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We find Our Intrepid Heroes just chilling out, surfing the Internet for Japanicrap porn, when Sheriff Jody calls from the lush coastal rainforests of southeastern South Dakota with news that several residents of Canton, Ohio, have been found mummified as of late, and would the dear boys care to investigate? But of course, kind lady sheriff! And so, Sam and Dean hop into whatever trashed-out piece of junk they're driving this week to motor on over to Stark County, where they quickly discover the following: Strange clusters of mysterious mummifications have plagued Canton at various points in the city's history for at least the last ninety years, and an odd young man in a black fedora seems to have been present for all of them. Thanks to a bit of good old-fashioned detective work and a tremendous amount of luck, the boys learn that the odd young man went by the name of "Ethan Snyder" back in the day, and wouldn't you know it? The guy's still living in the same house he'd apparently been occupying since the turn of the last century.
Naturally, Our Intrepid Heroes track this Ethan person to the scene of his kill, but just as Dean flies at the fiend with murder on his mind, a sudden whack of extremely bright demonic mojo sends both Dean and Ethan hurtling back to the Canton of 1944, because Ethan Snyder is really Chronos, The God Of Time. Ooops! Once in the past, Dean quickly finds himself arrested for whipping out his trusty pearl-handled automatic in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, and he ends up meeting Eliot Ness, who in this version of history is actually yet another hunter of supernatural beasties, which probably explains The Cleveland Torso Murders, which also probably would have been a far more entertaining bit of history to exploit for this evening's entertainment.
In any event, Dean and Ness join forces to rid the planet of Chronos once and for all while Sam and Sheriff Jody frantically search for a way to drag Dean back to the present. Fortunately, Sam stumbles across a spell that compels Chronos to appear before whomever recites it and, after a bit of mischievous time trickery ripped straight from this particular Dennis Quaid masterpiece, Sam and the sheriff manage to suck both Dean and The God Of Time back into 2012, whereupon Our Intrepid Heroes proceed to dispatch Chronos with a pointy stick. However, right before he dies, The God Of Time rather ominously promises Sam and Dean that their future will be "covered in thick black ooze," but when you think about it, hasn't this show been coated with a slick layer of bitterly black demonic goo ever since it premiered in 2005? Shut up, Jason Dohring.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Rattle, Rattle WE DON'T GIVE A SHIT ANYMORE THEN!, and aside from the three seconds it takes to remind us all of Sheriff Jody's existence, the contents of this evening's THEN! have absolutely nothing to do with tonight's episode, so we'll be skipping ahead to the...
...Rattle, Rattle STILL NOT GIVING A SHIT NOW! Thunder rumbles ominously overhead as the camera fades up to peer from across the street at a dimly-lit gentleman ambling down a stretch of rain-dampened nighttime sidewalk. And as the gentleman, who's sporting a concealing calf-length black overcoat beneath an oddly anachronistic wide-brimmed black fedora, turns down an alleyway, the shot cuts to focus in on Dashing El Deano, who'd been suspiciously eyeing the gentleman's progress from the driver's seat of whatever crapped-out piece of trash he's been tooling around in this week. "All right," Dean mutters, cocking his trusty pearl-handled automatic. "Let's do this." "W-w-wait!" Darling Sammy splutters from the darkened depths of his side of the car before quite reasonably wondering, "What's the plan, exactly?" "Don't die," Dean grunts, and with that, Our Intrepid Heroes hop out of their crapped-out junker to skitter off after that mysterious man in black.
"He's heading downtown," Dean realizes as the boys gaze after the mysterious gentleman's rapidly diminishing form from an appropriately prudent distance, and because nothing bad ever happens to these two dimwits when they split up, ever, Dean decides to send Sam scurrying off down the street proper while he himself trails the mysterious gentleman through the alleyways of this as-yet-unnamed city all by his lonesome, the idea of course being that they'll end up attacking the mysterious gentleman from two sides. This should end well for everyone involved.
One quick time-lapsing cross-fade later, and we find ourselves staring at a row of exceptionally photogenic green plastic trash cans now lining a dark and forbidding alleyway. A dark and forbidding dead-end alleyway which, you know, means that Our Intrepid Heroes won't be able to attack the mysterious gentleman from two sides after all because there's only one entrance, so Dashing El Deano's cunning plan is already falling to ruin, and eventually, the moron in question rounds the far corner to find...the mysterious gentleman sucking the glowy red life-force from some anonymous bum! Dun-dun-DUN! "Son of a bitch!" Dean growls, and barely has the mysterious gentleman allowed the anonymous bum's now-desiccated corpse to drop down to the slick alleyway asphalt when Our Intrepid Idiot comes barreling at him to unleash a full-body tackle. Fortuitously enough, Darling Sammy wanders onto the scene from points elsewhere just in time to witness what follows, and what follows is this: As Dean wraps his fingers around the mysterious gentleman's throat, that glowy red life force said gentleman siphoned from the anonymous bum goes nuclear, and both Dean and the mysterious gentleman vanish in a screen-whitening burst of demonic mojo. D'OH! A small shockwave expands from the center of the explosion to whip through the alleyway, ruffling Darling Sammy's deeply perturbed sideburns as it goes, and once it's passed, Our Remaining Intrepid Idiot manages to bellow, "DEAN?!" right before his pretty, pretty face gets obliterated by tonight's...
...SNOT ROCKET! And it's a very sad evening here at Chez Demian, for Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon has once again bailed on your faithful recapper, the latter of whom will be covering this episode's wacky time-traveling hijinks most bitterly alone. The damn dizzy lizard decided he'd rather go bowling, if you can believe that bullshit. Yes, he has his own ball. And yes, that ball is pink. I tried to persuade him to purchase something more in keeping with his inimitable personality, like this flaming little number here, but the reptilian heart wants what it wants, I suppose. I feel so betrayed. About his abandonment of me, not about his ball choice. But I'm starting to ramble, so shall we continue? Excellent.
The words "Two Days Earlier" emerge from the inky gloom following this evening's SNOT ROCKET!, and as those words vanish from whence they came, the camera fades up to take in Dashing El Deano, whom we find obsessively trawling the Internet for any and all information on the infamous Richard Roman. A bleating cell phone awakens Darling Sammy, who'd been slumbering peacefully on a nearby cot, and Sam groans and grumbles and stretches for a bit before answering to find Sheriff Jody on the other end, calling from her prowler somewhere deep within the lush coastal rainforests of southeastern South Dakota. Sheriff Jody politely apologizes for phoning at so late an hour, then wastes no time getting down to business. "I got something that smells like you boys," she announces, and Must. Resist. Obvious. Jokes. Seems an unusual corpse has appeared in Canton, Ohio, and according to Sheriff Jody, "the local P.D.'s trying to bury the story and the body." And why would the local constabulary want to do such a thing, I'm sure you're asking at this point? Because, as Sheriff Jody explains, "when it went missing, it was a perfectly normal grad student named Charles Durbin," but "when it turned up, the thing was mummified minus the wrapping." In addition, the late Mr. Durbin's dehydrated remains were "the second body found like this" in the same number of weeks, so Sheriff Jody quite naturally assumed this was the boys' sort of thing, and she figured she'd give them a friendly heads-up about it all. A still-groggy Sam promptly promises to look into it all, thanks Sheriff Jody for the intel, and hangs up to fill Dean in on the details, after which he eyes Dean's glowing laptop and opines, "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I hope you're watching cartoon smut, 'cause reading Dick Roman crap over and over again is just self-punishment." Dean takes a moment to consider this statement, carefully and deliberately shuts the laptop's lid, and sniffily counters, "It's called 'anime,' and it's an art form." Hee. Yeah, keep telling yourself that, you pervert.
The camera cuts to linger for a bit on the crumbling façade of a ramshackle and fenced-off house in what the just-arriving location card assures us is "Canton, Ohio," before descending to capture Our Intrepid Heroes as they wheel up in whatever crapped-out piece of trash they're tooling around in this week. The boys are already kitted out in their FBI drag for the revelry to follow and, after Dapper Dean remarks snidely on the building's appearance, the two break in through the back door to set up residency therein for the remainder of the episode, because they're still avoiding tacky motel rooms. Inside, Dean does his best to set up a research station in the decrepit home's front parlor while Sam descends from above to note, "There's a semi-functioning bathroom and one un-rancid bedroom." "Define 'semi-functioning,'" Dean replies, "and do not use the words 'hole in the floor.'" Because Sam obviously has no choice but to use the words "hole in the floor" to describe the ruin's facilities, he remains silent for one awkward moment before positioning himself for a rousing game of Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine who gets that one un-rancid bedroom. Dean follows his younger brother's lead, and it's one, two, three...
...un-rancid bedroom for Sam! A dejected El Deano wanders in from the hall just as Sam unrolls his sleeping bag and, after pouting in the doorway for a moment or two, he complains, "How does paper beat a rock? It's stupid!" Heh. Sam ignores this petulant outburst, as well he should, and Dean eventually vanishes to the comparative squalor of whatever gross room he's ended up with.
Some time later, Our Intrepid Heroes loiter on the sidewalk in front of the home of the only witness to the late Charles Durbin's untimely demise and, after reviewing a little file folder of relevant information they apparently swiped from the "STARCK COUNTY MORGUE" because even the props guys have given up on this pathetic wreck of a show at this point, Sam and Dean mount the porch steps to interrogate said witness. And as said witness is rather unamusingly stoned out of his gourd for the conversation that follows, I'll just skip ahead to the relevant bits of his testimony. Basically, Pothead Pete, here, saw that mysterious man in black from the top of the hour approach the soon-to-be-dead Charles Durbin a couple of nights ago, and as the stoner gazed on in muffle-headed amazement, the mysterious gentleman proceeded to suck Mr. Durbin's glowy red life-force right out of his body. Oddly enough, Pothead Pete's watch stopped while "Durbs" "aged before [the heavily medicated witness's bleary and bloodshot] eyes," and...that's about it, I think. Yeah? Yeah.
Our Intrepid Heroes retire to This Week's Hovel to process through all this new information, and long story short, Super-Smart Sammy deploys his mad Googling skillz to discover that strange corpse desiccations have been plaguing the city of Canton for the better part of the last hundred years. "Any pattern, here, other than location?" Dean wonders. Negative, Sam more or less replies, though he does note that the victims "seem to drop in threes." Super-Smart El Deano does some quick math and realizes this means the current cluster should produce at least one more leathery-skinned corpse before it's done, and assumes control of the laptop to deploy some mad Googling skillz of his own to hack into a local security firm's network of spy cameras. Just go with it. Dean quickly zeroes in on a set of cameras focused on the last known location of 2012's first mummified victim, and wouldn't you know it? There's that mysterious gentleman from the pre-credits sequence, lurking in the shadows! Sam squints at the image for a second, then calls up an old news article detailing The Great Canton Mummy Cluster Of 1957, which includes a photograph of the same mysterious gentleman rather stupidly looming over one of that year's bodies. DUN! That particular corpse had been found by a then-preadolescent girl named "Terry Cervantes," so Our Intrepid Heroes decide to look the young lady up in the now, and they discover her...
...working as a doctor in one of Greater Canton's finer medical facilities. In a remarkable stroke of luck, Middle-Aged Ms. Cervantes recognizes the mysterious gentleman as one of her parents' neighbors from back in the day, so Our Intrepid Heroes decide to look this mysterious "Mr. Snyder" up in the now, and they discover him...
...recreating the sequence of events from the top of the hour. Like, precisely recreating the sequence of events from the top of the hour, second by very long second, so you'll forgive me, I'm sure, if I skip ahead to the bit where both Dean and the mysterious Mr. Snyder vanish in a screen-whitening burst of demonic mojo, only to land in a sepia-toned version of the very same dead-end alleyway they'd just left. DUN! Dean grapples with the mysterious Mr. Snyder long enough to get a good, long look at his adversary's chunky silver signet ring, which prominently features an infinity symbol, but the mysterious Mr. Snyder manages to break free from Our Intrepid Hero's grasping hands and dash out into the street. Dean, never once noticing that the row of exceptionally photogenic green plastic trash cans has been suddenly replaced by a couple of beaten-up wooden barrels, chases after the mysterious Mr. Snyder with his trusty pearl-handled automatic at the ready, and it's only once he reaches the sidewalk that he realizes Something's Not Quite Right With Canton, Ohio. Specifically, knots of locals attired in the finest fashions of the early 1940s stare gape-jawed at him while two cops emerge from a silvery vintage Studebaker to demand he drop his weapon, now. D'OH! Befuddled El Deano wisely complies with the cops' request, and as he slowly raises his hands in the air in surrender, a languid little foxtrot -- this episode's only piece of period-appropriate music, by the way -- plays us out into this evening's first CHOMP!-less commercial break.
We return to find Dashing El Deano handcuffed in a subterranean interrogation room, spluttering out his cover story for the benefit of a bald-headed police officer who is not buying it, at all, mainly because Dean's fake FBI badge was issued "sixty-eight years from now." Super-Smart El Deano takes a very long few moments to count back from 2012 on his fingers and eventually gawps, "'Forty-four? I'm stuck in 1944?" "We're all stuck in 1944," the cop dryly observes, but barely has that statement left his mouth when a nattily-dressed certain someone of importance enters the basement to assume control of the interview. The bald-headed cop beats a hasty retreat, and The Certain Someone Of Importance gruffly orders Dean to repeat his story. And when Dean's done describing the anonymous bum's mummification and the subsequent explosion of red light and whatnot, The Certain Someone Of Importance takes a seat and prompts, "Tell me more about the red light." "You believe me?" Dean breathes, astounded. "Are you...?" he begins to ask before popping his eyebrows into the air and stating with a firm assurance, "You're a hunter!" The Certain Someone Of Importance plays dumb, but Dean knows better and, after he offers The Certain Someone Of Importance his demon-related bona fides, they finally introduce themselves to each other, and The Certain Someone Of Importance is Eliot Ness. Well, this show's version of Eliot Ness, for whatever that's worth, and while Dean is suitably impressed to meet the gentleman in question, I find myself battling off a near-overpowering wave of ennui, because I? Am most certainly not an Untouchables fanboy. God, Kevin Costner sucks. Did you see what he said about The Hatfields and McCoys as it relates to property disputes in Malibu in the last Entertainment Weekly? Asshole. Tone-deaf, insufferable, no-talent, hacky asshole. CHRIST, I hate him. I hate him SO MUCH. GAH!
ANY-way, I suppose I should here point out that Eliot Ness is being portrayed by Nicholas Lea, an actor of course best known to X-Files aficionados as Alex Krycek, and...that's about all I have to say about that. What's ?
Oh, yes: Back in the present, Darling Sammy's busily tacking a Magical Mystery Board up to one of the walls of This Week's Hovel when his cell phone chirps, and it's Sheriff Jody, calling to check on the status of the investigation she quite conveniently dumped into Our Dear Boys' collective lap all those many scenes ago. Upon learning of Dean's disappearance, Sheriff Jody immediately offers her assistance, which a flustered Sam gratefully accepts.
Old-Timey Interrogation Room. Dean waxes batshit about his enthusiasm for a movie this Eliot Ness will never see for a very lengthy period of time before the two finally get down to business and, once they realize they have nothing new to tell each other, Eliot Ness hauls the inappropriately-attired Dean over to a tailor shop run by a quick-witted, wisecracking, middle-aged broad with the improbable name of "Ezra Moore" for some new clothes. Miss Ezra takes one look at Our Intrepid Hero and scoffs, "Who's he? Some farmer clown?" Eliot Ness explains that Dean's from the future, which offers Dean the opportunity to regale them with tales of 2012's many, many wonders like so: "Yeah, gas costs four bucks, you can get cheese out of a spray can, and the President? He's a black guy." Eliot Ness looks suitably amazed at this last, but Miss Ezra simply deadpans, "Paint me impressed," before dragging Dean back towards the fitting rooms.
Cut to This Week's Hovel, where we find Sheriff Jody just now arriving with the contents of one of Dead Bobby's numerous storage lockers, because the lead law enforcement officer of the largest city in South Dakota can apparently just fuck off to Ohio whenever she feels like it, and...that's it? That's the whole scene? Oooo-kay, then.
Miss Ezra's. We're "treated" to a brief montage of Dashing El Deano getting all '40s-style spiffy in some natty attire of his very own that quite frankly doesn't fit him very well at all until Eliot Ness decides now would be an excellent time to inform Miss Ezra of the particulars of his latest hunt. "Delightful," Miss Ezra replies after learning they're tracking an apparent time traveler, and with that, we head back to...
...This Week's Hovel, and here's the point where they start in with a lot of quick cuts between 2012 and 1944 that are structured so it seems like the five characters involved are speaking to each other across time as they quickly realize the mysterious Mr. Snyder is actually Chronos, the ancient God Of Time, and while the sequence is both well-paced and artfully done, I'll be damned if I'm going to hold your hand and lead you through it step-by-step. Darling Sammy, bless his little heart, does remind us of the pagan gods' standard M.O., and there's a bit of chatter about how Chronos is using his victims' glowy red life-forces as a sort of "gasoline" to power his jaunts across the timeline, but that's about it. And when it's done, we settle into 1944 for a bit as Eliot Ness drags Dashing El Deano over to...
...Chronos's tastefully appointed manse on the edge of Canton, where the two barge in to ransack the place for clues, of which they find none. Well, except for a leather-bound ledger Dean spots on the coffee table that includes a meticulously-maintained list of future horse-racing results. Chronos, you see, has been funding his rather pricey lifestyle by betting on races for which he already knows the results, a money-making scheme Dean calls "The Biff Strategy" after one of the central plot points of the Back to the Future trilogy, though why it is important that we know this, I could never explain to you, but there you go. In any event, the list includes several references to someone with the initials "L.Y.," which Ness interprets as standing for "Lester Young," a well-known Canton bookie, so it's back over to...
...that subterranean interrogation room, to which Our Intrepid Hero and his host lug the unfortunate Mr. Young for a series of harshly-worded questions accompanied by copious amounts of physical abuse until Mr. Young squeals that the gentleman he knows as "Ethan Snyder" tends to hang out at "a dive on Haggerty" named "The Early Bird."
This Week's Hovel. Sam and Sheriff Jody pore over various books and manuscripts until they stumble across the following piece of relevant information: Chronos can easily be summoned via a carefully documented spell, but there's one tiny flaw with this particular course of action. You see, Sam and Sheriff Jody need to summon the god when Dean is right there with him -- "literally with his hands on the guy," as Sam puts it -- so Dean might "surf" back to their present on Chronos's mojo. Otherwise, Dean will quite naturally find himself stuck in some past or future slice of time forever. Sheriff Jody rolls her eyes in frustration at this bit of unwelcome news and reaches into one of Dead Bobby's boxes to pull out a never-opened bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, upon which has been affixed a handwritten note that reads as follows: "Fine, you ass -- you win for once. Enjoy, R." "Who's 'R'?" Sheriff Jody wonders, and after Sam fills her in on the sad, short life of Rufus Turner, they decide to crack open that bottle of soothing booze to toast to the memory of their departed friends, or something. To be honest with you, I thought they were going to get drunk and jump each other, because hey, why the hell not? Sheriff Jody's both exceptionally attractive and currently unattached, and Darling Sammy's a remarkably healthy young man, indeed, so who could it hurt? And then I remembered the long, long trail of corpses Sam's special bits have left in their deadly wake on this show, and I decided it was probably for the best if Sheriff Jody refrain from riding the dear boy like a hobby horse. And while all that was running through my obviously bored skull, we somehow slipped into this evening's CHOMP!-less commercial break without me noticing it. Whoops!
The Only Street In Old-Timey Canton Because They Didn't Have The Budget To Dress More Than Four Storefronts. Dean and Eliot Ness sit side-by-side in a roadster, eyeing The God Of Time, who himself is seated in a nearby diner. Of course, Dean and Eliot Ness get to talking about their respective pasts, and I'm going to ignore Dean's side of the conversation completely, because he does little more than piss and moan about the sad, sorry life he's led up to this point, and WE'VE HEARD THAT ALREADY, SEVERAL GODDAMNED TIMES, so here's what you need to know about this show's version of Eliot Ness: The only reason he went after Al Capone is because Capone "had the best hooch in Chicago," and he didn't begin his hunting career until after his move to Cleveland, when he quite unexpectedly ran into a nest of vampires. As I mentioned in the recaplet, this bit of information likely explains The Cleveland Torso Murders, and as I also mentioned in the recaplet, The Cleveland Torso Murders would have been a far more entertaining piece of Ness-related history to exploit for this evening's entertainment, but they chose to go with Chronos, so here we are. And since I've veered off onto a tangent here, I might as well take this moment to note that Chronos is being portrayed by Jason Dohring, late of the excellent Veronica Mars, currently of the laughably abominable Ringer, and as that's all I have to say about him -- and can you tell I'm not exactly what you'd call a fan? -- let's skip ahead to the bit where...
...a pert blonde chippie exits Chronos's diner to pass directly in front of Eliot Ness's roadster, followed shortly by The God Of Time himself. Dean and Eliot Ness grab a couple of Tommy guns from the depths of Ness's very own Bottomless Trunk O' Demonic Destruction and begin to chase after the pair, and the camera goes all Original Recipe Batman with the crazy Dutch angles and such until Chronos catches up with the blonde in The Only Alleyway In Canton, Ohio, whereupon The God Of Time and his pert blonde chippie start in with a vigorous round of tonsil hockey. Dean and Eliot Ness get all Whaaaaaa? with the quizzical glances they toss in each other's direction because both had been convinced, of course, that the pert blonde chippie was going to be Chronos's third victim in this 1944 cluster, and once that's over with, we leap forward in time to...
...a little later that evening, where Ness learns from a conveniently passing hay farmer that the blonde is named "Lila Taylor," and that she lives in the nearby house just barely visible through the atmospheric wisps of fog hugging the ground out here on the near-rural outskirts of the city. Ness instructs Dean to head back to Miss Ezra's while he himself keeps his "peepers" on "the Sheik and the Sheba" and, after Dean hands Ness a rifle, Our Intrepid Hero obediently motors on back to...
...Miss Ezra's, where the no-bullshit broad in question presents him with a very pointy stick. Miss Ezra, you see, is this era's version of Bobby The All-Knowing, and she's managed to scrounge up the one thing that can kill Chronos dead: A "thousand-year-old olive branch carved by vestal virgins" that's been dipped in the blood of some creature that will remain nameless forever, because Miss Ezra's rather rudely decided to keep that piece of information to herself. "Wait," Dean frowns. "If I kill Chronos, I'm stuck here." "You just now realized, dumbass?" Miss Ezra shoots back, except perhaps for the very last bit of that sentence. Poor Dean's pretty, pretty face falls at that, so Miss Ezra kindly tries to cheer him up with a chipper, "Oh, come on -- 1944 ain't so bad." "Yeah," Dean mopes, "I could head over to Europe and punch Hitler in the neck." "Oh, there's lots of ways to pass the time, sugar," Miss Ezra croons, and here, the sassy old gal latches onto his lapels to drag him into a salacious smooch. Atta girl. "That's for luck," Miss Ezra coyly smiles, gently wiping traces of her lipstick from his pouty mouth with her thumb before adding, "'Cause I'm lucky." To his eternal credit, Dean does not look completely grossed out by this turn of events, and instead simply turns to grab his hat. Spotting a few pieces of unopened mail on Miss Ezra's shop counter, he quickly stumbles across a cunning plan, murmurs, " Back to the Future!" and spins back around to smirk, "I need to borrow some paper."
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Eliot Ness creeps up to Lila Taylor's front door, only to find himself jumped from behind by The God Of Time. A bout of manly fisticuffs ensues until Chronos punches Ness clear through the wall of Lila Taylor's gardening shed, and things are looking pretty grim for everyone's favorite former Treasury agent, indeed, until Lila unknowingly interrupts the riotous proceedings by sauntering out onto her porch to coo something schmoopy in Chronos's general direction. And while The God Of Time is thus so distracted by his apparent beloved, Ness beats a hasty and strategic retreat into this evening's CHOMP!-less commercial break.
We return from the break to find Lila futzing around with the grandfather clock in her tastefully appointed parlor, because Supernatural is nothing if not subtle. Chronos enters, orders her to pack a bag because they're blowing town, pronto, and if I cared at all about either one of these characters, I might have felt a tiny twinge of sadness when a woebegone expression flickered across The God Of Time's face at one point during this scene, but I don't, so whatever, and what the hell has Dashing El Deano been up to, anyway?
Oh, right: Ripping off Frequency. Yeah, yeah, he murmured " Back to the Future" when he first stumbled across his cunning plan to inform Sam of his whereabouts, but since they already violated that trilogy's relevant plot point at the end of "Frontierland," I guess they needed to rip off a different variation on the same theme for this evening's presentation. Though, you know, since they went to all that trouble last week to remind us that Western Courier still exists as a business entity on this show, I don't know why they didn't just have Dean send Sam an actual package, but whatever. Long story short, Dean invades the charming little two-story 1944 home that will eventually degenerate into This Week's Hovel and, after a lengthy bit of subterfuge and nonsense involving...something about termites I've already pretty much forgotten, Dean attacks the wainscoting in Sam's 2012 bedroom with a knife.
Cut to the present-day version of This Week's Hovel. Sheriff Jody enters the parlor with a tray full of carry-out snacks to find Sam passed out at the table, and she promptly orders him upstairs for some much-needed shuteye. Darling Sammy meekly obeys and, once he's sprawled out atop his sleeping bag in the hovel's only good bedroom, he realizes someone's scratched "SAM" into the bottom of the doorframe on the opposite side of the room. Dun-dun-DUN! Darling Sammy scrambles across the decrepit carpeting to pry the scratched-up square of woodwork from the wall, and he of course finds a yellowed piece of paper there waiting for him. So, yeah: Not so much with the Back to the Future, here. In any event, Sam elatedly leaps down the stairs to present the note to Sheriff Jody, and the most relevant bits of what Dean has to say in the letter are these: The date, which is November 5th, 1944, and the name of Chronos's beloved, which we already know. Now all they need to figure out is the actual hour and minute of Dean's promised confrontation with The God Of Time, and to get that, Sam and Sheriff Jody...
...track Lila Taylor down to a local retirement home, which is awfully convenient, but I haven't the strength to bitch about that now. Poor Lila's grown more than a bit senile over the years, but she'll never forget the events of November 5th, 1944, because that's "the night the clocks stopped." "The clocks stopped?" Sam dimly repeats. "Eleven thirty-four," Old Lila confirms, adding, "Every clock in the house." Old Lila then goes on to reveal that "Ethan" "choked the life out of" Dean that evening, which I mention only because of this: Does this assertion of hers mean that this episode's presenting us with two different timelines, one in which Dean dies in 1944, and the other in which he's -- spoiler! -- saved by Sam and Sheriff Jody's magical intervention? Or is senile Old Lila simply misremembering what actually happened that evening? The show never answers these questions during the course of this particular episode, but I'm throwing them out there on the off chance they might come into play later on in the season.
Oh, who am I trying to kid? They're never going to revisit this issue, ever.
Meanwhile, way, way back at the ranch, Dashing El Deano's just now returning to find that massive Ness-shaped hole Chronos punched through the wall of Young Lila's gardening shed a couple of scenes ago. Our Intrepid Hero cautiously tippy-toes his way up to Young Lila's porch, expertly picks the lock on her front door, and eases himself inside to take a quiet look around. Unfortunately, The God Of Time pops up from out of nowhere to pimp-slap his bow-legged ass clear across the first floor. Fortunately, Eliot Ness materializes at this very moment with Young Lila as his hostage, his loaded revolver pointed directly at her stomach. "Let's talk," Ness suggests. Please don't. Please -- please -- just kill something instead. I don't know why I bother with that request, though -- you know they're going to start yammering their idiot heads off at each other anyway the instant we return from this evening's final CHOMP!-less commercial break. Sigh.
This Week's Hovel. Sam and Sheriff Jody start prepping the summoning spell. Incidentally, the way these present-day scenes are frantically intercut from here on out with the final confrontation back in 1944 makes it seem like Sam and Sheriff Jody are under inordinate amounts of pressure to complete the spell in time to meet some urgent deadline, when really, they're not. At all. I mean, all they've got to do is smash up an hourglass in a bowl, scrawl "11:34" in blood on a piece of paper, and set fire to the whole thing while chanting some Craptin, and they could do that now, or a week from now, or a year from now, or whenever.
But I probably shouldn't waste precious minutes bitching about all that when I've got to listen to Jason Dohring deliver an absolutely interminable speech detailing how woefully misunderstood he is. Oh, wait a second -- I don't have to listen to Jason Dohring at all, do I? Hooray! Long story short, Chronos claims he sucks the glowy red life-force out of anonymous bums simply because it's the only way he can return to 1944 and his One True Love, Lila, and then he latches onto Dashing El Deano for whatever reason just as Young Lila's grandfather clock ticks over to the appropriate minute.
Back in This Week's Hovel, Sam and Sheriff Jody complete their spell.
Chronos and Dean -- and the pointy stick Dean got from Miss Ezra, natch -- vanish in a burst of screen-whitening demonic mojo that rips outwards to dump them both in...
...This Week's Hovel, where the pointy stick goes clattering across the floor to land at Sam's ginormous feet while Dean and Chronos break apart from each other, retching and staggering about for a bit from the stomach-churning effects of their precipitous lurch through time. Chronos recovers first, and yet another bout of manly fisticuffs ensues until Sam jams Miss Ezra's pointy stick right through the god's chest. And as Chronos drops to his knees on the hovel's floor, dying, he manages to rasp out this final little monologue as a parting Fuck You! to Our Intrepid Heroes: "You want to know your future? I know your future -- it's covered in thick, black ooze. It's everywhere -- they're everywhere! Enjoy oblivion! Muah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! [Dies.]" Our Intrepid Heroes shoot each other a matching pair of Looks Fraught With Significance at this, and then we finally cut to black.
week: A rerun of "The Girl Door," because Supernatural won't be airing another original episode until February 3rd. Have fun!
Demian has nothing further to add at this juncture. Raoul should have been back from bowling hours ago. You may reach the former at demian_twop@yahoo.com. The latter is an imaginary gay dragon on the Internet.