Supernatural Talk

Tarts talk about The Rapture

By Suzette Chan
June 8, 2009

Welcome to Supernatural Talk, where Tarts talk about Supernatural, their favourite show about demon-hunting brothers. This week: episode 4.20, "The Rapture."

Sam and Dean stumble upon the aftermath of an angel-on-angel brawl and find that Castiel has left his vessel. So the Winchester brothers acquaint themselves with Jimmy Novak, the mook who "volunteered" to house Castiel when the angel fell to Earth. Jimmy swears off helping the angels ever again and attempts to reunite with his family. However, angel and demon interference threatens the lives of his wife and daughter, and Jimmy finds himself begging to host Castiel again. Meanwhile, Sam is out of demon blood and can't help but drink from a demon in front of Dean. Sam is surprised that Dean doesn't get angry with him, and even more surprised when Dean and Bobby lock him up in Bobby's panic room.

What did Jimmy's backstory add to your understanding of Castiel? How did it fit into the Supernatural mythos?

Patti Martinson, Staff Writer: I'm not sure Jimmy added much to my understanding about Castiel, other than how Castiel arrived on Earth. In the mythos, it adds to the notion that people can be possessed, by either demons or angels.

Katherine Keller, Culture Vultures Editrix: Ah, poor Jimmy. "Be careful what you wish for" is the moral of his story. He wished to do something big and amazing for God, got his chance, and destroyed the family he loved.

As for how did it fit into the Supernatural mythos? Humans are possessed by angels and demons and it's not pretty. It also fits in with the theme that you can't serve two masters, and as well as with the idea that both sides use humans like pieces in a chessboard, regardless of the consequences to that person.

Suzette Chan, Assistant Copy Editrix and Staff Writer: Supernatural has spoiled me. I'm used to Supernatural storylines doing double and triple duty, even in stand-alone episodes that are light on series mythology. In "Family Remains," (4.11) — which was written by this episode's writer, Jeremy Carver — the story of the siblings who lived in the walls and crawl spaces of the house referred to a real life incident in which an Austrian man kidnapped his own daughter, hid her in the basement, and fathered a number of children with her, as well as the 1991 Wes Craven movie, The People Under the Stairs, which was about a clan of incestuously produced children who were kept in the cellar. Both the real life story and the fictional movie played on anxiety of a domestic horror: specifically, incest and the repression of its consequences. The story of the unfortunate siblings in "Family Remains" was a distorted mirror version of the relationship between Sam and Dean and their mission to get rid of outsiders (i.e., supernatural forces) from their house (i.e., the human world and their own little two-person family).

Would that "The Rapture" had half those layers! The first problem with the episode is that Jimmy's story in "The Rapture" was a fairly prosaic roll-out of an uninteresting story. In fact, Jimmy's relationship with the angels compared unfavourably to the complex relationship that Dean has with same faction. To be fair, Dean's demonstrated issues with faith dates back to the Season 1 episode called "Faith," (1.12). I don't expect that kind of long-term development to be evident in Jimmy's one-off appearance (at least I hope it's a one-off), but I was very disappointed that Jimmy was less interesting than some of the show's monsters of the week, like those siblings in "Family Remains". And it's too bad the episode didn't make more use out of the missing persons narrative, for example, stories of people thought dead making a surprise return.

Secondly, Jimmy's non-predicament led to a lack of dramatic tension in his story. Before he was chosen by Castiel, Jimmy Novak (a reference to film noir/Hitchcock movie stars Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak?) was a one-note true believer who made Ned Flanders look nuanced. Jimmy's acceptance of the existence of angels and his decision to allow Castiel to possess him were uncomplicated, ineffable acts. Jimmy's post-possession rejection of the angels is similarly pat.

This is not to say that a true believer character is a bad thing. Jimmy's simple faith is a contrast to Sam and Dean's ongoing angst. Like Sam and Dean, Jimmy is being presented with options by supernatural forces that claim to be helping them do good things. Unlike Sam and Dean, Jimmy's outlook is so simplistic that his story does not offer viewers multiple points of engagement with the options. The story we were given did nothing to expand upon Castiel's initial — and perfect — one-line description of Jimmy: "He's a devout man: he actually prayed for this. "

Finally, the inconsequential A-story messed up the dramatic impact of the episode. While the episode emphasized the foregone conclusion of Jimmy re-volunteering his body to Castiel, it displaced the real drama of the night: Dean's discovery of the source of Sam's scary new powers.

Wolfen Moondaughter, Assistant Reviews Editrix and Den Mother: It affected the concept of angels in general more than offering insight to Castiel. In fact, it's rather confusing now. Anna was born a human because she was an angel missing her Grace — when she got her Grace back, she became a full angel again. I did not have the impression that Anna's body was only a vessel, but rather more like she was an angel who needed to be re-plugged in to the power of God. Couple that with the murders of the other angels, which reinforced my perception that angels' bodies were their own, their deaths permanent, and therefore their existence being more like mortals in that, by the Christian church, they generally only get one shot at life. I thought that Anna's angelic body was sort of reconfigured so that she was born a human. Now that theory is all shot to hell.

So what is the deal? Is it if you're unlucky enough to get your vessel killed, you're permanently dead? Or could the angels take new vessels? If those particular angels weren't in vessels, how could the humans see them?

I guess this reinforces the notion that demons started out as fallen angels — they are fundamentally similar, each just adversely affected by the power opposing the side they chose. So does this mean that humans can become angels the way they can become demons? Or is that a difference too?

As far as this whole scenario affecting my perception of Castiel, it's not the backstory that affects my understanding so much as what Castiel did to Jimmy in the present — and to Jimmy's daughter. Whatever happened to Castiel in heaven, he's gone back to being a full-blown company man — but this time he doesn't seem happy about it. But then again, that could be a ruse; maybe he just wants those in charge to think he's back on their team so he can stop him from the inside. Either way, like Sam, it seems he's willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. While he has done harsh things in God's name before, I don't think he would have taken over Jimmy's daughter like that before. Then again, he probably knows Jimmy so well that he knew Jimmy would insist in being taken instead, but even that seems harsh.

Which raises the question: is really even Castiel in there? Perhaps the higher powers figure Dean will trust that body and not question it. Were the demons in on it? They seemed to be. Which means there's either a resistance group of demons helping Heaven, sort of like what Ruby claimed to be, or else Jimmy is now inhabited by a demon masquerading as Castiel.

When Castiel first appeared, he said his vessel volunteered. What did you think of the angels' idea of volition by the end of this episode?

Patti: I think it was a formality that a human needs to volunteer. Jimmy didn't have any real concept of what becoming a vessel would mean, that there would be a great cost to it, personally. Jimmy's consent at the end of the episode was a more informed one, if under more dire circumstances.

Katherine: Jimmy consented, but the first time, it wasn't a truly informed consent, and the second time, it was to save his daughter from what would be, in some ways, a fate worse than death. Also, it spared Jimmy's wife the agony of losing both her husband and her daughter.

The moral high ground that the angels hold in selecting "willing" hosts, as practiced, is only about an inch or two out of the mud.

Suzette: Heaven has a track record of being not big on practical applications of free will. Like Lucifer before her, Anna had to leave the angel camp in order to exercise her free will. Castiel has been shown wrestling with the conflict between his orders and his conscience (Castiel is more interesting — more human — than Jimmy Novak). Since free will is God's creation, it's perfect, but the forces of Heaven advocate a notion of free will that allows individuals to do whatever they want, as long they blindly follow God's will.

Clearly, Dean is a problematic soldier for the forces of Heaven — but they needed him because Dean is just hellish enough to slip behind enemy lines. The angels' seeming inability to know what to do with Sam — they appear to not even want to think about him — is perhaps an unintended textual reinforcement of Heaven's cluelessness when it comes to wilful individuals.

Wolfie: It's coercion, extortion, a rather corrupt take on "volunteer".

The whole Abraham story never sat well with me — you know, where God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as a test of faith, only to have an angel stop Abe at the last minute and give him a goat to kill instead? Even if God never meant for Abraham to actually go through with it, the fact that He asked struck me as a sick headgame. And really, were I God, I would not want any follower who would so willingly murder their own child just because I asked them to. At any rate, yes, this scenario was different from that biblical tale, but it still involved using a child as a means of testing a follower's resolve, and the concept of a deity doing that seriously squicks me. Hell, even if it had been Jimmy's wife that was used, rather than his daughter, it still would have disgusted me. It reaffirms my feeling that Sam and Dean are better off without either side, demon or angel.

I liked that Jimmy was a lot less eager to do the devout things he once did without question, that he was no longer a blind sheep. It's like he realised he was in a cult and woke up. Yet at the same time, you could see how conflicted he was when is daughter asked if they weren't going to pray over their food — was it because old habits are hard to break, or because he was afraid of her reaction if he said no, or because he was afraid of the higher power's reaction if he said no?

I do think that, unlike with demons, angels can't take a host without some sort of an in. There has to be some sort of willingness to be taken; in Jimmy's case, he made himself wide open the first time, but the second time the possessor (whoever it was) had to convince him by other means (which is another reason I suspect the whole thing was a set-up). His daughter was probably devout enough to allow herself to be taken.

Dean is clearly concerned about the toll that demon blood drinking is taking on Sam. But in the greater war against evil, what are the pros and cons for Sam's method of using demon powers against demons at his own expense versus Dean's method of hand-to-hand skirmishes that may result in third party human casualties?

Patti: I'm not sure. I don't think it can be an either/or situation. My gut reaction is that Dean's way is better overall, although Sam's method is clearly effective in the short run. But could Sam's method be better if he wasn't in thrall to ingesting blood to boost his power? Because I also don't think that Sam alone suffers at the expense of his powers. Dean is clearly upset by it and the demon that Sam sucked blood from wasn't exactly enjoying it. We haven't seen third-party casualties with Sam, but they are certainly possible.

Katherine: Ah, but is Sam's consent any more informed than Jimmy's? Is it as informed as Dean's deal with the Crossroads Demon? It would be one thing if it were a selfless sacrifice ("no greater love" and all that), but it's not. Sam loves the superpowers he gets from it and we can see that's its very much a drug to him, and we, the viewer know that something else is taking root in him. How much Sam is aware of what drinking the blood costs him is a matter of debate. It's very much an ends justify the means view.

Dean's method, though it may result in more third party casualties, is not the more obviously moral approach. It's certainly less expedient and it's going to cost more lives, but in the end, I think it's not a route that's "paved with good intentions."

Suzette: I like how the episode clearly delineated the brothers' differing positions, yet showed through their actions that neither argument is perfect in practice. In this episode, Dean killed one demon and its human host with Ruby's knife; Dean's possession of the knife scares another demon out of its meatsuit, so that person survived. However, it's clear that Dean was ready to kill the second demon-and-host combo. While effective, the problem with Dean's method is that human hosts are pretty much dead whenever Dean has a chance to kill a demon. He sees individual human lives as expendable in the larger fight for collective humanity.

Sam killed one human host and two demons. The problem is that Sam is constantly having to pick and choose which humans should be killed and which should be saved. He drinks blood from one demon-possessed human and kills her (for reasons unexplained), then uses the resulting telekinetic powers to exorcise and kill a demon who was possessing someone connected to his social circle, Jimmy's wife, Amelia.

Interestingly, the problems with each brother's method actually align with the other's overriding philosophy. Dean's emphasis on the greater good over the individual is along the lines of Sam's utilitarian bent. Sam's choice to save individuals whom he personally values is along the lines of Dean's choices to toss away larger moral questions to protect or save the people he loves.

This is where the show uses its two-person cast to great advantage. It has developed a running dialectic about practical morality, dramatizing abstractions through the characters' contrasting personalities. At this stage, the boys' positions and personaes have flipped poles: now it's Dean who thinks of human consequences first, and Sam who is focused on killing things in the most brutal manner — even at the expense of his own humanity, on which he seems to have given up.

Wolfie: The obvious pro, which is what Sam is using as his excuse, is that it levels the playing field. Even if Ruby is betraying them after all, if your enemy is stupid enough to hand you a weapon, why not use it? It actually seems amoral to have the power and not use it, if it means letting people die because you don't want to dirty your hands, or especially if using other methods puts innocents at risk. It's the wielder of the tool that determines whether it's good or evil, not the tool itself.

At least, normally it is. But if you become too dependent on something, to the point where you can't function without it, that's a very bad con. Now when Sam's going through withdrawal, he'll be less effective than if he'd just stuck with developing his powers naturally. He'll be more vulnerable, both physically and mentally. Now Ruby — or any other demon — has a bargaining chip to use against Sam. Sammy didn't read the label on the bottle, so to speak, didn't account for the drawbacks, focusing too much on the boost. Sounds a bit like steroid addiction, really.

Other thoughts?

Patti: The belief that becoming a vessel because you can be a force of good is in question. I doubt Uriel's vessel would have accepted if he knew what Uriel was up to. Jimmy's daughter probably didn't consent to being possessed by Castiel. There is no guarantee that the angel will be a force of good.

I will have to say that Misha Collins did an outstanding job. I was very surprised he pulled off a fully realized Jimmy. Jimmy and Castiel are very different and it is tribute to his skill that Misha was able to fully differentiate them.

Katherine: This episode was just over 37 minutes long, once all the commercials were stripped out and there were no ending credits. I can't believe for a moment that it's more cost effective for The CW to air several commercials for its own shows (including three for Gossip Girl in the same break!) than to give us additional moments of story.

That's just crappy and weak, and for the record, as a matter of principle, I will never voluntarily tune into Gossip Girl or Reaper because I view the ad nauseum, ad infinitum repetition of ads for those shows during this episode as theft of content from Supernatural. I won't buy them on DVD or iTunes, either. You didn't make me curious about them, CW; I now actively loathe them.

Suzette: Although the character of Jimmy Novak left a lot to be desired, Misha Collins did a great job of conveying a very different personality as Castiel's vessel.

The portrayal of the limits of Amelia's belief was interesting. Although she bristled at pre-possession Jimmy's suggestion that she might not believe in God, she thinks that Jimmy is crazy for thinking that angels are talking to him. Like a lot of people, she picks and chooses which supernatural entities ought to be considered real. Of course, for Sam and Dean, they're all real.

Remember way back in "Scarecrow," (1.11), the sense of shame Sam displayed when he admitted that he committed a crime to get back to town and save Dean? Yeah, well, that's gone. Sam has gone from wincing, "I stole a car," to hotwiring one in front of Jimmy's family and turning it over to them with a matter-of-fact, "Well, here's your car." I amused myself for days replaying the scenes side-by-side in my head.

Now I don't trust Anna. They've got her doing what Ruby was doing in the first half of the season, basically acting as a supernatural Twitter feed that pops up now and then with cryptic bits of information in 140 words or less. Characters who are obviously not telling the whole story are highly suspect on this show — and that includes secretive Sam from the beginning of the season until this episode.

Patti: Now that is something I hadn't thought of before, but you're right. Anna is like Ruby but for Dean. I don't think she'll be as manipulative of Dean as Ruby was, but the parallel is pretty clear.

Wolfie: The thing with Anna is, if Ruby is playing Sam, and Anna is playing Dean, that means that aside from the usual demon/angel war, there's at least one more party at work, then — and that faction isn't anymore trustworthy than the demon or angel team. Because I really don't think Anna is working for the demons, and she's definitely not working with the angels.

I wonder what happened to that poor woman who had been possessed, like her husband, when the demon left her. Imagine waking up in your neighbour's house and finding your husband dead beside you! Will she recall what happened? And how will she handle the body? Will she call the authorities?

Like Suzette said, I thought Misha did a fantastic job playing up the contrast between the two characters. I'm relieved Castiel's not gone, though (even if it's not really Castiel): Misha's "Castiel voice" is sooo sexy!

I also loved the intervention — very deftly handled. Granted, the moment Bobby opened the door, I knew what was about to happen, but it was still well played.

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