Directed by Kim Manners
Written by Sera Gamble
Faces. It’s all about the Faces. You know Kim Manners studied and knew his Cassavetes.
On the one hand, “Houses of the Holy” is a very bizarre episode, undeniably powerful and yet strange, a slight anomaly: it seems downright kooky compared to the rest of what has been going on in the season. Its very anomaly-ness is why it ends up working, especially in light of Season 4 when the angels arrive. It’s a tease, it provides a strange kind of hope for “deliverance”, that word – very important (still) … and then when the angels arrive, well, you wish they’d go back where they came from. “Houses of the Holy” is the first real evidence of the huge 5-season arc. Sera Gamble drops bread crumbs on the path, crumbs that won’t be picked up for two more years.
“Houses of the Holy” comes at an interesting juncture and works best when you connect it to other things, to the arrival of the angels, predicted for here, and yearned for here, but also to Sam’s Season 2 journey, what it’s been building to, where it is about to go in the next episode. Seen in light of the episode following this one, “Houses of the Holy” is, frankly, devastating. “Houses of the Holy”, and its gorgeous final scene, provides a strange and wary hope, especially since it is Dean, the skeptic, expressing it. If Dean can come around … then perhaps all is not lost? It’s crushing.
It also reflects the general moral issues that come up repeatedly: Who is a victim? Is killing right if it’s done for a good cause? Is killing a clearly bad person okay? Sam and Dean grapple with these things. Or, more accurately, Sam does. Think of the argument in “Croatoan”: We’re SUPPOSED to struggle with these things, Dean, it’s part of the job.
The two priests they meet in “Houses of the Holy” are good men, men who believe in what they do and try to help people. Like Pastor Jim, of yore. Come the later seasons, people with strong faith are generally seen as nut-jobs willing to follow the first fanatic who points the way. There are exceptions. The Winchesters were not raised with a strong faith, although Pastor Jim was a strong force in their childhood. There are some interesting quirks in that storyline of faith: Dean reveals to Sam that their mother had strong faith. Sam never knew that. John never passed on that information; he was all about “vengeance,” just like Father Gregory is in “Houses of the Holy”. Mary Campbell was raised as a hunter, and Mary Campbell was the one who believed in God. Fascinating. That would have been good information for her sons to have, as they struggled through the violent world. Dean, who knew as a child that his mother had faith, does not have faith. His faith burned up on the ceiling with her. But Sam reveals in “Houses of the Holy” that he prays every day and has done so for a long time. Sam, in other words, came to faith on his own, as Dean has come to skepticism on his own. Both seem like logical reactions to the world in which they live. Sam’s reveal that he prays is treated almost like a betrayal by Dean (oh, Dean). It’s as though Dean is a jealous boyfriend going through his girlfriend’s text messages.
A Small Semi-Personal Treatise On Assuming Things About People.
Praying is private. You don’t have to tell people you pray. It’s better if you don’t, actually. Sam is under no obligation to tell his brother that he prays. It would be like saying, “Hey, I masturbated today.” Uhm, join the club, TMI, why do I care, also, ew, shut up. When Sam reveals that he prays, Dean is taken aback … it shows how much preconceived notions can be walls to deeper understanding. How fragile their relationship dynamic actually is. In an ideal world, for example, Sam would say, “I pray every day” and Dean would say, “Wow, I had no idea, good for you.” Instead we get the symphony of “wait … what? … huh … I am confused … who are you …”
We’ve all revealed something about ourselves and had someone react the way Dean does in that moment when Sam says he prays. It’s not even negative, it’s just, “Huh. I thought I knew you.” I HATE IT when it’s done to me. My first boyfriend used to do that to people all the time. He would sum someone up in his mind, and make an internal judgment about them (“I approve of you.” “I disapprove of you.”) and then get strange and detached when that person, you know, revealed that they were individuals with their own free will, not just phantoms with characteristics ascribed to them in his own mind. It drove me crazy. I would be like, “Who gives a shit whether or not you APPROVE of some person’s private personal choices? Who elected you Moral Arbiter of the Tri-State Area? Get over yourself.”
More than anything else, when Dean balks at his new-found knowledge about his brother, and resists it … it makes me understand why Sam, periodically, needs to get the hell away from this individual. Attention/assumptions like that can be cloying, claustrophobic, controlling: You there: be the way I want you to be in my mind. Sam handles it well in “Houses of the Holy”, remaining complete and strong, and willing to discuss it all with Dean. Pushing Dean to discuss it. It turns out that Sam is wrong about the angel thing, although in that larger arc, his insights are quite prophetic. But Dean’s “Huh, I thought I knew you” reaction pushes a huge button in yours truly.
Treatise Over
The danger in “Houses of the Holy” is obvious, and I would love to be party to some of those initial conversations in the writer’s room. Religion? Angels? God? Oh no, I thought on my first viewing. Please don’t … I didn’t want them to go touchy-feely New-Agey on me. Sera Gamble is aware of that herself in her script, throwing in not one but two Touched By an Angel jokes that work as a reassuring salve: Don’t worry … we’ve got you … let us do our thing, we won’t disappoint …
I really enjoy “Houses of the Holy” as a harbinger of what is to come. The archangel Michael! So hugely important later, but introduced here. Raphael, too, introduced here, invoked in the Last Rites. Father Reynolds, in his first meeting with the brothers, gives them a crash course in the stuff they will need to know later on. Dean doesn’t even recognize the famous quote from Luke. This is not the Winchester Wheelhouse. But it will be, it will be.
Directed by Kim Manners, “Houses of the Holy” has a dark and strange look: The camera angles are extreme, especially in the church, making Sam and Dean look both toweringly tall, as well as dwarfed by the architecture. Angel wings show up everywhere, they flutter through the screen on all sides. It’s almost over-the-top once you think of Season 4 and 5. The closeups are achingly vulnerable, with the classic forehead-chin-cut-off typical of Manner’s style: he leaves us no room to escape.
I have thought a lot about Manners’ style, and have wondered often about why it is so effective, and also why other directors in the series – capable, strong, artistic as well – do not get the same results from their equally-close close-ups. You could pick Manners’ stuff out of a lineup. Gus van Sant was so obsessed with this kind of thing that he re-created Psycho, shot for shot … mainly as an experiment. Wherein does magic lie, in other words? If I set up a shot in exactly the same way that Hitchcock did, with the same lighting instruments, the same angles, same costumes, same everything … why do I still not capture the ineffable magic of the original? And so, as I’ve written before, Kim Manners came in early, in “Dead in the Water”, and started giving us these achingly romantic closeups. His style was clearly definitive for the series. He films Padalecki and Ackles like he is in love with them. It’s as simple as that. (It reminds me of director Stanley Donen’s wonderful answer to the question: “How do you direct Audrey Hepburn and NOT fall in love with her?” Donen replied, “You don’t.”)
And watch for those circular camera moves he loves so much. The episode starts out with a couple, one shot from above, and they are a signature of the show, but nobody really does them like Manners. They feel elegant, and – best of all – you barely notice them. They are not attention-getting gimmicks, but camera moves that immerse you in the story.
Led Zeppelin
Houses of the Holy is Led Zeppelin’s fifth studio album, which came out in 1973. I remember being frightened of the image on the album cover, seen in the record collection of a friend’s older sister. I didn’t like the look of it at ALL.
I did some research on the album cover and found out some cool things. I love Led Z, but am not as familiar with their stuff as I am the Stones, the Beatles, and you-know-who. You can read here some of the background about the cover design. Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End. Nice dovetail with the Winchesters, if you think about it for a bit. Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland! I’ve been there! I should have recognized it. There was a BBC documentary in 2010 about the Houses of the Holy album cover.
Houses of the Holy was a huge success.
The band had recorded a title track, which ended up not being used on the album. They included it on their next album, the epic Physical Graffiti, which I’ll get to in a minute. Houses of the Holy includes the song “No Quarters,” which … dumb joke … Dean runs out of quarters in “Houses of the Holy” for the Magic Fingers bed. I mean, so stupid and funny, and a clear nod to the album. The first track of Houses of the Holy is “The Song Remains the Same”, which gets its own Supernatural episode title in Season 5, an episode that has all KINDS of connections to “Houses of the Holy” – it’s almost a direct line from “Houses of the Holy” to “The Song Remains the Same”. “The Song Remains the Same”, too, is the first episode where we actually see and hear Michael, albeit in a vessel. Watching that episode, and that moment in the nursery at the end packed such a huge punch because it called back in my mind the anomaly-ness of “Houses of the Holy,” and I realized that bread crumbs were being picked up in Season 5, that had been laid down in Season 2. I immediately had to come back and watch “Houses of the Holy” after “Song Remains the Same.” And … they’re all connected to a Led Zeppelin album, which is just so Supernatural I can’t even stand it.
Physical Graffiti has many connections to the Winchesters, and I am sure there are many I am missing. It is the album that has the song “In My Time of Dying” on it. It has “Houses of the Holy” on it. Dean also lies on the vibrating bed listening to “Kashmir” (also included on Physical Graffiti) – so it’s literally like he is LIVING that entire album on multiple levels, just by lying on a vibrating bed and moaning about how he has no quarters. Yes, it’s true that the song we hear Dean listening to is not at all “Kashmir” but Led Zeppelin is very strict about allowing their songs to be used on soundtracks (there’s a reason you don’t hear their stuff all that often), and in the Special Features of School of Rock Jack Black makes a video addressed to the members of Led Zeppelin, begging them to allow the School of Rock team to use “The Immigrant Song”. It worked.
Speaking of Jack Black, have you seen his speech paying tribute to them at the Kennedy Center Honors? It’s wonderful.
And just in case you haven’t seen this gorgeousness, Heart’s version of “Stairway to Heaven” at the same Kennedy Center Honors is absolutely epic.
“Kashmir” is a gigantic ominous push of a song, frightening and intense. “Houses of the Holy”, on the other hand, is practically a teenage-pop-song in comparison. Yes, Satan shows up, but he shows up in the midst of talks about movies and gardens. But here we also see the “angel on the shoulder” as well as the “sword of gold” which takes on huge resonance once Michael takes over the action, etc. etc. I’m preaching to the choir with all this, I realize, but still, it’s fun.
Let me take you to the movies.
Can I take you to the show?
Let me be yours ever truly.
Can I make your garden grow?
From the houses of the holy,
we can watch the white doves go.
From the door comes Satan’s daughter,
and it only goes to show. You know.
There’s an angel on my shoulder
In my hand a sword of gold
Let me wander in your garden
And the seeds of love I’ll sow. You know.
So the world is spinning faster.
Are you dizzy when you’re stoned?
Let the music be your master. Will you heed the master’s call?
Oh… Satan and man.
Said there ain’t no use in crying
Cause it will only, only drive you mad
Does it hurt to hear them lying?
Was this the only world you had? Oh-oh
So let me take you, take you to the movie.
Can I take you, baby, to the show.
Why don’t you let me be yours ever truly.
Can I make your garden grow? You know.
Teaser
Providence, Rhode Island
I grew up in Rhode Island and still consider myself, on some level, a Rhode Islander. Yes, Providence was once-upon-a-time an extremely dangerous place, a place you passed through on Route 95 on your way to Boston. We used to go up to Providence in high school to underground dance clubs, like The Rocket, total shit-hole places where we would slam-dance in mosh pits for hours on end. (Got my first black eye in one of those mosh pits. A proud moment.) Providence, now, is a more genteel place, with high-end pubs and restaurants, a completely rebuilt waterfront, and lots of civic pride. So it’s pretty funny to see Supernatural‘s version of Rhode Island as being so dangerous that priests are gunned down on the steps of churches in broad daylight.
That being said: You don’t need to be a student of theology to understand why the city of “Providence” was chosen for this episode.
Heather Doerksen plays the aptly named Gloria, slumped in her dump of an apartment, ashtray full of cigarette butts, television droning on. A sit-com. The laugh track sounds psychotic, in comparison to her bleak and dead-eyed face. But watch how weirdly it is filmed. She is surrounded by detritus, the flotsam and jetsam of a messy nocturnal life. But on the table beside her chair is a small collection of what look like clay angels, perhaps made by her, who knows, that’s my story.
Maybe over the past week she’s been feeling something strange, and found herself making those angels as a kind of protection. They cluster by her side, and Manners films the wings, almost fluttering in the foreground in alarm.
The television switches channels to a preacher screaming, “You don’t have to suffer … You think God forgot about you? Can’t you just hear those angels singing?” The walls start to shake, and she stands up, she is filmed through the angels, the wings toppling back and forth in the foreground.
Finally, a bright golden light appears at the door, and there is a beautiful close-up of her perceiving what is coming at her, mouthing the words “My God,” with a visible falling-away of her depression and despair. Hell of a closeup.
The Angels On the Table Are Important
The invisible force of protection that may (may) very well be around us all, even in a show as catastrophic and violent as this one. The protection invoked by Mary Winchester in her bedtime ritual with her oldest son. The protection that ends up being very true, and very real. Castiel was there all along, watching, hovering, waiting. (He took his damn time showing up, didn’t he.)
Because “Houses of the Holy” is presented as another Monster of the Week, and it connects us to what comes after (Sam going off the rails), the spiritual conversation (somehow completely avoided up until now) is a shocker. When I first watched the episode (and I went into the series blind, having no idea where it would go), I felt some undeniable unexplainable power in it that I couldn’t put my finger on. The episode felt enormously important but I wasn’t sure why: The scene in the church with the conversation about Michael. It gave me a creepy-crawly feeling. The conversation about prayer in the little side-chapel, where Mary Winchester comes up. Creepy-crawly feeling. And then that final scene in the motel room. And the closeup of Dean. There is power in all of it, uncontainable, unexplainable. And then ignored … until Season 4. When the angels come up again as a topic of conversation in “Lazarus Rising,” there is the same amount of skepticism from Dean, the brothers have practically the same conversation they do here. Sam is open, Dean remains closed. “Houses of the Holy” cracks that door open a tiny bit, and gives us a glimpse.
Angels crowd the screen from beginning to end. It almost becomes a joke. You can practically hear Castiel yelling in frustration: “I’M RIGHT HERE.”
Angels/Table Out
1st scene
Simply filmed and beautifully lit, the first scene immerses us in an unearthly glow of certainty provided by “God’s will” and the chance at redemption. Gloria is seen from behind, seated on a bed in what looks like a hospital, reading a book. The light streams in, but the shadows are more present than the light.
Heather Doerksen was excellent in the teaser, providing us with an entire life and backstory through the depth of her sigh, the expression in her eyes, and the way she put out her cigarette. We got it all. We know who she is. And here is a radical transformation, and instead of seeming creepy, it seems calm and almost beautiful. Even when she reveals she has stabbed a man. Her angst has vanished. Her despair is gone. The light she saw in her doorway is no longer external: it’s now coming from within.
Sam, dressed as an orderly, enters the room and questions her, towering over her.
Watch how Manners and Ladouceur distribute the light in the room. The light comes through the window, hitting her face so we can see her pretty clearly. Sam sits in a chair with his back to the window, and so he is mostly in shadow. (In those early days, Supernatural loved to put their heroes in shadow.) But … shimmering around on Sam’s outline, his hair, his shoulders, is a silvery line of light. It’s practically a halo. I have no idea how long it took to get that effect, and these guys are professionals and knew what they wanted going in.
I’ve spoken before about Padalecki’s world-class listening. Actors have to be good listeners. There are no exceptions. If people give bad performances, more often than not it is because they have stopped listening to their scene partner, and are thinking about themselves. The good news is you can train yourself to be a better listener. You might not have innate acting talent, but you at least will be LISTENING to your partner onstage. The Meisner Technique is all about training your listening capacity, which, in turn, helps you to be in the moment.
Listening is not as flashy as, say, having a gift for accents, or physical transformation … but being good at accents and physical transformations are just gimmicks if you aren’t listening.
There are great stories of brand-new actors suddenly having to play a scene with, oh, Robert De Niro or someone … and De Niro makes them better, forces them to be in the moment, because of how he listens to them. That’s how powerful a force listening is.
Because Padalecki is so good at it, there are layers to his listening. He takes what she gives him, first of all. He’s present to her reality. (He is also pretending to be an orderly. Nobody’s perfect.) As she tells him her story of feeling redeemed, of feeling God’s will, Padalecki peels back the onion. He continues his act, of being a relatively disinterested orderly, but there’s also Sam the Hunter, trying to figure out what he might be dealing with here. But even deeper than that, closer to the core, is Sam’s desire to believe what she is saying.
2nd scene
One of my favorite edits comes here. Big gorgeous closeup of haloed Sam, contemplating spirituality … to big gorgeous closeup of freckled lascivious Dean, headphones on, vibrating. Manners is in so close that we don’t even know what we’re looking at at first. Where is Dean? What is he doing?
He’s having a private experience, grooving out in pleasure, grooving out with himself … because when Dean is in a good space, he is awesome company for himself. This is part of the Burlesque.
The Burlesque Refresher Course, Level 1A
I know I go on and on about the Burlesque of Dean Winchester, and the performative aspect of his personality. It’s really important, and now I just use it as shorthand, so hopefully those who are new to these posts, can follow along. When I talk about Burlesque, I really am talking vaudeville, pin-up, whatever. Like Mae West, oozing with pleasure in herself. The bombshell’s enjoyment of her own bombshell-ness.
Burlesque has been, historically, a female thing, although male performers have always been around as well. I have been engrossed in my Shakespeare Chronological Reading project (so fun) and it occurs to me that all the cross-dressing that goes on in his plays are also an element of burlesque, made even more so when you consider that all the roles in Shakespeare’s day were played by men. So with Rosalind in As You Like It, for example: She dresses up as a boy. Her monologue that ends the play talks about how she will kiss every man in the audience if they please her. In reality, though, Rosalind was played by a man. So we have, if you can keep it straight: A boy playing a girl playing a boy, and then, in one role-play scene with Orlando where she pretends to be “Rosalind” (i.e. herself), she’s a boy playing a girl playing a boy playing a girl. You got that? Gender is completely destabilized at the same time that it is celebrated. Fluidity! Gender as something performative, something freeing.
Women are seen as sexual objects and women have participated in that dynamic, for their own survival, and also, hell, because it feels good to some women and they enjoy being that type of fantasy figure for others. (I will say that one of the funniest and sexiest burlesque acts I’ve ever seen was by a guy – at a birthday bash for David Bowie and Elvis Presley that didn’t even really get going until 1 o’clock in the morning. You can see pictures here of the whole event, and the Burlesque Guy is a bit down on the page. You can’t miss him. Look for the naked butt cheeks. He’s wearing an aviator’s outfit. On the front of his bulging leather underwear was a small remote-controlled glittery propeller. He was awesome.)
Dean’s version of Burlesque, which practically amounts to a feather-dance in a vaudeville hall filled with hooting yahoos in fedoras, is a survival technique, fostered over years of having to live a life that fucking sucks. So there’s that. It seems as though many hunters become hardened to simple pleasures: the trauma is too severe. But then there are others who revel in the simple pleasures because their lifestyle has given them an appreciation for the most basic elements of life. (Like the image we are given of Ellen’s husband bursting through the door after a hunt, scooping his wife and daughter up in his arms.) Dean grew up in a sparse and stingy environment, crappy hotels, bad food, no friends, work work work work. Clearly, by Season 10 we are seeing someone who is … how you say … tapped out … one of the reasons why Demon Dean was such a relief. Carefree fun with inappropriate women! Karaoke! Foos ball! Yay!
However: pleasure and an appreciation for it, a damn near reveling in it (like an odalisque, which brings us way way back in the re-caps) … was built into his character from the pilot. And so Ackles ran with that. He invested simple activities like eating and sex and sleeping with a glorious abandonment – and this happened early on. First couple of episodes, and I clocked it immediately. When Dean sleeps, he SLEEPS. When he eats, he shoves stuff into his mouth until you are completely embarrassed for him. When he gets naked, he goes all soft and mushy-breast-plate-y and his nakedness is vulnerable enough that I want to tell him to cover up his dirty pillows. He’s tough and you’ve gotta be if you’re a Burlesque performer because you have to deal with cat-calls every minute of your life (as Dean does, metaphorically and literally). He gives off a sexual vibe, like the smell of ozone in the air during a storm, something you can’t quite clock, and people react to it. He’s not unconscious of his effect. He uses it. He’s Mae West, he’s Brigitte Bardot. People were probably reacting to him weirdly before he even understood what it meant. He’s an erotic muse. More Sheila Shorthand.
The fact that Dean’s love of pleasure has survived intact at all is evidence of his strength of character. It has taken an act of will on his part. He leaves room for fun in his life. It’s so important. The real warning sign in Season 9 was the disappearance of his libido and when he chose not to eat the hamburger that was right in front of him and was brusque to the pretty waitress. The things Dean revels in are the things that are essential for our survival: food/sleep/sex. People take these things for granted. People can also get judgmental about overindulgence in these areas. This is where some of the “Dean is a limited womanizing chauvinist, I wish he was a vegan barista” commentary comes from. But honestly, if you have any experience with deprivation in food/sleep/sex (which I do, because of my stupid illness – and I’m sure a lot of you do as well), then you know how amazing/weird/scary it is when you start to let pleasurable things have room in your life again. It’s life-giving, it’s life-affirming.
Consider, too, in light of “Houses of the Holy” in particular: religion, with its interest in controlling morality (not always a bad thing), often has a lot to say about pleasure. Pleasure is a gift from God, right? But only in specific circumstances – otherwise, WATCH OUT. Pleasure should be limited, controlled, corralled. Otherwise:
Burlesque Class Dismissed. Pop Quiz Next Week.
In “Houses of the Holy,” coming on the heels of the SWAT-team-STYX getaway in “Nightshifter”, Dean is “on lockdown.” Sam works the case. Dean stays in the motel room. The power dynamic has shifted, as it always does. Sam is “on top,” the one in charge, the one calling the shots. Dean is the pleading younger brother, being left out of the action. In lieu of not being allowed to do his job, Dean descends into the Pleasure Principle. I am trying to picture life in that motel room over the last week. Dean taking showers that last 20 minutes. Dean hogging the remote, engrossed in soap operas and reality TV. Dean taking long naps in the middle of the day, so that hard-working Sam comes home to find his brother passed out diagonally across the bed. It would piss anybody off, and I’m sure Sam has been doing his pursed-lip passive-aggressive thing as he tries to clean up after Dean, and maybe get the remote from his brother so he can watch the news, please? The stir-crazy quality of their life together is going to be the plot-line of “Tall Tales,” coming up, but you can see the problems starting here. They’re too broke to get separate rooms. They are on top of each other. They have zero privacy. Even worse, Dean has ceased to care. He’s gonna do the Magic Fingers in front of his brother. He’s the honey badger now.
Dean’s reveling in pleasure is mirrored by the pleasure Manners gets in filming him. We get a couple of different angles of him vibrating: the beginning close-up, a side view with the coin-operated mechanism in the foreground, and then, gorgeously, shot from below.
And that is how Sam finds him.
And that is how we learn that Sam and Dean, apparently, are staying in the Mudflap Motel.
Thelma and Louise’s heads would explode. But not before they blew up the motel in feminist outrage.
Naked women are everywhere: on the wall dividers, above the bed, and then, in a gleaming back-lit wall at the other side of the room. I love that Dean and Sam never acknowledge it. Maybe they did a double-take when they first entered, but “whatever” would be the next response. In a room devoted visually to male pleasure, Dean of course goes hog-wild. He can’t stop vibrating himself. He’s been popping quarters into that thing all day. I am now picturing Sam trying to sleep in the next bed, hearing the vibrating start up again through the darkness.
Manners has a lot of fun with those naked woman, flaunting their stuff at the brothers in almost every frame. The lascivious motel room is in direct contrast to the vision of holiness and redemption that comes out as they work the case. The brothers begin to grapple with serious spiritual questions. Maybe on one level the MudFlap Motif is just a random joke, Jerry Wanek having some fun, but Supernatural‘s view of sex, and the role of women, is usually one of integration (criticisms to the contrary). Women provide something extremely important to the brothers: they were raised in a female-less environment, deprived of their mother. It’s no shock that Mary re-enters in “Houses of the Holy”, THE female figure to both of them. I’m not saying Mary Winchester is somehow in those MudFlap images, but I do think the question of Female-ness and the obvious LACK thereof is there. Subtextual, but it’s there. That’s how women often appear to men who don’t get to be with actual real-life women all that often. You know, G.I.’s in WWII covering their barrack walls with Rita Hayworth or Betty Grable in bathing suits. Woman with a capital W. Women are not just mothers. They are also objects of fantasy, the “substance of things hoped for” (I love using the Bible to back up my point about Sex), and potential sex/love partners (not “whores”, there’s a difference). Women are rare in Sam and Dean’s world, and even harmless flirting helps take the edge off. Dean knows that. Sam, not so much.
The Mudflap Ladies are another version of that gigantic ball-gown on the wall in “Playthings.” Women dominating, even when they are conspicuously absent.
Sam, after a busy day, lying his way into the mental hospital, comes into the room, ready to fill Dean in, only to see his brother in Odalisque Mode. Sam smacks at Dean’s foot to get his attention, annoyed. Dean isn’t startled or embarrassed. He is drunk on pleasure, and his little line about “Man … you gotta try this … there really is magic in the Magic Fingers” – with the hand-gesture (fingers waggling, then pointing over to the coin-op) … This has been going on for a week. Sam is over it.
Padalecki’s visual discomfort in the face of his brother’s sexual pleasure is obvious. He can’t even look at Dean and he asks Dean to please stop … whatever it is that he is in the process of doing.
How often has this scene been played out in their lives, in different contexts? Dean’s lack of shame, Dean’s exhibitionistic tendencies, Dean’s frank acceptance of the role of pleasure in his life … Dean looking at Hustler in plain view while Sam tries to focus on his Algebra homework. Dean protests, like a little kid, all pissed off and resentful. “You got me on lock-down!” Sam heads off to the bathroom and it is then that Dean’s last quarter runs out. No! “My last quarter,” moans Dean, and I’m vaguely embarrassed for him and want him to hide that part of himself. But I’m glad he doesn’t because Comedy. You know how when little kids get bored they become practically frantic? I watched my nephew once throw himself on the ground, writhing about in despair, merely because he was bored.
Dean calls out to Sam, desperately, “You got any more quarters?” and Sam, washing his face in the bathroom, barks back “No” in a cranky tone worthy of Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby.
Dean hangs in the bathroom doorway, with the gigantic hottie behind him, crowding in on his frame. It’s so bizarre.
As Sam fills Dean in on his conversation with Gloria, the first small rift appears. This is a rift that represents good team-work, and part of the structure of the show that I always appreciate: the conversations about what supernatural entity they might be tracking. The script leaves room for uncertainty, for discovery, for the brothers to use guesswork, to throw out ideas, discard them. Sometimes entire episodes happen where the brothers are chasing the wrong thing. “Oh my God … you guys aren’t spirits, you’re ghouls!” You know. Here, though, the conversation about Gloria’s situation is disturbed by what amounts to Sam’s openness to religious connotations. Dean is not open to that at all.
How could he be with those Afro-ed babes filling up the frame behind his brother?
These are extremely personal issues and Dean is not comfortable talking about them until later in the episode, after Sam sees what he believes to be an angel. And even then Dean is not “comfortable.” It is hard for Dean. These topics cut him to the quick, and in his own way, his relationship to faith (through his strident lack of it) is just as personal as his brother’s relationship to God.
Manners goes so close to Ackles’ face that Ackles sometimes leaves the frame, his eyes going above, before coming back down again. A less inventive director would consider that a flaw, but Manners knows better. Closeups with deep blackness and deep red behind them, shot through with bright light – from window – and the strange silhouettes of posing mudflap women with gigantic Afros all around them. This show is insane.
So much to look at!
3rd scene
Check out the swooping circling shot that opens Scene 3. It changes its mind on where it wants to go, looping back on itself once the brothers get out of the car. And it’s really Ackles driving, so the timing has to be perfect, the pulling up of the car in tandem with the camera moves, getting out of the car, looking around, starting up the steps … all in one. It’s beautiful!
In a minute or so, there is another circling shot, this time a complete 360 around Sam, as he thinks things over, and considers what to do next. Dean is in Wisecrack Mode, an aspect of the Burlesque, and even cracks himself up at one point, all a part of trying to put Sammy in his place with the dumb Angel conversation. Sam is not amused. Something nags at him, and that 360-degree shot lets us into that.
The episode has an interesting structure, character-wise: The times when the brothers are totally in sync, working a problem, are rare, and beautiful (“Usual Suspects”). But for the most part, each episode is “about” only one of the brothers. You can pick out which one is supposed to be the protagonist each go-round. Obvious examples: “Route 666”? It’s about Dean. “Born Under a Bad Sign” coming up? It’s about Sam. In “Houses of the Holy”, it gets all mixed up, and it’s one of the best parts of the script, and also one of the elements that gave me that creepy-crawly This is all very important feeling on my first time watching. Dean’s Burlesque is so strong and attention-getting that he may feel like the protagonist, but that’s only Dean’s self-regarding self-reflecting persona at work. I don’t care that he doesn’t like being singled out at birthdays: boy Bogarts the mike, for sure. But Sam is the important one here, Sam is the protagonist with an “arc” to go on. Dean is the wisecracking non-serious sidekick. But that all changes. It begins to change in the conversation in the chapel, about Mary. And the last moment in the episode is given, unforgettably, to Dean. This is why Sera Gamble was paid the big bucks, people. Because you realize that Dean had a journey to go on too. Almost more important than Sam’s, when you consider the background, his staunch initial defiance.
Sam looks around and heads into the backyard. Dean is a follower, Sam pushing the case forward, allowing for the possibility of these unknowns to be at play. The stakes are higher for Sam and Padalecki is playing that: I want this all to be true, because then there will be hope for me. This is something he cannot discuss with his brother, part of their intermeshed boundaries. Dean can’t listen, can’t hear. Sam keeps his worries to himself, praying, and trying to do the right thing. Lots of secrets between these two guys.
Circling camera again, the camera at a low level, moving around a wooden bulkhead in the side yard, Sam and Dean approaching, towering above the camera.
Once in the cellar, Sam’s flashlight-beams light up the obligatory Gross Things in Jars.
Two things to point out:
1. Thank goodness the basement has a dirt floor.
2. Like Sam seeing the nearly-invisible quincunx on the inside rim of various vases through “Playthings,” I am completely impressed that he would see the scratches on the wall in what is nearly pitch-black darkness. Good job, Laser Eyes!
To reiterate the ongoing rift, now present in every scene: when the skeleton is discovered (I love how Dean silently, like a tired Sherpa, goes to get the shovels to dig up the floor: no words even have to be exchanged), Dean admits grudgingly that the being that appeared to Gloria “knew what it was talking about. I’ll give you that.”
4th scene
In yet another shit-hole in Providence shown from the ceiling’s vantage-point so we get a good look at the nastiness, Dude (Wesley Salter) lies in bed, drinking Scotch from the bottle (we’ll see the bottle label on the floor later), and reading a graphic novel or magazine, involving both Theseus (a king, a founder, the guy who also killed the Minotaur) and “cannabals.” Make of it what you will. Guy’s in bad shape.
Father Gregory basically destroys the guy’s flophouse room as though he was a 5.8 on the Richter scale. Angels, as we learn later, do announce themselves by shaking rooms, disrupting television/radio transmission, smashing glass. They are destructive. Or at least they were before they became boring bureaucrats.
As the bright light appears, we see his expression change, in the same way we saw Gloria’s expression change. From fear comes hope, a surrender to beauty, to peace, a falling-away of sadness and loss.
Because of the example of Gloria, when the dude is shown walking down a residential area at night, we know he’s probably up to no good. Beauty alert: there is a beautiful glowing white street-lamp, like something from out of a fairy-tale – with snow on the ground, and the blue-black night … That very distinctive street-lamp will come back, multiplied later in the episode: beautiful. Makes me wonder if these were already existent, or “practicals” installed by Ladouceur et al to get the magical effect they wanted. Whatever the case, it’s gorgeous). As he walks, suddenly a bright light starts emanating from one of the front yards on the street.
Smiling, dude knocks on the door of the house and says to the man who answers: “My name is Zach …” He then plunges a knife into the guy’s chest.
The camera pulls back, and you knew this one was coming.
(Supernatural makes the point here, repeatedly, that the appearance of holiness is often a deliberate front for evil.)
5th scene
A short, sweet, and satisfying scene. What could be a mere information-dump is elevated into something slightly goofy (again with the magic quarters and all the naked ladies) as well as beautiful/poetic. Manners is unable to set up a scene in a boring or stock way. A boring or stock style would have opened the scene with Dean in medium shot, sitting on the bed with the police radio, coin-operated gizmo in clear sight beside him. Then cut to Sam at the door, medium-shot. Then a couple of over-the-shoulder shots as they talk to each other. Boom. Out. We’ve seen it all before, so much so that perhaps we don’t even KNOW we’re bored, and we may be forgiven if we imagine that those are the ONLY choices to be made.
But watch Manners’ choices.
The scene starts with a closeup of the crackling police radio. The camera pans up to the opposite wall where there are not one, but TWO mirrors, both of them circular, and hanging unevenly on the wall. In one of the mirrors, is Dean.
(You know me and my Mirror Moments, although this one doesn’t really qualify. To me a Mirror Moment is a man staring at himself in the mirror, trying to see who he is. Dean has a ton of those, almost one an episode in Season 10. But still: I love mirrors!) But we’re not done with this great shot. We see Dean only in the mirror’s reflection, not in the space itself. But then his head comes into the frame on the left side, glancing over his right shoulder behind him.
The joke then comes in the next shot, satisfying what we already know: a close-up of the coin-op. (Dean, don’t be a loser: go get some change at the laundromat if you’re hard-up. Take control of your need for vibrating.) – followed by a great focus-switch up to Dean in the foreground, looking lost and forlorn, like he dropped his ice cream. It’s pathetic.
At this moment, the door opens, and the camera pans up, giving us the Mudflap wall-divider again, and Sam entering, urgent and full of news. But before Sam gets a word out, Dean leans into the frame again, his head taking up most of the space, and looking back … yet again … at the coin-operator.
Dean says, “Yau bring quarters?” and looks back up at Sam, completely unselfconscious about where he’s at right now and who he is being. Honey badger. Doesn’t give a shit. Sam comes into focus at the door, staring at his brother with blatant distaste.
The inventiveness does not stop here! Sam follows Dean’s anxious glance, and we get a big close-up of the coin-slot gizmo, before switching focus, again, back to Sam. To orient us in the room: Dean is now sitting off-frame to the right, and the camera is now behind him, the coin-op is a blur in the foreground, and Sam stares at Dean in the background. A simple sequence, but Manners shoves a lot of fun into it, and it only requires two set-ups, maybe three!
Sam compares his brother “to one of those lab rats” that keeps pushing the pleasure button instead of the food button. Dean has no idea what Sam is talking about (“What are you talking about? I eat.” which is … an excellent point.) Dean also has been working, too, a subtlety that Sam often misses in his brother’s Burlesque. Dean is able to get Intel WHILE he is scoring the waitress’ phone number. Two things can happen at the same time. Pleasure vs. Food? Why the vs.? Don’t we DESERVE both in this sucky life?
The pieces are coming together of their case. Zach Smith stabbed some guy in the heart and then confessed. As Dean put it, “Roma Downey made him do it.” Sam and Dean scuffle, slightly, over the term “angel,” but move on past it. Dean heard the victim’s address on the police radio, and swipes a Post-It off the nearby mirror, giving Sam a look like, “Can we go check it out? Please?” (Please get me away from the Magic Fingers. Maybe I do have a problem …)
Just as Sam listened to Gloria, so Sam listens to Dean here, with that layers-of-an-onion depth to it.
Look at that.
Angels telling people to kill for them? Maybe he’s got the creepy-crawly too. Wouldn’t it be so … exciting … if angels were real? Wouldn’t it change the game entirely? Dean, with all his exhaustion and grief over Season 2, is acting pretty chipper, pretty okay with his life, bouncing back from the first half of the season (and perhaps counter-acting Sam’s tendency towards worry). Sam, though, is starting to perceive that maybe … there is a way out? Not just for him and his situation but for the two of them.
6th scene
Not in love with the 1980s-montage-sequence music that covers the next bit, of the yellow crime-scene tape, and Sam and Dean shown in a snowy alley, leaping up over a back fence, and then carefully opening the lock of a kitchen window and heaving themselves inside. The music choices are sometimes great. Other times not so.
Holed up in the stabbed guy’s house, Sam sits at the guy’s computer, while Dean wanders around, observing that Frank “likes his catalog shopping.”
The pig freaks me out.
In Regards to the Evil in “Houses of the Holy”:
Back to Dean’s observation that it’s people who are really scary, not monsters.
Supernatural is a highly suggestive show, filled with double entendres, sexual jokes, and lots of violence. The worst violence is emotional (I watch a lot of really violent movies, and Supernatural is pretty soft-core). That being said, in terms of the subject matter on the show and how certain “plots” are used: Rape is suggested, often, but it’s usually in connection with Dean, sometimes with Sam. It seems that the Vampire episodes, in particular, are where they introduce themes of abuse and sexual violence, rape and sexual trauma. But in general, women are not portrayed as hapless damsels strolling through a world of predators needing to be saved. Rape is not used as a plot device, in other words. When there is a sexual assault suggested, it usually connects us back to the Winchester Trauma Narrative, even more disturbing. But it’s rare that Supernatural tiptoes into sexual assault-land. (As I’ve droned on about, some critics may see it otherwise: I read some goofball on Tumblr saying that because Dean gives fake names to the women he picks up, what he does with those women is tantamount to rape. Listen, I’m not endorsing giving out fake names, but come ON. That type of hysteria about consensual sex between adults, fake names or no, is NOT HELPING. I may be biased. One wild debauched night in New York, when I used to have those, my friend and I pretended that we were “Shrivers.” As in, related to the Kennedys. It was super-stupid, and the two of us started it as a goof, because the bar was boring and we were trying to stir up excitement, so our stupid tales of summers in Hyannisport did draw in a couple of drunk guys, and we ended up hanging out with them for a couple of hours. Whatever. It was totally dumb, but the guys were a lot of fun, and I am sure they knew that we were not, in any way, shape, or form, Shrivers. No harm no foul.)
The sexual swamp of Supernatural sometimes turns nasty, equating a woman’s body with sexual violence and getting off on the portrayal of it (Meg’s torture), although all things considered, it doesn’t happen all that often. That Meg torture scene is tone-deaf, a misfire, and the reaction was so negative that everyone appeared to have learned their lesson. I appreciate the fact that Supernatural does not equate Woman with either Sex or Violence. Plenty of the plot-points involving women have nothing to do with sex at all, but things like family and trust and loyalty.
“Houses of the Holy” stands out, in its explicit handling of the nastiness of human nature by introducing us to a killer, a pedophile and a rapist-in-waiting.
What I am trying to say is that other shows dealing with heroes and mythic arcs often use women as collateral damage, or place them entirely in refrigerators. The only thing that can possibly happen to women in these types of stories is to almost be raped and then be saved. And then women get to sleep with the hero. But Supernatural, while it definitely tips a hat in the direction of those tropes, does not embrace it entirely: it comments on it, it subverts it. I appreciate that. I love the show Criminal Minds because I love serial killers and psychopath stories, but I was watching an episode with Alex in Long Beach, and she commented from the opposite couch: “This show should not be called Criminal Minds. This show should be called Women Should Never Leave the House.” I get sick of womanhood being associated with weakness and peril (similar to the disheartening transformation, as I see it, of the Vagina Monologues over the years from being a celebration of the vagina and a liberation from the shame associated with the word itself to a never-ending tale of trauma and sexual violence which ends up equating Vagina with Violence. There may be some of you who disagree, and that’s totally okay. I don’t want to hurt anyone with my observation. Sexual assault is a huge problem, I get it, but that one-to-one equation Vagina=Violence is not helping. It helps create an environment of hysteria that leaves people more vulnerable.).
It’s actually a relief to hang out in Supernatural-land, where those “rules” don’t really apply.
The subject matter in “Houses of the Holy” needed to be that heavy in order to make sense of Father Gregory’s quest from beyond the grave. Because of the awful-ness of the crimes, Sam and Dean both have conflicting reactions to the “avenging angel” at work.
Great set-up.
End of Evil
Sam cracks open some locked file (and I love the slightly proud glance he throws up at his brother when his hacker skills pay off … but Dean is not paying attention.), and finds a bunch of saved emails. (Some prop person had to write those creepy emails. I made the mistake of freeze-framing the screen and reading two of them. Awful. But still: well done, props person, well done.) Dean winces when Sam says the “lady” the guy was writing to is actually “13 years old.” “I don’t want to hear this,” says Dean. Their heads are both jammed into the frame, and both of their reactions – Padalecki’s and Ackles’ – are beautiful, especially since they’re placed side by side.
Manners’ style is almost completely face-driven.
Sam and Dean recoil from those emails.
Dean doesn’t get it. This thing doing the killing is almost “like a do-gooder …” and Sam, in my favorite line-reading in the episode, fills in Dean’s blank with, “An avenging angel?” It’s one of those subtle Padalecki-ish moments, breathing with annoyance, trying to be patient, but firm and persistent in sticking to his guns. There’s almost a “we don’t have time for your blah-blah-blah-blah” vibe to the line-reading. He knows Dean will flip out, yet he moves forward with the comment anyway. There’s also the slightest eye-roll as he says the line, an almost, “Okay, here comes something you won’t like, but get over it, I’m saying it anyway … ”
Relationship! Conversation! Accumulation!
Meanwhile, Dean has picked up a piece of paper, looks at it, and interrupts Sam’s monologue, asking him where this Frank guy went to church. Haltingly, Sam says, “Our Lady … of the Angels?” Dean, deadpan, murmurs, “Of course that’d be the name.”
Who all is in this thing for the plot? I am sure there are some. I’m not. I’m in it for the relationship and the behavior. It’s like crack.
7th scene
Welcome to Our Lady of the Angels, the gloomiest church on the Eastern Seaboard.
Christian Denomination Scorecard:
In Season 1, there was “Hook Man,” which seemed Episcopalian to me. Married priest, fancy church. Then there was “Faith,” with an older, more renegade version of Christianity, looping us back to the Chautauqua Circuit and the Great Awakening and the Pentecostal folks gathering in tents in fields. If I had to warrant a guess, I would say that the townsfolk in “Scarecrow” are Lutherans. “Salvation” brought us Pastor Jim, so … not Catholic, probably. Our guys are mainly called “priests.” I am probably offending everyone on the planet right now but I can’t seem to stop myself. Pastor Jim’s church was pretty scary-looking though, and pretty formal. I was going to guess Unitarian but I don’t think so, based on what that church looked like. So … Protestant, although what denomination I don’t know. In Season 2, “Crossroad Blues” plunged us into the American South and the hoodoo tradition which really evolved in the Mississippi Delta area, a place from which all good things come (culturally, anyway). There’s spirituality in Hoodoo, but not really Christian, although in its American version it mixes in with Baptist or Pentecostal faiths … and I am sure dissertations have been written about all of this.
Later, as the apocalypse starts, radical evangelical sects started to be featured, sects that are similar to doomsday cults, fanatics, moral police types, etc.
Catholicism is the religion in “Houses of the Holy,” although never named. The priests are not married. There is a huge fancy church with stained glass and gigantic paintings of angels. Jesus hangs over the altar. And Dean makes a crack about “Father O’Malley” (hey there!) and then is corrected with, “Father Shaughnessy.” Ah, to have your people be the butt of all The Priest Jokes for all time.
Denominations Kyrie Eleison
The scene opens with a stunner of a shot: the camera high up behind Christ on the cross and then moving even further up so there is a view of the entire cavernous church, with Sam and Dean and the head priest walking up the middle aisle, dwarfed by the architecture around them. Well worth the time it clearly took to set it all up. Manners, giving us a moment to see/feel the sheer grandiosity and tradition of faith, and how tiny Sam and Dean appear, strolling into that world.
Father Reynolds is played by the wonderful Denis Arndt (Touched by an Angel shows up on his resume). He manages to give his character a warm welcoming manner, friendly, but you can tell he’s nobody’s fool. He’s overworked, he’s losing hope, but he believes in what he is doing. Watch the look he gives Dean when Dean tries to bull-shit him. Dean, glimmering and burlesquing at him – in a church, no less -… Father Reynolds takes one look at the guy and knows that every single thing he is saying is a lie. But Arndt also shows that his character just lost a friend, in a horrible killing, and Father Reynolds is still somewhat traumatized. As someone who sees himself as a caretaker, he feels he is failing in his mission. There’s a worried darkness in his manner.
Dean starts off by being too enthusiastic, saying, “We just don’t feel right if we don’t hit church every Sunday.”
Tone it down a notch, pal.
When Father Reynolds asks them where they’re from, originally, Dean spouts off, “Fremont, Texas” (and listen to Sam go, “Yup” – Ha!), and Father Reynolds, unfortunately, knows that town, and knows that Catholic parish there. Dean continues to flail, saying, yeah, yeah, we know the priest there, Father …. O …Malley … (Who left him in charge of this interaction?) Sam has to intervene. As he always does.
I am a simple creature and when I like something I like to see it 100 times over (like the lab rats pushing the pleasure button?), and Dean screwing up these initial interactions by being too flippant/flirty/insouciant/feather-dance/whatever the hell he’s doing so that Sam has to take over is a dynamic of which I never tire.
Sam careens the car away from the railing, and Dean barely misses a beat. He asks about the bad neighborhood, and suddenly the camera is down at floor-level, staring up at them, as Father Reynolds says, “That’s why the church’s work is so important.”
Dean asks about the murders, and then comes boom-boom-boom three different closeups, one of Sam, one of Dean, one of the priest: Each man is shot from below, with some fabulously interesting thing going on behind his face, far back in that huge church. The whole look and feel is part of that anomaly-ness that I mentioned earlier. Something big was being revealed in the episode, something strange … but I couldn’t quite figure it.
The argument between Sam and Dean about the possible existence of angels continues here, and both Sam and Dean use Father Reynolds to make their points AT one another. On the surface, they’re just asking the priest innocent questions about angels, but underneath is a churning, “See? I TOLD ya so …” thing going on.
Sam points to a painting and asks, “Is that Michael?”
(The painting is by Raphael. I’m just saying.)
Let’s look at it in detail. This is Michael putting his foot down. On Lucifer.
Isn’t it something? In “Houses of the Holy,” the mention of Michael is basically just to bolster up Sam’s pointed reminder to Dean that angels are not fluffy benign creatures but ferocious warriors. But once you’ve seen the whole series, of course this moment becomes much much MUCH more.
Michael is a character on the show, and yet you never see him. His name was said, what, 10 times an episode for that season? He loomed over everything, circling around Dean, licking his chops. Michael’s sword. Sam is leading Father Reynolds on: “So angels aren’t the Hallmark versions, right? They’re fierce.” Dean knows what Sam is up to, and the glances between the brothers are eloquent. It’s a small silent debate club going on. Father Reynolds is a modern priest, and so prefers to think of angels as “loving” but he does remind them:
‘An angel of the Lord appeared to them, the glory of the Lord shone down upon them, and they were terrified.’
Once he finishes the quote, Sam and Dean both look uncomfortable, Dean more so, because he wears everything on his sleeve, and he has no idea what the priest just said to them. Because Dean cannot keep track of his own make-believe character, he has forgotten that he said literally 30 seconds before that he “just doesn’t feel right” if he misses even one Sunday of church. He doesn’t even realize he’s outed himself, and I love how Father Reynolds knows. The way he says, “Luke 2:9”, right at Dean, is perfect. He’s enjoying putting Dean in his place a little bit.
Wherever Dean goes, there are these small moments of power-play and drama. He brings it out of everybody.
Out on the front steps of the church (the streets in Providence, Rhode Island are not that wide. Moving on.) is a cluster of candles and icons, and we get this big swooping shot of the church, from below, and then moving in across the street, as Father Reynolds, Dean and Sam come out onto the steps. I love it when the camera moves, and I love it when it knows WHY it moves.
And here’s the most important scene in the episode. It comes almost at the exact halfway mark. It’s beautifully written.
Dean asks about the little shrine, and Father Reynolds tells them about Father Gregory, murdered on the church steps two months before for his car keys. “He was a good friend,” says Father Reynolds, looking down at the shrine, and you believe him.
He looks devastated, and admits that since it happened he’s been “praying his heart out … for deliverance.” As he speaks, there are beautiful and silent reaction shots from Sam and Dean, Dean standing on the same step as the Father, with the blurry wintry traffic in the background, and Sam standing a couple of steps below, looking up at the priest. Beautiful angles.
As the conversation comes to a close, Dean holds out his hand and says, “Thanks, Padre,” and I love the moment. Man to man. Padre. Love everything about it. Once left alone, the camera circles around the shrine, with a small photo of Father Gregory propped up against a candle, and Dean picks up the photo, the camera landing on the sidewalk below the brothers. Again with that destabilizing angle, making them look both hugely tall and also dwarfed by all that is up above them.
Because both actors are so tall, putting them in the same frame is a challenge, and everyone has it down to a science now. I like Dean being a couple steps below Sam, staring way up at his brother, a visual reminder of their shifting status with one another, that Sam is rising in strength/power/importance, leaving Dean behind, limited, small. That’s what the next moment is about. I’ve watched the scene a bunch and am still discovering new things to love about it.
Dean sees things one way: Father Gregory is a vengeful spirit. Sam counters, getting his own closeup, by the way (unlike Dean, who is in medium shot, with Sam looming in the frame beside him: such choices tell us who is the Dominant one in the scene). Father Reynolds started praying for deliverance two months ago. Could it be that these killings are the angels responding to his prayers? The regular everyday “what are we dealing with here” conversation is derailed by Sam’s openness to the possibility.
Dean basically can’t even.
“Come on, man … what’s your deal …” is his eloquent rejoinder.
Dean’s skepticism almost amuses Sam. He’s almost looking forward to a little theological debate. His brother, so open and aware of all things supernatural, refuses to consider a theological explanation for these killings. Sam is not contemptuous of Dean. Just … alert and interested in the way the conversation is about to go. He’s ready for it. I love Padalecki, in particular, in this scene.
For Dean, it’s personal: Who are you right now, Sammy? I don’t get what’s happening with you? For Sam, it’s not: I am looking at all of the variables and possibilities in regards to these murders, like we always do.
So many problems in this life come when you assume you know a person, make decisions about that person based on your assumptions, weigh in on them with approval/disapproval based on your assumptions, and then act all betrayed or “disappointed” when said individual does not comply with your assumptions. Dean can’t even see he’s doing it. When he says, scornfully, “What’s next, are you going to start praying every day?” and Sam says quietly, “I do pray every day. I have for a long time,” it’s as though Dean has gotten the wind knocked out of him. (That’s how personal Jensen Ackles makes this. You see? Yes, he judges religion as superstition and thinks people who believe in what they cannot see are deluding themselves. But the reaction here is not about that: he looks up at his brother with almost shock. He had no idea his brother prayed. He has no idea what this means. What else is going on that he has no idea about? He looks stunned. His freckles rage. He looks about 14 years old.)
There’s really nowhere to go when someone looks at you like that. When someone says to you, “The things you learn about a guy …” Sam squints slightly in response: that’s Padalecki thinking again. Wonderful moment. It’s up to Dean to adjust his conception of his brother. To be more flexible with it. That’s on him. Dean seems to know that in some way, because he breaks the moment, averting his eyes. He’s very uncomfortable. Sam is so complete. So sure of himself. Awesome contrast.
8th scene
The foyer to Father Gregory’s grave in the crypt is crowded with angels. Knowing ugly little angels.
Slowly, as though summoned, Sam turns and looks at a certain stone angel, standing in a shaft of light.
Dean has moved on (giving him just enough time to clock the wormwood on Father Gregory’s grave), leaving Sam alone. The angel starts to shake, and Sam moves closer to it, looking up at it with an expression on his face that makes me want to cry.
Both these actors, strong and strapping though they may be, have full access to their vulnerability. The shining light then comes, and Sam stares into it, breathless with expectation, hope.
Dean returns, impatiently calling for Sam (looked over by that gargoyle/angel up in the corner), and sees Sam collapsed on the floor. Shot from the point of view of the angel in the shaft of light, Dean hunches over Sam, trying to wake him up. When Sam emerges, his glance moves up to the angel, Dean’s glance following.
It was so disturbing to me, first time viewing.
Dean helps Sam into a little side chapel to re-group, which leads to my favorite scene in the episode.
Who the hell says that two people talking isn’t inherently dramatic?
Sam’s body language and expression shows that what he saw gave him a sense of peace and well-being almost entirely foreign to his life-experience. It’s all in how he walks, the look on his face. Dean doesn’t like this at ALL, and takes a flask out from his pocket, offering it to Sam, who says No in no uncertain terms. He doesn’t want to take the edge off of what just happened. Dean shrugs and takes a swig. These actors’ internal motors are perfectly calibrated: a less-sensitive actor would have gone at Sam in an intense way, but Dean is so freaked out he detaches entirely. Only actors ENJOY reveling in intense emotions. Regular people usually don’t.
Sam is not unaware of Dean’s reaction, but the experience was so strong he doesn’t hold back. “This feeling washed over me … peace … like, grace.”
Dean goes to the jokes, making a crack about glow-sticks and Dr. Seuss hats. Obnoxious, but still, pretty funny. I did ecstasy once. Never again. Sam sticks to his guns, fighting for his experience, staring up at his cynical brother. What’s beautiful and unique is Sam’s reaction to this Burlesque behavior: Just like Gloria in the mental hospital, he is calm and certain in what he saw, and all of his troubles have been lifted off of him. Dean’s skepticism cannot take that away from him. If anything, it makes the experience that much stronger.
Dean starts to walk to the other pew, and Manners films that movement simply yet eloquently: circling camera, again, with blurry glimpses of windows/ceilings in the background – the brothers linked together by their presence in one another’s shots, Dean crossing around in front of Sam for a second as he goes to the next pew. It’s beautiful.
Dean is dealing with a lot, the aftermath of the “I pray every day” revelation, and now his brother being contacted by a vengeful spirit disguised as an angel. It’s his job to state his case, the other side of the case, the side Sam resists. It’s not easy, though, when Sam is looking at him like that, with that dreamy smile on his face. Hasn’t one of Dean’s dreams always been to see Sam happy? It’s all rather awful.
We were left out of what the angel said to Sam, but he was told a sinner needed smiting. “I don’t suppose you asked what this alleged bad guy did …” freckled Dean glimmers/gleams/burlesques from the next pew. Sam is feeling all of that power and attitude come at him, but he’s not intimidated, he’s not going to give in. He knows what he saw.
“He hasn’t done anything. Yet.” Back to the “If you met Hitler in 1922, would you kill him” argument from “Bloodlust.” Dean can’t deal with this. His first reaction is to laugh, but then, it goes personal, it goes a bit ugly: “You know, you’re supposed to be bad too–” and then Manners goes so close that Dean’s face takes up the whole screen, on the diagonal, alarming: “Maybe I should just stop you right now.”
It’s a threat. It’s also the crux of the episode, the heart of the theological argument.
The argument is on now, and Sam is shot in deep close-up too. There’s no way out of what they are arguing about, all that matters is Dean and Sam: this is claustrophobic filmmaking, this is filmmaking leaving us with no escape from what they are talking about. The epitome of their relationship.
“Maybe we’re hunting an angel here, and we should stop. Maybe this is God’s will.”
That word. God. Even with their familiarity with demons, they have never discussed the possibility that demons might mean Devil, and if there is a Devil, then there must be a God. Sam and Dean don’t talk about God. This is brand new territory. I love it when these guys move into brand new territory. They don’t handle it with grace. Who the hell does? Especially siblings, who are so close, who work in shorthand, who work on assumptions.
Sam talking about “God’s will” is freaky to Dean, it’s ground he doesn’t know how to access, he doesn’t know how to meet Sam on that playing field. He detaches again. It comes off as condescending, but the two of them have never had this conversation before. And as he speaks, the memory of his mother is rising. It’s powerful stuff.
“All right. You know what? I get it. You’ve got faith. That’s … Hey. Good for you. I’m sure it makes things easier. You know who else had faith like that? Mom. She used to say when she was tucking me in that angels were watching over us. I think that was the last thing she ever said to me.”
Sam is pretty wrecked by the revelation, and Dean struggles with even revealing it. It is his own private grief-space, his own thing with his mother, made awful by how she ended and what was taken from him. “She was wrong. There was nothing protecting her. There’s no higher power. There’s no God. There’s just chaos and violence and random unpredictable evil that comes out of nowhere and rips you to shreds.” One needs only to watch Ackles play this monologue (something that he, the real-life man, who has faith, doesn’t believe at all) to understand what acting is about. It’s simple, it’s brutal. He’s not tearing up, he’s not emotional. He’s now almost completely detached after the small glitch you can see on his face when he tells Sam about his mother’s bedtime ritual. Sam, to his credit, listens. He doesn’t like it, but he listens.
Dean is on top now. He doesn’t gloat from his position. But he has regained his status. He has proof that they are probably dealing with a vengeful spirit.
Theological debate over, the brothers have moved back into the crypt, and we get a creepy panning shot of Father Gregory’s grave, the stone wreathed in a kind of crinkly vine. Sam is confused, staring at it, and glances at Dean, who says, “Wormwood.” (Ah, competence.) Sam sees the proof, but resists the implications. I feel for him. I really do. When Dean suggests they summon Father Gregory’s spirit, to test the theory, Sam balks. “Here? In the church?”
The set is shown beautifully in its creepy entirety as the brothers walk away, Dad’s journal has a seance ritual in it, Sam makes a crack hoping “Whoopi is available” for it.
“If Father Gregory’s spirit is around, the seance will bring him right to us. And we’ll put him to rest.” says Dean.
“But if it’s an angel, it won’t show.”
I love the episode. It’s a cliffhanger. I found myself wanting to believe in angels, wanting to believe that someone was watching out for these guys, for the good in humanity.
9th scene
It’s been a bit intense so the humor is welcome, the sight of Sam and Dean gathering materials for a seance from a corner grocery store. Kevin Keefer’s Korner? WTF, Supernatural. They’ve had to buy a Spongebob placemat for the seance. I love the image of the two of them wandering through the narrow aisles of a grocery store, reading out loud the ingredients from Dad’s battered journal, doing the best they can. Sam’s energy is light-hearted. He’s enough of a hunter to realize Dean is right. I like the complexity of that. It’s the whole “both/and” thing I’ve talked about before: when the show is best, it presents “both/and” as opposed to “either/or.”
Sam suddenly stops, though, and sees a man standing on the sidewalk, with light emanating out from around him. He, too, carries a bag from Kevin Keefer’s Korner. We’ve got some great focus-pulls coming up, Dean turning to look at the guy, the background blurring out, the foreground blurring out. Having watched Aaron, our genius focus-puller on our own little movie, work his magic, I am even more in love with the guys who can do such things. The gentleness, the sensitivity to image and flow, so important. Sam still sees the light, he’s pointing at it. Dean sees nothing. “That’s the guy!” says Sam.
10th scene
Now comes an extremely complicated sequence: the episode splits off into two, Dean chasing the guy, and Sam doing the seance. As I mentioned, this is one of the only times in Supernatural‘s history that “OMG, rape about to happen” is used as a plot point, and I don’t mind it because the episode has set the whole thing up so well. It has a lot to do with people’s potential for violence, perhaps untapped: Maybe that guy isn’t a serial rapist, maybe he is, but whatever the case may be, he’s going out with this woman and he’s having pissed-off thoughts about her, about the hoops she’s making him jump through (buying her flowers, for example), when all he’s interested in is sex. He’s feeling led on. All of that is clear in the brief scene we get of the two of them in the car. Had he confessed these feelings to Father Gregory? Yes, which implies that on some level he knew it was wrong. Could he have stopped himself? Supernatural has a complex relationship to free will, part of its bizarre charm. Destiny and fate and “it’s in the stars” all do battle in people’s lives. I just re-read Julius Caesar and it’s all about that: Packed full of omens and dreams and symbols and soothsayer’s warnings … all making everyone question who exactly is in charge. People make the mistake of thinking they are in charge (although, notably, the women do not: they beg their husbands to heed the warnings). The men ignore the warnings. The stars are in charge. Everyone dies.
These two plots surge forward, side by side, until that final stunning moment at the end of the car chase, which stops Dean in his tracks, leading us into the final scene which I couldn’t love more if I tried. But the editing work is superb, because the two plots ARE one. They are woven together seamlessly, despite the completely different energies of both.
The scene opens with the cross-walk changing from white to red, and the man crosses the street, all as Dean and Sam practically scuffle with one another at the side of the Impala. Sam wants to pursue. Dean has a great line: “You’re not gonna go kill someone because a ghost told you to, are you insane.” When Sam says he needs to “stop” him, Dean’s response is great: “Define stop.” Sam pleads though, and the guy’s headlights light up across the street. The music starts, the creepy piano-ish music that accompanies Dean on his stalking course through Providence, Rhode Island, and I don’t mind it. It’s still a bit 1980s-sh but I don’t mind it.
Dean seems to concede, gets into the car, but then locks Sam out.
And off he goes.
The first stalking scene starts off with the enormous glow of one of those distinctive white street lamps, which will come up again in the upcoming scenes.
There’s something strange about them. They both are and are not realistic. They’re romantic looking. The glow they put forth is soft and white. There’s snow on the ground. Dean drives through a real neighborhood, trailing after this alleged bad guy. There are no other cars on the road, and Dean watches as the guy, holding a bouquet, gets out of the car, greets a woman in front of her house, and the two get into the car and drive off. All to the undeniably slightly-cheesy-and-yet-still-forgivable-somehow soundtrack. We don’t know what we’re looking at yet. The guy Dean stalks seems harmless. And he IS harmless at the moment. He’s just driving down the street.
Do intentions matter? Do thoughts matter?
Meanwhile, back in Wormwood City, the music changes to a mournful organ pipe sound as Sam sets up his seance ritual, with Dad’s journal open on the floor (love that detail, it shows how little they use seances in their everyday hunts). Spongebob placemat placed face down.
Father Reynolds busts him in the act. Sam glances down at his little Satanic altar, panicked, knowing, yeah, how bad it all looks. “Father, I can explain. Actually, maybe I can’t.” Oh, Sam.
When he tries to say that seances are “based on early Christian rites”, Father Reynolds grabs his arm and starts to drag him away. It is then that the bright light emerges, stopping both of them in their tracks, looking back. “Oh my God …” breathes Father Reynolds, and it’s a wonderful moment. “Is that an angel?”
The second the bright light appeared, you can see the loss on Sam’s face, and his reply, “No. It’s just Father Gregory” is full of his disappointment. From the white light emerges Father Gregory, who says kindly, “I’ve come in answer to your prayers.”
Dean drives his Impala through the snowy streets, all to the creepy incidental music, and it’s beautifully shot, it’s a real driving scene,the Impala going by, with the misty white light in the opposite windows, Dean in stark profile, the scene moving on in one take so we see the two cars on the road, with those mystical Narnia-ish streetlamps again.
I get distracted by things like streetlamps, especially ones so pretty.
Mournful elegiac music moves us back to Father Gregory, who addresses Sam by name. “I thought I sent you on your path. You should hurry.” Sam’s face is only partially lit, and his face is sad, and there’s kindness there, too. Compassion. Father Gregory thought he was doing right. Father Gregory believes he has been transformed into an angel.
You don’t have to see an actor’s face fully lit to get the full force of his emotions. As Father Gregory describes his own death, describes how “there was no pain” there’s a silent reaction shot from Sam, who hears those words, and wants them, wants them so badly to be true. No more pain. Of course Father Gregory would want that. Of course we all would want that. “Houses of the Holy” taps into something primal in the human condition, the yearning to be free from suffering, and the comfort that faith brings. And yet there’s enough mystery around the “case,” it’s filmed in a mysterious enough way (and we’re coming to the real mystery, that final scene) that you are left doubtful, you are left open to all possibilities.
Dean continues to track Probable Douche, turning a corner, and then somehow losing the car. The street in front of him is empty. Streetlamps again!
Back in the crypt we get the “Here’s why I done what I done” monologue, with Father Reynolds trying to talk sense into the spirit of Father Gregory.
Father Gregory, like Gloria, like Sam, has the calmness of knowing he is right, of knowing the feeling of grace. An episode like “Houses of the Holy” is so “out there” that they can afford to be really on the nose, it can “take” the obvious connections being made for us, spoken out in plain words. For example, Father Gregory insists that the “innocent people” who killed the others were being offered redemption. He slowly turns to Sam and says, “Some people need redemption. Don’t they, Sam.” Sam is taken aback, throwing a quick almost embarrassed glance at Father Gregory. Consider the arc of the next episode! Poor Sam.
Father Reynolds also, after getting over his shock, takes a kindly counsellor tone with Gregory, filled with emotion, saying he’s “misguided, lost …” Father Gregory is getting vengeance, that’s all, and that’s wrong. These are extremely strong concepts, still paying off in Season 10. One could say that it makes up the entire emotional tension of the show as a whole.
Father Gregory, despite his certainty, is open to the counsel of these two people, who approach him with a level of compassion and understanding. He starts to crack a bit, and sadness starts to come out. It’s almost akin to Sam being possessed by Gadreel, and having to deal with the fallout of killing Kevin, seeing his hands killing Kevin. Sam is a good person and cannot pass the buck on that one. Father Gregory is made of the same stuff.
Probable Douche (Sean Rogerson) has pulled his car into an alley, and a woozy country song plays on the radio (because don’t all rapes happen to the accompaniment of a country and western tune?). His date (Zara Taylor) looks confused. She’s holding her flowers. She doesn’t recognize him as a predator yet (damn those predators for not wearing “I Am Planning on Raping You” signs) and starts laughing, and he moves in to kiss her, and she keeps laughing, pulling back.
He restrains himself, because her body language is clear, but he doesn’t like it. He’s embarrassed. She tries to keep things normal, and he smacks her across the face. Rogerson is excellent. You just know he’s one of those Nice Guys(TM). He’s been so nice, hasn’t he? He brought her flowers, that was nice, right? Why do girls only like jerks?? (Newsflash: they don’t like jerks. And more often than not, the “jerks” are actually guys who are pretty upfront about sex, laid-back about it, and non-judgmental about it, and are man enough to create a safe environment so that a woman feels free to … basically become the Mudflap of his (and her) dreams.) Nice Guys are only nice because they see sex as a reward. Thankfully, having dealt with many Nice Guys(TM), I now can recognize the scent they give off almost immediately. Has saved me a lot of trouble. Give me a Bad Boy any day of the week. You know what Bad Boys have that Nice Guys(TM) don’t? They LIKE women.
After the slap, he apologizes, a great and terrible detail – “I’ve never done this before …” as though what just happened is something anyone can recover from. She tries to get out of the car, but the doors are locked and he pulls out a knife. The struggle that ensues is terrible and both actors are wonderful. These scenes are difficult to do. The struggle has to look real, but people can’t get hurt. And both have to “go there”. (In a play I did a million years ago, I had to be sexually assaulted onstage. The other actor was a good friend of mine, still is, and the first time we went through the scene full out, after we had carefully choreographed it, was extremely upsetting for both of us. That scene ALWAYS worked between us. But the first time we did it in rehearsal, it was like we had unleashed poison into our veins. It took a second to get ourselves together. He leaned down to help me up off the floor, and said to himself in his gentle voice, “That was a very curious feeling …” Indeed.) Team-work helps create a rape scene, as strange as that might sound. It takes enormous trust between the two actors. She struggles hard, and he struggles hard, which is when Dean punches through the driver’s side window.
Rapist doesn’t know what hits him, all he knows is he’s punched repeatedly, his head slammed against the steering wheel a couple of times, before lights out, all as his date cries and screams.
I never get sick of Ackles’ physical work: Dean sees her getting out of the car, and literally can’t afford the time to go around the front of the car to get to her, but instead scrambles hurriedly over the hood, leaping off on the passenger side. It’s graceful, it’s urgent and motivated. The camera follows him in a simple horizontal motion, which helps make it work. It’s a frenzied movement on his part, but the camera is calm. Would that other directors would imitate Kim Manners and stop over-relying on handheld to show that a scene is “urgent.”
While he’s making sure she’s okay, Rapist starts up his own car and drives off. Dean hustles over to his car, ordering her to “call 911”, a moment that is touching and supportive even though, you know, he’s outta there. Brakes squealing, Dean races off. They make us wait for the car chase, though. I was aching for it, gearhead that I am.
Back in the crypt, Father Gregory stares at his own grave, upset. He needs to be here, he is still needed here, he doesn’t want to go. Father Reynolds says kindly that it is time for him to be at peace: “Let me give you Last Rites.”
Father Reynolds is shown in almost portrait fashion, with a completely black velvety background, his face placed to the side of the frame. How they make those blacks as black as they are, I do not know, but it’s so Renaissance-gorgeous.
Father Reynolds begins the prayer, and there’s a mournful undercurrent of music, tapping us into Sam’s journey through the episode as well as the entire season. It seems now that there is no hope. When Father Gregory starts to fizz away, like television static, he looks frightened and says, anxiously, “Father Reynolds?”
Anyone who has ever watched someone die, or been present at someone’s deathbed, has probably seen at least a version of that moment. I am unable to speak more about it, but it’s extremely emotional, those brief moments of fear. Father Gregory kneels, and Father Reynolds continues to pray “calling upon the Archangel Raphael” which, good Lord, foreshadowing or what. “Master of the air” is such a beautiful phrase.
Father Gregory’s ice-blue eyeball is the last to go.
Once Father Gregory is put to rest, the crypt goes to darkness again, and my first time watching, I again got that creepy-crawly This is super-important and yet why feeling.
Now we’ve got our car chase! Granted, it’s no To Live and Die in L.A. car chase, but then again, what is?
(Speaking of which, I really enjoyed referencing To Live and Die and LA in my review of Taken 3, as an example of the spatial-reality – and therefore excitement – that Taken 3 was missing.)
Supernatural so rarely does car chases, it’s fun to see them create it. The streets are dark, there are hills, and bridges and underpasses, sparks flying as the cars go over bumps, and so we get the beauty of two sets of headlights, swerving around in the darkness. There’s one moment where the cars are piled on top of one another in the frame, so there’s some actual driving going on. There’s also a beautiful shot of the ominous-looking Impala in Rapist’s rear-view mirror, floating in space.
The miracle of how the car chase ends is just that: a miracle in conception, first of all, and a miracle in execution. You’d have to storyboard the shit out of it, I imagine, in order to make it even comprehensible what goes down. A bunch of stuff happens simultaneously and we have to perceive all of it. I love, too, that Manners did not rely on slo-mo, which (in my opinion) is a lazy way to make action sequences comprehensible. We also have to understand that Dean, careening up behind, sees it all. He sees it all go down with his own eyes.
The cuts are quick, clear, concise. The swerving truck. Slamming on the brakes. A metal pole cutting loose from the truck, bouncing once on the ground like a javelin, and then careening towards us (or the Rapist), and through his windshield with a crack of perfect glass, seen from the inside. Masterful. Dean slams on his own brakes, pulls up alongside, seeing the pole going through the windshield, and piercing through the guy’s body, impaling him onto his seat … but not sure … again … that he has seen what he has seen.
Talk about your Michael’s sword, huh?
Dean gets out of his car (but nobody else does. Weird, right?) and looks freaked out at what he sees before him.
So sorry to interrupt the action, but look.
Look at the streetlamps. Look how beautiful they all look. Blacks and whites, monochromatic, glimmering pinpoints of light everywhere. The streetlamp will continue to hover in the background, glowing, as he looks in at the pierced Rapist.
Remember, Manners (and Supernatural, by extension) is all about faces. The faces tell the whole story.
The final sequence of that car chase is exactly what they need it to be. Ackles’ astonished face draws us into …
11th scene
1. It’s gorgeously written. It is an extremely complicated scene, in a way, but the dialogue simmers down to something very simple, with lots of juicy pauses, tons of thinking going on. There is nothing more emotional than watching characters we care about think about something.
2. The brothers are together, with a soft and open energy, and yet separated by a vast expanse. Broken up by that gyrating lit-up Amazon-Lady between them.
Insane.
This time, Sam accepts a drink from the flask. Eagerly.
Why is that so funny to me.
Look at where Dean’s face is. I mean … move your head just an inch upwards, dude, you can do it …
3. Their attitudes have almost reversed. Dean walks into the room, heavy with what he saw on that road.
Sam is heavy with the knowledge that he is alone, that there will be no deus ex machina for him. Of course there wouldn’t be. He let his hope cloud his judgment. He wanted so badly to believe. He opens up to Dean about that.
Normally, Dean is not open to listening to such things from Sam because he gets freaked out. Here, like he always does, Dean assures Sam that he will look out for him, but he does so in an almost rote fashion. It’s words only, and he seems to know that. But in a way, it’s like his mother saying “Angels will watch over you.” Dean says those things to Sam because he means them, and they are true for him. He’s a protector. He’s always been one.
4. There are so many tiny shifts of emotion happening in each individual. Dean is listening, and intently, to everything his brother says, while still being full almost to the brim with his own stuff.
5. And that, even though there is no dialogue to support it, brings us back to Mary Winchester. When Dean tries to talk about what he saw, emotion comes up in him that is entirely new. This Dean? We haven’t seen him before. Dean has been shown something … maybe even given something … and to guys like Sam and Dean, gifts are suspicious and scary. There are no good surprises in life. There is nothing new under the sun, just chaos and violence. The hope that is there in Dean, in those final words, is painful. Hope is a positive emotion only to those who have not experienced serious deprivation. Dean will have to re-evaluate everything if … well, if what he saw and sensed out there was true. And can he do that?
He has buried his mother’s words so deep in his psyche because they represent the betrayal of the universe. His mother was wrong. Her hope for him was delusional. She died anyway and his own life was ruined because of it. In other words, can he let his mother and her tender protection of him and the memory of it be a part of his life again? Can he allow for the possibility that she knew there were good things out there, masters of the air, who had his back? That he was not alone?
Flash-forward:
Dean: And why would an angel rescue me from hell?
Castiel: Good things do happen, Dean.
Dean: Not in my experience.
Castiel: What’s the matter?
[pause, he studies Dean]
Castiel: You don’t think you deserve to be saved.
That’s all here, already.
6. When Sam realizes that Dean has been somehow … altered … he asks, “Dean … Dean, what did you see?” Padalecki’s line-reading gives me goosebumps every time.
7. The entry of Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” at the perfect juncture.
8. Dean saying the words “God’s will” knocks the entire world off its axis.
9. The closeups in the final scene are just as intense as they were in the chapel scene but instead of being claustrophobic, they open everything up.
I’ll end with an anecdote shared by the late, great Madeleine L’Engle in her book Penguins and Golden Calves: Icons and Idols in Antarctica and Other Unexpected Places
Children are often better believers than we are. A young friend of mine who works in a day-care center one day overheard a little boy say, “I want to die,” and he meant it. She swept him into her lap to try and find out what was wrong that he should feel and say such a thing … Everything was wrong. His parents were drinking, fighting, screaming, throwing furniture. His anguish at the violence at home had focused into a terror that someone was going to come take him away in the night. My young friend said to him, “I’m going to fix that for you. I’m going to send four guardian angels, one to stand at each corner of your bed. They will spread their wings around you, and you will be enclosed in their love, and no one will be able to take you away.”
The next morning when he came to the day-care center she hurried to him, asking, “How did it go last night?”
He responded very seriously, “I think we can cut down on the angel guard. One will be enough. The flapping of their wings kept me awake.”
Wow, that’s an epic post!
I’ve never watched Supernatural, but what a career that Kim Manners had. And who knows anything about him? It makes me wonder about all the TV directors who just don’t seem to get the props of their film brethren.
Jeff –
Thanks for reading!!
Yes, Kim Manners – his style is so distinctive, and he has helped to basically create the look of Supernatural (and X-Files too). I find his style to be extremely psychological and romantic – all those dark closeups – which is great because it’s in the service of these genre shows. He helps to deepen the emotional content through his devotion to faces. He cares about people’s experience – he cares about watching people think.
He died, and Supernatural still misses his presence. People try to imitate him but he’s got that thing, his own individual thing that is the mark of his genius. It’s just so immediately recognizable.
An auteur, for sure. :)
OMG, a new recap for my birthday! (And for Jensen Ackles’ birthday!) I haven’t read it yet, but I’m so excited! Such a great episode, too!
Happy birthday, Natalie!!
I’ve missed my SPN peeps!
birthday buddies with a celebrity, wooo! Happy birthday!
Natalie – I finally saw Whiplash, and one of my first thoughts was: “I wonder what Natalie would have to say about all of this.” Just so you know.
Abuse wearing the mask of caring. Terrifying.
Thanks for the birthday wishes, Sheila and Jessie! It was a good one!
//I finally saw Whiplash, and one of my first thoughts was: “I wonder what Natalie would have to say about all of this.”//
This just totally made my day! I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’ll definitely check it out now!
Thanks for this one, Sheila, seriously. The episode has always been one that I like in a rather offhand way. I felt a little alienated from its oddness and it’s generally one I skip on a S2 rewatch. Despite the angels it doesn’t have a gimmick, really, or a high-concept hook like WIAWSNB. I don’t find it as exciting/mesmerising as the next one, or as complete as something like Roadkill or Playthings; it doesn’t kick you in the guts like Heart or AHBL. But you’ve helped me find a few more of its strengths and even if it’s not a favourite it has some tremendously effective moments and performances. That’s Supernatural, I guess — even at its worst there are usually several indelible moments, generally when the camera is on the main guys.
I remember being surprised when Sam said he prayed. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time. Religion was not a particularly visible phenomenon in my childhood or community so I was like, the show can just reveal this about someone? Can a person just pray without doing a whole bunch of other stuff too, without being marked in some more visible/ongoing way as “religious character”? All of which is to say, the stuff that is going on that we don’t see: I am of the opinion that Sam doesn’t pray anymore.
Thanks for highlighting the 360 around Sam, it’s so gorgeous. JP turns in the opposite direction to the camera and still manages to give us like three profiles. It’s a ballet. He does such great work in this episode. The look on his face when Father G shows up, how his tears tremble in the focus pull. The unending refrain of “Someone’s going to do something awful, and I can stop it.”
Gamble gives great dialogue. I love the end of the magic fingers scene, the little jokes, reactions, amidst the debate. Sam pretending to be sad about unicorns. And the guys play it so well: there are some great pauses in this episode. All of Dean’s prepatory “run my hand over my face” moves. My two favourite pauses are: the long one before “I’d like to know what you saw” as Sam looks for a chair and sits down and gazes at that excellent actress for a while; and the looong evaluative pause before “I do pray every day.” And he says it so softly!! Kills me.
Man, I love it when Dean laughs at his own jokes. “Might get filleted by a hooker from God, hah!” I feel like there’s an unusually high amount of JA chopping and changing his sentences here — getting words wrong, the cadence of a line and starting again — like on the steps of the church (“Hey father, what is — what’s all that for”). Even when I bet it’s scripted for him to have a wordless reaction he still bites off a word. Mistakes or no it’s interesting and works well for this episode.
Amazing as it might seem to some of us, hunters have basic physical needs, just like real people. This is my favourite song about magic fingers. Not sure how wide that field is.
Also, that first picture is the best. Angel just wants to high five them! Go boys and your soul-searching, crime-fighting selves!
I love that that angel is so cheesy, a plastic monstrosity – AND it’s tilting over to the side.
Jessie –
Thanks!!
// Despite the angels it doesn’t have a gimmick, really, or a high-concept hook like WIAWSNB. //
That’s for sure. Houses of the Holy, for me, works best when it is connected to those other episodes – that angel-arc, the Winchester-arc – but on my first viewing, of course, those connections weren’t apparent at all since I didn’t know what was coming. Hence, its weird out-of-sync feeling. For me, it definitely gained in stature after I had seen the whole series.
In re: Sam not praying anymore. That makes me sad, but I think you’re probably right.
Dean, on the other hand? He prays to Castiel all the time. Not now, really, but back in the day. There are those moments later when he “caves” and prays to God – Season 4 – but it’s always out of desperation. God’s a deadbeat Dad, fuck him.
// JP turns in the opposite direction to the camera and still manages to give us like three profiles. It’s a ballet. //
Yes! It’s dizzying – great coordination. Why it isn’t over-the-top is another one of Manners’ little magic touches. It really prioritizes Sam as the leader of what they are doing, all as Dean wise-cracks about Christmas decorations and hookers.
// My two favourite pauses are: the long one before “I’d like to know what you saw” as Sam looks for a chair and sits down and gazes at that excellent actress for a while; and the looong evaluative pause before “I do pray every day.” And he says it so softly!! Kills me. //
Yes!! Two wonderful pauses. Sam is so thoughtful. Or – thought-full, if you get my meaning.
I like your observation about JA changing-up those perhaps straightforwardly-written lines – and making them sound more natural.
And that clip, Jessie! Oh my God, that is FANTASTIC.
ha ha I know, it’s so funny and FILTHY. Zappa has a schnozz to rival Cain’s.
Your ongoing evaluation of Manners is such a pleasure. He had an enormous amount of skill and talent.
Sam is so thoughtful. Or – thought-full, if you get my meaning.
Completely. Watching him think, read, realise things; it’s one of the show’s chiefest pleasures! One of my favourite moments in gosh S8 I think, when they find Metatron, is a total throwaway of Sam making the weirdest connection between a symbol and something he read years ago (he’s gotta have something close to an eidetic memory; in this episode he remembers the name of Mr Killer Librarian’s church) and you see something flip in his eyes. GOTTA GET A BOOK he thinks and runs straight to the MOL bookshelf. Gotta love ol’ Laser Eyes.
Ooh – I can’t remember that moment with Metatron, will have to track it down.
But you’re right: there is so much of that in the performance, and Padalecki is so great and eloquent. The listening – but also the thinking. Dean is usually caught up with some interior drama, although it’s great to watch him thinking too. Dean’s stuff is more mixed-up though, because … I don’t know … he takes everything personally. Drama!
I love it when these guys – who easily could carry an entire show by themselves – play support-staff to one another. It’s somewhat thankless stuff, but it’s the real meat of the show.
Jessie- that is the perfect song about magic fingers! True, I also have no idea how wide the field is, but I am now sure that this song is exactly what Sam is thinking about when he is prudishly disturbed by his brother. Awesome.
// The episode has always been one that I like in a rather offhand way. I felt a little alienated from its oddness and it’s generally one I skip on a S2 rewatch. //
Jessie, for a long time this episode was on my list of ‘not so great episodes of Season 2’. That list is a lot shorter now, and this episode has nudged itself into the group of the ones I most like to rewatch. For me it sits within that run of episodes of Sam dealing with Dad’s whisper, a kind of mirror to ‘Hunted’ in which Sam races off to find answers to his situation like the good rationalist he is, whereas in HoH he reveals he’s been praying, operating on faith, not evidence. And it also pairs with the next episode – HoH is explicitly about redemption, Sam’s feeling that he needs redemption, whether he can redeem himself by saving people or be saved from whatever’s looming ahead by a higher power. Born under a bad sign is a continuation of part of the final conversation in this episode, where Dean’s assurances that he’ll look out for Sam are put to the test. It’s in this episode that there is time and space to talk about belief, the ontological underpinnings of each brother’s world, what they have hitherto kept most private about themselves, their most closely guarded memories and internal conversations. A much needed breather, but still filled with some of the most important conversations and revelations in the whole season. Love it. Thank you, Sera Gamble.
Aw, Sheila, you describe so well all the beauty in this episode. The amazing teaser. The first scene where Sam strolls into the woman’s room, like an Annunciation in reverse – he’s a Chewbacca size angel in glowing white, but she’s the one giving the glad tidings. JP is so good in this scene, it’s like the woman’s words are like water in the desert he’s living in. I also love how the picture of Michael spearing the dragon is echoed at the end when Mr Rapist gets speared. The contrast between the Mudflap Motel and the interior of the church. That the episode takes place in the unbeautiful, raw tail-end of winter, with the mud and half-melted snowdrifts on the roads made beautiful at night by the glowing white street lights. Spongebob jostling with Raphael, Master of the air.
your phrasing is so poetic Helena! I’m not at the point where it’s taken over my very soul like so many other episodes, but it’s definitely risen in my estimation — and I agree its placement in the season is crucial, ie, set up for maximum heartbreak.
Great catch on Michael’s spear, as well. This is my favourite image of St Michael, and his spear looks even more like the rebar that killed Mr Rapist!
// I’m not at the point where it’s taken over my very soul like so many other episodes //
hahaha I know what you mean. What Is and What Should Never Be has definitely taken over my soul.
and WOW, that image of Michael!!
Goosebumps!
Helena – I love how you write! Annunciation in reverse! Yes! Great observation!
// It’s in this episode that there is time and space to talk about belief, the ontological underpinnings of each brother’s world, what they have hitherto kept most private about themselves, their most closely guarded memories and internal conversations. A much needed breather, but still filled with some of the most important conversations and revelations in the whole season. //
I think that’s it. The pressure is off a bit here – at least in terms of Sam going Dark Side and other season-wide concerns, so there’s a bit of time to discuss these things, and grapple with them. Because there won’t be time later.
This stuff is extremely personal: Sam praying. Dean’s memory of his mother. It’s so important to our deepening understanding of these guys!
Wow, Jessie, never mind Michael, that Lucifer is awesome.
he’s looking up at Michael with these huge bulging eyes like he doesn’t know whether to poo himself or pop a boner, it’s fantastic and an absolutely appropriate response.
// like he doesn’t know whether to poo himself or pop a boner //
hahaha That’s exactly right.
He’s kind of languishing there like, “Oh, please … stop … no wait … please don’t stop …”
Who is the sculptor? Where is this?
Michael is like a Rock Star. Elvis in his cape.
That cape, 100x yes! So striking.
The sculpture is by Jacob Epstein and it’s on the side of Coventry Cathedral.
//he doesn’t know whether to poo himself or pop a boner, it’s fantastic and an absolutely appropriate response.//
Oh God, Epstein. I’m surprised that he didn’t endow Lucifer the most enormous erection, as he seemed to lavish them on other statues, eg the tomb for Oscar Wilde in Pere Lachaise Cemetery. He gave the figure the most enormous set of genitalia, which were first ordered to be covered up by a bronze butterfly (not for long, it was removed by one of OW’s friends) and then were eventually hacked off, possibly by a couple of outraged ladies using their umbrellas. Similarly, a set of statues he made for the exterior of the British Medical Association on the Strand were deemed such an affront to public morals that their bits were hacked off, leaving them looking like a set of mutilated corpses. The building with its defaced statuary is still there.
Anyway, Epstein had a thing for angels and devils. I adore his Jacob Wrestling With the Angel (and then google some more, as you need to see the statue from various angels, I mean angles.) I’m sure this statue has already made its way into a thousand SPN fanfics. All I will say is, that’s definitely not wrestling.
Helena – wow, I remember hearing about the Oscar Wilde statue. Thank you so much for the background.
The Jacob statue. Oh, Destiel, fanfic, totally.
Okay, so I went down the rabbit hole of OW’s tomb. It’s all coming back to me now – Robert Ross!
The sculpture is so insanely provocative. Just like OW was. Amazing.
//Michael is like a Rock Star.//
This is my favourite rock-star angel – St Michael overlooking Maidan Square, Kiev. It’s everything I hate about public statuary and yet I love it. More like Flash Gordon than St Michael – you can’t see the details of his cape but it’s awesome. Great wings. Great pins: he could just cripple Lucifer with a kick in the nads, no need for a spear. I think he must be on the celestial ice-hockey team.
The gold! Definitely Flash Gordon.
Oh jeez, he’s too wholesome to bear!
But a bit Captain America cosplay, too.
ok, I googled the cape and it is almost RuPaul levels of fab.
It’s totally Captain America. I Googled it as well – how do they keep all that gold from being worn away? He totally shines in the light.
I love that the cape has all these folds in it – huge drapes like curtains – and then on top of THAT, he’s got the wings.
Is it just me or does the “threading of comments” suddenly work again on my site? I am seeing other people “threading” besides myself. I swear I did nothing. I don’t understand the Internet or how my own blog works. But I am happy to see it return.
Yes, hurrah! the threading seems to be back – mutecypher noticed this a while back. It’s gone back to how it was before – you can thread up to a certain point and then all of a sudden it will display your post as a new thread.
Was a Master of the Air responsible for fixing this problem, I wonder?
hahaha!
Here’ the complete prayer – I think Supernatural cut it short otherwise it would have taken about 10 minutes to get through …
Yeah, interesting – they pulled out that beautiful Raphael section.
Some powerful words there. I have been there when Last Rites were performed and, not a surprise, I remember NONE of it. I remember the moment but not the words.
PUN ALERT
maybe Arachne, goddess of threads?
Nice one!
you should know better by now than to encourage me
Hello!
Just so you know, your recaps are like drugs to me: I just can’t wait till the next dosage.
This episode always stood out for me. It’s so different from the rest (in S2). I liked it, I hated it (‘couse it felt like an open ending, you describe it well – a cliffhanger of sorts in the storytelling. It itches). It makes so much sense, rewatching AFTER the “Angel Seasons”. As far as foreshadowing goes, the moment when Sam notices the painting of Michael, he points towards it, but on the screen-cap it seems as if he is pointing towards Dean. It’s a widely celebrated screen-cap.
http://www.homeofthenutty.com/supernatural/screencaps/displayimage.php?album=35&pid=77596#top_display_media
Thank you so much for sharing your classis rock knowledge, I lack that. Alot. Not my milieu. It makes so much of the references clearer and funnier. Had no idea about the coins and Led Zeppelin references. Only what it says shalowly on TV-Tropes and such. You bring so much extra! Keep it up.
Manners’ angles, Padaleckis’ listening – I love it! So much I had no idea about! With your analysis I can finally understand my obsession with this show (well, partially). You reveal the magic, but without spoiling it. Well done!
Your reading of Dean and Ackles’ work is stunning, I accept it as the ultimate and true reading. He is a very chalanging character: so illusive in a way, even with all his emotions practicly splattered on his face.
It’s very interesting to observe that, in fanon works and interpretations, Sam is the most widely used point of view character, and not Dean, and usually feels like pretty much the same interpretation. But when you read a Dean POV work/thought/what not, it is as if you are reading a different character EACH TIME. That’s how illusive he is. Jensen Ackles is probably the only person on this planet who actually understands Dean Winchester and his motivations/process of thought completly. I dare to say even the writers are behind him on that. You are probably the second person after Ackles on the matter of “Understanding Dean Winchester”. I saw quite a few psyhological profiles on the character by psychology students and grads, and, while they seem to start the same (his past, abvious issues and such), they never appear to conclude the same, by the end of the essay/paper.
Some screen-caps above of Ackles as Dean are FRIGHTENING to me – It’s somethig about the eyes: like lucid lunacy, I kid you not. More about that, in a mibute.
>>>(My goodness I have so much to spill. Bare with me, or ignore :) )
First thing first – some food for thought: “Gregori” are a lower class of angels, dutied with watching the earth and humanity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcher_%28angel%29
Among them are listed:
Azazel
Gadreel
Chazaqiel (Ezeqeel)
I LOVE IT when the show goes there – as a hebrew speaking jew, with some conspicuous interests with the use of Judeo-Christian mythology in pop-colture now-a-days (and some mild religious background myself), it delights me to no end.
Everything gets another layer, knowing hebrew at first hand, For example, something that wasn’t probably taken into account, but still fun to know – “Dean” is a legitimate hebrew name, and means “Judgement” or “Sentence” . Huh. “Latet Din Ve’Heshbon” means – “To be accountable, to pass judgement and to account for your doings”. As in, in the “End of Days” kind of way, or a court verdict.
Second:
The ending scene, with the about-to-become rapist, being punished, as a part of Gods’ Will, by A METAL TUBE PIERCING THROUGH HIM AND GETTING NAILED BY IT – that’s some eye-for-an-eye right there (and a very strong statement for a show, kudos). It’s the vengeful God, the Jewish one, not the Christian one, as far as I know. But it begs a very difficult question: the rape hasn’t accured, yet, the man was punished (for the sake of the argumentm it was NOT an accident) for his thoughts.
So, thoughts are a fare game then? Aren’t we all oh-so damned, and are going to A Ver Special Hell, then?…. It’s a very, very heavy issue, right there. (BTW, a sinful thought in judaism considered WORSE than the sinful act, but ISN’T punishable. The theology and discussion on the matter is fascinating).
Third:
You…. just compared praying to sending SMS…. XD My immediate thought: “Bruce Almighty”….
But on a more serious note – the part about Dean being “jealous boyfriend going through his girlfriend’s text messages” – NOT the first time being noticed/called upon.
He actually does it, at least once – in season 4, when Ruby is involved. Such a creepy little moment! It begs the question – who is the more obsessive/possessive of the two? I would say it goes both way, albeit a bit diferently.
Somewhere on the interent I read a perfect phrasing for it: Someone wrote, “I can’t decide if their love towards each other is beautiful or terrifying”.
And here is the THING: TERROR AND BEAUTY. As you put it quite well, again and again – “both/and” as opposed to “either/or.”
My God, this is it, the epitome of Gothic Horror? Isn’t it?
I read some beautiful articles, about Deans’ shattered psyche, as opposed to Sams’ split psyche. I accept those ideas very much.
Each of them is a horror story: Sam – a physical one, so it seems (Jared Padalecki, by now, played 6 different characters ON THE SAME SHOW, no less: Sam, Meg, Gary Frankel, Lucifer, Leviathan Impersonating Sam and Gadreel. Should be a Guinness record…. Plus the recurring binding/caging of his character.)
Dean, as you named it so fittingly – A Beautiful Disaster, like, “Where Is My Mind”??? How come he is still standing??? He is, as Bela Talboy says.. “a throwing stone from being a serial killer”.
Oh, but no, TOGETHER – thay are a complete and utter, terrifyingly BEAUTIFUL, Gothit Horror Story.
And a sympathetic one, too. So rare, I might have seen such a narrative only twice or thrice (crappy stuff dosen’t count, and I hope you know what I mean, in regards to the late screening of such.. CRAP). But then again, there is much I haven’t seen yet in my life, so…
They are beautiful on the outside, terrifying on the inside, which is somewhat grotesque (a very notable gothic literature theme, as far as I know, but you know better then me for sure, so correct me if I’m wrong about ANYTHING, please do).
ALL THAT, ALL THAT GUSHING, comes directly as a result of looking at two of the sscreen-caps you chose of Dean – the one with the “14 years old” comment, and the diagonal close-up. They are THAT poweful, to invoke in me all that babble.
I have so much more to put into words, but I’m afraid it is going to become almost inappropriate. I’ll save it for the next recap.
———————————–
Keep up the good work, I’ll be here, waiting for the next recap with unbelievable anticipation.
My God, Troopic – there is so much to think about in your comment!! I love it and am so glad you are enjoying what I am doing. Thanks so much for your patience and waiting around for the re-caps. I appreciate everyone who shows up here.
Thank for the “Grigory” detail – wow!! Very nice!
You know, my bedtime reading for the last month has been a re-read of this very strange biography of Rasputin called “The Rasputin File.” I’m almost done with it. Rasputin is about to be murdered. But he was referred to often as “Father Grigory” – and it did occur to me last night – huh, wonder if Sera Gamble knew that. Rasputin: priest or evil con-man? Holy fool or just Fool fool? The cloak of religion hiding really really sketchy behavior. and etc.
Love to make these connections, whether they were deliberate or not. Rich material.
And God, Sam pointing at Dean saying “Is that Michael?” HA!
Truth be told, I could talk about the subjects above all day long o_O Just give me the chance…
You brighten my existence, you :)
The SUPERNATURAL family of fans/critics/analysts consists of some of the more smart people in our trite society of imitations of each other. Originality is such a rare concept this day and age.
Furthermore, the morbidity of many of the subjest on the show is something not everyone understands the beauty of – it requires some level of intelectual capacity, and some devious curiosity to enjoy.
I hope to see you complete your mission: A full recap for each episode. Ever. Amd one day, maybe even published as a fan work, hardound. It is that worthy. Salute!
I’m personaly very invested in the narrative, and subsequently – in your recaps. So much so, that I rewrote all of the above when my yet-to-be-published comment got erased…
Troopic – Totally agree with your observations about the intelligence of the fandom.
it’s been extraordinary.
The second I started writing about the show, these incredible people started showing up here, and the conversations had have been enriching and fabulous. Super impressed and will definitely do my best to continue, with at least some regularity with the re-caps.
Okay, Troopic – have a bit of breathing room in my schedule today so wanted to discuss your comment more! Great stuff!
// You reveal the magic, but without spoiling it. //
Thank you so much. There is definitely magic here – and a lot of it has to do with behavior. Sometimes parsing it out too finely does spoil it – I’ve seen some discussions that seem hell-bent on removing the magic, or the mystery – not just with SPN, but with film in general. I really do try not to do that.
I haven’t done a lot of reading in re: Dean’s psychology – some of the stuff I have read seems to want to reduce him to Trauma – which seems part of the times, these days. It’s a “poor Dean” kind of thing, and that’s a turn-off. I guess I see more of the Survivor, than the Trauma – that may be a fine distinction, but it’s why I think the character is so fascinating. He’s got all this pain – but he Burlesques his way through life, and it’s self-determined and almost pleasure-giving for him – it’s why he reminds me a lot of Marilyn Monroe in that way, as weird as that may sound. Some people look at Marilyn Monroe and see her only as a victim of patriarchy/sexism. What a shame. I look at her and see an improbable and intelligent Survivor. Who was able to find pleasure in giving pleasure to others. Good for her. Not to dismiss her pain and what she went through. Again with the “both/and” as opposed to “either/or.”
All of this is to say: thank you for your kind words about my reading of Dean. It really means a lot. I love this kind of stuff – it’s my favorite kind of writing to do – Cary Grant is another one I love to write about in this way, his various mercurial and elusive characterizations, how he really cannot be pinned down as “one thing” when you look at his filmography as a whole.
And thank you so much for your Hebrew-speaking take! I agree with you that whatever we see in SPN, it is clearly Old Testament stuff.
// So, thoughts are a fare game then? Aren’t we all oh-so damned, and are going to A Ver Special Hell, then?…. It’s a very, very heavy issue, right there. //
Yes, indeed, extremely heavy.
God help me (I’ll just speak personally) if thoughts can be prosecuted. That’s some Orwellian shit right there – his concept of “thoughtcrime” in 1984 being damn near prophetic, considering the landscape we live in today. Scary.
In re: Dean’s jealous-boyfriend behavior: Yes, I know it’s been discussed out there quite a bit. This is one of the things that is so great about his character – and which Sam kept clocking him on repeatedly through Season 9 – you have to let me go, you have to back off, you have to be able to be alone, you have to move on, Dean … Some people seemed to find those scenes repetitive or thought Sam being “too hard on Dean”. I didn’t at all (and, in general, do not agree with the fans who seem to dislike anyone who is “hard” on Dean. This isn’t a group-therapy session – it’s a TV show with multiple characters. I mean, I understand being loyal to a character – but Good Drama comes out of Conflict. So bring it on!! I LOVE it when Dean is called on his shit, even unfairly.)
And I love the thoughts on Gothic Horror – as well as shattered/split!! Great stuff. The thing that is so amazing to me is that these concepts/themes just continue to work – season after season after season. There’s no end to it. Amazing.
At this point, I would say that the only reason that those things continue to resonate is because of the acting of the two leads.
That’s it.
They’re still covering the same ground, the directing is pretty workmanship-stuff at this point, although sometimes very effective, the plots have become (for me, anyway) irrelevant.
All that matters is Sam and Dean. We would not be here today, and the show would not be going into its 11th year, without those two guys and their depth of feeling that they put into these two characters. Even Erik Kripke is probably like, “Holy mackerel, is that thing still on?”
//I guess I see more of the Survivor, than the Trauma//
That’s exactly why I accept your version over the others. I shit you not.
I tend to… go check things myself. Look for the source, for comments from people with experience. Only then, I give my own take on things. (For example – after my long comment above – I opened a tumblr, and I watch this show since 2005. I needed to archive and spit out my thoughts, likes and dislikes. You were, in-fact, a factor. And that was liberating, thank you.)
//Good Drama comes out of Conflict. So bring it on!!//
Agreed! That’s how you keep a story rolling.
About the hebrew – I am MORE THEN DELIGHTED to share my knowledge. I’m a linguistics enthusiast at heart (I speak, write and read in Russian, Hebrew and English. If I get the chance, I want to learn Arabic and Latin).
If you don’t protest, I’ll be leaving some hebrew/old testament related thoughts now and then.
//“Holy mackerel, is that thing still on?”//
Yes mister Krip. You have created an infinite monster, with endless shelf-life.
Thank you for taking your time to read my babble and to answer it so thoroughly!
//My God, this is it, the epitome of Gothic Horror? Isn’t it?//
Troopic, my god, the Winchesters as Kathy and Heathcliff? I love this idea – I think!
Yes!
Sam and Dean got compared to every possible dysfunctional couple ever, as well as other crime duos, I think, you just added to the already existing pool:
>>On the show (NOT including paralleling relationships of side characters) –
Honey Bunny and Pumpkin from Pulp Fiction
Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers
Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Bonnie and Clyde
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Leopold and Loeb
Sid and Nancy
Thelma and Louise (also with Dean and Castiel, once) – Hope I didn’t miss anything.
Also, obviously – Cain and Abel0, Michael and Lucifer, which are, hilariously enough, actually an exception in the pattern above.
>>Additionally, on the analitic/fannish front:
Han and Leia, the Original Star Wars Trilogy (EVEN though Sam is a “luke Skywlker Type”)
Edward and Alphonse Elric of Fullmetal Alchemist
Catherine and Christopher Dollanganger of Flowers in the Attic
The Prince and The Sleeping Beauty
Jack and Rose from Titanic
Sara and Setsuna Mudou from Angel Sanctuary
>>Plus your donation to the list.
AND it’s just those I can think of right now. It goes on and on.
I remember reading about the album cover for “Houses of the Holy” being inspired by Arthur Clarke’s Childhood’s End, but I always think of my first impression – that it was related to The Time Machine, with some curious and naive Eloi children going to visit the Morlocks. That seems a bit more of an SPN image than an LZ one.
FWIW, the sit-com that Gloria is watching is The Drew Carey Show. And then she feels the need for some TV preaching. Coincidence?
I like how our first glimpse of the possibility of angels is that they are truly other, manifested by the strange effects around the angel in the foyer – made awesome by Sam’s awed reaction. And they continue that way for so long, with Pamela Barnes getting blinded by Castiel before we ever see him. Then they become a dysfunctional family with an absent father. Then they become bureaucrats. Tragedy to farce. If you’re going to have them become regulars on the series, they can’t blind someone every time they show up, but still.
“Foyer.” I remember back in junior high, a friend was talking about something that had happened in the foyer of the auditorium. He couldn’t remember the word “foyer,” but he knew it was something vaguely French sounding, so he called it the first word he could think of but didn’t know the meaning of: “commode.” It happened in the commode. This was a source of amusement for a while amongst us junior high boys.
I watched the scene in the foyer again, just a moment ago. The stone angel shakes, and there’s a light that streams in from the window behind it – but Sam turns from the stone angel to a brighter light that’s behind him, not from the angel in front. A signal not picked up by Sam (or me, the first time I watched) that the bright light isn’t an angel.
I like the reversal here where Dean does some misunderestimating of Sam, when learning that Sam prays. It seems more common for Sam (and everyone else) to underestimate Dean. Not getting that Dean can gather intel and phone numbers simultaneously. Or his familiarity with Vonnegut. I also like, that despite Dean’s blustery rejection of faith, he listens to his brother and considers what he is saying. He has to understand Sammy to be better able to save him. And he really does love the big moose.
The episode manages to be portentious, without being satisfying. That’s a nice bit of trust they show in the audience, and in their story-telling ability.
// FWIW, the sit-com that Gloria is watching is The Drew Carey Show. And then she feels the need for some TV preaching. Coincidence? //
Yeah, I saw that on the Wiki but I’ve never seen The Drew Carey Show. I did my due diligence, googling for a clip to see if I could figure out the relevance but came up with nothing. Googling for the quotes in the scene about trolls – came up with nothing. Therefore I left it out. I try to only talk about things that I already know something about, or have noticed all on my own. I like to do the heavy lifting myself.
So what’s the coincidence you see there?
If anyone can fill us in on the Theseus magazine/graphic novel, with the “Cannabals” headline, that would be great. I Googled the shit out of that one and came up with nothing.
// If you’re going to have them become regulars on the series, they can’t blind someone every time they show up, but still. //
Yeah – I re-watched a lot of Season 4 last month and the angels are so fearsome! And the fear that the demons have of the angels. It was all so exciting!
// I also like, that despite Dean’s blustery rejection of faith, he listens to his brother and considers what he is saying. //
Yes. They both do a lot of good listening to each other in this episode. That chapel scene – Sam is in the aftermath of his spiritual event, but he does manage to be present to what Dean is saying, and try to consider it.
It’s all that thinking, evaluating going on. Lots of excellent pauses in the episode too.
I didn’t see a coincidence, just a bad joke on my part. Although it was Drew and Mimi talking about a troll(doll) – so a supernatural creature in a comic context.
I also tried to find something with Theseus and Cannibals and came up empty.
Regarding Theseus and Cannabals, I also came up blank. I was trying by way of the logo on the corner of the comic cover, which seemed familiar to me. It could have been a DC/Dark Horse logo–but I came up with nothing on the companies’ websites. Theseus as a character WAS used as part of DC’s “Crisis on Infinite Worlds” series (an attempt to streamline the DC multiverse by killing off various characters and worlds), but the logos on those books was a traditional DC logo.
So it’s probably a mock-up, or an underground/independent comic. Which leads to interesting questions as to why it’s featured in the opening shot of the scene.
I did find an online comic at Deviant Art that told the Theseus story in an interesting way, and had some themes that seem to link in to Supernatural. Did you see this?
http://jakewyatt.deviantart.com/art/THESEUS-FULL-COMIC-300172533 (I’m sorry, but still not feeling confident in my ability to use HTML in WordPress, you’ll have to copy/paste!)
Huh, what do you know? It linked for me! Gotta love automation (sometimes)!
Barb – nice find!! (and nice work with the link. Ha!)
I had not come across that in my Googling – I like the artwork a lot!
“themes”, Barb? What a find! That’s essentially Sam, walking his own soul.
Well, I didn’t want to make any grand claims or anything.
Looking at it again, it could even be Sam, circa season 1! I confess, I was thinking more of Dean the first time around–the bloodlust, the MoC-ish becoming what you fight, etc.
I just looked to see if the comic could still be purchased, but it looks like it’s no longer in print–have to watch for this artist, though.
wow, I love that we had such different instinctive interpretations! I totally see what you mean about Dean and the MOC. I absolutely read it as about Sam’s own perspective on his blood-corruption (with a side of Daddy issues, seeing as JW basically IS at times Sam’s problematic blood inheritance).
You know – one of the things that is so cool about doing re-caps of early seasons while watching current seasons – is you can see all of these themes repeating, but dressed up differently.
Dean’s MOC has definitely been reminding me, in general, of Sam’s demon-blood struggle – which happened so long ago (in their world, anyway) that they aren’t making those connections. But it’s all there.
I was especially thinking of it when I just re-watched Born Under a Bad Sign – to get ready for the next re-cap, and those sort of helpless looks that Sam gives Dean (yes, it’s really Meg, but … you know) … like I can’t stop this, it is not stoppable, please stop me, help me …
and it’s exactly what’s been happening this season, only with Dean.
I have to say that Sam has so often been “the problem” – with the demon blood and the no-soul and then “Oops, sorry I didn’t look for you in Purgatory,” etc., that it’s a relief, story-wise, to do that with Dean. You could feel that building in Season 9, as they kept reiterating that it was Dean who was the problem now, Dean can’t let go, Dean can’t be alone, etc. etc.
Sometimes, on binge-watching, the themes start to seem TOO repetitive – and maybe that’s even more exacerbated to those who have been watching it in real-time for a decade. I don’t know.
But it’s kind of cool, to see those connections working – laying Season 10 episodes on top of Season 2 episodes, and vice versa.
I think we’re going to be able to talk about this more fruitfully after the season is done, but I find these echoes fascinating and kinda frustrating at the moment. There have been several moments over the last three episodes where I’ve felt like the parallels or callbacks with earlier seasons have been so strong that it pulled me out of the narrative when they didn’t remark upon it. The most prominent I can think of at the moment is Sam going back to college. I get that he wouldn’t need to soliloquy about it ten years after he left — and maybe the lack of comment is comment in itself — but I was yearning for some acknowledgement!
On a slightly topic-adjacent note – it’s always National Pie Day somewhere. In the UK we get National Pie Week. Yay!
I’m linking to this mainly because of the incredible sigil like designs for mince pies you can see half way down the page. (Mince pies – delightful mouthfuls of spiced dried fruit mixture in a feather light crust/disgusting soggy lumps of sugary devil spew – take your pick.) Also, the origins of ‘to eat humble pie’ – no one’s favourite flavour, not even Dean Winchester.
Sigils! And pie!
It’s a wonderful world you’ve shared with us, Helena.
Yes, no wonder the Puritans wanted to ban them – all those designs look pretty satanic to me. Or maybe Enochian. Maybe that page of pies is actually spelling out Enochian curses.
Seriously, the Wikipedia entry on mince pies makes for lurid reading. Quakers also distrusted them as remnant of popery/idolatry – “who distinguish their Feasts by an heretical Sort of Pudding, known by their Names, and inveigh against Christmas Pye, as an Invention of the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, an Hodge-Podge of Superstition, Popery, the Devil and all his Works.”
Who knew a pie could be heretical, or devilish? Can you perform an exorcism on one?
It’s a bit disappointing to find nothing about the supposed practice of decorating the pies, which used to be made as a large oblong pie rather than the little tarts we see now, with a pastry baby Jesus.
I read the Wikipedia entry, thanks for the tip.
Those Roundheads and Quakers would REALLY hate Cadbury Eggs.
Somebody hates them, that’s for sure!
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/12/living/cadbury-creme-egg-recipe-change-feat/
On the other hand, the Cadburys were a Quaker family, so they must have had to some kind of spiritual accommodation with vestiges of both paganism and popery.
And now there is a new recipe Cadbury Creme Eggs which is 200% even more disgusting than the originals as it does not use original recipe Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate.
Sheila –
I love how the “news” article describes them as having a “cloying yolk.” Good thing it’s all so objective.
Cadbury sells so many, somebody must love them.
And now I want to sing a few verses of Monty Python’s “Spam” song – just to honor those whose taste buds appreciate an extremely broad range of flavors.
Helena –
Quakers huh? That’s funny.
It was the first news article I could find. I mainly remember the howls of outrage from friends/family members/everyone on earth across all social media platforms.
My hugely pregnant friend in England, wailing on Facebook – “But these are my only pleasure right now! Please! This must be stopped!” This is a serious brainiac of a woman. She loves her Cadbury Eggs. I am not a Cadbury Egg person but I sympathize. If anyone changed the recipe for Wheat Thins, I’d blow a gasket. I’d take to the streets.
Change Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and this is me.
http://www.funnyordie.com/pictures/fb16e75d71/your-argument-is-invalid
I love those designs for mince pies!
I actually did not know that about “umble pie” but can’t remember where I learned it. Shakespeare?
I love Sera Gamble. She has written (or co-written) some of my favourite episodes of the show: Faith, Crossroad Blues, All Hell Breaks Loose I, Dream a Little Dream of Me, Jus in Bello, It’s a Terrible Life, When The Levee Breaks, Death’s Door…
She’s also very funny to listen to in the dvd commentaries, and I love her voice, and I love her face.
OK, I have a huge crush on her.
Yes, she brings something very special to the show, very much her own.
Any thoughts on the Mudflap Motif?
Reductive? Or inspirational? Or just stupid?
//Any thoughts on the Mudflap Motif?//
I think I just find it hilarious, and also almost pathetic, as in arousing pity. I can’t find it reductive or demeaning to women because of the complicated way women are represented and operate in Supernatural, so please don’t anyone read this as condoning the sex industry or objectification of women. But, confining my remarks to SPN, its women are complicated presences and so are these plastic women.
But it also has a kind of thematic tie-in, inasmuch as our first sight of Sam is of this apparition in glowing white, asking a woman about angels. The next scene is of his brother, lost in the pleasures of the flesh. That’s kind of right where they are at this point in terms of their needs and how they meet them. Sam is on a spiritual quest from the get go, one that blinds him a bit to what they are really dealing with, and Dean is lost in the toils of the flesh out of sheer boredom. The plastic hotties decorating the room are the only kind of angels he allows himself to believe in. But they also signify lack – lack of real women, company, sex, stability, whatever it is that will take the pain away. Anyway, that rift – spirit vs flesh – faith vs evidence, redemption vs going darkside – hope vs nihilistic despair.
By the end of the episode I find them almost sad – I don’t quite know why, except for the palpable sadness and disquiet of the final scene. Dean’s worldview is upended and Sam’s hopes dashed. There are no angels and/or God has intervened in a way that brings no spiritual comfort, only confusion and unease. But the Mudflap girls are still there, promising earthly comfort, if only in fantasy form. Also the sheer over the topness of the decor prevents the scene from sliding into mawkishness.
And that’s my thruppence worth on the Mudflap Motif.
Helena – like it a lot! And I like how they do seem to change by that last scene, mainly because of how strange and disturbed the two guys are.
That was what I was trying to get at – with the whole “lack of women’ comment – that often lack of women in real-life causes women to actually seem like these unavailable omnipresent Mudflaps to the lonely guys out there. Not necessarily a bad thing – and also probably not something either Sam or Dean would think or even realize.
The gigantic one looming between the two brothers in the opening of the final scene seems the most strange. Like – what the hell would she say if she could speak? What’s her DEAL?
That spirit/flesh divide is so important! There’s conflict on both sides.
And of course, next episode? Jo comes back. And then in a bit we have Madison. Where women start to take up some real space in their lives. Temporarily, for sure.
//and also probably not something either Sam or Dean would think or even realise.//
Hahaha! I mean, God forbid they would walk into a motel room and think – dude, this decor totally symbolises the themes of this episode we are in! And the fact we don’t have girlfriends!
// dude, this decor totally symbolises the themes of this episode we are in! And the fact we don’t have girlfriends! //
hahahahaha
I can’t add anything to Helena’s explication of the women in the Mudflap Motif (very good!), but the mudflap itself (never seen , just implied) emphasizes the on-the-road reality of the situation post “Nightshifter.” Dirt, travel, crummy hotel rooms – the Family Business – plus Dean hiding from Johnny Law.
Just to continue stretching things, the afro’d ladies also called out to The Shining. We see Dick Hallorann propped up on his bed, with a couple of seductive black women on a painting behind him, as Danny reaches out when things get serious-bad at the Overlook. At least, that’s what I got when Sam walked in the door, just a little call back to “Playthings.”
//Dirt, travel, crummy hotel rooms – the Family Business – plus Dean hiding from Johnny Law.//
Good call – it’s very redolent of The Family Business.
I guess the hotel doesn’t run to Casa Erotica? Because I think by the end both of them must feel like bustin’ out the bourbon and an evening of pay per view, if you know what I mean, and not Dr Sexy MD.
Mutecypher – good call on the Dick Hallorann connection! That’s right!!
//But they also signify lack – lack of real women, company, sex, stability, whatever it is that will take the pain away. Anyway, that rift – spirit vs flesh – faith vs evidence, redemption vs going darkside – hope vs nihilistic despair.// Helena, this is great! In two sentences you’ve given me a whole new appreciation for the Mudflap women. In this context, anyway.
Yes, it really is a great way to put it.
That’s my sense of it too – that the women everywhere starts to signify the lack of women in their lives. (Cue Jo’s re-entry! And Meg, too, come to think o fit.)
It’s also just a goof – so there’s that. But it definitely works on multiple levels.
Yep, definitely also a goof ;-)
hello everyone! you all give me the most amazing ideas with the sigils and pie designs and pointing at the hybrid created by dean and thath pin-up shape… i have just summited a formal petition to the museum of wax of madrid to consider jensen ackles and jared padalecki to be made into wax figures. i am going to get in touch with the spanish supernatural fandom so the museum gets thousands of petitions. if jack black begged led zeppelin to use their music for the school of rock film and that petition was answered why can’t we?
i had a look at the web of the walk of fame to know the procedures so jensen ackles gets his star in the walk of fame. it is a question of consulting the fandoms.
resumee of chapter 10×14. the good, the bad and the ugly.
resumee of chaptar 2×13. angels abroad.
I was here at the beginning of the week, saw this and thought, “Yay! New recap!” But it’s taken me a couple of days of bookmarking to have the time and space to read and consider it all. Thank you, again, Shelia, for doing these–I’m with Troopic, I hope that you will be able, eventually, to go through all the episodes! (No pressure, right?) I’ve also really enjoyed reading everyone’s comments. You all have given so much, opening up worlds of art/history/language/pies, and deepened my understanding of this little show with discussions of John Dee, sculpture, mathematics, music, the importance of wedding dresses on the wall, and plastic vs. real women. I often feel like I can’t keep up, and I really can’t add much to this conversation except to add my own personal response to this episode (because I can never seem to separate entirely from this when talking about art or pop culture).
My husband didn’t like it. He didn’t like the sudden consideration of angels, so at odds with what had gone before–I think he would agree with you, Shelia, “Please don’t go there–“. He didn’t like the physically implausible death of the Rapist, or Dean’s final conclusion, ripped from him as it was, that he maybe witnessed “God’s Will.” For my part, I agreed with Jessie and Helena that it was a strange lull, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It does gain in importance after the introduction of actual angels in season 4, to be sure. In hindsight, taking the time to lay out these ethical questions and the brothers’ different attitudes towards faith made the following seasons’ use of these themes possible. Knowing where they began on these questions laid the groundwork for their subsequent changes or vacillations in opinion.
I’m saddened, for example, when Sam is rebuffed by Uriel and Castiel in season 4, and sad to agree with you that he probably doesn’t pray anymore. On Dean’s side, I honestly don’t think his fundamental view has changed. Sure, he prays to Cas, but these often take the form of one-sided conversations. For another example, when he’s forced to pledge obedience to the angels in that season, he changes the wording so that he’s actually swearing loyalty primarily to Cas. I think he’s still a believer in what he can see, he’s just incorporated this new reality into his belief system. Sam had a steeper descent in terms of his faith, I think, but his goals in season 2–redemption, in particular–mesh well with a hope for a higher power.
This all makes me wonder about how much of this was intentional and how much recognized after the fact. I’ve read about Eric Kripke calming his worried actors and fanbase that the show was not going to become, “Touched by an Angel”. And yet, the dilemma of Dean going to Hell, and the introduction of the Apocalypse, created the perfect opportunity to bring Heaven into the mix, and the show became so much richer for it. And it started with “Faith”, and continued here with “Houses of the Holy.” Knowing how much was considered beforehand probably wouldn’t enrich our understanding of the show, but it certainly factors into considerations of artistic Providence (provenance?) .
Barb –
I remember having thoughts similar to your husband’s when I first watched this, though I had come around to something like Dean’s feelings by the end. As a viewer, I took the episode as a bit of a provocation to me that maybe there were more things in heaven and earth than just demons, wendigos, ghosts, and vampires. I needed to step up my philosophy, as it were.
And then they just let it rest for another season and a half. Freakin’-A!
My thoughts about Sam praying, the only creature he could pray to is Death. Who else has tried to give him a good deal? That’s not really a morbid thought, Sam praying to Death. Not the same as praying for death. And Death will reap God at the end of the universe, so if you go along with Pascal’s Douchy Formulation of Faith, what does he have to lose? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager
I think Sam is more decent than that, ol’ Blaise always seemed completely cynical in his formulation.
Hmm, faith=betting on the odds. I think I get the crux of his argument, but it seems reductive to me. Also, if faith is a requirement for “getting in the club” at the end of everything, and if you have merely been behaving your way in, how does that affect the outcome? There’s gotta be more to it than that! Still, a lot to think on.
Death, in the Supernatural universe, is a neutral creature, powerful, but holds to his duties without regard for such petty things as good and evil. He’s all about the balance (which is why I’d love to know what he thinks of those rogue reapers! Not to mention the closing of Heaven to human souls–Anyway). This makes him one of the more reasonable of all the entities that the brothers have encountered. I don’t know if that makes him a suitable receptor for prayers, but it would certainly make more sense than praying to a God they know is on walkabout, or to angels bureaucratic or otherwise!
I’m not saying that I think Sam does pray, and he prays to Death, but if you remember “I Think I’m Going To Like It Here,” the first episode of season 9, Death says that he considers it an honor to collect Sam. And Death guaranteed Sam that if he went with him, no one could resurrect him and no one else would be hurt because of him. That was probably an “if you go with me now” offer, not a “good forever” offer.
So if Sam does pray, I’d wager the prayers go to Death.
Barb –
“You all have given so much, opening up worlds of art/history/language/pies. . .”
Hahaha, yes, I feel the same way! And for what it’s worth, I have found the personal responses of all the commenters here to be a rich addition to the brilliant technical and analytical observations. :)
“I’m saddened, for example, when Sam is rebuffed by Uriel and Castiel in season 4, and sad to agree with you that he probably doesn’t pray anymore.”
It’s hard to believe that it takes a solid 7 episodes (!) for Sam and Castiel to actually meet after Castiel’s first appearance to Dean – and that little scene always kills me. Sam is so overwhelmed at the prospect of meeting angels, he has such an innocent and open response to them – he tries to shake Castiel’s hand!! – and the angels are just so foreign and cold and non-comforting, they have no sympathy for him. Not at all the protectors he thought they would be.
Also, your son’s response to Gilmore Girls is priceless. (And specific! How funny that it wasn’t just a generic “Hey, that guy from Supernatural!” but instead “Padalecki!!!” Especially since that name is such a mouthful to spit out!) Clearly you are raising him right. ;)
// Sam is so overwhelmed at the prospect of meeting angels, he has such an innocent and open response to them – he tries to shake Castiel’s hand!! – and the angels are just so foreign and cold and non-comforting, they have no sympathy for him. Not at all the protectors he thought they would be. //
I know!! Sam is so unbelievably touching in those sequences in Season 4.
Bethany-Thanks! Just got to know where your priorities lie, when it comes to kids. (I’ve used the show to introduce them to classic rock, too.) :-)
// opening up worlds of art/history/language/pies //
hahahahahaha Awesome.
I love hearing people’s personal responses – they’re all so varied! It’s also cool to hear how your husband weighs in.
// In hindsight, taking the time to lay out these ethical questions and the brothers’ different attitudes towards faith made the following seasons’ use of these themes possible. //
I totally agree with that. I agree with your comment about it being a “lull.” Now, of course, the episode seems crucial but that’s only because I know what comes after, and how it carefully set up all of those things that will pay off years later. But in real-time, I was like – “Angels? Religion? Not so sure about this.”
// And it started with “Faith”, //
That’s for sure. Such an important episode, still one of my favorites in the entire series.
(Now I can’t seem to shut up! An aside to share, personal again.)
This is not really Supernatural Creep, since I invited it, maybe an example of Supernatural Enabling?
I’ve started watching Gilmore Girls on Netflix, spurred more by the discussion on another thread about Edward Herrmann, who had always been a favorite of mine, than by knowledge that it was JP’s first big job. (honest!) It was one of those shows that fell into the cultural black hole of my early years of childrearing, but I’d always had some curiosity about it. Anyway–
Yesterday I was home sick and indulging in a GG marathon on the couch, and when my younger son came home he grabbed a snack and sat down with me. He really wasn’t paying close attention, and he didn’t notice JP when he first showed up–but about a minute into a longish scene, he suddenly hissed and pointed at the screen, for all the world like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I looked over and he squeaked out at me, “Padalecki!!!!” Then I totally blew his mind by informing him that Jared’s name on this show was “Dean”.
Ha!!
I loved Gilmore Girls so much!
//he suddenly hissed and pointed at the screen, for all the world like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I looked over and he squeaked out at me, “Padalecki!!!!”//
hahahahahahaha! Love those hisses and squeaks! From now on I shall always say the name Padalecki in a squeak.
//Quakers huh? That’s funny.//
Just FYI, here’s some intel on Quakers’ dominance in chocolate manufacture in the UK.
That was informative, thanks. Increasing chocolate consumption is a temperance movement I could endorse.
lips that touch chocolate shall always touch mine.
I like that the Quakers acknowledged that folks need pleasures, so they wanted to provide a pleasure that they approved of.
Kinda like Rumspringa. “Have at it, kids. But hopefully you’ll come back to us.”
Sheila, I am so sorry, I can’t seem to be able get away from the keybord.
You are like fertilizer and I’m popping sprouts o_O; I literaly went to sleep, closed my eyes – opened them and rushed to my laptop.
Thinky-thoughts coming up!
About Deans’ sexual endeavours, indulgence and the odalisque-ness of his existence.
*deep breath*
Remember how you celebrated that moment in Crossroad Blues, with Carly?
The dialog goes like this:
SAM: So.
DEAN: Secretary’s name is Carly. She’s twenty three, she, uh, kayaks, and they’re real.
SAM: You didn’t happen to ask her if she’s seen any black dogs lately, did you?
DEAN (holding up a page): Every complaint called in this week about anything big, black, or dog-like. There’s nineteen calls in all. And, uh, (pulling off a Post-it note) I don’t know what this thing is.
I cringed at that scene, alot.
There are a few of those moments here and there, and I have to say, they make my heart ache.
Remember you wrote about “the darkest Winchester family secret”? Back in “Dead Man’s Blood” I think? About Dean as bait?
See, here is my problem:
With Carly, I really don’t care if he enjoyed groping her or didn’t, or what not, the fact remians that he actually just sold himself for info. Now, it’s never black and white (“both/and”, which I adore, It’s a thing for me now). I am not a judgmental person, a work is a work, consenting adults are just that – consenting adults. But the fact stands – there was some kind of transaction, and he used his own flesh as currency.
And it bothers me – for example, Sam’s absolutly comfortable with that. He dosen’t even recognize it as morally vague at all. (Winchesters and their morals is a murky teritory…)
On one side, Dean seems to appreciate his own looks, he even comments it.
He loves sex. He dabbles in all kinds of carnal joys… and still.
It bugs me tremendously, that moment.
I’ll try to explain myself, why.
Since we touched upon the biblical, the old-testament feel of Supernatural….
In Judaism, you are suppose to indulge your body, because pleasure is god-given, your body is god-given (all in right proportions, ofcourse). Sing, dance, drink wine, eat, laugh. Enjoy sex! There are so many books written about that by so many Rabbi’s, you have no idea (all between married couples abviously..).
In fact, today is Purim, a holiday of joy and laughter, and it is a custom to get drunk for the sake of fun and giggles. Very opposed to the asceticism of Christianity.
But, your body, is also holy, since it is god-given. That’s why suicide and self mutilation are such great sins: who are you to damage the holy gift you’ve been given by god? (In jewish tradition, suicide victims are not allowed to be buried with the rest of the dead, for example. Tattoos are forbidden, and so on).
And, selling your body – is just that. It’s even worse.
It goes something like this: Body contains spirit, right?
You can nourish your body, with good food, fun, laughter, wine and purfume – they are all good for the soul; but on the other hand – selling touch, it is desecration of the spirit, and damages the soul. Your body is for you to enjoy, not for others. You are not to sell god’s gift that was given exclusively to you. It is about autonomy.
This bothers me.
Dean embodies this “sin” alongside the “basic precepts of religion”. That shouldn’t even be possible.
He is a twisted personality, it is horrifying. He shouldn’t work, he shouldn’t exist.
On one hand he desecrates himself like no big deal, and then indulges in the joys of body and flesh like a boss.
It’s as if he is managing some kind of bizzare sadistic-masochistic relationship WITH HIMSELF: First, he sells himself, laughing it away, then – getting sex for the fun of it – BOTH IN THE SAME ACTION. How???
He (spiritualy) hurts himself, then patches himself, then again and again. How long? Till there’s nothing left?…
He could’ve gotten the info in so many ways other then that one. I really believe so. He could’ve slept with her for fun, but have enough self-respect to get the info differently. It’s murky at best: You could argue that it is the fastest way to get the info, and the most effective one, and he enjoys it as well. I could argue that it just can’t be that simple; maybe one day he stops and thinks – “that’s a lie”. Or maybe I’m totally wrong, and it IS that simple???
Maybe I’m used to a different kind of moral code, but one thing sticks: The spiritual damage of the transaction such as this one. It’s just not meant to be, your body isn’t currency, even if it is pleasent. It is not even about morality, it is about a sense of SELF.
No wonder Dean seems so detached sometimes – cringeworthy example: when Bobby berates Dean for selling HIS SOUL, “I could throttle you!!!”, and he shakes him, the way Dean just *not there*, oh then I knew something was very very deeply wrong…
Ackles does an amazing job there, but my thought was: where have I seen this expression and body languahge before? My god! It was the exact same way detached sex workers (well at least on the screen, never seen one in action, live, really…) are portrayed when a deal is going down. It’s shocking like that! Bless this actor o_O;;
Selling affection, then touch… seems to lead to be able to sell your soul. What a degradation of a sense of self.
That’s why I just can’t see your interpretation of “Dean & Sex” as you portray it, as a “complete picture”, survivor or not. There is another piece there.
I hope I didn’t “victimized” him as you said earlier.
That’s not my opinion of him at all. But that’s the series – you have to fall the lowest to get up! And in my opinion – selling his soul, Dean hits the lowest. There is only upwards from that moment on. And he rises magnificently, I say!
He becomes more aware of his SELF after Hell, I think. I’ll come back on that later.
Phew. Now. Forgive me for littering around like that…
But you make me think so much! :)
Troopic – Hi there! Love your comments!
In re: the Carley moment:
// the fact remians that he actually just sold himself for info. //
To me, that’s a bit dramatic language for that transaction. He didn’t really. He flirted to get information. It’s a huge difference. If you’ve ever flirted to get out of something, or flirted to pass the time of day, or flirted to perk up your life … then the experience is not of “selling yourself”. He also seemed to enjoy her, and saw an opportunity to get what he needed out of a pretty girl behind a counter – and she probably knew the score too. I think of the legendary Amy in “Shadow,” the police officer he basically had a relationship with for a week during the case. Amy was no dummy. But Dean walked into her life, she partied with him, she slipped him files, he called her repeatedly, and then life moves on. Flirting is how Dean operates. I would not put those encounters on the level of John using Dean as bait at all.
Or – to put another way: It is Dean’s way of turning that negative into a positive.
Ie: Fine. I’m bait. I always have been. People leer at me all the time and they always have. Okay, so … maybe this is an asset, maybe I can enjoy it, maybe I can use it and not feel bad about it. AND also get the information I need WHILE I’m having a little bit of fun.
// It’s just not meant to be, your body isn’t currency, even if it is pleasant. //
Well, but that’s not entirely true. In flirting/sex/seduction, your body is your currency. I wouldn’t use those words – because there’s a negative spin on them. I would say more: This is pleasant, I like your boobs, you like my face, let’s go with that.
We aren’t just Brains walking around in the world. We have bodies and we notice the bodies of others and people notice our bodies. I get it that some people may find that really upsetting, and I am not trying to tell other people how to live or how to interpret those things.
There are moments, for sure, when Dean is upset about how he is leered at and used. But flirting with women behind various counters is not part of it. Those moments put a spring in his step! Happy sex-times, even theoretically. Sex is fun, he loves it, and when people respond to him favorably, he loves it, he uses it.
Like a Burlesque star does.
My two (or three or four) cents!
And never apologize for your comments. I love to hear them all!
// And in my opinion – selling his soul, Dean hits the lowest. There is only upwards from that moment on. And he rises magnificently, I say!
He becomes more aware of his SELF after Hell, I think. //
I like that a lot. I see that too.
sheila –
Tahnk you for the answer.
I thrive on this conflict! To each his own!
I love your 2-4 cents, I am starting to understand where you are coming from.
What I said about reading from people with life experience? You comment from a place of intimate knowledge. Me? In my 24 years of existence?…. That’s why I love to hear your thoughts, becouse I lack the “vocabulary”.
I guess I expirience these “interactions” differently. Apparently, as some friends pointed it out to me – I don’t notice when people flirt with me. Like I lack some kind of comprehension of the matter. Probably that’s where it comes from… I recently came to the understanding that sex is not much of a priority to me… It’s very secondery. o_O;
So these things depend alot on personal take on life. I bet you and Dean could have a very long, understanding conversation, under the right circumstances :)
One thing though, and you seem to agree with me (hell, the whole SPN community, I bet) – is dean’s sense of SELF. I can’t wait till you get to sink your masterful teeth into that.
Salute!
Troopic – salute right back at you!
Personal life experience, yes, helps create our filters for whatever work of art – and it’s wonderful to discuss these things!
I thrive on the conflict too. Ha!
SPN is remarkable because it is so flexible in the way that you describe. I’m still not sure how they manage it. It is very specific – but it also has built into it all of these gaps – and abysses – where you, or I, or everybody else – can project our own stuff up onto it.
This is what old-school Hollywood (say, 1930s/40s) did better than anyone. And those old-school persona actors – like John Wayne or Joan Crawford – who basically helped invent film acting – were both highly technical talented individuals, and also … huge enough that they became Icons, Mythical … projections somehow.
That type of storytelling is out of style now – except in genre stuff, beautifully.
SPN is icon-making and myth-making – and there’s something about icons/myths that leave a lot of room for individuals to project themselves up onto it. It’s all quite interesting!!
and lastly: sexuality is so personal and so individual!
One of the elements that I find kind of … fascinating … in SPN is how the brothers have a sort of ongoing mild debate club about the role of sex in their lives. Provenance was obviously all about that – with Dean thinking Sam needed to flirt, hook up … (all of it culminating with that yucky “That’s muh boy” at the end – NO!) – and Sam honestly not feeling ready, and also having a more stereotypically feminine reaction to romance/sex. “But we’ll leave town, and we’ll have to say goodbye …” Dean’s like, “Dude, it’s just a date. Not marriage.”
So there’s a difference there.
And Sam is kind of grossed out by Dean’s promiscuity – although there are levels there too. He might be envious of it a little bit. He sits upright on the edge of the bed watching porn. And turns it off when his brother comes in the room. He very well may think to himself, “Jeez, Sam, lighten up about all of this …”
It’s not a huge part of the show, since romance is so rare for either of them – but I always like it when it comes up.
It definitely makes for some fascinating behavior!
//SPN is icon-making//
I will put my money on that ONE show to survive and be retro stuff for my grandchildren.
//but it also has built into it all of these gaps – and abysses – where you, or I, or everybody else – can project our own stuff up onto it//
Is true. The ratio for SPN fanfiction out there just outweighs so many other fandoms/franchises by a mile. I think I saw some statistics once. It’s remarkable.
BTW, fun fact: the FIRST work of fiction about SPN ever was uploaded a few hours (or max. 24 hours) after the official airing of the Pilot.
//ongoing mild debate club about the role of sex in their lives//
It just ends with a silent agreement to put it aside for a while, ’till the next time it rises up again XD
Hi Sheila –
A dear friend referred me to your post on Jensen Ackles and physical comedy back in June – and since then, I have been slowly and methodically (obsessively?) working through your SPN recaps, starting in season 1. I guess I feel the same obligation that you do to work through all of it in order? Haha. Part of the reason this journey has taken so long has been because I can’t help reading all of the comments on every entry – how is everyone here so well-read and intelligent and also so kind? I feel so lucky to have found this place. The internet is overflowing with blogs devoted to Supernatural, but nowhere else is anything like THIS happening, this level of thoughtful analysis and attention to acting choices (and the wide range of fabulous behavior going on at any given moment), as well as appreciation of the importance of henleys and the length of Sam’s hair. :) What a gift.
Thank you for the mini-digression on Led Zeppelin, that was so informative! “No Quarters” – you’re kidding me – I love that Sera Gamble did her homework there! I have always loved “Kashmir” and respected Led Zeppelin as a towering juggernaut of a rock band, but it was Supernatural that actually got me looking up their songs, hunting down their music. I hope that the collective Supernatural fanbase can channel their inner Jack Black to petition Led Zeppelin at the end of the series (whenever that may come!)…because if the Winchesters DO make it through (instead of going out in a blaze of glory), how awesome would it be for them to be able to drive off to “Ramble On”?? Perfect lyrics, bittersweet and hopeful and such an on-the-road song – and, according to “Monster at the End of This Book,” Dean’s favorite song!
“. . .you realize that Dean had a journey to go on too. Almost more important than Sam’s, when you consider the background, his staunch initial defiance.”
Absolutely, thank you for pointing this out. I love how both brothers take responsibility for their previous positions and mistaken assumptions in that last scene, both of them so open and vulnerable that it’s almost painful. (I feel like that place is nearly impossible for Dean to get to in the later seasons, or at least that it takes a lot more than the space of an episode for him to work himself up to that.)
I also wanted to point out how in the 10th scene, Dean locks Sam out of his own house of the holy (the impala) – yes, on a practical level, he doesn’t want Sam to do anything criminal – but I think he also can’t handle the implications of Sam’s faith, the potential that a higher power would have to just dismantle their world (as it indeed does, come season 4). He has to forcibly lock that out. And then when he witnesses that moment of angelic justice, he has to step OUT of the impala, his sanctuary, has to experience that moment of faith/crisis outside of himself and the refuge that he’s created to protect himself from the hope of a protective outside power. One of the most painful things about the season 4-5 arc for me is watching both brothers open themselves to hope, regarding angels, regarding heaven, and seeing how those hopes are betrayed and disappointed.
When I first watched season 2, this episode seemed like such an unusual outlier that somehow I never connected it with the episode that follows, one of my favorites from season 2. But of course Sam hoping for redemption in “Houses of the Holy” is going to link directly to his predicament in “Born Under a Bad Sign”! I can’t wait to hear your thoughts.
Thanks again for creating this space for us in spite of your busy schedule and all of your active projects (including the ones that, you know, actually pay you – haha). It is truly a gift! :)
Bethany – welcome! I am so glad that that piece on Jensen Ackles “has legs,” as they say, and that people have passed it around. So many cool people have arrived here because of that piece, and I am very happy about it.
Glad you are here!!
// I hope that the collective Supernatural fanbase can channel their inner Jack Black to petition Led Zeppelin at the end of the series (whenever that may come!)…because if the Winchesters DO make it through (instead of going out in a blaze of glory), how awesome would it be for them to be able to drive off to “Ramble On”?? //
I KNOW. JA and JP should do a begging video like Jack Black did. It would go viral in about 2 seconds.
// I love how both brothers take responsibility for their previous positions and mistaken assumptions in that last scene, both of them so open and vulnerable that it’s almost painful. (I feel like that place is nearly impossible for Dean to get to in the later seasons, or at least that it takes a lot more than the space of an episode for him to work himself up to that.) //
YES. One of the things I love so much about the series is how these things accumulate. It can get repetitious, especially when you watch it in bulk – as I did initially – but you really do get the sense of things accumulating, of real progression/regression – The trauma is pretty bad at this point in Season 10, and of course it would be, all things considered. There’s only so much characters can take. A lesser show would have made Dean and Sam impervious – and stay the same. I’ve written before about CHiPs, as a ridiculous example of a long-running show where there really was no development of character, and no accumulation of events. Ponch and John remained the same. Their dynamic was set in stone. Obviously it worked with audiences but I am so glad that the writers of SPN are really psychologists in many ways – they are all devoted to deepening the relationship and the characters. That sometimes seems to me to be the whole point. Forget Abaddon and Crowley and Big Bads … it’s all about these two guys, and how they react, change, grow, regress. That’s what fascinates me the most anyway.
// He has to forcibly lock that out. And then when he witnesses that moment of angelic justice, he has to step OUT of the impala, his sanctuary, has to experience that moment of faith/crisis outside of himself and the refuge that he’s created to protect himself from the hope of a protective outside power. //
I really like how you connected the Impala to all of this!!
Thanks for reading and commenting, Bethany. Welcome!!
Sheila, thank you again for the wonderful recap, beautiful screen grabs, and for stimulating such fun commentaries. I never would have got the connection to Led Z’s “No Quarters” without you. I love how reading your recaps is so enriching. I mean, come on, No Quarters…!
That image of Father Reynolds, surrounded by the inky blackness at the end there is so gorgeous, and the ones with the magical street lamps, just delightful.
I always enjoyed this episode, (odd creepy music at the end notwithstanding) and agree with all the assessments about the lull and cliffhanger, how there was so much danger with ‘going there’, but because it is excellent SPN they still leave lots of space around the questions of faith, while at the same time allowing this to hint at a game change. To me this episode feels a bit like a play, where the motel room is the stage and everything else happens off stage but is part of the conversation. It also has a soft tension, like at the beginning of dating someone, when you have that ‘real conversation’ between the bowling and dancing and making out, the one where you kind of know if things are going to continue or not based on the outcome. When it isn’t just about fun or excitement, but a deeper compatibility. I see that with the brothers and feel it with the show’s creators. Both Sam and Dean go through their arcs regarding their openness with faith, and both allow for the other to have their experience, while learning from each other. I see Dean’s moment as only being possible because he is open to his brother being right about these metaphysical possibilities. Sure he witnessed a bizarre freak accident, but for that to cause a spiritual epiphany is only possible because he was so primed. And the episode works that way with us too, you can see what you want to, or need to, at the end there.
As for the mudflap women, I love all that people said. For me they are purposefully reductive, as in, meant to show us how tacky/trashy their earthly circumstances are in contrast to the spiritual questions at hand. Pretty much the contrasts and juxtapositions that Helena mentioned. They also help put Sam and Dean in the same place as the other victims/redeemed that the ghost-angel activates.
When I was young, I didn’t understand that the mudflap women were trashy, I just thought they were sexy. It was Thelma and Louise that taught me to see them in a different way, from the lens of an adult woman. Quite eye opening for me really. They are still pretty darn gorgeous in this episode, but despite that I do think we are supposed to pick up on the trashy, squalid, low rent quality they represent. I miss the obvious poverty and ‘wrong side of the tracks’ lives that our heroes lived in. I always found it refreshing and important that they were so lacking in material resources, because it meant that they their resources had to come from within. I think I am in the minority that I don’t really like the MOL bunker because it too Batcave. Interesting that now they are more externally and materially resourced, the show has focused more on Dean possibly not having the internal resources needed.
Heather – hi!
Fascinating addition to the Mudflap conversation! I, too, had kind of a revelation when I saw Thelma and Louise. I was never bothered by the sexy women on the backs of the wheels of trucks – thought they were a nice “shout-out” to Da Ladies. Ha. I mean, maybe they still are on some level, but there are valid arguments on both sides. Especially once you’ve had experience a couple of times being “reduced” by some jerk to your lady-parts. That’ll make you more sensitive to those implications.
Very interesting, too, in regards to highlighting the low-rent trashy disposable quality of their lives at this point. Like – WHAT is that hotel room? Not just the women – but the studded red leather wall and the uneven mirrors – I mean … bed bugs is what I’m thinking.
I love your thoughts on the episode as a whole.
// To me this episode feels a bit like a play, where the motel room is the stage and everything else happens off stage but is part of the conversation. It also has a soft tension, like at the beginning of dating someone, when you have that ‘real conversation’ between the bowling and dancing and making out, the one where you kind of know if things are going to continue or not based on the outcome. When it isn’t just about fun or excitement, but a deeper compatibility. I see that with the brothers and feel it with the show’s creators. //
Great!
There is an exploratory vibe here, you’re right – a sort of “let us just float this out there and see if it takes … we might need it later … let’s test the waters …”
Since I haven’t been watching in real-time, I wonder what the critical/fan reaction was initially, when it first aired? Does anyone remember?
//Since I haven’t been watching in real-time, I wonder what the critical/fan reaction was initially, when it first aired? Does anyone remember?//
It is amazing how different of an experience watching it in real- time is instead of binge watching. I have to say, I find watching SPN real-time can be frustrating. Right now it is in large part due to the fact that I am massively pregnant and can’t seem to reliably stay awake during the regularly scheduled episode, (embarrassing, I know). Also, I think I like it private, and definitely re-watchable. If I had it in me, I would wait and then devour the season, but … yeah, that is impossible.
There is something about the almost interactive quality of real-time watching, especially with the stuff that sometimes feels like a shout-out to fans (except for Fanfiction) that makes me feel like the time-space continuum is unstable. Or something like that.
BTW, I also blame all typos and errors on the pregnancy too. It is only fair.
Gosh, all of this to say, I too would be interested in anyone who remembers watching this real-time.
Heather – congratulations on the upcoming baby! Yay!
I’m with you on the frustrations of watching it in real-time. This is only because my first experience of it was a binge-watch by myself. So I had to adjust.
I like the privacy of watching it in my own time, and also to have the space/time to reflect on it, without all the chatter going on at the same time.
Also people sometimes over-react to episodes when they happen in real-time. i.e.: “That SUCKED.” Like, instant reactions. Nothing wrong with that, but sometimes a little time to reflect can change those first impressions.
This is similar to my feeling about those who go to film festivals, see films, and then immediately upon exiting the theatre, tweet their mini-reviews. This is mainly a film critic thing. It seems to be part of the job now. But I don’t participate in that.
Even if I have a deadline, I need time to reflect, dammit, and that reflection work is done by myself, where I ask myself, “What did I think of what I just saw?”
Of course, sitting around talking about movies or TV is such a fun thing to do – but I like at least a tiny bit of time to myself before I pontificate.
All of this is to say: By Season 2, they had a nice healthy fan-base going on – and I am very curious to know what the instant-reaction was to Houses of the Holy.
Sheila, thank you! I am totally thrilled.
//Even if I have a deadline, I need time to reflect, dammit, and that reflection work is done by myself, where I ask myself, “What did I think of what I just saw?” //
This might be part of what sets your work apart- you aren’t asking, “what type/kind of movie is it, two star, three star…?” or “should people like this movie or not?”
//The sculpture is so insanely provocative. Just like OW was. Amazing.//
Yes, and it was basically being kissed to death!
wow troopic what a nice line to follow. what would we do if we met dean? i , for sure would use my nurse abilities to nurse him back to health and if we met in a public library we would pinch each others books o files on the supernatural stuff. this is my other abilitie, to nurse back to health the supernatural entities. we, dean and me ,would probably get rough about it… not matter, i would heal both.
//what would we do if we met dean?//
You go for it, you!
(Me? LOL. I’m soooo not his type. Could be friends. Nothing more. But if he would ever want to actually spill and talk – I can listen for ages, and just nod…)
Troopic, dean it is not my type and i am not his type but given that he gets baddly hurt often and his body needs to get fix and depending on the case he is working on he can visit a mental hospital and a profesional can help him to open up about is chilhood background, i can help there. also there is this thing about the supernatural stuff that it is being a part of my life since little, so i do my research about cases in public libraries so we could met there about to grab the very same book o search for a file. we would eyed each other, we could get rough, but i would get the book.
eye-lash battling doesnt’s work .
//I think of the legendary Amy in “Shadow,” the police officer he basically had a relationship with for a week during the case.//
I think Amy is my favourite character in the entire series.
hahahahaha I know, me too. I have a vivid picture of her in my mind. Like a tatted-up Blake Lively. But don’t let me ruin however you envision her.
I love how he’s having this whole relationship going on that we never see.
Not so long after meeting Dean, Amy did an MBA in her spare time then moved to LA and now runs a mall but highly successful private security firm, with a mainly female clientele. She’s very busy around Oscar season. For a while she was considering having a baby via sperm donation but got a lovely borzoi instead.
Carly is now married to her high school sweetheart (he was married to someone else before, long story) and they have also have two wonderful dogs, a chocolate lab called Charles and an adorbs three-legged rescue dog called Tusky. Every year Carly takes a photo of the whole family wearing Santa hats for her Christmas cards. She and her husband still occasionally go kayaking.
oops, that should read ‘small’ not mall – so much for being clever. ;-)
Tusky’s the one who pees on the carpet when he gets over-excited, right? Poor thing.
Okay, this might be the funnest game invented so far. Creating histories/futures for the women we never see who have interacted with Dean. This is hilarious.
I love that they both end up happy.
// She and her husband still occasionally go kayaking. //
lulz
and go Amy. She was definitely a go-getter. Knew how to party, knew how to do her job. Dean probably still has her on speed-dial. But he never calls, of course.
Haha! Are there any more invisible women? I could only think of the woman who invited Dean to have an appletini – but that was only over the phone :-(
There’s pretty powder-blue sweater girl at the hospital in Season 1. Of course we actually see her so it’s not quite the same thing. But she’s in the same “here’s someone who can help me, but my God, she’s pretty, so … having pie plus eating it too can maybe happen if I bat my eyelashes at her …” realm.
Amy, though. She’s the gold standard. She’s the one to beat.
Amy had never really considered getting a dog, but found herself with a Borzoi on her most recent trip through Texas. She had pulled over to the shoulder to stretch her legs and saw it limping gracefully down the road. I guess Borzois are the ballerinas of the canine world, she thought, and lured it into her car with bribes of Afterburn Beef Jerky (TM). The local vet was able to bandage its paws in record time, and heaved it into Amy’s arms with an intimidating gleam in her eye.
“You hurt this dog, and now it needs a home.”
“I only gave it a bit of jerky,” Amy protested, spitting dog hair out of her mouth . “And I think it’s just just lost. It’s in pretty good shape.”
“Are you going to man up or not?”
“Look, it even has a collar–”
“This dog is yours now,” the vet said.
I’ve always fancied myself a llama person, Amy thought, but I guess Borzois are the llamas of the canine world. The vet seemed to sense her acquiescence, and nodded in inscrutable satisfaction.
“There’s my hero. Hey listen, you wanna stay for tea? I’ve just put the spaghetti on.”
There is no light without the darkness; a life of peace and health exists only by virtue of the horror that touches it. Amy would never give up her Borzoi for the world. He has been her constant companion and a useful business partner to boot, walking out with actresses in need of elegant protection (Borzois being, of course, the German Shepherds of the canine world). But in the depths of the night, waking from uneasy sleep, when Amy looks at him she can’t escape the terror of that night. That night in Texas, and the things, the unspeakable, uneatable things she encountered there.
Jessie – that was brilliant.
I forgot the bit where Sam and Dean bang! Oh, man.
//the unspeakable, uneatable things she encountered there.//
… and the strange, yellow light in that tatty old motel room … She could never bear the taste of lime again.
Jessie, bravo, that is a masterpiece.
I also thought of the lovely girl in the blue sweater, but you do see her, and anyway I think she’s engaged and planning the wedding. Just maybe having a few … doubts. I mean, she really loves Duane but can you really spend the rest of your life with a guy whose mom buys his underwear? She gets he’s that bit older and just wants to settle down, but shouldn’t you be a bit, you know, unsettled first?
Is this all there is?
And then this guy just walks into reception one day, Dreamy McDreamboat with the longest lashes you have ever seen not on a cow, and suddenly her knees are shaking and bolts of electricity are shooting up from her stomach to her brain. For a moment, she actually goes blind.
Their eyes lock. “Can I help you?” she manages to say, her voice coming from far, far away. “Oh God, yes,” he says, and she hears waves crashing against a distant ocean shore. In her mind she’s already climbing over the counter, scattering files and coffee cups everywhere, laddering her tights, and reaching up to take him by those outrageously large, sexy ears. “But I’m on duty right now.” Jesus, he’s a a police officer. This is her recurring dream come true at last. This is destiny. Her heart skips a beat, then two. Courage, Kaitlyn Madonna Parks, seize the moment.
“No problem,” she says, not quite believing how calm her voice sounds. “I think the records you need are kept in that broom, er, store cupboard over there. I can kiss you, I mean, show you. Right now.”
“Thank you, miss, you’re a true patriot,” he says, and those waves start crashing again. They turn and start to walk to the cupboard. It seems to take forever, it’s like they’re racing. “No problem, officer” she says. And now it’s like another person is talking, the person she never dared to be. “Oh, officer, are those handcuffs? I’ve always wanted to know, how exactly do they work?”
// Courage, Kaitlyn Madonna Parks, //
hahahahaha
ha ha haa! No point pretending you haven’t read 1 million words of terrible erotica anymore, Helena!
What do you think the EL in Helena really stands for?
I was gonna go for Elrond’s Long-johns but feel free to correct me.
//I forgot the bit where Sam and Dean bang! Oh, man.//
And don’t forget Dean is the llama of German shepherds and Sam is the borzoi of ballerinas.
you extend yourself beyond the bounds of all decency
Decency by d*mned, not only have I read a million words of terrible erotica, I have read a million words of terrible vetinerary erotica.
Like Sheila, I watched the whole show not knowing what was coming. The first time I saw the episode, I remember being generally underwhelmed. Except for the shot that turns around Sam in front of the house – I remember pausing and replaying it. It’s the first time I really noticed such a thing in the show, and probably the first time I learned who Kim Manners was. That’s the problem with binge watching: you miss shit-ton of things. On the other hands, it helps some stuff stand out, for me at least, even if I often understand why much later (I’m slow).
And then, that last scene was like being punched in the gutt. I remember not knowing what to make of it, but being very moved by Dean’s hesitation… « God’s will »… It’s pretty funny in retrospect, and I love what all of you have brought to the conversation.
Heather: (congratulations!)
// I miss the obvious poverty and ‘wrong side of the tracks’ lives that our heroes lived in. I always found it refreshing and important that they were so lacking in material resources, because it meant that they their resources had to come from within. //
I can’t say I really miss it, because I’ve accepted that they have moved on to something else: it’s an other part of their life, and another era on the show. But I totally see what you mean, and you put it so perfectly! And I think it’s part of what made me fall in love with them. Had the show begun with the MOL bunker, I wouldn’t have loved it as much, I think. They drank cheap beer, stole shit, shoved food in their mouths when it was free (well, Dean did), and I loved them for that.
// Okay, this might be the funnest game invented so far. Creating histories/futures for the women we never see who have interacted with Dean. This is hilarious. //
Sheila, Helena, Jessie, that is just… beautiful!
Personnally, I often wonder about not a woman, but our favourite vampire. So much is left unknown, and I make up my own stories. At that point, I’m probably the only one still interested. But seriously, Benny… If he has a grand-grand-grand-daughter, he probably had a wife? Whom we were never told about. Was she already dead when he was turned, leaving orphans? Was he a sailor away at sea when it happened and he never went home by fear of what would happen and she died of desperation, believing she was a widow? Did he go home, and the whole story ended tragically, leaving him with eternal regrets that got him on the path of redemption? Did she look like Andrea or was she very different? What was it like, to be a vampirate ? Was he, at some point, the sole survivor of a descent into the maelström? (I like to think he was). There are probably tons of fanfiction out there, I don’t know, I don’t want to know, I like the one in my head better.
Oh, Benny.
Sheila, a few weeks ago we were talking about finding people comfortable in their own skin sexy. I didn’t see it with Garth, but is Jack Black the epitome of that or what? His confidence and the way he moves, his crazy eyes, his sincerity in everything he does… So sexy! I would get nekkid in a heartbeat, let me tell ya.
Lyrie and Blaise Pascal present you : The French – bargaining with faith and derailing all conversations to talk about wet panties since forever. But you don’t really need me for that, DO YOU?
Lyrie,
Thank you!
And Benny, beautiful, beautiful Benny. It is always good to think of him.
//The most prominent I can think of at the moment is Sam going back to college.//
Goodness, I missed that one. Which episode was this?
Not going going back to college, I mean the episode with the wifi ghost and they spend a lot of it on campus making remarks about the college experience and it really threw me that there was no reference to Sam’s college days. And he was even thinking about going back to college back when he still thought he could have a life with Amelia. Not necessarily saying they should have; I think you can make a case either way. I would have to watch the episodes again to figure out to what extent it’s purposeful, letting the historic texture sit outside instead of inside the episodes. But I do really, really love callbacks and memory.
Thanks, Jessie.
//letting the historic texture sit outside instead of inside the episodes. //
that’s a brilliant way to put it.
Maybe the answer to the ‘does Sam want to go back to college’ is ‘only if Dean has carked it.’
(I can barely remember a thing about that episode itself except that it’s very hard to escape from haunted wifi. Overshadowed by the one before and after.)
Jessie, I thought the same thing re: no mention of Sam’s college days. I’m pretty sure there’s a moment (when they’re in the cafeteria or the stairwell or something) when Dean sees a pair of college girls walking by and says offhandedly to Sam, “Can’t believe I made you leave,” or something like that – it’s meant as a joke, and I guess it still could be, but I completely tensed waiting for Sam’s response to a loaded statement like that – and it never came. Though maybe Jared reacted with his face? He’s good at keeping track of those moments with his expressions, when they don’t write in the lines for him (which I feel happens much too often, especially in the later seasons). Anyway, I’m with you – callbacks and continuity bring me joy, in the occasions when they do crop up.
As there was a discussion of Zeppelin in this recap, I thought this may be a relevant/fun addition. This video is making the rounds on Youtube. It’s elementary school kids performing Kashmir, The Ocean and The Immigrant Song on percussion instruments – they do a great job. In the comments on YT, someone says that Jimmy Page saw the video and complimented these kids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYuOZnAqQCY
I love this video! (Plus, the kids are from Louisville. As a life-long Kentuckian who is sick of the stereotypes, I love it when KY gets national attention for something cool!)
Go Louisville Leopards! That was great.
hello. remember that i said that i was going to get in touch with the Wax Museum of Madrid and send a formal petition to consider the leading actors of the TV series “Supernatural” to be made into wax figures?
Guess what.
A high ranking member of the museum is personnaly giving his support to the petition and submitting it to the President’s Commite.
GO MADRID!!!!!!
Sheila – Thanks again for the another wonderful review. I’ve been reading the reviews and trying to keep up with the commentary but as you know like happens. As mentioned above, (I’m sorry can’t remember who made the comment) this is usually one of those episodes that in a rewatch has just been background noise, I never really paid close attention. However on closer rewatch for your review I gained a much greater appreciation for what is going on here, especially when put in perspective with all the other angel shennanigans that occur later. Yes this is the initial mentions of Michael and Rafael but also the the 1st mention of the one of my all time favorite words, SMITE. I’ve been known to use that word frequently in my bible study class (I tend to be rather irreverent.) As an aside here if I had never watched Kevin Smith’s “Dogma” it is unlikely that I would’ve continued with SPN after the angels were introduced. It took me awhile to actually watch Dogma all the way through because I couldn’t handle it – it felt blasphemous and made me uncomfortable. Well, I’m totally over that now!
This was a beautifully filmed episode and the writing is excellent. There may have been issues with seasons 6&7 (which I would argue weren’t really that bad) but SPN is the poorer for the loss of Sera Gamble.
Slightly off topic again – been watching a show on the little known channel PIVOT titled “Fortitude” creepy mystery set in a small town in the Arctic Circle called Fortitude, it is so beautifully shot, even I noticed it. It features Stanley Tucci who is just awesome in it.
I know you’ve already posted on 2×16 “Roadkill” by now, but this is one of my favorite episodes, and I’ve gone all obsessive over it (blaming you all!), so I thought I’d blurt out my comments on this one before making my way to the present…
By the way, you guys are something else, with your demonic/enochian pies and your borzoi fan fic…
Thanks for this recap! (And all the others, for that matter.) I’ve always loved this episode. Compared to the previous episode (“Nightshifter”), this one was slow and odd. But the issues it brought to the forefront were nice and CRUNCHY to me. Faith and free will and Sam’s pain and Dean’s doubt, etc., etc., all laid out in plain sight for consideration and then modulation. I can’t think of another show that can be so explicit and yet retain its characters’ mysteries.
When I first watched this episode, I was also excited by the possibility of the existence of angels. It opened up so much story potential, regardless of whether or not they ever appeared onscreen. I guess I felt this way because I like fantasy and science fiction stories more than horror stories. I liked the idea that there could be heavenly forces working in opposition to demons in the narrative. It freed up space for hope for Dean and me.
And then angels got dropped for 1.5 seasons. But then they were waaay better than I had hoped for. And then not so much. And then they got Hannah-tized. *sigh*
Digression: The last time I felt any hope for the show going back to the old mystery and power of angels was as recent as season 9, when they had that pain-killer-angel, the one who turned his victims into pepto-bismol mist. By his angelic alien perception, he was performing acts of compassion. That put him light years ahead of most angels in his potential to understand and empathize with humanity. All the boys had to do was widen his spectrum of acceptable pain and demonstrate alternative options beyond kill/vaporize. Cas or Dean trying to teach such an angel to awkwardly hug would have been fun, dammit. (That being said, I don’t recall the angel being written or acted with those potentialities in mind. It was all just in my head as a concept as I watched. *sigh again*)
/end digression
One of my favorite scenes in the whole season (and I looove this season) is the one between Sam and Dean in the church after Sam’s angel-vision. (Side note: They somehow made Jared look at least a head taller than Jensen when they walked through that door. Like Jensen barely came up to his shoulder. How’d they do that? Just camera angles? Jared wearing shoe lifts? Jensen in a trench? In any case, kudos!)
Thank you, Sheila, for explaining the director’s reasons for closeups. It’s helping me to prioritize what’s going on with both brothers in this scene.
Dean’s super-claustrophobic screen-filling closeup happens when he’s articulating his worst and ugliest fear: “Maybe I should just stop you right now” because of the possibility of Sam going darkside. It is a true and deep fear, but it seems to me as though Dean was wielding it like a weapon here. I don’t think early season mostly-innocent Dean ever gets this ugly unless he’s nearly overwhelmed with anger AND pain. It’s why I don’t quite feel your description of Dean as “detached” at this point. I feel like he’s riding a wave of pain and personal betrayal, making his argument to Sam that *this* is what happens when you believe in God. It’s why JA’s line reading of “random unpredictable evil that comes out of nowhere and rips you to shreds” still chokes me up: because to me, he sounds like a man who would rather believe in random evil than risk being betrayed so personally and so deeply again.
Also, Dean has a slight smile at the end of his speech. I interpreted it as a variation of his “I’ma gonna hit something” smile. I got the feeling if God showed up at that moment and said “Surprise! I’m real and here to save you…,” firstly, Dean wouldn’t have been surprised at all and secondly, Dean would’ve punched Him in the face. Since Dean’s next act was to show Sam what he felt was conclusive proof of a spirit instead of an angel, I think he settled for punching holes in Sam’s argument instead.
Sam’s super-claustrophobic screen-filling closeup happens when he’s saying “Maybe it’s God’s will!” I feel as though this is his longing for the comfort and security of a higher power. His suggestion that maybe they should stop the hunt and follow the angel-vision’s instructions says to me that he’s willing to let go of most of his hard-won autonomy. (It’s unnerving when I think about the next episode, “Born Under A Bad Sign,” where he loses *all* autonomy when he’s possessed by Meg.) Sam’s willingness to “stop” someone who hasn’t done anything wrong yet is even more alarming to me, demonstrating that Sam is putting his trust in the judgement of that higher power, instead of questioning the morality of it all.
When I think about it, I imagine their belljar (TM Sheila Variations) upbringing was so warped that “higher power” probably meant John, then Dean, then maybe God as a distant third. Now that John is dead, Dean is the next higher power. And Sam relies on him, of course, but he will always question everything. (I agree with you that it’s one of their strengths as a team — IIRC.) But only three episodes ago, he found out that Dean was capable of lying to him for MONTHS about something that is literally life or death for Sam.
Now Sam’s a very forgiving brother, but that has to have destabilized or at least re-ordered his world view. Praying is an unobtrusive way of dealing, so shush, Dean.
That being said, Dean is going to freak every time evidence comes up that there are parts of Sam that are kept secret from him, because for all he knows, there may be going-dark-side secrets. So judgey snark is a relatively mild reaction from him.
It’s kind of soothing back here in the second season, where Sam and Dean can have fundamental disagreements and yet still *listen* to each other without dangerous rancor or rupture.
//Hope is a positive emotion only to those who have not experienced serious deprivation. //
Ouch.
So, I was re-watching that episode last night, and I wondered… how come I had never seen this before? This time, as soon as I saw the angel, it shocked me. Is it just me?
And, it would completely makes sense, because, as discussed above, Mary’s presence is felt throughout this episode.
I love this connection, Lyrie – no, I had not noticed it.