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<\/a><\/p>\n\nDirected by Robert Singer
\nWritten by Sera Gamble & Raelle Tucker<\/i><\/p>\n
Robert Singer has said openly that he is a character-guy, not a plot-guy. He was brought on early on as an executive producer, to not only help Eric Kripke make the show a success, but to also bring his expertise to bear. If Kripke had his way, it would be all-gore all-badass all the time, and he has admitted that. He joked that he couldn’t believe his name was on anything as “classy” as the “Faith”<\/a> episode, but he was very very proud of it, that the story he thought up would lend itself to such a mood. Singer is drawn to the characters and relationships. He feels the plot will work itself out, but his primary focus is the relationships (and you can hear it in his commentary tracks. He points out tiny acting moments, things he can’t take credit for, but loves: “God, look at how he does that \u2026” “Look at this moment coming up \u2026”) <\/p>\n Robert Singer is my kind of guy, in other words.<\/p>\n Salvation is a place in Iowa but here it enters the show on not only an existential level but a spiritual one. Pastor Jim has been mentioned a couple of times, as a friend of John’s, and someone who would take care of the boys on occasion when they were young. It’s interesting to consider Sam and Dean in a religious environment. The show handles matters of faith somewhat delicately, which is funny because they pretty much lampoon religion wholesale, turning angels into bureaucratic dicks and God into a deadbeat Dad, for example. But in terms of whether or not to believe, the show doesn’t come down on either side. Arguments are made in favor of both. And the brothers get into it a bit in Season 2, a fascinating precursor of what is to come. “Faith” was the first gauntlet thrown down. A statement of purpose: We will feel free to go HERE, just so you know.<\/i> <\/p>\n “Salvation” isn’t the abyss of “Dead Man’s Blood,” although it does have its disorienting moments, as is usually the case when all three Winchester men are in a scene at the same time. The season is racing to its conclusion now, so “Salvation” is where things start to wrap up. Meg re-enters and we know she’s always big bad news. <\/p>\n The mood of the episode is gloomy and grey. “Dead Man’s Blood” was dark and shadowy; “Salvation” on the other hand is heavy, looming, low grey skies, with constant rain. You can see the rain dripping on their jackets, their hair, in the puddles around them. The wet-ness has a double function. It makes the world look unwelcoming, that’s for sure, but it also works thematically. “Salvation was created for sinners,” says Pastor Jim in the teaser. Baptism is obviously one ritual connected to salvation, and so the wet-ness throughout makes the entire episode feel like it’s a baptismal font overflowing. I mean, holy water is basically poured out through the pipes at one point. So the Winchester brothers, trying to understand what the demon wants (although John already knows), are entering a world of religious symbolism and iconography that threatens to drown the world in a flood. As the series continues, the brothers worry about their souls, for good reason. Souls are left behind. Souls can have a life of their own. Souls can be damaged irrevocably. Water is life-giving, essential. It can also be destructive. It has strong symbolic properties. <\/p>\n The Arc of the episode is simple (unlike “Dead Man’s Blood” which leads you into a Hall of Mirrors). There’s a lot of plot here. The Colt. Meg. The demon. Sam. Sam’s visions. <\/p>\n But the real interest is in the relationships. You can feel it in how Singer films those relationship scenes. He presents them with loving detail. <\/p>\n Only one episode to go in Season 1. I can’t believe it. <\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n Teaser<\/big> From the town of Blue Earth to the town of Salvation. Nice work from you, Supernatural<\/i>.<\/p>\n We start off with stained glass. Jesus and his disciples. Goblet. Bible. The accoutrements of religion. Pastor Jim (Richard Sali) stands at the altar of a small dark church flipping through the Bible. He is alone. Sudden blowing wind causes the bank of red candles to flicker. Meg (Nicki Aycox, whose performance has definitely grown on me with re-watching) enters. She says she “needs to talk.” He is open and pleasant. He seems like a kind man, the best of what organized religion may have to offer. A non-judgmental listening ear. I love the dichotomy of priest-Jim and hunter-Jim. Hunter-Jim clearly feels totally free to “judge” and kill the supernatural. I also love the image of a hunter-priest although in the wrong hands it could get all …<\/p>\n \n \nBut instead we get this.<\/p>\n \n \nMeg seems truly penitent, and actually almost afraid at points, at the levels of her own bad-ness. Is there no hope for her? Echoes of Crowley later \u2026 “How \u2026 can I even begin \u2026 to look \u2026” It’s a con, obviously, on her part, but it’s still extremely believable. <\/p>\n \n When Pastor Jim says to her, gently, “Salvation was created for sinners,” he is rewarded with a blank face. (I wrote a little bit about my love of the “blank face” school of acting here.<\/a> Meg is a perfect candidate.)<\/p>\n Meg talks to Jim, sitting in a pew, looking up at him. She’s done really bad things. Lied, lusted. He listens. But when she says she “met a nice guy” and slit his throat, her eyes turn black. She reveals herself to him. Pastor Jim, horrified, stumbles back, and with that one movement we know he’s not just your regular priest. He calls out to her, “You’re not supposed to be here.” A church is supposedly hallowed ground. Hell, hallowed ground killed the Racist Truck<\/a>, why the hell is an actual demon immune to it? Because these things only work when the plot needs them to work. Okay? <\/p>\n Cinematographer Serge Ladouceur films her beautifully as always, almost every shot making her into a symbolic creature. It’s not realistic framing at all. She’s got the yellow hair, the tight red coat, and darkness surrounds her figure. The glimmering red candles blurry in the background. There’s almost always the color red whenever Meg is in the frame. She stands, seeming quite menacing, saying, “Maybe that works in the minor leagues,” suggesting that there is a hierarchy of demons with increasing powers. Isn’t that convenient. <\/p>\n \n Pastor Jim runs from her, down into his basement, and then barricades himself in what is basically a badass ammo-stash room, with a wall of super-intense high-end weapons that makes John Winchester’s Batman panel look like Tinker Toys. However, Pastor Jim bypasses all that and goes for a knife, which is when little pixie Meg kicks down the door, the lights of the stained glass window streaming in around her. <\/p>\n Religious imagery in high baroque gear in “Salvation.” <\/p>\n \n \nHe whips the knife at her and she catches it in mid-air, sneering, “You throw like a girl,” and I’d like to point out that the first person to make an “oooh you’re a girlie-man” comment on the show is, technically, a woman. Pastor Jim asks, “What do you want?”<\/p>\n Which, frankly, is a good question. She says she wants “the Winchesters.” I get a little lost sometimes in terms of what everyone wants. But I’m not a plot-girl. As long as I get the basic gist, I’m fine. I’m in it for the relationships. Meg wants to get the Winchesters because they have the Colt. She wants the Colt because it could kill her and her boss\/yellow-eyed father, and she wants it out of commission. <\/p>\n Pastor Jim says he hasn’t spoken to John Winchester “in over a year,” and then says, “Even if I did know, I’d never tell you.”<\/p>\n She slices through the air with the knife, opening his throat, and in less than 5 minutes of screen time Pastor Jim had already become a character that I liked, trusted, and then mourned. Bobby is about to enter the series. Bobby has not been mentioned once. The series eventually backtracked on that and made Bobby an alternate father for the boys, a huge influence in their childhoods – something Sam and Dean obviously would have mentioned along the way, except that the writers hadn’t made Bobby up yet. It’s forgivable, but a definite glitch. There’s also the fact that John Winchester had clearly done something to so infuriate Bobby that Bobby threatened him with a shotgun at their last meeting. Just a day in the life for John Winchester. And I imagine the boys would rise and fall according to their fathers’ friendships. “Hey, whatever happened to Bobby?” “Forget him. He’s dead to us now.” “Oh. Okay.” <\/p>\n Very cult-like. You’re a person, and then when you’re outside the charmed circle, you’re an un-person.<\/p>\n The scene ends on Pastor Jim, hand over his open throat, gurgling and dying in the corner of his Bat Cave. <\/p>\n 1st scene<\/big> Inside the “beautiful mind” of John Winchester. <\/p>\n John has set up shop in the Homeland of Daniel Elkins, Manning, Colorado. He has created his command center in the rustic cabin we saw in “Dead Man’s Blood,”<\/a> and here is where we pick up the trail. What’s great and spooky, though, is how the 1st scene begins. I know I go on and on about “establishing shots” (shots which show the whole room, placement of the characters), but I will keep doing so because it pleases me, and the cinematographer and directors of the show are clearly in sync on the style they want. The opening of this scene is abstract in the extreme: close-ups of different objects, the camera moving from one to the other, so you get completely lost in the collage. It starts out with a deer’s dead eyeball. If you think of serial-killer films\/TV shows, often the killer’s “lair” starts out with a shot like this one. Really really close on a series of creepy objects, scarier and scarier, until finally, you can see the whole room. Criminal Minds<\/i> uses this style ad nauseum, it’s part of the serial killer playbook. Go in deep closeup to the unhinged mind of a madman, see his possessions, the way he sets things up – before pulling back to let us see him. <\/p>\n So. I’m just saying. It’s pretty funny to use a page from the serial-killer playbook in order to “establish” the Winchester headquarters. <\/p>\n \n \n \n \n And, seen only in passing. <\/p>\n \n \nSo much awesome. Notice the name circled emphatically. Hm. Maybe Sam would see that and say, “Uhm, Dad, what do I have to do with the evil Virgin Mary thing you got going on there?” And phone number for Gerry. Member Dad’s friend Gerry from Phantom Traveler<\/a>, the very first episode to feature a demon? <\/p>\n John shows at least an echo of a very grim sense of humor with his little addition “UN” before the word “Easy.” Granted, it’s not Mel Brooks, but it’s something. Picturing him alone in the Sleep Easy Motel, drinking whiskey, books piled up, 15 voice-mails from Dean on his phone, salt poured around the door frames, and in a moment of clarity looking around him, seeing the crazy, and scribbling “UN” drunkenly on the notepad. At least that’s my fantasy of the moment.<\/p>\n \n \nWe are buried, visually, in the obsessive disoriented mindset of the hunter. We pull down from the maps on the wall to the face of John Winchester, who opens the episode, something we don’t expect because it always starts with Sam and Dean. Not this one. It’s an intense technique, holding our beloved stars back, prioritizing John. The Colt lies on a pile of paper on the desk. John gestures at the collage behind him, and says, “This is it. This is everything I know.” <\/p>\n Finally we get a shot of Dean. Of Sam. They’re separated. Dean is looking down, hearing what John is saying, but not looking. Sam looks directly at John. John explains that after years of looking for the demon, a year ago he picked up a trail. Dean says, “That’s when you took off \u2026” But again, not really looking at John, a fascinating choice. He sort of moves away, and as he does, he DOES look at Sam. Sam is really the one he checks in with, the one he goes to. <\/p>\n \n The demon’s “trail” has spread across the United States, and the pattern John discovered is that “it’s going after families.” And Mommy is burned up on the night of the infant’s 6-month birthday. Sam, who was born into this cult, remember, and has only been given fragments of information, the “need to know” thing, looks alert at that. “I was 6 months old that night?” Sam is putting it together: “So \u2026 this demon is going after kids. For some reason.”<\/p>\n Give this man an extra cookie.<\/p>\n And he then makes the leap, the all-too-common Winchester brothers leap to self-blame. “Same way it came for me?”<\/p>\n John, of course, knows way more than he’s telling. But we won’t even know the details of it until Season 2. Until LATE in Season 2. Amazing patience. The fact that he pauses here could be seen a million different ways, that he doesn’t answer. Meanwhile, right behind the guy is a postcard with Sam’s name circled!<\/p>\n \n “So \u2026 Mom’s death \u2026 Jessica \u2026 it’s all because of me?” <\/p>\n He’s pissed rather than self-pitying. But Dean must intervene with that line of conversation. He already knows where Sam is going. He knows because they’ve had this conversation before, and he knows because he would go there himself. “We don’t know that, Sam.” <\/p>\n A quick jagged fight breaks out. It’s the same fight they’ve been having since, damn, “Bloody Mary”,<\/a> with the great scene in the car on the rainy night. It’s the accumulation of memories, it’s the fact that they have argued about it so many times already, that Dean has said over and over and over, “It’s not your fault” – it’s the repetition that makes <\/em>these scenes possible. Everyone is on a hair-trigger, and ready to blow. We’ve COVERED this. Within 2 seconds, Sam and Dean are yelling at each other. <\/p>\n John stands and says, “Okay. That’s enough.”<\/p>\n I love how they obey. It’s pretty great. It’s a silent beat change. <\/p>\n Sam is worked up, pacing, back on topic, demanding, “What does it WANT?” <\/p>\n Of course, by now, John has a damn good idea “what it wants,” and he’s looking right at him. <\/p>\n Sam is aggressive. Dean is subdued. Everything is under control for Dean while Dad is in the room. There’s a muzzle on Dean. It brings out interesting behavior, the almost choir-boy aspect of him looking down, obedient, calm, circled in upon himself. John gives them the low-down, and you can feel the buried burn of frustration there, the sense of failure. “I’ve never gotten there in time to save –” It’s his own brand of self-involved self-pity. And it’s Dean’s job (again) to pull his father out of it and get him to focus. “So how do we find it?” <\/p>\n \n \nWithout the other two even knowing it, Dean is managing<\/i> them. At great cost, perhaps, but it’s natural to him. Ackles is so good at it. I think John and Sam, on some level, feel superior to Dean. They’re the sergeants, he’s the grunt. But he’s quietly keeping everyone in line and on point. It’s not easy, not when those two yahoos keep spinning off into psycho-drama. <\/p>\n So John blah-blahs about the signs that crop up in the areas where the demon appears. <\/p>\n Dean, unlike Sam, doesn’t fly in with a comment, but he sure has some thoughts about the new information. Watch him take it in. He looks at Sam. And then back at Dad. His face has gone soft. It’s the child. The look on his face when anyone mentions “home” (I went into that here<\/a>, the small eruptions of feeling, and breaking down, when Mom or family or home comes up, even casually.) <\/p>\n “These things happened in Lawrence \u2026” Dean says. <\/p>\n \n John is pretty upfront here, with both his information, as well as his emotions. The hair-trigger in abeyance. But it is also fascinating to remember how much he ISN’T saying, specifically about Sam, and watch how Morgan may be playing that as well. His feelings about Sam. The thing he will whisper in Dean’s ear in Episode 1 of Season 2. It would be interesting to read John’s current journal entries. How MUCH does he know? What is his timeline? What does he think will go down next? What is his plan? And – if Pastor Jim hadn’t bit it, and if they hadn’t had the car accident, and blah blah \u2026 what would have been his plan then? Sure, kill the Demon, and there’s a revenge element, but there’s something else. Something having to do with Sam. So it’s a very layered scene, when you consider what’s coming. <\/p>\n \n We’ve been so accustomed to just having the two guys as our focal points for the entire season. But John Winchester is the focal point of “Salvation”‘s opening scene. Dean and Sam are to the side, blurs behind him, or seen only in conjunction to him. Robert Singer is very very sensitive to relationship and the ties that bind. It is one of his gifts as a director and an invaluable contribution to the show. <\/p>\n Demon signs have been popping up around Salvation, Iowa. Supernatural <\/em>has fun with Biblical place-names and have almost from the get-go, member Phantom Traveler<\/em>? The first episode (besides the teaser in the pilot) featuring a demon? <\/p>\n 2nd scene<\/big> “JW” is not a book in the Bible, although it is certainly “the Book” according to the Winchester boys. The whole sign is crazy, with the Loto numbers, and the fact that the sign is on the other side of the street so it reads “Leaving Salvation” as opposed to “Entering Salvation”, and then the threatening fundie question with the British spelling, and the bogus Bible verse.<\/p>\n \n Well played, Supernatural<\/em>, well played.<\/p>\n Next we see John careening off to the side of the road, with the Impala following.<\/p>\n The following is a great scene. Lots of information to impart, but the emotions are bigger than the information, and that’s the milieu I enjoy. It also just flat out LOOKS great. It’s cinematic, inventive with angles, Ladouceur coming up with different ways to suggest both the isolation of each character and the triangulation of the relationship. <\/p>\n John has gotten the call about Pastor Jim’s death just then, and has to pull over. We, too, are looking to John as the leader, whether we want to or not. Hell, I’d pull the Impala over as well. And instead of being holed up in a dark interior, or buried in pitch-blackness like they were most of the time in “Dead Man’s Blood,” we see them out in the world. It’s raining. They all look horrible. Singer\/Ladouceur have chosen to almost completely blur out the tree background, so that the guys are all given this moody black-green-brown backdrop. That dark background acts like the dark cloths used in jewelry stores to highlight the stones.<\/p>\n \n \nIn other words, their figures literally POP out of the screen. So the look is both realistic and grubby and poetic and symbolic. <\/p>\n There are all of these interesting angles, too, and they move from one to the other: Sam by the car, Dean, with John’s shoulder, Dean alone in the frame, Dad alone in the frame, or sometimes John with the blur of Dean. It makes me wonder how they filmed it. It’s clearly three angles – a couple of shots of John from Sam’s point of view. But it all is knit together into a seamless emotional whole. The variety of camera angles feels deliberate and specific as opposed to showy and attention-getting. It shows how tied together the three men are, invisible ropes binding them, the eye-lines of the camera angles acting like a thread connecting them, but it also shows how each one is wrapped up in his own concerns as well. <\/p>\n \n So let’s talk about specific moments. <\/p>\n As John tells them what happened to Pastor Jim, Dean and Sam are both upset and thrown. John is their anchor, the one with the knowledge, so he is the focal point, but watch, in their behavior, how much they are drawn back to one another. Even when they don’t look at one another, the magnetic pull is strong. Over the course of the season, John has stopped being the checkin-point (due to his absence) and they now need each other. Just a glance will do. “Are you hearing this?” “What do YOU think about this?” The glances are constant, compulsive. It’s relationship<\/i> through behavior.<\/p>\n \n \nAnd, as always, it is Dean who helps everyone focus. “What do you want to do?” he says to John. <\/p>\n John’s plan is extremely elaborate, involving all of the hospitals in the area, and finding children whose 6-month birthday is coming up. Sam, rational soul that he is, balks at the thought of it. How many kids could that be? As the scene goes on, with the reverberation of Pastor Jim’s death churning underneath it (one of the few people John hadn’t alienated in his life), one can feel John’s emotions start to rise. Old griefs, old losses, helplessness, anger. And when his emotions start rising, he gets fierce, focused, and tough. Pastor Jim was innocent, except for the fact that he was connected to the Winchesters. Collateral damage like that is going to be an issue throughout the show (well, it starts off with Jess, she is the prime example of it). Totally innocent people caught in the crossfire. No wonder hunters hunker down alone. <\/p>\n
\nBlue Earth, Minnesota<\/i><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nManning, Colorado<\/i><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nA long shot of John’s Phallic Truck barreling along with the Impala behind it, and the camera moves down and we see a glorious ridiculous sign on the side of the road.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n