Episode Report Card Demian: A- | 4 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT The Hardy Boys Full-On Swayze That Mother. Again.
By Demian | Season 4 | Episode 15 | Aired on 03.12.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.When Darling Sammy's mad Googling skillz uncover a tiny speck of a burg in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming, whose residents apparently refuse to die, Our Intrepid Heroes are forced to motor on over to Wilford Brimley's hometown to figure out what the hell is going on. After interviewing the teaser's blameless gunshot victim (who still has the bullet he caught with his chest lodged in his heart, don't you know) the boys fumble through various potential otherworldly causes -- rejecting desperate midnight deals with sassy crossroads demonettes and excessively judgmental fundamentalist preachers' wives, among other hell-sent possibilities -- before determining the village's Reaper's gone missing. An off-screen phone call from the never-seen Bobby provides a reason for the mysterious disappearance, and yes, Lilith's involved, though we thankfully never see her, either. Turns out that one of the many, many seals she's been so insistent upon breaking this season involves the slaughter of a Reaper during the new moon.
One problem: The living -- whose numbers of course include our favorite repeatedly resurrected slices of eye candy -- cannot see (and therefore cannot track down) Reapers, so Our Dear Boys are forced to enlist the aid of the delightful and still-officially-blind Show Barnes, who hauls her cranky derriere and increasingly tattered Ramones t-shirt over to this week's absolutely filthy motel room to whisper a little Latination in their ears, thereby booting the boys' souls out of their remarkably healthy bodies and onto the astral plane. Or something like that. My attention kept drifting towards Jared Padalecki's shoulders during that scene, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm missing certain pertinent details. In any event, now that they've been freed of their physical forms, Sam and Dean are able to speak with the ghost of Greybull's last official death -- a pre-teen asthma victim by the name of Cole Griffith -- who eventually informs them that the creepy old-guy Reaper sent to claim his soul vanished during the kid's wake when a mass of roiling, bitterly black demonic goo barged into the funeral home from points unknown to abscond with Death's elderly assistant.
And wouldn't you know it? The exact same thing happens to Tessa when she blinks in to pick up her missing colleague's slack. Seems the seal-breaking involves slaughtering not one, but two Reapers during the new moon, and on top of that? Alastair and his aggravating Brando impersonation have been tasked by Lilith with carrying out the entire plan, which of course annoys both Dashing El Deano and the entire viewing audience as a whole to no end. Ultimately, however, My Sweet Baboo Castiel pops up just in the nick of time to zap Alastair and his aggravating Brando impersonation... elsewhere, I guess, and Tessa survives the demonic incursion to escort the various undead Wyominginians into the great beyond, or wherever.
And then? They kill Show Barnes. Just because. God, this season is depressing. Damn you, Kripke!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Once again, before we begin, Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon would like to make an announcement. "Thanks! [A-him!] Umami can be my Mamà any time she wants!" Raoul! "What?!" That's... that's... oh, never mind.
Rattle, Rattle BLOOD-RED THEN! Let's see: Back at the very beginning of the season, we met the sassy and irrepressible Show Barnes whom, as you'll recall, continued to be "the best damn psychic" in her never-named state even after my sweet baboo Castiel seared the eyes right out of her skull. Later, a dark demonic force sent straight from the flaming maw of Hell named Alastair renewed his acquaintance with Dashing El Deano, who apparently fell under Alastair's tutelage during his hiatus-long sojourn in the realm down under, and you'll understand why Our Intrepid Hero was most displeased to see the slimy, slithery gent topside when I remind you of Alastair's horrifically aggravating and entirely unnecessary Brando impersonation. Around the same time, Pete's secretary from Mad Men popped up to remind everyone that Lilith's trying to break sixty-six seals in order to raise Lucifer himself, and still later, when last we saw Our Dear Boys, a succulent siren forced the two to unleash streams of bitter, bitter honesty in each other's direction, and Dean was all, "BRENDA BLETHYN!" and Darling Sammy was all, "Whatever, pussy!" before they knocked the snot out of each other, after which they enjoyed some cool and refreshing Coca-Cola beneath Bedford, Iowa's opulently scenic Skybridge while attempting to dismiss the nasty and true things said the night before as "just the siren's spell talking." Got all that? Excellent. Now shut the hell up for the...
...Slashy, Slashy NOW! As the NOW! advances forward to vanish back into the darkness from which it emerged, the camera fades up on the glorious, wooly-headed neon sign outside the delightfully alliterative "Bison Bud's Bar" just as two of the locals -- including, I'm sure, the great state of Wyoming's only African-American resident -- emerge after a pleasant evening spent knocking back a few whilst watching some sort of sporting entertainment or another on the bar's TV. The two middle-aged gents banter about the details of the game just passed and have barely reached the bar's parking lot when... the meth-head who'd been lurking in the shadows this entire time attacks! DUN! Well, actually, the meth-head just asks them for some change, and it's only after the boozy gent who is not Wyoming's only African-American resident gives the kid a wary once-over before shrugging, "Sorry," that the meth-head whips a Saturday night special from the waistband of his pants and demands their wallets. The boozy bar gents make with the placating hands for a second but unfortunately for them, one of the bar's adolescent kitchen workers -- who'd been taking out the trash, don't you know -- chooses this moment to get all skittish and lets the parking lot Dumpster slam shut with a terrific BANG. This, of course, freaks out the meth-head, who jumps at the unexpected noise, and in the process, he inadvertently squeezes off a round from his cheap handgun that ends up embedding itself in the white guy's chest. "VIOLENCE!" shrieks Raoul, ecstatic to witness such vicious behavior so early in the episode. "WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT VIOLENCE AND GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Um. Raoul? "WHAT?!" Yikes. No need to get snappish, and I apologize for interrupting you in mid-writhe, but you do understand that there's no gore to be had in this sequence, yes? "I'll pretend I did not just hear you say that, thank you very much!" But... "SILENCE!" Ow! Okay! Okay! Fine, go back to your writhing atop your overstuffed armchair even though this scene doesn't deserve such exertions on your part. See if I care. "I will, no thanks to you, and I will not! So there!" It's going to be a long night.