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Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season
Warner Bros. // Unrated // September 1, 2009
List Price: $79.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Series:
Dean: We gotta see the new Raiders movie!
Sam: Saw it.
Dean: Without me?
Sam: You were in hell.
Dean: That's no excuse.
Supernatural is back for its fourth season and this one is just as good as the ones that preceded it. There have been a few times over the course of the series that it looked like the creators had written themselves into a corner, but they always managed to wiggle their way out of things without resulting to any lame plot devices, and this season is no exception. Now the Winchester Brothers have the biggest fight of their lives on their hands. Lilith, the demon that plagued them in season three, has a plan: A plan to break Lucifer free from his confines and literally create hell on Earth. Just as suspenseful, humorous, and engaging as ever, this season is a winner.
Sam and Dean Winchester (Jared Padalecki & Jensen Ackles respectively) are hunters. They don't hunt animals for food or sport however, they hunt supernatural creatures. Werewolves, Vampires, Ghosts, and demons, the
As the fourth season starts, Dean wakes up in his wooden coffin, buried six feet under the ground. Four months have passed since he was killed, and Dean has no idea how or why he's alive.
Taking a car, he travels to Bobby's and with the old hunter's help he finds Sam. The younger
The first order of business is to find out just how Dean managed to crawl out of Hell. Finding a few small clues, including a name, Dean dresses up an old warehouse with all of the demon traps and wards that he knows and prepares a summoning incantation using the name that he found, Castiel. He arrives, but the traps have no effect on him, and neither does Ruby's demon-killing blade. That's because Castiel is an Angel of the Lord. Yep, part of the heavenly choir and he was the one who dragged Dean out of Hell.
It seems that Lilith has been up to things while Dean was dead. There are 600 seals that keep Lucifer in Hell, and she's been breaking them. What's worse is that she only needs to destroy 66 of them to release the head demon. Castiel has brought Dean back so that he can stop her.
This season has a lot going for it, not the least of which is that they figured a way out of last season's ending without breaking any of the 'rules' that have been stating previously in the show. It also makes sense that if there's a Hell and demons that there would be a Heaven and angels. The creators successfully raised the bar, yet again, as to what the stakes were without taking the easy way out. They could have made just another 'monster of the week' show and coasted on the strong characters. They chose a more risky road and it's paid off well, something that rarely happens. (In contrast, look at Prison Break or Heroes where the creators couldn't keep the momentum up.)
This season also sees a lot of character development. Sam and Dean are changed people because of what they've gone through. Though it was only four months on Earth, time works differently in Hell and Dean was in the pit for forty years subjectively. Being constantly tortured changes a person and what he went through makes Dean more careful and cautious. Sam on the other hand saw his brother being torn apart and that hardened him. He no longer is interested in see the other side of things or reasoning with creatures. He sees everything in black and white. This causes friction between the two brothers, and it gets pretty bad at times.
This season is a little darker than the previous years. There's more of an emotional toll that the brothers have to pay and that makes the show all the more immediate and intense. People have to decide just how far they'll go to get information out of a prisoner, and there's always the question of if the ends justify the means.
While I enjoyed the vast majority of shows in this season, zipping through them as quickly as I could, there were a couple of episodes that didn't work as well as the others. In the earlier seasons there were a few episodes where one of the brothers saw what life would be like if they weren't hunters or if they didn't have their brother to rely on. They do that yet again in the episode It's a Terrible Life. They followed that up with a rather silly episode, The Monster at the Endo of This Book, where the brothers discover that they are characters is a series of Supernatural novels, books that relate all of their adventures in the smallest detail and written by someone that they've never met. While the episode wasn't horrible, the foreshadowing at the end seemed a bit lame and beneath the show.
Of course the start of the show, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, are just as good as ever. Their characters change fairly significantly but the men pull it off and without a hitch. They make the changes seem natural and realistic and seem very at home with the altered personalities.
One other group of people that should be singled out for recognition is the casting directors for the show. Eric Dawson, Carol Kritzer, Robert J. Ulrich, Heike Brandstatter, and Coreen Mayrs do a magnificent job filling the various roles. This show has many more roles to fill than your average weekly program due to the nature of the stories, and every slot is wonderfully filled. A lot of the roles are demanding too. Having someone play a person both before and after they've been taken over by a demon can be a bit challenging. All of the supporting (and even the minor) characters fit the roles physically and are good, solid actors. It's one of those things that you usually only notice when it's done wrong, and it never is in this show.
The DVD:
Audio:
This set, unfortunately, gets only a DD 5.1 mix. I was disappointed that the program didn't rate a lossless track, but it still sounds good. The dialog is crisp and clean and the sound effects are never overpowered by the music. The few action scenes make good use of the full soundstage and the sub gets a moderate workout in a few places. Distortion, hiss, dropouts, and other audio defects were absent.
Like the earlier seasons, the original music was kept in tact as far as I could tell. The background music mainly consists of classic rock by groups such as AC/DC,
Video:
The 1.78:1 1080p VC-1 image looked very good. The show was shot and mastered in HD (naturally) and the resulting picture has a good amount of detail. The image is sharp and the blacks are deep and dark. The show has a dark atmosphere with a lot of scenes taking place in sewers, dark warehouses, and abandoned buildings late at night. These low light scenes were reproduced very well, with details still present in the shadows and colors appropriately toned. In brighter scenes the show 'pops' well and has accurate skin tones. There is a small amount of grain in some of the darker scenes, but this isn't distracting and gives the show that old movie feel. Overall this is a nice looking set.
Extras:
There's some nice bonus items included in this set. There are commentary tracks to three episodes, all of which feature people behind the camera. Stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles aren't included, which is too bad.
The best extra is a look at Mythologies of Supernatural an hour-long look (presented in HD) at the rules behind the creepies in the show. The only problem is that this is broken down into about half a dozen separate short featurettes that are accessed from a series of menus. I would have preferred that they just made one long documentary. In any case this featurette looks at the history and mythology of various creatures that pop up in the show and how the program handles them. There are interviews with the writers, theologians, and experts in the paranormal that are both entertaining and informative.
There's also a ten-minute gag reel that was very funny in parts, and a series of deleted and extended scenes.
The digital copies of the episodes (included with season 3) are no where to be found in this set, but that's no big loss. If you've invested in an HD set up, why bother watching the shows on an iPod? Overall this is a very nice set of bonus material.
Final Thoughts:
Like the other three seasons of this show, this year's worth of episodes is excellent. The show continues to evolve and grow without getting stupid or becoming a parody of itself. As the series progresses if just keep getting richer and more fleshed out. A wonderful set of shows that comes Highly Recommended.
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