If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I’ve been a whiny, snotty mess all weekend.  If you don’t, well, now you know. So, in light of the fact that I feel like hell, I’m going to keep this relatively short and really only get into the important parts.

This means that I’m largely going to ignore the enjoyable-but not-important-to-the-mythology True Grit-like main plot of the episode, in which Dean played Rooster Cogburn to a sassy tween girl, the daughter of a fellow hunter.  All you need to know is that they saved her dad from a couple of she-monsters (one played by someone from Once Upon a Time I’m told), and Dean encouraged her to pursue her dreams of becoming a pediatrician in addition to being the kid of a hunter.  Done.

In much bigger news, Bobby is officially deceased.  But is he GONE gone?  The boys are obviously in mourning, but there was a mysterious disappearing-beer incident that seemed to indicate that something odd was going on.  I loved Bobby as a character, but I’m glad that they bit the bullet and killed him off, because like I’ve said before, it’s one of the few game-changers that the show had left up its sleeve.

Bobby was basically the boys’ father (lest we forget the ‘I adopted two boys, and they grew up HEROES’ speech that made us all bawl last month).  Losing him was really the only major hurdle left for the boys to face, other than one of them dying (permanently I mean – they’ve each died and come back about three times by now).  Facing the future without him was really the only way to change things up in a big way without losing a Winchester.

Taking Bobby’s place as helper-guy is Frank Devereaux, whom we’ve met before and who is a total delight.  He spent most of the episode working with Dean to figure out the meaning of the numbers that Bobby scrawled on Sam’s hand before he died.  The missing number turned out to be important (obviously) but Frank figured it out and discovered that they were coordinates to a plot of land owned by one of Dick Roman’s companies.  What’s happening there?  We don’t know.  But the land is under heavy surveillance, and is clearly the location of something big down the road.

Back to the beer incident I mentioned earlier: Dean had a beer that looked like this:

And seconds later, with no sips taken, it looked like this:

What to make of that?  Bobby’s ghost?  Cas’ ghost?  Can angels HAVE ghosts?  The fact that the ghost was thirsty for alcohol would strongly indicate Bobby’s involvement, right?  If it was a burger or a porn video instead of a beer, I’d be more inclined to suspect Cas.  We have no way of knowing the meaning of it right now, but it’s definitely something to think about. Any and all theories are welcome in the comments!

At one point in the episode, Frank and Dean had a heart to heart about how to continue on with one’s business in the face of horrible loss, and Frank doled out some pretty blunt, yet practical, advice on how to handle work while you’re dying on the inside:

“I call it being professional. Do it right, with a smile, or don’t do it.”

The episode ended with Dean appearing to take that advice to heart, or at least trying it out.  Behind the wheel, with nobody looking, he practiced his smile.  But the glassy eyes gave him away:

No matter how hard he and Sam try, the loss they feel with Bobby gone is something that neither of them will be able to get past for a very long time.

So, what did you think of the episode and the now-confirmed loss of Bobby?  What did you make of the beer?  Any early theories on what Big Dick is up to with all that land?  Check out the promo for next week’s time-travel episode (Dean as a 40′s gangster!), and then hit the comments!