Supernatural: When The Levee Breaks
By fred | May 8, 2009
(S04E21) Last episode ended with a shocking event and lots of promises for this week, and maybe I had build up a bit too much my expectations about this episode, but in the end I felt somewhat disappointed by this episode, which pretty much didn’t had that feeling of amazement or excitement you’d think it should have had. At the end of the day, even if you weren’t fully disappointed by what you saw, you still had to seriously hope that next week, for the season finale, things would get a whole lot better.
Something big is coming, we’ve know that for a long time, with plenty of people warning us about it, some just regular people, some demons, some angels, and more. And because we’re not stupid, we all knew that in the end there would be a fight between the two brothers, that what it would all come down to would be a fraternal love being challenged, and Sam vs Dean.
But Sam has not been his self for a while now, and I guess the writers tried, with this trip into his mind, to show us things from his own point of view. Thing is, it’s hard to sympathize with him now, because he’s completely out of it. Just look at what Sam’s mind does, he sees his mother coming back to tell him that he’s right, he should do what he’s doing, it’s the right thing to do and the only reason Dean doesn’t see it is because he’s weak!
Sam is self-righteous and egoistic and a lot worse, but at the same time it only makes sense, that’s what happens when you’re a drug addict (in serious need for a fix). It all becomes about you, and whatever wrong thing you do is not wrong, it’s just that no one gets you, they don’t understand why you do it, why you have to do it. Sam might claim not to be an addict, that this is about Lilith and killing her, but when he couldn’t wait and sucked demon blood in front of everyone, that was not about getting stronger to fight Lilith, clearly.
And I’m not sure this little trip in his sick mind helped a lot, because we already knew the place is in. Or maybe it’s how it was done, and that it was quickly interrupted as Sam “escaped.” After that, it was a strong déjà-vu, wasn’t it? Because I feel like we had seen this already before, Dean having to track/hunt Sam down, the brothers fighting and saying hurtful things to each other, and ending up fighting one another.
Been there, done that. The only difference here, is that at some point it looked like the only thing between the brothers was a girl, or a demon, Ruby. Dean was okay with everything as long as they would get ride of her, and Sam didn’t want that, he would protect his little demon’s blood supplier, and he was ready to push things really far. Sam is so full of himself he can yell at Dean “you don’t know me, never have never will” all he wants, but the simple fact that Dean found him right away is proof of the contrary.
When he was chocking Dean, it looked like he really could have done it, but he hadn’t enough demon blood in him, there was still a little bit of humanity left, and he stopped. But next time, if Dean tries to stop him, he won’t stop. Just like when Bobby foolishly tried to offer him a second chance, Sam just knocked him out.
So now we’re back to square one, except that Lilith is almost there, and the apocalypse is about to become real. Question is: what do “God” want? Because Castiel has always had a somewhat unclear and confusing ways of dealing with things, and while I won’t say angels aren’t fighting back, they don’t seem too worried about Lilith coming close to having broken all the seals she wanted to break.
I can’t understand why Castiel just tricked Anna the way he did (and by the way, isn’t she supposed to be quite powerful? Why is it she never can do anything then??), or more importantly why he would let Sam go?
I have always been convinced that Ruby wasn’t helping Sam, that she was part of Azazel’s plan for Sam, that her motives really weren’t what she claimed. During her bed talk to Sam about the last seal Lilith was about to break soon, I wonder how much of what she told was true, and how much was lies – probably lies based on the truth. What if the last seal doesn’t have to be broken by the first human turned demon, but by a human turned demon?
What if this was the plan from the start, take a few babies and turn them into demon, hoping that one of them would make it all the way through, and eventually be the one to break that last seal to let Lucifer out. Or maybe Lilith just need a strong human turned demon when she breaks that last seal, to turn him into Lucifer’s host? Either way, Ruby would be using Sam, getting him ready to unleash evil on Earth by turning him into one of them. Problem is, in that case why would Castiel be helping, and letting Sam free??
Anna said that Sam’s condition was worse than they thought, and she too was surprised and confused by Castiel’s actions. Clearly they intend to use Sam to defeat Lucifer, but I’m not sure how exactly. Chances are that somehow Dean will have to do something he won’t want to do, such as killing his brother, but I fail to see why letting Sam go would help Castiel & co. If Dean is the key, the only one who can stop things, why not try to help and support him, instead of backstabbing him that way?
Oh and, in case anyone was still wondering whether Lilith was pure evil or not, she eats babies.
What did everybody else think?
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Supernatural
Have we all figured out what the 66th Seal is yet? :-)
Brilliant episode and brilliant season. I’ve been so frustrated with other series and the stupid character twists they’ve foisted on us for the sake of shock value. This series shows what you can do when you truly think through and plan out an entire season and allow the characters time to develop logically. Sam’s downfall has far more impact than “Tony Almeida is evil because we thought it’d be kewl!”
It’s terrible and awful and tragic and wrenching, but in a really wonderful way. Sam has been plagued for ages with the feeling that he’s tainted, and has tried to fight it by becoming “normal” or by trying to turn the curse into a positive. Ruby picked away at his vulnerability after Dean’s death, when he was alone and grief-stricken, until she twisted his needs and actions to suit her own plan. Speaking of Ruby, it seems evident now that she is knowingly working for Lilith, as her smirkiness isn’t explained by anything else. She deliberately stayed away to expose Sam’s addiction and set the brothers at odds. Sam’s series of hallucinations as he detoxes are painful and disturbing, from the vision of suffering Dean’s torture at the hands of Alistair, to the reproaches of his younger self, the unexpected appearance of his mother to validate his delusions, and Dean’s denunciation of him as a monster. The surprise is his mother’s role in speaking for the “practical” side of things. That’s not what we expect from a maternal figure, yet there is precedent for hunters choosing the expedient over the moral, and Bobby himself raises the prospect in this episode. The vision that’s clearly the most piercing for Sam, and the audience, is of Dean cruelly dismissing him as a monster. It’s obviously Sam’s deepest fear, and it’s devastating when it comes to pass in real life.
The show is in some complex territory in dealing with the question of whether one can cut corners morally for the greater good. It’s always a temptation in times of crisis, but clearly if they put this rationale in Ruby’s mouth, it’s wrong. There’s nothing bad about with Sam’s impulse to try to turn the demon taint to something good, but he’s plainly gone off the deep end. Poisoning himself with demon blood prevents him from thinking clearly and is having all kinds of dangerous side effects. Bobby, too, speculates whether it isn’t better to have a demon-powered Sam on the battlefield with them than to lock him away and rob him of his abilities. Bobby is usually the voice of reason to the “idjits”, but here I think his reason fails him, and Dean is correct to insist that they don’t have the right to sacrifice Sam. I love that they have Bobby suggest it, though, because this kind of fear-induced second-guessing makes the direness of the Apocalypse more real. Dean’s response represents an evolution of his character since he sold his soul to save Sam’s life, too. When Bobby points out that Sam may die during the detox, he replies that at least his brother will die human. Apparently he has realized that there are worse things that can happen to Sam than dying.
Now what’s worse, knowingly doing wrong to help others, or mindlessly following orders to the certain peril of others? There are two possibilities for Castiel’s actions. One is that the angels have been infiltrated and have fallen victim to disinformation again. Last time Castiel failed to question orders, the results were terrible, and Anna’s reappearance here to reproach him for freeing Sam suggests he’s in the wrong here too. The other possibility is that Castiel is in fact working for the good, and a confrontation must be forced in order to save the world from the Apocalypse.
The fallout from Sam’s liberation is awful, though. He seems a hair more rational at first. When Bobby catches him by the car, in one of the saddest moments of the episode, he says, “You want to help me?” and presses the muzzle of the gun to his heart. He knows at that point that he’s in freefall and in the wrong. Once dosed with Ruby’s blood, though, he returns to his delusions and begs Dean to trust him in his course of action. Dean, of course, can’t say anything to this but no. Despite Bobby’s warnings about not pushing Sam away, Dean acts like Dean and bursts out with the worst, worst possible thing he could say to Sam. I think he does it in the name of moral suasion, but he may as well have set off a neutron bomb in Sam’s psyche. Sadly, before this, Sam was actually still reachable, still wanting to reconcile with his brother, to Ruby’s disappointment. Once Dean rejects him, however, he’s over the edge, and if he wasn’t a monster before, he surely will be now. And yet….