Supernatural: The Song Remains The Same

Team Free Will for the Win!
by Sylvia Bond
Supernatural Episode Review – Season 5, Episode 13
“The Song Remains the Same”

This episode is a wonderful reprise of the Back to the Future theme for Show, except that it starts out with a long, boring conversation between Anna Banana and the Soap Angel. Anna Banana says, “Yap, yap, yap!” and the Soap Angel goes, “Blah, blah, blah.” That repeats a few times and then Anna Banana disappears, and good riddance to her. (There was a dream sequence for Dean as well, but all it was was an opportunity to have two nearly nekked nubile young female things on the screen, but who cares about that? Get me some nekked nubile young MALE things on the screen and then I’ll be interested.)

I cannot figure out for the life of me why Anna Banana’s even still around, because didn’t she implode at one point? Angels aren’t indestructible, as we’ve seen, so once you implode, that should be the end of you. The only thing I can figure is that the actress who plays Anna Banana had a contractual obligation to do X number of episodes, and so we got stuck with her, which is why the character makes no sense to me. Never did, never will. Not to mention the fact that her sex scene with Deanarino in the back of the Impala (was it last season?) was about as interesting as day old bread. Ackles is so hot he could ignite a paper bag with his eyes, so I pretty much place the blame on her for that one.

The Soap Angel shows up in Sam and Dean’s motel room, and tells them the Amazingly Horrible News that Anna Banana is going back to the past to stop the Apocalypse by killing Mary and John Winchester. There’s some dramatic conversation about the boys saving their mom and dad, and then they twist the Soap Angel’s arm to take them where they can do some good. And thusly, at a full nine minutes and twenty-one seconds into the ep, Sam and Dean and the Soap Angel all end up in 1978 together and it finally starts to get interesting.

Luckily, the Soap Angel is cleverly written out of the episode so he can’t a) take up story time, or b) invariably save the day at the last minute and make the boys look like they couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag. (A different one than the one mentioned before, because that one’s on fire.)

We are treated to a slew of old cars, and I would have enjoyed some more old-fashioned goodness from the 70’s, like more about the pay phones, going to the library to do research, actually writing letters (yes, we still did that then), gas prices, not to mention the music, and best of all, McDonalds was still frying their French fries in beef tallow. Stuff about the past is de rigueur and part of the fun for an ep like this, but alas, I am denied. At any rate, the first thing Sam and Dean do, obviously, is hotwire a car and head to the house of The Mom and The Dad. Except that The Mom and The Dad are young Mary and John Winchester, very sparkly and oh, so cute, living in that huge house, paying enormous bills for heating and lighting, and obviously madly, truly, deeply in love.

The image of them as a young married couple is vivid and perfect. Mary, as you will recall, is a hunter who made a deal, and is trying to forget that she did and lead a normal life. At the same time, she’s trying to pretend she doesn’t have a hunter’s background. Plus, I don’t know about her cooking skills because she’s already got the biscuits on the table, yet later says that it’s seven o’clock and she really needs to get dinner started. (The biscuits should be wrapped in a towel at least!)

John, on the other hand, is a working class Joe, with his good-boy haircut, and a welcome handshake for the strangers at his door who say they are cousins of Mary’s. Thus Sam and Dean are allowed across the threshold, and welcomed into the bosom of the family and the house full of yellow appliances, just like the kind we used to have when I was a girl. And then the fun truly begins.

Dean’s experienced this before, so he’s all calm and stuff saying hi to The Mom and The Dad, shaking their hands like they’re truly Cousin Mary and her husband John. But Sam, oh, Sam, his reaction is a treasure and right on the money. Besides his hair being perfect (there’s this tendency for dampness to bring out the wave in it) and his skin so perfectly fawn against the thin green corduroy of his shirt, he gets all dewy eyed (maybe even weepy) over the vision of The Mom and The Dad standing in the doorway of their perfect little happy home in all their innocent glory. And then he can’t let go of John’s hand as he shakes it.

And I started to think, what a gift this would be for Sam, this, and at the same time, what a very painful reminder of what he’s given up, what he’s never had, actually: a normal family with a mom and a dad and a home like that. And especially startling for Sam (though perhaps a welcome change) would be this John, a John who would say hello, and smile, and offer beers, all so casual and relaxed and just easy to be with. Especially a John who would ask Sam if he was okay, something that John as The Dad never would have done. No, instead he would have told Sam to buck up and run another mile. In the rain.

And then Sam stares at Mary, and I mean STARES. Dean covers up Sam’s just-about-creepy staring by saying she’s the spitting image of “our mom,” and I can see how this will work out, because anything Sam and Dean can mess up can be explained by family connections (that no one typically wants to hear about), and so they prove their right to be there. John never even suspects a thing, being the trusting, sweet mechanic that he is. (Is anyone else a little weirded out by John being so nice and trusting? Not in a bad way, not that they did it wrong, but in that it’s such a contrast, a change from The Dad that we are used to.)

Sam’s visible, teary-eyed grief over yearning for what he never had is painful (and glorious) to watch. As is the watching John talk over the phone to his boss at the garage, begging to keep his job. Since when did John ever beg for anything? For that matter, since when did John remark that he likes being bossed around by his wife? Oh, yes, since before John became The Dad and was sweet and gentle and thoughtful and kind. And a hard worker, which, actually hasn’t changed. Except the voice at the other end of the line isn’t his boss, it’s Anna Banana, who’s unfortunately back in the ep again. In the words memorable words of Admiral Ackbar, “It’s a trap!” (Although I can never imitate him as well as Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory does.)

Dean’s warnings about angels to Mary are hard to take, and Sam continues to stare with his mouth open a little like he wants to find something to say that will express what he feels. But since what Sam’s feels is about as big as a mountain (a range of mountains, actually), even the twenty or so volumes of the Oxford English dictionary won’t be enough. (Padalecki has had very little lines of dialog up to this point, but he carries it well on his manly shoulders.)

John ends up at the dark and deserted garage (“It’s a trap!”) with a bevy of Mustangs and Chevy Chevelles, dying to talk to his boss about keeping his job. But his boss is dead and thus Anna Banana attacks him. John Whumpage is not something you see very often, so that was fun, though I did wonder why Anna Banana was moving about as slow as a zombie, but this was quickly explained that she’s still a tad dizzy. (I like it when Show makes things logical like that.)

Then Dean shows up, and there’s more whumpage and some very nice Dean tummy-cam there. And as well, John gets to see his beloved Mary fighting an angel like the true pro that she is. And you know, fight scenes are all very well and good, but I’m just not that in to them, especially when they don’t involve either Sam OR Dean.

Luckily Sam knows how to draw a sigil on the wall to send Anna Banana packing. Except this means that everyone, including John, sees what he does which makes the ride home in the Impala (in the rain) verrry interesting. What would Sam have paid to be part of a family of four in the beforetime, riding in the back seat with his brother and both parents in the front seat? Well, this is his lucky day. Except it turns out to be not that fun.

John of course doesn’t believe it, or doesn’t want to believe it, but there’s nothing else for it, what with the evidence he’s seen. I love scenes like this one, the back-to-the-future reveal, where finally (finally!) the truth comes out. Otherwise it’s just like a spooky soap opera where people go ‘round and ‘round the truth till you just want to scream, and if I wanted that, I can pull out my old tapes of Dark Shadows and the Collins family dance around the bushes never saying what they mean or meaning what they say.

The especially magic moment comes when everyone’s starts talking at once trying to explain, and then John says, “Shut up, all of you. Not another word or so help me I will turn this car around.” Oh, Show, thy name is love, because here, in the midst of disaster is a Winchester family moment, a might-have-been flicker of a normal mom trying to talk, and the two sons trying to talk from the bowels of the back seat, and a dad who wants it quiet and barks and threatens to turn the car around.

Matt Cohen was an excellent choice to begin with, and now, even more settled into the role, takes just the right tone with this, as a husband and a father, feeling he knows what’s best, and taking charge as he sees fit, the way he knows a man with a family should be. And I dearly adore Dean’s reaction in the back seat, and his comment to Sam, because surely it has not escaped them how almost normal the moment is, and the gift of being able to see the John that once was. That within the hunter that was The Dad there lived a regular kind of dad, too.

So they drive out to the old family estate, which is stocked up like a fortress against evil. Sam and Dean have also brought all their goodies, more sigils and holy oil and stuff. I am happy because it’s just the four of them now, and that means more family time, and less time for anything else. I’m so tired of angels and demons, I just can’t tell you.

Sam takes Mary off into another room so Dean and John can have some quality father and son time, even if John doesn’t know about the father and son part. When Dean shows him the sigil, John offers to draw it. He doesn’t care what it means, just how big it should be, and all practical, like a man on a battlefield, doing what needs to be done, which seemed to be right on the money for John’s character.

When Dean says it needs to be drawn in blood, John slices open his palm without a second thought. What I liked here was watching John’s backbone grow. Or rather I admired seeing it rather than liked seeing it, since, sadly when his backbone grows, he becomes hard and flinty and not very fun to be around. Plus Cohen handles the transition here very smoothly, the change in John from regular guy to almost-hunting guy aptly reflecting on John’s Marine training and experience in battle. Even Dean notices as he remarks that John now reminds him of his dad.

But then comes more. A whole lot more and perhaps the scene I’ve been waiting for since Show began, though I didn’t even realize I wanted it. And perhaps that’s because a) I didn’t know I wanted it, and b) if I had been given it in the usual way (under normal circumstances while The Dad was still alive), I wouldn’t have appreciated it. And that is a personal heart-to-heart between John and Sam. Naturally, again, John doesn’t realize that the heart to heart is about him, at any rate, but it’s still there.

The conversation is magical. John asks Sam how long he’s known about “this hunting stuff.” And Sam says, “Pretty much forever; my dad raised me in it.” And John’s reaction to Sam was so perfect, it must have been what Sam wanted to hear all these years and never did: “You serious? Who the hell does that to a kid?” More achy goodness follows when Sam tries to explain, because John snaps, “I don’t care. What kind of irresponsible bastard lets a child anywhere near….you know, you could have been killed! The number it must have done on your head. Your father was supposed to protect you.”

You know, fans have been saying this for years, about a father’s responsibility to his kids and whether or not John was a Good Dad or a Bad Dad. I always figured that John did the best he could with what he had, and even if he did a lot of things wrong, he did so very many things right. Don’t believe me? The proof is in the pudding, that is, the proof is in the men his sons became. But at the same time, for Sam to hear it at this point must hurt very badly, on account of the contrast of what could have been (this kind of dad) and what Sam actually got, which was The Dad.

Still, it must have been so very gratifying to hear John’s reaction, which Sam might have also not realized he wanted, and that is John’s extreme indignation at the way Sam was raised, because what father would do that? Which tells Sam what he (and we) already knew, that if John could have found another way, he would have. And, since Sam often asks for forgiveness and second chances, he himself tends to be a very forgiving kind of guy. Plus he heard what he so desperately needed to hear, a kind of time-warped, “I’m sorry,” from The Dad.

So then Sam gets to say what’s in his heart and in his soul about how much he loves John, even in spite of him being a not so very good dad sometimes. I love Sam’s speech about John to John to pieces and then some, so I’m including it here in its entirety: “He was trying. He died trying. I used to be mad at him, I used to hate the guy. But now I get it, he was just doing the best he could. See, my mom she was amazing…she was the love of his life. When she got killed, and I think he would have gone crazy if he didn’t do something. Truth is my dad died before I got to tell him that I understand why he did what he did and I forgive him for what it did to us, I do. I just…I love him.”

The beauty of this scene is RUINED by Anna Banana showing up outside the house. She’s nothing but a pain in my ass at this point, but considering her ashy end, I’ll allow her another few minutes to spoil the scenery. There’s a scene with her and Uriel, where Anna Banana goes, “Yap, yap, yap,” and Uriel goes, “Mumble, mumble, mumble.”

Meanwhile, Dean gets his own delicious scene with Mary, who wants to know why an angel wants her dead. She doesn’t accept Dean’s, “Because they’re dicks,” explanation, so Dean starts talking. Which means his mouth starts moving, and isn’t that a lovely sight? And finally, finally, he tells her that he’s her son, and what year they’re from, and what’s actually going on.

Dean can prove it because he’s got the intel on her private thoughts and worries and what soup Dean got when he was sick, and the name of the lullaby he got. The saddest part is that she has to learn that John was the one who raised his kids as hunters, because she, Mary, is all too soon dead.

What makes the scene even more amazing is that Sam suggests that Mary leave John so that he, Sam, breaker of the last seal, will never be born to kick off the apocalypse. Dean is eager to agree, and while it’s interesting that he and Sam would fight Anna Banana on killing their parents, they kind of see the logic in her argument and would be willing to snap themselves out of existence to save the millionty billionty souls on earth. And that’s true heroism, because real heroes are willing to do this, to do the deed, and not talk about it, and disappear into history.

Of course, love can be selfish as well as generous, and so Mary says no. I don’t blame her for that, and I can’t, because John seems like one in a million. And then there’s the real reason she can’t leave, and that because is that she’s already pregnant with Dean, who was born on January 24, 1979, and will be a sweet and protective older brother all the days of his life.

But the beauty of this family moment is disrupted by John’s announcement that the sigil is gone, and then Uriel and Anna Banana break in. They disrupt everything with another fight scene, which luckily involves Sam and Dean, my own true loves. John does his best, but gets slammed through a window, and then Anna Banana kills Sam. And I mean kills him. He’s all dead and stuff (he dies so well, doesn’t he?) with an iron bar right through his gut. And unlike Magical Bobby, he dies right away.

But lo, John appears as the meatsuit for the Archangel Mike, who quickly turns Anna Banana into a cinder! Oh, man! It was a beautiful thing! Her contractual obligation should be up now, don’t you think? Then he sent Uriel into nothingness, one hopes. At any rate, you could have heard my shouts for joy all the way to Baltimore.

Additionally, John as the Archangel Mike was the epitome of sexiness, all slow and confident, with that smoky voice, and just every confidence that being the archangel brings. Better yet, he has a discussion with Dean over the issue of whether or not Dean will wear Mike’s meatsuit. “First we talk,” says Mike, then I’ll fix your darling little Sammy.” (Need this be said? Darling, yes, but little? No. Plus, Cohen sold it to me, this yet another incarnation of John, and I bought it, hook, line, and sinker.)

It’s at this point hear we learn about the blood line stretching beyond Dean, and John, back to Cain and Abel, which comes as no surprise since many a fan besides me has been conjecturing the similarities since Season 1: two brothers battling it out. Except that in the Bible and the Koran and the Torah, Cain kills Abel and is cast out to wander the earth forever, and while Dean does wander, he has not yet killed Sam. Nor will he, I expect. But you get the idea.

Mike tries to talk Dean into it, explaining the facts about love and betrayal. “Free will is an illusion, Dean,” says Mike. “That’s why you’re going to say yes.” Then he talks about duty and destiny and chance and the lack of randomness in Dean’s very existence, until I, even, thought that Dean might ought to want to consider signing up for meatsuit duty.

But to his credit, Mike does not use Sam as coercion material, instead he fixes Sam and sends him back to his own time. Dean looks like he’s panting a bit at this point, and whether it’s in pain, or because he came that close to saying yes, I don’t know. But he’s got to be feeling the pressure by now, don’t you think?

Back in the past, back in their bedroom, Sam and Dean tend to the woozy Soap Angel, yadda, yadda, yadda. I love Sam and Dean drinking together at any time, but especially now. First, because Dean in a previous episode made a remark that indicated that he didn’t feel he and Sam drank together much anymore. (And drinking, as you know, is a certainly kind of quality Winchester time.) And here we have them drinking and talking, practically dithering! What could be better? And second, because Dean says, “This is it.” And when Sam asks, “This is what?” Dean says, “Team Free Will” and I don’t think I’ve ever loved him more. I think I want to make a t-shirt out of that expression, you know?

What Dean probably knows, no doubt, is that one of God’s gifts to man was free will, something that the angels never had and never did. It’s arguable of course that since some angels went with Lucifer when he was cast out that they had some form of independent thought, but certainly nothing like man’s. Thus, though I did feel for a second that Dean should say yes to Mike, I had to applaud him standing for what he believed and felt, that saying yes would be wrong, even if it brought about the end of the world. Are we talking the needs of the many and the one here? Because sometimes, as you know, the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.

In spite of his doubts, I think Dean knows he’s right and the angels are not, but Sam has doubts, on account of the fact that he knows he’s a tad weak in the spine department (metaphorically of course, not physically, not with that buff body!). And all I could think of was, “God they look good against that orange paint.” And then, along more serious lines, that free will and destiny are somewhat interdependent. In that you might have a destiny, but with your free will you can change the shape that that destiny takes.

Back in the past we see a very pregnant Mary. Since she’s showing so much, and it must be either November or December, so I’m not sure what’s with the birds tweeting outside the window, or the green leaves on the trees either because the timing is off. But I sure did like John loving the angel statue that Mary bought. And the fact that finally, finally, we get the explanation to the “angels are watching over you,” statement that Dean’s been carrying around emblazoned on his heart for like forever, even if the time paradox would indicate that it’s Dean who introduced to the angel concept to her in the first place. Then you also have to ignore the fact that the Archangel Mike scrubbed her brain so she would forget. But the way I figure it, something that pure and full of love (good angles, that is, not the ones who are dicks) would have leaked through, easy. I mean if you look at it, the Archangel Mike himself is looking after the Winchesters, all. And nobody deserves that kind of protection more than they do.

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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