Supernatural Station

Jus In Bello

Supernatural Season 3, episode #12.
Airdate: Thursday Feb 21, 2008.
Written by Sera Gamble.
Directed By Philip Sgriccia.

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• Synopsis: Click here to read the episode summary.

  The Winchester brothers walk into a trap set by Bella and are captured by local police led by FBI agent Henriksen. They are chained together and locked up in the small town jail while Henriksen arranges their transport to a federal prison. Then things really start to go badly for the Winchesters and everyone around them. It begins with FBI deputy director Groves who unceremoniously shoot Dean in the cell. Sam grabs his arms to stop him and and sees that the whites of his eyes are black. A few short latin phases later, the demon is exorcised and a dead body is left behind. Then, all the outside guards are killed, the helicopter transport explodes, and FBI agent Reidy is killed. This is followed by a now possessed agent Henriksen who kills the sheriff inside the Winchester’s cell before his demon is also exorcised by Sam. And thus begins an organized effort by demons to get at the Winchesters inside the jail.

  The last 3 survivors join together with the now unshackled Winchesters to prepare for the impending demon attack. They lock down the building and apply road salt and devil’s trap symbols to every window and door. Soon, massive demon smoke descend on area, blanketing the building. That is soon replaced by crowds of demon-possessed people surrounding the building. When the young deputy accidentally breaks the line of salt at a window, one demon gets in and it is trapped. That demon is Ruby and Sam releases her from the devil’s trap. Ruby warns them that a new demon leader, Lilith, wants Sam dead and is behind this attack. She then tries to use a spell that requires the sacrifice of a virgin, secretary Nancy, to kill all the demons, including herself. Dean adamantly refuses but Sam remains ambivalent. Then Dean comes up with his own alternative plan.

  Sam, Dean and Henriksen let the demons into the building while outside on the roof, the secretary and deputy wait to re-salt all the exits with the demons inside. Fighting the hoard of demons, Winchesters are disarmed and thrown against a wall. At Dean’s prompt, Henriksen turns on the speaker system and Sam’s exorcism ritual is heard throughout the building. All the demons are exorcised at once except one, who manages to escape while Nancy was sealing the last door. Afterwards, Henriksen lets the brothers go free and they leave. Then a young girl shows up, says her name is Lilith, and proceeds to vaporize the sheriff’s building and all it’s occupants, including Henrikson and Nancy. At the motel, Dean turns on the local news and hears everyone proclaimed dead, including themselves.
  The end.

• Praises: This is the episode that was shuffled so it could be the season finale if the writer’s strike did not end. So, do I think it measured up? Well…almost. There were some aspects of this episode that was truly great. There was fighting, some funny moments, a few truly tense and even scary moments, and some fantastic special effects. The best moments of this episode were it’s tense moments. When the deputy director unceremoniously shot Dean, it was shocking. The special effects of the black clouds approaching, then surrounding the building was just awesome and quite scary. I even appreciated the irony of Bella doing to the Winchesters what they did to Gordon.

  Dean was at his snarkish best and the result was some hysterically funny scenes. I especially loved when Dean declared that they were not killing any virgins. The way he said it just cracked me up. That idea just had to come from Anteka’s plastic!Winchester theater where plastic!virgin sacrifice is not an infrequent topic. The joke just begged to be topped of with Nancy giving Dean her phone number…cuz you know she was thinking of him when she said she was “so going to have sex when this is over.” But it was not meant to be. Destined to be a fangirl favorite is the scene where the brothers bare their chests in sync to show matching tattoos over their hearts. That was a squealable moment, and I should know. Being a longtime SFF fan, I couldn’t help notice that SG-1 veteran, Peter DeLuise, was the FBI deputy director. By my count, he is the fourth SG-1 personality to make an appearance on Supernatural. Beat that Heroes with your STOS guest stars!

  And lastly, one of the best moments of the show was when we got our first look at the new demon nemesis, Lilith. Her appearance and what she did was truly shocking. That made an awesome ending…except that it wasn’t the end and boy, was that a mistake.

• Nags: Maybe there was too much going on in a short space of time, but some scenes seemed cut short or glossed over. This episode was also a little too reminiscent of “The Magnificent Seven” at the season’s beginning. And the brotherly moments were too brief and unemotional. Emotionless Sam was back in full force after last episode’s all too brief reprieve.

  When the demons attacked in smoke form it was quite scary. When they attacked in human form it was not. The army of demons actually looked and acted more like an army of zombies. All they needed was to stretch out their arms out to complete the picture. And when exactly did agent Hendrickson get possessed? Was he possessed all along? Or was it later, after he locked up the Winchesters? His tormenting words about separating the brothers forever and SuperMax prison might have been his words or a demon’s. I honestly could not tell. The toilet bowl water turned into holy water was just gross. You’d think there’d be a rule that certain kinds of water can’t be blessed…like water that’s been exposed to fecal matter. I see the effort to make Ruby into a “good guy” is still going strong. OK, Kripke…you have convinced me. I now believe Ruby is a friend to the Winchesters…the kind of friend that Sadaam was during the Cold War to the US.

  The absolutely worst part of this episode has to be it’s final scene between Ruby and the boys where she blames the boys for causing everyone’s deaths. I must point out that it is clearly canon that demons don’t leave survivors if they can help it. The results would likely have been the same whomever plan was implemented, so that scene was uncalled for. I so wish I hadn’t waited around through the long commercial break to see it. It completely undid the shock impact of Lilith appearance and left a bad taste in my mouth. Kripke, why did you put that scene in? It damaged the whole episode beyond repair because it’s the last thing viewers see and what they remember. I hope you have the foresight to remove it before this episode reairs later in the season. I was tempted to give this episode a low score solely because of that hated last scene, but I can’t ignore the other good parts, so I gave it a high rating.

• My Rating: Great episode. 4 out of 5 stars.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 8:51 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.