Baby’s Rear View Recap: 11.16 “Safe House”

This post is about Supernatural season 11 episode 16, “Safe House,” written by Robbie Thompson and directed by Stefan Pleszczynski.

Spoilers below.

“This place is way more of a fixer-upper than we thought.”

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a mother is stripping wall-paper in her new old house when she hears her daughter scream. She runs to check on her, and finds that she is fine but scared, saying she hears noises and complaining that her room is cold. Mom reassures her it’s fine, but as soon as she leaves, the lights flicker and the door shuts of its own accord. The little girl is hiding under her bed when a mottled grey hand reaches out and grabs her foot.

“This case seems like a lay-up.”

Cut to Dean and Sam, for once not in the bunker but eating breakfast in a diner instead. Still no word on Amara or Cas, Sam informs us. Apparently it’s been weeks since last time they saw Cas, and though Dean wants to keep his eye on the prize, Sam thinks they should take the case of a little girl in a supernatural coma. Dean reluctantly agrees and the hunt begins.

“Even the Internet thinks I’m crazy.”

Momma Naoki explains about daughter Kat screaming and tells them about the cold spots and flickering lights. They head to the house, thinking it’s probably a ghost.

“They were two of the rudest people I'd ever met.”

When they arrive at the house, a neighbor lady questions them. She’s the head of the neighborhood watch, so it’s her business too. She mentions that two older FBI agents came to investigate the house a handful of years ago.

“Were you ever nice?”

“1985 -- Worst year of my life.”

Flashback to a handful of years ago, Bobby asleep in a beat-up car parked outside the house. Rufus drives up and knocks on the car, rousing Bobby. The two head to work, with Rufus explaining that he needs Bobby to do the heavy lifting because it’s Shabbat. The neighbor lady stops them and when she asks what their official business is, Rufus replies “It's officially none of your damn business, ma'am.”

“You think Bobby and Rufus wasted any time arguing about this kind of crap?”

Dean and Sam investigate, finding lots of EMF. In the past, B and R question a mother whose son went into a coma under similar circumstances. Both couples head to the same hotel room years apart to discuss possible ghosts. Both couples argue over whether it may be more than ghosts. Sam thinks ghosts just seem too easy. Rufus bets a bottle of Johnnie that it's a Baku.

“Oldest rule of hunting, Bobby -- You can't save everyone.”

B and R dig up the graves in the past and have a manly heart-to-heart about the impending apocalypse and Bobby’s concern over D and S. D and S dig up the graves to find ashes. They finally conclude that it’s not a ghost, but too little too late. Momma Naoki has already been put into a coma.

“If they don't show some signs of rallying soon, I'm worried we may lose them.”

A doctor who treated the patients in the earlier case explains that the patients’ vitals are dropping; something must be done, and fast. She says she doesn’t know what happened in the first case, just that the patients woke up on their own and couldn’t remember anything.

“Next thing you know, I woke up in the hospital, and one of the FBI agents told me to never touch the wallpaper in the sitting room.”

D and S visit the victims from the case in the past. Mary Henderson explains that while in the coma, she dreamed about spirits in the house and had visions of dead loved ones. D and S check the wallpaper in the house and find some sort of seal.

“A Soul Eater? The hell is that?”

“Undead creature that feeds on souls, hence the name.”

Both pairs come to the conclusion that it’s a soul eater, a creature that settles down in a house and builds a nest that is between worlds and exists outside of time and space. They can pull victims’ souls from the house into the nest, but leave their bodies behind. So Mary wasn’t dreaming, her soul was in the nest. The nest can also show victims “parts of their souls in distress,” (AKA the people they love, dead) thereby keeping them vulnerable. The souls slowly decay in the nest while the bodies quickly decay outside it. Both pairs figure out they can trap it with a Celtic sigil. Apparently Bobby originally tried the sigil in a last-ditch effort to save himself, and it worked. S and D find that the monster can be killed if it’s painted in blood both in the nest and outside it.

“If memory serves, things are about to get hairy.”

Dean prepares to enter the nest, as he’s lost rock paper scissors. Sam and Rufus both begin to paint. They can hear ominous footsteps. Soon Dean and Bobby are both pulled into the nest. They both awake alone and start to look around. Bobby finds Will Henderson, but not before he has a vision of S and D dead. Dean immediately begins to paint. Kat finds him and asks what he’s doing. He explains he’s going to get her out. In the past, the Soul Eater possesses Bobby’s body. In the present, the Soul Eater possesses Dean. Two fist fights ensue, but both end when the sigil is completed. Dean and Bobby catch a glimpse of each other before fading from the nest.

“Yeah, well forget the oldest rule, Bobby.”

Past Dean calls Bobby for help with a possible lead on Lilith in Maine while they’re on a case in Reno.

“How messed up are our lives that you seeing a vision of dead me is actually kind of comforting?”

The boys drive off to take care of Bobby’s old Soul Eater case in Tennessee while The Allman Brothers Band’s Midnight Rider play on Dean’s radio in the present and Bobby’s radio in the past.

Questions:

What is with the title? How is it a safe house? Isn’t it more accurately a dangerous house? Like the opposite of a safe house?

When does this take place? Lilith is still alive so definitely after 3.9 but before season five. It’s probably after Rufus’s first episode because he and Bobby had to reconcile, which would put it after 3.15. I can’t think of any episodes in that time frame that name Reno or Nevada specifically, so that hunt was probably between episodes but I can’t pinpoint when.

Time travel? So I get that the nest is outside of time and that’s why it was Dean and Sam that were able to save Bobby and the Hendersons. But why didn’t all the souls get out then? It’s not that the bodies had decomposed because they would have gone back to their correct times, like Bobby did. Is it because the other souls were too old and dead? And how can they even have different relative ages? Like why did Dean and Bobby seem to get there at the same time, but both kids had been there longer? Shouldn’t all souls arrive at the same time and die slowly together at the same rate? Maybe they all did get out and it just didn’t show the others—because they did all fade away the same. But if that’s true then Dean and Sam probably never kill the one in Tennessee. Because the guy in that nest (Harvey) never woke up, and if all the souls return to their bodies when the monster is killed, and his soul never returned then the monster was never and will never be killed. Because Bobby returned to his body in the past immediately even though the monster was killed in the future. So Harvey should have already returned to his body in the past because the Winchesters would have killed the monster already in the future. But he didn’t… unless he did… My head hurts. Let’s get drunk and not think about this ever again.

Conclusions:

A WOC who is a lesbian! The show is doing a pretty good job of organically including minorities as minor characters, but they’re only the one-offs who are on the periphery and never come back. That’s sort of its own form of marginalization . . . I doubt we will ever see this family again.

I just loved so much of this episode. You guys, BOBBY and RUFUS! Every time Rufus said something I was just bursting with love for him. Bobby too. I miss Rufus and Bobby SO MUCH. Also, the episode was just plain genius. It’s a unique episode with beautiful, in-character writing; I was still invested in Bobby’s fears even though I’ve already seen them resolved, and the relationship between Bobby and Rufus was just so perfect. And the transitions between times in this were just beautiful. It worked really well. There are so many quotes that I can’t get over. I love that Bobby uses a machine to dig. He’s just the best.

And it’s not just B and R who were well done in this. S and D were great too, and I felt like I got so much development through B and R as well. And then that hug when Dean wakes up after getting out of the nest. So. Beautiful.

I think this is my favorite episode so far this season, at least in the last half. It was really well done all around, with lots of added bonus points for working in Bobby and Rufus AND doing it seamlessly. This is what I want from my show.