Recap of Supernatural
Season 13, Episode 3:
Patience
Written by: Robert Berens
Directed by: Robert Singer
Air date: October 26, 2017
When her friend is murdered by a wraith with a taste for psychics, Missouri Moseley (guest star Loretta Devine) enlists the help of Dean and Jody Mills to protect her granddaughter, Patience (guest star Clark Backo), who has no idea she shares her grandmother’s trait and could be next on the wraith’s hit list. Meanwhile, Sam continues to work with Jack on learning how to control his powers.
Tropes
- Back for the Dead: Missouri Moseley returns for the first time since her appearance in the season 1 episode Home only to be killed in the first act of the episode.
- Back from the Dead: When Jack overhears Dean saying that Castiel is dead (for which he blames Jack, natch) he reaches out and revives the seemingly Deader than Dead angel.
- Blessed with Suck: So far, all of Patience's visions have been of violent assaults and murders.
- Combat Clairvoyance: Indirectly so. Patience uses her visions of James, Jody, and Dean's deaths to warn them how to counterattack and kill the wraith.
- Continuity Nod:
- Sam references his past demon blood addiction.
- Sam reminds Dean that John told Dean Sam might turn evil and that Dean would have to kill him to save the world.
- Can't Refuse the Call Anymore: When told that she is psychic, Patience insists that she's "normal", but when she's kidnapped, her visions show her everyone will be murdered in their attempt to rescue her. She has to use her visions to save the cavalry so they can save her.
- Catapult Nightmare: Patience springs up in bed after her dream of seeing her grandmother's ghost and being killed by the wraith.
- Death Is the Only Option: Missouri stayed behind with no protection because she knew that the wraith would sense her and return to kill another powerful psychic giving Dean and Jodi more time to find and protect her son and granddaughter. She also knew that news of her death would insure that her son, James, took the threat seriously.
- Drowning My Sorrows: In the beginning of the episode, Dean is sitting on his bed, drinking beer and listening to music. The large collection of empty bottles make it clear he's been drinking for a while. While he's a drinker throughout the series, how much he drinks is directly tied to his current outlook.
- Face Death with Dignity: Missouri refuses to scream or cower in fear when faced with her death at the hands of the wraith that has been murdering psychics.
- Fantastic Racism: Dean toward Jack. Also, James is against psychics, after his mom failed to predict the death of his wife. At the end, he tells Patience to ignore her powers.
- Hypocrite: Sam points out the hypocrisy of Dean wanting to kill Jack because his bloodline "destines" him to be evil when Dean refused to kill Sam despite everyone telling him doing so would be for the greater good because Sam's demon-tainted blood destined him to destroy the world.
- Ignorant of the Call/ Refusal of the Call: Because of her estrangement from her grandmother, Patience doesn't realize she has powers and writes her visions off as deja vu. Her father, James, reinforces this by claiming Missouri was a fraud and insisting Patience has no powers.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Dean has been cruel to Jack, but he was quick to point out that Sam does want to use him to get their mother back from the other dimension. Sam spending most of the episode focusing on Jack's powers adds to it.
- Loves the Sound of Screaming: The wraith enjoys causing pain and likes to hear his victims scream and beg. Missouri won't indulge him.
- Meaningful Echo:
- Dean's line of "You deserved to be saved!" is very similar to Castiel's season 4 line "What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved?"
- In message to Jack, Kelly tells him "You've got an angel watching over you" which is the same thing Mary used to tell Dean as a child.
- Missing Mom: Patience's mother, Tess, died long before we meet Patience.
- Parental Betrayal: James tells Patience that Missouri chose to abandon them directly after the death of Patience's mother. In reality, James forbade Missouri to contact the family. He intentionally lied to his daughter, denying her the comfort of her grandmother, intentionally misleading her about her powers, and making sure that she would not have connection to the one person who could help her control any psychic powers that manifested.
- Phony Psychic: Averted. James accuses Missouri of being a phony psychic after his wife dies despite Missouri assuring him that she would survive her illness. However, Missouri is a true psychic; The outcome just sometimes changes after a psychic reading.
- The wraith who is targeting psychics has the psychic read his aura to make sure she is a true psychic. If she reacts by screaming in reaction to his memories of murdering previous victims, he knows she's a true psychic.
- Truth in Television: Dean's Fantastic Racism towards Jack brings tensions to a boil. Dean blames Jack's very existence for Cas' death and Mary's disappearance. Dean always viewed Jack as a potential problem, but following the events of the finale where several people died, Dean transitioned from simply being worried about Jack's powers to viewing him as a major threat and representative of everything wrong in Dean's life. This irrational hate eventually draws a reaction from everyone in the group who can no longer ignore Dean's outburst:
- Sam calls Dean out for constantly attacking Jack as an abomination when he defended Sam against anyone who tried to claim Sam was destined to be evil or destroy the world. Dean insists that Sam deserved to be saved. Sam is his brother, whereas Jack is the child of their enemy.
- Dean's continual death threat and insistence that Jack is evil begin to hurt Jack. Having one of the only living caretakers he's ever known constantly tell him he's evil and deserves to die really starts to traumatize and not even a video from his mother can comfort him.
- In general, people in pain look for someone to blame. Dean blames Jack; James blames Missouri.
- Touch Telepathy: Dean explains that this is how Missouri's powers work. It is demonstrated when she offers him condolences for his losses after hugging him without Dean telling her that anyone had died. Missouri also uses her touch to read the crime scene.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Sam confronts Dean for threatening to kill Jack, which is clearly having a negative effect on Jack.
- You Remind Me of X: Sam strongly identifies with Jack and his genetically enforced "destiny" to be evil.
