Episode 09×07 AKA the Episode with Winchester Feels

This week I’m struggling to write about this episode. Not because I didn’t like it, on the contrary, but because the episode hit a little too close to home. So forgive me for stilted angsty writing this week; I’ll be back to my snarky self next week.

Synopsis

The writers made a brilliant choice this week in keeping the plot simple. Dean receives a phone call from a man named “Sonny,” who is revealed to be the man in charge of a boys’ home. Dean reveals to Sam that he spent two months there when he was sixteen, and that John Winchester had lied to Sam about it. Dean plays it off nonchalantly, like it wasn’t important, when in fact, it may have been the most significant two months of his childhood. But more on that later.

Sonny calls Dean because of a death on the farm–a man has been skewered by a forklift that no one was driving. Definitely a case for the Winchesters.

As the boys investigate the mysterious death, Dean has flashbacks to his time in the group home. Sixteen-year-old Dean (played by Dylan Everett) is still a smart ass and still following in John Winchester’s footsteps. We see that Dean was not miserable in the group home; Sonny gave him the support, encouragement, and paternal guidance that John Winchester couldn’t; Dean fell in love with a girl named Robin. Sam slowly pieces together what Dean’s life was like on the farm, solving the case of Dean Winchester while Dean hunts down the ghost.

After Ruth, a woman who lives/works on the farm , is killed in a bathtub, and a young boy is injured by the lawnmower, the Winchesters realize that they’re dealing with a rather vengeful ghost who is very protective of one little boy, Timmy.

The ghost is Timmy’s mother, and in one heartbreaking moment, Dean and Sam realize that the ghost isn’t tied to an object. The ghost is connected to Timmy, and Timmy has to let go of his mother so that she can move on into the afterlife and he can move on with his own.