Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 14: “Born Under a Bad Sign”

Directed by J. Miller Tobin
Written by Cathryn Humphris

“Born Under a Bad Sign” is a fake-out, a tricky “Gotcha!”, it leads you down the wrong path, giggling behind its hand, and then it laughs in your face when the truth is revealed. Since “Playthings,” with Sam’s drunken plea to Dean, the situation has veered off into other areas, adding layers of difficulty to their lives. Sam “going dark side” has loomed like a specter since “Croatoan.” In “Born Under a Bad Sign” we get a taste of how bad it might get, but then … Ka-doink! the joke is on us. It’s just Meg getting some revenge. First time through, I was slightly annoyed by it all. Like, really? Y’all just faked me out? On further reflection, I think the fake-out works. (I’m a slow processor!) What ends up happening is that the anticipation of Sam going bad, of how Dean will handle it, of the rupture that is to come in their relationship … starts to BE the landscape of the show. It’s the anxiety in which they live, the air they breathe.

Interestingly enough, considering the Season 9 refrain of “Dean can’t be alone, Dean will do anything to not be alone …”: Sam (or Meg/Sam, whatever) says to Dean in “Born Under a Bad Sign” – “Are you so afraid of being alone that you won’t blah-blah-blah?” As early as Season 2, that element was being voiced. It’s so explicit! They just put it right out there.

Supernatural is nothing without the primacy of that sibling relationship. It is why people tune in, it is why it has lasted as long as it has. So: how unstable can that relationship get? How much of a rupture can it stand? How much truth can be told?

I love when the relationship is threatened. The conflict is so rich, emotionally.

Padalecki is so good here in material that might sink another actor. It could be so cheesy: Oooh, look at the good guy act like a bad mo-fo! I don’t grade on a curve. Something either works, or it doesn’t. What happens in “Born Under a Bad Sign” is reminiscent of watching Dean as the shape-shifter in “Skin.” You see an alternative reality, where the big good-looking hunk we have come to know and love turns into an entitled resentful asshole. More than anything else, what I love about these episodes involving possession is the acting challenges they present our two fearless leads. I love watching them work as actors, I love watching them problem-solve as actors, I love watching them work with this material and find their “way in.”

Ackles is so convincing as the dead-eyed sexually pushy glamour-puss in “Skin” that it opened up a whole new avenue for his career, should he have wanted to take it (or if Supernatural had not come around). He’d be awesome as a sexual predator. He’d be a great Preppy Murderer. He was able to leave out his sensitivity. He just removed that part of himself, and Voila, Shifter.

Padalecki, up until now, has not had to show a similar range. The levels going on in “Born Under a Bad Sign” can twist you up into knots if you think about it too much, and still, after all these years of not acting, I think like an actor. I wonder at his approach. I wonder at the challenges provided and how an actor digs on into those challenges. Sam has been possessed against his will by the demon known as “Meg.” Meg takes the wheel of his body and voice and mind, and Sam is somewhat aware of what is happening yet is helpless to do anything about it. But how to play that, without tipping your hand to the audience too soon? In the early scenes with Dean, Sam is basically Meg acting like she is Sam. He pleads innocence, he seems baffled, lost, but how much of that is Sam? Or does Meg subside a bit, allow Sam to speak to Dean? Either way, it’s a hell of a challenge.

And once I knew the score, once I had seen the episode, it was fun to go back and watch those early scenes again and watch Padalecki’s acting choices. Because Sam is “off,” WAY off, and it’s there from the start, it’s there in the expression that comes into his eyes from time to time – even before he punches Dean, before he walks into Jo’s bar in full-on demon mode.

This goes back to what I was talking about in the “Houses of the Holy” re-cap about burlesque, especially in regards to Shakespeare’s cross-dressing heroines (it’s usually the heroines. In only one play, Merry Wives of Windsor, does a man dress up as a woman. In Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra reminisces about a time when she and her lover put on each other’s clothes: she “put my tires and mantles on him, whilst / I wore his sword Philippan” … cross-dressing here as erotic play as opposed to survival, like it is for Rosalind or Viola, etc. The performative aspect of gender is made even more complex with Shakespeare because all of the actors onstage playing all of the roles in his day were men. So if you are supposed to have a hot and sensual Queen of Egypt … the man playing the role had to really “go there” and inhabit that because the story demanded it … and all kinds of homoerotic implications would come into play, and it must have been delicious and hilarious and provoking and all the rest. It would be so interesting to have a time travel machine to go back and see those productions and see how they did it. My point is: Sam behaving as Sam in the early scenes is akin to the performative aspect of the cross-dressers throughout Shakespeare. He’s actually Meg in those scenes, acting like Sam, or trying to, and then finally, later, Meg is being Meg, all while still looking like Sam.

Good luck, Moose.

Seeing Padalecki play that scene in the bar in Duluth brings to mind one of the thoughts I had when I first watched the episode “Changing Channels.” (I hesitate to jump ahead because part of the fun of these re-caps is to forget what is coming next, to remember what it felt like to see these episodes for the first time. But I’ll make an exception.) “Changing Channels” is a high watermark of the series. One of the reasons I love it so much is that in its lampooning of regular series-television, in its goofball sending-up of sit-coms and police procedurals and Japanese game shows and soapy-melodramas, it shows the alternate career route of the two leads, if Supernatural hadn’t come along and (in my opinion) set them both free. On what other television show could these two particular guys show off their range? Their humor? They both would be good in anything, but other shows are limited by their genre trappings. If Padalecki or Ackles were on Criminal Minds, they would be wonderful. If they were on Grey’s Anatomy, they would be wonderful. But they would not be allowed to go OFF in the way they are allowed to do on Supernatural, because those shows don’t have the flexibility. Those shows don’t lampoon themselves, for one thing. “Changing Channels,” in its beautiful way, celebrated the freedom and openness of their own show, highlighting all of the stuff they are allowed to do on Supernatural. Sam and Dean Winchester are the roles of a lifetime: anything is possible with these two actors. The show itself knows that, the show knows what they have with their two leads. No way would either of them have stayed on the show as long as they have if it hadn’t provided them with these ongoing challenges. They’re both really smart, and really competitive. They’re competitive with themselves, they want to be excellent. Supernatural is both a really comfortable job for them by now, it has been their entire adult lives as actors … but it’s also full of weekly challenges, physical and emotional, that keep them having to bring an A-game.

J. Miller Tobin, who directed, directed one of my favorite Supernatural episodes, A Very Supernatural Christmas, and also helmed Heaven and Hell, another one I love. “Born Under a Bad Sign” was his first episode, and there are some very interesting choices he brought to the table, which I’ll highlight as we go along (the first being the use of jump-cuts in the teaser. Jump-cuts are not part of Supernatural‘s normal style. I can’t think of a jump cut before this one. The jump-cuts are highlighted by the fact that when we finally meet up with Sam in those opening sequences, he is shown in a big gigantic still profile. The jump-cuts vanish. Sam’s identity has become fixed, he is locked inside himself. There’s not a lot of movement with the camera.) And then, in the fight scene in the motel, when Sam finally “becomes” Meg, and knocks Dean out, the style switches to hand-held camera – not used in any of the other scenes. And later, there are some slo-mo moments, eerie and surreal. Tobin (and Ladouceur, and the editor) planned it all out meticulously. It’s a beautifully planned episode, visually.

“Born Under a Bad Sign” is a blues song by the great Albert King, the title song from his 1967 album.

Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan did an album together called “In Session,” (a fave of mine, I’m a huge Stevie Ray Vaughan devotee) which was also recorded for a television broadcast. Listen to Vaughan’s guitar in the clip below. What a great counterpoint and illumination!

Speaking of the lyrics, let’s take a look:

Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn’t for bad luck,
I wouldn’t have no luck at all

Hard luck and trouble is my only friend
I been on my own ever since I was ten
Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn’t for bad luck,
I wouldn’t have no luck at all

I can’t read, haven’t learned how to write
My whole life has been one big fight
Born under a bad sign (and etc …)

I ain’t lyin’
If it wasn’t for bad luck
I wouldn’t have no kind-a luck
If it wasn’t for real bad luck,
I wouldn’t have no luck at all

Wine and women is all I crave
A big-legged woman is
gonna carry me to my grave
Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn’t for bad luck,
I wouldn’t have no luck at all

Yeah, my bad luck boy
Been havin’ bad luck all of my days, yes

So, you know. There’s no way out. It’s in the stars. Sam knows there’s no way out. John knew it. Yellow-Eyes knows it. Dean is in denial. Sam doesn’t even know the half of it, and won’t learn the real story until the end of the season.

Dean is often a scene-stealer, and even here Sam’s descent into being Meg ends up being about Dean. Sam as bait. Evil Sam dangled before Dean’s eyes, to push Dean. Meg wants to see Dean squirm.

Plot isn’t really my interest here (now or ever), although I got the gist of it. What I am interested in is the underlying emotional architecture of all of these issues. Sam tried to “get out” of the family. He succeeded for a while. He lived another life. He made new friends. He devoted himself to his studies. But his past came a-calling. As the episodes trudge on, you see how inevitable it was. That feeling of helplessness in “Born Under a Bad Sign,” the lyrics of the song, Sam’s words that he is unable to fight this thing, he CAN’T choose … the feeling that you were BORN to this misery, this bad luck.

Sam’s journey over Season 1 was one of grief and mourning for the loss of his girlfriend, a slow process, as well as an integration back into the Winchester dynamic. And now … what are his feelings about his father? For exposing them to all of this? For making Jess on the ceiling inevitable? Meg uses John Winchester in Sam’s attack on Jo. The episode is full of parents, absent parents. Dean is susceptible in ways that Sam is not. Dean’s openness leaves him vulnerable. Sam is stronger. The way to “get to” Dean is through Sam. That will always be true. So Sam is stuck. Is there no hope?

“Born Under a Bad Sign” does not answer these questions. If Sam had hoped to start to understand what “plan” was in store for him … he’s still got a ways to go. Despite the fake-out “Gotcha” of Meg’s re-emergence into Sam, she still brings up what is to come. She forces both of them to face some things, to say some things … and, typically, they both will back off of those revelations in the episodes to come.

I am extremely bummed out (some day I’ll get over it) that we did not get to see Sam in full-on Meg mode, smoking cigarettes like a “chimney”, throwing bottles around a convenient store, and then careening off in a VW bug. Why oh why do they put that tantalizing image into my mind and then deprive me the right of experiencing it?

With jump-cuts and pouring rain and an exposed shoulder and a This Is Your Life tour of characters like Bobby and Jo, “Born Under a Bad Sign” is all over the place, geographically and story-wise. There are four different locations in four different states.

The main interest for me is Padalecki as a Psycho, which, like Dean as shifter, makes me think he could have made a living playing Psycho Stalkers on the Lifetime channel. He’s so good at it. He removes his humor, he imbues himself with coiled-up resentment and sexual hostility, and – in a couple of moments – he goes completely dead in the face, like a cobra. Those are my favorite moments. Padalecki has thought this shit out, planned it as carefully as Tobin et al planned the visuals.

Teaser
The sound of the pouring rain is the backdrop. Dean stands in what looks like an industrial wasteland, underneath a bridge, talking on the phone with Ellen, trying to figure out where Sam is. There are bridges in the distance, and there’s mud (We love mud!), and it all looks bleak and unwelcoming. Like, get in the car, dude, to make your call.

The teaser is our first clue that “Born Under a Bad Sign” will not be your typical Monster of the Week. Or, the monster of the week is Sam. Last seen in “Houses of the Holy,” listening intently to his brother, open and vulnerable, wanting the solace of faith … to going MIA? Our own experience of these two episodes is that of a HUGE jump-cut. Information is missing. We have jump-cut from “Houses of the Holy” to here and Sam is gone.

Jump-Cut Digression
Jump-cuts! They break up the fabric of reality, they mess with linear time. Jean-Luc Godard gets credit for bringing the jump-cut into modern cinema through his use of them in Breathless, but the jump-cut has been around from the get-go. Georges Melies used them to create his magical illusions in the dawning age of cinema. Godard used them in a very attention-getting way, and there are stories about why he used them in Breathless: he was told the film was too long, and so he just went through snipping away at scenes internally, a second here, a second there, in order to cut the time down. You can see some jump-cuts in this scene from Breathless but they are there throughout.

Here’s a discussion of Godard and Breathless and jump cuts in general.

John Cassavetes used them a lot. He didn’t care about classical continuity. Woody Allen used them, in a clear nod to Cassavetes, in Husbands and Wives. Wes Anderson used them memorably in the suicide-attempt scene in Royal Tenenbaums:

I never get sick of watching the opening sequence in “Born Under a Bad Sign” for those beautiful jump-cuts.
Jump-Cut Back to the Re-cap

The jump-cut jitters of Dean under the bridge sit side by side with the still quiet closeup of Sam in an undisclosed location, the camera slowly moving down to his blood-stained hand. The Impala roars across the land, and Dean is then seen leaping out of the car (more jump-cuts), and heading into the motel (more jump-cuts as he comes down the hallway, looking for Sam’s room). Sam sits on a bed, quietly, waiting for Dean to show up. He doesn’t move, he does not appear agitated. He is shown in profile, from both sides.

Close-ups, normally, are revealing. That’s what close-ups are there for. To quote Gena Rowlands: “You can see an actor’s soul on film.” But here, with Sam (and throughout the episode), the close-ups are anything BUT revealing. In fact, they conceal. The close-ups cloak Sam in mystery, leaving us out of his “soul,” shutting us out of his experience. It doesn’t matter that it’s a profile: think of how often Supernatural uses the “tormented profile,” and how those profiles usually tell us everything! They come at the end of a scene, dialogue done, and the profile shows us the real emotions of what is going on.

These close-ups though are not like that. They are statuesque, frozen, rigid: an unchanging face … We are shut out. (And, of course, Sam himself has been shut out. He is not “in there”. That’s why these close-ups look so … strange. So off.)

The door is unlocked and Dean lets himself in. It’s a generic motel room, somewhat, with two double beds, but there is a wall divider featuring leaping fish. Because … Jerry Wanek is a lunatic. I can find no Blue Roses metaphor in the leaping fish, although I’m open to suggestions. I thought it might have to do with the Zodiac, but Sam is a Taurus. So that was a dead-end. Dean is an Aquarius, the “water-bearer,” so there may be something there (even though his birthday hasn’t been referenced yet, I don’t think). In other words, the wall divider/episode-title is symbolic: we are meant to think that the episode is about Sam being born under a bad sign, when in reality it is about Dean. I’m probably over-thinking what was, in essence, a set-decoration joke. The motel is a shit-hole. Dean sees Sam sitting on the bed and approaches, cautiously. Sam’s shirt is covered in blood. Dean gropes at him, trying to look for the wound, but there is no wound. Dean questions his brother, but Sam’s answers are unrevealing.

Here we’re going to see Dean as caretaker, as big brother, but really it’s Dean as Mother. The symbiosis of their relationship (or at least one major aspect of it) is in full flower. Sam’s quiet freak-out about not remembering anything is counter-acted by Dean’s super-calm “let’s just handle it” response. The more freaked-out Sam gets, the more Dean dials down his own panic. It starts the tension up in Dean, the tension of not saying what he is really thinking and feeling, which is: WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?? Dean’s first reaction is to get totally calm, even blasé at points. He cracks jokes. He treats Sam’s amnesia as a mild annoyance. He tries to lighten the mood. His behavior does not say: “This is a really serious situation.” Sam’s behavior, however, does, so Dean adjusts in response. This is how their relationship works. And notice: it’s on Dean to do the adjusting. He does so automatically.

1st scene
Dean returns to the room, with food, a bottle of soda, and information. He’s first seen entering the room through the mirror (a device Supernatural uses a lot). Those doubling moments, always adding layers of instability.

Dean is extremely matter-of-fact. If he is concerned, he is not letting on. This is where Dean shines. It’s also dysfunctional, but whatever, many of us are at our best when we are acting like nothing is wrong, in order to calm someone else down. It’s like an EMT. You don’t want an EMT to take one look at your injury and exclaim, “OH MY GOD THAT IS SO SCARY-LOOKING AND GROSS.” Dean’s an EMT here. He subjugates himself, his true feelings, in order to handle the situation. It’s beautiful, actually. Dean reveals that Sam checked in under the name “Richard Sambora,” and then can’t resist:, “I think the scariest part of this whole thing is that you’re a Bon Jovi fan.”

Yes, Dean. That is the scariest part of Sam not remembering anything.

What is even more hysterical is picturing Sam at the check-in desk, looking like this.

Jared Padalecki was in a movie with Jon Bon Jovi called Cry Wolf (anyone remember that?) and I Googled around looking for clips and found a cute one of Padalecki talking about a moment during the filming of Cry Wolf.

I’m a pretty big Jon Bon Jovi fan, and I have no shame in it, and I am also a fan of his face, his body, his jeans, his ass. My friend Mitchell, who is an atheist, mind you, said to me once, “Jon Bon Jovi’s ass is literally from the Lord.”

I love Sam’s quiet, “Dean,” to get Dean back on track, to ask Dean to stop joking around. These are the small relationship moments that make me happy. Dean’s in charge now. They’ll work it like any other case. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Sam Winchester, as played by Jared Padalecki, is open and thoughtful, willing to look at the complexities, willing to consider all possibilities. He’s not rigid. Dean is way more rigid than Sam is. But here, the roles are somewhat reversed. And even though Sam, as the “problem”, is center stage, it is Dean’s response to it, to Sam being a “problem”, that is compelling. Heartbreaking even. You can hear John’s whisper throughout this scene, can’t you? Dean was still brainwashed enough to keep that secret from Sam for the first half of the season. Ultimately, though, what we end up seeing, in this scene and throughout the episode, is Dean’s memory of that whisper: Yes, John said he might have to kill Sam. But ONLY if he couldn’t save him. Dean, as the grunt, the follower, the perfect little soldier, takes that order seriously.

It’s also fun to watch the scene and see Sam as only Meg in those interactions. Begging Dean to admit he is bad, pushing Dean to accept that Sam is past help. And later: Come on, Dean, pick up that gun, what are you stupid? I’ve killed a man. Are you so stupid that you won’t kill someone so CLEARLY bad?

These closeups are COLD.

Dean sees the bloody prints on the window frame, giving us again a mental image I would like to see: Sam clambering through that window, bloodied and ferocious. Such a contrast to the rigid nearly-presidential closeups we’re getting of Sam.

Outside, it is a grey and raw day. There’s thunder at one point. The motel looks like a mental institution. The two of them walk up the hillside beside it, Sam looking around, Dean tuned in to Sam. But Dean’s behavior has an eye-roll quality to it, a fascinating choice. Ackles could have played it as all intense and caring and in Sam’s face. But that would be a cliche. A choice like that wouldn’t give him room to go anywhere. This is Ackles being in charge of his own arc. He takes his cue from the script (the Bon Jovi joke, the Menthols joke) and runs with it. Dean adjusts his behavior to the increasing craziness of the situation. It reminds me of a mother going into mother-mode during a crisis. I remember flopping around in the lake when I was a kid, holding onto a little styrofoam board. I was probably 4 years old. I couldn’t swim. It was the 1970s, if that helps explain the lack of a hovering parent. The adults sat around on the dock. I remember letting go of the styrofoam thing and I remember sinking. And then suddenly: crazy storm of bubbles and sunlight. My mother, fully clothed, had leapt into the lake and dragged up to the surface. I remember another moment when I crashed my bike into a mailbox and got a huge gash in my leg. I was surrounded by shrieking panicking children, and my mother raced out, calm and cool as a cuke, and scooped me up to take me to the hospital for stitches. I am sure she was panicked, but I didn’t sense panic in her at all. She was Safety. “Okay, so we’re going to do this this and this and everything’s going to be fine.” Later, she may have collapsed in sobs with my dad as he made her a vodka tonic after I went to bed. But I sensed none of that in the emergency of the moment. That’s what Dean’s doing. “Whatever, you’re Richie Sambora, you’re all bloody, okay, yeah, it’s weird, but it’s annoying too and we’ll figure it out please stop freaking out.”

The alley is bleak and depressing-looking, with a row of storage units to one side. Sam stops. His memory is jogged. Or Meg is leading Dean to where she wants him. That’s the fun of watching Padalecki throughout. One of the storage units seems familiar, and Sam then “remembers” that he has the key to the padlock in his pocket.

Inside the storage unit is a small VW bug and Dean’s look of distaste is worth the entire episode. “Please tell me you didn’t steal that.” And I am laughing out loud. If you are going to steal a car, let it be something cool, not some hippie-dippy bullshit like a Volkswagen, good GOD. First Bon Jovi, now THIS? (And that gives me another image: Sam, lanky and gigantic, squeezed into a tiny VW bug.)

The inspection of the car leads to terrible discoveries like:
1. blood on the steering wheel
2. a blood-soaked knife in the backseat
and … most “disturbing” of all, according to Dean
3. a pack of Menthol cigarettes.

With every discovery, Sam confirms that what happened is bad. There is no other way to “spin” it. Watch Dean’s calm-ness, though. Watch how he avoids looking at Sam until the last minute. “I’m not thinking anything,” says Dean, not looking at Sam. He’s being careful. He’s modulating his reactions. He’s totally putting the lid on his own feelings. It’s required.

2nd scene
The show finds itself in an interesting situation with their two leads: It’s not an ensemble show. It’s the Sam and Dean Show. They’re the only game in town. Because of that, they often seem like the only smart people in the room, the only ones who know what is going on. Sometimes that is true, but that dynamic would get boring extremely quick. Who wants to watch two hot guys be right week after week? The only way it works is to undercut their status, to allow secondary characters and one-off characters to refuse to defer to them, because why should they defer? Who made you all Queen of the Land? Get off my lawn. Sam and Dean wouldn’t be nearly as lovable if their status was continually propped up by everyone they encountered. In fact, it would be gross.

And that is why I love the gas station attendant, played by Richard Kahan.

The second Dean and Sam walk into the convenience store, the clerk starts saying, “OUT. OUT,” all while picking up the phone.

Both Sam and Dean look shocked at this reaction from someone neither of them have seen before. And it is then we are given the glimpse of Sam in action: smoking in the store, buying malt liquor, and throwing bottles around. Leaving without paying. Dean can’t seem to stop saying, “This guy …?” gesturing at Sam, just to get clear. He can’t picture the scene. Neither can I and I wish I had seen it.

“What am I, speaking Urdu?” sneers the clerk, and Dean looks taken aback at the guy’s tone, because he’s used to people deferring to him. Or he assumes they will. He knows he’s smarter than most people because he knows there are monsters, and he flashes fake badges and gains entry to places where he has no business being. It gives him an entitled mindset, even though, as we observe constantly, he is always on the verge of annoying civilians. People don’t like to be treated that way, or told that this freckled hottie is allowed to be in the morgue/crime scene/private funeral, just because he says so. I love it when Dean is taken aback.

“What, you’re drinking malt liquor now?” he says to Sam. Ah, humor. The clerk, though, is about ready to call the “po po”, and Dean takes over. “Put the phone down. Sam, go wait in the car.” Sam protests, Dean insists. He’s a parent, talking to another parent who’s ready to tell the principal that that kid hit my kid, I want him expelled. As Sam exits, Dean smiles tightly at the clerk, who puts the phone down, but definitely does not smile back.

Dean tries to ascertain which way Sam drove off: “Please, you’d be doing me a huge favor.” The clerk says, “That is what I live for. Doing you a favor.” Dean’s charm isn’t getting him anywhere, he accepts that, he changes tactics. He’ll pay for the booze and the smokes. Best of all, is that the clerk looks at the money offered and then says, grinning, “It’s coming back to me now. He took two packs.”

Listen, if a gigantic drunk man threw a bottle at MY head, I’d do the same thing. Dean sees he’s being taken advantage of, sees he’s being milked for more cash, and there’s a stand-off look on his face, like, “Are you kidding me” and then plops down some more cash. Dean always has mini-dramas like these with strangers when he asks for something. It happens all the time. It’s part of the scent he gives off, he can’t help it.

Compensated for his pains, the clerk tells him which way Sammy went. Dean can’t let the clerk win so thoroughly though. He grabs a candy bar, with a “I’m taking THIS” fanfare, and stalks out. It’s slightly sad and also very funny. Oooh, you showed him, Dean Winchester!

3rd scene
The scene at the gas station was in the daylight and it’s night now. They’ve been driving a long time. Aimlessly. Whatever they are looking for, they don’t know. Sam is engulfed in silence and darkness in the passenger seat, and Dean keeps throwing looks his way. The lighting …

The Impala scenes are always very intense. It’s a space of truth but it’s also a space of hiding. Lies can be told in that darkness just as easily as truth. Dean tries to get his son (basically) to open up. It’s no coincidence that a bit later in the episode he will pose as Sam’s dad, trying to track him down. The equality of relationship that we saw in the episodes prior to this one, both of them strong and capable, siblings but with an adult dynamic, has completely tipped over. It will tip over into slapstick in the episode after this one, “Tall Tales,” where they wrestle on the bed and bicker like two little kids. There is no stable ground.

Dean’s trying to talk to Sam (and as he does the camera moves around from the backseat around to the passenger side so we get the both of them in the frame: it’s a beautiful move, simple, clean). “Smoking – throwing bottles – that sounds more like me than you …”

That line has always struck me as off. We have never seen Dean that out of control. Ever. I suppose you could say he is talking generally: I like to party, get lit, whatever … but still. I have always gotten the sense that Dean is a somewhat sexy cuddly drunk, as opposed to a violent one.

Sam, out of the blue, tells Dean to turn left, he doesn’t know why. Meg? Is that you in there? I thought so. Dean obeys, with that slight frustrated eye-roll to his behavior.

The Impala pulls up a long isolated driveway, with alarm-lights going on as the car passes. It’s a gorgeous shot.

Dean is hesitant. This is not a case yet. “Shall we knock?” he asks Sam on the front porch of the house. Dean Winchester knocking on a door? You know you’re through the looking-glass. Sam comes across broken glass at a nearby window and a box full of cut wires. Curiouser and curiouser.

Inside the trashed house, they come across a study, which (naturally) has venetian blinds at the window, so you can get those great noir effects on the wall and on the guys’ faces.

The murder of the hunter, shown on security-video footage, is one of the most grisly and graphic things the show has ever done. I have become immune to watching knives go into people, and creatures being blown apart, blood splatters all over the place, but that moment seen on the security footage sticks with me. It reminds me of a terrible scene from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which I wish I could un-see. My pal Greg Ferrara wrote about that same scene back in 2007 and I remember reading that post and feeling relief that someone had put into words my ambivalence about it.

Watching Sam thrash around as a mad-dog killer is horrible. The worst, though, is the shot of him holding the man’s neck open for the knife. It’s amazing and bold to make one of your lead characters do something like that, and then ask us to forgive it. I mean, it’s like being in a cult where you are asked to believe all kinds of crazy things for the good of the group. Sam slicing that guy’s throat open … worse than anything we’ve seen any actual monster do.

Sam starts to push Dean now: “I did this. How else do you explain it …” Dean stands up for Sam: if Sam did do this, he must have had a reason. Self-defense, something. It is around here that the dead-eyed cobra look comes into Sam’s face on occasion. It could be read as refusal to let himself off the hook (that’s how I read it on my first viewing: Sam rejecting Dean’s half-hearted excuses on his behalf). But on repeat viewings, I’m not sure. There’s a nothing-ness there that I think suggests the battle going on inside, the Meg-ness controlling the conversation, frustrated that Dean isn’t just jumping up and killing Sam then and there. Or maybe loving the fact that Dean doesn’t do that, so that she can keep having her fun.

When they open the closet door, they see a beautifully back-lit rack of some serious weaponry. Beside it is the tell-tale collage of a hunter. I love the collages so much. Here, the only thing I can really catch is a taped-up Xeroxed piece of paper showing all the planets in our solar system, with maybe some vaguely Zodiacal connections.

But there’s more there, the camera swooping over the crazy images. Dean says, “Either this guy’s a Unabomber…” (Ha. A Unabomber. Not THE Unabomber. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “A Unabomber.” “Good luck with that.”) Not only does my friend Mitchell occasionally look like the Unabomber, once I sent a picture of myself to a guy I was dating. He lived in Las Vegas, I was on vacation with my family in New Hampshire. I texted him the following photo saying, “Good morning from the dock,” and he replied, “You look like you’re holed up in the woods writing your manifesto.” Guy turned out to be an asshole but that comment still makes me laugh.

There’s a camera blinking its red light up in the corner, and so the two of them pull up the footage. Staticky and fuzzy, we then watch Sam and the hunter wrestle across the floor in the study. Sam seems like a wild man. I’ve already spoken about the effect that footage had on me.

So let’s take a moment to revel in the reaction shots of both Sam and Dean watching the footage. It doesn’t have that Kim Manners je ne sais quoi … it lacks Manners’ dreamy romanticism, but it is beautiful in its own right. The scene has been practically monochromatic up until now, a black-and-white palette, with a faint hint of blue behind those venetian blinds. Now we get all soft blues and blacks. The shadows rest on their faces softly, almost gently, highlighting the beautiful angles and planes of their faces. Very glamorous shots.

Shadows fall differently on their faces. Ladouceur and team have it down to a science now. Padalecki’s forehead is big, which plunge his eyes into total shadow. Ackles has the really strong nose, the strong lips, plus eyelashes that would rival a bathing beauty emerging from the pool in 1940. His face naturally takes to these shadows as well. These different close-ups go on forever, sometimes starting on Dean and moving down to Sam. It’s all about watching people watching something. Watching people thinking. The blue bars of night-time light from the venetian blinds are still there, and my favorite moment (getting really granular now) is when Dean, shocked at what he just saw, straightens up slightly, moving into a different lighting scheme, turning slightly towards Sam, and suddenly, his eyeball catches the light, goes translucent.

That’s how you utilize a lighting cue!

It reminds me of the “We had faces then” comment from Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard which I talked about in the “Shadows” recap. But it goes all the way back to the gorgeous shot of Dean in the police station in the pilot. Listen. Cinema is about many things: storytelling, drama, conflict. It’s about making money. It’s about entertaining people. But also it’s about Beauty. It is about making pretty pictures on the stage or on the screen, pictures that become a part of our landscape as a people. You know, the silhouettes in doorways used throughout The Searchers. Those images are a part of who I am now, part of my reference library for the world.

Joan Crawford leaning into her key light in Mildred Pierce, in all of her great films, perfectly placed so that the lighting highlights her cheekbones, eyelashes, glimmering eyes, the emotion.

Marilyn Monroe in every single frame of Niagara.

James Dean in the red leather jacket in Rebel Without a Cause.

They are visuals full of symbolic and emotional significance, and yet they also end up existing outside of the story. There will be those who have never seen Rebel Without a Cause but will still know the image of James Dean in the red jacket. There will be those (unfortunate) people who have never seen a Marilyn Monroe movie and yet when they think of her they will think of what she looked like in Niagara. It makes you wonder what came first: the story or the Beauty in the images that tell the story. In the best cases, the most famous cases, they are one and the same.

The dueling closeups of Sam and Dean, and Dean straightening up into another lighting cue where the blue bar of light catches his eyeball is not on the level of John Ford’s use of Monument Valley. But it has the same spirit behind it. It has the same interest in creating a certain kind of iconography, a certain landscape of resonant and palpable beauty that works on an audience: beauty makes the audience lean forward. Beauty has the effect of making an audience satisfied and greedy for more at the same time.

In the final moments of the scene, Dean gets to work, wiping down the room, all as Sam sits in a trance reading a letter to the guy from his daughter. Dean tries to get through to Sam: They have to clean the place up and get the hell out of there. Dean’s activity is in direct contrast to Sam’s stillness, which is shown (just like it was in the teaser) with closer-than-close shots of Sam’s face. You can’t tell what he is thinking. It’s all projection on our part.

4th Scene
The guys enter the room at the Leaping-Fish motel, and the camera is already inside, waiting for them like a stalker, low to the ground, and it’s all hand-held now. When it cuts to a closeup of Sam, it’s still hand-held. The switch-up to hand-held makes the air in the scene feel jagged and unpredictable. You immediately know, without maybe knowing why, that things are going to go south and it’s going to get ugly.

Watching the scene, seeing Sam as not Sam but as Meg speaking through Sam, you can see him pushing Dean into a confrontation. It gets to the point where Sam takes Dean’s gun and hands it to Dean, with a pleading look on his face, tears in his eyes, You know what you have to do. You promised Dad. So manipulative. But there are other behavioral things that reveal Meg to us. There’s that sudden flash of deadness that comes over him from time to time, a flat affect expression.

Then there is Sam’s confession that for the past couple of weeks he has been feeling “rage” and “hate”. He can’t really look at Dean when he makes that confession, just quick glances over. You could interpret that as Sam being embarrassed at the ugliness of his own feelings, but something else is present: the demon knowing she’s maybe pouring it on pretty thick, needing to look away in case she gives herself away.)

Because Dean’s face, when Sammy makes that confession …

Dean gets tense with this “feelings” stuff. When Sam says the words “rage” and “hate” … Dean is suddenly blasted open, and he looks practically … oh God, forgive me for the repetition, but motherly, mother-hen-nish, a worried Mom listening to her depressed teenage son talk about his dark thoughts. The expression is both alarmed and protective. It’s involuntary. I almost feel bad for Dean.

Relatability Doesn’t Matter. Except When It Does. Personal:
I’ve said before that I relate to Sam: feeling like you are a “problem” and that the thoughts and feelings you have are not acceptable to be shared. An identity is set up for you and if you deviate from it you are blamed. This can split you off from yourself. My loony-tunes brain chemistry made this worse. I learned to hide, I learned to compartmentalize, “saving” my family and friends from how bad it was. Nobody could “take” it. People looked at me the way Dean looks at Sam. Alarmed. Concerned. But not understanding me either. Wait … what? You feel what? Having people look at you like that for 20 years ends up being confirmation of how OFF you really are. I am not sure I could have handled Supernatural, especially the various Sam arcs, if I had started watching it pre-2012-crackup and 2013-diagnosis. Because it doesn’t feel “supernatural” at all, it feels like an extremely effective ongoing ever-changing metaphor for living with/managing mental illness. I mean, it’s NOT just that, but it works that way as well. Dean is also a part of me I recognize. I connect with him on the survivor level, which is why I talk about that aspect of him so much. Pleasure reminds you that life is worth living, that you are worth it, life is short, be touched if you want to be touched, as long as no one gets hurt, have AT it. Sam, though … especially Sam in these first five seasons … that’s like my life, man. I’m not sure I could have even perceived that pre-diagnosis. Who knows. All I know is that look on Dean’s face, when he sits down, taking in Sam’s words about “rage” and “hurt” is a look I know all too well coming at me, and I never want to see it again.

Sam even says at one point, “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to scare you.” Very familiar. Naturally, it annoys Dean, as it has annoyed those I have spoken to that way. A comment like that is insulting, because what it says to your concerned friend/family is that you are not strong enough to handle what I’ve got going on.
Who Cares, Right?

As Sam continues to push his darkness on Dean, Dean reacts by rejecting it, offering alternatives, saying “I don’t know, but …”, trying to talk Sam off the ledge. Even when Sam holds the gun out to him, bringing up words that he said before in “Playthings,” and that Meg has latched onto – “You promised …” – Dean’s reaction is not one of shock, or fear. He knows who he is and he knows he will not kill Sam. “I’d rather die,” he says (great line-reading from him, with a smidgen of contempt in it. What are you cracked, brother? I’m not shooting you, get the fuck out of here.)

The thought also doesn’t seem to cross Dean’s mind that Sam has been possessed by a demon, whereas both Jo and Bobby, in later scenes, seem to sense it instantly. Jo doesn’t know much about possession, but she knows enough to know that Sam is really really off when he shows up. But it is a blind spot for Dean, one that Meg counts on and exploits.

In my first viewing, I never guessed that Sam was not Sam in these scenes. I was not questioning what I was seeing. When Sam hauled off and smashed Dean in the face with the pistol, I gasped. I would be curious to hear other people’s responses, if others clicked into something earlier. It reminds me of “Asylum,” another early episode where Sam is co-opted by something evil. There are a lot of similarities between “Born Under a Bad Sign” and “Asylum”, including Dean punching Sam hard once Sam was back to himself. The punch in “Asylum” is hilarious, and the one at the end of “Born Under a Bad Sign” is pretty funny too, made even funnier by Sam’s shocked reaction, almost feminine in its fluttery hand-against-cheek-shocked-huge-eyeballs expression.

Throughout the entire argument, which is really a sober re-tread of the drunken argument in “Playthings,” Dean deals with what he believes is right in front of him: his scared amnesiac brother. Dean is as surprised by that pistol-whip as the audience is. Down he goes (in slo-mo, too. There will be another moment of slo-mo later. It’s a fancy episode visually, isn’t it.)

The whole thing, especially the ending, where “Meg” finally takes the wheel and we can actually SEE her, reminds me of the terrifying moment in Take Shelter when Michael Shannon suddenly goes OFF at the community potluck dinner. If you haven’t seen the film, I cannot recommend it highly enough! It’s a film that works as a metaphor for mental illness, and it also works as an apocalyptic end-of-world scenario. Madness IS the end of the world as we know it. Michael Shannon’s kindly and caring character, haunted by nightmares so scary that he wets the bed, does all he can to hold it all back. His identity does not include “raving maniac”. Of course it doesn’t. He has a wife and two kids. But at that potluck … he can no longer hold it back, and out it comes.

And you know what? There’s a relief in such moments. No more pretense. This is as bad as it is for me. This is what it is like for me. This is who I am. And that’s what Sam says to Dean: “What if this is who I am meant to be?”

5th scene
What could be a boring filler sequence is instead turned into a minor comic set-piece mixed with bittersweet emotional weirdness. Seriously.

The next scene goes as follows:
— Manager wakes Dean up, tells him it’s time to check out.
— Dean asks if he can use the motel computer and calls the cell phone company to get Sam’s GPS on his phone turned on.

I mean, I am yawning just typing those sentences.

Cathryn Humphris turns each little beat into its own mini-moment, a “bit” if you will, and Dean’s super-boring conversation with the cell phone person is then turned into the touching spectacle of Dean posing as his own brother’s worried father, while also taking a moment to listen to the cell phone operator rave about how awesome Justin Timberlake is. All in a day’s work for Dean. There’s also the humorous bit of Dean having to, yet again, hand over money to someone to get what he wants. These people are milking him dry.

In a lot of ways, this tiny sequence in the motel is MORE of a challenge than a big fight scene, or an emotional love scene. With big scenes like that, the stakes are high, the event is clear, everything is important. But “Hey, can you track down my brother’s GPS on the Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz” …. Equal care needs to be given to those tiny scenes, or the whole thing falls apart.

The cranky manger, played by Philip Granger, helps save the day with his battering-ram mantra delivery of, “It’s past checkout time …” The floozy blonde and her white-haired gentleman-friend waiting to get into Dean’s room help save the day. And Ackles saves the day, too, through his sense of disorientation at first, and then his whole vibe on that telephone call. He’s buzzing with urgency, and lying through his teeth: his “son” did not drive to Duluth to see Justin Timberlake. He rolls his eyes when he agrees that JT is a “triple threat” (Mitchell and I agree with that assessment of JT.) His “son” is not a diabetic because … he HAS no son. But watch how touching that phone call ends up being. It says so much about their relationship and how Dean sees himself.

Also, there’s a huge fish hanging on the wall behind Dean’s head and something like that is always a good thing. Especially since he’s a Water-Bearer.

6th scene
Almost mid-way through the episode now, we are treated to a glorious atmosphere in The Sandpiper, the Duluth waterfront bar where Jo works, and, just outside, the waterfront warehouse. It feels like a real location (especially the warehouse). We’re only going to be here briefly, for three scenes, before moving on to Sioux Falls. That’s a lot of driving. How many miles did they log during this episode alone?

It’s so good to see Jo again!

There’s a lot to say here about Jo, and how she plays these scenes coming up, the one with Sam, and the one with Dean. The genre context, for her and for any woman who “lasts” in the Winchester world in any way, is the “Howard Hawks Woman” (which I went into in inappropriately exhaustive detail here). Jo is smart, independent, not deferential to our two leads (a key component of the HH Woman), and yet still capable of great feeling and vulnerability. She’s a young woman, but a part of her is still a hurt little girl. Her father was killed. She talks big to throw people off the scent of her hurt, especially when she’s with the brothers. She doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her. She crawls off into a corner to re-group, she does not make a plea for sympathy. She had to get away from her mother, who was maybe too much in her face about these things, or at least a hovering worrying presence (similar to how Dean is with Sam. “Born Under a Bad Sign” is filled with the mention of parents, the absence of parents, they’re everywhere.)

The scene with Sam is all about that. The scene with Dean is as well, but it’s different, because Dean is recognizably himself, while Sam is not, and Jo is on her guard with Sam from the start. With Dean, too, she is pretty buttoned-up. I think I wrote about this in my comments about Missouri Mosley, who is often criticized for being “mean” or “rude” (I totally disagree.): In Postcards from the Edge, the director (played by Gene Hackman) gives Meryl Streep a talking-to about her behavior. She complains, “You sound like my mother …” and Hackman says, “Listen, you’d make a mother out of anyone.” Dean is the same way. He’s a sex-pot, he’s a grown-up, but there’s something child-like about him too, and he brings out the motherly-scold in everybody, male and female. Jo is younger than Dean, and she turns into an impatient mother, handy with the First Aid kit, and not overly gentle, because come on, you’re a grown man, stop whining and let me patch you up, dumbass.

Once the scene moves to Duluth, in comes the ominous pulse of “Ashes to Ashes,” by The Tarbox Ramblers. Great music choice, man, and a great precursor to The Doors song later. Sam enters in the darkness and she says, sensing his presence with eyes in the back of her head, “We’re closing up.” When Sam speaks, the woman turns, surprised, and we see it is Jo.

How much fun did these two actors have, creating this scene?

One could interpret her less-than-thrilled reaction to Sam’s appearance as being dread that these guys are coming back into her life, or a holdover of resentment because John ended up getting her dad killed. I don’t see it that way. I think Sam is exuding a dangerous energy, almost a forcefield, that Jo, no naive young thing, senses immediately. Jo would never need to read Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear. She has walked through a very violent world since she was a child and she had two very tough parents, who taught her how to defend herself. Back at the roadhouse, she dodged sexual advances with a snark and an eye-roll, managing to see the hunter-mating-game for the bullshit that it was, and keeping her way out of it. She’s not a damsel-in-distress. Sam is … not Sam. She says that later, once he goes openly violent, but she senses it from the start.

I love Alona Tal’s choices. The way she plops the beer down, pretty hard, and then walks off to clear a table. Her armor is UP.

Sam swinging by to look her up … not right. His contemptuous “That’s sort of what we do” answer to her asking how did he find her … not right. Her casual question regarding Dean brings out Sam’s really frightening, “Boy! You’re really carrying a torch for him, aren’t you?” … it’s not right. Jo isn’t so much hurt by the mean-ness as she is taken aback by the not-right-ness of what is in front of her.

Here’s what’s interesting to me about Padalecki. He’s a big handsome guy, but Sam Winchester does not carry himself like he knows he’s a “big handsome guy.” Dean practically sashays through doors with a swish of his pleated skirt in comparison. Dean isn’t vain, but he is certainly not oblivious to the effect he has on others. Sam, though, is often taken aback when he is hit on, or sexualized. There is a lot of humor in these situations. (I loved his reactions to the drooling ladies in the recent “Clue” episode. Dean is more apt to see such behavior as the invitation that it is. Huh, hadn’t really thought about it, but maybe I WOULD like to fuck that person who’s coming onto me… Hmmm. You know Dean always has a condom in his pocket. He’s ready to go. That happens in the “Clue” episode too, with Dean, and seeing the reactions of Sam and Dean, side by side, to drooling female desire was hysterical.)

In a normal context, when Sam is Sam and Dean is Dean, these two different styles are okay, used humorously, context for teasing. Dean gets more action, but that’s just because Dean puts himself out there. Sam doesn’t. If Sam flirted around bars, he’d get laid constantly too. Sam is a relationship guy. He likes sex in the context of monogamy – or, at least, that’s all he knows. Unless we get a flashback telling us otherwise, I think he lost his virginity to Jess. Jess has been the only one thus far. In “Provenance,” especially, Dean advises Sam to loosen up, enjoy flirting a bit, you’re both adults, have fun, Sammy. And, on the flipside, Sam often has to course-correct various situations because Dean’s libido threatens to overturn their schedules. Either because he goes MIA for a night, or because he bats his eyelashes at a morgue attendant or a Marine. Compulsive. However, in the normal round of their lives, there isn’t a lot of resentment between the brothers. They rarely compete for the same woman. Sam is used to his brother getting all the attention. He knows his brother is a bombshell, and he’s used to having people fall down like ninepins at the mere sight of Dean. That being said, Sam is judgmental towards Dean’s promiscuity, rather than envious. Why be envious of something that looks so empty (to Sam)? Dean judges Sam’s prudery (according to Dean) right back. They bicker, they tease, they move on. No big deal. Brothers.

But here, like the sudden reveal of a switchblade, out comes Sam’s resentment of his brother hogging the sexual limelight. Resentment is too mild a word. It’s hatred. Not just of Dean, but of Jo for pining after someone so uninterested in her. How pathetic. Did you honestly think that Dean saw you that way? Please. He doesn’t see you like I see you. And etc. It is NASTY. Jo, again, knows – in her gut – that this is not Sam. She’s not sure how to get out of it, she’s not sure how she will handle it, but you can see her brain whirling around, keeping itself safe, remote, held back. Sam would never talk to her like that. Sam would also never speak of his brother in such a rude way. (This is Meg’s error in judgment, which she makes yet again in the scene with Bobby. “Dean’s in way over his head …” sneers Sam. Sam and Dean may argue amongst themselves, but they don’t throw one another under the bus so casually. It’s a huge “tell.” Bobby clocks it immediately.)

Padalecki has so much fun playing all of this. She says to him, off-screen, “Okay, one beer,” and his so-called welcoming smile (which actually just looks creepy and too intense) vanishes, leaving that dead-ness in its wake. His features go totally slack. ost alarming moment in the scene.

Sam is undeniably tall, but his spirit is so gentle that you forget that. He seems aware of his tallness and intimidating presence, and works with it to put people at ease. Here, though, he sits at the bar, legs spread, taking up as much space as he possibly can, a physical reminder to Jo of his sheer size.

Jo acts like he’s just another customer, someone she maybe knew once, and has no interest in talking to further. There are times when she comes towards the camera, to clear a table, and we see him in the background. We can see her thinking, coiling up in self-protection. She cuts to the chase and asks him what he’s doing there. “We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.” I love Sam’s “shy” glance down before he speaks. The real Sam can be shy and this is something he does when he is “himself”, but it looks different here. It looks manipulative. It looks fake: Let me be all shy … that’ll get her… Just like Dean’s courtship-tactics as the shapeshifter, which trucked in self-pity and self-absorption (Look how deep I am, look how isolated I feel, let me turn that up to 11, chicks love that, they cream their panties at this stuff), it’s contemptuous of the woman being hit on.

So let’s take a moment to tip our hat to Jared Padalecki, who can turn a regular Sam gesture (glancing down shyly, before speaking) into something that looks extremely different in another context.

Sam takes off his jacket and she, a hunter in her DNA, immediately notices a weird red brand on his arm. It’s the first time we’ve seen it too. I remember feeling RELIEF at the sight of it, even though I had no idea what it was. Oh, so that weird mark is obviously the cause of what’s happening … She mentions it, and he starts laughing, saying in a bizarrely hostile way, “Had a run-in with a hot stove.” He says he wants to “square” things with her, that he knows she doesn’t really like his dad. In another “tell,” Sam says he doesn’t blame her: “He was obsessed …”

SEASONS later, Meg will throw the fact that she lived inside Sam’s body and head for a week. That she knows what it’s like in there, she knows his thoughts and feelings. It’s a huge violation. And you can see Meg “acting.” You can see the bullshit. Dean is a much bigger bullshitter than Sam is, and he does it with no compunction whatsoever: “Yes, it’s very lonely being an FBI agent, ma’am … I lie in bed at night, feeling lonely …” Dean how do you say that with a straight face? Sam doesn’t do that, at least not in the way he is doing here, so the overall effect … I’ll be honest. I find it very upsetting. “I’m just telling you because I care.” It has such contempt for Jo.

Now, after 10 seasons of possession and evil-angels and demon-dean and lack-of-souls, I am a bit more prepared for the loss of identity that Sam and Dean regularly experience. But at the time of “Born Under a Bad Sign,” it’s the first real glimpse we get of that experience. And I was dying for Sam to be Sam again. It was extremely anxiety-provoking. And even with Sam’s extremely ambivalent feelings about his father, it’s also not right somehow that he trash-talks his dad. Sam would take a very different tactic, would go out of his way to make Jo feel safe and comfortable, all of the things that Dean refers to as “pansy stuff” in the next episode. Lampooning Sam’s sensitivity is coming up, and in “Born Under a Bad Sign” we see Sam with the sensitivity surgically removed. It sucks.

When Sam reaches out and grabs her hand (although considering the position of their hands, it’s really like he traps her hand beneath his), she moves to put a stop to it all.

Even in the brief time she knew Sam, she got to know who he was, and this self-pitying angry courtship technique is not Sam’s style. When she tries to pull her hand back, he grabs it harder. When she says, “I think you should leave” Sam acquiesces, but grumpily, another red flag.

Their physical work in the fight scene is superb, on both sides. The first section, as they wrestle, is all done in one take. No cuts! The first cut comes when the bottle breaks on the bar, and then we switch points of view, to more wrestling, as Sam heaves her around so that she’s belly-up against the bar, with him pressing in behind her. She pleads for her life, saying his name repeatedly (trying to get through to the real him) and – again, in one take – he smashes her head against the bar, knocking her out, and she swoons over backwards in his arms, her body falling in a dive. He scoops her up like she weighs nothing and lies her down on the bar. One shot. That head-knock against the bar looks real. Her swoon backwards requires total trust in Padalecki to catch her. It’s all one movement. It’s a beautiful and violent ballet. It’s very upsetting, but that other side of my brain, the actor-side, loves fight choreography, is in love with the scene for its spare-ness (only three shots), and its sense of movement and trust between the actors. It is important to remember, too, the disparity in strength between these two. If Padalecki were to really struggle with Jo, it would be no contest. Padalecki has to fake the struggle in order to not hurt the actress – but it has to look real. This is hard stuff. Right brain/left brain stuff.

I love the scene because it’s not cut to death in the editing room. These two actors actually have to play it out. A lot of films create such violent scenes in the editing room, trying to maximize the sense of danger by using a lot of quick cuts. It’s annoying. Let me see what’s going on without a cut every 1.5 seconds please.

The smashing of the bottle on the bar brings to mind a famous moment from Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire, the scene where Stanley rapes Blanche. She is panicked, and breaks a bottle to fend him off. Instead of being scared, he gets turned on.

STANLEY: Oh! So you want some roughhouse! All right, let’s have some roughhouse! [He springs toward her, overturning the table. She cries out and strikes at him with the bottle top but he catches her wrist] Tiger – tiger! Drop the bottle-top! Drop it! We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning!

Sam is turned on by how hard she struggles, how easy it is for him to subdue her. Thinking about the diminutive Meg inside Sam, the thrill she must feel at inhabiting a person so huge just adds to the nastiness.

But still: gorgeous scene.

7th scene

Even more gorgeous is the transition into the next scene, which involves:
1. a record starting up on the jukebox.
2. slo-mo that is so subtle it almost can’t be discerned, but it makes me feel queasy just looking at it. It’s very David Lynch-ish.

The record plops down on the old-school jukebox, the song chosen presumably by Sam, as accompaniment to his torture/rape/dismemberment/whatever he has in mind for Jo. It’s “The Crystal Ship” by The Doors, with lyrics creepy enough to make your blood run cold. Or, I suppose, if you were high on hallucinogenics in Haight-Ashbury, circa 1968, it would have sounded like one heck of a good time!

Before you slip into unconsciousness
I’d like to have another kiss
Another flashing chance at bliss
Another kiss, another kiss

The days are bright and filled with pain
Enclose me in your gentle rain
The time you ran was too insane
We’ll meet again, we’ll meet again

Oh tell me where your freedom lies
The streets are fields that never die
Deliver me from reasons why
You’d rather cry, I’d rather fly

The crystal ship is being filled
A thousand girls, a thousand thrills
A million ways to spend your time
When we get back, I’ll drop a line

I mean … thanks for sharing, psychopath! I love that Dean’s casually tossed-off “I’ll call you,” to Jo, is an echo from the last line of the song. The images in the song show complete obliteration of self, with “girls” ceasing to be individuals. There’s a “thousand” of them, each of them offer a “thrill,” a “million ways to spend your time” … with that much variety, why focus on just one? Really good choice of song, especially when used as accompaniment to Jo “coming to,” with that verrrry slight slo-mo on her.

I love Jo’s response to him upon coming-to: “You’re not Sam.”

Padalecki and Ackles have both talked about how one of the greatest challenges of the episode “What Is and What Should Never Be” (coming up) was to play the scenes where Sam and Dean didn’t get along. It made them both feel uncomfortable. They didn’t like it. They both said things about it to Kripke, like, “This is so weird … I don’t like this.” They had identified so strongly with their characters! One of the other challenges that both of them have to face as actors is the challenge of transformation. They have to become “other.” Padalecki had to work out for himself what Sam without a Soul would look like. He had to figure out how he would play being possessed by an angel who spoke only in haughty iambic pentameter. Ackles had to figure out what Purgatory PTSD would look like, and what Dean would be like 5 years in the unforeseeable future. He had to imagine himself into the domestic dream-world of life with Lisa, and what Dean would be like as a boyfriend. He had to figure out what Dean as Demon would be like.

Ponch and John never had such problems!

They were static. They did not change.

So a scene like this poses a huge challenge to the actor. Who is Sam without a conscience? Who is Sam, when he’s being run by Meg? How does it manifest? We already saw a bit of it. Barely concealed rage. Contempt towards Dean. Sexual tone-deaf-ness. The thing that strikes me is how much fun Sam (or Meg) is having. His body language, his face, his phraseology, his expressions … all point to his glee. Meg is thrilled at destabilizing Jo, a trusted figure in Sam’s life, quarrel notwithstanding. Instead of going in for the kill, we are instead treated to a long cat-and-mouse conversation, with Sam goading Jo into talking about her dad’s death. He’s going to torment her by giving her the truth, and giving it to her in graphic terms, so that the picture of her father, torn up and gurgling, will be in her mind forevermore. Meg is not fucking around.

As I said, something like this could be so cheesy, people! Like, I might wince with embarrassment if it didn’t come off! But it does come off, and that is mainly due to Padalecki’s inventiveness and creativity.

“Like Daddy, like daughter. You’re bait. Open up.”

That moment is up there with the security-cam footage in ugliness.

There are a couple of great details: the gentle way Sam strokes her face with the sharp edge of the knife, using it to move her hair out of the way. Tender. Caring. The way he circles the post, peeking his head around at her, keeping her off-balance. The smile on his lips. The smile of knowing something she doesn’t. But there’s another moment I like: he gets up and moves behind the post at one point, and for a second, just a second, he looks around … and he looks at a loss. The alternating grin/cobra-face vanishes for a second. She doesn’t see it because he’s behind her, and when he re-appears he’s got himself together, but for just a second … he doesn’t know what to do next.

When he tells her the “true” story of what happened to her dad, the camera is right up in their faces, the two of them in the same frame, just like they always do with Sam and Dean. He’s so close to her, and she can’t get away. We also cannot get away, because there is nothing else to look at on the screen. Claustrophobic.

When Dean bursts in, Sam suddenly “acts like Sam” again, screaming “I begged you to stop me, Dean.” Dean appears openly upset. Out of breath. The moment he has been dreading … is here.

How many times does Dean say to someone, “That bad thing you did … that wasn’t you … it’s not your fault …” He does not extend the same grace to himself. Often we are far more forgiving of others than we ever are of ourselves. Dean throws himself out on a limb, trusting that Sam will become himself again … before Dean has to really do anything about it. Fuck his dad’s whisper, in other words. I love how John’s whisper is built up to so much through the first half of the season – by never mentioning it – and then once it’s out … Dean immediately begins to disobey it, left and right, not once questioning his disloyalty to Dad. He’ll die trying to SAVE Sam. The same is true for the promise given during “Playthings.” Dean will be perfectly fine going back on that promise. Fuck you, Dad. And fuck you, Sam. Fuck you both for putting that on me. It’s great. Dean’s mission in life is to look out for his brother, as he said earlier in the motel room: “I have tried so hard to keep you safe.” Everything he does comes from that.

Sam screams “SHOOT ME” and at that moment, we get the eerie slo-mo again. I love how it’s used in the episode, three times: when Dean goes down, when Jo wakes up, when Sam shouts “Shoot me.” And it’s all the same speed, not too slow, but just enough that it makes everything seem dazed, slightly unreal, ripe for danger.

The tense standoff draws on, with one of those Dirty-Harry focus-pulls, moving from Dean’s face to the gun and back to Dean’s face. Badass. When Dean turns away, supposedly admitting defeat, Sam shouts the theme of the Dean Winchester character, the “problem,” the “spine” to use Elia Kazan’s terminology. I talked about the spine a lot here. Spines can be boiled down into a character’s essence, what he wants. The spine should not be dissertation-length. It should be a sentence. And here it is:

“What is wrong with you, Dean? Are you that scared of being alone that you’d rather let Jo die?”

Of course, no, Dean does not want to let Jo die, and by this point he has “got the memo” and knows that Sam is not Sam, and therefore has turned around to bust out the holy water. But still: those words echo … and echo … and echo. They’re practically a throwaway here, and easily dismissed because Sam is so obviously EVIL right now. But that’s the spine, the essential “problem” of Dean.

When Dean hits Sam with sprays of holy water, Sam starts smoking (Menthols?), and grunting and growling and going black-eyed and it almost reaches the Silly Plateau. The whole episode teeters on the edge of the Silly Plateau.

Sam takes a running jump and crashes out through the windows behind the bar into the night. All business, not even a “Hey, how are ya,” Dean slices Jo’s hands free, and starts after Sam.

Jo calls out to Dean, panicked, hopeful, and she seems very young suddenly: “He was possessed??”

Dean stops in the window to look back at her, a Movie Star Male Icon Hero moment.

Best of all, though, he does not respond! Just turns and continues on after Sam.

A Hero does not have time to talk.

Cathryn Humphris knows what she’s doing. Mad Men was lucky to have her.

8th scene

The warehouse is the star of the next scene, which features too much explanatory speechifying to really keep my interest. But the space is vast, cavernous, misty, filled with boating equipment and ropes, and it looks like a real location, as opposed to a set. (The sound design is great too: the clanking of buoys out in the water, the trilling of the loons, the swish of water. I grew up in a fishing town. These details are right.) The scene that follows is borrowed from every Black-Hat/White-Hat standoff in Western movies, where the two adversaries hide, guns drawn, calling out accusations and taunts and “here’s where I’m coming from” explanations into the empty air between them. Shots fly, ricocheting way too close. The point is to get all that exposition out. Boring. So your scenery better be interesting.

It is.

Filmed with disorienting zig-zags of the camera, Dean tries to get to a safe vantage point, trying to see where Sam might be out there. Dean’s clothes are dark, he blends into the background. Sam, in his light-blue shirt, sticks out.

“You’ve been in Sam since he disappeared, haven’t you?” calls out Dean, using the sexual language that he will end up commenting on later with a joke. They’re sometimes subtle with this, but more often than not they are not, instead choosing to have a lot of fun with the concept of things being “up inside” other people. Supernatural, you crazy. The fact that Supernatural has fun with it, to the point that they end the episode on a joke about it, is great. Let the fans write dissertations about trauma and assault. The show leaves a lot of room for the fans who want to be outraged, it leaves a lot of room for the audience to get pissed off, freaked out, whatever. I am not knocking these things. It’s all great! This type of space around serious concepts, the fact that Supernatural is not literal with it, and often brushes things off with a joke, is one of the reasons WHY the fan base is so devoted. They feel protective of the characters. These are all trigger-y concepts having to do with consent, and the show re-visits it again and again and again. I don’t think I would have loved the show so much if it was in love with trauma, and poured on the “My God, it was so awful what just happened to me …” and blech, please. I love the show because the characters try to brush things off, make light of it, deflect. We can still SEE how messed up it all is. It’s still horrible, but there’s a sense of irony to it that is very entertaining.

I’m not crazy about the “explanation” scenes, especially with exchanges like this:

“Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?”
“That would have been too easy. Where’s the fun in that?”

Also that Sam basically tells Dean his plan to target hunters. “I’m gonna kill as many of them as I can!” Oh, so okay, you are telling your adversary your modus operandi. It happens a lot in the scripts of Supernatural and it’s a flaw. They are aware of it, and have made concerted efforts to avoid it, but it still presents an irresistible pull.

Dean’s masculinity is called into question, as it often is. When Sam calls out to Dean that: “I should have known you wouldn’t have the sac …” Dean’s reluctance to kill his own brother is used against him. This is what tyrants do, this is what cult leaders do, they make people reject that which is natural. Children turning parents in, husband informing on wife … Stalin made heroes out of such people. As Jason Beghe said in his famous exit interview from a certain cult: The best cons are the ones where you police yourself. That was John Winchester’s tactics with his sons. They needed to learn all this stuff so well that obeying would be automatic. They needed to police themselves. When John re-entered their lives at the tail-end of Season 1, we could clearly see – in front of our eyes, for the first time – the damage that was done to these two guys, how they changed in their father’s presence. Dean got submissive, Sam got aggressive. It was startling. Emasculating. Dean being “as much of a man” as his dad is going to become crucial, even more so in Season 3, Season 4.

Sam escapes the warehouse, drawing Dean out into the open. Dean is maybe disoriented because he is hunting his brother, and he creeps out from the shadow of the building, peering over the edge of the dock into the water. He’s totally exposed. Methinks he would never be so careless if he were hunting a Wendigo (then again, normally he is hunting BESIDE Sam, so they can dole out the risks between them.) Dean turns, and sees Sam pointing the gun at him. Sam fires. Dean goes over into the water.

I’m thinking Meg is not as good a shot as Sam Winchester is. Sam would have been able to put that bullet right through Dean’s heart.

Sam peers over the edge, and there’s no sign of Dean in the black water below (with the posts of the dock stretching off into the watery distance. It’s beautiful and atmospheric.) Listen for the “whoo-hoooooooo” of the loon.

Makes me think of a certain Grande Dame.

9th scene
Jo stalks through the warehouse, ringing Dean on his cell, and pointing her flashlight around. I love how she walks. I love her whole stalking posture here, doing two things at the same time, flashlight, phone, all as she deals with a bump on the noggin and a surge of adrenaline.

She’s more frustrated than freaked. I like that. I like her choices as an actress. She adds a great dynamic to the relationship. That will continue on through the following scene with Dean. These are all tough people. They dig bullets out of each other’s bodies, numbing the pain with whiskey. You’re expected to not make a big fuss out of stuff. It would be embarrassing otherwise.

Making her way through the totally glamorous dock, she starts to hear Dean’s dad-blasted ring tone emanating from below her somewhere. She stops, and, like Dean straightening up into the blue shaft of light that then caught his eyeball, Jo has to step into the light cue to complete the moment – and it’s a doozy. She’s in complete darkness, coming towards us, up until her final step where … this happens.

I’m slightly obsessed with Jo in Movement.

She’s small, delicate, lithe, but when she needs to move, she moves. The way she jumps down onto the lower ramp, still with the cell phone and the flashlight … Dean lies half in the water, half out, like a fish struggling to take its first steps on land, perhaps? Wall-divider premonition? Nah, just teasing.

She helps him up, and my favorite moment is that his legs give out, once he’s vertical. He’s up, and then, he’s on his way down again. It’s a stunning visual of the two of them headed up that ramp.

10th scene

While nothing can compete with the butch primal toughness in Season 4 of Sam sewing up his own wound, dousing it with whiskey, and then jamming Dean’s dislocated shoulder back into place, the scene that follows comes close. Jo and Dean sit in the bar, and the camera pans along the table, all to the accompaniment of Dean’s groans of pain. Swiftly, we see Jo plop the bullet into a shot glass (so butch! so Wild West!), and Dean take a desperate gulp from a bottle. She is no-nonsense, even annoyed that he’s being such a “baby” about it.

“You’re a butcher,” grunts Dean, and Jo says, “You’re welcome,” and I’m in love with both of them.

He is gruff and ungrateful (“Are we done yet?”) She is unsympathetic. It’s awesome.

Since Dean had come prepared with holy water, he had obviously figured out what was going on with Sam, and Jo, mind still on the terrible things Sam had said to her, asks Dean how he knew. Her hunter’s mind wanting to learn, but also wanting to write it all off as a lie, no truth in it. Dean says he just knew “it couldn’t have been him.” It takes a little bit for Jo to ask the next question. She just was attacked by another Winchester. She’s not too trusting of either of them at this point. Dean had already put her through her paces when they teamed up on the hunt in Philadelphia, and Jo is sensitive about being perceived as incompetent. She doesn’t want to open herself up to embarrassment by not knowing something. So when she asks Dean, “Do demons ever tell the truth,” it takes a little bit. It’s a risk for her.

Dean, still gulping down booze in the foreground, says sure, “why do you ask?”

And now it is her turn to not answer. “No reason. It doesn’t matter.”

These people hold their cards close to the vest. It’s such a treacherous landscape. It helps enormously in keeping the tension going. If everyone said what was really on their minds at every moment … well. Nobody talks like that, number 1. And number 2, you would obliterate any tension you may have built up. It is what people DON’T say that often matters most.

The space between Jo and Dean is prickly. Their dead fathers are there in that space. Sam is there. Ellen is there, too. The easy camaraderie that will come later is not in existence yet. Dean is working a buzz, a major buzz, with shoulder exposed (just another way Supernatural messes with what the audience wants: Okay, y’all are dying to see skin. Here’s a glimpse, and only for a second, and not in a sexual context. GOTCHA.) Next stop: Bobby’s. Jo assumes she’s coming. She’s back in now.

I’ve used this gif before, and I am sure I will use it again.

Dean, though, doesn’t even consider it as a possibility. “Huh? You’re not coming.” Hysterical. Like, not even a discussion. This is the shit that drives Jo crazy about how she’s treated. She balks, and Dean doesn’t even blink. He doesn’t raise his voice. It’s not even a fight to him. It’s non-negotiable. “You try and follow me and I’ll tie you right back to that post.” Hard to argue with that. Especially when he’s really gone into Bathing Beauty mode now. The overall effect is gentle. A strange mix, considering his words, but compelling. He means what he says.

He looks both very young, somehow, and incredibly wise. His face is open and yet also a closed door. She’s not coming with: “that’s just how it’s gonna be.”

The pill bottle moment following is great, because Dean is on his way out and Jo can’t help but stop him. Inside she might want to punish him for not letting her come along, but the man has a bullet-hole in his shoulder, and the pain pills might help, and … dammit, wait. The way she says “wait.” It says everything! This is the “Dean could make a mother out of anyone” thing, and she resents it, especially when he basically just pulled a “You’re not coming with, end of story, I’ll tie you up if you disobey, see ya wouldn’t want to be ya” with her. She’s gentle almost against her will as she hands the pills over. It’s so multi-layered, and there’s a long moment of eye contact, with Dean taking her in, his face going soft, opening up, Jo staring back, trying to seem … maybe not as freaked as she is … and then Dean breaks the moment, still in that soft space though, heading off with a casual, “I’ll call you” over his bum shoulder.

The final moment is so classic Hollywood. Big huge closeup of Jo watching him go, with a mixture of rue, mild humor and self-knowledge on her face. “No, you won’t,” she says to his vanishing back.

Aaaand scene.

I get attached to these people. I can’t help it. I am attached to Ash and to Pamela and to Jo and Ellen. To Garth, to Bobby, to … Melanie, the girl from “The Mentalists.” (Sorry. I feel like I’m running a political campaign for a losing candidate every time I bring her up.) I get attached to these people and I love it when they come back.

11th scene

Thank goodness Bobby apparently doesn’t have a cell phone.

Bobby’s face lights up when he sees Sam at the door. Sam is now pretty much a “bad actor,” as far as I’m concerned, with the shy-squnit-smile he does, now seeming manipulative and “acted” as opposed to an organic gesture. Bobby, though, seems not to notice. He’s all, “Hey! Long time! Come in!”

This entire opening moment in Bobby’s house is one big con, and it’s so much fun to watch once you know that Bobby knows instantly that that is not Sam at his doorstep. Bobby is too good a hunter to show his suspicions. He is also in-tune with Sam and Dean – they usually call first. Just showing up on the doorstep unannounced is weird. And Sam’s smile is weird. And why isn’t he with Dean? And what’s with the He-Man Action Figure posture? All of these things would flit through Bobby’s mind in the instant he saw Sam at the door, and yet he plays it cool. Bobby is “acting” himself. So as they move into the dump of a house, it’s two performances coming at each other: Meg acting like she’s Sam, and Bobby acting like he doesn’t notice.

A word on the set of Bobby’s house. It was not originally built to last 6 or 7 seasons or whatever it was. It was basically erected as a one-off, but then as Bobby grew in stature, more and more scenes happened there, and by the end of its run, the set was hanging together by a thread. So of course they burnt the house down. Hysterical. Kripke et al have been very funny on various commentary tracks about that damn house, and how if they had known it would be such a huge repeat location, they would have put more time into it. But whatever, low-budget show, it works. It’s funny to me, though, to watch how the set developed. From the beginning, that main book-lined room was really the only set. The kitchen was a dark mysterious space off to the side, and they just passed through it, you never really saw it. When they got to later seasons, they built that kitchen out so that … you know … actual SCENES could go on there and there would be another place for the guys to hang out. The house was always meant to be a rat-trap-slash-book-depository, but in these early episodes it is damn near a hovel. Not so much by the time we get to Season 5, 6. There’s a couch, there’s more detail shown in the background, there are hallways and stairwells. At least it looks semi-livable. But at this stage of the game? Bobby may as well be squatting in an abandoned derelict building.

There’s an interesting moment when Bobby goes off to get Sam a beer, and as he leaves he asks, “Where’s Dean?” Because, of course, Sam and Dean go together. Like a married couple. It’s the same question Jo asked, and Sam says the snarky dismissive line about Dean being holed up with “a girl and a 12-pack.” And his chest is puffed out, but he looks really … weird. At odds with himself. Awkward. Like an amateur actor who doesn’t know how to do blocking. Anyone who has met Sam for 5 minutes might say, “Dude, what’s up with you right now?” It’s a really good choice, because the “stress” of having to “pretend” he’s Sweet Sam with Bobby is a bit much, even for Meg. When Sam and Bobby talk about Dean in other situations, the given is always that they both care about him. They can say “You know how Dean is” without throwing him under the bus. Sam’s vicious tone would give Bobby the creepy-crawlies, and so he’s off-screen, sprinkling holy water into Sam’s bottle of beer. Hilarious.

Bobby returns with the beer, but then, best of all, he takes a moment, a fatherly emotional moment, to toast to John. To John! How awesome is that. So manipulative. Would Bobby ever force either Winchester son to toast John? No WAY. Sam acts the shit out of his response, saying sincerely, almost sappily, “To Dad.”

Bobby’s eyes gleam as he drinks, and he never takes his eyes off Sam. Sam takes a swig, and immediately starts smoking (Menthols?), and Bobby still keeps drinking, with a glint of vicious enjoyment in his eyes.

One of the most badass satisfying moments in the episode.

12th scene

The visuals in this scene are a mirror of the exorcism scene in “Devil’s Trap,” so even though we still have no idea that it’s Meg in there, we very well may guess from this scene, since basically we’ve seen it all before. Dean’s eyes glancing up, Sam’s eyes and head following, the camera moving up to show the devil’s trap on the ceiling. Same exact shots.

Sam sits tied up in the middle of the room, Dean has arrived, and slaps Sam, hard, across the face. Bobby stands at Dean’s side. Both Bobby and Dean assume that this is an emissary from Yellow-Eyes. The Meg reveal comes late. But Padalecki, trapped in the chair, sneering insinuatingly up at his captors, is doing an imitation of Nikky Aycox, and a pretty good one. There’s that sexual knowingness in every line, the sense of glee in being cruel, the hilarity at the sight of Bobby and Dean being baffled. It’s a hell of a performance.

The disorienting situation is that Dean and Bobby are looking at the vessel that is their beloved Sam, and yet are speaking to the evil entity within. It changes everything, it makes things real clear. Sam, as Meg, is impervious. Nothing throws her. Dean and Bobby have the exorcism planned, in order to get that thing out of Sam without hurting him. This will be a constant issue, made most plain in Season 4, when Sam discovers his demon-blood powers, that he can force the demon to exit and, in many cases, save the vessel. He feels like a savior. Dean thinks he’s gone off the rails. But that discussion is an important one, part of the warp and weft of Supernatural, where innocent human beings are constantly being penetrated against their will by the demons roving the earth. Meg refers to Sam as a “meat puppet” and it’s so gross and dehumanizing. The words “meat puppet” and “meat suit” will become a common lexicon, but it’s relatively new here. Demons count on Sam and Dean’s hesitance to kill the vessel.

Bobby starts reading the exorcism ritual, and I love the thought of the various Supernatural actors, getting whatever script, and being like, “Oh shit. Latin. Let’s get to it.” They have a professor basically on call to help with pronunciation. Great. Dean, working under the assumption that the Demon is part of the “plan” for Sam, says, “Whatever bitch-boy master plan you demons are cooking up … you’re not getting Sam.” He’s ferocious. Sam goes through the same thing Meg went through, his body jerking around, resisting the Latin words, but then, alarmingly, he throws back his head and starts laughing. It’s a huge belly-laugh.

When Sam says, “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Master Plan …” (neither do I, dude) both Bobby and Dean look disconcerted. It gets worse when Sam puts his head down and starts chanting the Latin ritual himself, to no effect. As he continues to murmur the words, the fire in the fireplace explodes, a giant wind starts whipping Bobby’s papers around, and the ceiling starts to crack, breaking up the Devil’s Trap. Bobby’s house can’t take the strain. I’m concerned.

Dean and Bobby shout to one another, over the wind, over Sam’s voice, confused and scared. Bobby sees that brand on Sam’s arm and informs Dean (and us) that it’s a “binding link”, locking the demon inside Sam.

Methinks if the demons wanted to get away with such shenanigans, they’d put the binding link in the crack of his ass or something, where it wouldn’t be so visible. I shoulda been a demon.

When Sam looks back at Dean, his eyes have gone black, and even though Dean knows that the thing he is looking at isn’t his brother … it’s still awful for him. Because … that IS his brother. Dean’s heart is in his throat. It’s scary.

Sam takes that moment of human disorientation to throw Bobby and Dean around the room. Bodies fly, crashing into bookcases and walls. Dean is already injured, and crashing into the doorpost doesn’t help. He lies on the floor, in agony. (Ackles is good with this stuff. Dean is a hero, but he feels pain. He is macho and tough, but the pain is real. It’s reminiscent of, say, Harrison Ford as Action Hero. If you watch Raiders, or Air Force One … in moments of physical conflict, Harrison Ford is not afraid to “go there,” to show fear, or surprise, or pain. Some action heroes are not called upon to do that. Their roles are impervious. That’s the appeal of them. But with Harrison Ford, you never forget that he’s a man, a human. He doesn’t take the position that showing that will make him less of a hero. I treasure the male action stars who are like that. It makes the action sequences that much more tense and gripping, because … that guy up there, strong A-list movie star though he may be, may not come out of this unharmed.)

Dean is strong and capable. He’s the guy you want around in a crisis. But he also seems extremely vulnerable. Even mid-fight. I’ve referenced this before. He’s superb physically.

One other thing I notice, and this is a theme with a couple other very specific fights of his, usually with a loved person in his life who is inhabited by something evil: He doesn’t fight back. It happens here with Sam. It happens with Bobby a couple seasons later. It happens with Castiel in the crypt even later than that. Each fight has a similar thru-line. They punch him in the head so many times he becomes nearly unrecognizable, and any one of those punches could actually kill him. And Dean takes it. Sometimes he pleads, “This isn’t you … this isn’t you …” but he does not find whatever strength he has left to throw some punches back (as he does in many other situations when he is cornered.) He gives in. He refuses to retaliate. It’s tragic. It’s beautifully consistent. Granted, there are a couple of fight scenes with Sam where they are equally matched – but that’s when Sam is Sam. Here, Sam is not Sam. Dean just takes the punches. When Sam grinds his hand into Dean’s injured shoulder, Dean is in agony, but watch for his hand resting on Sam’s wrist, the same wrist that is hurting him. And at one point, he’s holding onto Sam’s shirt, clutching it, his hand just resting there. It has a childlike look to it, that gesture, the way a little kid will rest their hand on your arm and just leave it there. He does this with Castiel too, in the crypt, when Castiel reaches his hand out towards Dean’s face (ultimately to heal him, but Dean expects another blow). Dean grabs onto Castiel’s arm, and there’s a plea in that touch, it’s submissive and gentle, he doesn’t throw the arm off, or react in any way … He does not find it within himself to get to his feet and knock Castiel out. Or Sam. Or Bobby. He can’t. It’s not in him. He loves these people. Love is a serious matter to Dean, because it happens so rarely. Not many people get “in there” with him (talk about a binding link). The refusal to fight back in these very specific circumstances is one of the keys to Dean’s emotional life, his essence, his spine.

That hand gripping Sam’s shirt helplessly, all as Sam beats the shit out of him, is the ultimate in vulnerable. That’s all Ackles.

Meg now reveals herself, and she has a monologue about what Hell is like and how bad it is, even for demons, and in between each phrase, she smashes her fist into Dean’s face. It’s foreshadowing, too. For Dean, who will end up in Hell. Every punch to Dean’s head is done in medium-shot. Meaning: pretty close. They are fake punches, obviously, but it’s much more challenging to fake things when the camera is this close. These guys are amazing. The trust such a scene requires on both sides … Padalecki “pulling” his punches in a way that cannot be discerned by the audience, and Ackles “faking” his reaction in a way that seems visceral and real. Take the punch. It’s make-believe. I love make-believe. It’s what I call the Bang Bang You’re Dead School of Acting, and it is one of my favorite things (my favorite example right here.)

Dean the scene-stealer comes into play. Sam has been the focus all along, and suddenly we realize that everything we have seen up until now has been about Dean, Meg’s desire to torture Dean. The script goes explicit, setting off a reverb that we are still living with 8 seasons later:

“I can see it in your eyes, Dean. You’re worthless.”

This type of language, especially spoken by his brother, whom Dean has often wondered, uneasily, What does Sammy think of me? – disarms Dean. There are things that disarm all of us, that sucker-punch us no matter how armored, or how prepared we might be. Dean is more able to dismiss such commentary if it comes from an adversary who doesn’t look like his brother … or his mother … or Castiel. Supernatural is an emotional swamp, with people up to their necks in their own psychodramas. That’s the appeal, that’s the draw. Demons, Hell, Yellow-Eyes, I don’t really care about any of those things. Or, it’s not what keeps me watching week after week. What I love is that SWAMP, and the opportunities they find to dig in there, explore the psychology, torment their main characters, make them face things, force them to deny things. It’s so compelling!

Dean had thought he was doing one thing: tracking a demon who was using Sam as bait. Turns out Dean was the “bait” all along. Dean was the one being tracked, not Sam. Meg’s sneering words about Dean’s worthlessness are Dean’s Kryptonite. He goes slack, he accepts the force of those words, Meg is merely saying out loud what he already knows. It’s infuriating to watch, because, of course, as audience members, we know he is not worthless. The fact that the show is still getting mileage out of that disconnect (“But you’re so awesome. How can you have such a low opinion of yourself??”) is a minor miracle. I credit the actor playing it, no surprise there. With anyone else, it would have become unnecessarily repetitive and it would have seemed like the character is stupid and refuses to grow or change. But that’s not our experience of Dean at all. So it creates great tension between audience and character, emotional investment.

“You couldn’t save your dad. You couldn’t save your brother. They would have been better off without you.”

Palpably untrue, but Dean’s secret feelings spoken out. And still: clutching onto Sam’s shirt. Almost binding them together. Keeping Sam close with his clutch. Such a strange and beautiful fight-choreography choice.

Bobby suddenly re-appears, a desperate man, holding a hot fire-poker, which he jams into Sam’s arm, breaking the brand. That’s gotta hurt. That would also leave a hell of a scar. But, you know. This is Supernatural. No scars to be found later on. The demon comes pouring out of Sam’s mouth in an unending sexual stream of black smoke, flooding into the room and then racing up the fireplace.

We teeter on the edge of the Silly Plateau. We refuse to go over the side.

Sam collapses, and Dean struggles to sit up, holding his shoulder, blood seeping from his nose. Sam wakes up, and he’s clearly himself again, “coming to,” having no idea what just happened. Dean looks like a panel in a medieval triptych, gloriously martyred, beautiful and bloody, shining through the dark Byzantine space. Seriously. Dean injured is filmed like it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

The final moment of the scene is played for laughs. Sam says, “Did I miss anything?” and with his last ounce of strength, Dean leans forward with his good arm and punches Sam in the face. Sam grips his cheek like a surprised damsel – and the look on his face reminds me of this gorgeous moment of film-making satire.

It’s that over-the-top.

13th scene

There are ice packs. There’s a wisecrack about how Dean looks like crap. Sam doesn’t seem the worse for wear. Dean, on the other hand …

Dean’s had a rough couple of days. Nobody’s talking about what just happened. Nobody says a WORD, which I think is hysterical. Nobody’s like, “Dude … this whole thing was because of Meg? For real?” That’ll come in the final Impala scene, but for now, the brothers sit in Bobby’s main room, recuperating silently.

When Bobby approaches them, he does so with a deliberate step, deliberate and yet somehow hesitant. It gets their attention. Bobby has entered the scene filled with … something. Something that sets off alarm bells. As if having your ceiling cracked open and Sam being exorcised wasn’t troubling enough …

Similar to the gleam in Bobby’s eye as Sam drank the beer, the following moment shows Jim Beaver’s beautiful understanding of his own character, or where the guy is coming from, but more important than that: how he communicates. Bobby is so huge to the fan-base now, he became such an enormous part of the show, but at this moment, he’s still a new entity. We don’t know him yet. For me, “Born Under a Bad Sign” was my real introduction to Bobby. I thought, “Oh. Okay. I get who you are now.” He is so impressive.

Bobby, in a measured voice, asks the brothers if they’ve ever heard of the hunter who was just killed. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” asks Bobby, and he’s placed off-center in the frame. As close as the camera is, there’s still this dark space off to the right-hand side. It’s beautiful. Somehow that dark space helps us focus in on what is happening over to the left-hand side in Bobby’s face. But what I find most interesting is that Sam and Dean are sitting there. Sam was just a demon for an entire week. But Bobby addresses all of his questions right to Dean.

There could be many reasons for that but I prefer to swim in the swamp of possibilities. There are many. Sam exudes “difference,” and we can see how he is treated as such, even by someone kindly like Ellen. There’s still something a little … distant there. Dean is the older brother, and even though Sam is a man now, too, everyone persists in seeing Dean as the leader, the go-to guy. Bobby will always see Sam as a boy. That could be there. But it also could be that Bobby expects Dean to lie to him. He wants the lie, not the truth, and Sam would tell the truth. So the entire conversation is in code, code that Bobby understands, code that Dean understands, code that Sam rejects.

Sam whispers, “Dean …” to stop the lie, but Bobby cuts Sam off. Dean does not take his eyes off Bobby, his head going back, similar to the lighting cue earlier with the blue shaft of light, only this time, his eyes go into the shadows. Dean’s willingness to accept that darkness of the lie. He and Bobby know the score. It’s an ugly score, because poor Steve, you know? and poor daughter-of-Steve, but – to quote Harriet the Spy: “Sometimes you have to lie.”

It’s brutal, no matter how you slice it. It’s morally ambivalent.

Again, straight to Dean from Bobby: “You understand what I’m saying.”

Introducing Bobby Singer. No surprise that he will show up in the episode following “Born Under a Bad Sign” as an important outside eye. A confidante, a father figure, a collaborator. This relationship is now crucial to the structure of the show. It wasn’t until this moment.

Dean and Sam haul themselves to their feet, and Bobby hands them two charms to “fend off possession.” (Would have been nice to have those all along, Supernatural, Jeez Louise.) “That demon’s still out there. This’ll stop it from gettin’ back up in ya.”

An opening, one Dean finds unsurprisingly irresistible. “That sounds vaguely dirty, but thanks.” Sam laughs. I love that he laughs. He just was co-opted by a demon for a week. He killed an innocent man. He terrorized Jo. He beat up his brother. And still, he laughs at Dean’s dirty joke. Brill.

Still only looking at Dean, Bobby says, “You boys be careful now.” Sam says, “You too,” and there is a fascinating exchange of looks between Bobby and Sam. Bobby glances at Sam when Sam speaks, and there’s a really sharp-eyed cunning look of assessment on his face. It’s extremely different from the way he looks at Dean. Sam feels that look on him, those eagle eyes, and smiles, almost shamefacedly, like he’s not sure what to do, what to say.

Details, people. No behavioral detail too small. And if you can present something complex without language, that’s preferable.

It’s not a particularly friendly exchange. Things are not back to normal.

The “boys” leave, with Bobby and Dean sharing one last look, a look filled with code, an “I know” look, a “WTF” look. There is no sense of triumph or of getting Sam back in the fold. Sam being Evil has loomed like an afterimage for episodes now. It is still unknown how it will be stopped. And while the Yellow-Eyed Demon is the “master” of it all, Dean persists in believing Sam can fight it, that “no one can control you but you …” That’s being challenged. Sam is “Other”, and it’s painful to admit that. Dean will go down swinging in denial of that reality. Once the brothers exit, the camera goes back to Bobby, Bobby alone with himself, and you can see how serious it all is. If Bobby looks that grim, when no one else is looking at him, in a private moment, then things are seriously bad news.

Both the scene with Jo and Dean and this scene, end with a close-up of the secondary character. It prioritizes them, they are not sidelined, their view of the “boys” is essential, and is a clue that they will return. They’re regulars now. Thank goodness because I’m attached.

14th scene

Having thoroughly dissed REO Speedwagon in “Simon Said,” Dean and Sam now drive off into the night to the rousing classic tones of “Back on the Road Again.” You know, guitar hooks like that don’t grow on trees.

I spoke about the music choices most recently in the “Nightshifter” re-cap. Music, more than anything else in the tool-box, tells us how to feel. Music has such power in that respect that it is often abused. Swelling romantic chords during a swelling romantic scene. Or a sad song being played during a sad scene. Choices can get quite literal, and the film-makers who use music in innovative ways often create scenes that embed themselves in our DNA. Here’s one of the most famous examples, or at least one of the most famous examples in my lifetime.

There’s nothing wrong with swelling inspirational music. It’s hard to picture the following scene without the score underneath, for example. It’s a perfect partnership.

When I feel music is bossy, i.e. shouting at me FEEL THIS NOW, I become a contrarian and resist. Nope. I will not cry. Stop bossing me around. Supernatural does not do that. It’s subtler. Some of the incidental music is pretty cheesy, and I prefer it when they use extant songs, but the three different Winchester Themes are really really effective (especially because they are used so sparingly.)

My point with all of this is: the final scene opens with the glaring headlights of the Impala, the camera moving up and around to the driver’s side window so we can see both of the guys, all to the accompaniment of the thrilling opening of the REO Speedwagon song. It’s sexy. Drums like that are sexy. So while we may be disturbed by everything we just saw, and we probably are, and so are Sam and Dean, the music provides another mood, another context. Imagine if the final scene had opened with the mournful Winchester theme. Or the inspirational-horn-section Winchester Theme. Very different feeling going into the scene. My bias is towards music that undercuts the emotion. That denies the emotion, that provides an entirely separate energy, forcing us to adjust. (Like Michael Madsen torturing a guy to that peppy finger-snapping tune.)

The audience isn’t always right. What the audience wants (catharsis, mainly) is often not the best or most dramatic choice. Withholding catharsis, and withholding a big open “here’s what I feel” “well, here’s what I feel” conversation, is just good scriptwriting, first of all, especially in an episodic, but it also leaves that huge space I keep talking about, the space between the show and its fans. Fans, frustrated at the lack of catharsis, or tying-up-in-a-bow emotional conversation, race to fill that void with fanfic and Tumblr posts and all the rest. Withholding catharsis almost guarantees emotional investment. Supernatural does it like no other.

The guys lie to each other. They withhold. They say they’re “fine” when they’re not. They don’t want to “scare” one another so they hide. People ask questions and nobody answers, the questions hanging in the air. Things are put off for episodes on end. In this way, you get to 10 seasons.

Dean knows he’s got to speak. He’s got to manage the denouement, the post-mortem. He’s got to be brave, and he’s got to listen to what Sam has to say. It’s not easy for Dean. That fix-it gene is so strong. But he tries. He makes a joke, “You in there?”

Dean doesn’t ask, “What has it been like for you this past week?” because he doesn’t want to know. But that’s what Sam shares. He was “awake for some of it.” He wasn’t in a complete black-out. He saw himself killing the hunter. “I saw the light go out in his eyes.” Both guys are in the frame. I am a broken record. But it is continuously excellent, and switching the focus from Sam to Dean and then back … perfectly timed, intuitively timed … is so much a part of the mood and look of the show that I celebrate it when it shows up. Not to mention the beautiful play of flickering lights and shadows over both of their faces.

It’s damn-near dreamy. All as REO Speedwagon sings a good-bye song addressed to “mama.”

Please don’t hate me mama for what I’m about to do
But the good times we’ve had together are just about now through
Please don’t misunderstand me, I hate to see you cry
But I think that it might look better if I told you now goodbye
I’m back on the road again, it’s time I leave you now
And maybe I’ll see you next time, that I’m around
Until then I hope you’re happy, baby, and good times come your way
I’m back on the road again, I’m on my way
Well I’ve loved you since the day I met you and I’ll love you till the day I die
But we both know the life I’m livin and we both know the reason why
That I’ve got to leave ya, mama, and I’ve got to leave today
But you know that I’ll see you next time that I come through your town to play.

Dean reiterates his stance throughout: “It wasn’t you.” Sam is now Sam again, demanding to know why Dean didn’t shoot him, despite all the horrible things he just did. Crisis over, Dean can speak more calmly to Sam about his attitude. This is not an everyday conversation. They’ve been avoiding discussing John’s whisper ever since “Croatoan.” But Dean makes it clear: “If it’s the last thing I’m gonna do, I’m gonna save you.”

It’s not just Dean who feels worthless. Sam does too. He doesn’t understand Dean’s emotional investment in him. Or he does, and in positive moments, he feels grateful for it. Sometimes it’s a burden. A “Get a LIFE, Dean” thing. So it’s somewhat of an impasse, an impasse of worthlessness, but there’s truth in it, and Sam, more freaked out than he’s letting on, feels good that Dean is there, that Dean is standing up for him, that even when he was out of commission – Dean refused to kill him. Morally ambivalent, again, because it turns Steve the Hunter/Dad into an unnecessary casualty. But there is a respite, a bit, in Dean’s stance for him, and Sam smiles a little bit. There’s not much more to say but he feels somewhat safer.

When Dean starts laughing, though, Sam doesn’t know what’s happening. It’s about him. Obviously it’s about him. But NOTHING is funny right now.

Right?

Well, not if Dean Winchester is your brother.

“Dude, you like full on had a girl inside you for like a whole week.”

Never get sick of the moment. Never get tired of it. If Dean clutching at Sam’s shirt, as Sam punches him, tells us a lot about Dean, so does this moment. And it is funny. What are ya gonna do, cry? Not these guys, with their stitched-up whiskey-soaked bandages and broken knuckles. REO Speedwagon starts surging back now, taking over, and Dean keeps laughing. Sam is being made fun of, obviously, for being violated. Which is horrible. And funny. The sexual subtext of the whole situation, there from the beginning, is finally spoken out. By the least reliable narrator in the universe. Also brill is Dean’s summing up of the whole episode with, “It’s pretty naughty.”

Naughty. It’s an almost prissy word-choice and it’s perfect.

The wave of Dean’s reaction to the humor proves irresistible to Sam as well, who starts laughing, in a beautiful shot from the back seat. One could see it as an inappropriate joke, but I’m not really in favor of that because it limits the possibilities of deeper understanding. I think to these guys it is kind of funny, it’s a relief to laugh about it, to see it as Sam strolling around for a week with a “girl” inside of him, because the stress of having been violated is lessened, and Dean shares it for that reason. It’s all in there. Relationship.

Forgive me, I can’t remember which one of you said that “Tall Tales” was when you got “hooked” on the show. Nearly falling off your chair laughing at “Lady in Red.” Was it you, May? Or Maureen? So sorry, it’s in the comments section somewhere. Regardless: I’m with you. There were a couple of different moments where I became invested in the show, especially considering the weird sideways way that I started watching it. “Tall Tales” delighted me so much I thought I would fall over with my gluttonous attitude. Oh my God, they’re going to go HERE? Yes, please, YES.

The show is getting more confident in its silliness. The omnipresent Silly Plateau. You can practically feel it. The show’s structure can take silliness. Not every structure can.

The last scene of “Born Under a Bad Sign,” with its easy strange mix of poignancy and Beauty and silliness hits me in the sweet spot.

These guys, man.

Am I right? Am I right?