It’s week four of the Supernatural rewatch, and superfans? Things are getting gross. Not like the way you feel after you read THAT kind of Jezebel article, and spend the rest of the day side-eying your fellow commuters. The fun kind of gross, where you watch the TV through your fingers and make noises so squeaky your roommates start laying rat traps.
Let’s toast to gore!
THE OFFICIAL FYA SUPERNATURAL DRINKING GAME
Take a drink every time:
• Dean or Sam flashes a badge and passes for federal law enforcement despite being clad in denim and/or flannel
• A demon possesses some hapless schmuck
• The camera gives tight artistic focus to blood being splattered
• Dean enjoys a cheeseburger crams his face full of junk food
• Sam purses his lips passive aggressively
• Either brother picks a lock
• Someone employs a Titan of Classic Rock as an alias
• The Glorious and Faithful Impala is damaged in the line of duty
1x6: Skin
Monster of the Week: Shapeshifter
This episode opens on a young woman in the direst of circumstances. She’s bloodied, tied to a chair and being menaced by a shadowy brute with a wicked-looking curved knife. Before he can cut her again, a SWAT team breaks in, following the trail of bloody handprints to the victim who tells them which direction her assailant fled. Officers catch the brute before he can climb out the window. When he turns?
Twist!
How did this shocking turn of events come to pass? Flash back to a week ago, when Sam gets an email from a college buddy. His friend has been arrested for the murder of his girlfriend. Sam tells Dean to saddle up the Glorious and Faithful Impala so they might ride in to save the day. Dean says it’s not really their type of job. Sammy purses his lips, preparing himself for a passive-aggressive smackdown.
Next thing you know, the boys are at buddy’s house. His sister, who is an adult despite Sam calling her “Lil’ Becky,” greets them. She says her brother couldn’t have committed the murder because he was with her at the time. Unfortunately, a video starring a guy who looks exactly like him puts him at the scene of the crime. When the boys view the video, they see Sam’s buddy’s eyes turn creepily silver in direct light. Dean suggests that perhaps the thing on the video is some sort of “doppelganger.” Which can mean only one thing: Dean Winchester is an L.J. Smith fan, darlings. Didn’t we always secretly know?
“Stow it, Sam! I just got to the part where Elena and Stefan kiss for the first time.”
Meanwhile, the jerk walking around in Sam’s buddy’s skin (and somehow managing to look like a Bizarro version of himself) sits at a café, creepily stalking a happy couple, who he eventually attacks, torturing the wife and framing the husband.
That goatee, tho.
Dean and Sam discover the shapeshifter is living in the sewer, amongst many piles of fleshy goo that the creature molts after changing identities. They are thoroughly grossed out and split up to find the thing. Which of course leads directly to Sam getting captured. The shifter has taken his brother’s form. Not!Dean torments a tied-up Sammy, saying he also absorbed Dean’s feelings and memories. After a forced family therapy session, the wicked beast runs off to hurt Lil’ Becky.
And we’re back to the opening scene! Not!Dean manages to escape the SWAT team into the sewer, and, in a rage, molts in the hands-down ickiest moment I’ve ever seen on basic cable (including American Horror Story AND Two and a Half Men). Teeth fall out, flesh is ripped and gore is flung around like a senator’s name at a Hill party. It is REVOLTING.
Yet somehow also delightful. Just be thankful I didn’t go with a gif.
The boys find one another. But all’s not well. Dean’s wanted for murder, with a police sketch out on the evening news. He protests it’s not a good picture (priorities, darling) and laments that when acting as him, the shapeshifter drove the Glorious and Faithful Impala (priorities, Actually? I agree. This is a shame).
Circumstance separates our heroes (again) and Sam is captured by the shifter (again). He and Not!Dean engage in invigorating fisticuffs until the Real Dean shows up and puts two bullets in the thing’s chest.
Brotherly Angst Quotient: Freakish
When seeing Sam going through his Blackberry emails with a stylus, Dean taunts him, not for the unforgivably dorky tech, but for thinking he can maintain relationships with his college friends. Sam admits he has to lie to his friends to keep them, and it weighs on him.
And now for a very special look inside our more stoic Winchester’s head. The shapeshifter can see Dean’s thoughts. He’s jealous Sam got to go to college, have friends, have a life, while he was stuck in service to Papa Winchester, a man who rewarded that loyalty by walking out on him. All his hard-edged bravado is just that, and on the inside he’s a gooey mess of abandonment issues.
When the boys are reunited, Sam tries to make Dean’s gooey-center feel better by confessing he never fit in at college. But it’s okay that they’re freaks (or at least freakishly hot, amirite) because they aren’t alone.
Aw. What’s that I feel? A song about friendship coming on? Not yet, darlings. BUT…not anytime soon, really.
Only 194 episodes left to go!
Where in the World is Papa Winchester?: Anywhere but here.
How Drunk Are We?: I’m awarding infinite points for the loving rendering of blood and gore in the “Not!Dean peels off his own body parts” scene. Go ahead and drink whatever you have on hand. I promise it still won’t be enough.
Soundtrack: “Good Deal” by Mommy and Daddy.
The Quotable Winchesters: “What do you think this is, Hooters?” Lil’ Becky for the win with her response to Sam’s request that she bring he and Dean beers and also make them sandwiches (Sam, no).
Moment Most Likely to Inspire Troubling Fan-Fic: When this rewatch project began, I thought that the Wincest craze sweeping the fan nation might be hard to support in the canon. That I’d have trouble finding a good example each week.
I was mistaken.
Notable Cameo: None to speak of this week.
1x7: Hook Man
Monster of the Week: Hook Man
We begin with a good buttoned-up girl asking her slutty bon vivant sorority sister for advice on a date outfit. They come up with a red velvet number and the girl skips away to meet her boy. He takes her parking, and, not interested in her protestations regarding necking, begins to slobber all over her. But before things can get too SVU, a horrible metallic screech sounds outside. The boy goes to check on it. An invisible hand slashes a gash in the car’s door and suddenly, the boy is gone. The good girl runs out of the car instead of driving away, presumably because she is dumb. She sees her dead date hung over the car.
I’m not saying I believe in vigilante hook-based justice. But we should always respect our dates’ personal boundaries.
She lives, somehow, and Sam and Dean are on the case, posing as transfer students at her university. After joining the local frat, they go to church, where the survivor’s dad is the reverend, to meet her. Sam gets her to talk about what happens, and based on that, the boys are thinking the urban legend Hook Man might be responsible. But who was he, and more importantly, where is he buried? To the library! A lady librarian is only too happy to retrieve dust-covered file boxes for them. I feel you, girl. And I’m not the only one.
Dean likes the librarian type? Be still, my nerdy heart.
They discover Hook Man was an old-timey preacher arrested for murdering a bunch of prostitutes back in the day. He’s been stalking the same church for years, getting other preachers arrested for similar crimes they swear they didn’t commit. He’s currently fixated on the Reverend and his daughter.
The Winchesters go ghost-hunting with rock salt shotguns. Why rock salt, you ask? It may not kill a ghost, but it will sure slow him down.
“Ain’t nobody a badass with a double dose of rock salt that deep in their tits.”
Meanwhile, the girl comes home late to find her roommate sleeping. The next morning when she wakes, the roommate has been horribly murdered in her bed. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?” is painted on the wall. Dean is psyched to investigate the crime scene, “Dude, sorority girls! Think we’ll get to see a naked pillow fight?”
They do not.
Later, the boys split up, Sam protecting the Reverend’s daughter while Dean burns Hook Man’s bones. The girl is very pleased with her protection detail.
Up top, preacher’s daughter.
Her father comes out to yell at her for making out on the lawn, and in true teenage fashion, she tells him she’ll do what she damn well pleases because she is a GROWN-UP, DAMMIT. Sick of their family drama, Hook Man appears behind the reverend, stabbing him in the neck. Though Dean burned the bones, he neglected to burn the hook, which had been donated at the time of his death to the church and melted down for its silver.
The boys race through the church, burning everything silver while Hook Man stalks them. Just as the ghost is about to slash Sam and the girl into pieces, Dean throws the right object into the furnace. Hook man’s hook melts rather…flaccidly. He flames out in a special effect that, well, let’s just assume the show already spent their effects budget on the previous episode.
You deserved better, Hook Man.
Brotherly Angst Quotient: Low.
Sam has a moment of Jess-guilt that requires him to stop making out with the reverend’s daughter, but this week is pretty much all about the evil ghost-preacher slaying.
Where in the World is Papa Winchester?: Whereabouts unknown. Sam is running down a few more leads in the beginning but without any luck.
How Drunk Are We?: Technically only two drinks are required for this episode, but since we drank everything we had for the shapeshifter’s hideous molting, how about we call it a wash?
Soundtrack: “Peace of Mind” by Boston.
The Quotable Winchesters: Dean, to Sam. “Your, uh, half-caff double vanilla latte is getting cold over here, Francis.” Sam, to Dean. “Bite me.”
Moment Most Likely to Inspire Troubling Fan-Fic:
Sam paints a frat boy while Dean lounges on a chair, giving direction.
Notable Cameos:
Christie Laing of Arrow and Once Upon a Time, plays the doomed roommate.
Chelah Horsdal of Arrow and Hell on Wheels, plays the librarian.
Next week: Mama Winchester is back!