SUPERNATURAL Recap: Old Heroes Die Hard

Season 11, Episode 15: “Beyond the Mat”
Directed by Jerry Wanek
Written by John Bring & Andrew Dabb

[photos: Liane Hentscher/The CW]

I didn’t care much for this episode. Once in a while, Supernatural likes to torture the boys unnecessarily. This episode was all about destroying idols and pointing out their clay feet. While they didn’t get tortured physically, it was a dark, morbid episode. And not in a good way.

We open at a wrestling match. Guest star Mike “The Miz” Mizanin is wrestling the Hangman. The Hangman (Travis Watters) is more than a bit drunk and almost strangles Harley, which is the Miz’s character, after he puts a noose around his neck. The noose falls from the ceiling at some predetermined time in the show. (Do they really do that in wrestling?)  Harley is so angry that he threatens the Hangman in front of witnesses. Another older wrestler steps in to calm then down. Alone and drinking in the locker room, the hangman ends up hanged by his own rope. It was missing from his locker earlier.

Dean (Jensen Ackles) sees the obituary in the paper and wants to go to the funeral to stretch his legs. A funeral, Dean? That sounds like so much fun. Just the break you need. Their dad used to take them to Top Notch wrestling and the Hangman was dad’s favorite wrestler.

Meanwhile, Castifer (Misha Collins) is organizing the troops to find another Hand of God and humiliating Crowley (Mark Sheppard) some more. This leads to our seeing Lucifer in Castiel quoting Tommy Lee Jones, which is a little surreal.

At the funeral, Dean goes nuts over Gunner Lawless (Aleks Paunovic), who was evidently his favorite. Dean says he was robbed during a match on Pay Per View and there’s a fleeting expression of guilt or regret on Lawless’s face. Sam meets Rio (Jackie Debatin), whom he had a crush on. She asks if he was one of the guys who had her poster above his bed and he denies it. He totally had her poster over his bed. Rio thinks that Hangman committed suicide.

The boys go to the memorial show that night. They remember Top Notch being more top notch. Sam (Jared Padalecki) tells Dean that they are only making 25 bucks a night.  There is a real Brimson, Missouri. I’m sure they picked it because it sounds like brimstone. But in real life, it has all of sixty-three people. They’d be doing good to make that much money! Dean says that it doesn’t seem worth it, going to town after town, risking their asses,  no money, no glory. Sam says he just described their jobs. They meet a dad with a kid, which brings back memories.

Backstage, a man with a strange long face hands Lawless a packet. Harley witnesses this.

Lawless comes out and Dean jumps up, ready to get the glove that Lawless always gives to someone in the audience, but Lawless gives it to the kid. I guess Dean forgot he wasn’t a kid for a moment. We then watch the match, where Lawless wrestles someone in what might be a devil suit. The best thing about the match is watching Sam and Dean. Sam might have been detached before it started, but he was as much into it as Dean.

After Lawless defeats the devil, the dad behind them needs to go pay rent for his beer. The line to the restroom is long, so he goes out back to pee in the street and gets killed.

He is sliced up and has ritual markings. Sam convinces Dean that it’s a case. Dean goes back into the building and no one is there. This is the absolute best part of the episode: Dean bounces around the ring pretending he’s a wrestler until he gets caught by Rio. The only information that he gets out of her is that a body was found in another town they were in, and that everyone is at the bar.

The lovely young lady demon with the very big hair, Simmons (Bethany Brown), springs Crowley from his kennel.

Dean goes to the bar. He and Gunner bond over scars. Gunner says no matter how much he’s beat up, he just keeps on grinding. Sam calls and says the bodies, including the Hangman, have an ancient Sumerian symbol on them that means that their souls are being taken. Harley accuses Gunner of taking drugs. There’s a fight and Harley leaves. Dean doses everyone in the bar with holy water and tequila shots, which results in his drinking way too much. No one reacts to the holy water. They go to find Harley, since he’s the only one that didn’t get tested. His room was trashed and Sam taps into security footage that shows Gunner has taken Harley.

Gunner and the long-faced demon have Harley tied up. The demon, Duke (Aidan Kahn), is using Gunner to collect souls, and wants another servant. This is the second best part of the episode. Harley makes a logical, sensible conclusion. He says no. He says if there is a Hell, there’s a heaven, and he’s not going to give up his chance at paradise for a belt he could win on his own anyway. So the demon hamstrings him and tells Gunner to kill Harley. Gunner balks, but does it.

Simmons and Crowley go to his super secret stash. He has the Rod of Aaron, that he now realizes is a Hand of God artifact. Castifer shows up and reveals that Simmons let him out to lead to any weapons Crowley has. Crowley uses the rod but Simmons jumps in the way and is obliterated. He finds out to his dismay that the rod only works once, just like the artifact in the last episode, but he gets away from Castifer.

The Winchesters burst in too late to save Harley. Gunner goes after Dean. Duke keeps Sam restrained. Dean tells Gunner he knows about demons and deals; Gunner tells Dean his story, that he sold his soul years ago for a belt and does the demon’s bidding to stay alive. Dean tells him that it’s not too late to do the right thing. The demon tells Sam that he is stashing souls for himself due to the instability in Hell. We see Sam about to be killed by the demon, but Gunner stabs him from behind with one of their demon killing daggers.

Gunner hears the Hell hounds coming. Dean offers him a gun, presumably to off himself, but he says he deserves what he gets. They leave him to be dragged to Hell.

They get to the bunker, looking shaky, and Dean says Gunner was a good man and didn’t deserve to go out that way. He and Sam reaffirm that they will save Cas, beat the devil, and shank the Darkness. They will keep on grinding.

Thoughts: Overall, this episode is a downer. It foreshadows death and defeat. They identify with Gunner. They have both made deals they shouldn’t have, and they are now worried about Cas. But Gunner doesn’t get a last minute reprieve or a divine intervention. And he was not, in fact, a good man. He killed the drunk Hangman (who was a family man), the drunk father, and poor Harley. I know this is the kind of story where Gunner’s fan Dean brings out the good person in him and he saves the day. Maybe it would have been more emotionally satisfying if Harley had been saved as well.

Poor Dean has to find out his idol is a serial killer, enslaved to a demon. He handles it pretty well but it’s an awful thing to do the guy who forgot he wasn’t a kid anymore and wanted the glove.

The hamstringing was unnecessary. Why cripple the guy if you’re going to kill him? Although it was par for the course. Everyone Gunner killed was incapacitated. I wondered for a minute how he could have gotten to the drunk father since he was just getting off the mat, but the guy was peeing right behind a trailer marked with the Top Notch logo.

It might have been better if we had heard some mention of the wrestling in a recent episode, or if there were a flashback to Sam and Dean’s childhoods. I always enjoy seeing them as boys. It might not have been possible to get Jeffrey Dean Morgan since he is now on The Walking Dead.  It would have been better if Sam had not said that Dean had just described their jobs. The viewer can figure that out for themselves.

On the positive side, Aleks Paunovic , who played Gunner, and Mike “The Miz” Mizanin, who played Harley, did good work with their roles. They were not just hired for their muscles.

Questions: They never really explained the packet that the demon, Duke, gave to Gunner. Was he keeping him strong and fit for the ring with some spell? He did throw Dean through a wall.

New info: Crowley is out. We know that a Hand of God can destroy a demon, but so can Lucifer with a snap of his fingers. We also know that Crowley can handle an artifact without being consumed by it.

Duke was making his own stash of souls-maybe that’s why recruitment is down in Hell?

The previews show Amara and a voice saying that the world will burn. But it’s safe for now. Supernatural does not return until  March 23.

 

Supernatural airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW.