You Can't Handle the Truth

"Hey, this is Jensen Ackles..."

Hi, Jensen Ackles!

Then: Sam's different, Dean can't lose Lisa and Ben,shooting stuff, Sam watching him get turned, Lisa getting shoved up...against...the...wall... Um. Yeah. Dean getting turned back, remembering the past few hours/days, count on Sam (yeah, right).

Okay, Now.

Bar. Calumet City, Illinois, waitress being stereotypical woman...until she invokes some truth spell and everyone starts telling her stuff. OMG, what did that guy put in the soup?

Why the hell is truth only negative?

This poor woman!

Oooh, I just noticed this was Biggerson's.

Have we figured out what the shattered glass represents yet?

Bobby insists Sam has been tested thoroughly. Dean believes Sam is Lucifer, but Bobby's fighting pretty hard. Trying to keep Dean restrained, or something else? Dean doesn't even want to ride in the car with Sam, he's so freaked about not knowing what the hell he is.

Lisa still hasn't called him back. It does suck, Sam, but so do you. *scowl*

Sam notices the sister's tell (it's pretty obvious, tucking the hair behind her ear), but he gets really cold and smug again, and man, that gives me shivers. And NOT the good kind.

Now we have a guy in the dental chair revealing some really sick stuff. WHOA. His confessions about the dentist's daughter drive the dentist to drill him. Literally. Can a dentist's drill really generate that much blood? (Tanya is hiding her eyes now.)

Commercial, so I have to worry this detail to death. There's a spell or something making people tell the truth, but the only truths we hear are horrible. The waitress is told she's ugly and creepy and pitied. An old lady says she killed a homeless man in a hit and run. The dental patient is disgusted by his wife's saggy skin and either had sex with a teenager or did something worse to her. Is this bad writing, oversimplifying that no one ever has anything nice to say? Or is that just part of the spell?

Back to Dean and Bobby. Bobby's research hasn't found anything that fits. Dean thinks the worst case is Lucifer, but Bobby's worst case is that it's just Sam. Dean tries to call Lisa, but stops himself. Sam comes in, pretty awfully gleeful about the drilling. Dean sends him off to interview the guy, says he'll stay and do research, try to figure out what they're up against.

Sam says the guy hung himself in the cell, but the patient was confessing stuff, and Sam said he'd have murdered him for it, too. Dean speculates that it's a curse. Sam will go to the morgue, Dean to the dentist's office, to see what they can see.

Blood. Lots of it. Creepy big-assed teeth and a...saxaphone? Ahhhh, Dean finds the common denominator. Jane had a label for House of Horns, and so does the dentist. The guy mentions a stolen horn, a museum piece, about a thousand years old, stolen about two weeks ago. Dean finds info on Gabriel's Horn of Truth. Huh, maybe Castiel will listen to him now.

Ha! He does.

Oooh, ouch, Dean, calling him names. Cas has nothing to offer about Sam. Except he knows he's not Lucifer. He'd feel it if Lucifer escaped the cage. He doesn't know what's wrong with Sam. Dean asks what's wrong with Cas, why he's not human-like anymore. Cas, very solemnly, very heavily, says he's at war. Certain regrettable things are now required of him. Dean mentions the horn and Cas disappears. When he comes back (he looked "everywhere" in 2 seconds) and it's not the Horn of Truth. Cas offers to make inquiries about Sam, he wants to help, and then he disappears again. Dean's pretty much at his wit's end.

Sam asks to see all the suicides, but the attendant says they're gone. "Gone" gone, whatever that means.

Dean's in a bar, where the news person on the TV mentioned the truth. Sam calls to tell about the missing bodies. He has a lead, a woman who died in a car accident a week before the other bodies. Dean tells the bartender, "I'd just like the freaking truth" and invokes the curse. At least the bartender is aware that she's saying odd things, whereas the others all seemed oblivious to the strangeness of blurting horrible truths. Her first one's not too bad, that she's in a sham marriage, but then she says she's snorting Oxy. A bar chick tells Dean she just bought her breasts and needs lots of attention, which Dean obliges.

Dean tests his theory by calling Bobby, who reveals some hilarious stuff. He watches Tori and Dean, gets a pedicure that's apparently, um, really good, and Dean's his favorite, though Sam's a better hunter. He, too, recognizes something's wrong, but Dean's glad. Bobby, apparently, doesn't have evil secrets, just disturbing ones.

Great line by Bobby: "Why is it half the time you clean a mess, you get dirty?"

Dean calls Sam, who doesn't answer, and says he has some things to ask him.

Sam's interviewing someone about the car accident death, saying it was a suicide. She says she was obsessed with finding out the truth about her boyfriend. Ding ding ding!

Lisa calls Dean, and she's very angry. She won't let Dean put her off. But he won't explain. Still, she goes off on him, telling him he can't push everything down the way he does without freaking, and she knew as soon as Sam came back it was over, that they have "the most unhealthy, tangled up, crazy thing I've ever seen, and as long as he's in your life, you're never going to be happy." She's close to her sister, but she wouldn't bring her back from the dead. Dean won't argue with her about that, but she won't let him say what she and Ben mean to her. She ends it, and Dean's crushed. *whimper*

Sam's exploring a neon-green bedroom and finds a box with a weird little skull (apparently the missing cat).

Dean demands answers from Sam, and he immediately knows Dean's cursed. First question, why Sam just stood there. Sam say's he didn't. Claims he froze, blames shock, and he's obviously lying. So he's immune to this curse, dammit. Sam puts on a decent replication of himself, and Dean backs down, which is a little annoying. Sam was immune to the demon light bombs, and the Croatoan virus, and all the demon kids. So why wouldn't he be immune to this? But Dean apparently doesn't even think of it.

If the previews hadn't shown us Sam apparently admitting stuff to Dean, I'd be furious right now! Those writers had better not be bait-and-switching us.

The box contained the ingredients of a summoning spell for Veritas, the goddess of truth, who slams you with the truth until you kill yourself, which feeds her (tribute). So they have to stop her before she takes Dean. Exposition reveals dogs are her Achilles heel, and she wanted to be worshipped. So Dean immediately thinks "attention whore" and connects the modern-day speaking truth to the masses to TV news. But I'm thinking the chick in the bar.

They go to the news station and get a huge box of tapes of Ashley Frank, and watch unedited segments of "Frank Talk." Time passes. Dean eats. Sam doesnt' move, just watches her recordings in fast forward. Dean eats some more. A dog on screen goes haywire during a location spot, and they catch camera flare in her eyes. Okay, maybe it wasn't the chick in the bar. :)

Off they go to chase down Veritas. Who drives a smokin' convertible. *want* The guys dip knives in dog's blood.

Dean: "Do I even want to know where you got that?"
Sam: "Probably not."

Ashley goes up her stairs in that provocative-casual manner that hints that she knows the guys are there. Modern, stylish home with water and fire and cats everywhere. They find a mosaic of her, and more cats. Eventually, they wind up in a room full of snacked-on dead bodies, and of course, she sneaks up on them, and tosses them into a tub or something, where they wake up tied to the safety handles.

Sam gets a knife to cut his rope as Veritas pulls out and nibbles on a tongue. Sorry, Tanya, but it IS the tastiest part. Dean gets mouthy, and she puts her truth mojo on him. What does he really feel about his brother? Dean says better now, as of yesterday he wanted to kill him in his sleep, as a monster, but now he thinks he's just acting like Dean. He blames the job, says he told himself he wanted out, wanted a family, but he's good at slicing throats. He's not a father, he's a killer, and now he knows there's no changing that.

*sob*

I don't get the "Mallory to your Mickey" reference.

She turns her mojo on Sam, asks how he feels about the band getting back together. He says what they do is hard, but they watch out for each other. We see slow realization dawning on Veritas's face, because she knows Sam's lying. She wants to know what he is, says he's not human. Sam cuts through the rope, tosses the knife to Dean, and starts fighting Veritas (who might be, IMO, the most beautiful woman to have guest starred on this show; something appealing about her, where so many are plastic).

Fight ensues, Dean frantically saws at his bonds, gets free, knifes Veritas as she chokes Sam (evocative of season one!). We see her true visage for a moment before Sam kills her with the second knife.

And then Dean turns the knife on Sam.

Sam's pretty convinced Dean will carve him up, and frantically tries to get him to listen. He admits Veritas was right, there's something wrong with him, he's known it for a while, he lied to Dean. He let him get turned by the vamp, because he knew there was a cure, they needed him to get in the nest, and he knew Dean could handle it. When Dean says he could have killed Ben, Sam says that should have stopped him cold, but he just doesn't feel it. He's a better hunter, nothing scares him anymore, because he can't feel it. He doesn't know what's wrong with him, and thinks he needs help. Dean sets down the knife. Sam seems relieved, unburdened, but that must be an act, too, if he can't feel anything.

Then, WHOA, Dean whollops (how the heck do you spell that word?) Sam. I mean, whales on him. Pounds his face in. WTH?

The preview for next week is very spoilery, so let me post a warning before I talk about it.

SPOILERS BELOW THIS LINE!!!!!!!!

Terri gets credit for first posting the possibility that Sam is without his soul. I high-fived her because, while watching "The Third Man," I voiced the same possibility. We deserve cookies! :) We postulated lots of viable theories over the last few weeks, but for me, this one grew as I watched past seasons and as this season went on. I think it's been a masterful build to this reveal, giving us plenty to keep us guessing, yet feeding that truth so completely. It really changes the whole face of the show from here on out.

And I'm very impressed with Jared's acting. He's internalizing the character now, and it's wonderful.

So I'll stop there and let you all start weighing in with your thoughts!