Supernatural – Recap & Review – You Can’t Handle the Truth

photo: cw

Supernatural
You Can’t Handle the Truth

Original Air Date: Oct 29, 2010

Alyssa Silva – TwoCents Reviewer
alyssa@thetwocentscorp.com

The truth doesn’t set you free if you’re Dean Winchester. In fact its bloody, gory and way too much to handle. You could even say it’s intense.

A string of strange suicides provides us with the catalyst we’ve been waiting for since the start of the season. The Goddess of Truth has descended upon a folksy town in Illinois, forcing people to tell the truth. Honesty isn’t really the best policy for the victims. One blows her brains out after her sister tells her to and another gets drilled to death in a dentist chair after confessing to statutory rape. The bodies serve as tributes at the altar of Veritas, who bears a striking resemblance to Zatanna from Smallville. In true Winchester fashion, Dean gets the veritaserum after a shot of tequila and the results are, well, not what I thought they would be.

Dean’s remarks about Sam are heartbreaking. I’ve been with this show from the start, and you have been to, you know just how much Dean loves his brother. He’s sacrificed his life and so much more to protect the only family he’s got left. So to hear him say that Sam makes his skin crawl, that he can’t even be in the same car or room as Sam, that what he really wants to do is shoot Sam in his sleep…I think we’ve reached the faultline that’s been dormant since the last season. The look on his face when he realizes that the man standing in front of him is really just Sam, not Lucifer or some kind of doppelganger, was a man in anguish. After being hexed with the truth voodoo, Dean confronted Sam about letting him get turned last episode. I knew Sam was lying when he said he just froze. Dean seemed to want to hold on to that last shred of hope and accepted Sam’s words, reminding us of how much of a blind spot Sam still remains for him.

Also it was interesting to hear why Sam’s ruthless edge has Dean so disturbed. It seems Sam reminds him of himself – a killer who doesn’t deserve to have Lisa and Ben in his life. All that self-doubt he’s been harbouring since he got back from Hell comes to the boil in his confession to Veritas. The talk about blood, about only knowing how to slice throats, shows us that one year of an apple pie life has done nothing to erase the scars left behind. This, I think, was reflected in the episode when Dean was consistently seen with a drink. That’s a coping mechanism right there.

As for Sam, kudos to Jared for making Sam so…cold. Veritas told Sam that he wasn’t human. Sam finally confesses to Dean that he had let him get turned, that they needed to get inside the nest. It was alright because they had the cure. It didn’t matter whether Dean could have been killed or not. Ever since he’s come back Sam’s been a better hunter. Why? Because he can’t feel anything. At all.

He tells Dean that he needs help and while before we would have expected Dean to succumb to the unhealthy codependent relationship everyone in the show keeps reminding him off, Dean just snaps. Instead of helping his brother, he beats him bloody. It was difficult to stomach how far these two brothers have fallen apart from each other when before they were necessary for the other to function.

It’s a tone that I’m actually looking forward to see develop. I can already feel that this season might be the swan song to the series. If it is, I’m hoping for a happy ending for these two. But I’m not holding my breath.

What did you think of the episode? Were you amused of Bobby’s secret love of pedicures and bad reality television? What about Cas and how he’s been doing so-called regrettable things? Give me your TwoCents!

Next Week: Family Matters