The Winchester Family Business

Preview for “Appointment in Samarra” (6.11) 
 
This week Supernatural ends the first half of the season with "Appointment in Samarra," an episode featuring the return of two familiar faces, Death, one of the four horsemen from the myth arc of last season, and Tessa the reaper from “In My Time of Dying’ (2.01) and “Death Takes a Holiday” (4.15). (Just a side bit of information, the character of Tessa was inspired by Neil Gaiman’s Death from his Sandman graphic novels. As Crowley, the recently deceased King of Hell, was also an inspiration from a Gaiman novel, one of the SPN writers has a definite soft spot for author!)
 
 
 
While the majority of the episode titles so far this season have been references to movie and TV shows, this one has a  literary reference based on ancient folklore.  Right up Supernatural’s alley! So, what does the title mean?
 
It’s an old Babylonian folktale of a Baghdad merchant who sends his servant to the local market. A woman bumps into the servant and he immediately recognizes her as Death (Yea…Death is a female. How sexist is that!)  Death gives the servant a threatening look.  The servant becomes terrified and flees. He tells his master about the encounter, borrows his master’s horse and flees to the city of Samarra.  The merchant then goes to the marketplace to talk to Death and find out why she made a threatening gesture. She replies, "That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."
 
The folk lore is a classical fatalistic tale where no matter what a character does to avoid a situation; it only causes exactly what was supposed to happen all along.  The Final Destination movies are a prime example.  No matter what the characters do to avoid Death, they all end up deceased. And this concept is not unfamiliar to Supernatural either. In "The Monster at the End of This Book," no matter what Dean and Sam do to avoid the prophecies of Chuck, their action don’t change the outcome.
 
Question is to which brother does the story apply?  Dean, who, in an attempt to get Sam’s soul back, actually loses it? Or does Sam's attempt to keep his soul out of his body, lead directly to him actually getting his soul back?
 
Sera Gamble in this weeks issue of TV Guide states the story line comes to a head in this week’s episode, which is “about how far each brother will go to get what they need.”  
 
What does each of them need?  
 
Dean needs to get his brother back.  Even with the ‘issues’ they have, Sam is still his brother and neither of them is whole without the other.  The cure might be worse than the disease, but that is a chance Dean feels is worth taking, and as Sam is not Sam, Dean sets out to correct the problem.  Humans can’t exist without souls.  (Of course that really is Sam’s decision, not Dean’s.  Dean is right, Sam isn’t Sam without his human side, but both he and Dean can learn to deal with it. And Soulless!Sam can be quite funny at times.)
 
Sam needs to stay in command of his own existence.  He doesn’t know why he is out of the cage, but he is alive, and that’s good enough for him.  He doesn’t feel a soul is all that important, and would rather stay as is, then risk the possible alternative. (Of course, the episodes thus far have gone to great lengths to point out that Sam has not only lost his emotions, but also his sense of right and wrong and the ability to reason, something he has already admitted a few episodes back.)
 
How far will each go? 
 
Dean goes looking for Death, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.   He finds him in a restaurant in Chinatown.  Dean met with Death in a pizza parlor last season, and now it seems Death has a taste for Chinese.  Nigel Horsleya local photographer, took these photos of Dean and Death (Julian Richings) in Vancouver’s Chinatown.  To see others he took, to go to his Photostream page.
 



 
 
Death offers to help return Sam’s soul, but only if Dean spends a day working as Death.  
 
 
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And of course to be Death, you have to be dead.  So Dean ends up at Dr Robert’s (portrayed by guest star, Robert Englund) office, who is described as “an unlicensed doctor who works out of the back of a butcher shop.”  Dr Robert’s also has a creepy assistant Eva played by Danielle Benton.  
 

 
 
Once Dean is Death, it looks like Tessa is assigned to train/assist Dean in how to be a reaper during his 24 hour deal.  And various ‘deaths’ occurred in a not so good section of Vancouver.  Susan Gittins was on hand for some shots of those locations.  Her photos are below.  
 

 

 
So where is Sam while all this is going on?  Seems while Dean is making a deal with Death to get Sam’s soul back, Sam is going to extremes to ensure that his soul will never re-enter his body.    He finds out about a spell from Balthazar that will keep him soulless.  The catch -  the spell requires blood from Sam’s father, and as John is long dead, Sam decides Bobby is the next best thing.  Seems the spell requires the blood of his father, but the father needn’t be blood.  Canada’s Space channel promo shows Sam about to kill Bobby, so apparently a lot of blood is needed for the ritual.  

The CW promo shows Death making a proposal to Dean, Dean putting on the Death’s ring amid a green glow and Sam trying to use an axe on a door, either before or after tying Bobby to a chair and sharpening a knife. The promo implies that Dean isn’t wounded before ending up on Dr Robert’s table, but goes there deliberately to get “killed”.  In a brief clip from the CBS video announcing the SPN TV Guide cover (on the front page of the website), the doctor greets Dean and gives the impression he has been fixing up Winchesters for generations.  I’m assuming here he is referring to the Campbell blood line Dean carries, as the writers have put a lot of time into portraying the Campbell line as having been hunters for generations and the Winchesters as relatively newbies to the scene.  It will be interesting to see how Dean finds out about the doctor, as he has supposedly been around for years making a living fixing up those who can’t go through normal channels for medical help.
 
So where does all this lead?  From the recent article in TV Guide, some fans think Sam will be “re-souled’ this episode.  And one could read the spoiler that way.  However it had been stated earlier that we shouldn’t expect to see Sam’s soul returned before mid-season.  One thing we can expect to see is Sam getting an ‘ass-kicking’.  In fact both brothers are on the receiving end of a “hardcore” beating.  Says Gamble, “I don’t want to give away the farm on this episode, but I will say both of them are at the very least near death in this episode.”    Gamble also said that anybody watching the last frame of “Appointment in Samarra”, will not want to miss the first frame of “Like a Virgin” (formerly “How To Train Your Dragon”) which airs on January 28.  So I’m going to speculate that the battered and bleeding brothers is our cliff hanger for the hiatus.  Big question, what happens to Sam’s soul if his body dies without it?  In the past, it’s been said that each time the boys meet one of their many deaths, they end up in heaven.  Will Sam’s soul be released from the cage then?  They are soul mates for eternity.  If Dean’s soul goes to heaven, Sam’s should as well.  Maybe that’s a way to get him out of the cage?
 
For those concerned about Bobby, he is in “Like a Virgin”.  After he posted on Twitter that they had just ‘wrapped’ that episode, he apparently had 10,000 tweets asking him if ‘wrapping’ meant he had died.  He assured everyone that ‘wrapping’ an episode doesn’t mean he is leaving the series.  In a separate post,  he indicated he would be back filming the series in a couple of months, which at the time of the tweet would make it sometime in February.  Now… that doesn’t mean he is not a ghost, but it does mean we will still see Bobby after the hiatus.
 
The official synopsis: Dean seeks out Death to help get Sam's soul back. Death tells Dean he will help Sam if Dean will agree to act as Death for 24 hours. Meanwhile, Sam decides he doesn't want his soul back and asks Balthazar for a protective spell to keep his soul out of his body. Balthazar tells Sam he needs the blood of his father for the spell to work and since John Winchester is dead, Sam decides Bobby is the next best thing. CW Publicity
 
The episode was director by Mike Rohl, who has directed episodes of  Smallville, Eureka and Haven to name a few.  He has also direct 14 episodes of Supernatural which include “My Bloody Valentine”, “The Monster at the End of This Book”, and “On the Head of a Pin” The episode was written by executive producers Sera Gamble & Robert Singer.  
 
The cast (IMDB) includes: Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Jim Beaver, Julian Richings (Death), Lindsey McKeon (Tessa), Sebastian Roché (Balthazar),  Robert Euglund (Dr Robert), Danielle Benton (Eva), Alison Araya (Jolene), Alison Wandzura (EMT) and Chaz Chamberlain.
 
The CW promo video for the episode is below.  CW didn’t release a preview clip.  
 

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And Canada’s Space channel promo and preview clips are below.  Seems Dean and Death are in a wager more than a deal, but either way Dean ends up dead.
 

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ArtCreative Design and Custom coding;
 
For me, I hope Sam gets his soul back this episode, so we can move on.  The Soulless!Sam arc is not going down well, and the writers are having a hard time consistently depicting Sam’s ‘lack of emotions’.  I would feel much better about the season if I knew we were coming back to MOTW stories about the alphas, Purgatory and Cass’s civil war in heaven. Even thought I am so done with the myth arc scenario, that is preferable to Soulless!Sam and Soft!Dean.  Is that a possibility?  According to Gamble….yes.  “We will see Sam and Dean working more and more together as a team to solve cases, the way we remember them back in the day.” For me, that needs to start this episode.  
 
This has been a wonderful week for the series, our site and the wonderful Alice Jester.  The cover of TV Guide for us fans….and a lot of publicity for our super Editor-in-chief…long overdue as far as I’m concerned.  Congrats Alice!  In addition, my hats off to those of you who voted for the cover until three o’clock in the morning!  As only 20,000 votes separated us from the second place runner up, the time you put in, put us over the top.  Thanks big time from me!  Now let’s get the boys back so we can have a happy second half of the season.
 
Enjoy the episode!!  Come back and tell us what you think!
 
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