Supernatural: It’s The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester
By fred | October 31, 2008
(S04E07) After a very serious and dark tone for the first episodes of the season, Supernatural went all black & white and offered us a little “intermission”, with episodes that were obviously still pretty awesome, but also pretty hilarious. The tone was lighter, and for a moment the big stakes at play were almost forgotten. Sam and his demonic powers, Dean and his trip to Hell, and Lilith’s quest to bring Lucifer back to Earth were put aside for a little while.
Now, as the date pretty much forced it, this was the Halloween special episode of Supernatural, and as such it was probably quite natural for many of us, I suspect, to expect this episode to be another big bag of fun and hilarity, all the while tracking dangerous demons of course — I mean this is Supernatural, still.
But while humor wasn’t missing in this episode, which opened with still a lighter tone, rapidly things evolved and took a turn for the more serious. Because this is Supernatural after all, and Halloween might be all about fun, candies and costumes for us “regular people”, but for Sam and Dean living in the world of Demons, there’s quite a different meaning to the day, as indicated by its pretty bloody history.
We didn’t have to deal with a regular witch, but one at least 600 years old and extremely powerful. One that would have killed one if not both brothers, had Castiel – and his new buddy Uriel – intervened. Yes, for a moment I suppose it wasn’t exactly clear if Castiel was really real, only appeared to Dean in dreams or was only seen by him. Castiel was hiding from Sam, and last night they finally met.
Sam was pretty excited about the meeting, almost looking as if he was finally admitting that it was all real, that they were real, and saying how much of an honor it was for him, who’s been fighting evil for a pretty long time now, to meet Angels from God. Apparently though, that sentiment wasn’t really shared, and Castiel took a awful long time before shaking his hand. It’s almost as if he was afraid to touch him, because he didn’t trust Sam or something. And given his first words to Sam, “the boy with the demon blood“, I’d say this isn’t far off.
In the end Sam didn’t thought much of the Angels, and I have to say that I’m not entirely sure myself if they are trustworthy or not, but they did get Dean out of Hell after all, so… they can’t be all bad, right?
Castiel and especially Uriel were willing to kill everyone to be sure another seal wouldn’t be broken, and the witch be killed. Almost mimicking an old habit of Sam vs Dean, where they’d argue whether to just kill a demon, cause it was just that, because it had to be done, or whether they should try to save the host, find another way to get ride of the evil, the brothers and the Angels weren’t agreeing. Dean was not okay with that idea of making an entire town disappear.
Eventually, Castiel agreed to let the boys do it their own way, and because it was a very powerful demon they had to deal with Sam was wondering whether or not he shall have to use his powers. Of course Dean wouldn’t have any of that, but that wasn’t how things were to happen. That final scene when Sam used his mind powers to get ride of the demon left me with a few questions.
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Supernatural
i really liked the Sam vs. Samhain standoff, Padalecki did an excellent job acting it out, my head was hurting just looking at him lol
Did no one pay any attention? Dean had no way of knowing where the knife was. How could he run in and grab it if he didn’t know where it was? For all he knew Sam still had it. There was a fairly long corridor seperating them.
Also what Sam was doing clearly required concentration, if Dean had moved in closer he could have broken Sam’s concentration and Samhain would have killed him instantly. Anything Dean tried to do most likely would have resulted in more harm than good.- Dean did the right thing and the smart thing and the thing which was safest for Sam at that moment. Did you want him to do something stupid that most likely would have gotten Sam killed?
Also I don’t believe Sam tried to use the knife in a genuine manner. If he’d really tried to use the knife he’d have used it instead of getting into a punch up with Samhain. Anyone of those punches Sam landed could have been a kill shot with the knife. Or he could have rushed Samhain while Samhain was uselessly trying to ray gun him and stabbed him before he figured out it didn’t work on Sam. If Sam had planned on using the knife rather than his powers, the knife would have been in his hand, not somewhere inside his jacket.
No, I was paying attention! :) I know he didn’t know what happened, so maybe he couldn’t run and grab it like that, but he could get the best weapon he had on him at the time, move forward and try to see how he could help Sam. It’s certainly not the first time the boys are in such a situation where they don’t know all that going on or how they’ll get out of it alive and well, but when they have to they usually jump in and try to do their best with what they have.
I think your vision of things is biased because you know how it eventually turned out, but at that time, and even ignoring the fact that Dean doesn’t want him to use his powers, between Sam who’s been using his powers for a few weeks, months at best, and Samhain who’s been around for some hundreds of years and has been having a very strong reputation from about as long, there was no way to be sure that Sam would win.
Samhain could have just continued to walk up to Sam and eventually rip of his head off or something! When you say Dean’s reaction, or lack thereof, was the safest thing to do, I feel that’s because you have more cards in your hand than Dean had, namely you know how it worked out. I still feel such a lack of reaction, or action, from Dean was odd – as well as significative of his feelings of course. (I do wish we had a scene with the brothers together after that, wonder how that went…)
About Sam using the knife, I think you’re right. He had the knife just because of Dean, but he really wanted to use his powers and see how strong he was/they were. And, it might have been a way for him to let all his anger and frustration towards what’s happening to him out on “someone”…