Recap – “Unforgiven”
Next Sam and Dean are each caught in their own unbreakable spider web. They struggle, but it’s no use. Roy comes out of the shadows for some monologuing. It’s all about the monologuing with these monsters. You know one of my favorite villains of all time is Mickey Rourke’s character in Iron Man 2. You want to know why? He just killed. No monologuing, no manic behavior. It was pretty cool.
Anyway, Roy makes a joke. “You got to admit, I look good Sam.” Oh, except for the hole on his forehead where there bullet entered his brain. Sam tries to negotiate for Brenna’s life, claiming it has nothing to do with her. “You come back around, you start hanging around with my wife, and you think this has nothing to do with her?” While Roy has his little moment of jealously, Dean goes for a piece of shattered glass on the floor next to him. You see, Dean has no guilt trips holding him back.
Back to the monologuing. It seems Sam got the arachne all wrong. She wasn’t there to feed. She was there to breed. “That thing was playing the mating game, and I guess I fit her profile.” By the time RoboSam thought he was putting them out of their miseries, Roy wasn’t human. Bullets didn’t hurt him much, neither did fire. I’m sure that really pissed him off, though! There is a close-up of both Roy and Sam’s eyes this time, and the table are turned. Roy’s are blank (of course, they’re arachne eyes, too) and Sam’s are tinged with fear. Good trick! Anyway, the story. They all ran after Sam left, and Roy was out there for months, starving. “But you know what kept me going? Every night I dreamed about ripping your throat out.” Yeah, he’s mad, and that is such a classic monologing line.
Roy goes on, he thought he was sending Sam a neon sign. “The text, taking all those girls you screwed. I was kicking up so much sand in your eye I couldn’t figure out why you weren’t getting it. Then Bren tells me you’ve got brain damage. It’s just too good.” Sam wants to know what happened to the women. Same as the men. Scattered, doing what arachne do. Time for the iconic, “moral of the story” line! “You killed one monster, you made so many more.” Again, the story of Sam’s life. That’ll make a great essay!
So, all that being said, there’s only two choices now. Killing Sam or turning him. Dean, who’s cut through his web by now, sees his chance. He hops up and goes for Roy. He’s easily handled by Roy’s super strength, who begins to choke him without a fight. Brenna tries to stop him from doing that, but Roy won’t listen, so Brenna grabs the knife and cuts Sam loose. Sam’s pretty quick and swift, and in one swipe of the knife, Roy’s head is gone. Dean’s startled, Brenna is devastated, and I won’t even get into the intense guilt trip Sam is on right now. It’s bad. Brenna looks at Dean instead, who’s far more sympathetic in his gaze and less traumatized.
Okay, here’s what I think are two of the more intense closing minutes this show has ever done. First, our hearts need to be crushed into tear-jerking vulnerability. Sam walks a despondent Brenna back to her house. As they go up the the porch, Brenna goes first and won’t even look at Sam. Sam in the background looks like…well, remember the time he accidentally started the apocalypse? He’s mortified. “Brenna, look, I am so sorry.” Nope, doesn’t work. Without words and one weepy expression, she goes into the house and slams the door. Sam is left behind outside, and in other cool directorial choice, we start with the back of Sam’s head. He turns around to the sad music. Whoa, Sammy is totally despondent. Fixing things, making them right, isn’t going to be so redeeming, is it, Sam?
Back to abandoned house and Sam is still completely despondent, sitting on the cot while packing up. Dean comes in and asks if he’s okay. Um, Dean, NO!! Sam solemnly answers, “You were right. We shouldn’t have come back here.” Dean tries to offer some solace, reminding him he did kill the spider man. “So you’re suggesting what I did back there was a good thing?”
Dean tries to explain then goes for some honesty. “Sam, you gotta understand, in all that crap last year, all of it, none of it was you.” Sam scoffs. “Let’s be crystal clear. It was me.” You’re both right! It was part of him. Dean gives up, realizing that there’s no talking to Sam when he’s like this. He asks if he can get Sam anything. “What are you now, my waitress?” “I’m just trying to make you feel better. Don’t be a bitch,” Dean answers. Ooh, tense much? Sam backs off in guilt and tells him he’s fine.
Now, this part is cool! The camera moves completely to Dean in the other room, so we can only hear Sam. “Yeah, you look fine,” Dean says sarcastically. He tries to assure Sam that everything will be okay. Sam from the other room says, “I don’t know, Dean, if I did this here then who knows how many other…” THUD! Camera swipes back to Sam, who’s seizing on the floor. GAHHH!!!! No, Sammy!!!!
Dean jumps up and rushes over, begging Sam to talk to him. Sam gasps and then he stops seizing, going into a dissociative gaze instead. Not good!
You know what else isn’t good for Sam (but great drama for us)? The same trick they used at the end of “No Rest For The Wicked” when Dean was dead. They show what’s going on inside Sam’s head by extreme close-up through the eye. It’s another shot of Hell! This time it’s Sam and fire is everywhere. Sam is burning alive and laughter is heard in the background. Sam tries to fight it, but the agony gets him quick. He screams as he goes up in flames.
ROLL CREDITS??? SERIOUSLY??? You shock us with that surprise ending and we’ve got to wait a week to find out what happens??? DAMN YOU!!!!!!! Well, I guess it was only a week. It’s not like it’s a season finale or anything. Still, I’m freaking out. OMGOMGOMG!!! NOOOOO, Sammy!!!!!!!!! You cracked the wall!!!! I don’t think Dean is relishing in “I told you so” right now. Poor Dean. His work undone so quickly! I guess we can count on from here on out that wall not being very stable. Good to know!
Of course, any compelling drama that this story had to offer was instantly unraveled by a quick resolution and killer dolls, but not everyone bats 1,000. That’s a recap!
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