Supernatural Review: Revenge of The Body Snatcher

The episode aptly titled ‘And Then There Were None’ is befitting for the body count racked up in this latest Supernatural adventure. Okay not that it was particularly large in quantity, but to be perfectly spoilerific – Gwen (Campbell), Rufus, and Samuel all bite the dust.

It starts off at a truck gas stop where the younger girl who is now possessed by the mother of all creatures comes up to a truck driver. The trucker thinks she’s just some runaway kid who needs a ride somewhere, but Eve (as she calls herself) starts making sexual innuendos and starts kissing the poor man. But unexpectedly he pushes her back and tells her that she needs God to fill the void that’s making her seek physical gratification with the likes of him. Eve laughs and tells him that God doesn’t care and in fact has abandoned them. She creepily says that a good mother wouldn’t do that. Next thing you know she’s whispering sweet nothings into his ear and the trucker goes home to bludgeon his wife to death.

Meanwhile Sam, Dean and Bobby notice a grisly monster madness pattern that has them scoping out the trucker who killed his wife. He claimed that he couldn’t remember what happened and that he just woke up at work. Looking at surveillance tapes though the Winchesters and Bobby see Eve and her scary face. They get word of another batch of killings by a man down at the local cannery and Bobby goes to investigate leaving Sam and Dean to investigate Eve more.

At the cannery, Bobby runs into Rufus who’s also in town investigating the weird killings. The chemistry between Jim Beaver and Steven Williams is golden. The two have perfected the grumpy old men dialogue and I find myself hanging on their words. In this episode, Beaver and Williams really outshone everyone else in their delivery of two hardened hunters with gritty backgrounds and snappy comebacks. We also learn much more of Bobby and Rufus’s relationship with each other, that once they were very much like Sam and Dean but then the tragic Omaha case happened where Rufus lost someone he could never forgive Bobby for.

Later that night Sam and Dean meet up with Bobby and Rufus at the cannery to check out the latest crime scene to see if they can track any leads. Inside they meet Samuel and Gwen. It’s a Campbell family reunion! It’s a short lived one unfortunately when Dean pumps Gwen full of bullets after being body snatched by the critter that’s been possessing the bodies of the other men. They find Dean who wakes up freaked out as the little slug crawls out of his ear and he’s had no recollection of killing Gwen.

Bobby tells everyone that they all need to put their weapons away because the slug could be in any of them and this was the best way to lessen their chances of blowing each other’s brains so easily. This whole time Samuel’s being a big tool and it’s taking a lot of self-restraint on Dean’s part not to start pummeling his grandfather.

He gets his chance soon enough though as Sam and him follow Samuel to the bathroom and the elder man pulls out a hidden gun. We get a quick shot of black goo come out of his ear but he manages to get away from the brothers. Sam manages to get to his grandfather first and the elder man tries to distract Sam by saying that he’ll tell him all about all the things he did last year. Sam is tempted but stands his ground telling Samuel not to move. Gramps kept on coming though and Sam put a bullet in his brain. Truthfully I was uncertain if Sam had the guts to actually pull the trigger now that he has his soul back. Samuel was betting on this as well, but too bad for him that there might still be some robo-Sam leftover.

Still I think it was more of self-preservation that caused the younger Winchester take the shot. Samuel would have definitely taken him down, since we know he has absolutely no feelings for anyone else (aside from his creepy daughter issues). Still they aren’t sure if the slug is actually in Samuel, so Bobby and Rufus begin to saw his skull off to make certain. Like in those scary movies where the killer isn’t really dead yet, gramps opens his eyes and starts beating the other two hunters (Sam and Dean were outside the room and Samuel quickly sticks a large piece of wood through the handles to delay them).

Luckily Bobby manages to push Samuel onto a live electrical wire where the slug is forced out of Samuel (who is now really dead).  Next problem is that the slug could have entered any of them. To make sure they were all still themselves, they each took a shock of electricity. The final unexpected death happened in seconds just like Gwen and Samuel. Slug-possessed Bobby sticks a knife into Rufus’s heart before Sam and Dean are able to subdue him. After being safely duct taped onto a chair, Bobby begins to speak in a weird raspy voice and we know the slug is talking. Apparently they were lured to the cannery because Eve wanted them to know that their lives would be full of pain from now on (doesn’t she know though that this is nothing new?). They manage to force the slug out of Bobby via prolonged electrocution.

The final scene shows the three hunters standing over Rufus’s grave. Dean proclaims that Rufus should have gotten over what happened in Omaha because of all the crappy things that happen to them, they’re all each other’s got. He tells Sam that it doesn’t matter what any of them have done and that the slates are wiped clean. Earlier Sam asked his brother what their mother would have said after he killed Samuel. The elder Winchester responded that just because your blood it doesn’t make you family, you’ve got to earn that. The three hunters have been there for each other when it really mattered and that’s the difference between their relationships and that of the Campbell clan that we were introduced to in season six.

We’ll have to wait and see if Sam can actually forgive himself for the things he did last year and if he can finally let go of trying to remember it all. It’s a big step for Dean to really forgive his brother for everything that happened when he was soulless. Previously it seemed like Dean wanted to just forget about things and not necessarily deal with them but after the events of this episode all the deaths around them appears to have given him real closure. Life is too short after all and they have bigger things to worry about.

Season 6, Episode 16: And then There Were None (originally aired March 4, 2011)

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Images courtesy of The CW and Jack Rowand