From MadCap's Couch - Supernatural: "Time Is on My Side"

Look what I've become
The nightmare that she should fear
Is the father you left alone

Here we are, the penultimate episode of Season 3.

Recap time!

...Dean's got a demon deal. Lilith wants to kill Sam. Sam killed the Crossroads Demon. Bela stole the Colt. Sam and Dean are trying to get Dean out of the his deal.

There. That's it.

So, after that, we start out in Erie, Pennsylvania. Two plastic surgeons chat while leaving the office. One gets away scott free while the other gets jumped by an unseen force. After some time in a wooden box, he shows up at the ER... with his intestines flopping out of his body.

Yep! It's an organ removal story!

Yaaaaay!

Sam and Dean were not impressed by the demon's gargling skills.

Elsewhere, Sam and Dean are interrogating a demon for the name of the one who holds Dean's contract. Needless to say, the demon is unhelpful and gets a bunch of holy water for his trouble. Of course, before that, the demon taunts Dean about his fate and that he'll be waiting for him down there... Sam completing the exorcism not long after, though Dean is very clearly shaken.

Sam and Dean heard about the man in the cold open, learning that the man was covered in bloody fingerprints that weren't his own... and match a man who died in the 1980s. Thinking zombies, the boys head out and talk to the coroner, learning that the liver wasn't ripped out of the man, but had been surgically removed by someone who knew what they were doing. They begin to look into any survivors of such attacks, talking to a man who had his kidney stolen but he isn't particularly helpful for understandable reasons.

Back at the motel, Sam has a theory being that the wounds were sewn up with silk. This would cause infections, so maggots were used - maggots eating bad tissue rather than good tissue and Doctor Liver's stomach was stuffed with them. Dean, about to gag, realizes that he's heard about this before. Sam pulls out John's journal, reintroducing Dean to a Doc Benton, a New Hampshire doctor who had been obsessed with alchemy. He abandoned his practice in 1816, disappeared for twenty years, and was changing out organs until John hunted him down and took his heart out... or so it was believed. They begin looking for locations near a steam or other running water source where the Doc might be hiding out, using the water to get rid of the evidence.

Being someone who has a heart condition, we have a frankly terrifying scene where a jogger with a heart rate monitor watch is kidnapped, strapped to a table, and said watch beeps faster and faster and faster as his heart is carved out by none other that horror legend Billy Drago, who is playing Doc Benton.

Back at the motel, Sam has narrowed down the spots where Doc might be when Dean's phone rings. Bobby has gotten a beat on Bela, a hunter named Rufus Turner who she was trying to buy some things from. Dean thanks him, and Bobby advises him to take a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue with him. Dean is ready to cowboy up and go get Bela and/or the Colt, but Sam puts his foot down: they can learn Benton's secrets of immortality so that Dean won't have to die and go to Hell. Sam will even do whatever is needed so that Dean technically won't be welching on the deal.

Steven Williams is an actor that should be used as early and as often as possible.

Dean really doesn't like this at all, arguing that killing the demon that holds his contract is the best method and chasing immortality is a bad idea. Despite Dean's insistence, Sam puts his foot down and sticks with the hunt. Thus, the boys go their separate ways on this one.

Dean heads over to Rufus' place, finding a fully locked down place with security cameras galore. Rufus stone walls Dean... until he brings out the bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, which immediately changes Rufus' tune. Rufus, over the scotch, reveals he knows about Dean's demon deal and that the Colt isn't going to save him... and Rufus shares in Dean's philosophy of hunting ending bloody and sad. And, he promises Dean, that he is what Dean has to look forward to if he survives. More on that... later.

As Sam begins to hunt down Doc Benton, Rufus tells Dean all about Bela. He knows things about Bela that Dean doesn't, thanks to using a forensic technique that identifies people by the ear rather than the fingerprints (which Bela has burned off).  He even gives Dean a folder with the information. "Bela Talbot" is not Bela Talbot at all, that is yet another alias of hers. Whatever is in the file, though, throws Dean for a loop.

Sam, meanwhile, breaks into one of the cabins and finds some information - stealing a journal with some alchemy symbols on it - soon finding a woman who has had flesh taken off of her arm, an arm that is covered in maggots. Sam attempts to help her, fleeing with her as Doc Benton returns. Getting her into his rental van, Sam is attacked by the Doc, but manages to pull free and then run the man over before escaping into the night... Benton resetting his head with a sickening crack and revealing in a close up that one of his eyes has begun to bleed.

"Oh, shit! My contact fell out!"

At the hotel Rufus gave him the address of, Dean confronts Bela. Bela doesn't have the Colt anymore, it's long gone. He keeps her at gunpoint while he checks the room, possibly the maddest we have ever seen him in the series outside of when Sam died. Frustrated and enraged, Dean puts Bela at gunpoint and reveals he knows about what happened to her parents... or rather, Abby's parents... namely they were killed in a horrific accident. While Dean says it doesn't matter, we get a flashback to a younger Bela, with an implication that she was either physically or sexually abused or both by her father...

When Dean pushes her against the door, both he and the audience take note of a bit of devil's shoestring over the door - something Dean has seen before - and ultimately declares that she isn't worth it, leaving. Bela managed to steal a receipt from Dean's pocket and knows the motel. She calls up someone, telling them that "it worked" and that she knows where the boys are.

Meanwhile, Dean calls Sam to tell him what's going on. Dean's on an event horizon of despair, but Sam potentially has the solution. Benton's work isn't magic, but science. Dean seems eager to do it now... but Benton intervenes and kidnaps Sam. He's brought him to the cabin again, having taped Sam's eyelids open and he explains that his immortality comes at a price - parts have to be replaced regularly. Benton gets his evil villain monologue and prepares to take an ice cream scooper to Sam's eyeball before Dean arrives... and Benton no-sells his gunshots. As Dean's surprise attack seems to not work, he stabs Benton in the chest... with a knife covered in chloroform right to the heart. Benton goes down and Dean frees Sam.

Soon enough, the two have Benton strapped to the table. He tries to appeal to the brothers with his promise of immortality, saying that he can read the formulas for them. While Sam seems keen to do it to save Dean, Dean ultimately refuses to become like Benton - what the Doc is isn't living. They put the Doc under once more, leaving him buried in a steel fridge wrapped in chains underground along with the man's diary. As Benton screams in protest, the two bury the man in his eternal grave...

For once, the fangirls were not saying "Now kiss!".

Finally, we return to the motel Sam and Dean were staying at. Bela breaks into their room and shoots what she believes to be a sleeping Sam and Dean... only to find a pair of real dolls have been left behind. Like she tricked them previously, they have returned the favor. Like when she tricked them, the phone rings. Picking it up, Dean tells her that he knew she swiped the receipt and that he noticed the devil's shoestring. Bela's parents had died ten years ago that day, and at the hands of a demon. Bela admits that she stole the Colt to get out of her deal, but the demons demanded more - namely the death of Sam.

With the clock turning over toward midnight, Bela begs for help... and Dean tells her the irony that they would have helped her had she just come to him. Bela, at the last moment, tells Dean that the demon that holds her contract is the one that holds Dean's. It's said she holds every deal: her name is Lilith. Dean asks her why she's telling him this now, Bela saying that she hopes that he can kill her.

Dean tells her that he'll see her in Hell and the phone line goes dead. Bela watches the clock turn over to midnight and hears a howling... and we hear an all too familiar growl just as the camera cuts to black.

And that's Time Is on My Side. First things first... Bela. I promised back in Bad Day at Black Rock that I'd talk a bit more about her and discuss my feelings about her character. She's not a well-received or indeed very beloved character within the fandom but, as I said in that review, I really don't think she's worth all the hate. Had we gotten a full 22 episodes for this season, perhaps we would have seen more development for her. As it stands, she was given enough to make her a good recurring antagonist for the boys. A sometimes ally, sometimes enemy, but definitely always a chaotic force that could challenge the boys on their level.

Gee, I hope the show doesn't put a character in that role that really doesn't fit it and whose continued existence serves to make Sam and Dean look like a pair of incompetent morons!

...stop laughing!

I will say that I fear that Bela's backstory comes too little too late for the character to be in any way redeemed. While she does give the name of Lilith at the last second, it's under duress and knowing that there's no way out. So not so much a redemption as... exposition. Also, despite Dean's promise, we never see or really even hear about Bela all that much ever again other than a mention in Season 5. Perhaps they could have brought her back as a spirit or even a demon trying to earn her redemption by helping the boys.

Gee, I hope they don't bring back some other character to do that and make her absolutely awful while ignoring so many terrible things that she did and trying to play her largely for comedic value.

...stop laughing!

We also get the introduction of Rufus "Creighton Duke" Turner here. He's pretty awesome, and he serves as another facet of hunting philosophy that we've been touching upon since Bloodlust opened the door on that conversation. Rufus point blank tells Dean that his life, living as an antisocial shut in with a high level security net and plenty of guns, is what Dean has to look forward to if he lives on beyond the current issues with his deal. From a non-deal standpoint, this seems to be the fate of most former hunters. Ellen technically wasn't a hunter, but ran the Roadhouse as a network for them, and she's probably the best example of life after hunting being... tolerable. Bobby is another example. While less coarse than Rufus, he's still essentially a shut-in with all his books and doing networking for hunters, in particular the boys.

Is that the fate that awaits Sam and Dean in the end? Obviously not given what we know about the series going forward, but it's a hard truth about hunters in general... there is no such thing as a happy ending, just a slightly less bad one.

Doc Benton wanted to live forever, and the Winchesters made sure that he did...

With the end of this episode, however, the pieces are moving into their final places for the finale. Next time, Dean will be glimpsing the B-Side, we'll meet the creepiest child actor in the show's history, some last minute revelations will come to light, and the boys will fight against time to put Lilith's head on a plate in order to get Dean out of his demon deal.

Next time, there is... No Rest for the Wicked.

Be there!