Supernatural: The Third Man

August 28, 2021 4:30 AM - Season 6, Episode 3

When three police officers are struck down by, respectively, copious bleeding, boils, and locusts, Sam and Dean call upon Castiel, who explains that someone is using the Staff of Moses to inflict fatal biblical plague-like ailments, and that there's a civil war in heaven.

Quotes:

Dean: Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray to Castiel to get his feathery ass down here.
Sam: You're an idiot.
Dean: Stay positive.
Sam: Oh, I am positive.

Sam: [after Castiel doesn't appear in answer to Dean's prayer] Like I said... son of a bitch doesn't answer. [notices Dean looking beyond him] He's right behind me, isn't he?
Castiel: Hello.
Sam: "Hello?"
Castiel: Yes.
Sam: Hello? Hello?
Castiel: Uh, that is still the term...?
Sam: I spent all that time trying to get through to you. Dean calls once, and now it's, "Hello"?
Castiel: Yes.
Sam: So, what, you like him better or something?
Castiel: Dean and I do share a more profound bond. [to Dean] I wasn't gonna mention it...

Castiel: [impatient, with "air quotes"] Sam, Dean, my "people skills" are "rusty". Pardon me, but I've spent the last "year" as a multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent. But believe me, you *do not* want that weapon down here. Help me find it. Or more people will die.

Sam: I thought the staff turned, like, a river into blood, not one dude.
Castiel: The weapon isn't being used at full capacity. I think we can rule Moses out as a suspect.

Dean: There's too many angels, Cass! I don't know who's on first, what's on second...
Castiel: What *is* "second"?
Dean: Don't start that.

Castiel: What... is all this? What are you doing?
Balthazar: Whatever I want. This morning I had a ménage à... What's French for twelve?

Balthazar: [after turning Raphael into salt] Same thing happened to Lot's wife. Iodize the poor sucker, and your kitchen's stocked for life.

Dean: Still driving the plastic piece of crap, huh?
Sam: What's your mileage, again?
Dean: Shut up.

Sam: Were you racing me?
Dean: No. I was kicking your ass.
Sam: Very mature.

Sam: [looking out the window at his car several stories below, which Castiel and another angel have just fallen on and destroyed] My car!
Dean: Okay, silver lining.

Sam: [finds a mask in the Impala's trunk] What the hell is that?
Dean: Oh, it's, uh, Ben's Halloween costume.
Sam: Wendigo?
Dean: Yeah.
Sam: Accurate.

Trivia:

At one point Balthazar says "what is French for twelve". Sebastian Roché was actually born in Paris, France and speaks fluent French.

Dean is just leaving 'Burger Heaven' when Sam calls. That is a neighbourhood family restaurant in New Westminster, a south-east suburb of Vancouver, BC, Canada.

While at the morgue, Dean reads that the officer had boils inside his body -- in his airways -- something that would only be known after an autopsy. The body had just been brought in and there was no incision on the chest as is done with an autopsy.

posted by orange swan (5 comments total)

Those were some very realistic-looking boils.

The contrast between Sam rigorously working out while Dean casually does a few stretches and then heads off in his car to get burgers for breakfast was pretty funny. I suspect there's some relation between the characters' attitudes towards working out/diet and those of the actors who play them. Jared Padalecki takes exercise and diet very, very seriously (he has two exercise rooms in his house: one for weights and one for cardio) and is never not in amazing shape, while Jensen Ackles seems to be more relaxed about it and is sometimes not in great shape -- though of course he must generally eat much better than Dean.

Must say Jared Padalecki has never looked better than he did in that opening scene of his (I mean, damn....), but even so I'm not sure I buy that the prostitute would "almost forget" that Sam hadn't yet paid her for the previous night. Don't prostitutes expect payment up front?

The use of a prostitute is another sign that all is not well with Sam. The guy who normally has very little interest in casual sex is now hiring prostitutes? Dean doesn't know about the prostitute, but the incident with Aaron definitely clued him in that something is wrong. The normal Sam Winchester ain't no high-functioning sociopath.

Speaking of Aaron, that poor kid. Couldn't they have asked Aaron if the angel gave him a name? Or for a description?

Interesting choice of name, too, for someone who was going to be using the Staff of Moses. Moses's brother, who served as Moses's assistant because Moses had some sort of speech impediment (commonly thought to be a stutter), was named Aaron.
posted by orange swan at 5:06 AM on August 28, 2021

It's a shitty trope, the idea that if you're sufficiently good at sex, a sex worker will decide not to collect payment out of gratitude.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:57 AM on August 28, 2021 [3 favorites]

Synchronized car door closing!

Fake/possessed/whatever (because these were the options going through my head when I first saw this episode) Sam was pretty cold to the sex worker. He could have at least been friendly or cordial, even if he didn’t want to share information.

You left out the second part of that equation, Pope Guilty, it's sufficiently good at sex + hot (and young) = freebie from the hooker. And yes, it's a terrible trope.
posted by sardonyx at 8:50 AM on August 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Absolute top-shelf gross outs, magnificent. Any show can liquefy a guy in the teaser; the mark of class is the plague of locusts eating their way out of a man's skULL JESUS GOD.

Sawed-off biblical staffs and throwing together angelic rituals like you'd make an omelet: good stuff. The idea that an angel wants to buy your soul is both a cool evolution of the idea that started with crossroad demons, and a large step down the path to some extremely tiresome storylines in the future, but I can't say it doesn't fit right into this universe as it's presented. Could personally have done without the kid screaming in agony though.

Leaving the Black kid you just tortured to be, uh, rescued? by the cops, who murdered his brother and covered it up like last week, is a bad look in a completely different way than torturing him in the first place was a bad look. The point's made, Castiel Makes The Tough Choices now, give it two more lines and have him take the kid home to his father, jfc.

sufficiently good at sex + hot (and young) = freebie from the hooker

This show cannot make an episode I like without at least one thing that makes me want to punch myself in the face every time, good LORD this was obnoxious.
posted by jameaterblues at 9:11 AM on August 28, 2021 [4 favorites]

That sex worker scene was dumb. Also, Dean/ Bobby's physiques are closer to realistic for brawlers. Sam's definition resembles those of MMA fighters, but MMA fighters look that way because they cut to make weight (lose weight unhealthily, for a very brief period prior to weigh-in, in order to be as low weight as possible for tier-ing purposes). Sam's looks are for looks (vanity), not for utility. The SRT8 is also a really dickbag car.

Given how frequently they're cut and beat up, Sam's very low adiposity is garbage. Resurrection notwithstanding, Sam should look like a Ken doll that's been savaged by a psycho terrier. Roman gladiators (combat for entertainment) tended towards chunky muffins and looked like Bobby but with even more padding.

I used to be Team Sam (or whatever that's called), but are they playing Sam with residual Lucifer at this point in the story arc? I'm probably more Team Sam Sr. now than either Sam or Dean.

Burger Heaven! Was there last weekend. Good burgers and one of their (many) schticks is using tea candles to keep little glass bowls of gravy warm (it isn't enough gravy for the portion of fries/ onion rings they serve). But good grief, they really jacked their prices up from pre-covid, which already wasn't cheap. Upper $20/ lower $30 for a burger. Pre-side-substitution/ addition, pre-drinks, pre-tax, pre-tip (tipping "culture" has gotten even more rancid around here post-covid). Not going back anytime soon.

Enjoyed Sam making fun of Castiel's voice. Does Cas' tie get increasingly decrepit as time goes on?

Yeah, the effects were good. Too bad they didn't explore plague vs Pestilence re: Moses is an Old Testament OG who got top billing in the spinoff New Testament, but the staff/ Egypt is still prequel Judaism/ Pharanoic?
posted by porpoise at 12:20 PM on August 28, 2021 [1 favorite]