Supernatural: Provenance pt 2
Images borrowed from here because my efforts to screencap anything would be laughable.
Librarian: It seems this Isaiah, he slits his kids’ throats, then his wife’s - them himself. Now, he was a barber by trade - used a straight razor.
Sam: Why did he do it?
Librarian: Let's look. ‘People who knew him describe Isaiah as having a stern and harsh temperament …’ Controlled his family with an iron fist. Wife, two sons, adopted daughter … There were whispers that the wife was going to take the kids and leave - which, of course, you know in that day and age … So instead, old man Isaiah, well he gave them all a shave.
…
Sarah: Dad! You promised you wouldn't sell that painting.
Daniel Blake: I know, sweetie, but Evelyn's offered a persuasive amount of money.
Sarah: You're shameless, you know that?
Daniel Blake: For that sort of money I can afford to be.
Since the painting isn’t the source of the problem, Sam and Dean conclude that the people must be, and head off to a library to learn about the Merchant family. This takes us right back to dealing with class and social expectations.
The Merchant family seems to have been reasonably prosperous when they met their end in 1912. Certainly they were wealthy enough to have a portrait commissioned - and to adopt a little girl when they already had two boys of their own to feed and clothe. And you can confirm at least some of the librarian’s story just by looking at what they had commissioned. Granted many of the photographs of the era have that stiff, formal appearance, because nobody could maintain a smile for the length of time it took to take the damn things, but there’s no reason for the family to look like that in a painting. They could be depicted smiling or in motion, and in anything from formalwear to play clothes. They - or presumably Isaiah - have chosen this dark, gothic, expressionless look. Everything about this portrait suggests that the family in it is repressed, old fashioned and cold. The sort of people, in short, who probably cared about looking respectable.
And yet there were whispers that Carolyn Merchant wanted out.
Whoever this woman was, she didn’t want her life to be as miserable as all that. She didn’t want her children to grow up in this oppressive environment. You can’t get that from the portrait - at most you could say that Carolyn looks a little tense and worried - but apparently it was there. And, as the librarian points out, in that day and age a woman who walked away from an unhappy marriage would be likely to cause something of a scandal; while I am hardly an expert in American history, a quick bit of Googling tells me that the divorce laws in New York in the early 20th century were particularly restrictive and difficult - precisely because legislators found the idea of couples separating to be scandalous and immoral. This left Isaiah with two obvious choices - be disgraced or be dead - and the popular theory is that he chose the latter.
This is in itself a horrifying example of how damaging social strictures can be: that a woman and her children could be murdered simply because they wanted to be free, because the society of that time and place judged a man’s character at least in part by his ability to keep his wife and kids ‘in line’. Of course, this is unfair to Isaiah. As it turns out, while he may have been a bad husband and father he wasn’t a killer. He is unjustly disgraced in quite a different way - as a murderer and a suicide, he cannot possibly be buried with his family. The story, then, becomes an example of how social expectations can blind people to the truth. Once the story of the potential divorce got out, it became the prevailing narrative of the case: it was a motive people could understand. No one considers that Melanie might have been the murderer. She was a little girl, and little girls are not commonly considered dangerous. But Melanie only ‘got away’ with murder in the sense of reputation. Having killed her family, she then killed herself. This was an unhappy and disturbed child, who needed help she clearly didn’t get. She is a victim here too, and to this day is taking her misery out on every family she joins.
If people - from Isaiah and Carolyn right down to the family’s neighbours - hadn’t focused so much on what society might think, the tragedy might have been averted. There’s nothing wrong with Isaiah and Carolyn needing to separate; if the marriage isn’t working then it isn’t working. A little girl who thinks of nothing but death? That’s a problem worth dealing with.
It’s easy to see how this connects to Sam’s story. Like Carolyn, Sam wanted out. His family environment was oppressive and damaging and frankly dangerous, so he wanted to get away and be ‘normal’ and safe. In pursuit of that normality, he tried to conform to social expectations: he was becoming an educated man, and educated people do not generally (although of course there are exceptions) believe in monsters. Thus he didn’t tell his friends, or even his girlfriend, about his socially unacceptable past. He didn’t tell them that he knew monsters were real. Eventually, a monster came for his girlfriend, and Sam blames himself for bringing trouble into her life; for failing to warn her; for valuing his pretence at normality over her safety.
And just like in the Merchant case, Sam’s concern over propriety and his own relationship with it is completely irrelevant. Given the forces arrayed against her, it is unlikely that Jessica would have survived even if Sam had told her everything he knew (it’s also true that he’s being a bit hard on himself, given the circumstances, but again - irrelevant). The simple fact of the matter is that no one yet knows how to handle the demon menace - in the season’s final episodes we’ll see several competent hunters, the Winchesters included, taken out by demons because no one has yet thought to memorise an exorcism or carry holy water around everywhere. Rather the problem in Sam’s life is his own heritage. It is what demons did to him as an infant and the way angels bred and shaped him. That’s what he needs to worry about if he’s going to win this war.
Getting back to the Blake family, we see another example of misdirected focus. We’ve already established that money is pretty much the ultimate social currency to Daniel Blake: if you have it, there’s not much you can do wrong in his eyes; if you don’t, then what good are you? A woman named Evelyn has offered a large sum of money for the Merchant painting, and that money is significantly more important to Blake than any promise he made to his daughter. And yet Sarah is right. Never mind ethics, does Blake really want to become the owner of the auction house of death? That’s exactly what will happen to him if he keeps selling that painting. But to Blake, telling a rich person ‘no’ is unthinkable. He should be listening to his daughter, but that would go against all his social conditioning. Evelyn will die because Blake wouldn’t listen. To be very fair to Blake, it’s worth pointing out that he, like Sarah, is recently bereaved. It may be that he is burying himself in his work as his own form of retreat. But he never develops enough characterisation to make him particularly sympathetic.
And this just leaves one pertinent question. What the hell is wrong with this Evelyn that she wants to buy that horrific thing? The Telescas were drunk. What’s her excuse?
Sam: I don't get it. Why do you care if I hook up?
Dean: Because then maybe you wouldn't be so cranky all the time. You know, seriously, Sam this isn't about just hooking up, okay? I mean - I think that this Sarah girl could be good for you. And I don't mean any disrespect but I'm sure this is about Jessica, right? Now, I don't know what it's like to lose somebody like that, but … I would think that she would want you to be happy. God forbid - have fun once in a while. Wouldn't she?
Sam: Yeah, I know she would … Yeah, you're right. Part of this is about Jessica. But not the main part.
Dean: What's it about? … Yeah, all right.
…
Sam: Sarah, I know this sounds crazy, but we think that that painting is haunted.
Sarah: You're joking. … You're not joking. God, the guys I go out with …
Sam: Sarah, think about it. Evelyn, the Telescas - they both had the painting. And there have been others before that. Wherever this thing goes people die. And we're just trying to stop it. And that's the truth.
Sarah: Well then I guess you'd better show me. I'm coming with you.
Sam: What? No. Sarah, no, you should just go home. This stuff can get dangerous and … I don't want you to get hurt.
Sarah: Look, you guys are probably crazy, but if you're right about this? Well, me and my Dad sold this painting - we might have got these people killed. Look, I'm not saying I'm not scared because I am scared as hell but I'm not going to run and hide either. So are we going or what?
The Merchant family was apparently cremated - and naturally that complicates the situation. With no obvious body parts lying around for them to burn, Sam and Dean return to discussing the one artefact they know to be connected to the haunting: the painting. We establish that Dean does not know about symbolism in artwork as depicted in The Da Vinci Code (I think this is supposed to be a joke about Dean’s failure to keep up with current literary trends, but really I can only applaud his choice not to read it. My dad made me read it because he did and it was so awful he needed someone to complain to.), and the conversation cycles back around to Sarah - both as their only means of gaining access to the painting to study it and as Sam’s potential love interest.
Sam objects to Dean’s efforts to force him and Sarah together, and while I would agree that Dean is being a bit pushy and obnoxious here, it is also true that there is a reason for his behaviour. Dean is trying to find out why Sam is as miserable as he is. He has a theory that Sam is still in the throes of destructive grief over Jessica’s death - and while that isn’t quite the case, raising the possibility does bring Sam almost to the point of a confession. While he leaves the specifics unsaid, it is at least made clear that Sam is not thinking about Jessica, but about himself. In one sense, that’s completely valid: Sam gets to choose whether he dates or not. But it becomes problematic when it is framed around policing other people’s choices. Sam has identified himself as a source of danger, and has therefore decided that women aren’t allowed to be attracted to him for their own good. He doesn’t want to be around Sarah, because he fears his very presence will get her killed. Of course, even aside from the fact that over the course of the season Sam and Dean have encountered numerous people - women included - who have chosen to go up against the supernatural for their own reasons, without thinking about Sam Winchester at all, the whole episode speaks against this. The ghost was here before Sam and Dean arrived. Sarah is tied to it quite naturally, because the painting always returns to her family’s auction house after its owners are killed. And Sarah is naturally curious and inclined to take responsibility for the deaths around her.
It’s completely okay if Sam doesn’t want to date - but his reasoning here is a bit dodgy. He is trying to protect Sarah from making choices that he feels are too dangerous for her. There’s a touch of hubris in that. He is working from the assumption that she will only be involved in the case if she is involved with him, despite all evidence to the contrary. And this highlights a problem with the way Sam is dealing with his grief. He is assuming that he could have - and should have - protected Jessica; that if he had told her the truth she would have run away to safety, or that he should have known better and stayed away from her in the first place. What he isn’t considering is Jessica’s own agency - her identity is being consumed by his guilt. What Sam isn’t considering is the possibility that, if he’d told Jessica everything, she might have stayed.
Sam learns that the painting has been sold while trying to convince Sarah to let him examine it again, and he and Dean rush to Evelyn’s rescue - with a bewildered Sarah in tow. They’re too late for Evelyn, alas: she hasn’t so much had her throat cut as been transformed into Supernatural’s answer to Nearly Headless Nick from Harry Potter. But they do get confirmation that the painting moves - they all see Isaiah’s head turned toward them, Sarah included.
Naturally, this means Sarah has questions, and in giving her straight answers Sam is able to atone for his mistakes in dealing with Jessica. He’s also exposed to the problem with his guilt - because Sarah immediately insists on accompanying them on their hunt, because she (with her father) has been selling the painting to its victims. We don’t know enough about Jessica to guess how she might have reacted if she had found out that her world was riddled with monsters. Sam did know her, but this is one occasion where his judgement isn’t trustworthy: his opinion is shaped by his guilt, not by his familiarity with Jessica’s character. But the possibility that she might have chosen to fight back was always there. It probably was wrong of Sam to conceal his past from Jessica, but not in the way he thinks. It was wrong because it’s a bad idea to try to build a life with someone to whom you are lying. Protecting her doesn’t come into it. Sarah acts as Jessica’s stand in, here, challenging Sam on his assumptions. She is like Sam and Dean: if anything she takes on too much responsibility. Sarah didn’t want to sell the painting - her father did, so Evelyn’s death is mostly his fault. But Sarah is determined to deal with this herself.
Dean: Well, if the spirit is changing aspects of the painting, maybe it's doing so for a reason.
Sam: Hey, look at this - the painting in the painting.
Dean: Looks like a crypt or a mausoleum or something
Sam: Yeah.
Dean: … Merchant.
…
Sarah: So this is what you guys do for a living?
Sam: Not exactly. We don't get paid.
Sarah: Well. Mazel tov.
…
Dean: Notice anything strange here?
Sarah: Where do I start?
Dean: No, that’s not what I mean. Look at the urns.
Sam: Yeah. There are only four.
Dean: Yeah. Mom and the three kids. Daddy dearest isn't here.
They head off to Evelyn’s house - crime scene or no - to examine the painting, and end up playing a game of ‘spot the difference’ with the original and the photocopy they took from a library book. There are a number of differences - Isaiah, obviously, and the razor is open in one and closed in the other - but the most significant difference is the painting that serves as the background for the portrait: originally it was of a mountain range, but now it depicts the Merchant family mausoleum. But when they go to the cemetery to investigate, they find that Isaiah’s ashes are missing.
This is a big clue as to what’s really going on here, and everyone misses it. In season two’s The Usual Suspects Sam and Dean will come up against a similar situation - a ghost who leaves garbled but eye-catching clues, and who leads them directly to her corpse. There, Sam is savvy enough to realise that something is off about that:
Sam: You know what? This is bothering me.
Ballard: Well, you are digging up a corpse.
Sam: No, not that. That's pretty par for the course, actually.
Ballard: Then what?
Sam: It's just, I mean, no vengeful spirit I've ever tussled with wanted to be wasted, so why the hell would Claire lead us to her remains? It doesn't make any sense.
The Usual Suspects
By that point he and Dean have another half a season’s worth of experience under their belts, and besides, the basic humanity of monsters is a major theme within season two - so it’s not surprising that Sam is more attuned to the subtleties of the situation. Here, Sam and Dean are still fumbling toward an understanding of what monsters really are. Certainly they’ve made plenty of progress - but the big development is being saved for the season finale, when the demons reveal themselves as a rival family with dreams and goals of their own. Nowadays, what the painting is telling them is obvious: Isaiah has the razor open to indicate the murder weapon, he’s looking down at his daughter to indicate the murderer - and by showing them the mausoleum he’s directing them towards her corpse, not his. That’s a hell of a lot better than REDRUM, not to mention DANA SCHULPS. Isaiah is to be congratulated on his clarity. I bet he’d have been great at Pictionary.
Beyond the practicalities of the case, we also see a shift in Sam and Sarah’s relationship. In a lot of ways it mirrors Sam and Dean’s: it is completely impossible for them to talk about anything important until somebody gets the truth shoved in his or her face by accident, and after that it is easy. Before the ghost united them, Sam and Sarah’s class differences were like a wall between them. Sarah’s wealth and sophistication reminded Sam too much of what he’d lost, what he’d failed to do, and what exactly his experiment with normality had cost those around him. Now he’s able to make jokes about his poverty: though both he and Sarah have returned to working in their respective family businesses after their dream careers fell through, at least Sarah is getting paid. The situation is not yet resolved, but this is a clear sign that Sam is beginning to relinquish responsibility for Sarah’s choices. It’s usually a good sign when someone is able to see the funny side of things.
Sam: Look, it's hard to explain. It's just that when people are around me … I don't know. They get hurt.
Sarah: What do you mean?
Sam: I mean like physically hurt. With what my brother and I do, it's … Sarah, I had a girlfriend. And she died. And my mom died too. I don't know, it's like I'm cursed or something. Like death just follows me around. Look, I'm not scared of much, but if I let myself have feelings for anybody …
Sarah: You're scared they'd get hurt too. That's very sweet. And very archaic.
Sam: Sorry?
Sarah: Look, I'm a big girl, Sam. It's not your job to make decisions for me. There's always a chance of getting hurt.
Sam: I'm not talking about a broken heart and a tub of Häagen-Dazs. I'm talking about life and death!
Sarah: And tomorrow I could get hit by a bus - that's what life is. Look, I know losing somebody you love - it’s terrible. You shut yourself off. Believe me, I know. But when you shut out pain, you shut out everything else too.
Sam: Sarah you don't understand. The pain that I went through … I can't go through it again. I can't.
Dean puts himself on research duty, going off to dig through the records in search of information on Isaiah’s burial - thus leaving Sam free to have a private chat with Sarah. It’s interesting to see how this scene contrasts with the bar scene at the beginning of the episode: there Dean was flirting and Sam was researching - and consequently Dean was lying about who he was and Sam was telling the truth. The second part of that is still true - Dean is still lying (although this time for professional reasons), and Sam is talking honestly about the state of his life and what he does. But the first part, obviously, is backwards. The beginning of the story showed us the status quo. Now we’re seeing things change.
Sam admits to Sarah that he is reluctant to enter into a relationship with her because he fears for her safety. Sarah naturally objects to this, pointing out that she has the right to decide for herself what risks she is willing to take. And Sam then admits that deep down it’s not really about Sarah’s safety at all. It’s about his own fear of suffering another loss. That’s much better: just as Sarah has the right to choose whether to risk herself or not, so does Sam. You can reasonably argue, as Sarah does, that closing yourself off is not a healthy way to live your life, but it is honest. It’s not an attempt to control other people or take responsibility for their choices. Now that we’ve got to the heart of the problem, we can begin to address it.
It’s worth considering to what extent Sam is actually right about being cursed. Over the years, the fact that Sam’s love interests tend to have the life expectancy of a short-sighted lemming has become something of a running joke - to the point where Dean references it in Season 7, Time for a Wedding in an attempt to talk Sam out of marrying Becky. But mostly, these women do not die because Sam is ‘cursed’. Mostly, they die for thematic purposes. Madison’s death foreshadows Sam’s; Ruby’s death in her moment of triumph counters Castiel’s desperate last stand; the women in Unforgiven play into the tragic irony of Roy’s revenge quest - the soulless version of Sam wouldn’t care about the dead women and Sam himself wouldn’t have earned Roy’s ire. Nor do all Sam’s lovers die: as far as we know, Cara of Sex and Violence is alive and well; she served a different thematic purpose there. Really, it’s only Jessica who falls victim to the Winchester-family curse. It’s not destiny that’s out to get Sam’s girlfriends, it’s the writers.
A higher proportion of Dean’s lovers survive simply because Dean is established as being significantly more sexually active than Sam - and thus the women he sleeps with are more likely to appear onscreen (however briefly) or be referenced in the story. Killing them all would be absurd. And yet in terms of meaningful relationships, Dean scarcely fairs better than Sam. Jo’s life is snuffed out the moment that Dean begins to take an interest in her; Anna is forced to end her human life and reclaim her angelic one shortly after she and Dean meet and bond; and they may have pulled back from literally killing Lisa, but she was certainly erased pretty thoroughly from the plot.
Death is a constant theme in Supernatural, so naturally we see a lot of it. Jokes aside, it’s really only unsafe to date Sam if the story’s theme requires a sacrifice. Sarah is perfectly safe. Provenance isn’t about that.
That brings us to the ways in which Sam is not at all safe, despite his precautions. Though the women in his life may still suffer from thematically appropriate deaths, they’re not targets for angels and demons. Instead, Sam’s enemies will go after John, they will go after Dean, and they will go after Bobby. Sarah talks about retreating into a safe place after suffering a loss - she was able to go home to her father and take refuge in the family business. Her dad would understand what she was going through, and not push her to do things that made her uncomfortable - if only because he was too distracted by his business to worry about her social life. But Sam’s retreat is planned, and not by him. The angels and the demons want him to maintain the fraught, complicated relationship with his father. They want him to be close to Dean. And they want those things so that they can take his loved ones away from him.
Sam’s half of the battle is built around his desperate desire to prove that he is an adult - that he is capable of making good decisions, that he can protect the people around him. He’s forced to fail at this for a long time, because he doesn’t know exactly what he’s facing and thus doesn’t know how to resist. Provenance can mend his issues in the short term by teaching him to open up a little, and to appreciate that other people’s choices play a part in their fates, but it can’t cure them. The trouble is not simply that Sam is cursed so that the people around him suffer, but that Sam is being shaped. The monsters put pressure on the people around him to behave in certain ways, in order to regulate his environment, and they put pressure on him to make certain choices in order to make him more compatible with Lucifer. That’s why Jessica died: to force Sam to start hunting again. Since ‘what Sam does’ is all tied up with ‘who Sam is’, it’s not surprising that he struggles to extricate himself from his sense of guilt and responsibility. Sure, his hand is often forced - but his choices still feel like his own.
And that’s why the story now asks us to stop paying attention to Isaiah and start paying attention to Melanie.
Sarah: You guys seem to be uncomfortably comfortable with this.
Sam: Well, this isn't exactly the first grave we've dug. Still think I'm a catch?
…
Dean: Tell me you slammed the front door.
Sam: No, it wasn't me. I think it was the little girl.
Dean: Girl? What girl?
Sam: Yeah, she's out of the painting. I think it might have been her all along.
Dean: Wasn't the dad looking down at her? Maybe he was trying to warn us
…
Sarah: Sam, wait. We used to handle antique dolls at the auction.
Sam: Well, that's fascinating, Sarah but important right now?
Sarah: Well - back then they use to make the dolls in the kid’s image. I mean everything. They would use the kid's real hair.
Sam: Dean, Sarah said the doll might have the kid's real hair. Human remains - the same as bones.
Sam, Dean and Sarah burn Isaiah. They do this with very little fanfare, and the act scarcely even seems to register later when they realise that it was Melanie committing the murders all along. This neatly illustrates why the case gives them so much trouble: they’re still not really capable of thinking of monsters as people. They can attribute human motivations to them when they’re doing the murder-mystery portion of the case - working out how they became ghosts in the first place - but if they get that part wrong it’s very difficult for them to accept conflicting pieces of evidence from the dead. Isaiah has been trying to help them, and they destroyed him - but they don’t have any particular feelings about that. He was just a ghost, after all. This stuff is largely going to have to wait until season two.
Really, the most interesting thing about this scene is that Sam is still making jokes about his terrible unpaid job.
With Isaiah gone, the group heads back to Evelyn’s house to dispose of the painting - just to make absolutely sure the ghost is gone. Sam and Sarah go inside and Dean stays in the car, apparently imagining that the painting theft might be the scene of a romantic interlude. Dean must go on some weird dates. Instead of romance, they get the real perpetrator of the episode’s crimes: Melanie Merchant emerges from the portrait with her doll in one hand and her father’s razor in the other, all ready to audition for the leading role in a cross-dressing children’s production of Sweeney Todd. While I am not entirely comfortable with the way the show portrays Melanie, it is relevant to Sam’s character arc. Throughout the episode, the various characters have been concerned with issues of class, status and social propriety. And naturally, the case has seemed to revolve around these issues as well. The final reveal here strips all that away. Melanie is not at all concerned with social issues. Her motives remain unknown - she’s not said to be abused or traumatised or diagnosed with any specific mental illness. Whatever is wrong with her comes from the time before her story officially begins. She came to the Merchant family broken, and that brokenness is part of her provenance. Melanie: a child who murdered her family.
Melanie embodies everything Sam fears about himself: that he is inherently bad and a plague on those around him. In a way, the fact that Melanie’s ‘badness’ is so poorly defined is even the point - Sam doesn’t feel like there’s anything specifically wrong with him. Even when it comes to his creepy, demon-given powers he always strives to do the right thing and make choices that will help others. It’s just that his choices keep going badly wrong. Sam doesn’t know what’s wrong with himself any more than we know what’s wrong with Melanie.
As the fight begins, we are once again looking at an amalgam of earlier episodes: as in Bloody Mary (and Home), Dean is trapped outside while Sam is left to face the monster; as in Hook Man, Sam is tasked with defending a woman from a ghost’s wrath while Dean hurries off to burn its remains. But there are differences. Both Charlie and Lori were essentially helpless against the ghost. Sarah is not. In fact, she’s the one who figures out how to defeat her by pointing out that Melanie’s beloved doll would have been made with her hair. It’s a neat way of making a character who is not physically imposing useful. Sarah is not trained in combat. She doesn’t know how to fight ghosts, and she will need Sam to defend her from this one. But she can think like a hunter. That’s the important bit. The rest you can learn. Her choice to be involved in the case is vindicated. In a lot of ways, she’s the hero of the piece. It’s a really good thing Sam didn’t get to choose for her.
Sam’s initial response to Sarah’s suggestion is one of the few places in the episode I feel I can legitimately criticise him. While I don’t quite understand why Sarah is so forgiving of Sam’s evasiveness and fits of aggression, I have no difficulty understanding them in the context of Sam feeling as though he’s being pushed into a relationship he’s not ready for. But here Sarah has been accepted as one of the team. She’s proved to be brave and helpful and willing to lie to get the job done, and she hasn’t demonstrated a tendency to make irrelevant comments. So if she’s suddenly talking about antique dolls, I think she’s owed the assumption that she’s doing it for a reason, and Sam’s sharp dismissiveness makes me want to shake him. Just a little.
Other than that, it’s noteworthy that Sam acquits himself much better here than he does in Bloody Mary - unsurprisingly, since that episode represented the nadir of his character arc this season - and about as well as he does in Hook Man. Yes, he does manage a more dramatic save in Provenance than he did in the previous episode, hurling himself bodily between Sarah and the ghost, but the upshot is pretty much the same: Sam successfully fends off a ghost until Dean is able to destroy it. That’s not the difference between Hook Man and Provenance; though Sam has got more capable at some aspects of hunting over the course of the season, he was already pretty competent at the physical stuff at the outset. The difference is that this time Sam is able to take credit for his actions.
Worker: Where's this one go?
Sarah: Take it out back and burn it. I'm serious, guys. Thanks.
…
Sarah: There are a million things I want to say to you, but for the life of me I can't think of one.
Sam: Yeah, I'll miss you too.
Sarah: You know there's a lesson in all of this.
Sam: What's that?
Sarah: We all got through this in one piece. I didn't get hurt.
…
Dean: That's my boy.
They go back to the auction house and this time they really do burn the painting just to be safe - and along the way confirm that Melanie had a history of murder. It’s interesting to look at the difference between the actual destruction of the painting and Sam and Dean’s previous attempts to destroy it: those were undertaken under the cover of darkness, and relied on being able to get in and out again without being seen. When the painting is really burned, it is done in broad daylight and in an official fashion. It’s also noteworthy that Daniel Blake is conspicuously absent from this scene. His concern for social norms, for keeping rich people happy and keeping the riffraff out, has caused a lot of trouble in this episode, and he is thus no longer allowed to make important decisions. Sarah makes them instead. Wanting a (presumably valuable) piece of artwork destroyed is weird, and Sarah gets some odd looks from her employees when she tells them to burn it. But she doesn’t care. We’ve established that in this story, caring about propriety gets you nowhere.
Provenance also sets up one more contrast between itself and the earlier episodes of the season. Both Bloody Mary and Hook Man ended with Sam driving unhappily away from a troubled young woman. In Bloody Mary he offered some consolation to Charlie, encouraging her to forgive herself, but this was offset by the fact that he clearly could not forgive himself in similar circumstances; in Hook Man he fled from Lori’s awkward advances - she was no more sure of how to live her life than Sam was, and neither knew what to say to the other. Here, the story pointedly shows Sam not leaving. Obviously at some point he does, since he and Dean are still driving around slaying monsters in the next episode, but that’s not what this story chooses to end on. Rather, it shows us Sam going back and choosing to connect with Sarah. It’s still a struggle, and he clearly has to make a conscious decision to defy his instincts. But Melanie Merchant is dead and gone, Sarah is alive, and right now no one is trying to hold Sam’s incredibly messed up life against him. So these battles can be won. He did save the day, and it was a good thing.
It might, as Sarah suggests, just be possible to reject your birthright if you don’t like it. Just because Melanie couldn’t doesn’t mean Sam can’t.