SPN 6.10 - At least the break isn't next week
I'm not sure I've ever loathed an episode of SPN so much before it was even over, especially when the writers were actually dealing with their seasonal arc. So if you adored this episode, this will not be the discussion for you. This one pinged all of my buttons the wrong way -- the treatment of women, the jokes for no good reason, the logic gaps, the lack of explanations anyone with a brain would want, not to mention the waste of many characters in service of this plot. I don't know where the writers are planning to go next from here but there just doesn't seem to be any big payoff in sight. That's not a good sign as we move on to our halfway point next week.
The Good
Not much, so let's get this out of the way:
1) The return of Meg. Other than a problem I'll discuss at the end, Meg's return was all to the good. The show was fortunate in that by first casting Nikki Aycox and now Rachel Miner, they've created one of the more interesting female characters on this show. This has been less due to the writing and more to the acting, but the importance of the casting was obvious in this episode. Especially with Meg gone for so long, and being one of many in an episode chock full of guest stars, she not only holds her own but makes one believe she's a worthy adversary for both Crowley and the Winchesters.
I also much prefer seeing Meg with her back against the wall than a follower of Lucifer's, though I agree with the writers' decision in Abandon All Hope that it was necessary to demonstrate what Meg's motivation had been all along. Being a true believer was an interesting explanation for why someone so independent would have followed Azazel's plan in the first place. Now that we know, it's good to see her back in her more lone wolf role.
I found it interesting that the writers put her in the position of holding off the hellhounds while Sam, Dean and Castiel headed off to try and kill a bigger fish. It strongly echoed the role Jo and Ellen were left in the last time we saw Meg. At least Meg survived this episode, which I hope means we'll see more of her in the future, particularly now that Crowley's gone.
2) Sam, although it was a mixed bag. I thought Sam was a little too sure of himself thinking that Meg wouldn't torture them for information, but then this Sam would be, devoid as he is of Sam's usual fears and caution. It's not like it wasn't already in Sam's nature to be very sure of himself.
That said, I'm with Sam when it comes to a lot of his thinking. Dean's emotional arguments are there to contrast with his more logical approach but the writers need to do a better job of giving Dean more sensible soapboxes to stand on. Obviously, given their history with Meg, working with her is going to stick in his craw more than Crowley, who was introduced to them as an ally and hasn't done much against the Winchesters to date. But Dean didn't seem to have any compunction in working with Crowley against Lucifer. Working with Meg against Crowley is just another version of it.
I enjoyed Sam using the ark of the covenant to bring Castiel to them, though the line afterwards explaining the joke to the pop-culture illiterate in the audience ruined it. If Sam didn't believe it would work, he wouldn't have tried it. He was counting on the fact that Castiel didn't know about it. (And I'd still like to know, is Jimmy in there?)
But why does Sam think that Castiel owes him anything? Because he recaged Lucifer? Granted, Sam knows that at first Castiel went along with angel plans to hide the truth from them. But so far as I know, Sam and Dean never realized who set him free from Bobby's panic room, and it's not like Castiel didn't try to make up for it later. So I don't know what Sam's talking about here, and I still find it ridiculous the way Sam and Dean talk to Castiel as if he's their lapdog. This is not how friends deal with one another.
Sam taking charge of interacting with Meg and the demons, taking the knife back, stabbing the demon, taking charge of the mission, all played in well to the idea of this new all-business Sam (and while I also appreciate smart-Dean moments, I am happy with a return to smart-anyone moments, as wildly as their brainpower seems to seesaw in this series). I had to wonder what that scene afterward of Sam checking guns in the Impala's trunk was supposed to indicate to us, especially as it merges into a broody Cas. I am again wondering if their scene together and Castiel's conversation with Dean, are obscuring the fact that Castiel and Sam are in cahoots over Sam's soul. One could certainly fit that scenario in between the lines here, though given everything else in this episode, I am despairing that the writers have anything that big in store.
Lastly, Sam using blood to draw the devil's trap? Unexpectedly clever. Him rushing around afterward, ripping pipes off of walls and suffering no ill effects from bleeding out that much? Downright stupid.
The Huh?
1) While I get the reason why the Shifter would want to wear Crowley's face as it was being tortured, nothing else in the scene made sense. The shifter had been captured some time ago so I assume that Crowley had not been waiting until now to torture him. Instead, I take it that the time to come up with an iridium dagger is what had been taking so long.
Why then does he not USE IT?? He gives the shifter one little stab, just enough to prove it works, and then tosses it aside! Why bother threatening it with carving if he's not going to do anything? And then, there's the baby monitor. Really? Crowley was going to host a nursery full of shifter babies for all this time just so he could threaten the parent with sounds? And then after quickly dropping two tactics in a row, he doesn't go back to using the knife but simply chops off its head in order to make a bad joke.
I mean, that was the most pathetic torture session I've ever seen. My question was the same as the shifter's -- what made him think a still living creature had any idea how to get to purgatory? Did he think the shifter had returned from there? Why not further interrogate the informants who led him to believe that the shifter would know?
But my biggest question is how he was able to tie up a shifter in the first place? Why doesn't it just turn into a rat to escape? I mean it's an alpha shifter -- this whole session seemed as pointless to the episode as it was to any sense of logic. And since when can you kill a shape shifter by beheading them (especially since it was already resistant to silver)?
2) I assume that Dean's question at the beginning of the episode was answered and that Sam really was trying to get his soul back, given what he went through here (though I still prefer to think he and Castiel are in league about something). But apparently Samuel was right about Dean being a hypocrite because after his speech to Samuel, he turns around and ignores what Castiel, Meg, and Sam himself are saying to him about leaving well enough alone when it comes to Sam's soul.
Besides what this tells us about Dean, I have to wonder what the writers are thinking by going this route. Plenty of fans have been speculating about what state Sam's soul would be in if it were retrieved. The fact that this is most likely a bad idea could have been ignored at the end of the season if the writers decided to handwave a happy ending. After all, when Dean emerged from 40 years in hell, you'd never have guessed it from his behavior, so it's not like there isn't precedent.
But that storyline is a good example of how the writers boxed themselves in that season in exploring what hell had done to Dean. Their major plan was to hide what Sam was up to for as long as possible. To do that, virtually all the episodes in the season were told from Dean's POV, because he, and thus the audience, were to stay in the dark about Sam. That meant, though, that the audience was also going to have to deal with the POV of a character who was himself a wreck after decades of torture. They clearly didn't want to do this. So it's possible that they're going to go this route in S7 now that Dean himself can be the more everyman-POV on Sam's wrecked self.
I'm of two minds on that outcome. For one, yes, it will take them someplace different and allow the writers to continue to delay a happy reunion between the brothers. They have clearly taken to heart that Sam and Dean are the central couple of the series and so just as writers forever delay the romantic leads coming together in other shows, so they plan to in this one, even if it's not actually a romantic storyline. The formula is the same - delay, delay, delay. I am very tired of seeing that cliché playing out in other shows, and I'm pretty sure the audience will be tired of it here too.
Second, such a storyline would be an acting and writing challenge, and frankly I don't know that the writers are up to it. After seeing how they handled a disability storyline with Bobby as well as any other storyline that requires some sensitivity, well, enough said. Also, both leads have already stated they prefer episodes (if not seasons) where there isn't so much angst because it is a draining business over time. This sort of storyline is the exact opposite of what they want.
Thirdly, who's going to be happy with this outcome? We seem to have three choices: abandon Sam to what has now been spelled out as a terrible fate, rescue the soul and make it and everyone else around Sam suffer its distressed, dysfunctional state, or have him show up inexplicably fine. (I am reminded of Angel's line about S7 Spike spending "three weeks moaning in a basement and then you were fine" when his soul was restored). A season full of tortured-beyond-belief-Sam next year is not something I'm looking forward to and I'm convinced at this point that the more the writers keep messing with the Winchester dynamics, the more of the audience they're going to lose. But I've certainly been wrong before.
Lastly, a Sam-is-a-wreck outcome means still another series of episodes, or entire season, where Sam is once again a mysterious, distant figure. Hooray.
3) Castiel. Given that Castiel is pretty busy fighting a war he seemed to be wasting an awful lot of time hanging around in this episode. I'm going to assume that either Sam and Dean were already near the Campbell compound (given how Samuel shows up later) or he teleported everyone there. However, I've no idea why Dean felt Castiel couldn't be around while he talked to Samuel given that Castiel's been in Dean's head various times.
The whole thing with the porn was pointless and time wasting and the kiss with Meg made about as much sense as well. Also, I think Dean may be speaking from his solitary upbringing but guys do indeed watch porn together and talk about it -- not all of them, certainly, but they do.
I did wonder if, when Sam walked back in with Castiel and explained that Castiel was simply acting to help friends, if this was something they'd agreed upon to say or if Sam was being uncharacteristically kind to both Dean's feelings and Castiel's relationship with him.
Having Castiel be the deus-ex-machina here, finding Crowley's bones like that, just kind of made me sigh. I agree with Crowley, the bones would be the thing he'd guard most carefully of all, so if Castiel couldn't find Crowley himself, how did he turn those up just like that? I could say maybe Meg but, again, if she couldn't find Crowley himself, how would she tip them off to the bones' location?
The most interesting part of Castiel's appearance was actually his confrontation with Crowley. With him gone we may never know, but I'm going to guess that Crowley's purgatory scheme was indeed related to taking advantage of heaven's chaos.
The Awful
(A) Curiously, in the past few days I was talking with krystalyn about Dean's line back in Twihard ("Isn't that kind of rapey?"), and how neither Dean nor SPN has any business in taking another pop-culture text to task when it comes to attitudes towards women. Let me count the ways using this episode as Exhibit A.
1) "Banging a hooker in a sweet spot…good night girls...I don't speak little bitch."
2) "Now I need a daily rape shower." Dean, unless you are actually getting raped by a demon you do not need a rape shower. And given the fact that Dean, the character, likely had been raped countless times by one, nice of the writers to trivialize it like that.
3) "I'm not supposed to talk about it." In another episode, I probably would have found this funnier. As it was, it just seemed like something creepy a pedophile would tell their victim.
4) The djinn, and the type of torture it's implied Crowley is subjecting her to.
5) The use of Meg as a sexual outlet for Castiel. I can't get too worked up about this on Meg's behalf because she has always been a character who played on her sexuality so it's nothing but continuity when it reoccurs here. However, the larger point is -- what female demon on this show hasn't?
6) The worst part though was the return of the torture porn table. I hated it when they did this with Ruby in S4, and I hated it even more here. In an episode full of people being tortured, it's only the woman who once again is strapped naked to a table while the camera lingers on a knife running down her body. If even one man being tortured had had the same done to him, they might have had plausible deniability. But in Sam's similar scene in the panic room he's fully clothed, nor does Dean do it to Alistaire, the most obvious choice for this treatment, nor do we see it done to the shapeshifter or Dean with the ghouls in this very episode. Nope, it's only two women who ever have this happen in the series. I can't express sufficient disgust on this point that when men are tortured, it's torture. When women are tortured, it's meant to be sexually provocative.
(B) Samuel. Ok, it had already been really obvious that he was keeping a picture of Mary in his desk (which came from where, I wonder? A heavenly P.O. box?) But WHAT? He wants her yanked out of heaven and brought back to life after 30 years? Why? Why doesn't he just want to die and be reunited with her in heaven where he'd already been? He wants Crowley to do the same thing to her that he did to him? And why is there still no mention of Deanna here?
I'm going to give the show the slightest benefit of a doubt and assume that there's some more complicated reason why he feels the need to "rescue" Mary. But honest to God, Dean should have asked him the same thing and then the other obvious questions which is how does a demon have the power to be yanking people out of heaven and why would anyone want them to? Does Samuel not remember where he was? Well, Dean and Sam remember heaven and can tell him. Why does Dean not make this argument to him?
And if there isn't anything more complicated about the Mary storyline, I am just throwing up my hands because, seriously, what parent wishes that on their kid?
(C ) On a similar note, Adam. In this episode we have three people mention what a wreck Sam's soul probably is and Castiel, of all people, says that Lucifer and Michael have "nothing else" to entertain themselves with than to torture Sam. Oh really? Has everyone forgotten that Sam isn't the only Winchester in the box? Have we also forgotten that, like Samuel, Adam only said yes in order to see his mother and, perhaps, spare Dean what he was obviously unwilling to do?
Let me be possibly the only person to mention that yet another Campbell died in this episode, one who was possessed and may have been as innocent all along in any of his own actions as any other person out there, and who was apparently targeted solely for his bloodline. I'm sure no one will bother to miss him.
Word to the writers: it makes it really hard to be sympathetic to your lead character(s) when they apparently are so unbelievably selfish and single-minded that they can't seem to remember any kind of decency to people who are either beloved family members, or innocent family members. You are making all the characters on this show despicable in one way or another and it doesn't give viewers a lot of reason to keep watching, especially since you're not doing it in any kind of interesting way or for much of a payoff.
Other Stuff
1) When Dean mentioned that they'd been doing all these Crowley runs, I was wondering where we are timeline-wise in the series. Has it been months? Weeks?
2) I was bothered by the use of the ceramic mug when Sam and Dean returned to the, I'll assume, abandoned house where they're squatting which still gets electric, water, and free cable pay-per-view. Where did it come from? Are they traveling around with mugs in the car? Why wouldn't they just be using plastic cups?
3) Sam and Dean are knocked unconscious so often in this show (and never with any aftereffects) that I would expect they'd be more worried about their brains being non-human than Sam's soul.
4) Why did they need an hour before they left to attack Crowley, since presumably they'd have had to summon Meg once they had their answers?
5) Is that a different angel sigil on the wall that Samuel draws?
6) We had yet another episode where family betrays family, this time Samuel with Sam and Dean. I wonder though, given what Dean does in this episode, if the hint that brother will betray brother will actually turn out to be Dean of Sam and not the other way around?
7) Ok, so I buy that Crowley, thanks to all the souls in his command, somehow got powered up since last season. But if so, how come he couldn't quickly bust out of a devil's trap and how did Meg have so much power over him?
8) "Castiel, haven't seen you all season." Best line of the night.
9) So now at the end of the episode Sam and Dean are all understanding about Castiel's problems? Man, they blow hot and cold.
10) I take it that Castiel destroyed the prison full of monsters at Sam's request, including the shapeshifter babies that Dean had such an issue with in 6.02. But hey, as long as he doesn't have to watch, I guess it doesn't matter!
Comments at Dreamwidth
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The Good
Not much, so let's get this out of the way:
1) The return of Meg. Other than a problem I'll discuss at the end, Meg's return was all to the good. The show was fortunate in that by first casting Nikki Aycox and now Rachel Miner, they've created one of the more interesting female characters on this show. This has been less due to the writing and more to the acting, but the importance of the casting was obvious in this episode. Especially with Meg gone for so long, and being one of many in an episode chock full of guest stars, she not only holds her own but makes one believe she's a worthy adversary for both Crowley and the Winchesters.
I also much prefer seeing Meg with her back against the wall than a follower of Lucifer's, though I agree with the writers' decision in Abandon All Hope that it was necessary to demonstrate what Meg's motivation had been all along. Being a true believer was an interesting explanation for why someone so independent would have followed Azazel's plan in the first place. Now that we know, it's good to see her back in her more lone wolf role.
I found it interesting that the writers put her in the position of holding off the hellhounds while Sam, Dean and Castiel headed off to try and kill a bigger fish. It strongly echoed the role Jo and Ellen were left in the last time we saw Meg. At least Meg survived this episode, which I hope means we'll see more of her in the future, particularly now that Crowley's gone.
2) Sam, although it was a mixed bag. I thought Sam was a little too sure of himself thinking that Meg wouldn't torture them for information, but then this Sam would be, devoid as he is of Sam's usual fears and caution. It's not like it wasn't already in Sam's nature to be very sure of himself.
That said, I'm with Sam when it comes to a lot of his thinking. Dean's emotional arguments are there to contrast with his more logical approach but the writers need to do a better job of giving Dean more sensible soapboxes to stand on. Obviously, given their history with Meg, working with her is going to stick in his craw more than Crowley, who was introduced to them as an ally and hasn't done much against the Winchesters to date. But Dean didn't seem to have any compunction in working with Crowley against Lucifer. Working with Meg against Crowley is just another version of it.
I enjoyed Sam using the ark of the covenant to bring Castiel to them, though the line afterwards explaining the joke to the pop-culture illiterate in the audience ruined it. If Sam didn't believe it would work, he wouldn't have tried it. He was counting on the fact that Castiel didn't know about it. (And I'd still like to know, is Jimmy in there?)
But why does Sam think that Castiel owes him anything? Because he recaged Lucifer? Granted, Sam knows that at first Castiel went along with angel plans to hide the truth from them. But so far as I know, Sam and Dean never realized who set him free from Bobby's panic room, and it's not like Castiel didn't try to make up for it later. So I don't know what Sam's talking about here, and I still find it ridiculous the way Sam and Dean talk to Castiel as if he's their lapdog. This is not how friends deal with one another.
Sam taking charge of interacting with Meg and the demons, taking the knife back, stabbing the demon, taking charge of the mission, all played in well to the idea of this new all-business Sam (and while I also appreciate smart-Dean moments, I am happy with a return to smart-anyone moments, as wildly as their brainpower seems to seesaw in this series). I had to wonder what that scene afterward of Sam checking guns in the Impala's trunk was supposed to indicate to us, especially as it merges into a broody Cas. I am again wondering if their scene together and Castiel's conversation with Dean, are obscuring the fact that Castiel and Sam are in cahoots over Sam's soul. One could certainly fit that scenario in between the lines here, though given everything else in this episode, I am despairing that the writers have anything that big in store.
Lastly, Sam using blood to draw the devil's trap? Unexpectedly clever. Him rushing around afterward, ripping pipes off of walls and suffering no ill effects from bleeding out that much? Downright stupid.
The Huh?
1) While I get the reason why the Shifter would want to wear Crowley's face as it was being tortured, nothing else in the scene made sense. The shifter had been captured some time ago so I assume that Crowley had not been waiting until now to torture him. Instead, I take it that the time to come up with an iridium dagger is what had been taking so long.
Why then does he not USE IT?? He gives the shifter one little stab, just enough to prove it works, and then tosses it aside! Why bother threatening it with carving if he's not going to do anything? And then, there's the baby monitor. Really? Crowley was going to host a nursery full of shifter babies for all this time just so he could threaten the parent with sounds? And then after quickly dropping two tactics in a row, he doesn't go back to using the knife but simply chops off its head in order to make a bad joke.
I mean, that was the most pathetic torture session I've ever seen. My question was the same as the shifter's -- what made him think a still living creature had any idea how to get to purgatory? Did he think the shifter had returned from there? Why not further interrogate the informants who led him to believe that the shifter would know?
But my biggest question is how he was able to tie up a shifter in the first place? Why doesn't it just turn into a rat to escape? I mean it's an alpha shifter -- this whole session seemed as pointless to the episode as it was to any sense of logic. And since when can you kill a shape shifter by beheading them (especially since it was already resistant to silver)?
2) I assume that Dean's question at the beginning of the episode was answered and that Sam really was trying to get his soul back, given what he went through here (though I still prefer to think he and Castiel are in league about something). But apparently Samuel was right about Dean being a hypocrite because after his speech to Samuel, he turns around and ignores what Castiel, Meg, and Sam himself are saying to him about leaving well enough alone when it comes to Sam's soul.
Besides what this tells us about Dean, I have to wonder what the writers are thinking by going this route. Plenty of fans have been speculating about what state Sam's soul would be in if it were retrieved. The fact that this is most likely a bad idea could have been ignored at the end of the season if the writers decided to handwave a happy ending. After all, when Dean emerged from 40 years in hell, you'd never have guessed it from his behavior, so it's not like there isn't precedent.
But that storyline is a good example of how the writers boxed themselves in that season in exploring what hell had done to Dean. Their major plan was to hide what Sam was up to for as long as possible. To do that, virtually all the episodes in the season were told from Dean's POV, because he, and thus the audience, were to stay in the dark about Sam. That meant, though, that the audience was also going to have to deal with the POV of a character who was himself a wreck after decades of torture. They clearly didn't want to do this. So it's possible that they're going to go this route in S7 now that Dean himself can be the more everyman-POV on Sam's wrecked self.
I'm of two minds on that outcome. For one, yes, it will take them someplace different and allow the writers to continue to delay a happy reunion between the brothers. They have clearly taken to heart that Sam and Dean are the central couple of the series and so just as writers forever delay the romantic leads coming together in other shows, so they plan to in this one, even if it's not actually a romantic storyline. The formula is the same - delay, delay, delay. I am very tired of seeing that cliché playing out in other shows, and I'm pretty sure the audience will be tired of it here too.
Second, such a storyline would be an acting and writing challenge, and frankly I don't know that the writers are up to it. After seeing how they handled a disability storyline with Bobby as well as any other storyline that requires some sensitivity, well, enough said. Also, both leads have already stated they prefer episodes (if not seasons) where there isn't so much angst because it is a draining business over time. This sort of storyline is the exact opposite of what they want.
Thirdly, who's going to be happy with this outcome? We seem to have three choices: abandon Sam to what has now been spelled out as a terrible fate, rescue the soul and make it and everyone else around Sam suffer its distressed, dysfunctional state, or have him show up inexplicably fine. (I am reminded of Angel's line about S7 Spike spending "three weeks moaning in a basement and then you were fine" when his soul was restored). A season full of tortured-beyond-belief-Sam next year is not something I'm looking forward to and I'm convinced at this point that the more the writers keep messing with the Winchester dynamics, the more of the audience they're going to lose. But I've certainly been wrong before.
Lastly, a Sam-is-a-wreck outcome means still another series of episodes, or entire season, where Sam is once again a mysterious, distant figure. Hooray.
3) Castiel. Given that Castiel is pretty busy fighting a war he seemed to be wasting an awful lot of time hanging around in this episode. I'm going to assume that either Sam and Dean were already near the Campbell compound (given how Samuel shows up later) or he teleported everyone there. However, I've no idea why Dean felt Castiel couldn't be around while he talked to Samuel given that Castiel's been in Dean's head various times.
The whole thing with the porn was pointless and time wasting and the kiss with Meg made about as much sense as well. Also, I think Dean may be speaking from his solitary upbringing but guys do indeed watch porn together and talk about it -- not all of them, certainly, but they do.
I did wonder if, when Sam walked back in with Castiel and explained that Castiel was simply acting to help friends, if this was something they'd agreed upon to say or if Sam was being uncharacteristically kind to both Dean's feelings and Castiel's relationship with him.
Having Castiel be the deus-ex-machina here, finding Crowley's bones like that, just kind of made me sigh. I agree with Crowley, the bones would be the thing he'd guard most carefully of all, so if Castiel couldn't find Crowley himself, how did he turn those up just like that? I could say maybe Meg but, again, if she couldn't find Crowley himself, how would she tip them off to the bones' location?
The most interesting part of Castiel's appearance was actually his confrontation with Crowley. With him gone we may never know, but I'm going to guess that Crowley's purgatory scheme was indeed related to taking advantage of heaven's chaos.
The Awful
(A) Curiously, in the past few days I was talking with krystalyn about Dean's line back in Twihard ("Isn't that kind of rapey?"), and how neither Dean nor SPN has any business in taking another pop-culture text to task when it comes to attitudes towards women. Let me count the ways using this episode as Exhibit A.
1) "Banging a hooker in a sweet spot…good night girls...I don't speak little bitch."
2) "Now I need a daily rape shower." Dean, unless you are actually getting raped by a demon you do not need a rape shower. And given the fact that Dean, the character, likely had been raped countless times by one, nice of the writers to trivialize it like that.
3) "I'm not supposed to talk about it." In another episode, I probably would have found this funnier. As it was, it just seemed like something creepy a pedophile would tell their victim.
4) The djinn, and the type of torture it's implied Crowley is subjecting her to.
5) The use of Meg as a sexual outlet for Castiel. I can't get too worked up about this on Meg's behalf because she has always been a character who played on her sexuality so it's nothing but continuity when it reoccurs here. However, the larger point is -- what female demon on this show hasn't?
6) The worst part though was the return of the torture porn table. I hated it when they did this with Ruby in S4, and I hated it even more here. In an episode full of people being tortured, it's only the woman who once again is strapped naked to a table while the camera lingers on a knife running down her body. If even one man being tortured had had the same done to him, they might have had plausible deniability. But in Sam's similar scene in the panic room he's fully clothed, nor does Dean do it to Alistaire, the most obvious choice for this treatment, nor do we see it done to the shapeshifter or Dean with the ghouls in this very episode. Nope, it's only two women who ever have this happen in the series. I can't express sufficient disgust on this point that when men are tortured, it's torture. When women are tortured, it's meant to be sexually provocative.
(B) Samuel. Ok, it had already been really obvious that he was keeping a picture of Mary in his desk (which came from where, I wonder? A heavenly P.O. box?) But WHAT? He wants her yanked out of heaven and brought back to life after 30 years? Why? Why doesn't he just want to die and be reunited with her in heaven where he'd already been? He wants Crowley to do the same thing to her that he did to him? And why is there still no mention of Deanna here?
I'm going to give the show the slightest benefit of a doubt and assume that there's some more complicated reason why he feels the need to "rescue" Mary. But honest to God, Dean should have asked him the same thing and then the other obvious questions which is how does a demon have the power to be yanking people out of heaven and why would anyone want them to? Does Samuel not remember where he was? Well, Dean and Sam remember heaven and can tell him. Why does Dean not make this argument to him?
And if there isn't anything more complicated about the Mary storyline, I am just throwing up my hands because, seriously, what parent wishes that on their kid?
(C ) On a similar note, Adam. In this episode we have three people mention what a wreck Sam's soul probably is and Castiel, of all people, says that Lucifer and Michael have "nothing else" to entertain themselves with than to torture Sam. Oh really? Has everyone forgotten that Sam isn't the only Winchester in the box? Have we also forgotten that, like Samuel, Adam only said yes in order to see his mother and, perhaps, spare Dean what he was obviously unwilling to do?
Let me be possibly the only person to mention that yet another Campbell died in this episode, one who was possessed and may have been as innocent all along in any of his own actions as any other person out there, and who was apparently targeted solely for his bloodline. I'm sure no one will bother to miss him.
Word to the writers: it makes it really hard to be sympathetic to your lead character(s) when they apparently are so unbelievably selfish and single-minded that they can't seem to remember any kind of decency to people who are either beloved family members, or innocent family members. You are making all the characters on this show despicable in one way or another and it doesn't give viewers a lot of reason to keep watching, especially since you're not doing it in any kind of interesting way or for much of a payoff.
Other Stuff
1) When Dean mentioned that they'd been doing all these Crowley runs, I was wondering where we are timeline-wise in the series. Has it been months? Weeks?
2) I was bothered by the use of the ceramic mug when Sam and Dean returned to the, I'll assume, abandoned house where they're squatting which still gets electric, water, and free cable pay-per-view. Where did it come from? Are they traveling around with mugs in the car? Why wouldn't they just be using plastic cups?
3) Sam and Dean are knocked unconscious so often in this show (and never with any aftereffects) that I would expect they'd be more worried about their brains being non-human than Sam's soul.
4) Why did they need an hour before they left to attack Crowley, since presumably they'd have had to summon Meg once they had their answers?
5) Is that a different angel sigil on the wall that Samuel draws?
6) We had yet another episode where family betrays family, this time Samuel with Sam and Dean. I wonder though, given what Dean does in this episode, if the hint that brother will betray brother will actually turn out to be Dean of Sam and not the other way around?
7) Ok, so I buy that Crowley, thanks to all the souls in his command, somehow got powered up since last season. But if so, how come he couldn't quickly bust out of a devil's trap and how did Meg have so much power over him?
8) "Castiel, haven't seen you all season." Best line of the night.
9) So now at the end of the episode Sam and Dean are all understanding about Castiel's problems? Man, they blow hot and cold.
10) I take it that Castiel destroyed the prison full of monsters at Sam's request, including the shapeshifter babies that Dean had such an issue with in 6.02. But hey, as long as he doesn't have to watch, I guess it doesn't matter!
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