Season 10 Episode 8 – “Hibbing 911”

I’m really getting the impression that Supernatural has very little left to give in the 10th season as this was another really weak outing. With the midseason finale happening next week I would think that the season would feel like it’s going somewhere.

We have two returning characters this week. Kim Rhodes reprises her role as Sheriff Jody Mills and Briana Buckminster returns as Sheriff Donna Hanscum. Unsurprisingly they stumble into a buddy cop story that predictably highlights their differences but also things that they can agree on. Sam and Dean take something of a back seat in this story to allow these two characters to form a connection. I’m not sure what the reason for this choice would be other than them scouting for another potential spinoff. If that’s the case then this isn’t the spinoff to go for.

The two actresses do really well for the most part and the characters have a fun enough dynamic to make some of the scenes entertaining enough. Jody is always a good character to see as she has a really interesting back story and Rhodes is great at channeling that into her performance. There are mentions of what her life is like now that she’s raising Alex but it amounts to a procession of phone calls and anecdotes. It would have been a far more interesting episode if the focus had been Jody’s difficulties in raising Alex. Buckminster’s Donna is actually really likeable despite some of her more insufferable qualities. She also has some really great comic timing that helps make her scenes stand out as being really funny. It was also good to see that Jody brought out a more confident side in her and encouraged her to take a little more control of her life instead of allowing others to walk over her.

Using these two characters as the focus does present something pretty positive for the show. Supernatural has had issues with featuring decent female characters in the past. There have been a few that have come and gone like Ellen, Jo, Lisa and Ruby but on the whole they are fairly vacuous temporary love interests that last one episode. Seeing an episode focusing on two strong female characters who have plenty of agency as part of the narrative is a really positive thing and definitely something that Supernatural should be doing a little more. They even had a moment where the stuck the metaphoric middle finger up to the chauvinism that sometimes infects the show.

Vampires return as the main antagonist in this episode but they arrive so late in the story that it’s really hard to see them as a credible threat. They’re dealt with so quickly that there’s hardly any point in them being there. It is an old foe to use and there’s only so many times something can return before it stops seeming threatening but there was such a laziness to this that I’m struggling to remember anything about it as I write this.

Sam and Dean finally discuss the Mark of Cain, briefly but they do discuss it. Dean still isn’t being honest with Sam which is just frustrating at this point. Haven’t we been over this countless times? Didn’t Dean explicitly learn -or at least be reminded- that hiding things from Sam is not a good idea? We really shouldn’t be putting up with it at this point and it’s just a lazy way of manufacturing drama. In terms of overarching plot that was about it due to the absence of Castiel and Crowley to move things along in that respect.