Supernatural – Recap & Review – Mannequin 3: The Reckoning

photo: cw

Supernatural
Mannequin 3: The Reckoning

Original Air Date: Feb 18, 2011

Alyssa Silva – TwoCents Reviewer
alyssa@thetwocentscorp.com

This episode wasn’t scary. To quote Dean, it was just freakin’ creepy. The show dug deep to unearth a paranormal entity that has struck fear in all our beating hearts – dolls. Not the justifiably creep-worthy little girl dolls, with their bonnets and fake curly hair. These dolls are the ones you pass by at the mall, all stiff, white and ready to stab you in the gut with a rebar. Did I mention Metallicar suffers a fatal injury?

Read on after the jump!

A string of murders suck our boys back into a case involving a nostalgia-inducing vengeful spirit. Seems a while since we had something so mundane, hasn’t it? The MO seems to be a bloody gash across the forehead before the victim is brutally maimed in some way. Thanks to the trusty EMF, the Winchesters deduce that the dolls have been killing them off. While there is some confusion about why the victims have jumped zip codes, Agent Sam deduces that the victims are all from the same factory and linked to a missing woman called Rose. Who, it seems, was the casualty of a cruel practical joke involving a fake male mannequin. Rose is exacting her revenge on the ones that murdered her. Sam burns the body but unfortunately poor ol’ Johnny suffers the same gruesome fate at the hands of his sex doll (don’t ask). Turns out Rose’s spirit has attached itself to the kidney she donated to her still alive sister. The “haunted kidney” dilemma is resolved when Rose’s sister gets stabbed fatally through by a stray piece of glass, a result of Rose possessing Dean’s baby aka Metallicar.

Sam

As you can tell, Sam isn’t dead. There were a few moments in the opening, with Dean pressing his fingers for a pulse on Sammy’s neck and not finding any, that Sam fangirls everywhere wept. But they were proven right when Sam jumped right back on the bandwagon. Apparently all he needed to recover from “the episode” was a cup of coffee and greasy mobile diner food. Yes, that was disbelief but this is fiction so I’m willing to let it slide I guess. But this episode, too-fast recovery aside, brought back the elements of old Sam that I have missed (I still adore RoboSam…until he tried to off Bobby). He was pushing Dean to talk, showing concern for everyone, solving the case with heart and soul. It was nice to see him working the case solo when Dean drove off to resolve his issues with Lisa and Ben.

Dean

Oh you poor, tortured man. Seriously I wanted to give this man a hug, and not because I think he’s the embodiment of the perfect male specimen. Creepy, faceless killing dolls aside, this hour brought some much needed resolution on the Lisa/Ben front.

Now my dislike for Lisa has been well-documented. I can sympathise with her mostly because she can’t ask Dean for anything when Dean himself doesn’t know what he wants, and also because it must be hard expecting the next phone call to be Sam telling you Dean is dead. But this woman told him at the start of the season they could make it work when Dean offered up all the same reasons she’s using to reject him now. Lisa obviously doesn’t realize that having turned Dean away from her, she’s also turned her away from Ben. Needless to say I hope to never see this woman again because that dislike for her has graduated to strong dislike after that scene in the kitchen. Girl if you think Dr Matt will ever replace Dean Winchester, you are seriously mistaken.

Ben, on the other hand, offered Dean something to chew on. Dean tried to explain to Ben that he didn’t want Ben to become the man he is when he’s hunting. Dean the Hunter isn’t something Ben should look up to. The kid’s got more than one road for him to travel on. Ben shuts all this down by saying family is more than blood – its people who care for you no matter what – and Dean’s the dick who has walked out on this one. We don’t get shown how the conversation ends because the next scene is Dean driving the Impala while a montage of Lisa (gag me) and Ben flashes across the screen. So maybe there are a few loose strings left to tie up there, but it does explain why Dean’s stayed away for as long as he has.

Also this scene pretty much summed up Dean (for me, in any case), when both the brothers were discussing dealing with the past and feelings:

Dean: “You shove it down with bits of violence and alcoholism.”
Sam: “Sounds healthy.”
Dean: “Works for me.”

What did you think of this episode? Did you enjoy seeing the brother’s work an old fashioned case? Did you wonder where “the Mother” was, considering they didn’t even mention the new Big Bad throughout? Did you almost cry when Dean spoke with Ben? Will I freak out tomorrow night when I close my store and am left alone with those nefarious white mannequins? Give me your TwoCents!