Thursday, April 23, 2015

Supernatural 10x19 "The Werther Project" [Contributor: Deena Edwards]


"The Werther Project"
Original Airdate: April 22, 2015

Sam needs to save his brother. Rowena wants her son dead. Working together with a witch (not to mention one who has tried to kill both you and your brother) is just begging for trouble, but it’s seemingly the only hope Sam has left.

While Dean has taken off solo to get rid of a vamp nest, Sam and Rowena meet up to discuss terms. The witch agrees to help him translate the spellbook which could possibly hold the cure to the Mark of Cain, but in return, she needs him to kill Crowley. Desperate, Sam doesn’t hesitate to agree, and she informs him that in order for her to be able to translate the spells, she needs another book -- a codex that belonged to Nadya, one of the witches from the Grand Coven. Nadya was killed long ago, by none other than a Man of Letters. Rowena advises him that he should start looking at home, and so he does, but not before rushing to meet back up with Dean, hoping to reach him before the eldest brother does something stupid. But don’t they always?

Taking out the Mark’s hunger on monsters seems to be the only thing able to take the edge off, which is why Dean doesn’t even wait for Sam before tearing into the vampire nest, managing to take down six of the fanged creatures all on his own before his brother even arrives. Dean shrugs it off. What’s done is done. But it’s obvious that Sam is bothered by it. Sure, Dean is all grown up, and he can take care of himself, but with the dangers of the Mark still looming, one slip-up could put all of Sam’s work to save Dean to a quick, violent end.

When they return to the bunker, Sam immediately buries himself back into Men of Letters files, stumbling on a recording of one of their old sessions that reveals the codex has been hidden in something called a Werther Box. It was an invention created by one of the members, armed with a deadly “alarm” system which causes hallucinations that drive whoever is under its influence to suicide. It still resides in a Missouri home, where it was buried, responsible for the death of an entire family that lived there many decades ago. All members of the family killed themselves, except for the daughter, Suzie. She continued to live in the home after their deaths, raised by her aunt there until she also met her unfortunate end with the box. Suzie lives there to this day, which Sam finds out the hard way when his attempt to break into the home ends with him immediately returning to his car after the woman points a gun through the mail slot down at… well, at a place one doesn’t want a gun being pointed at.

No sooner than Sam climbs back into the vehicle, Dean shows up, having tracked Sam down by taking a etching off of Sam’s notepad. He admits what he’d done before was reckless, apologizing for it and saying that Sam doesn’t have to do this case alone, whatever this case is. Sam doesn’t come completely clean, only telling his brother about the Werther Box and leaving out the tidbits of information about what’s inside of it and why he needs it. While Dean pretends to be part of the neighborhood watch in order to gain access inside the house and distract Suzie as best he can, Sam works on breaking inside through the back door, venturing down into the basement where he attempts to disenchant the box. It doesn’t work, of course, and he ends up setting the “alarm” off, releasing a strange cloud of green smoke out into the rest of the house and into Dean and Suzie. The woman immediately begins to hallucinate her dead family, who goade her into taking her own life a few minutes later. Sam tries to run to her aid, but he’s too late. Rowena appears to help just as the hallucination of Suzie is attempting to do the same to Sam. Once she’s dispelled, the two take off to the basement, reading the inscription on the box. To break the curse on it, it requires blood. Men of Letters blood.

Meanwhile, Dean finds himself in a very familiar place, with an old friend. Wandering through a hallucination of Purgatory with Benny, he walks in circles trying to find a way out. He wants to leave, wants to stop fighting, but the Mark has other plans. It wants a fight. Purgatory, as terrible of a place as it is, is some form of a “happy place” for Dean, as Benny puts it. It’s not exactly Disneyland, of course, but it’s a place where he doesn’t have to go looking for a fight -- the fights come to him, and he can kill without consequence. Benny points out that there’s also another option, which Dean immediately dismisses. Despite that, you can tell that it is something that’s crossed Dean’s mind once before. This is Dean Winchester, after all. Self-sacrifice goes hand in hand with the lying and the self-loathing, and with all they have gone through and continue to go through, it isn’t entirely difficult to imagine them looking for another way out of it all at one point or another. He admits that if it came down to it -- taking his own life so that Sam would not have to -- he would do it, but it wasn’t going to be today. He was going to keep fighting, after all. “Killing” Benny, he breaks out of the hallucination, rushing down to the basement.

As it turns out, the Rowena there is just yet another hallucination, pushing Sam to the point of draining himself nearly to death. Dean shows up just in time, giving the box the rest of the blood it requires in order to open it.

The codex now in his hands, Sam returns to Rowena, handing it over to her. Though this time, though, it seems he’s smart enough to at least have thought things through. He shackles her wrists together, chaining her to the room that she’s in. What, did she really think he was going to set a centuries old witch free with both dangerously important books and just hope for the best? She’s definitely not going to be happy about this, and neither is Dean when he finds out.

Memorable Moments/Quotes
  • “Looking at me like that.” “Like what?” “Like I’m some sort of a -- a diseased killer puppy.” 
  • “I’m over 300 years old. Beauty sleep isn’t optional.”
  • “Tall, white fella… pretty hair.” His hair was nice this episode.
  • “We had an agreement, giant!”
  • “That says something, doesn’t it? Werther splits us up in there. Within an hour we’re both on the brink of death? … The universe is trying to tell us something we both should already know. We’re stronger together than apart.” You guys should start actually listening to the universe every now and again.

1 comment:

  1. The college football season has evolved into a three-part series of events. The Bowl season concludes the annual gridiron campaigns, the conference season determines who attends which bowl games, and the season-opening "games" are designed to - well - who knows what they are designed to do. Although it escapes understanding how Nebraska improves its performance on the field by wiping out Ball State, these games actually count in poll calculations Took off to team up

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