Let’s Speculate: Supernatural 15.07 “Last Call”

THEN:  Are they just a punchline to some cosmic joke?  Cas tells Dean he’s going to move on. Sam’s bullet wound with a possible link to God.  Eileen – a ghost restored.

 

NOW:  Night in Texhoma, Texas outside a seedy little building whose neon lights proclaim it to be B’s Sugar Bar.  Two girls are staggering out, one drunk, the other supporting her.  The drunk blonde wants to go to an afterparty; her friend, a serious brunette, doesn’t want her to.  The blonde goes off to the edge of the parking lot to throw up, while her friend gets in her car and starts to check her phone.  The drunk girl is about to head back but then has to vomit again.  Behind her, the light from the phone seems a bit erratic.  Finally feeling better, she heads toward the car only to realize it’s not there.  The parking lot is completely empty. “Angela?” she queries, but her friend and the car have completely disappeared.

 

Angela wakes up in a basement, tied to a chair.  There is a tube inserted into a vein in her hand and leading to a door with a barred window.  Still a bit disoriented, she watches her blood flow through the tube to drip out the end inserted into the darkness behind the locked door.  Suddenly, a monster’s distorted face smashes into the bars.  Angela screams.

 

A shelf with assorted beer bottles.  A hand reaches for one.  It’s Dean, lying on his bed in the bunker, scrolling through the internet on his phone looking for a case.  “Well, hello!” he says as he sees the caption, “My Friend Was Raptured While I Was Drunk.”  Dean enters the kitchen to find Eileen and Sam cheerfully cooking an abundant breakfast which they offer him.  Dean first asks if the bacon is real, then adds, “Are you hungover?”  They admit they might be.  Dean turns down the breakfast, saying he’s going out:  he’s found a case and he needs to clear his head.  He also turns down Sam’s offer to join him.  Concerned, Sam followed him into the hallway.  Dean assures him that he’s good but adds, “I gotta get out of here.”  “Alone?” questions Sam, leading Dean to indicate with a smile that now Sam and Eileen can have some alone time.  Sam indicates that things haven’t gotten that far, but Dean reminds him to put a sock on the door if they do.  As Dean heads off, Sam says, “Call me if you need me.”  “I always do,” answers Dean.  Back in the kitchen, Eileen asks if everything’s OK.  “Dean was so down I thought he wouldn’t get back up,” Sam tells her.  “Him leaving – that’s progress, right?”  

 

Dean pulls up outside the sheriff’s office in Texhoma and is met on the sidewalk by the Stetson wearing, smiling sheriff.  When Dean identifies himself as Agent Dukes, the sheriff holds up his fists in an imitation fight:  “Put your dukes up!” he says cheerfully.  When he hears that the “agent” is there investigating the disappearance of Angela Sullivan, he says that she left on her own.  She probably headed to LA.  A lot of young people around here do, but they’re back within a week.  Not him though.  He’d stayed a whole month!  When asked about her friend Sally, the sheriff says she has issues and is most often seen at Swayze’s bar.  As Dean turns to leave, the sheriff encourages him to go to LA and try his hand at acting:  “You’ve got the look.”  Dean heads to toward his car seeming a bit bemused.

 

The Impala pulls up that night in front of Swayze’s Bar.  The place is packed with a lively crowd and a band playing.  A woman dances on a counter; other patrons play pool.  A smiling woman with long brown hair greets Dean and tells him they have the best beer and wings.  Dean tells her he’ll be the judge of that.  She eyes him appreciatively, then holds out a basket, but she doesn’t want his gun — it’s Texas, after all.  She wants his cell phone.  Obligingly, he drops it in; she slaps his rear as she walks off.  He seems a little surprised but also perhaps interested, when the man singing with the band attracts his attention.  He eyes him intently.  As the man approaches, they both seems stiff and on guard.  Then they smile, clasp hands, then hug.  The man says that he owns this joint.  He asks if Dean’s still hunting and then happily calls for a beer for his friend.

 

Back in the bunker, Sam and Eileen have been focusing on research when Eileen stops and asks to do something fun.  “Ideas?” signs Sam.  Hesitantly, he reaches out for her hand.  Just then, the bunker door slams open.  Cas enters like a grim thundercloud.  “Where’ve you been?” asks Sam.  “I’m here now, ready to help,” Cas says intently.  Sam introduces him to Eileen; he’s surprised she’s not dead.  “Where’s Dean?”  “He went for a drive,” answers Sam.  They’ve been looking for signs of Chuck and Lilith.  Cas is surprised at the mention of Lilith; he tells them that they’ve been looking in the wrong places.  The wound, which Sam says has not healed, has significance:  when Sam pulled the trigger, he sent out part of his soul.  “There may be some of you inside Chuck,” intones Cas.  “Ew,” says Eileen.

 

Dean and his friend are laughingly reminiscing at a table in the bar.  Lee asks about Dean’s dad, and Dean tells him that he died thirteen years ago.  Lee says he always liked him, and Dean mentions that John had praised Lee’s skill as a hunter.  They laugh about the time John caught them wasted on a hunt and drink a toast to his memory.  They haven’t seen each other since Sammy was in college.  “You probably thought I was dead,” remarks Lee.  “That’s usually how it ends,” Dean says seriously.  Lee tells him that he’d had a job here in Texhoma after that cult thing in Arizona, and he’d decided it wasn’t his life anymore.  “Ever regret walking away?” wonders Dean.  “Not once,” replies Lee.  

 

Sam sits on a plain bed in a barren bedroom in the bunker with Cas and Eileen nearby.  Cas tells Sam that he needs to probe the bullet hole.  “Probe?” “Study it,” clarifies Cas.  Eileen is worried that it’s dangerous, and Cas tells him that it will sting.  Pulling his shirt off his shoulder, Sam reveals the wound, and Cas holds his hand over it, emitting a golden light.  Sam winces and gasps but holds firm until a sudden explosion of light hurls him against the wall.  He collapses back onto the bed where he lies still and unresponsive.  

 

Cas is on the phone, getting Dean’s “other other other other” phone.  “Sam’s hurt!” he barks into the phone.  “Where are you?”  But back in Swayze’s Bar, the message goes unnoticed as Dean’s phone rests in the basket, and Dean, Lee, and the hostess drink and share memories.

 

Cas calls Sergei, an unscrupulous Russian purveyor in the supernatural, reluctantly asking him for help in healing Sam’s divine wound and reminding him that he owes him.  Sergei demurs, saying he has plans with his niece.  “If you don’t help me tonight,” Cas declares, “I will find you and burn you alive.”  Sergei agrees to come, but after he hangs up, Cas makes one more call.

 

Dean is laughingly telling Lee about the ghost sickness and how, when a cat jumped out at him, he was so scared he had to check his pants.  When Lee asks why he came to Texhoma, Dean pulls out a picture of the missing girl.  Lee says he doesn’t recognize her, but the hostess says, “That’s Angela.  She’s in here all the time.”  Now Lee remembers, but he’s surprised that Dean is hunting down missing persons.  He’d thought he’d be dealing with something bigger like the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot.  “Someone’s gotta look out for the little guy,” Dean responds.  “God isn’t.”  “That’s dark,” observes Lee.  “It’s been a rough decade,” Dean tells him.  Lee asks him how many hundreds, even thousands of lives he’s saved.  Doesn’t he deserve a break?  Then he asks if he remembers the song his dad would play before a hunt.  He gets up on stage and beckons Dean to join him.  Reluctant at first, Dean downs his drink and joins him.  He begins to sing:  “Just the good ole boys, never meaning no harm.  Beats all you ever saw, been in trouble with the law since the day they were born” — it’s the theme song from the Dukes of Hazzard.  Dean sings the second voice and then they join in harmony on the chorus to the appreciative whoops of the crowd.  Suddenly, a woman yells, “Stop it!  Leave me alone!”  It’s Sally being groped by some big, bald bikers.  Lee and Dean approach and Dean tells them to leave.  They loom large and threatening, then with a crash of glass, they’re thrown through the window.  Dean and Lee kick them out through the double doors of the bar.  “We still got it!’ Lee declares as they stand in the open doorway together.

 

Sergei arrives at the bunker and is impressed:  “The fabled Men of Letters!  So, stories are true.  What wonderful things must be here!”  Cas recognizes the greed in his eyes and tells him curtly, “You’re here for a reason.”  “Aren’t we all?” counters Sergei.  He leads him into the bedroom where Sam lies unconscious on the bed.  “Help him!” demands Eileen earnestly.  Sergei removes a large crystal stone from his bag and moves it slowly over Sam’s body.  “He’s dying,” he announces.

 

When Dean and Lee reenter the bar, Dean realizes that the woman who’d been assaulted was Sally, the friend of the missing woman.  He questions her while Lee fixes the broken window.  Sally states that her friend was a good girl; she loved Jesus.  Lee interrupts a bit sarcastically, “And America too,” but Sally doesn’t find this humorous.  “Angela was raptured, and I was left behind,” she says intently.  Dean asks her about the car which had disappeared.  “You can’t rapture a car!”  “It was a good car!” she tells them.  

 

After, Lee is discounting Sally’s words, but Dean says that best friends don’t up and leave without saying goodbye.”  He asks where someone would drop a car they were trying to hide.  Lee suggests the lake, but the hostess, walking up, suggests the wrecking yard where it would blend in with hundreds of other vehicles.  The men agree to split up and look for Angela’s car.

 

“Dying?” asks Cas.  Sergei tells him that most wounds want to be healed, but this wound is different.  It goes to Sam’s very soul and also goes out to the world.  It’s connected to something.  Cas made it stretch, and now Sam’s soul is like a rubber band, stretched so tightly that it could snap.  But he can fix it.

 

Dean walks through the scrapyard, overwhelmed by the amount of junker around him.  He looks at the picture of Angela with her car in the background then back at the wrecks piled around him.  Then he recognizes a sticker in the window.  It’s the right car – minus doors and tires.  He opens the trunk to find Angela’s dead body lying inside.  As he looks down at her sadly, a click sounds behind him and a gun is pressed up against his neck.  “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” says Lee before knocking him out.  

 

Sergei is applying a substance to Sam’s wound – “There; done.” – but nothing happens.  “Wait for it.”  Then Sam gasps, arches on the bed, and gasps again.  He sees a quick flash of scenes, Amara talking to Chuck, telling him he’s trapped, Chuck saying he used to see Sam and Dean but now he can’t.  Beside the bed, Sergei reveals that what he’s just done has made it worse.  Sam will die soon, unless they give hiim what he wants.  Furiously, Eileen holds him against the wall of the hallways, her hand at his throat.  “I kill you!” she declares.  Sergei says he will heal Sam if they give him what he wants:  the key to death.  It’s a black key that will open the door to Death’s library.  Give it to him and Sam will live.  “No!” states Cas.  “You can’t win this,” Sergei tells him.  “Yes, I can,” Cas replies unwaveringly.  He holds up his phone on which he has a picture of a young woman.  It’s Sergei’s niece.  Cas has sent AltBobby to stalk her.  “Fix Sam now,” demands Castiel.  Sergei knows a real threat when he hears it.  Holding his hands over Sam, he chants and Sam wakes up with a gasp, sitting up and looking around, confused.  “We’re good,” says Sergei.  “For now,” replies Castiel implacably.  Sergei tells him that he likes this new Castiel; he’s very Russian.

 

Dean comes to tied to a chair in the same basement where Angela has been.  There’s a tube running from his restrained arm to the bars on the doorway in front of him where a monster lurks.  Lee comes down the stairs.  “This isn’t you,” Dean says.  “Not the old me,” admits Lee.  He explains that the case in Arizona, what the monster did to those people, had convinced him that if evil like that exists, they will never win.  So he gave up the fight and decided to have a little fun.  On his last hunt, he’d find a creature.  All he has to do is keep it fed, and it gives him money and health.  What about the cost of innocent lives, questions Dean.  No one’s innocent, Lee tells him.  Don’t they deserve something?  Aren’t they owed something for the sacrifices they made as hunters?  “Deserve?  Owed?”  mocks Dean.  “Youre not God!”  Lee shrugs, “Good or bad — no one cares.”  “Well, I do,” Dean states.  “Yeah,” Lee replies a little ruefully, “that’s why you’re here.”  He switches a tab on the tube, and blood starts to flow through.  “It takes awhile to drain a man,” Lee tells Dean, “but after a while, you’ll just fall asleep.”  He pats Dean’s shoulder and tells him that it’s not how he wanted it to go, but he’s Dean Winchester, Righter of Wrongs.  “If it comes down to you or me, why not me?” He walks away, ignoring Dean who calls his name.  

 

Dean’s blood drips slowly from the end of the tube; then a monster’s face appears and begins to gulp it down.  Knowing his time is limited, Dean glances around the cellar, noticing an array of tools on a far wall.  He begins to thrash in the chair, rocking it back and forth until it crashes to the ground.  He rips the tube out of his hand, then starts untangling himself from the remnants of the chair and the ropes binding him.  The monsters roars in anger, crashing into the door.  The locks buckle, and Dean struggles to get completely free.  

 

Upstairs in the bar, Lee is cleaning when he hears a sound.  He halts, then draws his gun.  Footsteps sound on the stairs, then the cellar door swings open partway.  Nothing happens.  Then the green-colored, decapitated head of the monsters comes hurling through the opening and rolls across the floor.  Dean appears in the doorway:  “Sorry about your friend.”  Lee shoots at him, and Dean dives behind the bar, where he grabs a shotgun, saying, “God bless Texas.”  They exchange shots, until Dean runs out of ammunition.  The cartridge box on the counter shelves is empty.  “I’m out,” he tells Lee, “and by my count so are you.”  He stands up slowly and puts the shotgun on the bar.  Lee lays down his handgun.  “You’re hard-core, brother,” Lee acknowledges.  “No, don’t pretend we’re friends,” Dean tells him.  “I’m you,” Lee tells him, without his beliefs in right and wrong.  But Dean tells him that when you see what’s wrong in the world, you fix it.  You don’t walk away.  You fight for it.  Lee wants to pretend it never happened.  He wants Dean to walk away.  “Can’t do that,” Dean tells him.  “I kill monsters.”  They begin to brawl through the bar, first exchanging punches, then Lee smashes a chair over Dean’s back, hits him with a bottle, and grabs a pool stick and strikes him with it.  It breaks, and Dean grabs it and plunges it into Lee’s body.  They stand there for a moment.  “Why do you care so much, Dean?” asks Lee.  “Someone has to,” Dean answers.  Lee laughs.  “I’m glad it was you,” he says.  Dean pulls out the pool stick, and Lee collapses to the floor, dead.  

 

Cas is standing in the bunker when Dean bursts in.  He’s finally gotten Cas’s messages.  “Sam?” he asks.  “He’s fine,” Cas says baldly.  “Good,” says Dean.”  “Yes,” says Cas and walks away.  “Good,” says Dean.

 

Dean, Castiel, and Eileen are gathered around Sam.  “I feel like I’m in his head,” Sam says.  “Chuck is weak.  I think we can beat him!”  He smiles.  “I think we can beat God!”

 

THE END

 

QUESTIONS:

1. Are “the good ole boys” Dean and Lee or Sam and Dean?  
2. What did you think about learning that John, Dean, and Lee hunted together after Sam left for college?
3. Was Angela a convincing victim for Lee to grab?  Wouldn’t the community have started to notice missing people over the years?
4. Why did Lee choose a monster over his old friend?
5. Did you expect Lee’s betrayal?  Did you expect Dean to deal with it with such equilibrium?
6. What did you think of Cas threatening Sergei’s niece?
7. At the end of this episode, Cas is once again a fierce warrior, Dean is determined, and Sam is hopeful.  What do you think comes next?
8. Why does Sergei want to get the key to the library where Death’s books are?
9. What is the significance of the title:  “Last Call”?

 
Let’s Speculate!

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