Previously: Dean’s last Christmas involved the hunt for some pagan gods, a little fingernail pulling, and some feelstastic flashbacks.
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Malleus Maleficarum
Kirsti: A posh looking couple in formal wear walk into their bedroom talking about how tedious the party they just attended was. He wants to have some sexy times, but she says she needs a few minutes and excuses herself. She heads into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Elsewhere, a match strikes and a woman starts chanting in a language that Google Translate is telling me could be Latin, Irish, Croatian or Danish. I don’t even think you tried, Google Translate. (M: “It’s definitely a language! Probably.”) The camera pans across a bunch of occult objects, including a used toothbrush, as the unseen woman continues chanting.
Back in the bathroom, Posh Lady starts brushing her teeth. The unseen woman slices her hand and lets the blood drip onto the toothbrush. Suddenly, one of Posh Lady’s teeth falls out. She’s all “THE FUCK??”, which is a pretty legit reaction to that. You know, unless you have scurvy. With every drop of blood that falls on the toothbrush, Posh Lady loses another tooth.
Anna: Somewhere in the world a dentist is watching this and thinking: “It’s because you don’t floss…”
Marines: And somewhere, a Marines is thinking, “EW EW EW EW. WHAT DID I SIGN UP FOR?”
K: At least it’s not toothbrush sharing?
She calls out to her husband, then starts to cough up blood as more teeth fall out. Her husband rushes into the bedroom, and she just has time to say “My teeth!” before the door slams shut between them.
The unseen woman keeps chanting as the husband pounds on the door. Posh Lady keeps coughing up blood. The unseen woman stabs the bloody toothbrush with a dagger, and stops chanting. Suddenly, the door swings open on its own, and Posh Lady is dead on the floor in a pool of her own blood. Given that she was a woman of colour, let’s have double shots!!
SATAN’S SCREENSAVER.
After the Not Credits, the boys question Posh Lady’s husband, claiming to be from the CDC. Sam investigates the bathroom while Dean asks if Posh Lady had any enemies. Sam finds something under the sink and returns to the bedroom, nodding to Dean that he’s done. They make their excuses and leave.
Outside, Sam shows Dean what he found – a hex bag. Dean’s grossed out because it contains animal bones and teeth, and also because it means witches and witches are icky.
Anna: Willow Rosenberg isn’t here so I’m disgruntled on her behalf. Although witches are basically always evil in SPN, now I come to think about it, so maybe Dean has a point.
Mari: And even Willow was evil for an end of season arch!
K: Valid points. Mostly I just find it entertaining that Dean, who basically lives on fast food in his car, is judging people’s sanitary habits.
Sam’s kind of annoyed too, but that’s because the witch could be anybody. You know, provided they had access to her house to get the hex bag in. So clearly, it was someone in her life who was mad at her. If they work out what the motive is, they can find the murderer.
Outside a house nearby, a woman is working in her garden. A car pulls up next door, and her neighbour – with a bandaged hand to let us know it was the witch from the teaser – jumps out with a bag of groceries. The witch, Amanda, looks totally shifty and the gardener, Elizabeth, asks if she’s okay because she missed book club the previous night. Too busy being a murderer, apparently. Amanda makes an awkward excuse and rushes inside. She carries her groceries into the kitchen, and grabs a plate of food from the oven. It’s a rotting, maggot filled roast chicken. (A: Um. GROSS.) Excuse me while I hurl. Amanda just stares at the plate.
Cut to that night. Posh Lady’s husband (Paul) is sitting in his car eating a burger, which seems like totally normal behaviour for someone whose wife just died??? IDK. (M: Grieving might make him hungry. DON’T JUDGE.) He’s listening to Every Rose Has Its Thorn, which will never not remind me of the terrible-but-secretly-awesome movie version of Rock of Ages.
I couldn’t find a gif from the movie, but this Grace Helbig gif is a thing that exists, so…yeah.
Anna: Still an excellent gif.
K: Anyway, back at Amanda’s, she’s setting up her witch supplies again. Except this time, the maggoty roast chicken has taken the toothbrush’s place. Paul glances at his wrist and is surprised to see his watch is missing. Amanda starts chanting and places a watch – presumably Paul’s – on the maggoty chicken. She finishes her incantation and then says that seeing as the dinner was made for Paul, now he’s going to eat it. She stabs the chicken with her athame.
Paul’s car. The radio spontaneously changes to I Put A Spell on You, which obviously reminds me of this:
Anna: I kind of like this witch lady already though. At least she has a sense of humour.
K: And very dramatic taste in music!
Paul puts down his burger to sort out the radio, and we see maggots fall out of the meat. Okay, this is a total segue, but I couldn’t eat broccoli for five years of my twenties because my dad didn’t wash it properly one night and I realised half way through eating it that it was covered in little worm corpses, and so basically? THIS IS MY NIGHTMARE WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME, SUPERNATURAL. (A: That sounds like the worst thing ever nope nope nope.) Anyway, Paul takes another bite and makes a grossed out face because something’s clearly wrong. He stares at the burger and sees the maggots, then drops it with a scream.
Mari: I just want to know where this lady came up with “choking on her teeth and blood” and “choking on a maggoty burger” as her go-to ways of killing people. WHO ARE YOU, LADY? (You know, besides a murderer.)
K: We’ll get to that shortly, Mari.
The radio comes back on by itself, and Paul starts choking. He staggers from the car and doubles over just as the Bromobile arrives. The boys rush over, and Dean tries to help Paul while Sam searches his car for a hex bag. He finds it and lights it on fire. At Amanda’s, the chicken explodes into flames and she stares at it in shock.
Paul stops choking and the boys demand actual answers from him. He admits that he was having an affair but he ended it when the woman tried to blackmail him. He also says she was crazy, so I’mma hand out a round of misogyny shots for ticking the “I’m a dirty cheater but she’s mentally unstable so it’s not my fault” box. (A: The worst box. Sexism and ableism in one. YAY.) (M: Women as supernaturally able is its own weird little thing but this spurned and crazy variety? I’m understanding the shots now. Pass. Them. Over.) (K: We’re gonna need to send Intern Pacey out for more booze now that there are three of us…) The boys demand her name.
Back at Amanda’s, she flips frantically through what’s basically a recipe binder with photocopied grimoire pages in it. Not fast enough though. A wind blows through the house out of nowhere, and her wrists get sliced open. Blood pours out and Amanda screams, which is totally legit. She falls forward onto the glass coffee table, and bleeds to death as we fade to black. Ten minutes in, two female characters dead. Let’s all have another drink.
Anna: Chin chin everybody.
K: After the Not Commercial Break, the boys turn up at Amanda’s. They pick the lock on the door and head inside to find her dead. The candles are still lit, so she hasn’t been dead long. They’re a little confused by this turn of events, and do some investigating. Dean nearly walks into a dead rabbit hanging from the ceiling, and makes a Fatal Attraction comparison before getting sad that bunnies always get the raw end of the deal. Bless.
Cut to a couple of women sitting on a sofa. A man – the husband of the stuck up looking blonde – lingers in the doorway and says that he’s on to them. He knows they’re not having book club because none of them have brought a book in weeks. They laugh it off, and he reluctantly leaves as Elizabeth – Amanda’s neighbour from earlier – arrives. Elizabeth wants to discuss Amanda, but the others are all “LOL NOPE” and blame Amanda for being a mentally unstable murderer. Ugh.
Elizabeth wants to give up “book club” because people are dying, but the bitchy blonde of the group says it’s given them too much. Like promotions and trips to Hawaii and home businesses. Not gonna lie, all I can think about is Charmed and how they pushed the whole “no magic for personal gain” thing. Whatever. They all kneel around a grimoire and start chanting “Book of Shadows we kneel before you” blah blah CROSSOVER MAGIC SHOTS!! (M: Charmed crossover? Twitch.) (K: Yes, but it comes with booze!)
The next day, Elizabeth is doing her gardening thing again when the boys turn up and introduce themselves as Detectives Bachman and Turner. Please, be MORE obvious with your fake names. Please. They start asking her questions about Amanda, and she flinches when they mention the occult. But the other two coven members walk up and get all snooty, so the boys make their excuses and leave.
That night, the boys are Bromobiling their way down the highway. They discuss the possibility that the coven killed Amanda to keep up appearances. Sam announces that they need to be stopped, and Dean’s shocked because they’re human. Sam replies “They’re murderers,” and apparently that’s all Dean needed to agree. Whee.
Anna: Look at you boys, branching out, not discriminating… equal opportunity murdering…
K: Yay. *waves world’s tiniest flag in a sarcastic fashion*
Suddenly, the car dies. The headlights flicker back on and we see Ruby standing in front of the Bromobile. The boys jump out, and Ruby tells Sam that he needs to leave town. Like, NOW. Dean, meanwhile, thinks that they should just murder Ruby’s face off, and points the Colt at her. He also says they won’t leave town until they’re done hunting witches. Ruby snaps that they SERIOUSLY need to leave town because it’s not about the witches – it’s about who they work for.
Anna: I’m gonna be over here taking shots for all the lovely misogynistic name-calling.
Mari: Guys, this episode might kills us.
K: On the plus side, that would mean we don’t have to recap the remaining millionty episodes??
Sam joins the dots and realises that witches get their power from demons. Ruby says that there’s one in town, and it’s going to come after Sam. Dean thinks that she’s just messing with Sam’s head. They shout back and forth, and Dean shoves the Colt in her face and pulls the trigger. Sam yells “Dean, no!” and shoves his arm away just in time. The brothers fight for a second, and Dean looks disgusted. They look up to see that Ruby’s vanished. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, the boys storm into the Motel of the Week. They fight about whether or not Sam should have saved Ruby, and his argument is that if Ruby wanted them dead, she’d just stop saving their lives. Dean sighs and wants to know why Sam is suddenly okay with killing humans. Sam’s confused because surely Dean should be okay with the fact that Sam now agrees with him. Dean’s mostly worried because Sam’s not acting like himself. Dean starts rubbing his stomach as he talks, then doubles up in pain. He gasps out that it feels like knives in his stomach, and says it has to be the coven.
Sam starts tearing the room apart searching for the hex bag. He even slices into the mattress, which is a fucking terrible plan because SURELY IT WOULD BE OBVIOUS IF SOMEONE HAD SLICED OPEN THE MATTRESS ALREADY?!?!?! Whatever, show. Whatever. Dean starts coughing up blood, and Sam frantically grabs the Colt, checking that it has bullets in it. He rushes out the door, and Dean’s all “Dude, WTF? Dying here…” We see the Bromobile speeding through the night as Sam bitch faces behind the wheel.
At Stuck Up Blonde Lady’s house, the coven chants. Sam kicks the door down, and storms in, gun drawn. He orders them to let Dean go, and they plead ignorance. He tells them to get away from the altar, and they move back with their hands up. Back at the Motel of the Week, Dean’s still coughing up blood. The door bursts open and Ruby storms in. “You wanna kill me? Get in line, bitch,” Dean gasps. Let’s have some more misogyny shots, because this episode is rough, y’all.
Anna: YAY SHOTS.
K: Ruby heaves Dean up onto the bed and pins him down before squirting a blackish-grey liquid into his mouth from a leather sack. He struggles, but she keeps squirting the liquid into his mouth. Then she stands, and watches as Dean coughs up some liquid. “Stop. Calling me bitch,” she pants. High five, girl. High five. (M: That’s a good place to start. I also like that she saves him in the most violent way possible.)
Stuck Up Blonde’s house. Sam ushers the coven over to the fireplace at gunpoint. Elizabeth insists they weren’t hurting anyone. Sam cocks the Colt and says they have five seconds to stop the spell. Elizabeth yells desperately that they were just getting Stuck Up Blonde a better interest rate. Sam stares at them in confusion.
Motel of the Week. Dean’s surprised that Ruby saved his life, and she brushes off his total lack of thanks. He wants to know what the liquid was, then says “God, it was ass. It tasted like ass…” Don’t mind me, just creating Bisexual Dean head canons… (A: Oh dude I have volumes of them. How do you know what ass tastes like, Dean? HMMM?) Ruby replies “It’s called witchcraft, short bus” and storms out because she’s freaking fabulous. Dean grumbles to himself.
After the Not Commercial Break, Demon!Tammi gestures at Sam, Piper Halliwell style, and he goes flying across the room and ends up pinned against the wall. Elizabeth and Stuck Up Blonde are horrified and demand to know what the eff is going on. Demon!Tammi eyerolls. Stuck Up Blonde gets uppity, so Demon!Tammi does another Piper Halliwell gesture, and Stuck Up Blonde’s neck snaps and she falls to the floor, dead.
Elizabeth screams and freaks, which is pretty legit. She asks who Demon!Tammi is, and Demon!Tammi sasses about being the demon that Elizabeth sold herself to. That all it took was for her to bring the Book of Shadows to book club and they all fell into line. Demon!Tammi turns back to Sam and sasses “Comments? Questions?“, which I think I’m going to use on small children at work in the future. (A: An excellent idea. Might also do this when I’m teaching.) Anyway, Demon!Tammi goes on to say that she and her demon friends have been looking for Sam. He sasses that he’s not going to lead a pissy demon army.
Demon!Tammi scoffs and says that they don’t want him to lead them. They don’t believe in him, they believe in the new power that’s rising. “That’s the horse to bet on, Sam, the one who’s gonna tear this world apart. Thing is, this demon? It doesn’t like you very much. It doesn’t want the competition,” Demon!Tammi says. She raises a hand, and Sam slides up the wall. She tells him that it’s nothing personal and Sam gets crushed into the wall.
Just then, the door slams open and Dean rushes in with his shotgun out. Demon!Tammi spins and waves a hand, hurling Dean across the room and pinning him to the wall. Ruby walks in and asks Demon!Tammi to stop. The boys think she’s there to help, but Ruby tells Demon!Tammi that she wants back in, that she led the boys there. Dean mouths “I TOLD YOU SO” at his brother. Ruby says that the boys are a gift for Demon!Tammi, that she’s wanted her and to serve her for so long. Dean gives us Eyebrows of Innuendo because of course he does.
Anna: To be fair I would be pretty down with lesbian!Ruby / bisexual!Ruby because you can never have enough kickass queer ladies… but then again I don’t really trust the SPN writers… ah well.
Mari: Meh. I think it was a little icky to have it lead to this innuendo place just because it was clearly just for the sake of this innuendo. And I also think it was stupid to give us the shot of Dean’s Eyebrows of Innuendo. You are about to die, Dean. FOCUS.
K: As with so many things in this show, it was only included so that Dean could basically recreate Monty Python’s Nudge Nudge Wink Wink sketch. So yeah. Icky.
Ruby and Demon!Tammi stare at each other for a beat, then Ruby pulls her knife and attacks. Demon!Tammi fends it off and the knife goes flying across the room. They fight, and Demon!Tammi fairly quickly gains the upper hand. She stands over Ruby, wielding a poker and eyerolls about Ruby siding with the boys, who she calls Abbott and Costello. Fun fact about Australian politics? For about four years there, our treasurer was Peter Costello while our current Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, was Health Minister. So Abbott and Costello held positions of power in government. That should tell you pretty much everything you need to know about Australia right there. Well, that and the fact that at about the same time, the Opposition Leader referred to the government as “a conga line of suckholes”. Yeah. That happened.
A: Already sounds more interesting than British politics.
Mari: Sorry, guys. We have Sarah Palin and Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin.
K: Continuing the Abbott and Costello theme, our Prime Minister ate an onion the other day. Skin and all. It was weird… ANYWAY.
While Demon!Tammi’s busy threatening Ruby, Elizabeth slips over to the demonic altar. She pours a bunch of pins onto the altar. Demon!Tammi drags a bloody Ruby up off the ground and laughs about how they’ve been there before. Sam’s surprised. Demon!Tammi lets slip that Ruby was a human witch once upon a time, and Demon!Tammi was the one to turn her. The boys both look shocked, and Demon!Tammi sasses at Ruby some more before starting an exorcism. I’m not quite sure how a demon can perform an exorcism without exorcising itself, but whatever…
A: Shhhh don’t question it. It’s easier that way.
K: Ohhh, right. No poking plot holes. Got it.
Suddenly, Demon!Tammi starts to cough. The camera pans across to show us that Elizabeth is chanting under her breath. Demon!Tammi coughs harder, and the boys fall to the ground. She coughs up a handful of pins and stares at them in surprise. Then she squeezes her hand tight and Elizabeth gasps and drops dead. Dean appears behind Demon!Tammi and stabs her a bunch of times with Ruby’s knife. She – and the demon inside her – drop dead. Dean helps Sam up, and they turn to look at Ruby. She tells them to go and that she’ll clean up. The boys leave as Ruby pulls her knife from Tammi’s corpse. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Dean’s in the car park outside the Motel of the Week. Ruby appears from the shadows, and he asks if she was really human. Yup, back in the days when the plague was big. Every demon she’s ever met was once human too. Dean scoffs that they don’t act like they used to be human. Ruby tells him that’s because they’ve forgotten. “That’s what happens when you go to Hell, Dean. That’s what Hell is – forgetting what you are.”
He snarks about Hell a little, and she starts to leave, but turns back to say that yes, the same thing will happen to him. She says that it might take centuries, but eventually Hell will burn away his humanity and he’ll become a demon. Dean studies her for a second and says “There’s no way to save me from the pit, is there?” She admits that there’s not, and says she told Sam that she could save him so that he’d actually talk to her. She says that she’s telling Dean this because she needs his help to get Sam ready for life without Dean so that he can fight the war on his own.
She turns to go, but Dean asks why she’s on their side. She says sadly that she’s not like the others. Because she, unlike them, remembers being human. Dean stares sadly at the ground, and when he looks up, Ruby’s gone. Fade to black.
Welp. That was a thing. The final death count in this episode is five, and they’re all women, which UGH. I’m inclined to agree with Dean on this one – witchcraft is icky and unsanitary in the Supernatural universe. And really, all this episode gave us was a handful of things: 1) demons used to be human, b) witches get their power from demons, and cat) Ruby was lying about being able to save Dean. So for me, this episode was probably middle of the pack territory. Because we learnt important things. But it took 42 minutes to give us like 2 minutes worth of information…
Anna: Agreed. Basically the only bit of this episode I found enjoyable to watch was Ruby kicking ass and being done with Dean’s BS. Everything else was either GROSS OH GOD OH NO or incredibly…. blah. Could easily have put the information from this episode into more or less any other and skipped out on the forty-ish minutes of lady-murdering padding.
K: Pretty much exactly.
Next time on Supernatural: Everything is one big dream sequence and it’s incredibly confusing. Plus, Sam gets an awkward boner in S03 E10 – Dream a Little Dream of Me.
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.
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 south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
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