"Game Night" – Supernatural S14E17

Well, things happened in "Game Night". Again. The slow decline of Jack continues. And continues. And continues.

This week, Nick carries out his plan to bring Lucifer back to inhabit his body. It involves him kidnapping Donatello (Keith Szarabajka) and injecting him with poison. He then uses a recording of Donatello's voice to lure Dean and Mary to him, and demands to see Jack in return for giving them Donatello's location before he dies from the slow-acting poison.

Jack meets with Nick and head-butts him, which gets Jack's blood on Nick's shirt. Dean and Sam then take Nick to the abandoned warehouse where he's keeping Donatello. Dean goes in and two demons attack him as he finds Donatello. Mary and Jack have figured out that Nick injected Donatello with angelic grace, not poison. They tell Sam, who questions Nick and Nick helpfully explains that he used the grace to contact Lucifer and find out how to bring him out of the Empty. Nick has a piece of metal to get out of the handcuffs, hits Sam in the head with a rock, and drives off to a cabin to summon Lucifer using Jack's blood from the head-butt earlier.

Sam is presumably dying, and Mary gives Jack permission to use his powers to teleport them to Nick. Jack does so, sends Lucifer back to the Empty as he starts to come through into the real world, telekinetically crushes Nick's hand, and then burns him from the inside. He teleports off to heal Sam, and then comes back. Mary tells him that something is wrong with him and she's going to tell her sons, and Jack clutches at his head, his eyes glow, and the screen goes black as he whispers her name.

In a subplot, Castiel meets with Anael (Danneel Ackles) and offers her a pair of mildly cursed earrings in return for help finding whatever her boss Joshua used to contact God. Anael takes him to an emporium run by Methuselah (Nathan Kay), and they wander around for a while and talk about how God doesn't like to meddle but Anael does, and they're all alone. They find the object--a necklace--but God doesn't respond. At the end, Anael goes off but not before Castiel tells Anael that they have each other. And... I have no idea where this was all supposed to go. Other than the creative team is trying to build up some kind of romantic relationship between the two angels.

Oh, and Anael calls Castiel on not telling the Winchesters that Jack's soul is gone. And that he will tell them when he gets back. But we the audience didn't need Anael to get that accomplished.

So as I said, to no one's surprise, Jack turns evil. One wonders if the whole thing wasn't a setup by Lucifer to get Jack as a host body, rather than Nick. Lucifer's apparent plan to possess Nick was pretty easily thwarted, all things considered. There were a few unexplained moments, like... why did Sam and Dean take Nick with them? If he required it, I must have missed that scene. Releasing Nick from his cell in the bunker was a key part of Nick having the chance to escape and summon Lucifer. So why did they do it?

The "Game Night" of the title refers to the opening bit where the Winchesters and Jack are planning to have an old-fashioned Winchester game night. It doesn't seem to have any significance beyond that. Lucifer is playing games with them, but he does that most times that he appears. Dean is playing a version of Mousetrap in the beginning, so I suppose there's that symbolism. But the Winchesters are often on the receiving end of some kind of convoluted plan by the Big Bad to do something that will ultimately help the BB.

So it looks like Lucifer really wanted Jack as a vessel, and set up Nick--his old vessel--to bring him back from the Empty and then die, giving Lucifer his shot at a now-soulless Jack. Or maybe Jack is just soulless and Lucifer wanted to give him that final push. Or maybe it has nothing to do with Lucifer but we still end up with Jack as a soulless Big Bad.

The whole season story still seems a bit convoluted. Michael was the Big Bad, but then he wasn't. Lucifer and Nick have been lurking in the shadows, coming out for an episode or two. But then they disappeared because of the Michael drama. Which tends to undermine them as a threat or even a presence. Or the Jack drama. Or the unavoidable cases of the week that have nothing major to do with any of the other storylines, like last episode's "Don't Go in the Woods". And on top of that, add whatever's going on with Castiel and Anael, apparently. And there's still the occasional odd plot element out there. Like Dark Kaia. Remember her? Not to mention all of those hyped-on-Michael-grace monsters which just... gave up and went away after the attack on Kansas City failed because Team Winchester captured Michael.

Overall, the entire season has felt rather diffuse. Not because of the occasional Case of the Week--that's part for the course-- but because there are so many major storylines that seem to be drifting around. Michael, Nick, Donatello, Lucifer, Dark Kaia, Apocalypse World (where is Alt-Bobby?), one or two others I'm probably forgetting. I guess the goal is to get to where Jack, or Jack/Lucifer, is the Big Bad. But it seems like the season is too long (20 episodes, apparently) to make him a Big Bad by himself. So they tossed in Nick, and Michael, to keep things going to and to build Jack up as the eventual Big Bad.

I like Alexander Calvert as an actor, particularly as Jack. But I'm not sure he has the acting presence to sustain continuing appearances on the show and play the apparent role of Lucifer mark what-ever-he-is. Not to mention, they've only done Lucifer as a Big Bad once or thrice. Bringing Lucifer back again just seems like overkill at this point. The Winchesters have defeated him, they've defeated Michael who is presumably as big a threat as Lucifer. They've moved onto bigger threats than Lucifer. Backsliding to Lucifer seems like weak sauce.

Plus, although Mark Pellegrino appears in next week's previews, presumably the toasty death of Nick means we won't be seeing much of him, which again, is a shame. Although tonight's performance as Nick seemed to be overkill, I've enjoyed Pellegrino as both Nick and Lucifer as long as they kept him down to relatively small doses. I can deal with small doses: it's when they make him the center of attention, like tonight, that his going evil whole-hog approach gets a bit tiresome. All he's been doing is acting evil, killing people, and whining about how he wants Lucifer to take him back over. It's not a subtle role, is it?

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