Recap 206 - The Underbelly

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Sam and Sock are watching TV at the Work Bench. It appears to be a Japanese program with a tarantula fighting a... scorpion? (not sure, I looked away as soon as I saw the tarantula and I'm not watching this part again because BLURGH!). Apparently Kristin told Sock about this "bug fighting" thing that's "big in Japan". Bug fighting has been a thing in China since ancient times, but that's only with cicadas. I wonder if that's where the Japanese got the idea. Which came first? The Pokemon or the bug fighting? Inquiring minds wants to know.

Anyway, Sock leaves to go get some chicken fingers, and as soon as he's out of sight, the bug fight cut out and all the TV screens start to play a live video feed of Sam. Sam thinks Sock is playing a trick on him, but of course it's The Devil (thank you Devil! Thank you so so much). After irritating Sam for a bit by shoving a video camera in his face and delivering a marketing spiel on the wonders of high resolution, The Devil shows Sam a video of a terrified guy at the mouth of a dark mine being nabbed by giant wormy tentacles. On the video, The Devil pokes his head in front of the camera. "Is this thing working?" Hee.

Tentacle monster is the soul of the week: Walter Kite Nash, who used to lure people to a silver mine in the little town of Dove Hollow and then kill them and take their money.

Sam looks worried, but The Devil sells him on thinking of it as a "working vacation" in a "beautiful little town", handing him a quaint postcard of "wondrous Dove Hollow" with a nice lake and majestic mountains. Just like that, Sam warms up to the idea. "Alright, if I have to go out there, maybe I can take Andi and the guys. Make a road-trip out of it." Taking your girlfriend on a road-trip to a creepy town with a man-eating tentacle monster? How romantic. I'd want to keep my girlfriend away from the tentacle monster, but maybe that's just me.

The Devil is ecstatic: "There you go! That would be great!" Which probably means it will be disastrous. "Now here's a little cherry for your sundae. You're gonna love this vessel." The Devil holds up a small vessel box, and Sam opens it to find a grenade. "Is that bad ass or what? You don't even have to get close to the thing. You just lob that baby and watch the party." Sam looks relieved that it's not another tricky vessel that will get him in trouble while he figures out how to use it. "Okay, yeah, this could be good. A little vacation." The video of the tentacle monster plays again complete with "dun dun DUN!" music. Oh Sam.

Credits.

Ben and Nina are waking up at her barn. Ben follows Nina's every movement and wants to know what they're doing today. Nina says they've been spending every second together for the entire weekend. She tries to get some alone time, but Ben's not taking the hint and just won't leave her alone until she tells him she's planning to eat a live llama. He agrees to let her have her me-time, but he wants her to call him, and he tells her he already changed her cellphone plan to unlimited minutes. Nina has to go.

Nina goes straight to Andi's office. Girl talk! We find out Sam already invited the gang on the tentacle monster road-trip, and Ben invited Nina along, too. But she doesn't want to go. Not because of the whole tentacle monster thing, though that would be my reason to beg off. No, Nina just needs some time away from Ben. "I'm a solitary creature."

"Everything's great. Ben is great. He's just..." Clingy? "He's always there. Staring at me. Telling me how beautiful I am. Ben is adorable and I really, really like him. But um... he's just a little clingy." There ya go. "Sometimes... Kinda makes me want to rip out his internal organs and show 'em to him." Oh, I've been there, sister.

Andi advises Nina to be honest with Ben. Then the conversation turns to bad boys as Nina tells Andi about being used to dating guys from hell. "They treat you like crap but at least it's exciting. Oh, but, who am I talking to, you know all about dating bad boys." Andi is taken aback "Uh, Sam isn't exactly a bad boy." At least he's more of a badass than Greg. Nina brings up the whole "son of the devil" thing again. "He's gotta be a little bit evil, right? It's sort of in his nature." She leaves Andi with that.

Sam's Prius drives past a "Welcome to Dove Hollow" sign. Playing the part of Dove Hollow is Burnaby Village Museum. The gang (plus Kristin, I guess Sock invited her) comment on how creepy and perfect and deserted it is. Sam and Andi goes off to find something to eat. I hope they check out the cute ice-cream place.

Sock and Kristin go check-in at the hotel. The clerk pops up creepily from under the main desk when Sock rings the bell. There's much ado about how there's only three rooms in the whole place with one bed each so Sock and Kristin will have to share a bed. Why can't Sock share with Ben? Oh, whatever. The clerk suggests they go and visit the silver mine. Kristin is like "I've never been to a mine before! Let's go!" Guess no one filled her in on the dangers. Maybe she'll get eaten by the monster if we're lucky.

Hee! Sam and Andi really does end up at the ice-cream place at Burnaby Village, er, I mean, Dove Hollow. A perky waitress pops up creepily from behind the counter. Sam and Andi orders some sandwiches, and after a bit of small talk, the waitress suggests they go check out the mine.

Ben is at the "saloon", leaving Nina probably the umpteenth message. The bartender pops out creepily from behind the bar counter and puts a brewsky on a coaster. He suggests Ben take his girlfriend to the old silver mine. "Women love that place."

The gang meets up outside (minus Kristin, who is "taking a tinkle") and quickly deduces that the townspeople are trying to feed them to the monster. Sam wants to get out of there right away. They can't take on a whole town with only one soul vessel. A little snag in that plan: Sam's car is gone.

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Sock and Sam goes to the sheriff to report a stolen car. The sheriff is sitting at his desk with his feet up. He does not pop up creepily from behind anything. He does tell them that Sam's car is not stolen - the sheriff had it towed because it was in a loading zone. The impound lot is closed, so the gang is stuck there until at least the next day. The sheriff tells them to relax and stay awhile, see the beautiful sunsets. Then he goes into a tangent about his father calling the sunset "God kissing the world goodnight". His dad was a fire-and-brimestone end-of-the-world type of preacher. He asks Sam if he believes in hell? Sam stammers that he doesn't really know and he likes to focus on the here and now. The sheriff smiles. Creepily. Sock and Sam retreat.

Outside the hotel, Ben is leaving another message for Nina. "We're sort of trapped here. But I don't want you to get worried." Andi sits with him. "Ben, how often would you say you call Nina?" "Every couple of hours, or every hour, or sometimes on the half hour." Yikes. Andi gently gives him a talk about people needing space sometimes. A worried Ben wants to know if Nina said something to Andi. Andi concedes that the word "clingy" might have come up. "Clingy?!" Ben wants to call Nina right away to make sure everything is okay between them. Andi yoinks the phone out of his hands. "You know what? Maybe we should just turn this off for a while." Ben starts to reach for it again. He stops when Andi shakes her head at him. Hee.

Sam and Andi are outside of the mine. Great, so not only is Sam taking Andi on a romantic trip to a creepy town, he's taking her directly to a dangerous monster's lair, too. Why doesn't he just season her with some barbecue sauce? Andi exposits that there are miles and miles of tunnels underneath the city. "It's going to be impossible to find this thing." Hearing that is enough to make Sam ready to give up. "Maybe I can sweet talk The Devil into letting this one go." Andi is concerned that her boyfriend sweet talks The Devil, but not as concerned as when Sam pulls out some wine, complete with wine glasses and cheese and crackers and decides to have a romantic picnic right there in front of the monster hole. Within tentacle grabbing distance.

Sam is more concerned that he forgot to bring a corkscrew. He tries to use The Force his Devil power to remove the cork. Hmm, that would be a good use for telekinesis. However, Andi doesn't think so. She is freaked by his casual use of Devil power. Even though his bottle-stare is not working for cork removal. Absolutely nothing happens. Maybe it'd help if he ripped off the foil first. "You're getting pretty comfortable with all of this," Andi chastises him. "It seems like none of this even bothers you anymore! Okay, we're having a picnic in front of a monster lair. I have to wonder if you're getting sucked into the lifestyle." Here I thought the picnic in a danger-zone just meant that Sam is a dumbass, but Andi's words ring true, too. As much as Sam bitches and moans about all the Devil stuff, at least some part of him is into it.

"I'm not getting sucked into anything!" Sam yells. "I have no choice!" At this point I'm starting to expect the monster to be disturbed by all the noise and come out to eat them both. Andi says Sam's "no choice" mantra is starting to sound like an excuse. Sam suddenly gets a little too quiet and starts blaming the Devil for the suckitude of this weekend, getting increasingly agitated and ignoring Andi when she tries to direct his attention towards the quaking wine bottle. Oh boy, here comes the monster. At least that's what I thought until the wine bottle explodes as Sam is shouting "DAMMIT! THIS IS NOT FAIR!"

Sam and Andi both stare silently at the broken wine bottle for a moment. And here I'm expecting the monster to come out and eat them again, but no. Andi asks Sam if he just did that. Sam isn't sure, but yeah, it's gotta be him. They're both bummed now and just decide to get back to town. Either the monster is busy with something else or it's a heavy sleeper.

Inside the hotel, Sock and Kristin are getting into their room. Sock opens the door to see that a separate cot has been prepared for him. He hits Kristin in the face with the door in his haste to shut it so she doesn't see the cot. He sends her off to get ice while he goes throw the cot out the window. It snags on his shirt but manages to fall without taking Sock down with it, landing with a crash and setting off a car alarm. Kristin comes in and follows the sound of the car alarm to the window. She sees the cot and quickly figures out that Sock threw it out the window because he wants to sleep with her. I could do without this whole side-plot, but I'm just glad she's no longer too clueless to figure out Sock wants her in that way. After he has been so embarrassingly obvious about it for so long. Sock wants her to admit that she'd want to screw him if she met him in any other way but as his sister. She simply says "No, I would not". Socks apologizes and leaves the room, crestfallen. I hope that would be the end of that.

Sock sits at the bar, drinking something out of a shot glass, rambling on about women being like a mystery wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a third mystery. The bartender just stares at him like "the hell?" Sock orders another couple of those shot glass things, and he wants a wine cooler, but in a beer glass so it looks manly. "One manly wine cooler, coming up." Hee. But before I get too comfortable with the idea that the bartender is not so creepy after all... he glides away while Sock isn't looking. The hell?

"Is this seat taken?" Kristin is suddenly in the bar. The hell? She's pretending like she's meeting Sock for the first time, and after a while, Sock catches on and plays along. He breaks out his best pick-up line: "Excuse me. Hi, I think you're standing on my penis." The hell? Kristin says she's not sure she understands, but it sounds charming. You have got to be kidding me. Kristen then tells Sock that she had thought about him that way, it's just that she was raised to push her feelings away and follow rules. But Sock doesn't follow rules. I guess that makes Sock a "bad boy" as far as Kristin is concerned, and she is attracted to that. "One bed in the room will be fine," she says, and they rush off to bed. At least this ends the stupid-ass "unresolved sexual tension". The hotel clerk pops up behind the main desk after they pass by. He glares. Creepily.

Morning. Sam, Andi and Ben are ready to get Sam's car and leave. Andi wonders where Sock and Kristin are. Ben guesses they're still sleeping. Sam wants Ben to go wake them up right now. "The longer we stick around the more likely something bad will happen." Sam and Andi turns a corner and are greeted by the sheriff. The sheriff's car has a hotel cot for a hood ornament. He asks if Sam knows what happened. Sam does not. "Since you and your friends are the only ones staying here, I'd say: suspect pool, pretty small." Sock chooses this opportune moment to open the window wearing nothing but an open robe, champagne glass in one hand. "Morning, friends. Sheriff." The sheriff asks Sock if that's his cot, Sam gives Sock the international signal for "no". I really don't think denial will help, but somehow Sock makes it worse by confessing: "You know what? Yeah it is. I don't care, I'll shout it from the rooftops. THAT is MY COT!"

The sheriff drags a handcuffed Sock down the hotel stairs. He yells that it's not his cot. Yeah, that's not helping. Kristin follows in her robe, wondering what's going on. "He vandalized police property," says the sheriff. The clerk shouts "Degenerates!" at Sock and Kristin. "Last night he shared a bed with his own sister." The sheriff is shocked and disgusted. "No no," Sock explains, "Stepsister!" The clerk says that it's the same thing. "No really, it's not!" Seriously, how is it the same thing? But the clerk isn't finished. He points at Kristin and shouts: "You make me SICK!" Her eyes goes wide and she runs back into her room. I think she's going to cry. "No no not sick! Healthy! You're a very healthy girl!" Sock keeps shouting as the sheriff drags him out the door. "We're so healthy!"

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Sheriff's station. "I'm gonna release your buddy on Wednesday," he tells Sam. "That should give him enough time to learn his lesson." No, I don't think he'll learn his lesson. But that's not the only thing the sheriff wants to talk to Sam about. He takes out a file from the "Bureau of Souls: Escaped and Missing Souls Division". He found that in Sam's car. Sam comes up with an okay lie about it being a creative writing project for school. The sheriff beckons Sam closer for a conspiratorial whisper "You know you can trust me." When someone says that, it's usually a pretty clear sign you shouldn't trust them. Sam tells him he does trust him, 'cause what else would you say to an armed man who has your car and your friend locked in a jail cell? The sheriff releases Sam's car and lets him go, with one more cryptic: "Anything you want to tell me, anything at all... door's always open."

Nina's barn. Nina checks her cell and sees that there are no new messages. She looks worried. She puts a platter of herbs in front of a llama (aw... fuzzy!) "Okay. You keep eating. You get yourself nice and garlicky. I'll be back in a little while."

Andi is comforting a weeping Kristin in front of the hotel. Sam walks up and tells them he got the car back. Kristin wants to leave, saying she'll walk home. Sam says they have to stay until Sock gets out of jail. Andi wants to take Sam's car and take Kristin home. Sam folds - he and Ben will stay and wait for Sock while Andi leaves with Kristin. Kristin goes off to pack. Sam apologizes to Andi for the suckitude of the weekend. Andi is having none of it. "It was never going to be a vacation, Sam. The soul was always your first priority." If only there was a way Sam could have heard me when I said it was a bad idea to take your girlfriend on a road-trip to hunt an escaped soul from hell. Sam wants to talk about this with Andi when they get back home. He hands her his car key and tells her not to worry about him. "Hmm. I'm not worried." That's kind of cold, considering he's still going to be trapped in a creepy town with an escaped soul from hell. On the other hand, as far as she's concerned, he's likelier to cause harm than to be harmed, what with the freaky bottle smashing hell powers and all.

Andi and Kristin drives past a "Now leaving Dove Hollow" sign in Sam's Prius. Nina, in demon form, flies towards Dove Hollow.

Nina enters the saloon. The bartender greets her. "Good afternoon. Can I help you?" Nina tells him she's looking for her friends. "They enjoy alcoholic beverages, so I thought they might be here." Hee. The bartender describes them as "three guys, two girls, kind of a funny brunch." That sounds right to Nina. He tells her they're out and about, but she can stay there and wait for them. She thanks him and asks for a glass of water. Like with the others, he tries to sell her on going to the mine. "No thanks, I'm not here to sightsee, just surprising my boyfriend." Oh, Nina, you've said too much, but I guess being a demon, nobody ever taught you about stranger danger. The bartender creepily lights up at this. "Oh, so your friends aren't expecting you." Nope. "Nobody knows you're here then." Probably not. "Interesting."

Nina squints at him. "You're... off." The bartender begs her pardon. Nina goes on. "Something's wrong with you. You're not real. And you smell like... hell." The bartender leans towards her. "You smell delicious." He drags her under the bar and we hear some crunching, roaring, and crashing sounds. After all that, the bartender pops back up like nothing happened. Oh no, where's Nina?

Jail. Sock is upset that Kristin just left. Sam says they need to focus on getting Sock out. Ben suggests going "Shawshank". But they have to give up on the idea of digging him out since the sheriff will be back any minute. Why the sheriff would leave them alone in the jail for even a minute, I have no idea. And how will they get out of town after breaking Sock out of jail? They don't have a car. Whatever. Ben comes up with the idea to break the lock "old school". As in with a pick axe. Which he will borrow from the saloon. Yes, that won't be suspicious at all.

Saloon. Ben tells the bartender he needs to "axe something". The bartender tells him no, that pickaxe is an antique. Ben spots Nina's purse. "Hey, is my girlfriend here? Blonde, beautiful, a little intimidating?" The bartender says he saw her, but he's not sure where she got off to. Suddenly he wants Ben to borrow the axe. "Why don't you come over here and take it down?" As Ben is trying to get the axe down, the bartender glides up to him behind his back and is about to get him when he explodes in a rain of green slime. Ben screams and turns to see the sheriff with a shotgun. What's left of the bartender is attached to a tentacle, and it retreats into a hole behind the bar. "I warned him," says the sheriff. "Stay away from you guys. He just wouldn't listen."

[bec]

The sheriff tells the guys he has been alone with tentacle monster for ten years, when people started disappearing. Sam tells him those people didn't just disappear. "That thing ate them. And you fed them to it." "Well, I have no choice," says the sheriff. I wonder if Sam notices the parallel to himself in those choice of words. The sheriff claims to have done everything he could to stop people from coming to the town. Including driving out the locals and turning away busloads of tourists. "If I'm not here to stop it, then it might go on to the next town, the next state!" He asks Sam if he knows what it's like to be stuck in a situation with no way out. Boy does he ever.

Ben asks if everyone in town are tentacles. The sheriff exposits that it mimics people and then it drags everyone through the tunnels to the mine, where it feeds. Sam wants to know why the sheriff decided to help them now. It was because he read Sam's devil folder and figured he was sent to help. Now he wants to know what Sam is. Sam is hesitant. The sheriff reminds him he saved Ben's life. Sam lets him know he catches escaped souls from hell for The Devil.

"Has anyone escaped from it?" Ben asks. "Maybe that thing didn't eat Nina right away." The sheriff tells him it takes everything with one big gulp. Ben grimaces. Sam tries to comfort him with the knowledge that Nina went down swiftly. "Til digestion starts," adds the sheriff. Uh, thanks for that. Ben hugs Nina's purse. No, not Nina! Why couldn't it have been Kristin instead?

The sheriff wants to know if Sam has a plan. "I'm gonna send it back to hell," he holds up the grenade. "With this." The sheriff thinks that would just make tentacle monster angry, but Sam tells him it's not a normal grenade, it's a vessel, he just needs to get close enough to the soul to catch it. The sheriff says he can help. He shows the guys two big tanks of gas. His plan is to "smoke it out". The guys wait at the mine entrance, and he drives the monster to them.

Mine entrance. "Do you smell smoke yet?" Sam asks. Sock takes this as an opportunity to over-share about his night with Kristin. Moving on. Ben grabs the grenade out of Sam's hand and rushes towards the mine. "Nina's dead. I have nothing to live for! Don't worry, I'll take care of this thing myself." Sam shouts that he's being crazy. Sock takes this time to talk about himself and Kristin some more. "You were dating Nina for what, three weeks? I on the other hand, just lost a sister and a lover." If only it was because a monster ate her. If only.

Sock continues to say that they need to stick together and get through this as a team. Ben insists he's not going find anyone else. Sock says there are plenty of fish in the sea, which is an appropriate thing to say for a breakup, but kind of an insensitive when someone just died. Ben sulks that it doesn't matter, who's gonna want him? "You bite your tongue, Benjamin," Sock admonishes him. "You bite your tongue til it bleeds in your mouth." I think actually doing that could kill you. "You are a beautiful man. On the outside and the inside. You got that smile that lights up a room. That laugh, that infectious laugh. You've got that sexy Latin gaze that just pulls you in like a magnet from the mothership."

"You... mean that?" Ben asks. Sock confirms it for him. "Benjamin Perez Gonzalez, I could get lost in your eyes for days." I think it kind of cheapens Ben's love for Nina a little, the way he seems more concerned about his ability to find someone else in the future than about Nina herself. But it is nice to see some unabashed man-love between male friends. Anyway, Ben now feels better and decides not to kill himself, and of course this is when the tentacle monster nabs him. "Oh beautiful Ben!" Sock cries. Light flashes inside the tunnel and a goo-covered Ben comes flying out, followed by the glowing grenade vessel.

The guys return to the sheriff's station triumphant. The sheriff is very, very surprised to see them again. Sock tilts a gas tank with his foot. It's still full. The sheriff never set the fire. In fact, he warned the monster that the guys were coming for it. No wonder it didn't sleep through all the shouting at the mouth of its lair this time. It is, however, awfully stupid to get close to guys who have a vessel for its capture that could work even from within its bowels. Why would the sheriff help the monster? Why, this town is all he has, and the monster has been his companion, his family for all these many years. He was even dating Millie, the waitress we saw earlier, for going on six years. Sock is grossed out. "Dude, you're banging a tentacle?" Wonder how that would work. We've seen that the tentacle-imitated people don't have legs. Maybe the tentacle can suck and blow. Or maybe the sheriff is a bottom.

"You're crazy." Sam realizes. Maybe the three of you can tackle him before he finishes opening his cabinet. No? Okay, now he's taking a shotgun out of his cabinet of guns. He points it at the guys. "I don't like change. I like to keep things pure and simple. The way I see it, if somebody has to die to preserve my way of life... that's the price of paradise." He pulls the trigger. The guys scream, but no shot was fired. The sheriff checks his gun. "Oh, I must be crazy. Forgot to load the damn thing." Instead of taking this opening to tackle him before he can actually load the damn gun, the guys run off screaming like the damn fools that they are.

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The sheriff stalks through the town's main street. The guys are hiding behind some bushes nearby, debating whether to run out into the open to the sheriff's car. Well, they can't stay where they are - they're sitting ducks. If they had time to hide behind the bushes, why didn't they steal the car before the sheriff came outside with the gun? Probably the same reason they didn't tackle the sheriff while he still had an unloaded gun. They're panicking and they're morons. Also the episode would be over too soon. Sock wants Ben to distract the sheriff while he and Sam run to the car. Ben protests that that's stupid and suicide. Sock argues that he should be willing to do this for his buddies if he was willing to kill himself over Nina. Ben actually agrees, so Sam has to stop him.

All of their stage whispering attracts the sheriff's attention, and he fires a round in their direction. With that, the guys run screaming to the car, all the while with Ben worrying that it would be locked or be without a key, and Sock chastising him for his "negative energy". Conveniently, the sheriff did leave his car unlocked with the keys inside. I'm not going to harp on the illogic of this because I can confirm that people really do leave their cars like this in small towns. Even when the population is more than one man and one tentacle monster. So.

Sam is driving, Sock riding shotgun, and Ben is in the back. They speed around the town until they end up back on the main street, where the sheriff is waiting for them in the middle of the street. Sam pauses. Ben and Sock urges him to keep driving. He does. The sheriff shoots at the car and probably damage the engine block enough to bring the car to a pathetic slow halt right in front of him.

So much smoke streams out of the broken car that it gives the guys ample opportunity to scatter. Of course, Sam chooses to run into the ice-cream place right next to the crashed car and hide behind the counter. He leaves the door wide open to make sure the sheriff will know exactly where he is. Oh, Sam. "Oh, Sammy," behind the counter, The Devil is sitting on a milk crate and pointing a video camera at Sam. "You're looking right into the camera. Ever hear of the forth wall?" Sam gasps that the sheriff is trying to kill them. "Yeah, him and his perfect town," The Devil stops the camera. "Just like a David Lynch movie."

"I need something to defend myself!" Sam yells. Yeah, that won't attract the sheriff's attention at all, Sam. The Devil offers him a grenade. "No! It's a vessel! It doesn't work on people!" Again with the yelling, Sam. The Devil tells him that it's more of a bargaining chip than a weapon. So wait, is that the actual vessel with the tentacle monster inside or a look alike? Sam hadn't had a chance to turn in the actual vessel at the DMV yet, so the real vessel should still be on him. Unless he dropped it at some point, which as far as we know, he didn't.

The Devil tosses Sam the grenade and promptly disappears, leaving Sam alone with the approaching sheriff. The sheriff comments on how few places there are to hide in the town, and I actually can't believe it took him this long to find Sam. Didn't he see the wide open door and hear the yelling? He cocks his shotgun and is about to shoot Sam, but Sam stops him by offering to release the soul from the vessel.

[bec]

It has gone from day to night. I guess they had to walk to the mine since the only car in town is broken now. The sheriff is herding Sam towards the mine at gunpoint. He says he'll let Sam go after Sam lets the monster out. Sam knows that's a lie. What a great time for him to finally be smart. The sheriff admits that Sam is right, but he can make Sam's death quick and painless or slow and horrible. It's up to Sam. Sam tries to appeal to him to walk away from this craziness so that he can have a real life. But the sheriff is convinced he would be all alone without the town and the creature.

"You can get past that. Make new friends. Sheriff, there was a time when you tried to protect people from this thing. I know you used to be a good person! You can be that again." But it doesn't matter to the sheriff. He has done too many bad things already, so Sam better do what he says or he'll shoot Sam in the head with his shotgun. Sam pulls the pin, throws the grenade, and runs like hell in the other direction. The sheriff follows.

A few steps away, they stop and stare at the mine. I would keep running, but nobody ever listens to me. After a beat, the grenade comes flying back out and lands at the sheriff's feet. As they're wondering what the hell happened, I half expect for it to be a real grenade and blow them up. Or for tentacles to reach out and grab them. But no. Suddenly, a demon comes flying out of the mine and tackles the sheriff. Finally somebody tackles that guy.

"Nina?" Sam asks. The demon nods in confirmation. She gets ready to kill the sheriff. "No no no, Nina! Don't kill him! He's not a soul. He's a person." Sam assures her that keeping him alive will be way worse than any punishment they can dish out. He'll be all alone, living with what he did. Nina tosses the sheriff about a hundred feet. He screams in terror but is not killed. Sam gapes. "But, yeah. If you just want to throw him, you can do that, too."

Okay, so let me get this straight. The grenade Sam threw at gunpoint was an empty decoy and not an actual vessel or grenade. And Nina has been freed since Ben captured the soul earlier, but the creature was so huge that she was still deep inside the maze-like tunnels of the mine and it took her a while to find her way out. The show doesn't explain these things too clearly, but this is the explanation that seems to make the most sense.

Sam and Nina walk back into town. They're discussing how Nina is apparently indigestible. Nina tells Sam the creature had three stomachs and she never made it past the first one, but it gave her nice exfoliation. Hee. Wait, how does she know the thing had three stomachs if she was only in the first one? Oh, forget it. Besides that, Nina, comparing it to a camel would be closer to the mark. Camels have three stomachs. Cows have four. The more you know.

Nina suddenly thinks she gets something. Sam is confused. Nina says Sam let the sheriff live because he wants the sheriff to suffer. Sam denies that, saying he let the sheriff live because he's human and they don't kill human beings. Nina insists that according to Sam himself, the sheriff will live a life of terrible pain, like hell on earth. "You're diabolical." She smiles at him, impressed. "No, I'm not, Nina. It's called justice, he did it to himself."

"No, you are... you're evil." She gives Sam a come-hither look, grabs him and plant a slurpy-sounding kiss right on his mouth. "I find that very attractive," she breathes. Sam is just frozen in shock. Nina turns around and starts calling out, "Benji? Sweetheart, are you here?"

Ben comes out of the sheriff's car trunk. That's actually not a bad hiding place. The most dangerous spot is the safest, since it wouldn't occur to the sheriff to look in the apparently empty broken car. Ben and Nina shares a schmoopy reunion with Ben whispering his glee at seeing Nina alive. Why the whispering? Sock is asleep in the trunk.

Sock's home. Kristin huffs off as soon as Sock comes in the door. At Sock's insistence, Kristin tells him what she's feeling: ashamed. Because of her culture, how she was raised. Look, I appreciate the effort at adding more depth to the character and take her beyond the "sexy Asian bimbo" stereotype. It is true that a lot of Asian cultures are still kind of old school when it comes to female sexuality. But if this character really buys into that shame stuff, I can't believe she'd show that much cleavage, even around the house. Yowza.

And I'm still not sure which Asian country she and her father are supposed to be from? As far as I can recall, the show only ever referred to them as "Asian". Her knowing about Japanese bug fighting might be a clue, but really, a lot of neighboring Asian countries also pay attention to Japanese trends. The only reason I even wonder is because I see some potential for good stories in incorporating mythologies about demons and hell from other cultures. With something like that going on, I can see this character maybe having something resembling a point. Right now, her only function on the show is to give Sock a boner, it has absolutely nothing to do with anything else going on. She might as well be a blow-up doll. Right now, cutting her out of the show entirely would be a huge improvement and not even a little bit of loss. It would take something much more significant than a bit of shallow "cultural depth" to make this character relevant.

Ahem. Anyway, Sock convinces Kristin that shamelessness is awesome, and she is won over immediately and hop on his back. Their foreplay is interrupted by Sock's mom and Kristin's dad coming through the front door. Awkward. Sock covers by saying they're on their way to doing some normal sibling-like roughhousing. This pleases the parental units.

Work Bench. The Devil shows up to pat Sam on the back for a job well done. As per usual, Sam bitches about how much the weekend sucked and how The Devil sucks for making his life suck. "Sam, I want to tell you that I don't put you in harm's way just to get my jollies. I put you in these situations because I have confidence in you. I want you to have confidence in yourself." Sam's like yeah, whatever, great. The Devil continues. "You can handle much more than you realize. You can withstand any blow. Any blow."

The Devil disappears and Andi shows up behind Sam. Sam apologizes again for the bad weekend. He tries to ask her out for another weekend, but she is having none of it. She can't plan a future with Sam anymore - evil is in every part of his life, and she thinks that he's starting to like it, that it's changing him. She should have been here just a minute earlier to hear him bitch and moan. "Maybe it's always been in you. I just never saw it. I'm sorry, Sam. I'm really, really sorry."

"Andi, wait. Are you breaking up with me?" Duh, Sam. We don't hear Andi's answer. The episode ends right here.