Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 12: “Nightshifter”

Directed by Phil Sgriccia
Written by Ben Edlund

Ben Edlund’s voice quickly became an extremely important one in the Supernatural writing staff. The writing staff bring different sensibilities to the table, one of the reasons why the show has such a good mix of tone, comedic and tragic, touchy-feely and macho, light and dark. This is the second episode Edlund wrote, the first being “Simon Said”, and both show his somewhat wacky obsessive bent, the nerd-quotient is high in this one. He doesn’t judge the nerds he writes about. He treats them with affection and respect. Yes, they are sometimes silly, but they are also smart and they mean well.

Ronald, in “Nightshifter,” is one of the most memorable characters in the history of Supernatural, due to the writing, for sure, but also due to the performance of Chris Gauthier. There’s a reason Ron would return, seasons later, as a ghost to haunt Dean. Writing a character like Ronald, who lives and dies in the space of one episode, is difficult, and Edlund goes deep FAST. Ron feels extremely personal, somehow. It would not shock me if Ben Edlund had a similar UFO collage on his office wall, or, going back, on his childhood bedroom wall. Edlund KNOWS this world. His mind is conspiratorial, obsessively going over connections, looking beneath the surface. This is what nerds do better than most. Along with Die Hard and Terminator 2, “Nightshifter” is also inspired by X-Files (well, the whole series is, but this episode in particular).

“Playthings” was a psychological swamp of gender-roles. Dolls, velvet dresses, tea parties, doll houses, Granny in a rocking chair … Sam and Dean tromping through in their boots, circulating through insistent cloying female-ness. Looked down upon by the gigantic white gown on the wall.

“Nightshifter” represents a swerve into reality with a capital R. Back in Season 1, Dean was wanted for murder in St. Louis. In “The Usual Suspects,” Dean again is dragged in on murder charges. Dean Winchester’s name is “out there” now. St. Louis comes to call yet again in “Nightshifter.” FBI agent Victor Henriksen (the brilliant Charles Malik Whitfield) enters the scene, and instantly takes the wheel, veering Supernatural in the direction HE wants it to go. He’s not a vigilante. He’s good at his job. He can’t be explained away as a villain. It’s not a coincidence that both Henriksen and Ronald return in that “hunters haunted” episode.

How I Moved From Outsider Status and Fandom-Watcher to Supernatural Fan Myself in a Series of Trust-Building Moments
“Nightshifter” is a crucial moment in the series as a whole, and the episode was one of those trust-building moments for me personally in my first encounter with the series. (I am slow to trust. It takes me a while.) Is this series going to condescend to me? Bore me? Will they rely on cliches? Are the characters going to grow and change? What is the story? And, most importantly, why should I give a shit?

So, in looking back, I know the moments where trust was built between myself and Supernatural, when I realized they knew what they were doing, that I was interested in what they were doing.

Remember, or maybe you don’t remember, in any case, here are the facts: I only started watching Supernatural because of the mainly-Destiel-fan-dust-up over Castiel sleeping with the reaper in Season 9, Episode 3. (After I finally saw the aforementioned episode, I mentioned it in my review of Wolf of Wall Street.) From what I gathered, having never seen the show, was that Destiel fans appeared to be upset (and I was so naive about the show, I went to IMDB to see who played “Destiel” and was very confused when I found there was no character by that name) because Castiel lost his virginity, which, according to them, should have been saved for Dean. (These fans angrily denied the existence of Castiel’s wife, whom he was with after the Leviathan debacle: they HATED her, and pretended she – and the sex he probably had with her – didn’t exist. Listen, I’m just reporting the facts.) They felt betrayed and devastated by Castiel’s human-ness/sex-life being initiated by a woman. Additionally, they all seemed to agree it was rape and they were very upset about that too. (See my post on Wolf of Wall Street if you want to hear me blabber on about my feelings about all of that. The same type of conversation is going on now in the discussion around American Sniper too, on both sides of the political fence. American Sniper is this year’s Wolf of Wall Street. The conversation has been appalling.) Anyway, don’t ask me why I was reading fan writing about a show I had never seen. I thought I might like to write something about the fandom itself and how it operated. It was so passionate. I was fascinated by the fact that certain fans seemed constantly triggered and outraged by the show, making me think, “Why do these people watch the show if it upsets them? Why do they clearly seem to want the show to be something other than what it is – which I have no idea what it is, since I’ve never seen it.” There were also the wars (so-called) between Destiel fans (I finally figured out why “Destiel” would not be listed on IMDB) and the rest of the fandom, and etc. After the Castiel-reaper-virginity-blowup, I finally decided, “Well. Better watch some of this before I start pontificating about the fandom.” I realize this might sound condescending, but that was how it happened, and that was why I started watching. Very strange. In a way, you can say those Destiel fans upset about Season 9 Episode 3 led me to watch the show, so I thank them for that!

I watched the first episodes in a purely research frame of mind. Lemme see what everyone is shouting about on Tumblr. I was impressed by the pilot, I liked Wendigo, I loved Dead in the Water, but it was Dean’s fear of flying in “Phantom Traveler” that was the real hook, and it was a major hook. (I prefer Supernatural when it’s goofy anyway, so humor would be my “way in.” My thought was: Oh! These guys are funny, too! Yay!) It was the introduction of broad schticky humor that made me think, “Oh. Okay. I’m down with this.”

“Bloody Mary” was okay, and I was interested in Dean’s batting-eyelashes behavior, and flirting with the morgue attendant, my first real insight into the guy. Ohhh, so that’s who you are, got it.

“Skin” was fascinating in its examination of Dean’s resentment which we’d never really seen before. I enjoyed that the show seemed to want to be ABOUT their relationship, the monster was actually secondary.

“Hook Man” was all right but one for the books because of the gorgeous editing of that final sequence.

“Bugs”? Well. You can’t win ’em all, although it contains perhaps my favorite shot of Dean in the entire series. Definitely Top 5.

So all in all, the show was a bit uneven for me, but I liked the acting and how it was shot. But nothing about it warranted watching nine seasons in one almost-continuous binge. And then came …

The boom-boom-boom-boom of “Home,” “Asylum,” “Scarecrow” and “Faith”. One after the other after the other after the other, diverse, and scary, and moving, and funny. It was unbelievable, I HAD to keep watching after that. When I get obsessed with something it is extremely time-consuming so I honestly have to decide whether or not to pursue something. Will whatever-it-is be worth the commitment?

Following that quadrangle of brilliance came “Route 666” and even with its ridiculous elements (what does the devil have to do with a Racist Monster Truck? Why is pouring two cups of coffee as complicated an act as splitting the atom? Why?) I cherish it because it showed Dean in a completely different context, adding worlds of depth to him, and I also loved the teasing energy between the brothers, also a new element. Very important episode, even though they have never mentioned it again. Doesn’t matter. They’re the ones who created it, I’m not just making shit up!

Moving past that, moving into the final episodes of Season 1, you could feel the show growing in confidence, the introduction of John Winchester was essential, and “Something Wicked” was crucial for me. Almost the most important episode in Season 1. I had already been hooked in, but flashbacks? Them as children? Oh hell YES. Also bowling pins.

A lot of people seem to write off “Provenance,” but for me that episode was a HUGE trust-building moment, with Dean’s burlesque on full display. It’s practically screwball. The episode is not perfect, but I’m in this thing for the acting and the behavior, mainly, and the scenes between the brothers and Dean eating and dispensing advice, and Dean burlesquing his way around … I watch it if I need cheering up. Does the trick.

Once we started Season 2, the Beauty Factor became so omnipresent, so visceral, in both “In My Time of Dying” and “Everybody Loves a Clown,” that you would have had to pay me to stop watching the damn thing. The glitchy nature of Season 1 was gone. There were no more obvious clinkers like “Bugs”.

But still, at any moment, this thing could derail.

“The Usual Suspects”, hearkening us back to Season 1, gratified my need for both continuity and emotional-accumulation (there is possibility for growth and change and curve balls – the characters are not static), and then “Nightshifter,” admitting the reality that Sam and Dean would be Persons of Interest to law enforcement officials across the land … well. That excited me tremendously.

The comforting bizarre stability of Winchesters Always Right, and Everybody Else a Dumbass is hijacked. There is the final moment in “Nightshifter,” when they take off the SWAT masks, and Dean murmurs, “We are so screwed”. Talk about a trust-building moment. In a lesser show, Dean would have wisecracked, like the snarky Houdini that he is, or Sam would have said something reassuring, and the audience would be able to rest easy, knowing Our Boys got it. A moment like “We are so screwed” makes ME relax (strangely enough). I feel like people know what they hell they are doing when they allow for an ending and a plot-twist like that.
Trust-Building Moments Over

Agent Henriksen’s arrival is a game-changer.

To quote Jessie again, from one of the comments sections: this is what the Winchesters look like to law enforcement:

I think every time they leave a motel their garbage bins are full of print-outs of crazy satanic woodcuts. How hilarious it would have been to watch Victor Henricksen travel behind them. “So they went to the library and photocopied twenty pictures out of a book on Appalachian folklore and looked at them for a while. Then they emptied a can of salt onto the carpet of their motel room. Then they walked around the victim’s house and had a D&M with his five-year-old. Then they bought a gong from a hippie shop and went and got drunk on top of a car in a park somewhere. Then they murdered three dudes and desecrated their corpses. Then they had a Dr Sexy MD marathon on pay-per-view and the next day they drove 3000 miles to some podunk town in Florida.”

In “Nightshifter” we have

— Ronald’s awesomeness.

— Agent Henriksen’s awesomeness.

— Another episode that takes place almost entirely in one location. There’s a great hotel room that brings product placement and location-identification to a new level of absurdity, and then there is Ronald’s man-cave, but other than that, everything takes place in and around the bank, a big old-fashioned John-Dillinger-would-rob-it bank. And I LOVE the lighting. But I’ll get to the lighting and how important it is.

— A computer-generated shot that is pleasing every time I see it. It LOOKS different than anything else on the show thus far, and that’s appropriate. We’ve left Supernatural and entered Die Hard.

— Along those lines: “Nightshifter” feels extremely expensive. It feels like there is a lot of money on that screen. Crowd shots, tons of extras (SWAT teams, cops, reporters, onlookers), a big cast (all those folks in the vault), cars and trucks, and then that CGI shot that took weeks to complete.

— Watch how the style alters itself to fit the story. The story is an urban crime thriller and the style goes with that genre. Compare and contrast with the filming of, say, “Playthings,” just to pull out the previous episode. In “Playthings” we had a feeling of elegiac classical femininity, a formal style, long low tracking shots, beautiful shadowy set-ups, plus the homage to The Shining. Here we have mostly darkness and a TON of hand-held camera stuff (way more than usual), and a “you are there” feeling by starting the episode with news footage, “ripped from the headlines.” I am not a fan of hand-held camera stuff mainly because it is overused by lazy directors who wouldn’t know how to set up a shot if you put a gun to their head. This versatility in production and look/feel – from “Playthings” to “Nightshifter” as only one example – is one of the supreme pleasures of Supernatural.

— The dynamic between Sam and Dean is fascinating, especially coming on the heels of the promise Sam enacted from Dean (twice) in “Playthings.” There are a lot of interesting power dynamics at work, and it’s pleasing because it has to do with masculinity and how it presents, and how there honestly isn’t “one way” it should look. (I’ve babbled on about this before. The show is about men.) Ronald brings another type of masculinity to the table, but the show does not make the error of making fun of him, in order to underline Teh Awesome of the hot leads with good hair. I mean, yes, “mandroid” but honestly, Ronald is awesome and there’s a real sense of loss when he dies. We get to see Dean and Sam’s masculinity in a different way when Ron enters. This is what Chuck provides as well.

Tough Guys don’t have to look a certain way. I mean, check out this guy.

He was short, balding and had a speech impediment which caused him to not only drool but lisp. Nerds with chips on their shoulders about how girls only like jocks would do well to remember that one of the biggest movie stars and romantic leads of all time was not a strapping John Wayne type. Bogart had to stand on a BOX to kiss Ingrid Bergman. And he makes women quiver with desire. To this day. So get over your resentful selves.

And finally:

— Dean’s ferocious hand to hand combat with a dame wearing a white slip. We’ll get to that.

A comment on the flow of the season: “Playthings” was a deep pool of dreamy associations, so deep I can’t even perceive that there IS a bottom there. “Nightshifter” zig-zags off the surface, avoiding the depths, because there is no time for that. It’s an extremely male environment. It’s also a very human progression: the pulling back after raw truth-telling, the recoiling, and it’s also realistic in terms of “Nightshifter’s” plot: when you have a SWAT team closing in on you, things get real real simple. RUN.

“Nightshifter” the title is obviously a play on “shapeshifter,” along with the fact that those on the front lines with the creature are security guards who work the night shift. I wondered if there might be any connections with this high watermark of American cinema:

I re-watched some of it (it’s been years), but didn’t find any obvious connections. I demand props for trying. I feel so sorry for Henry Winkler’s fiancée in that, what a horrible character! So convinced she’s fat she won’t come out of the bathroom. Spending hours on her exer-cycle. Never having an orgasm and freaking out when her fiancé even says the word. I mean, these are her character traits! That’s all I got out of it, sorry.

Teaser

Breaking News from Milwaukee. Local affiliate stations logos, “BREAKING NEWS” tickers along the bottom, frenetic “caught” shots of police cars, a bank entrance, a crowd of worried onlookers. This is the kind of footage that represents a challenge to film-makers (and editors, in particular), and Supernatural loves those kinds of challenges. We just saw them imitate The Shining in “Playthings.” We’ll see an entire black-and-white episode that really looks like old Warner Brothers monster movies, with a couple of shots flat-out stolen from classics such as Beauty and the Beast and Dracula and Frankenstein. Re-creating these looks, on a limited budget, takes an enormous amount of research and planning, and it must be a blast. Here we have a pretty damn good representation of a frenzied and voracious local news program. It looks pretty real. I can’t “clock” any artificial cinematic give-aways.

The teaser gives us the Who, What, Where, When. It doesn’t give us the Why. A reporter on the beat gives us the low-down about the hold-up and hostage situation going on inside the Bank of Milwaukee. Suddenly there is a flurry of movement over near the door of the bank, and the reporter turns to look. We see a hostage being ushered out, a man holding onto him shouting at the cops. The camera zooms in, and who do we see?

Agent Henriksen gets an urgent call from the field office in Milwaukee or Chicago, and hops on a plane.

1st scene
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
One day ago

The music comes in, eerie and minor-key, and it’s an example of how good the “incidental” music can be in Supernatural.

Digression on Music
Sometimes the incidental music is so grating, telegraphing to us “wackadoo goofball boys doing something cuh-ray-zee” or “Lifetime Television emo-stuff”. There are a couple of musical “themes” that they use repeatedly (still!) and they are powerfully Pavlovian. They are:

1. The sexy “rock” chords, that lead us into the actual Supernatural theme, and that is used when the guys are moving into action-mode, telegraphing to us: “Shit’s getting serious, let’s revel in the hot-ness of our leads jumping into the Impala” or whatever.

2. The mournful elegiac theme, used when The Past is coming up in The Present. First used so gorgeously in “Dead in the Water,” it’s still in operation.

3. The inspirational Winchester Family Heroic theme, involving horns, that I first clocked in the final scene in “Shadow.” It’s one of my favorites, and they don’t use it often (thank goodness: too much of it would be overkill.) It sounds like something Ron Howard would use or Steven Spielberg in one of their patriotic dramas. It’s a national anthem type sound.

Then, of course, there are the extant songs used to sometimes great effect. Blue Oyster Cult in “Faith”, Black Sabbath, and here, Styx’s “Renegade” which closes out the episode. THAT’S how you use a song.

The first scene comes in and Sam and Dean are mid-investigation. The “hey, here’s a potential case in the paper” scene does not exist in “Nightshifter.” we catch up with them later. They are in a jewelry store, interviewing people about a jewelry heist gone wrong, and the scene is introduced with this eerie almost-sad music. Just to show the effectiveness of the choice: Imagine if this scene was underlaid with the sexy rock chords of the Supernatural theme. It would give the scene a very different feel, it would remind us that Sam and Dean are great, they are in control, they’ve got this. The music choice here allows for an uneasy feeling, a slightly not-sure feeling, especially since we know where we are going in the episode: somehow Dean is going to end up on the nightly news in the middle of a bank robbery. The music choice helps underline the feeling that Sam and Dean are vulnerable.
The End of Music

As always, I get distracted by the production values and the behavioral stuff. I love how the jewelry store interior is a softly lit, the walls glowing a pale orange, and the streets outside are bright blue.

Let’s Talk About Teal and Orange
It’s a color scheme that has become so common in Hollywood that it’s now a cliche. You will be able to date current films, not because of the actors in them or the topics covered or the technology used, but because every damn movie has a teal and orange color palette!

Here is a fantastic blog-post about the complete domination of the Teal-and-Orange color scheme, and what a mess it is, how conventional and “the same” it makes everything look. Enjoy – it’s a great post! Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator was almost entirely teal and orange. It’s the “look” of the film to an exaggerated degree.

Even the Columbia Pictures logo was color-corrected, to reflect the Teal-and-Orange times.

Obviously teal and orange are pleasing together visually, there’s a reason why the colors are used together so much. But seriously, enough is enough. In this opening scene in Supernatural, it’s a mild version of it, nothing too over-the-top – just thought I would mention the trend and how it immediately popped out at me.

What I get from those pale orange walls and the bright blue outside is a sense of isolation and vulnerability, warmth against coolness. That’s why that color scheme is so popular, it does so much of the work for you.
Let’s Stop Talking About Teal and Orange

The next thing I am aware of is Sam’s hair.

He has a widow’s peak, which I am not sure I was fully aware of, and there’s a whimsical little “I’m an FBI guy” flip-up in the back. That is a LOT of hair.

But we don’t start with Sam.

We start with Dean chatting up a pretty jewelry store employee. He’s supposed to be interviewing her, but instead he is throwing her a self-pitying country-song of bullshit about how “lonely” it is working for the FBI, shaking his head at all the “secrets” he has to keep. She is enthralled. It’s a fun bit because although we know that Dean gets around, we don’t really see him in action all that much. Here, we get his malarkey full frontal.

She’s “in” on it, somehow. It’s a little flirty-flirt game they’re playing. “What’s it like, being an FBI guy?” “It’s lonely.” “I so know just what you mean.” What are you all TALKING about? Oh. Pantsfeelings. Right. Also, she’s wearing a sexy white silk top that’s practically corset-like in its structure. She’s wearing white because all of the details in that interior are white: the gleaming jewels, the white flowers, the overhead lights.. any other color would detract from the color-scheme. But later in the episode, Dean has a fist fight with a dame in white silk. He can’t escape from white silk. Not since he was 4 years old has he been able to escape from white silk.

While Dean is working his social life, Sam questions the manager (Sanjay Talwar). The head buyer, a woman he’s known for years, a woman who said at the Christmas party that the jewelry store employees were the only family she’s ever had (“all the lonely people, where do they all come from …” Supernatural operates in a world of shattered families.. where you have to find your own family.) The sad sack came and cleaned out all of the display cases one night, and when the night watchman caught her in the act, she grabbed his gun and shot him. She had known the night watchman for years.

Meanwhile, back on the set of The Bachelor, Dean has questioned White-Corset, in between country-western-song verses, and she provides the rest of the backstory.

“The cops said it was a suicide, they should know, right?” says White-Corset. Dean can barely hold back the scorn, and it’s an important detail, Dean’s overall feeling about law enforcement. He feels superior to them. They mess up his cases all the time. During the episode he will meet a lawman whom he cannot sweet-talk, sass-talk, or fool.

Dean, trying to stay on point, thanks her for her information, and she, with a glance over at her manager, says to Dean meaningfully that she has more information if he wanted to interview her … in private. Sometimes it’s Dean who makes that first leap over the boundary from flirtation into action, but more often than not it’s the woman. Women throw themselves at him, not just because of his good looks. He was the same good-looking guy in “Skin,” but when he turned on the moves as a shape-shifter, he was skeevy and blank, like a Preppy Killer. It’s the inner essence that women respond to. Of course here the “inner essence” he is throwing at her is bull shit (a lonely guy full of secrets), but the REAL essence is … Dean is up for sex. He exudes it. All you need to do is nudge him, just a tiny bit, and he’s naked. How relaxing.

And that’s what happens here. There is a pleasing symphony of behavior from Dean, as he understands what she’s saying, hesitates, and then … stops hesitating. He calls her a “true patriot” and then tells her to write down her phone number, with a guilty hand-swipe on his face, a glance over at Sam, the Parental Figure in this scenario. She better write down her number fast so Sam doesn’t bust him fucking around.

It’s details like that that make these, frankly, boring scenes pop off the screen.

That and a little hint of teal and orange.

2nd scene

As the Impala pulls up in front of Ronald’s house, Dean is still complaining about cops and their interference. It’s a rainy night, mist coming through the trees as Dean and Sam walk up to the door, a beautiful walk-and-talk moment, with Sam filling Dean in on another similar robbery, where some guy killed himself after holding up the bank. Or something. I’m too busy looking at the rays of white misty light coming down behind Sam’s head.

And let’s talk about Sam in “Nightshifter.” He is extremely nose-to-the-grindstone, with an exasperated edge, and very impressive later on as he tries to control the situation in the bank. Sam is overwhelming in some of those bank scenes: “Nobody’s dyin’ here!” he yells at the crowd. (Amusingly, despite Sam’s thrilling machismo throughout “Nightshifter,” it is still Dean who gets the girl, the hostage fluttering her eyelashes at Dean and gushing to Sam about his “heroic” brother. Sam’s blatantly annoyed smile of response, and drawling eye-roll to her Elvis-fangirl-libido are two of the comedic highlights of “Nightshifter”. Sam’s being awesome and take-charge, and STILL the woman is like, “OMG, your brother, tee-hee, flutter-flutter.”) Sam was somewhat incapacitated in “Playthings,” and in the next episode, he separates himself from Dean again, through spirituality and a relationship with God. Here, he’s on point. Beneath all of it, though, is John’s whisper to Dean, the fear of the dark side approaching, the fear that he doesn’t have a lot of time. Sam is a “problem.” (In every season, one or the other of the brothers is the “problem.”) In “Nightshifter,” eventually, it is DEAN who is the problem: Dean, who falls in love with Ronald, Dean, with warrants out for his arrest … Sam does his best to contain Dean, to handle the situation, to get Ronald out of the way.

Dean is more often than not the workaholic one (although in Season 2 that has shifted, Dean’s getting tired.) But he’s usually the one keeping them on track. In “Nightshifter” he also keeps them on track, but allows himself to appreciate Ronald, treat him with kindness and appreciation, whereas Sam has zero time for that noise.

The scene coming up is full of a ton of GREAT closeups of both Ackles and Padalecki, as they stare up at Ronald’s manic monologuing.

As they knock on the door, a light on the porch blares down at them. They are caught in it, wincing, as they will be “caught” repeatedly throughout “Nightshifter” up until the end. There will be no way out, there will no Linda Blair. That spotlight is on them now for good.

Suspiciously, Ronald (Chris Gauthier) peeks down the hallway at them. The rain pours down and the sound adds to the feeling of loneliness, isolation, night-time. It’s a very specific sound.

Sam and Dean have the classic patient “we’re Top Dogs in this scenario” behavior, brought to them by their fake badges, and even when Ronald demands to see their badges (a nice change from the many folks who barely give the badges a second glance), they display the badges to him with a choreographed mixture of contempt and good-natured patience. Ya wanna see the badges? BOOM. How’s that.

While there are many good badge moments in Supernatural (I can’t help but think of Treasure of Sierra Madre), my favorite badge moment came in Season 9.

Sam’s fake name is Han Solo. I love the swoopy confident signature. Sam is very Han Solo-ish in “Nightshifter,” the natural leader trying to keep all the different elements cohered, so nobody gets killed. But he’s cranky about it the whole time. Han Solo.

Ronald takes in the spectacle of Hot G-Men on his doorstep and seems flattered, and yet afraid to really go with that emotion. He’s been burnt. “You came to hear what I got to say?” he asks. It’s tragically vulnerable. Dean has subtly taken over the interaction, another switch-up, it’s normally Sam who handles the openers.

I like that right before they enter, we get a sudden point-of-view change, back up to the light on the porch staring down at them. Dean winces up in that direction right as he walks through the door. It’s brief, lasts only a second, but it’s a visual reminder of the teaser, a reminder that although Dean and Sam are hunting something, they’re the ones being hunted down.

As Ronald leads them into his cluttered man-cave, he begins the monologue that does not stop until the end of the scene. He has a LOT to say, and NOBODY has wanted to hear it. Guthrie plays it with a mixture of total lunacy and intense logic. His skin is slightly clammy. He is clearly a night-shift guy who sleeps in the day. He has the nervous inappropriate manner of a guy who doesn’t converse with other humans much. He probably goes into fugue-states for hours at a time arguing on message boards and forums about Area 51. Ronald is nervous, shy almost, maybe so ingratiating and self-deprecating that he makes himself invisible. The fact that the FBI – the FBI! JUST LIKE X-FILES – is actually looking at him makes him lose his shit. He is going to talk until he can’t talk anymore.

Right when he says, “The cops thought I was crazy …” his Vision-Board is revealed. It looks just like the walls Sam and Dean put up in their motel room, like John Winchester’s demon-tracking wall, and it seems normal because they do it, but when a regular civilian papier-maches his wall like that it looks very very different. An interesting connection/denial of connection which will be reiterated throughout the episode: “What’s crazy anyway? Why is Ron crazy? He’s not that different from us.”

As always, kudos to the props department. There’s such detail, which is skipped over as the camera moves by, but then is fully revealed when you freeze-frame it. Like the big word “SAM” on some random hotel stationary in John’s serial-killer wall, only visible when you slow the film down.

I cannot get enough, people. The inclusion of “cheeseheads” is awesome, and the motel room will really land that location for us. Even without the location listed on the screen, anyone who’s been to Milwaukee will know where it’s supposed to take place.

When Sam interrupts Ronald’s monologue, it is with a firm and insinuating tone, a “guilty until proven innocent” tone, practically an accusation. Sam wants to do two things with Ronald:

1. Get him to tell what he knows
2. Throw him off the scent so he doesn’t get killed

And so Sam chooses to go into the interaction in a hostile way (bringing up all sorts of interesting glances from Dean, who is swept away by Ronald’s enthusiasm). This is another low-level example of the “Yes/and” quality of the show (as opposed to “either/or”.) Both guys, both Sam and Dean, have separate reactions to Ronald. Neither are wrong. You could say that of the two Sam is the one keeping a cooler head: Ronald cannot be allowed to hunt this thing himself, he will get himself killed. Dean gets that, he does, but he doesn’t take such a strict line with Ronald. And, of course, Ronald DOES get killed. And seasons later he will return to try to kill Dean from the afterlife. So, you know. Layers. I love it.

“The thing I let into the bank wasn’t Juan,” he informs Sam and Dean. Pantomime of behavior between Sam and Dean at this revelation. It could be read a couple of different ways. They’re “acting” and their acting job requires them to be suspicious G-men. They’re going to make Ronald work for it. Sam’s reaction is practically scornful. Maybe it’s the expert’s reaction to the amateur, but it seems tactical on Sam’s part. This guy, whatever he knows, has to be protected. Let US handle this. I am going to intimidate the hell out of him.

Juan wasn’t Juan, he was too perfect – “he was like a Juan doll …” says Ronald, trying to put what he saw into words. Remembering the slick Dean as shape-shifter, his licking-lips blank-ness, the usage of his sexuality so different from Dean-the-real-guy … that’s exactly it, right? It looked like Dean, but it wasn’t Dean. It was Preppy Killer Dean. But Sam, trying to both ward off Ronald’s personal investigation as well as getting him to talk, says, sarcastically, “A Juan doll?” There’s a sudden change of perspective then, off of Ronald, and onto Sam and Dean, who are placed tiltingly huge in the frame. It must be how Ronald sees them. Glowering hunks towering before him. Judgey. A wall of authority.

Sam looks through Ronald’s material, and says in a bored unimpressed voice, “What’s that, Mr. Resnick?” He’s so official! That’s all the push Ronald needs. Excited, he picks up a magazine, pointing at the scary-robot on the cover, and murmuring in a rat-a-tat conspiratorial whisper, “Chinese have been workin’ on ’em for years.” The headline reads: “BIRTH OF THE CYBERMEN.” The magazine is a real one, inspired by the paranormal/supernatural work of Charles Fort. (Who actually wrote the book Charlie has to go track down in the most recent episode! The only reason I even recognized the name was because of the research for this re-cap, so I feel wicked smart right now.)

Sam remains staunchly unimpressed, but Dean catches the drift of the thing, and says, helpfully, “Like the one in T-2” which, of course, is exactly the right reference, and Ronald almost jumps up and down in excitement.

Member this douchebag?

Ronald trusts Dean from that moment on. And Dean likes Ron. You can see it in every shot, even when Dean is blurry behind Sam. He’s looking at Ron with a mixture of humor, admiration, and attraction. Not sexual, just, “I really like this guy. He’s awesome.”
Dean is open to the awesome-ness of others in “Nightshifter,” whereas Sam is pretty closed off, focused only on the mission. I mean, a guy says “Okie-Dokie” to the both of them, and Dean loves it so much he goes off on a dreamy monologue about how much he likes that guy, “he says Okie-Dokie… Okie-Dokie…” He tries out how it sounds when he says it. (The guy is listed in the cast credits as “Okey-Dokie.”) Then there’s the moment Dean takes to open up to the woman in the vault, suddenly presenting her with his inner self, his vulnerability, demanding intimacy, insisting on getting her name, giving her his name. Dean is VERY open in “Nightshifter.” The whole episode starts with him flirting in a pretty hard-core way and then discovering how great Ronald is. It may sound strange, but the world of “Nightshifter”, to Dean, is filled with pretty girls who are open to him, awesome smart nerds like Ronald, and kindly guys who say “Okie-Dokie.” Dean is soft here. It’s a reminder that he has no friends. Maybe he’d like to have some friends. Dean’s flirting batting-eyelashes stuff, compulsive though it may be, especially in inappropriate situations, is one way to make the world seem friendly, small, like he has a place in it. Exhibit #5,672 why “womanizing” is such a dismissive and wrong way to talk about his behavior. Sometimes he bats his eyelashes and people get pissed off. But sometimes he bats his eyelashes and doors open for him, shirts unbutton for him, drinks are poured for him … it’s worth the risk for him because sometimes he is allowed “inside” with all that that conveys, okie-dokey?

Dean is pleased that Ron liked his T-2 reference, he feels proud, Ronald is all right, man. This is the Geek side of Dean, the Dean that looks at LARP-ing and thinks it would be fun, the guy who has dissertation-length thoughts about the various versions of Godzilla, the guy who jams out to a musical version of his mother burning on the ceiling. We’ve had interesting discussions here about how his Geek-self, more than anything about his sexuality, more than any other quality, is the thing that Dean is most embarrassed about. He could go full-on Geek if he didn’t have John’s brand of machismo ringing in his ears. As a way to combat his embarrassment about being a nerd, he turns Sammy into the nerd, the book-worm. It’s a weak spot for Dean, an Achilles heel: it’s thrilling when he throws off the shackles, on occasion, and embraces his Geek self.

Sam throws Dean a glance, and Dean immediately tries to simmer down. It’s hysterical. Sam as judgey Parent.

Ronald, hyped-up, elaborates on the “mandroids.” Sam, still in skeptical mode, repeats the word, “Mandroid?” There’s a sneer in his voice, but Dean says, “What makes you so sure about this, Ronald?” (Sam calls Ronald “Mr. Resnick,” Dean calls him “Ronald.”) And look at Dean’s face when he says that. He’s basically got stars in his eyes.

Ronald pops a video tape into the old-school VHS he’s got going on, babbling on and on, all as Sam and Dean sit underneath the Cheesehead Wall of Paranoia.

I can’t get enough of the multiple angles in this scene. And watch, as Ronald keeps talking, the close-ups prioritize Dean and Ron. There are more close-ups of Dean than of Sam, which tells us something. Dean’s reaction to Ronald is one of the themes of the episode. You can do that through language, and we’ve already had some of that, and Ackles handles it gracefully and clearly. But the closeups do a better job. Sam is essentially side-lined by the camera.

These are the things that interest me.

Ronald stops the tape when Juan’s eyes flare up into the camera. Ronald screams and points: “SEE? HE’S GOT THE LASER EYES.”

Oh, Ronald. He puts contemptuous quotation marks about “camera flare.” He galumphs around.

Starting with Ron’s line about how the “mandroid” “morphs itself” into another person, here is the sequence of closeups (putting my own Geek-Self on display, because I counted it out.):

Ron to Dean to Sam to Ron to Dean to Ron to Dean to Ron to Dean and then to Sam.

Sam is involved early on in the sequence, and then he vanishes, leaving just Dean and Ron, until finally Sam returns in the final closeup when he grabs control of the situation. It is a very important visual sequence, and the WAY it is put together is even more important than the look on Dean’s face (admiring, caught up in Ron). If closeups of Sam had been doled out as equally as closeups of Dean we would have a very different story, Sam’s skepticism would be shown as equally important – but here, what is important, is the relationship between Dean and Ron.

“Okay,” says Sam, interrupting the close-up fest. Ron, swept up in the accord he found with Dean, assumes he will find the same thing with Sam. Sam stands up and Dean follows, not knowing why, just doing what Sam does. It is slightly adorable. They are filmed from below so they loom up into the sky. There’s contempt in Sam, his cheeks red (I love it when he flushes). There’s a shot of Dean looking confident and almost happy, still caught up in his thing with Ron, and I wonder what HE thinks Sam is going to say. “There’s no such thing as mandroids.” says Sam. Sam is now isolated in the frame, shot from the side, darkness all around him. It’s HIS moment now.

When Sam says, “There’s nothing evil going on out there. It’s just people, you understand,” Dean looks like he wants to intervene, maybe soften the blow a little bit, but he withholds. Sam is the epitome of a Man in Black, a representative of a powerful bureaucracy whose job it is to shut nut-ball individuals like Ron out of the inquiry. When Ron realizes what has happened, he shouts, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.”

Dean has a moment, a brief moment, where he regrets how the interaction has gone down.

Like I said, “Nightshifter” has all of these interesting power shifts between Sam and Dean, power flowing from one side to the other, without much talk about it. Both of them powerful, but in different ways.

3rd scene

While not as flashy-dashy as the disco-room in “Provenance”, the motel-room in “Nightshifter” (shown only once in the episode) wins a couple of different prizes for

1. Sheer random-ness
2. Filmability

What Jerry Wanek has done is create a moody otherworldly space with a lot of different elements: a brick wall, shadows, Venetian blinds, a small black-and-white television, the painting of a steer over the bed, manly wood-paneled walls, a serial-killer collage wall, and then the one-two punch of a lit-up blue lamp declaring SCHLITZ as well as a wall-divider with lit-up Schlitz logos … all of these things become this dreamy weirdo backdrop to the conversation that follows. It’s an in-joke, Milwaukee being obsessed by its beer (which, if you’ve spent any time there, you know is true) … However, I’ve stayed in many motels in Milwaukee, and, you know, they aren’t filled with lit-up Schlitz logos. You see all of this in the beginning when Sam crosses the room. Dean is in the foreground, drinking a beer. Schlitz, I presume.

The overall effect is beautiful. And very strange.

Dean expresses regret about Ronald. To lie to him, to play him, to trick him, steal his leg-work … Dean doesn’t like that. It seems unfair. “Messed up” is how Dean puts it.

Dean, who has been expressing exhaustion and discontent about the job, maybe remembers how “cool” it is what he does in his life, through Ron’s enthusiasm. Ron WANTS to be doing what he already is doing, so maybe he’s not doing so bad. There’s an interesting little identification there, something that rubs off on Dean throughout (until the one-two punch of Ron dying and Agent Henriksen arriving, that is.) But Sam picks up on the undercurrent, as he pops in Ron’s confiscated video tape. “Are you pissed at me?” Dean’s just maybe a little freaked at “how good a Fed” you are. Dean, you run around wielding badges too and nobody blinks an eye. You use your fake-status as a Fed in order to impress women. You, too, are very convincing as a cop. So shut it.

Dean has settled in at the table, with blueprints and tracing paper and a Sharpie (what you up to, nerd?), and the Schlitz light-show behind him, and he’s pleading Ron’s case. What would it hurt to at least throw him a bone?

“Mandroid,” is all that Sam needs to say. Dean’s got to give him that: “Except for the mandroid part.” The exchange is pleasing: neither are too set in their own opinion to not give a little in whatever exchange goes down. It’s a conversation, not life-or-death.

“I liked him,” Dean declares. “He’s not that different from you and me.”

Sam watches the security footage (and there’s something tragic about Ron stalking by in his security guard uniform) and Dean does a little connect-the-dots grid over the blueprint, and they talk about shape shifters, connecting them to the St. Louis experience. Sam is so butch in “Nightshifter”, I’m in love with it. And not to “overcompensate” for something. It’s because someone has to steer this ship.

Even exposition feels real with these actors. They put a lot of “sub” into that “text.”

4th scene

The environment of the City Bank of Milwaukee is introduced in a series of shots that show tellers and customers going about their business. It introduces us to the cast of characters who will eventually be hostages. We get a brief glimpse of each one. It’s a good way to start. Orientation all around.

Dean and Sam, in their security-tech coveralls stroll through the bank, led by the main security guard, who tells them there have been no problems, and Dean says it’s just a routine check. Their walk through the bank happens “in one,” the camera following them along, giving us a feel of that main space – necessary for later. It’s an establishing shot. We’re going to be here for a while.

Led into the office with the wall of security monitors, the security guard leaves Sam and Dean with a friendly, “Okie-dokey!” – so sincere and Midwestern.

Dean is used to living in a much more hostile world, he laughs in delight. He’s not put off by it. Unlike, say, his father, he does not hold innocence in contempt. Yes, he wants to protect the innocent, but he doesn’t see the innocent as stupid sheep: he sees them as precious reminders of his mission statement.

All of that in his reaction to “Okie-dokey?” You betcha!

As they sit down at the monitors, he can’t let it go: “Okie-dokey. I like him. He says okie-dokey.” Of course he also admits he will kill him without thinking about it if dude turns out to be a shapeshifter. But still, he likes the guy. He likes Ronald. He likes White-Corset. Life isn’t half bad.

They give us a little dissolve, from the wall of monitors, to Dean’s hand switching the cameras around. Supernatural doesn’t use dissolves much (showing the passage of time). It’s probably happened only twice before. Usually they keep scenes self-contained. But here, they need it. Sam and Dean have been staring at the monitors for a while now. Boredom sets in. Dean zooms in on the security guard, and says to himself, to Sam, “Looks like Mr. Okie-dokey is … okie-dokey.” There’s a little bit of an “attitude” in how he says it, like he’s “acting” it, and enjoying the feeling of the words in his mouth. It’s minor-burlesque as opposed to major.

Look at that frame. The darkness encroaches upon them, shadowing their faces, their eyes are hooded, their coveralls are dark … it’s the look that the stupid network people, who are not artists, who have never been artists, balked at. It is why we were subjected to the primary-color Desperate Housewives palette of Season 7. They’re back on track now, although Supernatural will never be this dark and monochromatic again.

And what’s happening in this scene? Nothing. Sam and Dean are passive, sitting in chairs, staring at screens. Dean gets distracted by a woman leaning over, and zooms the camera in on her ass with an appreciative gleam in his eye, Sam tries to get him back on track. Dean’s like, Come on, man, this’ll take 2 seconds, relax, I’m just looking. Dean is “befriending” her ass, basically, all part of his general vibe in the episode. This is part of investigation process, part of any buddy-cop movie, the stakeout: boredom, riffing, improvising, having to wait something out. Supernatural is confident enough to give us the time to get that. They didn’t have the dissolve, for example, leading us right in to Dean and Sam seeing the shapeshifter on the screen. They gave us this restless nothing-ness beforehand. It’s so much a part of the texture of the show and I am grateful for it.

Look how stunning.

Finally, they find what they are looking for, the bank manager’s eyes gleaming like the mandroid that he is.

Sam is already out of his chair. Before Dean can join Sam, though, he stops cold. There is Ronald on the monitor, machine gun slung over his shoulder, hustling around at the front doors of the bank, chaining them shut. Dean knew this was coming, somehow, as did Sam, but Dean’s reaction sets the tone for all that will follow. Almost admiring, he looks up at Crazy Ron, and says, “Hello, Ronald.” Annoyed, maybe, but the way you get annoyed at a lovable child who misbehaves even after a scolding.

Thank you, Jensen Ackles, for the 10 layers you put into 2 words.

Moving from the camera monitor footage into the real thing, Ron hustles down the stairs into the bank (watch for how hand-held camera comes into play now. And the music adds to the sense of chaos and danger.) Ron comes running down, standing at the foot of the stairs shouting, “THIS IS NOT A ROBBERY” and shoots the machine gun into the air. Pieces of plaster flutter down around him and people scream off-camera.

Ron is seen in a long overhead shot, giving us a view of the entire space, a very impressive angle, and then, suddenly, Ron is filmed from below, just like Sam and Dean were back at his house, showing his change in status. He’s the bad-ass authority figure now.

People run around, Ron waves the gun at them, hollering orders. Hand-held camera, all of it. Ron seems totally unstable.

Sam and Dean hustle towards the main room, people fleeing past them, Dean snarking about how Sam said they shouldn’t bring guns. Sam is pissed, wishes he had a gun, wants to throttle Ronald, and as they come towards the camera (all in one take), Dean says, “Just let me do the talking. I don’t think he likes you very much, Agent Johnson.”

It’s gotta be a Die Hard reference, right? I went searching for the “I’m Agent Johnson … No relation” moment on Youtube, and came up with this, dubbed in French, which is strangely hilarious.

“Agent Johnson” is a put-down, looping Sam in with dumb cops as opposed to smart hunters. It’s also juvenile: “Ron likes me better than you.” When Dean calls out to Ronald, Ronald turns, wild-eyed, and roars at them in a rage: “YOU!” Dean smiles uncertainly in response, like, “Hey, member me? You liked me at least, remember?” It’s vulnerable and inappropriate.

The following interaction, charged and frantic, involves Ron’s paranoia ratcheting up, “YOU WORK FOR THE MEN IN BLACK?” and Dean trying to calm the situation down, and Sam barely holding back his irritation that they are wasting time with this lunatic. When Ron says the word “mandroid” again, Sam yells, from his kneeling-position, and it’s a taunt (I LOVE the line-reading), “We’re not working for the mandroid!” It’s so RUDE! Ron’s got the machine gun and the paranoia and his scream, “I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU. I DON’T LIKE YOU” comes from the depths of his soul. Sam is taken aback by it. People usually don’t react to him so negatively. That’s usually his brother’s department. Dean looks almost triumphant. Told ya, Agent Johnson.

When Dean is frisked, it is revealed that Dean disobeyed Sam, sticking a little silver knife in his sock. Sam gives him a look, a marriage look: I thought we agreed … Dean is embarrassed, the best part of the moment, and hisses at Sam, “I’m not just gonna walk in here naked.” He looks very freckled and very adolescent.

I like the Ron performance because he truly seems dangerous, the way he holds that gun, he’s not in control of it, his adrenaline is so high he could faint at any moment. Ronald is the kind of role character actors dream of when they go up for episodics. Think of what Ron goes through in less than 40 minutes!

I like that in the background is the blurred sound of a phone ringing. The bank is still open for operation, and people are still calling in … but nobody is there to pick up anymore. Dean tries to get Ron to focus on him. (Dean would make a good hostage negotiator. My cousin is married to one of those guys. They are tough, rational, compassionate, psychologically-sophisticated mother-fuckers, let me tell you.) The rest of the scene drops away, leaving us with another closeup stand-off between Ron and Dean. Dean offers himself as a hostage.

The way Dean speaks, as though it’s him and Ron against the world, gets through to poor lonely Ron. Ron says, with a glimmer of an excited smile, “Okay!” and it manages to be pathetic, and it also doesn’t last long. “EVERYONE ELSE,” he screams, waving the gun around (hand-held camera again), “GET IN THE VAULT.”

Because there are so many people locked up in that bank, the shapeshifter has a field day. So many bodies to choose from! The clothes part of the exchange is still a mystery to me.

I’m not sure how it works, and I don’t care.

5th scene

Out the padlocked doors of the bank, a cop on the beat strolls by, glancing in, almost casually. But then the perspective switches to outside, and he hustles towards a group of police cars, pulled up along the sidewalk, alerted to the situation inside. It’s a small huddle, but it’s a precursor to the chaos in the teaser. It’s started. Quick shot, but it’s beautiful:

Back inside, Ron hustles the group into the vault, including Sam, who stares out at Ron and Dean, hands in the air, looking mad enough to eat nails. He seethes. He hates Ronald, and hates Dean for indulging Ronald, because look at what has happened! Dean, closing the huge vault door, says, “It’s okay, everyone. Stay cool,” and throws Sam a “Jesus Christ” glance before the door shuts.

If you look at it from Sherri’s perspective, the blonde bank teller who will play such a huge part later, played by Georgia Craig: as far as she knows, that security technician in coveralls is a hostage just like she is. And he is brave enough to offer himself up to the bank robber as collateral, in order to save the rest of them. She can’t BELIEVE it. She has never encountered anyone in her real life, EVER, who is that brave, that calm under pressure, that …. omg he’s hawt, help me, I love him, what. WHAT. WHO IS THAT MAN..

Here is one of my favorite moments in the episode. It’s partly funny because of how Padalecki plays it (to perfection) but also funny because of how they’re set up and filmed. Sherri is in focus, her eyes still on the place where Dean just was, murmuring, “Who is that man?” The camera backs up slightly so that Sam is now in the foreground, and then he is in focus, while Sherri blurs out. Sam says quietly, “He’s my brother.” Sherri, still a blur back there, takes in the information and breathes, “He is so brave.” Sam, still facing the camera, does such a deep eye-roll that I fear he might throw out his back.

6th scene

Dean and Ron are hunting together, going through the bank, looking for the shapeshifter’s cast-off skin. You can understand why Sam is annoyed. Or at least, I can. This is BULL SHIT, thinks Sam. Here’s Plan B, guys: disarm Ron, you could do it with your pinky finger, lock him up in the vault, and take OVER.

Dean and Ron come into the bank manager’s office. Ron wields the gun, but Dean walks around like he owns the place. He don’t need no stinkin’ gun. Ron still thinks they’re looking for a robot with laser eyes, so he walks around behind the desk and falls on his back, slipping on the slimy skin shed by the shifter. It’s a great pratfall, Ron collapsing out of the frame with a scream. Ron just keeps on screaming when he sees the slime he has landed in.

When it’s a night-time scene and you need light, make sure you have a window with venetian blinds. Problem solved. Serge Ladouceur knows his film noir.

Dean has taken off his coveralls, draping them over his shoulder, and he’s wearing a plaid shirt which I am sure will bring on some controversial reactions round these here parts. Dean is annoyed, and poor Ronald has to struggle to keep up.

“Now it can be anybody.” Meanwhile, Ron picks up some of the slime, captivated by its consistency and feel. He makes the mistake of referring to it out loud as “its robot skin” (I’m dying laughing) and Dean finally has had it. It’s taken a lot. “Let’s get one thing straight,” says plaid Dean, “It’s not a mandroid. It’s a shapeshifter.”

Dean finds a silver penknife on the desk, looking relieved (and the music comes back in, low and ominous). Knowing Ronald probably knows everything about werewolves, he clues him in that werewolves came from “these guys”. Dean is on his way out, barking at Ron to follow. Ron stares down at the slime. For so long he has felt like an outsider, that the truth was “out there” but he couldn’t get to it or nobody would believe him. Now he’s on the inside. He’s hunting a werewolf??

The scene ends with Ronald at the door, glancing back inside, with a look of pure exhilaration on his face. He’s a hero. He feels like a real man.

It’s such a touching funny performance.

7th scene

Here is the piece de resistance of “Nightshifter,” an exterior that combines elements of Die Hard with a Gotham-like comic-book feel of Big Events in the Big City: a helicopter swoops through the night sky, the “camera” following it from below, complete with lens flare, and its searchlight hits the tall building, swooping down its side, the “camera” moving down to see the street below, with emergency vehicles coming and going. In the entirety of Supernatural, there is not an equivalent shot (and I’m actually glad about that – it’s perfect for this episode, but they didn’t ruin it with too much of a good thing). All of it, everything, is computer-generated, every bit of it. Here’s a fun behind-the-scenes with Ivan Hayden, the special effects supervisor of Supernatural, about how they created it. The shot took 5 and a half weeks, start to finish.

To go back to what I mentioned earlier about the lighting in the episode, and how good it is, because it’s connected:

Eventually, all the lights in the bank go out. We already understand the layout because of those establishing shots early on. But then we see the helicopter, and the sheer amount of man-power descending onto the bank from the outside. How to keep that awareness of what is going on outside, even from inside? What they do in “Nightshifter” is have the womp-womp of helicopters, and also they have the air through the windows constantly flashing with the red and blue of cop-car lights. Wherever they can put red and blue flashing, at whatever angle, they do. It’s on the walls, at the end of halls, it’s everywhere, even when you think – what, do they have a cop car parked on top of the garbage cans in the alley outside? Those lights mean we are never lulled into forgetting that outside is The Law. There are also frenetic exteriors showing police cars and news trucks, but that’s not enough. We need to feel the outside pressing in on the interior. So how do they do that? Place a couple of twirling red-and-blue gels behind a flat, Voila, you get the impression that the entire Milwaukee police force waits outside.

Simple, cheap, effective.

Next is a confusing collage of the scene on the streets: SWAT teams emerging from their van, streets being blocked off, news crews pulling up, crowds being held back, policemen hanging around. Snipers in upper stories. It’s a vast sprawling crowd scene and the camera seemingly struggles to keep up: there’s one moment where the camera lingers on a big white police truck, and then “realizes” that something else is happening and whizzes over to watch a gleaming black car pull up. It all feels like the news footage in the opening, with an ambitious cameraman trying to capture it all. (Phone call for Nightcrawler.)

A big-wig Lieutenant stares up at the building, and enters the temporary headquarters in the police van. Cops are in there, phone-lines and monitors, cups of coffee. “Another day in paradise,” cracks one of the cops. He must be a Phil Collins fans. I never was, but one could not escape that particular album the year it came out. More’s the pity. And without further ado:

Look at the gorgeousness of this. This is art.

Such care is given even to the smallest of moments featuring people who only have one or two lines.

8th scene

Dean stalks out into the main bank area, with Ron following, giggling like a kid on a sugar-high. Dean, you should take that gun away from him. Ron has to stop and talk and share the exhilarating freedom he is now experiencing. He’s NOT crazy, he’s been treated like he was crazy for weeks, and he’s NOT. There’s a hilarious moment when he suddenly concedes ground to Dean, in almost a deferential way, with a big “You first” gesture, very 19th century, when he says “I was right … well, except for the mandroid part. Thank you.”

It is at that moment the power goes out, shots of every area of the bank that we have come to know well plunging into blackness. Dean is furious, Ron is confused, especially when Dean says the “cops” turned the power off. “THE COPS????” cries Ron. Dean allows himself to get frustrated then, allows himself some annoyance, although even then, he goes gentle with it. He’s a father figure.

“You weren’t exactly a smooth criminal about this, Ron.”

Second 1980s music reference, this one much cooler!

If Sam had said such a thing to Ron, Ron probably would have shot him. But when Dean says it, Ron splutters, “I didn’t think!”

9th scene

Meanwhile, back in the vault, Sherri has basically cornered Sam in the darkness to keep talking about Dean. It’s like trying to befriend Aerosmith’s roadie in order to get to Steven Tyler. If she talks to Sam, HIS brother, then that makes her almost sorta kinda CLOSE to Dean. She is a grown woman with a good job and she sounds like a chatty member on a Robert-Pattinson fan forum when faced with the spectacle of Dean Winchester. It’s a Meta-moment. Yup. That’s how you all talk about him. It’s gently making fun of it, and us. What is so funny about Sam’s reaction that he is so used to this. He moves away from her, she follows. “Has he always been like that?” she demands. Yes, and I’m OVER it, could be the response. He was over it probably by the time he was a teenager and getting interested in sex himself (how is one supposed to make your own way with girls when you have a twinkling charismatic bombshell for an older brother?), and even here, in a scary situation, it’s still happening, and honest to GOD, it is RIDICULOUS. Padalecki’s tight-lipped annoyed smile is so entertaining.

The door opens, revealing Dean, and lovestruck Sherri cries out in ecstasy, as though it is Steven Tyler himself, “YOU SAVED US. YOU SAVED US.” (Talk about having a blast in a one-off performance. Georgia Craig must have got the final script and thought, “Holy shit. This is gonna be FUN.” When does a woman who looks like that ever get to do fight choreography at this level? And she also gets to have the whole falling-in-and-out-of-love-with Dean thing that happens in the vault.) Dean has a gun now. He says, authoritative, that he “found some more”, and hustles more hostages into the vault. Sherri is openly devastated. Her hero has … joined up with Crazy Rifle Man?

Dean summons Sam, and Sam exits, leaving Dean staring at Sherri, her look of dismay glimmering at him through the darkness. He shrugs and laughs, in an awkward humble-brag way. Because he is who he is, he has picked her out of the crowd already (Pretty girl. There she is.), and had to have a moment with her, and it’s strangely performative, his version of a Hero Being Humble. It’s all for her benefit. He knows he’s on stage. He’s a burlesque star, why wouldn’t he.

This little stuff is totally Ackles. Nobody told him to play that moment in that way.

10th scene

A couple of quick shots outside, searchlights turning on, SWAT team guys locked and loaded, sirens and lights. Always keep our awareness of what is going on outside. Dean fills Sam in on the shape-shifter. It’s bad news. Faintly, you can hear the sirens outside. It’s nervewracking. Sam says, “Dean. You are wanted by the police,” as though Dean is somehow not getting how serious the situation is, and Dean laughs, like, Yeah, that’s another wrench in the works, huh. It’s almost funny. No wonder Sam gets frustrated.

Sam is concerned about their escape plan. Valid point.

Dean says, “One problem at a time.” Valid point.

Love the “yes/and” of it all, even though they are in conflict. Dean takes charge: he’s going to do a sweep for stragglers. Dean has had enough time with Ron to include him in the conversation, but the second he says his name, Sam starts laughing. It’s so spontaneous. When Dean says, dead serious, “Help Ron manage the situation …” Sam explodes, “Help him MANAGE? Are you INSANE?”

Ron glances over, and Dean, caught between the two men, decides to give Ron a reassuring smile and a thumbs-up which is, frankly, insane. It’s so encouraging, it’s so cavalier and foolish and charming. Dean knows Ron needs it, so he gives it. Freely.

There’s a lot of accumulated anger in Sam from being locked up in the vault with Miss Lovesick Tween, and Dean going off with Ronald. Really? RONALD? Dean deals with the chaos: Our plans went awry, okay? We gotta find the shifter before the cops come in here, and blah blah … Dean goes on for a bit.

Then comes my favorite focus-pull in the episode:

Dean’s back is to the camera, talking to Sam. Sam is in focus, and we see Sam looking over Dean’s shoulder, see something, we assume it is Ron, and then give Dean a LOOK, like, “Uhm … You need to turn around right now.” Dean turns around, and with a whoosh, the focus switches, Dean right in the camera, Sam blurred out. Dean’s freckles reach an Anne of Green Gables level, and how they accomplished that in the darkness I don’t know.

Never get sick of that shot and that focus-pull.

And there is Ron, standing in the glow of the searchlight, holding up the rifle.

Sam might have raced across and wrestled with Ron, letting out some of that aggression. But Dean hisses, again in the tone of an exasperated father whose child is misbehaving and making him look bad, “Ron. Outta the light.”

Dean leaves Ron and Sam, and the two of them stand there in a stilted awkward silence, like two awkward teens forced to go together to the church dance by hopeful parents. Sam says, glumly, obediently, “Hi, Ronald.”

I love Sam.

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“Nightshifter” is allll about the lighting for me, at this point.

I’m overwhelmed.

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Similar to the opening sequence in the bank, when we got a series of images of customers and tellers going about their day, back in the vault we see the hostages, sweating, one fingering rosary beads, one leaning his head back, the low murmur of voices.

Poor Mr. Okie-Dokie starts clutching at his heart. Sam pulls open the door and tells everyone he’s going to leave it open, “get you folks some air.” (How confused must everyone be. Who are those guys?) Sam is concerned for people but he is more concerned about keeping everyone under control. He is formidable: “No one leaves this vault.” He is not in the mood to sugar-coat anything in “Nightshifter,” and normally he’s the sugar-coater, even if it’s for manipulative “get this person to talk” reasons. It’s really fascinating to me, as well as hot, I won’t lie. Dean glimmers and glows through “Nightshifter,” in love with the world (tiny exaggeration, but still, he’s positive, he’s friendly), and Sam feels the weight of it pressing down. It’s extremely well-written.

The land-line rings, jarring everybody. Ron almost shoots it off the hook.

Sherri, leaning exhaustedly against the safe-boxes, says, “I don’t understand. Why are you helping him?”

Beautifully, almost glamorously, shot, Sam stands in the doorway. How does one achieve such a monochromatic and dark look, and yet still have the right things pop out at you? It’s not too dark. It’s just right. And the framing, the light catching the right side of his hair, the door-frame on the left, the vast dark grey space behind Sam …

It gets even more beautiful in some of the moments that follows, when he tells Okie-Dokie that he’s very sorry, but he can’t let him out. As handsome as Padalecki is, this is the light that suits him best, especially with the deep-set eyes. He’s got a face made up of all these angular planes, veritable shelves that the lighting guys and the cinematographer can play with, shadows, angles – all in the face itself. You have to get the lighting right though. This is superb.

Meanwhile, Ron has actually answered the phone and is now engaged in conversation with the hostage negotiator. Sam’s got Okie-Dokey collapsing on one side, and Ron saying things like, “I’m a crime fighter” into the receiver on the other. Sam is a harassed babysitter. The people in the vault plead for Sam’s help, the man needs a doctor, he’s having a heart attack …

Sam’s reaction to the heart attack news, though! There is no concern, no worry. Just a glaring rolling of the eyes right at Ron, saying, “Could be him. Could be our guy.” It’s so CHILLY COLD and I think it’s great! He’s got bigger concerns than one man’s health. If there were more time, he could focus on it, but for now, he’s got to shut down Ron, handle the negotiators outside, and circle the wagons around the hostages who are becoming a problem. When one of the hostages calls out, “You’re just gonna let him die?” Sam yells back, “Nobody’s dyin’ in here.”

My favorite line-reading in the episode. Thrilling.

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Hurtling along now on its tracks, the episode starts to fracture, split its time in shorter segments, outside chaos, inside the vault, out in the bank. Like I said 10,000 words ago: the episode is extremely controlled in presenting an extremely OUT of control event.

Dean moseys through the hallway with a flashlight, and then we hear Big-Wig’s voice, and we cut to the interior of the police command truck. So there’s overlap, now, scenes bleeding into one another, exterior pushing into interior.

Big-Wig (played by Roman Podhora) is on the phone with Sam now. Sam is in charge. And I need smelling salts.

Big-Wig says, “Just stay calm, sir,” and Sam barks, “Just send in a paramedic, okay?” We get this beauty of a shot, which, honestly, looks like there is no artificial stage-lighting used at all. Just that thin line of fluorescent behind him. Perfection.

Ron frazzles an apology at Sam, who glowers under the weight of the pressure. One of the hostages calls out accusingly, holding onto Okie-Dokey, “He’s gonna die right in front of you.”

Meanwhile, Dean pokes at a ceiling tile and out falls a dead body, just like the dead body falls through the elevator ceiling in Manhattan Murder Mystery.

The body is stark naked. Dean looks down at him, gingerly turns him over. It’s the same dude from the vault, the guy holding up Okie-Dokey. His throat is cut.

The guy in the vault (who is now the shape-shifter, poor sap) demands to be let out so Okie-Dokey can get help. Ron re-appears, waving the gun around, and I am now openly annoyed that Sam and Dean don’t take that fucking thing out of his irresponsible hands.

Dean walks back into the area, and pulls Sam aside to talk. The hostages stare out at the pow-wow happening between these two mysterious men, and, frankly, so do I, with this beautiful dark double-silhouette.

On Creating Iconic Images
There are many reasons why characters start to feel iconic. You can’t beat the audience over the head with “THIS GUY IS MEANT TO BE ICONIC” because discerning people will be like, “Y’all, don’t tell me what to feel.” You have to be careful and specific, and Season 2 has been all about that. Even the way they film the Impala has become self-conscious, self-conscious because they know what they have created by now and they are building on it, pushing it. Eric Kripke said that in the hiatus in between Season 1 and Season 2, he got more letters worried about the car than the boys. Good information, and so they started pouring their attention into how they filmed that car, they understood the Impala had acquired real meaning. I mean, consider what happens to the Impala at the end of Episode 2 in Season 2. They knew what they had by then, you can tell. The same is true with how they presented Sam and Dean. These guys are complex, impressive, and fans had strong feelings of identification with them, not just as individuals, but together. A shot like the one above, brief though it is, knows that, and is giving the fans what they want.

That’s how you build effective iconic imagery: it has to be based on something that is already present, that already exists.

Like this.

I’m not a big fan of Seven Year Itch although she’s watchable in pretty much anything. But that scene, where her skirt blows up, works because of the audience’s already-existing feelings about Marilyn Monroe. It’s a tremendously self-knowing scene, everyone involved knowing that the audience who will come to see it live in a world where Marilyn Monroe is the biggest sex symbol on the planet. (Men and women loved her equally. She was one of those rare individuals.) This scene is giving the people what they wanted. If she had been an unknown starlet, the scene might not have had the same impact. Or it would have felt more like a gimmick (it already feels like a gimmick). The real point of the moment is to give everyone a chance to REVEL in the force of nature that is Marilyn Monroe.

The scene became famous almost instantly. It is still one of the most well-known images of Marilyn Monroe, symbolic of her sex appeal, playfulness, and beauty. People might not even know what film it came from anymore, but they know that image. (Of course the whole joke in the movie is that it’s a heat wave and she needs to cool off so she steps over the subway grate. She is totally innocent, seeking relief, and when her skirt blows up, she’s more like, “Oops! Silly me!” than “Va-va-voom boys, look at me.” She was sweet and delighted with herself. That’s who she was. And THAT is her thing, THAT is why she is an icon. And she’s filmed that way.)

I don’t want to over talk Sam and Dean in pow-wow. It’s not as “iconic” as all of those close-ups with both of their heads jammed in the frame. This is more subtle. But it fills me with a shiver of satisfaction somehow, because I somehow expect it and I somehow need it. We need things from iconic figures, whether we admit or not. And I need Marilyn Monroe’s skirt to fly up, too. We collaborate in the process of creation. I think the reason why I like Sam and Dean in Silhouette Silent Pow-Wow so much is that we are not privy to what they say, we are suddenly shut out of the charmed loop, we’re with the hostages in the vault. We’re seeing them from the outside, and that really helps with Iconic Status.

I HOPE you people out there understand what I am talking about. All I can say is how a shot like that works on me.
Iconic Images Over and Out

Sam, having heard Dean’s whisper, goes in to retrieve Okie-Dokey from the arms of the shape-shifter. His solicitousness and caring is a complete change-up from his aggravated response earlier to the news the guy was having heart failure. It would be amusing if the situation wasn’t so serious, like, “Jeez, guy, you were just annoyed my ticker was giving out – now you give a shit?”

Once those two are gone, Dean moves into the light, staring at the shape-shifter.

It’s practically Baroque. He looks damaged, dangerous, and glamorous.

He and the shapeshifter have a fight and Dean is knocked down.

The following sequence is put together so beautifully that I’ll take a little bit of time looking at the nuts-and-bolts. The sequence of shots is very important. There’s a use of slo-mo. And then the sound drops out. It’s really pared-down, really really effective.

So let’s break it down. Shot breakdown:

— There’s some jagged Jaws-ish music as the shapeshifter tears across the bank.
— Sam, helping the guy up the stairs, stops, and looks back down over the main bank floor.
— Ron, with his gun, runs after the shifter, stopping in the middle of the space.
— Change point of view, so we see Ron from the other side, the search-light streaming in whitely behind him, holding the gun up, ready to shoot. Right at the end of that shot, the slo-mo kicks in. Gently, though, you barely notice it.
— Sam, looking on, shot from below, and then, quickly, the camera moves up towards his face. A camera move like that is NEVER a good sign.
— The next thing we see, and the music cuts out at the same moment, is a red laser beam landing on Ron’s back.
— Just for those who might not get it, we then see the gun, outside, with the red laser coming out of it (complete with little focus-pull, so we see the laser then we not only the gun behind it, but the gleaming whites of the sniper’s eyes through his black SWAT mask. Great.)
— Next thing we see is Sam yelling “GET DOWN”, only we can’t hear him. Brilliant urgent emotional choice. The feeling of impotence one gets in the middle of a crisis of being unable to stop events, or like a nightmare where you are trying to run but you remain stationary. They took Sam’s voice out, so that a huge feeling of helplessness suddenly overwhelms the scene. (I, for one, did not think Ronald was going to die. The first time I saw the episode I cried out, “No!” It’s good to remember first reactions.) AS Sam is yelling, we hear the muffled “pop” of the gunshot.
— Back to the red laser on Ronald’s back, going black, where the bullet penetrates.
— Switch point of view to Ron from the front, white light streaming around him, frozen from being shot.
— Dean enters the scene, and when the shot comes, he throws himself down and out of the way, a movement that looks both awkward and graceful because of the slo-mo. Crouching down, looking on, agonized at what just went down.
— A close-up of Ron’s chest, with blood coming out of the bullet-hole.
— Back to Ron from the front, swaying on his feet. Still no sound.
— Big juicy close-up of Sam looking on, upset and helpless.
— Ron starts to sway forward, he’s about to go down.
— Back to Sam, and this is one of my favorite shots of him in the episode. I don’t know why. I don’t question it. I just love it, its helplessness, its reach.
— Ron falls to his knees, and we see that from the front – and then from the back of him – and suddenly we have sound, the sound of knee-impact, a big echoing surreal sound, and the laser, horribly, is still pointed on his back.
— Finally, and awfully, the camera is now on the floor, and Ron falls into his dead closeup, right into the frame.
— The scene ends with a slow pull-in to Dean, still crouched down and hiding, looking over at dead Ron with a horrified expression.

It’s just so well put-together, and if it’s any fun at all for you to freeze-frame your way through the scene (especially an action sequence like this one), it’s a great lesson or example of of the nuts-and-bolts of collage, which is what film-making is all about. It’s quite complex, imaginatively handled, it’s ambitious. It’s not literal. It’s theatrical and devastating.

Seamus Heaney wrote a lot about how to get his “feelings into words.” By that he meant: a poem should not just be descriptive: “I saw this. I saw that.” Whatever the poem was about had to
1. come from a strong feeling
and
2. utilize words that somehow got that feeling across. Even just by the SOUND of them, not necessarily the meaning.
It is an extremely difficult thing to do. Artists struggle with it all the time: finding a FORM that is right for the CONTENT. Content is important but if it’s put in the wrong form, it won’t work. We’ve all seen movies that are TRYING to be funny and aren’t. Maybe the script wasn’t funny but more often than not the director was unable to find the proper FORM for the story. Moments lie dead when they should zip. The pacing is off. The timing is wrong. And so that which should be funny feels totally serious and it’s a very unpleasant experience.

And then you watch Bringing Up Baby and the FORM (what it looks like, who they cast, the costumes) completely matches the CONTENT (a bunch of lunatics running around the countryside trying to catch a leopard.) That’s how it’s done.

Well done action sequences are rightly studied frame by frame because you can learn a lot about WHY something works. It’s not enough that something works. (Or it’s not enough for a nerd like me. I want to understand WHY.) Why did they choose to cut there? Why did they switch back to a closeup of that guy? What information is being conveyed?

Phil Sgriccia started out as an editor. That gives him a visceral understanding of how shots flow together, how to piece together different parts to make a whole, how to keep energy going through cuts (or dissolves). Most directors have some understanding of editing, it’s a huge part of their job, but working as an editor is a whole different level. Sgriccia’s episodes are really fun to watch for the editing brilliance, if you’re into that sort of thing. Which, yeah, I am.

The Ron dying scene is a Master Class.

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So that we never forget what is going on outside, there’s another quick collage of the activity going on outside the bank, SWAT teams moving into position, police radio voices, search-lights on the bank entrance.

Back inside, the hostages, decide to make a break for it, and hustle on out of the vault.

Sam joins Dean, and the two of them crouch there, side by side, silent, traumatized, Dean maybe more so than Sam at the moment. The horrible-ness of Ron actually being shot, actually being gone, spreads around them like black ink in water. It’s the accumulation of such events that has made Dean (in particular) who he is in later seasons. There’s a certain point when you get tapped out. Kevin was the breaking point. Dean’s essence practically changed overnight. (Speaking of American Sniper, there’s one closeup of Bradley Cooper – my old classmate, so weird – looking through his gun-sight, and within that closeup one can see his consciousness, his awareness, flooding backwards, out of the brain, so that the body can do what it needs to do. You can see why these guys come home and cannot adjust. That was never better expressed than in The Hurt Locker, with this moment:

He can take apart an IED while being shot at from all sides, at every moment in danger of blowing himself up, but when his wife tells him to buy some cereal, he stands in the aisle, frozen, in a panic.

Sam grabs the reins, giving Dean an order, telling him what to do. Dean needs it. Sam knows Dean needs it. I love the little moment of them crouching there in a makeshift foxhole.

Once Sam has gone, Dean creeps over to Ron’s body. It’s a long time before he speaks. He can’t yet. Outside you can hear the thud-thud-thud of the helicopter in the sky, and the air is filled with those flashing red and blue lights. Ron has been a casualty of the ridiculous situation, and yes, he was foolish and impulsive, but he did not deserve that. Dean let him down. Like Brando in the back seat of the cab to Rod Steiger: “You were my brother, Charley. You shoulda looked out for me. Just a little bit.” Dean should have looked out for Ron, just a little bit. Dean’s breath is still high in his throat, he is anxiously aware that every move he makes can be seen through those windows, that outside is a gigantic force with guns drawn. The music comes in, soft, melancholy, and Dean can’t stop looking down at Ron. A world of regret and sadness struggle across Dean’s features, and a moment like that is why Ackles is the actor that he is. He goes there, man. He does not self-protect.

“Sorry, Ron. You did a real good job tracking this thing. You really did.”

He reaches out to grab Ronald’s gun, which he should have done at the get-go, and hustles off to take care of Okie-Doke.

Sam stalks through the bank with a flashlight, pushing open doors, looking for the shifter. A bunch of the fleeing hostages come upon him, and he barks at them, “What are you DOING here. You’re in danger. GET BACK TO THE VAULT.”

I guess what I love so much about Sam in “Nightshifter” is that his sensitivity has been clearly established thus far, over one and a half seasons. While Dean can be gruff and sarcastic when focused on the urgency of a hunt, Sam is able to modulate that response and deal with the freaked-out victims in a gentle way. It’s still bull shit, in a way, because Sam is, like his brother, lying and presenting a fake badge and ‘acting a part’, but Dean relies on him for that sensitivity because he bungles up those moments. Here, because of Dean “checking out” to befriend and include Ronald, and because of Dean being wanted by the police, Sam has no time for those pretend niceties.

Now we are moving into the teaser. Dean hustles Okey-Doke towards the front door, and outside you can see and hear the chaos. Dean, though, murmurs, “It’s okay. It’ll all be over soon.” Frenzied shots of stretchers and guys with guns: seriously, how much did they spend on “Nightshifter”? Dean is the caretaker, reassuring “his” hostage, despite all of the panic he must be feeling, and when they come out the front door, there are three SWAT guys, like demons from a nightmare, three red laser beams coming at them. Shifter schmifter, this is terrifying.

Dean knew a crowd had gathered, but was not prepared for the pandemonium facing him, the sheer size of it. He has a moment looking around, completely terrified, before he shouts at everyone, everyone, get back, get back!

Inside the police van, the police sergeant turns to the Big-Wig and says, confused, that one of the hostages has taken over the situation. Music comes in now, big orchestral intense music (I bitch about the incidental music on occasion so it’s only fair I shout out when it’s used beautifully – as it is throughout “Nightshifter”), and that’s the accompaniment underscoring Dean hustling the security guard outside, and then retreating into the bank, feverishly padlocking the door again. He’s alone. He just saw all he needed to see. They are fucked.

But because this is the CW, what he says is, “We are so screwed.”

15th scene

After the chaos and noise of that moment, the sound drops out, and we hear the murmuring ring of a cell phone, echoing. There’s a stunning overhead shot of Sam, crouched in a dark stairwell, looking down at the leftover slime of the shifter.

Dean, hustling down another stairway, answers his phone (Dean, change your ring tone. I suggest this song, especially now in Season 10.) Sam sifts through the nasty slime. Sam says, “It changes a lot quicker than the one in St. Louis.” Well, the one in St. Louis was more interested in proclaiming long emotional monologues about how mad he was that Sam went to college as well as hitting on Blondie with a blank-eyed lip-licking stare. So that might have been a contributing factor. Dean says it’s like “playing the shell game,” which I find strangely charming. I know the shell game, but I have never given it a second thought. The Wikipedia page for it is very fun.

Lighting alert. That looks like one simple light. Nothing else. Nothing fancy. But the result! Ah, dark early Supernatural, you have my heart.

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30 minutes into “Nightshifter”, here comes Agent Henriksen.

He seems so inevitable, doesn’t he? He makes such an impression. Long ago in the comments section to some post, we were all listing the various things we loved about Supernatural. Things like “episodes with mud” were included. Henleys, obviously, were included. Agent Henriksen showed up in people’s lists multiple times. The thing is: even though he clearly is inevitable, from the moment Dean escaped the murder rap in St. Louis, I still didn’t see him coming. “The Usual Suspects” should have clued me in, but still, I didn’t anticipate him strolling into the series in the way that he does. Whatever I imagined MIGHT happen was nothing compared to what DID happen.

Similar to when Gordon showed up, and anybody else who will end up being important (Bobby, Ellen and Jo, Charlie, Rufus, Bela – her entrance rules, Lisa, who has a wind machine placed right outside her door so she will look particularly fetching – you know, these are all very deliberate entrances) … Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s a mis-fire, but great care and thought is given to how these important secondary characters will be introduced. It’s all part of having a show that isn’t really an ensemble show, there are only two lead characters … so people coming into that duo is … tricky.

What I love about Agent Henriksen (and the actor’s performance) is that he doesn’t give a shit what we think of him, he doesn’t give a shit that we need a second to adjust to him, he has a job to do and he is going to do it. It’s a MAJOR entrance. Nobody saw him coming. We get that, gorgeously, in the multiple close-ups of Dean listening to him on the other end of the phone. Dean’s “wait a second WHAT” flashes of panic make him US, he’s reacting the way we would, it’s the most destabilizing thing in the world to hear this aggressive unstoppable KNOWING voice on the other end talk about his life history. Dean is a smart guy but he somehow had deluded himself into thinking he and his brother acted with impunity.

But we’ll get to that moment.

Outside, multiple gleaming black cars and vans pull into the cordoned-off space. It looks important. The sergeant in the police van hangs up the phone and says, “Crap. The Feds are here.” Big-wig practically groans out loud. “Crap.”

No wonder Dean had been bitching about cops in the early portion of the episode. He’s paving the way for more cops than we have ever seen before in the history of Supernatural. The van door opens and one guy, wearing an FBI jacket, enters. You think he might be in charge, but no, he is creating the space for the Star of the Day, he’s just the forward-guard of the gigantic bureaucracy known as the FBI, and there’s a slight moment of hesitation, like: why aren’t you speaking, pale sir with glasses? – and that is when Agent Henriksen walks into the van, walks into it like he owns it, walks into the space like it is HIS.

On the Full Color Spectrum of Masculinity
“Playthings” was about femininity, and “Nightshifter” is about masculinity. The femininity in “Playthings” was seductive, compelling, irresistible. As long as they were in that inn, they were guests in a female world (the female world they had been banished from since their mother died). In “Nightshifter” we have the opposite. The only major moment involving a woman is a kung-fu fight to the death. Men are in charge here, men run things, men keep secrets, men withhold, men barge in where they are not wanted, men feel left out and get pissy, men want to be involved, men try to be friendly and open, men have to “step up” and be tough, men fight over who is “lead dog” in any given interaction … Almost every single male character goes through some of that or all of that at one point or another through “Nightshifter.” In “Playthings” Sam and Dean are mistaken for a gay couple. They are placed in a room where there is a dress on the wall. They don’t have women in their lives, not yet, not really. The female-ness in them, the fluidity of their personae, is triggered, strongly, in “Playthings,” an unconscious reaction to the woman-heavy environment. “Nightshifter”? It’s guns and helicopters and banks and jostling/shifting of power dynamics. It’s not about Tough Guys, remember. Ronald is a part of the dynamic too. Okie-Doke guard is a part of that. Big-Wig is part of that, and so is Helpful Man in Vault/Shapeshifter. Agent Henriksen is a part of that. If Sam and Dean were limited in their upbringing by having no female presence in their lives, then they were equally limited by the kind of man their father was and the kind of men hunters usually are. They don’t question it, they both inhabit that take-charge tough-commando space very well, without being psychos about it, a la Gordon. (The whole Mark business is an extended metaphor for “being a man” and what that is supposed to look like as opposed to what it actually is. Integration of yin-yang/good-bad … Looking at Supernatural as a whole, it is a constant ongoing theme.)

Similar to my thoughts on the Howard Hawks Woman and how the women of Supernatural have to fit into those genre requirements if they want to last in the world of the show, any male who enters, who has any chance whatsoever of “making it” (either as actors, or as characters) in the dynamic-duo setup of the show, have to be strong and forceful. That doesn’t have to look macho: it just has to be fully present, lived-in, THERE. Like Ash. Chuck is a good example. He is a type of male not really seen on the show, a worried intellectual, a neurotic Jewish borscht-belt-humor type, but he is just as strong – persona-wise – as the two leads. Listen, you step into an Iconic Story, you have to fit in, otherwise you’ll be run right over. Garth is another great example. A hunter, a happy positive-thinking mush-ball, willing to speak his emotions, not afraid of Sam and Dean, just as awesome as they are and he knows it. He doesn’t even realize he’s supposed to defer to them. Because why should he? The success of these characters is a mix of many factors: conception (maybe most important), the writing, the acting (who they cast), and also: how they are introduced. It’s that first moment that makes a difference, that says, “Hoo-boy, take a look at THIS person, pay attention to THEM.” Castiel’s entrance is probably the most magnificent example. The show would never be the same again. Dean and Benny hugging over the patch of dirt in the opener to Season 8 is another one of those moments. You have to feel like whoever is entering the story in a significant way has something to ADD, have some mystery and power about them, they are not there to just reflect the two leads in a flattering way. Sam and Dean don’t have regular access to women, and they also only have regular contact with a certain type of man, a small sliver of the color wheel of masculinity. But there’s a full spectrum out there. Each one provides a potential mirror to Sam or Dean. Men like Chuck, like Ronald, are comic relief in a lot of ways, but their manhood is not presented as invalid or “off” – just different. Supernatural is ABOUT masculinity, in lots of ways, even though there are rarely explicit conversations about it. The conception and casting and introduction of these male characters is important.
I Love Men, In General, and I Enjoy Writing About Them. Obvi.

And that’s what Charles Malik Whitfield does with his entrance. The Lieutenant, acting out a role, fitting into the expected form, snarks, “Let me guess, you would just love my full cooperation.”

Henriksen replies, “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do. You can go get a donut and bang your wife for all I care.”

It’s as intimidating as it gets. The Lieutenant looks taken aback. He was acting a part, and his scene partner just went off-script. He doesn’t know what to do. The “bang your wife” is particularly rude, and a rather brilliant tactic to shut down the hostility coming at him. Henriksen IS lead dog, let’s not waste time. The Lieutenant accepts it, lowers his status (betraying his resentment in the slight attitude he puts in the word “agent”) and tells Henriksen that something is not right about this whole situation, it’s not going down the way heists usually go.

“There’s a monster in that bank” is a great line, it could be taken two ways. Eventually we learn that the “monster” Henriksen refers to is Dean Winchester, but it’s a great moment of total uncertainty, and the scene cuts away from Henriksen after he says it, the action moving back inside to pick up with Sam. But the words echo. Who the hell was that guy? How does he know about the shape-shifter?

16th scene

After the shocker of Agent Henriksen’s entrance, and his “monster” line, the show can’t wait to steer us away from him, to withhold him until it’s time. Back inside the bank, workaholic Sam wanders the hallways with his flashlight, pushing open doors, looking for slime. While Sam hunts the shifter, Dean has rounded up the hostages and led them back to the vault. These poor people, coming and going. They look defeated and exhausted.

Lovesick shifter-Sherri, says to Dean, disappointed, “I thought you were one of the good guys.”

A couple of things seem to motivate Dean’s suddenly blasted-open response. Early on, when defending Ron, he said to Sam, “People think we’re crazy, too.” Crazy came up again in another argument with Sam. “Crazy’s the only game in town.” The monster they hunt in “Nightshifter” is a shapeshifter, one of the RUDEST of monsters because it takes on your skin, and wreaks havoc using your name to do it. Like, RUDE. Get your OWN identity. The shifter leaps from person to person through the vault, and so identity has become dangerously fluid. Your brother could be a monster, you’d never know until it was too late. Then there’s Agent Henriksen’s comment: “There’s a monster in that bank.” There sure is and it’s a shapeshifter. But to Henriksen, and the PD in St. Louis and Baltimore, DEAN’S the monster. They can’t be blamed for thinking of him that way. From appearances, the man is on a killing spree. Dean’s identity, then, fluctuates: he’s a hero, he’s a monster. To Sherri, his original actions appeared heroic. And now he’s changed in her eyes. Over the course of Season 2, ever since John’s whisper, Dean himself has felt like something has changed. He’s 26 years old and he’s exhausted. It is important to him that he be aligned with “the good guys,” that he knows in his gut that what he does he does for the right reasons. (Think about his “I crossed the line” moment in the recent episode in Season 10. There are moments along the way where Dean cannot reconcile his ideals for himself and who he has become. The same will be true for Sam, but that’s not really going on in “Nightshifter.” Not yet. That whole Arc is coming up.) When Sherri says to Dean, “I thought you were one of the good guys” … it hits Dean in his weakest spot. It’s not anger that gets him so much, it’s disappointment. (We see that with John. We see that with Lisa and Ben. Dean can deal with almost anything except disappointing someone who relies on him.)

“My name’s Dean,” he says.

“I’m Sherri.”

“Hi, Sherri.”

It’s a short exchange but it is eloquent of all of the things I’ve ranted on about before, Dean’s desire to make the world friendly, Dean’s belief that creature comforts/softness are important and there to be valued, his kindness towards women, his ability to be vulnerable (sometimes to get what he wants, but sometimes because it feels good.) Dean is in a terrible position, and he takes the time to get her name, and then say it back to her. Personalization. We’re all just human beings here. There’s almost a pleading in his face. I’m not one of the bad guys. I can’t explain now. Hopefully you will understand. It’s important to me that you understand.

Connecting the vulnerable moment here to the fight scene later opens up an abyss of associations, all of the connections to Mary in Sherri, and Dean’s reaction to a Mary-like figure (destabilized, naturally, by the fact that she was crushing on him for a while. Psychosexual Landscape of Dean Winchester.)

We see Dean’s hand hesitate before picking up the phone. Just a pause. Getting himself in another mood than the open one he just let out.

The progression of the conversation is shown in a series of riveting closeups, Henriken to Dean and back and forth. Dean has contempt for cops and thinks he can tough-guy his way out of this, because it usually works. Immediately, though, he realizes he is dealing with another entity altogether. What then follows is a confrontation where Dean’s facade cracks: his face starts to fall apart, and he struggles to keep his voice under control. Henriksen is unstoppable.

When he first says Dean’s name, it’s like an ice pick goes into Dean’s back. Maybe somewhere he knew this moment was coming. And now … it’s here. The camera could not be closer to Dean’s face, and we get everything: fear, confusion, alarm … not to mention soft painterly shadows and eyelash-shadows going down his face.

Dean is completely thrown off. He listens to Agent Henriksen talk about his family … his FAMILY … and similar to Linda Blair rattling off the details to Sam in Baltimore … it’s completely frightening to know that their family, a secret unit really, like Navy SEAL Team Six or something … is KNOWN. People have been talking about them, gossiping, picking through their dirty laundry. It makes him feel resentful and dirty, almost a little bit ashamed. Their family’s name being dragged through their mud. To hear their tragic childhood spoken about in such a dismissive way, to have it be so misinterpreted … Dean is so thrown off that he has to claw his way back to his anger. You can see him clawing. But anger is not there for Dean anymore. What is there is fear, and also a mushy-soft susceptibility (always present when Dean’s family is mentioned.) He’s already lost the battle. He knows it. When Agent Henriksen starts talking about John, wondering out loud if he was a “white supremacist” or something, Dean gets his back up, and says, with a smile, that is TRYING to be the Tough Guy, that smile is a lie, he knows it, but he’s trying, “You have no right to talk about my Dad …” It’s weak. He sounds 10 years old. He has complicated feelings about his father, now and always, but he will defend him to the death if an outsider criticizes him. Many seem frustrated with Dean’s sometimes defense of his father but I don’t know … I come from a close-knit tribe myself, and we can bitch amongst ourselves about one another, but an outsider? You are not ALLOWED.

The weakest moment, and most interesting to me, comes when Dean, flailing about in space, grabs a handhold, pulls himself together (and you can see it happen, his face going upwards, his eyes gazing off into the distance dreamily) and says, “My dad was a hero.”

That’s why Ackles is paid the big bucks. It manages to be helpless, riveting, and slightly pathetic … all at the same time. He knows this character so well. It’s weak and he almost knows it’s weak. It’s a moment where Dean himself is “acting.” It’s tragic, it makes him look like a fantasist. He probably feels like one. Very hollow moment.

It’s a tour de force.

“And yes, I know about Sam, too, Bonnie to your Clyde.” Bonnie and Clyde were a couple. And, at least in the movie, Clyde was impotent. I’ll just leave that there.

Dean hangs up, and the blackness around him “gets” him. He puts his head in his hands and for a second, his head disappears, the white-ness of his hand glowing out from the black-ness. This is the look I treasure. Agent Henriksen has threatened to bust in in one hour if they don’t come out.

Out in the van, Henriksen immediately orders everyone to scramble, they’re going in. Big-Wig, leaning against the wall, balks: they’ve let out a hostage, let’s give them that time so nobody else gets hurt.

“Trust me,” says Agent Henriksen. “Dean’s a greater risk to them than we are.”

“This is crazy.”

“Crazy’s in there. And I just hung up on it.”

Great line. The word “crazy” again. It’s a theme.

17th scene

The scene opens with the same establishing shot from earlier, looking down on the whole of the main bank room, the shot when Ron stood with the rifle in the air. Now it’s dark, and Ron’s body lies in a dark clump in the foreground.

Sam, doing his sweep for the shifter, with the helicopter sound in the distance and a red light swirling on the wall, sees drops of blood on the floor, and quickly opens the door beyond. Sherri, lovesick Sherri, topples out. Only she is now only clad in a white silk slip. Her throat is cut. Her eyes are open. Too late. Sam goes back to the vault, and Dean is there, totally freaked out, saying, “We got a bit of a problem outside.” Sam almost laughs, and says, “We got a problem in here.” They stand face to face in front of the vault, the opposite point of view of that Iconic Pow-Wow image, but the same format. It’s stunning.

They open the vault door, with all of these big echoing sounds, thunderclap-py, ominous, and Dean summons Sherri telling her they’re going to let her go “as a show of good faith.” She is (rightly) suspicious now, and hangs back. Look at what she sees when she looks at the two of them. Look at how sketchy they look, how you can’t see their faces, Sam is entirely in shadow. Villains are filmed this way, not heroes.

Sherri says No, she’s going to stay in the vault with everyone. Dean says, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist”, his old-school manners, and it is then that Sherri sees the gleam of silver in Sam’s hand. She obeys, leaving a scared group behind her, clustered together under a dramatic beam of light. This episode is so gorgeous.

The next shot is from floor-level, showing Shifter-Sherri (or is it real Sherri) lying on the floor in her white slip, Dean and Sam ushering Real-Sherri (or is it Shifter-Sherri?) into the room. The vertical Sherri, understandably, starts freaking OUT when she sees herself dead on the floor in her underwear. Her screams are heart-rending, even more so when you know that this Sherri is the real Sherri. She does an excellent job. Sam and Dean make a mistake, a big one, and have mixed up who is who: they are rough with the real Sherri, assuming she is a shifter, and as she bucks and screams, Dean cracks, “Community theatre? Or are you just naturally that good?” Sam is growlingly Dirty-Harry-ish and unsympathetic. Sherri faints to the floor, Sam and Dean don’t know how to handle it. It’s a very funny small pantomime of “Awwwwk-ward”.

The two Sherris lie on the floor. Dean and Sam loom over them, awkward huge males looking down at two comatose identical females. “Nightshifter” has been so macho, in the classic sense of the word, with its nods to Schwarzenegger and Die Hard and cop dramas, typically all-male environments (although T-2 has an awesome heroine.) But the genre is male-dominated. “Playthings”, with its concessions to the compelling force of femininity, feels like a million years ago.

Dean moves to look down at first the slip-Sherri and then the fully-clothed-Sherri, with a What the hell expression on his face. He kneels down by fully-clothed Sherri, the one they assumed was the shifter, and then (hilariously) he shrugs to himself, like, “Oh well” and raises the pen-knife in the air, about to stab. It’s such a casually-done gesture. Well, just as easy to stab THIS one as opposed to THAT one. The interchangeability of women, as perceived by men, even good men? Women as stand-ins for something else? Representative of other things to men, causing that confusion? We’re coming up to Dean fighting with White-Slip-Sherri, a scene that has all kinds of resonances having to do with Mary, but for now, it’s sheer confusion. Sam stops his brother from stabbing. He has some questions. Why would a shapeshifter choose to faint? Something’s not right.

Damn right, something’s not right. Dean is stumped. He squats down by White-Slip-Sherri, looking down at her cut throat. There’s a queasy eroticism in the sight of a woman lying dead in her underwear. Don’t blame me for saying it, blame the culture. It would be silly to say that that is not somewhere present. Her body is not leered over by the camera (thank you Phil Sgriccia), but we’ve seen so many dead women in their underwear that it calls us back to it. Dean is seen from Sam’s point of view, Sherri lying on the floor beneath him. Dean looks back up at Sam, and as he does so, White-Slip-Sherri’s eyes open.

To quote Frances McDormand in Something’s Got to Give: “Yuh-oh.”

A couple of things happen at once: there’s a sound of breaking glass in the distance, and Sam turns to look. White-Slip-Sherri reaches up to grab Dean. Clothed-Sherri wakes up, sees Dean fighting with … an undressed version of herself … and starts screaming all over again. Sam has to deal with Clothed-Sherri, who stands over the fight scene, basically screaming in terror at what she is seeing, she can’t look away, and Dean, being strangled, trying to bring the pen-knife down, calls out to Sam to get real-Sherri out of there. Sam hustles screaming Sherri out of the room, and Dean gets down to business trying to kill The Thing on the floor. But she is strong. She hurts him. He’s almost surprised.

Shot of broken glass on the floor, and gigantic black boots crunching across it. Here comes the SWAT team, with their red laser beams, their flashlights, coming down the stairs.

White-Slip has gotten away and Dean, in pursuit, looks for her in what appears to be a boiler room. When he hears something approaching, he hides, and it is then that two SWAT members enter the room, guns drawn, looking, looking … and when they shine their flashlight where Dean just was, of course he has now vanished. The SWAT team moves on, out of the room, and then Dean steps back into the frame, back to the camera. It’s all done in one, which I love, because one can picture Jensen Ackles tiptoeing away when the camera moves away from him and then stepping back into place when it’s time. Coordination! Collaboration! Choreography! Theatre magic!

The SWAT team surges through the bank and comes across terrified Sherri, by herself in a hallway. They swarm around her and usher her on down the hallway. Where is Sam? The next shot answers that question, without showing us anything: Two SWAT team guys enter a dark space, one of them shouting into it, “FREEZE. LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS.” We don’t even see a figure there. The scene then cuts back to Dean looking for the shifter. It’s great: it keeps information from us for about 2 seconds … we don’t see Sam. When we move back to the SWAT team scene, Sam is in the process of taking down both guys, smashing them in the face with their own weapons. Aaaand that’s why John Winchester trained them so hard, to be able to pull off something like that. The fight takes place in a hallway, with those omnipresent red and blue flashes, and one might think another SWAT team member would have come to investigate the ruckus. (“Could you describe the ruckus?”)

Sam has been so on top of his game in “Nightshifter,” maybe making up for checking out in “Playthings.” He fights the SWAT guys in order to survive, and then … his mind goes click click click … and now he knows how he and Dean can get out of there.

Dean is ambushed by an angry dame in a white slip. The fight that follows is phenomenal; they are equally-matched in power. If anything, she’s better than he is. More forceful, more fearless. Maybe there’s some hesitation on his part since she’s a woman. Yes, she’s a monster, but she’s in a form that he feels protective towards. Ackles is superb physically, and a master at fight choreography (it always feels real), and she is great, too. It’s one of my favorite fight scenes.

Women in White Are Everywhere
On the heels of our discussion about the white dress on the wall in “Playthings” calling up the image of Mary pinned on the ceiling, here is another blonde woman in white, a white garment that is a private garment, in the same way a nightdress is. Instead of being pinned on the ceiling or wall, she fights to the death with Dean.Supernatural provides an opportunity for actresses, young, old, little girls, old women, to do big ol’ fight scenes, scenes they normally are not asked to do. Because these women are monsters, the audience’s normal reaction of “OMG he’s hitting a girl.” is submerged. But it’s still present, causing a beautiful instability. White-Slip Sherri kicks Dean’s ass. She kicks him in the balls, hard. (Dean may very well be on his way to being Clyde Barrow with a kick like that.) Her blonde-ness was a deliberate choice in casting, as was the fact that she was wearing a white slip, reminiscent of a white nightdress. Every step of the way in creating an episode there are choices made, choices that multiple people weigh on. She could just as easily have been lying there in a tank top and underwear. Or a bra and boy-shorts. Any number of costume choices could have been made. But no, they chose to put her in a white slip. These thoughts don’t occur to Dean and they didn’t occur to me the first time I watched “Nightshifter” but now, it’s all I see.

Maybe it feels good to beat the crap out of a woman in a white slip after being loomed over by that weird white nightdress on the wall in the hotel. Maybe there are things being churned up by all these little connections. Maybe being abandoned by his mother is the cause of all of his problems and he’s pissed at her for leaving him. Dean’s secret self, activated. These associations are not meant to be explicit, or even explained. On the most surface level, Dean is fighting a monster, end-stop. But the rest of it is also present, swirling around, possibilities rather than actualities – and that, for me, is the fun of it. If Sam had been in the position of combatting with the blonde in the white slip, one would see him fighting with Jess, the vision he saw at the end of “Bloody Mary.” Sam might be even more tuned in to those personal symbols and signals. Dean is more damaged than Sam, psychologically: he must compartmentalize, forget, interpret, deny, “My dad was a hero …” all that.

Watching the fight scene as Dean and Mary trying to kill each other adds so much to the texture of it.
Women in White Out

It’s also undeniably erotic.

Your mileage may vary. I’m just describing mine.

It’s sexual, what’s going on here. (Of course it is. Dean is involved.)

And this. Wow.

Dean has to work for the upper hand. She will not go down easily. Once he stabs her, there is the intimacy of her death, the closeness of their bodies, the way her body slides down the wall, all as she still holds onto him, and he holds onto her. Her hand on his neck, a gentle-looking touch.

Hell of a scene.

I love how interiors in Supernatural have mist somehow in them. How else are you going to get those great lighting effects?

Dean, still alone with White-Slip, crumpled dead against the wall, kneels down to look at her. We have been close to Dean with the camera during that amazing fight scene, making you feel like you should be ducking some of those blows, too. But as he kneels down, we get a shot from across the room, and it looks like a religious painting. Or like something from Goya in his “black” period. A pool of light, with a murdered woman in white, Dean’s dark crouching figure in front of her.

Whatever may be in Dean’s mind as he looks at her, we do not know. We’re not meant to know. The camera moves down her body, showing the red stain in the middle of her white slip where he stabbed her, the same abdominal area where the blood spreads out in the middle of all the women in white pinned on various ceilings across America.

The other thing about Iconic Imagery is that, somehow, even with all the force of the moment, its specificity, its unforgettable qualities, there is a lot of SPACE present in the image. Space for us out here, space for our projections. That’s one of the things that the old masters in the 30s and 40s, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, did like nobody else. They had collaborators in actors such as Joan Crawford or Bette Davis or Humphrey Bogart, actors who were not far away from the grand 19th century tradition of acting, with its reliance on big gestures and pantomime (before cinema, your acting had to reach the cheap seats). Today, in our more granular kitchen-sink-realism world, this type of acting and icon-making is out of style (although alive and well on Supernatural, another trust-building element for me.) There are only a few actors who are able to pull off that old-school kind of acting and it’s not a surprise that they are the biggest money-makers out there. Julia Roberts. Meryl Streep. Angelina Jolie. (More women than men, interestingly enough. The Icon Business is dominated by women, maybe because of the male gaze thing, that’s a possibility – in which case, thank goodness for the male gaze, because I love looking at women too – but on another truer level, women understand the “performative” aspect of being a woman – as unfair and silly as the performative aspect is – these women USE it, manipulate it, own it, just like Crawford/Davis/Stanwyck et al. used to do. Cinema Dynamite is the result.) Acting on that iconic level is just as specific as “modern” performances but it is the SPACE it provides that ends up withstanding the test of time. We’ll see if any of the so-called iconic performances in the last 20 years are still resonant 80 years from now the way Ingrid Bergman’s performance in Casablanca is or Joan and Bette’s performance in almost everything.

The tableau of Sherri dead in a pool of light and Dean in darkness crouching over her is a perfect example of a specific story taking on universal overtones, dark and strange, setting off echoes in the audience’s mind. It is what it is, and it also is way MORE than what it is.

A flashlight picks up Dean, a click of a gun, he turns, looking up into the light.

(I love that it’s Sam, and we don’t see Sam, and it isn’t clear until a few minutes from now that it is Sam. So let’s picture Sam’s activities while Dean was in the process of kicking his dead mother’s ass. Sam has taken down two SWAT team guys. He has dragged them, heavy with weaponry and boots, into a closet. He has removed ALL of their gear, masks, and vests, and boots, and guns. He has put on the gear himself. He holds the second guy’s gear in his arms – that’s a ton of gear – and has hustled off through the building to catch up with Dean. Sam is a Ninja.)

18th scene

Without showing us that it is, indeed, Sam, the episode moves away from Dean and follows the police now, the SWAT team guys calling out “Clear,” as Agent Henriksen stalks into the middle of the chaos, swaggering down a hallway in his FBI jacket.

There are so many missed pieces still:

— What happened after Sam took down the SWAT team guys?
— Has Dean been captured? Sure looks like it.

I am not a big “let me figure out the plot” person. I am more of an absorber of information and a slow processor of emotional information.

So when the final scene of “Nightshifter” came, and all of those little pieces of unfinished business were put together, it was immensely satisfying. I didn’t “guess” that it was Sam busting Dean over the dead shifter. I was completely caught up in the trapped-feeling of “Nightshifter,” its helplessness and fatalism.

The team comes across the first victim, his throat cut. Picture how monstrous Dean must seem to these cops.

A SWAT team guy stares at Sherri, dead and bloody. Dean has vanished. Was he captured? Wait … what? The episode was two steps ahead of me. It was extremely pleasurable. I connect the cops to Ronald. Ronald keeps saying “the truth is out there” … but you all just won’t see it. If only people could see what he sees, if only people had the information he has. The SWAT team guy says to a colleague, or Henriksen, it’s not clear, “I’m telling you, man, I just walked her out of the bank. Maybe she has a twin sister.” The SWAT team has encountered the truth, it is right in front of him, maybe it will haunt him later, but he can’t see it, he can’t put it together.

Body count in the bank? Three people. One killed by a SWAT rifle, but they’ll blame that one on Dean too.

A cop tells Henriksen that the search is complete, no sign of Dean or Sam in the bank. Wrong answer. But then the cop leads Henriksen to what has been discovered, the final missing piece (that at least I needed). The bodies of two SWAT team guys have been discovered in a closet, huddled back to back, no clothes on except boxer shorts, like twins in the womb.

That image launches a whole world in my head. It connects to the two Sherris, the clothed one, the naked one, lying side by side. The manifestation of the fact that we all are split, to some degree, split off from ourselves, but also just a mixture of good/bad, crazy/sane. There’s also associations with gender, women’s bodies, male bodies. The world of masculinity is extremely amped-UP in “Nightshifter”, it’s on steroids, it’s guys with guns and guys in power, guys jostling for position, who’s the toughest guy in the room, who’s got the biggest …. gun. The SWAT team are an embodiment of Men, the type of men Dean and Sam know well, in their own hunter version of it. There’s not too much difference between those snipers and Sam and Dean. But here, in this gentle childlike image, two guys stripped down, lying together, curled up butt-to-butt, almost like they’re asleep, we see the truth. Underneath our clothes, our strong public identities, our gender-performative-stuff, whatever … we’re all just naked people in our underwear. Frail and human.

Maybe not the most profound realization in the world, but, you know, it’s what I got.

As the camera lingers on the twins-in-the-womb tableau in the closet, Styx’s “Renegade” starts, haunting a cappella.

The opening words are perfect, considering all we have been discussing.

Oh mama, I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law …

The camera goes back to Henriksen, looking down at the men, knowing Sam and Dean, but especially Dean, have slipped from his grasp again. If he weren’t so formidable, he’d throw a tantrum. Instead, you can see him double-down on his goal: I will find this evil sonofabitch if it is the last thing I do.

With a jagged change of scene, suddenly it’s light outside, it’s dawn, and two SWAT team guys hustle up the back stairway into the parking garage. They are anonymous. They wear masks. The camera is hand-held, not letting us get a good look at them, no closeups on their recognizable eyes, nothing: they have taken on the costume of men with a capital M, the men who have been tracking them, the men whom Dean has been bitching about for the entire episode. There are some transformations that are inevitable.

We see their mysterious Ninja bodies slow down once they hit the garage, and they approach the Impala.

The song continues, that single voice, that moaning mourning voice. The lyrics could be too on-the-nose, but the way it’s handled, the way the song is parsed out to go along with the final sequence is masterful. This is not a triumphant escape. This was way too close a call.

Lawman has put an end to my running and I’m so far from my home
Oh mama, I can hear your crying you’re so scared and all alone
Hangman is coming down from the gallows and I don’t have very long …

Eerie, right? It’s in my Top Musical Moments in Supernatural, the entrance of Death being #1.

Once inside the Impala, one by one they both pull off their masks. They are out of breath. There’s no words to be said. That was a disaster. And the disaster will continue to unfold.

Dean says again, “We are so screwed.”

Sam does not disagree.

In that emotion, in that silence, in the mess of their lives, Dean revs up the Impala and they hurtle out of the garage.

“Would you like to interview me …. in private ….?”
“Ronald’s okay. I liked him.”
“Okie-Dokey!”
“I like him. He says Okie-Dokey.”
“Your brother is … so … brave …”
“My name’s Dean.” “I’m Sherri.” “Hi, Sherri.”

The world will not allow vulnerability, friendly and flirtatious, buddy-buddy and humorous, vulnerability which, by extension, means the possibility of kindness, to survive.