TV Surfing

Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver)

Gender: Male
Occupation: Demon Hunter
* First appeared on May 04, 2006 in the episode Devil's Trap.

Bobby is a hunter like the Winchesters, though he seems to stay fairly stationary. His customary attire usually consists of flannel and a trucker's hat. Bobby provides hunting and research support to the Winchesters, while running an auto salvage yard during the day. He became a hunter after being forced to kill his possessed wife. Bobby has amassed an extensive collection of resources about the supernatural, including literature and relics. Sometime before the events of the show, Bobby forged a friendship with John Winchester, although they had a falling out. After the death of John Winchester, Bobby stepped in and began assisting the brothers on a more routine basis. Bobby's relationship with Sam and Dean has developed to the point of family, with him acting as a father figure.

Season One

Bobby first appears on the show in the episode "Devil's Trap", when Dean and Sam Winchester head to Bobby's place to ask him for help near the end of Season One after their father is taken captive by Meg Masters. He helps the brothers by giving Sam the Key of Solomon and showing them how to trap and perform an exorcism on Meg. He tells Dean before Meg's exorcism is complete that the soul of a demon's host stays inside the body and will remain even after the demon is exorcised, but since Meg fell seven stories out of the warehouse in "Shadow", the demon is all that holds her together and the innocent girl inside will die.

Season Two

Bobby next comes to the Winchesters' aid after John, Sam, and Dean's car accident in the final moments of the Season One finale. John asks Sam to go to Bobby and get some items on a list. When Sam arrives, Bobby tells him that the items are not used for protection from demons as John told Sam, but are rather used to summon a demon. Bobby nevertheless finds and gathers the items as requested and gives them to Sam to take to John. Bobby also retrieves Dean's totaled Impala to prevent the hidden weapons stash in the trunk from being discovered and because Sam told him Dean would want to rebuild it, no matter how totalled it was.

After John Winchester's death and Dean's miraculous recovery, Bobby lets Sam and Dean stay at his place for about a month to rest up and recover. Dean spends the month channeling all his energy into rebuilding his car while Sam tries to get him to talk about their father's death. Bobby also gives them use of the only working vehicle he has in his salvage yard, an old minivan, so that they can locate John's old acquaintance Ellen Harvelle, whom they discovered through an old voice message on John's phone. The boys then use the minivan to check out a hunt in "Everybody Loves a Clown", but abandon it by the side of the road after they fear they were spotted in it. Though Bobby is mentioned and not seen in that episode, it is assumed that Dean and Sam stay with him after that until Dean's Impala is fully restored and the Winchesters go back on the road again.

In "Born Under a Bad Sign", Bobby helps Dean exorcise a possessed Sam. When Sam, after a week spent missing, shows up on Bobby's doorstep without his brother, Bobby offers Sam a beer. Bobby demonstrates his cleverness by secretly spiking the beer with holy water. This exposes Sam's possession by the demon formerly in possession of Meg Masters, whom they had exorcised nearly six months earlier. After Dean arrives, they attempt to exorcise her out of Sam, but the demon has locked herself inside Sam's body with a circular binding link on his arm. During the subsequent fight between Dean and Sam, Bobby again reveals his resourcefulness by burning a line through the link with a hot fireplace poker, breaking the circle and allowing their previous exorcism to work, freeing Sam. He then provides the brothers with pendant charms that fend off possession to prevent a repeat occurrence.

Soon after that, they call him to come to help them out on a case in Ohio that they can't get a handle on. The narrative of "Tall Tales" consists of Dean and Sam alternately relating the situation thus far to Bobby, and each brother's stories about the case reveal the boys' own increasingly ridiculous behavior. After hearing everything, Bobby exasperatedly tells them that it looks like a trickster god (such as Loki or Anansi) is messing around. Though Bobby warns them that as a god, tricksters are immortal, the three force a confrontation with it anyway after finding a weakness. They leave the university thinking that they succeeded in killing it, though unbeknownst to them all, the trickster simply tricked them and moved on.

In the first part of the second season finale, "All Hell Breaks Loose", Bobby returns to help Dean find Sam after he mysteriously disappears. At the end of the episode, they find Sam in a long abandoned ghost town, but arrive too late to help him. They witness Sam being fatally stabbed in the back. Bobby tries to restore some sense to the distraught Dean, begging him to bury Sam. When he subsequently learns that Dean has traded his soul for Sam's resurrection, he reprimands Dean.

He then plays a vital role in closing the portal to Hell located in a Wyoming cemetery that sits in the middle of a giant Devil's Trap of railroad tracks. After closing the portal, Bobby sees John's ghost consoling Dean and Sam. After Dean kills Azazel, Bobby and Ellen inform Sam and Dean that up to 200 demons may have escaped Hell while the portal was open.

Season Three

Bobby continues to appear in Season Three as both a hunter and a mentor to Dean and Sam, helping them fight the war against the demons. He also continuously proves to be an important asset to the brothers as he and Ruby both rebuild the Colt together. In "Dream a Little Dream of Me", it is revealed that Bobby got into hunting after witnessing the possession of his wife and killing her. It is shown through his dream state in the episode that he bears immense guilt for what he did to her, and has taken some sort of unwritten vow to become involved with the supernatural to prevent what happened to him from ever happening to anyone else. He once again appears in "Mystery Spot", used as one of the Trickster's disguises. The Trickster pretends to be Bobby in order to convey to Sam a powerful lesson-that Dean is going to die, that Sam can't stop it, and that the Winchesters need to stop sacrificing themselves for each other. The Trickster even goes so far as to see if Sam will kill Bobby in order to bring back Dean. Sam does kill Bobby (thinking he's really the Trickster), then is wracked with extreme remorse when Bobby stays dead-until the Trickster transforms back from Bobby into himself to deliver his message. In the season finale, Bobby helps the Winchesters in their efforts to save Dean by pinpointing Lilith's location, and insisting upon accompanying them in their likely fatal attack on her. Dean protests that it's not Bobby's fight, but Bobby responds with "Family don't end with blood, Boy!" Bobby proves invaluable in the fight by brilliantly turning the water supplying a lawn sprinkler system into holy water, cutting Lilith off from her army. He is last seen sadly looking at his watch as midnight arrives and Dean's life ends.

Season Four

Bobby returns in the Season Four premiere episode Lazarus Rising and is the first person Dean speaks to upon escaping from Hell. Dean calls Bobby twice after he is rescued from Hell, but Bobby doesn't believe him and threatens to kill him. When Dean then shows up on Bobby's doorstep, Bobby makes two attempts to kill Dean before Dean proves that he is who he says he is (cutting himself with a silver blade and being unaffected by holy water). While doing so, he describes Bobby as "the closest thing I have to a father." Bobby helps the two brothers to reunite and also introduces Dean and Sam to Pamela, a psychic who attempts to channel the "demon" that pulled Dean out of hell. Bobby also assists Dean in the ritual to summon the "demon", which turns out to be an Angel. He's rendered unconscious by the Angel Castiel with a simple touch to the forehead. He then helps the brothers do research to figure out why the Angel rescued Dean, and then, why the dead have risen and are attacking hunters. It is Bobby who figures out that the dead have risen as part of the "Rising of the Witnesses", a sign of the coming apocalypse. Bobby also figures out the spell for setting those risen spirits to rest again. It is revealed in the same episode that Bobby has built a ghost- and demon-proof panic room of solid iron construction, embedded with salt, surrounded by Devil's Traps, and decorated with a poster of Bo Derek in 10. He returns in the episode "Yellow Fever," helping Sam cure Dean of a disease that kills people with fear. It is revealed in that episode that he is fluent in Japanese.

Bobby returns once again in "Sex and Violence", where it is revealed that he cons actual federal agents for Sam and Dean when they run into them on cases. Bobby ends up saving the day by killing a siren that has manipulated Sam and Dean into a fist-fight.

Bobby is seen briefly in "The Rapture," towards the end of the episode. He calls Sam and asks that both Dean and Sam get to his place immediately. Once there, Dean and Bobby trick Sam and lock him up for his own safety.