Supernatural season 11, episode 17, “Red Meat,” focused on the lengths the brothers will go to when faced with losing the other. Hint: Over the edge.
There’s be a single definite in the world of Supernatural since the pilot: the Winchester brothers will go to hell — and heaven and purgatory — and back for one another. Literally. The brothers keep each other human and without one another, all logic and, well, sanity goes out the window. If you looked up codependent in the dictionary, you’d find pictures of Sam and Dean.
“Red Meat” was another exploration of that — though in particularly brutal fashion.
Sam and Dean, without any leads on Casifer or Amara, decide to take a case just to get out of the bunker. They follow the trail of a couple of missing hikers, Corbin and Michelle, who have been kidnapped by werewolves. But during the fight with the creatures, Sam is shot in the stomach. When Dean leaves to find wood to make a litter for Sam, Corbin suffocates the wounded Sam, knowing they need Dean to escape but Dean won’t leave without Sam. When Dean returns, he finds Sam apparently dead.
Corbin, it turns out, has been bit by one of the wolves and is in the process of turning. But that doesn’t come to light until Dean and the hikers are safe at a clinic in town. Michelle is horrified when she learns the truth about what Corbin did to Sam. Meanwhile, Dean tries to get out of the clinic to head back to Sam’s body, but the doctor and local police won’t let him.
Had he been able to get there, he would have discovered Sam alive. Being suffocated sent Sam’s body into shock and his vitals dropped to almost nothing, making him appear dead to Corbin. But he revived. And Sam, being the BAMF hunter that he is, ends up taking on two more werewolves while still dealing with a gunshot wound to the gut.
But Dean doesn’t know this, so he tries a trick he pulled in season 6’s “Appointment in Samarra”: he kills himself to speak with a reaper. While his body seizes from the overdose of drugs, Dean is confronted by Billie. While Dean wants to take Sam’s place, Billie is hearing none of it. There will be no more deals when it comes to death for the Winchesters, as she told Sam. As she prepares to reap Dean, she tells him that Sam is still alive. However, Billie must leave disappointed as the clinic’s doctor revives Dean. No Empty for either brother today.
While Dean’s actions here are predictable — we can even point to an episode where he did the same thing — it’s a strong reminder of just how far the brothers continue to go for one another. Despite everything that comes between them, that unwillingness to let one another go remains. While it’s not actually healthy, are any of us watching Supernatural for healthy familial relationships?
Michelle helps Dean get out of the clinic and he makes contact with Sam, but the reception is bad so Sam can’t warn him about Corbin. As Sam drives back into down, bleeding and in agony, Corbin murders the doctor and cop on scene. Dean fights him and is saved when Sam shoots him, having arrived just in time.
Sam’s Big Damn Hero moment in this episode makes up for a few of those times he was unceremoniously knocked out. A few. But seriously, Sam is incredible in this episode. The sheer willpower that it must have taken for him to push through the agony of a gunshot wound to kill two werewolves and get back into town to save Dean is hard to fathom. But this is also the guy whose soul spent 18 months in the Cage with Lucifer and overcame the debilitating memories for Dean’s sake (“The Man Who Knew Too Much”), so what’s a little gunshot?
As Sam is stitched up and gets a bunch of new blood, Dean talks to Michelle. She doesn’t know how to move forward after watching the man she loved die — and Dean can relate. He’s lucky he can walk out of the clinic with his partner today, but he’s lost Sam before and knows the pain Michelle is going through. The actress who plays Michelle, Erin Way, gives an incredible performance in this episode.
The final scene of the episode, when Dean makes light of Sam asking what he did when he thought Sam was dead, leaves a slightly sour taste in my mouth, but overall this episode — in all its brutality and brotherly devotion — felt like a true episode of Supernatural. Season 11 has really been killing it with the standalone episodes.
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