Supernatural season 6 episode 6 review: You Can’t Handle The Truth

This review contains spoilers.

6.6 You Can’t Handle The Truth

A waitress suddenly finds customers and colleagues telling her the truth. And that includes guilty secrets, and exactly what they think of her. Seeking solace, the waitress phones her sister who tells her the brutal truth about what a burden she is. Unable to take anymore, she commits suicide.

Investigating a rise in recent suicides, Sam and Dean question the sister, who tells them that she tried to offer support. Sam doesn’t believe her and she admits the truth of what she said, but couldn’t understand why she said it.

Elsewhere, a patient starts telling the truth to a dentist. The truth concerns the dentist’s daughter and, on hearing it, the dentist kills the patient.

Back in the hotel, Dean, with Bobby’s help, is still trying to find out who or what Sam is. Sam returns with information of the dentist’s crime. Suggesting to Dean that they go and question the dentist, Dean says he wants to stay and do some research, so Sam goes alone.

Sam finds the dentist has committed suicide while in custody and phones Dean. He suggests Dean heads to the dentist’s office while he investigates the victims’ bodies at the morgue.

Dean finds information linking the dentist and the waitress to a music shop, where the owner doesn’t know anything about the deaths, but has had a horn recently stolen. At the hotel, Dean believes the stolen horn might be an angelic weapon and contacts Castiel, who appears. Castiel confirms that it isn’t the horn compelling people to speak the truth, and when Dean questions him about Sam, he tells him that he doesn’t know what Sam is.

At the morgue, Sam finds that all the bodies have vanished and contacts Dean, who is in a local bar. One of the bodies that vanished was apparently a victim of an accident. Because it’s vanished, Sam has linked it to the case and heads off to investigate further.

At the bar, Dean admits to the barmaid that all he wants is the truth and suddenly finds everybody providing him with it. On leaving the bar, Dean telephones Sam, but gets his voicemail. Dean tells his brother that he wants to ask him a few things.

Sam’s investigation of the accident victim leads him to discover that she felt her boyfriend was cheating on her and was determined to find out the truth.

Lisa phones Dean and, because of what happened after Dean was bitten by the vampire, she ends the relationship with him.

Dean meets up with Sam and asks him for the truth about why he stood and let him get turned by the vampire. Sam says he didn’t, that he froze and feels terrible about it. Dean, knowing that Sam has to speak the truth, accepts this.

In the hotel, the brothers have deduced that the accident victim had summoned Veritas, the goddess of truth, and now that she had been invoked, anyone asking for the truth will hear it until it drives them to suicide as a tribute to her. Dean has a hunch that Veritas is on earth in the form of a local television personality and, after investigating this further, they find the proof they were looking for.

Sam and Dean stake out her house, where they find the missing bodies. Veritas surprises them and knocks them out. They awake tied up and Veritas compels Dean to speak and face the truth about himself. She then moves onto Sam only to discover that he’s lying to her and she can’t understand how and why.

Sam manages to escape and helps Dean to free himself and between them they manage to kill Veritas. Sam is then faced with a very angry Dean. Sam admits that, since he has been back, he doesn’t feel any emotion at all. Dean punches Sam to a bloody pulp.

So that’s what happened. Now what was it like?

Well, this was a bit of a teaser of an episode. In an episode that promised the truth, nothing much actually gets revealed, but at the same time we do get some answers.

The idea of having to tell the truth is something that isn’t original, but the episode still handles it very well, and having the weight of the actual goddess of truth makes Sam’s ability to tell lies all the more interesting. His confession at the end, no matter how genuine it may sound, may still turn out to be a lie, but we do now have Castiel’s assurance that Lucifer is still caged.

However, seeing what we have seen of Sam so far this season, he does seem to be a bit ‘dark side’. In this episode, for instance, he does seem to be taking some perverse pleasure when questioning the sister of the first victim.

I was actually surprised by the end, or seemingly, of Lisa and Dean’s relationship. I had actually expected the relationship to end at the start of the season and was intrigued when the powers that be kept it going. I liked Lisa as a character, and Dean wanting a chance at a real life seemed very genuine.

Here’s to the next episode where, hopefully, we will get the truth that we can handle…

Read our review of episode 5, Live Free Or Twihard, here.