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Dean is happily nesting at his and Sam's new digs when Kevin calls to tell them he's finally translated the tablet. To close the gates of Hell, they have to complete three trials. Nobody seems especially worried that Kevin only has half a tablet. What if he got the translation wrong? What if it really says they have to complete thirty-three trials? Or maybe at the end, it says, "By the way, it was Opposite Day when I wrote this! Love, Metatron." Anyway, the first trial requires killing a hellhound and bathing in its blood. By an enormous stroke of luck, the Winchesters find some rich ranchers who made a crossroads deal and are due to pay up. All they have to do is wait for the hellhound to show up.
The problem is, they don't know who exactly made the deal. To thoroughly scope out the situation, Sam and Dean take on jobs as ranch hands. They soon discover that more than one person in the family made a deal. First the husband dies, then his sister-in-law when she shows up to pay her respects. The hellhounds are still on the prowl, waiting for a third victim, but who could it be? There's the old geezer who married a young lingerie model, the talentless daughter who became a pop star, and the decent, hard-working ranch manager named Ellie who has the hots for Dean. Naturally, it's Ellie, who traded her soul to cure her mother of Parkinson's.
Without discussion, Dean takes on the responsibility of completing the trials. When he finally explains his reasoning, it's depressing as hell. Basically, he feels it's a suicide mission. Sam is the smarter one who deserves to live and Dean is the "grunt" with nothing to live for. It's a good thing the show just got renewed for another season, because we need the extra time just to work out Dean's self-esteem issues. Anyway, when the hound comes for Ellie, it's Sam who ends up killing it. Since he's the one who killed it, he's the only one who can complete the trial. Dean wants to start over and find another hound so he can martyr himself, but Sam stands firm. He's going to close the gates himself. He says it's not a suicide mission, and that he plans to survive and that he's going to spread some of that optimism to Dean. That's probably going to be the most difficult trial of all. Stay tuned for the full recap.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!THEN! The Winchesters learned about crossroads demons. People made deals with these special demons in exchange for their souls, which were then collected by budget-friendly invisible beasties called hellhounds. Sam called them "demonic pit bulls," which is hardly fair to pit bulls. (Sadly, they do not show us the time that hellhounds dragged Dean to Hell. Remember how intense and suspenseful and emotional that was? Remember how horribly beautiful? It seems odd they wouldn't bring it up at all, doesn't it?) They also learned at some point that Crowley could control the hellhounds, which makes sense, since he was a crossroads demon himself, once upon a time. The show also wants to remind us of a bit of anti-demon hoodoo called "goofer dust," so that the brothers don't have to engage in endless exposition about it later on. A bit more recently, Kevin Tran holed himself up in Garth's house boat and got to work on translating his half of the demon tablet. The Winchesters, too, found themselves some new digs, in the form of the Men of Letters' abandoned (but well-appointed) hub. Larry Ganem, a former Man of Letters himself, called it the "supernatural mother lode," and spoke in awed tones of its amazing power.
NOW! Kevin Tran wakes to the sound of his alarm clock beeping. He's still on Garth's house boat, which is still not remotely a house and only barely a boat. Kevin's clock says it's 5:00 AM, which is kind of weird, given how bright it is outside. He rolls out of bed with a grunt and crosses the day off on his calendar. We're two weeks into January at this point. He pours himself a cup of coffee and sits down to stare at his tablet chunk. As usual, it warps and wobbles before his eyes, because God forbid God makes anything easy to read. Stumped, Kevin fries himself up a hotdog. He gets back to work, stares some more at the chunk, downs an aspirin with a swig of coffee. His stomach lining can be heard faintly but plaintively wailing. When he finally collapses into bed, it's 2:45 AM. The days continue like this, as the regular intake of aspirin and hotdogs increases. So, too, grow the stains on Kevin's shirt and the fuzz on his chin as he systematically ignores his own body. He jots down notes, pins them to a board, repeats the process again and again. The calendar is now filled with marks to the middle of February. Every morning seems depressingly the same until, at last, he stands before his board full of notes and has an epiphany. "Holy crap," he whispers, nearly giddy with relief. "Holy crap!" Feeling a spot of wetness at his nostril, he reaches up and touches blood. He sways on his feet and drops to the floor. The morning, Kevin still lies bleeding and unconscious, oblivious to the insistent droning of his alarm. Supernatural!
We go now to the hub, where Dean is settling into his new bedroom. He's already amassed a tidy collection of vinyl records. Some viewers might wonder where he's been keeping these in the already crowded Impala, but the implication seems to be that he has recently gone shopping. He takes his latest purchase from its paper bag with no small amount of love, for it is Led Zeppelin's debut album. Why vinyl instead of CDs or music downloads? Because this is supposed to be a demonstration of some measure of permanence. Vinyl is something that requires care. You can't just toss old records into the back of your car where they might warp from the heat, or become irreparably damaged from sharing close quarters with assorted knives and swords. To invest in a proper record collection means you have some expectation of being able to care for it. It means you're optimistic to some degree, which is quite a feat for Dean Winchester.
With the same tenderness he showed his new old record, he straightens a shotgun he's displayed on his wall. For the final decorating touch, he takes a small photo from his wallet. "Hey, Mom," he says. It is dog-eared, faded and scuffed, but it takes pride of place under the lamp on his desk, between the old typewriter and cache of celluloid pens. "Wow," Sam says from the doorway. "Not bad." Dean is just about bursting with pride. "'Not bad'? I haven't had my own room in... ever." He's even thrilled about his new mattress: "Memory foam! It remembers me." As he then goes on about how clean his new room is compared to the motels he's known up until now, Sam unwraps a stick of gum. He tosses the wrapper towards a wastebasket and misses. When he makes no move to clean up after himself, Dean is aghast. "Really?" He looks at Sam like he just peed on the floor. Sam, duly chastened, removes his litter from the floor. "I'm gonna go fix us some grub," Dean grumps. Once Sam is alone, he has his first real look at the room. He sees the photo, the obvious care that went into the weaponry displays, the immaculately made bed with pillow placed just so. He smiles, seeming to understand the significance of it all.
Later, Sam is reading in the library Dean walks in wearing surprisingly few shirts. He's almost unrecognizable without a four or five hobos' worth of outerwear. "Whatcha reading?" he asks. "Sort of everything," Sam says. "Well, good," Dean says. "Somebody's gonna have to dig through all this, and it ain't gonna be me." Now watch, that'll be exactly what ends up happening. Dean slides a delicious-looking burger in front of baby bro. Sam looks down at the glossy, eggy bun, the fresh tomatoes, the ooey melty cheese. "You made these?" he asks, incredulous. "We have a real kitchen now," Dean says. "I'm nesting, okay?" Sam takes a bite and finds, to his amazement, that it's as tasty as it looks. "You're welcome," Dean says. Before he can dig into his own meal, his phone rings. It's Kevin, who manages a weak "come quick" before dropping the phone. Thus called, the Winchesters rush off to the rescue, but not before Sam goes back for his burger.
So they drive for untold hours to reach Garth's "house boat," making it seem even more glaringly weird that they didn't bring Kevin to the hub weeks ago. They skulk around, guns drawn, and find the place ominously silent. Suddenly, something crashes behind a closed door. Dean pushes it open and finds Kevin retching into the toilet. "Found him," Dean says. Sam joins him and they watch Kevin vomiting for a while.
After Kevin is done evacuating his innards, he sits down to tend to his still-bleeding nose. "You look like hammered crap," Dean says. Kevin says he's been getting nosebleeds and headaches, and may have suffered a small stroke. "But it was worth it," he says. "I figured out how to close the gates of Hell." He gives them a woozy smile. "Come here, you smelly sonofabitch," Dean says, scooping him up off the floor for a big hug. Season 8 will forever be known as the Season of Dean Hugging. Kevin is too stinky to hold onto for long, though, so they move on to the matter at hand.
Kevin says he's found the spell they need. "It's just a few words of Enochian, but the spell has to be spoken after you finish each of the three trials," he says. "Trials like Law & Order?" asks Suddenly Stupid Sammy. "More like Hercules," Kevin tells him. He goes on: "The tablet says whosoever chooses to undertake these tasks should fear not danger, nor death, nor a word I think means 'getting your spine ripped out through your mouth for all eternity.'" The Winchesters aren't too fazed by this possibility, since they go through something like it at least once a season. Kevin also says that God designed these tests. Somebody should probably ask why God would make it so difficult to close the gates. Like, is there some even more horrible thing that happens if you close them? Because it seems like God would want to make it pretty easy, right? There has to be some horrible catch, of which the Winchesters should be highly suspicious. Alas, they seem to readily accept Kevin's "God works in mysterious ways" explanation.
Kevin describes the only trial he's been able to translate so far: "You've got to kill a hound of Hell and bathe in its blood." Sam is horrified. Dean is totally game. "Hey, if this means icing all demons, I got no problem gutting some devil dog and letting Calgon take me away!" He thinks it'll be easy to find one, since they "only" have to track down someone who made a crossroads deal 10 years ago. He tasks Sam with getting online for the search while he goes on a supply run for goofer dust and something besides hotdogs. Or, as Dean eloquently describes them, "ground-up hooves and pigs' anuses." His inner chef is really coming to the fore.
While Dean is off doing that, Kevin takes the opportunity to shower off the weeks and weeks of accumulated grime. He's eager to get right back to work, but Sam tells him to slow down. "Get some shuteye, take a day off," he says. Perhaps he could find a local group of Moon-Door fans and indulge in a day of LARPing. Kevin's not down with the vacay. Even though he hates the "house boat," he can't leave because demons are after him. Again, why not just take him to the hub? Not that I particularly want to see Kevin every episode, but they should at least address the possibility. "I just... I need this to be over," he says. Sam says he understands. "But trust me on this -- this whole saving the world thing? It's a marathon, not a sprint." Or, more precisely, it's a slow stroll for most of the season and then a mad dash toward the end.
Dean returns with supplies. While Kevin was showering, Sam was apparently hard at work on the computer. His skills paid off and he's found a likely candidate in the Cassity family from Idaho. They were small-time farmers, he explains, who found oil on their land where geologists had previously turned up nothing. As they're leaving, Dean tells Kevin to call if he finds anything else about the hellhounds: "Because between the claws and the teeth and the whole invisibility thing, those bitches can be... real bitches." He says it so lightly, too, as one might discuss a grumpy in-law, rather than a monster with which one is horrifically and fatally familiar. As a parting gift, he offers Kevin bottles of headache pills and pep pills. This will probably come back to bite somebody on the thickly clothed ass at some point.
They pull up outside the gorgeous and sprawling Cassity Farms, where Dean reminds Sam to keep an eye out for anybody who seems to be hallucinating. Because that's what people do when hellhounds are after them. Sam wouldn't remember this from the time his own brother was hunted down by hellhounds. Sigh. This show, sometimes. They've also apparently not discussed their plans in the hours and hours they've spent driving. "And if we find someone?" Sam asks. Dean waggles his demon knife and says, "You get 'em clear, I spike Fido, the crowd goes wild."
"Hey, pal, who runs this joint?" Dean asks a pair of legs sticking out from under a tractor. He and Sam both seem a bit surprised when the mechanic turns out to be a woman. "You're looking at her," she says. She clarifies that she doesn't own the place, but manages it. She assumes they're there for the job that conveniently needs filling. Sam and Dean seem surprised by their good luck, like what was their cover story going to be had this not dropped into their laps? A bearded man with ruddy cheeks joins them. "Ellie, who've we got here?" he asks the manager. The brothers introduce themselves and shake hands. The man is Carl Granville, whose wife owns the farm. "I'm just one of those trophy husbands," he jokes, patting his beer belly. Carl tells Ellie to hire the two strangers, based on... what? Who knows?
Ellie shows them to their room, which looks more or less like any number of rooms the Winchesters have occupied over the years. Dean, however, has developed a taste for finer things as of late. "I miss my room," he grumbles.
For their first job, the boys are sent off to clean the Augean stables. Sorry, no -- make that the Cassity stables. While they're scooping horse poop, they overhear Ellie arguing with a lady in fancy riding clothes. "Organic food is better for the cattle," Ellie says. "My land, my animals, my money, my way," says the fancy lady. "End of story!" She flounces off in a huff. Ellie joins the Winchesters. "She's a real piece of work, huh?" Dean says. Ellie sighs. "Alice Cassity is a piece of something, all right." After Ellie leaves, Sam and Dean discuss their crossroads options. Dean dismisses Ellie because she's "the help," and Sam says Carl doesn't seem the type. They both settle on Alice as being their likely candidate.
That night, Alice and Carl are dining al fresco when they hear a howling in the distance. The horses neigh nervously. When Alice leaves to check on them, the Winchesters follow close behind. Meanwhile, Carl is all by himself when the hellhounds come to rip him to shreds. Poor Carl. It looks like he didn't even get to finish his appetizer.
Soon after, the sheriff arrives to look over the scene of destruction. For some reason, nobody wonders if the two, big, strapping drifters they just hired had anything to do with Carl's untimely demise. The sheriff thinks it was wolves, but Ellie disagrees. The Winchesters should probably wonder why she disagrees, but they don't. They're too busy kicking themselves for following the wrong lead.
Dean stomps off to pack up their things while Sam heads for the stables. Alice is brushing one of her horses. "Are you okay, Ms. Cassity?" Sam asks. "I really am," she says, a bit confused. "And I know I shouldn't be, because I loved Carl. I think. I just can't remember why." Wheels start turning in Sam's head. He presses, gently, for more information. Alice says she knew Carl her whole life, used to make fun of him in school. Then, suddenly, on Valentine's Day of 2003, she fell in love with him at a party. "It was like I was seeing him for the first time," she says.
When Sam makes his way to their room, he finds Dean hatching a plan to summon a crossroads demon himself. Sam points out that Crowley would find out. "That's not a plan, Dean -- that's suicide." He suggests they stick around for a while. Carl made a deal for Alice, he says, not for oil. Chances are a demon signed up someone else in the family, too. "Look, Dean, this family's rich because someone booked a one-way ticket downstairs," Sam says. "As of tomorrow, they're all gonna be right here." Dean acts like he's a little bit annoyed not to be killing himself just yet, but agrees to go along with Sam's plan. For now.
The day, Ellie helpfully narrates the arrival of the Cassity clan, so the brothers and the audience are in the know. There's Noah, an old geezer who thinks he's going to a Dallas theme party as J.R. Noah has just married a young lingerie model, whom he has not brought with him. Then there's daughter Cindy, wearing a permanent scowl and chincy rabbit fur jacket. She had a hit song on the country charts a few years ago, then started hitting the bottle. "Her last album was holiday songs for dogs," Ellie says. She sarcastically names her favorites, and I would list them for you, if I could understand what she was saying here. Finally, there's Margot, the baby of the family. "She ran away just before Alice and Carl tied the knot," Ellie says. She barely looks 20, so either she was very precocious, or looks super young for her age. As the Cassity family head inside, Ellie explains Sam and Dean's jobs for the night. One of them will be serving dinner and drinks, while the other will be manning the grill. Wouldn't they have other employees to do this? Would you want the guy who was just elbow-deep in horse poop to cook your food?
Dean gets the grill. All those years of setting corpses ablaze has really paid off. "Impressed?" he asks when Ellie comes by to check on him. "I do like a man who can handle his meat," Ellie says. Dean doesn't even know what to say to that.
Inside, Sam is dealing with a different kind of fire. The Cassitys are all nonstop bickering and being awful to each other. Cindy blabs that little Margot and Carl slept together. This is news to Carl's widow. Margot insists it was before Cindy and Carl got together, which doesn't seem possible (or at least legal) given how young she looks. Somehow, the conversation eventually turns friendlier. Perhaps the copious amount of wine they've been drinking has finally kicked in. "I can't remember the last time we all sat down to have a meal together," Alice says. "It was back at the old crappy house," Cindy says, "when Daddy invited that traveling salesman to dinner." They fish around in their memories for his name and come up with: "Crowley." Sam overhears this. His face goes, "Oh, shit!"
He rushes outside to tell Dean the news. They figure it's beneath the King of Hell to collect on his old deals, and that he's just sent the hounds in his place. Sam has no idea who might have signed over their souls that night ten years ago. With impeccable timing, Kevin calls to tell them he's just discovered something on the tablet. He reads: "The dire creatures may be seen only by the damned, or through an object scorched with holy fire." Luckily, they still have some holy oil in the Impala's trunk. Kevin suggests they use a pair of glasses. Sam reminds him to get some sleep, but Kevin is soon downing pep pills and getting back to work.
While Dean heads off to find some glasses, Sam goes back to the Cassity family dysfunction. It's not long before he notices Noah and Margot walking by with guns in hand. He chases after them. "Whoa, where are you going?" he asks. "Wherever I damned well please," Noah slurs. Both he and Margot seem more than a little drunk. They swear vengeance on the wolf that killed Carl. "I'll come with you," Sam says. Noah narrows his eyes at him. "You know anything about hunting, boy?" Sam's like, "Um, yeah, a little bit." At her father's urging, Margot gives Sam her gun. Together, they all head off into the woods, even though it would probably be more sensible for Sam to force them back inside. He's eight feet tall, he has a gun. Who would argue with him if he really got insistent?
Meanwhile, Dean pours a little holy oil on the driveway, lights it and waves two pairs of glasses over the flames. Somehow, even the thickest, dorkiest glasses are crazy flattering on him. Before he can give them a proper test run, Ellie finds him. "I like it," she says. "The whole Clark Kent look." He quickly takes off the specs. Ellie seems a little bit drunk herself, or maybe she's just woozy from the proximity. She's runs her hands all over Dean's chest. "I think you're really hot," she says. "You wanna go to my room and... have sex?" Dean seems utterly confused. "What?" Ellie says she doesn't usually do this. "I guess I'm feeling my oats," she says, even though it sounds like, "I guess I'm filling my Os." Dean, with some difficulty, turns her down. Ellie backs off, embarrassed. Dean asks for a rain check. He even waggles his brows at her, but no dice. "This is one night only," she says. She walks away, looking very sad, as one might after losing out on nookie with Dean.
Sam and the two Cassitys head deeper and deeper into the woods. Sam hears something off to one side and goes to investigate. He's stalking, stalking... holding his breath. Suddenly there's a gun in his face. "Watch yourself, boy," says Noah. Sam didn't even see this old coot who almost pulled a Dick Cheney on him, yet he somehow expected to find an invisible hellhound. Whatever. It's just an excuse to leave Margot alone so that it's a shock when they later find her being ripped to shreds.
Sam and Dean manage to gather the surviving Cassitys back at the house. By now, they've decided to drop the ranch hand act. Dean explains about the hellhounds. "When you sell your soul to a demon, they're the ones that come to rip it out of you." They all gape at him. "A demon?" Alice asks. Dean tells them about their old dinner guest, Crowley. The Cassitys think Dean is nuts. Nobody will admit to selling a soul that night, so Sam sets about spreading goofer dust all around the entrances to keep the hounds out. This would be the perfect time for Dean to share his personal experience with the hounds and let them know exactly what lies in store for them because he's lived it and died it. But he doesn't. Instead, his argument is about how he's their best chance of safety.
With the dust down and the Cassity family handcuffed to various pieces of furniture, Sam explains about the hallucinations they might experience. "The handcuffs are so you won't hurt yourselves," he says. "And," Dean adds, "if one of you starts bugging out, we know who's on tap to become puppy chow!" He tells Sam to stay behind while he heads off to the hunt. Sam's not down with that. "You need backup," he says. "I need you to be safe, Sam," Dean says. He reminds Sam of their battles with Yellow Eyes, Lucifer, Dick Roman. "We both know where this ends," he says. Yeah, with somebody dead in May, and then alive in September or October. But Dean, unlike the viewer, doesn't take it for granted that they always survive. "So, you just decided it's gonna be you?" Sam asks. "I'm a grunt," Dean says. "You're not. You've always been the brains of this operation." Sam tries to interrupt, but Dean goes on. He says that Sam sees a way out, a light at the end of the tunnel. Dean doesn't see it. Dean can't see the light beyond the black hole that is his self-esteem. He sees a bloody end for himself and doesn't even seem sad about it. Just like that, his budding grasp on permanence is gone and he grabs, instead, for the first opportunity to throw himself into the nearest sacrificial volcano. He wants Sam to have a normal life. "You, with a wife and kids and grandkids, living 'til you're fat and bald and chugging Viagra. That is my perfect ending, and it's the only one that I'm gonna get." He warns Sam against following him by threatening to shoot him in the leg. Not that Sam could budge from under the five metric tons of Dean-shaped despair, even if he wanted to.
While Dean marches off to face his doom, Sam is left with the even more horrible prospect of dealing with the Cassitys. They are still, even after all the recent deaths, bickering over trivial matters. Finally, somewhere in all their squabbling, it comes out that Margot was the one who wished for oil. She thought the family would be happier if they were rich.
Dean gets sidetracked by the strains of "I Touch Myself" coming from the stables. Naughty horses! He follows the music to Ellie's room and finds her drunk-dancing alone. He turns off the music. "Are you okay?" he asks. "I'm good," she says. "I bet you're great." She's all up on him, kissing him. He manages to tear himself away and lock herself inside her room. "This is gonna sound crazy, but there is something evil out there," he says. "I know. It's coming for me," she says.
Inside the house, it's still all bicker, bicker, bicker. At this point, even Sam has to be kind of hoping the hellhound takes them all out. With his own pair of special glasses on, he peers out the window. A dog-shaped blob of smoke creeps around outside. While Sam's back is turned, Alice slips out of her cuffs and makes a run for it. Sam chases after her and catches her as she reaches her car. The hound snarls somewhere nearby. Sam pushes her back toward the house for her own safety.
Ellie tells Dean the story of how she came to make a deal with Crowley. She was a kid, living with her mother who worked for the Cassitys. On the night of that dinner party, Crowley found her and asked if she had a wish. "My mom, she had Parkinson's," she says. "Early stages, but I know how that story would end. So I took the deal." Her mother is alive and well in Phoenix. "Stupid move, Ellie," Dean says. "I did it for my mom, Dean," she says. "What would you do for your mom?" So Dean tells her all about the time he did the same thing for his brother and it almost led to the annihilation of the human race. Actually, he doesn't say any of that. But he does found out that Crowley didn't divulge a lot of important details when he made his deal with Ellie. Dean should totally try to get the deal nullified on those grounds, but these are Herculean trials, not Law & Order trials, as we've established.
A hound howls nearby. When Ellie looks to Dean for reassurance, the face staring back at her is monstrous. Dean's eyes are milky white, his flesh rotting and gray. He's got a nice frosting job going on with his hair, though. Ellie backs away. "Ellie, whatever you're seeing, it's not real," he says. "It means the hellhound is close." He draws a circle of goofer dust and instructs her to stay inside it.
He heads into the barn to confront the hound. With his glasses on, he can see its amorphous outline. "Ah, so you're Crowley's bitch. I guess pets really do look like their owners!" Crowley really looks more like a Boston terrier. He keeps taunting the hound, trying to get it to come at him. Somebody screams in the distance. Dean is distracted just enough for the hound to take a swipe at him and throw him across the floor. The knife goes one way, his glasses another. Defenseless, blind and bleeding, Dean can only lie there as the hound's smoky breath signals its approach. Ever so luckily, Sam is there to shoot the beast. It leaves Dean and lunges for Sam. Sam dives for Dean's fallen knife and stabs the hound in the throat as it looms over him. Sam is doused -- or bathed by its black, tarry blood. Dean, who's been struggling to prop himself up this whole time, finally collapses to the ground.
Later, Ellie patches up Dean's wound. She advises him to go to a hospital, but he scoffs at the very idea. He crushes cars with his body and doesn't even break out the Bengay. Their plan is to give Ellie a hex bag and send her on her way. "If Crowley can't find you, he can't sic another mutt on you," Dean says. That... doesn't seem likely. "So I'm not going to Hell?" she asks. "Not on my watch," he says. After she leaves to give the brothers some privacy, Sam points out that Ellie's soul is still earmarked for Hell. Dean thinks shutting the gates will take care of all that. So, the gates not only keep demons in, but keep souls out? But what about the souls that really belong there? Do they go to Heaven, or end up hanging out on Earth? Maybe that's the downside mentioned on the other half of the tablet.
But back to the matter at hand: Dean has a bowl of hellhound blood and the spell ready to go. You'd think a guy would take off his many shirts in preparation for bathing in something, but you'd be wrong! "The spell's not gonna work for you," Sam says. Dean ignores him and recites the four Enochian words that comprise the spell. Nothing happens. Maybe he should try the shirt thing. "Doesn't matter," he says. "We'll track down another hellhound, and I'll kill it." But Sam's already made up his mind to finish this trial, and the two. "I wanna slam Hell shut, too, but I want to survive it," he says. "I wanna live, and so should you." He reminds Dean that he has friends, even though it wasn't all that long ago that he was pointing out just the opposite. Maybe he doesn't know Dean broke up with Benny. "You were right, okay? I see light at the end of this tunnel, and I'm sorry you don't. But it's there, and if you come with me, I can take you to it." Furthermore, he doesn't think Dean is a grunt, but a genius. "You're the best damn hunter I have ever seen. Better than me, better than Dad. I believe in you, Dean, so please, please believe in me, too." I'd argue that it's not about Dean not believing in Sam, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel that is this episode, and I'm gonna keep aiming for it. Sad music plays. Sam and Dean give each other long, intense, pleading stares. Finally, Dean relents and hands over the spell.
Sam, still doused in black blood, recites the spell. He makes a face like something just goosed him. He falls to the floor, grunting and panting. His right arm glows from the inside. His veins stand out in silhouette. "Sammy? You okay?" Dean asks behind him. The glow dissipates. Sam catches his breath and squeezes his hand into a fist. He stands back up. "I'm good, I'm okay," he says. "I can do this." Dean looks very worried. Maybe he's worried that Sam is wrong, or maybe he's even more worried that Sam is right.
So, what do you think? Is Sam going to end up trapped in Hell as part of closing the gates? Is Dean going to spend the summer hiatus looking for him? Or perhaps when Sam inevitably comes back, Dean can remind him that they don't look for each other when they go missing. How does this all tie in with the Nazis and Naomi and the other side plots of the season? Or does it?
Tippi Blevins has been possessed by a recapping demon. Send holy water to b_tippi@yahoo.com, or chant spells at her on Twitter: @TippiB.