| “Of Grave Importance” The episode begins with Dean stress-eating on the hood of their latest Metallicar wanna-be. Annie an old friend and hunter calls Dean’s cell, and is willing to meet the brothers to hand over some books of Bobby’s. She is staying at the Crow’s Nest Inn in Bodega Bay not far from where Sam and Dean are. Sam divulges that Bobby and Annie had a “very Hemingway” kind of relationship. Of course Dean being Dean confesses: “She and I kind of went Hemingway this one time too.” Only the Winchesters could dirty up great literature. “That happens,” Sam says, and then admits “She was stressed, and I didn’t have a soul!” (On a personal note: I get very confused when new characters are being introduced as old, since I have seen EVRY episode and do not recall Annie at all. Please correct me if I am wrong). The scene cuts to two of hormonally-crazed teenagers, who have snuck into a haunted house. The poor doomed kids see the headlights of Annie’s car, fear it’s cops and bolt. They get spooked by a hulky looking man screaming at them “You should not be Here”. By the time an unarmed Annie ventures inside the house, she stumbles upon the bloody bodies of the poor kids, as the door slams shut behind her and she is trapped. Sam and Dean waiting at a restaurant for Annie and sipping coffee get worried and Dean knowing of Annie’s punctuality asks: “Are we being stood up?” Sam and Dean are worried about Annie, so they break into her motel room looking into her files, however, the focus of the scene shifts to an unseen Bobby. He is exhausting himself by making the curtains shimmy and wiggling his flask, desperately trying to get the boys attention. Sam and Dean figure out that Annie was investigating missing persons last seen at the Van Ness House. About a dozens of murders happened there in the past few centuries. Leaving to investigate poor Bobby is almost left behind, thankfully, Dean comes back into the room to grab his jacket holding Bobby’s flask. (This of course confirming what Fans had long suspected, Bobby's ghost is attached to his flask). From Sam and Dean’s perspective, the Van Ness manor isn’t all scary. It is eerie, dusty and shadowy, but they can’t see the dozens of ghosts that are everywhere. Bobby can and even he’s freaked out. All of the ghosts stand in a paranormal trance, except two: the gigantic man and a handsome man who’s scolding him. “I know what you did last night, and you know it was forbidden. Don’t do it again, Dexter, or you know there will be consequences.” The EMF meter whirring red from all of the paranormal activity give the boys the understanding that there is in fact something going on. Dean calls Annie’s cell, and finds her phone lying on the floor. Bobby is able to see Annie and realizes she is dead. While Annie never saw her reaper, she is upset with Bobby for ducking his. He explains to her that he has unfinished business in helping the boys defeat Dick Roman. Bobby confesses that existing on a different plane tiring. When he knocked the address book off a table in “The Born-Again Identity” he “blacked out for two weeks.” Sam is stumped as to why a house that had been the scene of so many murders boasts no evidence of any foul play. Dean discovered a eerie clue in Annie’s voicemail: a message where a woman brokenly chants “Free me.” Back in the parlor, Annie and Bobby encounter a ghost named Niles Crane who pulls out a chair and sits at the bar to read his book. He is snobbish and short, but Annie charms him to have him give the two of them lessons on how to move objects. There are two ways for ghosts to move items: “Calmly tell the thing what you want it to do” or by the way of vengeful spirits with “explosive anger and red-hot rage.” “We should move crap for the power of Zen?” Bobby grouses. The other lesson he offers comes after shrieking ghost darts around the room like a firecracker. It is what happens to all ghosts eventually, in which a whole spirit becomes a shell. Finally, Annie comes in contact with the fancy lady herself, Victoria, the woman who left the message on Annie's phone. Ghosts can use Spectral Voice Transference to make phone calls and communicate with the living. It’s also a testament to Victoria’s power as a spirit. Just as she’s about the tell Annie why, Bobby is jerked back into the car, because the boys left to do more research. The boys end up at the historical society where they learn more of Whitman Van Ness, and the Van Ness Mansion. Whitman lost the family fortune, and then his house was turned into a brothel. He isolated himself there until he died at 40. His fiancée was also murdered the night before their wedding by the violent criminal, a hulk of a man named Dexter, who Van Ness kindly took on as a groundskeeper. Back at the Motel, Dean takes a shower. (OK I can’t help myself…..who else would like to be a fly on the wall in that bathroom? And I was just slightly mad when Dean manages to pull a towel inside the curtain and shucking on a t-shirt before the camera ever catches an inch of exposed skin) The steam fogs up the mirror. Bobby remembering what he learned: “I can kill werewolves, fix a pinto and bake cornbread. I will be damned if I can’t get Zen.” Dean looking at the mirror and seeing “Annie trapped in house” in the steam, he calls Sam into the bathroom and points, “Tell me you wrote that.” Watching the faucet turn on the hot water and slowly seeking a name appear “Bobby”, the boys burst with confusion and joy, glancing crazily around the bathroom. “Get your asses back to that house!” Bobby hollers even though he cannot be heard. At Van Ness manor, two teenagers film themselves entering the house, trying to find their buddies, the teenaged lovers. Instead Dexter charges and the kids and run. Whitman Van Ness, intercedes, seemingly protecting the kids and screaming at Dexter. “I expressly forbid you.” “Thank you,” the one of them whimpers. But Whitman yanks out their hearts, he turns to Dexter the ghost, killing him by absorbing his energy and power. Annie gets Victoria to grab the teenagers video camera because she can try to use Spectral Image Transference to warn Sam and Dean. Victoria is too scared of Whitman to interfere. She explains that he purposely traps souls there “for this food and perverse entertainment.” Annieconfinces Victoria’s and she grabs the camera and hides with Annie just as Whitman arrives to drag the bodies away. The boys find the camera and on it an image of Annie. Bobby sneaks his flask out of Dean’s pocket and hides it in a drawer. He knows he has to remain in the mansion to help Annie. Victoria appears to warn them about Whitman, and how he killed Annie. Sam and Dean knowing who’s bones to burn, head to Van Ness mausoleum. Whitman tucks a key into Sam’s pocket so that he could leave the house and dispatch the boys. Bobby watches from the window as Van Ness disappears with the boys. By now we figured out that Whitman murdered all of the fancy ladies, and Dexter, who escaped prison only to be shot to death at the Van Ness house and to be framed for the murders. With Whitman out of the house, Annie and Bobby can search it, locating the trap door to Whitman’s Cave of Corpses. Annie stares at her bloody corpse propped against the wall. She asks Bobby, who’s gaining more ghost-strength by the minute, to burn her bones so she can attain the peace in death she hadn’t in life. As expected, Whitman has foul play in mind, he pushes the accelerator and tries to steer the car into doom. Sam and Dean work together to overpower Whitman’s ghost and regain control of the car. The car, and Sam and Dean both pat themselves down to search for anything they might have picked up from the house. Just as Sam finds the key, Whitman plunges his hand into Sammy’s back. Dean shoots the key with his gun, which saves Sammy’s and careens Whitman back to his house. Whitman back at the house confronts Annie and Bobby. Sam and Dean finish what they started out with and burn Whitman’s bones as he’s in the midst of draining. When the boys head back into the house, they both see Bobby greet them, and they are overwhelmed because they can see him too. After all the bodies have been burned and Annie receiving her Hunter funeral, Sam figures out that Bobby never made contact with him because he’d always tried to reach him when Dean was gone. The boys are wondering how Bobby could come back after his own Hunters funeral. “You could be in Heaven right now.” Dean seethed. “We still have work to do. I guess I thought that was kind of important, Dean.” Bobby vanishes. Dean is still trying to digest that Bobby has once again screwed with the natural order of life. He is too upset to realize that by doing so, Bobby has saved their lives as least three times, and found Castiel, who helped regained Sam's sanity Sam, ever the hopeful little brother, wonders if maybe they could hunt with Bobby’s help going forward. Bobby’s invisible in the back seat, listening as Dean predicts, “What are the odds that this ends well?” |
|
