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While in Joliet on the trail of a djinn responsible for the disappearance of dozens of people over the years, El Deano has the great misfortune of getting his tantalizing ass trapped by the thing in an abandoned warehouse, and after the creature unloads a little sparkly blue mojo on the dear boy's head, Dean wakes up in an unfamiliar Lawrence, Kansas apartment in bed to a saucy brunette he's never seen before who's entirely devoted to him and his insouciant ways, and on top of all that, he's got bills to pay and a regular 9-to-5 job at an auto-body shop with which to do so, a mother who's still alive and comfortably ensconced back at their cozily appointed and never-burned home from the series premiere, a sassy future sister-in-law who never found herself nailed to a ceiling out in California with a foot-wide gash through her torso right before she burst into flame, and a solemnly responsible nerd of brother who hates Dean's guts for a variety of entirely understandable reasons. And while they never specifically address these issues, I'm sure Al Gore won the electoral vote -- twice -- and all of the Ramones are still happily kicking around the planet, as well. Of course, it's all simply a djinn-concocted fantasy in Dean's head, through which the cracks begin to show when an eerily silent young woman clad in a White Nightgown Of Doom starts dropping in on Our Intrepid Hero at the most inopportune moments. See, the djinn hurls people into their deepest wishes so it can then slowly suck the life from their veins, and both Dean and the mystery woman are actually strung up in that abandoned Joliet warehouse, hooked to blood bags. And despite the achingly palpable temptation to remain in this dream world of his, Dean forces himself awake and, with the help of a conveniently arriving Sam, manages to destroy the monster and save the girl. But oh, my. The ANGST involved in that decision? Is going to kill me dead. Damn you, Kripke! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Crackle, Crackle THEN! Way back in 1983, the Winchester family's bête noire nailed Mary Winchester to the ceiling with a foot-wide gash through her torso before burning her alive, thereby effectively scarring Wee El Deano for the rest of his life. Twenty-two years later, The Ceiling Demon returned to give Jessica Moore a little of the same, thereby effectively scarring Darling Sammy for the rest of the series. And finally, after The Ceiling Demon dragged Shut Up Daddy down to Hell in exchange for El Deano's life, Dean decided that the family business just wasn't worth all of the agita and angst that came along with it, as Our Intrepid Heroes receive neither appropriate remuneration nor appropriate amounts of gratitude for their efforts, instead having to make do with nothing more than copious amounts of bad luck. El Deano's such a friggin' downer.
Crackle, Crackle NOW, and heresy! The Impala's sporting a new license plate! "And it's from Ohio, of all the ghastly places on the planet!" Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon notes with distaste. Raoul has issues with Ohio. "Don't get me started!" Up behind the wheel, Dean answers his chirping cell phone to find a tense Sam on the other end of the line. "There's a cop car outside," Sam whispers, eyeing the prowler in question from behind the curtains of their room at the Joliet Motel. "You think it's for us?" Dean wonders. "I mean, I don't see how," he continues. "We ditched the plates and the credit cards." Barely have those words left his mouth when the cop car rolls off harmlessly into the night, and Sam's forced to admit it was all a false alarm. "See?" Dean smirks. "Nothing to worry about." "Yeah, being fugitives," Sam sarcastically agrees, mindful of their newly won place atop the FBI's most wanted list. "It's a frigging dance party." During all that, the camera's passed across the various volumes of research material Sam has open on the motel room's table, one of them featuring an engraving of a four-armed, serpent-tongued figure from Hindu mythology opposite an entry entitled "DJINN." "So, you got anything yet?" Sam asks. As Dean's apparently been tasked this evening with canvassing the fifty square miles of Illinois real estate in which "all the victims disappeared," the answer would be no. Sam's research has, of course, proved more fruitful, as he's now certain they're hunting -- as Dean puts it -- "a friggin' genie." "You think that these suckers can really grant wishes?" Dean scoffs. Sam notes that genies are perhaps powerful enough to do so, but warns, "They're not exactly Barbara Eden in harem pants." Shudder. "I mean," Darling Sammy elaborates, "djinn have been feeding off people for centuries -- they're all over the Koran." Unfortunately for Sam, he lost Dean's attention at the Barbara Eden reference, for his cheerfully louche reprobate of a brother now gazes wistfully into the middle distance and croons, "Barbara Eden was hot, wasn't she? Way hotter than that Bewitched chick." The episode ends abruptly when ravening hordes of Elizabeth Montgomery fans descend upon the Impala to rip El Deano limb from limb. That's a wrap! See you week, gang!
Kidding. Sort of. I'll spare you the whole "Samantha Stevens, her magnificent bitch of a mother, her delightfully swishy stereotype of a gay uncle, her dodderingly befuddled early-onset-Alzheimer's victim of an aunt, and that malpracticing lush Doctor Bombay kicked stupid bimbo Jeannie's scantily clad and offensively submissive ass in every conceivable way" rant, save to note that Dean's preference for scantily clad and offensively submissive stupid bimbos does make depressingly perfect sense when we remember that Dean is, at heart, a heterosexual Neanderthal. ANY-way, Sam verbally bitch-slaps Dean's attention back to the matter at hand, and informs his brother that people-sucking genies tend to hang out in "ruins" "the bigger the better," as there are "more places to hide." Fortunately for the furtherance of this evening's plot, El Deano just happened to have motored past a building that fits Sam's description perfectly not five minutes ago and, brushing off Sam's suggestion that he return to the motel so they can investigate the place together, hangs up to swing the car around. By the way, Darling Sammy's cell phone makes this little zzzzzzwing! noise when he hangs up, and maybe it's just because they've already busted out the relevant reference this evening, but it does bring to mind the sound effect you hear every time Endora swings her arms around in a fit of pique to transform Durwood into a newt. Make of that what you will.
The rain-streaked Metallicar grumbles up outside the abandoned factory headquarters of The C. & R. Jacob Chemical Company, and El Deano disembarks into the night to poke his nosy yet tantalizing ass around the place. After a bit of flashlight-fu at the main entrance, he makes his way upstairs to the company's former offices, and as he obliviously ambles past abandoned old-fashioned floor fans and positively antique upright typewriters, a ghostly figure appears in the miraculously intact frosted glass behind him. DUN! The figure trails along after him until Dean reaches a doorway connecting the office to the outer hall, and as the figure presses its ashen face against the frosted glass for a better look, Dean suddenly senses the thing's presence. He carefully hoists a blood-tipped hunting knife into the air and, after taking a moment to steel himself, leaps into the hallway with the knife at the ready. Unfortunately, the figure's disappeared. Or has it? The camera pans along with Dean as he warily picks his way across the trash-strewn floor, and we catch a fleeting glimpse of the figure's bald head in the foreground of the shot right before it leaps from an alcove to slam Dean up against the miraculously intact frosted glass. Dean loses his flashlight and his hunting knife in quick succession, and when he focuses his eyes on his attacker, the camera cuts around to reveal a heavily browed and bald gentleman whose skin -- every visible inch of it, from the top of his head to the tips of his fingers -- is covered with navy blue tribal tattoos. The Frigging Genie, for that is indeed who our new friend is, presses Dean against the wall of glass in a chokehold while allowing his eyes to flip an almost neon shade of blue. Soon enough, a shimmering swath of identically tinted mojo bursts from the palm of his free hand and races up and out across his fingers until it looks like his entire appendage is aflame. He then gently -- and that's a nice bit of incongruity, there -- presses that hand against Dean's forehead, and Dean struggles and chokes until his eyes roll back in his head, his irises replaced by sickly cataracts that quickly disappear into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
RAAAWWWR! "Eeeeeeeeeeeee!" Poor Raoul. You do realize the title card's about the only excitement you're going to get this evening? The rest is all manly tears and angst. "That's actually okay! I can catch up on my reading!" Oh, Raoul! So erudite you are! "Thanks!"
The title card immediately spritzes into televisual snow that's just as quickly replaced by a clip from one of the absolute worst horror movies of all time, From Hell It Came, whose title reportedly inspired the pithy review, "And to Hell it can return." It's about -- and I kid you not -- a rampaging, radioactive, Polynesian tree named Tabanga who has a fondness for nubile young American blondes. As the rampaging, radioactive, Polynesian tree with a nubile young American blonde in its branchy arms turns to glower at the audience, the camera slowly pans away from the TV upon which this masterpiece is currently screening until a sudden blast of thunder outside snaps Dean bolt upright in bed, where he'd apparently been sleeping to a never-before-seen brunette. He's not wearing a shirt. I repeat: Dean Winchester is not wearing a shirt at the moment. For those of you playing along at home, we are exactly three minutes and thirty-nine seconds into this evening's presentation. You can thank me later. By the way, in the first indication we receive that Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano, his Mystical Amulet Of Indeterminate Origin has been replaced by a simple silver chain around his neck. And then I pretty much stopped paying any attention to detail because the camera's pulled back a bit and SHOULDERS! and ARMS! and CHEST! and it's a good thing the mightily puzzled El Deano decides to pull on all of his clothes to wander out into this woman's living room, because if they'd kept him naked for a second longer, I'd have to go lie down for several hours, and I'm on a deadline, here. In any event, Dean flips on a light, and the thing we know, we're staring at the screen of Darling Sammy's product-placed Motorola Q as Sam receives a call. "Sam!" Dean whispers urgently once his brother's answered. "I don't know where I am! The djinn -- it attacked me!" "'The gin'?" Sam repeats, bemused. "You're drinking gin?" Dean, pacing the floor, impatiently orders Sam to drop it with the jokes, and hisses that after The Frigging Genie flattened its palm against his head, he found himself in bed "to some hot chick." "Carmen?" Sam prompts. Dean starts to splutter something, but Sam, grinning, cuts him off with, "You're drunk! You're drunk-dialing me!" Heh. Dean protests, but Sam just suggests he get some sleep, and Sam'll see him tomorrow. Sam hangs up immediately and chuckles at his phone for a bit before slinging it off to the side so he might slam shut the book he'd been consulting. A book entitled Criminal Law & Procedure. DUN!
Back in the unfamiliar apartment, Dean spots a pile of mail on the kitchen table and starts riffling through it. The top few items are addressed to a Carmen Porter at 53 Barker Avenue in Lawrence, Kansas, but just below them lurks a cell phone bill addressed to Dean at the same house number. Barely has he muttered a confused "What the hell?" when Carmen materializes behind him in a blue silk robe to wonder, "Honey? What are you doing up?" Dean bluffs his way through the subsequent bit of banter -- during which a concerned Carmen promises him a little premarital nookie if he'll just stop it with the midnight rambling and come back to bed -- and after he agrees to join her shortly and sends her off with a kiss that is, on his part, rather stiff (not like that), he starts scoping the room for further clues. He finds a framed photograph of Carmen posing on a beach somewhere right to others of the two of them enjoying a meal in an upscale restaurant, along with one little playful snapshot where Dean's got his arm around her and is obviously holding his own camera at arm's length to capture their grinning faces. I think I hate her for that one. But that's not important right now, for Dean's spotted yet another picture on a table across the room, and as a somewhat mournful oboe groans its emoish way onto the soundtrack, Dean crosses to lift the thing into the air, an expression of complete and somewhat horrified disbelief spreading across his face. We never get to see the photo itself, but what it portrays is so shocking to Our Intrepid Hero that he involuntarily lets it slip through his fingers to crash onto the floorboards. As the shattered bits of glass from the picture's frame glint in the low lamplight, Dean takes off out the apartment's front door.
Moments later, as The Emo Oboe Of The ANGST That Is Going To Kill The Recapper continues on the soundtrack, Metallicar grumbles up to a suburban curb, and Dean -- still with this expression of incredulous shock on his face -- disembarks to hoof it on up to the house he would have grown up in had The Ceiling Demon not intervened all those many years ago. Incidentally, sharp-eyed and long-memoried people on the forum boards noticed yet another indication That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano: The house's number's been reversed, from 1481 as seen in "Home" to 1841 here. Very clever, show. In any event, Dean raps on the front door, then rings the bell a couple of times until the porch light unexpectedly snaps on above his head, startling him a bit. And when the door opens and Dean gets a look at who's answered, his voice catches in his throat to the point that he can barely stammer out, "Mom?" For yes, gentle reader, the woman at the door is an entirely unflambéed Mary Winchester, clad in a death-defying white nightgown over which she's fastened a pink robe. Perhaps wisely, the makeup department's made no effort whatsoever to age Samantha Smith for this evening's festivities, but I do resent the resultant fact that I'm supposed to believe this 38-year-old woman is actually 53. Shut up, Supernatural. In any event, Mary's all full of concern for her elder son's well-being, what with him popping up on her doorstep unannounced in the middle of the night, but when she asks him if he's okay, Dean, on the verge of tears, can muster no more than a truthful, "I don't know." Sign Number Three That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano: If the LYING LIAR WHO LIES extraordinaire can't pull together a simple "Oh, yeah -- I thought I'd just, you know, check in on you on my way home" for the benefit of his suddenly uncrispified mother, something really fucked up is going on here.
Mary pulls him indoors (and in a nice touch, Dean almost flinches away from her hand the first time she places it on his shoulder), and after she's shut the door behind him, she proceeds into the living room, nattering on and on about Carmen calling and whatnot, but Dean -- suddenly suspicious, as well he should be -- demands she repeat what she said to him every night while tucking him into bed when he was a kid. Mary, taken aback at first, eventually just smiles and reminds him, "I told you that angels were watching over you." Dean's reserve completely cracks at this, and as the hint of a genuine smile tugs at his mouth, he bow-leggedly strides across the room to pull Mary up into a grasping embrace. Mary, meanwhile, admits to fears for his sanity. Heh. Dean blows past all that and, after drawing back to hold her at arm's length to babble something about wishes coming true, pulls her into another hug. "I'm just happy to see you," he admits, and with his face thus hidden from hers, he allows himself a quick, silent sob of joy. Wimp.
Realizing he threatens to freak her out if he doesn't get it together, he breaks the embrace and spins to examine the various family photographs on the bookshelves lining the living room, all the while too-casually asking about a fire in the house when he was young, which of course never happened. The camera pans across Jensen Ackles's actual prom picture (he's prettier than she is, the poor girl) and Jared Padalecki's actual senior portrait from high school (neeeeeeeeeeerd!) before Dean finds a shot of Daddy Shut Up in a softball uniform with a Route 66 logo on the sleeve, and very clever, show, and very nice that Dean finds it amusing as well, but that's not what's important at the moment. No, what's important is the fact that Daddy Shut Up most thankfully dropped dead in 2006 even in this reality, only this time around, he went peacefully from a stroke in his sleep. Dean finds comfort in that, because Dean continues to refuse to see his father for the lousy, worthless bastard the man truly was when he was alive, but again: Not that important, because Dean is now officially freaking his mother out. "You've been drinking," she eventually guesses with a hint of a condescending smile on her lips. Heh. Dean denies it of course, but Mary insists on calling Carmen to pick him up, anyway. Dean pleads with her to allow him to crash at the old homestead this evening -- "I miss the place" -- so Mary relents, perhaps attributing her son's bizarre behavior to her worthless bastard of a husband's recent death. He collapses onto the sofa, and Mary, stepping over to caress his face, asks, "Are you sure you're all right?" Dean, obviously still overwhelmed, is not, but this time around, he manages to LIE TO HIS POOR UNDEAD MOTHER, "I think so." She kisses him on his forehead before heading upstairs to bed, and I mention it only because Jensen Ackles allows the tension in Dean's face to melt away completely for what I'm pretty sure is the first time ever on this show when she does so, and it's a beautiful little moment.
After urging him to "get some rest" and telling him she loves him, Mary disappears up the stairs, leaving Dean alone, the better for him to examine more closely the photographs surrounding him, and that's a very, very, very bad move, indeed, because oh, my God, I have never seen such crappy Photoshopping in my entire life. In every single one of these damn things, it looks like they've pasted production photos of Samantha Smith and Jeffrey Dean Morgan onto actual pictures of The Padalecki and The Ackles from the boys' individual childhoods, and nothing -- color intensity, apparent light sources, even the heads' proper sizing in proportion to each other in the same goddamned photograph -- matches up. ANYWHERE. I'm tempted to call it Sign Number Four That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano, but please. It's just shitty, nonexistent-budget production design. Oy. And this episode was going so well. Sort of.
ANY-way, Dean promptly falls asleep on the couch, and when he wakes in the morning to find himself staring directly at A HIDEOUSLY PHOTOSHOPPED "FAMILY" "CHRISTMAS" PICTURE FROM HIS SUPPOSED CHILDHOOD, he screams upright on the sofa and attempts to call Sam immediately. The call falls into voice mail, unfortunately, so El Deano's forced to perform a little research on his own. Yep, the scene finds the LYING LIAR WHO LIES in fine form in a nearby anthropology professor's office, assuring the guy, "I love your lectures! You...you make learning fun!" Heh. Soon enough, the professor's running through the relevant mythology attached to genies throughout the centuries, but Dean cuts to the chase: Can these creatures actually grant wishes, even if those wishes remain unvoiced? The professor glances at El Deano like the latter's been smoking crack, but he allows that, because of their "godlike" powers, the djinn can pretty much do whatever to whomever, whenever they want. When Dean starts puzzling out the possible motivations behind such wish-granting behavior, however, the professor drops the polite act and demands, "Son, you been drinking?" "Everybody keeps asking me that," Dean manages to grin after an uncomfortable pause, "but, uh. No!"
Thunder subtly rumbles outside as the camera hops from Dean's bright expression to the Impala's trunk. Having left the research behind, Dean opens the trunk in the rain to find nothing more than a couple of old Maxim and Playboy magazines, along with a few discarded food containers and a wadded-up t-shirt that looks like it's been living in there for the last four years. "Who'd-a thought, baby?" he chuckles -- partly to himself, but really mostly to the car. "We're civilians!" Dean's happiness is short-lived, however, for across the street, standing in front of the university's station on Lawrence's delightfully efficient light-rail line, is a solemn and sullen Woman In White. Well, not one of the Women In White from the series premiere, but a woman dressed in white nevertheless, and as women dressed in white are always bad news, we have officially reached the actual Sign Number Four That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano. She stares at him, her breathing slow and deliberate, utterly oblivious to the professors and students passing by around her. Dean, unnerved, starts across the street to confront her. Of course, he nearly gets run down midway by a screeching red Volvo, and when he's refocused his attention from the car to the girl, she's vanished. DUN!
Back at the Winchester homestead, Dean lustily chomps into a delicious-looking BLT his undead mother's most graciously prepared for him. "This is the best sandwich ever!" he enthuses through a mouthful of food, and it does look fantastic, though think about it: Jensen Ackles shoves so much food into his gaping maw on this show that you know some poor PA's got to hang onto a nasty-ass spit bucket for him just off-camera during what must be multiple takes of these shots, because there's no way in hell he actually devours that much crap and still maintains that trim figure of his. NO WAY. In any event, Mary joins him at the kitchen table, and after a bit of business that involves Dean LYING TO HIS POOR UNDEAD MOTHER about taking the day off from work "at the garage," Dean notices with undue amounts of concern that her lawn's a little shaggy. Mary stares in disbelief. "You want to mow the lawn?" "You kidding me?" Dean replies, still with a mouthful of bacon. "I'd love to mow the lawn." Mary's all, "Knock yourself out," before giving a little roll of her eyes and lightly offering, "You'd think you'd never mowed a lawn in your life." Dean, with his back to her, still looking out the window, wiggles his eyebrows around, all, "Well...now that you mentioned it."
As Joey Ramone's version of "What A Wonderful World" kicks into gear on the soundtrack, Dean rips the cord on the lawnmower, and I really want to hate the montage that follows, but I love the song, and Dean's just such a dippy, happy-looking goofball throughout it all that I find myself smiling anyway. The fact that the lawnmower doesn't have blades? Why, that's simply Sign Number Five That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano! No, it's not another example of shitty, nonexistent-budget production design. It's a Sign. No, seriously. No, seriously. NO SERIOUSLY AND SHUT UP I AM NOT SYCOTIC IM TELLING YOU TEH TRUTH and look! There's even a white picket fence out front! With roses! Awww. And after El Deano's cheerfully waved at the neighbor across the way who's clearly about to call the police because some whackjob's tooling across Mary Winchester's lawn with a mower that has no blades, and after El Deano's settled himself comfortably on the front steps with an El Sol beer to bask in the sun and the satisfaction of a no-blade lawnmowing job well done, up rolls a little foreign import from which The Ginormotron eventually unfolds all fifteen feet of himself. Sign Number Six That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano? Sam's wearing pastels. Sign Number Seven? Sam's coif is fabulous. Also in the car? An entirely unflambéed Jessica Moore, of course! Hi, Jess! I wish I could say I tuned in every week to your afterlife on that football show, but I only caught the premiere and the finale, and I'm afraid Kyle Chandler's Hair left more of an impression than you did. Don't feel bad, though -- Kyle Chandler's Hair left more of an impression than pretty much everyone else in the cast, including Kyle Chandler himself.
In any event, Dean sweeps Jessica up into a hug so enthusiastic and bone-crushing that she's forced to bleat, "Can't breathe!" into his ear, and poor Li'l Stumpy. Sam's girlfriend is as tall as he is. Hee. So the boys get to talking, and from Sam's perspective, Dean's weirdly overenthusiastic about everything and probably drunk, and from Dean's perspective, Sam's a little stand-offish and grumpy, but it matters not to El Deano, who's simply overjoyed that Sam and Jess are still together and still at Stanford, where Sam's in the middle of earning his law degree. One problem: Sam and Jess actually flew in from California because it's Mary's birthday -- the first, presumably, since her worthless bastard of a husband died last fall. Don't tell Sam that Dean forgot about it! Dean gulps.
Soon enough, however, the entire family (plus Carmen) has gathered to celebrate at some chi-chi dining establishment, where the waiter serves El Deano a plate of crudité. Dean LIES that it looks awesome, but everyone giggles at him, because they all know he hates crap like that. Sam, resplendent in suit and tie, offers a toast to their dear, darling, uncrispified mother, and the group clinks its glasses together. Sam and Jess share a smooch under Dean's approving eye before Carmen leans in to his ear and whispers, "Whaddya say later we get you a cheeseburger?" "Oh, God, yes!" Dean whispers back. He gazes into her eyes and marvels, "How did I end up with such a cool chick?" "I just got low standards," she jokes with a shrug, and the two snicker at each other and kiss. Their little moment's interrupted by one for Sam and Jess, though, and yes, of course, after Sam announces they have one more surprise for Mary's birthday, Jess flashes her engagement ring. The entire table leaps up to hug each other and whatnot, but when it's Dean's turn to congratulate Sam with a sincere, "I'm really glad you're happy," we get Sign Number Eight That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano: Sam greets this sentiment with a puzzled expression and more than a hint of his impressive bitchface. Unfortunately, we can't linger on the implications of that, because in Sign Number Nine That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano, tonight's Woman In White unexpectedly reappears to lurk by the restaurant's entrance, and to be honest, she's looking a little worse for the wear -- her skirt and blouse are filthy and torn, her hair's fallen into a tangled mess around her shoulders, and her arms and her face are streaked with dirt. Spotting her, Li'l Stumpy abruptly pushes past The Ginormotron and plows across the restaurant's floor, but by the time he's reached the entrance, The Woman In Now-Filthy White has once again disappeared. He wavers uncertainly before turning to face his family -- all of whom eye him like he's grown three additional heads -- until the camera leaps past his confused and uneasy expression to fall into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Back at the Winchester homestead, there's a hideous photograph composed of Jeffrey Dean Morgan's head glued onto the body of some guy holding a massive fish, so let's ignore all of that to watch as the family arrives from dinner, the ladies chattering discreetly amongst themselves in the background while Sam pulls Dean aside in the front to wonder what gives with his bizarre behavior at the restaurant. After Dean hastily LIES that he thought he saw someone he knew, Mary thanks them all for a wonderful birthday, and retires upstairs for the evening. Sam proposes he and Jess do the same, but Dean points out that it's barely nine o'clock, and what with Sam's engagement, the younguns have some celebrating to do. When Sam politely declines and Dean obliviously presses the issue, Carmen and Jessica shoot each other Looks Fraught With Significance until Sam asks the ladies for a little alone time with his brother. And in Sign Number Ten That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano, after the gals have disappeared into the kitchen, Sam reveals that he pretty much hates Dean's smarmy, ATM-card-snaking, graduation-bailing, prom-date-banging guts. For yes, in the world in which The Ceiling Demon left the Winchesters entirely unmolested, Dean was a right little bastard to his younger brother, to the point that now they speak only on holidays, and then just barely. Mind you, Sam's reached a place of forgiveness about it all, and God knows he'd never ask Dean to change who he is, but they have nothing in common at all, so this little "warm, fuzzy, Ecstasy trip thing" Dean's been on over the last couple of days? Is chafing The Ginormotron's ass. And that's a lot of fine ass to chafe. Just saying. Dean, stunned and more than a little heartbroken, attempts to splutter out something about all the fun times they've had while hunting, but in this world, of course, Sam's never so much as held a gun in his entire life. Sam shrugs it all off and moves to join Jessica in the kitchen, but at the last moment turns to eye Dean with concern, and rather significantly suggests, "Get some rest." Dean, lost, watches silently as Sam disappears.
Later that evening, a reflective Dean's changed into some plaid flannel from the uncomfortable shirt-and-tie combo he'd worn to their mother's party, and he's crashed out on the sofa in his apartment while Carmen grabs him a bottle of El Sol from the fridge. After she joins him on the couch, he admits he's deeply disappointed that he and Sam don't get along as well as they should. Carmen offers some words of advice, but what's most important about this little scene is when Dean confides that just recently, he's felt like he's been given a second chance at life, and he wants to atone for all of his apparent transgressions. That's crazy talk to Carmen, of course, but she agrees that whatever he's been going through lately has been for the better, and they mack for a bit until she rises to get ready for her night shift at the hospital, where she's a nurse. Dean marvels at the respectability of his girlfriend's profession -- I guess he thought he'd end up with a stripper -- and after she's gone, he finds himself channel surfing in the middle of the night, despite the fact that the time-stamp on Bloomberg News claims it's 9 AM Central. Ooops. In any event, he eventually lands on the KJLT Channel 15 news, which features Sign Number Eleven That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano: A story on the one-year anniversary of the crash of United Britannia Flight 424. Dean shoots forward in his seat. "We stopped that!"
Not according to the online news archive of the Indianapolis Sun, you didn't. In fact, 108 people died when the flight went down outside of Pittsburgh a year ago -- which, according to the masthead, was December 5, 2005, and I'm not sure if that's Sign Number Twelve That Things Are Not Quite Right With El Deano Because Who In The Hell Has A Lawn To Mow In Kansas In December For Christ's Sake, or if it's simply another example of shitty, nonexistent-budget production design, but at this point, I don't really care. We're already halfway through this episode, there has been NO GORE WHATSOEVER, and all of this alternate reality crap is starting to bore me, so let's kick this plot in its ass to get it moving. "Gore?! Did you just say GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!?" Yes, Raoul, I did, but only to note the lack of it. "Rats!" By the way, who are you reading about now? "Marie Prevost! And after her, it's Lupe Vélez!" Oh, again? "I just can't help myself! It's all just so sordidly delicious!"
In any event, Dean plows through the Wide Wide World Of Web searching for the cases they've dealt with over the last two years, only to discover that each one of them ended badly for everyone involved because Our Intrepid Heroes were not there to save the day. The kiddies in Fitchbu/erg? Dead. The parents of all those mouth-breathing morons in Medford and Mishicot? Ditto, along with poor little boring Tyler Thompson in Cornwall, Connecticut. As Dean attempts to process the implications of all this, a shadowy figure shoots past the corner of his eye into the apartment's bedroom. Dean leaps out of his chair to give chase, only to find nothing amiss. Well, nothing amiss until he hears a suspicious creaking in the closet, of course. And no, it's not his repressed sexual orientation, but it is pretty damn close: A couple of decaying corpses strung up by their rotting hands to dangle from the ceiling. Geddit? Skeletons in Dean's closet? Oh, show. Oh, clever, clever show. Dean stares at them in horror until The Woman In Now-Filthy White's reflection snaps into focus in the closet door's mirror. He spins around to find her now looking a lot worse for the wear -- a gash in her forehead, bloodstains on her blouse, scabs around her mouth -- and what's more, she buzzes and blinks and flickers in and out before vanishing completely. Once she's gone, a visibly rattled Dean turns slowly back around to face the closet. It's empty, too.
Thunder again rumbles ominously overhead, this time above a nighttime cemetery, and oh, crap. I was going to mock this, really -- especially the part where that pussy Dean allows not one, but two perfect tears to drop from his eyes during the soliloquy he addresses to his father's headstone on the nature of duty and sacrifice and how much it sucks to be a Winchester because of said duty and sacrifice -- but upon rewatching it about four times, I have to admit that Jensen Ackles really does sell the hell out of it all, so I'm going to give it a pass. Long story short, Dean realizes he must hunt down the genie again, this time to force the thing to reverse his wish, not only to ensure the well-being of all those he and his family had helped in the past, but also so he and Sam can find and save the Woman In Filthy And Now-Bloodstained White who's been haunting this perfect world of his. And with the burden of all that responsibility once again pressing down on his shoulders, Dean trudges off into the CHOMP-less commercial break accompanied only by a sole, mournful violin. Sniff. "You're just as much of a wimp as he is!" Oh, shush.
The camera fades up on the window in Sam and Jessica's darkened room before it pans over and across the bed, upon which our lovebirds slumber. She's on top of the sheets in a cropped t-shirt and a pair of those for-the-ladies boxer-briefs, by the way, and we get a brief shot of The Ass That I Have Not Actually Been Waiting For, Thank You Very Much as she rolls away from Sam onto her side. The camera continues up to Sam's face -- he's depressingly clad in a dark grey t-shirt -- as a dog's barking hits the soundtrack from the yard outside, accompanied by the soft rattling of someone stumbling into the furniture on the floor below. Sam's eyes snap open at the latter, and he creeps out onto the stairwell landing with a baseball bat to traverse the blackened depths of his mother's nighttime house, angling around corners and darting his eyes across an open window before catching sight of a crouched figure rooting through his mother's china cabinet. Sam nervously slinks around the corner, and with the intruder's attention otherwise occupied, Sam pounces, whipping the bat around through the air. Dean snatches the bat from his brother's hands and slams Sam onto his back on the floor. Jensen Ackles's far-too-pretty face emerges from the living room's pervasive gloom into the low light provided by the streetlamps outside to smirk, "That was so easy, I'm embarrassed for you." Mrow. "Dean?" Sam bleats incredulously, panting a bit from all of the exertion. "What the hell are you doing here?" "Well, I was looking for a beer," Dean jokes, ever the cheerfully louche reprobate of the family, as opposed to his brother's eternally solemn and responsible nerd. "In the china cabinet?" Sam challenges, finally breaking all of the parallels to the series premiere to step over to the wall and flick on a light. With withering amounts of contempt, he quickly guesses his brother broke into their mother's house to swipe her wedding silver. Dean LIES about the true nature of his business, blaming it all on gambling debts, and, after pocketing one of the knives, he apologizes to Sam for all of the bad blood between them over the years, asks his brother to tell their mother that he loves her, and turns to exit. Dean pauses at the front door for one last, wistful look around before walking away from his deepest wish forever, leaving Sam alone to gasp and flail about the living room in confusion, and I'm sure I'd be touched by all of that were it not for the fact that this sequence completely fucked up the narrative conceit they had going up to this point, which was Dean's wish world as perceived by Dean as Dean experienced it. Lovely parallels to the series premiere up there, Mr. Kripkeeper, sir, but we should never have seen Sam and Jess alone in bed together, nor should we have just now lingered inside the house for Darling Sammy's reaction shot to his brother's bizarre goodbye, nor, in fact, should we have been witness to Darling Sammy slamming shut one of his law books, because in none of these instances was Dean there to witness it himself.
ANY-way, I can almost forgive all of that for what follows. Dean contemplates the life he'll never have for a little while longer out in the front seat of the Impala, and is genuinely surprised -- and pissed -- when Sam crawls into the passenger's seat beside him. "Get out of the car!" he orders immediately, but Sam's having none of it, insisting, "Whatever stupid thing you're about to do, you're not doing it alone, and that's that." With that, Sam raises a pair of schoolmarmish, brook-no-dissent eyebrows that are just this side of an actual bitchface. Hee. "I don't understand," Dean protests. "Why are you doing this?" Sam sighs and primly admits, "Because you're still my brother." Dean's eyes hood themselves a little bit in that teasing, uber-macho way they do whenever he's about to deliver the following line: "Bitch." Sam, adorable, and with full bitchface: "What're you calling me a bitch for?" Dean, equally adorable, if a little lost: "You're, uh, supposed to say, 'Jerk.'" "What?" Sam bites, supremely unamused. "Never mind," Dean mumbles, throwing the car into gear. And I am not ashamed to admit that bit made me laugh out loud. Repeatedly. For several minutes. Okay, maybe I'm a little ashamed.
Out on the road, there's a lengthy scene between the two wherein Sam finds the lamb's blood Dean needs to coat the silver knife, freaks, and attempts to call the proper psychiatric authorities until Dean snatches the product-placed Motorola Q from Sam's hand and whips it out the window. Heh. Padalecki's cute as hell during all of this with the squeamishness and the outrage and such, and considering what Sam pulls later in the abandoned chemical factory, it all adds to the ongoing set-up that pays off beautifully at that moment, but you don't really need to know anything else about it, do you? Thought not. "You might want to mention that it reportedly contains elements excised from the initial pilot script!" No, I don't want to do that, Raoul. Be quiet. "Well, what about the music?!" "Saturday Night Special" by Lynyrd Skynyrd? So not worth my time. "Oh! Okay! Never mind! Hee!"
The rain-streaked Metallicar once again grumbles up outside the abandoned factory headquarters of The C. & R. Jacob Chemical Company. Dean wakes the thoroughly out-of-it Sammy with a penlight to the eyes, and when Sam wonders, "Where are we?" Dean rather seriously replies, "Well, we're not in Kansas anymore." "You might want to reconsider your earlier remark about the contents of this dear boy's closet!" Raoul suggests. Don't think that thought has not crossed my mind, my scaly friend. In any event, Dean eventually allows his stony demeanor to fall and snickers at his little joke. Sam remains singularly unamused, so Dean admits they've arrived in Illinois.
And with that, the boys disembark to follow Dean's earlier path through the company's offices, Sam all the while nagging his brother about the stupidity of traveling across the better part of two states to stumble through an abandoned warehouse until a low, feminine whimpering hits his ears. "What the hell is that?" Sam hisses, darting his eyes around. Dean orders Sam to remain behind him with his mouth shut for what follows, and the boys turn a corner off the corridor in which Dean was initially attacked to find those two dangling skeletons from Dean's closet. The camera swoops and swirls around the desiccated things -- lingering on one long enough to make note of the empty hospital blood bag still hooked up to its neck -- before smashing over to the boys' right, where they find that Woman In Filthy And Bloodstained White who's been haunting Dean all evening. The Now-Woozy Woman In Filthy And Bloodstained White whimpers and moans and jerks around a bit insensibly, drawing the attention of the tattooed genie from the top of the hour, who's been loitering inside his lair at the far end of this warehouse room the entire time, unaware of the boys' presence. Dean drags Sam behind a set of shelves, and they both watch with increasing amounts of horror as The Frigging Genie approaches The Woozy Woman In Filthy And Bloodstained White, who piteously cries out for her father. In a particularly creepy shot, her bare feet -- which scarcely reach the floor given the way she's been suspended from the ceiling -- slip around in a puddle of blood as she tries to pivot away from the tattooed monstrosity before her. Presumably, it's her own. "Eeeep!" "Sleep," The Frigging Genie suggests, activating the shimmering blue mojo on the palm of his hand, and pressing it against her face. The Woozy Woman In Filthy And Bloodstained White struggles for a moment more before complying, her head dropping forward towards her chest just as her feet stop slipping through her own bodily fluids below. And then? The Frigging Genie pops a tube out of her blood bag and starts squirting the contents into his mouth! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" I'm so happy they finally came through for you, Raoul! "So am I! Reading is terribly educational and everything, but I need my wanton acts of unrepentant violence!" As do we all, Raoul. As do we all.
In any event, this last bit of gruesomeness of course finally elicits an audibly disgusted grunt from Sam, and The Frigging Genie flashes his neon-blue eyes in the direction of the sound before creeping over to investigate. Dean's already dragged Sam elsewhere -- beneath the stairs, as it turns out -- so they remain hidden as The Frigging Genie slowly climbs to the second floor, where he slams a door behind himself. You should probably bear in mind that the slamming door sounds an awful lot like thunder. Just a suggestion. Anyway, Sam starts panting out something placating in Dean's direction regarding his own earlier disbelief, but Dean blows past all of that to arrive at the brilliant realization that because The Woozy Woman In Filthy And Bloodstained White clearly has no idea where she really is, it must mean that The Frigging Genie is just playing around inside her mind. Sam, increasingly frantic, begs Dean to flee the warehouse, but Dean -- caught up in his own increasingly horrifying realization and buffeted by visions of himself suspended from the ceiling with a blood bag hooked up to his neck -- simply gasps, "What if I'm like her? What if all this is in my head?" Before we get the answer to that, however, Sam, Dean, The Woozy Woman In Filthy And Bloodstained White, the decaying skeletons from Dean's closet, and the panicky expression on Dean's face get swallowed whole by the METAL TEETH CHOMP!.
With anxious Sam babbling along behind him, Dean carefully approaches The Woozy Woman In Filthy And Bloodstained White and reasons, "Maybe he gives us some kind of supernatural acid, and then just feeds on us slow." "What if that's why she keeps appearing to me?" he continues. "More and more, I'm catching flashes of reality, like I'm in here somewhere, and I'm catatonic, and I'm taking all this stuff in, but I can't snap out of it?" You know how I suggested you bear in mind that the warehouse's slamming door sounded an awful lot like thunder? It's because Dean is right, and the thunder that kept rumbling above during the earlier scenes was actually The Frigging Genie slamming a door. And I didn't even notice that until I hit the last scene while writing the recap. Well played, Supernatural. In any event, Sam attempts to drag Dean physically from the warehouse, but Dean suddenly and violently resists. He's convinced this Sam is no more than an illusion concocted by The Frigging Genie, and to prove it, he's ready to drive that knife soaked in lamb's blood into his own stomach. "An old wives' tale," Dean calmly explains. "If you're about to die in a dream, you wake up." Sam babbles some more, but Dean's unwavering in his resolve until, of course, this fantasy Sam screams, "Wait!" just as Mary emerges from the shadows, wearing the same beatific smile and White Nightgown Of Doom she had the last time Dean saw her alive. "Why'd you have to keep digging?" Fantasy Sam asks, a bit sorrowfully, as Carmen steps into place behind him. "Why couldn't you have left well enough alone?" Fantasy Sam continues. Jessica, too, joins them, and Fantasy Sam gently argues, "You were happy." Dean counters, of course, that none of it was real, and therefore none of it had any actual meaning, or something, and I'm sorry, but if I start picking this scene apart line by line, it's going to seem approximately sixty-eight thousand times cheesier than it actually was, and as that would be a disservice to all of the performers involved -- especially the two leads, one of whom is positively heartbreaking during this sequence, and it's not Jensen Ackles -- let's cut to the chase. If Dean stops questioning things and pushes from his mind the fact that he'll be dead in a matter of days in the real world, he can have years -- decades, actually -- of happiness in this one. Caressing his cheek again, his mother croons, "Get some rest," echoing the plea The Frigging Genie's placed in every single person's mouth throughout this fantasy tonight, and thereby revealing what Dean's truest wish has been -- if not throughout the series, then at least throughout this season. By the way, and apropos of everything, it was in this scene that I finally realized how closely Carmen resembles The Reaper who came for Dean in the season premiere. Also? It now makes perfect sense for his bastard of a so-called father to be just as dead in this reality as he is in the other. That "well played" I offered for the thunder? You should multiply that by fifteen, at least, for everything they just toyed with and revealed during this one scene, which tied together Dean's entire arc throughout the second season and made this season look far better in retrospect than it initially appeared as it was playing out. Outstanding.
That said, we all know what Dean's going to do, because this sort of wish-fulfillment storyline's has appeared in everything from It's A Wonderful Life to The Last Temptation Of Christ to goddamned Xena, Warrior Princess, as well as everywhere else before, in between, and to come ["But was in fact invented by Joss Whedon, I'm not sure if you knew that." -- Joe R], so long story short, Dean whispers, "I'm sorry" to the assembled apparitions, and plunges the knife into his stomach.
"Dean!" The one true Darling Sammy bellows into his brother's dazed face in the real world's abandoned C. & R. Jacob Chemical Company. Dean, suspended from the ceiling with a blood bag hooked up to his neck, slowly struggles into sludgy consciousness, and when he sees Sam standing there in front of him, he gets a small little grin on his ashen, wasted face and whispers, "Auntie Em!" Heh. "There's no place like home," Dean murmurs, continuing the reference while doing more damage to his heterosexual Neanderthal reputation than I ever thought possible. "Might I remind you," Raoul interjects, "that Darling Sammy suggested the dear boy was overcompensating as far back as that dreadfully boring episode set in the bed and breakfast?! Perhaps his supposed fascination with Barbara Eden -- that goddess of the small screen -- is simply more of the same!" Excellent point, my scaly friend, but I really must finish this recap. "Oh, by all means!" Though to be honest, after that last scene in Dean's Fantasyland, I really don't care much about the ending of the Monster Of The Week bit, so let's speed through it, shall we? Sam unhooks Dean from the blood bag and is halfway through cutting him down when The Frigging Genie attacks. Of course, because Sam suh-huuuuuucks at the hand-to-hand, The Frigging Genie quickly subdues his gargantuan ass and is about to send The Ginormotron spinning off into a Fantasyland built upon Sam's own deepest wish (my guess? To be entirely normal, which means that in his dream world, Sam'll be all of five-foot-eight. And that's just for starters) when El Deano manfully breaks free of his remaining bonds and stabs The Frigging Genie in the back with the tainted silver knife. Once they confirm The Frigging Genie's dead, Our Intrepid Heroes free the real-world Woozy Woman In Filthy And Bloodstained White, and it's off to yet another CHOMP-free commercial break for everyone involved.
Joliet Motel. Denouement. While flipping through a magazine, Dean stumbles across an ad for El Sol beer with the tagline "Go someplace better." Ugh. And on top of that, the model in the ad is Carmen, in the same pose she struck for that beach picture of hers in Dean's imaginary apartment. Double ugh. They should have left well enough alone. And as that's put me right off this denouement, let's get to the facts, shall we? The Real-World Woozy Woman In Filthy And Bloodstained White is recovering quite nicely at a nearby hospital, thank you very much, and Dim Dean doesn't realize what he actually wished for. Nope, he still thinks he wished their mother alive again, not understanding at all the deeper impulse that resulted in every last detail of his dream world -- most importantly Fantasy Sam's complete lack of dependence on his brother, unfortunate though the circumstances that led to that complete lack of dependence were -- and while it's fun to understand more about the character than he seems capable of understanding himself, still: Poor Dean. So tragic. So dumb. Though I do wonder if they're going to exploit any of this stuff further, because I think they could have fun with it, especially Dean's now blatantly evident deep-seated hatred of his worthless bastard of a so-called father. In any event, after Dean bemoans everything they've lost over the years because of The Ceiling Demon -- again, some more -- we finally fade to black.
week: I have no idea, because I've been avoiding spoilers for the two-part season finale. Have anything to add, Raoul? "I do! Did you know Auntie Em killed herself by tying a plastic bag around her head?! I do hope Our Dear Boy didn't inadvertently jinx Darling Sammy!" Um. Ooops?