Initial reaction 13.05: "Advanced Thanatology"
THEN: Oh, look at our sweet little boys. Pain, horror, death, Death, Billie, the Empty. Dead Winchesters. Keep the faith, Sam. Looks promising, guys.
NOW: Oh my god, this open is SO LONG. Two kids with video cameras (where did they find those, an antique store?) break into an abandoned asylum which I think might have been used in S12 or 11, because this stained glass in the stairway looks familiar. And then there are freaky bird masks that kind of remind me of that one guy from Oz a couple of seasons ago who wore a bird mask, remember? Was that the one with Dark Charlie? Sorry, I'm distracted because oh my god, this part just goes on and on and on. It finally ends with the kid named Evan getting attacked by a bird-masked ghost wielding a drill and the one named Shaun escaping with a creepy bird mask in his backpack.
Title card!
Bunker. Dean's making a PBJ for breakfast, and I don't know why Sam finds this unusual, because it's a staple breakfast item in my house. What is unusual is that Sam offers him a beer to go with it, saying "come on, live a little." Sam then suggests they take Shaun's case on their own, leaving Jack in the bunker to catch up on Sam's old fantasy DVDs. (And whatever fantasies you thought Sam might be purchasing on DVD, recalibrate your expectations, because they include something about time-traveling ferrets.) Dean's surprised and a bit suspicious, and he should be, because Sam keeps giving him little quick anxious looks, but he agrees to Sam's plan.
And I mean, backlit Sam is so pretty, how could you not agree to anything he wants?
They pull up outside Shaun's house and Sam hands Dean an ID. Dean's surprised again to see that Sam gave him one for Agent Page. "I thought you always liked to be Agent Page," he says. And this seems fairly minor at first, but really, there's a lot to unpack here. First, I'm sure they re-use the same IDs over and over. They don't make new IDs for every case. So if Sam is always Agent Page, that means he had to make a new ID so Dean could have that name. And B, it means Dean must want to be Agent Page sometimes, but he lets Sam have it, so do with that what you will. And third, why does Sam prefer Agent Page? We have no reason to think Sam is a huge fan of either Jimmy Page or Robert Plant, so what difference does it make? My theory is that it's because the ID says James Page, not Jimmy Page, and Sam thinks that makes it less likely anyone will notice the name, because my theory is that the musician names are Dean's thing, not Sam's, and that Sam would be happier flying under the radar as Smith and Jones, or even Smith and Smith again. (Also, I'm currently working on a fic where they use Page and Plant, so this makes me happy.) Sam acts like this is no big deal, he just thought they'd change it up a little bit, but he continues to give Dean tiny little anxious glances.
Anyway. Agents Page and Plant knock on the door and are greeted by Shaun's mom, who we last saw in Trial and Error, when she and her family owned a nice farm and the deal her husband made with a demon came due. (Excuse me. I need to think about Trials!Sam for a few minutes. Mmmmm.) Alice Cassity Shaun's mom tells them her son hasn't spoken since the incident, due to the psychological trauma. (Also, the actress just does a really good job here.)
Dean goes up to Shaun's room and finds him drawing picture after picture of the bird mask. Dean tries to get through to him, and it's very reminiscent of his interactions with Lucas in "Dead in the Water." But it's also very, very different. I don't think I've really talked about how Jensen's been playing Dean so far in S13. Everything is very muted. His voice is low but not growly. He barely smiles. He has no spark. The only energy we've seen is when he's angry. Basically, he's been playing the hell out of depressed Dean and I like it a lot. And the Dean who comes up to Shaun's room is still good-with-kids Dean, it's still the Dean who gets down on their level and talks to them like they're adults and admits that there is horror in the world but tries to reassure them that they are safe. It's still that Dean, it's just a greyer version of him, and I love it.
I love you, depressed Dean.
Anyway. He jumps right into the "monsters are real" speech, saying "I know what it's like to see monsters, and I know that when they're gone, they never really go away." And we could spend a couple of days unpacking that one as well, because we all know he's talking about a lot more than whatever Shaun saw. Dean tells Shaun that he and his brother stop the monsters, but he needs to talk to him.
Meanwhile, downstairs, Shaun's mom tells Sam that Shaun's friend Evan is still missing, and that the two of them and their friend Mike were inseparable. And yet Mike says he doesn't know what they were doing. Hmmm.
Next we see the Impala pulling up to an unusually nice hotel. As the guys get out, Dean tells Sam that he didn't get any information from Shaun, and then this happens...
So, strip club?
Wait. Sorry, what?
Strip club. There's one just outside of town. The, ah, Clam Diver.
You want to go to the Clam Diver.
Yeah, it got great reviews.
You read reviews for the Clam Diver.
It, it got four and a half -
Dude, what is going on with you?
What are you talking about?
All day. You give me beer for breakfast. You gave me Agent Page, which you always like to be. You didn't whine about me blaring my music the whole way here. And when we stopped for lunch, you ordered me chili fries.
You love chili fries.
Everybody loves chili fries, that's not the point. Now you want to go hang out at a strip club? You hate strip clubs.
No I don't.
Dude, the last lapdance you had was at Christmas, it was a gift paid for by me, and you spent the entire song trying to convince the girl she should go to nursing school.
Things I love about this scene: The way Sam pauses before saying "the Clam Diver," like he can't bring himself to say it. The fact that Sam like, got on Yelp or TripAdvisor to read strip club reviews (oh please tell me it was TripAdvisor, and that he also consulted the Grand Junction, Colorado forum to ask for suggestions). The way Sam is so very uncomfortable with all of this and is also such a bad liar. Dean's reaction. Dean's choice of a Christmas gift. The fact that Sam tried to talk a stripper into going to nursing school. (Also, check out this very relevant Tumblr post.)
But the best part of this scene is that Sam admits he's just trying to be nice. Because his brother's not happy and he loves his brother so much and he wants him to be happy and aw, dammit, guys. Because he's upset that Dean said he doesn't believe in anything any more, "and you do believe in things, you believe in people, that's who you are, that's what you do. And I know you're in a dark place and I just want to help."
Dean, to his credit, doesn't deny being in a dark place. He says he's been there before and fought his way out, and he'll do it again. (And yes, we've seen it.) When Sam asks how, he says "Same way I always do. Bullets, bacon, and booze. A lot of booze." (Spoiler alert: the unstated 4th B is "babes.")
Another amazing thing about this scene is the way the automatic door doesn't work for Dean, so he waves a hand in front of it and then makes a frustrated gesture and opens it by hand. Such a little thing and yet so absolutely perfect. Also perfect is Sam's resigned little nod before he admits he's trying to be nice. I pretty much love everything about this scene.
So much perfection.
It comes to an abrupt end when we cut to Shaun, waking up screaming. His mother assures him it was just a bad dream and he needs to try to get some sleep. He responds "okay," which might be the first thing he's actually said to her since the incident, because she seems really glad to hear it. I hope you're getting a happy ending, Shaun's Mom. But when she leaves, he hears a power drill and then the bird masked man appears in his room. That can't be good.
Morning. Sam's alarm goes off (sleepy single-layer Sam!!!! \o/) and he wakes up to find Dean's bed still made. But never fear; Dean is actually asleep on the floor, with his tie around his head, a pink bra around his neck, and a whip in his hand. I suppose one likely explanation is that he entered the room in this state and collapsed on the floor. But another explanation is that he brought a stripper to their room and she gagged him with her bra to keep him from waking Sam while they got busy right there on the floor. So, you know, get to work on those fics, and notify me when they're published.
Illustrations would be good too. If you're so inclined.
Sam leaves Dean snoring on the floor and goes to visit Shaun's friend Mike, who is working on a farm. Mike looks really familiar to me too, but I can't place him from a Supernatural episode. For all I know, he was on a Skittles commercial. Mike claims he didn't know what Shaun was doing, but Sam tells him he's a shifty-eyed little liar, and he admits they were going to "the old Meadows place."
Back at the hotel, Dean's wearing sunglasses and availing himself of most of the bacon on the breakfast bar. I don't know about you, but a pile of greasy bacon is the last thing I'm interested after a night of bullets and booze. Sam shows up and gives him a little bit of a hard time, and Dean says "what happened to you being nice to me?" Sam's response is to hand him a giant bottle of beer because Sam just loves his brother and wants to take care of him and make him happy, guys.
Operation Be Nice To Dean is literally killing me.
As Dean eats his giant pile of bacon in the most Deany way possible, Sam tells him about Dr. Avery Meadows, who gave everybody a lobotomy and experimented on patients at his house and was hung for it. Dean recognizes a picture of the creepy bird mask in Sam's file, and Sam explains that it's a plague mask that Dr. Meadows wore, and that in fact, he was wearing one when he was arrested and they had to hold him down to tear it off. Huh. Seems he was mighty attached to that mask. Then Sam's phone rings.
It's Shaun's mom, who is apparently named Penny. We cut to her house, where she's explaining to Agents Page and Plant that Shaun had a bad dream, and then the house got cold and when she went back to Shaun's room, he was gone.
I'm glad to see Agent Plant cleaned up a little bit and changed his shirt before they came over.
As they leave, Dean blames himself for not pushing Shaun harder to tell him what he saw. Because that's also who Dean is and what he does. Sam hypothesizes that it could be a ghost, since the house got cold, but Dean asks what the ghost would be attached to. (Oooh! I know!!! Ask me!) They head off to the old Meadows place to see if Shaun's being held there.
They talked to Penny right after breakfast, but it's dark by the time they arrive at the old Meadows place. It must actually be pretty far away, or maybe it took the Winchesters a long time to change into civvies. Or maybe it took Dean a long time to change his shirt after demolishing that pile of bacon. Or they deliberately waited until nighttime to visit the creepy house, as one does. (Point taken; you can move along now.)
Inside the house, the EMF meter goes crazy right before the bird masked ghost of Dr. Meadows shows up, complete with power drill. The guys get knocked about and Dean almost gets drilled (and not in a sexy way) before Sam disperses the ghost. They continue looking for Shaun, and come across the room with the display of creepy bird masks. Oddly, though Shaun took one of the masks earlier, there doesn't seem to be an empty space on the shelf. Dean burns the collection of masks, but when they continue their search for Shaun, the house is still ghost-cold. Then things fall off walls and lights explode and they hear ghostly voices and they conclude that the house is full of the ghosts of Meadows' victims, but they're too weak to pierce the veil.
And rather that follow Sam's suggestion that they search the entire house for bodies (or follow my suggestion that they get the hell out and just burn the place to the ground,) Dean decides the only reasonable thing to do right now is to get to a point where he can talk to the ghosts. And how does he plan to do that? "Easy." He pulls out a small tin with two hypodermic needles. "One needle stops the heart, the other one starts it up again."
Wait, what? He's going to die so he can talk to the house ghosts? And he always carries this shit around with him? Sam's as dumbfounded as I am, but Dean doesn't listen to him. He instructs him to give him three minutes, then plunges one needle into his chest and collapses. And Sam gets to watch his brother die again. Let's not think about Sam, having lost everyone Dean just lost, and now having to sit there and watch Dean die, because that just hurts too much right now.
This is fine.
Sam sets a timer on his watch and pours a ring of salt around Dean's body. He doesn't include himself inside that ring, which breaks my heart, because right now Sam's the one at risk, not Dean. But Sam just wants his hopefully temporarily dead brother to be safe, y'all. (Ironically, the one thing he doesn't do is CPR. Why not? Wouldn't you want Dean's blood to keep circulating, even though you're not trying to bring him back to life?) He gets the needle ready and gives Dean a reassuring little pat (I'm not crying, you're crying) and waits to bring him back to life.
Meanwhile, Dead!Dean chases after a ghost and runs straight into... a reaper! "Hello," she says, "my name is Jessica, and I'm here to lead you to your next life." Dean brushes her off, but she recognizes him. She shows up in the W section of a huge library and announces "Dean Winchester is in the veil!"
Back at the old Meadows place, Shaun finds Dean and recognizes him as "the FBI man from my house... are you dead too?" Shaun tells him Meadows showed up in his room, possessed him, and made him put on the mask and return to the house. Once there, he made Shaun kill himself using the drill. Damn. And now Shaun misses his mom and Dean's all "me too, kid" and blames himself and apologizes and this is just a whole lot sadder than I was prepared for. Shaun tells him that Evan's ghost is trapped there, too, and asks why they can't leave. Dean tells him he'll help him get to a "better place" if Shaun can just tell him where their bodies are. He then runs up to Sam, still waiting over his corpse. Dean gets there just as Sam's timer goes off and he injects the second syringe, but nothing happens. As Dean watches Sam panic, a familiar voice says "hey Dean" and he looks up to see... Billie! \o/ Billie's back and she's wearing a kick-ass long leather coat and carrying a scythe and I think we know what that means, don't we?
Billie puts Sam on pause and explains to Dean that there's some bizarre rule that when Death is killed, the next reaper to die takes his place. This is... well, it's kind of ridiculous. Death was already older than God. Why would there even be a rule for what happened if he died? How often is that expected to happen? And further, why would the next reaper to die become Death? What if there wasn't a reaper death for a thousand years? Why wouldn't it be the last reaper to die, or the leader of the reapers, or the one who won rock-paper-scissors, or whatever? So yeah, this rule is stupid, but I'm going to let it slide because it brought Billie back to us. With a kick-ass long leather coat, a nifty scythe that she's smart enough to keep away from Dean, and a very familiar ring. Yes, this is all very good indeed. (I do have to say that I miss her big hair, though.)
Billie zaps him to her "reading room," which is the W section of the huge library we saw earlier. She tells him that whether he stays dead depends on him. She's heard that he was "slipping between interdimensional worlds" and she wants to know how he did it. He won't give her that information for nothing, so when she asks what he wants, he tells her to free the ghosts at the old Meadows place. Billie agrees, and we see Jessica the reaper taking the house full of ghosts away.
Dean explains that Jack created the rip into AU Land and asks her why she cares. She tells him that the multiverse is a house of cards, "and the last thing I need is some big, dumb Winchester knocking it all down."
"Hmm. That does sound like us," Dean replies. Dean has slipped back into that muted mood he was in earlier, very flat and emotionless, and Billie's a secret fangirl so of course she notices. She points out that he's changed, and that when he was making a deal, he asked to release the ghosts instead of asking for his life back. He says he didn't think she'd release him, but she calls bull on that. In fact, she's been spying on his through this entire episode, because she knows how he feels and she knows he tells people he'll work through it, and she also knows that he's lying, he doesn't think he will.
What do you want me to say? Doesn't matter. I don't matter.
Don't you?
I couldn't save Mom. I couldn't save Cas. I can't even save a scared little kid. Sam keeps trying to fix it, but I just keep dragging him down. So I'm not gonna beg, okay? If it's my time, it's my time.
You really believe that. You want to die. Dean, every notebook on this particular shelf tells a version of how you die. You specifically. Heart attack, burned by a red-haired witch, stabbed by a ghoul in a graveyard, and on and on. But which one's right? That depends on you. On the choices you make.
Well, I guess I made my choice.
But, unfortunately, none of these books say you die today.
After seeing little doe-eyed S2 Baby Dean in the "Then," we can definitely see how much our boy is aging. But damn, he ages well, doesn't he?
Billie tells him he doesn't get to die today, because now that she's Death, she knows things she didn't know as a reaper. She knows he and his brother are important, and they have work to do, and she's not happy about it, but she's sending him back. Well, it's a good thing you didn't fling them into the Empty before you knew they were important, isn't it? Hope that'll teach you about snap decisions, Billie. Dean tries to ask about his mother, but before he can finish, he wakes up back in his body, gasping for air with a palpably relieved Sam telling him he's okay.
Aftermath! It's morning, and officials are clearing all of the bodies out of the old Meadows place. Sam looks like he's trying to comfort Penny and failing miserably. He walks over to Dean and tries to get him to tell him what happened, and Dean says they'll talk about it later. "But we won't talk about it later, you know that," Sam says, and who can argue with that?
So Dean tells him about Billie being Death, and how she said they're important and they have work to do, and Sam quietly freaks out and Dean admits he's pretty far from okay (and The Husband says "did he just quote Marsellus Wallace?" and I tell him to hush because there's no talking during Supernatural but yes, it is true that there might have been a little Pulp Fiction right there) because he always believed what they do was important and he just doesn't believe any more. He just needs a win.
Despair is such a good look on him.
And they get in the car and drive off and Penny sees her dead son and cradles his face and this is really, really sadder than I was prepared to deal with tonight. And it looks like we're done. The Impala drives off into the night, Billie's in her office reading her favorite Dean Winchester deathfic, Sam dozes off in the car - and then Dean's phone rings. He looks shocked, then he looks at Sam, then he looks more shocked, and then some time passes and the Impala drives past a glowing blue cross and stops in front of a phone booth and it's Cas! And Dean stares at Cas and Cas stares at Dean and for some reason my video feed must have dropped or something because I know there had to be a closeup of Sam as well, there had to be a reaction shot of Sam staring at Cas, they wouldn't have left that out of the episode. That would have been fucking ridiculous. So clearly it was just a glitch in the CW's feed. That's the only explanation.
:-|
But let's not end on a bad note. Let's think about the wonderful things in this episode. Let's remember Sam, and how much he loves his brother, and how hard he tried to make him happy, and how some of his attempts were a little clumsy and obvious and that just made them even more endearing. Let's remember hungover Dean with sunglasses. Let's remember that it's canon that Billie has massive shelves full of Dean Winchester deathfic, and let's note that these are not just dry lists of how Dean might die, these are obviously full-fledged stories, and let's imagine that right here Billie is reading how the red-haired witch burned him because that's one of her favorites.
Let's imagine Billie writing her own fanfics featuring a beautiful reaper who takes Dean down, because you know she would.
And let's also remember not to leave any spoilers in the comments, thanks!