Supernatural 10x19 "The Werther Project"

As you may remember from last week, Sam is making a deal with Rowena to decode the book of the damned to find the spell to remove the Mark from Dean. Just what are her terms? She wants Sam to kill Crowley. Sam is quick to agree, because obviously he's never been a very big fan of Crowley in the first place. The only thing is, Rowena can't actually decode the book just yet. She needs another book to do it, the special spell book that had a certain name that I've now forgotten from a long dead witch named Nadia.

But just how is Sam supposed to find some old grand coven witch's special book? Well, luckily the Men of Letters are now involved in basically everything even though the Winchesters had never heard of them until a few seasons ago, because it turns out they took the book many moons ago. Sam does some research and discovers that a rogue Man of Letters that we saw last season created a box to keep the book in, only when people get too close to the box, it activates and makes those near it kill themselves. Well, that's no good now, is it?

Sam heads off to where he believes the book to be, a former St. Louis Men of Letters chapter house. He tries to do it without Dean, but Dean ends up following him and taking it as a sign that he needs to apologize for going after a nest of vamps by himself earlier on. This development, of course, forces Sam to lie about what he's really doing there, in a matter of speaking, because it's only technically not telling him the whole truth than full on lying. Anyhow, while Dean chats up the woman of the house, Sam heads down to the basement to try to deactivate the box's enchantment. But, it doesn't work, the thing gets released and infects all three of them.

While the owner lady kills herself rather quickly, Dean goes into a kind of catatonic hallucinatory state, where he believes he's back in Purgatory with Benny. Sam, meanwhile, faces the accusatory ghost of the owner lady, who is starting to get to him until Rowena appears and dispels her. She and Sam head back down to the basement to try to figure out this box, tying Dean up to a chair so he doesn't try to kill himself in the meantime.

Dean and Benny walk around Purgatory, talking about how Dean was better off there, because there's always an easy fight around the corner, and blah blah. I mean, we know this isn't really Benny, and Dean knows it isn't really Benny either, so when he starts going on about how Dean should really just end things himself rather than relying on Sam or Castiel to do it, I was thinking to myself - um, Dean can't kill himself, precisely because of the Mark. Which, thankfully, Dean pointed out anyway, and pulls himself out of his catatonic state.

Meanwhile, Sam and Rowena have deciphered the box's encryption - it needs Men of Letters blood in order to open. Except it wants a lot of blood. So much that Sam is starting to look a bit pale and weak from losing so much blood. Luckily, Dean comes running in just in time to stop him and give it some of his own blood to finish the ritual or whatever you want to call it. But wait, you say, if he sees Rowena, then he'll know what Sam is doing! Ah, yes. This Rowena is but a figment of Sam's imagination, trying to get him to kill himself with the whole blood spillage deal.

Lucky for him, the box really did want Men of Letters blood to open, so Dean is able to add some of his to the mix and they do actually get the box open, retrieving the book inside. Sam feigns innocence as to its contents, but we know better. He takes it to Rowena with the book of the damned later. But, as he doesn't trust her, he chains her up until she does what they agreed to, and nothing more. Bum bum bum!

Random Thoughts:

- There was supposed to be kind of this suspense around whether Sam would be able to deactivate the box in time to stop Dean from trying to kill himself, but to me that kind of lacked suspense because duh, the Mark won't actually let Dean kill himself. Were they trying to say if he tried he would go demon again or something? Or was it just assuming we wouldn't think of that?

- Would that really be the situation Dean's unconscious would go to when hit with that stuff? I feel like there are other, more effective, ways the stuff could've tried to get to him, but maybe that's just me.

- I feel like I enjoy Rowena a lot more when she's interacting with Sam than I did when she was hanging out with Crowley all the time. Not sure why, per se, but that's why this is called a random thought.

- One has to wonder what is in store next after they get this whole Mark of Cain business figured out. Is it going to be more of Rowena as the villain, or something completely new?

Quotes:

Susie: Tall white fella. Pretty hair.

Rowena: We had an agreement, giant.

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