SPN 6.08 - Not so much heaven as purgatory
On the whole, I'd say this episode was not that different from Adam Glass' first script. Although I had various issues with 6.02 in terms of how it moved the plot along (namely, that it left some gaping logic holes that someone should have been talking about), it otherwise moved along fairly well and balanced some good character moments with action scenes. Considering its placement after the confusing and overstuffed 6.01, that was welcome enough. Although I wasn't particularly enthralled with this episode, I felt there was a largely successful attempt here to set up some characterization moments, move the arc forward, and deliver a little action and suspense.
What worked
1) Characterization issues. One thing I welcomed about this episode was that I felt the central issue here was to deal with "the state o' Sam and Dean." This was done more clearly with Sam, but I think Dean's issues were just as much a focus. It was simply more obscure because Lucky was a stand-in for Dean. I wonder if, like Dean, he just turned up at Mandy's door and got "lucky" that she took him in? I'm gathering that Cal may not have been around that long and likely appeared after Lucky, but none of this was ever explained. Maybe I'm just being optimistic about that because I can't imagine why Mandy would want to be around Cal for even a day.
Aside from Mandy being a single mom with a kid, Dean looking at Lisa's name in his phone directory seemed an obvious effort to connect those storylines, just as Dean's ability to get Lucky on their side by figuring out where he's coming from is supposed to echo Dean's own desire for some comfort. Like Lucky he's struggling to just walk away because he knows his adopted family is better off without him, given his own nature. I gather that Lucky's trip to see Mandy at the end of the episode was meant to suggest what would happen if Dean went back to Lisa. Of course, Lisa had a better idea what she was getting into and she likely would feel less betrayed by Dean. But one thing SPN has made clear so far is that in this show the monster never gets the girl. In that final shot where Lucky walks off alone, it made me think of the "lone wolf" and how that largely describes Dean now. There's no returning to Lisa and Ben (at least in the short term) and Sam is about to make clear to Dean how much on his own he is, even with Sam there.
Lucky's conversation with the other skinwalker who accused him of betraying the group made me wonder if we're going to see a showdown like that at some point between Sam and Dean over Lisa and if that's part of how Sam's idle talk about double-crossing is going to come into play.
Shifting to Sam, the first thing that struck me was how Sam is such a dick to the investigator at the dock. While it's not entirely unlike Dean's own attitude with law enforcement, it seemed a little harsh even for him. I wondered at first if we were supposed to be seeing another example of Sam trying to mimic Dean in order to make things work smoothly between them.
But other clues kept being dropped, such as Sam's line to Dean about whether he can do it, "shove her in the trunk, serve her up to Crowley." I thought that line was a good choice, echoing Ruby's test of Sam with the nurse in 4.22. This continued with Sam's casual reference to Madison which was devoid of anything but suspicion about Mandy's potential to be a killer.
I felt these various bits built up nicely to the talk at the episode's end where Sam discusses how things are easier for him now exactly because he doesn't feel anything. I wonder if he decided to tell Dean simply because attempting to pretend he's not what he is was simply becoming too difficult and tiresome to continue the pretense, which is essentially what we were shown in the rest of the episode. The more time he spends with Dean, the harder it must be for Sam to keep up his front. He says he's coming clean because Dean may walk if he doesn't know the truth, and I'm sure that's part of it. But I think Sam also just wants to get on with it without having to play a part for Dean, because to be concerned about Dean's feelings is as alien to him now as it is for anyone else Sam encounters.
One thing that pleased me is that Sam addressed the question I would have expected Dean to ask at least an episode ago (and perhaps Dean's reaction explains why he didn't even want to know). If he doesn't care about anyone, why does he want to be with Dean at all? And he said, flat out, that he doesn't care about Dean.
One thing that was left out of his confession though, is why Sam hunts at all if he doesn't really care about anything. "You get the job done and nothing really hurts." He seems to take some pride in the fact that he has accomplished things that he couldn't have before. Where is Sam's drive to hunt coming front if there's no emotional commitment to it, or pleasure in the act or the resolutions? Are we supposed to assume that he and Dean are simply natural born killers?
Zachariah once told Dean that he was born to hunt, that he would find his way to it every time. Of course, in Terrible Life, Zachariah barely even mentioned Sam (a glaring enough omission at the time) - and yet it was even more true of him. It was Dean who Sam dragged reluctantly into hunting. It was Sam who was convinced his life was not his own and that he was meant for something else. (And coincidentally, Madison and her werewolf nature were also mentioned in that episode). So if Sam who had his soul but not his memories was still a hunter in TL, the Sam without a soul is still a hunter now. As Dean told Lisa, being a killer is what he is, not just what he does.
Leaving that aside, Sam may be hunting for still more reasons than natural instinct. "Let's just say I should probably go back to being him." Sam says this is because of memories he has, and the way Dean looks at him, there appears to be hope there that Sam recognizes there were good experiences in his past that are worth reclaiming. But I can't help wondering if Sam is still telling Dean what he wants to hear.
"We do what we got to do, and we get my brother back." It seems to me this is the point of this whole conversation, to maneuver Dean into committing to Crowley's plan. And I am increasingly sure that Crowley and Sam are working together, not that Sam is a pawn in Crowley's maneuvers. This is both a more interesting storyline, and also one which would make more sense given how events have gone. In 6.02, Dean accuses Sam of using the shifter child as bait (which at the time, I speculated was true, but that the child was bait for Dean, not the shifter). In Twihard, Sam actually does use Dean as bait (though it seems unlikely it was premeditated). I'm thinking that Sam showing up at Lisa's had been, as he indicated then, necessary because Dean himself had become a target (inadvertent bait), but I think Sam was thinking of Dean beforehand as a means to an end.
While this may not be a particularly happy storyline for the season, or for longtime viewers to contemplate, I have to say that from a storytelling perspective it is more likely to hold my interest than the surface explanations we've been getting so far.
2) Mild suspense. I wasn't that concerned about the whole showdown in the warehouse, although the sniper rifle was new and appreciated. I was kind of wondering if Sam would get bitten and nothing would end up happening. Unlike werewolves, skinwalkers appear to have complete control over their changes and can also control their behavior towards those around them. Given Sam's lack of a soul, you'd think the only real change it would effect in him is that he'd have a handy new ability.
I was, however, more anxious that Sam was indeed going to go rogue and kill Mandy on his own because he didn't trust Dean's instincts. As it turned out he didn't, but I'll bet I wasn't the only one thinking that.
What didn't work
1) Given the ending of the last episode, Crowley's appearance wasn't entirely needed. This could have been done in part with the same phone call to Bobby that we opened on Dean with. However, Sheppard does tend to make things more interesting with his presence so I didn't really mind the extra exposition.
What I did rather mind is the fact that Dean makes such a big deal of working with Crowley in this particular circumstance. I mean, maybe he doesn't like the idea of extending Crowley's reach to purgatory, that would be understandable. But that's not how he frames his objection. He instead complains about working for a demon. This is rich coming from Dean. What about last season, when Crowley appeared, practically unknown to either of them, and against Sam's objections, Dean blithely follows along with Crowley's every suggestion even when he may end up being a casualty of the plan? And for what? There was never any guarantee that Crowley could actually help them in averting the apocalypse (certainly the Colt issue had been a bust), Crowley didn't make much effort to convince them he could be trusted, and what’s worse, Crowley used Dean's own suspicions about Sam against him.
Given that Crowley reneged on his deal with Bobby, perhaps we can say Dean's had his feelings about him reinforced. But frankly, Bobby's deal had clearly not been in the forefront of Dean's mind for some time. And Crowley actually did help them in terms of preventing the apocalypse - maybe for his own reasons but he did follow through on what he offered. If anything, Dean should trust him more now than he did then.
So when it comes to moral stances against not working with demons, I felt they were really skating on thin ice here in not doing a better job of showing why, despite his past behavior, Dean now has a real objection to hunting on Crowley's behalf - especially when he decided on his own to return to the hunting life.
2) I'm assuming Lucky didn't die and shift back when he was shot because it wasn't a fatal one. That sure makes his buddy a crap shot to not have been able to kill him at that distance when he was barely moving. None of it made much sense as if he was going to shift back he needed to attack right away, not stand there and bark. I'm guessing the whole sequence was there solely to show Mandy who Lucky was so that we could have the final scene at the house. But perhaps because I'm not that invested in either Lucky or Mandy's story, the logic issue bothered me more here than the outcome.
3) This isn't so much a "didn't work" as an observation. I found it rather remarkable how this whole episode worked without CG effects when we actually had a whole bunch of skinwalkers (and a demon) in it. It rather reminded me of what happened in the last episode where we managed to go through a big vampire showdown with next to no fighting shown, and the Twihard without the big showdown scene of Dean fighting as a vampire. The show isn't just cutting back on the music budget (which was decimated long ago) but it's starting to cut back on the effects as well. Since I don't watch the show for the horror aspects or the monsters, I can't say this really bothers me, but it does change the nature of the show. They've been taking the easy way out with camera cuts as much as possible. They've always done this with demons and angels appearing and disappearing off camera, but they're doing it with all sorts of other things as well, such as Castiel healing Sam in the last episode, or here where we just use a camera cut to replace a dog with a human and vice versa. I guess we can see where the salary boost money came from.
What's confusing
1) So who are the skinwalker sleeper cells for? The point seems to be that all the different monsters are being coordinated for a joint attack on humans. But why and for who? Are they sorry the apocalypse was called off? Do they feel they'd be better off if it had? Are they being coordinated by one of the convenient pagan gods? Are they actually working for Crowley, and he's not trying to get information from them so much as locating and recruiting the alphas? There seems to clearly be a larger plot afoot.
2) So was Sam simply making conversation about double-crossing people counting on him? It's possible this was included, as many things were, simply to show yet again that Sam is not really Sam and also that Dean shouldn't be letting out the leash (heh). But it seems equally possible that Sam is simply wondering why Dean isn't considering this possibility when it comes to him.
Other Stuff
1) I thought the opening was rather clever as I assume the guy who got killed was talking to his dogsitter, treating his dog like a human. This not only foreshadows Lucky being a human masquerading as a dog, but also that we often treat animals better than other humans. This is essentially what Lucky told Sam and Dean, and also was suggested by the dead guy's job as a slumlord.
2) It's about time the boys did some BBQ instead of a burger joint. However, given they may have been in Pennsylvania or NY, it seems like an odd locale for it.
3) When Dean woke in the motel room I had a momentary flashback to S1. No donuts from Sammy this time around though (nor does he seem to still be sleeping with a knife). But "let me get dressed"? I get that he meant in a suit, but what is it with always sleeping over the covers in his clothes?
4) Between babies and dogs, Adam Glass seems to be going for the most difficult episodes he can.
5) "Already been, didn't agree with me." Hee!
6) Isn't it almost suspicious how often we see Sam eating these days? I mean, were there even a dozen cases of it in the first five seasons (at least ones that made it to the broadcast?) I wonder if there's a suggestion here that Sam now indulges himself with food the same way he now indulges himself with sex, strictly on a physical level.
7) I find it kind of hilarious that Mandy clears the kitchen table apologizing for the mess, when between a dog and a small child, you'd think the place would be more of a wreck instead of tidier than my place.
8) Too bad the only music we got was the snippet we got from Cal and his buddies in the garage.
9) You'd think that with Sam not sleeping, Dean would have taken advantage of that and relied on him to stay awake during the all-night stakeout.
10) It took me more than one rewind to see what Sam had jumped off of when he was chasing Lucky over the fence. It looked like he'd leaped on a trampoline but it was supposed to be a metal box.
11) Sam's got an incredib|e pair of legs on him to have been even that close behind a running Sheperd.
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What worked
1) Characterization issues. One thing I welcomed about this episode was that I felt the central issue here was to deal with "the state o' Sam and Dean." This was done more clearly with Sam, but I think Dean's issues were just as much a focus. It was simply more obscure because Lucky was a stand-in for Dean. I wonder if, like Dean, he just turned up at Mandy's door and got "lucky" that she took him in? I'm gathering that Cal may not have been around that long and likely appeared after Lucky, but none of this was ever explained. Maybe I'm just being optimistic about that because I can't imagine why Mandy would want to be around Cal for even a day.
Aside from Mandy being a single mom with a kid, Dean looking at Lisa's name in his phone directory seemed an obvious effort to connect those storylines, just as Dean's ability to get Lucky on their side by figuring out where he's coming from is supposed to echo Dean's own desire for some comfort. Like Lucky he's struggling to just walk away because he knows his adopted family is better off without him, given his own nature. I gather that Lucky's trip to see Mandy at the end of the episode was meant to suggest what would happen if Dean went back to Lisa. Of course, Lisa had a better idea what she was getting into and she likely would feel less betrayed by Dean. But one thing SPN has made clear so far is that in this show the monster never gets the girl. In that final shot where Lucky walks off alone, it made me think of the "lone wolf" and how that largely describes Dean now. There's no returning to Lisa and Ben (at least in the short term) and Sam is about to make clear to Dean how much on his own he is, even with Sam there.
Lucky's conversation with the other skinwalker who accused him of betraying the group made me wonder if we're going to see a showdown like that at some point between Sam and Dean over Lisa and if that's part of how Sam's idle talk about double-crossing is going to come into play.
Shifting to Sam, the first thing that struck me was how Sam is such a dick to the investigator at the dock. While it's not entirely unlike Dean's own attitude with law enforcement, it seemed a little harsh even for him. I wondered at first if we were supposed to be seeing another example of Sam trying to mimic Dean in order to make things work smoothly between them.
But other clues kept being dropped, such as Sam's line to Dean about whether he can do it, "shove her in the trunk, serve her up to Crowley." I thought that line was a good choice, echoing Ruby's test of Sam with the nurse in 4.22. This continued with Sam's casual reference to Madison which was devoid of anything but suspicion about Mandy's potential to be a killer.
I felt these various bits built up nicely to the talk at the episode's end where Sam discusses how things are easier for him now exactly because he doesn't feel anything. I wonder if he decided to tell Dean simply because attempting to pretend he's not what he is was simply becoming too difficult and tiresome to continue the pretense, which is essentially what we were shown in the rest of the episode. The more time he spends with Dean, the harder it must be for Sam to keep up his front. He says he's coming clean because Dean may walk if he doesn't know the truth, and I'm sure that's part of it. But I think Sam also just wants to get on with it without having to play a part for Dean, because to be concerned about Dean's feelings is as alien to him now as it is for anyone else Sam encounters.
One thing that pleased me is that Sam addressed the question I would have expected Dean to ask at least an episode ago (and perhaps Dean's reaction explains why he didn't even want to know). If he doesn't care about anyone, why does he want to be with Dean at all? And he said, flat out, that he doesn't care about Dean.
One thing that was left out of his confession though, is why Sam hunts at all if he doesn't really care about anything. "You get the job done and nothing really hurts." He seems to take some pride in the fact that he has accomplished things that he couldn't have before. Where is Sam's drive to hunt coming front if there's no emotional commitment to it, or pleasure in the act or the resolutions? Are we supposed to assume that he and Dean are simply natural born killers?
Zachariah once told Dean that he was born to hunt, that he would find his way to it every time. Of course, in Terrible Life, Zachariah barely even mentioned Sam (a glaring enough omission at the time) - and yet it was even more true of him. It was Dean who Sam dragged reluctantly into hunting. It was Sam who was convinced his life was not his own and that he was meant for something else. (And coincidentally, Madison and her werewolf nature were also mentioned in that episode). So if Sam who had his soul but not his memories was still a hunter in TL, the Sam without a soul is still a hunter now. As Dean told Lisa, being a killer is what he is, not just what he does.
Leaving that aside, Sam may be hunting for still more reasons than natural instinct. "Let's just say I should probably go back to being him." Sam says this is because of memories he has, and the way Dean looks at him, there appears to be hope there that Sam recognizes there were good experiences in his past that are worth reclaiming. But I can't help wondering if Sam is still telling Dean what he wants to hear.
"We do what we got to do, and we get my brother back." It seems to me this is the point of this whole conversation, to maneuver Dean into committing to Crowley's plan. And I am increasingly sure that Crowley and Sam are working together, not that Sam is a pawn in Crowley's maneuvers. This is both a more interesting storyline, and also one which would make more sense given how events have gone. In 6.02, Dean accuses Sam of using the shifter child as bait (which at the time, I speculated was true, but that the child was bait for Dean, not the shifter). In Twihard, Sam actually does use Dean as bait (though it seems unlikely it was premeditated). I'm thinking that Sam showing up at Lisa's had been, as he indicated then, necessary because Dean himself had become a target (inadvertent bait), but I think Sam was thinking of Dean beforehand as a means to an end.
While this may not be a particularly happy storyline for the season, or for longtime viewers to contemplate, I have to say that from a storytelling perspective it is more likely to hold my interest than the surface explanations we've been getting so far.
2) Mild suspense. I wasn't that concerned about the whole showdown in the warehouse, although the sniper rifle was new and appreciated. I was kind of wondering if Sam would get bitten and nothing would end up happening. Unlike werewolves, skinwalkers appear to have complete control over their changes and can also control their behavior towards those around them. Given Sam's lack of a soul, you'd think the only real change it would effect in him is that he'd have a handy new ability.
I was, however, more anxious that Sam was indeed going to go rogue and kill Mandy on his own because he didn't trust Dean's instincts. As it turned out he didn't, but I'll bet I wasn't the only one thinking that.
What didn't work
1) Given the ending of the last episode, Crowley's appearance wasn't entirely needed. This could have been done in part with the same phone call to Bobby that we opened on Dean with. However, Sheppard does tend to make things more interesting with his presence so I didn't really mind the extra exposition.
What I did rather mind is the fact that Dean makes such a big deal of working with Crowley in this particular circumstance. I mean, maybe he doesn't like the idea of extending Crowley's reach to purgatory, that would be understandable. But that's not how he frames his objection. He instead complains about working for a demon. This is rich coming from Dean. What about last season, when Crowley appeared, practically unknown to either of them, and against Sam's objections, Dean blithely follows along with Crowley's every suggestion even when he may end up being a casualty of the plan? And for what? There was never any guarantee that Crowley could actually help them in averting the apocalypse (certainly the Colt issue had been a bust), Crowley didn't make much effort to convince them he could be trusted, and what’s worse, Crowley used Dean's own suspicions about Sam against him.
Given that Crowley reneged on his deal with Bobby, perhaps we can say Dean's had his feelings about him reinforced. But frankly, Bobby's deal had clearly not been in the forefront of Dean's mind for some time. And Crowley actually did help them in terms of preventing the apocalypse - maybe for his own reasons but he did follow through on what he offered. If anything, Dean should trust him more now than he did then.
So when it comes to moral stances against not working with demons, I felt they were really skating on thin ice here in not doing a better job of showing why, despite his past behavior, Dean now has a real objection to hunting on Crowley's behalf - especially when he decided on his own to return to the hunting life.
2) I'm assuming Lucky didn't die and shift back when he was shot because it wasn't a fatal one. That sure makes his buddy a crap shot to not have been able to kill him at that distance when he was barely moving. None of it made much sense as if he was going to shift back he needed to attack right away, not stand there and bark. I'm guessing the whole sequence was there solely to show Mandy who Lucky was so that we could have the final scene at the house. But perhaps because I'm not that invested in either Lucky or Mandy's story, the logic issue bothered me more here than the outcome.
3) This isn't so much a "didn't work" as an observation. I found it rather remarkable how this whole episode worked without CG effects when we actually had a whole bunch of skinwalkers (and a demon) in it. It rather reminded me of what happened in the last episode where we managed to go through a big vampire showdown with next to no fighting shown, and the Twihard without the big showdown scene of Dean fighting as a vampire. The show isn't just cutting back on the music budget (which was decimated long ago) but it's starting to cut back on the effects as well. Since I don't watch the show for the horror aspects or the monsters, I can't say this really bothers me, but it does change the nature of the show. They've been taking the easy way out with camera cuts as much as possible. They've always done this with demons and angels appearing and disappearing off camera, but they're doing it with all sorts of other things as well, such as Castiel healing Sam in the last episode, or here where we just use a camera cut to replace a dog with a human and vice versa. I guess we can see where the salary boost money came from.
What's confusing
1) So who are the skinwalker sleeper cells for? The point seems to be that all the different monsters are being coordinated for a joint attack on humans. But why and for who? Are they sorry the apocalypse was called off? Do they feel they'd be better off if it had? Are they being coordinated by one of the convenient pagan gods? Are they actually working for Crowley, and he's not trying to get information from them so much as locating and recruiting the alphas? There seems to clearly be a larger plot afoot.
2) So was Sam simply making conversation about double-crossing people counting on him? It's possible this was included, as many things were, simply to show yet again that Sam is not really Sam and also that Dean shouldn't be letting out the leash (heh). But it seems equally possible that Sam is simply wondering why Dean isn't considering this possibility when it comes to him.
Other Stuff
1) I thought the opening was rather clever as I assume the guy who got killed was talking to his dogsitter, treating his dog like a human. This not only foreshadows Lucky being a human masquerading as a dog, but also that we often treat animals better than other humans. This is essentially what Lucky told Sam and Dean, and also was suggested by the dead guy's job as a slumlord.
2) It's about time the boys did some BBQ instead of a burger joint. However, given they may have been in Pennsylvania or NY, it seems like an odd locale for it.
3) When Dean woke in the motel room I had a momentary flashback to S1. No donuts from Sammy this time around though (nor does he seem to still be sleeping with a knife). But "let me get dressed"? I get that he meant in a suit, but what is it with always sleeping over the covers in his clothes?
4) Between babies and dogs, Adam Glass seems to be going for the most difficult episodes he can.
5) "Already been, didn't agree with me." Hee!
6) Isn't it almost suspicious how often we see Sam eating these days? I mean, were there even a dozen cases of it in the first five seasons (at least ones that made it to the broadcast?) I wonder if there's a suggestion here that Sam now indulges himself with food the same way he now indulges himself with sex, strictly on a physical level.
7) I find it kind of hilarious that Mandy clears the kitchen table apologizing for the mess, when between a dog and a small child, you'd think the place would be more of a wreck instead of tidier than my place.
8) Too bad the only music we got was the snippet we got from Cal and his buddies in the garage.
9) You'd think that with Sam not sleeping, Dean would have taken advantage of that and relied on him to stay awake during the all-night stakeout.
10) It took me more than one rewind to see what Sam had jumped off of when he was chasing Lucky over the fence. It looked like he'd leaped on a trampoline but it was supposed to be a metal box.
11) Sam's got an incredib|e pair of legs on him to have been even that close behind a running Sheperd.
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