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The boys discover Kristen's Twilight-type fixation and realize that real vamps must be using the Twilight hype to lure in victims. They go to a gothy club and split up to follow suspected bloodsuckers. Sam tracks and kills one, but the one Dean follows is just a guy with glitter trying to get laid. Hah! Unfortunately, a real vampire decides that Dean is ripe for turning. Sam sees the attack, but does nothing to stop it. In fact, he seems pleased. That's not good.

The inside man
Dean reacts to his vampification as you'd expect -- he wants Sam to kill him. But Sam insists on calling Grampa Campbell, which turns out to be wise, because Gramps has a cure. ("It's an old Campbell recipe. Kind of like the soup.") What a pleasant surprise! Except… maybe not so much of a surprise. Grampa Campbell told Sam about it -- did he deliberately get Dean turned so he could infiltrate the nest and get a bead on the Alpha vamp? Sam denies all knowledge, and he's shocked, shocked! that Gramps would suggest such a thing. Save it, Sam -- we're not buying it anymore.

Dean gets to the nest and discovers it's a well-run recruitment machine: The big, burly vamp who turned him is looking for pretty boys like Dean, who he turns so they can lure in hot emo chicks. Those chicks get turned, and they, in turn, will lure in more pretty boys, who can lure in more emo chicks…. it's like a perpetual motion machine. And it's happening all over the place, at the behest of the Big Bad ÜberVamp, who speaks to his children telepathically, using what appears to be clips from the David Lynch school of creepy dream imagery.

Of course, now Dean's cover is blown, so he has to go on an utterly awesome vampire killing spree. The boy knows how to wield a machete. After everyone is beheaded, dismembered or otherwise destroyed, he takes out the vamp who turned him and gets the necessary ingredient for the cure.

Bad trip
The cure is really, really unpleasant. Granted, it doesn't kill Dean, but it leads to some heroic levels of puking and some highly disturbing flashbacks. Dean rewinds through the night, up to the time when he was attacked… and in that rewind, he sees that Sam saw the attack and did nothing to stop Dean from being turned. As we, and Gramps, suspected, Sam deliberately let Dean get turned so he could be a spy in the nest and get intel on the Alpha. Yep, he willingly put Dean in immense peril, let him be turned into a monster, and sent him into the nest. That's so much more evil than using Twilight to munch on emo chicks!

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• Seriously, what the hell is going on with Sammy here? We know some ardent Dean fans will see this as not much different than Sam's previous behavior, but we strenuously disagree. Sam could be a bit self-involved in the past, and there were times when he took Dean for granted, but that's worlds away from using him as cannon fodder.

• Interestingly, Grampa Campbell doesn't seem to be suffering the same extremes of callousness. Yes, he's kidnapping monsters and using them for …something, but he's still disturbed by Baby Stew and by the thought of Sam using his brother this way. Apparently, it's not being brought back from the dead that did it to Sam, but something that happened to him in the pit.

• On the upside (or possibly downside), Dean now knows that Sam is utterly ruthless and unfeeling now. And the previews for next week make it sound like we'll start to discover what's going on. We better -- we're not happy with this shell of a Sam!

• On to less fraught matters. This episode was full of quotey goodness. When Dean confronts his not-really vamp, who is wearing false fangs, he's disgusted. "What are you 12? Are you wearing glitter?" "I only do it to get laid, man!" the guy protests. Dean pauses. "Does it work?" The kid nods. " 'll be damned," Dean says. "All right, mmmbop your way out of here. Use a condom!"

• Vamped-out Dean, on why Sam can't go with him to the vampire nest: "Dude, you reek. You're like a walking hamburger."

• Dean does bring some intelligence back form his time in the nest: "Recruitment drive. The Alpha's building an army." Sam and Gramps aren't surprised. But Dean has more: "That's not the worst….We don't scare them anymore." Hmmm. Well, for what it's worth, Sam is scaring us!

• Dean ends the ep with a telling quote: "At least you got my back. No matter what happens I can always count on you, right Sammy?" "Yeah. Of course, Dean," Sam replies. We all know he's lying.

So what did you think? Were you thrilled with the Twilight mockery, or was it not to your taste? Were you surprised at how far gone Sam seems be? Are all of the Alphas recruiting armies? Why? Share your theories in the comments!