Friday, October 30, 2015

Supernatural, Season 11, Episode 4: Baby




Gah, it’s another care love episode. Am I the only one who doesn’t really care about the Impala?

And to action – we see Dean, unconscious, injured and handcuffed in his car. Yes, it’s another of those “start the episode half-way” bullshit openers

So back 48 hours for car washing and plot recapping. They don’t even point the camera at Dean who doesn’t get all wet and then need to take off his soaking shirt that’s all skin tight and… Honestly, who has Dean Winchester, a hose and a tight t-shirt and focuses on a damn car?

Castiel is busy healing (and not understanding Netflix) and not getting all wet and shirtless either.

So on to a case in Oregon possibly hunting werewolves. Dean is outraged at Sam’s malicious smoothie drinking (flashbacks nostalgia love). Dean can’t convince him to party with him in a dive bar though, so Dean goes alone – only emerging with sunrise and looking… rough. Only to find that Sam was hosting naked women in the car. Sam is embarrassed, Dean revels in taunting him for it. Followed by a singalong

Ok, I’m totally loving the brother thing.

Alas all this fun is kind of derailed by Sam getting all angsty and introspective.

The Sam goes to sleep and wakes up with his Dad – as a young man – driving. Ok. Why not. Sam isn’t a big believer in his dad John being back from the dead – anyway it’s a message/dream/vision saying the Darkness is coming and they’ve got to stop it. Really you need a vision to tell you this?

Sam wakes up for real now to tell Dean that he’s having ominous visions (as opposed to it being an actual dream? Let’s face it, it wasn’t a very influential vision). Sam thinks this is all due to him praying so it’s all divine intervention stuff. Dean is not impressed with empty nonsense as intervention from an absent, doing-nothing deity.

Dean also isn’t surprised by dreaming about John because he has lots of dreams about his dad – normal dreams of a normal childhood which he never had. Sam does the same – but about his mother. Both dream of the normal life they never had. Sam insists on divine messages.


Dean doesn’t by it – and also has a nice insight than Sam is looking for some greater divine reason for what happened beyond “the Winchesters screwed up, again.”

To the case! They still think the dead sheriff has been killed by some kind of woo-woo. Dean really wants to get everyone call it a werepire. And a steak house with valet parking - Dean is horrified at giving his car to someone else. Probably wisely since the valet goes joyriding in it with her friend. Dean wants everyone to call the monster a werepire (and no-one is playing). And Dean keeps trying to kill the monster Deputy that just won’t die while Castiel is on speaker phone. And the damn thing just won’t die (how wrong was it for me to keep laughing at this?)

While Dean is playing with this, Sam has been jumped and calls Dean for help. Which, by various means, is how they end up with the dead Sheriff’s unconscious wife in the back of the car (she was attacked). Castiel has more research and calls the monsters Nachzehre - and Dean updates his name to ghoulpire (no-one is playing because they’re all mean). They’re also semi-pack animals and they need a Charon’s Oble to put in their mouth (a Greek coin traditionally used to pay the ferryman, Charon, to cross the River Styx). And killing the boss ghoulpire (I’ll play Dean even if they won’t) turns everyone else back human.

So they need a copper coin. Which means an old penny because, as Sam geekily points out, modern pennies have very little copper in them.

Also seeing if Lily Markham, the sheriff’s wife, knows anything would go easier if she hadn’t found the still living disembodied head in Dean’s cooler. She starts ominously talking about risking her family and ruining everything. She then attacks Dean to “make it right” demanding to know where something is (the body I think). Dean ends up fighting her in the back of the car which is brutal and nasty. She drives off with Dean in the back seat, all handcuffed while she goes to put the head back on the body he decapitated.

With them both back they exposition – Lily killed her husband and didn’t hide the body properly because she’s a knew ghoulpire. He’s the ghoulpire Alpha and he is creating a lot more baby ghoulpires to have an army to fight the Darkness. Which means he also intends to turn Sam and has lured him into a trap using Dean’s phone (and intending him to eat Dean.

Of course that’s not going to happen – so Dean causes a car crash (and finds the joyriding valet’s purse). We have another really nasty brutal fight and, thankfully, the valet had a copper coin in her purse letting Dean kill the Alpha – and turn Lily and all the other ghoulpires human again. Which includes Lily’s family who were ambushing Sam.

Sam and Dean of course see this as more evidence of the ominous darkness.




Ok I expected the worst but that was actually really fun – rather than loving on the car, the whole episode took part in the car. And it was fun – a nice old school zany monster hunt with Dean at his quipping best

We have some nice introspection about their dreams and normality which was nice simply because it wasn’t laid on ridiculously thick as well which I appreciated.

I also really liked the little normal life shot it gave us – sure they have the Winchester Cave now, but this reminds us how much of their life they actually spend in their Impala. Sure Sam may be being horribly cutsey with his “this is home” but it’s true – they live out of that car. Especially given how much travelling

The fight scenes, despite being in one tiny place and without lots of weapons actually felt a lot more real and a lot more brutal. I’m not even sure why, but they did.


More episodes like this! Not everything has to be epic and sometimes fun is good! Sometimes a day in the life of the Hunters is just what we need.