Because Zeroth is genius, he has expounded upon all of the things that are horribly wrong with “Bugs.” He has noticed patterns that I didn’t see, even.

We can learn something from dissecting what went wrong here.

So first, check out Dana’s excellent breakdown of the last time Supernatural was egregiously bad with cultural appropriation: “Wendigo”

Notice a pattern? Laziness. No research and no respect for NDN peoples and their cultures. Once you start with that attitude in one aspect of the writing, it can invade the rest quite easily. And that’s what happened here. A lackluster and frankly lazy script followed up by shoddy camera work and exploitative filming.

So let’s expound on what is lazy with the script.

But that’s not all! Once you have read the ways this went wrong, he’ll show you how it could have gone right, with a story treatment that will make you pound on the Supernatural creative team’s door demanding a do-over. Go. Read. Delight!

Cold open: two men, one older than the other, sitting beside a campfire with Hunter paraphernalia strewn about. Both men are First Nations, but wearing tough, reliable European clothing. No stereotypical FN garb or symbols around them. They attempt to ward off a swarm of bugs, before the older man is forced to run off into the woods, leaving the younger one behind, screaming.

Sam and Dean discuss a body found in a development neighborhood, defleshed overnight. That sounds like their kind of thing, so they roll into town. They meet Larry and Matt and the realtor, and Sam befriends Matt over their shared estrangement from their fathers. Matt gives them a clue that there’s a lot of bugs not behaving normally. Out of season, or not local to the area. He gives them a picture he found of bodies in the woods…

Read the rest!

And, just because I cannot get enough of that hint of Dean in the shower, which in my opinion is the only good thing to emerge within that episode itself: