Previously: The Seven Deadly Sins showed up for half a second along with a mystery demon-slaying blonde, and Dean’s impending doom was apparently nbd.
—
Anna May: We open in Cicero, Indiana where a (presumably divorced) father is dropping his daughter home. Something’s clearly got her spooked, as she runs straight to her mum—according to dad, she pitched a fit. She missed her mother and doesn’t want to stay at her dad’s any more. “He’s mean, and there are monsters there,” she complains—her mother comforts her, as we cut to the dad’s house.
Like most homeowners in this series, the dad seems to have a Basement Of Don’t Go In There, and – bonus! – it’s filled with lots of woodwork tools. This can only end well. He’s making a wooden rocking horse, which is one leg away from completion – is that for his daughter? ‘Cause if so no wonder she doesn’t want to stay with him, he’s hilariously out of touch; she’s about five years too old for a rocking horse. (K: TRUTH) It’s late, and he gets up to leave—but a circular saw starts up apropos of nothing. (K: Random segue: this made me laugh because any time my dad wants to say something pointless, he starts with “apropos of nothing” and we all know to tune out for five minutes. Maybe I’d pay more attention if power tools turned on of their own accord…) Ruh-roh. He switches it off, and heads out, only to have the same thing happen again. Like an idiot, he leans in close to inspect it—at which point something jump-scares him from behind the camera and he falls directly onto it. As he dies, we see the rocking horse rocking back and forth on the table, all four legs in place. Kid’s toys are creepy, yo.
Kirsti: TRUTH. Also, this is a horrifying death.
Anna: After Satan’s screensaver does its thing, we see Sam on the phone to Bobby discussing demon-dispelling rituals. Seems Dean’s happy-go-lucky attitude to death didn’t do much to convince him. He’s sat in a café, in the middle of translating one on his laptop when Dean shows up—Sam is super duper casual as he scurries to hide the evidence, claiming to have been ordering pizza despite being sat in a restaurant.
K: Be cool, Sam. Just be cool.
Anna: Dean’s not all that bothered, though, as there’s a new case—he hands Sam a newspaper article about the dad from the pre-credits bit. Sam doesn’t think there’s anything special about a man falling on his own power-saw… and Dean admits that okay, there’s another reason he wants to go to Cicero: a woman named Lisa Brayden, a yoga teacher he hooked up with once on a road trip. Dean’s dying wish – or one of the many dying wishes he’s going to eke out before he’s gone – is to find her and hook up with her again. And then he calls her “gumby girl” and I pull a face. I guess I started looking back at the early seasons of Supernatural with rose-tinted glasses ‘cause I’d forgotten how dodgy Dean can be sometimes.
K: A+. I think because the show gets progressively worse, the early seasons seem utterly magical. And then you watch them and realise that the show has gone from dubious to hella awful. Sigh.
Anna: Cut to Dean dropping Sam off at a motel in Cicero and gleefully driving off.
When Dean pulls up the outside of Lisa’s house is decked out in party balloons, but he heads over anyway. She answers, and the exchange they have is so incredibly awkward. I have to wonder what Dean was thinking was gonna happen? I mean, it’s been nine years and he just rocks up on the doorstep with his god’s-gift-to-women grin on… was he expecting for her to just fall into his arms and then get with the insta-sex, or…? ANYWAY. She says he’s come at a bad time, as they’re having a party. Dean loves parties… but not this kind, I assume, as it cuts to a children’s birthday party.
Turns out it’s not just for any kid, it’s for Lisa’s son Ben—who, as it turns out, is Dean’s exact mini-me, complete with leather jacket and love of mullet rock. “How old…?” Dean asks, and I kind of love the look of dawning realisation on his face. He’s eight, Lisa says, before abandoning him to welcome the new guests (the mum and daughter from earlier).
K: No power in the ‘verse can convince me that Ben isn’t Dean’s kid. NO. POWER. IN THE ‘VERSE.
Anna: Cut to the other mums gossiping about Dean and blatantly ogling him, swapping stories they’ve heard about him from Lisa.
Ben: You know who else thinks [moonbounces] are awesome? Chicks. It’s like hot chick city out there.
OKAY THIS IS WEIRDING ME OUT. I’m all for the possibility of this kid being Dean’s (who are we kidding, it’s a certainty), but literally no eight year old ever behaves like this. Clearly it’s weirding Dean out too, because he makes another hasty exit.
K: YUP. REALLY WEIRD. I’m also weirded out by the knowledge that Americans call bouncy castles “moonbounces”…
Anna: Yeah… at least “bouncy castle” is a legit description. Get it together, Americans.
Cut to the kitchen, where Lisa’s checking up on before-the-credits-mum-lady. She’s holding up, more or less, but she’s worried about her daughter, Katie: there might be something wrong with her. Not the grief of losing her father, something really wrong with her. (Lady, you’re in a horror series—kids are generally bad news, you’re probably screwed.) She’s not even sure Katie is Katie any more. Lisa looks appropriately freaked out by this confession, and promises to get her help. Frustrated, mum-lady goes off to find her kid and leave.
Enter Dean, who admits he’s met Ben and maybe, maybe, noticed a few teeny-weeny similarities—plus, the rather glaring timing coincidence. They dance around the question for a moment until Dean has to ask outright if Ben is his kid. Lisa says no, but I don’t think anyone (including her) believes that. Katie and her mum head past on their way out, and Dean mentions the accident– Lisa admits there’s been a lot of bad luck around lately. Dean does his “Scoob, I feel a mystery coming on” face.
K: BEST DESCRIPTION EVER.
Anna: Cut to the motel, where Sam is still researching the heck out of ways to save his brother, when he’s interrupted by Kickass Blondie from the previous episode.
After the Not Commercial Break, it turns out she’s been following him since Lincoln. She also describes potato wedges as “deep-fried crack”, which sounds unhealthy on so many levels. Sam asks about the knife she had, the one with the rather handy demon-slaying properties, but Blondie doesn’t want to talk. She’s interested in him because he’s tall—oh, yeah, and maybe possibly the antichrist. They to-and-fro about Sam’s visions and the whole Yellow Eyes debacle, until Blondie drops in a comment about Mary Winchester, and “what happened to her friends”. It’s clear that Sam doesn’t have a clue what she’s on about, so Blondie leaves him a number and tells him to call her when he’s looked into it.
K: Okay, I love the Mary Winchester sub-plot, even though it takes them like a thousand years to follow through on it.
Anna: “Oh, and you do know there’s a job in this town, right?” she adds. She leaves, and Sam’s phone rings—it’s Dean, confirming what Kickass Blondie said. Turns out there have been more domestic “accidents” like the power saw incident, all within the same community.
Paranoid Mum-Lady’s house. She wakes up on the sofa to find Katie staring down at her creepily, and jumps out of her skin. Lady, I sympathise. One time I was babysitting my sister and I started to nod off in the living room, before waking up to find her stood an inch from my face mumbling about “the black words”. Turned out she was sleepwalking but it was scary as hell for about ten seconds and my entire brain was going “LEAVE ME ALONE, TINY SATAN”.
K: My brother used to sleep talk and have night terrors when he was teeny. Apparently one time, my mum went in to check on him, and when she went to adjust the covers, he sat bolt upright in bed, opened his eyes, slowly turned his head towards her, and said “DON’T.” Pretty sure she’s still freaked out, and he’s 29 now. So yeah. “Tiny Satan” is an accurate description at times.
Anna: Katie says she wants to play, and Paranoid Mum reluctantly agrees while I have The Shining flashbacks. Katie (or Not-Katie) goes to hug her, making a big show of being adorable—at which point Paranoid Mum-Lady looks in the mirror to see that her kid’s reflection is soaking wet, pale and slimy. Yikes. When she looks back again, however, Katie seems fine.
In another of the homes in the neighbourhood, Sam’s posing as a life insurance salesman in order to check out some of the “accidents”. Here, a bloke was changing a lightbulb and apparently lost his balance (sounds pretty sus to me) and the only one home was his daughter—who Sam spots staring creepily out of the window. He also spots a SUPER OBVIOUS BLOOD STAIN on the window and the bench, which surely the mum would have had cleaned up after the tragic loss of her husband, but okay. As she turns around to lead Sam back into the house, we see a super-gross leechy bite mark on the back of her neck. Ow and also ew.
Speaking of leechy bite marks, it appears Mum-Lady’s got one too—she distracts Katie/Not-Katie with food while she runs off to the bathroom to check it out, but Katie/Not-Katie’s having none of it and starts banging on the door and shouting to be let in. She finally stops when the doorbell rings, and the two pretend like everything’s normal as they answer the door to an insensitive estate agent type using sympathy food as a front for badgering her about the house. Mum-Lady shuts her down pretty quick, only to be confronted immediately by I’m-Pretty-Sure-Now-It’s-Not-Katie.
A park. Dean’s heading to his car when he spots Ben sitting alone on a bench. He reintroduces himself, and Ben explains that a group of other boys have nicked his GameBoy and are playing with it a little way off. Dean starts to offer to go over and get it but Ben says no—“only bitches send a grown-up. And I’m not a bitch.” Dean agrees with him and smiles proudly—next thing we know, Ben walks straight up to boy who nicked his game, with a little encouragement from Dean, and kicks him in the nads to get his game back.
Dean Winchester, you’re a terrible influence.
K: SO MUCH OMG. And yet, I can’t help but think his little chuckle of pride when Ben stands up to his bullies is adorable. Clearly I need help.
Anna: Lisa drops by to say much the same, and Dean looks appropriately guilty. She continues that their connection is pretty tenuous at best and he has no business with her son, let alone teaching him to beat up other kids—she wants him to leave the two of them alone. (The fact that Ben is almost certainly Dean’s kid notwithstanding, I’m with Lisa on this; he’s coming across like a total stalkery loon.) Three of the kids in the park stare creepily at Dean as Lisa storms off.
Meanwhile, Not-Katie is being bundled into the car by her mother, who looks in the rear view mirror; instead of seeing her daughter, she sees—HOLY SHIT THAT’S CREEPY NOPE NOPE NOPE.
Mum-Lady drives to the edge of a lake and, tears rolling down her face, sets the car rolling down the bank into the water. Man, this is fucked up—it was at this point where part of me wanted the twist to be that she’s actually just loopy and there’s a reasonable explanation for all the other stuff, but then I remembered that this is Supernatural and not a Stephen King narrative. Not-Katie stares blankly at her mother as the car sinks out of sight.
K: That would be an insane and horrific plot twist.
Anna: I have a soft spot for those.
Back at her house, Mum-Lady is (understandably) pretty upset. She heads through into the kitchen—and there’s Not-Katie, soaking wet, sat at the breakfast bar and smiling.
Oops.
After the Not-commercial break, Sam and Dean have both come to the conclusion that the kids in this town are seriously creeptastic. Sam’s hypothesis: they’re changelings, evil monster kids climb in the window and take the place of the real children. There’s one in each of the victim’s houses. They feed off the mother, hence the leechy bite marks, and kill anyone who tries to get in the way of their food source. Fire’s the only way to get rid of them. Sam also points out that the real kids might still be alive and stashed somewhere by the changelings—at which point Dean suddenly has a mighty need to check on Lisa and Ben.
Dean shows up at Lisa’s door and tries to super-duper-subtly warn her by suggesting she take a long weekend out of town at his expense and offering her a blatantly stolen credit card. Points for effort, I guess? He realises it’s too late, though, as Ben’s creepy changeling counterpart appears in the background and tells Lisa to make him go away, which she does.
K: Not quite sure how she doesn’t realise he’s a changeling, because I work with kids Ben’s age, and I’m not sure any of them would say “Mommy”/”Mummy” if they weren’t seriously injured.
Anna: +1 to that. When they’re not being hella creepy, all these kids are acting way too clingy and cutesy to be real eight year olds.
Dean lurks around a bit outside, though, finding a stain on the windowsill similar to the one Sam saw. Heading back to the Bromobile, Dean explains that 1) Ben’s gone, and 2) the stain wasn’t blood, which has given him an idea as to where the real kids might be.
They turn up at an empty, half-constructed house with a big pile of dirt outside—specifically, red dirt, which explains the stains on the windowsills. The brothers split up, Sam looking in the front while Dean sneaks in the back. As predicted, Dean finds the missing kids – including Ben – locked in cages in the basement.
Sam, meanwhile, is caught by the realtor lady from earlier… and a quick look at her reflection tells us she’s a changeling too. Dean searches through the cages, and we see that the real realtor is being held captive, same as the kids. She gets aggressive with Sam, who goes for his makeshift flamethrower, but she disappears before he can torch her.
Back at Lisa’s, Not-Ben refuses to go to bed and is generally super creepy. I have to wonder how on earth these people don’t notice there’s at least something off about their kids…? They’re freakishly deadpan and unemotional, completely unlike any real kid ever. (K: YUP.) Still, Lisa seems to suspect nothing until she catches sight of Not-Ben’s spooky reflection in the glass tabletop.
Dean sets about setting the kids free and I have to admit that Ben being his little helper, reassuring the other kids, is kind of adorable. He even offers his jacket to cover the broken glass when Dean smashes a window so they can make their escape, and sends the other kids out before himself. N’awww.
K: Seriously, Ben taking charge and helping/comforting the other kids is amazing. And it totally reaffirms my conviction that he’s Dean’s kid.
Anna: Sam rushes in to warn them about the mother—she’s the reason the real kids are still alive, so she could snack on them. The kids clamber out one by one, but – speak of the devil – Mama Changeling turns up.
Lisa accuses Not-Ben of not being her son (which, for having no prior knowledge of the whole changeling thing is a bit of a leap, but okay show) and tries to escape, but she’s warded back into the house by three more of the dead-eyed little monsters. Mum-Lady is having trouble, too—she’s locked in the bathroom again, with Not-Katie hammering on the door.
Sam and Dean try to fight off Mama Changeling and there’s some wonderfully hammy manly-fighting-noises and falling into things as Ben works to get himself and the other kids to safety. Sam torches Mama Changeling, and the changeling kids in their respective houses burst into flames along with her.
Dean brings Ben home for a happy reunion with Lisa and explains everything—what happened to Ben, the changelings, the fact that hunting down supernatural beasties is kind of his job, etc. He also double-checks that Ben isn’t his – which, fair enough – but Lisa says no. She did a blood test when he was a baby, the father turned out to be some biker she met in a bar. Girl, I call bullshit on that one. (K: SO MUCH BULLSHIT) The Tinkly Piano of Feels tinkles away sadly as Dean almost seems disappointed; it seems his whole one-year-to-live deal has got him thinking about what he’ll leave behind after he’s gone. He saved Ben, though, Lisa points out, and that’s pretty damn big.
Dean turns to go, saying he would have been proud to be Ben’s dad. Just for the record.
LITERALLY NOTHING WILL CONVINCE ME THAT BEN IS NOT DEAN’S KID OKAY.
K: NO POWER IN THE ‘VERSE.
Back at the motel, Sam’s following up on Kickass Blondie’s advice and looking into Mama Winchester’s friends—all of whom, it seems, died horribly. What a coinkydink. Having tracked down Blondie, Sam shares his findings and demands to know how she knows so much about him and his family, why she’s following him, and who she is. Blondie’s eyes turn black—DUN DUN DUN, she’s a demon.
Anna: Sam goes straight for the holy water, but she insists she’s there to help. Not all demons are assholes, it seems. She doesn’t have all the answers but she knows Sam is important and wants to find out what’s going on just as much as he does. There’s something in it for him, too: she can help him save Dean’s life.
K: A likely story, girl. A likely story. For me, this is a pretty fun episode. There’s creepy children, which always ups the nyargh must hide behind a cushion factor, and although Ben has his DUDE NO YOU’RE EIGHT WHAT ARE YOU DOING moments, it’s still a pretty great plot to have Dean be all “Oh shit, I might have a kid”.
Anna: Agreed. Ben emulating Dean was pretty hit or miss (seriously? ogling one of the mums? ew you’re eight) but when they got it right, they really got it right.
[Editor’s Note: I’ve never heard it called a moonbounce. This American has always heard “bounce house” because they aren’t always castles, duh. -M]
Next time: Sam’s bad luck reaches ridiculous proportions thanks to a cursed rabbit’s foot, Gordon, and a British mercenary in Supernatural S03 E03 – Bad Day at Black Rock.
Writer, YouTuber, musician, pretentious idiot, swarm of angry bees in a human suit. Queer in every sense of the word, and not quiet about it. Several years into a plot to take over the BBC so I can become the new Doctor Who showrunner and fix all the problems.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
