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Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoilers

Dorian Thompson

Admiral
Admiral
New episode at 9/8c tonight, ladies and gentlemen. It looks to be the most emotionally wrenching episode of the series to date; no hyperbole this time. For those who missed it, a preview clip from tonight's eppy.

How the mind punishes us

Eric Kripke directed the episode. He knows how to bring the heartache.
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

I'm excited.
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

What a sanctimonius asshole Dean is.
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

They're just delicious.

Kripke, you are a sick, sick bastard. :lol:

EDIT: Well.....that was grim and stark, wasn't it? :wtf: No angsty bull shit there. Just get the fuck out. Wow.
 
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Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

Dean's problem is that he still sees supernatural creatures as monsters, a horrifically racist attitude that has been shown to be incorrect on more than one occasion already.

Sam's problem is that he doesn't see the obvious fact that Lillith's death is the last seal, and that Ruby is manipulating him into breaking it. Dean's other problem is that he doesn't see that the Angels are intentionally maneuvering things toward the apocolypse, instead of away from it.

At this point, the brothers just need to tell both sides to go screw themselves and settle down to some nice cushy retirement, perhaps digging up Doc Benton, making a fortune by patenting scientifically reproducible human immortality. Like Tic-Tac-Toe and Global Thermonuclear War, the only way for them to win is to not play the game.
 
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Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

Yeah, but Castiel was feeding into Dean's hatred of supernatural things and his constant fear for Sammy. Remember, at the beginning? He said that the amount of blood Sam would have to ingest would turn him into something Dean would want/have to hunt. The angels really are dicks. Letting Sam out sure wasn't kosher. I don't know what Castiel's game is.

Dean's right, though. Sam isn't in his right mind. Ruby's....uh....yanking his chain :lol:....pretty adeptly. I love my Winchester brothers, but they are both far too emotional for their own good. Hell, at least they're allowed to fight. Too bad Peter and Nathan Petrelli were never in a room together long enough to have a smack down.

Bobby's still made of awesome.
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

I can't believe I stayed home to watch Supernatural instead of going to see Star Trek, just kidding. I was not planning on going until tomorrow.:lol:

The first part of the episode was a little slow. I wasn't that invested in Sam facing his inner demons. I've seen similar scenes many times before where the inner struggles are presented as people in the character's life and despite putting a supernatural spin on it it wasn't that groundbreaking or compelling. Things did pick up when Castiel freed Sam.

The writers better be careful because for me the Angels are upstaging the main stars. Castiel, Anna give me more!

The writers also need to be a bit more careful because there were times the brothers angst was a bit overwrought and instead of being dramatic it was melodramatic i.e the smackdown in the motel. It just didn't work like the writers clearly intended it to for me anyways. I know they were going for this as a shocking breaking point in the boys' relationship as a point of no return(who really believes that anyway--I certainly don't) brought on less by Sam's demon blood addiction and more so by the fact that he has had these pent up feelings for a while now and Sam's vulnerable condition makes it more difficult to regulate them. It also probably didn't help that it felt like Jared and Jensen were a bit off tonite.

And while I know the writers have a tendency to portray Hunters as bumpkins I thought Bobby's remark about Dean being the angels' bitches was lame and Dean's "shady politician from the planet Vulcan" was cringe-worthy. And it felt out of place last week when Dean used an SAT word like "vivisection". That is a term Sam would use.

And yes, I know Lilith is pure eeeeeeevvvvvviiiiiiiiiiiil but baby-eater. That was corny not disturbing.

I'm thinking Castiel might have let Sam out because he believes Sam is the only one capable of stopping Lilith and that Dean will be called to duty to kill Sam afterwards. I guess we'll see.

Overall not exactly a strong start for the finale but All Hell Breaks Loose I was middling and Part II came off better so anything is possible.
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

Actually, in mythology lore Lilith is known as a destroyer of babies. :D I kid you not; it's true. It's not without precedent what that line said about her. In some Jewish and Babylonian lore she killed newborn babies in their cribs--in others she sucked their blood. She's also known in lore as a succubus/seducer of men.
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

Good episode.

Something I noticed, a line near the end. Dean tells Sam "if you walk out that door don't ever come back" or pretty close. I don't feel like digging though season 1, but isn't that essentially what John told him when he left the first time?
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

I dunno...I really liked this episode.

One thing that bothered me, and as mentioned earlier it's probably the writers just upping the drama, is why Dean is being such an a**. While I can understand and sympathize with his POV he seems to give no quarter to Sam or Sam's ideas while Sam has bent backwards to help Dean and follow his 'rules'. Demons always lie is a pretty good rule to follow but I don't see where Ruby has ever given Dean or Sam any reason to not trust her. Sure she's given half-truths and put them in dangerous situations, same could be said of the angels. So why can't Dean trust Sam just in this one case, especially if it's something that could stop the freakin' apocalypse? Dean was so willing to sacrifice to save Sam at the end of Season 2, yet now he doesn't mind if Sam dies? I realize going to hell changed his view of things but that doesn't mean he has to be so uncompromising. His signing up to be the "angel's bitch" as Bobby so eloquently put seems just as bad to me as Sam's using Ruby to defeat Lillith.

Anyway...those are my thoughts from tonight's episode. It definitely put me from 'on the fence' to firmly on Sam's side at this point. I'm glad they have Season 5 to reconcile the relationship because it's pretty broken at this point.
 
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Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

Dean knows that, if Sam becomes a demon, he'll go to hell. That's what's changed. It's not just the matter of Sam's life. It's Sam's soul. Dean didn't have that to consider before--and he knows what hell is like. Of course he minds if Sam dies, but he now realizes there are worse things than mere death. Hell is worse. Ruby giving him the blood is helping Sam along that road; of course Dean's going to hate her. Castiel is giving Dean cryptic warnings about Sam, that ingesting enough blood to kill Lilith will "change him forever" and make Sam into "something you'll feel compelled to hunt." I can see why Dean's being an ass about it. Sam still comes before the rest of humanity to Dean. He can't afford to trust Sam in this case. He's too terrified of Sam becoming a demon to think straight.

At least before he was choking him on the floor. Don't know how they're going to get past that. Ouch.
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

i was thinking Castiel's orders to let Sam loose, was that the angels knew Dean would go after him, and fight thus causing 2 things: 1.) a rift between the two, so the battle lines are drawn with them on opposite sides. And that they fullfill their mission by getting the last seal broken and raising their fallen angel bro, lucifer. I'm kind of thinking Ruby's out of the loop and is being given misinformation and truly believes that she is doing the right thing in getting Sam to kill Lillith before she breaks the last seal, when on the contrary....well ill just leave it at that.

Might be farfetched, but I think the swerve will be that the angels (other than Castiel because he's just following orders, that or he doesn't even know) have been using Dean this whole time. And that Sam has been mislead into thinking he's doing the right thing. We shall see, 7 more days people!
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

Hunters are sort of like the Klu Klux Klan, only less well organized and instead of lynching Negroes they lynch non-humans. It just so happens that most of the non-humans that we see are ruthless murderers, but most hunters don't care about the guilt or innocence of their victims. Sam has compassion and empathy for non-humans, to a sufficient degree that he can love and trust one. Dean does not. He was raised to hate all "monsters" and for the most part he does. Sam has been able to pull him back from committing some vile atrocities against the innocent at times, but just barely.

Consider the events revealed in Jump the Shark. John Winchester murdered a man whose only crime was stealing food for his family. That food just happened to be dead bodies. It may have been disgusting, but it wasn't harming anyone. John was a moral person with a strong sense of right and wrong, he'd never kill an innocent man just trying to feed his family. If that man hadn't been a ghoul, if he hadn't been racially impure, then John would never have hurt him. In the mind of most hunters, being racially impure is a crime, one punishable by death. It is a mindset that Dean shares. To him, the sub-humans have to prove that they are worthy of life.

Right now, Dean is in the same position that Cyrus Dorian from Route 666 was in before his death. Sam, whom he loves in a very disturbing but explicitly non-sexual way, has betrayed him in favor of a demon, a monster, a sub-human, a mud-person. So he does what any reasonable hunter would do, what Cyrus Dorian did for his lover, he attempts to save Sam by murdering the ethnically inferior hypotenuse of their twisted little interracial pseudo-incestuous love triangle.

But Sam, he rejects this act of love. And worse, he consumed her blood. That's almost as bad as a Nazi getting a transfusion from a Jew. It practically makes him an Untermensch himself. But it's worse, because those poor people have no choice, but he's willingly giving up his innate racial superiority.

Dean doesn't want to see that happen. He doesn't want to see his brother loose his birthright as a member of the Master Race and will do anything to stop Sam from throwing that away.

Sam's basically a white supremacist who just found out that one of his great grandparents was black and chose to deal it constructively and explore the truth, while Dean feels that he's loosing his brother to the mud-people and that's making him an even more hardcore racist than he already was.

It doesn't help that there really is a Zionist-Communist conspiracy to undermine the Fatherland and that it's Elders really do have Protocols.
 
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Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

yeah, you could also say racists are "set in their ways"
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

Dean doesn't want to see that happen. He doesn't want to see his brother loose his birthright as a member of the Master Race and will do anything to stop Sam from throwing that away.

No, actually he doesn't want his brother to become demonic and end up in hell for eternity. That's what happens to demons. I love the discussion. Believe me, I do, but I think we're being a tad harsh on old Dean. :D Demon blood is physically and psychologically detrimental, and a demon killed both Dean's parents and made his life a living hell before it became a dead hell. Can't blame Dean for being snitty about that. Come on. Ruby's not on the up and up. You know she's not. She can't be. That would be so dull if she really were the demon with the heart of gold underneath it all. Katie Cassidy could have pulled it off. Genevieve Cortese can't.

Good point about John and the ghoul daddy, though. As to what the hell is up with the angels, you got me. Much deceit and subterfuge is afoot with those clowns.
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

It's not clear what Castiel implies will become of Sam, but I don't think he'll become a demon.

No demon has powers that resemble Sam's. If one did, then Sam would be pretty redundant. No, whatever Sam might become, it's not a demon. If it was, Castiel would have said it, he wouldn't have been so cryptic.
Castiel chose his words carefully, Sam isn't going to become a demon, but he is going to become something that Dean would feel compelled to hunt, something that the angels want dean to hunt, most likely, not a demon, but something substantially more powerful than any demon.

And besides, it isn't hell that Dean fears for Sam, it is loss of humanity. Dean didn't choose his words carefully, but he did express what he felt. Dean didn't warn Sam about the possibility of going to hell. Dean called Sam a monster. His dialog all throughout the episode was short on concerns about eternal torment and long on concerns about Sam remaining human.

Besides, at the rate things are going, becoming a demon is probably the best possible choice. Lucifer will rise next week, and all hell will be coming with him.

I think that Dean and Sam really don't understand that they are racists, that most hunters don't. We've seen from guys like Gordon that the perspective in that culture is extremely skewed. There are a few moderates like Bobby, but for the most part they see things in very simplistic terms that allow them to write entire races all as being evil by default without considering the greater moral issues involved.
 
Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

After watching this episode and the following promo for the season finale, I too believe Lilith's death is the last seal and Ruby knows it. And I have this feeling that she's been helping Sam enhance his powers all this time so he can be a powerful enough host for Lucifer when he gets released. I think Lucifer is some kind of non-corporeal being who's a force to not to be mess with within the domain of Hell but in the physical world, he's not much of a threat unless it's inside a physical body. I also think that was a part of the Yellow Eyed Demon's plan too. After Sam were to take charge of the other gifted kids and led them to fight a war to take over the world and the underworld, that would have been the time for the Yellow Eyed Demon to take over Sam's body so he can use his powers to his ultimate delight. Ruby knew that and saw an opportunity for herself after the Yellow-Eyed Demon was killed. If she helps Lucifer gain a physical body, she would be on Lucifer's good side for a while until he doesn't see the point of having her around anymore of course.

I think one of the scenes in the promo confirm a part of this theory when it looks like Sam is trying to attack Ruby with his powers but something is stopping him from doing that like maybe Lucifer. I think after killing Lilith and before being taken over by Lucifer, Sam is going to learn that Ruby tricked him about Lilith and realize Dean was right about her all along. But we won't see Sam telling Dean this until somewhere late in the first half of Season 5 when Sam somehow gets released from being Lucifer's host. An experience that would probably scar him for life.

I think the Angels knows about the whole Lucifer possessing Sam thing and maybe sees it as their one chance of getting rid of Lucifer for good without imprisonment with him residing in a physical body. That's why Castiel let Sam out of the room and why he still goes along with his orders. Because he too wants Lucifer to be destroyed though it pains him to manipulate Dean and betray Anna. And the information he was trying to give to Dean in Rapture was probably about Chuck's vision of the future which involves Sam's fate. Castiel was deeply concerned by it and wanted Dean to know but the Angels stopped him from doing that and forced him into a sitdown in which they told him their plan and made him chose between being a part of it and being severely punished like becoming a fallen angel. Castiel chose the former and a part of him is regreting doing that. But he'll come through with Dean in the finale when he lets him try to save his brother only it's too late.
 
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Re: Supernatural4x21 "When the Levee Breaks" episode discussion/spoile

^I like your theory there. It has the positive of redeeming Dean's actions over the last few weeks and gives a good reason why Castiel would do such a stupid thing as releasing Sam. I guess I could see Ruby doing what she does in order to get on Lucifer's good side, and as the last remaining psy-kid Sam would be the best vessel. Demons are manipulative and do use humans, it did seem odd that she'd strike up a relationship with one. Wanting to be Lucifer's right hand after Lillith's gone would make total sense of all her actions over the last year and would explain her appearance not long after All Hell Breaks Loose. She was released that night and saw what happened, decided to use the situation to her advantage over a long period of time.

Oh boy...I get the feeling we're in for one heck of a cliff hanger.
 
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