I’m a big fan of the early ’80s flick The Thing. Dear God it scared the crap out of me; gave me nightmares for months … no, years. A couple of things in this episode were ripped right from the premise of that movie.
Firstly, we had the whole paranoia aspect. We have a creature that gets around by possessing a host, while no one is the wiser to it. That is, until that person decides to go bonkers and gun someone down. First down, Gwen. I have to admit that was quite a shock in the way it happened, and it took me a couple of minutes to realize it just couldn’t have been the “real” Dean who pulled the trigger. Once the group realized they couldn’t trust each other, and then locked the guns away in the locker, I made the immediate Thing connection.
The other blatant connection to The Thing was the electricity test. In the movie, though, they tested samples of the people’s blood in petri dishes. With something like that, I wouldn’t so much call it a ripoff as I would call it a homage, of sorts. It gets increasingly frustrating, though, when you know all these people need to do is stay glued to the hip and not let anyone out of their sights.
Even in seeing Gwen, Samuel and Rufus clearly dead as doornails, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was going to turn around and wind up being a hallucination brought on by that demon bug being in all of their heads. Once we saw the final shot at Rufus’ grave, it was clear these victims really are gone. Gwen I don’t really care all that much about, though I’m not quire sure how I feel about Samuel being taken out in what I consider a wimper. He was one of those guys I think more than a few people would’ve liked to see dragged down into Sam’s old cage in hell or something equally horrific.
Back to that final scene at the grave — it was a bit lame if the intention was for us to actually believe Sam and Dean were looking over Bobby’s grave. I really want to know how many people believed even for a nanosecond that Bobby didn’t make it. If the answer is nobody with a half-assed IQ or better, then that attempt at a trick failed miserably. The same thing happened in an episode of Buffy, actually, where we were supposed to believe Cordelia died from a rebar through the gut — didn’t work then, either. Another homage, perhaps?
One last thing: It never ceases to entertain me how not only Sam and Dean can pose as FBI agents so easily, but scruffy hick Bobby and Rufus could as well. Always brings a smile to my face, no matter how absurd the idea might be.
“Bobby, you got a cranial saw in the truck?” – Rufus
“Pfft. Of course.” – Bobby
Clacked by Keith McDuffee 
on Mar 04, 2011 @ 22:31 EST5EDT
This episode was really effective for me. It was a bit of a departure from the usual SPN, with not much humor to lighten up the darkness. But I think Keith hit it on the head, b/c they were going for an homage of sorts, and definitely trying to create a specific mood, a scary, tense and mistrusting mood, which they did very successfully. And so different from last week, but just as good. Loving season 6!
the deaths were soooo anticlimatic, i though that Samuel character was going somewere, guess again!!! :)
I felt almost like I was watching an episode of The Vampire Diaries- three people that we knew, killed swiftly and unceremoniously. I wish Samuel had been able to tell Sam about his time without a soul- it would’ve had quite an impact (knowing that Sam would keep this knowledge to himself- oh tortured soul!). Did anyone else get weirded out by NotBobby when he was speaking about the Mother? Gah! Creepy!