Supernatural: And Then There Were None
September 10, 2021 5:12 AM - Season 6, Episode 16 - Subscribe

When Sam, Dean, and Bobby run into Rufus and the Campbells while all of them are hunting the cause of an upsurge in supernatural activity, tensions erupt into violence.

Quotes:

Dean: [Advancing on Samuel with his gun aimed, cocked, ready to fire] Welcome to next time!

Bobby: So. You must be Samuel.
Samuel: You must be the guy pretending to be their father.
Bobby: Somebody ought to.

Rufus: [referring to Samuel] I take it you know each other.
Dean: He's our grandfather.
Rufus: Ow. Somebody needs a hug.

Dean: [happy to see Rufus] Well, look what the cat dragged in.
Sam: It really is good to see you, Rufus.
Rufus: [shaking hands with Sam and Dean] I can believe it. It must get old dealing with this miserable cuss here [Bobby] all by yourselves.
Sam: Ha! Is it that obvious?
Bobby: Why don't you three get a room?

Dean: [Bobby is showing Sam and Dean a spike in monster activity in the past week, circling locations on a US map] Nest of vamps, werewolf dance party. Shifters, six of them. Two hunters died taking them out. Ghouls, ghouls, ghoul-wraith smorgasbord.
Dean: Is it just me, or is that a straight kick line down I80?
Bobby: [Draws a line along the interstate on the map] Exactly.
Dean: Looks to me like it's a... Sherman march monster mash.

Dean: I am not in the mood! I just had a 12 inch... harpy crawl outta my ear!

Samuel: What if that thing's still in ya, and we can't trust a word you're sayin'?
Dean: [points his gun at Samuel] It's not!
Bobby: Check your ear.
Dean: [Looks at Bobby and lowers his gun] What do you mean, check my ear? Check my ear for what?
Rufus: [pokes his finger into Dean's ear]
Dean: Hey! Wha -- [pulls away, then checks his own ear, muttering] Why don't you buy me a drink first?
Rufus: Second date.

Rufus: [Looking at Sam, Dean and Bobby after coming to] This can't be my afterlife cuz the three of you are here.

Dean: [Watching Bobby as he comes to, tied to a chair, possessed by the worm] Well, hey there, you little herpe. [Places the live wire against Bobby's neck then steps back]
Sam: Why do you keep talkin' about herpes?
Dean: What?
Sam: ....
Dean: I don't -- shut up. Shut up!

Trivia:

The title refers to an Agatha Christie novel with the same name. The novel was first published in the US under the title "Ten Little Indians". Its original title, as it was published in the UK, utilized a word now considered highly offensive. In the book, a group of people is isolated and killed one by one. In the same way, Eve's new monster infests different characters, causing them to kill off each other, one by one.

Dean describes the thing that crawled out of his ear as "a Khan worm on steroids". He is referring to the creature that controls human behaviour from the sci-fi classic Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

After burying Rufus, Bobby takes out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, which is a very expensive type of Scotch, and pours some of it on his grave to honour his fallen friend, then takes a swig himself. As Rufus told Dean in "Time Is on My Side" (ep. 3.15), Johnnie Walker Blue Label is not only his favourite drink but the only liquor he will drink.

The scene where Sam, Dean, Bobby and Rufus were shocking each other to see who had the parasite is very similar to the scene in The Thing, where the scientists were testing their blood with regular human blood too see who was the thing. The wire they use contains all three AC leads (live, earth, and neutral). Binding the three together would cause a dead short and instantly blow a fuse, rendering them totally useless.
posted by orange swan (3 comments total)
 
It seems like such a waste of Mitch Pileggi to bring him on the show only for the kind of arc he got. The 1973 flashbacks were fine, but the contemporary scenes were garbage. I just don't buy that he would have betrayed Sam and Dean the way he did in order to bring Mary back.

Dean didn't even seem to feel any guilt over killing Gwen. It wasn't his fault, of course, but you'd think he'd be upset as Bobby was over Rufus.

This is such poor writing. Given Dean's need for family, his feelings about the Campbells should have been explored more. They barely registered with him.

I suppose that's all the Campbells wiped out now?

I liked Rufus and he deserved a better fate than this.
posted by orange swan at 5:22 AM on September 10, 2021 [1 favorite]


If I didn't know better, I'd swear that all of the on-screen stuff happened just because somewhere, in the back office, they wanted to get some regular guest actors "off the books" somehow. Yes, I know if they're not regulars, they don't count in the financial consideration of things, it really felt like back-office machinations rather than writing-room driven. Or maybe the writing room was just having a really bad few weeks, but yeah, I keep saying that family doesn't actually mean family to Dean, and this is another point in favour of that argument.

This episode was absolutely a waste of both good characters and characters with potential to be good.
posted by sardonyx at 9:22 AM on September 10, 2021 [1 favorite]


Samuel and Gwen weren't GREAT characters but they, and certainly Rufus, deserved a better episode than this.

So sorry to hear that Bobby and Samuel just met and haven't been passive-aggressively seething at each other offscreen this whole time, egged on occasionally by Robosam when he got bored.

Bobby can be frustrating but he's also the only person who will think of stuff like maybe Sam and Dean don't need to see him autopsy their grandfather, even if one of them promised to kill him and the other actually did it. (I think they wouldn't have cared that much, but he still thought to ask. But they both had to look away from electrocuting Bobby.) 

"Yeah, I wouldn't go with the family thing" yeesh, at least someone said it.
 
"You know what I think Mom would say? She'd say just 'cause you're blood doesn't make you family. You got to earn that." First, I'm not sure where Dean's getting that, but okay. Second, I think this does actually kind of make sense from Dean's perspective. He didn't grow up with any kind of biological extended family, that isn't necessarily something that has a lot of inherent value or meaning to him. (I don't know that it meant a ton to the Campbells, from what I can see.)

I think there's a school of thought that Supernatural is a story about found/chosen family and I don't think that's exactly right, but it is true that at least for Dean, there's family and there's Family, and I think on some level for him it does have to be earned and even chosen. (Which, honestly, there's some truth to that for a lot of people, including me.)
posted by jameaterblues at 9:32 PM on September 10, 2021


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