Supernatural Revisited: 6x11 Appointment in Samarra
While 6x11 Appointment in Samarra is neither the best episode of the show nor beyond reproach, it stands head and shoulders above most of series six so far. One of the chief contributors to this is, of course, Julian Ritchings as Death, a role in which he is simply delightful. Tessa also made a return, her third appearance in the show so far, and for a majority of the episode, Dena and Sam were playing completely different questlines, thereby rendering mind-numbing sibling bitching minimal. Oh frabjous day, callooh callay!
My main criticism of the episode, though, is the actual story was underwhelming and tired, and in the end the majority of this episode had little bearing on the overall narrative of series 6. It had potential as Death is fantastic, Tessa's a welcome returning face and Dean is 90% of the reason I watch this show. All three of them together in one episode should have a showstopper, but they were utilised to essentially tell the viewer that fate and a natural order exists in this universe, and that people have to die when it's their time.
That's hardly insightful, original or interesting, and this is something Dean already knows. It's also something he doesn't care about, and is not going to start caring about ever, so what does this episode accomplish, other than maybe making casual viewers not really thinking much believe they've just watched something deep and meaningful?
Though the influence ofTerry Pratchett's and Neil Gaiman's versions of Death are obvious, he still feels like his own character rather than a knock. That he is not an evil antagonist as in lesser works such as Final Destination is, as every other time I have discussed the subject, such a relief. The idea of Death loving cheap junk food like pizza and hot dogs is fab and tickles me every time. Were it not so obviously taken from Pratchett and Gaiman, it might suggest a more mature, philosophical perspective on death and dying, the kind that comes with age, bereavement, and general experience. However, Good Omens, Discworld, and The Sandman ran so Supernatural could walk.
Before moving on from the subject, Death in Good Omens loves sherbet lemons. Pratchett's Death also has arresting blue eyes, a sense of whimsy, and an undertone of threat and danger. Not only did Supernatural draw heavy inspiration from Pratchett, but anybody who has read the Harry Potter books will instantly associate those things with Dumbledore. Terry Pratchett really is the grandaddy of modern fantasy fiction.
The reason why Terry Pratchett's spirit felt ever-present during this episode is the striking similarities to his novel Mort from 1990, in which Death takes on an apprentice named Mort who cannot quite handle the responsibilities that come with being Death. This could of course be entirely coincidental, though the influence of Good Omens and The Sandman on the show would makes this highly unlikely. Supernatural is also by no means the first show to do an episode of this nature, with Charmed having two similar episodes involving Prue and then Piper spending time with the Angel of Death who, like Pratchett and Supernatural's Death, is not antagonistic, but simply inevitable.
Unfortunately, the point of Death in this episode is the same as in the aforementioned stories: that fate is unavoidable and death must happen.
On that subject, I wrote a novella some years ago before having read Mort, and it is only in hindsight that the similarities are apparent. The two are very different, but that one might conclude a significant Pratchett influence on my work is understandable. There are, however, other works which were far more influential, the biggest of which are mentioned in the foreword. If you are interested, the whole 130 page novella is available here. I intended to share it earlier in conjunction with my analysis on 5x18 Point of No Return due to it dealing with suicide, but here it is now. An (amateurish) audiobook recording is also available and takes roughly 3 1/2 hours. Read or listen should you feel so inclined, and do let me know if you have any thoughts on it.
But back to Supernatural:that Death also has immense presence in each and every one of his scenes is magnificent. Suffering through the lamentable Samdroid plot is worth it just for Death in this episode.
His interactions with Dean are, as always, the highlight of the episode. Watching Death treat Dean like a favourite nephew who still exasperates and annoys him is such fun, but at the back of my mind is always the fact that more should have been made of that. Many was the viewer who concluded that Death was perhaps grooming Dean to one day take over his role, and had that been the end of the show, I would not have complained.
Tessa, however, was unexpectedly shitty to Dean. This is perhaps not a huge breakaway from her characterisation in 4x15 Death Takes a Holiday and 2x01 In My Time of Dying, but she certainly is far less subtle about her exasperation with humanity and Dean in particular. Since she is a manifestation of natural order, this makes sense, and to the writers' credit does help differentiate her from Death in The Sandman after whom she was so evidently styled. Considering she spends every moment of every day interacting with the dead, one would ascribe a greater amount of tact and empathy to her, some of which she did indeed display (or pretended to) in her earlier appearances. She is in fact a total douche on several occasions in this episode, not least when she blamed Dean for the woman's untimely death right in front of the woman. Here I am refusing to swear while teaching because it would be unprofessional, yet there she is blaming and bullying colleagues in front of clients, while on the job no less. What a total dick move. How does that help Dean or the woman? It does nothing but provide Tessa with a moment of vindictive joy whilst causing the woman further distress. In no world should Tessa ever become a teacher.
In that same scene, Tessa claims that the woman should have lived for decades yet, and that her death was caused by Dean's hesitance to kill the girl. But since fate is predetermined in the Superverse, this is false. Nothing happens in the Superverse which was not supposed to happen, since everything is dictated by God. As such, the woman whose name I have just remembered is Jolene was indeed fated to die that day, otherwise she would not have died. These are the rules of Supernatural, which Tessa must surely know as does Death.
Apropos blaming Dean, I have yet to remind the reader of the plot of the episode. In brief, Dean must spend the day as Death, killing people whose time has come. If Dean removes Death's ring before the day is done, he forfeits and Death refuses to retrieve Sam's soul from the cage. Though quite blasé about the deaths of the men early on, Dean at refuses to take the life of the little girl with cancer. This refusal then means that things happen which should not happen, resulting in people dying who should have lived. Because Dean refused to kill the little girl, her nurse got into a car crash and died.
You might have noticed I wrote above that Dean was blasé about the men's deaths. The first guy got shot while trying to rob a shop, while the second died of a heart attack while eating a pizza. The first guy is mocked and goaded as he got what he deserved and is on his way to hell. The heart attack guy was essentially given the 'sorry, but it's your own fault' treatment, and the audience was not invited to care or sympathise with his death. The metanarrative here being of course that, as always, viewers are not invited to care about the deaths of men on screen. Their deaths are either well-deserved as in the case of the armed robber, or the result of their own poor choices, as in the heart attack victim. But the deaths the audience was supposed to care about were female: a little girl dying of cancer, and a woman
What this also shows is the ideas of male hyperagency and female hypoagency, i.e. men are capable of making their own choices, and are thus responsible for everything that happens to them. Women conversely are the objects of other people's choices and are not responsible for their situation in life. Supernatural frequently plays into this narrative of men and women's lives, or rather the writers show their own views on men and women in what they produce. There are some notable exceptions, such as Rowena and Ruby, but considering how 'progressive' Kripke et al might like to present themselves, their writing is still stuck in traditional views of men and women's roles. Women are grown adults who make choices and are responsible for their position in life, not helpless victims of other people's whims. Contrariwise, sometimes stuff happens to men which is utterly outside their control and no fault of their own. Claiming otherwise and neglecting to show it is infantilising to women and dehumanising to men.
I know a woman who had essentially starved herself for well over a decade until she made the walkers in The Walking Dead look almost healthy. Her weight loss was so severe she was kicked out of Weight Watchers. Of course she denied having an eating disorder while abusing appetite inhibitors and simultaneously drinking herself into a stupor first once, then twice, then four and finally seven nights a week for years. Not forgetting the numerous suicide attempts which were probably not actual suicide attempts but left scars on the people in her life.
Workplace bullying almost twenty years ago was one of the trigger causes, but long-term causes included childhood abuse and trauma coupled with bipolar and undiagnosed ADD and/or autism. At some point, she was a victim, but at what point do we admit that well over a decade of self-abuse while destroying personal relationships and traumatising people around her is the result of her own choice to refuse accountability and responsibility? If you insist on still seeing her as the victim of other people's actions, then can we not also apply this same reasoning to the man who died of a heart attack? Was he similarly abusing himself due to mental health problem and the complications of neurodivergency and trauma? If the woman I described is a victim of other people's actions, then why is the man not? Or are people in general still of the belief that men's lives are just not as deep or complicated as women's, and that men do not have the same depth of feeling as women?
Alright, moving on...
This is now the third time this series that somebody has taken a swipe at Dean's appearance. Gwen said he has very delicate features, the vampire called him pretty and now Tessa's calling him a 'slack jaw' and ragging on his hair cut. One wonders why this is never directed at Sam, but I am reminded of something a friend once said about watching an actor in martial arts films when he was young. Said actor (was it John Wayne? I cannot remember) never got hit in his films, for which reason my friend concluded the actor was probably a douche in real life. Since Sam is almost never the butt of anybody's jokes but Dean's, you are invited to draw your own conclusions about the actors.
Now it is once more time to discuss the nature of souls in Supernatural, though not tracing the same steps as earlier in this discourse. But in my original notes for this episode made in May 2021 (over five years ago at the time of writing), I wrote the following:
What exactly is a soul in the Supernatural mythology? It clearly is not comprised of the memories, personality, or thoughts of a person, yet is connected to morality and empathy. Samdroid's morality is reminiscent off people's fears of artificial intelligence; what if a powerful artificial intelligence created to e.g. end hunger and suffering decided to kill all humans? They cannot be hungry or suffer if they are dead, after all. Which reminds me of the totally bitching song The Day that the World Breaks Down by Ayreon and the album The Source, but I digress...
This 'moral compass' part of Samdroid's mind appears to be in absentia, leading one to conclude that:
soul = a value for human life + compassion + empathy.
The corollary of this is that memories, thoughts, and personality have no bearing on a personal morality or empathy in the Superverse. In fact, the mind and soul appear to be like a Venn diagram; some crossover in the middle, but mostly inhabiting separate spheres of the human. This raises a fair number of questions.
The soul clearly influences humans' behaviour, as proven by Samdroid and characters later in the show. Is the soul a person is born with good or bad to start with? Memories, thoughts, and personality are not of the soul, and a person has a soul from birth. Does the soul influence the mind, or the other way around? A newborn has a soul, unless I am mistaken, but hardly a mind.
Does the soul lie dormant until the 'mind' awakens after a few months? Or does the soul get to work in the baby from the off, causing the mind to awaken in a body already being swayed towards either good or bad? If this is the case, why would the 'mind' go to Hell if the 'soul' is in control? Or, indeed, why would its destination be Heaven if the 'mind' had no choice? The show after all has made it clear that Free Will is just an eight-letter concept in this universe, so ipso facto nothing is the mind's fault. Nor is the soul's for that matter, but rather the creator's.
My A level in Philosophy of Religion was clearly not wasted on me. Thank you Alan for for being a fun teacher, and thank you past me for giving more thought to matters of Superverse metaphysics than the writers did. As a reward, I am now going to make myself a cup of tea and have some lovely Estonian chocolate. Kalev > Fazer > Marabou > Cadbury, no question. Die in fire, Mondelez and Kraft Foods.
As for the episode's other quest line, it involves soulless!Sam trying his hardest to prevent his soul being returned. He summons Balthazar who tells him that committing patricide will sully him so much that his soul cannot be restored to him. Quite why this is the case is beyond me, and since Bobby is not Sam's dad it would not even count as patricide anyway, but whatever, show. What follows is Sam trying and failing to kill Bobby, then nearly killing Bobby before getting knocked out by Dean who appears behind him at the right moment (thanks to Tessa, perhaps?). As if everything else soulless!Sam had done before that point were not enough to make the viewer hate him and want to never see him again. Never mind the fact Paula and her commenters had been heckling him like Waldorf and Statler since 6x01 Exile on Main Street and longing for the day they saw the metaphorical back of him. Letting your brother get metaphorically raped in an alley then using him as a tool in 6x05 Live Free or Twi-Hard apparently does not warrant getting your arse blasted to Kingdom Come, only almost stabbing your not-father in the neck deserves that.
Deep breath...
The reason Sam does not want his soul back is because the soul has been in the cage with Michael and Lucifer for a year (possibly 200 years in cage-time, but this is never confirmed) and would be damaged beyond repaired. Flayed, as Death put it. I believe one character also refers to it being gang-banged by Michael and Lucifer, which is a tasteless way of saying raped (that language would not be acceptable if Sam were a woman, mind you, because idk men just are not affected by rape in the same way as women and somebody hand me the bleach, please, I want a drink!)
In her review, Paula asked why it is Death specifically who must go to the cage to retrieve Sam's soul. If putting on Death's ring makes Dean Death, this would also enable him to enter the cage and do it in Death's stead. At least theoretically. A shame it never occurred to him, and perhaps not even the writers.
Do you remember all my bitching about how Bobby had become a flanderised grump who took liberties with his relationship with Dean and Sam? Clocking Sam out cold in this episode might just have redeemed Bobby in my eyes. For causing Sam a cerebral haemorrhage and serious concussion, we salute you, good sir. Semper fi, or whatever it is the Americans say.
Bobby actually showed some intelligence in this episode in how well-prepared he was for monster attacks. Perhaps this came about as a result of 5x15 Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, but installing a trap door in front of the cupboard or closet was a good idea, as was reinforcing the basement door with metal. This unfortunately did not stop Sam who somehow ended up climbing out of the grate in the ceiling on the panic room, a move which felt far too convenient. Also of the convenient variety was the fact that, rather than killing Bobby in the shed outside as soon as he was knocked out, Sam dragged him into the house and down into the basement, tied him to a chair, and then waited until Bobby woke up before trying to stab him. Did he know he was in an episode of Supernatural and that Dean needed to stop him killing Bobby?
Anyway, that just about does it for this time. One last point to mention is that the title of the episode, Appointment in Samarra. This is a reference to the title of a novel with the same name which the internet informs me is inspired by a poet and playwright's retelling of a tale from Ancient Mesopotamia which equates to death being inescapable.
This is a reference to a tale which the internet informs me is from Ancient Mesopotamia which equates to death being inescapable.
There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appointment_in_Samarra
This might be a reference Americans are more likely to get than those of us on the other side of the ocean, but it is quite possibly another reference to Neil Gaiman. The end of the the fourth issue of Books of Magic ends with Tim and Erik at the end of the universe and the end of time. Death and Destiny appear to him at the end of existence, and Death takes Destiny. Shortly after, Death tells Erik to essentially walk back in time billions of years because they have an 'Appointment in Samarra', i.e. Death expects to see him later in the day for his 'appointment'.
And regarding Books of Magic: it is a story about a teenage boy with black hair, glasses, and an owl who learns magic. Not that she ripped off the story, but it was probably a significant inspiration along with Pratchett. They were the big names in British fantasy in the late 1980s and 1990s when the series was incubating. I also expect Nymphadora Tonks owes a debt of gratitude to Delirium... who in turn was modelled on Tori Amos.
Anyway, one last thing to comment on is the fact that Death set out to prove a point to Dean in this episode, the point being that there is a natural order which must not be disturbed. A part of that natural order is that Sam cannot be brought back from the cage as he is 'dead' and must stay there. Except, even though Dean lost the wager, Death got Sam's soul out of the cage anyway. In other words, the wager was apparently pointless as Dean got what he wanted anyway.
Escaping Purgatory pointed out, however, that Sam's soul being in the cage while his body walks around on Earth is also against the natural order. Bodies should either have souls or be dead. Was this why Death agreed to fetch Sam's soul? Seems like killing soulless!Sam would have also solved the problem, but never mind. At least, as Paula pointed out, soulless!Sam essentially did die at the end of the episode as Death restored his soul, and he went out screaming like a bitch. God bless America! Definitely reminded me of this from Dragon Ball Abridged...
That's all, folks.
One also must take a moment for Adam, who is still stuck in the cage and whom Dean abandoned without a second's thought. And do also remember how willing Dean was to die at the beginning of the episode.
You can read more of my analyses here:
Series 1
Series 2
Series 3
Series 4
Series 5
Series 6
Sundry
You can read Paula’s review here and Demian’s here.
