Previously: Castiel got sucked back to Heaven, leaving the boys to deal with his vessel, Jimmy.
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When the Levee Breaks
Kirsti: We open basically where we left off, with Sam locked in Bobby’s panic room. Dean opens the hatch on the door and Sam demands to be let out. But Dean’s all “LOL NOPE” because Junkie Sam needs to get clean. Sam insists that it’s a bullshit comparison because he’s not doing it to get high. He’s doing it to get strong enough to defeat Lilith. Dean scoffs and says he’s being weak and pathetic.
Sam snaps that killing Lilith is what matters, and Dean’s all “I TOTALLY AGREE”. That’s why he and Bobby are going to deal with it while Sam stays in the naughty corner and thinks about what he’s done. Dean shuts the hatch and walks away. Sam bangs on the walls and yells. Dean walks up the basement stairs and stops at the top to sad panda in some dramatic lighting.
CREEPY BIRDS!
After the Not Credits, Sam’s having withdrawal symptoms. Everything’s going fuzzy, and he’s staggering around the room. Okay, but like…HE LITERALLY JUST HAD DEMON BLOOD. Are three weeks magically supposed to have passed? Is it the iron in the panic room that’s causing this? Why did the panic room never affect him and his childhood demon blood before? I HAVE QUESTIONS, KRIPKE.
Marines: We must’ve missed the part where they hit the instant-detox button, duh.
K: Oh, of course.
Sam tries to open the door and obviously fails. Then he realises he can see his breath on the air, and he yells for Dean and Bobby to get the fuck downstairs and help him. But it’s too late. He turns around and comes face to face with Alastair. Alastair smiles creepily and says that he’s got Sam all to himself. “How will we pass the time?” he sing-songs while playing with a scalpel. (M: Seriously, this Alastair only gets creepier each time I see him…)
Cut to Sam tied down on a steel table. Alastair plays around in Sam’s guts, and Sam screams and begs him to stop. Alastair commends him on his manners. JPad acts with his nostrils some more, then resumes screaming. (M: You’ve earned every bit of nostril flare if someone is playing in your guts.) (K: Valid point.) Except when the camera pans out, it’s all a hallucination. (Duh, because the walls of the panic room are made of salt and iron, so no ghosts or demons could ever get in.) Sam’s just lying on his cot in the panic room screaming.
Upstairs, Bobby and Dean drink to help get through the screams. Dean asks how long it’s going to take, and Bobby sasses “Let me just look it up in my demon detox manual. Oh wait, no one ever wrote one!“. Then he sighs and says that he’s not even sure Sam will survive. Dean looks feelsy. They’re interrupted by the phone ringing. It’s Rufus (remember him?) (M: No.) (K: WELL YOU SHOULD) (M: The link helped), and whatever he says makes Bobby look horrified.
Detox Basement. Sam snaps out of his hallucination and gasps in relief. But wait! He’s not done hallucinating yet. Because now he’s seeing Teen!Sam. Teen!Sam demands an explanation, because their plan was to grow up normal. Sam says he tried but it didn’t work out. Plus, demons killed Jessica so he had to get revenge. Teen!Sam is all “bitch, please”, reminding him that if he hadn’t gone off hunting with Dean, Jessica would still be alive. Also, she definitely wouldn’t have wanted Sam to turn into this.
Sam says that they were never going to be normal or escape hunting.
“Grow up!” he snaps at a hallucination of his 14 year old self. Teen!Sam vanishes and reappears across the room. He suggests that maybe Sam’s right and you can’t hide from what’s inside you. He blinks and his eyes flash yellow.
Back upstairs, Bobby hands Dean some news reports and tells him that there’s weird shit happening all over the place (although only in the US…) (M: Remembering the rest of the world is hard.) and that it’s all related to seals being broken. Lots of them, and very quickly. He looks worried and asks Dean where the angels have disappeared to in all of this. Dean has no idea. Bobby looks worried some more and asks if the pending Apocalypse is the best time to be detoxing Sam the demon killer.
Dean is massively unimpressed by this and snaps that he refuses to use his brother as a nuclear warhead. Bobby agrees that it’s a terrible plan and says Sam’s like a son to him, but follows up with “Maybe he’s here instead of out there on the battlefield because we love him too much“. Dean’s face is all “Ew, it’s not Esther Day, why are we talking about familial love?”
Detox Basement. Sam sits on the floor and sweats profusely. His vision gets all wibbly again as he tries to make his way to a table with some water on it and fails miserably. “Poor baby…” comes a voice. It’s Mama Winchester in her pretty white virginal nightie, only with a big bloody stomach wound. (M: I’m pretty sure we have to deduct pretty, white and virginal points for blood stomach wound stains.) (K: Probably.) She tells him he looks awful, and he says he’s waiting to hear her spiel about what a disappointment he is.
She tells him he’s being brave and doing the right thing and that she’s super proud of him. Also, Dean doesn’t understand. But she does. She was raised a hunter, and grew up knowing that there are difficult choices to be made in life. “Yes, our family is cursed,” she says and I laugh because that’s the understatement of the millennium. But Sam, she says, has the power to turn their curse into a gift.
She strokes his face and Sam gets teary because she didn’t live long enough for him to remember her doing that and ow why did I stab myself in the feels. He asks tearfully what happens if the evil inside him is stronger than he is, if Dean’s right. Mama Winchester strokes his face some more and says Dean’s weak and can never understand how strong Sam is. Sam has to go on without his brother and make her death mean something, even if it kills him. She kisses his cheek and disappears.
Mari: Can we talk about bad parenting if the parent is a demon-blood-detox-hallucination? That was horrible advice.
K: It really was. I’m also torn on whether or not it counts as bad parenting, because technically Sam’s known nothing BUT bad parenting (except from Bobby, and even he’s a little hit or miss at times) and so it’s not surprising that his hallucinations would also give shitty advice. (M: It really is no wonder that his subconsciousness picked a parent as the form to offer justification.)
That night, Dean wanders around the junkyard. There’s a feathery sound from behind him and he turns to see Castiel. “Well, it’s about time. I’ve been screaming myself hoarse out here for about two and a half hours now!” he snaps. Cas gives zero fucks. Dean asks again what Cas was going to tell him before getting sent back to Heaven, but Cas insists it’s not important.
Dean asks if Sam can really kill Lilith, and Cas says it’s possible. But in order to do so, Sam would have to drink, like, ALL the demon blood and that would take him past the point of no return. He’d probably end up as the next creature Dean had to hunt. The angels, he says, believe that Dean’s the one who’ll stop Lilith. They want him to accept his role.
“If I do this, Sammy doesn’t have to?” Dean says. I’m 90% sure this accepting-his-role thing is less about Sam and more because Cas gave him a massive dose of puppy dog eyes. Cas gives a non-answer, and Dean declares him to be a total dick since he got back from Heaven. (M: TRUE. Puppy dog eyes and dickishness cancel each other out.) Then he sighs and agrees.
Cas makes him say something specific about being in the service of God and his angels, including a promise to obey orders. Cas looks slightly teary when Dean does. Then he tells Dean to wait for them to call on him. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Sam’s sitting on the floor being all shaky. Then he hallucinates that all his blood vessels are slowly turning black, and it’s pretty gross. He screams for help, but Dean just stands there looking feelsy. Bobby’s all “Ignore the screaming, let’s talk about why the fuck you suddenly trust the angels.” Dean insists that he’s never trusted them less, but it’s a less shitty option than letting Sam trust a demon. Bobby’s all “Huh. Good point…”
They suddenly realise that the screaming from downstairs has stopped, which is totally suspicious. They rush down there and open the hatch to find Sam having convulsions on the floor. Dean wonders if he’s faking, but Sam suddenly gets thrown across the room by an invisible force. He’s declared to be Not Faking, and they throw the door open and rush in to help.
Sam spins along the walls and flails his arms around. They grab him and manage to tackle him to the floor, still convulsing. Bobby shoves his belt in Sam’s mouth, and tells Dean they’ll have to tie him down for his own protection. Dean reluctantly agrees.
Later, Sam wakes to find himself chained to the bed. Dean insists they had to because the demon blood was flinging him all over the place. He tearfully asks why Sam did this to himself, and Sam snaps “You know why“. Dean’s all “Revenge, yeah?”. Except that there’s no point in revenge because he’s back from Hell. Sam’s reply of “Point? How about ‘stop the damn Apocalypse?‘” shows us that he’s talking to an empty room, hallucinating again. Hallucination Dean insists that he’s the one chosen by the angels to stop the Apocalypse and that it’s nothing to do with Sam.
Upstairs, Bobby asks if they’re doing the right thing. Dean insists that they are because of how he was being flung around the room. But Bobby says it’s not the demon blood that’s killing him. It’s them. Cold turkey clearly isn’t working, and they need to give him some demon blood. Dean disagrees. “And if he dies?” Bobby says in surprise. “Then at least he dies human!” Dean snaps.
Mari: Why is everyone suddenly so okay with Sam dying? First his halluci-mom and now this.
K: “Better dead than evil” is kind of the unofficial motto of Supernatural, I suspect…
Detox Basement. Hallucination Dean says he knows why Sam drank demon blood. It’s because he’s felt different all his life, and he knows he’s a monster. Sam yells at him to shut up, but it doesn’t work. Upstairs, Dean says tearfully that he’d die for his brother in an instant, and that he won’t let Sam turn into a monster.
In a delightful juxtaposition, we cut back to Hallucination Dean hissing that Sam’s a monster and that he had to try really hard to pretend that they were brothers, that Sam wasn’t just something they should be hunting. “You’re nothing to me,” he snaps. Sam turns away tearfully, and when he turns back he’s alone in the room.
That night, Sam wakes to a buzzing noise. His chains unlock by themselves, and he looks freaked, which is pretty legit.
The door creaks open and he calls out. There’s no answer. He walks over there and pushes the door open, calling another “Someone here?“. Dude. You’re acting like one of the people who dies in the teaser of a Supernatural episode. (M: If only…) There’s no answer. He creeps through the door and heads upstairs.
But instead of following Sam, the camera remains in the basement. We see Castiel lurking in the shadows under the stairs, then the door to the panic room swings closed again. Cas gestures, Prue Halliwell style, and the lock slides across. Upstairs, Sam sees Dean and Bobby asleep in the study and creeps past them.
Cut to an industrial site by a river somewhere. Cas sad pandas by the water. He turns to find Anna behind him. She asks what the fuck he did, and he says his orders were to let Sam go. Anna’s all “HE’S DRINKING DEMON BLOOD EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE”, and Cas says she shouldn’t have come. Two angels appear on either side of her and take her captive. Anna tears up. They vanish in a flash of white light, and Cas goes back to his sad pandaing.
Mari: All of my STUPID ANGELS feelings have been building up and Cas just sold out the one I actually liked so angels can suck it.
K: Pretty much exactly.
Back at the junkyard, Sam’s breaking into a car when a gun cocks behind him. It’s Bobby, who says the only place Sam’s going is back into the panic room. Sam refuses. “Dammit, boy,” Bobby says tearfully. Sam tears up too, and insists that Bobby won’t shoot him. Bobby insists that they’re trying to help him. Sam grabs the shotgun and presses it into his chest. He tearfully tells Bobby to shoot him. Bobby doesn’t. Sam grabs the gun and uses it to knock Bobby out. Then he finishes breaking into the car and drives off. Fade to black.
Mari: SAM WINCHESTER, I HATE YOU. What kind of bad-things-happening-to-decent-characters parade is this? Well, luckily for us, I think they’ve run out of decent characters after two.
K: Truth.
After the Not Commercial Break, Dean and Bobby open the door to the panic room and are all “HOW THE FUCK DID HE GET OUT?!” Bobby suggests he had help, probably in the form of Ruby. Dean’s not so sure because there was a devil’s trap right in front of the door, so surely she shouldn’t have been able to open it. But mostly, he HOPES Sam’s with Ruby because he plans on murdering her face off.
Bobby points out that he’s supposed to be waiting on word from the angels. Dean gives zero fucks and says they can contact him in his car “on my way to murder the bitch“. MISOGYNY SHOTS! Bobby sighs and tells him that Sam doesn’t want to be found so will be near impossible to locate. Dean mutters “Yeah, we’ll see” and leaves.
Meanwhile, Sam’s at the Fancy Hotel of the Week looking jittery. There’s a knock on the door, and he sighs with relief when it’s Ruby. He asks if she busted him out, and she’s all “No? Designed to keep me out, remember?” He asks where the fuck she’s been for the past three weeks, and she offers up a half-hearted apology that she was looking for Lilith and that she had no idea Dean would do this.
Sam says that Dean’s going to be looking for him, and knows all his habits. That’s why they’re in the honeymoon suite of a fancy hotel rather than a dodgy motel room, as per usual. Ruby says it’s sad how bad things have gotten between them. She strokes his hair, and he slams her into the bed. He grabs a knife from her ankle sheath and slices her arm before sucking her blood. She smirks.
Mari: This caused me actual discomfort to watch. Sam is all twitchy and desperate and the way they mix the blood drinking with the sexual stuff… Ugh. Can’t. Everything is awful.
K: SO AWFUL.
Back at Bobby’s, Dean’s fixing the Bromobile. Bobby appears to say that his car’s been found in Jamestown, North Dakota. Dean’s all “Ohhhh, so Sam thinks he can fool me by switching cars? COOL.” He asks Bobby if any other cars were stolen in Jamestown, and there are two. One is a low-key anonymous old bomb, and the other is an Escalade with custom rims.
Dean announces that Sam’s taken the latter because it’s exactly what Sam wouldn’t do. He tells Bobby that he’ll head out in search of Sam while Bobby stays put and mans the phones. Meanwhile, Sam and Ruby are having post-blood drinking/sex snuggle time. She grins as she says that his appetite’s increased. Sam’s disgusted by this, but she insists that it just means he’s getting stronger. Strong enough to kill Lilith. (M: It reeks of manipulation.)
She says that it’s just in time because they’re down to the last two or three seals. Sam’s horrified and demands to know whether the angels are. Ruby’s all “The fuck should I know?”, then announces that she has big news. The final seal, she says, can only be broken by “Lucifer’s first“. Otherwise known as Lilith, the very first demon. Sam’s thrilled because this means that if he can stop Lilith, the last seal can never be broken.
He asks if Ruby knows where Lilith is, and she says she doesn’t. But she’s found one of Lilith’s entourage. Her “personal chef“, so to speak. Sam looks confused and asks what Lilith eats. Ruby wrinkles her nose and says he doesn’t want to know.
Mari: She says it way too cutesy-like, as if Lilith is a vegetarian or something.
K: She’d be a vegetarian the way Edward Cullen is a vegetarian: in the way that involves no vegetables and lots of blood.
Cut to a hospital and a couple of nurses in teddy bear printed scrub tops. One tells the other that a horrible thing happened at another hospital nearby: a nurse stole two babies from the neonatal unit and walked right out. I… feel like we’ve been here before.
They head into the nursery as the conversation continues. Apparently this other nurse has no memory of taking the babies and is claiming she was possessed. The nurse listening to the story is all “LOL WHUT” then asks who’d hurt a baby because “they’re just delicious“. Her eyes flash black as she stares at the babies. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Ruby tells Sam that Baby Stealing Nurse has graveyard shift at the hospital the following night. Then she says he needs more blood to be able to defeat Lilith. More than she can give him. Sam sad pandas, and Ruby reassures him. But it’s not the blood. It’s Dean’s lack of faith in him. He sad pandas some more and says he hopes he and Dean can sort their shit out when this is all over.
Meanwhile, Bobby and Dean are on the phone. Bobby says the police found the pimped out Escalade in a ditch outside Elk River, and there’s a town nearby called Cold Spring that’s full of demon signs. Then Bobby says that finding Sam has to be about bringing him home, not pushing him away. Dean’s all “Ugh, whatever” and hangs up. Rude.
At the Fancy Hotel of the Week, Sam peers around the corridor to make sure there’s no one around before sneaking out of the room. But of course, Dean’s magically lurking around the corner. He waits until Sam’s gone, then breaks into the room to find Ruby packing. He attacks her with the knife and they fight. Just as Dean’s getting the upper hand, Sam appears and grabs his arm, forcing him down onto the bed.
Dean’s all “NICE TRY AT LOSING ME, ASSHOLES”. Sam says he’s glad Dean’s there and he wants to talk. Ruby bitchfaces. Dean says they can talk when Ruby’s dead. Sam tells Ruby to leave, and she runs for the door, which is totally legit. Sam and Dean proceed to argue about whether or not Ruby’s poison. Dean gets all teary and says he just wants what’s best for Sam.
Sam says he wants them to take down Lilith together. Dean’s totally on board with this plan, as long as they ditch Ruby. But Sam refuses. He insists he needs Ruby to help him and that he’s the only one who can kill Lilith. Dean’s all “Bitch, please”, and it rapidly descends into an argument again. Sam snaps that Dean’s always been the one telling him what to do, and he trusts Dean no matter what. He just needs Dean to trust him on this one.
Dean shakes his head, and says Sam doesn’t know what he’s doing. Sam insists that he does. That’s worse, though, “Because it’s not something that you’re doing, it’s what you are!” Sam gets teary and JPad acts with his nostrils a lot as he tells Dean to “say it“. Dean tells Sam he’s a monster, then takes a detour to One Manly Tear Town.
After the Not Commercial Break, the boys fight. The room gets smashed to shit as Sam quickly gets the upper hand. He knocks Dean to the ground and starts choking him. Just before Dean blacks out, Sam lets go. Dean gasps for air. Sam stands over him and snaps “You don’t know me. You never did. And you never will.” He heads for the door. “You walk out that door, don’t you EVER come back,” Dean gasps from the floor.
Look, they had to force a tipping point between these two eventually. But this felt really long and really drawn out, and basically the only new information we got in the entire episode was that Lilith eats babies. So…yeah. This wasn’t great for me.
Mari: I finished this episode and immediately took to Twitter with my realization: I hate Sam Winchester. I think I really do. He was my favorite for a long time, on account of Dean being all jaw-clenched and misogynistic, but damn. Everything about Sam in this episode made me a little sick or a lot of angry and I’m over it. It feels bad to say that in this episode where we delve deeper into his addiction, but I kept thinking back to the Winchester Prophet who said that he never wrote about Sam’s addiction to demon blood because it would make him look unsympathetic. Something about how this all played out definitely made him look unsympathetic.
To be honest, my feelings are probably all mixed up between my discomfort at having to watch some of his scenes (which, well played show) and just this whole ONLY I AM STRONG ENOUGH mentality he has. In the end, I don’t want Sam to be right. I don’t want him to be the one who stops the apocalypse, you know? Plus, Ruby is shady as shit and if that is all just misleading acting, I’m going to be pissed.
I’ve talked a lot about all of the moving parts of this season and I get where Kirsti is coming from because we had to pause for a whole episode to do nothing more than watch the Winchesters implode. I appreciate it though because it was a long, long time coming. This has been building since Dean came back. And if we can pull all of the jillion pieces of this season together at all, it would be under the theme of good/bad, right/wrong. The angels were perfect to introduce that whole deal because they are supposed to be good but… are they? Then you have righteous Dean who tortured people in hell and practical Sam lapping up demon blood.
Everything is topsy turvy. And, honestly, I think I hate Sam.
Next time on Supernatural: We find out if the boys manage to avert the Apocalypse in S04 E22 – Lucifer Rising.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
