Recap / Supernatural S 03 E 15 Time Is On My Side

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Recap of Supernatural
Season 3, Episode 15:

Time Is On My Side

Bela: Dean, listen, I need help.

Dean: Sweetheart, we are weeks past help.

Bela: I know I don't deserve it.

Dean: You know what, you're right, you don't. But you know what the bitch of the bunch is? If you would have just come to us sooner and asked for help we probably could have taken the Colt and saved you.

Written by Sera Gamble.

Directed by Charles Beeson.

Air Date: May 8, 2008.

After failing to get the name of the demon who holds Dean's contract, Sam gets a call about a man whose kidney was stolen in Erie, Pennsylvania. Believing they have a zombie, they go to investigate. When they get there, however, they find that the kidney was surgically removed, not torn out. Turns out, they're chasing a doctor who is using the body parts to keep himself alive. While investigating, Dean gets a call from Bobby, who tells them that Bela has resurfaced. Dean wants to go after her, but Sam insists that they stay and investigate. As it turns out, Sam planned this in advance; Dr. Benton holds the secret of immortality, and Sam wants to use it on Dean. If he can't die, he can't go to Hell. Dean doesn't like the idea as much as Sam, and takes off after Bela.

Dean manages to dig up some information on Bela's past and tracks her down in Canaan, Vermont. Unfortunately, she doesn't have the Colt anymore. Sam finds Benton's hideout, saves a victim, and runs over the good doctor. It doesn't take. He does, however, find Benton's book, complete with his secret to immortality. Unfortunately, before Sam can tell Dean his plan, he's jumped by Benton, tied up in the basement, and starts getting his eyes pulled out. Dean make a very well-timed entrance, and they regain the upper hand.

Bela tracks down Sam and Dean and tries to kill them; turns out that she made her own deal with a demon, and her time is up. She stole the Colt to get out of it, but the demon who holds her contract, Lilith, changed the deal and demanded that she also kill Sam. The brothers had figured this out beforehand and got away, leaving Bela defenseless in their empty motel room as she hears hellhounds approaching.

Body count

For this episode = 4 humans.

For the series so far = At least 254 humans (of which 3 were witches), 9 demons, 19 ghosts, 10 vampires, 6 changelings, 3 gods, 2 shapeshifters, 2 werewolves, 1 crocotta, 1 djinn, 1 rakshasa, 1 rawhead, 1 shtriga, 1 wendigo, 1 zombie.

Tropes

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Loathsome though she was, Bela's horrific backstory and even more horrific fate was heart-breaking.
• Alchemy Is Magic: Dr. Benton's secret to immortality.
• Anachronism Stew: Dr. Benton uses 19th century medical technology.
• And I Must Scream: Dean and Sam face the immortal Dr. Benton. Unable to kill him, they bury him alive to be trapped underground forever.
• And Show It to You: Heart Guy lives long enough to see his heart being pulled out of his chest before dying.
• Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?:
  Sam: Remember that thing in the paper the other day?
  Dean: Stripper suffocates dude with thighs?
  Sam: The other thing.
• Autopsy Snack Time: Dean is chowing down on a burger while Sam is talking about maggots.
  Sam: Lost your appetite yet?
  Dean: [looks a bit sick, then says to burger] Oh, baby, I can't stay mad at you.
• Big Damn Heroes: Dean saving Sam from getting his eyeballs pulled out by Dr. Benton.
• Black Eyes of Evil: The demon at the beginning of the episode.
• Blatant Lies: This won't hurt a bit.
• Buried Alive: Have fun with that immortality, doc...
• Car Fu: When Sam runs Benton over. It doesn't kill him, but it does make him need more "parts"...
• Consummate Liar: Right after we see a flashback showing that Bela killed her parents because she was a sexual abuse victim, adult Bela just smiles in the face of Dean's pistol and says her parents were wonderful and she just killed them for the money.
• Continuity Nod: Sam and Dean trick Bela into their motel room and call the room phone to gloat about it over the phone, just as Bela had done to them in "Jus in Bello" (S03, E12).
• Cool Old Guy: Rufus.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Dean points out that if Bela had only asked for their help instead of stealing the Colt, they'd both have a chance of surviving.
• Creepy Basement: Where Doc Benton brings his kidnap victims, putting them in restraints, removing their body parts, and messily patching them up.
• Cruel Mercy: Rather than shoot her dead himself, Dean leaves Bela alive, knowing what will happen to her.
• Deal with the Devil: Bela made one ten years ago that got her parents killed in a car "accident". She made another one to get out of her first, by agreeing to steal the Colt, but the demons double-cross her once she does that and make her try to kill Sam. She doesn't succeed.
• Downer Ending: Bela's fate is horrific, and it's looking more and more like Dean will share that fate.
• Dragged Off to Hell: It is very strongly implied that, right after the episode ends, Bela is torn apart by hellhounds and her soul is dragged off to Hell.
• Everyone Has Standards: Dean might be desperate to find a way out of his deal but he isn't so desperate that he will willingly turn himself into a monster like Dr. Benton to save his own skin. And while he hates Bela, if she had been honest with them and asked for help, he would have tried to save her.
• Eye Scream: Benton tries to pop Sam's eyes out (with a serrated melon baller) to replace his own. UGH. Thank God Dean shows up when he does!
• Fate Worse than Death: For both Dr. Benton and Bela. Since they can't just kill him and finish him off for good like John tried, Sam and Dean decide that the only way to keep Dr. Benton from just coming back is to bury him underground in a chained-up refrigerator. Forever. For the latter, her deal with Lilith is up, and as the episode ends, hellhounds are approaching her position....
• Flashback: Bela gets a couple that give us a fleeting impression of why she made her deal.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Viewers get front-row seats to Dr. Benton removing a jogger's heart. The sounds of him cutting and breaking ribs leading up to it are just as hard on the ears.

• Immortality Immorality: Serial organ thief Dr. Benton.

• Killed Off for Real: Bela, most likely.
• Loophole Abuse: Sam's reasoning behind using Benton's research to make Dean immortal. Dean needs to die in order for his soul to go to Hell, if he can never die then he'll never go to Hell. When Dean points out that Sam will die if Dean tries to screw with the deal then he says that he'll make himself immortal too. At the very least Sam thinks that the procedure will give them time to think of a better solution. Dean is having none of it.
• Mad Doctor: Now with 30% more immortality!
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: The zeerust look is justified given the Doctor's preference for his own era's technology.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Bela's parents died in a car crash, suspected to be caused by a severed brake-line.
• Mortality Phobia: A Mad Scientist/Alchemist went to length to take others' organs to prolong his own life. Though a subversion in that it was more to be comfortable than immortal, but Sam and Dean provide him a Fate Worse than Death to truly punish him.
• Moving the Goalposts: Lilith told Bela to steal the Colt from the Winchesters and give it to her if she wanted to save herself from her deal. Bela did, so she did. Lilith then changed the exact terms of their deal so that Bela also had to kill Sam if she wanted to save herself from her deal. Bela did, so she tried, but the boys got away and Bela died instead.
• Necessarily Evil: Benton claims this, saying he only kills people to survive.
• Not Quite Dead: John Winchester previously tangled with the good doctor and cut out his heart, thinking that'd kill him. It didn't.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Bela's trip to Hell isn't shown on-screen; she's in the motel room alone, talks to Dean before he hangs up on her, sobs...then the clock strikes midnight and she hears howling...she gets up, stares out the window, we hear a dog snarling...and she's never seen again.
• Not Worth Killing: Dean can't bring himself to shoot Bela in cold blood. Subverted when it's revealed he knows she's doomed anyway.
• Organ Theft: When pieces wear out, they have to be replaced...
• Over Nine Thousand: Kidney Guy describes his organ removal as "the worst pain you could possibly imagine, only worse."

• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The little girl in Bela's flashback, meaning she's actually a crossroads demon.
• Revenge by Proxy: Dr. Benton's monologue to Sam reeks of this, with regards to Papa Winchester.
• Sarcasm Mode: The coroner and the missing-kidney victim aren't very impressed by Sam and Dean's questions.
  Kidney Guy: Yeah...there is one thing...you know what I remember? Getting my kidney cut out of my body!
• See You in Hell: Dean's last words to Bela.
  • Likewise, the demon Sam and Dean torture at the start of the episode, who knows Dean's time is running out.
  Demon: Go ahead. Send me back to Hell. Because when you do, I'll be waiting for ya. With a few pals who are dying for a meet-and-greet with Dean Winchester.
• Shout-Out:
  • "My man Dave Caruso will be stoked to hear it."
  • The Walking Dead
  • Dr. Quinn, Zombie Woman
• Sleeping Dummy: Instead of pillows, Sam and Dean use blow-up sex dolls!
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Doc Benton's victims-to-be.
• Taking You with Me: Attempted. Bela tells Dean that Lilith has his contract so that he'll go try to kill Lilith.
• Tempting Fate: Nurse: "Don't you worry, there's nothing I haven't seen." Patient's insides fall out.
• Titled After the Song: By The Rolling Stones.
• Torture Always Works: Subverted; Sam and Dean threaten their captive demon with torture and go through with it, but he doesn't care because he's more afraid of the torture the demon holding Dean's contract would put him through if he did talk.
• Trauma Swing: Teenage Bela.
• Villain's Dying Grace: One way of looking at Bela giving Dean Lilith's name is that she's hoping that he'll be able to use the information to kill Lilith and save himself.
• Villainous Breakdown: Both Doc Benton and Bela get one.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Dean's response to Sam's plan has shades of this.
• Your Mom: Dean is torturing a demon with holy water.
  Dean: I'M GONNA ASK YOU ONE LAST TIME! WHO HOLDS MY CONTRACT?
  [Demon suddenly has Black Eyes of Evil and a nasty smile]
  Demon: Your mother. Yeah, she showed it to me right before I bent her over.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: So Bela says when Dean corners her in her motel room, but Dean thinks otherwise. Bela turns out to be right, but only because Dean is leaving her for the hellhounds to get.