From MadCap's Couch - Supernatural: "It's The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester"

"Dean, I just don't see Halloween-themed Junior Mints catching on."

See? I told you we'd be getting back to it...

When we last left the Impala, Sam and Dean had just dealt with some Yellow Fever. This time, we get a pre-credits sequence with more or less a montage of a whole gaggle of things the boys have fought and a recap of the Season Arc - Lilith starting an apocalypse, Sam using his psychic abilities to exercise demons, etc. - before we show up in small town America "two days before Halloween".

A husband, wife, and infant child - the Wallaces - are living the suburban life, the wife having brought back some candy for the big day and denying her husband some. He snatches some anyway once her back is turned... and then coughs up a pair of razor blades after a frankly unnerving scene of him pulling a razor blade out of his mouth. Wife finds him on the blood-spattered floor soon after, dead as a door nail.

Sam and Dean arrive as duly appointed Federal Agents the next day, learning that there were four more razor blades in Mr. Wallace's stomach and one in his throat. In searching around while Sam interrogates, Dean finds a hex bag - witches are afoot! Mrs. Wallace denies anyone would want to kill off her husband.

Back at the motel, Sam has been doing some research. The hex bag is a heavy duty thing. Its contents include an actual Celtic coin, an herb that's been extinct for at least two centuries, and a boiled bone from an infant... that's at least a hundred years old. Dean has done some poking around, but can find no reason why someone would want Mr. Wallace dead.

At a frat house Halloween party, bobbing for apples goes horribly wrong for a girl in a slutty nurse outfit who dunks her head until the water... and then drowns when she can't pull back up out of the water. Oh, and her face gets flash-fried, but that's basically just overkill by that point.

Sam and Dean investigate, speaking to the Ashley Benson-shaped cheerleader who witnessed it. Dean investigates, learning that the cheerleader has no idea who Luke Wallace was. Sam finds another hex bag.

Dean's been looking for a limited edition for years!

Back at the motel, Sam comes up with a theory - the killings aren't for revenge, they're for a spell. Specifically, a ritual to summon a demon called... Samhain. Here we have the Halloween II problem again with pronunciation, since the holiday is pronounced saa-wn, not Samhain, but nevermind. It's the name of a character rather than the holiday, so I'm willing to let it slide. The lore Supernatural gives is that Samhain is the reason that Halloween exists and, while he was exorcised centuries back, bringing him back would bring... basically everything that Sam and Dean would fight that lives in the shadows, all at the beck and call of the demon. As Dean puts it, a slaughterhouse.

In the next scene, Dean is staking out the Wallace's and finding nothing. They find a connection, however, as the cheerleader from earlier comes over to the Wallace's - Tracy is the babysitter! Tracy apparently got into an altercation with a teacher and was suspended, the boys going to investigate.

In the art room, some of the masks trigger some of Dean's flashbacks to Hell that he pushes off. The teacher - Don Harding - apparently holds no ill will against Tracy, but says her artwork was getting disturbingly inappropriate. Page after page after page of symbols and drawings of ritual killings that she depicted herself in the middle of. They show him the coin they found from the hex bag, and he confirms that he thinks they're one of the symbols. They also learn that Tracy has no parents she's living with, she's an emancipated teen. Getting back to the motel, they apparently went and found no sign of her. It's like she's dropped off the face of the earth.

After an altercation with a boy in a spaceman outfit, the boys enter the motel... and find Castiel and who we will later learn is Uriel. Sam is star-struck and tries to shake Castiel's hand... and finds the angels are all business. The angels inquire if the boys have found the witch, having discovered a hex bag hidden in the wall of their motel room. Apparently, adding onto the stakes, the rising of Samhain is one of the sixty-six seals. The angels are unable to find the witch due to the magics the witch is using, and Castiel introduces Uriel - a "specialist" angel that is going to destroy the town.

Dean and Sam try to argue for the people in this town, insisting that they'll stop the witch before the Seal can be broken. When it seems they can't convince them, Dean puts his foot down - they aren't leaving. Castiel relents despite Uriel's reservations on the subject and gives Sam and Dean the time they need.

"Hello, one of us is definitely not the villain!"

In the egged Impala, Dean consoles a Sam who has had his illusions shattered a bit by meeting the actual angels. Despite not believing in it himself, Dean encourages Sam to not give up in it just because the angels they've met are dicks. One of my favorite quotes of his comes from this episode: "Babe Ruth was a dick, but baseball's still a beautiful game". Going through the hex bag contents again, Sam comes up with an idea - the baby bone that was boiled would need some extreme heat. The boys return to the art room at the school and find baby bones in the teacher's desk. Harding is the witch!

Elsewhere, as children head out for Halloween trick or treating, Castiel and Uriel talk on a park bench. Uriel makes his disdain for humans clear as well as his desire to drag Dean out of here and blow this place to kingdom come and Castiel makes it clear that they have their orders... their true orders... and pointedly asks Uriel if he's prepared to disobey.

The boys break into Harding's basement and shoot him down just before he can ritually sacrifice Tracy... who is also a witch as they find out once they release her. Knocking them down, Tracy completes the ritual to summon Samhain. While she does so, Sam takes some of the blood from Harding's body and smears it all over his and Dean's faces, much to Dean's confusion.

Samhain is freed and enters Harding's body, having a tender reunion with Tracy... just before he snaps her neck and calls her a whore. As you do. Interesting to note, however, Samhain walks past both Sam and Dean without bothering with either of them... Sam had a hunch masking them, as per the lore, would hide them from the demon.

Also of note - Samhain does not have black or red eyes, but instead has a pale green with visible irises for his demonic visage. Just an interesting little note.

On the way to the cemetery, reasoning that Samhain will go there to raise the armies of the night, the boys debate the use of Sam's powers to take him down - Sam arguing for it and Dean being adamantly against it.

The teenagers from earlier get locked into their mausoleum rave by Samhain as the dead begin to rise. The boys come in to let them all out just before the dead begin to rise, Dean getting to deal with some nice, wholesome therapy in the form of rekilling some zombies. Going deeper in, Sam finds Samhain and gets to work.  Samhain uses the demon white light on him to no effect as Lilith had before and the two get into a proper tussle. Sam attempts to use the knife, which Samhain holds some resistance to and eventually disarms Sam of. As a last, desperate act, Sam uses his mind once more.

"Use the Force, Sam! Let go, Sam!"

It seems more difficult, Samhain resisting powerfully and Sam's nose beginning to bleed, but soon enough, Sam exorcises him... just in time for Dean to come up and witness it happening.

Later, Uriel chastises Sam for using his powers despite Sam having been stuck having no real choice in that particular situation. Uriel threatens to turn Sam to dust as soon as he stops being useful and tells him to ask Dean what he remembers of his time in Hell.

Elsewhere, Dean meets with Castiel. He reveals the truth to Dean - the angels' orders were to follow Dean's orders, not to stop the summoning of Samhain. A test of Dean's ability in "battlefield conditions". Despite thinking he failed, Dean says he'd do the same thing again if he had the chance to do it again, because this town is still here because of himself and his brother.

Castiel tells Dean that he's misjudged him, explaining that he wanted Dean to choose to save the town. He reveals a secret to Dean: he does have doubts about his orders, about what's right and what's wrong. Cas knows that Dean is going to have to make some hard choices in the months to come, and he doesn't envy him that burden that he carries. Dean looks away thoughtfully and, when he looks back, Castiel has disappeared...

And that was It's The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester. Supernatural is a show that digs into the lore quite a bit and their Halloween episode definitely isn't a bad one by any means. The mispronounciation of Samhain aside, they don't necessarily do much with it, but you get your standard Halloween pack of ghosts and goblins along with a tie-in to the myth arc. We meet our third second angel in the series so far in the form of Uriel and we learn that Castiel is a bit more complex than we may have at first been led to believe.

Samhain gives a unique look for demons that we sadly don't ever really see again on the show - most demons defaulting to either black or red eyes for most of the rest of the series. The twist in the story that two witches were needed for the ritual rather than one was set up well, although Sam and Dean likely should have been a bit more suspicious of Tracy even after saving her if I'm being entirely honest.

Anyway, the apocalypse looms ever onward on the horizon. Will Sam and Dean be able to circumvent it? When we return to the adventures of Sam and Dean in the Impala, it'll be time for some Wishful Thinking. Next time, however, we're going to be heading into the multiverse to pick up with some old friends we haven't seen in quite some time here on the blog.

Be there!