Supernatural – The Complete Eighth Season: Blu-ray Review
Season Overview:
After a year apart and escaping Purgatory with the help of a vampire named Benny(Ty Olsson), Dean (Jensen Ackles) heads straight for Sam (Jared Padalecki), but the reunion isn’t everything he imagined it would be. Although Sam drops everything to rejoin his brother, leaving the life he had grown accustomed to turns out to be harder than he imagined. In the meantime, Dean’s association with a vampire turns out to be more than he bargained for. As the brothers struggle with their unexpected reunion, they make a shocking discovery that could lead them on a deeply personal mission to settle some old scores and seal the Gates Of Hell forever. If only they could agree, is this a “family business” or isn’t it?
The ending to season seven left us guessing as to what was going to happen to Dean and as the first episode starts we see EXACTLY what has happened to him. Premieres like that are perfect to me because it shows the person come back in not the best of shape mentally. It reminds me of Buffy The Vampire Slayer when she returned back from the dead and was “off”. Not many shows usually pick up a year after the previous season but in this case it was necessary to build up somewhat of a distance between Dean and Sam. It was a great part of the storytelling of this season. I liked the fact that plenty of the episodes felt fairly standalone but still kept parts here and there that made the main storyline flowing throughout. Padalecki and Ackles have both grown into their respective characters and you can see just how comfortable they are with each other on screen. You can almost feel like they’re actual brothers. My favorite episode has to be the one that would be unlikely to some. The episode “Bitten” was one that barely even had the series characters in it. It revolved a group of 3 students (2 males and 1 female) in a “found footage” style of filming. The episode’s story is about one of the group that gets bitten by a werewolf and the effects it has between the friends. Again, it was strange for me to like it because Sam and Dean were in the episode for maybe a total of 5 minutes but the character development that took place within the allotted time was really awesome. I sympathized for the characters and what was going on. Something like that doesn’t come along very often. The finale was one that had me on the edge of my seat and kept me wondering what was going to happen to Sam. It truly was the culmination of everything the Winchester brothers had been working for the entire season and it didn’t disappoint one bit. The closing moments in “Sacrifice” were those that left me staring at the screen with a simple “Whoa.” coming from my mouth. I CANNOT WAIT to see what the next season of Supernatural brings and what road Sam and Dean will be traveling down. Count me in for sure!
Special Features:
Finding Supernatural – This feature shows more about the episode Bitten that I was speaking of above and shows the little tricks that production team did to create what we saw on screen.
Angel Warrior: The Story Of Castiel – A pretty cool tribute to Castiel himself that includes the cast and crew talking about the character.
For The Defense Of Mankind: The Tablets Revealed – This shows the inspiration for the search of the tablets in this season.
Deleted Scenes – Only a handful of deleted scenes that are pretty decent.
Gag Reel – This feature was probably the funniest set of bloopers I’ve seen in a long time. Very entertaining.
