By Paula R. Stiles

[Here be many spoilers]

Tagline: Sam has a terrible dream in which Dean coldly shoots an unarmed human. He persuades Dean to investigate and their search leads them to a town that is being isolated and “disappeared” by a demonic virus that may also be responsible for the disappearance of the “Lost Colony” at Roanoke. The question is: why? And will they survive?

Recap: The “Then” recap for this episode is a famous one among fans. Clips from previous episodes include a whole bunch of stuff from “Wendigo”, “In My Time of Dying”, “Simon Said”, “Everybody Loves a Clown”, “Bloodlust”, and “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”. Most of it involves Daddy John’s knowledge about Sam being “touched” by the demon Azazel, and passing on that secret to Dean. However, there is some material in there about Dean and his early-season-two emotional breakdown, with a really nice (and disturbing) montage of Dean flipping out as he impales a vampire, punches Sam, punches Gordon (all three from “Bloodlust”), and beats the hell out of the Impala with a crowbar (end of “Everybody Loves a Clown”) before it ends with a clip of Dean looking confused and ashamed with his face covered in blood. The message seems quite straightforward: Sam may be tainted by demon blood, but Dean is just plain nuts.

Jump to “Now”.

In muffled silence and slo-mo, we see Dean walking, grim-faced, down a hallway (and he has never looked quite as crazy-hot as he does in “Croatoan”). He stops to pull out his favourite, pearl-handled pistol. He takes out the magazine, checks it, snaps it back in. Cut to a different view of him entering a room – a victim’s-eye view as we soon realize. Suddenly, everything speeds up. He takes aim at a point just past the camera at a terrified young man tied to a chair. The young man is crying and declaring, “It’s not in me.” Others in the room, including two women and an older African-American man, look frightened and talk amongst themselves, but don’t interfere. Dean glances at a woman in a white coat standing nearby. The woman, nearly as terrified as the young man, says, “I just don’t know.”

“I got no choice,” Dean growls. Then he fires two times into the young man, presumably killing him.

Sam wakes up in agony on a motel room floor with dark-wood walls and nasty red lampshades. We have been inside one of his prophetic, demonic dreams. His awakening is witnessed by a bemused Dean who has entered the room with a six-pack of beer and a beef jerky in his mouth. This Dean, the “real” Dean, is a comical figure obviously contrasted with the sociopathic killer of Sam’s dream.

Later, as they drive down the road, Dean is disbelieving when Sam tells him about the dream: “And I ventilated him [for no reason]?” He is also miffed when he insists that he would never kill an innocent man and Sam doesn’t exactly leap in to support the statement. But he is willing to go along with Sam to find out what is going on, since Sam’s dreams are always connected to their enemy, Azazel (known them only as the “Yellow-Eyed Demon” at the time) and come true if Sam doesn’t interfere to stop them. Sam, resourceful boy, has remembered that he saw a poster of Crater Lake (oooh, been there) on the wall, so the River Grove they’re looking for is in Oregon. God only knows how many miles they have to go before Dean sleeps.

When they arrive in town (I’m sure Jensen Ackles enjoyed the scenes in this episode where he’s clearly driving the Impala), everything looks totally normal. Dean introduces them to a local as U.S. Marshals “Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard”. Sam doesn’t appear to recognise the local as the older man in his dream and asks him if he knows anyone fitting the description of the young man Dean killed (leaving out all of the inconvenient dream and killing stuff). The man is cleaning his gun and gives off the impression that he’s a bit of a survivalist. He seems suspicious of Sam’s patented Puppy-Dog act (which usually works), but more out of natural wariness than anything else. Still, Dean is able to bond a bit with him, using the “Marine brat” angle (John was a Marine in Vietnam), after recognising his tattoo and correctly identifying him as a former Master Sergeant. “Sarge” rather reluctantly admits that he knows someone by that description, a Duane Tanner, and gives up the young man’s address up the road. He lives with his family on Aspen Way.

The brothers thank him and go back across the street. As they pass where they parked the Impala, Sam bumps into a telephone pole with a mysterious (and ultimately chilling) message – “Croatoan”. This was a message left by the first English colony at Roanoke (there were actually two groups), which disappeared without other trace c1590. The brothers decide that this could be a very ominous sign on top of Sam’s dream and try to call Bobby or Ellen for help, but Dean can’t get a signal on his cell phone. Even more ominous – the local payphone doesn’t work, either.

Up the road on Aspen Way (a heavily-wooded area), the brothers leave the Impala at the end of a lawn and trek up to the house. A train horn is blaring in the distance. The house is one of those dark-cedar-type deals you see a lot of in the Pacific Northwest (and parts of Vancouver), with a sign on the door that says, “Born to Fish; Forced to Work”. All very homey. When they knock, a teenage boy claiming to be Duane’s brother, Jake, answers the door. He says that Duane went fishing “up by Roslyn Lake” (man, these are people who take their fishing seriously). He says that his parents are inside, but when his father comes to the door, Dad says that Mom’s out; she went grocery shopping.

The brothers say their goodbyes and move off, but they’re suspicious. These people were a little too normal. They go around the back, where they see Mom in the kitchen, tied to a chair with a gag in her mouth, while Dad cuts Jake’s arm. Jake bleeds into a cut on her shoulder after creepily assuring her, “It’s not gonna hurt.”

This is enough for Dean. Pulling out his gun, he kicks in the back door and he and Sam rush in. Dean shoots the Dad three times when the man rushes him with the knife, killing him, but Jake escapes by jumping out a glass window and running away when Sam hesitates.

The boys drive Mom to the local clinic, where the two women from Sam’s dream, a nurse named “Pam” and a doctor named “Lee”, are seeing patients. Sam rushes Mom in and Dean follows with Dad’s blanketed body over his shoulder. His first interaction with the doctor involves admitting that he just shot one of her neighbours stone dead. Always a good first step.

Inside, Mrs. Tanner declares that her husband and son were fine one minute and the next, “They had the Devil in them.” Dean takes Sam aside for a chat. Are they dealing with multiple demon possession? Sam asks. Dean’s not sure: “It’s like a friggin’ Shriner convention. That’s one way to wipe out a town: take it from the inside.”

But Sam is skeptical. They didn’t see any of the usual signs, especially demon smoke. And when Dean shot the father, Mr. Tanner fell down and died. Possessed people don’t die that easily. So, what are they dealing with?

Dean is also angry with Sam for not shooting Jake. He believes that, with Jake dead, “We’d have one less to worry about.” When Sam protests that Jake is a kid, Dean coldly replies that Jake is now an “it”, a monster, and that Sam can’t afford a “bleeding heart” right now.

Before Sam can pursue this disturbing attitude of Dean’s further, Dr. Lee marches in and demands to know what was going on. Dean just killed her next-door neighbour. She has already discovered that the phones are down and Sam admits that his and Dean’s police radio in the Impala doesn’t work, either. After finding out that the nearest town is Sidewinder, 40 miles down the road, Dean volunteers to go get help, leaving Sam to mind the store.

What he finds instead is an empty family car with a bloody bullet hole in it, with blood all over the front seats and a baby seat in the back, and a bloody hunting knife next to the smashed-in driver’s side window. And farther down the road, he finds a roadblock of local citizens. Front and centre is Jake, who smiles at Dean. Whoops. Dean’s been made by the creepy Stepford people. As he gets ready to back up, one guy appears right next to his window and asks him to get out, first with apparent reason and then ordering him to do it. Dean smiles brightly and revs it into full reverse, slewing around and racing back to town even as the men shoot after him. But that doesn’t solve the main problem, which is that the town is now completely cut off.

Back at the clinic, Dr. Lee has discovered that Mr. Tanner had a viral infection that left a residue of sulphur. Sam immediately thinks “demonic virus”, which is definitely a new wrinkle at this point in Supernatural. They talk to Mrs. Tanner and try to explain that they think she might be infected. She acts all hurt and innocent, but it turns out to be an act when she flips out and goes after Sam with a scalpel. Sam smacks her with (I think) an oxygen tank and she goes down, knocked out.

Meanwhile, Dean is having a moment of détente with Sarge when Sarge stops his car at rifle point and Dean pulls his own gun. They each quickly establish the other is not infected. Sarge just had to shoot his neighbour, “Mr. Rogers”, after the man came after him with a hatchet. They go back to the clinic, guns still pointed at each other.

At the clinic, the nurse, Pam, is freaking out and wants to leave, but Sam talks her down. Dean and Sarge come in just as Pam seems about to tell Sam something. Sam tells Dean about the virus Dr. Lee found: “demonic germ warfare”. “It’s like a biblical plague,” Dean grumps. Sam tells him he’s more right than he realizes. In John’s journal, Sam found a theory John had about the Roanoke Colony, that it was possibly destroyed by a demon called “Dever” or “Reshef, a demon of plague, of pestilence.” He figures this must be why he had a vision about the place, that it’s connected to Azazel somehow.

At that moment, Sarge calls them in. He’s just found out that Mrs. Tanner is infected. He warns the others that his neighbours were strong, and seemed to get stronger the longer they were infected. Mrs. Tanner has to die. Dean pulls out his gun as the nurse protests that they can’t just shoot her. Dean goes into the storeroom where they’ve locked Mrs. Tanner. She starts pleading and crying and saying the others are “infected”, not her. Dean looks upset. But it doesn’t stop him from shooting her dead when Sarge can’t do it and Sam confirms that she’s “one of them”.

Later that night, the infected townspeople slowly gather outside. Inside, Pam drops a vial of blood and freaks out that she has some on her, but Lee assures her she’s fine. Meanwhile, Sam, Dean and Sarge discuss how they’re going to escape. If they stay there, Sam says, they’re screwed. “Yeah, that’s true,” Dean admits. “Night of the Living Dead didn’t exactly end pretty.” Sarge suggests they make some explosives to even the odds and Sam hits on using the chemicals in the clinic to do so. Their tête à tête is interrupted, however, by the arrival of someone new: none other than Duane Tanner, the young man that Dean shoots in Sam’s dream. And he has a cut on his leg. Whoops.

A debate ensues on what to do with him. Lee admits that she can’t tell beforehand if someone has been infected until he/she turns and it takes three hours from contact to when victims go viral. As Sarge ties Duane up, Sam grabs Dean and hauls him into another room for a chat. This is exactly like his dream and therefore, Dean can’t kill Duane (Sam’s dreams and visions in seasons one and two were always about things he was supposed to prevent). Dean coldly says that Duane is almost certainly infected and that they therefore have to kill him before he turns and kills them. When Sam protests too much, Dean locks him in the room and goes off to do it, with Sam screaming at him and banging on the door. But once Dean enters the room, he goes right up to the very edge of pulling the trigger…and can’t. Sam’s persuasion has had a delayed effect and, with the added weight of his brother’s frantic pleas on the balance of mercy, Dean chooses differently this time and stands down.

Three hours later, Duane’s blood is still clear and it looks as though Dean narrowly missed killing an innocent man. But just as things seem to have normalised, at least inside the clinic, Pam gets Sam into a room and locks it. She’s infected. She knocks him down, cuts herself and him, and, before the other can break in, smears her blood into his wound. Dean shoots her dead, but it’s too late. Sam has been contaminated.

With the shoe on the other (Sam’s) foot. Dean angrily refuses to allow Sam to be shot. The others, even Sarge, fear him too much to take him on, but won’t back down completely, either. Dean finally breaks the deadlock when he gives his car keys to the others and sends them off, staying with Sam, who will probably turn in three hours. Dean admits to Lee when she thanks them for the help that they aren’t U.S. Marshals, which just confuses her. Sam is furious with Dean and rails at him, but Dean finally admits that he is suicidal and too broken to go on. Everything in the past year – his near-death experience, their father’s devil’s deal and death, have exhausted him. When Sam tells him he has to “keep going”, Dean replies, “Who says I want to?”

But then the others come back. The infected zombie people have vanished, the entire town. And three hours later…Sam remains miraculously uninfected and unturned. Even weirder, the blood samples of the infected people that Lee took no longer have the virus or sulfur in them. Sarge leaves with Duane, headed south. Sam and Dean leave together. Lee stays behind to talk to law enforcement.

The coda is very disturbing, in keeping with the rest of the episode. Duane and Sarge pull over at one point and Duane casually cuts Sarge’s throat. He pulls out a cup like the one the demon Meg used to communicate with Azazel at the end of season one’s “Scarecrow” and fills Sarge’s blood with it. He dips his hand in the cup and tells a whispering voice coming out of it, “It’s over. You’ll be pleased. I don’t think any more tests are necessary. The Winchester boy, definitely immune, as expected. Yes, of course. Nothing left behind.” His eyes turn demon black.

At the very end, the boys are hanging out by a lake and drinking beer. Sam asks Dean what he meant when he said that there was more to his despair than what happened with their father. Dean tries to pass it off, but Sam won’t let him. Dean says maybe they should visit the Grand Canyon and goes off on a rant about how they should “take a break”. When Sam continues to press, Dean admits, “Right before Dad died, he told me something. He told me something about you.” As Sam asks, “What did he tell you?” the credits roll.

Yeah. And the original hiatus between this and the next episode (where we found out what John told Dean) was a long one, too.

Review: The opening scene of “Croatoan” is arguably the darkest of the series and probably my favourite. It’s one of those that deviate from the usual formula of a teaser where some hapless bozo is targeted by the MOTW and messily killed – or is it? Maybe we’re seeing that same type of scene from the POV of the MOTW, instead?

One question “Croatoan” raises, over and over again (not unlike “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things” earlier in season two) is: who is the MOTW? Is it the hapless, infected “Croats”? Is it the demon apparently orchestrating everything? Is it Sam, who is infected as a test yet turns out to be immune? Or is it Dean, who is perhaps the most dangerous of them all? Dean racks up an impressive body count in this one all by himself, and the people he’s holed up with are almost more afraid of him than the Croats, as well they should be.

I’ve never understood those fans who infantilise Dean just because he acts playful and childish at times. Sure, he’s cute and goofy when he’s shoving caramels or a burger in his mouth, but hey, I thought that snow leopard playing with a pumpkin at the Central Park Zoo last month was pretty damned cute, too. Doesn’t mean the same snow leopard isn’t capable of ripping your face off if she’s in the right (or wrong) mood. Et enim Dean Winchester.

One of the things I really like about Supernatural is that, unlike so much mainstream horror, fantasy and SF, it does not automatically equate minorities with “evil” or “uncivilized” Other characters (you know…those scary folks “out there”. Them not Us). Look at Drag Me to Hell, in which the gypsy is “bad”, even though her cause is entirely just. Why shouldn’t she fight back to save her house from the bankers? Or look at Stargate: Universe (which I call Stargate: Tits in Space, for fun and accuracy), where the women are eye-candy waiting in line to get a good shag (even the tough, amazon type) and the Angry Insubordinate Soldier Guy is (wait for it) African-American. Because, hey, as we all know, African-American guys have issues with their tempers and aren’t too bright, to boot. Apparently, if we don’t talk about all those clichés about Darkest Africa and its Child Savages (and/or, we have another African-American character who is a nice guy and in an “appropriate” profession like Ship’s Cook), we’re not actually ringing the same changes on them. Tealc from Stargate: SG1 even carried a spear. But at least Tealc had calm and dignity and brains and experience. This guy has…a gun. And the willingness to use it. How nice.

In Supernatural, though, guess who our Noble (sometimes) Savage is? Yup. He’s a white guy named Dean Winchester. This is especially notable in “Croatoan” (and in terms of this week’s theme, Hidden Histories) because Dean is very much the Native Son in this “desperate land” (as the Doors put it). In “Croatoan” he even hooks up with another “feral” character, Sarge. Sarge is African-American in a lily-white town (a favourite motif of the writers), but the main influence on his personality is that he’s a war vet. Sarge was not born and raised in the hunting life the way Dean is. He’s scarred, but not truly feral. Dean (and Sam) is the one we need to keep an eye on, who might “revert” and turn on us at any time. The show may not get everything right (Oh. God. Ruby), but it’s nice to see people who aren’t white, privileged men get to be something besides the Other. Even better to have the show be about two versions of the Other and not kill them off.

When the show began, it seemed to be doing straightforward western themes like The Man Who Killed Liberty Vance, with Sam in the Jimmy Stewart role and Dean in the John Wayne role, both still “civilised” European-Americans on the frontier, but with one who had gone a bit feral and could no longer live in “polite” society. Then they got more into The Searchers territory (say, in “Bloodlust”) with Dean again in the John Wayne role and Sam in the “half-breed-yet-more-civilised-than-Wayne” role of Marty with his demon blood and moral reservations. But, by “Croatoan”, Supernatural seemed to have gone all the way over into The Last of the Mohicans, with Sam probably in the Hawkeye role and Dean as the title character. There was a metaphor here (not entirely fair, of course, since many Native-American and First Nations societies were as “civilised” as any Europeans, if not more so) where the supernatural stood in for a frontier and Sam and Dean were denizens of that frontier.

Of course, more problematical is that, by giving us Dean and Sam as Noble Savages, with all of the traditional stereotyped conflicts of those Other characters, Supernatural doesn’t seem to find any room for actual Native-Americans (perhaps Kripke needs to dial back on his admiration of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which similarly neglects Native-American folklore just a tad). We got a Wendigo and a haunted Native-American massacre site (”Bugs”) in season one, but little else. The Ghost Sickness, a culture-bound illness from the Southwest United States, that appeared in season four’s “Yellow Fever”, was in the end connected to Japanese mythology and lynching folklore instead. Okaaaay. “Croatoan”, Supernatural’s closest attempt to a Thanksgiving episode so far, and an excellent chance to bring in at least some First Nations lore from Canada about vanishing Inuit settlements in the North American Arctic wilderness, doesn’t. Instead, we get sucked deep into the blander European (or, in the case of this episode, Western Asian) demonology. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I’d like to see more Native-American lore and, dammit, characters. On the other hand, if all of the show’s Other characters are as batfudge nuts as Dean is in “Croatoan”, maybe it’s just as well. If you think about it, the legend of the Vanishing Village seems to derive more from European fears and fantasies about frontiers (think Brigadoon or Lost Horizon) than Native-American or First Nations lore, anyway.

But surely, there is a happy medium between little or nothing and destructive stereotypes. I mean, the Wampanoags were the good guys, the civilised folk, in the Thanskgiving tale. Even though they didn’t trust the Pilgrims and had suffered bad experiences in the past with Europeans, they still decided that they would come with food because that was what you did with strangers in their culture. That didn’t make them chumps; it made them good people. If the Devil was in Colonial America, methinks the Puritans imported him. Surely, there’s a folkloric way to acknowledge that.

“Croatoan” also evokes the mystery of the Lost Colony on Roanoke Island (now in North Carolina). This was the earliest known English colony (at least the earliest official one, as there were other settlements up around Newfoundland, but those were fishermen, pirates and explorers). Established in 1585, it had two periods of settlement. The first group made a hash of their relations with the local Native-American tribes by burning down a village over the alleged theft of a silver cup. They asked to go back to England the following year. The second group arrived in 1587 and the first “official” English child, Virginia Dare, was born in August, a month after the colonists arrived. Her grandfather, John White, went back to England to get more assistance later that year, but was unable to come back until 1590, due to a war with the Spanish.

When he arrived, he found the settlement utterly deserted. It looked tidy, as though the colonists had made an organised evacuation. But to where? The only hints were the word “Croatoan” (or “Croatan”) carved on a tree and “Cro” carved on another one nearby. A nearby friendly tribe lived on Croatoan Island (now Hatteras Island). White wanted to go down there to investigate, but was unable to do so due to bad weather and had to return to England. By the time a more successful colony was established by Captain John Smith (of Pocahontas fame) at Jamestown in 1607, the Roanoke colonists had vanished.

The strongest theory is that the colonists, starving and desperate, moved to Hatteras to live with the friendly Tuscaroras there. There is possible DNA and archaeological evidence that the white settlers were assimilated into the local tribes. Another possibility is that they were capsized en route and all drowned. Other theories advanced have been that hostile tribes or the Spanish (who had destroyed rival French settlements in Florida) raided the settlement and killed or enslaved everyone (but as there were no signs of violence or bodies, this seems unlikely). Similarly, cannibalism or a pirates’ attack would have left signs. Still another theory is that they tried to go back to England on their own and didn’t make it (and there is even a really silly theory that they were abducted by aliens) . But ultimately, we just don’t know for sure what happened to them. And we may not ever know. It’s a mystery and it’s been a compelling one in the centuries since.

It’s pretty unlikely, though, that they were infected and killed by a demonic virus. At least outside the SPNverse.

The two names mentioned as candidates for the demon Croatoan are two Old Testament demons: Dever was the demon of pestilence and Reshef (or Resheph) the demon of plague. Reshef was also originally a Canaanite god of pestilence and war. He was revered as a “deer” or “gazelle” god by the Phoenicians and was also worshipped in Egypt during the latter half of the second millennium B.C.E. as a god of horses and chariots. He was represented by an arrow or, by the Egyptians, an armed ram’s headed figure, and has similarities to other Mediterranean gods who dealt out pestilence in the form of arrows like Apollo.

“Croatoan” is significant within the show for many reasons. It was the first really big move in Azazel’s game plan that went beyond the psykids plot. It disappeared for a while and made a huge comeback in season five as the primary way that Lucifer plans to wipe out humanity. And the cliffhanger set up the resolution (in the next episode, “Hunted”) to a major question posed at the beginning of the season about what John told Dean about Sam at the end of season two premiere “In My Time of Dying”, something that had been eating Dean up ever since.

But there are also two significant things about “Croatoan” that make it controversial among Supernatural fans. First, it’s an episode that leaves a lot of questions hanging: who was Patient 0 for the virus? The Tanner family (since Duane was apparently possessed by the demon that ran the entire “experiment”)? If so, how did the other townspeople get infected? By Jake? And if so, isn’t Sam responsible for getting most of the town killed because he couldn’t shoot Jake? Where did the infected townspeople go at the end? What did the demon do afterward? Why wasn’t Dean infected (this last especially important since we know that Dean has the same blood that made Sam originally important to Azazel, so he probably should be immune)? How did the nurse get infected if the contaminated blood never touched her? And so on.

In a way, though I’d prefer that “Croatoan”’s sequel, “The End“, had answered more of these questions (like whether Dean was immune or not), I really like the fact that the episode leaves so many dangling. The story is about an unsolved mystery at its heart. To solve it, even from the brothers’ point of view (or ours) would be to suck out its mystery. If it were solved, it would no longer be an unsolved mystery and it would lose its power.

Another thing that has only recently become obvious is that “Croatoan” is the first time we start to get the sea change from Supernatural being Sam’s story more (though not completely) to Dean’s story. We still have the trope of Sam the Genius Psykid and Dean the Roughneck Tagging Along, but, even though the experiment is about testing Sam’s immunity, the story is ultimately about Dean’s personal Heart of Darkness. Sam’s immunity test is just the MacGuffin – the person truly being tested and changed is Dean. Dean falls and falls deeper into darkness, killing with greater and greater ruthlessness and ease, crossing line after line, until he comes to one (killing Sam after Sam is infected) that he will not cross. On the surface, “Croatoan” is “Saving Sam” but underneath, it’s really “Saving Dean” because Sam stays true to his values in the episode. Demon blood and demon virus immunity or not, his soul is not the one in peril (ironically, Sam is faced with a similar slippery slope in season four and, like Dean, chooses differently than before, but in the opposite direction). Damnation is not always an obvious process and it’s one that Dean very narrowly averts in “Croatoan”. It is a turning point for him.

Fun lines:

Dean [to "Sarge"]: [Duane's] not in any trouble – at least, not yet. [spots his tattoo] I think you know who he is. Master Sergeant. My dad was in the Corps. He was a corporal.

Sarge: What company?

Dean: Echo 21.

Dean [reading the message on the telephone pole]: “Croatoan”?

Sam: Roanoke? Lost Colony? Ring a bell? [off Dean's blank look] Dean, did you pay any attention in history class?

Dean: Yeah! The shot heard round the world, how bills become laws.

Sam: That’s not school. That’s Schoolhouse Rock!

Dean: Whatever.

Sam: Roanoke was one of the first English colonies in America. Late 1500s.

Dean: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do remember that. The only thing they left behind was a single word carved in a tree: “Croatoan”.

Sam: Yeah. And, I mean, there were theories: Indian raid, disease. But nobody knows what really happened. They were all just gone. I mean, wiped out overnight.

Dean: I tell you one thing – if I was gonna massacre a town, that [cutting the phone lines] would be my first step.

Dean [about the Tanners]: That was kinda creepy, right? Little too “Stepford”?

Sam: Bigtime.

Doctor Lee [about Mr. Tanner]: Was he attacked, too?

Dean: Uh, no,actually, he did the attacking and then he got himself shot.

Mrs. Tanner: One minute, they were my husband and my son, and the next, they had the Devil in them.

Dean [about Mr. Tanner]: Well, something turned him into a monster. You know, if you’d taken out the other one, that would be one less to worry about.
Sam: Dean, it was a kid.
Dean: No, it was an it. Not the best time for a bleeding heart, Sam.

Dean [to Dr. Lee]: My partner here will stick around, keep you safe.
Dr. Lee: Safe from what?
Dean: We’ll get back to you on that.

Infected man [to Dean]: Say, why don’t you get out of the car and we’ll talk a little?
Dean: Well, you are a handsome devil, but I don’t swing that way, sorry.

Sarge: What’s going on with everybody? My neighbour, Mr. Rogers…
Dean: You got a neighbour named “Mr. Rogers”?
Sarge: Not anymore.

Dean [as he and Sarge point guns at each other]: Aw, this oughtta be a relaxing drive.

Dean [to Sam]: I feel like Chuck Heston in The Omega Man. Sarge was the only sane person I could find.

Duane Tanner: Has anybody seen my mom and dad?
Dean [quietly to Sam]: Awkward.

Dean [about killing Duane]: Hey, I’m not happy about this. It’s a tough job. You know that.
Sam: It’s supposed to be tough, Dean! We’re supposed to struggle with this. That’s the point!
Dean: Yeah? What’s that buy us?
Sam: A clear conscience, for one.
Dean: Well, it’s too late for that.

Sam: You don’t act like yourself anymore, Dean. Hell, you know what? You’re acting like one of those things out there.

Dean [to Sarge]: I’m only gonna say this one time: you make a move on [Sam], you will be dead before you hit the ground. You understand me? I mean, do I make myself clear?

Dean: I’m tired, Sam. I’m tired of this job, this life. This weight on my shoulders. Man, I’m tired of it.

Dean: I feel like this is the one that got away. Trust me: we’re gonna lose sleep over this one.

Dean: I dunno, man. I think we just oughtta…go to the Grand Canyon. You know, all this driving back and forth across country, you know, I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon. Or we could go to TJ. Or Hollywood, see if we could bang Lindsay Lohan.

Next Week: Mystery Spot: While investigating the mysterious disappearance of a professional debunker of “mystery spots”, the brothers get caught in a time loop that has Sam reliving, and Dean re-dying, the same Tuesday over and over again.

And don’t forget that new episodes of Supernatural return on January 21.

HAPPY AMERICAN THANKSGIVING!

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