Supernatural Scoop

Episode 3.09: Malleus Maleficarum
Airdate: 31 January, 2008

Recap

A man and woman –Paul and Janet Dutton- enter their bedroom. Janet begins brushing her teeth, as we see another woman, somewhere else, chanting, and performing a spell on a toothbrush. As Janet brushes her teeth, they begin to come loose. She pulls a couple out of her mouth. She spits up blood, and more of her teeth, as the other woman ends her incantation. Paul Dutton finally succeeds in breaking into the bathroom to find Janet lying next to a pool of blood draining from her mouth.

Paul Dutton is talking to Dean, who is posing as a CDC investigator. Sam looks around, and finds a hex bag tied to the bathroom sink drain.

As the boys leave, Dean expresses his disgust over witches, and the nasty ways they conduct their business. They discuss how they’re going to find the witch that killed Mrs. Dutton.

In a nearby cul-de-sac, the woman who was casting the spell against Janet Dutton –Amanda. As Amanda carries groceries from her van, her neighbor, Elizabeth, asks her about her not showing up for “book club”, the night before. Amanda brushes her off and heads into her kitchen. She removes a bug-infested chicken from the oven. As Paul Dutton is eating in his car, Amanda is putting his watch into the chicken, holding a ceremonial knife, and saying that “this dinner was prepared for you…”. Suddenly, Paul’s chicken wrap is infested with worms. He begins to choke on the infested fast food. This sounds like a 1980s news item, to me.

Dutton more or less falls out of his car, going to his hands and knees, as Sam and Dean speed across the square in the Impala. Dean helps Dutton, as Sam digs the hex bag from under Dutton’s dashboard. Sam torches –literally, with a gas torch- the hex bag. Paul quickly seems to improve, as Dean tells him that someone killed his wife, and is trying to kill him. Dutton tells Dean about a mistake –an affair- that he had ended. It must be the scorned woman… Amanda.

In Amanda’s living room, knife-slashing sounds accompany sudden, deep cuts appearing on Amanda’s forearms. Amanda falls to the floor, dead.

Sam and Dean enter Amanda’s house, and find her dead. They figure that she ended the ordeal by offing herself. Dean disparages “witches”, and compares the “love triangle” to Fatal Attraction. Appropriately, Dean is suddenly startled by a rabbit carcass dangling at eye level, with teeth missing, and dripping blood. “Why does a rabbit always get screwed in the deal?” Aha! The real reason for Dean’s dislike for witches… bunny love.

Sam finds a hex bag under Amanda’s coffee table, and they know it wasn’t a “spurned lover’s hat trick.”

Elizabeth shows up to “book club”. She wants to stop “book club”, because people are dying. Renee challenges her, saying that the deaths are over, and look at all the great financial gain that it has yielded them.

Sam and Dean, posing as detectives, find Elizabeth tending her “herb” garden. Sam remarks how amazing it is that she gets the herbs to grow so well out of season. Elizabeth acts surprised when they tell her of Amanda’s black magic practices. “But she was Episcopalian.” Renee and Tami, evidently to shield Elizabeth, as if she’s a weak link. The conversation fizzles fairly quickly.

In the Impala, Dean talks of the herb garden evidence for Elizabeth’s being a witch: Belladonna, Wolf’s Bane, mandrake. Sam wants to stopthem. Dean questions his desire to “take them out”, since he’s usually the human-loving pacifist, but agrees, “Burn, Witch, burn.”

Ruby “kills” the Impala. Dean draws the Colt on her. Ruby tries to convince Sam to get in the car and leave this town, right away. Dean seems delighted at the opportunity to take her out, the Ruby that’s “messing with [Sam's] head.” Ruby reveals to them that the witches’ power comes from a demon, a powerful demon that Sam should get away from. Dean and Ruby argue about which of them is more concerned for Sam’s well-being. Dean readies to fire the Colt at her, but Sam thrusts Dean’s arm up, forcing the shot to fire harmlessly into the air.

As the boys enter their motel room, Dean chides Sam for being nice to Ruby. Sam defends his alliance with a demon as a strategy to win the war they’re in against the demons from the Devil’s Gate. Dean is upset that, recently, Sam has been cavorting with this demon, and hasn’t been acting like his usual nice-guy self. Sam’s easy willingness to fight and even kill disturbs Dean. He explains that they’re supposed to argue, and Sam’s supposed to be on the “sanctity of life” side of all their issues. Sam tells him he has had to learn to be more like Dean, since Dean’s not going to be around to play that role anymore.

As they argue, Dean starts getting sick, much like Dutton did. Sam frantically searches the room for the hex bag. When he doesn’t find, he grabs the Colt, and drives off.

Without a word, Ruby shows up at the motel, forces Dean to drink from your standard, everyday, Renaissance Faire wineskin flask, and, of course, saves him. Lances Dean, “It was ass. It tasted like ass.”

Storming in on “book club”, Sam questions the coven at Colt-point, demanding they release Dean. Sam focuses on Tami, since she’s the only one who isn’t obviously profiting from the coven’s spells. Her fake weeping gives way to the black-eyed demon look, and cocky expression. She taunts Sam, saying that Dean should already be dead. Sam fires the Colt, but she is able to stop the bullet by simply holding up her hand. She’s evidently more powerful than the usual demons they run across. Elizabeth and Renee look on in shock as Tami tells Sam that he’s “in a lot of trouble.”

Tami forces, magically, Sam against the wall. She then kills Renee, snapping her neck with a flick of her wrist in the air. She then explains to Elizabeth that she’s “wearing [Tami's] skin”, and all those incantations they chanted, were devotions to her. So, the coven had “sold themselves” to her.

Dean rushes in, but “Tami” stops him, forcing him to the wall. Ruby comes in, claiming that she misses “Tami” and wants her back. She claims she led the Winchesters to her, and wants to serve her. Ruby pulls out her famous demon-killing blade, but a fight ensues. Tami seems to overtake Ruby easily. As “Tami” taunts Ruby, lying on the floor, Elizabeth sneaks off to the table holding the witch supplies.

We learn that Ruby was a witch, devoted to “Tami”. After devoting herself to “Tami”, “Tami” made Ruby a demon. As Tami starts to suck the essence out of Ruby, Tami begins to bleed from her mouth, as she realizes Elizabeth is chanting over some relics in the corner. “Tami” kills Elizabeth, but too late to avoid Dean’s thrusting Ruby’s knife into her side, repeatedly, enjoying it a bit.

Ruby gets up and tells the boys to leave, and that she’ll clean up the mess.

Sam is splashing water on his face in the bathroom. As Dean stands outside the motel, the lights flicker, then Ruby shows up. Ruby became a demon “back when the plague was big.” Every Hell-bound soul eventually loses its humanity, leaving something like all the demons they’ve met. Ruby says she needs Dean’s help with Sam, to help get him ready to fight the war, on his own. Ruby says she wants them to win, because she’s not like the other demons. She remembers what it’s like being human. She doesn’t know why, she just does.

Okay. I admit. I like Ruby. Bring on the “oh, she’s just playing [herself]“, or whatever, but… Katie Cassidy is proving to be a strong actress. We’ve discussed, tonight, how much we wouldn’t hate seeing Katie Cassidy slip into the Whedonverse, as well, someday.

What do you think of the first new episode since mid-December? Three more to go. Is it enough? A new season? Just a couple more, if the strike ends soon?

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