{"id":92381,"date":"2014-12-03T09:58:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T14:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=92381"},"modified":"2025-09-23T11:45:45","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T15:45:45","slug":"supernatural-season-2-episode-10-hunted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=92381","title":{"rendered":"Supernatural<\/i>: Season 2, Episode 10: \u201cHunted\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"h11\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nDirected by Rachel Talalay
\nWritten by Raelle Tucker<\/i><\/p>\n

Let’s take a moment to note the first female director of the series (it is her only episode). Talalay does her best with a script that is all over the place. Gordon wants to take over the episode. He basically DOES take over the episode. But Talalay does her best to even things out and prioritize the Advent of Ava, with a truly loopy motel room design that is, at first, totally random (and I also would like to stay there indefinitely), but there is a method to the madness of that motel. The blue circles on the wall are psychedelic and strange, creating a dream-like psychedelic atmosphere that (somehow – for me, anyway) loops us in with the teaser.<\/p>\n

Season 2 has a much more complex arc than Season 1, which was all Dad-Dad-Dad-Dad. Season 2 has multiple arcs set up from the beginning, each one inching its way towards a climax. There’s Dean not being able to deal with Dad’s death and John’s whisper at the end. That took up the first part of the season. Along with that, there is Sam, and the “problem of Sam,” seen through Dean’s eyes, and now, with “Hunted”, the “problem of Sam” is the rocket that propels us to the end of Season 2. <\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

One of the best adversaries the show has ever seen has been not a monster, not a demon, but a mortal man, Gordon, played by the magnificent Sterling K. Brown. He entered in “Bloodlust,”<\/a> one of the best episodes of Season 2, and brought with him his own objectives, his own story-line. He nearly takes over every time he shows up. This is unique: to have a secondary character whose needs and wants and desires rival the leads. Even at the end of “Hunted,” when Gordon is hauled off to jail, the look on his face would crack glass. He is an enemy you do not want to have. His gentleness towards Dean (mixed with the potential of violence) creates disorientation. Dean revealed his tender underbelly to Gordon, not realizing he was in the presence of a predator. Gordon senses Dean’s fears about masculinity, that he’s not as good a man as his dad was. Dean didn’t expressly say that to Gordon when they were BFFs for 5 seconds, but Gordon picked up on it. Gordon has a lot of emotional ammo in his arsenal.<\/p>\n

Gordon is reminiscent of Mr. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness<\/i>, a man buried in the jungle, there for the purpose of a mission, but the mission has so become the man that he is now lost to humanity. It’s one of the themes of Supernatural<\/i>: how does one do the job and not BECOME the job? Where are the lines drawn? How do you know when you’ve gone over? Gordon has the messianic belief in the rightness of his cause that is typical of all tyrants, dictators, cult-leaders. The Gordon episodes are disorienting because of that submerged identification factor. He presents an alternative. In order to understand Gordon and his effect on Sam and Dean (Dean, in particular) one has to understand just how attractive<\/i> is the alternative Gordon embodies. <\/p>\n

In “Croatoan,” Sam confronted Dean, saying, “We’re SUPPOSED to struggle with these things.” That goes against John Winchester’s training, it goes against Gordon’s understanding of his job. It’s no coincidence that Gordon would re-enter the action after those crucial words were spoken, because Gordon presents a way of life that is beyond that struggle. Gordon doesn’t feel <\/em>he’s doing right, he KNOWS he is doing right. But on the flip side, and back to Mr. Kurtz, if you know<\/i> you are doing right, even if “doing right” means doing terrible terrible things, then you are no longer really human. You have abdicated your place at the civilized table. To further the confusion, that is how Gordon views Sam. It’s irreconcilable. And, of course, Mr. Kurtz, at the end of Heart of Darkness<\/i>, seems to realize that himself, as his last words suggest: “The horror – the horror.” <\/p>\n

Hunters get into the business through personal trauma (except for Garth). Everyone else reels through their “job” with a mixture of Charles-Bronson-revenge-film anger, total lack of perspective, and an OCD-serial-killer’s attention to pattern-making. Gordon took his sister’s disappearance on the chin. He made the choice to become a hunter. Sam and Dean were children when their mother died. They were raised “in the life.” They had no choice. Sam doesn’t remember his mother. Dean only remembers fragments. John Winchester is more of a classic Hunter than Dean and Sam are: Dean and Sam missed having a mother, but they were so young that the life John gave them was the only life they ever knew. (And for hunters, that also appears to be rare. Most hunter parents we meet try to protect their children from the job. That’s what Dean does when he lives with Lisa and Ben. Not John. And not the Campbells, ironically.) Gordon’s trauma has made him a good hunter, and has made him unreachable. <\/p>\n

It’s interesting to consider where Sam Winchester ends up going in the seasons after Season 2. Season 3, and the heart-wrenching Season 4. Season 6. How he deals with his problems, with his own past (distinct from Dean’s past, although Dean can’t really accept that), is unique, and deeply threatening to Dean. <\/p>\n

Dean’s “job” was twofold:
\n1. become a hunter
\n2. protect Sam<\/p>\n

Dean barely lives outside of those two mission statements. One can hardly blame him, but I’m not interested in watching Supernatural<\/i> from a place of blame or not-blame. What we are seeing onscreen is conflict, inner and outer, and conflict is the stuff of Drama, and should be maintained until the final frame (whenever that may be), and all will be resolved, and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. Until then? Bring it on. <\/p>\n

The Psychic Kids plot-line is one of the driving forces of Season 2, set up in Season 1, with Sam’s visions and the advent of Max Miller. The plot-line loops together the Yellow-Eyed Demon and the Winchester Family, making personal what was before seen as random. What if all along Sam was “the one” the Demon was really after? We meet Andrew Gallagher in “Simon Said,” and now in “Hunted” we meet Ava (the wonderfully screwball Katharine Isabelle). The Psychic Kids plot-line develops in a sort of X-Men<\/i>\/Breakfast Club<\/i> kind of way. In general, I am not a fan of the Psychic Kids plot-line, it feels imposed<\/i>, as opposed to an organic out-cropping of the natural action. You can see that imposed feeling in “Hunted,” because we have Ava and Gordon side by side in the same episode, and it’s almost two episodes shoe-horned into one. The Gordon Walker Arc feels natural and organic, acting as a counterpoint to the somewhat-healthy hunter atmosphere of Ellen\/Jo\/Ash. <\/p>\n

Teaser<\/big>
\nAs teasers go, this one is top-notch. After bitching about the non-entity score in “Croatoan,” “Hunted” more than makes up for it by using Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” underneath the teaser. THIS is how you score a sequence. The song, famously, is one big crescendo. It doesn’t have a traditional verse-chorus-verse-chorus format. And it works beautifully with the action onscreen. They play the entire song! <\/p>\n

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