The Road So Far: “Slumber Party” Review

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, IDJIT!

Supernatural, I… hate you.

That seems like a weird response to an excellent Charlie episode, but I know how this goes. Yes, last night’s episode was great, but I know the writers are just going to hurt me again. I’m on to you, Supernatural. Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for last week.

But for now, let’s focus on this latest episode. Because as fans, we have to take the crumbs the writers throw at us.

This week’s episode brought back Charlie, which is great. I’m still, however, super annoyed that Charlie hasn’t met Cas or Kevin. Charlie could have met Cas if the last episode hadn’t—no, no, now is not time.

Anyway, Charlie returns to try and help Dean and Sam find a way to track the angels. Which she doesn’t seem to do. She downloads all the information the Men of Letters have in their computer, but it doesn’t seem like Sam or Dean have a solid way to track the angels yet. Charlie probably could have figured something out, but the three of them are interrupted by the Wicked Witch and Dorothy. Oh yeah, you heard that right.

Some classic black and white flashbacks reveal that Dorothy is actually a hunter and that the writer of the Oz books, L. Frank Baum, is her father who recorded her story, though Dorothy reveals the books are largely inaccurate. The Wicked Witch was brought to our world by Dorothy, who hasn’t found a way to kill her. Dorothy used a spell to bind herself and the witch to stop the Witch from hurting anyone. This liquified both Dorothy and the Witch. I can only assume this is a jab at the Witch being killed with water, especially since no one brought it up in the episode.

Dean bumps the bottle the Witch and Dorothy are in, releasing them. Charlie is instantly fascinated and excited. Charlie, it’s revealed, has been hunting on her own, but laments that there is nothing very magical about hunting. She longs for a magical world and quest like she reads about in her books, and with Dorothy’s arrival, she gets that. Charlie gets to be the hero of this episode—not that she hasn’t been one before—but this time, Dean and Sam are literally incapacitated while Charlie kills the Wicked Witch of the West and heads off to Oz with her hopefully future girlfriend Dorothy.

For the most part, this episode is excellent and informed us that Robbie Thompson is the only writer concerned with things that happened before season eight. Sam and Dean discuss their ideas of home and mention their parents, which are things we haven’t heard much about for a while, and Charlie reveals that Chuck’s unpublished works were published online by Becky. So yay! Continuity! And Crowley knows about the musical Wicked, which made me ridiculously giddy. Oh, and Dorothy drove what I’m pretty sure is a 1930 Indian Four Motorcycle, which is a freaking beautiful and classic piece of machinery.

Hey there sexy!

So on the upside, it now looks we have two strong recurring female heroes, along with our badass female villain Abbadon, but I’m not holding my breath for things to last. The show also kind of addressed sexism, but in a way that made me a bit disappointed. In the flashbacks, Dorothy is shown directly dealing with sexism. The Men of Letters were surprised she captured the witch all by herself, and Dorothy responds by basically telling the men that yes, she, a woman, did capture this dangerous witch and cut out her tongue all on her own. We also see Dorothy leery of the Men of Letters.partly just because hunters and Men of Letters don’t seem to get along, but also because of the sexism in the Men of Letters. She calls Sam and Dean pencil pushers, and refers to Charlie as their secretary. When Charlie reveals that she is a hunter too, kind of, Dorothy is shocked and asks what year it is.

The show portrayed sexism in general as if it was a remnant of the past and that Sam and Dean were not sexist at all. Which… okay, I don’t think Sam and Dean, like many people, intend to be sexist, but I think the hunters are definitely sexist and Sam and Dean share a lot of the same beliefs just because of how they were raised. It was strange to see the show act like this sexism didn’t exist and in fact tried to make the hunters look egalitarian compared to the Men of Letters, which is so not true. Furthermore, Charlie tries to debunk Dorothy’s anger about sexism by admitting that yeah, the Men of Letters might have been sexist, but after Dorothy disappeared, they kept her case file open and never stopped looking for her. And Dorothy may have hated her father because he tried to erase her story and her history in the Oz books to make himself feel better, but he had actually been leaving her clues on how to fight the witch. See, Dorothy, everything is fine. Calm your little feminist self. It seemed like every step of the way this episode tried to claim that sexism didn’t exist or at least it doesn’t anymore. Not going to lie, it was a slap in the face to have a show that’s particularly sexist try to act like sexism isn’t a problem anymore.

Overall, though, the episode was pretty good. But don’t get your hopes up: next week Dean will Vulcan mind-meld with a dog. *headdesk*

Meanwhile, Adam is still in Hell… yep. And since we were screwed out of seeing Cas and Charlie together, here’s a picture of Felicia and Misha to brighten your day.