Previously: The legend of the Hook Man happened, and another cute girl fell in love with a Winchester. Story of their lives.
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Bugs
Sara: Construction Zone. Some construction guys are building new, ritzy houses in a classy subdivision. Beardy Construction Guy complains about mosquitoes right as another guy falls through a weird hole and breaks his ankle. As Beardy Construction Guy runs to get a rope to pull him out, the guy in the hole gets COVERED in bugs, and this is like the third Supernatural recap I’ve gotten that involves something that legitimately terrifies me. UGH. By the time Beardy Construction Guy gets back, the guy in the hole is laying at the bottom (with no bugs on him) and bleeding from the eyes, nose, and ears.
Kirsti: Hello, nightmare.
Sara: Over at some shady looking biker bar, Sam is reading the newspaper on top of the Bromobile as Dean makes their gas money from gambling. Sam complains that they should really get a day job, but Dean says that demon hunting is their day job; it just doesn’t pay very well. Seriously, you’d think somebody could write them a check for the life saving and all.
K: Meanwhile, I stop to have all the feels over the fact that THEIR FATHER RAISED THEM TO HUSTLE POOL AND SCAM CREDIT CARD COMPANIES. Worst. Parent. Ever.
Sara: Sam fills Dean in on their next mission: A guy in Oklahoma is said to have died from mad cow disease, but since that particular disease takes months, or even years, to destroy someone’s brain, it’s kind of odd that this guy’s brain was destroyed within minutes. (Fun fact: I can’t donate blood because of the risk of mad cow disease since I lived in England for a time.) (K: TWINSIES!!) They turn on some rock music and head to Oklahoma.
When they make it to Oklahoma, the first person they track down is Beardy Construction Guy (BCG) to ask if he worked with their “Uncle Dusty”. He’s surprised to see them, because Bug Guy never mentioned having nephews, but they worm their way into his heart by saying that Uncle Bug thought BCG was just the best. They ask for more information about what happened that day, but BCG isn’t sure. He went to get some rope to help him out, and when he came back, Uncle Bug was dead and bleeding. Uncle Bug wasn’t acting strangely before all this, but BCG is happy to show the boys where they were working when their “uncle” died.
They examine the hole, and Dean decides that they can flip a coin to see who will go down there, since the hole is only big enough for one person. Sam is like LOL the fuck? But when Dean calls him chicken, Sam tells him to just flip the damn coin. Dean calls Sam a chicken one more time as the coin flips in the air, and Sam snatches it from him and says he’ll go.
A short while later, the boys are driving away and Sam is holding a beetle. Huh. It feels weird that they just skipped the beetle-finding scene, right? Anyways, Sam says that there were no burrows or holes for the beetles to have crawled through, but beetles have been known to eat dead meat before. He only found ten, though, and Dean says that ten would never be enough to kill Uncle Bug. Sam declares that they need more information to figure it out, so they should ask around about the neighborhood.
As Dean drives past an open house with a “FREE BBQ” sign, he says he knows the perfect place to start. Damn, is this how ritzy neighborhoods do open houses? Sign me up. On to the way to the door, Dean bitches about how he would never be able to live in a Leave it to Beaver style neighborhood because he’d rather be a weird ass Winchester. When they get to the door, the realtor greets them right away.
Sara: They tell him that they’re just looking for a house for their (negligent asshole) father who is getting older and needs a new home. Gay-Friendly Realtor nicely segues into saying that seniors are always welcome, too. (K: LOL. Sorry, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. You’re officially a senior citizen.) He brings them inside and introduces them to his wife, who he tells (in front of them) to lie if she has to about the neighborhood because papa needs to sell some houses. He’s actually very charming. They talk for about half a second before another woman walks up and gives the same speech from Gay-Friendly Realtor. The boys make faces, and Dean leaves Sam (calling him ‘honey’ on the way) to go investigate the shit out of things.
K: He also smacks Sam’s butt on the way past, because this episode just wants me to have ALL the Magical Padalecki Facial Expressions on earth.
Sara: And also to encourage all the Wincest shippers. Inside the house, Gay-Friendly Realtor (GFR) is showing him the floor plan when Dean notices jars of bugs in the living room. GFR says his son is a fan of insect collecting, and I want to ahead and put this out there for my unborn child: FIND A DIFFERENT HOBBY CAUSE NOPE.
Outside, Sam is also getting the Realtor spiel from another lady. She’s leaning on a table and is moments away from a motherfreakin’ tarantula crawling on her hand when Sam calmly moves her out of the way and picks up the tarantula to deliver to the shitty teenage boy watching with a Cheshire cat grin on his face. He snottily asks if Sam is going to tell his dad, GFR, and Sam nicely says no. Yeah, this is kind of the best possible way to make sure people never, ever buy a house in your stupid neighborhood.
Bratty teenage son, Matthew, brats about how shitty his dad is and Sam commiserates and says that it gets better. As Matthew sarcastically asks when, GFR shows up and pulls his kid to the side to bitch him out. Dean is back, too, and Sam asks if GFR reminds him of their own negligent dad. Dean is completely caught off guard by the comparison because he never saw their father act that way, but Sam clarifies that it was always directed at him, because he didn’t want to learn or do the same things that they wanted to do.
K: Question to saltgunners in the know: have we ever actually SEEN the boys use these “very important” bow hunting skills??? Because I feel like NOPE.
Sara: Dean changes the subject to another mysterious death that happened in the area. Before the neighborhood was even built, one surveyor dropped dead on the site due to an allergy to bee stings, so: More bugs. Also: FEELINGS.
The boys tie the bugs to the mysterious death but don’t think any ghosts are involved, since they didn’t detect a ghostly presence. Their next idea is that someone is telepathically controlling the bugs to do the killing, and their first suspect is GFR’s creepy teenage son because he’s creepy. Dean convinces Sam to stay the night in one of the model homes, because honestly, he can convince Sam to do *anything* he asks. It’s that cute face.
K: Meanwhile, I’m back to having all the feels because THEIR FATHER RAISED THEM TO SQUAT IN EMPTY HOUSES. I just…ARGH.
Sara: The female realtor who almost had a tarantula on her hand gets home from work and sits down to watch some TV before taking a shower. The news shows that their neighborhood is being sprayed for bugs, because of some reports of West Nile Virus. As she’s taking off her shirt, A FREAKING SPIDER CRAWLS OUT OF HER HAIR AND DOWN HER FACE OMG.
While she’s in the shower (BAD THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN IN SHOWERS, GIRL), a shitload of bad CGI spiders crawl out of the shower head and all over the walls. It’s slightly less terrifying than all of the earlier shots, because seriously, that is some bad CGI. The camera turns away as she screams and glass breaks, and then we see her laying on the floor in her room with spiders all over her face. How many times will I have to be reminded of my fear of dying naked?
K: Many. So very many. Also, I would totally die if there were that many spiders in my shower too.
Sara: Sam tells Dean to GTFO of the shower, because there was a death in the neighborhood that they heard reported over the police scanner. When they get there, they ask GFR what’s going on, but he doesn’t have any information yet. Dean says that the boys will need to get into the house and see if they can find a bug problem.
They climb through a window (as usual) straight into her bedroom and see the police tape on the ground. I hope real life cops are better at keeping people away from crime scenes. When they shake open a towel on the ground, a bunch of plastic spiders fall out. Except apparently they were supposed to be real spiders, which surprises me because they are really, really obviously plastic. (K: Seriously. The only way they could look more plastic would be if they had “MADE IN CHINA” on them in big red letters.) The teenage boy, Matthew, is still at the top of their list of suspects so they head to his street to catch him getting off the school bus.
When the bus pulls up, Matthew gets out but heads in the opposite direction, so the boys follow him. Turns out, he was just heading out to the woods to catch some more creepy bugs like the creepy little fuck he is. When the guys ask him what he’s doing, Matthew quickly figures out that they aren’t looking to buy a house, and wonders if they’re serial killers. They assure him that they aren’t, but isn’t that exactly what a serial killer would say?
K: Probably.
Sara: They ask if he’s heard about what happened to the lady who was killed by plastic spiders, and he says that he did but had nothing to do with it. He adds that they couldn’t possibly think he was involved, because the bee thing happened before he even moved there. They’re surprised he knows about the My Girl death, too, but he says he knows all of it and thinks the bugs are acting really weird. Takes one weirdo to another weirdo, I suppose.
Matthew tells the boys to come with him, and they follow him through the woods. On the way, he tells them that he tried to warn his dad and get everyone out of the neighborhood, but his dad won’t listen to him because he thinks he’s a freak. Sam says he understands, and Dean is still not getting that time with their dad was completely different for Sam than it was for him. Aw, Sam feels. And now I feel bad for making fun of Matthew for being a little bug lovin’ weirdo. Anyways, Sam tells Matthew that something really awesome is going to happen in two years: He’ll turn 18, go to college, and get away from his dad. Dean is upset by this advice, because he thinks Matthew (ahem, Sam) should stick with his family. He obviously does not understand what Sam is going through.
Matthew leads them to a spot where tons of insects are congregating. He’s been tracking them for months, and it seems like they’re all meeting up for something. They find a pile of worms positioned over a hole in the ground and when Dean pushes through them with a stick, he feels something hard inside. When he reaches his hand in the hole of worms, I literally flinch, and he pulls out a skull. If that had been me, I would have thrown it at the nearest available Snark Lady. Sorry, Kirsti!
K: -_- Although let’s be honest – neither of us would have reached into a worm-ridden hole in the first place.
Sara: Totally valid point. After the Not Commercial Break, the boys are carrying a box full of bones they found in the unmarked grave somewhere (K: Archaeologist!Kirsti is twitching about them removing things from a site, because that is THE. WORST. EVER.), and Dean confronts Sam about why he told Matthew to ditch his family. Sam knows what the kid is going through and just wanted to help. Dean thinks he should have told Matthew to respect his old man, but Sam didn’t not respect their father. He just always felt like he wasn’t good enough for Daddy Winchester.
K: See also: Joyce kicking Buffy out of the house for being a vampire slayer.
Sara: WORD. Sam thinks that even if they find Daddy Winchester, he won’t want to see him because of how disappointed he is. AW, YOU GUYS. This is really sad. I’m having a lot of Sam feels right now. Dean tells him that Daddy Winchester was never disappointed in him. He was just worried that something might happen to him without his family there to protect him. Dean confesses that they used to make regular visits to Stanford to check up on Sam without telling him. DOUBLE AW, YOU GUYS. I love them.
They bring the bones to a local college and ask the professor they’re visiting if he could figure anything out about them. Judging by some sciencey thing and another sciencey majig, they’re probably Native American bones. There were no reservations in the area, but it’s possible the bones were moved there. He directs them to the closest reservation for more info.
Some flutey Native American sounding music leads us into the next scene, as Dean and Sam approach a man named Joe playing cards in a diner. They tell him that they’re students at the local university and he’s like, “SKRT, stop right there, ya liars.” Dean tries to start again by saying, “The truth is…” but Joe Native is like, “SKRT AGAIN, anyone who starts a sentence that way is a damn liar.” I love this guy.
K: Me too. Anyone who calls the Winchesters on their super obvious lies is the best.
Sara: The boys ask if he knows anything about any Native American folklore in the area, because they found some Native American bones close by. He tells them a story his own father told him: Many years ago, their tribe lived on the land over there until the Cavalry came and told them to move. They refused to leave, so the Cavalry murdered and raped many of them. They left and came back the following day, and so on and so forth for six more days, until the night that the moon and sun shared the sky. On the sixth night of murdering and raping, the whole tribe was dead. As the last man lay dying, he whispered to the heavens that no white man would ever live on those lands again but they would experience misery and death like what the white man brought to them. On the night of the sixth day, none would survive. Well, that’s all it would take for me to GTFO.
K: Right there with you, dude.
Sara: As the boys leave, they deduce that spring equinox is the day that both the sun and moon share the sky, and so this will continue to happen every single year. They also realize that today is the sixth day, OF COURSE. Just once I’d like for them to solve something two days before deadline, so they can chill for a while.
Over at Matthew’s house, he investigates a small hole in the ground AND THEN A TON OF HISSING COCKROACHES COME CRAWLING OUT NO NO NO NO. I know that I have said in several other posts that different things are my biggest fear, but FOR REAL THOUGH, COCKROACHES ARE MY BIGGEST FEAR.
K: In which case you should never work in a library. Because there are fucking cockroaches EVERYWHERE. And I scream and make that pukey face every time I see one. Usually because THEY’VE CRAWLED OUT OF A BOOK AND ONTO MY ARM.
Sara: OMG KIRSTI, NO. I CAN’T BREATHE NOW. My husband tells this story about being at a friend’s house once, and they had a pizza box open with a full pizza in it, and a cockroach fell from the ceiling and onto the pizza, and UGHHH. I am very sorry for giving you this mental image now, too, but I have been stuck with it by myself for far too long.
As the boys race back to the neighborhood, they call GFR and tell him there’s a gas leak so he’ll need to get everyone the hell out of town. GFR wants to know who’s calling and when Dean throws out the name Travis, GFR calls him out because he knows Travis. He demands to know who’s actually calling, and Dean just says, “Uh…” and hangs up. I like how he’s occasionally really terrible at lying under pressure. Like when he tried to keep that girl from getting on the plane.
Sam grabs the phone from him and calls Matthew (because they have his number somehow?) and tells him to get his family out of the neighborhood. Matthew doesn’t know how to do that since they don’t listen to him, and Sam tells him to make them listen. All I would have to show my mother is ONE cockroach, and she would be peaceing the fuck out of the entire state (K: Mine used to live in Fiji. She’d probably take them on bare-handed.). Dean grabs the phone back and tells Matthew to just lie and say he needs to go to the ER. Much better plan. After hanging up, he scoffs at Sam’s “make him listen” approach.
The boys pull up to GFR’s house and they’re still there. WTF. Your child says he needs to go to the ER, and you don’t leave?! As the boys walk up to the door, GFR and Matthew come out, and Matthew spills that he tried the telling the truth technique. Oh, good. I guess GFR isn’t as terrible a parent as I originally thought. Dean tries to tell him to GTFO, but GFR mocks the idea of a biblical plague of bugs coming to town. They bring up all the weird deaths around town and tell him that the land is cursed, but GFR ain’t biting.
On cue, a huge swarm of bugs can be heard coming and GFR’s face already looks like, “…shit.” A ton of bugs start flying into the bug trap on the porch, and the Winchesters yell for GFR to grab his family and get inside. Luckily, the neighborhood hasn’t been built up yet, so they’re the only ones who live there. GFR’s wife wants to know what’s going on, but as the swarming gets louder, he just yells for her to call 911. To what? Shoot the bugs out of the air?
Just then, the CGI bugs are able to swarm through the fireplace, and Dean holds them off with fire and bug spray while everyone else rushes to the attic. Unfortuanately, termites are eating through the roof of the attic, and a hole in the roof crashes through. These people don’t have any luck today, huh? The boys patch the hole up quickly, but then another hole falls through moments later. The can of bug spray only lasts so long before they’re out of options. Everyone is cowering as the CGI bugs just buzz around stupidly, and then just in time, the stupid sun finally rises and the bugs are like, “Bored now. Bye!” and take off. Okay.
K: Seriously, this entire scene is RIDICULOUS. Like, it’s light when the boys leave the reservation. And when they reach the house, it’s pitch black but the bugs haven’t attacked. And then it’s insta-dawn?!?! Plus, the CGI’d bugs attacking them in the attic reminds me of The X-Files episode Darkness Falls, except way less spooky/convincing. Which is saying something considering that was made in 1993.
Sara: After a fade to black, the boys visit GFR who is loading up his shit and ready to GTFO. He says he’ll make sure never to let anyone live there again, and hey! Maybe this is how Paper Towns are made! Dean says that GFR doesn’t seem too torn up about it, and he sweetly responds that he’s lost a lot of money, but he realizes what’s important now: family. D’AW.
As the boys take off, Sam tells Dean that he does really want to find their dad so he can apologize for all the shitty things he said to him. Because Sam is such a sweet guy and Daddy Winchester probably does not deserve his apology since he can’t be bothered to pick up his phone. The boys drive away, leaving the beautiful, ritzy town behind.
Honestly, this is probably one of my least favorite episodes so far. I guessed pretty early on that this would be a sacred ground style monster, and it really didn’t feel like Dean and Sam did anything to actually save anyone. That can of bug spray didn’t really help anything; sunrise was the savior here. I did like the conversations about how Sam and Dean have such different relationships with Daddy Winchester, but the creature-of-the-week was pretty meh for me.
K: Yup. This episode is stupid. And I’m not gonna lie, when Sara suggested that I take the odd numbered episodes and she take the even numbered ones, I jumped at the chance solely because it meant not having to cover this episode. Sorry, Sara. Sort of…
Sara: Curse Kirsti’s future knowing!
Next time: Sam has a vision of a woman who needs help, and convinces Dean to check it out, in Supernatural S01 E09 – Home.
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