Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 7: “Hook Man”

Directed by David Jackson
Written by John Shiban

For a couple of episodes now, the “trail for Dad” has gone cold. We’ve seen the brothers start to get to know each other as men. “Skin”, episode 6, the one before this one, explored the theme of doubles and dark sides, the buried resentments that may be there between the Winchesters, especially from Dean’s side. Beautifully, Episode 7, written by John Shiban (who also wrote Episode 6) takes those themes which had been made explicit in Episode 6, and goes implicit with them.

That explicit-to-implicit (the reverse of how things normally go) is one of the greatest pleasures of Season 1, especially when you’ve seen the whole series. It’s not just peeling back the layers of an onion, because that implies that the characters become clearer with each episode, with each layer removed. They don’t. What they do is become deeper, MORE complex. If Sam and Dean became clearer with each episode, then there would be a point where the characters became static. In older episodics, like, say, CHiPs, we don’t learn a lot about Ponch and John. The characters were established from the get-go (Ponch is the ladies man, John is the more serious one) and the guys just kept playing those characters in episode after episode. Obviously it worked. Then there is something like Miami Vice (I’m picking “buddy” series): those two characters were not slowly revealed over the course of many seasons, because that was not what the show ultimately was about. The show was about its style, its music, its wardrobe, its striking cinematic visuals. We weren’t in it for “who the hell ARE these guys??” the way we are with Supernatural.

Without that Winchester brothers hook, we would have nothing.

If I could pick an analogy, it wouldn’t be a layered onion. It would be a prism. The prism is angled differently, slightly, each episode. So that things we thought we understood, or were coming to understand, recede into the shadows, depending on the angle of the prism, and other elements, other aspects, reveal themselves. Supernatural becomes more complex as it goes on. Things aren’t just “one thing”. Qualities are not set in stone. Characteristics come and go, depending on the prism angle, and depending on the light source shining on it. This is the way it is in life too. None of us are just “one thing”. I wrote in one of my earlier pieces: Who is more rigid? Sam or Dean? Well, that depends entirely on the angle of the prism and the strength of the light source. It would have been so much easier to clearly delineate the characters: Sam is smart and sensitive, Dean is gruff and macho, and if the actors are good at it, you very well might have a hit show. I sure wouldn’t have been watching, though.

I love the prismatic aspect of the scriptwriting and the performances.

And here, in “Hook Man”, we see Sam’s college experience, as well as Dean’s (possible) resentment of said college experience, things that we very well may have expected we left behind in Episode 6 (“didn’t we just deal with this??”), through another angle of the prism. Because issues in life as big as “what if?” and resentment do not get “handled” in the length of an episode. They continue to bleed into our lives and there is a sense of frustration sometimes like, “THIS issue again? I thought we HANDLED this!”

My sense, in Season 9, is that the writers are finally dealing with Dean’s need to save Sam and sacrifice himself, at all costs. And they are dealing with it in a way that is earned, because we’ve seen the repercussions of his pattern so many times. Dean himself seems completely broken down by his own pattern. But we wouldn’t have the sense that a payoff of some kind is coming if they hadn’t set up that aspect of Dean’s character so carefully, so relentlessly, over so many seasons.

We’ve seen this part of Dean through every angle of the prism. We’ve seen its beauty, we’ve seen its courage, we’ve seen its willingness to lie, we’ve seen its heroism. And now we’re seeing its ugliness and the brokenness from which it really comes. I don’t think it’s an accident/coincidence that in Season 9 we were given an episode where we saw Dean in a reform school at age 16, where Sonny, the guy who runs the school basically likens Dean’s family to the gang he escaped from (after going to prison because of his dealings with said gang). Sonny tells 16-year-old Dean that eventually you have to make yourSELF happy, you have to choose for yourSELF. But Dean got sucked back into his family and forgot that lesson. He’s having to learn it now. Only he’s such a broken mess, how will it all play out? We’re at the end of the road with that arc, the prism can show us no more angles. It seems to me that where they are going is truly dealing with Dean’s pathological (totally pathological) fear of being alone. FINALLY, they’re getting to the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter, as it usually is, is existential in nature.

This is the strength of the prism approach to screenwriting.

Episode 6 showed Sam cutting the ties, finally, with his old life, his friends from Stanford. (Interestingly, if you think of Dean showing up at Stanford in the pilot to pull Sam back in, that is just what John Winchester did to Dean when he pulled him out of the reform school, where Dean was flourishing, had his first kiss, was on the wrestling team, etc. Normal.) And remember, Episode 6 revealed to us, for the first time, that Sam had been having prophetic dreams about his girlfriend Jess being killed. This is something he has not shared with Dean. But the guilt of it is still operating. Issues from one episode bleed into the next. But writer John Shiban knows that there are things that have already been dealt with explicitly in Episode 6, so here he goes implicit. Episode 7 takes place on a college campus, for example. Coincidence? No. It involves a young girl in conflict with her father who won’t let her go. The connections are there, but not in the script. It’s left up to us to make those correlations.

And finally, I love it when urban legends I have in my DNA show up in Supernatural. I don’t know nothing about demons or Wendigos (although now I do), but I know all about the Hook Man, because it feels like it’s a story I have always known. Ghost stories told at Girl Scout camp, at sleepovers, Hook Man was the star of them all. And here he is, re-imagined, re-purposed, and it’s such a fun part of the show.

Teaser
Theta Sorority
Eastern Iowa University

The teaser here is quite elaborate. It is filled with information that will become relevant as the episode unfolds. It’s also CLASSIC horror-movie style. It couldn’t be darker and creepier. Has there ever been a creepier sorority house on film? Seriously, can’t these girls ever turn the lights on? In a pitch-black bedroom, a girl is getting dressed for a date and showing her outfit to her roommate. Maybe turn on the lights to see the outfit better? Oh, that’s right, you’re in a horror movie, you can’t! Laurie (Jane McGregor) shows her conservative outfit to her roommate, Taylor (Christie Laing), who shakes her head No, and goes and gets Laurie a sexy spaghetti-strap top. Laurie resists, but Taylor says, “There’s a hot chick buried in there somewhere.”

A simple scene but it sets up the relationship between the two girls, and it also sets up the struggle within Laurie. Taylor may be a sexy college girl but she is not unkind to her more mousy shy roommate. Her wardrobe suggestions seem supportive, rather than mean-spirited. This will get into one of the larger themes of the episode, as well as the series, which I’ll get into later, but I’ll mention it briefly here: Supernatural is on the side of fluidity, flexibility, and complexity. Anything black-and-white is inherently dangerous. Rigidity is dangerous, whether it be ideologically, politically, socially. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could all just cut each other a little bit of slack? Ghosts and demons cut NO slack, but Supernatural also deals with that on a human level. People who are rigid, who see things as black-and-white … well, they’re not “asking for it”, but they are setting themselves up for a big fall. Because life exists in the grey areas, and so do important human qualities such as compassion, empathy, and grace. Sam and Dean live in both worlds: they live in the black-and-white world, where evil things must be killed, and there is really no wiggle-room there. It’s cut and dry. But they also live in the grey world, when they deal with fellow humans and their foibles. You could say that Sam and Dean, by fighting tooth-and-nail against black-and-white thinking, are PROTECTING the grey areas of life. However, when you drill down into their personal lives, of course they are as black-and-white as the rest of us, they struggle with rigidity and polarizing thinking all the time. Their fight is ideological in nature. But to LIVE in the grey area? They may protect it for others, but they have a hard time with it for themselves.

Okay, so that wasn’t so brief. But I’ll re-visit it.

Laurie is excited for her date. She looks sexy. Taylor sends her off with “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”, to which Laurie responds, “There’s nothing you wouldn’t do.” She says it good-naturedly, though, and Taylor, flipping through a magazine, laughs in agreement. That, right there, is the grey area. Taylor is okay with flaunting her hot chick self, Laurie isn’t, and yet there, in that moment, they are in the same world, the same grey area, where they can cut each other some slack. That will change.

We can also see this relationship writ large in the relationship between Sam and Dean, if you want to search out those connections. Dean is on the Taylor side of the spectrum, and Sam is on the Laurie side. Dean uses sex for comfort and companionship, however brief, and he can separate out his “feelings” from it. Sam can’t, and he won’t. At least not at this point. Dean has no idea what it’s like to fall in love, at least not fully, and has no idea what Sam is going through with the loss of Jess. But something tells Dean that Sam needs to start trying to get over it, not to forget, but to move on. Maybe hook up with someone? Maybe kiss somebody? Whatever, it should be starting, because it’s not good for you to suppress those desires. None of this is in the script for Episode 7, but it’s all there.

Next, we see a truck parked under a big scary bridge (which, if I am not mistaken, is used no less than 742 times over the course of the series). It’s spooky, and dark, and we see the truck from through the bushes, which we know is a terrible sign.

Laurie and her date, Rich (Brian Skala) sit in the truck and she’s a bit nervous. She thought they were going to a party. At one point, Laurie’s phone rings, she glances down and sees it’s her Dad calling. She doesn’t pick up. Rich moves in and they kiss for a while. Rich is sweet, but then moves to go under her shirt, and she pulls back saying, “No.” His response is bad news, no matter how sweet the guy is: “It’s okay.” Dude, she said “No.” Hence, it is not okay. I’m not saying he deserves to die. I also think there are grey areas in sex, and “No means No” doesn’t even begin to address the complexity of what goes on between two people, HOWEVER. She couldn’t have been more clear, Rich. “No.” Laurie succumbs, and they start kissing again, and then we see the truck being stalked through the bushes. Suddenly, we see a tall black figure, in a hat of some kind, and a long coat, standing at the end of the small road leading to the truck. Back in the truck, Laurie is still trying to cool things down, and who knows, it could end up pretty badly, this is how these things often go. In the darkness, we see a road sign: 9 MILE ROAD – and suddenly, the black figure reaches out and we see a hook scrape across the sign (fantastic sound effects, the noise is cringe-inducing). Laurie and Rich both hear it and look around them in the darkness. Rich gets out to investigate, because, of course, this is a horror movie and that’s what dumb boys do. Laurie, panicked, hyperventilates in the car. Suddenly, we see a hook scratch move its way down the side of the car. Rich is now nowhere to be found. The whole scene in the car is about sudden calm and silence being interrupted by sheer terror, when the hook crashes through the roof of the car. Laurie gets out of the car and starts to flee back towards the main road, before she stops, turns around, and sees Rich now strung up above the car, hanging there upside down, bloody and dead. Camera moves in on Laurie’s face and she screams at the top of her lungs. Laurie has no less than three AWESOME horror-movie screams in the episode. She puts her whole body into it.

It is difficult to avoid the implication that she is somehow being punished for being sexual.

1st scene
There was a longer version of this first scene, where we learn that Dean gave Sam a police badge that has a female’s name, Frances. Sam bitches to him about it. “Get me a badge with the right gender, please.” That’s cut, though, although the name “Frances” remains, and it’s a funny weird little moment. The brothers are at an outdoor coffee shop, Dean in the background at a table, on the laptop, with Sam at a nearby pay phone. Why a pay phone? Did something happen to his little blackberry with the stylus that we saw in Episode 6?

Anyway, Sam is on the pay phone, and frustrated, hanging up after some kind of “blah blah, well, thanks for your time” comment. Dean calls out to him, “Your half-caffe double vanilla latte’s getting cold over here, Frances.” One of the eternal moments where Dean makes fun of Sam for being girlie. There’s an episode later where Sam eats a “health shake” and the look of disgust on Dean’s face is one of the funniest moments in the entire series.

The search for Dad is rising in the narrative again. We’re 7 episodes in, and we’ve left the search for Dad for 5 episodes now. But he’ll be coming back, big-time, and soon. This small scene is a reminder that the brothers are busy. Yes, they’re looking for new cases, but in their spare time, they’re trying to find Dad. Sam reports back to Dean that he had someone check the FBI database for missing persons, and he even ran Dad’s license plates for any traffic violations. Nada. Dean says, “I don’t think Dad wants to be found.” And with that one line, we see, yet again, that Sam is the lead on the search for Dad, he feels more urgency about it. That unfinished business he has with the man.

I love the detail of the laptop. Of course the brothers would not have a spanking new one, and of course they would cover it in ominous band stickers.

Dean has come across a news item about a mutilated fraternity brother in a college only 100 miles away. The witness said the attacker was “invisible”.

We then have an exchange which will be on eternal repeat, with variations, throughout the series:

Dean: Could be something interesting.
Sam: Could be nothing at all.
Dean: Dad would check it out.

Dean’s comment is the clincher for Sam, and the boys are off. All as “Bang Your Head” starts blaring.

2nd scene
The Impala barrels along the country roads (the boys seem to stay off the interstates), all to the rousing accompaniment of “Bang Your Head”, and then we get a rare helicopter shot of the small Iowa college town. Supernatural rarely goes up that far, visually. It’s interesting: The episode takes place on a college campus. Dean and Sam are so far outside the mainstream that they are on the level with criminals, drug dealers, hackers, and other outlaws. “Fitting in” in such a nice little town is already unheard of for them, although Sam did his level best not too long ago, and actually made friends, did his homework, etc. He may not have felt like he “fit in”, but he still gave it a shot. Giving us that helicopter shot of Americana highlights the brothers’ distance from anything even remotely normal. Especially in that damn Impala which seems like a fire-breathing dragon when it pulls up to the curb in front of the fraternity, belching smoke out of its gas-guzzling muffler.

I mean, seriously, does that look so badass? It’s a sunny day but the way the shadows fall inside the car make them look like ominous black-hatted villains. Eric Kripke tells a funny story about why he chose an Impala for the car. He wanted it to be the kind of car that would pull up next to you at a stoplight and you would instinctively lock all your doors. Kripke went outside to talk to his next-door neighbor who was a car fanatic, went to car shows, etc. while neighbor was mowing his lawn, and Kripke said, “So I’m working on this pilot, blah blah, and I want the brothers to ride around in a vintage muscle car, the coolest car ever, the toughest car ever, and I was thinking a ’57 Mustang.” And the neighbor said, without missing a beat, “Yeah, the ’57 Mustang is tough …. if you’re a PUSSY.” Kripke was like, “Oh my God, really? No, no, that’s not what I’m going after at all!!! What kind of car should it be then??” And the neighbor said, without hesitation, “67 Chevy Impala.” Hysterical. Awesome.

In two or three lackadaisical atmospheric shots, we get a great feel for fraternity life: two guys working on their car, a beat-up couch out on the sidewalk, everyone just hanging around, probably hung over. Into this world stroll Sam and Dean. Every guy on that sidewalk is stopped dead in their tracks at the sight of the Impala, and Dean, trying to make chit-chat, says to one of the guys at the car, “Nice wheels,” and everyone looks at him weird. Because Dean, when he tries to be normal, comes off weird. Especially with other guys. But Dean doesn’t care. He knows he’s more Alpha Dog than anyone in a 5-mile radius, he is proud of his freak status because it means he’s tough, and these pudgy beer-fed boys got nothing on HIM. It’s funny, though, Dean and Sam stand there, and Dean says, “Hey, we’re transfers, we’re your new fraternity brothers, we’re moving in,” and just the looks on their faces … they BOTH look so incredibly sketch.

They are shown to their room where they see a half-naked guy standing in front of the mirror painting himself purple. There’s a sticker saying “Purple Man” on the door. Production design, in its simple invisible way, does a great job here as they do everywhere, suggesting the reality of frat life, the posters, the totally random furniture, the chaos just outside the door. Purple Man is not surprised to hear he has new roommates. He has no feelings about it whatsoever, because he is probably still drunk from the night before, and totally obsessed on painting himself purple. He asks if one of his new roommates could finish up his back, and Sam and Dean both look grossed out, and Dean makes Sam do it, “He’s the artist. The things he can do with a brush.” And Sam TAKES this. I suppose he wouldn’t want to make a scene, and refuse to paint the guy’s back, but it’s such a funny older-bratty-bossy-brother moment. Dean strolls over to the couch, sits, picks up a magazine (which is called “BACKSIDE”, I mean, come on), and watches Sam paint the guy’s back. You can tell Dean is loving every second of it, even telling Sam he “missed a spot” at one point. The absurdity of their lives.

Meanwhile, Dean, with some subtle Batting-Eyelashes behavior (I go into Dean’s pan-sexual Eyelash-Batting here), questions Purple Man about the killed fraternity brother.

Sam, sulking, paints Purple Man’s back, and Purple Man discloses that Rich was on a date with Laurie, who is a “local” and a “reverend’s daughter”, not to mention “hot”. I grew up in a university town. The whole “local” thing is so accurate in terms of the hierarchy in college life. “Locals” have a strange glamour, maybe a bit grittier, a bit mysterious, because they “come from there”. I was a local at my university so I know of what I speak. Dean, sensing that there is more to this Laurie person, who witnessed an “invisible” creature killing her boyfriend, asks Purple Man what church she goes to.

3rd scene
I’m thinking the church is an actual location and not a set. It’s superb, and they come back to it a couple of different times. Location shoots are rare in television (although they are getting more common), and Supernatural is all about location shoots. There are some sets, including “the bunker”, their most elaborate and expensive set, which they are now utilizing to the fullest. But for the most part, the show occurs out there in the real world.

Reverend Sorenson (Dan Butler) is up in the pulpit, speaking about the murder of Rich, ending with, “I believe he died trying to protect my daughter.” Technically, that is true, although before that Rich ignored Laurie’s very clear “No”, but moving on. Taylor and Laurie sit together in a pew, and everything is very solemn and holy and sad. The mood is totally interrupted by Sam and Dean barging in through the door in the back, mid-sermon, and letting the door slam behind them. The service goes on, Sam and Dean sitting in a back pew, and there’s a beautiful moment when Laurie, peering over her shoulder at the strange men in the back, makes eye contact with Sam. He smiles gently at her, across the space. When the Reverend asks the congregation to pray, Sam puts his head down, then notices that Dean is sitting there, still looking around, oblivious. Sam nudges him, a signal: “Pray, dude“, and poor Dean puts his head down.

The religious aspect of the show, the questions of faith and prayer, is really introduced here for the first time. The show always takes a pretty light touch with it, never tipping over into Christian-izing proselytizing (thank God), and it also takes Biblical entities like angels and turns them into psychopathic dicks, which is a lot of fun. The fact that Laurie is a reverend’s daughter, concerned with the Bible and with her own place in the modern world, seems incidental here, casual, but it’s our first glimpse of that stronger Arc coursing underneath the series, the apocalyptic Good vs. Evil Heaven vs. Hell arc.

After the service, Laurie and Taylor walk outside the church, the camera following them on a long dolly-track in a really cool and complicated shot. They’re in the dark church, and the outside world shows bright through the open door, the two of them in black-silhouette. The camera follows the two girls outside, into the light. That’s a tough trick to pull off, lighting-wise and camera-operator wise. It’s cool and symbolically potent as well, especially because Taylor, being sympathetic again, is inviting Laurie to hang out that night, do tequila shots and watch Reality Bites. (Do kids today have nostalgia for Reality Bites? That seems a bit old, but what do I know. I’m a bit old, too.) Laurie can’t, Sunday nights she has dinner with her Dad. Taylor says to her, “You are allowed to have fun,” almost the exact same words Dean said to Sam in episode 3. Taylor’s comment has great resonance for Sam right now, although, good Lord, as the series goes on, I don’t care that Dean drinks and fucks like there’s no tomorrow. None of that’s working for him anymore. He’s the one who needs to have fun. By fun I mean a break from existential aloneness and dread and guilt. But I digress.

The girls hug goodbye, Taylor takes off, and then Sam and Dean approach and introduce themselves. Sam takes the lead with Laurie, and I love when the brothers instinctively choose who is gonna go first, who is gonna talk to this person, that person. They both have strengths and weaknesses. (Humorously, in “The Purge”, the last episode – so far – in Season 9 – Dean insists on interviewing the hot chick at the gym by telling Sam, “You’re weird with girls. Sam-weird.” Dean, you’re weird with pretty much everyone, but thanks for sharing!)

They throw bullshit her way about being transfer students (they must have been held back multiple times in grade school), and she’s sweet and open but also clearly traumatized, and that is the part that Sam feels, Sam senses. Sam, in his quiet sensitive way, asks her what happened, and she shares that she feels like she’s going crazy, and the cops don’t believe her. Sam says to her, “I kinda know what you’re going through. I saw someone … get hurt once. It’s something you don’t forget.” As he speaks, watch Dean listening, and watch his quick glance over at his brother. It’s eloquent. The brothers do not confide in one another about their respective traumas, Mom and Jess. Just like with the kid Lucas in Episode 3, where Sam hears Dean’s memories of what it was like for him, here, Sam opens up to Laurie, and it’s something Dean hadn’t heard before. The fact that the brothers are capable (still) of being surprised by one another, of being vulnerable to one another, is one of the reasons the show works.

The reverend comes over to see who is talking to his daughter, and Laurie introduces them. Reverend says something like, “It’s so nice to find young people open to the Lord’s message” or some such thing which makes Sam and Dean squirm uncomfortably. They have to lie to nice people. It sucks.

There’s an absolutely gorgeous shot of the four of them talking. They’re outside but it looks like they are in a cathedral.

Dean pulls the Reverend aside to ask about church groups, so that Sam can get Laurie alone. Sam, gently, conversationally, asks her what happened with Rich. She says, “I guess I was seeing things.” Sam replies, in that gentle insistent way he has, “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.”

I’ve mentioned before the times that “outsiders” look at Sam or Dean, suddenly perceiving who they are, and it is our way of understanding what they must look like to people outside their small world. They are both extraordinary creatures. They don’t feel that way, because their lives suck, and they’re the ones living it, trying to live up to their father’s expectations for them, but to someone like Laurie, Sam suddenly seems like the most amazing person who has ever lived. He believes her.

4th scene
I wrote in the re-cap for the pilot about how much I love Supernatural for its implicit celebration of public librarians. “Hook Man” has some awesome library scenes, which show
1. Society still needs public libraries
2. Society still needs librarians.

And Sam and Dean Winchester USE their local libraries. They use them the way they are supposed to be used. They make the librarian earn her pay by asking for this and that court record. Public libraries are a service to any community, and Ben Franklin knew that when he set up the first lending library.

This is a personal issue for me, dear to my heart, as a librarian’s daughter, and “Hook Man” is a great example. Now that we’re in Season 9, with the bunker and all, there really are no more libraries to go to because of the extensive Men of Letters library they have at their command, but, in a way, the whole Men of Letters thing is just an extended celebration of archivists, knowledge, specialization, and organization, all things dear to librarians’ hearts.

Dean and Sam stroll through the library stacks, and it’s a crowded day, with fluorescent lights, but they show up in black silhouette at the end of each aisle, which is classic Supernatural. It’s apparently natural light here (although, of course, it takes a lot of artificial light to LOOK natural), and the boys look gorgeous in that moody shadowy light. As they walk, Dean says to Sam, “So you believe her,” and Sam says, “Yeah”, and Dean says, “I think she’s hot, too” which is so bratty and dismissive. BUT. Dean, in his normal bloodhound No-Boundaries self, senses Sam’s attraction to her, which hasn’t even been referenced, and is acknowledging it, just putting it out there into the open.

They stop to talk about the case thus far, and it’s a great scene, albeit all “Lore” stuff. I love watching Ackles and Padalecki hash out “the lore” in episode after episode. Why do I love it so much? The variety they find in these repetitious scenes? I think it has to do with that thing I have mentioned before about the most interesting thing a human being can do on camera is THINK. Supernatural, with all its gore and action, is really about “thought”, and the “Lore” scenes show both these brothers with their minds working on overdrive. It’s fun.

Both brothers recognize the hook-scratches and upside-down-boyfriend as part of the famous “Hook Man legend”, but Dean is awestruck: “You don’t think we’re dealing with THE Hook Man?” Sam, cool and persuasive, tells Dean (and us): “Every urban legend has a source. A place where it all began.” So they discuss what it could be. A pissed-off spirit is the obvious choice, but they need to do more research before they can say for sure.

Librarian alert! A librarian plops down two dusty boxes in front of the brothers. I love how Dean blows dust off the top of the box and then chokes on it, in mild disgust, not only at the dust, but at the whole boring research part of his job. Behavior! Jensen Ackles never misses a beat, not one BEAT, to go specific, to go funny, to make something out of what could very well be nothing.

In the boxes are arrest records for the town going back to 1851.

Dean thanks her, and she gives him a flustered flattered smile, which is one of the subtle ways the show acknowledges how gorgeous these guys are. It would be ridiculous to pretend that either of these gentlemen are not head-turners. Dean gets what’s happening, that he’s been checked out in a way, and turns his head to watch her walk away. It’s a small moment, but grounds us in reality. That’s how it would go.

A character aspect of Dean that I love is that even with the greasy burgers and porn, dude is hygienic. He gets seriously grossed out by germs, by filth, by sick people, by being contaminated. There’s that one hilarious scene in a later season where he steals a car, and sees that the front seat is filled with garbage. Dean mutters to himself, “Have some respect.” He’s stealing a car and he’s irritated and, frankly, grossed out that the person he is stealing from is a slob. He cannot STAND witches, or cases having to do with witches, because they are always “spewing their bodily fluids everywhere”, as he says, which just cracks me up, since in certain contexts, Dean obviously adores bodily fluids. But in a controlled consensual environment ONLY. Otherwise it’s just nasty and he needs to wash his hands. In the “Wizard of Oz” episode in Season 9, the Wicked Witch of the West, on a rampage through the bunker, tears apart the kitchen. Never mind that the Wicked Witch is deadly and can kill you with a zap of electricity. Dean looks at the ruined kitchen and moans, “I just cleaned in here!” Dean’s cleanliness (next to Godliness?) is not made into a bit, or schtick, but it shows up periodically and it’s an unexpected character thing I really like. The man has rarely had a proper hot shower in his whole life. He owns only a couple of pairs of jeans. He has grease and dirt under his fingernails at all times. He never feels clean. We can look at that metaphorically, too, in terms of guilt and shame and trauma. Sam, too, has a whole thing with “purity”, which will grow in import over the next couple of seasons, but it doesn’t manifest in Dean’s almost squicky devotion to hygiene.

So that tangent is based on the fact that Dean is grossed out by the dust on the box and that he has to deal with said dust. Sam is much more matter-of-fact, opening up his box, and Dean says, disgusted, “This is how you spent 4 good years of your life, huh.”

It will be the first of many “college” references thrown at Sam by Dean over the course of the episode, which reminds us of the Shape-shifter Dean’s pity party in the episode before this one, bemoaning the fact that Sam was the one who got to go to college. Of course that was an unreliable monster talking, but the constant digs about college here subtly let us know that the Monster was onto something.

5th scene

Time has passed and the research continues. Sam and Dean have now taken over an entire table as well as the shelf behind them. Sam has come across an 1862 arrest record of a local preacher who was angry over the red light district and killed 13 prostitutes.

Shout out to the props department. These look like real archival material. The details!

Sam reads aloud that some of the victims were hung upside down in trees “as a warning against sins of the flesh”, and, better yet, the deadly preacher had a hook for a hand because of an accident. Best of all, all of this happened on 9 Mile Road (Eminem? You there?), the scene of the frat boy’s murder. Dean looks over all of this and says to Sam, impressed, “Nice job, Dr. Venkman”, one of my favorite of Dean’s pop cultural references.

6th scene
It’s about time for the “Hook Man” to strike again. Reverend Dad drops Laurie off at her sorority house, and they are in mid-fight. Laurie asserts that she’s 18 now, he needs to back off. Reverend Dad says he knows what goes on in that house, the partying, that ROOMMATE. Laurie is upset, but this young actress brings a totally conflicted energy to the table, something that will make sense by the end of the episode. She’s not a “good girl acting out”, she’s not a “bad girl pretending to be good” or vice versa. She is TRULY torn. Her father pulls her one way, her young adulthood pulls her the other way, and where she retreats is into that rigid black-and-white thinking that will bring about all of her problems. Like I said, Supernatural is on the side of gentleness, of cutting others slack, of not being too judgmental or hard about the complexities people face in life. Laurie is really struggling with that. Dean and Sam will struggle with it too.

Laurie goes into the sorority house which, again, is dark, terrifying, and ominous. I mean, do you want to walk up this stairway?

The music is eerie and Laurie stands in the upper hallway, glancing around, freaked out. She’s sensing something. Maybe she’s just nervous. Maybe someone needs to turn on the lights. There’s a wonderful small shot, where Laurie peeks into an open doorway, and sees a girl at her desk studying. It is a benign image, it is what people do at college. But it looks strange. The shadows are too thick. Something’s off.

She goes into her room, where Taylor lies asleep (passed out from those tequila shots, no doubt). Laurie, still freaked out, whispers Taylor’s name a couple of times. No response.

7th scene
Dean and Sam go down to 9 Mile Road to the crime scene to check things out. The lighting team pull out all the stops here. It’s a misty night, there’s a body of water, there’s a moon, and all of these natural elements are suggested in deep blue shadows, fuzzy lights, a silvery streak of moonlight in the water, with Dean and Sam moving around in the darkness. It’s gorgeous.

Dean starts rummaging around in the arsenal in the trunk (I love how we can see a giant wooden cross just lying there), and here is where we are introduced to the concept of rock-salt bullets, which eventually becomes so much a part of the show that I want to stock up on them myself just in case a spirit ever comes out of my closet. Salt is supposed to “deter” spirits, it won’t kill them, “but it will sure slow them down”, and Dean and Sam carry salt with them everywhere by now. If you surround someone with a circle of salt, the spirit supposedly cannot break through (although, of course, that doesn’t work if there is any kind of breeze at all in the room, which breaks apart the circle, and in Supernatural there is ALWAYS a breeze.) We haven’t seen any rock salt behavior yet in the series. Dean pulls out a sawed-off shotgun and hands the bullets to Sam, who, looking truly terrifying in black silhouette, loads up the gun, all while saying, “You know bullets won’t do any good.” Dean informs him, “Rock salt.”

Sam is impressed and says, as they start off down the shoreline, “You and Dad think of this?” Dean, swaggering in front, throws his second college barb at his brother: “I told you. You don’t have to be a college graduate to be a genius.”

Like I said, I love that Episode 6 makes us think that the resentment from Dean is just a product of a monster being mean and manipulative. Now we see there’s some truth to it, and the issue is NOT resolved.

A local cop emerges from out of the bushes (after we are made to believe, through stalker-ish camera angles that it is the Hook Man), and shouts at them to drop the gun and fall to their knees. Sam and Dean both obey, and in later episodes they would have had a much better cover story at the ready, FBI badges out, Bobby on speed dial. They’re not there yet. They get on their knees, hands in the air, and then the cop, pointing his gun at them, tells them to lie on their bellies, and as they do so, Dean mumbles petulantly, “He had the gun!!” So funny. So RUDE. Dean is going to let his brother take the fall there? It’s as though they’re talking about a toy gun and they’re in trouble with their dad, “He started it!”

8th scene
Back in the Sorority House called Sigma Doom and Dread, Laurie crawls into bed, and as she does so, slowly, the camera moves across the room and lands on the open closet door. Nothing comes out. Nothing needs to. All we need to do is look at that black space, remember the Hook Man legend, and run for our lives.

9th scene
Morning has broken, and Laurie and Taylor’s room is dimly lit with dawn through the Venetian blinds. Laurie rolls over, and stares across the room, and notices something weird. There is a huge dark puddle on the floor beneath Taylor’s bed, with something dripping down from the bed sheet.

Horrified, Laurie’s eyes move up to Taylor, who is seen in fragments, a bloody wound here, her open scared eyes there, and we don’t see all of her but what we see lets us know that she has been slaughtered in her bed. Laurie bolts upright in bed, and screams at the top of her lungs. Then, even worse, her eyes are struck by something above Taylor’s bed, and there, on the wall, is a scratched blood-streaked message:

We then get our third awesome horror-movie scream from Laurie.

10th scene
Sam and Dean clearly spent the night in jail and emerge into the morning light from the police station, Dean swaggering with pride about how he talked the Sheriff down to a fine by telling him that Sam was pledging a fraternity and the whole thing had been part of a Hell Week hazing ritual. Dean is so proud that he refers to himself as “Matlock”, which, I’m sorry, heart crack. They stroll up towards the Impala, and they both look like shit, and Dean says, glancing over at Sam, “Besides, you look like a dumbass pledge.” Dean, your nonexistent resentment is showing. Suddenly, before they can get into the car, what looks like the entire police force burst out of the station, race to their cars, and peel out, sirens blaring.

11th scene
Chaos at Theta Death-Dorm. Ambulances, cops, sorority girls wandering around in their pajamas. Laurie sits huddled in the back of an ambulance, wrapped in a blanket, looking completely cut off from the trauma she just experienced. At that point, there’s a great shot where the Impala drives by on the street below, slowly, and across the space, Laurie makes eye contact with the brothers. Dean only looks over briefly before turning back to the road, but Sam’s eyes are glued onto Laurie’s. This isn’t about her being “hot”. This is about Trauma recognizing Trauma, even in a crowded room. It’s a nice sequence, the camera angles, the pull-in to Laurie’s face. It’s emotional in nature, it’s connecting Laurie (black-and-white Laurie) to the world of compassionate grey areas, where people are allowed to be complex, although we don’t know that yet.

Reverend Dad shows up and wants to take Laurie home. The cop there is apologetic, this is a small town and everyone knows everyone, but Laurie is now connected to two murders. Reverend Dad is firm: “Either arrest her now, or let me take her home.” The cop relents, and Dad goes to help Laurie back to the car, and he is very gentle with her, not scolding, not “I told you so”, which is a clue, if you think about it.

Dean has parked the Impala on the empty road behind the sorority and they sneak up to the house through the back yard, undetected by cops or hottie sorority sisters. Sam, behind Dean, is hissing his confusion at what is going on, always thinking, always analyzing. Ghosts stick to one location, and the sorority house is nowhere near 9 Mile Road. The brothers quickly hide against the side of the house at the sight of two sorority girls strolling by, and as Sam crawls up to the second-story balcony (with Dean’s help), Dean leers at the sorority girls and he seriously looks like a serial killer in that moment.

“Think we’ll see a naked pillow fight??” he asks Sam’s body as it climbs up to the roof. I love that Dean’s conception of college is:
1. Dusty boring boxes
2. Naked pillow fights (i.e. Animal House)

The place is still crawling with cops, who somehow miss the fact that two grease-ball brothers are basically climbing up the side of the house and breaking into a second-story window.

As the brothers climb through the window, we hear Dean grunt as he lands, and then comes the following exchange (which we only hear):

Sam: “Be quiet.”
Dean: “You be quiet.”
Sam: “You be quiet.”
Dean: “You be quiet.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Supernatural would not work as well if the two lead characters were not brothers. If they had been un-related buddies, there still would have been character-chemistry, but it wouldn’t be brother-chemistry like that. It’s so ridiculous, it gives the show a ridiculous voice sometimes, and it’s awesome.

There are cops still in Laurie and Taylor’s room. Dean and Sam skulk in the closet waiting until the coast is clear. It’s great that a situation like this, which would give other people heart attacks (breaking into a crime scene) is so no big deal to both Dean and Sam that they don’t blink an eye. Their blood pressure probably doesn’t rise. They move into the room confidently, looking around. Dean points to his nose, indicating the stink, and Sam nods. They stare at the scratch on the wall, which, if you were scared out of your mind by a Hook Man story as a child, you will recognize.

Sam, though, points to the weird symbol at the bottom of the message. What is that?

12th scene
Dean and Sam come back out to the Impala, which now has a parking ticket on the windshield. As Dean and Sam talk, Dean picks it up, looks at it, has no reaction. It’s not even mentioned, it’s not even included in the script. GREAT. The more behavioral and character stuff you can add without dialogue the better. Parking tickets mean nothing to Dean Winchester. They aren’t even annoying. Meanwhile, the brothers sit on the hood of the Impala and stare at the photocopy of the original hook on the preacher’s hand. There is that same symbol. So obviously they are dealing with a pissed-off spirit and Dean is practical, they need to go find the grave of the preacher and salt and burn his bones. Sam, still poring over the material, says he was buried in an unmarked grave. How many times does this happen on the show? How many unmarked graves ARE there in America? Since the spirit is obviously not attached to 9 Mile Road, they have no idea where he will manifest next, and that is worrying.

Dean, though, who has been thinking on his own independent track, says to Sam, “I think your little friend Laurie may have something to do with this.” Sam looks confused, taken aback. Both by the implication that innocent Laurie may be connected, and also, maybe Dean’s word choice: “your little friend”.

13th scene
Dean and Sam meet up that night at a frat party to do some re-con after whatever it is they’ve been doing separately all day. It’s chaos: dart boards, swirling lights, crowds of people, alcohol, mayhem. Dean makes his way through the crowd, overwhelmed by the girls/the partying. He says “Hey” to a couple of girls before coming up to Sam (and Dean can barely get through the following scene without being distracted by offscreen girls.) Sam is serious and almost somber, he already went through college, probably went to a couple of frat parties, realized it wasn’t for him, and moved on. But Dean is a kid in a candy store. Sam looks super uptight, as he stares around him, a kindred spirit with the conflicted Laurie, saying to his brother, “This wasn’t really my experience.” Meanwhile, Dean catches eyes with a girl off camera and says, “Hey”, smiling huge. It’s hilarious behavior. Especially when you consider that Jensen Ackles is reacting to someone who isn’t there at all. It’s offscreen. He’s making this shit up. So funny. Make-believe!!

Sam has been doing research on how the Hook Man might be tied up with Laurie and hands Dean a piece of paper, which Dean, distracted, horny, over-stimulated, can barely focus on for a second. They move through the crowd, Dean reading the paper, and Sam filling Dean in.

In his research, Sam found evidence in the past of preachers who were busted for murder, and all the witnesses had said it was done by an invisible man. Each preacher committed murder in the name of upholding/protecting Morality. (This entire conversation takes place with a pool table in the background, a nice snarky ironic detail.) Being obsessed with the Immorality of others has clearly led these preachers down a horrible path, and Sam wonders if somehow the spirit has latched onto Laurie’s father. Maybe he is trying to save his daughter from immoral choices (and we know that’s true, we’ve already seen it.) As the brothers talk, there are a couple of gorgeous shots of them, surrounded in black, barely emerging from the shadows. Supernatural is now in a groove with how to light these two extraordinary-looking men. (Unfortunately, by season 3 or 4, the network put the kibosh on the darkness and de-saturation. You can feel the difference on a visceral level.) But, in the meantime, revel in the beauty of this lighting.

I like this scene a lot. It’s just a scene of the two of them discussing all of this, thinking about it, speaking out their thoughts. They are open to one another’s thoughts, as they throw ideas out there. Sam says, “You know how a poltergeist can haunt a person, instead of a place?” No, Sam, I didn’t know that but thanks for enlightening me. Dean takes this in, and thinks about it, nodding, putting some of the pieces together, saying, “Yeah, the spirit latches on to the reverend’s repressed emotions, feeds off them, yeah, okay.” Sam adds the final catcher: “Without the Reverend even knowing it.”

Now that is a scary concept and brings us (subtly) into Supernatural‘s ongoing “consent” theme. People need to be allowed to police their own boundaries, to not be over-taken, compromised, against their will, by a spirit, a demon, an angel, whatever. But consent is taken away time and time again. The brothers are almost used to it. Dean is certainly used to it, since he’s more susceptible, more vulnerable to it. Sam, with the secret in his blood that he is not even aware of yet at this point, is also “susceptible”, and in many ways it is far more dark than Dean’s susceptibility. Dean’s susceptibility merely comes out of his innocence (strange word, considering his life style, but true), openness, and that strange sexuality that is so intense that it gives off a super-sonic sound wave without him being conscious of it (for the most part). Not to mention the fact that everyone, male, female, angel, demon, wants a piece of him. Sexually, spiritually, physically. They want a piece of him so much they lick their chops while having a conversation with him. It’s so rude. At least wait until his back is turned before drooling right in his face. This is the objectifying/non-consensual air Dean Winchester breathes. There’s a moment with Abaddon in Season 9, where she is basically snarling right into his face about all the things she can’t wait to do once she’s “inside” him, and how she’s dreamt of that moment, and it’s super-sexual, and super-violent, and Dean almost rolls his eyes in response, saying, “Are we gonna make out or are you gonna kill me, because I’m getting mixed signals here.” It’s a tired response from him, an over-it response, rather than an alarmed one. “You want to get inside me, bitch? Step in line, I’ve been hearing this shit since I was 12.”

So. The brothers now feel that Reverend Dad is somehow involved. The night is young, they still have work to do. Dean, again handing the Laurie responsibility over to his brother (I love how they never once have a conversation about it), says Sam should “keep an eye on Laurie” tonight. Dean so wants to just stay at the party and hang out and flirt that you actually can feel that it pains him, it hurts him, but he tells Sam he’s gonna go see if he can track down the unmarked grave of the Hooked Preacher. At this moment, a blonde steps into the frame over by the pool table, coming in between the brothers visually, and she is smiling over at Dean. An inviting sweet smile. Dean is frozen in his tracks for a second and then turns away, and he is literally wincing with repression. It’s funny.

14th scene
Dean walks through a graveyard at night, shining his flashlight beam ahead of him. It’s night and all you can hear are the crickets. It’s a beautiful sequence. Dean is seen through the trees, which, of course, is par for the course, making us feel that he is in danger, vulnerable somehow. And, what a shock, the grave actually was NOT unmarked. That pesky symbol, on the wall and on the hook, is a dead give-away and when Dean comes across it he knows he’s found the spot.

15th scene

Meanwhile, Sam stands in Laurie’s front lawn, with the church behind him and it’s a beautiful and evocative shot, the byproduct of filming on location.

Laurie and her father are seen through the windows of their home, and Sam watches a really intense fight go down. We can’t hear what they are saying, and we assume that Sam can’t either, but he just watches, that protective part of him in overdrive, that empathetic part of him operating. The connections aren’t made for us, not here, but I can’t help but think of the constant fighting between Sam and his dad, and the final fight which had to be horrible, leaving Sam scarred with that unfinished business. If Dad is dead, then the final thing he would have heard from his son would have been anger. Thank goodness John Shiban held back from making these connections explicit, because it would have been too sappy to be believed. Here, it all works as subtext. And Padalecki plays subtext like nobody’s business.

16th scene
Grave desecration will become something we get totally used to in the show. Such a huge cultural taboo, and Supernatural makes it as casual as going to a McDonalds drive thru. Oh, whatever, yeah, digging up a skeleton again, no biggie. This is our first time witnessing the salt-and-burn ritual so the episode lingers on it, taking us through it, Dean digging up dirt, standing in the hole in the dark graveyard. In future episodes, all we need to see is a shovel being taken out of the trunk, and Dean lighting a match, and we know everything. Dean is filthy, heaving dirt up out of the hole, and talking to himself. He clearly got the bum deal on this case: “Next time I get to watch the cute girls’ house.”

There’s a cool overhead crane shot of Dean crashing his shovel into the revealed coffin, and it’s a wonderful reminder of how GROSS their line of work really is. You could never get the stink off you. Not fully.

17th scene
Sam is the kind watching stranger in the night, and he sits outside Laurie’s house, quietly. She has seen him from inside and comes out to talk to him. Sam is so sympathetic. He’s certainly not a-sexual but he is able to hide his sex drive better than Dean is. Besides, his sex drive is all wrapped up with his dead girlfriend, and he can’t let it go. But these two are kindred spirits in many ways, and Sam is intuitive about stuff like that. Also, he is able to talk to a young attractive woman without sexing her up, and Dean is not really able to do that. Laurie jokes that she has called the cops on him, and then sits beside him, saying, “I think you’re sweet, which is probably why you should run away from me as fast as you can.”

Her dilemma becomes the brothers’ dilemma as the series continues. People who get close to them die. They feel cursed. Marked. It is perilous to get close to anyone. The situation in Season 9 has become dire, for both of them, and here we see it in its infancy.

18th scene
As Sam quietly talks with his college-self kindred-spirit, dirty Dean crawls out of the grave, and goes back to his duffel bag for the supplies. He’s stripped down so he looks like a totally sick Greek God, and that mysterious necklace gleams, being pointed up without all those layers. He pours lighter fluid down onto the revealed skeleton below, and the camera is over his shoulder looking down into the grave, and maybe I’m gross, but the perspective makes it looks like he’s pissing on the grave. That has to be deliberate. The show really wants you to be implicated in loving these really morally-questionable guys, they really want you to get on board with them, and then ask yourself questions about what you are willing to tolerate. Very provocative shot.

He looks both gorgeous and scary. An amoral angel.

Deadpan Dean lights a book of matches, and tosses it down onto the bones, and we see them burning, from close-up and then from the omniscient point of view, the “God view”.

19th scene
Sam listens as Laurie opens up about how she is now a pariah. Nobody will talk to her anymore, “except you”. Sam doesn’t say anything, just leans in to the listening. Jared Padalecki is amazing in these scenes. They could be repetitious. They never are. He makes them not so. Laurie is angry with her father, who keeps telling her to “pray” and “have faith”. She sneers, and it is startling seeing that sneer on such a sweet young girl, “What does he know about faith?”

Faith (broken and whole) is going to be key to Supernatural. It will come up again in Season 1, and of course will explode to celestial proportions over the next four seasons. There are certainly some questions to be had about all of it. While the Christian religion explodes, what are the Muslims and Buddhists and everybody else up to? Is it only one apocalypse that goes down, the Christian one? Are the Buddhists laughing behind their hands, like, “Ah-ha-ha, those SUCKERS”? Supernatural sometimes explores this, but usually in less controversial ways than that, by having “old gods” trying to take over the world again now that that whole Christian thing is done for. It’s fun. But in an ecumenical sense, Jesus is rarely mentioned (maybe 5 times does he come up). God is the one everyone is looking for, angry with, etc. The question becomes: Is anyone up there listening? Are we alone in this world? What if it just feels good to pray? Does that make us dumb sheep? Dean is a conflicted atheist at the beginning, not a believer. He only believes in what he can see. That will change. When Dean prays, and he does, you know he is desperate, and it hurts, to admit he is helpless. Dean is furious at God, and has no use for God. If God was all-powerful, then why does it suck so much down here? Who needs Him?

The angel war in Heaven (which we never see) is reflective of the battles going on down on earth, the battle between obedience and free will, destiny and choice. The problem with fanatical religion is that it wants to remove choice from the equation. And yes, humans, overwhelmed with choices, seek situations where that choice will be eradicated. Everything that happens, with Dean, Sam, Bobby, Jody Mills, Castiel, the whole bunch, has to do with making choices, deciding on your own path, and doing what you believe is right, not what someone has told you is right.

Sounds pretty simple, right? The difficulty comes when you start to drill down into the implications of that on a personal level. Can Sam have the choice to go his own way? Can Dean choose to leave hunting and be a husband/dad? Can they have one foot in and one foot out? Can they make their own way? In many ways, Dean and Sam act like fanatical religious leaders to one another: Do it my way or take a hike (Dean more so than Sam, although Sam has his moments.)

Laurie confides in Sam that she found out her dad is seeing a married woman who goes to their church. His hypocrisy is infuriating to her. It is in such moments that people lose their faith. Sam doesn’t say a word, just listens, and she leans over and hugs him. We see him take the hug. The touch of a human being, a tender touch, is something he now lives without, and you can see all that conflict in his face as she hugs him. Padalecki is so good at portraying “still waters run deep”. Dean is not shallow, as a matter of fact he goes DEEP, but the water is pretty clear, you can look right down into him. At every moment Dean is showing where he’s at, which is why he is a bad liar. But Sam is thoughtful and still. At first he doesn’t move, and then you see him hug her back, putting his arms around her.

Without a word said, you know this is the first time he’s touched anyone since Jess. This is all on Padalecki to play, and he does. They kiss, and it is tender for a second, and then more passionate, before Sam pulls back, telling her, “I can’t” and the look on his face breaks my heart.

Reverend Dad comes to the door and calls Laurie in, and he does not sound casual, he sounds angry. He is clearly afraid for his daughter’s soul/virginity/morality. Laurie calls back at him, in a rage, “I’ll come in when I’m ready” and it is at that moment that a dark figure appears behind Reverend Dad in the doorway, a hook flashes out, and Dad is dragged back into the house like a vaudeville act being given the cane-treatment. Sam, pulling out his gun, runs into the house and charges up the stairs where he can hear the Dad screaming. Laurie follows, screaming herself. There’s a lot of screaming going on. Sam bursts into the room at the end of the hallway, and sees Dad on the floor, cowering beneath a tall looming black figure with hooked hand raised high. Sam blasts at it with his gun and it de-materializes in a whose of angry black particles.

20th scene
At the hospital, Sam stares in at Laurie and her dad, who lies in a bed, all bandaged up. A cop (the same one who arrested them for being “dumbass pledges” down by the river) interviews Sam, and Sam calls the cop “Sir”, and his energy is gentle and sincere (unlike Dean when cops get in his way or get too close), but the cop says, “Son, seems every time I turn around I’m seeing you. I suggest you stay out of trouble.” “Yes, sir.” says Sam, which is in direct contrast to what happens in the final scene when the same cop confronts Dean. Sam and Dean are there to help, they are on the good side of things, but as we learn, hunters bring with them mess, destruction, chaos. They are often accused of murder, of breaking and entering, all kinds of things, because there is no reason for them to keep showing up the way they do. Sam and Dean are already used to this kind of thing.

And then Dean appears at the end of the hallway, and he’s trying to come see Sam but two cops are holding him back. Dean, classic Batting Eyelashes, says to the cops, all friendly and buddy-buddy (and they are having none of it, as per usual), “Oh, it’s okay – it’s my brother.” He waves at Dean, huge grin, calling out, “BROTHER!”

He looks insane.

And then of course the second he is allowed through, the big smile vanishes and he rolls his eyes at Sam as he trudges towards him. The brothers both seem so suspicious. They don’t even seem to care. They know they won’t have to actually LIVE in that town afterwards and get along with people. They will be long gone. Their game-faces will get better as they move forward, at least in terms of the outfits and the cloud of plausible deniability they put around themselves. It makes it easier on them to maneuver if their cover stories are airtight.

As they walk away they have a hissed and urgent conversation. Sam says, “I saw the Hook Man – why didn’t you torch the bones?” Dean says, “What are you talking about? I did.” So it’s NOT the spirit of the hooked-preacher then? Sam, though, has some other thoughts, based on his talk with Laurie. He fills Dean in. The Hook Man attacked the Reverend, so he’s obviously not latching onto the reverend because why would he sic the spirit on himself? Sam thinks the spirit is latching onto Laurie.

And here comes a great exchange:

Sam: (urgent, he totally gets it) “Last night she found out her father is having an affair with a married woman.”
Dean: (blank faced, shrugging) “So what.”

Dean truly does not get the big deal.

This reminds me of his scornful moment in the episode with the haunted house and Helen Slater, where Sam reveals that one of the occupants of the house had had a baby out of wedlock. Dean replies, “Rent Juno. Get over it.” Which is hysterical and so insensitive, but he kind of has a point, too.

As I said, Supernatural is on the side of compassion, acceptance of grey areas and complexity. People sometimes do bad things, or “immoral” things, but they are not bad PEOPLE. Ghosts/angels/demons don’t see it that way. They are the enemies. They see things in black and white. Dean, as amoral as he is, is a grey-area kind of guy. Sleeping with a married woman? Oh well. It happens. No need to go all HOOK MAN for over 150 years, douchebag. In the world of Supernatural, Dean’s attitude is the right kind of attitude to have towards our fellow humans.

But still, Dean’s casual acceptance of an affair with a married woman is missing the point, and that is that Laurie has unwittingly become an avenging angel. So Sam explains the situation to Dean, in a “Duh” kind of tone, but also with that urgency beneath it. Both actors are great at playing objective throughout these “figuring out the Lore” scenes. If you didn’t have an objective driving these scenes, then you’d just have a book report. Sam understands now that Laurie is furious at immorality, because her father is a hypocrite. Dean needs this spelled out for him.

Sam says, “She’s upset about it. She’s upset about the immorality of it.” It all makes sense now, all of the victims: “Rich comes on too strong, Taylor tries to turn her into a party girl, Dad has an affair.” Sam actually has empathy towards her position, but Dean looks a bit freaked out. His response is: “Remind me not to piss this girl off.”

Hahaha.

Sam and Dean were never allowed innocence in their childhood and yet they encounter it every day in the people they meet during these cases. The brothers are at their best when they don’t have contempt for innocence. It is, I imagine, one of the most challenging things about being a hunter. How do you keep doing your job and not let it completely take over your personality? How can you see ANY good in ANYthing? In “Freaks and Geeks” in Season 8, Dean takes the teenage hunter aside and reminds her, in no uncertain terms, that hunting is not about revenge, and sometimes it’s not even about killing. A difficult balance. Their responses towards innocence are sometimes mixed with regret, that bubbles up unbidden, spontaneously: why should others be allowed innocence when it was denied them? Self-pity is not in their makeup – it comes out more as rage – and here, they are able to see that Laurie’s innocence has now turned into rage. They just get it, they don’t even need to speak about it. Dean doesn’t understand why salting and burning didn’t stop the guy. Now, I am not a hunter, but I admit I thought to myself, “Did you get the hook though, Dean?” I’m wicked smaht.

Sam asks Dean, “Did you get the hook?” and then follows more talking. This is a long-ass talking “piecing together the bits of the story” scene, and it’s such a pleasure to watch these two guys work together, onscreen together, thinking, listening, talking, that I don’t care that it’s just about the “Lore”. This is what actors do. They make fake conversations seem real, they breathe life into fictional characters. It’s all in the details.

Sam and Dean are now totally in sync, throwing ideas around, and finishing each other’s sentences. The whole scene ends with them saying, “we stop the Hook Man” in unison (I am glad they don’t do the “unison” thing too much, only twice so far, it’s enough to give us a taste of it, of their relationship, but it’s not so much that it becomes cutesy schtick).

21st scene
Oh my God, they go back to the library. I am in heaven. This late in the game, this late in the episode, and John Shiban sends them back to the LIBRARY? For more RESEARCH? That’s bold! Supernatural, I love you.

The library is dark, again, the overhead lights off, love it, and Dean and Sam pore over big old ledgers and old court records.

When did Dean lose his silver ring, by the way? I miss it. Just like I miss the leather jacket and the necklace. The plan now is: to find the original hook of that preacher-man, who clearly had not been buried with it, otherwise it would have burnt up when Dean pissed in the grave. Dean and Sam follow the trail of the preacher as much as they can, and Dean has come across a log book of the Iowa State Penitentiary which lists the personal effects for each prisoner. Hooked-Preacher man’s effects were given back to St. Barnabus’ Church. Laurie’s church. Where she lives. Sam is confused. He wonders what the hell happened to it? Why wouldn’t anyone have mentioned seeing a bloody weird hook over all of these years?

Dean says, now totally in the zone, “Gonna go check the church records.” You go with your nerd-self, Dean Winchester.

I love these guys as researchers. It makes me happy. I know the Men of Letters thing was not plotted out at this early point, but it works so well, it makes so much make sense, it FITS. Hours seem to have passed. The guys have now moved to nearby chairs with all their research spread out. Sam has found out that the hook had been melted down and re-forged.

22nd scene
It’s night and the Impala drives up to the church. I love how conspicuous the car is, first of all in what it looks like, and also in how LOUD it is. There are so many scenes when they need to be undercover and yet they still drive that chugging snorting gigantic thing. And then, in my opinion, the sexiest moment in the entire series is when Dean finally goes to get the Impala out of storage. I mean, not to be graphic, but I need some alone-time after that scene.

Okay. Moving on. I guess the plan is to find everything silver, in the house as well as in the church, and burn it all down. Who knows if the hook was made into a communion wafer platter, a candlestick, whatever, it all has to go. They split up, Sam choosing to “take the house”, while Dean takes the church. Dean, again sort of pushing the “you like her, Sammy” thing, which is obnoxious, but also kind of sweet because it shows … oh, I don’t know, he cares … and that Sam may feel like his heart is dead and he’ll never have sex again, but Dean knows better, and it’s okay, you can crush on her if you want to. But what Dean SAYS is: “Hey. Stay out of her underwear drawer.”

In the last re-cap, I talked about the whole women’s underwear thing and Dean Winchester. So Dean, we all know you’d not only be totally up in that drawer if you “took the house”, but you might even swipe a couple pairs for your own use, so just stop it.

Next, we see Dean in the church basement, heaving silver things into the fire in the furnace. Sam, carrying a big bag filled with clanking stuff, comes down the stairs, and starts hauling it all into the furnace. The music is tense now, cliffhanger stuff. There won’t be any more library scenes, there won’t be any more sweet confessional talks with Laurie. We’re in full-on Third Act Horror Movie now.

Suddenly, the floorboards creak above them and they both freeze, looking up. Drawing their guns, they run up the stairs. Keeping silent, they push open the door that leads into the church, which is dark and beautiful, with candles lit, and the stained-glass windows glowing. But all the rest in shadow.

One detail I noticed that I find totally delightful: As Dean and Sam peek into the church, take a look at the big whiteboard in the foreground, and take a look at the words we see there.

So silly and funny and snarky, and has all kinds of echoes in the series as we meet actual reapers. “Reaping With Joy.” Brill.

When they see Laurie sitting in a pew up front, crying, Dean gives Sam a look (“This one’s yours”) and goes off back down the stairs. Sam makes his way down the aisle towards Laurie. Laurie is sobbing. She tells Sam she is praying for forgiveness because she now understands that she is somehow doing this. She says, “I read in the Bible about avenging angels …” And with that one phrase, the Christian iconography of the series starts to clank into place, only it’s done almost invisibly. As the two talk quietly, a dark cloaked figure materializes at the back of the aisle, and suddenly all the candles are snuffed out.

Sam and Laurie both sense something, and Sam leaps into action, grabbing her and running down the aisle. When they try to go through the door near the Reaping with Joy sign, the Hook Man is suddenly there, the hook comes crashing through the wood. They run down the aisle again towards the altar, their fleeing figures captured in a great tracking shot, and once in the room behind the altar, the Hook Man reappears and swipes at Sam’s arm, injuring him.

Then, in a thrilling shot, very Exorcist-inspired, Laurie, who has fallen to the ground, is then grabbed under the arms (by a totally invisible being) and whizzed down the long hallway into the room at the end of it. It’s horrifying. It looks like the hallway will never end. Sam runs down after her, and he gets tossed across the room by the invisible Hooked Man. With the amount of times these giant guys who each stand over 6 feet are thrown across the room like rag dolls, you’d think they’d have more broken bones. Excellent stunt-work. The bookshelf collapses on Sam’s body, leaving Laurie unprotected as the Hook Man looms over her. Sam staggers up behind the Hook Man.

Now comes a badass moment, beautifully imagined and perfectly executed, which puts Dean Winchester in great heroic company: Dean appears at the end of the hallway, running at top speed, holding his gun. He sees the scene at the end of the hall, shouts, “SAM! DROP!” Sam drops to the ground, leaving the Hook Man in view and Dean blasts him away with rock-salt. It’s fucking awesome. “SAM! DROP!” And Sam does. It just shows how well John Winchester trained them.

As the gun blasts go off, plaster explodes from the walls. Sam is upset and injured and screaming up at Dean about the silver. Why is the Hook Man still there? What did they miss? Both brothers are screaming at one another, and then Sam sees Laurie’s silver cross, and he points at it, still screaming, “WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?” Poor Laurie. She tries to answer, but both Winchester brothers are screaming at her now: “WHERE’D YOUR DAD GET IT?” “IS IT SILVER?”

As this screaming fest goes on, a hook scratch starts appearing in the wall down at the end of the hallway, and it proceeds on, leaving a scratch-mark, and powdery residue filling the air. It’s a wonderful effect, and there’s a great shot of Dean looking over his shoulder at it. He looks freakin’ terrifying.

Sam yanks it off her neck, and, in another beautifully choreographed moment (would love to see how many times they had to do it to get it right), tosses the necklace to Dean, who, at the same moment, tosses the gun to Sam. Who, remember, must catch it with his un-injured arm. These actors are both so wonderful physically.

Dean tears off down the hall and now it is up to Sam, lying on the floor, with one bum arm, to hold off the Hook Man. Scratches appear in the walls up near the ceilings. Sam points the gun, fires. The room is totally destroyed. Sam has to re-load the gun, with his one good arm, and it’s just great physical character-work from Padalecki. Dean pounds down the stairs into the basement and tosses the necklace in. Waits. Stares at the damn thing as it hovers over the red embers. Upstairs, Hook Man appears and knocks the gun out of Sam’s hands, and it annoys me that they do not take the “bungee cord” suggestion from the convention, even though they discuss it as a good idea. Honestly: almost every fight scene involves Sam or Dean getting a weapon knocked out of their hands. Guys: handle this. Velcro, Bungee, something. It’s a problem. So now Sam has no weapon, and the Hook Man looms over him and Laurie, and downstairs Dean, impatient, frenzied, watches the cross in the embers, waiting for it to start melting. Finally, the damn thing melts, and upstairs the Hook Man sort of dissolves into charred embers embers himself. I love the effects: not too much, not too slick. Just enough.

Dean comes running back upstairs and down the hallway, out of breath, looking at Sam. There is a lot going on in his face, but he doesn’t say anything. They just share a long moment of eye contact, similar to the final moment on the plane in “Phantom Traveler”. No words necessary. They both know what a close call this one was.

23rd scene
It’s morning now, and we have another scene of chaos, with ambulances and cops, only now it’s outside the church. Dean is in the process of being questioned by the cop, the same cop who found them by the river, and questioned Sam at the hospital. Dean, unlike Sam, is not afraid of the cop, not submissive, and takes on this casual “Yeah, man, we saw the guy with the hook, and then he ran …” attitude as he tells his tory. He is telling the truth (mostly), but he seems like he is lying.

Humorous moment and my favorite in the episode. The cop can tell that this whole situation stinks somehow, and yet he can’t figure out why, but he knows these two suspicious brothers are up to no good. So once he finishes questioning Dean, he gets all authoritative and starts to say: “Listen. You and your brother–” Dean interrupts him, tiredly, “Oh, don’t worry. We’re leavin’ town” and walks away. It is so funny, you just can tell that Dean has had this same confrontation about 500 times in his life and he’s cutting to the chase for the cop, he knows the drill, they’re outta here.

Sam’s arm is getting patched up at the ambulance, and Laurie, now in a sheer white shirt, looking vulnerable and angelic, goes over to him.

Now comes a masterpiece sequence, simple, full, and beautifully put together. The genius of it is in the editing. The way the scene is pieced together, the collage of it, says it all, with no language (well, there’s only one line). We see Laurie approach Sam. We then see Dean, at the Impala, getting into the driver’s seat, after a quick glance back at his brother and Laurie at the ambulance. Dean looks into his side mirror, watching what is going on back there through the mirror.

It’s strangely sad, showing the lives these young men have chosen to live. The sacrifice Dean has made is on his face, but he seems okay with it, and now he’s also thinking about the sacrifice his brother has made, and is still making.

The masterpiece sequence continues, briefly going back to Laurie and Sam, Laurie still dazed, but thanking Sam. Sam smiling down at her.

Cut back to No Boundaries Dean, who is still watching through the side mirror. It will become explicit in the “antiques dealer episode” coming up soon, but it’s starting here. Dean is concerned about his brother. Dean thinks Sam should maybe … date again? Or at least try to crush on someone? Get laid? Dean would never say so. It’s kind of against their code, and it’s also kind of embarrassing because, you know, feelings and sex are involved. But you can see it in how he watches his brother say goodbye to Laurie. The way the shot is set up is great: We don’t stay back there with Sam and Laurie. We stay on Dean, looking into the side mirror, and we can see their two blurry figures through the back window. Sam and Laurie don’t hug, we can see that, and Sam walks away back to the car. Dean watches all of this, with a couple of different expressions on his face. Great moment from Ackles, and then we see him from the side of the car again, as his brother approaches the passenger seat.

We don’t see Jared Padalecki’s head, it is not in the shot. We just see his body through the passenger side window. And, and, he hesitates before opening the car door.

My heart almost stops with Sam’s hesitation. It’s subtle, brief, but an entire world of regret is in that pause.

It’s hard to accept the life. He is doing it, but it still takes him a second. He is only 22 years old.

Sam gets into the car, and they both sit there for a moment. We still can see Laurie, glowing almost white, blurry, through the back window. The camera is on Dean, who is looking over at Sam, with a fresh open expression that also almost breaks my heart. He loves his brother. And what Dean says is, “We could stay.”

That Dean would make that offer is extraordinary. We already know how threatened Dean is by anything that threatens to rock the boat of the Winchester family. It’s a huge concession he’s making here, and he makes it simply and openly. And Dean would stay. At this point in the series, he would. Because he loves his brother.

Meanwhile, there hasn’t been ONE CONVERSATION about “I like Laurie” or “She’s cute” or anything. It’s all been subtext. Pretty great.

After Dean says his one line, the camera pans over to Sam, whose face is bruised and bloody and almost stern. He is staring straight ahead. He does not look at Dean. He shakes his head. No. Let’s go.

It’s really sad.

Dean, once again, glances into the side mirror back at Laurie. We see her standing there alone now.

Back to Dean, who shakes his head a little bit, regret, sadness, resolution, and drives the car off. End of episode.

But here’s that last sequence, broken down into its beautiful parts. It’s my favorite “ending” so far in the series. Way to do it with mostly visuals, camera angles, and almost no dialogue. Gorgeous.