Supernatural review: 02.13 - "Houses of the Holy"
Fair warning: This is religion-major heavy. In fact, I think we might be able to properly call this a Supernatural exegesis. Thank you, Chaplain, see how I use what you taught me?
As always, in perpetuam:
I want to love this episode whole-heartedly. I want to love it. But one thing, one thing bugs me so bad down to the bottom of my recovering Catholic soul:
There is no sacrament called Last Rites any longer. None. Nada. Zip. Extreme Unction became the Anointing of the Sick post-Vatican II. It carries no sacramental authority to release souls. In face, its whole purpose is to strengthen the body and will of those who are suffering in order to accept G-d's Divine Judgement and prepare them for the healing power of grace. Last Rites are not a "banish the soul to final rest" card. In fact, if Kripke is suggesting that the sacraments of Roman Catholicism do indeed have the power to command and compel spirits, then the proper funeral Mass ought to have sent the soul to rest without additional intervention on the part of the priest or the hunter. This is so logically inconsistent and so factually errant...Jesus Christ on a cracker, Kripke, open Wikipedia. Or, y'know, a Catechism. Mother of pearl, y'all. Hire me. I know this crap backwards and forwards and I don't get paid the big bucks for it!
Okay.
Rant over.
Mostly.
I actually took notes on this episode because I knew I wouldn't remember all the meaty bits of it once it went off. (I think I was counting on it to irritate me because, hey, it's been that kind of day, really.) So, some thoughts, in more-or-less chronological order, or at least the order I noticed them.
Dean has some serious issues with unconditional goodness. I find irony in the fact that he goes straight for unicorns, which, aside from their pop cultural representations as cotton-candy fluff, are actually seen as representing Christ in medieval art. The unicorn is a representation of unearthly purity, able to be brought into the presence of man through the power of a virgin, an obvious connection to the status of Mary in medieval thought. So immediately, and in a veiled way, Dean is attacking this idea that there is anything on earth that is wholly pure, wholly good, wholly sanctified and wholly accepted. People know what a unicorn is. They see it as myth, but it is known. Dean prefers the profane, arcane, the things that most ordinary people cannot understand. He wants his covert world of darkness, not a world wherein something as easy to understand as a unicorn might be real. Because what he does is harder, it has more validity to him than easy faith in beautiful, good things. We also see him using that vicious humour again as a defense mechanism. He cannot deal with easy faith in beautiful things, so he pushes and pushes and picks and niggles and tries to get Sam to admit how ridiculous it all is. Once it's confined to the real of the ridiculous, Dean can deal with it. Until then, Dean is uncomfortable and will make Sam uncomfortable, too.
I liked that the second murderer was reading a comic called Theseus. Theseus defeated the Minotaur, and does, I believe, represent the conquest of civilisation of the bestial nature of man. It also deals with the codification of power within the Greek city-states, but that's a bit out of the scope.
The scene after Sammy sees the "angel" is really telling and really well done. Not only do we see Sam and Dean divided on matters of faith--echoes of Faith yet again, which is good--but they are literally on different sides of the aisle. The reveal that Mary told Dean angels were watching over him was big, and it hurt, actually, but I think that's my inner!Dean talking. Dean was given faith by his mother, and when he lost her, he couldn't hold on to the faith she tried to instill in him. Sammy, who had, I think, only a functional exposure to religion in order to foster his abilities as a hunter, prays daily. He worries about his salvation. He worries about his soul. Sam has always, I think, had a mystical bent that we're seeing here. He believes in the big things. He's been sheltered enough that there's a part of him that can still wonder at the world. And because he has an image of someone always protecting him and helping him and getting him out of trouble in Dean, he can imagine an image of G-d that does the same thing. Dean allows Sam to have faith in G-d, and it's Dean that slices that faith to pieces by the end of the episode.
Did anyone else notice how Sam was shut out of the Impala for the last third of the episode? Dean can't let him in. Not only can he not risk Sammy doing something that would a.) lose him Sam through jail time and b.) allow Sam to destroy his moral fiber (remember, Sam hasn't killed anyone on-screen), Dean can't let Sammy into his emotional stronghold. He can't let Sam's faith, which is rattling his own convictions, into his sanctum sanctorum, his own house of the holy. And when Dean sees the final bad guy impaled, as per the angelic instructions, he can't witness it in the car. He has to get out. He gets out of his safety zone and experiences his own moment of doubt. His Gethsemane cannot happen while he feels safe and protected. It requires vulnerability, and that means getting out of his armour and let doubt puncture him. (I also had to think of the Luke verse when Dean's staring into the car: "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Lk 22:43-44. It was a Luke-heavy episode. But Luke's good for that sort of thing and most immediately recognisable to American Christians.)
Overall, this was a good episode. It was solid, it was character-building, it told us some things about the boys. It showed us the power of religious ritual, especially Catholic ritual, in the universe Kripke's creating. It dealt a lot with how the brothers individually deal with the weight they carry, and it also underscored Dean's commitment to Sammy. (And Dean also entered the 21st century by using an MP3 phone, I'm so proud. Nice product placement, Verizon.) But if Kripke had cracked a freakin' Catechism, I might've actually enjoyed the last, oh, third of it instead of yelling at the screen about Extreme Unction versus Anointing of the Sick and the Second Vatican Council.
As always, in perpetuam:
I want to love this episode whole-heartedly. I want to love it. But one thing, one thing bugs me so bad down to the bottom of my recovering Catholic soul:
There is no sacrament called Last Rites any longer. None. Nada. Zip. Extreme Unction became the Anointing of the Sick post-Vatican II. It carries no sacramental authority to release souls. In face, its whole purpose is to strengthen the body and will of those who are suffering in order to accept G-d's Divine Judgement and prepare them for the healing power of grace. Last Rites are not a "banish the soul to final rest" card. In fact, if Kripke is suggesting that the sacraments of Roman Catholicism do indeed have the power to command and compel spirits, then the proper funeral Mass ought to have sent the soul to rest without additional intervention on the part of the priest or the hunter. This is so logically inconsistent and so factually errant...Jesus Christ on a cracker, Kripke, open Wikipedia. Or, y'know, a Catechism. Mother of pearl, y'all. Hire me. I know this crap backwards and forwards and I don't get paid the big bucks for it!
Okay.
Rant over.
Mostly.
I actually took notes on this episode because I knew I wouldn't remember all the meaty bits of it once it went off. (I think I was counting on it to irritate me because, hey, it's been that kind of day, really.) So, some thoughts, in more-or-less chronological order, or at least the order I noticed them.
Dean has some serious issues with unconditional goodness. I find irony in the fact that he goes straight for unicorns, which, aside from their pop cultural representations as cotton-candy fluff, are actually seen as representing Christ in medieval art. The unicorn is a representation of unearthly purity, able to be brought into the presence of man through the power of a virgin, an obvious connection to the status of Mary in medieval thought. So immediately, and in a veiled way, Dean is attacking this idea that there is anything on earth that is wholly pure, wholly good, wholly sanctified and wholly accepted. People know what a unicorn is. They see it as myth, but it is known. Dean prefers the profane, arcane, the things that most ordinary people cannot understand. He wants his covert world of darkness, not a world wherein something as easy to understand as a unicorn might be real. Because what he does is harder, it has more validity to him than easy faith in beautiful, good things. We also see him using that vicious humour again as a defense mechanism. He cannot deal with easy faith in beautiful things, so he pushes and pushes and picks and niggles and tries to get Sam to admit how ridiculous it all is. Once it's confined to the real of the ridiculous, Dean can deal with it. Until then, Dean is uncomfortable and will make Sam uncomfortable, too.
I liked that the second murderer was reading a comic called Theseus. Theseus defeated the Minotaur, and does, I believe, represent the conquest of civilisation of the bestial nature of man. It also deals with the codification of power within the Greek city-states, but that's a bit out of the scope.
The scene after Sammy sees the "angel" is really telling and really well done. Not only do we see Sam and Dean divided on matters of faith--echoes of Faith yet again, which is good--but they are literally on different sides of the aisle. The reveal that Mary told Dean angels were watching over him was big, and it hurt, actually, but I think that's my inner!Dean talking. Dean was given faith by his mother, and when he lost her, he couldn't hold on to the faith she tried to instill in him. Sammy, who had, I think, only a functional exposure to religion in order to foster his abilities as a hunter, prays daily. He worries about his salvation. He worries about his soul. Sam has always, I think, had a mystical bent that we're seeing here. He believes in the big things. He's been sheltered enough that there's a part of him that can still wonder at the world. And because he has an image of someone always protecting him and helping him and getting him out of trouble in Dean, he can imagine an image of G-d that does the same thing. Dean allows Sam to have faith in G-d, and it's Dean that slices that faith to pieces by the end of the episode.
Did anyone else notice how Sam was shut out of the Impala for the last third of the episode? Dean can't let him in. Not only can he not risk Sammy doing something that would a.) lose him Sam through jail time and b.) allow Sam to destroy his moral fiber (remember, Sam hasn't killed anyone on-screen), Dean can't let Sammy into his emotional stronghold. He can't let Sam's faith, which is rattling his own convictions, into his sanctum sanctorum, his own house of the holy. And when Dean sees the final bad guy impaled, as per the angelic instructions, he can't witness it in the car. He has to get out. He gets out of his safety zone and experiences his own moment of doubt. His Gethsemane cannot happen while he feels safe and protected. It requires vulnerability, and that means getting out of his armour and let doubt puncture him. (I also had to think of the Luke verse when Dean's staring into the car: "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Lk 22:43-44. It was a Luke-heavy episode. But Luke's good for that sort of thing and most immediately recognisable to American Christians.)
Overall, this was a good episode. It was solid, it was character-building, it told us some things about the boys. It showed us the power of religious ritual, especially Catholic ritual, in the universe Kripke's creating. It dealt a lot with how the brothers individually deal with the weight they carry, and it also underscored Dean's commitment to Sammy. (And Dean also entered the 21st century by using an MP3 phone, I'm so proud. Nice product placement, Verizon.) But if Kripke had cracked a freakin' Catechism, I might've actually enjoyed the last, oh, third of it instead of yelling at the screen about Extreme Unction versus Anointing of the Sick and the Second Vatican Council.