Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: C | 5 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT A Steaming Pile of Cacao
By Tippi Blevins | Season 8 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.17.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.After realizing that they have no leads on God's Littlest Prophet, the Winchesters decide to take on a case that appears to involve ritual human sacrifice. All the victims' hearts have been removed without the modern convenience of a scalpel. We the viewers are privy to just how this done, thanks to an opening scene where a pudgy jogger outstrips a seemingly fitter one, and then rips out Mr. Health & Fitness's heart with his bare hand. Another sacrifice happens in another town, and then another. The Winchesters recognize a pattern because the same thing happened just six months earlier.
Sam and Dean track down another murder, this one committed by a cop who received an eye transplant. Unlike the other murderers, the act has left him a babbling, guilt-ridden mess. He nonstop babbles a chant that goes, "blah blah blah Cacao blah blah." Sam sends an audio file to an old friend who helped them with that Amazon warrior gig they had last season. Turns out that (at least on this show) Cacao was the ancient Maya god of sports and corn. After a brief chat with a pretty doctor lady, Dean finds out that the organ donor in all the cases thus far was a football hero named Brick Holmes.
They visit Brick's widow and learn that Brick signed an organ donor card during some kind of promotional event, then drove himself off a bridge sometime later. The Winchesters think the widow Eleanor is hiding something. Indeed, the young woman who received Brick's heart has moved in with her. This woman, named Randa, kills a man outside the strip club where she works and proceeds to tear out and then chow down on his heart.
Sam and Dean sneak into the Holmes house when Eleanor is away and discover that Brick has had many different identities through the years, all of them sports heroes. They also discover that Eleanor is actually Brick's wife, Betsy. When confronted, Betsy confesses the truth: Brick was a Mayan sports hero 1000 years ago and made a deal with Cacao to be young and strong forever. All it took was eating a human heart twice a year. Unable to live with himself any longer, he drove off the bridge to end it all. It didn't quite work and his organs survived for transplantation. Betsy tells the brothers that all they have to do is kill the heart and the rest of the donated body parts will die. This culminates in a battle between Randa and Dean, as well as most of the other organ recipients who have showed up to help. Dean stabs Randa in the heart and she and all the rest of her organ buddies drop dead.
While all this is going on, Dean and Sam realize they're not on the same page as far as hunting goes. Dean is thrilled to be hunting with his brother again, or at least he tries to seem that way. Sam, on the other hand, wants a normal life and has an odd, too-bright flashback to a date with Amelia. Stay tuned for the full recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!THEN! Sam gave up hunting so that he could shack up with a rude lady vet named Amelia. The Winchesters met a Professor Morrison who helped them out on that Amazon warrior gig from last season. Kevin Tran, God's Littlest Prophet, disappeared after they lost the Word of God tablet to Crowley. Dean enjoyed stabbing monsters. Like, a lot. I have no idea why they even bother showing these, because they cover all the same stuff in excruciating exposition later.
NOW! Minneapolis, Minnesota. Night. The episode gets off to a promising start as the camera swoops down over a jogging trail and focuses on a lone jogger. He's young, trim and quite obviously doomed. Nothing good ever happens to people who go jogging alone on a TV show. He hears rapid footsteps behind him, glances over his shoulder and looks surprised to see a pudgy, middle-aged runner gaining on him. For a few moments, they run side by side, with the pudgy runner flashing triumphant smiles. If they were in cars, they would be gunning their engines, daring each other to a race. The pudgy runner leaves the thinner guy in his dust. When he finally catches up to the pudgy runner, he graciously admits defeat. "Congratulations! You're fast." Huffing and puffing, he extends his hand. "I do a lot of cardio," says his triumphant opponent, not even breathing hard after his run. He pulls back his arm as if he's going to punch the thin jogger, but no! He plunges his hand into the thin jogger's chest and rips out his heart. As he crumples to the ground, the thin jogger's last thought is of all the carbs he denied himself. The title card flames onto the screen.
Dean and Sam stroll around a farmers' market somewhere sunny and green... or at least sunnier and greener than the places they usually find themselves. Sam chows down on organic apples and buys a bag of tomatoes while Dean checks the news on his phone. Apparently there's a lot to catch up on: "Wow, a guy goes to Purgatory for a year and all hell breaks loose." Yeah, how do you like them apples, Sam. Dean is nearly giddy to learn of the heartless jogger in Minneapolis, and even more so when he pulls up another article from six months earlier detailing a similar incident, also in Minneapolis. "I mean, that's gotta be a ritual," Dean says, "or at least some sort of heart-sucking, possessed, satanic, crack whore bat." Sam hears this word salad coming out of Dean and frowns. "What?" Dean pushes through to the important stuff, namely that it's a case and he thinks they should get back to their regular work. Sam just wants to concentrate on finding Kevin and the demon tablet. It's like back in the early days when he wanted to concentrate on finding the demon that killed Jess and Dean had to convince him they could do both. Dean points out that they don't have any leads on the Kevin front. He's been so engrossed in his reading that he hasn't noticed until now that they're at the farmers' market. He looks around like it's the strangest place he's ever seen, and that's something for a guy who's been to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. He gives Sam an accusatory look. "What? I had a year off," Sam says in his defense. "I took the time to enjoy the good things." Dean glares at him. "While avoiding doing what we actually do?" Apparently they've had some version of this conversation even more than we've been privy to, because Sam's already tired of it and makes a series of pissy faces while Dean talks. "We'll find Kevin," Dean says, "but in the meantime, do we ignore stuff like this or are innocent people supposed to die so you can shop for produce?" Sam looks like that last bite of apple suddenly turned bitter.