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Our Intrepid Heroes track Pestilence to a nursing home in Davenport, Iowa, where The Horseman's been posing as the home's resident geriatrician as of late in order to conduct a series of gruesome experiments on some of the patients, each of whom ends up dying of multiple infections from an exotic variety of rare tropical diseases. When his demonically enhanced assistant informs him of Sam and Dean's arrival, Pestilence unleashes a plague that instantly slaughters the remaining patients and staff, then afflicts the boys with a combination of meningitis, scarlet fever, and syphilis that brings them to their knees. Fortunately, Castiel shows up at the very last minute to save the day. Unfortunately, his wacky Angel-B-Gon antics in Van Nuys have left him far more human than angel at this point, and he, too, nearly succumbs to Pestilence's pestilence, but he somehow manages to hold it together long enough to hack off The Horseman's ring finger with The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't. Before Pestilence vanishes, though, he warns Sam and Dean that "it's too late." DUN!
Meanwhile, we learn that Bobby took Crowley up on the latter's end-of-episode offer last week, and Crowley's little spell revealed the following bit of very bad news: Chicago's about to be destroyed by a thunderstorm that somehow sets off a cascading series of catastrophic natural disasters which in the end will leave more than three million people dead. Good thing I moved. The final Horseman's behind it, of course, and Our Intrepid Heroes are about to roadtrip on over to Illinois when Crowley drops another little bad-news bombshell on their tantalizing derrieres: Niveus Pharmaceuticals issued a press release announcing countrywide distribution of their new, faster-acting swine flu vaccine which is actually, of course, the Croatoan virus, so by this time Thursday, the boys plus their remaining allies should be living in Zombieland. D'OH!
The gang decides to split up, with Sam, Castiel, and Bobby heading back to Nevada to put a halt to the Croatoan distribution before it begins, while Dean and Crowley trot over to Chicago to kill Death. After a thrilling firefight in Niveus's warehouse, the Nevada posse succeeds in destroying the zombie virus. Dean, however, fails to off Death, but he's in luck, for Death's sick and tired of being tethered to tantrum-throwing spoiled brat Lucifer, whom he'd like to see reimprisoned perhaps even more than the brothers. To that end, Death voluntarily presents Dean with his ring, and even goes so far as to offer Our Intrepid Hero a comprehensive lesson on how to use the things.
And while all that's been going on, our fearless protagonists and their feisty sidekicks continue to debate the relative merits of Sam's astoundingly stupid plan to say yes to Lucifer, then wrest control of his body back from the archangel long enough to hurl himself into Lucifer's divinely constructed cage. Can you believe these morons are actually going to go through with it? Idiots.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Rattle, Rattle THEN! Adam Milligan got trapped in Heaven's Green Room with the rapidly descending Archangel Michael, Castiel obliterated himself with an Angel-B-Gon sigil he most awesomely carved into his own chest, the recently deceased Archangel Gabriel sent Our Intrepid Heroes a posthumous message regarding Lucifer's divinely wrought cage and the role The Horsemen's rings play in locking it, Crowley offered to lead Our Intrepid Heroes to Pestilence, Niveus Pharmaceuticals planned to unleash the Croatoan virus upon the planet by tampering with a vaccine for Mexican Influenza, Capital-D Death rose at Lucifer's bidding in Carthage shortly before Thanksgiving, Crowley proposed "borrowing" Bobby's soul in order to triangulate Capital-D Death's current coordinates, Darling Sammy drunk-dialed Bobby to discuss an Apocalypse-ending plan of stupendously asinine proportions, and wow. That THEN! was pretty damn plot-tastic, wouldn't you say? Let's see if the episode itself manages to do the same.
Rattle, Rattle NOW! The NOW! creeps towards the front of the screen, only to vanish in a cross-fade that lands on the nighttime façade of the Serenity Valley Convalescent Home in Davenport, Iowa -- Quad Cities represent! -- after which we head inside to one of the patient's rooms. "Doctor Green!" the fragile-looking woman on the bed smiles as her as-yet-unseen physician enters from the hall. "How was your trip?" "Very productive," the good doctor answers with a grin in his voice, and once he crosses the room to perch on the edge of her bed and take her hands in his, the camera reverses to reveal...Pestilence! Looking rather homey and avuncular and not like a plague-carrying Horseman Of The Apocalypse at all! DUN! "And how are we tonight, Celeste?" Doctor Pestilence asks with large amounts of false sincerity and concern coloring his tone. "The nurse says you can't sleep?" "Oh, I just feel worse and worse," Mortally Imperiled Celeste wearily complains. "Well," Doctor Pestilence cheerfully explains as he dons his reading glasses, "that's because you're suffering from a combination of the common cold, Dengue fever, and a nasty, nasty case of Japanese encephalitis!" "I'm...sorry?" Rapidly Deteriorating Celeste murmurs, thinking she misheard him, but Doctor Pestilence confirms his diagnosis with a grin, then passes a hand across her face. Instantly, a constellation of ragged red blisters erupts across her wan skin as Doctor Pestilence realizes, "You never had chicken pox as a child!" "This," he promises, giddy as a schoolgirl, "is going to be fascinating!" "But, how could I...?" Quickly Fading Celeste murmurs, barely able to get the words out at this point. "Have all those diseases at once?" Doctor Pestilence finishes for her. "Well, it's a proprietary blend," he happily explains. "I mix it up in a Petri dish, the Petri dish being...you!" "Are you gonna cure me?" Soon-To-Be-Dead Celeste whispers, drawing a frail hand to her hyperventilating chest. "No," Doctor Pestilence replies. "You're going to die -- in 4, 3, 2..." "HUAAAACK!" A fluorescent green spray of split pea soup thwacks Doctor Pestilence on the side of his face as Almost Totally Dead Celeste horks up several severely diseased internal organs before allowing her head to drop limply to one side on her pillow, by now most thoroughly deceased. "Interesting," Doctor Pestilence observes, yet another sly grin tugging at the corner of his mouth right before the audience gets thwacked on the side of 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 the poor dear is going to be so woebegone and forlorn once they finally get around to replacing this isn't he? "I beg your pardon?!" Nothing! Nothing, my scaly friend. Just, uh, wondering if you have anything to add at this point? "I do not!" Then I'll continue. "Bully idea!" "Bully"? Thanks, Teddy Roosevelt. "Hee!"
As the camera pans across a series of webpage printouts informing us of raging wildfires in California, freak electrical storms in Maryland, and deadly tornados tearing across Kansas, a card appears at the bottom of the screen informing us it's now "One Day Earlier." The camera then follows Bobby's hand as it plucks the latest printout from the stack littering his desk and continues spinning around Speed Racer until it catches sight of a ranting Dean, screaming at Sam in the Emporium Kitchen. "What the hell is wrong with you?" Dean seethes. "And don't 'Dean' me! I mean, you have had some stupid ideas in the past, but this?" "Did you know about this?" Dean demands of Bobby. "About Sam's genius plan to say yes to The Devil?" Bobby, somewhat reluctantly, nods his head. There's a pause in which Dean stares at Bobby, all slack-jawed with disbelief, after which his features fly back up into Rage Mode as he shouts, "Well, thanks for the heads up!" It's unreasonably amusing. Hee. "This ain't about me," Bobby protests, so Dean whirls back upon Sam, jabbing a finger in his brother's direction while firmly asserting, "You can't do this!" "That's the consensus," Sam shrugs. "All right!" Dean snaps. "Awesome! End of discussion!" His phone rings. "HELLO!" Heh. "Dean?" Castiel asks from the other end of the line.
The scene cuts to the interior of yet another hospital, where we find My Sweet Baboo reclining on a bed in one of those cheap gowns with an admission bracelet firmly secured around his wrist. He also appears to be hooked up to an IV drip, so we know something bizarre's going on with Dashing El Deano's angelic boyfriend even before Castiel tells Dean where he is and explains, "I just woke up here. The doctors were fairly surprised -- they thought I was brain-dead." The poor dear's sporting some nasty-looking scratch marks on his left eyebrow and a huge bruise on his right cheekbone, but his hair is fabulous. Seriously, it hasn't looked this good since his gloriously spectacular entrance into our lives way back at the beginning of the fourth season. In any event, Impatient El Deano brusquely prompts My Battered Baboo for further information, and Castiel willingly complies with, "After Van Nuys, I suddenly appeared, bloody and unconscious on a shrimping boat off Delacroix." Castiel pauses for a moment before adding, "I'm told it upset the sailors." Ha! Dean rather comically shakes that one off, then explains the current situation to his celestial slampiece before urging Castiel to zap himself up to the lush coastal rainforests of southeastern South Dakota posthaste. "I can't 'zap' anywhere," Castiel sighs, grimacing a bit from some unspecified ache or pain. "It seems my batteries are drained." "Whaddya mean," Dean frowns, "you're out of angel mojo?" "I'm saying that I am thirsty and my head aches," Castiel replies. "I have a bug bite that itches no matter how much I scratch it. I'm saying that I'm just incredibly..." "Human!" Dean realizes. He allows that to sink in as he sinks into a kitchen chair, and there's an awkward-ish pause before Dean offers, "Sorry." Castiel brushes past that to point out he can't go anywhere without money for a plane ticket. And food. And painkillers, while we're at it. Dean rubs at his tired eyes and assures Castiel that Bobby can wire the fallen angel whatever he needs. This news comes as a surprise to Bobby, but Dean ignores the cripple's outraged yelps to listen as Castiel notes, "Dean, you said no to Michael. I owe you an apology -- you are not the burnt and broken shell of a man that I believed you to be." Hee. And then Jensen Ackles, with a delightful sense of comic timing, mutters a delayed "Thank you" before pausing again, only to add -- hilariously -- a mildly annoyed "I appreciate that." And then Castiel just cluelessly hangs up without saying another word. Ha!
After a brief farewell scene out in The Emporium's junkyard, Our Intrepid Heroes grumble off in the Impala and arrive in Davenport after dark, where they stake out Serenity Valley from across the street. "It's kinda more depressing than evil," Sam sighs. "It's like a four-color brochure for dying young," Dean agrees before realizing, "Of course, to Pestilence, it's probably Dollywood in there." They fret for a while about figuring out who among the inmates is human and who's not until Eagle-Eyed El Deano spots a security camera installed above the front entrance, which gives him an idea, and the thing we know, the boys are wandering through the halls in search of the guards' office. They find it quickly enough, and Dean bumbles in, pretending to be lost, looking for his "nana," "Eunice Kennedy." The scruffy-looking rent-a-cop attempts to be helpful, and for his trouble receives...an uppercut to the jaw! "VIOLENCE!" shrieks Raoul, who I think had been getting bored up until this point. "Not in the least!" Raoul shriekingly assures me, and really, my scaly friend? This episode hasn't been dragging for you? "Absolutely not! In fact, I've found it extremely entertaining thus far!" That's, uh, surprising. To say the least. So, should I continue? "By all means!" Okay.
So, Devious El Deano knocks out the scruffy-looking rent-a-cop with one simple uppercut to the jaw and, after lugging the hapless minimum-wage wage-slave into an inconspicuous corner, he lets Sam into the office, and the two settle down to stare at the footage streaming in from the dozen or so security cameras planted in various points around the facility. And in the interest of brevity, I'll not be bothering to wonder why the hapless minimum-wage wage-slave remains unconscious throughout the time-lapse montage of dull video surveillance that follows, and will instead skip ahead to the point where Pestilence finally makes his appearance on the monitors. Cleverly enough, while the image remains stable where it's transmitting his clothing, it dissolves into a cloudy line of televisual snow wherever Pestilence's flesh is exposed, with minor otherworldly interference at his hands and a great big thick stripe of garbled data where his head should be. DUN! The boys follow his progress through the facility from one monitor to the until The Horseman arrives at Doomed Celeste's bedside, and we get a repeat of the bad doctor chatting about his productive trip out west for a bit before hopping back over to Our Intrepid Heroes, who by now are slinking through the home's halls with various implements of demonic destruction at the ready. And as they tiptoe past an ailing patient's open door, the pretty, raven-haired attending nurse snaps her head to attention, her Hellish Spidey-sense all a-tingle. DUN! She darts her evilly twinkling eyes over towards the now-empty hallway, and a fiendish smile starts to spread across her face until she...
...slips into Dead Celeste's room with the exciting news that the Winchesters have arrived. Then, her eyes flip beetle black as she firmly cautions, "We should go." Pestilence, who'd been calmly wiping the split pea soup from his face and reading glasses, chuckles a bit at his underling's overly cautious manner before snorting, "Are you kidding me?" Nurse Wretched wavers, and hesitantly points out that the boys "have a track record with Horsemen." Pestilence crazies something about what Sam and Dean did to his "brothers," then announces, "The only reasonable thing to do here is to take it out of their healthy young asses." "Dirty!" Not like that, you filthy lizard. "Hee!" In any event, Nurse Wretched delicately reminds her boss, "We're under strict orders not to kill The Vessels!" "If Satan wants them so badly," Pestilence testily replies, "then he can GLUE THEM BACK TOGETHER!" Nurse Wretched's all, "Oooo-kay, freak!" only she's terribly non-verbal about the whole thing, but Pestilence senses her extreme discomfort with his entirely unhinged delivery of that last line, so he encourages her to draw close to him so he might gift her with a soothing, soup-spattered embrace. A soothing, soup-spattered embrace from which he apparently draws some sort of strength, for when Nurse Wretched collapses against him and closes her eyes, Pestilence twists his pale green ring around and...
...an actual doctor elsewhere in the facility hacks up a green lung and drops dead! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Meanwhile, the petite brunette nurse he'd been speaking with looks on in horror as a constellation of ragged red blisters erupts up her arms, and as she starts choking on her own blood and bile, or something, the camera zooms in on her terrified face before...
...leaping over to Our Intrepid Heroes, who are still slinking through the halls when Pestilence's rapidly expanding plague waves wash over them! DUN! Their vision goes blurry, and the two start coughing and wheezing into their sleeves, but our foolhardy protagonists soldier on, eventually staggering across the rapidly cooling corpses of the actual doctor and his petite brunette nurse, the latter of whom apparently bled out before dying. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" "We must be getting close," Super-Smart Sammy guesses. "Ya think?" Dean snots back. Like, literally snots back -- he's all but spitting up clots of mucus onto the linoleum at this point. Both are also by now sweating freely, and Dean, apparently bleeding from his gums, eventually slides to the floor, unable to continue. Sam, however, somehow holds himself together long enough to fling open Dead Celeste's door, where he finds Nurse Wretched waiting to greet him. "The doctor will see you now!" she impishly perks. Sam woozily attempts to menace her with The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't, but he's really just feverishly flailing about at this point, and barely has Pestilence invited him in than the lurching Ginormotron topples down, and down, and down and down and down and down and down into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Serenity Valley. Aftermath. Nurse Wretched casually drags Dean in from the hall while Sam dribbles blood onto his hand. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Pestilence wryly observes that they're not looking so hot, and sardonically surmises that their current wrecked appearance might be due to the scarlet fever, meningitis, and syphilis with which he just dosed them. Unfortunately, Pestilence then rather tediously lectures Our Dear Boys at length regarding the nature of disease and its relationship to God, and because this episode was going so well up until this point, I'll just pretend this minute-long bout of blathering on The Horseman's part never happened and skip ahead to the bit where My Sweet Baboo arrives to save the day. Hooray! "How'd you get here?" Pestilence demands once Castiel's slammed his way in from the hall. "I took a bus," Castiel growls and then, because the poor thing's more human than angel at this point, he immediately drops to his knees to barf up part of his esophagus. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Pestilence taunts at him, unwisely pissing off the nerd angel, so it's little surprise when Castiel snatches up The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't from where it landed on the floor and lurches to his feet to...hack off Pestilence's ring finger! "VIOLENCE!" howls Raoul, practically piddling himself with glee over this sensationally gruesome turn of events. "WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT DIGIT-CHOPPING VIOLENCE AND GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Pestilence spins off bellowing as his amputated ring finger -- with bonus pinkie! -- rolls around in a puddle of its own blood. Meanwhile, Nurse Wretched emits a caterwauling banshee wail as she leaps upon My Badass Baboo, and that's a very bad move on Nurse Wretched's part, indeed, for Castiel's still clutching The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't, so it takes little effort for him to jam the thing between Nurse Wretched's ribs, and Pestilence's comely assistant zots and zaps and shivers and dies.
Of course, Our Intrepid Heroes instantly recovered from their paralyzing illnesses the second Castiel lopped off Pestilence's fingers, and Dean now hustles to retrieve The Horseman's ring. "Doesn't matter," Pestilence calls out with an oddly triumphant smile on his face even as the blood continues to spurt from his mangled hand. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" I'm so happy you're happy, Raoul. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" In any event, having thus captured Our Intrepid Heroes' attention, Pestilence mysteriously asserts, "It's too late!" before vanishing in a swirl of something I'm certain would have been impressive to see, had they not chosen to have him dematerialize off camera.
Back at Bobby's, Dean spins Pestilence's ring around on Bobby's desk as the gentleman of The Emporium notes, "Well, it's nice to actually score a home run for once, ain't it?" Sam, Dean, and My Sweet Baboo remain uncharacteristically gloomy, so Bobby wonders what gives. The boys plus Dean's celestial boyfriend glumly explain about The Horseman's final cryptic warning. "We're just a little freaked out that he might have left a bomb somewhere," Dean adds, "so please tell us you have actual good news." "Chicago's about to be wiped off the map," Bobby replies. Well, that's cheery. "Good thing we moved!" I already made that joke in the recaplet, Raoul. "Rats!" But are you wondering how, exactly, the city of Chicago will be wiped from the map? "I am!" Let's listen in, then, friend of friends, as Bobby explains: "'Storm Of The Millennium' sets off a daisy chain of natural disasters -- three million people are gonna die." And I'll be honest with you all, here: When the episode thread exploded shortly after 10 PM last Thursday with little more than post after post deriding Sam's patently stupid plan to end The Apocalypse while also yelling about how MEAN TO DEAN this evening's installment was, I found myself scrolling through them all going, "Yeah, Sam's an idiot, and WHATEVER ALREADY, Deangirls, but is no one wondering how a fucking thunderstorm kills three million people in Chicago? Seriously? 'Cause a fucking thunderstorm killing three million people in Chicago is one of the most mind-bendingly stupid things this show's ever attempted to pull over on us, and that's saying a lot after five years of Insta-Dawns and magical highway wormholes and racist trucks and goddamned angels finding their goddamned grace in goddamned trees, for Christ's sake." And then I remembered that the people who make this show believe that the Chicago Loop cowers in the shadow of a two-thousand-foot-high bluff, figured Kripke & Ko. would therefore think a lot of water could trigger a massive landslide that would sweep the entire city into Lake Michigan, decided everyone on the boards came to the same conclusion, and dropped it. "A wise decision on your part, I must say!" Thanks, Raoul. Now, might I continue? "Please!" Excellent.
"I don't understand your definition of 'good news,'" Castiel admits. Heh. Bobby patiently elaborates that Capital-D Death will somehow be responsible for the massive landslide that shoves The Windy City into the lake, and if they somehow manage to find The Horseman before he triggers the storm, and if they somehow manage to separate Capital-D Death from his ring, not only will they have saved three million people, but they'll also have the final key needed for Lucifer's divinely wrought cage. "You make it sound so easy," Dean grumbles. "I'm just trying to put a positive spin on things!" Bobby more or less snaps back. Super-Smart Sammy, meanwhile, finally thinks to ask how Bobby managed to put all of this together. "I had, you know. Help," Bobby evasively replies. Cue Crowley, materializing behind them without a sound, but making quite a bit of racket pouring himself a scotch. D'OH! "Don't be so modest," Crowley croons in Bobby's direction. "I barely helped at all." He sniffs at Bobby's inferior liquor, pointedly sets the offensive swill down on the sideboard, and prompts, "Go ahead -- tell them. There's no shame in it." Our Intrepid Heroes are all, "No shame in what, exactly?" and Bobby hems and haws and stutters and stammers and finally admits to trading his soul with Crowley in exchange for Death's coordinates. Dean is shocked and appalled. "You sold your soul?" "More like pawned it," Crowley corrects, adding, "I fully intend to give it back." Sam, meanwhile, has been scrunching his nose up, lost in thought, and finally blurts out, "Did you kiss him?" "Sam!" Dean yelps, shocked and appalled again. "Just wondering!" Sam counters in his defense. Bobby denies it. Crowley clears his throat and directs their attention to his iPhone, and I'm sorry, but I never, ever needed to see Jim Beaver and Mark Sheppard engaged in a hot-n-heavy liplock. NEVER. Call me ageist or lookist or whatever the hell you like, but no. NO. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" I see it disturbs you as much as it does me, my scaly friend. "To the contrary, I'm sure!" Oh, God. "It's the most deliciously foul thing I've seen on this charming little Thursday-evening divertissement since that lovely little security guard found himself split in two by that delightfully whimsical elevator! 'EEEEEEEEEEEEE!' say I! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
"Why'd you take a picture?" Bobby growls. "Why'd you have to use tongue?" Crowley wonders in return, and ew! Hee! Ew! Hee! Ew! "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" In any event, Crowley intends to hang onto Bobby's soul for insurance purposes, as even a supposed rageaholic like The Ginormotron won't try to off him as long as he's got Bobby's business in his deposit box. And with that matter settled, we head back outside to watch as Dean digs around in Metallicar's bottomless trunk, searching for the most appropriate implements of demonic destruction to deploy in the impending fight with Death. Digging, digging, digging, and stop! The Ginormomope lumbers over and leans heavily against the Impala's side with a sigh. "Lemme guess," Dean begins. "We're about to have a talk?" Heh. They are, indeed, and because the talk they're about to have involves nothing more than Sam's patently stupid plan to end The Apocalypse, I'll fast-forward past it all until we hit the part where Crowley rudely interrupts Our Intrepid Heroes' deeply felt heart-to-heart to push a newspaper into Sam's gigantic mitts. "There's something you need to see," he tells them, pointing at one article in particular. Sam reads aloud that, in order to "stem the tide of the unprecedented outbreak," Niveus Pharmaceuticals is rushing delivery on its newest vaccine for Mexican Influenza, with "simultaneous nationwide distribution" set to begin this coming Wednesday. And then, because Our Intrepid Heroes are actually Our Intrepid Morons, they stare dumbly at the demon until Crowley's forced to explain what the audience already knows about the vaccine's Croatoan-laced contents. "You two are lucky you have your looks," Crowley eyerolls. He also counsels them to "stock up on everything" "because this time Thursday, [they'll] all be living in Zombieland." D'OH!
"Chicago, Illinois," which is the same exterior set they used for "Kansas City, Missouri," with a CGI'd El train stuck in overhead. Ooops. As Jen Titus's version of "O Death" enters on the soundtrack, an absolutely gorgeous 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVille wheels its way down the street, and as the lovely and talented (and delightfully named) ickypooyucky so helpfully pointed out on the forum boards while so many were busy screaming "MEAN TO DEAN": Oh, show. Oh, clever, clever show. The Death Car is, of course, being driven by Capital-D Death himself, though I find myself wondering why so august a personage would not avail himself of a chauffeur. "The crippling cost of employee insurance?!" Raoul coyly suggests, and I see what you did there, friend of friends. "Hee!" In any event, Death expertly guides the absolutely gorgeous 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVille over to the curb and disembarks, and he's being played by Julian Richings, whom I recognize from The Red Violin, because I am a freak who has seen The Red Violin at least fifty times, but whom others are most likely to recognize from Kingdom Hospital. It's pretty flawless casting based on looks alone and, as we shall soon see, it remains pretty flawless casting once actual acting ability is taken into account. So, Death unobtrusively joins the crowds on the sidewalk, where a furiously texting yuppie rudely bumps into him. "Watch where you're walking!" snaps the yuppie, and that is a very bad move on the yuppie's part, indeed, for when Death smoothes the slightly mussed shoulder of his coat, the snappish texting yuppie suffers a massive coronary and drops dead right there in the middle of the sidewalk. Would that we all had that power over similar assholes on our own sidewalks. "Hooray for Death!" Indeed.
Bobby's Emporium. Out in the nighttime lot, Bobby's carefully loading packets of Semtex into a duffel when My Sweet Baboo wanders over from someplace else to stare up at the stars and sigh. Drama queen. I mean, I love him to bits, but still. In any event, Castiel vocally mourns his lost angelitude, or whatever, and Bobby tells him to shut up. !
A little later, Our Intrepid Heroes have arrived to finish preparations at the Impala, and after Dean slams shut the trunk, they all wish each other good luck, for Sam, Castiel, and Bobby are heading back to Nevada to sabotage Niveus Pharmaceuticals' distribution center with the Semtex while Dean and Crowley intend to handle Death in Chicago. Sam offers Dean The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't, but Crowley's got something much, much better: Death's Rusty Hand Scythe That Can Kill Anything And Actually Always Does. "How did you get that?" Castiel squints. "Hello!" Crowley replies. "King Of The Crossroads!" And that explanation's good enough for me, so: Moving on! Crowley suggests they hit the road, then pointedly asks Bobby, "You just gonna sit there?" "No, I'm gonna Riverdance!" Bobby scowls, not getting it. Crowley gently chides Speed Racer for "wasting" his Crossroads deal before noting, "I took the liberty of adding a teeny little Sub-A Clause on your behalf." Generalized eyebrow popping abounds. Bobby finally infers what Crowley's been implying for the last few minutes, and...it's a miracle! "Lord have mercy! Hallelujah!" Bobby first wiggles his toes, then rises triumphantly from his wheelchair, and everyone has the good grace not to note that he'll probably go back to being stuck in that chair the minute Crowley returns his soul, which is nice of them, don't you think? "Terribly proper and polite!" !
The Road To Nevada. My Sweet Baboo's been mulling Sam's abysmally stupid plan to end The Apocalypse and, because Our Intrepid Heroes "have a habit of exceeding" Castiel's "expectations," My Dumbass Baboo decides it just might work, despite the fact that Michael, as expected, has turned Adam Milligan into an angel condom, so failure on Sam's part now is certain to result in the deaths of billions. Also: CRACK! For yes, gentle reader, Darling Sammy must go all Cracky The Crackheaded Crack-Crack on our collective behind again if he hopes to wrest control of his body from Lucifer after the possession has taken place. You see, the demon blood "strengthens The Vessel" and "keeps it from exploding." "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Now, Raoul, has your excitement been triggered by the promise of the return of The Ginormovamp, or by the threat of Darling Sammy exploding should he not hydrate properly before week's no-doubt thrilling installment? "Either delightful option is absolutely fine with me, I'm sure!" Good to know. !
Niveus Pharmaceuticals' Distribution Center. The three watch as pharmaceutical flunkies load a bunch of cunningly repurposed Penske cargo vans with the tainted Mexican Influenza vaccine, and OH MY GOD, SAM, CUT YOUR GODDAMNED HAIR ALREADY! And those sideburns? Jesus! You're starting to look like that sylph-like wisp of a hooker who took down George Rekers. ANY-way, Bobby announces that the first truck's not due to leave for another hour, so they've got plenty of time to rig the place with plastique. "That truck is leaving," Castiel astutely observes, pointing to a box van that is, indeed, pulling away from the warehouse. "Balls!" Bobby shouts before thinking fast and announcing, "Okay! New plan." Heh.
And just what does that new plan involve? My Badass Baboo hijacking the first truck just as it reaches the gate, for starters, thereby strategically blocking the exit for all of the cargo vans still parked in the warehouse bays. Unfortunately, when Castiel rams the driver's head with the butt of his sawed-off shotgun, the driver's head smashes down onto the truck's horn, thereby alerting the demonically enhanced warehouse supervisors to Team Free Will's presence. One of the supervisors, by the way, is last week's janitor. Just so you know. In any event, the demonically enhanced warehouse supervisors immediately decide to "bake [the intruders] up a little treat," and to that end, they throw the warehouse into lockdown, trapping dozens of still-human flunkies inside while Sam and Bobby bang uselessly against the now-shuttered warehouse bay doors. Super-Smart Sammy thinks to check for a side entrance, however, and after blasting off the lock with Dashing El Deano's trusty pearl-handled automatic, he and Bobby enter to push a clutch of terrified still-human flunkies out the door. And once those people are gone, things get very, very quiet, save for the muted sounds of a gruesome struggle somewhere deep within the warehouse interior. The demonically enhanced supervisors, you see, have dosed about a half dozen of the formerly human flunkies with the jacked-up Mexican Influenza vaccine, and the fresh Croatoan rage zombies are now apparently eating one of their coworkers! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" And as the rage zombies sense Sam and Bobby's presence and rise from their huddle to face our suddenly imperiled protagonists with their lurid red-rimmed rage-zombie eyes, the strings on the soundtrack go bananas with the psychotically shrieking upward swirls, and Deluxe Action Sammy With The Super-Special Glow-In-The-Dark Zombie-Smiting Hands coldly aims Dean's trusty pearl-handled automatic directly into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Warehouse. Immediate Aftermath. And it's a turkey shoot, basically. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" A turkey shoot that takes place entirely off-camera. "Drat!" And once the initial tangle of rage zombies lies dead on the ground, Sam turns his attention to the struggle taking place even deeper within the warehouse interior. He passes Bobby The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't and takes off with a shotgun. Thus left to his own devices, Bobby quickly guts one of the demonically enhanced warehouse supervisors. !
"Chicago," "Illinois." Dean and Crowley arrive at yet another warehouse, this beneath the "El" "tracks," and Crowley's pretty sure Capital-D Death's inside, what with the hundreds of Reapers now loitering in the parking lot! DUN! As dust devils heralding The Storm Of The Millennium eddy about their feet, Crowley heads off to investigate, but D'OH! Death's not inside. !
Warehouse Of The Damned. Deluxe Action Sammy With The Super-Special Glow-In-The-Dark Zombie-Smiting Hands rescues a fair maiden from the mad clutches of yet another rage zombie, then takes out another before escorting the fair maiden and another survivor to the exit. Bobby's apparently dispatched a few more rage zombies himself, if that litter of sprawled corpses near the exit is anything to go by, and Sam heads off for one final sweep of the premises as Bobby gazes at Our Intrepid Hero in amazement. Or some such bullshit. !
"Chicago." Dean crosses a street to climb into the Impala just as a light rain begins to fall, fretting all the while about how to evacuate three million people from "Chicago" in the ten minutes until Crowley pops in to announce he's found Death cooling his jets in a nearby pizzeria. A nearby pizzeria named "Rinascita." Oh, show. Oh, clever, clever show. And I'm going to pretend I didn't see that Ghostfacers.com bumper sticker plastered onto one of the "El's" support columns. !
Warehouse Of The Damned. Bobby sporks the other demonically enhanced supervisor with The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't, Sam arrives with a few more survivors they push out the exit, a sly little bald-headed rage zombie leaps from his hiding place the instant Sam's foolishly announced the All Clear, and huzzah! For If It Is Thursday, Then Sam Is Being Throttled! "Whee!" Bobby attempts to aerate the sly little bald-headed rage zombie, but his shotgun dry-fires, and the ornery hairball's about to descend into a mad, screaming panic when My Badass Baboo calmly steps forward and blows off the top of the rage zombie's skull! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" "These things can be useful!" My Badass Baboo seems surprised to note once the rage zombie's head has dissolved in to a spray of blood and brain matter and bone. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" "Can we commit our act of domestic terrorism already?" Bobby sarcastically wonders, and hey, Bobby, if you got 'em, then blow 'em the hell up. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
"Chicago." Deliberate El Deano carefully tiptoes through the pizzeria's alleyway entrance and scans the restaurant interior to find...nearly a dozen corpses! "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" None of which have visible wounds. "Poop!" One of which was a waitress who bought it before she got the deep-dish pizza she was carrying to the table, so now it's splattered all over the floor, which seems like a terrible waste. "DEATH! DEATH TO SHE WHO WOULD BOBBLE THE DELICIOUS STUFFED SPINACH PIZZA TO THE FLOOR!" She's already dead, Raoul. "AS WELL SHE SHOULD BE! Hee!" Oy. So, anyway, one customer remains, calmly dining amidst the carnage, and Dean inches closer with The Rusty Hand Scythe That Can Kill Anything And Actually Always Does, but alas! The handle magically heats to the point where Dean all but screams out in pain, dropping The Rusty Hand Scythe That Can Kill Anything And Actually Always Does to the floor in the process. "Thanks for returning that," Death politely opens without turning around to face Our Intrepid Hero. Dean glances back down at the floor, but The Rusty Hand Scythe That Can Kill Anything And Actually Always Does has already hopped over to Death's table, where it now rests, its blade curved around Death's iced tea. "Join me, Dean," Death offers -- though, you know, it's more of a command -- before adding, "The pizza's delicious." And Death can knock it off with that "delicious" crap immediately, because I do not have fifty-five bucks to blow on a mail-order pizza from Giordano's, and I am really, really, really hungry right now. Mmmm. Mail-order pizza.
Gah! Where the hell was I? Oh, yes: As lightning flickers through the restaurant's front windows and thunder rumbles ominously overhead, Dean picks his wary way to Death's table and takes a seat opposite The Horseman just as the heavens unleash torrent after torrent of rain down upon the city. "Took you long enough to find me," Death notes, not once glancing up from his delicious-looking meal. "I've been wanting to talk to you," he admits. "I gotta say, mixed feelings about that," Dean replies, ever the smartass. "So is this the part where you kill me?" Lightning flashes across Death's harsh features as he finally lifts his eyes to meet Dean's. "You have an inflated sense of your importance," Death announces. "To a thing like me," he explains, taking a sip of his iced tea, "a thing like you, well: Think how you'd feel if a bacterium sat at your table and started to get snarky." Uh oh. I think that Death is being MEAN TO DEAN. "Eeep!" "Eeep," indeed, my scaly friend. He'd best watch his pasty ass lest the rabid crazy fucking Deangirls forcibly relieve him of it. In any event, Dean doesn't quite know how to respond to that -- though my God, he's looking especially attractive during this scene thanks to some expert hair-, lighting-, and camerawork -- so he remains silent as Death continues, "This is one little planet, in one tiny solar system, in a galaxy that's barely out of its diapers. I'm old, Dean -- very old -- so I invite you to contemplate how insignificant I find you." I think I'm in love. "Demian!" Kidding! Just kidding, but I certainly wouldn't mind if Death popped up every now and again in future episodes to remind these dolts how insignificant they are -- it might give these weepy little girly men a little perspective on all of their distasteful chick-flick ills.
Anyway, Death passes Dean a slice and tells him to eat. As the storm rages ever louder outside, Dean hesitantly goes at his plate with a knife and a fork -- it looks like it's pepperoni with green peppers and mushrooms -- and seems surprised when he fails to keel over dead. "Good, isn't it?" Death asks. Dean silently agrees, then wonders how old Death actually is. "As old as God," Death shrugs, "maybe older. Neither of us can remember anymore. Life, death, chicken, egg, regardless: At the end, I'll reap Him, too." "'Reap God'?" Dean repeats, incredulous. "Oh, yes," Death mildly replies, "God will die, too, Dean." "Well, this is way above my pay grade," Dean foolheartedly jokes. Death's all, "Yeah, just a tetch." Heh. "So, then why am I still breathing?" Dean asks, all but begging for a Death-dealt smackdown at this point. "What do you want?" "The leash around my neck off!" Death hisses with an unexpected ferocity. You see, Lucifer somehow has Death "bound to him with some unseemly little spell," and has been treating Death like an indentured servant over the last couple of months, which is why Death couldn't go to Dean directly and had to wait for Our Intrepid Hero to "catch up" to him. "He made me his weapon," Death peevishly explains. "Hurricanes, floods, raising the dead -- I'm more powerful than you can process, and I'm enslaved to a bratty child having a tantrum!" "I understand you want this," Death states, indicating his chunky signet ring. "I'm inclined to give it to you." "What about Chicago?" Dean asks. "I suppose it can stay," Death allows, adding rather nonchalantly, "I like the pizza." There are conditions, however -- Dean must do whatever it takes to place Lucifer back in his cell, so Death exacts a promise: "You're going to let your brother jump right into that fiery pit." Dean gulps. "Well?" Death prompts. "Do I have your word?" Dean hesitates, but eventually blurts, "Okay, yeah! Yes." He accepts The Horseman's proffered ring, and with that, the raging thunderstorm outside passes. "Now," Death continues, "would you like the instruction manual?" METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Bobby's Emporium. Dean's outside at a workbench, evidently practicing Death's instructions regarding the four Horsemen rings. He has them arranged in a Y shape, and when he slides one towards the center, all four snap together as if magnetized. The gentleman of The Emporium delicately announces his arrival by knocking aside a bit of automotive debris with his now fully functioning legs, and Dean looks up from the rings to smirk, "How'd it go with the Rockettes audition?" "High kicks fair," Bobby shoots back, "boobs need work." Bobby passes Dean a beer, Dean shows Bobby his neato ring trick, and then the two settle in for an end-of-episode chat that covers Dean's promise to the final Horseman and Sam's abysmally stupid plan to end The Apocalypse. Dean thinks Death might be lying about that whole indentured-servitude-to-the-spoiled-brat thing, but Bobby's inclined to take The Grim Reaper at the latter's word. There's some chatter about Sam's heroics at the Niveus warehouse, and then mention is made of the "darkness" supposedly lurking deep within The Ginormomope before Bobby expresses his belief that Sam will either succeed in defeating Lucifer or die trying. "So, I gotta ask, Dean," he finishes, laying it all on the line, "what exactly are you afraid of: Losing, or losing your brother?" The Ducky Lips do not answer.
"Flagon?!" Why, of course, friend of friends, though you were so quiet during these last few paragraphs, I almost forgot you were here. "My apologies, I'm sure! But I was simply far too enthralled by that absolutely cadaverous Horseman-type gentleman's performance to speak!" It's nice to enjoy an episode again, isn't it? "It is indeed!" Okay, how about you go whip us up some cocktails while I deal with week's promo? "My pleasure!"
week: Season finale, bitches! The network's been scanty with the details, but we do know it involves Sam talking to himself in a mirror for about six hours, so that's sure to be gruesome. See you then! "Kisses! Anticipatory season-finale kisses to all my pretties!"
Demian really wants a stuffed spinach pizza from Giordano's right now. Raoul is mixing cocktails while listening to Carmen Miranda for some bizarre reason. "¡Ay yi, ay yi! Oh, Carmen!" 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.
Discuss this episode in the forums, and see which Supernatural cast member should leave the show for Chuck!
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