Welcome to week forty-nine of the rewatch project, darlings. How many times have the Winchesters bit it now? Apparently more than any of us know. Sam and Dean take a trip to Heaven and find out it’s not even close to their first visit.
Cheers to convenient immortality.
THE OFFICIAL FYA SUPERNATURAL DRINKING GAME:
Take a drink every time:
• There’s a corpse
• A demon possesses/de-possesses and/or makes a deal with some hapless schmuck
• A far-off disaster is mentioned but not shown for budgetary reasons
• Dean crams his face full of junk food
• An angel is snotty
• Anyone is tied up
• 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
5x15: Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
Monster of the Week: Zombies
In Bobby’s small South Dakota town, a man claws his way out of his grave and murders another man in his home. Sam and Dean investigate, interviewing a witness to the killing who calls himself “Digger.”
Afraid someone’s going to put you out of a job, Chuckles?
He personally knew both victim and killer, and insists that he saw Clay kill the other man, even though Clay has been dead for five years. The local sheriff sees them talking, and demands to know why the FBI is investigating the case. She takes their home office card and calls to check on their credentials. Bobby answers as usual, pretending to be their voice. Small problem: the sheriff recognizes Bobby’s voice. She tells the boys that Bobby’s the local troublemaker and whatever they’re planning, they need to cut it out.
Bobby insists the boys shouldn’t have come to town, he already checked the witness’s story, and the man’s just a drunk. But Dean is suspicious. On the way out of town, he stops by the cemetery and they find Clay’s grave empty. They head to his house, where’s walking around, fully coherent. He admits to rising from the grave and killing the man, though he did it out of a previous grudge, not any zombie-like desire. Just as the boys take him into custody, the real sheriff shows up and arrests them. She calls Bobby to come get them and he makes a shocking revelation. The town’s dead rose a few days earlier, and he didn’t tell them because his dead wife rose with them. She is named Karen and she makes them all pie. Dean is charmed.
Dude. Don’t eat zombie pie.
Bobby said she rose with no memory of his killing her while she was demon possessed. Revelations makes mention of the dead rising alongside Death, and Bobby thinks maybe this is the only good thing to come out of the apocalypse. Later, Karen tells Dean she actually does remember how she died, but she wants to bring Bobby peace, so she’s keeping her mouth shut.
Sam checks out some of the recently risen and finds one of them who looks like she’s starting to go off. She beckons him closer.
All of the nope.
Sam reluctantly edges forward. She attacks, knocking him to the grounding and drooling a thick white foam into his face. He manages to blow her brains out and finds her recently-eaten husband lying on the floor. Back at Bobby’s, the Winchesters tell him the dead have got to go. He pulls a gun on them and tells them to GTFO.
They split up. Dean sneaks around to find a way back into Bobby’s house. Sam goes to round up the Sheriff. She’s dealing with problems of her own. Owen, her recently-risen son, has gone bad, killing and eating her husband.
No, Owen, it’s a bad Owen!
As she runs from her child, Sam bursts into the house and hustles her out. He helps her get it together by telling her they’ve got a town to save. She’s apparently a practical sort because after putting up the briefest of fights, lets Sam go shoot her zombie son. They round up what townsfolk they can, and herd them to the jail where the armory awaits.
Meanwhile, Karen collapses. She’s got a fever and a barely-controllable hunger. Realizing she’s turning bad, she tells Bobby he’s got to kill her. He doesn’t want to, and she tells him she remembers he did it before, and it’s alright. She also tells him that when she rose from the grave, there was a crazy thin man who waited for her, telling her that he had a message for Bobby. Dean breaks into the house just in time to hear the gun go off. He finds Bobby holding his re-dead wife’s hand.
Dean and Bobby gear up out in the junkyard where several zombies attack them. They manage to retreat into the house, but zombies have surrounded them. They have to retreat into a closet. Dean suggests zombies are morons and can’t pick locks. They proceed to do just that. Luckily Sam and the sheriff show up at the rear blowing them all away.
Later, the boys and the sheriff burn the corpses in a mass grave. She seems pretty devastated.
Brotherly Angst Quotient: Agony Uncle
Bobby burns Karen’s body separately. Dean says at least he got a few more days with her. But Bobby says it’s just made his already terrible life harder. “She was the love of my life. How often do I have to kill her?”
He reveals Death’s message. Death specifically came to Bobby’s town because Bobby’s been helping Sam say no to Lucifer. His wife’s rising was meant to break Bobby’s spirit, to get him out of the way. Sam asks if he’ll be alright. Bobby doesn’t answer.
Paradise Lost of It All: Hell’s getting smarter, coming after the people Sam loves to get his compliance.
How Drunk Are We?: We live! We die! We live again! Drink everything you’ve got because the amount of corpses walking was incalculable.
The Quotable Winchesters: “Don’t you ever get tired of being wrong?” –Bobby to Dean.
Moment Most Likely to Inspire Troubling Fan-Fic:
A woman comes back from the dead and chooses to spend her extra few days of life baking pie to serve her man and his friends. It’s already troubling, darlings. Perhaps fic could give poor Karen a more interesting character?
Notable Cameos:
Kim Rhodes of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody plays Sheriff Jody Mills
5x16: Dark Side of the Moon
Monster of the Week: Hunters/Zachariah
The boys wake to masked gunmen in their motel room. He recognizes them as fellow two hunters. They shoot Sam to death in retribution for starting the apocalypse and then Dean for good measure, so they don’t have to worry about him trying for revenge.
Dean finds himself reliving one of his favorite memories, the Fourth of July he and Lil’ Sammy shot off fireworks and ended up razing a wheat filed.
I’m glad he’s got a few nice memories kicking around his angst-ridden brain.
Before long, the sounds of the beautiful explosions soon turn into memories of the fatal gunshots. Lil’ Sammy disappears and Dean suddenly hears Cas talking to him through the Impala’s radio. He tells Dean he’s in Heaven and he needs to follow the road so he can find Sam.
Sam’s entry memory is having a normal Thanksgiving dinner with his middle school girlfriend’s family. Almost as soon as Dean finds him, the whole house starts shaking and filling with a bright light. Cas appears on the TV screen warning them the light is Zachariah. He’s looking for them so he can send them back to their bodies. The boys seem pretty okay with that, but Cas tells them that being in Heaven is a rare opportunity for espionage. He wants them to follow the road to the garden at the center of Heaven where God’s mouthpiece, an angel named Joshua, waits.
The boys follow the road and end up in one of Dean’s memories as a toddler.
I always suspected, darlings.
Mary is there, making Dean a sandwich. Sam urges him to get the show on the road, but he sticks around long enough to soothe her after she has an argument with John. Sam is moved, saying he hadn’t realized just how long Dean has been mopping up Papa’s messes.
Before long, Zachariah finds them! While he threatens to horrible things to them, a man in a luchador mask beckons them closer. It’s Ash! He draws a sigil on a wall and pulls them into a recreation of Harvelle’s Roadhouse. Ash tells them everyone gets their own personal heaven, and this is his. He also tells them this isn’t the first time he’s explained this; Dean and Sam have definitely died and gone to Heaven multiple times. The angels just keep wiping their memory. He’s upset to hear Ellen and Jo are dead. Sam asks about their parents, and Ash says he hasn’t been able to find Mary or John, but he has run into an old friend or two. He brings out Pamela! She is snarky as always, telling Dean she’s still annoyed they got her killed. He points out they also got Ash killed.
Aw, Ash is the best. Everyone sneak a drink for the fallen tertiary characters.
Pamela tries to sell Dean on saying yes to Michael. People will die in the apocalypse, but they’ll come to Heaven and be happy. Dean seems less than convinced. But Ash announces he’s found a shortcut to the garden. As the boys leave, Pamela plants a big kiss on Dean, a shocking revelation given her Sam-girl status in life.
Sam and Dean take Ash’s path and find themselves once more in their childhood home. Mary is there, but she’s changed, saying horrible things to her sons, especially to Dean, about how he was a burden she was glad to be free of. Zach shows up and starts kissing on her neck, just to be an ass. He’s ready to start torturing Dean to get him to say yes to Michael when another angel shows up, saying he needs to speak to them. When Zach gets huffy, the angel says that the boss insists and “you know how he is with that whole wrath thing.”
Zach reluctantly disappears, and the angel, Joshua, leads them to the garden. Everyone sees it differently. Sam and Dean apparently see it as the Cleveland Botanical Gardens, the most beautiful place they’ve ever personally seen.
This is the saddest backstory fact that’s ever been dropped on this show.
Joshua has a message from God for them: Back off. God knows everything that’s happening, but doesn’t think it’s his problem. Dean gets furious, saying God’s just another deadbeat dad with a bunch of excuses and he’s through. Joshua says he wishes he could tell him something different, he’s rooting for them. What he can do for them is allow them to remember this journey to Heaven.
The boys wake and tell Cas about their journey, including how the God he’s searching for wants nothing to do with them. It breaks something in him.
Dude, your dad sucks.
Cas gives Dean his necklace back, saying it’s worthless. Sam says they’ll find another way to stop it all. Dean seems less convinced.
Brotherly Angst Quotient: Rejection
All of Dean’s good memories revolve around him putting a smile on his loved ones’ faces. All of Sam’s? Involve him being far away from Dean. Besides the Thanksgiving, he also fondly remembers the time he ran away as a teen on Dean’s watch and lived on his own in Flagstaff for two weeks with a golden retriever, and the night he left for Stanford. He tells Sam he feels like everything they saw is a rejection of him, and they don’t have time to resolve it.
Paradise Lost of It All: Put away those prayers. God is not interested in the apocalypse.
How Drunk Are We?: Swaying in the streets. Take five drinks for corpses and snotty angels.
The Quotable Winchesters: “In heaven I have six wings and four faces, one of which is a lion!” -Zach
Moment Most Likely to Inspire Troubling Fan-Fic:
#sorrynotsorry
Notable Cameos: None
Next Week: Adam Winchester is back, y'all