Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 19: “Provenance”

Directed by Phil Sgriccia
Written by David Ehrman

Supernatural works cumulatively. Yes, each season has its own particular arc, its underlying motor and drive. But it is the accumulation of details, character and otherwise, that make the show work, ultimately. I’m not a big Plot-Girl, really. I’m all about character. I’d rather see something with character and no plot than the other way around. Sometimes Supernatural hits the nail on the head with both, but as long as the characters keep developing, and revealing themselves, and contradicting themselves, I’m in. “Provenance” is a piece of fluff, really, in the major run to the end-zones of Season 1, but it’s extremely important (and subtle) in terms of character. It’s a messy and silly Monster of the Week, and it’s all over the place, with red herrings strewn in our path to up the ante (It’s the father! No, it’s the daughter! “My sister, my daughter!”.) It features the Winchesters stepping, for the first time, into a world of wealth, which provides some of the comedic moments in the episode. Considering the fact that “Provenance” is book-ended by two powerhouse episodes, “Something Wicked,” and “Dead Man’s Blood,” it seems quite slight in many respects, but in others it has a lot of depth. It has “oomph” in the realm of character, and like I said, that’s my main interest.

Supernatural doesn’t allow itself to go balls-to-the-wall silly for a while. In Season 1, they are still establishing their tone and the various Arcs they want to pursue. After “Something Wicked,” you might think it would be natural to go straight into “Dead Man’s Blood,” so that we don’t lose momentum with the Dad Arc. But no, “Provenance” is a breather. A slight pause, a caesura, before the plunge into the final episodes. The mood lightens precipitately.

I have often thought that if Supernatural took itself too seriously it would be dreadful. Like, embarrassing. There are those who get off on that kind of thing and don’t like their beloved genres to be cloaked in silliness. Supernatural, early on in Season 1, though, stated its intentions, both visually and performance-wise, that this was not going to be All-Serious-All-the-Time. For me, watching Season 1 for the first time, I’ve tracked a couple of key moments where I got hooked. Most of these moments have to do with humor, although there are exceptions (Dean and Sam’s in-unison “Yes, sir” in “Shadow” being one of them). Dean’s entire symphony of panic during “Phantom Traveler”. Huge hook. But it was with “Provenance” where I got that tell-tale goose bump-y feeling that I sometimes get when I realize that something is not just good, it’s awesome. (Sam: “He’s not a waiter.”) It happened for me with Slings & Arrows (one of my favorite series of all time) in almost the first damn scene. I sat there, watching it for the first time, and knew that I would not stop until I had seen every damn episode, and so I had to cancel all of my plans for the next three days. Which is basically what happened. I didn’t have that instant feeling with Supernatural, although I liked both actors, liked the cinematic feeling of the series, and was fascinated by the familial dynamic. But that wouldn’t justify, for me, a 10-season commitment. “Provenance,” for me, represented when I realized I was “in”. And it had nothing to do with the characters or the plot or “OMG I can’t wait to see what happens.” It had to do with the acting itself. Comedy is harder to do well than operatic tragedy. You can have glycerine tears placed on your face and no one will be the wiser, but comic timing … it’s like having a gift for mathematics or music. You kind of just have to have it. And that’s what I felt when I watched “Provenance.” Watching Dean perambulate through the episode, messed up and relaxed, careless and chill, all of it manifesting itself physically was a revelation about who Jensen Ackles was as an actor. The tearing-up during the phone call to Dad in “Home” was my first realization of, “Oh. Okay. So this guy is fucking good is basically what I’m seeing.” But seeing him in “Provenance,” hungover and fucked-out, sniff a glass of champagne right in the face of a snooty suspicious man, before sashaying away rudely, is just one of the small gems of behavior in “Provenance” that hooked me in for GOOD. My first post about this whole damn series was about Jensen Ackles’ gift for physical comedy. We’ve seen him be funny in Season 1, but not funny like he is in “Provenance”. In “Provenance,” he is funny between the lines, he moves funny, he’s thinking funny. What I got from all of this was a sense of unpredictability about him. I literally did not know what he was going to do next. Now THAT’S a hook.

The theme of love/intimacy/relationships/romance is what “Provenance” is really about. It’s the flip-side of “Route 666,”, sans Racist Truck. You could tell, in “Route 666,” that the only thing anyone on the team cared about was exploring Dean having been in love, and what that must have been like for him, and who he was in a boyfriend context, and what Sam felt about all of it. You could almost feel everyone being like, “Oh. Right. We have to have a monster too here, don’t we. Shit. Okay. Ummm, Racist Truck? Sure, whatever.” “Provenance” isn’t quite as unbalanced as that although it’s in that territory, because what is interesting here is Sam. What is interesting here is Dean dealing with Sam.

So the Monster of the Week almost becomes a distraction from the real point of the episode, which is Sam’s next step in letting go of Jessica, of allowing himself to have a crush on someone else. Supernatural obviously works best when the Monster in question is not a distraction at all, but dovetails seamlessly with the emotional themes of the given episode. “Provenance” isn’t seamless, the cracks show, but the emotional stuff is so interesting to me (and, side note, I relate to it – I relate to both sides of the argument in “Provenance”, the Dean side, the Sam side – I have been BOTH of them at different moments in my life, so there’s a Memory Lane thing that happens for me too with “Provenance”.)

There are also a couple of interesting bread-crumbs, thematic paths you could follow, should you choose. The whole “Provenance” thing to begin with, and the fact that Dean keeps mis-pronouncing it as “Providence”. It’s played as a joke, but there are obviously echoes of deeper themes there. Not really dwelled on, just tossed down carelessly, to be thought about and contemplated if you felt like it. (Clearly, I do.) Provenance, the word, has multiple meanings: obviously, it refers to the history of ownership of any given work of art. But it also means the “origin” of something, its beginning, where it comes from. Twice in the episode the question, “Why’d he/she do it?” is asked. What is the origin of someone becoming a murderer? Sam’s resistance to even having a two-day crush on someone is not just Sam being a prude about sex, or trying to differentiate himself from his promiscuous brother. What’s the real “provenance” of it? That’s what the episode cares about, that’s what the episode is interested in examining. And it would need to be someone like Sarah, someone who has been through her own shit and understands loss. The death of Jess has bonded Sam to Dad (the discussion of that is yet to come) in a way that Dean can’t share. Dean knows he doesn’t understand, but he knows that’s what’s going on … and maybe … they should talk about it? Maybe Sam needs to talk about this stuff? Maybe he, the older brother, can help? Dean’s got shit to SAY. But it’s hard for Dean and it’s hard for Sam. Their relationship is not based on honesty. They have no skills to discuss emotions with one another. But they will start to, in “Provenance,” at Dean’s insistence. It’s a fascinating element to their relationship, heretofore unexplored. It leads us to one of my favorite scenes in Season 1.

And while “Provenance” represents a break in the Dad Arc, the whole thing resonates with sketchy unreliable fathers (Sarah’s father makes a promise to her and then casually breaks it when someone offered him enough money) and then, of course, the mysterious Mr. Isaiah Merchant in the portrait. Sam and Dean don’t even talk about their own Dad here, but his shadow is everywhere, it’s their landscape. This is all complicated, beautifully, by the fact that Isaiah Merchant is assumed to be the Bad Guy for almost the entirety of the episode, only to find out at the end that he was not bad at all, but a victim, and now is heroically trying to warn others. It is the CHILD who is the bad one. There are so many clues along the way that Sam and Dean miss. Their assumption is the Dad has to be the bad one, it CAN’T be an innocent child. Blind spots, from their own life experiences.

So. Like I said, perhaps a bit top-heavy for “Provenance,” which doesn’t address these things head-on (nor should it). What “Provenance” is interested in is Sam’s emotional journey. And how Sarah plays into that. And how Dean tries to help. That’s it.

Sam’s romantic/sexual life is pretty much dead, for obvious reasons, and Dean has noticed. He has noticed because he has as much sex as he possibly can, and Lack of Sex is something he is tuned into. So there’s that. Sam’s grieving, and reluctance to get involved again, has been touched on before, most explicitly in “Hook Man”, when Dean actually says, “Hey, we can stick around for a while if you want” at the end of the episode. “Scarecrow” introduced Meg, who tries to ensnare Sam while he’s stuck at the bus station, and he seems intrigued, but also holds back. It’s too soon. Thank goodness, because it turns out she is a black-eyed broad who speaks Latin into a bloody bowl in her spare time. You’re better off without her. But that’s the start of Sam starting to come out of the Jess shell, just a tiny bit. “Shadow” brings Meg back into Sam’s life, and Sam is immediately suspicious, but all Dean can see is GIRL and proceeds to tease Sam mercilessly throughout the entire episode. It’s the aggressive and obnoxious version of what ends up being kind and compassionate in “Provenance.” But, you know, in general, Sam is not interested in “circulating” and his reasons are complicated, and he doesn’t feel like talking about it.

Dean is not stupid and Dean guesses that it’s not just Sam being prudish about promiscuous sex. Sam was in love with someone. She was killed. Dean didn’t show any interest in Jess in the 2.3 seconds he met her in the pilot. In fact, he was downright rude. But times have changed since then. He’s getting to know his brother as a grown-up man. Instead of being trapped in the Belljar with his Dad, there’s some air let into the sibling dynamic. That was mainly what was going on with all that ribald teasing in “Shadow” (before Dad showed up). They’re not used to being out and single together, they’re not used to being “wingmen” for each other, they’re not used to any of it. All of it is totally new.

I find the levels of “Provenance” interesting, the multiple levels of what each actor is doing and playing and reacting to. Both of them, over the course of the episode, withhold information from the other. Both of them keep secrets. This is obviously well-trod ground at this particular point in Season 9, but the fun of it is putting ourselves back in Season 1 mode, when we didn’t know these guys all that well. Dean does his job in “Provenance” and works the case at hand, but the real case he’s working, the one he’s most devoted to, is getting Sam and Sarah together. And Sam’s resistance isn’t what it seems on the surface. He’s not just a humorless prude. He has guilt, shame, and fear of going through that stuff again. He also feels responsible for Jess’ death in a way that he can’t recover from, and his mother died in his nursery. He lay in the crib staring up at her. He may not remember it, but he was THERE. These topics are radioactive ground for the Winchester brothers, but they do tiptoe forward a bit in “Provenance”.

Both Ackles and Padalecki play the surface of things as well as the deep secret levels. And that’s how you get fascinating behavior and that’s why I find “Provenance” satisfying.

Directed by Supernatural regular Phil Sgriccia, “Provenance” was written by Daniel Ehrman and it was his only episode for the series (no surprise there, since a quick look at his IMDB page makes me wonder if the man ever sleeps).

TEASER
Visually, the teaser tells us everything. It starts with a closeup of the little girl in the creepy portrait. Not the father looking down at her. So the entire episode starts with the answer to the “Whodunit”. There are also visual cues in the scary walk up the dark stairway, clearly shot from a child’s height and perspective, not the perspective of a tall man. If we, the audience, are clued in, then we will know throughout that Sam and Dean are chasing the wrong ghost.

An upscale couple with no taste who have enough disposable income that they go to a charity auction, get drunk at the open bar, and buy a creepy-ass portrait of someone else’s family stand in their chilly modern townhouse, drunk, horny, and laughing at the portrait they just bought. They are about to go up to the bedroom for some bow-chick-a-bow. A happy sexy couple is, of course, the way “Provenance” would start, an episode that is really about love and intimacy and sex.

After they leave the room to head to bed, the father’s head moves in the portrait, staring out into the empty room with what looks like a ferocious and mean face, although it looks quite different once you know what the hell happened to that poor guy.

The husband locks up the house, all as something walks up the dark stairs towards the bedroom, and if you listen closely, you can hear something dragging along the ground. The death scene is pretty gruesome here, mainly because we don’t see any of it, we just see the aftermath. Then, of course, traumatized husband bites it too. That’s what you get for having such bad taste.

1st scene
With a complete contrast in mood to the chilly modern-home teaser, Dean and Sam sit in a rowdy bar, with musicians setting up on the stage, the lights low and warm and sexy. The mood is friendly and full of possibility. Not that Sam would notice or care. He’s sitting at a table reading a local newspaper, waiting impatiently for Dean to finish chatting up a girl named Brandy (or Brandi?) over by the bar. Dean is hyped-up and filled with the adrenaline of Sex That Is About to Happen. He has clothes on but that’s a technicality. Sam is cross-checking the report of the Nouveau Riche couple’s murder with notes made in Dad’s journal about a series of unexplained murders that have happened in this town in Upstate New York town (what the hell are they doing there in the first place?? I love it how they jump around, and how sometimes we are given connecting links, but sometimes we are not. The gaps in their timeline also help the show work. There’s more going on, always, than we actually see).

Sam has had to rein Dean in a bunch of times at this point in the series, get him to focus, get him to think with his upstairs brain (but, as I pointed out in “Shadow,” Dean can do both at the same time. It’s a helluva gift and should not be under-estimated or dismissed. Just ask Amy.) Dean will not be stopped from his pursuit of a sexy night off, though, and this is the real theme of the episode: Yes, people must be saved from evil beings, but what is the harm in having some fun with girls who want to have fun with you? (The scene in the Season 9 finale where Dean doesn’t even notice the cute waitress, and treats her in a cursory manner, so not like him, is almost more shocking than anything else that happened in that episode. His libido vanished once Kevin died, basically. And his libido, in many ways, is the most healthy thing about him. But I’ll get to that.)

Although Sam is slightly annoyed and maybe a little bit uncomfortable about having to witness Dean’s clearly Hounddog nature on full display, he also finds it funny and ridiculous. Dean has told the girls at the bar that he is a talent scout for “reality TV”, because of course that makes sense, and Sam rolls his eyes. There’s a clearly improvised moment when Sam is talking to Dean about the case, and Dean’s eye strays to yet another pretty girl passing by and Sam has to snap Dean back to attention: “Dean … DEAN.”

Behavior is often the funniest thing about a moment, not the lines or the situation, and Supernatural not only allows for that, it encourages it. “Provenance” was the first episode where I really got how funny both of these guys are. It’s not in the lines. It’s in the behavior. The way Padalecki cuts himself off mid-sentence to say, “Dean … DEAN …” He’s in tune with the moment right in front of him, with the behavior Ackles is giving him.

Behavior has to feel spontaneous, un-thought-out, un-anticipated. It’s what happens BETWEEN the lines that is funny. I was so gratified to learn (and not at all surprised) that in order to save time with set-ups, scenes between the brothers are often filmed with two cameras on them, one on Sam and one on Dean, as opposed to doing Sam’s “side” first and then Dean’s or whatever. This technique allows for spontaneity, but it also is great because you are seeing them both playing the scene, as opposed to playing their individual moments in a series of isolated closeups.

Dean’s body language through the entire episode is kind of loose and floppy and PRESENT. We hadn’t seen this Dean before. It may very well be my favorite Dean. I remember thinking, on my first viewing, “Holy shit. He’s hilarious.”

Dean may be the oldest but Sam is more often in the parental role, trying to keep Dean under control, make him eat right, focus on the job. And Dean treats Sam here like Sam is his chaperone, basically asking for permission to go home with the babe at the bar. I’ve said it before but again, ugh, with the claustrophobia. They’re grown-ups. It’s unnatural, their situation. It’s messed up and the most messed up thing about it is that neither of them question it.

The whole scene starts with Dean telling Sam that Brandi/y has a friend and “I could hook you up.” Sam, predictably, says, “No, thanks. I can get my own dates.” To which Dean replies, and it’s pretty on-the-nose for him, he’s been tiptoeing around the topic for episodes now, “Yeah, you can, but you don’t.” It’s so straightforward that it stops Sam a little bit, it’s too much, it’s too close, and he says, “What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean senses he’s gone too far, that he’s getting too close to expressing the truth of the matter, and he’s not ready for it. Now is not the time. Especially not when he’s got a woman waiting for him at the bar and a condom in his back pocket. So he backs off.

I love how after Dean says to Sam, “We can’t pick this up until first thing though, right?” and Sam says, “Right,” Dean is out of there without even a goodbye. No time like the present. Sex About to Happen is the most Important Thing in the World, and you have to leap on any given opportunity. Because you’ll be outta that town in two days and who knows when you’ll find a safe haven again?

2nd scene
Dean is passed out in the passenger seat of the Impala, wearing sunglasses. He so rarely wears them. He looks completely decadent.

Not as decadent as this immortal moment from The Decline of Western Civiliation: The Metal Years, a high watermark for decadence captured on film.

But pretty decadent nonetheless. It’s early morning, so Sam has obviously picked Dean up from wherever he was staying with the two chickadees. I am imagining Dean stumbling around through the unfamiliar apartment, gathering together his clothes, and tiptoeing out to the Impala, with Sam waiting impatiently at the wheel. Dean has had a blast. He knows how to do that. He is now snoring.

I’ve mentioned “Sleep Behavior” before and how good Ackles is at it, and how good he is at waking-up behavior. Sometimes he wakes up slowly and crankily, rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands, like he’s a four-year-old, and sometimes, like here, he is jolted awake by Sam beeping the horn, and his entire body leaps into action, with flailing defensive arms. He looks insane. Especially with the sunglasses. Sam has taken the opportunity of the early-morning hour to break into the Telesca home, and sweep it with the EMF. No dice. Dean is collapsed against the side of the car, degraded, and sated. You can smell the sex through the TV screen. His sexuality is so obvious anyway, that when he decides to revel in it on his own terms it’s like his entire world is destroyed/enhanced by it. So often people/demons/monsters are up in his grill, drooling over him, chomping at the bit, compromising him … everyone wants a piece of Dean. But when he decides to give it away? He’s happy as hell.

Sam tells Dean the house is “clean”, meaning empty. Dean is almost completely horizontal but this gets his attention. “Where’s their stuff?”

3rd scene
Delicate violin music cues us as the entryway into the world of the wealthy, and the auction house scene starts off with a great establishing shot from outside: The camera pans along the high-end gleaming cars parked in the lot (love the one license plate we see: THE KRIP), until the camera rests on the monstrous Impala, beat-up, mud-splashed, dusty. But, of course, sexy, too.

If those cars were a bunch of cocks lined up in a row (blame Supernatural for that comment), then you know which one you’d probably pick as the one that can get the job done, which, of course, is the whole point. But wealth is (or can be) intimidating. Sam and Dean are strolling into the lion’s den.

They wander through the auction house, a big elaborate space, filled to the brim with furniture and artwork and knick-knacks. Dean grabs little hors d’ouevres off every plate he sees, making snide comments about “garage sales for WASPs”, but he seems totally unconcerned with making a “correct” impression. Who gives a fuck, I’m still drunk, and I was asleep, like, 20 minutes ago. Meanwhile, the two have been clocked by a snooty older gentleman (played by Keith Martin Gordey), standing with an elderly elegant woman (Barbara Frosch), Evelyn, who comes to an unfortunate end during the episode. Snooty Guy takes one look at Sam and Dean and knows they aren’t supposed to be there.

This is the scene, the scene where I felt the excitement of Comedy.

Snooty Guy (his name is Daniel Blake) swoops over suspiciously. Dean has popped a mini-quiche in his mouth, and glances at Snooty Guy with a total lack of interest and zero intimidation. Then Dean asks him for a glass of champagne. Sam says, “He’s not a waiter,” and his line reading makes me laugh out loud. Dean doesn’t seem embarrassed by what is obviously a faux pas. Shrugs it off. Oh. Saw your suit. Thought you were the staff. My bad, bro, whatever. Sam tries to smooth things out, introducing themselves as art dealers. But Snooty guy isn’t buying it. “You’re not on the guest list.” Dean, still chewing, laughs and says, “We’re there, Chuckles. You just need to take another look.”

So helpful!

What is so great about Dean here, and throughout, is he really doesn’t recognize or respect authority. He is not intimidated by it (except when it’s his Dad). He doesn’t care that everyone here is wealthy. It literally – LITERALLY – does not matter to him. He doesn’t even try to “front” properly. Authority like this, based on wealth and possessions, is not even worthy of respect.

I admire how little Dean cares. Of course his obnoxious behavior is what gets them booted out. But they’ll just break in later after-hours when they can have the joint to themselves. He is a true revolutionary. He does not recognize authority that is meaningless to him.

There is also the little matter that he spent the last 12 hours getting properly laid, I’m thinking by both of the women at the bar. It takes him about two days to come down, the two days they spend working this case. Seen in that context, the sex context (which is the filter one should always use with Dean), Dean is completely satisfied, and still buzzing with pheromones, pheromones that relax him, drug him, and stupefy him. It also means that he is not on the prowl. There is almost no flirting done by Dean here, no Eyelash-Batting (I go into the Eyelash-Batting-Flirt thing in “Bloody Mary”, but it comes up repeatedly). He got all of that out of his system, and so when Sarah appears he doesn’t try to pounce on her, he never flirts with her, he barely looks up from his food when he is introduced. This is very rare for Dean. Of course he then figures out that she only has eyes for Sam, and unlike in “Shadow,” when he seems annoyed that Meg ignores him and isn’t attracted to him, Dean starts plotting and scheming to get his brother together with Sarah. He wouldn’t be into her anyway. Not at this particular moment in time, because all the Sex is out of him for the moment. He’s relaxed, loose, loopy, and that’s a conscious choice on Ackles’ part: later in the episode, he says to Sam that maybe if Sam hooked up with a woman once in a while “you wouldn’t be so cranky all the time.” The comment lands like a small grenade, but it shows a consciousness on Dean’s part, not only about what is going on for Sam, but why he, Dean, does what he does. Of course sex feels good and if you want to have it then you should go out and have it. But Dean, navigating his tough and stressful life, has found relief in what seems to me a very adult way. He’s not gonna be getting married, so regular sex is something he has to go out and find. It’s GOOD for him. Otherwise life would be unbearable. People seem to look at the “womanizing” as some sort of regressed state, or as evidence of his misogyny (which I think is total bullshit, I wrote about that in the “Faith” re-cap), an unwillingness to get intimate, a way for Dean to keep women at arm’s length, a way for him to overcompensate, take your pick, the analysis is out there. Parts of all of that may be true, except for the misogyny part – some opinions actually are wrong – but it’s all a bit too intellectualized for my taste. There are certainly hints galore that Dean has had sketchy sexual situations in his life where his boundaries were totally compromised, where he participated in compromising his own boundaries, probably some of it going on as Dad looked on, and there is of course the trauma of losing his mother and all of that. But let’s not over-think and social-justice it too much. Dean NEEDS sex like other people need food and water. It’s where he gets to be soft and open and receptive and, incidentally and interestingly, safe. It’s where he gets to take a turn being the center of attention without it being a life-or-death situation. (I’ve written before about how much Dean hates being the center of attention.) It’s also where he gets to forget about himself for a while, and focus on whatever person he’s with, taking care of her, making her happy, and that’s also a welcome change and comes naturally to him. He NEEDS all of that, more than most. Sex isn’t a place where he’s “conquering” anything, these people are not notches on his bedpost. I think that’s a total mis-read of the situation. His hook-ups are actually life-savers, life-givers, a reminder that normalcy still exists, that he is human and it’s good to be human, and it’s okay to be open for a second or two. He will never experience it in any sustained way but he sure as hell makes the time to visit that landscape as much as he can.

(Naturally, the dynamic changes over the course of the series, as things get worse and worse for him, as the traumas pile up. But that’s not to say it doesn’t start out, and still sometimes is, a totally healthy way to handle his 100% fucked-up life.)

There’s a moment in the documentary called 9/11, directed by Gédéon Naudet and Jules Naudet, where a fireman talked about finally being able to go home, after days working in that smoking pit of hell and death. He was a big Irish-looking guy, with a shock of black hair, pale skin, and a big beefy handsome-as-hell face. He hadn’t slept in two or three days, and many of his friends were dead. It was a terrible terrible day for the NYFD. And he said something like, “So I went home to my wife.” Pause. “And we got into the hot tub.” Long long pause, and then he started laughing, but there was something terrible in his laugh, a sadness, and he said, “But I won’t talk about that.” It was such a piercing moment. What was also there was the image of all the wives who didn’t get to welcome their husbands home. Anyway, I think of that fireman sometimes when I watch Dean Winchester. It was a moment where both hard-ness and soft-ness existed simultaneously. Hard-ness is essential in order to do your job, but without the soft-ness to counteract it, then life would be a howling wilderness and your sacrifices would not be worth a damn. “Normal civilians” sometimes have a hard time grasping this concept. But it’s something firemen get, soldiers get, cops get.

All of this is to say is that Dean’s high-voltage sexuality is something he actually protects and nurtures. He gives it some room to breathe and operate. If life is seen as a scale, then the darkness weighs down one side, and he needs to balance it out on the other side with happy stuff. It keeps him stable.

Personal Tangent, Related.
When I had my crack-up in 2013, the first doctor I talked to – who is still my doctor now- said something so … confrontational… that I almost never even thought of resisting it. He was talking to me about my diagnosis and he said, in his thick Italian accent, “Exercise is such an effective mood-stabilizer that if I COULD get away with refusing to treat people who refused to exercise … I would.” I told him I used to be a runner. He said I needed to start again. I was so out of my mind at that point that I begged him to just give me a fucking pill. But I did what he said. I started running again. I am now convinced that my illness was held at bay in my 20s in part because I was so athletic and active. Once I slacked off in my 30s, the scale had nowhere to go but down.

What this has to do with Dean and sex (I told you I related to both sides of the Dean/Sam “Provenance” argument) is that the scales are tipped against me. One side has the illness and it is a monster and it weighs a ton. The other side of the scale MUST be weighed down as well, with things like proper diet, lots of sleep, and daily exercise. When I’ve slacked off, and stopped sleeping as much as I need to, or miss a couple of days of exercising, I can almost feel the bad side of the scale going down again. So I need to get outside and take a run. Dean’s need for sex works like that. My need for sex works like that too, and this is why Friends with Benefits were invented, but I have been confessional enough, and Jeez Louise, my mother reads here. Dean is on an internal schedule with what he needs, and based on his behavior in “Provenance,” it does him a world of good. His self-knowledge, which amounts to self-protection and self-preservation, is one of the main qualities Dean has lost over the ensuing 9 seasons. The loss has created a gigantic void. The scale has nowhere to go now but down.

A tray of champagne floats by and Dean grabs one, needing some hair-of-the-dog, and then sniffs the glass, staring right at Auction Man, before walking away. Color Sheila in Love with Supernatural right around this exact moment. Sam, embarrassed, shuffles off after his debauched rude brother. They don’t even know what they’re looking for. Sam catches sight of the painting, standing propped up on the floor.

Dean and Sam’s contemplation of the creepy painting is interrupted by a voice coming from above them: “A fine example of American primitive, wouldn’t you say?” They both look up and there is Sarah Blake, coming down a spiral staircase, in an elegant black dress.

Sarah is played by Taylor Cole, and she is one of the most breathtaking women to ever appear on the show, second only to Alaina Huffman, who is almost at Angelina Jolie level of eye-catchery as Abaddon. Cole’s beauty is the kind that is deepened by the warmth of her personality, and by the touching vulnerability she brings to her role. (All made even more amazing when you see the gag reel for “Provenance.” She is clearly a giggler, and there are scenes where she can barely get a line out without breaking up. She and Padalecki clearly clicked, and the “date scene” was interspersed with huge guffaws where the entire thing ground to a halt. There’s something about Taylor Cole that is so adorable and accessible, even in her bloopers, that it can’t help but translate into the performance.)

Seen in the context of her return in Season 8, her glimmering and palpable vulnerability in “Provenance” is that much more touching and awful. Sarah is a woman who has been through a lot. She is recovering from a loss. She has course-corrected in a way that has harmed her, as often happens. We recoil when we are hurt, we protect ourselves too much. That’s where Sarah is at in “Provenance.” And Sam comes along, who has been through the same thing, and has reacted in the same way. It takes a couple of scenes for him to confess that to her, and so perhaps in this scene, with the banter about art history, he really is just responding to her stunning beauty, but I don’t think so. It’s how she handles him, her “testing” of him … that really gets his attention. He likes it. He respects it. It pokes through his own shell of self-protection.

Dean is already perked-up, in general, because he was just having sex, like, moments ago, and he’s scarfed down FREE quiche and champagne, and he is basically having a FABULOUS morning. Seeing a goddess like Sarah descend the staircase is yet another perk. But Sam, whose sexuality is on a shorter leash, has actually heard what Sarah said. And it doesn’t sound right to him.

He looks down at the painting. She just said it was “American primitive.” But … he knows what “American primitive” is …

And the creepy portrait has nothing to do with American primitive (I had to include this particular Grandma Moses painting, with its Supernatural environment of a country Halloween night.)

A more suave man, or a more shallow man, might have picked up on how she was testing him, and would have either been pissed off and offended, or would have gone along with it, just to keep the conversation going. But Sam doesn’t do either of those. He turns to her as she approaches and she is so beautiful that you could certainly forgive him if he stumbled a bit at the onslaught. But he doesn’t. He says, calmly, firmly, “I’d say it’s more Grant Wood than Grandma Moses.”

“American Gothic”, of course, is the most famous Grant Wood painting and has a lot of resonance in the Supernatural world, with the show’s devotion to Americana and small rural communities off the Interstate, not to mention its critique/lampoonery of judgmental Puritanism, and black-and-white ideological thinking. Shirley Jackson territory, which I referenced in the re-cap to “Scarecrow.”

I find Wood’s painting “The Perfectionist” even more frightening.

In every Shirley Jackson story there is a woman like that.

And good for you, Sam. The expressions in the portrait do have a Grant Wood style.

Sarah is slightly embarrassed at being busted, and glances down, looking even more lovely, and Sam realizes what’s just happened. He gets what’s going on, and says, “But you knew that. You just wanted to see if I did.”

To be able to “keep your head” during a moment of flirtation, to still have an operating brain … pretty impressive, Sam Winchester, and also hella sexy.

In the meantime, though, Dean has popped another quiche in his mouth, just as Sam reluctantly drags his eyes off Sarah and turns to introduce Dean. Dean does not unfurl his peacock feathers for Sarah, in the way he tried to do with Meg. He is more into the food he is eating, and also, I think he has somehow consciously submerged his dazzle. Erotic muses can do that. They can turn it on and off. It’s part of being used to being objectified. Truman Capote tells a great story about how Marilyn Monroe could literally make herself invisible on a crowded Manhattan street. No makeup, headscarf, sunglasses, and nobody recognized her. Then, playfully, she said to Truman, “You want to see her?” And all she did was take off her headscarf, and then became Marilyn, before his eyes. Within seconds, she was recognized and was swarmed by fans. Only true Erotic Muses know how to play with their persona in that way. It takes an intuitive understanding and acceptance of what it means to be an Object. Clearly, Dean is in that realm.

Watch how he behaves when he is introduced to Sarah. He is focused on the quiche, he doesn’t blaze a smile at her, he doesn’t bat his eyelashes. He got everything out of his system last night. He’s not rude or anything. But he turned his light off.

Sarah takes in the spectacle of Dean eating, (and it is certainly a sight to see), and says, “Can we get you another quiche?” He shakes his head and says to her, “Mm, no, I’m good,” and he is so satisfied, so in the zone with his pleasure, that it’s almost embarrassing. Dude, why don’t you and the quiche get a room, nobody wants to see that. He may have turned his light off for Sarah, but that was only so he could pour all that light onto the quiche. Dean bats his eyelashes at his car, at his cassette tapes, at a burger. At a quiche. He bats his eyelashes at the world.

None of it registers with Sarah, anyway, Dean is irrelevant and she turns right back to Sam. The two of them start talking, and Dean, glancing back and forth, understands what is happening. He’s not dumb about pheromones, and he picks up on the “splashy-splashy” thing going on between Sam and Art-Babe. It’s not how HE would do “splashy-splashy,” but “splashy-splashy” is a universal language.

It’s such a great sibling moment. Dean’s realization: “Wait … what … ehmagerd … reciprocal flirty thing happening? imsoexcitedOMGthisisawesome…”

And from this point forward, Dean couldn’t give a shit about the painting. Well, that’s an exaggeration. But the case he REALLY works in “Provenance” is getting Sam to go out with Sarah. It’s strangely adorable and obnoxious.

Sam feels the splashy-splashy, too, but is not sure what to do about it, it’s kind of ambushing him, so he asks if he can see the “provenances”. Suddenly, in swoops the “Waiter” from before, saying, No way, Jose. Dean glances at his nemesis, and gulps down the last of his quiche, with a Ruh-roh look on his face. Snooty Guy looks straight at Dean, who is the clear trouble-maker: “You’re not on the guest list. I think it’s time for you to leave.”

And Dean says in a haughty almost British accent which is funny every time I see it, “Well, we don’t have to be told twice.” To which the Waiter replies, “Apparently you do,” which is even funnier. Sam, once again, takes over the interaction (Dean has a way of messing things up), and says, “We’re leaving …” and, with a glance at Sarah, takes off.

4th scene
Motel Room Insanity Alert. Dean and Sam haul their bags out of the Impala and head to their motel room. I like how the blue neon sign is reflected in the window, and I like that a cleaning lady walks by. Atmospheric. Specific.

Dean is in the process of teasing Sam, “Grant Wood, Grandma Moses, what the hell …” But his brain is already circling: Okay, this Sarah thing needs to happen. This is gonna be great. He needs to WORK this for Sam. Sam informs Dean that he took an art history class in college: “It’s good for meeting girls.”

Sam has been so serious and pained thus far, with most of the sexy-sexy comedy coming from Dean. So the moment is a reminder that Sam was a young kid, in college, free from his family for the first time, looking over a course catalog, and deciding to take Art History because there would probably be a lot of girls in a class like that. It’s sweet. And sad too. Because he’s only 23 years old. He’s basically a widow.

And now comes the big reveal of the motel room. The production design team went so out of their way that Sgriccia decides to give the motel room its own long moment. They enter the room, and suddenly a driving disco dance beat starts, and we see the Do Not Disturb sign swaying on the doorknob, with a silver figure on it with a familiar silhouette.

I can’t mention this disco-themed motel room without mentioning Kwik Stop, directed and written by an old flame of mine, (he also starred in the movie). One of my favorite memories of our time together was stumbling across an underage dance-club in Ithaca and they had a disco night, and Michael got to show off his stuff. He’s a tough Italian guy from Chicago, and he grew up obsessed with Saturday Night Fever, and the boy can DANCE. Not exaggerating or bragging, just stating the facts: a clapping circle of people surrounded us at that dance club as he went to town and I tried to keep up. He also “knows how to lead”, and if you’ve ever tried dancing with a partner who doesn’t know how to lead, then you know the joy of the opposite. Anyway, in Kwik Stop, Michael’s character (also named Michael) and the runaway girl he picks up at a convenient store check into a motel for the night. They struggle inside with their bags, turn the lights on, only to see the entire room is disco-themed, with a silver ball rotating above the ratty bed.

It’s a strange and beautiful thing to watch a movie directed/written by an old flame, someone with whom you once went disco dancing (two decades after disco died out), and to see a shot like that. It was so HIM. (See Kwik Stop by the way. It’s rent-able! I beat that drum often.)

Back to Supernatural: the camera swoops around the room, giving us a good and detailed look at the decor, the white and silver, the flashy wallpaper, the cheese ball decorations, and we also get a circling pan of Sam and Dean taking it all in.

Even funnier, is that while Sam and Dean definitely NOTICE the decor, they barely have even a “What the hell” reaction. They look around, say, “Huh”, in unison, and then head into the room to unpack. They are not conventional people. They are eccentrics. They are not white-bread people. Disco decor is weird, but it’s not the weirdest thing they’ve seen. “Huh.”

Dean slings his bag onto his bed, and says, “What was that about the … providences?” (His whole “providence” behavior, along with the quiche-eating display, as well as the “Well, we don’t have to be told twice,” is why I fell in love with the episode – and, through that, the show itself. It’s when I got how pro-actively funny he is, in a really rich behavioral way. It is all him. You can’t teach someone to be funny like that)

Sam corrects him: “ProveNANCes.”

Dean begins to work his other case, his own personal case. He says that they won’t get the Providences out of “Chuckles” but maybe Sarah …

Sam is so used to the sibling dynamic, Dean being on the prowl, Sam taking a backseat. He doesn’t even question it. It’s not til Season 2, with “Heart”, that Sam is finally able to assert HIMSELF romantically, by insisting that he gets to stay with the pretty girl for the night. But that’s still a ways off. Dean is still the “Star” here, romantically, in Sam’s mind. Besides, who would want to put themselves in sexaul competition with Dean? You’d lose. You can see why it would be intimidating and you would say “I can get my own dates, stay out of it.” Sam assumes Dean is into Sarah, and jokes that maybe Dean can get her to write down the information “on a cocktail napkin.”

Dean laughs: “Oh no, not me.”

Sam, also laughing: “Pickups are your thing, Dean.”

Dean reveals his cards with a whoosh, “It wasn’t my butt she was checking out.”

This lands. Sam certainly felt the splashy-splashy. He’s not an idiot. Sam sits in bars reading newspapers. Women must check him out too. But he hasn’t noticed. Dean is telling him the truth of what happened back there at the auction house. It is the outside eye, validating what he felt was going on. Dean gives him a look that says, all at the same time, Come on, man, that was totally splashy-splashy. If I hit on her, she wouldn’t be interested. She didn’t even know I existed.

Sam feels a bit sketchy about the whole thing, morally. “In other words, you want me to use her for information.”

Dean doesn’t even blink. Yes. Says, “Sometimes you gotta take one for the team.”

It’s a funny line, but gets stranger and stranger when you really think about what that has meant for Dean in his life. I would bet that John Winchester said that to him once in almost an identical situation. Now sometimes stuff like this is akin to “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it …” Trauma can be weird like that. If you don’t feel you were traumatized, then maybe you weren’t. Or maybe you can’t see it. Or maybe Dean doesn’t question “taking one for the team”. Obviously he doesn’t. However, consider Amy, one of my favorite characters on Supernatural (kidding. But not really.), even though we never see her. Dean “took one for the team” in “Shadow,” and ended up having a blast, and had this whole little relationship going on throughout the episode that we never see. That’s Dean. Sometimes, as we will see in the next episode, he “takes one for the team” and it makes him feel gross and puts him at risk. You have to accept that contradiction if you want to understand Dean.

Of course here, with Sam, there’s that deeper level for Dean, the worried-brother level. It’s hard for Dean to talk about, and he and Sam have no skills to talk to each other openly about this stuff. But Dean understands happiness, weird as that may sound. Forget Season 9. Dean, in Season 1, faces so much darkness and evil on a daily basis that he understands intuitively that if he didn’t balance it out with sheer sensual enjoyment (his car, his music, mini-quiches, pretty girls named Brandy/i) he’d be dead. What would it all be FOR then? Aren’t they fighting the good fight so that regular civilians out there can enjoy the things in life that are meant to be enjoyed? Sam is on the way towards clamping down completely on everything that makes life pleasurable and Dean knows that that’s not healthy and also … (and he’s shy about even thinking this) … he senses that Jess wouldn’t want Sam to bury his heart at Stanford University. Maybe somewhere, as much as Dean misses his mother, he knows that his mother would not want him to be unhappy ALL the time. Dean is smart here, about emotions.

5th scene
Clearly Sam doesn’t say No because the next scene is a “date scene”, with Sam and Sarah having dinner in what is clearly the dining room at Versailles.

It’s a lovely scene. The Winchester brothers don’t go on dates. It’s fun to see them outside of their normal context. Sam is handed the wine list, and he flips through the pages, stalling, trying to look like he knows what he is doing. You forget, sometimes, how young he is. Sarah notices, understands what’s happening, and takes over, gently, saying to the waiter: “I think I’ll have a beer.” It’s kind. Her father may be a snooty douche, but obviously her mother raised her well.

They get to know one other. She is forthcoming. He is, up to a point. It highlights how impossible it would be to be intimate with anyone when you can’t tell them the basic truths about who you are. You wonder how Sam managed it with Jess at all. Dean could never have managed it. There’s loneliness, on both sides of the table. Sarah hasn’t dated in a while. Her mother passed away unexpectedly a year before, and Sarah has retreated into a shell. She shares that recently she’s been thinking that her mother would not have wanted her to retreat like that. It’s deeply moving, in and of itself, although obviously it’s part of a script structure thing, mirroring Sarah’s experience of loss with Sam’s. And it’s fascinating that these same words will be spoken by Dean later, in my favorite scene in the episode (and one of my favorite scenes in Season 1 as a whole).

Sam says, “So what did you mean when you said you haven’t been on a date in a while? Are you trying to make me feel like I’m not such a loser?”

Living in the belljar with these two guys, hanging out only with them, it is almost inconceivable that Sam would think of himself as a loser. He is formidable. He shouts an exorcism at the top of his lungs as a giant plane plunges towards the earth. But of course he feels that way and always has. His father made him feel like an outsider. He never fit in at Stanford, not really. Sam doesn’t say the “loser” line in a self-pitying way, he is matter-of-fact about it. There are other moments in the series where you see how the Winchester brothers see themselves, and it’s always a welcome breath of fresh air: For example, when they go to the SPN convention and are amazed that people would want to live their lives because Our lives SUCK is their attitude. Or in “The Wishing Well,” when they assure the poor nerdy guy in the back seat that their lives are terrible, nothing works out for them, they never get what they want. It’s funny and important to see what their lives feel like for them.

6th scene
Post-date, back at Studio 54. The scene opens with a closeup of Dean sharpening a knife, a nice edit, going from the candlelit glimmer of the date to that totally machismo image. The two worlds Sam lives in.

Dean says, “So she just handed the providences over to you?”, and Sam, already sick of it, corrects him: “Provenances.” My favorite part of Dean’s reactions to these corrections is he is not insulted or pissed off, he’s not like, “whatever, who cares” – he keeps trying to get it right.

But what Dean really wants is to know what happened on the date. Sam says nothing happened, they went back to her place, she gave him the papers, he left. It must be a little bit intimidating to have a confident sexual powerhouse as a brother, who always “closes the deal” when there is a deal to be closed. Maybe Sam operates differently. Why should he have to explain himself to his slut brother? He doesn’t want to be like that anyway! But that’s what’s so good about these brother scenes. Dean seems, on the surface, to be “pimping” Sam out. But he actually isn’t. Everyone underestimates Dean, Sam most of all. It happens with siblings.

Dean, in the background, like a little devil on Sam’s shoulder, says, “You didn’t have to con her? Or do any special favors?” Sam doesn’t like the sex talk, doesn’t like being put under a microscope, and asks Dean to get his mind out of the gutter. Dean starts laughing in response. Like I said, loosey-goosey, he’s had enough sex for the day, now he wants other people to have sex so he can live vicariously until he’s ready to do it again.

In the later scene between the brothers Dean says if Sam hooked up on occasion maybe he wouldn’t be “cranky”. A word like that is a clue for an actor on how to play something. For the entire episode, Dean, who can be pretty damn cranky if you think about it, is NEVER cranky. He laughs stuff off. He plays around. He stuffs his face. He doesn’t take stuff personally. He is in some other zone, open and free and present. That’s a performance choice on Ackles’ part, based on script analysis: That’s how you read a script, and find your “way in”. Oh, okay, so I should show zero crankiness in “Provenance”, got it.

And just like in “Hook Man,” Dean makes the improbable suggestion that they could “stick around for a little bit” after they wrap up the case. They’re so connected, it’s so claustrophobic. You have to ask permission from your brother to “stick around” and pursue some girl? I realize it’s totally normal to them, but it’s worth remembering how weird a situation it is, how on top of each other they both are. They’re grown men. And what happens if you want to “stick around” for a couple of days, and your brother doesn’t want to? What then? Supernatural gets into that dilemma again and again and again … and again with these guys, and it remains unresolved. I, for one, am sick to death of it. I would love to see them put that sucker to bed. For good. Lights OUT on that issue, for the love of PETE. Fall in love, get a girlfriend, shack up, or whore around the rest of your days, whatever you want to do, but stop making an issue about what the other guy is doing.

Sam drags Gossipy Dean back to the subject at hand, the Providences, and how they connect to the dates written down in Dad’s journal. The lighting is beautiful and weird in this scene, the grubby Winchester boys surrounded by gleaming chrome and plastic and swooping curves and busy shiny wallpaper. It highlights their odd-ness.

7th scene
Ninja-Assassins with a mission, Dean and Sam scramble up and over the gate into the auction house in the dead of night. The whole section is filmed with a propulsive forward-motion energy, sexy, rough, intense, with jamming screeching guitars and constant movement. Beautifully, they have to stop and dis-arm the alarm system, involving cutting the right wires, wearing gloves: They are seasoned criminals. No wonder Sam could barely make casual conversation with Sarah on the date.

They charge through the dark warehouse, flashlight beams whipping around, until they find the painting, cut it out of its frame, and then take it outside to burn it. Before Dean tosses down the match, he says, “I think we’re doing the art world a favor.”

Back in the warehouse, the painting re-forms within the frame.

It’s always good when the show itself knows more than the characters do, when the audience knows more than Sam and Dean. It doesn’t happen often but when it does it ups their vulnerability and the sense of urgency.

8th scene
The next thing we see is the guys packing up their gear the following morning. Dean is frantic about something, which is so not like him that I immediately wondered what he was up to. He says he thinks he dropped his wallet in the warehouse last night. Sam can’t believe the sloppiness, and neither can Dean, apparently, but he’s hauling on his coat saying they have to go back to the auction house to find the wallet.

Sneaky matchmaker Dean.

9th scene
Hustling through the auction house, it’s fun to see Dean “acting” like he’s actually looking. If you didn’t know better, you would not discern the difference. As I’ve said before, Dean is often a terrible liar. He’s too open, his emotions are too close to the surface. But sometimes he is an awesome liar. It’s fun to track when it works and when it doesn’t. Sarah, walking through the auction house, sees them skulking around like the criminals that they are, and is surprised and aglow, saying, “Hey guys!” They both whirl around in alarm, and they look so sketchy. Look at Dean’s “casual” pose in the background.

Sarah asks Sam, “What are you doing here?” and you can hear in her voice she is thrilled to see the tall awkward hottie again. Sam glances over at Dean, thinking maybe Dean will handle it, but Dean shrugs at him, tossing the ball back. This one’s yours. She’s all yours.

Unfortunately, Sam chooses to say, “We’re leaving town and we came to say goodbye” so Dean is forced to intervene. He comes forward saying, “What are you talking about? We’re sticking around for another day or two -” and then, as though he just remembered it, he takes his wallet out of his back pocket, his wallet that is most emphatically NOT lost, making a whole bit of it, and hands Sam a twenty-dollar bill – “Lemme give you that twenty bucks I owe you …” Sam knows he’s been had, he’s been played, and he can’t mention it because Sarah is standing right there. Dean, now in full-on parental mode, says he’s going to leave “you two crazy kids alone” (Dean, stop it), and suddenly, in a flash, he is no longer able to lie. It happens in “Heart”, too. I love the moments when the brothers realize that they are cock-blocking one another and have to find an excuse to exit. There’s the moment between Jo and Dean in the roadhouse when Sam suddenly realizes the two are waiting for him to leave, and he says, “Oh … I need to go … over there … right now …” So funny.

Dean says, looking at Sarah, “I gotta go do somethin’. Somewhere.” Subtle.

Look at the TYPE of smile on Sam’s face as he watches Dean leave. Sarah can SEE that fake smile, Sam!

Sam feels exposed and trapped, and knows that Dean would maybe be smoother in his shoes (although considering what we’ve seen of Dean in these rom-com situations I would say that “smooth” is not how he comes across at all. He’s more just open, friendly, and up for it. Guys don’t NEED to be “smooth” if they have all of those things going on on a genuine level.)

Sarah takes the lead, rescuing Sam, saying patiently and sincerely, “I had a good time last night.” Sam knows how weird he must seem, and he understands that she is leading the way towards helpful small talk, like “Here is what it is customary to say“, and his laugh shows he appreciates the gesture. She makes him feel okay about himself. But when she suggests they maybe go out again, you can see Sam almost wince in response. Pain from Jess, yes. But also fear of Sarah getting hurt.

Those are two separate things. Padalecki has to play both and he does.

Their small sad tete-a-tete is interrupted by Sam seeing the Creepy Painting being carried by. He shouts, “OH MY GOD.” scaring Sarah half to death. When she asks what is going on, poor Sam fumbles, “That PAINTING … looks so GOOD.” Hysterical. Sam is suddenly anxious to get out of there and go find Dean. You can’t blame Sarah for looking at Sam with confusion. Two seconds ago, the air between them was sweet and shy. Now he’s gawking over a terrible painting and hustling his way back out of the auction house after barking questions right in her face.

10th scene
Sam and Dean argue it out in the Impala. Dean is at a loss. Dean’s been too busy pretending to lose his wallet to pay attention to the subtleties of the case. Sam says that all of the lore about haunted paintings suggest that it is the SUBJECT of the paintings that is doing the haunting. Well, awesome, Sam, you might have wanted to share that at the get-go. This is what I mean about the cracks showing in “Provenance”. Sam’s sudden memory of that useful piece of information came a day late, and normally Sam is on top of the Lore like nobody’s business. It doesn’t ring true, it feels shoe-horned in to “complicate” the Monster plot-line.

11th scene
While “Provenance” unfortunately does not include a library scene, it does go into a second-hand bookshop, and therefore, I am happy. Crazy Motel Room? Check. Book-Nerds and Archivists? Check. “Provenance” features a scene in a second-hand bookshop with a guy (Jay Brazeau) pulling out dusty huge books and old newspaper archives, clearly thrilled to actually USE his knowledge, instead of just standing behind the counter doing nothing as old geezers snooze in the corner. You can tell the scene was filmed on location. They’re out there in the world. It’s cinematic. Location shooting helps the show enormously.

Because Book Man is so excited to share his knowledge, he comes off as rather blood-thirsty, miming a razor slicing across his throat at one point, with a big laugh.

I love the fact that Dean has picked up an old gun magazine, and is flipping through it, nodding approvingly at the firearms. Details, people.

Meanwhile, Book Man has pulled out the local paper for the first murder, which, incidentally, occurred in April of 1912 where … something else was clearly dominating the headlines.

The story goes that Mr. Isaiah Merchant was a barber, and he slit his family’s throats before turning the razor on himself. Sam wonders why the guy did it, and Book Man gets excited, opening up the paper, “Okay, let’s look.” (I love Brazeau’s small performance. The industry would fall apart if it weren’t for good character actors like him.)

He reads out loud that Mr. Merchant was a stern man who ruled his family with an iron fist. Hm. Sound familiar? There’s a really interesting moment when Dean quickly glances up at Sam, and there’s something in his face other than, “Hey, sounds like he must be the ghost, huh?” It’s a tiny moment, not dwelled on, or underlined, which is why it is so interesting. A shared brotherly moment, but not really wanting to “go there”, to make that connection with their own Dad.

Of course the bodies were cremated, because aren’t they always when you need bones to burn. Book Man pulls out a big art book to show them the portrait of the family, the one they thought they had destroyed the night before. Sam and Dean stare down at it. Sam has better eyes for this kind of thing, and Dean knows it. Maybe it was that Art History course. Sam asks for a copy of the portrait in the book. Dean again looks to Sam. One of those nice moments where the Leader/Follower roles get reversed. It happens all the time, showing their strengths as a team.

11th scene
In a beautifully and eerily shot scene back at the auction house, Sarah approaches her father, who is watching the Merchant portrait being packed up into a crate. She scolds him, “Dad, you promised you wouldn’t sell that painting.” Light streams in from high-up windows far behind her. It’s a four-line scene, purely plot-driven. But the level of detail on the screen for a “nothing” scene is so striking, so much a part of why Supernatural works.

Her father says “Evelyn” offered a “persuasive” amount of money. He had promised Sarah he wouldn’t sell the painting. But for the right price, he broke that promise. To his daughter. Such things are always a huge deal in the world of Supernatural, where the currency of the realm is trust, honor, and loyalty.

12th scene
And here’s the scene I love so much.

The Winchester boys sit at the table by the window in the motel, and Sam points out to Dean how the portrait has changed. The one in the book has the Dad looking straight out, and in the one they supposedly burned he is looking down at one of his daughters.

In classic Supernatural style, we are given an establishing shot three shots into the scene (as opposed to leading off with it, as is customary). We cut from Sarah looking at the portrait in the auction house, to a close-up of the photocopy of the portrait, being pushed across the table at Dean. We then move from the photocopy up to Dean’s face. And it is only then that we pull suddenly back and see “where they are”, sitting at the table in the motel. (Beautiful moody lighting, by the way: the lights are low, to perhaps lessen the distraction of all the glitter and chrome, and outside is that blue neon sign again.) But it’s great to hold back establishing shots like that. In conventional stories, you would start out with that third shot of the two of them at the window and THEN move in close. Supernatural always reverses that, and the audience probably doesn’t notice it (except for film nerds like me), but what they DO notice on an unconscious level is feeling … uneasy, perhaps. Off-balance.

Dean wonders if anything else might have changed in the painting. Sam says, “Like a Da Vinci Code thing?” and the reaction he gets from Dean is total and utter blankness. Dean knows he should know what that means. He doesn’t. He says, “I don’t … know. I’m waiting for the movie on that one.” (It’s the pause between “don’t” and “know” that makes it funny for me. He hates admitting he doesn’t know and he drags his feet on it.) But Dean doesn’t linger in uncertainty for long. He gets up, saying, “We gotta get back in and see that painting.”

As he moves away, his legs come towards the camera, with Sam in the background. It’s a dramatic shot, signifying a mood change, a beat change. Also Sam’s shirt is black-and-white which makes him somehow a part of the black and white wallpaper and decor, in general. Dean swaggers towards the camera, saying, “This is a good thing – it means you can get some more time to crush on your girlfriend.” He then flops back on the bed, off-frame. He’s teasing and happy. He’s worried about Sam for all kinds of reasons, his ESP stuff, the visions, and he can’t help with any of that. But this? He can help with THIS. Dean crosses his arms and legs, and his face has the happy arrogance of one who has decided what is best, what is going to happen. You can’t escape a look like that, and Sam feels that pressure: “Dude. Enough already.”

I love the camera placement of the next sequence. Dean’s form is somewhat in the foreground while the camera is on Sam, so that Dean shows up as a slight blurry smudge on the edge of the frame, and when the camera is on Dean he is alone on the bed, master of all he surveys. Master of himself, with Sam nowhere in the frame at all.

Visually, the choice shows Dean’s independence and, dare I say, health, in this one particular area of his life. Sam is still attached somehow to Dean, with Dean intruding in on the frame. It is a reversal of what we have seen in their dynamic, with Dean not wanting to do things alone, of wanting Sam to hunt with him, of Sam busting off on his own to be his own man at Stanford. But Dean knows how to keep his equilibrium while hunting. He is not conflicted. He is not embarrassed. He has more perspective on it than Sam does. So Dean is present in the shots of Sam, a blurry smudge, while Sam is not present at all in the shots of Dean. We could also see it as a representation of Dean intruding on Sam’s private business. That would work, too. Either way (and it could be both), it’s a nice way of showing that visually in the following exchange.

Sam says, “Ever since we got here, you’ve been trying to pimp me out to Sarah.”

Pretty strong word there. But it passes without comment.

Dean says, “You like her, don’t you?”

Sam can’t really respond because he wants the conversation to end. Dean sees his opening in the pause and takes it. “All right. You like her. She likes you. You’re both consenting adults…” What. Is the Problem.

That’s the top level for Dean. We’ll be getting to the other level. Both levels are true for Dean. That’s why the scene is so good. Sam and Dean, almost against their will, go deep. They both hate it. It is not a conversation they have had before and that’s important to keep in mind. It is NEW.

Sam flips out, “What’s the point? We’ll just leave! We always leave!” There’s emotion there, the emotion of the little kid who was repeatedly dragged away from school just at the point he started to make friends.

Dean starts laughing, but it’s a kind laugh. I’ve heard that laugh coming at me from a friend when I over-analyze a crush. Dean says, “I’m not talking about marriage, Sam!” He manages to say it without contempt, and it’s a very sane thing to say. Dean is not incapable of emotions. Far from it. He’s not “over” women. It’s one of the most attractive things about him. He is constantly surprised by them. (I went into that in “Wendigo”, but it’s come up again and again.) He’s not trying to be rude or crass, but he thinks it would be good for Sam to try not to be too serious, and not over-think something like a little harmless splashy-splashy. Enjoy Sarah. It says a lot about Dean that he is getting that. I know I keep bringing up Amy, which is so stupid, but I don’t care, it’s symbolic. That was a “take one for the team” hook-up, and Dean turned it into a win for himself, and he enjoyed her while he was with her.

Here is where I relate to Sam, too. I may do what I need to do to stay stable, and some of it looks a hell of a lot like what Dean does, without the alcohol, and I don’t feel bad about it at all. But I have also had almost this exact same conversation with people who care about me who are trying to get me to lighten up, smell the roses, gather ye rosebuds, whatever. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Sheila. It was just one date. Relax. Enjoy yourself. It’s okay to have fun.

Sam attacks: “Why do you care if I hook up with Sarah?” A comment that is a great example of how new such territory is for these guys.

And Dean says, and it’s almost out of his mouth before he can stop it: “Because then maybe you wouldn’t be so cranky all the time.”

The key to why this scene is so good is that Dean is not coming from a place of contempt, as I said. If he were like, “Loosen up, nerd,” it would have been a regression to the dynamic the brothers had in the pilot. They are beyond that now. Thank God. I wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple of episodes with Dean as he was in the pilot.

The pause stretches out and Dean moves in further, going down to the other level that has always been there for him, the level BENEATH the top level. “Sam, this isn’t about hooking up. I think this Sarah girl could be good for you.” Sam is so used to seeing Dean as the promiscuous guy stinking of sex every other morning, he doesn’t yet get that Dean actually has something to contribute in this arena. Sam tries to laugh it off. Yeah, right, you just want everyone to be a slut like you, please. But Dean’s not done. The next bit isn’t so much difficult for Dean to say, it’s certainly been in his mind for months, probably. He knows exactly what needs to be said. But he hesitates. He is about to step onto sacred ground. He must choose his words. So he prefaces it all with, “I mean no disrespect …” It’s so formal, something you might hear in the diplomatic realm, or corporate realm. It is, in its own way, enormously gracious, as all good manners are. It gives Sam SPACE. “I’m sure this is about Jessica, right?”

At the mention of her name, things change for Sam. For a second I wondered if Sam would attack Dean, the way Dean pushed Sam up against the bridge in the pilot when Sam said something about Mom. But that doesn’t happen. He listens. Dean says, “I don’t know what it’s like to lose somebody like that, but … I would think that she would want you to be happy. God forbid have fun once in a while. Wouldn’t she?”

It’s gorgeously played. Simple and true.

It’s a mirror of what Sarah said to Sam on their date at Versailles. Almost immediately, at Dean’s words, tears fill Sam’s eyes. That mournful “Winchester Family Loss” piano theme starts in. It is as touchy-feely as they have ever gotten. And nobody runs away now, nobody jokes it off. It’s just a small sad space of truth, an acknowledgement from Dean’s side that I see your loss, Sam. I am not trying to be mean. I am trying to help. Sam maybe felt that Dean couldn’t see it, could never understand it, would make fun of him for it.

So no, none of it is about sex. Or, it IS, but it’s about it in the healthiest way possible. People deal with grief in all sorts of ways. People who sniff derisively at those looking for “comfort” in all the supposedly wrong places probably live very comfortable existences and don’t realize what a precious commodity comfort is. Someone offers comfort? Even for just a night? Life SUCKS, man, so TAKE that comfort, REVEL in it, and don’t feel bad about it. I mean, if it floats your boat, that is. Comfort like that reminds you are ALIVE and human and lovable and that life has GOOD things to offer. And that’s reason enough to do anything.

Now it’s Sam’s turn to have those multiple levels. Jess is so present for him she’s practically in the room, telling him to let go, but there’s that deeper level, the level where the guilt and fear reside. While Dean shares his deeper level, Sam doesn’t. All he says is, “Yeah. You’re right. Part of this is about Jessica. But not the main part.”

There’s a beautiful closeup of Dean, where the lighting is so specific that part of his eyeball is translucent (it is the type of look they will perfect in Season 2).

Dean is totally open. He is not afraid of hearing what Sam has to say. He is present. Grown-ups. But the wall has gone up again. The mood has shifted. (The scene is so short but it has about 10 beats in it. Amazing.) Dean moves back to his position against the headboard, arms crossed. That’s enough emotion for one day. He says, “We still gotta get in and see that painting.”

After the closeups, we are back to the camera placement in the earlier section of the scene, with Dean visible as a blurry smudge in the corner of the shots of Sam, intruding on Sam’s space as Sam calls Sarah. I love the small moment where we see Dean, alone on the bed, rolling his eyes to himself. It is his only moment of frustration and it’s to himself. It’s so human. Behavior is what matters. Well. It’s what matters to ME. The episodes I get frustrated with are the ones that seem to leave no room for little behavioral moments, the small eye-rolls, the pauses, the asides, the jokes. The show is so full, normally, with that stuff. And so while “Provenance” is certainly a speed-bump on the way to the season finale, it is RICH behaviorally.

Dean lies there, eyes closed, head against the headboard (the headboard looks strangely familiar). Maybe it’s because I can be shy and awkward, but I personally would want to step out of the room so that my brother, who just gave me the Time of Freakin’ Day about this woman, wouldn’t overhear my awkward chit-chat. As Sam says, in a phony cheery voice, “Hi! Sarah! How are you?” Dean creaks open one eye to peer across the room. Sam keeps saying he’s doing “good” and “really good”, and it goes on forever, and Dean whispers, “Smooth,” getting a glare from Sam as his reward. Dean, again, rolls his eyes to himself, settling back against the headboard like the satisfied Sex-Pasha that he is. Now he’s back to Fine, nerd. You live your life your own way. Be cranky. See if I care. I tried to help.

13th scene

Poor Evelyn. She sits by the fire in her huge house, reading what I am assuming to be the Bible, due to the gold leaf on the edge of the pages, but that’s just a guess. Dean keeps thinking the word “provenance” is “providence”. There is a slightly Biblical quality to his mistake. We see the Creepy Painting looking down on her (a great shot of the back of her head, giving us the painting’s POV), and then we see the father turning his head out. Speaking of which: shootout to Linden Banks who “plays” Isaiah Merchant. The man basically appears only IN a painting, and yet whatever that actor did to bring up the horror of Merchant’s life … it worked. I mean, I can see his face in my mind right now.

There’s a great shot, very Hitchcockian, Strangers On a Train-ish, of Evelyn putting her glasses down on the table. In the reflection in the lenses, we see a phantom razor blade going by. Excellent.

Strangers On a Train

Evelyn, holding her dainty tea cup, hears that strange dragging sound we heard in the teaser, and she glances up, gasping in horror at what looms over her.

14th scene
The Impala roars up the driveway of Evelyn’s home, and Sarah is already there, pacing and worried. Sam says to her, blunt and Alpha, “I told you. You shouldn’t have come.” Dean and Sam pound up the steps and bang on the door. Dean starts to pick the lock, all as Sam races up and down the porch, seeing if he can get through the barred windows. It is Sarah’s moment of realization that these guys are not art dealers in any way/shape/form. Dean gets the door open and the three enter the dark house, calling out for Evelyn. Evelyn is still sitting in her chair in front of the fire. The three move slowly towards her through the darkness, the painting looking down on them, telling no tales. Sarah, unthinkingly, reaches out to touch Evelyn’s shoulder, and Sam already knows, and tries to stop it. At that moment, Evelyn’s head falls back, her throat cut open, with a grisly squelching sound. It’s an awesome effect. I have this thing about throat-slashing scenes. I have a hard time with them. I don’t mind gore. I could see someone’s arm hacked off and be like, “WOW. COOL.” I see heads literally roll and think, “NEAT.” But slice someone’s throat and my hand goes up to my own protectively.

Sarah starts screaming, and at the same moment looks up at the painting and sees that it has changed, that Mr. Isaiah Merchant is now looking out, instead of down. The horror breaks over the scene, the camera moving in close, close, close, to Merchant’s face, all to the accompaniment of Sarah’s screams, as Sam tries to hustle her out of the room to safety.

What do we see in Isaiah’s face? At this point, we see murderous intent. It looks very different once we understand the truth.

15th scene
A small scene that featured so much laughter in the out-takes that it is awe-inspiring that Padalecki and Cole were able to get themselves together. Poor Ackles sits in the background at the laptop, in take after take, as the other actors laugh so hard they are in tears. It’s hilarious to watch but it must have been agony to experience. Because you’re wasting people’s time. What will happen if you CAN’T get it together? There are some out-takes of the British Office where they reach take 27, 28. A helpless feeling descends over the actors. Martin Freeman at one point says right to the camera, “I honestly don’t know how I’m going to get through this. There is no way that what he is doing CAN’T be funny to me.”

Sarah shows up at the door, pissed off and upset. “I just lied to the cops,” she tells Sam. The background is so … BUSY … that damn wallpaper, it undercuts the seriousness of the scene in beautifully goofy ways. Everyone is totally oblivious to the disco theme, they don’t even notice it. I mean, look at what is going on in the frame. It’s trippy.

Dean, yet again, has his peacock feathers all tightly curled up and hidden, his eyelashes totally under control. He lets Sam handle Sarah. He sits back and watches, watches them like a gossipy HAWK. Sam breaks the news to her that … something supernatural is happening. “You saw that painting move.” Sarah tries to laugh it off (and I imagine Cole made that choice because she basically could not stop laughing during the filming of the scene anyway.)

“That’s impossible!” she says. Dean drawls, “Welcome to our world,” which is pretty funny. He’s so over it.

But now that she knows the deal, she insists that she is involved, and she’s coming with them, wherever they are going. Dean, again, holds himself back. She’s Sam’s. Sam says No way to that noise. There’s a pause, and there’s a cut to Dean, at the laptop, looking on. Sam is now acknowledging that “other part” he held back mentioning to Dean. Dean is smart about emotions, in his own way. He can feel it. Sam says, “It could be dangerous. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

The terrible irony is what happens to her in Season 8. Even years and years later, she is not safe from the Winchester influence. That episode rocked me. It was psychological warfare on a devastating level. So she ends up being a casualty anyway. It’s awful.

Sarah says that since she and her father sold that painting, they bear some of the responsibility for what is going on. It is Winchester Logic. It is the logic of people who take responsibility for themselves and try to clean up their messes. And the way Sarah speaks, it’s no longer a debate. She walks out of the room, saying, “Are we going or what?” Dean is totally impressed. You can see him nodding in approval and appreciation, glancing over at Sam, commanding him to “Marry that girl.”

Even in the midst of a painting gone totally rogue, Dean doesn’t forget what is REALLY important and that is … Sam’s love life.

16th scene
Back at Evelyn’s house, Sam takes the painting down off the wall to get a closer look. Mr. Merchant is now staring down at his Creepy Kid again. Sam scans the painting. Dean checks the photocopy. Sarah hovers nearby, worried that she is about to be murdered, a valid concern at this point. Dean notices that the razor on the table in the photocopy is closed, and the one in the painting is open. OMG you guys do you think it means something?? Sam then notices that the “painting in the painting” has changed. In the photocopy, it’s a painting of a mountain range, but in the actual portrait it’s different, an image of a stone structure surrounded by trees.

I love how Dean picks up a nearby crystal ashtray and holds it up to the painting to get a magnified look at the background. Nerd.

17th scene
There’s a series of second-unit shots of a black bird sitting in a tree, cawing, and a stone angel. Then a flock of black birds erupt from a tree, cawing. We don’t even need an establishing shot of the graveyard to know that is where we are going. It’s a great example of how to use a second-unit, of what the second-unit actually does. MOOD. Atmosphere. Detail. Texture.

Dean, Sam and Sarah walk through the cemetery, and it’s the “third boneyard we’ve checked,” according to Dean. It is still broad daylight. They find the Merchant crypt, and there’s an eerie overhead shot of the three of them approaching the structure. The camera is moving constantly and yet specifically: up into the trees, looking down on the three figures, and then, seen from below them, the camera moving up onto their faces, and then the door of the crypt, the camera moving up from stoop to the lettering over the door, with Dean’s hand, holding giant clippers, dropping into view. The camera is never static in Supernatural. Editing is important, too, of course. Every choice is specific and stylistic.

They break into the crypt. Inside is musty and dank, with a tiny stained glass window, and stone plaques on the wall for each member of the murdered family. But worse, a whole wall is devoted to glassed-in dolls, with little dusty urns in front of each. It’s like the Romanovs. All those murdered children.

Sarah is creeped out by the trapped dolls and Smartypants Sam steps in to give the background, that when children died back in the olden days, the families would often preserve the child’s favorite toy to be buried along with the child. Of course he guesses wrong. Sarah ends up being the one who helps crack the thing open. Wind blows dried leaves through the room. Dean, looking around, is sensing something, something not right, and says, “Do you notice anything strange here?” I love Sarah’s comment: “Uhhh, where do I start?”

But Dean is in Spidey-Sense Hunter mode. He points out that the only urns there are Mom and the three kids. The urn for “Daddy Dearest” (Dean’s nickname for Mr. Merchant, which, again, has thematic echoes for his own arc with his Dad) is missing.

18th scene
One of the few scenes that actually starts with a conventional establishing shot, although the camera is in motion, showing Sam and Sarah sitting outside what looks like a municipal building. The sun is out, but the color is drained out of the frame enough that the effect is the opposite of cheery. It looks cold. Sarah is asking, “What exactly is your brother doing in there?” (I don’t know … in the broom closet, humping the county clerk so she will “open up her files for him”, so to speak? Anything’s possible.)

Sam is now forthcoming, and therefore his whole behavior is different from what we saw on the date. He can be himself now. She knows about him. He tells her Dean is in there looking at death certificates, trying to find out what happened to Daddy Dearest’s body. Sarah asks, “How do you even get in the door?” and Sam laughs: “Lying and subterfuge, mostly.”

Mostly. He has done it already with her. The awkwardness of that knowledge is there in him. I’m surprised she doesn’t bring it up (“Did you ask me out just for the Providences, or did you actually like me?” It would have been interesting to see Sam handle that.) The sun is shining directly on her face, and then comes a moment right out of the Rom-Com playbook and I wince to see it, it’s so overdone. Sam tells her she has an eyelash on her face. You can almost feel Dean’s eyeroll from within the building, from within the robust embrace of the willing county clerk… I’m kidding. But not really.

It is a testament to Jared Padalecki that he makes it work. They’re both so good-looking it’s honestly blinding, but they’re filling it with character stuff and real emotion. And then, even though you know it’s coming and, frankly, wish it wouldn’t, because, Yuk, it’s strangely sweet when Sam tells her to “make a wish” with the eyelash.

What I like about the moment, snark aside, is how normal it is. I like it BECAUSE it’s cliched. I wish they had found a better way to break the ice in the script, something less obvious, but since they didn’t, let’s deal with what’s onscreen. There aren’t 5,000,000 ways to fall in love. There are about, oh, 10. And the Winchester boys’ lives are so strange, it must feel like such a relief to actually … be a cliche, for about 2 seconds. To be like everybody else. To manufacture a reason to touch the pretty girl, to laugh as you do it, to pretend that it all might work out.

The intimacy is there between them and Sarah takes her moment. I want to give her a medal for it. She speaks her truth and asks him if there is something there between them. “A girl could wait forever,” she says. Yes, it’s only been two days, but come on, with splashy-splashy it’s either there or it’s not there. You don’t need five months to figure it out.

They have a pained and honest little romantic conversation. He says no, she’s not “delusional”, there is obviously something there, and she says, “There’s a ‘but’ coming,” and of course there is. He says he doesn’t think “this” would be a good idea and she says, “Can I ask why?” He’s in her heart a little bit so she feels permission to ask.

The show is so much about boundaries, and consent issues, and who “gets” to come inside and all that … it’s nice to see the boundaries blending a little bit, in a gentle way, in an okay way. Sam lets his guard down. A little bit. And it’s because of who SHE is being. It wouldn’t have been right to go cavort with Brandi/y’s drunk friend in the room next to Dean getting it on. Because the conversation he is about to have with Sarah is what is there for him where women are concerned. And that matters to him. In a way, what we’ve seen in “Provenance” is the healthy attitude Dean has towards compartmentalization (compartmentalization is usually seen as un-healthy – I vehemently disagree with that, at least as a blanket attitude: in many ways being able to compartmentalize has saved my life, dammit. Don’t knock it til you try it.) But now we see the flip-side. And it’s equally valid and represents a sort of change/transformation for Sam, if you think about it. Sam can’t and won’t compartmentalize. Whatever happens with him and women has to somehow incorporate all of this stuff now, and that’s a heavy burden to put on a “hookup” … you CAN’T put it all on a hookup. So there needs to be some level of trust there in order for splashy-splashy to become swimmy-swimmy. (And remember: Sam went through an entire relationship with Jessica, even shopping for rings, without telling her who he really was. As I’ve said before, Dean could never have pulled that off. He fell in love with Cassie and had to tell her who he was. He couldn’t fall in love otherwise. Dean is a terrible liar, mostly, especially when he gets intimate and vulnerable. Sam is such a good liar that he managed to apply to Stanford without anyone knowing. He “fell in love” but never told her about his childhood or the monsters he hunted. Sam knows a little something-something about compartmentalization too and his is a rather terrifying version of it. Not quite Don Draper sociopath level, but close.)

Both guys seem super grown-up to me in “Provenance”, their own men, with their own ways of surviving. No side is privileged over the other. It is really Sam’s episode, with Dean as the sidekick comic relief, but it is through that contrast we can see both attitudes. This is what Supernatural, at its best, does so very very well.

Watch how Cole listens to Padalecki. It is always the case that the listening helps the speaker play his scene. You cannot act in a vacuum. The quality of listening is as important as the dialogue.

“When people are around me … they get hurt. Like, physically hurt. With what my brother and I do … Sarah. I had a girlfriend. And she died. And my mom died too. I don’t know. It’s like I’m cursed or something. Like death just follows me around. Look, I’m not scared of much, but I’m scared if I let myself get close to somebody …”

Acting like what is going on here is not often congratulated or even noticed, because it’s so simple. He is not emoting. He is not “showing” us his feelings. That would be bad acting. He’s just telling her what it is like for him.

But I love her response: “That’s very sweet. And very archaic.”

It’s indicative of the Belljar he lives in with his brother that her comment startles him. They don’t question their attitudes, and how they operate, they reinforce them for one another. Sarah says, “It’s not your job to make decisions for me.”

Pretty deep for two yahoos who haven’t even kissed yet.

Sam says, “I’m not talking about a broken heart and a tub of Haagen Dazs,” but she’s having none of that. She could die tomorrow suddenly. So could he. Death is a risk we ALL face every day. She says, “When you shut out pain, you shut out everything else too.”

And that was really Dean’s point back in the motel room. It’s not about “hooking up.” It’s about how Sam is shutting himself off from the good too.

Personal Tangent II, Related.
I got so hurt in 1994/95 that I moved across the country to get away from him. I refused to feel any more pain. It seemed a good plan. I clearly would not survive another blow. It took me years to realize – literally, years – that in warding off pain, I was warding off good stuff too. And my illness entrenched itself further. I’m still digging my way out. I’ve said before that if I had started watching Supernatural in real time, or even if I had started watching it pre-2013, I probably wouldn’t have been able to continue with it. Because it would hit too close to home. It is about over-reaction to very valid trauma and the traps we unknowingly set for ourselves. It is about how we swerve out of the way of crisis, and make things worse by doing so.

Sarah is clocking Sam on that. And she’s clocking it from a place that truly understands.

But it’s too soon for Sam. Too much. He tells her, he “can’t go through” what he went through again. “I can’t.”

And then we see Sam and Sarah from behind, and Dean juts himself in between them on the diagonal, saying, “Am I interrupting something?”

Jensen Ackles moves funny. He is a gorgeous hunk, obviously, but he moves like Jerry Lewis. Dean assesses the mood with a quick glance. He is having a good day. He got what he needed inside. He is AWESOME. The actions of Daddy Dearest were so shameful to his family that his body was handed over to the county. Sarah is totally allowed into the family secret now. The country is littered with people who have met the Winchesters, been lied to at first by them, and then allowed into the inner circle. They don’t explain to her what is happening though, so imagine what all of it sounds like to her.

“So there are bones to burn then?”
“There are bones to burn.”

Cheerio!

19th scene
Sarah stands over an open grave, holding a flashlight, looking sick to her stomach, as Sam and Dean dig up Daddy Dearest. I love her line: “You guys seem uncomfortably comfortable with this.” Sam jokes, “Still think I’m a catch?” (There’s a wonderful line early in Season 6, when Dean is off to meet Sam for a case, giving Lisa instructions on salt and iron and holy water and demons and he makes her cock the gun for him so he can see she is doing it right – and then stops himself and says, “I bet you’re missing your boring ex right now.”)

Sam and Dean, poker-faced, salt and burn the skeleton.

There are two stunner shots of the three of them standing over the grave, all blues and blacks, with a tree rising above them, blackness moving in on all sides, the three of them in black silhouette. Gorgeous, and it is then repeated, only with the slight difference that the light of the flames come up from the dug grave illuminating the three lonely figures. It’s beautiful stuff.

20th scene
Naturally, when Sam, Dean, and Sarah go back to Evelyn’s darkened house to get rid of the painting (“just to be sure”), Sarah insists on coming inside with Sam. Because … why is that now? Because she needs to be specifically in harm’s way, that’s why.

Dean stays in the car and leaves the motor running, and also can’t resist hissing to Sam urgently as Sam starts up the steps, “I’ll stay here. You go make your move.” Yes, Dean, because breaking into a crime scene where a woman’s head was sliced off is a perfect First Kiss environment. Well, it would be for Dean. In this line of work, you can’t wait for candlelight and soft music. Take what you can get. Sam, of course, ignores Dean, who then turns on the radio, and Grand Funk Railroad blasts into the night: “I’m in love with a girl I can’t live without…” Soooo stupid and funny. Dean seems genuinely confused when Sam gives him a look like, “Turn the damn song off.”

I like Dean as Matchmaker.

Once inside the house, Sarah and Sam are seen from the painting’s POV again, and both of them look troubled and frightened. The little girl who had been standing next to Daddy Dearest is now not in the painting. A blank black space is there instead.

Dad is staring out, not down. Sam also notices that the razor is gone from the table. All in all, those are not good signs. All in all, I am sick of the painting, in general. And the plot. All I care about is Sam crushing on Sarah and Dean trying to make it happen. Supernatural gets effed-up when the two thru-lines (whatever they may be) don’t weave together well. The show tips over, basically.

A creepy laugh fills the air, along with that dragging sound, startling the two of them. Now we get a series of swooping alarming zoom-ins, one towards Dean in the car, one towards the open front door, and one towards Sam and Sarah, you feel that something is approaching, and then the front door slams all on its own.

I like the detail that Sam calls Dean, even though they are right there on opposite sides of the door, and Sam says he thinks it’s the little girl, who is now out of the painting. Daddy Dearest has been trying to warn them, they’ve had it wrong all along.

There’s a thrilling sequence of Sam and Sarah scouring the first floor for salt and iron. Sarah doesn’t ask questions, just does what Sam says. Dean is now throwing himself against the front door to no avail. Evelyn’s house is now in full-on Poltergeist mode, wind blowing through the rooms whipping loose papers up into the air, and all of the doors to the main room slam shut, trapping them inside.

Enter the lacy-dressed sausage-curled little murderer, dragging her doll behind her, and holding the open razor.

Dean stalks around the periphery of the house, the phone line between the brothers remaining open. It’s quite a complicated sequence. It involves multiple locations, brothers separated, careening Impalas, and two climax set-pieces, one in the crypt, and one in the house. The editing is awesome, you never lose a sense of where you are, and the momentum is not sacrificed.

Sarah surges forward to share her own bit of Nerd-Lore, that she and her Dad used to sell antique dolls. Sam is so rude to her, and I love it: “That’s fascinating, Sarah, but important right now?” Look out when the Winchesters get in the zone of action. She barely notices, though, just continues to tell him that grieving families would create dolls in the dead child’s image, using even the child’s hair.

I had heard that this was true and in a little Google search came upon the following cheerful light-hearted image.

Ah, childhood. Such a carefree time!

Sam passes the information on to Dean, who is shown in a killer dramatic shot that lasts all of half a second, involving him, the Impala, a tree, some mist, the looming house, seriously – hats off, team. In yet another example of the speaking-in-unison thing Supernatural uses from time to time (and I have to admit, it’s not my favorite device, it tiptoes towards the border of cutesy, but I think both actors pull it off), they both say, “The mausoleum…” and Dean is then barreling off to the Impala.

The wind picks up inside the house, and Sam, like Cato lying in wait, holds up the poker, alert for the ghost to appear again, all as Dean crashes through the gates of the cemetery. A huge dresser flies across the room, pinning Sam, and Sarah struggles to help, when the little girl, dead-eyed and awful, suddenly appears. Cross-cuts between Dean racing to the crypt through the spooky nighttime cemetery and Sarah’s final confrontation with the dead little girl. It’s Sam’s worst nightmare come true. Well, Sarah, you insisted on coming in the house with him.

Small moment I love. I wonder if it came out of a quick rehearsal and Ackles improvised it. It feels like something that came from him. Once inside the crypt, he runs to the glassed-in doll and starts pounding on the glass, but it’s shatter-proof. He gets an idea, pulls out his gun, and starts banging the barrel of the gun on the glass. Everything is happening so fast, you don’t question it. Frustrated, Dean starts for the Impala to get a better tool, and then suddenly stops. Realizes. Says to himself, pissed, “Come ON, Dean …” and goes back to the glassed-in case and fucking shoots his way through.

I love it because the show allows him to be clumsy sometimes, to not always be A-game Man. Men who are always A-game make boring action heroes. That’s why Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones is so effective. He’s thinking, making mistakes, goofing up, correcting himself, improvising. He is totally capable but he is not a Transformer, programmed for success. And Dean’s little bitch-slap of himself, “Come ON, Dean …” It feels very real.

Meanwhile, Sarah is thrown across the room and is loomed over by scary girl and her gleaming raised razor. And Dean suddenly can’t light the lighter to burn up Barbie. Over and over again he tries, getting actually frantic, all as Sarah, back at the house, is menaced by Creep Girl. It’s a gimmick, sure. You know, just at the moment you need to peel the car away from the curb, the engine won’t turn over. Dean never has problems with his lighter (it’s turned into a joke with the Supernatural convention, and the two LARP-ers realize how difficult it is to light your lighter when you are under the gun in a dark graveyard.)

Finally, the doll’s hair catches on fire, just as Sam has struggled out from underneath the dresser, and launches himself across the room to Sarah, and it looks like just in time, that razor was on its way down. But Creep Girl bursts into flames at that point anyway. Guess we had to have Sam save Sarah. To … redeem him? Assuage his fears? Bury the past? Get a second chance? Now he CAN save someone? Honestly, the episode doesn’t need it. I know, I know, last-minute rescue, horror movie tropes. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. You can’t win ’em all.

Creep Girl then re-appears into the painting above the mantel. I’m getting dizzy. I hate that painting. There’s a small moment, with Sam lying on top of Sarah, the two of them realizing it is over and also realizing, well, that he’s lying on top of her.

Dean calls. I love the exchange, it’s so Winchester:

“Sam, you good?”
“Not bad.”
Click.

These guys have been sensitive enough for one episode. “Not bad” is as much as you’re gonna get out of Sam at that particular moment.

21st scene
Dean has had a busy morning. Sarah and Sam are at the auction house, and Dean has gone back to canoodle with the county clerk and figure out something about that weird kid. Success: The daughter was adopted, because she had murdered her real family. Add Millie Merchant to the long list of Creepy Kids foisted upon us by Hollywood. The Bad Seeds of the world.

Sarah asks, “Why’d she do it?” Remember Sam asked the same question in the scene with Bloodthirsty Book Man.

I find Sam’s answer here fascinating. And incomplete. “Killing herself, killing others. Some people are just born tortured. When they die, their spirits are just as dark.”

We’ve talked a lot about Nature/Nurture here. It seems relevant. I’ve been reading a fascinating and painful site called The Narcissist’s Child, written by a woman who was raised by a malignant narcissist. If you have never met one, consider yourself lucky. My first thought about Millie Merchant is what the hell did her family of origin do to her that made her murder them? (Shades of Bela. Not that there is an excuse for murder, but sometimes there are explanations, very different.) That thought never seems to occur to Sam. And it’s fascinating, considering the journey he is about to go on in Season 2, when he learns the truth about what happened to him, and how he was “chosen”, and the demon blood and all that. I am putting more onto the moment than seems to actually be there, and a lot of my reaction comes, obviously, from having seen the rest of the series. (It’s one of the reasons why re-watching episodes of Supernatural can be such a gratifying experience.) A book like We Need to Talk About Kevin (forget the movie, it’s the book that made the impression on me) tries to tackle these issues head-on and it’s disturbing, confrontational, and people hate/love it. I’ve written about the book before. My friend Beth, who is a teacher, had a fascinating response to it, based on her experiences with parents who refuse to see that their child may have a problem, who turn it around onto the teacher, the school, anything other than the reality of what is happening “No, no, everything’s fine at home, my kid’s perfect at home, it’s only at school that he acts like a fucking maniac …” Scott Peck’s book People of the Lie is about evil, another way to describe malignant narcissists. The stories he tells are chilling, describing parents who actively want their children to stay stuck and sick, the parents would prefer stuck/sick children to having to look into the mirror and see how THEY might have contributed to the problem.

“Provenance” is book-ended by two huge episodes about parents/children, and the long-lasting effects of abuse/trauma. I don’t know if I would call John a “malignant narcissist”, but you can see that very early on he put his sons into two clearly-labeled buckets: There was the son who could take the shit, and the son who needed to be protected from the shit. One was seen as strong enough to be his second-in-command on the front lines, and one was seen as too precious to be put at risk. I am not at all surprised that the one who was assigned the “take all the shit” role is now … in the state he is in, let’s just say that. Said in another even more disturbing way, it’s about time. This is what happens when you do that to a child.

The question “Why’d he do it?” would result in many different answers, most of them valid, but it’s a constantly morphing subject, worthy of further discussion. There are those who get annoyed at the question “Why’d he do it” and we’ll see Dean get annoyed here, an interesting detail. “I don’t really care. It’s over. We move on.”

Supernatural is not literal or linear. It takes a prism-approach to huge complicated emotions and experiences, so we see them from the side, we see them refracted, we see them from all sides, and it looks different, depending on the angle of the prism.

A moment of unspoken feeling passes between Sarah and Sam, with Dean right in the middle of them. He looks around. Takes his time getting the hell out of there. Brat. It’s his way of saying Would you two crazy kids GET TO IT. He lingers. Says, “I’ll go wait in the car.” No need to announce it, just go do it. And then he still doesn’t go. He smiles at Sarah. Says, “See ya, Sarah.” It’s kind of brilliant because Dean NOT leaving makes everyone ACHE for him to leave. Dean nods to himself, and then finally, finally, walks off.

But the BEST button of what could have been a totally cutesy moment (and I don’t like Supernatural when it gets cutesy, I’m sure you have picked up on that) is Dean walking off, grumbling to himself, annoyed, “Burned the doll, destroyed the spirit, but don’t thank ME or anything.”

Awesome.

Sam and Sarah need all the help they can get, frankly. They just stand there with each other, wordless. Everyone onscreen wants to start kissing. I mean, that’s obvious. But nobody knows what to do. I love how she says to him, “I didn’t get hurt,” reminding him that his worst fear did not come true. Haunting, though, her re-appearance in Season 8. The show is designed to break your heart. There is no escape, not really. But it FEELS like there MIGHT be here.

She is giving him all of this clear “Please kiss me” behavior, leaning in, smiling encouragingly. It’s awkward and awful and sweet. She says, “Maybe you’ll come back and see me,” and Sam’s smile is hesitant. He’s not Dean. His feelings are already too deep to handle. It’s sad, man. The music is sad. Her face is somewhat sad. Dean stands outside, by the Impala, waiting. Sam comes out the front door, with Sarah a little bit behind him, and Dean turns to go get in the car, and briefly you can see his face. Frustrated, bummed out, a little shake of the head. There is a potential Ick factor in the situation, but somehow the show makes it work. It’s on the line, though. I don’t feel the “Ick” but I feel like I COULD feel the “Ick”, if these guys weren’t so on point, and if the music wasn’t so melancholy, reminding us of the loneliness, the difficulties in having to drag oneself away from comfort.

But still. Your brother is standing over there, waiting for you to kiss some girl. He’s, like, standing right there. Like, you can see him, right there, and he’s waiting for you to kiss someone. I realize my boundaries can approximate Fort Knox but come on!

Maybe you boys should examine how you’ve set up your dynamic and make some changes because this shit is gonna GET you in the end.

Sarah is seen leaning longingly against the now-closed door of the auction house, and she’s so beautiful and perfect she looks like Snow White. Supernatural makes you think Sam has chickened out, leaving the goddess un-kissed, but no! The Prince in Flannel with the zit on his chin knocks on the door, urgently, and when she opens it, he manfully takes her into his arms. Smooch!

Dean, get in the car.

It’s a testament to Ackles that the terribly cheesily written final moment (“That’s my boy”, Dean says to himself … really? Ew.) is actually kind of beautiful. How does he do it? How does he make it work? By underplaying, by not smiling too widely (that would be too weird, like, why are you leering at your brother’s lip lock?), and by infusing all of it with a little bit of melancholy as well as muted humor. Dean is a bit impressed with Sam’s forceful taking charge of the little lady. He approves. But there’s sadness there, too, just a tad, because it’s only going to last a moment. They have to be moving on now.

And that’s how Ackles makes it work. All things considered, it’s a minor miracle.