“It never ended well for the siblings.” – museum curator
So, Dean Winchester went behind his brother’s back and killed childhood friend Amy the Brain Eating Monster because she killed four people. That happened.
Two episodes earlier, the brothers Winchester went up against a pair of homicidal witches, but ultimately let them walk away after a rather hands-on relationship counseling session. Dean didn’t seem too concerned with the four dead bodies left in their wake then and by the end of “The Mentalists” apparently, Sam’s care switch has been firmly duct-taped in the off position because he tells Dean that he understands why he killed Amy and they drive off into the sunset in their stolen car to be best friends forever again.
My brain is leaking out of my ears, but it’s fine. I’ll go get a band-aid or something.
Up until that far-too-convenient chick flick moment at the end, “The Mentalists” is actually a pretty solid monster-of-the-week episode. A decapitation by Ouija board planchette in Lily Dale, NY, the psychic capital of the world, lures our perpetually petulant heroes to the same case of the weird. It’s been a week and a half since Sam split from Dean after the events of “Slash Fiction” and Sam is content to let Dean stew in the time out corner. Dean is a little more of the “why can’t we be friends?” persuasion, but after thirty minutes of Sam being as snarky and uncooperative as humanly possible, Dean caves and tells him to “stop being a bitch.”
And somehow, for reasons that are beyond my understanding, Sam does. He just… does.
While on one hand, this is great, because long stretches of Sam and Dean giving each other the silent treatment get old really fast, while on the other hand I feel like we sacrificed an important aspect of Sam’s character to get there. Sam has always been the brother with the ability to see the gray spots where Dean is very much a black and white thinker. This tends to get Sam into trouble sometimes, like the whole demon blood thing, but Dean tends to dig his own grave(s) just as well with his inability to compromise where monsters are concerned.
You know, unless that monster’s name is Sam.
It was only a matter of time until Sam forgave Dean for the Amy thing and I’m glad that this storyline is finally being wrapped up, but the idea that Sam not only forgives Dean for his actions but has come to agree with them, is unsettling. Or out of character. I’m going with unsettling because it doesn’t make me fly into a sloppy writing induced rage.
Dean once said that Sam “keeps him human.” I’m not sure then, how it bodes for the brothers if Sam is changing so fundamentally that he can no longer fulfill that role like he used to.
Some stats and info about Supernatural, “The Mentalists”
TV SHOW – Supernatural
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 7, Episode 7
AIRED ON – November 4th, 2011
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – CW/Netflix
GENRE – Drama, Teen Dramas, Horror, Fantasy
CREATED BY – Eric Kripke
CAST – Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard, Jim Beaver, Alexander Calvert, Mark Pellegrino, Samantha Smith, Ruth Connell
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.