7.02 Hello, Cruel World
Title | Hello, Cruel World |
Episode # | Season 7, Episode 2 |
First aired | September 30, 2011 |
Directed by | Guy Bee |
Written by | Ben Edlund |
On IMDB | Hello, Cruel World |
Outline | The Leviathans are loose on the world, while Sam struggles to keep his sanity. |
Monster | Leviathans Hallucifer |
Timeline | October 3-5, 2011 |
Location(s) | Bootbock, Kansas (fictional location) Sioux Falls, South Dakota |
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Synopsis
Directly following 7.01 Meet the New Boss, Dean and Bobby are confronted with one of many Leviathans that is occupying Castiel's vessel; however, Jimmy Novak's body cannot contain them all. It is rapidly deteriorating, and so the Leviathans retreat. Dean and Bobby follow and find Sam, who is caught up in a hallucination involving Lucifer. Lucifer's image is trying to make Sam believe that he is still in Hell and that everything else is an illusion—a creative form of torture. Dean snaps Sam out of the hallucination, and the three of them follow the Leviathans, still occupying Castiel's vessel, to a nearby reservoir.
Castiel's vessel wades into the reservoir and, as they watch, disappears beneath the surface. A vortex then erupts outwards and spreads a black ooze throughout the water, which vanishes moments later. Bobby remarks that, now that they're in the pipes, the Leviathans will be able to travel anywhere. Dean finds Castiel's trench coat floating in the water, but there is no other sign of what may have happened to the angel's vessel, and the hunters assume that he has been destroyed by the Leviathans. Dean takes the trench coat with him as they leave the reservoir.
Back at Bobby's house, Dean wakes Sam and examines the palm of his hand, which was injured confronting Castiel. Sam "sees" Lucifer in the room with them and "hears" his commentary as first Dean pours liquor over the crude stitches, and then Bobby re-bandages the injury. When Dean questions Sam about his condition, Sam admits that he's not just having flashbacks anymore—he's seeing Lucifer. When Dean learns that Sam isn't sure what's real and what's not, he's at a loss as to how to convince Sam that he's no longer in Hell. He watches worriedly as Sam strips and re-strips his gun, and then turns on the GPS on Sam's phone in case he "flies the cuckoo's nest." Bobby asks him how he's doing, but Dean insists that he's fine.
Meanwhile, the Leviathans have traveled through the water and possessed the body of a young girl named Annie, a man named Edgar, and two adolescent boys who are on a high school swim team. The two boys massacre their entire swim team, drawing the attention of Sam and Bobby, who send Dean to investigate the scene of the crime. Annie and Edgar are more discreet, and when they meet to discuss their fellow Leviathans, Edgar tells Annie that "the boss" wants the others to be kept in line. She tells him that she and the others are hungry, but the Edgar is unsympathetic. Annie tells him that she has a plan.
At Sioux Falls General Hospital, Sheriff Jody Mills is recovering from an appendectomy. Her surgeon, Dr Gaines, sees a young girl alone in one of the hospital rooms and approaches her. The girl is Annie the Leviathan, and she takes his form and then kills him. The Leviathan, now in the doctor's body, enters Jody's hospital room, and Jody wakes up in time to see him sedating her roommate, Madeline Hackett. Jody pretends to be asleep as he wheels Mrs. Hackett away, and then she follows them into a ward closed for construction. As she watches through a window, he cuts into Mrs. Hackett's body and feeds on her liver. Horrified, Jody stumbles away and then collapses.
In Stockville, Kansas, Dean investigates the scene of the swim team's murder. He sees a smear of black ooze on the wall and knows immediately that the Leviathans are involved in the deaths. He calls Sam as he heads back to Sioux Falls—the two boys who survived the massacre seem to be headed that way. As Sam waits for him to return, his hallucinations involving Lucifer intensify. Lucifer goes so far as to suggest that the only way out of this form of torture is for Sam to kill himself. Bobby tries to comfort him, but Lucifer is always there, at one point stabbing an iron poker through Bobby's back.
Shortly after Sam "sees" the poker stab through Bobby, Bobby's phone rings. It's Sheriff Mills, and she tells Bobby that she needs his help because her surgeon is a monster. He's reluctant to leave Sam alone, but Bobby goes to help her. After he's gone, Dean returns in the Impala, and he tells Sam that he needs him to back him up while he pursues the two boys from the swim team. Sam takes his gun and goes along with him.
Meanwhile, the Leviathan posing as Dr. Gaines leads Edgar and the two boys from the swim team into the hospital's closed ward. There he has two hospital staff held captive, and the two boys take their forms and then kill them. Dr Gaines tells them that at the hospital they can easily feed without drawing suspicion. Edgar is impressed, but decides not to stay at the hospital himself because he has other business to attend to for "the boss." While they convene, Bobby arrives at the hospital and helps Jody to leave in a cab before going to the morgue to investigate what happened to her roommate, Mrs. Hackett.
Sam and Dean are on the road, but Dean (the real Dean) has just arrived at Bobby's house. When he realizes that Sam is gone, he turns on his GPS tracker and starts after him. While Dean pursues them, Sam and the false Dean pull up to an office building. Dean is acting strangely aggressive and bullies Sam into going inside with him, and Sam goes along with him. Once inside, however, the office building becomes an empty warehouse and Dean morphs into Lucifer. Sam is confused and upset, and draws his gun. He starts shooting wildly and almost hits the real Dean, who's followed his GPS signal to the warehouse. Dean tries to convince Sam that he's real and that whatever else he's seeing isn't, and he has some success when he grabs Sam's injured hand and presses hard against the injury. Feeling the real pain of his injury seems to temporarily snap him out of his hallucination.
Back at Sioux Falls General Hospital, Bobby is examining Mrs. Hackett's body when he's confronted by the Leviathan posing as Dr. Gaines. Bobby shoots him with silver buckshot, but it has no effect, and so he retreats. He calls Sam and Dean to let them know that he's headed back to his house and will meet them there.
Sam and Dean rush back to Bobby's house, but are confronted by the sight of a burned out husk where it used to be. Horrified, they start searching the debris and then the salvage yard for Bobby, but are quickly attacked by the Leviathan Edgar. He throws Dean against a car, breaking his leg, and knocks Sam unconscious with a hard blow to the head just before Dean manages to drop a car on him. Once Edgar is defeated, Dean tries to wake Sam with no success and then calls 911. In the ambulance, Sam wakes up just long enough to see Lucifer again before he starts seizing, and Dean finds out from the EMT that they're headed towards Sioux Falls General Hospital. Back at the salvage yard, it seems that Edgar is recovering.
Characters
Definitions
Music
- "Black Water" by The Doobie Brothers
- (plays during the water montage)
Quotes
Sam: Breakfast in bed.
Bobby: Hey, what am I, chopped brains on toast?
Bobby: That's the roofies talking.
Dr. Gaines: Oh, I severed their vocal chords, of course. It was a delicate procedure, but very doable.
Trivia & References
The origin of the phrase is unclear, although it appears in Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 novel Mother Night. Vonnegut was a writer who often employed metafictive literary devices, which Supernatural is also fond of (see Meta Episodes). Vonnegut was mentioned in 4.18 The Monster at the End of This Book
Both phrases have featured many times as the titles of songs and albums since from groups including Pink Floyd, Elvis Costello, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
- American Psycho refers to the book by Bret Easton Ellis (later made into a movie with Christian Bale) about an investment banker who is a sadistic serial killer.
- Atom Ant is a 1960's-era cartoon superhero, whose catch phrase was "Up and at 'em, Atom Ant!"
- Mothra is a giant mutant mothlike monster from Japanese cinema.
- A reference to the range of Barbie dollhouses known as 'Dreamhouses', the latest one released at the time of this episode's filming was known as the 'Malibu Dreamhouse'.
Dean: Turning on his GPS in case he tries to fly the Cuckoo's Nest
- A reference to the novel by Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which was made into a movie of the same name starring Jack Nicholson. It is about a larrikin criminal who stirs up trouble in a psychiatric institution.
- Bobby is alluding to the semi-autobiographical novel by Sylvia Plath called The Bell Jar, about a woman's struggle with depression. Plath herself committed suicide shortly after the book was published in 1961.
- Gunga Din was the eponymous Indian water-carrier character in the 1890 Rudyard Kipling poem.
- A reference to the British royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, which happened in April of 2011. The couple are a regular subject of coverage in tabloids. Sam's hallucination of Lucifer is reading a copy of Weekly World News, which has featured in previous Supernatural episodes. The tabloid ceased to publish its print edition in 2007 but continues as a website.
- Lucifer's encouraging Sam to kill himself to end the dream may be an indirect reference to the movie Inception, in which the characters could wake up from a dream by killing themselves in the dream state. Leonardo DiCaprio's character's wife in the movie killed herself because she thought she was still dreaming and couldn't tell the difference between dream and reality.
- Bag-lady is a slang term for a homeless woman who carries her belongings around with her in shopping bags.
- Obamacare is a nickname for the health care reforms introduced by President Obama.
- A reference to the fictional character Pinocchio from the children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio and later the Disney film Pinocchio (1940). Pinocchio was a sentient puppet who wished to become a real boy.
Hallucifer: Smell you, Florence Nightingale.
- Florence Nightingale was the founder of modern nursing and well-known for her work during the Crimean War.
- The 1950 James Stewart movie Harvey in which the main character Elwood P. Dowd claims to see a 6'3.5" tall rabbit named Harvey. This may also be a reference to the character of the same name in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
- Beautiful Mind is a 2001 movie about the schizophrenic maths prodigy John Nash, in which he has trouble distinguishing his hallucinations from reality.
Minutiae
- "I've been playing this guy for so long, I feel like I've got a pretty good handle on how he would react in a situation. [...] I think his relationship with Cas was very deep [...] and, the pulling the coat out, I discussed it with Guy like 'if he ever comes back, he's gonna need the trench coat'. So, we were like, y'know what let's just pull it out. So, I pulled it out, and it was soaking wet [...] There was just something kind of... almost like a closure, folding it up and putting it away [...] I wanted to take care of it because it belonged to somebody who meant a lot to Dean."(source)
- Tuners in car radios of the Impala's era were analog. The preset buttons mechanically moved the tuner to the new location. To set the location for a preset button you usually pulled it out, turned the tuning knob to get the best reception for that station, and then pushed it back in. It was often difficult to know what frequency the radio was on since the display was a single line that moved in front of a background with only a few main frequencies marked.
- Dean is referring to the hunter Martin Creaser who the boys helped on a case while he was committed to the Glenwood Springs Psychiatric Hospital in 5.11 Sam, Interrupted.
In 5.20 The Devil You Know, Crowley says to Brady:
"If Lucifer wins, he'll turn this place into his kingdom. When the Morning Star cleans house, we all get the mop."
Gallery
During the episode both director Guy Bee and Jim Beaver tweeted photos from the set.
Pics posted by director Guy Bee which follow his part in the episode from preparation, casting and filming through to editing.
July 20: View from my office... #SPN #prepping703 Russ Hamilton
Matt Tichenor and the Metallicar! #SPN 703
Pic posted by Jim Michaels
Pics posted by Jim Beaver