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So, the new plan to defeat Lucifer involves luring him into that divinely constructed cage beneath St. Mary's Convent and locking him in there for the several millennia using The Horsemen's rings, as I'm sure you'll all recall from the end of last week's episode. With War and Famine's rings already in their hot little hands, Our Intrepid Heroes hit the road in search of Pestilence, whom they think is slowly spreading Croatoan across the desert southwest, but that is nothing but a vile bit of misdirection on the crafty Horseman's part. He's actually spreading a particularly virulent strain of swine flu in order to panic the population into demanding a vaccine, now, no matter how shoddily formulated that vaccine might be. This brings us to The Niveus Pharmaceutical Corporation which, in addition to bringing us Herpexia, has been tasked with concocting a newer, faster-acting version of the traditional influenza vaccine. Unfortunately, Niveus's remarkably youthful CEO is actually a demonically enhanced former classmate of Sam's from Stanford -- more on that below -- who's colluding with Pestilence to spread Croatoan through the swine flu vaccine. DUN!
Meanwhile, Crowley pops up again for the first time in half a year with a little proposition for the boys: Because he still doesn't want Lucifer to win, especially after all that unpleasantness with The Fucking Colt That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't, he'll help Sam and Dean collect the remaining two Horsemen rings for free. Despite some initial misgivings, Our Intrepid Heroes agree to the temporary alliance, and Dean and Crowley head over to Niveus's corporate offices to kidnap the remarkably youthful CEO, whose name is Brad or Brody or some similar atrocity of like Chipster heinousness, and when they drag the guy back to Crowley's hovel, we get a ton of backstory on Sam's college years that we weren't exactly clamoring for at this point in the fifth season's overall arc. Long story short, Broheim got himself demonically enhanced during their sophomore year at Stanford because Azazel thought Sam was getting a little too soft even back then, Bromeister then introduced Sam to Jessica, and Brosephus ended up being the one who nailed Jessica to the ceiling with a foot-wide gash through her torso right before blowing her up, thereby setting the entire series in motion. Thrilling, yes? Not really, because come on: Who still gives a shit about Jessica Moore at this point, anyway?
And in the end, nothing happens, because they wasted too much time on Sam's psychodrama. Pestilence is still out there, the Croatoan virus is about to be unleashed, and Bobby sells his soul to Crowley to get a shot at Death. Ooops. That last bit might be kind of important, right? Whatever.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Rattle, Rattle THEN! A very long time ago, Darling Sammy didn't know what he'd do without Jessica Moore until Azazel nailed her to the ceiling with a foot-wide gash through her torso right before blowing her up, after which Darling Sammy quickly figured out a Plan B. Meanwhile, a very long time into the future, Dashing El Deano found himself trapped in a post-Apocalyptic Kansas City wherein each and every inhabitant had been infected with the Croatoan virus, so he beat the crap out of a little girl, as one does in such situations. Somewhere in between those two points, Our Intrepid Heroes met Crowley, the ancient demonic force in charge of the Crossroads gang, who gave them The Fucking Colt That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't, mainly to prove that said Colt cannot kill Lucifer. And finally, Gabriel just last week posthumously gifted the boys with a massive information dump that included the following: If Sam and Dean somehow manage to collect all four of The Horsemen's rings, and if Sam and Dean somehow manage to lure Lucifer back into his divinely constructed cage deep beneath the ruins of St. Mary's Convent in Ilchester, Maryland, then The Apocalypse can be averted simply by locking Satan up again for the few thousand years.
Rattle, Rattle NOW! Frisky little lab rats frolic about comfy-looking aquarium cages bedecked with HerpeXia print ads as two white-coat researchers steam past a burly night janitor to bitch about their current experiment, which involves some new, "faster-acting" H1N1 vaccine that "Niveus Pharmaceuticals" plans to push into human trials this week despite the fact that, in the researchers' considered opinion, the vaccine is nowhere near ready. "Have you even seen it?" White Coat One asks. "No," White Coat Two admits. "I have!" the janitor smiles, and with that, the janitor...jams a hypodermic into White Coat One's neck! "VIOLENCE!" shrieks Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon, positively a-flutter over this absolutely shocking development. "Is that sarcasm I detect in your tone, missy?!" Raoul shrieks again, evidently annoyed with yours truly, and it might be, friend of friends, but why don't we see if we can make it through this remarkably brief pre-credits sequence with a minimum of sidebar chit-chat, okay? "Okay!" It's such a joy when you're agreeable, Raoul. "Don't mention it!" I wasn't...oh, never mind. So, as White Coat One bugs out his eyes before dropping to the floor, either unconscious or dead, White Coat Two howls, "What the hell?" Exactly, White Coat Two. Exactly. For his part, Janitor Man replies by backhanding White Coat Two clear across the lab. "VIOLENCE! WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT PETA-APPROVED VIOLENCE!" "Relax," Janitor Man grins down at White Coat Two's now-battered form, "you're part of it, too!" With that, Janitor Man swipes himself out into the hall, then hammers the lab's locking mechanism with his fist until it sparks and zots and shorts out, trapping White Coat Two inside with his partner and several cages' worth of mildly annoyed Capuchin monkeys. And as White Coat Two pounds uselessly against the exit door's tempered glass, White Coat One rises rather ominously from the floor with vivid red bruises now swelling beneath his eyes. The camera darts in for an extreme close-up of his vaguely threatening face just as White Coat One's pupils expand to swallow his irises with a bitterly black demonic foulness, and the thing we know, it's gone all 28 Days Later there in the lab, with White Coat One yanking his hapless partner out of our line of vision while the increasingly agitated Capuchins screech and whine, and there are some gruesome, bone-cracking noises on the soundtrack as Janitor Man watches what we can't see with avid interest, and finally, at long last, a mighty gout of White Coat Two's arterial spray rips across the lab's exit door. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Janitor Man allows his eyes to flip beetle black and smirks, "Looks like it works!" right before we all get slapped in the face with the...
...SPLAT! "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" shrieks Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon, once more writhing about upon his overstuffed armchair with delight over the fifth season's endlessly compelling blood-burst of a title card, and oh, Raoul. "Yes?!" You realize we have only two more episodes before this, your most favorite of Supernatural's title cards, goes away for good, don't you? "I'll pretend I didn't hear you say that!" Ah. So, we're going with denial, then? "Absolutely!" Excellent. Shall I continue, then? "Please do!"
The camera pans across a waiting room full of sniffling, sneezing, rheumy-eyed flu victims hacking away into their sleeves, and it lingers just a moment on last week's convenience store clerk before carrying on to take in the just-arriving LYING LIARS WHO LIE, who are here posing as agents from The Centers For Disease Control. They're both sporting surgical masks, by the way, which are completely useless against the flu, but they do allow Dean to joke that he looks like a dead child molester, so that's nice. "I'm glad the CDC is here," the overcrowded emergency room's attending physician allows, "but what we really need is vaccine." Hmmm. Would that be the same vaccine that turned White Coat One into a Croatoan rage monkey, perhaps? "I think you're right!" Only time will tell, I suppose. In any event, Darling Sammy casually shifts the topic of conversation over to the strain of Mexican influenza afflicting the patients surrounding them, wondering if the good doctor's noticed anything unusual about this particular outbreak, like aggressive behavioral changes in any of the ill. "Excuse me?" the good doctor squints. "Have the flu victims shown any homicidal tendencies?" Dean specifies. The good doctor stares at them like they've just farted in her hair. "Symptomatically speaking," she lectures, "we're looking at a relatively mild case of swine flu, here -- probably add up to a miserable week off of work, that's about it." "So, nothing unusual?" Dean presses. "Well," the good doctor admits, "a day and a half ago, we didn't have a single case, and now we're looking at over seventy." "It's the infectious equivalent of a briefcase bomb," she continues, "so, yeah, I might call that a little unusual." The boys mutter amongst themselves about some statues that coincidentally started weeping a day and a half ago, then smilingly take their leave. Well, I'm assuming they're smiling, what with the pointless surgical masks blocking my view and all.
Moments later, the Impala's photogenically tearing up a length of foggy backwoods blacktop somewhere remote while the boys confer with Bobby via cell. Neither Sam nor Dean can figure out why Pestilence is "dealing up soft-serve like swine flu when he's got the Croatoan virus up his sleeve," but Bobby gripes that that's not important right now, because what is important is the fact that Pestilence has hit at least four towns since he surfaced last week, and Our Intrepid Heroes "are still eating his dust." Or, you know, his mucus trail. Your choice. "I'll go with the mucus! Whee!" That doesn't surprise me in the least, you adorably sick little lizard. "Hee!" Anyway, as there's yet no discernable pattern to Pestilence's wanderings, Bobby suggests the boys just keep heading east. "East?" the two blurt in disbelieving unison before Dean points out, "We're in west Nevada -- 'east' is practically all there is." Bobby rather unhelpfully replies, "Well, you better get to driving!" and rings off, leaving Sam and Dean to grumble at each other until...Crossroads Boss Crowley magically materializes in Metallicar's back seat! DUN! Dean spins the car into a squealing, multiple-lane-hogging halt as Deluxe Action Sammy With Super-Special Glow-In-The-Dark Guest-Star Stabby-Hands whips out The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't and rams it into...the Impala's vinyl seat cushions! D'OH! "He's gone!" Deluxe Action Sammy With Super-Special Glow-In-The-Dark Guest-Star Missing Hands pants. Oh, but not for long, of course, for no sooner has Sammy blurted that out than Crossroads Boss Crowley raps at the passenger-side window to offer, "Fancy a fag and a chat?" "Homophobe!" shrieks Raoul, and Raoul, sweetie, Crowley's English. "So?!" So when he says "fag," he means "cigarette." "Oh! Oh! My profuse apologies for the silly misunderstanding, I'm sure!" Not to worry, friend of friends. Now, shall we join the fellows as they yammer away at each other for the fifteen minutes out there in the middle of nowhere? "Why not!?" Why not, indeed.
Our Irritated Heroes angrily disembark and advance upon Crowley with murder in their eyes, for they're still pissed off at him over that whole Fucking Colt thing that went down at Crowley's instigation over in Carthage, Missouri, just before Thanksgiving. Crowley insists -- perhaps honestly -- that he thought The Fucking Colt would actually kill Lucifer before he launches himself into an amusingly furious little rant regarding how much trouble he's been in with Lucifer's minions as of late, taking care to note with proper amounts of outrage that said minions "ate [his] tailor." Hee. It's all in Mark Sheppard's delivery, which is of course nearly flawless, but I suppose we should focus on what's actually relevant to the episode at hand. "Yes, please!" So, after calming himself a little bit, he informs the boys that if they want to track down Pestilence, he can help them. Are Sam and Dean interested? But of course. They're intrigued, even, so the three pile back into the Impala and drive off to...
...Crowley's hideout which, in sharp contrast to his mansion, is little more than a boarded-up rattrap somewhere deep within the vasty wastes of Nevada's Great Basin. Well, I'm guessing. I mean, Crowley could have magically transported the Impala to Maine, for all I know. In fact, given the bizarre and completely illogical location jumps we're about to endure for the remainder of this episode, I wouldn't be surprised if Crowley did indeed magically transport the Impala to Maine just now, but whatever. I've got actual plot points to deal with at the moment, including the following: Crowley knows all about The Horsemen's rings and Our Intrepid Heroes' plan to ensnare Lucifer using the same thanks to a tracking device-slash-microphone Crowley's valet hid in the Impala back in November, and they're just pulling this crap out of their collective ass at this point, aren't they? I mean, it's bad enough we're dealing with a never-before-mentioned tracking device-slash-microphone, but to learn that said never-before-mentioned tracking device-slash-microphone is in the shape of "a magical coin"? Shut up, Supernatural. I just...I HATE...I can't...oh, screw it. I haven't the strength this late in the season to scream about this bullshit, so let's keep this moving, shall we? "Let's!" Bless you for keeping my back in this, my hour of need, friend of friends. "No problem!" Okay, now where were we? Oh, yes: Crowley's stupid fucking magical coin, with which he eavesdropped on every single goddamned stupid fucking Impala conversation for the last six goddamned stupid fucking months. I wonder if he grew to hate the end-of-episode homilies as much as we did. ANY-way, while Crowley can't lead them directly to Pestilence himself, he can lead them to "The Horsemen's stableboy," an upper-level demonic force who basically acts as The Horsemen's personal assistant, and why we're hearing about this guy for the very first time in the third-to-last episode of the season, I'll never know, and then Dean wonders where The Horsemen's Buttboy's been keeping himself as of late, and we're off to...
...Niveus Pharmaceuticals' corporate headquarters, where Jocko Whitney from Smallville is conducting a late-night product meeting with people from his R&D, marketing, and distribution departments, and because Jocko Whitney's name appeared in the guest scroll at the top of the hour, and because the pharmaceutical industry is evil, I'm guessing Jocko Whitney is The Horsemen's Buttboy. "I was just about to suggest the same thing!" Yes, yes, Raoul, you are indeed a sage and discerning dragon. "Thanks!" Now, may I continue? "By all means!" Good. So, Jocko Whitney's even more of an unmitigated cock than he ever was on Smallville, and he screams about how the United States is in a mad panic over the Mexican influenza -- like, maybe last year, show -- and after he tears the wimpy head of distribution a new one over the latter's inability to push the Croatoan vaccine into market immediately, The Horsemen's Buttboy storms out of the conference room to...
...casually scroll through his e-mails back in his corner office. There's a knock at the door, and it's the unfortunate and wimpy head of Niveus Pharmaceuticals' distribution department, there to apologize for his woeful lack of business acumen, or something like that. Buttboy waves this "Mitchell" person into the room and rises from his desk to start in with the smarmy corporatespeak regarding lateral promotions into the communications sector and such, all the while circling closer and closer to Poor Doomed Mitchell until Buttboy...whips a straight razor out of his pocket and slits Mitchell's throat! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" I'm so glad one of us is enjoying himself, Raoul. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" In any event, you might be wondering why Buttboy slashed Poor Dead Mitchell open like that. "I'm am not! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Ahem. In any event, those of you who are not dizzy houseguests of yours truly might be wondering why Buttboy slashed Poor Dead Mitchell open like that. "Hee! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Ugh. ANY-way, remember the blood phones Short-Lip Meg and Screamin' Duane used to dial up their Dee-monic Daddy back in the day? Same deal here, only Buttboy's calling Pestilence, who answers the blood phone by sending a couple of lazily buzzing disease-laden flies up through the sticky liquid in the cup. And once the connection's been made, Buttboy informs Pestilence of the Croatoan vaccine's "grotesque" levels of success during its recent human trials, and promises to have a nationwide distribution network set up soon. !
Crowley's Rattrap. Our Intrepid Heroes load a couple of duffels with various implements of demonic destruction while bickering about the decision to work with Crowley for a bit until The Crossroads Boss himself enters from points unknown to smoothly ask if Dean's ready. Dean's all, "Buh?" so Crowley patiently explains that Sam will be remaining behind to keep the home fires burning at the rattrap because for one thing, Crowley doesn't like Sam, and for another, Crowley doesn't trust Sam, and for a third, Crowley's getting pretty annoyed with how Sam keeps trying to kill him. And while all of that seems perfectly reasonable to me, Sam -- for whatever bizarre and just-appearing character reason that I'm sure will become important by the time the season finale rolls around in two weeks -- flies into a spitting rage, and he gets all beetle-browed and screamy and such, but long story short, Dashing El Deano agrees to do this Crowley's way, so Darling Sammy will just have to learn to live with his crushing disappointment. Or something like that. And how, exactly, does Darling Sammy learn to live with said crushing disappointment?
By getting sloppy on some off-brand whiskey and drunk-dialing Bobby, of course! "Atta girl! [Slurp!]" "And then Dean just walks right out the door, with Crowley!" Drunk Sammy whines. "He's so mean to me sometimes!" Bobby, clearly as tired of this bullshit as I am, wearily takes a slug of scotch and agrees that yes, Dean can be so mean to Sam sometimes, but he's probably just saying that to get the gigantic boozy mess with the tragic hair off the goddamned phone already. Unfortunately for both of us, Drunk Sam takes Bobby's response as license to babble about the astoundingly stupid idea the alcohol just gave him, which goes a little like this: Remember when Bobby got his damn fool self possessed, and then wrested control of his body from the demon in question long enough to jam The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't into his hefty beer gut, thereby severing his spinal cord? Yeah, well, Drunk Sam's decided that if Bobby can do that, so can he, and he's now determined to say yes to Satan, just so he can then wrest control of his body back from the fallen archangel in question long enough to leap into that divinely constructed cage deep beneath the ruins of St. Mary's Convent, after which Bobby and Dean will seal the cage with The Horsemen's rings, thereby leaving Darling Sammy and Lucifer to rot with each other for all eternity. In Maryland. "[Shudder!] [Slurp!] [Shudder!]" Needless to say, Bobby vociferously opposes this astoundingly stupid idea in the hoariest language imaginable, because Bobby is an ornery frontier coot given to elaborately outdated turns of phrase. And...are we done, here? "We are!" Excellent. !
Niveus Pharmaceuticals' Corporate Headquarters, which are apparently located deep within the vasty wastes of Nevada's Great Basin somewhere close to Crowley's rattrap, unless Crowley zapped the Impala from Nevada or Maine or wherever to Deerfield or Groton or someplace like that. From his hiding place out on the front drive, Dean peers through a pair of binoculars at the security guards manning the front desk and quickly guesses, "Demons!" "Human shields," Crowley corrects, adding, "The demons are up top, twelfth floor." Dean sighs and mutters something about finding a path through the back entrance, then, which makes Crowley sigh and mutter, "You Winchesters make everything so complicated!" right before Crowley...teleports himself from the car! "Aw, crap!" grumbles Dean, and he hoists the binoculars to peer into the heavily guarded lobby once more, where Crowley's just now...O.J.-ing the security guards' throats! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Dean, far less appreciative than Raoul of those crimson spurts now leaping from the ragged holes in the security guards' necks, freaks and races towards the lobby entrance, where he finds the guards' rapidly cooling corpses swimming in puddles of their own blood. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" "You killed them?" Dean flusters. By way of response, Crowley -- God love him -- simply wipes the bits of neck flesh off his knife with a pocket square, delicately picks his way around the rapidly cooling corpses' blood puddles so as not to muss his shoes, and leads Deeply Disturbed El Deano over to the elevator bank. He shoves Dean into a waiting car and presses the button for the twelfth floor, then steps back with a bright smile on his face while perking, "Go get 'em, tiger!" "You're not coming?" Dean grunts. Crowley shrugs, "It's not safe up there -- there's demons!" Heh, and again: All in Sheppard's delivery, because God knows the line as written isn't all that funny. In any event, Crowley assures Dean that everything will be fine as long as Dean executes his part of the plan as previously discussed somewhere off screen, and he pushes Dean back into the elevator car, waving a cheerful goodbye as Dean disappears upwards.
Twelfth Floor. Dean ices Buttboy's demonically enhanced bodyguard with The Knife That Can Kill Anything, then enters the luxuriously appointed corner office to blatantly wipe the bodyguard's blood from The Knife's blade onto one of Buttboy's cashmere overcoats. Unfortunately, if he was hoping to get a rise out of Buttboy from all of this, he must be sorely disappointed, for Buttboy merely waves Dean over to a seat and starts in with the chattering. And because they jaw away at each other for a full two minutes, and because none of the dialogue involved is particularly interesting, I'll get to the point: Dean bluffs that he's willing to sell Buttboy the rings he and Sam swiped from War and Famine as long as Buttboy agrees to continue the present meeting at a neutral location of Dean's choosing. Buttboy responds to Dean's offer by kicking Dean's ass. "VIOLENCE!" You see, even if Buttboy did get those two rings back from Dean, they'd be of no use to his conquered masters, for War and Famine have been mere husks of their former selves, curled up in fetal positions ever since Our Intrepid Heroes defeated them, and so much for seeing Titus Welliver on this show ever again, I suppose. Stupid Supernatural. "VIOLENCE!" I'm getting back to it, Raoul! Calm down. "VIOLENCE!" Rrrrgh. Anyway, because of all that, Buttboy would like nothing more than to exact a little vengeance for his fallen Horsemen, and he intends to start exacting said vengeance right now by ripping it out of Dashing El Deano's stumpy yet tantalizing derriere. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" And as Raoul writhes himself into paroxysms of glee thanks to the stupendously brutal beatdown Our Intrepid Hero's now suffering, the METAL TEETH CHOMP! clamps down to snatch us all into the commercial break.
Evil Pharmaceutical Empire. Immediate aftermath. Mildly Mutilated El Deano somehow has made it back to the elevator, and we travel downwards to the lobby with him in real time until everybody in the audience falls asleep, and by the time we all wake up, the episode's over! See you week, kids!
Kidding. Well, about the episode being over already. We actually do travel downwards to the lobby with Mildly Mutilated El Deano in real time, though, for some asinine and completely boring reason, and then Mildly Mutilated El Deano warily tippy-toes out of the car to glance around the building's apparently deserted entrance for a bit, only to discover that...Buttboy's somehow magically and silently teleported himself from the twelfth floor! DUN! Buttboy slams a fist into the back of Mildly Mutilated El Deano's head, and the Buttboy gloating that follows is almost as tedious as Dean's lengthy journey in the elevator. Almost. So, you know, it really is a very good thing that Crowley arrives at this moment to cinch a sigil-bedazzled burlap sack around Buttboy's surprised head, after which Crowley conjures up a crowbar to beat Buttboy like Buttboy owes him money. Whack! "VIOLENCE!" Whack! Whack! Whack! "WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT SKULL-CRUSHING VIOLENCE!" Whack! Whack! Whack! "WANTON ACTS OF, um, UNRELENTING UNREPENTANT SKULL-CRUSHING VIOLENCE!" Whack! "Can I do it now?!" One more, Raoul: WHACK! "Now!?" Now. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" And as Buttmunch crashes to the terrazzo, unconscious, Mildly Mutilated El Deano staggers to his feet to demand, "What was that?" "That," Crowley replies with an appreciative smile, "was perfect." "'Perfect'?" Mildly Mutilated El Deano gasps, incredulous. "He didn't want the rings," Mildly Mutilated El Deano protests, "he wanted me!" "Imagine the surprise on your face!" Crowley crows. "Your ignorance and misinformation?" he explains as Mildly Mutilated El Deano flails around, feeling betrayed. "I mean, completely authentic! You can't fake that." Mildly Mutilated El Deano glares. "It went like clockwork!" Crowley insists. "Not for me, you son of a bitch!" Mildly Mutilated El Deano yowls. "That's what you get for working with a demon," Crowley playfully chides, and with that, we're...
...back in the Impala, where Dean dabs at his scalp wounds with a handkerchief in the front seat while Crowley busies himself carving a lurid entrapment sigil directly into Butthead's chest. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" This will, of course, prevent Buttload from escaping his host's body during the torture to come. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" "Now, up here," Crowley instructs, turning his attention to the road ahead, "we don't want I-50. Take 93 North." Wow. I guess we are still in Nevada. Go figure. Though why Pestilence And Friends would set up their Croatoan plant out in the middle of nowhere is beyond me. Anyway, Dean bristles at the sudden change in route, and wants to know why he's supposed to drive away from the rattrap. "We can't take this guy back to your brother," Crowley explains. 'They got history, all right?" Dean slams on the brakes to shout, "What history?"
Why, they dull kind, of course! For yes, gentle reader, we have arrived at the portion of this evening's festivities in which everyone involved tries and fails to interest us in events that transpired at Stanford University seven years ago. "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAWN!" Yes, Raoul. Yes, exactly. You see, Buttwit, here, is actually Sam's old friend, "Brady," from Pre-Law or the frat house or their frigging work-study job on the cafeteria lunch line or whatever, only "Brady hasn't been Brady in years" -- not since the middle of their sophomore year, in fact -- and it was Brady's demonically enhanced persona who initially introduced Sam to the late, lamented Jessica Moore. "Who?!" Yes, Raoul. Yes, again. No, I have no idea why they're throwing this guy in our faces now, in the second-to-last episode before the fifth-season finale, and no, I don't particularly care at this point, either. What I do know is that he won't make it to the end of the evening alive, so I'll be spending as little time as possible on his scenes, despite the fact that Eric Johnson really is being as entertaining as he possibly can be, here, given the dreadful material he's got to work with.
By the way, now that I've imagined Darling Sammy with a work-study job on the cafeteria lunch line, I find myself trying to visualize the hairnet vast enough to contain his mighty coif. "It's impossible!" shrieks Raoul, and I have a feeling Raoul is right. "I usually am! [Slurp!]"
Now, where the hell was I? Oh, yeah: So, when Sam learns his old friend Brady has actually been demonically enhanced for years, Sam flies into a yet another spitting rage, getting all beetle-browed and screamy and such once more until Dean's forced to wrestle his very loud brother into a separate rattrap room while Crowley has a sit-down with whatever is currently occupying Brady's dead body. Unfortunately, Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body is one of those Satanic true believers like Azazel and Lilith and Ruby and that crazy chick down in the basement from that especially awful episode in Season Three who are convinced that Lucifer has only their best interests at heart, refusing to understand that Lucifer intends to wipe all traces of humanity -- including the demons -- from the face of the Earth. So, you know, the sit-down doesn't go exactly the way Crowley would have liked. "He buy your Girl Scout cookies?" Dean asks once Crowley's skulked back into the rattrap's sitting room. "Not yet," Crowley admits before glancing around and wondering, "Where's your moose?" Hee. Sam's off soaking his freakish Cro-Magnon head somewhere, so Crowley affably tells Dean to "get bent," and makes for the door. "You going somewhere?" Dean wonders, dimly. "Well, he won't budge," Crowley explains, hiking a thumb in Brady's general direction, "so now I go stick my neck out." "What're ya gonna do?" Dean eyebrows. "Exactly the kind of desperate swashbuckle I've been trying to avoid," Crowley allows. "Now I go kick open a hive of demons." "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Off screen, Raoul. "Rats!"
Oh, this is just stupid. And that's saying a lot, considering the abject stupidity surrounding it. Once Crowley whisks himself elsewhere, Dean heads to the mysteriously still-functioning rattrap bathroom to splash water on his face, and Super-Stealth Sammy locks him in there to go play Hide The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't with Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body. And Dean -- the guy who effortlessly hurls himself through stained-glass windows, for Christ's sake -- can't kick that rotting door down. Go to Hell, Supernatural.
And then? Yet another attempt to interest us in events that transpired at Stanford University seven goddamned years ago. Long story short, Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body -- following The Ceiling Demon's orders, by the way -- initially possessed its host during Thanksgiving break their sophomore year, and upon its return to college managed to engineer a breakdown for its host of Lohanesque proportions, thereby ensuring Gullible Sammy would work extra hard to save his lunch-line pal and set the guy back on the straight and narrow, thus forging an unbreakable emotional bond between the two gents. Or, you know, between Sam and the thing Sam believed to be his friend. Then, Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body introduced Sam to the late, unlamented Jessica Moore, and proceeded to...nail her to the ceiling with a foot-wide gash through her torso right before it blew her up? Fuck you, show. Fuck you! There are examples of retroactive continuity that pretty awesome, like Azazel actually receiving his marching orders from Lucifer all the way back in 1972 or Mary Campbell making the deal that would doom her sons to lifetimes of misery and pain, and there are examples of retroactive continuity that I don't actively hate, like The Trickster being The Archangel Gabriel all along, but then there's bullshit like this. No, show, this sneering little punk-ass bag of bleeding crap did not nail Jessica Moore to the ceiling with a foot-wide gash through her torso right before he blew her up back at the end of the pilot because The Ceiling Demon nailed Jessica Moore to the ceiling with a foot-wide gash through her torso right before he blew her up back at the end the pilot, and if you try to tell me otherwise again I'll... I'll... Well, actually, I'll just keep making fun of you every week like I've been doing for the last four years. I'll tell you what, though: This episode is dead to me. DEAD.
Meanwhile, Dumb Dean still hasn't broken down that fucking bathroom door. I hate this show. Sam eventually frees him, Dumb Dean immediately clompy-stomps over to make sure that Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body is still alive, and Our Immensely Irritating Heroes are about to launch themselves into yet another of their patented sissy hair-pulling slapfights when Crowley arrives from points unknown, looking somewhat worse for wear. "What a day I've had," he sighs for Sam and Dean's benefit before crossing into the torture chamber to tell Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body, "Good news!" "What'd ya do?" Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body mopes. "Went over to a demon's nest, had a little massacre," Crowley explains. "And WHY were we not witness to THAT?!" shrieks a terribly distraught Raoul, who has been forced to endure the last fifteen or so minutes of tedious chit-chat without so much as a single exploding eyeball to satisfy his cravings. "It's criminal!" Raoul laments, and you know I do not disagree with you, my scaly friend, but now that we've both given up on this pile of garbage that they're trying to call an episode, don't you think it best if we hurry through what remains as quickly as possible? "Oh, do whatever you want!" sobs Raoul, heartbroken. "I'm going to have another cocktail! [Slurp!]" Wise decision, Raoul. Wise decision.
So, yeah, Crowley had a little off-screen massacre while we were stuck back here not even trying to care about Sam's stupid seven-year-old psychodrama, but there seems to have been a snag. "Must be losing my touch," Crowley twinkles mischievously before clarifying, "Let one of the little toads live! Ooops!" "I also might have given said toad the impression that you left your post last night," Crowley adds, "because you and I are -- wait for it -- 'Lovers In League Against Satan.'" As Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body rolls Brady's dead eyes Heavenwards, Crowley lets a sly little smile flicker across his face while cooing, "Hello, darling!" I've a feeling I should be annoyed by that, but Mark Sheppard's just too, too delightful with the impish merriment, here, so I'll probably order one of the Lovers In League Against Satan sweatshirts that popped up all over CafePress and Zazzle about five minutes after this episode aired. Or maybe a Hello, Darling! skateboard. Eh, I can always decide later.
Needless to say, Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body is pissed because Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body is now officially on Lucifer's permanent shit list and, realizing it's been beaten, Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body decides to reveal Pestilence's current whereabouts. Unfortunately, before it can do that, a Hellhound bays in the distance. Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body freaks out first, followed presently by Dean. Meanwhile, Sam's still too busy bunching his enormous panties into a tremendous wad to care much one way or the other, and Crowley spends the several seconds frantically searching through his pockets until he finds what he's been looking for: A never-before-mentioned tracking device-slash-microphone is in the shape of a magical coin. Fuck you, Supernatural. Turns out one of the dead demons Crowley visited slipped the tracking device into his jacket, and now that Hellhound out there is homing in on the thing. Crowley, no fool, of course immediately flips the aggravating magical coin into Dumb Dean's outstretched hands and whisks himself out of there, leaving the mouthbreathing idiots to their collective fate, and I refuse to recap what happens , because what happens includes Dean blasting away at an invisible dog with rock salt until Crowley returns with an invisible dog of his own, and then the two invisible dogs fight with each other. Let me repeat that: We are watching two invisible dogs fighting with each other. FOR EIGHT GODDAMNED MINUTES. Well, okay, it's more like a minute, minute and a half, tops, but still: Two invisible dogs. Fighting with each other. What the hell happened to this season?
In any event, Our Intrepid Idiots plus Crowley and Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body manage to escape while the two invisible dogs snarl and bite at each other for twenty-seven minutes and fifty-one seconds, and when we rejoin everyone, Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body has already passed along Pestilence's current coordinates. Satisfied, Crowley vanishes into the night, leaving Sam and Dean alone in a dark alleyway with Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body, who proceeds to taunt at an oddly hatchet-faced Sam until that oddly hatchet-faced Sam kills Whatever Is Currently Occupying Brady's Dead Body dead. This development perturbs Bandy-Legged El Deano for reasons I will never trouble myself to fathom, and we enter this evening's final commercial break wondering which nitwit on staff came up with this crapfest, Kripke.
Somewhere deep within the lush coastal rainforests of southeastern South Dakota, Speed Racer sits at his pile of Very Important Research, chatting with the never-heard Rufus via his cordless. Bobby's spotted some pretty nasty omens popping up here and there over the last couple of days, but as none of them have indicated "Death with a capital 'D,'" he decided to keep mum about them until Rufus called to check in. And, after telling Rufus to "watch [his] ass out there," he hangs up to find...Crossroads Boss Crowley lurking in his kitchen! DUN! "[Slurp!] Is that charming little British gentleman going to slaughter the hairball in the wheelchair?!" My guess would be no, Raoul. "Then fie, I say! FIE! [Slurp!]" Oh, stop being so dramatic -- we've only got three minutes left, and I bet I can recap them in a couple of sentences. "If those sentences do not end with the phrase 'and then that charming little British gentleman slaughters the hairball in the wheelchair,' I'm not interested! [Slurp!]" Oh, fine. I'll see what I can do. "Hooray!"
So, Crowley materializes in the kitchen and, after Bobby pumps a couple of entirely ineffectual rounds into him, he makes Speed Racer the following offer: If Bobby "loans" his soul to The Crossroads Boss, Crowley will use the resulting mojo to kick-start a spell that should spit out Death's present location in little to no time at all. Bobby considers this for a very long moment but makes no response, so that charming little British gentleman slaughters the hairball in the wheelchair. "VIOLENCE! WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT HAIRBALL-SLAUGHTERING VIOLENCE AND GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!"
Happy, Raoul? "Very much so, and thank you kindly for asking! [Slurp!]" Care to handle the promo for week's episode. "I'd much rather have another cocktail!" Suit yourself. "Thanks! I will! [Slurp!]"
week, Dean has a tête-à-tête with Death himself, and to be honest with you, Death's not as big as I thought he would be. "That's what Dean said!" Oh, Raoul. "Hee! Kisses, my pretties! Oversized dragon-flavored kisses to all my pretties!"
Demian doesn't want to hear about your stupid college years, either. Raoul, however, would like nothing more than to gab about his madcap seasons on the old alma mater's drill team with you over a couple of smart springtime cocktails. You may reach the former at demian_twop@yahoo.com. The latter is an imaginary gay dragon quite thankfully nearing the end of his house arrest on the Internet.
Shouldn't the boys have run out of evildoers to face by now?Our vlogger investigates. Check back soon for the full recap.
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