Recap of Supernatural
Season 10, Episode 13
Halt & Catch Fire
Written by Eric Charmelo & Nicole Snyder.
Directed by John Showalter.
Air Date: February 10, 2015.
Sam and Dean hunt a ghost killing a group of college students through electronic devices.
Body Count:
For this episode: 4 humans and 1 ghost.
For the series so far = At least 1110 angels, 1086 humans (of which 9 were witches), 178 demons, 62 vampires, 50 ghosts, 36 Jefferson Starships, 22 gods, 19 zombies, 12 werewolves, 10 hellhounds, 7 shapeshifters, 7 skinwalkers, 6 changelings, 5 djinn, 5 reapers, 4 dogs, 4 ghouls, 4 Leviathan, 2 Amazons, 2 arachnes, 2 kitsunes, 2 rugarus, 2 Thule, 2 vetalas, 1 cat, 1 crocotta, 1 deer, 1 dragon, 1 fairy, 1 familiar, 1 Khan worm, 1 lamia, the Mother of All, 1 okami, 1 phoenix, 1 pishtaco, 1 Purgatory creature, 1 rakshasa, 1 rawhead, 1 shojo, 1 shtriga, 1 siren, 1 Titan, 1 wendigo, 1 whore of Babylon, 1 wicked witch, and 1 wraith.
Tropes
- Asshole Victim: Averted with Delilah, who was genuinely remorseful over Andrew being killed, regularly visiting the site and leaving flowers. Billy, Julie, and Kyle, on the other hand, were losing no sleep over it.
- Brand X: Since you can't really have Siri being hacked by a ghost to kill someone, the first victim uses the app Trini.
- Computer Equals Monitor: When Andrew has his last target cornered, menacingly appearing on electronic screens, Dean starts smashing cell phones and monitors with a crowbar to stop him. It makes more sense with the cell phones than the computers.
- Electromagnetic Ghosts: More literal than most see below.
- Ghostly Goals: Andrew Silver is engaged in vengeance against the college Greeks who hit him through careless distracted driving and didn't call for help.
- Haunted Technology: Andrew's spirit became anchored to Wi-Fi signals after he died on electrical lines connected to transmission towers, bound by his wife's picture of them on her computer. This allows him to bypass conventional wards against ghosts such as salt barriers and more difficult to dispatch with earthly remains past the entire internet. He initially used this position to reconnect with his wife online before becoming obsessed with vengeance and hijacking Wi-Fi connected technology to kill his murderers.
- Idiot Ball: Andrew's wife seems to be holding one with regards to removing the flowers left at the site of Andrew's death. She watches closely enough to have a description of who's regularly leaving the flowers but takes no action beyond removing them. In reality, an unsolved death with flowers being left at the site on a regular basis would be of great interest to the police, who at the very least would do what Sam and Dean did: talk to the person leaving the flowers in order to get some answers. Delilah would have cracked pretty quickly under questioning by the police.
- It's All About Me: Billy chose not to report the accident that killed Andrew because he was already dealing with a DUI and didn’t want the trouble he would have faced if he revealed he'd been driving.
- Never Hurt an Innocent: Andrew's ghost waits for Billy's girlfriend Janet to get out of Billy's truck before making the truck crash. Later, he ignores Dean while going after Delilah.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Billy's girlfriend Janet goes blank when Dean comments that Billy's car went Christine.
- Sextra Credit: A variant: Julie is sleeping with the TA so she can pass the tests.
- Shout-Out:
- Sam and Dean introduce themselves as Agents Cobain and Grohl, both members of Nirvana.
- To croissookies.
- The plot –four young adults causing a car accident and then being hunted down over it– has similarities to I Know What You Did Last Summer. Delilah is an Expy of Julie in the original novel (has red hair and is best friends with a blonde, left flowers for the victim, and has good grades due to focusing on her studies to avoid thinking about the accident).
- Social Media Before Reason: In the flashback Billy and Kyle are tweeting each other while driving.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Ultimately Andrew needs to be talked into passing on by his wife over FaceTime.
- Token Good Teammate: Delilah is the only one of the quartet responsible for Andrew’s death who showed legitimate remorse about it, with the others more focused on protecting themselves at the moment Andrew died; Delilah only didn't call anyone about it herself because the others grabbed her phone and pressured her into saying nothing. At the conclusion of the episode, the Winchesters take her to meet Andrew's widow so that they can talk about it in depth.
