In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Turns out G.I. Jake managed to elude Bobby -- which, I might remind you, wouldn't have happened had Bobby just frigging shot the stupid guy -- and scurried off into the woods surrounding Cold Oak to set up camp. Of course, Our Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance has no problems tracking him down, and as Jake was the last super-special mommy-free and -having child left standing, The Ceiling Demon now has a very special task for him: To take The Fucking Colt to rural Wyoming and use its unusually shaped barrel to unlock a crypt at the center of an old cowboy boneyard, which itself is at the center of an elaborate, pentagram-shaped network of rail lines that Samuel Colt constructed in the mid-nineteenth century. The crypt, you see, is actually a portal straight down into the depths of Hell, and while earthbound demons can't cross the iron rail lines to access it, G.I. Jake can. And he does so, because he's a worthless and greedy bastard who believes The Ceiling Demon's promise that he and his family will be treated as royalty in the new world order that arises once Jake's freed The Demon's armies from the bowels of the earth, and thus he deserves to die, but we'll get to that in a second, because we've got a Dead Sammy to deal with first.
And what a photogenic corpse that Dead Sammy is! The Ginormotron spends the first thirteen minutes and twenty-five seconds of the episode laid out like Barbara O'Neil post-Sherman at Tara while Dean and Bobby argue about over the best disposition of the remains until El Deano sneaks out to a crossroads, summons a saucy little black-clad brunette, and trades his soul for Darling Sammy's life. Of course, rather than the regular ten-year deal, she forces him to accept the one-year plan, and the repercussions are almost instantaneous when Bobby immediately figures out what Dean's done and tears Our Intrepid Hero a new one out in the middle of the junkyard. The screaming and the ANGST would still be going on, I'm sure, had the fabulous Ellen Harvelle not chosen that very moment to stumble back into their lives (she was out restocking the roadhouse's supply of pretzels when everything went boom, don't you know), and after she slaps down a mysterious map of Wyoming ashy Ash left for her in the bar's safe, the four quickly set to researching, and uncover Our Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance's plan.
So, it's off to the graveyard for the season-ending showdown between The Posse Of Good and The Ceiling Demon and his minions, and while Jake does manage to unlock Hell's portal, he pays for his actions with his life when Darling Sammy finally grows a pair and plugs him full of holes. Unfortunately, several hundred demons manage to emerge through the gateway before Ellen and Bobby -- both bad-ass in the extreme -- wrestle the thing closed. Quite fortunately, one of the last of the critters to make it through is Daddy Shut Up, who wrestles with Our Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance's embarrassing CGI spume of demonic goo long enough for El Deano to regain control of The Fucking Colt, with which Dean finally, at long last, offs the monster that's been plaguing his family for the last twenty-three years. What? No, not Daddy Shut Up -- The Ceiling Demon. Sillies.
And after Daddy Shut Up erupts into a golden light and vanishes Heavenwards to join Mary in the eternal beyond, Sam figures out what Dean sacrificed and vows to help his brother out of the mess he created for himself, Bobby and Ellen remind Our Intrepid Heroes that a whole new slew of demons now need dust-busting, and El Deano quite happily accepts the challenges looming in the coming year by perking, "We got work to do!" It's going to be a very long summer hiatus. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Crackle, Crackle THE ROAD SO FAR! Again! Some more! Eh, it was better last week, so let's keep this brief, shall we? As The Kripkeeper recycles "Carry On My Wayward Son" from last season's "Salvation," we're reminded of a few things relevant to this evening's episode: The Fucking Colt That Can Kill Anything Except When It Can't; the fact that The Ceiling Demon is now in possession of said Fucking Colt; the existence of Crossroads Demons, who barter certain gifts in exchange for the eternal souls of those foolish enough to trade with them; the terms of last week's Demonic Miss America Pageant; and The Death Of The Sammy at G.I. Jake's hand, despite the fact that Darling Sammy was Our Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance's favorite in the competition. The montage isn't that bad, though, for it's absolutely littered with visual references to just about every episode this season, including Sam rescuing various nondemonic moppets during "Everybody Loves A Clown" and "Playthings," Dean bursting through Kurt's condominium door in "Heart" and deploying a little flashlight-fu behind the walls in "No Exit" before directing a shotgun blast at Jonah's spectral form in "Roadkill," Sam summoning Dead Gay Tobey during "Houses Of The Holy," both boys desecrating the movie star's grave in "Hollywood Babylon," The Frigging Genie choking Sam before Dean offs it with a tainted silver knife in "What Is And What Should Never Be," Dean blowing holes through the evil clown's spectral form, some Metallicar action shots, and Tough-Guy Jazz-Hands from "Croatoan," and Sam aerating the zombie chick's head at the end of "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things." So, you know, not a complete waste of time, but still. Not a good sign for the rest of the evening. And as Kansas gets to that bit about laying your weary head to rest, the camera cranes up above Dean cradling Sam's rapidly cooling and unnaturally enormous corpse in his arms to the point where both of the boys look impossibly small against the field of unbroken mud that surrounds them, and then, as he's encouraged not to cry no more, the camera screams in tight on Dean's face so he might bellow once more, "SAAAAAM!" and we're off to the...
...Crackle, Crackle NOW! Once the flaming letters vanish slowly into the darkness, the camera fades up on an overhead shot of Dead Sam stretched out upon a bare mattress, and at first, the color's so drained from the shot that it looks like one of those sepia-tinted death portraits those morbid Victorians were so fond of back in the day, and that's a nice touch, but that's not what we're here for. "Of course not!" Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon vehemently agrees. "We're here for positively spectacular wanton acts of unrepentant violence and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Alas, my scaly friend, you'll be getting little of either this evening. "What?!" shrieks Raoul, appalled. "But...but...it's the season finale!" Sorry, doll, but tonight it's all about The Goddamned ANGST That Is Going To Kill The Recapper, starting right now with the mournful El Deano, standing wasted watch above his impossibly enormous younger brother's rapidly cooling corpse.
"Well!" Raoul harrumphs. "I just don't know what to do with that, but I'll try!" Oh, this oughta be good. "Silence! [Ahem!] First off, that should read 'The Goddamned ANGST That Is Going To Kill The Recapper And His Ever-Faithful, Glamorously Cosmopolitan, And Sleekly Chic Lizardly Companion,' you silly little man! Am I not as adversely affected by all of this nonsense as you?!" Well... "SILENCE! And secondly, Darling Sammy's unnaturally gargantuan corpse is hardly 'rapidly cooling' at this point, for if memory serves -- and it seldom fails to do so, I might note! -- Dean and that filthy mongrel of a man in the trucker's cap had to drag Sam's body through several miles of South Dakota's coastal rainforest before reaching the rain-streaked Impala, after which they faced a drive of at least an hour before they reached the scruffy ball of hair's junkyard! 'Rapidly cooling'?! I do believe the phrase should be 'tantalizingly malodorous'!" Oh, Raoul. How could you be so cruel? This is Darling Sammy we're talking about, here! "Sentiment should not obstruct accuracy! Besides, it's the perfect opportunity to renew my call for Scratch 'N' Sniff cards to accompany all future episodes!" That's a little foul, don't you think? "I do indeed! Which is why it's a perfect bit of marketing genius for the third season! Mark my words: That silly little Kripke person will be thanking me for it come May's Upfronts when he finds this delightful little show has been renewed for two more years!" I'm writing it down, Raoul. I'm writing it down.
Now, where the hell were we? Oh, yeah: The ANGST. In a sign that things are singularly unwell with Our Remaining Intrepid Hero, when Bobby arrives back at his shack with a bucket of chicken, Dean declines the offer of free food. Yep, under Bobby's vaguely disapproving eye, Dean eschews the tasty deep-fried bits of Original Recipe in favor of slugging back a mouthful of Johnnie Walker Black, so it's a little perplexing when Bobby -- clearly aware of Dean's fragile mental state, here -- inquires as to Dean's plans for the disposition of Dead Sam's remains. I mean, I'm expecting Dean to crack that bottle of scotch right across Bobby's craggly face simply for bringing it up. As it is, though, when Bobby asks, "Don't you think it's time we buried Sam?" Dean simply shoots him a look that promises impalement should Bobby continue along such conversational lines and spits, "No," before settling into a chair. Bobby, foolishly not dropping it, goes on to hint that they might want to pull a little DIY cremation job on The Dead Ginormotron, then, but Dean's adamant: They will not be doing any of those nasty things to the humongous Sammy-shaped mass of corpse flesh currently occupying Bobby's guest bedroom. Bobby finally all but throws his hands in the air at it all and insists that Dean get his ass out of the shack now to help Bobby hunt down the yellow-eyed monster truly responsible for Darling Sammy's demise, but that's no good, either, for Dean just angrily snaps that if the world wants to end today in a rain of hellfire and brimstone, then fucking let it, because El Deano is done, do you hear him? DONE. Angry El Deano goes so far as to leap up out of his chair -- pouncing upon Bobby with a ferocity the latter was clearly not expecting -- while screaming for the older gentleman to get the hell out of there and leave him the hell alone, and, oh dear. I'm afraid I'm going to have to correct Raoul, here. Seems the fifteen-foot-tall corpse is not actually laid out upon the unmade mattress in Bobby's guest bedroom. "It's not?!" Nope -- Sam's actually reposing in one of the rotting cottages of long-abandoned Cold Oak, it seems. "But...but...that makes no sense at all!" Which bit of no-sense do you mean, Raoul? The part where they've stuck around Cold Oak despite the fact that The Ceiling Demon and G.I. Jake are likely still haunting the place? The part where they've magically procured a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black for El Deano's Manfully Pained Swig Of Mourning And Grief? The part where Bobby's about to stomp off and leave Dean alone when Bobby has no other means of transportation back to his junkyard? Which? "I was actually talking about the fried chicken! Does The Colonel still have a franchise in Cold Oak?!" I fear we shall never know, Raoul, for Bobby has exited, and Dean, now alone with the gigantic corpse, slumps against a bit of furniture in despair, the better to allow a single, perfect tear to drop from his right eye, race down his cheek, and disappear into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
RAAAWWWR! "Eeeeeeeeeeeee!" Raoul delightedly shrieks, as is his wont, before turning to me in his overstuffed armchair and howling, "A TEAR?! A single, perfect, manly tear disappears into the opening METAL TEETH CHOMP!?" I've a feeling this development upsets you. "As well it should! If a tear is going to drop into the opening METAL TEETH CHOMP! of the season finale, it had best be A TEAR OF GORE!" Raoul, you know I could hardly agree with you more, but you really must settle down, or it's going to make for an impossibly long evening. "Okay! I don't really care that much about it, you know! I'm just trying to be conversational and such!" Thanks for the effort, my scaly friend. "You're welcome!'' Now, shush.
Elsewhere, G.I. Jake lounges al fresco in front of a fire he's managed to start deep within the lush South Dakota coastal rainforest surrounding Cold Oak. No, I don't know where he got the frigging tent, so don't ask me. Just as G.I. Jake nods off, The Ceiling Demon pops up on a rock opposite with a too-friendly, "Howdy, Jake!" Jake, to his credit, understands immediately that he's dreaming, and while you know how much I love me some Frederic Lane as Our Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance, let's get the bit of expository blathering that follows over with, okay? Long story short, if G.I. Jake -- "the last man standing" in The Ceiling Demon's ongoing demonic Cold Oak cage match among all of the super-special mommy-free and -having children -- does not now do everything The Ceiling Demon tells him to, Our Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance will "make certain" that Jake's mother and younger sister "live long enough to know the chewy taste of their own intestines." "And why were we not witness to that?!" Raoul shrieks, still feeling cheated. Because it hasn't happened yet, sweetheart. "Ooops! Never mind!" Seriously, Raoul. Chill. "Okay!" In any event, Jake quickly acquiesces to The Demon's demands, but we'll have to wait a bit to learn the nature of those demands, for first we must attend to the tremendously large matter of...
...The Dead Sam we've all got on our hands at the moment, and I swear to God, I have not seen a corpse this photogenic since the deathless Barbara O'Neil lay in artfully lit repose at Tara all those many years ago. Or, you know, the last time TNT ran that movie as counterprogramming on Super Bowl Sunday. Your pick. Dean sits shiva above his ridiculously lengthy dead brother, and I don't know if I can make it through the monologue Dean delivers to the corpse. Not because it's horribly written -- it's not that bad, really -- and not because Jensen Ackles fails to sell the crap out of it -- he does, and this scene explains perfectly why he submitted this episode to the Emmy nominating committee, despite the fact that we'll all be playing ice hockey in Hell long before he ever receives a nomination for this show -- but because of all The Goddamned ANGST That Is Going To Kill The Recapper And His Ever-Faithful Yet Severely Deluded Lizardly Companion. "You rememb...HEY!" "You know when we were little?" Dean begins, and already I must fight the urge to scream, "No, he doesn't, because he's dead, MORON!" at the television set. I really am not to be trusted with The ANGST. Then again, whatever happened to that "no chick-flick moments" vow from the series premiere? Huh? I was promised no chick-flick moments, and now El Deano's having a nervous breakdown over Sam's frigging ginormous corpse like he's Sally Field in Steel Magnolias going, "Open your eyes, Shelby! Ope-ope-open your eyes!" Wimp.
In any event, a grieving and likely heavily drunk El Deano continues, "You just started asking questions -- how come we didn't have a mom, why did we always have to move around, where'd [Our Worthless Bastard Of A So-Called Father] go when he'd take off for days at a time? I remember I'd beg you, 'Quit asking, Sammy! Man, you don't wanna know.' I just wanted you to be a kid, just for a little while longer." Nice little callback to "Something Wicked," that, but now I'm getting a Shirley MacLaine in Terms Of Endearment vibe, and that's never a good thing. Oh, Dean. Oblivious to me and my mocking ways, Dean allows himself a fond, wistful smile at the memory and keeps at it with, "I was trying to protect you -- keep you safe. [Our Worthless Bastard Of A So-Called Father] didn't even have to tell me. It was just always my responsibility, you know?" Sam does not know, because as I believe I noted earlier, SAM IS DEAD. "It's like I had one job -- that one job," Dean emphasizes right before his voice cracks a bit, and the tremendous pussy allows a sob to escape as he realizes, "and I screwed it up! I blew it, and for that, I'm sorry." A single, perfect tear escapes his right eye at this moment and drops directly into the blackness beneath the lower edge of the frame before two more appear to trickle down his face. Dean wipes these away almost immediately, and with a grim bitterness settling into his tone, he supposes aloud, "I guess that's what I do! I let down the people I love." "I let [Our Worthless Bastard Of A So-Called Father] down," he falsely recalls, "and now I guess I'm just supposed to let you down, too." "How can I?" he suddenly wonders to himself, just as The Emo Oboe Of The ANGST That Is Going To Kill The Recapper And His Ever-Faithful Yet Severely Deluded Lizardly Companion unexpectedly gives way to a set of low, tense strings. "How am I supposed to live with that?" he demands of the entirely unresponsive corpse, giving in to the tears for a moment. "What am I supposed to do, Sammy? What am I supposed to do?" Sam hasn't an answer, of course, because SAM IS DEAD, DEAN. GOD! Dean bellows his last question once more at the sky, or wherever, and the thing we know...
...the Impala's headlights flash on, and Dean tears off down the road towards points unknown. Well, points unknown if you didn't catch the Crackle, Crackle THE ROAD SO FAR!, of course. And it's a pity we didn't get to see him pull The Dean Winchester Patented Bow-Legged Clompy Stomp Of Great Vengeance And Furious Anger through the two miles of South Dakota coastal rainforest he needed to traverse to reach the car, isn't it? No matter, for after Jensen Ackles's stunt double sends the Impala fishtailing through an intersection and off across a stretch of rural highway, the grimly determined El Deano quickly reaches his destination: An isolated crossroads, in the middle of the night. There's a fast montage of Dean rooting through Metallicar's bottomless trunk for the various disgusting tools of the voodoo trade necessary to fill the appropriate tin box -- the name on the false U.S. Wildlife Service ID he uses to meet the photo requirement is "Agent Dean Ford," by the way -- before Dean clompy-stomps to the center of the crossroads to start digging through the gravel and the dirt with his bare hands. Soon enough, the summons has been buried, and Dean waits a very long time for the saucy demonette to appear, eventually screaming out in frustration, "Show your face, you bitch!" And when she mysteriously and silently appears behind his back to smirk, "Easy, sugar, you'll wake the neighbors!" it becomes clear what delayed her: That fancy style-and-set she snagged for her host body before arriving for this tawdry little assignation. Tonight's saucy brunette Crossroads Demonette is being played by Ona Grauer, by the way, who last worked with The Kripkeeper on the pilot of his justifiably ill-fated Tarzan, and the less said about that, the better.
In any event, The Demonette's eyes flip blood-red for a moment before she allows them to clear so she might admit with a genuinely enthusiastic smile, "It's so, so good to see you!" "I mean it!" she practically sings, sauntering on up to him. "I mean, look at you: Gone and got your family killed, all alone in the world? It's just too sweet!" "Excuse me," she apologizes, getting up close to whisper into his ear while being not terribly sorry about anything at all, "you're gonna have to give me a moment -- sometimes you gotta stop and smell the roses." Heh. Dean threatens to send her back to Hell, of course, but she -- along with everyone in the audience -- knows it's an empty threat, because we all know the reason he's here, and shortly enough, Dean proposes the expected trade: Sam's life for Dean's soul, after Dean gets another ten years with it. "You must be joking," The Crossroads Demonette flatly states, throwing Dean for a loop. "That's the same deal you give everybody else," he protests. The Demonette comes up with the retort for me: "You're not everybody else." You also reek of desperation here, dude, so of course she's going to lean into your ear to whisper some more, "Why would I want to give you anything? Keep your gutter soul -- it's too tarnished, anyway!" Dim Dean immediately commences with the -- as she puts it -- "fire sale," offering to accept nine, then eight, then five years before her hellhounds arrive to drag him away. He claims that five years is his last offer, but she knows he'll settle for less, and sure enough, he does, eventually agreeing to a mere twelve months more on this earth in exchange for Sam's life. "Here's the thing," The Demonette cautions before sealing the deal. "If you try to welch or weasel your way out, then the deal is off: Sam drops dead, and he's back to rotting meat in no time." Dean hesitates. "It's a better deal than your [worthless bastard of a so-called father] ever got," she reminds him, pushing her boobs up against his chest and tilting her face, tauntingly, up towards his. "Whaddya say?" she breathes. Dean stares her down for a moment before diving in to confirm the trade with a kiss. That lucky bitch.
Meanwhile, back in Cold Oak, Dead Sam's eyelids suddenly snap open. He pushes himself up onto his elbows and frantically scans the surrounding room until he's gobbled up by the METAL TEETH CHOMP!, and the lovely and talented Celebrindal25 just won a Metallicar t-shirt! Hooray!
Meanwhile, back in Cold Oak, Dead Sam's eyelids suddenly snap open. He pushes himself up onto his elbows and frantically scans the surrounding room until he's gobbled up by the METAL TEETH CHOMP!, and the lovely and talented Celebrindal25 just won a Metallicar t-shirt! Hooray!
Back in Cold Oak, Zombie Sam's recovered sufficiently enough to hoist up his shirt and examine the slowly healing wound in his back via its reflection in a miraculously still-hanging mirror. Just as miraculously, Dean's already traversed the two miles' worth of South Dakota coastal rainforest back to town from the Impala, and is now entering the dilapidated room. "Sammy?" Dean bleats before striding across the floor to pull The Ginormous Revenant into a tight embrace. Zombie Sam winces in excruciating pain, however, ruining the moment before it's even begun. Hee. I don't want to say, "Suck it, Wincesters," but...suck it, wincesters. In any event, and long story short, Dean eases his zombified brother into a chair, and then, when Sam wonders what happened, LIES about the events of the evening, claiming Sam's fatal wound was nothing more than a scratch that Bobby quickly patched up. Zombie Sam seems to buy it and begins to offer G.I. Jake's backstory, but Dean insists they eat something first, so it's back to the outer room for some braaaaaaaaains, and oh, my God, this show can go straight to hell. In addition to a KFC, Cold Oak's apparently also blessed with functioning Domino's, Szechuan Palace, and 7-Eleven franchises as well. ["Oh, like the strip mall in hell wouldn't have a Domino's." -- Joe R] Unless, of course, they're no longer actually in Cold Oak and are simply using the Cold Oak sets for all of th...oh, the hell with it. I give up. "As well you should have!" Raoul opines. "Twenty minutes ago!" Can it, Raoul. "Back at you, you ninny!" I think the lack of gore thus far has made us both a little grumpy. "You think?!" Nevertheless, we must soldier on, my scaly friend, to note that as they chow down on their improbable breakfasts, Our Intrepid Heroes fill each other in on both The Ceiling Demon's apparent plans now that he's identified the so-called winner of the Cold Oak cage match and the impressive yet off-screen immolation of Harvelle's, and there are a couple of touching moments wherein the still-injured Zombie Sam insists they get back on the road to deal with everything, pronto, and Dean rather heartbreakingly attempts to have his freshly resurrected brother just rest for a little while, but Sam wins out -- mainly because he's chosen to deploy The Super-Special Undead Puppy-Dog Eyes Of Anxious And Zombified Pleading And Determination -- and so Metallicar's quickly grumbling down a rural backroads until they hit...
...Bobby's place. Bobby is, of course, completely horrified to see Zombie Sam up and about, but he hides that horror well enough from Sam's face while shooting rays of death with his eyes at Dean behind Zombie Sam's remarkably broad back. Hee. Dean attempts to bluff his way through the situation, all the while understanding that Bobby's already guessed what's really happened, but fortunately for the sake of the plot, Bobby chooses to let it go for the moment so he might share his latest bits of research with El Deano and The Ginormous Revenant. Seems that, virtually overnight, "demonic omens" -- including massive cattle die-offs and lightning storms -- "skyrocketed from out of nowhere" all across the central Mountain States with the exception of one location: The Great Divide Basin in southern Wyoming. "It's almost as if the demons are surrounding it," Bobby ominously explains. Bobby then rather conveniently asks Sam to reexamine the evidence with the latter's freshly undead eyes so Bobby and Dean can "retrieve" a few more "books" from Bobby's "truck." Of course, once they're well out of the range of Sam's enhanced zombie hearing, Bobby The Badass quickly shouts Dean into embarrassed submission and obtains the relevant facts regarding The Ginormous Revenant's ungodly resurrection. "I could throttle you!" Bobby cries, snatching Li'l Stumpy up by his jacket. "And send me downstairs ahead of schedule?" Dean bleakly jokes. Bobby just shakes his head in disbelief at this and, shoving Dean away, growls, "What is it with you Winchesters, huh? You, your [worthless bastard of a so-called father]? You're both just itchin' to throw yourselves down the pit!" "That's my point!" Dean protests. "[My worthless bastard of a so-called father] brought me back, Bobby -- I'm not even supposed to be here!" If Bobby's surprised by this news -- and he shouldn't be, since he was intimately involved in the events of the season premiere -- he hides it well, and Dean goes on to reveal his tortured, tragic, and dumb logic thusly: "At least this way, something good can come out of it, you know? It's like my life can mean something!" "And it didn't before?" Bobby howls, aghast. "Have you got that low an opinion of yourself? Are you that screwed in the head?" Duuuuuuh, Bobby. Have you not been watching your own show? Where the hell have you been for the last season and a half? Dean pleads that he simply couldn't let Sam die like that. Bobby, of course, brilliantly counters, "How's your brother gonna feel when he knows you're going to Hell? How'd you feel when you knew your [worthless bastard of a so-called father] went for you?" Dean weakly begs Bobby to keep his secret. Bobby, despairing, gently grabs Dean's head in his hands, and both of these gigantic pussies are about to collapse into quivering puddles of girly tears over it all when a sudden noise out in the junkyard pimp-slaps them both back into their respective game faces. After much manufactured tension, Dean pounces upon the intruder, and it's the fabulous Ellen Harvelle, her face frozen in a horrible expression of shell-shocked disbelief and loss until she realizes Dean and Bobby are still alive. She gratefully collapses into Dean's arms when he pulls her in for an embrace, and she allows herself to smile for the first time in perhaps days right before all three of them vanish into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Indoors, Bobby slides a shot of holy water across the table at his newest guest. Ellen smirks a bit at this welcoming ritual of his, then easily downs the stuff with one sardonic eyebrow raised before sliding the glass back at her host with, "Whiskey now, if you don't mind." I know I've said this before, but I think I want to be Ellen Harvelle when I grow up. "You and me both!" And long story short? Pretzels saved Ellen's life. Yep, the bar's stock was running low, so she hopped out for a fresh supply, and while she was gone, Soon-To-Be-Ashy Ash called her up with "panic in his voice" and ordered her to look in the bar's basement safe should anything happen to him, right before the call cut out. By the time she'd sped back to the roadhouse, it was all over. Ellen then, like some sort of Amazonian rodeo gal, swings around in the air above her head a massive anvil about getting to live while so many of her betters burned to death, and once she's unceremoniously slammed the damn thing straight into Dean's forehead right between his eyes, we learn what she found in the bar's basement safe: A map of southern Wyoming with five Xs surrounding the Great Divide Basin.
The scene jumps ahead to the point where Bobby's discovered something of related importance in his extensive library. The five points on Ashy Ash's map correspond to five abandoned frontier churches constructed in the mid-nineteenth century by none other than Samuel Colt, he of the infamous Fucking Colt that everyone around here likes so much. Furthermore, the endlessly busy Mr. Colt built a series of private railway lines linking each church to the other. Guess what? The railway lines form a pentagram on the map. Guess what else? That pentagram is actually an enormous, "one-hundred-square-mile" devil's trap, constructed by the hateful Mr. Colt to imprison something in the "old cowboy cemetery" at the center of it all while keeping the entire area otherwise demon-free, for dark demonic forces sent from the flaming maw of Hell cannot cross iron lines, you see. Thus, the railways, and thus, of course, the recent swirl of demonic activity around those railways -- hundreds of the beasties are trying to access whatever the hateful Mr. Colt locked away over a hundred and fifty years ago. Sam, because he is super-smart even in zombie form, quickly realizes what Our Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance is up to with G.I. Jake.
And no sooner has The Ginormous Revenant arrived at that realization than we join G.I. Jake as he approaches one of the aforementioned Colt-built Fucking Rail Lines in a rented car. He disembarks, clad in a set of civvies, and warily ambles up to The Fucking Tracks. Just as he's been told, apparently, for he barely has time to look around before The Ceiling Demon pops up behind him to confirm Jake's followed his earlier instructions to the letter. And long story short, the upshot of all that follows is this: Because Our Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance cannot cross The Fucking Colt-Built Rail Lines himself, G.I. Jake must hustle his grunt ass fifteen miles hence to unlock a crypt at the center of the old cowboy cemetery. And whatever shall G.I. Jake use as a key? Why, The Fucking Colt itself, of course! There follows a lengthy conversation in which The Demon also reveals that The Fucking Colt is the only weapon on earth that can kill him dead, which of course leads to a not-so-tense standoff when Jake initially presses the barrel of the thing against The Demon's head, but as the whole point of all that is partly to remind the audience of The Fucking Colt's magical properties -- which they already did in the Crackle, Crackle THE ROAD SO FAR! sequence -- and partly to show G.I. Jake giving into temptation because he is weak and backsliding -- which we already knew because he stuck Darling Sammy like a pig at The Demon's orders -- let's cut ahead to the point where...
...G.I. Jake enters the old cowboy cemetery and picks his way across the unattended graves to the promised crypt. He's about to examine the complicated locking mechanism embedded in the crypt's doors when Zombie Sam unexpectedly calls out, "BRAAAAAAAINS!" Ooops. He actually said, "Howdy, Jake!" which I suppose is meant to be far more disturbing, for the "Howdy, [Person Upon Whom I Am About To Inflict Agonizing Injury And Excruciating Death]!" construction is one previously used only by Meg and her demonic father. Make of that what you will. Jake slowly spins around to find himself surrounded by Zombie Sam, Bobby, Ellen, and Dean, each of whom is aiming a gun at his head. "You were dead!" Jake insists. "I killed you!" "Yeah?" Zombie Sam sneers back. "Well, time, finish the job." "I did!" Jake exclaims. "I cut clean through your spinal cord, man! You can't be alive -- you can't be." Zombie Sam shoots Dean A Look while Bobby shiftily averts his eyes. "Awwwwwwk-waaaaaard!" shrieks Raoul, temporarily awoken from his COMA OF BOREDOM by this unexpected turn of events. Many are the taunts and the teasings and the threats of death until G.I. Jake focuses his attention on Ellen and, after allowing his eyes to flare yellow for the briefest of instants, suggests, "Hey, lady -- do me a favor and put that gun to your head." Ellen, struggling mightily against the suggestion and clearly freaked by her body's rebellion against her conscious mind, shakes and shudders and eventually complies. "See?" Jake gloats. "That Ava girl was right -- once you give in to it, there's all sorts of new Jedi mind-tricks you can learn." Jake verbally orders the gentlemen present to disarm themselves, and despite Ellen's brave objections, all three do so. Having thus bought himself a little time, Jake leaps towards the crypt, shoves the barrel of The Fucking Colt into the center of the locking mechanism, and twists hard, sending the two concentric panels in the middle spinning in opposite directions.
Dean and Bobby immediately lunge for Ellen and wrestle the gun away from her head just as her errant finger squeezes the trigger, and the echoing report of that gunshot overlaps with the first of four subsequent shots Zombie Sam plugs into G.I. Jake's back in rapid succession. Jake, blood pouring from his mouth, almost instantly collapses onto his back, and sneering Zombie Sam -- here trying to evoke the sense of menace he so effortlessly communicated in "Born Under A Bad Sign" but failing miserably and instead resembling nothing so much as a drag queen doing Faye Dunaway doing Joan Crawford during Mommie Dearest's infamous "Tina! Bring Me The Axe!" sequence -- deliberately crosses to stand astride Jake's prone form and blast three more bullets into his head. Zombie Sam's now sporting a few specks of Jake's blood on his face, by the way, and as Bobby and Ellen brush past him to figure out what's going on with the crypt's ominously clanking locking mechanism, Bobby gifts The Ginormous Revenant with a quick look of terror. Hee. For his part, Zombie Sam simply wipes the blood from his face with one of his remarkably large hands, and if El Deano has a reaction of his own to all of this, it's going to have to wait, for the locking mechanism's now clanked to a halt with The Fucking Colt protruding from the center of a spiky pentagram. DUN! "Oh, no!" Bobby breathes. "What is it?" Ellen wonders. "It's Hell!" Bobby growls. Dean lunges forward to retrieve The Fucking Colt from the lock just as Bobby shouts for everyone to take cover. Dean and Zombie Sam dive behind a couple of nearby headstones, and in a fairly done -- yes, "fairly done," only -- effects sequence, the crypt's doors burst open to unleash both a massive, roiling, swarming cloud of bitterly black demonic goo and a tremendous shockwave that rips outwards from the cemetery. As hundreds of individual demonic whirlwinds obscure Our Intrepid Heroes from sight on the ground, the camera leaps up high above the Basin, and when the shockwave blasts across the surrounding countryside, the crisscrossing rail lines that comprise the devil's trap crackle with rapidly moving flames that illuminate a large part of the overall pattern while destroying the trap itself. In a neat little touch, you can see two of the tracks of fire converge upon one of the points of the pentagram, and the abandoned frontier church at the meeting of the lines goes boom! in the very, very far distance. Heh. Satanic lightning strikes zap the formerly off-limits area at the center, and that roiling, swarming cloud made up of hundreds of individual demonic whirlwinds rises from the earth below to shoot up towards the sky and directly into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Graveyard. Aftermath. As a few demonic stragglers emerge from the now-gaping crypt, Dean bellows, "What the hell just happened?" Ellen shouts back that Jake just opened "a damned door to Hell."
Meanwhile, one of The Ceiling Demon's cloudy minions tears across the ground somewhere nearby, ripping a section of The Fucking Colt-Built Rail Lines apart. Our Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance calmly and deliberately steps through the fresh gap.
Back in the graveyard, Ellen, Bobby, and Zombie Sam race to shut the crypt's doors, but Dean hangs back long enough to check The Fucking Colt's cylinder for The Last Magical Bullet That Can Kill Anything Except When It Can't, and just as he's confirmed The Last Magical Bullet's presence in the chamber, The Ceiling Demon himself materializes behind Our Intrepid Hero to snap The Fucking Colt out of Dean's hand with a quick flash of telekinetic energy. "Boys shouldn't play with Daddy's guns!" The Demon grins, right before hurling some more of that telekinetic mojo directly into Dean's torso. Dean hurtles through the air a good fifteen yards before his thick skull connects with one of the headstones, and Dean crashes the rest of the way to the ground semi-conscious. Over at the crypt, The Ginormous Revenant seems to be having undue amounts of trouble slamming shut the gates. "It's the creeping rot!" Raoul excitedly exclaims. "His overdeveloped musculature is disintegrating as we speak! Wheeeee!" I was just going to guess that shutting The Gates Of Hell was a little more difficult than closing a bank vault, but I think I like your explanation more. In any event, after much manly struggling, Zombie Sam spots The Ceiling Demon menacing his brother, and with a mighty roar, he...completely abandons the fabulous Ellen Harvelle to all the imps of Hell? Yep, pretty much. Oh, Sam. "Quite ungallant of the dear boy, I must say!" Raoul notes before giggling and clapping his paws together with delight. "Perhaps the creeping rot has reached his brain!" Again, I was simply going suggest his unhealthily overdeveloped sense of fraternal duty is to blame, but your explanation is far superior, my scaly friend. "Thanks!"
In either case, it matters not, for The Ceiling Demon's already telekinetically pinned The Ginormous Revenant against a tree, so a fat lot of good Sam accomplished by abandoning poor Ellen like that. Over amongst the graves, The Ceiling Demon takes to taunting El Deano, and I'm pretty certain some of these taunts are not the sorts of LIES one would expect from him, but I'm also not in the mood to transcribe his entire speech, fantastically delivered though that speech may be by Frederic Lane, who apparently has never met a polystyrene horror movie cemetery set he didn't promptly devour, lustily and with relish. Long story short, The Demon hints both that he personally gave permission for Dean's trade with the Crossroads Demonette earlier in the evening and that he did so to ensure Darling Sammy didn't return from the great beyond "100% pure," for various of his own future nefarious purposes. "You of all people," he croons, all up in Dean's bloodied face, "should know that what's dead should stay dead." "Anyway," he continues, breezily enough, "thanks a bunch! I knew I kept you alive for some reason." "Until now, anyway," he amends, before grandly orating -- in near iambic pentameter, no less -- "I couldn't have done it without your pathetic, self-loathing, self-destructive desire to sacrifice yourself for your family!" And just as he's about to unload The Fucking Colt's final round into Dean's head, an oddly opaque figure from the crypt stalks up behind him and...shut UP, Daddy! For once in this worthless bastard's miserable existence, he listens to me, for the spectral form of John Winchester speaks not a word as it materializes to wrestle The Ceiling Demon from the body it had lately been inhabiting, and oh, my holy Christ, this is just bad. They've got poor Jeffrey Dean Morgan tussling with a CGI cloud of bitterly black demonic goo, and it looks exactly as awful as that description would have you believe. I am deeply embarrassed for everyone involved, so let's skip through all of this to hit the main points:
When Ghastly Shut Up Daddy yanked The Actual Demon from its host, said host dropped unconscious to the ground, in the process releasing his hold on The Fucking Colt, and you can see where this is going, right? Right. The Actual Demon eventually throws off Ghastly Shut Up Daddy and plows back into the host body, rising to its feet just in time for Dean to squeeze the trigger on The Fucking Colt, and we're treated to another CGI sequence in which we shoot backwards, in slow motion, through The Fucking Colt's barrel right in front of The Last Magical Bullet That Can Kill Anything Except When It Can't itself, and in a rather anticlimactic end to the series's overarching storyline to date, The Last Magical Bullet That Can Kill Anything Except When It Can't actually works, and after a few gurgling noises and zappy-sounding "special" "effects," Our Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance keels over, both itself and its host now dead. That was dull. "I agree! He should have exploded! With gouts of blood spraying everywhere and positively dizzying amounts of GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE! dripping from trees and headstones and Our Intrepid Heroes' faces!" I hate that you can be so sensible sometimes. "I'll take that as a compliment!"
Once The Ceiling Demon's so boringly gone, in quick succession Zombie Sam drops from the tree, Bobby and Ellen slam shut the gates to Hell, the gates to Hell clangily relock themselves, and in what I'm certain would be a very touching moment had this entire BORING episode not hardened what's left of my heart into a tiny little bitter lump of solid lead, Shut Up Daddy -- who remains silent throughout -- gifts his sons with approving glances right before erupting with an inner golden light that flares out to envelop his buzzing and blinking form until he finally shorts out of this plane of existence and into whichever one's waiting for him on the other side, thus becoming Daddy Shut Up once again, and for all eternity I hope, and then the soundtrack gets overrun by some "uplifting" Dreamworks-style Behold The Wonderment Of Childhood Fulfilled CRAP as Dean and Sam weep at each other like the teeny-tiny chick-flick girly-boy pussies they truly are until the METAL TEETH CHOMP! finally -- FINALLY -- puts an end to all of this sentimental TRASH by slicing through its jugular and letting bleed to death all over the last commercial break of the season.
God, that SUCKED.
Teeny-Tiny Dreamworks-Style Chick-Flick Pussy-Boy Saccharine Hell Overload Aftermath. As Raoul and I struggle to emerge from the diabetic comas that last sequence hurled us into, Zombie Sam and El Deano toddle over to the corpse of the human host that had been inhabited by The Ceiling Demon during this season. "Well, check that off the to-do list," Dean shakily smirks. Zombie Sam, agape with the barely believing and such, breathes, "You did it!" "I didn't do it alone," The Winchester Clan's Pathetic Self-Loathing Self-Destructive Sacrificial Lamb humbly bleats. They ruminate on Daddy Shut Up's current unknowable disposition for a moment before allowing their minds to be blown by what they've just accomplished. "Our whole lives," Zombie Sam whispers, "everything has been prepping for this, and now? All I want are BRAAAAAAINS." Or maybe he simply can't think of anything appropriate to say. Bloodied and filthy El Deano can think of something to say, but as that something's so dreadfully stupid, we'll be skipping past it to...
...join Our Intrepid Heroes as they trudge back to the Impala. Okay, fine. What Dean actually did was lean down in close to the corpse of the human host The Ceiling Demon had been inhabiting this entire season and growl, "That was for our mom, you son of a bitch!" while more of that "Uplifting" Dreamworks-Style Behold The Wonderment Of Childhood Fulfilled CRAP played in the background, and now don't you wish I'd kept my mouth shut? Innway, back at the Impala, Zombie Sam's finally figured out why he suddenly craves braaaaaaains and confronts Dean about the whole messy revenant situation. Dean's forced to admit Sam did indeed die in the mud on Cold Oak's only drag, and that Dean traded his immortal soul plus all remaining years of his life save one to get Sam zombified. Or, you know, "back." There follows what in fact does amount to a touching little scene between the two of them over the fact of Dean's sacrifice, but I've become so soured on this entire evening's presentation that I'll leave it without comment. Long story short, Zombie Sam explains that, just as Dean's always thought it his job to protect Sam, so Zombie Sam has always believed it his job to protect Dean, and so Zombie Sam vows to do whatever he has to in order to extract his big brother from his current hellhound-related predicament. Until he needs to eat Dean's brain, of course.
Bobby and Ellen amble over for the denouement. Unfortunately, it's awkwardly written filler about the hundreds of new Hell-sent dark demonic forces they've got to battle in the coming days as Our Now-Deceased Yellow-Eyed Acquaintance managed to release an "army" upon the face of the earth, and Bobby hopes to hell Our Intrepid Heroes are ready for it, "because the war has just begun." Boston's "Don't Look Back" kicks in on the soundtrack, and Dean, by way of response, gets this brilliantly eager smile on his face. As the shot cuts to TrunkCam, Dean tosses The Fucking Colt into the trunk, and he gleefully announces, "We got work to do!" before slamming the thing shut on Season Two.
I was going to insert a lengthy rant at this point regarding how lousy this episode was both as a season finale and as a series finale had the network not renewed Supernatural for 2007-2008, but I got tired and went to bed, so I'll leave you all instead with this kindly message from yours truly to The Kripkeeper:
My dear, sweet Mr. Kripkeeper, sir, if Dawn Ostroff jerks you up and down about renewal season the way she did this one? Plan on going out with a great big goddamned earth-shattering kaboom regardless of the outcome, like you did in Season One. Because that shit was awesome, and this most definitely was not. And so, Mr. Kripkeeper, a happy and healthy hiatus to you and yours, and Raoul and I will see you back here in the fall. Don't make us regret it, because Raoul will cut a bitch. "You better believe it, mister!"
God, Raoul! I'm trying make credible threats, here, and you blow them all to hell every single damn time you unhinge that gaping maw of yours! What's that bag that just dropped out of your mouth? A cunning little Roberto Cavalli clutch? "Oh, don't be such a great big bitchface pissypants about it all like our darling little Sam! It's summer, for heaven's sake! Enjoy it!" You're right, my scaly friend. "I always am!" Indeed. Some of the time. "Hey!"
Happy hiatus, everyone! Now go out and get some air.