Supernatural Sorta Recap: 15.05 “Proverbs 17:3″

“The crucible is for silver and the furnace is for gold, but Chuck fucks with your heart.” – Proverbs 17:3, New Snarkian Bible

“Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but the SHOW tests your patience over and over again.” – Proverbs 17:3, King Snark Meta Bible

Okay this won’t be a regular recap, either. I’m dealing with pneumonia or maybe just a really lingering cold. Whatever it is isn’t affording me the patience or energy to carefully watch and pause the episode for a blow-by-blow recap. I’ve coughed so much my ribs hurt. I should have defined abs by now. Anyway. I’m going to just think out loud about it and maybe speculate, keeping in mind that I don’t read spoilers or much other speculation.

So first off, the opening follows the show’s tendency to write young people, especially girls and women, as if they’re in a skincare commercial. Bouncy! Vibrant! Giggling! Strained dialogue! What the hell IS Pitera Essence anyway?? Only Ashley survives a werewolf attack when she and her friends go camping.

It turns out the whole thing is a Rube Goldbergian plot to get the Winchesters out on a case so that Ashley, who’s actually a freshly revived Lilith, can get the Equalizer gun from them. It takes her like four seconds to figure out they keep it in the glove compartment of the Impala (with the windows rolled down, even) so it’s not like she even really needed to do any of the stuff leading up to that.

But we the audience needed to see yet another This Parallels the Brothers in Some Way plot, where two werewolf brothers end up at odds with each other. One of them is tall with long hair and one of them is less tall with short hair!! OH NOOOO. Tall Brother wants Taller Brother to stop with the sudden spate of murdering and ends up killing him, then himself.

Lilith calls Chuck out on being soooo in love with the trope of brother versus brother that he keeps reenacting it. Which means the show is calling itself out on its own slavish adherence to the trope, no matter how forced, but…. so what? Sam is going to continue to have dreams about killing Dean or being killed by Dean, they’re probably going to argue about it, and then in the finale they’re either going to fulfill it or subvert it. Either way, it’s going to take until the end to find out which one it is, so everything until then will be some form of repetition of what’s come before.

Some other things about the episode:

Dean quickly starts to figure out something’s wrong because the case is going a little too easily for them. But like… it’s not going any easier than that sheriff immediately believing there was a benzene leak in a town with no benzene pipes. There’s nothing that happens in this case that should trigger suspicion of this kind except that the script said so.

That brings us to Chuck’s ill-defined abilities.

A few episodes ago, he was supposedly so weak he couldn’t leave this world without Amara’s help. Has that changed because of some development in the story or did it change because the plot needed it? Because Lilith tells us he went to the Big Empty to bring her back. That’s not the “parlor trick” level stuff Amara mentioned. He can make people act out his stories still: the werewolf brothers seem to have been forced into these new murderous roles by Chuck. He’s apparently still powerful enough to not only revive Lilith and spring her, but scare her into obedience.

For the final season, it feels cheap to leave something this big so nebulous. It smacks of wanting to leave the show plenty of easy options instead of plotting things out more tightly. It makes me uneasy for the finale, and not in an edge-of-my-seat kind of way.

In the end, Sam confesses to Dean that he’s been having dreams or visions. They figure because of the quantum-entangled (or whatever) bullet wound, he can see Chuck’s thoughts. They should immediately worry that this means Chuck can see Sam’s thoughts, but maybe that’s for another episode.

Oh and Show? Dean still looks about 90% the same as he did in season 1 so stop acting like he went from this

to this

Donations to my Anti-Pneumonia and/or Winter Cider Fund are greatly appreciated: https://ko-fi.com/A4017DA

This.

I’m getting there. I swear. *sobs*

I whittled it down, but now I’m back at 16 + some stuff in drafts that I owe you. Bear with me. I love y’all’s sweetness in thinking of me 🤗 And hey I whipped up a review of the season premiere for you, it should be posting this afternoon at some point, I forget what time I set it for. Okay bye.

Well MOSTLY back on track, drafts still stacked, thank you for your continued patience, lurve y’all MWAH 💋😘

As of this post, we are FIVE listens/downloads away from 1,000! 😁🎈🎆

So if you haven’t caught up on all the episodes, now’s the time to do it:

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and most all your other favorite platforms!

Get your spooky on. It’s Sunday, after all. 😉👻

I’m getting there. I swear. *sobs*

I whittled it down, but now I’m back at 16 + some stuff in drafts that I owe you. Bear with me. I love y’all’s sweetness in thinking of me 🤗 And hey I whipped up a review of the season premiere for you, it should be posting this afternoon at some point, I forget what time I set it for. Okay bye.

THANK YOU!!!