Supernatural: Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

After five weeks of hellatus, Supernatural goes thriller in this week's episode.

This week begins with a zombie emerging from his grave in the stormy night while a biker is nearby in his trailer watching, what else but an animal documentary on tv, of course. The biker hears a sound coming from outside and opens the door to check but sees nothing. After a few moments, the door wildly swings open but there is still nothing there. Suddenly, the zombie is standing right behind him when he turns around and he is horribly killed.

Sam and Dean arrive in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where they enter a local diner (disguised as FBI agents) to question "Digger" who has apparently witnessed the murder. Digger insists the biker killed the zombie when in his pre-zombie days and had it coming. Soon after, Sheriff Jody Mills walks in and asks what two federal agents are doing in her town and tells them she wants speak to their supervisor. Sam responds by giving her his card which she calls, on the other end is Bobby who answers with the name "Tom Willis". Surprisingly, Sheriff Mills recognizes Bobby, the local town drunk as she dubs him, and the FBI game is over for the brothers.

Now that the jig is up, the boys head over to Bobby's place to discuss the case; apparently he already looked into the entire thing and came up with nothing. On their way out of town, Dean convinces Sam they need to look at the graveyard just to be sure there isn't anything wrong. When they dig up Clay Thompson's (the zombie) grave, they find nothing in the casket and head straight for his home. Clay catches them sneaking around and attacks Dean who drops him in one shot! Clay knows he is dead and even agrees to go with Sam and Dean if they don't wake his kids but after the boys haul him out, Sheriff Mills confronts them and doesn't even care he's a zombie but more how Dean was going to shoot him in the street.

Bobby bails Sam and Dean out of jail, who tells them the dead started rising all over town five days ago – a fact he had known the whole time. But what is the reason for Bobby's sneakiness? One of the fifteen people who rose from the dead happens to be Bobby's dead wife, Karen. All this is the work of the horseman, Death making his grand entrance. Dean tells Bobby that he has to kill his wife but Bobby can't and begs the two to leave her alone so the boys decide to do some investigating which is code for "One of us will be caught right away." Karen catches Dean watching their house and the two chat about her being dead. Karen catches Dean watching their house and the two reminisce about her untimely death; how a demon took over her body and how, in a cruel twist of faith, Bobby had no choice but to kill her.

Sam arrives at Mrs. Jones's house who is actually a zombie and looks pretty gross. She gets Sam to come close enough to attack him and drool on him but I hope for Jared Padalecki's sake it was prop drool because that stuff was sick! So I guess the zombies have expiration dates on them before they go all Dawn of the Dead. Needless to say, Karen's odds of survival are quickly dropping and even though Sam and Dean tell Bobby what happened, he kicks the boys out of his house after pulling out a gun.

Dean chooses to stick around and watch Bobby while Sam draws the short end and has to track down the other zombies who are turning fast. Bobby speaks with Karen one last time before she turns but is left with no time to grieve as all of the zombies come for him and Dean – so I guess Dean got the short end really. Right before it seems like Dean and Bobby will become zombie spam, Sam and the Sheriff show up to kill the rest of the zombies. As it turns out, Karen had a message for Bobby from Death: all the demons were actually sent after him. Why? In his words, "because I've been helping you, you sons of b****es".

Overall, the episode was boring. There were only a few clever lines of dialogue but zombie-like creatures have been done before in Supernatural in the episode, Croatoan and it was much better. There is never a moment in the show where I felt anyone was in any real danger whatsoever since at this point in the series, zombies are the least of their worries.

Adding some background to the character Bobby was interesting but there were too many distractions throughout the episode which marred its focus. It could have been an exciting story without zombies if it had focused on Bobby's past with flashbacks and had given more exposition to what happened with Karen. Jim Beaver is fantastic as Bobby, portraying him as an old wounded soldier that will go down shooting until the end but it's a shame his character isn't given more than this.

While Supernatural has taken a unique approach to the four horsemen, it has not been impressive. The coming of the four horsemen should signify that the end of the world in on the doorstep but when only fifteen people rise from the dead in a small town to send a message to one guy, it's just a waste. I'm glad Death wasn't another old man in a car but it would have been nice for Sam and Dean to drive into a town that had been wiped out from Death's presence. I know the show doesn't have a budget like Lost, but the horsemen are forces of nature and not just another YED (Yellow Eyed Demon).

After the announcement that Supernatural will also have a sixth season I am not sure what to expect from the rest of season five but I am hoping more focus will come in the future episodes.

Tags: Supernatural, Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Jim Beaver, Death, zombies

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