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An atmosphere-heavy, plot-light episode finds Dean getting electrocuted in the first scene while killing a monster that was after a few woolen-short-pantsed Dickensian orphan types. His heart is "irreparably" damaged by the shock and he's given a month to live. Gasp! Sam logs onto the internets and finds a "faith healer" in Nebraska, which proves you should never trust anything you read online. Meanwhile, Dean is busy "dying" by dusting himself with talcum powder and limping around with his hands shoved into his pockets. During the first healing ceremony they attend, Dean is called to the stage courtesy of his penchant for muttered heckling, and is indeed cured during a nicely-shot laying on of hands. But when it turns out that a young man of roughly the same age and physical fitness (which is "Hubba Hubba" on the President's Physical Fitness Scale) died of a heart attack at the exact moment Dean was "cured," the boys know something is up. A few tarot cards and a brain tumor sob story (played by Darla from both Buffy and Angel) later, and it becomes clear that someone has made a deal with The Reaper (also dug out of the Buffy art direction closet). That someone is the preacher's wife, who has a non-role until she gets to go a little Alec Baldwin in Malice at the end. Did you guys ever notice how sometimes, the folks involved with tent revivals are sort of creepy? No? Okay, I guess it's just me, then. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
What looks like a shanty-town on a dark, foggy night. The boys pop the Metallicar's trunk, moving quickly and seriously despite that damn dreamcatcher's wily attempts to make them crack up laughing. Sam asks Dean about the gadgets he pulls from the trunk: "What've you got those amped up to?" and Dean responds, "100,000 volts. I want this rawhead extra freaking crispy. Remember you only get one shot with these things. So make it count." He slams the trunk, and we cut to the boys each holding a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other, and doing that extended-arms, flashlight-holding hand underneath and steadying the gun-holding hand thing. This move is also known as Tough Guy Jazz Hands. They head down the creaky old staircase into a basement; when Dean reaches the bottom, he does that extended-arm 180 degree swoop. This move is also known as The Policeman's Kick Ball Change. They hear tapping coming from an old wardrobe and approach it quietly. Dean whispers to Sam, "On three," and then counts down to wardrobe infiltration. Theyflingthedoorsopentoreveal...two little chimney sweeps huddled in the corners. They're all woolen and "Please sir? Can I have some more?" I think the stylist must have just came off a Newsies bender. Lord knows I've been there. They nod when Sam asks if the monster is still there, and both brothers usher the kids up the stairs. On their way up, a monster's hand reaches out and grabs Sam's ankle and makes him fall down the stairs. Dean shoots his electricity gun at the monster. The gun shoots what looks like coiled wires, which I guess makes sense, although the gun bears an unfortunate resemblance to an Acme product Wile E. Coyote would buy. Dean's shot misses, and he yells to Sam to get the kids out of the house. Sam tosses his gun to Dean and does as his brother says.
Dean does some more Tough Guy Jazz Hands until a gross scraggly monster screeches out of the corner at him and knocks him to the ground. Dean scrambles over toward his dropped gun, which now lies in a corner covered in a puddle of water, and he shoots the monster right in the chest. The monster lights up with voltage, electricity shooting out his toes. The monster, however, is standing in the same puddle Dean scrambled into, so it's Dean-kabobs for dinner. Kudos to Jensen Ackles's convincing rendition of electrocution; do I smell a serial-killer biopic? Sam rushes back down the stairs to his unconscious brother.
Credits. In the hospital, Sam deals with a kindly nurse asking for insurance. He distractedly fishes a card out of his wallet and she takes it, "Okay. Thank you, Mr." -- looks at the card -- "Berkovitz." And is that...is that a Jewish joke? I don't get it, because it isn't like Jared Padalecki looks like a member of the Aryan Nation. Anyhow, Sam turns away from the nurse to talk to two police officers looming behind him. Except their looming is a total fake-out, as they turn out to be nice and gullible. Sam lies that they were taking a short cut through "the neighborhood" and they heard screaming. The officers thank him, obviously itching to get back to their tap routine, and Dean's doctor comes up to talk with Sam. The doctor gives Sam the news, telling him that the electrocution triggered a massive heart attack that left Dean's heart severely damaged. "We can try and keep him comfortable at this point, but I give him a couple weeks at most." Ouch. Close-up on Sam, who I've never noticed has a wonky right eye, as he insists that there must be some sort of treatment. The doctor says, "We can't work miracles. I really am sorry." Sam takes off down the hall.Dean flips through the channels from his hospital bed. He's looking pretty rough. As Sam approaches the foot of the bed, Dean asks, "Have you ever actually watched daytime TV?" Um, boy went to Stanford for four years, what do you think that degree really stands for? B.A.ys of Our Lives, that's what. Sam tries to talk to Dean about the diagnosis, but Dean keeps quipping about television -- "That fabric softener teddy bear, whoo. I want to hunt that little bitch down" -- and his imminent demise: "Well, it looks like you're gonna leave town without me." Sam tells him to quit it, but Dean keeps on: "You better take care of that car or I swear, I'll haunt your ass." Hee. Oops, I mean, "sob." Sam tells him he's not being funny but Dean is ruthless: "Look, Sammy, it's a dangerous gig. I drew the short straw." Sam responds, "Don't talk like that, we still have options," but Dean's a realist: "I know it's not easy, but I'm gonna die."
Storytime: Dean's "I'm dying" make-up is killing me, because I can't stop thinking about the time in fifth-grade English class when my best friend Laurel and I acted out the scene in Anne of the Island when Anne goes to see her friend Ruby Gillis the night before Ruby dies of a romantic consumption, and I got to play Ruby, who has the best lines -- "I want to live, I want to live like other girls. I -- I want to be married, Anne -- and -- and -- have little children" -- and my fifth-grade self totally rocked the shit out of the halting melodrama, but the reason I keep thinking about this is because in order to get into character I dipped my face into a vat of talcum powder, because dying people? Are pale, right? And then gave myself really dark under-eye circles, and I'm sort of wondering if maybe Dean stepped into a time machine to get his make-up done by me in the girls' bathroom. I'll save for another time the story about when I delivered a speech by Abraham Lincoln during my first-period history class, and decided to give myself a beard with a wand of water-proof mascara.
Ahem. Okay. Sam sits in his motel room surrounded by heart center flyers and graphic medical illustrations, trying to get in touch with his dad. We hear the familiar voicemail, and at the beep, Sam rocks the shit out of his own halting melodrama: "Hey, Dad, it's Sam. You probably won't get this, but, ah. It's Dean. He's sick and, uh, doctors say there's nothing they can do, um, but, ah, they don't know the things we do, right? Um, so don't worry, cuz I'm-a gonna do whatever it takes to get him better." Awww, little brother! Man, but their dad SUCKS. Check your voicemail once in a while, dude! Sam sits contemplating his lack of options when he hears a knock at the door. He opens it to find Dean, leaning against the doorjamb for support. Also, the soda machine is right outside their door. Total score! Brother coming home to die in your arms in a seedy motel AND grape soda? Sam looks cutely bright when he sees Dean, as Dean gimps into the room declaring that "I'm not gonna die in a hospital where the nurses aren't even hot." Sam calls him out on his shtick: "This whole 'I laugh in the face of death' thing? It's crap, I can see right through it."They sit down, and Sam tells him he's been on the internet for the past three days. And this is unusual how? Sam got a tip from one of their father's contacts who pointed them in the direction of a "specialist" in Nebraska. Dean moans, "You're not going to let me die in peace, are you?" Sam: "I'm not gonna let you die, period. We're going." Thunder clap of brotherly love.
The Metallicar pulls up outside a tent meeting in a rainy and muddy field. People are gimping all over the place, and someone is even literally warming himself by a fire roaring inside an old metal oil barrel. Aaand we have confirmation of my Newsies hypothesis. Dean gimps out of the car himself, though he's looking less gimpy than some of the other oldsters making their way through the muck. Dean's pissed because Sam told him they were going to a doctor, and as far as he knows, most doctors that conduct their healing in a field have a tendency to stick their arms up their patients, usually up to their elbows. Sam reminds him that he merely said "specialist," and that this guy is "the real deal." Dean continues to gripe about the situation, and we cut to a shot of the boys from the back and hear a woman retort, "Reverend Le Grange is a great man," except there is no woman in the visual field who could have uttered this. The brothers continue walking and pass a man shouting at a police officer, "I have a right to protest, this man is a fraud!" The policeman tells him that "this is a place of worship" and tells him to move it. As the brothers pass a sign reading "The Church of Roy LeGrange Faith Healer Witness the Miracle," Dean remarks on the protester, "I take it he's not part of the flock." Sam gets all new-agey: "When people see something they can't explain, there's controversy." Then he tells Dean that maybe it's about time that he have a little faith in something. If this were actually Newsies, I think we'd have a little musical number here. Also, by the way, Sam's wearing quite a handsome windbreaker in this scene. And by mentioning faith and windbreakers in the same breath, I've officially become my mother.
The brothers continue having their metaphysical debate about whether something is real if you can't see it (so Hegelian, yawn), when Darla pauses to address Dean's complaint that he's seen what evil does to good people: "Maybe God works in mysterious ways." He takes a moment to pick himself up out of gimpiness and sex-grunts, "Maybe he does." They introduce themselves, and Darla's name in this world is actually Layla, which I guess I'll use because Darla was actually an interesting character, with the sweet voice coating a spicily evil filling, whereas Layla is just a sweet voice coating a boring nougat of self-righteousness. Mmmm, I'm kind of hungry now. Layla's mom comes to bring her inside the tent and Dean takes the opportunity to act the cad -- "I'll bet she can work in some mysterious ways" -- except his line comes out all muckled, so I've made a mental note to look for this scene in the bloopers extra that the first-season DVD had better feature.Inside the tent -- which is wonderfully art-directed in muted grays and dull browns -- Dean notices the security cameras and scoffs, "Yeah, peace, love, and trust all over." Dean tries to sit in back, but Sam, playing the role of my dad, forces him up toward the front of the makeshift church. A soulful piano riffs in the background, and we get a few shots of the downtrodden in the gathered crowd. This is what we like to call, in our household, The Hard Luck Crowd, often found on the #66 Chicago Avenue bus in the middle of the day. Except maybe with a few more portable oxygen canisters here. The Rev -- blind and wearing rather hepcatty horn-rimmed black glasses -- revs up the service, beginning with an anecdote about his wife Sue Ann reading him the news. Why is he speaking in a southern accent? They're in Nebraska. He's working the call-and-response style, getting his congregation to nod and emit "Amens!" with a collection of non-sequiturs about God rewarding good and punishing the corrupt. His wife sits behind him primly and he quips about God helping him to "see into people's hearts." Dean leans toward Sam and mutters, "Yeah, or into their wallets." The Rev immediately responds, "You think so, young man?" and then good-naturedly suggests Dean "watch what [he] say[s] around a blind man, we got real sharp ears." Close-up of Dean, who seems won over by this just-folks routine. The Rev lisps, "I want you to come up here," and when Dean at first refuses, the congregation goes silent and the Rev is stunned. But the clapping and praising and oh-lordy-lordy-ing resumes and the Rev keeps at him, and Dean can't resist.
Sue Ann helps him up the stairs, and Dean confesses that he isn't a believer. The Rev instructs the congregation to pray with him, and the soulful piano keeps up its casual plinking in the background. Everyone in their seats closes their eyes and raises their hands to the spirit along with The Rev. The Rev starts mouth-breathing as he slowly brings his hand to Dean's head. The camera goes handheld and skewed and The Rev starts whispering, "All right now, all right now," while Dean starts looking woozy. Dean sinks to his knees, we hear a slicing noise, and Dean's spine goes loose and he falls onto his side. Sam rushes to the stage while the congregation is all "Hallelujah!" and when he reaches his brother, Dean is coming back to consciousness, suddenly far less pale and much healthier-looking. As Dean wakes up, he looks up at The Rev, who stands there with his Blind Man's smile, and beyond whose shoulder lurks a nattily-dressed demon with the face of a Shar-Pei and also pretty much the same face of the villains developed for a critically-acclaimed episode of that critically-acclaimed television show that I certainly don't want to have to bring up week after week, and so will just leave unnamed because we all know what I'm talking about, and, yes, it does rhyme with "Huffy the Cast-Iron Conveyor."Commercials. In a doctor's office, Dean and Sam get the news that there is nothing wrong with his heart, and no indication that there ever was. The doctor then exposits, "Still it's strange it does happen. Just yesterday, a young guy like you, 27, athletic, had a heart attack out of nowhere." Dean is suspicious, but Sam just wants to let it slide. Then Dean tells Sam that when he was healed he felt "wrong. I felt cold. And for a second, I saw someone -- this old man." Then Sam starts whinging, "Well, if it was there, Dean, I think I would've seen it, too. I mean, I've been seeing an awful lot of things lately." And I guess that is true, if by "awful lot" you actually mean "two" -- that one dream you had about Jess, and then the dream you had about the lady who lived in your old house. Look how easy it is to PAY ATTENTION to plot points. Dean totally faces Sam hard: "Excuse me, psychic wonder, but I think you're just gonna need to have a little faith," and then tells Sam he's been doing this long enough to know when to trust a feeling. And again, if the world actually was my oyster, we'd get a musical number here. Probably one where the rest of the set would go dark except for a spotlight on Dean. Sigh. Dean instructs Sam to check out the heart attack guy, and then says he'll visit The Rev.
At The Rev and Peggy Sue's, Suzy Q pours some iced tea while Dean says he just wants "to make sense of what happened." Preachy Sue says, "A miracle is what happened." Dean asks The Rev Roy when the miracles started. The story is: The Rev woke up blind one morning and was diagnosed with cancer. So they prayed for a miracle, then he went into a coma, and when he woke up, against all predictions the cancer was gone. Well, that's anticlimactic. Then Dean asks why The Rev picked him. The Rev responds that "I looked into your heart and you just stood out from all the rest." Then he gives him the Crystal Ball 101 treatment, telling Dean that he is "a young man with a job to do. An important one. And it isn't finished. Oh, and also you have a big decision to make. And you'll find love. And you also had something to eat for dinner last night."
Over in the locker room, Sam is working on an important job himself. Heh. He's interviewing an unidentifiable man -- coach? teammate? -- who confirms that Athletic Boy's death was totally unexpected. Unidentifiable Man earns his paycheck by telling Sam that Athletic Boy freaked out right before his death, "saying that something was after him." Then he gets a little something extra by sticking around long enough to tell Sam that the stopped clock is frozen at the exact time Athletic Boy died, 4:17.
Dean leaves The Rev and the Evil Wife Singers' house and runs into Layla on the steps. She Vicodins, softly and sweetly, "Dean, hey." Her mom comes up behind her, and the women walk up to Sue Ann, who's come onto the porch. Sue Ann tells Layla that The Rev is resting, and Layla's mom arranges her lips into a frighteningly narrow configuration and begs, "Sue Ann, please! This is our sixth time!" No luck. Dean has been eavesdropping behind them, and as Sue Ann leaves, Thin Lippy turns on Dean: "Why are you still here? You got what you wanted." She's upset because The Rev keeps picking unbelieving strangers over Layla. When Dean asks Layla what her gimp is, she explains: inoperable brain tumor yadda yadda. Julie Benz is a very pretty woman, and she looks good here in her little fitted blazer with the gathered shoulders. However, when this woman is stuck playing a character with no heft to counterattack that naturally sweet voice and serene eyes? One-way ticket to Snoozetown. Thin Lippy turns her weirdly jack o' lantern face on Dean and grimaces, "Why do you deserve to live more than my daughter?" Um, have you SEEN his ass?Dean returns to the hotel and to Sam's apologies. Sam sighs a bunch while telling him about Athletic Boy's time of death. He then goes over his fascinating research method: he crosschecked the dates when The Rev has "healed" people with "the local obits." I mean, can someone get the news out to those poor suckers twiddling their thumbs at the obituary desks of regional newspapers that they are doing important work? Also, is there any way I can get a hold of Sam's research expertise to help me out on my dissertation? Sam has found that every time someone is healed, someone else dies of that person's same malady. As Dean repeats this back to Sam, we cut to a young woman running in a forest. Sam concludes, "Le Grange is trading one life for another," the woman stops and calls out into the woods, "Hello?" and some virtuoso keyboarding starts on the soundtrack.
Cut back to the hotel where Dean expresses disbelief: "Wait, so Marshall Hall died to save me?" Now add some light tapping on a snare and then, as Sam says, "Dean, that guy probably would've died anyway," a wailing Yngwie Malmstein-esque guitar riff. Cut to The Rev with his hand on the head of an old man on oxygen. More wailing guitar. Dean yells at Sam about bringing him there. In the tent, The Rev and his congregation raise their hands. Dean tells Sam that The Rev himself isn't trading lives, that he's getting help from someone else. Cut back to the forest where the young woman is alarmingly out of breath. Cut to me, alarmingly out of breath from flashing too many devil horns at the screen. Cut back to the young woman, who turns around to find Shar-Pei Face standing behind her. We take a brief musical pause here as the guitar holds one tremulously bad-ass note. Dean takes this opportunity to give a "deep down I knew it" speech, leaning over at the exact moment Albert Bouchard* fucking lets loose on the skins. Dean says, "We're dealing with a reaper." Cut back to the forest, where the young woman runs from the reaper, clearly fearing it no matter how many times the now-full-volume Buck Dharma* tells her to not to. The reaper walks calmly behind her while we cut back to the tent where The Rev is laying his hands on Mr. Moldy Oldy. The young woman trips and falls, and as she begins to get up, Shar-Pei Face puts his hand on the side of her head. Her eyes get a pale, dull glaze, and we cut between The Rev with his hand on Moldy Oldy and the reaper with his hand on the poor girl. The girl clearly can't breathe, and she finally keels over. We cut immediately back to the tent, where Shar-Pei Face has appeared to put his hand -- full of life and breath -- on Moldy Oldy's head. The congregation continues with its creeepy raised-hand praying until Moldy Oldy stands up, takes out his oxygen tubes, and takes a deep breath.
*Please note: I learned everything I know about Blue Oyster Cult two minutes ago on Wikipedia. Or maybe I didn't. You'll never know.Commercials. In the hotel, Dean and Sam trade Garbage Pail Kids. Actually, they're trading various line drawings of evil men. Sam asks, "You really think it's the grim reaper?" Dean says no, he's not talking about "the" reaper, but "a" reaper. This time Dean's been the one poking around on www.obviousfacts.com, as he says what Sam usually says each week: "There's reaper lore in every culture on earth." Cut to a shot over Dean's shoulder that shows him looking at a line drawing of a be-robed Skeletor type with the word "Famine!" written above it. That exclamation point kills me. Sam challenges Dean, "I thought you said you saw a dude in a suit," and Dean answers, "What, you think he should've been working the whole black robe thing?" Dean says the stopped clock is evidence enough that the villain is a reaper, and I want to pull my hair out over being back in the middle of this boring brotherly game of Which Monster Is It? that we were spared last week. Dean exposits that you can only see a reaper when it is coming after you. Sam does the faraway "I'm thinking" expression before remembering, "That cross!" and then explains he saw an unusual cross in the tent the other night (and, whoops! I neglected to recap that moment in favor of weird Anne of Green Gables reminiscences), and finds that same cross on a tarot card. He blabs, "Tarot dates back to the early Christian era, right, when some priests were still using magic, and a few of them veered into the dark stuff?" I'm sorry but the graves of old Buffy plots and art direction are getting a bit tired of being dug up here. Dean hypothesizes that The Rev is using black magic to bind the reaper, and then Sam finally gets a goodly ridiculous line as he shuffles his little tarot cards: "If he is, he's ridin' a whirlwind. It's like puttin' a dog leash on a great white." Maybe week, Sam will try to actually put a dog leash on the members of Great White and ride that whirlwind.
Dean gets up and suggests that they kill The Rev. Sam says they can't, because that isn't what they do. Dean reminds Sam that The Rev is "deciding who lives and who dies. That's a monster in my book," but Sam retorts, "We can't kill a human being. We do that, we're no better than he is." Sam finally has an idea: they have to figure out what the spell that The Rev is using is, and then how to break it.
Back at muddy tent town, Sam holds our hands through this extremely challenging plot development: "If Roy's using a spell, there might be a spell book. See if you can find it." They run into the protester, who hands flyers to both, says "Roy LeGrange is a fraud," and is met with "Amens" from the brothers. The Rev and wife leave their house just as Sam slips in through an open window. He walks directly into the room with all the books, and finds that the bookshelves have about a fifteen-year layer of dust on them -- except in front of one book. Cleanliness? Godliness? Bueller? He takes the "Encyclopedia of Christian History" off the shelf, flips through the pages, and doesn't find anything, then reaches into the book's empty slot on the shelves and finds the Le Grange little black magic book. The book has a newspaper clipping in it with the partial headline "Openly Gay Teacher Wins / Strong Message Sent to Nation's Schools." He finds more clippings, one about an "abortion rights advocate" and another about the protester from out front. Strings swell, I get more wine.In the tent, gimps gimp and Dean's phone rings. Sam tells Dean that "Roy's choosing victims that he sees as immoral," and then tells him that he thinks Protest Dave is . Sam says he'll find Dave, but Dean has to keep The Rev from "healing" anyone. Old-timey piano plinking inside the tent. We cut quickly to Sam wandering around the parking lot, about as good at looking for something as my husband, who's been known to ask where his glasses are while they rest on his face. Back in the tent, The Rev calls Layla to the stage. Talk about bad timing! Nobody'd really miss Protest Dave, would they? I mean, couldn't he have put his protesting skills to better use? Like perhaps political puppetry on the steps of the state capitol?
In the parking lot, Sam wanders. Dean intercepts Layla on her way up to the stage and tells her he can't let Roy "heal" her. He tells her "something bad is gonna happen," but opts not to tell her any more. Sue Ann beckons to her, her mother looks on, and Layla does not obey the bizarre pleadings of the cad she met the other day.
Parking lot again. Sam spins around in circles until he hears someone screaming for help. Great job finding Dave, there, pal. time I need to find my keys, I'm going to wander around slackjawed until they start yelling for my help. Anyway, Dave is being pursued by Shar-Pei Face, but Sam continues to spin around in his self-woven web of stupidity.
Back in the tent, The Rev goes through his shtick with the hands and the breathing and the praying, while in the parking lot, Dave is frankly acting rather queeny, flinging himself around and stamping like Nathan Lane finding out there's no Fiji water in his dressing room. Sam has found him, but when Dave points to where Shar-Pei Face is, Sam can't see him. Sam grabs him and they run off. In the tent, more hands raised, and just as The Rev brings his down upon Layla's head, Dean yells out, "Fire! The tent's on fire!" People start shuffling around, and though Layla's mom begs them to stop, The Rev asks them to leave in an orderly fashion. Dean calls Sam to tell him he stopped Roy.
Sam asks Dave if he thinks he's okay, and Dave nods before turning to see Shar-Pei Face right in front of him. He falls to the ground as the reaper grabs his head, and Sam yells into the phone that Dean's plan didn't actually work.
Commercials. Sam yells through the phone that Roy must not be controlling this thing while Dave writhes around on the ground. Dean, standing in the now empty tent, shows why it is he is so good at this job by, oh, using his eyeballs to see something and so sees Sue Ann with her back to him, obviously up to no good. Just as the reaper is about to finish Dave off, Dean spins Sue Ann around and sees her tarot cross necklace. He stares at her for a good fifteen minutes without doing anything before she starts yelling for help, and the policeman who was apparently standing right to Dean steps into the frame to grab Dean. Great choreography, folks. Sue Ann tucks the pendant back into her shirt. But because she's stopped her spell casting, Shar-Pei Face leaves Dave alone, but not before giving him a pretty funny cocked-lip smirk, like, now what was he supposed to do? He's got another reaping to get to, clear across state lines!Dean is manhandled out of the tent by two police officers. Sue Ann follows and scolds him for...what? What did she even accuse him of doing? Walking up to her in a tent? Anyway, she gives him the dead eyes of the truly righteous and tells the police that she won't press charges. The police give him a little shove and he teeters forward, only to immediately turn to his right and find Layla. My fourth-grade production of The Wiz had better choreography and scene transitions than this. ["You had a fourth-grade production of The Wiz? Where did you go to school, the set of Fame?" -- Sars] Layla confronts him, and when he tells her Roy isn't a healer she states the obvious: "He healed you!" Pianos of It Pains Me Not To Be Able to Tell The Truth, But You See, I Am a Man of Wisdom and Mystery play in the background as Dean tells her he can't say why, but Roy isn't the answer. She walks away and wishes him luck. Dean looks tortured as he says to himself, "You deserve it a lot more than me." As Dean walks away, he passes The Rev telling Layla's mom that he'll heal Layla during a "private session" later that night.
Back at the hotel, the brothers discuss how Roy doesn't know what his wife is doing, and instead believes in his "healing" powers. Sam shows Dean the little black book of evil that he found, and then starts explaining about the binding spell he found inside, and I cover my ears and start singing "Row, row, row your boat" to myself to drown out the expositional terror. Sam marvels about the "seriously dark stuff" that Sue Ann had to get into to cast the spell, although I'm not convinced that her actions are that unusual, because Pottery Barn's "Black Magic" line of altars and human blood accessories are all the rage among the Unimaginative, Money-To-Burn set. Dean suggests that Sue Ann was probably desperate to keep Roy from dying. They take a moment to sympathize with her plight before plunging into a lesson on Hollywood ethics. Dean asks why she keeps doing the spell when we all already know why she keeps doing the spell and Dean also already knows why she keeps doing the spell but we have to hear again why she keeps doing the spell: to punish "immoral" people. We get it, she's a religious hypocrite. So now Dean can scoff, "God save us from half the people who think they are doing God's work," and I guess now we won't be upset when Sue Ann dies at the end, but why oh why won't they just stop holding my hand through all of it?
The boys decide that they need to break the binding spell. Dean tells Sam about "the Coptic cross" she was wearing in the tent and that "when she dropped it the reaper backed off." Um, how does he know those two actions were related? He wasn't outside when she let go of the cross, and isn't it just as likely that an interruption to whatever mumbo-jumbo she was mumbling would cause the reaper to back off? Anyway, Sam asks if they should destroy the cross or the altar. Dean says both.Back at tent town, where I'm tired of being. The boys pull up in the Metallicar and Dean takes a moment to feel guilty: "You know, if Roy had picked Layla instead of me..." Yeah, yeah, yeah, and if Judd Apatow had picked me out of high school, I'd be Seth Rogen right now. Sam tells him to cram it, and asks him if he's willing to let someone else die to save her. Sam continues, "You can't play God." Ah yes, a lesson Alec Baldwin learns at the hands of the deceptively bumbling cuckold Bill Pullman in Malice.
The brothers wander aimlessly through the parking lot a bit. We've finally arrived at the final "walking around" part of the episode! Dean tells Sam to find Sue Ann as he purposefully calls the two police officers' attention to himself. Dean takes off at a run, and Sam sneaks over to the The Rev's house. Sam spends some more time shuffling around like he's got all the time in the world. Dean runs through the parking lot, and now this I could watch all night. But no, we've got to cut back to Sam standing on the porch, vaguely looking around himself, thinking, "Now where did I put those sunglasses?" He again takes advantage of his supernatural power of HAVING EYES and glances down to see a glow coming through the slanted metal cellar doors. He hops over the porch railing and heads in.
It's Filler Time! Dean slowly pokes his head up to the cab of a dumpy RV. A crazed dog starts barking and frothing inside the cab, catching the policemen's attention. Oh boy, it looks like Dean's going to get caught...walking around again! Trouble is a-brewin'! But when the officers get to the RV, they don't see anything. Wha? Wha happened? That crazy Dean, he's up on the roof of the RV!
In the cellar, Sam finds the altar in question, covered in just a bunch of crumbly-looking cellar detritus. Oh, and also, an eight-by-ten of Dean with his face X'd out in what looks like blood. Sam picks up the glossy when Sue Ann appears behind him: "I gave your brother life and I can take it away." Sam take the altar and tosses it all over. Sue Ann scurries out of the cellar and puts a stick through the handles, locking Sam below. As he pushes on the doors, she lectures him, "Can't you see? The Lord chose me to reward the just and punish the wicked. And your brother is wicked." Wicked hot, maybe. Sam has in the meanwhile gone over to the other side of the cellar and bashed open the flimsy dryer connection thing-y.
The tent. The Rev is at it again. With another full house. Don't these people have things to do other than attend random healing services?
In the parking lot, Dean sneaks around, but gets alarmed when the street lights (which, street lights? Since when? They are in a tent IN A FIELD) start shutting off as he passes them. In the tent, you know the deal: the hands, the plinking, the praying. Dean turns around and is not happy to see that Shar-Pei Face has decided that he wants to curl up on Dean's lap .Commercials. Wrapping things up here. In the tent, the hands and the plinking; outside the tent, Sue Ann clasps her pendant and mumbles; in the parking lot, Dean is getting the dull eyes and loving Shar-Pei glances. Suddenly, Sam comes out of nowhere, grabs Sue Ann's cross, and breaks it on the ground, where it shatters, on the asphalt, that surrounds the tent? That previously was surrounded by mud and muck? Cut back to the reaper, who shrinks away from Dean, and then cut to Layla in the tent, who opens her eyes and says, "I don't feel different." Sue Ann drops to her knees in front of her smashed necklace and exclaims, "Oh my God!" just so that Sam can judge some more: "He's not your God." In the tent, The Rev and Layla are confused. Outside, Sue Ann sees the reaper coming for her, and he looks pretty psyched to be doing so. She falls to the ground, her eyes glaze over, and she does a few nicely graphic convulsions before dying. The Reaper is just happy that he can leave this muddy wasteland and join his pals at the annual convention in Vegas. Sam turns away from her and walks away. The boys meet back at the car and exchange laconic remarks.
In the motel, Sam packs while Dean broods. Dean isn't sure they did the right thing. A knock on the door, and Layla and her push-up bra come in. Sam called her to come say goodbye. Sam says he's going to grab a soda, which, lucky for him, is a mere eight inches away. So jealous. Layla and Dean have an incredibly implausible conversation where she sits on the bed to him and primly talks about having faith instead of tearing his clothes off. Lady, you've got six months to live, what are you waiting for? She says goodbye, and as she leaves, Dean tells her that though he's "not much of a praying type, I'm going to pray for you." She gets cheesily verklempt and says, "Well. There's a miracle right there." No, the miracle is that I made it through this scene without puking.