In the fourth episode of the fourth season of Supernatural, Dean confronts Sam about his powers, and then NOOOOOOOPPPPEEEE. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Supernatural.
I have a lot of feelings about Sam. I HAVE A LOT OF THEM.
It’s hard having a lot of expectations to live up to, particularly when you know there are matters not under your control that make that difficult. Sam, thrust back into a world where his brother is by his side, must now wrestle with the choices he made in the months that Dean was gone. I suppose I’ll always wonder what it was that Sam did for those three to four months, but I kind of like the idea that for now, the writers are leaving that up to our imagination. We have Sam’s canon reaction to Dean’s death in “Mystery Spot,” and now we know that when faced with his death again, Sam really did continue on. But in the process, he turned to Ruby for guidance and stability. Which makes sense! He always looked to Dean for that, but Dean left a vacuum behind when he died. It makes me worried for Sam, because while Ruby continues to do good things for Sam, this suggests that she may have taken advantage of Sam’s loss.
Of course, that’s central to Sam’s narrative in this episode. He was readying himself for a life without Dean, and that meant he made different choices. He never expected to have to justify his pursuit of his powers to anyone else, but now Dean is back. He’s back, and he’s reacting exactly how Sam feared. The saddest thing about this whole thing is that for as much as Dean insists that this is a choice, Sam never chose to have Azazel give him demon’s blood. And I get why Dean is upset, but I really think he’s unfair to Sam at the beginning of this episode. Actually… throughout the whole thing, but we’ll get there. When he’s punching his brother, he’s not acknowledging that he has more information than Sam. It’s not like Sam was also visited by an angel, who told him not to go down that path. Sam had no one else to depend on, no one else he could turn to. He made the decision to use his powers to exorcise demons because it was the only way to make the disease within him into a good thing. There’s an unspoken parallel to chronic illness here, and for the moment, I’m glad the show isn’t necessarily pursuing it or making it more blatant, just because it could turn into a hot mess.
But what Dean lacks here is sympathy. He’s deliberately hostile to Sam, he makes no effort to try to understand what Sam is going here, and his words cast Sam as a freak of nature. He’s not supportive at all! Hell, the show doesn’t even address the fact that Dean is technically being a hypocrite. Isn’t the whole reason he went to hell is because he worked with a demon? Granted, I admit that it’s not a totally analogous situation here, but there’s an undeniable commonality between them. I think it’s also possible that Dean acts as he does out of an intense love for and desire to protect Sam, which is something we’ve seen plenty of times before.
The whole thing is complicated, essentially. I’m glad that Dean told Sam about what happened in the previous episode, and I think that’s why he reacts so poorly to Sam’s lies. There’s a different context for Sam’s lies, which he finally vocalizes later in “Metamorphosis,” but Dean doesn’t see it that way earlier in the episode. He just knows that he’s being honest with Sam literally a day after something happened, and Sam’s admitting the truth a year after he knew it. It’s through the case in “Metamorphosis” that Dean finally gets closer to empathizing with what it is that Sam is going through. This really is one of the better parallel cases that the show has given us, though I found it had a lot in common with the episode “Hunger” in season seven of The X-Files, which Kim Manners also worked on! (I will never apologize for the near-encyclopedic knowledge I have of that show, NEVER.) It’s disturbing because the implications of Jack’s affliction means that he is fighting against a biological urge to do something horrible. Of course, it’s all an allusion to Sam’s own metamorphosis. He was given something as a child that might very well turn him evil, and he’s constantly aware of the horrible path that he’s on.
But in the case of Jack Montgomery, we get the story of a man compelled to eat human flesh, of which there are only rumored survivors. It’s the inevitability of this monster (the Rugaru) that’s so haunting. Despite that Jack himself has no desire to eat anyone, his biological destiny constantly fights against him. It’s sad to watch because Travis, the hunter who brought them in on this case, is certain that there’s no way for Jack to escape his fate. He’ll eventually consume human flesh, and then he’ll rapidly transform into his pure form.
In a twist of irony, it’s Travis who ultimately provokes Jack into his metamorphosis. Travis reminded me of Gordon Walker in one sense, since he was deadset on the idea that the Rugaru was destined for evil, and just like Gordon, he was felled by the very thing that he was hunting. OH, BUT NOT BEFORE REVEALING THAT JACK’S WIFE WAS PREGNANT. Which is actually never addressed again? Like, is her son definitely a Rugaru, too? Regardless, it’s by taunting Jack with Michelle’s murder that Travis ends up enraging Jack so much that HE RIPS APART HANDCUFFS. DUDE. And really, what’s so horrible about this situation is that Travis won’t even entertain the notion that there’s any hope for Jack. Of course Sam’s going to be against this! And you know, Sam’s always been the one to consider the option that saves the most people, even if that person might be a monster, too.
In the end, Jack is burned alive by Sam, which is haunting enough as it is, particularly when you consider that everything Sam tells Jack while locked in that closet IS ABOUT HIMSELF. But “Metamorphosis” ends with Sam making a promise to Dean: He’s done using his powers. He’s sick of thinking of what it may do to him and to those around him. And I think it’s important that Sam says he’s doing this for himself. It’s important that Sam values himself, you know? That doesn’t mean that Sam is going to keep this promise, though, and I’m interested to see if he really will resist using his power.
Goddamn, this show is too much.
The video for “Metamorphosis” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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