SPN: Scenes I Love . . .
"The Benders" cont.
Warning: reference to homophobic themes and sexual assault.
It seems Sam isn’t the only Winchester with the power of puppy dog eyes. Kathleen is unable to resist Dean’s pleas and we shortly find she has acquired the traffic cam footage and is sharing the results with Dean. While he’s going through the photos, Dean notices a van making a decidedly unhealthy noise, and he realizes they may not be looking for a supernatural monster after all.
In fairness to young Evan McKay, the sickly engine does sound just like a cross between Godzilla’s roar and Mothra’s squeal. Hey, maybe that’s how the foley people produced the sound effect! 😁
Meanwhile, Sam wakes up to discover he’s in a cage. Must be Tuesday.
This time the cage is literal, rather than a metaphorical, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be a metaphor, one that illustrates Sam’s life path and also foreshadows his destiny.
Sam soon discovers he isn’t the only prisoner. Alvin Jenkins is in an adjacent cage, and we soon discover he’s about as sympathetic as sandpaper.
Sam quizzes him for information about their captors, who obligingly turn up on cue to feed Jenkins, and Sam makes a shocking discovery:
Actually, I’m not sure how he can be so sure; they could be vampires, shape-shifters, were-wolves . . . and that’s just a few human hybrids from the first season. But I’ll bow to Sam’s expertise on the matter.
Seriously though, many have commented that they found “The Benders” one of the most frightening episodes precisely because the threat is not from anything supernatural, but simply from evil human beings.
Jenkins, it seems, is hyperfixated on one kind of threat in particular. After a string of episodes featuring homoerotic/homophobic quips earlier in the season, the show has been quiet on the theme for a while, but now it’s back with a vengeance as he reveals that he’s “waiting for Ned Beatty time”, a reference to the movie Deliverance wherein Ned Beatty’s character is infamously subjected to homosexual rape. He assumes the Bender family to be “a bunch of psycho hill-billy rednecks looking for love in all the wrong places”, a concern Sam dismisses as the least of their worries. But already these themes, along with the theme of dysfunctional family dynamics, are taking on a much darker tone than they intitially seemed to have when they were introduced in the early episodes.
As an aside, I’m curious to know which of this episode’s characters was people’s least favourite: Alvin Jenkins, or Pa Bender. In terms of being just plain annoying, I personally think Jenkins has an edge.
.
Warning: reference to homophobic themes and sexual assault.
It seems Sam isn’t the only Winchester with the power of puppy dog eyes. Kathleen is unable to resist Dean’s pleas and we shortly find she has acquired the traffic cam footage and is sharing the results with Dean. While he’s going through the photos, Dean notices a van making a decidedly unhealthy noise, and he realizes they may not be looking for a supernatural monster after all.
In fairness to young Evan McKay, the sickly engine does sound just like a cross between Godzilla’s roar and Mothra’s squeal. Hey, maybe that’s how the foley people produced the sound effect! 😁
Meanwhile, Sam wakes up to discover he’s in a cage. Must be Tuesday.
This time the cage is literal, rather than a metaphorical, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be a metaphor, one that illustrates Sam’s life path and also foreshadows his destiny.
Sam soon discovers he isn’t the only prisoner. Alvin Jenkins is in an adjacent cage, and we soon discover he’s about as sympathetic as sandpaper.
Sam quizzes him for information about their captors, who obligingly turn up on cue to feed Jenkins, and Sam makes a shocking discovery:
Actually, I’m not sure how he can be so sure; they could be vampires, shape-shifters, were-wolves . . . and that’s just a few human hybrids from the first season. But I’ll bow to Sam’s expertise on the matter.
Seriously though, many have commented that they found “The Benders” one of the most frightening episodes precisely because the threat is not from anything supernatural, but simply from evil human beings.
Jenkins, it seems, is hyperfixated on one kind of threat in particular. After a string of episodes featuring homoerotic/homophobic quips earlier in the season, the show has been quiet on the theme for a while, but now it’s back with a vengeance as he reveals that he’s “waiting for Ned Beatty time”, a reference to the movie Deliverance wherein Ned Beatty’s character is infamously subjected to homosexual rape. He assumes the Bender family to be “a bunch of psycho hill-billy rednecks looking for love in all the wrong places”, a concern Sam dismisses as the least of their worries. But already these themes, along with the theme of dysfunctional family dynamics, are taking on a much darker tone than they intitially seemed to have when they were introduced in the early episodes.
As an aside, I’m curious to know which of this episode’s characters was people’s least favourite: Alvin Jenkins, or Pa Bender. In terms of being just plain annoying, I personally think Jenkins has an edge.
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