A man, Terry leaves church when something comes over him
and he commits a rather unpleasant suicide with a candle stick. It was actually
pretty unbloody for the traditional opening murder
The Winchesters are on the case of the candlestick-disembowelling
suicide, apparently one of three – and Sam is distracted probably by the Mark
of Cain. The only connection they find is that they’re all Catholic.
Nun intermission! Nuns and guy talk. Yes, that’s rather
random
Time for the next victim – only with a twisty. This time
the guy’s wife is possessed by a gaseous spirit when they leave church and she
stabs him in the stomach rather than him committing suicide. The Winchesters go
to the church to question the priest and establish that all of the dead have
recently gone to confession though not what they confessed because of that
whole confidentiality thing. Instead one of the guy-talk nuns, Sister Matthias,
acts as tour guide. She has the gossip about the latest victim cheating on his
wife and some insight on why she became a nun – because life was bad and she
needed a change (somewhat simplified) which resonates with Mark of Cain bound
Dean. Or maybe because she’s pretty and he’s Dean. Yes Dean is interested in
the “hot nun”
Brief run down of the case has Dean deciding that all the
men have, in some ways, wronged the women in their lives which links to them
all going to confession. So Dean goes to confession... he doesn’t exactly take it all that seriously,
though the call to soul searching gets through to Dean and he opens up about a
teeny tiny fraction of his vast, eternal angst. He touches on his constant
expectation of death, how that has become very real rather than an abstract and
how, facing that death, he wishes he had lived differently, experienced things
differently. Dean also says he believes in a god – but he doesn’t think god
believes in them
Back to Sister Matthias talking guys with an Italian nun,
Isabella – the guy in question being a great artist called Pierro who she posed
for. In 1520. She became so mopey over the guy not living her back that her dad
threw her in a convent which seems like an overly harsh (and, of course,
partriarchal) response even if unrequited love angst is so very very annoying.
As Dean leaves confession, a ghostly Isabella appears
outside – looking like the same gassy ghost that killed the others. She doesn’t
go for Dean – she goes for the priest. Sister Matthias finds Isabella’s old
journal which describes leaving the nunnery to find Pierro – and find him
having sex with a woman. She stabs him repeatedly.
Sister Matthias calls in the Winchesters – it seems she’s
quite used to restless spirits in the church and not all that bothered by them,
but then most of them aren’t murderous. Isabella was burned for witchcraft so her
bones don’t need burning. They spend a really ridiculous amount of time
wondering what her tether could be while waving around her precious journal.
Dean wants to burn everything but Sam does more reading
and discovers Piero mixed Isabella’s blood with his paint because Creepy.
Isabella takes it to the next level and actually cut off a finger tip to add to
his paint, grinding it up. Uckies (and it seems to horrify Piero as well).
Dean and Sister Matthias go ghost hunting only to find
the priest dead and Sister Matthias becomes possessed. Sam burns the painting
before Dean gets stabbed
Alas we must return to the trainwreck of family drama
that is hell with Rowena being all stroppy and bad tempered in her continued
manipulation of Crowley. She’s annoyed that Crowley won’t intervene with the
grand coven for her and willing to throw many tantrums until he does.
Crowley folds and he has Olivette leader of the Grand
Coven brought to Rowena in chains. Rowena and Olivette are not fans of each
other. Apparently of all the many things Olivette doesn’t like about Rowena,
her sleeping with a non-magical man and having Crowley is top of the list.
Rowena wants something from the coven – but the Coven has apparently been much
reduced after the Men of Letters pretty much destroyed them by using the church
and mob to hunt them down before stealing and hoarding all their shiny
treasures. Olivette also knows that Sam and Dean are (technically) Men of
Letters. How convenient.
Of course, now that Olivette has confessed that the Grand
Coven is pretty powerless, Rowena realises she doesn’t have to hide from them
or fear them any more.
Now Rowena has something else to manipulate Crowley with.
Time for the wrap up with Sam offering to help Dean if he
wants – since Dean is the master of burying his pain and, again, saying that he
refuses to accept the inevitability of Dean’s death like he does. Dean isn’t
convincing in his agreement
So we’re back on Dean’s angst train again. And it’s a
good train, the seats are comfy, it has great views – but we’ve kind of done
this journey 100 times before and it’s becoming more over extended than this
metaphor.
There are interesting new elements – like the idea of
Dean always having accepted his inevitable death, but kind of as an abstract or
immediate. He always knew he would die violently some day and he’s had plenty
of occasions where he had every reason to expect to die in the next hour or so
(and even some occasions where he DID die). But this is different – it’s
accepting his death as a concrete, approaching reality but with enough time for
him to actually dwell on it and reflect. It’s a nuance but an important one. But
still what on any other show I would praise for nuance, on Supernatural it has happened just a bit too much
Dean and faith is a tricky one – and, when examined, a
pretty hopeless one. After all, Dean can’t say he doesn’t know about god
because he’s met several. Ok, Supernatural is an extremely Judeo-Christian
focused show and those gods are generally, and dismissively, presented as
faking to various degrees, but he has met several angels who have confirmed the
existence of god. He has fought the Metatron, he has held the Angel tablet… but
he has done all that without god. There has been no divine intervention, even
the angels say god is missing (and are hardly benevolent beings) and he has
faced all kinds of apocalyptic evil and not had any divine help (though quite a
lot of hindrance). Dean believes – but doesn’t get any comfort from it because
what he believes in is absent. Is there any hope in believing in a divine that
is supposed to care but doesn’t?
On Isabella – I am glad to see that Isabella blamed the
man she considered to have wronged her rather than the woman as is too often
the case in fiction. What I also found interesting was the ambiguousness of her
story… was she a woman shamefully used, exploited and led on by a man who
cheated on her? Or a woman who became dangerously obsessed with a man who didn’t
like her romantically and made that clear?
And, at last, Rowena's endless meandering storyline seems to be finally reaching something resembling a point
