Supernatural 13x03 EARLY Early Access!
Added 2025-09-24 13:00:14 +0000 UTC
Comments
Parallels abound with this one, yes. This episode is drawing the clear poetry of Sam and Jack’s respective situations rhyming. The stanzas have the similar beats. I feel Sam’s line of he knows what it feels like to feel like you don’t belong. To be afraid of the darkness inside and fear who you are and what you can do. Jesus, that line is a bit too real. So, he is the best man to help Jack as he knows what Jack is feeling. Maybe not down to every single tiny little detail, but definitely, as you say, Sam can see past the powers, past his own fears and grief and pain, to see who Jack is: Just a kid, scared like we all are, and needs help. I also would buy that book that Sam bought. Saw that, and said, “Probably a smart call.” I get Jack’s pain too of when Sam is sort of hovering, and Jack can’t quite achieve what Sam is asking. Brings back some memories. And good on Sam to cut Jack the break. And well said on how Sam knows that you can’t just cut off that which is such a big part of you. I KNEW you’d greatly love the scene where Sam calls Dean out on the hypocrisy, even going so far as to remind Dean that their father held the position of Dean should put one in Sam’s head, and said position was intractable and adamantine. This whole ordeal taps into the old wound, and yeah, you can tell it’s healthy for Sam to get it off his chest. Dean’s not ready to hear it, but good on Sam for saying it. I say good for Dean that he works a case with Jody; get some good godmother time in with Jody. Ok, yes, Jody is likely not literally the boys’ godmother, but like I say Bobby is their dad, and Charlie is their sister, Jody is very much like an aunt to them, and she very much acts like their godmother, that I just bestow her the title. Rotten for Dean to get hit with Missouri’s death, good last stand though she had, and it brought to mind one scene from the third Matrix film, which was great. Going to be perhaps the tiniest bit mean, in that you say that Dean “is a far cry from Mr. Mental Health.”, my dry response is, “You’re expecting an argument?” I deeply know the low both boys felt with Bobby, then there’s the low Dean was in following John’s death. His go to is apathy and rage. And as you say, he feels he doesn’t deserve the hope, and hope is too terrifying, especially if it ends up false, followed by the irreparable harm that it would cause. One bead of hope is he’s on the rage side more than the apathy side of the equation, which is good, it’s something. Like a wise old woman said in Star Wars, “Apathy is death, worse than death, because at least a rotting corpse feeds the beasts and insects.” Here, Dean is in rage mode, and though not healthy, it’s good, as it shows that he’s not checked out yet. There is just the tiniest seed of hope that Sam is right that he’s just burying because he can’t face it yet. The trauma is manifesting in the differing ways. Great how both the boys have the messy parts of the dilemma. Like the difficult thing of Dean accusing Sam of wanting to use Jack to get their mom back, and Sam never denies it. It is certainly something Sam is hoping for. But his greater concern feels more that he wants to help Jack. Or you have Dean reminded that he said he’d kill Jack, when Dean does look regretful, and states that it wasn’t quite that cut and dry, his talk with Jack. Both of them dealing with conflicting feelings. Which my one recurring joke is that with Jack, since we’re three episodes into the season now, and there has still been no Jerry Goldsmith music playing, I’d say we’re probably in the clear with Jack going Damien. Cautiously optimistic as Jess said.
Thomas Corp
2025-09-24 18:03:05 +0000 UTCAnd as I understand it, Jim wasn’t meant to be the major star in this that he ended up being. From what I heard Jim describe, he said Bobby was pretty much a one-off, but they liked working with him, and after that first guest spot, the fans liked him a lot, so Bobby kept coming back, and we get the great many episodes with the boys and their dad. Seeing Missouri in that sort of parental role would have been nice. One of those things of you’re perfectly fine with how it played out, yet the alternative is genuinely something very good as well.
Thomas Corp
2025-09-24 17:34:38 +0000 UTCI absolutely love the parallels in this episode, and all the call backs to the early seasons. What an incredible way to bring us back to early seasons, when Sam was dealing with his own psychic journey, and his own abilities, and tie it into what Jack is now going through, along with Patience. I've said before how similar Jack and Sam are and I feel like this episode is really driving that point home for us, reminding us of the place Sam used to be when he was younger, so that his speech to Jack, about having that darkness inside you, feeling scared of who you are, what you can do, hits us that much harder. Sam is probably the only person on the planet who can fully empathize with Jack, and he is exactly who Jack needs right now. Because Sam made all the wrong choices, once, and he knows where that path ends. But Sam has also made all the right choices, and he knows how hard that can be, the consequences, intended or not, of those choices. And Sam can see past the powers, past his own fears and grief and pain, to see who Jack is, the scared kid alone in the world who needs a helping hand, who needs acceptance and trust, and, yes, a person to guide them, and help them not hurt anyone. Sam never got that, not even from Dean, not really. Hell, this episode, a decade later, we still see Dean's approach to psychic powers, and abilities is... ignore them, push them away, pretend they don't exist, and honestly it probably comes from a place of fear and not understanding. But Sam gets it, and he knows the damage that cutting off a part of yourself can cause. I love that Sam is protecting Jack from that history repeating itself, by shielding him from the mistakes his own family made with him. And I do love that Sam confronted Dean. That Sam forced Dean to acknowledge that he used to be Jack, and Dean is doing exactly what John did to him. Even if Dean wasn't ready to hear what Sam was saying, I think Sam really needed to get it off his chest. That trauma, of his own father ordering his brother to kill him, needs to be acknowledged if Sam is going to keep Jack from enduring that pain as well. And Dean... Dean is just taking hits nonstop right now. Losing Missouri was a devastating blow to Dean, who is already very clearly struggling. And we all know Dean is a far cry from Mr. Mental Health. We've seen Dean this low a few times, after Bobby's death, and his father's, and this is textbook Dean when he is struggling. Pain and fear always manifest as either apathy, as Jess pointed out, or rage, and it sort of goes back and forth between the two. And I think with Dean he needs to not let himself hope, because a) he feels like he doesn't deserve hope, like he is too blame for not saving everybody, and b) if he lets himself go there, I think he thinks he isn't strong enough to come back from it if his hope gets crushed. If he lets himself think his mom is alive, only to find out she isn't, it would destroy him. If he thinks Jack is good, and he goes dark side, it would destroy him. He is shielding himself from reliving some horrific trauma and emotional devastation, because he has already gone through losing his mother. He watched Sam go dark side (a few times actually, between the multiple possessions, the demon blood, the soullessness), and the PTSD and depression and anxiety that Dean is experiencing is forcing himself to shut down, to close himself off to reopening that kind of wound, and exposing himself to that kind of agony again. It's really interesting to watch these two very traumatized boys take their pain, and history, and, lets be real, they both have severe PTSD, but react entirely differently to the same circumstances. It is a really sharp contrast to the brothers, and is setting up for a very interesting rest of the season, especially if they keep on these separate paths of handling what's going on around them
Elisia
2025-09-24 16:28:59 +0000 UTCSo fun seeing Missouri again, absolutely adore her! Fun fact, I'm not sure if you knew or not, but Missouri was originally supposed to be the "Bobby" figure to Sam and Dean in the early seasons, but then she got booked on Grey's Anatomy, so Supernatural brought in Jim Beaver instead and changed the supportive, guiding older figure role to the Bobby we all know and love.
Elisia
2025-09-24 16:10:47 +0000 UTC
