"That's what hell is: forgetting what you were."

"Dad's gone now. He wants us to pick up where he left off. So what do you say we kill some evil sons of bitches and we raise a little hell?"

I think Sam must feel a little left out, sometimes, that he never gets to voiceover the previously section.

Then.

Ruby saved Sam's life using her magic demon-killing blade, the existence of which had everyone stumped. She also helped Bobby fix Samuel Colt's magic demon-killing gun, so that it can kill demons again despite all the original bullets being used up. The mechanics of this were never explained. She also revealed herself to be a demon, and Bobby shot her with the Colt, but since the magical demon-killing aspect had not yet been restored at this point she was merely pissed off about it, rather than killed.

Sam and Dean argued over Sam's willingness to cooperate with Ruby for information versus Dean's automatic distrust of her demonic nature. Sam explained that Ruby had claimed she could help save Dean's life, but Dean countered that she was merely exploiting Sam's weak spot.

Dean fretted that maybe the Yellow-Eyed Demon was right, that his brother had come back wrong, and although Bobby offered what reassurance he could on that score, neither seemed entirely convinced there was nothing to worry about.

Sam grew impatient with Ruby's failure to follow through on her offer to help save Dean, but she proved to be in no rush, telling him he was going to have to do things that would go against his gentle nature. His decapitation of the vampire Gordon certainly fell into that category. She simpered that, on the bright side, she would be with him the whole way – a little fallen angel on his shoulder. However, she hasn't been seen since, so clearly that was a hollow promise/threat.

Three guesses, based on this run-through of past events, which recurring character will be popping up in this episode.

Now.

A young couple arrive home from a terrible, terrible party, exchange some flirty small talk, and prepare to retire to bed. As the woman – whose name is Janet – heads into the bathroom, we start to cut back and fore to another woman lighting up candles and chanting in Gaelic, although whether a variant of Irish or Scots I couldn't say. Janet takes a brand new toothbrush out of a box to brush her teeth, which puzzled me a little at first, but it turns out that she needs a new toothbrush because hers has been stolen. It was stolen by the Gaelic-chanting witch, who we now see slicing her hand open to drip blood on said toothbrush. That's just gross.

Janet winces and puts a hand to her mouth, and one of her teeth falls out at the touch, all bloody and horrible. That's even more gross. Janet is wigged. So am I. I've had tooth extractions; they weren't fun. More blood drips onto the toothbrush. Janet reaches into the back of her mouth to pull out another bloody tooth. I hide my eyes as I remember how it felt to gag on bits of tooth that fell apart during extraction. Freaking out big time now, Janet starts screaming for her husband, Paul. The witch continues to chant. Paul comes running, just in time to see the bathroom door slam shut and lock itself.

Paul hammers on the door. Janet screams for help. The witch chants. Janet chokes and gags and spits teeth and blood into the sink, and I start to feel sick. Finally, the witch stabs her knife into the toothbrush. The bathroom door opens, and Paul rushes in to find Janet dead on the floor.

Ick. I'm now completely squicked out, and we haven't even had the title card yet!

Titles.

A devastated Paul Dudden runs through Janet's final moments with Dean, as Sam searches the bathroom for clues. Is it just me or are they dividing the duties up in this way more and more often? It seems like once upon a time Sam would have been the one lumbered with solo interviewing, because he was the one whose sympathetic manner could be relied on, while Dean, who has always tended toward blunt and smartass over sympathy and sincerity, evaded dealing with the bereaved by doing the poking around. Dean's interview technique is a lot smoother these days, and he handles Paul extremely well here. Today the brothers are posing as CDC officers, the notion of which bemuses Paul a little, especially when Dean's line of questioning turns toward any enemies Janet might have had.

In the bathroom, Sam finds a little leather bag tucked into the u-bend under the sink, stuffs it into a pocket, and rejoins the others just as Paul stutters to a halt while insisting that Janet had no enemies and becomes evasive. He is clearly hiding something as he firmly reiterates that everyone loved Janet. Rather than press the point at this stage, the boys thank him and make their exit.

"That dude seem a little evasive to you?" Dean remarks as they head back to the car in the pouring rain.
"I don't know. I was under a sink," Sam sniffs, showing his brother the hex bag he found.
"Oh, gross," Dean groans, opening it up to take a look at the contents even as Sam runs through the list: bird bones, rabbit's teeth, cloth cut from something Janet owned.

The brothers agree that this means they are dealing with a witch, and not the wholesome new age-y type, either. This is old world black magic, warts and all. Safely back in the nice, dry Impala, Dean grumbles that he hates witches. "Spewing their bodily fluids everywhere…it's creepy – no, it's downright unsanitary." Hee. It's funny to hear the word 'unsanitary' out of Dean's mouth.

The bottom line is that someone definitely had it out for Janet Dudden, and went to some pretty extreme lengths to kill her. Still a little disgusted with the idea of a witch being behind all this, Dean grunts a disgruntled query as to whether they should be looking for some craggy old 'Blair bitch' out in the woods, but Sam counters that it could be anyone. "Neighbour, co-worker, man, woman. That's the problem, Dean. They're human. They're like everyone else."

Cranky, because he disapproves of humans deliberately invoking supernatural evil even more than he disapproves of supernatural evil in the first place, Dean grumbles about how difficult it could be to be to find this person. Sam breaks it down: this wasn't random. Someone in Janet Dudden's life had an ugly axe to grind, so if they can find the motive, they'll find the murderer. They don't, yet, approach the tricky topic of just what they will do when they find that person.

The Impala drives off in the pouring rain.

Random suburban street. It's now dry as a bone, so either Paul Dudden's house is in a separate district, one with a distinct micro-climate all its own, or some time has passed.

A young woman we will later come to know as Elizabeth is on her hands and knees tending the front garden. A car pulls up next door and another woman gets out. She has a great big bandage across the palm of one hand, instantly identifying her as the witch who killed Janet Dudden. Elizabeth calls out to her, thus kindly naming her for us as Amanda, but Amanda is distracted and it takes a couple of tries to get her attention. Elizabeth asks if she's okay, what with missing book club the previous night and all. So…Janet Dudden only died last night? Wow, the boys were on the case fast. It usually takes at least a few days after a suspicious death for them to notice the report, flag it as a potential case, and travel there to investigate. Or has Amanda missed a couple of book club sessions now, for reasons of her own, and Elizabeth is only calling attention to the latest? Anyway, Amanda makes her excuses and hurries inside, leaving Elizabeth looking concerned.

Once safely inside her house, Amanda opens the oven and pulls out…ewwww. It's a roast bird that's decidedly on the elderly side. Like she cooked it and then just left it there for days and days, so that it is absolutely covered in flies and maggots, and my stomach turns at the sight and sound of it. This episode is really gross. Give me blood, guts and gore any day. Amanda stares lovingly at the seething mess, confirming her absolute insanity.

Night. Paul Dudden sits in his car outside a pub, eating a burger. Apparently, he isn't in the mod for either cooking or company. In her house, Amanda sets up some serious spell-work around her maggot-infested roast bird and starts chanting. In his car, Paul checks his watch, only to find his wrist bare. In the house, Amanda places the stolen watch atop the gross ruined dinner. "Dinner was cooked for you, Paul Arthur Dudden," she mutters, stabbing her knife into the roast. "Now you're going to eat it."

Spurned. Vengeful. Insane. All is becoming clear.

In the car, the radio starts to flicker to static, and changes channels to play a new song. 'I put a spell on you'. Very funny. Bemused, Paul sets his half-eaten burger aside to puzzle over this. Close-up of the burger reveals it to now be crawling with maggots, just like Amanda's roast. I seriously cannot watch this again, so shall summarise the sequence of events without looking. Basically, Paul turns the radio off, then starts to chomp once more on his now maggot-infested burger, realises something is wrong, and begins to choke and gag in horror. I almost throw up.

Paul stumbles out of the car and drops to his knees, heaving with the grossness, just as the Impala screeches to a halt alongside him – in the middle of the road, so it's fortunate there isn't any traffic. Dean rushes to Paul, ordering Sam to check the car. Sam finds the hex bag in about three seconds flat, and sets fire to it with a nifty little miniature blowtorch. Heh. My brother has one just like it – maybe he's a closet demon hunter! The fire breaks the spell, and Paul is saved, although I'm guessing he'll never be able to eat a burger again.

In her house, Amanda is shocked when the maggot-riddled roast bursts into flame as her spell backfires.

Dean asks if Paul is okay, and Paul incredulously wonders what the hell is going on. "Someone murdered your wife, and now they're trying to kill you – that's what's happening," Dean rather bluntly tells him, in a marvellous return to form. Dean really isn't one for sugarcoating the truth. Paul protests the impossibility of this, until Dean points out that if the brothers hadn't been following him he'd be a doornail right now.

Writer Ben Edlund clearly likes using the word 'doornail' as a euphemism for 'dead', as he gave Sam a similar line back in Hollywood Babylon and had him repeat it several times. We don't get so many jinxes any more, but since the brothers spend almost every waking moment in each other's company, and have very few other regular acquaintances, it figures that they'd use a lot of the same vocabulary.

Dean asks Paul who would want him dead, pressing firmly for the truth when the shocked man umms and ahhs before admitting that there is a woman. He had an affair, he admits, a mistake – this woman was unbalanced and blackmailing him, but he put an end to it a week ago. Bingo. Sam asks what her name is. Paul still doesn't see how she could possibly have anything to do with all this. Dean repeats Sam's question, but with a more authoritative note in his voice. Paul crumbles.

Amanda's house. Amanda rifles furiously through her homemade spellbook, trying to figure out what went wrong. A gust of wind blows through the room, extinguishing most of her candles, and she is wigged. That nervousness turns to horror as her wrists slice themselves open, long, vertical cuts that gush an impressive amount of blood. She collapses across her glass table, dead.

Later. Dean picks the lock to gain entrance to Amanda's house, Paul having provided her name and address. Hmm. Used to be that Sam did the majority of the lock picking, but that statistic has reversed completely. These days Dean seems to handle the chore more often. The brothers enter the house, guns at the ready. Inside, the discovery of Amanda's corpse takes them both by surprise. Sam's face is a picture. I love Sam's surprised face.

"That's a curveball," Dean bemusedly notes, and Sam can only agree.

Dean uses the point of his gun to lift Amanda's wrist and take a look at the deep slices there – finally, he's learned not to touch. I'm delighted. We shall see how long this newfound caution lasts. He presumes it was suicide, and Sam – who looks almost as squicked out by the remains of the maggot-infested roast as I am – notes that she was in the middle of some heavy-duty spell work.

While Sam continues to poke around Amanda's black magic paraphernalia, Dean turns around and almost jumps out of his skin at finding himself face to face with a dead rabbit, strung up by the hind paws with its mouth all bloody, the teeth having been extracted, and dripping blood into a dish on the table below. Ick. Again with the tooth extraction. Dean's startled and grossed out reaction tickles me no end. "Friggin' witches! Seriously, man, come on!" he shouts. Sam dismissively shrugs that now they know where she got the rabbit's teeth from, but Dean is still wigged and mutters angrily that it's like Fatal Attraction all over again. "But why's a rabbit always get screwed in the deal?" he complains. "Poor little guy." Hee.

Sam wonders why Amanda would kill herself, if she was so bent on revenge. Dean hypothesizes that she believed she had killed Paul as well as Janet, and decided to take herself out as well: "make it a spurned lovers hattrick," he suggests, pointing out that she clearly wasn't the most stable person in the world. Sam doesn't look convinced and continues to poke around, quickly finding another hex bag tucked up under the table to disprove the suicide theory.

Dean rolls his eyes in frustration at the implication of witch-on-witch murder, and hauls out his cellphone to report the discovery of a dead body to the police. "My name? Yeah, sure, my name's –" He hangs up mid-sentence, and it's so casual and practiced, and I love that we got to see it. I love everything about the way they are working this case so far, smooth and efficient and quite the well-oiled team. I guess the routine of working jobs like this is just about the only source of comfort they have right now.

"Why are witches ganking each other?" Dean wonders.
"I don't know," Sam murmurs. "But I think maybe we got a coven of witches on our hands."

Random suburban house. And here we have the coven itself. Members #1 and #2 are sitting around smirking at a random husband as he rolls his eyes and teases them that their 'book club' is just a front for female gossiping session, what with them never actually bringing any books and all. Well, he's right about it being a front, although I imagine it started out genuinely enough, and almost right about the gossiping part, too. It's just the black magic he hasn't cottoned on to, this being the kind of respectable well-to-do household where such a thing should be unthinkable. This is Renee and Tammi, and they are both insufferable. Elizabeth arrives to complete the trio, because classical witches must always come in threes to hit the Shakespearean archetype.

I've seen grumbling about gender issues in this episode, with all the witches being women, but honestly, I think that's being a little over-sensitive to political correctness. Evil in this show is generally pretty well spread out between the genders, but they are riffing off the whole bored desperate housewives stereotype here, and that means women only. This type of woman would not include any male friends in this kind of group. We've already been told that witches can be male, but they aren't in this instance because that wouldn't have fitted the profile being satirised here, and wouldn't fit the story being told in this episode.

Husband Ron makes himself scarce, while Tammi and Renee smirk. Elizabeth is anxious, realising that Ron doesn't know about fellow witch – that is, 'book club' member – Amanda's suicide. The fact that Elizabeth is so upset about Amanda's death tells us that this is the good witch of the group, while the others remain chipper and blithely indifferent to their supposed friend's demise, brushing it off completely, what with Amanda having been so unstable and having probably killed Janet Dudden, and all. Those two are the ones to watch.

Elizabeth can't quite believe their attitude and protests that they have to stop book club, that this has all gone too far, and oh, how right she is – they have been playing a game, a very dangerous game, without any true understanding of the rules and consequences, and are in way over their heads. But Renee and Tammi patronisingly bitch that she needs to calm down, that Janet and Amanda's deaths were awful, of course, but it's all over now. They point out that they've all done well out of book club: a promotion for Elizabeth's husband, the holiday to Hawaii that she won, Renee's home pottery business taking off at last, and so on. Basically, they are using black magic to feather their already respectably well-heeled nests. Nice. The conflicted Elizabeth is easily swayed by peer pressure, and the black magic paraphernalia is whipped out for a spot of quick spell work before Ron gets home from his fantasy football session.

Heh. The evil spell book they all pray around is called the 'book of shadows'. How very Charmed.

Morning. Elizabeth is on her hands and knees digging the front garden again. A pair of feet wanders into the shot, and Sam's voice calls out that she must have a green thumb. Elizabeth looks up to find Sam and Dean standing over her, and stutters her incomprehension of this non-sequiteur. Sam points out how impressive it is that she has all kinds of herbs growing out of season, which doesn't help her predicament, since she can hardly come out and explain that she's a closet witch and can use black magic to take care of stuff like that. Having thrown her well and truly off balance, Sam now smilingly introduces himself as Detective Bachman, and his partner as Detective Turner. Heh. Even I got that reference.
        
Sam continues to take the lead on this interview, explaining that they are following up on Amanda's death, talking to neighbours and the like. Elizabeth stutters that Amanda killed herself, implying that there should be no need to follow up on something so cut-and-dried. Sam offers a 'maybe' to the suicide theory, which unnerves Elizabeth even more, and Dean starts to ask how much she knew about her friend's 'practices', since Amanda's house was littered with satanic paraphernalia. Alarmed at this line of inquiry, Elizabeth protests that Amanda was an Episcopalian. "Well, then, we're pretty sure she was using the wrong bible," Dean snarks.

Renee and Tammi come smirking to the rescue before Elizabeth can crack under interrogation. Renee points out that Elizabeth is upset, and when Dean addresses her as 'miss' is quick to very patronisingly correct him that she is a 'mrs'. "Mrs. Renee. Van. Allen," she snobs, very slowly, as if addressing a five year old. "Would you like me to spell that for you?"

Oh, burn. Dean just lifts his eyebrows a little at the slur on his intelligence and shrugs it off. He's used to people looking down their noses at him. Sam doesn't miss the insult, and offers a stiff smile while narrowing his eyes as Renee and Tammi continue their defence of Elizabeth and their coven, primly commenting on how surprised they were by all this unpleasantness, and that they'd thought they knew Amanda. "I guess we all have secrets, don't we?" Dean smiles. Sam thanks the women for their time, since it is clear they aren't going to get past the guard dogs to the very nervous Elizabeth, and the brothers make their exit.

Night. The Impala zooms along another typically Supernatural deserted road. Inside, the brothers discuss the intel they've gathered thus far. Dean is sold on Elizabeth as a coven member, based on her 'victory' garden of out-of-season herbs: belladonna, wolfsbane, mandrake. He rattles the names of the herbs off just like that, based on one quick glance, demonstrating once again his botanical knowledge. I really appreciate it when Dean is allowed to show us how smart he is; he might not have had the most classically complete of educations, but he's very good at what he does. He's dedicated most of his life to getting good at it. Sam agrees that Elizabeth has had a good run lately, sifting through a pile of research papers in his lap to offer up a few examples, and noting that it's the kind of thing a little black magic always helps with. Why have I never thought of trying that when I enter raffles or apply for new jobs?

"I don't think she's alone, either," Sam adds. "Looks like 'Mrs Renee van Allen' has won almost every craft contest she's entered in the past three months."

I love the way he says the woman's name, like it smells bad. He really didn't appreciate the way she spoke to his brother.

Dean agrees that the three women they met were most likely the coven, minus one member, recently deceased. Sam suggests that since Amanda was clearly 'going off the reservation' maybe her fellow witches killed her to keep up appearances.

"So, if they killed the nutjob, should we thank them, or what?" Dean wonders.
"They're working black magic, too, Dean, they need to be stopped," Sam says, in the weary tone of a teacher addressing a rather slow student.

It kind of kills me that Sam doesn't like outsiders talking down to his brother, but does it himself all the time.

Dean is taken aback. "Stopped like stopped? They're human, Sam."
"They're murderers," Sam calmly points out. He doesn't know that for sure, though; it's just a working hypothesis based on available evidence.

Dean still looks startled, glances sideways at Sam a few times, not quite able to believe that Sam of all people is taking this hard line even with the ruthless and cynical attitude he's been sporting this season, and then shakes his head a little in bitter resignation. "Burn, witch, burn," he remarks, with a sardonic curl of the lip, as if the words taste really bad. They probably do, and he's really tired of being worried about Sam and not having enough time left to do anything about it.

The Impala's engine cuts out rather abruptly at this point, and Dean is perturbed. The only other time this happened, there was a supernatural explanation, and the same is true now. Ruby is standing in the middle of the road just ahead.

Dean and Ruby have never met before, let us remember.

"Sam, listen to me, there's no time," Ruby breathlessly begins, as the boys get out of the car to confront her. I like her better with the straight hair than the curls she used to sport. "You have to get out of town."
"So this is Ruby, huh?" Dean observes, cocking the Colt and pointing it at her. "Never had the pleasure."

Sam looks alarmed, torn as he is by having these two people in the same place at the same time. Dean snarks at Ruby a little more, with a huntsman's gleam in his eyes, target in sight. He has hated the very idea of this demon ever since he heard about her. Ruby dismisses him utterly, and repeats her warning to Sam that he has to go. "Get in the car, and don't look back."

Sam stammers the question 'why', not understanding where this is coming from or how a messy but manageable gig has suddenly blown up into something so potentially catastrophic. He needs Ruby, needs that tiny strand of hope she has been holding over him, and suddenly Dean has her at Colt-point and everything is combusting.

"Hey, hot stuff, we can take care of a few kitchen witches, thanks," jeers Dean.
"I'm not talking about witches, you jackass," Ruby sneers. "Witches are whores. I'm talking about who they serve."
"Demons," Sam realises, and you can see the chill run down his spine. "They get the power from demons."
"Yeah," Ruby agrees, still looking worried. "And there's one here, now."

Dean keeps darting glances back and fore between the two of them during this exchange. He is completely excluded from their conversation, since they already know one another and he hasn't ever met Ruby before, all of which puts him at a disadvantage, but he keeps the Colt trained on her and remains unimpressed.

Ruby continues that this demon knows Sam is in town, is going to come after him, and is way more than he can handle. Sam's alarm levels are rising. He's learned to very grudgingly trust Ruby, to a certain extent, at least. But Dean has mistrusted the very idea of her since Sam first mentioned their interactions, so having the two of them in the same place at the same time is now pulling Sam in very different directions, and this warning is dire, and things are fast spinning out of control. And Sam…doesn't divide his attention all that well in times of crisis, and never has; he doesn't have Dean's years of experience as mediator.

"Oh, come on, what is this? Please tell me you're not listening to this crap?" Dean groans at Sam.
"Put a leash on your brother, Sam, if you want to keep him," Ruby angrily counters.

I kind of love that they are sniping at one another so indirectly now, using Sam as the middleman, rather than actually addressing each other, because that fits the situation so well. Each of them has a claim on Sam that is threatened by the other, each of them knows Sam but not the other, each of them has wildly differing beliefs and intentions, and it all adds to the pressure Sam is under, having to decide who to listen to and what to believe.

Sam tries asking his brother to chill out for a moment, but Dean is having none of it, insisting that Ruby is messing with Sam's head, because that's what demons are all about. He has a point. Dean's gut reaction to Ruby was always going to be DEMON, and she's been playing games with Sam all season, which makes him all the less inclined to want to listen to or believe a word she says. But she's got this hold over Sam, that promise of Dean's life, and she's proved useful before, and Sam badly wants to believe in her. For all that he's changed and grown more ruthless this season he's still Sam, and his instinct is to trust people who have offered proof of their helpfulness.

"I'm telling you the truth," Ruby insists.
"And I'm telling you to shut up, bitch," Dean snarls.
"I'm sorry, why are you even a part of this conversation," Ruby snips back at him.

Well, she's the one that stopped his car in the middle of the road and forced this little showdown. If she didn't want Dean present for it, she should have found a way to get Sam alone. It's quite the put-down, when you think about it, implying that Dean has no part in the decision-making process here, is completely unimportant. She is deliberately goading him now, whether because he is annoying her or as a deliberate tactic. She has taken great care to stay well away from Dean all season thus far, so I find it hard to believe it is sheer chance that she has revealed herself in his presence now. More likely that this is simply another phase of her gameplan, whatever that might be.

"Because he's my brother, you black-eyed skank," Dean growls.
"Oh, right, and you care about your brother so much," taunts Ruby. "That's why you're checking out in a few months and leaving him all alone."

Ouch. That's a low blow. Demons get into peoples' heads, we must remember, and find all their weaknesses to use against them.

"Shut up," Dean snarls.
"At least let me save him, since you won't be around to do it," she goads, and boy, she couldn't be more provocative if she'd tried, Dean being Dean.

Dean yells again for Ruby to shut up, pulling the trigger, and Sam grabs his arm just in time to send the shot flying wild. It's a pretty intense moment. The brothers scuffle over the Colt for a moment, Dean firmly retaining his grip on it, outraged. When they look back at Ruby, she has vanished.

I'm still kind of fascinated by the ability of demons to do that, since it is never elaborated on or explained. It's just something that they do.

Motel. The brothers arrive back to their room, both of them still fuming. And, wow. For the first time ever, it is Sam who has the bed nearest the door.

"The hell were you thinking?" Dean grumbles.
"What? What was I thinking?" Sam disbelieves.
"She's a demon, Sam, period," Dean snaps, annoyed and frustrated. "They want us dead, we want them dead."

Sam promptly brings up the demon Casey that Dean got trapped in that basement with back in Sin City, reminding his brother that he'd argued against killing her. Dean counters that she wasn't stringing him along like a fish on a hook. Again, he has something of a point. Ruby has blatantly been stringing Sam along with vague promises that never amount to anything, and Sam knows it, but he still can't let go of that tiny hope she offers, because it's the only hope he has. He denies being strung along, though, insisting that he knows it is dangerous, that Ruby is dangerous. "But like it or not, she is useful."

Dean doesn't see it, firmly arguing the need to kill her before she kills them.

"Kill her with what? The gun she fixed for us?" Sam snorts.
Dean is down with that idea. "Whatever works."
"Dean, if she wants us dead, all she has to do is stop saving our lives," Sam points out.

Dean simply rolls his eyes in response to this line of debate, not prepared to trust Ruby as far as he can spit no matter how many times she saves their lives. Which I don't think has actually been all that many times, in point of fact. She saved Sam fairly directly in The Magnificent Seven, it is true, and she restored the Colt, which has been an indirect lifesaver, but beyond that she hasn't exactly been what you'd call proactive. It seems to have been months in the show's timeline since Sam even heard from her.

"We have to start thinking about the big picture, Dean, start thinking in terms of strategies and moves ahead," Sam argues, while Dean goes over to the little sink and splashes water on his face, not looking too well all of a sudden. "It's not so simple, we're not just hunting any more. We're at war."

Dean turns around, still not looking all that well, and asks if Sam is feeling okay. Sam sighs and asks, just as in Bad Day at Black Rock, why his brother is always asking him that. I don't think twice really counts as pestering him with the query, but clearly we are meant to infer that this question has been asked a lot off screen this season.

"Because you're taking advice from a demon, for starters," Dean tells him, loudly, because Dean always gets loud when he frets. "And, by the way, you seem less and less worried about offing people, you know? It used to eat you up inside."
"Yeah, and what has that got me?" Sam snips.
Dean rubs a hand across his chest, looking uncomfortable, as he frustratedly replies: "Nothing, it's just what you're supposed to do, okay? We're supposed to drive in the freaking car, and freaking argue about this stuff, you know, you go on about the sanctity of life, and all that crap…"
"Wait," Sam looks mildly amused now. "So you're mad because I'm starting to agree with you?"
"No! No, I'm not mad. I'm worried," Dean gruffly admits, looking more and more uncomfortable as he wearily drops onto the bed, still rubbing at his chest and abdomen as if in pain.

I love that Dean has finally come out and verbalised the growing trend I've commented on a few times this season, which is that role reversal the boys have had going on, wherein Sam expresses his blithe willingness to commit what amounts to murder, thus causing Dean to swing around into Sam's more customary position of advocating that they first consider the possibility of a slightly less bloody approach, because he's so weirded out by Sam's newfound ruthless streak. Dean relies on Sam to act as his conscience, so now that Sam isn't stepping up to that task any more, Dean has to do it himself. He relies too much on the counterbalance provided by such debates not to. And Dean is willing to openly admit to the things that trouble him a lot more readily these days than ever seemed possible a couple of years ago. Then again, he has a lot less to lose now than he did back then.

"Sam, I'm worried because you're not acting like yourself," he continues, sounding very, very tired. Throughout the conversation that follows he continues to wince and grimace with increasing physical discomfort.
"Yeah, you're right, I'm not," Sam freely admits, as if it should be obvious. "I don't have a choice."

Dean wonders what that's supposed to mean. "Look, Dean, you're leaving, right?" Sam points out, and it kind of kills me that he's adopted the habit of euphemising Dean's fate. Back when he was trying to break down Dean's walls of denial, he was sledgehammering the point, throwing the word 'dying' around left, right and centre. But now that the air has been cleared and they are both supposedly facing up to the future, he's less and less willing to say it out loud.

"And I got to stay here," Sam unhappily continues. "In this craphole of a world. Alone. So the way I see it, if I'm going to make it, if I'm going to fight this war after you're gone, then I got to change."
"Change into what?" Dean wants to know, voice tight and pained.
"Into you," Sam tells him, and Dean looks startled. "I've got to be more like you."

And, man, that's quite the kicker, in so many ways. For all that Ruby still has that tiny shred of hope to hold over his head, Sam's attitude has gradually become one of desolate acceptance of the fact that Dean is going to die soon, end of story, leaving him all alone in 'this craphole of a world', a prospect in which he plainly sees nothing but misery and despair. Echoing a major theme of last season, his growing ruthlessness this season has been a conscious choice, he is telling us – he is consciously trying to model himself after his brother, and that also echoes back to season one, when he was quite vocal about his belief in Dean as the favoured son, John's perfect soldier. He understands the more complex dynamics of his family a lot better now, but that belief in Dean's innate aptitude for hunting remains strong. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so there's something of an enormous backhanded compliment in there, letting us know in just how high a regard Sam holds his brother's skill as a hunter, now as in childhood setting the standard toward which he must strive. But for Sam to become more like him is the last thing Dean would ever want, when he worked so hard for so many years to preserve as much innocence and normality for his brother as he possibly could, given their situation, and believes Sam to be worth so much more than himself. Sam spent the whole of last season terrified of being turned into something he wasn't, so there's a terrible irony in the fact that he is now choosing to make that change for himself. He fought so hard all his life for his independence and identity as an individual, for his hopes and dreams, and now he's just completely given it over and isn't even fighting any more, and wow, that hurts.

The notion of Sam trying to model himself after Dean also echoes back to Fresh Blood, when he admitted that his brother was his childhood hero, that he'd tried hard while growing up to be just like him. But there's a significant 'but' in there, because this is all about perceptions and definitions. What Sam is trying to imitate is how he perceives Dean the Hunter: strong enough to make the hard decisions and to do whatever has to be done for the greater good no matter how horrible. For two seasons we've watched Dean stand between Sam and the grimmer aspects of the job, taking all the harshest and most unpalatable duties and decisions on himself so that Sam wouldn't have to, and this season Sam is trying hard to shoulder his share of that burden, both to ease his brother's load and in preparation for when he has to take it all on, alone. But what he's missing is the balance. Dean's pragmatism is tempered by his compassion, by the empathy he feels for the victims in each case, whether he is able to express it or not. Plus, he's always had Sam at his side, the perfect counterbalancing sounding board, to prevent him crossing any lines. Empathy and compassion are what Sam has been stripping away from himself this season, in contrast, distancing himself from the people he is working both for and against with clinical detachment, and such cold, hard ruthlessness is a dangerous slope to be sliding down. Especially given that he expects to be all alone with this soon, with no one to hold him back if he takes it too far.

And man, what all of this really emphasises is how horribly desolate their situation is. Each of them has had everything they ever cared about stripped away, so that literally all they have to cling on to is each other, and even that will be gone soon.

It has to be of some comfort for Dean, though, to at least hear Sam state aloud his intention of surviving and continuing the good fight.

Dean doesn't get the chance to respond in any way, instead doubling over and gasping with pain, and Sam finally starts to pay attention to his brother's rapidly deteriorating physical condition, asking what's going on. Dean doesn't know, but he does know that something is wrong and getting worse by the second, gasping that it feels like knives inside of him. Oh, and for those playing along at home, the regular eerie demon music has started playing in the background to warn us that evil is afoot. Alarmed now, Sam rushes over, and hovers with one hand on his brother's shoulder and the other on his knee, not knowing what is causing this or how to help.

Dean puts it together and gasps that it has to be the coven, grabbing at Sam's arm by way of communicating the need for his brother to search the room for another of those hex bags. Quick, Sam, move. Sam rushes into action and starts tearing the room apart, as Dean collapses across the bed writhing in agony. He manages to pull himself upright again, only to fall forward onto his hands and knees coughing up blood all over the floor, and now everyone is having flashbacks to Devil's Trap on his behalf.

While Dean chokes on his own blood, Sam continues to frantically rip the room apart, even slicing the mattresses open, but he can't find the hex bag. Dean collapses onto the floor, still coughing up blood and choking, and Sam's blood runs cold. You can see it in his face and eyes, as he murmurs "no," and snatches up the Colt.

Dean chokes out a question: "Sam, what are you doing?" But Sam ignores him and runs out of the room without so much as a backward glance. It's the soldier's choice. And I know that he has a goal in mind, that this is his last ditch attempt to save Dean's life and the only way he can think to achieve it, but it still chills me: to be that focused, that single-minded, that he can walk out the door and leave his brother alone, bleeding and dying in agony on the floor, without so much as a moment's pause or even a backward glance.

That unwavering intensity is Sam's scariest and most dangerous characteristic, when you think about it. It's Sam, though, and he's his father's son. He makes a rapid decision and then pursues it with every ounce of his being, whether it's the right decision or not, without doubt, deviation or hesitation, never allowing for the possibility of error or compromise. So very single-minded, and sometimes that's a good thing because it certainly draws results, but things are not always quite so clear-cut. He always has had that streak of ruthlessness about him, which he is cultivating to such a dangerous extreme this season. We saw it way back in Faith, when he chose to spend three days solid researching in a motel room rather than spending time at the hospital with his dying brother. It paid off, but if it hadn't losing out on that time together would have been a hell of a price for them both to pay. Sam never gives up, and remembering that fact about him really drives home the magnitude and awfulness of his acceptance of Dean's eventual fate. When Sam gives up on something he's set his heart on, it's a sign of just how hopeless the situation really is.

And Dean calls after him through a mouthful of blood, understanding only that he has been left to die alone, and that hurts.

The Impala speeds along another deserted road, Sam at the wheel looking resolute. This is only the second time that Sam has driven the Impala on-screen this season, which is still two times more than last season. Dean isn't one for giving up the wheel if he can help it.

Van Allen house. The coven of three sit around their black altar, holding hands and chanting. Sam kicks the door open and charges in, Colt in hand, and the three women jump out of their skins and start squealing in fright. Sam orders them to let Dean go. Renee angrily denies all knowledge of what he is talking about. Sam tries another tack, telling them that if they know about him, they know about the gun, and they are killing his brother and have to let him go, and he sounds more and more desperate with each word as he begins to realise that this isn't going to work. He furiously orders them away from the altar, and they tremblingly begin to oblige.

Motel. Dean has managed to drag himself back up onto hands and knees as he continues to wheeze and choke and cough up mouthfuls of blood. There's nothing quick or easy about this particular method of murder, which says something about the brand of sadism wielded by the killer. Ruby kicks the door open and marches in, looking pissed off in the extreme about having to go to all this trouble. But Dean is the key to her hold over Sam, and letting him die would throw something of a spanner in the works of whatever she is plotting, no matter how much his attitude annoys her. Unwilling and begrudged cooperation between opposing parties is always the best kind, in terms of interesting viewing.

With blood all over his face, Dean shoots unfocused eyes in her direction and gasps out, "If you want to kill me, get in line, bitch."

Without saying a word, Ruby grabs him by the collar and throws him onto his back on the bed, grabs his jaw to force his mouth open, and starts pouring some kind of black liquid down his throat. Dean struggles and gags, but evidently gets enough of it down that she is satisfied and releases him. "Stop. Calling me. Bitch," she snarls.

Van Allen house. Sam gets the three women lined up against the fireplace, safely away from their black altar. Elizabeth and Renee stutter that they weren't hurting anyone and don't even know his brother. Sam growls at them to stop the spell, or die. He'd do it, as well, no matter how human and scared and potentially innocent they might be. Sam is very ruthless this season. He gives them five seconds and cocks the gun, and they start squeaking protestations of innocence again. It is very noticeable that it is Elizabeth and Renee doing all the talking, as they insist that all they were doing was getting Renee a lower mortgage rate.

Sam freezes, with that hilarious 'huh?' expression he wears whenever he realises he might have made a mistake. Sam never factors the possibility of error into his plans.

Motel. "Next time you point that gun at me, I'm not going to just disappear, you understand?" Ruby menaces. There is no love lost in this room, on either side, but she needs Dean alive, and he's just had his life saved and is still a little bleary and confused, and thus truce is achieved. Dean is now sitting on the bed with most but not all of the blood wiped off his face, looking rather shaken. Ruby tosses a sawn-off shotgun to him.

"You saved my life," Dean bemusedly observes, which I'm pretty sure she'd already noticed. It's the last thing he'd have expected from her, though, having been so confident in his mistrust of her demonic nature, so his uncertainty in this scene is understandable. Ruby shrugs not to mention it. Dean wonders what that stuff was that she poured down his throat. "God, it was ass. Tasted like ass," he mutters, disgusted. Heh.

"It's called witchcraft, shortbus," Ruby sardonically drawls, walking out of the room.
"You're the shortbus," Dean mutters at her back, and even he knows how lame a comeback that is, but hey. He just almost died, and Ruby has thrown him well and truly off balance, so he can be forgiven not being at his wittiest right now.

It's something of a deus ex machina, this save, and brushing it off as 'witchcraft' doesn't really change that. There's no explanation of how the magic potion reversed the effects of the hex on Dean, or how Ruby knew it was needed and managed to whip it up so quickly. But it works for the plot, so we can let it pass.

Van Allen house. Sam is starting to look more than a little distressed as it becomes clearer and clearer that his desperate gamble is not going to pay off. How long did it take him to get here? How long does he think it would take Dean to die, alone on the floor of their motel room? "Maybe it's not you," he reasons, gun aimed at Elizabeth, and then shifts very slightly to point it at Renee. "Or you. Maybe it's you." The gun is now trained on Tammi, who has largely stayed out of all the desperate pleading for their lives up till now.

Tammi starts to tearfully protest her innocence and ignorance, but Sam is very certain of his deductions, pointing out that everyone in the coven has gained from runs of good fortune, except for her. "Now tell me, why is that? You didn't want anything for yourself? Or is it because you're already getting what you wanted, like these women's souls?"

Renee and Elizabeth look shocked at the accusation, as Tammi keeps up the pretence just a moment longer, and then drops it completely in the face of Sam's stony resolve, revealing her black demon eyes.

"Nice dick work, Magnum," the demon coos.
"Let. My brother. Go," Sam grits out.
"What's wrong? Couldn't find my hex bag?" she taunts. "Sorry, sweetheart, but your brother's lungs should be on the floor by now."

It's interesting to speculate just how much control over her spells this demon has. We will soon learn that she has the power to kill a human with the simplest thought and gesture, up close, using her power directly. But the trap she set for Dean involved black magic rather than demon power, presumably because it was an assassination carried out at distance. She doesn't seem to know that it hasn't worked. And neither does Sam, of course.

Enraged at the suggestion that Dean is probably already dead, and knowing that it is almost certainly true, Sam pulls the trigger. The bullet speeds toward Tammi's head…but slows down as she raises her hand, stops dead, and drops harmlessly to the floor. That's a scary new trick that we haven't seen before. Bobby was absolutely right when he cautioned the boys about the demons that escaped the devil's gate possessing all kinds of abilities they haven't previously encountered. The Colt is a powerful weapon, but not all-powerful, and this isn't the first demon who hasn't been afraid of it. Dean using it to kill the Yellow-Eyed Demon was as much luck as anything else.

It seems pretty clear by now that there's a decent supply of ammunition for the Colt now that Ruby has worked her magic tricks on it, though – it is still used relatively sparingly, demons only, but there is no concern whatsoever about running out of bullets again.

Elizabeth and Renee gasp in fear. Sam is horrified. The Colt was the only weapon he had against this demon, and it hasn't worked, which leaves him completely defenceless. "You're in a lot of trouble, Sam," Tammi smirks.

Sam just has time to look deeply alarmed before Tammi waves a hand and sends him flying into the wall, pinning him there. Shades of Devil's Trap yet again. It's been a while since we saw a demon this powerful, with this much of an upper hand over the brothers.

With Sam winded and trapped, the two remaining witches turn to their demonic fellow. Elizabeth tremulously wonders what's wrong with her eyes, while Renee takes the high ground and stiffly demands to know what her friend is doing. Tammi rudely tells her to shut her painted hole, and Renee is incensed. This is her house, and she is not going to stand for behaviour like this…

Tammi rolls her eyes and with one swift little flip of the wrist snaps Renee's neck. Elizabeth screams in horror, and Sam regains his voice, still pinned to the wall, to start pleading with the demon to let the girl go. There's still an innocent to save, even if all does seem lost for himself and his brother. Tammi snips at him to wait his turn, and turns to the terrified Elizabeth with patronising reassurances designed to menace rather than soothe. Elizabeth realises that this really isn't Tammi. "No," the demon coos. "But I'm wearing her meat. I had to break the ice with you girls somehow." At Elizabeth's tearful prompting, she cheerfully admits to having killed both Renee and Amanda. "That's what happens to witches who get voted off the island," she jeers.

Elizabeth wants to know who she is. Tammi laughs. "Funny story, actually. You remember all those dark, demonic forces you prayed to? When you swore your servitude? Just who did you think you were praying to?" Elizabeth starts to stutter that this isn't possible, and Tammi laughs again, mocking her ignorance of what she was doing. "It was me. You sold yourself to me, you pig. All I had to do was bring one good book to book club, and you ladies lined up to kiss my ass." Elizabeth tearfully protests that she didn't know, but Tammi is having none of it. "Oh yes you did. You knew. Every step of the way. And now your ever-living souls are mine."

Hmm. Those lower mortgage rates and raffle prizes aren't looking like such good value any more.

There's been a fair bit of debate over why this demon is here in this town in the first place, if it might have been setting a deliberate trap for Sam. I tend to think not, though. I think it was genuine chance that brought them together, that the demon was simply building herself up a nice little power base with which to consolidate her position, post devil's gate-escape, having found a gullible enough group of bored, desperate housewives to exploit. Gaining human souls in bondage has to give a boost to a demon's status and street cred, if not its power. And if those eternal souls remain enslaved to her after death, it makes sense that she would be so free to randomly kill off her acolytes; she can always pick up more where she found them, and they remain in bondage to her even after death, so she loses nothing. Sam might be a target of all the newly released demons out there, but he's clearly not consuming every ounce of their time and attention. Or, if they are investing all their time and effort into tracking him down, they aren't doing a great job of it! So Sam wandering into town to investigate Janet Dudden's death was simply a nice little stroke of serendipity for this demon. But now that he is here and at her mercy, she is only too delighted to take advantage of her good fortune at having run into him; it's the exact scenario that Ruby was trying to avoid when she warned Sam to leave town.

"Hmmm, Sammy Winchester, wow," she coos. "Right here in our little town. You know, my friends and I, we've been looking for you."
Sam, who by now no doubt believes that his brother is already dead and that this is pretty much it, rolls his eyes. "Why? Oh, right. 'Cause I'm supposed to lead some piss-poor demon army."
"No, not at all," Tammi corrects him. "You're not our messiah. We don't believe in you."

Well, the notion that the newly released demons are divided between those that believe in Sam as their intended leader and those that don't isn't new – we first heard it way back in the season opener. Sam looks a little freaked out, though, although I'm not sure that a demon determined to see him enthroned as king would be that much easier to deal with than one that simply wants him dead.

"There's a new leader rising in the west," Tammi continues. "A real leader. And that's the horse to bet on, Sam: the one who's going to tear this world apart. Thing is, this demon doesn't like you very much. Doesn't want the competition. Nothing personal, it's a PR thing." She lifts a hand, and Sam's back slides up the wall until his feet are well and truly off the floor, and he struggles and groans as wind whistles through the room, pressure being brought to bear against his body.

"So, bye-bye," the demon taunts, pushing her raised palm forward. The pressure against Sam increases, and the wall behind him starts to crumble and crack as he is slowly crushed. Tammi looks smugly satisfied with her day's work, and Elizabeth continues to cower in the corner, disregarded, clearly considered about as much threat as a newborn lamb.

The door bursts open and Dean charges in, sawn-off at the ready. He's clearly recovered enough from his brush with death to have figured out where Sam was going when he rushed off like that, but he knows there's a demon in town, so just what he thinks he's going to achieve with an ordinary gun I don't know. I suppose it's the principle of the thing: that Sam came here without backup because he was trying to save Dean's life, and Dean has to follow and try to help even if there is nothing he can do. Kamikaze. If they're going down, they're going down together.

With one quick flick of the wrist, Tammi tosses Dean aside like a rag doll, the gun flying from his hand. He's back on his feet again almost at once, but she remains unruffled, simply pinning him to the wall so that she can return her attention to Sam. "Two for one. Lovely," she chirps.

Both Tammi and Sam should have believed Dean was dead until he ran into the room, alive and well and looking none the worse for the murder attempt. But neither so much as bats an eye at his unexpected appearance. Mid-showdown is no time to stop and question such things.

"Wait." And now everyone's here, as Ruby marches into the room, hands raised, pleading that she just came to talk. This is a different attitude than we've ever seen from her yet – gone is the cockiness, the arrogance, the confidence, replaced by humility and submission. She isn't as strong as this demon, and she knows it, so she needs to play this very carefully if she is going to survive with all her carefully assembled playing cards intact.

"You made it out of the gate. Impressive," Tammi remarks, confirming for us that Ruby is one of the demons released from hell in All Hell Breaks Loose. "It was a bitch of a fight, wasn't it?"
"Doors out of hell only open for so long," Ruby noncommittally agrees.

Tammi demands to know what Ruby wants, and Ruby obligingly launches her game plan. "I've been lost without you," she breathes, walking toward the other demon. "Take me back. It's why I led the Winchesters here."

Scowling, Dean mouths 'told you so' at Sam, who looks crushed – his trust in Ruby, that is, as well as physically, which he also is, since Tammi is still halfway through pressing him through the wall.

Ruby continues that she brought the boys here as a gift for Tammi. "Let me serve you again," she breathily implores. "I've wanted it. I've wanted you, for so long."

Dean's eyebrows shoot up at what looks like the imminent prospect of demonic girl-on-girl action, but honestly, I don't think gender or sex mean anything to demons. It's all about power. The death of the Yellow-Eyed Demon left a massive power vacuum, and all the demons that escaped are jostling for position in that vacuum. The more powerful among them are gathering followers, because the more supporters they have the more they cement their position and bolster their chances of coming out on top in the power struggle, while those further down the ladder align themselves with more powerful demons in hopes of safeguarding their own position and maybe even climbing a few rungs. Others, like Ruby perhaps, who aren't strong enough to gain followers of their own and are unable or unwilling to form alliances with their more dominant fellows, will be striking out on their own, working any end they can to secure a firmer footing. But every one of them is plotting ways of securing a stronger position in the hierarchy – it's chaos, just as Casey said to Dean in Sin City, and that kind of chaos is far more dangerous than straightforward all out war between two clearly defined factions.

"You were one of my best," Tammi admits, allowing Ruby to step right up close to her, and Ruby smiles as happily as if this praise is all she could wish for – then whips her magic demon-killing knife through the air, only for Tammi to grab it by the blade before it can strike a killing blow, blood running down her palm.

If the knife kills demons, surely there should be sparks or smoke or something from a sliced hand? I mean, shooting John in the thigh with the Colt while he was possessed damaged the Yellow-Eyed Demon, so surely a minor wound from this knife should have a similar impact on this demon, relative to the severity of the injury.

"But then again you always were a lying whore," Tammi snarls at Ruby, wrenching the knife from her hand and tossing it aside. It lands close to where Dean is pinned to the wall, for those of us paying attention to small details.

Fighting ensues, which I shan't recap in any detail. Tammi very quickly proves that she is a hell of a lot stronger than Ruby, who puts up a decent enough showing but never comes close to hurting her opponent, who manages to inflict significant damage on her. We've seen in the past that demons can be incapacitated or rendered unconscious in their host bodies, for all that they can keep them functional long after they would have died without the demon's animating force.

"You're really telling me you threw in your chips with Abbott and Costello here?" Tammi scornfully mocks as she smashes Ruby in the head with a fire iron. Ouch. Ruby is pretty much down for the count, and all seems lost.

Elizabeth has been cowering in a corner in fear up till this point, but now that all her potential rescuers have been incapacitated, she finds her backbone and creeps into action. Ignored by Tammi, she tiptoes over to the abandoned black altar and empties a bowl of pins onto it. I'm not going to wonder what the pins were originally intended for.

Tammi's attention is focused on her downed opponent, as she continues to taunt Ruby. "We've been here before, haven't we?" she simpers, then turns to Sam to add, "Oh, she didn't tell you? Pretty mortifying, I guess. She was one of mine. I turned her out a long, long time ago. Ruby here was a witch. Of course, that was when you were human."

The boys look puzzled at this statement, not understanding what it means. Tammi continues to mock Ruby. "Oh, didn't want your friends to know? That all those centuries back you sold yourself to me? Embarrassing, I guess. But don't worry, love. No secrets where you're heading, remember?"

Tammi starts to chant, and Ruby gasps as black demon smoke starts to bubble out of her mouth. Demon exorcisms work differently than human exorcisms, it seems. Or maybe it's just the difference between Gaelic and Latin. Dean and Sam struggle, but remain pinned to the wall. Nothing they can do to affect the outcome of this – Tammi will take Ruby out, and then return her attention to them. Game over.

But no! Providing a very neat twist in the story, it is the innocent who saves the day. Because she isn't really an innocent at all, we should remember. Tammi suddenly starts to cough, appearing vulnerable for the first time, as, over at the table, Elizabeth sits at the black altar chanting desperately, with tears running down her face. The black demon smoke is sucked back into Ruby as Tammi's exorcism is interrupted. Tammi continues to cough and cough, doubling over, and the force she was exerting to hold Dean and Sam against their respective walls is suddenly released, dropping them both to the floor. Sam has rather further to fall than his brother, and collapses in a crumpled heap.

Tammi coughs a mouthful of blood and some long, sharp, wicked-looking pins into her hand, and then turns on Elizabeth, recognising where this unexpected attack has come from. She raises a hand, and clenches it into a fist. At the table, Elizabeth stops mid-chant, clutches at her heart gasping, and drops dead on the spot. That's some scarily impressive power that demon has.

SLAM! Before Tammi can so much as blink, never mind turn around and kill anyone else, Dean slams Ruby's magic demon-killing knife into her side. And again. And again. And again. A lot, in fact. You might call it a touch of overkill if she wasn't so deadly and hadn't come so very close to wiping them all out. Tammi expires in a crackling blaze of red demon-killing fire, and Dean drops her to the ground. I like the knife now that Dean is the one using it! You've got to admire the speed of his reflexes – the second Tammi released him, he went for that knife and charged her. It wasn't in time to save Elizabeth, but still pretty fast.

Once upon a time, the necessary killing of a demon-possessed human was extreme and unusual for our boys, something to agonise over. Now, it is so commonplace they have become desensitised to it, and that is a sad thing. The death toll in this episode is scarily high. No one was saved, really, other than the unfaithful husband, and it's best not to get into any judgements about who does or doesn't deserve to be saved. Our boys don't, although they do tend to debate over who does or doesn't deserve to be killed. Every episode features someone's undeserved tragedy – that's the whole point. It's why the brothers do what they do. It's fairly typical of the show, though, that the human perpetrators of supernatural evil all end up dead at the hands of that supernatural evil, without the boys having to compromise their integrity by killing them, Tammi's host body aside. And I really appreciate that it was Elizabeth who saved the day in the end, rather than Ruby or the brothers. There's something very satisfying about that resolution.

Sam is still on the floor, recovering from Tammi's attempt to crush him to death. Dean spares a glance for Ruby, lying on the floor at his feet, but then turns away to haul his brother to his feet. Ruby's a demon and he still doesn't trust her, for all that she saved his life in the motel and at least tried to save everyone here. Sam is his baby brother, and that trumps everything. He gets Sam upright and claps an arm around his shoulder to keep him there, still keeping a tight hold on his brother's sleeve as he bends to retrieve the Colt.

"Go," Ruby tells the brothers, as she clambers back to her feet, bloody and beaten but unbowed. "I'll clean up this mess."

Dean doesn't need telling twice, ushering Sam toward the door – still keeping a tight hold on his collar in case he stumbles – and retrieving the sawn-off as well, en route. As he picks up the gun, he turns back toward Ruby as if about to say something, but she cuts him off by flashing demon-black eyes to snarl, "Go."

The brothers leave. Ruby turns back to the fallen Tammi and pulls her magic demon-killing knife out of the woman's body, accompanied by a puff of smoke.

Conquistador Motel. Sam splashes water over his face and broods at the mirror. This was not a win, not by a long shot.

Dean slowly wanders back toward the room from the vending machine, having grabbed himself a can of something. The lights start flicking all around, signalling the presence of a demon, and Dean is instantly on alert, stuffing the can into his pocket and cautiously looking all around. He's unarmed, defenceless, and therefore worried, but has to have a pretty good idea who this is.

Sure enough, it's Ruby, standing nearby looking pissed off. It seems to be her default expression where Dean is concerned. He relaxes very slightly when he sees her; better the devil you know, and all that. Or maybe it's that familiarity really does breed contempt.

"So the devil may care after all, is that what I'm supposed to believe?" he challenges by way of greeting.
"I don't believe in the devil," Ruby lightly quips.

She's just being glib, but that's nice, tying in with Casey's explanation in Sin City that the Devil – Lucifer – is a demon religion, believed by some but not others. And, given what we are about to learn about how demons are made, you have to wonder if this concept was something the earliest humans to end up in hell took with them, distorted and exaggerated over the centuries, or something they found already there, distorted and exaggerated over the centuries. Which came first: the chicken or the egg?

"Wacky night," Dean guardedly observes, moving toward her. "So let me get this straight. You were human once, you died, you went to hell and you became a…"
"Yeah," Ruby confirms, turning and walking away to maintain the physical distance between them.
"How long ago," Dean calls after her.
Ruby stops, but doesn't turn around. "Back when the plague was big," she drawls in her most disinterested tone.

Dean takes a few steps forward again. This is a pressing and extremely disturbing topic for him, given his situation, and he's obviously been thinking what he learned in that room through to its logical conclusion.

"So, all of them?" he asks, frowning. "Every damn demon? They were all human once?"
Ruby turns to face him. "Every one I've ever met."
Dean is blown away by this revelation, but tries not to show it. "Well, they sure don't act like it."

The tone Ruby takes for this conversation is interesting. Gone is her usual provocative, cocksure poise, and in its place is grave, contemplative sobriety. Now, she could be feeling a little downbeat because of the hiding she took earlier, but it seems far more likely that she habitually gauges her manner to fit the audience and what she hopes to get out of the conversation. Demons lie, and demons twist the truth, and all of this they do to manipulate people into doing what they want. We've already seen her doing it with Sam and trying it on with Tammi. Now it's Dean's turn, and the groundwork has already been laid. When they met on the road earlier she really hammered the point home that he isn't going to be around much longer. She couldn't have planned Tammi's revelations, but they certainly haven't hurt, focusing Dean's mind on what lies ahead of him all the more.

"Most of them have forgotten what it means," Ruby sombrely explains. "Or even that they were. That's what happens when you go to hell, Dean. That's what hell is: forgetting what you were."
Shaken, Dean nonetheless whips his defensive snark back into place, quick smart. "Philosophy lessons from a demon. I'll pass, thanks."

It comes out half-hearted, though. This is too huge to just brush off with a quip and a smirk. It's his future, and he's staring it in the face, and it's worse than his worst nightmares could ever have prepared him for.

"It's not philosophy," Ruby tells him with a wry snort. "It's not a metaphor. There's a real fire in the Pit, agonies you can't even imagine."

Dean's got his hands stuffed into his pocket, shoulders hunched, every muscle in his body locked and rigid with tension. Defensive posture. His worst nightmare, the most horrific prospect he could have imagined, and he was already dreading what is to come. But he's not going to let her see his fear, joking that he saw Hellraiser and got the gist. Ruby turns away again as she shrugs that actually they got that pretty close, "'cept for all the custom leather."

Behind her back, Dean's eyes are so, so bleak. Everything he's ever done has been for his family and to save lives, and this is his reward: to have every scrap of his humanity burned away and become the thing he hates most, become the very thing he's spent his life fighting against. And there's nothing he can do but wait for it to happen. Viewers can't help but recall Tessa the reaper, back in In My Time Of Dying, cautioning that he was on the brink of becoming an angry spirit if he refused to give up and let go. He was fighting for his family then, and his current situation came about as a result of a sacrifice also made for his family. Man, this guy really needs to learn how to be a bit selfish!

Dean believed for the whole of season two that everyone would have been better off if he'd died when he was supposed to. Everything that's happened in season three can only have cemented that conviction all the more. As Ruby turns back to him, though, the game face is instantly back in place. She's a demon, and no matter that she gives a fine impression of being on the side of good, for whatever reason, he knows better than to drop his guard around her.

"The answer's 'yes', by the way," she remarks. "Yes, the same thing will happen to you. Might take centuries, but sooner or later hell will burn away your humanity. Every hellbound soul, every one turns into something else. Turns into us. So yeah. Yeah, you can count on it."

Hearing it said out loud like that makes it real, so definite and so terrible. It's an awful, awful fate, and Dean is facing it with such terribly desolate resignation.

It's possible, of course, that there is still deception and manipulation going on here, but based on the evidence I tend to think no, that this is a genuine part of the show's mythology being laid out for us here. This explanation of the origin of demons – or at least of some of them, since it is still possible that there are different types – makes a lot of sense of their varying levels of power. We've met a lot of demons over the course of the show, and they were all different: yellow eyes, red eyes, black eyes, different levels of power, differing strengths and abilities. If they all became demons at different times, down in the crucible of the Pit, depending on when they died, then it follows that they would each develop their demonic powers at a different rate, especially when you factor into the equation the varying reasons for a human soul ending up in hell in the first place. You have those that were already pretty evil in life mixed with those who simply lost their way, perhaps, plus those, like Dean, who managed to sell their souls for whatever reason, whether knowingly or in ignorance. If a hellbound soul is already bound to a particular demon that could also have an impact on how long it takes to have the humanity burned away and become something else, as could sheer force of will and how hard they try to hold on to who they were versus how willing they are to just let go. Those that have been down there for millennia will inevitably be stronger and more powerful than those that have only had a few centuries of fire to shape them. It's possible that enslaving human spirits provides a boost to a demon's power, the more the better, one would presume. They can forge alliances, whether temporary or more permanent, and learn from one another, steal from each other; we've seen that the Meg demon picked up all kinds of powerful new tricks during her stint in hell between seasons one and two…. Basically, there are all kinds of possibilities to speculate on.

A seething mass of tortured spirits struggling and burning and climbing all over each other is the impression we are left with, and it's all Dean has to look forward to, the most horrific prospect imaginable.

Dean absorbs Ruby's words, reflects on them for a moment, and reaches a conclusion.

"There's no way of saving me from the Pit, is there?" he guesses.
"No," Ruby admits.

Dean nods and looks down and looks away in the way he does when something hits hard, because he never believed that there was, but Sam's trust in Ruby is founded on her promise that she could do it, and it was the only hope either of them had. And giving Sam false hope hurts him, and that's never going to sit well with Dean.

"Then why'd you tell Sam that you could?" Dean fiercely asks.
"So that he would talk to me," Ruby shrugs. "You Winchesters can be pretty bigoted. I needed something to help him get past the –"
"The demon thing?" Dean gives her his sternest death eyes. "That's pretty hard to get past."
"Look at you. Trying to be all stoic. My god, it's heartbreaking," she mocks.

Dean rolls his eyes, since she's hardly the first demon to tell him she can see right through his defences, although it has to bite that they keep throwing it in his face like that – which, of course, is the point. Demons and their mind games. "Why are you telling me all this," he demands.

Ruby confesses that she needs his help. Dean wants to know what with. With Sam, she says, as if it should be obvious. Dean rolls his eyes again, since the last thing he wants to do is help any demon get closer to his brother.

"The way you stuck that demon today," Ruby appraisingly continues. "That was pretty tough. Sam's almost there, but not quite. You need to help me get him ready. For life without you, to fight this war, on his own."

She already well and truly rubbed his face in the fact that he will shortly be leaving his brother all alone, in their argument on the road, and it's the same thing Sam later told Dean he was trying to prepare for: life after, life without him. What will become of Sam after he is gone is an enormous concern for Dean, especially given everything that's going on. And that makes it the perfect hook, just as the prospect of saving Dean so effectively ensnared Sam. We've seen in the past that Ruby seems keen to lure Sam down some very dark paths indeed; now she is seeking to enlist his brother to help speed up that process. And we still don't know what her real motive is, or what she truly hopes to achieve.

Ruby starts to walk away, but Dean calls after her with a very good question. "Ruby. Why do you want us to win?"
She turns back. "Isn't it obvious? I'm not like them. I don't know why, I wish I was, but I'm not. I remember what it's like."
"What what's like?" Dean wants to know.
"Being human," she says.

Now, this is the one aspect of this episode that doesn't really sit well with me, the notion of demons having consciences and genuinely being on the side of good. There's something worryingly black-and-white about that, straight up choice of good or evil, and I prefer the shades of grey you get when black and white are forced to meet in the middle – which is what the show has always tended toward.

As little as I like the idea, it is possible that she is telling the truth, or some variant thereof: that she genuinely is a 'good' demon, and her sole aim here is to help Sam fight the good fight after his brother is gone…but I really doubt it. Everything we've ever learned on this show has taught us not to trust the word of a demon. So it's important, perhaps, to bear in mind that a major theme of this season so far has been misdirection and falsehood. Ruby is a demon and therefore an unreliable narrator, and has already admitted to lying in order to get what she wants. We've seen her using Sam's desperate desire to save Dean to gain a foothold in his life and trust, so it isn't hard to believe that she would now be using a similar ploy on Dean.

It still seems most likely, therefore, that Ruby has her eyes on a prize of her own, and is using the Winchesters to achieve it, that her quid pro quo with Sam is the focus, but she's now drawing Dean into the scheme, thickening the plot all the more, and perhaps advancing to the next phase of her plan. Demons lie, after all, and they also twist facts to get what they want, and there are so many strands to the game she seems to be playing here. Dean doesn't have a huge amount of time left, and this is a terrifying prospect for two reasons: because of what it means for Sam, and because of what it means for Dean himself. Sam is going to be left all alone in a hostile world, and Dean desperately needs to feel sure that his brother will be all right, that he will be able to cope, that he will survive. By expressing a desire to get Sam ready for that – for whatever reason – Ruby is speaking Dean's own language; it isn't a suggestion he can really argue with, taken at face value.

And, while Sam prepares to be left all alone in the world, Dean is facing an eternity in hell – and has now learned that as a result he will eventually become a demon, the thing he hates most, that he will have every last shred of his humanity burned away as if it never existed. So by presenting herself to him as a demon that remembers its own humanity and is on the side of good, is Ruby offering him a scrap of false hope to cling to, just as she did Sam? Switch followed by carrot. First she destroys any hope he might still have entertained by telling him flat out that he can't be saved and that every single hellbound soul is inevitably forged by fire into his worst possible nightmare. And then, having sent him plumbing the depths of despair, she tosses this unexpected lifeline, this incredible exception to the rule, which by the very fact of its existence – if true, that is – presents him with the tiniest, most miniscule crumb of renewed hope: the twisted prospect that when the worst comes to the worst it might actually be somehow possible to maybe retain some semblance of his own identity and humanity after all. If she can do it, can survive the transformation and still do good, why not him?

Plus, of course, she is tapping into Dean's own motivations here. Dean does what he does because he wants to help people, because he cares. Expressing a similar motivation is as good a way as any of trying to gain his confidence and of swaying him to her way of thinking. And if she wants his cooperation with whatever she has planned for Sam, Dean's confidence is something she needs to possess.

It remains to be seen what Dean will make of this intriguing conversation. What does seem certain is that this is where the secrets that Sam has been keeping start to become really dangerous. Dean doesn't know anywhere near enough about the content of Sam's previous conversations with Ruby. He doesn't know about her stated interest in what the Yellow-Eyed Demon had planned for Sam, doesn't know what she revealed to Sam about the fate of their mother's friends, doesn't know anything, really. Sam has acknowledged Ruby as dangerous while trying to present her to Dean in the most helpful light possible, wanting Dean to agree to his cooperation with her, if only for the sake of how useful she might be. Therefore Dean is getting a distorted image of her, with only his standard 'demons are evil' paranoia to balance it out, which Ruby herself has to have made at least some inroad on dispelling in this episode.

Dean looks away, overwhelmed, and when he looks back, Ruby has vanished. The camera pans back on Dean, all alone in the parking lot with the weight of the world on his shoulders.


February 2008

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