Recap / Supernatural S 08 E 05 Blood Brother

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Recap of Supernatural
Season 8, Episode 5

Blood Brother

"A little rest, half a cooler full of AB negative, most wounds short of an amputation will mend up, vampirically speaking." —Benny to Dean

"I have to agree with the vampire, Dean. The risk of crossing Purgatory with a seraph, it's...less than strategic."

—Castiel

Written by Ben Edlund.

Directed by Guy Bee.

Air Date: October 31, 2012.

In Eagle Harbor, Washington, Benny, the vampire who helped Dean escape Purgatory, finds Quentin, a member of Benny's old vampire nest and also the person who held Benny's legs when he was beheaded. Benny asks Quentin where the Old Man is, but there are two other vampires who ambush Benny. He beheads Quentin, but is badly wounded by the others.

We then find the Winchester brothers in the Paradise Motel in Enid, Oregon. They have been trying to track down Kevin, but continue to be outsmarted by him, as he manipulates his credit card records. Dean gets a call from Benny asking for help, and leaves without telling Sam where he is going, which results in an argument between the two brothers.

Dean has a flashback of fighting with Benny in Purgatory as he drives to Washington. Sam starts tracking down Kevin, but is sidetracked into a search of Amelia's credit history. He is distracted by the sound of a malfunctioning fan, and has his own flashback of getting a job at a motel and getting to know Amelia.

Dean finds Benny unable to stand and covered in blood. He gives him a cooler full of plasma for transfusions and Benny makes an almost-complete recovery. When Dean asks what is going on, Benny is reluctant to tell him and says he has done enough already. When Dean insists on knowing, Benny responds, "You and that whole friend thing, man". This triggers a flashback to the two of them with Castiel in Purgatory. Benny is trying to convince Dean that continuing with Castiel is too risky, and Castiel agrees with him, pointing out it is unlikely an angel could pass through a portal made for humans. Dean insists Castiel is going to make it out with them.

In the present time, Benny reveals that he is hunting his maker, who killed Benny after he betrayed the nest over a woman, Andrea. The nest attacks yachts, functioning as vampire-pirates. They search Quentin's belongings and are able to track down the nest in Prentiss Island by finding a cable bill. As they drive to the island, Benny tells Dean how he left the nest and changed his life after meeting Andrea, but they were tracked down by his maker, who killed him and Andrea.

When Dean and Benny infiltrate the vampire nest, Benny is so surprised to see Andrea alive that he is captured and handcuffed to a chair by the vampires. Dean decides to call Sam and ask for help at this point and then starts hunting down the vampires in the nest. Benny finds out that Andrea was turned into a vampire and is currently the maker's lover and second-in-command. Andrea manages to slip Benny a knife and the keys to the handcuffs before he is taken to see his maker. Benny finds out that Andrea was evidently kept alive to maintain a connection to Benny, the maker's favorite. Benny unlocks his handcuffs and beheads Sorento. His maker tries to convince him that everything he believes in is false, but Benny attacks him as well.

After killing several vampires, Dean has another flashback to Purgatory, where Castiel, Benny, and he are attacked by a group of Leviathans and Benny saves Castiel's life. Sam steals a car and starts driving to Prentiss Island. Benny returns the knife, now covered in blood, to Andrea, and tells her that the Old Man is dead. She is not willing to leave with him, and instead wants to run things herself. He tells her she is no longer the woman he loved, which prompts her to attack him. Dean arrives just in time and stabs her from behind. Sam is waiting on the shore when they get off the dinghy and meets Benny. When Sam shakes Benny's hand he feels the cold flesh and reaches for his knife, but Dean shakes his head and Sam backs down. Benny then says, "I can see you two have a lot to talk about."

Body Count:

For this episode = 14 vampires.

For the series so far = At least 825 humans (of which 6 were witches), 106 demons, 58 angels, 47 ghosts, 42 vampires, 36 Jefferson Starships, 19 zombies, 19 gods, 9 hellhounds, 7 skinwalkers, 6 changelings, 5 shapeshifters, 5 werewolves, 4 ghouls, 4 Leviathan, 3 djinn, 3 dogs, 2 Amazons, 2 arachnes, 2 kitsunes, 2 rugarus, 2 vetalas, 1 crocotta, 1 dragon, 1 fairy, 1 Khan worm, 1 lamia, the Mother of All, 1 okami, 1 phoenix, 1 Purgatory creature, 1 rakshasa, 1 rawhead, 1 reaper, 1 shojo, 1 shtriga, 1 siren, 1 wendigo, 1 whore of Babylon, and 1 wraith.

Tropes

• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Dean continues to refer to Castiel as "Cas".
  • Benny's maker shortens Sorento to "So-So".
  • While most people refer to him as Benny, Benny's maker calls him "Benjamin".
• A God Am I: While many vampires consider their makers to be like a god, Benny's maker actually seems to believe it.
• The Alcoholic: Maybe Amelia is afraid of getting scurvy or is cooking a lot of ceviche, but it seems likely the limes were meant to imply she is drinking quite a few cocktails, beers, and/or shots. The margarita glass on the counter supports this theory.
• Anger Born of Worry: Some, but not all, of Sam's anger at Dean.
• Answer Cut: After all's said and done, Benny asks Dean why he kept his end of the bargain and resurrected him. Dean deflects the question, but we get a flashback from their time in Purgatory: Castiel is about to be killed by a Leviathan and Benny, who had spend most of the trek grumbling about how their escape would be easier if they ditched the angel, immediately jumps to Castiel's defense and beheads the monster, saving Castiel's life.
• Antagonist in Mourning:
  Benny's maker: I know it won't change anything, but I regretted having you killed. When it was all done, I wailed when I saw you in all those pieces. Didn't I, Sorento? Didn't I wail like the ugliest baby in the world?
• Back from the Dead:
  Quentin: [to Benny] You go and crawl your way out of God's ass for another ride on the merry-go-round.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Dean and Benny during a fight in Purgatory, with Benny whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King".
• Beard of Evil: Sam's hair style is lampshaded my Amelia.
  Amelia: I knew there was something off about you, with your creepy Army-Navy and your sideburns.
• Big Brother Instinct: Inverted Trope, with little brother Sam slamming the gas pedal in a stolen car because he is worried about his big brother.
• Blood Lust:
  Andrea: You remember what it's like at first. Life is blood, that's all—and whoever gives it to you.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Of the I Hate You, Vampire Dad variety.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Benny's maker.
  Benny's maker: I am evil, after all. At least I've had that much to keep me cold at night.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Dean almost sends a text to Sam, when he arrives at Prentiss Island, but deletes it.
  Dean's deleted text: Hunting vamps—nest on Prentiss Island...not alone.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Sam reminds Dean that Kevin was in Advanced Placement to explain how he keeps outsmarting them, recalling Kevin's answer to Meg in "Reading Is Fundamental" (S07, E21).
    Meg: Not a demon nor a chomper. What the hell are you?
    Kevin: I'm a...K—Kevin Tran. I'm in Advanced Placement. P—please don't kill me.
  • His maker refers to Benny as his "wayward son", referencing "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas, which plays over The Road So Far every Season Finale.
  • "Dean, you don't have any friends. All your friends are dead."
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: Unlike most examples of this trope, we see Dean running up behind Andrea a second before he kills her.
• A Day in the Limelight: We have the first Benny-centric story.
• Deader than Dead: Leave it to Castiel to ask the question we've all been wondering all season.
  Castiel: It does present a curious curl in the metaphysics, doesn't it? If you murder a monster in Monster Heaven, where does it go?
• Death from Above: Leviathans hurl to the ground and form into a Badass in a Nice Suit.
• Decapitation Required: To kill a vampire.
• Despair Event Horizon: After Andrea's death, Benny asks Dean why he resurrected him instead of just dumping his soul. Then when Sam is reaching for his knife, Benny sees but doesn't move to defend himself.
• Divine Date:
  Benny: [to Andrea] Well, sleeping with God has got to have some perks.
• A Dog Named "Dog":
  Amelia: "Dog"? That's what you're calling him?
• Doom Magnet: Benny calls both Castiel and Dean this in Purgatory.
  Benny: [watching Castiel kill a monster] Well, I got to admit, Dean, he's got his strong points, but holy hell if he ain't a magnet.
  Dean: Well, before we found Cas, you said it was my humanity that was drawing too much attention.
  Benny: Yeah, that too.
• Double Entendre:
  Amelia: [to Sam, who grabbed her bag of limes] Don't touch the produce.
• The Drifter: Sam in Kermit, Texas. Lampshaded by Amelia.
  Amelia: I think it's creepy you buy all your clothing at Army Surplus. White supremacists do that.
  Sam: Yeah, but I'm not.
  Amelia: Drifting serial killers do that.
  Sam: Fair enough.
  Amelia: You come from nowhere, you appear to be going nowhere and you've, quote, "seen a lot of stitches". It's all pretty solid creepy.
• Eat the Rich: A literal interpretation that allowed the vampire nest to survive by attacking yachts.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave:
  Sam: A "friend"? Dean, you don't have any—all your friends are dead.
• Evil Mentor: Benny's maker.
• Facial Dialogue: On feeling Benny's cold hand, Sam has a look of fury and reaches for his knife, but Dean silently shakes his head to make Sam back down.
• Faking the Dead: Benny was led to believe his maker had killed Andrea, but instead she was turned into a vampire.
• Fantastic Racism: Castiel shows overt contempt for Benny. In fairness, the feeling is returned.
• Flaming Devil: Benny's maker.
• Faux Affably Evil: Benny's maker.
• Femme Fatale: Andrea
• Funny Answering Machine: "This is Dean's other, other phone..."
• A Glass of Chianti: Inverted Trope. Instead of sipping the blood from a glass in a refined manner, Benny slurps it out of the tube attached to the plasma bag as if it was a straw.
• A God Am I: Benny's maker.
  Benny's maker: This is my story, you gnat. It ends the way I choose.
• Graduate School Is High School Part 3: Amelia's transcripts reveal a C in Trigonometry, Vet History, and Business Management. This of course begs the question of why history and trigonometry are being taught in veterinary school.
• Grand Staircase Entrance: Andrea's introduction.
• Healing Factor: Blood for vampires.
• Hero Stole My Bike: Sam steals a car to go and rescue Dean.
• Hollywood Hacking: Dean and Sam chasing Kevin, and Kevin leading them on a wild goose chase.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters:
  Benny: And I think we both know which of our kind kills more humans.
  Castiel: Well, statistically speaking, that'd be your—
  Dean: Yes, thank you, Cas.
• I Can't Feel My Legs!: Subverted Trope. Despite Benny saying his "legs aren't working so good", he recovers completely after drinking blood.
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad
• Interchangeable Asian Cultures: Kevin switches his surname from Tran (the 3rd most common Vietnamese surname) to Park (the 3rd most common Korean surname) on the credit applications.
• Interspecies Romance: Benny and Andrea when she was still human.
• Island Base: Prentiss Island for the vampire nest.
• Kinda Busy Here: Played with; Sam calls Dean while he's in the vampire nest, but fortunately his phone is on vibrate. Then Dean calls back and lampshades the trope.
• Lonely Together: Sam and Amelia.
• Love Redeems: Benny's love for Andrea leads him to question his maker.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Benny is very seriously injured at the beginning of the episode, but explains the situation very calmly to Dean over the phone.
• Meaningful Name: We see that Kevin's e-mail is [e-mail].

• Mirror Character:
  • Amelia, who, like Sam, has no one.
  • Benny's story of how his life changed once he fell in love matches that of Sam and Amelia. And Dean and Cas.
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: While Amelia has remained aloof to those around her (not knowing the name of the boy at the front desk of the motel or that his father is sick) and often assumes the worst about other people (her reaction to Sam fixing her sink), you have a feeling she maintains this distance to protect herself from something in her past (which may also be why she is still living in a motel three months after moving to Kermit).
• Monogender Monsters: Averted as one of the Leviathans is female.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Benny clearly thinks so.
• Mr. Fixit: Sam at the motel.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
  • Benny's old nest were vampire-pirates, or, as Dean says "vampirates", which turns out not be as original as Benny seemed to think (there's a webcomic called Vampirates, another called Charby the Vampirate, and a Vampirates book series).
  • Since Benny is a vampire-pirate back from the dead, does this upgrade him to vampire-zombie-pirate?
• Non-Indicative Name: There's constant reference to "The Old Man", so when Benny's maker is revealed, his youthful appearance is a surprise.
• No One Gets Left Behind:
  Dean: [to Benny and Castiel] Listen to me, you undead blood junkie, I'm the one with the mojo. I'm the one with the plan. Cas, we're going to shove your ass back through the eye of that needle if it kills all three of us.
• Not What It Looks Like: Upon finding Sam in her motel room, Amelia immediately mistakes him for a stalker, not knowing that he works there doing maintenance and was fixing her sink.
• Paint the Town Red: After Benny takes out Quentin and his henchmen, we see a blood-covered street complete with lifeless bodies and unattached heads.
• Product Placement:
  Dean: Mind if I take the Toblerone?
• Punny Name: The yachts on the list: Age of Aquarius II; The Big Mermaid; Solitaire; Lucky Myra; Sea You Later.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: We find out that Benny died of decapitation and witness the beheadings of Quentin, Sorento, Andrea, and at least two monsters in Purgatory.
• Right Under Their Noses: Benny and Dean take a dinghy to the island and walk right into the vampire lair with no one stopping them.
• Ring-Ring-CRUNCH!: Dean uses his cell phone to distract a vampire, but when he beheads the vampire he ends up Cutting the Electronic Leash.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Benny's plans to kill his maker and burn down the operation.
• Run or Die: What you do if Leviathans are coming.
• Ruthless Modern Pirates: The vampire nest targeted yachts leaving on long sea journeys so they could kill without trace.
• See You in Hell: Or in this case, in Purgatory.
• Shout-Out:
  • Dean compares Kevin to Rain Man:
    Dean: The kid's like Rain Man. He's like a crappy little credit card-counting, criminal prodigy Rain Man.
  • Sam says Kevin is a Wascally Wabbit.
  • During the first flashback in Purgatory, Benny is whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from the Peer Gynt Suites by Edvard Grieg.
    • This was reported by the director, Guy Bee, to be an homage to Fritz Lang movie M, where the serial killer whistles the same tune.invoked
    • Given the use of the term "Old Man" for Benny's maker, which was also the title of the Troll King or Mountain King in Ibsen's play, this may also be an attempt to link his belief in himself and nothing else to the "to-thyself-be-enough-ness" philosophy of the trolls.
  • When Benny explains how he met Andrea, Dean asks if Fabio was on the cover.
  • When Benny starts wondering if this world is real, Dean talks about going down the rabbit hole.
  • Benny says Dean is worried that if they make it topside, Benny will start eating his little piggies.
  • Dean compares Benny's drinking donated blood to a Zone Diet.
  • Benny tells his maker, "You know what Socrates said about a life unconsidered".
  • Dean's comment about passing through the eye of a needle is from The Bible. Though it was a camel, not an ass.
  • The Leviathans form from a liquid into an immaculately dressed solid form like the T-1000.
• Slipped the Ropes: Benny shows he's uncuffed at a suitably dramatic moment.
• Someone to Remember Him By: Instead of Benny's child, his maker took Andrea, Benny's lover, as a reminder of his favorite son.
  Benny's maker: I wanted someone to remember you by.
• Spock Speak: Castiel insists he is not Benny's relative when called his crazy aunt.
• Stalker with a Crush: Despite Sam's assertion that he is not a stalker and is just concerned, breaking into Amelia's credit history, her DMV records, and school transcripts, is going a bit too far.
• Straw Nihilist:
  Benny's maker: I've been here so, so long, Benny. Seen all the outcomes, all the patterns, a trillion times. It all means so little. This universe is a pyramid of despair. Nothing else.
• This Is Reality:
  Benny: It's weird being back—in the world, I mean. Isn't it?
  Dean: Sure as hell is.
  Benny: I mean, what do you do with it all? All the—all the everything? Hell, I don't even know if this world is real, if I'm real.
  Dean: Hey, listen to me. I see what happens down that rabbit hole, okay? We're real. Benny, this is real. It's the only way to play this game, you get me?
• They're Called "Personal Issues" for a Reason:
  Dean: I got some personal crap I gotta take care of. That's all.
  Sam: What does that mean, personal?
  Dean: Did you have a stroke? Vocabulary. Personal! As in my own, grown-up, personal, I don't know, crap.
• Took a Level in Badass: Sorrento gets a nasty shock when he finds Benny's fighting skills have improved with all that time in Purgatory.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: The escape-Purgatory plan relied on Dean being this.
  Benny: [to Dean] You see, you are an intact, living human being stuck in Purgatory's craw. This dimension wants to spit you out, which is exactly what's going to power our escape pod.
• The Twink: Benny’s maker, belying his title of Old Man.
• Vampires Are Rich: Benny's maker likes to keep himself in style, though the only thing he keeps is his harpsichord.
• Vegetarian Vampire: Benny, who survives on donated plasma from blood banks after he meets Andrea.
• Viewer-Friendly Interface: Sam's search of Kevin's and Amelia's credit histories:
  • All of the credit applications are accompanied by photos to help identify the characters.
  • Typed and signed applications have evidently been scanned in with a large enough font size to be easily read.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Justified as Benny's nest want to find out exactly how Benny has come back from being Deader than Dead.