Nostalgia time!
This episode has Sam and Dean going hunting down a
monster that Rufus and Bobby (Bobby! Oh how I miss you) once hunted as well –
and we have a lot of flashbacks of how the two teams worked.
And I loved it
I loved the genuine affection both teams had – though Sam
and Dean have a heavy dollop of cockiness (especially from Dean) and snark,
while Rufus and Bobby are much more cautious and have a wonderful sense of
world weariness about them.
I like that – it would have been easy and lazy to try and
make both teams the same: the make Bobby and Rufus just a duplicate of Sam and
Dean – but it wouldn’t work. Bobby and Rufus aren’t as close and have also been
doing this a whole lot longer. We have parallels (I like that both teams are
taking this case as an easy win to distract themselves from world consuming
horror they can’t quite figure out how to deal with it).
And, of course, all the world must love Bobby calling Sam
and Dean “my boys” and when Rufus even thinks of challenging that Bobby doubles
down. Sam and Dean are his all-but-sons, not even questioned. Doubly so when we
see Bobby’s tormented nightmare is the death of Sam and Dean. Even when they
take him for granted and he calls the idjits, there’s so much care there.
I miss Bobby.
Rufus and Bobby also work so well together – maximum crotchetiness,
lots of experience and confidence without as much of the macho bravado of Dean
or the endless emotional issues and Manpain. I would almost say spin off – or at
least more of these since it would also do a good job of increasing the number
of recurring POC in the series – except Rufus has already been killed off.
The story itself was nicely spooky, a nice old school
monster of the week episode. It had lots of creepiness, lots of excellent
relationship moments between the brothers without the wall to wall angst which
seems to almost be a necessity recently. It was fun, not too deep, but a great
way of just seeing the Winchesters in action.
And we had a lesbian WOC who had a happy family, didn’t
die and wasn’t used for comic relief! Yes, she didn’t have a great deal of
screen time and spent a fair amount of time comatose – but NOT DEAD. Yes, this
is how low my expectations have sunk.
This episode was a desperate grab for fan nostalgia – and
I’m fine with that. This show is now 11 seasons long, a little nostalgia to the
good ol’ days isn’t a bad thing – especially a character as awesome as Bobby
