I've never been a huge fan of zombies. Out of all the things in horror, they just don't really appeal to me like others do. Maybe I just don't care for them for the same reason that the Cthulhu Mythos has never struck a chord with me like it has with so many others. I like the thought of there being some kind of hope in the darkness of horror. The massive, uncaring eldritch beings that are so much more than anything human can understand and the innumerous hordes of the undead seeking to consume the flesh of the living really just don't hold the same appeal to me because of that.
And yes, I'm aware a major theme of the Cthulhu Mythos is regular humans standing up against the darkness and screaming "We matter!", but you get the idea.
Oh, and for the record...
I have it well documented that I do not believe that mummies are zombies. Just so everyone knows. Also, yes, I've seen Buffy and have heard Anya's statement about how zombies don't eat brains unless instructed to do so by their zombie masters. My decision still stands.
Regardless, we're talking about a different show entirely and Supernatural isn't about the Cthulhu Mythos...at least not yet. Now, Supernatural is going to cover something that I'm kind of surprised it took two seasons to get to: zombies. Hence that whole intro about zombies and Cthulhu, less the Cthulhu part.
Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things begins with the recap we've come to expect, reminding us of John's deal to save Dean from death's door and the cost as well as the Sam and Dean drama after.
With our clips played, we come to a man and a woman in a kitchen. The woman, Angela, is having some trouble with her boyfriend, Matt. Neil, the man is attempting to comfort her. When Matt forces his way past Neil and into the house, Angela has already left. Matt calls her while she's driving and between the distraction of that and her grief, Angela gets into a crash and dies upon impact, slumped against the steering wheel in a bloody mess.
Elsewhere, Sam and Dean are going to visit their mother's grave. While Sam wants to do it to honor her memory, Dean thinks that it's ridiculous to pay tribute to a slab of granite - seeing as Mary had no body to bury after her death.
At the gravesite, Sam speaks to her grave as if talking to her, placing John's Marine dog tags in the earth in front of it. A genuinely good scene by Jared Padalecki as Jensen Ackles plays the more stoic Dean, looking at a gravestone that reads "beloved father" and attempting to blow it off. It is Dean, however, that notices a strangely dead tree in the graveyard...and a circular patch of land where no grass is growing, but a grave clearly is, a bouquet of wilted flowers on top.
Sam is skeptical, but he and Dean start looking into it since the state of the ground might be a sign of a demonic presence.
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| Hey, Angela. You've got red on you. |
. . .not an unfair assumption about Dean given things we've seen before and things we've yet to see.
It ends with Dean heading off to get a drink, alone.
Elsewhere, Matt is an absolute wreck watching home movies of himself and Angela. When he leaves the room, the plant on his coffee table (a perfectly natural place to have a plant) wilts in what is admittedly a pretty good effect even by today's standards. After getting a beer, he sees something in the reflection of the television...Angela herself...and then gasps as blood splatters across his television screen.
Later, Dean's participating in some nice, wholesome breaking and entering at Angela's place. He meets Angela's roommate and manages to fast talk his way out of the police being called. Dean questions said roommate and eventually learns that Angela's boyfriend - Matt - killed himself the previous night. The thing that catches Dean's interest was that Matt saw Angela in the days leading up to his death...
Dean returns to the motel to walk in on Sam watching Casa Erotica 4 and gets him up to speed on what he's found. Dean also went to Matt's apartment off-screen and found dead plants and even a dead goldfish. Dean apparently stole Angela's diary to read. The pair hit on a name from Angela's bestest friend in the whole wide world...and decide to go to Neil.
Neil tells them that Matt was responsible for Angela's death. Angela had apparently walked in on Matt with another girl, hence leading to what we saw in the beginning. With Matt dead, they think that the terror might be over. If Angela is a vengeful spirit, then all they have to do to make sure is burn her bones. When they go to dig her up, though...they find an empty coffin.
Back at Neil's, Neil heads into the basement to find...Angela, seemingly alive and well. The two share a tender kiss, though the music sting tells us that it's anything but.
Back at the grave, Sam and Dean are utterly confused. What they do find in the coffin, however, is something with Greek writing on it. They confront Angela's father about it, having worked out that it's a necromancy ritual. When it becomes clear that Angela's father has no part in it, Dean pushes him anyway as he clearly is suffering from those issues that he's definitely not having. Sam and Dean have another argument about the subject that resolves all of nothing. In the end, the only thing the brothers seem able to agree on is that their lives are weird.
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| "...Awkward." |
Sam and Dean Winchester, Masters of Understatement.
Back at Neil's, Neil seems to have everything he wants with Angela making moony eyes at him but something seems to be bugging him...something he can't put his finger on. Yet, Angela smooth talks her way into him seemingly forgetting all about it.
Once more with the Winchesters, the boys discuss the various legends around the undead and how to kill them...or rekill them as the case may be. They hit upon silver as a common factor. Dean also believes, if Angela's father didn't bring her back, that Neil did...being that he's Angela's father's TA and thus has access to all his books.
They get into Neil's house, finding all the dead plants and eventually getting into the basement to find the set up he had for Angela to stay in. They find a loose grate in the wall and Dean puts two and two together about Angela's roommate, Lindsey, and her boyfriend Matt.
At the apartment of the artist formerly known as Angela, Lindsey opens the door...and finds a zombie Angela has developed slasher film teleportation powers. She attacks her, giving Lindsey a scare with a fake out death before Dean gets to her rescue with a few well-placed shots. They don't kill Angela, but they do scare her off. When they get back to the Impala, Sam comes up with the theory that staking Angela into her grave will put her back to rest. In order to do that, they go to Neil and confront him with what they know.
He eventually breaks down and tells them that she's at his house...the dead plants, on the other hand, tell a different story. Dean feeds him some BS story about a ritual to put Angela back in her grave. When Neil doesn't agree to come with them, Dean whispers some quick advice to him before he and Sam leave. Neil goes into the other room where Angela is, confronting her about not staying in the house. He's horrified at the wounds on her body and that she is determined to kill Sam and Dean before they perform the ritual.
He attempts to leave, telling her to stay there, and finds her in the parking lot waiting for him. His reward for all his incredibly twisted love and devotion is a broken neck.
At the gravesite again, Dean and Sam have set the trap. When they hear a branch break, the boys spring into actions, on the alert. Sam reverse corners Angela and she begs for her unlife. Sam responds by shooting her in the head to no real effect. Sam lures her back toward the gravesite and Dean shoots her repeatedly until she falls into the grave, finishing her off with a silver spike to the chest and proclaiming, "What's dead should stay dead".
The boys banter as they walk away, Dean looking back to Mary's gravestone for the first time. Sam offers to stay for a bit longer, but Dean turns him down. With another hunt well in the books, the boys drive off. A ways down the road, Dean pulls the car over and gets out, Sam following. Dean apologizes for the way he's been acting. They talk, discussing what happened back in In My Time of Dying and Dean has finally put the pieces together. Him making his insanely impossible recovery, John being dead, and the Colt being gone can only mean one thing: John made a deal. Thus, we get the bigger reason why Dean's been on the "what's dead should stay dead" kick - he feels that John is dead because of him, and that he should have stayed dead instead.
Dean asks Sam what he could possibly say to make that alright...and Sam can't answer him, our episode ending on a somber note as the question is left hanging in the air.
Dean doesn't usually use Kleenex for this.
He's out of his element.
Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things is a pretty good episode. We have a pretty good re-interpretation of zombies (Supernatural liking to play with its lore a lot, especially in the early days) and good character bits between Sam and Dean. As we've been dealing with since Everybody Loves a Clown, Dean is still reeling from John's death and Sam rightly calls him out on this a few times during the episode even to the point of saying that Dean is genuinely terrifying him.
It has a good pay off in the emotional scene at the end of the episode, as Dean lays it on the line how he's been feeling and the two boys share a quiet moment at the end as Dean unloads and Sam processes everything.
Next time, Sam and Dean will be heading into another nightmare, though not quite in the way you might expect. When we return to the world of Supernatural, it'll be because Simon Said.
. . .no, I don't know who Simon is. Or why he's saying things.
Be there!
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