Episode Report Card Demian: B+ | 4 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT The Hardy Boys Get Frisky Over A Pottery Wheel
By Demian | Season 2 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.27.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close. You'll have to excuse me -- Jensen Ackles spent the entire episode wearing nothing more than a white t-shirt and a pair of light-blue drawstring scrub pants, so of course I had just a tiny bit of trouble following such tedious and unnecessary things like the dialogue and the plot. What I do remember is this: The episode picks up right where we left off at the end of last season, with the manly Winchester trio badly battered and bleeding in the brutalized Metallicar. They're soon enough airlifted to a nearby county hospital, where Sam and Shut Up Daddy rather quickly recover from their recent ordeal, the better to brood over poor comatose Dean, who, as you'll recall, was already suffering from massive demon-induced internal injuries even before that eighteen-wheeler twisted Metallicar into a crunchy pretzel. However, our intrepid Deano was never one to languish in bed when there's work to be done, and so his spectral self pops out of his near-dead body to wander the halls, where he soon enough meets up with Tessa, a Reaper initially disguised as a fellow near-dead patient. Tessa eventually manages to convince a predictably resistant Dean that it's time to move on to whatever plane of existence comes next, just as Shut Up Daddy turns into Daddy Heroic through the trade he brokers with The Ceiling Demon: His life (and that damned dirty Colt, natch) for his son's. The episode ends with a certain Dr. Kripke pronouncing the time of death over John's rapidly cooling corpse as Sam and Dean gape in horror and disbelief from the doorway beyond. Sniff. You may rest assured that both Sam and John got in some very nice moments over the course of the hour, but the second season's opener really was All About Dean. Want more? The full recap starts right below!Drunken Bee, I want to be you when I grow up.
Okay, let's get this out of the way up front: DAMN YOU, KRIPKE!
There. I feel so much better. For now. On to the longest "Previously on Supernatural" sequence in the history of man! (Feel free to skip the following if you're not new to the program.)
From the inky depths of the television screen, Bobby Singer's face emerges to warn Sam and Dean, "A storm's comin', and you boys? And your daddy? You are smack in the middle of it." The opening chord of Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" hurls us back into the black for a moment before a huge, flaming "THEN" dances around a bit, fading away as Soon-To-Be-Burnt Mary races into The Imperiled Nursery Of Bleach-Blonde Doom to open her mouth with a full-throated scream. There's a quick cut to Daddy! John's impressive shout of horror as he spots his wife nailed to the nursery ceiling with a foot-wide gash through her torso right before the sheets of flame burst from her still-breathing body to ripple outwards and bounce back from the walls, immolating her. Daddy! John pushes The Tiny Sam Log into The Head That Ate Cleveland's arms before we cut again to the Winchesters' front lawn, where John sweeps both of his children up in his arms just as the nursery windows explode outwards above their heads. "Dad wants us to pick up where he left off," Dean whispers urgently in the voice-over as Dream Sam arrives at the cemetery to lay flowers on Jessica's grave and Real Sam plows the Impala through Constance Welch's spectral form out on Centennial Highway. "Saving people," the Dean VO continues as Dean himself breaks the surface of Lake Manitoc with both Lucas and tremendous amounts of slow-motion spluttering and gasps. "Hunting things," Dean VOs on, accompanied by a bit of Flashlightery Jazz Hands and Gun Porn, before Real Dean catches up with his voice-over to finish, "The family business!" Next? A montage! Dean hoists a shotgun to blast a certain scarecrow three times in the chest, Sam wields a fireplace poker like a baseball bat and slams it through a certain homicidally inclined ghostly moppet, and Dean busts a flare in a certain frat-boy-chewing wendigo's ass, before we cross-fade to a lovingly lingering pan across the implements of mass destruction lining Metallicar's trunk. Unfortunately, there's nary a dream catcher in sight.