Supernatural 10x11 "There's No Place Like Home"

The Mark of Cain is looming ever larger in Dean's mind, so much so that he's decided to try a cleanse of sorts - no more eating greasy foods or indulging in the booze, just some egg whites and water. But the darkness is still there, showing up in a new tremble in Dean's hand, especially as he holds a nasty knife. Good thing we've got a nice parallel storyline to help our wee minds understand what's going on with him this week!

Before the brothers can find Cain to ask him about the Mark, they must attend to some other business - namely, Charlie is back from Oz, and is apparently wrecking havoc, beating up seemingly innocent people. The boys soon find out these people aren't so innocent. Rather, they are all tied to the death of Charlie's parents. Or should we say Celeste's parents? Apparently that is her real name! Anyhow, they track down the next person she will be targeting, and find her to be super badass, to the point where she can kind of take down Dean.

Whaaa?

Charlie drives off, but then another Charlie drives up. Oh! There are two Charlies. Basically, back in Oz, they were going to lose the war, so Charlie decided to let wizard release the darkest part of her self in order to help win the war. Well, they did, but she did some pretty terrible things to do it, so Good Charlie didn't want to let her back inside. Dark Charlie was pissed and came back to the real world to track down their parents' killer in order to win Good Charlie back over, or something. Only she breaks the key to Oz, which was the thing that performed their magical separation, so right now... they're stuck. Which is no good, because if you hurt Dark Charlie, it also hurts Good Charlie. Got it?

Okay! Well, Good Charlie and Sam go off to try to see if they can find another key to Oz. They discover that a former Man of Letters had gone to Oz in the past, eventually came back thanks to the help of L. Frank Baum, and went into a witness protection of sorts. They set off to find him.

Meanwhile, Dean has tracked down the guy who killed Charlie's parents, and waits there for Dark Charlie to show up. Show up she does, but convinces Dean that she just wants to talk to the guy, nothing more. That, of course, is a lie. She just kills him, even after he is rather apologetic. Dean heads to the local watering hole to think about drowning his sorrows, only to have a strategically timed conversation with DC, who then steals the Impala to go off in search of GC and Sam.

GC and Sam have tracked down the dude and find out that he is actually also the good version of himself. The dark version of himself is the wizard back in Oz. The only way to get them back together is to mortally wound the good guy to get the wizard to come and save him, thus bringing a key with him. They do, and the wizard appears, but as soon as he does he starts trying to kill Sam. GC has to kill the good guy in order to also kill the wizard and prevent him killing Sam. Meanwhile, Dean has stopped DC from going inside by, you know, punching her a lot, satisfying his inner Mark rage stuff for the moment.

In the end, they are able to reunite the two halves of Charlie to make her whole again. She lives to fight another day, but not with the boys, and hopefully not to die at some close time in the future. She vows to help them figure out this Mark thing, and forgives Dean for the beating, even though he's not so keen to forgive himself, which is, as Charlie points out, kind of his thing.


Random Thoughts:

- This was probably a pretty fun episode for Felicia Day to do, getting to play the badass side of Charlie while also doing the more funny side-kicky side too.

- They were laying it on a little thick with the comparisons between Dean and Dark Charlie, sheeeeesh.

- I enjoyed not having the whole angel and demon of it all for this episode. While certainly Castiel and Crowley are big parts of the show now, sometimes it's nice to just have the brothers doing their thing, even if it did still involve a big recurring guest star.

- Next week's episode looks like it could be pretty funny, but then the one with old Dean wasn't as great as it could've been, so who knows if Teen Dean will be better. Too bad we can't get some Teen Sam in there too, but alas I think Colin Ford probably looks older than the current Teen Dean, though technically Dylan Everett is one year older than Colin. Hmm... hmm...

Quotes:

Dean: As soon as we get rid of this demonic tramp stamp, I am back on the booze, burgers, and... more booze.

Dark Charlie: Should've known Rocket and Groot would track me down.

Dark Charlie: You lied to yourself... that's kind of your move.

Dean: Oh you son of a bitch!

Dark Charlie: You hit like a girl who never learned how to hit.

Sam: Be careful out there.
Charlie: Does that sound like either of me?

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