Supernatural Season 14, Episode 15 review: Peace of Mind

After a very heavy episode last week, Supernatural lightened the mood a bit this week sending Cas and Sam on a mission to the 1950s while Dean and Jack visit an old friend.

A fun, weird episode was much needed in this back half of Supernatural. Between all the Michael stuff this season and with John’s return in the 300th episode, the season has been very dark and heavy. This week we took a step back and added a bit of humor into the episode, while also dealing with some pretty emotionally heavy stuff with our boys.

Sam is still reeling from last week’s massacre of all the other hunters. The funerals took place off-screen, which is fine, we didn’t know most of their names. Everywhere Sam looks around the bunker, he can see the dead bodies of his team. And he can still hear Maggie’s scream. Which after everything Maggie has gone through, it’s really unfortunate that she was unable to survive the season.

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Cas is walking on eggshells around Jack. No one is sure how defeating Michael affected his soul. Jack is mostly concerned about the snake. It won’t eat.

So, feeling like they can’t help their respective “partner,” Dean and Cas swap: Cas is going out on a hunt in Arkansas with Sam and Jack and Dean will go on a road trip.

“What would the Winchesters do?”

For his road trip with Jack (and the snake), Dean takes him to see Donatello. He figures if anyone will be able to figure out the state of Jack’s soul, it would be a man without a soul himself.

On the drive, Dean decides to try his own test: he gives Jack some Angel Food Cake and some Devil’s Food Cake and tells him to choose one to try. He breathes a sigh of relief when Jack chooses the Angel Food Cake. Not exactly the most scientific method to figuring out the status of one’s soul, but it makes Dean feel better.

At Donatello’s, Dean waits outside while Jack and Donatello go inside for a chat. They talk about what it feels like to not have a soul. It is such a nice scene between the two men. It was a really good use of Donatello. It was nice to see him not manic and crazy.

Jack tells Donatello that he doesn’t really know how it feels to feel nothing, so he’s not sure what he feels. So Donatello told him to just do what he thinks the best men he knows would do. So Jack determines to do whatever Sam and Dean would do.

Back at the bunker, Jack looks at his new pet snake and determines that Sam and Dean would help him. Since the snake misses its owner (probably), Jack determines he should let it be reunited with him. So he kills the snake.

Cas is watching behind him and looks uneasy.

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“Like a ripe melon on the sun.”

Sam and Cas travel to Arkansas where people’s heads are exploding. They are led to Charming Acres, which the convenience store clerk describes as being “weird.”

In Charming Acres, Sam and Cas find a city in the middle of the 1950s. Everyone is a little weird. They go to the soda fountain where they are served free milkshakes. This is when I was pretty sure people were getting drugged in the milkshakes since Sam consumed his and Cas didn’t. As Sam and Cas ask questions around town, they get more and more suspicious about what is going on.

After discovering love letters to the man who was killed from the milkshake girl, Sunny, Sam suggests they stay there and sleep. When Cas wakes up, he can’t find Sam anywhere. When he finally tracks him down, he discovers him in a cardigan, his hair pulled back and married to a woman whose husband had just broken out of the trance the night before and had his head exploded.

Cas accuses Sunny the milkshake girl of being a witch but turns out it was the mayor, and Sunny’s dad, who is brainwashing everyone. He can just control people with his mind. And when they choose to not go along with his Utopian ideal, he makes their heads explode.

There is a showdown, but Cas is able to get through to Sam. He tells Sam that he knows he just wants to be happy, and he knows what it’s like to lose his army, but Sam needs to break through this, for the people they have left, the people they lost, for him, for Dean. That helps Sam break out of the fog.

They go confront the mayor, and the mayor tries to explode Sam’s head, but Sunny stops him. Apparently, she can control people too, except she doesn’t do it to kill people. She orders her dad to be happy and ends up trapping him in his own mind.

The foray into Charming Acres was a good way to move us past the heavy topics we would normally be dealing with after what happened last week. It gave us a comedic break and allowed us to breathe before heading into the last few episodes where I’m sure it’ll only get darker.

Back at the bunker, Sam tells Dean that he hates the bunker right now. That all he sees are his fallen friends. But he needs to get over it because the bunker is home.

Performer of the week

Misha Collins. He carried the episode. With Dean and Jack taking up maybe 10 minutes of screen time and Sam becoming brainwashed, the episode fell to Cas to solve the problem.

Misha Collins was probably in the majority of the scenes, and he had to solve this problem on his own. Between being able to deliver his honest, clueless Cas lines with a straight face and then being able to kick brainwashed butt, Misha shone as the lead in this episode. There are very few episodes that rely solely on Cas, so this was a really nice departure from that.

What did you think of last night’s episode? Do you think Jack has any of his soul left? Did you like the comedic break we got? Let us know in the comments below!

Supernatural airs Thursdays at 8/7c on The CW