Supernatural: Of Grave Importance
October 5, 2021 5:24 AM - Season 7, Episode 19 - Subscribe

Bobby tries to help Sam and Dean find a missing hunter inside a house haunted by a number of other ghosts.

Quotes

Sam: You know she and Bobby had a thing, right?
Dean: Yeah!... Yeah, I knew that. [pauses] Really?
Sam: Yeah! Kind of a foxhole thing. Very Hemingway.
Dean: Huh... She and I kinda went Hemingway this one time, too.
Sam: Alright, well... that happens.
Dean: Wait, you too?
Sam: Look, it was a while back. We ended up on the same case; she was stressed and I... I didn't have a soul?
Dean: That's a lot of foxholes.

Bobby: [looking at a room full of spirits] My people. Hi. I'm Bobby, and I'm a ghost. Hoping for a little ghost orientation here.
Other spirits: ...
Bobby: Je m'appelle Bobby.
Other spirits: ...
Bobby: Chilly.

Annie Hawkins: Dead. Ghost. Me. Three words you never want to use in a sentence.

Annie: You ran away from your reaper? On purpose? That's why you're still here? You stupid, crazy old...
Bobby: Hey. I remember a time when you liked how crazy I was.

Bobby: [a Victorian ghost is eying them] Is it me, or am I being checked out?
Annie: No, stud. I'm being checked out.

Victoria Dodd: When this house was a brothel, I worked here as a fancy lady. He slit my throat.
Annie Hawkins: "Fancy lady"? A hooker?

Victoria Dodd: Annie's in terrible danger. We all are.
Sam: From?
Victoria Dodd: Whitman Van Ness.
Dean: But he's dead.
Victoria Dodd: [to Bobby] I thought you said they were good.
Bobby: Give 'em a minute. They've gotten slower since I've been away.

Sam: Where'd you come from?
Victoria: Here. I was a fancy lady.
Dean: A hooker?

Bobby: You're saying we should move crap with the power of Zen.
Haskel Crane: I'm telling you to let go of all that. Calmly tell the thing what to do.
Bobby: [concentrates on candle]
Haskel Crane: You're getting tense.
Bobby: You're not helpful.

Bobby: You said there were two ways.
Haskel Crane: Oh, you could use explosive anger and pure, red-hot rage, but that's impossible to manufacture. Sorry.
Annie Hawkins: Makes sense. Like poltergeists, vengeful spirits.
Bobby: I am vengeful.

Bobby: I can kill werewolves, fix a Pinto and bake corn bread. I'll be damned if I can't get Zen.

Bobby: What else did you say this place was, other than a whorehouse?
Annie Hawkins: It was a lot of things. It was a boarding house, a school, a speakeasy.
Bobby: Yeah, well, thing about speakeasies... hell of a lot to hide. [finds secret door] I still got it.

Bobby: For the record, I hated that Swayze flick -- romantic bull crap.

Bobby: Suck on that, Swayze.

Annie Hawkins: Sam! Dean!
Bobby: Honey, don't you think I've tried that? I shouted myself hoarse.
Annie Hawkins: But I'm right here!
Bobby: Well, now you know how all the ghosts who have ever tried to talk to us feel.

Bobby: Annie's here, too, by the way.
Dean: Hi, Annie.
Annie Hawkins: Hi, guys.
Bobby: She says you both look uglier than she remembered.
Annie: [smacks Bobby]

Bobby: [about Annie] I'll miss her.
Dean: Me too.
Sam: Yeah.
Bobby: Well, you didn't know her like I did.
Sam & Dean: ...

Trivia

When Dean and Annie are on the phone, Annie says she is in Bodega Bay and staying at the Crow's Nest Hotel. This is a reference to Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film The Birds, which takes place in Bodega Bay, where characters are attacked by crows and other birds.

When Dean and Sam walk back into the house, and Dean thinks he hears something, he says "Slimer?", a reference to the friendly ghost from Ghostbusters.

Haunted house is the Tulk House in Vancouver. It was also the Pierpont Inn in "Playthings" (ep. 2.11).

As revealed by the boys' discussion as they wait in the restaurant at the beginning of the episode, Annie is the only woman in the series to have "had a thing" with BOTH Winchester brothers (and Bobby as well).

Whitman Van Ness opens a secret passage to drag bodies of people he has killed out of sight. When Bobby and Annie are searching for the bodies, they would not have needed to find the candle holder that controlled the passage...they could just walk through the wall to find the passage, because they weren't carrying anything from the physical world. Just minutes before, they had walked through the door into the room that contained the entrance to the passage.

When Annie and Bobby's ghost locate the hidden room, Annie's corpse's mouth moves, despite being dead.
posted by orange swan (4 comments total)
 
Respect to Annie for the hat trick. Sam and Dean sometimes butt heads when they're both attracted to the same woman, but they don't share, and I must admit that if I were a character in the Supernatural universe, I'd share their scruples and pick one. The idea of doing two members of the same family squicks me out.

That was a fabulous house and while it has a terrible reputation, it's no longer haunted, so I bet it could be had for a song.

Victoria's prim offense over being called a hooker was a hoot.

Victoria Dodd and Haskel Crane still being cogent was something of a surprise. Ghosts can keep their humanity for over a century -- or lose it nearly immediately.
posted by orange swan at 5:35 AM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


There are a few times in this show where I think it cheats the viewers with regards to characters and this is one of them. Annie seems like a great character that we should have met prior to her death. Then, this episode would have had more meaning, especially because she seems like a character that could have done a great job in keeping the boys in line (which, at times, they desperately need).

I know I keep harping on this, but the rules about being a ghost don't make a lot of sense in this universe. Annie's a ghost, and seems like she really didn't want to be and is shocked that Bobby made the choice to duck his reaper. Some ghosts are tied to places, some to things. As orange swan pointed out, some ghosts can keep their humanity, others can't. Yes, I know everybody's different with different strengths and mental and emotional stability, but still, it just seems like there wasn't enough thought put into how ghosts work.
posted by sardonyx at 8:48 AM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


There must be other ways to wind up stuck being a ghost than just refusing to go with your reaper. We can infer from Annie's disapproval of Bobby for having dodged his reaper that she didn't do so. She didn't even know she was dead until she saw him. Are there circumstances under which reapers drop the ball and don't show up to accompany the spirit to their destination? Was Whitman Van Ness doing something to keep the reapers away from the ghosts of the people he had killed, and if so, what was it?
posted by orange swan at 9:04 AM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Legit baffled by whoever thought the most effective way to bring Bobby back was having him talk in catchphrases for the first half of the episode.
posted by jameaterblues at 10:37 PM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


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