From MadCap's Couch - Supernatural: "No Rest for the Wicked"

"CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SOOOOOOON!"

Okay, so... first off... 150th From MadCap's Couch! Party hard! Second, weird choice for a Valentine's Day episode, but here we are.

Hopefully, it's not a bloody one.

Huh, Jensen?

Huh?

You get it?

Do you get it?

DO YOU GE-

No Rest for the Wicked recaps the entire season. Go ahead and read back through my previous reviews if you need a refresher on what's going on.

Or, y'know... just go and watch the show.

Although, it's noted, after the last drumbeat that leads into the episode, we've shown the clip of Demon!Dean in Dream a Little Dream Of Me hauntingly reminding Dean that "You're gonna die! This is what you're gonna become!" Definitely a good use of the footage from previous episodes, the optimistic tones of "Carry on Wayward Son" cutting off sharply before it happens.

"Bobby called the British guy in California.

We begin with Dean running from a hell hound before it jumps him and starts tearing him apart... and he wakes up, having fallen asleep going over some books at Bobby's. Sam tells him that Bobby had figured out a way to find Lilith and is optimistic about their chances even with only thirty hours remaining until Dean's bill comes due. He says that everything's gonna be okay. When Dean looks at Sam, however, his younger brother's face is twisted and contorted in a horrific visage before returning to his normal appearance.

Bobby, being Redneck Giles as he is, pulls out a device and a map and chants some Latin to find Lilith, tracking her down to New Harmony, Indiana. While Sam is eager to head out, Dean brings up some logical issues with this course of action: 1) They're going off of Bela's intel, and they definitely don't trust her, 2) they have no way to kill her without the Colt, and 3) Lilith wants Sam's intestines on a stick. Sam has a solution: Ruby. Dean is... less than pleased by this, leading into Dean shouting both Sam and Bobby down as he refuses, saying that they aren't going to make the same mistakes all over again.

As Bobby leaves to "find something else" as Dean puts it, Sam heads into the basement and summons Ruby. After some opening banter, Sam asks her if she knew about Lilith owning Dean's contract, which she confirms and claims she kept the information from the boys to keep them from going off and getting murdered to death by Lilith. Sam insists he's ready and demands the knife, Ruby deflecting about the knife by telling Sam that he is ready because Lilith is on vacation and so it's the perfect time to catch her off-guard and kill her. When Ruby refuses to give the knife, she tells him that she can't save Dean... but he can. His abilities from Azazel aren't gone like he believed, but dormant. Sam can do all sorts of things that he never dreamed of, and Ruby can show him how.

Dean pops in, having anticipated that Sam would call up Ruby anyway. Dean demands the knife, Ruby yells at him for being a dumb, spineless dick. He throws a punch, egging Ruby into a fight that ends with Ruby stuck in a Devil's Trap and Dean having sleight of hand'd her knife off of her. Dean, at least, had planned for this entire thing. The boys leave an enraged, screaming Ruby in the basement and head back upstairs, where they begin to prep their gear. Sam questions whether or not Ruby might be right about his abilities, but Dean refuses it. He elaborates on his earlier statement: John gave up his soul to save Dean, Dean gave up his soul to save Sam, and he isn't going to let Sam do the same thing with Ruby.

Sam is Dean's weak spot, and Dean is Sam's. And the demons know it, too. He declares that they're going to take Ruby's knife and go after Lilith the way John taught them to and, if they go down, at least they'll go down swinging.

Lilith had a very difficult time learning sign language.

Sam says Dean should have been jamming Eye of the Tiger behind the speech he definitely didn't rehearse. With that settled, Sam and Dean contemplate what Lilith's "shore leave" might be.

Cut to New Harmony, where the Fremont family (heh, cute reference) is seemingly the very picture of surburban bliss. The grandfather slips a "Help us" message to a neighbor before coming back into the house to find a dead woman in the foyer and a mother and father all worried about 'her'. A young blonde woman in a blood-stained white dress comes downstairs, acting sickeningly saccharine and childish, contrasted terribly with the blood on her dress and a darker attitude when her 'father' asks if she'll eventually let them go. When he reaffirms under duress that he does indeed love her, the girl's attitude changes again to chipper and jovial.

Yeah, it's Lilith, and she's creepy as Hell. Sierra McCormick is fantastic in the role.

Sam and Dean are preparing to leave when Bobby is revealed to have removed the distributor cap from the Impala. When Dean tells Bobby that this isn't his fight, Jim Beaver gives one of the best deliveries in the series.

BOBBY: The hell it isn't! Family don't end with blood, boy!

Bobby also has worked out that Dean has been having hallucinations as well, so they need all the help they can get. They drive off and later that night, Sam tries to get in the misty goodbye speech but Dean will hear none of it, putting on "Wanted Dead or Alive" by Bon Jovi and the brothers have one of the most iconic moments in the show as they sing it, Dean loud and off-key and Sam reluctantly getting into it, but by the end of the chorus is singing right along with his brother, laughing and smiling like they aren't about to go into the biggest battle of their lives (so far).

Sometime later, a cop pulls them over. Dean gives a fake ID, then knocks the cop over with the Impala door and - following a brief struggle - stabs him with Ruby's knife. The cop's body begins to light up as demons are when killed by the knife. Dean could see the demon's face through the human host. Bobby elaborates as they're hiding the body that Dean, being on the highway to Hell, can now see demons being that they're from Hell. At the very least, they have a weapon to use against Lilith in case she has any demons stashed around New Harmony, which she likely does.

"A fine addition to my collection!"

Back at the Freemonts, Lilith has another birthday party and confronts her 'grandfather' about going to the neighbor for help. When the mother and father don't come to the grandfather's defense, Lilith snaps Grandpa's neck with a gesture for being a bad man, a very bad man. Lilith instructs her parents to not scream, because screaming makes her mad...

By this point, the boys and Bobby have gotten to the house and are scoping the place out. Dean has identified Lilith as the little girl, but also a go-getter mailman and a neighbor who are demons as well. Even with this, Dean expresses some reservations about going in and killing a little girl. However Sam, and oddly enough Bobby advocate for doing it via "needs of the many". More on that... in a bit.

Dean tricks the mailman into getting stabbed by Sam, ending that particular threat while Bobby chants some Latin and drops a rosary into the water main. By this point, the boys have also killed the other neighbor, dragging him away into the dark. As Dean heads to the fence to scout out the area for more demons, Ruby swoops out of the darkness and tackles Dean into said fence. She demands her knife back and Sam gets her to back off via the knife. Ruby refuses to let Sam get himself killed, already having written off Dean. Sam refuses... and they are soon swarmed by demons.

As they break into the Fremont house, the sprinklers get activated and start laying the smackdown on the demons. Inside, they find the body of the 'grandmother' in the foyer and soon run into the father, Dean having to knock him unconscious and toss him into the basement. Before that, he gives a valuable piece of information - Lilith is upstairs with her mother. Ruby and Sam head up, sneaking into the bedroom via two different doorways.

The little girl is laid out sleeping in her mother's arms, her mother being awake as Sam looms over them with Ruby's knife. She begs in a whispered, panicked tone for him to kill her. The girl awakens and screams at the sight of Sam... but Dean saves her at the last minute. Lilith isn't in the little girl anymore, which only complicates matters. They get the daughter and the mother into the basement while Sam asks Ruby what he has to do to save Dean. Ruby tells him that there's no time left, but Dean refuses to let Sam go down this path, shouting angrily at him and snapping him out of it.

Dean apologizes for what he's done. Sam asks Dean what he's supposed to do.

DEAN: Keep fightin'. Take care of my wheels. Sam, remember what Dad taught you. And remember what I taught you.

A tearful moment between the brothers is interrupted by the toll of the bell. Midnight.

Ruby apologizes to Dean, saying that she wouldn't wish this on her worst enemy. They hear the hell hounds and Dean can see it in the room, snarling angrily at them. The three duck into another room, Dean and Sam pulling out goofer dust to line the door and the window into the room. Ruby encourages Sam to give her the knife, saying that she can fight off the hell hound. However, Dean's ability to see the demons comes in handy as he realizes that she's not Ruby... she's Lilith.

Lilith pins Dean to a table and Sam to a wall, saying that she sent Ruby "far, far away". Lilith kisses Sam, apparently going full Fatal Attraction psychotic. Sam tries to bargain for Dean's release, but he has nothing Lilith wants. With a sinister smile, she opens the door and sics the hell hound on Dean, who is torn into by the fangs and claws of the unseen creature while Sam cries out in protest. Lilith, so confident in her victory, attempts to blast Sam with the same white light from Jus in Bello. However, it suddenly fades and her eyes even retreat from demonic white into her host's color as she stares at Sam... completely unharmed. Now seemingly panicking, Lilith attempts to push Sam back, but her powers don't seem to work anymore. Sam picks up Ruby's knife, preparing to run her through with it. Before he can, Lilith leaps out of the host and escapes as black smoke through a vent.

"Now you will come with us, taste our pleasures..."

Sam is left weeping over Dean's mutilated corpse in a way that makes the Mystery Spot look absolutely heartwarming by comparison. As he does, the camera pans in through one of Dean's eyes to show a nightmarish landscape of black smoke and a veritable Gordian knot of chains as far as the eye can see. At the center of it all, meathooks tearing into his flesh, is Dean. He cries out for Sam to help him as the episode, and Season 3, ends.

After Season 2 ended on such a high, optimistic note, this one hurts but oddly in a good way. It does suck that, despite all their efforts, the boys ultimately could not keep Dean out of Hell, but that's life. There is so much to dig into in this episode, I doubt I'll even be able to cover it all here, namely because it's the end of the season and we see the payoff (or build up to further payoff) of several things through the Season.

Let's start with Sam. Ever since Azazel's taunt to Dean about Sam potentially having come back wrong, we've see a gradual darkening of his character that started in that episode with how easily and without mercy he ended Jake's life. In Season 3, our first look at that same attitude was seen in Fresh Blood, when he was without hesitation ready to kill Gordon to end the threat he posed, and this before the boys knew he'd become a vampire. This being to the point where it even disturbed Dean. We saw another example in Jus in Bello, where he was not one of the people who immediately protested Ruby's plan of carving out Nancy's heart for the spell to kill the demons. The six months later part of Mystery Spot even has the Trickster wigged out at how unhinged Sam has become. We see it here again in how, even hesitantly, he is okay with the plan of killing the little girl Lilith is possessing. It's kind of terrifying, and it will become more so as the series progresses. We'll be analyzing Sam's character as time goes on, but things aren't looking too good at this point... and, spoiler warning, they're going to get much worse.

We also see the end of Dean's arc this season, going from a devil may care man who cared so little for the fact that he was going to Hell, ready and willing to throw his own life away simply because he believed that it didn't matter in spite of what Sam and Bobby both told him. Over time, we got to see that bravado get stripped away until Dream a Little Dream Of Me, when a battle against his own psyche forces him to admit his fears and his belief that he ultimately does not deserve to go to Hell, as well as commit himself to trying to find a way out of it. However, he doesn't take (seemingly) easy ways out such as using Doc Benton's formula in Time is On My Side or Ruby's potential training for Sam's powers here. In Jus in Bello as well as this episode, Dean also refuses plans or methods that compromise or corrupt their humanity. After all, Dean is incredibly rough and worn down, but he adamantly believes that his humanity is the one thing that keeps him from being like all the terrible things that he and Sam fight.

Now, we come to Lilith. She doesn't have too much of an appearance in this episode, but what she does have has an unmistakable impact. As I said before, Sierra McCormick does really well as her in the little Fremont girl's body and Katie Cassidy does her pretty well as even somehow more unhinged psychotic when going after Sam and killing Dean. Given that she was possessing Ruby's host since at least before Ruby and Sam entered into the little girl's bedroom, one has to wonder about one of her final comments when posing as Ruby, telling Dean that she wouldn't wish Hell upon her worst enemy. Given that she was playing a role, that might be just be her adding to the act. However, given what we find out about Lilith next season, one is given to wonder. After all, as Meg told Dean way back in Born Under A Bad Sign, demons really don't like Hell and will actively work to get out of it.

Mother dead, Father dead, and now brother dead. Sam is the last Winchester... for now.

Her powers not working against Sam are also interesting, given that she was able to use her telekinesis to throw him and pin him to a wall. However, perhaps the extreme trauma of seeing Dean being mutilated by the hell hound triggered some kind of defense mechanism in Sam that no-selled her abilities. Given what we also learn about her and Sam in Season 4, her reaction to his sudden power cancellation is somewhat odd. It could be explained a way in a few different ways, but none of them really stick for me and either way I can't really get into them here for fear of spoilers.

Looking back over it, Season 3 was a little uneven mostly out of necessity given the Writers' Guild Strike. It would have been nice to get the full 22 episode Season, but I'm okay with what we ended up getting barring a few episodes like Ghostfacers. The first five years of Supernatural are honestly a stretch of episodes that range from phenomenal to good. Only the occasional clunker here and there. The show hadn't gotten to the point by then that it had gotten reductive, recycling the drama between Sam and Dean and just swapping who was in what position for a season arc.

So, Lilith is on the loose, Ruby has been sent "far, far away", Dean is in Hell, and Sam is left with his dead brother and the knowledge that he failed to save Dean or kill Lilith. A somber note to end on, to be sure. Where will the show go from here? When we return to Supernatural, we'll get a new myth arc that will change the show forever for both good and ill, we'll get the introduction to a fan-favorite character who comes at the cost of others being pushed to the side, and we'll something that has been teased and hinted at since the very beginning... the Apocalypse itself.

However, when From MadCap's Couch returns after a few weeks (or possibly longer), we won't be hopping back into the Impala. Instead, we need to look back at the story of a certain madman in a certain box that we left on fire and spinning out of control after Russell T. Davies left his job as the showrunner kicking and screaming. Next time, we'll meet my favorite companion of the Steven Moffat era of the show, my favorite Doctor from the 2005- series, and we'll begin to see some cracks in time...

Next time, we will be well and truly into The Eleventh Hour.

Be there!