Obviously, the high rating for this episode is simply because it is about the backstory on the Winchester clan, but frankly this episode feels like a retcon. Plus it's not very good. First, the actor who played Henry Winchester was incredibly stale and monotone, continuing the trend of awful guest acting in Season 8. He didn't feel like someone from the 1950s, just a modern actor doing cosplay. Second, why do writers feel the need to redeem EVERY character? What made the Winchester family saga compelling over the years was that John came from a broken home with absentee parents and was left to his own devices while Mary actually had a good and positive upbringing from 2 loving parents, despite being them all being hunters. John was a NORMAL person who turned hunter, but all of a sudden it turns out that his father wasn't a deadbeat and he disappeared because he travelled in time to 2013 and never returned. One of the best aspects of the early seasons of this show was despite the supernatural focus was also how gritty and grounded the Winchester family dynamic was. After losing Mary, John degenerated a lot into what his father was because he lost the one person who humanized him and lost her in the most brutal way possible. Yet the writers felt the need to force some redemption arc for John's father just because he's a Winchester and in doing so, further undermines the more relatable aspects of the show. Bad parenting and abandonment is a thing. There is no need to retcon that. It's the negative aspects of characters as much as the positives that make them relatable and human. The whole point of the Winchester dynamic was that each generation learned from their parent's mistakes. But now all of a sudden John's father was actually a better father than he was. Not only that, his father was fully aware of the supernatural even before he was. Earlier in the series, there was an episode where we saw Bobby as a spirit re-living painful childhood memories of his abusive father and enabling mother. It was a powerful moment that resulted in genuine viewer sympathy. And unfortunately, I'm also certain that based on this high rating, this forced filler subplot of Sam and Dean's grandfather secretly being a good man drew viewer sympathy as well. But there's good writing of tragic backstories and bad writing for backstories. This episode is most definitely an example of the latter.
Review of As Time Goes By
