Supernatural S02 E10 – Vigilante justice

Previously: A demonic virus took over an entire town, and Sam proved to be mysteriously immune to it.
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Hunted

Kirsti: Psychiatrist’s office. A creepy guy in his early 20s tells the psychiatrist that a year or so ago, he started getting migraines. Then he found out he could electrocute things with his brain. He tried it out on the neighbour’s cat. The psychiatrist frowns and makes notes that probably say “DO NOT SHAKE HANDS WITH THIS DUDE OMG.” Electro-creeper says that he didn’t want to kill the neighbour’s cat, but the yellow-eyed man comes to him in his dreams and asks him to do things, that he has plans for him. Cut to Electro-creeper walking towards his car at night. When he reaches his car, there’s a dark figure reflected in the window. Electro-creeper turns and promptly gets stabbed twice.

FLAME ON!

After the Not Credits, we’re where we left off last episode. Dean reveals what Papa Winchester whispered to him – that he had to save Sam, and if he couldn’t save him, he has to kill him. Sam demands to know what that means and Dean says a little tearily that he doesn’t know and that Papa Winchester told him not to say anything. Sam’s fuming and wants to work out what it all means.

Dean pleads that they should lay low for a while. Sam reluctantly agrees. But that night, Sam creeps out of their motel room, bag over his shoulder. He steals a car and drives away.

Cut to Sam standing outside a darkened house. He examines an address written on motel stationery, then breaks into the house. As he walks inside, he walks into a tripwire and a grenade explodes. Sam screams and we get a close up of his smoking boots. There’s a flash of light and we cut to a girl about Sam’s age. She wakes up gasping. Her fiance asks if she’s okay, and she says she just had a nightmare. She tells him to go back to sleep, and lies down again, staring into the darkness. Fade to black.

After the Not Commercial Break, Sam walks into Harvelle’s. Ellen smiles, unsurprised to see him, and tells him that Dean’s been calling constantly. She asks what’s happening between them, and Sam changes the subject to Jo. Ellen smiles sadly and says that Jo took off after the H. H. Holmes case because she wanted to keep hunting and Ellen didn’t want her to. Sam apologises for letting Jo hunt with them, and Ellen says that it’s not their fault. She asks what’s up and he says he needs help.

Sometimes later, Ash has tracked every incidence of a nursery-fire-on-the-kid-born-in-1983’s-six-month-birthday in the continental US. It amounts to five names: Sam Winchester, Max Miller (who we met last season), Andy Gallagher (of evil twin fame), Electro-creeper (real name: Scott Carey). Ash says that Electro-creeper is buried in Lafayette, Indiana. Sam decides to head there. Ellen says she has to update Dean, but Sam begs her not to. She reluctantly agrees.

Cut to Electro-creeper’s father’s house. Sam claims to be a friend from high school and, when Papa Electro-creeper says that his son was having nightmares and migraines, asks to see Electro-creeper’s room. Up there, he finds several pill bottles prescribed by the psychiatrist from the teaser, and a collage of pictures of yellow eyes taped to the back of the closet.

At a motel that night, Sam determines that he’s being followed. He grabs his stalker and slams them against a wall. It’s the girl who had a vision about his death, and she tells him that he’s in danger.

Inside Sam’s motel room, she introduces herself as Ava Wilson and starts rambling about how she has dreams about people’s deaths and he has to believe her. She found him because she saw the motel stationery in her dream, Googled it, and drove there. Sam’s all “WOW”, and Ava interprets this as “YOU’RE CRAZY” rather than the “ONE OF US!!!” that it actually is. When he says that he has visions too, she’s all “WTF”, which is kind of hilarious. Her mother’s not dead so much like Evil Twin, she doesn’t fit the pattern.

Cut to Dean Bromobiling his way around the lower 48. Ellen rings to tell him where Sam is, and he immediately changes course for Indiana. Back in Sam’s room, Ava begs him to leave town. He’s all “LOL NOPE” because he needs to find out what’s happening and how it relates to them. And he needs her help to do it. Cut to the psychiatrist’s office. Ava’s in a session as a new patient, effectively distracting the psych while Sam climbs past the window and into the file room.

    Back at the Motel of the Week, Ava looks shocked. Sam flips through Electro-creeper’s file as he asks if she’s okay. She says excitedly that she’s awesome because apparently stealing confidential documents is the most fun ever. Sometime later, they listen to the recordings of Electro-creeper’s therapy sessions. Cut to outside. Dean pulls up and spies on Sam through the window. He’s relieved to see that Sam’s okay, then chuckles when he sees Ava there because obviously the only reason for a woman to be present is that Sam’s picked up. MISOGYNY SHOTS!!

Back in the motel room, the therapy tapes inform us that the Yellow Eyed Demon told Electro-creeper that there’s a war coming, and all the psychic kids are soldiers. Ava’s all “the fuck?!” and just as Sam starts to reply, the window is shattered by a bullet. He dives to the floor and shields Ava’s body with his. On a roof across the road, Gordon (remember him?) peers through his sniper rifle. Just as he’s about to take another shot, Dean jumps him and punches him in the face a bunch of times.

Gordon manages to grab the rifle and hits Dean in the face with it, knocking him out. Fade to black.

After the Not Commercial Break, Sam and Ava investigate the roof. Sam examines the cartridges left behind, and gets all Gil Grissom about them while Ava suggests calling the local LOLPD. Sam says that would be pointless and pulls out his phone to call Dean. Across town in an abandoned murder scene-looking house, Dean’s tied to a chair. Gordon holds the phone to his ear. Dean tells Sam that he’s in Lafayette, and that it’s “a real funky town“. Sam says there’s someone following him and asks where Dean is. Dean gives him the address and Sam says he’ll meet him there before hanging up. Gordon is pleased with the way the conversation went.

Motel of the Week. Sam’s all “TRAP!!” because apparently “funky town” was their super secret sibling codeword for someone holding a gun to their head.

Ava thinks this is the worst codeword ever. Sam cringes a little and says it was Dean’s choice. Murder House. Gordon starts pulling weapons from his bag as Dean says that this seems a little excessive in terms of revenge. Gordon tells him that it’s not revenge. It’s a hunt. And Sam’s fair game. Dean looks shocked.

Outside the motel, Sam orders Ava to leave town and go home to her fiance. He doesn’t care that he’s walking right into her vision because Dean’s in danger. She leaves reluctantly, making him promise to phone when he’s got Dean back and everything’s okay. Murder House. Gordon tells Dean that he was exorcising a demon from a teenage girl and the demon said something about war coming. That got his attention and he switched from exorcism to torture to find out what he wanted to know, no fucks given about the teenage girl. Dean’s disgusted.

Anyway, during the torture process, the demon told him everything: psychic humans who’ll be soldiers during a coming war, fighting on the side of demons. Oh, and BTW, Sam Winchester is one of them. Dean scoffs and says the demon was probably lying, but Gordon says he’s done his homework and that he has connections at Harvelle’s too. That’s how he found Sam. And also Electro-creeper, who hadn’t killed anyone yet but it was totally inevitable, so Gordon was just doing the world a favour. Dean says Sam’s too smart to fall for his trap, but Gordon’s anticipating that and has added an extra level of trap to the trap, in the form of a grenade. And then another grenade. He tells Dean that at least this way, Sam’s death will be quick. Fade to black.

After the Not Commercial Break, Dean tries to convince Gordon that Sam’s too nice to turn evil, but Gordon doesn’t care. One day, Sam will be a monster and it’s his job to kill monsters. Dean gets pissed (legit), and Gordon says he thought Dean was more of a professional than that. What if, he asks, Dean had 20-something Hitler right in front of him. Wouldn’t he do the right thing and kill Hitler? Dean insists that it’s not the same thing, and Gordon shoves a gag in his mouth. He understands that Dean loves his brother, but he knows Papa Winchester would have killed Sam if he had to. Dean glares.

Sometime later, we see Sam creep up to the Murder House, just like in Ava’s vision. He breaks in and we cut back to Gordon and Dean. The first grenade goes off and Dean screams through his gag. Gordon tells him to wait because it’s not over yet. The second grenade goes off and Dean sobs and fights to get free. Gordon unsympathetically apologises and heads to the back room. He sees Sam’s smoking boots and smiles to himself.

But Sam presses a gun to the back of his head and tells Gordon to drop his rifle. Gordon sasses that he’ll get tetanus from taking his shoes off in the Murder House. Sam yells at him again to drop the gun. Dean hears his brother’s voice and heaves a sigh of relief. Gordon reluctantly drops his gun, then knocks the gun from Sam’s hands. He attacks, knocking Sam to the ground and drawing his knife. He raises the knife, saying that Sam’s no better than the monsters they hunt. As he goes to bring the knife down, Sam lashes out. He flips Gordon over and punches him twice, then points the rifle at him. After a moment’s hesitation, he knocks Gordon out rather than shooting him.

Sam shuffles into the front room and unties Dean. Dean checks Sam’s okay before turning towards the back room with murdery feelings.

Sam tells him that Gordon’s taken care of. He pulls Dean towards the front door, and they head outside. Moments later, as they’re staggering away from the Murder House, Gordon appears with a gun in each hand. He shoots wildly and the boys run for cover. They hide in a ditch as Dean’s all “Bitch, please. This is NOT taken care of.” Sam smirks as three police cars pull up with their sirens blaring. Shortly thereafter, Gordon is arrested as a cop examines the weapons rack in his truck. Sam smugly says that the police had an anonymous tip, and we fade to black.

After the Not Commercial Break, Dean’s filling Ellen in over the phone. He demands to know why she talked to Gordon about Sam, and she’s all “Are you fucking kidding me? There are like five million hunters in this bar, you moron.” She tells him she has no control over any of the hunters or what they choose to believe.

Later, the Bromobile is broing along. Sam calls Ava for what’s clearly the somethingth time, and leaves a worried voicemail asking her to call him because he wants to make sure she got home okay. When he hangs up, Dean wants him promise not to take off ever again. Sam says that Dean can’t protect him from everything, but that he’s not going to stop hunting any time soon. So if Dean wants to watch his back, they’d better stick together. They bring back the “Bitch” “Jerk” routine from the pilot and grin at each other. Sam stares at his phone, worried, and Dean’s all “Sam and Ava sitting in a tree”. Sam says he has a bad feeling and asks how far it is to Ava’s town.

Cut to the boys breaking into Ava’s house in the dark. They find her fiance dead in the bedroom, blood everywhere. Dean runs a finger along a windowsill and finds it covered in sulphur. Clearly, a demon’s been there. Sam spots something on the floor and bends down to find that it’s Ava’s engagement ring. He stares at it in concern as we fade to black.

This is another episode that feels kind of like filler to me. Yes, it introduces us to another couple of psychic kids. And it introduces the idea of Sam as a potential Big Bad, which is pretty significant in future episodes. But I don’t enjoy it when the boys are split up and doing their own things – it inevitably ends in stupidity that wouldn’t have happened if the other were present. Plus, I can’t stand Gordon, and this episode makes me add an extra level of hatred to the Reasons I Hate Papa Winchester pile…

 

Next time on Supernatural: The boys head to a creepy hotel where people are dying in disturbing ways in S02 E11 – Playthings.