Black Gate

Last episode ended with a cliffhanger, with Sam’s memories busting out from behind the mental wall that Death put up to keep them hidden. This episode begins about a minute later with Dean slapping Sam awake. He seems groggy and has a headache, but is otherwise little the worse for wear. Kind of an underwhelming resolution to a cliffhanger.

Cut to a janitor cleaning a science lab who, it appears, is murdered by the anatomy mannequin that normally hangs in the lab.

Once Dean lays down the law on no trips down memory lane for Sam, they begin investigating the janitor’s death. Their only lead is some funky electromagnetic readings at the science lab, focused on the anatomy dummy that Dean can’t help but pull bits and pieces off of … but they quickly get a break in the form of another murder, this time at a clothing factory.

Again, Sam’s electromagnetic scanner again goes haywire, giving him an idea. “Wait, that anatomy dummy you were molesting at the lab.”

“Excuse me?” Dean replies.

“What if that’s what this is about?”

Cautiously, Dean asks, “What exactly are you accusing me of?”

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Every episode starts off with a monster attack … but this week, the monster is Sam! A year earlier, in Bristol, Rhode Island, Sam worked a case with his grandfather Samuel. He shot someone or something, which made Samuel look a bit uncomfortable.

As they were leaving town, though, they got pulled over by a deputy … who soulless-Sam beat senseless when he tried to arrest them, because Sam was suspiciously covered in blood.

“You think there may be calmer ways we could have done all of that?” Samuel asked.

“Do we care?” Sam replied, reminding us all why soulless-Sam was not a fun guy to hang out with.

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When we left Supernatural for its winter hiatus, Death had rescued Sam’s soul from where it was trapped with Lucifer and the Archangel Michael and placed it back into Sam’s body. (And I’d made several predictions about where the plot would go.)

We return to the series with the requisite opening monster attack … but let’s get to the important part: Sam’s got his soul back.

He’s unconscious, though, and Castiel can’t tell if he’ll ever wake up. He does, however, and doesn’t seem to remember anything that’s happened after he jumped into the pit with Lucifer & Mikey. (This is to be expected, because Death could only bring him back intact by “walling off” the part of his soul that remembered the torments inflicted upon him.)

Dean decides that Sam doesn’t need to know what’s happened, so tells him that he’s been in the hellish prison for a year and a half. He explains that Death brought Sam back, but doesn’t give further details. Bobby’s reluctant but does go along with the deception, although he makes it clear that Sam will figure it out eventually. (Turns out that eventually isn’t what it used to be.)

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This episode begins with the appearance of Robert Englund (better known as Freddy Kreuger from Nightmare on Elm Street) as a doctor who works out of the back room of a Chinatown butcher shop. He’s stitched up John Winchester many times over the years, but now it’s Dean seeking him out, for some sort of procedure which, apparently, has a 75% success rate. I’m thinking a vasectomy, but no, he’s going to go all Flatliners.

In the seven minutes that he’s dead, Dean casts a spell to summon Tessa, a Reaper (as in the Grim kind). But he doesn’t really want Tessa, he wants her boss … Death.

Dean figures that if there’s anyone they know who can get Sam’s soul out of its little hell box with Lucifer and Michael, it’s Death. And, in fact, he’s right. He tries to blackmail Death by threatening to not give his ring back (the ring was obtained at the end of last season, so that the Winchesters could trap Lucifer). Death is amused, because he knows exactly where the ring is being held. But still, he offers Dean a deal, a bet, and if successful he’ll give Sam’s soul back and put up a wall that will hold back the memories of his torments … for a time. Possibly even a lifetime.

The terms of the bet: Dean has to wear Death’s ring for a day.

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The demon Crowley is now the king of hell, since Sam and Dean trapped Lucifer back in the pit, and he’s on a mission to track down a way to claim Purgatory next. Monsters, it seems, come from Purgatory and go there when they die, so he thinks that by collecting the creators of different monsters – the Alphas of their respective races – he’ll be able to figure out how to take over Purgatory. Toward that end, he’s resurrected Sam, but without his soul, and is blackmailing Sam and Dean into working for him to get it back.

One of the monsters they’ve already caught is the Alpha Shifter, who Crowley is interrogating. The casting director got a bit of a break this week, because the shifter has taken the form of Crowley, so he’s torturing himself. It ends with Crowley decapitating the Alpha, which really doesn’t particularly seem to help his case, but then, Crowley is a demon, so you can forgive him for being driven by his passions.

Speaking of demons, an old favorite, the demon Meg, returns and kidnaps Sam and Dean. It seems that since Crowley’s taken over Hell, he’s been cleaning house of all of the Lucifer loyalists. She’s trying to use them to get a lead on Crowley, but the Winchesters haven’t actually seen him in a while, dealing instead with middlemen as they drop off their prey. Instead, Sam makes a deal with Meg to take out Crowley. Oh, what a tangled web they weave …

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If you’re an avid fan of my posts on this blog (and I assume that most of you are) you’ll notice that I didn’t post last week. I’m hoping that the intervening week has removed some of the trauma and heartache from the experience, not to mention given you the opportunity to seek some much needed counsel from your spiritual guru or therapist.

It was my DVR’s fault. A week ago, I re-arranged the living room so that we’d have room for the television. I moved the television, along with the accompanying bundles of wires and electronic gizmos. Everything was working fine, hours before Friday night prime time television. But, sadly, the DVR still decided (and make no mistake, it was a conscious choice, of this I’m sure) not to record Supernatural.

So I went to the CW website, in hopes of watching the episode in time to review it … but to no avail, because it takes a week for them to post the episode. And my internet television of choice, Hulu, does not offer Supernatural. Thus why you, dear readers, are getting this recap more than a week after the show aired.

On the plus side, though: Dean gets abducted by aliens … or maybe fairies!

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We start in Buffalo, New York, with a businessman’s car being attacked (along with the businessman) by a very angry dog. Lot of options: both werewolves and hellhounds come to mind.

At a roadside diner, Dean chats on the phone with Bobby in an effort to work out what to do about Crowley (the “King of Hell” who’s taken Lucifer’s place and busted Sam out of Hell), but Crowley shows up in the middle of the phone call. He’s got a job for Sam and Dean. Sam puts up a nominal protest, but he doesn’t have a soul, so how much can he really object to anything anyway. As Crowley puts it, “You’d sell your brother for a dollar right now if you really needed a soda.”

Dean, however, still has a soul and refuses to work for Crowley … until he points out that he can cause Sam pain whenever he wants, since he currently is in possession of Sam’s soul.

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For weeks, viewers (including yours truly) have wondered what’s up with Sam, who has not quite been acting right since he got back from the hellish prison he dove into at the end of last season … and mysteriously returned from at the beginning of this season. Last week, he even watched as Dean was turned into a vampire, apparently in an attempt to catch the Alpha Vampire.

Tonight’s episode starts with a waitress who gets a little too much truth. A customer, an old woman, offers that she once ran over a homeless man and didn’t even check to see if he’s okay. Her co-workers confide way too much information about what they think of her (of the not-positive variety). This all begins when she says, on the telephone, “I just need the truth. That’s all.” It ends with her blowing her own brains out.

Cut to Dean, who is on the phone with Bobby about how to find out the truth about Sam. I think you can see where this is heading.

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The episode opens with a young man (Robert), dressed all in black and wearing too much product in his hair, romances a girl (Kristen) in a bar. He is enigmatic and tentative, recoiling at the sight of blood from a papercut. “We can’t be together,” he says. “You think you know me, but you don’t. I’ve done bad things. You should run. Now.”

“I can make my own decisions,” Krsten replies. “I’m 17.”

No, they haven’t called in Stephanie Meyer to guest write this week’s episode of Supernatural. Instead, they’re taking a turn at dark parody, pulling the cliches from the Twilight saga into their more nitty-gritty vampire mythos. In Supernatural, vampires are flat-out monsters, not dark romantic leads.

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