Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 16: “Roadkill”

Directed by Charles Beeson
Written by Raelle Tucker

I’m going into the hospital this week, and then will have to go in again in the weeks after that. It’s going to be super-fun, but I did want to get this up before that happened. I’ve been working on this re-cap in bits and pieces for about 3 weeks, whenever I had a spare hour or so. My new job is time-consuming (and fun!) and I still have my paid writing to do. But I do want to continue! I’ll have to figure out the best way to move forward, for myself. In any case, here it is. “Roadkill”!

The Sixth Sense-inspired structure of “Roadkill” allows for all kinds of emotional and philosophical conversations that normally have no place in the Winchester world (at least up until this point). Their job is to hunt and kill ghosts. What happens to the ghosts afterwards is not their business. Such a question enters into spiritual territory that seems anathema (strangely enough) to them. But things are starting to shift. “Houses of the Holy” introduced a spiritual element in the most explicit way since “Faith” in Season 1. “Roadkill” is another episode where new ground is broken, and it’s done so gently, mournfully, delicately. It stays focused on the specific. There are only three main characters in the episode (well, four, counting Farmer Greeley.) That makes the action focused and emotion-based.

If you’ve loved someone and had to let them go, it is like a death. You not only mourn the loss, but you mourn your own future, so brightly and clearly imagined. That is Molly’s journey in “Roadkill.” The time will come when Sam and Dean, both, have to go through something similar. Sam is already approaching it. Something is “wrong” with Sam, he knows it, his dad knew it, and it’s working on him, worrying him. He was possessed by Meg for a week in “Born Under a Bad Sign.” He can no longer draw a clear line between the monsters they hunt and himself. He’s also just so …. Sam-ish in his insistence on going about things the right way, the respectful way, the thoughtful way. He wants to be conscious of what he is doing as a hunter.

There is a stark difference between how Sam treats Molly and how Dean treats her. Dean never uses her name. He calls her “lady” and, even ruder, “sister”. But Sam gently and respectfully uses her name. She’s still HER. And where she’s at may be where he’s going. He’s thinking a lot about his own life and his own future in “Roadkill.”

Death has been an ongoing theme of Season 2, starting off with John’s death and Dean’s near-death. Dean’s experience with Tessa the Reaper deepened our own understanding, as audience members, of the process of death (in Supernatural-Land, anyway), and was destabilizing to Dean’s understanding of his own life, and who he is in the world. That comes up again in the “John’s whisper” sub-plot, which – while it is not mentioned all that often – is really the subtext of the entire season. It’s working ON the characters, as opposed to being forefronted as a plot. The “psychic children” is the biggest “plot” of the season, and it’s a bit of a dud. It doesn’t lead to these in-depth examinations of morality and letting go and grief and what it means to be human. That’s what “Roadkill,” a quiet and very very dark episode, does.

“Roadkill” is evidence of the blessing of having a long season. With a long season, you can take the time to have an episode like “Roadkill,” one that doesn’t necessarily loop into a larger season-wide Arc, and yet is crucial in its own way. Molly is an upset ignorant ghost and she asks tons of questions about what Sam and Dean are doing, and why. This is not normally how things go with ghosts, right? Her questions allow for Sam (not Dean, who couldn’t care less) to consider answering them, to actually think about what he is doing, and why. Ghosts/spirits clearly feel pain when their bones are salted and burned. Their screams show that. But after that? Do they find peace? Are they okay? Is the pain they go through necessary? What are Sam and Dean actually doing to them? Molly forces them (Sam, mostly, although Dean comes around) to consider that.

“Letting go” whichever way you slice it is not an easy process. It sounds easy, right? You’re holding onto something, so you just open up your hands and “let go.”

Yeah, right.

It reminds me of that wonderful exchange from Men in Black:

Jay: You know what they say. It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Kay: Try it.

Molly’s story alone (and Tricia Helfer’s performance) would be enough to make “Roadkill” a powerhouse episode, but it’s also the tricky (for lack of a better word) architecture of the script that helps make it what it is. We are not “in on it” from the start. The episode withholds information from us. We do not follow Sam and Dean in “Roadkill,” we follow Molly. Her slow process of realization is ours. It’s a subtle but very important difference, and you can see it in the sheer number of gigantic closeups given to Helfer throughout. Visually, her point of view is prioritized. Like “The Usual Suspects,”, “Roadkill” features a point-of-view shift (which I went into in that re-cap: I am sure dissertations have been written about why point-of-view-shifts are a key element of erotica!)

So let’s re-visit the idea: Sam and Dean are our leads. Their world is a claustrophobic Belljar. (I went into the whole “Belljar Effect” in the re-cap for “In My Time of Dying.” I am trying to keep up with my own shorthand!) Very rarely do we leave that Belljar, especially not this early in the game, where there isn’t a larger ensemble in the series. Our point-of-view is Sam and Dean’s point of view – there IS no outside eye. So when, in “The Usual Suspects,” we are suddenly forced outside The Belljar, and we get a chance to see what Dean and Sam look like to the outside world … it’s awesome! The same happens in “Roadkill,” although it’s more hidden here because of Tucker’s script. We don’t KNOW we’re outside the Belljar, although we sense something is different early on … we aren’t let in on the secret until the end, when those flashback moments show us how Sam and Dean put together the case.

In terms of point-of-view shift, “Roadkill” has almost more power than “Usual Suspects” because it doesn’t state upfront that that is what it will be doing. We THINK we’re still on the “inside” with Sam and Dean, when all along, Charles Beeson has been thrusting us into Molly’s experience and Molly’s experience alone. And so because of that point of view shift, Sam and Dean seem … different. Don’t they? It’s because we are being asked to meet them for the first time, to see them as we would see them if we were Molly. Molly then realizes that she has only been seeing what she wanted to see. The episode places us in the same position.

If Supernatural is going to work, and at the depth that they (the creators/writers/cast) want it to work, then they need us, the audience, to be willing to go deep. The show is not plot-driven at its core. Ever. (Supernatural is weak when it becomes all about its plot.) Supernatural is driven by emotions only. And so Kripke et al are training us, as any audience needs to be trained. A show or a movie needs to announce: “Here is who we are. This is what we will be interested in.” The audience is not the King. The creator is. The audience can choose whether or not to watch, but the best shows know in no uncertain terms who they are, what they care about, and how they are going to proceed. It always surprised me when a certain sub-set of Sopranos fans, who seemed to love the show for the violence and the boobs, were outraged by the show’s abrupt ending (or bored by the quieter episodes having to do with therapy.) Methinks these fans could not have seen (or understood) the pilot. That pilot is one of the strongest pilots I have ever seen in my life. It is deeply melancholy, and existential in its awareness of death. The ducks in the pool. From the very first frame, The Sopranos announced itself – its mood, its concerns, its tone … and then was consistently misunderstood for its entirety by those who kept wanting it to be Goodfellas. (I wrote about that here.) Supernatural, too, had a very strong and very moody pilot, even with its couple of scenes of clunky exposition (“Dad gave me a gun for my birthday! What kind of childhood is that??” etc.) Within that framework, we got the depth of emotional possibilities that the show has been exploring ever since. It’s all there.

And so it’s great: Sam and Dean enter “Roadkill” from the side. They just appear, suddenly, into HER scene. When we first see them, they look up at her through the rain-speckled windows of the Impala. We are in her shoes, not theirs. But when we get the flashback of that same moment later, we are inside the car with them, looking out the window at her. It’s not until that moment that we realize how much has been withheld from us.

Dean is an extrovert (by necessity) with a sensitive mushy soul. His Burlesque Act is a survival technique. We watch him go in and out of it, we understand where it’s coming from, even when it’s obnoxious. In “The Usual Suspects,” we are placed in the cops’ point-of-view, and Dean strolls into that bureaucratic environment like Steve McQueen, the individualist, the brave wisecracking hero, the cool-as-a-cuke resourceful guy, the smartest guy in the room. If Dean was always presented like that, without the other shadings, we’d have just another shallow action hero, the guy who is never afraid, who strolls away from huge explosions in slo-mo. That has its place but Supernatural, very early on, started poking holes in Dean’s Burlesque Act (“Phantom Traveler,” “Dead in the Water”), and so we see where his persona comes from, what it is meant to hide. In “Roadkill,” he is aloof, and extremely short with this panicked woman who needs help. This is our first behavioral clue that Molly is not who she thinks she is. Dean is normally very gentle with victims, even when he bungles the questioning by cracking jokes or getting uncomfortable. He draws a clear line: Humans are to be sympathized with, ghosts are to be killed.

So on my first viewing of “Roadkill,” I felt frustrated with Dean early on. I didn’t understand why he was being so bossy and rude. I mean, I got it: they only had a limited number of hours to put the ghost to rest, so there was no time to sit around chatting. But when Sam pleads, “Don’t sugarcoat it for her …” sarcastically … I felt the same way.

It’s yet another example of just how fluid and flexible the two lead characters are. They’re so flexible that Supernatural can pretty much do anything to these guys at this point, and the characters can take it. That’s as much a credit to Ackles and Padalecki as the writers and Eric Kripke.

Once all is revealed at the end, it is clear why Dean didn’t care to “sugarcoat” things for Molly. Because she’s a ghost, and therefore, not human, and her agony and terror are of the supernatural variety and not his problem. But it’s bold, to have Dean be so frankly unsympathetic for an entire episode. I love it when he comes off as unsympathetic. It’s one of my favorite Deans.

Dean’s behavior is mitigated by Sam’s gentleness, gorgeously performed by Padalecki, one of his stocks-in-trade as an actor. I’ve discussed this before, maybe most at length in the re-cap for “Nightmare.” There is nothing more important for an actor to do than listen. All good actors are great listeners: there are no exceptions. During the course of “Roadkill,” which is so dark throughout that often you can’t see the action on screen, he and Molly find themselves in quiet still moments where she asks questions and he answers. Patiently and gently. At first, it seems that he may be withholding information because he knows her husband is dead. Later, of course, we understand. “Roadkill” is one of those episodes that is better the second time through. What we see in these long scenes between Padalecki and Helfer is Sam trying to tell her something, trying to give her something useful that she can use when eventually she has to “let go.” And he has great sympathy for that process. He has great sympathy for her.

In every scene with her, Padalecki is playing multiple levels, which gives his performance great depth and subtlety. You can clock the real truth in his eyes from time to time when he looks at her. He knows that her husband is alive, and has re-married. He knows that she is dead, and does not realize she is dead. He knows she has spent 15 years pining for her husband. And he is sad for her. There is also the growing sympathy he has with “monsters”, since he may very well be one himself. Maybe they need to be helped to see the better way. Maybe they need sympathy rather than hatred. This comes down to the question of Free Will, very important in Supernatural, although that doesn’t become explicit until Season 5. But it’s there from the start.

Do we get to choose who we are? Do we have any say over our own fates? Even when we become “ghosts”? Does strength of character and will count? That came into play in a huge way in Season 10 with the Mark. And in Season 2, Sam knows he is vulnerable to something, that something in him may “turn.” He doesn’t know the truth yet, about the demon blood, but his situation is starting to rise in urgency as a problem that needs a solution. Dean is all “I’ll take care of it, I’ll look out for you” but that’s already been a bust. Sam will be alone in this and he knows it. Molly’s panicked ignorance about her own condition is something he recognizes in himself. Maybe his behavior towards her is what he hopes will happen to him when his time comes.

Like “Nightshifter,” like “Asylum,” , “Roadkill” takes place almost entirely at night. I just want to point out that Beeson’s first job as director with the series was with the Kubrick-inspired “Playthings.” He had a tremendous amount of fun creating that formal and elegant space, re-creating shots from The Shining. The look/feel could not be more different from “Roadkill.” This is the fun of these jobbing-around television directors who have to be sensitive to material, who have to be flexible with their own style. Look out for Auteur Theory, folks, because it tends to be dismissive of those who can adapt, whose style is adaptable. The Auteur Theory has its place but not when it ignores someone like, oh, Vincente Minnelli, who could do anything, who made everything beautiful, who worked in multiple styles.

In “Roadkill,” you often can barely see the characters, a perfect symbol for Molly’s ignorance of her own condition (and our ignorance as audience members). Serge Ladouceur manages to find so much variety in night-time scenes, using mist and fog, the headlights of the Impala, flashlight beams coming through darkness. It’s not monotonous. The thing about this style that is so beautiful (and it’s similar to the style of The X-Files) is that it appears to be natural, while at the same time being cinematic and chosen. It feels like it’s as dark and disorienting as it actually would be.

“Roadkill” is organized around the recurring appearance of The Animals’ version of the traditional folk song (with a fascinating backstory of its own), “House of the Rising Sun.” (And “Roadkill,” of course, ends with the image of the sun rising.) All I know is I have about 10 different versions in my own music library. Passed down from generation to generation, it was first captured by Alan Lomax, underneath the auspices of the Archive of American Folk Song. (Lomax went traveling around America, seeking out traditional songs, sung by folks in the Appalachians, the Delta, mining communities in Kentucky, and everywhere else. His project was sponsored by the Library of Congress – and we owe Alan Lomax an enormous debt!) Everyone who sang the song said versions of the same thing: “I first heard my grandmother sing this song” “My great-grandfather taught me this song …” giving us a sense of the song’s long history. Everyone recorded it. Dylan recorded it. Woody Guthrie. Roy Acuff. Leadbelly. Dolly Parton. Nina Simone. When The Animals recorded it in 1964, it seemed like an unlikely choice (not to mention a weird song to become a hit). It’s so ominous-sounding, first of all. Also, it’s a folk song, and it sounds like one. But now it’s in the Classic Canon and it still gets almost constant radio play. Go figure.

There’s a great clip of Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler, sitting around playing the song. Here’s the clip. They won’t let me embed it. The two guys discuss the lyrics:

Chet Atkins: “I used to sing this when I was 8 years old and I didn’t know what it was about.” [Pause.] “What IS it about?”
Mark Knopfler: “It’s one of them titty bars, don’t ya know.”
Chet Atkins: “I thought it was just a house.”

Whether or not “The House of the Rising Sun” was an actual place (a brothel, a slave-trading outpost, a quarantine house for people with syphilis … the theories proliferate) has never been established.

It’s also interesting to consider that there are many interpretations of the song, and many different sets of lyrics (similar to “Stagger Lee,” another one of those songs passed down through the generations). Supposedly it started out as the story of a woman, meant to be sung by a woman. The Animals changed the voice to a male voice. One version of the song is a brother warning his sibling not to “go there,” to stay away from that house. He’s been there, and it’s been his “ruin.” He hopes his sibling will not follow in the same path. That meaning is lost in the newer versions of the song, but its ghost remains, and I would bet money that Raelle Tucker knew about it.

If the song was meant originally to be a warning from one sibling to another … well, that works out mighty nice, doesn’t it?

Teaser

The reason I love the opening scene is that the couple, Molly and Dan McNamara (Tricia Helfer and Dan Gauthier), are bickering in a pointless and petty way. The conversation is not lovey-dovey, it’s not “Oh, I can’t wait to get to the bed and breakfast” or “That dinner was so good, happy anniversary baby” or some other totally cliched dialogue. No. We get to know them in the midst of a petty fight, where he’s being annoying and babyish (insisting he knows where they are) and she’s frustrated and pissed … and THAT’S, ultimately, what one misses when a relationship ends. How comforting it is to have a “Someone” that you can bicker with, a “Someone” who is a safe place like that.

The argument also represents a moment she regrets. These were our last moments together. This was the last thing I said to him.

The bickering doesn’t have a toxic quality. It has a regular everyday quality, and is one of those things that becomes more poignant once you re-watch the episode. Her husband realizes he’s gotten them lost and then tries to joke and flirt with her, she resists, trying to stay mad, and it all feels extremely real.

Then, of course, Farmer McDouchebag appears on the frosty dark road, she slams on the brakes, and the car skids off the road, down a hill and into a tree at the bottom.

Just for shits and giggles: watch the crash sequence only for the editing choices. Where they choose to cut. There’s about three cuts, different perspectives in each shot (from inside the car – looking out through the windshield, the whole car seen plummeting down the hill, etc.) – and those cuts gives it its sense of chaos and movement. It’s not re-ineventing the wheel, editing like that, but it’s an example of a beautifully orchestrated and well-planned sequence.

The next thing we see is a circular overhead shot of the crashed car, which should give us some clue that the event has now changed, gone into the supernatural realm. It’s the God’s-eye point of view. We fly upward into the sky, looking down on the event. All is silent. The windshield has shattered, and Molly is seen inside the car, in gigantic claustrophobic closeup, head against the wheel, eyes opening slowly. The two-shot husband-wife bantering is in the past. Now it’s only Molly.

I am in love with the almost black-and-white palette of this opening scene (and the whole episode). Until the final scene, there is no color onscreen. She’s wearing black and white. Sam and Dean are in dark colors. Nothing “pops.” It’s such a bold visual choice, and the kind of thing the network balked at (which they would eventually lampoon a couple episodes later in “Hollywood Babylon”.)

Molly comes across a cabin in the woods, and still seems to think she will find her missing husband. (I am wondering: how many of you out there guessed immediately that she was dead?) Inside, a figure stands there, the Farmer from the road, and she forgets for a moment her quest in her relief that she did not kill him. However, he turns around, and at first he looks normal, and alive, but then morphs into a leering skull. Scream. Black-out.

1st scene

We usually join up with Sam and Dean after the title-card but here we do not: we remain with Molly. It’s another clue of the point-of-view of the episode, of Sam and Dean being “outside”. Panicked, she runs through the woods, emerging onto the isolated snowy road. A car barrels down the road, and she runs into the street screaming for it to stop. The driver slams on the brakes, and as the car shrieks forward, we see it is the Impala, we see Dean freaked out at the wheel.

They have snuck themselves into the episode from the side. When she runs over to the window, screaming that she needs help, Sam and Dean stare out at her, through the rain-speckled window, alarmed.

Sam and Dean get out of the car, and she tells her story. Wet snow is falling around them. As she tells her story, there is portentous eye contact between Sam and Dean, although they don’t say anything. These quick sharp glances, of ESP, non-verbal communication are extremely satisfying behaviorally (the episode is full of it, since the two of them are holding out on us – and on her.)

Since they haven’t had time to plan out what to do if they run into a ghost who doesn’t know she is a ghost, they fly by the seat of their pants. They take different tones. Dean is blunt: “Did he look like he lost a fight with a lawnmower?” Sam throws him a look, like, “Really?” Dean shrugs. She’s a ghost, man.

But in my first time viewing, I just thought it was Dean being his normal bumbling self in the face of trauma. Sam steps into the driver’s seat of the event. Dean is in his own driver’s seat, but Sam takes it upon himself to be gentle with Molly, to treat her with concern and care. She wants to get back to her car. Sam wants to take her into town, but she insists she is not leaving until she finds her husband. Another long meaningful glance between Sam and Dean and by this point I was thinking, “What is going on, you two? What are you hiding?”

When they return to the crash spot, the car is gone. Molly stands down in the ravine, disoriented, looking around. Sam and Dean stand up at the edge, with their flashlights, conspiring what to do. They both have a sense of urgency, but they are not in sync as to how to handle it. Sam wants to tell Molly “the truth,” Dean balks. They’re whispering like conspirators.

Molly’s sense of disorientation is so complete, you could believe it was head trauma from the car crash. Helfer does a wonderful job modulating that, because it changes over the course of the episode, although her confusion continues. The Impala heads down the lonely road, and for a second, it’s shot from behind and slightly above … a strange and slightly frightening angle, like the car is being stalked. Molly sits in the back seat, telling them it was her and her husband’s anniversary. “Hell of an anniversary,” is Dean’s sensitive and kind response. Sam, in the passenger seat, is more open. He asks questions, and leans his head to the side to listen. Beautiful behavior from him.

She says, “The only time we ever fought was when we were stuck in the car,” and Sam laughs, saying he knows what that feels like. Prickly-pear Dean shoots him a “Whatchoo talkin’ bout, Willis” look, but the bond between Molly and Sam has somehow left him out. Or he has left himself out. Sam is easy with her, natural, and is interested in hearing from her. Molly senses that. Dean is a watchful serious presence, glancing at her through the rear view mirror. You wonder what it is he sees. Suddenly, the Impala’s radio comes to life on its own: “House of the Rising Sun”. Dean and Sam are startled, and Molly, still with that head-trauma vibe, leans forward, saying that that was the song playing when they crashed. More close-ups of Dean and Sam, reacting. I’m in heaven with “Roadkill” because of the non-verbal behavioral stuff. It’s everywhere. The radio starts to move its own dial to another frequency, and a staticky creepy voice starts speaking: “She’s mine …”

Suddenly a figure appears in the dark road before them. Dean sees it, gets that hard determined look, tells the others, “Hold on” and speeds up. Molly starts screaming, and the Impala charges right through Farmer Greeley, who disintegrates into the dark air.

If they can’t calm Molly down, who is now screaming in the back seat, she is going to be an impediment to whatever they are up to, that’s for sure. Sam looks grim. The engine starts making bumping noises, and Dean has to pull the car over to the side of the road. Dean tries to turn the engine over, it chugs, it won’t start. They’re stuck. Dean says to Sam, quietly, “I don’t think he’s gonna let her leave.”

Here is where the Dean Burlesque starts to really show up, and it shows up in contrast to the Duo of Molly and Sam. Sam, though, has almost the more interesting journey in “Roadkill”. Like Dean, he knows the truth, but instead of brushing off Molly’s trauma/disorientation as a Confused Ghost and therefore not worth his time (Dean: don’t you remember when you were a helpless ghost? Can you tone it down a notch, please?), Sam decides to help her. She can’t let go. That’s clear. Maybe she needs him. Sam has multiple levels of objective in every scene. Dean has only one. The contrast in behavior, in reaction, between Sam and Dean gives the episode its strange and emotional charge.

Dean starts rummaging around in the trunk, and Molly staggers out of the car, still caught up in the fact that they just ran over a man back there, and what the hell happened, and where is her husband? Dean doesn’t have time for this. Sam doesn’t either. But Sam’s reaction to that time-constraint is very different than Dean’s. Greeley has to be handled, but so does Molly. Molly is not incidental, she is not an impediment, or in their way. She, and what she is going through, is their business. That’s what they’re here for.

It’s a very good script.

“This can’t be happening!” says Molly, and Dean, loading up his shotgun, says, “Trust me. It’s happening.” Once she sees that terrifying trunk of weaponry, she starts to back off, terrified of the both of them. She’s about to bolt, when Sam says, desperately, “It wasn’t a coincidence that we found you …”

The alignment of that moment is stunning, one of my favorite shots in the episode. Look at how there are no colors. Look at how the figures are placed in the frame.

Molly’s confusion, her questioning response, makes Dean take the lead, in his typically sensitive way: “We weren’t just cruising for chicks when we ran into you, sister.” Uh-oh. Dean’s in a mood. But her resistance is going to hold them back. He rips the Band-aid off. “We were out here already. Hunting for ghosts.” Then back he goes to the trunk, leaving Sam frustrated, with one of my favorite line-readings from him in the episode: “Don’t … sugarcoat it … for her …” Oh, the pauses!

Now we finally get a moment of exposition, thanks to Sam, who takes the time to explain to her (partially) what is happening. She resists: What he is saying doesn’t make sense. And why aren’t they looking for her husband? Dean is busy with his guns, and Sam moves towards Molly, slowly, openly, telling her about Jonah Greeley, a farmer who died on this road 15 years before. “One night a year on the anniversary of his death, he haunts this road.”

I love the image of Dean and Sam, months before, marking their calendars. Okay, we gotta be in Nevada on such-and-such a night. How many times did John Winchester attempt to capture Greeley? What trail of evidence was left in the journal?

Molly thinks they’re both crazy. Dean moves into the conversation, with a devil-may-care arrogant attitude, cracking stupid jokes, whacking Sam like, “Ha ha, wasn’t that funny” and it feels extremely out-of-tune with the mournful and confused energy emanating from Molly. Again, this is because the entire episode is from her point-of-view, not theirs. This is how Dean “presents” to her. There’s a lot more going on with him, as always, but Molly wouldn’t know that, and so this is how he seems to her. And Ackles is playing that. He’s “closed” to us, and that’s a strange experience. Dean doesn’t get many close-ups in “Roadkill” – some, but not many. Most of the close-ups are Molly’s, with Sam running a close second. But if you watch this scene, you’ll see how Molly’s point-of-view dominates.

As she listens to Sam, tears start to glimmer in her eyes, and mixed with the rain on her hair, and the raindrops on her face, it’s a beautiful image, one that will be echoed in the final scene. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she asks Sam, but it is Dean who answers, “Deadly.” And he himself looks deadly. Glamorous and deadly.

Molly is devastated and victimized: “I didn’t do anything!” Dean would have barked some rude comment, but this is the Sam Show: “It doesn’t matter. Some spirits see only what they want to see.” And this is one of those moments that looks very different once you know the whole story. In this moment, Sam tries to help her. Not just to understand, but to see herself. To understand that she is in a loop of her own confusion, that she cannot see the truth of her situation, because she doesn’t want to see it. His words and soft behavior are tremendously loving, seen in that second context. A moment of pure compassion.

Molly hears all this, and goes right back to her missing husband. Did Greeley take her husband? No answer from Sam and Dean. Dean is not the person to be in charge of Molly’s emotional experience, you can see it in every single shot of the guy. Sam has moved, powerfully, into that vacuum, while still standing strong beside his brother. There is no disagreement between the brothers on having to deal with Greeley: it is Molly that is the wild card.

2nd scene

The camera is inside the little woodshed where Molly had seen the leering bloody Greeley. Molly and Dean appear at the door, and Dean’s flashlight beam cuts through the gloom of the interior. There are chains hanging from the ceiling, in the foreground, making for an interesting visual: it’s good when things are placed between us and the thing we want to see. But that chain hanging there gives us the feeling of tight quarters, claustrophobia, and the placement of the camera has that Stalker-y horror-film feeling.

While Dean is busy looking around the shed, Sam appears at the door, saying that there were no gravestones or markers outside. Molly asks questions. Dean takes an opportunity to provide an answer, and it gives him pleasure to discomfort her. Because she’s a ghost who doesn’t know she’s a ghost. But as I’ll keep saying, because it’s interesting: In my first viewing, I kept thinking, “Dean. You’re being obnoxious. Stop it.” I felt as left out as Molly does. Sam steps into the void left by grumpy Dean, explaining that finding Greeley’s corpse will help her – and her husband – (a bone thrown towards her delusion – Sam is being practical, too. They need her. The whole bait conundrum. Sam doesn’t like it, Dean doesn’t like it either, but sometimes they have to do it.) Sam is so certain and competent and professor-ish that she is taken aback. Not only is her husband missing, but there are actual “ghost busters” in this world.

It’s Dean’s turn to take over. And in this mini-monologue, where he becomes an aggrieved bitchy foreman of a lazy construction crew, he calls her “lady”. She has abdicated her right to a name by becoming a ghost. Sam, though, says her name repeatedly, continuing to speak to the person Molly once was, a person who deserves to know what has happened to her.

Once outside, flashlights struggling through the mist and rain, Dean heads off by himself, and Sam and Molly pair up. I mean, if you were Molly, who would YOU choose to follow? The soft-voiced giant who takes the time to explain things? Or the gun-toting wisecracking crankypants? Sam warns Molly to stay close. She immediately disobeys when she hears what she thinks is her husband calling for her. Greeley materializes, grabbing her, and then Dean appears, shotgun cocked, saying, “Whoops” before blowing Greeley away. You see? It’s all Burlesque. That Burlesque works in so many different circumstances: survival, self-entertainment, flirtation, pleasure, handling of stress, dealing with anxiety. Here: we just get the surface of the Burlesque. He’s Bruce Willis in “Die Hard,” another example of the action hero who manages to wise-crack his way through the most dire circumstances. Normally we get layers with Dean. Here, not so much. It’s fascinating, and again, a clue that we are not in his story this time, we’re in Molly’s.

Sam reassures her: “You’ll see David again, I promise …” a line that has multiple meanings, and made me wonder, first time viewing: How does he know that? What do they know that we don’t? Meanwhile, Dean has moved on (Molly’s issues being of no interest to him), saying, “Hey. Let’s follow the creepy brick road.”

Dean, again, moves on ahead and Sam and Molly follow. She asks questions. “That thing shoots rock-salt?” He answers, explaining about salt. He is still on high-alert, peering through the trees, assessing the threat-level. Sam has the patience and strength to do both. He’d make a great Dad. Or a counselor. Or a hostage-negotiator. How many ghosts say, “Hey, what’s up with salt?” Or “What are we doing now?” It’s a strange situation, no precedent really in their experience, and Sam – improvising – does what he thinks is right. I am sure John Winchester would have taken Dean’s route in the same situation (although with less joking). This is one of those moments where you can see Sam’s “sui generis” personality, his out-of-nowhere individualism – emerging intact despite the cult-like atmosphere of his childhood. His instincts are sometimes way off, and his uncertainty about the fallibility of his own mind is starting to be in operation for him at this point of Season 2. Maybe he’s NOT to be trusted. Maybe how he sees things IS the problem. But with Molly, in that dark wet forest, he decides to answer her questions, to treat her kindly, and maybe – through that – help her do what he already knows she needs to do. It’s quite moving. If you’ve ever been in a crisis – a real mental crisis – and had a friend or doctor or whoever – treat you kindly, patiently … not talked down to you, not dismissed your delusions/paranoia/mental-loony-tunes-thought-patterns … then you know how that kind of listening DOES provide you the space to move on. Or, at the very least, to see where you ACTUALLY are.

I guess I take “Roadkill” personally. For me, it works most powerfully as a metaphor. For being “stuck” in your life. For being unable to move past something. For not even KNOWING you’re stuck (which is the worst.)

The house that emerges from the woods is a creepy ruin, and Dean says, “Just once I’d like to round a corner and see a nice house.” His behavior is cranky and put-upon throughout, leading to some humor (a breath of fresh air in this very dark episode). As we’ve seen, Dean is not a complainer. It’s against his code. But sometimes he slips. For whatever reason, and I think it’s because now they have a ghost tagging along with them, he’s annoyed by the situation. By the cobwebs. By his job. By his life. If it were just him and Sam, his energy would be very different. He’s “showing off” for Molly. Not in a flirtatious way, but in a “Look how hard my life is” way. If you ghosts would stop hanging the hell around, then I wouldn’t have to crawl through dark cobwebby spaces. He’s “acting.”

It appears that the only light source onscreen is from their flashlights. That is pure illusion: it takes a lot of very subtle lighting to achieve that palpable darkness, pierced with areas of lesser darkness, so we can perceive movement, faces, background. But the overall effect is one of total naturalism. It’s a dark-as-hell and scary-as-hell night. You honestly can’t see anything onscreen that the flashlight beam doesn’t show you. Go Serge!

In an upstairs room, Molly and Sam come across piles of papers and scrapbooks and documents of an entire life (the props are superb). The music here is eerie, mournful, but like a kid’s mobile-music can be mournful. It’s almost child-like, that music choice. This, to me, is connected to Molly’s almost child-like attitude throughout. She is trying to understand, but she doesn’t have the capacity yet. In her real life, when she was alive, she was a grown woman who could understand things. But nobody can prepare you for … this.

Death is out there, waiting for us all. We do so much to avoid that knowledge, and it is that very avoidance (based on knowledge) that separates us from the animals. Knowledge of and fear of death allows so much to happen: philosophy, art, theatre, love, poetry, everything comes from that tension. Our time here is not forever. There’s something about Molly and Sam looking through old photo albums and newspaper clippings that brings up that sense of the fragility of life, and its meaninglessness once it ends (what we leave behind is just a pile of paper and photos) – but alongside that meaninglessness is a deep profundity. Greeley was a person once. With a wife. And a life. And so was Molly. Getting her to understand that she and Greeley are the same will not be easy, but it’s what needs to happen.

Molly comes across a love letter the farmer wrote to his wife. It touches her. She doesn’t understand how such a man could turn into that leering monster out there in the woods. Sam turns away. Not dispassionately or dismissively, but thoughtfully. As he starts to explain to her about spirits, just watch his behavior. Watch Padalecki work. It’s hard sometimes to remember that this is work, because it looks easy and effortless. But all along the way, he the actor has made choices (to go back to Stella Adler’s definition of talent: “The talent is in the choice.” Bad actors make bad choices. Good actors make good ones. End of story.) And his small monologue here is explanatory, but it is also a way to prepare her. He is talking to the “wounded animal” in her. Because she will need that information. She will need to prepare. She does not know “who she is,” but Sam knows, and the fact that he knows something she doesn’t (something so essential about who she is) makes him … uncomfortable. He knows he must tread carefully. He doesn’t look at her directly for too long, he keeps turning away. Fascinating. And on an even deeper level, the level he couldn’t even put into words if he wanted to, he’s talking to himself. He himself is trying to understand. Because he senses the darkness approaching for him as well.

That’s a lot of stuff to “play.”

And watch Padalecki play it.

Burlesque-Boy suddenly appears at the door, shattering the fragile space of talking and listening going on between his brother and Molly. He drawls his next line, leaning against the door-frame with an arrogant over-it demeanor, that also manages to be truthful. You figure out how Ackles manages that.

He doesn’t show discomfort or jealousy that Sam and Molly are bonding, he doesn’t feel “left out,” but he sure as hell is not going to let them New-Age-woo-woo into the sunset without giving his two cents. Dean refers to Sam as “J. Love Hewitt,” the Ghost Whisperer, which is pretty amusing if you think about this scene:

You know Dean watched that show religiously.

“I don’t like ’em,” announces Dean. Yes, brat, we got that. Having done what he set out to do, break up the tender little tete a tete, he gets back to business, and discovers a little doorway behind a cupboard. It’s locked from the inside, and Dean kicks at it. I love that he has to kick twice. These are heroes, but they have to work for every victory. Dean assumes he’ll bust through the first time, his behavior has a bit of a “Hey, watch me do THIS” on his first kick, because there’s that performative thing he’s doing, mainly for Molly’s benefit. But his first attempt is a bust. These tiny moments help make the atmosphere richer, more complex, certainly more interesting to watch.

The attic space beyond is so draped in cobwebs that you would have to pay me money to crawl on in there. Dean murmurs that it “smells like old lady”, and that is when they see the skeleton, hanging from the rafters. It’s gorgeous in a really gruesome way.

The image of the wife of the farmer, killing herself after the death of her husband in that isolated space … and no one ever finding her … is tragic. How is it possible? No family, no friends, nothing? Whatever the case may be, the rest of the episode is haunted by that scrapbook packed with memories and love letters. Molly has the self-centeredness of all human beings. Her pain is the only pain. Her loss is the only loss. She starts to get it though. She stares up at the skeleton and says, “She didn’t want to live without him,” which brings a beautiful little double-take from Dean, a moment I love.

Dean, too, is working on multiple levels, but he’s more bound-up in performance than Sam is. It’s one of the ways the brothers differ. It’s one of the reasons why there is such a great and watchable tension in Ackles’ work as Dean. Because there is such a war between what he thinks, and what he allows himself to do, what he feels (how deep it is), and his desire to NOT feel those things. I don’t think a desire to cover up your feelings, or to try to not feel unpleasant things, is “unhealthy” or any balderdash like that. Human beings have survived BECAUSE we are able to avoid terrible feelings and move ON. We DON’T get “stuck.” What would have happened to the human race if the first cave-woman whose husband was eaten by a woolly mammoth or a saber-toothed tiger (or whatever, I may have my prehistoric time-lines messed up) lay down in her cave and cried for three days? We would have been extinct in 10 years. We are made up of grit and strength and power. There are evolutionary reasons for sucking-it-up and moving-on. I only mention this because the tension in Ackles’ work often brings out this agony in the fans (myself included), for Dean to say what he feels, or, even simpler, FEEL what he so CLEARLY is feeling. But that’s not who he is. It’s why we want to watch the character.

An illuminating moment follows, when Sam moves to cut the skeleton down, and Dean blatantly does not understand why. Who cares about her? Sam is shocked, with that moral-compass thing he’s got in over-drive. She deserves to be put to rest. “Why?” Dean decides to be obnoxious. This is Molly’s influence. With her presence, Dean starts to highlight his callousness, it seems to happen automatically. But Sam is so strong in his objective that Dean caves, and you can see his defeat as he moves forward to touch that gross old-lady skeleton. You can almost hear the Archie Bunker grumbling: My life sucks.

3rd scene

Grave-digging complete (seriously: how long does it take to dig a huge hole in the ground?), Molly asks what will happen to Greeley once they burn his bones? Dean snarks, “Lady, that answer is way above our pay-grade.” At this point in my first watching, I wanted to tell Dean to put a sock in it. Molly is, beautifully, baffled, and she says, “You hunt these things but you don’t know what happens to them?”

That is one of the underlying themes of Season 2, with its focus on death, John, and Dean, and then Sam, at the end. What comes after? Tessa the Reaper gives us a glimpse of the other side. But the topic is almost too hot to touch. Sam and Dean certainly don’t discuss it. It’s taboo. It will continue to be so throughout the series. With Bobby, with others who pass. But I love Molly’s question and I love how she asks it.

Dean is so uncommunicative that Sam, looking down into the grave, takes over. He answers truthfully that they don’t know. “My dad used to say it was death for ghosts …”

Look at how stunning the lighting is.

Molly kneels by the grave and looks down at the skeleton Dean is in the process of burying. Sam has continued to speak, and he moves into a philosophical area, using the collective “we”: “I guess that’s why we all hold onto life so hard …” That line brings a quick glance from Dean. I can’t get enough of those brief glances that go on throughout. Molly, though, is wrapped up in herself. Perhaps she is starting to understand. And because of that, she goes back to her husband: “The only thing I’m scared of is never seeing David again.” Both Sam and Dean tremble in a “pause” at those words. Should they tell her the truth? They’re so in sync, it kills me.

That in-sync quality is eradicated by the final moments of the scene, however, which feature two huge close-ups, one of Molly, troubled, glancing up at Sam, her rock, her guide, and Sam, equally troubled, looking back down at her. Dean is nowhere to be found (at least in the frame, which is all that matters.)

It’s so simple, isn’t it? It looks so effortless.

4th scene

Important scene. I love how it opens with a stretch of silence.

So many shows are so dialogue-driven, they would never allow for silence like this. Unimaginative people think silence is static, they don’t understand how to work with silence, how silence can add to not only the tension, but the emotional import of the story being told. You need the silences to be full, of course.

Molly is now lost in the loss of that other couple, the Greeleys, and in that shift, she moves away from her own loss (which should tell her something). She wanders around in the derelict kitchen, holding onto the scrapbook, looking through it. Her posture is erect and alert. She takes in the story of other people. People who were on this earth, people who loved and lived. She doesn’t know what is happening to her: All she knows is that she has to keep looking at those photos, those love letters … where does love like that go? Does it end? Does it have substance, like matter? What happens to us?

The Man That Got Away
… with a nod to Judy Garland, whose birthday just passed.

I was in love with someone in my 20s. When it ended, it was like a death. Nothing compared to someone who lost a husband of 40 years, but it was the worst thing that had happened to me, romantically, up until that point. So I’ll use the language I want to use. I can honestly say I never fully bounced back. It took me years to even accept it. And he still has a way of re-appearing. Even so many years later. It would take me forever to realize that I had essentially widowed myself, at age 28. I wish I could get that time back! I moved away from Chicago, away from him, and yet was still so haunted by him I used to see him on the streets of New York and run after him, calling his name. He lived in Milwaukee. He was not in New York. I mean, you know. I lost my mind.

A paragraph from L.M. Montgomery’s book Emily’s Quest, the final installment in her magnificent Emily series (which I think is even better than the famous “Anne of Green Gables” series), kept coming to me during that time, and I clung to it. Emily, too, had had to let someone go. He was still alive, but she had to mourn it like a death.

And she — she would love him forever. And even though he knew it not, surely such love would hover around him all his life like an invisible benediction, not understood but dimly felt, guarding him from ill and keeping from him all things of harm and evil.

That’s the only sense I could make of that whole disaster. That would be my life. I would love him forever, and hopefully it would make a difference in his life, somehow, even if it was “not understood but dimly felt.” This was a long time ago, but it’s what I think of when I see Molly flipping through that scrapbook.
Moving ON.

Sam, standing aimlessly between the two downstairs rooms, between Molly and Dean, stares helplessly at Molly. It pains him. When he moves off, we suddenly see Dean, seated in the other room, looking out the window, in one of the most beautiful (albeit very brief, it was hard to get a screen-grab) shots of the episode.

It’s beautiful BECAUSE it’s brief. Sam wants to tell Molly “about her husband.” Yeah, can you tell US too?? Dean puts the kibosh on that. He’s calmer now, though, because he’s not performing for Molly. He’s more grounded in himself, he’s still certain that his choice is the right one, but he’s not flinging his weight/persona around. This is just him and Sam hashing it out. Sam doesn’t like it. It’s “cruel.” In another stunning shot, with that silvery light and the dark shadows making his eyeball translucent, Dean stands, facing Sam in dramatic profile.

He thinks they should “stick with the plan” (WHAT PLAN) and tell her afterwards. She is at the doorway now, saying, “Tell me what?” With that child-like uncertainty again, the feeling that her entire fate is in their hands, that she has no agency, she relies on them totally … she looks scared. She is no longer the same woman she was, though, in that opening sequence when she flags them down. A transfer has started to take place. She is starting to get it herself. In her atoms, her cells, she’s starting to understand.

It’s a lovely performance.

Cue The Animals. When the song erupts from the next room, the three of them turn to look, faces full of dread. It’s so ridiculous. Dean goes to investigate, and there’s an old-timey radio standing against the wall underneath a sheet. Dean notices the unplugged cord, with a frayed cut end. Which is awesome. I love the image of Greeley the Ghost utilizing that song as an announcement-marker because the people who killed him had it on their car radio. It’s so perverse.

When that second verse starts up, and the voice goes up the octave (goosebumps, it’s a wail!), Dean hears a crackling sound, and looks over at the door, the glass of which frosts up of its own accord, revealing a message:

There’s a big and deliberate push-in to Dean’s face, as he looks at that message. The stillness is almost unbearable. Then we see Sam, in the other room, glancing in at Dean nervously. Nobody speaks. The next shot is Molly standing with her back to the open window. The camera angles and the simple choices that lead us up to that moment make her look unbelievably vulnerable and all you can see is that she is not protected from behind. The window! The window! The window! Sam moves forward towards Dean. Then there is a similar push-in to Molly, standing there. Greeley takes his moment and grabs her through the window, pulling her back out with a huge crash of glass.

It’s a nice sequence, really tense and silly and scary.

Sam and Dean, wielding flashlights, race out of the house and into the woods. We see them through the trees, those flashlight beams waving around through the darkness. They run through the trees, and then stop, the camera doing almost a full 360 around them. Love those circular camera movements. This is the only one in “Roadkill.”

5th scene

Bursting back into the house, Sam says, “We gotta find Molly!” Ya think? Dean, though, is more concerned with finding Greeley’s bones. The endless night is actually not endless. The sun will be coming up in two hours. They don’t have much time. Sam is then struck by a photograph in the scrapbook on the table. I love his mind. In the photo, which (helpfully) has the date written underneath it, there is no tree outside the cabin. But there’s a tree there now. Dean looks up at Sam like, “So?”

Sam tells Dean about the “country custom” of planting a tree as a grave-marker and Dean gets that “wow, you’re a nerd” look, makes a crack about encylopedias of weird and stalks out of the house to go check out the tree, leaving Sam embarrassed for a second. It’s Sam’s embarrassment that makes the moment, because “walking encyclopedia of weirdness” is just not as funny a line as it should be. There have been similar moments in the series, when Dean has to comment on Sam’s book-smarts and how nerdy it is, but the lines are usually funnier. But Sam’s taken-aback response is funny, like, Shut up, man, so I read, so what. There’s a long history of brotherly teasing in that reaction. He recovers with a strong and manly, “Yeah. I know.” My encyclopedia brain just figured this mother OUT, big brother.

6th scene

The obligatory torture scene, Molly strung up with chains in the shed, demanding to know what Greeley did with David. These two are caught in a loop, re-enacting the same trauma over and over again. Neither can move on. Their lives have been ruined.

We finally get a nice long look at Greeley (Winston Rekert).

His hand, as he caresses her face, is stiff, bloated and red. It’s horrible. She tries to bond with him about his wife. He’s having none of it. He cuts open her stomach with his long curly nails. She screams. She cries. Thank goodness, because Sam and Dean hear her, and freeze like alarmed deer.

Sam has a shovel and is about to dig up a damn tree. Back in the cabin, Greeley transforms into a leering spirit, and Dean, in the doorway behind, blows him away. Molly sees Dean and breathes, “Oh, thank God,” and in his most Die Hard moment in an episode full of Die Hard moments (although with an Ackles-ian twist, which I’ll get to), he jokes, “Call me Dean.”

But that is too blatant, even for Dean, and Ackles knows that, his sensibility is nuanced and subtle, and he undercuts the wisecrack with an almost shy laugh and a shrug, like, “Oh shucks, I’m being silly and stupid, whatever ignore me …” and it’s charming and … bizarre. I love it when Dean is weird. It’s almost embarrassing because it’s so transparent. Like the moment I went on and on about in my first post about Ackles and schtick, the moment lasts one second and it still manages to have about 3 beats in it.

And, of course, taking the time to crack a joke and be shy/shruggy/smiley is his undoing because it gives Greeley time to materialize behind him. Greeley is able to scratch Dean’s face without touching him (oh, you ghosts, with your special powers), and Dean takes the time to be enraged. It’s another error because Greeley takes that pause and throws Dean across the room like a rag doll. Dean’s gorgeous blunt shotgun clatters to the floor. Bungee? Nope. Why make things easier on themselves?

Sam, meanwhile, is the fastest grave-digger in the history of the profession, having uncovered Greeley’s bones in less than 3 minutes. Uh-huh. From inside the shed comes Dean’s scream, “HURRY UP, SAM” and … well. Not every moment is perfect. Greeley has got some major Carrie-esque powers, commanding a hunting knife to fly across the room into his hand. Dean is trapped by some supernatural centrifugal force, and Sam is taking for EVER to open up the salt container. Like, for. ever.

Greeley looms over Dean and there is a stand-off with the knife, Dean pushing it away, Greeley pushing it forward, Molly dangling in the air in the background like a thrown-out puppet. Sam, for God’s sake, what is taking so long. Stop glancing over your shoulder at the shed, you’re giving me a heart attack. But finally, salt, burn, Greeley up in smoke, job well done. Jesus Mary and Joseph, cutting it pretty close there.

Oh, and one last thing: Because this is an episode concerned with what comes after, and also concerned with the feelings of ghosts, prompted by Molly’s questions, Greeley’s demise is lingered over. His pain is highlighted, the agony he experiences before he “goes.” He writhes with it. He is FORCED to “go.” This image makes all kinds of reverberations go off in my head, about the life-force (as Sam mentioned earlier), and our attachments here on earth. Not to possessions, those don’t matter, but to the people we love. It’s all about other people. Who can even picture “going” to a place where those people you love AREN’T? Death is something we all eventually will do. But nobody can tell us what that final moment is like. If you have been present when someone has passed away, then you know that … something happens. Something is there … and then it is not there. Even with illness and pain and agony … the body WANTS to live. It FIGHTS to live. Because life is all that we know.

These thoughts are very personal and it’s the landscape of “Roadkill.” We have never before seen such a humanized “ghost” (well, okay, Dean in the Season 2 premiere) … and Greeley’s pain as his bones are burned is intense. He has been very scary throughout, but as Sam coached Molly and coached us … he wasn’t a bad person, he didn’t start out this way, he’s trapped here, he needs to be put to rest. But being “put to rest” is a horrible process . It’s violent. It’s loud.

As he screams and writhes amongst the flames, we get one of those enormous closer-than-close closeups of Molly watching.

We have been in her point-of-view all along.

7th scene

As you’ll notice, the “case” is over, but we still have 10 minutes left in the episode. Like “Everybody Loves a Clown,” the case is somewhat truncated, because there needs to be a pretty significant book-end to the episode and time must be left for that. Because what really matters, the real POINT, is not finding Greeley. It’s Molly. And what to do with Molly. Dean walks to the car, lugging his bag, like the grunt that he is, with Sam and Molly following. The rain is still coming down, and I love that they are out in it. Raindrops on their faces, their hair wet. It’s not a downpour but it’s just enough to give it that realistic freezing-wet-night feeling. It’s extremely sad. Molly’s energy has changed. She’s solemn and still. What a change has occurred in her from the start, yes?

Sam is solicitous, opening the door for her. “Let’s get you out of here.” She stands there, saying, “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what happened to my husband.” Dean, again, is nowhere to be found in the frame. It’s all Sam and Molly. Sam is sorrowful, he feels for her, he doesn’t know what to say, how to say it. She is no longer in a panic. Look at her face in that shot, and the silvery light along the side of her hair. It’s stunning.

Dean may be the grunt who carries the tools but it is Sam who takes on the heavy-lifting, emotionally, in “Roadkill.” Molly thinks she understands. Greeley killed her husband. “He’s dead …?” says Molly, with this fresh wash of grief over her face, and I find her performance so touching. I also find the memory of David, bitching about the map and being annoying in the teaser, touching. Because he was just a regular guy, not Clint Eastwood or Brad Pitt or whatever, just a regular human guy, but he was loved like this. And so I suddenly imagine what his grief must have been. How difficult it must have been for him to let go of her, of the life and future he thought he would have. I have tears in my eyes just typing this out.

Sam, with rain in his hair, and a big silent pool of knowledge all over his face, making him awkward, hesitant, beautiful, says, “No, Molly. David’s alive.”

And then this happens on her face ….

… and forget it. I’m slain. She is so good.

This is the moment when you realize that being a “hunter” is a solemn and practically sacred job, although Sam and Dean don’t really act that way. Or they haven’t quite considered it that way before. Salting/burning is only one aspect of it, and you can see Sam doing the best he can.

A beautiful thing happens next: she gets into the backseat, and we see her, blurred out through the rainy windshield. The image of her is wavering and unclear, but we can still perceive that that helplessly happy and beautiful smile is still on her face, the knowledge that David is alive … and how happy she is that he, the man she loves, is alive. But we’re seeing her through the rain-drenched windshield, and so the image itself is tremendously sad. It’s like the window is doing the crying for her.

And because I cannot help myself: using rain as a stand-in for tears is an old cinematic trick. Have someone stand in front of a window where rain pours down along the glass and you don’t have to do too much else to give a scene its emotion.

One of the most well-known examples of this technique is a famous scene from In Cold Blood (1967).

Director Richard Brooks and cinematographer Conrad Hall had Robert Blake, playing the murderer Perry, do his whole monologue about his sob-story life against a window streaming with rain. Blake barely has to act. The rain does 3/4s of the work for him. Imagine that scene without the rain. Impossible. And you’ll notice that Robert Blake does not shed a tear. But the reflections on his face of the rain-water give the impression that tears are streaming down his face. It’s so beautifully done.

Having us see Molly through that rainy window, all with that dazed happy smile on her face, even for just a second, is devastating.

8th scene

The Impala chug-chugs into the frame. I never get sick of that particular angle. It is never not sexy and macho and hot as hell. The camera pulls up over the hood to show Dean, Sam and Molly through the rainy windsheild, Sam says gently, “He’s in that house right there.”

Which … if I were her, I’d be like: What?

And Molly is, indeed, like … What?

It’s that whole Sixth Sense thing, of being the last one to know of your actual state.

Now. Watch how suddenly color starts to come into play. There’s green grass, soft yellow lamplight, soft brown cupboards in the house inside, and, later, of course, a blazing sunrise at the end of the street. The rest of the episode has been the silver-black smudginess of Molly’s reality, her night-time life, her never-ending loop. Life and warmth stopped for her on that night 15 years ago. It did not stop for others. David obviously mourned his wife. But he has moved on. Life continues. You can’t even BELIEVE it when you’re in the first wave of it. But it does, indeed, continue. There will be warm lamplight and coffee pots and a warm house and all the rest … those things still exist. David had to find his way back to them. It took some time. For Molly, those things are over. The difference is so stark: that horrible cabin, those wet woods, the pitch-blackness and the silence … and then the interior of David’s house, which Molly stares into, baffled. She sees David, with the coffee pot. He’s wearing a robe. He’s about to start his day. Maybe he has a long commute. Who knows. But from Molly’s perspective, it makes no sense: it’s a betrayal. She’s been running around in the forest looking for him, when he was here and cozy all along? Everything changes when a woman walks into the room and David greets her with a smile and a kiss.

Sam and Dean stand back a bit, letting Molly have her experience, discover the truth for herself. They are both soaked. Dean’s dropped the Burlesque altogether. He’s not invested in it anymore. Greeley’s gone, his job is done. But Sam is still the Lead Caretaker.

It is Sam Molly turns to in her hurt. “Who is that?”

“It’s David’s wife,” says Sam.

Beautifully, (thank you, Raelle Tucker), Molly doesn’t respond. She looks at Sam. She looks back at the happy home inside, her husband with his wife. She looks back to Sam. That’s the kind of moment I mean that a lot of shows do not indulge in, but that Supernatural indulges in all the time: the silence of revelation, of discovery, of thought. These moments allow the space for thought, and NOTHING is more interesting to watch than people thinking. In many ways, it’s what the movie camera was invented for. Too bad so many directors still have not gotten that truly basic memo.

And God, is it a beautiful and heartbreaking shot.

She can’t take it in. Sam explains. To her, and, finally, to us. 15 years ago (15 years she’s been in the dark about herself!) she and her husband killed Jonah Greeley. David survived. Molly feels alive to herself. How can it be? Remember the discovery moment in Sixth Sense, when he finally gets it. She says to Sam, “What are you saying?” Dean answers, with a minimum of attitude, finally: There are two spirits haunting that highway, “Jonah Greeley and you.”

As she resists, the light behind her swells to fill up the screen on the side of her face: it is the soft lamplight from within the house behind her, blurred out, washing against her cheek. It’s a beautiful effect, and has so much sadness in it, because that light on the screen is the light of home, of love, of marriage. All things from which she is now banished.

These closeups are incredible. I don’t know what kind of lens they use (they’re still on film at this point), but I do know that with a closeup of this magnitude, the camera is usually inches away from the face. This is where technique mixed with faith/belief/imagination comes in. It is hard to be “present” as ourselves in everyday life. Imagine being present and vulnerable with a camera up your nostril. I mean, that’s the acting gig, that’s what required. Those who can’t do it, don’t get work. That’s the way it goes. But her work in this last sequence is stunning, not just emotionally, but technically. She is so in it, and – she is in it in the most artificial situation possible – with a gigantic camera looming towards her left cheekbone.

When Dean tells her what year it is, she glances his way, tears gleaming in her eyes, raindrops shimmering in her hair, and it looks like everything on screen is about to dissolve into moisture. And perhaps because it is Dean who tells her the year, Dean who has been so gruff and unpleasant up until now … his words hold a lot of weight. He may have been rude, but he is not a liar. If he says it, it must be true.

In that moment, the screen flashes white, and we get a quick series of flash-backs, straight from the Sixth Sense playbook, showing – finally – what the “case” has been like from Sam and Dean’s experience. Silly us, we thought they were the leads. But they haven’t been the leads at all in “Roadkill.” They’ve been busy bees, off-screen, putting together the pieces, and then appearing from the side into Molly’s narrative.

First up, we get the scene that usually starts an episode: Dean and Sam driving, Sam reciting his research about the killings/disappearances that have occurred along that highway. Dean asks questions, and here is the regular Dean, the Dean we haven’t seen in “Roadkill” thus far. The Burlesque is on mute. Witnesses describe seeing a woman being chased by a man covered in blood. And I’m sorry, my heart aches for Greeley and Molly. What a life. Jeez. “Two spooks.” says Dean.

After that, hooray! A library scene! It’s been a while since we’ve had one of those! I’ve written a lot about it, which you know if you’ve been following along. The first time was in the re-cap for the pilot, but it comes up repeatedly. My father was a librarian. My first job in high school was in a library. Supernatural, in its bizarre way, becomes practically an advertisement for the importance of public libraries. That even with our online world, there are still things that have to be looked up, researched out, found on microfilm, or digging through archives. And often you need a person – i.e. a librarian – to help you do that. Supernatural has scene after scene after scene in libraries. I am in heaven. Sam and Dean huddle around a computer, scrolling through microfilm. Ah, memories.

After that, Sam and Dean paid a visit on David McNamara, posing as who-knows-what, asking where Molly was buried. “She was cremated,” says David, which gives us another piece of the puzzle. Seen through the trees in the front yard (again not allowing us a clear view of what we want to see), Sam and Dean emerge from David’s house, confused, having hit a roadblock. There will be no grave-digging for Molly. “But what’s keeping her here?” asks Sam. Which is, indeed, the question.

Shots repeat. We get the God’s-eye shot of the crashed car. Molly in the rear view mirror. David screaming. Sam saying, gently, “Some spirits only see what they want.” Molly screaming for David and running out into the street, flagging down the Impala.

This time, we move inside the car with Sam and Dean, both staring out the windshield at Molly. “Dean,” breathes Sam, suddenly getting it. “I don’t think she knows she’s dead.”

We see the same exact opening scene, but from Sam and Dean’s perspective now. No more rainy window between us and them. We are inside the car. When she bangs on the passenger window, the two of them stare out at her, stunned, not knowing what to do. It all makes sense now.

Then Sam saying to Molly, “Some spirits hold on too tight. Can’t let go.” In that original moment, it seemed he was talking about Greeley. But of course now it looks totally different.

Back in the present moment, Molly listens to Sam, still with that child-like wounded-animal look, open and trusting, but her grief is profound.

9th scene

A small time-lapse, and the first rays of dawn struggle through the rain-clouds at the end of the street. The music has become mournful, with that elegiac horn-theme they use from time to time, an emotional sound, an almost epic sound. Like “Taps.” The Winchester-mournful theme. Molly has sat down, and Sam and Dean loom over her, like big awkward boyish protectors. The rain still comes down, and the light is cold and grey.

The script is excellent:

Molly: Why didn’t you tell me when you first saw me? Why wait until now?
Dean: You wouldn’t have believed us.
Molly. And you needed me for bait.
Sam: Well, we needed you.

Molly rises: she must go talk to David, she has to tell him …

Sam, in enormous close-up, as enormous as the close-ups of Molly throughout (these are clues, again, as to how we are supposed to “view” this: This is Sam’s journey too), says, “Tell him what? That you love him? He already knows.”

Her expression kills me.

Finally, Dean gets to have a close-up. If she goes in there, “you are gonna freak him right out. For life.” There’s something vaguely humorous in his line-reading, although there is caring behind it now. Caring for her, certainly, but more for David. Dean is on the side of The Living. Something about his tone stops Molly, and Sam glances over too (Sam has already become used to “running” this event and handling Molly, so Dean’s contributions are rare and noticeable.) Dean knows he’s not as “good” at the touchy-feely stuff as Sam, although he’s experiencing a touchy-feely thing in his own way, for David, and in Dean’s huge close-up, he does that little shrug-with-his-face thing he does on occasion, looking over at Sam. It’s great, a little non-verbal, “Okay, fine, I’m not good at these moments, but you know I’m speaking truth to power, Sam.” Great.

“This is your unfinished business,” says Sam, and Molly starts to cry. She’s scared. She doesn’t know what to do. How is she supposed to “finish” this? There is no rule-book. And Sam and Dean don’t know either. They just know it has to happen. This is like the amazing hospice people who understand the stages of death approaching. Who can help the grieving family understand these stages. And accept that it’s natural, it’s supposed to happen, Death is natural. I myself could not do such work, but I am filled with gratitude to those who do. Because the natural thing, for the living, is to buck against death, to fight it, to see “health” and “life” as the normal thing. But it’s not. It’s just one stage of our journey here.

Sam’s uncertainty about this is touching. She needs help. All he can say is: “Just … let go?” And there’s a question mark. It’s vulnerable. Because he doesn’t KNOW. He’s still alive. Where she is going is a place he has never been. She has to do it on her own. Let go of David? Let go of life? No! Helfer is extraordinary. There’s no pyrotechnics here, no show-offy acting, just a deep understanding of this character’s reality, based on the love of her husband and her life, and her fear of what comes next.

I can’t take it.

“If you let go … we think you’ll move on,” says Sam, and he is so gentle and sweet you would follow him anywhere. “But you don’t know where …” says Molly, and that’s the fear, that’s what we ALL face, even those with faith. “It’s time to go,” says Sam. There’s a slight morning breeze, moving her hair, and all feels soft and caring, the light rising, a change becoming possible, perceivable. Dean has glanced away. It’s hard for him. But Sam stays on Molly with focus. He is her guide.

She moves away from them a bit, and they watch her go. Wondering. Because ultimately … they don’t know. They surmise, but they don’t know.

Think of their relationship with death. Sam has no memory of his mother. He grieves the loss of her, of never having had her, but his grief is different from Dean’s. Dean was 4 years old and not allowed to grieve. That’s some “unfinished business” right there. There has been no room in their lives to incorporate any sense of gentleness and ease with “passing”. They have only known wrenching violence. They are unprepared. As they watch her walk off from them, they look boyish to me. It’s new territory. This is not the certainty of Touched By an Angel. This is the uncertainty of Supernatural, which is why the episode is able to survive these next moments. What could be cheesy and “pat” is instead moving and profound.

The sun is rising in a blaze of light and color. The wind has picked up, and Molly faces the light.

In her final moment, letting go is as easy as just deciding to do it. But it took her 15 years of resistance to get there. It took a repetitive re-enactment of the trauma. It took the help of two guys in wet flannel. It reminds me again of that exchange in Men in Black. Life is hard and letting go is hard work. It takes forever, in some cases.

Molly is absorbed into the rays of the dawn, and vanishes. There is no screaming and writhing, a la Greeley. It is a peaceful surrender.

Sam and Dean watch it happen, and suddenly, in the sunrise light, we see flesh-tones again, the pinks of their skin. We’ve missed it in the black-and-white of the episode, the inhumanity of zero color. Even Dean seems moved. But not sure what to think. Still. When he speaks, it’s with a grudging tone: “I guess she wasn’t so bad. For a ghost.”

Oh Dean.

But the episode ends with Sam. His experience has become interior. Dean seems to want to talk about what just happened. They’re in different places, though, which speaks to the sense I get that Sam has been thinking about himself as well as Molly. And that is something he cannot discuss with Dean. Sam prays. We’ve learned that. He has carved out a small space for himself in the mess of his life to contemplate the eternal, to ask for help, to … whatever it is that people do when they pray. I know what I do, but I won’t presume to speak for anyone else. When Dean asks if he thinks Molly has gone to a better place, he sounds vaguely skeptical, but also … hopeful. Or, not hopeful, but that Sam is the guy to go to with such questions. Sam will have a “take” that maybe Dean wants. Sam is the go-to guy throughout, the real grunt. “I hope so,” says Sam. Dean makes a crack about “Haley Joel,” because, of course, and heads off to the Impala. Leaving Sam alone, glancing at the spot where Molly just was, the spot where Molly vanished. He doesn’t look peaceful or serene, or like “job well done.” He looks worried. Consumed with worry.

“Hope’s kind of the whole point,” Sam said to Dean.

It’s a mistake to think that hope is easy or that hope comes cheap. Hope is hard for Sam. Hope is nearly impossible for Dean, but it’s hard for Sam, too. Especially “hope” of this philosophical nature. Perhaps he prays for help in keeping his hope. Hope that what they are doing has meaning, hope that what they do really does help, hope that the peace they help people find has resonance, will make their sacrifices worth it. One of my favorite lines in the Bible describes faith as being “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

That’s Sam’s solitary struggle. To maintain hope, and faith, that “things not seen” will still, to quote L.M. Montgomery again, be “dimly felt” and make a difference, a real difference, in people’s lives.

In his own as well?

Sam’s not so sure about that one at all.