Supernatural: Free to Be You and Me

Someone Else’s Boy

by Sylvia Bond

Supernatural Episode Review – Season 5, Episode 3

“Free to Be You and Me”

As you’ll recall, last we left off, Sam and Dean broke up. As in they’re not together any more. Show cleverly (and kindly) presents us with each boy on his own, in parallel worlds in a montage of scenes that give us details on how each boy spends his time. While Sam disguises himself as a normal guy and gets a job as a busboy, Dean disguises himself as an FBI agent. While Sam scrubs the counter, Dean scrubs the blood off the Impala. While Sam slices lemons, Dean slices vampires.

There were two things I thought were interesting here. First, that Dean, even on his own, goes on being Dean. Nothing changes for him. Even though, as he looks at the empty passenger seat and realizes that a large chunk of him is missing, he goes on as before. I’m not sure whether he’s unaffected by Sam’s absence (surely not!) or that he simply doesn’t know any other way to be. Dean doesn’t lack imagination, but I think he’s out of energy to even try something new, so whether it be via disguises or everyday habits, Dean is always Dean.

Second, that Sam looks really, REALLY good in a grey v-necked t-shirt. I mean, seriously. Did you SEE those forearms of his? He can bus my table any time! And also that Sam on his own becomes someone else. Or at least he tries. I think what he’s doing here is taking on the guise of what he thinks is normal, doing what normal people do, not realizing that with his build and his reluctance to share, he doesn’t really fit in at a place like Hoyt’s Bar, where the good old boys of Garber, OK, come to share and spit and relax.

Dean on his own spends a great deal of time with the Soap Angel. Both characters seem to be using the same growly, semi-angry voice, and whether the Soap Angel is starting to sound like the slightly older, whiskery, exhausted Dean that Dean’s become lately, or Dean’s taking on the monotone delivery of the Soap Angel, I’m not sure. But it did feel a little noticeable to me, and got a little grating. As did the number of closeups of the Soap Angel, at the expense of Dean, mind you. I’m a Samgirl, as you know, and I was still irritated every time the camera would zoom past Dean to focus on the Soap Angel. Is it the Soap Angel Show now? Hopefully it’s just an aberration.

The Soap Angel wants Dean to help him look for the Archangel Rafael. I adored Dean’s quip about the “teenage mutant ninja angel,” and was even more gratified by Dean’s demand to get his damn necklace back. Also noticeable was the Thelma and Louise joke that Dean threw out there that the Soap Angel didn’t get. I don’t need to tell anyone that SAM of course would have gotten the joke and either smirked or rolled his eyes, depending on Dean needed most at that moment.

Sam would have known the and responded to it in the way that only family members, especially siblings, can. You know those jokes, right? Those in-family references, where you really only have to tell the punch line to have everyone rolling on the floor? You simply can’t buy an audience like that, not for all the money in the world. That’s what Sam and Dean had, that connection. Only now they don’t, and no matter how hard the Soap Angel tries, he will never, never, ever get the joke. Enough of him already. (As for Dean, before he piled on the layering, he looked really, really good in a dark blue v-necked t-shirt, so extra points to Show for giving us Deanskin!!)

Dean and the Soap Angel mosey on over to Waterville, Maine. There they plan to interrogate a guy who laid eyes on the Archangel Rafael. The fake IDs for Eddie Moscone and Alonzo Mosley had me rolling because they come from one of my favorite movies of ALL time, Midnight Run. I’m talking top ten, here. Robert DiNero stars as the bounty hunter, Jack Walsh, who is up against his conniving bail bondsman, Eddie Moscone (played by Joe “Pants” Pantoliano), and the savvy, dry-humored Agent Alonzo Mosley (played by the scathingly brilliant Yaphet Kotto). I’m pretty sure you can rent it easily from Netflix and I’m confident that you would enjoy it immensely.

Anyway, there’s lots of cuteness here, of course, and comic timing as the Soap Angel attempts the uncomfortable decent into lying about his identity. He’ll never make it as an FBI agent, that’s for sure, and the stuttering and hesitation and Dean’s exasperation (for surely he’s remembering how much better SAM is at this sort of thing) soon got old.

Dean and the Soap Angel plan a ritual that will entice the Archangel Rafael to occupy the body of the guy so that they can make Rafael tell them where God is. There’s a lot of chatting and eventually Dean figures out that the Soap Angel is a virgin. Dean’s answer to that is to take the Soap Angel to a whore house. Even considering the fact that angels are asexual (Show seems to disregard this completely), off they go. Whore houses (or gentlemen’s clubs, as they are called in more polite company) are where Dean likes to go, you see, and the first thing he thinks of as entertainment for what might potentially be the Soap Angel’s last night on earth.

At the whore house, looking like a kid in a candy store, Dean entices the Soap Angel to relax and have fun because “iniquity is one of the perks” of rebelling against heaven.  Really, the whole Soap-Angel-as-an-Awkward-Teen got old five minutes after it started. It felt like Show was dropping these obvious anvils of “See? The Soap Angel is awkward and nervous! Doesn’t that make him cute?” Maybe for some, but I just got tired of it real fast.

That the Soap Angel started Preaching the Word the second he was alone in a room with a female companion was done for the cuteness factor alone, as I don’t believe for a minute that the Soap Angel (having been blown to bits at one point and lived to tell the tale) is that unsophisticated. But there was some pleasure to be found in the scene. Dean, for one, laughs at the Soap Angle’s fumblings and realizes how long it’s been since he’s laughed that hard, and I’d say he deserves it.

Back at the hospital, Dean and the Soap angel do the ceremony to bring Rafael back into the body of his previous meatsuit. I enjoyed the chiaroscuro lighting on Dean’s face, and his expressive doubts and sarcasm about the whole thing. Naturally, the ceremony doesn’t work, so off Dean and his new BFF drive back to the run-down squat where they are staying. Naturally, there appears before them the Archangel Rafael in a brilliant CGI show of wings of electric flame which were, to tell the truth, rather pretty.

However, the removal of the characters from the hospital to the squat represented dramatic interference. Show didn’t need to break up the scene and give it two locations for it to be effective. Just another delay, I expect, to give the Soap Angel more screen time than he could possibly deserve. We learn that God is dead, blah, blah, blah. Dean’s got a lot of great lines (and looks very good lit by lightning flashes), but cuteness factor aside, the scene is overly long and pales in dramatic comparison to any scene with Sam in it.

Although I really did like the driving in the rain scene with Dean behind the wheel, trying to convince himself that he doesn’t miss his Sam. Even though he says to the Soap Angel, ““I’ve had more fun with you in the last 24 hours than I’ve had with Sam in years. And you’re not that much fun,” and tries to convince himself that he’s happier not being chained to his family, I don’t think he’s convincing himself. Or me either, for that matter. There’s a difference between feeling chained and feeling connected, though it doesn’t seem as if Dean knows the difference.

But instead of me complaining about the Dean half of the ep, let’s talk about Sam because the Sam half of the ep is what this episode is all about. For starters, there’s Sam half naked lying in bed, draped only in bed linen. You could picture it in your mind’s eye if you wanted to, but you don’t have to. That’s how this ep starts off, with Sam’s naked chest and dusky skin accented by white sheets and a red counterpane. That is a feast for the eyes indeed, and an answer to my constant call for Equal Opportunity Nekked Nudity.

Whether Show is listening to me personally or responding to the demands of the scene makes no never mind to me. Sam is so gorgeously hot, it’s criminal. But who do we arrest? Padalecki’s parents and all his ancestors for bringing together such a lovely assemblage of genes and DNA? Or Padalecki himself for eating his veggies and working out consistently? Indeed, why arrest anyone at all, eh. With results such as we see here, all is forgiven.

Equally important is what’s going on in the scene. If you can take your eyes off the powerful line of Sam’s clavicle, you’ll notice that he’s in bed with Jessica, his dead girlfriend. Or rather he’s in bed with the idea of Jessica, on Show, one can never be sure. Sam seems to understand that she’s not real, but he talks to her just the same. And, while they linger over sweet touches and longing looks, she talks back. She has a lot of the same things to say that The Mom had to say during Sam’s stint in the panic room. About the mistakes he’s made, and how he needs to stop running from his life, that the darkness within has always been there and will continue to follow him everywhere, that there is no hope, no escape.

These are dark messages coming from what is, ostensibly, Sam’s own head. But they are why the poor boy has been beating himself up for ages, you see. In wanting normal, in wanting good, he’s picked the very road that destiny and fate laid out for him so long ago. The very same fate that The Dad knew was there, and even if John couldn’t see the end from the beginning, he knew enough to task his eldest son with looking out for Sammy. And if Dean couldn’t save Sam, he was to kill him. And though no one blames Dean for failing in THAT particular task, there’s plenty of blame to go around, for both brothers.

This scene is especially nice in that we get a glimpse of the Sam that Was. The Sam from long ago, who still believed and wanted and hoped. The one who loved Jessica and still had the light of innocence in his eyes. Even better, there is a flicker of tears in Sam’s eyes, and when’s the last time we saw that? Looking back, I don’t believe Sam has cried since before Cold Oak. Oh, sure, there have been sparks of rage that looked like tears, but it wasn’t real crying. Not the really messy, snotty nosed crying that was so typically Sam’s signature. No, not for ages. Here, it’s a new type of tear, a small fleck, a glint, and barely that, looking like a stray diamond. Right there. If you blink you’ll miss it, but what a treat, what a sight! It’s standing in, you see, for the humanity that’s coming back to Sam. Off the blood, off the trail of finding Lilith, Sam can now direct his energies into finding himself. Or at least one hopes. Poor Sam. His burdens seem insurmountable at this point, don’t they. (But deliciously insurmountable, if you know what I mean.)

To his fellow workers at Hoyt’s Bar, Sam, is busy being a riddle wrapped inside an enigma wrapped inside a taco and answering to the name of Keith. (Where does one order such a taco anyway?) The bar wench, Lindsey, since she has extremely good taste, is naturally drawn to Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsomely Troubled. She teases Sam/Keith about his ability to do the New York Time’s Saturday crossword puzzle (presumably in ink, though she doesn’t say), thus proving again that no matter how much Sam/Keith wants to blend in, he will always stand out, for he is, as he always has been, a remarkable boy. She challenges him to a game of darts, and when she wins, he gets to tell her his story. In a really cool bit, Sam/Keith throws three darts in Zen-style quick succession (barely looking at the dart board, if at all), hitting the bull’s eye all three times. Go Sam!

It’s nice to see Sam like this because there’s lots and lots of Sam to see, thanks to the camera guy and the lighting guy working in tandem. Sam must have the largest seeing eyes in all the wide, wide world. And he’s luminous, glowing from within, his Samhair trailing his temples even as he’s troubled and struck by massive guilt with the weather reports about hail and fire. Here he is being smacked over the head yet again about how he was the one to start the apocalypse. Much fannish discussion is still ranging as to which brother is more to blame. I don’t think either one of them is to blame for the apocalypse in particular, since both of them were set up from the beginning and fated to play their roles like pawns in a supernatural game of chess.

Another interesting thing about the bar is the chick, Lindsey. Not that you can blame her, but she seemed to take an unwarranted interest in Sam. When she first challenges him to a dart game, Sam wants to know what they’re playing for. Pertly out of her mouth comes the answer, “World peace.” This is followed by a little smirk when Sam asks, “Oh, is that all?” With Show’s propensity to have people seem to be one thing but then turn out to be another, I was immediately suspicious of Lindsey.

Here’s the limb; I’ll crawl out on it, shall I? The main push to the past few eps has been the search for God, since He is the only one who can beat Lucifer at his own game. What if God is right under the character’s noses, just like on Joan of Arcadia? What if God is using Lindsey as His Vessel? What if He is looking after Sam, right there and In Person? I mean, stranger things have happened, and if Lucifer can come up from hell and have a human meatsuit, and if Lilith can occupy the body of a sweet, innocent little girl, then who says the Lord of Host and King of Kings can’t occupy the body of a fully grown woman? She’s exactly the type of person Sam would not feel threatened by, and through whom he might learn to trust again. And she’s the last person you’d suspect to being El Shaddai. So I think She is He.

There’s a poignant scene where Sam calls Bobby to alert him to the fact that there are demons on the move in his local area. Bobby is less than welcoming because he feels that Sam, who is the best man in the area, should be the one to take up the task of dealing with it. Sam, it seems, however, has taken a leave of absence and will not go hunting, no, not at all. It’s interesting that Bobby is not supportive of Sam’s choice, and I had to ask myself why. Why is Bobby insisting on the school of “never give up, never surrender?” Surely he can understand that Sam’s self-confidence in his ability to make the right decision is shot to hell, as it were. Well I do. I think Sam needs a lot more than just going back to work can give him.

Soon, there’s more trouble for Sam, as three hunters walk in, looking for Sam the hunter, not Sam the retired guy. Who pointed them in Sam’s direction, you ask? Why, Bobby did. All innocence and not knowing Sam was incognito, or a purposeful rousting of the boy out of his stupor, only time will tell.  The three hunters “out” Sam, reveal him to be a hunter, and it was quite delicious to watch Sam’s discomfiture as tension and doubt and all that good, angsty stuff race across his noble brow. Lindsey seems more concerned for Sam than circumstances warrant, and her narrowed glances at the three hunters in Sam’s defense is really my only evidence here that she might be something more than she appears.

But he’s off limits, and won’t go hunting with them. He’s insistent. One of the hunters asks, “What baggage is so heavy it can’t be stowed away from the freaking apocalypse?” Once again, Sam is confronted with the idea that HE was the one who started the apocalypse. And you know Sam, he wears guilt like a cloak and carries it around with him till it’s in tatters, so he’s beautiful here, and troubled, and really, really messed up. (Seriously, if I had a dime for every time I wondered why I felt a pull towards that sort of character, I’d be buried in dimes.)

Lindsey wants to take him to dinner. Sam fidgets adorably and says that he can’t, and Lindsey strangely says, “The only way to avoid bloodshed is to say yes.” Who invites people like that, I ask you! So either she’s God, or she’s Lucifer! Right? (Or maybe the Archangel Michael!) Are you with me on this one? Better theories abound, perhaps, but that’s mine.

Anyway, they go out to dinner at a place that must surely be one of those local cheap steak and all-you-can eat salad bars, where the food is lovingly prepared by one of those college drop-outs who might or might not have washed his hands. She manages to get him to admit that he used to be in business with his brother, that he’s not mafia, and he’s wounded and sad-eyed and utterly irresistible. As for Lindsey, she’s asking her questions like she already knows the answers to them. I continue to suspect her. One of her key statements to Sam (after he continues to evade her questions) is that “No one has ever done anything so bad that they can’t be forgiven.” Doesn’t that have a biblical, Heavenly Father ring to it? At any rate, it is the only instance of a clear message of hope that Sam’s gotten in a long time.

Later, back at the bar, Sam is busy cleaning up. In walks two of the hunters with blood on their coats and anger in their eyes. Turns out the demons were too much for them and their pal Steve bought it. Worse, the demons told the hunters Sam’s secret, and they use Lindsey as bait to get the truth out of him. Sam asks them, “You going to hate me any less? Am I going to hate myself any less?” Which kind of tells you, as if you didn’t already know, that there’s an awful lot of self hate going on in Sam’s sassy head.

I got the feeling that the hunters weren’t total bad guys and didn’t really want to hurt Lindsey, but in their desperation used the only leverage they had. Sam reveals that yes, he started the apocalypse, at which point the hunters handcuff Lindsey to the bar, jump Sam, and wrestle him to the floor. (I’m fully convinced that Sam was only bested because they were hunters, because surely two regular guys would have been no match for our boy.)

Harder to watch is when the hunters make Sam drink the demon’s blood they brought along. Sam is already struggling with enough at this point in time, add the lure of demons’ blood to the mix and it’s practically a cocktail for disaster. Sure enough, Sam jumps to his feet and, without wiping the blood from his face, uses the hunters’ bodies to smash the place up. (Watching Sam in motion like this is like watching a whirlwind of power – all legs, and arms, and yes, Samhair!)

But did the demon blood actually make Sam hulk out? Or had he just had enough and decided to break out a can of whoop ass? Either way, he’s a fearsome sight. He’s about to slice through one of the hunters with a large bowie knife when he espies Lindsey looking at him, watching him. The whole time, Sam’s had Lindsey as his watcher, his witness. Not wanting to come across as the cold-blooded killer he thinks he is, he lets the hunter up and intones both hunters to GO. “Don’t think we won’t be back,” snorts the hunter. I love Sam’s rejoinder, showing me and the world that he’s not afraid of anything: “Don’t think I won’t be here.”

Soon, the ultimate scene of the ep comes, with Jessica in Sam’s bed again, telling him dark things, and where her hand, in the midst of a loving gesture, pulls away. Sam sits up, and turns away from her, away from Jessica whom he loved, and tells her, unequivocally that she’s wrong because, as he says, ““People can change; there is reason for hope.” To me this evokes the comment that Lindsey made, and the seed that she (God?) planted, because Sam was all out of hope and needed it. You’d think, just then, that Sam was on his way to getting out of the pit of despair, but guess what? Jessica turns into, ta-da, Lucifer, and I for one, NEVER saw that coming!

It’s a really good scene, the best one in the ep, and frankly had me creeped out like I’ve not been in a long time.  Lucifer is in the room, but he’s not really there. The sigil that the Soap Angel marked on Sam’s ribs keeps Lucifer from knowing exactly where Sam is, but it doesn’t keep him from spreading his filthy powers around. Or from Sam being tormented Yet Again by the fact that he willingly and of his own (mostly) free will took part in freeing Lucifer from hell.

In the midst of Sam angsting over that little factoid, Lucifer announces to Sam that he’s always been the choice for the Prince of Darkness’ meatsuit. Even if Sam kills himself as he threatens to do, Lucifer can always bring him back, potentially as often as he needs to. For Sam, there is no escaping this fate. For me, there is a tiny, glittery tear that falls from Sam’s eye, unnoticed by him, but signifying his utter despair. (Does Show plan these tears, are they actually IN the script? Or are they serendipity? Maybe the world was never meant to know.)

Lucifer tells Sam, “I will never lie to you (yeah, right!), I will never trick you (sure, uh-huh), but you will say yes to me.” Padalecki plays it just right, just on the verge of shaking into tatters but having Sam hold on as tight as he can. And I for one, love the fact that he’s in that grey, v-necked skin-skimming t-shirt again, and realize, on the heels of how shallow it is of me to be gawping at his neck and shoulders while at the same time, Sam’s being pushed into a corner. But when the guy looks as good as he does here, what’s a fangirl to do? And thus the ep ends, with Sam in a no-win scenario, and his brother off gallivanting with his new BFF, who is, notably, NOT Sam. Will the brothers ever get back together? Of COURSE they will! The question is: how?

Back to the argument of which brother is more to blame. So you think about it. Both brothers had a hand in starting the apocalypse. For his part, Dean suffered through 40 years in hell, 30 of them on the rack, 10 of them torturing souls. He stepped into his role of being the righteous man who sheds blood in hell, and came back to a tattered world, complete with a Sam so messed up and off the side of might and right, there was no repairing it.

Dean can be excused because he had no idea that what he was doing would take him (and the world) where it did. Sam on the other hand, made conscious decisions all the way along, messing with dark forces that he’d been told time and time again were dangerous. He’d also been told early on that his fate was so dark and dire that his own father put in place a plan to kill him if he ever did go off the rails. So it’s not like Sam didn’t know his decisions were potentially dangerous.

So I feel more for Sam’s position than I do for Dean. Because ultimately, I think what makes Sam’s burden harder to bear is the fact that his destiny is to die on the side of eveil and darkness. Even if Dean screwed up big time selling his soul for his brother and being in hell so he could be the righteous man, he can sleep the sleep of the just and the good because he’s, ostensibly, in the side of might and right. Whereas al of Sam’s actions have brought him to sit on the right hand of Lucifer the Prince of Darkness and you have to pity the poor boy because nobody wants to die to support evil. I mean, do they?

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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