Previously on Supernatural

Sam had a lot of terrible ideas to fix Dean. Everyone told him they were terrible ideas. Like, even dead people told him. Probably random strangers at the grocery store told him and we just didn’t see it.

Currently on Supernatural:

Nighttime in Omaha, Nebraska. A young woman with Freddie Lounds hair meets with a doctor in his office. She thinks she’s there to participate in some kind of research study about eyesight, but starts to think that something’s weird when the doctor tries to kiss her.

Her suspicions are confirmed when he then slits her throat and uses a melon baller to scoop out her eyes. OMG that is not what a melon baller is for! It’s right there in the name! A janitor, hearing the noise, rushes into the office just in time to see the doctor jump out of the window with the pilfered eyeballs.

By the way, this is what the “doctor” was looking at on his computer before the murder:

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Sam visits Rowena in her makeshift prison, where he is super pissed to learn she hasn’t been able to crack the Book of the Damned yet. The witch’s codex turned out to be encoded, too, so it’s no help to her yet. “Dean gets worse every day,” Sam fumes. Since he doesn’t know about the reappearance of the demon eyes, what is he picturing here?

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Next we travel to Shreveport, Lousiana, where we find a lovely mansion occupied by a bunch of white guys who all look a lot alike and have vaguely “Southern” voices. The oldest of these fellas addresses the fake doctor from earlier. “There was a time, Eldon, when Ah would call you our most promisin’.” I’m gonna call this guy Crawdaddy. “You ask your brothahs and your cousins,” Crawdaddy goes on. While you’re at it, ask them why everyone is dressed like they’re in Spring Awakening:

Crawdaddy is mad because Eldon screwed up his “harvest” of the eyeball girl, leaving behind a witness and a body. “The whole key to our success all these centuries is SECRECY!” Secrecy… and EVIL! Crawdaddy threatens to turn Eldon into a lab rat unless he cleans up his mess. He also wants Eldon to hunt down the Winchesters and get back the Book of the Damned.

A cousin named Eli gloats, until Crawdaddy reminds him that he’s the one who hasn’t been able to find Charlie, and assigns him to help Eldon. Hah hah, you suck, Eli.

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Dean is researching the eyeball girl when Sam gets home. Dean notes that Sam has been disappearing an awful lot lately. “Is there a woman you haven’t mentioned?” he asks.

Sam fumbles for an explanation before finally changing the subject to the case. Dean recaps the Styne family history for us, including how hard they are to kill and how they just seemed to materialize in the 1800s. Then I guess his research into the family led him to eyeball girl’s case?

When Dean heads off to bed, Sam sneaks off to meet Charlie at some random rest stop. They’re wearing the same outfit.

Sam says he has a way to decode the Book of the Damned, which he is just now telling her still exists. He knows the Stynes were after Charlie when she had the book. What makes him think they wouldn’t hunt her down again now that he hasn’t burned the book?

She also finds out that Dean doesn’t know. “Jeez, the two of you,” she sighs. (Keep in mind she’s read all the Supernatural books, so she knows how this is an ongoing pattern.) “He would try and stop me,” Sam says. “He’s given up!”

He asks Charlie to work with Rowena to decode the codex. She reminds him that Dean said the book would kick their asses. “Is there any part of this that doesn’t reek?” she asks. No. No, there is not. “As far as I can tell, this is our only shot at saving him,” Sam says.

Next thing you know, Charlie’s in the makeshift prison with Rowena. They’re immediately at each other’s throats, so Sam calls Castiel in to referree. You know what this means, don’t you? He’s not out looking for Metatron, which means he’s not out killing Metatron, which means that little turd blossom is going to survive into another season.

Castiel is surprised to learn from Rowena that Dean doesn’t know all of this is going down. “Sam, this never ends well!”

Yeah, go tell Dean you lost Metatron, too, pretty boy angel.

Sam says all their choices suck. “Lying to Dean is the choice that sucks the least,” Sam says. They all agree to go along with this plan. “For Dean,” Charlie says. “For Dean,” Castiel says. Then for some reason they all turn to Rowena for her answer. “I barely know the man,” she says.

Continuing in this episode’s attempt to inject humor into the proceedings, Crowley throws darts at some guy in Hell. Two minions approach and nervously announce that Rowena is missing. Crowley kills one of them and sends the other one off to find her.

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The Winchesters head to Omaha to talk to someone about the fake doctor. He’d been renting the office for a month, blah blah blah. Security footage shows him jumping from the high window and then running away without so much as a sprained ankle. The most important thing is that they see the Styne family tattoo on his wrist.

Literally the second after the Winchesters leave, Eldon shows up and kills the guy who showed them the security footage. Wouldn’t that video also be in police custody by now? How many people is Eldon going to have to kill?

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Castiel procures snacks for Charlie because that seems to be the best use of an angel’s time.

They all get around to talking about the nun who wrote the Book of the Damned. Rowena explains there has to be a balance. “To cure one curse, Agnes had to know how to inflict another.” I think that other curse will be called “Season 11.”

Rowena tries to convince Charlie they have a lot in common. She says the main difference between them is blind devotion… particularly to the Winchesters. “Sam and Dean are like my brothers; I love them,” Charlie says. “And that steadfast loyalty will be your undoing,” Rowena ho-hums.





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The Winchesters are on the road home, talking about the Stynes and eyeballs and how happy they are the Book of the Damned was burned. Hahahahaha. Ha. Dean says he’s had some creepy visions but it’s like, eh whatever. They don’t notice that Eldon is following them, but you know what I noticed?

Rainy the Rain Cloud really does follow ONLY the Winchesters!

Back at the Lair O’ Letters, Dean answers Sam’s phone when Castiel calls because Sam left it behind when he left the room. Dean gives a curious little look and asks, “Cas?” Castiel mistakes him for Sam until Dean corrects him.

He makes up a lame excuse and hangs up, leaving Dean feeling a bit suspicious. When Sam returns, Dean asks him about it, but Sam plays dumb. Also, why did they leave Omaha? Wouldn’t there have been more to investigate?

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Crowley has a conversation with Olivette the witch-turned-hamster. Can he talk to all animals, or just enchanted ones? Because the CW needs to hit me up for my weekly nature special idea.

Anyway, he finds out from Hamsterette that Rowena used to consort with a demon in the sack. He wants the info so he has something he can hold over her as a bargaining chip. Why doesn’t he just kill her or imprison her?

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Dean runs out to get a pizza when he’s ambushed in an alley by Eldon and a disposable Styne. Why does everyone on this show come and go through alleys? Go through the front door, would ya? Dean rolls his eyes like, “These assholes again.” He fires a warning shot into the air. Great. You probably just killed someone’s cat a block over. Bullets do come down again.

Dean offs the disposable Styne and battles with Eldon, who he’s surprised to learn is strong enough to lift him with one hand. Luckily, Dean is stronger and quickly subdues him.

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At the makeshift prison, Charlie complains to Castiel about what a pill Rowena is being. Why don’t they just gag her? Rowena, I mean. “Something bad is gonna happen here,” Charlie predicts.

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Dean drags Eldon back to the Lair O’ Letters and, for some reason, only chains up one hand. Were they out of cuffs? Were they going to play “Stop Hitting Yourself!” with his free hand? Most importantly, what happened to the pizza? This is so ridiculous and plot-driven and ridiculously plot-driven, I can’t take it.

There. Fixed it.



Shouldn’t Sam be sort of pooping himself with anxiety about now? The Stynes have that steampunk compass technology that can find the book. They would know it’s still in play. He seems super calm, though. Anyway, they get around to talking about the family and how vast and eeeevil it is. “You’re in way over your heads,” Eldon says.

Eldon says the family’s power doesn’t come from the Book of the Damned. “It comes from intelligence and will.” And not chaining up people by a single limb! Sorry I still can’t get over that. “The book just facilitates,” he says. He lists off all kinds of things the fam is responsible for, like the recession, 9/11 and… the Arab Spring. Really, Show? REALLY? The family then profits on the fallout.

Sam steps away to take a call from Castiel. Eldon starts talking about the family’s “harvests,” where they take body parts like the girl’s eyes with which they enhance themselves. Have they not heard of LASIK? He shows off some of his own added enhancements.

“It’s pretty much what you’d expect given the family tree,” he says. He blah blah blahs for a while. They had to change their name a bit after some unwanted notoriety. “It’s one of Europe’s oldest families: The House of Frankenstein.”

If there weren’t 500 takes of the actors busting up at this revelation, I would be incredibly impressed, because that is some laughable mess right there.



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Charlie and Rowena continue to squabble with each other because the episode needed needed a flimsy-ass reason to separate them. Never mind that, as an angel, Castiel could probably silence Rowena with his powers, or that Charlie, determined to help Dean, wouldn’t waste time with this petty crap.

Castiel, the babysitter in this whole patronizing debacle, has called Sam for help. Sam suggests separating them because Castiel can’t come up with even the simplest ideas on his own.

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Eldon is still droning on about his family. Mary Shelley wrote her novel as an expose on the family, thus necessitating the need for a name change. Then he ends the story with: “But nobody believed the book to be true.” THEN WHY DID YOU CHANGE YOUR NAME? WHY?!! FOR THE LOVE OF PIES WHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!!!!!! YOU MAKE NO SEnSE! NONE OF THIS MakES SENSE!

Now, at this point, I want you to notice how loose this ONE SINGLE CUFF is on Eldon’s wrist:

They eventually get around to the subject of the OTHER book in this storyline. “The book was burned,” Dean says. “It cannot be destroyed,” Eldon says, explaining that the book is protected by a spell. A bunch of stuff starts clicking together in Dean’s head like a Rubik’s cube.



Dean goes to ask Sam about all this, but they’re interrupted by a kerthunk coming from the dungeon. They run back in there to discover that Eldon has somehow torn free from his arm. A bunch of zoom shots and musical stings accompany this revelation. Let’s… let’s just examine this more closely.

I know what you’re saying. “Maybe he just had that arm sewn on recently so it tore off there like perforated paper.” No. First, nobody would attach a new arm right there. It would be at the joint. Second, if it were that loose, he wouldn’t be able to do any fighting with it because it’d be flopping around like “falling off the bone” tender chicken.



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Castiel chains up Rowena in another room, separating her from Charlie. For some reason, though, this isn’t separate enough for Charlie, who decides to hop into her car and drive away.

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Ol’ one-armed Eldon manages to make it to some alleyway in town without the Winchesters following him. How many miles is that? He only had like a minute’s head start, no car, and rapid blood loss. To top it off, they didn’t even take his cell phone away from him, so Eli is able to call him from outside Charlie’s motel room.

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After Dean tries and somehow fails to find Eldon, he returns to the Lair O’ Letters to have a little chatty chat with Sam. Dean is very calm and measured, friendly on the surface and utterly menacing right beneath.

He points out that the book can’t be destroyed, and yet Sam burned something in that fireplace. Funny, right? Sam looks like he’s going to turn inside out starting with the butthole. The phone rings before he can come up with another terrible lie or admit the truth. Castiel tells him that Charlie has left and he can’t find her because nobody can find anybody in this episode…

…except for the Frankensteins, who are currently lurking outside Charlie’s motel room, where she’s finally had a breakthrough with her decoding. Eldon bangs on her door instead of just kicking it down. Maybe he’s afraid his leg would tear off.

Charlie hides in the bathroom and calls the Winchesters in a panic. Dean tells her to give the Frankensteins whatever they want, but she emails her translation and destroys her computer. Then, for some reason, she doesn’t flee through the bathroom window, but stands her ground.

By the time the Winchesters get there, it’s all over. They find her bloody and dead in the bathtub, denied even a proper fight or death scene, because this is apparently only about how the brothers react to her death, and not about the death itself.

I’m not even that fond of Charlie, and I think this death blows. So many incredibly stupid things had to happen, and I’m not even talking about the questionable decision to keep secrets from Dean. That was dumb, but it’s sort of in-character dumb. The Winchesters sometimes lie to each other for what they think are good reasons.

I’m talking about stuff like improperly containing Eldon, leaving his phone on him, Charlie going off on her own even after Rowena was being separated from her, and so on. So it wasn’t a good character death. It was completely plot-motivated, and a terrible plot, at that. Then there’s everybody ignoring the fact that Dean keeps saying he hasn’t given up, and insisting he has given up in order to force urgency into the situation. Why? Because it’s May and it’s time for the finale. If I had Eldon’s lost hand, I would throw it up right now.

I give this episode two Hellhounds, and both of them are for the acting and not in any way for the writing.



– Tippi Blevins