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So now we know why they couldn't afford the rubber spiders for the last episode! This week: Lots of fire! Violence! Knives! And other cool stuff! But, sadly, still no tits.
Sam and Dean return to their childhood home in Lawrence, Kansas after Sam 'fesses up about having a premonition about something evil brewing there. Turns out Sam is right and the brothers find a just-moved-in young mother and her two small children dealing with flickering lights, plumber amputations, and, oh yeah, a certain figure engulfed in flames sitting down to breakfast with them each morning.
The Hardy Boys can't handle this level of production quality on their own, and so enlist the help of Missouri -- played by the honey-voiced Loretta Devine -- a psychic to whom their father had turned after their mother's flameout. Together they rout the evil spirits, but not before Sam gets nearly taken out by an evil floor lamp.
But if we've learned anything from Poltergeist -- and lord knows, the writers for this show certainly have -- we know it ain't over when the fat lady says "this house is clean." Sam gets pinned inside by some sort of supernatural Gravitron and when Dean comes to save him from the Fiery Human Furnace they realize it's -- gasp! -- their mother. She tells the evil gravity to leave her son alone and then disappears herself.
In the final scene, we find that Missouri was hiding Daddy Winchester in her house all along, and then he remains annoyingly vague about why he can't talk to his kids.
Plus! Padalecki got his bangs trimmed! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Lawrence, Kansas. A piano plinks as a woman sits on the floor in the dark amidst a pile of moving boxes, tearfully looking at her wedding photos. Holy eighties wedding dress, mutton sleeves! The woman does, indeed, look a lot like Maria Bello. Her daughter, who looks about nine or ten, walks in to tell her that "there's something in my closet." Cut to the mother, looking tough in a wife beater, throwing open the double closet doors in her daughter's room. The camera is positioned inside the closet looking out, so we've got the monster's-eye view. This time the in-peril guest star does NOT hear the score, because while the mother turns to her daughter to say, "See? There's nothing there," the eerie drone tells us otherwise. She closes the closet doors, and goes to tuck her daughter in. The little girl says, "I don't like this house," and her mother reassures her that she just isn't used to it yet. Mom turns out the light and slides a chair over in front of closet at the little girl's request, "just to be safe."
Back downstairs, the mom has decided to continue unpacking in the dark. And I'm beginning to regret deciding to recap during the day, as all I can see is my own damn reflected image in the dark screen. Hello, gorgeous! Mom hears creepy rattling and tapping and looks grossed out: "Please, God, don't let it be rats." She decides to go down into the EVEN darker basement to check it out. The lights don't work down there. Lady, I think the rats would wait until the morning if you'd like to deal then.
Upstairs, the closet doors begin rattling against the chair, which begins sliding forward. The little girl sits up and gasps. She scoots back against her headboard as the chair slides completely away from the doors.
Back in the basement, Mom wanders around the completely dark basement until her flashlight reveals a very unassuming-looking trunk. Why the trunk stood out to her amidst all the other old junk in the basement is not clear. She goes over to it and opens it up, finding old Winchester family photographs.
Upstairs in the room of paralyzing fear, the little girl watches helplessly as the closet door finally swings completely open.
Basement again, where Mom flips through photos of the young pre-evisceration Winchester family and smiles.
Upstairs again, the little girl watches as a ball of fire begins coalescing out of the dark recesses of the closet. The camera cuts to her bathed in the flickering light and then zooms in on the little actress as she takes a deep breath and lets out a pretty decent horror scream.Credits. Exterior shot of a house with creepy trees out front. The house is nicely regular, no ornate old-timey spookiness about it, just a dime-a-dozen two-story suburban house. The lighting and drone tell us that this shot isn't taking place in the real world or real time, and the camera stiltingly zooms in to show Jenny, the mother from the opening sequence, standing at the upstairs window soundlessly screaming and banging on the window. A truck horn sounds as we get an extreme close-up on the Padelecki being jolted awake from this nightmare. He sits up in his bed, and in doing so shows us that he's gotten his bangs trimmed! Oh, joy! It's about time, because there is no reason that your bangs should ever be overgrown. Did you know that you can just pop in at your stylist's and get your bangs trimmed for free -- for free! -- any time you want? Of course the trip is never totally free because you always end up walking out with an armful of hemp-derived Aveda products, but still. Your bangs? They should always be the proper length. issue, please.
And the issue appears to be Padalecki's drawing skills, as the camera shows us him attempting to sketch the gnarled tree from his dream. I'm happy to see that he is doing so on the motel-issued writing pad -- it says "Sleep Easy Motel" across the top -- and not on, say, a completely out-of-place canvas and easel. Nice touch, Props! As Sam sketches, Dean sips coffee and surfs the interweb on his DELL LAPTOP COMPUTER: "I think I found a few candidates for our gig. A fishing trawler found off the coast of Cali. Its crew vanished. And, ah, got some cattle mutilations in West Texas…" Sam is not listening to him. Dean asks if he's "boring you with this hunting evil stuff?" and, well, Dean, I hate to break it to you, but that whole evil bugs thing from last week? Pretty boring. Sam claims to be listening and Dean continues, finally asking him, "Any of these things blowing up your skirt, pal?" Hee.
Sam continues staring intently at his eighth-grade art project until something clicks: "Wait, I've seen this." He rushes over to dig their dad's journal out of his bag, flips through some of the pictures stuffed into it, and finds a double of one of the photos stuffed in the box in Jenny's basement. He turns to Dean and tells them they have to go back home to Kansas. Dean is like, "Okay, random." This is actually his line. Sam goes over to Dean and starts to explain that he thinks the people that live in their old house might be in danger. Dean wonders where he's getting this information and Sam tells him he just has to trust him. Dean gives him the z-snap, and says, "Well, tough. I'm not going anywhere" until Sam explains why they have to go home. So Sam takes a deep breath and tells Dean, "I have these nightmares. And sometimes they come true." Dean: "Come again?" Sam: "Look, Dean, I dreamt about Jessica's death. For days before it happened." Dean tries to shrug this off, but Sam continues, "No, I dreamt about the blood dripping, her on the ceiling, the fire, and I didn't do anything about it because I didn't believe it." Oh, Sammy, don't beat yourself up over that. Last night, I dreamt that I grew muffins for feet and I haven't done anything about that either. The Hardy Boys are both getting a little choked up in this scene as Sam pleads with Dean to believe him. Dean shakes his head and says, "I don't know." Sam's voice goes up into Mike Tyson's register and he squeaks, "What do you mean you don't know? This woman might be in danger. I mean, this might even be the thing that killed Mom and Jessica." Dean pulls out the big guns by employing the Get Up and Distractedly Walk Over Here method of connoting emotional distress while asking Sam to just "slow down. I mean, first you tell me you've got the shining? And then you tell me that I've gotta go back home? Especially when…when I swore to myself that I would never go back there?" Sam counters Dean's GUADWOH with an Intense Stare Coupled With Slow Rise to My Feet and tells him, "Look, Dean, we have to check this out, just to make sure." Guess who wins? Sweeps does.
The Metallicar, lonely highway. They say that the road ain't no place to start a family. While pulling up in front of the old house, Sam asks Dean if he's going to be all right. Dean turns to him and with a cracking voice says, "Let me get back to you on that." Aw. I wonder if Sam ever gets mad about not having any lines that make me go either "aw" or "hee"? They knock on the door and Jenny answers. Dean immediately starts in on one of his "federal marshal, ma'am" lies, but Sam interrupts with something closer to the truth and tells her that they used to live there, were just driving by, and wanted to take a look around. She realizes the pictures in the basement were their family's, and invites them in.
She leads them into the kitchen. Dean is holding himself very stiffly. In the kitchen a toddler jumps up in down in his playpen asking for "Juice! Juice! Juice!" She says his name is Richie, and goes to the fridge to get him some of his toddler crack. Close-up on the child-proofed refrigerator door. The little girl is sitting at the kitchen table doing some homework, and gets introduced as Sari. Dean wants to know why they moved there, and Jenny vaguely says she needed a fresh start. Dean and Sam are both fixing a real "Lady, you don't know what you're in for" kind of look on her. Sam asks her how she likes the house, and she tells them no offense but "this place has its issues." She tells them about the flickering lights, backed-up sink, and rats in the basement before catching herself and saying she doesn't mean to complain. Dean asks if she's actually seen the rats or just heard the scratching. Sam and Dean exchange looks as Sari asks her mom to see if the thing in her closet lived there when they used to. The Hardy Boys try to keep it together, assuring her that nothing lives in her closet, when Sari busts out with "it came into my bedroom and it was on fire." Oh shit.
The boys rush down the front stairs going over the evidence. Sam is doing a little Shining victory dance, saying that all the signs point to "a malevolent spirit." Dean says he's "just freaked out that your weirdo visions are coming true." Sam is giving Dean the full-on Amy Sherman-Palladino treatment, firing questions at him: What's the thing in the house? Is it the thing that killed Mom and Jessica? Sam wants to get the family out of the house now, but Dean thinks that plan is wiggity-wack. Sam's being a little whiny: "So what are we supposed to do?"Cut to a gas station where Dean answers, "We just gotta chill out." Holy Christ, we've got a smooth and logical transition! And on top of all that continuity, we even get a nice low shot of the Metallicar. Dare I say that this episode is artful thus far? Why yes I think I do dare, tee hee hee hee hee! Dean tells Sam to get some perspective on this "job." Sam walks around back of the car to join Dean in the rear. Heh. They start discussing what Dean even remembers from that fateful night back in '83. He remembers "the fire, the heat, and that I carried you out the front door." Sam is touched: "You did?" He never knew that before. Dean says if their dad had a theory about what happened that night, "he kept it to himself. God knows we asked him enough times." Dean's locution is getting a bit too "just folks" here. They also clearly shot this scene before Padalecki's visit to the stylist, as his bangs have become problematic again. Sam says that in order to figure out what's happening now, they have to figure out what happened back then, which no, not really you don't. Dean is all business with a curt "Yep. Gotta talk to Dad's friends, neighbors..." Sam tries to get him to acknowledge how weird this "job" is, but Dean just excuses himself to go to the bathroom...
...and cry cry cry, taking a page from the Female Office Worker Handbook. Actually, he's just gone around back to make a phone call. We hear the voicemail pick up: "This is John Winchester. If this is an emergency please call my son Dean, 866-907-3235." I'll wait here as you go call the number one more time. Okay, done? Good. Close-up on Dean as he leaves a message, his voice, as they say in the romance novels, thick with emotion, his features most beautifully furrowed (sigh): "Dad, I know I've left you messages before. I don't even know if you get 'em. But, I'm with Sam. And we're in Lawrence. And there's somethin' in our old house. I don't know if it's the thing that killed Mom or not, but" -- and here his voice cracks, marking the squee moment of this episode -- "I don't know what to do. So whatever you're doin' if you could get here, please, I need your help Dad."
Back in Jenny's kitchen, I'm wondering if the woman has heard of hundred-watt bulbs. Maybe she can only afford twenty watts. She's leading a plumber to the sink while delivering a load of silly foreshadowing: "No sir, nothing weird down there, I promise." Who says that to a plumber coming to unclog a sink? She leaves, and the plumber gets to work. As he lies on the floor under the sink, one of those cymbal-clashing monkeys (recognized the world over as an emotionally scarring toy) starts clanging away unprompted. The plumber Joe (his shirt says, and I trust it because he doesn't look like a thrifter) unplugs the disposal under the sink, gets up, rolls up his sleeve, and plunges his hand into the drain to start rooting around down there. The monkey watches. The plumber roots. When, yoips! Something has grabbed his hand down there in the drain and he -- omigod omigod omigod! -- oh. Removes his arm with no problem, or carnage. Time for another go, I guess. Back in the hole the arm goes, where he roots around some more. Heh. Then I am cursed for my dirty mind because the disposal starts whirring, the plumber starts screaming, the monkey starts clanging, and the score starts screeching in the background, and it all goes on for a few beats too long. Commercials. Guenther's Auto Repair shop. Dean talks to, presumably, Guenther: "So you and John Winchester used to own this garage together." Guenther says that was a long time ago and that John disappeared over twenty years ago. He wonders why the cops are interested in the case again. Dean asks Guenther to tell him anything he remembers about John. Guenther: "Well, he was a stubborn bastard, I remember that. And, whatever the game, he hated to lose. It was the old Marine thing. But, ah, oh he sure loved Mary. And he doted on those kids." The boys emote. Sam asks, "But that was before the fire. Did he ever talk about that night?" Guenther says he didn't at first, and the boys prompt him some more until he admits that John thought something caused that fire. Dean asks if John ever said what that something was. Guenther fixes him with "whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" eyes and says, "Nothing did. It was an electrical short in the ceiling or walls or something." Then Guenther says that he begged John to get some help but "it just got worse and worse." How? Oh, John started reading weird books and going to a palm reader in town.
Cut to Sam flipping through the phone book. He reads off a list of psychics and palm readers. "There's El Divino, there's The Mysterious Mr. Fortinski." Heh. I'm going to start calling my husband The Mysterious Mr. Fortinski. Sam continues, "There's Missouri Mosley," when Dean jumps in, "Wait, wait. Missouri Mosely?" Dean gets their father's journal out of the car and reads off the first sentence of the first page: "'I went to Missouri, and I learned the truth.'" Dean shrugs adorably, "I always thought he meant the state."
The Hardy Boys sit on a couch waiting and looking tense. Loretta Devine sweets her way through the room walking a man to the front door, "All right then, don't you worry about a thing. Your wife is crazy about ya." He leaves and she turns to the brothers: "Poor bastard. His woman is cold bangin' the gardener." Hee. Dean asks why she didn't tell him, and she wises, "People don't come here for the truth, they come here for good news." I have a feeling I'm going to be learning a lot from the Divine Ms. Devine. She tells Sam and Dean to follow her. They look surprised that she knows who they are. Missouri cutes, "Well, let me look atcha. Ooh, you boys grew up handsome!" She points at Dean: "And you were one goofy-lookin' kid, too." Dean gives her a cartoonish "Yoips!" look while Sam grins like a seven-year-old. Missouri turns to Sam, takes his hand, and then furrows her brow: "Oh, honey, I'm sorry 'bout your girlfriend. And your father. He's missing?" Cut to Sam and Dean both freaking out. Sam, "How'd you know all that?" Missouri, "Well, you were just thinking it." When Missouri says she doesn't know where their father is, Dean takes this opportunity to ride in on his high horse: "You don't know? You're supposed to be a psychic, right?" And there he hit the "Oooh, chile" button, as Missouri goes off on him: "Boy, you see me sawing some bony tramp in half, you think I'm a magician? I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies in a room but I can't just pull facts out of thin air." Dean's like, "Well, ex-CA-uuuuse ME!" Sam grins some more.She tells the boys to sit down, and as they settle in she goes off on Dean again: "Boy, if you put your foot up on my coffee table, I'm gonna whack you with a spoon." When Dean protests that he didn't put his foot up, she says, "Well, you were thinkin' about it." Hoo-whee, this lady is tough, but fair. Sam asks Missouri to tell them what she told their father. She says she just "told him what was out there in the dark. I guess you could say, I drew back the curtains for him." Shit, is THAT what's lurking behind my curtains? Eviscerating demons? Time to get a maid in here, I guess. Missouri continues, telling the boys that their father took her to the house hoping she could "sense the fingerprints of this thing." Sam about craps his pants: "And could you?" No, no she couldn't. Otherwise you'd be out of a job where you get to perfect the elusive Crapping My Pants look. Missouri doesn't know what it was, but whispers, "Oh, it was evil."
Which reminds us, let's take a look at what's going on at Home Sweet Evil. In the kitchen, Richie jumps up and down in his playpen while Jenny argues with someone over the phone over whether or not she is liable for what happened to the plumber. The ceiling starts rattling and she gets off the phone to go check it out, telling Richie she'll be right back.
Back at Missouri's, Sam tells her they think something is back in that house. Missouri says she is confused because she keeps an eye on the house and it's been quiet: "No sudden deaths, no freak accidents, why is it acting up now?" Sam says that everything happening at once -- their dad disappearing, Jessica dying, and now this house -- "feels like something is starting." This show really needs to sort its shit out. Is "something starting" or is there just always weird evil happening all the time? Is there a larger evil or just little weekly evils? Dean is not amused by Sam's declaration about this "something." I knew he wanted to marry me.
Back in the kitchen, the hinge pins holding the wooden playpen together are slowly drawn upward by an invisible force. The front of the playpen drops to the floor. Then the child safety lock on the refrigerator is loosened by the same force and the refrigerator door swings open. Richie looks down at the track marks on his arm and realizes this is his chance to make a major juice score. It is so sad to see kids in the throes of addiction. He toddles his way over to the fridge for his fix. Monster's-eye view again from inside the fridge. This kid's death wish is so strong, a desire to numb his veins and his heart with the cold sweet embrace of juice, that he climbs in to be with the juice and the invisible force slams the door shut on him. Cut to a middle-distance handheld shot of the fridge that now holds a tiny person inside. Creepy.
Commercials. Jenny returns to the kitchen to find the playpen disassembled and Richie gone. Handheld camera of maternal desperation as Jenny starts yelling Richie's name and ineffectively looking for him. She moves toward the refrigerator a few times only to circle back away from it. Finally she notices milk dripping out of the refrigerator onto the floor and rushes over to it, pulling her little addict out and hugging him tightly. The kitchen is inexplicably filled with grey mist. Vincent Price, are you behind this?Knocking. Jenny opens the door to find Dean, Sam, and Missouri standing on her front stoop. She's unwilling to share her mental breakdown with them and tells them that it isn't a good time. Dean starts barking "Jenny, it's important" when Missouri knocks him on the back of the head and tells him to "give this poor girl a break." She asks Jenny to hear her out, telling her she knows that she knows that something weird is going down in the house. Jenny's got a pair of chompers to rival Everwood's Madison. Wonder if she wishes she were Maggie Grace, too?
Upstairs in Sari's bedroom, Missouri says, "If there is a dark energy here, this room should be the center of it." Sam asks why, and she tells him, "This used to be your nursery, Sam. This is where it all happened." Creepy ghost screams on the score, as Dean backs nervously toward the door. Dean revs up his tiny hilarious Treo-ish ghost detector -- what is it with him and bitty, ineffective tools? -- and Missouri calls him an "amateur" for using this "EMF." She concludes that she doesn't know whether they should be disappointed or relieved, but "this ain't the thing that took your mom." She busts into the haunted closet and drops the bomb: this isn't an "it," it's a "them." And "they" are in the house because of what happened to the Winchester family. How Missouri explains it: "Real evil came to you. That kind of evil leaves wounds. And sometimes wounds get infected. This place is a magnet for paranormal energy. It's attracted a poltergeist." Yawn. Until Dean decides to go all cowboy: "Well one thing's for damn sure. No one's dying in this house. Ever again. So whatever is here, how do we stop it?"
Glad you asked, Dean! We stop it by tying up little bags of sage and patchouli and sacrificing the Birkenstocked hippies that are attracted by its scent! Dude, I wish that was a plot point. They are indeed bagging up some witchy materials that they will have to place inside the walls in the four corners of the house. Missouri says this "should purify the house completely," and I wonder why nobody did this after the mom was killed. Perhaps the poltergeist-fighting power of angelica root is a recent discovery. Thanks, Glaxo-Smith-Kline. Missouri tells the boys they'll have to work fast, because "once the spirits realize what we're up to, things are going to get bad."
Home Sweet Evil. Jenny and her kids are leaving to get out of Ray Parker, Jr.'s way. Sam begins tapping like a little pansy on a horrifically papered wall. You'd think the Nate Berkus in him would take a more combative stance toward this dark blue, ornately flowered monstrosity. Meanwhile, behind him, a lamp cord begins snaking its way toward him. Downstairs in the kitchen, Dean is also approaching the wall a bit too mincingly. Behind him, the knife drawer opens. In the basement, Missouri bends down to tuck her pouch of Ghost B Gon into a corner when a huge dresser comes hurtling toward her, pinning her to the wall. Just as Dean sloooowwwwlllyyyy moves his bag of herbs toward the wall, he hears a knife being unsheathed. He ducks as the knife whirs past him. He thinks quickly and turns the kitchen table on its edge, just in time for about six knives to stab into the wood. Back upstairs, Sam is menaced by a lamp cord. If that isn't the gayest threat ever devised, I don't know what would be. Well, I guess a feather boa with a penchant for wrapping itself too tightly around his fabulous neck might be gayer. ["The part where the lamp was basically tiptoeing around in the background of the shot cracked me up. Probably not the effect they were going for." -- Sars] The lamp cord pulls Sam to the ground, strangling him as he reaches his little bag of Organic Poltergeist-icide toward the hole he's made in the wall. The cord is too much for him, and he lies nearly dead on the floor when Dean rushes in. Dean kneels on top of him and grunts and groans trying to loosen the cord. Or whatever. He realizes that he needs to get the little bag in the hole (I'll say!) to save Sam. Once he does, the room illuminates in a harsh white light and we get an exterior shot of the evil light fleeing the house. Sam wheezes and struggles to breathe until Dean lifts his head and untwists the cord from around his neck.
Commercials. Premature Piano of Exorcised Ghosts plays as Sam, Dean, and Missouri stand in the midst of a terrible mess. That poltergeist really threw down in there. Sam is not convinced the house is cleansed, but Missouri says it is. Jenny returns with her kids and expresses surprise at the mess. Sam says they'll pay for it, while Dean is like, "No way, José!" Missouri tells Jenny that Dean will clean it all up, and then turns to Dean, who hasn't said a word out loud, to tell him not to cuss at her.
Though Missouri just implied that Dean would clean the huge mess right then, we cut immediately to the boys and Missouri leaving the house that same night. Ah, the complex calculus of understanding how time works. The three turn to look back at Jenny standing in the doorway and then turn to leave. We cut annoyingly to Jenny lounging in bed. Nothing like the violent exorcism of a poltergeist to make one feel cozy! She turns out the light and, surprise! the bed starts shaking all over the place.
Exterior shot of the house. Pan down to find the boys waiting on the street in the Metallicar. Dean asks Sam to remind him why they're still sticking around. Sam tells him he just has a bad feeling about it still. Dean says, "Why? Missouri did her whole Zelda Rubenstein thing. The house should be clean. The whole thing should be over." Oh, Dean, I bet you were one of those assholes who got up and left after Naomi Watts got safely out of the well in The Ring. You have to watch the whole thing, nimrod. Just then, Sam looks up at the second-floor window to see the image from his nightmare -- Jenny standing at the window, soundlessly screaming for help. The Hardy Boys run into the house, Dean telling Sam to "grab the kids, I'll get Jenny."
Jenny is trapped in her bedroom. Cut to Sari's room, where the Maternal Flame has materialized in her closet again. Cut back to Dean at Jenny's door, telling her the "stand back!" before kicking the door in. One time, I got stuck in a bathroom while everyone else was outside having a barbecue and I yelled and yelled for help until my friend Greg came winging down the stairs, got to the door, and yelled, "Stand back!" before unsticking the door knob. Ah, fun times, fun times. The moral of that story is that Dean easily gets Jenny out of her room. A little WD-40 would probably have worked just as well.Sam appears in Sari's doorway, holding Richie. The Maternal Flame stands between them. Sam snakes around the flames to pick Sari up. He tells her "not to look" and gets them out of the room. Meanwhile, outside, Dean and Jenny look frantically at the front door, waiting for their families to emerge. Inside, Sam gets down the stairs successfully, only to make this weird face. The face is not unlike the Crapping My Pants, but this time its a little more Oops, Gotta Take Care of Some Business Before Leaving the House. …What? I'm just trying to paint a picture for y'all. He puts the kids down and tells Sari to take her brother outside and don't look back. Sari looks terrified, and just then Sam gets his legs knocked out from underneath him and gets dragged along the floor back into the kitchen. Sari gets her brother out, and tells Dean that Sam is stuck inside. Dean looks intently at the front door just as the camera zooms in on it shutting in fast forward.
Commercials. Trunk of the Metallicar creaks open as Dean grabs a shotgun and an axe. People have gathered outside to watch, and who wouldn't, because how many times do you get a front row seat for EVIL? Dean starts kicking in the door while inside we see Sam getting thrown around the kitchen in a quite convincingly terrible manner. Cut back to Dean having trouble with the door. Cut back to Sam getting to his feet, only to be flung backward and pinned against a wall, unable to move his hands or anything. Gravity rides everything, dude. Cut back to Dean finally having luck axing the door down. Cut back inside, where the Maternal Flame has started walking toward Sam while he remains motionless against the wall.
Dean stalks into the house with his gun ready and puts himself between Sam and the Maternal Flame. He raises the shotgun when Sam shouts, "No don't! I know who it is. I can see her now." Upon hearing this, the Maternal Flame ditches the fire get-up and stands before them, the same age and in the same nightgown she wore the night she was killed. Dean's arm shakes as he lowers the gun he had pointed at her, and he says simply, "Mom." She steps toward him with an inscrutable smirk on her face and says simply, "Dean." Dean starts to lose it. She moves past him to Sam and says, "Sam. I'm sorry." He asks, "For what?" and she looks confused and sad, and then does a little ghostly CGI turnaround move, looks up at the ceiling, and says, "You, get out of my house. And let go of my son," before going up in flames and disappearing. Sam is released, and Dean looks around for their re-disappeared mom in a heartbreaking manner. Sam declares, "Now it's over."Outside, daylight. Dean thanks Jenny for the trunk of photos she found in the basement. Sam sits on the front stoop as Missouri comes out and says, "Well, there are no spirits in there anymore this time for sure." She's just trying to cover her ass before the Poltergeist Exorcism Standards and Practices Committee comes after her for insufficient cleansing. Sam asks what happened, and Missouri psychic-wanks about energies canceling each other out and says that "your mom destroyed herself going after the thing...to protect her boys, of course." None of this makes sense, because why would she have to go after anything if the energies actually did cancel each other out? And I'd prefer to have a better explanation about why the mom and the poltergeist were both there at the same time. Did one attract the other? Has the mom always been there? There are some simple causal relationships that could have been set up to clarify these issues. And furthermore, SHUT UP, ME. Missouri apologizes to Sam for not believing him when he sensed the house wasn't clean. He asks her, "What's happening to me?" and Missouri ingenuously replies that she doesn't have all the answers. Guess she didn't get the memo about how sassy black women always have all the answers.
As Sam and Dean get in the Metallicar, Missouri calls out to them, "Don't you boys be strangers." And then adds, "See you around." Oh, you betcha, Loretta Devine! The Metallicar chugs off, accompanied, sadly, by strings rather than Scorpions.
Cut to Missouri entering her house. She walks through a doorway, puts her hand on her hip, and says to someone off-screen, "That boy. He has such powerful abilities. Why he couldn't sense his own father, I have no idea." The camera swings around to reveal John Winchester sitting on the couch with his head in his hands. He says, "Mary's spirit. Do you really think she saved the boys?" John stares sadly at his wedding ring until Missouri breaks in, "John Winchester, I could just slap you. Why won't you go talk to your children?" He replies that he wants to, that she can't imagine how much he wants to see them, but that he can't: "Not yet. Not until I know the truth." Which, if I'm counting correctly, will be about eight episodes from now. Don't hold your breath.