Recap of Supernatural
Season 11, Episode 5:
Thin Lizzie
Writer: Nancy Won
Director: Rashaad Ernesto Green
A double murder in a Fall River, Massachusetts bed and breakfast based in the former home of Lizzie Borden gives Sam and Dean an apparent ghost hunting case. They get more than they bargained for when the Darkness turns out to be involved.
Body Count:
For this episode: 7 humans.
For the series so far = At least 1179 humans (of which 13 were witches), 1119 angels, 180 demons, 69 vampires, 51 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, 3 Khan Worms, 2 Amazons, 2 arachnes, 2 kitsunes, 2 rugarus, 2 Thule, 2 vetalas, 1 cat, 1 crocotta, Death, 1 deer, 1 dragon, 1 fairy, 1 familiar, 1 lamia, the Mother of All, 1 nachzehrer, 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
- Abusive Parents: Sydney's parents used her and her sister as ashtrays. She also doesn't have a very high opinion of Jordie's parents, given that Jordie's mother was cheating on her husband and his father was (apparently) dealing meth.
- Asshole Victim: According to the murderer, at least.
- Creepy Good: Len winds up as this without a soul. Sure, he's weird as hell, but he still does the right thing.
- Fingore: Len removes his own thumb in order to escape from being handcuffed. He's a little disturbed by how easy it was.
- Incriminating Indifference: Sam is unnerved when the wife of one of the victims is remarkably cold when her husband is found hacked to death in their driveway, but she's not the culprit, merely a cheating wife.
- Moral Sociopathy: Two, as a result of becoming The Soulless, which effectively turns the soulless body into a sociopathic shadow of their former self that's driven by impulse instead of compassionate emotion.
- Sydney, as murderously crazed as she becomes, is still fixated on protecting and caring for the boy she used to babysit. She's just all too happy to go about doing this by murdering his deadbeat parents and kidnapping him now that her soul's moral restraints are gone.
- Len still remembers what it was like to do the right thing and knows the difference between right and wrong despite not being able to feel anything anymore, and he gives himself up to the police and confesses to all the murders because he knows it's just a matter of time before he kills again.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Discussed. Dean jokingly says that Sam wants to visit the Lizzie Borden house because of his "freaky fetish for serial killers".
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: From two directions. The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum is revealed to have an EMF generator in the attic as well as tape recordings in the walls and automatic dimmers, all to simulate a haunting. Meanwhile the "how" of the murders turns out to be relatively mundane. It's the "why" that's the scary part.
- Red Herring: See "Scooby-Doo" Hoax above.
- Revenge: Sydney decides to kill everyone who has ever wronged her after losing her soul.
- Serial Killer: Sydney, as a result of becoming The Soulless.
- The Soulless: Both Len and Sydney after Amara is done with them. The results are more immediately volatile in Sydney's case, while Len at least initially is more numbed out than anything.
- Taking the Heat: Len decides to take the blame for the murders Sydney committed, both because he doesn't trust himself to be free and because he remembers how doing the right thing felt.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: The source of the problem.
