Recap of Supernatural
Season 4, Episode 9
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Written by Sera Gamble.
Directed by Charles Beeson.
Air Date: November 13, 2008.
Ruby tells Sam and Dean that a powerful demon named Alastair is searching for an escaped mental patient, Anna Milton, who can hear the angels' conversations. Dean still doesn't trust Ruby, and asks Sam to explain why he trusts her. Sam asks Dean what he remembers from Hell. Neither will tell.
They find Anna's parents first, dead. They figure that Anna is religious and hiding from demons, and correctly guess she's hiding out in the church.
When they find her, all it takes is saying that they're Dean and Sam. She knows all about them. Turns out she tunes into the angel's conversations and has heard all about the brothers. Sam isn't too popular upstairs. The first words she heard, clear as a bell, were "Dean Winchester has been saved".
Ruby arrives in a panic. Alastair is coming. A statue of an angel starts weeping blood, marking his arrival. He attacks the Winchesters as Ruby and Anna escape. The boys lose Ruby's knife in the ensuing fight, and only make it out by jumping through a church window, and then only because Alastair wanted them to lead him to Anna.
The boys were badly beaten, dislocated shoulders, self-administrated stitches, the works. Dean lashes out at Sam for trusting Ruby, believing that they were set up and now she's killed Anna. Sam reveals how she saved his life during Dean's imprisonment in Hell. She taught him how to use his powers, comforted him, hint hint, and saved his ass again and again.
Eventually the boys are able to go to the cabin where Anna and Ruby are. The lights start flashing. They think they're done for, but it's just Castiel and Uriel, demanding to be taken to Anna, but not for the reason Dean hopes.
Body count
For this episode = 6 humans and 4 demons.For the series so far = At least 282 humans (of which 5 were witches), 19 demons, 25 ghosts, 10 vampires, 6 changelings, 3 gods, 3 shapeshifters, 2 werewolves, 1 crocotta, 1 djinn, 1 rakshasa, 1 rawhead, 1 shtriga, 1 wendigo, 3 zombies, 1 rugaru, and 1 dog.
Tropes
- After-Action Patch-Up: In the motel.
- The Alcoholic/Drowning My Sorrows: Sam after Dean's death. Ruby makes him promise her sobriety if he wants her help in killing Lilith.
- At the Crossroads: Sam attempted to make a crossroads deal but failed because the demons want Dean in Hell.
- The Bait: Alastair lets Sam and Dean escape because he knows they will lead him to Anna. Lilith's demons are holding a little girl in a house, waiting to ambush Sam when he tries to attack what he thinks is Lilith in her Creepy Child persona.
- Brain Bleach: Dean did not need to hear about his brother doing it with a demon.
- Cassandra Truth: Anna tries to warn people of the upcoming Apocalypse. She's forcibly committed to a mental institution for her troubles.
- Cliffhanger:Castiel: We're here for Anna.Dean: Here for her, like...here for her?Uriel: Stop talking. Give her to us.Sam: Are you gonna help her?Castiel: No. She has to die.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Alastair vs. the brothers Winchester, armed with Ruby's demon-killing knife. It does not end in Sam'n'Dean's favor: they end up having to jump through a window and run away to lick their wounds, and the only reason they even get away with that much is because Alastair lets them so they can lead him to Anna.
- Despair Event Horizon: Sam is revealed to have passed this in the aftermath of Dean's death.
- Destination Defenestration: Sam and Dean jump out a stained-glass window to escape Alastair.
- Double Entendre: "It's warm inside this body, Sam."
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Shades of it with Ruby's seduction of Sam. Sam is grieving, angry, and emotional when Ruby starts coming onto him, giving him a Forceful Kiss and continuing to pursue him when he breaks it up and goes to the opposite side of the room. Jared Padalecki's performance gives no indication that Sam is at all receptive to the counter, but Ruby keeps pushing it, making Sam touch her host and goading him with no signs of stopping or respecting Sam's rejection until he starts kissing her and it turns into a more-or-less consensual sex scene. In the present day, Dean is more grossed out by the idea of his brother having sex with Ruby than anything else (although since we didn't hear Sam's description of the incident, it's possible he described it differently from what we saw) and Sam is now close to Ruby with an ongoing partnership and apparent Friends with Benefits type arrangement. Needless to say, if a male character kept forcing himself on an unwilling female character in the same way Ruby forced herself on Sam, it would've been handled very differently. This makes Ruby the latest of several female characters to sexually harass or menace Sam, and still without the show acknowledging it or showing any trauma from Sam.
- Dramatic Dislocation: Dean dislocates his shoulder when jumping from the church, and Sam pops it back in for him.
- Fanservice: Sam and Ruby provide equal-opportunity fanservice by showing a lot of skin in their sex scene.
- Flashback: When Sam tells Dean what happened during those months Dean was in Hell and how Ruby saved his life.
- Forceful Kiss: In flashbacks, Sam is despondent about his powers not working and angry at Ruby for playing therapist. Ruby ends up abruptly kissing him hard, despite Sam visibly not accepting or enjoying it, and putting as much distance between the two of them as possible.
- Good is Not Nice: The angels want Anna to be turned over to them, not to protect her, but to kill her because it is necessary.
- Heal It with Booze/Self Stitching: Dean and Sam disinfect their wounds with booze and Sam improvises painful-looking stitches.
- Hearing Voices: Anna, which gets her locked up for schizophrenia when really she's just tuning in to "angel radio", as Dean oh-so-eloquently puts it.
- Impaled Palm: Sam pins the crossroads demon in place to try to force him to make a deal. It doesn't work.
- Mind over Matter: Anna uses her mind to shove a drawer into the possessed nurse hard enough that it knocks him out. His head hits the door so hard that it cracks the glass panel.
- Neurodiversity Is Supernatural: Anna's doctor thinks she has schizophrenia because she hears angels and has visions of the coming apocalypse, but her visions are true.
- No-Sell: Neither Sam's powers nor Ruby's knife works on Alastair. Played with in Sam's case as his powers do work eventually, but currently he's not powerful enough.
- Number of the Beast: Anna reveals in the opening that there are actually over 600 seals imprisoning Lucifer and that Lilith needs to only break 66 of them to set her master free.
- On Three: Sam does the "on three, one" version when popping back Dean's dislocated shoulder.
- Playing Drunk: The short con Sam and Dean are running re: the pool game.
- Prophet Eyes: When Sam tries to exorcise Alastair, it just makes the demon cough politely and his eyes turn white like Lilith's, instantly marking him as a huge threat.
- Psychic Nosebleed: Sam gets this.
- Psychic Powers: Anna is telepathic (she hears angels talking in her head) and telekinetic. Flashbacks reveal how Sam worked with Ruby on his own powers to get strong enough to psychically exorcize demons.
- Sassy Black Woman: The maid Ruby temporarily possesses to deliver a message to Sam and Dean. Hilarity Ensues.
- Seeking Sanctuary: With the demons chasing her, Anna hides in the attic of her father's church, not realizing that this show's demons can enter hallowed ground if they're strong enough.
- Separate Scene Storytelling: Sam sums up his experiences while Dean was in Hell via flashbacks.
- Sex for Solace: The flashback of Sam and Ruby in the cabin.
Sera Gamble says, "We were asking ourselves, 'where's the lowest place Sam can go in a state of despair?' That's why calling it a love scene strikes me as hilarious. It's kind of like self-mutilating and calling it getting dressed for the prom." - Sexy Discretion Shot: The good ole "clothes tossed to the floor before a raging fireplace" scene.
- Shout-Out: The ward Anna was in is 42—the answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.
- Stab the Scorpion: In flashbacks, Ruby has another demon grab Sam. She takes her knife back from Sam and, revealing that Lilith had let her out of Hell to kill him, holds it up to do the job...before she uses it to kill the other demon instead.
- Super Window Jump: Sam and Dean jump out of a window in the attic of a church in order to escape Alastair.
- And the results... aren't pretty.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: To escape Alastair in the church's attic, Dean and Sam jump through the stained glass window. The next scene?
Sam stitching up a gash in his arm back at the hotel, Dean coughing up blood in the bathroom sink, and Sam relocating Dean's dislocated shoulder. - Tears of Blood: A statue in the church begins shedding these as Alastair is arriving.
- Too Much Information: Spoken word for word by Dean about Sam and Ruby's sex scene. Exactly how much detail did Sam go into?
- Toplessness from the Back: Ruby when Sam takes off her shirt when they start having sex.
- You Are Not Alone: Ruby says it to Sam when seducing him in the aftermath of Dean's death.
- You Can See Me?:Anna: [terrified] Your face—What happened to your face?!Demon: I know. I'm downright kissable.
