Directed by Philip Sgriccia
Written by Sera Gamble

“The Kids Are Alright” is an important episode wrapped in the entertainment of a Monster of the Week. The Monster of the Week aspect (ignoring how the episode loops into not just the season-wide Arc, but the next four – count ’em! – seasons) is one of the nastier scenarios Supernatural has indulged itself in (Kripke joked that he couldn’t believe they were allowed to do it).

It’s so well-done that I think as I watch: “The mother of that little girl will never be okay again. She will never forgive herself. She will always know, forevermore, that she had THAT in her. How could she live with that?” It wouldn’t surprise me if she became an alcoholic.

That’s not sadness. That’s madness.

The episode has a hell of a lot going on in it already (although, for me, her Arc takes over every time): Dean and Lisa, Sam and Ruby, the looming reality of Dean’s “deal,” Ruby’s dangling-carrot promise to Sam, Mary Winchester’s fate rising from the deep, “It’s always been about you,” says Ruby to Sam. Side note: amazing, since Dean is the focus of everyone’s worries in Season 3. It will be Sam’s turn in Season 4. But her comment loops into my overall feeling – that I have expressed repeatedly: Sam is the Key to Everything. Sam is the key to the show, the linchpin. Dean’s the show-stopper with the emotional melodrama. But Sam is “the one.” It’s stated as explicitly as it ever has been in “The Kids Are Alright,” with Ruby’s cryptic – albeit crystal-clear – words. Now that the Psychic Kids malarkey is over, and Yellow-Eyes is dead … Sam may have felt a sigh of relief, a little bit of the pressure off, time to focus on Dean. Not so fast … says Ruby.

In “The Magnificent Seven” (my re-cap here), the reality of what was let out of Roger Corman’s Cemetery starts to hit home. What else will be coming at them? “The Kids Are Alright” is a breather, but – as I said earlier – is maybe the most important episode in the season, at least in terms of the seeds planted, seeds that will not blossom until Season 6. Season 6! The patience! Lisa is not introduced as a character who will rise to such importance that Dean makes the choices that he does. She’s introduced in the context of Dean’s ongoing dying-wish sex drive, AND she is not interested in him at ALL for the majority of the episode. She’s a peripheral-player in the Monster of the Week plot. But there are signs, one visual motif in particular, that show Kripke et al were working towards an End Game with her. They know where they are going. The Ruby Arc does not pan out until the end of Season 4, and will involve two separate actresses. (I wrote a lot about Ruby – and her hair – in the re-cap for “The Magnificent Seven.”)

Digressions. As always.

Dean and Children

1. It’s introduced as a “thing” early on in “Dead in the Water” (recap here). His interactions with children are illuminating on a variety of levels. Both brothers are good with children, but Dean’s trauma is so un-managed that it makes the interactions that much more intense. He ends up parenting himself during the encounters. He can’t help it. Trauma recognizes trauma. He has no boundaries anyway, so he sees himself in these ankle-biters going through scary shit. Pure nostalgia does not exist for Dean. He never was a child (as he just recently said to his mother). Children sense his sensitivity, childlike in nature. It’s that “un-managed” and un-handled … THING … in Dean: children sense that. Because they aren’t “managing” and “handling” their anxieties and fears, either. They’re just experiencing them. But Dean also feels his own strength when dealing with these tiny human beings. He’s big and strong, he’s there to protect them. He’s strong and he knows how to be gentle. (Think of the interaction with the traumatized boy in the barn in “Bad Boys.” That is probably the purest example of it.)

2. Fatherhood isn’t on his radar as an option. Neither is “settling down.” In “Bugs” he made a crack about how he would want to blow his brains out if he had to live in some gated community. Lisa, of course, lives in a gated community (on a yoga teacher’s salary? As a single woman with no husband in the picture? How does she afford that house? Does she now own a yoga studio? Lisa and her non-existent work life has always bugged me. As does her generic House Beautiful decor. Usually the set decoration is more specific. Moving on.) And out of nowhere, Dean is drawn to the primary colors and green grass of that world. He has no future (especially so in Season 3) but he heeds the call anyway, and steps in as father figure to Ben when (he feels) Lisa is falling short. (So inappropriate.)

My first-time watching, I did not sense how huge Lisa and Ben would become. That’s good storytelling. They did not telegraph where it was all going, but the emotional groundwork was set up. Every cell in Dean’s body wants to stay. The strength of his emotions surprise even him. Clearly, his reaction to Lisa and Ben is intensified by the “deal.” What will be his legacy? What will he leave behind?

Initial Thoughts on Lisa

I’ll talk more about Lisa when the time comes.

But for now: I appreciate how much thought and care was clearly put into developing the character, and casting the right woman (Cindy Sampson). The writers on Supernatural knew – from the get-go – that Dean is a weird man, and knew that any woman he attached himself to, or loved – Cassie, Lisa – had to be unique, her own woman, not generic. Your garden-variety woman could not deal with Dean at all. And vice versa. This takes a sensitive writing staff to understand the complexities of a man who romper-rooms with floozy waitresses but has the capacity to fall in love with someone as spiky and volatile as Cassie. I mean, I know men like this and have been both a floozy waitress AND a spiky-volatile love object … so the Dean thing with women is quite realistic but rarely managed well in fictional characters.

Lisa was going to be a huge deal in the future, they all knew that even if we didn’t, so they had to get her right on the first try. They do.

The most perfect thing is that Lisa and Dean don’t have chemistry. At all. The chemistry existed only in the past and in Dean’s fantasizing mind, but in the present moment, it is clear that Lisa is not into him at all. She’s not “playing hard to get” in order to hide her sexual attraction. She is LEGIT annoyed at his presence. (I find this so entertaining.) Thank you, Sera Gamble. Ackles is so gorgeous that it would be a turn-off if women constantly fell over like ninepins. (I’ve written about this aspect of the characterization before: How often Dean’s “burlesque” DOESN’T work. That’s why I love the Burlesque.) There isn’t any sexual heat between Lisa and Dean – shocking, seeing as Dean has sexual heat with a plate of pancakes. With inanimate objects. With randos on the street. With his car. But here … zip. Dean adjusts. Dean adjusts to everything. The lack of sex-sparks is one of the reasons why the situation is believable, and also makes possible the explosion of emotional warmth that eventually comes.

Colors: A Schizo-Episode

Except for the spectacle of Dean mowing the lawn in “What Is And What Should Never Be” (recap here), we’ve never seen primary colors like this in Supernatural. I look at this …

and think … “Wait, what am I watching again?”

The Lisa/Ben/Dean sections are warm and bright, with thick green grass, sunlight, bright balloons, water glasses with bright orange and pink flowers on them. This is a world of sunlight and safety. It’s made to look as appealing as possible. Who wouldn’t WANT to enter that house, in an area of the country where a single mom on a yoga teacher’s salary can afford such a place (because clearly she’s bought it. She can’t be RENTING in that community, can she? Sorry, I’ll move on.) These bright colors represent a deliberate choice on the part of Sgriccia/Ladouceur (even more so since they film in Vancouver where blue skies are hard to come by). I remember the episode being disorienting on my first time watching because of the brightness of the colors (little did I know that the moody darkness I loved so much would not last).

But there’s a whole other sequence in “The Kids Are Alright” having to do with Sam and Ruby. And those colors are different.

As Dean cavorts in the sunshiny green of the gated community, Sam and Ruby operate in a world across town where even the weather is different.

References

The episode title refers to the crazy 1979 rock documentary featuring The Who at their most NUTS.

Here’s the trailer:

And, of course, the title of the film comes from the song, and when I re-listened to it in preparation for the re-cap, I realized the lyrics express Dean’s entire emotional subtext. There is a space already there for him in Lisa’s world. Lisa and Ben end up feeling it. Dean feels it too. Dean NEVER feels that way. But he does here. In the lyrics is the beautiful conversation between Lisa and Dean in their final scene together. In the lyrics is the entirety of their relationship to come.

I don’t mind other guys dancing with my girl
That’s fine, I know them all pretty well
But I know sometimes I must get out in the light
Better leave her behind with the kids, they’re alright
The kids are alright

Sometimes, I feel I gotta get away
Bells chime, I know I gotta get away
And I know if I don’t, I’ll go out of my mind
Better leave her behind with the kids, they’re alright
The kids are alright

I know if I go things would be a lot better for her
I had things planned, but her folks wouldn’t let her

I don’t mind other guys dancing with my girl
That’s fine, I know them all pretty well
But I know sometimes I must get out in the light
Better leave her behind with the kids, they’re alright
The kids are alright

Sometimes, I feel I gotta get away
Bells chime, I know I gotta get away
And I know if I don’t, I’ll go out of my mind
Better leave her behind with the kids, they’re alright
The kids are alright

Eric Kripke spoke in the special features on the DVD about how he had just become a new father as this episode was being filmed. The best horror is personal. Consider the latest sensation, Get Out, which – if you haven’t seen – you MUST.

Daniel Kaluuya, “Get Out”. Just looking at that makes me shiver.

Get Out is as personal as it gets, diving into the heart of an urgent social and political issue with such laser-clarity that it could actually open people’s minds, if those minds aren’t closed TOO tight.

The reason Kripke wanted to do the episode, the scene that mattered the most to him, was when the mother allows the car to roll down the ramp into the water, with her daughter still strapped in in the backseat.

“The Kids Are Alright” has a lot in common with the recent thriller Case 39, and I’m not just saying that because my cousin Kerry O’Malley had a large role in the film. The film involves physical abuse, a terrible scene in a bathroom, and a mother driving her kids into the water.

Kerry O’Malley, “Case 39”. Hi, Kerry! Sorry you’re having such a rough time!

Here is the trailer:

And, of course, more so than Case 39, the episode calls up this heinous bitch:

What Susan Smith did makes Casey Anthony look like a Girl Scout with some mild personality issues.

Teaser

The teaser sets up a whole complex (and sad) world in about 20 seconds: a shattered family, a troubled child, a particularly gruesome death, and then this …

Sometimes teasers start with a happy “moment before.” Not here. Something dreadful has already happened, and something worse is unfolding. There’s a keyboard playing a slow mournful tune underneath. The child (Margot Berner) has dark circles under her eyes. Something is very very wrong. The kids are NOT all right.

Katie’s Mom is the kind of role that could win the actress an Emmy, if Supernatural was the kind of show that won Emmy’s. It’s the kind of role where an actress would go through the round of auditions, losing sleep at night because she wants it so badly. Guest spots like Katie’s Mom don’t come around every day. Kathleen Munroe plays Katie’s Mom, and she the actress, of course, re-appears SEASONS later as the owner of a crab-shack in New Orleans, who initiates a flirtation with poor Dean, who is at that moment lovelorn-worried about his out-of-control boyfriend, the barrel-chested Benny, who is ALSO – unbeknownst to her – that same woman’s vampire great-grandfather. (Oh, Supernatural, never change. Oops. Too late. You’ve changed. Please change back, kthxbai.)

More on Parenting

Parenting is an explosive topic in Supernatural. In many ways, it’s what the show is ABOUT. In “The Kids Are Alright,” the parents are all good ones, but they experience their children as parasites. (Well, that’s because the kids ARE parasites. But I still think something is slightly “off” anyway. Supernatural has a great suspicion towards suburbia, conformity, domesticity, etc.) Sam doesn’t really work this case. He comes into it for the final show-down only. It is mostly Dean’s journey, and he is straight up against parenting, couplehood, childhood dynamics. A world he knows nothing about, a world where he is always on the outside, staring through windows, knocking on doors.

Dean has a memory of being involved in a childhood like the one on display here. A kindly mother who took care of him, who allowed him to be the center of her world. Sam is un-attached from those types of haunting memories. Perhaps that is why he is a more complete human being. There was a consistency in his childhood, as terrible as it was. Dean experienced the upheaval of his whole world.

Dean feels a parental impulse towards Ben, an impulse he does not understand, an impulse that is rejected by Lisa – and strongly, an impulse brought on by his rapport with Ben. Dean goes through the entire episode certain that Ben is his. He MUST be his. Ben is a mini-Dean. Dean is freaked out, and yet – automatically, by instinct – he steps up to the plate. He adjusts, remember? The second he walks into Ben’s birthday party, he adjusts his expectations, with nary a sulk. Lisa stops being a potential hookup and instead becomes the woman who maybe probably holyshitohmygod is the mother of my son. With the swiftness that comes from susceptability to outside circumstances, he adjusts. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it. He doesn’t look longingly in the rear-view mirror at the sexual gymnastics he had hoped for. He accepts Ben as part of Lisa, and – inappropriately – he assumes his place in the family, even though Lisa is like, “Dude. Get the fuck OUT.” Dean’s protective nature is a force as strong as a hurricane. He does not question his protective impulses in that regard. He is not put off by Lisa’s increasing hostility.

Bad parents are a big BIG deal to Dean (that little shake of the head in what I think of as the “incest episode”, his exclamation to Sam after: “People, man …”.) His feelings about his own parents are ambivalent in the extreme. He is in his 20s, and most of his trauma is un-acknowledged; sometimes it’s stuffed down but sometimes it rises up and runs the show. He has probably, on some level, acknowledged that he won’t be a father in his lifetime. He doesn’t even think about it, it’s so far outside his conception of his life. (Which is why it is so fascinating that he is so drawn to Lisa’s world, that she – and her picnic blanket – show up in his dream. Dean’s been holding out on us. Dean’s subconscious has been holding out on him.)

In “The Kids Are Alright,” parenting isn’t a party with balloons. That’s just the surface. What parenting REALLY is is a car sliding down a ramp into a reservoir. Dean WAS Katie, staring back at his mother, his once-loving father, right before his life was submerged in a nightmare and the child he was died. And yet suddenly, here, he wants “in.” He’s GOOD at it. He’s never really tried it but he’s GOOD at being a parent. I’ve written before about the opening episode in Season 6, and how it’s one of my favorites in the entire series. There are men built for domesticity. There are men who wear that mantle easily, accepting the limitations of it, complaining with their friends about it but not in a toxic way, who ENJOY the boundaries, who work best WITHIN those boundaries. Dean is like that in that episode. Once he’s in, he’s IN. When Sam submits to a domestic life, it is much more chaotic, more just “shacking up.” Dean would have a hard time with a situation that amorphous. He needs the labels, the rules of engagement. “This waitress slipped me her number. Waitresses always slip me their numbers. But I don’t act on it anymore because I can’t.” He’s a rule-follower, a sponge, a chameleon.

I’ll go deeper into this later, even though what I’ve written is probably more than enough.

1st scene

In the recap for “Magnificent Seven,” I wrote about how Padalecki’s listening grounded that not-very-good episode, and single-handedly connected the episode to the season-wide Arc. That episode ended with Dean’s Burlesque in high HIGH gear, an attitude that left Sam out to dry. Unlike a certain season now going on, the characters are not static from episode to episode. There are developments, small shifts in objective, one layer peeled back, two layers added … It’s a prism, a kaleidoscopic effect. When “The Kids Are Alright” opens, Sam is – as he was in the first scene in “Magnificent Seven” – doing research alone trying to find a way to get Dean out of his deal.

The framing shows the care that used to go into things. No detail too small. There’s a fan shoved in the corner. Cinematic. Plus deep focus. Depth of frame. Pawn shop. Tells you what section of town they’re in. The splotchy red bar keeping Sam’s head contained in that big window.

This is the palette of Sam’s side of the episode: Grey-silvery light, deep reds, dark golds. Glamorous and seedy. The Winchester atmosphere.

I just love the lighting there, the slight silvery nimbus around his head. Stunning. Sam is surrounded by red for the majority of his scenes in “The Kids Are Alright.” My interpretation is that these colors, pressing in on him from all sides, are the flames of Hell. Dean cavorts in blue-skied land, while Sam never forgets that looming hellfire.

I never get tired of the fake websites.

Sam has learned his lesson from “The Magnificent Seven.” Dean’s deal is not to be discussed. Sam is left to worry by himself. Dean can be hugely forbidding. The Burlesque is there to reveal, but it’s there to conceal too, and God help you if you try to crack beneath the surface. He’ll go to his grave clutching his Burlesque Act. At least that’s the plan, as it stands in Season 3. And so Sam has accepted Dean’s clearly stated rules of engagement. It’s a tiny shift for Padalecki, but has huge implications in how scenes are played. This is how good Padalecki is.

The two men are filmed in glorious decadent closeup. It’s not Kim Manners, but Sgriccia loves their faces too, how light hits their faces, Padalecki’s thick hair, his moles, Ackles’ freckles, muscles in the jaw line. In these closeups, you can feel their physicality, their life, through the screen. The only way I know how to say it – and it is key (or was key) to why the series worked so well for me – is that the way they are filmed revel in the FACT of them, the physical fact of their bodies, skin, postures, breath, eyes. That’s what the camera is MADE FOR, after all.

Dean may already be in bed with Lisa in his mind, but for my money, Sam’s the sexy one here. Something about his posture at the table. His older-brother patient humorous vibe. He’s … contained.

(And when you see what Sam is actually like in the sack, you realize how much he has to contain.) Sam keeps himself in check. Unlike his brother. Uhm …

That’s one of the dirtiest shots in the history of Supernatural. It’s pornographic. It gets even worse when he shows up on Lisa’s doorstep. I can barely watch. I do want to say: Lisa, you GO, girl, for being so amazing in bed that a man yearns for you 8 years later.

Member when I talked about the lack of sexual heat between Lisa and Dean? This isn’t a criticism or anything, just what I consider to be an accurate description, and an interesting “way in” to what will be one of the most important Arcs in Dean’s life (even though it ends so unsatisfyingly because the writers couldn’t figure their shit out.) To have that guy up there … the freckled hounddog … get drawn into a domestic situation based on mutual trust, caring, and sharing of responsibilities … is fascinating, dramaturgically. To counter-act the Lisa/Dean thing, there’s Sam and Ruby, who – from the get-go- have an explosive sexual tension synonymous with hostility/hatred. Hate-fucking is a thing, you know, and Sam’s sexuality comes roaring out in that circumstance, which we’ll see time and time again. This is very interesting, the opposite of what you would expect. Kim Manners again: Give them what they want but give it to them in a way they won’t expect. TRUST us out here watching. TRUST. US. For God’s SAKE.

2nd scene

I only post the screengrab below to call your attention to the random ZZ Top band member over in the corner. We’ll see him again.

On the Outside Looking In: A Visual Motif

Dean’s hand knocking on Lisa’s door. That same shot will repeat again and again over the next season, all the way through season 6. He keeps going back. He stays for a while. He leaves. He goes back. How I wish they had found a better way to close out that Arc. Something that honored what had happened, forced Dean to LIVE with it as opposed to forget it and … one that actually made fucking SENSE. But never mind. I am in love with repeating motifs when they are used well.

Even Dean doesn’t allow himself into his own heart to the degree that that motif reveals. He is the eternal outsider. He was not “built” to be inside a house. He is always on the outside looking in. Inside is safety, outside is danger. He would love to step inside, but he can’t.

For the 500,000th time:

That’s Dean.

He knocks on doors constantly for his job, but his time indoors is always temporary. He is never a guest, he is always an intruder. But with Lisa, he’s welcomed inside. He’s asked to stay. And yet … the way the relationship unfolds, it keeps looping back to this one motif. Knock, knock, knock, until finally Lisa asks (my favorite of her lines): “What do you want from us, Dean?” The “us” is eloquent. Because that’s what Dean wants. To be part of that “Us.” Not any “Us” but THAT “Us.”

The first episode of season 6 opens with a montage that is among my favorite sequences the show has ever done. It’s set to Bob Seger’s “Beautiful Loser” with these lyrics that say it all about Dean Winchester, at least in regards to Home and his feelings about it:

He’s your oldest and your best friend,
If you need him, he’ll be there again.
He’s always willing to be second best,
A perfect lodger, a perfect guest.

It’s tragic.

It’s fascinating how well Dean takes to fatherhood. How automatically that “Dad” – as a role, an archetype – is there for him. It allows him to express his enormous tenderness, something he rarely gets to do. It also allows him to do what he already does best: protect the innocent and weak. This tendency will become neurotic once he moves in with Lisa and Ben seasons later. Dean is wired to protect. He is wired to stand out in front of the house standing guard. He is not wired to go inside.

Now.

Lisa opens the door. She looks so stunning you want to fall over dead. She appears to carry around her own wind machine. Dean stands there in a state of blatant lip-smacking carnality. He’s clothed, but he might as well be naked. He assumes his presence will be welcome, even though he didn’t call ahead. If their weekend together was that fun for him then he knows it was fun for her. (Turns out, he’s not wrong. The two lascivious ladies at the party, gossiping behind Dean’s back, know his name. Because Lisa talked – in detail – about her weekend with Dean 8 years earlier. Hence: epic memorable fucking. Good for you, Lisa! I’m impressed!)

However. When Lisa is faced with this on her doortsep:

… she is less than thrilled. There is zero part of her that telegraphs, “Holy shit, Hot Man, would love to get naked pronto but have to get back to the party.” She pretends to be polite, even while confronted with the onslaught of his titanic sexual energy. And my God, it’s an onslaught.

Emotionally, his fly is unzipped. He licks his lips. He takes his time speaking. He looks at her in a knowing “I know you want it” way (so delusional on his part). All while she stares at him baffled and frozen, with the wind machine blowing on her. It’s horrifying! And it keeps going!

Please someone stop him!

Sgriccia launches us into the backyard party with a shot where the camera follows some kids scampering across the yard into the house – passing by Lisa and Dean – and then the camera moves back out into the yard again following the two of them as they enter the yard. This has been a very static episode so far, visually, and the fluid camera move is beautiful. It’s slightly disorienting, showing Dean thrust into a totally unfamiliar world, where he doesn’t know the rules, hasn’t been invited, has to learn new things as he goes. He’s confused. Lisa is not. She doesn’t know why he is there but she knows who she is. Their relationship – as it eventually develops – is very adult, which … Lord knows if I ever get to those episodes … would be fun to talk about. Dean is a boundary-less man. Lisa has very healthy boundaries. It’s a good influence on him.

But first must come: the glory that is Jensen Ackles’ Awkward Pantomime. There’s not much that freaks out Dean Winchester, and so he has no resources to rely on when he gets truly deeply FREAKED, as he is here. The possibility that he impregnated a “random chick” 8 years ago – and never knew it – rocks his whole world. He trips over garbage cans. He can’t decide which way to walk. Because Dean is so transparent, whatever he feels is visible to all. Meanwhile: Dean, you were not invited to this party in the first place.

Once Dean is confronted with the spectacle of Ben flipping out over AC/DC, he forgets his original hopes for a sex play-date. He hovers there, an uninvited guest, pinned to the spot, staring at Ben across the yard. Lisa leaves Dean to go greet her friend, and Dean barely registers her absence. You can see him calculating in his mind, as he searches Ben’s face for any sign of a resemblance. The calculator will show up again. Okay, so we fucked in November, and now it’s August and oh shit that’s 9 months … is it? Wait, let me do it again … was it November? November, December, January … (etc.)

Momentarily, he forgets his worries and gets sucked into enjoying the aesthetic pleasure of the race-car birthday cake. But on the heels of his appreciation … reality sets in again. This is CLEARLY the birthday cake of my son. Holy shit.

As Dean stands over the cake, he is sexually objectified by two ladies sitting nearby. Which brings me to:

Objectification in Supernatural, Part 2,789

The concept of objectification was one of the first things I latched onto and sensed in my first time watching of the series, and – along with Ackles’ gift for “schtick” – was the first thing I chose to write about. Objectification is interesting because we, the audience, are complicit in it. Because what are WE doing other than watching? You can be anti-objectification but at least don’t live in denial that you walk around all day every day seeing things and judging them. “What a beautiful skirt” is objectification, if you want to get technical about it. God forbid we ever stop appreciating beauty. Sure, there’s a type of objectification that is “reductive” but … well, I’m not against that either, at least not in some sweeping way. I want a man to love my heart and soul and mind but I want him to love …. everything else too. Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I want him to love and appreciate those things? I’m being purposefully obtuse to make a point. We live in a very puritanical society that treats pleasure with suspicion. We always have. Of course I do not want to be reduced to my parts when I’m in a business meeting. I do not want to be seen as invisible or value-less because I’m not a size 2. But the Pleasure of Looking at Stuff is one of the things that makes life worth living. And yes, sometimes that pleasure is sexual. (I wrote about this at length in the second piece I wrote about Angelina Jolie’s gorgeous By the Sea.)

Am I objectifying Marilyn Monroe when I ache with adoration over her figure and how she moves? Sure. She wants me to. She knows she’s giving me pleasure. She wants to give pleasure. Do I also love her comedic timing and her sensitivity? Of course! It’s “both/and”, not “either/or.”

I’m not a big “Down with Male Gaze” person, because … well, for multiple reasons. #1. I thank God for the “male gaze” of Michelangelo and Degas and Josef von Sternberg and Gus van Sant and P.T. Anderson and … well, hell, any male artist who shows me what he sees in a beautiful and memorable way. Without the “male gaze”, we’d have no Marlene Dietrich. And #2: What I said up above. I appreciate beauty too, whether it’s presented to me by a man or a woman. I appreciate the spectacle of Brigitte Bardot in a bikini just like anybody else with a pulse. Or this. It makes me ache.

It’s supposed to make me ache. If I respond to it in a visceral way, if I look at him and want to touch him … then that seems to be a “mission accomplished” type situation. Elia Kazan filmed James Dean in the full knowledge that he would have that effect. (I just wrote an enormous essay on East of Eden for the Library of America.)

No wonder art is seen as so destabilizing. It IS destabilizing. It makes people … FEEL STUFF.

So onto Supernatural. I’ve written enough about objectification in these re-caps to be a doctoral thesis but I’ll just say again: Dean is objectified by everyone. Monsters, people, strangers, friends. This probably started happening early for him, when his Beauty was still developing. It probably started happening when he was too young to understand what was going on, and why people were suddenly treating him weird. It’s like a girl with fully developed breasts at age 11, 12. She’s not ready to be sexualized, but she is. Because the world sucks. John Winchester probably recognized the developing Beauty/Erotic-Muse quality of his son before Dean did, and instead of protecting his beautiful son from potentially sketchy situations – thrust him out there alone, to be used as bait. Because John looked at Dean and recognized what pretty pretty bait he made. It’s sick and unforgivable. Dean does not question any of this. There’s a reason that he rushes forward into danger shouting sexual come-ons. There’s a reason that his sexuality comes out in inappropriate situations, when he tries to flirt his way through closed doors, batting his eyelashes at morgue attendants. He’s not entirely in control of it. Like Marilyn Monroe, he knows what he has. He’s always been this way. He’s not vain about it, not really. He accepts it, because it is his reality. Everyone wants to fuck him. They always have. He tries to turn what has been used against him – in queasy abusive ways – into an asset.

This whole objectification thing – the act of looking, of being looked at, of the violation of it, AND of how sometimes you WANT to be violated – was woven into the show from the jump, and was one of its distinguishing characteristics for me, right off the bat. I think I first clocked it with that camera move up Ackles’ body in “Phantom Traveler,” with Sam standing over him looking down. I was like: “What country, friends, is this??” The show exists in that boundary-less place where pleasure and fear lie, sometimes simultaneously, of men who are strong, but whose bodies are penetrable (Dean’s more so than Sam’s, although Sam has his own brand of vulnerability), men who stir up sexual shit just by walking in a room … and all of this stuff is cleverly cloaked in a Monster Genre Show. So that if you don’t pick up on it (HOW COULD YOU NOT? But okay, let’s say you don’t:) – the show still works. But there’s this whole other aspect going on beneath. The actors are “in” on in it too. They both know what they’re doing.

So here we are in a Monster of the Week. We have just witnessed Dean rolling his tongue around in his mouth thinking about Lisa, imagining himself as “Pokey” to her “Gumby” (I mean, come on), and then sexing her up to such a degree on her doorstep that he doesn’t even notice that she stares back like a deer (with a perfectly-placed wind machine) in the headlights. When Dean objectifies, he is automatically in the Baroque stage of it. There is no intermediate stage. He’s always hot for it. He has a condom in his wallet at all times. And when “it” is imminent, he’s a walking dildo.

The problem, though, is that he can’t just turn that off. He turns it off for HIMSELF, here, when he suddenly realizes that his one-weekend-stand has resulted in a son. Suddenly, he is no longer a walking dildo to himself. Now he is a scared uninvited guest cutting himself a piece of cake and breaking out into a cold sweat. But that emanation remains. His always-existing pheromones cut through the grade-school-vibe of that party. So the two ladies who ogle him (Susie Wickstead and Desiree Zurowski) pick up on what EVERYBODY picks up on. They stare and drool. Hey, wow, look at that, a dildo just walked into this party. The camera moves up his legs, leeringly. This is not normally how the leading male of an episodic is treated. The two women murmuring to themselves about how this is the legendary Dean (what “semi-illegal” thing did he want her to do?) don’t even try to conceal that they are blatantly talking about him. He turns around and sees them for the first time. This is what he sees.

I love these actresses.

He says, “Hi.” They say back, all sexed-out just from looking at him, “Hi.” He becomes flustered, caught in the leering microscope of their gaze, and he’s alREADY flustered. He starts to walk off one way, changes his mind, and walks the other way, making Dean look uncertain, restless, and awkward. This is pure Ackles. Dean’s “game face” is always in operation (part of the Burlesque), but the fascinating part of the Burlesque is that it so rarely works. This, too, is all Ackles. The writers and the sensitive directors have just capitalized on what Ackles brings to the table already. He’s so inventive with himself, with business and behavior. He is at his best (well, he’s always at his best) in awkward situations, where he gets to bring out his screwball sense of humor.

Wandering aimlessly through the party, he comes across Ben. Dean’s energy here is perfect. He’s scoping out Ben, investigating possible similarities, or a resemblance. But he doesn’t want to tip his hand, because – intuitively – he knows that children have the best bullshit detectors on the planet. In a way, Dean stopped growing – mentally, emotionally – at 4 years old. Because of that, in a very natural way he GETS children. How you should talk to them like they’re full three-dimensional people. How they need protection, but how they’re also tougher than they look.

So Dean holds himself back from Ben. He doesn’t push. He’s just chatting with him, all while he’s assessing that maybe … possibly … I helped … MAKE him??

Dean is “in” from this moment forward. He’s “in” until Season 6. Everything that follows comes from this episode, and the best part is … you can’t really TELL that when you first watch “The Kids Are Alright”. Lisa and Ben are not introduced in a weighty way (the way Bela will be, next episode, where it’s obvious: “This is a major new player in town.”) Lisa and Ben are there to fill in some blanks in Dean’s past, and give Dean something to contemplate in re: his impending death (which otherwise he is not dealing with at all). You would never know that this somewhat slight episode would still be bearing fruit well into Season 6.

All of Ben and Dean’s mirrored behavior throughout the episode – taking a bite of the cake at the same time, the same double-take at the hot females passing by, the posture on the bench, the identical outfits – was all thought up by director Phil Sgriccia. This is what a good director can provide. Find a way to make scenes pop. To underline the themes without showing you’re underlining the themes. Both actors play it to the hilt.

Dean turns into a statue when Ben raves about how it’s “Hot Chick City” in the Moon Bounce. Ben scampers off and Dean remains a statue, with a dead look on his face. (I laugh out loud every time.) The dead-ness vanishes when, in a gorgeous closeup, Dean goes off into his mind, calculating the timeline: Sex-romp with Lisa, Ben’s birth, what month is it right now? when did we fuck? Okay, so that’s October, November … such good work on Ackles’ part, precise and realistic and funny, and he gets so freaked out because of the dates lining up that he attempts to either flee the scene OR go and find Lisa PRONTO (probably both), and barrels into a garbage can. Making a spectacle of himself. Which, of course, is nothing new, but it is nonetheless eternally pleasing. Sometimes Dean WANTS to be a spectacle, but in the moments when he wants more than anything else to appear cool and competent and in charge, he trips over garbage cans.

Meanwhile, inside, Katie’s Mom and Lisa commiserate, while drinking out of perfect little water glasses decorated with orange flowers. Because “Katie’s Mom” – and her journey – is so harrowingly portrayed by Kathleen Munroe, this scene is not just exposition or filler. It’s a mini-portrait of a woman slowly losing her mind. It’s haunting. Similar to Dean’s creepy-crawly feeling in the opening episodes of Season 6 that even though the giant sitting next to him in the Impala LOOKS like his brother, he knows that it is NOT his brother, Katie’s Mom looks at her daughter and knows – KNOWS – that that’s not Katie. But how do you say that? People recoil from you. Lisa recoils when Katie’s Mom says it. There are dark circles under the mom’s eyes. She looks frightened.

Lisa Is Not a “Wet Blanket Woman”

Much of this only becomes relevant in Season 6, when Dean moves in with her, but I might as well address it now. Dean is drawn to the family unit that she and Ben represent long before Sam told him what to do about it. And so Dean gives domesticity and monogamy a go, and he does a really good job at it (at least until Sam returns). He may be tormented, but he STAYS. He tolerates the discomfort of it because once he said he was “in,” well then, he’s a man of his word. He’s able to white-knuckle basically anything.

But what is so good (for me, anyway) about that whole section is how Lisa handles the … Dean-ness of Dean. The writing staff clearly went back and studied this earlier episode to make sure the continuity of character was in place. This is true in all of the minor scenes along the way in upcoming seasons when Dean shows up at her door. Her energy with Dean (except for this first episode) is intimate in a very specific way. She’s strong. She’s got her own busy life, and it’s up to Dean to fit into it, not the other way around. She has boundaries. She’s willing to throw him out when he shoves Ben. She’s got a line, and when he crosses it, she sticks to her guns. BUT: she is also not afraid of what Dean is, what Dean does. She lets him in, KNOWING what she will be getting. She’s not a martyr, or unrealistically understanding. Everything she does represents a choice that comes from a very real place in the character.

And when Dean’s behavior starts reaching her limit – when he keeps them on lockdown, for example – she fearlessly goes to talk to him about it. Dean is not easy to talk to. He is not easy to negotiate with. He is boundary-less and he owns shit he should not own. He always assumes he is in trouble. He treats everyone as though they are John Winchester. Lisa is not John Winchester, but there are moments when he has a hard time discerning that. She breaks through to him: “I’m just asking a question.” “I’m not freaking out, I’m just asking.” He trusts her. These comments do get through to him. She is not afraid. Or, she is afraid, but she accepts that a damaged warrior has entered her house, so she makes allowances for it, as best she can. As long as he’s honest with her and not abusive to her or Ben, then they can co-exist, and look out for each other, and have some company. Some low-maintenace company. It’s easier to go through life as a pair.

It would be very easy for an actress playing Lisa to turn her into the cliche of a nag. What I call the Wet Blanket Woman. (One of my least favorite tropes in storytelling and I can’t believe it’s persisted so long. It’s really insidious now because it’s actually seen as “feminist” in some circles. A Wet Blanket Woman is there to resist her husband’s dreams – and it is my opinion that this is seen as “feminist” so that the woman doesn’t just “go along” with his shenanigans. She has her own life, her own dreams, why doesn’t he just put down the Bunsen Burner and pick up little Johnny from school? But what a horrible view of marriage, what a horrible view of women – it’s Woman as No Fun Whatsoever, Woman as Anti-Dreams. Yeah, really empowering. I wrote a whole post about the Wet Blanket Woman in a post about the wife in Field of Dreams.) Lisa is not a Wet Blanket Woman. She COULD be. Some of her lines skirt on the edges of the trope: (“Come to bed. Stop working. Calm down. What about Ben?” etc.) But she’s not. When Dean’s restlessness starts rising, when he starts to get twitchy with it, AND when it starts to impinge on how SHE wants to live HER life, she doesn’t make tearful demands that he change. No. She sets him free. She knows he needs her, he needs Ben. She also knows that he needs them more than she needs him. This is never said, but it’s clear in Sampson’s playing of it. This could have turned into a maternal performance, an unrealistically understanding woman. But … I don’t know. I get Lisa. I’m a Dean-type, as I’ve said before. I need someone who gets that, is into it, and lets me BE. Now, Dean may turn Lisa INTO John or Mary at times, but that’s Dean, that’s not the writing of the character of Lisa.

Let’s bring it back to this episode, shall we?

When Lisa deals with her friend, she openly asks her how she’s doing, knowing her friend is not doing well. She’s got a house full of grade-schoolers but she’s not going to ignore that a grieving confused woman and child are present. Lisa is not afraid of emotions that are not happy. When she gets the answer “I’m doing fine” to her question, Lisa pushes deeper. (If you’ve ever been grieving, then you know how rare it is for anyone to want to dig deeper with you, or ask you to talk about it. Most people shy away.)

When her friend starts “talking crazy”, Lisa realizes her friend is in crisis. And speaks it out loud, names it. This is very rare behavior. Most people shy away from other people’s troubles, especially if the troubles are very very serious. While Lisa tells her friend that she can’t “talk like that,” she does not stop there. She follows up with: “We’re going to get you help. It’s going to be okay.” If the situation WEREN’T a supernatural one, then you could totally see Lisa picking up the phone, finding a therapist, driving her friend there, following up. She’s strong enough to deal with other people’s “weaknesses” without shying away or judging. And it is THIS quality that makes her “good” for Dean, as “good” as anyone can be, that is.

And finally, skipping ahead: Consider the difference in how Katie’s Mom deals with the mirrored reflection showing her daughter is a monster and how Lisa deals with the same moment. Katie’s Mom cracks. She drives that “thing” to the reservoir and lets the car sink, murmuring promises about ice cream. (Brilliant acting.) Lisa, though? She looks at the monster in the coffee table, gasps, and then says: “Where’s Ben?”

I have to say, the moment gives me goosebumps every time.

At that point, she does not know what Dean does. As far as we know, she has had no experience with the supernatural before. And yet when it arrives, she recognizes it, internalizes it, and NAMES it. Out loud. Instantly. Imagine that. Especially when it’s not, like, a vampire or something, but a monster that looks like your 8-year-old son. Lisa is made of strong strong stuff.

Which is why it’s so funny when Dean enters following this painful intimate tete-a-tete.

Dean. You need to go back where you came from. Why are you here? You’re eating the cake, you’re whipping the suburban ladies into a frenzy, you’re fishing for information from an 8-year-old, you’re ogling Hot Moms, you’re Bedroom-Eyeing a woman you haven’t seen in 8 years … like: You weren’t invited to this party. Go away.

Look at both of their faces. Dying … She is so over him. Barely paying attention to him. Impervious to him. And when does that EVER happen? (Another smart choice in scriptwriting and season-Arc construction. I’m chalking it up to the fact that a woman wrote this episode. Lisa has depths she might not otherwise have.)

The All-Important Device of the Point-of-View Shift

It’s fun to see Dean from two different points of view, his own and hers. Any point of view shift is exhilarating in the context of this show in particular, since it takes place primarily in the Winchester Belljar(TM). Sam and Dean are IN their lives, they don’t stand outside looking in, considering themselves and how they must appear. (Which is why some of the dialogue in this current season is driving me so fucking crazy. “We’re hunters. We wear flannel, we pick up a gun…” NOPE. Let US do that, don’t make THEM do that. Dummy-dumb.) And so when we get to see them as others see them … it’s voyeuristic, it’s destabilizing. Lisa’s perception of Dean is not as dramatic a point of view shift as we saw in “The Usual Suspects” (recap here) – which was all ABOUT keeping us outside the Belljar so we could revel in what these guys must LOOK like to people out there in the real world (Agent Henriksen serves the same purpose) – but it’s still very clear, and every scene operates with two competing points of view.

In this conversation at the kitchen island, they are both preoccupied. Dean is suddenly Dad Dean, and Lisa is still Worried Friend, and so we have BOTH points of view operating simultaneously. Intensely pleasing. It’s great, too, when other characters are allowed to be annoyed at Dean, or frustrated, or not bowled over by his baby-greens the way the hot-to-trot dames were out in the backyard. If everyone drooled over Dean, the show would not work. Let the fans do ALL that work. Let the fictional characters resist him. Hard.

This, too, is one of the reasons the Lisa-Dean dynamic works for me. They have little to no chemistry. Something ELSE opens up between them over the course of the episode. They don’t know each other at all. Dean remembers her with lip-smacking clarity, Lisa clearly remembers him in the same way (she told the neighbor ladies about him), but for Lisa, that was a long time ago, maybe on another day she would have welcomed the Blast From the Past, but not right now, with her neighborhood and friend in trauma. So what is a baffled attempt at politeness when she sees the Freckled Hounddog on her doorstep turns into bristly irritation to outright anger. Enough work is done in the 40 minute-episode that it makes sense to me that in the end she would ask Dean to stay, if he wanted to. What Dean reveals to her about himself, how he responded to Ben, how interested he is in the possibility that Ben might be his son (as in: he doesn’t flee. No! He leans in instead. What kind of man would do THAT? Well, Dean would.) … Lisa sees all that, senses his goodness, and feels safe in inviting him to a place at her table, or in her bed, or wherever else. It all works.

And the choice made by everyone involved – Kripke, the writers, the directors, Ackles, Sampson – to play it as a relationship where all of the sexual heat existed far in the past, and not in the present – is a FASCINATING one, considering the Erotic Muse(TM) nature of the character of Dean Winchester. It’s a very bold choice, too. Counter-intuitive. Unexpected. Doesn’t everyone want to see Dean all heated up with passion and sexual drive? Yup. And so in his one major relationship thus far, they DENY us that pleasure. It’s kind of brilliant. Because what emerges between these two, in the LACK of sexual need for one another, is something far more substantial. Dean knows sex. He’s had enough of it. But a woman trusting him and relying on him and allowing him to be a father? That’s new. That’s worth sacrificing everything else.

Their small scene here is very well-written and very well-played. Dean fishing, again, Lisa realizing what he’s asking, pulling back from any intimacy that that might suggest. Dean not insisting, or pushing, but still: he needs to know. Later in the episode, Lisa, softened up, observes that Dean looks disappointed when he learns that he is not Ben’s father. That look is on his face here too, only she’s not in the space yet where she can perceive it. Dean’s in a trance, staring at Ben outside. He likes Ben. He sees himself in Ben, and he doesn’t see himself ANYWHERE else in the world. What follows (no boundaries, maybe, but also it’s a natural biological father-reaction) is an automatic sense of protectiveness towards this child, as well as the child’s mother. Retro, maybe, but oh well, millennia of evolutionary biology will not be sneezed at. This protectiveness does not reside in the intellect. It’s not a choice. Dean practically has nothing to do with it. It’s THERE for him, and everything that follows happens almost like clockwork.

The Winchester Antennae for Trauma senses the melodrama going on with the dead-eyed child led out of the party. The segue for Dean into work-mode is automatic. (Lots of beautiful segues for Dean in this episode. How he reaches the emotional state in the final scene happens on a subterranean level. He’s led there by following his instincts, which he does not question.)

3rd scene

It’s a shift from the primary colors of Lisa’s world to the seedy grubby glamour of the Winchester world, with crappy wood paneling, formica tables, and deep red booths/curtains/ketchup/window-lettering. As the camera slowly circles around Sam, there are flashes of red everywhere. This will continue in later scenes. I have to believe it is deliberate.

Hell is all around.

But it’s also setting the stage for the character about to appear: Ms. Ruby-Red.

I wrote my preliminary thoughts on Ruby – and her hair – in the recap for “Magnificent Seven” so I’ll just build on what I said. Both actresses who play the role have their work cut out for them. Ruby may be one of the most challengingly WRITTEN roles in the series. It’s all text, it’s all lies, it’s all life-or-death. These women have to be 100% sure of themselves in their delivery and 100% full of shit at the same time. We have to WANT to believe in them. I think they both do an amazing job.

Observations

1. Member I mentioned that ZZ Top guy a while back? Well …

Sam, I think it’s not just Ruby who’s following you.

2. Katie Cassidy does a (fairly) good job of convincing me that she eats French fries, although you’ll notice her bites are TEENY, and I’m sure she was spitting before swallowing between takes. You don’t have a figure like that and eat French fries. However this moment is worth that slight awkwardness:

Ruby-Red taking care of her needs: Let’s add MORE red to the screen, please. A big goopy POOL of it.

3. Behind them is the drifting melody of Lee Lynch’s “Just for You” which is such an insane and perfect choice. (My parents had one of his albums in their collection, mainly because he was an Irish folk singer-balladeer. Which makes me love the music choices on Supernatural even more, at least back in the day. Like, who thought up Lee Lynch?) “Just for You” came out in 1969, and the old-school out-of-this-era sound is perfect for the Winchesters, first of all, and perfect for their milieu, diners and pool halls and lonely truck stops. Before the world became homogenized and synthesizer-ized. This also is the perfect accompaniment for the scene that goes down between Ruby and Sam, which is primarily a power-exchange, cloaked as fishing-for-information. These are two poker players feeling each other out. Two gunmen showing up in a frontier saloon, wondering if they can team up to go after the REAL Black Hat. These are not “modern” people. They are timeless. They are archetypes. They are mythic. Sam is mythic. Ruby is immortal. They fit into narratives that they are not even aware of (one of the main strengths of the show. John Wayne didn’t act like he was an epic persona. He acted like himself and we projected onto him. Huge difference.)

4. The entire season began with an achingly huge closeup of Sam. A clue to the point of view, in the episode, and in the season. Dean uses his Burlesque against Sam and against us. He won’t let us in. He’s like some other icons I can think of, burlesque artists and erotic muses, expressive and yet withholding, so much so that they still make us dream and project and yearn for insight 70, 80 years later.

Much of Sam’s Arc is twofold: trying to find a way out of Dean’s deal (where Ruby comes in), and also trying to make Dean care whether he lives or dies (a more difficult proposition). Even Sam is taken aback by just how deep Dean’s self-loathing goes. That’s how good Dean’s Burlesque is. It’s the POINT of the Burlesque.

Although Dean’s Arc is the scene-stealer in “The Kids Are Alright,” he doesn’t get a closeup as pointed and as dramatic as this one:

… which should tell you something. (There’s an even closer closeup in the effective final sequence, a closeup as close as the season opener). If you want to establish Point of View, closeup is the most effective way to do it. Also, the angle is startling, he’s got red behind him (he’s drowning in Ruby), the whole shot is a representation of the destabilizing sensation Sam experiences in the moment Ruby appears. She has something he wants. He wants that knife. This closeup is the launching-pad for all that follows. Ruby is filmed just as close, just as dramatically.

Their scenes are all close-up to close-up and back, very rarely pulling back to give us perspective, to let us see them in the space, to let us breathe. That stylistic choice alone tells us just how important Ruby is going to be.

5. Plus. Her hair. I continue to be obsessed.

Beating a red horse:

Look at the setup of that shot, in particular the black-haired woman sitting in the booth behind Ruby. That woman appears as a black cut-out in the fabric of the red. There are no distinguishing features saying “This is a human.” She is a black hole, a blank. A mirror image of who Ruby actually is? Bottomless? Everything is red in that shot. Except for Ruby herself, and that black cut-out of a woman. (Who also, incidentally, is reminiscent of Lisa.)

This is the film-making aspect of the show. The careful construction of shots, what’s included in the frame: nothing extraneous. Supernatural is not literal. It is symbolic. That symbolism can only be expressed in the stylistic choices made by the creators. It cannot be in the language, because these are people who are real and yet who exist in an epic story crowded with symbols. Every shot must be chosen. There are 100 choices one has to make, even in the most casual of shots.

Look at that shot, the pure and disturbing beauty of it. Monochromatic. With a pitch-black human-sized shadow looming in the red.

6. If Dean and Lisa have no sexual chemistry, then Sam and Ruby have almost too much. It manifests as hatred, but what’s seething beneath all of it is a dangerous drive towards the other. For various reasons. Let me fuck her so that she will shut up for five seconds. If I fuck her maybe she’ll give me what I want. Sure, I’ll fuck him if that means he’ll do what I want him to do. Also he’s tall and I love a tall man. (Sam’s reaction to that comment from her is classic subtle Padalecki.)

We move from the two ladies drooling over Dean to Ruby objectifying Sam. Ruby’s approach is not the approach of the Demon Meg, who sexualizes literally everything and everyone (she is the dark mirror of Dean, making it completely understandable – outside her actions and her Demon-status – that Dean would despise her so much.) And so there’s a parallel structure going on in the episode, as we are “let in” to the points of view of those looking AT Sam and Dean, as opposed to just how THEY see things. It’s too simplistic to say that these women “are us” (i.e. the fans who also drool over them). It’s more complex than that.

This sense of Desire + Hatred between Ruby and Sam is even stronger in the final scene when Ruby toys with him, dangling possibilities in front of him with a smirk, and Sam gets tough with her. One tiny breath and they would be fucking where they stand.

“The Kids Are Alright” is not an episode about women, but it is an episode featuring two very different kinds of women, one for each brother. Each woman gives what is by now a very well-known character another area in which to play and express, each woman provides a glimpse of the extra layers in these men we think we know. Each woman, too, opens up the man’s eyes to those other layers within himself, whether he consents to that “violation” or not.

4th scene

As I mentioned, the melodrama with Katie and her Mom takes over the narrative for me. These sequences are filmed with a sense of emotional horror so palpable that you enter into the harassed world of the mother, being driven literally mad by her demanding daughter, by the fact that she doesn’t think it IS her daughter, and by the fact that that is the most terrible thought anyone can ever have. What is wrong with her that she would even entertain it? It’s so claustrophobic, these sequences. And the situation goes way too far to ever be rectified, even after the daughter “changes back.” It may be a Monster of the Week, but this one haunts me. Whatever is wrong here will never be righted. It wouldn’t surprise me if after all this, Katie’s Mom gave Katie up, decided she was not fit to raise a child anyway. She will not be okay.

Sgriccia knows this. Kripke knows this. The angles are terrifying, showing the completely messed-up landscape of the workings of the mother’s brain. Watch for the total lack of color. The whole house is grey. This sequence is extended, and interrupted by the other arcs going on in the episode. It takes on its own form and weight. It’s not isolated. We follow Sam, we follow Dean, we follow her.

The opening shot, of the mother lying asleep on the couch, reading a vampire novel, is great. Maybe this is not the best reading material for a crisis? Or maybe she’s looking for clues. Maybe she’s searching for an answer to her problems. She KNOWS something is not right, something is uncanny, not quite of this earth.

To have your daughter say “I love you” and find it off-putting, to cringe at her touch, to get the creepy-crawlies when you just LOOK at her … is too much. Too much for this woman. She does not have the imaginative power of Lisa, who realizes her son REALLY isn’t her son, and ADDRESSES it. Openly. “Okay, I had no idea there were monsters in this world. But … oh well. There clearly are, this is not my son, and I am OUTTA HERE.” Think about the boldness of that. The imaginative flexibility. No wonder Dean likes her (beyond her love of sex). I’ve said it before: when Dean DOES choose someone, and he rarely does (as far as I can tell, only three times in his life) … he chooses WELL.

This is another GREAT shot.

There are three of her. Complete fragmenting of identity.

5th scene

While Dean takes a walk down memory lane, and suddenly starts acting like a suburban Dad (with some quirks), Sam investigates another death, and discovers another strange piece of the puzzle, the gigantic hickey on the back of the widow’s neck. But what really strikes me about this short scene is Sam’s brown suit – when have we seen that?, checked shirt and gold-flecked tie. He looks fabulous!

Since the scenes flip back and forth between Sam and Dean, we get another example of the parallel tracks they’re running on. In this scene, Sam notices a little girl (and of course she is named “Dakota”) staring at him with a blank-affect out the window. 5 or 6 years ago, I wrote a whole essay about “creepy kid” movies, the Grand Pooh-Bah of them all being the original “bad seed”:

I’m sorry, Damien can’t hold a candle to Rhoda.

Sam’s “this is really off” antennae start quivering. The same thing will happen to Dean in the next scene.

It’s a very well-structured script in that way, since except for the showdown scene, Sam and Dean are on separate tracks. When Sam and Dean reconvene, they have both reached some conclusions. BUT, even better, with all the commiserating about changelings, both of them keep secrets. Sam’s secret is more important, but the casual withholding that they do with one another, the “leaving out” of important shit that will grow in importance, is practically compulsive. Dean doesn’t speak of Lisa to Sam. He doesn’t say, “Dude, I think I’m a dad, you should have seen this kid …” And Sam doesn’t say, “Dude, you’ll never guess who I just had lunch with …”

As a matter of fact, these things are never shared. These secrets pass on to the next episode, and the next, and the next … It provides a tension that continues throughout, that helps hold the whole thing together. It’s also the fabric of the show, which is the relationship between these two men. If there’s anything I really mourn the loss of in this latest season, it is that. The total absence of “BM scenes” is the biggest indicator that the new Overlords have no idea what the show is really about.

But let’s not dwell. Let’s stay focused on this episode. Please? I want to live in the past for now.

6th scene

Katie knocking at the door of the bathroom is shown with crazy angles, the door rattling, the daughter never seen but heard, the bangs on the door so violent that it sounds like a professional wrestler not a child. It’s an exaggeration of a situation extremely true to life: the total lack of privacy a parent may experience, never being “allowed” to be alone, in a quiet space. All great horror comes out of an exaggeration of something truthful.

When the real estate lady shows up, the mood shifts, and it’s interesting the layers in this short scene, considering that she’s the Mama Changeling. Engineering the murder of Husbands. To clear the way towards the Mums? This woman is the Wild Card, the one thing not anticipated or planned for by Sam and Dean.

It is her knock on the door that quiets Katie. Katie the changeling knows this woman, knows who she is, her true mother. She stands quiet and watchful. It’s a great choice to have Mama Changeling show up with a fruit basket, show sympathy for the grieving woman, and then say “Are you going to sell your house? We here at Cicero Realty …”

A vulture. A symbolic vulture as a businesswoman and a literal vulture as the Changeling version of the child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

7th scene

Moving from the grey world of Katie into the sunlit green of Dean’s experience is jarring. I’m sure he feels the same way. Again, one of my first responses to “The Kids Are Alright” was aesthetic, and it was so strong it almost amounted to rejection. My system, accustomed to show’s shadows, nighttime milieu, and grey-skies/bleak colors, cringed away from the sunlight like a vampire. Well-done Manners, Singer, et al. The only bright colors allowed thus far were in the lawn-mower/Joey Ramone sequence, and that took place in an alternate reality entirely in Dean’s mind. Here, what is inside Dean’s mind – the world he has kept hidden from Sam, from everyone, even from us – is made manifest. He steps into it. (I have written before about Dean’s feelings of unclean-ness. No wonder he takes half-hour showers. I wrote about that in my first post about Dean. One of his distinguishing characteristics.)

The Impala is parked on a stretch of green grass, gleaming in the sunlight. Dean approaches, seen in the distance, with Ben, a looming blur on the left-hand side of the screen.

Another beautifully constructed shot, with a gorgeous focus-switch, a stylistic “tic” of the show (early on anyway) that I have always loved, because it prioritizes relationship, the connection between two people across space.

These visual choices all come from an emotional and thematic place. They are meant to illuminate the themes. If you notice them, if they are too obvious, then that’s Amateur Hour. This is not Amateur Hour. These choices exist for careful close-reading viewers like myself, and they deepen my appreciation of the levels everyone is working on here. The plot is one thing. The theme is another. Supernatural is now about its plot and there are no themes. It’s disheartening. It’s like looking down at your 7 year-old daughter, and she may look the same, but she is NOT the same. Something is missing, her soul, essence, personality.

But here: Dean and Ben are connected in the opening shot. They are not shown in two separate shots, one of Dean, one of Ben. Because that would not be thematic. The two are together in space-time. And maybe Ben even came from the brief union of Lisa and Dean. That’s certainly on Dean’s mind. It’s on ours, too. I have liked to fantasize that Lisa was lying to Dean in re: blood tests. The blood test is sketchy anyway. Did she pluck out some of Dean’s hair on the weekend in question, just in CASE she got pregnant and needed genetic material? Did she say during their weekend, post semi-illegal sexual activity: “Hey, just curious, what’s your blood type?” Maybe she asked the biker-father for DNA, and thereby eliminated Dean. Still, it’s kind of fun to just try on the idea that she’s lying. That she made up the bar-back. That Dean’s clearly the one. Lisa is similar to Dean in that she doesn’t want to be beholden to anyone, she doesn’t want someone else to take on what she sees as her responsibilities. But … here he is, on her doorstep, over and over again, so maybe … maybe she should just let him in after all.

We’re close to Ben here, not Dean. Dean is in the backround, which also says something. We are not quite in his point of view, nor are we throughout the episode. Whatever his dreams and thoughts may be, he handles them personally, buried within him. We get glimpses but not the whole thing. It’s why his “dream” of Lisa on a picnic blanket is so unexpected.

What happens next is a male bonding experience, involving beating up another boy. But Dean, a sensitive man, sits down and feels the misery emanating from the child. A lot of adults don’t care about the problems of children, or minimize the tragedies going on in the 4-foot-tall set. Dean takes one look at the situation and sees all. And is vulnerable enough to ask Ben. Dean’s a helper. It’s compulsive.

He is the kid’s father, after all. SOMEONE’s gotta teach Ben to stick up for himself. He deliberately says something to make Ben laugh, a joke about the kid who stole his game, and Dean makes it look easy. Being a father-figure comes naturally. Interestingly enough, all of this happens below Lisa’s radar, or when she does notice it, it looks like Dean butting in where he CLEARLY does not belong. He shows up on her doorstep, expecting her to fall into bed with him after eight years, and now he’s trying to, what, impress her? get on her good side? insinuate himself into her life? by bonding with her SON? USING her child to get to her?

Point of view again. You can’t argue with Lisa’s perception. Which makes it all the more interesting when Lisa asks him to stay at the end. It’s not just because Dean saved Ben. It’s because Dean clearly looks disappointed when he hears Ben is not his. And you can’t fake that expression on Dean’s face. It’s so subtle that it almost doesn’t even register. But Lisa sees it.

The identical outfits. The mirror-image body language.

Dean is impressed with the kid’s ferocity about fighting his own battles. But he gives Ben some tips, and then sits back to watch the fur fly. Laughing, and also glancing around to see if anyone is watching his involvement. That’s a humorous Ackles detail. Always aware of context, and always aware of not just WHO he is but WHERE he is. Where we are informs who we are. (Many actors miss this memo. Ackles never does. It’s a kind of three-dimensional awareness: what he is PLAYING in the scene, who Dean IS – within the scene and elsewhere – and WHERE Dean is.)

You’ll notice that Ben starts out the confrontation with “I’d like my game back, please.” Dean’s advice was not “Go up there and punch him in the face.” His advice was: “Ask nicely.” Give the bruiser a chance. Plausible deniability. You did not start the fight. You asked. If he refuses … well … let him have it.

I’ll state the obvious in re: the confrontation with Lisa that follows. She probably thinks this is the boiling point. She literally could not be more clear. You have no business here, you have no business with my son. And yet he shows up on her doorstep AGAIN! Imagine, again, what this looks like to her. I’ve had some pesty guys who would never go away but this verges on – IS – stalking. Or that’s her perception of it. Let alone the fact that she has no idea he skulks around outside her house peeking through the windows. I love love love these point of view shifts.

But one observation that pleases me every time I watch this scene:

When Lisa stalks over to scold Ben for beating up the kid, she eventually turns her wrath on Dean. Dean, sitting on the bench, looks up at her and snaps, “What?“, and his tone … it is so instantly intimate (no boundaries, remember), it is so “You and me are together, and you’re being annoying like you usually are, and get off my case” … It’s a presumption of intimacy. Like, he GETS to talk to her like that. As though she scolds him on a daily basis. This is Dean’s blessing (he is capable of intimacy very quickly) and his curse (he can’t HELP being intimate – with everyone – even when it’s not appropriate.)

Dean gets worse when she continues to rail at him and he says the worst thing a man – or anyone – can say when you’re flipping out, “Relax.” And he says it in a slightly annoyed tone, too. The tone of a boyfriend who’s sick of his nagging girlfriend.

SO RUDE.

No wonder Lisa yanks his arm and pulls him away to read him the riot act. He’s acting like a boyfriend. Like he has a place here, like he has a right to be here. She sets her boundaries like a prison guard. Get OUT. Do NOT tell me to “relax” in that tone. You are a stranger to me and now you’ve ruined my awesome sex memory by being such a jagoff. Dean feels that rage, doesn’t understand, tries to talk with her in a shift of tone – “Lisa!” (Just her name. There’s a pleading in his tone. Come on! Let’s just talk about it. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.) But she is off.

The music has entered, very slightly, nothing too insistent. It has a sad and eerie tone, Dean’s confrontation with maybe something he wants, something he’s drawn to without knowing why, part of his progression to that line in the final scene about not leaving anything behind but a car. He liked it when Ben hugged him. He liked helping Ben. He liked that role a lot. He’s very alone.

I was just on a panel with the wonderful Michael Phillips, of the Chicago Tribune, and he made a great observation about closeups, which I already knew on some gut level, but had never thought of it in quite this way. Had never put it into words.

“Somebody once said that the best use of a closeup is a character changing their mind. Not just one emotion, one thought, one stupid reaction shot, but somebody changing their mind.”

I love it! And Ackles is a master at this. The directors know that he is, and leave a lot of space for such moments.

8th scene

This terrible Susan Smith scene is the mid-point of the episode, which shows you Kripke’s priority. Filming this scene had to be so involved, it’s extraordinarily complex. You’re submerging a car in water. It has to look right when it goes down. You’re not going to have too many shots to get it right. You have to give the illusion that the child is in the car. It’s a night shoot which comes with its own challenges. You need a fog machine. And, I imagine, you have to somehow shield the child actress from what is actually happening in the scene.

It’s quite a feat.

This young actress is so good. Sgriccia, who seems like such a nice comfortable presence (witness the special features clip of him working with the young actresses in the musical episode. He’s great with all of them! He respects them. That’s what you’re seeing.), probably gave her very good direction, very clear, with clearly stated instructions. Keep trying to hug your mother. Beg your mother!! The way she keeps pleading for ice cream, trying to hug her mother, is just awful, and her mother experiences those touches as incredible and unwelcome pressure.

The scene of the ramp is bookended with beautiful establishing shots, showing environment and atmosphere. They don’t do this often on the show. The show is more about Faces than Places, but when they DO invest in one of these shots, it’s always stunning and evocative.

9th scene

Crickets chirping, a nice touch, as the camera pans over Sam’s work, moving up to his face, a repeat of the opening shot of the first scene with Ruby. And again, the background is pierced with red, a red glow around his face. Sam is researching changelings, but he’s really just taking a break from researching ways to get Dean out of that eternal Red Glow.

Workhorse Sam saw that hickey and immediately realized what was up, coming home to their motel amongst the pines, populated by ZZ Top and their roadies, to do the research necessary.

Fake web site alert, fake top nav. Yeah, because Sam has a bank account. Uh-huh.

Now about this motel room. The Cicero Pines motel room. It’s close enough to nature that you can hear crickets chirping from inside your room. It’s also close enough to nature (maybe their room is in the back, not facing the highway) that there are shadows of tree branches, making it a strange and fantastical space.

But the decor … the decor is straight-up Wild West Bordello. Lush and sensuous, with busy thick red-designed wallpaper, and wooden walls, painted wainscoting, the whole nine yards. There’s a mirrored wall, a mirrored vanity where Dean sits. No matter where they go … there they are. Maybe that’s part of the point thematically, although it’s also just Jerry Wanek and set dresser giving Serge Ledouceur and Sgriccia a hell of a lot to work with in terms of shot construction. No matter where you point the camera, there’s something interesting in the background.

Now again, the real priority – as always – are their faces. That’s all we – and the show – cares about. But those faces cannot gleam out in the way that they do if the background doesn’t highlight them.

These are good-looking men, but the background, and its intricacy, its darkness flecked with light and color, makes them seem like works of art.

So in the midst of an episode where the majority of the action takes place in day-glo green and sunlight, or interior spaces that are monochromatic in Ikea-tan – like Lisa’s – or flat grey – like Katie’s – suddenly we have a luscious and decadent room filled with purples and pinks and reds and oranges and gold.

… with the dizzy doubling of both Sam and Dean, through all those mirrors.

That last one has an excellent focus-pull too, so subtle you don’t even perceive it’s happening. But it tells you where to look. Camera operator: I salute you..

The mirrors on the wall fragment their bodies even further:

These visual clues represent the unspoken, the secrets both of them are carrying, from one another for sure, but also from themselves.

Outside of any possible thematic connections, it also just flat out looks beautiful, and in my book that’s reason enough to do anything. These two lead guys deserve to be highlighted against startlingly beautiful/strange backgrounds: it is the best way to show off what they both have.

MY GOD, LOOK AT THIS LIGHTING.

10th scene

Knock, knock, knock #2.

Little does Dean know … knocking on her door will become a regular thing, a thing he can’t avoid or stop. For years. Sometimes we know a thing before we really know it. My friend David says to me all the time, “Sheila, your life is a literary conceit.” I’m kind of sick it to be honest, and maybe it’s just the way I INTERPRET things, or that I NOTICE patterns, repetitions, dovetails (this, by far, is the worst recent example. If you wrote it in a novel, it would sound over-planned. Maybe it’s all in how you look at it.) Whatever the case may be, Dean knocking on the door of a home that contains a family, a family he feels a part of, by default, bonding with them almost by accident … Dean going away and closing that door behind him … Dean returning to knock again … the supplication of that stance, the lack of comfort, the … THIS-ness of it:

… is such a perfect representation/literary conceit of Dean’s entire life.

This is yet another reason why the bunker needs to GO. Enough already. Make them homeless. Cut them off from comfort. It’s necessary. The bunker is actually hurting the story now. Torch it.

Here is what Lisa looks like when she sees Dean.

This woman is so over it. Also, the way she opens the door … you can tell she’s already harassed. We haven’t seen “the change” come over Ben, but he’s already full-blown by the time Dean shows up. And you can bet that Lisa has noticed. Dean’s timing is awful. In general. Dean perceives it because he perceives everything but he launches into a schpeel that is basically a sales pitch for 6 Flags, handing her a credit card. I know I keep harping on this, but while WE can see what he’s doing, all Lisa sees is this one-time fuck-buddy will not go away and now he’s handing her a phony credit card – CAN YOU IMAGINE – with a clearly fake name – a blend of two famous magicians and escape artists – his message being: “ESCAPE LISA. ESCAPE” – and somehow seems urgently devoted to the idea that she and her zombie kid take a vacation.

In short, Dean looks insane if you view this scene through Lisa’s eyes.

Even when she shouts, “GET OUT,” he responds, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

!!!!

And then he skulks through her yard, peeking through the windows.

Yes, this is all part of the plot of the episode. But think about how this relationship ends up playing out. All of the themes are here. And I guess that was what I was saying earlier, in re: literary conceits. It’s rare you get the distance to see those patterns. But each of us carry our life experiences with us, each of us behave and react according to our own experiences, and of course these things will line up in patterns, repeat themselves. Besides, Dean is an epic hero. His journey here is one of Eternal Return.

Speaking of ZZ Top:

This is a very good Legs episode.

First, we had the leering pan up Dean’s bow-legs.

Then we have:

And:

Legs split by a thick beam of light. What could be better.

The house under construction is – like the motel room – another example of how the care Wanek and team gives to each location – pays off in spades. It’s a nice scene, but it is also GREAT to look at. The boards and beams of the unfinished house give this low-budget show an opportunity for some truly stunning lighting effects, accomplished with very little money. Put up a couple of beams, put on the fog machine for 10 seconds, then shine a spotlight from behind: Voila: mood and texture and beauty. It’s also not monotonous or generic. As this scene unfolds (flipping back and forth between this location and Lisa’s house), it is increasingly difficult to figure out where the hell Sam and Dean are in relation to one another. And that’s perfect for the scene. Unlike Lisa’s house, this house is an empty shell. And Dean and Sam rattle around through it, stepping over bars, coming through plastic, trying to find what they are looking for. Along with the relatively quick editing cuts, and the lighting, it’s an extremely interesting location. Made with a couple of planks of wood.

Back to the Houdini theme: during this sequence where Sam and Dean – separated – wander through the construction site, they are usually seen through bars, from across a space, things interrupting our line of view. Trapped. These “themes” – made manifest – don’t even need to be planned for consciously. But since there has been so much detail involved, in every aspect (well, I wish Lisa’s house was more personalized, not so House Beautiful – but other than that) … each location pours into the overall themes.

Dean and Children, Part II

The camera follows Dean’s passage through the house. We stay with him. It’s disorienting. It’s effective, too, because you can see that he sees something, but you don’t see what it is. Not for a good 2, 3 seconds, as he approaches. His face is blasted open with feeling and urgency. Dean the protector, Dean the innocent who is still able – after everything – to feel compassion for others and horror at cruelty. The shot of the child’s fingers rising up through the bars of the cage, into the beam of light coming from Dean’s flashlight, is the best shot in the episode, an episode filled with great shots. It’s tragic.

The sequence that follows – Dean releasing the children, taking breaks to fight the Mama Changeling, going back to help the children – loops into my earlier thoughts about Dean and children. For a variety of reasons, Dean took such hard knocks on the chin at age 4, that on some level he stopped developing. Life stopped for him. Dean was old enough to have a Before/After memory of his life. The trauma had to be excruciating, especially since he had no support, and was expected to hunker down into Commando Mode.

I am not a parent but most of my friends are. They speak often (especially my friends who had unhappy abusive childhoods) of looking at their children and wanting to do better than their parents did. Wanting to provide their children with a feeling of safety, come what may, that no matter how bad things get, the kids know their parents have their backs. There’s a lot of pain in parenting like this, because childhood stuff gets dredged up. Abandonment issues, a feeling of unfairness, unmanaged pain … It’s a lot to manage, at least according to the friends of mine going through it.

Dean steps into that dad role because Sam asked him to, but he’s already drawn to it. I’ve said before – although it doesn’t seem so relevant now in the series, since … the characters no longer seem to be present … that Dean knocking someone up, and finally getting to be a father, seems like a pretty good solution for the angst of Dean Winchester. Picturing him being happy and okay with a normal life, working out and having friends and going out for cappucino (according to the fanfic) just makes no sense, not considering what he’s been through. But devoting himself to taking care of someone else? I think he could do that, it would give his life purpose, he would be able to love in a simple and uncomplicated way, and he would get to use his strength for good.

This shot really says it all. And there’s the outside/inside tension too, just like Dean knocking at the door. Let me in, let me out. Both. It’s so great.

Clearly, these thoughts are a tangent, but they are related to the subtext of the episode, and it’s what I think of every time I watch Dean see the children in the cages, and start to let them out. I don’t think it’s 100% a metaphor, obviously it’s not, but there’s an element of it that works on a metaphoric level. The “literary conceit” level. Releasing these children, releasing himself, bashing open the locks to save the children, when nobody bashed the locks to save him. It’s too late for him, but at least he can do this, and maybe if these children get out and have a happy life, maybe that’ll make his own sacrifice a bit more meaningful.

The real beauty is that the metaphoric level is there if you want to pick up on it, but what you see on screen is a guy letting children out of cages, end-stop. It works on multiple levels, and that is Supernatural at its very best.

This final sequence is three-pronged: Dean and the kids, Sam and the real estate lady, Lisa and Ben. (I am slightly confused about the timeframe. It’s slightly Bugs-esque, which featured the shortest night in the history of Planet Earth.) The confrontation in the half-built house takes place at night. Meanwhile, back at home, Ben pesters Lisa for food. It’s past his bed-time. The confrontation builds, until finally, the changelings vanish, etc. When Dean drives the real Ben home, it’s daylight. So … how exactly does that work? Unless Lisa is up at 5:30, 6:00 a.m. and Ben the Changeling has been pestering her all night … and she gets up to make him a pizza at 5 in the morning … which doesn’t seem to be the case …

Once Ben is released from the cage, he silently and automatically “steps up” and helps Dean release the other children. He is quiet and capable, taking his peers by the arm and leading them away. Dean notices. He doesn’t say anything, but he notices Ben’s helpfulness, his knowledge of what to do. Ben is a great help throughout, including the moment when he reads Dean’s mind about the broken glass on the sill and hands up his jacket to cover it. He also makes the other children crawl through the window first. He’s a Little Man. These details … again … explain all that follows. Explains why Dean has such a hard time cutting that tie when it eventually becomes clear to him that he must do so. Also why the final scene between Dean and Ben in Season 6 is so extraordinary, so painful, SO well-written. Ben does not let Dean off the hook in that final scene. Nor should he.

Meanwhile, back at home, Lisa gets the memo instantly.

“You’re not my son.” “Yes, I am.” “Where’s Ben?”

This woman is STRONG.

The music, by the way, is great, tying together this rather complicated sequence going on in multiple locations, but intimately connected. The zombie creepy children advance on Lisa’s house (such a funny image), while Dean gets caught up in a fist fight with the real estate lady. It’s an awesome fight. I’ve said this before: one of the fun things in Supernatural is its un-traditional handling of gender, since a little old lady can turn out to be a ferocious monster, and etc., so that suddenly actors who have never had to do fight choreography to this degree before in their careers suddenly get to do a gigantic fight scene. This is a perfect example. It’s even better since she’s in her logo-ed real estate outfit with her blunt haircut. Hilarious. Ackles and Padalecki doubling over in pain at her fake punches and kicks gives me no end of joy.

As Lisa’s standoff with Ben continues, the location switches to Katie’s Mom, hiding in the bathroom again (notice how the first shot of her involves a reflection, fragmenting her face) as her daughter rattles the door. When the Mama Changeling is finally torched, the changeling children vanish in a burst of fire, leaving both mothers huddled on the floor, in beautiful repetitive shots.

11th scene

Dean drives Ben home. 4, 5 hours after he saved him. Did he take him out to breakfast? Why wouldn’t he go pick up Lisa, too? Details, details.

When Lisa flings herself at Dean, hugging him and crying, Dean has one of those moments over her shoulder that is exactly what Michael Phillips describes up above. It’s a moment that starts one way and shifts into another. Neither are expected. He’s surprised to get a hug like this, and then … instead of moving into an obvious choice like comforting her, or feeling gratified that he’s finally being thanked … he looks, instead, confused. And there’s Ben standing there looking up at him. This family unit moment feels right, and he’s taken aback by it. It’s a wonderful moment and it lasts half a second.

Lisa hasn’t been introduced to Sam, and Dean has been so busy annoying her and giving her phony credit cards that he hasn’t had a chance to fill her in on the existence of a sibling. She barely seems curious about the hunk standing outside the car, saying “I’m gonna give you guys some time.” I love that moment. Any time Sam stands back from Dean, and lets his brother be … gives him space … vanishes in order to avoid the cock-block … it’s pleasing. It doesn’t happen often and it’s very adult. Usually these guys are up in each other’s grill. All the time.

It’s great, too, that there’s not a closeup of Sam watching the embrace. He’s seen across the Impala, with Lisa and Dean huddled together on the side of the frame. Sgriccia understands that that’s more pleasing: We get to see Sam observing and thinking, across the space. None of that “Atta boy” close-up stuff. No.

A couple of things to note about this beautifully written and gorgeously played scene.

Visual choices

It starts with a closeup of Ben’s hands turning on his compact disc player (member those?), with a nice focus-switch to Lisa and Dean on the other side of the room looking on. To reiterate: this choice unites the three of them into a unit. But note there’s tension there still, distance between each figure. Yet there they are, visually connected, fragile spaces of connection flowing back and forth. The fabric of it could easily be broken, but Dean feels so close to both of them. His entire behavior changes, which I’ll get to in a second. And Lisa feels close to both of them. And Ben feels so safe with the two of them there that he ignores them completely. All of this accomplished with no over-obvious closeups. Done in one shot.

Then comes a reverse shot, showing Ben across the room, with Lisa and Dean as shadowy bookends in the frame.

A parental shot if ever there was one. A protective shot, the two of them hovering on Ben’s periphery, a team watching out for him.

I’m never sure how much these visual tangents interest people, but I figure people can go anywhere for regular re-caps and plot points. What I’m interested in is how the look of the show and the choices made help tell the story. They’re effortlessly woven into the story.

My final observation along these lines:

1. In the following conversation, watch just how much each of them “barges in” to the other’s closeups. Lisa’s head takes up half the frame when the camera is on Dean, and vice versa. These people aren’t just connected. They’ve merged.

2. When there is a closeup and the other one does not appear in it, it’s extremely deliberate:

A. When Lisa says, “Before I became a mom.” It’s her private moment. Dean witnesses it, and feels it, but his body does not barge into her private space.

B. When Dean looks at Ben, considering their similarities, considering the naturally occurring bond he feels with the child, and absorbing Lisa’s confirmation that he is not the father. He’s by himself in that one. Lisa witnesses it, feels it, but her body is nowhere to be seen in that frame.

The tilt of his head, the space around him, makes him seem untethered. In a new space. And there’s longing in his face. He had hoped …

He was ready. 24 hours ago he would have balked at the thought. But now? He’s ready.

Acting moments

All of these subtle visual choices are there to support what’s important, which is the acting. Ackles does some of his best work here. He’s so good in emotional detail, in effortless subtlety, in always always thinking something deeper than what he is saying. The conversation he is having with himself – that we are not privy to – is often far more fascinating than the words that come out of his mouth, and it is this aspect to Ackles’ acting that draws audiences in so deeply. In many ways, it’s not an emotional choice: it’s a character choice: this is who Dean is. And think back to who Dean was in the pilot. He is not written this way. This is what Ackles brings to it.

So there’s Lisa, laughingly providing way too much information about her other one-night-stand around the same time as Dean. But this tells me that she knows Dean might get a kick out of it, and also – most importantly – that he will not judge. He’s not that kind of guy. He gives her a great look when she describes the guy. A side-eye, filled with knowingness, maybe a little surprise. But he’s also a little bit … impressed.

It’s very kind, whatever that look is. They’re grownups. Both of them.

I’ve written before about Dean and women. I think I’ve connected it to the Tough Guys of cinema in the past. Bogart. Wayne. These men were legitimately tough. They weren’t “overcompensating.” That was not their archetype. That’s a modern conception placed on an older form that’s not appropriate. But it was with women that we got to REALLY see them. Women get to see parts of Bogart, parts of Wayne, that their male cohorts – no matter how close – will never see. This is pre-Alan-Alda masculinity. Dean qualifies. (With, of course, a truly modern aspect of him that is gender-less and fluid.)

When he looks at Lisa, when he opens up to her, in his own way, something rises up from within him, flooding his face, that we rarely see. That even Sam almost never sees.

Dean is vulnerable to women. He has no boundaries in general but he has even less with women. Consider how his initial reaction to Ellen was a rough rejection. Not for any alpha-male bullshit, but because her sharp eyes saw beneath his surface, and he had no defenses. This is a motherless man, after all.

For whatever reason, and maybe there are details about Lisa NOT of a sexual nature that live in his memory, he trusts her. He can show her this. He can tell her what he cannot tell Sam, what he cannot even tell himself half the time: That he knows he’s going to die. Soon. And what has he done with his life? What will it mean? What has he left behind? It made him feel good, momentarily, to think he passed along his genetic material. Who does he ever talk to like this?

And he does it in a typically non-self-congratulatory, slightly awkward, and yet 100% captivating way, the Dean Winchester thing: a man not used to expressing his introspection, but a man who is very introspective nonetheless.

In their final moment, Dean can’t leave without coming clean. And it’s how he closes his eyes as he makes his statement that makes the moment, that tells us EVERYTHING, beyond the words he’s saying. It’s not easy for him to say, and it’s not easy for him to be with the emotion that it brings up.

No wonder Lisa makes her offer after that. I don’t blame her. He doesn’t recoil from her embrace, her offer, her. He leans in. He lingers, hovers, caught in that connection, caught by his own draw to it. He barely knows which end is up. 24 hours ago he would never have seen himself HERE.

The goodbye, when it comes, is kind. Nobody gets hurt.

That will be the energy between them almost throughout their relationship. Mainly because of Lisa and her lack of “wet blanket” impulses. She wasn’t waiting around for Dean – or a man – to show up. She can take care of herself. But Dean fits in her life, and fits with Ben. As nuts as his life is, as dangerous as it is, he would be safe to let into her home. She can’t just date around. And so it makes perfect sense that she would allow him to come in and out that door until … she reaches her limit. I never thought we’d see Lisa again after my first-time watching this episode. It felt like a self-contained story (and I was still dreaming of the return of Cassie and her coffee/tea ritual). But taken all together, it’s a very satisfying arc, held together by those Knock Knock Knocks on the door.

12th scene

The star of this final scene is not Jared Padalecki or Katie Cassidy. The star of this final scene is the editing. I ADORE it, it’s masterful. To give a sense of the passage of time, of Sam accumulating evidence through mountains of phone calls, there are quick-cuts, showing different angles of Sam, on the phone, asking questions, making notes, sometimes just sitting there thinking. He moves around the room. Sometimes the cut lurches into a future moment and yet his voiceover continues. Buoying all of this is an urgent score.

It’s the editing that makes this the scene that it is.

Remember what I said about those closeups of Sam? That Season 3 began with a gigantic closeup of Sam, practically up his nose? It’s here again too.

Dean didn’t get a closeup like that. This tells you all you need to know. Dean is on a personal journey and Sam is on the epic journey. (They will collide, but not yet. Dean has to go through the personal stuff first.) It’s not that Lisa and Dean isn’t urgent. It is, but not urgent like THIS. Sam is investigating his mother, on Ruby’s suggestion. He has told Dean none of this. It’s one HELL of a secret.

The sequence gives a chance to revel in:
— Jared Padalecki’s face
— Jared Padalecki’s intelligence as an actor. This is a boring sequence on the page. He makes it urgent, he gives it a build.
— The motel room, with the unmade bed, making it look even more like a sex den.

Ruby, too, has been keeping a secret. She only showed up in episode 1. Unlike Lisa, it’s already clear she is extremely important. She is unflappable (“Racist.” A joke that will be made again and again). More disturbingly, it is so clear that Sam is doing all of this behind Dean’s back. Dean should be involved in this conversation. Naturally, though, he can’t be. Dean held onto the secret of John’s deathbed command. For episodes on end. Now it’s Sam’s turn.

Padalecki is sexy as HELL in this scene. His anger, shaded with hatred, is sexy. “Just tell me who you are.” It’s a scene crackling with a kind of chemistry charged with hate-fuck potential. (This is exactly the opposite of the energy between Lisa and Dean, another example of the fascinating mirror-images and switch-backs the episode specializes in.)

They both look so gorgeous you just want them to get to it. Or … I’ll just speak for myself. I just want them to get to it.

Black-eyed Ruby dangles that “I can help Dean” carrot.

Sam doesn’t see it coming. Neither did I. I also did not second-guess her.

My bad.

Supernatural Re-Caps
Season 1
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