Dean wakes up in 1951 to a military compound full of dead people and a monster.
Rewind 24 hours back to the bat cave. Sam’s a mess. Dean wants to cut his hair. Sam can’t catch a bottle of beer.
He wants to head out to find Kevin, but Dean knows he’s not 100% and they head down to the firing rage where Sam can’t even hit the paper. Dean says they’ll sit tight for now while Garth and other hunters are on the lookout for Kevin.
They get an e-mail from Charlie who says she’s in the neighborhood and has a case for them. They bring in her into the bat cave and she definitely geeks out over it.
She tells them about a nearby case of a man’s insides being liquefied. She’s researched a lot, since she’s now very interested in monsters and the like. And through her research, she also stumbled upon the Supernatural book series by Carver Edlund. Awkward!
But, more important things. Dean says he’ll check it out and Sam wants to go, but he’s definitely too weak. So Charlie volunteers. What better way to get proper hunter training than from a Winchester on the job.
Fine. Dean makes her her own FBI badge and they go on a shopping spree for FBI-clothes. Charlie says it must be nice to have a brother who has his back all the time. From reading the books, there’s nothing the Winchesters can’t do if they work together.
Dean asks her if she’s got any siblings of her own. She replies Xbox and PS3.
Dean borrows Charlie’s phone and checks in with Sam, who’s still very not at full power.
They head over to see the body, but coroner wants the paperwork. No paperwork, no body.
Dean tells Charlie they’ll just break in later.
But that evening, two teens find a dead guy with a stomach full of gooey, liquefied insides. Dean and Charlie head to the scene where they find Sam already there.
Charlie talks to the teens (and likes the video game they’re playing) while Dean unsuccessfully tries to get Sam to go home and rest. Dean leaves them there to head to the first body, but Sam gets him and Charlie there first. Again.
The coroner suddenly arrives and Charlie goes to keep her busy while the Bros look at the body… that isn’t there. It’s been burned already.
They head back home. Sam wants one of Charlie’s tablets and Charlie wants her own Papa Winchester journal because Dean has found what they’re looking for, some bastard offshoot of Djinns.
Well this is great, time for a break, Charlie says and she heads out for snacks. The Bros notice something’s off and they’re right. Charlie heads to a remodeled Bobby’s home where she’s got passports, IDs, and credit cards and is hacking in to get herself some money. But suddenly, the coroner pops up behind her.
The Bros figure out she’s been lying to them about the comic convention in Topeka. Having turned on the GPS on Charlie’s phone earlier, they track down where she is and find her home. But no Charlie. They see all the passports and stuff and Sam sees she’s been using the different aliases to make contributions to a patient, Gertrude, in a local hospital.
Dean heads out to check her out. Gertrude’s been a vegetative state for 16 years and got worse last year. The ventilator is the only thing keeping her alive. She and her husband had been hit by a drunk driver on their way to pick up their 12 year old daughter who hasn’t been heard from since.
You got one helluva daughter, Dean tells Gertrude. He promises to find Charlie.
While the coroner sucks the delicious fear from Charlie, Sam and Dean piece together the details and realize it’s her. They head to the abandoned warehouse she owns where they kill the djinn, but Charlie doesn’t wake up after getting injected with antidote.
They decide to use African dream root to get into Charlie’s happy place. Dean takes the plunge with a little help from Sam’s fist. And we rejoin Dean in 1951.
Dressed like Lara Rambo Croft, Charlie saves Dean from vampire supersoldiers and explains this is her recurring nightmare, a video game called The Red Scare that she had stolen from a video game company in the development stage, tweaked by her and released for free.
She was 12 when they tracked her down to have her arrested and she’s been on the run ever since.
Back outside their bodies, Sam finds out the hard way the Djinn coroner has a son.
Back in Charlie’s head, they find her mother and she explains it’s thanks to her that she’s interested in the stuff she’s interested in now. They also find Sam in the bed next door.
While Sam takes care of the djinn son, Dean realizes to break the loop, maybe they need to stop playing. That they don’t have to save the patients in the hospital, including Charlie’s mother. Charlie blames herself. If she hadn’t been scared at that sleepover, her parents would have never been driving to pick her up. She just wants to tell her she’s sorry one more time.
But Dean tells her it’s not her fault and that she needs to let go. She puts down her machine gun and the vamps disappear. But so does her mother.
Sam manages to get them to wake up. Dean apologizes to Charlie, but she just hugs him.
At the bat cave, the Bros see Charlie off. Charlie tells Sam she knows, from reading the books, that he’s a tough guy and if anyone can get through the trials, it’s him. He says she should visit sometime and look through the archives. She’s definitely a Woman of Letters.
Sam heads back inside. Charlie says she’ll head back to the hospital, to let go. Will Dean let go? No. That’s my boys, she says.
Charlie tells Dean she loves him and they hug.
He heads back inside and Sam starts to apologize for not staying put, but Dean just hugs him and says they should go and find Kevin.
Charlie is at the hospital and signs a form. She takes a seat next to her mother and says “One last time” as she takes out her copy of The Hobbit and begins reading.
Episode Thoughts
Well, that was a nice little episode. At first, I thought, isn’t it a little too soon to be visiting with Charlie again? And maybe it is, they could’ve saved her story and this episode for next season.
I guess the show needed filler this season. Which actually sounds kinda bad. But I can forgive that since this was a good episode. Charlie and Felicia Day are awesome, so it’s not a bad thing to have her visit.
It was an unexpected story, but definitely fit with her character. And it established her friendship with the Bros even further. Plus it was fun. That little shopping montage was hilarious.
The episode was a good breather to ease us back into the episodes after the little break. But I’m sure the three final episodes will hit the ground running towards the final cliffhanger.
Well, this will be my final Supernatural episode until June since I’ll be heading to the Philippines for a month. No internets in the province and no Supernatural on TV. So I’ll definitely be anxious the next month to see how they’ll end this season.
Miss the episode or want to watch it again?
Download full episodes of Supernatural on
.
Also pre-order Season 8 on Blu-ray and DVD at
.
