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News of a series of robberies at banks and jewelry stores in Milwaukee, Wisconsin -- in which the perpetrators bizarrely commit suicide after committing the crimes -- sets the boys' collective Spidey-sense to tingling, so it's off to the land of the cheeseheads we go, where Sam and Dean, with the assistance of a doomed conspiracy theorist, quickly realize a particularly avaricious shape-shifter is responsible for the spree. Unfortunately, just as Our Intrepid Heroes go undercover at the only bank along the shape-shifter's sewer line that hasn't been hit, the doomed conspiracy theorist decides to take matters into his own tubby hands, locking the place down in a hostage situation that draws the unwelcome attention of both the local police and the FBI. The boys team briefly with the conspiracy theorist, but after a SWAT sniper takes out the fat guy, they're left to their own devices with a vault full of potential suspects inside the bank and a federal agent with a Winchester-shaped axe to grind outdoors. The guys finally manage to isolate the shifter, and after some awesome hand-to-hand combat during which we are treated to copious amounts of slimy gore, Dean kills her -- yes, her -- with a silver letter opener. And then? Why, only the MOST AWESOME ENDING, EVER! As the SWAT teams storm the bank, silent-but-deadly Action Sammy lurks in the shadows before pouncing to take two of them out, and the boys don the gentlemen's concealing uniforms to escape, right beneath the FBI's noses. And as Styx's "Renegade" arrives to fucking own the soundtrack, Our Dear Boys slump into Metallicar's front seat and realize they are oh, so very screwed. I can't wait to find out what happens ! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Crackle, Crackle THEN! "Skin," mainly, especially the bit where NotDean's teeth worm their way out of his gums, just to gross us completely out all over again, with a little bit of "The Usual Suspects," including the scene wherein Linda Blair informs Action Sammy of El Deano's arrest for mur-- hey! What the hell? Just as Action Sammy's about to work himself into a pissily outraged fit over the charges against his brother, this "Breaking News" logo from Channel 8 slams onto the screen with a stereotypical "ding-ding-DING!" breaking-news-type music cue and appropriate teletype clatter in the background, despite the fact that no one's used a teletype machine in thirty-five years. Some on the boards -- who, one would hope, actually have a VHF Channel 8 affiliated with The CW in their viewing area -- actually believed the program was being interrupted, but I just thought someone at the network screwed up the edit and accidentally omitted the Crackle, Crackle NOW!
In any event, Asian Reporter Tricia Takanawa brings us up to speed on the hostage situation currently unfolding inside The City Bank Of Milwaukee at 685 West Hastings Street, an address which does not in fact exist in The City Of Beer, but does in fact happen to be the location of The Royal Bank in Vancouver. Go figure. "Though a short exchange of weapons fire occurred just minutes ago," Asian Reporter Tricia Takanawa tells us, "police and SWAT teams maintain position as we enter the third hour of this intense standoff." While she'd been babbling on, the news camera jumped all over the place to take in scores of squad cars, police, and nosy bystanders before landing on a pair of snipers training their rifles down at the bank below from a couple of windows high atop a nearby clock tower. There's more boilerplate breaking-news coverage until a commotion erupts at the bank's front door. The camera jerkily focuses in on three or four SWAT guys huddled to an ambulance, covering the EMTs as the latter haul a gurney out of the back. There are another half-dozen or so SWATs arrayed around the door itself, ready to open fire on whomever's about to emerge. And as that person happens to be a bank security guard on the far end of middle age who pleads, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" with his hands in the air, the SWATs' commanding officer orders them to hold their fire via an open police radio within range of the reporter's microphone. In the blurry distance, we can see a flannel-clad figure pushing the guard down the steps, and we hear a man's voice shout, "Don't even think about it!" The news camera jerks around again before zooming in on the flannel-clad gent, and DUN! It's El Deano! Putting those luxuriously lashed doe eyes of his to perfect use, as it turns out, for the instant he realizes he's being filmed, he freezes like a deer in the headlights. The news camera wobbles a bit more as Dean gapes until he's gobbled up by the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
RAAAWWWR! "Eeeeeeeeeeeee!" shrieks Raoul, The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon, who was uncharacteristically quiet during that opening sequence. "Only because that opening sequence was uncharacteristically short!" You realize you just left me the perfect opening to mock Jensen Ackles's relatively diminutive stature, don't you? "Well, don't take advantage of it for once! That opening certainly was oddly dull for this show, and I do realize that situation's not about to improve for some minutes, but the latter two-thirds of the hour is simply so fraught with tension and suspense and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE! that you need to get yourself there posthaste!" Um, I'll get on that right away, Raoul. Okay? "Okay!"
Through the blackness that follows come the words "Milwaukee, Wisconsin" at the bottom of the screen before the location card amends itself with "One Day Ago." An overly thin brunette with rather prominently displayed mammaries boobs her way through the location card to flirt, "So what's it like being an FBI guy?" Barely covering those prominently displayed mammaries of hers is a top so ghastly, I find myself on the teetering on the verge of a horrifically painful flashback to Rose McGowan spasmodically slurring her way through the very last episode of Charmed, ever, and as that is a place I've no desire to revisit in this or any other lifetime, I'll be doing my best to focus on the brunette's face during what follows. Not trying terribly hard to focus on the brunette's face at all is El Deano, who turns to answer her question with a suavely casual, "Well, it's dangerous." "And the secrets we gotta keep?" he continues, shaking his head slightly while slathering on the charm. "God, the secrets," he muses all faux-wistfully before concluding with heavy amounts of innuendo, "But mostly, it's lonely." "I so know what you mean!" the brunette vows solemnly, and she so does not, because she's a salesgirl in a jewelry store in Milwaukee, for God's sake, but she just wants the fine specimen before her to whisk her off to her boudoir, like, yesterday, and who the hell can blame her what with the way El Deano's shoulders are working that dark overcoat of his to death and the store's soft white lighting is hitting his preternaturally gorgeous mug at just the right angle and the eyes and the cheekbones and the smile and I have got to skip ahead to the scene because I am never going to make it through the recap alive at this rate.
And that strategy fails almost before it even begins, because Darling Sammy's sporting his Sunday Go-To-Meetin' coif and his shoulders are working his own goddamned dark overcoat to death, so let's just stick to the facts, shall we? The store's manager exposits for Sam's benefit, "Helena was our head buyer -- she was family, you know? She said it herself, every year at the Christmas party, she said we were the only family she had." "So there were never any signs she'd do something like this?" Sam leads. The manager confirms that and adds that he can't believe it even now before finally revealing what "it" is. On the night in question, Helena returned to the store after closing and cleared out all of the display cases, as well as the safe. When the store's veteran and aged night watchman caught her in the act, Helena somehow stripped him of his gun and shot him in the face. "And why were we not witness to that?!" Raoul shrieks, feeling cheated. "We haven't seen anybody getting shot in the face in months on this show, and even then it was only a zombie!" I sympathize with your disappointment, Raoul, but please. There's exposition I must attend to, here. "Fine!" Raoul harrumphs. "But let the record show that I am not happy with this development!" Gotcha. In any event, Sam asks for a possible motive, eliciting a perplexed, "What motive?" from the store's manager. "It makes no sense," he elaborates. "Why steal all those diamonds -- all that jewelry -- and then, what? Just dump it somewhere? Just hide it, and then go home and..."
"...she killed herself?" Dean eyebrows at the brunette back in their section of the shop. "Well, the cops said she dropped the hairdryer into the bathtub and fried herself," the brunette gossips, far less concerned over her coworkers' untimely and violent deaths than her boss is. "They should know, right?" "And we'd know as well, if the heartless miscreants responsible for this show had actually allowed us to see it!" Raoul! Exposition! Now! "Pffft!" Raoul snorts, two perfectly round rings of smoke bursting from his nostrils, currently flared with righteous indignation. Oh, now, stop it. We'll get to the good part soon, okay? Just, I don't know, go back to filing your claws, or maybe work on that sweater you've been knitting for your husband Jack Bauer, or something. "Ooooh! Excellent idea! I'm having such a time recreating that delightful scene from the fifth season for the front of it -- you know, the one where my husband Jack Bauer presses a box cutter up against the terrified eye of the president's faithless Chief Of Staff!" Sounds fabulous, Raoul. Now may I continue? "By all means!"
ANY-way, where was I? Oh, yes. Dean processes this newest bit of information and offers his thanks to "Frannie," noting she's given him all he needs at the moment. "Really?" she perks, not at all eager to see him leave. "I mean, 'cause I've got more," if you know what she means, and I think you do, "if you want to interview me sometime...in private?" Dean considers her proposition for all of a microsecond before asking Frannie to write down her number. Heh.
Meanwhile, Sam confirms that the manager himself never saw the footage from the store's security cameras. "The police took all of the tapes first thing," the manager nods. "Of course they did," the just-arriving Dean smirks disdainfully. Our Intrepid Heroes nod at each other before we...
...jump ahead a bit in time to watch as the rain-streaked Impala grumbles up in front of a nondescript bungalow elsewhere in the city. "Friggin' cops!" Dean bitches as they disembark. "They're just doing their job," Sam primly replies. "No," Dean counters, "they're doing our job, only they don't know it, so they suck at it!" He drops the outrage for a bit so Sam might exposit about another recent robbery, this at The Milwaukee National Trust, which was hit about a month ago with an M.O. identical to the jewelry store heist: "Inside job, long-time employee -- the 'never in a million years' type -- who robs the bank, then goes home and supposedly commits suicide." The gentleman they've arrived to question is one "Ronald Reznick," a security guard at the bank who was beaten unconscious by the teller who robbed the place. The boys climb the front steps to the porch, where Sam raps sharply against the glass on the storm door. Almost immediately, a harsh overhead security light snaps on, nearly blinding them as the extremely tubby Mr. Reznick warily makes his way through the bungalow's front hall to peer out at them. The boys, still squinting in the glare, attempt to smile as Sam opens with, "FBI, Mr. Reznick." "Lemme see the badge," the fat man demands, so Our Intrepid Heroes dig around in their coat pockets for a bit before slapping their false identification against the door -- in unison, with their left hands, and there's a joke somewhere in that gesture involving Sam and Dean doing a Supremes cover in a karaoke bar. Fat Ronald intently examines the IDs for a moment before protesting, "Han Solo and Jack Ryan? Pull the other one, you idiots. Now get off my property before I call the damn cops!" Okay no, he doesn't say that, even though he should, because those are the names on Our Intrepid Heroes' fake badges, but we'll give Fat Ronald here the benefit of the doubt and assume he's farsighted and isn't wearing his contacts. "I already gave my statement to the police!" is what Fat Ronald actually blurts, so Dean must assure the fat fellow that he and his colleague seek "clarification" on certain elements of the fat man's story. "You come to listen to what I gotta say?" Fat Ronald demands. "That's why we're here," Dean nods. Fat Ronald stares them down for a moment before allowing them indoors.
"None of the cops called me back after I explained to them what was really going on," Fat Ronald reveals as he leads the boys back towards the den. "They all thought I was crazy." And one quick glance around Big Fat Ronald's Big Fat Den Of Wacky Conspiracy Theories is enough to convince both Our Intrepid Heroes and the audience that the cops' assessment of this clozapine-deprived blubber wad was correct. The cheaply paneled walls are papered over with UFO diagrams, one of which features various cheese-headed Wisconsinites being sucked up into an alien "mothership" beneath the hand-scrawled headline "CHEESEHEADS ARE POTENT MANDROID SPIES," which I suppose would go a long way in explaining the continuing influence of Greta Van Susteren, but that's neither here nor there, because the central point of this tour through Fat Ronald's obsessions is this: Bitch crazy. He insists that the "Juan Morales" who knocked over The Milwaukee National Trust was not Fat Ronald's colleague, friend, and fellow poker player, but rather a "thing" that just happened to resemble Juan right down to the last detail. "It had his face," Fat Ronald overexcitedly explains as he digs around for a file, "but it wasn't his face -- every detail was perfect, but too perfect, you know? Like, if a doll-maker made it, like I was talking to a big Juan Doll." "A 'Juan Doll'?" Sam carefully repeats. Hee. Fat Ronald blows past Sam's obvious skepticism to present them with the folder -- which contains clippings detailing the recent jewelry store heist -- as he claims that both jobs were pulled by the same "thing." "And what's that, Mr. Reznick?" Sam frosts as he and Dean skim the folder's contents. Fat Ronald hoists up a copy of The Fortean Times and jabs his finger at the -- no, I am not kidding with this -- Doctor Who Cyberman on the cover. Oy. "Chinese been working on 'em for years," Fat Ronald insists, "and the Russians before that." And here I thought some wardrobe hack at the BBC knocked them together out of golf balls, vacuum cleaner tubing, and Reynolds Wrap in 1966. Go figure. Fat Ronald, naturally, begs to differ with me, claiming these creatures are exactly like "the Terminator, but the one that can change itself to look like other people." "Like the one from T2?" Dean nods, only his tone is far more kind than mine would be at this point. "Exactly!" Fat Ronald enthuses. "So not just a robot, more of a mandroid!" Sam repeats this last word with barely disguised disgust dripping from his tone. Dean ignores the attitude emanating from his fifteen-foot-tall freak of a brother and instead rather kindly inquires, "Now, what makes you so sure about this, Ronald?" Fat Ronald gazes blankly at them for a moment before suddenly remembering the one piece of evidence he's certain will convince them.
thing we know, Fat Ronald's shoving a tape into the VCR. "I made copies of all the security tapes," he explains. "I knew once the cops got them, they'd be buried." Dean and Sam are now perched side-by-side on a small sofa in that little Den Of Crazy, Dean following along intently while Sam, for whatever reason, continues barely to mask his annoyance with the entire situation. In any event, long story short, Fat Ronald plays back the blurry, black-and-white security feed until the purported Juan Morales happens to glance directly at the camera, at which point Juan's eyes get the MS Paint treatment. DUN! Sam and Dean lean forward, jaws dropping a bit, before darting their eyes to shoot Looks Fraught With Significance at each other. Meanwhile, Fat Ronald just geeks out about NotJuan's mandroid "laser eyes" for a bit before becoming increasingly unhinged as he admits he was fired from the bank because his "post-traumatic stress" kept him yammering on endlessly about Chinese robots, or whatever, until he finally vows, "The law won't hunt this thing down? I'll do it myself." He's got it all figured out, you see: The mandroid "kills the real person" and "makes it look like a suicide" before it "morphs into that person, cases the job for a while until it knows the take is fat, and then it finds its opening." He even figures the mandroid retreats to an underground lair to recharge its mandroid batteries between robberies.
Dean -- impressed that Fat Ronald's come so close to figuring out the truth, here -- plays along with all this crap with an encouraging smile, but Sam's had more than enough. "I want you to listen very carefully," he states as he rises from the couch, "'cause I'm about to tell you the God's honest truth about all of this." Dean hops to his feet as well with a friendly enough grin, obviously thinking Sam's going to spill the whole shape-shifter story, so he's visibly shocked when Sam asserts, "There's no such thing as mandroids." Both Dean and Fat Ronald let their faces fall a bit as Sam continues, "There's nothing evil or inhuman going on out there -- it's just people, nothing else. You understand?" Fat Ronald almost looks like he's going to cry, and starts stammering about the laser eyes, but Sam cuts him off with, "I know you don't want to believe this, but your friend Juan robbed the bank, and that's it." Fat Ronald falters for a moment, then shouts at them to get out of his house. Dean looks deeply pained and uncomfortable, while Sam's all, "Yeah, whatever, but first things first." Dean furrows.
Cut to the interior of a most amazingly decorated room Our Intrepid Heroes have rented for the length of their stay in lovely downtown Milwaukee. It's Schlitz-themed. Well, "Schultz-themed" because they didn't want to pay for the rights to the real beer's logo, but whatever. The lettering and the artwork is nearly identical, so we'll give them credit, especially because of that large screen of oversized beer bottles interspersed with the company's logo that separates the living area from the kitchenette. Oh, and the big cow on the wall, too. In any event, turns out Sam confiscated Fat Ronald's copies of the security tapes, which is what that whole "first things first" bit was about. Dean both admires Sam's moxie, or whatever, and pities poor Fat Ronald -- who did, after all, come very close to solving this particular mystery on his own. "'Mandroids'?" Sam sneers again. "Okay, except for the mandroids part," Dean allows as he traces the downtown sewer routes off an old blueprint. Meanwhile, Sam argues that in Fat Ronald's case, ignorance is bliss. "If he were to go up against this thing," Sammy points out, "he'd get torn apart. Better to stay in the dark and stay alive." "I guess," Dean shrugs, still clearly sympathizing with the fat guy. The boys then drop the matter to remind us all of the shape-shifters' "retinal reaction to video" and their apparent fondness for sewer living, just as Dean transfers his tracing to a map of local businesses. "There's one more bank lined up on that sewer main," he realizes. I'd offer a DUN!, but I believe we knew that already, right, Raoul? Um, Raoul? "Shhhhh!" Raoul hisses, momentarily pausing all of the click-click-clacking of his knitting needles that had been underscoring the episode for me up to this point. "I'm trying to get the Chief Of Staff's eyeball to bulge out the way it did on the show, and it requires all of my concentration! Leave me alone until they get to the gore!" You're knitting a bulging eyeball into that thing? "Only the best for my husband Jack Bauer!"
Wow, Raoul scares me sometimes. Anyway, sure enough, the one bank left standing is The City Bank Of Milwaukee. We cut over to find the place buzzing with activity as that aging security guard from the top of the hour leads Our Intrepid Heroes through the main lobby. The boys are masquerading as technicians from "SecuriServe Guard Service," and my, but don't they look scrumptious in their navy blue coveralls? Long story short, they talk their way back to the hidden bank of security cameras by LYING that there's "a glitch in the overall grid," and soon enough, the aging guard is leaving them alone with a cheery, "Okey-dokey!" After the door shuts behind them, Dean gets this goofball grin on his face and announces, "I like him. He says 'okey-dokey.'" Snicker. We then get a lengthy -- lengthy -- montage of the boys futzing with the cameras, clearing Mr. Okey-Dokey of suspicion first before Dean abuses his temporary position to zoom in on the heart-shaped derriere of one of the tellers. Ahem. One of the female tellers. I should know by now to specify things like that when addressing you people, shouldn't I? "Dean, we're supposed to be looking for eyes," prissy Sam grumps. "I'm getting there," Dean's leeringly appraising ducky lips pucker. Just as that female teller exits the frame, the bank's manager enters it to flash a couple of glowing white eyes at the camera. "Got him!" Sam breathes, immediately jumping up to head to the door. Dean's about to follow when he spots something far more troubling on one of the other screens: Fat Ronald dumping a rifle at his feet as he frantically lashes the bank's front doors shut with a length of chain. "Hello, Ronald!" Dean sarcastically remarks as the shot pans in on Ronald's screen for a moment before...
...jumping out into the bank proper to follow along as he sweatily chunks a padlock into place. With that, he snatches up his weapons cache and lumbers down the grand staircase to the lobby below, where he bellows, "This is not a robbery!" as he points his -- whoa, dude. That's, like, some kind of semiautomatic, isn't it? "You amateur!" Raoul shrieks, momentarily drawing his attention away from his handiwork to scold me. "My husband Jack Bauer would instantly identify that as an ArmaLite AR-180B semiautomatic rifle with a chrome moly barrel featuring an integral muzzle brake and ArmaLite's exclusive adjustable front sight base! Remember: It's Not Your Father's AR!" Really, Raoul? Because if your husband Jack Bauer did that, he would be a LYING LIAR WHO LIES. The hand-grip muzzle-thingy is totally different. "Oh, how should I know!? I was just trying to make conversation! Do I look like one of those backwoods gun freaks to you?!" Well, you are knitting bulging eyeballs into a sweater you're fashioning for your fictional torture-happy television husband, so you tell me. "Just one! Just one bulging eyeball! Do you not watch the show?!" Okay, Raoul, whatever. No time to be arguing about this, because Fat Ronald's decided to punctuate his statement by peppering the lobby's ceiling with a couple of rounds, leading directly to a massive collective freak-out in the bank. As fluttery tellers with heart-shaped derrieres scream with fright, Fat Ronald howls, "Everybody! On the floor! NOW!" The camera spins in on his face right before the poor, delusional fat man drops straight down into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Bank. As Fat Ronald blasts a couple more rounds into the ceiling, a few of the bank's employees duck out through a back hallway, but most of the people in the lobby obey his orders and sink to their knees in the center of the floor. As two of the fleeing employees skitter and carom around Sam and Dean in the far recesses of the building, Dean growls, "And you said we shouldn't bring guns!" Sam splutters, "I didn't know this was gonna happen!" which is amusing, and would be even more amusing had Dean chosen at this juncture to needle the gigantic Psychic Boy over the latter's lack of foresight, but Dean just snorts, "Let me do the talking. I don't think he likes you very much, Agent Johnson." Sam glares at the back of Dean's head. Heh.
As Fat Ronald informs all those present that he barricaded the bank's only exit, Our Intrepid Heroes lope onto the main floor to talk him down. Unfortunately for them, Fat Ronald goes ballistic at the sight of them, ordering them to their knees as well before yammering about outrage! and betrayal! and "Who are you working for -- the men in black? You working for the mandroid?" "We're not workin' for the maaaaan-droid!" Sammy drawls. Hee. "I ain't talking to you!" Ronald yells right back, getting all red in the face. "I don't like you!" Dean just rolls his eyes all, "I told you so," as Sam mumbles, "Fair enough." Fat Ronald crazily stares them down for a moment before ordering one of the hostages to frisk them for weapons, and the guy who gets to do the honors? I hate immediately, and with the bright, blazing passion of a thousand fiery suns. Bastard. Cheap, unbelievably lucky bastard. ANYWAY, Altar Boy Sammy's clean, but El Deano's got a little silver knife tucked into his shoe. "I'm not just gonna walk in here naked!" he hisses in response to Sam's tremendous bitchface. Fat Ronald grabs the invaluable weapon from the cheap, unbelievably lucky bastard who found it, and foolishly drops the thing into one of those old trash chutes you still occasionally see in older bank buildings. Point is, it's gone for good, and that's a very bad thing indeed, for as you'll recall, shape-shifters can only be injured or killed by items forged from silver. In any event, a nicely written and played little scene follows, in which Dean convinces Fat Ronald that he and Sam actually, honest-to-God believe him, and that they've got to join forces to capture the bank manager before the shape-shifter inside switches appearances again. Fat Ronald gratefully accepts Dean's offer of assistance, visibly relieved at long last to have found an ally, but orders everyone else -- including Sam, whom he still hates -- into the vault. Heh.
Meanwhile, a passing cop too-casually eyes the chains on the bank's front doors and hand-signals about eight other policemen into position out on the street. DUN!
Downstairs, Fat Ronald hustles a half-dozen hostages plus The Ginormotron into the vault, which Dean somewhat reluctantly locks. None of the hostages present, I should note, is the bank manager, but who knows what foul, fiendish deeds the shape-shifter perpetrated while Dean was making his deal with Fat Ronald? "And," Raoul hastens to note, having abandoned his knitting for the remainder of tonight's presentation, as we've by now entered the really good part of the hour, "Lord knows we've got all of those other escapees scurrying around the upper floors. Suspects everywhere! Hooray!" Indeed. This is getting exciting. In any event, a tall blonde teller gazes adoringly at El Deano as the latter takes a moment before shutting the vault to assure the hostages that everything'll be okay. "Who is that man?" she breathes, all dreamy and fangirl-like. "My brother," Sam frowns. "He is so brave!" she coos. Sam just rolls his eyes heavenwards. Hee.
Upstairs, Dean and Fat Ronald scour the bank's offices for the manager. Dean's taken the time to strip off the coveralls, by the way, and is now sporting that flannel shirt we saw him in at the top of the hour. As Dean bangs further through the office into a room marked "PRIVATE," Fat Ronald pulls a little amateur SWAT-fu to angle around a desk and...flop flat on his back after slipping on something! The camera shoots up to an overhead so we all might note Fat Ronald's fallen into a slimy pile of shape-shifter droppings. "Wheeeee!" shrieks Raoul, simply giddy with delight. "It's not gore, per se, but it is most gratifyingly gruesome nonetheless!" Abso-friggin'-lutely. Dean takes a moment to disabuse Fat Roland of his mandroid notion and get him up to speed on the shape-shifters' true attributes -- among them their "human drives, in this case for money," their susceptibility to silver, and the fact that they don't always slaughter their latest inspirations before assuming said inspirations' forms. Dean then points out that, as the shape-shifter's shed its skin, they have no idea who it could be anymore. "Come on, Ronald!" Dean calls out after he's snatched up a handy silver letter opener from the desk and heads off towards another office. Fat Ronald glances down at the gooey mess on the carpeting once more before skittering over to follow, and right before he shuts the door behind him, he gets this awesomely elated grin on his face, as if he's suddenly realized that everything that's actually happening is a thousand times more cool than anything he'd ever dream up in his Den Of Crazy. Aw. I might have to drop the "Fat" bit from his name after that. "Pity he's not long for this..." Raoul! Silence! Spoiler! "Hee! Ooops!"
Outside, a police helicopter whirrs by overhead to scour the bank tower's façade with a searchlight as the street below buzzes with activity, with the now-dozens of policemen joined by the city's SWAT team. Oh, and the news van from WMWE, Milwaukee's nonexistent Channel 8, of course. Why they didn't use the call letters and station number for The CW's actual affiliate is beyond me, but that doesn't matter at this point, because the lead detective's just arrived on-scene to join his colleagues in the Mobile Emergency Command Unit. After getting a quick assessment of the current situation from the uniform we'd seen earlier, he orders them to cut the power.
Back inside the lobby, Ronald giggles as he turns a corner with Dean. Dean halts in his tracks to spin around and demand, "Are you nuts?" "That's just it!" Ronald replies with a genuinely happy grin plastered across his face. "I'm not nuts! I mean, I was so scared that I was losing my marbles, but this is real! I was right!" "Except for the mandroid thing," he hastily amends. "Thank you," he offers most sincerely. Dean, wigged by all that sincerity crap, bitch, simply mutters, "Don't mention it," before continuing on his way through the lobby. It's then, of course, that the power shuts off throughout the building. "Dammit!" Dean grumbles, instantly realizing what's happened as Ronald freaks out. When Ronald goes so far as to express surprise at the fact the police even know something's amiss inside the bank, Dean's forced to remind him, "You weren't exactly a smooth criminal about this, Ron. I mean, you didn't even secure the security guard! He probably called them." Ron rather endearingly starts babbling out excuses, but Dean orders him to calm down and zip it so they can strategize, and quickly arrives at the conclusion that things are looking pretty bleak. An unexpected noise raises their hackles, and both gentlemen squint into the surrounding darkness, Ron with his ridiculously large semiautomatic at the ready.
Down in the vault, Blondie's gushing to Darling Sammy, "Has your brother always been so, um, wonderful? I mean, staring down that gun, and the way he played right into that psycho's crazy head, telling him what he wanted to hear? I mean, he's, like, a real hero, or something!" Sam looks for all the world like he wishes he still had that cast on his arm, so he might beat this giggly wretch senseless. Whatever, dude. You think a half hour in the bank vault with Blondie here is taxing? Try attempting to moderate the Deangirls on the forum boards for a couple of days, and then we can talk. But my special hell is not the issue at the moment, for Dean's just now arrived to draw open the vault's door. Blondie, of course, goes near-ultrasonic with the squealing and such, all, "OMG! You saved us! You saved us!" Until she notices the revolver in his hand, of course. D'OH! He waves a few of the hostages out of the vault, Sam among them, before almost apologetically shutting Blondie and the rest back in.
After Dean -- now up in the lobby -- fills Sam in on recent shifter-related developments, Sam snorts, "Great. You know, Dean, you are wanted by the police. So, even if we do find this damn thing, how the hell are we gonna get out of here?" Dean's all, "We'll fall off that bridge when we get to it," and proposes he himself sweep the entire building to corral the remaining stragglers into one place. He passes Sam another silver letter opener and instructs his younger brother to remain with Ronald to help the latter "manage the situation." "Are you insane?" Sam spits, his voice rising to uncomfortable levels. Dean pauses to give a nervous Ronald a couple of thumbs up before whispering, "Look, I know this isn't going the way we wanted." "Understatement!" Sam duhs. Heh. Dean starts babbling about their crappy options until Sam notices Ron doing something particularly stupid and, with yet another massive bitchface, impatiently gestures in their hefty friend's direction. "Ron!" Dean blurts immediately. "Out of the light!" Dim Ron, you see, had been standing with gun aloft right in the helicopter's spotlight, presumably in full view of the SWAT snipers. Ron obediently scurries into the shadows as Sam pitches a mighty little hissyfit over in the boys' corner of the lobby. Dean acknowledges that Ron's bungled plan was more than a little crazy, "but right now, crazy's all we got." And with that, he biffs Sam in the shoulder with a "buck up, little camper" shrug and darts off in search of the missing bank employees. Sam squirms his gigantic, fifteen-foot-tall frame around for an uncomfortable moment before swinging his head over in Ron's direction and grudgingly offering the guy a "Hi, Ronald" that's accompanied by more than a hint of an eye-roll. He is so seven years old at this moment. Ronald, oblivious, grins back. Hee.
Upstairs, Dean angles through the apparently deserted hallways with a little flashlight-fu, ducking around the police floodlights, all the while whipping his head around at every single one of the old building's many, many creaks and groans.
Down in the vault, one imprisoned teller thumbs through her rosary beads -- nice touch -- as the aging guard slowly doubles over, suffering from some ominous shortness of breath. As Sam and Ron arrive and open the vault door to allow those inside some fresh air, the phone unexpectedly starts ringing. Ron foolishly answers to find the police negotiator on the other end just as the ailing security guard clutches at his left arm and pleads to be released. Oh, shit. "Well, it would be a moment of unendurable crisis," Raoul opines, "had we not already known that Dean escorts this elderly gentleman out to a waiting ambulance." Doy! You're totally right, and I completely forgot about that. At any rate, Sam's not privy to that information and, increasingly keyed up, tries in vain to cope with dim Ron on the phone and the growing panic among the hostages in the vault at the same time, finally deciding to deal with both situations by shutting them down completely, grabbing the handset out of Ron's hand to slam it back into its base while ordering everyone in the vault to shut up. "You just gonna let the man die?" a particularly strapping hostage demands. "No one's dying in here!" Sam shouts back before angrily shoving Ron over to guard the vault. He then picks up the phone to dial.
Dean keeps playing with his flashlight. No, not like that. "Dirty!" shrieks Raoul.
Meanwhile, Sam's on the line with the lead detective, telling the guy to send in a paramedic, and no one else. "We don't have time for that!" the particularly strapping hostage protests. "He's dying right in front of you!" Ron offers a few weak -- yet heartfelt -- apologies to everyone present while Sam frets.
Upstairs, Dean's found an off-kilter ceiling tile -- just go with it -- and pokes at it with a handy coat rack. After a couple of jabs, the entire thing collapses down onto the floor, dragging along with it the naked male body that had been stowed up in the ducts by the crafty shape-shifter. Dean rolls the corpse onto its back and finds...the particularly strapping hostage! Dead! With an enormous gash through his neck! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" shrieks Raoul, excitedly flapping his paws around in the air. "I told you the second half of this episode was far superior to the first!" Oh, and we haven't seen the best of it yet, for not an instant passes before we jump back down to the vault, where Dean arrives to whisper something inaudible into Sammy's ear. Sam nods his head and immediately moves to escort the ailing guard from the bank himself. The particularly strapping shape-shifter makes to go with them, but Sam calmly assures the monster that he's got everything under control.
Once Sam and the guard have passed out towards the stairs, Dean stares the shifter down for a long moment before loping over and jerking his head towards the antechamber with a too-casual, "Hey, can I talk to you a second?" The shifter, knowing he's busted, cracks, "You got the gun, man -- whatever." And then, with lightning-quick reflexes and near-super strength, the creature yanks the revolver from Dean's grip right before slamming Dean across the chamber into a wall. While Dean, stunned, tries to pick himself up off the ground, the shifter tears up the stairs and through the main lobby as poor, doomed Ron chases after him. As the shifter disappears into the warren of hallways in the back of the building, Sam and the ailing guard turn just in time to watch Ron stop and take aim. In a couple of really nice touches as Sam spots the red laser sight from a sniper's rifle dancing across Ron's back, the scene grinds down into near slow-motion and all sound cuts out, save for a slight tinkle of glass as the sniper's bullet breaks through the window, followed by two quietly sharp, slicing noises as the bullet rips into Ron's back and exits through his chest. Sam's silent scream of "Get down!" is for naught, and Dean, finally emerging onto the main floor, can only scramble for cover of his own in a corner as Ron, with a look of wide-eyed shock, drops first to his knees before plowing face-first into the marble floor. The camera shoots in on Dean's panicky and horrified face before everything vanishes into the METAL TEETH CHOMP! "Eeeeeeeeeeeee! That was faaaaaab-ulous!"
Bank. Chaos in the street. Escaping hostages in the vault. And one very large dead man on the marble lobby floor. "Gore?" Raoul whimpers. Soon. I promise. Our Intrepid Heroes scamper together behind one of those antique lobby stands, and Sam slips the key to the front doors' padlock off his wrist and presses it into Dean's hand, telling his brother to escort the ailing guard out to the paramedics while Sam chases after the shape-shifter. Dean, still more than a little stunned by recent developments, crawls around to offer a few valedictory words at poor, dead Ron's rapidly cooling corpse before grabbing Ron's rifle and exiting to reenact the scene from the top of the hour. The camera cuts over to Ron's pallid face, and a thick stream of blood pours from his mouth to spread across the floor! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Raoul shrieks again, this time kicking his feet around into the air as well as he wriggles around in his overstuffed armchair with exuberant glee. "I almost felt bad about my reaction to that," Raoul admits once he's calmed himself a bit, "but then I thought, 'Well, after all, they're the ones who decided against sentiment by having the gore drip from his mouth in the first place, so why not?!'" Why not, indeed, Raoul. Why not, indeed.
Elsewhere, Sam advances upon a closed door and slams it open to find...an empty supply closet! He spins around to continue his search...only to ram right into Blondie and a couple of the other hostages! He bellows that their lives are in danger and sends them fleeing back down into the vault.
Meanwhile, Dean finally reenacts the scene from the top of the hour, and it plays out much as it did before, with one exception: No sooner has Dean's face appeared on TV than one of the lead detective's underlings shouts something about the FBI assuming control of the entire situation, effective immediately. Dean pushes the ailing security guard into the paramedics' waiting arms and quickly replaces the padlock on the bank's front doors. "We're so screwed," he mutters to himself. "Oh, you don't know the half of it, honey! Wheeeee!" Raoul, you scamp. Don't tease the fake people on the television set.
Over in a stairwell, Sam's stumbled upon the shifter's latest gooey set of droppings. He rings Dean via their cell phones to mope about this latest turn of events. Dean orders Sam to continue his search while Dean rounds everybody up again, some more.
Out on the street, not two minutes after Dean hit Channel 8's breaking news coverage, the FBI arrives in its many, many black vehicles to start throwing its weight around. Foremost amongst the agents is a no-bullshit, abrupt type named "Henriksen," in obvious tribute to the actor. By the way, the nickname "Agent Scooter Javert" quickly took hold for this character on the boards because of the Winchester-sized axe he has to grind this evening, but as Sam and Dean's lengthy list of suspected and actual crimes easily overwhelms Jean Valjean's one-time foray into the world of five-fingered discounts at the boulangerie, I'll be sticking to the character's proper name until I discover he's yet another of The Ceiling Demon's minions. Or something like that. In any event, Agent Henriksen and "Lieutenant Robards" whip 'em out and measure 'em. They quickly realize Henriksen's is bigger, so the feds take over the siege. "You have no idea what you're dealing with, do you?" Agent Henriksen sneers at Milwaukee's finest. "There is a monster in that bank, Robards!" I'd have given that a DUN!, but it's clear from the inclusion of Linda Blair's scene in the Crackle, Crackle THEN! that he's talking about El Deano, so whatever. By the way, did you know that when you type "Milwaukee's finest" into a search engine, the first result is for Blatz beer? "That's nothing!" Raoul snorts. "I typed in 'New York's finest,' and the first thing I saw was a listing for a straight-to-video masterpiece whose plot was described thusly: 'A cross-dresser helps three whores in their search for rich husbands.'" Oh, that's classy, Raoul. "I thought you'd appreciate it!"
Anyway. Sam. Flashlight-fu. God, he's hot tonight. Ooops. Did I type that out loud? "You did." Dammit! So, Sam slams open a door and waves his flashlight around. Uh. It's far more tense-making than I just made it sound. Trust me.
Vault. Dean escorts a group of hostages back inside, last among them Blondie The Discouraged Deangirl. "And I thought you were one of the good guys," she ornately mopes. In a bit of nicely played character business wherein Dean reveals he actually does want people to think well of him, he asks for her name -- "Sherrie," as in "Oh," as in "Oh, Nooooo! Do Not Ever Play That Song On This Show!" -- and offers his own, along with his honest assurance that everyone will be okay. Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie's supremely unimpressed. I'm telling you, you piss off those Deangirls just once, and they're just vicious until the end of time.
Dean shuts the vault door once more, and I swear to God, they're screwing with us in these shots, because they've got that wee little bow-legged man straining to push closed that massive door again and again this evening, when half the time, The Ginormotron could've just, like, leaned on it a little bit, or something, and bam! But I shouldn't be making fun of El Deano, for he's in the process of receiving a very painful phone call. "This is Special Agent Victor Henriksen," the gentleman in question officiously introduces himself when Dean picks up the bank's ringing line. Upon learning Dean's "not really in the negotiating mood right now," Henriksen snaps back, "Good, me neither. It's my job to bring you in -- alive's a bonus but not necessary." Dean's all, "Whoa, dude, nice talk from a federal agent!" and Henriksen's all, "Cut the crap Dean Winchester, I want you and your brother out front, pronto, or we're coming in with guns blazing." "How'd you know we were even here?" Dean splutters. "Go screw yourself," Henriksen sneers, "that's how I knew." The agent then goes on to list Dean's many purported crimes in St. Louis and Baltimore, tossing in the grave desecrations and credit card fraud for good measure before launching into an attack on Daddy Shut Up. "You don't know crap about my dad!" Dean seethes. "Ex-marine, raised his kids on the road," Henriksen all but ticks off on the tips of his fingers, "cheap motels, backwoods cabins -- real paramilitary survivalist type, but I just can't get a handle on what type of whacko he was: White supremacist, or Timmy McVeigh?" Dean gets very quiet as he responds, "You got no right talking about my dad like that -- he was a hero." Henriksen's all, "And your mother blows bubble gum. In Hell. Come out in one hour or we come through those doors full automatic." Click. Dean bangs the handset against his forehead a couple of times before slamming it back into its base.
Out in the mobile command center, Henriksen orders the SWAT teams to attack in five minutes. "This is crazy!" Robards howls, citing the danger such an action would represent to the remaining hostages. "Crazy's in there," Henriksen shoots back, "and I just hung up on it." Then the obnoxious agent man steps right into the METAL TEETH CHOMP! Pity I already know he's returning from his all-too-brief sojourn in the belly of the metal commercial-break beast. "He is rather...high-strung, don't you think?" "High-strung" is a good phrase for it, Raoul. Then again, so is "batshit insane." There's no way an FBI agent would place the lives of at least twenty-five hostages at so great a risk just to take out one guy, is there? "Let's not get into that, shall we?" Raoul sighs. "Especially since we all know he's working for The Ceiling Demon." You're probably right. Still: Ew. "Oh, agreed!"
Bank. Sam's still sneaking around when he notices blood seeping out from beneath a closed door. He carefully positions his silver letter opener, then yanks on the knob to fling the thing open and...scuttle back a few feet as Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie's demurely attired corpse flops out at his feet! DUN! Her throat's slashed, but I am happy to note her girls are firmly strapped into proper foundation garments. Not to belabor the point or anything, but yeah: I've seen lacy blue slips masquerading as outerwear with no underwear beneath on far too many occasions in the past, so bravo to the Supernatural costuming staff, even though it makes absolutely no damn sense for Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie's corpse to be wearing anything at all.
Down at the vault, Dean would very much like to conduct a processing summit with the just-arrived Sammy regarding the deteriorating situation outdoors, but Darling Sammy rather curtly informs Dean of the monster in the vault, so the FBI and its unhinged special agents can wait for a bit. The boys swing open the door again, and Dean informs Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie they're releasing her as a good-faith gesture towards the police outside. There follows a well thought out and acted scene wherein Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie's suspicions of the boys' true motives for separating her from the others seem perfectly reasonable to both her fellow hostages and, perhaps, to those in the audience who remembered Dean's earlier admonition that not every source of inspiration for a shape-shifter's new look ends up dead. For those on the other side of the fence -- including the boys -- Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie's protestations make her look like just another hellbeast, vamping for time. Very nice.
In any event, Our Intrepid Heroes have by now led her away from the vault and towards her doppelganger's corpse in that upstairs office. Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie takes one look at her apparent self on the floor -- with her apparent self's throat rather garishly slit -- and wastes not a moment to start screaming and thrashing around in horror. "Community theater, or are you just naturally that good?" Dean snarks. Heh. Action Sammy grabs hold of her and vows, "This is the last time you become anybody, ever." And with that, Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie drops to the floor in a dead faint. Far too amusingly, the boys stare down at her, all, "Well, that's new." After a moment, though, Dean swings back into action, kneeling at Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie's unconscious side, ready to ram that silver letter opener through her heart. "Dean, wait!" Sammy urges at the last instant. "What's the advantage of this plan?" he wonders. "I mean, fainting now wouldn't help it survive." Dean considers that, then pivots around to stare closely at the apparent corpse. "Hunh!" he puzzles, then, after a beat, rises to hover over the Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie wearing the slip. Before he can decide upon a plan of action, though, a loud crashing noise rises into the office from the main lobby below. Both Dean and Sam focus their attention towards the direction of the noise, and so neither notice...Apparent Corpse Sherrie snapping open her eyes to latch onto Dean's throat with her right hand! Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie picks this moment to wake up screaming, so Dean -- in between bouts of fending off The Sherrie Shifter's attacks -- yells for Sam to drag the screechy teller out of there, now. Sam complies, just as...
...the SWAT team carefully picks its way across the shattered glass of the bank's lobby. They silently swarm down the stairs and through the hallways as we leap past them to find Dean in the bank's basement boiler room, hot on The Sherrie Shifter's tail. Unfortunately, Dean's forced to abandon his search for the monster in favor of hiding behind a piece of machinery until the SWATs exit.
Upstairs, a quartet of SWATs lurk through a hallway until their flashlights land on Oh, Nooooo! Sherrie. "Please, I work here!" she mewls, and she does have that name tag pinned to her blazer, so two of the guys whisk her away towards the exit. The remaining duo shimmies down the hallway until their laser sights land upon Darling Sammy's remarkably broad back. "Freeze!" one of them yells. "Lemme see your hands!" D'OH!
Down in the basement, Dean performs a little flashlight-fu of his own until...The Sherrie Shifter slams an uppercut into his nose! "Not the face!" Raoul shrieks. "Dear God in heaven, not the face!"
Upstairs, Sam's treating the nice gentlemen from the SWAT team to a little of the same, biffing one guy and snatching away his rifle so he might beat them both unconscious with the thing. The SWATs go down like French prizefighters.
Down in the basement, The Sherrie Shifter is Kicking. Dean's. Ass! The shots are too quickly intercut for me to give any sort of a coherent blow-by-blow of the action, so just an overall brava to Georgia Craig on her mad stage combat skillz will have to do, I guess. Oh, except for the bit where Dean finally latches onto The Sherrie Shifter's arm, and she replies by letting that section of skin strip off her body into his hand, after which she kicks him hard -- really, really hard -- in the nuts. Alas for The Sherrie Shifter, the Winchester Wonderballs are apparently made of steel, for Dean takes not a second to recover and slam her against the wall before ramming that letter opener into her chest. The Sherrie Shifter chokes and gasps and slowly drops to the ground, never taking her eyes off Dean's until the last moment, when her unnatural life finally leaves that unnatural body of hers. Most amusing is the fact that The Sherrie Shifter's chosen to shuffle off her many mortal coils right beneath a poster that boasts "NUMBER OF DAYS WITHOUT INJURY: 67." God, I love this show.
In any event, as Dean crouches by her side to ensure she's really most sincerely dead, he allows his eyes to drop from the faked gash in her throat down her skin-stripped arm to the opener sticking out of her chest. Just then, an impossibly large boot steps into the foreground of the shot. Dean snaps his head around at the noise, and a SWAT flashlight blinds him right before the final METAL TEETH CHOMP! bites down on everyone and everything in the frame.
Bank. Henriksen marches through with the SWATs and gets the bullet on the particularly strapping corpse. Meanwhile, down in the basement, another SWAT examines The Sherrie Shifter's rapidly cooling remains and swears, "I'm telling you, man, I just walked her out of the bank. She must have a twin sister, or something." Elsewhere, another pair of SWATs -- one unnaturally tall with remarkably broad shoulders, the other a stumpy little bow-legged midget -- escort Henriksen into yet another room as that uniformed officer from the scenes arrives to assure the special agent that the building's secure, with no sign at all of the Winchesters. Henriksen knots his panties into a tremendous wad and bitches about tearing apart the ducts and the furnace and whatnot, but Officer Anonymous once again assures him such action will not be necessary as he leads Henriksen towards a utility closet.
As Henriksen gazes down with loathing and disgust upon a pair of unconscious, handcuffed, and faceless-because-of-the-camera-angle gentlemen who have been stripped to their underwear -- one of the gents long and lean, the other more than a bit less so -- this episode makes a sudden leap from "highly enjoyable" to "Fucking. AWESOME!" when Tommy Shaw arrives on the soundtrack to deliver the opening line of "Renegade" by Styx. The soft drum follows his solo voice like a heartbeat, and the camera cuts from Agent Henriksen's sneering face to a jittery hand-held shot that's silently tracking the progress of two SWAT team members up a narrow set of metal stairs into a parking garage, where they finally slow their pace down to a walk. The harmony kicks in as the guys in the SWAT uniforms -- one a fifteen-foot-tall freak of nature, the other one Dean -- reach the Impala. They swing open the doors and crawl inside while Styx notes, "Hangman is coming down from the gallows, and I don't have very long." The run of lyrics pauses, but the heartbeat of the drum continues as Our Dear Boys strip off their stolen helmets and peel their balaclavas up over their foreheads. And then they sit there for a moment, panting and wasted and wrecked as the heartbeat slowly and insistently drums underneath. Finally, Dean inhales -- a sort of involuntary hitch, here -- and lets it out with a deep, soft, "We are so screwed."
"YEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" The full force of the deliriously cheesy song slams on in to fucking own the soundtrack as the boys silently agree: "Yes, we are quite robustly screwed after that last little adventure of ours." As the song hits "This will be the end today of the wanted man," Dean finally throws the car into gear and spins out of their parking space to take off towards the exit. The Kripkeeper then splices the track so we get a piece of the face-melting guitar solo right when Metallicar runs a stop sign, and as the taillights gradually become tiny points of red in the far distance of the shot, Styx comes roaring back with, "Oh, Mama, I'm in fear for my life from the long arm of the law." The METAL TEETH CHOMP! clamps down with the final downbeat of the drum to send us all into the final blackout RAWKING our idiot headbanging heads off, and I cannot wait to see what happens !
As Henriksen gazes down with loathing and disgust upon a pair of unconscious, handcuffed, and faceless-because-of-the-camera-angle gentlemen who have been stripped to their underwear -- one of the gents long and lean, the other more than a bit less so -- this episode makes a sudden leap from "highly enjoyable" to "Fucking. AWESOME!" when Tommy Shaw arrives on the soundtrack to deliver the opening line of "Renegade" by Styx. The soft drum follows his solo voice like a heartbeat, and the camera cuts from Agent Henriksen's sneering face to a jittery hand-held shot that's silently tracking the progress of two SWAT team members up a narrow set of metal stairs into a parking garage, where they finally slow their pace down to a walk. The harmony kicks in as the guys in the SWAT uniforms -- one a fifteen-foot-tall freak of nature, the other one Dean -- reach the Impala. They swing open the doors and crawl inside while Styx notes, "Hangman is coming down from the gallows, and I don't have very long." The run of lyrics pauses, but the heartbeat of the drum continues as Our Dear Boys strip off their stolen helmets and peel their balaclavas up over their foreheads. And then they sit there for a moment, panting and wasted and wrecked as the heartbeat slowly and insistently drums underneath. Finally, Dean inhales -- a sort of involuntary hitch, here -- and lets it out with a deep, soft, "We are so screwed."
"YEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" The full force of the deliriously cheesy song slams on in to fucking own the soundtrack as the boys silently agree: "Yes, we are quite robustly screwed after that last little adventure of ours." As the song hits "This will be the end today of the wanted man," Dean finally throws the car into gear and spins out of their parking space to take off towards the exit. The Kripkeeper then splices the track so we get a piece of the face-melting guitar solo right when Metallicar runs a stop sign, and as the taillights gradually become tiny points of red in the far distance of the shot, Styx comes roaring back with, "Oh, Mama, I'm in fear for my life from the long arm of the law." The METAL TEETH CHOMP! clamps down with the final downbeat of the drum to send us all into the final blackout RAWKING our idiot headbanging heads off, and I cannot wait to see what happens !