Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 8: “Bugs”

bugs30

Directed by Kim Manners
Written by Rachel Nave & Bill Coakley

Firstly, neither of those two writers wrote for the show again (or anywhere else that I can discover). This is not a surprise. The problem with “Bugs” (outside my obvious personal problem with the topic, which is irrelevant) is with the script. It is bossy, contrived, and lacks the subtlety of other episodes. It’s as though “Bugs” is a test run for these writers, and they clearly failed. The Monster of the Week is not really a monster here, but a curse, and the Brothers Relationship Arc/Find Dad Arc is present, but it’s handled in an awkward ham-fisted way that just doesn’t sound like the show. We’re only 8 episodes in and we already know the tone is off. So in a way, “Bugs” is interesting because it shows that you don’t need multiple seasons to establish a tone, or to claim your ground. Supernatural has already done so in the episodes before “Bugs”, which is why this episode stands out.

My main issue with the episode (besides all the BUGS) is with the script, and the bossy way it makes the connections between the Monster of the Week plot and the Brothers Relationship plot. Normally the show does a much more elegant job of linking up those two plots. Episode 6 is a perfect example of how that dovetail can work, when it works well.

Dad is brought back here, in not-so-subtle ways, through the mean father they meet who shames his son for being different. Not subtle. Sam clicks with the kid and tries to help the kid, igniting Dean’s ire about the awfulness of ungrateful sons. It feels imposed, as though the writers were told, “Make sure to somehow connect the monster plot-line to the brothers journey”.

The next four episodes, “Home,” “Asylum,” “Scarecrow,” and “Faith” are each mini-masterpieces and, taken as a whole, make an amazing Story Arc, in and of themselves. The issues brought up in “Bugs” (being cursed, feeling like a freak, feeling dominated by your mean Dad) all come rushing to the foreground in the next four episodes in ways both powerful and poetic. They just highlight “Bugs”‘ weaknesses.

“Bugs” does, however, contain a shot that is in my list of Top Favorite Shots in the Entire Series. So it’s got that going for it.

Teaser
Oasis Plains, Oklahoma

Some gas company guys are working at a construction site, near a creepy-ass twisted tree like the one next to the Winchester house. The guys are in hard-hats and they banter about how nice this housing community will be, how none of them could afford to live there. Hello, forced exposition! One of the guys hears/feels something weird through the ground, a buzzing, some kind of hum. Meanwhile, the guy babbling about how nice it would be to live here gets bitten by a mosquito. The other dude suddenly falls into a sinkhole that has opened up in the ground, and breaks his ankle. Babbling dude didn’t see it happen, it went down so quick, but he runs to get a rope from the truck. Broken-ankle man notices some beetles down there with him in the dark, and is grossed out, but then, even more so, when they start to swarm all over him. They are everywhere, pouring out of the dirt, up his body, and by the time the guy arrives with the rope, he’s dead, and we see his bloody horrified visage down at the bottom of the sinkhole. Good times.

bugs1

1st scene
Sam lies on the hood of the Impala, reading a newspaper outside a lively dive biker bar. Dean comes out of the bar, swaggering and laughing, holding a wad of cash. This is Dean the hustler. I dated a guy once who said to me on our first date, “I’m kind of a hustler.” He was gorgeous and fascinating and really into me and looked like John Travolta, and he showed up on our date with no money and yet we had a couple of rounds of beers that he magically produced. It made me wildly uncomfortable (how on earth did he get these drinks without any money?), but it was also kind of interesting to witness, and my dude had that same gleaming-eyed swagger. It should not be a surprise that the relationship did not last. I had to pry him off of me, basically.

I wish Supernatural explored the hustling side of their lives more. It’s a persistent question: how do these guys get money? It’s assumed they live off of phony credit cards but still, I miss that outlaw mode that percolates through Season 1, and here we see part of the job of hunting: Take a night, go to a bar, hustle pool.

bugs2

Sam greets Dean’s triumph with a moralistic sermon which just doesn’t make sense at this point, or maybe it’s just bad writing. He says to Dean that they could get day jobs once in a while: “Credit card scams? Hustling pool? It’s not the most honest thing in the world, Dean.” Sam, you’re just getting this memo now? It’s merely a set-up for the contrived conversation that follows:

“It’s what we were raised to do.”
“Yeah, well, how we were raised was jacked.”
“Says you.”

You can feel the plot with a capital P clicking into gear. The REAL reason for the episode has nothing to do with cursed land and a Biblical plague of bugs, the real purpose is to show a disagreement about their childhood and how Dad raised them. There’s nothing wrong with the change of focus. “Route 666” also has a dumb monster, and tries to handle a serious topic such as racism, which seems a mistake (the show is not about homiletic messages about the important issues of the day) but the plot-line in “Route 666” of Dean actually having an ex-girlfriend whom he loved, and who hurt him, is so compelling that it is the real reason for the episode, it is its motor. It’s something we haven’t seen before, it’s something new and fascinating. But an argument about Dad? We’ve covered this. Dad is about to return to the show, so they’re clearly feeling the need to bring that conversation back front and center after a couple of episodes with barely any dad talk at all.

Both actors play the contrived conversation light, teasing, laughing – and their delivery saves it.

Sam fills Dean in on a possible case going down not far from where they are where a gas company guy fell into a sink hole and died, very very quickly, of human mad cow disease.

Dean: “Wasn’t that on Oprah?”
Sam: “You watch Oprah?”

bugs41

Dean is busted and doesn’t even respond. Dean, as we know, watches everything. He loves Chuck Norris and Clint Eastwood but his tastes are more Catholic than you might expect. He gets sucked into a Spanish soap opera when he breaks his leg and actually looks like he is going to burst into tears when “Ricardo” dies. He is obsessed with Dr. Sexy M.D., a parody of Grey’s Anatomy, and tries to pawn it off as a “guilty pleasure” but I’m not buying it. It’s pleasure for him, full-stop. He cops to loving Titanic and tries to explain the reason as being “Winslet’s rack” but I’m not buying that either. I think he loved Titanic unabashedly, rack or no rack. He saw Black Swan twice and says that it’s because of the “tutu-on-tutu action”, but I also am suspicious that that is the real reason. If you just wanted to see two women having sex, then fire up the porn, why subject yourself to Black Swan? TWICE? So yes. Dean watches Oprah, in his off moments when he has nothing to do in the motel room. And, because he is who he is, suggestible, open, innocent in a way, he gets totally sucked into whatever topic is at hand.

So off they go to Oklahoma.

2nd scene
Sam and Dean show up at the gas company main office and approach a random guy in the parking lot who just happens to be the guy in the teaser who tried to save his friend, and they know it’s him how? They call out to him by name. It’s sloppy, it doesn’t hold up. They introduce themselves as nephews of “Uncle Dusty” and want to know what happened out there. Stock scene, but Kim Manners shoots it in a strange off-kilter way giving it more heft than it actually has. The light is de-saturated, blues and greys and whites and shadows. This is cinematic light, not television light, and revel in it now because that look will disappear from Supernatural and I still miss it.

bugs42

3rd scene
There are some pretty great crane shots in this episode, showing the housing development with all the houses in various stages of completion, empty lots, construction going on. The weather in the episode is problematic as well. It’s blue skies, then rainy, then blue skies again. I get it, sometimes the weather is like that, but it feels arbitrary in this episode. The mood is “off”, and you can’t even tell what DAY you’re in.

I do love this shot, though, of the Impala pulling up in front of the sink hole. It’s classic Supernatural and classic Kim Manners.

bugs4

The police tape is around the sink hole but the perspective of the shot puts the crime tape around them. Sam and Dean go into the lot, and peer down into the sink hole, discussing what it could be. Not a creature, whatever this was worked from the inside. The hole looks like the most uninviting place on the planet.

bugs5

After a brief teasing exchange about who’s going to go down that hole, they flip a coin for it. Dean is being obnoxious, saying, “I’ll go if you’re scared.” Sam may balk at the “way they were raised” but he can’t abide being thought of as a chicken. He is not a coward. Any time we get reminders, early on, of Sam’s essential toughness, that he is as tough as Dean, and as eager to prove that toughness (maybe even more so than Dean) the better.

4th scene
Post-sinkhole-exploration: The brothers cruise around in the Impala, and Sam is holding a dead beetle in his hand, thinking about it, touching it, which, EW. Dean is now skeptical that this is a case at all. “You found a beetle in the ground. Shocking.” Sam thinks they need to do more research, about the neighborhood, the history of the area, and Dean thinks the whole thing sounds like a stretch, but why don’t they pull over here at an Open House (the sign announces Free Barbecue) and talk to the locals. Again, there’s a bit of a stiltedly written argument here, with Sam saying, “Oh, and the free food has nothing to do with it?” The script is forcing the brothers to be at odds with each other. I don’t like it.

bugs6

Dean parks the car right in front of the house because of course because he never has to search for parking. As they walk to the front door, Dean looks around and shivers.

The exchange goes like this:

Dean: “Growing up in a place like this would freak me out.”
Sam: “Why?”
Dean: “Manicured lawns, ‘how was your day, honey’, I’d blow my brains out.”
Sam: “There’s nothing wrong with normal.”
Dean: “I’d take our family over normal any day.”

That’s a bossy script, putting the theme into the mouths of the characters. Normally, Supernatural isn’t so bossy. Even in an episode like “Dead in the Water”, which ends up being about Dean connecting with his own trauma, it’s done so beautifully, poetically almost, that you don’t feel the gears moving. Here, in “Bugs”, you do. The script keeps reminding you of it: “Get it? See the theme? Get it?”

Even with the forced nature of the exchange, it has some interesting elements. I will now pontificate on them to my heart’s desire.

Dean is a “freak”, he does not fit in with the vanilla world, and he’s okay with that, mainly because he’s the Toughest Guy in any room and he doesn’t WANT to be normal, not if it means being an ignorant sheep. At the same time, with the sparseness of his life, the horrible motel rooms, the greasy food, he revels in physical pleasure. Dean’s reveling in pleasure, whether it be sex, a bed with Magic Fingers, a burger, or a hot shower, almost turns him into an odalisque (an odalisque as pictured in all the paintings anyway.)

Odalisque

That is my impression of Dean Winchester’s response to pleasure. I wasn’t kidding when I referred to Dean Winchester, and Jensen Ackles’ creation of the character, as an “erotic muse”.

When Sam and Dean move into the bunker, Dean walks around in a robe – a freakin’ ROBE – this from a man who sleeps in his clothes, declaring that the water pressure is “marvelous”, a word I don’t think he has ever used in the entirety of the series. He inhales his food, eyes rolling back in his head like a shark. He dreams of pie. He honestly doesn’t seem to have dreams outside of the day-to-day, at least not beyond: “There’s an awesome diner in the next town which has great pie, let’s make a pit-stop”. And he doesn’t just like these things. You can see him luxuriate in pleasure.

Sam does not have the same thing going on. We could discuss why the brothers diverge on this point endlessly, and we will. It has to do with the concept of “home”, which is why Dean’s shudder here at McMansion Suburbia is so interesting. I think it’s sincere. I don’t think he’s bluffing. But when you think about later seasons, season 3, season 4, what he starts dreaming about is Lisa, and her little suburban neighborhood, and her sitting on a picnic blanket with a bottle of wine, waiting for him. It is the most stultifyingly domestic image EVER. This is Dean’s most secret dream. And, of course, he ends up joining that world for a year. He doesn’t take a year off and go live in Vegas, or New York, or anywhere that buzzes with stimulation. He’s had enough of that. He lives in a house in suburbia, and mans the grill in the backyard, and works construction, and cooks scrambled eggs for his makeshift family in the morning. He doesn’t fit into that life, but he loves it nonetheless, and he protects it ferociously. Lisa had a wild promiscuous past, which is how she and Dean met, but she’s calmed down with motherhood, and she wants stability for her son. She’s responsible, understanding, and a pretty good match for Dean, who is (to put it mildly) a handful.

Compare this to what happens with Sam on his “time off” during Dean’s year-long stint in Purgatory. Sam hooks up with a vet named Amelia, who, although she has a good job, is living in a ratty motel on the outskirts of town. Why doesn’t she have a house? Why is she squatting in a motel? Sam, drifting, damaged, gets a job as a mechanic at the motel, fixing stuff up, and basically biding his time. He is lost. He and Amelia have a couple of conversations where it is clear that she is almost as screwed up as he is. She is as secretive as he is. She is on the run from her past too. She has a responsible job, but other than that, girl is a wreck, living in a motel, and trusting no one. When they do finally hook up, it is passionate and yet twisted, too. You get the sense that they are two drowning people clinging to one another (a dynamic her suspicious father immediately picks up on). They are both lost, and they find comfort with each other. Their relationship exists as long as neither of them think about it too much. What I like about Amelia, and what I wish had been explored even more (the character was sort of unceremoniously dropped) is that she is a mess. She is a bit self-destructive and impulsive, and there are moments when she truly does not know what she wants. She makes a choice one night that you can imagine certain audience members would balk at, she’s a bad girl, she’s not good, she’s not a nice person. But Supernatural doesn’t judge her for that action. It lets her BE. People are screwed up sometimes, sometimes people don’t know what they want, sometimes they don’t do the right thing, or they do something bad and they think it’s right. This happens to all of us, but episodic television rarely allows for such subtlety, especially in what is a guest spot. Amelia is not a cliche. She’s three-dimensional. She is not some perfect woman Sam encounters, she does not illuminate for him a beautiful road to domesticity. She can barely function, she’s living in a fleabag motel with a backed-up sink and she doesn’t even care. I like that a lot. I like that Sam, after being drawn to “normalcy” so young in his life, through college and monogamy and even shopping for engagement rings for Jess, would, as a man, fall in love with someone so unstable, so much a MESS. It is difficult to picture Dean being drawn to a similar mess. He’d be outta there the second he felt the shadows closing in, or the second she kept a secret from him, or the second she did something he didn’t understand. Ironically, Dean needs safety and normalcy way more than Sam does. Maybe it’s because Sam seems to know who he is, even in the midst of chaos. Dean gets lost. (This is not entirely true, and there are some switch-backs throughout the series when Sam goes down a really dark path, and you can sense how much he needs Dean to be his moral compass, to show him the way.) When Dean is lost, he clings to normalcy (something he would never guess at at the time of this early episode), and when Sam is lost, he clings to mess and uncertainty. It’s a fascinating dynamic.

Here, in “Bugs”, when Dean shudders at the sight of suburbia, both brothers are unaware of how that background is going to inform their lives in years to come, how it will manifest.

They knock on the door and now comes a scene beloved of Supernatural fans, the first of many, where the Winchester brothers are mistaken for a gay couple. It’s funny, too, because both the developer, Larry (Andrew Airlie), who answers the door, and the realtor, Linda (Carrie Genzel), who they meet later, say the same exact words to them: “Let me just say … we accept home owners of any race, color, religion or ….. sexual orientation.”

It’s from their “please congratulate us for our tolerance” playbook.

bugs7

How do you say “No, we’re not gay” without being a dick? Sam almost laughs out loud at the assumption, and Dean just says, “We’re brothers.”

In the backyard, Dean and Sam hulk through the polite suburban atmosphere in their ripped jeans and flannel and battered leather jacket, and they do not fit in, and neither of them even seem to be aware of how much they stand out. They are flying under false colors, pretending they are in the market for buying a house for their Dad who is “getting on in years”, one of the more interesting parts of this mostly lame script. Wish fulfillment on Sam’s part who makes up that lie?

The developer gives them the sales shpeel about how 18 months ago there was nothing here, and now it’s going to be great, and he loves it so much he even bought into it. Sam and Dean, so far out of the mainstream that they already know they will never have a retirement plan, a 401k or a home of any kind, are polite (but not really) are feigning interest. They are introduced to Linda, the realtor, who dies later in such a horrible way that I can’t even think about it and do not want to discuss it at all. Linda, with a huge smile, immediately starts HER shpeel about not discriminating based on sexual orientation.

Look at their faces when she says that.

bugs8

There’s often a lot of fan chatter (in certain sections of the fandom) about homophobia and Dean in particular. I don’t see him as homophobic at all, it just does not hold up. Not once. I see his reactions to being assumed to be gay (and it happens all the time) as often baffled (“why does everyone think we’re gay?”) to sometimes even flattered (“I thought we had a gay thing back there …”). He is annoyed when he and his brother are assumed to be gay, not because he thinks being gay is gross but because, ew, that’s my brother. In the “The Purge” in Season 9, Dean and Sam are talking in the spa cafeteria, and the cafeteria manager walks by and reprimands Dean, “Quit flirting with the trainer.” Dean is annoyed at being reprimanded, and taken aback by the assumption (yet again) that he is hitting on another man, but more than that, he’s grossed out because, ew, the trainer is his BROTHER.

Supernatural certainly could do better in handling gay-ness, meaning: where are the gay people? Why are there not gay people on the show, when you have people of every race imaginable showing up in the episodes, but no gays? They were a bit behind the curve on that, and it’s a problem, especially when it’s a road trip show and the people they meet are not from homogenous communities. Thank goodness for Charlie, who swept into the show in Season 7, and her four episodes so far have been just a JOY and a half, and her gay-ness is the least interesting thing about her. She’s not there to “represent” gay-ness, she mentions her conquests, we even see her making out with a fairy (literally, a wood fairy), but not every moment reminds us she’s gay. She’s a thinker and a nerd and a fantasist and smart as hell. She’s a PERSON, not her sexual orientation.

Back to Dean’s reaction to being assumed he is gay, and the homophobic charge: Never does he push back in macho annoyance, as though the very thought of being gay turns his stomach. Look for such a moment, you will not find it. He is, at times, taken aback by open gay-ness, but that’s merely because he’s a little bit dumb sometimes and assumes everyone is straight. But he doesn’t treat people differently, he’s not “Ew” about it, he’s not “Ew” about anyone, not really. Not people, anyway. Besides, there’s a flexible strain in Dean’s sexuality, something he seems to be aware of, something I think has an interesting backstory, created by Ackles, and which shows up in behavioral stuff and subtext. Ackles said once, “Dean’s a promiscuous guy. Who knows what he’s done in the past to keep food on the table and keep him and Sam in business.” He’s thought about it a lot.

When Dean is struck with the “fear disease” in “Yellow Fever”, his defenses are so disintegrated that he flirts openly with a guy in the sheriff’s department – like, flirts flirts, not just Batting-Eyelashes-To-Get-What-He-Wants behavior. He stares at the deputy behind the desk, gob-smacked, and then says, “You’re awesome,” blushing and doing awkward hand gestures like a teenager at the punch bowl.The deputy behind the desk says, “So are you”, a huge pleased smile breaking out on his face at being “chosen” by this hot vulnerable FBI agent who can’t stop staring at him. Sam has to drag his brother away. I’m not saying Dean is gay, I don’t think he is. But I do think he’s flexible, and open to everything. If the moment was right, would he sleep with a man? I have no doubt. He says to Rufus in their first conversation, in re: a weird sexual image that Rufus has inadvertently put into his brain: “Hey man, I’ll try anything once, but that sounds … uncomfortable.” I believe him when he says “I’ll try anything once” and when he says “anything”, I believe he means “anything”. I think limiting Dean Winchester to one point on the sexuality spectrum means you miss much of the nuance of what Jensen Ackles is actually doing here, with masculinity, toughness, sexuality, openness – all of which are unique to him and is what he is bringing to the table as an actor. Consciously, I must point out. I am annoyed by fans who think that somehow Jensen Ackles is unaware of what he is doing, of what he is actually portraying. Like, “Hee hee does he even know how that moment comes across?” Please. Of course he knows. The guy’s been doing the show for 9 seasons and Dean Winchester is his baby. He knows everything about this character.

The flip side of this conversation comes from fans who resist this interpretation so vehemently that they actually DO sound homophobic. I am not quoting directly but there’s a rage about all of this in certain forums, with “Dean Winchester is 100% straight!” type comments which seem to equate gay-ness with something gross or not appealing. Or “He sleeps with so many women, what are you morons talking about?” Uhm, sleeping with women does not mean that someone is 100% straight, hate to break it to you. I hate the whole tone of the conversation anyway. I wish there was more openness around this conversation in general. We’re getting there, but still, we obviously have a long way to go.

This is why I keep saying that Jensen Ackles is doing something very different with this role, different than another actor would do, and something we aren’t seeing in any other male right now on television, or elsewhere. With Dean Winchester, he is actually opening up a little bit of space and breathing room around our conversations about masculinity and what it means, and sexuality and how it operates … I don’t think he set out to do that, but I think he’s a smart actor who read between the lines of this character, came to some conclusions, and behaved accordingly. It’s an extremely suggestive and provocative performance and it is entirely deliberate on his part.

In one of the episodes, he is sent on a wild goose-chase by three magicians who want to mess with him, and they send him to an underground gay S&M sex club without him knowing what he is walking into. Dean is not horrified at the thought of gay sex, but he is horrified (and rightly so) at the thought of rape. Unlike a lot of men, rape is a fear for Dean, maybe because he is creeped on so often by everyone, and certainly post-Hell, where we are obviously meant to assume that rape was part of the torture that Dean was put through. Not to mention, as well, his promiscuous lifestyle which usually involves alcohol. (Exchange in The Purge, from Season 9: Dean: “Those aren’t supplements, they’re roofies.” Sam: “How do you know what roofies look like?” Dean: “How do you NOT know?” It is assumed that women and gay men are the people who need to be educated about roofies, but Dean is smart and knows he’s at risk because of his lifestyle, so he does what he can to protect himself.) Dean only knows what it is like to be himself, and “being himself” means everyone wants a piece of him, and he is hit on by everyone, men, women, monsters, etc. This is normal for him. Dean knows that being raped is not something that only happens to women, and so he tries to protect himself accordingly.

This brings us back to the omnipresent Consent Conversation, which Supernatural never tires of. Dean’s boundaries are penetrated far more often than Sam’s are, and there are many reasons for that, the main one being that he has no boundaries to begin with. And so he is seen as gettable by everyone in his vicinity. If there’s a predator around, that predator will sniff out Dean Winchester. It’s a destabilizing dynamic, especially for someone who is so tough. Supernatural actually asks questions about what toughness means, what it looks like, it actually puts on the table the theory that toughness has nothing to do with Overt Manliness. Dean loves Clint Eastwood, but he loves Black Swan too, and the voice of his scornful father echoes in his head about how he’s not a real man, not enough of a man, there’s something WRONG with him. I think limiting that internal conversation to gay-ness is doing a disservice to all of the other issues that this might bring up, which basically has to do with being human. Being soft is not a bad thing, and Dean is very soft. Dean is openly emotional, and when he lies, you can see it, because he can’t hide anything. Dean was shamed for this by his father, and Dean was made to feel he was never allowed to make a mistake. If he made a mistake, his father withheld love. Dean is not even aware at this point in the series that that has been done to him, he is still in thrall to his father.

Another interesting thing that comes up in “Bugs” is that Sam’s perception of his relationship with his Dad is that Dad loved Dean the best, “you were perfect”. Sam was seen as the black sheep for wanting to play soccer and go to college. Dean was the good soldier, the obedient son. This is all coming to fruition now in fascinating ways in Season 9, with the advent of Cain, a place the series has been wanting to go for a long long time. When we get flashbacks to Sam and Dean as kids, we see how much Dean took on as a child, and how hard his father was on him. Sam was the one Dad doted on, Sam was seen as the one who needed protecting, not Dean.

Anyway, this is a long digression and is really only suggested at in “Bugs” – but the episodes following this one will get into them in far more explicit and beautiful ways.

So. Yet again, they are seen as a gay house hunting couple. Dean decides to exit the conversation, calling Sam “honey” and giving him a smack on the ass, leaving Sam to awkwardly chat with the realtor.

Meanwhile, Larry gives Dean a tour of the house, and Dean sees two jars of bugs on the hall table. Larry, whose behavior suddenly seems strange, almost annoyed, says, “My son is into insects.”

Back outside, Linda the realtor is babbling away at Sam about the steam shower, all as Sam politely listens but you can tell he is bored out of his mind. Suddenly, he sees a creature (and I won’t even type the name of it, and please, respect my phobia – it’s not funny!) crawling along the table towards the realtor’s hand. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And even WORSE, EVEN WORSE, Jared Padalecki stops the realtor, and goes over and PICKS UP THE CREATURE, which is clearly real, and Jared Padalecki suddenly seems like a super-hero and I am filled with awe/envy/horror at the fact that he is not afraid of such a thing. I would have to be carted off to Bellevue in a straitjacket (for the second time in one year. No, just kidding.) Seriously, Padalecki, you are so badass. Anyway, then we are treated to an AWFUL scene where Sam holds the creature, and starts talking with the aforementioned son, Matt (Tyler Johnston) whose “pet” it is.

Sam and Matt talk, and the son is played by Tyler Johnston who also plays “Samandriel” or “Alfie” in Season 8. Samandriel only has two episodes, if I recall correctly, and boy, does he make an impression. A wonderful actor. He manages to suggest what angels would be like if they were good and filled with light, something Supernatural totally destroys with all of its other angels, who are manipulative, cunning, and bureaucratic. Samandriel, when he looks at Dean Winchester, is filled with an innocence that is touching, heartbreakingly so, considering what happens to him. He’s a lovely actor, and here he is, 7 seasons earlier, holding a horrible pet, and bitching about his dad to Sam. I will be keeping my eye on this kid!

Sam and Matt talk a bit, and Matt refers to his dad by his first-name, and Sam reacts to that. “Ouch.” Sam says, “Hang in there, it gets better, all right? I promise.”

Larry comes over, furious, and apologizes for his son. Sam is like, “Whatever, it’s fine”, and you can tell he is sizing Larry up, being the Big Brother that Matt doesn’t have. Sam seems imposing. I, however, would thank GOD for Larry if I were in Sam’s position. HAVE YOUR CREEPY SON GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME. I WILL NEVER MOVE INTO THIS HOUSING COMPLEX, NEVER NEVER NEVER.

At this point, Dean comes over, as Larry and Matt walk away and start arguing on the steps. This shot is echoed in the final shot, with Sam and Dean framing the father-son tableau in the background.

bugs9

The bossy script comes into play here again, when Sam, looking back at Larry bitching out his son, says to Dean, “Remind you of someone?” I don’t know. It seems to me that Sam already knows that Dean wouldn’t agree with his interpretation, and why would he bring it up? To pick a fight? Dean totally does not know what Sam is talking about. Sam prods Dean, “Dad?” Dean says, “Dad never treated us like that.” Is Dean lying? Does he not remember? Is this just the role he is so used to taking with Sam? Justifying Dad’s behavior to his younger brother? Sam laughs and says, “Dad never treated you like that. You were perfect. He was all over my case.” Dean says, “Maybe he had to raise his voice but sometimes you were out of line.” Sam laughs and says, “Right, like when I said I would rather play soccer than learn bow-hunting.” (This is ground already covered, and better, in the pilot. It feels really awkward here, forced.) Dean insists that bow-hunting is an important skill. Impasse, so Dean fills Sam in on what Larry told him, there was one other mysterious death in the area a year before. A surveyor died from a bee sting. Bugs again.

5th scene
Sam drives a lot in this episode, with Dean riding shotgun, and I have to admit, I just don’t like it.

bugs10

They talk about bug manifestations and paranormal activity and what they could be dealing with. They wonder if it is somehow being controlled by Matt, who tried to scare the realtor with that CREATURE. There was no evidence of ghost activity in the house. Something is controlling the bugs, making them attack.

I cannot tell you how much I love the following casual reference thrown into the mix:

“You mean like Willard?” says Sam.
“Yeah,” says Dean. “Only bugs instead of rats.”

If you get it, you get it, if you don’t, it goes too quickly for you to worry about. I get it, because I love horror movies from the 1970s, and it makes me happy.

I like to think they mean the 1971 version, not the re-make.

Sam, driving and thinking, says that “there are cases” of connections between humans and animals, and Dean, lost in reading through the case file, murmurs, “Yeah, like the whole Timmy Lassie thing”, which, again, is a reference that makes my heart sing. Dean definitely thinks Matt is somehow involved, and says to Sam, “Think he’s our Willard?” Sheila is happy as long as the Willard references keep coming.

It is at this point that Dean tells Sam to pull over. It’s night-time, and they’re driving (endlessly, it seems) through the housing development, and Dean sees a finished empty house and obviously means to break in. Sam hesitates, but Dean doesn’t see what the big deal is.

“We’re gonna squat in an empty house?”
“I want to try the steam shower.”

And you know what? It’s as simple as that for Dean. It really is.

Sam, rolling his eyes, not wanting to follow along, but swayed by his big brother’s insistence as always, pulls the car into the garage and Dean, looking like a criminal, pulls down the garage door behind the car.

6th scene

bugs11

Linda the realtor bites it in a scene I will not go into or describe. Before she steps into her fateful shower, she sits on her bed and watches the news. There is a report being broadcast about West Nile Virus. But something worse is headed down HER pike and it’s awful and I will never watch this episode again.

7th scene
It’s the following morning and we see Sam walk down the hallway in the empty house to call Dean out of that mythical shower. A couple of things:

The camera angles are crazy and ominous, and if I could hazard a guess, it is director Kim Manners pulling out all the stops, not just because he’s awesome (which he is) but because he knows this lame episode needs all the help it can get. For example:

bugs12

Second of all, the music choice running under this scene is so weird. It’s kind of generic background music, a bit soft-porn sexy, like music running under a shwoopy romantic montage in a bad 1980s movie. It’s such a funny weird choice, because it puts Dean’s luxuriating in the shower beyond the door into this weird cheese-ball context. Sam is impatient and annoyed, because he has heard over the police scanner that there’s been another death, and he’s probably been waiting for Dean to get out of the shower for 25 minutes at this point. Dean appears at the door, and, even though his hair is almost a buzz-cut at this point, he has his head wrapped high in a towel, a beautiful girlie detail. I’ll just say this: If Dean’s vision of himself (I’m tough, I’m capable, I’m cool and together) were the show’s vision of him, we would be in cliche-land, we would be in insufferable un-ironic bullshit land. I would hate the show. It is when a character can’t see himself clearly that an audience gets invested. Jensen Ackles is on board with this: he loves the tough guy stuff and can do it well, but he loves even more the opportunity to poke holes in that persona. He RACES towards such moments.

bugs13

I mean, honestly. Dean, still blown away by the experience he has been having in there, says, “This shower is awesome.”

I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: The fact that the two lead characters in the show are siblings makes a huge difference in how the show operates (as opposed to the two lead characters being colleagues, perhaps close friends, but NOT related). Dean can peek his head out the door like that, and openly rave about the shower, his head wrapped in a towel, because it’s just Sam out there, his brother. He’s safe with Sam.

8th scene
It’s now pouring rain, and Linda’s dead body is being rolled out of her home by some guys in the coroner’s office. Dean and Sam pull up (Sam again is behind the wheel), and they both get out, pop open black umbrellas, and go over to talk to Larry and ask what happened. Larry seems distracted and upset and says, “This isn’t a really good time.” Kim Manners, again: we get medium shots of both Sam and Dean looking at Larry, and they are holding their black umbrellas behind their heads, so that they seem to be surrounded by darkness. It’s a cool effect, and one of those deliberate visual subtextual moments that help get us in the proper mood. Larry is holding a grey umbrella, and so the effect when we look at him is different. Only Sam and Dean are filmed in a way to make them look almost ominous, as though they carry darkness with them.

bugs15

bugs16

Sam and Dean break into the house, even as the area is still crawling with cops, and this is a cool shot. Again, I see this as Kim Manners being typically inventive with what is a pretty stock scene, finding an interesting and visually arresting way to show them breaking in. This show is filmed under extreme time constraints. An episode every 6 or 7 days. They’re working 14-hour days. They are so well-planned, so prepared. When they get to a location, it’s like a wartime maneuver, everyone working at a high level of competency to get their shots done for the day. And Supernatural is devoted to being cinematic. It doesn’t want to look like other shows, and it doesn’t.

bugs17

Inside the realtor’s horrifying bedroom, her horrifying body shape is traced out on the ground where she fell, and because she crashed through the glass shower wall there’s blood everywhere. As well as little plastic creatures. No name necessary. Not on my site. Now they definitely think that Matt, Mr. Budding Entomologist, has something to do with it.

9th scene
Dean and Sam sit in the parked Impala, basically stalking Matt’s schoolbus, and they look terrifying.

bugs18

I mean, if I was a cop I would call them in for questioning even if I had nothing on them because they just don’t look right. They see Matt get off the school bus and instead of heading home, he tromps off into the nearby wooded area. Dean and Sam get out of the car to go follow him.

The woods scene is filmed in dark greens, with black shadows, and you can feel that the day is threatening rain (even though the above Impala shot is taken during a sunny day. The weather is really inconsistent in this episode). But the woods scene is beautiful. The sounds are lush, rich, the proliferation of Mother Nature all around, you can smell the mold in the trees, the mud. This scene also includes the shot I mentioned at the beginning, one of my Favorite Shots in the whole series and that’s saying something.

Dean and Sam come across Samandriel, oops, I mean Matt, in a little clearing, holding some kind of enormous praying-mantis-like creature. I don’t have as much of a problem with this particular creature as the other aforementioned creatures, mainly because it has a respectable amount of legs, rather than the frankly offensive too many. Matt looks confused by these two scary-looking guys approaching him, even though Sam is gentle and knowing in his attitude: “Remember me?”

bugs19

Matt is well aware of the other weird insect-related deaths in the area, and says he had nothing to do with it, but: “Something is going on here. I don’t know what, but something’s happening with the insects.”

He leads them off through the woods, he wants to show them something. As they walk through the dark dank woods, Sam asks why Matt wouldn’t tell his father about what’s going on with the bugs, and Matt, with the same sneer in his voice we heard earlier, says that “Larry doesn’t listen to me.” Sam wonders why that is the case (Dean trudges along behind Sam, blatantly uninterested in this heart to heart), and Matt says, “He’s too disappointed in his freak son.”

That word again: “freak”. It’s important to the series, it comes up again and again. It’s almost a code-word. Sometimes it is a badge of honor, sometimes it is a cry of pain. Episode 6 really introduced that word and its weighty baggage. Here, Dean is almost proud of his freak status: he couldn’t stand living in the normal world, he’d blow his brains out. And yet damned if he’s not going to spend time in that steam shower and not be embarrassed about how much he loves it! And Sam, one foot in the freak world, but still with at least an understanding of why people would choose to live in a normal world, takes a more nuanced view. You would think that Dean might get why Matt is determined to be himself, even if the normal world doesn’t understand it, because Dean gets being a “freak”, but that’s not the way it goes, because Dean is so Dad-Identified at this point that he has zero sympathy for a son who disobeys his father.

So when Sam replies to Matt’s comment, “I hear you”, Dean, from behind, looking very short and diminutive, throws Sam an alarmed look.

bugs43

One of the things Jensen Ackles does so well, and he continues to do it, is to show the almost constant mini-shatterings that go on within Dean Winchester whenever his family is mentioned. He has not dealt with any of it. He has not made peace with what happened to him. He has no distance from who he was as a terrified 4-year-old clutching his baby brother, watching his mother burn up. He is 27 years old now and he has no perspective. And so when his family is mentioned, either by Sam or anyone else, his whole world shifts alarmingly. There are times when he shuts the doors, ferociously, on the conversation, especially when it is an outsider making an observation, or even just saying the words “your father” or “your mother”. Watch how Jensen Ackles plays those reaction shots. He is often not given dialogue, but he’s the kind of actor who doesn’t need dialogue. He is a master at pantomime, gesture, and expression. Even just casually bringing up “What would Mom have wanted?” causes an eruption of emotion within Dean Winchester that threatens to derail him. So that’s what’s going on here. He and Sam are close, but they never talk about real things, and they never talk about feelings and how they feel about their family. Sam saying something totally casual and commiserating like “I hear ya” to Matt rocks Dean’s fragile understanding of his little world.

The argument they have here is contrived and forced (at least in terms of the writing), but it does set up where we will go, and far better, in the next three episodes (and beyond, but those in particular). We need to hear how they both interpret their childhood, and Dad in particular.

As they continue to walk on, Sam becomes Matt’s guidance counselor, despite the dirty look that Dean just gave him. Sam says, “Don’t sweat it, Matt, in two years, something great’s gonna happen. College. You’ll be able to get out of that house and away from your Dad.”

Worst possible thing he could say, and Dean, who’s being a bully, really, says, “What kind of advice is that? A kid should stick with his family.”

He’s wrong. Matt is 16. You’re sounding like a fundamentalist Christian homeschooler, Dean. Or like you’re living in the pioneer times. Children are supposed to separate from their parents. You’re the one who has it all wrong. But that’s what abuse does. That’s what trauma does. Dean, at this point, has totally justified his own childhood and his Dad’s parenting, for valid reasons, because to see it another way will make the entire edifice crumble.

Matt leads them on further and as they get deeper into the woods the buzzing of the multitudinous insects fills the air. They walk into an open glade, and there’s a great omniscient “God’s view” shot of it all. It’s almost from the insects’ point of view.

bugs21

Speaking above the buzzing, Matt tells them that he’s been keeping track of insect populations for an AP science class, and Dean says, in a sort of deadpan way which is so obnoxious, “You two are like peas in a pod.” Sam is now ignoring Dean fully, keeping his focus on Matt.

And a moment I love, so tiny it’s barely a moment, shows Sam registering Dean’s comment, his face flaring with annoyance for a split second, and then he looks around the glade and back at Matt, asking, “What’s been happening?” It is in such subtle moments of behavior that we know who Sam is, that we learn to love Sam. This is Jared Padalecki’s beauty as an actor. He’s so subtle, so connected to the underlying objective of the scene and his character within that scene.

All kinds of insects are congregating in the glade, and Sam sees a slightly raised mound of dirt over on the other side. They go over to investigate. Dean taps his foot on the glade and a sinkhole appears with a whoosh, and huge worms wriggle just beneath the surface. Dean, without even blinking, squats down and reaches his hand into the sinkhole, and feels something hard down there. He grips onto it (you would have to pay me big bucks to stick my hand down there), and pulls it out. It is a skull.

And here comes the shot I keep mentioning, the shot I love almost to the exclusion of any other shot in the whole series.

bugs22

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?

There’s a reason I referenced Hamlet and Dean Winchester in the first piece I wrote.

In upcoming episodes, Dean is going to almost die, and then actually die. Of course, Dean’s death is an ongoing concern, throughout the entirety of the series, as well as his carelessness about his own safety and his disbelief that he is worth saving. But they don’t ease up to those difficult concepts, it’s there at this early stage. Dean has a heart attack in “Faith” and is given a couple months to live, and then is shot in the head in “Nightmare”. Dean’s relationship with death is fearful and childish, which makes it human. He accepts his own death, and seems to toss it off as irrelevant, but when faced with other people dying, he honestly cannot handle it. Death seems WRONG to him. He did not get the memo that it happens to all of us.

This Yorick moment with the skull is brief, and not lingered on, but I love it for its connection to Hamlet, and Hamlet’s monologue about the skull, and what it says about our relationship to mortality, our own and others.

10th scene
I don’t know of any university where you can pull right up in front of the building you are going in. But that is just what the Winchesters do. Sam, again, is driving. Why?? Some rockin’ guitar solo is blasting as they pull up. Sam brings out a box, with the skull in it, and places his jacket over it, so he looks completely sketchy. Actually they both look sketchy.

bugs45

Dean’s been itching for a fight and so he brings up Sam’s comment in the woods. “How could you tell him to ditch his family like that?” This is a true belief of Dean’s, and his survivalist hunker-down PTSD mentality and it is very sick but he is completely certain in the truth of it. Sam doesn’t fight, just says he knows what Matt is going through. Dean can’t bear separation. He can’t bear it physically or emotionally. Everyone must be in sync AT ALL TIMES. (I wrote about his whole “So are we okay? We good?” thing in the re-cap of Episode 2.) Of course being “in sync” to Dean means everyone has to agree with his version of events. Sam does not cooperate. Dean is still pissed – “How about telling him to respect his old man?”

Sam, as he always does, cuts down to what Dean is REALLY saying. “You think I didn’t respect Dad?”

In this fight, the placement of the two in the frame makes Sam look toweringly tall (which he is) and Dean look wicked short (which he is not).

bugs23

Once Sam speaks the truth of the matter, Dean backs off, “Forget I said anything”, infuriating behavior. Sam is now the one who wants the fight. “I respected him,” says Sam, “but no matter what I did, it was never good enough.” Dean doesn’t get it. He was pissed off at Sam for leaving, but we’ve already established that he envies Sam in a way, in a way he can’t really acknowledge. The college experience, normal life. Dean also has some information that Sam doesn’t know, so he knows that Sam is only seeing a skewed version of what happened. Sam goes over the same material we’ve already learned, he wanted to do normal things, Dad put a gun in his hand. He feels that Dad was and “still is” disappointed in him. He was the “freak” of the family because he wanted to be normal. Dean’s response is, “Yeah, you were kind of like the blonde chick in The Munsters,” which makes me laugh. What the hell was she doing in that family?

Then there’s a gorgeous closeup of Sam, and there’s all this emotion behind his words, when he says, “You know what most dads feel when their kids score a full ride? Proud. Most dads don’t toss their kids out of the house.”

bugs24

Now that they’re there, mid-fight, Dean steps up to the plate. He’s in it now. He says he remembers that fight and he remembers some of the angry things that Sam said, too. And this is interesting, because I’ve found Dean to be immature and unreasonable throughout this episode. Clingy and codependent and obnoxious. But his points here are ones that are important in any child-parent relationship. In his own way, Sam is being immature too. He thinks Dad should be the one to make the first move, to make it right. But Sam is a man now. If you want a good relationship with your Dad, then it’s up to you, too. Such a hard lesson, such a weird thing with the power dynamic. Sam can’t see it yet.

Dean then drops the bombshell of his information, which is worth it to go through this creepy-crawly episode to get to, because it shows us John Winchester in another light, a heartbreaking one. Dean tells Sam that Dad was never disappointed in him. “He used to swing by Stanford whenever he could. Keep an eye on you.”

That’s some powerful stuff. Sam doesn’t know how to let that in, incorporate it into his view of his Dad. And in a way, it is this moment, above all else, when Sam actually becomes a man. He stops thinking about himself, he stops going over his old hurts like a pouting child. He stops thinking it’s only up to his Dad to create the right kind of relationship. He sees things in a new way. But he’s not there yet, he’s still dealing with the image of his father circling his dorm room, spying on him as he walked to class. Sam says, “Why didn’t he tell me that?”

And Dean says, and he’s right, “It’s a two-way street, dude. You could have picked up the phone.”

It is too easy to blame John Winchester for everything. If you want to be a real grown-up then you need to demand the kind of relationship with your parents that you want to have. You have to be willing to give, to concede ground. Now, Dean is going to have to go down that path, too, but here, he is actually being a really good big brother, giving really good advice.

Big moment over, they turn to walk into the Anthropology building and suddenly it appears to be night-time and I don’t understand why. It was daytime 5 minutes ago.

11th scene

bugs25

Sam and Dean pose as Anthropology students and talk to a professor to see if he can tell them anything about the bones they found. The professor says the bones look to be about 170 years old, and mentions that they are probably Native American. Sam, college boy, takes over the questioning and asks about tribes or reservations, anything that might have gone on on that land. He asks about local legends and oral histories, and the professor points them in the way of a tribe that still lives 60 miles from there and may know something. Could you be a little bit more specific, Professor? What, they’re gonna cross over to the reservation and scream out the window: “WHO KNOWS ABOUT OASIS PLAINS, PLEASE?”

12th scene
Now it’s day-time again and I am so confused about the space-time continuum in this episode. Anyway, Sam and Dean are now on the reservation which is garbage-ridden and pretty bleak and I could do without the Indian tom-tom music. They ask for directions from a guy walking by (what are they looking for though? “Take us to your leader?”), and they end up at a local cafe/trading post. Blankets hang on the railings of the stairs outside, and Dean and Sam walk in, clearly outsiders. But then, they’re outsiders everywhere.

An old Native American dude (Jimmy Herman) plays Solitaire at a table by the window. Sam and Dean approach and Sam asks if he’s Joe White Tree. He is. Racial stereotypes aside, I actually do like this scene, or I like this opening part of it. In the next episode, “Home”, a similar thing goes down with Loretta Devine (whom I love so dearly, she’s always awesome). Dean just comes off as dishonest. People treat him differently than they treat Sam. We’ve covered this. Sometimes it’s sexual harassment or un-asked-for flirting and come-ons (boy gives off a pheromonal scent), but other times it’s with suspicion. He just doesn’t seem on the level. When Dean flashes a smile, he often gets what he wants, so that’s why he uses it. But when it doesn’t go over well, it REALLY doesn’t go over well, like with the coroner in Bloody Mary. Dean doesn’t bat his eyelashes at Joe White Tree, but the effect is the same. He says that they’re “students at the University”, and Joe White Tree says bluntly, “No, you’re not. You’re lying.”

bugs27

Dean is taken aback. He’s used to rejection, but he’s not used to such blunt rejection. He shrugs, smiles, says, “Well, the truth is –”

Joe White Tree interrupts again, “You know who starts sentences with ‘The truth is’? Liars.”

Dean can’t even speak. How on earth did he alienate this guy in 2 seconds? He glances over at Sam, who says, “Do you know of a place called Oasis Plains?”

Joe White Tree glances at Sam and then, he can’t let it go!, looks back over at Dean, and says, pointedly, “I like him. He’s not a liar.”

It’s an awesome scene. It’s uncomfortable. Dean has it coming though. He is visibly uneasy, does that wiping-off-his-face thing which is a compulsive Jensen Ackles “get myself together” gesture, and Sam clearly realizes that yet again his brother has effed everything up within the first moment of introduction so he takes over. He asks Joe White Tree to tell them the history of the area. And Joe White Tree tells a horrible story, passed down to him through his grandfather and great-grandfather about a terrible massacre of a tribe that went down in the 19th century during the brutal re-location program that happened in Oklahoma’s shady past. It all happened on a “night when the moon and the sun share the sky as equals”. It was a 6-day affair, and at the end of it everyone was dead. “They say on the 6th night as the chief of the village lay dying, he whispered to the heavens that no white man would ever tarnish his land again. Nature would rise up and protect the valley.”

Dean and Sam walk back out into the parking lot, and they talk about the timeline of deaths, which line up in a 6-day period. Gas company guy died on the spring equinox (“the night the sun and the moon blah blah blah”) so whatever is going to go down is going to go down tonight. “Nature” (i.e. bugs) will rise up and kill any white person living in that valley.

I do like the way the light is hitting in this scene. Sun going down, they don’t have much time.

bugs46

Sam wants to know how they break the curse and Dean says you don’t break the curse, you “get out of its way”.

13th scene
Back at Oasis Plains, Bug-Boy Samandriel goes out into the dark backyard with a flashlight and looks around. He hears things. Bug things. He’s not sure what is happening. He sees a hole in the ground and shines the flashlight on it. He pokes at the dirt and then, awesome, swarms of cockroaches come pouring out of the hole and I swear I have now had it up to here with this episode.

14th scene
Thrilling-urgent music as we see the Impala barreling along dark roads on the way back to Oasis plains. Dean is barking into the phone to Larry, pretending to be a representative from the gas company, telling him there’s a gas leak and they need to vacate immediately. Dean says he’s “Travis Weaver”, the guy they talked to outside the gas company, and Larry knows Travis, and says, “Who is this??”

bugs29

Dean, busted again, hangs up on Larry. Good save, dude! Sam grabs the phone and calls Matt, who picks up on the first ring, panicked and tells Sam about the cockroaches.

Small moment in this scene that I find really good. What can I say, I’m an optimist, and both Padalecki and Ackles are so good they always give you stuff to talk about.

Sam tells Matt that he needs to get his family out of the house because “something’s coming”, and Matt says, “How am I supposed to do that? My dad doesn’t listen to me,” and sweet Sam says “Make him listen” but Dean has had it by that point, grabs the phone, and barks at Matt, “Under no circumstances are you to tell him the truth, he’ll just think you’re nuts. Tell him you have a sharp pain in your right side and you have to go to the hospital, okay?” He hangs up and for a second he doesn’t say anything, just stares ahead at the road, and then he says, and his voice drips with contempt, “‘Make him listen’. What are you thinking?”

It’s a moment I love. There’s a lot in it. First of all, there’s the trampled-on son who knows that it is not easy to make a bossy Dad “listen”. And so Dean, with his devotion to truth and all cards on the table, knows that “sometimes you have to lie” (a line I love from Harriet the Spy), and lying is sometimes the best policy. It’s also more efficient, going back to the hustling-pool argument at the beginning of the episode. Sam, trying to connect to Matt, is too close to see all of that, and too angry at his own Dad for bullying him to cut through all of that. Dean gets it. Lie, Matt, lie through your teeth, and save your life, is Dean’s attitude. It’s also interesting because, in a way, Dean acknowledges here that Dad never listened, you can’t make Dad listen, Dad was a bully who didn’t take us into consideration and there was no way on earth to EVER go up against him.

But it’s that final button of the scene, and the way Jensen Ackles says that last line, that nails it. With all of the phony contrived “arguments” this episode has given us, that last line breathes with reality, with truth, with in-the-moment spontaneity and that is ALL on Ackles.

15th scene
They pull up outside the house and Dean is pissed off to see that the family is still there. A nice detail of this scene on the front steps is that the bug-zapper is going off like crazy, interrupting the dialogue. Supernatural does not have a big budget, and they have to be selective with what special effects they devote their time to. We do get a couple of cool moments later, when we see the bug swarm, but those images can’t hold a candle to the eerie weirdness of hearing that bug-zapper working overtime.

Larry comes bursting out of the house furious, screaming at them to get off his property. Matt is apologetic, he told his dad the truth. Dean, deadpan, down on the walkway says, “We had a plan, Matt. What happened to the plan.” (Jensen Ackles is good at modulating Dean’s rage. He could very well have been a rageaholic in a less-sensitive actor’s hands, where the whole thing is yelling and snarling. But Ackles deadpans that line. It’s good.)

At this point it’s midnight and time is ticking, the brothers try to convince Larry that they have to leave NOW, and Matt does the same thing, and Larry’s reaction to his son’s interjection is swift and furious. It’s ugly. “WHY WON’T YOU LISTEN TO ME?” screams Matt. But suddenly the air is filled with a horrible buzzing sound. It’s too late. There’s a cool shot of the full moon, suddenly being blacked out by the swarms of bugs approaching. It’s too late to run now so they all race into the house.

Sam and Dean take over, putting towels around the doors and all that, and the chaos that follows is totally bug-ridden and totally awful and they’re waiting it out till sunrise, but it’s sloppy because there is no sense of time passing. As far as we can tell in the episode, the Battle of the Bugs commences at 12:02 a.m., and it is over by 12:05, and the sun rises then and there. I’m surprised that the show-runner or the story editor let this slide. It’s just sloppy. The show is usually better at avoiding huge continuity glitches like this in their story lines. It makes the show seem un-serious, frankly.

bugs31

But a couple of things about the Bug Fight that follows:

1. It’s gross. I would have a heart attack.
2. Dean finds bug spray in a bucket in the kitchen and watching Dean, who has a frightening arsenal in his trunk, do battle with the swarm by shooting bug spray into the air is hysterical. The way he’s filmed makes it looks like he’s in ‘Nam or something, but he’s wielding a can of Off.

bugs32

I mean, that’s funny.

They end up fleeing to the attic, and then the termites chew through the roof, and bugs swarm into the attic and it’s horrifying, and Dean is fire-blasting them with Off, and it’s chaos, and then suddenly, light breaks on the horizon, and suddenly, the bugs reverse paths and swarm OUT of the attic back up into the sunrise sky.

bugs33

The whole point is that they needed to out-last the night, out-last the curse, but the scene goes continuously, there is no cut to show time passing, to show that this fight went on for hours. Anyway, a mistake like that is so easily avoidable, it bothers me.

And this shot cracks me up.

bugs34

If you’ve seen the gag reel of Supernatural, then you know that the show has an extremely funny set. People often can barely get through a line without laughing. Poor Misha Collins has said he ruins more takes than he completes, which I can totally see because some of Castiel’s lines are so freakin’ hilarious and he has to be completely deadpan. Jensen Ackles describes one moment when they were filming “The French Mistake”, with the fake version of Supernatural, with the fake Castiel, and the bad acting, and Misha Collins started laughing so hard that he basically had to go take a walk, and was seen wandering around off to the side, with tears of laughter streaming down his cheeks. It’s amazing they actually got a work-able take on that particular episode. Anyway, I see that shot of Sam and Dean peeking up through the roof and I have to believe that that shot was surrounded by hilarity. Because it’s ridiculous.

16th scene
It’s the following day, I guess, who knows with this episode, and the Impala peels around a corner pulling up in front of the Pike house, which already has a moving van parked in front of it. Larry, Sam and Dean talk, and Larry says the development has been put on hold while the bones are investigated, and he’s moving out. “I’m gonna make damn sure no one lives here again,” says Larry. Good luck with that, dude. Larry says, “This has been the biggest financial disaster of my career, but somehow …” – goopy sentimental look over at Matt taking a box over to the trash at the head of the driveway – “I really don’t care.”

This is what Supernatural would look like if it were a bad show, as opposed to a good one. It’s not a pretty picture.

And, I’m sorry, but look at Dean’s reaction to Larry’s supposed breakthrough in understanding with his son through the Bug Manifestation Debacle.

bugs35

Hahahaha. He looks so sincere, doesn’t he? Sam goes over to talk to Matt, and unlike other episodes, where the brothers quietly respect the goodbyes that each one has to make, Dean barely looks interested in the Matt-Sam friendship. As a matter of fact, he looks super bored.

bugs36

The episode doesn’t have heft or weight. We know that. The actors know that too, I would bet. The scene between Matt and Sam is short, nothing deep or anything, just a nice moment of connection, and as Sam makes his way back to the Impala, he slows down. It’s similar in nature to what happens at the end of “Skin”, as well as the slight hesitation before he opens the car door in “Hook Man”. Sam’s journey back to the Impala and to his waiting brother is always weighted down with regret, hesitation. He does what he has to do, but his body language is eloquent.

Sam and Dean look back at Larry and Matt, now chatting at the top of the driveway, in a replica of the earlier framing at the barbecue.

bugs39

Aww, father and son are reconciled! So maybe Sam can reconcile with Dad? Is that what’s on Sam’s mind? I’ll bet you $100 that it is.

Sam leans on the Impala next to his brother and they both stand there for a bit, in one of those classic Supernatural shots.

bugs40

Eye candy, man.

The energy between them is quiet now, and Sam is filled with emotion. He says, “I want to find Dad” and Dean, instead of saying, “We’re gonna find him” or “all in good time” or anything bossy like that, says, “Yeah. Me too.”

Sam says, “I want to apologize to him.” Dean takes that in and asks, “For what?” When Jared Padalecki wells up with tears, I do too. It’s one of his gifts as an actor, that accessibility, that feeling that reaches out of the television and grabs you. He doesn’t like crying, this character, he fights it, and that just makes me blubber more. Sam says, “All the things I said to him. He was just doing the best he could.”

Dean breaks the moment with a snark about how when they do find him, Sam will apologize, and “within 5 minutes you’ll be at each other’s throats.” Sam laughs. Blah blah blah, shwoopy shwoopy.

One final word: It is always informative to see what excellent actors do with poor material. Some material is so bad that actors can’t help but go down with the ship, too. But as a lesson in “how to survive” a poor script, you could do worse than watching Padalecki and Ackles in “Bugs”.

The brothers get in the Impala and peel out of the cursed-land housing development.

On to the next adventure, which will be much better. As a matter of fact, it will be a powerhouse.

With no bugs.

This entry was posted in Television and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

58 Responses to Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 8: “Bugs”

  1. Helena says:

    Aagh, thanks and well done for getting through this episode, Sheila. I don’t want to dwell on its shortcomings, as you’ve done this so well, and it has much to redeem it.Well, if I had to name one of my bugbears it’s that whenever anyone goes to visit a university professor they invariably meet them in the lecture room with a blackboard scrawled with chalk. Just the laziest shorthand way of saying ‘this is a university’.

    Love what you say about order and chaos. It’s such a rich topic.

    Not one for the ages, for sure, but that makes the good moments stand out all the more, I guess. I love the moment with the towel round the head. I love the frantic journey back to Matt’s house where Dean tells Matt to lie to his dad. It does make perfect sense, and is such a pay off to being called out as a liar beforehand.

    Re being taken for a gay couple – maybe this is a really stupid point, but it kind of brings to the fore that there is next to no physical resemblance between them and no attempt is made to suggest it. Padalecki and Ackles convince you through their acting alone that they are brothers, with a shared heritage, genetic material, whatever. But there are no shared physical shortcuts. In my own nerdy way I’ve had fun watching out how the physicality of various members of the Winchester/Campbell family suggests the family link. For instance, when Adam the half brother turned up I wasn’t that fussed about the actor on first watch, but on second watch I could see the actor had really paid attention to some of Sam and Dean key traits, and channeled aspects of both of them, and – genius – he actually looks like both Sam (height) and Dean (colouring). In the same nerdy vein has noted that the young John Winchester has a closer physical resemblance to Sam than Dean, and actually walks like Sam, or rather, Sam walks like him.

    • sheila says:

      Oh man, I had the same response to Adam. At first I thought, No, but then I could see it, and then I could REALLY see it. I loved his anger, his quick temper, his sarcasm – that whole first episode with him was so AWKWARD. But I liked his performance a lot, and you could tell that yes, the actor had studied the show and had studied what both JP and JA were doing.

      (Another person who had clearly done their homework is the young teenage actor who plays teenage Dean in an episode in Season 9 – which, so sorry, I know you haven’t seen yet!!. I was NOT thrilled with the high-school-flashback-Dean from an earlier season – his face was too angular, he looked cold, rather than lush and hot – he should have been Boy Band Pretty, not lean and mean and angular – and I just didn’t feel that that guy was a younger Dean. The young actor playing the young Sam, however, KILLS ME. But once you get to Season 9, wait until you see the young boy they get to play Dean. The way he wrinkles his eyebrows, his hand gestures, the little half-smile – this actor is a child, really, and was clearly well-cast, but he had studied Jensen Ackles’ behavior, it’s so clear.)

      // In my own nerdy way I’ve had fun watching out how the physicality of various members of the Winchester/Campbell family suggests the family link. //

      That’s an interesting viewpoint – I should pay closer attention. Yes, young John does seem more like Sam – which I REALLY like. Also that he’s clean-cut, a military guy, but also a mechanic – so there’s that Dean connection. I have a hard time connecting that actor to Jeffrey Dean Morgan, though – who just seems so BULKY, while that guy seems like he has a slight frame.

      Casting those roles (and I love young Mary, too – she reminds me of Jo) were so important. They really had to get the right people! I think, all in all, they did a really good job.

      • Helena says:

        //I have a hard time connecting that actor to Jeffrey Dean Morgan, though – who just seems so BULKY, while that guy seems like he has a slight frame.//

        I know what you mean. On the other hand, I look at him in those flashback episodes and just think, sweetheart, what happened/i> to you?

        • sheila says:

          Yes, good point. The transformation is devastating.

          And let’s not forget: he was father-less. Fathers are such a huge deal in Supernatural.

  2. Jessie says:

    I love the Oprah exchange, mostly because of the long tail of Dean kicking himself for mentioning Oprah. But it’s so interesting the way Sam polices Dean’s pleasures at the most unexpected moments. I’m not really sure why because he’s supposed to be the more enlightened one; but I guess he has his own rather rigid image of his brother and, like Dean, finds it very hard to see the truth around that.

    “O hai, we’d like to talk to you about our beloved Uncle Dusty. Like what are the gruesome details and exact location of his death please. It will help us grieve.”

    The guys and the car between the caution tape is how to do on-the-nose RIGHT.

    A ha ha ha, “you’re awesome,” I love that exchange. That kid almost sees god when Dean says that.

    Despite all the Significant Conversations About Their Childhood JA and JP manage some great little brotherly connections in this episode. Like the teasing tone of their hustling exchange, or the way Sam socks Dean in the balls while driving into the garage.

    I know you’re not letting John off the hook here, and that we are talking about the transition from Parent-Child to Parent-Adult relationships here, but I am not so enamoured of Dean’s advice. Remember John laid down that classic ultimatum of “if you walk out that door, don’t ever come back.” In my own way I am reacting quite viscerally (and not because of any family trauma in my past) to the idea that despite the abuse and neglect John visited on his sons, there is an onus on Sam to step up. But I suppose that is the choice anyone with a distorted familial relationship has to make; IF you want contact (and you are justified in not wanting contact, but IF you do), you have to figure out what concessions you are willing to make.

    I can’t even with the whole Native American interlude. The music, the dogs, the mystical and completely obvious equinox riddle. The actor is good and it has some good moments but it wastes the concept of a NA curse due to genocidal atrocities in a really obnoxious way, because as we know bugs and nature really have nothing to do with the meat of the episode. Native American experience is just a stereotypical device here.

    I love that moment in the car as well, the severe practicality of Dean’s advice and how he has to acknowledge despite all the back-and-forth in this episode that his dad was impossibly inflexible. You just know he lied to John at times, probably taking a bullet for Sam when Sam wanted something. And you can just see Sam start to smile through the fade. United, yay!

    Ha ha, the end is SUCH A MESS. Ridiculous. The whole mechanics of that thing. Earth-shattering murderous curse, but it’s only weird nocturnal bees that attack, not the legions of household & attic bugs, and putting some towels under the door will prevent anything getting in….I can’t handle it.

    Aside from its restructuring of space-time and complete lack of subtlety (you couldn’t just let Dean react to Sam’s comment about understanding the kid’s life? You had to make him say “you do?”? What a waste of two words) there are two fundamental disconnects that break this episode.

    The first, which you touch on, is that the episode is about, like, bugs, and also strict fathers. There is no thematic connection there.

    The second, that last shot. It’s so gorgeous it makes me want to cry. But NO. Lesson not learned, assholes! The familial arcs are reversed. Samandriel’s dad started out strict and when his family was threatened relaxed, placing having a supportive and loving family environment above other concerns (eg profit). John is the OPPOSITE. We eventually learn that maybe John was a problematic husband even before Mary died. But there is not much evidence, especially at this stage, that he was anything like this episode’s Dad before their family trauma happened. I can see why Sam and Dean might take the wrong lesson here, but the episode does not seem to realise this at all.

    Thanks again for the pontificating, Sheila! Hope you don’t mind me running my mouth.

    • sheila says:

      Jessie – I totally hear what you are saying about John Winchester, and it’s painful when he finally does show up and DOESN’T hug Sam. Like, dude, please, get over your fucking self. There’s all this weight between the two men, so much baggage – and there’s Dean, hugging Dad and clutching him and Sam is just so outside that family circle. But I still think that if it is true that Sam wants to “find Dad”, then he needs to deal with what the hell he wants to happen when he DOES find Dad – and “Bugs”, in its semi-awful way, suggests that maybe he has some concessions to make himself. If a parent is limited (as John Winchester is), and you are not – then maybe it wouldn’t hurt all that much to be the one to be the bigger person, to make the first move? It’s all a bit twisted. And John Winchester infuriates me.

      // But it’s so interesting the way Sam polices Dean’s pleasures at the most unexpected moments.//

      I know, right? Yeah, you can see that he is sometimes embarrassed to be in the presence of Dean when Dean is enjoying something (Magic Fingers), and how the porn habit freezes his laptop, and all that … but yeah, he sort of idolizes Dean, right? And they haven’t been in everyday contact for about 5 years or so by the time the series starts – the last time they “hunted” together they were both teenagers. Or, Sam was a teenager and Dean was 20 or whatever. So now, here they are, men – without Dad there as a brake on their behavior, their freedom with one another – no way would Dean have reveled in that shower with a damn towel around his head when Dad was around.

      Sam can be judgmental. I love Jared Padalecki’s pursed-lips bitch-face. It makes me laugh.

      // “O hai, we’d like to talk to you about our beloved Uncle Dusty. Like what are the gruesome details and exact location of his death please. It will help us grieve.” //

      Jessie, I am absolutely dying laughing.

      // it wastes the concept of a NA curse due to genocidal atrocities in a really obnoxious way, because as we know bugs and nature really have nothing to do with the meat of the episode. Native American experience is just a stereotypical device here. //

      Yup. It’s shorthand. And using genocide as shorthand is bad bad news.

      Now I have to look for Sam smiling through the fade after the “Make him listen” moment. I missed that. Dammit, I’ll just cue up the scene – I am NOT watching this episode again.

      // You had to make him say “you do?”? What a waste of two words//

      SUCH an awesome observation. It’s scriptwriting 101. Bad.

      I love how you are calling Matt Samandriel too. And YES, right, there is zero connection between those two arcs. John Winchester went off the rails when crisis came, and basically ruined his sons over the course of the next 20 years. They are still living in the fallout and the damage is so all-encompassing that they can’t even FEEL it yet. Crisis didn’t make John W. break down and hug his boys close to him – and even now, in this search for Dad that takes up the first half of Season 1: there are times when both boys call him and leave messages – Dean is literally in tears during one of those calls – and the guy doesn’t call them back. WTF.

      // We eventually learn that maybe John was a problematic husband even before Mary died. //

      Wait – remind me??

      • Jessie says:

        Sam wants to “find Dad”, then he needs to deal with what the hell he wants to happen when he DOES find Dad
        well said. And oh, John Winchester, you infuriating bastard. We will be saying that a lot at the end of next episode I think.

        Now that I think about it there is only the one hint I can be certain of re: John before Mary died, and they are barely even that. In the Heaven episode, Mary’s having an argument with John over the phone, that sounds very familiar, and it freaks Dean out to the point where he has to offer her comfort.

        I have a lingering memory of something being indicated in WIAWSNB but I think that carries over from the clear signs that something is wrong with Dean, and the graveyard monologue at the end (oh god :-( that episode)

        I love the idea that despite living in each others’ pockets for their whole lives, they meet again now as men and kind of have to rediscover each other.

        ha ha yes I can’t really remember the names of anyone in this episode except for Sam and Dean.

      • Jessie says:

        And yes, bitch-face forever!!!

      • sheila says:

        Oh, that’s right – child Dean overhears the fight on the phone, and Dad moved out for a couple of days. I wonder what they were fighting about.

        The “You ‘wuv hugs'” moment makes me laugh out loud. Jared’s line reading there is so hilarious!!

        And God, yes, that episode, with the graveyard monologue – the whole damn thing. I watched it last weekend, just to revel in it. So painful, so beautiful, so so excellent. The Christmas sweater Winchester family portrait? How much fun did the props department have putting that one together??

        In re: adult siblings: I have three siblings, and I’m the oldest – so there was that moment, or many moments, along the way, when we sort of discovered each other as adults. The relationships shifted. The hierarchy shifted. There’s 10 years between me and my youngest sister – so that one took a while – there’s a huge age difference between 26 and 16. But once we caught up to one another, it was so fun to see who we were outside of the family set-up.

        I like the thought of how weird this is for Sam and Dean – not hunting, they know that life – but hunting without Dad. And how they can let off steam with each other, watching movies, or football, or whatever it is they do on off days – without that tension of Dad being in the room. It must feel GREAT, actually – and how much guilt would that bring on for them, to almost be relieved that Dad isn’t there? As much as they want to find him, it has to feel pretty awesome to be men, together, alone without Dad, who honestly cannot see them outside of who they were when they were children, and who totally resists the undeniable fact that they are now grownups.

        So Dean gets to be silly, and watch his porn, and go see chick flicks on his day off, and Sam probably reads for pleasure – novels, history books – stuff that has nothing to do with hunting – and I can imagine that Dad would judge both of them for that kind of behavior. Behavior that is not bad or negative but that shows they are separate from him, individuals with their own tastes – They are their own men. I think John would have a big problem with that – and that makes him a tyrant.

        • Jessie says:

          Me too, I am five years older than my only sibling and it’s been a tremendously fertile and interesting journey the last few years as we’ve started to work out how to relate to each other as adults.

          And so great for Sam and Dean — we know they spent a lot of time alone as children, but the triangulating and defining presence of John would always have been felt. In season 1, as they begin to unify into us-against-the-world, they can start to relate to each other outside of the roles of good son and favoured son, which is a subtle but important difference, and which doesn’t preclude the good son from getting more appreciation, or the favoured son from also being the problem child.

          Of course we know this stuff still troubles them but I like to imagine a fleeting period of freedom! Imagine if at the beginning of S2 all that death hadn’t started setting in, putting limits on the time and space and emotional energy they had to work this stuff out properly.

  3. Helena says:

    Oh yeah, and the next four episodes are just about perfect.

  4. Machelle says:

    I’m glad you broke down some of the issues surrounding the supposed homophobia. I think that Dean doesn’t have the vocabulary to express what he knows instinctively. Just think of the change in language even in the last 5 years from “gay marriage” to “marriage equality.” Dean has never been in on those discussions. He’s watching Oprah, not Hardball. Sam’s been to college, he probably took a World Literature class at the very least, so he knows the language of inclusivity. Dean has no idea how to talk about it, to protect the view of himself from outside. Could you imagine him at a Pride parade? “WTF? NAKED BODIES EVERYWHERE! I LOVE IT!” He’d be a total goofball. And everyone else would be “Dude, it’s Pride. Have a drink.”

    I also was taken out of the episode by the shortest night in all of human history.

    • sheila says:

      // the shortest night in all of human history. //

      hahahaha

      Yeah, the homophobia conversation can get pretty intense – and I get the sense (this is not backed up by data or pie charts) that a lot of the fan base has a serious problem with overt masculinity anyway, the Tough Guy stuff – they see it ALL as “covering something up”. I don’t read much of that commentary, because it doesn’t interest me, but I’ve come across some of those comments and I just don’t see Dean that way at ALL. I see the toughness as a very very real part of him, it comes easy to him, in a way he loved being in Purgatory because the fight there was clear and pure. And yes, maybe it is there to hide his sensitivity – but that just puts him in a long continuum of other tough guy actors who also are vulnerable and open. That’s what makes a good movie star. Bogart. Etc. I see him in the continuum of great Tough Guys, like John Wayne and Charles Bronson – guys who were tough and courageous but who also are capable of playing deeply feeling men. I’d wager that the “Dean’s a homophobe” people would despise John Wayne and all that he represents, or feel the need to apologize for liking him. I cannot STAND that type of attitude. It’s self-righteous. I come from an old-fashioned family of tough Irish guys, and I love tough guys, and value them, and don’t think they all need to go into sensitivity training in order to pass muster. My main boyfriend was a tough guy who actually kept his cigarette pack rolled up in the sleeve of his white T-shirt as he played pool, and drove a ridiculous old car, and he had zero judgment about anyone else, me or anyone. Looking at him, you might think he was a Neanderthal, but he wasn’t. He may not have used the “correct” words for things, but I don’t get caught up in words as I do in what is in someone’s heart and how they behave. Many tough guys are strong enough to maintain “live and let live” attitudes, and as long as you don’t hurt people or take advantage of people, have at it, do what you want.

      But yeah like you say Dean has lived in a pretty narrow world, completely dominated by his father, with no friends, really, no outside influences beyond movies (although they would teach him a lot). There just isn’t evidence that he’s homophobic at ALL.

      I think he might get freaked at a Pride parade but only because all the gay guys, like everyone else on the planet, would be all over him, and want a piece of him. He would be creeped on at every turn. :) But yeah, people having fun, having tons of sex and not feeling bad about it? Dean would be all about that.

      • Helena says:

        //this is not backed up by data or pie charts) //

        pie charts, Sheila?

        That reminds me, have you heard of the Diagram prize, an annual award for the book with the weirdest book title? I think a previous winner was ‘Greek Rural Postmen and their cancellation numbers’ – maybe also ‘How to avoid large ships’? This year two contenders are ‘Pie-ography’ and ‘How to pray when you’re pissed at God’. Just sayin’

        • sheila says:

          Did someone say Pie???

          Oh my God, that diagram prize sounds incredible. Greek Rural Postmen?? I will look it up. I love nerds/specialists so much!

  5. mutecypher says:

    For some odd reason, this summary has me humming “Ben” to myself.

    The bug zapper was very funny.

    And “within 5 minutes you’ll be at each other’s throats” was pretty much how it played out in Dead Man’s Blood.

  6. Helena says:

    Going back to how you outlined the order/chaos thing going on in the brother’s relationships, which I loved, it struck me for Dean it’s essential that Cassie/Lisa know what he does. For Sam, in both of his relationships with women (human women, anyway) they arise at a time when he has drawn a line between him and his family and/or his past, and he never tells them about this part of his life. Although he’s brilliant at making intellectual and emotional connections, Sam is very good, too good, at rationalising and compartmentalising, which I feel is also part of how he manages to justify the whole Ruby thing to himself, at least until it completely unravels. (I think there’s intellectual hubris there, too – I mean, Faustian pact with Ruby or what?). Dean doesn’t rationalise or compartmentalise so much as live in a state of perpetual, utter contradiction – the whole life with Lisa thing is a case in point, I think, but there are many others. Sam’s ability to process stuff in this way can be both negative (Ruby) but incredibly healing and positive – you see that towards the end of Season 8, maybe, when, crappy as things are, he is coming to terms with himself and what he’s done. It allows him to honestly let go of stuff and move on. Whereas with Dean, particularly in Season 8 for me, you see the contradictions just keep colliding against each other with ever increasing violence.

    • Helena says:

      … Should have added this thought to the last post – Dean refuses to process because doing so would utterly shatter his view of himself and those around him, which is terrifying. I guess that’s what’s going on in Season 9 right now? (and curses, curses that I can’t see it for ages).

      • sheila says:

        // Dean refuses to process because doing so would utterly shatter his view of himself and those around him, which is terrifying. //

        Exactly. The last two episodes of Season 9 have shown him completely broken. (i.e.. beard.) There are no defenses left, and he is up against not Sam, not a demon, not anything – but himself. The final moment in the last episode we saw (“The Purge”) is a shot of Dean in the kitchen of the bunker, and he honestly looks like an abandoned infant. It’s horrible. But necessary, I think. It’s about time.

        When the heck are you all getting Season 9 0ver there??

    • sheila says:

      // Sam is very good, too good, at rationalising and compartmentalising, which I feel is also part of how he manages to justify the whole Ruby thing to himself, at least until it completely unravels. (I think there’s intellectual hubris there, too – I mean, Faustian pact with Ruby or what?). //

      Awesome point. There are those chilling moments where he says stuff to Ruby like, “Dean’s different – since he got back from Hell – he’s not strong enough …”

      It’s just awful, to picture him sort of dissing Dean behind Dean’s back to this demon (as helpful as she is – but of course she has ulterior motives).

      And good point: Sam is able to walk away from “the life” and have a very deep relationship with Jess, with Amelia, all while not telling either of these women the most important fact of his life. You don’t get the sense that this weighs on him. But you’re right, it weighs on Dean. He fell in love with Cassie so he HAD to tell her who he was. He just couldn’t ever have fallen in love otherwise.

      // Whereas with Dean, particularly in Season 8 for me, you see the contradictions just keep colliding against each other with ever increasing violence. //

      Could you talk more about that? Examples?

      I love that: living with the contradiction. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it – but that’s why life, in general, is so hard for him.

      • Helena says:

        //Could you talk more about that? Examples? //

        Ok, there are a lots to pick from throughout the series which you’ve already identified: dad the idol vs dad the destroyer of Dean’s personhood; the good son vs second-best son; homebody vs drifter; happy hunter vs perpetual failure; normal life vs hunter’s life; the rescuer who despairs of his own life; the alpha male almighty fuckup. These are the contradictory ideas about himself that – I think – Dean carries around in his head at all times. There is his increasing ambivalence about the hunter’s life: it defines Dean utterly and also has destroyed for him every other avenue of opportunity and hope for the future. He’s sick to death of it and it’s the only thing he can see himself ever doing. (And you notice, whenever he tries to voice what becomes his absolute despair to anyone but Sam, they just say, well, suck it up.) And of course, there are the two almighty tenets in Dean’s life: 1) putting Sam above everything else, which trumps a) anything Sam wants for himself or Dean b) anything Dean wants for himself c) anything anybody else wants for either of them. 2) His existence is only justified by his ability to protect those around him – without that justification he is nothing and has nothing.

        I think what comes to the fore for me in Season 8 is how the two tenets are severely challenged – trampled on, just about – either by his own feelings and choices, or those of others, and I find it horrible to watch. (I spent a lot of Season 8 peeking though my fingers which doesn’t help as I’m still finding the whole angel demon tablet war in heaven thing immensely complicated). Friendship with Benny threatens his relationship with Sam and puts Dean (in Sam’s eyes) in the same position for which he gave Sam so much grief regarding Ruby – being in a relationship of trust with a ‘monster’ which violates the hunters’ unwritten code. For Dean, who regards himself as a hunter through and through, this is quite something to wrestle with. There’s Castiel’s refusal to be rescued from Purgatory which Dean reconfigures in his memory as his own failure to rescue him. There is Sam’s insistence that he does the trials, rebuffing Dean’s instinct to sacrifice himself and basically, well, emasculating him. Sam and Castiel, in their own ways, decline his increasingly attempts at intervention, rescue and control as their own sense of agency grows. Dean’s attempts at intervention, rescue and control become more beleagured, desperate, monstrous. He appears towards the end to accept the unacceptable: that they simply don’t need to take the only things he thinks he has to offer them, which are his protection and/or his life. But actually, no, no he hasn’t.

        I think I finally got what you meant about the Damsel in Distress thing. Sam is a beautifully drawn character and Padalecki in Season 8 is formidable, a joy to watch. Season 8 has some of my favourite episodes of the whole series. But other episodes had me with my hands over my eyes going, aagh, just stop this train crash already.

        • sheila says:

          Oh there’s so much to chew on here!! Thank you so much, Helena!

          In that last episode of Season 9 I keep mentioning – the last one aired – Dean says to Sam, and he’s desperate when he says it, pleading – “Without you, there’s no me.”

          It’s just …. awful. And Sam sees it, sees the issue, but what can he do about it? Tell Dean to “get a life”?

          I’ll be back in a bit – cooking dinner! Great comment!

        • sheila says:

          Okay, some of what you said in your comment reminded me of the Lisa/Ben arc, when Dean was so drawn to that husband/father role. That last scene with Ben, in Ben’s room, when he says goodbye – one of the things that is so powerful about that scene is that it doesn’t go the way you expect (with a tearful hug or any resolution) – Ben doesn’t let Dean off the hook. Ben INDICTS Dean for “walking out on his family” – the worst possible thing you could say to Dean. And the scene just ends – right there. Dean has to eat that pain, eat that truth of what he is doing. Maybe his reasoning is good or sound, but tell that to a heartbroken 10 year old. And then of course he does that unforgivable thing later to Lisa and Ben and I’m not sure who to be more pissed off at – Dean, or the writers who created it. I HATE it. But I won’t get into that now.

          You get the sense that both Dean and Sam would be great dads, if given the chance – maybe a little gruff and old-fashioned, but would be loving and caring and protective and all that – they’re both great with the kids they encounter (Dean, especially, does great with kids) – and you actually get to see Dean in that Dad role, and he does great at it (until, you know, he doesn’t.)

          So that contradiction is there, like you’ve pointed out – that internal fight. Fathers are so important in the show. So important, more so even than mothers. And to be a Dad, while you still have those unresolved issues of anger/rage at your own Dad … It’s never really explicitly addressed – “this is the kind of Dad I’M going to be” – but JA is playing it. In every breath, every moment, when he’s in the presence of Lisa and her son.

          It’s so sad.

          And yeah, I seriously need a flow chart (pie chart?) to keep track of the angel demon tablet war.

          Season 8 really is so intense. I LOVE Benny and that relationship, I LOVE it when Cas returns to them – such excellent story lines – but you can feel things starting to fall apart. Or shift. Maybe it’s just Dean who’s falling apart – Sam is actually coalescing, coming together.

          It’s so codependent. The stronger Sam gets the more Dean falls apart. And Sam can see it and not only can’t stop it from happening but doesn’t seem to want to stop it anymore. It’s like that thing we discussed before about having a family member lost to addiction – at some point, after trying to help, and offering help, you have to let that person go. They need to want the help.

          Maybe Dean’s almost there. I don’t know. He’s such a tough nut to crack. I won’t give too much away in Season 9 but Castiel is honestly trying to help the brothers understand one another – which is sometimes very funny, because – he’s Castiel, and the way he expresses himself is so unique. But he can see the dynamic, the pattern, and is trying to counsel Sam, at least, to knock that shit off and get over themselves.

          Obviously, though, it’s Supernatural, it’s not gonna be that easy. I have a feeling that Season 9 will end in a sort of mirror-image of the ending of Season 8 – with Dean on the rack somehow, not sure how. Like Sam doing the trials, something’s gonna go down with Dean, something big. I can’t wait to see what it is because I can’t take too much more of this as it stands!

        • Jessie says:

          Helena, what a succinct and astute breakdown of Dean’s chaos, thank you! Dean, the Tough Guy monster hunter, has this primal need to feel safe — but his primary definition of safety is the existence of another person.

          How wonderful it has been to have a televisual character of contradictions where those contradictions are not “she’s good at her work — but not at her dating!!”

          It would be so cool if S9 ended up being a reflection of S8, because one of the things S8 coalesced into was Sam trying to figure himself out and them both clearing house and recommitting to being with each other. Rather mournfully chosen, at first, but it grew quite strong despite shaky foundations and sandy soil underneath.

          I would love for S9 to mirror that, except without everything going to hell at the end (la la la can’t hear you about Dean on the MOC rack la la la).

          • sheila says:

            Oh man, that “mournfully chosen” scene – Ugh. But beautiful, too – that was some good television.

            // How wonderful it has been to have a televisual character of contradictions where those contradictions are not “she’s good at her work — but not at her dating!!”//

            That is such an awesome comment!! Something I hadn’t really thought of – but you’re so right! This is part of what JA is bringing to the table – and he’s comfortable there (a lot of male actors aren’t – especially good-looking male actors, mainly because they are usually required to play unambiguous heroes, or steely-eyed villains – so they become un-used to having to portray weakness, uncertainty – things that might make them look not cool). But JA runs towards those contradictions –

            There’s a scene in “Shadows” in Season 1 which, taken in the context of what we are discussing here, may be the most important in the entire series. It is when Sam says he looks forward to going back to college “after this is all over” and Dean just can’t deal with it – and instead of it being an argument – which you think it might – instead we see Dean saying, “I just want us to be a family again.”

            And it’s so touching and sad – this is a 27 year old man – who cannot deal with his sibling going to college – for real. And that’s the first time we really see the PAIN behind all of Dean’s obnoxious bossy behavior about Sam’s independence. It’s GORGEOUS. And Sam, in that scene, basically counsels Dean – gently – saying, “We already ARE a family.”

            Great stuff. Amazing how that is still playing out.

            And in re: Season 9 – since we now know there will be a Season 10, I bet they are now working overtime to put both brothers through HELL just to keep us watching. Damn them!!

          • sheila says:

            Also in re: “she’s good at her work — but not at her dating!!”

            I don’t think that Dean’s breakthrough is going to be about finding a companion, finding love and normalcy – as much as that is what I yearn to see for him. Just a guess. His real breakthrough – and it’s existential in nature, as it always has been for him – is going to be okay with being alone. That’s the only thing that will truly save him.

            This goes back to some of our earlier conversations about how the show implicates us in what we want for the characters. Or, I’ll speak for myself. The show makes me yearn towards normalcy – in a way that I don’t in my own life. I’m a freelance writer, I’m a freakin’ outlaw in the mainstream culture – I also shudder at the thought of suburbia. I don’t judge those who find happiness there but it is not for me. But I look at Sam and Dean and God I just want them to be happy and calm and settled.

            But that’s not what’s going to happen for these guys. HOWEVER: peace with who they are, peace with their roles in life, and a sense of AGENCY over their own destinies … that is possible for them, and it’s a tougher road. Supernatural doesn’t provide an easy way out.

            Helena mentioned in a comment on another thread that so often the show shows them achieving something – and then takes that thing away so they have to deal with the “lack”. The show is so good at that, it’s why it can be so painful.

            So it’ll be interesting to see how that all plays out – for both brothers.

          • Helena says:

            //“she’s good at her work — but not at her dating!!”//

            Though, Jessie, this really does seem to apply to Sam for a while, right? ;-)

          • Jessie says:

            Au contraire Helena, evidence suggests Sam is great at boning :-D

  7. Helena says:

    //I don’t think that Dean’s breakthrough is going to be about finding a companion, finding love and normalcy – as much as that is what I yearn to see for him.//

    Amen, let’s hope it’s not this. Actually, I think Sam’s character is primed for this – although it might be supernatural normalcy, maybe running a law firm doing divorces for witches or negotiating real estate deals with poltergeists. Think he’d do a lot of pro bono work.

  8. Helena says:

    //Au contraire Helena, evidence suggests Sam is great at boning :-D//

    No disagreement there, I just meant the choice of girlfriend (werewolf/demon) often seems unfortunate ;-)

    • sheila says:

      Humorously, in Season 9, Sam and Dean join a “chastity group” to investigate some murders and both have to open up to the group on why they want to re-claim their virginity. Comedy ensues. Sam says, awkwardly, “Any woman I’ve had relations with … it ends badly.” Dean, scruffy and inappropriate, laughs and says to the group, “He ain’t lying.”

      • Helena says:

        ha! And what on earth does Dean say … or is it left to our imaginations?

        • sheila says:

          Dean starts off by saying how great sex is and how fun sex is – and then tries to course-correct by saying (and you don’t buy a second of it) – “but sometimes it just makes you feel bad.” Horrible liar. Then he starts talking about how sex is all about “touching and feeling … every inch of her body…” and he goes on … and on … and ON … in this rhapsodic way, all as the virgins in the group (all female) squirm with mounting desire-slash-horror. He basically has a sexual experience in front of the group. Sam, sitting next to him, is mortified. And then Dean tries to correct himself again, awkwardly, “But sometimes the whole thing just gets a little too …. sticky.”

          It’s hysterical.

          • Helena says:

            OK, then, sounds like nothing left to the imagination there. :-)

          • sheila says:

            None! It’s the most graphic sex scene in the entire series. I mean, Dean says the phrase, “and then you hit that sweet spot …”

            Like, he walks us through the whole experience. It is so inappropriate and so funny.

          • Helena says:

            //Like, he walks us through the whole experience. It is so inappropriate and so funny.//

            Like some kind of cerebral orgy.

          • sheila says:

            Right, and we are treated to shots of all of the virgins clamping their legs together, and crumpling up paper as they listen to him, agog. It’s unbearable to them.

            So dumb, but so funny.

            Sam says to him afterwards, “Dude. Overshare.”

            And Dean says, “Hey. I was purifying myself.”

  9. Helena says:

    //And Dean says, “Hey. I was purifying myself.”//

    And yet managed to have exactly the opposite effect on everyone else? Hilarious.

  10. Machelle says:

    Haha! Man, do I love these comment threads. You all are the best. I’m glad to have somebody to share my worry with. I’m so worried about these guys.

  11. Cat says:

    Sheila,
    Once more you provide such an interesting perspective on Dean and Sam. I don’t know if you set out to do this but you have made me rethink Jared Padalecki’s acting. I generally have thought he is a much weaker actor and at times I thought he’s been outright awful in certain episodes and really great in some episodes (The End and Born Under a Bad Sign). I still don’t really like Sam as a character but you’ve helped me appreciate Padalecki a bit more.

    • sheila says:

      Cat – interesting viewpoint, thank you so much for sharing!

      Can you elaborate on which episodes you don’t like him in? I’d be curious to hear.

      Yes, I think JP is quite good, often totally heartbreaking and quite funny (“I lost my shoe”) – and is a wonderful balance for Dean’s more show-stopping shenanigans. I think JA is actually a genius – as I’ve mentioned – he’s got that spark, that special “magic” spark that makes him a Star with a capital S. There’s all kinds of reasons for that, his beauty, his humor, his depth of emotion and accessibility – and by this point – 9 seasons in – it is obvious that that “magic” is not just a fluke. It’s something he, the actor, is aware of, it’s something that he is able to use and manipulate – in the way Cary Grant did, he’s in that rare company – and his ability to use that natural magic that he has makes him even more impressive as an actor. JP doesn’t have that (for me), but he is an excellent actor in my opinion, and I am glad to sort of highlight those moments where he does “his thing” so well.

      You need someone really really strong to “compete” with JA. He would take over scenes even if he’s just in the background. He’s a star. The two guys are just so great together!

      Thanks again for reading and commenting! These discussions are so much fun.

      • Machelle says:

        This makes me think of the interviews with Moffat/Gatiss about casting Sherlock. They had Cumberbatch, and they auditioned everyone for Watson. The trick was to find someone slightly “junior” in stature to Sherlock without getting blown away. They finally found Martin Freeman who brought his own gravitas to Watson while still being secondary to Sherlock. Now in this case, the “primary” switches back and forth, sometimes it’s Sam, sometimes it’s Dean, but indeed they are great together. And not everyone could have pulled that off. JP has his own center of gravity.

        • sheila says:

          The chemistry needs to be so right. Especially in a show with really only two leads. It’s such a crapshoot!! JA and JP work gorgeously together – and there’s not a lot of ego there, you can tell. Sometimes JA takes the lead, sometimes JP – sometimes it’s Misha – in a couple of episodes it’s Bobby. And you sense (or at least I do) that JA and JP love that Supernatural slowly, over time, became an ensemble show – as opposed to a two-man extravaganza the way it is in Season 1. You know? By Season 8, Season 9, we have about 5 or 6 regular characters. Imagine if they hadn’t gone that route – if they had had it just be Sam and Dean swinging into different towns, killing monsters, and that was it. That definitely could have been the concept of the show – it wouldn’t have lasted, though. Kripke always had that larger more complex Demon-Mom arc in mind.

          Of course the cast getting larger takes some of the pressure off of JA and JP’s demanding shooting schedules – they actually get to have days off here and there, so there’s that – but everyone talks about what a great set it is, how welcoming everyone is to the new ensemble members, or guest stars … This isn’t a “stay off my lawn” kind of thing for JA and JP – it makes a huge difference in the feel of the show.

  12. Max says:

    Hi, Sheila. I love your site, you’re quite brilliant. I first read the Schtick-piece like two weeks ago and been guzzling your stuff since. I too consider JA a genius. A rare kind of genius; no pretense, just hard work and unabashed talent. Also loved finding a discussion this classy in the comment section. It’s not all that common when it comes to Supernatural.

    I rather like S9. It’s kind of bold, setting up to resolve these longstanding issues about Dean’s fear of being alone (or for Sam not to need him). And like you say, it’s dark. I like that. I think the dialogue isn’t as witty and where’s the 70-80’s classic rock and where’s the exquisite photography. But then again, it was a while since all that was in place and it’s not a specific S9 problem. It reminds you of that this is a show who really has to compromise to stay alive, and it also makes it kind of fantastic, ’cause everything this show accomplishes it accomplishes in spite of that sort of oppressive regim that it has to operate under. I think these conditions have made Supernatural what it is and everything said in Supernatural carries ten times more weight for me than say anything on HBO. I don’t really know what I’m talking about here, it’s just my impression of things.

    This last episode (The Purge, new ep tomorrow 25th, or is it today?) is really going there. Like allright, but you better have somewhere to go after this, and you better make it fucking awesome and cathartic! More and more I think the bossy-ness that you talk about with Bugs is showing. Like the writers suddenly got really worried we were all too dumb to get it. You mention how great it is with Dean’s nesting, and it is, I too just loved that! But then they had to go and spell it out for us in the Oz-episode. They’re mid-battle and Dean’s like “Oh, by the way Sam, why don’t YOU feel like this is our home. Sam: Well Dean, I think it goes back to my childhood and how i never experienced having a home”. Jesus, this isn’t Dr Phil, I felt seriously offended by that.

    I had no idea JA said that about Dean (“who knows what Dean’s done in the past” where’s that quote from?). Very interesting, makes me think about what you said about the Twihard-episode in S6 where the vamp says “You want the private tour don’t you?”. I mean definitely! That’s a MEMORY he’s experiencing right there. In earlier seasons Dean would not have reacted that way but would have been more glib about it, it wouldn’t have bothered him so much. These days he seems to see those past experiences like something that actually hurt him and I think that’s pretty healthy actually. That whole hustler-vibe he was sending out seemed like someone who had internalized the objectification/hustling (abuse?). He still uses the flirtation to protect himself, and in ways that feel purely sincere with women, but that whole lighthearted way he was about it in earlier seasons are gone. I miss it sometimes but I like that he’s evolving the character like that. I think that’s a great thing about JA, that he isn’t afraid of making big changes in character like that. It feels completely natural and necessary for Dean to go that way.

    Allright I could go on but.

    • sheila says:

      Max – hi there! Thank you so much for reading and commenting. I, too, am thrilled about the conversations going on in the comments sections – they’ve been so much fun!!

      I’m with you: I miss the musical soundtrack, and sometimes there are shots that are indistinguishable from any other cheese-ball episodic – and I look back on Season 1 and Season 2 with its dark moodiness and natural light – and I really feel that loss. But your point is well-taken: this show is a SURVIVOR. and it has had to adapt and change in order to stay on the air … so yes, those compromises have been made, and yet still, the essence of the show remains. Season 9 shows that. I’m still invested in these guys. That’s crazy, after 9 seasons!! A huge accomplishment.

      In re: JA’s comment about Dean’s promiscuity – I can’t remember where I read it. It was from an interview, very early on in the show. I’ll see if I can track it down. I think of that every time I hear some dumb fan babbling about “Does JA realize what that moment looked like?? Tee hee!” I realize, some of the fans may be very young, some of them have no idea what acting really is and what actors actually DO – but it’s not really in my nature to cut people slack in that regard. Half of my site is in praise of the brilliance and smart-ness of actors, and the choices they make … so I get frustrated with those who think that JA is just some dumb pretty boy who is being “made to” create this character that is fluid sexually and if he KNEW what he was doing, he would balk at the portrayal … I mean, it’s so dumb I don’t worry about it too much but it certainly does affect some of the conversations about JA, and I certainly wanted to add my voice as a corrective, with that first piece about the “schtick”.

      Schtick like that is CONSCIOUS. JA knows EXACTLY what he is doing, AND he makes it look easy. I love this character, I love what he has created so much!!

      Okay, moving on!

      In re: the bossiness of the scripts: It is a challenge with this show, and some episodes are stronger than others. In, I think, the second episode (??) of Season 2, when they go visit Mom’s grave and “stumble” over a hunt – there’s definitely some bossiness going on there in the script. “Dean, you are looking for a hunt to avoid Mom’s death” “Dean, you cannot deal with Dad’s death, and therefore you are behaving in this way …”

      Both guys play the hell out of those scenes – there are some great fight scenes in that episode – and it all works IN SPITE of the bossiness of the script.

      Obviously Supernatural works best when those connections are left mostly unspoken – when it’s not too on the nose. When WE can see the connections, but the brothers CAN’T. Like in “Skin”, the first episode that comes to mind.

      And in re: Dean, in Season 9: If I could track it, I would say that his time in Purgatory, and those months when he came back, and the guilt over Castiel, and all that: Any self-protection that Dean may have had left, any shred of resiliency in his emotional apparatus – was shattered after that. And now we are seeing the final result of all of that. This is JA’s great-ness because he is tracking that journey for us over two seasons – and there are even episodes when it doesn’t come up at all, but it’s still there, an underlying objective/emotional thru-line that is going to have a huge payoff. The final closeup of Dean at the end of “The Purge” was unbelievable – you can see his entire LIFE on his face. Seriously.

      And I agree, that abuse/trauma – of which Dean obviously has a lot of experience – comes back to bite you in the ass just when you think you’re over it, or past it. Dean tries to “play” with his own trauma, letting off steam and dealing with it through those flirty moments – where it feels like he has control over it, he is taking control … but yeah, that look on his face in Twihard. That’s not about what’s going on in that moment – or it’s not ONLY about that. That’s a memory. I would bet $100 that that is the way JA decided to play it, as a memory. He’s been down that road before. He’s done things, to get out of situations, to save himself, that make his skin crawl – or, more accurately, he’s let people do things to him – and he’s buried it so deep it doesn’t even really bug him.

      Such an excellent acting moment from him.

      The next couple of weeks are insanely busy for me with my paid writing gigs – I’ll do my best to get the next re-cap up as soon as I can.

      “Home” is next up. A hell of an episode!!

      Thanks again for reading and commenting!

  13. Steve says:

    Did you catch the reference to this episode in the May 4, 2016 episode? Chuck/God responds to Metatron’s reaction to the autobiography draft by saying he had not seen such a look on an editor’s face since he submitted “Bugs”. Pretty funny…seems as if this episode’s legacy lives on.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.