Recap – “Unforgiven”
Back to current Sam, who looks at the bag like he’s in a trance until he realizes Brenna is staring at him pretty concerned. Sam snaps out of it and asks if he can borrow all this stuff for a couple of hours. She agrees and as he’s gathering stuff together, she asks, “You really don’t remember Roy, do you?” Sam’s sad facial expression answers that one. “He was a good man. I’ve made peace that he’s dead. I just want to know what happened.” Sam looks at her with pure sympathy, then pulls out the bullshit line, “I’m sure he died a hero.” Oh, no! Remember that for later. She nods in appreciation and Sam gives her a tense half smile before moving on.
Sam quickly steps outside, and man, there are huge clumps of snow on the trees out front now. Or is it snow? While on the front porch, Sam’s cell goes off, telling us he didn’t have coverage inside but now he does. He listens to Dean message on the porch while noticing the giant and pretty thick cobweb at the end of the porch. Once word gets to him it’s a trap, he puts down the box to investigate and inches closer toward the cobweb. It’s almost like something is on the verge of clicking in his mind, something very wrong. He looks terrified. Suddenly we get the POV of multiple eyes in watching him from the yard, you know, a bug-like creature.
Sam examines, with trepidation, the cobweb, and then something touches his shoulder. He whips around with his gun pulled, and it’s Dean again! “I almost shot you, again!” Sam is really edgy this time, far more than before. Dean again doesn’t pick up on this, instead berating Sam for leaving and talking to Brenna. He asks if Sam got his message and Sam doesn’t deny. Dean decides he’s got to get him out of there, and we get the POV of the creature in the yard watching them leave. Wow, that scene is so cool!
Back at the house, which, while abandoned, still has running electricity. And wireless. Dean is going through the scorecard. “So we know that this is a monster with opposable thumbs and unlimited text messaging, and we know that it wants to kill you specifically. Does that about cover it?” Ah, Dean, I do love your way of looking at things. Sam sheepishly comes clean. “It’s an arachne.” That gets a perplexed “What?” out of Dean. “I remembered,” Sam confesses. Oh, no, not what Dean needed to hear. He’s shocked and insists on knowing what else he remembered.
Sam insists it’s nothing to do with Hell, but that ain’t good enough for Dean. “Not yet, anyway.” Sam can’t help it, what’s coming back is probably natural. Yeah, and in your case, Sammy, oh, so catastrophic. Story of your life, I guess. Dean insists they’re leaving, Sam says they can’t. “We are not the only hunters on the planet. We can call Bobby. He and Rufus can wrap things up.” Nope, not so simple, they’ve got no leads, and the real answer to all this lies in Sam’s head. “I know who did this. I just can’t remember.” Sam grabs some more files and Dean yanks them away. You know, this next bit is so good, I’m going to do the whole transcription:
Dean: I don’t think you get the risk here, Sam.
Sam: Yes, I do.
Dean: Really? You get that every time you scratch that wall, that you are playing Russian Roulette?
Sam: Dean, I get you’re worried, okay? And I know what you think is going to happen, but you know wha? It will or it won’t.
Dean: Sam-
Sam: I’m starting to think that I might have done some bad stuff here, Dean. And so, I don’t care if it’s dangerous. I have to set things right ’cause I’ve got a freaking soul now, and it won’t let me walk away. I’m staying here, and I need you to back me up.
Dean (relunctantly): Alright, why not? Well, let’s “Memento” this thing, shall we?
It should be noted that Dean only agreed after getting puppy-dog eyed by Sam. Yes, it especially works on big brother. Anyway, they start taping all the pieces to the wall, and the nice creepy score from “Phantom Traveler” (plus others I can’t remember) comes on. Looks like they were saving some money there! As they put up the pieces on the wall, Sam goes through all that he’s remembered so far. There’s sex-in-a-bathroom lady mentioning the disappearances, except she’s in black and white now. Next is Roy mentioning that they aren’t Feds, they hunt things. They put up the strings connecting the dots and there’s Brenna at the jail saying, “You really don’t remember?” Sam glances all around at the pieces of evidence and things start clicking. Finally Dean mentions “crazy eyes McGee,” and Sam looks at her picture.
Sam is totally lost in the pieces on the wall, and Dean looks at him with complete worry. He must have a real bad feeling about this. He should! Then Sam starts getting a barrage of flashes of the night that happened in the teaser. He starts getting more frantic as it all comes back to him, and Dean asks if he’s okay. Hell no, he’s not okay! Now it’s time for the missing pieces to click together.
RoboSam and Samuel are back at the restaurant, and Sam is on the phone to Roy. He’s telling him to meet them at Lonely Pines Park in one hour. The scene is again jagged as all the others and the noirish angles are back. Samuel is a bit skeptical about the plan. As in, really bothered skeptical. Sam explains it in the most coldhearted possible way. “The arachne has been snacking on mid 30’s guys. We need BAIT (yes, he actually used that word) to fit the demo. I’m too young, you’re too old.” “89 and counting,” Samuel confirms. Yeah, he would be that old. Cool that someone did the math.
Samuel thinks they should have let Roy in on the plan, RoboSam wants a convincing performance. I’m not so shocked that RoboSam would be like this as Samuel agreeing to it. Roy is shown waiting at the park alone. Samuel, back at the restaurant, asks what if something goes wrong, and Sam thinks Roy’s a big boy. Oh, come on, Samuel, kick his ass. Do something! Instead, Samuel says “It’s just not the way I’m used to doing things.” Yeah, that’s also true of your other grandson and the one across from you WITH A SOUL. Jerk RoboSam replies, “Welcome to the future.” That didn’t raise any red flags, Grandpa??? Judging by his unsettled look, he did, but he does nothing. Where are your balls, Grandpa?? Did they leave them behind like they did Sam’s soul?
I’m so glad you’ve decided to do more recaps, since I found this site I have gone back and read all of the ones you did for the previous seasons. I will take my time and read this one later as my laptop battery is about to die on me, but I’m sure it’ll be a good one. Catch you later.
Hi Alice. I thoroughly enjoyed your recap of this episode, much more than I enjoyed the episode itself, I’m afraid. I think I just have a hard time dealing with sociopathic RoboSam. He is so scary and really so very cold and unemotional in all his evilness. I believe Samuel would have tried harder to get through to Sam if he hadn’t been actually afraid of his grandson by that time. And, the way Sam was back then, he had good reason to be afraid he would get in Sam’s way and be tossed aside without a qualm. 😥
Anyway, again, loved your recap! 🙂
Sam is burning alive and laughter is heard in the background. Really??? I don’t remember the laughter, I’m going to watch it again.
wow you know?
on Sunday I was remembering that you did this recaps, and I was wishing you did this again, at least for the bests episodes and you did 😆
You don’t know how much I enjoy your Recaps.
Im going to quote Bevie here “I enjoyed, much more than I enjoyed the episode itself”.
I loved the scenes with Sam struggling with his memories and Dean trying to protect his brother but I don’t know why I didn’t enjoy a lot the arachne part, cause I love the Spiderman movies….
My favorite favorite episode of the season is 6×19 “The man who would be king” I have watched that episode a lot of times 😆
“Dean is at the box-wine lady’s house” hehe
“You can buy wine in that many gallons?” I would have thought someone in the set decorator made a mistake… so that’s a common size in Canada? wow 🙂
I was able to finally go back to the episode and get the shot of the box wine. I put it in the recap. It’s definitely a size only sold in Canada. Wow!
[img]https://www.thewinchesterfamilybusiness.com/images/Unforgiven/boxwine.jpg[/img]
I enjoyed the recap and revisit to what I consider one of the best episodes in season six. It was just very well put together and the mystery and the monster were cool.
I disliked them calling/considering the bathroom woman a cougar. What is she at most: 10 years older than Sam? The box of wine cracked me up, and of course I’m looking at the label, but wine is sold by the liter in the US. 750 mL is the standard bottle and 1.5 L being the big one. Boxes of wine are labelled by liter and I think the biggest is 5 L. So that was kinda weird for the set people to mark the box that way.
I love soulless Sam! I love the fact that, for the most part, soulless Sam is the closest thing to Lucifer there is. He is soulless and emotionally vacant and will do anything that suits his agenda. Sounds pretty much like the angels on Supernatural.
I think Grandpappy was way in over his head with that “boy”!
Well I finally read your recap and it was thoroughly enjoyable. I loved everything about that episode. I’m with AndreaW, I loved RoboSam. Jared played him so brilliantly and with such coldness, exactly like the sociopath he was without a soul. The cinematography was absolutely gorgeous, I love b&w movies and those flashback scenes were pure film noir. It gave me chills, especially the end with Sam on the floor burning in Hell. OMG!!!
I’m on vacation and away from home and I already miss my SPN DVD collection. I am so suffering from Supernatural Obsessive Disorder! Thank God I brought my PC with me so I can check into the WFB every day to get my SPN fix.
Oh wow, Alice. I never noticed the laughter in the background before. It’s very faint, but you CAN hear it if you put on some good headphones and listen closely. I honestly never noticed that before. Thanks for pointing that out! So I wonder if that Lucifer laughing at Sam? Hmmm… very interesting.
So glad to see you’re back recapping. It was kind of a case of ‘You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone’ with you!
Your narratives and jumping between thoughts as you write are such fun to read. It’s kind of like sitting next to you on the couch while you’re watching, after that box of wine….
And thank God you came back to such a gem of an episode! An investigative one into Sam, body and soul (though temporarily without memories) was always going to be good. And your heart can’t help but ache for Sam and Dean, both during the episode and after it because while Sam has to deal with Soulless Sam and the wall, he certainly won’t do it alone. Dean would climb into Sam’s soul himself and shoulder that wall for an eternity if he could.
Poor old Dean seems to be floundering in this one. His desperation at Sam’s desperation is palpable. It’s not that Sam won’t stop thinking about his time as Soulless Sam, I don’t think he can’t. How hard would it be to actively put something like that to the back of your mind? The more you deliberately don’t think about it, the more you end up thinking about it. Even if he and Sam had scarpered after they realised he was there before, it wouldn’t have done any good. I think the seepage through the wall would have been greater had they left, to be honest. This new, glued together Sam is something Dean doesn’t know how to deal with yet. In fairness, he hasn’t met his real brother for over 18 months and now that he’s back gung ho, he’s bound to be tentative around him.
My expectation before this episode (based on speculation) was that we’d learn things about Sam we didn’t known prior to it; how Sam and Samuel hooked up, the order of their relationship (and thank God we have season 7 to possibly address that), shit, even small things like how Sam arrived back topside. We had that amazing scene in Lazarus Rising where Dean dug himself out of a grave to see he was surrounded by fell trees, I’d like to know what greeted Sam when he got up, how he processed things in those first few weeks, months etc. Even Soulless Sam had to have had a degree of confusion there. Anyway that’s my wishful thinking list for today!
I know that we learnt nothing new about Sam but it didn’t make a blind bit of difference. Sam’s gradual realisation of what he learnt about himself more than made up for it. The dark of Soulless Sam makes Souled Up Sam seem to shine all the much brighter. Yaay!
Plus, given that this was the last we saw Soulless Sam before The Man Who Knew Too Much, I’m glad he got to such a big episode. He such a unique, complex character. I kinda want to tie him to a chair and say ‘Dude, whassup?
In regard to Sam, I think inwardly, Samuel was a wee bit scared of Sam. I mean, who wouldn’t be? A guy he’s never met but is his grandson turns up. We’ve no clue under what circumstances they met ie who approached whom etc (though it is on my top 5 list of things I want to see) The scene in Two and a Half Men kinda indicated to me that Samuel deferred to Sam, and Soulless Sam made it very clear that he answered to no-one.
It’s interesting that while Samuel obviously found what Sam did um… distasteful, he never once stopped him. Perhaps he kept quiet because he knew they did what they had to do, and he was relieved he didn’t have to make the hard calls.
I appreciate that we got the opportunity to see Samuel as a (somewhat) likeable man before he ends up selling out Sam and Dean. The way he speaks about his daughter shows how deeply he loved her and that does go some way towards explaining his actions in Caged Heat. He did what he felt he had to do, and somehow got lost in the enormity of it. He gradually chipped away who he was bit by bit and he did it for love; same as John, Dean and Sam. Guess the Winchesters and the Campbells aren’t too different after all.
On an aside, it’s good to know that while the puppy dog eyes are potent they’re not potent enough to have a woman, whose husband Sam set up to be turned into a big spider and then killed, twice (once right in front of her), forgive him. Maybe next time he should stick out his tongue and pant?
Re: the laughter. I hadn’t noticed it but when I rewatched there’s definitely a chuckle oh sweet Jesus, it ups the horror factor in that scene by a million. (Michael and Lucifer, you pups! What did you do to my boys baby boy?)
Anyway, thanks so much for this. Looking forward to your next recap (hopefully soon…..)
Hi Alice
Cant tell you how pleased I was to see one of your recaps back. They have always been one of my favourite things around here. I have really missed them and I know am not the only one.
It was very interesting to read with distance between viewing and the episode, I think it made it even better. It made me want to go and watch again.
I know they take a lot of time to produce but I do hope you intend to do more
Thanks Ju
I want to do them, but we’ll see how my time constraints go. I can at least get the next one started for Mannequin 3: The Reckoning. I love writing recaps for bad episodes. I have a lot of fun ripping into them with little guilt. Oh, but then there’s the French Mistake. I really ought to do that one too. Maybe I’ll have time on vacation.
Wonderful recap. I will anxiously await the next one, which is one of my favorite episodes (tho others disagree it seems) but I liked the flow from “I can fix this” to the futility of their jobs and the realization that sometimes there just aren’t any easy or correct answers; but there is hope.
Alice, basically there’s no need to tell you how much I love your recaps. I’ve told you countless times, eh?
That you took this particular episode on, despite your tight schedule, was a real treat. Thank you!
If you found time to do more of these in the future, I’d be frightfully happy… But only, of course, if putting them together remained fun and not stress… you’ve got enough of that at work (as do I). And we’re not stressing with things we love!
Hugs, Jas