Review for 3x12 'Jus In Bello'

[galathea]

Sorry it took me a little longer this time, but between starting a new job, Photoshop stress and the AFA, I didn't find the time to actually write my review down. *g* Another exciting instalment from Sera Gamble and Kim Manners for this season, an action-packed episode with new reveals and mytharc development!



Dean: "If that's how you win wars, then I don't want to win." ♥

Supernatural never shies away from very controversial and morally complex topics and Jus In Bello is no exception, which sometimes makes me a bit nervous, because wartime ethics are a seriously dangerous minefield, although Sera Gamble treated it with a lot of care in this episode. ♥ I am no lawyer, but as far as I understand it Jus In Bello is a term that describes the humanitarian laws that apply to the war between two parties. It states a) that non-combatants should be protected from unnecessary suffering and that the fundamental human rights need to be preserved, even for prisoners of war and b) it has to be ensured that war is limited in its scope and level of violence. There has to be a proportionality of means in war.

Unfortunately the Winchesters are in a war with enemies who couldn't care less about fundamental human rights, which makes upholding the moral standards of humans so much more important. It’s one of the most basic principles that if you lower your own standards to those of your enemies, integrity is lost. It's hypocritical to fight for humanity and in the course of that fight take the mercilessness of the opponent as an excuse to forego humanitarian principles. In Jus In Bello the different approach to the principles in war were beautifully represented by Dean and Ruby.

While I still can’t make heads or tail of Ruby’s behaviour and doubt her willingness to actually sacrifice herself for the greater good, her approach to the subject of war at least makes her an interesting adversary for this episode. It’s very telling that although she emphasized in Malleus Maleficarum that she sides with humanity, because she still remembers how it feels to be human, her stance here is completely demonic, humanitarian considerations don’t play into her arguments at all. Ruby's motto is to fight fire with fire. For Ruby, war is a simple game of numbers, in which the end justifies the means. I would argue though that while she outwardly presents herself as an ally to the brothers, her real agenda is to present a moral dilemma to Sam, specifically, and test his reaction to the situation. She claimed in Malleus Maleficarum that Sam needs to toughen up to fight this war without Dean, and I think she assesses Sam's boundaries here.

Ruby's initial line of arguments is questionable, especially if we look at her actions. She claims that she comes to save them, but then she just bails, when the brothers don't follow her course of action. If she really wanted to make sure that Sam and Dean have a fighting chance, she could have fought at their side (especially if she was really willing to sacrifice her own life, just so the boys can win) and provided them with the only actual useful weapon: her dagger. I also fail to see the validity of her argument that, without the Colt, their situation turned into a sure suicide mission. Firstly, we know that there are demons whose powers render the Colt useless and secondly, the weapon only has 6 shots anyway and then needs to be reloaded. I daresay that with 30 demons attacking at the same time, that's only a flimsy base for a win, so the situation was desperate, Colt or not! In any case, instead of being the ally she claims to be and stand at the brothers' side, Ruby chooses to leave as soon as Sam supports his brother's plan, instead of following Ruby's suggestion for a human sacrifice. So it clearly wasn’t her real motif to make sure Sam survives.

Additionally, after everything is said and done, Ruby instantly shows up at the boys' doorstep, despite her earlier statment that she is disappointed in Sam, and again tries to manipulate Sam and Dean into feeling guilty for their course of action. Her attempt to put the blame for the unfortunate deaths of Henriksen, Nancy and the others at Lilith's hand on Sam and Dean really aggravates me. The brothers actually did everything right in this episode. Dean’s plan, although put together under great pressure, was brilliant and actually worked without killing a single person and sent 30+ demons back to hell. That’s an incredible achievement, and I love that the boys are shown so competent here and manage to single-handedly save everyone in that police station with their improvisation skills and knowledge.

Ruby's attempt to devaluate that achievement - by claiming that Lilith was only able kill those people, because Dean's plan wasn't airtight and allowed one demon to escape and inform Lilith - is completely off the mark. Firstly, the demon Sam exorcised out of Henriksen at the beginning of the episode explicitly told them that he had already informed Lilith and the others where they were, so the damage was already done, long before Ruby even showed up at the station. Secondly, even if they would have gone through with Ruby's plan, there was no guarantee that Lilith was indeed in a one mile radius from the police station. She obviously preferred to send her minions, so it's not unreasonable to assume that the spell wouldn’t have hit her anyway, which would have left her just the same opportunity to come after the survivors at the police station, as Dean's plan did. So, Ruby’s little attempt to guilt trip the boys is sheer manipulation, she has no argumentative basis, and I am sad that the brothers are too numb from the shock to point that out to her. I remain absolutely convinced that Ruby's motifs are very shady.

I refrain from making any attempts of developing theories about the new Big Bad derived from her name Lilith. I find her depiction as a little girl fascinating, because it might put the brothers in a serious conflict when it comes to confronting her. While they show less and less concern about the death of the innocent humans, when it comes to killing demons, killing a child might be a barrier they are not willing to cross (I really hope so!), which makes the Colt useless and they do need other options anyway. Why a demon obviously as powerful as Lilith bowed to the YED, whom she apparently opposed, is a mystery to me, but I guess we will learn about her own motifs soon enough.

Henriksen: "My job is boring, it’s frustrating. You work three years for one break and then maybe you can save a few people. Maybe! That’s the pay-off."

Why my show forces me to write one obituary after another for my favourite recurring characters is beyond me, and if I have one complaint about this episode then it is that they killed Henriksen off. Not only was he the only character who represented an outside perspective on the world of the Winchesters, but the Feds storyline was also my favourite subplot in the show, because it provided a believable obstacle for the boys and satisfyingly dealt with a lot of side-effects of their existence as hunters. I’m not sure why there was the necessity to close that particular storyline down, but I am very sad about it. It’s funny to note though that now Dean and Sam are officially dead, while John is the only Winchester officially still alive. Talk about irony! *g*

I expected that Henriksen would sooner or later be confronted with the truth about Sam and Dean, and I was really looking forward to that. Even if it was a farewell to my favourite FBI agent, the show at least made it a memorable one. The interaction between Dean and Henriksen was clearly the highpoint of the episode for me. Dean’s usual bravado where law enforcement is concerned in combination with Henriksen’s arrogant attitude allows for some funny bickering between the characters, and right from the start, even when Henriksen is still ignorant about what is really going on, it shows that deep down Henriksen and Dean have a lot in common. It makes their easy companionship later in the episode very believable. While Henriksen can be an arrogant jerk, he also grudgingly pays respect to Sam and Dean's ability to evade capture for so long, which is remarkable, given that it had to be a blow to his ego that he wasn't able to catch the boys on his own, but relied on an anonymous tip. Not to mention that he lost them on several occasions before.

Henriksen’s calm and judicious reaction to the siege, while everyone around him broke out in panic, was impressive, and I liked how competently he acted here, i.e. taking a short moment to reassure Nancy and giving clear orders to the sheriff and his deputy, keeping everybody around him calm. While his conversion from non-believer to believer via possession and his subsequent trust in the boys felt a bit rushed, I am willing to concede that within the time limit of this episode it was unavoidable to handle it that way.

Dean and Henriksen’s short but heartfelt exchange about the similarities of their jobs and their private lives was fabulous. ♥ While Dean and Henriksen may hunt different kinds of monsters, in the end it leads to a relatively isolated social existence for both of them. One can easily imagine these two as close friends in the future, and Henriksen would make a formidable hunter, which makes it all the more sad that he bites the dust in the end. Not to mention that an ally in the FBI would have come in handy for Sam and Dean, they don't have enough allies as it is.

Anyway, I also love that, again, it shows how effortlessly Dean bonds with people, when they approach him without prejudices. Henriksen’s fierce pursuit of the brothers and his snide remarks at the beginning of the episode are water under the bridge, as soon as he believes the brothers and shows them respect. Dean clearly realises that Henriksen had no other choice than to act as he did, lacking the proper information to put the Winchesters in the right context, and so he doesn’t hold a grudge against Henriksen. Henriksen is also the only one instantly siding with Dean in the virgin-sacrifice argument. Their choice to act human in the face of overwhelming odds against them, sets them apart from all others in that room, and unfortunately that includes Sam! :(

Dean: "That doesn't mean we throw away the rule book and stop acting like humans!"

I have to make a short excursion here: One of the difficulties in analysing the brothers in this episode lies in the fact that they switched the airing of Mystery Spot and Jus In Bello, because they wanted the season to go out with a bang, in case the writer’s strike had put an early end to it. While I can understand the reasoning for that decision, the reading of Sam and Dean's actions is different, depending on whether we look at the episodes in production order or in airing order. Since the switch was decided while the strike was already in progress, the writers had no opportunity to re-write scenes or adapt to the changes in the character continuity for the episode, but no matter in which order we approach the episodes, the character continuity is always disrupted:

In Sam's case I would have preferred if they had aired the episodes in the original production order. There’s a great sense of progression in Sam’s approach to violence from Malleus Maleficarum, where he toys with the idea of killing human evil-doers, to Dream A Little Dream Of Me, where he actually kills an evil human perpetrator, to Jus In Bello, where he seriously considers to sacrifice an innocent human being and finally Mystery Spot, where Sam takes that last step and actually decides that human sacrifice is justified, if it serves his (personal) goals. Sam is visibly shaken at the end of Mystery Spot, but any moral lesson Sam might have taken from his slide into darkness, when he hunted the Trickster down, is undermined by his suggestion to sacrifice Nancy in Jus In Bello, if that episode comes after Mystery Spot.

For Dean, on the other hand, the switched episode order actually makes more sense than the original one. His relaxed and happy attitude in Mystery Spot follows very naturally out of his newly found will to live in Dream A Little Dream Of Me, while it seems a tad inappropriate directly after the disturbing events of Jus In Bello. Also, I would expect an inquiry in regard to the secrets that Sam keeps from him following after Jus In Bello and the lack thereof in Mystery Spot is a bit disappointing in the original order. Overall, I consider the impact of the episode switch on the character continuity as more detrimental to Sam’s character though, so the original production order is preferable for me, and I hope that they restore it on the DVD version of S3 and make the fallout from Mystery Spot visible in the episodes that will follow.

Anyway, in many regards Jus In Bello was a perfect mirror for Croatoan, only with reversed roles for Sam and Dean. Not only have they been under siege in an enclosed space in Croatoan as well, but they also had to decide if killing a human being is justified in order to protect innocent lives. Back then it was Sam who argued for a clear conscience by keeping Duane Tanner alive, against the odds that he might be infected with the demonic virus and a danger to them all. He struggled with the morality of 'the end justifies the means', especially as long as there were still other options to explore. Dean, on the other hand, voted for a 'shoot first, ask questions later' approach back then, not least because he was hell bent to eliminate each and every danger to Sam, John's last words - that he had to save Sam under all costs - ricocheting around in his head.

Sam doesn’t have this kind of psychological distress 'excuse' in Jus In Bello. He considers to kill a person in cold blood, without weighing other options first, and that he takes Ruby’s faithfulness and sincerity for granted is worrying. She helped them a lot, but her agenda is still hidden, she never told Sam what she gets out of helping the brothers. She is a demon, after all, and no matter how much she might be connected to her humanity, the centuries in hell changed her and to blindly trust her word in this matter is foolish. Even if Ruby was telling the truth about the effectivity of her spell, her claim that the good of the many outweighs the good of the one here, is the same distorted argumentation that the people from Burkitsville used in Scarecrow to sacrifice innocent couples to a God for the survival of their own community. To kill Nancy would be murder, clear and simple, and it doesn’t matter that she agrees to being sacrificed, because under the aforementioned law of war, she is a civilian and has to be protected.

Dean’s utter disgust for the plan to sacrifice Nancy goes back to his original mission statement: 'Saving people, hunting things, the family business.' The protection of human life is the main principle of Dean's job, hence human sacrifice is simply not acceptable for him, as it puts them on the same level as the things they hunt. Ultimately Dean has to act as Sam’s conscience here, and just like Sam’s plea back in Croatoan probably played into Dean’s decision to not kill Duane, Sam follows Dean’s lead and supports his alternative plan, no matter how infinitesimal the chances of survival may seem. He may have argued for Ruby's plan, but in the end his decision falls on the right side, and that’s at least a ray of hope for him, afer all, there's still a huge difference between considering an action and actually going through with it. Again, it proves that Dean and Sam work best in a team, they rely on one another to lead the way, when one of them strays too far off the path. Sam without Dean becomes psychologically unstable, as we can clearly see in Mystery Spot, and Dean without Sam equally drifts into ruthless territory, which is shown in many instances in S2. Sam and Dean are truly interdependent, no doubt about it.

While part of me is incredibly worried about Sam, the other part of me is extremely fascinated by the fact that the writers walk a very, very thin line with Sam’s character this season, showing him progressively ruthless, but without making him completely irredeemable, yet. I find that preferable to making Sam evil, as long as they don’t push him over the line and force him into an action that the viewer, and Sam himself, finds unforgivable. They walked a similar line with Dean last season, with Croatoan being the hardest push, which had me worried that they might destroy the character and I was incredibly relieved when the turn for his character came with Hunted. I hope to find a similar relief in the next couple of episodes for Sam’s character.

Bela: "You don’t know me at all."

Generally, Bela’s appearance was short enough to not annoy me in this episode, still, I am a bit frustrated that she got one over the boys yet again. In theory it should not be so hard to actually find her: She is a dealer and she needs to be visible to her clientele or she would be out of business pretty soon. Even if she lays low for a while, there should be enough leads to follow out of her contacts. I am still annoyed at how the Winchesters are dumbed down in order to make a character like Bela work at all in this show.

Bela’s statement that she didn’t steal the Colt for profit, again gives the impression that sooner or later we are jumped with a redemption story for Bela, which I really, really don’t want to see. For me a reconciliation between Bela and the boys is impossible, no matter her backstory, for one main reason: We know Dean isn’t one to hold a grudge forever, his easy companionship with Henriksen in Jus In Bello is ample proof of that. Henriksen just didn’t know better, he lacked the necessary understanding of the world the Winchesters inhabit, hence Dean doesn't hold him responsible for prosecuting them. In the end Henriksen was just doing his job. Bela, on the other hand, is fully aware of the consequences of her actions and still chooses to act without any moral conscience. Like Henriksen said, everybody has a sob story, but not everybody becomes a killer. Her actions are a conscious choice, hence I see no way to write her back into good relations with the boys, without putting Sam and Dean out of character.

As a sidenote: If Bela hadn’t delivered the boys to the FBI, the demon army wouldn’t have known where to find them in the first place, hence the bodycount of this episode is to a good deal her fault, even if she couldn’t foresee the far-reaching consequences of her actions. I somehow doubt she would care. By the way, it amuses me greatly that the big ass demons need to infiltrate an utterly human and mundane institution like the FBI in order to find the boys. *g*

What else is noteworthy:

(1) I love when they depict Sam and Dean as the smart hunters they are. Sam instantly grabbing the possessed FBI guy, rapidly chanting Latin and exorcising the demon in next to no time, was beyond awesome! As was his idea to utilise the prison cell toilet as an impromptu holy water basin. Additionally, Dean’s brilliant plan to use the stereo system to exorcise 30 demons at once, was just wonderful! ♥ It's far too rare lately, that the brothers manage to solve a difficult situation without any outside help, so I appreciate it a lot, when they actually have the upper hand, just by relying on their smarts and skills! ♥

(2) I couldn't help but wonder if Ruby’s alleged spell is genuine, because it would provide the boys with a handy means to wipe out the demon army, if they would be able to a) lure all demons to one confined location and b) either substitute the virgin heart component or find another way to obtain it e.g. from a corpse. It’s an interesting thought at least, and I suspect that Bobby would be able to find that spell if he knew what he was looking for!

In conclusion: Jus In Bello was an exciting episode and Sera Gamble and Kim Manners once again proved that they are the winning team for the show. I can’t wait for the rest of the episodes, going into another long hiatus really sucks!