“Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?” - Princess Leia

Between a Rock and Another, Really Hard Rock
by Sylvia Bond
Supernatural Episode Review – Season Four, Episode Seven
“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester”

I’d thought we’d already had our Halloween episode for this season, but here we have another one. I’m not complaining, though, because while the other one was done for laughs, this one was not. It creeped me out, left me with a ton of questions, and gave me and other fangirls lots to talk about. First up was the old “razor in the candy” trick, which I thought was a terrific start because that urban legend is one of the oldest in the book. However, the razor was just a convenient way for the VOW to die. What I’d like to know is who the hell dreamed up the Mouth-Cam on this guy? We are inside his mouth just after he’s chomped on razors and is pulling them out of his gums. Urk. Double Urk. (But it’s a good kind of gross.) The second VOW (a young eager miss attending a Halloween party in a short-skirted nurse outfit) dies in a boiling cauldron full of apples. Nice, huh? (I thought it would be more razors and had actually covered my eyes in preparation.) But the episode is, thankfully, not really about that.  It is about the destiny of a certain two brothers, hurray!

Sam and Dean, yeah, them, go to investigate razor guy and dead nurse chick. They are dressed in FBI outfits again, and while I cannot (and will not) help but admire the dark swath their combined suited shoulders make against the air, and adore thinking of them figuring out which tie to wear, I wish Show would be more inventive with the disguises like it used to be. Yes, I know, the FBI disguise is a sure thing and will always get them in the door, but surely someone, sooner or later, is going to be calling down to the J. Edgar Hoover building to verify, and the boys will be found out. Even if Hendrickson is dead, the FBI hires smart people, and someone’s going to get wise and the boys will land in jail. Again. (On second thought, maybe that’s not such a bad idea, eh?)

During the interrogation of the dead nurse chick’s friends is the return of the Brotherly One-Two Punch. It’s the kind of dialog we used to get, back in the old days, where no matter how tricky the plot or difficult the gig, the brothers would find time out of their busy schedules to sally back and forth as if they were again 14 and 10 years old, or 10 and 8, or at whichever age Sam started to talk because you know durn well he never hesitated telling Dean (and the world) exactly what he thought. There’s more than one of these exchanges in this ep, and this one goes like this: Upon seeing the chick in the cheerleader costume, Dean goes, “I got this one.” Sam says, “Two words: Jail bait.” Dean says, “I would NEVER!” Upon which Sam gives him the look that, without him saying a single word, says, “I cannot believe not only that you are such a reprobate but that you are related to me.” (With dimples ablazing! Padalecki has the most amazing dimples, don’t you think?) It’s this kind of verbal brotherly exchange that I’m always calling out for and here it’s being handed to me. It’s not a long exchange, no, but it’s there, and my fangirl’s heart shouts out with glee because someone on Show has figured out that THIS is what we like. THIS.

Interspersed amongst the FBI-interrogation scenes are two lovely dithers at the motel du ep, inside of which, the boys, for once, are doing their VERY own research! Let’s stop a moment and be thankful, shall we? In the first one, Sam is on the couch (looking very nice against the green), and Dean marches in chomping on candy. They’ve found one hex bag, and soon they’ve found two, and back at the motel, Dean is on the laptop, concentrating (trying very hard, one assumes, NOT to pull up a porn site), and Sam is, by golly, lounging on the bed. LOUNGING there with his long legs, and while I kind of get the feeling that Show set up this shot for the angle (so as to get both boys in the same shot) I like the idea of Sam reading in bed, and I like being able to watch him do it.

It’s Sam who figures out the Samhain legend (enjoying himself most deservedly while doing so), that there’s probably some witch trying to summon a demon who rises up on the last night of harvest and then he, in turn, raises up a whole lotta other bad dudes to make the world a messy place. I think what Show is doing here is taking poetic license because not only is “Samhain” pronounced sow-en (or a variation on this, depending on your source), Samhain is a celebration, an end of harvest feast, and not a person. But I’m going to stick to my poetic license excuse, besides, the Demon-Cam was cool!

What’s even more fun about this scene and the image of Sam researching on a bed is Dean’s throw-away remark about leprechauns who have, he says grimacing, “Small hands.” Then he makes this almost obscene gesture, and I’m like what? Apparently, not only do leprechauns exist in the boys’ universe, the boys have had run-ins with them before. I’ve suddenly got these hysterical images in my head of the Winchesters going up against these tiny men dressed all in green, complete with tiny Irish brogues, their tiny fists doing tiny nasty leprechaun things, and I’m laughing even though I’m not sure why. Nevertheless, I’ll just put in my request now for a leprechaun-based episode, shall I?

In the next scene we get more of the Dean-eating-candy running joke, and when he comes back to the motel to discuss the idea that the cheerleader chick might be more involved than the boys previously thought, we get another Brotherly One-Two Punch scene. Sam says something dismissive about the cheerleader and Dean says, “Yeah, well, if you were a 600-year-old-hag and you could pick any costume to come back in, wouldn’t you go for a hot cheerleader?” Sam says nothing, and Dean says, “I would…” and sort of trails off with this porny look in his eyes, and Sam says nothing, but you can TELL he’s thinking something along the disparaging lines of: “Why are you ALWAYS such a horndog??” Sam has such a superiority complex, I swear. I’m beginning to agree with Dean that he needs to get laid and soon.

The boys go check out the art teacher to ask about the cheerleader (using, oddly, totally different FBI cover names), and the art teacher (”Call me Don.”) paints a very black picture of the cheerleader indeed. (I suspect him immediately, but then, I always was squicked by teachers who tried too hard to be friends with the kids.) What’s more interesting to me about this scene than the advancement of the plot, is the advancement of the story behind how Dean spent his time in hell. He spent it miserably, one assumes, but here we get something more of that, instead of just some really quick flashbacks. As Dean’s staring at the art masks drying overhead, he hears screaming. Now, I don’t know if these are his own screams or someone else’s but I really appreciated the time Show took to lay this thread out, that Dean is starting to remember. Sam asks, “What were you thinking there?” and Dean totally covers. For all Dean gets so snappy at Sam for lying to him, he’s not doing much better himself. Which only builds the anticipation of a complete meltdown for either or both of them. Mark your calendars!

The boys go back to the motel where outside they are met by the useless boy-dressed-as-astronaut asking for candy. By useless I mean that it doesn’t forward the plot, but who cares because in addition to the oddly filmed Kid-Cam (we get the kid’s view of Sam and Dean staring down at him) we get another Brotherly One-Two Punch! The kid wants candy, see, and Dean, thinking it’s odd that the boy is trick-or-treating at a motel, says, “We don’t have any candy.” To which Sam says, gesturing, “No, we have a ton in the–” and Dean cuts him off, saying, “We did but it’s gone.” It’s gone because Dean ate it ALL, and the glaredown between the kid and Dean is priceless; the kid has no fear of Dean, none at all. As for the verbal sally, I really am a lucky fangirl; lighthearted moments like this, where Sam merely rolls his eyes at Dean’s antics, remind me how well these guys know each other, and how much brotherly love there is between them. Which is the first and most important reason why I watch Show. The MOW (and all attending VOWs) is purely secondary, if that.

And then, at last the moment comes. Dean and Sam enter their motel room, which looks like a whole lot of other motel rooms (are the Motel Decorators on holiday? I miss the rabidly wild rooms we used to see in Season 2), to find two men within. One is the soap angel, and the new one is Uriel. (Uriel is, among other things, the “Fire of God,” which I took to mean you just better stay out of his way. I’m not sure how I feel about having yet another angel hanging around when I don’t properly understand the motivations of the first one, but it sure does feel like it’s getting a little crowded around here, angel-wise. More angels do not for more dramatic conflict make, you know.) Padalecki plays it perfectly: Sam is wide-eyed and eager, he’s believed in angels forever and has wanted so badly to meet this angel, who, after all, pulled his brother out of perdition. He steps up and in the most fanboyish way EVER (stuttering and blushing), his expression so full of gushing admiration, devotion, and respect it’s almost embarrassing, and says, “Oh, my GOD.” Which becomes even more embarrassing for him as he tries to apologize.

But it all goes even more awry and I was really quite touched when Sam held out his hand for the angel to shake, and Castiel almost doesn’t return the gesture. Whether this is because he’s an angel and doesn’t really know how to shake hands, or whether he’s a bit put off at the thought of shaking the hand of someone tainted by demon’s blood, I don’t know, still there’s this horrible, long pause, and Sam’s bright face just falls. And even when the angel does shake his hand back, and covers the grip with his other hand, he says stuff about Sam’s demon blood, and you can see it in Sam’s eyes how torn he is about this.

One the one hand, he looks like a whipped puppy, wanting this guy’s approval but falling short. On the other hand, yeah, Sam remembers his demon blood just fine, thank you very much, and would the soap angel like a taste of just what that demon blood can do? Again Padalecki demonstrates his acting strength, because with that marvelous bone structure of his, somehow managing to make him look gaunt and lush at the same time, he shows us that Sam is a coin with two very different faces, and depending on how the coin is treated, Sam could either go darkside or he might not. The jury is still out on that one.

What I expected more from, I think, is in Dean’s initial reaction to the meetup. His attitude towards the soap angel has been diffident at best. He’s talked about the angel to Sam, but has seemed in no particular hurry to either a) say how he really feels about it all and b) to hasten the meeting between them. So what I thought I’d see coming was Dean having a little freak out the moment they opened that door and saw those angels standing there, as in, here is the moment, oh, crap! Which was, truth be told, my reaction. I might be projecting. I do that sometimes.

But the scene was still cool because even as the angels are flapping their invisible wings around in irritation, the brothers retain a united front. The angels, you see, want to “smite” the town to get rid of the witch who wants to raise Samhain. (This is one of the seals holding Lucifer in hell, apparently.) But Dean and Sam refuse to allow them to do this. Sam is flabbergasted and surprised that angels (who are supposed to be just and righteous) would be willing to kill 1,214 souls just to get at one witch. (He is beautifully open-mouthed in his shock.) As for Dean, he uses himself as a weapon, because if that’s what the angels are planning, then he’s not leaving town, and they’ll be killing him too, and how would the Man Upstairs like that, huh? Typical Dean, he’s a strutting cock-of-the-walk, but it’s not bluster, he means it. And when he means it like that? Just take a look at the flash in those eyes, and tell me it doesn’t make you want to swoon. I know I did.

In the next scene, while Dean shouts out mock-obscenities at the kid who egged his car, Sam mourns the loss of his angels. He’s been praying to them forever and ever, amen, but now they turn out to be a-holes on a mission. In other words, dicks. There’s good stuff here in this brightly lit car dither. Dean is back in swing, giving big brother advice on how to love baseball in spite of Babe Ruth, how to love God in spite of some bad apple angels. But it’s Sam’s face that kills me, with his hair falling forward a little; he looks sad but resigned, totally in little brother mode, letting big brother comfort him with sports analogies and obscene comments about Sam “fingering his bone.” Ah, brothers. (What’s also cool here is that Sam seems to be more upset by what the angels have planned than by how they treated him; such is his good heart.)

There’s a conversation between the angels in the park, where we are treated to the idea that angels don’t like humans very much, and who can blame them? Humans are first in God’s eyes AND they have free will, whereas angels have to follow orders, like, all the time. Show spent too much time on this scene, as I don’t really care what the angels think, luckily, we are swiftly returned to the brothers figuring out the gig and racing to the art teacher’s house to rescue the cheerleader.

Except the cheerleader is in on it, Sam and Dean kill the art teacher, then she raises Samhain. Then, of course, Samhain breaks the cheerleader’s neck. I saw that coming a mile off; whenever anyone on Show puts their hands like THAT around someone’s neck, there’s going to be breakage. And all the while the boys are writhing on the floor. (The double blind involving the cheerleader wasn’t necessary, I think, because it added complications that didn’t really forward the plot, and cost Show money. They could have saved the money they spent on the blond chick and used it to pay for more screen time for the boys. Tell me you agree with me here.)

Samhain is raised, a seal is broken. It gets cool when Sam decides to cover his and Dean’s faces with the art teacher’s blood, because not only do I really, really enjoy the image of Sam touching Dean’s face (and Padalecki has such nice, large hands), we get another Brotherly One-Two Punch. After Samhain marches past them, Dean asks, “What the hell was that for?” Sam says some stuff about Halloween lore and masks, and then says, “I gave it a shot.” Dean says, “You gave it a SHOT?” in that incredulous tone he’s used on Sam a hundred times and which is such a nice flashback to earlier seasons showing us how weirded out he is by Sam using ratiocination to figure it all out, that is, using intuition rather than logic to put the pieces together. Delicious brotherly glare ensues.

Dean and Sam then race to the cemetery, which is where they are sure Samhain will go. In the car they have another brotherly dither, this time about how they are going to bring down Samhain. Sam suggests that they might have to go above and beyond, while Dean insists that they use Ruby’s demon-killing knife. What I love here is the “don’t hate me because I’m powerful” expression on Sam’s face. He so wants Dean’s love and approval, and I love it when the two brothers are mired in disagreement because it brings out such lovely expressions for them both: hooded eyes, sidelong glances, twists of the mouth, and somber ticks of jaw muscles. I also liked the little cool “sheeek” sound the knife makes when Sam whips it out of Dean’s hands. (The nice lighting doesn’t hurt either, so thank you Lighting Guys!) But Samhain beats them to the cemetery and locks the kids in. Since the kids were all wearing costumes, I’m not really sure how the demon saw them. No matter. It’s a plot device that will soon separate the brothers, with Dean staying to rescue the stupid kids and Sam going off on his own to slay the demon.

When I saw the bodies crawling out of the crypt, I had a moment of happy for all the zombie lovers out there, not least of which is Dean himself. There wasn’t a whole lot of lurching or shambling, no body parts falling off, but Dean gets to fight zombies, and while he was obviously worried about Sam, he himself was having a perfectly good time. Dean likes to kill things, see, and if zombies are at the top of his list, zombie GHOSTS are like a little piece of heaven. I think it’s because the killing of these particular supernatural things is straightforward, and they simply have no idea how fast he can move, can make no retorts to his “Come and get it, stinky” comments. There’s been so little of this type of battle this season that I forgot how freaking HOT Dean is in the midst a fight, the supple ease of his muscles beneath his jacket, and that grimace of satisfaction as he offs each and every one of them.

When Dean is having fun taking out some zombie ghosts, Sam takes the demon-killing knife and goes off on his own to confront Samhain. Now, everybody knows that the first rule of being in a horror TV show is to never separate like that; it’s a rule that is frequently ignored, much to the dismay of the subsequent victims. I can’t imagine that both Dean and Sam, at the same time, didn’t realize that it might, in light of Sam’s troublesome habit of falling off the wagon, perhaps be better if Sam killed zombies and Dean dealt with the demon. And because I can’t imagine this, I put it off to the writers thinking this would be fun, somehow.

But apart from my inner critic launching itself at this one (and really, Dean wouldn’t have lasted two seconds with Samhain), I did enjoy Sam’s battle with the demon. It starts off brilliantly when the demon flashes the Hand of White Light at Sam, expecting that it’s going to fell our beautiful boy. As he’s doing this, I’m muttering aloud, “Oh, yeah, like THAT’s going to work!” and “Good luck with that,” and so on, because I knew, I just knew it wouldn’t. And I was very pleased with Sam’s response to him, sardonic and full of pride as he says, “Yeah, that demon ray gun doesn’t work with me.” This boy knows what he can do, what he’s capable of, and there just isn’t anything sexier than the look in the eyes of a self-assured man.

The fight that follows is full of whumpage and then limpage and I found myself a little distracted during the battle because, just as with Dean, it’s been some time since I’ve seen a really good, knockdown dragout fight with Sam in it. Like THIS. I think Show dragged the filming of this scene out on purpose, because there’s just way too many clips of Sam with his shoulders braced and his hair flying for my poor hormones to manage very well. (My enjoyment of watching men fighting is just not something I’m ready to admit, though I imagine it must be akin to men’s enjoyment of women mud wrestling and therefore already known to the public.)

Although the demon wasn’t very light on his feet, I was worried about Sam, especially when he lost hold of the demon-killing knife. Yeah. Trouble ensues, because the demon is fairly powerful and determined and after waiting 600 years (which is when he was last cast into hell), this is his night. The relevant conundrum that Sam is confronted with is whether or not he will use his forbidden powers and save himself from Samhain. As a fangirl, this is a question that does not need asking, since the answer is so obvious, even though I know that Sam would be in SO MUCH TROUBLE should he do what he’s done before and lied about again, and again, and again. And then one more time after that. And then I became distracted by the fact that the lighting was such (oh, those lighting boys, ever on the job!  Big smooches for ya!) that Sam’s eyes glimmered a rather strange color as he raises his hand to exorcise the demon. I couldn’t figure out whether it was yellow or white, but there was something there, something so very WRONG that my breath stuck in my throat and I though, “Oh, poor Sammy.”

I know he should and I wanted him to, and what makes this scene even better than the delicious anxiety of this dilemma is a number of things. First, we get some nice, good, old-fashioned Sammy, flashbacks to Season 1 in the best of all possible ways. As in, he’s grabbing his head in pain like he’s got the mother of all headaches, just like he used to. AND, second, just as I was saying to the TV (yes, I talk to my TV, don’t you?) “If he’s hurting that much I better be seeing a nosebleed pretty quick,” and LO, there it was, a nosebleed, probably because Samhain was a fairly powerful demon and thusly required more effort on Sam’s part. Perfect. And THEN, Dean has seen the whole thing and has the most remarkable expression combined of sorrow and resignation, as if he finally figures it out (or starts to) that Sam isn’t messing around with his powers for the fun of it, he’s doing it because he has to. Best of all, though? Is Sam’s face as he sees Dean there: his very precious “don’t hate me because I’m a freak” expression, he wants Dean to accept him and forgive him, because for all the brothers fussing and fighting, sometimes they let their guard down and this is one of those times, and Padalecki’s got this expression down pat. (Sam’s little chin wibble at the end of this scene just KILLED me.)

Then we go to Sam, angrily packing in the motel room. Uriel shows up to give Sam an angelic talking to, saying stuff like, “You were told not to,” and blah blah blah. I think in Sam’s mind he feels that he can control the situation, that he can keep abreast of the darkness. It gets better as Sam says to the angel, “My brother was right, you are dicks.” The coolness here is threefold, one that Sam says “my brother” which implies that no matter what, the two of them will always be a united front, and two, the glare in his eyes tells me (as it should tell the angel) that Sam does not take orders, not well, and not at all. Not even from Dean, who he has been disobeying for quite some time. Then, three, is the look on Sam’s face when the angel kind of whiffles forward on some nice, creepy and unseen angel wings, and Uriel threatens to turn Sam into dust if he continues to be less than useful.

The threat here is very intense and sexy, plus, Padalecki has Sam do that FACE again, the little-boy-lost expression that tells me with no uncertainty whatsoever that Sam was doing his BEST and if Hell is going to make him its child, then Lucifer and all his minions are going to have a battle on their hands because I do not think Sam is going to go gently into that not-so-good night. Yeah, Show might be setting itself up to have Dean and Sam battling each other, representing the opposing sides of Good and Evil, but the Sam they have created will not have his whole heart in it, and the battle will easily be won by his brother. (Not that anyone dies in said battle, right Show? Right? Uh…Show?) Uriel then tells Sam to ask his brother (that’s Dean) about his time in hell, because, apparently, Dean’s on his high horse about what happened down there. How that’s possible (do they even have high horses in hell?) I’ll never know, but it’s apparent that Show is laying down little breadcrumbs for fangirls like me to follow. I just hope they don’t get blown away by a demonic wind or corporate suits farting. (Which, sometimes, is tantamount to the same thing, wouldn’t you say?)

In the end, Dean and the soap angel are sitting in the park, looking at kids playing, at the trees, the sky, the dirt, all of which are evidence of God’s bounty. In addition to another “my brother ‘n me” unity statement from Dean, we get some reveal, when the soap angel says that what God told them (the angels) to do was to obey Dean’s orders to the letter because it was all just a test. Dean of course is mystified, but what I thought was interesting was what the soap angel admitted. The easy route for Show to have taken was to have the soap angel tell Dean that he passed the test. Instead Show has the angel admit that he doesn’t know whether or not Dean passed the test. While I enjoyed this nebulousness of the angel’s, at the same time I mourned the easy defanging of this ambiguous and potentially dangerous character. Partly because next to Uriel he now comes across like a kindergarten teacher, lacking some titillating frisson of danger, but mostly because he might soon become very, very dull. And they’ve spent far too much time and effort on this character for that.

This ep, overall, was a cerebral one for me because of the threads Show was laying down and the questions presented, for example, are all angels good, will there be a battle between the brothers, and, lastly and most importantly, how do these boys keep getting better looking every week? Plus, it seemed a Sam-ish episode to me, whereas previous episodes have had very little of Sam. (Not that there will ever be enough of EITHER brother!) Sam’s been detached and absent, and based on this episode, I’m still waiting for the fallout from Sam taking it and taking it and TAKING it about the whole demon blood thing, and never once lashing out. All he’s looking for is acceptance from his brother. Which, of course, he’s always had, but now that acceptance is stretching thin and what’s developing is a deep rift between the brothers over this. Fallout. I demand fallout! I want fighting and biting, nightmares and headaches. I want evidentiary evidence of PTSD for Dean and more nosebleeds for Sam, because the nosebleed we got this time around is pretty much one of the only markers that Show’s given us as to how freaking hard this has all been for Sam. I like to watch both boys suffer, and I’ll admit that here because it would be disingenuous not to, and I’m honest like that. (And no, I’m not getting help.)

Sylvia Bond is a ten-year technical writing veteran with too many degrees under her belt to count. She lives in Colorado, but does not ski, preferring instead to spend her money and time at the annual Great American Beer Festival, taking road trips across the United States, and reading historical fiction from the comfort of her fluffy green arm chair. She has been involved in fandom since 1993 and been writing fanfic since approximately 1993. What she finds most amazing about fandom (besides the open heartedness of fans and the sheer amount of creativity) is how visible fandom has become. “In my day,” she says, “we had to hide behind P.O. boxes to get fanfic. But nowadays, people wear t-shirts that shout their affiliation and share their shiny toys on the internet.” It’s a wonderful world.

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