What’s dead should stay dead.

That’s the theme of this episode (which was named after a 1972 movie [external link]), and it applies to a lot more than lost loved ones. Memories, relationships, emotions—if it’s over, just move on. According to Dean, anyway.

Another good lesson? Don’t drive when you’re upset, especially if you’re crying uncontrollably. Also, don’t speed, and definitely don’t get into an argument over the phone. Angela, a college student who caught her boyfriend cheating, needed these lessons. At least, she needed them before finding out the hard way with the help of a cement barrier. Ouch.

Dean’s position on the dead staying dead starts with a visit to their mom’s headstone. They’re going because Sam wants to; Dean thinks the whole concept is irrational (her body isn’t even there because there was nothing left to bury). So while Sam has his visit, Dean wanders around the cemetery. He stops when he notices a dead tree by a fresh grave. It’s Angela’s grave, and it’s also covered with dead flowers and surrounded by a circle of dead grass.

Dean thinks there’s something to all the dead vegetation, and wants to investigate. Sam is skeptical, but he agrees to look into it anyway.

They pay a visit to Angela’s dad, a professor. I love actors who are subtly expressive, and both Ackles and Padalecki use this scene to show how it’s done. After Dean finds an Ancient Greek book in the professor’s office, he and Sam have an impressive argument. Dean asks the prof questions while giving Sam meaningful looks, and Sam responds calmly, while silently signalling that Dean should shut up. I feel bad for the father who’s just grieving his daughter, but watching the interaction is amazing.

There’s also a nice fakeout a little while later. Angela’s cheating boyfriend is killed moments after seeing the reflection of a dark-haired woman in white. Then, when Dean is sneaking around Angela’s apartment, he also sees a reflection of a dark-haired woman in white. For a moment you expect a bloody attack; then, it turns out to be Angela’s roommate, who is decidedly un-murderous (she’s too busy panicking over the strange man in her house).

After calming the roommate down, he tells her he’s Angela’s cousin, there to get her stuff. Dean hasn’t used a good alias in a while, and this is one of his best: Alan Stanwyk, the [spoiler] villain from Fletch [external link], a movie about a man (Fletch) who’s always using aliases of celebrities and famous people. You’ve got to love a meta moment. He then takes the opportunity to ask a few questions about Angela, and finds out about the cheating boyfriend’s apparent suicide the night before.

When Dean gets back to the motel, Sam is watching “Casa Erotica,” which I only mention because it’s a running joke with some relevance down the line. This particular scene, however, is creepy and awkward and I’m not really sure why it was included. Maybe to show that the boys are just regular people and not Paladin-esque [external link] heroes who are beyond reproach, which is fair. After the awkwardness passes, Dean fills Sam in on what he found out at Angela’s, as well as her boyfriend’s place, and even what he read in her diary. You can’t accuse him of not being thorough. Everything he’s discovered points to a vengeful spirit, “But you know, that’s just me transferring my own feelings.” Sam probably should’ve listened to Dean sooner, because his apology now doesn’t make much of a dent in Dean’s anger.

Dean and Sam—now in agreement that there’s something to investigate—pose as grief counsellors from the college and pay a visit to Angela’s friend Neil. He insists that he’s okay, but adds that the boyfriend killed himself out of guilt, not grief. He tells the boys about how Angela caught him with another girl the night of the accident.

Since it seems as though Angela’s spirit has had its revenge against the cheating boyfriend, the only way to be sure that she won’t hurt anyone else is to burn her bones. Unfortunately, it’s been only a week since she died. Yeah, there won’t be any nice, dry bones to dig up. And Dean seems weirdly unconcerned about it. Luckily for all of us, the coffin is empty when they open it. Well, not entirely empty—there is a paper with some Greek writing on it, which they immediately take to Angela’s dad.

After he recognizes that the writing is part of an Ancient Greek “divination” ritual, he confirms that the ritual is used for necromancy. But why would a divination ritual—which has to do with telling the future—have anything to do with necromancy, as in communicating with and/or raising the dead? I think someone mixed up some words (or thought the audience wouldn’t know better). In any case, Dean goes off on the poor man, accusing him of bringing Angela back as a zombie. It’s not until Sam manages to point out all the healthy, living plants in the professor’s office that Dean calms down enough for Sam to drag him out of there. Even still, Dean thinks the prof is just keeping zombie Angela elsewhere.

Well, Angela is elsewhere, all right—at Neil’s place. Apparently she had a posthumous epiphany that he was the only one who ever really cared about her, since he was the only one who bothered to resurrect her. Neil is concerned because he suspects her of killing her ex, and is worried that she’s changed since he brought her back, but not so concerned or worried that he has any problem kissing her. Who among us hasn’t overlooked a little mayhem and murder for the love of a zombie?

Meanwhile, Sam and Dean have agreed to set aside dealing with Dean’s troubled emotional state so they can focus on figuring out how to get rid of Angela for good.

Dean: “We can’t just waste it with a head shot?”

Sam: “Dude, you’ve been watching way too many Romero flicks.”

Apparently there are too many stories on how to kill the walking dead, everything from setting zombies on fire, to feeding their hearts to wild dogs (both of which, I might add, would kill just about anything). Since silver shows up a few times, they decide to try that first. Then, they head over to Neil’s (because from what Dean saw in Angela’s diary, Neil has “unrequited Duckie love” [external link]).

After looking around Neil’s, followed by some lucky guesses, the boys go to Angela’s apartment just in time to stop her as she’s trying to skewer her roommate with a pair of scissors (the same scissors that she’d just pulled out of her own chest). Dean shoots Angela with silver bullets, and though the silver doesn’t hurt her much, it does have enough of an effect to get her to leave in a hurry.

A couple of comments: First, the roommate starts the scene sitting alone in the dark, staring off into space. Why is this a trope? Does anyone in real life sit silently in the dark, doing nothing? Have I been missing out on quality brooding time? Secondly, when Dean shoots Angela, the roommate is right behind her—was there no concern that she might be hit? I know I’m being nitpicky, but sometimes things like this take me out of a story, and I think that deserves a mention.

Sam and Dean decide their next best option is to trap Angela in her grave. From there, they go have a talk with Neil.

At first Neil plays dumb and calls them crazy.

Dean: “Your girlfriend’s past her expiration date and we’re crazy?”

Eventually Neil tells them that Angela isn’t there, although the dead plants in the room indicate otherwise. When Dean presses the subject, Neil glances at a door, making it clear that Angela is there. Thinking fast, Dean tells the room that it doesn’t actually matter where Angela is; all they need is to perform a ritual over her grave. After that she’ll be dead again within a couple of hours. He tries to convince Neil to leave with them, and I have no idea why he doesn’t. But Dean leans in and quietly tells him to get out of there as soon as he can—and whatever he does, don’t make Angela angry.

After they’re gone, she comes out of hiding (covered in unhealed wounds), and it was like Neil didn’t hear a word Dean said. He confronts her about killing her ex and trying to kill her roommate, but Angela’s excuse is that they hurt her. Of course she wants Neil to go to the cemetery with her to stop Sam and Dean from killing her, which he realizes means killing them. He agrees and tells her to wait there while he gets the car. Well, just because she’s dead doesn’t mean she’s stupid. She realizes he’s about to leave her and snaps his neck before he can defend himself.

Finding her way to the cemetery, she tries to make her case to Sam, saying she’s still a person. He shoots her in the head. Now she’s really angry. There’s a chase and a scuffle. Dean shoots her again, making her stumble backwards into her grave; he pounces and stakes her to her coffin. Some background lore I think is worth sharing: the history of vampires is long and complicated, and at one point vampires in Europe were viewed as a type of revenant, or reanimated corpse (not dissimilar from what we would now consider zombies). Staking them wasn’t meant to kill them permanently, but rather to keep them from leaving the grave and harassing the living. So staking Angela to her coffin has precedence, and I’m impressed that the show went there.

In the morning they finish re-burying Angela, and drive off. I thought that would be the end of the episode, but suddenly Dean pulls over and gets out. He apologizes to Sam for the way he’s been acting—and for dad, because it’s his fault that John is dead. Sam has no idea what he’s talking about, so Dean has to spell it out: he was dying in the hospital when suddenly he’s miraculously healed. Then minutes later John dies and the colt goes missing. Dean knows the demon (Yellow Eyes) was involved and that John is dead because of him. Sam tries to say they don’t really know whether that’s true, but no one’s buying that, most of all Dean. He insists he never should’ve come back, it wasn’t natural. He was dead and should’ve stayed dead. Then he starts crying for real, making me admire Jensen Ackles’s acting skills all the more.

Dean: “You wanted to know how I was feeling. Well, that’s it. So tell me, what could you possibly say to make that all right?”

The episode ends without Dean getting an answer.

Aside from the incorrect usage of divination and my nitpicks, this is a solid episode. The lore is good, the monster is scary, and Dean’s emotional upheaval is palpable. This character is going through something, and you couldn’t ignore it if you wanted to. Even the alias is impressive. Episodes like this are why we’re still talking about this show, and probably will be for years to come. ASB