As Samuel is preparing the cure Sam is there, eager, methodical, and all he is interested in is what Dean did see. He doesn’t ask how he, Dean, feels, he is focused on another task – finding the Alpha. I’m grateful that Dean shuts him up, because I don’t know how I would bear any more of that bleakness, devoid of the emotional support he used to offer to Dean whenever necessary. 

‘L’chaim’, to life, he says, cringingly, and swallows the potion Samuel mixed for him. Oh, yes, he will live. But after turning back with vomiting black goo and the vampire in him dying a agonizing death he might have wished, for just a moment, to have died earlier. This looks horrific. And the vision of his last minutes before being turned burns in his memory (and ends in about the closest close up ever, much like that one on Janet Leigh in Hitchcock’s Psycho). He knows that Sam stood there and did nothing while Boris was feeding him his vampire blood. After watching that scene over and over I finally saw an instant where it actually might have been possible for Dean to actually catch a glimpse at Sam, through lidded eyes and half conscious. And those images were stored in his unconscious, to be triggered in a moment of sheer agony. 

As Dean returns from the bath room, cleaned up and somewhat his former self, Sam greets him with a tight hug and ‘Hey, Dean, how do you feel?!’ … oh, yes, I forgot. This is the new Supernatural. All Sam wants to know is what Dean saw in the nest, his air all strategic excitement for good vampire intelligence… the Sam I encountered over the last seasons would have rushed to his brother, expressing relief and concern. 
 
Instead, what we get is someone closely resembling a lying cad. His ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘of course, Dean’ are stereotypical, clichéd phrases devoid of the emotion that would usually accompany them and make them genuine. 

I love Sammy. I always have. But this Sam is giving me a hard time loving him. I’m trying to imagine how I would react to a guy I love like that in real life, if I experienced similar moments of being let down or deceived. My natural reaction usually is to listen to the other’s explanation. To listen whether I find any truth there, since loving someone means to embrace his dark side, too. At least to me it does. And, well, I’d most likely give him one good slap.

But slowly I’m reaching a point where it becomes too hard to bear this development, although I am so very proud of Jared’s marvellous acting skills. Again, he shows a lot of courage by treading this path which is tough for an actor to dismantle a well-loved character in this manner. 

I don’t want to lose faith in Sam, but I’m going to need a good explanation. And soon. Because this emotional turmoil I’m getting thrown into since the first episode of this season is messing me up. This show entered my soul in a way I had never expected and I didn’t protect myself well enough.  Watching the writers pile even more agony, guilt and torment on the protagonists’ shoulders is more than I want to ingest every week. It might be only a tv show, but it does something to me. 

I still live in hope that we will be given a satisfying answer. Soon.

By all means we’re given an astounding episode that keeps the minds of its audience reeling, with fascinating cinematography and nuanced lighting. A story that depleted and finished me to a point I was hardly able to breathe. That alone is amazing for a show that has never ceased to amaze me for more than five years now. And the acting here can’t be commended highly enough. I am stunned, really.

I’m left in about the same state of confusion as Dean is. Noticing the changes in Sam, trying to make sense of them, being utterly shocked and betrayed and somewhat disheartened at finding what he is capable of.

I’m chewing on essential questions that shake the foundations of our show. For five seasons now it was built on the importance of family and the power of the unconquerable love of the brothers. ‘In the end they chose family’ was one of the closing messages of Swan Song. 

There are elements of it here, but the core of Supernatural, the caring relationship of the Winchester brothers, has suffered serious harm to an extent of almost becoming unbearable. 

I do hope that Lucifer’s words in The End that no matter what they did they would always end up at each other’s’ throats with Lucifer as the victor will not hold true in the twisted version of a break-up of the brothers’ deep bond. 

Personally, I will try to calm my mind and wait for the next episode before losing heart, as I trust there will be some answers there. Well, I need them. I suppose we all do. 
 

‘It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us’

(Norman MacLean)