Wow. Sam Winchester is a bad, bad man without a soul. Last night's episode, "Unforgiven", explored some of soul-less Sam's activities while he was hunting with Grampa Samuel, before he reconnected with Dean at the beginning of season six. So let's see just how naughty he was, shall we?
SPOILERS!
The episode begins with a flashback (we can tell because it was in black and white, with odd camera angles and cuts. Oh - also there was a caption at the bottom of the screen that said "One Year Ago"). Gramps and Sam are in some sort of dark room, and Old Samuel is watching Sam move around the room, firing a handgun. Grampa's flinching every time his grandson pulls the trigger. Then it cuts to the two of them in the van, driving out of a small Rhode Island town in a hurry. They're stopped by one of the town sherriff's deputies, who pulls them over and demands to know where the sherriff is. He addresses them as "Agents", which clues us in on the fact that Gramps and Sam are probably using an FBI cover. The deputy notices that Sam's arm is bleeding, and tells them to get into the back of his patrol car so that he can take them into town for some Q & A sessions. Sam grabs the deputy's gun and then proceeds to beat the shit out of him, leaving him bleeding in the middle of the road (Come on, Sam - you can't even pull him to the side so that no one runs him over?). Gramps and Sam get back in the car and beat a hasty retreat, with Gramps looking visibly shaken over the cold beat-down he just witnessed.
Jumping to the present, Sam and Dean are packing up, preparing to leave another hotel room in another town. Sam's phone does its "bingley bingley bing" thing, and the mysterious text is nothing but coordinates. Using the power of the internet, Sam finds out that the coordinates spell out the location of a town in Rhode Island, where there have been a few recent disappearances. He immediately wants to go check it out, but Dean is reluctant - if it has to do with Sam's past, he wants no part of it. He reminds Sam about the Wall - don't scratch the Wall, Sam! Sam is undeterred, however, so they drive the Impala to Rhode Island. On the way there, Sam sees a billboard which has the town's name on it (and a poorly-drawn octopus, for some reason). He gets a flashback, and realizes that he's been to this town before. Dean notices Sam's reaction and asks him what's wrong. "Nothing," Sam replies, doing the shifty "everything's totally fine and I am absolutely not lying" thing. Dean does the "I can see that you're obviously lying but I'll let it go because you don't want to talk about it right now" grunt. That little exchange is typical of about eighty-nine percent of their communication. It was nice to see it again.
Dean and Sam start their investigation at a nautically-themed restaraunt, where they go over the "Missing Person" flyers - all of the recent ones are women. Dean heads off to visit the "Poop Deck" (I'm not making that up), and Sam is approached by a woman who seems to know him. She calls him "Agent", and seems surprised that Sam doesn't remember her. She re-introduces herself and her husband, then pats his shoulder as they say goodbye. This triggers another flashback - apparently she and Sam had sexy fun time in the bathroom when he was there before. Huh. As Dean comes out of the "Poop Deck", he notices the restaraunt's Wall of Fame for some "eat this and we'll take a Polaroid of you with a pirate hat on"-type contest. His gaze falls on one of the pictures in particular, and he takes it to show his brother - Sam and Gramps are in the background of the pirate-hat contest winner in the photo. To be honest, we were really hoping to see Sam with the pirate hat on.
The Winchesters continue investigating the missing women, and they discover that the reason Sam and Gramps had come before is that there was another round of disappearances - but those missing people were all men. Sam is even more determined to get to the bottom of this, because he realizes that either he failed to do the job the first time around, or he messed up and whatever is kidnapping people is back. Dean is all for putting the town in their rear-view mirror, but Sam refuses to leave. Unfortunately, he meets up with the deputy that he'd introduced to the asphalt, who immediately arrests him and throws him in jail. There, Sam is visited by another woman who seems to know him - but this isn't another former conquest. This woman is the old sherriff's wife. Her name is Brenna. She begs him to tell her what happened to her husband, who has been missing since Sam's first visit. She's not inclined to believe Sam when he tells her that he has no memory of what happened during his first time in town, but he pulls his sad puppy face and she decides to trust him. Brenna lets him out of the cell, and he promises that he will help her find out what happened to the sherriff.
Dean meets up with Sam at Brenna's house - she had her husband's old case files, which they were going over to try to jog Sam's memory or make some kind of connection. He does remember something - the monster that he and Gramps were after was an Arachne. Dean tells Sam that he discovered what all of the missing women have in common - they were all women that Sam slept with while he was there before. Remember the woman from the restaraunt? Yup. She's missing now, too, and Dean is convinced that this whole situation is a trap that someone set for Sam. Sam still refuses to leave, though, and he and Dean return to the hotel room to map out the case. To do this, they used a map and a lot of string (Get it? GET IT?! Arachne = Spiders, Spiders = WEB?!). Sam gets another flashback, a big one this time.
(In black and white) Sam and Gramps are explaining to the sherriff and his wife that they really aren't with the FBI - they're monster hunters. They're filling in the sherriff to get his help with the case. Later, Sam and Gramps are discussing the case over dinner in the restaraunt. The Arachne seems to be taking middle-aged men, and they need to draw it out into the open. Sam is too young, and Gramps is too old, so Sam sets up the sherriff as bait - without his knowledge. Gramps is taken aback by this plan, but Sam assures him that they'll be able to get the monster before anything bad happens to the sherriff. In the background, a pirate hat-wearing contest winner is having his picture taken.
Sam and Gramps stake out the meeting place and see the sherriff arrive. They watch his confusion as he realizes there's no one there to meet him. Well - not no one. The Arachne springs from her hiding place and attacks him, dragging him away before Gramps and Sam can do anything. They follow her to her lair, where they discover the other missing men mummified in spider silk. They realize that the men are all still alive, but have been poisoned by the Arachne. They find the sherriff, who has received the same mummfying-poisoning treatment. At that moment, the Arachne shows up. She attacks Sam and Gramps, who discover that bullets don't kill her. However, a machete slice at the neck works fine - her head drops off and she dies. Sam's arm was injured in the fight, but he's okay enough to stop Gramps from trying to rescue the sherriff. He says that the men are all going to die anyway, and that they should just put them out of their misery. So he shoots the sherriff (but not the deputy! Sorry, I couldn't help it) and the others, then burns the place to the ground.
When Sam snaps out of this flashback, he's horrified by what he did. He and Dean also get a frantic call from Brenna, and when they go to help her, they're ambushed by an Arachne. Not the same Arachne - this is Sherriff Arachne. It turns out that the female Arachne was kidnapping mates and poisoning to turn them into Arachnae, too, so Sam's bullets and pyromaniac skills did nothing to prevent that. All of those men are now Arachnae, and all of the women that Sherriff Arachne kidnapped have now been turned, too. Sam's actions spawned many more monsters than the single Arachne he killed, and Sherriff Arachne is out for revenge. He was the one who sent the text with the town's coordinates, and kidnapped all of the women who Sam had slept with. Fortunately, Dean escapes his spider-silk mummification and cuts the sherriff's head off. Sam tries to apologize to Brenna, which really made us scoff. Really - after setting up someone's husband as spider-bait and then shooting him point blank in the face, not to mention failing to realize that he was turning into a monster, what more is there to say?
Dean and Sam have their post-job discussion in the crappy hotel room as they start packing up. Dean tries to make Sam feel better about the whole situation by telling him that all of the things that happened when Replicant Sam was there before aren't his fault. Sam disagrees with him sharply, saying that it's all him. He goes on to wonder about what else he might have done, but collapses mid-sentence. He starts seizing and having a vision of Hell, where he's trapped in flames and his pretty face burns to ashes.
Questions that still need Answers:
Stop scratching the wall, Sam. Although we weren't terribly impressed with his vision of Hell. When Dean was in Hell, we saw him hanging from meat hooks - there was much blood. Sam's vision of CGI fire eating his face was a little "meh".
We're not sure if we really want the answer to this question, but exactly how does an Arachne "turn" somebody? They referenced "mates", and all of the female Arachne's victims were male. All of Sherriff Arachne's victims were female. This leads us to the disturbing conclusion that spider-monsterism is some sort of horrible sexually-transmitted disease. So - just one more thing to think about before starting a romp with a new partner, okay kids? Stay safe.
How much of Sam is his soul, and how much is not? I think that Sam's right when he says that everything Replicant Sam did is still on him. Remember in the third season when the Trickster killed Dean in order to show Sam what his life would be like once Dean went to Hell? Sam became a cold-hearted bastard, that's what. If you thought it was shocking for Replicant Sam to try to kill Bobby in order to sever all ties with his soul, then what about when the Trickster showed Sam that he'd be willing to go that far to get his brother back? And even though the Trickster did eventually bring Dean back and reset everything from that first day in Mystery Spot, we saw again what Sam is like without Dean at the beginning of the fourth season, when Dean comes back from a four-month stint in Hell. In that time, Sam managed to get involved with a demon, develop his psychic powers, and become addicted to demon blood. So really - Sam seems like he's on the brink of sociopathy, and that his tiny little abused soul is all that keeps him from going into full Terminator mode.
Next Week:
I have two words for you: Haunted. Mannequin. I can't wait!
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