Supernatural: American Nightmare (12x04)

Wow. I'm impressed by how solid that episode was. We got mentions of both Cas and Mary, which I always appreciate.

Cons:

An ongoing complaint with this show is how incompetent Sam and Dean can be. I get that they're trying to raise the stakes by putting their lives in danger all the time, but come on. Sam gets kidnapped? Again? Yikes.

A bigger complaint is that Magda, a psychic, ends up getting killed by Mr. Ketch at the very end of the episode. The British MOL rear their ugly heads once again, and with mixed results. I want Mr. Ketch to be something more than just a ruthless assassin. I also basically want the MOL to stay out of this season, since they've proved such a disappointment thus far. Magda did deserve a second chance, and it felt like a cheap shot to kill her off just to escalate the threat of the MOL for Sam and Dean.

Pros:

The plot was basic, but still twisty enough to keep me guessing. Sam and Dean discover a nutty exclusionary religious family, who let their eldest daughter die instead of getting her treatment from a doctor. Turns out, she's not dead, just locked away and punished by her crazy fanatic mother. While Dean is off chasing down another lead, Sam gets kidnapped by the family. When he learns about Magda's abilities, he tells her that she's not the devil. Magda's crazy mother poisons her family's food, planning for them all to die and go to Heaven together. Magda stops her brother from eating the poisoned food, and stops her mother from killing herself and Magda as well.

Threaded through all of this is the fact that Dean has been really "crabby" since Mary left. He takes it out on Sam, and even lets it affect his work. The minute he finds a woman who says she's Wicca, and who works for CPS, he decides she must be the bad guy. Sam doesn't think so, and it turns out that Sam is right. I liked the fact that Dean immediately turns a CPS employee into a villain, because it speaks a lot to his current mindset. He's automatically going to think bad of anybody whose job it is to separate families. I bet Dean feared being separated from John and Sam a lot when he was a kid. It was a very real concern, after all. By the end of the episode, Dean acknowledges that sometimes families do need space from one another. Mary texts Dean and says that she's okay and that she'll always be their mom, which seems to cheer him up quite a bit. I love that Dean apologizes to Sam in his own way, and even acknowledges that he has some issues in this area that he needs to work on.

Sam gets MVP for this episode, though. I loved the way he talked Magda down from her self-hatred. Sam has always hated himself for being different, for being "unclean," and all that stuff. And here he sees an example of somebody going through that, and he immediately knows how to handle it. I also love seeing the way he's processing Mary leaving. Unlike Dean, who is caught up in his understandable abandonment issues, Sam has this amazing ability to see things from Mary's perspective. He's always understood the need for a little alone time, even if Dean hasn't.

Mary and Dean texting one another was adorable. I'm glad that we're not going with a total cut-off between Mary and the boys. She needs room to process, but that doesn't mean they're suddenly estranged. Dean and Cas talk briefly, although we only see Dean's side of the conversation. Cas reports to Dean, who reports to Sam, that Cas and Crowley have teamed up and are hunting down Lucifer. I loved the confirmation that Cas and the guys are keeping in touch, and apprising each other of their situations. It never made sense for Cas to be cut off from them, so even a token acknowledgement that they're keeping tabs on each other is very much appreciated.

That's what I've got. For a C-plot episode, there sure was a lot of meaty material. I'm pissed about Magda dying, but I'm glad that Sam got a chance to revisit his psychic past all the same. Now if the British Men of Letters would just decide what they're doing in this season, that would be much appreciated.

8/10