5.15 "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" review

1. Teaser. Cf. “Lazarus Rising”.

2. The juxtaposition of this man looking like a former rock fan and the lazy herbivorous animal is funny, if not particularly original.

3. What’s wrong with nicknames, Dean? “Who died and made you queen?” I DON’T understand this reference, but I love it. Yay to Digger, I guess.

4. It’s a very old-school Supernatural episode, what with a woman sheriff, trouble with the law, grave desecration and a funeral pyre.

5. Five phones for every occasion, and nothing helps. Boys, Bobby owes you a dozen “idjits” in a row for having been so stupid.

6. The number Sheriff Mills says to the “agents”, does it mean, outta here, quick?

7. The episode’s beginning is quite funny in how everyone apart from the boys tries to play down the weirdness of what is happening, so that at first it’s Sam and Dean who seem to be the fools, but you wait, you wait.

8. Bobby lies to them. But when does their hunting instinct fail our heroes? Right, it never does. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Mr. Singer, but not this time.

9. They drive back to the first zombie’s house and – oops – the pale-looking man makes no attempts to attack the brave hunters. In fact, he plainly acknowledges he did kill the guy from the teaser who, in his turn, killed him 5 years ago, and, in a funny turn of events, he’s ready to follow the FBI agents wherever they are gonna take him.

10. Our fake FBI agents are foolishly taken aback again, but Sheriff Jodi Mills saves them from disgrace and – ha – takes them to the police station. “You’re a zombie” – “I’m a taxpayer – hilarious.

11. Until Bobby sweet-talks the Sheriff into letting them out of their jail, even though the Sheriff and Mr. Singer didn’t seem to be on speaking terms even a few days ago. So that the guys start to realize something really wrong is going on.

12. “There are zombies and zombies”. And Bobby’s wife is a cooking freak. Pies are everywhere! Shout-out to fandom’s concept of pies as an omen of death? Dean clearly still doesn’t know about this fanon. But Sam obviously does, as he grants Dean a classy bitchface and shudders to even touch Karen Singer’s dishes his brother is gulping down with such obvious pleasure.

13. This Karen is so neat and clean it’s hard to even think she’s a zombie raised from ashes. And what a tragic story it’s gonna be, you know it straight away.

14. Do Death or Lucifer want to breed hostility between Mr. Singer and the boys, so that they kill each other? Such tactic seems to be the Horsemen’s trademark.

15. By the way, it’s another Horseman we’ve got, and why don’t they show him to us yet?

16. It’s funny how the guys defeated the first Horseman in episode 5.02, and it’s been half a year, and now all of a sudden two Horsemen show up one after the other.

17. I’ve never read Revelations, so I’m trying to figure out who the fourth Horseman is. Mammon? Jealousy? Disease? Fear?

18. Karen is singing “Strangers In The Night”. The song has never sounded so creepy, for she is a dangerous stranger now.

19. Her loving husband fully realizes he’s clutching at the illusion he’s deceiving himself with which is stronger than his usually perfect common sense.

20. Sam and Dean definitely didn’t expect their “surrogate father” to tell them to walk out that door and never come back. They looked genuinely hurt. It’s a nice substitute family they’ve got. Bobby didn’t have (time to have) kids of his own due to his wife’s violent demise and probably felt it wrong to remarry, and evidently he thinks of Sam and Dean in terms of almost-children. There’s the same family tragedy/trauma in the boys’ past and these tragedies bind them all and they make up for the lost families together, so Bobby ready to point a gun at them should they hurt his resurrected zombie wife is pretty discomforting.

21. Bobby asks the guys what they would do if they were in his shoes. Really, what? I mean, Karen is the living proof of the fact that Death is powerful enough to raise people from the dead even if the dust in the wind is all that’s left of them. They never mention that, but what would Sam and Dean do if, say, their father came up to them one morning, resurrected in this manner? Better not even think about it.

22. Ooh, Sam is trying to see sense in people’s zombiephilia, while Dean is being uncompromising. Good old times.

23. Nice model shot, that with the camera advancing towards Dean leaning against the Impala, cautiously waiting outside of Bobby’s house for any signs of trouble.  

24. Mrs. Singer invites Dean to the kitchen. What a pleasant, sensible zombie she is. No kidding.

25. Karen, when asked by Dean why she hadn’t told Bobby she had known everything that had happened to her while she had been dying, says that her wife’s job is to make her husband happy and peaceful, and, she adds, if Dean doesn’t realize it, it may be because he’d never loved anyone. Well, probably Dean has never formed any meaningful, deep relationships with women, but there were and are some men in his life he definitely loves more than words can say. If anything, his world has always been men-centered. Mother was a sacred figure, not a woman as such (not until Season 4, at least). But father was a beloved hero, and the silent love affair that’s going on for years between him and his brother? He does love someone.

26. And she never warns Bobby about the impending danger coming for him. To think people who you love wish you the best but it almost turns out to be the death of you. Dean’s “job” was not that different from Karen’s – remember his monologue in “All Hell Breaks Loose II”. He was trying, even as a kid, to make his little brother happy by not letting him know much about the hunting life, and what happened? Whatever, but Dean does understand the idea of keeping the beloved ones in the dark for the sake of their “happiness”, and he also knows the costs and consequences.

27. Sam goes to check the other zombies in the neighbourhood. Cut to the old zombie woman lying in her bed and looking very ill as she beckons Sam, and Sam, good boy that he is, obeys (“I’m going to regret it”, he says – hell yes, genius). And the old woman attacks, spitting some thick white slime right at Sam’s face before he gives her a headshot!

28. Bobby’s house. Mr. Singer is very sure he can handle it himself, even if it takes him to kill his wife again. The boys think he’s slightly mad from love.  

29. People who had come back from the dead are reverting back to monsters and it manifests in their becoming feverish and HUNGRY and wanting to eat their family members. Cf. the previous episode. Sheriff Mills’ pre-teen son goes all cannibalistic on his father, and the man suffers a horrible death – it’s like the reversal of the Greek myth – now children eat their parents.

30. Bobby’s Karen shows signs of degradation, too, but she’s able to check them. She actually asks her new-found husband to shoot her again. So, Dean, there are zombies and zombies indeed: some of them are actually wiser and have more dignity than real human beings.

31. Bobby shoots, and at least she dies beautiful. And before she goes she tells him a few words off-screen.

32. Brave and broken Sheriff, and Sam’s killing the zombie kid.

33. Wait, is Bobby really famous in his hometown for his excessive drinking? Is it just a cover for his true hunter identity? Being a freak in people’s opinion is much safer?

34. Dean and Bobby, back to back against the zombies! They hide in some closet and go “Grumbly Old Men” again – at a moment when there are no bullets left in their shotguns and zombies are lockpicking their door. What a nerve, dudes. And: Dean is a king of ad-libbing.

35. Really, yeah, if we ain’t got shots, why not just punch the zombies in the head instead?

36. Takes skills to shoot these zombies without actually shooting your brother. Atta boy, Sam. Ditto Sheriff.

37. What a beautiful shot: the camera sliding along the treetops of this Canadian (South Dakotan) forest and panning down to the massive funeral pyre of zombies’ bodies burning.

38. And how come the whole town didn’t panic but, rather, greeted these monsters? Didn’t even call the police. Even the ones who’ve never lost a family member. Only now they’re retelling the story to the press.

39. Bobby has laid an individual pyre for his wife. And what he says – how Death told Karen zombies were all coming after him first and foremost – really, why couldn’t she have told it to him earlier? Love can be fatal, and see number 26.

40. “Because I’ve been helping you, you sons of bitches. I’m one of the reasons you’re still saying no to Lucifer, Sam”. Since when does Bobby know about Michael and Lucifer’s plan for the guys?

41. These Horsemen harm not the boys but the people around them or the people they love – that must hurt more.

42. What episodes ended like that, with them standing by the pyre? “Jump The Shark”, what else?

43. Sam more asks than asserts – “Bobby, you’re gonna be alright, yeah”.

44. Death must be a tougher Horseman than his brothers. He’s like a ninja – they never even saw him yet.

45. Finally, some thoughts on the airing shift. This episode was to have aired before “My Bloody Valentine”, hence some OOC in its beginning – Sam and Dean completely forget what they went through a few days ago. At the end of “My Bloody Valentine” Sam was a wreck, but then in “Dead Men…” he’s as good as new and no traces of comedown whatsoever show, and they don’t even talk about his addiction issues at all in “Dead Men…” Should these two episodes have aired as they had been originally scheduled, location continuity in both of them would make more sense. If sequenced in the initial order (“Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” followed by “My Bloody Valentine”), the first episode would have naturally flowed into the second: the guys investigate the case in Bobby’s hometown of Sioux Falls, then leave to work on the Famine case, and then come back to Bobby’s for Sam to detox in the panic room. But with the airing shift, it looked like first they investigated the Famine case, did the detoxing, and then drove off South Dakota only to drive back because some weird omens showed in Sioux Falls (and Bobby’s oh so surprised to see them again like it’s been months, like Sam never stirred him in his sleep with blood-curdling screams merely a few days ago!). Funny how it reminds of 1.06 “Skin” where they drove all the way in one direction, but then Sam had a whim of working on the case of his college friend, and they had to drive all the way back.