Supernatural – Season 7, Episode 16 – Out With The Old
Supernatural is back from it’s month-long Hellatus with its latest offering, Out With The Old.
In a ballet school, a group of dancers are commenting on a fellow dancer, Norena; it’s clear they don’t like her. She comes in the studio, and tells them that practice makes perfect, if they’re up for it.
And does it ever. After everyone has left, she dances her feet off. Literally. The janitor, who had been mopping the floor in the hall, enters the studio when he sees blood splatter onto the glass doors, and he finds Norena laying in a pool of blood, her feet literally gone. The ballet shoes she strapped on earlier lay a few feet away, not a drop of blood on them.
Dean is on the phone talking to Frank, who is trying to keep dean apprised of all the businesses and properties that Dick Roman’s companies are buying. Dean pretty much tells him that he could care less. There’s something to this, I know it – the fact that Frank sees a connection with all of these purchases is going to come out eventually!
On a side note, I kind of like Frank. He’s a meaner, more sarcastic, techier, and grumpier version of Bobby. But he also appreciates a really good wisecrack. I’m sold on him.
Sam shows Dean a newspaper article about the dancer’s death, and they both agree it sounds like something they should look into. Sam is swilling coffee like it’s going out of style, and it’s all because of the non-stop concert Lucifer is performing in his head. Dean asks if he is still doing the hand thing, and while he says yes, I don’t think it’s working anymore.
At the police station, an officer working the counter is logging evidence while his daughter does her homework at the table. She looks longingly at the just-bagged ballet shoes on the table. She gets up to go to the bathroom, and on the floor in the bathroom are the ballet shoes. She eagerly sits down and puts them on, sighing with happiness when they shrink to her size.
When Sam and Dean check in at the front desk, the officer notices his daughter and the shoes are gone. Sam and Dean rush into the bathroom just in time, as the little girl starts to spin and spin. Sam grabs hold of her while Dean tries to rip the shoes off, and she keeps apologizing to Dean for uncontrollably kicking him in the face. They finally get the shoes off, and Sam says he’s Thinking cursed object. “Ya think?!?” Dean replies.
When the shoes that Sam put in the trunk appear in the back seat of their car, Dean has an almost irresistible urge to put them on. Sam grabs them with a pair of tongs and they rush into the antique store the shoes were bought from. As Sam questions the deceased store owner’s son, Scott, Dean lovingly caresses the ballet shoes. Sam runs up to him, grabbing the shoes and stuffing them into a box: “Are you done, Baryshnikov?”
In questioning Scott, the store owner’s son, they learn that when his mother died he began selling some of the old things she had lying around. Dean comes out of another room with a bunch of empty boxes, and when Scott tells them the objects came from the safe his mother kept, they discover the safe covered in sigils. The empty boxes are curse boxes to house cursed objects. They find out from Scott what else was sold and to whom, and they go on the hunt for the items.
One woman chugs an antique kettle full of scalding water while cooking her dinner. The boys discover her on the floor, and Sam calls it in. “My name? Uhh…Bruce Hornsby.”
Outside the split the list and head in different directions: Sam looking for a haunted gramophone, and Dean for (wait for it) and antique porn magazine. “How do you think that kills him?” “Dean, I don’t want to know.” “Good point.”
Sam bursts in on a son about to stab his mother from behind on the advice of the whispering voice in the gramophone, and Dean manages to head off a death-by— never mind.
Dean takes the items back to the store to put in the safe. He learns from Scott that his mother had been keeping the store going for 40 years, while he always wanted her to sell it. She held off her whole life, when she all of a sudden decided to sell. The next day she drove off a cliff.
After leaving the store, Dean notices Bickelbee Realty signs in almost every shop window on the street.
Meanwhile, at the Bicklebee Realty office, Joyce Bicklebee is trying to convince one Mr. Marshall to sell his business. He refuses to sell, and after another attempt at convincing him otherwise, she shakes his hand and wishes him well. As soon as she lets go of his hand, he signs the sale agreement on the dotted line. When she dispatches of Mr. Marshall, her assistant George comments on her being a little quick off the draw in killing him: “You know Mr. Roman doesn’t like us to call attention to ourselves.” She instructs George to take the body and his stinky, burning cigar back to Mr. Marshall’s house and put the body in his bed – burning cigar and all.
The Leviathans are back!!!! And I can’t even repeat the coffee order she just gave George.
We cut to Sam falling asleep at the wheel after talking to Dean on the phone, and when he stops to get a coffee, George recognizes his voice and quickly calls Joyce. She doesn’t believe the Winchesters are there for them, and berates George when he expresses an interest in eating Sam.
This episode has all the markings of a case-of-the-week, but not the feel of it. Like I said before, there is something to the fact that Frank keeps alluding to all these purchases by Dick Friggin’ Roman’s companies. Dean calls Frank when he is restricted from accessing a link for GeoThrive Inc. on the Bickelbee Realty website. GeoThrive, he tells Dean, is a conglomerate owned by a corporation that’s owned by a conglomerate – in other words, it’s a tangled web of businesses all ultimately owned by Dick Roman.
Sam arrives to meet Dean, and on seeing him Dean insists that he needs sleep. Sam tells him it’s no use, that Lucifer never EVER shuts up. “And right now?” Dean asks. “Right now, he’s singing Stairway to Heaven.” Dean grins: “Good song.” Sam shakes his head and says ruefully’ “Not after 50 times in a row.”
Sam’s phone rings, and it’s Scott – he’s looked in one of his mother’s old mirrors and he can’t stop wanting to rip his face off. The boys rush out of the restaurant and head to the store, where they are greeted by George and Joyce, who have Scott tied up in a chair.
A fight ensues between the boys and the Leviathan. George begs Sam to dunk him in a “bucket of that stuff you like to throw at us” (presumably Borax, though why anyone, even an antique store, would happen to have a barrel of Borax sitting out is beyond me!), “quick, before she sees!” Sam obliges and dunks him. When Joyce tosses dean to the ground, Sam grabs a sword and lops her head off.
They ask George why he helped them, and he replies that he’s dying to know what Joyce tastes like. After some banter, they deny George the taste and grill him about Dick Roman. George explains to them that killing people is not on the leviathan agenda, and that the boys put the focus on the wrong pieces of information: “Real estate deals are happening everywhere, its way bigger.”
Dean demands to know what they’re building. George tells them it’s going to be a research centre for diseases, where they plan to cure cancer.
Wait, what? The Leviathans simply want to take over people in an effort to help …cure … cancer??
Sam asks why the hell Dick Roman would want to cure cancer, and George replies that they are only here to help. So….after killing all those people, and taking over a hospital so they could eat everyone.,. they want to cure cancer..?
The boys take the safe with the curse boxes in it and put it in a trailer they are now hauling behind a truck Sam stole. Dean tells Sam he better sleep all the way to Frank’s.
They pull up at Frank’s single-wide and break the door open when he doesn’t answer. The trailer and all Frank’s computer equipment is trashed, and there is blood everywhere.
Typical. As soon as someone grows on me they die or disappear.
