I’ve been waiting for this episode all season: the moment when John and the boys have enough time to air the past grievances and let it all hang out. And this episode didn’t disappoint. I love it when characters confront each other and none of them are particularly without fault. It’s even better when everyone has a valid point underneath it all.

The fact is, John and Sam are probably too similar to ever get along for very long. And Sam brings up the one thing that prevents either of them from giving up control over what’s coming: they’ve both lost the woman they loved to the demon they’re chasing. John may have been doing it for longer, but for Sam, the pain is more raw for being so recent. Sam resents the idea of being left out of the chance for vengeance.

John, of course, doesn’t want to lose anyone else in his family, which is a completely understandable point of view. But the fact is, his sons are grown and have the right to decide on their own. (This attitude makes the previous episode more relevant, since it helped establish Sam’s similarity to his father.)

Believe it or not, despite months of raving over how the formula for this series is executed to near-perfection, this was the first time that I got my wife to watch an episode. Sometimes it takes that outside perspective to provide a more objective point of view. After all, this is a Sam-centric episode, and I typically find them less interesting.

My wife, on the other hand, felt that the writers really brought the creepy, and she found a lot of the more familiar elements to be quite engaging. That’s an interesting point, because even if this wasn’t the most exciting episode from my point of view, my wife really liked it. That could be a good sign for the series, because she’s basically the “fresh audience”, someone with no context stepping into the series at an odd moment. The episode was good enough to pull her in, so it’s always possible that others could do the same!

Anyway, in terms of the episode itself, I felt that Sam was a lot more expressive this time around, but it still wasn’t particularly convincing. Part of the problem was the guest actress.