Supernatural season 6 episode 4 review: Weekend At Bobby’s

This review contains spoilers.

6.4 Weekend At Bobby’s

Let’s do the recap first. The episode starts one year ago, just after the averted Apocalypse, with Bobby trying to regain his soul from the demon, Crowley. Needless to say, Bobby doesn’t get his soul back. Demons, you just can’t trust them.

Back to the present day and Sam and Dean are investigating a gruesome death and contact Bobby for help. Despite interrupting his work, Bobby drops everything and spends the night finding out information for the brothers and, after passing on the information to Dean, gets back to what he was doing.

Bobby has a demon trapped in the basement and is torturing it to extract information about Crowley. Whilst he is interrogating the demon, Marcy, a friendly neighbour, unexpectedly calls and invites him round for dinner and a movie.

After Marcy leaves, Bobby returns to the demon and finds out what he wants to know, Crowley’s real name. With that knowledge, Bobby starts investigating Crowley’s origins, but is interrupted by another hunter, Rufus Turner, arriving at Bobby’s house with a dead monster to bury. Bobby helps Rufus hide the body and, in turn, Rufus offers to use his contacts to find out more information on Crowley.

The FBI, who are looking for Rufus, turn up at Bobby’s place where they discover a large empty hole where Bobby and Rufus thought they buried a dead monster. Bobby tracks the monster to Marcy’s house and saves her from it. In spite of this, she won’t be inviting him over again anytime soon.

Rufus contacts Bobby with news of Crowley. He has information on Crowley’s long deceased son and knows where to find a ring that belonged to him that would enable Bobby to summon his spirit.

After a phone call from Dean, who wanted to confide in Bobby about his concerns over Sam and leaving Lisa and Ben, Bobby delicately puts it to the brothers that he does have his own problems to sort out. The brothers offer to help in any way they can.

After using the ring to summon Crowley’s son, Bobby then calls forth Crowley again. The deal is the same. Bobby wants his soul back. With the newly found information Bobby has, Crowley reluctantly agrees.

Another great episode.

Without doubt, it is Jim Beaver’s episode. His portrayal of Bobby is first class, with Steven William’s performance as Rufus adding so much to the mix they could almost have their own Grumpy Old Hunters show. It’s also a huge credit to the actors and writers that, in an episode that deals with Bobby’s soul, torture and various very bloody deaths, there is a lot of humour, but not at the expense of the drama or characters.

Mark Sheppard’s Crowley does almost steal the show, though. It is a cliché that the villain has all the best lines but “I hope that’s paint” is possibly the funniest and equally subtle line I’ve heard in a long time.

Sam and Dean? It is a truly confident show that can sideline the two leads into a few scant scenes and carry itself with the supporting cast and not leave the audience wondering what the main characters are up to. And this episode does it superbly.

We get an insight into Bobby’s life and all his interruptions. And you share his irritation at those interruptions and want to get back to his story.

Had Supernatural finished at the end of last season, it would have been the characters gambling everything they had to save the world. Now we are seeing the consequences of those decisions and the world being a changed place because of it.

Read our review of episode 3, The Third Man, here.