By: Dan
I’ve just enjoyed the latest episode of Supernatural, ‘Pac-Man Fever’.
Sam and Dean are contacted by old friend Charlie Bradbury who brings them a case where the victim’s insides have been liquefied. As Sam is still recovering from the second trial, Dean benches him and decides to teach Charlie how to hunt. After the coroner refuses to let them see the body, Dean decides to break in that night, but before he can, a second victim is discovered.
At the crime scene, Sam shows up, refusing to stay behind and together they investigate only to learn that the coroner has cremated the bodies and they determine the monster is a “bastard off-shoot” of a Djinn. Charlie leaves to secretly donate money to a brain-dead woman, but is captured by the Djinn who is actually the coroner and put into a fear-induced dream. While searching for Charlie, Sam and Dean learn about the woman who is actually Charlie’s mother.
They locate Charlie and kill the coroner, but are unable to free her from the Djinn’s poison, so Dean enters Charlie’s dreams to break her out. Dean finds her trapped in a nightmare of a videogame she stole and sold as a kid where she must endlessly defend her mother from super-soldier vampires. Dean realizes that Charlie’s fear is of losing her mother and he gets her to realize that her mother is long gone and let go.
Once she does, she returns to the waking world where Sam has killed a second Djinn, the coroner’s son and the true culprit behind the deaths. Charlie leaves, but is invited to visit again to look through the Men of Letters’ archives. Dean finally agrees to let Sam hunt again and start the search for Kevin. Charlie decides to let her mother go and has her taken off of life-support, but first reads The Hobbit to her one last time like her mother used to do to Charlie when she was a child.
It was a wonderful episode, that really delved into the back history of Charlie – showing us what shaped her into the person she is, and what drives her going forward. It continued the overall plot line of the season, but also had room for some fun, and plenty of emotion. I can’t wait for more next week.
Thanks for reading.
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