![\"s53\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/s53.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nDirected by Kim Manners
\nWritten by Eric Kripke<\/i><\/p>\n
“Sam, this is bigger than you think.” – John Winchester said.<\/p>\n
I’ll say.<\/p>\n
Shadow<\/i> is one of the rare urban-setting episodes, which always seems to bring out interesting romantic things in the team in charge of Supernatural<\/i>. The Winchester brothers are cut off from a regular community, roaring past in the Impala, unconnected. They touch down, take off, touch down again, moving on, moving on. But their regular milieu is the wide open spaces of the midWest and Western states, the back roads, the gravelly crossroads, the ramshackle farmhouses and biker bars spread across the plains. But when they do enter a city, like they did in “Skin,”<\/a> the first time, it just highlights their \u2026 oddness. So many people clustered in one area. So many people piled on top of each other. There isn’t room to spread out, to hide. Of course, cities provide more shadows because there are more light sources. We saw that in “Skin” as well. “Shadow”, which takes place in Chicago, is all about shadows. Shadows that have a life of their own. <\/p>\n A word on shadows themselves, and their symbolic power. <\/p>\n Naturally, “Shadow” makes me think of this iconic figure. <\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n \nThere are even some images in “Shadow”, of the shadow floating up the wall, growing in size, looming, that are reminiscent of some of the images from that original source material. A clear influence on Manners and team in creating the look of the episode. It has a comic-book vibe: the dark gleam of Gotham, the steam bursting up from subway grates, the lonely figure stalked by a shadow taller than a building. So many of those early and influential comic book stories took place in cities. The anxiety of urbanity. <\/p>\n Now about “The Shadow.” Orson Welles, of course, in his early days in New York (where he began the most meteoric rise to fame in entertainment history), did radio shows with his Mercury Theatre group (which included folks like Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead). They would adapt well-known works of literature and put them on the radio. Orson Welles used radio in a way it had never been used before, in one case so memorably it made the front pages<\/a>. And one of Orson Welles’ many many gigs during that fertile period, was being the voice of “The Shadow”. Here he is, in character at the microphone.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n