Supernatural 10x13 "Halt & Catch Fire" [Contributor: Deena Edwards]

"Halt & Catch Fire"

Original Airdate: February 10, 2015

We live in a world dependent on technology, obsessed with things like tweets, snaps, Insta-whatevers, and so on. It’s not always a bad thing, of course, unless you’ve somehow managed to land yourself in harms way of a very angry vengeful spirit. In which case, you should probably avoid the electronic devices all together.

Last night’s episode was another throwback, a good old fashioned hunt with a little bit of a twist. Sam and Dean head to a college in Iowa to talk to a girl who claims a possessed truck drove her friend off the end of an unfinished bridge to his death. All signs point to ghost--- cold spots, the nav app, Trini, seemingly having a mind of its own, and of course, the fact that the truck the victim was driving at the time belonged to his dead brother, whom he didn’t get along with at all. Sure enough, when they go to the salvage yard where the truck is--- or what’s left of it, there are traces of ectoplasm and the EMF meter is going crazy. They salt and burn it, but the problem doesn’t stop there.

Not long after, there’s another death, this time a girl named Julie, strangled to death in her sorority house by her own laptop charger after a series of strange messages involving the number “810.” At the crime scene, Sam steals her laptop, hoping to find a clue in it as to how and why a spirit is hopping from one machine to the next.   They find out the number is an address where, nine months prior, Andrew Silver was killed in a car accident. With his body having been cremated, and the victims seemingly having no ties to each other, the brothers wonder exactly how the spirit is sticking around to haunt these victims.

After a third student is killed, his brains turned to jelly by his own speaker system, they finally find out the truth. Delilah, a girl from the college, who also had been caught on several occasions leaving flowers at the spot of the accident, comes clean about that night all those months ago. She and her friends, the previous three victims, were driving (and tweeting, and selfie-ing… come on, guys, really?) when the car veered over into the other lane, causing the other car to swerve and hit a power line, one of the cables snapping loose and electrocuting the car, engulfing it in flames. They drove off, never calling 911.

While Sam heads off to the scene of the accident, coming to the conclusion that the spirit is traveling through the wifi signal in town, Dean is keeping Delilah company. He relates to her situation, telling her,   “I have made more mistakes than I can count. Ones that haunt me day and night.” Much like she’s been plagued by nightmares and guilt from that night, the deaths that have occurred under Dean’s watch have stuck with him, as well.

Before they can get to the routers to turn them off, the power flickers, Andrew’s face appearing in all of the computer, tablet, and phone screens in the room. The two of them take off to the basement, hoping the lack of signal and salt lines at the doors and windows will be enough to ward Andrew off, but he reappears anyway. Dean attempts to reason with him, using his own experiences with the Mark to try to talk him down.  “You can keep killing, and become something that you won’t recognize. Or you can move on, ‘cause that is the only thing that is gonna give you peace.” As good of a speech as it is, ghosts aren’t so easily swayed from their vengeful ways, and it takes a video call from the deceased man’s wife, who tells him it’s time for him to let go, to make him move on.

In the end, Dean decides to follow Andrew’s lead. Peace over pain, and his peace is in working cases, in saving people, rather than killing themselves over a cure for the Mark that may or may not even exist. The answer in controlling the darkness inside of him lies with him and him alone. Of course, things are never that simple, and I’m sure that when an actual lead on a cure comes along, Dean’s mind may change.

Memorable Moments/Quotes:

• “Go screw yourself.” “You go screw yourself.” I’m sure this will be the future of talking GPS apps, just you wait.
• “A croissookie.” “A croissookie?”
• Dean spending the entire episode distracted by college girls and copious amounts of food just brings me way back to season one Dean, and I love it.
• “Agents Grohl and Cobain.” The fake names just keep getting better.
• “So Trini and everything else in the truck went all Christine...” “Who’s Christine?” I appreciate your pop culture references, Dean.
• “If you died and I drove your car, you’d kill me?” “If you stunk her up with tacquitos, probably.” 
• “I have a photographic memory. Hashtag blessed!” DO THE YOUTHS REALLY TALK LIKE THIS NOW?! HASHTAG PLEASE STOP.
• “I hit up Julie’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, InstaChat, Snapchat, AIM. Nothing but posts on rush and Fifty Shades of Grey. The movie, not the book.”  “Yeah, I didn’t get half of that.”
• “Nothing ever really gets deleted from the internet… you knew that, right?”  The look of concern that passed over Dean’s face just then. Makes you wonder what kind of stuff he has posted that’s just floating around out there.
• “So, you’re like… Ghostbusters?” Yet another Ghostbusters reference of the night. I’m starting to think that maybe Supernatural and Parks and Rec are telepathically connected or something somehow this season.
• “How do you deal?”  “Whiskey. Denial. I do my best to make things right, whatever that may be.”
• “Oh yeah, sure, Sammy. We’ll just kill the internet. Wait, can we?”
• The brother moment at the end physically hurt my soul.