Supernatural 6.12 “Like a Virgin” Review

Slaying the Dragon

Dean returns with his half of a sword and Sam elects not to tell him he knows the truth now. Instead, they head to the sewers, find a big pile of gold jewelry (which Dean later appropriates for himself), and find the missing girls in a cave. They also find two dragons. Except the dragons can also shape-shift into human shapes. Sam manages to kill one, but the other disappears.

The boys head back to Bobby’s house, where Sam tells Dean he knows the truth now and he’s so incredibly sorry for what he did while soulless. He wants to make amends, but Dean doesn’t want Sam to do anything to jeopardize the wall Death put up in his head, and explains how serious the situation is. But Sam won’t be derailed, he needs to make up for what he did to Dean and Bobby in particular.

The Next Big Bad

Bobby soon calls the boys inside to talk about a book they found in the dragon’s lair. He explains that this very ancient book relates to Purgatory. Specifically, how to find Purgatory, open a door to it and get something out. Cut to the dragon who escaped meeting up with another dragon, who has a van full of virgins. They take one of the, enter some sort of cave and then hurl her into a really, really deep pit. After some chanting, the girl reappears – floating through the air.

Who is she? As Bobby explains, this is the ‘˜mother’. Presumably the mother that the alpha vampire mentioned back in the episode ‘Family Matters’. This is the ‘Mother of All’. As she appears in front of the dragons, she admonishes them for keeping her waiting, then says they have a lot to do.

Relief, Thy Name is Supernatural

I called up my friend Tamara, who wrote my Supernatural midseason review with me, and also had my sister watching the episode with me, and the three of us are in agreement. We were incredibly pleased with this episode. It felt like classic Supernatural. Tamara gushed about ‘my sweet, earnest Sam’in a baby voice. ‘He’s trying so hard!’she cooed to me when I asked whether she was happy that Sam was back. (Note: Tamara has complained and insisted that I tell all of you that she’s also very smart and said brilliant things about the episode – between the cooing and gushing).

What I particularly liked about Sam’s return is that it seems as if everything that happened in seasons 4 and 5 happened, but the bridges that the boys mended at the end of season 5 seem to have held. So Sam isn’t behaving like the petulant younger brother that marked most of his blood-drinking days leading up to becoming Lucifer’s vessel. Instead, he’s behaving more like season 2 Sam. But it doesn’t feel like a regression, it feels like the brothers’relationship has legitimately healed.

And Dean was so incredibly happy to have his real brother back again. We all agreed that Bobby was behaving unnecessarily harsh towards Sam. Yes, Sam tried to kill him. But I feel like the writers didn’t properly define what it meant not to have a soul. We saw Soulless Sam act with no thoughts to morality, but we also saw him exhibit feelings. I was incredibly frustrated throughout the first half of the season that the ‘rules’about having/not having a soul weren’t really laid out. So Bobby’s anger towards Sam seems harsh to me, because we’re really not all that sure how much of the real Sam was left behind in his soulless vessel. Plus, do you think Bobby would act the same towards his favorite kid Dean if Dean had done what Sam did? Probably not.

Dean’s decisions to lie to Sam throughout the episode would have, at one time, felt wrong. But here it was justified. He was so scared of triggering Sam’s memories and destroying the wall. But Sam’s decision to tell Dean that he remembered felt like it went a really long way to further healing the brothers’fractured relationship. The two of them spent most of the episode joking with each other, but they were also supportive of each other and were eventually honest. There are no more divergent agendas between them, even if Dean isn’t really on board with Sam’s plan to make up for what he did while soulless. They’re both on the same page where it counts.

I loved the comedy of this episode Both of the boys were back to being their old selves again and the episode felt like a cool drink of water after a long drought. The truth is that a lot of things happened in this episode: the overall story was propelled forward, the brothers’relationship was re-established and it provided us with some big answers. But at no time did the episode ever really feel rushed or haphazard. Kudos to the writers for that.

The Mother of All

This is probably the only part of the episode that bothered me a little. I feel like it took a bit too long to get to this point and to learn the identity of this season’s ‘˜big bad’. Because of that, the gravity of the situation seems to be less than it should be. I don’t buy the danger of this mother of monsters like I bought the dangers posted by Azazel, Lilith and Lucifer, for example (but this is due to how long it took to introduce her, I think). I’m also concerned that there’s too few episodes left in the season (with a few of them being stand-alone) to properly give the overall mythology the attention it probably deserves.

On the other hand, I was thrilled about this episode and feel like the rest of the season has more promise than it did before the midseason finale.

Watch a promo for the next new episode of Supernatural on February 11.

clarissa @ tvovermind.com
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