Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 18: “Something Wicked”

Directed by Whitney Ransick
Written by Daniel Knauf

As Season 1 nears the final innings, some major themes, on a low boil on the back burner, are brought up to the front. Kripke was concerned all along that the show was going to become ONLY “Monster-of-the-Week” episodes and he always had something larger and epic in mind, a Western, essentially. The sudden introduction of Meg in “Scarecrow” was the real start of that epic story, although I suppose you could also say that the teaser in the Pilot was the seed of all that was to come. However, “Scarecrow” was episode 11. That’s a pretty long way into what is, essentially, a first season, to throw a wrench like that into the works. They didn’t even know what they were going to DO with Meg when they introduced her, but they knew they needed her, that she would pay off. Looked at from the distance of time, you can see that even with the whole Brothers Relationship Arc going on, episodes 5, 6, 7, and 8, are pretty strictly Monsters of the Week. Most have very good things in them. But Kripke was not satisfied. Things had to get bigger, without sacrificing the emotional guts of the series (the relationship between the two leads). There are other things that are about to enter the storyline, like the Colt, which will be a thru-line for seasons to come, a link to that larger Western genre epic that Kripke had always envisioned for the show.

Meg was re-introduced in Episode 16, and she brought Dad along with her. And, as happened in “Scarecrow,” Meg brings with her a telescopic effect, a glimpse of the large battlefield at play … something the Winchester brothers can only guess at at this point. But in many ways, you can tell that the series is still finding its sea-legs. Critical reaction was somewhat mixed. Some loved the one-off episodes, others didn’t at all. Pretty much everyone agreed that the chemistry between the two leads was the main reason for tuning back in. So all of that was good information for the creative team to have. There’s a lot of improvisation going on, on a script-to-script basis, and it’s very interesting to hear the writers themselves talk about the development of the episodic scripts, and also how they would hash them out as a group until everyone was satisfied.

The main thrust of Season 1 is “find Dad, and find the thing that killed Mom.” We’ve only got a couple of episodes to go now, and of course, eventually, what we get is Dad possessed by Azazel, and so “finding Dad and finding the thing that killed Mom” leads the brothers to the exact same place. It’s a perfect little connecting point, disturbing, and frightening, and will carry over into Season 2 and beyond, as “possession” becomes one of the major things to fight against in the Supernatural universe.

On that emotional thru-line level, “Something Wicked” is almost more important than any other episode in Season 1. The back-and-forth arguing of the brothers over how they were raised, which began in the pilot and just continued on through almost every episode, pays off big-time in “Something Wicked,” which gives us our first flashback-motivated episode. Dean’s version of his childhood is that Dad did the best he could in a shitty situation. Sam argues back that Dad has a lot to answer for, especially how Dad (and Dean) reacted to him going to Stanford. Dean, because of the hierarchy of their relationship, still pretty stable at this point (although it’s shifting), wants to own the narrative. He’s a tyrant about it. We get glimpses, though, tiny glimpses … like him breaking down in tears on the phone with Dad, with his body-language-change when talking to Dad on the phone, and the eagerly submissive “Yes, sir” that comes out when Dad gives him an order. I’ve said before that Season 1 has a slow reveal of the truth of what went on in their childhood, and the show is still plumbing those depths in interesting ways. There are still gaps. What was most interesting was figuring out, slowly, in my first watch of Season 1, that Dean was an unreliable narrator. He is so compelling an actor, so dazzling, really, that you find yourself drawn to his version of events. You make excuses for him, for Dad. But, as I said, that all starts to change. “Something Wicked” was a real turning-point for the series. After episodes of suggestion and deniability, we got what looked like concrete proof of how bad it was, for Dean, in particular.

It could have been a soppy sepia-toned type of episode, but cooler heads prevailed. The edge remains. I’ll get into that in the re-cap. Sharing trauma with someone can inhibit intimacy. It can also bond you together, for all time, but you’re not gonna sit around and talk about it openly. Witnessing the abuse of someone else puts you in a complicit position – unfair as it may be, especially if you are a child. And of course all of this is complicated by Dean’s complete internalization of his father’s definition of him and his worth. He’s a tough nut to crack. He’s not gonna be cracked in one episode.

So, all told, I think the writing team and creative team did a good job with crafting the Arc of Season 1, especially when you consider they had no idea how long the show would last, where they were going with half of these introduced plot-points, they were just throwing shit on the walls and seeing what stuck. It’s a high-wire act, done in front of people, with no net. “Okay. Who is Meg? No idea. Let’s just keep bringing her back though – she’s important – we’ll figure it out in the process of writing.” Same with the Colt, same with Azazel and the whole Sam-psychic-kids thing. Some of it is messy, you can feel the scripts flailing to make those connections, but in general I think it all ties together pretty great.

And speaking just personally: “Something Wicked” was revelatory to me, in my first time watching it. I finished the episode, rewound, and watched it again immediately. I felt like, “Okay. The light has dawned now. I get the Story we are being told now. I understand what they’re doing.” The saying “Yes sir” in unison at the end of “Shadow” was my first goose-bumpy sense that I was going to love the series and really hang in there with it. If it had just been “Hook Man” and then “Bugs” and then “Wendigo”, and on and on, it would have gotten tiresome, as appealing as both Padalecki and Ackles are.

“Something Wicked” is beautifully crafted, with a monster that targets children. And not only children, but siblings. One by one, the monster takes down entire families. One does not need to be a Nobel laureate to see the connection with the Winchesters, whose entire family was also “taken down” by a monster. Whose sibling relationship is both strong and fragile at the same time, where the older brother feels responsible for the younger, where children are tasked with taking care of one another, due to the distraction of the grown-ups whose job it really should be. So there’s all that. Investigating the case, and the sick kids, launches Dean into a memory, a memory he has probably worked hard to bury.

“Something Wicked” is the only Supernatural episode by both director and writer, although I do want to point out that writer Daniel Knauf also wrote for and produced My Own Worst Enemy, starring Christian Slater and my talented and awesome cousin. So hats off.

Obviously, “Something Wicked” references the Ray Bradbury novel called Something Wicked This Way Comes, about two teenage boys getting involved with a scary-ass midnight carnival, and of course Ray Bradbury took his title from Macbeth.

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1
Second witch:

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks.

Problem is the monster here doesn’t knock. She comes in through the window.

TEASER
Fitchburg, Wisconsin

A little girl kneels by her bed, praying, as her father stands at the door, protectively, kindly. She prays:
“Angels watch me through the night
And keep me safe til morning light.”

Of course, Mary Winchester’s nighttime ritual with her son Dean, involving angels “watching over him” is far in the future of the series, but there’s a nice connection made here regardless. Feeling that someone is watching over you is both comforting … and creepy, when you start to gain some autonomy. Besides, there is no such thing as “safety”.

Even before we learn that Mom is in the hospital with the little girl’s sick sister, we sense the absence. The energy is sad, Dad is worried and burdened, the music is mournful, the lighting shadowy and cool. And the Dad’s protective posture, his gentleness and fatherly concern for his family, will be in direct and stark contrast to what we see in the flashbacks later.

Speaking of stark contrast, once Dad leaves the room, the shadows start to take on lives of their own. The double-window gleams almost white, as though there is an ice-storm out there, and the tree branches are black shadows scratching on the wall.

To my taste, with all the demons and vampires we see, the Shtriga is the most terrifying. Its hood, it’s gaping mouth, its long creeping fingers … seriously, this is the stuff of nightmares. It’s Emperor Palpatine coming to get you.

And there’s a connection with a story that frightened me/haunted me to nervous distraction as a child, and that was the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I was 6 or 7, and we had an illustrated copy, and I would read it over and over again, as much as it freaked me out. Because I wanted to understand, I wanted to know what happened. I wanted to somehow STOP the events in the story. And the little lame boy who was left behind! I just ached for him. I over-identified with the story, as obviously I was meant to do.

Kate Greenaway’s illustration

So the Shtriga is a kind of Pied Piper. The disappearance of children is, of course, our way in to the deeper subtext of this episode. The real guts of it. Not just the plot-line aspects of it, where we see how much responsibility Dean was given as a child, and how much blame he endured. That’s important too. But the Monster of the Week here highlights the innocence of children, and how easily they can be carried off into the night if you don’t watch over them. Children vanishing. Subtextually, of course, Dean’s own childhood vanished. He was dragged off into the night, not by a monster, but by his own father. Sam had more of a childhood, but that was only because child-Dean ran interference, and took the majority of the crap from Dad. Dean acted as a human shield between Sam and monsters, Sam and Dad. Episode 3, “Dead in the Water”, was our first clue of the deep levels of trauma that have defined Dean Winchester. Not only that but he was only able to really express that stuff to the child in the episode, the traumatized Lucas. It was the first example of Dean bonding with a kid, or identifying with a kid, or being drawn to a kid. Trauma has stopped Dean’s growth. Kids are triggers. They remind him of who he used to be (briefly), who he has shoved down through toughness and strength, kids are reminders of all he has lost. It’s just not the same thing for Sam.

The little girl races to close the curtains, freaked out by the shadows (I don’t blame her), and then hides under the covers. A terrible and long spiky hand appears amongst the shadows in the window, and the hand opens the window from the outside, setting the little girl’s stars/moons wind chimes clinking and clattering, in a creepy overhead shot (reminiscent of the shot of the mobile seen from Sam’s POV in the very first teaser).

We actually get a glimpse of the thing head-on, it’s cavernous mouth opening wide.

I never want to see that thing again.

1st scene
The Impala barrels through the landscape. Sam and Dean are mid-argument. Thank goodness, because we’ve heard this argument before. Repeatedly. Dad has clearly texted them coordinates leading them to a town in Wisconsin called Fitchburg. Other than that, Dad has said nothing. But it’s enough information for Dean to go on. Maybe Dad has “unfinished business” there or something. Sam pushes back. Hard. He has done research on the town, the local papers, and there’s nothing fishy going on, not that he can tell. It is a wild goose chase, or Dad being a cryptic douche again – why are they just jumping when he calls? Dean is stoic and certain: Dad wouldn’t have sent us the coordinates for nothing. Maybe Dad will meet us there, says Dean. Sam laughs in Dean’s face. Dean pulls rank. “I’m the oldest, I’m always right.” He’s kidding, but the oldest brother thing will come up as a theme in the episode.

So which is it? Fitchberg? Or Fitchburg?

2nd scene
Dean brings coffee to Sam, who is leaning up against the Impala. Sam is engrossed in staring off-camera, and asks Dean for the time. Sam says, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

There is a gorgeous shot of the two men, a classic Supernatural shot, pairing them both in the frame, one in focus, the other slightly blurred.

They find inventive ways to muck with this format, and still do. How to put these two guys, with their different heights, different complexions, all that, into the same frame and make it work, and not be repetitive, is certainly one of the challenges for the DP.

Sam has been staring at a nearby playground. School’s out, but it’s virtually empty of kids. There is one little girl climbing on a jungle gym. Sam’s got excellent eyes. I love that he picked up on the absence of kids, and when Dean looks at the playground, he gets it too. Where the hell are all the kids?

This is the underlying question that Dean will end up asking himself, inadvertently, as he works the case. Not just “where are all the kids,” but “what the hell happened to ME as a kid?” “Where did I go?” One of the great things about Ackles’ performance in “Something Wicked” is that we can track when he starts to “get it”, when he starts to understand what the hell it is he is there for, why Dad sent him here. It’s not handed to us on a platter. Dean “gets it” before it reveals itself to us. That’s why the flashbacks start, sort of bombarding him with unwanted memories. The past is rising up to claim him. The past will also, of course, help him solve the case and understand what it is they are hunting.

Dean approaches the one mother in the playground. More often than not Dean is bad and awkward at these initial questionings. He “acts”, and it doesn’t go over well, because he chooses to flirt and he’s a terrible liar. But not here. He certainly doesn’t show the woman his cards, and is being more casual than he feels, but his questioning is simple and open. It reminds me of how he questioned Emily in “Scarecrow”. The mom says “it’s a shame” that the playground is empty – you know, because of all the sick kids. “How many?” asks Dean, spidey-sense on high alert.

The Kid-Thing. Dean is unable to deal with kids without personalizing. There is no separation for him. I mean, he barely has separation with anything. That no-boundaries thing. But it’s true with kids in particular.

The key to all of this, performance-wise, is underplaying, of which Ackles is a master. (He’s also a master at complete goofball clowning, which puts him in rare rare company.) If you were too on the nose, or in any way sentimental, with this kind of material, viewers might gag on the syrup. Well, I certainly would. The key to “Something Wicked”, too, is that Dean himself doesn’t know what’s going on half the time, that what he is actually investigating is his own childhood.

We can discuss how manipulative and terrible it was for Dad to just send coordinates to Dean, knowing that Dean would be ambushed eventually by old feelings of failure. It is, in its way, a reprimand from Dad, a reminder that Dad never forgets. Another key to why Dean Winchester works as a character, as infuriating as it may be, is that he willingly takes the reprimands when they come from Dad. He races to put his head on the chopping block. Fighting back is not an option. As much of a fighter as he is in other areas, it does not occur to him to fight Dad. Dean believes that he was wrong, he failed, he let everyone down. Dad knows how strong a strain of that feeling Dean has, and knows Dean will do what it takes to get the job done. It’s reprehensible, Dad’s behavior here (and he’s completely unseen, except in the flashbacks). The tension comes from sympathetic viewers who love Dean feeling defensive on his behalf. That tension is strong enough, compelling enough, to last for 9 seasons. It’s still going on. That is ALL on Ackles. And the writing staff, too, but without an actor who could tap into it, we’d just be in maudlin territory.

Dean’s lack of self-pity is triggering to some viewers, who want to see him cry, break down, feel bad for himself, so that they can have a catharsis. But holding back on certain things, withholding, is how good stories operate! One of the things you hear all the time in acting classes is stuff like, “If you the actor try to hold back the tears, your AUDIENCE will cry.” I’ve been to plays where some actress is SOBBING onstage, and she’s doing all the crying for me and her both. So Dean clamps down on feelings and self-pity and what happens in his audience? They RACE to feel all that FOR him. And that, my friends, is a slam-dunk for an actor. That is how actors get a rabid fan base. Or, one of the ways.

Dean is not a victim. He is a SURVIVOR. And we can see what that actually can mean in reality, what being a survivor has actually done to him.

Somerset Maugham wrote, “It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part makes men petty and vindictive.”

I have certainly found that to be true in my own life. The idea that suffering itself is somehow noble is pretty damaging and has contributed to the glorification of victimization that we currently live in, something that Sam and Dean Winchester fight valiantly against. I admire that about them. I also admire how well Dean has survived the trauma, without it killing his capacity for empathy. However, we are coming to the end (for now) of that road in Season 9, when everything is catching up to him. You can’t bludgeon a man for 30-plus years and expect him to remain unchanged. An unwillingness to feel sorry for himself is certainly a huge motivator for both Dean and Sam. Their moments of self-pity are few and far between (and are often hugely cathartic moments). Anger at what has been done to them is common, but that too comes out only after a long fight.

It is their relationship to one another that has been their saving grace. It shows up in different ways, in different forms, seen through different angles of the prism. It is an Achilles heel, it is also redemptive. It is their downfall, it is also the only thing they have.

3rd scene
I love how the hospital steps (which, if I’m not mistaken, have been used about 800 times in the series thus far) are overshadowed by the looming hood of the Impala in the foreground. It’s not just a standard establishing shot. It’s saying: “The brothers are in the house.”

In cheap suits, Dean and Sam walk down a hallway of the hospital and they are arguing. (In the gag reel, there was clearly a lot of laughing done on this day. It’s amazing they got any clean takes.) Sam balks at the badge Dean gave him, which says that Sam is a “bikini inspector” for the CDC. Dean takes on the big brotherly role, tells him it’s all about “confidence”, she won’t even look at the badge, so now it’s show-time, and he shoves Sam up to the front desk. The nurse asks for some ID, and Sam reaches into his pocket, pulls out a card, shows it to her, smiling like a game-show host. He seems so SKETCHY. I love it when innocent Sam seems sketchy.

He could inspect my bikini any time. But only if he stops smiling in that mega-watt way! It’s freaking me out!

I like that in this pretty grim episode we see the brothers’ relationship in a couple different facets: serious, teasing, arguing. It is the natural ebb and flow of their bond.

Once up on the pediatrics floor, they stroll down the hallway in a nice long one-shot, and Dean glances into a room and sees a withered white-haired crone (Mary Black, she’s awesome) sitting there, with noir-shadows and an upside-down cross on the wall.

She will end up being a total red herring. I love it when Supernatural indulges in red herrings because that would be how it would go during an investigation. You follow every lead. And creepy old witch lady? Clearly is a suspect merely for being creepy! She turns and stares up at Dean with an evil ferocious gleam in her eyes, something that chills him to the bone. Sam has moved on down the hall, but Dean can’t move. I love this shot of him, with the two tones of the wall behind him interrupted by his body. It’s a beautifully framed shot, those colors sort of highlighting the focal point of the image, which is – obviously – him.

They meet up with the pediatrician named Dr. Hydecker (Adrian Hough, who, HOLLA, also played Victor, the Hunter-slash-Foster-Father in “Freaks and Geeks” in Season 8) who walks them through the pediatrics ward with all the sick kids behind the glass.

A word on the color-scheme of the episode which is very well thought-out: The flashbacks are completely drained of color, on the verge of black-and-white in some scenes. The current day is all whites and greys and silvers, with stark black shadows. Everything is desaturated to the extreme, color drained out, light fuzzy and gleaming, a visual representation of that “spiritus vitae” which will come up later.

Dean stares in at all the sick kids. Doc says at first he thought it was pneumonia, but now “It’s like their bodies are wearing out,” says the doctor. A nurse comes up and joins the conversation, saying that “it” works its way through the families, taking down one sibling after another.

Sam and Dean loom over the father we saw in the teaser, and notice how the light streams in silvery and strange behind them.

The dad says, “I already went through all this with the doctor,” which brings me to one of my favorite repeat motifs on the show. How victims and witnesses say stuff to the Winchesters constantly like, “But I already told the police this …” “Like I already said to the cops …” The writers never get tired of the repetition. It STILL happens. I love it because it’s funny, first of all, especially when it keeps showing up, but I also love it because it helps us feel like we are in the real world, as opposed to some Fantasy-Land where the brothers operate in a vacuum. Dean and Sam are interlopers and are asking these people to go over well-trod ground. Of course you would be confused – why am I being asked the same question twice? Who are these guys again?

Beautiful shot of Sam and Dean in profile. See how the color scheme is working? Even something boring and rote like a fluorescent light is made to seem strange and fuzzy. Nothing is random.

Sam and Dean head off down the hall after questioning Sad Dad, and this time it is Sam saying, “Maybe there’s nothing supernatural going on here.” Dean knows there is, if only because Dad sent them the coordinates. But I can sense that Ackles is already playing something else here, a stirring of the inner depths, a strange feeling inside. There’s something else going on for him in these early scenes, even though he has no language to support it.

I love this next moment because Sam, who always seems to be more on the moral high ground, suggests that they go over to the house of the latest admission, the house of the Dad they just talked to. He won’t be going home any time soon. So inappropriate! So awesome! Dean is impressed with the suggestion. Usually sketchy suggestions like that come from him.

4th scene
Dean and Sam, with EMFs, give the little girl’s room a once-over. Sam goes over to the window, and Dean just stands there for a second, looking around the room. The pictures, the dolls, the kids’ stuff. He’s in the presence of a family. A family where something has happened to the kids. It’s quiet, not dwelled-on, no big closeups, not yet. He can feel that shift going on inside him.

Sam opens the window and his eye looks at the ledge. There’s a nice shot from outside the window, Dean in shadow in the background, both of them framed by the white white paint of the window frame.

There’s a horrifying claw-print scratched into the sill, and now, finally, we get a big honking closeup of Dean leaning in. A closeup like that is emotional in nature. Now he knows. Now he knows what’s going on.

Sam whispers, “What the hell leaves a handprint like that?”

Dean’s face then turns into the face of young freckled Dean (played by Ridge Canipe in a couple of flashback episodes, and he does an excellent job in what is a very difficult and very grownup role).

Flashback 1
Young Dean stares down at a photograph of the same claw print, with Dad’s journal crowding in on the side.

Motel Room Alert! It’s a freakin’ bowling alley theme. Also notice: it’s all whites and greys and silvers.

What. The. Hell with those bowling pins.

And there’s a young John Winchester (or, younger: Jeffrey Dean Morgan is kind of miraculous at seeming almost 20 years younger than he was in “Shadow”, when he’s obviously the same age. It’s a matter of being clean-shaven, and having somewhat neat hair, his Marine Corps days still having an effect on him.)

John Winchester is pumping a shotgun and giving Dean instructions. Dean is bored and frustrated because Dad has obviously already told him all this and he KNOWS what to do, he’s not STUPID. John says, “Come on, dude. Look alive. This stuff’s important.” Dean KNOWS it’s important. Why doesn’t his Dad treat him like an equal?

Also, there is the creepy feeling, once you’ve seen the whole episode, that John Winchester is purposefully leaving his children unattended, in order to draw the Shtriga their way. Bait. As Dean and Sam do with Michael later in the episode. It’s the only way. It becomes a huge argument for Sam and Dean, it’s crossing a line. But the problem is: that line was already crossed in their childhood. How do you re-assert boundaries when they have already been so compromised? John Winchester knows that he is hunting something that attacks children. Instead of dropping them off with Bobby or Pastor Jim, to get them out of harm’s way, he brings them along, and leaves them alone in the Bowling Alley Motel Room. For days.

The windows stream with light from outside, making the interior of the Motel seem even grimier, dirtier. It’s also like the glaring light from the Shtriga’s mouth is already in the room. Or maybe (a more hopeful interpretation), it is the boys’ “spiritus vitae,” their life force strong, vital, resilient, even in the face of what they are put through. Who knows. All I know it is an individual look, specific to “Something Wicked,” the light pouring in from windows in a blur of white.

Dad’s final instructions: “Most important?”
Dean: “Watch out for Sammy.”

And then we see Sammy (Alex Ferris) behind Dean, watching TV, totally zoned out. (The actor they eventually got to play young Sam in multiple episodes, Colin Ford, is phenomenal and could totally go toe to toe with these adult actors, and they were able to give him some extremely difficult scenes, like when he appears to Sam in the panic room. He more than held his own. Little Alex Ferris doesn’t have much to do here, but be cute and appealing.)

Dad says, “If something tries to bust in?”
Dean: “Shoot first, ask questions later.”
Dad, proud: “That’s my man.”

Then we see the cartoon Sam is watching, and I’m sorry, but please look at the reflection of the damn bowling pins in the screen.

I love this show. It’s so WEIRD.

4th scene, Part 2
Dean straightens up from the windowsill. He’s shaken. He’s also stirred. How can he tell Sammy that he’s figured it out WITHOUT telling Sammy the whole story? “I know why Dad sent us here. He’s faced this thing before.”

Dean says to Sam, “He wants us to finish the job.” There is a symphony of stuff going on behind the lines. There’s that strangely submissive quality that we saw in “Shadow,” when he was in Dad’s presence, an unwillingness to look at Sam directly, his eyes making brief eye contact, and then looking away. He swallows. It’s a hell of a closeup.

The overriding impression I get is one of guilt and shame.

5th scene
Because I am obsessed with the Motel Room Motif: the next scene opens with the Impala pulling up underneath a huge blinking neon sign. It’s so noir, it’s so Edward Hopper. The lonely wet rainy by-ways of America, off-the-beaten-path.

Sam and Dean get out of the car and Dean has obviously given Sam a bare-bones rundown of what they’re hunting. Sam has never heard of “shtriga” before, and Dean doesn’t know much about it either. “It’s kind of like a witch, I think,” says Dean, but still, there’s more there that he’s not saying. You get the sense that he would prefer to never ever talk about that past event. If he could get away with never revealing it, he would. He does not forgive himself for his actions back then. And Dad texting them coordinates is a reminder that Dad hasn’t forgotten. One could say that John knows that for DEAN this is “unfinished business”, not just for him … but Dean is still taking it as a pointed reminder of that shame.

Sam wonders why there’s no mention of such a thing in Dad’s journal, and Dean says that Dad hunted one about 16, 17 years ago, also in Wisconsin. “You don’t remember?” Dean says. “You were there.”

Sam finds the whole story sketchy. Why is this thing still breathing if Dad was hunting it? He killed everything. Dean is brushing it off, “I don’t know, maybe he didn’t have his Wheaties that morning.”

Sam is no dummy. He knows his brother. “What else do you remember?”

Dean throws down the roadblock. “Nothing. I was a kid, all right?”

Next comes a beloved scene in the Supernatural lexicon. A little kid named Michael (Colby Paul) is manning the desk of the motel. He emerges from the back room and looks up at Dean with a completely blasé expression and asks, “King or two queens?”

Dean, oblivious, walks right into trouble by replying, “Two queens.”

The kid glances out at Sam, in a shot that is so glamorous and dark and sexy it makes my eyes ache.

The kid murmurs, staring out at Sam, “Yeah, I bet.” Dean realizes he’s being made fun of, that yet again he and his brother are being taken for a gay couple, but the kid has already moved on, complimenting his car, which normally warms Dean up, but not this time. Dean is not really an adult. He is an actual man, of course, but inside he’s about 11 years old, and suddenly he’s basically in a playground taunting-match with this little kid. The kid’s mom (Venus Terzo) enters, and takes over the transaction, telling the kid to “go get your brother some dinner.” Dean sort of smirks down at the kid, like, “Ha ha I beat you” which is so ridiculous, and the kid wins the round anyway by snarking to his mother, “Two queens.”

Dean hands over his bogus Master Card and please note what local joint is being advertised on the lobby wall behind him.

At the preliminary design meetings: “Okay, so let’s having everything be grey and white and silver … and let’s have bowling alleys somehow be featured, because why the hell NOT…”

While she runs the credit card, Dean glances in the back and sees the little boy pouring a glass of milk for his younger brother.

The camera pulls into Dean, watching this, with a vulnerable almost caught look on his face. The flashback is connected to the present by another closeup of a glass of milk being poured. It’s a good way to handle flashbacks, grounding the shift in time with an object. Objects hold memories. That is the whole basis of sense memory. As acting teacher/Actors Studio founder Lee Strasberg once said, “You can look down at a pair of shoes and see your whole life.”

Flashback 2

The TV is on in the background and I can’t figure out what they are watching. Whatever it is involves rocket ships, a guy writhing in agony, and a scene with flickering lights. Dean is cooking supper for Sam on the little hot plate.

The next bit actually makes me tear up every time I see it. Young Sam balks at Spaghetti-Os. He wants Lucky Charms. Dean tells him there are no more Lucky Charms and Young Sam isn’t buying that, he saw the box. Dean says, “There’s only enough left for one bowl and I haven’t had any yet.” It’s hard for Young Dean to say that, to assert his own hunger, that he needs to eat too. He thinks that maybe Dad would say he was being selfish and Dean should go without. Protect Sammy. Watch out for Sammy. Young Dean’s stomach is growling, though. Lucky Charms will be all he will eat all day. It’s the sort of defensive tone this young actor brings to that one line that really makes it land for me. He feels GUILTY for having to eat himself.

Children are not supposed to be selfless. They are SUPPOSED to be selfish. You cannot fault a child for wanting to eat. And any parent would go without in order to put food in their children’s mouths. No brainer. Dean was not taken care of, and Dean was never allowed to be selfish. Being selfish is a normal part of development, AND “selfish” has negative connotations but it’s not, not really. You have to believe you are worth something, you have to believe that your survival is not irrelevant, that you deserve to be here. If that’s selfish … we’re all screwed.

Dean IS best when he has something/one to take care of. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. We all have different ways of coping with trauma. Someone may look at my life and say, “Jeez, she handled her trauma that way? I know EXACTLY what she should do and the best way she should get over it.” Well excuse me for saying, but Eff You. Dean’s need to “take care” of things is his strongest instinct. Clearly, “taking care of Sam” is no longer working, as an adult. I mean, honestly. We’ve had 9 seasons seeing how it doesn’t work anymore. And Dean is now sliding off the rails completely. It’s about time. It’s about time people looked at Dean and thought, “Jeez. We should maybe … take care of HIM for a little while … I don’t know … he’s way WAY off …” Of course he won’t be able to tolerate it. Hence: tension/drama/storytelling/conflict. Hoo-yah.

Anyway, these are all interesting ways that Dean’s care-taking thing has played out. But here, in “Something Wicked”, we see how it was drilled into him first-hand, and what happened when he took his eye off the ball.

Sam just stares up at Dean pleadingly, and Dean can’t help it, he gives in: he throws away the Spaghetti-Os and plops down the Lucky Charms box in front of Sam. Sam, not getting it, because why would he, he’s 6 years old, reaches in and hands the prize out to Dean with a hopeful little smile. Let’s just turn the screws on us, shall we, Supernatural?

5th scene Part 2

In the dark and manly motel room, with wood paneling and cheap curtains, Sam sits on the bed, researching on his laptop, and Dean pours himself a cup of coffee. It’s not that it’s hard for Dean to keep secrets. It’s that it is a moral imperative that the story he now remembers doesn’t get out.

He was 10 years old when this all went down. He is now 27. He has been haunted by it ever since. If you are a survivor of trauma, then you don’t want to dredge it up. There’s a reason you bury those things. Trauma makes you unable to “incorporate” these memories into your world-view and your self-view. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. If nothing else, strangely enough, and beautifully enough, Supernatural is about trauma. Trauma inflicted on guys who have been trained to be tough. It’s a certain KIND of trauma, and you can see it in evidence in veterans and people who have been through something as hellacious as Fallujah or whatever else. This isn’t on the level of playground bullying. This is shell-shock, essentially.

Sam has been researching “shtriga” and it has taken some digging on his part. They hail from Albania, because, of course. Maybe the war in the Balkans made the Shtriga flee to Wisconsin for fresh meat. Who knows. There’s some interesting information here, especially when it comes to the “evil eye” (something Dean got a good look at with the Red Herring Crone in the hospital).

I love the fake website designs.

The Shtriga sucks out your “spiritus vitae,” and Sam is a bit snotty when saying to Dean, “It’s Latin. It means breath of life.” (Also, judging from the websites on your laptop, you just looked up that word yourself, Sam, no need to be snotty about it.) Dean is writing something, misses the tone, wouldn’t care if he did pick up on it. Ever since he saw that claw-scratch on the windowsill he has moved far away from Sam, emotionally, spiritually. It’s like the intimacy of being charged to be someone’s protector actually isolates you from being able to BE with them. If you see yourself as a protector, if you see your brother as someone you must protect, as opposed to someone you just have to love and be kind to and whatever … then it will totally color how you react to that person. It muddies the waters. And so, in self-protection, Dean draws back from Sam. It’s subtle, but it’s there. It’s too painful to be close to someone he failed so deeply. Ackles is playing all of it.

Sam has found out that Shtriga are resistant to all weapons, and Dean, not looking at Sam, says, “No, that’s not right. She’s vulnerable when she feeds.” Busy in his duffel bag. Getting something. Rattling off that she can be killed with consecrated wrought iron. Sam is struck by the detail. How does Dean know this? Dean, still busy: “Dad told me.”

Sam, who has always felt a little left out of the dynamic duo of Dad and Dean is almost insulted. Why the hell has he been researching then if Dean has more information? “Did Dad tell you anything else?” Sam says.

And watch how Dean says, “No, that’s it.”

You can tell a good actor when you see that the coverup is as good and as real and as believable as the underlying truth. Too many actors “telegraph” their subtext in ways both obvious and insulting to audiences. Why do they do this? For a variety of reasons. Lack of talent, for one. They don’t know HOW to “play subtext.” They only know how to play the lines, which lead them to obvious on-the-nose choices. But they also “telegraph” the subtext (“See all the pain I am really in beneath my smiles??”) because it is through the “subtext” (the character’s pain, loss, whatever it may be) that the audience will feel sympathy for your character. And too many actors want to be liked. It’s not a mystery as to why that is the case, but still: your work suffers when you are concerned with being “understood” or “liked” by an audience. Leave the audience hanging, dammit. Let the audience decide for themselves. Now obviously Jensen Ackles is an enormously appealing actor and he doesn’t have to work too hard to get people on his side. But he also knows that the coverup is not only PART of Dean’s identity, it is woven into his fabric, it is, in many ways, WHO he is. He wouldn’t be an amateur at his own coverup, in other words. So Dean, at the counter, looking down, and saying, “Nope, that’s it,” is a fascinating example of how to play the cover-up of a damaged character. It gives almost nothing away.

I’ve said before that in some cases Dean is a terrible liar. But in other cases, he is world-class.

Dean, in the middle of his emotional burlesque act (both concealing and revealing at the same time), feels the gaze on him from across the room and says, “What?” It’s similar to what went down in “Route 666” when Sam suddenly realized that his slutty older brother had actually had a pretty important love affair. Sam can’t stop staring at Dean and Dean needs Sam to stop staring at him. Dean needs everyone to stop looking at him. I’ve gone into that before. Dean is so charismatic, naturally, that he is usually the center of attention. When it’s a hookup situation, he uses it to his advantage and takes pleasure in it. But in general, he hates being the center of attention. When he was the center of Dad’s attention, it was always Bad Bad News. Stop looking at me.

Sam backs off, and says that Whatever they do, they have to do it fast. When a Shtriga isn’t hunting, it takes on human form, usually something “innocuous” like a little old lady, which is, Sam informs us nerdily, where the whole Witch-as-Crone thing came from. The brothers are beautifully set up over at the counter. You have to be inventive with these guys, you have to get them in the same frame, and you have to do so in a way that is not totally repetitive because then it would become schtick. This is a good example.

We are now faced with Dean, who is thinking thinking thinking. He’s a couple steps ahead of us. And Sam. Without a word, Dean remembers the woman at the hospital. He remembers how she looked at him. Dean goes to get a map and shows Sam what he’s discovered, that in the center of the location of the victims’ homes, lies the hospital. Ackles, again, is playing this very specifically, with multiple layers. He’s super-serious, because the memory is upon him now, and Dad hovers over him, wagging his finger. It is personal.

Dean tells Sam, “When I was at the hospital, I saw an old woman.”

Maybe my favorite moment in the episode is here, where Sam, leading Dean on into a joke, says, “An old person? At the hospital? Oof, better call the Coast Guard.”

Such an asshole, and so funny.

Dean is in no mood for teasing, and is in no mood to be treated like some dumb jock jackass. But notice how he has distanced himself from Sam, how he is purposefully keeping himself separated somehow, behind a wall inside of him. He can barely look at his brother directly, something we saw when Dad suddenly showed up in Chicago. The intimacy between the brothers, the ease, vanished. And here it is again, blocking him from closeness with Sam. That is the legacy of the memory. Dean, pissed, gets Sam’s attention by saying, “Listen, smart ass, she had an inverted cross hanging on her wall.”

It’s an extremely well-written scene, and extremely well-played, by both actors. When you think about it, the entire scene is just information. That’s all. What a Shtriga is. How to kill her. That’s it. But the emotions underneath are operatic and it is those emotions that MAKE the scene. That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about subtext.

6th scene
At the hospital, after hours, looking for the Crone. I mean, do they look ominous, or what?

Of course the Crone is in Room 237.

Supernatural uses the Room 237 joke a couple of times, especially in the clear Shining-inspired episode in a later season, with the creepy haunted hotel, but here it is just a fun small in-joke, leading us even further down the Red Herring path, should we pick up on it. If that crone is in Room 237, then you KNOW she is bad news!

Before they enter the room, Dean pulls out a gun, and Sam gives him a look. What, we’re gonna shoot this woman? Dean sort of shrugs, like, “I know, I know,” doesn’t put the gun down, and gestures to Sam, with the gun, to open the door. It is one of those silent-movie pantomimes between them that I love so much. The show allows for that spontaneity of behavior. Not a lot of shows do.

Think about how messed up the situation is: Sam and Dean are sneaking into a little old lady’s room in the hospital in the dead of night. She is ILL. They are ready to kill her with gleaming silver guns. She has done nothing wrong. The only thing she has done wrong is to look super-creepy. It’s hilarious.

Forget the Evil-Eye crone, check out how scary Dean looks!

She springs to life, sensing him there and starts CrankyPants-ing about how people are always “stealing her stuff”. She scares Dean out of his mind, he topples back against the wall, completely freaked out, all as Sam hurriedly turns on the lights, trying to salvage the situation by apologizing and saying they’re maintenance.

‘Cause janitors brandish silver pistols.

She crackpots, “I was sleeping with my peepers open!!” and starts laughing to herself, and Dean, susceptible (as he always is when he gets scared), and freaked out, can’t seem to move, pinned against the wall beneath the cross, and she barks at him to “fix that damn crucifix”, and Dean does, giving Sam a slow look like, “We just almost fucking killed a harmless Granny. Oops!”

7th scene
Back at the Motel, the two young brothers sleep in a room with stark shadows on the wall, it’s raining and blowing wind. The tree branches scrape at the window, and then, suddenly we see the hand creep into view. I just hate the Shtriga so much.

8th scene
Dean and Sam, the next morning, drive back to the Motel (where the hell have you boys been all this time? Out to breakfast?), and Sam is still laughing about the “peepers” line. Dean is not amused. Nothing is funny. Then he catches a glimpse of the young kid who had snarked about “two queens” the night before, and the kid is sitting on a bench outside the main office and his posture seems slumped and defeated. Something in it calls to Dean. He walks over to the kid, with Sam following, perplexed. Sam is obviously picking up on the fact that Dean is not quite … together … right now, but so far he hasn’t mentioned it.

Dean squats down to get on the kid’s level (both guys do that, compulsively, whenever they have to deal with kids, they’re aware of how huge they are), and cuts right to the heart of the matter. Not “How’s it going.” No. He says, “What’s wrong?” Because he knows. And the kid says his brother is in the hospital. He’s in tears. Dean had already taken in the entire brother dynamic in that one glimpse he got of the older brother pouring the younger brother a glass of milk. That one glimpse told him all he needed to know.

“It’s my fault,” says the kid. “I should have left the window latched. He wouldn’t have pneumonia if I had left the window latched.”

Dean pauses. He knows exactly what he wants to say. It’s not that he is wordless. It’s just that nobody ever said this to him, and he is having an awareness of that, in real-time, at this very moment, and it takes him a second. He speaks directly to the kid, pretty intense: “Listen to me. I can promise you that this was not your fault, okay?”

A key factor to understanding Dean Winchester is not just the whole Life-as-Burlesque-Act thing he’s got going on (which was my main “way in” to the guy), but what I mentioned earlier, his dogged refusal to feel self-pity. When it does come up, it threatens to completely destroy him, that’s how big the pain is. If Dean Winchester were played with a self-awareness of how bad it was for him, of feeling sorry for himself … we just would have nothing with the character. No tension. Nowhere to go. So we can look on here and say, “Jesus. Nobody ever said this to HIM and someone damn well SHOULD have.” And Dean clearly has a foggy awareness of that, although that awareness fights with remaining loyalty to Dad. It’s a gorgeous tension. Strung tight as a wire. But, unlike other damaged men, he does not scorn innocence. He still protects it and sees it as valuable. John Winchester did NOT do that with Dean. The whole innocence thing is really the point of the whole episode, and what happens when it is ripped away too soon, the marks it leaves. And by the end of the episode, Dean makes an enormous concession to one of Sam’s comments, whereas earlier in the season, he would have pushed back and HARD. But that edifice is cracking. “Something Wicked” is really the game-changer. The season has been working up to it meticulously. Neither guy is quite the same by the end of it.

Mom hustles out of the office, in a state of total worried distraction, giving Michael orders on what to do while she’s gone. Michael, panicked, says he wants to go with her, he needs to see Asher! Dean steps in and it’s a beautiful moment, showing his automatic parental instinct, his empathy, too, for all sides in the domestic drama unfolding before him: “Michael, I know how you feel. I’m a big brother too. But you need to go easy on your mom right now.” I love the moment. Mom is so freaked out that Dean in full-on caretaker alpha-dog mode, says. “You’re in no condition to drive. Let me drive you to the hospital.”

She, like Dean, is not a self-pitying woman, although there clearly is a history behind her life, there’s no Dad in the picture, who knows what happened, and she runs the motel and her sons have obviously taken on responsibilities. She refuses his offer and he says, gently, but firmly, “It’s no trouble. I insist.”

It’s so ORGANIC, who he’s being. I think of the fireman who helped me the night of my apartment-building fire, when I was out of my mind because my cat was lost and half of the building was destroyed. That guy was not affronted by my emotions, did not condescend to them, did not try to tell me to calm down … he did NOTHING but firmly and gently take care of me. Hovering around me while I packed up my stuff to go to the hotel where they were putting us up. And I was SOBBING because my cat was lost. He didn’t blink an eye. Just stood there, with his flashlight through my trashed apartment, waiting as I packed. I’ll never forget him. I felt safe in his presence. He is on my mind because there was another fire in my neighborhood this past week, a bad one, and I saw him hanging around in the street in the aftermath. He recognized me, said Hi. Good man.

But again, there’s that other level for Dean, burgeoning. He holds open the door for her, and you can see it churning in him. FURY. After he closes the door on her, he turns and looks at Michael, briefly, and then turns to Sam, saying intensely, but never once looking at Sam, “We’re gonna kill this thing. I want it dead, you hear me?”

9th scene
Public library scene! Not only Yay for that but Yay for actual microfilm! I spent many an hour in college huddled over those damn screens, scrolling through old articles, looking for whatever it was I needed. And also Yay for no overhead lights, and a dark moody space. It’s so damn Supernatural.

Sam sits at the screen, and gives Dean a call. Dean is at the hospital with the sick kid, who is not doing well. Dean seems drained and sad. It might be nice to step out of the sick room, Dean, to take your phone call, but no matter, it’s more dramatic to have the sick kid in the background. Sam has been researching the Shtriga, and there is a gorgeous old-school shot of his face with the microfilm text reflected up onto him.

This is a classic exposition scene, with Sam rattling off what he discovered, and so both sides of the phone call have so much visual interest in them to counter-act what might be boring. It looks great.

Every 15, 16 years, this thing hits a new town, and tons of children die. It goes into hiding, re-emerges again. So basically what they are seeing now in Fitchburg/berg is just starting. Dean listens and asks, “How far back does this thing go?” His voice is husky, he’s starting to lose it.

Because what is happening now, what is happening to Asher, is his fault.

Sam has found a mention of some mysterious ailment taking kids back in the 1890s, and he comes across a photo of a group of doctors huddled around a bed. It’s from 1893, and Dr. Hydecker is clearly visible in the group. Dean hears this new development and is not openly shocked, or angry. He gets even more still, even more focused.

When he hangs up, he looks back at Dr. Hydecker, cupping the kid’s head in the bed. The look on Dean’s face would cut glass. Now that he knows he is in the presence of this thing, everything changes.The rage is starting to grow. The doctor comes over to him, colleague to colleague, and asks him what the CDC has come up with, and Dean, face to face with the monster, this thing he saw when he was a kid, this thing that almost killed his brother, this monstrous thing that preys on the innocent … you can see him barely holding onto his “act”. He can barely be civil. He is looking directly into the Heart of Darkness.

“Nothing’s more important to me than these kids,” says Dr. Hydecker, and Dean nods, but the look in his eyes is murderous. It’s actually scary.

10th scene
Dean and Sam meet up back at the hotel room. Both of them are pacing. Dean has to take his jacket off. He’s too upset, he is crawling out of his own skin. He actually goes into the bathroom to get a cold cloth to put on his neck. He says he’s relieved he hadn’t brought a gun to the hospital, he would have shot the doctor “on principle”. But Dean already knows what to do. If this thing can only be killed when it’s feeding, then maybe Michael is their only chance. Maybe it will come for Michael tonight. Sam flips out. “No. We’re not gonna dangle Michael in front of that thing.” Sam is startled that Dean would even suggest it. They don’t DO this, what the hell is Dean saying? It’s starting now. It’s starting to come up, it’s gonna come out, and Dean can’t stop it. Also, consider that Sam’s version of Dad is different than Dean’s. Dad DID use Dean as bait, and I am guessing it got even creepier and weirder when Dean hit adolescence. There’s a comfort/familiarity in Dean in “Dead Man’s Blood” when he pimps himself out to the vampire, all as Dad looks on. So that’s another secret in Dean’s memory, a secret he never revealed to Sam, and still hasn’t. It’s deep deep subtext. Sam is horrified at using someone as bait, because it was never done to him. It’s beyond the pale. But Dean has been used as bait repeatedly. And hell, he survived, it’s not the worst thing in the world. You get over it.

Dean slips up, saying “Dad sent me here for a reason,” and Sam says, “Sent YOU here? He sent US here.” Dean has to walk away now, there are tears coming, his sense of blame crashing over his head over what went down.

Sam doesn’t know what he has stepped into, but he is not afraid. “Talk to me. You’ve been hiding something from the get-go.”

So Dean starts talking. “Fort Douglas, Wisconsin. Our third night in this crap room. I needed to get some air.”

Third night. Think about that and think about how little those kids are.

Flashback 3
Dean, in the Bowling Alley room, watching television, some old black-and-white movie, I wish I could tell what it was. He glances back at sleeping Sammy in the next room, goes and grabs the key and leaves the room.

He hangs out for a while in the motel office, playing a video game. No one else is around. Eventually, the motel room manager tells him he’s closing up. Dean heads back across the dark parking lot and lets himself back into the crap room. It’s all shadows, except now the door to Sam’s room is almost closed, and the light is on back there. Slowly, Dean moves towards Sammy’s room, and I know it’s a serious moment, but please just look at the bowling pins hanging to the left. Marmaduke, you CRAZY!

Once Dean opens the door he is confronted with the sight of the horrifying Shtriga, hovering over Sam’s sleeping head, mouth wide, and gleaming blue from within. It’s one of the most terrible images ever created on this damn show. It is a metaphor for the Winchesters’ entire childhood.

Dean reaches down for the shotgun by the door and holds it up. But it’s like he’s moving in slow motion. He’s a child, and he’s scared, and he hesitates. At this very moment, John Winchester bursts in, shouting at Dean to get out of the way. It seems obvious that John had been hovering nearby the whole time, one, two, three days, letting his children starve, waiting for the Shtriga to come after his boys so he could catch it in the act. Maybe he knew that Dean would “crack” and leave Sam unattended. Maybe he was COUNTING on Dean being “weak” in that way. I wouldn’t put it past him.

John shoots the Shtriga, and the Shtriga wheels back towards the window, and I’m sorry to interrupt the serious moment, yet again, but look at the photo over Sam’s bed.

I can’t stand it.

Dad picks up Sammy, and cradles him, cuddling him, in tears, overwhelming Sam with love and protection, all as Dean peeks in from the other room.

Sam is the one who often feels on the outside of the Dad-Dean dynamic, but from the beginning, it seems now that it was always Dad and Sam who were in the inner circle, with Dean banished to the outside. It’s heartbreaking. Even more heartbreaking, is how Young Dean moves tentatively into the room. You want someone to look out for this child. He’s so small. Dean says to Dad, “I just went out for a second…” because he can’t lie or bluff.

Dad can’t believe it. His is the worst possible reaction, cold and angry: “I told you not to leave this room. I told you not to let him out of your sight.”

It’s brutal.

Even more brutal, is the contempt in Dad’s eyes.

There are many bad dynamics a relationship can survive, if the couple is determined to work on it. But one thing that cannot be overcome is contempt. Studies have been done. The work of Paul Ekman and his analysis of facial expressions has been fascinating. Malcolm Gladwell has written a lot about Ekman, and here’s a piece about the contempt factor. I am sure you know couples where one person treats the other with habitual contempt. Literally rolling their eyes at their life partner, behind his back or even in front. (I say “his” because I have mostly observed this in male-female relationships, with the female in the contemptuous role. But obviously the opposite will also be true, and I’m sure it goes on in same-sex relationships as well. Any time human beings get together, the danger of contempt – from familiarity, perhaps? – is there.) I did not grow up with parents who did that to each other. I did not grow up with a mother who eye-rolled about her husband in public. I find that energy so toxic that I can’t be with it at all. If you roll your eyes more than 10 times a day about your partner, then you need to look in the mirror and ask why you are with someone you find so disgusting. My first relationship, which lasted four years, was with a guy who held me in contempt. And then would make up for it by being super-sweet and fun and exciting. So I never knew which end was up, and I was young, and didn’t know how to fight back, and being treated with contempt for years has marked me, unfortunately. It’s why I like tough independent-minded guys who are somewhat casual in their approach to me. Not casual as in careless, or over-it, but casual as in: “You do your thing, I’ll do mine. Let’s overlap whenever possible. Because I think you’re totally cool.” I feel totally safe with a guy like that. Other women find such men stressful for their own very valid reasons, and need more, but I find it relaxing and safe. I need a ton of space. I have followed Ekman’s work with great interest because it rang so true. I first encountered it in a Malcolm Gladwell piece in The New Yorker.

The way Dad looks at him there is shattering to Dean’s sense of self and his sense of safety. He will never get it back.

As a man, he is doing the best he can with the fragments left behind from that event. He has survived it. He survived his childhood. But it has marked him forever.

10th scene part 2
Dean finishes up the story and looks wrecked. Sam is now sitting beside him, thoughtful, kind, sad. Dean never once looks at Sam. It’s too much. He can’t be close to Sam anymore. In Dean’s mind, Sam would be right to be pissed off at him too.In what worldview would Sam say, “Dude, how could you go play a video game and leave me alone? Damn you, you almost got me killed!” But that’s how Dean sees it. Dean is harder on himself than anyone else is: that is one thing he learned from his father. I am very glad that Dean shared the story. He’ll hate himself for it later, especially when Sam tries to get all yoga-mat-supportive about it, but it’s good information for Sam to have.

And it’s good information for US to have. It changed my whole conception/feeling about the character. I started seeing him in the context of child abuse and trauma, and saw John Winchester for who he really was. From then on out, my feelings about the whole family was more complex. Deeper. It’s a hell of a hook.

Dean tells Sam that after that night “Dad looked at me different, you know? Which was worse.”

Sam says, “Dean, you were just a kid,” which is what any normal empathetic person would say when told such a terrible story, Dean shuts that down quick. “Don’t. Don’t.”

It’s all underplaying. Dean even tries to laugh a couple of times, because that’s what you would try to do. It’s only Bad Actors who race to “feel bad feelings” and “show” their pain. Normal human beings try NOT to feel unpleasant things. We fight against pain, we don’t want other people to see it.

Dean’s whole energy is so different here than what it has been in the entire episode. Telling the story has taken something out of him. He is quiet and still and a tiny bit broken.

I’ve spoken before about Sam’s acknowledgment and awareness of the truth of what is going on for him, whatever it may be (discounting the demon blood, I mean). Sam has secrets, and will have more, but at this early stage, it’s pretty cut-and-dry. He is not walking around burdened by secrets he cannot bear to look at. He KNOWS what’s going on for him. He doesn’t feel guilty about applying to Stanford and betraying the family because he doesn’t see it as a betrayal. He is healthy, in other words. That will change. Dean, on the other hand, is so repressed that he is ambushed by his memories, and ambushed by his realizations about himself and what is going on for him. Dean’s way to survive was to tough it out, and shove it down. That works. For a while. It won’t work forever.

I’ll just throw in one of my favorite analogies again: Oak trees snap in hurricane winds because they are so rigid and straight. Willow trees bend, and therefore survive even the harshest blast. Dean’s rigid reaction to trauma, clamping down on it, has made him MORE fragile than Sam, who has been able to bend with it all a little bit.

11th scene
Little Michael has obviously been informed by the Two Queens about the “Shtriga” because we next see him gripping the telephone in the motel office and screaming at them: “You guys are crazy! I’m calling the cops!” Dean cuts to the chase: “This is what attacked your little brother. It attacked my little brother too.” Michael asks, nervously, “Does this thing have a long … robe?” He thought he was having a nightmare. Dean, with his feelings about innocence, his sense that it is worth protecting, even though his father didn’t protect his, has a terrible internal struggle following – it’s brief, but it’s there. And when he says, “I’d give anything not to tell you this …” you believe him.

Dean says that he knows how to kill it but they need Michael’s help. Michael is obviously like, “NO.”

I like very much that Michael does not say Yes right away.

12th scene
Back in the motel room, back to square one, Dean is frustrated (understatement) and Sam is not surprised. “You can’t ask an ADULT to do something like that, Dean,” says Sam. The whole “using people as bait” thing comes up again and again, and brings up moral and ethical issues: how far are you willing to go, how much are you willing to risk, how bad are you willing to be yourself in order to get the job done? The grey areas of hunting. And Dean’s anxiety to stop the Shtriga, his personal investment in it, his personal responsibility for it, brings him to a desperate situation. It doesn’t make it any less Grey-Area. If we don’t give John a pass for it, then we don’t give Dean one either. But it should certainly make us contemplate those grey areas, those muddy waters. I’ve written before about the black-and-white issue before, and that will come up really strongly in the “Gordon Arc” coming up, but it’s really there all along. Being committed to a cause means you’re all in. But when you start to pick it apart philosophically, morally, you come up against some road-blocks. And where do you draw the line? It will be different for you than it is for me. AND who knows what you would do when pushed to the limit? Who knows what you would be willing to do if forced into it?

Suddenly a knock comes at the door, and there is the small heroic figure of a brave child who asks, “If you kill this thing, will Asher get better?”

And heroic Dean responds, “Honestly? We don’t know.”

I don’t know if it would be forgivable if Dean gave any other answer. Michael needs to get into this thing knowing all the information, so he can weigh his options. (Dean’s answer is in direct contrast to how John Winchester treats his kids, even as grown men.)

“You said you’re a big brother.”
“Yeah.”
“You take care of your little brother? You’d do anything for him?”
“Yeah, I would.”
“Me too. I’ll help.”

Boy does that exchange have resonance, resonance that is still paying off. It’s seen as beautiful here, but there is a dark side to it. And who knows how Sam feels about it. He looks on from the background as Dean flat out admits that he would do “anything” for him. It’s a responsibility placed on Sam, to have someone feel that way about him. To be the entire focus of someone’s life. It will not end well.

13th scene
Dean and Sam rig up a camera with night vision in Michael and Asher’s room so they can watch from the next room. Michael lies in bed and Dean sits down next to him to talk him through it. It is a beautiful scene, well-played on both sides. Michael asks questions. Dean calmly explains how it will go. He does not brush off Michael’s concerns. But he does answer everything straightforwardly, and also tells him exactly what he should do. He also knows the gunfire is going to be louder than Michael probably expects, so he says, “I want you to cover your ears, okay?”

In the presence of innocence like Michael’s, as well as his courage, Dean is serious and respectful. He needs to be, since using Michael as bait makes him feel queasy. Michael needs to know exactly what he is getting into. Michael needs to know now that everything is going to be okay. Which, of course, Dean can’t know that at all. But it’s important to say those words anyway.

My favorite line in the scene, the one that moves the most, is Dean saying, “Are you sure you want to do this? It’s okay if you don’t want to. I won’t be mad.”

That’s empathy. Knowing that Michael, a pipsqueak, a child, who obeys adults because that’s what kids do, may not feel that he would be allowed to change his mind. And maybe Michael would think Dean would be mad at him. Again, you just feel the echoes of all the things that were never said to Dean in his words. He’s not playing it like that, he’s too concerned with Michael being drilled to think about himself, but it’s there, an afterimage, an echo. Who would Dean be if his father had said to him, “I won’t be mad.” or “Don’t worry, son, I’m not mad.” Dean still can’t question how he was raised. He’s not there yet. But it sure as shit is there for US at this point.

14th scene
Sam and Dean sit and watch the monitor. Hours have passed.

A small soft scene ensues, funny and tender, when Sam suddenly, out of the blue, apologizes. Dean is confused. Huh? For what? Sam, probably knowing that this won’t go over well but he has to say it anyway, says, “I’ve given you a lot of crap for always following Dad’s orders. But now I know why you do it.”

It’s sincere and beautiful and way too touchy-feely for Dean Winchester, who handles his feelings the old-fashioned way, by ignoring them and trying to drink and fuck them away. He’s in the foreground, with Sam’s compassionate face behind him, and he turns to the side, murmuring, “Oh God, kill me now,” and it’s so funny and perfect and in-character. Even Sam laughs. We need some edge in the characters to remain. They can’t give it ALL away, otherwise we’d have nowhere to go.

Finally, the Shtriga arrives at the window. Michael sees it and Sam and Dean see it too.

Hot Queens waiting with their guns drawn.

Emperor Palpatine moves across the room, and the worst part about the plan, for Michael, and for Sam and Dean, is that they have to wait until literally the last second to pounce. Michael will have to tolerate having that thing put its hands on him. It really is a terrible thing to ask a child. Michael, the bravest boy in the world, sits there, looking dead-on as the thing approaches, as the thing touches him, caresses his torso, as the thing gapes open its terrible blue mouth.

Sam and Dean burst into the room, with Dean, as promised, shouting, “Michael now!” Michael scrambles off the bed and Sam and Dean open fire. Emperor Palpatine falls backward onto the floor. He appears to be toast. Michael stays hidden and Dean, shot dramatically from below, with long thin shadows on the ceiling above him, goes to check it out.

Things are too quiet. We should not be surprised when the Shtriga, like Glenn Close rising from out of the bathtub, springs to life and throws Dean across the room. It wants Sam. It recognizes Sam. It missed out on getting Sam’s spiritus vitae so many years ago. This is the Shtriga’s “unfinished business”. Sam is thrown to the ground and the Shtriga is on him, strong as hell, immobilizing him. Sam can’t reach his gun, and meanwhile, the Shtriga’s long creepy fingers manipulate Sam’s mouth open. It’s … fucking awful, is what it is. The transfer of spirit starts to happen, and Sam can’t stop it. We also should not deny the sexual connotations of these images, disturbing as they are. Supernatural ends up running with that idea of things going in and out of the mouth, until finally we reach the glorious apex of such a thing with Crowley and Sam basically raping one another’s mouths with their swirling black-red smoke spirals, and I have no idea how either of them could film that scene without laughing so hard they fell off their chairs. But still: having something, your essence, drawn up and out of your mouth into another’s mouth is squicky and boundary-compromising to the nth degree.

Dean, wounded, blood on his forehead, blows the Shtriga away from across the room. So … they missed the first time, apparently? But … but … Or … it only goes down with a head shot? I know, I know, it’s better to have the thing be dead but not dead, for the potential Scare Factor. Dean, frozen in place, gun still drawn, calls across the room, “You okay, little brother?”

It comes out automatically. It’s knee-jerk. It’s not sentimentalized. It’s said pretty flat out, Dean wants information, it’s a check-in. Dean doesn’t introduce Sam to others as “my little brother,” he never says those words. He kids around sometimes about being the oldest and therefore smarter, he should get the first pick of girls because he’s older, whatever, but it’s always just teasing. But suddenly, in the immediate aftermath of Sam’s run-in with that horrible Emperor, out comes Michael’s words: “little brother”.

Sam, still heaving for breath, stands up and there is then a great Pulp Fiction type shot of the two of them looking down at the dead thing, Dean calmly holding up the gun and shooting some rounds into it. Deadpan. No expression. Hot.

The only crack in Dean’s armor comes when he says, “It’s okay, Michael. You can come on out.” You can hear the emotion there, the emotion of a little boy.

15th scene
Dean and Sam are loading up the Impala the following morning, and Dean sees Michael’s mother across the parking lot and hurries over to her, asking about Asher. Michael runs out to meet her at the same moment, and she hugs Michael excitedly, saying Asher is going to be fine, and a lot of the other kids are also being released today. Dean says, “That’s great,” but he’s not really playing “that’s great”. On his face is a mix of expressions, having to do with his own past, his sense of loss about his childhood, his sheer relief that he shut that mother down, that he “handled it”, and did what Dad asked him to do. Dean glances in Sam’s direction, but doesn’t really look at Sam. And while it may be a victory for Michael and his mom, it is a pale victory for Dean. You get the sense that if he ever had a free minute to himself in the next day or so, he would maybe cry a little bit about all of this. Just a little bit. Maybe he will in the shower later that day. Just to relieve some stress. And then jerk off. I don’t know. He’s holding it together, but barely.

Mom and Michael go off to their car, and Sam and Dean head to the Impala. Sam says, almost to himself, “It’s too bad,” and Dean, snapping back to form, says, “They’ll be fine.”

But when Sam wants to share, he will not be deterred. It’s one of his finest qualities. He says that no, it’s too bad about Michael. Now Michael will always know that there are things out there in the dark. “He’ll never be the same, you know?”

This hits Dean. We’ve already seen that dawning realization on his face in the moment he hesitates before telling Michael that nightmares are sometimes real. His feelings on all of this are private, though. He’s shared enough in the last 24 hours. Sam is also dealing with some stuff. He doesn’t even remember this momentous Shtriga moment from his past, the thing that was such a defining event for Dean. How close he came to death at age 6. All of these huge crises in their family happened before he could remember them. No wonder he feels on the outside. But whatever the case may be, Sam does know that his innocence was short-lived. And once it was gone, you never get it back. Sam says, “I wish I could have that kind of innocence.”

Dean normally pushes back on that kind of conversation, that kind of remark. He doesn’t want to hear it. It’s too touchy-feely, and also it doesn’t help them do their job. It’s a waste of time, and is actually harmful. You can’t live in the What Ifs of life. You have to stay sharp, focused, and skeptical. But here, now, he allows it. It’s sad. So sad to hear his little brother express regret like that. Dean turns, and watches Michael and his Mom drive away in a really intense closeup. What one would call a “star closeup.”

You can see what he is thinking. But you also wonder at what else might be there. Stars are never 100% clear. There’s always that slight bit of mystery left over, the slight space left in their work for audiences to reach out, fill in the blanks. Bogart. Wayne. Monroe. Grant. Dietrich. Hell, Elvis. They are so present, so there, so IN their own faces … and yet we will never ever have all of them. That’s the allure. That’s the magic.

When Dean finally speaks, he says, “If it means anything, sometimes I wish you could, too.”

Which is the most fascinating thing about the entire episode, almost. It’s not “I wish I could have had that kind of innocence,” or “I know what you mean, I feel the same way,” because Dean does not prioritize himself and Dean does not think of himself at all. It’s “I am sorry YOU didn’t have that innocence, and I wish YOU could go back to it.”

Dean has already come a long way in order to admit that at all. In the pilot he swaggered around, insisting to Sam that Dad raised them great. It’s hard to believe that was the same guy as what we see now. It’s hard to believe that all along he had THIS as a memory in his back pocket, that THIS is where he was coming from. But it will be long time before Dean can even half-way confront what was taken from HIM. His “spiritus vitae” was gone before the Shtriga even showed up. And has he grieved that? Does he even know how bad it is? Well, no, he doesn’t. It feels wrong to him to dwell on such things, to allow them brainspace. It also feels disloyal to Dad. These are all very real things to Dean Winchester.

And so now, when I think of the look on young Dean’s face, as he watched Dad cradle Sam in his arms, standing alone on the outskirts, I see that that was the end of the road for him. Not Mom’s death. Mom’s death was the start of it all. Dad and the Shtriga was the real crack, Dean’s real break in belonging.

Important to notice: when Dean says “I wish you could have that too, Sammy,” and fails to include himself … Sam doesn’t catch it.

Sam’s “spiritus vitae” was seen as more valuable than Dean’s. Dad felt that way, Dean felt that way, and so did the Shtriga (then and now). Dean is cast aside by the Shtriga, and Sam is attacked. Sam’s life force is worth more, more treasured and prized. Dean got that memo early. And the evidence is still there right in front of him, when even if he had tried to sacrifice himself to the Shtriga, she would not be interested. His life-force is worthless to her.

Sam, theoretically, doesn’t feel that his “spiritus vitae” is worth more than his big brother’s, of course he doesn’t but the dynamic is so engrained between them, so automatic and unquestioned, that he misses the “tell” in Dean’s words, the very worrisome “tell”.

Sam says not another word, and the two of them get into the Impala, and drive away, with Ozzy wailing about the “road to nowhere”.

The wreckage of my past keeps haunting me
It just won’t leave me alone
I still find it all a mystery
Could it be a dream?