Reaction to 10x19, "The Werther Project"
Seriously, folks, was I the only one who was disappointed they didn't make a single Werther's Originals joke? I was hoping for at least an easter egg, maybe a balled-up golden wrapper next to the codex inside the box. Bah. Wasted opportunities :-P
I won't gripe too loudly, though, because it was an incredible episode. I'm going to primarily focus on Dean because man, if that faux Purgatory stuff didn't just cut to the painful heart of the matter. But I'll start with Sam, who I both want to hug and smack. Hug because he very nearly let himself bleed to death just to get that box open, get the codex, and get the translation, all to hopefully save Dean from the Mark. But I want to smack him for the LIES. For fuck's sake, this all has to stop. Dean has been fully truthful this season, even apologizing for when he hasn't let Sam know about stuff right away. Hell, last night, he apologized for going off on that (totally awesome and badass) vamp hunt without him, and Sam just sat there and--well, he didn't exactly lie, but he omitted why he was truly there, and ARRRGH. When will he learn? He gets so mad when Dean keeps stuff from him, and now he's doing it, too. I don't want to hear the "But he's doing it for Dean's own good!" argument: We've been down that road way too many times, and it always ends in a dead end--sometimes literally. Dean is going to be furious when he finds out, and what if that fury pushes him over the edge and the Mark takes him on a killing spree? Ever think of THAT, Sammy?! ARRGH. I wash my hands of you.
I was hoping Sam would get busted when Dean got in the car, but no such luck. At least we got several cases of smart!Dean during the episode--my very favorite flavor of Dean :) He followed Sam to the suicide house, he came up with a Nervous Nellie character to interrogate Susie, he realized that he was in a hallucination, he figured out how to escape said hallucination, and, best of all, he stopped Sam from bleeding out and offered up his own blood to finish the offering. Thank you, Robert Berens! Please write more episodes! (And thank you for retweeting two of my tweets last night, hehe. That was cool.)
Back to the hallucination scenes, which were collectively the most intense parts of an already intense episode. First, I loved how the hallucination slowly took over Dean, ala Jacob's Ladder. I have been wanting that for Dean for SO LONG, since season 4, in fact. If you haven't seen that movie (and you should, because it is excellent), it's about a Vietnam Vet, played by Tim Robbins, who has flashbacks that sometimes take the form of a hallucination. He'll be walking down the street, and the streetlight will turn into a palm tree, the sidewalk into a muddy trail, and so on. I was hoping they'd do stuff like that for Dean after his trip to Hell, but nope. Then I hoped they'd do it for post-Purgatory Dean, but again, nope. So finally I got a taste of it last night with faux-Purgatory, and I was SO happy because it was SO creepy and SO worth the wait! And then, as a perfect, Southern Comfort-soaked cherry on top, we got BENNY! Faux-Benny, but who cares, I've missed him and I loved seeing him again, so there.
I am glad, though, that Dean figured out it wasn't really him and that he was just seeing things; Benny and everything around him was a figment. He wasn't in Purgatory, Benny couldn't really help him this time...it was all smoke and mirrors. But then...THEN...Mr. Berens took the figment notion and ran with it, and holy fucking shit did that writing take me back to school. As Benny pointed out, the real figment is the idea that Dean can survive the Mark. THere is no safe place where he can go and both satisfy the Mark and stay guilt-free. That's not how it works. Likewise, any control he thinks he has over the Mark is a hallucination in and of itself. He's going to lose the battle. And THEN, in the punch below the gut remark, Benny calls Dean on his safety net: the idea that Sam, Cas, and Crowley will put Dean down if the Mark takes completely over him again. "How do you think that will make them feel? How do they get over that?!" Benny points out, and that's just IT, isn't it? As I tweeted last night, Dean never, ever wants to be a burden to anyone, not even in his own death. My poor, sweet Dean, always thinking he's nothing, always putting everyone else first. He can't make his family go through that, can he? Of course not. So he very nearly kills himself--but kills the fake Benny instead. But even if he got free of the spell, you know that Benny's words are going to haunt him. And that's what scares me, because Dean is *THISclose* to losing it. He may be all smiles and confidence, but we know better by now. I only hope Sam notices and helps him instead of lying to him again. He's helped a lot this season! That gives me hope. Of course, the fact that there are only 4 eps left in the season make me doubt that any GOOD help is coming--only the help with consequences...
So that's my take on it all. What did you think?