Supernatural: Metamorphosis (Episode 404)

THEN: Dean went back to the future and discovered that a) Mary was a hunter, b) John was actually a nice guy, and c) the Yellow-Eyed Demon made a deal with Mary that allowed him to poison Sam with demon blood.  Sam lied to Dean about using his psychic powers, and Castiel told Dean that he had to stop Sam or the angels would step in.  Also?  Show and I got married.  It was a small private ceremony presided over by Kripke himself.  Our gift registry is at Pottery Barn.

NOW:  Sam and Ruby are in an abandoned warehouse.  They have a possessed man caught in a devil’s trap.  Sam asks him where Lilith is, but the demon just taunts him in reply.  He mocks Sam for thinking he’s one of the good guys while he’s in cahoots with a demon.  “Tell me about all the things you and this demon bitch do in the dark,” he snarls, which sounds extremely sexual.  Sam, who wants the world to know that he would NOT HIT THAT, gets his mojo on and exorcizes the demon with his mind.  Outside of the warehouse, Dean watches his brother in horror.

WINGS.  TITLE.

Sam’s feeling pretty good about himself, as the possessed guy survived the exorcism.  He and Ruby start to lead the man out of the warehouse when Dean enters, looking five kinds of pissed.  Sam’s horrified that he’s been caught, and I’m sorry, but this is pretty much the Maury episode my roommate and I were watching this morning:

      Maury: Today on Maury: Caught in the Act.
      Dean: What the HELL is this shit?!  What you think you doin’?
      Sam: Yo, baby, it’s not what it looks like!  We was just chillin’!
      Dean: Who is she?  Who is this stank-ass bitch?
      Ruby: Don’t hate cuz yo’ man keeps coming back to ALL of this!
      Dean: Ruby? BITCH I WILL TEAR OUT YO’ WEAVE! *attacks*
      Maury: Security!
      Audience: BOO! BOO!
      Sam: Shut up!  You don’t know me!  YOU DON’T KNOW ME!

As you can see, Dean is just not happy about the whole situation.  He tries to stab Ruby with her own knife, but Sam stops him.  In turn, Ruby slams Dean up against a wall and starts choking him, but she stops when Sam orders her to.  At Sam’s bidding she takes the demon’s victim to the hospital.  Dean storms out of the warehouse without another word.

The next morning, Sam waits for Dean in the motel room.  When Dean finally enters, he immediately starts packing his bags.  He says that Sam doesn’t need him, and that he can just hunt demons with Ruby.  When Sam tries to talk to him, Dean punches him in the face.  Ouch!  “Satisfied?” Sam asks, but Dean just punches him again.  Double ouch!  Dean asks what else Sam can do, and Sam claims he can exorcize demons and send them to Hell, but nothing else. Dean is not inclined to believe him.  Although Sam is sorry for lying to Dean, he doesn’t believe that using his powers is a bad thing.  “I’ve saved more people in the last five months than we save in a year,” he tells Dean, but Dean still doesn’t buy it.  He thinks that Ruby manipulated Sam into thinking this way, and that using his powers will only lead Sam to darker and darker activities.  When Sam insists that he won’t let it go too far, Dean snaps, throwing a lamp across the room.  “If I didn’t know you,” he says, “I would want to hunt you.  And so would other hunters.”  Oh, that smarts.  Though Sam is visibly affected by this confession, he still insists that he’s not doing anything wrong, and that using his powers was the only way he knew to keep fighting after Dean died.  And now Dean drops the big bomb; he tells Sam about Castiel’s instructions to stop him or else the angel would do it himself.  “That means that God doesn’t want you doing this,” Dean says, and Sam loses it.  He’s fighting back tears when his phone rings, and barely gets through a brief conversation with someone named Travis regarding a man named Jack Montgomery.  If my (tragically extensive) knowledge of soap operas is correct, that’s the name of a character on All My Children.  Perhaps they’re going to exorcize Erica Kane?  It’s about time someone did.

We cut to the Montgomery house—which is in Missouri, not Pine Valley—where the aforementioned Jack and his wife are eating dinner.  Jack is devouring everything in sight, and making the most disgusting eating noises I have ever heard while doing it.  His wife is equally horrified, and asks if he’s on drugs.  Heh.  He insists that he is neither stoned nor sick, and downs his third steak while waiting for dessert.  Damn.  Later, a shirtless Jack is brushing his teeth when he suddenly collapses.  We see his bones shift under his skin as he writhes in pain.  After a few seconds the shifting stops, leaving him to wonder what the hell happened.

Sam and Dean are in the Impala driving towards Missouri.  Dean has apparently told Sam all about his trip to the past, and Sam can’t believe that their mom was a hunter.  Sam asks what she was like, and Dean describes how she was made of 100% pure win.  The knowledge that Azazel killed their grandparents as well as their parents upsets Sam, who doesn’t understand why so many people had to die just so “Yellow Eyes could get in [his] nursery and bleed in [his] mouth.”  Almost immediately he realizes he’s messed up, as Dean didn’t mention the demon blood.  Sam is forced to admit that he’d known about it for over a year, which does nothing to repair Dean’s broken trust in him.  They drive on in tense silence.

Back at the Montgomery household, Jack is still really hungry.  His wife assures him that a delicious dinner will be ready in 45 minutes, but he doesn’t look happy at the prospect of waiting that long.  Just outside, the boys are watching Jack from the Impala.  Travis said to watch for anything weird about the man, but he seems completely ordinary so far.  I have to agree with them on that one; weird people generally don’t wear white polo shirts.  Even as they debate this, though, Jack is getting hungrier and hungrier.  He finally grabs some leftover chicken and starts stuffing fistfuls of it into his mouth.  Dude, manners.  When he’s devoured that, he grabs a package of raw meat and…oh God.  He actually eats the raw meat, and gets it all over his face and completely normal shirt.  Sam and Dean watch this display, and conclude that there is something fishy about this guy after all.  And congratulations show, because this is the first thing you’ve ever done that actually made me gag.

When Sam and Dean get back to their motel room, Travis is already there, drinking their beer.  He’s an older hunter who is a friend of the family, though he hasn’t seen the boys in ten years.  He marvels at Sam’s height (as so many do) and asks if he’s still a mathlete.  Hee!  Sam is so a mathlete.  Travis says that John would have been proud of how the boys have stuck together, which gives Dean a perfect opportunity to subtly guilt trip Sam about keeping secrets.  They sit down to share info, and Travis thanks the boys for giving him a hand, as he has a broken wrist.  The boys describe Jack’s peculiar eating habits, and Travis is not surprised.  Their info only confirmed what he had suspected; Jack is a roogaroo.  Say what now?  That can’t be a real word.  “That sounds made up,” Dean says, echoing my sentiments.  These creatures start out more or less human, but after 30 years they go through a metamorphosis.  They begin to get hungry, first for everything, and then for human flesh.  The second they take that first bite of “long pig,” the transformation completes itself, and “they’re a monster forever.”  As Travis talks, we cut over to the Montgomery kitchen, where Jack’s wife accidentally slices her finger with a knife.  Jack stares at the wound hungrily, but bolts before his hunger consumes him.

Back at the motel room, Dean asks Travis how he knew Jack is a roogasomething.  Apparently the condition is genetic, as Travis killed Jack’s father 30 years ago.  He didn’t know that his mom was pregnant, and she put Jack up for adoption when he was born.  Travis couldn’t stand the thought of hunting a more or less innocent kid, so he waited to make sure that Jack really was a rutabaga.  Or whatever.  This word will be the death of me.

Jack is at a bar, gorging himself on peanuts while thinking of his wife’s cut.  He notices some jerk practically harassing a woman despite her insistence that she’s waiting for someone.  Jack, who’s itching for a fight, jumps to the woman’s defense, calling the guy a douche bag and a “fat, sweaty dick.”  The guy tries to punch him, but Jack catches his fist, snapping his wrist like it’s a twig and SWEET JESUS THEY SHOW THE BONE!  You can actually see the bone popping out of his skin!  Oh, show, why would you do that to me?  Jack seems equally appalled, and runs out of the bar.

The next day, Dean and Travis are getting their blowtorches ready (not like that!), as fire is the only way to kill a…ring ding?  Oh, who cares.  Sam walks in from a research session, and Travis is like “um, I’ve been doing this for 30 years and you feel the need to research?” Travis is sort of awesome, which means that he probably isn’t going to make it through the episode alive.  Dean tries to smooth things over by saying that research is Sam’s equivalent of Busty Asian Beauties.  I guess he’s forgotten about Sam’s love of Latin porn.   Anyway, Sam found some stories about people who started to turn, but never completed the transformation because they never ate human flesh.  He thinks that if they can explain everything to Jack, the man can sustain his hunger by eating lots of raw meat and they won’t have to kill him.  Travis isn’t buying it, saying that Jack not to eat the long pig would be like a person who hasn’t eaten for days passing up a steak that’s put in front of him.  Dean, who’s probably that hungry right now, seems to agree with Travis.  Sam takes this rather personally, and says that “[they’re] not going to kill him unless he does something to get killed for.”  Watch out for those falling anvils of parallelism, y’all.

Back at the Montgomery house, Jack’s wife is making herself some tea when Jack sneaks up behind her.  She pretty pissed at him, since she had to drive herself to the hospital to get stitches after he ran out on her.  He makes up a bunch of excuses about how the blood freaked him out and his cell died and whatnot.  She doesn’t let him off the hook, but does forgive him enough so that she doesn’t protest when he starts an epic make-out session.  After a few moments, though, Jack starts getting rougher, and she tells him to stop.  He doesn’t, and she finally has to shove him away from her.  “What the hell is wrong with you,” she asks, and he doesn’t have an answer.

In the Impala, there are uncomfortable conversations abound.  Dean’s willing to try talking to Jack, but he wants to make sure that Sam knows they’ll probably have to waste him.  Sam refuses to acknowledge this, and Dean wonders if it’s because he relates to Jack a little too much.  This infuriates Sam, who yells Dean to stop the car or he will.  Can he even do that?  We may never know, as Dean pulls over.  Sam’s out of the car before it stops moving, fuming.  “You want to know why I’ve been lying to you, Dean?” he asks.  “Because of crap like this! The way you talk to me, the way you look at me, like I’m a freak!”  Dean starts to deny the accusation, but Sam just keeps yelling, saying that Dean is treating him like he doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong.  Dean wonders if Sam does know the difference, but Sam dismisses the question, saying that Dean has no idea what he’s going through.  When Dean asks what he means, Sam yells, “I’ve got demon blood in me, Dean!  This disease pumping through my veins, and I can’t ever rip it out or scrub it clean.  I’m a whole new level of freak!”  Dean goes silent at this, and Sam explains that he’s just using his powers to make the best of a bad situation.  Realizing how much his brother is anguishing over his situation, Dean drops the issue.

Sam and Dean arrive at Jack’s house, and find the man watering plants in his backyard.  They tell him they need to talk, and give a few details about Jack’s symptoms to get him to listen.  Predictably, Jack has trouble believing that he’s a rotorooter.  Sam tells him that his biological father was one as well, which he also doesn’t believe.  Finally, Dean goes into “let’s cut the shit” mode, and tells Jack that he’s just going to get hungrier and hungrier regardless of whether he believes them or not.  The boys tell him that he can fight it, even though he’ll feel “like an alcoholic swimming in whiskey.”  If he indulges, they tell him that there’s no going back, and that they’ll be forced to stop him.  Jack asks if that’s what happened to his father, and when the boys confirm he tells them to get off of his property.

That night, Jack sits on a bench, listening to a voicemail from his worried wife.  He looks up and sees the woman he defended at the bar undressing in a window.  He’s seized with hunger, and starts climbing up to her apartment while the boys watch.  Jack’s eyes go bloodshot as he watches her, but at the last minute he manages to restrain himself.  The boys don’t know this, though, so they burst into the woman’s apartment, ready to kick some ass.  She flips out and goes to call the police, and they make an ungraceful exit.  Hee!

When Jack gets back home, he finds Michelle (his wife’s name, though they took long enough to tell us) gagged and tied to a chair.  Before he can help her, Travis sneaks up behind him and knocks him out with chloroform.  When he comes to he’s handcuffed to a column in his living room.  He tells Travis to take whatever he wants and go, but the hunter simply removes Michelle’s gag and says that he can’t leave.  When Travis reveals that he’s working with the Winchesters, Jack says that he did what Sam and Dean told him to do and that he hasn’t hurt anyone.  “Not yet,” Travis says, “but you would’a.  They always do.”  Michelle asks Jack what’s going on, but Jack doesn’t have the heart to tell her.  He begs Travis to let her go.  Unfortunately, Michelle accidentally revealed to the hunter that she’s pregnant, meaning that Travis has to kill her to eliminate the threat entirely.  Though he seems genuinely upset about what he has to do, Travis begins dousing the room in lighter fluid.  Inspired by his desire to save his wife, Jack embraces his inner ramalamadingdong and breaks the handcuffs.  He and Travis get into a scuffle, and Travis slams his cast into Jack’s face.  Jack grabs the cast and snaps it in half, and while Travis is incapacitated by the pain, he takes a big bite out of his neck.  Almost immediately his skin turns pale and wormy, the metamorphosis completed.  Once Travis is dead, Jack frees his wife.  She’s terrified of him, and runs out to her car and drives away.  Having nothing left but his hunger, Jack devours the rest of Travis’s body.

The boys arrive at the Jack’s house and find Travis’s meager remains.  In their moment of grief, Jack takes them by surprise and slams Dean into a coffee table, knocking him out.  He then tackles Sam and hits him over the head with his own blowtorch until he’s unconscious as well.  When Sam comes to, he’s locked in a closet.  He calls for Dean, and Jack responds that “Dean can’t come to the phone right now.”  Sam pretty much flips his shit, but Jack assures him that Dean is still alive.  We see that Dean is still unconscious and lying on the coffee table.  Flooded with relief, Sam tries to talk Jack down.  It doesn’t work, as Jack thinks that the boys knew about Travis’s plan to kill Michelle.  Sam says they didn’t, and asks why Travis would want to hurt her.  Realizing that Michelle is still in danger, Jack doesn’t tell the boys about her pregnancy.  While Sam tries to pick the lock with a coat hanger, Jack’s hunger returns, and he samples some of Dean’s blood.  Sam tells him that he understands what it’s like to have evil inside of him, but that “it doesn’t matter what you are; it only matters what you do.”  None of this is really applicable to Jack anymore, since he already took that first bite of human flesh, but this has really been all about Sam for the entire episode.  Dean starts to wake up just as Jack is about to give in to his hunger, but Sam breaks out of the closet before anything can happen.  In what is more or less an act of suicide, Jack runs towards Sam and his blowtorch rather than eating Dean, and that just might be the dirtiest thing I’ve ever typed.  Sam lights Jack on fire, and Dean gets up just in time to watch as the man is consumed in flames.

When the boys drive away a bit later, Dean tries to assure Sam that he did the right thing.  He apologizes for giving Sam such a hard time about the psychic thing and actually starts talking about his feelings, but Sam doesn’t want to have that conversation.  Dude, Dean just initiated a chick flick moment.  That may never happen again.  Sam says that he can’t make Dean understand what he’s going through, but Dean insists that Sam doesn’t have to go through it alone.  Sam also says that the whole conversation is null and void, because he’s done using his powers.  Dean’s extremely relieved, but Sam says that he’s not doing it for him.  It’s his choice, and he’s determined not to have it taken away like Jack did.

Next week:  Werewolves and vampires and mummies, oh my!  (Lame joke is lame.)