From MadCap's Couch - "Supernatural: The Benders"

[record scratch] Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got here...

Hey, black comedy Rednecks, am I right?!

That is black comedy that uses Rednecks, not black Rednecks that are comedic. I imagine I'd end up on a watchlist for that sort of behavior in this day and age.

We've covered the occasional episode of a series that shows us normal people can be monsters, too in other shows. This is the first one of that kind in Supernatural. They don't come up often, and they're of varying quality when they do. More on that later, however. For now, let's crack open The Benders.

Seriously, cannibalistic rednecks two days before Thanksgiving (in the US). I literally could not have timed this worse, could I?

Could someone pass the turkey?

After the recap, we see a young boy at a motel watching a movie. Looking outside, he sees a man taking out the garbage. He hears a strange noise and checks under a car. . .before suddenly being pulled under it, much to the boy's shock.

As it turns out, the boy's name is Ethan and the man was known as Mr. Jenkins. State Patrol Officers Winchester and Winchester are on the case and come to question him about it. He claims he heard a weird noise, a monster he says. Ethan's mother has him tell them what he was watching - Godzilla vs. Mothra. The original, as Dean approves of. Whatever it was, it took Mr. Jenkins away. . .and left on the sound of a whining growl in its wake.

At the bar, in plain sight of a bunch of other people, Sam and Dean openly talk about their work. While Dean thinks it might just be a regular kidnapping, but Sam points out that the spot was marked by John in his journal as a potential hunting ground for a Phantom Attacker - with several kidnappings having happened over the last few years. They decide to check it out just to cover their bases. Dean heads off to take a leak before they leave, and Sam goes out to the parking lot.

There is a noise. . .and the music cue tells us it's a tense moment. . .and Sam gets a cat jump scare! However, it's implied that something under the car is watching him. When Dean gets out, Sam is nowhere to be found.

. . .seriously, Supernatural. You're trying to sell me on the thought that 6'4" Jared Padalecki was taken down offscreen? C'mon.

Especially when we find out the actual villains of the episode, which I already ruined in the opening.

Dean, naturally, panics until he finds a security camera hanging over the parking lot. Dean goes to. . .the local cops. Officer Kathleen Hudak is skeptical of his story, and makes a comment about Dean being dead in St. Louis and having been wanted for murder when she does the background check. However, she finds nothing about Sam. She has Dean fill out a missing persons report while he attempts to let her let him come with her to check out the cameras.

Sam, meanwhile, wakes up in a cage. There's a man alive in the cage next to him, but he isn't doing well.

"Uh, he's. . .6'4". . .his presence causes flooding by fangirls. . ."

Afterwards, Hudak has gotten the video camera footage and she and Dean pick out a mini-camper leaving the scene, with potentially stolen plates. A car drives by, making a whining growl that gets Dean's attention.

After some talking, we find out that the man with Sam is Mr. Jenkins, and he's finding the rescue to be piss poor. Sam asks him what it was that took him, and they enter for the reveal: regular human beings, much to Sam's shock.

Dean and Hudak go searching the area between two of the cameras - it being established that the truck did not pass the second one - and Hudak reveals she's been running a check on the badge that Dean showed her and it turns out it came up as stolen from the actual Officer Washington. He makes an impassioned speech speaking to his history with Sam, literally pulling him from the fire when they were younger. . .and she's not having any of it.

She has to take him in. . .after they find Sam.

Back at the ranch, Sam is trying to make an escape attempt. He pulls down a pipe, and then there seems to be a short in the cage. . .Jenkins makes a move to escape, but Sam insists that it's a trap. Sam, as it turns out, is correct. The doors reseal the moment Jenkins gets out, and he "escapes". . .only to be hunted down in the woods by some rednecks in blackface, Sam hearing the screams as the man is stabbed to death.

Morning comes, and Dean and Hudak are getting a coffee. Dean asks why she's helping him, and Hudak gives some backstory about her brother having gone missing just like Sam has. She knows something is responsible, and she doesn't give up hope. They arrive at a turn off, Kathleen handcuffing Dean to the car to keep him from following her in. She leaves as Dean makes a reference to the pilot episode. Heading up the path, Kathleen does indeed find the truck next to a little house that would definitely be in the same neighborhood as that of the Sawyer family.

A young girl with gnarled hair answers the door when Kathleen arrives, and we can literally not only hear the banjos in the distance, but also the faint screams of Admiral Ackbar insisting that it is, in fact, a trap. Kathleen gets knocked out by a shovel from the Father of the family.

Meanwhile, Dean tries to grab the car antenna in order to escape. By the time two of the Rednecks come to get Kathleen's car, Dean has pulled a Houdini.

Kathleen wakes up in the other cage, talking to Sam and getting him up to speed. Dean has managed to get in to the place, and attempts to get Sam and Kathleen out. He takes the time to criticize Sam getting screwed over so easily (and again, offscreen).  We also get the reveal, when Kathleen asks about a black Mustang, that the Rednecks were responsible for what happened to her brother.

It's suddenly night - which makes me confused as to the pacing of this episode, though not nearly as bad as I was in Bugs - and Dean goes looking for a key in the basement, finding a Saw-esque dungeon of photographs and other memorabilia.

Dean gives the iconic line: "Demons I get, people are crazy."

He is correct.

Dean heads upstairs, and picks up a big stick to take down the Father. Rather than just get the key and leave, he gets sucked in by the little girl and gets captured. To give Dean credit, he does put up a good fight. . .for all of about ten seconds.

"You got a pretty mouth, boy!"

When he wakes up, he's tied to a chair. . .and basically insert the PG-13 version of the feast scene from Texas Chainsaw here. Dean, naturally, says they're sick to do this to people. They get ready to torture Dean with a white-hot poker, but the Father changes his mind. They're going to hunt tonight. . .and Dean has to choose between Sam and Kathleen as the target. He chooses Sam, thinking he'd have a better chance. . .and the Father tells one of his sons to go and kill both Sam and Kathleen without letting them out of their cages.

Sam, however, has a bit of the machinery from earlier and manages to get into a struggle with the son, knocking him out and taking his rifle. The Father and the other son go after him, finding that he's been knocked out and thrown into the cage and Sam and Kathleen have escaped. A bit of cat and mouse in the barn later and they rig things so that the son shoots the Father and Sam beats him into unconsciousness.

Kathleen holds the Father at gunpoint, insisting that Sam go on without her. Father rants and raves about how she hurt his family, she replies that he killed her brother. When she asks him why, he answers "Because it's fun" and laughs right until the bullet takes him out.

Afterwards, she tells Sam and Dean that she shot him while he was trying to escape. Kathleen tells the boys that the Feds and actual State Police will be on their way there, so they had best start walking. As they walk off, Dean warns Sam not to go missing again or he won't go looking for him. Sam scoffs at this.

Sam will be proven right in Season 2. We'll get there.

The Benders. . .exists? Despite having the one quotable line and the non-twist of it being regular people instead of something supernatural being the culprit, it's not a particularly memorable episode. It's not bad, sure. It's just. . .there. There's nothing about it that makes me want to come back to it or ever really think about it besides a few Dean lines.

"Ready to get out of this episode?"
"Hell, yeah."

It also doesn't contribute anything to the overall arc which, granted, not every episode has this Season. However, many of them have managed to do it in some way, even if it's a small scene or a line or something of the kind. By now, we know about Dean's determination to keep Sam safe. That's old ground. . .that is going to get progressively older as we go on, though at least it's (usually) tackled in less blunt force kind of ways than this. Or, at the very least, in ways that are far, far more entertaining to watch.

This episode just kind of exists in a void space. There's nothing bad to make it objectionable, and nothing good to really elevate it into something I feel like revisting all that often.

Next time, though, we'll be getting back on the myth arc train. It's time to go to Chicago where Sam and Dean will run into a few familiar faces, and fall under a Shadow.

See you then!

Supernatural belongs to the CW and Warner Brothers.

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