The CW Source

So they bust into Jay's room, tie him up, and question him -- but Jay obviously has no clue what they're talking about. He does know enough to escape even Hunter-level knotwork, though ("Guess we should have seen that coming," Dean says with a sigh), and he has the boys arrested for assaulting him. Then he goes back to work -- but he's a little freaked out. What if my act really is killing people He asks his friend Charlie. Are you crazy? That's impossible! Charlie responds. But when Jay does the Table of Death that night, Charlie ends up stabbed to death.

This makes Jay reconsider, and the boys tell him that it's obviously someone close to him that's doing this. Since Charlie's dead, that just leaves Vernon. The boys search Vernon's room -- practically a museum of magic -- while Jay talks to Vernon, accusing him of causing these deaths. But it wasn't Vernon -- it was Charlie. He's alive, and he's young again. He got a grimoire from Barnum and cast an immortality spell on himself. Now he wants to give his two good friends the same opportunity. Jay confronts him about the killing, but Charlie is unrepentant -- they were douchbags, and I was giving you your career back! He shows off the tarot cards used to transfer death. The boys burst in, but Charlie is chock-full of magic -- he makes a noose snake around Dean's neck, and Sam ends up shackled to the Table of Death. As the boys struggle, suddenly, Charlie gasps -- he's been stabbed. But no one is near him -- Jay filched the deadly tarot cards, planted one on Charlie, then stabbed himself in the gut. This, apparently is enough to kill Charlie for real this time.

Later, the boys thank Jay for saving them, but Jay doesn't want to hear it. I killed my best friend yesterday -- he was practically my brother! -- all in the name of doing the right thing. "Now I have to spend the rest of my life old and alone. What's so right about that?" he asks.

That rhetorical question gets Sam thinking. He goes back to Ruby and tells her he's in. He'll do that ... something.... because "I don't want to be doing this when I'm an old man." Uh-oh. We just a had a story about a man killing his brother to save people from harm. This can't be good.

What we're thinking about:
-- Sam was into magic when he was a kid? Poor thing -- we imagine that it was comforting to see some "magic" that he could, in fact, control.
-- At the same time, we get where Dean is coming from, too -- "It offends me -- playing at demons and magic when the real thing will kill you bloody."
-- Jeb Dexter really was a schmuck. How about him practicing his brooding looks in the mirror while the noose snaked across the ceiling?
-- Jay was planning on killing himself when he first did the Table of Death. What kind of counseling would you need if you were in THAT audience?
-- What did you think about Charlie and Jay sending Dean to an S&M joint in the guise of directing him to a tarot-card dealer? We couldn't help but think that seeing a masked torturer appear from the pit couldn't have been good for the poor boy's psyche -- even if Chief did ask for a safe word.
-- When the guys contemplate aged hunters, Sam brings up Bobby - he's survived this long! "yeah, there's a poster child for growing old gracefully," Dean scoffs. Hey! Mock not the Bobby, Dean! The Bobby is Awesome! You should BE so lucky as to be like Bobby when (and yes, Kripke, we said when, not if) you get old!