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After Darling Sammy endures yet another of his massive-migraine premonitions, Our Intrepid Heroes head off to Crater Lake, Oregon, only to find a dark demonic blood-borne virus ripping through the humble townsfolk, in the process transforming each and every one of them into neurotic rage monkeys of Ben-Stiller-esque proportions. Our boys barricade themselves in the town's tiny medical center with a handful of survivors, and El Deano blows away at least three of the infected -- but not before one of them slices open poor Sammy's remarkably broad chest to transmit the disease. Half an hour's worth of The Angst That Is Killing Me later, the boys discover that Sam's apparently immune to the bug. That's certainly convenient. And ominous. Maybe. I think. In the end, all of the humble-yet-demonically-infected rage monkeys simply vanish into thin air, and the boys head off to a scenic lake for yet another Suisse Mocha moment, wherein we were led to believe courtesy of the promos that Dean would finally reveal Daddy Shut Up's big secret from this season's premiere. And just as he's about to spill his guts...The Kripkeeper cuts to black! DAMN YOU, KRIPKE! DAMN YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL!
Oh, almost forgot: Short-Lip Meg's back and chatting with Daddy Demonic via her blood phone again, only this time around, she's Shane Oman from Mean Girls. This should be interesting. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Crackle, Crackle THEN! "You know the truth about Sammy?" No, Mr. Ceiling Demon, sir, but we are supposed to find out tonight! Thanks for asking, though! The Ceiling Demon begins tonight's THEN! by repeating his little snide scenelet with Shut Up Daddy from the season premiere before we get knocked around a bit by Darling Sammy's migraine-inducing death visions for a while. After Sam confirms this rather lame psychic ability for the incredulous benefit of Andy from "Simon Said," he then asks of Shut Up Daddy, "The [Ceiling] Demon said he had plans for me -- do you have any idea what he meant by that?" Shut Up Daddy LIES to Darling Sammy, right before spilling the great big secret truth of it all to El Deano, right before dropping dead. So, El Deano embarks upon a season-long bender of shooting monsters in the face with rock salt that we are meant to interpret as a sign of his deep psychic angst, rather than a sign of, you know, DEAN DOING HIS DAMN JOB. Ooops! This little sequence also includes El Deano meatily thwacking Sam and Gordon around a little bit before whaling on the blameless and bruised Impala with a tire iron, so I guess that was the part we were meant to interpret as a sign of his deep psychic angst. My bad! Despite the fact that, you know, Gordon totally deserved it for using poor Sammy as vampire bait. Whatever. "You're tail-spinning, man," Sam cries out in the voice-over as Dean stares out all dead-eyed from the depths of his blood-spattered face, "and you won't let me help you!"
Crackle, Crackle NOW! Dean, in extreme slow-motion, paces from one closed door in a darkened hallway across to another, deliberately sliding the clip from his automatic to tap it once against the barrel before reloading. I'm almost certain that action was entirely unnecessary, so: Gratuitous Gun Porn. Right there. Are you happy? Raoul, The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon, theatrically stifles a yawn with one of his perfectly manicured paws, so I'm guessing his answer is, "Hardly." The camera jumps inside what appears to be a doctor's office, decorated with a poster commissioned by the "River Grove Chamber Of Commerce" that encourages all of us to "Visit Beautiful Crater Lake," and I suppose I should point out right now that Rivergrove, Oregon, is nowhere near Crater Lake and leave it at that, because there are going to be far more important things to scream about much later in the recap.
The camera drops away from the poster to hit Dean as he slowly enters the room to menace a frightened, grimy, and somewhat battered-looking blond guy with the automatic. The blond guy -- who's sporting a fresh, angry scar on the right side of his forehead -- twitches a bit and babbles, "No, no, no, no, no, no, I mean, you're not gonna..." Dean allows the door to latch shut. "No, I swear!" the blond guy panics, in a close-up so extreme I can practically count the individual hairs in his eyebrows. "It's not in me!" "Oh, God," a thin-lipped bleach-blonde nurse with enormous dark eyes whimpers in yet another extreme and harshly over-lit close-up, "we're all gonna die!" "Maybe he's telling the truth," the nostrils of a middle-aged gentleman of color offer, for the camera's practically crawled up this poor guy's nose in order to take in that line. Slo-Mo El Deano's having none of the gentleman's nostrils' reasonable-sounding arguments against his current plan of action. "He's not him," Dean growls, advancing with murder in his eyes upon the apparently restrained blond guy, cocking the gun as he goes. "Not anymore." "No, NO! STOP IT!" Blond Guy pleads. "Ask her!" he screams, manically jerking his head at someone off-screen. "Ask the doctor -- it's not in me!" Tonight's Good Doctor -- a tense thirtysomething in desperate need of a hot-oil treatment -- stammers helplessly (in yet another violently extreme and harshly over-lit close-up, natch), "I...I...just...I can't tell." "No, please," Blond Guy shakes his head, almost crying now, "don't, don't -- I swear it's not in me, I swear!" He continues babbling on like that as Dean ices, "I got no choice." The automatic's muzzle gets all up in our collective face for a moment before we snap back over to Blond Guy, who's scrunching his eyes tight shut in fear. "Don't!" he sobs repeatedly as Dean's upper lip twitches spastically before we slam back to the gun for...BAM! BAM!
The screen smears blood-red for an instant until we realize we're now looking at a blurrily down-sliding shot of a motel room's lamp before the camera whips over to Sam, who's snapping himself awake from yet another of his nocturnal death visions. The camera lingers on his gasping face for a moment before flying back up away from him towards the ceiling so we might note that this particular vision either knocked him directly to the floor from his feet, or it sort of bounced him off the bed he'd been resting upon while the just-arriving Dean skipped out for a six-pack of longnecks. "Oh, we should have seen Sam bouncing off the bed onto the floor due to the force of his nocturnal death emission," Raoul opines. "You know how giggly that would have made all of us." Dean, coddling the six-pack in the crook of his left arm, is comically enough in mid-gnaw on a massive slab of jerky when he finally notices his fifteen-foot-tall brother thrashing around on the vile motel carpet. "...Sam?" Heh. Sam pops up into sitting position to pant and huff and pant some more through his unbelievably alluring and porny O lips as the camera swings in close on his face before everything gets gobbled up by the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
RAAAWWWR! "Eeeeeeeeeeeee! Pity the rest of the episode's not nearly as well-paced as the pre-credits sequence, though." Shhhh! That's a spoiler! "Oh. Um. Ooops! Hee hee!"
The Impala grumbles down the nighttime backroads somewhere as Sammy navigates with one of those newfangled GPS devices all the kids are talking about nowadays. During the expository blithering that follows, Sam basically relates the details of his nocturnal death emission, which he probably would have done long before now if this show had any sort of rational timeline, but that's not important, because what's really important here is the subtext of the chatter they're sharing at the moment: Sam clearly believes that over the last couple of months, his brother's become just the sort of addle-brained psycho who would shoot an entirely innocent man twice in the head. Dean picks up on this and vehemently disagrees, and Sam's all, "Fine!" and Dean's all, "Fine!" and Sam's all "FINE!" and Dean's all "FINE!" and Metallicar, having long ago grown weary of this sort of tedious brotherly bickering, speeds up to plow through the episode's title card at the bottom of the screen.
Early the morning, Metallicar grumbles into downtown River Grove, which Supernatural would have you believe is not an urbanized suburb of Portland, but rather a rustic and quaint little burg out in the middle of nowhere. Dean wheels the Impala into a parking spot along the town's main commercial drag just outside the MEDICAL CLINIC, and the boys glance around at the affable-seeming residents, who casually amble about offering friendly greetings to one another, because that's just how folks roll in small-town America. Sam spots the middle-aged gentleman from his nocturnal death emission fiddling with a rod and reel on the front porch of a bait-and-tackle shop across the way and nudges at Dean to point the gentleman out. "He was there," Sam nods, so Our Intrepid Heroes disembark and head over. "Morning!" Dean brightly opens, and this is the last bit of truth to emerge from his mouth for a very long time as the LYING LIAR WHO LIES proceeds to introduce himself as "Billy Gibbons." Along with his partner, "Frank Beard," the two are "U.S. Marshals" in search of, as Sam puts it, "a young man, early twenties, with a thin scar right below his hairline." "What'd he do?" the suddenly suspicious gentleman demands, likely because even he recognizes the fact that the false names actually belong to two of the hairballs from ZZ Top. Dean LIES that the person they're looking for "isn't in any kind of trouble," but the gentleman clams up anyway. Well, he clams up until Dean notices a tattoo of a cap-wearing bulldog on the inside of the gentleman's forearm and smarms, "I think maybe you know who he is, master sergeant." "My dad was in the Corps," Dean explains. "He was a corporal." LIE! I think. I mean, I'm pretty sure. "What company?" the gentleman demands, still not quite buying their act. "Echo-Two-One," Dean replies without hesitation, so the gentleman allows his frosty reserve to melt a bit in order to admit that one "Duane Tanner" bears a scar similar to the one the boys described. The gentleman directs Our Intrepid Heroes towards the Tanner homestead "up Aspen Lane," and eyes them uneasily as they take their smiling leave.
Once across the street, Sam rather conveniently bumbles into a telephone pole upon which someone has carved the word "CROATOAN," and we'll just pretend the production staff went to great lengths to make sure it looked as if it were gouged into the wood yesterday rather than forty years ago, so Sam's heightened sense of urgency during the expository blithering that follows doesn't seem entirely unjustified, contrived, and more than a little bit hysterical. Dean's all, "Cro-in-the-who, now?" so Sam -- as well he should -- condescends, "Roanoke? Lost Colony? Ring a bell?" Dean's expression remains blank. ["Man, even I knew what Croatoan was. ...It's east of Java, right?" -- Joe R] "Dean," Sam sighs with growing frustration, "did you pay any attention at all in history class?" "Yeah!" Dean bluffs. "The Shot Heard 'Round The World, how bills become laws...." "That's not school," Sammy peeves, "that's Schoolhouse Rock!" "Whatever," Dean shrugs. Along with Raoul, as it turns out. "Terribly weak joke, my darlings. Now could we speed along to the gore already?" I couldn't agree more, Raoul, so let's keep this brief: Our Intrepid Heroes natter about the Roanoke legend for a very lengthy period of time before realizing that, as Sam's nocturnal death emissions are always in some way connected to The Ceiling Demon, something devious, foul, and Croatoan-related is likely afoot in seemingly placid River Grove, Oregon. They also eventually realize they're a bit out of their depth with this one, and so make to contact Bobby and Ellen back at Harvelle's for little backup research. One problem: Neither of their cell phones has a signal. One more problem: The payphone's dead. "I tell you one thing," Dean grumps, referring to all of the dead phone lines, "if I was gonna massacre a town, that'd be my first step." DUN!
Out on Aspen Lane, the boys arrive at the Tanner homestead and mount the porch steps to the front door. Incidentally, there's a festive little "Born To Fish, Forced To Work!" sign hanging by the door beneath a lucky horseshoe that's quite unluckily nailed to the wood siding upside down. Sucks to be the Tanners, I guess. In more ways than one. Sam raps at the frosted glass, and young Jake Tanner presently appears with a startlingly toothy grin plastered across his face. El Deano whips out the fake government ID and asks if brother Duane is home at the moment. "He went on a fishing trip, up by Roslyn Lake," comes the reply. There's a joke in there somewhere about how close Roslyn Lake is to Boring, Oregon, but I don't have time to make it. "Are your parents home?" Sam inquires. "Yeah, they're inside," Jake smiles. Barely have the words left his mouth when his considerably shorter father pops up by his side to wonder -- in a manner that seems just a little too carefully concerned -- what's going on. The boys LIE for a bit before wondering when Duane's due back. Papa Tanner clearly feigns ignorance, and when Sam asks to speak with the missus, Papa Tanner hastily concocts the excuse that she's out shopping for groceries, despite the fact that Jake just now swore she was inside the house. Our Intrepid Heroes, increasingly -- yet silently -- freaked, thank the gentlemen for their time and turn to leave as a lonely railroad horn wails in the distance (which...what?). The instant the door's shut behind them, Dean offers, "That was kind of creepy, right? A little too Stepford?" "Big time," Sam grunts, so the two book off towards the back of the house.
As Our Intrepid Heroes perform a bit of surreptitious sneak-fu on the dewy lawn outside, the camera cross-fades to the interior of the Tanner homestead kitchen, where a terrified Mama Tanner sits bound and gagged in a chair by the table. "By the way," Raoul would like you to know, "if you're one of those fans intent upon bringing a little bit of Supernatural into your own home, you can find the tea towel they've used to gag her at the Bed, Bath, & Beyond near you." And we're getting paid for that product placement...when, exactly? "There's no call to get snippy," Raoul sniffs. "I was just trying to be helpful." In any event, Toothy Jake rubs at his mother's shoulders as he leans close to her ear to whisper, "It's okay, Mom -- it's not gonna hurt." Toothy Jake then straightens himself up to yank on one of his hooded sweatshirt's sleeves to expose a bare forearm to that huge honking kitchen knife his father's toting. "Also available at the...." Zip it, Raoul. "But I was simply...." Knock it off, Raoul! "Well! See if I ever offer any of my invaluable home-decorating tips to you again, missy!" Should I point out to the folks at home that Raoul's lair looks like a cross between...nah, not worth it. Now where was I? Oh, yes: Papa Tanner draws the blade across his son's arm as Sam and Dean peer through the back window at the freakshow currently in progress. Dean decides he's seen more than enough and draws his pearl-handled automatic out of the back of his jeans to cock the thing as Toothy Jake now drips blood from his own wound into the one previously opened at some point on his mother's shoulder. Just as he's done so, though, Dean manfully boots in the back door to the house, and both boys charge into the kitchen with weapons drawn. "Naaaaaaahooooo!" howls the suddenly deranged Papa Tanner, lunging towards the intruders in a bizarre skip-frame shudder as Sam shouts for the man to drop the knife. Papa Tanner ignores Sam completely, so El Deano plugs him full of holes. "Yesssssss! hisses Raoul, entirely recovered from his earlier snit now that we finally have some actual bloodshed on the damn screen. Meanwhile, Toothy Jake's taken off in a bizarre skip-frame shudder of his own and hurls himself bodily through one of the kitchen's windows onto the dewy grass of the lawn below. Action Sammy rams his remarkably broad shoulders against the window's shattered frame and takes aim at the fleeing freak, but at the last instant, when it really counts, he finds he cannot bring himself to squeeze the trigger, and so Toothy Jake vanishes into the wilderness surrounding the Tanner homestead as cheery little birds chirp merrily away in the treetops above. Dean, who'd slammed up against Sam in time to watch his wimpy younger brother totally biff the kill, glares up at Sam's shaggy head, all, "You moron." Anguished Action Sammy briefly deploys The Super-Special Puppy-Dog Eyes before both of Our Intrepid Heroes get their equally tantalizing asses swallowed up by the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Metallicar spins around the main drag's corner to wheel into the same parking spot it had earlier occupied outside the medical clinic. Wedged into the front seat between the ginormotron and his somewhat smaller brother is Mama Tanner, whom Sam escorts into the clinic while Dean grimly opens the Impala's trunk. Once indoors, Sam calls out for help and is answered by the bleach-blonde nurse from the pre-credits sequence, who quickly summons "Doctor Lee" to Mama Tanner's aid. Doctor Lee takes one look at Mama Tanner's mewling face and orders, "Bring her in." Sam vanishes further into the clinic just as Dean barrels through the front door with Papa Tanner's tiny corpse slung across his relatively narrow shoulders. "I'd suggest you postulate," Raoul too-innocently opens, batting his lashes in my direction, "that the unusually small stature of the actor portraying Papa Tanner worked directly in his employment favor specifically to make this particular sequence believable, but I wouldn't want the rabid Jensen Ackles fangirls to rip you to shreds with their bare hands, now would I?" Raoul's a bitch. In any event, after Dean answers a few questions from the increasingly perplexed yet oddly calm Doctor Lee regarding the late Papa Tanner, she allows Dean into the clinic's innards, where he might relieve himself of his tiny corpse in one of the examination rooms.
A short time later, Doctor Lee attends to Mama Tanner in the other examination room. "You said Jake helped him?" Doctor Lee puzzles. "Your son Jake?" Mama Tanner's all, "Do I stutter, you frizzy-haired bimbo?" only she's much more shell-shocked and mournful about the whole thing. "I don't believe it!" Nurse Pam interjects. After shushing her rude assistant, Doctor Lee returns her attention to "Beverly" and wonders if either of the Tanner men had any sort of history of chemical dependency or, I don't know, batshit insanity that might explain their behavior this afternoon. Meanwhile, the camera's panned around all of the women to reveal Sam and Dean lingering in the doorway to oversee the interview. "I don't know why," Beverly moans. "One minute, they were my husband and my son, and the ? They had the devil in them." The four furrowing eyebrows on Our Intrepid Heroes' foreheads transmit the DUN! for me. "We gotta talk," Dean mutters. The boys scurry outside as Beverly Tanner dissolves into sobs.
Out in the reception area, Sam and Dean bang their heads together to decide rather quickly that they're facing "multiple demons" intent on a "mass possession." Problem is, none of the usual demonic accessories like streaming gouts of bitterly black miasma accompanied their encounter with Dead Papa Tanner, so they're at a loss as to how to proceed. Dean takes a moment to bust Sammy's chops about letting Toothy Jake escape, but before it can all blow up into yet another annoying bout of rampant internecine douchebaggery, Doctor Lee strides out of the examination room to demand to know precisely what the hell happened up on Aspen Lane. "You just killed my -door neighbor!" she cries. "We didn't have a choice," Dean insists. "Well, maybe so," Doctor Lee allows, still mightily pissed and more than a little freaked out, "but we need the county sheriff, I need the coroner...." "The phones are down," Sammy interrupts. "I know, I tried," the good doctor efficiently replies before frowning at El Deano, "Tell me you got a police radio in the car?" "It crapped out just like everything else," Sam LIES. Thanks to the good doctor, though, Dean learns the nearest town is about forty miles away, so he volunteers himself to head off in search of assistance while Sam remains at the clinic. "He'll keep you guys safe," Dean assures her, clapping Sam on the shoulder. "Safe?" Doctor Lee eyebrows. "From what?" Dean takes a moment for A Pause Fraught With Significance before responding, "We'll get back to you on that one." Doctor Lee cranes her head all the way back to gaze up at The Super-Special Puppy-Dog Eyes plastered across her fifteen-foot-tall supposed savior's face.
Outside, Dean hops into the Impala to peel off into the ground-hugging mist as a pair of overly concerned extras eye his exit.
The camera leaps ahead on the road to Sidewinder to take in the license plate affixed to the front of a late-model Ford blocking one half of the two-lane blacktop before climbing above the hood to pan over the blood-spattered and gunshot-riddled windshield. The license plate's number, by the way, begins with "WTF," which must be deliberate, seeing as how the sentiment might be applied to any number of elements littering tonight's presentation. In any event, Metallicar rumbles up behind the Ford Focus Of Death, and Dean keys off the ignition to evaluate the situation, surreptitiously drawing a sawed-off shotgun from the front seat to aid in his investigation. He eases past an infant's bloodstained car seat in the rear before finding two far larger puddles of gore soaking into the driver's and passenger's up front. The driver's-side window's been smashed in, too, just so you know. Dean then stupidly -- STUPIDLY -- squats down to retrieve a bloody knife from the pavement, like, did you learn nothing in Baltimore about the dangers of littering crime scenes with your own fingerprints, Dean? He doesn't answer me, because he is a fake person on the television set. Rather, he warily eyes the quiet woods around him as the camera cuts back over to...
...Dead Papa Tanner's tiny little rapidly cooling corpse, neatly laid out on a gurney in the town clinic. Sam glances at it curiously while the good Doctor Lee bends over a German-made microscope to examine a sample of the tiny little rapidly cooling corpse's blood. She spots fuzzy yellow flecks clinging to his red blood cells, and offers us all a "Huh!" "What?" Sam asks on the audience's behalf. "His lymphocyte percentage is pretty high," Doctor Lee reveals, before explaining that bit of information as, "His body was fighting off a viral infection." Sam wonders if a viral infection could cause so rapid and drastic an alteration in behavior. Doctor Lee's forced to admit this is the first she's ever heard of anything like it, and what's more, there's this strange, foreign substance clinging to the individual cells. "If I didn't know better," she frowns, "I'd say it was sulfur." Sam's eyebrows choose not to perform The Devilish Dance Of The Demonic DUN! this time around, but under the circumstances, it would have been most appropriate.
Meanwhile, Dean's made it a bit further down the road to Sidewinder, only to find the first bridge out of town blocked by a couple of trucks and a posse of shotgun-wielding yokels, foremost amongst them the infamous Toothy Jake, whose stance, quite frankly, is a little too musical-theater chorus-boy for him to pull off the air of silent menace he's attempting at the moment. Dean stares the fey kid down for a bit until yet another yokel bangs on the Impala's roof and shoots his head into the driver's-side window from somewhere behind. "Road's closed -- quarantine," comes the explanation that isn't for the current situation from yet another LYING LIAR WHO LIES on this show. "Say," the interloper continues with a false smile on his eerily hangdog face, "why don't you get out of the car, and we'll talk a little." Dean makes briefly terrified eyes at the freak before chuckling the suggestion off with, "Well, you are a handsome devil, but I don't swing that way. Sorry!" The hangdog weirdo chuckles along for a bit before suddenly dropping all pretense of humor and intoning, "I'd sure appreciate it if you got out of the car for a little bit." Dean nods, blinks, and throws the Impala into reverse while gunning the engine at the same time. Whee! The hangdog whackjob latches onto Dean's coat to get dragged along the asphalt for a while as Fey Boy and his synchronized team of tap-dancing mercenaries flap-ball-change flap-ball-change forward to begin a dazzlingly choreographed pursuit on foot. Fey Boy And The Merry Mercenaries knock it off with the choreography long enough to open fire on the Impala, which happens to coincide with the exact moment I lost any sort of sympathy for them. "Do NOT harm the IMPALA!" Raoul shrieks, frantically waving his claws around in the air for emphasis. Fortunately for us, El Deano skillfully executes this supremely awesome 180-degree spin in the middle of a curved incline that not only flings the hangdog whackjob into a roadside tree, but also allows him to rip off down the highway before any of those disgusting blasts of buckshot get a chance to scratch up Metallicar's paint job. "And thank God for THAT!" Raoul agrees, still shrieking from all of the excitement.
Back at the clinic, Beverly's face cracks with agony as the good Doctor Lee bestows upon her the depressing news of Dead Papa Tanner's likely infection. Captain Empathy remains at the ready, prepared to leap forward at any moment with comforting words of consolation for the grieving widow. Doctor Lee gently approaches her patient and asks for permission to draw a blood sample, just to make sure the latter's not infected as well. The Widow Tanner offers a brave little smile by way of response, patting the good doctor's hand for a moment before...launching her middle-aged form into a violent attack! "Aaauauauaaargh!" The Widow Tanner growls as she leaps into a skip-frame shudder to back-hand Doctor Lee into the wall. All of this harshly lit skip-frame stuff is supposed to evoke, like, 28 Days Later, or something -- or so I've been told -- but it's just making the entire enterprise look as cheap as it probably is. "Too true," Raoul sagely nods. "The dearth of proper lighting this show's known for, while distressing to many in the audience due to the fact that we frequently cannot see a damn thing that's happening onscreen, does cover a multitude of low-budget sins." In any event, The Infected Widow Tanner hurls Sam bodily into a glass cabinet before snatching up a scalpel to disembowel him. Action Sammy, thinking fast, grabs a handy oxygen canister and whacks the widow on the side of the head -- hard -- with the thing, sending the demented freak into an unconscious heap on the linoleum floor.
Meanwhile, Dean's tooling through the apparently deserted streets of River Grove in the Impala until the bait-shop Marine sergeant pops up in the middle of the road to menace him with a hunting rifle. "Son of a bitch!" Dean shouts, grinding Metallicar to a halt and waving his hands around in surrender at the sergeant's orders. "Outta the car!" Sarge shouts. "Easy, big guy," Dean urges, still waving his hands around as he eases open the driver's door to rise to his feet. The instant he's done so, he whips a small automatic from, um, somewhere to point it at Sarge and scream, "Put it down!" "Put it down!" comes the equally loud response. The rapid-fire standoff shouting match that follows goes roughly like this: "Areyouoneofthem?" "No!Areyou?" "No!" "Youcouldbelying!" "Socouldyou!" It's more amusing than it should be, but that could just be due to the fact that so much of this evening's entertainment has been so dull. Long story short, Dean convinces the Sarge to accompany him back to the clinic, and the two arrive at an uneasy truce, of sorts, to climb into the Impala together, leveling automatics at each other for the entire trip. "Well," Dean snorts, "this should be a relaxing drive." "Oh, you've had much worse, honey," Raoul croons, and really, he has. Nothing could possibly come anywhere close to Samantha Ferris glowering righteously beside you for twenty-eight hours of back roads and no music all the way from Philadelphia to Bumfuck, Nebraska, Deano.
Clinic. The good doctor examines The Widow Tanner's blood under the microscope while Nurse Pam panics, eventually bolting for the outdoors to make sure her boyfriend's okay. Captain Empathy catches up just in time to talk her back from the edge, however, and it's then that the sounds of Metallicar grumbling up outside hit their ears. If you're finding yourself wondering why the boys would ever believe they'd be safe from roving packs of the rabidly infected in this flimsy little glass-fronted clinic building, simply remind yourself of the plot twist at the end of the episode and keep chanting: Our Intrepid Heroes must behave like complete idiots for the plot twist to work. Our Intrepid Heroes must behave like complete idiots for the plot twist to work. Our Intrepid Heroes must behave like complete idiots for the plot twist to...oh, fuck it. Where the hell did I leave my beer?" ANY-way, El Deano directs Sarge towards the doctor, then hangs back for a little processing summit with Sammy regarding "dee-monic" viruses. "I feel like Chuck Heston in The Omega Man!" Dean seethes. "Sarge was the only sane person I could find!" Meanwhile, College Boy's been poring through Daddy Shut Up's demonic day-planner in Dean's absence and managed to stumble across an entry regarding the lost colony of Roanoke. Seems Daddy Shut Up "always had a theory about 'Croatoan,'" specifically that the word was actually a demon's name. "A demon of pestilence," Sam needlessly explains, just as needlessly linking what happened in Virginia four hundred years ago to what's happening now in Oregon. And as Sam goes on further to claim that they must find a means of escape in order to warn the world at large, Sarge's voice comes bellowing out from the clinic's innards. "They've got one of them in here!" Sam and Dean race towards the back as Sam babbles out the sitch with The Widow Tanner. Dean responds by cocking his automatic once again, and I'm beginning to hate typing that word all the time. "It is rather a filthy sort of word to associate with that particular action, now isn't it?" Raoul agrees.
"You're gonna kill Beverly Tanner?" Nurse Pam incredulously squeaks. "Can you cure it?" Dean demands of the good doctor, referring of course to the current plague. "For God's sake!" the good doctor exasperates, unwilling to have such responsibility shoved in her direction. "I don't even know what 'it' is!" "It's only a matter of time before she breaks through," Sarge warns, referencing the infecteds' apparent super-strength. "You can't shoot her like an animal!" Nurse Pam protests. Dean's all, "Wanna bet?" and hustles towards The Widow Tanner's temporary prison. Well, more or less. There might have been more debate going on there, but really. It's well past time for the fucking gore, people. "AMEN TO THAT!" shrieks Raoul. Dude, I'm sitting right here. Stop screaming at me. "WHAT-EVER! GORE! GORE! GORE! GORE! GORE! GORE! GORE!"
The armed men charge the barricaded utility closet while the fretful womenfolk flutter around impotently in the background. Sam takes a moment to steel himself, then unlocks and flings open the door. Sarge whips into the small room -- followed quickly by Dean -- to find The Widow Tanner balled up in a near-fetal curl on the floor against the far corner. "Mark!" she whimpers upon seeing him. "What are you doing? Mark, it's them! They locked me in here! They tried to kill me!" "They're infected, not me!" she pleads, beginning to hitch and sob. "Please, Mark! You've known me all your life!" Mark waffles. "WIMP!" shrieks Raoul. "HE WILL BE THE FIRST TO DIE WHEN THE ZOMBIES RISE UP IN THEIR MULTITUDINOUS GLORY TO RULE THE EARTH!" Raoul's becoming unhinged. "YEA, VERILY SHALL SATAN'S ZOMBIE ARMY SLAY BOTH THE UNDESERVING EXALTED AND THE POTENTLY STUPID ALIKE!" I think it's the holidays. "THE ZOMBIES WILL FLAY ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CURRENT SEARS ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN ALIVE AND DEVOUR THEIR ENTRAILS!" Raoul, dude. Get a grip. Though I have to admit, if I have to sit through "Here Comes Santa Claus" one more goddamned time, I'm probably going to end up a little homicidal myself. ["Oh, God, that campaign. Carry on, Raoul." -- Joe R] In any event, Dean receives from Sam the stony-eyed confirmation that The Widow Tanner is, indeed, One Of Them, and so hesitates not one instant to cut through all the bullshit by stepping forward and plugging her full of lead. "BAMBAMBAM!" Raoul shrieks, clapping his paws together for emphasis while eagerly parroting Dean's pearl-handled automatic. "GOOOOOOOOOOORE!" And Raoul would go on like that for a very long time, I'm sure, were it not for the blessed arrival of the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Clinic. Aftermath. Mark warily peers through the front windows' Venetians at the ravening horde of decaying zombies scouring the flaming streets of ruined River Grove for fresh brains. Or, you know, he spots the two, maybe three guys in deer-hunting caps lounging around the parked cars at the far end of the block. "RIP-OFF!" shrieks the mightily disappointed Raoul. Meanwhile, Sam and Dean futz around with the arsenal of weapons they apparently had all the time in the world to retrieve from Metallicar's trunk while those three guys in deer-hunting caps continued to lounge around the parked cars at the far end of the block. Somewhere in the back, fluttery Nurse Pam shatters a tray full of blood samples on the floor and immediately begins to panic that she's infected, now, too. Doctor Lee hastens to assure her otherwise, and everybody descends into a hideously boring conversation regarding their current options, which apparently are few, despite the fact that they're being guarded by all of three loafing goons in deer-hunting caps at the far end of the block. Yawn. Eventually -- finally -- Duane Tanner himself comes a-banging on the clinic's front door, and Mark hastens to let him in, despite the fact that a blood-borne demonic pathogen has been ripping through the townsfolk while leaving no outward signs of infection amongst the afflicted. "All of the stupid people may now begin to drop dead," Raoul sighs, having recovered from his earlier gore-related mania. "And I regret to note that Our Darling Boys may include themselves in their numbers." Raoul! Heresy! Sort of. In any event, Dean confirms that Duane's the guy he offed in Sam's latest nocturnal death emission, and quickly hustles the guy back into an examination room so the good doctor might run Duane's bloodwork. Ominously enough, Duane sports a fresh gash on his shin, which he ascribes to a spill he took in the woods after fleeing from a frenzied cabal of his ravenous neighbors. You know, I've grown more than a little weary of hearing all these horrible stories about the frenzied cabals of ravenous neighbors rather than, you know, actually seeing some of the damn attacks, and you'd think...oh, the hell with it. This show can't get back it's many missed opportunities with this episode, so whatever. Let's just get through the crap they gave us.
In any event, Dean insists Duane be bound to the chair until the doctor determines he's uninfected, and the plot starts steamrolling towards a real-time reenactment of Sam's nocturnal death emission from the pre-credits sequence. The doctor reveals her study of The Widow Tanner's bodily fluids indicated the sulphur didn't appear until three hours after the woman's initial exposure to the pathogen, which...NO. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. BECAUSE YOU DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THE SULPHUR WHEN SHE FIRST WAS BROUGHT IN AND SO YOU DID NOT SAMPLE HER BLOOD AT THAT POINT AND THEREFORE, YOU COULD NOT HAVE ANY KIND OF BEFORE-AND-AFTER SAMPLE UPON WHICH TO BASE THIS RIDICULOUS INCUBATION TIME THAT I SUSPECT YOU JUST NOW PULLED OUT OF YOUR ASS, AND FURTHERMORE, COLLEGE BOY HERE SHOULD BE CALLING YOU ON YOUR CRAP.... "Ahem," Raoul begins, delicately clearing his throat. WHAT? "Demian, my dear, you're not remembering your own earlier admonition to the audience: For the plot twist at the end of the episode to work...." Yeah, yeah, fine. You're right. It just...I mean...it...IT'S GIVING ME CHARMED FLASHBACKS, GODDAMN IT, AND THAT IS PISSING ME OFF. Whatever. Whatever! MOVING ON, SUPERNATURAL. I swear to God, though. They try to pull off another episode like this one in the future? They better tighten this shit up.
Ugh.
ANY-way. Dean pulls Sam into the outer reception area for yet another tête-à -tête, and this one's just as boring as the others they've been having this evening, so let's cut to the chase: Sam insists that Dean can't kill Duane until they're 100%, absolutely, positively certain the poor guy's infected, and Dean disagrees by throwing Sammy against a wall. Dean then locks Sam in the outer reception area to loiter around with the cheery "Living With Diabetes" posters while Dean himself enters the real-time version of Sammy's latest nocturnal death emission alone. And that plays out exactly as it did earlier -- minus the extreme and harshly lit close-ups -- until the very end, when Dean's conscience gets the better of him. And with a furiously muttered, "Dammit!" he holsters his unfired automatic to storm out of the room.
Later, Sam and Dean silently prepare jury-rigged Molotov cocktails with the supplies available in the clinic. Doctor Lee enters at some point to note it's been "four hours," and Duane's blood samples remain free of sulphur. She'd like to untie him now, if that's okay with the U.S. Marshals in the room. Sam lifts his eyebrows in Dean's direction, Dean allows his wordless and begrudging assent, and Sam agrees to the good doctor's wishes. Once she disappears, Dean returns to the task at hand, and the Foley boys go so nuts with the sound of Dean filling a bottle with potassium chlorate that I suddenly feel a very strong urge to relieve myself. Sam then attempts to get Dean to open up about The Angst, but El Deano -- bless his little heart -- shuts down completely, choosing instead to snort, "We need more alcohol." "You and me both, honey!" Raoul shouts, unable to rise above the temptation of a cheap joke due to the torpid pace at which this half of the episode's unfolding.
Sam sighs and wearily pushes himself up to head into the dispensary, where he greets the already-present Nurse Pam with, "How you holding up?" "Good," she shrugs before adding suspiciously, "It'll all be over soon." She then crosses behind him and deliberately shuts and locks the door. Bamp-chicka-bamp-bamp! Sorry! Sorry. That should've been a DUN! because God knows neither of these boys is ever going to have Crisis Sex on this show. "In fact," Nurse Pam continues, ignoring me completely, "I've been waiting for this the entire time." "For what?" clueless Sammy buhs. "To get you alone," Nurse Pam twinkles, right before she tweaks out and slams Sam onto the floor. And, no, like I said before: Not For That Reason. She leaps to straddle his remarkably broad chest, biffing him once in the face before slashing open a shallow gash across his clavicle with a handy scalpel. She then carves a gouge into her own palm and presses her dripping hand against his fresh wound. Dean finally manages to kick in the door and pump Nurse Pam full of lead, but it's too late: Sammy's been exposed. "And not in the good way, like he was in 'Hell House.'" Raoul hastens to remind us all. "Lord, I have never been so envious of a towel in my life!" Meanwhile, while Raoul's been reveling in fond memories of better days, Dean's eyes widen at the relevant realization for a bit until everyone vanishes into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Clinic. Aftermath. Again. Some more. And we've now reached the point of the episode whereupon, on first airing, The Angst nearly threw me into a coma of boredom. If I'm interpreting all of the incessant shouting correctly, Dean's revealed himself to be a big, fat hypocritical LYING LIAR WHO LIES, for while he was more than happy to gun down Papa Tanner, The Toothy Fey Jake Boy, The Widow Tanner, and Nurse Pam after they'd proven themselves to be infected -- indeed, even going to far as to chew Sam a new one for wavering at a crucial moment and allowing The Toothy Fey Jake Boy to escape -- and while he was also more than willing to aerate Duane before they had even received confirmation the latter had actually been exposed in the first place, he is, of course, now entirely opposed to offing the impending zombie when said impending zombie is his own brother. I'm sure I'd care very deeply about this were there even the slightest chance that darling Sammy might not survive, but please. Jared Padalecki's not going anywhere anytime soon, so yaaaaawn. Long story short, El Deano tosses the Impala's keys at Mark with instructions for the other three present to hop into the car with the explosives at hand and get the hell out of town, pronto. For his part, Dean intends to remain with Sam until the bitter, bitter end. Mark, Duane, Doctor Lee, and Sammy himself attempt to talk Dean out of his obviously suicidal decision, but all of their protestations fall on deaf ears -- like, go figure with the determined would-be suicide here after the way he's been acting all season, but then again, Jensen Ackles isn't going anywhere anytime soon, either, so whatever. The others eventually offer Our Intrepid Heroes their thanks and exit, and while the tear-filled scene that follows is touchingly acted by both of the gentlemen involved, because the stakes are so impossibly low -- if not outright nonexistent -- I can't be bothered to engage myself much with their chatter. For all of those reasons, long story short: Dean admits he's really, really tired of it all, Sam attempts a "Buck Up, Little Camper" speech he can't manage to deliver through the snot dripping from his nose, and everything they've just said to each other is rendered moot when Doctor Lee returns from the world outside to rap urgently on the examination room's door. "You better come see this," she breathlessly heaves once Dean's responded to her knock.
The boys emerge onto the misty nighttime streets of River Grove to find, in Doctor Lee's words, "no one, not anywhere -- they've all just...vanished." Dean glances around and eventually lands his eyes on the "CROATOAN" carved into the telephone pole.
A lengthy period of time later, Sam -- unbound, mind you -- is perched on a table in the examination room while Doctor Lee busies herself once more with her German microscope. "Well," she offers him, turning away from her studies, "it's been five hours, and your blood's still clean." "I don't understand it," she admits with a heartening smile, "but I think you dodged a bullet." Sam's astonished. Doctor Lee's all, "Um, duh, Stoopy The Wonder Psychic. I just admitted as much myself. Did you lose 50 IQ points over the course of this episode, or was that just the audience?" Or maybe she just agrees with that emotion while spinning around on her stool to reconfirm the differences between Sam's blood samples and the ones drawn earlier from the deceased Tanners. "What the hell?" she gapes, huddled over the Tanner samples' microscope. She spins back around to face Sam, agog. "Their blood!" she breathes. "There's no trace of the virus! No sulphur...nothing." Sam's eyebrows remain motionless once more, but this time around, his Adam's apple assumes responsibility for The Devilish Dance Of The Demonic DUN! as it bobs up and down on his throat in an impressive gulp of dismay.
Shortly thereafter, the five survivors gather on the sidewalk to bid farewell to two of their number. Duane notes he and Mark are "heading south" to get away from this godforsaken burg, and he invites Doctor Lee to join them. She smiles and affably declines the offer, insisting she'll be headed over to Sidewinder to enlist, at long last, the aid of the proper authorities. "If they'll believe me," she adds, shaking her head a bit at the prospect. As Duane and Mark climb into the latter's truck, Dean seeks assurance from the doctor that Sam is, indeed, okay. She gives him the assurance he craves and, looking strangely none the worse for the wear after her recent ordeal, rather brightly turns to reenter her corpse-littered clinic. Hmmmmm. "Oh, absolutely," Raoul nods. "She's in on it, too." Raoul, shut up! We haven't hit The Twist yet! "Ooops! Okay, I promise to keep my maw shut. Well, until the very end, of course, when I'll be joining everyone else with the screaming and flailing and rending of clothing and whatnot." Raoul, you have no clothing to...you know what? Forget about it. Let's just get through the remaining five minutes with our tattered sanity intact, shall we?
Dean glares at Sam. "Don't look at me!" Sammy protests. "I got no clue." "I swear I'm gonna lose sleep over this one," Dean admits after a beat. "I mean, why here? Why now? Where the hell did everybody go? It's not just like they friggin' melted!" Sam processes that for a moment before adding in a soft, self-critical, and vaguely despairing voice, "And why was I immune?" "That's a good question!" Dean asserts, getting all aggressive with his index finger and the vehement pointing and such. "I'm already starting to feel like this is the one that got away," he growls, finally crossing behind Sam to slam his way into the Impala. Sam looks conflicted for a moment before joining his brother, and Metallicar grumbles away.
Somewhere south of River Grove, Duane asks Mark to pull over to the side of the road. Mark, clearly thinking Duane needs to take care of a little personal business, complies, and seems more than a little put out when Duane reveals, "I gotta make a call." Mark rolls his eyes and snorts, "No phone out here." "I got it covered," Duane assures his companion, rooting around in his knapsack for...a tiny dagger he slices through Mark's jugular vein! And oh, man! I completely forgot how totally gross this was. "Hooray!" Raoul enthuses. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" As the mortally wounded Mark thrashes about, choking on, like, his own severed tongue, or some damn thing, Duane thrusts a silver chalice beneath the gout of blood spurting from the hole in the guy's throat to collect a cupful of fresh good stuff from poor, dying Mark. And I believe you already know the drill from here: Duane dips his fingers into the thing to activate some kind of whirlpool through which he communicates with Daddy Demonic, or whomever. "It's over," Duane tells Whomever. "You'll be pleased -- I don't think any more tests are necessary." After a pause during which he receives some message, Duane replies, "The Winchester boy -- definitely immune, as you expected." Pause. "Yes, of course." This with a leering smirk. "Nothing left behind," he assures Whomever, and here he turns to face the now-dead Mark, his eyes flipping beetle-black as he does so. And unless there was some massive script error during the production of this episode, he also just confirmed that the good Doctor Lee was in on the entire experiment as well. Which, you know, would go a very long way towards excusing her pitifully sloppy explanations of the contagion's attributes, but there's still the tiny little matter of OUR INTREPID HEROES' RAMPANT STUPIDITY THIS EVENING WITH REGARD TO SAME. GOD!
And with that we...fall into the METAL TEETH CHOMP? With less than two-and-a-half minutes to go? Uh. Okay. We can play it that way, show. "I can assure you the wait will be worth this tiresome and unnecessary interval," Raoul insists. "After all, we'll finally learn what Daddy Shut Up whispered into Dean's ear all those many episodes ago, won't we?" Nobody likes a smartass, Raoul.
The camera pans along the shiny, sunlit Impala as a soothingly anonymous piano melody plinks away in the background. I hate this scene already. Birds chirp in the lush foliage overhead as the camera continues its journey to discover the boys silently enjoying each other's company after their latest scare over a couple of beers by a ridiculously scenic lake. Sam swallows a mouthful of beer...and The Angst begins. "NOOOOOO!" shrieks Raoul, futilely clapping his paws over his ears. "NO MORE WITH THE ANGST! PLEASE! DEAR LORD IN HEAVEN I'M BEGGING YOU, NO MORE WITH THE ANGST!"
Sam inquires as to the nature of Dean's suicidal outburst the evening while both boys were locked in the bowels of the River Grove clinic. After a few mild protestations on Dean's part, the soothingly anonymous piano melody kicks in again, and Dean...you know what? I can't do this. He barfs up some heartfelt confession involving the Grand Canyon and Tijuana and banging Lindsay Lohan -- no, seriously: BANGING LINDSAY LOHAN -- and it's all about him wanting to live life a little bit instead of constantly shouldering so much of the responsibility with regard to the coming Demonic War, and I totally understand his impulse to flee his miserable life, or whatever, but come on. We were promised The Secret, not this tawdry bullshit, so fucking get to it already. Dean eventually realizes how stupid he sounds, and mercifully shuts up, turning to pace a couple of feet away from Sam, who decides to take this opportunity to launch himself into some WHATEVER about fraternal I DON'T CARE that ends with the words, "Let me help a little bit." "I can't -- I promised," Dean flusters. Well, "flusters" by his definition, which is pretty much "jerk and twitch a little bit until the words finally free themselves of their own accord from his mouth." "Who?" Sam demands. "Dad," Dean admits. Raoul leans forward in anticipation. "I leaned forward in anticipation the first time this aired," Raoul huffily corrects me from the depths of his overstuffed chair. "I think I know better this time around." In any event, Sam's all, "What are you talking about?" so Dean chokes out, "Right before Dad died, he told me something -- he told me something about you." As a tense string begins thrumming on the soundtrack, the camera slowly pulls in on a close-up of Sam's suddenly fretful expression. "What?" Sammy breathes. "Dean, what did he tell you?" The camera reverses onto Dean as the tense string is joined by a mournful horn. We travel all the way in onto Dean's face until he finally lifts his eyes to Sam's and...
...Blackout! PSYCH! "This show makes me so tired sometimes," Raoul confesses, and I'm inclined to agree. So much so, that I'm not even going to bother with a "Damn you, Kripke!" because I'm too weary to type it out. Well, except for the part where I just did, but what the fuck ever. We plodded through this entire dreary episode for that? Ecccch.
Sam inquires as to the nature of Dean's suicidal outburst the evening while both boys were locked in the bowels of the River Grove clinic. After a few mild protestations on Dean's part, the soothingly anonymous piano melody kicks in again, and Dean...you know what? I can't do this. He barfs up some heartfelt confession involving the Grand Canyon and Tijuana and banging Lindsay Lohan -- no, seriously: BANGING LINDSAY LOHAN -- and it's all about him wanting to live life a little bit instead of constantly shouldering so much of the responsibility with regard to the coming Demonic War, and I totally understand his impulse to flee his miserable life, or whatever, but come on. We were promised The Secret, not this tawdry bullshit, so fucking get to it already. Dean eventually realizes how stupid he sounds, and mercifully shuts up, turning to pace a couple of feet away from Sam, who decides to take this opportunity to launch himself into some WHATEVER about fraternal I DON'T CARE that ends with the words, "Let me help a little bit." "I can't -- I promised," Dean flusters. Well, "flusters" by his definition, which is pretty much "jerk and twitch a little bit until the words finally free themselves of their own accord from his mouth." "Who?" Sam demands. "Dad," Dean admits. Raoul leans forward in anticipation. "I leaned forward in anticipation the first time this aired," Raoul huffily corrects me from the depths of his overstuffed chair. "I think I know better this time around." In any event, Sam's all, "What are you talking about?" so Dean chokes out, "Right before Dad died, he told me something -- he told me something about you." As a tense string begins thrumming on the soundtrack, the camera slowly pulls in on a close-up of Sam's suddenly fretful expression. "What?" Sammy breathes. "Dean, what did he tell you?" The camera reverses onto Dean as the tense string is joined by a mournful horn. We travel all the way in onto Dean's face until he finally lifts his eyes to Sam's and...
...Blackout! PSYCH! "This show makes me so tired sometimes," Raoul confesses, and I'm inclined to agree. So much so, that I'm not even going to bother with a "Damn you, Kripke!" because I'm too weary to type it out. Well, except for the part where I just did, but what the fuck ever. We plodded through this entire dreary episode for that? Ecccch.