Supernatural 9.13 "The Purge" Review: The Truth Hurts

    This week’s episode of Supernatural, “The Purge,” was written by Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder and directed by Phil Sgriccia. This writing team hasn’t impressed me in the past with episodes such as “My Heart Will Go On” or “Mannequin 3: The Reckoning.” The preview  of the episode lead me to believe that this was going to be a lighter, filler episode, played for laughs. However, I did like the duo’s fall episode “Dog Dean Afternoon,” and this episode managed to blend some lighter moments with a good monster of the week hunt and some much needed clarification of where the brothers are in terms of their relationship. The return of Sgriccia as director ensured that the scenes between the brothers were exceptional.

    A quick shout out to the VFX team for their work this week. The victims who were drained of their excess weight were a great effect as was the Pishtaco. Is it ever not skin-crawlingly creepy to have a monster have something come out of its mouth to feed on its victims?

    The monster of the week story followed the basic pattern that is familiar to Supernatural viewers. The first victim appears in the teaser before the title card, Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki) are alerted to something strange in Stillwater, Michigan and pose as FBI agents to get information from the local police. Their first lead proves to be a red herring before they get on the trail of the real monster. After identifying the monster and how to kill it, they chase it down and do just that.

    However, as with the best Supernatural episodes, this hunt resonates with much of what is transpiring between the brothers. At the center of the hunt are the two Pishtacos, a brother and sister and the sister’s husband. The sister has learned to control her appetite and pass easily as human but the brother cannot control his appetites and has had to be shoved further into the background away from the humans. Maritza’s love for her brother is what motivated her to try to help him, but he is ruled by his appetites and ruins the Spa for all of them and kills his sister’s husband to save himself. She tried to show him a better way, a way to co-exist. Given what we know of the spin-off, that it includes sympathetic monsters, Maritza is another sympathetic monster who simply wants to co-exist, much like Garth last week.

    It’s no accident that Dean is placed in the kitchen with Alonso (Joseph Julian Soria) or that we see evidence of his appetites – he’s back on the whiskey, seemingly a bottle a night, and eats the pudding laced with drugs. In fact, Maritza (Anabelle Acosta) and Larry (Corey Sevier) place Dean in the kitchen because of his excessive zeal over fitness – Dean has a hard time blending in as “regular” folk.

    There were lots of lighthearted moments. Dean wearing that hairnet and Sam teaching yoga was another one of them, and also demonstrated that Sam doesn’t blend in as well as he thinks he does either. I loved all the betrayed looks the spa-goers gave him as they exited the yoga class – they clearly had not expected to get a workout!

    The theme of family comes up again at the end of the hunt. Dean is determined to make it a “family affair” and kill Maritza after everyone finally leaves. Sam tells Dean that she doesn’t deserve to die – certainly not for what her brother did. He tells Dean that he doesn’t want to kill her because he has a heart, implying, of course, that Dean does not. She might be a monster but she helped save them by telling them how to kill her brother. Sam draws the comparison to if a hunter had tried to kill him when he was possessed by Gadreel. It wasn’t Sam’s fault he was possessed after all – it was Dean’s, but would Sam have deserved to die? Dean can’t argue with Sam’s logic and agrees to let Maritza live as long as she goes back to Peru. However, it’s clear from the reaction on Ackles’ face, that Dean is aware of the irony here.

    It was interesting that the victims were hollowed out by the monster – much as Sam was hollowed out by Gadreel. Maritza has just said that she is all alone now, and Acosta does a great job of showing how distraught she is over that. Is it possible, especially given the final scene that Dean views killing her as a mercy killing? Sparing her from being alone with no family left?

    Maritza’s failing to see how her brother was different from her and trying to save him, ended in the deaths of a number of people. She failed to see his true nature or to deal with it. In many ways, Sam and Dean have suffered from this very failing. The theme of “honesty” running throughout the episode resonates with the importance of acknowledging the truth, even when that truth is unpleasant or hurtful.

    There is another nice moment that resonates with the larger themes of the brothers. When they are explaining – as much as they can – to Sheriff Hanscum (Brianna Buckmaster) why they are “undercover,” she tells them why she’s at the spa. Hanscum’s husband left her because of her weight, saying she loved food more than him. Here again, her compulsive eating of the donuts which she shares with Dean, makes her an obvious comparison to him.

    When she tells them her husband left her, Ackles and Padalecki do a wonderful job of conveying without words the brothers’ different reactions. Dean clearly identifies with her feelings of loss. Sam seems more embarrassed and uncomfortable – both agree that Doug was a dick. Dean also clearly identifies with her declaration that she was in a dark place and guzzled her pain away – much as he is doing with alcohol at the beginning and end of the episode. Buckmaster was a terrific guest star. I adored her homage to Frances McDormand’s portrayal of Sheriff Marge Gunderson in Fargo.

    I’ve saved what will, no doubt, be the most debated scenes for the end of my review. The two main scenes are nicely bookended in the episode and both take place in the heart of any home – the kitchen – where Dean seems to have retreated. Both Padalecki and Ackles are outstanding in both these scenes.

    In the first scene we see that Dean is not sleeping and has returned to self-medicating with alcohol. He’s stayed up all night watching movies, researching, and clearly drinking. As Dean leaves the kitchen, Sam stops him and asks if he’s alright. Dean pauses on the threshold and turns back denying that anything could be the matter. Sam asks if it was what he’d said before, not stating it, clearly wanting Dean to repeat it to him to prove that Dean had, in fact, heard him. Dean does repeat that Sam said they couldn’t be brothers anymore. Sam doesn’t correct Dean, proving what many wanted to deny, that that was what he meant. In true Dean fashion, Dean denies that he’s at all bothered by it – that he doesn’t break that easy. Sam tells Dean that its good he understands and that Sam was just being honest. Dean continues to try to deceive both Sam and himself that he doesn’t care.

    Dean’s attempts to lash out at Sam are pretty juvenile at best, and while annoying, don’t have the impact of Sam’s honesty. He tells Sam he’s just being honest when he won’t let him questions the fitness employee because Sam is weird and awkward around girls. There’s also a nice contrast in the brother’s attitude toward honesty in that scene. Dean actually calls the victims correct weight as 180 when she’d listed it at 165 – saying that all women lie about their age and weight. Sam turns to Dean immediately and calls him on having told a waitress the previous week that he was 29. Dean just looks at him and agrees – not denying it, not necessarily seeing those ‘white’ lies as a bad thing. It’s no secret that Sam has never been comfortable with the lies they have to tell just to do their job – even in the “Pilot” he complains about them having to impersonate federal marshals, and his discomfort is also evident when he bumps into Sheriff Hanscum and he becomes completely flustered.

    The fact that Sam may not be being completely honest with himself or Dean is also evident in how upset Sam gets when Dean is drugged. He almost takes the cook’s (Brendon Zub) head off. If Zub seemed familiar, you may remember him as Johnny Campbell in “Exile on Main St.” There’s another interesting juxtaposition of the two brothers that underscores Sam’s ability to maintain some innocence even in their world when he doesn’t recognize the roofies and Dean does. Dean returns the favor of Sam rescuing him by rescuing Sam from Alonso – in a scene that was very reminiscent of the many times Sam was rescued by Dean from being strangled in season one.

    The final scene brings the brothers back together in the kitchen of the Bunker. Dean has just settled down with a new bottle, but he’s just opened it, so we can assume that what follows isn’t to be blamed on his being drunk. This time Dean stops Sam on the threshold by telling him that he saved him back at the Spa, just as he’d saved him at the Church and the hospital and telling him that he’d do it again. Sam then closes the gap and calls Dean on what Dean sees as his self-less drive to save his brother. Sam is not wrong to call Dean on saving Sam for selfish reasons – Dean’s fear of being alone. This isn’t news to anyone; we’ve known this since Dean told Sam this himself in season one.

    Sam’s logic falters in assuming that things would be significantly better if Dean had let him die, however. Would Kevin still be alive? Would Metatron have grown bored and come to earth anyway, gunning for Kevin? In all likelihood, Dean would also be dead by now, killed at Abaddon’s hand. Sam’s assertion that Dean is willing to sacrifice as long as he’s not the one being hurt ignores several of Dean’s choices – foremost of which is selling his soul for Sam’s life in season two. Again, Dean may have been guilty of not seeing what that would do to Sam, but he knew what it would do to him.

    However, Dean’s logic is flawed because he thinks he does things because they are “right.” But we’ve seen that Dean’s choices often turn out badly. This assertion also seems to fly in the face of Dean’s recent guilt over Kevin. Dean's belief that he helps more people than he hurts is also at the core of what keeps him going. This may be tough love on Sam's part to hurt his brother enough to really reach him, but it's still unclear exactly what Sam wants in the end. Perhaps it's as simple as Dean making better choices.

    When Dean turns the honesty tables on Sam and says that if the tables were turned, Sam would do exactly the same thing to save him if he were dying, Dean does not get the answer he was expecting. He clearly expected that Sam would say yes. But Sam painfully admits that he wouldn’t. He tells Dean that he would not do anything to prevent Dean’s death. Sam gets up and leaves the kitchen at that point – leaving Dean both physically and spiritually alone. The final shot of Dean is Ackles’ acting at its finest as Dean’s devastation shines through. Really, this entire final scene is some of the best acting we’ve seen from both actors in the run of the series, making this a very powerful scene – which will no doubt spark some strong fan reaction.  

    “The Purge” clearly refers to the hunt, but it also refers to the brothers really purging their thoughts and feelings during the episode. We may not like what they’ve said, but given the emphasis on honesty throughout the episode, it seems we are meant to take their words as stated. What did you think of the episode? I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions – I know there will be a lot of them. I urge you to be “honest” but respectful of each other’s opinions. Let me know what you thought in the comments below!