S09.E12: Sharp Teeth

[DittyDotDot]

Sam and Dean locate Garth after months of him being gone, only to find out he's a werewolf and part of an apparently human-friendly pack.

 

Did Jeremy Carver forget he left Being Human for a while? I think I could've gotten past the werewolf-cannon screwery in this episode if there was something else that held my interest. There really wasn't. Watching two grown-ass men bitch-facing and sniping at each other is really not something I enjoy--no matter how valid their reasons may be for ill-feelings, grow up and act like the men you are.. Nor do I enjoy monster monologues. And that was basically the whole shebang. Sigh.

 

Irony is, Sam and Dean annoyed the living shit out of me in this one, but I actually I find Garth fairly entertaining here (and that's saying something considering how much I wished Dean had shot him back in Southern Comfort). Dean should've recognized the creepy apple-orchard-scarecrow guy and offed the annoying werewolves on site. I kid, I kid...sort of.

[Iguana]

This episode shit on established werewolf canon so badly that a gallon of Imodium couldn't halt the flow.  Hate it for that reason.  Garth is just as annoying as a werewolf as he is as a human.  Hate it for that reason.  The plot required everyone to be stupid about figuring out who the bad guys were.  Hate it for that reason.  Haaaate.

[Goldmoon]

Yeaa, I got nothing.

[GirlyGeek]

While this episode isn't so bad in the (very recent for me) wake of Season 8, there's not much here.  The monster goes on and on way too long, I've never liked Garth much, and werewolves aren't that interesting to me, really, especially these ones.

Sam and Dean being so off and cold is really disruptive to my sensibilities- do not like.  And I know its just gonna get worse, so I'm assuming crash positions.

 

The end scene with Sam and Dean really pissed me off the first time around, I recall.  I felt like Sam was being way too dramatic and overly sensitive.  I mean, Dean saved his life!  I wasn't too harsh on Dean for the whole Gadreel thing.
But second time around, I was leaning more toward Sam.  Funny.  But I see Dean spiraling (probably because I know where the season is going, so I've got that 20/20 hindsight thing going for me), and his whole speech to Sam is so scratching the surface and not even dealing with the actual problems between them.  Sam is looking for Dean to see its more.  The roles have reversed some, too, and the younger brother isn't looking up to the older with 100% trust anymore.  Its uncomfortable, for the viewer and for the brothers.

And I'm not really looking forward to more but the only way out is through!

[takalotti]

I couldn't follow that last conversation. They were both talking in half sentences so much that I don't know what they were actually saying!

[RulerofallIsurvey]

And the winner for best lines of the episode - maybe even the Season (so far at least!) goes to...GARTH!  Come on Down!

"Dean can start a fight in an empty house..."

"Sam's a little insecure at times...Bless his heart" (LOVE the Bless His Heart!  Lol!  It's a Southern thing.)

And the BEST line: "The jawlines and the hair - it's intimidating!"  Hee hee hee!  Yes, it is.

And then it went down from there.  

I do enjoy seeing Garth.  I just wish they hadn't made him a werewolf.  Sure, they left him alive this time.  It only means the clock is ticking.  Oh the werewolf pack thing was mildly interesting.  What was more interesting was 2nd and 4th generation werewolves.  

Don't see the point of Dean lying to Sam about Garth being on camera at all.

Ragnarok made no sense and was barely relevant.  They could have just left it out to use later in a more meaningful way.

And haven't we seen the 'Sam and Dean don't want to work together' thing before?  Wasn't this Season 4 or 5?  

Sam's little speech at the end had me rolling my eyes hard.  Little bit of revisionist history there, Sam?  Dean might have encouraged you to give up the trials so you wouldn't die, but the ultimately the final decision was YOURS.  YOU made the decision not to finish them, so don't lay that at Dean's feet.  If you really wanted to finish the trials no matter what, then you would have.  So stop being a whiny bitch about it.  

[sigh] At least Sam initiated the hug with Garth at the end.  And even Dean caved.  Cuties.  Now just let me smack your heads together until you get over yourselves and we'll be fine...

[DittyDotDot]

2 hours ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

Don't see the point of Dean lying to Sam about Garth being on camera at all.

Is there ever a point to the lying? Seriously? 

If only smacking their heads together would work. I imagine it'd just give them more brain damage. ;)

[RulerofallIsurvey]

9 minutes ago, DittyDotDot said:

Is there ever a point to the lying? Seriously? 

If only smacking their heads together would work. I imagine it'd just give them more brain damage. ;)

Eh, I can understand delaying telling the truth under certain circumstances, but the way these two morons drag it out: No.

And could they actually get more brain damage at this point?

[AwesomO4000]

3 hours ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

"Sam's a little insecure at times...Bless his heart" (LOVE the Bless His Heart!  Lol!  It's a Southern thing.)

I don't want to make you feel bad about liking it, but oh, how I hated this line. So, so much. Because what it basically was saying to me - especially by having observer Garth say it - was that Sam is a loser. So Sam is a little insecure at times, but he has a good reason to feel insecure? What? And "bless his heart?" (which yes, it's a Southern thing, but it basically is said when someone means well, but is kind of clueless about what they are doing.) Well, to quote Sam and Dean: Bite me, show. But considering the stuff you have Sam say to Dean in this episode, you've already made it clear, to me, that Sam's only role going forward is to make Dean feel badly and throw a hissy fit / pity party for himself and that's about it. Again, I say bite me.

[RulerofallIsurvey]

On 8/5/2016 at 10:47 PM, AwesomO4000 said:

I don't want to make you feel bad about liking it, but oh, how I hated this line. So, so much. Because what it basically was saying to me - especially by having observer Garth say it - was that Sam is a loser. So Sam is a little insecure at times, but he has a good reason to feel insecure? What? And "bless his heart?" (which yes, it's a Southern thing, but it basically is said when someone means well, but is kind of clueless about what they are doing.) Well, to quote Sam and Dean: Bite me, show. But considering the stuff you have Sam say to Dean in this episode, you've already made it clear, to me, that Sam's only role going forward is to make Dean feel badly and throw a hissy fit / pity party for himself and that's about it. Again, I say bite me.

Ouch.  Okay, I didn't take that interpretation of what Garth said.  Granted, I did think the entire line from Garth about Sam was extremely weird, especially when he added the 'he has a good reason to be' at the end.  In retrospect, after reading your post it makes sense though.  At the time I saw it, I wasn't quite sure what the show was trying to say about Sam and I guess I really didn't want to think that the they were having Garth say something mean and nasty about him, especially after the "aw" factor of Dean being a big teddy bear a few seconds prior.  So I chose to believe the 'Sam has reason to feel insecure' bit was a call out to Dean lying to him about Gadreel again.  In other words, in my head it went something like "Sam can be insecure at times for instance, feeling like something is wrong with him, but then he has good reason to feel insecure, because he keeps getting lied to so he doesn't have all the relevant facts, Bless his heart*" - or something like that.  

*[The Bless Your Heart, Southern thing, is not always used sarcastically or to express pity.   Depending on the context, it can be used to express sincere affection or sympathy, or even gratitude/love: "You baked me brownies? Oh bless your heart!"

"It's an expression of pity, but can be used sarcastically.

Let's say that I just found out your good friend died. I could say, 'Oh, bless your heart!' without sarcasm to express pity. However, if you did something naive/idiotic, I could say it sarcastically.

Let's replace it with the expression, 'God help you'. If you're going through a really tough time, someone could say 'God help you' in an honest, meaningful way. If you do something really stupid, someone could say 'God help you'... and it the implied bit they don't say is, '...because you're gonna need it, ya jackass.'"]

So I guess, depending on one's interpretation of Garth's observation about Sam, the "bless his heart" could have different meanings.  I don't know specifically what he meant, but since I don't think Garth really has a mean bone in his body and has genuine affection for both guys, I don't think he was intentionally condescending or sarcastic with his usage of the phrase.  

[AwesomO4000]

1 hour ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

I don't know specifically what he meant, but since I don't think Garth really has a mean bone in his body and has genuine affection for both guys, I don't think he was intentionally condescending or sarcastic with his usage of the phrase.

Oh, I know Garth doesn't have a mean bone, which in a way makes it almost worse that the show has Garth say it, and he was saying it like he didn't realize he was saying something not so nice... but the look on Sam's face - which is fairly insulted - tells me that Sam did not interpret it as something complimentary. So I wasn't happy with the writer having poor, sweet Garth say that line. And I think his "Bless his heart" was said to express a sympathy kind of thing, but considering the sympathy was for Sam having a reason to feel insecure, it kind of came across - to me anyway - as unintentionally condescending.

I wish I could go with your interpretation, but it just seems a little convoluted a logic for Garth... and I'm not sure how much of the history behind what was going on between Sam and Dean Garth knew that he could be commenting on the details. So I tended to take the most straightforward interpretation... and I didn't like the "he has a reason to be." Considering how fairly ineffective the show has made Sam to this point in the last season and a half - spending much of season 8 having to be saved, and much of season 9... well pretty much ditto, I kind of took this as a somewhat mean dig at Sam's character. If the meaning was supposed to be your interpretation, I think the writer could've found a better, clearer way to say it. But I'm not so sure that the writer here - Adam Glass - generally does Sam's character many favors. Quite a few times in his episodes Sam is incompetent, ends up as a Samsel in distress tied to a chair, or both. He did write a couple of episodes that I really liked, but a few that I loathed as well.

To this point in the show, I was not so happy with Carver's interpretations of the characters, though, so this might be clouding my interpretation.

[Dobian]

A decent little motw episode, plus Garth...that is, until the end when it devolved into another round of Sam and Dean relationship drama.  I said before that these two are like an old married couple.  I was wrong, they're worse.  I know a lot of married people who aren't half as bad as these guys.  "I can't trust you...we don't see things the same...I'll go with you, but we're not brothers now so don't get the wrong idea."  Good grief.  Do these two ever get past all the soap opera and start acting the way real brothers act?

"Yeah I jerked you around to save your life, now when you're done whining, STFU and buy me another round."

"So that's why you stuck an angel in me, to keep me around to order your drinks."

"Correctamundo."

[DittyDotDot]

13 minutes ago, Dobian said:

Good grief.  Do these two ever get past all the soap opera and start acting the way real brothers act?

Heh, I do have high hopes for S12... . ;)

[DittyDotDot]

Seriously, guys who feed their families to scarecrow apple orchard gods and show up later as a werewolf should just be shot on sight. Probably should just off the whole family for good measure. Would've saved us all a lot of trouble. ;)

Sam, hon, I know you have serious brain damage from all the blows to the head, but Dean did not make you stop the trials. You're a grown man and if it matters so much to you, go fucking start them again. It should be quick and easy the second time around. And Dean, hon, stop acting like your the biggest martyr who ever martyred. You fucked up and Kevin died. You know what would be a better way to honor Kevin's memory, getting the fuck over yourself and be there when other people need you so they don't end up dead too. Gah! 

Oh, and by the way Sam, everything that's ever gone wrong between you isn't because you're family. Things usually go wrong between you two when you stop acting like you're family...just sayin'.

And now they're not brothers, but got back in the car together anyway. Idiots, I tell ya! Poor Baby, she shouldn't have to listen to all their whining.

TBH, I think they should've kept them separated longer. I mean two weeks isn't long enough for the "when we rode together we split the crapiness" to be earned. 

On 8/5/2016 at 5:54 PM, RulerofallIsurvey said:

Don't see the point of Dean lying to Sam about Garth being on camera at all.

Now that I refreshed my memory, I think Dean was trying to get Sam to think they didn't have any leads and Garth was gone. He was hoping Sam would pack it up and leave now. Because, you know, Dean is poison so they can't hunt together. Gah! 

On 8/5/2016 at 5:54 PM, RulerofallIsurvey said:

And haven't we seen the 'Sam and Dean don't want to work together' thing before?  Wasn't this Season 4 or 5?

Yeah, the more things change the more they stay the same. 

Edited September 22, 2016 by DittyDotDot
Because site and sight may sound the same, they do have very different meanings.

[bettername2come]

On 9/20/2016 at 11:29 PM, DittyDotDot said:

Seriously, guys who feed their families to scarecrow apple orchard gods and show up later as a werewolf should just be shot on sight. Probably should just off the whole family for good measure. Would've saved us all a lot of trouble. ;)

Exactly! And if they'd just made sure Missy Bender went to jail as an accessory, Sam never would've had to kill Dean's monster daughter. (I love the repeated actors sometimes just for moments like this.)

Garth used "bless his heart" correctly. "Guns waving and the jawlines and the hair. It's very intimidating!" I like Garth more here. He's a little calmer, more lowkey, and he knows the boys better, so his character doesn't feel so forced. He's not trying to be Bobby.I kind of hate that we never actually got to see Garth and Kevin together. I like the theoretical connection between them. I appreciate him taking on some of the guilt for abandoning Kevin, and "I was turning into a werewolf" is a pretty solid reason to stay away from hunters, even if the writers just likely dropped the ball before that. "Someone's gotta live to tell this damn story someday and who better than you." Suddenly, I'm convinced that Garth will be one of the few characters to make it through to the hypothetical series finale. The episode is fine, nothing special. 

[Hanahope]

Sorry to lose Garth as a full time hunter.  I could see him still doing it now and again though, using those werewolf skills.  He should have told the brothers beforehand.

what was with that dialogue at the end?  The brothers are alive because they are family.  They save people because they are family.  Stop with the guilt and martyr bit and get back to being family and hunters.

[Iju]

boring episode. SPN has beat it into your brain to never trust even the best looking of monsters (and now angels, ouch, double betrayal) so it wasn't a suprise at all. the only thing good about this episode was garth turning into a werewolf for his bae. power of love gets me every time and all ;_;

 

side note the evil female werewolf was very pretty :)

[The Companion]

On 8/7/2016 at 9:12 PM, RulerofallIsurvey said:

Ouch.  Okay, I didn't take that interpretation of what Garth said.  Granted, I did think the entire line from Garth about Sam was extremely weird, especially when he added the 'he has a good reason to be' at the end.  In retrospect, after reading your post it makes sense though.  At the time I saw it, I wasn't quite sure what the show was trying to say about Sam and I guess I really didn't want to think that the they were having Garth say something mean and nasty about him, especially after the "aw" factor of Dean being a big teddy bear a few seconds prior.  So I chose to believe the 'Sam has reason to feel insecure' bit was a call out to Dean lying to him about Gadreel again.  In other words, in my head it went something like "Sam can be insecure at times for instance, feeling like something is wrong with him, but then he has good reason to feel insecure, because he keeps getting lied to so he doesn't have all the relevant facts, Bless his heart*" - or something like that.  

*[The Bless Your Heart, Southern thing, is not always used sarcastically or to express pity.   Depending on the context, it can be used to express sincere affection or sympathy, or even gratitude/love: "You baked me brownies? Oh bless your heart!"

"It's an expression of pity, but can be used sarcastically.

Let's say that I just found out your good friend died. I could say, 'Oh, bless your heart!' without sarcasm to express pity. However, if you did something naive/idiotic, I could say it sarcastically.

Let's replace it with the expression, 'God help you'. If you're going through a really tough time, someone could say 'God help you' in an honest, meaningful way. If you do something really stupid, someone could say 'God help you'... and it the implied bit they don't say is, '...because you're gonna need it, ya jackass.'"]

So I guess, depending on one's interpretation of Garth's observation about Sam, the "bless his heart" could have different meanings.  I don't know specifically what he meant, but since I don't think Garth really has a mean bone in his body and has genuine affection for both guys, I don't think he was intentionally condescending or sarcastic with his usage of the phrase.  

Thank you! So many people describe "Bless your heart" as an insult but it is actually quite versatile. 

On 8/5/2016 at 5:54 PM, RulerofallIsurvey said:

 

And haven't we seen the 'Sam and Dean don't want to work together' thing before?  Wasn't this Season 4 or 5?  

 

I believe we have even seen Sam and Dean don't want to work together and Garth is there. Sigh.

 

This episode was firmly meh for me. I hate the angst for angst sake. A better job by the writers might have at least had Sam reiterating his fear that people die because Dean saves him, but instead we get a nonsense explanation about being brothers as the problem. There is no nuance when the angst comes out.

I also hate when something happens in the show that begs discussion about prior episodes and it gets ignored. How do you have an entire episode of maybe good monsters and NOT discuss Benny or Lenore? Dean's assertion that they are definitely bad didn't feel organic without some discussion of his gut. He was just so insistent there couldn't be a group of werewolves that behaved this way. 

And then of course there was a subgroup and how much more interesting and unpredictable would it have been if that wasn't the case? Or if Dean and Sam pushed them into bad acts. 

I didn't hate hate it. There were some good parts and I liked that they left Garth, his wife and FIL alive. I like that Garth was happy. So, it wasn't a total wash.

 

ETA: I stand corrected that there was a line about prior friendly monsters but it was blink and you miss it. I think there was a missed opportunity here to bring in the show's history and to justify Dean's hostility (as simple as, "I just have a gut feeling on this.")

Edited January 8, 2020 by The Companion