2.11 “Playthings”
Sam and Dean are trying to find out, without any success, what happened to Ava, but in the meantime get a gig to check out a hotel in Connecticut where some odd deaths have occurred. Arriving there they find the owner, Susan, is preparing to close the place at the end of the month and take her two daughters with her. It hasn't worked out sadly and the business is not there, so it's time to move on. The brothers notice that there is a tangible link between the two deaths: one was a lady handling the sale of the hotel while the other was a removal guy taking some unwanted stuff away, including some of the daughters' toys. So both, they reason, were involved in shutting the place down, and perhaps something living here does not want that to happen. They've noticed a “hoodoo jar” on the porch then they came in, powerful magic. But Susan says she doesn't even know where it came from, seems like it's been there forever. They discover more urns around the hotel though, and then a large collection of dolls as well as a scale replica of the hotel itself.
As if this isn't enough, they then learn there is an old woman --- Susan's mother, Grandma Rose --- living upstairs. She is reportedly frail and sick, and not taking visitors, so the boys will have to find another way of getting to see her. Sounds about right, huh? Creepy dolls, odd accidents, miniature hotel and strange old woman in the attic? Plus powerful hoodoo magic? To add to all this, a lawyer sent to finalise the sale and who confirms that rather than renovating the hotel as Susan thought they are actually going to demolish it, is found hanged in his room. Sam gets emotional and wonders if he will change into something evil (he is also very drunk) and gets Dean to promise to kill him if the time comes. After a lot of reluctance and avoidance Dean promises.
Dean talks to Sherwin, the old retainer, who tells him that the hotel was Rose's home, had been in the family for over a century. He shows him a photograph of Rose with her nanny, a Creole woman who wears a necklace with a quincunx design, the same as on the urns, a sigil of hoodoo magic. The boys decide that it's time to visit old Grandma Rose. They find instead of an old wiitch woman working spells as they had expected, a frail old lady who appears to have suffered a stroke and can't move or talk. Just then Susan enters and in a fury at their trespassing --- and surely now worry about who they really are --- throws them out of the hotel altogether.
As they prepare to leave we learn that Susan only has one daughter, Tyler, that the other, Maggie, is imaginary, so far as she knows. But we can see both girls and they look real. The one called Maggie seems quite petulant and just a little evil perhaps. It seems obvious that she has been the one causing the fatal accidents around here. Susan only narrowly avoids being run over by her own car when Sam rescues her, and they tell her what they suspect: that her mother, Rose, was working hoodoo to protect the hotel from an evil spirit, but then she had a stoke a month ago and could no longer work her magic, whereafter the spirit has had free rein in the place. Sam and Dean advise her to get her mother and her two daughters out of the hotel, and are surprised but then understand when Susan tells them in confusion that she has only one daughter: Maggie is imaginary. But the brothers saw two little girls. So now they know that Maggie is the malevolent spirit.
When they get back to the hotel Tyler is nowhere to be found. Dean asks a frantic Susan if her imaginary friend Maggie could be someone who lived in the hotel, maybe died there? Susan recalls her mother had a friend called Margaret, who drowned in the pool. They race there, to find Tyler drowning in the pool. Sam rescues her and later they find Rose dead in her wheelchair in the attic. We see later her (young again) and Maggie skipping and playing; she has given up her life in order to protect her daughter and granddaughter, and to provide the spirit of her friend a reason to let them go.
MUSIC
Michael Burkes: “Voodoo spell”
PCRs
There are so many references and allusions to “The Shining” that I'm not even going to bother. If you saw the movie you'll more than likely recognise them.
Dean says he will talk to “Boomin' Granny”. This is the title of a Beastie Boys track.
He also recommends as a hangover cure, “a big greasy pork sandwich served up in a dirty ashtray.” This is in reference to the movie “Weird science”, which features the same line.
Dean talks about meeting Fred and Daphne, from of course the cartoon Scooby Doo. Interesting in a way: the Scooby Gang travelled America solving spooky mysteries, which is almost what Sam and Dean do, though in an Impala rather than a van. Also, Buffy and her friends call themselves “The Scooby Gang” in that series, referencing the more-or-less same vocation. Yeah I know: I need to get out more. Or at all.
Dean's alias on his credit card, Jack Mahogoff, is apparently a crude reference to masturbation. Hmm.
The WTF??! Moment
Surely comes when we realise that although we can see two girls, Susan only has one daughter, and that the other, whom Tyler takes to be her imaginary friend, is in fact the spirit causing all the trouble.
I guess granny turning out to be the protector of the house, rather than working evil magic, is a candidate for this slot too.
BROTHERS
Something very important happens here. Sam, drunk admittedly but still aware of what he's saying, thinking back on what he has learned and what their father made Dean promise, asks his brother to honour that vow. If Dean sees Sam turn evil, start to change, become a pawn of the demon, he wants him to kill him. Dean avoids the question as long as he can, but eventually Sam becomes so intense that he has to agree. Curiously, we don't see him cross his fingers behind his back, which is something you would expect of the older Winchester, and he does not later make that his excuse when Sam asks again at the end of the episode.
Even amid all the death and horror it's nice to see that Dean and Sam can still rib each other good-naturedly. When they're (again) taken for a gay couple –- what? Have none of these people ever heard of brothers?? Gay is the first thing that comes to their minds? --- Sam tells Dean he is “kinda butch. Probably think you're overcompensating.” Dean wants to know why Susan thinks they “look the type”, though whether that's the type who go antiquing together or the type who are gay is not made clear: either way, Susan avoids the question.
Sam is obviously thinking hard about his destiny now. Having been hunted by Gordon, seen and heard other examples of “chosen ones” and now with Ava having disappeared, to say nothing of Dean's attempt to make a deal with the demon, his mind must be in a real muddle. Surely he contemplates killing himself, to spare his brother, and anyone who he might harm, seeing him change? He seems to have come more over to the idea that he is doomed to turn evil, whereas before he fought against it. In his heart of heart, Dean probably thinks the same. What will happen when both have to face the inevitable possibility?
The ARC of the matter
Nothing terribly important to the arc here really: self-contained story, mostly a sort of half-homage to “The Shining”, but Sam's doubts about himself and Dean's fears for his brother can only grow in the coming episodes and seasons. What will the outcome be? Would Sam really go up against his brother, fighting for the demons of Hell? And if it came to it, would Dean be able to honour his promise and kill Sam?