SUPERNATURAL Delivers With Huge Doses of Geekery

Episode 720: “The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo”

[photos: Jack Rowand & Liane Hentscher/CW]

Felicia Day and writer Robbie Thompson are officially the greatest things ever. The end.

No, seriously. I may have only just started watching Supernatural recently, but this episode made my head explode from the sheer quantity of geekservice.

We start off with a much needed and extremely rapid-pace tying together of a whole lot of plot threads. In five minutes flat we discover the real reason behind the nefarious dealings of the Leviathans – we’re all being tamed and fattened up for a big global “happy meal,” as Dean Winchester put it. Happy for the monsters, not so happy for us. It all makes sense now.

The stage being set for the final showdown of the waning season seven, we meet the geektacular Charlie (Felicia Day, in a Princess Leia tee), whose nervous and frenetic energy adds to the excitement, tension and humor of the episode. She works for Dick Roman’s company and is given the deceased Frank’s hard drive to crack amidst her impressive collection of PEZ dispensers and bobbleheads. Crack it she does, and, like her bobbleheaded idol Hermione Granger, she can’t help but sneak a peek into the files, despite the fact that she was ordered to turn over the drive immediately. Whoops.

Turns out her boss is, quite literally, a monster. Disturbed, she heads for her car only to witness one of Dick’s henchmen eating someone in the parking garage, proving beyond a doubt that the information on Frank’s hard drive was true. Once at home, she encounters the Winchesters and the trio team up in order to try and get back into Dick’s office to grab that vital information for themselves.

Where’s Bobby during all this? The sneaky devil slipped his flask, the physical item he’s tied to, into Charlie’s bag despite Sam and Dean telling him to stay out of it so that he doesn’t go “vengeful.” This is the one thorn in my side with the entire episode, and actually this entire season. Yes, bring Bobby back as a ghost, that’s perfect, but why ruin a beloved character by corrupting him by degrees? They’ve already telegraphed several times that spirits “degrade” and that “what are the chances this ends well?” Well, writers, this is all up to you. Do the right thing here.

Naturally, during the course of the evening, Dick figures out that Charlie’s a turncoat and locks the doors, sealing her inside the building. The Winchesters are outside. Charlie and Bobby are inside. Dick is coming.

Bobby focuses, places his hands on the glass doors and they spiderweb, but don’t shatter. Right as Dick and his henchman are about to get Charlie, Bobby throws the henchman into Charlie (breaking her arm), throws Dick backwards into a something cement with painful-looking corners, and the Winchesters tumble through the window to the rescue unable to see anything that just occurred.

Everybody escapes, Charlie grabs a bus out of town to assume a new identity, the Winchesters are left with a seemingly innocent lump of clay that Dick Roman is very upset about losing, and the tension rises as we approach the final showdown. And Bobby… well… I hope the writers have mercy on us viewers and give him a decent ending if they can’t manage to give him a meaningful afterlife.

[Official Show Site at CW]