Recap of Supernatural
Season 4, Episode 21
When The Levee Breaks
Written by Sera Gamble.
Directed by Robert Singer.
Air Date: May 7, 2009.
Sam asks Dean to let him out of the panic room, and Dean refuses. Sam denies being a junkie and rejects the metaphor of drug addiction saying he’s trying to get strong enough to kill Lilith. Dean says he and Bobby will kill Lilith, before locking away a shouting Sam.
In the panic room, Sam hallucinates and has the shakes. While trying to escape, he sees a vision of Alastair, who begins to torture him. Alone on his bed, Sam begs the not-real Alastair to stop. Bobby and Dean drink whiskey, wondering when or if Sam will recover. Bobby gets a call from Rufus and then someone else.
Sam sees a vision of his younger self who asks him why he didn’t let them become normal. Sam apologizes to his younger self, who is merciless, and blames Sam for Jessica’s death. Sam tells his younger self that they were never going to be normal. Young Sam says that he’s probably right because you can’t run from what’s inside you and his eyes glow yellow.
Bobby lists off a number of events that are clearly seals that Lilith is breaking. Bobby and Dean realize there aren’t many seals left and wonder where the angels are. Bobby wonders if detoxing Sam is the right thing since he could stop the apocalypse. Dean vehemently rejects this idea to a skeptical Bobby, who says he loves Sam like his own son.
Sam hallucinates Mary, who tells him he looks awful. Sam expects her to be disappointed in him, but she’s proud of him. She says Dean doesn’t understand, but she was raised a hunter and understands hard choices. She encourages him to use his powers, even though they both know the power is evil. She says Dean is weak, terrified, and in over his head. She encourages him not to let Dean get in his way.
Dean is out in Bobby’s yard and sees Castiel. Dean asks him what he was going to tell him in Illinois, and Cas denies it was important. Dean presses and Cas apologizes. Dean asks him if Sam can kill Lilith and stop the Apocalypse. Castiel says it's possible but Sam would need to drink more demon blood. A sympathetic Cas explains that this would forever change Sam and turn him into the kind of monster Dean is compelled to kill. Cas says the angels believe that Dean, not Sam, is destined to stop the apocalypse. Cas asks Dean to step up and embrace his destiny. Dean asks if this will spare Sam, and Cas says that if it gives him comfort he can look at it that way. A disgusted Dean says Cas is “a dick these days” but he agrees. Cas asks Dean to give himself over to the service of God and his Angels, and Dean vows his obedience as he stares into Cas’s eyes. Cas tells Dean that they will call on him when it is time.
In the panic room, Sam hallucinations his veins turning black and shouts for help. Bobby confronts Dean about signing up to be the angels’ bitch. Dean agrees it's a bad idea, but it’s better than letting Sam trust a demon. Bobby sees his point. Bobby and Dean realize Sam’s been too quiet, and they go and find him having a seizure.
Sam awakens to find himself shackled. A vision of Dean stands over him and confronts him about his behavior. Vision!Dean says it’s his job to stop the apocalypse not Sam’s. Bobby, meanwhile, tells Dean that they are killing Sam. Dean says he’d rather Sam die than become a monster. Vision!Dean taunts Sam about feeling different his whole life and becomes crueler and crueler about Sam being a monster.
Sam escapes his shackles and the panic room door opens. Castiel has allowed him to escape. Later, Castiel is on a pier looking rather tormented when Anna shows up and confronts him about Sam. He tells her he was ordered to let Sam escape, and that he wishes she hadn’t come. She’s arrested by other angels as an unhappy Castiel watches.
Bobby holds a gun on Sam trying to get him back into the panic room, saying they are trying to help him. Sam says he should shoot, but takes the gun, knocks Bobby out, and flees in one of the cars. Bobby and Dean assume that Ruby helped Sam escape, and Dean resolves to kill Ruby.
Sam, meanwhile, is in a luxurious honeymoon suite, and Ruby arrives. She’s happy to see him and is sorry he’s hurting. She’s sorry Dean did this to him, and they discuss how they must avoid Dean. Ruby claims to be sad the brothers are on the outs, but Sam pushes her on the bed and cuts her so he can drink her blood.
Bobby and Dean discuss how to track Sam, and Dean knows that Sam will be trying to throw Dean off. Meanwhile, Ruby tells Sam that Lilith is the only one who can break seal 66. She’s the first demon Lucifer ever created, and Sam realizes that if he kills Lilith, she won’t be able to break the final seal. Ruby has a lead on Lilith’s personal chef.
Two nurses discuss a nurse who stole two babies and then claimed to be possessed. One of the nurses’ eyes turn black and describes the babies as delicious.
Sam laments being on the outs with Dean to Ruby. Bobby tells Dean that he had to be good to Dean to convince him to stop. Dean finds the hotel room and attacks Ruby. Sam rescues her. Sam wants to talk, and Dean wants to but only if they kill Ruby. The brothers have an intense argument over Ruby, and Sam chooses Ruby. Dean calls Sam a monster, and Sam punches Dean. It turns into a brawl, which Sam wins, nearly strangling Dean. Sam tells Dean he doesn’t know him and never will. Dean tells him if he walks out, to never come back. Sam walks.
Body count
For this episode = Everybody Lives. On-screen, anyway.For the series so far = At least 311 humans (of which 5 were witches), 28 ghosts, 26 demons, 10 vampires, 6 changelings, 3 gods, 3 shapeshifters, 3 zombies, 2 angels, 2 ghouls, 2 werewolves, 2 dogs, 1 crocotta, 1 djinn, 1 rakshasa, 1 rawhead, 1 reaper, 1 rugaru, 1 shtriga, 1 siren, and 1 wendigo.
Tropes
- Back from the Dead: Subverted with Alastair, who is not really back. Sam is just hallucinating. By the time Mary appears, it's apparent to the audience that she's also a hallucination. Though Sam intuited in the preceding scene that he was hallucinating, he still talks and reacts to her as if it's his real mom.
- Beautiful Dreamer: Ruby is lying in bed with Sam and watching him when he wakes up and notices her. We're not told how long he was asleep or how long she watched him, but it calls back to Stalker without a Crush behavior in early Season 3, only now with a Crush. Demons don't sleep and the context is a fair bit of
Squick, but there is likely some degree of romantic intent to the scene, given that both Eric Kripke and the actors for Sam and Ruby believed the characters to be in love. - Berserk Button: Sam's sensitivity over being called a freak or monster, fueled by a fresh dose of demon blood, causes him to beat up and choke Dean.
- Big Bad: Ruby splits the brothers apart by corrupting Sam with her demon blood.
- Black Eyes of Evil: A nurse's eyes turn black as she leers at the NICU during a discussion about kidnapped newborns. The implications are unpleasant.
- Cain and Abel: Sam and Dean. They only speak briefly until the end, but the conflict between them is the heart of the episode. Sam is the younger (Abel) and Dean is the older (Cain). In an interesting subversion, it is not nearly as black-and-white as it typically is. Withdrawal-suffering Sam has an unnatural addiction he got into thanks to an Ambiguously Evil demon from Hell and is willing to attack his loved ones in ways that could have seriously injured or even killed them to finish his mission, while teary-eyed Dean is aligned with Light Is Not Good angels, unwilling to try to reason with Sam until it's too late, and would rather Sam die than risk him turning evil. Both brothers love each other, want to protect each other, and have understandable and even sympathetic motives for why they're opposing each other on this, though both skirt the side of evil in coming close to killing each other.
- Call-Back:
- Dean once again makes a deal to try to save Sam, but this time he pledges his allegiance to the angels instead of selling his soul to the demons.
- Lilith had mentioned drinking baby blood in "The Monster at the End of This Book".
- Dean's parting words to Sam are to say that if Sam walks out, to never come back; in Season 1, these were the same words their dad had said to Sam when he left to go to Stanford. It works just as well as it did the first time.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Sam thinks a returned Alastair has tied him down to inflict this on him. It turns out to be his first hallucination of the detox.
- Deal with the Devil: Inverted: in this episode, through an angel, Dean makes a deal with God to save Sam.
- Death of a Child: No children die onscreen, but the trope is still averted by the clear hints dropped about Lilith's preferred treat. At least two babies are suggested to have been recently kidnapped and eaten offscreen by Lilith with the help of her chef, and considering how very old and evil Lilith is, and the fact that her demands are such to even require her own "personal chef", likely means there have been an unthinkably high number of infants fed to Lilith.
- Dying as Yourself: If worst comes to worst, Dean is willing to let Sam die in the panic room so that he at least doesn't become the monster they've been dreading.
- Eats Babies: This episode introduces Lilith's "chef" and implies that in addition to possessing little girls, Lilith likes to eat infants.
- Fan Disservice: Gratuitous pan over Ruby's body? Nice. Sam cutting her arm open to suck out her blood? Ugh.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Eagle eyed viewers will be able to tell that the Dean talking to Sam while he is tied down is a hallucination and not the real one by the fact that the hallucination is wearing a green shirt while the real Dean is wearing a blue one.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision: The choice between Dean and Ruby for Sam. Now that his Dark Secret has been exposed, he wants Dean to join them in hunting Lilith, but Dean is deadset on killing Ruby now that he's realized she got him addicted to demon blood. Sam won't let him do it because after working with her for so long, he has come to believe she's vital to tracking down Lilith and helping him kill her. After burning his bridges with Dean, Sam chooses Ruby.
- Going Cold Turkey: Dean and Bobby lock Sam in the panic room to break him of his demon blood addiction.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: Heavily Played With as Dean pledges loyalty to the angels despite how morally ambiguous Castiel's actions are while Sam throws in his lot with Ruby, despite how morally ambiguous her actions are. Turns out they are both bad, until Castiel's Heel–Face Turn in the next episode.
- Hero Antagonist: Dean is the antagonist of the episode, but he wants Sam to overcome his demon blood addiction.
- Hemo Erotic: When Sam reunites with Ruby, she reaches to touch his face, he throws her back on the bed, and they have an intimate moment. Sam runs his hand down her thigh to grab a knife from her boot and cuts her arm to start feeding again, while Ruby makes an expression of pleasure. In the next scene, Sam wakes up to find himself in bed with Ruby.
- Ironic Echo: Dean's last lines to Sam in the episode are just like what John said to Sam before the latter left for college.
- It's Quiet… Too Quiet: When Sam stops screaming, Dean and Bobby realize something's wrong. They walk in to find him getting flung around the room by his own telekinesis.
- Like a Son to Me: Sam is like a son to Bobby.
- Meaningful Look: At the pier, Castiel is still following orders but his facial expressions indicate that he's absolutely tormented by what Heaven is ordering him to do.
- Metaphorically True: Castiel's reassurances that Dean is saving Sam are Double Speak and highly manipulative give that Castiel is well-aware at this point that the angels want the final seal broken so Dean can help Michael kill Lucifer.
- Missed Him by That Much: Dean steps off an elevator into a hotel corridor just as Sam walks out.
- More Hero than Thou: What Sam and Dean's argument essentially boils down to.
- Noodle Incident: Bobby's brief but colorful conversation with Rufus. It's possible that he's referring to Sam's problem, but it's so abrupt, unclear, and inexplicably funny in an otherwise very tense episode that it comes off as this.Bobby: Hello. (Beat) Suck dirt and die, Rufus. You call me again, I'll kill you.Dean: What's up with Rufus?Bobby:He knows.
- Playing Both Sides: For some unknown reason Castiel is shown helping Sam escape from Bobby's panic room after he had just promised Dean that the angels would help him end the apocalypse.
- Psycho Serum: Demon blood. Withdrawal causes Sam to experience a number of hallucinations. Now that Dean knows Sam has been drinking it, he concludes this is why Sam has been acting unlike himself for the past season and even claims he'd rather let Sam die than keep drinking it and keep turning into something he's not.
- Put on a Bus: Castiel finally arrests Anna even after she saved his life. She will not appear again until more than halfway through next season.
- Sadistic Choice: Dean agrees to serve the angels in order to combat the apocalypse. When Bobby points out that they are obviously playing him Dean points out his only other option is to let Sam turn himself into a monster.
- Super-Power Meltdown: Alluded to. When Sam's own powers start turning against him, Bobby is afraid that they'll end up killing him if the detox continues.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: Sam's hallucination of his younger self has these, referencing the fact that he has Azazel's demon blood in him as well as Ruby's.
- Tainted Veins: Sam sees the veins in his arms go black. As he screams, it spreads to his face.
- This Is Your Brain on Evil: Sam's demon blood addiction is addressed and portrayed almost entirely as a drug habit, complete with withdrawal-inducted hallucinations.
- Villain Protagonist: What Sam has become.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Bobby and Rufus, in a single, three-sentence exchange we only hear one side to.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Anna to Cas after he lets Sam free.
- You Don't Want to Know: Ruby says that to Sam about what the demon girl is cooking.
- You Monster!: Dean calls Sam a monster. He doesn't react well.
