Supernatural: My Bloody Valentine
August 17, 2021 6:01 AM - Season 5, Episode 14 - Subscribe

Castiel helps Dean and Sam hunt down Cupid after people start killing themselves and each other for love on Valentine's Day.

Quotes:

[as a happy, chubby and naked male Cupid grabs and bear hugs the brothers and Castiel]
Dean: This is a fight? Are we in a fight?
Castiel: This is... their handshake.
Dean: I don't like it!
Castiel: No one likes it.

Dean: [while looking at victims' body parts] Hey, Sam. [passes heart to Sam] Be my Valentine?

Dean: [on his phone] Cass, it's Dean... Yeah, room 31C, basement level, St. James Medical Cente... [walks right into Castiel, who has suddenly appeared]
Castiel: [through his cell phone, while looking at Dean] I'm there now.
Dean: Yeah, I get that.
Castiel: I'm gonna hang up now.

Castiel: [about the hamburger he's eating] These make me very happy.
Dean: Seriously how many is that?
Castiel: I lost count, but it's in the low hundreds.

Castiel: Where is your hunger?
Dean: Huh?
Castiel: Well, slowly but surely, everyone in this town is falling prey to famine, but so far you seem unaffected.
Dean: Hey, when I want a drink, I drink. When I want sex, I go get it. The same goes for a sandwich or a fight.
Castiel: So, you're saying you're just well adjusted?
Dean: God, no. I'm just well fed.

Famine: [holds his hand up to Deans chest, causing him to struggle in pain as he looks inside him] That's one deep, dark... nothing you got there, Dean... You can smirk and joke and lie to your brother, lie to yourself, but not to me! I can see inside you, Dean! I can see how broken you are, how defeated; you can't win and you know it, but you just keep fighting, just keep going through the motions. You're not hungry, Dean, because inside, you're already dead.

Castiel: What human myth has mistaken for "cupid" is actually a lower order of angel. Technically it's a cherub, third-class.
Dean: Cherub?
Castiel: Yeah, they're all over the world. There are dozens of them.
Dean: You mean the little flying fat kid in diapers?
Castiel: They're not incontinent.

Dean: Why does heaven care if Harry meets Sally?

Alice's friend: She was a nice girl. And I'm talking, like, a nice girl -- like she still had her promise ring, if you know what I mean.
Sam: She was a virgin?
Alice's friend: No premarital. I used to wonder how she did it. I mean, you know, didn't do it.

Sam: He died from a Twinkie binge?
Dr. Corman: Well, after he blew out the band around his stomach, he filled it up till it burst. When he could no longer swallow, he started jamming the cakes down his gullet with a... with a toilet brush, like he was ramrodding a cannon.
Sam: So, what do you make of it?
Dr. Corman: I'd say that it was a very peculiar thing to do.

Sam: Not much more we can do tonight. Alright, I'm just gonna go through some files. You can go ahead and get going.
Dean: What?
Sam: Go ahead. Unleash the Kraken. See you tomorrow morning.
Dean: Where am I going?
Sam: Dean. It's Valentine's Day. Your favourite holiday, remember? I mean, what do you always call it? "Unattached drifter Christmas"?
Dean: Oh, yeah. Well... be that as it may... I don't know. Guess I'm not feeling it this year.
Sam: So you're not into bars full of lonely women?
Dean: Nah, I guess not. Ahh. What?
Sam: It's when a dog doesn't eat -- that's when you know something's really wrong.
Dean: Remarkably patronizing concern duly noted. Nothing's wrong. We gonna work or what?

Trivia:

Sam and Dean use the names "Cliff" and "Marley", after Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley.

In 2009, Jensen Ackles also starred in a movie with the same name as this episode title, My Bloody Valentine.

Just before Dean hits him, the cupid is singing the same song Alastair was singing as Dean was getting ready to torture him in episode 4.16 "On the Head of a Pin": "Cheek to Cheek", by Irving Berlin.

James Otis's costume in this episode of Supernatural was the same on an episode of The X-Files, "Alone" (Ep. 8:19), in which he also played a very elderly, frail man on oxygen and in a wheelchair.

Because Misha Collins is vegan, the "raw meat" that Castiel is devouring in the diner with Famine was made specially for him. Instead of actual cooked meat made to look raw, it was what Misha describes as a "disgusting" concoction of soy, ketchup, and tomato sauce, among other things.

When Sam and Dean open the briefcase, the soul glows. This may be a reference to a similar scene in Pulp Fiction. Most people theorize that the glowing object in that briefcase is Marcellus Wallace's soul.

Famine's car is black, because the horse that Famine rides in the apocalyptic legend is black.
posted by orange swan (4 comments total)
 
God, that cold open with the couple mowing down on each other... [shudder].

The Cupid was a lot of fun, as were Dean, Castiel, and Sam's reactions to being bear hugged by a much too affectionate naked man.

I'm not getting the rationale for Dean's not only not falling prey to the epidemic of ravenous appetites as everyone else, even Sam, was doing, but losing his normal hedonistic appetites. Wouldn't being so empty inside as Famine claims make him even more ravenous?

Famine is pretty repulsive, but I suppose he's not as gross as Pestilence will be.
posted by orange swan at 6:10 AM on August 17, 2021


I legit like this episode, it's a good mix of funny and disturbing (you live on in my nightmares, fryer guy), but also I can't watch the famine scenes without thinking of EAT NUTRIGRAIN FEEL GREAT.

John and Mary being set up by Heaven makes sense in the big picture, but I don't like it from a character standpoint. It doesn't help that Michael was just going on about all the ways chance had to align for John and Mary to meet and fall in love, for us to find out an episode later that it was in fact extremely arranged, probably by him, and involved some sort of angelic whammy for them to be able to tolerate each other. I have no problem with Michael lying to Dean about the nature of fate, and at this point it would be more surprising if Heaven didn't have some sort of tactical eugenics side hustle. There's even something appealingly grim to the idea that Mary's desperate deal with Azazel, and John's obsessive pursuit of him, were at least partly fueled by a romantic devotion they had to have programmed into them just to create the kids whose lives it destroyed. But John and Mary weren't a perfect couple, it wouldn't make the show better if they were, and at this point the story has enough fantasy elements in the mix that it could benefit from keeping that relationship at least semi-grounded.

The miles of suffering contained in the line "eight suicides and nineteen ODs", and Jimmy still being enough himself in there enough to be absolutely dying for a burger.

"Wait your turn." brrrrrrrr.

I don't know how I feel about Dean being so empty there's nothing for Famine to latch on to. Famine isn't a million miles from the siren, in terms of amping up human desire and feeding off the wreckage, and I think the siren had Dean's number pretty good. He's been through a lot since then, I would buy that he's extremely depressed, but it's hard to think he's ever not someone who deeply needs and wants a family around him. But maybe that's not the kind of desire Famine cares about.

It's rough to see Dean so low, but the way he breaks down at the end and begs for help from God sounds so much like the times he most desperately asked for John.
posted by jameaterblues at 8:00 AM on August 17, 2021


Wouldn't being so empty inside

Maybe not what the writers had in mind, but this could be an example of integer overflow error. In some old 16 bit games, if you score over 65,535, it wraps around to -65,534

Really enjoyed Jay Brazeau as the coroner. Prolific guest actor. Played a couple of different roles in TXF.

The very last bit of the background music in the very last scene - it sounded like a riff from 'O'Death,' perhaps a very subtle bit of foreshadowing?
posted by porpoise at 7:30 PM on August 17, 2021


Dr. Corman is surely named for the king of B-movies, Roger Corman.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:12 AM on August 19, 2021


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