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Wow. After last week's comparatively complicated goings-on, this one was so straightforward, I barely know what to do with it. Because of an urgent tip from Ellen, Our Intrepid Heroes temporarily abandon their search for the still-missing Ava in Peoria and head off to Connecticut, where a series of bizarre and ghastly deaths have been plaguing a century-old hotel for the past month. After deciding that the butler did not, in fact, do it, Our Dear Boys eventually realize the owner's daughter's "imaginary friend" is:
A. The spirit of the owner's stroke-crippled mother's long-dead elder sister; B. The supernatural meanie responsible for the series of bizarre and ghastly deaths; and C. Now gunning for the owner's kid, because she doesn't want to be Casperina The Lonely Ghost anymore.
Creepy little girls! With creepy antique dolls! In a big, creepy hotel! And in a shocking twist, Our Intrepid Heroes do not, in fact, save the day. Sure, the hotel's owner and her child make it through the episode alive thanks to multiple assists from Action Sammy, but it's the stroke victim who ends up sacrificing herself to end the spectral moppet's short-lived reign of terror. The sisters, reunited in death, end the episode merrily skipping rope together in what I'm hoping is not a bit of foreshadowing for the boys themselves. Though, of course, the image of Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles skipping rope together is unnaturally amusing.
More naturally amusing were all of the many, many shout-outs to the fans -- like Drunk Sammy calling Dean "bossy and short," to mention just one of them here -- but those can wait for the recap proper. All in all, a most enjoyable evening. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Before we begin, Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon correctly believes he'd be horribly remiss were he not first to offer his thanks to the kind folks at The Striped Wall. "Indeed!" Raoul shrieks enthusiastically. "Their screencaps are so clear, I can practically taste the gore!" And with that, on with the show:
Crackle, Crackle THEN! Read the recap, because nothing in the Crackle, Crackle THEN! took place earlier than last week, from The Aggravating Reveal Of The Big Fat Hairy Secret That So Totally Was Not Worth Our Time, to Sam meeting Ava, to Sam and Dean's conversation in the Impala towards the end of the episode, to Our Intrepid Heroes discovering Ava's fiancé swimming in a pool of his own blood, with Ava herself missing.
Crackle, Crackle NOW! An ancient, carved, oaken sign creakily swings into view through the blackness that follows to inform us of a vacancy at the "Pierpont Inn," which was established in 1930, if you care about that sort of thing. The camera inches down beneath the sign to reveal the Pierpont's nighttime façade, and the place is a splendid old Tudor-style pile of tremendous proportions. I'm jealous already. A white box van trundles past the front door as the inn's sign continues to squeak in the chilly breeze.
A few moments later, the inn's petite owner leads the rather rotund driver of the van through the dimly lit and beautifully paneled first-floor hallway towards the grand staircase. The mantle in the foreground of the shot and the stairwell wall in the back are positively packed with sepia-toned and elaborately framed portraits of what we'll presently learn are this woman's ancestors. "Most of the stuff is up here," the owner explains, leading the way to the second floor. "I still can't believe you're closing this house," the rotund driver notes, looking up to marvel at the architecture. "My parents got engaged here," he reveals. "My grandparents, too." "A lot of people did," the owner smiles before efficiently directing the guy towards the back of the second-floor hallway, where he'll find the boxes he came to retrieve. The camera circles up the remaining flight of stairs with him to land upon two identically dressed little girls perched to each other on the floor in the balustrade's nooks, their Mary Jane-clad feet casually dangling from the second-floor gallery as they eye the fat man's progress towards the back of the manor. "Preadolescent girls frighten me to death!" shrieks Raoul, clutching one paw to his suddenly jittery heart while using the other to fan away at his unsettled face. "They're the most insidious evil on the face of the planet!" he insists. "We're barely a minute and a half into the tonight's presentation, and already I'm practically paralytic with terror!"
I agree wholeheartedly with that assessment, Raoul, but you must pardon me here, as I have to interrupt you to note that the girls' identical clothing is the first of many, many references to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining this evening, some as obvious as the costuming choice in this and subsequent scenes, and others as subtle as the passing mention of a relevant room number. I'll never catch all of them myself, so if you notice something I've missed in the recap, feel free to point it out in the "Pop Culture References" thread on the forum boards. More to Raoul's point, one of the little girls this evening is being played by Conchita Campbell, best known as Maya, the preternaturally calm precognitive returnee on The 4400, so we already know her character's going to be the source of some whacked-out shit over the course of the hour. Anyway, back to the scene: "He's gonna take our toys?" the non-Maya girl whines to the inn's owner. "Only the ones you don't play with anymore," the inn's owner reassuringly smiles back. Not Maya grimaces miserably, leading the inn's owner to shift her smile to a pleasantly teasing smirk before reminding the child, "It's not like you don't have enough already." As the owner begins descending to the main floor, Maya burns holes through the woman's skull with her scorching glare and mutters, "Son of a bitch." "Son of a bitch!" Not Maya instantly parrots, and the owner stops dead in her tracks to look up and chide, "Watch your mouth!" "Maggie said it first!" Not Maya protests. "Watch your mouth, too, Maggie," the owner grins, a little indulgently, before continuing down the stairs. The Mayas shoot each other A Look. "Eeeeeeeek!" shrieks Raoul at the identically attired little girls. "Nothing good will come of this, I assure you!" he predicts.
The camera cuts to pan down a couple of shelves stuffed with glassy-eyed antique porcelain dolls, including one Mortimer Snerd-esque atrocity that's so close to clown-like that Darling Sammy's certain to collapse into paroxysms of terror the instant he catches sight of the thing. Poor Sam. The camera jumps around to linger on dozens of similar dolls as Not Maya eases herself into the manor room devoted to their storage. She glances at the collection fondly before heading over to a massive dollhouse, which is apparently a fully detailed replica of the inn itself. She gathers up a handful of smaller, articulated dolls she'd earlier arranged on the house's front steps and positions them in various rooms. One -- a gent in an old-timey sailor's cap from the turn of the last century -- she places in a rocking chair on the dollhouse's second floor. We get a close-up of its face, and its features have been so worn down thanks to years of handling that it looks like a goddamned burn victim. Raoul frantically waves his paws around in the air, cringing at the sight. "If preadolescent girls are the most insidious form of evil on the face of the planet," he insists, "then their horrible dolls come in a close second!" Not Maya busies herself putting a number of the other poppets to bed before returning to the burn victim in the rocking chair. One problem: He's not there anymore. Not Maya searches the dollhouse's other rooms for him until she finally finds him in a heap at the bottom of the main stairs. She picks him up to discover his head's been twisted all the way around. DUN!
And as if to justify that DUN!, the owner's scream of horror hits Not Maya's ears at this very instant from the main floor below. With the camera, we jump ahead of the creepy little girl to peer down from the second-floor gallery at the foyer below, through the foyer's chandelier. The owner's picking her way through an unruly mass of toys scattered across the carpet while frantically babbling into her cordless, "Are you there? Yes, you have to send someone over right now!" The camera untangles itself from the chandelier to settle a little lower over the scene, so we might now spot the pool of blood slowly expanding across the parquet from the rotund driver's twisted form at the bottom of the stairs, just as Not Maya arrives on the gallery to goggle at the scene below. "Tyler, don't look!" the owner shakily pleads before returning her attention to the 911 call. The camera slides into a low-level pan across the toys on the main floor until it sweeps past the rotund driver's rapidly cooling corpse. Ooops! My bad, 'cause he's not dead yet! Yes, the wide-eyed driver, despite having his head wrenched all the way around on his neck by his apparent fall down the stairs is still working his gaping mouth like a landed trout. Ew! "I can even see the shattered vertebrae poking through the skin!" shrieks Raoul, clapping his paws together with delight. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" The camera leaps back up to Tyler's unexpectedly impassive expression before returning to crawl past the soon-to-be-dead fat guy and linger on yet another antique porcelain doll lying flat on its back at the guy's mangled side. A spider's web of cracks runs across the doll's blank face, likely due to its impact with the floorboards. The rapidly expanding pool of blood crosses the parquet to soak the doll's white shirt right before everything gets gobbled up by the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
RAAAWWWR! "Eeeeeeeeeeeee! God help me, but I still love that title sequence, even after all these months." You and me both, Raoul. You and me both.
An old blues song hits the soundtrack as a print-out of a computerized map of the Midwest fades up on the screen, followed by the words "Peoria, Illinois." Someone's inserted pushpins into various locations on the map, nailing scraps of paper containing the names of The Ceiling Demon's extra-special mommy-free and -having children to certain cities, including Lafayette for Scott, Peoria for Ava, Lawrence for Sam -- who has a star to his name, because he's super special -- and Guthrie for Andy. Lengths of string connect the pins in differing configurations, and it's all very Heroes of them, but that's not the point. No, the point is the massive production error also pinned to the map. Yes, someone in the props department completely fucked up Ava Wilson's "Missing" poster, for rather than having it issued by the Peoria Police Department, the thing's headed "Lafayette Metro Police" and reads in part, "Ava Wilson was last seen at her home in Lafayette, Indiana." WRONG. But we'll gloss over that to join Darling Sammy, who's on his cell in the brothers' latest motel room, finishing up a chat with Ellen back at Harvelle's just as Dean arrives from the outdoors with a couple of cups of coffee. Long story short, in the last month -- yes, "month," as Sam notes later in the conversation that follows -- neither Sam nor Dean nor Ellen have learned anything regarding Ava's mysterious disappearance, but Ellen does pass along a bit of information regarding "two freak accidents in the last three weeks" in a hotel in Cornwall, Connecticut. In the first, "a lady drowned in the bathtub," and in the second, well, we just saw the second, now didn't we? By the way, I'd link to an image of The Shining's Drowned Lady In A Bathtub, but I'm afraid they're a bit too graphic. "Oh, for heaven's sake!" Raoul interjects. "They're not babies! Here. Looks like someone could do with a nice little seaweed wrap and a facial!" Um. Thanks, Raoul. Yeesh. Now, where the hell was I?
Oh, yeah: Dean's a bit surprised that Sam would so willingly abandon the search for Ava in favor of driving halfway across the country to investigate a couple of mysterious deaths in some random hotel. "It's not the patented Sam Winchester Way, now is it?" Dean notes when pressed on his attitude. "I just figured after Ava, there'd be, you know, more angst and droopy music and staring out the rainy windows." Sam glares. "Yeah, I'll shut up now," Dean fidgets, averting his eyes. Heh. Though, of course, El Deano's the one who's been driving us fucking insane with The Almighty Angst all damn season long, so I don't know where he gets off criticizing poor Sammy for indulging in the exact same sort of behavior, but whatever. The important part of the blathering that follows is Sam's sincere vow to "save as many people as [they] can." They've hit a dead-end as far as Ava's concerned, so it's time for them to head back out on the road. "That attitude is just way to healthy for me," Dean teasingly deadpans as Sam cracks an appropriately amused grin. "I'm officially uncomfortable now," Dean continues, figuratively clutching at his pearls. "Thank you." Sam starts all-out snickering as Dean finally drops the act to agree to Sam's plan.
The thing we know, Metallicar's grumbling down a wet backroad somewhere as anonymous, composed-for-this-episode, wocka-wocka "rock" "music" plays in the background. Our Intrepid Heroes quickly enough arrive at The Pierpont, and good goddamn. The place is even more gorgeous in the daylight. Dean apparently agrees with me, for when the boys disembark, the first words out of his mouth are, "Dude! This is sweet!" "Who knew he had such good taste?" Raoul wonders. Indeed, Raoul, especially after he made such a mess in his jeans over Andy Gallagher's psyche-scarring atrocity of a van a few episodes ago. Oh, wait. He's not reacting to the manor itself, but rather to the prospect of spending the evening in accommodations so swank after God knows how many nights in those dreadful-looking motels they somehow always manage to find. "I never get to work jobs like this," Dean explains. "Like what?" Sammy buhs as he slings his backpack over a shoulder. "Old-school haunted houses, you know?" Dean elaborates. "Fog, secret passageways, sissy British accents -- might even run into Fred and Daphne while we're inside." "Good God, I hope not!" Raoul shrieks. "The second the odious Freddie Prince, Jr., and his sharp-angled baggage appear on this program is the second I stop watching it for good!" Yes, yes, Raoul, I'm certain we're all in agreement on that, but do you mind? There are plot points to describe. "My profuse apologies. Do continue." Thanks. In any event, the boys have made it to the front steps during all that, and are halfway up towards the door when eagle-eyed Sammy spots something suspicious on a nearby decorative urn. "I'm not so sure 'haunted's' the problem," he begins, drawing Dean's attention to a set of five interconnected dots on the urn's rim. "See this pattern here? That's a quincunx -- a five-spot." Dean correctly identifies it as holding a rather prominent place in traditional hoodoo whatever, and Sam agrees, noting, "You fill this thing with bloodweed, and you've got a powerful charm to ward off enemies." "Except I don't see any bloodweed," Dean counters, adding, "Don't you think this place is a little white meat for hoodoo?" "Maybe," Sam shrugs, and the camera shoots in on the five-spot as strings laden with portent thrum on the soundtrack. Shut up, Portentous Strings. That is nowhere near a DUN! Have you no sense for your own genre? Get with the program.
Inside, the inn's owner greets Our Dear Boys at the reception desk, and as Dean books a room "for a couple of nights," Tyler and Maggie dart from elsewhere to chase each other around The Ginormotron's legs. "Hey!" the owner calls out with a little frown of annoyance before offering Sam a "Sorry about that." Sam's all, "No big," so the owner shifts back into full gracious hostess mode, congratulating the boys on perhaps being the inn's last guests, ever. "Sounds vaguely ominous," Dean jokes. "I mean, we're closing at the end of the month," the owner explains. Then, shooting an appraising eye up and down Our Intrepid Heroes' forms, she ventures, "Let me guess: You guys are here antiquing?" Dean clearly thinks that one through for a moment before deciding to play along. "How'd you know?" he grins. "You look the type," the owner grins back with a friendly and conspiratorial wink. "So," she offers, getting back to the booking, "king-sized bed?" Dean's eyes widen a bit as Sammy splutters and stammers and splutters some more before finally choking out, "Two singles! We're just brothers!" "That's not what I've heard," Raoul archly notes. "At least," he clarifies, "not if I'm to believe what I've read in any of those thousands of pieces of gutter-trash fan fiction positively littering the Internet nowadays." Oh, Raoul! Fan fiction? Really? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. "I'll admit my curiosity got the better of me one lengthy and tiresome afternoon," Raoul allows, "but never again! Those things could inflict permanent damage upon one's brain." True, that. Now, where were we? "The 'homosexual panic' portion of this evening's festivities, I believe." Oh, yes. Talk about tiresome.
In any event, the inn's owner hastily apologizes for her incorrect assumptions and, embarrassed, drops her eyes to the guest register to complete the booking. Dean -- clearly disconcerted over the fact that his carefully constructed image was so completely misinterpreted -- goes to great lengths to maintain an affable and nonchalant smile on his face, and gulps a couple of times before too-casually wondering, "Whadja mean we looked the type?" She looks up at him, thrown by the fact that he'd press the matter rather than dropping it, and her glance involuntarily flutters from his luxuriously lashed doe eyes to his carefully gelled hair as she discovers to her immense discomfort that she's at an utter loss for words. Heh. Fortunately for both of them, Sam leaps into the awkwardness at this juncture to change the topic of conversation to anything else, and he picks up on the whole antiquing business to use it as an opening for the following: "You have a really interesting urn on the front porch -- where did you get that?" "You know, I have no idea," she replies, gratefully slipping back into gracious hostess mode. "It's been there forever." Booking complete, she rings for the bellman as she hands Dean his fake credit card and room key. "You'll be staying in Room 237," she notes. Despite Dean's supposedly obsessive familiarity with the works of Jack Nicholson, he does not, in fact, immediately reply, "Are you fucking crazy?" while flinging the key straight back into her pretty smile. Rather, he thanks her and turns to get a faceful of the elderly bellman "Sherwin" as the latter arrives to collect their bags. "Let me guess," Sherwin begins, nodding politely at the boys, "antiquers?" Wah. Wah. Waaaaaaaaaaah.
Sherwin drags Dean's duffel up the stairs and over towards Room 237 as the boys trail behind him, listening as the bellman offers a brief history of The Pierpont. While we do learn he refers to the owner most respectfully as "Miss Susan," there's not much else to bother with at the moment, though Sherwin does note he "practically grew up" in the place, as he followed his parents into service at the inn many, many years ago. He escorts the boys to their room, and after a bit of purportedly comical business over the tip with Dean, he leaves them alone so Sam might review their research to date while Dean mocks the décor -- specifically what appears to be a 100-year-old wedding dress affixed to one of the walls. "That's normal," Dean scoffs before wondering, "Why the hell would anyone stay here? I'm amazed they kept in business this long." Sam ignores him to review the facts: "Victim number one, Joan Edison, 43 years old, a realtor handling the sale of the hotel, and victim number two was Larry Williams, moving some stuff out to Goodwill." Our Intrepid Heroes quickly notice that the relevant connection between the two involves their respective roles in "shutting the place down," and suppose that someone who doesn't want to leave is using hoodoo to fight back. They quickly absolve Susan of responsibility, as she is, after all, the person who's selling the place. Sherwin briefly falls under Dean's suspicions, but Sam's finely tuned Spidey-sense makes him shake his shaggy mane at the very idea. Or something like that. Dean shrugs his shoulders around and changes the subject to note, "Of course, the more troubling question is why do these people assume we're gay?" Sam, never raising his eyes from his research, blandly offers, "Well, you are kind of butch -- probably think you're overcompensating." And I have no desire to deal with that at all, so let's skip ahead to the scene, shall we? "Capital idea!" Raoul agrees, for some reason affecting his speech with archaic exclamations. "I'm bored, darling," Raoul sighs by way of response. "What happened to the gore?" What, indeed?
We're treated to a slow-moving, low-angled tracking shot down the second floor's hallway as Sam and Dean snoop around the place. Sam pauses to lift a vase from a table of knick-knacks and spies another five-spot on the interior of the thing, right below the rim. The boys exchange knowing looks for a moment before Dean edges over to a door marked "PRIVATE." Miss Susan answers when he knocks, and both the audience and Our Intrepid Heroes get an eyeful of the antique porcelain dolls occupying every available surface of the room behind her. After a bit of supposedly funny business wherein Dean talks their way into Miss Susan's personal quarters by convincing her that Sam's an antique doll freak, the boys enter and subtly scour the place for clues. Miss Susan notes the dolls are all family heirlooms while Sam wows about the massive and meticulously detailed dollhouse. Soon enough, he fumbles across the burn-victim sailor from the opening sequence, still lying at the foot of the dollhouse's main stairs. "His head got twisted around," Sam hmmms aloud, hoisting the creepy little thing into the air so Dean might get a gander. "What happened to it?"" Sam asks. "Tyler, probably," Miss Susan replies, just as the creepy moppet in question comes a-scampering into the room with, "Mommy! Maggie's being mean!" "Tell her I said to be nice, okay?" Miss Susan instructs with a subtly patronizing roll of her eyes. Sam leaps at the opportunity to pump the kid for information and, in the guise of the doll expert he's supposed to be at the moment, asks Tyler what happened to the burn-victim sailor. Tyler truthfully replies she hasn't the faintest, and denies that either she or Maggie would ever willingly break one of the dolls, as such an action would upset "Grandma Rose." All of the dolls belong to her, you see. "And where's Grandma Rose now?" Dean leads. As Tyler answers, "Up in her room," the camera pans in on an empty-faced brunette doll slouched to its right on one of the shelves before cross-fading to take in a wheelchair-bound ancient slouched in the darkness of the inn's attic, silhouetted against the dying afternoon light streaming in through the dormers at the far side of the room. "I'd really like to talk to Rose about her incredible dolls," Sam's voice begins as the camera continues its silent journey across the attic floor towards the woman in the wheelchair. The shot abruptly snaps back to Miss Susan's hard face as she just as abruptly shuts Sam down with, "No!" Both boys flinch visibly at the sharp response. "I mean," Miss Susan flusters, softening her tone, "I'm afraid that's impossible -- my mother's been very sick, and she's not taking any visitors." The camera then jumps down to poor little Tyler, who looks woebegone at the mention of her beloved grandmother's illness. "IT'S AN ACT!" Raoul shrieks, eager to jump-start any sort of excitement at all. "She's killing them all! Be mindful of the supremely foul wickedness of the preadolescent, boys! THEY'LL STOP AT NOTHING TO GET WHAT THEY WANT, DO YOU HEAR ME?! NOTHING!" I don't think it's working, Raoul. "Eh," Raoul sighs, settling back into his overstuffed armchair. "It was worth a shot."
Out in the hall, the boys run through all of the evidence that might link the locked-away granny to the recent spate of unnatural deaths. In addition to the five-spots etched everywhere, there's also the fact that dolls are quite famously utilized in voodoo circles to bewitch or curse a practitioner's enemies. Dean decides to head off in search of this mysterious grandmother, while Sam's to remain in Room 237 to surf The Wide Wide World Of Web for "old obits, freak accidents, and that sort of thing" to see if Grandma Rose has "whacked anybody before." "Don't go surfin' porn," Dean calls out over his shoulder as he bow-leggedly lopes away. "That's not the kind of whackin' I mean." Sam flaps his arms around in the air at Dean's retreating back and purses his lips into a pissy little bitchface of outrage. I guess that was funny. "Mildly," Raoul opines. "More importantly, it's functioning as a bit of a shout-out to the online fans who will not stop chattering about Darling Sammy's close brush with Cinemax-style lesbianism." Uh, snore? "Don't worry, Demian," Raoul assures me. "The fan shout-outs later in the episode are much more satisfying." I think I knew that, because I, too, have already seen the rest of the episode, but I really shouldn't get into it with Raoul right now, so let's keep this moving, shall we?
Downstairs, Miss Susan's signing away her rights to the inn under the snooty eye of the closer the real estate conglomerate sent over to finalize the deal, and long story short, she discovers they intend to raze the place for new development. Miss Susan's more than a little put out at the news, as she was under the impression they'd be renovating the building rather than demolishing it, and...scene.
Up in front of the dollhouse, Tyler's setting the table for a tea party with a quartet of Grandma's creepy porcelain antiques. Oblivious to the ominous drift of the camera, she contently hums a tuneless, meandering run of notes to herself as the shot slowly tracks over to yet another burn-victim doll perched upon a bed in one of the miniature rooms. With Tyler's tuneless humming our only accompaniment throughout what follows, the camera cuts over to the closer, who happens to be sitting in his own room in a position remarkably similar to the latest burn victim's. Back at the dollhouse, the burn victim's door pops its latch of its own accord and slowly creaks open -- an action paralleled in the real world, as well. The closer loosens his necktie. Meanwhile, Tyler contently pours nonexistent beverages for her creepy, glass-eyed guests until something in the dollhouse distracts her. She turns to discover the latest little burn victim hanging by his neck from the tiny room's tiny ceiling fan. As the portentous strings arrive to assume control of the soundtrack, the camera cuts to an overhead of the closer's lodging, where we find him dangling a few inches above the carpet, jerking uncontrollably as he strangles to death from the ceiling fan's cords wrapped around his neck. The closer's body goes limp just in time to vanish into the METAL TEETH CHOMP! "That was disappointing." Shhhh! I'm on a deadline, and this is taking forever!
Inn. Aftermath. Sam pushes aside the curtain in his room to watch as the local coroner's department loads the closer's bagged corpse into a van. He leans heavily against the window's frame, almost on the verge of tears, before angrily flinging the curtains back into place and vanishing. Meanwhile, a stricken Miss Susan climbs the front steps to offer Dean an explanation for the commotion, adding somewhat bleakly, "I don't understand -- we've had a lot of bad luck around here." "Look," she rather generously offers, "if you want to check out, I'll give you a full refund." "No thanks," Dean replies, eyeing the morbid activity in the drive for a moment before returning his eyes to hers. "I don't scare that easily."
Upstairs, the door to Room 237's ajar, with the key still in the lock. Dean arrives and wastes not a moment retrieving the key before plunging into the room with the bad news. "I know," Sam croaks from his blurry slouch in one of the room's chairs in the background of the frame. "I saw." "What'd you find out about Granny?" Dean demands, futzing around with something in his backpack. From behind him comes a woozily complaining, "You're bossy!" Dean freezes, then whips his head around at the somewhat bedraggled Sammy, who's just now coming into focus on the screen. Sam elaborately flops his arms out in some sort of "Um, duuuuuh!" half-shrug and repeats, "You're bossy!" He thinks as best he can for a moment before giggling to add, "And short!" Hee! If Sam mocks Dean's clompy bow-legged stomp of angry determination, my work here is done. Alas, it is not to be. "Are you drunk?" Dean eyebrows. "Yeah!" Sam challenges. "So?" As Dean spins around to note the fifteen empty mini booze bottles scattered across the top of the room's courtesy refrigerator, drunken Sam slings a pouty "Stupid!" at Dean's back. Heh. And then what had been a somewhat amusing scene up to this point goes all to hell as Drunken Sammy starts wallowing in The Angst That Will Kill The Recapper to blather on and on and on about the dead closer and the missing Ava and Destiny! and If I Don't Save Everyone, You'll Have To Kill Me Like Daddy Shut Up Said! and snooooore. "Yeah, well Dad's an ass!" Dean snaps back in response to Sam's last bit of moaning. "He never should have said anything! I mean, you don't do that -- you don't lay that kind of crap on your kids!" "See what I said about the shout-outs becoming more satisfying as the episode progresses?" Raoul inquires. Yes, Raoul. Yes, I do. However, The Angst is goose-stepping all over whatever fun I should be having at this moment, so let's get this over with, shall we? Sam's drunk and shouty, so Dean slams "Sasquatch" onto the latter's bed with orders to get some damn sleep already, and Sam gets all clingy and gross the way the overly inebriated all too frequently do, and then Sam finally passes out on his stomach. Dean frets as Raoul and I theatrically stifle a pair of yawns.
Unable to sleep because he finally agreed to kill Sam just to get him to shut the hell up or whatever, Dean ambles down the main staircase to angle through the main floor, eventually arriving in the manor's grand dining room with its illuminated-from-below bar, and bravo to the production design staff for so nicely evoking the Gold Room scene in The Shining. What follows between Dean and old Sherwin -- here acting as the inn's barkeep -- bears absolutely no resemblance at all to events in the movie, of course, but it is, visually speaking, a nice little homage. In any event, Dean and Sherwin gossip about the recent spate of unnatural deaths over a couple of glasses of whiskey for a bit until they gather up their cocktails so Sherwin might lead Dean on an impromptu tour of The Pierpont and its many, many secrets. Out on the stairwell, Sherwin indicates a photograph of young Grandma Rose and a preadolescent Miss Susan in happier days, and we get the entire history of the place in a few brief sentences. In short (snerk), the inn is actually the family's ancestral estate, and now Rose is to be shipped off to an assisted living facility so the real estate developers can rip down the old place to toss up McMansions, or something. Dean makes appropriate sympathetic noises as they shift their attention to another set of framed portraits on a nearby table. One of them features Rose as a girl, posing with her Creole nanny, Marie. Nanny Marie's apron features a prominent five-spot on the bodice. DUzzzzzzzzz! Sherwin places the picture more prominently on the nearby mantle as Dean silently nods his head around, all, "Well, that's interesting." "It's really not, my dear boy," Raoul sighs, "but I suppose we'll go along with your assessment of the situation for now."
The morning, Dean arrives back at Room 237 from some errand to find Sam praying to the porcelain god. "How you feelin', Sammy?" Dean too-cheerfully calls out. Sam groans. "Yeah," Dean agrees, "I guess mixing whiskey and Jager wasn't such a gangbuster idea, was it?" Wait a minute. What the hell kind of high-end tourist inn keeps miniature bottles of Jagermeister in its courtesy refrigerators? "The kind that's going bankrupt?" Raoul guesses. Oh. Well. Never mind, then. Dean references Weird Science just to make Sammy puke again before finally getting down to business, informing Sam of Grandma Rose's hoodoo-practicing nanny, and a short time later...
...Our Intrepid Heroes are picking the lock on Miss Susan's PRIVATE living quarters in search of Grandma Rose. After copious amounts of sneak-fu up a near-hidden back staircase and hallway, they eventually arrive in Grandma Rose's attic room, where they find the wheelchair-bound gal staring listlessly at the rain running down her garret's windows. Sam takes one look at the woman's slouched posture and distant-yet-vaguely-horrified expression, and hustles Dean into a corner for a chat. "This woman's had a stroke!" Sam hisses. "But hoodoo's hands-on!" Dean murmurs, perplexed. "You gotta mix herbs, and chant, and build an altar..." "...so it can't be Rose," Sam finishes for him. "Maybe it's not even hoodoo." Dean takes a moment to stare down the wrecked figure in the wheelchair before announcing, "She could be faking." "Yeah, what do you wanna do, poke her with a stick?" Sam snorts. Dean shrugs and nods his head around, all, "You know, that's not such a bad..." "Dude!" Sam whispers, outraged. "You are not gonna poke her with a stick!" Hee. Just then, Miss Susan barges into the lonely garret to break up all the fun. "What the hell?" she growls, crossing instantly to her disabled mother. "Look at her!" she exclaims. "She's scared out of her wits!" Susan turns on the intruders, demanding, "I want you out of my hotel in two minutes, or I'm calling the cops!" Busted, the boys don't even attempt to talk their way out of it. Thunder rolls across the soundtrack as we get another close-up of Grandma Rose's distant-yet-vaguely-horrified expression, and I've got to hand it to the actress they hired for this part; she's conveying an awful lot using little more than her eyes. "Then again," Raoul notes, peering at me over his reading glasses after perusing her entry on the Internet Movie Database, "her resume seems to consist entirely of roles entitled 'Old Woman,' 'Elderly Woman,' 'Old Arthritic Woman,' 'Crazy Lady,' and 'Parkinson's Sufferer,' so I think she's had a little experience in the field." Excellent point, my friend. Excellent point.
In any event, the thing we know, Metallicar's grumbling off down the driveway as Miss Susan glares at the vanishing Impala from the inn's front porch.
Upstairs, Tyler and Maggie are playing a round of jacks on the grand staircase's first landing as Miss Susan bangs through the front door to look up at them with her hands on her hips and wonder, "Have you started packing yet?" "No," Tyler replies. "Why not?" Miss Susan shoots back. "I don't want to move," comes the somewhat whiny reply. "Maggie says we're not allowed to move," Tyler adds, making sure to include that special emphasis. "Tyler," Susan exasperates, "enough. Maggie is imaginary, you are too old to have an imaginary friend, and I am done pretending." DUN! Sort of. Maybe. I made the mistake of reading the sides when they initially appeared on the forum boards, and this reveal was included in the script pages for Susan, so I knew it was coming all along. I've no idea how those unfamiliar with the twist reacted to it as it appeared on the screen, but still. ["I caught on about 30 seconds before the reveal and kind of slapped my forehead, because I really should have caught on sooner. For whatever that's worth. Which is nothing." -- Joe R] I have to admit they did an excellent job of keeping Maggie's true identity hidden from the audience up to this point while maintaining the plausibility of the reveal -- particularly that bit where both of them scampered around Sam earlier, but only Tyler actually ran into him -- so bravo to them. "Eh," Raoul shrugs. "They'd have done an even better job had they not cast Conchita Campbell in the part. That child's quickly becoming this decade's Patty McCormack. Shudder."
In any event, with that last line, Susan disappears further into the manor. Left alone with Maggie, Tyler nervously glances over at the preadolescent menace, who simply stares the idiot child down for a very long moment before intoning, "I don't like her." "Eeeeeeeek!" shrieks Raoul, right before all of us drop into the METAL TEETH CHOMP! "I'm not accustomed to using such language, but Conchita Campbell scares the crap out of me!"
Some time later -- and we might be talking a couple of days, here, for all I know -- Susan totes a packing box out to her car. Sherwin motors past in an ancient pick-up truck with an offer of assistance, but Susan just smiles her thanks, insisting she can handle it all on her own. "Okay, then," Sherwin nods, all kindly and such before calling out a "See you later!" as he tools off down the driveway.
Meanwhile, upstairs at the dollhouse, Tyler runs a little metal wind-up cavalry drummer along the miniature's front walk as the camera rises slowly above her head to settle upon the toy playground equipment at the far end of the model's façade. One of the swings on the set begins rocking back and forth, followed shortly by the other. Tyler catches the movement out of the corner of her eye and turns her head to stare at the things as they begin swinging higher and faster, all of their own accord.
Down on the driveway, a chill wind kicks up just as Susan's about to return indoors. She hears the chains on the actual swing set creak, and is unsettled to note that only one of the swings is swaying in the breeze. Instead of, oh, I don't know... "...GETTING THE HELL OUT OF THERE IMMEDIATELY?" Raoul helpfully shrieks, clapping a paw to his forehead at Susan's stupidity. Yes, Raoul. Exactly. Instead of getting the hell out of there immediately, Susan turns to investigate just as the other swing, too, begins flinging itself backwards and forwards into the air. The moment she steps into the small playground proper, the empty seesaw starts rocking up and down, and the camera jumps back up to the dollhouse so we can see the same happening up there, as well. Tyler, because she is a creepy preadolescent girl, does not run screaming from the room, but rather sits there staring blankly at it all, because she is likely dark demonic force sent straight from the flaming maw of Hell. "Forget the 'likely,'" Raoul asserts. "She is. They all are. Trust me."
Just as something supernatural assumes control of Susan's car, sparking the ignition and throwing the thing into gear, everything over at Susan's end of the front yard goes completely batshit insane, with the merry-go-round whipping around and around as the seesaw teeters uncontrollably and the swings practically loop themselves around the set's support bar. Dutch angles abound as Susan, weeping openly, slowly backs away from the Satanic playground equipment. Unfortunately for her, it's at that very moment the something in her car decides it's time to run her over. Fortunately for her, Action Sammy's apparently been lurking in the bushes this entire time, and now leaps out to tackle her to the far side of the playground, leaving the possessed automobile to plow harmlessly into a tree. "You okay?" Action Sammy pants. "I...I think so," Susan shudders, still a little weepy. Dean skitters over to haul both of them to their feet. "Let's get inside!"
The three stagger into the grand dining room, and Susan collapses into a chair, shakily begging for a slug of whiskey. "I know the feeling," Captain Empathy assures her as he hustles to the bar to comply with her request. With stray tears still running down her cheeks, Susan demands of Dean, "What the hell happened out there?" Dean blinks. "You want the truth?" "Of course!" Susan insists. "Well, at first we thought it was some kind of hoodoo curse," Dean explains. "But that out there?" he continues, gesturing towards the windows. "That was definitely a spirit." "You're insane," Susan states, knocking back her just-arrived cocktail. "It's been said," Dean allows. Sam apologizes for the boys being so blunt about things, then asks when, exactly, Grandma Rose suffered her stroke. Sure enough, it was "about a month ago," right before the spate of unnatural deaths began at the inn. Our Intrepid Heroes bang their heads together and quickly realize Grandma Rose was using the five-spot hoodoo urns to ward off some sort of wicked entity, and the minute she was unable to do so, said entity -- and I think we all know it's Maggie, by now -- immediately began running roughshod over the inn and its numerous unwanted guests. Susan starts making baffled and outraged noises, but Sam cuts through the crap to lay it on the line: "You and your family are in danger, all right? So you need to clear everyone out of here -- your employees, your mother, your daughters, everyone." Susan gapes for a moment, then informs them she has only one child. Upon learning Maggie's "imaginary," Our Dear Boys shoot each other A Look Fraught With Significance before Sam urgently breathes, "Where's Tyler?"
Meanwhile, up in the garret, Grandma Rose practically vibrates with fear, and a few tears trickle out of her good eye before the camera leaps back from the close-up to reveal Maggie standing before her. "She's going to stay here with me," Maggie vows, "and you can't stop me." Rose works her mouth around futilely as Maggie stresses, "There's nothing you can do about it." Way to kick an old lady when she's down, girlie. "I'd comment," Raoul confesses, "but I'm too scared to look at the television screen at the moment. Do let me know when they've finally salted and burned the frightful little wretch's bones." Uh. In any event, Tyler arrives to scold Maggie for torturing poor Grandma, and wonders if she and Maggie can go have a tea party with poor Grandma's creepy-ass dolls. "We can have lots of tea parties," Maggie assures her while glancing back to torment old Rose some more. "Forever...and ever...and ever." Raoul! That last screencap is delightful! "I knew you'd enjoy it." The girls disappear into the hall, leaving Rose alone to tremble and weep. You can almost hear her screaming for help somewhere deep inside that immobile body of hers until the METAL TEETH CHOMP! arrives to drag her away. Getting old sucks.
Susan, Sam, and Dean burst through the door to the family's private quarters in search of Tyler, only to find all of the antique dolls in pieces on the floor. No, I don't know what all that's about, but I'm guessing they cut out a scene similar to the one in Interview With A Vampire where Claudia pitches a massive hissy over being trapped in a child's body forever and starts trashing her dolls, only in this version, of course, incorporeal Maggie has Tyler do all the dirty work for her. Then again, I could be totally wrong, and this is just some sort of bizarre fuck-up on the writer's part. In any event, in the midst of all the frenzied searching for Susan's daughter, the boys finally think to pump her for information on this Maggie person, and Susan eventually remembers that her mother had an older sister of that name who drowned in the pool. D'OH! "Come on," Dean growls, and the three race out of the room.
Over in the estate's absolutely glorious poolhouse -- seriously, the pool itself, along with the changing areas, is sort of sunk one story into the ground, with the aboveground balcony area atop it covered by a greenhouse canopy of glass, and where in the hell did the location scouts find this fantastic place, anyway? -- um. Where was I? Oh, yeah: Maggie's convinced Tyler to clamber over the balcony's railing and hang above the plastic-covered pool below with only her weak grip on the bar keeping her from certain doom. Tyler's a moron, yo. Long story short, Maggie attempts to talk Tyler into taking the plunge, knowing that Tyler can't swim. After Tyler also drowns in the pool, then, she and Maggie can keep each other company for all eternity on the grounds of the ancestral estate. Yeah, don't bother asking where Tyler's Reaper fits in as far as this grand scheme is concerned, because you won't be getting an answer. Whatever. I've found this episode doesn't hang together very well at all upon multiple viewings, and I've thus no desire to linger with it any longer than I have to. "I stopped paying attention to the details scenes ago," Raoul notes. "Pity, because it was an intriguing idea while it lasted." Which was what, ten minutes? "Significantly less." Raoul's heartless when he's disappointed. In any event, just when Maggie's almost convinced Tyler to take the swim that needs no towel, Our Intrepid Trio slam themselves against the upper balcony's outer glass doors to scream Tyler back from the edge, or something. Crafty Maggie's worked some mojo on the exits, incidentally, and the glass is now near shatterproof. No, don't ask for an explanation for that, either, because there isn't any coming. Crafty Maggie, annoyed by the appearance of Tyler's mother, knocks it off with the persuasion already and simply pushes Tyler into the pool below. Hee. Tyler immediately entangles herself in the plastic sheeting stretched across the water, and sinks to the bottom to drown. Susan and Dean, horrified, race to the back entrance while Action Sammy continues to ram against the glass with his cast. Finally realizing that metal is better for smashing things than plaster is, Sam hoists a nearby urn from its moorings and starts jamming the thing into the door. Meanwhile, Tyler's somehow managed to surface, but Crafty Maggie pushes her head back underwater. Elsewhere, Susan and El Deano reach the pool's back entrance, but Maggie's mojo keeps Dean from kicking the door down. Finally -- finally -- just as Tyler's abandoning her struggle, a disembodied girl's voice calls out for "Margaret," and Crafty Maggie, for whatever reason, dematerializes to, um, shoot up through that fantastic greenhouse canopy? We'll go with that, because I so do not care at this point.
The upshot of all that is that now, with Crafty Maggie gone, her mad door-blocking mojo's gone with her, so Action Sammy instantly smashes through the glass to vault over the balcony and into the pool. "That cast is going to reek once it dries!" Raoul shrieks. Dude, I thought you stopped paying attention. "I did," Raoul assures me, "but everyone knows one shouldn't pass up an opportunity to ogle a wet Jared Padalecki." Well! Indeed. In any event, everything grinds down into slow-motion, and I'm tempted to take a quick nap as Dean and Susan a-t l-o-n-g l-a-s-t make it through the back entrance while Action Sammy s-l-o-w-l-y retrieves the limp Tyler from the bottom of the pool. After a few "tense" moments, Tyler coughs up a lungful of chlorinated water, and great is the rejoicing when Tyler confirms that Maggie has left the building. I repeat: Maggie has left the building. "You're resorting to Elvis references?" Raoul sniffs. "You poor boy. Just cut to the end, already."
I would, friend of friends, but first I have to head back to the garret, where Crafty Maggie's conducting a bizarre, one-sided conversation with Grandma Rose. Ooops! My bad. Grandma Rose is apparently telepathically chatting with Maggie, even though Maggie's answering aloud, even though Maggie's a ghost, and absolutely nothing about this episode is making any sort of sense anymore, so screw it. The sisters reach an agreement, and Maggie draws a hand across Rose's cheek.
Meanwhile, the rescue party's returned to the manor, and Susan and Tyler head up the back stairs to drag Granny out of the house while Dean and Wet Sam remain on the floor below to fret about Maggie's disappearance. Susan's sharp howl of agony, however, sends them racing up to the garret, where they find Rose dead. And do we get a METAL TEETH CHOMP! as everyone collapses into the final commercial break? NO! NO, we do NOT! "I think you should give this episode an F simply for that dreadful omission right there," Raoul opines. Don't think I'm not considering it, bucko. Ugh.
The Pierpont. Aftermath. The coroner wheels poor dead Grandma away, and after the boys and Susan confirm Tyler can no longer find Maggie anywhere in the inn, everybody's all, "Well, guess it's all over, then!" "RIP OFF!" Raoul shrieks. "WHERE ARE THE BURNING BONES? I WANT MY BURNING BONES! I WANT MY BURNING BONES! I WANT MY BURNING BONES!" Raoul, I didn't know you cared so much anymore. "Honestly? I don't. But I did think it only proper I put in the effort." Thanks, I'm sure, but I think the effort's been wasted. This denouement is pathetic. "Well, I didn't want to say anything. After all, this season's been going so well." Except for "No Exit," of course. "And 'Croatoan.' Don't forget 'Croatoan.' Lord, I thought that one was going to kill me." You and me bo-- What's that? You'd all rather know what's actually happening in this scene, instead of listening to me and Raoul blathering on? Okay. We can play it that way, but I'm warning you: This scene is dull as hell.
Our Intrepid Heroes escort Susan and Tyler to a waiting taxi, and Susan takes a moment to offer Sam a hug brimming with gratitude before driving off with her daughter. Once they're gone, Sam and Dean amble back to the Impala, where Sam admits he remembers everything he told Dean during his bout of drunkenness "last night." "You were drunk!" Dean protests. "But you weren't," Sam counters, "and you promised." Um. Erm. Uh-oh. Promised to what, again? "To kill him if he turned evil, darling. Don't you remember?" Pffft. Guess I do now. Whatever would I do without you, Raoul? "Crash and burn!" Not funny. Not funny at all, and so very, very beneath you. In any event, the boys climb into the car, and although Dean looks like there are about three thousand different Sam-related aggravated emotions he'd rather express verbally at the moment, he remains silent as he wheels Metallicar out of The Pierpont's parking lot and down the main drive.
The camera lingers on the "Vacancy" sign for a moment before cross-fading to track through the inn's open front door. In the distance on the mantel, we can see that photograph of little Rose with Creole Marie, and for a very long time when this initially aired, I really believed they were going to pull a Shining at the end of this shot and have Maggie appear in the photograph along with her sister and the nanny. Doesn't happen. We simply linger on little Rose's face for a while until the shot cross-fades again to another low-angled track through the upper floor's hallway, and here I thought they'd pull a Shining by having raging torrents of blood explode into the corridor from the passageways beyond, but that doesn't happen, either. Sigh. "Don't ask too much of low-budget horror," Raoul sagely counsels. "If you do, there will be nothing but heartache waiting for you at the end." Speaking of heartache, the slow, low-angled tracking shot has finally arrived at its destination, and we watch the spirits of Rose and Maggie, both of them preadolescent for all eternity, merrily skipping rope together on the carpet in front of the dollhouse under the glassy -- yet watchful -- eyes of Rose's numerous porcelain antiques. WHICH WERE SMASHED TO BITS FIVE SCENES AGO. GOD! We linger with all the tiny terrors for a moment until the camera discreetly pulls back into the final blackout.
What the fuck did that mean? Oy.
week, there's some sort of demonic hostage situation in a bank. All I ask is that it make sense. Please, show. Please?