Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) tangle with the God of Time (Jason Dohring), who sends Dean back to 1944, where he is immediately arrested by none other than the one and only Eliot Ness (Nicholas Lea). While trying to figure out how to retrieve his brother, Sam is surprised by the reappearance of an old friend (Kim Rhodes).
Original Air Date: 13 January 2012 – Directed by Philip Sgriccia and Written by Robbie Thompson.
The moment has arrived for one of those uncanny time travel episodes. Supernatural gets back into its stride this week as the boys come to blows against Greek god Chronos in Time After Time.
The episode starts off with Sam and Dean chasing down a man in a fedora who sucks the life out of his victims. When Dean manages to grab the guy, they both disappear in a red flash of light, leaving Sam with only guesses as to what just happened.
A Case of the Mummies
Two days earlier, Sam and Dean are alerted to a case from Sheriff Jodie Mills who’s started keeping an eye out for activities of the supernatural variety. Bodies of young and healthy adults are turning up mysteriously mummified, aged beyond recognition. Picking up the case, the boys head to Canton, Ohio but not before Sam takes the opportunity to tell his big brother that he’s going to torture himself staying up at night obsessing over Dick.
Trying to tie leads together, the Winchesters talk to the only eyewitness to the most recent incident (who local law enforcement have branded as “unreliable”). After a rather passionate account from the witness chock full of details about a guy in a fedora choking the life out of his neighbor, more clues manifest. The victim aged right before his eyes followed by a strange red energy passing from victim to assailant and even his watch stopped as it happened.
This isn’t the first time that fedora guy has been spotted. Canton is rife with similar incidents of shriveled bodies throughout history and the boys come across an actual newspaper article containing a photo of the mystery man. Using local camera feeds (a trick Dean picked up from Frank), fedora guy is discovered stalking around a gas station where Sam and Dean realize that this same man hasn’t aged a day in over 55 years when compared to the photo from 1957. After talking with a witness from the actual 1957 crime scene, the boys get fedora guy’s address, stake out his house, and move on him when they see him leaving the house.
Dean manages to catch up with him in an alley right as he’s claiming another victim and we’re back to where the episode begins…
After tackling the man and being enveloped by the red light, Dean struggles with the mystery guy and catches a glimpse of the ring he’s wearing which has the inscription of the infinite hourglass — the mark of Chronos. Fedora guy gets away and Dean is immediately spotted by local authorities (wearing retro police uniforms) and gets arrested.
After being grilled by his arresting officer, a new case detective takes over the interview. Dean tells his story (the actual truth) to the detective and quickly realizes he isn’t being written off as some sort of kook by this new officer. Learning that the detective happens to be 1944′s version of a hunter, Dean is floored when he shakes hands with Eliot Ness.
Eliot takes Dean to meet his tailor, Ezra Moore (Linda Darlow) who is the era’s very own version of Bobby Singer all the way down to the sharp tongue. Ezra gives Eliot and Dean the scoop on Chronos, the God of Time while she decks out Dean in a new getup suitable for the era. Using Dean’s recollection of Chronos’ address from the future, the men raid his house learning that the God of Time has stayed wealthy by betting on sporting events that he knows the outcome to (Back To The Future style). They’re able to confirm this after (hilariously) working over the bookie that’s been handling Ethan Snyder’s (Chronos) gambling bets and get the location of Snyder’s favorite hang out.
Staking out Snyder from outside the diner, Dean and Eliot talk and we learn how Ness became a hunter and his motivation for staying in the profession. Spotting a young woman leaving the diner who is followed moments later by Snyder, the hunters suspect her as the next sacrifice Chronos has picked out. Making the move on Snyder, Eliot and Dean realize that the young woman is actually Snyder’s girlfriend and hang back long enough to figure out who she is and where she lives. Instructing Dean to swing back to Ezra’s for any new info she may have gathered on Chronos, Eliot elects to case the house of Chronos’ girlfriend Lila (Melissa Roxburgh), but gets ambushed by Chronos the moment he’s alone.
Back at Ezra’s shop, Dean receives the weapon that is guaranteed to kill the God of Time from Ezra along with a special “good luck” present from the wise hunter. Glancing over a stack of Ezra’s mail, Dean figures out a way he can get a hold of Sam in 2012.
Writing a letter to his kid brother, Dean leaves it in the house where he and Sam were squatting before he was zapped to 1944…
Back to the Future
Back in 2012, Sam is trying his best to connect the dots looking for some clue to where Dean has disappeared to. After another phone call from Jodie, Sam and the sheriff start working together on the case and Jodie uses her pull to break into one of Bobby’s storage units. They learn everything Dean, Eliot and Ezra has learned about Chronos, the God of Time along with Chronos’ motive behind the victims (sacrifices) he’s draining dry. Unfortunately, nothing they have solves the big mystery — where Chronos and Dean are actually at. The only way to figure out the next move is to learn how to summon a god.
Jodie finds lore indicating that Chronos can be summoned for a reading of the future which is good news until Sam delivers his bombshell. Sam has the spell to summon Chronos, but the deity has to be called when Dean is within range (hands on) to get them both together in the current time period. Stuck between a serious rock and a hard place, Jodie sends an exhausted Sam to bed to rest up and Sam makes the discovery of a lifetime as he’s about to close his eyes — Dean’s letter from the past.
Knowing where and when Dean is, Sam and Jodie still need an exact time from where to get Chronos and Dean together to make the spell work. With Dean’s letter mentioning Lila Taylor, the duo locates Chronos’ ex-girlfriend in a local retirement home and learns that in the 40′s, Ethan choked the life out of Dean right in front of her and Eliot Ness leaving every clock in the house stopped at exactly 11:34.
The Future is covered in Thick Black Ooze
Searching for Ness back at Lila’s place, Dean gets jumped by Ethan but the fight is interrupted when Ness shows up out of hiding having taken Lila hostage. Cornered, Ethan reveals that he is a god who has been killing to travel back and forth through time because of Lila who he is truly in love with. At the exact moment that Lila told Sam and Jodie about, Dean tries to come at him with the stake but Ethan intercepts him and starts to strangle him.
In 2012, Sam and Jodie incant the summoning ritual and pull both Dean and Chronos through time back to the present. Before the two are yanked back to the future Ness makes sure Dean has the stake, calling the young hunter untouchable. Infuriated by being pulled back into the present, Chronos lashes out at Sam and readies to finish what he started in 1944 with Dean but is distracted long enough allowing Sam to deliver the fatal stab to the heart.
Dying, Chronos gives the hunters a reading on their future which is a direct foretelling of events to come for the rest of the show’s seventh season. “It’s covered in thick black ooze. It’s everywhere. They’re everywhere. Enjoy oblivion.”
While the episode ends very abruptly (no end scene where the boys sit on the car and talk about their feelings this week), we’re left with a very good episode of Supernatural that actually returns the show to its more classical formula of action, humor and solid storytelling.
Season 7 so far is turning out to be the “season of Dean” and this episode is no exception. Dean is once more brooding about Leviathans and drowning in the sorrows of his personal losses. Our boy gets some more advice on how to deal with the terrible pitfalls of his life as of late this time from the great Eliot Ness. His advice to Dean about dealing with life and loss comes on the heels of last week’s speech from Frank which basically reminds Dean that no one lives and sooner or later he’ll be dead, too.
Jodie Mills has come a long way since her introduction in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. It’s great seeing her character start to fit in better and better with the boys (and the hunter culture) and seeing her as she tries to unravel Bobby’s life puts a new spin to the take no attitude sheriff she was once introduced as. Watching how she interacts with the boys on this case we quickly get the impression that Jodie is going to become a bigger fixture in the series for a while to come.
If there’s one thing Supernatural time travel episodes do, its showing off how much of a dork Dean Winchester can really be. Whether he’s touting references to Untouchables or just relishing in the moment (“Is that a German name?”), seeing Dean geeking out and making a complete 180 from troubled Dean is always a sight to see.
Seeing the brothers also back in more of a light hearted spirit also let’s us know that they are trying to move past losing Bobby. From the classic Winchester rock-paper-scissors match (which always ends with Sam winning) to Sam’s teasing the Dean is “strictly into Dick,” we have ourselves a classic episode of Supernatural.
Supernatural goes on break for two weeks (reruns) before returning February 3rd with The Slice Girls. See you in a few weeks.
