Hmmm... Friday's episode of Supernatural, "Mannequin 3: The Reckoning" was - well, I'm not quite sure what it was. Perhaps by the time I've finished writing the recap, I'll have figured it out.
SPOILERS!
Last week's episode ended with Sam collapsing in a fit of Hell-flashback, and we saw him have a vision of fire burning his face off. This week started with Dean frantically leaning over his brother, who has stopped breathing (at this point, we were thinking that Dean would call Cas for help, but alas, he did not). Sam comes to, however, and brushes it off as no big thing. The two of them discuss it over coffee, with Dean saying "I told you so" and Sam saying "Bite me. You would have done the same thing." Dean stresses the importance of burying the memories of Hell beneath layers of alcoholism and violence - he knows this from experience.
At a small college, a janitor is cleaning up an anatomy lab after hours. He's alone in the room except for a life-size anatomy mannequin, which is creepy. Our feelings of unease are justified when the mannequin becomes animate - after a gash opens up on the janitor's forehead, the mannequin takes a scalpel and slits his throat.
Sam and Dean mosey on into the anatomy lab in their "FBI" suits, and Dean immediately starts taking organs out of the anatomy mannequin and cracking jokes. Sam pulls out their trusty home-made EMF meter, which whirs when it's next to the mannequin.
That night, a security guard at a sewing factory is making his rounds, shining his flashlight at the blank faces of the clothing mannequins in the building. He hears noises and thinks that his friend may be playing a trick on him - we, of course, know that he's just mannequin fodder. He's surrounded by three of them and skewered with a long metal rod.
The Winchesters discover a link between the two victims, which leads them to believe that they've been killed by the same ghost. What's strange about this case is that ghosts usually haunt places or objects, and this one seems to be moving around. The link turns out to be a woman who disappeared earlier that year, who was a co-worker of both the janitor and the security guard when they all worked at the sewing factory. They go to interview the woman's sister, who has nothing to offer them really, except that her sister was shy and socially awkward. And very giving.
Dean gets an urgent call from Ben, who says that Lisa is extremely depressed and won't even leave her room. Sam insists that Dean go to help, assuring him that he can handle this case on his own. Dean reluctantly drives to Lisa's place.
Sam finds out more about the woman who went missing by interviewing the people she used to work with. One guy acts incredibly suspicious, and Sam picks up on it, letting us rest assured that his bullshit detector is working fine. Later that night, the suspicious guy (who we'll call Dick #3) is alone in the factory, and mannequins come after him. Sam jumps in and saves him by keeping the haunted mannequins out of a small room with barriers of salt. He yells at Dick #3 and bullies him into telling the truth about the missing woman - it turns out that he and his dick friends thought it would be funny to trick her into thinking she had a secret admirer. When they set up a meeting between her and her "admirer", she entered the apartment and discovered that her "date" was nothing but a mannequin, and then the three of them jumped out and started laughing at her. When she started to flee in tears, one of the dicks grabbed her arm and she fell, hitting her head against the coffee table. Rather than report it, the dicks dumped her body in the woods. Sam heads out there to salt and burn the bones.
Meanwhile, Dean grimly walks up to Lisa's door, and is surprised when she opens it herself. She's all dressed up, because she's going out on a date. She and Dean fight - probably about Dean leaving them or Lisa telling him not to come back, but the dialogue makes it as clear as mud. Dean talks to Ben, who's angry at him for "walking out on his family". Dean puts on his sad face, but leaves again anyway.
Sam tells Dick #3 that he's in the clear, and the dick goes back to his crummy apartment. There, he starts talking to someone off-camera, saying that they have to leave town as soon as possible. It turns out that he's talking to a sex doll laying on the bed (EWWWWW!!!!). The sex doll becomes animate and kills him.
Sam and Dean reunite and are confused about Dick #3's death - the bones of the ghost were salted and burned, so how was she able to get her revenge on the remaining dick? They go back to her sister's house to see if there are any objects she might be attached to, and find out that the sister has one of her kidneys. That's right folks, a haunted kidney! Sam and Dean are at a loss - they can't destroy the haunted kidney without killing the innocent sister, so they have a short brainstorming session and come up with hoodoo. Just then, Dean's Impala roars to life, and Dean yells at the ghost to "leave my baby out of this." The car zooms toward Dean, who dodges it. Dean is fine, but the Impala drives through a plate glass window, and one of the shards kills the ghost's sister. The ghost is laid to rest as the sister dies.
The brothers have their post-job conversation as Dean repairs the damage done to the Impala. This case doesn't count as a win, but they're still alive. Sam thanks Dean for getting his soul back. The End.
Questions that still need answers:
If you think that my snark is a little less present in this recap, you're absolutely right. This episode was "meh", and it seemed as if even Supernatural's writers thought so, too. It was "filler".
Is this all we're going to see of Sam's Hell problems, or should we expect more?
Is Dean's relationship with Lisa and Ben finally over for honest-to-goodness real this time? We sure hope so, because dragging it out isn't doing anything for his character development, and just pisses us off.
Next week:
We enter the ultimate meta-verse as Sam and Dean are transported to an alternate universe in which they are actors named Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles who star in a TV show called Supernatural. This could be really good, or it could be phenomenally bad. Whichever it is, it needs more Cas.
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