Sunday Quickie - with Sam and Dean from Supernatural
It's Leviathan season! Warning - Contains spoilers for Season Seven, also Dick jokes.
Hello, boys.
It's Leviathan season!
(** Warning - Contains spoilers for Season Seven, also Dick jokes. **)
Brothers and sisters in Supernatural fandom, hear me out.
This season is widely regarded among our flock as one of the worst seasons of the entire 15-year run of the show.
An opinion I myself held until very recently.
Me and the missus are currently rewatching the whole bloody lot from 1 to 15, and we’re just done with Season Seven.
We very nearly skipped it. I know, right?
But I am here to testify that, far from being the worst season of SPN, it is actually really good. And if anyone disagrees I will stick you with Ruby’s Demon-Killing Knife and burn your bones while reciting “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica etc,…“
I’m sure all SPN lifers will know the full exorcism by heart, so no need to repeat it in full here, for safety as much as anything else just in case a friendly demon is reading this and freaks out.1
Meg (Rachel Miner). A Friendly Demon.
There is so much to love about this season.
There’s Sam with Lucifer psychically projecting himself into his brain after Sam let him in (rookie error, Sam).
Mark Pellegrino as Lucifer does “annoying” far too well, btw. I bet he drives his wife nuts.
You’ve got the demise of Bobby (Jim Beaver), not a dry eye in the house, and then he hangs on as a ghost, Swayze-fashion, for five or six more episodes and its even sadder when he goes for good.2
You’ve got Mark Sheppard’s excellent portrayal of the slightly camp, unpredictable Crowley.
And there’s the introduction of reluctant Prophet Kevin Tran (Osric Chau), and DJ Smalls as hunter Garth, who likes sweets and cakes, reads comics and gets drunk too easily.3
And the season’s Big Bad, the Leviathans, were nowhere near as annoying as I remembered. And they weren’t in absolutely every episode anyway.
The Leviathans were the very first creatures that God made, but they turned out so dangerous that they needed to be locked up in Purgatory or else they would destroy the universe.4
The existence of the Leviathans also provides a good reason why God didn’t similarly imprison or destroy any of the other vile things he made.
Demons, Angels, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Lucifer, Crowley, humans, wasps, spiders, those ‘orrible little yappy dogs that bite yer ankles all running around unchecked - nah, its OK, they’re not as bad as the Leviathans. Leave them alone.
The Leviathans actually appear in the Bible, too, described thus in Job:41.
"I will not fail to speak of Leviathan's limbs, its strength and its graceful form.
Who can strip off its outer coat? Who can penetrate its double coat of armor?
Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth?
Its back has two rows of shields tightly sealed together; each is so close to the next that no air can pass between. They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted.
Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn. Flames stream from its mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke pours from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds. Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth.
…
When it rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before its thrashing. The sword that reaches it has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
…
Nothing on earth is its equal- a creature without fear. It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud."The main objections from fans seem to be twofold.
Now, some will say that the problem with the Leviathans were sold to us as the most powerful and evil of all the Old Ones.
Whereas what we got was shapeshifters who eat people, and melt when you pour borax on them.5
Well, a major part of speculative fiction is to create seemingly all-powerful foes, then have them defeated somehow. Where would be the fun in beating a weak, incompetent adversary? And the season would last an episode and a half, tops.
The other “problem” some folks have with Season Seven is the childish obsession with toilet humour, always present in Supernatural but given total free rein here.
All depends on what you think about the double entendre as a comedy tool.
Me, I’m always happy to give you one.
There’s Something About Dick
Dick Roman, portrayed brilliantly by James Patrick Stuart, is the charismatic leader of the Leviathans. Without Dick, they are nothing.
Some fans don’t care for Dick. Others can’t get enough Dick.
It’s fair to say the writers and actors had a ball with Dick throughout the whole season.
Here is a partial list of S7’s Dick gags (deep breath):
“How much Dick is too much Dick?”
“Dick is coming!”
“What makes Dick so hard to beat?”
“So we got dick on Dick?”
“If you dig down, it’s all Dick.”
“Dick made more Dicks.”
You got anything to say on the topic of Dicks?
and my personal favourite, courtesy of Crowley:
“All the boys need is to get Dick”.
One final Dick pic - this is where he finally gets destroyed by the Bone Of Righteous Mortal Washed In The Three Bloods Of The Fallen.
Fair play to God for always leaving a loophole.
Other posts from Talk About Pop Culture you may enjoy:
Sunday Quickie - What It Means To Be British
An Interesting Fact about Conan The Barbarian
The Owl Service - Teatime Folk-Horror for all the family
Thank you. Come again.
Yes, that was a trigger warning for demons.
Inasmuch as anybody ever really goes “for good” on this show.
Relatable to many of the show’s fans.
Perhaps the Almighty could have considered an initial prototype on a small scale before going straight to production untested. There was nobody for him to run these things past at the time (at the time there was literally nobody else around). He should have been a bit more careful with his first go at creating sentient beings, is all I’m saying.
Borax has been banned in the UK since 2010 because of its toxicity. I guess Americans are more trusted by their government to make good decisions. If any leftover Leviathans decide to move to the UK, we’re fucked. There’s a moral there but I’m not quite sure what it is.