Supernatural: The Man Who Knew Too Much

My Sock Drawer Is Really, Really Tidy Now
by Sylvia Bond
Supernatural Episode Review – Season 6, Episode 22
“The Man Who Knew Too Much”

The first part of this episode begins where the last one leaves off. Sam gets whapped by some type of memory spell (thanks to the SA), and spends a lot of time trying to figure out where he is, who he is, and what he’s supposed to be doing. He also bumps into other versions of himself and absorbs them along the way.

Sam Winchester

The First Sam we see is the one who has his soul but doesn’t remember his time in hell. He hooks up with Bar Chick and spends time tromping around, looking and wondering, but not get very far, answer wise. We learn that the creepy, eerie feeling Sam (and the viewer) has is because this is all a dream state; Sam’s real body has been picked up and hauled back to The Panic Room in Bobby’s basement. There, Bobby and Dean drink away their sorrows because they don’t know how to wake Sam up from his less-than-restful coma.

Hiding

Sam has a few funny quips, most notably when he tells his female companion that “he’s stubborn.” I’m glad that he can remember that much about himself, although it’s a pity as well, because we already know that. It’s not new nor insightful, and, what’s more, that’s about all the insight we get into Sam’s character.

While Sam is in the dream state, there is one TERRIFIC scene where Sam runs full out through the forest, and my goodness, how that boy can move. With those long legs of his, it’s a wonder he doesn’t just up and break through gravity’s power. Oh, my, what a nice bit that was.

The joy in the running

However, like the insight into Sam’s character (the one we already knew, that he’s stubborn), that one running scene is the only one we get of Sam’s beauty. There are hardly any closeups of Sam in the dream state part of the ep, even though all of this is ostensibly about him. The camera often cuts away from Sam mid-scene, so except for a few cameos by the Samhair, and in spite of the fact that this part seems to be about Sam, we really get very little of him.

In fact, we spend an inordinate amount of time, instead of watching Sam, watching Bar Chick march around. She throws up her hands a lot and professes statements that indicate she’s “full up with crazy” and has reached the edge of her patience with weird things. Sam reflects on the world through her, so she’s a useful character to help us see what is happening to Sam, but far too much time is spent on her.

Then First Sam meets up with Soulless Sam. At least I think that it’s Soulless Sam, and that’s because we get only one Soulless Sam-style smirk. Although, truth be told, there will never be anything as hot as Soulless Sam. During First Sam’s encounter with Soulless Sam, we get a single flashback where we see that Soulless Sam actually shot Bar Chick during the year he hunted with Grandpaw. Turns out Soulless Sam shot Bar Chick to get the drop on a demon who was using Bar Chick as a shield. In short, she represents what must surely be a whole cornucopia of people that Soulless Sam shot or treated badly in one way or another and now feels guilty about.

Bar Chick dies and goes away and we never see nor hear from her again. At one point I began to think that Bar Chick represented some portion of Sam’s psyche, like his inner girl or something, but alas, Show is not that sophisticated. Except, based on the amount of time that Show spends on her and then just gets rid of her, this indicates that not only is Show not very sophisticated, it also doesn’t understand the guideline about the Economy of Characters; why spend so much time on a character you’re going to kill off anyway? Because you need a chick with boobs and a vagina to draw in the viewers? Hey, whatever gets you through the night, Show.

Plus, I suspect that the scene with Bar Chick getting shot wasn’t shot on purpose for this particular ep. I suspect very strongly that Show had a leftover clip from earlier in the season, from a day of shooting where they got some clips showing Soulless Sam being soulless, and this was one of them. Not, as you see, shot for this ep, because god forbid Show should spend some actual time and money on Sam Winchester.

This type of treatment is completely different than what we got when Dean encountered himself in a dream state.  There’s a scene in that ep where the two Deans circle round and round each other, making snotty comments at each other and in doing so reveal a great deal about Dean’s character, such as he really, really resents The Dad for doing what he did, raising them the way that he did. At that point in the storyline, this information was important because while we may have suspected that Dean resented The Dad, we didn’t really know, and at that point, we did. This is called giving insight into a character.

Sam in the dark

In comparison, in the little (and I mean little) scene where First Sam meets Soulless Sam, we get nothing that’s on par with what we got on Dean. The pair of Sams circle around each other alright, but the camera shoots them from a distance, a little ways down a hill, with three-quarter shots starting at mid calf and ending somewhere a little ways above Sam’s head. There are almost no closeups and certainly no dramatic view points or reveals that would indicate in any way whatsoever that this character is important. The camera, in fact, tells us most certainly that he is not.

First Sam confronts Soulless Sam

The information the two Sams exchange is banal and superficial; we get nothing new about either Sam and suddenly, whamo, First Sam kills Soulless Sam. And in a scene worthy of the final episode of The Highlander, First Sam absorbs Soulless Sam’s energy. But instead of demonstrating how the joining of these two parts of Sam might change him, the story then hops to the other plot, which I’ll get to in a moment.

The whole Soulless Sam storyline seemed to demonstrate that the killing side, the soulless side, carried with it the strength and the ruthlessness that First Sam sometimes seemed to be missing. (I once referred to First Sam as a fat bellied kitten, on account of he was so shocked to encounter violence from the local sheriff.) However, in spite of this rather clever and intriguing setup, Show did nothing with the joining of the two parts of Sam. Or at least nothing worth writing home about.

Cocking the sawedoff

Remember the episode of Star Trek called The Enemy Within? By some mishap with the transporter, Kirk was separated into two halves of himself. The contrast between the two was marked and it was quite interesting to follow each of them as they made their way into the world. It was shown that each Kirk could function as separate entities, but much less effectively. And in the end, it was proven that when the dark, evil, but smart half was combined with his gentler half, Kirk was a stronger person.

But here, with Sam, we kind of got some Enemy Within kind of stuff at the start, in that First Sam was a little bit ineffectual without the Soulless side of himself. And yet, when we get the two together, as we see in this scene, Sam, who now is First Sam AND Soulless Sam, goes along like nothing has changed. There’s nothing in his demeanor to indicate he’s been transmogrified, and no one around to reflect the changes he’s just (supposedly) gone through, and certainly, no one around to express amazement to the audience and to point out how different or changed Sam now is. He’s all alone with his breakthrough and no one cares, and, as no time is spent on it, the storyline treats it of no importance.

What a gyp! Alone, Sam soldiers on. The camera continues to half ignore him, focusing elsewhere, other than on Sam, as if even the growing grass in a nearby ditch is more important than his face, or his profile, or, indeed, any aspect of his physical or emotional character.

Interestingly enough, Transmogrified Sam finds his way back to Bobby’s house. Bobby’s house is dark, but lit with a million candles, which, perhaps, represent the inner goodness that is Bobby, and that is, therefore, to be found in Bobby’s house.

Lit by candles

But what ho? What is this? Transmogrified Sam comes across a shadowy figure sitting at Bobby’s desk. The candles are barely bright enough to show us that this is the I’ve Been In Hell Sam, but it is he. I’ve Been In Hell Sam is ragged and bloody; he looks torn up and torn asunder; his Samhair is limp and he looks miserable. But this is a good thing, at least for the audience, because at last it seems that the storyline has arrived at the spot where we will finally find out what happened to Sam in hell.

As an audience, we have been teased (and tormented) with the tantalizing idea that behind the Wall of Sam (created by Death to keep Sam’s memories of his time in hell at bay) lay an undiscovered country of unheard of angst and emo and the deep, dark, fiery, and hellish torments that Sam suffered through. While there wasn’t a written contract, through the process of storytelling (with its endless hints at how DIRE his time there was), as well as the threats (threaded through dialog) of what would happen should The Wall come down, the audience was promised a reveal on the subject. We were promised that we would come to understand the nature of Sam’s suffering while in hell.

Similarly, as you know, we came to find out what happened to Dean hell, didn’t we. We discovered, through many, many eps that Dean suffered on the rack for 30 years and then got up and tortured other souls for 10 years. We even got to meet his Torturer, Alastair, and see some of the relationship between Alastair and Dean.

For Sam? With barely a two-second face shot of I’ve Been In Hell Sam, Transmogrified Sam kills I’ve Been In Hell Sam, and we yet again get The Highlander effect as Transmogrified Sam absorbs the energy from the I’ve Been In Hell Sam. But otherwise, we get nothing. Zippo. We don’t even get a vacuum of nothing-ness, the kind that nature abhors and strives to fill.

Samhair moment

We get some special effects flickering flames, Sam clasps his head, and then, that’s it, that’s all she wrote, folks. We get no insight, no information about Sam’s time in hell, no reveal, nothing about Sam. If it weren’t foretold that Show would be picked up for another year, would Show have thusly treated Sam? I believe it would. Show holds Sam to no account and I cannot trust that it would treat Sam any differently than it has here, regardless of the amount of episodes left in this season or next.

Still, at this point, Sam is all one person, he is First Sam, Soulless Sam, and I’ve Been In Hell Sam – he’s altogether himself again, and that’s a good thing, right? It is, but it should have been a lot more interesting and engaging than it is shown in this ep.

While Sam is in his coma, Dean leaves Sam a piece of paper with an address where Dean and Bobby would be, and, also, Dean leaves his pearl-handled 1911 Taurus, because that’s a truly useful tool against anything demonic or angelic, right? My Friend in Alaska pointed out that Dean’s leaving his favorite gun next to Sleeping Sam is a sure sign that Dean loves his brother more than anything. I think if I’d not been so riled up about the Dearth of Sam, I might have noticed that more.

Sam is able to make his way to where Bad Things Are Happening. We don’t get to see him waking up, or dealing with his situation, or see him finding the note and the gun, we get nothing of Sam, just him arriving at the spot. We do see him arrive, but he spends about five or so on-air minutes (while the plot continues on without him) doing something unknown (maybe finding a good parking spot), and then he shows up into the fray, finds the angel killing knife and stabs the Soap Angel with it. From behind.

This entire encounter perplexed me a great deal. First, I think there is only one door into the room where the Bad Things Are Happening, so I’m not really sure how Sam gets in the room, and how he’s able to sneak up on the Soap Angel, who now has the power of a million souls inside of him. But yeah, Sam’s able to outwit this supposedly omnipotent being, and be enough of a sneaky snake to tip-toe into the room, AND super silently pick up the angel killing knife, AND stab the Soap Angel with it.

Soulless Sam - Still HAWT

I’m also not sure why Sam feels it was necessary to sneak in and stab the Soap Angel. He wasn’t around for most (if not all) of the conversation where we learn that the Soap Angel has gone crrrrrazy, so what is Sam’s motivation for attempting to kill a character for whom he so recently professed that he would give his life?

Oh, wait. Most of Sam’s story happens off screen, so I supposed I could imagine or pretend that the missing scene had happened, whereby the newly arrived Sam had, oh, I don’t know, overheard the damning conversation and then taken it upon himself to do something about it and Save DEAN. But no. It didn’t happen that way and not only do I have no idea why Sam did what he did, I’m also left feeling that Show thinks Sam isn’t important, and the story could pretty much just continue on without him.

I have never seen a show do this to major character, to treat that character so badly. While the rest of the story goes on, Sam is left standing in the middle of an empty stage, with no one to talk to or interact with; his presence is so unnecessary at this point, the writers could write him out of the plot, and it would barely cause a ripple with all the other stupid stuff that’s going on?

Searching through his own past

And poor Jared Padalecki, he must be bored to death, waiting in the wings, memorizing his one line, showing up two mornings a week to get hit in the head and get locked in a room, which was what happened last week, really, but this week wasn’t any better. Why does Show even bother having Padalecki show up at all? Why pay all that salary? Heck, for all the significance Sam has played this last season, you could construct a dummy of Sam (and a beautiful dummy it would be), and let Padalecki GO to find other projects that would be more worthy of his acting skills.

Sam Winchester has been handled so badly in favor of an alternate storyline that has nothing to do with the original premise. If you set up, as this show has, the premise that your story is about TWO characters (in this case, two brothers saving people and hunting things), then it should continue to do so. If you do not, you have jumped the shark. There are dozens of shows with a two-character premise, among them being Starsky & Hutch, Man from Uncle, The Sentinel, and Due South (just to name a few) that have done this much, much better than Show has, and never jumped the shark.

Due South in particular is a marked example of how it should be done. It was a story about Benton Fraser (a Canadian Mountie who came to Chicago on the trail of his killers, the rest isn’t important now) and Detective Ray Vecchio, who were constant companions in fighting the onslaught of crime that is daily life in Chicago. Due South never jumped the shark, it was always about Fraser and Ray, and except for one or two not-so-good episodes (in a four year run) , more than 15 years later, continues to hold up as an excellent example TV script writing, directing, and acting.

I can’t imagine that Show feels that its treatment of Sam’s character is justified by the Holy Civil War storyline, not when that particular story has nothing to do with Sam or Dean. If Show does believe that this finale is effective, then I beg to differ. Most of the ep was about the Holy Civil War, which is being fought far above and beyond Sam and Dean’s heads and is thusly not character driven. Sam and Dean made huge sacrifices to stop the apocalypse, except it turned out that Rafael could start it up again simply because he wanted to, so their sacrifices were in vain. Just make two shows, why don’t you? One about an Angel Puddle Battle, and one about Sam and Dean. I’d watch the latter rather than the former.

The other part of the episode first deals with Dean and Bobby angsting over Sam’s Comatose Frame. They’ve settled Sam in The Panic Room, which is, one assumes, appropriately guarded against both angels and demons. Who frankly, in this storyline, are tantamount to the same kind of supernatural creature: both angels and demons battle over souls, they entrap each other, they all lie, they kill anything and anyone to get to their goal, neither is more noble or self-sacrificing than the other, so tell me why I should have sympathy for either group?

The part of the episode that is not about Sam (that is, most of it), is made up of several rather long and boring conversations where the characters stand their and flap their gums. I was so bored during 99% of this that I cleaned my sock drawer. Seriously.

There’s some good stuff between Crowley and the Soap Angel, with interesting and snarky comments, but I think that’s based on the fact that Mark Sheppard can bring a wooden stick to life simply by opening his mouth. And by virtue of that fact, he’s able to elevate the idea that the Soap Angel has been making deals with the King of Hell, and make interesting that an angel is about to double-cross a demon.

Sheppard tears at the scenery and makes it possible to empathize with him when he finds out that he, the King of Welchers, has been welched upon. Thank GOD for Sheppard and Crowley in this scene, otherwise, I would have been forced to watch only the Soap Angel standing there, all glazed-eyed, and talking in that horrible monotone. And THEN I would have been forced to go clean my spice cabinet, too, out of sheer boredom.

Walking away from a killing

(There were a bunch of double-crosses, back flips and kipp ups between the angels and the demons, but I don’t remember them and I refuse to watch the episode twice just to discuss them with you here.) Then Dean and Bobby enter the scene. Or actually, they fall into the scene, down the single metal staircase that leads into the room where Bad Things Are Happening.  There’s a whole lot more of all the characters standing around with their hands at their sides, talking. Talking, talking, talking. I mean, who farted, right?

I have been informed by my Friend in Alaska (who is sympathetic to the Dean/Cas shippers) that if you are a fan of the Soap Angel, that you have been DEVISTATED by the fact that your favorite has been, is being, and will have been feeling betrayed by his earthly friends, on account of the fact that the Soap Angel has been lying to said earthy friends for OVER a year, and is now out in the cold without a single friend in the world. If I were a fan of the Soap Angel, I’d be devastated too; my heart goes out to those who are. However, I am not a fan, and so was thusly pleased that the SA is on his own, except for the fact that it took so long to tell and where is that pillow I can pull over my head anyway?

In the end, the Soap Angel has absorbed a million times a million souls, all gained from Purgatory. He is now, in fact, a Soap God, isn’t that neat? He can control the world. I even recall (and my Friend in Alaska reminded me) that he ordered everyone to bow down and worship at his feet? Something like that. At any rate, he’s no friend of Dean’s. Or, I guess Sam’s, since Sam tried to kill him and all. Not that anyone cares. (Obviously I care, but Show doesn’t.)

The Money Shot

Instead, the Soap Angel is glutted on his own hubris, and will no doubt, in keeping with many myths and legends, meet some type of demise which will deflate his ego like a balloon. One can hope. But, in keeping with the fact that this is Show, let’s not forget that there’s always that Reset Button. I mean, just because the Soap Angel snapped his fingers and turned Rafael into blood pudding (and killed Balty, damint), that doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way. The Soap Angel, after all, was himself turned into blood pudding. Something brought him back, so who’s not to say that Balthy and/or Rafael will be brought back. But hell, better either of them than the Soap Angel.

Yes, I did not like this episode. Yes, I am very disappointed in the static nature of the entire thing. And yes, I’m ANGRY that Sam Winchester has been left by the roadside; even if the current storyline is boring as hell (no pun intended), I’d rather watch it with Sam being included than not.  I know some people liked this ep and loved this season and had a good time watching it, but it didn’t feel like the type of episode with enough power to not only end a season, but to also keep fans coming back for a seventh term in office.

I have one more thing to point out. My Friend in Alaska has assured me that this is not HBO so the type of scene I would have liked to have seen will never happen on Show. I expect too much, she tells me, and I should really, really find a way to reconcile myself to the fact that this Show has jumped the shark and to sit back and enjoy what glimpses of Sam (and of Sam AND Dean working together) that I can. But I feel it would be a disservice to not point out what a golden opportunity that Show missed out on. (Besides everything else it never does, I mean.)

Watching over sleeping beauty

Okay, so there’s the scene in The Panic Room. Dean has been drinking whiskey (‘cause that’s a sensible thing to do before confronting the King of Hell, right?) He is sitting by Sam’s bedside, ostensibly writing out a note telling Sam where they’ll be. Dean stands up. The camera is focused somewhere around Dean’s knees; Sam’s head’s not in the camera, neither is Dean’s. And then Dean just walks away.

This is what I wanted: I would have like to have seen Dean bend down and kiss Sam on the forehead. Just like that, like brothers. It’s what Wee Dean did in the First Episode, to send Baby Sammy safely off into sleep, so it would have been a nice echo to see it here, as Dean leaves Sam sleeping, leaves him behind to go fight the good fight.

And I won’t even go into the fact that because Sam is sleeping, Dean goes off with Bobby to do all this brave stuff, leaving Sam completely of the picture. I like Dean and the decisions he makes, but I wish he’d been able to make them WITH Sam rather than on his own.

I guess I wish this were a different kind of Show. I miss what Show used to be, that’s for sure.

GUH - For old time's sake

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