Sam does a fairly decent impression of the Season Two title card. Don't try this at home, kids.
It’s not too tough to figure out to whom the title of this episode refers. Without his soul, Sam did some horrendous things, and having Dean around again after a year only somewhat mitigated that horrendousness. And in this second episode with his soul reinstated, he comes face to face with one instance. Sam being Sam once more, he wants to atone for his misdeeds, even if he’s not entirely sure what they are.
In the first of what will be a series of flashbacks to Bristol, Rhode Island, when Sam was hunting with Samuel, we find Sam calmly shooting several someones or somethings, and Grandpa doesn’t look the least bit comfortable about it. They’re soon hustling away from a burning building and hitting the road. On their way out of town, however, they’re pulled over by an upset deputy who is dealing with a missing sheriff and suspects these two “federal agents” may know something about it. When he insists they come back to the station with him, Sam beats the holy crap out of him, leaving him unconscious in the middle of the road. “You think there are maybe calmer ways we could’ve done all that?” Samuel chides. “Do we care?” Sam responds.
Present day finds resouled Sam catching up his celebrity news when he gets a mysterious text message containing some unknown coordinates. No one answers when he calls back to the unfamiliar number, but a little research reveals the coordinates are for Bristol, Rhode Island, where three girls have recently gone missing. Dean hears all kinds of alarms in this situation, but Sam thinks the disappearances are worth checking into. And they aren’t even in town yet when things start getting “squirrely.” Just driving past the welcome billboard on the edge of town kicks off a load of flashes in Sam’s head of the last time he was here. Needless to say, “Where Memories Are Made” is an apt motto, and Sam quietly freaks out. While failing spectacularly at keeping it from Dean, I might add. They go over the details of the case while dining at Captain Bob’s Buccaneer, a gloriously cheesy pirate-themed restaurant. They even have the restrooms labeled as “The Poop Deck.” And while Dean pays a visit to the head, Sam tries to figure out why all these brunettes were targeted, as hair color seems to be the only common denominator. Seconds later, however, he’s scrambling to keep up a cover he doesn’t remember when another local brunette stops by the table to warmly greet “Agent Roark.” Dean returns just as she’s asking about “the big bald guy” and makes “we should be going” noises, prompting the brunette to move along. As she passes, she lays a hand on Sam’s shoulder, causing another memory to rush back; that of banging her in a public restroom last year. No wonder her husband was watching her so suspiciously. “What was that?” Dean wonders. “She just cougar-eyed you.” Sam’s theory, that he and Samuel worked a case here, is confirmed when Dean tosses a Polaroid on the table from the Captain’s Sea Challenge bulletin board–showing Sam and Samuel in the background of the shot.
The Puppy Dog Eyes of Intense Sincerity and I Can't Remember Crap About Last Year. Nearly infallible.
Dean immediately wants to get the heck out of Dodge, since they don’t have any idea what happened on Sam’s last visit, or what the fallout might be, but Sam is of a mind to finish his unfinished business, whatever it was, especially since there are still Rhode Islanders vanishing. “Sam, there is a reason hunters don’t hit the same town over again. Because we have a habit of leaving messes behind,” Dean argues. “One of Dad’s rules,” he continues, “you never use the same crapper twice.” “Dad also said, you finish what you start,” Sam counters. Eventually, he sways Dean, albeit very reluctantly. So, Dean heads out to interview friends and families of the missing girls while Sam swings by the police station. Dean quickly learns that Sam interviewed one of the missing girls last year while investigating the missing men…and so much more. Her roommate describes the “tone and nature of their conversations” as “…loud, and…athletic.” Heh. Soulless Sam really took advantage of that whole no inhibitions thing. Meanwhile, Sam doesn’t even get across the police station parking lot before he’s stopped and cuffed by the very deputy he now recalls beating to a pulp. And the guy is still pissed. So, Sam finds himself in a cell, with his amnesia story utterly dismissed. Hours later, he gets a visit from a distraught woman, who it turns out is the wife of the missing Sheriff Dobbs, Brenna. She, too, has had a year to stew, the difference being that a year ago, Sam and Samuel told her and her husband who they really were. The Puppy Dog Eyes of Intense Sincerity and I Can’t Remember Crap About Last Year eventually sway her into helping him. As she works at the station, she’s snagged the keys and lets him out so he can go figure out what really happened.
Elsewhere in Bristol, Chick Soulless Sam Banged #1 goes down to her basement for another box of wine, only to be snatched by some unseen creature. Now holed up as a fugitive–again–in the rundown abandoned house they’re squatting in(ever notice these places always include a full complement of mangy furniture?), Sam is jumpy enough to nearly shoot Dean when he returns, and is somewhat vexed to learn he had yet another “exercise partner” he doesn’t remember. Dean on the other hand? “I gotta say, man, you really got around. Soulless or not, I’m actually kind of impressed.” The report of CSSB #1 comes across the police scanner just then, and Dean heads out again, ordering Sam to stay put. Which lasts all of five seconds. And apparently CSSB #1’s husband, Don, gives Dean quite an earful, because he’s soon connected the dots: all the missing women are Chicks Soulless Sam Banged. The mysterious text and the victims are all a trap for Sam. But instead of answering Dean’s warning calls, Sam is off breaking into the police station and then Brenna Dobbs’ house to find the case files on the first batch of disappearances. And while Brenna is upstairs collecting the box of files, Sam has another flashback, to a previous visit to this living room; during which his soulless self claimed family slows you down, rather horrifying his current self. Oh, but the horror has just begun.
For one picture and a bit of cobweb in an evidence bag are enough to recall he and Samuel had been hunting an arachne, another of those recently immigrated creatures thought long extinct. Sensing he’s on the verge of a total recall moment–and knowing it could damage that wall in his head–he asks to borrow the files. Better to possibly fall apart in the privacy of the abandoned house, with Dean present. As he departs, he finally gets Dean’s message, at the same time he’s noticing a large, thick web drifting along the edge of Brenna’s porch in the cold winter breeze. It’s all very spooky, and in true horror movie fashion, just when you expect the monster to jump up out of the dark and snatch Our Hero, an innocent hand on his shoulder scares the crap out of him. Except that Sam is much more prepared than the usual movie protagonist, and spins to train his gun on Dean in a split second. “I almost shot you–again!” he complains. Heh. Dean can be really sneaky sometimes. Back at their ramshackle abode, Dean summarizes. “So, we know that this is a monster with opposable thumbs and unlimited text messaging, and we know that it wants to kill you specifically, does that about cover it?” And when Sam reveals he remembered some of the case, Dean is ready to bail immediately to avoid more wall-scratching on Sam’s part. But Sammy is back in full force now. “Look, I’m starting to think that I might’ve done some bad stuff here, Dean. And so I don’t care if it’s dangerous, I have to set things right. ’Cause I got a friggin’ soul now, and it won’t let me just walk away.” Aww, Sammy. Dean appears to be thinking he should be careful what he wishes for. This is the Sam he wanted back, but now he’s recalling how Sam’s moral stances drove him nuts on occasion. Still, he’s not about to leave without his brother, and reluctantly agrees to help Sam dredge up the pertinent details from behind the wall in his head.
And boy, do they come back. With all the case files, evidence, maps, etc., spread out before him, the whole thing floods back into Sam’s consciousness. Once they had figured out they were hunting an arachne, Sam and Samuel set a trap at a local park, using the trusting and recently enlightened Sheriff Roy Dobbs as bait. Sure enough, he’s snatched by the creature. Plan A had been to catch the thing as it went after Roy; Plan B is to follow the GPS on Roy’s phone back to the lair. “My God, son, you’re about as cold as they come, you know that?” Grandpa comments. You ain’t seen the half of it yet, Gramps. Sam’s plan leads them to an old over-grown dock-side office that night, and the place is covered in webs. Wherein they find all the missing men, well cocooned and half-dead, including Roy. The arachne attacks, injures Sam, tosses Samuel across the room after he empties his handgun into her, then loses her head to Sam’s machete. “Well, I guess decapitation works.” Which leaves them with helping her victims. Samuel wants to rush them to the nearest hospital, but Sam declares them “dead mean walking”, with the arachne poison coursing through their veins. His solution? Put them out of their misery. And here we see just how stone-cold Sam was without his soul–we find Sam calmly shooting the arachne’s victims in the head, and Grandpa doesn’t look the least bit comfortable about it. After that, he just as calmly orders the burning of the building to disguise the bodies. Needless to say, this is all way past horrifying for current day Sam.
Brenna, meanwhile, is shocked to see her dead husband walk in the back door. And while he’s looking pretty good for a guy who took a bullet to the head, he’s not gonna win any beauty contests. When Sam calls, she asks if he can stop by in her best I’m-trying-to-remain-calm-but-my-presumed-dead-husband-just-turned-up-again-and-he’s-Spiderman voice. It’s still snowing when the guys pull up and step cautiously into the Dobbs’ cavernous garden shed, machetes drawn. Soon enough, Arachne Roy has Sam and Dean webbed up against a couple support beams. Since his beef is with Sam, he doesn’t pay much attention to Dean, who spies a shard of broken glass within reach and starts discreetly sawing at the webs with it. Roy’s Evil Monologue reveals the arachne Sam killed had turned them, not fed on them, and he did the same with the girls who disappeared the past couple of weeks, all to get Sam back in town so he could exact his revenge. Only he hasn’t decided whether to kill Sam or turn him as well. While he’s debating that, Dean breaks free, rushes him, and gets tossed around. Brenna grabs a dropped machete to cut Sam free, and he in return decapitates her husband to save Dean. In another instance of be careful what you wish for, Brenna now knows what happened to Roy, and that Sam killed him, twice. When he gives her a ride home, she can’t even bear to look at him, slamming the door in his face as he tries to apologize. Sometimes even the wins feel like losses.
As they pack up to leave town, Sam admits Dean was right about this case, and they never should have come to Bristol. Dean tries to bright side things, but Sam wonders out loud what else he did elsewhere…at least he starts to. In the middle of his sentence he suddenly crashes to the floor in a major seizure. As Dean rushes to his side he goes still, and in a nice parallel to the cliffhanger in “No Rest for the Wicked” that ended Season Three, the camera dives into Sam’s open, unseeing eye, through rings of fire, into his earliest memory of Hell, when the flames first burned away his clothes and skin and left him screaming. Okay, I know some have issues with the special effects for this, but you have to admit Jared does sell the pain and agony. And that’s what sticks with me–this is Sam’s personal Hell, and it’s only just beginning.
