The Purge 9X13 Review

Honesty is the Policy

Part One: Summary

     The strange death of hot-dog eating contestant, Wayne McNut, brings Sam and Dean to Stillwater, Minnesota. The investigation of the body shows that the man went from 300 pounds to 90 pounds. The authorities say cardiac arrest, but the brothers suspect witchcraft. They first investigate the victim's rival, Jim Morgan, but don't find anything to hold against him until Sam discovers a putsi bag, essentially a hex bag, made by the wife in her room. Later, the wife finds the brothers at their hotel room and demands that they hand it back explaining that it was a good luck bag for McNut whom she was having an affair with.
     While she is with them, another victim gets attacked by the mysterious monster. After the woman finished her late-night workout she was pushed over onto a weight machine where something began draining the fat from her body. The next morning Sam and Dean go to the crime scene. Dean separates from Sam as he goes to interrogate the manager. He noticed a strange burn mark on her back that resembled one on both of the victims bodies. After further questioning, the brothers find out that the mark has something to do with the weight loss spa, Canyon Valley.
     Choosing to be certified physical trainers as their disguise, the brothers go under cover in Canyon Valley as they try to piece together what's going on. While working in the kitchen, Dean finds out the hard way that the pudding the clients have been eating is laced with roofies and while teaching yoga, Sam sees the same burn mark on every clients back. The couple who own the spa, Larry and Maritza, suspect that Sam and Dean are on to them and try to cover their tracks but it was too late. Dean questions them and discovers that Maritza is a pishtaco, a Peruvian fat sucker. She explains that they set up the spa for the purpose of controlling her hunger by feeding off the fat of the clients, which in return helps them too. Maritza then reveals that her brother, Alfonso, the kitchen helper, has been having difficulty controlling his hunger and is quite possibly the culprit behind the killings.
     Larry tries to stop Alfonso but is killed by him. Sam and Dean go on a man hunt after him into the basement where Sam is cornered by Alfonso but is killed by Dean before he does anything. After discussing it over with a distressed Maritza, the brothers send her back to Peru.

Part Two: Review

     While this episode tries to play off as some sort of "monster-of-the-week" trope, the underlying theme of this one is what I would like to refer to as the "honesty policy." The episode begins with Sam and Dean having a tense conversation where Sam brings up the time he told Dean they were not brothers. Dean dismisses it as though it was a petty fight between the two, but he knows better. Sam picks up on this and says, "I was just being honest." This is reciprocated by Dean when he makes a stab at Sam's past trauma with his relationships and says, "I'm just being honest." This showcase of cattiness parallels well with the title of this episode ("The Purge"), as the definition of a "purge" is, "(verb) to rid (someone) of an unwanted feeling, memory, or condition" (Dictionary.com) which could pertain to that of the time Gadreel was possessing Sam's body. The definition of a "purge" used as a noun is this, "An abrupt or violent removal of a group of people from an organization or place," (Dictionary.com) which could be loosely used to define Sam's motivation to removal his brotherly ties with Dean.
     Coupling this with the fact that Sam and Dean have never been honest with each other shows that these boys just never learn their lesson. Because of this, it seems as though they are caught in a type of "supernatural paradox." How this is revealed in the episode is through the juxtaposition of Sam and Dean's lives to the lives of Larry and Maritza. I know this is starting to get weird, but bare with me. Sam and Dean have seen each other as a monster at one point or another in the series, just as Maritza is a monster in her relationship. The difference here though is that Larry supported Maritza and accepted her fate, but instead of just dealing with it, they worked together to make it better for them both and for other people. Sam and Dean merely fought with each other and became selfish, and slightly suicidal, when it came to defeating the monsters they saw each other as instead of accepting it and trying to work through it. What makes this a paradox is that by beating out the odds and destroying the monster-side, Sam and Dean have conquered a lot of enemies, saved a lot of people (especially from the apocalypse), and upset the entire balance of Heaven and Hell. If they would have accepted the monster-side the world would have been in a worse state, compared to the happy clients that Martiza and Larry have in their world.
     This is a very rough theory. It's only in the beginning stages, but I hope that it was explained well enough for now.

Part Three: Questions/Concerns

     My only problem with this episode is that I saw it as a cheap way for the writers to hold on to "older" Supernatural fans by doing a "monster-of-the-week" and having Sam and Dean do an emotional talk in the beginning and end, but instead of it being by the Impala it is inside the Bunker. This episode was humorous, with the jab at Dean's "pudding!" from a previous season and Dean's comment about Sam's shorts alluding to the time Sam said something similar when Dean had to go undercover as a coach in a previous seasons. It even introduced Donna, who would later become an important character, which I think is just another trick in order to replace Garth. I would say it worked as she is popular still today and acts a lot like Garth, with the accent and crazy euphemisms, except Dean likes her better.