2.04 Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things

From Super-wiki
Jump to: navigation, search


2-04 Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things.jpg
Title Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things
Episode # Season 2, Episode 4
First aired October 19, 2006
Directed by Kim Manners
Written by Raelle Tucker
On IMDB Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things
Outline Dean and Sam investigate the murder of a college student who has come back from the dead to seek revenge on those who mistreated her while she was alive.
Monster Zombie
Timeline Late August, 2006
Location(s) Greenville, Illinois
« Previous Episode | Next Episode »

Synopsis

At Sam’s insistence, the brothers travel to Greenville Cemetery to visit their mother’s grave, where Sam buries their father’s dog tags. Dean notices a circle of dead vegetation around a nearby grave belonging to a girl named Angela Mason, killed recently in a car accident. Dean suspects there may be something supernatural at work, but Sam charges that his interest is simply part of Dean’s ongoing refusal to deal with his grief over their father’s death.

Sam agrees to investigate Angela’s death, but a visit to Angela’s father doesn’t provide any clues as to what may be going on. After an argument with Sam, Dean goes on his own to Angela’s apartment. Her roommate Lindsey is distraught - not only over Angela’s death, but also over the death of Angela’s boyfriend Matt Harrison, who apparently slit his own throat the previous night.

Dean manages to flip through Angela’s diary, which discloses that she had a confidant called Neil. He and Sam visit Neil, who reveals that Matt was having an affair which Angela discovered on the night of her death. Returning to her grave, the boys disinter her coffin to find it not only empty, but with Greek symbols engraved inside it. Suspecting that her father, a classics professor, may have constructed a ritual to raise her from the dead, the boys visit him again. Dean becomes aggressive and upset with Dr. Mason, although he continues to deny Sam’s accusations that he is losing control.

Dean decides Neil may have had a crush on Angela and raised her as a zombie. On returning to Neil’s house, they find no one home, but the house contains signs of a recent supernatural presence. They return to Angela’s apartment just in time to save Lindsey, guilty of having an affair with Angela's boyfriend, from being killed by Angela, who escapes. Sam and Dean find Neil and explain they have a plan to return Angela to death. Angela overhears, and after the boys leave, she kills Neil and pursues the boys to the cemetery.

At the graveyard, Sam lures her to her grave, where Dean stakes her inside her coffin. The boys leave town, but on a lonely mountain road, Dean stops the car. He apologizes to Sam for the way he has been acting. Dean is upset because he is convinced that John exchanged his life, and the Colt, for Dean’s life, and he is struggling to cope with feeling responsible for John’s death.

Characters

Definitions

Music

  • "Sad Girl" by Supergrass
(plays at the beginning when Neil plays the emo music)

Quotes

Sam: Okay, so what are you thinking?

Dean: I dunno. Unholy ground, maybe?
Sam: Un--
Dean: What? If something evil happened there, it could easily poison the ground. Remember the, the farm outside of Cedar Rapids?
Sam: Yeah, b-

Dean: Could be the sign of a demonic presence. Or the, the Angela girl's spirit, if it's powerful enough... Well, don't get too excited, you might pull something.
Dean: Burn the bones.

Sam: Burn the bones? Are you high? Angela died last week!
Dean: So?

Sam: So, there's not gonna be bones. There's gonna be a ripe, rotting body in the coffin.
Dean: Sam, I know what I'm doing.

Sam: No, you don't. At all. Dean, I don't scare easy, but man, you're scaring the crap out of me.
Dean: Don't be over dramatic, Sam.

Sam: You're lucky this turned out to be a real case. Because if it wasn't you would have just found something else to kill.
Sam: You're on edge, you're erratic - except for when you're hunting, because then you're downright scary. You're tail-spinning, man. And you refuse to talk about it and you won't let me help you.

Dean: I can take care of myself, thanks.
Sam: No, you can't. And you know what? You're the only one who thinks you should have to. You don't have to handle this on your own, Dean, no one can.
Dean: Sam, if you bring up Dad's death one more time I swear...

Sam: Stop. Please, Dean, it's killing you. Please. We've already lost Dad. We've lost Mom. I've lost Jessica. And now I'm going to lose you too?
Dean: You're telling me there's no lore on how to smoke 'em.
Sam: No, Dean, I'm telling you there's too much. I mean, there's a hundred different legends on the walking dead, but they all have different methods for killing them. Some say -- setting them on fire, uh, one said, where is it? Right here. Feeding their hearts to wild dogs. That's my personal favorite. I mean, who knows what's real and what's myth?
Dean: Well, it takes two to, you know, have hardcore sex... I don't know, it just seemed that, uh, Angela's roommate was broken up over Matt's death. I mean, like, really broken up.
Dean: Damn, that dead chick can run.
Sam: So the silver bullets, they did something, right?

Dean: Yeah, something, but not enough. What else you got?

Sam: Um, okay, besides silver, we have ... nailing the undead back into their gravebeds. It's mentioned a few times. It's probably where the whole vampire staking lore came from.
Sam: We know what you did. The ritual? Everything.

Neil: You're crazy.

Dean: Your girlfriend's past her expiration date and we're crazy? When someone's gone they should stay gone. You don't mess with that kind of stuff.
Dean: Sam... You and Dad... you're the most important people in my life. And now... I never should've come back, Sam. It wasn't natural. And now look what's come of it. I was dead. And I should have stayed dead. 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?

Trivia & References

The title of this episode is a reference to the 1972 zombie movie of the same name.
When Dean is examining the perfect circle by Angela Mason's grave, a silver chain necklace can be seen around his neck along with his usual amulet. When the camera cuts to him examining the grave marker, it's gone and is not present at any other time during the episode because it stays underneath his shirt.
Dean presents himself to Lindsey as "Alan Stanwyk." Alan Stanwyk is the name of a character in the '80s comedy movie Fletch.
Dean: What you brought back isn't even your daughter anymore. These things are vicious, they're violent, they're so nasty they rot the ground around them. I mean, come on, haven't you seen Pet Sematary?
A reference to the Stephen King novel and film, Pet Sematary, in which a grieving father buries his young son's body in an ancient Indian burial ground and it comes back as a zombie.
Dean: We can't just waste it with a head shot?

Sam: Dude, you've been watching way too many Romero flicks.

This is a reference to George A. Romero, director of many zombie films most famously, Night of the Living Dead & Dawn of the Dead. Romero created many of the modern zombie rules, which include only being able to stop them with a head shot.
Dean: Well, you've got your journal, I've got mine. 'Neil's a real shoulder to cry on, he so understands what I'm going through with Matt.' There's more in here where that came from. It's got unrequited Duckie love written all over it.
A reference to the movie Pretty in Pink where the character Duckie pines for his best friend Andie.
Sam: Yeah. An empty one. You think Angela's going after somebody?

Dean: Nah, I think she went out to rent Beaches.

Beaches is a chick-flick movie from 1988. Chuck Shurley says Beaches is his favorite movie in 5.09 The Real Ghostbusters.
Angela: Hi honey, I'm home!
Likely a reference to Desi Arnaz's famous line "Lucy! I'm home!" from the 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy.

Minutiae

On the IMDb page for this episode, Angela was originally credited as Summer Glau. It has since been corrected to Tamara Feldman. The mistake has erroneously been repeated on TV listings.
The close-up of Angela's phone after the crash shows the date to be "TUE 22 AUG 06". When Dean and Sam arrive, Angela has been buried for 3 days as Dean says, "Angela Mason. She was a student at the local college; funeral was three days ago." The next day, Sam points out that she died a week ago, "Burn the bones? Are you high? Angela died last week!" The temporary grave marker for Angela further confuses things, as it reads "DATE COMPLETED: 12/08/07. MONUMENT COMPLETED: 19/09/07."
When Sam is burying them, we get a brief glimpse of John's dog tags, which reveals that John's blood type was AB.
The announcer on the TV Sam is watching in the motel room says "Next on the Skin Channel, Casa Erotica 4. A tale of two Latin beauties..." This is the first reference to the Casa Erotica film franchise on the show.
At the end of the episode, Sam complains "I think she broke my hand" after his fight with Angela. This was included in the script after Jared Padalecki actually broke his wrist filming the previous episode. Because of this Sam is seen wearing a cast on his right arm in the episodes from 2.05 Simon Said until 2.11 Playthings.

Sides, Scripts & Transcripts

Promotion



Episode Meta

Retrieved from "http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=2.04_Children_Shouldn%27t_Play_with_Dead_Things&oldid=208766"