No Exit Review

By John Keegan

Visit The Shrine of Entil'zha for an archive of John's TV Review archives.

Ever since her introduction earlier in the season, the character of Jo has generated a great deal of controversy. Despite calls for patience from the writers and producers, fans have quickly begun pointing to Jo as the weak link of the season, an unnecessary complication. This episode, however, is the first time that Jo has been in the spotlight. How did Jo stand up under scrutiny?

As it turns out, fans had little to worry about. Jo and Dean may be attracted to each other in a general sense, but only enough to make the animosity that must now exist a bit more potent. It was quite clear, starting with the first act, that Jo wasn’t going to be Dean’s latest love conquest. She’s not mature enough for that. They quickly fell into a big brother/little sister routine, something that made the final scene far more painful.

In fact, my initial suspicion was that Jo’s real father was John Winchester, so I’m glad that the writers took it in a more adversarial direction. It would have been too easy for Jo to be the latest addition to the Winchester Gang, and far too distracting as well. Dean and Sam have enough to work out between them as it is. Now, Jo still gets to be the amateur hunter, but she’s not going to take direction or friendship from the Winchesters easily.

While her role on the series may now be less controversial, that doesn’t mean that she will be easily accepted. The actress plays the role relatively well. Unfortunately, that role involves a disturbing level of naïve moaning and posturing that gets old within the space of three minutes. It’s abundantly clear what the writers want to achieve with Jo, but that doesn’t make it easy to tolerate her personality.

All that said, this is a solid episode, giving Jo a lot more scope and fans proper perspective on her place in the scheme of things. Not only that, but the entire situation sheds light on Ellen and her attitude towards the Brothers Winchester. She has a lot of sympathy for them, given what they’ve lost and her own experience, and her professionalism shines through when she demands that they have the right resources. But she also has reason to hold a grudge against the name and the legacy.

As far as the case is concerned, it owed a lot to the classic “X-Files” episode “Squeeze”, at least in terms of the claustrophobic locations. The link to America’s “first serial killer” was intriguing, but without any other knowledge of the historical background, I felt like they were using the concept to make the episode more ominous. In essence, this could have been any serial killer, and the story would have worked equally well.

Visit the Episode Discussion Thread to discuss this review.

Share this:

Related