Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: C | 12 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT A Confederacy of Dunces
By Tippi Blevins | Season 8 | Episode 6 | Aired on 11.07.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.This is the episode where Sam and Dean finally get to vent their spleens at each other, but none of it really matters and it doesn't solve anything and it's not the cathartic release a weary viewer might have hoped for. It starts with Dean getting wind of a possible case when a woman brutally murders her husband of 30 years and claims to have no memory of it. Sam, of course, pisses and moans about how it's not really a case. When they arrive on the scene, they find Garth already there, posing as a Texas Ranger, even though they're in Missouri.
To Dean's dismay, Garth has picked up several of Bobby's traits. He likes to say "balls," and "idjits," and he wears one of Bobby's old trucker caps. He also carries multiple phones and acts as the supernatural Wikipedia for hunters all over the country. He proves helpful in the case when the first suspect's son goes on a homicidal rampage like his mother. Then a cop in the jail where he's being held is overcome with rage and kills his boss. The guys' research points them to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Confederate Civil War Edition. It was disturbed recently by some vandal teens, thus releasing a vengeful specter. This is slightly different from a regular ghost for arbitrary reasons.
They also discover that the Confederate soldier isn't entirely "unknown." Some theories suggest he was killed by his brother, a Union soldier. You see where this is going, right? When Dean heads off to avert the next murder, he ends up getting possessed by the specter himself. This leads him to confront Sam about why he didn't look for his big bro. He rails at Sam for his past trespasses, which include drinking Demon blood, hooking up with Ruby, and so on. Garth, who has learned that the possessed item is an old penny the soldier had, takes the meddlesome coin from Dean just in time to save Sam's life. Damn.
At the end, Garth takes his leave, but not before advising Dean to let go of his resentments. Sam, however, is still pretty resentful about Dean not telling him about his new vampire friend. He even kind of threatens to kill Benny someday. Dean forgives Sam for everything, or maybe he's just pretending to, in order to keep Sam close and prevent him from killing his friend. Because, really, Sam needs his to get his ass dumped like yesterday's cat litter after all the stink he's been raising. Stay tuned for the full recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!THEN! Sam and Dean met a silly hunter named Garth who probably should have died a thousand times over. After all, Sam and Dean die all the time -- even with each other as backup -- and they're big, strong, strapping things. Garth looks like he'd be knocked flat on his ass the first time he fired a gun. He even slept through the time they battled that Japanese beer monster, which I still totally think should have been named Grogzilla. Sam and Dean, perhaps finally feeling the effects of the many, many blows to their noggins, eventually grew to sort of like Garth. All that was before Sam gave up hunting so he could play house with an ornery veterinarian named Amelia. At the same time, Dean was trapped in Purgatory and making friends with a vampire named Benny. Sam finally met Benny and pissily pursed his lips so tightly that they became a singularity from which not even light could escape. Benny took one look at this, sensed that a terrible and boring brotherly fight was brewing, and got the hell out of their way.
NOW! We start off, as we often do, in a small town in the middle of the night. This time, it's Kearney, Missouri. A man works in his garage, fiddling with something under his car. Nothing good ever happens to people who work on their cars in horror stories. He sees a woman walking towards him through the open garage door. She looks angry, but the doomed mechanic seems less than adept at reading body language. "Hey, hon! You're just in time," he greets her. "Grab me a cold one, would ya?" She scowls down at him and shouts, "Why don't you have Sarah Alcott get it for you!" She kicks the jack out from under the car and two tons of American sedan drop onto the doomed mechanic. He gasps and sputters and begs for help, but the lady ignores him and gets into the car. "Mary, help me," he pleads. She turns the key in the ignition and steps hard on the gas. The doomed mechanic proved too good at his repairs and the car roars forward. Bones crunch blood sprays across a nearby Confederate flag, all but obscuring its promise that the South will rise again. This season's title graphic flames onto the screen and it will prove to be the most interesting thing about this dud of an episode.
Somewhere between where we left off in Washington last week and Missouri, Dean parks his perky behind against the side of the Impala. They are in the parking lot of a colorful eatery that a humorously porcine sign tells us is Fat Mack's Bar-B-Q Rib Shack. Dean reads something on his phone as Sam returns with a bag of ribs, presumably. The real supernatural mystery at the heart of this show is how these guys eat like this every day and keep their underwear model physiques.