![\"home7\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/home7.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nDirected by Ken Girotti
\nWritten by series creator Eric Kripke<\/i><\/p>\n
In this episode, Sam says to Missouri, the psychic: “It just feels like something’s starting.” <\/p>\n
It feels that way to me too. <\/p>\n
The seeds have been planted for where the series is going to go, even in the episodes where it seems those Arcs are in eclipse, or don’t exist at all. When you think of where Season 1 is going, and further along than that, Season 2 and Season 3, you can see that Sam’s instincts are right on. Something’s starting. And it really starts here, and in the next three episodes. Almost every important theme\/plot-line\/idea that is going to be necessary to keep Supernatural<\/i> going for as many seasons as it has lasted, is introduced for real in “Home” and the three episodes following. So let’s track it. <\/p>\n
The Pilot<\/a>: Episode 2<\/a>: Episode 3<\/a>: Episode 4<\/a>: Episode 5<\/a>: Episode 6<\/a>: Episode 7<\/a>: Episode 8<\/a>: But all of that seems mere preamble for what happens in the next four episodes, “Home,” “Asylum,” “Scarecrow,” and “Faith”, which, taken together, could make up a gorgeous and effective “Part 1” of some hugely successful movie franchise. These episodes weave in and out of each other, the prism focusing on this or that aspect of the boys’ lives, and with each one we go deeper and deeper into the outside forces working on both of them. It’s all here. Mom, Dad, childhood trauma, a rift between the brothers, the haunting threat of Death, as well as a couple of new concepts which will take on huge importance to the series as whole. Reapers, for one. What would the show be without its ideas on Reapers? We also get the introduction of Meg, in “Scarecrow”, and that final scene in the truck was a mind-blower for me the first time I saw the episode. If I could put into words my initial reaction it would be: “WTF.” <\/p>\n Because up until that moment, what we have seen the show to be is a moody and violent horror movie on wheels, and it seems mainly to be about siblings, family dynamics, and childhood stuff, albeit with monsters thrown in. “Scarecrow” is a game-changer. “Scarecrow” says to the audience, “Ha. Ha. You thought you knew where we were going. You thought wrong.<\/i>” <\/p>\n Suddenly, in that final scene of “Scarecrow”, the micro-view goes macro. With no lead-in or preamble, although we have sensed something is “weird” about Meg. But THIS weird?<\/p>\n Even better, Meg’s final moment is not witnessed by either brother. So we, the audience, know more than they do. And that situation lasts for another bunch of episodes. (Supernatural<\/i> has great patience for its big reveals. Dad whispers something into Dean’s ear in the Season 2 pilot and we don’t find out what he said until “Croatian”, which is Episode 9. Patience!) In terms of Meg’s final moment in “Scarecrow”, we want the brothers to know what we know, they are clearly in danger, and the “search for Dad” suddenly seems way way bigger than it had before, with much more at stake. But the Winchester brothers remain oblivious, until “Shadow” (and even then, they still don’t get the full picture). If Sam sensed “something is starting” during “Home”, then it was during “Scarecrow” that I originally thought: “Wow. What country, friends, is THIS??” <\/p>\n Home is one of the most important themes of Supernatural<\/i> as a whole, getting back to Home, what does Home mean, Home is where the heart is, any place I hang my hat is home, etc. It is natural that the brothers would avoid Lawrence, Kansas, like the plague, after what happened there, but inevitably, they must go back. <\/p>\n \n \nOne of the things I like very much about “Home” is it shows the brothers almost swapping-off strength and weaknesses. And “strength” doesn’t only look a certain way, and neither does “weakness”. It is hard to say, at times, which is which, and I find that to be quite complex and quite human. Because strength under another name is being rigid and a dumbass, and being weak, seen in another light, is actually being human and properly cautious. Up until now, we have had glimpses of Sam’s strength, and there is also the undeniable fact that he had the strength to remove himself from the family and go to college, even as it was treated like a huge betrayal by both his father and his brother. So that takes backbone. That takes a sense of self. Dean seems stronger and more capable, only because of his swagger and his confidence at his job (which is fully earned). He’s the big brother, he takes the lead on things, because he’s older, even though now, they are both men, and it’s about time that hierarchy shifted. And it will. Not yet, though, although it’s starting here. Sam is panicked about the nightmares he’s been having, and Dean’s worried about them too. But when Sam realizes that they must return to Lawrence, Kansas, he seems urgent, certain, and capable: he is not afraid. Dean, on the other hand, resists the return with every fiber of his being. We’ll get back to this. In subtle ways (unlike in “Bugs,” which lacked subtlety), we start to see Sam coming into his own, and in that process, Dean starts to unravel. If he’s not the “big brother,” then who the hell is he supposed to be?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Teaser<\/big> The words on the screen telling us where the teaser takes place gives us a clue that we are entering into some murky psychological waters. In a dark house (so dark the shadows creep towards the inhabitants, even in scenes taking place in broad daylight), a blonde woman sits on the floor going through a box, ostensibly unpacking but actually lost in a reverie. She stares at a wedding photo where she is pictured as the bride. Whatever happened to the husband, we never learn. Did he die? Did he leave her for another woman? Whatever went down was bad, and this woman is now trying to pick up the pieces. Unfortunately, she moved into the wrong house for a fresh start. Her sad reverie is interrupted by her young daughter who informs her that something is in her closet upstairs. Mom checks the closet, and the perspective (from inside the closet) is creepy, making Mom show up in black silhouette, a Supernatural<\/i> stylistic fingerprint. <\/p>\n \n \nMom shows the daughter there is nothing there, but the darkness of the room, the shadows, tell another story. The daughter tells the mother she doesn’t like their new house (you and me both, sister), and Mom reassures daughter that “you, me, and your brother are going to be very happy here.” Daughter makes Mom place a chair in front of the closet door and Mom obliges. The teaser for “Home” is one of those “take its time” teasers, easing us into the set-up, through mood and music, giving us evocative character details that will then unfold over the course of the episode. Done assuaging her daughter’s fears, Mom goes back downstairs and it’s so dark and creepy I want her to turn on a light for herself. Going back to her boxes, she then hears scuttling sounds through the floorboards, and murmurs to herself, “Please. Don’t let it be rats.” <\/p>\n Naturally, because she is in a horror movie and doesn’t realize it, she takes a flashlight and descends into the murky pitch-black basement to investigate for herself. The light doesn’t go on, something is off with the wiring (of course), but does she wait until morning to go check out the sound? Of course not! <\/p>\n Upstairs, in the daughter’s room, the closet door slowly opens, pushing the chair in front of it away. Blackness yawns from within the closet, and the daughter stares at the abyss in horror. She KNEW something was in there. (Have to say, too: it’s nice to have a little girl in Supernatural<\/i> who is NOT a “creepy kid”, the kind of creepy kid Hollywood delights in giving us<\/a>. There are many little boys who show up in Supernatural<\/i>, and some of them have creepiness licking at their heels, like Jessie, like Lucas, but ALL little girls are creepy here, not to mention Lilith, the creepiest of them all. I get that Sam and Dean may relate more to little boys, since they were little boys themselves, and maybe the “creepy little girl” thing is used more than the “creepy little boy” thing because we expect little girls to be pleasing and sweet and adorable, but not ALL little girls are dead-eyed little psychos-in-training, hate to break it to you.) <\/p>\n The teaser now moves back and forth between the events unfolding in the little girl’s room and Mom’s exploration of the creepy basement downstairs. Little girl trembles, terrified, staring at the darkness within her closet. <\/p>\n Mom’s eye catches sight of a dusty battered old trunk in the corner. Curious, she opens it up and sees it is filled with objects, photographs and construction paper cards (the first thing you get a glimpse of is a big card with the word DAD colored on it, a heart-stopping detail, when you consider that card was obviously made by Dean, before his world fell apart). <\/p>\n A mother, consumed with mourning for her own lost past, rifles through the objects, pulling out photographs, of these people we know, John and Mary Winchester smiling and embracing, the whole family standing together on the front lawn, and written on the back is: “The Winchester Family, John, Mary, Dean and Little Sammy.”<\/p>\n Supernatural<\/i> is very big on clues written on the backs of photographs. <\/p>\n Back in the bedroom, from out of the pitch-black closet materializes a figure wrapped in orange flames. The daughter huddles in her bed, staring at it, frozen (which \u2026 I don’t blame her). The way the scene is shot together tells the whole story (along with the images themselves): cutting from the Winchester family photograph to the Flaming Figure in the closet suggests that whatever is going on now is connected to what happened back then, which will be the story of this episode.<\/p>\n 1st Scene<\/big> Later that morning, Dean sits by the window at the laptop, drinking coffee, and Sam sits on the bed with a pad of paper. Dean tries to get Sam interested in possible cases, but Sam is too busy drawing a big twisted tree on a pad of paper. Dean is getting annoyed. I love the light in this scene. There are filmy white curtains at the window, showing tangled tree shadows from outside, and the rest of the room is dark as hell. When we do see the boys, they are either half-lit or gloomily lit, giving the scene a natural grungy feeling of grime, and burnt coffee, and chilly tile. I’ve stayed in cheap horrible motels, and it’s true: you don’t want to turn on too many lights because you don’t really want to see just how dirty the place is.<\/p>\n \n \nSam pulls out childhood photo and compares the trees. He knows where they need to go. “Home.” Sam shows Dean the photo, and says, “This photo was taken in front of our old house, the house where Mom died, right?” Dean looks at it, still as a statue, and glances up at Sam, without moving any other part of his body. His tone is cold and almost aggressive in its suggestion that these are dangerous waters, “Yeah?” I pointed out in “Bugs” the mini-eruptions that go on in Dean Winchester when anyone, even Sam, mentions the family, Mom, what happened, anything having to do with their childhood. He has not incorporated the trauma into who he is, he has not gone into it at all, he was not given a chance to as a kid, he was not allowed to grieve. So it’s fascinating to watch him, especially here, when he is forced to come face to face with his own past. That dead-voiced “Yeah” is our clue. <\/p>\n Naturally, Dean balks at this. Why? The way he looks at Sam shows that he’s not pissed or annoyed or pulling rank. He’s actually afraid. He’s about 4 years old. Playing that is all on Ackles: being angry would be the easy choice. Ackles taps into the underlying terror, the leftover trauma, something Dean himself is barely able to acknowledge. <\/p>\n \n \nSam is in a rush, he knows that the people who live in their old house are in danger, they need to hit the road, and Dean needs to just “trust me on this”. This is a big deal with the brothers, and will come up again and again, a sort of “don’t have time to explain it now, but you have to trust me”, or “I’ve proven myself to be trustworthy, please just follow my lead and I’ll fill you in later”. Sometimes this pans out for the good, sometimes it is treacherous and terrible. In this instance, Dean’s reaction to Sam’s asking him for trust is, “Trust you? That’s weak. You have to give me something more.”<\/p>\n Sam finally comes clean about his prophetic dreams or visions, which goes over about as well as you could expect. Dean is truly shaken. He tries to brush it off, but he has to go and sit down. What does it mean? What is up with Sam? Has he gone “The Shining” (a favorite reference for Dean – Stephen King is EVERYWHERE in this episode.) (Interestingly enough, later on, when Pamela comes into the picture, clearly the Hunter world is not so disgusted by psychics that they won’t welcome them into their confidence, so sometimes I wonder what the hell is the big deal with Sam’s visions.) But clearly for Dean, Sam having this whole other Big Thing that 1. he knew nothing about, and 2. he cannot control, is seriously upsetting. <\/p>\n \n \nOne dynamic I find interesting in the episode is the one I mentioned up above: Sam, although he has no idea what his visions mean for him, steps up to the plate in a very confident and adult way in response to them. He is the Leader in the episode, and Dean is the resistant baffled follower. A beautiful detail is how Dean, upon meeting Missouri the psychic (played by the divine Loretta Devine, who validates any project she is in merely by showing up), almost automatically becomes her punching bag. From almost the first moment. She treats him roughly, keeping him in line, before he has even done anything wrong. Sam she goes soft on, she recognizes a kindred spirit in Sam, she senses his psychic abilities which perhaps connotes a deeper sense of empathy and connectedness, something Dean needs to learn. Dean experiences her treatment of him as totally unfair, why he is always in trouble with her?? (I would also suggest that people have strange sometimes hostile reactions to beauty like the kind he has. The show is sometimes explicit about that, most often when demons mention his looks, but beauty affects human beings as well. I think Missouri may have looked at that boy before her, and thought to herself, “He needs to be taken down a peg. His beauty isn’t working on ME.” Just a thought.) Dean trying to deal with Missouri’s treatment of him goes along with his “racing to catch up with events” vibe throughout the episode. Dean is WAY off his game here. He’s off his game from the moment Sam says they have to return to Lawrence.<\/p>\n “I swore to myself \u2026 I’d never go back there,” he says to Sam, in almost a pleading voice.<\/p>\n And, classic Supernatural<\/i>, we go right up his nose to get a closer look at his panic.<\/p>\n \n \nDean sits on the bed and he looks very fragile and lost and it is a reminder that they had two very different childhoods. Sam was born into a world with no mother, he does not remember her death or those early years when Dad went off the rails. Dean does. Sam’s urgency (“This might be the thing that killed Mom, Dean!”) draws Dean up short. He understood his life and what he was doing up until that point. He has gotten into a groove with carrying on Dad’s legacy of hunting and killing evil things. Maybe he has even lost sight of the ultimate hunt, which is for the “thing that Killed Mom”. But Sam, still grieving the loss of his girlfriend, can’t forget it. Sam doesn’t remember the house-fire and he doesn’t remember Mom. It doesn’t have the same potency for him that it has for Dean. We saw that in the pilot during their night-time confrontation on the bridge. <\/p>\n Dean is handling a lot in this scene: he is handling the fact that his brother has weird dreams that come true. He is handling the fact that something may be going on in their old house, which means “the thing that killed Mom” may still be there? and he is also handling the fact that he has to return home. There’s eerie mournful piano and violin underneath this scene, elegiac and sad. It’s their subtext. Great use of score. <\/p>\n Dean looks at Sam in almost a pleading way, which is heartbreaking, and very new for the character. The same pleading\/questioning “help me?” look comes over his face at the end of the episode too. <\/p>\n Boy, Supernatural<\/i> loves its moody tormented profiles. So do I. <\/p>\n \n \n2nd scene<\/big> \n \nBoth brothers stare out the car window at the house, and, in a nice moment, Sam says to Dean, whose eyes remain riveted on the house, “Are you gonna be all right, man?” Siblings can sometimes argue about who had the worst childhood, or whose interpretation of how things went down is the right one, but in this moment, Sam gives Dean the space to have his separate experience. He reaches out to his brother, too. It’s kind. Dean’s response, “Let me get back to you on that” is surprisingly vulnerable. Normally the brothers are all, “I’m fine” “I’m okay” when questions like that come up. Dean is too raw for that. Sam knows it and is gentle with that knowledge. <\/p>\n They knock on the door, and blonde Mom Jenny (Kristin Richardson) opens it. Immediately, you can see Sam struck into total silence because this was the woman from his dream. Dean fills in the gap and begins babbling about how they are federal investigators but Sam cuts him off, and it’s the right choice: Sam tells her that they used to live here and they were just driving by and would it be all right if they took a look at the old place? Methinks Dean, with his awkward blunt-ness and his inability to go through a moment without flirting (he flirts with people, burgers, his car, angels, demons, anyone, to quote Nancy Lemon, he “would have batted [his] eyelashes at anything in shoe leather\u201d – I go into that dynamic at length here<\/a>), would have screwed up this initial moment royally without Sam’s intervention. <\/p>\n Because, after a moment of hesitation, she does let them in. Especially after she hears that their last name is Winchester. She tells them she found some of their old photographs. Dean says, “You did?” And again, he looks thrown. His father had tossed him into this life immediately following his mother’s death, had taken him shooting, gave him guns, pulled him out of school, and told him to take care of his younger brother. Dean knows how to cook, he knows how to change diapers, he knows how to heat up formula. I mean, we don’t see him do any of this, but as a child, he was responsible for a baby when he was barely toilet-trained himself. There was no space for Dean to understand what had happened to him, to grieve the loss of his mother, and to grieve the loss of his childhood. He didn’t know any other kind of life. So to hear that there are photos out there, in a basement, that may connect him to “the time before” \u2026 Another kind of man might be thrilled at such new information, but Dean gets rattled. He doesn’t want to look back there. He can’t bear it. He is fragile, not strong. This is what Jensen Ackles brings to the portrayal of Dean Winchester. I imagine that the creation of this character was a somewhat organic phenomenon, once the series got picked up, once they knew they would be making more episodes. In the Pilot, Dean is written as a brash womanizing douchebag, blunt, to-the-point, and bossy. But very quickly after the Pilot, other shadings start being highlighted, which would have been impossible if they had hired a less gifted actor. The writing team, Kripke and everyone else, clearly recognized what they had in this guy. He can do anything<\/i>, so let’s throw everything<\/i> at him. <\/p>\n The word “jackpot” comes to mind, although I am stealing that from Chelsea Handler’s reaction to Jensen Ackles’ face when he appeared on her show. <\/p>\n But still. It’s his talent that’s the real jackpot. <\/p>\n Acting teacher Stella Adler said once that “Talent is in the choice.” Marlon Brando was talented because of the choices he made as an actor, within scenes, within moments, he brought things to life that were words on a page, and it was all through the choices he made, unconsciously or not (it doesn’t matter). An untalented actor makes uninteresting poor choices.<\/p>\n Jensen Ackles basically does not make uninteresting or poor choices as an actor. Ever. There’s a magic in him, yes, a cinematic photogenic magic, and it is combined with his beauty, sex appeal, and general appealing-ness, which is all part of being a success as an actor as well (especially if you’re in the Leading Man bucket, and not the Character Actor bucket). But he has such a good instinct for the character, and for what the script needs. When it needs him to go balls to the wall, he can do it. When it needs him to underplay, he does it. When it needs him to be ridiculous and obvious, he can do that too. <\/p>\n The unbalanced quality he shows in “Home” is just the tip of a very enormous iceberg. <\/p>\n Jenny moves backwards, inviting them in, and there’s a quick glance between Sam and Dean, both of them polite, and awkward, and without speaking, Sam walks into the house first. It’s not a huge underlined moment, but it’s eloquent. Dean needs Sam to go first on this one.<\/p>\n The house is barely lit, and as they walk through hallways and rooms they are at first covered in almost complete darkness before emerging into half-lit smaller areas. It’s gorgeous. The production design\/lighting team makes this house look and feel haunted. Sam is looking around him, and Dean follows, looking around him as well, but there’s a halted energy in his walk, his posture, the look on his face. It’s almost too much for him.<\/p>\n Once in the kitchen, they see a little boy in a crib over to the side jumping up and down saying, “Juice” over and over again. The kitchen looks TERRIFYING, especially from this angle, with the crib looming in the foreground. <\/p>\n \n \nDaughter Sairie (Ginger Broatch) sits at the kitchen table, and Dean and Sam stand hulking over to the side, smiling shyly down at her, looking around them, and looking, as they often do, totally out of place. This is a domestic homey environment (creepy lighting notwithstanding), and they stink of the road, and unwashed laundry, and muffler fumes. But it is impossible to stand in that kitchen and not think about their own family, their dead mother, their missing father, the wreckage of their lives. <\/p>\n Jenny admits that the house has some problems, wiring issues, maybe even rats. Sairie breaks in and informs the brothers that there is something in her closet. Sam and Dean both seem frozen to the spot throughout this section, glancing at one another, but trying desperately to play it all cool, not alarm anyone. And, of course, since this is their own childhood they are facing, they are trying to keep down their own sense of alarm in a way that doesn’t happen during other more routine cases. Sairie says that what was in her closet was real, and it was on fire. <\/p>\n \n \nCircumstances dictate behavior. Less sensitive actors miss this memo all the time. So when emotions are called for, what they bring up is general (“this scene calls for anger, so let me press the Angry button”). They forget that circumstances are ALL, and one may FEEL anger but not feel comfortable letting it out, or may think, “This is not the place to show my anger”, all kinds of subtle moments like that. Lee Strasberg said that good acting was “coming alive truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” “Coming alive truthfully” is worthless if you forget the “imaginary circumstances”. This is technical nuts-and-bolts acting talk, but it’s interesting to me. Plenty of young new actors are great at “coming alive truthfully”, that’s what acting training is all about: you learn how to access your emotions, bring them out, be able to call upon them. But when you add “imaginary circumstances” (as in: you HAVE the emotions but you don’t want to show them, due to the circumstances, or you HAVE the emotions but circumstances dictate that this is not the time or place to give them free rein), many actors get lost. If you watch how Dean listens to Jenny and Sairie talk in this scene, if you listen to how he asks the questions, you can see an actor who understands both sides of that coin: coming alive truthfully and the circumstances part of it. In other “questioning” scenes in other episodes, he is forthright, sometimes flirtatious, sometimes obnoxious. But in this one, he teeters on a precipice. What he is hearing fills him with dismay and fear, but he can’t show it to Jenny or Sairie, and he also can barely acknowledge it to himself. <\/p>\n \n3rd scene<\/big> \n \nOne of Dad’s hunting mantras which he passed on to his sons was: “Shoot first. Ask questions later.” Those words come up first in Episode 2<\/a>, and we don’t know that it’s a quote from Dad, and we won’t know that for some time. Sometimes Dean is “shoot first, ask questions later”, but sometimes Sam is. When it’s Sam, look out, things can get pretty dark, especially in later seasons where he becomes downright scary. In “Home”, in this scene out on the street, Sam is so terrified and has such a sense of urgency that he basically wants to drag that family out of their home bodily before the thing hiding there can get them. Dean keeps just yelling back, “I don’t KNOW what it is in there \u2026 it may not be the thing that killed Mom or Jess \u2026 I don’t KNOW.” <\/p>\n If this were not his childhood home, if this were not somehow connected to his own traumatic past, it seems clear that Dean would not be shouting “I DON’T KNOW” at his brother. He’d be onto the plan, figuring out a way to get those people out of there and go after the evil sonofabitch inside. <\/p>\n But Sam, as urgent as he is, doesn’t have a plan. Shoot first, ask questions later, is actually terrible advice, for regular humans and for hunters. What needs to happen is research, understanding, and, basically, a TON of questions asked beforehand. Knowing what you are dealing with is far better than charging in blind. <\/p>\n 4th scene<\/big> It’s strangely touching, seeing these two big guys, remembering being so little. Sam is struck by this detail. He had never been told about Dean carrying him to safety. They talk about Dad, and we learn that they asked him multiple times, through their lives, what HE thought it was that killed Mom. Dad kept them in the dark. If he had a theory, he did not pass it on, which seems protective and also foolhardy. He was protecting his sons, but also leaving them vulnerable, which we can see now.<\/p>\n \n \nThe music, mournful piano, binds the episodes together. It was used to gorgeous effect in Episode 3, and it’s back here. It is the music of their past. <\/p>\n Dean’s energy here goes through a shift, as Sam’s does as well. Sam has a sad vulnerability, and in response Dean becomes brisk, almost official, like, he knows what they need to do, and they know how to do it. It’s codependent, these shifts, but it’s also just normal sibling behavior, the ebb and flow of strength and weakness. Dean’s emotions are rising up. His response is to clamp down on that shit. Dean excuses himself to go hit the head. He walks off around the corner of the building, taking out his phone, and glancing back at Sam as he does. Filmed from below, he looks totally off-balance, with the sign ‘MEN’ looming behind him (a nice detail: no detail like that is accidental: Dad is the one who drummed into him what being a real man looked like, felt like. Dean struggles with that. His father crushed his own sense of agency in certain areas, and made him believe that obedience was what was required of him. But Dean is without Dad now. And they’re back in Lawrence. And Sam predicted it. Dean is dealing with a lot, and in a way, Dad’s “here’s how real men are” teachings has left Dean completely unprepared for life.) <\/p>\n \n \nIt takes a lot for Dean to call Dad. It means he has failed. It takes a lot for Dean to show Dad that he doesn’t know what to do. Dad has been cruel when that has come up before. But when Sammy is involved, Dean is able to push down those fears of being inadequate or not manly enough and call Dad. Because deep down (and this isn’t clear until much much later), he has a feeling that Dad loved Sam best. Sam was the one who needed protecting. Dean grew up in Dad’s world with Dad’s points of view. He was irrelevant, almost. Sammy was the one Dad “doted” on. This hurts. It hurts like hell. But it is also drummed into Dean enough that he has taken on the same attitude. It’s second nature. So if Sam is in trouble, Dad needs to know. <\/p>\n This phone call, where Dean just leaves a message, is when I first realized just how good Ackles really was (in my first viewing of the series). I got that spidey-sense, that goosebumps-on-neck feeling as I watched this actor “go there”, with the camera right up in his grill. It’s one take. No tricks. Jensen Ackles is actually creating the mini-event of this phone call, it’s not something that was created for him in the editing room. Supernatural<\/i> often lets moments play out “in one”, meaning no cuts, which is super-challenging (for crew and cast), and also a huge part of why the show, even with its fantastical elements, can feel so real. Editing choices and shot choices work on you unconsciously: even if you are not aware of the fact that a scene has no edits and is playing out in one shot, even if you are not looking for those things – these technical details work ON you, the audience member, giving you so much information. So what we see here is Dean Winchester, in deep close-up, calling his Dad and leaving a message. The phone call starts out one way (emotionally) and then goes somewhere entirely different, and that shift is up to Ackles. A shot like this is akin to live theatre, where actors must create any given event on their own in real-time. There will be no “fixing in the editing room” later. So you’re onstage, and you have to start out a scene happy and bright and by the end of the scene you have to be collapsed on the floor weeping. You have to create that event. In film, it’s usually broken up into little chunks, so an actor can prepare for each chunk. To show you how it could go, and how it normally goes (in films, but also in television): We’d get a medium shot of Dean, starting to leave the message. He is official-sounding and no-nonsense. Then, when he starts to cry, there would be a cut, and we’d go in way close. A cut like that acts as an underlining<\/i> mechanism, an emotional shorthand. Sometimes it can be effective, but sometimes it is lazy. Sometimes it covers up the fact that the actor is not good enough to make that emotional transition in real-time. They can’t bring up tears on command, they have no emotional apparatus to rely on. <\/p>\n Jensen Ackles, in one take, takes a huge journey, from tough-guy imparting information to the Dad he is afraid\/in awe of, to crying helpless little-boy who needs his Daddy, and it happens in 15 seconds, and it happens right in front of our eyes. Like I said: this is the moment when I realized: Shit. This guy is GOOD. <\/p>\n \n \n5th scene<\/big> \n \nIt startles Plumber, but he keeps working on the sink, sticking his hand down the drain to try to remove the blockage. The monkey subsides its clanging-cymbals behavior. But not for long. <\/p>\n \n \nThe plumber eventually sticks his hand down the drain. You know this will not end well. As he digs around in the drain, we get a small shot of the now-subsided monkey, staring on from the side. It’s a great sequence, Kripke is right to be proud of it. Of course, eventually the drain basically eats the plumber’s arm, and as he starts screaming, the monkey claps its cymbals in glee. The monkey makes that scene. A scary cymbal-clanging monkey will be familiar to anyone who has read the works of Stephen King!<\/p>\n 6th scene<\/big>
\n— Winchester family backstory, mysterious death of Mom, Dad becomes a demon-hunter, bringing his children up in a dangerous and violent life of tracking down evil
\n— Current day: Dad has now disappeared, bringing the brothers back together to go search for him
\n— Sam’s girlfriend Jess is killed in the same way Mom was killed
\n— The search for Dad then takes on even more urgency. Whatever happened back in Lawrence, Kansas, appears to be starting up again. But why? And where is Dad?<\/p>\n
\n— Search for Dad continues, to no avail, although he does show up in the episode through the coordinates he has sent to his sons
\n— Friction between brothers over whether to search for Dad or to work the case
\n— Dean has a big monologue about Dad’s journal, and the legacy Dad has left them: “the family business”<\/p>\n
\n— Trail for Dad has gone cold.
\n— Episode 3 introduces the idea of lingering childhood trauma, something clearly set up in the pilot, but not explored explicitly until now. Dean bonds with a traumatized child, which loops us into the deep undercurrents of trauma and loss that churn beneath the waters of the Winchester boys’ lives. Yes, Dad is missing. But they grew up without a mother. Have they ever dealt with THAT loss? The FIRST loss? (“The first cut is the deepest.”)
\n— Dad is really gone in this episode. If anything, this episode is haunted by Mom. It is a mother’s love that the boys have really missed in their lives. <\/p>\n
\n— New concept introduced: demonic possession. (Demonic possession becomes so commonplace on Supernatural<\/i> in future seasons that I honestly feel like I would yawn if I watched a poor sap be penetrated by a whirling column of black smoke. I’d be like, “Whatevs, seen it.”)
\n— The demon they run into here seems to “know” things, suggesting that there is an interconnected level to the demonic world (unlike, say, the world of ghosts or Wendigos). The demon knows about Sam’s girlfriend Jess. This is hugely suggestive, and starts to connect the events of the present-day with the events of the past.
\n— Dad haunts the episode: the hunt they go on comes through an old friend of Dad’s, and the episode ends with Sam and Dean listening to Dad’s new outgoing message on his phone which says “If you need help, call my son Dean.” <\/p>\n
\n— Standard hunt, easing us into the Monster of the Week format that the show will keep going back to.
\n— The episode is really about Sam, and Sam’s prophetic dream about Jess’ murder. The fact that Sam has “psychic abilities” is introduced here, almost invisibly, you can’t tell how important that fact will eventually become. But it’s key. It’s also key to our understanding of the brothers’ relationship: Dean can’t bear secrets. They mean separation and separation is deeply destabilizing to his understanding of himself.
\n— The episode ends with Sam getting a glimpse of the dead Jess standing on a sidewalk. Vision? Imagination? Premonition? <\/p>\n
\n— Dad and Mom don’t appear here at all. The brothers are getting in a groove with one another, as men, without Dad around.
\n— Like “Wendigo”, this episode ends up being really about Sam needing to cut ties, for real, with his own past.
\n— Through the shape-shifter monster, who takes over Dean, we get a glimpse of the resentments that might be churning around in Dean’s subconscious about being left behind to stay with Dad, while Sam got out. Although it’s the monster talking, the seeds are planted here for eventual splits between the brothers, something that is still coming to fruition now, in Season 9.
\n— Dean is charged with murder during this episode. Although he escapes, that will come back to haunt him again and again. The series does not forget its characters’ own past (for the most part, the whole “Grand Canyon” thing being an especially annoying example of the writers forgetting a former episode). <\/p>\n
\n— The search for Dad comes back here, in the first scene, suggesting that their missing Dad will start rising in the narrative again.
\n— Episode 7 doesn’t really illuminate deeper themes\/thru-lines, it’s a pretty stock episode all in all. There are interesting connections made, with Sam’s college experience and Dean’s resentment of it, as well as Dean’s sense that maybe Sam needs to start trying to get over Jess. Maybe. This will become explicit in “Provenance”, a later episode in Season 1, which I adore. <\/p>\n
\n— Bugs.
\n— Stilted arguments between the brothers, where they battle out interpretations of their own childhood, and Dad’s parenting, in particular. Dad, even in his absence, is taking over the narrative. <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nLawrence, Kansas<\/i><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nTeaser image leftover: Outside the house, Mother seen inside the house, screaming for help, eerie slo-mo. Sam wakes up with a start in some terrible dark motel room, with an 18-wheeler screaming by.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThe Impala pulls up in front of their old re-built house, and my God, if you owned it, wouldn’t you cut that creepy-ass tree down? Isn’t it magnificent though? <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nDean and Sam burst out of the house, back into the sunlight, and head back to the Impala, both of them freaked out, for different reasons, and already arguing. Sam is freaked because there is clearly a malevolent spirit in the house and that family is in danger, and Dean is freaked out by everything, most of all by the fact that Sam’s visions are coming true. They stand in the street and it’s a beautiful shot of a neighborhood at sunset time, the road stretching out into the distance.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nA key scene, mainly in terms of deepening the Dean Winchester character. Sam and Dean are at a gas station, filling up the Impala, and the jagged edges of the fight in the road have subsided. They are now more thoughtful, and Dean tries to bring them back on course, older brother that he is. “How would we handle this if this were any other case?” This helps Sam focus, despite his misgivings about the approach. They need to research the house, and they need to research what happened in their own childhood. Talk to people who were there, neighbors, friends of Dad’s. In order to work the present-day case, they actually have to talk about what happened back then. And Dean is the witness, Sam was too young. Sam asks him what he remembers about that night. Again, watch for the small hesitation in Dean, the sense you get that this stuff, as long ago as it was, is un-handled, un-managed, un-incorporated. Dean says he doesn’t remember much, but he does remember the fire, and carrying Sam out the front door.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBack at creepy dark house, Jenny lets a plumber into the pitch-black kitchen, and leads him to the backed-up sink. Creator Eric Kripke has said that this is one of the scenes he is most proud of, something I find totally charming. The plumber starts to work on the sink. He’s futzing with the pipes. The shadows are deep and dark. Suddenly, over to the side, a terrible monkey-toy starts banging its cymbals maniacally.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nDean and Sam stand in a garage talking to the guy who was once upon a time John Winchester’s business partner. They owned a garage together. He’s played by Don Thompson, and he shows up again in a season 8 episode as a Sheriff. He’s got a grizzled old face, and it’s interesting because he was clearly a big part of John’s life before, and Dean and Sam are basically meeting a stranger. There is such a huge break with their own past that they don’t know anything about who their parents were “before”. That, obviously, will change. <\/p>\n