"Optimism" – Supernatural S14E06 Review

Well, that was closer to normal. But then again, maybe Supernatural doesn't have a "normal" these days. It touched on a subplot or two from season 14 in that Jack is coughing up blood, Dean is still dealing his guilt over letting Michael possessing him, and they touch on the Apocalypse World/Bizarro counterparts with Charlie.

The latter didn't seem to really contribute anything to the season. We don't know that Charlie was planning on leaving, so her "I'm leaving/no I'm not" subplot for tonight was pretty forgettable. It seemed to be there more for the creative team to remind us, "Gosh, isn't Felicia Day wonderful and we like her so much!"

But enough about the subplots, what about the main plot of "Optimism"? There's two, actually. Let's cover the second one first. Sam and Charlie are in Memphis staking out a bus stop where people have disappeared. There's a cute bit with Dean saying such-n-such about Sam, and the camera cutting to Sam doing the exact opposite. Like Dean saying Sam is smart, and cut to Sam with a dopey-looking grin on his face playing with a fidget spinner.

But the cab of their truck soon turns to more serious things, as Sam keeps treating Apocalypse World Charlie as "his" Charlie. She calls him on it, and explains her lover Kara died during the angel wars, killed by an angry mob during a riot. Charlie plans to retire from Hunting, and Sam convinces her not to. They finally determine the source of the disappearances is a fly guy called a Musca. He has to be tabbed with a brass nail dipped in sugar water to kill him. But Sam and Charlie track him to his lair--where he glues human corpses together with goo to make a nest--and kill him by the good old expedient of blowing his head off. Charlie decides to stay on as a Hunter, and that's that.

The main plot is Jack wants to go Hunting with Dean. Dean reluctantly takes him along to the small town of McCook, Nebraska, where the guys around the local librarian, Harper Sayles (Maddie Phillip) have a tendency to disappear. Jack is smitten with Harper, and Harper is smitten with him. Meanwhile, a prospective diner dater with Harper is killed, and then a creepy employee worker who is fixated on Harper gets killed. Dean investigates, and the killer comes after him. Dean somehow gets to Harper's apartment, and it turns out the killer is a zombie version of Harper's ex-boyfriend, Vance (Sam Robert Muik), who supposedly moved out of town after college graduation.

While Dean fights the zombie, Jack takes Harper to her library. Despite his locking the door, she lets Vance in when he comes there and then reveals she's a necromancer and was and is in love with Vance. Harper killed Vance and brought him back from the dead, and they play a little game where she falls in love with guys and then Vance kills them and eats them to keep his body together.

To defeat a zombie, you have to bury him and stake him with a silver spike. To get to that point, Dean shoots Vance with his shotgun and Jack handcuffs Vance to a radiator with silver handcuffs. Harper runs off and near the end, we see her writing a letter to Jack saying she loves him and once she kills him and brings him back, they'll be together forever. And then she sends the letter... somewhere.

In the bunker, Jack points out to Dean he was right about there being a supernatural case. And then he has more of his coughing fits and collapses, bleeding from his mouth and nose.

"Optimism" was an okay episode. Jensen Ackles is always good with the funny, and pairing him with Alexander Calvert as Jack was inspired. This was the first episode since he's appeared where I actually liked Jack. Here he does a pretty good job of playing the fish-out-of-water noob Hunter, which is actually the first time they've focused to any great degree on the fact that's what Jack is. Other than the coughing fits and a certain amount of guilt about not killing Michael when he had the chance, most of the Jack baggage got dumped on the luggage carousel and we just got the actor having fun with the character for once. Typically it seems like Calvert is too busy dealing with all the angst and the subplots the creative team channels through Jack to make him an interesting character.

I wouldn't say there were any great innovations on his character. They hit all the typical notes for Jack: unfamiliarity with cultural references, unfamiliarity with human customs (particularly his reaction to sex, which was amusingly awkward without going to Castiel levels of ignorance), and just being a young Hunter on his first real Hunt.

The Sam/Charlie story was pretty weak sauce by comparison. There was nothing wrong with it, and the initial bits with Sam were fun. But as writer Steve Yockey kind of gas-lighted, the whole thing was a weak metaphor for Charlie and her "I want to go off and live on a mountaintop. With Wifi." attitude. It was… okay. It didn't show Padalecki or Day at their best, but it didn't show them at their worst, either. It seemed like a lot of effort to establish something about someone who is by all rights a minor character. But as long as the creative team has that Felicia Day shrine in a back closet, and Day continues to be a nerd queen, I guess we're stuck with her.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?