Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: C | 76 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT The Hardy Boys and the Haunted Bunker
By Tippi Blevins | Season 9 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.25.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.While Sam and Dean continue to live in the bunker as unrelated colleagues, they notice that the lights are flickering an awful lot lately. Is the 80-year-old electrical wiring to blame? Nope, it's a ghost! The guys are completely baffled as to how the safest place on Earth could be haunted, then realize the ghost is poor Kevin Tran. He's stuck there because Heaven is closed not only to angels, but to human souls, as well. (This might have been a good time for them to realize the same might have happened if they'd sealed Hell, except with total asshole souls.) Anyway, Kevin says he's been asking other trapped souls nearby, and one of them says she saw his mother just a week ago, still alive and in captivity somewhere.
The former brothers track down this soul that Kevin met, and she says that she and Mrs. Tran were being held captive somewhere mysterious. She escaped and someone killed her before she could figure out where they were. Going off her vague description, though, Sam and Dean realize she was being held in a storage unit somewhere, and that her captors were Crowley and another demon. She says Crowley stopped showing up a while back, though. Dean, too, is unable to get in touch with the erstwhile King of Hell, which is weird because they're sort of working together now. Not that this is bit is mentioned in the episode, of course. Mark of Cain? What the heck is that?
Meanwhile, Castiel is off in his own subplot, sort of aimlessly looking for Metatron, or maybe a new tie for his outfit. Bartholomew's underlings bring him to their boss, who then tries to recruit Castiel to the cause. Naturally, Castiel is a bit wary. Barty explains that he's trying to find Metatron, too, and offers to share his vast resources with Castiel. All that Heaven's prettiest angel needs to do is prove that he's willing to do what needs to be done. To Barty, this means killing a peace-loving angel who has nothing to do with anything. Castiel refuses, so Barty kills the angel himself, then tries to kill Castiel, too. Castiel handily kills him first, thus earning the respect of Barty's underlings. Now they want Castiel to be their leader, so that they can... something-something angel politics. It's super boring.
But back to Sam and Dean. They find the storage unit in question, and manage to get duped by the nerdy twin managers who are very obviously demons. Or maybe just one of them is a demon, and that's the one who kills his brother in order to make one of those "blood phones." He's trying to call Crowley, but Crowley isn't picking up. The nerdy demon whines to Dean about how thankless his job is, while Sam finds and rescues Mrs. Tran. They let her have the "honor" of killing the demon and his innocent meatsuit, but whatever. It's only sad when people they care about die!
In the end, they bring Mrs. Tran back to the bunker to see her son. Just because he's a ghost doesn't mean she's giving up on him. She finds the trinket that's anchoring Kevin, and takes it – and her son – home with her, but not before Kevin tells the Winchesters to get over their problems. Do they take his advice? Of course not! Stay tuned for the full recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!THEN! The angels have been killing each other again. You'd think a story about angels slaughtering each other would be interesting, but no! It's been like watching rival sales teams at a paint factory trying to out-sell each other, and all they have is completely identical gray paint. There's Malachi on one side and Bartholomew on the other, fighting to see who gets to put us to sleep faster. On the human side of things, there was a teen prophet named Kevin Tran, who lost his mother and then got murdered while holed up in the Safest Place on Earth. Dean gave him a hunter's sendoff, which meant burning his tiny body atop a funeral pyre so that he'd be free to move on to his afterlife. Also, it's just so much more visually dramatic than any other option. Soon after, the Winchesters began the thousandth round of familial angst, with Sam saying Dean only saved him for selfish reasons.
NOW! It's a quiet night at the Lair O' Letters when the lights start flickering on and off. At one end of the hallway, a misty shape appears, and then just as quickly vanishes, accompanied by whisper that goes, "Rahhh!" The whispering grows louder as the camera prowls through the building. For some reason, the camera is about a foot off the ground, like maybe it's the POV of that adorable little Jack Russell who got offed a few episodes ago. We push through the grate at the bottom of a door and into Dean's room. "Raah! Grawwrr!" go the whispers. Dean lies stretched out on his bed, eyes closed, listening to some Billy Squier through his headphones. Our mysterious visitor takes a slow trip up Dean's bod, because why not? Suddenly, the room grows cold enough for Dean's breath to show. The music cuts out in a burst of static. His eyes snap open. "Sam!" The half-yell, half-growl echoes through the hallway outside.
Sam peers out of his own room, growling back, "Dean!" How many throat lozenges do you suppose the cast goes through every week? Sam sees the flickering lights and jogs down to Dean's room. He finds the bed is empty except for Dean's headphones.
He pounces into the library to see one of the chairs slowly spinning in place. Sam grabs a sword from the shelf and poses like Mulan getting ready for a fight. He tiptoes through the library as ominous music plays. The wall sconces fizz and sputter, and the map table's lights blink out. The misty shape from the hallway appears behind him and drifts closer. Sam turns around just in time to see Dean blast the mist with shotgun shells full of rock salt. "So," Sam says conversationally. "Yup, bunker's haunted," Dean says. The title card flaps and flames onto the screen.