Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 3: “Bloodlust”

Directed by Robert Singer
Written by Sera Gamble

Gordon (the phenomenal Sterling K. Brown) enters the action, bringing with him one of my favorite arcs in the entire series. Gordon brings with him ambiguity about things we have been led to believe are set in stone: that Dean and Sam are the good guys, that hunters are on the good side of the fight. He also brings with him a traumatic family story, a story of a sibling that cracks open the wary relationship of the brothers, and brings into question what it means to be loyal, to be a good brother. He brings with him certainty of a kind that is necessary for warriors, and can bring about a lot of good in the world. You do what you have to do if your foe is evil. But that same certainty can be used to justify things like genocide and scorched-earth policies. Supernatural is bold enough and brave enough to question the certainty of its main characters. Supernatural is brave enough, mischievous enough, to put on the table things we thought weren’t up for debate. And in doing so, the Winchester brothers fall into the abyss of their own past, its traumas, unresolved stuff, guilt, shame. It’s all there. Gordon brings it with him. John’s death has left a void. Into that void strolls Gordon.

“Bloodlust” follows in the footsteps of “Everybody Loves a Clown” in its continued examination of grief, and the aftermath of loss. Grief has left Dean vulnerable. His radar is faulty.

Faulty Radar Story #1
Directly following my father’s death, a man came into my life. Anyone who was reading my site during the spring of 2009 would have sensed what was going on. The man was an actor, who had gotten some high-profile jobs once upon a time, and I had actually had his picture on my wall when I was a tween. I had written something about one of his performances on my site, and a month or so after my father’s death, this actor found that piece and reached out to me via email to thank me. He told me that the post I had written about him had “helped him re-claim his past.” (A career had not really panned out for him, despite some excellent jobs as a young man.) So I don’t blame myself for getting caught up in it. Imagine someone you had taped on your wall when you were a kid writing you something like that. A correspondence began, and he was hungry to keep in touch with me. To give you an idea of the sheer scope of it, we corresponded for three months, exactly, almost to the day, and he emailed me over 400 times. Imagine the volume. My blackberry buzzed through the night. It buzzed through the day. He sent me papers he had written in college, for my feedback. He sent me DVDs in the mail of him doing standup, of short films he had been in. He opened up his heart, his soul. He told me everything. There were a couple of days when his laptop died, and he actually had one of his friends (whom I had never met, never heard of) email me to tell me why I hadn’t heard from Mr. So-and-So. Okay? He was so anxious that I would think he was blowing me off he gave my email to someone and had them give me an update. So strange in retrospect. Basically, I fell into the trap of a narcissist. I don’t know how I possibly could have resisted, but my radar was totally faulty because he appeared almost the moment after my dad died. We talked about our fathers a lot (his father had been a famous actor, someone I admire). Oh, whatever, that’s the story, a lonely sad man sent me over 400 emails (not to mention texts) in a three-month period. I emailed him back, of course. It felt like a deep relationship, but what he really wanted was to stay in contact with this random woman who had recognized his talent and wrote about it publicly on her popular website. He clung to me like a drowning man. Until he vanished into thin air without a warning, never emailing me again. One day he woke up and he was done with me. My cousin Mike said to me, while I was agonizing about it, “You are not allowed to let this poorly raised feeble man teach you ANY life lessons,” which was very good advice at the time, since I basically had gone insane once he stopped emailing me. His emails had filled the void left by my father. My father was one of my best “audience members,” he loved everything I did, loved hearing about what I was reading, loved talking to me about everything. This man appeared, like clockwork, giving me the same dynamic, only – you know – with the added weirdness that I had been in love with him when I was 12 years old because of one of his performances. The smoke cleared, and I realized he was a clever and charming narcissist who needed to have me in his life because I reflected him the way he wanted to be reflected. I will say one thing for him: He knew I was working on a script and to encourage me he bought me the software program Final Draft. An expensive software program. I still use it today. So thanks, I guess. That long story is really just my example of how, if I had been in my right mind, I would have somehow realized that I was being used as a mirror, that he wasn’t really interested in being friends with me, that he was a User, in other words. Grief made it IMPOSSIBLE for me to perceive that. Once the smoke cleared, like, a year later, I looked back on the 400 emails and thought, “Holy shit. What the hell.” It’s like it had happened to someone else.
Faulty Radar Story #1 Over

“Bloodlust” the title works on multiple levels.

First. We have this cult film from 1961.

Bloodlust is about four teenagers who find themselves stranded on a desert island with a guy who lives there who wants to hunt each one of them down, for sport. (Obviously influenced by the movie The Most Dangerous Game, which I’ve referenced in these re-caps before.)

The title can obviously refer to the vampires, and their sexualized mythology, their sexualized personae, mixed with the blood that they need to survive.

But it can also refer to revenge, to the situation where moral compasses do not and cannot apply. Dean and Sam have argued about revenge before. You cannot want to be a hunter out of revenge, you have to keep your humanity intact. But they are challenged on that level all the time. And of course, there’s the “lust” factor, something that comes into play with vampires, something that always seems to be in operation when the Winchesters have to hunt them. There are queasy sexualized things at work here, stuff that is connected to lust, stuff that cannot be spoken. The male bonding thing that happens between Dean and Gordon. There is a kind of lust beneath it, perhaps even sexual. It’s not just lust for connection and understanding from someone who is your gender, although that is definitely a part of it, especially for Dean, who doesn’t have male friends, and has a hard time with men, in general. But Dean and Gordon’s first scene alone is a seduction, plain and simple. Both men are operating from that place, although you understand later that Dean is the prey, not the predator. His emotions have been activated, his need for male companionship, a male mirror, if you will. Without John to mirror him back, Dean is lost. This is something Dean cannot admit and is not even fully aware of.

But that’s the trick, that’s why the Gordon episodes are so fascinating to me, they bring so much with them: DEAN might not know what is happening with himself, but ACKLES knows. So we get some great behavior stuff coming from that tension.

Sexual orientation notwithstanding, there is a flirtation that goes on between men who are trying to become friends in a real way … and men who can acknowledge it, without descending into homosexual panic, are happier people, in general. Supernatural understands that. Any guy who operates in a mainly-male environment will relate to these moments. It’s not about wanting to fuck the other person, it’s not that literal (although those feelings may very well be a part of it – Dean’s radical nature is that he is operating with that undercurrent all the time with everyone). It’s more about wanting to merge, it’s a relationship. Women don’t have as hard a time acknowledging those things, culturally, when they hook up with one another. It’s not as threatening. Supernatural acknowledges this sort of dynamic again and again and again, and Dean is the conduit for it. Sam is easier with other men, he can get along, he doesn’t have that void inside him to fill. Dean does.

This is the first time we’ve seen Dean become friends with a man. There are moments when I watch and think of Dean as a damsel in distress, thinking to myself, “No, no, don’t let Gordon see that vulnerability! You are not safe, Dean. You are not safe.”

Teaser
Red Lodge, Montana

The fun thing about the teaser is that it immediately launches us into a morally ambiguous world, appropriate for what the vampire episodes bring to Supernatural (we first talked about that in the first vampire episode, “Dead Man’s Blood.”).

So what we see here is a terrified girl being chased by a dark silent figure. We assume the dark silent figure is the monster, and she is the victim.

“Bloodlust” thrusts us into an upside-down world, a Hall of Mirrors, right is left, left is right. Vampires are not evil, it’s the hunters who are missing the boat. And that brings up all kinds of ethical questions that NOBODY wants to deal with. Well, Sam does. But in the Hall of Mirrors world here, the fact that Sam is willing to consider the fact that not all monsters are evil seems to spark a worry in Dean that goes far beyond the immediate worry.

It’s a callback to John’s whisper in Dean’s ear during “In My Time of Dying”. Is Sam relating to the things they kill? Is Sam moving into a grey area? Grey area is what “Bloodlust” is all about. Dean still hasn’t said a WORD about John’s whisper, and it has not been referenced once (and that silence will continue for many more episodes). But it is fun to watch how Ackles is playing it anyway. It’s all over his face. Keeping these Arcs on track is a challenge, when you have many episodes, and you have no dialogue pointing to said Arc, but Ackles is so so good with this stuff. It’s one of the reasons why Supernatural is so fun to watch repeatedly.

We see the dark figure lop off the girl’s head with an old-fashioned grim reaper scythe. And, unlike in “Dead Man’s Blood,” we actually see her head fall, and the headless body fall to the ground. So Season 2 is already more gory, more explicit, than Season 1, where decapitations were just suggested with a blood splash.

1st scene
Sexy-as-hell opening: AC/DC “Back in Black” blasts and we see an empty blacktop road, the heat wavering the image. The emptiness creates anticipation. And then, the repaired and gleaming Impala appears.

It’s a myth-making iconic kind of opening, referencing every Hot Boys and their Hot Vehicles sequence in any movie that swings that way. I mean, Steve McQueen bursting out of camp in his motorcycle.

It’s sexy, it’s impossibly macho, it’s designed to make us (male and female) want to fuck said person, regardless of sexual orientation. There’s a lot of homoerotic appeal in a character like Steve McQueen, something that gays acknowledge who adore him, and it works on straight men as well. Wish-fulfillment. Desire. Maybe not “I want to fuck that guy” but “I want to be that guy.”

And it’s not about the guys in the car. It’s about the CAR. (Kripke joked that in the hiatus before Season 2, the majority of the letters he got expressed anxiety about the CAR. Never mind the three supposedly-dead Winchesters in the car. People were like, “Is the Impala gonna be okay??” It was a sign to him that they were doing something right.) The show has a fetishistic quality, something that was hinted at in Season 1, but then goes all out in Season 2. The guys and their looks, in the bright sunlight, all that. But also the car. When the Impala barrels into view, we see it from all angles, from behind, from in front, we see the guys in the car, but we linger over the gleaming hub caps, the intimidating grille, all the silver fixtures.

It’s filmed the way a woman is filmed, typically, ogling at her from every angle. It is an extension of Dean.

The Impala is back on the road and all’s right with the world.

Dean is lost in pleasure and self-satisfaction. This is his anthem:

Sam doesn’t quite know what to do with this Dean.

In “Everybody Loves a Clown” I mentioned how nobody can let Dean BE. It’s part of his power and charisma. It’s part of who he is, and what he puts out there. It’s a complicated mix, and it changes, depending on your stance, depending on the circumstance. It has to do with his role in the Winchester family, as the peace-maker and parent-er of his father and his brother. That’s for sure. They need him to be a certain way. He was assigned that role early on (even before his mother passed away, we see it clearly in the “cutting off the crusts” moment in the Heaven episode, where 3 or 4-year-old Dean takes it upon himself to comfort his mother. That situation was intensified and exaggerated post-Mary’s death, when child-Dean was given a role by his father, one he continues to play out.) Dean is not quite aware of how much people put on him, or how much they look to him. I mean, he is, but he also isn’t. He participates in that dynamic, unconsciously, and sometimes consciously.

This scene in the Impala is a perfect example. Sam can’t just let Dean have his moment; instead, he has to comment on it, stand outside of it, distance himself. In other words, he can’t let Dean BE. (This is super-common among siblings, especially in the hothouse claustrophobic atmosphere of the Winchesters.) Dean is also a powerhouse, just by existing. We have to deal with that reality. Even him whooping it up is kind of overwhelming and people sometimes need to stand back from that and assert, “Hey man, that’s you, not me.”

What’s interesting is the vice that it puts Dean in, emotionally. But Dean doesn’t balk at it, or get annoyed, the way he did in a similar conversation in “Everybody Loves a Clown.” Here, he just keeps talking to the Impala, calling her “baby,” and telling “her” to not listen to Sam, everything’s okay.

There’s a lot going on in this episode. Remember: Vampires. And vampires bring out the family psycho-sexual Winchester drama.

Put alongside all of this is the undeniable fact that Dean is somewhat difficult to be close to, it is somewhat hard to know what he’s going through, or what he might need. Sam wants to be a good brother. Sam wants Dean to feel safe to deal with the tough stuff, and come to him if he has problems. Dean sometimes makes that hard.

And Dean’s charisma and beauty is a reality. Beauty isn’t something that people just admire. People have complicated reactions to it. We see that repeatedly in Supernatural with Dean. He is aware of what he looks like, and sometimes uses it, but even when he’s not using it, people react to him. I keep going back to that coroner scene in “Bloody Mary”, a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

But it manifests itself in all kinds of ways. Dean, even with his peace-maker role, was sort of the focus in the family. The linchpin. He was the witness. He was the observer. As well as the protector. So “who Dean was being” in any given moment would get a lot of attention. It’s why he was so clearly submissive in the episodes with his father, keep his head down, be obedient, whatever you do don’t call attention to yourself. Be who Dad wants him to be. Be who Sam needs him to be.

When Dean deviates from that, Sam and John would do a double-take. It’s incredibly limiting, the role set out for Dean, even as he is a swashbuckling Han Solo-type hero. This is why I say Supernatural is about masculinity, and a certain KIND of masculinity, the old-school Iconic Tough Guy Tradition. It does not pooh-pooh that tradition. As a matter of fact, it celebrates it, which makes the show completely out of step with today’s current culture. It doesn’t celebrate it without question, and that’s the territory “Bloodlust” steps into.

And so Dean is buzzing with happiness, adrenaline, purpose, and sexual power, and Sam has a distant reaction to it: “God, give you a couple of severed heads and a pile of dead cows and you’re Mr. Sunshine.”

Awkward exposition. But there’s an edge in Sam’s voice. It’s not particularly friendly.

My point in going on and on and on about all of this is that there is no ROOM in the Winchester brothers’ relationship. That’s all I’m saying. Because they are on TOP of each other (literally and figuratively), every single tiny emotional change will take on huge significance in a way it wouldn’t if the situation were different. You can really feel how little room Dean is given to be anything other than Sam’s conception of him (in this episode and the one before it), and we are about to go down the rabbit-hole with Dean’s conception of Sam, and how it conflicts with Dad’s conception of Sam, and all of that. Those episodes are to come, but we get a HUGE harbinger of it in “Bloodlust.”

With all their tough-guy stuff, these guys take each other’s emotional temperatures every other second. “You okay?” “You’re sounding happy.” “What’s wrong.” “I thought you’d feel this way.” I mean, my God, I’d have to take a 10 mile run every day just to get away from that intrusion!

But whatever little teasing comments (with an edge) Sam throws his way, Dean doesn’t give a shit. He re-built his car. She gleams. She purrs. She roars. It’s a long drive to Red Lodge, Montana. Dean puts the pedal to the ground.

2nd scene
Stock scene saved by:
1. Ralph Alderman, the actor playing the Sheriff. The mustache. The line-readings.
2. The bullshit “reporter” behavior from Sam and Dean.
3. The beauty.

No scene is too small or unimportant to get the Beauty Treatment. As a matter of fact, Beauty becomes even more important in these small “stock” scenes because it helps create a seamless whole. A reminder that people who are NOT artists are now in charge of what things look like. (If you have the time, check out this guy’s well-informed and lengthy rant about the same thing when it comes to posters and animation. Well worth it.) What we see now in Supernatural is bright primary colors, well-lit scenes, and people wearing a lot of makeup. In other words, a look chosen by someone who doesn’t understand mood, context, genre, OR honors what was so carefully and artistically set up in the first seasons by geniuses like Kim Manners and Robert Singer.

So it is glorious to look at a shot like this and revel in it. The care taken with it. The muted colors, the shadows. The natural light.

The sheriff looks like a bit player in a 1940s movie, blustering at them from across a desk that he cannot make any comments “to the press” at this time. Dean and Sam nod understandingly.

They want to know if there is any connection between the murders and the “cattle mutilations.” The sheriff seems confused. Dean clearly loves working again. He’s in the zone, a place he hasn’t been for three or four episodes. He’s easy, almost too easy (you can see the sheriff take in what Dean is throwing at him, trying to place it, categorize it, and then moving on away from it), giving the Sheriff a couple of looks like, “Come on, you haven’t thought of this?”

He’s not playing it the way Sam is playing it. Dean is tossing his “self” right out there, into plain view. It doesn’t go over well. It rarely does. First he gets the “wow, you’re in a good mood, why” from his brother, then he gets “Get out of my office” from the Sheriff. Just another day at work for Dean. It’s maybe comforting: this is his regular milieu, and it feels good to have things feel normal again.

The sheriff explains to them, in painstaking gross detail, why there is “no such thing” as cattle mutilations. Dean listens, deadpan. Sam adjusts his tie uncomfortably as the sheriff sneers at them like they are stupid. These are the details that a director like Robert Singer never misses, and at this point his relationship with Ackles and Padalecki would be almost telepathic (it’s probably 100% telepathic now). He has said before that he and Kripke were such a good team because Kripke’s primary concern is Plot/Gore/Horror and Singer’s primary concern is Character/Relationship. And they both end up in the same place. It’s a good mix. If Singer were also Plot/Gore/Horror focused, we wouldn’t have the depth of relationship which is the real point of the show, its real hook.

So you can see Sam sort of withdrawing from the force of the sheriff’s contempt, and Dean has almost no reaction whatsoever. When he’s in these situations with authority figures, he feels he is so far ahead of them, and above them, he’s not intimidated at all. Fine, don’t believe in cattle mutilations, be an ignoramus all your life, I’ll be moving on now.

Something about the two of them, sitting there before him, finally makes the Sheriff stop, and take them in. Something’s not right. He says, “What newspaper do you two work for again?”

Then, a painfully gorgeous shot of Dean and Sam, in the same frame, the way Supernatural loves to do, and it’s dark and glamorous, with shadows, and the prosaic background of American flag and file cabinet, highlighting the beauty through its very plainness. Not to be tried by amateurs.

The Sheriff’s suspicious question about what paper they write for brings on a pantomime of awkward behavior, as well as focus-pulling, sensitively done – the focus on Dean first, then Sam, then back to Dean, all in the same shot. Behavior! Beauty! Camera operation! Humor! Relationship! The shot has it all!

Dean says they write for “World Weekly News,” and Sam quietly corrects him, “Weekly World News,” and Dean awkwardly corrects himself, glancing at Sam, but he’s losing his cool battle now, he’s flailing, and when Dean flails, he destroys the entire facade he’s been setting up. It happens repeatedly! Finally, he laughs, and says to the Sheriff, “I’m new,” which is totally ridiculous. Even “new” employees know the damn name of the newspaper they write for. It’s kind of like in an episode coming up when Dean, flailing on the phone with Ellen, says that Jo cant come to the phone right now because she’s handling some “feminine stuff”. Even Dean knows that won’t fly, and he winces as he says it. What, Jo is putting in a tampon and can’t get to the phone? Her whole life has to stop for tampon removal? Come on, Dean, that’s weak. I love Ellen, too, basically rolling her eyes: “Put my daughter on the phone.”

Nothing better than Dean flailing.

The button of the scene, though, is given to the sheriff, who looks at Dean, has seen the flailing, understands he’s been played, has no real reaction to it, but says, bluntly and calmly, “Get out of my office.”

3rd scene
Dean and Sam now appear as doctors, in white coats, in order to infiltrate the morgue. The image of the two of them having bags of costumes in the trunk, alongside the machetes and holy water, is so pleasing and funny to me. The whole “costume” thing started slow in Season 1. They hint at it in the pilot, but then they started having fun with it, with the rock star names, and various badges and different outfits. Season 2 has two back-to-back episodes, “Hollywood Babylon” and “Folsom Prison Blues” which feature Sam and Dean basically “going undercover” for the entirety of an episode. It’s awesome. That whole series of episodes, four in a row, I think, are masterful.

Dean and Sam burst into the morgue room, only to see an intern sitting there. Dean glances at the guy’s badge, which says: “J. MANNERS.” Dean takes the reins, charging forward, “John –” (Of course Dean would go immediately to “John”.) The guy corrects him, “Jeff.” (And there’s the inside joke, because John Winchester is obviously played by a guy named Jeff. And Kim Manners is one of the directors. And around we go.) Dean starts laughing, and flailing, “I know that, of course, Jeff – Dr. Dworkin is looking for you.” Jeff says, “Dr. Dworkin is on vacation,” and Dean responds immediately, flying by the seat of his pants successfully for once, “Well, he’s back and he’s pissed and he’s screaming for you, man.”

Jeff/John hustles out of the room, and Dean and Sam immediately get to work, grabbing rubber gloves, and talking about Satanists and reversed pentacles on the forehead and Florida. Because “effed-up stuff happens in Florida,” says Dean, and I know it’s a network thing, making him say “effed up” instead of “fucked up” (Dean would swear like a sailor in real life), but I say “effed up” and it seems like a specific regionalism, although I may be wrong in that. I love “effed up.”

Great overhead shot of the guys pulling the body out of one of the morgue compartments, the colors stark, whites, blacks, greys.

Dean and Sam’s Arc
So I want to say a few things about Dean’s “arc” in the episode. Not to mention the whole season. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment-to-moment details and miss the sheer amount of stuff Ackles and Padalecki are playing (even when they have no language to support it). Ackles has to play the opening of “Bloodlust” in a state of almost impenetrable joy: his car is fixed, and he feels so much better, more in control of his life, having her back on the road. So there’s that. It colors everything. Nothing can touch him. Nothing can bother him. Then there’s the advent of Gordon, and Gordon immediately begins to tap into the place in Dean where everything is NOT okay, where he misses his father, where he also is angry at his father for not being there for him, and also his underlying worry about Sam, exacerbated by his father’s unforgivable pre-death whisper in his ear. All of that is then poured into the container of the “plot” of the episode, which has to do with vampires who have decided to not kill humans. Consider that scene with the Impala, Dean whooping it up, and then consider the last shot of Dean in the episode, the incredible push-in to his face in the sunrise light. That’s the arc. It’s huge. “Good” vampires go against Dean’s code of ethics, he’s not prepared for that ambiguity and he also doesn’t welcome the philosophical discussion. Sam does. That ethical disagreement opens up an abyss between the brothers, an abyss that Gordon subtly and manipulatively exploits. I found it extremely painful to watch the first time, and still find it painful.

But also let’s talk about Sam. He doesn’t know yet about the whisper. He doesn’t know the secret of his own past (and Dean doesn’t know it either). He is not aware that he has been compromised. How this comes out here is his concern for the ethical dilemma presented to them: Why are they killing these vampires if the vampires have made a conscious choice not to feed? Isn’t their job to hunt evil things? If these vampires are not evil, then why are we hunting them? It’s a fascinating discussion and one the show had not addressed at this point. I am so glad they felt confident enough to ‘go there’. So from Sam’s point of view, he senses that something is off about Gordon, and he senses, too, that Dean is under some kind of influence that may not be healthy. Grieving takes many forms, remember. Grieving can still be present when you’re whooping with joy about your repaired Impala. Sam has made choices to be a hunter. He tried to get out, and now he’s back in. He lost his father, and now is trying to “make it up” to his father by being a good hunter. But he’s already come along way from “Everybody Loves a Clown.” Torture is not right, and Gordon’s insistence on black-and-white thinking sets off an alarm bell. And rightly so. For the first time, Sam makes Dean question their life, their mission. Dean resists. But then, in the last scene, with the conversation over the hood of the Impala, it is Dean who questions “how they were raised,” and Sam who gently reminds him that Dad did the best he could. Fascinating. You can see the mirror effect, the disorienting vampire effect that we already saw in “Dead Man’s Blood.”

And so Dean has in the back of his mind his father’s whispered warning about Sam. We don’t even know what it is at this point. It will not be referenced openly for episodes to come. But watch how Ackles is playing it anyway. So it’s extremely insidious, where Sam’s concern for ethical issues LOOKS like Sam sticking up for evil, taking the side of evil. Isn’t this what John warned Dean about?

So both Sam and Dean have a hell of an arc to play here, and neither of them are given explicit language to spell it all out. The truth of it comes out in the playing of it, the behavior. Watching the scenes you can see that “the secret” that Sam doesn’t even know about yet is working on him. And you can see Dean playing John’s whisper, that whisper growing in volume with every alarming moment. The final scene is so touching to me because Dean is basically upset that everything is ruined now. He was feeling better. Now he feels like shit again. It’s so human. It’s so real. It’s grief. It ambushes you. Gordon acts as a catalyst. He will do so again and again. He is a brilliant character in his own right, and we’ll get to our discussions of Gordon.
End of Arc Discussion

What I see in these early scenes is Dean feeling good. Yes, he is lying to the cops, and hanging out in a morgue, but that just means normalcy to him, and so he’s feeling light, airy, on top of his own game, he’s feeling better, he can’t even believe it, because he’s been feeling so bad for so long! That “relief” comes out in his behavior. There’s a big container on the slab, and Dean says to Sam, “Open it.” Sam replies, “You open it,” and Dean shrugs, grabbing the container, murmuring, “Wuss.”

This is Dean having fun with his own life. It’s insanely weird, because he’s having fun while he’s about to open a container holding a severed head. He opens the containers, and they both flinch at the nastiness, the stench. They stare at the head. Dean wonders if maybe something was shoved down her throat, “like the moth in Silence of the Lambs,” so maybe Sammy should check in her mouth. Sam is grossed out. “You check.” “No, you.” “You.” Guys. Dr. Dworkin may be on vacation but Jeff/John is probably on his way back. Get cracking. Dean says, “Come on. Put the lotion in the basket,” and then laughs up at Sam in a way that seems completely insane, because he thinks it’s funny, and it is funny, but the context is so not funny, and Sam responds with deadpan annoyance. When Dean is putting himself out there to be adorable, it is strange for him when people do not respond. (There are two such examples in “Asylum,” involving Dean joking about Jack Nicholson – a similar vibe – and Sammy is similarly not amused – but there are so many more examples.)

Sam clocks Dean on what is really going on. Dean obviously doesn’t want to stick his fingers in that dead girl’s mouth, DEAN’S the wuss, not Sam. Yes, because the most important consideration in this case is who is the bigger wuss. Lives depend on it.

Sam starts rooting around in the girl’s mouth. The sound effects are squishy and nasty. They actually show us the head, the fingers, the dead flesh. It’s extremely realistic, very gross. I love that Sam says he’s going to barf, and Dean glances at him, but doesn’t laugh or tease him about it. He’s grossed out too. Moments like that are when the show really gets the rhythms of a sibling relationship. Dean asks Sam to lift up her lip, and Sam is even more grossed out. “You want me to throw up. Is that it?”

Then comes an effect which is so well-done it squicks me out every time I see it. Dean lifts up her lip, looking at the girl’s gums, which seem to have grooves in them. Dean presses down below the grooves, and a big white fang descends through the hole. It’s NASTY.

So now we know. The girl we saw bite the dust in the teaser was not an innocent victim. She was a vampire. Then who was it who killed her? Who was that dark figure?

The show is already messing with us. Our sympathies are with the victim we saw, it’s how we are built. Our responses go with the girl running through the woods, heaving for breath, scared. How does it make us feel to know she was, technically, a “monster”? Those questions aren’t explicitly asked, not yet, but they’re there, swirling beneath every moment in the episode.

4th scene
The gleaming Impala pulls up in front of a busy roadhouse, just the kind of place the guys like to frequent and that, yeah, vampires like to frequent too. Sam and Dean stare out the window of the Impala at the place for a while, share a look (telepathic), and then go to park the car. They wouldn’t even have to discuss next steps. I love those glances and I love that the script doesn’t feel the need to over-explain itself.

Sam and Dean enter the bar, and walk through the crowd, and the camera lingers for a moment on a man whom we will eventually know as Gordon, sitting by himself, drinking and smoking a cigarette. And oh God, look who’s tending bar!

It’s Dean’s girlfriend from season 8, Benny the vampire! Only sans suspenders, cap, and Louisiana drawl. No, just kidding. Benny/Eli is played by Ty Olsson, who will win the hearts of Supernatural fans forever seasons later with his portrayal of Benny. Ty Olsson is a fantastic actor, real star-power there, of a sort of lazy drawling Robert Mitchum stripe (complete with old-fashioned barrel chest), and he hailed from X-Files and Dark Angel, so there’s history with this group of actors, as there usually is.

Dean greets Benny (sorry, it’s not Benny) with a casual lit-up smile and a “How’s it going?” and he’s so shiny and friendly, and it’s so Dean.

Dean in the zone. He starts off soft with people, it happens repeatedly, that no-boundaries thing, which is both instinctive and manipulative. He tries it out, in other words, to see if it will go over. Benny says flatly in response, “Livin’ the dream,” which is pretty funny. Sam takes over, as he often does in such moments, getting down to business. It’s a fascinating part of the Winchester dynamic. Sam says, no bullshit, “So we’re looking for some people.”

Look at this shot. I want to EAT it with a SPOON.

Sam’s remark doesn’t get much of a response either. All Benny says is, “Sure. It’s hard to be lonely.” Sam grins in a “touché” way, and Dean glances at Sam, unsure. Something’s weird here. Sam stays cool, and pulls out a wad of cash (it’s an identical scene with the “Bloody Mary” coroner scene, where Dean flirts, gets busted, turned down, and Sam has to be the grownup and hand over the cash.) Sam is so cool and so manly and so buried in shadows that I want to eat him with a spoon, too.

It’s too much!

Sam says they’re looking for a group who would have come to town recently. “Probably pretty rowdy.” Dean adds, taking a swig of beer, almost like he approves of what he’s describing: “You know. Sleep all day. Party all night.”

I wouldn’t put it past Dean, however, to also be referencing the tagline to this iconic film, which any pop culture nut would have seen.

Benny tells them a farm has been leased out and the people there are real drinkers. He’s had to cut them off a couple times. Meanwhile, we see Gordon over by the window, suddenly, in intense noir closeup, listening.

Intense isn’t even the word for it. Ferocious. Dean and Sam glance at each other, have an entire silent conversation, nod slightly Dean thanks the bartender, finishes off his beer, and the two of them leave. As the camera follows them out, we see the table where Gordon was sitting, cigarette in the ashtray, smoke curling up. That whole “cigarette left behind to show someone has just exited” has been used almost since cinema began, and it’s great to see it here.

Dean and Sam walk outside into the night, and the placement of the camera is across the street, watching them walk back towards their car, but the angle gives the feeling they are being watched and stalked, a feeling corroborated by the camera then resting on Gordon in the foreground, crouching behind a truck. Dean and Sam are not talking to one another. Conversation can wait until they are in the car.

What Gordon brings, in a very real way, even real-er than the roadhouse, is the larger world of hunters. What these people are like. Nobody “plays well with others.” Close relationships are rare. You would think these people would bond together against a common foe but it doesn’t work like that. They work in isolation. Everyone has their own private tragic backstory. And how many times do they meet hunters who have strange responses to Sam? It’s like they sense something about him on a subterranean level … he is not one of us. Dean, with his dazzle and his flirting and his charm, he fits in in the hunter’s world, which has a lot of room for eccentrics. Nobody blinks an eye about Dean.

Obviously, because Sam and Dean are good at what they do, they understand probably pretty early on that they are being tracked. (Hunters have to ‘track’ vampires, since they are migratory. Other monsters, like ghosts or Wendigos, are pinned down in one location. So here, with vampires, the “hunter” term mimics what it means to hunt animals. And Sam and Dean are the ones being hunted. It’s a harbinger of things to come in season 2 and beyond.)

We then see Sam and Dean walking through grungy hidden alleyways, clearly NOT on the way to their car, which was my first clue that they knew they were being followed. They were leading Gordon down a dead end. Smartypants.

It’s a wet gloomy night. Gordon appears at the end of the alley and peers down it. Sam and Dean have vanished. I was assuming at this point that he was a vampire, and I think we are meant to assume that. It’s really beautifully designed, the whole episode. Humans are bad, vampires are good, it’s anarchy on a psychological level for all involved, including us. Good. Can’t get too complacent. A show needs to go deep if it wants to last, at least a show of this nature which is not just a police procedural.

John’s death works its way THROUGH the brothers in unexpected ways and that’s how grief works. You displace, you go into denial, you try to replace, you sugarcoat, you wear rosy glasses to view the past … all as a way to deal with the sheer unrealizable reality of his death. That’s why, so often, people make poor choices following a death. Their boundaries are shattered, their perspective is skewed. This is going to be even more noticeable with someone like Dean, who has no boundaries to begin with. He is prey to Gordon’s manipulations, and Gordon senses it immediately, as predators tend to do. A predator wants a willing victim, not someone who will fight them every step of the way. Gordon ends up floating comments out there … stuff that Dean clearly notices but lets slide. Until it’s too late.

As Gordon stands in the alley, looking around, suddenly Sam and Dean materialize from out of nowhere, shoving him up against the wall, Dean holding a gleaming knife to his neck.

A word on Sterling K. Brown’s portrayal of Gordon: Why his performance is so good, and why he keeps coming back, is that he plays it perfectly reasonably, and in Brown’s hands “reasonableness” starts to look like the scariest attribute on the planet. He’s attractive. He’s smart. He makes good points. He modulates his own violence, he is able to keep it under wraps and just be one of the guys. It’s incredibly slick, what he’s doing. Supernatural was very smart in casting this particular actor, who is never more terrifying than when he is being reasonable. There is a difference between how he reacted to his sister’s “death,” and how Sam and Dean reacted to the death of their mother … but what is the difference really? Is it really that huge a gap? Not really. And that’s the grey area, man. That’s the grey area that Supernatural does so well, that sets this show above other genre shows. It cares about the grey areas, it cares about them enough to drown in them. If Gordon were a sneering villain, then it would call into question why Dean would trust him. And Supernatural does not betray its own characters like that.

Supernatural is smart enough to know that Dean is smart, and Gordon brings something to the table (manipulatively, for sure, but it’s still there) that Dean needs. Dean responds to what Gordon has to offer, because Gordon’s game-face, in those first scenes, is so good. He is speaking to the choir. He hits Dean’s sweet spot. It is devastating emotionally, and is one of the things that Dean would find unforgivable, and we see that play out in all of the Gordon episodes.

Dean demands that Gordon “show us those pearly whites,” a nasty sneering line, spoken in a cooing almost seductive growl, par for the course with Mr. Winchester. Gordon doesn’t even blink. He is cool as a cuke, and says, “You’re looking for fangs. I am not a vampire.” He’s not pleading or angry. There’s even a small bit of contempt in his voice, like, come on guys, you’re hunters and you can’t tell I’m not a vampire? Gordon tells them he knows how to kill vampires, and Sam shoves him against the wall again. Gordon says, “Easy there, Chachi,” a really silly line, but when you think about it, Chachi had awesome hair, too.

Gordon finally lifts up his lip to show his fangless gums It’s so gross, the way Dean and Sam lean in to peek at his gums. Invasive and strange. Hostile. But nobody balks. This is what you have to do. Once they see the situation they reluctantly let him go. Gordon says, “Who the hell are you two?”

5th scene
Dean, Sam and Gordon stand by Gordon’s car (a huge red clunker – any gearheads know what it is?), and Gordon is saying, “Sam and Dean Winchester …” in a ringing voice that lets us know he knows exactly who they are. But you’ll forgive me if I am not listening to the dialogue because the shot is a work of art.

Gordon pulls out a grate hidden behind the back seat where he stashes his weapons. It’s intimidating and crazy-looking, but think of what is in the trunk of the Impala. The lines start getting blurred.

The scene is disorienting because Gordon is running it. He is not playing support staff to our lead characters. He takes over. He sets the tone, sets the pace, it’s HIS scene, and Sam and Dean can feel that happening (and Ackles and Padalecki can, I’m sure, too), and they sort of stand back to let it unfold, knowing they can regroup later and find their footing. Sam and Dean are the leads of the show, and except for John, nobody has entered their dynamic and challenged their status as … the leads of the freakin’ show. Gordon does. I love that. It’s the challenge we’ve been discussing in the comments section, of having other people enter the show, Jo, Ellen, a love interest, anyone … and how difficult it is to make it work. Gordon, without having to raise his voice, or pull any fast ones, insinuates himself into the action, and owns his spot. It’s a hell of a performance.

Watch how Robert Singer chooses what to highlight in this scene, when he chooses to cut to a reaction shot from Sam or Dean. Ackles and Padalecki are both such good actors that they fill their reaction shots with thoughts and feelings that pulse off the screen. It’s extremely rich film-making, character-wise. That’s what Singer’s style is all about.

There are two moments I love here and both of them have to do with reaction shots, one from Dean and one from Sam. Gordon is pleased to meet them. “I met your father once – ” he says, complimenting John as a hunter. Sam and Dean are awkward, they aren’t used to anyone outside their family circle referencing their dad. Gordon then says, “I hear he passed … I’m sorry.” Gordon has the same charisma that Dean has, the same subtle soft way of dominating. I believe Gordon is sincere here, but there’s also that manipulative side, something Dean has also utilized. Gordon admired John Winchester, he is happy to meet Sam and Dean, but he wants them to back off the vampire case. The way to do that is by buttering them up. Gordon keeps talking about how they have big shoes to fill as hunters, but from what he’s heard, they’re great hunters, great trackers. Dean and Sam look startled. Gordon says, “You know how hunters talk,” and Dean says, “No we don’t actually.”

Gordon, with a smile that manages to be too-knowing, too intimate, and yet also understanding, says, “I guess there’s a lot your Dad never told you.”

And watch Dean’s silent reaction shot. Sam begins speaking in the middle of it, asking Gordon about the vampires, but meanwhile, Dean is having a drama. What Gordon has said is a red flag. You can see Dean sense that. Dean is touchy about his father, and the fact that Ellen, for example, knew John well does NOT endear her to Dean. Dean does not like not knowing stuff. It puts him in a very vulnerable position. Ellen’s comments about John came from a caring place, although Dean didn’t take it that way, but with Gordon, he’s not so sure. He’s sensing something else. If he were on top of his game, if he were working at full capacity (which he can’t right now, he’s grieving), he would know Gordon was bad news with a comment like that. You can see him feel it, but he ignores it, ultimately. That’s how predators work, they count on prey like Dean ignoring the signs.

And that’s what’s going on in that tiny yet HUGE reaction shot from Dean. One of those moments that cannot be captured in a screengrab.

A couple seconds later, Gordon is basically saying to them, totally friendly, “I got this one. I’m a do it alone kind of guy. This is my case. No hard feelings.” Dean says, buddy-buddy, “Man, I’ve been itching for a hunt …” and here comes my second reaction shot that I love, Sam hearing that comment, and glancing over at his brother, giving him the puzzled once-over. It’s so subtle. A warning bell going off for Sam.

Who can really know what is going on with other people, right? We are mysteries to one another. Something is going on with Dean, and Sam has noticed it since his father’s death. He was projecting a lot in “Everybody Loves a Clown” but obviously he wasn’t so off the mark. This brings us to the other subterranean plot-thing coursing beneath the episode: Dad’s mysterious death, and Dean coming back from being dead. Was a deal made? Did Dad make a deal? Is Dean alive because Dad sold his soul? Nobody has spoken those words out loud yet and nobody will for a while. But Dean is starting to descend into a very dark and reckless place, which will unfold over the next couple of episodes. Sam is sensing that. His brother is a good hunter, but he’s not too happy about Dean “itching” for a hunt. It seems to be a bad sign. It’s all there in Sam’s little glance over.

Kudos to Robert Singer for his sensitivity to this kind of behavior.

Gordon drives off into the misty night leaving Sam and Dean standing in the darkness, watching him go. The silence between them is FULL. There was so much going on in that scene, and a lot of it was touching on shit they are flat out not ready to talk about. How do you put all that stuff into words anyway?

6th scene
Exterior of an old ramshackle saw mill. Gordon, as we will see, took over the episode in the last scene, and now we are following him on HIS hunt. Strange things are afoot. Stuff is getting up-ended. We’re through the looking glass, following Gordon. I wanted to hear Sam and Dean talk about Gordon, I wanted to hear them hash it out. But no, the episode has other things up its sleeve.

We see a security guard sleeping at his desk, and then woken up by a creaking floorboard. Naturally, the camera stalks him from afar, giving us that classic horror movie feeling of someone being stalked. The guy stands up, looking around, moving forward, alert.

Stunning.

The guard crosses the dark yard to the sawmill itself, looking around, the camera following him, hiding from him, peeking at him from behind other objects. He’s startled by a bird squawking, a false scare before the real scare, which is Gordon appearing from behind him, wielding a machete. A fight ensues, and the security guard shows his fangs. Gordon slashes away, and then follows a terrific fight scene, visceral and rough, handheld camera and all, with the two men struggling for the upper hand. The vampire activates the gigantic motorized saw, Gordon kicking, punching, until the vampire lifts Gordon up, as though he weighs nothing, and throws him down on his back onto the plank. Great stunt-work. The vampire grabs hold of the saw, a huge nasty-looking thing, and starts to bring it down, lining it up with Gordon’s neck beneath. But then, look how the great Winchester trackers have tracked Gordon (as you knew they would), and suddenly appear, Sam grabbing Gordon out of the way, Dean handling attacking the vampire. Dean drives a stake through the vampire’s heart, after a fierce scuffle, and then, slowly, beautifully, horribly, he lowers the saw, slicing off the vampire’s head.

It’s an important moment.

The way Singer films it tells us how to feel about it, (as does the look on Sam’s face as he watches).

The show wants to be complicated, and for that I applaud it and love it. Uncomplicated superheroes bore me to tears. Uncomplicated heroes are not worth my 13 bucks at the movie theatre. Give me John Wayne in The Searchers. Give me Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker. Give me Dean Winchester.

We don’t see the decapitation. Singer keeps his camera on Dean’s face, and we watch it get splattered with blood as the head comes off. He is focused, and terrifying, not afraid of what he is doing at all, because why would he be. He’s killing a vampire. There is nothing, zero, nada, wrong about that. But it’s the WAY he does it …

This is going to come up again and again, you have to be good at your job but you can’t enjoy it, and it came up fascinatingly in the “vampire” episode in Season 9, another sexualized clusterfuck, highlighting the sexual bait aspect of the vampire world, connecting us to Dean as a sexualized child who was also used as bait by his father to trap monsters. When Dean finally has one of the vampires up against the wall, knife at the ready, Dean yells into the vampire’s face, “LOOK AT ME, BITCH,” which is one of the ugliest moments we’ve ever seen from Dean Winchester, bar none. (It is also sexy as hell.) He demands that the vampire look him in the eyes AS he slices off his head. Sam, by this point, is frankly a little bit afraid of Dean, and talks to him afterwards about it. “‘Look at me, bitch?’ It felt like you were enjoying it. Just a little bit too much.” Dean is not interested anymore. Yes. I did enjoy it. My life fucking sucks and I enjoy killing things that deserve it. Fuck you. (Or “eff you,” I guess.) It’s interesting, though, that almost the same conversation/concern is raised (inadvertently) 8 seasons before in “Bloodlust,” another vampire episode. Maybe Dean relished that kill with the saw too much.

It’s a beautifully played, hugely complicated sequence, but Singer and actors keep us on the straight-and-narrow. It couldn’t be more clear what is going on, both physically and emotionally.

We are asked to question Sam and Dean. We are asked here to go deep. The show wants us to have a more in-depth examination of them. WE can feel protective of them, but the SHOW doesn’t feel that way. I, for one, would have gotten bored pretty quick if the show protected them too much.

In that moment where we see Dean’s beautiful face splattered with blood, forget that we know who Dean is, and that we have come to love him, and are willing to forgive him almost anything. Forget all that. He looks like a fucking psychopath. Sam suddenly sees him that way. When Dean is done with the decapitation, he lifts the saw up, and his face goes back into shadow. He is un-knowable to us. His experience is his own.

The camera lingers on Dean for a good while, his face in shadow, looking down on the headless vampire, coming back into himself. Letting it go. He turns, and Sam and Gordon are looking at him.

Something was just unleashed in him during that kill. We’ve already seen Dean kill so many things. How to make this one feel different? Robert Singer did. He chose those shots very very carefully. And Jensen Ackles did. He went somewhere extremely gross during that scene.

Gordon jokes, “I guess I gotta buy you that drink …” (and one can see that Gordon, having witnessed Dean in action, knows now that he can trust him. And THAT is a scary thought. THAT is the ambiguity of the episode.)

Meanwhile, Sam is staring at Dean, communicating with him urgently and silently. He is concerned and afraid and his face, which Singer pushes in on, getting in close, says all of that: “Dude. What the eff.” That look on Sam’s face, that thought in Sam’s brain, is just going to get worse, and come roaring out in the next episode, with an awesome fight on a sidewalk when Sam admits that Dean is now scaring him. We need to be set up for that. We need to see why Sam eventually says that, otherwise we will just think Sam is over-reacting.

Dean looks back at his brother, face in the light now, blood splattered, and he’s gone almost dead and flat in the eyes. Drained of feeling. He almost looks ashamed. He’s been caught out.

The whooping with joy about the Impala has been hiding THIS all along.

It’s reminiscent of this moment:

… and that is not an encouraging association, but it’s perfectly awesome and destabilizing to have an ostensible hero of a show call THAT to mind. YES. That’s where we want to be!

7th scene
Watch the first shot. It’s a doozy. It starts on Gordon, taking the shots from the waitress, calling her “sweetheart,” and then moves around the table so we see Dean and Gordon clinking glasses. The camera keeps moving so we see Sam sitting there, between them, sullen, and then the camera keeps moving over to Gordon who is now laughing, and says, “Dean …” (he only references Dean … it’s a way to isolate Dean from his brother. Saying someone’s name can be extremely inclusive, but it also can be an exclusionary tactic) “You gave that fang one hell of a haircut,” and he’s laughing, and the camera moves back down the table, crossing by Sam once again, not amused, to Dean, who takes a swig of beer, and he’s laughing too. Gordon is making him feel good, and it’s a way to erase the weirdness that came up with that particular kill. We’re still in the same shot, it’s one take. After Dean takes a sip of beer, he notices (as, of course, he has noticed all along) that Sam is not in the same mood as they are, so he says, “You all right, Sammy?”

Then we get our first cut, to Gordon, saying, jovially, “Lighten up, Sammy.”

It’s a hell of a shot, the camera never resting on one of them, never prioritizing one over the other. It’s like a series of isolated closeups, yet melded together into one.

There’s a small argument at first about who is going to pick up the tab, and Gordon insists, and it’s very date-like behavior. But it’s also a man-thing: whoever picks up the check has the biggest dick, or something like that. It’s a power thing. It’s not necessarily evil, and sometimes it is truly generous (I have watched all of my male cousins do the same thing when we are all out together – and in that context it’s a way to say, “I love you all so much – please let me buy this round”). But here, it’s a gentle and yet very clear power struggle. Sam and Dean are alpha dogs, but not when Gordon is around. Well, Sam is still his grumpy alpha dog self, scowling over to the side, but Dean goes right into beta mode, as if on cue.

When Gordon says, aligning himself with Dean, cutting Sam out, “Lighten up, Sammy,” we see the steel in Sam, we see him assert his boundaries, and speaks it right out, nodding his head over at Dean: “He’s the only one who gets to call me Sammy.”

It might be one of my favorite lines in the series. After expressing annoyance that Dean calls him “Sammy,” to have him now say that Dean is the ONLY one who “gets” to call him that … It’s awesome. A real “this relationship has come a long way” moment, although the surrounding context is twisty and dysfunctional.

Some Thoughts on Predators and Prey
Good predators work via creep. For the most part they don’t leap out at you from the bushes in the dead of night although that happens too. But really cunning predators test your boundaries, little by little, chipping away, “will he/she take this,” “how will this go over,” etc. That’s why a lame antelope is dunzo. The lions sense weakness, they can sense it from miles away. Easy target. Predators, for the most part, don’t want to have to wrestle you to the ground. They want you to go willingly.

This is why, incidentally, self-defense courses are so important for women. Men, too, I suppose, but women are socialized to be accommodating and it puts us at risk. One of my cop friends, who gave me self-defense classes back in my wild 20s in Chicago, told me, “Don’t be afraid of making a scene if you’re feeling threatened. So people will think you’re a loony bitch. Better than being a dead girl. So make that scene.” I had a terrifying experience on a deserted subway platform once, when I was waiting for a transfer at 2 in the morning. It was a long wait. Over half an hour. Honestly, I should have taken a cab home. I felt how foolish I had been. And a guy was harassing me from nearby. I pretended I didn’t hear him. There were only a couple of other people on the platform, but they were far away, some were snoozing, some were homeless drunks. The place was deserted. No people, no cops. It was me and this guy. The guy wasn’t being physically threatening, not yet, but he was making me extremely uneasy, and the only way to know if someone is a rapist is to wait until they are actually raping you. And, yeah, that’s the whole problem. I believe that guy was testing my boundaries. He saw I was scared, I was a lame antelope, and he was seeing how far he could get. So I remembered my Chicago-cops’ advice, and took matters into my own hands. I made a pre-emptive scene, shouting at the man at the top of my lungs, awakening the snoozers, “STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME, YOU HEAR ME? STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME.” The guy was shocked, and said something along the lines of, “Bitch, you’re INSANE.” But he sure as shit left me alone after that. Women cannot be expected to be mind-readers. If you act like a creep, and I’m scared, that’s the reaction you’re gonna get. I am not going to wait until a rape is under way to go, “Oh. He must be a rapist.” That was another thing my Chicago cop buddies taught me. “Don’t wait to find out if he’s bad. Assume he is. Run. Scream. Bite. Make a scene.” It took me 45 minutes to stop shaking. This is not to say that if someone wants to attack you there is anything you can do to stop them. But self-defense courses help you to be able to recognize predatory behavior, as well as to get rid of the socialized worry that women often have of not wanting to come off as “rude.” Of course my favorite story of a sketchy experience I had is this one, from Chicago, where my drag queen friend came roaring to my rescue. The Tough Guy I’ve mentioned before, the one who reminds me of Dean Winchester, makes a cameo. The whole thing was not funny at all, and Tough Guy found no humor in it, but I thought it was pretty funny. That actually was the experience that led me to take self-defense classes from the couple of cops I knew at the time. They were happy to help out and I still remember some of the things they told me. Predators come in all shapes and sizes, and Gordon is scoping Dean out.
Predator Discussion Over.

Dean, having been used for bait so often, doesn’t recognize when he is being groomed. It happens. That’s why these scenes are so painful.

Gordon isn’t offended when Sam cuts him off, and says lightly, “Okay. Just celebrating a job well done.” Totally friendly, not hostile. It’s another excellent line reading, showing that Brown knows exactly who this guy is, what he wants, and how he operates. Smooth. Friendly. Calm. “Completely chill,” as he says later. And that, ultimately, is the whole problem.

Sam says, “Decapitations aren’t my idea of a good time, I guess.”

Gordon tries to engage Sam, but always in that light smiling voice, that hides a steely edge, an edge that could kill you. “Come on, man. It’s not like it was human. You gotta have a little bit more fun with the job,” and Dean, swept up in the moment, snaps his finger and says, “That’s what I keep trying to tell him.” Then, to Sam, “You could learn a thing or two from this guy.”

Uh-oh. Look how discombobbled Dean is to behave that way. I mean, it’s a casual moment that would have zero ominous meaning in any other normal context. But here? It’s a sign of bad things. It’s like women who suddenly change their whole personality when they’re around the man they’re interested in. And their friends are like, “What the hell happened to you.” Sam stares at Dean, and there’s a fascinating moment of Dean pausing, almost like he knows that was too far, but then deciding, “Oh, what the hell,” and going back to his beer. Self-knowledge requires vigor, and it’s freaking hard. It’s especially hard when you are grieving. Hence, my desire for Black Arm-Bands to return. A visible signifier of the fact that you are not at 100% right now.

That moment, where Dean says “You could learn a thing or two from this guy” is great information for Gordon to have. Dean’s boundaries are porous, and Dean is willing to throw his brother under the bus in order to bond with Gordon. Okay, so Gordon sees all that, and continues, as the episode goes on, to chip away at that. Dean gave him the first opening and I think that little thoughtful moment to himself, before he takes a swig of beer, shows that somewhere Dean senses what is really going on. He may not be able to put words to it, but imagine him in all of the circumstances we’ve seen thus far. He argues with Sammy, he gives Sammy a hard time, but to an outsider? They close ranks. But here suddenly Dean opens ranks and includes Gordon, and Dean seems to realize that he was just slightly shitty to Sam. It’s a strange and upsetting moment, especially for the audience who love the brothers.

Sam decides to exit. He doesn’t like who Dean is being: “I’m not gonna bring you guys down – I’ll meet you back at the hotel.” I love Ackles’ entire gesture in response, it’s so specific. He’s like a put-upon wife dealing with her husband’s incomprehensible choices while others are looking on. He rubs his eye, says to Sam, tiredly, “You sure?” and then does this eyes-to-the-ceiling thing which is completely for Gordon’s benefit. Like, “I know, he’s being a drag, see what I have to put up with?” He does say, “You sure?” because I think Dean would prefer it if Sam got with the program and had fun with him and Gordon. In Dean’s perfect world, that would be a perfect night: ease and fellowship and alcohol and three guys shooting the shit. It would be great.

Before Sam leaves entirely, Dean tosses him the Impala keys, saying, “Remind me to beat that buzzkill out of you later, all right?” To have this go down publicly, in front of Gordon, whom Sam senses is not safe … It’s bad.

Gordon is alert, watching Sam go.

If you think like Dean Winchester, you can see why Gordon would be such a relief to hang out with. Someone who gets it. Someone who doesn’t judge. Someone who understands that yeah, YEAH, it’s fun to decapitate an evil thing, can we not make a federal case out of it, or angst about our feelings, God, enough with feeling shit.

Gordon says, “Was it something I said?” and Dean, still the sort of put-upon wife, says, “Nah, he just gets that way sometimes.” They are brothers, but their relationship operates like they are a couple. It’s insanely intimate. Way too intimate. And those chickens came home to roost big-time in Season 9, when Sam finally breaks that pattern. And we all know how well THAT went over.

8th scene
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a good motel. The next scene opens with a real showoff shot of the neon motel sign, reflected in the gleaming side of the Impala, Sam having returned home, leaving the other boys to their bonding. It’s just so beautiful, a smudgy watercolor of American loneliness. You know. Humbert Humbert’s car.

Sam enters, and we see in the foreground a little cactus sculpture, and Sam plops the key ring down over it. It’s a shot that is highlighted, obviously because we will need it later.

9th scene
Back with Dean and Gordon, Dean is in the middle of telling Gordon a story about killing something when he was 16 years old, and “Sammy’s waiting in the car,” and I’m sorry, but an entire universe erupts in my mind with that image, a tragic horrible universe, but Dean doesn’t even blink, this was normal for him. Dean and John killing a monster with “Sammy waiting in the car.” Dean and his Dad burned the thing in the woods. Dean doesn’t reminisce, normally, with anyone other than Sam, and even there it’s tricky. We have only had one flashback thus far. It’s fascinating to see Dean tell a story from his own life. It’s eloquent, he tells it gently, almost lost in the memory of it, all as Gordon sits there, smiling, taking it in, not judging, totally getting it. This is a new Dean. Even in male bonding, Dean is gentle and soft and open. He’s not like, “Yo, bro, let’s go see some naked hookers!” although I could see it going that way too. But that wouldn’t be precarious. That would be understandable, and “recognizably” male. But Dean and Gordon bond through killing, first of all, and then a soft and open confessional conversation.

Dean tells Gordon about watching the thing burn and he’s a teenager, and he’s thinking to himself that other kids his age are worried about “pimples and prom night, and I’m seeing things that they’ll never even know.”

It’s lonely. Ackles is playing the loneliness of it, the separateness of it, the eternal outsider status. It’s not a plea for sympathy, it’s an expression of truth.

He says, “Right then I …”

And Gordon finishes his sentence, “Embraced the life.”

It’s charming and supportive, but it’s also a way to speak FOR Dean, to put words in his mouth. It’s subtly and insidiously dominating. But it strikes Dean, because that is what he was going to say. And Sam is so resistant to “the life,” he always had been, and how can Dean tell Sam how much he has “embraced” it? That there is no way out for him? That there will never be an end to it where he gets to go back to normal. They discussed it in that killer scene in “Shadow” and Sam looked shocked at what Dean was revealing. So Dean’s love of it, that shameful secret love of the violence of it, the throw down, the killing, the pleasure in it … that is something he can never talk about, and he’s uncomfortable, but Gordon understands. Dean looks at him openly. So open you want to tell him to cover up a little bit. You’re picking the wrong guy to be open with, Dean!

But this is a conversation, not a monologue, and Dean asks Gordon how he got started. It’s always a bad story, and Gordon’s is nasty. He was home alone with his sister and a vampire got her. There will be a turn to the story and we will learn it later, and Dean makes some assumptions, fills in the blanks in other words, with what HE would have done, and how HE understands it, and once he learns the truth … you can see him recoil.

What’s so awesome about how Gordon tells his story is that he tells it almost with a little bit of pleasure. There’s that small smile always threatening to break out. But underneath, you feel the pain and you also feel the commitment to hunting the things down that did this to his sister. But his surface is so mild. That’s the seduction.

These are two traumatized guys who live violent lives who have not dealt with the traumatic things that have happened, or … no. They HAVE dealt with them by becoming hunters. There’s an unspoken understanding going on here, across that table, a gentle and open space, rare between men, rare for Dean and certainly rare for Gordon. Why the scene works so well is that you feel how good it feels for BOTH of them to open up and tell these stories of their more innocent days. Nobody will punish you here. Nobody will “get” you here. It’s a safe space.

Gordon, after describing his sister’s disappearance, looks up at Dean and says, “Try explaining that one to your family,” and Dean nods. It’s beautiful. I know it goes south later, but it’s still beautiful here. And as Gordon keeps talking, describing how he became a hunter after that, the camera remains on Dean, listening, gentle, open, but then he goes inward for a moment (Ackles is so good at that, going to a place inside himself where he is talking to himself, communing with himself, having thoughts and feelings outside of the script), and although Gordon’s story is different from his own he recognizes it. It is his life too.

Dean says, after Gordon stops speaking, “Sorry about your sister.”

We are tight in on Gordon now, tighter than we are on Dean, prioritizing him again in the camera choices.

What we see there is chilling. There is ice there, scars that will never heal. Gordon tells Dean she was beautiful, and suddenly, out of nowhere, we get an establishing shot, showing the whole bar, and the two of them sitting at their table. It’s very Supernatural, holding back a shot like that until mid-scene, when more conventional shows start out with that shot. It keeps us on edge. It’s not normal. It’s off-kilter. Just like the emotions. Nobody should be comfortable here.

That establishing shot represents a beat-change, an elegant way to do it. Gordon says, “That was a long time ago. Your Dad … that’s gotta be rough.”

We can remember how Dean responded to Ellen’s attempt at sympathy. And Dean’s reaction to Gordon’s words shows how uncomfortable he is in this very particular emotional space. That’s the thing with losing a parent. No one can tell you how to do it. Even those who have been through it. It is uncharted territory. And so I love the symphony of reactions that happens in response. He tries to smile, but he’s not fooling anyone, not even himself. The smile falls. He goes inward again. He bends his head, pulls on his ear. He’s making a decision. To open up. To talk about his father. It takes him that time.

He seems very young. He gives it all to Gordon, the whole of his personality and heart and soul. He says that his Dad seemed indestructible to him – “Nothing can kill my Dad,” he says, and he looks 16 years old. How Ackles does it I don’t presume to say, but it’s there.

Gordon doesn’t speak and doesn’t seem inclined to speak. He’s listening. Unlike Sam with his “please start grieving Dad in a way I recognize” and his “Wow, look at you being all in a good mood about the Impala” – Gordon just listens. There’s no overt need on his face. He doesn’t need Dean to be a certain way. He just listens. (Of course this ends up not being true. Gordon, too, makes assumptions. “Me and Dean, we think the same way. Dean will understand. Dean is an ally.” Gordon misunderstands Sam entirely, underestimating the strength of the relationship between the brothers.) But here, in this moment, it’s fragile, delicate, a little glass egg of communication.

Dean then almost realizes what is happening. You can see him “go there,” the sadness, the loss, all of that, and he’s not sure what to do with it, but what he does know is that when he’s with Sam he has to act a certain way. He’s the Leader of their little Duo, everything depends on him keeping it together. And so here, with Gordon, feeling the ABSENCE of that pressure … he’s aware of it. Sam is there in that absence, basically reminding him of the primary dynamic he’s got going on with his brother. It’s a fascinating little moment where Dean is uncomfortable with what he is feeling, and yet he feels no compunction to stop feeling what he’s feeling, and no compunction to cover it up.

Dean is actually quite sophisticated emotionally. I get annoyed with commentary that talks like he is somehow simplistic or “doesn’t want to deal with his feelings.” That’s not what I see in him at all. I see a guy who has uncertain boundaries, who has a ton of emotions, has been trained not to show them, but he does the best he can to manage them. Sometimes awkwardly, sometimes poorly, but he does what he needs to do. Sometimes he has to be forced to it, but I relate to that, personally. I’m not a big initiator with Feelings Talks either and I have 5,000,000 feelings on any given day.

Here comes one of my favorite moments in the episode, and it’s a sheer acting moment. That’s all it is. It’s Ackles being awesome. Dean admits, seeming, again, like he’s 16 years old and talking to a student counselor, “I can’t talk with Sammy about this stuff. I gotta keep my game face on.” Honest. He’s working up to something. Something he wants to say. Something he REFUSED to say during “Everybody Loves a Clown.” It’s his private space, his private heart, what goes on with him when he is alone, and Gordon is the one who gets to hear that. Nobody else. We don’t always choose the right confidants.

Dean says, point-blank, and yet with an echo of reluctance, “Truth is, I’m not handling it very well.”

Imagine what we know of Dean Winchester up to this point, and imagine what it feels like to make such an admission. Imagine how much he fights against it, even with himself. And here it is, with no veil over it anymore, nothing hiding it. To picture, again, how un-used to this sort of thing that Dean Winchester is … how much a comment like that would have been forbidden for his entire childhood … like, forBIDDEN. From “Bad Boys” in Season 9: You want to stay at the boys’ home and go to the dance with your girlfriend and be on the wrestling team? Too bad. Your dad’s here. Teenage Dean was crying in that scene, crying openly. Tears pouring down his face. We don’t see what happens when he goes to get back in the car waiting outside. But we can guess. Those tears would have been gone by the time he opened that car door. And he never fought back, and never complained, and never once said “I’m not handling [whatever it is] very well.” Picture John Winchester dealing with such a comment from his son. Dean is smart to hide that stuff. His survival techniques saved his ass. So it’s like he’s a tiny creature here crawling out from under a rock, and he keeps his eyes on Gordon the whole time, like he’s assessing how it’s going over. Will he be judged? Will Gordon think he’s soft, or not manly? How will Gordon “take” the admission?

Dean, still in that vulnerable space, says, “I feel I have this …” and Gordon completes the sentence off-screen: “Hole inside you?” Dean looks up and at Gordon. I love the shot. I love that Singer chose to stay on Dean and not cut to Gordon. Gordon’s words aren’t important, what is important is seeing Dean agree, and nod.

Gordon gives Dean a little pep-talk saying the hole inside him will help him do his job. Which, obviously, is already true, but we’re wading into murky waters where that “hole inside you” then becomes something to celebrate. Ain’t nothing to celebrate about having a hole inside you. Gordon is a hall of mirrors. Everyone in the vampire episodes are mirrors. Gordon says, “The hole just gets bigger and bigger and darker and darker?” Dean is caught, totally, in the truth of the moment, in the space between them, in the reflection coming at him across the table. It’s disorienting. There’s a tiny moment, look for it, where Dean actually blinks hard, as he’s listening, almost trying to snap himself out of it. Ackles. Seriously.

I mean, honestly, the show could conceivably go on forever. It does not live or die on its climax moments or its plot points. It’s moments like this, dark and dizzying and emotional, that keep the show on track. That’s why it’s a real ACTOR’S show, and it baffles me that it doesn’t get more attention for the superb work people are doing. This is some subtle complex shit.

Come on. Iconic.

10th scene
Exterior of Harvelle’s Roadhouse, with motorcycles gunning their engines, and a phone ringing inside. Here is our beloved Ellen, behind the bar, answering the phone. We then see Sam, back at the Adobe Court, sitting in the dark room. He’s reaching out. You know he’s worried. It’s interesting: Bobby still hasn’t really landed in the series as he eventually will, as the boys’ go-to guy. They’re busy establishing Ellen as a semi-regular, and so Sam calls her. Bobby becomes so much a part of their lives that it feels like they call him 20 times a day, to ask for advice, to ask him to look something up, to talk about their feelings. The show isn’t there yet.

When Ellen hears it’s Sam, she has a warm reaction, and it is so welcome when it comes. It is an energy rarely seen or felt in Supernatural. Friendliness. Openness. He’s calling about Gordon, does she know him? Sure she does, he’s a “real good hunter.” Sam says they’ve run into him and they’re kind of working a job with him and Ellen changes her tune so quickly you’d get whiplash. “Don’t do that, Sam.” He’s dangerous. Let him work the job alone, go your separate ways. She says, “He’s a good hunter like Hannibal Lecter is a good psychiatrist …” which gives us our second Silence of the Lambs reference in one episode.

11th scene
Empty shot glasses clutter the table. Dean and Gordon are in the process of closing the bar. The waitstaff are taking smoke breaks out break, bitching about the little romance going on at Table 2 who won’t close out their check.

Gordon is now pontificating on why he “loves” this life. Gordon loves it because it’s “black and white,” and here comes the theme of the episode and, on some level, the theme of the entire series.

The theme is given to a guest starring actor, and it’s a pretty heavy load of dialogue, top-loaded, as it were. “This. Is. The. Theme.” But Brown plays it so gracefully and truthfully that you don’t notice it. You just listen to him. At least that was my experience the first time watching. It is only on multiple watchings that I really notice the writers and creators putting into his mouth their main concerns with the entire series, and where they will be interested in exploring. Because Gordon does turn out to be a “bad guy,” although not in the classic sense. He has his reasons, just like everyone else does.

And what he is saying is part of the cathartic appeal of the show itself: seeing these clearly good guys fighting evil is attractive, affirming, it makes us feel good. But because it’s not Dean saying it, we have to question the truth of the words. We have to examine the source. It’s like those who love to moon about the profundity of Shakespeare’s line “To thine ownself be true,” and post it left and right on Facebook, as words to live by, somehow not realizing that Shakespeare put those words in the mouth of Polonius, one of the biggest boring-est blowhards to ever tread the boards. The man cannot speak without sounding like a badly-written Hallmark card. His son literally tries to flee the room the second his father enters it because he knows he’s just gonna get another boring speech. Polonius speaks in platitudes ONLY. (As my Shakespeare professor in grad school joked, “Polonius was born speaking in verse.”)

Bill Murray NAILED that dynamic when he played Polonius.

What Gordon is saying sounds reasonable, and, frankly, it’s a lot of what we’ve seen thus far in the show. Guys we have fallen in love with (and therefore they are “good”) fighting monsters, monsters whom we can’t expect to have any positive feelings about. That’s the show.

Not so fast … say the creators.

Gordon likes the life because right and wrong are clear. You kill something that is evil, you know what you are doing is right. Grey areas do not matter in hunting. They don’t matter “to us,” says Gordon, using the plural, looping Dean in with him, a subtle domination tactic that Dean doesn’t pick up on. Dean is not philosophical about hunting. He’s more of a grunt, a practical get-things-done guy. He hates it, on a lot of levels, and also knows he’s not fit for anything else. He hasn’t really questioned what he does or why. Why would he? You can also see how the hunter lifestyle would appeal to psychopaths, people who enjoy violence. It gives you permission. These are the implications of Gordon’s words, said in that gentle sing-song-y way, with that small friendly smile on his face. And watch Dean listening. He says at one point, “I’m not sure Sammy would agree with you,” but he says it laughing, his guard is down.

And that’s when Gordon says, point-blank, “Doesn’t seem like your brother is much like us.”

There is so much wrong with that statement, from the “us” at the end, to every other damn thing about it. It is setting up an “us against them” vibe, identical to what he was just doing with the monsters, although now he is putting Sam on the opposite side. It’s incredibly sinister. One must also consider the possibility that along with Sam’s lackluster enjoyment of decapitation, Gordon might sense that “other”-ness about Sam, that thing that sets him apart from not only other hunters but from other people. Whatever it is, and it’s a mixture of all of it, it’s a dividing tactic. It’s so against Dean’s rules. NO, says every fiber of his being, and you can see him look at Gordon like that, the peace between them broken a little bit. Gordon is brilliant emotionally, senses he may have gone a bit too far, and says, “I’m not saying he’s wrong. Just different.”

Dean is too deep in to extricate himself.

If he were thinking with his upstairs brain, he would say, “Thanks for the drinks, man. But me and my brother are gonna be heading off now.” Or, more confrontational, “Don’t talk about my little brother. Ever.” I have gotten into fights for less, and I’m not Dean Winchester. It shows how disoriented he is that he lets a comment like that slide, that he has let Gordon in this far. Need. It makes us do crazy things.

Gordon has made peace in the moment and says, “You and me? We were born to do this. It’s in our blood.”

It’s validating but it’s also … awful. And you can see all of that in the gigantic closeup of Dean that follows. He’s not quite as “happy” about being “born” to “do this” as Gordon is. Dean thinks his life sucks and his life DOES suck. But maybe Gordon is telling him something of use … maybe Gordon has the key on how to survive this life … maybe he needs to start encouraging THAT train of thought in his brain … you can see all of that wrestling for dominance in Ackles’ face in the closeup that closes the scene.

Also, the whole “it’s in our blood” thing. It’s a nice line, considering where Sam is going in the season. Of course the “blood” is also perfect, thematically, with vampires, but the feeling that what you do is who you are … that something like that, like violence and killing, is “in your blood” … these are very very dangerous waters, and you can see Gordon encouraging Dean to get his feet wet in them. It’s so subtle, though, and Gordon is so friendly, you couldn’t really clock him on it.

12th scene
Back at the lonely Adobe Court, Sam stands at a vending machine outside getting a soda. What is it with Supernatural and vending machines. I should edit all of their appearances together. They’re always strange and beautiful, bright neon signs of normalcy and regular life beaming through the black oily darkness of their lives. Norman Rockwell in the middle of a monster movie.

Also, that camera angle makes me deeply uneasy. So does the one following, where the camera peeks out from behind a nearby wall, staring at Sam. As he walks back to the room he is stalked from every possible angle. Behind cars. Across the lot. It’s insane. I am picturing Singer and his crew racing around the parking lot repeatedly, different set-ups, and Padalecki having to have to keep walking over the same patch of pavement to get that weird stalking effect. Sam himself gets spooked. (“Why are there cameramen stalking me??”) He lets himself into the room, and almost laughs at himself for getting scared, and, of course, any time anyone laughs after you are stalked like that by a camera, you are in for trouble. Sam is jumped by two guys. He gets in a couple of good punches but then one whales him on the back of the head with a rotary phone and Sammy goes down.

13th scene
A car drives across a wooden bridge, showing the gleam of a sunset on the horizon (which is confusing timeline-wise – this should be the middle of the night), and it is as beautiful as a painting.

The scene fades out, and it’s an ominous sign. Supernatural doesn’t use fade-outs typically. When the scene fades back in we see Sam sitting there, wherever he is, with a hood over his head, tied to a chair. The scene fades out again, but now it’s because we’re inside that hood with Sam. The hood is whipped off and we see Benny (sorry, can’t help it, his name here is Eli), blurry, looming above him.

Sam is completely freaked out, a gag around his mouth, and trying to understand where he is, what has happened, and why that bartender is here. You can see Sam’s brain whirling to compute the information in front of him. Then, Eli opens his mouth, and fangs descend. He menaces over Sam, who struggles, mightily, and then a voice comes from the side, “Eli. Stop.”

A woman stands at the door. She is Amber Benson, the wonderful actress that people will remember from Buffy, a nice little vampire-nod.

There’s another nod, in her name, and I only know this because of Bram Stoker quoting it in Dracula, so there you go with the vampire associations and how deep they go in “Bloodlust”.

Benson’s character is named Lenore. Lenore is a “good” vampire, and she will also return in the series, much later, when the boys need Intel on what is happening, they need a monster on their side. It’s kind of beautiful, and Amber Benson does an absolutely unforgettable job in this role, particularly the last scene with the torture. She’s kick-ass in her technique, in her belief in what she is doing, in the physicality of the part (the way she retracts her fangs back into her mouth, almost like it hurts her, like a canker sore). And she plays her part with a beautiful simplicity that makes it impossible not to consider what she is saying and places her in the starkest of contrasts with black-and-white Gordon. If Amber weren’t as compelling, as complex (she ain’t the vampires from Dead Man’s Blood), we wouldn’t have that necessary contrast. Dean has to look at her being tortured and his conscience has to start operating again. The same way it would operate if he saw an animal being tortured. Or, hell, a fellow human. Just because she is not human does not mean that torturing her is right. We really really need to GET that, the rest of the season depends on it. So she was clearly the right actress for the role.

But back to the name “Lenore.” Lenore was an 18th century poem by Gottfried August Bürger and considered to be one of the first vampire stories. It had a huge influence on German Romanticism and also a huge influence on Bram Stoker. The poem is not really about vampires, it’s more about the undead. It’s a horror story, told in ballad-form. Bram Stoker quoted a line from it in Dracula. “Lenore” is quite creepy, involving a “double,” a man who looks like Lenore’s fiancé showing up at her doorstep and summoning her. She goes with him, he tells her he is taking her to their marriage bed. They gallop away. And where does he take her? To a cemetery.

And swiftly up to an iron gate

With reins relaxed they went;
At the rider’s touch the bolts flew back.

And the bars were broken and bent;
The doors were burst with a deafening knell,
And over the white graves they dashed pell mell:
The tombs around looked grassy and grim,
As they glimmered and glanced in the moonlight dim.

But see! but see! in an eyelid’s beat,

Towhoo! a ghastly wonder!
The horseman’s jerkin, piece by piece.

Dropped off like brittle tinder!
Fleshless and hairless, a naked skull,
The sight of his weird head was horrible;
The lifelike mask was there no more.
And a scythe and a sandglass the skeleton bore.

Shivers. Here is Lenore and her so-called fiancé, by Johann David Schubert.

Notice that “Death” in Lenore carries a scythe, just like Gordon carried in that opening.

I love smartypants dovetailing like this.

Just to take this association a little bit farther: In the poem, Lenore is tricked by a double to follow him. She thinks he is her fiancé. It is only when they are at their final destination that he reveals himself for who he is. We can see that duplicitousness in the vampire lifestyle, of course: they parade around as “doubles,” masquerading as humans until it’s too late for the humans to escape. But there’s another way “Lenore” the poem is reflected in the episode. Dean has followed a kind of “double,” in Gordon. He believes in Gordon, and believes that Gordon is like him. It’s a compelling offer from Gordon, one he can’t be faulted for finding appealing. Escape, validation, understanding. It is only late in the episode that Dean sees Gordon for what he is, and that’s after a TON of fighting with Sam, bitter angry fighting, as hot as it has ever gotten between them.

These literary associations are fun to track down and follow because sometimes other issues are cracked open, that may be deliberate or not, it doesn’t matter. They’re there for the picking.

Lenore comes into the room and Eli subsides, resentfully. Sam is aggressive and pissed, and she meets that with calm reasonableness, the same way Gordon does, and it has a similar disorienting effect. Is this just a line? She’s a vampire. Why should I trust a word she says? Also, her goons knocked me on the back of the head. She has kidnapped him to plead her case. They do not kill people. They kill animals (hence the cattle mutilations). It is “disgusting,” she says, but they just want to live in peace with others. They are leaving this town tonight. They don’t want to be followed.

Sam is very verbal, and very pissed. She explains to him that she will prove that they are different from the others. She is going to let him go. Without a scratch on him.

Well played, Lenore.

The art direction and cinematography of this scene is achingly romantic: dark, with blue light through the blinds, and a dim lamp lit in the corner. It’s not exactly friendly light but it’s also not hostile, it’s not like the sawmill lighting. This is a makeshift home. Identical to the abandoned homes Sam and Dean sometimes squat in.

Sam is led out of the house, with the hood over his head. He’s going home.

13th scene

Dean and Gordon sit in the motel room at the Adobe Court, and Gordon is showing Dean the vampire’s trail on a map. They are looking for the nest. They now appear to be working together, or at least Dean assumes so. He wonders out loud where the hell is Sam and then does that eye-rub with the back of his hand which I’ve mentioned ad nauseum. His sleepy gesture. It’s vulnerable and childlike, compulsive. Dirty Harry doesn’t rub his eyes with the back of his hand.

Gordon says maybe Sam “went for a walk,” and underneath that benign comment you can hear something else brewing. He’s being casual, but his opinion of Sam is in that comment. He hits the “k” in walk in a way that somehow shows contempt. Brown is great.

Sam then enters, and sees Gordon sitting there. The three men all stare at each other for a long moment. Nobody speaks. It’s like Sam is a jealous husband, catching his wife with her mistress. Or a jealous wife catching her husband with another woman. Or man. Or whatever. Sam asks Dean if they can talk privately. Once outside in the parking lot, Sam says that maybe they need to “rethink this hunt.”

And here comes a fanTAStic scene, an argument scene that has literally everything in it. It has an argument about the vampires and the case they are working. It has an ideological struggle between Sam and Dean, between black-and-white thinking and grey-area thinking. It has their father’s death in it. It has Gordon in it. Gordon’s entry into their world has made such an argument inevitable. There’s also a cumulative thing going on, which the show has now started to excel in, and we saw them experiment with in Season 1. The argument in “Everybody Loves a Clown” had its own thrust, and the final scene in that episode showed the underbelly for Dean. And here, they go further into that landscape, a treacherous one. Sam is calling Dean out on the Gordon situation, and what is really going on there, and Dean, naturally, hits the roof (as well as Sam, and it’s a hell of a stage punch. It’s awesome). Dean is vulnerable. He’s vulnerable because of Gordon, and what Gordon is bringing up in him, and Sam is calling him on that. Not nicely or gently, but desperate times call for desperate measures. These guys don’t have the time to be loving and gentle with one another, the stakes are too high.

You could also see it from Dean’s point of view, too. Sam was “giving him a hard time” about the Impala and being psyched to work a case. Now he’s “giving him a hard time” about making a new friend. Is the world conspiring against me? People get MAD when I get happy? I’m not saying that’s there, it might not be, but it’s certainly an interesting possibility.

Dean goes into lock-down. “I don’t know why they let you go. I don’t really care. We find them and we waste them.”

When Dean calls up Gordon as an expert witness to back up his argument, Sam goes right to it. How long have you known this guy? Besides, Ellen says he’s bad news. “You called Ellen?” Dean couldn’t be more contemptuous. “We barely know her.”

As fights often go, Sam busts out the Mean, before he can even stop it. You can see it happen. He decides to talk about what’s REALLY going on. It is so often how fights happen, right? You don’t MEAN to get mean, but once you’re THERE, you start to say shit that maybe you would think twice about if you weren’t in the thick of it, or you might try to soft-pedal if you were thinking clearly. I love the gear-shift we see in Padalecki around this time in the scene. Something else starts rising. It’s old stuff. Bitter angry old stuff. Family stuff. Dean being un-reachable in many ways makes it worse. Dean doesn’t share. But Sam sees what’s going on. With no preamble, he rips down the veil. No wonder Dean punches him in the face.

“You don’t think I can’t see what’s going on? Gordon’s a substitute for Dad. And a poor one.”

Dean is blindsided, starts laughing and walks away. He has to walk away. It’s too much. Sam is still on him though, on him tight, saying, “He’s not even close, Dean. Not on his best day.” Which, ouch. Truthful, but ouch. He’s calling into question Dean’s judgment. If they stopped fighting right here and now, nobody would get punched. But of course it keeps going, even as Dean is trying to extricate himself. Sam can’t let it go. The Gordon thing has GOT to be handled, addressed. Gordon is dangerous, and Dean’s judgment is impaired. Sam goes for the jugular: You put on this big smile but I see what’s going on. Dad’s death has left a huge hole but you can’t fill it with Gordon: “It’s an insult to his memory.”

That, that right there, is going too far. Sam probably wouldn’t have said it if they hadn’t been mid-fight and he was on a roll. Dean has an electric inward-looking response, nodding quickly to himself, starting to turn away, but only so he can get the distance he needs to punch Sam in the face. Padalecki reeling back, the way he cries out, it all looks totally real. These guys are so good at stage-combat stuff. World-class.

Sam had that one coming. But Sam is also right, in this particular case. He recovers from the punch, holding his mouth, saying, “You can hit me all you want, Dean …” and there’s something about that language that really touches me. It’s so specific. A specific KIND of brother relationship between two very specific men. Men who have punched each other before. Men who are not unfamiliar with being punched and punching. Tough Guys, in other words. It comes up in the final scene as well. These guys are violent guys. And sometimes they turn it on each other. Then they move on, black eyes, cut lips, no hard feelings.

While the fight has opened up new ground, they are still at the same impasse. Dean is going to head out and find that vampire nest and exterminate all of those sons-of-bitches, and he will do so with even more gusto now that he’s piiiiiiiiissed.

They come back into the motel room and Gordon isn’t there. Gordon has obviously gone to find the nest. “Dean, we need to stop him,” says Sam, which makes me love him. After all that, after being punched, he sticks to his guns. These are some pretty opinionated people. He is not afraid of his brother. Well, he is a little bit afraid, but not that much. Dean can be overwhelming, and Sam isn’t biting. Sam pleads to Dean to “give me the benefit of the doubt” about this one – “You owe me that.” Which is a fascinating comment, if you think about it. It’s not explored further. It’s perhaps a bit manipulative, but there’s also truth in it, and I do like thinking about it. “You owe me that.”

All of it is a moot point however because Gordon has swiped the Impala car keys (a closeup of the empty cactus statue), so that the boys won’t be able to follow him.

Dean is now reduced to hot-wiring his own car, which he hates doing, because he just fixed her up perfect and it’s kind of a violation, to treat his car this way. She deserves to have a key in her ignition, not her wires sparked together like every other car they steal. Humorous. Sam sits in the passenger seat. They don’t even know where the hell they are going but the only evidence they have is that Sam was already out at the place, hooded, yes, but he was there.

The following small scene, as Sam describes what he remembers from that drive, is one of those beautiful moments when you see how extraordinary these two guys are. It’s also a moment where Sam is truly impressive (he’s actually been “impressive” this entire episode) and Dean gets the memo. One of the things that the writers of this show do so well, for the most part, is modulate the emotional experience of a really really intimate relationship. If it were climax-climax-climax constantly, everyone would get worn out. It understands that fights unfurl in unpredictable ways and sort of leave lingering effects in the conversations that follow, and yet at the same time, people move on, because there’s shit to do and there’s a case to work. Sam is looking at the map, and trying to figure out where the hell he was taken. He knows they went over a wooden bridge. He knows the turns. They went left, they went right. They were on the road for 4 and a half minutes after such and such. “How do you know that?” asks Dean. Sam says, “I counted,” and he’s so tough and impressive I want a statue to be erected of him in the town square. Even Dean looks taken aback. “You’re good,” he says. “You’re a monster pain in the ass, but you’re good.”

Imagine filming these scenes out of sequence. Imagine how carefully these actors track every emotional up-and-down through the episode, so they can tap into it, regardless of where they are chronologically. This may have been the first scene they shot. Or maybe the last scene over the Impala was the first scene they shot. Who knows. All I know is, these guys have to keep track of that stuff. And in the small wary scene in the car you can feel the weight of that fight between them, and the Gordon moments that came before. It’s all there.

14th scene
Lenore and Eli are packing up their belongings in the dead of night. They argue, just like Sam and Dean just argued. It is both practical and ideological. Eli wants to stay and fight the three hunters. It’s self-defense at this point. Lenore is firm. No. We’re outnumbered, there are more where those three came from. Eli says, “You can’t reason with these people …” and he sounds just like Dean arguing with Sam (“They aren’t human, Sam. We kill them.”) Lenore knows it’s unfair, but she refuses to give up hope that they will be allowed to live without interference. She is gentle with Eli, encouraging, saying, “If we can change, they can change.”

So you see how interesting all of this is. Vampires are talking about the stars of the show. The heroes. But the script is calling into question the lifestyle of our heroes, and their mindset. Perhaps this could only happen once John was dead, although you could see elements of it cropping up from time to time through Season 1. But here is the real grappling, the real psychological and philosophical dilemma. It is from this ground that you get 10 seasons, from that ambiguity, from the Hall of Mirrors, from the prism (let’s point it this way, let’s point it that way), the deep questioning that the show is interested in doing. To ask questions of the heroes, to put them in the witness stand, to have them have to defend their choices … to themselves … it’s a fascinating way for the show to go, and it’s the vampires (who were once human, who look like humans, who group up like humans) that allow the show to do that. The show wants us to relate to them, to hope that Sam and Dean will choose ANOTHER way to be heroic, something that goes against the grain of their training.

15th scene
Some gorgeous nighttime driving shots, showing Gordon driving over the wooden bridge, turning left, turning right, and then the Impala as well, far behind. A convergence. There’s a great small moment in the Impala, with Sam reading the map. Dean glances over at his brother for a long while, then turns back to the road. Sam glances up, and looks over at Dean for a long while as well. And that’s it. That’s the kind of behavioral detail that turns Robert Singer on, the kinds of small moments of behavior that reveal emotion and relationship that are the linch-pins of any show. Imagine how much you would miss such a moment if it were not there. And think of the subtlety such a wordless moment brings.

In those looks is everything they’ve been fighting about, as well as the worry about what they are walking into. Sam, in particular, looks very worried. What if he’s wrong about this?

16th scene
Lenore packs up the car. Amber Benson’s coloring is so striking and dramatic, with black hair and white skin. She was made to be filmed at night, by a cinematographer like Serge Ladouceur who knows how to do it.

She is jumped by Gordon, who holds a knife to her throat. The framing is beautiful, her paleness, his dark skin, creating a stunning effect. It’s sexy and violent, intimate and scary. They look gorgeous together onscreen.

In one of the most chilling moments in the series thus far, Gordon holds out the knife, dripping with blood, and plunges it into her torso. We hear the squishy sound of it going in and see her collapse. He whispers in her ear, “Dead man’s blood, bitch.”

We don’t have any feelings when Dean and Sam torch a Wendigo. Or burn up some bones. The only thing we feel is: “Job well done, boys. And nice hair.” We aren’t meant to have feelings for the monsters. That’s been set up, quite clearly, throughout. But it is impossible to not have “feelings” for the vampires. Even with Luther and Kate, and their ghoulish biker-bar strange-ness, they were recognizably human, and their love for one another was real.

And there’s something about Gordon’s whisper to her that is the key. Yes, you must hunt and kill evil things. But you can’t enjoy it too much. You can’t get OFF on it. You have to approach your job with an appropriate sense of humility and sorrow. Throwing back shots in celebration, and drawing out a kill so that the torture is prolonged … it’s against some totally unspoken unwritten code. You just don’t DO that. It’s a difficult concept and one that human beings have struggled with for centuries. You know. The Geneva Convention was created because human nature is understood to not be trustworthy during wartime. (I love that Dean makes a crack about the Geneva Convention during “Larp and the Real Girl” in Season 8.)

To show restraint in HOW you kill is what Sam is asking for, at least. Don’t REVEL in killing. He saw how slowly Dean lowered that saw in order to prolong the agony. He does not want to see Dean go down that road. That is the road that Gordon beckons from. It’s the natural result of black-and-white thinking. If you dehumanize your enemy, then it is easy to justify whatever you want to do to them. It’s why I don’t agree with political language that utilizes those broad types, because when you categorize whole groups of people with one word, then it would be easy to look upon them as sub-human. Right and Left both do this, so there’s no getting out of it: it’s what “we” do when we are fighting a fight we believe in. “Bloodlust” is all about that, all about the dangers of that.

17th scene
It’s exactly where we go in the next scene, which opens with a closeup of a knife being dipped in a mason jar of dead man’s blood. We don’t know where we are. No establishing shot, not yet. We see the knife, dripping blood, being turned this way and that, and Gordon looking at it. Then we see Lenore, and the change that has been brought about since we last saw her two seconds ago is heart-rending. She is drenched in sweat, her eyes having lost focus, rolling back, blood dripping from her nose, her throat. She is clearly in distress and Gordon is clearly drawing it out. He delicately dips the knife in the blood, and draws it across her chest slowly.

What “Bloodlust” cracks open is what the hunter life does to the people who live it. We’ve gotten glimpses of it with John Winchester, but that’s messed up because he is such a dominating figure in the boys’ imaginations. But here we see what hunting has done to Gordon. Who he has become. In a lesser show, we wouldn’t see how living like this impacted Sam and Dean at all, they would float above their own reality, sure in the knowledge that they were on the right side, and it’d all be very superhero-y and uninteresting. And think about Season 9 and what was revealed (and had been revealed before, all along the way). These guys have been shattered by the lives they have lived, and the accumulation of horrible shit. Sam has picked up the pieces. He is somewhat broken but he has also found some peace in how he lives and what he is doing. Dean, on the other hand, has been ruined. Finally. He held on as long as he could. He really did. There are a lot of reasons why I am in love with Supernatural, but one of the main ones is the sense you get, especially in re-watching, of the cumulative effects of their lifestyle – of how finally … they both get tapped OUT. Enough. No more. Can’t take anymore. No. No. No.

Dean and Sam enter the room during Gordon’s slow and loving torture of Lenore. Their movements are tentative when they see what is happening. Whatever reservations Dean may have had, whatever he felt about vampires in general … what he sees before him makes him stop. There’s something not right about this. Even John Winchester didn’t act like this. But be careful of drawing too clear a line, you can’t separate them out that easily. Dean HAS felt like Gordon, and HAS enjoyed killing things, and has yelled, “Come and get me, bitch” at the various monsters who threaten him. However, in this moment, as an observer, he can now see what that might look like. He can now see the danger of it, the ugliness of it.

This is Dean’s “Lenore-moment” when the mask drops and Gordon is revealed for who he really is.

Instead of charging forward to stop the torture, both Sam and Dean stop, realizing they are in the presence of an extremely volatile man. Dean says, calmly, “Gordon. What’s going on.”

Gordon is calm. “Poisoning Lenore here. Wanna help?”

Obviously what we are seeing is not strictly sexual in nature, but the title of the episode, plus the sexualized mood of the vampire episodes, is being tapped into, and there are three men in that room, and one woman, and she is tied up and bloody, and Gordon saying to Dean, “Hey man, wanna help?” has unavoidable gang-rape connotations. You can see Dean feel a little bit sick at the offer. Or maybe it’s the wording that he doesn’t like. The word “help.” It’s just not how he and Sam do things.

Dean says, “Okay … let’s all just chill out for a second,” and Gordon smiles, and says, “I’m completely chill.” That’s the problem.

When Sammy steps forward and tells Gordon to put the knife down, Gordon keeps his eyes on Dean, and says, “Looks like Sammy is the one who needs to chill.” That use of “Sammy”. Oh, Gordon. Don’t. You do not want to go up against the Winchester brothers when they are in sync. Because suddenly, magically, they are in sync. I love that they didn’t have a moment of verbal agreement, of “Okay, Sammy, I’ll back you up” or anything like that. It seems to happen the second they both walk into that room.

When Sam moves forward to stop it, Gordon holds a knife on him. Dean is gentle, like a hostage negotiator, not making any sudden moves, moving slowly into the room, trying to defuse the situation. But he does not realize what he is dealing with. He has misunderstood. He assumed that Gordon’s sister was killed by a vampire, and so he is acting out of revenge on all vampires. Gordon laughs a little bit (and Brown plays the entire thing from a place of total iron-clad reason and it is why the performance is so effective). No, the vampire didn’t kill his sister. It “turned” her. And Gordon hunted her down and killed her himself.

“You did what?” asks Dean.

“I didn’t blink. And neither would you,” Gordon says.

Now. Think of Dean’s secret. His father’s whisper in his ear. I wasn’t even thinking about it during this particular scene on my first watching. I was swept up in the moment. But now? Now Dean’s memory of what his father whispered to him is ALL I can see. That’s ALL that Jensen Ackles is playing. The memory of that whisper, and how Gordon is basically echoing what Dean will have to face. Dean’s worst fear. As Gordon tells the story of his sister, the camera stays on Dean. What we see is John’s whisper. Or that’s what I see. It’s soul-rattling, Dean is realizing that he is going to have to face that sooner or later. Gordon has a knife on Sam. Gordon has clocked Sam as “different,” and Dean, at first, conceded that point. Yeah, Sam is different. But now … now all of that is seen through a different prism. Yes, Sam is different, and Sam’s moral compass remained intact during this vampire psychological mess, while Dean lost his. And Dean needs Sam for that reality check, and Dean will protect Sam’s right to be different. Fuck his father’s goddamned whisper. Fuck everyone who tries to come between him and his brother.

It’s a hell of a shot. It looked entirely different once I had seen more of the season. In that shot, we see where we are going to go. We see Dean’s dilemma. We see him start thinking again.

To prove his point, Gordon reaches out quickly and slashes a cut into Sam’s arm, dragging him over to where Lenore is sitting. Just as quickly, Dean has his gun out, pointing it at Gordon. Gordon remains “completely chill,” his voice gentle, reasonable. He just wants to show them something about this supposedly nice vampire. Gordon holds Sam’s cut arm up over Lenore’s head and drips Sam’s blood on her face. It’s terrible. Lenore fights her own nature until she can’t anymore, and lashes out, fangs descending, needing, wanting, gasping for what she needs. Amber Benson has done her job. Because I look at that terrifying creature and I ache for her. Not an easy feat.

Gordon keeps his eyes on Dean the whole time. Sam is irrelevant to Gordon, not “one of us”. Dean is so uncomfortable at what is going on. He is uncomfortable because of Gordon, he is uncomfortable because he is looking at Lenore in pain and has feelings for her. His whole world is falling apart. Everything he knows … shifting.

It’s an incredibly unstable moment for Dean to have. But everything has become clear to him now. Clear as in: Grey Area clear. No, this situation is NOT black-and-white. There are exceptions, there is context to consider. And get your fucking hands off my brother.

Meanwhile, Lenore, painfully, retracts her fangs (I love how she does it, how it hurts her to pull her lips down over her teeth, how every fiber of her being resists), and starts crying out, fighting back her own need, “No … no …”

Dear Amber Benson, your acting rocks.

Now this, this is something new for Dean. He has now watched a monster fight its own destiny. There it is, right in front of him. The moment has changed the air in the room, Sam is now able to move Gordon’s knife off of his chest, and Gordon backs off. Sam scoops Lenore up in his arms and leaves the room, leaving Gordon and Dean alone.

Time for a break-up scene.

But first, we get a gorgeous Dirty Harry shot, identical to the couple we had in “Salvation,” with the gun in the foreground, then the focus switching to Dean behind it. And the look on Dean’s face … the blurry lighting behind him, the pale skin, the shadow cast by the eyelashes, the lips … It’s basically a psychedelic album cover from 1972.

It’s over-the-top in its beauty and it looks totally easy. Not self-conscious. Not making a point of the beauty, but just presenting it in a way that seems inevitable and right.

Gordon can’t believe the turn of events and Dean, frankly, can’t either. “But I know what I saw,” says Dean. More than that, he’s going to stand with his brother. He doesn’t SAY that, but it was Sam who pushed him to it. Gordon says calmly, “Get out of my way.” No can do, padre. Finally, in an air of concession, Gordon sticks his big shiny knife into the table, essentially saying “Here. I’m un-armed now.” Dean, again, misses the signs. He’s susceptible to men, he’s not at his A-game with men. He takes the clip out of his gun, so now, okay? We okay now? (Dean’s “we okay now” thing is one of his most beautiful and human qualities, vulnerable and somewhat fragile, but, as is so often the case, it is also an Achilles heel.)

The second Dean relaxes, Gordon grabs his knife again and is on him. Dean actually makes a sound like, “Really? You just tricked me into dis-arming? Come ON, man, that’s not fair.” It’s grade-school. I love it. And that sound is 100% Ackles’ choice. The fight that follows is brutal. Dean is un-armed, Gordon has a knife. Dean has no choice but to go all Velociraptor on this guy’s ass. He’s slamming Gordon’s arm against the wall, again, and again, and again, to dislodge the knife, and you definitely feel like these guys are about to actually kill one another. Dean is fighting from a place of betrayal, of having been tricked, of having bought Gordon’s bullshit, of having allowed himself to be seduced.

Faulty Radar Story #2
I got “tricked” by a guy in 2012, and when I broke up with him I said shit I wish I could take back, let me tell you. I hurt him. On purpose. Yes, he withheld information from me, but I went for the jugular in response. Not normally my M.O. Not my finest hour. In calmer moments, I can say, “Well. I had allowed myself to get swept away. I could have stopped it at this particular point, but I didn’t. If I could do it over again, I would do blah blah blah …” You know, trying to make it a learning experience, and take some responsibility for my part in it. But in that first moment of realizing I had been tricked? Vicious Sheila came out and I’d rather not encourage HER to flourish. She’s nasty! When one feels like one is tricked, horrible stuff can come out. Revenge. Bloodlust. Pound of flesh.
Faulty Radar Story #2 Over

Both actors are brilliant, physically. Creating a fight like this takes trust and expertise. What they are doing looks dangerous, and it’s all fake. It’s all hand-to-hand combat. Dean is pushed backward, where he crashes down into a table, putting him at a disadvantage and giving Gordon time to re-group. Gordon goes back to his sales pitch, but he sounds defensive now, a bit, like he needs to know that Dean “gets” him.

He’s disappointed, more than anything else, and disappointment like that is toxic. “You’re not like your brother,” says Gordon, again, separating Dean out from his family, “You’re a killer. Like me.” Dean, desperate, whips his legs out, kicking Gordon’s legs out from under him, and the fight continues on the floor. The sounds of the punches are Mike Tyson-level brutal. Gordon goes into a glass cabinet. Dean gets the upper hand, and you can feel things shift for him. He’s gonna get his now. Gordon is his now. It’s not pretty, but that’s what happens with betrayal/trickery. Gordon tries to get free, and Dean almost bats his arms away, like, “Please. You’re mine now.” The worst/best is when Dean gets Gordon in a chokehold and drags him into the next room, “accidentally” bumping Gordon’s head into the doorframe, saying, “Oops. Sorry.”

You can see how we are entirely in the grey area now:

— Gordon is “bad,” but he intersects with Dean in many ways so that we see where he’s coming from.
— Vampires are “bad,” but Lenore is at war with herself to live without hurting anyone else.
— Sam has a secret, which we don’t know yet, that is supposedly going to make him attracted to the dark side, and yet in this case it has helped him keep his critical thinking skills intact, and to see that no, killing these vampires is not the right thing to do. He’s not siding with evil, he’s siding with restraint.
— And Dean is like a kid in a scuffle on the playground. If a teacher were there, she would have pulled Gordon and Dean apart and sent them to separate corners. Neither of them can play fair, not with each other. They are Mirror Images. They are practically merged. And so you want to destroy that mirror. It MUST be destroyed. Part of what happens when you destroy that mirror is that you are destroying the part of yourself that saw the reflection and recognized it and loved it. No, no, no, that is not me, no, no.

So how on earth you stage a fist fight and manage to incorporate all of that in it, I don’t know, but they have done it.

In what looks like Bobby’s main room (clearly the same set), Dean is now tying Gordon to a chair, whispering in Gordon’s ear, “I might be like you … maybe not …” and then sneering, “But you’re the one tied up right now.”

Alpha Dog. He had to get that status back, just to be able to live with himself. What the hell just happened to him over the last two days with Gordon? He will shiver with revulsion when he thinks back on it.

But in those words to Gordon, you can also hear the philosophical ideas that have started to play out since the premiere of Season 2: The role of destiny in our lives. How we feel about destiny and how we interact with it (or the concept of it) is important. Dean thinks destiny is “crap”, and that opinion will continue to reverberate through the series in various arguments, celestial and otherwise. You could even call it Dean’s religion. We get to choose our own way. A fascinating viewpoint, considering the “destiny” his father has assigned to him from his earliest days. So yeah, maybe he saw himself in Gordon, and Gordon reflected something back to him, something that was truthful and something that Dean wanted to hear. But he gets to choose.

I love Dean’s sneered whisper to Gordon, because it is petty and philosophical, in the very same moment.

18th scene
The sun rises over the farmlands. Gordon, still tied up, sits in the chair, looking inward, impenetrable. There is nothing on his face.

One of the things we will learn about Gordon is that he has a gold medal in patience at an Olympic level of the sport. He does not rush. He does not panic. It is why (probably) he is such a good vampire tracker. He is able to wait. And so he sits there. And he waits. But make no mistake, Dean and Sam have made an enemy for life, and he will return again and again.

The show NEEDS Gordon. He always brings awesome things with him. Difficult things. Moral dilemmas.

Look at how beautiful this is.

Dean paces around Gordon, waiting for Sam to return. I guess Sam had to organize the vampire evacuation. Dean’s face is swollen, his ribs hurt, everything hurts. The adrenaline of the fight is gone. He hurts everywhere now. Sam returns. The only thing in Gordon that moves are his eyes. And they are murderous.

But Supernatural isn’t done yet. If Sam and Dean left the room at that moment, we might have a nice comfy feeling that right has won the day over wrong. But Gamble et al push that envelope. It needs to be pushed. Sam wants to leave but Dean says quietly, not yet. He’s not done here yet. He proceeds to tease Gordon, asking him if he needs to “tinkle” yet, and not to worry, they’ll call someone in a couple of days to come out and pull him out of his own mess. Dean is enjoying himself. And Gordon is tied up. Gordon is no longer a foe to be feared. He has been vanquished. For the moment. Dean is bullying a guy with his hands tied behind his back who can’t fight back. Totally unfair. Again, the schoolyard comes to mind, and “pick on someone your own size.” Dean is crossing that line. On purpose. Just a tiny bit and perhaps, yeah, it’s understandable, but you can’t tell me it’s not murky morally. It HAS to be. That’s what the whole episode is about. If you explain it away and defend Dean completely you’re purposefully missing that moral dilemma. That’s what Gordon brings with him. There ISN’T a big difference between Gordon and Dean. Gordon tortured Lenore while she was tied up. And if we can explain Dean’s actions, then we can explain Gordon’s too. That’s how proper morality works. And it’s a mess, as it should be. Hooray!

There’s a great line in This Is the End, where Seth Rogen says to Jay Baruchel, “You can’t be a sore winner in life.” Being a sore winner, a “nyah nyah nyah I won” person is even worse than being a sore loser. And Dean is being a sore winner.

He punches Gordon in the face, and Gordon and chair topple over.

Dean calmly turns to Sam and says, “We can go now. I’m done.”

20th scene
Filmed in the early sunrise light, one of the best times of day to catch natural beauty, this scene is where the Importance of Beauty goes into such overdrive that I have to watch the scene a couple of times to even hear what they are freakin’ saying because I get distracted by how their eyes blaze with translucence, or their eyelashes cast shadows, or whatever. The beauty is as disorienting as the episode itself. Ah, let us mourn the beauty of Supernatural, at least as it was in these early seasons.

Dean and Sam exit the house. Sam is tall and strong and un-marked. Well, he has a tourniquet on his arm where Gordon cut him. But other than that, he looks strong and perfect. Dean, on the other hand, is a wreck. He’s got a black eye, his cheek is swollen, it hurts to walk. It feels like it’s been forever since the start of the episode, with Dean flirting with his Impala, laughing and light-hearted. Look at how the pendulum has swung. That’s the fragility of his psyche, the house of cards aspect to it.

So the only thing he can do, to make things right, because he knows he deserves it, is to ask Sam to take a swing at him. It’s hilarious. “Come on. Clock me one. A freebie. I won’t even hit you back.”

Watch Ackles’ hand gestures. Why they crack me up I don’t know, but they do. And Sam stares at his brother, and laughs. No. “You look like you just went 12 rounds with a block of cement. I’m not hitting you.”

Dean knows he’s been an ass, and he knows that he threw Sam under the bus. Letting Sam hit him would make Dean feel better. I may be nuts but I understand that reaction. It’s super-annoying, when it’s coming at me in my own life, but I get it. “Please. Hurt me, just to even the scales. Then we can move on.”

Sam asks to “take a rain check” on that offer (funny) and starts back to the car, leaving Dean in his own upset. Dean says, “I wish we never took this job. It’s jacked everything up,” and you ache for the fragility of his good-times, his happy-times. The “happy times” aren’t really based on anything, unfortunately. He gets SO much pleasure from the simple things, the cars, the food, the drinks, the sex, the music … but what is happening now is way too big to be combatted with the Impala or anything else. His inner life is starting to DEMAND to be handled, or at least acknowledged, just as Sam predicted it would in “Everybody Loves a Clown.” Dean seems truly distressed. He misses being happy, like, two days ago.

There are beautiful shots of both guys, with perfect crystal-clear reflections of them in the hood of the Impala, the car is so shiny and brand-new, it’s a mirror.

Sam is already moving on, he didn’t get as caught up in the psychodrama of the episode as Dean did, so Dean’s language – “jacked up” and his tone – gets Sam’s attention. He’s not sure what Dean means. Dean can be pretty forbidding anyway about his inner life, policing areas where you’re not allowed to go, stuff you’re not supposed to say, he’s in a constant state of anxiety over what the hell is going on and how he can control it. Sam is left to make guesses as to what’s happening. He’s right on target sometimes, but the subtleties are often lost to him. I’m not sure Sam has a concept of just how deep this shit goes with his brother, and, of course, he knows nothing about the whisper from John.

Dean doesn’t have much to say about Gordon, as the two men talk over the hood of the Impala. He is “jacked up” because the experience with Lenore has now made him think about his childhood, and how they were trained to kill, and what if they had killed some things that didn’t deserve it? Dean hates monsters. He hates them. But now he’s questioning things. I can’t remember where else I said this, but when Dean questions things he becomes extremely unstable. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. As a matter of fact, it’s hopeful. Instability allows the grey areas to exist.

And very interesting: Dean is talking about “how we were raised,” which is normally a Sam type of line, a type of thinking that has made Dean get his back up in the past. Since John’s death, Sam has suddenly taken on being a “good son” and gung-ho hunter and talking about “it’s an insult to Dad’s memory”, all as Dean starts to question the very foundation on which he was raised … It makes me think of that scene in “Nightmare” from Season 1 when Sam suddenly says, “We’re lucky we had Dad.” Dean’s not sure what to do with that.

Talk about Destiny. Dean is used to sticking up for Dad, toeing the party line, defending Dad, all that … and when Sam slowly starts to change (as people do in life, especially post-death – you start to see other things come into play) – it leaves Dean swinging in the wind, alone, without anything to do. Dean couldn’t ever say that. He’s not there yet. He and his father had a very specific relationship, twisted and dark, and it has left him vulnerable to predators like Gordon. But he’s in a bind. If Sam rants and raves about how Dad was an asshole, then Dean will automatically have to stick up for Dad. It’s engrained. But when Sam says stuff like, “He did the best he could …” as he does here … Dean just looks lonely, lost, adrift.

You have to really know your shit, story-wise and psychology-wise, to be able to capture these tiny and yet huge ebbs and flows.

Dean says, “I know he did the best he could … but he wasn’t perfect.” He’s realizing it. It’s huge for him to say that! (Sam’s comment: “I don’t understand the blind faith you have in the man …” John’s whisper to Dean, the possibility of a deal being struck, not to mention the shattering experience of grief itself … Dean is starting to really change.) He says to Sam that he “killed that vamp” at the sawmill and felt nothing about it – “Hell, I even enjoyed it.” Another huge admission.

Sam tries to help. “You didn’t kill Lenore. That’s what matters.”

“What matters” is fascinating when looked at in the context of this Hall of Mirrors. “What matters” is entirely dependent on who you are listening to and where you are standing.

Dean doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that at all. But the moment is starting to be over. Dean says, to close things up, “You’re a pain in my ass,” and Sam smiles, saying, “Guess I have to stick around then” and Dean says “Thanks.” He means it. Thank You, Sam. He takes that breath, takes that moment. Dean got lost in Gordon. Sam helped pull him out of it. Sam gave a shit enough to fight with him about it, to not fucking abandon him when he obviously needed him, to even take a punch from him and still keep trying to get through to him. The entire time Dean felt like Sam was being a pain in the ass but what it actually meant was that Sam gives a shit.

And the sunlight is hitting the side of his face, and his eyes catching the light, and it’s too much!

Sam is not a sore winner. He is gentle. “Don’t mention it,” he says and he says it in a way that wipes the slate clean. It’s okay, Dean, says Sam’s tone. It’s okay. This is what family does for each other. I got your back.

He gets into the car, leaving Dean alone outside, and there’s a whole lot of stuff going on that starts to become clear once you learn more. Dean’s burden, Dean’s secret, Dean’s relationship with Sam, how it has been poisoned by that whisper, and the sheer fact that Dean is alive and Dad is dead, his feelings of guilt about that (the next episode is where THAT particular bugaboo is handled).

And this is Singer’s excellence:

The episode could have ended with Dean following Sam into the car then and there, and driving off. We’d all feel good about that. They had a nice talk. They learned. They grew.

But the episode has one more moment to complete itself.

Dean looks back at the house, where Gordon remains tied up. Gordon, Dean’s fun-house mirror, his reflection, his kindred spirit, the guy who showed him who he could be, and, in many ways, who he already was. Gordon who chipped away at the trust between the brothers, opening up that abyss already existing in Dean, brought there by his father’s whisper, the growing sense of distrust and unease that has to be a nightmare for Dean. Dean looks back. The rising sun cuts an arc across his face, fracturing the image a little bit, looping around him, a lens flare, done perfectly. The camera moves in and in and in, past the lens flare, into a deep and intense closeup, with Dean in an unblinking stare. He’s looking right at the camera.

It’s incredible.

That’s what they mean by Star Closeup. It has to grow in intensity the closer the camera gets, and the actor has to go deeper inwards, because once the camera is that close, you really shouldn’t be “doing” too much at all. The camera captures thought. Actors who understand that, like Ackles does, know that you don’t have to do anything more than think something. You could be thinking, “Dammit, I wish this day was over” or you could think, “I need a pee break,” or you could be thinking what the character is thinking, it doesn’t always matter: the camera will register it as something interesting.

What we see on Dean’s face in that slow push-in is arresting, a little bit scary. It’s reminding us of the depths that have been stirred up in him. It’s not going to be wiped away with a nice little chat over the hood of the Impala.

At the moment that the close-up is at its very closest, requiring perfect timing from everyone involved (especially considering the fact that they are filming it at a very specific time of day and don’t have forever to get it right), Ackles lowers his eyes, going inward, thinking something to himself, and in that moment, he closes himself off from us. The open moment is over. His inner life is his own again. We are allowed just a glimpse.

Dean then gets in the car, and the Impala roars off down the dirt road, into the sunrise, clouds of dust rising up behind it. There is no music. None whatsoever. No musical cue to tell us how to feel. Not the Winchester-emotional-theme, not the hot-shot sexy Supernatural theme, nothing: just the roar of the engine from the beloved car that started the whole episode, and the grind of the tires in the dirt.

Our feelings are left up to us.