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| "Dude, you fugly..." |
Needless to say, I really do like this one.
We start off as, the caption helpfully informs, in Burkitsville, Indiana one year ago. A couple is leaving an idyllic small town bed and breakfast after apparently getting lost. The townsfolk are so nice, pumping their gas for them, fixing their car up, and even giving them a home-baked apple pie on the house. I'm pretty sure, but now, that I don't actually have to use the Admiral Ackbar clip, because this is the opening of a Supernatural episode and you know what's coming.
Their car breaks down in an apple orchard and the couple get out to find help, instead finding...a scarecrow. Rather than immediately trying to walk back the way they came, they head deeper into the orchard toward the lights coming from some house...and are picked off by a figure that we don't clearly see. However, as the woman has whatever malicious force come upon her, we cut back to the stand that the scarecrow was on...and it's lacking a scarecrow.
Also, she saw it's head move earlier and did not immediately start walking away as fast as her feet could carry her.
In the present, we pick up from the end of last week's episode, Sam picking up Dean's phone...and John's on the other end. John assures Sam that he's alright, but that he can't tell them where he is. Not yet. Sam realizes that John is going after the thing that killed Mary and he confirms he is, and that it's a demon. John also expresses condolences to Sam about the death of Jessica.
He tells the boys to write down some names after telling them to stop following them. Sam is clearly furious while Dean obeys without question. John's names lead the boys to learning about three couples who disappeared without a trace over the last few years and all of their road trips took them through the same part of Indiana...Burkitsville, Indiana, to be exact.
Sam and Dean have an argument about what to do next, Sam determined to follow the area code from John's phone call and hunt him down in California, and Dean determined to do as their father tells them to do. Needless to say, the pair reach and impasse and Sam takes off in one direction while Dean takes off in the other. Soon enough, Dean arrives in Burkitsville. He has a moment where he considers calling Sam, but ultimately closes his early 2000's flip phone without doing so.
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| Sam's bad history with blondes continues... |
He questions a local, even showing him pictures of the two people from the cold open who went missing, but the local says he has no idea who they are. Burkitsville doesn't get many visitors, he says.
Sam, meanwhile, finds a blonde woman out by the side of the road. There's some banter there as they jokingly accuse each other of potentially being a hitchhiking serial killer before a trucker comes up...and offers to take the girl, but not Sam.
Whomp whomp!
Back at Burkitsville, Dean questions the general store owner and his wife, but it's their niece that points Dean in the right direction - mentioning that the husband of the missing couple had a tattoo and refreshing her uncle's memory on them having been there. He points Dean in the direction...of the orchard. Before he even arrives, Dean's EMF detector starts going haywire. Needless to say, he finds the orchard and the scarecrow.
Getting a ladder, Dean climbs it to look at the Scarecrow more closely...and finds the same tattoo that the husband had. He goes back to the General Store and speaks to Emily, the store owner's niece. She apparently isn't a local, but came here when she was thirteen after her parents died. She notes that everyone is so nice here...and the whole town seems...blessed, which is definitely not ominous in any way, shape, or form.
Sam, meanwhile, finds himself stuck at a bus depot until the next day. In a mirror to the earlier scene of Dean almost calling Sam, Sam almost calls Dean and is only stopped by the return of...Meg, the blonde woman he met on the side of the road earlier. She, too, is apparently heading to California, which is definitely not ominous in any way, shape, or form.
Dean hits up the diner at Burkitsville, Scotty's, and finds a new couple that have wandered into town and are being readied for their meeting with the Scarecrow. Unfortunately, Dean has the interpersonal skills of a wood chipper on fire and Scotty calls the sheriff, who promptly escorts Dean out of town.
Sam and Meg talk and there are a lot of parallels between the two as she speaks.
Dean heads back into Burkitsville at night and we get a similar scene to the opening with the addition of Dean going full shotgun on the Scarecrow. Dean doesn't kill it, but he's managed to work out just what it is and he tells Sam as much when they finally do converse in the next scene: it's a pagan god. The killings are ritualistic. Dean and Sam reconcile a bit, both apologizing for the things they said and Dean even admitting that he admires Sam for standing up to John, and that he's proud of him for doing his own thing.
Meg questions Sam about the phone call, wondering what Dean could have said. Sam tells her that he said, "Goodbye."
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| They were all a little surprised when Alan Funt came out. |
Dean talks to the Cigarette Smoking Man from X-Files to learn about the Pagan Gods in the area, those that would have been worshiped in the area at least, and hits upon ones called the Vanir. Dean has a plan in mind - he has to torch the tree. Unfortunately, the Burkitsville PD have tailed Dean and he gets knocked out for his trouble. The elders at Burkitsville gather together, and the decision is to sacrifice Dean and Emily in the place of the couple that escaped.
Back at the bus depot, Meg tells Sam their bus has come in...and Sam tells her to catch it, he's going to Burkitsville. Dean isn't picking up his phone, and that's not like him at all. Meg tries to implore him, but Sam refuses to leave his family behind, leaving Meg looking forlorn.
Meanwhile, locked in a basement, Dean and Emily discuss their upcoming sacrifices to the Scarecrow God. When Dean mentions needing to hunt down the tree, Emily mentions an old apple tree in the orchard - older than the others. They get tied to some trees in the orchard, Emily's aunt butchers the "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" speech from Star Trek and Dean tells the townspeople that he hopes their apple pie was freakin' worth it. Night falls, and Sam arrives instead of the Scarecrow!
Apparently, Sam stole a car to get here, which makes Dean even more proud.
However, as Dean is freed from the tree, the brothers notice that the Scarecrow is no longer on his stand. They attempt to leave and come back in the morning, but the townsfolk aren't letting them go. Emily's uncle insists that they have to let them take him...and he gets a scythe through the heart. It seems that the Vanir is no longer discriminating.
The three do escape and return in the morning with a can of gas, torching the tree. Emily gets put on a bus going to Boston with no explanation, and Sam and Dean finish their reconciliation. Sam still wants to find John and still thinks that Dean is a pain in the ass, but killing the thing that killed Mary and Jess won't bring them back and his family is all he has. If they're going to see this through, they're going to have to do it together. They banter a bit about the escape plan Dean totally didn't have as the boys drive off in the Impala. Interestingly enough, however, the episode doesn't end there.
A van drives along a road at night, "Bad Company" by Bad Company playing on the radio. Inside, Meg is riding shotgun with a creeper. She playfully suggests that he pull over, which he does...and she proceeds to pull a disturbing-looking cup out of her bag and slits the man's throat. She catches his blood in the cup and mutters an incantation to "make a call". She insists that she could have stopped Sam, could have stopped both him and Dean, and doesn't understand why they made her not. We don't get to hear the voice on the other end, but Meg seems consoled...by her father.
That is how we end the episode.
Scarecrow is a nice little one and done that has some set up for things earlier, and a bit of resolution for the issues that Sam and Dean were having at the end of Asylum. It has a lot of really good points and is honestly a high-water mark for the show in general. The Scarecrow is very spooky and iconic despite only being in the one episode, the town of Burkitsville has a very Wicker Man vibe to it, and we get some really good performances from Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles.
We also get the introduction of Meg, who will be...a very interesting character as time goes on. More on her later.
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| "The pie was great, the murder cult was terrible. 3/10" |
If I had to do any real criticism for this episode, it'd be that we have less interaction with Dean and San vs. the Scarecrow. There's really only the two major engagements - Dean attacking it to save the couple earlier and the brothers escaping with Emily as it goes to town on Emily's uncle. I feel like some more could have been done there, though there could have been a myriad of reasons why they didn't go that route such as budget.
That said, Scarecrow is a great episode and a great place to end the Supernatural reviews for this, Horror Month 2020. However, this isn't the end of the Supernatural reviews...we have a few weeks still before the traditional Doctor Who Christmas Special, so I'm going to keep going. Next week, we'll go into another good one from Season 1, Faith. Ironically, that isn't the Buffyverse character we're going to be seeing in the episode. Stay tuned for it, though, because it's a really good episode!
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