Did you guys see this great TV guide interview with Jim Beaver?
http://www.tvguide.com/News/Jim-Beaver-Supernatural-1041550.aspx
Maybe we won't see Bobby again for a while on SPN, but looks like fans can catch Jim on Justified sometime in the future!
Seriously, we should set it up. I bet someone else has, though. Anyone got a link? :)
Okay, here are some places I recently saw Supernatural guest stars:
An episode of Entourage from the last season, the one where Vince buys the dinosaur head. The actress who played Sarah in "Provenance" was in a similar role in the auction house.
Last week's episode of Leverage (two Sundays ago) had Todd Stashwick and the actress who played Casey in "Sin City."
I know there were others but I failed to write them down and my brain is starting to malfunction from hunger. I'm going to go make dinner--you tell me more in the comments!
It's the beginning of new episodes after hiatus, so you know we had to have a recap at the beginning of the show. And, yay, we had some classic rock with REO Speedwagon's "Riding the Storm Out." We were reminded about saying bye-bye to Cass (sniffle), the nasty leviathans, and Bobby's final moment of writing down the mysterious numbers, saying, "Idjits," then dying (sniffle, sniffle).
When we launch into this episode, we see a guy in a diner watching out the window. Seriously, this dude (the actor, Ian Tracey) has been on everything I watch lately. Since he played bad guys on Sanctuary and Hell on Wheels, it was nice to see him play one of the good guys. He follows a woman out of the diner/truck stop, but she disappears between two semi trucks. When he turns back around, the waitress he'd just been talking to turns out to be a little more than a waitress. She's got herself some sharp-ass teeth and she bites him. When he crumples to the ground, she says, "That's for the crappy tip." Moral of the story: always tip your waitress well.
Next we see the words "Week One" and Sam and Dean just sitting in a room staring at nothing. We know they're still in shock over Bobby's death (I hate typing those words, btw). Then it's Week Two, and they're look at the mysterious numbers and trying to figure out what they can be. Week Three, Dean has constructed a clue board and Sam comes in and asks if they should call "Bobby's people" to let them know about his passing. But neither wants to be the one to do it. Sam answers a call from a young girl who sounds scared. Her dad told her to call Bobby if anything happened to him, so when Sam can't produce Bobby she hangs up on him. But Sam tracks Chrissy down and soon realizes that her father is a hunter and he's gone missing. Sam says he'll find her father and leaves.
Meanwhile, Dean has gone to find super computer nerd Frank to see why it's taking him so long to get back to him about the numbers. Frank's cleaned out his house, but he shows up pointing a gun at Dean in case he's a leviathan. Dean says he's not, but Frank says that, sure, he's not. Neither is Dick Roman or Gwyneth Paltrow. To end the standoff, they each cut themselves to prove they blood red blood instead of black goo. Frank takes Dean to a stashed RV where he's set up his computers. He says that the five numbers Bobby wrote down are a dead end, but he figured since Bobby was dying he didn't have time to write down all the numbers. He created a probability program and figured out that it was actually six numbers and that they were coordinates to a field in Wisconsin owned by Dick Roman's company.
When Sam calls to check in, Dean tells him what is going on. When Sam expresses concern about Dean and Frank heading there, Dean says, "Relax. It's a field, not the Death Star." :) Dean and Frank (by the way, I think Frank is hilarious and a necessary comedic edition in the absence of Bobby and Cass) pretend to be line workers to stake out the field, and the sight of Dean trying to operate a cherry picker was funny. As soon as he gets the picker up though, Frank tells him to get back down because there are cameras all over the place on the Roman property. Instead of setting up their own surveillance, Frank hacks into Roman's cameras and sees a woman who works for Roman and a surveying crew. They're going to build something on the property, but what we don't know. Goofy Frank also goes serious long enough to tell Dean that he wasn't always like he is now, but that he has to find a way to get through each day since he was 27 and came home to find his wife and kids gutted on the floor. Damn, everyone on this show has lost someone in a horrible way. Even Chrissy saw her mother killed.
Back in Sam-land, he thinks he's tracking one vetala. But since he doesn't know they work in pairs, he gets attacked and dragged back to their lair too. When he wakes up, there are lots of dead guys lying around but Chrissy's dad, Lee, is still hanging on. When Dean figures out what has likely happened, he goes to Chrissy's to find out where Sam might have gone. But Chrissy has destroyed the map and notes so that Dean has to take her with him. Enter some smack talk between Dean and a 14-year-old girl, LOL. When they finally find and follow the vetala back to their lair, Dean cuffs Chrissy to the steering wheel of the car and goes in. Luckily for him, she had not one but two lock picks and rushes in as he's getting his butt kicked. She pretends to get captured by one of the vetala, but then she stabs and kills her then cuts Sam's bonds. This gives Sam and and Dean the chance to kill the other vetala.
When we see Lee recovering in a hospital, the boys urge him to quit hunting so Chrissy can have a normal life. Lee asks if they've ever known anyone to quit the hunting life. Dean says no, that they all end up dead first. When Chrissy runs out of the hospital after Dean, she says they're giving up hunting. She also tells Dean he's "kind of amusing for an old guy." LOL.
What did you think of the episode? What about Frank? What do you think Dick and his leviathans are going to build in that field?
Hellatus is almost over! *does the Sam!and!Dean!dance* I think this is the earliest return in a few years. It almost feels like it sped by!
Spoiler TV is holding some midseason polls. Go here to vote on which of the episodes that leaned heavily on comedy are your favorites. Some of these are tough! How can you choose between "You've gotta go be gay for that poor dead intern" and Sam tied to a bed?!
And stay tuned for Friday night's new episode and our recap/review!
People who actually read spoilers probably knew this already, but it was new to me :-) (No plot spoilers, btw.)
Go here to see who has a multi-episode arc coming up!
The boys have posted this adorable video to encourage your votes for the People's Choice Awards.
You should be aware that this post contains mega spoilers for the Dec. 2 episode "Death's Door," as well as wildly uninformed speculation on where Bobby's character goes from here.
I've mentioned before that I don't read spoilers. I like talking about ideas with other fans and I like taking note of what future guest stars may be on the show (Jason Dohring!) but beyond that, I don't look. So I went into this episode with no idea whether or not Jim Beaver is shuffling off the show ala Misha Collins. The show certainly hasn't hesitated to kill off characters in the past, so I've been a little concerned ever since the last episode when the aptly named Dick, aka Head Leviathan, shot Bobby in the head.
We pick up where we left off, with Sam and Dean freaking out and Bobby bleeding. As they rush him to the hospital, we cut to a different take from a scene last week, when they find a victim up a tree. But Bobby quickly realizes that this isn't exactly reality and that he in fact is the victim. From there, he begins bouncing around to different scenes in his life, including a meaningful conversation with his wife (although we're not sure yet why it's meaningful) and a job he once worked with Rufus (nice to see him again!) There are also some memories of Sam and Dean, then Bobby seeing his mother in his kitchen and instantly closing the door. (Major foreshadowing and I called the eventual plot development right there.)
Meanwhile, in what Bobby calls the waking world, doctors tell Dean and Sam to prepare themselves for Bobby's likely death. At one point later in the episode, a hapless hospital admin approaches Dean to ask how Bobby felt about being an organ donor. Who else got chills in that scene?
It turns out that the reason Bobby's mind went to that particular job with Rufus was because his former partner had a near-death experience. Rufus shared with Bobby that the way he escaped death was finding the right door--the one that makes you walk right through the memory you least want to face. Bobby explains that he's been shot and that Rufus isn't even real and his former partner becomes his spirit guide or what have you. They return to the scene where his wife Karen was, who is now violently upset. Turns out that she and Bobby had argued bitterly that night because he didn't want to have kids. (More accurately, because he didn't want to be a father.) Their argument was only three days before her posession and his eventually having to kill her and one of his worst regrets. Rufus is hopeful that this was the memory Bobby had to confront, but of course there's way too much left in the episode for it to be that easy! And, as Bobby has a Reaper on his tail (or, as Bobby put it, in his custard) we know it's going to be quite difficult. At this point, I was betting Bobby would in fact die.
In one of my favorite scenes, we see Bobby playing baseball with a young Dean even though they'd been expressly ordered by John Winchester (worst dad ever) to practice shooting. We also get a funny memory of adult Sam and Dean asking Bobby to solve the debate of who's a bigger bad-ass: Chuck Norris or Jet-Li. (Feel free to weigh in with your vote in the comments.)
Bobby tells Rufus that while you can't stop a Reaper permanently, he and the boys have run across them enough to pick up a few tricks. He manages to trap the Reaper, but the Reaper points out how parts of Bobby's mental world are disappearing because his brain is dying. Because of that, the trap will eventually fade and the Reaper will get him. Is Bobby merely postponing the inevitable because he has knowledge of the Leviathans he needs to give the boys?
The theme of the episode was clearly fatherhood (with the secondary theme of Bobby Singer Rocks) and we get a glimpse of Bobby on the phone arguing with John and admitting, "I know I'm not their father." But come on, we all know differently. Bobby Singer was the best parent those poor kids ever had. And in the final confrontation with his own abusive, aloholic father, Bobby concludes that as well. Bobby's late dad sneers that he's glad Bobby never had kids because he would have sucked and Bobby rejoins that, as a matter of fact, he adopted two and they grew up GREAT. They're HEROES. (Big Damn, if you'll pardon the Firefly reference.)
The awful childhood memory played out the way I figured it would, with young Bobby shooting his father in order to save his mother (at which point she immediately told him God would punish him. Yikes, the parents on this show.) And as the Reaper lunges for Bobby, he finally escapes death through the right door and...
His eyes opened in the hospital. Dean and Sam were ecstatic and for a second I actually thought the status had been returned to quo (they've dodged death plenty of times before). He tries unsuccessfully to tell them something and when they get him a pen, he scrawls the important numbers (what they are and why they're important, I don't know) on Sam's hand. Then he smiles at them and it hit me in the gut that he was totally gonna die. He opened his mouth and I braced myself for an admission of "I love you" that would make me sob. My husband said, "He's gonna say 'I'm ready.'" But, no. In classic Bobby fashion, all he said was, "Idjits." And then he flatlined. And I sobbed.
I thought that was the end of the show and was surprised to see us back again in Bobby's "house," the darkness ever growing outside it. Sam and Dean are in the living room arguing about proper movie snacks (and I laughed out loud at Dean's insistence that licorice is "chewy bites of heaven"). The Reaper tells Bobby it's now or never, is he gonna cross over peacefully or become a stuck spirit? He also says, "They'll be all right without you," the boys fade, and credits roll.
So, without citing interviews or spoilers that give us the answer (assuming they exist), what do you guys think? Is Bobby gone??? Will he return a horrible shade in the new year, caught between two worlds and warped by his own good intentions? (If so, did dude learn NOTHING from Cass?) What were those numbers? It all makes my head hurt. Although that could be from the crying.
What I do know is that, even if Bobby's "gone," this show is great at unexpectedly bringing back the dead for guest spots and episodes showcasing Jim Beaver's talents are always excellent. That said, holy crap, they killed Bobby!