S04.E09: I Know What You Did Last Summer

[DittyDotDot]

Sam and Dean meet Anna, a psychiatric patient who can hear angels and fight to protect her from demons.

 

Another conflicting episode from S4. There's quite a bit to like, but there's also quite a bit that I could careless about too. Starting with the negative so I can end on a positive: don't care for flashbacks in general, but can roll with them if they actually inform story--I don't think they tell us anything we don't already know, so I could have lived without them altogether. Firstly, Sam already told us he was messed up and had tried everything he could think of to get Dean out of Hell and we already knew that he was sleeping with Ruby given that she was half nekkid and her underthings were strewn around Sam's room in Lazarus Rising. And if the flashbacks actually lined up with explaining why Sam trusted Ruby, I would have been fine with it all, but Ruby saving Sam's life really only tells me she, once again, was making sure her asset didn't die before he did whatever it was she wanted him to do. And her changing tactics and trying to be more like Dean just spoke of manipulation to me--still never trusted Ruby and was even more sure she was up to no good. And, finally, I personally, found the sex scene to be awkwardly filmed and not all that sexy, but Dean's reaction to Sam oversharing is rather priceless, so I guess I'm cool with it.

 

Now the good. I love the pool hustling in the beginning, I love them jumping out of a window and I love, love, love them patching themselves up after the fight.  I think these are things that Sera always wrote well; finding these little moments and seeding them in so they aren't just sitting around barfing exposition. I also like the idea of Anna and liked Julie McNiven as Anna in this episode. She had that milky white skin and this innocence that I think works well for this version of Anna.

 

And, they left me wanting to know why the angels wanted Anna; meaning I was interested and invested in the story. So overall, I think the good outweighs the bad and I'm left feeling satisfied but still wanting more.

 

 

ETA: Sorry to keep harping on the flashbacks, but I think they really missed the boat on what I needed to know about Sam. I didn't need to learn how he started sleeping with Ruby, that's kinda intuitive, IMO. I think this should have been the opportunity to explain to us how the hell

Ruby convinced Sam to take his first swig of demon blood. Did Ruby say, "hey Sam, you know that demon blood that's dormant in your system, all you need to do is drink more of it and you can kill demons," and Sam was like "okey dokey, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable course of actions so sign me up for drinking sulfuric tasting blood and contaminating myself further"?  Seriously, that's one of those WTF moments that they've never explained to me. .

Oh crap, just realized this is technically a spoiler, sorry.

Edited September 16, 2014 by DittyDotDot

[AwesomO4000]

Since there was some debate over these episodes in the survival game, I was looking forward to my getting to them in rewatch to see if my impressions about them were as I remembered, and for the most part, they were. As I remembered, I found this to be the better episode by quite a bit for a lot of the reasons @DittyDotDot has already mentioned, and I'll add in a few more..

 

For the most part, I agree with you about the flashbacks in this episode @DittyDotDot. I definitely wish they would've told more of what we didn't already know, including what you mentioned above, but I also wanted an explanation of how Dean ended up buried where he did and felt cheated out of a Sam burying Dean scene. However I think I was just so happy to finally be getting some Sam point of view that I was willing to accept anything at this point, and apparently Dean needed to hear all this particular stuff for some reason rather than the stuff that I was interested in, and obviously Sam wasn't about to tell Dean about

the blood-drinking stuff.

So even though, as you mentioned, this was stuff we already guessed, and it should've been apparent to Dean that Sam would've been devastated by Dean's dying - I mean duh, Dean - and so was therefore going to be vulnerable to being influenced by demon Ruby - remember when you made a deal with a demon, Dean? - and so, yeah, her "saving him" and promising to help him kill Lilith was pretty much going to be as we expected.

 

And yes, obviously Ruby was manipulating him, but I looked at it - and the flashbacks at least did help me to understand this a little - that Sam didn't really care. As long as he got to kill Lilith and perhaps erase some of that failure, he didn't much care if he had to be manipulated to do it. He was just too low at that point to give a shit, and part of that I think was due to him knowing what kind of fate awaited him. I've seen criticisms before of "wow, it didn't take Sam long to fall completely off the wagon, etc" but I, myself, think that was helped along by "Mystery Spot." Sam had already lived this and knew what he was likely to become, and along comes Ruby offering a "purpose" and a way to, in Sam's mind at least, get some revenge and some tiny sense of accomplishment from all of his failure, and if he had to sell some of his soul, dignity, whatever to get that - and it was obvious from the flashbacks that he was - then so be it. And apparently by the time Dean returned, it was too late and Sam was already too into his mission - and of course Ruby had very early on added the "Lilith is going to kill people, cause a crap load of worldly harm, etc, and you're the only one who can stop her" story to her argument (as we saw in the flashbacks) and so of course Sam had latched on to that "I can do good" part.

 

The sex scene - is it awful of me that I found it just a bit sexy? I don't know, I guess I just found Ruby and Sam's scene a bit more elicit than the the the upcoming one. I also appreciated Jared's acting here. He made Sam seem into it - you could see where he resists and then just falls over the edge - and I like a sex scene where it's not all about the woman, but the guy seems to be having a good time, too. *shrug* I guess I'm not very romantic about that kind of thing with "love scenes", especially with my television shows and movies. I don't really much care about the adoring looks - I wanna be convinced that the man and woman are having a "good time" if you catch my drift and that both are participating towards that goal. And Ruby and Sam appeared to be having a "good time" and both were working towards that end.

 

I agree with all of your good stuff above @DittyDotDot, so I won't repeat. I liked the way Sam and Dean at first bickered about the case and then went about trying to find out more as it became increasingly obvious something was definitely up after all. I also liked badass, non-apologetic Castiel here as well. I agree that the mystery about Anna was engaging and I wanted to know more. On to part 2...

[GirlyGeek]

During this episode, I'm so busy trying to figure out if we, the audience, are supposed to believe that Dean changes his mind about RUBY and believes she is trying to help...?

... Or if we're supposed to think he sees right through her even more so after Sam's flashbacks, and just adjusts his tactics to pretend like he trusts her for 'saving Sam's life ' while Dean was  in hell? 

It seems to me like he realizes that Sam is in too deep to see the HUGE amount of manipulation going on, but Dean also realizes that if he pushes too hard against Ruby, he's going to push Sam away even more.

i honestly don't think I know the answer.  Option number one is dumb cause Dean should know better, but option 2 gives the writers too much credit, IMO and is subtle, which isn't a strong suit in this show.

[DittyDotDot]

8 hours ago, GirlyGeek said:

During this episode, I'm so busy trying to figure out if we, the audience, are supposed to believe that Dean changes his mind about RUBY and believes she is trying to help...?

... Or if we're supposed to think he sees right through her even more so after Sam's flashbacks, and just adjusts his tactics to pretend like he trusts her for 'saving Sam's life ' while Dean was  in hell? 

It seems to me like he realizes that Sam is in too deep to see the HUGE amount of manipulation going on, but Dean also realizes that if he pushes too hard against Ruby, he's going to push Sam away even more.

i honestly don't think I know the answer.  Option number one is dumb cause Dean should know better, but option 2 gives the writers too much credit, IMO and is subtle, which isn't a strong suit in this show.

Maybe it's a little of both though? I think Dean wants to believe Sam is right about Ruby, but his instincts are telling him otherwise. So, he decides not to fight with Sam about it, for now. But yeah, it's kinda hard to believe the show can really be that subtle.

[FlickChick]

I think it was used to convince the audience that if Dean can (somewhat) believe she's helping them, then we also are supposed to believe she has been/is helping Sam. Never bought it for a minute! And I think I threw up in my mouth a little when I heard Dean trying to indicate his thanks for taking care of Sam. :(

[bettername2come]

I didn't remember that the clip of Sam hustling pool in "Swan Song" came from this episode. The shots at the crossroads always look really cool. This time I like the detail of Sam's superlong shadow. The introduction of Alastair, the cool clip of them jumping of of the church window. It's weirdly nice to see the boys actually treating injuries.

I always wonder if it was before or after the Sam/Ruby sex scene that Jared and Genevieve got together. I'm strongly anti-Sam/Ruby, but damn that was hot. "And it's nice inside this body, Sam. Soft and warm." Manipulative as all get out, but damn, I almost don't blame Sam for, um, getting involved with her, even though "Don't fuck the demons" should probably be Winchester rule number one.  For all the talk about Dean and his womanizing ways in show, Sam always seems to have the hotter, rougher sex scenes. I will say she seems more like she cares about Sam in this episode than others.

Anna started out very likable. And everything else I will save for the other threads.

[RulerofallIsurvey]

It's all because of you, @bettername2come, and your comments which I have really enjoyed reading, that I had to go back and rewatch these episodes also!  And S4 was not one of my favorites, so I was not really looking forward to it.  And yet, I'm surprised at how much enjoyed quite a few of S4 episodes.  :)

Anyway, I liked the introduction of Anna's character.  I just wish:

Spoiler

she hadn't turned out to be an angel.  I think she would have been a much more interesting character if she could hear angel radio and know things as a human - maybe a prophet (before Kevin) - without having been a fallen angel.  

[auntvi]

On 6/22/2017 at 9:06 PM, bettername2come said:

For all the talk about Dean and his womanizing ways in show, Sam always seems to have the hotter, rougher sex scenes.

Another example: Heart in season 2.  (Fanning myself!)

[bettername2come]

44 minutes ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

It's all because of you, @bettername2come, and your comments which I have really enjoyed reading, that I had to go back and rewatch these episodes also!  And S4 was not one of my favorites, so I was not really looking forward to it.  And yet, I'm surprised at how much enjoyed quite a few of S4 episodes.  :)

And to think, these obsessive play-by-play posts all started because I got to "Bugs" in my rewatch and wanted to say nice things about it for a change. I haven't been a huge fan of season four because I'm supposed to be a Sam girl, dammit, and they make it so hard this season! But I haven't been quite as mad at him as I remember being and there's definitely more season 4 episodes that deserve to be in my top thirty than I previously thought. 

[RulerofallIsurvey]

16 hours ago, bettername2come said:

And to think, these obsessive play-by-play posts all started because I got to "Bugs" in my rewatch and wanted to say nice things about it for a change. I haven't been a huge fan of season four because I'm supposed to be a Sam girl, dammit, and they make it so hard this season! But I haven't been quite as mad at him as I remember being and there's definitely more season 4 episodes that deserve to be in my top thirty than I previously thought. 

Yeah, I feel the same about Sam - that was one reason why I've not been keen to rewatch this season at all!  Lol!  As far as saying nice things - I think I got to that point in S9, where it was so bad, I just had to concentrate on what good there was to be found.  :)

[DittyDotDot]

16 hours ago, bettername2come said:

And to think, these obsessive play-by-play posts all started because I got to "Bugs" in my rewatch and wanted to say nice things about it for a change. I haven't been a huge fan of season four because I'm supposed to be a Sam girl, dammit, and they make it so hard this season! But I haven't been quite as mad at him as I remember being and there's definitely more season 4 episodes that deserve to be in my top thirty than I previously thought. 

9 minutes ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

Yeah, I feel the same about Sam - that was one reason why I've not been keen to rewatch this season at all!

 

I think S4 improves greatly on rewatch. It's not so much that Sam is hard to like in this season, for me, it's that they drug out the mystery of it all so long. The first time through I would easily get distracted by trying to figure out what the hell was going on with Sam that I wasn't always paying attention to some of the finer points of the episodes. S4 really does have some really nicely done episodes, IMO.

[RulerofallIsurvey]

1 hour ago, DittyDotDot said:

I think S4 improves greatly on rewatch. It's not so much that Sam is hard to like in this season, for me, it's that they drug out the mystery of it all so long. The first time through I would easily get distracted by trying to figure out what the hell was going on with Sam that I wasn't always paying attention to some of the finer points of the episodes. S4 really does have some really nicely done episodes, IMO.

I think, for me, Sam wasn't so bad in the first part.  But in the latter part of the season, he really became unlikable and unfortunately, that colored my retrospective view of the entire season.  

[DittyDotDot]

3 minutes ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

I think, for me, Sam wasn't so bad in the first part.  But in the latter part of the season, he really became unlikable and unfortunately, that colored my retrospective view of the entire season.  

See, I don't mind characters being unlikable as long as there is a story reason for it. So, for me, it's not so much Sam gets progressively unlikable in S4, it's that they held the reasoning back for far too long. I figured there was a reason, so I kept getting distracted trying to figure it out for myself and eventually lost interest in it altogether. But, on rewatch, I can just focus on the episodes now. Some of them are very creatively structured and all. 

[AwesomO4000]

4 hours ago, DittyDotDot said:

See, I don't mind characters being unlikable as long as there is a story reason for it. So, for me, it's not so much Sam gets progressively unlikable in S4, it's that they held the reasoning back for far too long.

I wouldn't have minded the unlikable factor so much if the writers hadn't piled so much into it. Sometimes less is enough and more is way too much... and that was the case for me here.  In addition, not only did the writers - for me - hold the reasoning reveal back for too long, once they revealed the reasoning, there were a bunch of questions in retrospect that were never sufficiently answered for me. One of those being that they entirely skipped some emotional moments where we could have connected with Sam's pain and desperation: how did Dean's body end up in Pontiac, Illinois? Why did Sam bury Dean in that grove? What was Sam's state when he did so? In "All Hell... Pt 2" we stayed with Dean after Sam died. We knew exactly how he felt and why he made the deal, because the show showed us this. But not only didn't we get that for Sam, the writers skipped an important moral event horizon:

Spoiler

what exactly happened to convince Sam to drink demon blood in the first place

and the reason to go back to

Spoiler

drinking the demon blood

was, in my opinion, very poorly explained / justified.

So for me, it was not only that was Sam acting unlikable, it was that his POV was also lacking and the details were sketchy at best when we did finally find out what was going on. And admittedly I was already annoyed by the time we did finally find out, so that didn't help

4 hours ago, DittyDotDot said:

But, on rewatch, I can just focus on the episodes now. Some of them are very creatively structured and all. 

Interestingly most of my favorite episodes from season 4 are either stand-alone episodes or are somewhat mytharc light. "Monster At the End..." is probably the only exception, and I like that one in spite of the mytharc parts rather than for them.

[Iju]

i think i forgot everything about this episode except jared's acting as drunk/broken sam. he plays a good drunk, and was very convincing when he was yelling at the demon for him to replace dean with him. he was also good playing sam half drunk when talking to ruby when she got her new body, and i couldn't help but think about on how broken and dead inside sam was, he still put in an effort to care about people. 

it was really rude of sam to bite back at dean to say that bit about not sparing the details about hell. i know both of them knew he didn't mean it at all but i mean it wouldn't be out of character and it wouldn't have killed the writers to make sam say he was sorry. but hey at least we know that jared and jensen are great at playing thick af tension scenes. 

i have so many feelings about the sex scene. 1 (and most importantly), i just realized i can never see a single SPN sex scene because i freaking watch it with my mother and 15yr old sister. so there's that. i can say i'm not happy at all about that, hmph. 2, i really really hated ruby's guts for manipulating sam. like i never had hard feelings to her, i was just tentative on her being a new character. but dangit if i didn't want to knife her myself on this scene. sam's final expression before finally giving in just killed me, my whole family was screaming at sam to stop and hating ruby and...yeah it wasn't pretty. so we skipped it half because it's sex scene (duh) and also because we were just gutted by ruby. 3. sam isn't only having sex with a demon but it's literally necrophilia. i'm NOT bashing sam for this, it's all ruby's fault, grr. so i'm sure that even if i did get to see the scene i wouldn't be able to get that out my head to fully enjoy it. oh well.

oh and when dean told sam to stop telling him there's also some things i have to say about that as well. i was rather disappointed he didn't come up with a funnier line than "Too much information." for me i pictured dean giving an ironic grin to himself and sam asking what is it and he says something like "Damn it Sam, you had all this time when I was alive, but I leave for 4 months and you have sex with demons?" sam would tell him to shut up all in his feelings and dean would just say "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Keep going." and secondly, it really showed to me how much sam trusts dean and is willing to let everything out for him. because i would so not even say a syllable of my sexual adventures to ANYONE, not even a soul. i wouldn't even tell my parents about my first kiss, if i ever get one, one day.

i said before that jared plays a good broken/depressed sam, but he also plays a fantastic intimidating sam. for one when jared almost eagerly rammed himself in from on the knife ruby had, but the moment that made me sit on edge was when she tried stopping him from doing a suicide mission and he nailed her against the wall and glared at her silently, frightening even her. it's just a stare down game at first but at around the 34:70 mark when he cocks his head and raises his eyebrows and opens his eyes, you can read everything. he's saying "Try me okay? I will definitely kill you." it honestly felt like a hand of ice grabbed my heart at that moment. 

i don't know what ruby's angle is. i really don't. it seems like she has another reason to be here other than killing lilith. oh and when she possessed that dead girl and talked about the fries, i couldn't help but think of this scene:

because how the heck would sam know about that part in his story? :P

Edited March 17, 2018 by Iju

[DittyDotDot]

5 hours ago, Iju said:

i have so many feelings about the sex scene. 1 (and most importantly), i just realized i can never see a single SPN sex scene because i freaking watch it with my mother and 15yr old sister. so there's that. i can say i'm not happy at all about that, hmph.

I wouldn't worry about it. They're short and really not much to them. Personally, I don't think you missed anything.

[Iju]

7 hours ago, DittyDotDot said:

I wouldn't worry about it. They're short and really not much to them. Personally, I don't think you missed anything.

yeah i know, it's TV after all, you can't show a lot. still it's not like we see sam and deam shirtless every day ;_;