This episode was so up my alley!!! Gore was minimal, geek references were aplenty, and I love guest star Felicia Day (although she has a tendency to die in stuff I'm watching, so I was very worried for her.) And I love Jim Beaver, so seeing him was great. (Not sure I'm on board with the writers bringing him "back" after such an emotional and perfect goodbye, but since they did, I will enjoy his guest spots when I can.)
The ep. opened with Dean swigging from the ghost-flask, and Bobby appeared, finally explaining the numbers he wrote on his death bed. Bobby gives us our first sci-fi/pop culture reference when he says Roman is building a slaughterhouse--and the meat will be Soylent Green. Apparently, Leviathans have decided to dumb people down (ala the Biggersons episode, which, ew) and herd them off for food. While the guys are digesting this (my apologies for using "digest" in the midst of the Soylent Green convo)Sam gets an email from Frank, whose blood-spattered trailer left us to believe he was dead. Which is exactly what his email confirms: "if you're reading this, I'm dead, and someone is attempting to hack my hard drive." But Frank was canny enough to install a GPS in his hard drive and Sam and Dean track it to inside Roman Enterprises, or as Dean puts it "in the middle of the Death Star."
Then we flash back a few hours to Felicia Day--whose name I think is Charlie but I forgot to write it down--going to work (at Roman Ent.) and jamming out to Walking on Sunshine on her headphones. I appreciated her geek dancing in the elevator because it's possible I myself have been known to do that. (Although you can't prove it.) She does some hacking on company time (and the company's much faster internet) and her cubicle neighbor is impressed. We get another, more subtle, Star Wars ref when he tells her "I love you," and she responds, "I know." Then she's called into her boss's office--where HIS boss, Dick Roman awaits. She worries that she's in trouble but Dick tells her he finds her hacking "adorable" but now it's time to hack something for him. Or else. She has three days to crack Frank's hard drive. When she returns to her desk, she tells computer neighbor, "The Eye of Sauron is upon me." Did I mention I am freaking loving the episode? (Although I am, of course, still worried about "Charlie's" life span because I literally watched something day before yesterday where she died. Again.)
There's some War Games repartee as she cracks the hard drive, summoning enough info to make her really nervous. Even though she doesn't think Frank's crazy Leviathan talk can be true, she's freaked enough to go home--where Sam and Dean await. They all pour Borax on themselves to prove none of them are Leviathans and they try to draft her to go inside and hack Roman's email. (There was an earlier suggestion from Bobby that they mail the flask into the building so he can take a lookie-loo, but Sam & Dean, already worried about him sticking around as a ghost, are afraid he'll go Vengeful if he comes face to face with Dick. Who shot him.)
Charlie freaks out at the magnitude of what she's about to do and Sam has to give her a pep-talk via the head-set about how she needs to kick ass like Hermione (causing Dean to comment, "Way to go, Dumbledore.") It's adorable, but not as good as when Charlie has to flirt with a guard and blanks (due to a combo of nerves and her being a lesbian) and DEAN has to feed her lines, telling Sam, "This NEVER happened." Amid it all was a great tattoo reference--Charlie has a Slave Leia straddling a 20 sided dice that she got while drunk at Comic-Con. Charlie turns up that Dick is expecting a very important delivery (and also that is password is w1nn1ng--ha!). The boys go to the private airport to swap out his delivery, giving us Sam and Dean in goggled bright orange vest doofusness, but Charlie's trapped in the building with Dick. Busted.
Who should come to her aid but ghost Bobby, who errs on the side of Vengeful?
The boys get Charlie out of the building, and I'm both surprised and jubilant that she lives. (Their final exchange outside a hospital: She tells them they can repay her by NEVER calling her again. "Peace out, bitches." And Dean calls her "the little sister he never wanted.")
So at the end of the day, score one for taking the piece of red clay that's for some reason important to Dick. But lose a point because now they're worried Bobby is going down a Bad Path. So there's probably carnage and sorrow to come, but at least I got one great episode that made me laugh and had Dean making a Veronica Mars reference. Did this episode make you guys happy, too, or was I alone in my geek gushing?
