| Recap added by SFF
Eagle Harbor, Washington: nighttime
A man is walking down a towpath next to the waterfront. He seems nervous. Suddenly he hears someone say, ‘Hello Quentin’ behind him. He turns around and Benny is there. He is surprised to see Benny, who says he understands his confusion because Quentin held him down while Sorento sawed his head off! He wants Quentin to tell him where ‘He’ is and Quentin tells him he won’t tell him where the ‘Old Man’ is, but he’ll show him after he and his boys have cut Benny’s hands and feet off… and two vampires appear behind Benny. Quentin shows his vampire teeth to Benny, ready to attack but Benny cuts his head off and turns to face the other too…
Enid, Oregon: the same night
Dean and Sam enter a motel room. They are looking for Kevin who has led them on a false credit-card trail again. They argue about whose fault it was they fell for it and Sam brings up that Kevin is running from them because Dean tried to kill his mother when she was possessed by Crowley… Dean’s cell rings and he goes outside to answer it, ostensibly because he doesn’t have enough signal, but it’s Benny on the phone… Benny has killed all the vampires but he’s badly hurt and asks for Dean to help him. He says his legs aren’t working properly but he’ll manage to crawl to a fuel barge nearby to meet Dean…
Sam is angry when Dean tells him he has to leave. He reminds Dean that they are hunting Kevin: ‘We’re on the case, Dean. Remember? It’s the Winchester Holy Grail, shut the Gates of Hell forever case?’ Dean is unperturbed and tells Sam they have to find Kevin first… They are still arguing when they are outside and Dean is packing the car. He tells Sam he can stay in the motel room and research finding Kevin’s trail again while he deals with his own ‘personal crap’. Sam is still unhappy with this but Dean reminds him that he took a year off and he only wants a day…
While Dean is driving, he thinks back to a memory in Purgatory, where he is fighting monsters and Benny is his trusted partner – they are fighting back to back…
Sam is trying to find Kevin by searching on his credit card applications and activity online, but there’s a picture of Amelia there on the screen too – he’s also following her online through her credit card…
Sam hears a noise coming from a fan in the ceiling of the motel room and it takes him back to a memory from when he was staying in a motel after running over his dog last year… He goes into the motel office and speaks to the clerk, Everett: he’s friendly with him and asks how his Dad is – he is still poorly according to Everett and Sam sympathizes with him. He tells Everett he’s staying on for another week and when Everett says he thought Sam would have moved on by now he says he’s in between jobs and the dog has a follow-up appointment. The air-conditioning unit is making a similar noise to the fan in his room and he offers to fix it and Everett says if he does, he can have a job at the motel… Sam is back now, repairing the fan in the motel room now…
It’s now daylight and Dean is just arriving… He pulls up next to a station wagon and looks in the trunk. He finds a cooler full of plastic bags of blood and goes to find Benny… He walks down steps into the underground fuel storage area and finds Benny sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall. He’s covered in blood and looks bad. Dean opens the cooler to get some blood out for him…
Later, in what may be Quentin’s ‘office’, Benny seems fine. Dean is surprised how well he looks after being hurt so badly but Benny says some rest and ‘half a cooler of AB negative’ soon has a vampire on the mend. He thanks Dean, calling him ‘brother’ again and shakes his hand and Dean asks him what is going on. Benny won’t tell him at first but Dean insists and Benny says, ’You and that whole friend thing, Man’…
…This leads to Dean having a flashback to another time in Purgatory, when he and Benny were killing monsters again but this time Cas is there too. He kills a monster with his angel mojo and Benny says Cas has his strong points but he’s also a magnet... Dean says that before Cas was with them Benny was complaining it was his humanity that was drawing attention to them and Benny says, ‘Eh, that too.’ Benny and Cas don’t get on – they seem to bicker a lot. There is a very funny exchange after Cas muses on the fate of monsters killed in Purgatory:
Benny says, ‘And this is the crazy aunt I want to take on the road?’
‘I am not your aunt!’
Benny replies, ‘What, really?’
Cas says, ’I have no possible relationship to your sibling offspring,’ and so on… Dean is the unwilling arbiter of their childish disputes…
Cas does agree with Benny though that they shouldn’t take him with them as he is too dangerous, drawing monsters to them, and also they don’t even know if an angel can pass through the portal. Benny asks Dean to listen to Cas but Dean refuses to. He says they will get Cas through even if it kills them all…
Back in the present, Benny tells Dean that Quentin, the one he came for, was in the same nest as him and that he, Benny, is hunting the vampire who turned him, to kill ‘his maker’ before he kills him again…
The scene changes to Sam: it is night and he’s sitting outside the motel room, with his laptop. He sees someone collecting some ice from the ice machine, which triggers a flashback to last year… He’s working on fixing an ice machine and Everett asks him to fix a blocked sink in room 118. He’s doing that when the veterinarian (Amelia), walks in. She thinks he’s up to no good and starts throwing accusations at him but Sam explains what he’s doing… The scene changes to Sam coming back to the present…
… Back to Dean and Benny now: Dean finds a list of crossed-out names and dates and Benny explains that they are the names of boats. He says that his nest feed by attacking boats at sea – boarding them, burning them and burying (sinking) them – and the crossed-out ones have already been dealt with. He tells Dean they have a small fleet of pleasure craft and they’d target ‘fat, rich yachts’ going to far off ports. Dean says they are ‘vampire pirates’ – ‘vampirates’ – and Benny says he can’t believe no-one had ever thought of that before. Dean replies ‘… it’s like the third thing you say’ and Benny disagrees, which disconcerts Dean! (– this felt like a typical Dean / Sam moment!)
Dean asks Benny what ‘his maker’ would look for in a base if he is feeding here, which leads Dean to suggest an island, maybe? He finds a bill for Cable billed to Prentiss Island and shows Benny, who agrees it is a likely place for the nest. They head off in the Impala…
… Dean asks Benny why ‘his maker’ killed him because Benny had said he was his favorite. Benny explains that once you are turned you’re re-born into the vampire nest and your ‘maker’ means everything to you – you even start to think of him as God, and if he thinks it as well…Dean says he understands why that could be ‘a pickle’! Benny starts drinking blood and Dean asks him if he has to do that right now, so Benny apologizes, laughing, and stops. He says his ‘maker’ was a jealous god, keeping them all together but isolated from everything, always at sea. He says he always did what was best for the nest until he met someone, a beautiful Greek woman, Andrea Kormos, who was sailing to the Canary Islands. Instead of calling her boat in to the other vampires he joined her on her sloop and stayed with her. He tells Dean his life changed totally when he met her… They settled in Louisiana, but one night coming home, the Old Man was waiting for them with Quentin and Sorento, his oldest nest mates… Benny says he only realized that night what a crime the Old Man thought it was for him to leave the nest. They pinned him down and beheaded him, and the last thing he saw was the Old Man tearing Andrea’s throat out. Dean says he understands what ‘payback’ is all about… Benny says the docks are just up ahead…
The scene changes to Dean and Benny on a boat, approaching Prentiss Island. They land and walk up through woodland. Benny seems to be comparing this place to Purgatory because he says to Dean, ‘Remind you of anything?’ and Dean seems to think the same because he deletes the text he was about to send Sam about hunting vampires on Prentiss Island… Benny carries on, ‘It’s weird, being back…. The world, I mean?’ and Dean replies, ‘I suppose it is.’ Benny goes on to say he isn’t sure if this world is real, if he’s real, and Dean says, ‘Hey, listen to me. I’ve seen what happens down that rabbit-hole, okay? We’re real… Benny, this is real. It’s the only way to play this game, you get me?’ (Dean must be referring to Sam’s ‘Lucifer’ hallucinations when he thought he was still trapped in The Cage)
They see the house where the nest is: it’s large and imposing… They enter through a side door and go into the ground floor. Dean says they should move but Benny is distracted by the Old Man’s harpsichord… Dean calls him again and leaves the room but then Benny sees a photo of Andrea. He picks it up and is visibly upset, saying, ‘No… no, no’. He sees Dean has gone but he’s still holding the photo when she comes down the staircase… They greet each other but other vampires are there behind Andrea and one also creeps up behind Benny and knocks him out. Dean can hear the vampires hitting Benny from his position outside the room but he can’t help him at the moment – there are too many of them. He says, ‘Idiot!’ and looks grim…
The scene changes to Benny who’s handcuffed to a chair now. Andrea is there in front of him and Sorento is holding Benny’s knife in front of his throat. ‘He turned you,’ he says to Andrea and she nods… Meanwhile Dean is elsewhere in the house. Someone calls him – it is Sam – but he turns it off. He can hear a vampire somewhere ahead and ducks out of sight; the vampire appears but walks on.
Back now to Sam, who’s calling Dean again but it goes to voicemail. Sam is still looking at Amelia – at her driving license now – and he goes back to his meeting with her when he was fixing her sink… He tells her he’s helping out with maintenance at the motel while Everett’s Dad is sick. She doesn’t even know who Everett is. He asks her how long she’s been there and she says three months. He says a motel isn’t part of town and she hasn’t really moved in at all and she becomes angry when she finds herself explaining that she hasn’t found a place yet. Sam says he should leave and he goes…
Back to the present and there’s a funny exchange between Dean and Sam when Dean calls him back and asks him what he wants. Sam asks him why he’s whispering and Dean explains that he’s in the middle of clearing out a vamp’s nest. Sam is agitated and starts shouting that he shouldn’t go into a vampire nest on his own and Dean has to hold the phone to his chest to keep it quiet! He tells Sam he’s not alone, he has backup, someone who’s been tracking the nest. Sam asks if it’s Garth and Dean says no, it’s a friend whom Sam doesn’t know. Sam says he doesn’t have any friends; all his friends are dead and Dean whisper-shouts that’s not why he called, clutching the phone to his chest again!
… Andrea tells Sorento to tell the Old Man that Benny is alive again and he leaves. Benny’s surprised Sorento does what she says and she tells Benny that the Old Man trusts her judgment and she answers only to him. When Benny says sleeping with God must have its privileges she slaps him hard. She gets rid of the two other vampires by telling them to make sure the Old Man has everything he needs, and when they’re gone she starts kissing Benny and saying she’d heard he was back and she had to believe it, she had to hope… He asks her what happened and she told him the Old Man changed his mind – he turned her instead of bleeding her dry. Benny tells her he’s sorry, it’s all his fault that this happened but she tells him it isn’t, that she knew all about Benny and she chose him. He asks her why she stayed with the nest, with the Old Man and she explains in the same way that Benny did to Dean, that everything is reset after being turned and ‘life is blood’, and whoever gives you the blood… Benny understands… Andrea gives Benny a knife and says she can’t kill the Old Man but Benny came back from the grave and he’s proof that the Old Man isn’t God, that he’s frightened of Benny… Benny tells her that he’s come back to burn his operation down and to stop the killing and she says to do what he came here to do and they can be together. She moves away just before Sorento reappears. He says the Old Man wants to see him…
… Meanwhile, Sam is still arguing with Dean over him hunting, perhaps because he’s with this ‘friend’ and not with Sam… Dean tells him to shut up and that he’s texted Sam his location. He starts moving while Sam is still talking, but he isn’t listening to him anymore… A vampire walks up and finds Dean’s phone in a dish while Sam is still talking. As he picks it up, Dean beheads him, and his phone smashes on the floor. Dean is pulling the vampire away when another one appears…
Benny is escorted in to meet his ‘father’. He asks Benny how he got here and Benny says he found a way back. ‘From Hell?’ his ‘father’ asks, and Benny says from a place next door, and he’ll have to show it to his ‘father’. Benny asks him why he didn’t kill Andrea as she meant nothing to him and he said it was because she meant everything to Benny. He says he wanted someone to remember Benny by…
… Dean is just pulling the body of the second vampire around the corner when two other vampires run up. When they turn the corner he beheads them both, one head bouncing out from around the corner! He reappears and walks down the corridor into another Purgatory memory…
… This time Dean is asking Benny what he knows about the value of life as he’s a vampire. Benny points out that humans kill more humans than his kind do and Cas agrees with him. He tells Dean he knows he’s worried about what he, Benny, might do when he gets topside, that he might start eating ‘little piggies’ but he says that by the time he was ‘iced’ he was only drinking donated blood bought on the black market… He’d seen something in humanity and was only drinking blood, not people… Dean scoffs at this and Benny says he doesn’t care what Dean thinks because he’s got his head up his ass. He tells Dean they’ll never make it’ they’re all done for travelling with the angel who’s glowing like a beacon. Dean asks him if he needs to remind Benny of their deal, of what he committed to and Benny says Cas is going to get them all killed, but then Cas starts looking up and says they may get to test that theory. Dean asks if there are more monsters and Cas says leviathans. Dean tells Cas to blip out of here but Cas says he can’t, they are too close and he tells them to run…
… Back in the present Dean is still wandering through the house…
The scene switches to Sam who is just leaving the motel. He steals a car and drives off. As he drives he thinks back again to last year and Amelia, soon after their last meeting… Sam’s dog is off the lead and he runs into her motel room and sits down with her. Sam says, ‘Sorry’ and stands awkwardly in the doorway. She asks him how the dog is doing and Sam says much better and he takes that as his queue to come in. He compliments her on her stitching ans asks her why she thinks he’s creepy (she called him that earlier) and she said because he buys his clothes at Army Surplus, which is what White Supremacists and ‘drifting serial killers’ do, which Sam tries to deny; then she says he’s come from nowhere, he’s going nowhere and he knows a lot about stitches, which is all solid creepy. Sam sits down and looks at her and says, ‘You have no idea where you’re going either, do you?’ and she says, ‘No… not really.’ Sam replies, ‘And that’s because you have no-one… I mean at all, right?’ She tells him she used to have someone but that’s all over, it’s gone now and she says Sam knows what that’s like… Back to Sam in the car and he’s still trying to call Dean but it goes straight to voicemail again. He’s very worried and drives faster…
… The scene changes to Benny and the Old Man again. He’s still talking about Benny coming back from the dead and Benny says he should have let him go but he says he never lets anything go and Benny asks why, as he’s lived so long that he has so little – just an old harpsichord and a nest of hyenas? His ‘father’ says he has the sea and Andrea but Benny says he doesn’t have her and shows the handcuffs he’s removed with the key she gave him. Sorento attacks him with a machete but Benny easily avoids him and puts the handcuffs on him, dragging him around and forcing him to his knees; then he beheads him. The old man doesn’t seem to want to fight Benny, just play mind games with him. He says to Benny, ‘this universe is a pyramid of despair, nothing else’ and that Benny still doesn’t understand that what they have isn’t life… Maybe he wants to die now but Benny has heard enough. He says he can finally show him something new, a whole new world, and he shows his ‘father’ the knife Andrea gave him…
Ben leaves the room and comes back into the main room where he was captured. Andrea is there but he walks past her and leaves the bloodied knife on the harpsichord. He says to her, ‘the Old Man is dead’ and taking her hand to leave, he says ‘let’s go’, but she stops and says, ‘where, Benny?’ He replies, ‘what are you talkin’ about? – Anywhere’, but she still won’t move and he realizes she never intended to leave with him. She wants to carry on as before but this time with Benny beside her, plundering ships. She tells him they can have the life they always wanted but Benny says he wanted to leave a burning crater behind, to put her memory to rest. She says she’s not a memory, she’s right here but Benny says what he loved isn’t here anymore, it was snuffed out a long time ago by monsters like him and what she has become. She realizes it’s over and shows her vampire teeth, ready to attack Benny, but Dean comes up behind her, stabs her in the middle with his Purgatory knife, withdraws it and then beheads her… Benny looks sad, but resigned to her fate? He doesn’t seem to blame Dean for killing her, realizing it had to be done…
… Dean and Benny are getting ready to launch their boat to sail back to the mainland. Benny asks Dean why he resurrected him. He says Dean could have drained his soul into any culvert and no-one would have been any the wiser… Dean asks him what the Hell he is talking about. He is concerned about Benny and says, ‘are you good?’ and he replies, ‘Man, I don’t know what I am.’ Benny looks at Dean, then away, and jumps into the boat. Dean is worried. He has another flashback to when the three of them were running away from the leviathans…
… Dean, Benny and Cas are running through the woods and the leviathans start crashing to Earth like meteorites of black ‘goo’, which quickly turn into human clones. One of them attacks Dean and then another one lands near Cas. Benny is in the middle. Dean beheads his leviathan but Cas is brought down by his one, which is just about to eat him when Benny beheads it. He pulls Cas up. Cas looks surprised that Benny saved him, as does Dean…
Back on the boat, they are nearing land and Sam is waiting for them on the jetty. Dean throws the mooring rope to Sam, who takes it then carefully looks Benny over. Benny introduces himself to Sam and offers him his hand. They shake and Benny says, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Sam.’ Sam must realize from Benny’s cold hand that he’s a vampire because his face changes and Dean realizes that the handshake has given the game away too. Sam looks over at Dean and his hand reaches for a weapon while he’s still shaking Benny’s hand… Benny sees this and Dean shakes his head slightly at Sam to say not to do anything… Benny drops his hand and says, ‘I can see you two have a lot to talk about’ and Dean nods in agreement. He pats Dean’s arm and leaves. Dean looks straight at Sam and Sam looks angrily back at Dean…
Editor’s note:
I think this is a great episode, the best so far this season. It shows lots of backstory, particularly important backstory for Dean, revealing a lot about Benny’s character and starting to show why Dean thinks of Benny as a brother. I liked the moments where Benny shows feelings similar to Sam and Dean takes care of him, and they interact like brothers… |
