From MadCap's Couch - "Supernatural: No Exit"

Jeepers, creepers, where'd you get those peepers?

After a Jo-centric recap, we begin on a blonde woman in an apartment in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Calling her landlord over some electrical issues, see finds a black goo on her table that seems to have dripped down from the ceiling...and soon finds it gushing out of an exposed lighting fixture. When she looks into the fixture, an eye meets hers and she screams bloody murder.

At the Roadhouse, Dean and Sam prepare to head out and rescue Katie Holmes from an evil cult. However, Ellen and Jo are getting into a scrape. After finding out that it's a mother-daughter spat, the boys attempt to extricate themselves before they get Ellen Harvelle'd to death. After dealing with some tourists, Ellen has to answer the phone and Jo gives Sam and Dean some details on a case - several missing women over the past 80 years in the same part of Philadelphia.

Jo wants to take the case, but Ellen refuses to let her and insists that Sam and Dean take it.

In Philly, the boys break into the blonde woman's apartment and start investigating. Soon comes the EMF detector and the discovery of the joy that is ectoplasm. While Dean jokes about it being the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, Sam brings up a point of Supernatural lore - only ghosts that are incredibly old and pissed off ghosts make ectoplasm, not just your run of the mill spirit. To their surprise, Jo shows up with the landlord and poses as Dean's girlfriend to sell herself as someone genuinely wanting to rent out an apartment.

*record scratch* Yeah, that's us. You're probably wondering how we got here...

Jo apparently told Ellen she was heading to Vegas, even getting Ash to lay a credit card trail all the way there. Dean actually lies to Ellen about Jo being there (despite his better judgment) and the three get to work on going through all the information. Dean and Jo check one floor while Sam checks another, the pair having a discussion about the job. Jo accuses Dean of being a sexist pig thinking women can't do the job, Dean retorts quite well with the fact that woman can do the job just fine - amateurs can't. The job isn't something someone chooses, Dean even confiding in Jo that he wishes he could do anything else and only really deals with it because he's twisted.

Again, something else to add to Dean's laundry list of psychological trauma.

The pair end up hitting on something though, and Jo is nearly grabbed a a ghostly hand from a vent before she realizes what's happened. They check the vent, Dean using a screwdriver to remove the grating and finding...tuffs of blonde hair attached to what's left of a scalp. Yummy!

Elsewhere in the apartment, another blonde woman is going through her bills upon returning home and...well, you can see where this is going, I'm sure. Ectoplasm drops, lights flicker, and cracks start forming in the ceiling and walls and the same ghostly hand that nearly grabbed Jo grabs her instead and drags her away to...who knows where.

The next morning, Dean awakens on the couch and looking most uncomfortable for the experience. Jo is already up...or indeed is still up, having no slept. Seeing her twirling her knife again, Dean pulls one of his bag and hands it to her, saying it'd be a better choice than Jo's pocket knife. She hands it over to him, showing the initials "WAH" - William Anthony Harvelle, Jo's father. When he realizes the mistake, he apologizes it and hands it back to her. Jo presses him for what he remembers about his father, Dean telling her a story about when John took him shooting for the first time. He flips the script on her, Jo telling him a story about her father returning home from a hunt.

It's a great scene: one really well performed by Jensen Ackles and Alona Tal, the two people who have been so damaged by life bonding over their mutual trauma and finding common ground.

Getting back to the plot, they find that the building the apartment building is in was next door to a prison...where the most common method of execution was hanging. More to the point, one of the people that was executed there was one of America's most prolific serial killers - H.H. Holmes, who had a preference for pretty petite blondes. Normally, they'd be able to salt and burn the bones and that be the end of it. However, Holmes' body was buried in town and encased in concrete to prevent anyone from tampering with his remains. They realize that the most recent missing person might still be alive and so decide to go looking in the walls.

When they come to a narrow section of the corridor, Jo tries to squeeze through...and well, if you probably already know what's about to happen, namely that Jo gets taken by Holmes. By the time that Dean gets to her, Jo is gone and only her cell phone remains.

He gets a call from Ellen right after and Dean has to come clean, something that traumatizes Ellen. Dean promises to get Jo back, Ellen telling him that that isn't the first time she's heard that from a Winchester. Ellen tells the boys that she'll be getting on the first flight out. Sam works out that, while the girls might not be in the walls, the building connects to an old sewer system and that Jo and the other girl might be there. He and Dean head out to locate it.

Jo, meanwhile, awakens in a metal prison in the sewer deeps and finds the missing woman - Theresa. She attempts to encourage Theresa to be calm, that Sam and Dean will get them out, and Holmes stalks around for a jump scare or two.

So that's what boobs look like!

Sam and Dean do indeed find a way into the sewers (after some work) and start the tracking down. Jo faces off against the incredibly creepy Holmes with her father's knife, which turns out to be made of pure iron (as we've established, ghosts no likey the iron). Just when it seems like her number is up, though, Sam and Dean get to the rescue and manage to get both Jo and Theresa out. While Jo is happy to get out, Dean says it's time to revisit their plan of having Jo be bait - it's literally the only one that they've got.

Jo sits in the middle of Holmes' torture room, waiting for him to reform. When he does so, the trap gets sprung - a circle of salt being dropped that traps Holmes in the room. Trapping him down there and, for good measure, Dean gets his hands on a cement truck to seal the bastard in forever.

Then, the awkward drive back to the Roadhouse in silence once Ellen has arrived, Ellen being so powerful that she is able to break Dean's rule about using the radio in the Impala. Considering it's a 22 hour drive...that's gotta be an awkward one. Upon returning to the Roadhouse, Ellen and Jo get into it again, Ellen finally breaking down after digging into Jo about trusting the Winchesters. Jo asks about what she means and Ellen explains...offscreen.

Jo comes out and turns away when she sees Sam and Dean. Dean attempts to question her about it, and Jo tells him the truth - John was her father's partner on his last hunt, the hunt where Anthony Harvelle died. When Dean attempts to press further, maybe comfort her a bit, Jo just tells him to leave and ends the episode on a bitter note.

No Exit is pretty good. I know I made the joke about how often ghosts were used in Season 1 of the show, but this is the first one of Season 2 and it's a pretty damn effective one. Tapping into actual American history with the ghost of the man who is arguably America's first serial killer, H.H. Holmes makes for a very intimidating villain through the episode and one that can't be handled in the usual method of salt and burn, which leads to Sam and Dean's rather creative solution.

We get some more background on the relationship between John and the Harvelles first hinted at in Everybody Loves a Clown (and, once more, no), being that whatever John and Anthony were hunting ultimately is what led to Anthony's death and John's guilt that stemmed from that seeing to it that he never returned to the Roadhouse after. It also explains Ellen's extreme reluctance to let Jo go out into the hunting life, seeing what it's done to her father.

While she might look kindly on Sam and Dean, it doesn't mean that she trusts them and perhaps even less now than she did before.

Jo would have topped Dean. Calling it now.

Jo, too, seems very (understandably) disjointed by the news even to the point of pushing Sam and Dean away.

Next time, Sam and Dean are going to hit the road again and run into a familiar face...to us, the audience, not they the them. Horror legend Linda Blair guest stars in The Usual Suspects. Be there for it!