Robin’s Rambles: Supernatural 10.03 – “Soul Survivor”
I adored this episode. I suspect Dean is not really cured. I’m worried for the future. Demon Dean was very scary. Dean is type O, John AB. Does that mean John wasn’t Dean’s father??? Biology doesn’t lie.
Hannah plus Cas just wasn’t that interesting to me. But I did love his translation of human into angel for her. Hannah loves Cas. It’s sad and cute.
Dean’s growls during cure puzzled me. But I loved his taunting Sam. Cruel. And Dean pointed out just how monstrous Sam became in order to locate Dean and Crowley. Brrrrr. Using a human as bait, getting him to sell his soul? Bad Sam. Poor, dumb Lester, killed in the end by Dean, now roasting in hell.
Crowley isn’t having any fun in hell without Dean. If waiting is what one does in hell, I sure hope I don’t end up there. And what does he want with Cas, another wing man? Loved Crowley killing the demon who offered to replace Dean. Poof, lol!Â
Hannah got them lost on purpose, I’m sure. She doesn’t want Cas with the Winchesters, and Cas would rather die than kill another angel for more grace. Sam reports that he fears he’s killing Dean, but they agree they must continue with the blood ritual–even if it is killing Dean. Lean mean Dean insults his lame brother and says he killed their mother. They don’t have family, John wasted their lives. Another shot of blood.Â
Crowley kills more who have betrayed him. A demon immolates himself before a surprised Crowley, citing his shortcomings.Â
Cas warns Hannah against detours on this dangerous road. They need laser focus now, no emotions or distractions. They will be clear on their priorities, she promises. She enters a store–a trap–where they are attacked by Adina, the wife of the man they killed. She punches him through the door, intent on killing him slowly, so Hannah can watch.
Sam visits Dean’s room, finds family photos, half eaten pie. Awww. Sam, Mary, Bobby, brothers, laughing together.Â
Crowley finds Cas on the ground, a bloody mess. Calls him road kill.
Sam finds Dean gone from the chair in which he had imprisoned him.
Crowley stops Adina from killing Hannah. He also drains her grace into a glass jar.Â
Sam and Dean play cat and mouse in the bunker, The latter brandishing a hammer.
Crowley feeds Adina’s grace into Cas. You owe me, he says, and suggests he get over to the bunker to fix the problem he started, even if it means killing Dean. “I’m not sentimental,” lies Crowley.Â
Sam shuts off the lights, locking all the doors. Dean says he wants to find him, all the blood Sam gave him made him more human, so the cuffs and devil’s trap didn’t work and he escaped. Dean restores power. Sam begs Dean to let him finish the treatments. Dean bangs down the door between him with the hammer. Sam doesn’t want to kill him with the DKK, but he will. Â They end up with Dean standing, Sam pressing the knife to his throat. “Do it,” taunts the demon, but Sam drops his arm, unable to kill his brother. Dean advances forward for the kill, but Cas, eyes flaring blue, snakes his arms around Dean, eyes going black, and says, “It’s over.”
After giving Dean another shot of blood, Sam can’t figure out why Dean still resisted. It’s painful being human, answers Cas. Dean comes to. Sam and Cas eye him warily. “You look worried, fellas,” says Dean, sounding very human. Sam splashes him with holy water. No smoke! He’s cured! “Welcome back, Dean,” says Sam, smiling, relieved.
Sam reports to Cas Dean is OK, but exhausted. He is getting him food. The Mark of Cain will be an issue, Cas reminds him. Later, says Sam, he’s getting Dean some cholesterol, then getting drunk.Â
Cas tells Dean he has a long story to tell him–Crowley, stolen grace, a woman out in the car. Dean thanks him and asks if Sam wants a divorce. That wasn’t really you, Cas assures him, you’re brothers–and it would take more than killing him with a hammer to make Sam want to walk away. We are so screwed up, laments Dean. Cas suggests they take some time off before getting back to work; the timing is right–heaven and hell are in order, it’s quiet out there.
Tulsa, OK – A redhead sits in a chair, smiling, two dead men sprawled on the ceiling above her.
No clue what that last scene was all about, but will surely spell trouble for our boys.
I loved this episode, but found it a bit anti-climactic. No questions this time, but I would like to know what you thought about the episode.
Biology may not lie, but these writers have a notorious track record for sloppy continuity. So, I wouldn’t read into the blood type thing at all. That’s just me though! Thanks Robin, great summary.
Sam wasn’t trying to get Lester to sell his soul. He wanted Lester to summon the CRD so he could trap her. Lester made the deal before Sam could stop him. Not saying what he did was right it just didn’t go down like he had planned. I think that this episode is to be continued. Dean isn’t out of the woods by any stretch. I don’t think there was supposed to be a satisfying conclusion. Dean’s status is very much up in the air. I love this episode the more I watch it. Thanks for the fun review.
[quote]Dean is type O, John AB. Does that mean John wasn’t Dean’s father??? Biology doesn’t lie.[/quote]
Dean can have Mary’s blood type.
My family has it too. I have my father’s blood type and my brother has my mother’s. So It’s Mary’s blood probably. For all we know Sam’s is his father’s. 😉
– Lilah
I have to agree with Alice, the whole blood issue means nada….I am not sure why the writers even brought it up frankly… all it did was confuse people and draw attention to the fact that the blood being used wasn’t Sam’s which seemed like such a crucial part of the cure the last time we saw it. And since no one cared or brought it up when Sam was curing Crowley why should we care now? Willing suspension of disbelief is a lot easier if the writers DON’T draw attention to the things that they’d rather you not notice.
The blood that Sam was using on Crowley was glowing with trial juice. The trial powered blood wasn’t necessary to cure a demon it was needed to complete the trials and shut the gates of hell. Presumably Sam was going to explode in blinding light of God power to shut the gates and then he would have been trapped in hell for all eternity (again) having his “spine ripped out of his mouth”. And Crowley would have become human. All the priest needed to cure a demon was blood and the latin words. He wasn’t trying to do anything but cure the twisted soul inhabiting the human host. Which is what Sam was trying to do with Dean and I agree with Prix I think the blood type comment was just a little joke. Evidently the MOC would have combated any ill affects from the wrong blood type anyway.
Yes, I realize that the trail’s cure and Dean’s cure were for different purposes and had different requirements. Still though the fact that for the trials, Sam had to use his own blood “purified through confessing his greatest sin,” just seems far more dramatic than using any old blood “purified” after the fact by any old priest. Sam had to just stand there and wait (in his yummy doctor sexy outfit) then take the blood home, no problemo. All that = BORING and not dramatic (although the sexy was nice). It didn’t involve the the characters in a personal way as much, so therefore it didn’t mean as much. The blood typing comment I made was more a slam on these writers; always brining up issues that are meaningless and NOT brining up things that need to be dealt with and perhaps worse of all, inadvertently creating issues simply through a lack of forethought and creative thinking. Case in point: Dean being human enough to get out of demon handcuffs and blithely walking out of a devils trap with nary a care but still being demonic enough to want to kill Sam in the most violent, blood thirsty and brutal manner (a hammer? Sheesh, that’s cold!) possible. Why was Dean able to escape? Crowley couldn’t; in fact Crowley’s utter helplessness was part of what fueled that scene so brilliantly in Sacrifice. Crowley began to feel emotions again, he was even confused by it and wanted desperately to connect with Sam? So why did a half cured Dean still bear such malice against his brother despite hours of cure and gallons of blood? Why was he impossible for Sam to reach emotionally and felt nothing what so ever of their brotherly bond? Crowley was utterly ravaged by the cure, weakened. So why was Dean fresh as a daisy and still uber and demonically strong? The way it was written makes no sense given what we’ve already seen. The whole DD cure created bigger problems than it fixed, problems that I am not sure that these particular writers are even aware that they themselves created, and Carver let it all go which is even more of an issue. I realize that this was the first episode written, but it needed to conform to the elements regarding the cure that we’ve already seen and track logically with the new information that we’ve learned; it did neither.
Absolutely agree, E.
They set the bar with the curing of Crowley. The effects it had on both Sam and Crowley were what made it so powerful. The curing of his own Brother (officially the bond that is the heart of the show, according to TPTB) SHOULD have had an even greater impact on the audience.
It didn’t.
Writers fail.
The fact that the audience got hung up on the blood type thing (a simple mistake, like the Grand Canyon thing), suggests they’re all looking for SOMETHING MORE to have been implied/given in those scenes.
They TOTALLY missed the opportunity to use the “We keep each other human” thing….. Crossing my fingers that SOME writer can make it work with regards to the MoC.
Such a shame.
Have we ever seen a demon in it’s own meatsuit before? Maybe that is why everything was different with Dean. I don’t think that this is the story anyway. The MOC is the story evidently and that is what is going to drive the season from here on.
You know, I said I wasn’t going to watch this episode a second time because I was afraid it would suffer in the re-viewing. Well guess what… I was right. I did watch it a second time against my better judgement, and it did not weather repeated viewings well. Every illogical scene was magnified for me. Every dull moment (and there were a lot of them) became duller. The lack of urgency in the cure and in Cas’s journey to help Sam rankled. I mean Cas looked like he could barely be bothered he was so lackadaisical about getting to Sam. Hannah was sabotaging the journey, but even she didn’t appear to be trying very hard. And the lack of repercussions physically for Dean during the cure did not make any sense given what we saw with the priest and Crowley. Even the stalking scene, which was still good, lacked logic because I couldn’t get away from the fact that Dean was supposedly half cured by this point; cured enough to get out of his cuffs and the devils trap, and yet he was still so hung-ho to kill Sam and I couldn’t figure out why and it wasn’t explained. There was no logic to any of it. The only thing that saved it for me was Jensen’s directing and Jared’s acting.
So to answer your question Cheryl. If I recall I do think Dean is the first Demon in his/her own meat suit that we’ve known about other than Cain, so that may be a mitigating circumstance; well that and the MoC itself. But if so, then the writers needed to show us that clearly, or at the very least TELL us that’s why everything was so different. But they didn’t, it was just different without any explanation as to why. It was just unfolding for the audience as though what they were showing us was a given and that we should get it without explanation. I know Kripke said he hated expository dialogue, but sometimes its necessary. And that kind of “dump stuff into the audiences lap without explaining any of it” is par for the course for these writers. It is so THEM to get everything wrong and then treat it like it’s always been that way (rogue reapers! Sam waltzing into Hell…yep, still bitter:D).
And you’re right, it probably IS the MoC that is the real story here and not so much the demon Dean part. But that’s still no reason to throw away a perfectly good plot point through laziness and inattention, main story or not. This COULD have been an epic and important episode; a keystone to the remainder of the season and a crucial buildup to the MoC story and where it ends up going; all the pieces had been so perfectly set up for them by Black and especially Reichenbach. But it was botched, so now this ep will go down as a mediocre could-have-been and a waste of Jensen’s directorial talent.
In your point of view of course. I like the episode the same every time and all three together are the best. Also, I am on the other end and I guess with some others we get why, when, how, what without the explaining anvils hitting us or everything is explained. I would actually start to feel that they are thinking I am stupid if they would toss a manual and a book at my face to say why things happened like that and what reason. It is like telling someone this is the only way you are allowed to watch it. It would make me go bonkers in the long run.
In short, everything else has been explained on the other reviews what do I think so not repeating them here. Just saying I was fine with what they gave and rest is my own view. 🙂
– Lilah
It is interesting how we can be so different. I have watched this episode 3 times now and it gets better each time. I pick up on more detail. I’m not a Pollyanna that loves everything just because it has the SPN label (Man’s best friend, Bloodlines) but for whatever reason this episode worked for me in setting up the real story for Dean and Sam. And that looks like for me anyway is going to be how they deal with the MOC and what Crowley’s angle is going to be (still can’t get on board with the angels). For this writing team is was a satisfactory episode in the progression of the story. And we got Dr. Sexy Sam….:p
I thought Sam mentioning the blood type was meant to be more like a sarcastic joke. Thanks for the review Robin.
I may not understand, but if Sam cured a demon with his blood wouldn’t that mean that he has finished Trials? After all, he started them and almost completed. Or after a year break it doesn’t count any longer?
Maybe he needs to be glowing with trial juice? Kind of a thread left dangling but could be why he didn’t use his own blood.
Thanks for your thoughts Robin! I am glad you liked the episode. Me too. I am enjoying this season quite a bit, so far. I agree with you that Dean may not be all the way cured. It seemed a little too pat. I am suspicious. 🙂 It might be interesting to have two warring Deans in one body for awhile.
Sam said ‘I got your blood type’ which could easily have meant ‘blood that is suitable for you’ O is universal donor (in general), therefore it would be ‘your blood type’.
I don’t think it would have mattered since this is a magic solution and not a medical one, Sam was just wisecracking because he knew how tough this was going to be on both of them.
Anyway Jensen was asked about it today and his response was ‘erm, wut?’ basically. He said it was just a prop error.
I never did learn the POSITIVE/NEGITIVE blood type thing even though I have had over 20 transfusions.
so Lester in in hell BUT CROWLEY does NOT have the soul……[say what..]