Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 8: “Crossroad Blues”

Directed by Steve Boyum
Written by Sera Gamble

I realize putting this up on the same day as a Season 10 episode could be confusing, but I trust my devastatingly intelligent Supernatural readers to be able to segue between the two. I will also put up a separate post for tonight’s episode.

In the meantime! Let’s delve into the gorgeous Southern swamp of “Crossroad Blues.”

“[Robert] Johnson has created a mood so delicate and bleak one feels he cannot possible get out of his song alive.” – Greil Marcus

“He sold his soul to the devil to get to play like that.” – Mississippi bluesman Son House on Robert Johnson

On my first time through watching Supernatural, the title alone of Episode 8 sent a chill of anticipation up my spine. Robert Johnson? Are they quoting Robert Johnson? Then came the date listed in the teaser 1938 Mississippi, and I knew where we were going! I’ve been listening to Robert Johnson my whole life. The legends surrounding him reached me through osmosis (and through his lyrics), as I am sure is true for most people (although now I’m wondering if Supernatural will be part of perpetuating that legend for future generations). It’s thrilling to picture that fans of the show might discover the music of Robert Johnson because of this episode!

And then of course (or maybe not “of course”), back in 1986 Ralph Macchio appeared in a movie called Crossroads, inspired by the Robert Johnson legend, with dueling guitarists battling it out, at one point doing so in an actual crossroads. The film, as I recall it, is super dumb, but I saw it naturally as I will see anything that Ralph Macchio ever does, due to the fact that he saved my life. That one episode of Eight Is Enough acted as a personalized “It Gets Better” message when I was a suicidal 12-year-old. So whatever Ralph Macchio chooses to do, even now, I’m IN.

So. Good for Supernatural for going to the crossroads, and for including Robert Johnson so potently in the telling of that story (which is, ultimately, the story of Faust, only with an American spin). I, for one, would have missed it if it hadn’t been there. Missouri Mosley, in Season 1, mentioned “crossroads dirt,” our first foreshadowing of this whole Hoodoo Southern world, but that story would not be complete without Robert Johnson. He is not only a part of it, his story helped create it. His story confirms that there is darkness “out there,” and that there are things that cannot be explained in the light of day. Terror can alter reality. And man will do desperate things to get what he wants. That’s what “Crossroad Blues” is all about.

It’s an extremely important episode in the lineup. If we look at Season 2 so far, we see how far we have come, but also how far we have to go. And Episode 9, “Croatoan”, is when all of these multiple threads come together. They do not resolve, but they finally express themselves. That would not have been possible without the lead-up of “Crossroad Blues.” Going from “Usual Suspects” to “Croatoan” would have been skipping an essential step.

The Season 2 progression:
Episode 1: Dean almost dies. John whispers something alarming into Dean’s ear, John then dies.
Episode 2: The aftereffects of grief. Disorientation. Ellen and Jo enter. Life without Dad. No mention of John’s whisper.
Episode 3: Into the vacuum/void left by John dying strolls Gordon. Dean succumbs, Sam resists. No mention of John’s whisper.
Episode 4: Zombies. What’s dead should stay dead. Dean starting to lose control of himself. Did Dad make a deal of some kind so that Dean could live? Guilt. No mention of John’s whisper.
Episode 5: Sam’s psychic issues arising again. Psychic kids plot-line. The “problem of Sam” is starting to arise. No mention of John’s whisper.
Episode 6: Sam takes a backseat, playing second banana to the Dean and Jo Show. Fight at end of episode about John. So … John is starting to make his presence known again. No mention of John’s whisper.
Episode 7: A total break from all of these ongoing plot lines (Deals made with Yellow-Eyes, Dad dying, etc.) A classic one-off case (that will set up other different plot-lines for later). No mention of John’s whisper.
Episode 8: Now everything from the early episodes starts coming up. Crossroads. Demons. Deals made for people’s souls. John is mentioned, and mentioned heavily. Now they know that what they feared had happened had actually happened. The tension is building again, a longer tension, spread out over 8 episodes. Still, though, no mention of what John whispered to Dean.
Episode 9: Some sort of plague erupts. It will pit the brothers against one another, and finally, Dean comes clean about John’s whisper.

It’s one of my favorite long arcs in the series, the arc where John’s whisper is not acknowledged and yet hovers over everything. When you look for it, even in the silences, it’s so clearly there. What is NOT said is louder than what IS said. The best acting always has a secret in it. An actor without a secret is just reading the lines in a convincing manner. The good actors keep secrets, love secrets, hold onto them, use them.

Dean Winchester keeps secrets. He has a high tolerance for keeping his mouth shut. He’s good at it. (It reminds me of the line in The Departed – the Scorsese version – when Matt Damon’s character says to his girlfriend: “If we’re not gonna make it, it’s gotta be you that gets out, cause I’m not capable. I’m fucking Irish, I’ll deal with something being wrong for the rest of my life.”) A kept secret then works ON the secret-holder, and the secret reveals itself, accidentally, creeping out, informing the behavior.

Keeping John’s secret, the secret about Sam, starts to exact a toll on Dean.

Once the secret is out, the season changes course.

Some Thoughts On Robert Johnson. You Knew I Had To Go There.

There’s way more to the Robert Johnson story than the legend that he sold his soul to the devil in order to become the greatest bluesman who ever lived … but much of his story is lost in the obscurity of his time, when things went unrecorded, when birth records and death records were spotty (especially for African-Americans). He was here on this earth for such a short time. He was a peripatetic guy, and there are those who report seeing him in this or that town, or heard him playing live on the radio in, say, the Pacific Northwest – where he supposedly had never been … a lot of this cannot be substantiated. Robert Johnson was everywhere and nowhere. And then he was gone. He did not leave much recorded music behind, and had zero commercial success while he was alive. His scratchy recordings only saw the light of day for a wide audience in 1961 when they were released in a box set. We are lucky to have what we do. It is from this wellspring of terror and dread and sin and lust … that modern American culture was born. Music like Johnson’s needed the conservativism of country music to formalize the message and it also needed the wailing piety of the gospel tradition to set it free … and put that all together – gospel, r&b and country – and you get rock ‘n’ roll.

Robert Johnson sings about lust and women and wandering and good times, darkened by whatever comes after. He was not a “devil-may-care” guy. He was weighted down with many many cares. He was a black man in the early decades of the 20th century. He hailed from the Delta. A rich and textured cultural landscape … everything that comes out of that region (culturally) is good. Everything. There must be something in the water. And much that is pure evil comes out of that region as well. Robert Johnson experienced it all. That’s what the blues are all about. Surviving the un-survivable. Living the un-livable. Feeling the pain and still having the strength to sing about it. Robert Johnson’s songs are nightmares from which one cannot escape. If he could stand it, so can you.

I wrote on Facebook just recently:

I was walking through Times Square which I try to avoid but couldn’t this one time and it was packed with people in costume and random wanderers and suddenly Robert Johnson’s “Hellhound” came on the iPod and having that as a soundtrack changed the scene so much that it was downright eerie. What I’m saying is is that the song changed my perception of reality. I wish I had better words. The song made Times Square seem as doomed as Atlantis and as hopeful as Emerald City. In the same moment. I’ve never really been able to listen to him casually and this is a perfect example of why.

Here is an excerpt from a longer dialogue written by great music writer Stanley Booth, the dialogue that opens his wonderful book Rythm Oil where he imagines the crossroads conversation between Robert Johnson and the Devil (named Cyclone).

ROBERT: I know who you is.

CYCLONE: I been called by many names.

ROBERT: Teach me the blues.

CYCLONE: Sit down, boy. (Robert sits.) Fust and fo’most, you already know de blues. Everybody do, even white people, ‘cos everybody had some hard times. Black or white, rich or poor, man or woman. Hard times been all over. De blues ain’t no sin. People blame de blues. De blues is a lot like church. When a preacher’s up dere preachin’ de Bible, he’s honest to God tryin’ to tell de truth, and so is a blues singer. Bein’ a blues singer is a whole lot like bein’ a preacher. I have preached, and I ain’t too good to do it again. Tell de truth, I have been close to God.

ROBERT: You was throwed out of Heaven.

CYCLONE: I was certainly throwed out of Cogdell.

ROBERT: Teach me the blues.

CYCLONE: Got any money?

ROBERT: Not a cent.

CYCLONE: How you goin’ on de ferry?

ROBERT: I don’t know. Sometime a person will do something for a song.

CYCLONE: Come on, boy, de last fair deal’s goin’ down.

ROBERT: You can have my soul.

CYCLONE: Yo’ what? What I want did dat?

ROBERT: I know you done got most of ’em. Teach me, I been lookin’ for you all my life.

Greil Marcus wrote a chapter on Robert Johnson for his book Mystery Train (highly recommended). The Mississippi Delta blues is a vast landscape of interconnectedness and influence, and the rare recordings we have from the 1920s and 1930s still speak to the power of that music. Marcus wrote:

[Johnson] sang about the price he had to pay for the promises he tried, and failed, to keep; I think the power of his music comes in part from Johnson’s ability to shape the loneliness and chaos of his betrayal, or ours. Listening to Johnson’s songs, one almost feels at home in that desolate America; one feels able to take some strength from it, right along with the promises we could not give up if we wanted to.

More:

Johnson’s vision was a world without salvation, redemption, or rest; it was a vision he resisted, laughed at, to which he gave himself over, but most of all it was a vision he pursued. He walked his road like a failed, orphaned Puritan, looking for women and a good night, but never convinced, whether he found such things or not, that they were really what he wanted, and so framing his tales with old echoes of sin and damnation. There were demons in his songs – blues that walked like a man, the devil, or the two in league with each other – and Johnson was often on good terms with them; his greatest fear seems to have been that his desires were so extreme that he could satisfy them only by becoming a kind of demon himself.

Listen.

Marcus observes:

When acceptance and celebration mean the same thing, or when the two words must fill the same space in the mind at once, we can begin to grasp the tension and the passion of Robert Johnson’s music – because when one accepts one’s life by celebrating it, one also asks for something more. In Johnson’s blues the singer’s acceptance is profound, because he knows, and makes us see, that his celebration is also a revolt, and that the revolt will fail, because his images cannot deny the struggles they are meant to master.

These old-timey Southerners did not mess around with their religion. Supernatural takes place in almost a pre-Christian type of world (Jesus is rarely mentioned), an Old Testament world in many respects – where redemption is not possible except through horrible blood sacrifice and years of slavery and oppression. With the New Testament comes hope of something after, of the possibility of some kind of redemption … and Supernatural plays around with that (how many times have Sam and Dean been “resurrected” now?) but still it does not feel like, say, Touched By an Angel (explicitly Christian). I’ve gone on about the Manichean feeling of much of the spirituality portrayed, even though I barely know what I’m talking about, so I won’t bore you further.

Back to Southerners/their music/their religion (because it applies to “Crossroad Blues”): The literal and emotional brand of faith helped create the music that would change American culture (and the world) forever. The music came out of poverty, disenfranchisement, racial inequality, and so did the religion (Pentecostal, Baptist, and others). There was none of the upper-class Anglican emphasis on the importance of appearing holy. Dirt-poor blacks and whites had similar cultural releases and this was what maverick record-producer Sam Phillips sensed, and tried to capture in those early years at Sun Records. The people who ended up changing music forever felt strongly that there was cultural kinship between the races (something that was practically forbidden by law to acknowledge). Blacks and whites were in separate neighborhoods, but there was crossover (having to do with the advent of radio, mostly, but there were other factors). This meant that white people heard black music all the time (the first black-owned black-run radio stations started popping up, any big music town had one), and black people listened to the strictly-white Grand Ole Opry broadcast, black people heard the banjo-picking of the whites on their front porches on the next block, and white boys (like Elvis) snuck into black churches to listen to the gospel singing, and black boys (like Ray Charles) fell in love with Hank Williams on the radio, and on and on. While the world was segregated by law, the AIR, and the air WAVES, were not. In Robert Johnson’s music, you can hear the fragile birth of what would eventually become a flood that would knock down barriers.

His songs vibrate with terror and pleasure. Sometimes it is the singing of the song that keeps the terror at bay; other times, the terror emerges from the dead-center, there is escaping it.

The rumors around Robert Johnson persist. He died on August 16, 1938 in Greenwood, Mississippi, supposedly killed by a jealous husband (Johnson was a ladies’ man), although the cause of death is still unknown. It was thought that he might have been poisoned. There are also rumors he died of syphilis. There were other rumors, though, darker ones, that the Devil had come to collect. The original story about Robert Johnson goes that he was hanging around blues clubs, a young guy, eager and ambitious. But he couldn’t really play. He didn’t “have it.” Then, practically overnight, he became a genius. Son House, another Mississippi bluesman who knew Robert Johnson and had a huge influence on Johnson’s playing, was the one who theorized (probably as a joke) that Robert Johnson had met up with the devil at some crossroads one night and sold his soul, because that was the only plausible explanation for Johnson’s gigantic leap in ability. (By the way, a song by Son House also shows up on the soundtrack to “Crossroad Blues”, so hats off to Jay Gruska and Christopher Lennertz, the long-time music team for the show, for knowing/celebrating that connection between the two men.)

Robert Johnson’s songs feed into his legend. He sings about the Devil. He sings about Hell Hounds chasing him. He sings about Crossroads.

You could take it as a metaphor. Supernatural, obviously, doesn’t. The legend of Robert Johnson is what solidifies the gloomy ominous atmosphere of Season 2, making real and tangible what was before unspoken, the bogeyman in the dark. (And, let’s not forget: all this gloom is filmed beautifully, damn near glamorously. Sin is attractive. Sin is irresistible. People like Robert Johnson understood that.)

End of Robert Johnson Tangent. I Could Go On Forever.

Dark and glamorous, with faces filling the screen almost totally, “Crossroad Blues” is important in moving forward the plot-line that the season has ignored for a couple of episodes. The confrontation with reality approaches (John’s whisper to Dean. John’s mysterious death and Dean’s mysterious recovery.) It will be in “Croatoan,” episode 9, that all is finally revealed. It’s up to Dean to reveal it, so, you know, he’s on a different time schedule than other people. He’ll get to it when he gets to it. Things have to get real bad for Dean to confront.

I go on and on about Beauty, especially (so far) in Season 2, because it’s one of the most pleasurable and noticeable aspects of the show. It is pleasurable, but it is also destabilizing. It’s iconic, as well as contemplative. People react to Beauty without even knowing that that’s what’s happening. I’m not talking about the good-looking leads of the show. I’m talking about the style of the show itself, and how those good-looking leads are filmed. It makes all the difference. Even Padalecki and Ackles (those two names together, honest to God) could be flattened out and made generic-looking if they weren’t filmed carefully.

One of the fun things in “Crossroad Blues” is to watch Dean “act out”, to watch his prickly behavior, and to realize over the course of the episode that the depths have been stirred. All behavior comes from somewhere. If it doesn’t come from somewhere, then you are just left with an empty “attitude.” I’ve talked a lot about the importance of Subtext in these re-caps (and in general in other essays about acting): “Crossroad Blues” is a great example of what it means to play the subtext. There is the text (the dialogue) and then there is the subtext (the unspoken stuff going on underneath): there should be exchanges between the two; the subtext should work on the text, and vice versa. But you have to tread carefully as an actor: you can’t be too clear with ANY of it because then you stop seeming like a real human being. Real human beings in their real lives do not go around stating their subtext left-and-right. People who state their subtexts in real life are, in general, people you inch away from at parties.

Ackles is a master at subtext. He is a master at keeping that subtext bubbling and boiling over multiple episodes with no dialogue. He never loses track of what is REALLY going on. That’s what people mean when they talk about acting technique. Acting talent can exist without technique: some people are more emotionally fluid than others, some have more emotions to express than others: that’s talent. But technique is subtler, trickier, separates the men from the boys in this work, and should be invisible. That’s what’s going on with Ackles. It’s so fun to watch him work because you know he has tracked this shit out meticulously, and yet you can’t clock him doing any of it.

The teary-eyed conversation by the side of the road that closed out “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things” has not been referenced again. There are practical reasons for that (it’s a long season, you have to spread these things out), but it also works on a character-level. Openness happens, for Sam, for Dean, almost against their will, and is usually followed by a clamp-down in reaction. IIf you’ve dated a guy like this, you know that’s how it goes, how real it is. They are not Alan Alda in The Four Seasons saying in the middle of an extremely awkward group moment: “So does anyone have any feelings to share? Let’s all talk about what’s happening.” Dean and Sam zip it up, sublimate, deflect. It’s infuriating, but it’s also so watchable. In their dynamic (the push and pull, the reveal and the retreat) is both intimacy and tension. They are close, but not THAT close.

“Crossroad Blues”, as a companion piece to “The Usual Suspects”, is another great episode showing Dean’s Burlesque Act approach to life. He’s performing. He throws his persona out there, at Sam, at Carley the secretary, at Evan, everyone he meets, hoping it will dazzle, intimidate, entertain. The Burlesque Act is fluid, it can serve many purposes. What’s interesting in “Crossroad Blues” is that what starts as a light-hearted Burlesque Act of relief/enjoyment at now being regarded a Wanted Man, just like the bad guys in the movies … then turns into a Burlesque Act trying to avoid the unavoidable. The Burlesque Act is covering up the anxiety of how HE plays into all of this deal-making demonic stuff. By dismissing those who sold their souls, by reacting to them with annoyance and irritation, he is turning his back on his father … at the same time that he is starting to realize that his father is now … burning in Hell so that HE could live.

It’s a twisted dark mangle of denial and desire, irritation and vulnerability, fear and loathing (of others and of himself) which reaches its loony sexualized (of course, because it’s Dean) culmination in the scene with the Crossroads Demon, one of my favorite scenes in Season 2.

Teaser
Greenwood, Mississippi
August, 1938

We hear the blues guitar before we see a frame. It’s Johnson’s “Hellhound on my Trail” (there will be no imitation-singing from the actor – a smart move, since Johnson’s voice is so distinctive.) The first shot is an overhead shot of a small juke-joint, seen through a whirling ceiling fan (not sure a joint like this would have one, but never mind, it’s a cool effect. Ceiling fans make me think of Angel Heart, another Faust-ian story, and ceiling fans show up anytime the Devil is present. You know, because it’s hot where he lives. He needs to cool off.) There are some folks gathered, sitting at tables, watching a man (La Monde Byrd) sit up in front of them, play the guitar. He is dressed up (like the famous photo of Johnson at the top of this post), a cigarette dangling from his lips. The women fluttering their fans, smiling, the men tapping their feet, and, of course, one rapt woman (Yvonne Myers, excellent in her small part) sitting right up front.

The colors are perfect, deep greens, grey-greens and blacks, like a water-stained old photograph.

As the music weaves a spell, so does director Steve Boyum in the way he puts the sequence together. It is haunting, sexy, and gives a feel for what those joints must have been like (except for the ceiling fan). Boyum (and Ladouceur) create the mood in 4 or 5 shots, the camera moving always slightly, nothing static, the camera grooving with the music. The juke (or “juk”) joint is its own little isolated world, a place where hard-working people can let off some steam, be together, feel safe, escape. Similar to church. Boyum chooses a variety of different angles and camera moves, starting out with the overhead shot – and it all could seem a bit much, except it’s put together so elegantly. We don’t see Robert Johnson head-on at first. We see him from above. That then dissolves to a shot from the audience point-of-view, a slight move to the left obscuring him from our view. The camera is then circling around behind him, his silhouette in the foreground, seeing his happy audience, relaxed, enjoying themselves. His head is down, the rim of his fedora obscuring his face. Then there’s a really low camera angle from the back of the joint, the camera moving forward, along about ankle-height of everyone at the tables, highlighting Johnson, separated out from the crowd, and the alert woman sitting up front.

It’s an attention-grabbing shot (all of the shots are): beautiful, each shot flowing into the next, the point-of-view shifting with each shot, turning the experience in that tiny juke joint into something universal. (That’s what Johnson’s music means, ultimately. The music speaks to ALL of us.) Then there’s a close-up of his picking fingers, focus-switching to his face, finally, in close-up. He is engrossed in what he is doing, and yet not lost to the world. He is expressing something, something meant to be shared.

His lady-friend in the front is grooving, hard, on the vibe he’s putting out there. He knows it. She knows it. It seems, for a moment, that he is playing just for her.

Then he hears something. A distant … something. Something not right, something out there in the darkness. He looks up and around, stops playing. She, in tune with his every move, looks concerned, afraid, even. Maybe he had been telling her about the weird shit that had been going on for him.

So. Hellhounds. A couple things:

1. In Supernatural, they are directly tied to Hell. Hell’s pit bulls. But they are tied to other myths, in almost every culture, of terrible dogs that come a-calling. In some myths, the dogs are indistinguishable from dragons. They are associated with fire. There are dogs in certain myths that are like shape-shifters, so that they conceal their true nature from their prey until the last minute. I think my favorite part about the Supernatural hellhound is that they are never seen. That saves on having to create them digitally – and it is a pure example of how that which can’t be seen is often more frightening than a literal representation. I am sure you all have an image of how terrible these dogs are in your minds. I do too. It’s also fantastic that it is only the person “for whom the bell tolls” that can hear the dogs (I think they change that sometimes, as it suits them – but it works best when the poor Hellhound-haunted soul seems legitimately cray-cray, seeing things, hearing things, that others do not see.)

2. Even though Robert Johnson does not sing in the teaser, I think a look at the lyrics of “Hellhounds on my Trail”, the song he’s playing in the teaser, would be interesting because in it you see the structure of the episode, its symbols and mood. Even the “goofer dust” sprinkled round the door makes an appearance here in another form. What you get from the song is a sense of increasing panic, that you got to be moving on, something’s coming up behind you, you’ve got to be moving on.

I got to keep moving, I got to keep moving
Blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail
Blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail
And the day keeps on remindin’ me, there’s a hellhound on my trail
Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail

If today was Christmas eve, if today was Christmas eve
And tomorrow was Christmas day
If today was Christmas eve and tomorrow was Christmas day
All I would need is my little sweet rider
Just to pass the time away, to pass the time away

You sprinkled hot foot powder, mmm, around my door
All around my door
You sprinkled hot foot powder, all around your daddy’s door
It keeps me with ramblin’ mind rider
Every old place I go, every old place I go

I can tell the wind is risin’, the leaves tremblin’ on the tree
Tremblin’ on the tree
I can tell the wind is risin’, leaves tremblin’ on the tree
All I need is my little sweet woman
And to keep my company, hey, hey, hey, hey, my company

In re: my Facebook status: You can see why listening to that as one strolls through the modern bustling urban world of Times Square would bring on a serious sense of dislocation. Also: “Blues falling down like hail”?? One word: ACCURATE.

Then we hear it. Dogs howling. And the rusty squeak of the ceiling fan. Other people in the joint look around, but it’s not clear whether or not they hear the sound, or if they are just looking to see what Johnson might be seeing. Either way, it’s eerie. And when you consider the violent history of dogs chasing down escaped slaves – and how frightening a country night could be in 1938 Mississippi if you were a black man … I mean, that’s the thing with Johnson’s music, that’s the real terror that’s coursing through it. And not just terror. He’s telling it like it is. He’s telling the truth. No wonder the blues were so threatening (and attractive) to the status quo. Dissertations have been written on the topic, so I’ll move on.

He goes back to playing, and we have a stunning iconic shot that could not be more beautiful. It’s an album cover.

Then we go close, real real close, which will happen throughout. It’s the look of the show, although some episodes go closer than others. “Crossroad Blues” cuts out the forehead and chin entirely: it’s all eyes/nose/mouth. We are deep inside his experience now.

A snarl comes. A black shadow flashes past all the windows. We get our first good look at his face. Everyone looks at him … waiting to see what he will do, what might be happening. The camera pulls back from him, down the aisle, isolating him in that spot on the stage. He is alone. The cigarette drops from his lips and falls, in artsy slo-mo, to the rough wooden floor, still smoldering. This is a simply-done and yet beautifully cinematic sequence. Masterful.

He gets up and runs out into the night, leaving a flutter of anxious people behind him. He runs down a pitch-black country lane, clutching his guitar by the neck. The growls are all around him now, and the trees rustle and move, jostled by the invisible barking presences. Finally:

Steve Boyum is a kid in a candy store with that camera. He chooses well. He goes for the striking image.

The man hides in his shack, a ferocious barking dog on the other side of the door. Johnson, trembling, falls to his knees. Eventually, the door is pushed open, only it’s his lady-friend and a couple of other people from the club. There is no dog. Nothing. Just Robert Johnson writhing on the floor in agony. She runs to him, clutching his face with her white-gloved-hands, and the camera is so close to her face it has to jostle to keep up with her frantic movements. Robert is murmuring, “Dogs … black dogs …” and the gold cross dangling from her neck gleams. It is the last thing he sees before the invisible hellhounds claim him.

A final blues chord progression closes out the teaser. His song is finished.

1st scene

From the first glimpse of Sam and Dean, across the room at a diner, the entire situation between them is clear. Sam hunches over the open laptop, serious. Dean lolls back a bit, lazily, like a big cat, popping French Fries into his mouth after swiping them through a pile of Ketchup. I don’t even have to hear the dialogue to “get” that they are in two different headspaces. In “The Usual Suspects,” we got to glory in how in sync they are as a team, even when separated. In “Crossroad Blues” we get to glory in seeing them out of sync, and how hard they work (an uphill battle) to communicate to one another, to say what needs to be said. In its own way, the communication level in “Crossroad Blues” is AS satisfying as the level in “The Usual Suspects” because they have to work harder at it. Yes, it ends with Dean turning up the music to stop the conversation, he’s gone as far as he is willing to go, but he’s gone pretty far, considering.

After fleeing Baltimore, they have holed up somewhere (no location given) and Sam is checking up on what law enforcement is saying about them. There is a warrant out for Dean’s arrest in St. Louis, and Dean is now listed on the FBI’s database. (Somewhere off in D.C., Agent Hendricksen is assigned to the case.) Sam looks at Dean’s dead-faced thuggish mug-shot. Dean cracks that now he’s like Dillinger, and he knows Sam won’t be amused, but, duh, that’s why he does it. Also, it is kind of cool to be on an FBI Most Wanted List. This is classic big-brother/little-brother stuff. It’s practically role-playing. Dean is more concerned with his French Fries than his Freedom. (Freedom Fries?) This is the Dean from the pilot.

Dean shows momentary annoyance that Sam has not been charged with anything (which, when you think about it, is an outlaw mentality. A regular citizen would be terrified to be charged with a crime, and would be relieved that his brother wasn’t. Dean, however, is like, “Yeah, man, I’m Dillinger, and why the hell weren’t YOU charged as an accessory?”). Sam is having a difficult time dealing with/fending off Dean’s reckless attitude, and Dean grins at Sam’s gloomy face, saying, “You’re just jealous.”

Sam, as he always does, takes the bait, and snaps back, like he’s 9 years old, “I am NOT.”

It is always entertaining when Dean is being annoying on purpose because Sam always responds by getting annoyed, so it becomes a feedback loop of attention. I like Dean bratty, cranky, and burlesque-y. This Dean, in the diner scene, is one of my favorite Deans. What is great is that in this scene it starts out looking like the careless Dean in the pilot, the wisecracking guy not afraid of anything. And it IS that to some extent. Then, as the episode moves on, it starts to look like … something else altogether. He’s using the Burlesque to handle something else. And finally, in his confrontation with the Demon, he REALLY needs that Burlesque Act. We see it for what it really is: survival instinct. Because, boy, that scene is as sexual as it’s gotten with any monster on the show. He’d bang her if he thought it would get him what he wanted. He is prepared to bang her in his car if he has to. And of course when she shows up, she can barely hold herself back from him: he looks so tasty. All of this is awesome because it is the “surface” of Dean: the wisecracks, the lazy posture, the “whatever, I’m over it”, expression, the obvious sexuality – but the surface goes deep, the attitude is flexible enough to be useful in different situations.

It reminds me of that great quote from Oscar Wilde:

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Sam is helpless in the face of Dean when he’s like this. You can see him getting flustered and irritated, scolding and schoolmarm-y (“This is serious, Dean”) and they’re both just playing out roles that they set up for themselves a long long time ago.

They also appear to be in the first stages of an investigation and Sam has already done a ton of research. Some dude had called animal control babbling about big black dogs. Nothing found. He leapt off the top of a building (that he designed). Dean asks, “Do you think we’re actually dealing with a black dog?” The way he says it makes you think he’s not just talking about Fido, he’s talking about a supernatural thing. Sam hands over a couple of pages of lore about the big dogs (I love the lore conversations, I love the print-outs, I love the fake web pages, I love it all), Fenrir in particular, shown cozying up to Tyr. When I just Googled Fenrir, that was the first image that came up too.

This is one of those cases when they investigate something, guessing, using deductive reasoning, talking it out … assuming they are after one thing, until they realize that no, what they really are after is something quite different. A mis-diagnosis is a life-and-death matter! (It happened in “Usual Suspects”! Doh! She’s a death omen, pal!)

If you know the story of Robert Johnson already, then you would have recognized “Hellhounds” in the teaser, realized who it was, and guessed the story. If you DIDN’T know the story of Robert Johnson, then “Fenrir” could make sense too, any mythical black dog would do! The name “Robert Johnson” is not stated in the teaser, a nice touch.

Dean’s comment as he looks at the picture of the big dog is a musing, and almost admiring, “Bet they could hump the crap out of your leg.” Almost like he WANTS that to happen to him. Oh, Dean. Sam doesn’t laugh. (Sam has now not been laid in almost a year. So. I cut him slack.) Dean is like a little kid in the face of Sam’s disapproval of him: “What? They could hump your leg. I mean, look at that thing, come on, imagine it humping your leg, man, that would be cuh-ray-zee, right??” Dean needs to get laid, too. I am extremely concerned about both of them.

Sam feels like the big brother here, Dean the little brother on a sugar high who needs to settle down.

2nd scene

Next thing you know, Dean and Sam are in suits in some gleamingly wealthy, sleek, slightly Norwegian-looking bachelor pad kitchen … and they’re interviewing some guy (played by Aleks Paunovic) who knew the leaping architect.

As always, when you put Sam and Dean into a rich sleek environment, even if they’re wearing suits … something feels off. They are posing as staff writers for Architectural Digest, working on a tribute for the dead dude (which … come on. Whose bright idea was that. Now that’s a scene I’d like to see, where the brothers choose what ruse to use in order to talk to the people they want to talk to.) Yes, because we all know magazines have enough cash to put TWO writers onto the simplest assignment ever.

It doesn’t take much for the real story to come out. The dead guy had been a nobody, a bartender, a wannabe architect who “couldn’t design a pup tent,” according to Bitter Pants telling the story, and then suddenly, overnight, he starts designing buildings on the level of a Beethoven symphony (Jeez Louise, I need to see these buildings. How good could they be?), and he leaves all the competition in the dust. He became Top Dog (Top Hellhound). He had a “charmed life.” There are a couple of uneasy glances shared by the brothers: they know there is no such thing.

Kind of a rote scene, truth be told, informational only, saved by the intricate set which creates all this visual interest behind each close-up of a face. Sam’s background is different from Dean’s and Bitter Dude’s. There are yellows and greens, a wash of bright light behind Dean.

I like to point these things out, boring though they may be, because they help enormously in the overall. It’s just the production design team doing their job, creating sets that are interesting to film, that will look good behind the action – and it’s also just Ladouceur and the director doing their job. But things that are GOOD (like this show) represent small prosaic decisions made, hundreds every day, for each episode … that help keep that ball rolling.

You shouldn’t notice stuff like this too much, you should be listening to the dialogue – and we DO, but these beautiful details and color choices are a part of the texture of the show.

3rd scene

Dean was in the Animal Protection Agency for, what, 20 minutes? Tops. And in that time, Carley the secretary’s boobs somehow came into conversation and Dean was able to ascertain that “they’re real.” I have no doubt that he could get that job done in 20 minutes and it would have been an extremely fun conversation for everyone involved. Or, who knows, maybe she dragged him into a broom closet after 10 minutes of talking and he was able to investigate the situation for himself. Ever since this immortal moment in Seinfeld …

… women have the perfect comeback, should they choose to utilize it. I met a guy once in a bar and we struck up a conversation. This was years ago. We were talking. And he kept … glancing down. He couldn’t help it, but his distraction was distracting to me. (There are so many things on this earth to be angry about. Men glancing quickly at my breasts as we talk is not one of them.) Finally I just acknowledged what was happening, and said, “They’re real.” His body jolted, as though I had stuck him with a Taser. He looked momentarily mortified and busted. Then he asked, quizzically, “C-26?” Like he was in class, guessing at the answer. He guessed right, by the way. We ended up dating for years. Not because he guessed right, but just … because. So. You know. Sometimes these things work out.

These off-screen flirtations (or, hell, mini-relationships, like the never-seen Amy in “Shadow”) make me so happy. They’re so ridiculous. It’s Dean in operation, wheeling, dealing, whirling through people’s lives, trying to connect in the couple of free minutes allotted to him per day. It’s also a way to get people to do things for him. His beauty and ‘way’ about him grease the wheels of his life, and he is aware of it, although he’d probably never come out and say it. He needed “Carley” to look up some stuff for him and he needed her to do it quickly. So he flirted with her. Hard. He’s got a spring in his step now!

Sam, meanwhile, gloomily sits in the car, staring at print-outs of snarling black dogs, thinking about dead architects. All work and no play, Sam. Helpful Carley gave Dean a list of all of the folks who called in “black dog” sightings over the last couple of weeks, as well as a little Post-It with her MySpace address on it. Dean has no idea what MySpace is. Sam laughs in his brother’s face. It’s a fun moment. Dean seriously doesn’t know what MySpace is, and looks first anxious about it and then … slightly excited. Does MySpace have something to do with porn? Why isn’t Sammy explaining MySpace to him? What is it??

He seems simultaneously like a cocky young guy on the make and a totally uncool out-of-touch Grampa. Sam gets to feel the power dynamic shift in his favor (there’s a lot of that going on through the episode – nothing too toxic, but definitely Sam trying to get the upper hand, and at least keep his brother under control.)

4th scene

The interview with the architect told them much of what they would need to know. But they still think they’re looking for a “black dog.” They’re following that lead, spending a tedious day driving around to the people on Carley’s list, asking “followup questions” about why so-and-so called Animal Control. Dean is frustrated as they approach an upscale house. It’s been a boring day.

A little woman (Lilian Umurungi) opens the door (the two guys tower over her), and they now present to her Animal Control badges. She’s confused. Again? I talked to you guys yesterday. (Ah, Supernatural, I love your consistency. “But I already told the police officers this.” “As I told the cops yesterday…” “Who are you guys again?”)

Reluctantly, she lets them in. This is the second high-end sleek beautiful interior in the episode, only this one feels more like “old money” as opposed to the “new money” of the bachelor pad. Dean and Sam are hulking beasts in ill-fitting suits, slouching through the gorgeous kitchen, asking questions. They seem out of place, not only in these wealthy interiors, but, in general, when they are inside. “Crossroad Blues,” like “Everybody Loves a Clown,” thrusts Sam and Dean out into the open air.

It is the home of Dr. Sylvia Pearlman, but the Dr. is not in. The maid doesn’t seem to know where her boss is; her boss took off a couple days ago. If you look closely, as Sam and Dean most certainly are, the maid seems disturbed. One can only imagine how strangely her boss was acting in those final days at home. Babbling about dogs, calling Animal Control, locking her bedroom door.

Dean gets bored with this part of his job, and starts looking around, seemingly aimlessly, but with the roaming eye of a good investigator. Sam talks intently to the maid, asking her if she saw the stray dog she had called them about. The maid says no, and admits that she wondered if the doctor had been imagining things. “But she’s not like that,” she says.

Let us pause to appreciate the Beauty. Nicely framed shot.

There’s something strange here, something not right. Dean, in his aimless looking-around, sees a photo tacked up on a bulletin board, of the gorgeous young doctor with two friends. She’s hot and young, and this sparks something in Dean, a question, something that feels … familiar. He says to the maid: “She was, what, 42, 43? And she was chief surgeon at the hospital. That’s pretty young, right?” The maid is proud, saying, “Youngest in the hospital’s history. She got the position 10 years ago.”

Sam now understands where Dean is going: that ESP thing again (and they’re both suddenly in the same frame, Dean a blur in the background – but they’re in sync, they seem to “get it”, the story falling into place.) On the back of the photo, Dr. Pearlman has written “Lloyd’s Bar” (thank goodness, because otherwise how would Sam and Dean put the pieces together of what happened?)

Dean’s righteous attitude starts to assert itself. It’s just a flicker so far, a sort of partially aggressive hint of “fuck these people who made deals, fuck them HARD” kind of thing, and it will get stronger and stronger over the course of “Crossroad Blues.”

The camera zooms in on the party-girl smile of Dr. Pearlman, and as it does, sirens start to wail, bringing us into the next scene.

5th scene

The transformation from the young party-girl in the photo to the person we see now is harrowing (like those terrible “This is what meth does to your face” PSAs) and kudos to Catherine Thomas for going for it. She looks like a wizened hag on a wind-blown heath in the Middle Ages. She is gaunt, wild-eyed, with unkempt hair, grey-pallid skin, and she is jumping out of her skin.

It is not clear where she is at first, but the siren sound suggests a ratty hotel on the bad side of town (cinematic shorthand), a place where no one would think to look for her.

The color red encroaches on her from all sides.

We may not get any good motel scenes with Sam and Dean in “Crossroad Blues” but Dr. Pearlman’s motel is a DOOZY. There’s a Victorian Gothic feel: reds and blacks, with strange black wall-dividers (a Supernatural staple) with intricate patterns, old-fashioned lamps with red shades … Seriously, if you are having a psychotic break, this decor will put you right over the edge.

She is losing it, even more so when the hotel manager demanding she pay up morphs into a drooling leering monster right in front of her eyes. She’s been seeing things like that for days. It’s the worst part of the Hellhound situation in Supernatural-land.

6th scene

Major major Beauty alert. I find it difficult to even listen to the dialogue in the following scene because it’s so rivetingly beautiful. It’s also one of those scenes that would work, totally, even if you turned the sound down. Everything is presented visually, you don’t even NEED the words. The images are ALL. It’s an outdoors scene. The sun is on its way down. Magic Hour, so you get all those great effects that cinematographers cherish. With “Everybody Loves a Clown,” Supernatural placed the guys outside, in the large natural world, and the lighting was seemingly totally natural. The two guys were still gorgeous (perhaps even more so because they seemed so vulnerable in the direct sunlight), and it managed to make them look even more fragile (hard to do with big strapping guys), nocturnal creatures squinting into the noonday sun.

The scene here is pretty intricate, in terms of the information it has to impart to us, to those who don’t know about crossroads deals and what they signify in folklore. The setting is superb: four un-paved country roads converging (kudos to the location scouts), with a rambling shack of a bar clinging to one of the grassy corners. There are some phenomenal crane shots, dwarfing Sam and Dean, the crossroads revealing itself in all its mystery.

There are lens flares, too – something Serge Ladouceur uses very sparingly (thank the Lord, I get tired of them when they’re used indiscriminately). When used carefully and pointedly (like here), lens flares are beautiful. Like the gorgeous closeup that closes out “Bloodlust,”. The flare is a flaw in the cinematic fabric (and if I’m not mistaken, they were still shooting on film at this point, not digital – which adds to the sense of reality). The lens flare like the one at the end of “Bloodlust” cracks open the heart of the moment. And sometimes … they’re just so darn pretty. Like:

There are a lot of interesting camera moves here too: circling, and slow pulling-back, the aforementioned crane shots, and then some down-and-dirty closeups. Like the teaser, Steve Boyum and Ladouceur create so much visual interest, one shot flowing to the next, always shifting, always changing. Like acting technique, much of this should be invisible, it should not call attention to itself – although once you start looking for this stuff, it’s all you can see. But each shot is in service to the story.

Dean steps out directly into that lens flare, and the camera, which had moved in on him then moves up, up, and back, back – but not all the way yet. The moment cuts to Sam and Dean strolling into the road, through the sun, their shoes crunching on the rocks. Dean’s eagle-eyes notice the clumps of bright yellow flowers on the side of the road. They stand looking down at the flowers, Sam and Dean both recognize them as Yarrow, used in summoning rituals. (Yarrow is also a diuretic and brings on clotting, so you can use it to stop nosebleeds. Word to the wise.)

Who cares what they’re talking about. Just LOOK.

It’s so beautiful you want to rush right to that crossroads and make a deal so that you can be bathed in that soft light that gives skin the appearance of marble, or a softer rock, beautiful, fleshy, touch-able. Human as hell.

Sam and Dean make their way to the center of the crossroads, and finally, those intermittent crane shots pay off, and we finally see the landscape in total. The crossroads has revealed itself.

Shovel retrieved from the trunk of the Impala, they start digging. They don’t have to dig far. Boyum/Ladouceur keep going back to the “God’s eye” point of view, if you notice. Looking down on the digged-up hole, looking down on the top of Sam and Dean’s heads, but then back in close. It’s disorienting, the camera never landing for long in one attitude. Sam and Dean are approaching the secret at the heart of this particular case, as well as … well, part of their own backstory. Things are about to get global. Those God’s-eye shots help give it that larger perspective.

Buried in the crossroads is a battered tin box with all these creepy little objects in it, a glass jar of dirt, a couple of bones, some dried flowers. It looks like Greek to me, but Dean murmurs, “This is some serious spell work. Deep South Hoodoo stuff.” If you say so, big boy.

Uneasy, they stand, and again, the beauty blinds me momentarily, especially when they are both in the frame. It’s also attractive because not only are they informing us of what happens at the crossroads, they are starting to display feelings about it. Dean is going almost automatically into his “over it” pose, annoyed already with the folks “making deals with the thing”. Sam seems to sense that that’s what’s going on. He’s looking at Dean for the reaction. He can already sense that Dean is going to have big problems with this whole situation. They know each other so well.

This is where the episode shifts.

7th scene

Back to the poor doctor/hag hiding in her Gothic room, as someone(thing) tries to beat the door down, the chain-lock rattling at the strain.

It is at this moment that those with good eyes, who squint at the screen, will learn the name of the motel where the Good Doctor has chosen to hole up:

You would think a woman being pursued by a pack of imaginary dogs might balk at checking into a hotel with that name. But it’s her fate. Maybe it’s even part of her hallucination. She can run but she can’t run fast enough. Even the motel is symbolic of her pursuers!

And of COURSE The Baskerville Motel is designed to be something from out of a creepy Victorian-era opium-induced nightmare. The door rattles on the hinges with the ferocity of the attack on the other side. The Hellhound at the door ends up crashing through the window instead, and an invisible presence attacks her. (She does a phenomenal job. You believe that she sees what’s coming at her.) Invisible claws tear off one leg of her pants as she huddles in between the two red beds … a Baskerville Motel logo clearly visible behind her head as she is chewed up by an invisible dog.

That is RIDICULOUS and I cannot live without it.

The doctor is dragged off, screaming, into hell, pulling the red blanket with her, the red of Hell wiping out the screen.

8th scene0
Rosedale, Mississippi
1930

Hell knocked two years off of the standard deal for Robert Johnson. He only got 8 years. I guess if you’re going to be the “greatest” of anything, the price will be higher. As the chords start up again, the opening chords of maybe Johnson’s most famous song (“Crossroad Blues”), we are back at another crossroads. It’s deep at night, and a figure is crouching in the center, burying something in the dirt.

There is no Lloyd’s Bar, but other than that, it feels like the same intersection. An overlap of time. The music brings us back, and this time, we hear Robert Johnson’s voice, reminding us of the legend: that this sound, that we hear right now, is what Johnson, supposedly, was yearning for, and willing to sell his soul for.

Just so we can track this: There are other verses about a sweet woman, and how he doesn’t have one … (which then, of course, reverses in the scene we are about to see, when a woman shows up … although “sweet” is not the word for her) but here’s the gist of the song:

I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above, “Have mercy now. Save poor Bob, if you please.”
Standin’ at the crossroad, I tried to flag a ride
I tried to flag a ride
Ain’t nobody seem to know me, babe
Everybody pass me by
I’m at the crossroads, baby, the sun goin’ down,
Standin’ at the crossroads, baby, the sun goin’ down
You can run, you can run, tell my friend-boy Willie Brown
You can run, you can run, tell my friend-boy Willie Brown
Lord I’m standin’ at the crossroad,
I’m sinkin’ down

Like Nina Simone, Robert Johnson demands that I succumb to his world, his outlook, his experience. I find it impossible to listen to him casually. It is not background music. If you played “Crossroad Blues” in an elevator, or as “muzak” in a supermarket, people would run screaming. Maybe because it is not just expression. It is confrontation.

A second flashback, a second narrative continuing on from the teaser. How did that man we saw end up dying, muttering about black dogs? Well, now we’re about to see. With a guitar slung over his back, the man buries a cloth bag of something in the dirt, and then stands, waiting. Behind him is a figure in a white dress. It’s a haunting shot, beautiful, and soooo country. She’s a barefoot girl in a white cotton dress. When he sees her, you can tell he was expecting someone, but not THAT. “Holy …” he breathes.

Her eyes flash red, and she smiles. “Guess again.”

And hey look, Robert’s Demon (the crossroads demons all seem tailored to be the Dream-Girls – or boys, of whomever is making the deal) is played by Christie Laing, the roommate of preacher’s-daughter in “Hook Man,” the one who had to die in such a bloody way because of her immorality. Good to see she’s found future employment in the fiery afterlife.

The second flashback puts us in the rare position of knowing more than Sam and Dean do. They can guess how deals go down, and they both have an uneasy feeling about their father and Yellow-Eyes (bummed we didn’t get to see those two macho guys make out), but here, we witness it. We witness the sudden appearance of the demon after the bag is buried. We see that deals are sealed with a passionate kiss. Dean can’t know that going into the scene with his Demon, but he gets the picture pretty early on that there is a sexual component to deals. He very well might take it personally (For God’s sake … again?), but in the second flashback, Robert Johnson submits to it too. The kiss comes from out of nowhere, and his eyes are closed, lost in the sensation for a minute. When he opens his eyes, she is gone. He looks down at his guitar, wondering … and then starts off into the night. All of this goes down with the actual Robert Johnson wailing in the background. It’s fantastic.

Still, his name is not mentioned. We definitely should infer who he is by now.

But just in case …

9th scene

Back in the magical Magic Hour light, with the battered water-tower behind them, still haloed in gold, Sam says to Dean, “It’s like the Robert Johnson legend, right?” Sam knows the bare bones of the story and Dean (no surprise) knows the music. Great little scene here, where Sam shrugs uncomfortably when Dean says to him, “I mean, you know his music, right?”

Padalecki cracks me up. He is so great in that little-brother-yet-huge-grown-man thing. Dean raves about the occult references in Robert Johnson’s music, and Sam listens, feeling stupid and out of it (a flip-side of Dean not knowing what MySpace is. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.) Both of them are surrounded by soft gold light, cool shadows, a dim sky, thick greenery, night falling … It’s stunning.

Sam does not know Robert Johnson’s music, so he tolerates the lecture from his big brother, succumbing to Dean’s expertise.

Something else is starting to happen with Dean. When Sam wonders out loud how many other people have made deals at the crossroads, how many other people out there are going to be clawed to death in T-minus … Dean reacts. If he had his way, he’d leave town right at that moment, leave those people to their fates which they chose. Sam is a bit slow on the uptake at first and is taken aback by Dean’s attitude. Dean compares the deal-makers to people who go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Willingly. Fuck them. We’re not jumping in to save them. Let ’em burn. (Considering how Season 2 ends, and what Season 3 is all about, it’s a wonderful dovetailing of connections and associations.) They have already discussed the possibility that Dad’s death had some connection to Dean’s resurrection, but Dean was so upset during the conversation that it is not a surprise that neither of them have brought it up again. But here it is. You don’t deal with shit, it forces itself upon you anyway. Like a Hellhound. Put shit off, Scarlett O’Hara-style, and it will bang down your door eventually anyway.

What’s interesting is watching the behavior. Sam is struck by what’s going on with Dean, and he’s filmed with this gold halo on his hair, picking out his eyelashes, it’s stunning.

Dean is in a cooler light, softer, not as stark, and he pulls out the little photo in the tin box – This was the guy who made the deal, let’s ask around … “if he’s still alive” cracks Dean, as though it doesn’t matter one way or the other. Dean starts off into the bar, and Sam is left behind in the crossroads, thinking.

It’s not just Dean who has a secret throughout the episode. So does Sam. It takes a while for it all to come out, but Sam is picking up on Dean’s … shift in attitude. It does not bode well. (Change never ever bodes well inside the Winchester Belljar.)

They’re so in tune with one another. That does not mean agreement. It’s unbearably intimate and I, for one, would find it stifling, but whatever, I enjoy watching other people suffer. Especially if they are over 6 feet tall, with freckles, and long thick hair, and blazing green eyes, and casts on one arm. Especially then.

10th scene

The Impala LOOMS.

Just as we discussed in the re-cap to “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things”, a shot like that represents confidence in the style of the show. They’ve proved themselves with Season 1. The symbols and objects have been set up that matter. Now it’s time to pour it on. Highlight it. Observe these things in a way that calls attention to them. The effect will be cumulative. The Impala is so important that we keep talking about its absence in Season 10. A shot like this, way back in Season 2, is partially responsible for our collective attachment to the damn thing.

The following scene is as deep as it is wide, and that is mostly due to the performance of John Lafayette, a wonderful actor, as George Darrow. Darrow is a character who stays with me. We never meet him again, but there’s something about him that has a lot of reverb. Darrow is a character whose life does not exist only within the episode; it spills beyond the small screen’s confines. The set design of his apartment/artists’ studio helps: the screen is crowded with objects and easels and unfinished paintings … the accumulation of a life. When such care is given to what is basically a one-off character, the entire SHOW succeeds. It is the gift the character actor brings, the glue of the industry. Without the character actor, the stars could not shine as bright as they do. (See my commentary on Bruce McGill’s 10 minute cameo in The Insider.) The character actor, too, more often than the star, is burdened with exposition, and also burdened with embodying the larger themes of the whole. That’s what’s on John Lafayette’s shoulders. Here we see the price exacted. Darrow is a haunted man, clinging to the time he has left, filled with the urgency of the failed and unsung artist. Was it worth it? That’s the question his performance brings to the table.

There’s tons of behavior coming at him from Sam and Dean, diverging reactions to the deal-makers starting to manifest. Dean is unsympathetic to the point of callousness. Sam earnestly tries to help. George Darrow has submitted to his fate, bitterly, and in many ways agrees with Dean. They are cut from the same cloth. Think of the opening scene in Season 3 (Dean’s threesome, and whooping it up in the car afterwards. He made the deal knowing what he was doing. He did what he had to do. There’s a “fuck me” thing going on, and it takes him episodes – EPISODES – to finally admit, “I’m scared, I want to live. Help me fight to live.”)

The crossroads deal is such a great storytelling device for these psychological challenges that we ALL face in life. What do we think we’re worth? What do we value? What would we be willing to give up in order to get it? What will we gain? Much of the conversation comes down to self-worth, and that’s why it’s such potent and treacherous ground for an unstable guy like Dean Winchester, who Burlesques his way through life, and yet still thinks he probably doesn’t add up to much.

It is an enormous revving engine of the series, and this is where it all begins.

As Sam and Dean tromp up the flights of stairs to Mr. Darrow’s apartment (great location find, of course, beautiful strange structure), they wonder what the hell he wished for. It obviously wasn’t cash. The place is kind of a dump.

Dean makes fun of the whole situation, wisecracking that maybe Darrow wished for his apartment to be filled with “babes in Princess Leia bikinis.”. Sam withholds his support from Dean’s humor, trying to get into the right solemn mood to make a house-call, but Dean is having none of it. “This guy’s got one epic bill come due. Hope he asked for something fun.”

Sam notices a dark powder sprinkled along the bottom of the guy’s door. As they crouch there, looking at it, suddenly the door is flung open by Mr. Darrow. He is suspicious, his face blasted-open with feeling, hostility, fear. Dean takes the lead, and the energy is lazy but aggressive. Like a predator. Dean’s almost scarier when he’s like this (he confronted the music store Morrissey-lookalike in the same way in “Hell House”). With a dead-eyed face, Dean pulls out the little black-and-white photo and drawls, “See any hellhounds yet?”

Sam has to intervene. It is going to be rough.

11th scene

Clutter doesn’t begin to cover what is going on in Mr. Darrow’s apartment. It’s an old building, with giant windows pouring in white light, but there’s dust in the air. He pours himself a drink, as Sam and Dean wander around in the background, glancing over at him. And we’ve got another blues song playing in the background, Son House’s haunting “Downhearted Blues,” which is as visceral to listen to today as it probably was when his contemporaries first heard him do it. It’s tragic. The guitar that opens it sounds like a dying gasp, a man on his way down, down, down.

We can listen to the lyrics and think of Mr. Darrow.

Got up this mornin’
Feelin’ sick and bad
I’m thinkin’ ’bout the good time
That I once have had

Did you ever love
When they didn’t love you?
You know there wasn’t satisfaction
Didn’t care what in the world you do

I tell her come here little girl
Why don’t you sit down on my knee?
I just wanna tell you how
You have been treatin’ me

You know, that’s a shame
Ole dirty shame
I’m so sorry the day, honey
I ever knowed your name

I said, you know that’s a shame
I said, it’s a low down, ole dirty shame
Oh, the way you been treatin’ me
Is a low down, ole dirty shame

You know, love, love is a worried
Old heart disease
Look like the very one you be lovin’
Is so hard to please

You know, I go into my room
I sat down and cried
I didn’t have no blues
But I wasn’t satisfied

You know, did you ever get up in the mornin’
With the blues three different ways?
You had two mind to leave here
And you didn’t have but one such stay

Ouch, sir.

Sam asks about the powder around the door, and when Darrow says it’s “goofer dust”, Sam and Dean fall silent. (By the way, the Wikipedia page for “goofer dust” contains this gem: “Recipes for making it vary, but primarily include graveyard dirt and snakeskin.”) Darrow lords it over the interlopers with delicious contempt, relishing the moment (I would, too, in his position): “You think you know somethin’ about somethin’ and you don’t know about goofer dust?” He tosses a bag of it to Dean (watch Ackles throw his hand up and catch it. Smooth!) No, Dean has not heard of goofer dust, and his reply is: “We know a little about a lot of things. Just to make us dangerous.” I don’t know about you, but I would laugh if someone said that to me with a straight face. And you can see Darrow take Dean in, take in that comment with a slight expression of “Really, son? For real?” on his face.

The blues wavers and hovers around the scene, as Darrow tells them the story. Unfinished paintings surround him, with images of skeletons, and cut-out parts of faces. He admits he’s a drunk. He admits he’s broke. When the demon showed up at Lloyd’s, he asked for talent. “Shoulda asked for fame,” he admits, and he looks like a ruined man. Sam is sympathetic, somewhat, but Dean is blunt, his face deadpan. “Was it worth it?”

Darrow is beyond worrying about being judged by this freckled hottie with the gelled hair who showed up at his door. Please. His life is HEAVY, and he KNOWS what he has done. The goofer dust is just to buy a little more time so he can finish his last painting. He drinks throughout the conversation. The camera is so close to his face it becomes almost abstract, like his paintings. Gorgeous.

Look for the little cuts away, too, as he talks. The camera floating over some of the paintings, zooming in on this or that part. And Sam and Dean listening look both ultra-glamorous and beautifully complex. There’s a lot going on in both of their faces and they’re just listening (although there is nothing “just” about listening. If you can’t listen, you can’t be a good actor. There are no exceptions.)

Darrow kept up with his fellow deal-makers, and there was one more … one other guy … “nice guy, too” Darrow comments (a slightly heartbreaking comment). Sam still wants to help and Darrow fiercely refuses the help. “I brought it on myself and I brought it on them.”

He throws them out. He has work to do. The hellhound is coming. He will fight it alone. Like I said, the character haunts me.

12th scene

Evan Hudson (Vincent Gale) sits in his study working, interrupted periodically by the distant barking of dogs. It’s nighttime and he goes to the window, peeking out the Venetian blinds like a crazy person.

His wife (Leah Cairns) interrupts him. They have a small slightly awkward conversation that ends up being hugely touching for various reasons, mainly because the actors have clicked into the moments so well. He hugs her, clutching her to him. She, thinking she’s just saying goodbye for the weekend, is a little startled by the intimacy. When he says, “I love you. Forever.” she says, hesitantly, “Evan, are you okay?” (This reminds me of Emily’s monologue in Our Town, which – no lie – I think of once a day. Hats off, Thornton. I wrote more about that here, in my review of Kurosawa’s Ikiru.) There’s a painting on the wall of a solitary woman, all in white, staring out at the blue ocean. It’s a startling image. The wife stands in front of it so that blue is all around her head, a beautiful backdrop, and the image of the painting is perhaps prophetic of what her life is about to be like as a widow.

Another element of Hellhounds is now made evident to us. On her way out of the room, she turns back to him, and becomes an elongated roaring demon, as you do … (it’s always upsetting in the show when a loved/familiar person changes or is co-opted like that – it’s so manipulative). Then, suddenly, she’s back to normal, saying sweetly, “I love you too.” So … real? Imagined? The hotel manager transforming too? Above and beyond the dogs, the hallucinations strike me as the worst part of the Hellhounds phenomenon, the erasure of the certainty of reality. The co-opting of one’s normal comfort zones. Shivers. In its way, each detail presented here is preparation for the end of the season, and then season 3. Hellhounds, though … I never get used to those assholes.

13th scene

Please look at the sign on the fence in front of Evan Hudson’s house.

What would a show like Supernatural be without cheap stupid jokes?

Sam and Dean trot up the stairs and knock on the door. Watch Dean’s behavior. It’s similar to what happens in “Children Shouldn’t Wear Dead Things” although not quite as intense. His reaction to the folks making deals is not rage. The impulse is more towards total indifference. You made your bed, pal, you lie in it. This is a very volatile state for Dean to be in. It can’t last.

Sam has counter-acted Dean’s “whatever, I don’t care” thing with a sort of deadpan practical calmness which has almost obliterated him from being effective (that will change momentarily.) Sam’s attention is split, in other words. He’s aware that something is going on with Dean. He’s been aware of it since they dug up that box in the crossroads. But Dean is so strong. His mood can set the tone for an entire room. That’s what’s happening here and Sam is going to need to address it. It’s all there in the behavior from Sam, all through the scene with Darrow, and now into the scene with Evan. Dean is not as good with victims as Sam is, that’s for sure, but this case is different: Dean doesn’t see Evan as a victim at all. Evan is a volunteer.

It’s an interesting glimpse at Dean’s world-view. There are those he can help – people who DESERVE his help, that is – and everyone else is invisible to him. That’s not actually true, in practice, but he is challenged on that point here: in general, he acts like a fireman. A fireman doesn’t care if the person he is dragging out of a burning building is good or bad. Moral character is irrelevant to the fireman: everyone is “worth” saving. Firemen do not discriminate and Dean usually doesn’t either. But now, suddenly, he does. It’s messing Dean up. Sam senses Dean’s interior chaos like a super-sonic wave, a disturbance in the molecules of his brother’s forcefield.

Watch the way they both knock on the door. It’s a re-tread of the different postures in the diner scene that opens the episode. Dean is all “ho-hum, let’s see if this LOSER is home” and Sam is serious and thoughtful. Being out of sync is bad news for these guys. Always. There’s got to be some Golden Mean, but it’s very hard to maintain. And here they are, 9 seasons later, wearing cheap sunglasses, sitting at a campsite, bored out of their minds. Balance is over-rated, anyway. And it’s certainly not dramatic.

When Evan Hudson opens the door, Dean starts right in: “You ever been to a bar called Lloyd’s?” Evan slams the door in their faces. Dean calls out, irritated, “Come on, we’re not demons!” Every single bit of him, his voice, his attitude, the dead look in his eyes, the wrinkled forehead … broadcasts that he doesn’t care. Dean’s scary when he doesn’t care. Sam is annoyed, because he knew Dean’s plan to just come right out with it wouldn’t work, but he doesn’t have a chance to say anything because Dean kicks the door down.

If you want to say to the world: “I would like to live in a domicile that looks as scary as shit,” then Evan Hudson’s upstairs hallway decor is the way to go.

Dean and Sam have tracked Evan down to his study, and Dean immediately goes to kick the door down (hilarious, he’s on a roll), and Sam has finally had it, and stops his brother, with a silent warning gesture, like, Dude. Really? Dean subsides, and as Sam opens the door, he gives his brother a scolding look, really quick, like, “See? See how easy it is to open the door.” It’s these details that can’t be scripted, that are all Padalecki.

The following scene with Evan Hudson is so well-written. It’s beautifully acted by all three, and beautifully shot. The faces are surrounded in blackness – and look for the blues and where they show up in the scene. It’s extremely specific: the blues all pour out on one side of the room. Blue light from the window, Evan’s blue shirt, the blue in the painting.

Extremely specific placement/costume design. It’s painterly and beautiful, a real understanding of color. But it’s the writing that is the star here. This is how you write a scene, folks, and it has to come in the third act of the episode, not the first or the second. A scene like this needs to be earned.

The scene has a couple of great swerves built into it. The dynamic starts out pretty hostile and hot-headed on Dean’s side, despite Sam’s gestures to lay the hell OFF, brother, what is UP … and then Evan reveals he made the deal to bring his wife back from death’s door.

“I’d do it again …” Evan says, and you believe him. (It’s a great little performance. He’s just a guy, you know? A regular everyday guy, kind of nerdy and worried, and he has faced extraordinary circumstances. Even in the face of the dazzling Dude-Bro Burlesque Act who just two-stepped into his house, he maintains his sense of self, his core. He doesn’t cringe, even when Dean is openly judging him.

Like Darrow, Evan owns what he did. His reasoning, though, is no less problematic just because he asked for something to help someone else (as opposed to asking for fame/glory/money for himself). And that’s what Dean homes in on. That’s what pisses Dean off the most. (This situation is mirrored in a later season when Bobby brings his wife back from the dead. Dean openly admits he doesn’t understand the whole love thing, but he does know that it’s wrong to muck with the natural order. Fightin’ words.)

So here, in the scene with Evan, is the mirror. It’s been there all along, it just took a while to reveal itself.

And once Dean recognizes that he’s staring into a mirror, all that other stuff starts coming up, the stuff his Burlesque Act had been handling in the past two scenes (or, hell, since the first episode in the season). Suddenly, the over-it wisecracking attitude vanishes. Even Sam seems surprised by the swiftness of the swerve. Have you ever thought of what this will do to your wife? Have you ever thought of her in all of this? Or was it just that you couldn’t live without her?

He’s dealing with his own life now. No wonder he put off dealing with it. And now it’s ambushed him. He looks at Evan Hudson as someone who has put his wife in a terrible position, who has guaranteed that she will be abandoned and left behind, with a world of grief and loss and guilt … and how could he do that to her? You call that love?

Sam looks on as Dean lays into Evan. Sam sees the mirror now too. He’s cooler-headed about it. The brothers help each other in this way, when they allow it: One starts to lose it, the other picks up the slack, and vice versa. Sam knows he’s going to have to step in. (How many times has Padalecki played this identical moment? And how many times has he made it real and watchable? 100%. Pretty amazing. Dean’s “acting out” wouldn’t work as well – or at all – without it.)

Dean says (and Ackles plays the hell out of it, the camera right up in his grill):

You ever think about her in all this? I think you did it for yourself, so you wouldn’t have to live without her. But guess what, she’s gonna have to live without you now. But what if she knew how much it cost? What if she knew it cost your soul? How do you think she’d feel?

It’s all getting a bit much and Sam says, “Okay, that’s enough,” (Rowr), and Dean is pretty much done anyway, and turns to leave the room. Sam reassures Evan, we’ll figure this out, and goes to join Dean out in the spooky hallway. Sam’s first question to Dean, “You all right?”

If Dean is handling five different things in this episode, then so is Sam.

The continuation of the scene is so well-written, too. It represents another swerve (and there are more to come) because once stuff starts coming out … it keeps coming out, basically. What is fascinating here is that at first Dean has a plan to go to the crossroads and summon the demon, exorcise it, and buy a little time. Sam is astonished, and also firmly against it. “I don’t like where your head is at …” says Sam, a really brave thing to say to Dean, who can be a tyrant about his emotions. As expected, Dean reacts badly, sarcastically. The scene very well could have ended there, with Dean barking orders at Sam and barging off to do his thing, leaving Sammy behind. We’ve seen it before. It would work here too. But Gamble gives us another swerve. Dean resists being talked to in the way Sam is talking to him, and resists being told that something ELSE might be going on with him. Remember the blow-up in the motel room in “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things.” But here … it doesn’t go down that way.

Sam speaks the subtext. Finally. Dad probably made one of these deals. Right? We’ve both been thinking the same thing, right? At first you think Dean might lash out in self-defense. There’s a second where he hesitates. But suddenly, in that hallway, there’s an almost gentle flow of communication back and forth. It’s gorgeous because the brothers normally have more friction (especially when it comes to personal stuff and to Dad.)

Both of them are connected, by the way, with a wall-lamp in their respective dark backgrounds. (Sorry. Just have to comment on the symmetry of their closeups because it’s important and extremely beautiful. Nothing is irrelevant. The background helps the foreground.)

Evan starts calling out from within the study that he “hears it”, launching Sam and Dean back into the present.

14th scene

“Crossroad Blues” finishes out with a split-narrative: Sam and Evan against the Hellhounds, and Dean negotiating with the Crossroads Demon (played by the glorious Jeannette Sousa). Even though Dean doesn’t have a lot of time, due to the Hellhounds being on their way, time seems to stand still during his scene with the Demon. He has tried to think of everything (devil’s trap under the car, devil’s trap beneath the water-tower) … but he did not plan on how disorienting it would be to be in her presence. He also did not plan on her referencing his father so intimately. On her knowing him by name. (Get used to it, kid.) When she ends up “going there,” he is blindsided. Even with those surprises, Dean is at his manipulative cunning best throughout. She plays him, he plays her.

“First time?” she coos.
Dean gathers up his shreds of dignity, and admits, “Something like that.”

The path to get what he wants out of her is twisted, dirty, sexy. Sam woulda been in and out of the interaction in a much more cut-and-dried manner, would have wrestled for the upper hand earlier (at least at this stage in the series). But Dean gets sucked in.

It’s beautifully written, and Jeannette Sousa is a marvel. Here are the words that come up for me when I think of Jeanette Sousa’s performance: she’s ladylike in appearance, almost Southern in style (I detect the echo of a drawl), with a formality in her manner and speech. Even when she hits on him, she does so from an arch place of power and form. It makes her even more attractive and menacing. She’s wearing a black sheath dress, showing off some impressive cleavage, but it’s still a cocktail-hour kind of dress. This is Dean’s kind of girl, if you think about the women we see him with in real life.

There’s a double-take from him when she appears, a wash of vulnerability, when he sees who it is he has summoned. Not just because she’s pretty and a brunette, although Dean likes those things – but her woman-form in general.

Dean and women. He gets to be soft with them. I’ve talked about that repeatedly! I first noticed it in “Wendigo,” his reaction when Haley opens the door, and feels to me like a JA-addition to the role. It certainly wasn’t there in the pilot. Dean is susceptible to women for the obvious reasons (he looks at them and wants them naked as soon as possible, he talks to them and finds himself thinking, “C-26? Maybe 28?”), but also the not-so-obvious reasons. The Mother love he only got a tiny taste of. Women represent that. The unconditional quality of the love that women can provide (until they get annoyed with him. But still: in the beginning, that’s what’s present. He can sink into that unconditional energy, he can relax, he can take off his clothes, he won’t be shamed or judged or punished. Women LIKE his vulnerability.) Clearly, though, one does not want to relax with a Crossroads Demon, no matter how pretty, and Dean struggles throughout to keep it together, to try to remind himself that this is not Carley the big-boobed kayaking secretary, or Amy the party-hound Sagittarian police officer. She is dangerous.

After an entire episode of Dean acting out and throwing out the Burlesque of indifference, suddenly when she appears … openness. You can see it happen.

Everything she says has a romantic/sexual connotation which increases Dean’s disorientation because although this is familiar ground for him (everyone treats him like this), he’s still susceptible to it. And it’s not just pleasure, although pleasure comes to it. There’s shame, powerlessness, arousal, anger. We see it from him repeatedly in these situations. If she were a man, this interaction would go very differently. No less disturbingly, and no less sexually – he brings it out of everybody, but just differently.

Dean is first shown from far above, another God’s-eye-view crane shot: he is kneeling , burying the little box filled with his own Hoodoo objects. The crane comes down, down, close to him, circling around him, and then there she is, right behind him. (It’s always fun to picture an actor waiting in the “wings” and then stepping into place at the right moment. No special effects needed.)

“I know all about you …” she says, and he moves in on her, saying, “Don’t keep me in suspense. What have you heard?” His face is soft. His tone is alluring, seductive, “Ooh, tell me more …” She set the tone, and he accepts it. Her reply: “Well, I heard you were handsome, but you’re just edible,” brings on one of those little flickers of … not unease, really … but discomfort, more like it. Familiar discomfort. It’s just a flicker, though, because what he is engaged in is a high-stakes game and there is no time for getting squeamish. He suggests that they do this, whatever it is, in the car, “nice and private.” (He probably should have made the Devil’s Trap smaller than the body of the Impala, but he was rushed.)

She is both cooingly intimate and ladylike-formal. It’s an awesome mix. I love her.

Back to Evan Hudson’s predicament. Sam, the grunt, is engaged in sprinkling goofer dust around the periphery of the study. Seems like Darrow’s bag couldn’t contain THAT much goofer dust. There is mournful music, suddenly (the Demon and Dean were talking with no soundtrack.) Shown from a God’s-eye view as well, the two men huddle in the center of Evan’s study. As with Dean, Sam has no experience either. They’re relying on what they’ve learned in the past, hoping it will work. Evan is skeptical, and now it’s Sam’s turn to not give a shit. “Believe me, don’t believe me, stay inside the circle.”

To quote Linda Blair in “The Usual Suspects,” these two guys …

Dean and his demon stroll towards the Impala, with the neon sign peering through the blackness, and he tells her he wants her to let Evan out of his contract. That, she cannot do. (Her energy is a mixture of sinister strength, maternal warmth, and sexual harassment. Not to be tried by amateurs, and acts somewhat like cat-nip to Dean. It’s irresistible. It’s meant to get a rise out of him. It works.) Comfortable (somewhat) in the environment of bartering his own sexuality, he tells her he’ll make it worth her while. He’ll offer her … him. This stops her in her tracks, but her response stops him in his tracks. She coos, almost impressed, “Like father like son.”

It’s a pleasure watching these two duke it out.

It’s as though the intervening weeks have never occurred. He’s back in the immediate aftermath of his father’s death. Smashing up the Impala in a rage. He will defend his father to the death, and he imitates his father, desperately. But he knows “like father like son” is not a compliment. Not coming from her, and … somewhere, deep down, he doesn’t want to be like his father anyway. That’s all there in his reaction to her comment. He opens the car door, for all the world like a well-raised teenager taking his girl to the Prom in a rented car. She is impressed, again, but somehow making fun of him too (every moment here has more than one thing in it), “Such a gentleman.”

As she goes to step into the car, she notices the Devil’s Trap peeking out from underneath. She can’t believe his balls, frankly, but what I am struck by is how you cannot see her face at all. Dramatic. BOLD. To have a gorgeous woman on the show and not show her face? Would never ever happen now. But it’s such a fantastic look.

Meanwhile, The Baskerville Hounds have arrived and are trying to batter down the door to Evan’s study. Sam and Evan huddle in the middle of the circle, and there are tons of shots of door handles rattling, doors pushing inwards, back, forth, back, forth, Sam and Evan standing strong but freaked out. Sam and Dean eventually become extremely familiar with hellhounds (Dean, especially), and their invisibility, as well as their contradictory corporeality. But here is Sam’s first encounter. He doesn’t know what is going to come through that door.

Back at the Crossroads: the Demon is angry, angry at almost being trapped, angry at Dean’s gall. Her anger is on a slow burn, but no less threatening and Dean backs up from her, unsure of every step he takes. There are a couple of moments in the following scene when Dean suddenly looks, oh, 10 years old. She strips him of defenses. Every line she says has a sense of inner calm, she finds her balance very quickly, but at the same time, she always seems to be making fun of him just a little bit. It is an extremely obnoxious tone to take, and seems designed to bring up Dean’s feelings of worthlessness and failure. His game face is no longer possible, especially when she brings up John.

The thought of John Winchester coming back from the dead is so horrible and yet so achingly wonderful that the look on Dean’s face, as he is backed up against the leg of the water-tower … is alarming.

There’s yearning in his face, a childlike hope, a hope that he actually could right the universe again. But really what Dean looks like is lost. It’s great work from Ackles. And from her. She sees the look on his face and smiles, “Your suffering is the whole point.” Her phrase, “You’re all lit up with pain” is eloquent and suggestive: Dean’s subtext is so clear you’d have to be blind not to see that pain, it’s like a searchlight through the darkness. It is upsetting to Dean (repeatedly) to learn how revealed he is, how he cannot hide, how his layers do not protect him.

This Demon is (almost) too much for him to handle.

I know I’m getting so granular with all of this, but this scene is so good! After she throws the grenade at him about being able to bring his Dad back, Dean goes almost completely dead in the face. After the first moment of realization, yearning, hope, all of that washes away, leaving him blank. Watch it happen. You can project whatever you want onto that face (and this is Ackles’ gift: he is both clear and mysterious; like the old-school movie stars in Hollywood’s Golden Age, he leaves a lot of room for audience projection.)

I see Dean’s entire life in that blank-ness. A life dominated by a stronger man. A life co-opted by a cause. A life of never being good enough. A life devoid of the counter-acting and necessary softness of women. I see competing interests canceling each other out: love, loss, hope, and guilt, too – because maybe he’s terrified at the thought of John being amongst the living again. Maybe he was enjoying (secretly) being free from that yoke. He shuts down in the face of all of it. Going blank is often a sign of information/emotion overload. Dean is so often an open book of impulses, emotions, vulnerability, humor … It’s a terrible loss when he goes blank and it always has to do with John (at least at this stage of the game).

She won the round and she starts to walk away, leaving Dean a wreck. Ackles takes his time with that, and Boyum allows for it. There is a long stretch of a moment where Dean just stands there, in pieces, trying to gather it all up again. When he does finally call out to her to stop, to wait, he does so through the slats of the water tower. He places an object between himself and her. He is also setting up his second lure. Poker game. She, facing the camera, grins to herself. Upper hand.

Allowing for pauses is one of Supernatural‘s unsung strengths.

The scenes with Sam and Evan are less involved, and shorter. The hellhound is in the building. The hellhound is at the door. The hellhound has come in through the grate and disrupts the goofer dust. Wrap it up, Dino. There’s also a great shot where you can see the hellhound’s invisible claws ripping up the wooden floor, similar to the “Hook Man” scratching his hook into the wall back in Season 1.

It’s bold to go from something so loud and frantic (Sam and Evan) to something so dark, quiet, talk-y and cerebral (Dean and Demon.) The scales are definitely tipped towards Dean and Demon as being the more interesting duo, because what is going on there is something new, something strange and ambivalent, emotional and yet cold as ice. She comes back towards him, almost kind now, but pitying him. She has a “soft spot” for hurt puppies. (I don’t believe that for a second. I think she likes playing with him, toying with him, seeing what will hurt/arouse the most response in him. What a delightful way to spend your evening.)

The next swerve is coming, Dean having lured her back to him, underneath the water tower where he has painted a devil’s trap. But until then, until the moment she realizes she is trapped, she appears to be in charge. She does almost all of the talking. And Dean? His face fills the screen. One could put a label on what one sees there, but I would suggest it is never just one thing, especially with him. It’s everything. It’s a star close-up. When she says, soothingly (I love her voice), that she could bring John back – “just as he was”, and all that, something flickers across his face, like wind over a field of wheat. It’s just a shadow really, gone before it even gets there. But John “just as he was” is not altogether a positive thing for Dean to contemplate. And even acknowledging that fact would bring guilt, on top of the guilt he already feels. His urgency appears real, “Can you bring him back?” But there is also the possibility that it is part of the game, part of the trap he is setting, to lure her in. She finds hurt puppies so appealing, well, hell, let’s lay it on thick.

Dean’s expression dominates, though. I would not say that whatever we there is either/or.

Side note: one of my beefs with many modern audience members is that they are in LOVE with either/or readings of everything. The films of Christopher Nolan (in particular, for whatever reason) seems to encourage that kind of “there is only one answer, its all a big puzzle, so let’s FIGURE IT OUT” brand of audience participation. That is certainly one way to view things, but not every single piece of art should be viewed in that way. Not every single film or TV show is designed to be watched in that way. And so some people do not know how to watch something if it is not “either/or”. This results in people being not just uncomfortable with ambiguity, but contemptuous of it. Or, more worryingly, unable to perceive that there is such a thing as ambiguity in the first place. I am not an either/or watcher, in general, and I am not a fan of either/or types of analysis. I am a fan of “both/and”. “Both/and” leads to much more interesting viewing, richer, and certainly leads to funner discussions, that’s for damn sure! (Witness all of you lovely people who read and comment here.) Supernatural is alllll about “both/and”. The best part is that Sam and Dean themselves struggle with this (the characters struggle with the mood of their own show): they WANT things to be either/or – and who can blame them, it’s an extremely human thing to prefer “either/or” – but time and time again they find out that whatever it is is “both/and.”

Ackles does “both/and” like nobody’s business and that’s what that gigantic closeup is all about as she talks to him about bringing his father back. In such a state, it is impossible to say that there is only one thing on his face. There is the surface, and then there are the DEPTHS. There is the longing, but there is the fear. There is also his entire history there … a desire to be the good son, and how he’s still fighting with that now. We’re only halfway through this phenomenal scene!

When she says, “I can give you 10 years, 10 good long years with him …” she’s using the language of romance, the same terms she would use with Evan and his wife. The Winchester family unit is supposed to be all to one another, fulfill all needs (or, better yet: remove the need for other needs). She’s pouring it on thick, a layer of sentimentality in her voice, all gaga at the thought of “the Winchester boys all reunited…” It’s actually a bit gross. Dean looks lost. It’s all he ever wanted. He’s been brainwashed, a word he will not use until Season 10. Unbelievable. The family, all together again. He looks tempted, but MISERABLE at the same time. As she pitches the deal to him, she moves in close. He’s uncomfortable with her closeness, he glances down at her only briefly. Too close, too close. No boundaries.

The whole point is to make us afraid he will take that deal. If Dean doesn’t seem tempted, the scene wouldn’t work (and the ending scene of the episode wouldn’t work either). Dean is a good poker-player but he’s not that good … and it’s a surprise and a delight when he moves away from her slowly, as though he’s considering her offer. (And he HAD considered her offer, for real, it vibrated off of him, but now he swerves.)

He cracks, “Would you throw in a couple of steak knives too?” About to be furious at his sarcastic tone, she then “feels” the Devil’s Trap above her (I love devil’s traps, and I love it when demons can sense them before they see them. I don’t know why. It just pleases me.) She looks up at the bottom of the water tower and sees the devil’s trap that Dean painted there. (Another thing I love is the image of Dean arriving at the crossroads and, like a madman, painting stuff on the road, painting stuff on the water tower … he got a lot done! The drunken barflies in Lloyd’s might have watched him out the window, blearily murmuring to one another, “What is that damn fool doing?”)

The mushed face from the closeup is gone, and Dean has bounced back. He has the upper hand now. And look at how he is filmed. In complete silhouette. His features in total blackness. The exact same way she was filmed. Good stuff.

She is revealed, in her little spot under the water tower, and the Impala looms into the frame from the left-hand side, basically hemming her in between Dean and his vehicle. Dean is calm and cool. He knows he has her. He demands that Evan be broken out of his contract. She says no, she cannot do that.

He pulls out a rosary, and finally the Demon is thrown off her game. This was not at all what she had anticipated, and you’ll remember Dean’s comment from earlier about how hard the Demons have to work to claw their way up Stateside. She flails, trying to push that huge button again: “Think about your Dad.” And Dean does, it’s automatic and knee-jerk, he deflates just a tiny bit. He’s so susceptible and Ackles never misses a chance to show us that Achilles heel. He understands script analysis (which is where a lot of these choices come from), and has done his emotional homework. He’s consistent, too. With that small deflation, you can see what he’s been dealing with, deep down, for 7 episodes. How unstable Dean still is. It’s great rich stuff.

Dean circles around her, chanting in Latin (nice try, Ackles), and his Latin also comes over the chaos back in Evan’s study: papers blowing, goofer dust scattering, Sam and Evan running for their lives. The demon, trapped, is unable to fight those Latin words, similar to poor Meg tied to her chair. Sam and Evan hide in a closet at the end of the hall with the Hellhound banging on the door. I like that the hounds are invisible, yet they are subject to the laws of science while they are here. They can’t go through walls or doors, although there may be some subtleties I am missing. I think the Hellhounds are great, and I love how they are conceived. Truly terrifying. Seasons later, seasons after the hounds dragged Dean to hell, you can see his entire face change at the mere mention of them.

Finally, our pretty demon calls out, “Wait,” struggling against the pull of his awkward Latin. It seems like a really high-risk game on Dean’s part, which is why I like it. He hasn’t gotten her to break Evan’s contract. He assumes that she will prefer to break the contract rather than go back to Hell and he is right. But still … he is willing to go all the way with the bluff, should he have to. If Evan ends up dead? Well, he shouldn’t have made the deal in the first place.

Now comes a great series of cuts, which both gives and withholds information. We see Sam and Evan huddled in the closet, the door banging … and then suddenly the banging stops. Evan and Sam sit there, out of breath, hiding, waiting … wondering if it’s over. That section goes on for some time, the tension stretching out. Meanwhile, all we have seen back at Lloyd’s is the Demon crying out “Wait,” to Dean.

When we go back to Demon and the Dean, they are making out passionately.

Of course we have been set up for this part of the deal, from the flashback with Robert Johnson, but still. We don’t see the negotiation part go down. We cut to the lip-lock. And we are close to them, man. Both of them are breathing heavily. They are basically mauling one another. Robert Johnson and his demon were sweet and shy in comparison. When she pulls back, you can actually hear their tongues extract from one another. Guys. Get a room. Dean is used to being sexually assaulted, it happens all the time to him, explicitly and not, but this one came out of left field. He is not angry, but more confused – classic Dean. “What the hell was that for?” he asks. “Sealing the deal,” she replies.

I want to give Jensen Ackles a medal for the following line reading: “I usually like to be warned before I’m violated with demon tongue.”

He’s pissed, but he has to crack a grim kind of joke to regain the upper hand, but he was pretty into the kiss, too, don’t deny it, pal. The line is absolutely ridiculous as written, and Ackles knows it, and plays it straight, yet with a side order of snark, so that we get both the humor and the affronted quality of the moment. Gold star. I laugh every time.

She demands to be released, and then, calmly, coldly, enjoying himself tremendously, Dean pulls out the rosary again.

DOUBLE-CROSS.

“Funny how I’m the trustworthy one,” she observes, when he finally decides to release her, and yeah, funny how it works out like that. Blurred moral lines. Once she’s free, she can’t resist twisting the knife, and Dean, bless his heart, is such an easy target. If there is a predator in the room, they will sniff him out, because his weak smudgy spots are so obvious. It makes him feel helpless. If you think about it, his father was one of those predators. She sneers triumphantly, “You never would have pulled that stunt if you knew.” “Knew what?” “Where your dad is. You should have made that deal.”

It’s one of those moments that is even more satisfying after seeing the rest of the series, especially after Dean’s own unspeakable stint in Hell. The conversation starts to seem prophetic (as it is, the architecture of those first five seasons was so rock-solid). John Winchester is in a circle of scorched-earth in Dean’s mind and heart. The feelings are so complex he wouldn’t be able to mourn properly, he wouldn’t be able to grieve at all. And this … this from her makes it much much worse. Confirmation. So many complicated feelings would be the result. Would you be grateful that John made such a sacrifice? Or, as Dean already expressed to Evan … John’s so-called sacrifice has meant a living-hell for his son.

So when Dean says to her, “Shut your mouth, bitch,” after an entire scene of somewhat calculated poker-playing on his part, of taking the abuse she threw at him so he could get what he wanted … it’s scary. For me it’s the scariest moment almost in the scene, his breathless comment, it’s the most vulnerable, because he’s basically telegraphing how much she has gotten to him. He’s blaring it in neon. I worry about him. He might as well be standing there with no clothes on.

She practically drools at the sight of the wound she has caused, he is all “lit up with pain,” and when he threatens to send her back to Hell, the Demon exits that poor girl in a column of smoke. She was just out on a date at Lloyd’s and has no idea why she is now collapsed on the gravel underneath a water tower.

Beautiful scene. I never get sick of it. The deep blues and blacks, the circling around one another, the multiple double-crossing going on, the manipulation, and also the JOY they both get out of the game. Not a happy innocent joy, but an adrenaline kind of charge. Both come to the scene with strong needs, wants, objectives. And only one can be the winner. The stakes could not be higher. There are things that happen that are according to plan, and there are also total wild cards. For both of them.

Oh, and best of all, and most important: Both characters come out of the scene altered. They are not the same coming out as they were going in.

It’s a delight to watch two actors create something as good, as engrossing as that.

15th scene

After the psychological melodrama of that last scene (which is over 10 minutes long, by the way – yes, broken up by Sam and Evan running around the creepy hallway, but their scenes are minimal. The majority is Dean and the Demon and it is a GIGANTIC piece of text.) … anyway, after that scene, it’s time to come down. Way down.

The Impala rattles through the night, headlights coming out into the mist, the camera moving up over the hood of the car to Dean at the wheel, Sam in the passenger seat.

Dean’s put on Big Bill Broonzy’s “Key to the Highway.” Unlike Robert Johnson’s songs, which are still frightening enough to give you goosebumps, Big Bill Broonzy has a lighthearted skip in his step, shadowed by the hard times he’s seen. But while the song lasts, he knows who he is, he is confident that life will continue. He’s going down the highway. There’s a jaunty harmonica playing and listen for the clicking washboard. I grew up hearing Big Bill Broonzy’s stuff around the house because my parents were really into folk music and there was a revival in the early 60s of interest in old blues (made even more prominent with the advent of the Rolling Stones in the mid-60s), and many of those poverty-struck long forgotten bluesmen actually found work again in the late 50s and 60s, and fame, and regular gigs, 40 years after their heyday. They were living in a shack in the Delta, completely forgotten, and these earnest folk enthusiasts would become Nancy Drew and go root them out. Big Bill Broonzy influenced everyone.

Of all the songs to choose to close out the episode, “Key to the Highway” is perfection. The highway, first of all. Obviously. The restless got-to-be-moving-on energy of the blues. Dean and Sam’s life writ large. But it’s also a song that opens up a space. Perhaps not a collective space, because everyone has their own dreams, thoughts, feelings, that they bring to a song. Whatever emerges will not be unanimous. But some songs are just the kind that open up … at least the possibility of something NEW happening, of a small fragile space where one can maneuver with a bit more freedom. “Key to the Highway” is that kind of song.

We meet up with them post-mortem. Dean has already told Sam about what happened with the Demon, and told Sam what she said about Dad. Sam tries to reassure Dean. Demons lie. Maybe she was lying.

The shots in the Impala are to die for. The darkness actually gleams. The mood is gloomy and thoughtful. Dean has gone somewhat dead inside. Sam tries to talk him out of it. It’s as though the car is an island, floating through nothingness. Blurry golden lights whir by the windows randomly, but far apart, suggesting they are driving through the countryside. Not much going on out there. People asleep in their beds. The whole thing looks fragile. They look fragile. Silver light gleams along the side of Sam’s face. Dean is seen more head-on, but the shadows envelop him. He looks smushed. The light has been snuffed out of his features.

Brothers. Little kids without their dad.

Sam, the brave one, asks Dean … afraid to hear the answer … you weren’t really gonna make that deal, were you?

Then we get one of those totally dramatic focus-switch moments, from Sam’s face, to Dean’s in the foreground, his gigantic Michelangelo’s David profile, completely passive, no expression, and then, briefly, he flicks his eyes to the side. Before turning them back to the road. So clear, and yet so … conflicted. Ackles rests in that strange middle-ground, of showing us everything and telling us nothing. He never seems to get sick of it. It is his sweet spot as an actor.

Without answering Sam’s worried question, Dean reaches out to switch off Big Bill, enough with the blues, man, enough of this music, it’s too revealing, it is too blasted-open, can’t take it anymore, and switches on some mind-obliterating heavy metal, music that doesn’t give you time to think.

Sam gets the message, and there’s a beautiful moment where Sam looks upset, almost startled at being shut out like that.

And I think again of John’s whisper into Dean’s ear.

I got the key to the highway
And I’m billed out and bound to go
I’m gonna leave here runnin’
‘Cause walkin’ is most too slow

I’m goin’ down on the border
Now where I’m better known
‘Cause woman you don’t do nothin’
But drive a good man ‘way from home

Now when the moon creeps over the mountain
I’ll be on my way
Now I’m gonna walk this old highway
Until the break of day

Come here, sweet mama
Now and help me with this heavy load
I am due in West Texas
And I’ve got to get on the road

I’m goin’ to West Texas
I’m goin’ down behind the sun
I’m gonna ask the good Lord
What evil have I done