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We open with "The Story So Far," an awesome montage set to the tune of Kansas's "Carry On My Wayward Son." I am nearly convinced that this has been a jam-packed season. I love a montage. time you want me to do the dishes, but I don't feel like doing them, just compile a montage of the fun times people often have while washing dishes and I'll totally be your bitch.
Short-Lip Meg is back and still slashing throats. She first takes care of Pastor Jim (who lives in Blue Earth, Minnesota, home of the world's largest statue of the Jolly Green Giant, which, incidentally, I have stood on, trying to peek at what's under his oversized leaf toga). Poor Pastor Jim.
John finally explains to the boys all he knows about the Ceiling Demon. He's tracked it around the country, it goes after babies that are exactly six months old (except Jess, I guess), and it is always preceded by various natural signs. Sam finally puts it together that because the demon visited the Winchester house on the night he turned six months old, it was probably after him. John has identified Salvation, Iowa as the town the demon will visit, and when Sam's visions conveniently return, it's easy enough to figure out which family is about to get burnt to a crisp. So, the Winchesters are readying for the final fight when Short Lip calls, lets John listen to her kill Caleb, and then threatens to kill more of John's friends if he doesn't bring her the Guaranteed to Kill Anything Gun. And, so he goes. Which is...peculiar? Especially because his big plan is to just bring her a fake of the Guaranteed to Kill Anything Gun, so the boys can keep the real one to catch the Ceiling Demon that same night.
John hands Short Lip the wrong gun, and though she can intuit wherever John happens to be in the country, she can't tell it isn't the real gun, so she hands it to some soap actor emerging smirkily from spooky dry ice. He grabs the gun and shoots Meg while John just stands there, until the three dullards realize that Antonio (or whatever) has just proven that the gun isn't the real one.
Which is really no big deal because when it's demon time in the nursery back in Salvation, Sam shoots at the Big Bad with the Guaranteed to Kill Anything Gun, but it doesn't seem to work. This is why there should be truth in labeling. Sam and Dean do manage to drag the family out of their burning house in time, and then call their father to give him the good-bad news, only to have Meg pick up his phone to tell them they'll never see John again. To be continued... Want more? The full recap starts right below!
"The Road So Far." Carry on my waaayward son. There'll be peace when you are done." Happy Winchesters, Mama in a white nightgown, baby Sam in the crib, Mama FLAMING ON THE CEILING. "Lay your weary head to reeest." Winchester boys flee the exploding house, look back on their ruined lives. "Don't you cry no more. Pum pum pum pum pow." Dad's missing, Dean asks Sam for help. Tough guy jazz hands, water rescue, Sam whacks the head off a little girl ghost, Sam has to find Dad, shot of Jess's grave, Sam finds Short-Lip Meg in a bar, Short-Lip freaks around and slashes throats, Jess Dean tears up,"Dad?"I was soaring ever higher!The boys approach a church, DaddyVO about the Colt Gun Guaranteed to Kill Anything."But I flew too high!"Daddy shoots the gun intovampire Luther'sforehead, and we move into hardcore montage."Though my eyes could see, I still was a blind man, though my mind could think I still was a madman."Running, the Metallicar, shooting rock salt at ghosts, running some more!"I hear the voices when I'm dreaming", Sammy clutches his vision-filled head, close-up of his frightened eyeball, Jess on the ceiling yet again.I can hear them say!"Sammy explains his visions,sees Jessstanding in a white nightgown on a street corner."Carry on my wayward son, there'll be peace when you are done."Dean looks cool ducking and shooting shit up, the boys in a variety of dark settings, their awe-struck faces illuminated by a swath of light. Daddysaysthey are all he's got and they're going "after this thing" as a family."Don't you cry no moooorre. Pum pum pum pum."Cut to black.Sweetlord, do I love a montage.In Blue Earth, Minnesota (home of the world's largest statue of the Jolly Green Giant, which begs the question whether there areother, smaller statues of the Jolly Green Giant), a priest stands at the altar reading the bible or some other old book. This is clearly Pastor Jim, but the church is really ornate inside like a Catholic church. I guess, if we are buying "pastor," that this is supposed to be an Episcopal church, which is just J.V. Catholic anyway. Or, possibly, those Hollywood heathens have just never set foot in a church, CatholicorProtestant, and so can't design an accurate church set to save their...oh, cram it, Me. Meg walks in. Yikes. I mean, sure, because of the evil, but mainly "yikes" because of whatever the hell kind of hairstyle she's rocking. She looks like freakingCarol Channing. She looks concerned and asks to talk. Sitting down in a pew, she confesses that she's done bad things. Pastor Jim says there is "always forgiveness for us if we seek it." Short Lip demurs, "For everyone?" and Pastor Jim is psyched to get his ministerial tagline in here: "I like to say, 'Salvation was created for sinners.'" I was hoping his tagline would be a little more original. Maybe like, "I like to say, 'Shake your booty for Christ, Short Lip!'" Short Lip sighs and confesses to lying, stealing, lusting, and..."the other day, I met this man. A nice guy, you know? And we had a really good chat. Sort of like this." Pause. Pastor Jim looks on beatifically. "And I slit his throat and ripped his heart out through his chest." Pastor Jim furrows, and Short Lip slowly blinks her eyes to reveal...creepy pitch-black eyes. I don't care how "done" those contact lenses are, they creep me out every single time.
Short Lip tilts her head and baby-coos, "Does that make me a bad person?" Pastor Jim gets on his feet and backs away saying he knows "what you are." He argues that "you can't be here. This is hallowed ground," but Short Lip is like, pastor, please. Pastor Jim takes off for the church basement, where he gets himself some bug juice. Wait, no, that was what we used to do in my church basement. He locks himself in a room with an arsenal of weapons in the closet. Short Lip busts through the barricaded door; Pastor Jim whips a knife at her which she catches right up by her ear. She says, "You throw like a girl." As always, her locution annoys me to no end. She's still all mucklemouthed and affectedly bemused. Short Lip wants the Winchesters. Pastor Jim says he hasn't spoken to John in over a year, and "even if I did know where they were, I'd never tell you." Sign that death certificate on the dotted line, pal. Short Lip responds, "I know," and then slashes his throat right where he stands. He gurgles and spurts, then falls down dead. Metal Teeth Chomp.
Zappy credits. Back in Manning, Colorado. Quick shots of all kinds of crazy scribblings tacked on a wall. Weather reports, topographical maps, pictures of scary Egyptian-looking demons, everything scribbled all over with notes like "sulphur trace" and Xs marking the spots. The camera pans over to John, who is telling Dean and Sam that "this is everything I know." More papers are strewn about the desk in the cabin. Poor Jared Padalecki's hair has continued to get worse and worse, as it seems he is now coming very close to some sort of Prince Valiant action. Which...is not okay. ["It's bad, but I think it's better than it was at the beginning of the season." -- Sars] John says that he'd been searching for the thing for their whole lives but hadn't found anything. Until a year ago. Dean realizes that this is why John took off. John thinks the demon came out of hibernation. So, the trail:It's moved from Arizona, to New Jersey, to California. It leaves a house burned to the ground and it goes after families with infants on the night of the baby's six-month birthday. Sam's eyes widen: "I was six months old that day?" He does some huffing and puffing: "So, Mom's death, Jessica? It's all 'cause of me?" Dean tries to derail the choo-choo train chugging down the one track of Sammy's mind: "We don't know that, Sam." Sam gets heated, and Dean heats up in response: "No, it's not your fault." Sam: "Yeah, you're right, it's not my fault, but it's my problem!" Dean: "No, it's not your problem, it's our problem!" John finally stops them, just a moment too soon, because I sort of wanted Sam to return with, "Well, actually, it's not our problem, it's our time to dance!" Also: don't we all agree that all this is Sam's fault?
John doesn't know why this demon is doing any of this, and says he's "always been one step behind it. I've never gotten there in time to save --" God, what the hell has he been doing all year, then? John Winchester is one hell of a sheep in wolf's clothing. Dean wants to know how they'll find it, and John says he's put together a pattern. The days before the fires, "signs crop up in an area. Cattle deaths, temperature fluctuations, electrical storms." He found evidence that these signs appeared in Lawrence before Mama Winchester bit it, and in Palo Alto before Jess got kebabbed. He's found the signs in Salvation, Iowa (note: not a real place).
Really bad whammy-bar/reverb action as the AssTruck and Metallicar drive down yet another lonely back road. The cars come toward the camera as it pans across a sign that cars would see leaving town, and which reads "Leaving SALVATION / The Heartland of America / Are you ready for Judgement Day? / JW 2:27." Catch that little "JW"? Cute. Maybe not quite as cute as the shout-out to 227 that follows it, but, hey, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is no Jackée. The AssTruck veers off the road, a veer we are treated to the sight of for about five minutes. What's with all the driving? John gets out, his hair already wet from the rain that's coming down, so I guess this one didn't get nailed on the first take. He unconvincingly taps the side of his truck in quite the "rage" and quietly "yells," "Son of a bitch!" Dean asks what's wrong and John says he "just got a call from Caleb. Jim Murphy's dead." Sam clarifies for the audience, "Pastor Jim? How?" John replies, apparently getting confused for a moment between Supernatural and Grey's Anatomy, "Throat was slashed. He bled out." I'd call that phrasing not only redundant, but also GROSS. Caleb told John they found traces of sulphur at Pastor Jim's "place" (a.k.a. the church), and Dean nods his head: "A demon." Pause. "The demon?" but John doesn't know.
John wonders if the demon knows they're getting close. He says they have to act like every second counts, so in Salvation they need to split up to get the records they need. Ooh, riveting. John "wants a list of every infant that's gonna be six months old in the week." Sam: "Dad, that could be dozens of kids!" Okay, that is seriously not a big deal. But I guess if you are used to people walking up to you in parking lots and telling you what is happening, or randomly walking around until you see the evil demon doing its thing, or using small boys as bait to catch demons, this "investigation" might seem like a tall order. Sam's hair is about to take flight off his head by flapping the wings extended over his ears. They go back toward their respective cars, but Dean remembers his cue: "Dad?" Then John remembers his cue: "Yeah. It's Jim. I can't -- this ends now. I'm ending it. I don't care what it takes." The acting in this scene smacks of Martian Techniques for Acting Like Despairing Humans. More driving and peeling out.The AssTruck pulls up to the "hospital," which is clearly just some local office building that set design slapped a three-foot by four-foot sign saying "hospital" on. Daddy reaches into his front-seat cubby and fishes out a medical professional ID tag from among all the other IDs he has in it. Like father, like son. Inside, a nurse brings some folder to Sam, saying, "Here you go, officer." It's a birth certificate, and we get a shot of him taking down the information in his notebook.
Cut over to a blazingly pretty young woman behind the desk in a skin-tight sweater and Chiclet teeth. As Dean walks up, she beams, "Is there anything I can do for you." He recycles his own horny joke, "Oh, god, yes," she grins awkwardly, he confesses to being on the job and flashes a police badge. End scene. WTF? Is she somebody important's daughter, inserted into this episode under duress? There's already such a major lack of narrative material in this episode, it's not like we needed a break from information overload. This scene, like the one with Sam just before it, does nothing to advance the plot of this episode, the larger story arc, or our understanding of any of the characters. My arms and legs are getting tired from treading, people!
Outside the hospital, Sam peruses his notebook when he starts having a vision. Aural feedback honks as we get flashes of items that clearly belong in a nursery, for example, a freaky-ass clown mobile. We flash between this nursery, where a woman in a white nightgown puts an infant into a crib, and Sam holding the bridge of his nose and squinting in pain. We see the woman furrow her brow at something she sees or hears, then we hear a train whistle sound. Cut back to Sam coming out of the vision, muttering "a train" and then pulling out a map of the town. He conveniently finds that the train parallels a residential street for only a short block or two, and then he takes off running. Seriously, what is with this episode? Were there scheduling conflicts with the actors? It is totally random that Sam would just take off on his own to go creep out some lady, rather than, for example, cross-checking the street name he just discovered with the birth certificate records he just jotted down.
Anyhow, Prince Valiant has chosen the "creep out" option. He jogs along toward the house, when he gets another blinding vision. This vision goes over the same material as the last, only this time we see a figure standing in the nursery near the crib. Sam snaps out of it and looks toward a suburban house. Poor Sammy looks pretty ragged. He spots a young woman pushing a stroller down the street and immediately rushes up to her and offers to hold the stroller for her. It's Iowa and all, so she agrees. Sam continues in creep mode, awkwardly blurting out about the baby, "She's gorgeous! Is she yours?" Dude, tone it down! He then realizes what a creep he's being because he lies that he's just moved in up the block. At this, the woman introduces herself as Monica and breaks into a smile, and I like her look. The actress is sort of plain in a chipmunk-cheeks sort of way, but when she engages in a conversation, her features are very appealing. When Sam remarks on how good the baby is, Monica replies that she never cries, just stares at everybody: "I swear it's like she's reading your mind." Sam gets confirmation that the baby is six months old that day. Sam gets real sigh-y and furrow-y and seems like he's about to say something weird: "Monica --" She looks at him quizzically, but then he just tells her to take care, and she rolls off. Her husband pulls in the driveway, gets out, and they kiss. Sam, for his part, starts having another vision, and we snap into it as a narrative, rather than flashing glimpses.A music box plays, and the freaky clown continues to terrorize us. The music stops, and a wind stirs inside. A shadow approaches the baby's crib. Monica walks down the hallway toward the nursery, pushes open the door to see a clearly male, seemingly human, figure standing over the crib. She gasps and says, "What are you --" when she gets pinned to the wall and then dragged upward onto the ceiling. She cries out for her baby as she hangs over her; her stomach gets slashed, blood drips down onto the crib, and then flames engulf the camera. One more member for the Differently-Abled Child Survivors of Mommy Ceiling-Kabob Support Group.
Commercials. In a hotel room, John incredulously asks, "A vision?" Sam explains that this has happened before, and Dean jumps in, saying his brother used to get nightmares but now he gets them when he's awake. Sam thinks that the visions get stronger the closer he gets to the demon. John cranks, "When were you gonna tell me about this?" Both Sam and Dean look at their deadbeat father like, so we're really going to do it like this? Dean shortly responds that they didn't know what the visions meant. Daddy dopes, "Something like this happens, you pick up the phone and call me." Oh, it's on! Dean clunks down whatever he's fiddling with over in the corner and rushes past Sam to confront the asshole. "Call you? You kidding me? I called you from Lawrence. Sam called you when I was dying. Getting you on the phone, I got a better chance of winning the lottery." LOVE. Pained looks all around. John responds, like only the most boring of crazy men can, "You're right. Although I'm not crazy about this new tone of yours, you're right." How can I be so simultaneously outraged and bored to death? It's like every time John says something I halfway raise out of my seat, ready to go all Z-snap on the dude, but then fall back into the couch and doze off for a minute.
Sam reminds Dean and his father that the demon is coming tonight, and that Monica's family is going to go through the same thing they went through. John, from his comfily seated position, responds, "No they're not. No one is. Ever again." Let me repeat: the man is seated and seemingly not busy planning anything for this big fight tonight. Dare I note that he also seems simultaneously outraged and totally bored himself? Just sort of waiting to get killed off? Sam's cell phone rings. He picks it up, and it's Short Lip. Sam reminds us that the last time he saw her she fell out a seventh-story window. She asks to talk to John and Sam very poorly bluffs, "My dad? I don't know where my dad is." Who? My dad? This dad? I mean, no, not that dad? Dad? What dad are you talking about I don't got a dad in here with me, do I, Dad? Oops, I mean, "Dean." Short Lip tells Sam "it's time for the grown-ups to talk," and Sam hands the phone over.Short Lip says howdy and then introduces herself as "the one that watched Jim Murphy choke on his own blood." John bows his head. She tells him she's now in Lincoln, visiting another one of his friends. Short Lip walks over to a man tied to a chair and removes his gag and holds up the phone to his mouth. He starts, "John, whatever they do, don't..." and John recognizes that it's Caleb. The boys look alarmed. Short Lip says that "we" want the Guaranteed to Kill Anything Gun, and John plays dumb about it. Short Lip brightly says okay, but then slits Caleb throat off-screen and holds the phone up for John to hear Caleb gurgle and spurt. Whoa. Short Lip says that by taking the gun, John has declared war, "and this is what war looks like." John says he's going to kill her. What, by glaring dourly in her general direction? Short Lip tells him to mind his blood pressure, which...okay, hee. I was just about to remark on how lumbering and large and out of shape he seems for such a major demon hunter. Short Lip beat me to it. Her short upper lip must make it easier for her to crack one-liners. Short Lip tells John that "we're" going to kill anyone he's ever loved or befriended until he hands the gun over. John agrees. Short Lip gives him an address in Lincoln; John says it'll take him a day's drive, she tells him he has to get there by midnight that night. John says its impossible, but she insists, tells him to come alone, and hangs up. We get a really gratuitous shot lingering on Caleb's slashed throat as Meg asks the dead guy, "What the hell are you looking at?"
John tells his boys that he's going to Lincoln. Sam protests, reminding his father that the demon is coming that night and they need the gun. John concocts one hell of a wacky plan, suggesting that because nobody's really ever seen the gun...Dean interjects, "So, what? You're just going to pick up a ringer in a pawn shop?" John smarms, "Antique store." Dean thinks the plan is stupid, because what happens when Short Lip figures out she's been handed a fake. John says he just needs to buy a few hours, and then Sam realizes, and asks tearily, "You want us to stay here and kill the demon by ourselves?" Seriously, dude. You let your son drop out of Stanford for this shit, and then bail on the final fight? La-ame. John figures that while he's being lame, he'll really get a dogpile going, so he swallows a frog and croaks, "I want to stop losing people we love. I want you to go to school. I want Dean to have a home. I want Mary alive. I just want this to be over." I want there to be some limit to the amount of parallel construction one recapper should be forced to recount.
Outside, John fiddles with the guns in the trunk of his AssTruck. Heh. Dean drives up in the Metallicar, pulls the gun (in a grotty paper bag) out from inside his pocket, and hands it to his father. Dean asks, "You know this is a trap, don't you?" John says he can handle Short Lip. How, by sitting on the edge of a bed and bossing your sons around? When has this man ever displayed any kind of prowess at anything? Dean asks his dad to promise that if "this thing goes south, just get the hell out. Don't get yourself killed, you're no good to us dead." Nice delivery, but somehow, whether it's Morgan's acting or the character of John Winchester, all the charisma anyone else brings to a scene just gets vaporized. John repeats what we already know: only four special bullets left, make them count. Blah diddy blah "you finish what I started," lots of serious looks and staring, and then John hands Dean the gun, which the latter grasps familiarly around the barrel. Sam chin-ups, "We'll see you soon, Dad," Dean just sniffs, and John gets in the AssTruck and drives off. Finally. I wish that big dinosaur foot would come out of nowhere and just stomp him to pieces. Watching his father go, Dean quietly says, "Later."Commercials. The AssTruck pulls up outside the warehouse. Entirely too much slow walking around and glancing and smoking warehouse vents. Then entirely even too much more slow walking, and then a little lumbering thrown in for good measure. John looks around. Then he sort of touches a few things. Drunken Bee wonders: is this episode a treat for me, a reward for all my hard work this season? Because there is literally nothing to even recap in half of these scenes. And yet, somehow, I will manage to produce 10,000 words out of this nothing. The magical alchemy of television!
Back in Salvation, Sam and Dean lurk outside Monica's house, wondering how they are going to get the family out of there. Sam thinks they should tell them there's a gas leak. Dean reminds him that the gas leak plan has backfired on them once before. However, what does it matter if your escape plan is foiled when you can be sure that the space/time continuum usually warps in your favor? Then Sam suggests that they might tell Monica and family the truth. Dean swings his head around toward his brother and grimaces and they both go, "Naaaaah." Dean tells Sam that their only move is to just wait until the demon shows up, and make sure that they kill it before it kills anybody else. Sam wonders how their father is doing; Dean would feel better if they were with their father, backing him up. Sam would feel better if Daddy were there backing them up. If only Sam could see John slowly lumbering, he'd probably be glad that big fat albatross isn't there weighing them down.
And speaking of albatrosses, back we go to the Warehouse of Nuthin' Much Doin'. John keeps lumbering and touching stuff in various steamy locales. In particular, he is now lumbering and touching what appears to be a mini-water tower. Short Lip suddenly hovers into the foreground -- ack! Quit it, Carol Channing!-- gazing mysteriously off-screen and then slooowwwwly turning her head toward where John once stood, touching some stuff, only to find that...HE ISN'T THERE ANYMORE! I know, I could barely believe it myself. Cut to John, hiding behind some wall, then creeping around and touching some stuff. Ooh, then he climbs the ladder he was just touching, opens a trap door, says some Latin while holding a rosary, and then drops it into the water in the water barrel.
Cut back to the boys still lurking outside Monica's house in the Metallicar. Sam thinks it's weird to finally be about to take on the thing they've been wanting to fight for so long. Dean says they just have to do their jobs, "like always." Sam doesn't think this is an "always" kind of job, and launches into a little speech: "Dean, I want to thank you...you've always had my back...I just wanted to let you know, just in case." Dean interrupts him, telling to hold his horses and stop with the "just in case" crap: "Nobody's dyin' tonight. Not us, not that family, nobody," and then adds on almost as an afterthought, "Except that demon." Dean really gives Sam the crazy eyes in this scene.We whoosh back to Short Lip standing around in the Steamiest Little Warehouse in Iowa. She turns to find John lumber slowly up behind her. Short Lip is back at her toothy delivery: "John! You're back. Too bad, rew-wey." She tells him she sees where the boys get their good looks, but then tells him she thought he'd be taller. John is silent. Short Lip asks for the gun. John, crack hunter that he is, asks, "If I give you the gun, how do I get out of here." OH, COME ON, MAN! Short Lip says he should just figure it out. When he says he might shoot her, Short Lip tells him that it won't matter because there's more where she came from, and at that moment Sebastian Spence, who just wrapped his scene in Insert Sci-Fi Channel Show Here across the lot, comes lurking into the background, preceded by...yes, you guessed it, steamy fog. He walks verrrry sloowwwwly, in keeping with the theme of the episode. John asks who he is, Short Lip refuses to tell him, Sebastian Spence botoxes in John's general direction. John hands the gun to Short Lip, the supernatural being, who takes the gun and seems pretty convinced. Could we please have some consistency on the level of precognition a variety of characters on this show have? She then hands it to Sebastian Spence, who takes it, furrows his mouth (because his brow won't budge), looks pointedly at John, cocks the gun, and then...shoots Short Lip. Are we supposed to be surprised that he did so? I wasn't, because of course he has to test it on a demon that is invulnerable to other bullets. Well, Short Lip isn't the slickest gloss in the tube because she's damn surprised: "You shot me! I can't believe you just shot me!" BotoxoCop barks, "It's a fake!" and the importance of this conclusion has been punctuated by a variety of percussives loudly banging at the end of each of Short Lip's and BotoxoCop's exclamations. The scene ends with about sixty-three close-up cuts between each character's faces. To my admittedly untrained eye, it seems they are all wondering whether or not to go for the Jack Daniel's® Grill or Steakhouse Selects at Friday's later on. Metal Teeth Chomp.
Commercials. God. We're back in the Warehouse of Boring. Short Lip tells John that he's dead and she's cranky and that they're going to "strip the skin from your bones." Dude looks a bit thick there, Short Lip; better settle in for a long night. John backs away from them and then uses his STEALTH HUNTING TECHNIQUE of waiting for a clang to happen elsewhere in the warehouse so that Short Lip will turn her head and he can slowly pivot on his feet and slowly lumber through a door and then slowly lock the lock on the door. He manages to fit through a trap door in the floor and then goes walking through the basement passageway. Short Lip and BotoxoCop walk through the door he just locked. They then walk down into the basement after him, and John walk-skips over to a water nozzle. He then places his hand on the nozzle and turns it. Which makes water come out. CAN YOU FEEL THE HEAT SIZZLING OFF THE SCREEN? You think I am exaggerating the excruciating slowness of this "chase," but I am not. Remember that wonderfully daft scene in Footloose where a high-stakes game of Tractor Chicken is happening, and "Holding Out for a Hero" plays in the background, and the kids onscreen are whooping and hollering, but nothing can blind the viewer to the fact that they are racing TRACTORS at a speed of, oh, about five miles per hour? Sigh. I love that scene. I guess there are reasons to live, after all.So the water comes out of the nozzle; BotoxoCop pauses for no good reason, but then steps into the water and his feet start to burn. John stands there looking at them. Great escape plan. Short Lip tooths the single worst pair of lines ever delivered, "Holy water, John. Reeeeal cute," making sure to drag out the "j" and add a "w" to the "ohn" part of his name and then hit the "t" in "cute" real hard. I feel my powers of description are not up to the horror of how she says these lines. ["Amen. (As it were.) A Pop-Up Video bubble telling us it was holy water would have been a power of ten less awkward." -- Sars]
Metallicar. Dean tries to call their dad, but he doesn't pick up. The car radio starts crackling, as they do when evil is afoot. Sam notices and turns it up. A wind storm kicks up, the lights in and outside of Monica's house start flickering, and the boys looks on rather gape-mouthed until Sam gulps and says, "It's coming."
Guh. Outside the Warehouse of DIE JOHN DIE, John lumbers out to the AssTruck, only to find its tires slashed. To be expected. When you park your VEHICLE five feet from a DEMON'S LAIR. So he goes lumbering back through the warehouse.
Cut back to the boys, who easily break into the front door of Monica's house, only to be met with Monica's husband, who comes at them swinging a lamp. Dean manages to duck and immobilize the guy against the wall, telling him they're there to help, when Monica calls down from upstairs. Hubby yells for Monica to get the baby, Sam screams, "Don't go in the nursery!" and the men continue to scuffle. We cut upstairs to Monica pushing open the door and finding a human-ish figure in a trenchcoat standing in the shadows above the crib. Monica starts asking what it's doing, but gets thrust against and slid up the wall, just like she did in Sam's premonition. Sam hustles through the hallway, takes aim with the gun, and fires, but the figure poofs away at the exact moment the bullet is discharged. Monica falls to the floor, and Dean comes in just in time to scoop up the baby as the crib bursts into flames. "Now that's how you film some damn action," said the poor recapper with extremely low expectations.
Warehouse of Slow Lumbering. John takes a break from not doing much to try to use his cell phone. "Girl? You would not be-LIEVE this bitch!" No, not really. Before he can ring up his BFF, his cell phone gets whisked out of his hands and he gets thrust against the wall of the warehouse, much like Monica was. John does a fair amount of "Grrraaa! Gaaaahhh!" and then goes sliding up the wall as BotoxoCop emerges from steamy fog that is now illuminated in red light. Red light? Okay! Sign me up for more scenes with these two!Back in Salvation, the nursery explodes in a ball of flames while the boys, Monica, and baby come coughing out the front door of the house. Hubby is waiting for them outside (way to check up on your wife and baby, dude) and starts trying to get into it with Sam and Dean until Monica tells him that they saved them all. She takes her baby from Dean's arms and goes to her husband. Standard hand-held camera of family desperation as the three reunite and flash deeply grateful eyes at the boys. Sam looks back up at the second-floor nursery, now totally engulfed in flames, and sees the figure looming. He growls, "It's still in there," and starts toward the house, but Dean holds him back; he won't let his little brother commit suicide. The shadow figure fades into the fire. Metal Teeth Chomp.
In the motel room, Dean tries to call John, but realizes something is wrong when he doesn't pick up. Sam mopes that Dean wouldn't let him go back in the house. And what? Get burned to a crisp before even making it upstairs? Dean asks if Sam wants to "sacrifice himself" and Sam stands up, nodding like a crazy little boy about being willing to do so. Dean tells him that won't ever happen as long as he's around. Sam heatedly reminds Dean that they've been searching for this demon their whole lives. Dean replies that as much as he wants to kill it, "it's not worth dying over. I mean it. If hunting this demon means you getting yourself killed, I hope we never find it!" Sam plays the Dead Jess card and then the Dead Mom card. Dean spits toward his brother, "They're gone and they're never coming back," and Sam rushes him and pins his brother up against the wall, seeing Dean's spit and raising him some slobber: "Don't you say that!" Dean looks at his brother intently: "Sam look, the three of us, it's all we have. It's all I have. Sometimes I feel like I'm barely holding it together, man. Without you and Dad --" During this tearjerker, Sam releases his hold on his brother's shirt and walks away, rubbing his head: "Dad..." Dean tries John's cell phone again, and we cut to...Short Lip picking up his phone and telling them that they really screwed up this time. Cut back to Dean asking, "Where is he?" and Sam looking up in major alarm. Short Lip replies, "You're never going to see your father again," and then we cut to close-ups of first Dean's and then Sam's super-alarmed faces. Cut to me, and all you'd see would be some major devil's horns, because never see John again? ROCK ON.