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This week, Our Intrepid Heroes hit dreary Erie after a series of unwitting organ donors start popping up at area hospitals with their intestines spilling out onto the floors. Seems an immortal Frankendoctor's taken up residence in a remote hunting cabin on the outskirts of the mistake by the lake, and as part of his longstanding beauty regimen, he's been abducting local residents to slice out (and off, actually) various replacement parts for his own body. Heroic Action Sammy manages to track the monster down and rescue one of Frankendoc's victims, only to get his damn fool enormous self abducted almost immediately afterwards, and after a tremendously unnerving sequence involving a sterilized melon baller and The Super-Special Puppy-Dog Eyes, Dashing El Deano finally barges in on the festivities to save the day. Strangely enough, though, instead of ridding the world of Frankendoc by immolating the creep, Our Dear Boys choose instead to bury the freak in the middle of the woods, alive forever in a refrigerator, and I swear to God this has to be the fourth time I've seen that particular plot device on television this season.
No matter, though, because none of the above is really all that important, apparently. Nope, the evening's big reveal comes crashing down around the audience's collective ears in the last three minutes of the hour, during which we learned that Posh Bela has sold her own soul -- to Lilith, who in fact holds the contracts on everyone who made similar deals, including Dean -- in exchange for her parents' murder. (Her very own Daddy Dearest was both rolling in dough and diddling his darling daughter on the side.) All those unique items she procured for a select clientele, up to and including The Fucking Colt? Simply her way of attempting to arm herself against the inevitable. The end of the episode finds her defenseless and alone in Sam and Dean's long-abandoned motel room at midnight on the day her contract's come due. That infernal baying noise you heard around 10 PM Eastern? One part rabid hellhound and 2.5 million parts rabid Supernatural fans, the latter howling with glee over the bitchy aggravation's long-overdue demise. Hooray!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Rattle, Rattle THEN! As you'll recall, because Dashing El Deano had but a year to live, Our Intrepid Heroes decided to spend what little time he had left killing some evil sons of bitches and raising a little hell, and they were quite successful in these endeavors, indeed, until they hit a wee bitty speck of a town called Monument, Colorado, where Ruby The Sparkly Haired Demon informed them both of Lilith's very existence and of Lilith's foul designs upon Darling Sammy's blameless intestines -- and say goodbye to The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon, kids. "EEEEEEEEEK!" shrieks Raoul, who promptly hits the ceiling from the depths of his overstuffed armchair and stays there for the remainder of this sequence, for yes, The Kripkeeper has decided to insert a shot of that wicked child's eyes flipping a milky, opaque white as she raises one of her creepy preadolescent hands to flood the tiny precinct with a horribly brilliant light. That bastard. So, while I rustle up a flagon full of something smart and soothing in order to coax that damn quivering sissy of a lizard down off my ceiling, why don't you all go ahead and relax as Darling Sammy shoots Jared Padalecki's adorable fiancée in the face and the series reminds you of how deeply misunderstood poor Posh Bela is, okay? And, as always, after you catch Dean admitting to the debilitating depths of his fear, or whatever, you all need to shut the hell up, 'cause it's time for the...
...Silence, Silence NOW! "Erie, Pennsylvania" pops up in the location card at the bottom of the screen while the camera pulls this artily disorienting spiral away from the thoroughly modern façade of the "Cristal Spa & Racquet Club," from which two gentlemen are just now emerging, post workout, into the nighttime gloom surrounding the place to head towards their cars. The gentleman we won't be seeing again this evening invites the other out for a cocktail, but his companion -- a plastic surgeon, apparently, and geddit? GEDDIT? -- must decline, as he's "gotta be up at the crack of dawn" because "some crabby old broad wants the works" the following morning, and "it'll take a forklift to get it all back up" for her. The two toned thirtysomething gym rats snicker over the futile plight of the vanity-stricken aged, or something, and after bumping hands in a manner most obnoxious, they split up to head their separate ways. The camera sticks with the plastic surgeon as he remotely deactivates his car's alarm, and as he's being played by serial sci-fi victim Kavan Smith -- a most attractive gentleman who unfortunately has been subjected to any manner of gruesome tortures in the service of various Canadian-filmed TV shows ranging from The Outer Limits to Smallville to Stargate to The 4400 -- we know he'll be swimming in a seemingly bottomless pool of his own bile and blood in a couple of seconds. So, you know, it's a little difficult to muster up interest in his character, knowing said character's going to be dead before the opening credits. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Raoul, please! Could you wait for it? "Hee! I do apologize, I'm sure, but I am feeling most light-headed thanks to this delicious flagon you've managed to procure for my aid and comfort!" Anything to get you off the goddamned ceiling, you dizzy -- albeit impressively fanged -- fool. "You can't possibly blame me for that!" Raoul shrieks, an appalled and slightly inebriated paw clutching at his nonexistent pearls. "That was all that silly little Kripke person's fault! After all, there was simply no call to surprise us all with that...that THING on the television set so early in the episode!" Are you done? "Why, I do believe I am!" Good, 'cause there's a glorified Canadian extra that needs killing, and I'd like to see it happen before I'm eligible for Medicare. "You mean you're not already?!" You bitch. "[Hic!] Hee!"
So. ANY-way. Tonight's first bit of Monster Chow stows his gym bag in his car's trunk while something lurks behind him in the bushes. Once-Again-Doomed Kavan Smith's hackles rise but, seeing nothing when he spins to peer into the darkness at his back, he makes the unfortunate mistake of diverting his attention back to futzing around with his bag until the black-cowboy-booted fiend from the bushes tiptoes up behind him and...slings Kavan Smith into the trunk of the car! DUN! The mysterious, black-booted fiend slams the trunk shut immediately and stoops to retrieve Poor Kavan's keys from the iridescent patch of asphalt upon which they've most conveniently fallen while Poor Kavan screams and hammers his fists against the lid and screams and hammers his fists against the lid and screams and hammers his fists against the lid some more.
The day, a lonely drop of blood spatters against the linoleum in a hospital hallway as a man's bare legs stagger into view above it. Several more drops join that initially lonely one as the bare-legged gentleman lurches towards the nurse's station in the far, blurry background of the shot, and it's Poor Kavan, of course, sporting his navy trench from the evening and nothing else, apparently, as he presses both of his bloodstained fists and a knot of the trench's fabric against a wound in his side. A far-too-bubbly nurse approaches the ashen-faced and obviously agonized bit of Monster Chow and perks, "Let me see what happened!" When Kavan responds with little more than a sweat-streaked grunt of pain, the bubbly birdbrain continues, "Don't you worry -- there's nothin' I haven't seen!" With a smile on her face, she reaches to open his coat despite Kavan's frantic pleas against such action, and when she manages to pull his hands away? "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Raoul writhes about upon his overstuffed armchair with delight as the sound of Kavan's entrails sloppily spilling from his torso hits the soundtrack. And when those entrails SPLAT! against the floor at his feet, the camera jumps around to take in the formerly bubbly nurse's reaction through his legs with one ropy stretch of his guts partially obscuring her face as she unhinges her lower jaw to let loose howl after howl of abject horror and...
RAAAWWWR! "Eeeeeeeeeeeee!" shrieks Raoul as is his wont, despite the fact that he's once again grown weary with this season's far inferior title card. "I do hope that charming little Kripke person comes up with something a tad more exciting for year's enthralling installments!" I assume you have a suggestion at paw, my scaly friend? "Oh, I do, indeed!" This oughta be good. "It is! You see, I've always found that an exploding cadaver sets precisely the right mood for an evening of televisual entertainment, and one would simply be perfect in this opening sequence!" Oh, boy. "Can't you just see it!? Gradually swelling with the bloat and the decay until it bursts open to expel a lovely fountain of rotting innards directly at the screen?! With this delightful little Thursday-evening divertissement's title simply dripping through it all at the very last instant before a dapper and debonair gentlebeast arrives to gobble the entire tasty treat up? Eeeeeeeeeeeee!" I'll pen a note to The Kripkeeper about it now. "Please do!" Yeesh.
So, Our Intrepid Heroes have this demon lashed to a chair that's been bolted (presumably) into the center of a devil's trap, and we join them just as they Supernatural-ly waterboard the foul freak with a jug of holy water, trying to fry out of the guy the name of the entity that's holding Dean's deed. The demon of course denies knowledge of anything and everything related to the Winchesters until Dean forces another gullet-searing gargle down the guy's throat. When the demon recovers, his eyes have flipped beetle-black, and an infernal grin spreads across his face as he raises his head to sneer, "That's like a flea bite compared to what's coming to me if I tell you jack." "Do what you want," he continues as Dean and Sam frown down upon him. "The only thing I'm scared of is the demon holding your ticket!" Dean, somewhat defeated, tosses A Look in Sam's direction, so Darling Sammy starts Latinating -- from memory, natch. "Go ahead!" the demon sneers above the Latination. "Send me back to Hell, 'cause when you get there, I'll be waiting for you." "Got a few pals," he teases, "who are dying for a nice little meet-and-greet with Dean Winchester!" So, Hell is a fan convention? Good to know. In any event, Dean's finally had enough of this demon's touchy-feely self-help sneering crap, bitch, and orders Sammy to "send him someplace he can't hurt anyone else," so Sam kicks the Latination into high gear. Soon enough, the demon's screams fill the decrepit mountain shack Our Intrepid Heroes have selected for this evening's interrogation as the camera pulls a budget-saving zoom in on Dean's troubled face until...
...We shoot ahead an hour or so to find Sam just getting off his cell as Dean wearily trudges back indoors from burying the now-dead demon's long-deceased host in the shack's yard. "What was the phone call about?" Dean asks, swigging on a much-needed beer. "Remember that thing in the paper yesterday?" Sam prompts. "'Stripper Suffocates Dude With Thighs'?" Dean guesses, and I'm surprised they can find copies of The New York Post all the way out there in the middle of the woods like that. The goddamn News Corporation will not rest until Rupert Murdoch's taken over the entire planet, I suppose. In any event, Sam was of course not referencing the Post's latest coverage of New York's deadliest jiggle joints, but was in fact talking about the wire coverage of Dead Kavan's very last trip to the hospital. Seems Dead Kavan's corpse was "covered with bloody fingerprints" not his own, and Sam had apparently just been LYING to the Erie Police in order to learn if they've identified the fingerprints' owner yet. The Erie Police -- shockingly efficient -- have indeed, but here's the catch: The prints belong to someone who died in 1981, so there's a possibility Our Intrepid Heroes could be looking at some classic zombie activity, here. Dean, instantly intrigued, notes that zombies are quite fond of "the other other white meat," but almost as instantly questions Sam's motives. "You've been on soul-saving detail for months now," he points out, "and all of a sudden, you're interested in some hot zombie action?" Sam's all, "Whatever! You're the one who wants to keep hunting even though you're about to topple into the smoky pits of Hell -- I thought I was doing you a favor!" and Dean's all, "Well, obviously I want to hunt some zombies!" and Sam's all, "Fine!" and Dean's all, "Fine!" and Sam's all, "Fine!" and Dean bow-leggedly clompy-stomps out of the frame to prepare the Impala's cabin for departure while Devious Darling Sammy gets this adorably giddy shit-eating grin on his face. This won't end well.
Some time later, the LYING LIARS WHO LIE have gained entrance to the Erie County Coroner's Office -- yet again masquerading as detectives -- and we enter the following scene just as the coroner's finishing his description of Dead Kavan's wounds: Kavan's liver did indeed go missing during his misadventure, but everything else was intact. (Well, everything else was intact until he dumped all of it onto that perky nurse's shoes, but whatever. We know what he means.) When Dean wonders if teeth marks were present on the victim's skin, the coroner becomes instantly suspicious of their supposed credentials, and asks to see their badges again. Our Intrepid Heroes successfully bluff their way through the challenge, but the coroner takes this opportunity to hoist an eyebrow into the air smirk, "Fine -- so you're cops and morons." Heh. The liver was not ripped out, you see, and the LYING LIARS WHO LIE would have known this had they actually read the coroner's report, in which he explicitly noted that Dead Kavan's liver was "removed surgically by someone who knew their way around a scalpel." "You done?" the coroner asks, having thus effectively exposed Our Intrepid Heroes apparent incompetence. "I think so!" Dean too-cheerfully nods. "Please go away," the coroner sighs, more than done with them. "Okay!" Dean readily agrees. Heh.
Out in the hall, Sam and Dean bang their heads together -- with Sam noticeably directing the conversation down the path he'd like it to follow -- until Dean understands they're looking at "organ theft" rather than "zombie lunch," and with that, they head off in search of an attack survivor...
...Whom they find on a hospital bed, still recovering from the unwitting and unwilling kidney donation he endured not too long ago. Long story short, Kidney Guy was feeding his meter when someone jumped him from behind, and the thing he knew, he was strapped down on a table for some unanaesthetized surgery, during which he thankfully passed out and after which he awoke "in some No-Tell motel in a bathtub full of ice" minus a renal organ or two. !
Back at this week's motel, Ravenous El Deano's about to tuck into a delicious-looking cheeseburger when College Boy announces he's found something of interest on the Intertubes. Given we've found ourselves staring at a website entitled "Medical Procedures Of The 19th Century," I'm guessing this conversation leads to an unhappy end for Dean and his dinner. Sure enough, Sam points out that Kidney Guy's incision was sutured with silk thread, which was the cause of numerous resultant infections during the Victorian Era, so physicians of the period spread maggots across the affected areas to devour the diseased tissue. "Tasty!" shrieks Raoul, predictably enough. "Oh, do hush up, you tedious little man!" Raoul snorts, tossing an affronted side-eye in my general direction while two perfect circles of smoke spiral out from his nostrils. "I do believe I've forgotten more than you'll ever know about fine dining!" I don't doubt that for an instant, my scaly friend. Now, might I continue? "Please do! If this evening's delightful entertainment involves maggots, we must arrive at the appropriate scenes posthaste!" Not a problem. "Thanks! Now chop-chop!"
Rrrrgh. So, where the hell was I? Oh, yeah: Seems one or both of tonight's victims were found with their respective body cavities "stuffed full of maggots," as Sam excitedly describes it, and... "WHY were we not witness to THAT?!" Raoul roars, feeling cheated, and -- dude! Do you want me to get to the good parts already, or what? "Oh, I do apologize most sincerely! Please carry on!" Thank you. "Don't mention it! Hee!" SO ANYWAY, when Dean realizes this all sounds terribly familiar, Sam grins that it should, as their worthless bastard of a so-called father wrote extensively about just such a case in his demonic day-planner. "Doc Benton," Darling Sammy narrates as he flips the day-planner in question over to El Deano for the latter's perusal, was a "real-life doctor who lived in New Hampshire." Both "brilliant and obsessed with alchemy -- especially how to live forever," the good doctor abandoned his practice in 1816 to vanish for 20 years, after which his former townsfolk started turning up either completely dead or simply missing an organ here and there, or possibly a hand or two. "'Cause whatever he was doing was actually working," Dean recalls correctly. "He just kept on ticking, and when parts would wear out, he'd replace them." One thing, though -- didn't Sucky John off the guy by ripping out his heart? Sam shrugs that The Frankendoc must've just plugged in a replacement after the coast was clear. So, wait a minute -- you're telling me their worthless bastard of a so-called father encountered and subdued a supposedly immortal monster and did not proceed to cremate it? GOD, John sucks. Like, even more than I already thought he did. In ANY event, Sam notes The Frankendoc prefers to situate his various lairs in heavily wooded areas with easy access to fresh, free-flowing water, the better to dispose of "the bile and intestines and fecal matter" from his victims. Dean -- who'd been perfectly fine during the whole maggot discussion -- blanches at this last bit and nearly sets aside his delicious-looking cheeseburger before thinking better of the entire situation and noisily continuing to chow down. Atta boy.
Elsewhere, a strapping and vaguely Sam-like young gentleman jogs along the waterfront until he reaches the end of the path, where he parks himself upon some hideous piece of public art to check his heart rate while The Frankendoc -- presumably -- spies on him from a nearby copse of trees. When The Samalike bends to retie his sneaker, Frankendoc pounces, pinching a chloroformed cloth over The Samalike's nose and mouth to drag the remarkably healthy young gentleman into a blackness, from which eventually emerges...
...The Samalike's near-freakish Cro-Magnon-esque skull, braced with a leather strap across its forehead against a table. As The Samalike's eyes flutter open, a quick cut over to the flashy, newfangled heart monitor he's fastened around his wrist that says he's down to seventy-some beats a minute from his jogging peak of 126. Just so you know. Because when The Samalike rises into a sludgy semi-consciousness and begins to strain against the leather straps binding his wrists, that admirably low heart rate immediately jumps up into the nineties, and is soon zipping up the scale to settle in at a racing 140 or so. Meanwhile, the shirtless and sweaty Samalike rolls his head around as best he can, his slowly focusing eyes landing on oil lamps and candles and such until they reach...an enormous Mason jar filled with maggots! "Whee!" shrieks Raoul, clapping his perfectly manicured paws together with glee now that we've finally reached the good bits of this evening's presentation. "They look simply delicious!" Raoul enthuses, smacking his -- let's face it -- somewhat drooly lips together. "They are a bit on the scrawny side, I must note!" Raoul allows. "But I'm certain this delightful young physician I've been hearing so much about will soon take care of that!" Young? Careful, my scaly friend. We wouldn't want you to...overshare, now would we? "I-I-I-I simply have no idea what you could possibly be talking about, I'm sure! Now, do continue with your captivating little story!" As you wish, my scaly -- and aggravatingly youthful -- friend. "Oh, you are a dear soul!" Don't mention it. "Thanks! I won't! Ever again!"
Now that that particular disaster's been averted, where was I? Oh, yeah: The disaster on the television screen. Any sense of horror The Samalike might be experiencing at the moment due to those maggots instantaneously ratchets up about fiftyfold when Frankendoc looms into view, snapping open and shut one of those antediluvian bone scissors I'm sure I last saw in From Hell a few years back. "Excellent film!" I knew you were going to say that. "You must be psychic!" SO, Frankendoc -- who's got piebald patches of human skin not his own stitched into a crazy pattern across his skull beneath that soiled O.R. mask of his -- sets the bone scissors aside for a moment to retrieve a rusty scalpel, with which he opens a thin, bloody line down The Samalike's heaving chest, and Raoul's already hurling himself into a tizzy of massive proportions over there on his overstuffed armchair in anticipation of what's to come. In any event, Frankendoc then -- just out of our view beneath the bottom of the screen, of course -- clutches those bone scissors and snap!, snap!, SNAP!s his way up through the incredibly still-conscious Samalike's sternum before...CRRRRACK! The Samalike's heart monitor leaps up into a pizzicato of pain as Frankendoc splits open his ribcage with an antiquated spreader, and just when we think we'll be getting little more than those few spritzes of blood on Frankendoc's mask, the camera hops around as Frankendoc actually and on screen yanks The Samalike's squishy and still-beating heart from his chest! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Well, I guess that was worth the wait, wasn't it, my scaly and aggravatingly youthful friend? "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Careful -- you're going to strain your vocal cords again. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" You're not going to stop shrieking for hours, are you? "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Oy. So, as Frankendoc lifts the bloody organ out of The Samalike's now-gaping chest cavity, the flashy little heart monitor on the fresh corpse's wrist flatlines straight into the METAL TEETH CHOMP! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!"
The day, apparently, Our Intrepid Heroes strategize in their dingy motel room at The Erie when Dean's cell phone starts dancing across the table. It's Bobby, calling from his Dakota junkyard with news that a gentleman of his acquaintance by the name of Rufus Turner in Canaan, Vermont, has just been approached by Posh Bela regarding a possible deal. Word of warning, though: If Dean intends to track Rufus down for more information, he'd best bring along a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. "Right-o!" chirps El Deano, who hangs up and immediately starts shoving dirty laundry into his duffel. Sam's all, "Buh?" so Dean explains the sitch. Sam clears his remarkably broad throat and repeats, a bit more pointedly "Buh?" so Dean's all, "What gives?" And the screamy, hair-pulling slapfight may start...now. Seems Darling Sammy knew from the moment he read of Dead Kavan's unfortunate demise that they were tracking down Doc Benton, and he tricked Dean into going along for the ride because Frankendoc's obviously discovered the secret to eternal life, and if Our Dear Boys can get their hands on the formula, then Dean's Crossroads Demonette issue is moot, for if Dean can never die, then Dean can never go to Hell, and there goes College Boy again with the not thinking things through to their logical conclusion. Oh, Sam. Did you ever stop to consider what it'd be like dragging Dean's undying carcass around for the sixty years after the hellhounds got their shot at him? And did you further consider what it'd be like for Dean's undying carcass after you finally bit it yourself? Obviously not, but in The Ginormotron's defense, his dimwitted little brother fails to consider that aspect of the plan as well, choosing instead to RANT! and RAGE! and BETRAYAL! and whatnot until he finally calms down enough to order Sam into the Impala for a road trip to Vermont, pronto. "I'm staying here," Sam quietly replies. Dean attempts to argue further, but Sam's resolve remains unyielding, so Dean shoulders his duffel and bow-leggedly clompy-stomps out the door, alone. At the last minute, though, he turns to offer a mumbled, albeit sincere, "Sammy, be careful." Sam, fighting back tears, forces himself to meet Dean's gaze so he might respond in kind, "You, too." Aw. Don't cry, Sammy! You're the two leads! Of course everything's going to be okay! "Indeed! By the way, your mention of those darling little hellhounds has made me wonder: What do you call a Dean with no arms and legs hanging on a wall?!" That joke is benea... "ART! Hee!" Oh, Jesus Christ.
Vermont. Dean hikes up the front porch of a wood-frame house that's seen better days and rings the bell. He then pounds on the front door until a remote-operated security camera mounted high above one of the windows buzzes over to focus in his direction, after which a grumpy-sounding gentleman demands, "WHAT?" through the intercom. Dean introduces himself and explains the purpose of his unannounced visit, and he gets absolutely nowhere with gruff Rufus until gruff Rufus slams open the door to give Li'l Stumpy a piece of his aggravated mind, and Rufus is actually that beloved star of stage and screen, Mister Steven Williams! Many of you will recognize him from such hits as 21 Jump Street, The X Files, and Arli$$, but I know him best as Trooper Mount from The Blues Brothers, and if you're about to complain that you're too young to have seen that movie, you're banned. Now, where was I? Oh, yes: Steven Williams gives Li'l Stumpy a piece of his aggravated mind until Sly El Deano produces that bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Bobby'd instructed him to carry, and the thing we know...
...The two are comfortably ensconced in Rufus's tatty dining-room-cum-office, where they've already managed to polish off half the bottle. They easily and boozily chit-chat with one another until Dean finally gets down to business: Where the fuck is the posh annoyance, anyway? Unfortunately, Rufus seems determined to lay a couple of hard-earned life-lessons upon Our Intrepid Hero's tantalizing ass, and while the ensuing scene is delightful to watch thanks to the Mr. Williams's indelible performance of same, let's skip through to the major plot points, shall we? "Let's!" I knew I could count on you, friend of friends. "Any time at all, I'm sure!" So, long story short...
...Ooops. Forgot this bit was in here. Darling Sammy carefully wheels a rented SUV through a lonely stretch of track deep within the thick forest surrounding Erie, Pennsylvania. He keys off the engine, glances warily around the apparently deserted woods surrounding the car, and flips down the driver's-side visor to retrieve that map of likely Frankendoc locations he and Dean had been consulting when Bobby called. He steps out of the SUV with the map and a flashlight, and then carefully and conscientiously activates the locks, all the way out there in the middle of nowhere. Heh. Dork.
Vermont. And long story short, Rufus sent a photo of Bela's ear -- as captured on his security camera, natch -- to a friend of a friend of a friend at Scotland Yard, or someplace, and received in return ten pages of her confidential criminal file. 'Cause, you know, them Yurrpeens loves their hifalutin' fancy-pants technology so much. Also because Posh Bela apparently burned her fingerprints off years ago, and ear patterns are the best thing, but who cares? The point is, the file is now Dean's, and he can find "that skinny, stuck-up English girl" in Room 39 at The Hotel Canaan. Got all that? "I do!" Excellent.
Dreary Erie. The Ginormotron switches on his bitty flashlight and tiptoes through a decrepit hunting cabin that shows signs of recent human-ish activity, so he knows he's in the right place. He quietly rummages around until he stumbles across Frankendoc's private journal, lying right there on the desk, and he quickly shoves it into his jacket pocket before continuing his search. Soon enough, he's found the trap door to the cellar, and he bends down, and down, and down, and down, and down, and down and down and down and down and down, and down one more time to poke his freakish Cro-Magnon skull into the musty blackness before carefully planting his remarkably large feet on the creaky planks and picking his way downstairs. The Samalike, most thoroughly dead, remains upon the operating table of his doom, though Frankendoc's been kind enough to wrap most of the corpse in a modestly concealing sheet. Sam, cautiously freaking, abandons his near-doppelganger's body to scope out the rest of the basement and presently, his flashlight's beam lands upon a petite twentysomething's delicate forearm that is simply crawling with wriggling, scrawny maggots. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Yep, Frankendoc's flayed open the lady's arm either to stitch the skin onto his own or -- as one particularly sick twist on the forum boards suggested -- because "he was doing a little veinwork," and the festering wound is now indeed a most grisly sight to behold. "Yum!" You're scaring me again, Raoul. "I meant the maggots, not the arm! Honestly! What sort of creature do you think I am?" Uh, a...oh, never mind. Now, where the hell was I? Oh, yeah: Just as Darling Sammy stretches out a concerned hand to check the flayed lady's neck for a pulse, The Flayed Lady's eyes snap open in instant terror, and Sam tries frantically to calm her down so he might make with their escape. Unfortunately for him, Frankendoc's just arrived home upstairs and is now creak-creak-creaking across the floorboards above on his way to the cellar's trap door. Thinking both fast and very much off-screen, Action Sammy frees The Flayed Lady from the leather straps binding her to the table and flees with her through one of the hastily and shoddily boarded basement windows, so that by the time Frankendoc swings his lantern around the space they'd occupied, the only thing he finds is the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Back from the break, Sam hauls The Flayed Lady over to his rental, bleep-bleeps the doors, and slings her into the passenger seat, apologizing all the while for whatever additional pain he's causing her like the refreshingly polite young man he is. He races around to the other side and slides in behind the wheel, but before he gets a chance to peel off...Frankendoc's smashed one of his heavily reconstructed hands through the window! "VIOLENCE!" roars Raoul, for whom no episode would be complete without a bit of the old...well, I was going to insert the Clockwork Orange term for "violence" for what I assume will become obvious reasons, but my creaky memory has just reminded me said term was actually "ultra-violence," and that's of no fucking help to me at all, now is it? Thanks for nothing, Stanley Kubrick! So, Frankendoc smashes one of his heavily reconstructed hands through the window, snatches up a fistful of Darling Sammy's unruly mop, and starts banging Darling Sammy's face against the steering wheel. "DEATH!" howls Raoul, instantly changing sides. "DEATH TO HIM WHO WOULD HARM THE FACE!" Sam manages to throw the SUV into reverse and back up, however, managing also to throw Frankendoc into the dirt as he does so. And then? Sam rams the car into drive and smears Frankendoc all over that wooded path! "VIOLENCE!" Raoul roars once more, feeling better about the whole violence thing now that Darling Sammy's the perpetrator instead of the victim. "WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT VIOLENCE AND GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Unfortunately, the immortal Frankendoc just rises to his feet and fussily adjusts his broken neck like he's Meryl in Death Becomes Her, or something, so I'm thinking he's still a threat.
Hotel Canaan. Posh Bela enters her suite and...oh, fuck it. Let's just get this over with as quickly as possible, because there are fifteen minutes still to go in this episode, the final three of which are devoted entirely to her tiresome backstory, so to hell with this scene. Long story short, Dean jumps her the second she's crossed the threshold, and after a bit of sneering, he ransacks her room in search of The Fucking Colt That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't. And he did not ransack the room in her absence because...? Oh, Jesus. Like I said: Fuck it. Not finding The Fucking Colt -- which Posh Bela insists is now in the hands of some speaker of Farsi, and if you want a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad joke here, you're going to have to provide it yourself, because I can barely spell the douchebag's name correctly, so you can forget about the funny ha-has from me as far as he's concerned -- Dangerous El Deano levels the business end of his pearl-handled automatic at one of her preternaturally unblinking eyes, but just as he's about to pull the trigger, she gives him some lip. Unable not to rise to the bait, Dean tosses the fact that she killed her parents right back into her face. Yep, Posh Bela -- or "Abbie," as she was originally known back in the day -- lost her parents in a suspicious car accident when she was fourteen years old, after which she, as their sole beneficiary, inherited their many millions. The police suspected a tampered brake line, but the car's explosion upon impact precluded the determination of any sort of definitive cause, so Posh Bela walked.
And then? They Go There. Yep, we get a flashback to Abbie weeping on her bed as her very own Bad Touch Daddy deliberately stalks his way into her bedroom and just as deliberately shuts and locks the door behind him. Shut up, Supernatural.
Back in the present, where absolutely everybody still doesn't give a rat's ass about Posh Bela or her goddamned awful childhood, Dean's about to blow her smug, overdone face clean off her goddamned skull when he spies some sort of mystical hoodoo charm dangling from the top of the room's door. He clearly recognizes its purpose (and that recognition throws him for a visible, momentary loop), instantly changes his mind about plugging her full of holes, and shoves her aside so he might pull The Dean Winchester Patented Bow-Legged Clompy Stomp Of Great Vengeance And Furious Anger straight out of the room. Once he's gone, Posh Bela unfolds the motel receipt she evidently swiped from his jacket pocket and gets on her cell to announce to an unspecified someone on the other end, "It worked -- he found me. Sam wasn't with him, but I know where they are." DUN!
Dreary Erie. Sam's cell bleats, and it's Dean, and they quickly rehash The Vermont Disappointment before Darling Sammy offers a bit of good news: Frankendoc's formula for eternal life is neither demonic nor black magic, but rather simple science. Or, you know, as simple as Super-Smart Sammy, here, can figure. Unfortunately, just as he's about to spill the details, Frankendoc pinches a chloroformed cloth over his nose and mouth, and Dean's left to bellow "SAMMY!" into nothing more than the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Frankendoc's Cabin In The Cotton, and we have now entered the Clockwork Orange portion of this evening's entertainment, in which Frankendoc has strapped The Ginormotron down to an operating slab with Darling Sammy's Super-Special Puppy-Dog Eyes taped open a la Malcolm McDowell's in the aforementioned cinematic masterpiece. Well, so I'm told, because I watched that self-indulgent piece of crap once in college and never felt a desire to see it again. I suppose I should mention at this point that Frankendoc's being played by Billy Drago, with whom I am far too familiar from his many, many, many guest appearances on CANCELLED! I didn't mention it before because he hadn't any lines up until this point, and so it was easier to ignore the fact that it's actually him, what with the crazy quilt of replacement body parts the character's got stitched all over what once had been his face, but now that I'm hearing that voice again? Yeah. Shut up, Billy Drago. To his credit, however, he's far less annoying than I thought he'd be when first I saw the guest list for this evening's episode, so that's a plus, I suppose, but still: Shut up, Billy Drago.
Billy Drago of course ignores me and instead -- as Frankendoc, naturally -- assures Darling Sammy by name that the latter's chances of surviving the impending procedure are "very, very high," Sam manages to maintain enough presence of mind to wonder how Frankendoc knows who he is. Of course, Frankendoc found Sucky John's demonic day-planner when he yanked Sam from the motel room, so there's that question answered. Frankendoc also speechifies at length regarding his personal desires, needs, and self-imposed code of conduct, as is habitual with this series's monsters, but none of it's important. Partly because I said so, because Drago's gnawing on the scenery again, but mainly because while he's yammering on like that, he's also sterilizing a melon baller. Yike! "DEATH!" roars Raoul, for he knows where all of this is going. "DEATH TO HIM WHO WOULD HARM THE PUPPY-DOG EYES!" And then he takes the melon baller and he bends down to Sam's left eye with the thing and he gets the edge of it behind the lid and the eye goes instantly bloodshot and... "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!" Raoul shrieks. "NOT THE EYES!" Fortunately for your faithful recapper and his exceedingly distraught lizardly companion, Dashing El Deano arrives at this very moment to aerate Frankendoc's eternal back with a couple of slugs from his pearl-handled automatic. Frankendoc, mildly annoyed, turns to face his attacker with a deeply weary, "Shoot all you want!" Heh. Frankendoc accepts a few more bullets from Dean's gun before he leaps forward and flings Dean across the room into some cabinets. Dean grunts and groans and crashes to the floor, and as Frankendoc leans in for the kill, or whatever, Dean lunges upwards with a lengthy hunting knife he plants firmly into Frankendoc's chest. "What part of 'immortality' do you not understand?" Frankendoc scoffs. One problem for the gloating Frankendoc: Dean coated the knife in chloroform, so it's curtains for Doc Benton. Oh, just go with it. If you can buy that simple science can lead to an immortality that requires occasional replacement parts brutally ripped from unwilling donors, you can believe that a knife coated in chloroform can take out a Frankendoc.
That made sense in my head. Oh, screw it.
In any event, Frankendoc awakens some time later to find himself lashed to one of his own operating slabs, and long story short, he pleads to be set free, offering to interpret the immortality formula for Our Intrepid Heroes if they'll just let him go. Sam, still convinced his plan could work, draws Dean aside for a consult, but Dean's adamant: He'd rather face Hell than survive as a monster, so Frankendoc's got to go. And with that, he pinches a chloroformed cloth over Frankendoc's nose and mouth, and Frankendoc passes out one last time.
Even later, Frankendoc comes to and manages to light a couple of matches, thereby illuminating the interior of his tomb, which happens to be an abandoned refrigerator Our Intrepid Heroes found somewhere out there in the woods. They've wrapped the fridge in chains, and the thing now rests at the bottom of a very deep hole they've dug, with Frankendoc's personal journal rather pointedly sitting on top of it. As Doc Benton screams and hammers his fists against the lid and screams and hammers his fists against the lid and screams and hammers his fists against the lid some more, a determined Dean and a still-reluctant Sam start shoveling dirt on top of him, and I'm sure I'd be more impressed with this development had I not seen this plot device used at least three other times this season. But let's not be churlish, for it means the end of Billy Drago's reign of terror and overacting on Supernatural, does it not? "It does!" Excellent. "Hooray!"
The Dreary Motel. Posh Bela's heels click-click-click down the hall until she reaches Our Intrepid Heroes' room. She picks the lock, draws a silenced automatic from inside her jacket, opens the door, and...blasts holes through the lumps on each bed! "DEATH! DEATH TO HER WHO WOULD...oh, wait a minute! I am such a silly sometimes! They're not actually in the beds, are they?!" Indeed they are not, my impressively perspicacious companion. "Oh, those darling boys! So tricky sometimes! Hee!" Yep, Posh Bela just blew holes through a pair of blow-up sex dolls Our Intrepid Trickies left in their places on the beds, and the room's phone now rings as the clock on the bedside table hits 11:56 PM. Of course, it's Dean, dialing to gloat, and gloat he does. Pity I don't give a rat's ass about Posh Bela, or I'd care that he felt her hand swiping the motel receipt from his jacket pocket back in Vermont. And pity I don't give a rat's ass about Posh Bela, or I'd care that he correctly identified the hoodoo above her door as "devil's shoestring," which is an excellent herb to use if one wishes to ward off hellhounds. And pity I don't give a rat's ass about Posh Bela, or I'd care that he then rechecked her parents' obituary to discover they died "ten years ago today." And pity I don't give a rat's ass about Posh Bela, or I'd of course care that he put it all together to realize she made her very own deal with a Crossroads Demonette back in Merrie Olde England, and that said deal is coming due in about three minutes.
Ooops! Sorry! I totally care about that last part, because it means we get to watch hellhounds rip Posh Bela to shreds! "VIOLENCE! WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT VIOLENCE AND GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" I know! It's so exciting, I won't even wonder why a deal made in Greenwich Time would still come due at midnight Eastern. "Except that you just did!" Oh, leave me alone. I'm trying to ignore the flashback they just barfed up onto the screen, in which we watch Posh Bela seal the original deal with a preadolescent moppet who's sporting a ludicrously false pair of red eyes. And I'm also trying to ignore the tears and the weeping that follow, in which Posh Bela explains that "They" first told her she'd be off the hellhound hook if she swiped The Fucking Colt, only to renege on the revised deal by informing her she'd have to kill Darling Sammy as well. Dean, thank God, is having none of it, and announces, "You know what the bitch of the bunch is? If you would have just come to us sooner and asked for help, we probably could have taken The [Fucking] Colt and saved you!" "And saved yourself, I know," she babbles, snot trickling from her leaky nose onto the telephone. Ew. You see, Posh Bela knows all about Dean's deal because the demonette who holds his and all similar contracts -- yes, including hers -- told her about it. And that demonette would be? Lilith, of course, but that won't become important until week at the earliest, for it's time for Dean to sign off on the aggravating bint with a seething, "I'll see you in Hell."
As the line goes dead, the clock at her side rolls over to midnight, and hellhounds bay in the distance. She rises to her feet to stare through the curtains at the dingy city outside, and the camera tracks ever closer in upon her face while that howling draws near, and finally, at very long last, a harsh snarling pounces upon her to drag Posh Bela into the darkness for good. "Whee!"
week: Season finale, baby! Will Dashing El Deano make it through the hour intact, or will The Kripkeeper pull another goddamned cliffhanger designed simply to annoy all of us during the lengthy summer hiatus? "It's another mystery! Hooray!" See you then, kiddies. "And kisses! Kisses to my pretties! Hee!"
Demian thinks it's time you started acting your age. Raoul, however, has just invited you over for a High School Musical marathon where, he promises, there will be mud masks, pedicures, and s'mores for everyone. You may reach the former at demian_twop@yahoo.com. The latter is an imaginary gay dragon on the Internet.