Then: Five long weeks ago, Supernatural aired its last new episode. Sam and Dean both said they were OK when they clearly weren’t after engaging in an epic fight with words and weapons thanks to a Man Siren.
Now: A mugging at a bar goes awry when the victim gets shot int the chest. The mugger flees, and the victim gets up, perfectly fine. The Winchesters are called in to investigate people not dying. Sam (Jared Padalecki) tries to go, but Dean acts like a passive aggressive tool and wonders if Sam really wants him to come even though he’s not as good of a hunter as his little brother. I guess things aren’t OK after all.
Sam and Dean show in the the small Wyoming town posing as bloggers for FlooredByTheLord.com (save your time, because I already checked and, sadly, it’s not a real website). Sam wonders if the mugging victim visited any crossroads or encountered any red-eyed people lately.
Some computer research reveals the last person in town to die was a little kid named Cole. Sam thinks maybe the reaper is gone for some reason, so he decides to hold a seance and talk to the dead kid.
Dean (Jensen Ackles) has issues with this, because if they do bring the reaper back, a lot of good people could die. Sam says that’s the natural order of things, and Dean points out the hypocrisy of two formerly dead brothers talking about the natural order of things.
However, these two brothers are far from normal, since one has demon blood and the other was saved from Hell by an angel. As Sam points out, they’re not exactly Joe the Plumber, which forces Dean to add “Joe the Plumber was a douche.” Agreed.
Their seance is cut short when a creepy guy shows up to threaten them, Dean senses that this is Alastair in a different meatsuit, and Alastair flings Dean to one side. Unfortunately for him, Sam has been training hard on his dark arts, so he manhandles Alastair like a ragdoll before the Black Smoke Demon runs away.
Back in the hotel, Bobby calls in to let the boys know that Sam is right and the reaper was kidnaped by demons because killing a reaper under the solstice moon (which is one day away) is one of the 66 Seals. Too bad for them the reaper is invisible to the living.
So the boys call in Pamela, the psychic from the season premiere, to help perform a spell to make them temporarily dead so their spirits can walk around in the world of the dead. She has them lie down on their beds and close their eyes. That’s pretty much the start of a lot of Supernatural fans’ fantasies.
Dean and Sam wake up and are shocked to see their bodies still on the beds. It’s Ghost Sam and Ghost Dean! Pamela will have to bring them back to life, so she whispers the incantation into Dean’s ear “You have got a great ass.” Pamela’s a little saucy, and I like it.
The Ghost-chesters walk around the town and Dean is amused by his newfound ability to put his hand through his brother. They find Cole, the dead kid played by Alexander Gould, who plays the awesome Shane Botwin on Showtime’s Weeds.
Cole tells them the story about how the Black Smoke came and took away the reaper. Since I also recap Lost, it’s a bit confusing for me to see a giant pillar of black smoke and not think of that show’s monster. Maybe this means the Black Smoke Monster on Lost is actually a demon.
A loud rumble occurs and suddenly another reaper shows up, a sexy woman who knows Dean. She reminds him with a touch that it’s Tessa, the reaper who came to him in the hospital way back in the season 2 premiere, “In My Time of Dying.” Wow, it’s incredibly cool that this show bothers to bring back the same actress who had a one-episode guest spot more than two years ago,
After a trip down memory lane, she leaves them alone so they can rescue the kidnaped reaper before she comes back to take Cole. Sam talks the little kid into helping them and Dean gets to flirt with Tessa while confessing that he wishes he’d gone with her last time they met to save his dad and his brother.
Cole tells them that the Black Smoke was at the funeral home, and just then the Back Smoke storms in and takes Tessa. In order to fight it, the Ghost-chesters need to learn some ghost fighting moves.
Cole teaches them some tricks, starting with the lesson that if you want to touch something, you have to get really angry. Cole punches Sam and Dean a few times until Sam takes a swing at him and Cole disappears.
Once their training is complete, Sam and Dean visit the funeral home, which is covered in some weird demonic symbols which are apparently only visible to the dead.
Inside they put a ghostly beatdown on some guy before Alastair shows up and traps them in iron chains. He’s back in his old meatsuit, and I’ll be damned if Christopher Heyerdahl isn’t the absolute creepiest dude ever. He would give Hannibal Lecter the willies. He toys with them, firing off shots of rock salt for fun. It turns out he needs to kill two reapers to break the seal.
The two reapers are in a pentagram in the middle of the room, so Alastair takes a scythe he got from one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and goes to work killing some reapers. He takes out the original one, but before he can kill Tessa, the boys use their ghost powers to make a chandelier fall, which gives them just enough time to escape.
Pamela grows worried when she senses a bad guy in her room, so she tries to bring Sam and Dean back while fighting off her demon attacker. She brings Sam back, and he takes no time using his dark arts to crush the demon right out of the attacker. It’s not really cute anymore, it’s just scary how evil Sam is turning.
Dean, still a ghost, tries running away, but Alastair catches up to him. Luckily for Dean, a lightning bolt strikes him and Alastair vanishes. “What the Hell?” asks Dean. The answer is just the opposite, as Castiel pops up behind him. Now that’s how you make an entrance.
Castiel reveals that he tricked the boys into stopping this seal from being broken because it was him posing as Bobby on the phone earlier with Sam. Dean is angry that the angels didn’t help out, but Castiel reveals the writing on the funeral home was angel proofing. Things are looking good because the seal wasn’t broken and they’ve captured Alastair.
Now that everything is back to normal, Tessa asks Dean to come and help convince Cole that finally leaving is the right thing to do. Sadly, all Tessa brings is bad news, convincing Dean that there’s no such thing as a second chance, and that his future isn’t going to be good.
Pamela finally brings Dean back to life just as she’s about to die. As she fades, she tells them to tell Bobby to go to Hell for ever introducing her to the Winchester boys in the first place. Finally, she whispers into Sam’s ear that she knows what he did to the demon who attacked her, and that’s it most definitely not a good thing.
After the episode, a screen comes up that says “We dedicate the entire season to Kim Manners,” followed by “We miss you, Kim.” I’m certain every single Supernatural fan feels the exact same way.
Next week on Supernatural: Angels are dying, and Castiel asks Dean to torture Alastair for information. Things are going to get ugly.
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
