Directed by Cliff Bole
Written by Laurence Andries

So let’s get this out of the way: I know they basically “disowned” this episode by having Chuck refer to the “bad writing”. I know Eric Kripke has said it’s one of his least favorites. I’ve said this many times before, but now we’re finally AT the episode, so I will say it again: I DON’T CARE. I have seen people say “well, you know even THEY didn’t like ‘Red Sky'” – as though you’re not ALLOWED to like it because the people involved didn’t like it. Of course you don’t have to like it but I am not going to let THEM tell me which episodes I “get” to like. That’s not how art works. You made this thing, it’s out in the universe now, it’s no longer yours. It’s MINE.

I won’t make too many claims in its favor. Much of it is super-dumb, and the one-handed sailor with the long wet hair and the Ozzy-eye-makeup is embarrassing. (Not AS bad as the Renaissance artist in love with the nun who exploded another nun out of her backside. Nothing is as bad as THAT.) The treatment of Gert is unnecessarily hostile (in one moment in particular), although they got a lot of humor out of it (including one visual gag which makes me laugh every time I see it). Some of the dialogue is like … “what?” …(which Dean says, in a state of total confusion, THREE times in the episode – I love this: he is completely behind the eight-ball. Bela throws him COMPLETELY off). But I love it and its slightly off-kilter quality is in its favor. Like: “Dean …. you gotta relax.” That’s not really Supernatural-ese but I like it a whole lot. The argument between Sam and Dean is stale (but this is a season full of the same. damn. argument – so I sympathize). However, parts of the episode have a freshness of style and mood I welcome on the show. They let their hair down. It’s openly silly. (Not a criticism.) Yes, it takes place in a 1930s screwball world, with high-class parties and champagne and yachts and people pretending to be married like it’s a sex farce with mistaken identities. But Supernatural has visited many different worlds. There’s a sexy loopiness to “Red Sky at Morning” which, frankly, I wish the show indulged in more.

Bela Redux

Then there’s Bela. I went long on her here, and the qualities of femme fatale she brings. Regular guest actors are useless if they don’t bring out anything in the two leads – either creating conflict or creating comfort. What Bobby brings is not what Castiel brings. What Charlie brings is not what Frank brings. What Garth brings is not what Lisa and Ben bring. Not everyone new who shows up can be supportive (like Ellen and Jo, like Jodie). Some characters must bring conflict too, or be figures who create conflict between Sam and Deam. (They succeeded in doing this with Jack, only they didn’t push it far enough by a long shot – it should have been the point of the whole season.)

Bela’s arc is quick and dirty and intense. It is a mirror-image of the season as a whole: Dean’s arc is hers. Sam’s arc is ALSO hers. She swaggers in wearing leather coats and betraying them every chance she gets, but her goal is the same as theirs. She’s not just some random meanie. She has an objective which gives her texture, oomph (and it shows in the performance, which is very nuanced).

I said in my last re-cap that part of Dean’s reaction to her is not just hostility. It’s recognition. When she says, “Takes one to know one” here … she’s RIGHT. And who else is an outsider enough to even dare to say that to him? Her presence makes us see HIM more clearly. She brings in a kind of super-spy angle, complete with British accent, but she operates in the same universe. This is why Mr. Ketch and the BMOL, with their military complex and gear and SWAT team mentality was so appalling. What on EARTH did ANY of that have to do with Supernatural? It might have been forgivable if it was USED – the way Bela is USED – to illuminate the brothers’ relationship, add some conflict, make them fight it out (or not). But no. But instead it just SAT there, like a teenage boy’s fantasy of an over-militarized nightmare you can’t wake up from.

When you learn Bela’s backstory in the final hour, there are such parallels with Dean it kind of makes you sick to your stomach the more you think about it. She is onto him, because, it’s true what she says: Damage recognizes damage.

The fact that the show allowed her – a villain, really – to clock one of Dean’s issues – that they put TRUTH in the mouth of not only a villain but a WOMAN – is one of the major assets of Bela’s presence. Now I did not watch the show in real time during its first airing. I caught up with it in Season 9. So I get that binge-watching is different than real-time viewing. I believe we have discussed before what Bela seemed like to you all who have been watching from the beginning, and I bow to your experience. (The difference between binge and not is a fascinating one – it literally can CHANGE a story, depending on how you watch. If you parcel something out week to week, it FEELS different.) So Bela’s arrival may have been touted as a new love interest in the promos which turned people off, making them resent her before she even arrived. And then she DOES arrive and she’s this raging beast who isn’t nice to “the boys.” All I can do is express my own reaction from my own perspective, as a late-comer to the show, who got into it because I wanted to know why Destiel fans were screaming at each other so loudly it even reached my ears, and I wasn’t even paying attention and I didn’t even know what Destiel was. I then INHALED it all in a month and a half. By the time I got to Bela, I was riding the wave of a binge-watch and so her arrival felt like another part of the wave – I just went with it. So: this is where I’m coming from.

I would love to hear any and all Bela responses!

One of the many reasons I love her is that – unlike a lot of the other people who “make it” to regular status – Bela takes them down a peg. They can’t “win” with her. The show is bold enough to put them in a position – repeatedly – where they lose.

Three cheers for Bela. The MOTW here is so ridiculous that Bela – and her relationship to the boys – is the only game in town.

Other than that, what do we got? A Ren-Faire “monster” and cheesy special effects.

On the flip side, though: Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles wear tuxedoes.

You take the bad, you take the good.

Teaser

Samantha Simmonds plays Sheila (nice name), jogging along the waterfront surrounded by dreamily blurred-out lights. You can understand why Supernatural doesn’t often film along this waterfront – probably quite difficult to shut it all down, even for a couple of hours. But I love it when the show takes place out in our world, a recognizable space.

After seeing the ghost ship, she goes home, and drowns in her own shower because she was touched by a one-handed pirate.

My only real comment here is: We see two bathrooms in this episode. And both bathrooms are as large as my entire apartment.

1st scene

Picking up from where we left off in “Bedtime Stories,” Sam and Dean’s argument continues. The argument may be about the Colt, and why Sam dared to use it without Dean’s permission, but what it’s really about is the same thing it’s been about the entire season. Dean’s fury at Sam’s attempts to save him. There’s an interesting dynamic at work here, even though they’re going over the same territory.

It could be just the semi-sloppiness of some of the writing, but like I said above: once something is out there in the universe, it’s now ours to interpret as we see fit. Sometimes things are mistakes – “Man’s Best Friend with Benefits” comes to mind – and it’s best to not interpret it at all and just chalk it up to a bad idea. But sometimes there’s something there to grasp onto.

In the argument, Dean is hot, revved up, furious. It’s as though he never cooled down from the LAST argument. If anything, he’s even more pissed off, because Sam “disobeyed” him. So that’s the first thing. Dean is getting more and more like John in this argument every time it comes up. The “independence” of Sam, Sam’s free will, is seen as a PROBLEM, rather than an asset. Dean’s codependence is showing.

But I’m more interested by Sam’s reaction. Sam resists the argument by dialing everything down. He doesn’t counter with an amping up of HIS energy. He barely fights back. He’s over it. He’s over Dean. It’s as though something happened for him back at the end of “Bedtime Stories.” Watching Dean walk away from him down the hallway … and then trying to negotiate with the crossroads demon … before killing her … Something happened for Sam in that sequence of events which informs how Padalecki has chosen to play this argument (and the argument, if I’m being honest, feels slightly pushed, a little pumped up). Sam cracks a joke (“Happy Purim?”) and then … as Dean keeps ranting … Sam goes into “whatever, dude” mode. He doesn’t smolder or sulk. It’s Sam who gives this scene its pop. His defense for killing the crossroads demon – “She was a smartass” – is delightfully amoral. It’s also an ominous sign of things to come. It’s not AS heartless as killing a man in Reno just to watch him die, but killing someone – even a crossroads demon who could, as Dean points out, be useful to them – just for being a smartass – is certainly in the ballpark.

Elaborating on the crossroads demon reveal, Sam tells Dean someone else “holds Dean’s contract” which ratchets Dean up even more. As Dean gets more obnoxious, Sam is roused. He’s sick of apologizing for caring enough about his brother to do what he can to save him. They’re at an impasse.

This is why I said in “Bedtime Stories” that this whole Arc – Dean’s crossroads deal – is about the brothers’ relationship – and how they interact, counter each other, regroup, reattack. There’s a gritty raw bare-bones-ness to this that is (was, sadly) part of the show’s appeal. This argument between them continues into Season 4. Every single episode had some GIGANTIC Sam-Dean THING that had to be worked out. We went through Season 12 and Season 13 with almost NONE of that. It is a disgrace.

2nd scene

It’s not often the Winchester brothers are drawn into a wealthy world. It’s not really their stomping grounds. Here, they enter the realm of Palatial Bathrooms.

A word on Ellen Geer

She got her start in the deadpan flat-affect Petulia, starring George C. Scott and Julie Christie, where she – loopily – plays a nun in a white habit. You’ll find people who can’t stand Petulia. It’s bleak, it’s joyless, it’s paranoid, it says “Oh, what’s the use.” I think it’s a masterpiece.

If that isn’t iconic enough, she also has an unforgettable scene in Harold and Maude where she plays a cock-eyed hippie woman named “Sunshine.” Because it was 1971. Sunshine is Harold’s third date.

Ellen Geer is as breezily eccentric as Sunshine as she is as Gert Case. I mean, her outfit alone. And her death scene. I first saw this movie in the movie theatre (I came to it late, it was playing at the Music Box in Chicago), and I almost fell out of my seat laughing – and the guy I was dating at the time “Sh”-ed me, and he was toast from that moment forward. I broke up with him the next day. You “Sh” me when I’m roaring with laughter? BUH-BYE. Because WATCH her death scene. She is so insane. She’s as nuts as Harold is.

It’s not too out there to say that “Sunshine” was probably who “Gert Case” was as a young woman. An upper-class hippie-dippie eccentric, who got it out of her system, married really well, but never quiet settled into the WASP-lockdown expected of her.

You don’t cast Ellen Geer to play a normal human being. You cast her because she’s a nutcase. She’s not afraid of that.

Many MANY years later, Geer played Maude in a 2000 theatrical production of Harold and Maude, a beautiful tip of the hat to her appearance in the original.

Her father was Will Geer, mainly known today for playing Grandpa Walton, but his career stretched back to the Pre-Code era of the early 1930s. He and his daughter worked together quite a bit, in movies, and she was also on The Waltons a number of times. Ellen Geer appeared on almost every hit TV show of many different eras: Moonlighting, Streets of San Francisco, Fantasy Island, Dynasty, Trapper John M.D. She has been a busy working actress for five decades. She’s still working. Amazing.

Knowing her background, her work in projects eccentric and conventional, her performance as Gert is a lot of fun. She’s up for it. Besides, she’s a stand-in for an audience who drools over these guys anyway. Her zeroing in on Sam instantly is one of the fun quirks, because even though he is a CENTAUR, it is usually Dean who gets the attention. (That’s one of the great things about the Siren episode. It’s fun to see Dean treated like he’s invisible, since – no matter what he does, no matter how he hates it – he is the most VISIBLE person on the planet.) It’s always fun when Sam is hit on, because he’s never quite sure it’s happening. He, too, is used to Dean getting all the attention. (There’s a moment during his Bela dream in “Dream a Little Dream Of Me” – when she says “I can’t stop thinking about you” and his response is a confused and almost panicked, “What?” and I am laughing out loud as I type this.)

While of course everyone finds these guys hot … it wouldn’t do to have them find themselves hot, or act like female attention is their due. If Dean DOES show cockiness, it is usually undercut by the woman not being into it (siren ER doctor, for one, but there are so many other examples). Always best to undercut any possibility of hero-worship. These guys are attractive sex bombs just by walking in the room, you don’t need to underline it.

So Sam … slowly realizing, with horror … that he’s being hit on … is funny:

It makes him shy, and nervously polite.

Dean’s brotherly reaction is obnoxious. And also funny.

It’s all rather dumb, but in the right context, dumb is very very welcome. It doesn’t do to take yourself too seriously.

You know who REALLY understands this in “Red Sky at Morning”? Ellen Geer.

3rd scene

Dean and Sam out in the real world. I like it. And the lighting is beautiful on those gleaming white boats. It’s either sunrise or sunset, with a pinkish-purple glow.

The mysterious “Alex” is about to make her appearance, but in the meantime, Dean teases Sam about Gert’s attentions, but he does so in an appreciative way which somehow does not put Gert down. He appreciates the “crazy old broad.” Listen, sex drive is indestructible, and Dean knows that, and appreciates it when it shows up. Look how open he was to Dee Wallace in the retirement home, how accepting he was of her crush on him. If the world were fair, she would have become yet another semi-regular in their group of hunter-friends and allies. This is Jensen Ackles’ magic. There’s an aspect in the episode where you can tell the writer – the director – WANTS to make fun of Gert – like an older woman’s sexuality is inherently gross – but somehow Ellen Geer wiggles free from it. The one thing Geer can’t wiggle out of is the giant closeup of her mouth whispering in Sam’s ear. It’s a hostile shot. I know she’s basically sexually assaulting Sam throughout, but since it’s played for comedy – in the time-honored comedic tradition of unwanted seduction on a poor hapless leading man – see Marilyn Monroe with Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot – I’m fine with it.

I seem to recall the “Flying Dutchman” was called out in the Racist-Truck-Coffee-Pot episode as well. None of it matters. The “case” isn’t what matters here. What matters is sexual hijinx at snooty parties.

You will notice, though, that Sam is in the lead, just like he was in “Bedtime Stories.” Dean is not quite up to speed. This may, again, be evidence of lazy writing (Sam = Brains, Dean = Brawn), but maybe not. At any rate, it’s interesting to consider. Sam’s got a lot on his plate, plus a brother who is furious with him for CARING. Sam throwing himself into work, what he does best, all as the clock ticks down, is an important part of the tension of this particular season.

I absolutely love Dean’s jacket/pants/tie combo here. Different for him, but I think he looks fantastic.

What I also think is fantastic is how his hands flare out a little bit, the second he realizes the Impala is gone, and they stayed flared out for quite some time. His HANDS are speaking before he even SAYS anything. This is good acting. This is visible not-waiting-for-your-closeup acting.

Speaking of Sam being the steady responsible one, and Dean being … NOT either of those things … his flip out over his missing car involves having to put his head between his legs so he can breathe properly. It’s a dumb bit, but Ackles makes it totally real, having a moment where he suddenly can’t speak anymore, panic and loss cracks over him, and he crumples over, upset. That’s how you fill out a schticky-scripted moment. It’s funny every time. Dean is over-emotional. In Sam, there is always some residue of “Dean is my awesome big brother”, and when Dean shows cracks – it’s very destabilizing for Sam. He either finds it funny – like, “Oh my God, calm the fuck down” or upsetting. There’s a certain satisfaction too sometimes, like: “Dean doesn’t always have it together. Sometimes I’m WAY better than he is.” (This really comes into play in the last scene.)

The codependent nature of their relationship is in a state of total flux and it’s one of the most watchable aspects of the show, the push-pull, the separations, the merging, the retreats … Sam resisted codependence in the first scene in the Impala. He maintained his equilibrium. This could be seen as healthy … or sinister … and sometimes it’s both, and sometimes you’re just not sure. Think about Sam in Season 4. Or Season 6. Or Season 9. In each one, he “broke free” and sometimes it was for bad reasons, sometimes for healthy. In the Winchester Belljar(TM), codependence is the norm, as represented by Dean. When Sam resists, the entire show teeters. The teetering is healthy, it’s what gives us a SHOW.

When Bela (aka Alex) appears, glowing in a halo of sunlight, both Dean and Sam are thrown off. They are thrown off by her. This is why she’s such a great addition. These strong guys are both totally thrown off – and fooled – REPEATEDLY – by this petite British woman, and they continue to not be able to believe that she gets away with what she does, that she dares to do half the things she does.

Bela’s behavior is truly awful and could conceivably get them in huge amounts of trouble – and sometimes DOES get them in huge amounts of trouble – but since they sometimes need her, since she becomes a resource, the brothers are filled with self-hatred when they deal with her and sometimes – at least in Supernatural-Land, self-hatred is right next door to Lust. She knows this. She knows she could “have” Dean at the drop of a hat (Sam might be more complicated although his sex dream later on suggests he’s have-able too). She may even kind of hate them for it, hate how easy it would be to get them to fuck her, even though they despise her. (This is her femme fatale side. Femmes fatales are “man-eaters” not because they have a healthy sense of lust and need for sex. It’s quite the opposite. It’s because they cannot stand men who – in their experience – have been nothing but brutes and users and monsters. Think about Bela’s childhood.) She has a tougher time with Bobby and Rufus, older men not so easily swayed, but she plays them too. By the time they figure it out, she’s long gone. I think Bela is fantastic.

Also who else makes Dean splutter with helpless rage and Sam go quiet and stony?

The writing for her, too, is wonderfully consistent and points up a real strength of the show: nobody talks with the same rhythms, vocabulary. We all are unique. Bobby uses language different than Charlie uses language. You have to get into a character’s headspace to understand what they would say in any given moment. Bela’s lines are awesome:

“How do you sleep at night?”
“On silk sheets. Rolling naked in money.”

And Lauren Cohan knows how to pull these lines off. She doesn’t overplay her villainy. She doesn’t play “villainy” at all. She keeps things light, breezy, which makes her even MORE obnoxious. It turns Sam and Dean into spluttering doofuses because they literally do not frighten her and cannot intimidate her into submissiveness. They are equipped to save the world. They are not equipped to retort back to her when she flings some zinger at them. She always leaves them holding the bag. They have never met anyone like her, and nothing has prepared them to deal with her.

A couple of fun details: when Sam reminds her, “You SHOT ME” she says, “I barely grazed you” – which is just NOT the correct answer, it’s completely sociopathic – and there’s a shot of Dean where he seems to consider and then ACCEPT this explanation, which is hilarious. And also unexpected. The second the show gives you what you expect in every moment you get Snoozeville schtick. Bela notices Dean’s reaction and zooms in on him, commenting on Sam who is still right there, looping her and Dean together in a conspiracy: “A bit of a drama queen, yeah?” He responds by penduluming down into talking about the case, before being thrown into space again by her taunts about what’s in his car’s trunk. He literally does not know which end is up.

4th scene

Tobias Slezak, as one of the Menendez brothers, brushes his teeth in his mansion of a bathroom, and then drowns by being touched by a dude in a Pirate Shirt, who has emerged from his stand-alone tub filled with thick green dish soap.

Because all of this makes sense.

5th scene

The scene starts with a shot of Robert Moloney, as the remaining Menendez brother, answering some interview questions and we’re meant to understand that Sam and Dean are the interviewers, but then a shot reveals it’s Bela/Alex, holding a tape recorder, listening with a bullshit expression of concern, and speaking with an American accent. Dean and Sam swoop in from the side, and attempt to get rid of her, but Dean’s expression shows his … impotence? There’s really no other word for it.

Like: who would be intimidated by that look? He barely looks attractive there, and that’s saying something.

Ackles has such sensitivity to context, to underlying circumstances. The role – especially in a not-so-well-written episode like this one – could be played in a more one-note way. If another actor, one less intuitive, one less responsive to the tiny gradations of DIFFERENCE in any given context, wouldn’t adjust Dean’s swagger, wouldn’t know that when Dean’s swagger DOESN’T work, he is thrown back on himself, on less effective tactics. You can see why Bela might find it – and him – funny.

But what also makes their interactions interesting – and I wrote about this in “Bad Day at Black Rock” – is that she is not impenetrable. Sometimes they “get” to her, Dean more than Sam. She recognizes Dean. She understands him. Lauren Cohan gives an amazingly controlled performance. This is very specific “character” acting, representing smart script analysis and very specific choices made along the way. She’s not just a Dragon Lady. There is an element of her that is a little girl playing dress-up. Think of her childhood (or lack thereof). She probably stopped “growing” emotionally at around 13, 14. She’s a survivor and wouldn’t want anyone to cry for her (again, the connection with Dean, and his own lack of self-pity which becomes damn near pathological in Season 3, as well as his refusal to ask for help).

She’s not one to smolder though or sulk. She allows them to bully her out of the investigation and then strolls right over to the cops, breezy as you please, to report that those two guys questioning Lyle Menendez are pretty shady and probably not FBI.

Listen, you wouldn’t expect a wolf NOT to chew out of whatever has trapped him. Bela is acting according to her nature. This is the terrain of the femme fatale.

The following shot is a recreation of the final shot in the pilot (and many other shots throughout the series, always a callback to that first one). Bela strolls up between them and the visual is very funny.

Dean threatens her with a loaded gun and her response is a cool, “Now, now, mind your blood pressure.” She is not afraid of them. Or of much. When she gets frightened in her final episode, it’s somewhat heartbreaking. She doesn’t blab to Dean, she doesn’t plea for understanding (“This is what happened to me, this is why I am the way I am”) … she faces death alone. She goes to her grave with secrets in her past untold. That takes balls. On her part, AND on the show’s part.

Sam’s reaction to her is a cold steely anger, with the tiniest hint of a “you are so fucked up” eyeroll. Whereas Dean gets hot under the collar, because he never learns. He tries to WIN with her and he will never ever win. Maybe this is one of the reasons why some fans don’t like her? I love it when he wins, of course, and I the way Charlie looks at him explodes my heart … but it’s also so satisfying when someone is not cowed by Dean, who doesn’t “give him his due,” who strolls into his environment with soul intact and isn’t bullied down. Garth also comes to mind. He’s not impervious to Dean’s rude treatment of him, but he persists in his own way of doing things, his own outlook, and it gives such a nice spark to their relationship.

Bela refers to Lyle Menendez as “cannon fodder” and Sam has just about had it. They head back to the car, but Dean can’t hold himself back and walks back to her, convinced he is about to deliver the resounding BLOW that will make this obnoxious bitch crumble in the face of his manly self-assurance and righteousness. It doesn’t exactly go as planned.

And he says the exact wrong thing. He walks RIGHT into it. “Bela, how’d you get like this? Daddy not give you enough hugs?” (When you think of what her Daddy did to her, it’s amazing how little she flinches at “witty rejoinders” like this one.) She says, “I don’t know. Your Daddy give you enough?”

What’s interesting – and unspoken, really – is that he clocks it right. She is a walking-talking Daddy issue. But guess who else is a walking-talking Daddy issue? His reaction to her comment:

He’s thrown. He’s hurt and angry. Because she’s right. And from that point forward in the scene, he can barely speak. He only manages to get out a weak, “We help people” but that’s it. Sam dismisses her, and he does so in a really over-it way, like “We’re done, dude, go away, we’re bored with you and we’re busy.” But watch how Cohan barely acknowledges Sam. Everyone has a green background. The colors are very controlled. Her green eyes lock onto Dean’s green eyes, right up until she turns and walks away from him. Dean’s her “mark.” Dean sees her, but she sees him, too. The difference is, she KNOWS she recognizes him, she knows his soft tender spots. This gives her a space of power. He thinks his “game face” is a good one. When she walks away, there’s a brief shot of Dean, and it’s so good, it’s just a moment, but moments like this help flesh out the episode. He’s disturbed, thrown off, he knows he should have said so many other cool things that could have shut her down … why couldn’t he find the words? Why is he letting her GET to him? Now he has to just SIT there thinking about how his Dad never hugged him and FUCK HER.

6th scene

As brutal as Bela’s “cannon fodder” comment is, she’s right. She tells them she’s located the ship and they ignore her Intel. If they had allowed themselves to work with her, maybe Erik Menendez wouldn’t have drowned in his own car.

I just can’t bring myself to be scared by that.

7th scene

Short but effective scene.

The Impala carries Sam and Dean away from the debacle, with the first shot on Sam, a wash of red light around him, and he looks wrapped up in his own pain. Beyond speech.

A radio announcer intones about “severe weather” approaching (“sailors take warning” you understand), but both brothers are submerged in silence. They don’t even need to open up about what’s wrong. Dean addresses the elephant in the car, and the conversation quickly escalates. Dean’s pablum about “you can’t save everyone” loops into Sam’s shame that he has been unable, thus far, to save Dean. What a failure it has been, how terrible he must feel – especially since Dean has basically given up his LIFE to protect HIM.

Also, it’s gotta sting that Bela was RIGHT.

8th scene

I love it when they squat somewhere, this time in a big Victorian-era house with boarded up windows which appears to be in the middle of a neighborhood. They just set up shop inside. Because of this, Jerry Wanek can have fun with the random decorating, giving a feel of what USED to be there when it was a home. The battered old velvet couch, the painting over the mantel of a big clipper ship, candles, goblets, shutters … Who knows why they decide to squat … low on funds?

This one is actually rather nice and I wouldn’t mind living there. I bet the bathrooms are huge too because that seems to be how it goes in this seaside town.

Sam reads a book about shipwrecks and Dean may look like he’s doing something but all he’s really doing is LEGS.

When the knock comes, Dean sneaks over to the door and opens the elaborate little mini-door-peephole, with iron grating on the inside. DETAILS. NO DETAIL TOO SMALL to give us a sense of place. What makes THIS place different from OTHER places?

She struts in in her fitted suit, holding a briefcase, but then immediately slows down when she sees the squalor, expressing horror in a drawn out “Dear …. God.” I am in love with Bela – or maybe it’s that I’m in love with Lauren Cohan’s performance. I especially enjoy her because Sam and Dean hate her so. much. This is how the normally polite Sam reacts when he sees it’s her.

If I cover my eyes, maybe she won’t be there when I look again?

Also: look at the details on the table. Plus a little pot where they heated up .. what … Lipton’s cup-a-soup? Or maybe it’s for coffee? I’m into this shit. It takes a lot of work to create an atmosphere, every single object there represents a choice.

She is breezily unconcerned with their obvious hatred of her. She doesn’t flinch. She never gives anything away but she is always ready to make a deal.

Dean and Sam can be very intimidating, especially when they are angry. Sam basically intimidated Dr. Garrison in “Bedtime Stories” into letting his daughter go just by standing there and looking at him. They are amazingly intense men. They have a good foot and a half on Bela. She doesn’t give a shit. She’s in her element, one-upping them, pulling out pictures of the ship, the pirate, etc. All as Dean and Sam, almost against their will, get sucked into her Intel. Thank goodness Dean found his key light.

Dean is so thrown off he can’t hold himself back from making a joke about the “hand of glory” he got at the end of his “Thai message” which goes over as well as can be expected.

She punctuates her dialogue with vicious little asides, asides you can’t believe she dares to throw off. “Aren’t you a sharp tack?” she coos to Sam. She emasculates them EASILY – which, from my perspective, IS the joke. That’s one of her many assets as a character: The two of them getting “thrown off” – again and again and again – is the joke. In its own weird way, she humanizes them. (Every time I watch Dean put the Colt into the motel room safe, as Bela is standing right there, I think, “DEAN HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING??”) They underestimate her, they think they can win with her, they think they’re smarter and better, etc.

Now what’s coming up – the crashing of the “uncrashable” party is not … realistic, if anything can be said to be realistic on this show. Dean and Sam could easily have broken in after-hours. When Sam says “We can crash anything, Dean” in the next scene, Dean says, “Yeah, but this is easier and a lot more entertaining.”

He’s kind of speaking the episode’s raison d’etre. He’s also betraying that he’s actually having fun. With Bela. I’m not saying he loves her or even wants her, but there is something in her that turns him on, in ways that are new and confusing and somehow … stimulating. She roped him into this. He allowed himself to be roped in. (He also knows he got the better end of the deal. Sam has to be on a date with Gert. He gets to hang with Bela, who may be a bitch, but she’s wearing a backless dress.)

If they had broken in after-hours, we would have missed the spectacle of Sam and Dean in tuxedos, pretending to be on dates with two women they really don’t know and also don’t actually like … which is, as we know – or we should know – a key component to rom-coms back to the days of As You Like It and Twelfth Night, filled with women dressed up as boys, women falling in love with women, men falling in love with young boys, nobody being who they really are but pretending to be other people, and all the hijinx that follow. You either go with it or you don’t.

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I think, too, I have such affection for this unfairly hated-upon episode, because it features a moment which launched me into wanting to write about the series – and Jensen Ackles in particular, and in parTICular his gift for schtick. And that moment comes in this scene. I said what I need to say, really, in that linked essay, so I won’t go over it again here. No, just kidding, of course I will discuss it again.

To begin: in keeping with everything I’ve already said about Bela: this scene features Bela “on top,” where she calls out to him, “What are you, a woman?” He’s dressing up in a tuxedo – stereotypically meant for a man – like, THE MOST male thing you can even put on – and she’s joking that he’s a woman because he’s fussing about his appearance. Then, when he comes down the stairs, the music goes all woozy-romantic-burlesque, and we don’t see him in his entirety – just his shoes coming down the stairs. They make us WAIT for the full reveal. This is how women are treated in cinema. This is not how men are treated. (Again, see the link above. I actually compare him to Lana Turner in Postman Always Rings Twice.) So he comes down the stairs, after being called a woman, and he is filmed the way a woman would be filmed. And Bela – who is dressed in a stereotypically feminine way, in black dress and jewels – catches her breath at his beauty.

Which, again, is how a man normally reacts in such scenes if the sexes were reversed. Oh my God, look at the ugly ducking who is really a swan. And he barely even looks at her. She’s gorgeous and yet the scene is all about how gorgeous HE is. So there’s all kinds of gender-bendy stuff here which is great and which has always been a weird undercurrent in the show – like, very weird – so weird you wonder who over there is actually aware of it. And it’s Dean who gets this treatment. Not Sam. Sam is contained in his own category, and confident there (think Frontierland, the best example, especially in contrast to Dean’s flailing about for an identity) but sometimes you feel like Dean could go either way. Or both ways. Or all ways. His sexual orientation is “open for business.”

He presents himself to her, insecure and pissed, and he looks amazing but he doesn’t look like himself. He throws himself on her mercy, he submits to her “female gaze” and it’s extremely vulnerable for him. This is a very rich moment: the show explores this aspect of Dean repeatedly – here in Season 3 where he resists being the center of Sam’s attention, and next in Season 4 where he is freaked out at being the center of attention in Heaven. He’s filmed in long shot, so we get to see his full body, his awkwardness, and the presence of Bela, staring. (What do you want to bet she had two perfectly-fitted tuxedos waiting in her car? She was ready for this.)

His prickliness at her clear sexual attention, her admiration of his looks, throws him into outer space, and Ackles’ vulnerability to this – his understanding of what the moment needs – his ability to pull it off …

… is what started me on this whole damn thing which has now lasted for five years, and counting.

She sees his fluster and bluster. Bela is beautiful and sexy but she doesn’t really vamp it up. She doesn’t need to. She’s very straightforward. She, too, just like Dean, has probably done some very squicky things in her line of work. It’s marked her, but somewhere so deep no one could ever see it. (Dean DOES see it, though, and that’s the point.)

She clocks him on ALL of this when she speaks out the subtext that has been with them from the jump: “When this is over, we really should have some angry sex.”

It’s so blunt and open and honest – and this is a show that trucks in sublimation and indirection. Her comment blares like neon. She means it, too. She’d be up for it. She probably thinks it would be good for both of them. Poor Dean, though. It’s so out of context for Dean that he doesn’t even know what has been SAID to him at first. Dean – promiscuous sexually knowing Dean – has NO skills to deal with this moment. Her words – and HER – throw him into such confusion that there are a couple of moments where you literally cannot tell that normally he is quite an intelligent person.

The longer the moment goes on, the worse it gets. It’s like a pratfall that doesn’t end. Every time you think you’ve steadied yourself, your legs fly out from under you again. You grasp onto a table, and the table tips over. And etc. THAT’S Dean trying to deal with her JOKEY come-on. What has happened to you, man? Pull yourself together!

This tough tough guy, who faces down monsters, who cleans his guns when he’s bored, falls apart when this little British woman stares at him appreciatively and speaks out what’s been in the air between them.

The best part is she never stops staring at him and so he goes through all this AS she’s watching – which is Dean’s worst possible nightmare. Being looked at. How fascinating that this highly visible man cannot stand being looked at. These are the elements that no WAY were in the pilot, this is not Eric Kripke’s conception – this is the slow development of this character, illuminated by Ackles’ genius. To create THIS character and then give him all these bashful moments of not wanting to be looked at – seen – observed … it’s so rich!

Yet another layer is how out of his element he is wearing a tuxedo. He’s so out of his element he may as well be wearing a glittery ballgown. His final hand-hold in the neverending pratfall of his dignity and self-respect, is his truly weak, and yet boy he’s trying: “Don’t objectify me.”

Even HE can’t get up the strength to say it and mean it and she basically laughs in his face (I don’t blame her). He stalks off but the final button of the scene – the perfect Dean-Bela-Doppelganger button – is the small smile of triumph on his face right before he exits the frame. She wants me. I WIN.

Which … makes NO sense, considering he’s supposed to hate her, but which makes PERFECT sense, considering the sexually charged atmosphere of the entire wacko episode. Bela brings it all out into the open.

So: thank you Cliff Bole and Laurence Andries. Eric Kripke, Jensen Ackles – and everybody else can go fly a kite. “Red Sky at Morning” has a little bit of my heart because I KNEW I was getting obsessed from the moment I saw “Phantom Traveler” … and so I began the binge-watch in earnest after that but when I came to this episode I finally was like: “That’s it. I need to start writing.”

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The main room of the party is smaller than most of the bathrooms in the episode.

You put on a tuxedo to go to a party in a room the size of a broom closet?

The scene opens and suddenly we are in Bringing Up Baby.

There’s a close-up of a plaque telling us where we are, a brief exterior shot showing people in gowns gliding up the steps of a mansion (all as violin-y high class-y music plays), and then, boom, we’re inside and everyone is in tuxedos. Totally screwball. We have left the world of squatting in mansions, unwashed jeans, and the Impala. We are now in the gin-fizz of a 30s screwball. Try to keep up. Everyone here is a maniac.

Since when does Dean chew gum? I don’t like it when “quirks” show up and are then never mentioned again outside of that episode. (Like the practical joke schtick, confined to one episode. And … CASSIE, for that matter. I know you want me to forget Cassie but I REFUSE.) Clearly they’re trying to “show” that Dean is a blue-collar guy who doesn’t wear tuxedos and isn’t used to going to classy parties … but I think we already know that?

What I DO like is Bela scolding him, and his blase bratty response. They are already in a bored-relationship-squabble and it’s only been a couple of hours. They’re very alike. (This is also reminiscent of What’s Up Doc, and the first scene when “Judy” meets “Howard” in the drugstore and she pretends he’s her fiance, even though they’ve never met.)

Meanwhile, Sam and Gert come in separately. She’s got her hooks into him. Literally.

Dean and Bela are belly-up to the bar. Dean is “with” Bela, and Sam is stuck with Gert. Watch how Dean says to Bela, “Oh, look, he’s playing hard to get …” He includes Bela in teasing Sam – two against one – and it’s such a betrayal if you think about it, considering Sam and Dean’s shared feelings about Bela. But hey, Dean is with Bela now, too bad. This is Dean’s lack of boundaries, too. She confuses him and annoys him but she just said that “angry sex” thing to me and I don’t know what it means but I’m kind of into it, whatever it means … In other words, he is unable to create ANY distance from it.

Sam looks unbelievably gorgeous in his tuxedo.

The expectation is that Sam will do what it takes to keep Gert preoccupied, presumably even sex. He tells Dean there are limits to what he will do. Dean has no such limits. Dean has done everything under the sun if a job needs to be done. He’d be all over Gert if the situation were reversed. When Dean and Bela walk away, there’s a little bit of “couple” behavior: He grabs her drink for her, waits for her to get off the stool, says to her, “Come on” … etc. Why do I find this so amusing? I just do. But do you know what I find REALLY amusing? Do you know what REALLY gets me laughing, every single time I see this episode?

It is such a stupid visual gag, and I love it SO MUCH.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand in recent seasons, it’s the feeling of self-seriousness, ponderous self-seriousness. Give me champagne glasses floating up into the frame, held by an invisible old lady, and I’m happy. I don’t need much!

Dean and Bela glide into the foyer, putting their champagne glasses down on a table, in sync. They’re like pilot fish. Eyes scanning the room together, murmuring about the security detail, Bela ceding ground to Dean’s expertise: “What do you suggest?”

Unfortunately Dean – who can’t bear her to SEE him, he ALWAYS has to be a “winner” with her and he will never learn that that’s a losing battle – hisses, “I’m thinking” which opens him up to her ridicule. Sam and Gert dance cheek to cheek in the next room. This is Bela and Dean’s version of dancing.

She says, “Don’t strain yourself” and yet again, he is totally thrown off. He can’t BELIEVE it, he can’t BELIEVE what she just said to him. People don’t TREAT him like this in his world! (Of course they do, all the time, but in his Burlesque idea of his own Personality, NOBODY talks to him like this!) It takes vulnerability for an actor – who is the undeniable Hero of the whole entire show – to allow himself to “look bad” the way Ackles does. As I wrote in that long essay about him, he’s gorgeous, he’s sensitive, he’s tough, blah blah blah, all great Archetypal Hero stuff, but he – as an actor – is also a giant HAM. This is what Supernatural allowed him to let out of the bag – no other show that I can think of would have given him that space, would have even recognized that an actor who looks like that would not only be GAME for it, but could DO it. It’s Ackles’ ace in the hole.

When he hisses, “If you’ve got any better ideas” she promptly faints, and he has to race to catch her before she hits the ground. Once again, Dean is behind every event here. He’s constantly playing catch up and furious he has to play catch up because it makes him look foolish. What I love, though, is Bela’s implicit understanding that he needs a push, AND that he will know what she is doing, what her plan is, when she faints. They actually make an excellent team.

Dean makes a big show of trying to revive her and then – because he’s always hungry – spots the waiter, calls him over, asks some bullshit question about shellfish, and then pops an hors d’oeuvre into his mouth, saying “They’re excellent.” (This, by the way, is another example of schtick – and it’s played out in one. Ackles has to actually create that moment by himself, with no help from editing. This is what Ackles is so so good at. Try to re-create this moment yourself, and all the dips and turns it would take. It’s harder than it looks.)

In Supernatural, Sam and Dean have to constantly pretend to be other people. Suddenly, Sam has to pretend he’s a wreath enthusiast. Or a sketch artist. Dean pretends he’s a talent agent or a businessman in order to get laid. They have boxes full of fake badges, from FBI to CDC to health inspection certificates. They have a million aliases. They “sketch” things in for their audiences, knowing people are credulous, knowing people respect badges or respect those who sashay in like they belong there. So Dean’s husband behavior is strangely accurate – picking up her dropped purse and handing it to the security guard, hauling her up in his arms, muttering, “Come on, ya lush …”

I realize I am easily pleased.

I think it’s one of my best qualities.

He tosses her unceremoniously onto the couch upstairs, commiserates with the security guard about what a “pain in the ass” she is (perfect imitation of husband behavior), and we’re treated to an enormous – even closer than Kim Manners would go – closeup of Bela opening her eyes at being talked about in this disrespectful way.

She gets the major closeups in the episode, by the way, if you’ve noticed. Sam and Dean are in medium shot mostly, trying to deal with her, but she – she is filmed like a looming omnipresence. None of it really makes sense – considering the “role” she plays in the season – which is pretty minor, all told. She’s a side show. But there’s something about how the various directors treat her that UPS her profile – they find her fascinating and fun. She’s given a MAJOR character introduction – which, again, isn’t really warranted, when you see the role in its entirety. Never mind. Sometimes a character comes along whose only role is to breed chaos. That’s Bela.

Once again, Dean charges forward, allowing himself to get angry at Bela, but it’s like wading out into a crashing surf. He can’t withstand what’s coming at him. When she says she didn’t want him thinking … he’s thrown into chaos, and – just like the “Don’t objectify me” moment back at the house – we are treated to a moment of glorious wordless schtick, where Dean flails, searching for a “witty rejoinder” – all as Bela sits there, cool as a cuke, WATCHING him think and WATCHING him FAIL to say a damn word. It’s so funny. Ackles = Giant HAM.

“Look at you. Searching for a witty rejoinder.”
“Screw you.”
“Very Oscar Wilde.”

That may be dumb, but it’s entertaining.

I’m almost sorry they didn’t follow through on the “angry sex” promise, but that’s not really in Dean’s wheelhouse. It might have threatened the fabric of the show to allow him to go there. Sam’s an “angry sex” kind of guy, but I wonder if they allow Sam to “go there” because he has demon blood? That’s kind of a disheartening thought, as though you need to have “bad” in you to bang like he does. I’ve always considered this dichotomy – of Dean being a sensual romantic receiver (a bottom if you will) in bed – and Sam being the take-no-prisoners animal (so much a top he stands up to fuck) – a pleasing character-reveal. You might expect it to be the other way around, unless you have some experience in the world – people are never who you expect! I love that Supernatural gets this: who they are in public, who they are to each other, who they are to ancillary characters, AND who they are sexually … is all very nuanced, who they are depends on the context.

But it’s still not over, and Dean’s losing of the moment is still not done: Dean goes to leave, with a quick glint of his eyes around the room (which I love: he’s helpless and PISSSSED), and she stops him by telling which room the Hand of Glory is in (room 235 … so … right next door to room 237??), cooing, “I’m sure that won’t be a problem?” and Dean – in his biggest Loser moment in the episode – mocks her. It’s so Little Brother you’re almost embarrassed for him. Who else brings Dean to THIS?

Meanwhile, downstairs…

Look how tall he is.

Padalecki’s dimples are in overdrive in this scene.

I like when he calls her “Mrs. Case” and she gets offended and he corrects himself with “Ms. Case.” She is all over him. He won’t be able to fend her off much longer. I also like how he checks his watch around her back.

Upstairs, Dean is shot in high HIGH glamour mode as he breaks into the glass case. It’s insanely beautiful. He himself is like a lit-up gem on black velvet. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything … this isn’t a particularly glamorous episode (even though it takes place in the land of the rich), and the shot stands out.

Bela already has her End Game in mind. Get her hands on the Hand of Glory and sell it. To continue to finance her crazy race to stave off death. It is that “twist” of the character which gives her the symbolic Oomph that I find pleasing, dovetailing it with the overall thrust of the whole season. If that weren’t there, I don’t think I would have responded to her so strongly. She already knows she’s going to need to pick Dean’s pocket and will need a replacement item. What seems like a casual killing-time moment …

… isn’t at all.

When she’s interrupted by the security guard’s knock, quick on her feet as ever, she answers the door in a giggly and unmistakably in flagrante delicto mood. She’s adorable. She’s so adorable that even the stone-faced security guard falls for it. He finds it cute, he gets it, okay some hanky-panky in a closed room, what are ya gonna do …

Even funnier though is hearing her laugh and carry on behind the closed door, knowing she’s alone in there. The CAPPER of this joke, though, taking it to its limit, is Dean coming up the stairs and running into the security guard and the awkwardness of the encounter, because the security guard thinks the cutie-pie in the room is cuckolding her poor husband as we speak.

That, my friends, is screwball.

Almost every single freeze-frame of Dean in this episode is funny. Case in point, when he comes back in the room:

He is SO off his game.

I always try to catch her picking their pockets and I’ve never clocked her yet.

It’s a standoff.

A standoff between two impossibly gorgeous humans.

Back downstairs: It is so ridiculous to see all of those people in tuxedos and gowns dancing in such a TINY space. What a lame party!

After slow-dancing with handsy drunk Gert for an hour, Sam looks flushed and defeated. And yet, in her “pillow talk” with him, she provides the missing piece, why these victims, what they have in common.

The hostile shot of Gert shoving her mouth into Sam’s ear and Sam wincing … let’s just skip over that part, shall we? Let’s skip to here:

Dean and Bela sashay back in, Sam turns, relieved … but LOOK at Ellen Geer.

Listen, she is an actress and she has a job to do. She’s doing it. She is playing a total crackpot.

You’ll notice Bela’s purse is decidedly bulky when she puts it under her arm. Theft accomplished.

“You stink like sex” is funny for many reasons:
1. Because Sam has just been groped for an hour. That wasn’t “sex.”
2. Because Jensen Ackles actually takes a second to smell the stink of sex wafting off of Sam. It’s that teensy beat before he speaks – and the deadpan “just tellin’ it like it is” tone he uses – that makes him who he is as an actor. Perfect pitch for comedy.

When Sam and Dean get back in the car, Sam struggles with his bow tie to get the stink of sex off of him muttering about Mrs. Havisham, because Sam is the coolest guy ever, and poor Dean realizes Bela has swapped the Hand of Glory for the Ship In a Bottle. He never once suspected. Because he is a dumbass who consistently underestimates her. But he TRIED. He didn’t let her touch it! He put it in his INSIDE pocket. Still, though … like the woman says: She’s not a thief. She’s a “great thief.” There’s a difference.

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There’s heavy foreshadowing here to what we will eventually learn, via Rufus doing due diligence and getting Bela’s EAR analyzed by some off-the-books Scotland Yard commando. Just as the series has great patience this season with exploring all of the different ways Sam and Dean argue about Dean’s deal … the series has great patience in letting Bela’s arc play out, in not tipping us off, in allowing us to hate her, get frustrated with her, before we learn that what she did was an act of survival against a father who was a predator and a mother who probably ignored it or slut-shamed her own child. She was a child trying to survive, trying to get out. Once you know all that, it’s totally understandable why she has become what she has become. But they don’t TELL us that until the final moment, they allow us to sit around judging her as bad, cold, unfeeling – just like Sam and Dean do. It’s such a great reveal at the end.

They don’t top load her. They let the mystery stand. And because of that, there are beautiful and disturbing ambiguities in the character. She’s hurt little girl AND cool customer. Bela seeing the ship is a direct replica of Sheila seeing the ship, and I’m sure they filmed the two moments back to back so they would match.

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Sam resisting Dean’s use of the word “us” – separating it out into “you” – is so revealing. This will come to fruition in the biggest way in Season 9, when Sam’s insistence on his own boundaries – that’s YOUR thing, it’s not MINE – is so upsetting for Dean he goes out and grows a beard. I mean, that’s how bad it gets. But here it shows up in this piffly little non-episode, and I love how it’s written. Screw you, Chuck! It’s this little jujitsu move by Sam, and Dean – yet again – is thrown off into space. He doesn’t see it coming. His use of the word “us” is so compulsive and Sam calls him on it. Padalecki plays it beautifully. As Dean ratchets up his energy, he dials his down. In a way, he’s leaving Dean to swing in the wind, but he’s also right: this screw-up is Dean’s, not Sam’s. Sam kept up his end of the bargain, Dean fucked his up. This is the second time Dean says “What?” in the episode – there will be one more in the final Impala scene. People are constantly saying shit to him that throws him off, he can’t keep up with his own life. This, for a man who’s extremely sensitive and a very good listener, is noticeable!

Like I said, over-thinking is my jam, and it occurs to me that as the deadline for Hell approaches, Dean becomes less competent. Bela certainly doesn’t help.

Speaking of Bela, she knocks on the door in a panic. Sam and Dean open the door together and suddenly we are in a Monet painting.

This is what I keep saying. You have to care about their faces if you are directing this show. You have to realize the GOLDMINE of that canvas and do RIGHT by these faces. Hollywood is filled with beautiful people. The beauty of Ackles and Padalecki (those names!) is not in any way, shape, or form, unique. They had appeared in other shows before this – and of course they come off as handsome because they are handsome – but they didn’t become works of art the way they do here. It’s Kim Manners’ influence, although David Nutter set the tone early on, by drowning their faces in shadows, showing the possibilities therein, of the planes of their faces, and how those planes took the light. It takes CARE to film them as beautifully as they are filmed (like here, like Dean picking the Hand of Glory lock). I have no idea the sexual orientation of any of the Bro-Directors working here, and I won’t speculate. It shouldn’t matter, but sometimes it does. Sometimes male directors don’t film other men as objects of desire. They can’t “go there.” Too revealing for them? Homophobic? Whatever the case is, in Supernatural, early on – all of the directors were open to the beauty of these two men. If you have faces like this in front of you and you are a director, you had better be like a kid in a candy store with how you film them – otherwise what the hell ELSE are you doing? This aspect has really gone missing in the recent seasons which is a shame because their beauty is even more distinct now that they are late 30s/40. It hurts that their beauty is being taken for granted.

I really go into all of this – and I do go on, don’t I – in the re-cap for “Shadow.” FACES FACES FACES. The show’s obsession with their faces in rivals Ingmar Bergman’s obsession with faces. Like this:

That’s an Impala shot, basically.

Bela strolls into the middle of Winchester rage and submits to their interrogation. Sam is cold, Dean is hot, and neither of them show much human feeling for her.

Like the femmes fatales before her, Bela so staunchly resists self-pity, or pity from others, she would rather die than experience it. She ends up isolated and alone – which is how she prefers it – although this time, not so much.

Dean’s callousness will come up in their final episode together, and it’s here, too – so much so that Sam has second thoughts, you can tell when it happens.

A thematic tangent: It’s an episode about siblings. It’s filled with siblings. There’s Sam and Dean. There’s the Menendez brothers. There’s the captain of the ship and his Ren-Faire brother. “Cain and Abel,” as Sam says to Bela, calling up the first murder in history – a familial murder. Also “Cain” brings major foreshadowing to later seasons. (“Castiel” gets a shout-out here too in the cemetery. Coincidence? I know the Castiel fans are all over this shit.) When Dean tortures Bela, with the incredibly vicious “Was it Daddy?” (considering what her father did to her, it’s particularly terrible) … he then moves on to guess “Little sis?” Siblings: you can’t live without ’em, and you can’t live WITH ’em, either. It’s a rather obvious trope, which loops back into the ongoing Sibling Argument of Season 3, but it casts it in a particularly dark light. The potential of murderousness within a family, the potential of sibling arguments so extreme that one will kill the other. Sam and Dean never make the connection, nor should they, but their accusations towards Bela just SIT there … and it’s wild, because neither one of them looks in a mirror, neither one of them makes a connection to their own family, the treachery of their own father who kept them trapped, gaslit, or as bait – anything but protect them, really – neither one of them can see what is right in front of them, their own issues, the danger in their own relationship, and where their particular brand of familial codependence may be leading. In her own con-artist way, Bela SEES them. She SEES their compromises. She sees that “helping people” … yeah, okay, they believe that, but come on, there’s more to it than THAT. And of course she’s right.

But she is a survivor just like they are. And of course they’ve made “better” choices than she has, but come on … in the world of Supernatural that’s a very thin line. Consider who is about to make a reappearance into their lives in the very next episode, someone who has made the same choices they have made, and for the very same reasons, but who is at the farthest end of the dark spectrum: Gordon.

This is the twisted and ambiguous moral and ethical SOUP of the show, and sometimes it gets so confusing Sam and Dean get lost in it. That’ll come up in the episode with the witches. You can’t KILL them, because they are HUMAN. So … what to DO with them? Human beings do bad things too. Hi, The Benders! But it’s everywhere in Season 3. Gordon enjoys killing TOO much. But who really gets to decide that? Sam and Dean? Who says? Sam is “cold” when he kills the demon, or Casey. But … you have to be “cold” to kill anything to some degree. At a certain point, EVERYBODY must cross the line. Nobody is pure. It’s just Dean’s delusion (his own survival technique) that allows him to feel like the sacrifices he’s making is worth it and that his motives are always good. Both Sam and Dean continue to caution other characters throughout the series that killing out of revenge never works. They both learn this the hard way. Rufus adds to the complexity in his kick-ASS scene with Dean late in Season 3, one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. This is what you have to look forward to, Rufus says to Dean … a very creepy echo to what Demon Dean says to Real Dean in “Dream a Little Dream Of Me” – “And this? THIS IS WHAT YOU’LL BECOME.” Dean has no room to maneuver. He has no future. It’s either one or the other. No wonder he clings to “we help people.” Otherwise: what the hell has he been doing?

There’s something about Bela – her machinations, her manipulations, her lying and thieving – that brings all of this to the forefront. (This only really becomes clear once her backstory is revealed. Then you see what her drive has been, from where her drive comes. Because, as Supernatural reiterates over and over again – everybody – except for Garth – gets into this racket for some horrible reason.)

Like I keep saying: Dean’s reaction to her – his confusion, his bluster – and then his viciousness at going for the jugular – as well as his abandonment of her in her moment of need – doesn’t just come because she keeps double-crossing him. Something in him RECOGNIZES her. And he despises what he sees. This is not the Dean we have gotten to know. Something ELSE comes out of him here. And it’s ugly.

This is the reaction of a man who is being shown a mirror and he literally does not recognize it as a mirror.

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Apparently candles stay lit during a monsoon.

Also, Jared Padalecki deserves an Academy Award for the amount of Latin text he has to scream here above the roar of the wind. It may be the longest incantation in the show’s history. Also, the rain is going to blur the writing in Dad’s journal. You guys should shrink-wrap those pages STAT.

Not much to be said here beyond:

Nope.

Also, Dean would so be dead cracking his head against the monument while hurtling through the air at 60 mph. Nice detail, though, having his shotgun go off as he hits the ground. Everything dissolves into water, and the sibling-betrayal scene ends in a mutual splash-down of obliteration which everyone clearly worked on very hard since it goes down in slo-mo.

Thanks, Castiel, for saving the day when you are summoned!

13th scene

Bela looks like a million bucks in her outfit here. They continue to treat her like she’s a bug under a rock, and she continues to not care. She “thanks” them by giving them $10,000, which is quite a sum (no more squatting for a while), but they both clock her refusal to say the words “Thank You.” Or “I’m sorry.” She is unfazed by their judgment. They have their rules of play, she has hers.

I like how the three figures are lined up here. Boom, boom, boom – it’s a wonderful visual, presented in a no-big-deal way, gone before you miss it, but there’s care given to how figures are placed in the frame.

For the last time in the episode, Dean walks right into a trap, a trap he can’t perceive because he still thinks of himself as a “winner”, or better than her. And I’m not saying he’s not. I’m just saying that the character development of Dean – in relation to Bela – is what interests me, and what Ackles is interested in revealing – is unafraid of revealing – is how consistently thrown off his game Dean gets when in the presence of this woman. This woman who is literally going through the exact same thing he is with almost the exact same timeline. At her refusal to say “Thank you,” he laughs and says, “You’re so damaged.” Bela smiles and says, so softly you almost can’t hear her, “Takes one to know one” … which hits him, hits him where it hurts, a place he’s so used to not acknowledging he can’t even be sure what’s going on. The way he looks up at her … the competing expressions on his face … it’s not just one thing, it’s a couple of different things …

This is why I love him.

It’s different than his other more blowhard-y buffoonish reactions to her getting one over on him. Here, he looks at her, he heard what she said, he accepts it, he hates it, but there’s a moment of reckoning between them, a steely silent moment of eye contact full of self-knowledge, recognition, confrontation … a host of things.

For a dumb episode, they really got a lot in here that will be important later. It’s an important step on Dean’s journey to admitting he needs help, that he wants to live.

13th scene

“Red Sky at Morning” represents an impasse. No new ground is covered. Sam and Dean spin their wheels in the Season 3 argument. Spinning their wheels this obviously (and the Bela thing won’t pay off until the end of the season) is a function of the not-particularly-great writing (okay, Chuck, okay), and the way the episode gets side-tracked into screwball. I don’t particularly mind all that (CLEARLY), and it’s particularly notable since the season is shorter, and therefore every episode really should dovetail into the overall Arc. This one does … and it doesn’t. In Dean’s big monologue here, he picks up the thread from the first scene, only now he’s calmer. He “understands” why Sam went after the crossroads demon. Because … he saw what sibling hatred can become? It can dissolve into water in a cemetery? It’s not quite clear where the transformation took place.

But some interesting things happen here, which seem all of a part with Dean’s general cluelessness over the course of the episode. He takes on the role of reassuring older brother. I understand where you’re coming from, but you’re going to be okay when I’m gone, you’ll keep hunting … (Interesting he assumes that. Never in a million years would Dean say, “You can go back to college, get married …”) I’m sure Dean assumes this speech will go over well, otherwise why would he say it? Kind of like saying “You’re so damaged” to Bela, and assuming that would shut her down, when instead he realizes too late he’s walked into a trap. That’s what happens here.

Sam seethes at Dean’s big brotherly advice which – without Dean meaning it to – dismisses the grief Sam will feel, as well as how hard Sam has been working to get Dean out of the deal. It’s so dysfunctional. Most revealing, Dean says to Sam, “You’re stronger than me. You are. You’ll be okay.”

For Dean to admit that …

Is it a lapse in the writing? It’s brushed over so quickly but it’s fascinating, lapse or no. It’s even more interesting when you consider Ruby whispering to Sam over the next 2 seasons that he’s stronger than Dean. And Dean’s shame at having “broken” in Hell, and Sam’s conviction that Dean came back from Hell weaker, strengthened by Ruby’s sinister whispers.

On some level, Dean is trying to soothe himself – and if there’s anything Dean knows how to do, it’s self-soothe. It’s one of his best qualities. Sex, Atlantic City, magic fingers … telling Sam he’ll be okay because he’s strong. But it’s so callous. It’s so dismissive of Sam’s experience. The writing of this monologue is a bit too “subtext spoken” – although Ackles plays it beautifully – but it might have been stronger to leave all this unsaid and have Sam explode out of the silence. There are many reasons why the way it plays out here does and doesn’t work, the main one being “You’re stronger than me” is a hell of a statement and we need to feel they MEAN to be making that statement. Otherwise, it goes by so fast you’re like, “Wait … what did he just say?” The way Ackles plays it though is great, because Dean feels like he’s giving Sam a pep talk, when all he’s doing is saying “Your feelings aren’t really valid, you’ll be fine, you’ll get over it.” GET OVER IT??

In response to Sam’s “Screw you”, Dean says “What?” for the third and final time this episode.

He’s rarely this “behind” events, he rarely needs to play this much catch-up.

There are those, I suppose, who will see it as Out of Character. I don’t at all. I think it adds shadings and nuance to the character, who is – let’s remember – in a situation he’s never been in before. As much danger as he’s faced in his life, he’s never gambled his life away and had to wait for the Hell Hounds to come a-callin’.

One of the organizing principles of this entire arc, which ends with “Dream a Little Dream of Me” comes in this scene with Sam’s beautiful line: “I don’t want you to worry about me. I want you to worry about you.” And with that, the door closes. Dean retreats into a smiling mask of imperturbability. Nothing will get him. He’s Bela now. Through and through.

It reminds me of that fantastic moment a couple seasons down the road where Sam says to him, “This is good – now that I’m doing good, you don’t have to worry about me anymore, you can finally focus on yourself – this is a really good thing for you” and the look on Dean’s face shows he doesn’t even know what Sam is talking about. It’s literally his worst fear. Who would he be without this main job? This ONE JOB?

“Red sky at night”, as the saying goes, is sailor’s delight. “Red sky at morning”? Look out. Storm’s coming. And you boys are smack in the middle of it.

Supernatural Re-Caps
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3