Supernatural
CW, Thursday, 9PM
“I Know What You Did Last Summer”
Written by Sera Gamble and Eric Kripke
Directed by Charles Besson
Warning: this review contains some spoilers. If you’d rather not know what the story is going to include, bookmark this page and read it after viewing.
The steady progression of Supernatural‘s season four continues with “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” which is the first part of a two-part story. In this episode, the Winchester brothers try to help a young woman named Anna who has the special ability to hear the angels talking—an ability that the demons would desperately like to possess.
The episode begins with Anna being held in a mental institution. She realizes that the orderly is possessed, and uses her telekinesis to knock him out and escape. Meanwhile, Ruby warns Sam and Dean that the upper level demons put out an order to capture Anna alive. Even though Dean doesn’t trust Ruby, he goes along with Sam to investigate why the demons are targeting this girl. They arrive after Anna’s escape, but learn that she knows Lilith is breaking the seals.
A trip to Anna’s house reveals the demons are fast on her trail, having already killed her parents. Sam and Dean track her down hiding in her local church attic. The demon Alistair arrives, and the Winchesters find themselves out-matched, but they still manage to escape by jumping out a stained glass window. Meanwhile, Ruby has taken the girl and gone into hiding to keep her out of Alastair’s reach.
Sam and Dean slip out from under the demon’s watchful eye, and meet up with Ruby and Anna in a remote cabin in the woods. The episode ends with Anna saying, “They’re coming.” The lights in the cabin flicker, the door opens, and the angels Castiel and Uriel enter. They have come to kill Anna.
Overall, this is a solid and technically well-written episode that inches the season’s plot forward at a snail’s pace. Most of this episode feels flat, since its main purpose appears to be to set up next week’s episode and explain Sam’s connection with Ruby.
The episode’s slow momentum is primarily caused by the amount of time spent in flashback to explain Sam’s relationship with Ruby. Although the episode shows what Sam went through after Dean went to Hell, it really doesn’t advance the plot or make the story more engaging. The informational aspect of the flashback bordered on boring, except for the fact that Ruby chose to possess a comatose host without a soul in order to please Sam.
The most significant benefit of the flashback was finally getting Dean to “sort of” apologize to Ruby for treating her so badly. Other than that, the flashback failed to add much value to the episode, since most of what is learned isn’t new information. We’re just shown things that we already know, and there isn’t much value in that type of flashback. However, maybe something will be revealed in a later episode.
Maybe the flashback acts as a device to soothe our suspicions about Ruby. Maybe it’s all a setup and Dean was right about her. After all, she is a demon. Can she really be trusted? Then again, Supernatural has perfected the art of creating characters who are deeply flawed and multi-dimensional. Perhaps Ruby really is good. Perhaps the angels are bad. They have a history of wanting to kill innocents for the greater good, and they’re not the kind, loving beings that most people consider angelic.
Hopefully next week’s episode, “Hell’s Angels,” will deliver the action that this week’s episode lacked.