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Because Bobby's still being an obstreperous pain in the ass over the loss of Rufus at the end of the last episode, Our Intrepid Heroes decide to motor off to Chester, Pennsylvania, to investigate a series of mysteriously inventive and highly gruesome deaths that have afflicted a single family in the area as of late. Finding nothing untoward in the family's history to indicate such unpleasantries as blood curses or demonic feuds, the boys ring up Bobby's wife, Ellen -- let me repeat that: Bobby's wife, Ellen -- for an assist, and after she reveals that a similar spate of misfortunes has befallen a different family on the West Coast, Ellen tells Sam and Dean that everyone involved had but one thing in common: All of their ancestors arrived in the United States in 1912. Aboard the Titanic. DUN!
Of course, neither Sam nor Dean has ever heard of the Titanic because, aside from a near miss with an iceberg on its maiden voyage, the Titanic was just one of dozens of passenger liners assigned to the North Atlantic route a hundred years ago. Nevertheless, Sam deploys his mad Googling skillz and discovers the ship avoided the iceberg thanks to a certain first mate named I. P. Freely, whom a photo reveals to have been none other than erstwhile archangel Balthazar, and when the boys summon the erstwhile archangel in question for a consult, Balthazar reveals he leapt back in time to save the Titanic because he hated the movie. Brilliant.
Naturally, Balthazar's actions in the past initiated a ripple effect through subsequent events and, as a result, both Ellen and Jo are alive and well, though the other particulars of last season's abortive Apocalypse remain much the same. The problem is that there are now approximately 50,000 people roaming around who should never have been born in the first place, and that's pissed off Atropos -- of the Greek Fates fame, natch -- so she's strapped her bitch on to go all Final Destination on those peoples' unsuspecting asses, and when Sam and Dean attempt to intervene, she sets her sights on them. Dun-dun-DUN!
My Sweet Baboo eventually steps in to tell Atropos to buzz off, and during the lengthy conversation that follows, we learn that Balthazar actually "un-sank" the Titanic on Castiel's orders, because My Sweet Baboo wanted a few thousand extra human souls to help out in his war against Raphael. And because that explanation for this evening's events is far less entertaining than Balthazar's hatred of Celine Dion, we'll be pretending we never heard it.
And in the end, Balthazar goes back in time -- again, some more -- to re-sink the Titanic, in the process setting everything back to where it had been in the first place. Hey, can't they just resurrect Ellen and keep her around for the rest of the series, anyway? Huh?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Rattle, Rattle Tacky Blue Glitter THEN! A very long time ago, Our Intrepid Heroes had the great good fortune to meet up with the lovely and talented Ellen Harvelle and her equally lovely and talented daughter, Jo. Unfortunately, Ellen and Jo then had to blow themselves up so Dashing El Deano and Darling Sammy could continue to fight Lucifer and all his many minions during last season's abortive Apocalypse. "Woe!" wails Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon, gracefully placing the back of a deeply mournful yet impeccably manicured paw against his forlorn forehead at the sad memory -- as well he should -- and while I'm sure you know I couldn't possibly agree with you more, my scaly friend, would you mind not interrupting me during the THEN!? I've a feeling we've a lot of ground to cover this evening, and it might be for the best if we get through this part of the episode as quickly as possible. "Oh, I do apologize, I'm sure!" Raoul shrieks, chipperly agreeable as always. "Please do continue!" Thanks.
Now, where was I? Oh, yes: So, after Ellen and Jo selflessly sacrificed themselves only to have the abortive Apocalypse fall apart of its own accord anyway, My Sweet Baboo and Balthazar -- Castiel's bestest friend ever, you'll recall, until Dashing El Deano came bow-leggedly stompy-clomping into his life -- had this huge, screamy argument about the civil war now raging in Heaven, during which Belthazor reminded My Sweet Baboo that the latter went far beyond rebellion last season and in fact "tore up the whole script and burned the pages" for everyone involved. So, you know. There's that. Also, were you aware that human souls held uncommon value? Well, you are now, and just in time to watch once more as Rufus Turner gives up his during the last episode to air thus far this season. "Woe!" Knock it off, Raoul. "Ooops! Hee!" ANY-way, the THEN! ends with Sad Bobby once again pouring out some Johnnie Walker Blue for his freshly deceased homie, and with that, we're off to the...
...Rattle, Rattle Tacky Blue Glitter NOW! As the NOW! advances towards us from the inky depths of the television screen, the camera slowly fades up on a rain-dampened set of garage doors the just-appearing location card tells us is in "Chester, Pennsylvania." One of those garage doors presently trundles up, and a casually dressed gentleman props it open with a stick before snatching up his nearby beer to saunter back inside towards a workbench. This evening's first piece of Monster Chow then sets the beer down beside a dismembered lawnmower rotor so he might bang away at one of the thing's bent blades for a while, but when our imperiled guest reaches over to grab the bottle for a swig, the beer quite mysteriously has gone missing. DUN! "What heartless wretch would steal that poor man's booze?!" shrieks Raoul, understandably distressed, and just between you and me, doll, I'm pretty sure we'll be getting an answer to your perfectly reasonable question sooner rather than later. "Well!" Raoul shrieks again, moderately mollified. "Thank heavens for that!" I'm also pretty sure that "sooner" will be getting here a hell of a lot faster if you don't keep interrupting me every three sentences. "I do believe you're right!" Raoul shriekingly agrees, surprisingly enough. "I shall be as silent as the grave!" Promise? "Promise!" Excellent.
So, Our Imperiled Guest befuddedly bumbles about for a bit before discovering his beer has magically transported itself over to a nearby shelf, and here's where Supernatural first decides to go all Final Destination on our collective derriere this evening. Our Imperiled Guest stretches to retrieve his magical beer from the shelf, but when he pulls the bottle back over towards the workbench, he inadvertently sends a Mason jar filled with nails tumbling down to the concrete floor. The jar of course detonates like a bomb, sending nails skittering everywhere. "Dammit!" Our Imperiled Guest curses, setting his sorely neglected beer down yet again so he might retrieve a broom from the other side of the garage, completely oblivious to the fact that in doing so, he's freed a skateboard the broom'd been propping up. And as he busies himself sweeping up shards of glass, that skateboard silently and rather ominously rolls over behind him until Our Imperiled Guest backs up onto the damn thing and goes flying through the air towards yet another set of shelves. DUN! With arms flailing, Our Imperiled Guest somehow manages to halt his fall mere seconds before he impales his eyes on a wicked-looking set of hedge trimmers -- a depressing development I'm sure Raoul would protest most vociferously were he not currently obliged to keep that gaping maw of his shut -- but in his wild attempts to regain his balance, Our Imperiled Guest ends up knocking over a basket full of golf balls. D'OH! Our Imperiled Guest quite naturally goes flying through the air once again the instant he steps on one of them, and he lands so heavily on his back beneath the open garage door that the wind quite clearly's been knocked out of him. And as he struggles to suck in some air, the golf ball he'd stepped on goes bouncing over to the garage's far corner, where it lands on a -- wait for it -- mousetrap. Oh, show. Oh, clever, clever show.
Naturally, the trap springs, somehow propelling the golf ball back towards the front of the garage, where it proceeds to bounce off that stick Our Imperiled Gent used to prop open the door, and... "GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" For yes, gentle reader, the stick snaps, sending that garage door trundling straight back down to decapitate Our Soon-To-Be-Dead Guest where he lies. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Our Dead Guest's body jerks about spasmodically for a couple of delightfully gruesome seconds as an ever-expanding puddle of blood spills out towards the driveway, and barely has the camera leapt back to gift us with a wide shot of Our Dead Guest's corpse when it's time for the...
...Tinkle, Tinkle RAAAWWWR! "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" I'm so glad you enjoyed that sequence, Raoul. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" And I'm even happier to note that, unlike so many recent episodes, there's more where that came from. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" So, I guess I should just keep this going, then? "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Okay.
Deep within the lush coastal rainforests of southeastern South Dakota, Sad Bobby sits at his desk in the Emporium's study, poring over various leather-bound tomes while chugging voluminous amounts of whiskey straight from the bottle. "Atta girl!" Watching him from the far kitchen archway with worried expressions on their dear little faces are Our Intrepid Heroes and, after a moment, Darling Sammy hisses an urgent "Say something!" in Dashing El Deano's general direction. "You!" Dean soundlessly mouths back, thereby eliciting for himself the most massive of Sam's Massive Bitchfaces, and after a bit more of the whispered back and forth between the two of them, the boys resort to a rousing game of Rock-Paper-Scissors to settle their latest dispute. And in an ominous sign that Things Are Not Quite Right With Our Intrepid Heroes This Evening, Sam actually loses, even though Dim Dean's still obstinately throwing Scissors. Dun-dun-DUN!
Thus so unnervingly defeated, Darling Sammy clears his throat to speak, only to find himself immediately shouted down by Sad Bobby. "You two just gonna stand there like the ugly girl at the prom," Bobby bellows, "or are you gonna pitch in?" Sad Bobby, you see, is now more determined than ever to take down that Eve thing in the wake of Poor Rufus's death, and has in fact been so single-minded in his search for further information on her that he hasn't slept in days, much to the boys' collective dismay. Sam and Dean, God love 'em, make an effort to console Sad Bobby on the loss of his sometime friend, but Bobby -- being Bobby, of course -- vehemently denies that Rufus's untimely demise has had any effect on him at all, and he gruffly orders the two into the kitchen proper to fix him some coffee, pronto. "And make it Irish!" Bobby almost slurs at their retreating backs. "Capital idea!" Raoul shrieks. "After all, it has been rather chilly as of late, don't you agree!? Unseasonably so, in fact!" Knock yourself out, Raoul. Just make sure you get back here in time for the death, 'cause they really are quite amusing this evening. "Hooray!"
And as Raoul toddles off into his den to whip up a couple of warming flagons for himself, Dean sotto-voces a sarcastic "He's doing fantastic!" at Sam. "Yeah," Sam replies in kind, all but rolling his eyes, "this isn't about Rufus at all." "Whaddya wanna do?" Dean grumbles, raising his voice just a tad now that Sad Bobby's pretty much out of earshot. "I mean, we can't just sit here and watch him poop out his liver." Fortunately, Sam has a plan, and that plan involves hitting the road to investigate the string of mysterious deaths that's been plaguing a single family in Chester, Pennsylvania, as of late, of which the opening sequence's represented the third. Sam produces a newspaper clipping from his jacket pocket, and as Dean scans the relevant article, he wonders if "a family curse" might be involved, but unfortunately, Sad Bobby staggers into the kitchen at this point to cut the conversation short before Sam gets a chance to reply. Dean quickly invites Sad Bobby along for the road trip, and Sad Bobby just as quickly shoots that idea all to hell. "Just get out of my house," he mutters as he swipes his Irish coffee out of Sam's gigantic mitts. "You're driving me nuts!"
Our Intrepid Heroes wisely decide to let Mister Crankypants sulk all by his lonesome if that's what the goddamned hairy ingrate wants, and the thing we know, Sam and Dean have repaired to the Emporium's lot to depart. In The Second Ominous Sign That Things Are Not Quite Right With Our Intrepid Heroes This Evening, they sling their bags not into Metallicar, but rather into a garishly two-toned Mustang hardtop that's sporting their old Kansas license plates. Dun-dun-DUN! And in The Third Ominous Sign That Things Are Not Quite Right With Our Intrepid Heroes This Evening, a billboard swinging above the Emporium's lot identifies the place as the "B & E Scrap Yard." Dun-dun-dun-dun-DUN! Yeah, yeah, I know: That's gonna get real old, real fast, so for all our sakes, I hope they figure out what the hell's really going on in the two minutes. In any event, the boys embark, and the shot cuts to leap high above that orange and black monstrosity, where it spins around for a bit as the Mustang disappears towards the Interstate.
Meanwhile, back in the Emporium kitchen, Bobby's about to pour himself another belt of rotgut when a shotgun barrel enters the frame to bat his hand away from the bottle. "What the...?" Bobby splutters as the camera sweeps up to land on the shotgun owner's face, and in The Fourth Ominous Sign That Things Are Not Quite Right With Our Intrepid Heroes This Evening, that owner is Ellen. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-DUN! "Tell me you haven't been drinking this whole time," Ellen wearily sighs as only she can, and I feel absolutely no shame in admitting that Samantha Ferris's mere presence in this episode immediately guarantees at least a B+ from yours truly for the overall effort. Not that those letter grades mean a damn thing in the first place, but still. Welcome back, Ellen! I'm sure Raoul would be writhing about atop his overstuffed armchair positively apoplectic with delight over your return at this moment, but he's taking an unusually long time whipping up those flagons of his. Hey, lizard! "What?!" Hurry that oversized green ass of yours up -- Ellen's back! "Ellen!? EEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
And as Raoul hastens back into the living room from his den with his flagons rattling violently about in that cunning little cocktail cart of his, Ellen continues, "My God! I've been gone a week, and this place goes completely to hell." "WE LOVE YOU, ELLEN! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Raoul! Volume! "Oh, I do apologize, I'm sure, but I simply can't help myself! She's fabulous! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Dude, you're all pie-eyed, and you've yet to have so much as a sip of your cocktail. EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" That's fine -- you go ahead and squeal yourself hoarse while I get through the rest of this scene, all right? "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" All right.
So, Ellen crosses to the kitchen counter to unload a bagful of groceries, and during the easygoing banter that follows, it becomes clear that, in whatever bizarre version of Supernatural we've found ourselves for this evening's festivities, these two are married. Which always made a certain kind of sense, really, even if Bobby is far too old for her. Yeah, I said it. In any event, Ellen casually mentions that she's been hunting with Jo, so we know both of The Harvelle Girls are somehow still walking the earth, and after she commiserates briefly with Sad Bobby over Dead Rufus's untimely demise, she shoos him off to wash up so she can fix dinner. "Anybody ever tell you you're a pain in the ass?" Bobby gruffly teases her. Ellen plants a sloppy wet one on his beard and slaps him on the ass, smiling, "Go!" Aw. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" That, too.
Meanwhile, over in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Our Intrepid Heroes are already performing a little flashlight-fu in Our Dead Guest's garage, because Chester, Pennsylvania, is apparently a mere fifteen minutes away from the lush coastal rainforests of southeastern South Dakota. Dean whips out his trusty little EMF reader, but there's nary a satisfying VWEE-YORP! to be had in the place, so vengeful spirits clearly aren't responsible for this evening's wacky hijinks. Over by the freshly scrubbed garage door, however, Eagle-Eyed Sammy spots something of significance: A thin strand of braided gold. Actual, honest-to-God gold, as he discovers when he brushes it up against a handy terracotta flowerpot, leading him to wonder, "Why would a handyman have gold just lying around in his garage?" "There's definitely a skeleton in this family's closet," Dean frowns, going on to reason, "I mean, accidents don't just happen accidentally!" Sam shoots him A Look. "You know what I mean!" Dim Dean exasperates. Sam lightly rolls his eyes around for a moment before arriving at the following plan: He'll research whatever family records he can get his hands on while Dean interviews the of kin. Got all that? "I do! [Slurp!]" Excellent.
The morning finds Dean masquerading as a genealogist from the local university -- just go with it -- as he chats with an utter douchebag of an ambulance chaser in the latter's lightly sleazy office. Needless to say, Dean's utterly inexpert interviewing technique -- a technique that involves him bluntly asking questions like "Did Grandma ever piss off a gypsy?" -- soon has this "Shawn Russo" person throwing Our Intrepid Hero off the premises, and once Dean's reached the sidewalk outdoors, he rings Sam up on his cell to compare notes. Sam, whom we find emerging from the Chester courthouse, hasn't had much luck on his end, either, learning only that Clan Russo's forebears emigrated from Calabria in 1912, after which there ensued, as Sam puts it, "four generations of picket fence" with nothing to indicate the family's been cursed. "If these people are the Waltons," Dean grumps as he climbs into his hateful bicolor monstrosity, "why the hell are they dying?"
Cut to the E. J. Smith Travel Agency, where we find a casually attired ginger sporting a gaudy Isadora Duncan-length scarf as she attempts to sell a smart little Havana gambling vacation to one of her clients over the phone. You see, in The Fifth Ominous Sign That Things Are Not Quite Right With Our Intrepid Heroes This Evening, Cuba's displaced Las Vegas as America's top holiday destination, featuring as it does a "new Trump casino" with a wave pool for the kids. Another poster in the agency, incidentally, advertises Detroit as the country's premiere domestic travel spot, so I guess I should count that as The Sixth Ominous Sign That Things Are Not Quite Right With Our Intrepid Heroes This Evening, but that's not important right now because what is important right now is the fact that in the middle of Ginger's spiel, everything on screen suddenly grinds to a halt. DUN! Presently, an officious little blonde with Liz Lemon glasses marches into the otherwise frozen office to look around. After a few moments, Blondie -- who's toting a small green ledger book in her left hand, by the by -- retrieves Ginger's car keys from her purse and slings them beneath a nearby copier. Evidently satisfied with her little prank, Blondie purses her lips and exits the scene, after which everything snaps back into motion again.
Unfortunately, Ginger promptly loses her sale -- The Shat still shills for Priceline in this reality, evidently -- and she hangs up her phone to start digging around in her purse for her keys, which of course aren't there. Growing increasingly confused, she first pats down her pockets before spinning around in her desk chair to scan the credenza -- atop which is perched a particularly perilous vase of tulips, just so you know -- eventually finding her keys where Blondie left them. Ginger frowns to herself, but rises nevertheless from her chair to pick them up, in the process of course setting off this evening's , albeit far shorter, Goldbergian sequence of events. In bending over, Ginger inadvertently bumps up against the credenza, which sends the vase toppling over onto the copier, which immediately sparks and zots and starts freaking out, which means Ginger must reach across the copier in a desperate attempt to unplug the thing, which means that Isadora Duncan-length scarf of hers? Gets sucked into the copier's intake tray. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Well, actually, not so much, as she's just choking to death at the present moment. "Rats!" I feel your pain, friend of friends, but on the upside, we do get a lovely bit of petechial hemorrhaging around the eyes. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
And as Ginger slumps over, dead, Blondie steps back into the frame with a smugly pleased little smile on her face. She opens her ledger and flips the thing's tasseled bookmark forward, allowing a thin braid of gold to detach itself from the bookmark to float to the floor as Blondie draws a careful line through the ledger's entry for "Anne Witting." With that done, Blondie efficiently flips her ledger closed to march straight into this evening's first METAL TEETH CHOMP!
We return from the commercials to find Our Intrepid Heroes already making with the flashlight-fu in Dead Ginger's former office. Dean confirms the recently deceased travel agent's proper name, and the boys note for the audience's benefit that Dead Ginger was not, in fact, related to the various Russo cousins whose grisly and inventive deaths kicked this investigation into high gear in the first place. This time around, it's Eagle-Eyed Dean's turn to spot the thin braid of gold lying on the agency's floorboards, and with that piece of evidence in hand, Sam and Dean retire to...
...their tastefully appointed suite at the White Star Motel, where Dean calls up Ellen back in South Dakota for a consult while Sam deploys his mad Googling skillz in the far blurry background of the shot. Long story short, the thin braids of gold connect the latest two deaths with a string of at least seventy-five others across the country, including a cluster the never-seen Jo's currently working on out in California. While many of the people involved were indeed related to each other, almost as many of the victims were not, though as Ellen notes, they all did share one odd common point of reference: All of their ancestors came to the United States in the same year, on the same boat. "The Titanic," Ellen eventually remembers, after riffling through her mental files for a bit. "Ever hear of it?" she asks. Dean has not. Which, you know, doesn't mean a lot given how stupid he so often is, so we'll skip ahead to the part wherein Dean asks if Super-Smart Sammy has ever heard of the ship. Sam hasn't, either, so I guess this development actually does rate a DUN! of its own after all. DUN!
Moments later, Sam's mad Googling skillz have managed to call up the Titanic's entry on a Wikipedia-esque site known as "The Marconi Pages," from which Sam desultorily reads off the boring particulars of the ship, with the only item of interest being the fact that the Titanic "almost hit an iceberg" on its maiden voyage. "Looks like the first mate spotted it in time," Sam shrugs before pulling himself up short with a curt "Wait a second!" because that first mate's name? "Mr. I. P. Freely." "That's not suspicious," Dean smirks from the bed before rising to join Sam at the laptop, upon which the two almost immediately find a photograph of said Mr. Freely, and it's Belthazor. "Son of a bitch!" I'm sure Dean spits at this juncture, and with little ado, Our Intrepid Heroes summon the erstwhile archangel in question to their motel room.
"Whatever can I do for you?" Belthazor politely inquires once he's fluttered on in from points unknown. "The hell with the boat?" Dean immediately demands. "What boat?" Belthazor too-innocently wonders. "The Titanic!" Sam pissily prompts. "Oh, yeah," Belthazor casually nods. "Well, it was meant to sink," he continues, all studiously nonchalant and such, "and I saved it -- anything else I can answer for you?" "Why?" Sam snaps. "Because I hated the movie." HA! Our Intrepid Heroes pause for a moment to take that in, then Sam incredulously begins, "So you save a cruise liner because...?" "Because that god-awful Celine Dion song made me want to smite myself." That seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation, doesn't it? "Indeed! [Slurp!] That song is hateful!" You do not lie, my scaly friend. You do not lie. "Hee! [Slurp!]"
The upshot of the generally amusing conversation that follows is this: The rules that normally would have prevented Belthazor from altering the past no longer exist thanks to last season's abortive Apocalypse, so there was nothing to stop him from "un-sinking" the Titanic back in 1912 -- an act which then "butterfly-effected" all subsequent events thanks partly to the fact that upwards of 1500 dead people were reinserted into the timeline, but mainly to the fact that those 1500 ended up providing the world with around 50,000 descendants who should never have been born in the first place. As a result, while major events like the abortive Apocalypse still occurred, innumerable smaller ones did not, or occurred with somewhat different outcomes, so now Celine Dion's "a destitute lounge singer somewhere in Quebec" and Donald Trump's building casinos in Havana and Chevrolet never developed the Impala and Sam's throwing Paper instead of Rock and Ellen and Jo Harvelle are still alive. Referencing the latter point, Belthazor suggests, "Let's agree I did a good thing: One less Billy Zane movie, and I saved two of your closest friends!" "But now somebody is killing the descendants of the survivors!" Sam protests. "And...?" Belthazor replies. "And we need to save as many as we can!" Dean shouts. "Sorry," Belthazor smirks, though of course he's not terribly sorry in the least. "You have me confused with the other angel -- you know, the one in the dirty trench coat who's in love with you?" Heh. "I don't care!" he reminds them, and with that, he flutters away. "Son of a bitch!" I'm sure Dean rages once again, and the thing we know...
...Sam and Dean are on the phone with Bobby, filling him in on recent developments. Fortunately, Bobby already knows who they're up against: Atropos, the eldest of Greek mythology's Fates, which naturally explains the thin braids of gold she's been leaving behind after each death. Unfortunately, you can't kill Fate -- or so Bobby claims -- and he suggests that the easiest solution to their current problem would be to re-sink the Titanic. Dean immediately objects to this, and in tones so strident that Bobby actually wonders, "What's got your panties in a clench?" Heh. "Nothing!" Dean hastily LIES, but Bobby's not buying that, so the boys are forced to reveal that should they re-sink the ship, Ellen and Jo will die. Bobby, of course, immediately changes his tune, and he orders Our Intrepid Heroes to figure out another way -- any other way -- to resolve the situation, and while he doesn't come right out and say it, I do believe the implication is that he's fine with 50,000 people dying as long as Ellen lives. To honest with you, so am I. "Me, too! SAVE ELLEN!" Alas, my scaly friend, I've a feeling the idiots responsible for this mess are about to screw us over on that one. "Phooey!" There, there, Raoul. "But...! But...! But Ellen is faaaaaaa-bulous! Why would those beasts bring her back, only to slaughter her again?!" Well, like I said: They're idiots. "[Sob!]" Oh, have another flagon, honey -- it'll at least dull the pain somewhat when they do kill her off later in the episode. "Thanks! I will! [Slurp!]"
Now, where were we? Oh, yes: "How do we save fifty thousand people?" Sam glums once Bobby's rather abruptly cut off the call. "We don't even know who they are." "Well, we know one," Dean sighs, pointing over to the motel room's nightstand, upon which rests the pamphlet he took from Shawn Russo's office. Douchebag looks like Pee-wee Herman in that picture they took of him, but that's neither here nor there, I suppose, for we must leap forward in time with Our Intrepid Heroes to land on the...
...street outside Shawn Russo's office the following morning, where the boys wait inside their infernal Mustang until the douchebag in question emerges from the building to chat with a whiplashed client for a bit before answering a call on his cell. Sam and Dean immediately disembark to chase after the imperiled douchebag, but Russo's so caught up in his loudly discussed plans to bribe a judge that he completely ignores both them and the out-of-control delivery van now barreling towards him down the alleyway. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Unfortunately, the delivery van's driver stomps on the brakes at the very last second, so Russo narrowly avoids getting eaten by the van's grille. "Drat!" Fortunately, the douchebag then steps off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, so Russo does get splattered by a bus. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Yes, they swiped that move directly from the first Final Destination movie, and yes, this is the second time they've actually used that move on this show, but Raoul doesn't care. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Aw. He's awfully cute when he's caught up in one of his little grue-induced epileptic fits. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" And after Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki execute an extremely amusing series of double-takes in reaction to this entirely unexpected development, the METAL TEETH CHOMP! clamps down to drag them into the commercial break.
Sidewalk. Immediate aftermath. Our Intrepid Heroes are still gawping at the impressive smear of Russo guts now staining the asphalt until Dean realizes one of Russo's ads has been affixed to the back of the bus that splattered him. "Check it out!" Dean giggles. Sam unleashes yet another of his Massive Bitchfaces. "Too soon?" Dean wonders. "Yeah, Dean," Sam prissily sniffs, "I'm pretty sure six seconds is too soon." Heh. Sam shakes his shaggy mane around for a bit before he idly glances across the street at a restaurant undergoing renovations, and wouldn't you know it? There's Atropos staring back at him through one of the windows! What are the odds? "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" You'll have to excuse Raoul. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" He still hasn't recovered from the bus incident. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" So, I guess I'll just keep going without him? "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Okay, then.
"I think I saw her!" Sam excitedly blurts, jabbing his finger in the direction of the now-vacant window. "Fate?" Dean asks. "What'd she look like?" Sam wrinkles his nose and realizes, "Kinda like a librarian." "Your kind of librarian," Dean wonders after the briefest of contemplative pauses, "or my kind of librarian?" "She was wearing clothes," Sam huffs, all offended because he's gone back to being an insufferable prude now that he's been reensoulled. Dean immediately heads off across the street to confront her, dragging an extremely reluctant Sam behind him. As neither of them has any connection to the Titanic, Dean reasons, they shouldn't have any problems with Atropos, right?
Wrong. The boys make with some more of their flashlight-fu in the restaurant's deserted dining area until Atropos freezes the scene, after which she opens every last gas outlet in the kitchen so that by the time Sam and Dean reanimate, the entire place is one gigantic fireball just waiting to happen. She also apparently swapped out their batteries while she was at it because the instant Our Intrepid Heroes start moving again, their flashlights fritz out, and Dean's forced to whip out his trusty Zippo. The lighter mysteriously refuses to catch until they've reached the kitchen's threshold, at which point the flint's spark ignites the flammable gas around them, and the resulting explosion hurls them straight into...
... the middle of a forest? Buh? Oh, sorry! Sorry, my bad -- it was actually My Sweet Baboo who swooped in at the last possible instant to yank his earthbound boyfriend and his earthbound boyfriend's enormous freak of a brother out of Chester to plop them back down on the other side of the planet in what Castiel calls "White Russia," so it seems like something crazy happened to the Russian Revolution as well in this episode's altered timeline. Anyway, once Sam and Dean have adjusted to the sudden and drastic change in scenery, the three have a little chat -- of course -- and long story short, Atropos has several Capital-I Issues with Our Intrepid Heroes thanks to their role in last season's abortive Apocalypse, foremost amongst them the fact that said abortive Apocalypse rendered her "obsolete," as My Sweet Baboo so succinctly puts it. As a result, Fate will likely not stop slaughtering Winchesters until the very last Winchester lies dead. Of course, Castiel suggests, the boys could rid themselves of Atropos by killing her, though they'd need one of Belthazor's special Heavenly weapons to do so. Mindful of Bobby's earlier admonitions regarding Ellen, Sam and Dean almost immediately agree to My Sweet Baboo's plan, and quickly prepare to offer themselves up as Fate Bait to draw Atropos out into the open.
Meanwhile, over in the lush coastal rainforests of southeastern South Dakota, Ellen enters the Emporium study with news from Jo that thirty more Titanic descendants have died on the West Coast, and she blithely suggests that Sam and Dean should just have Castiel re-sink the ship. After all, she points out in an unconscious echo of one of Bobby's earlier lines, "dying bloody's not the same as never being born." Bobby, of course, freaks, and during the nicely played yet oddly filmed conversation that follows -- lots of bizarre close-ups on the actors eyes, here -- Bobby lets Ellen know exactly what would happen both to her and to her daughter should My Sweet Baboo shoot back to 1912 and correct the timeline. Ellen takes the news rather well, all things considered, and while Bobby insists they'll figure another way out of their current mess, Ellen seems to know better. Which, you know, means she's as good as dead. "[Sniffle!] [Slurp!] [Sob!]"
Back in Chester, the boys nervously put their Fate Bait plan into action, and what follows is a sequence both funny and recapper-proof that's set to Deborah Harry's "One Way Or Another," in which Our Intrepid Heroes skitter their tense way through a city park past such common and ordinary threats to life and limb as a clutch of impolite BMXers, a leash of snarling Alsatians, a duet of juggling buskers who specialize in flaming hatchets, and a particularly inconsiderate construction worker who's been armed with an industrial-strength nail gun. Despite their obvious unease, Sam and Dean somehow make it past each of these menaces unscathed, only to have a massive air conditioning unit drop from the sky onto their heads. "VIOLENCE!" Well, almost onto their heads, as Castiel clearly steps in to stop time right before the gigantic thing squishes Our Dear Boys into the pavement. "Rats! [Slurp!]" And after a few showy effects shots from various angles of the air conditioning unit suspended in mid-air above Sam and Dean, everything vanishes into tonight's penultimate METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Sidewalk. Immediate aftermath. We get a few more showy effect shots -- one of them featuring Sam and Dean's surprised faces reflected in the still-suspended air conditioning unit's shiny metal casing -- before My Sweet Baboo calmly wanders onto the scene. Atropos soon makes her presence known, and wow. The four minutes consist of absolutely nothing more than Misha Collins and Katie Walder yammering away at each other in front of a green screen. "[Yawn!] [Slurp!]" My sentiments exactly, Raoul. Well, you know, without the booze. "Awwwww!" Yet. "Hooray! [Slurp!]" Granted, Katie Walder does a very nice job with what she's been given to play -- she's presenting Atropos as some sort of über-Tracy Flick, and that's working just fine for me, thank you very much -- but as I am almost 100% certain we'll never be seeing this character again, you'll forgive me for cutting to the chase.
Basically, Atropos is pissed off because the abortive Apocalypse left her without a job, and as she has no identity independent of her literally God-given profession, she's been at an utter loss since the end of last season. She managed to keep it together, though, until Belthazor completely violated her sense of propriety by altering events already determined in the past, so she took it upon herself to eliminate every last one of the additional 50,000 people Belthazor's meddling created. Oh, and by the way? Belthazor didn't really un-sink the Titanic because he hates Celine Dion as much as the rest of us do -- he un-sank that boat under Castiel's orders, because My Sweet Baboo needed those 50,000 extra souls for that war he's waging against Raphael. Yeah, I really don't get that bit, either, but I guess we should probably keep that detail in mind, just in case the idiots responsible for this (mostly) tragic season decide to make it a plot point in the finale. At some point, Belthazor himself sneaks up behind Atropos with his Angel-Smiting Scimitar at the ready, but she icily warns both Belthazor and Castiel that, should anything happen to her, her two remaining sisters will stop at nothing until they've taken out My Sweet Baboo's "two favorite pets." Thus so left with no other choice, Castiel silently orders Belthazor to undo his handiwork, and as the three supernatural entities flash out of the scene, one of them apparently takes Our Intrepid Heroes with him, for when time restarts, that massive chunk of shiny metal slams down onto an otherwise empty sidewalk just as the METAL TEETH CHOMP! arrives to gnaw us all into this evening's final commercial break.
Lush Coastal Rainforests Of Southeastern South Dakota. Emporium Division, Lot Subdivision. As Celine's accursed caterwauling assaults our ears, the camera crawls alongside the gloriously restored Impala until it lands on Our Intrepid Heroes, who snooze side by side in the front seat. Dean snaps his eyes open with a sudden start and quickly switches off the radio before batting Sam awake with a fast backhand, after which he crawls from the car to blink up at the overcast sky. Sam soon climbs out after him and admits, "I just had the weirdest dream!" "Mine was weirder," Dean claims without bothering to hear word one of Sam's evidence to the contrary. And why? "Mine had the actual Titanic in it!" "Um," Sam begins, thoroughly freaked out, "did it not sink because Balthazar..." "...had a hate-on for Billy Zane?" Dean finishes, his eyes widening in horror. "Why are you having my dreams, dude?" he demands. Heh.
Castiel chooses this moment to announce his arrival, appearing off to one side to calmly inform them that it wasn't a dream, and that he personally ordered Belthazor back in time to set things right. "It was the only way to be sure you'd be safe," he adds. Both Sam and Dean are quite understandably flabbergasted that My Sweet Baboo would sacrifice fifty thousand people simply to protect them, but Castiel corrects them with his own echo of Bobby and Ellen's earlier sentiments regarding the whole Dying Versus Never Having Been Born thing. Speaking of which, he regretfully confirms that Ellen and Jo have gone back to being dead again while revealing that, though everyone else on the planet has no memory at all of the alternate timeline, he wanted Sam and Dean to retain some understanding of how "cruel and capricious" The Fates really are -- even though "cruel" and "capricious" are precisely the wrong words one would use to describe The Fates -- because Our Intrepid Heroes taught Castiel to value free will, and he wants them to understand what that really means. Or something like that. My Sweet Baboo then LIES to the boys' faces by claiming that Belthazor did, indeed, "unravel the sweater over a chick flick." "Might be time to take away his cable privileges," Dean jokes before admitting that the movie "didn't suck that bad," what with "Winslet's rack" and all, and by the time he's done with all of that nonsense, Castiel has fluttered away.
Sam and Dean reenter the Emporium proper to find Sad Bobby asleep on the study's sofa. Dean regards their slumbering host for a moment, then extracts a promise from Sam to keep news of this evening's events from Bobby forever -- ignorance being bliss and all that -- after which he crosses to cover the old hairball with a blanket. With that, Dean snaps off the light on the end table, and we finally fade to black.
Have you anything to add, Raoul? "I do not!" Do you want to handle the promo for week's episode, then? "I do not!" Do you at least have a flagon on that goddamn drinks cart of yours for me? "I do not!" I assume, then, that you'll be rectifying that situation immediately? "But of course!"
week involves more time travel, this time with Sam and Dean somehow winding up in the Old West. Will it suck? Probably. Have fun, anyway!
Demian hates time-traveling episodes set in the Old West. Raoul is far too busy rectifying the unfortunate cocktail situation to offer his opinion on the subject at this point in time. You may reach the former at demian_twop@yahoo.com. The latter is an imaginary gay dragon on the Internet.
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