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<\/a><\/p>\n\nDirected by Tim Iacofano
\nWritten by Ben Edlund<\/i><\/p>\n
Sam<\/strong>: You and I are chosen. “Simon Said” is the only episode from Tim Iacofano, and the first episode written by Ben Edlund, who, naturally, has become a gigantic part of the show, producing, directing, writing, the whole nine yards. Edlund is a thoughtful brainy guy and brings an interesting and contemplative energy to the moral and ethical side of Supernatural<\/i>, the “Big Question” side.<\/p>\n Sam’s psychic visions, connected to Yellow-Eyes, were set up in Season 1, starting with “Nightmare,”<\/a> where Sam tried desperately to talk Max, a pained (putting it mildly) telekinetic kid, off the proverbial ledge. “Nightmare” revealed that the powers Sam was “given” were somehow connected to these other kids out there, and it was all somehow connected to the demon. <\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n \nI’m not crazy about the “special children” Arc, although I love all of the individual actors chosen to play the various “children”, and I love “Simon Said.” It’s one of those episodes that is always pleasing, no matter how many times I have seen it. It’s goofy, anarchic, and the strong links having to do with siblings, angry brothers, family secrets, all that – is looped in gracefully. The performances are all excellent. Andrew’s a great personality and it’s wonderful to see how he brings out different things in Sam and Dean. You get the sense that Dean could actually be friends with Andrew, if the situation were a little different, and if Dean ever had friends.<\/p>\n The psychic kids plot-line doesn’t really reveal much, though, and is a bit too X-Men<\/i> for my taste. Or Wonder Twin Powers Activate. Or Island of Misfit Toys. Supernatural <\/em>spent a lot of time and effort in setting up that Arc, and then appeared to drop it, killing everyone off in a 24-hour period. It’s the benefit of working on a show where everyone dies anyway. It wouldn’t work on Dawson’s Creek<\/i>. You’d have to make someone go to Europe on an exchange program to get rid of them. But on Supernatural<\/i>? This Arc ain’t working, aw, fuck it, just kill ’em all. Or, conversely: dammit, we don’t like the roadhouse after all, what the hell are we supposed to do with it now that we’ve spent so much time setting it up? Uhm, torch it to the ground, yeah.<\/p>\n \n \nGabriel Tigerman, who plays Andrew, the psychic kid in “Simon Said”, gives a funny and well-observed performance of a lackadaisical guy who has been given this weird ability, and uses it to con people, get off his back, give him coffee, do him favors, have sex with him. He clearly roofies women with the power of his mind, and it just goes to show you I am an empty shell that I find it kind of charming. He leaves them smiling and waving to him longingly from upstairs windows! Unlike Sam, Andrew does not operate under a weight of shame or “Why has this happened to me?” Dean finds Andy harmless, entertaining, and also somewhat admirable. Sam, though, looks at Andrew and sees a mirror. There’s a reason the whole episode starts with Sam splashing water in his face and staring at his own reflection. Sam is afraid that whatever Andrew does will somehow say something about HIM. Sam is self-conscious about his “gift” in a way that Andrew is not. <\/p>\n Sam, as played by Padalecki, is a 6 foot 4 hulk of insecurities and floating potential rage, flecked with a dry sense of humor and an ability to see the big picture. It’s a wonderful character. But when this ability starts to raise its head, it re-asserts to Sam that he is not normal, he has never been normal, he felt judged by Dean and Dad in his childhood, and he is afraid that Dean will judge him now. These wounds are old. They won’t heal back up just because he and Dean are on better terms now. A little different is okay, Dean gets a little different, but THIS different? Part of Season 2 is the slow reveal of what actually is “wrong” with Sam, and what happened to him back in the nursery on the night his mother died. Sam sensing that something is “different” about him ends up having a physical basis. <\/p>\n Identification Conversation, Personal In Nature. Skip If It’s Not Your Thing.<\/big> “Simon Said” is loosey-goosey, eccentric. It starts with REO Speedwagon and ends with Soundgarden. It goes from benign to malignant, in other words. <\/p>\n A couple of things are “set up” here: Similar to the view of family seen in “The Benders,”<\/a> Supernatural<\/i> wants you to make disturbing connections. Andy could be seen as a Dean-standin, only without guilt or shame, although Weber could also be connected to Dean, the focused tough guy willing to do anything to keep his family together (and also, perhaps, having to be in the position of killing his own brother, let’s not forget that.) Think, too, of the sketchy shit Dean will pull with the women who dare to come into Sam’s life. (Yes, in the future, but that’s also part of what I’m saying here: While Weber is a “worst-case scenario” for Sam’s destiny, he also is revealing the dark side of Dean’s position. Nobody picks up on THAT, though. It’s buried in subtext.) Sam and Andy are connected because they both have special abilities, and also Sam very well may have read some Kant and Heidegger as well. They have the same inquiring mind. But Weber is a possible outcome for Sam, Sam can’t avoid that fact, no matter how much Dean tries to talk him out of it. His gifts COULD be used in the way Weber uses his. It’s a quadrangulated maze of inter-sibling-connections, very well-designed. Supernatural<\/i> trembles in the grey area between good and evil. When man is pushed, who knows how far he will be willing to go? If family is everything and risking all for family is seen as the highest good (as is the case with Sam and Dean), then Andy’s “evil twin” is living by that code as well. Sam and Dean fight it out. Dean’s point is: “Yeah but you’re NOT evil and you DON’T kill people” but Sam recognizes that as the half-truth that it is. Sam’s “situation” is about to take over, and Dean is hanging on to his version of events as best he could. Everything depends on it. <\/p>\n And suddenly, like an ice cube down the back, “the man with the yellow eyes” re-enters, an entity we have seen, an entity we fear. He’s only mentioned here but it’s a cold wind from beyond the grave. A lot of stuff comes churning to the surface, the maelstrom of John’s death starting to dissipate, with new and unknown threats announcing themselves, before vanishing into the ether again. What’s out there? What are the missing pieces? How is Sam connected to all of it? <\/p>\n Teaser<\/big><\/p>\n We see a man (Blu Mankuma) walking down a sidewalk, underneath a clock-tower, looming in the foreground, already an ominous camera angle. A passerby greets him, “Hey, doc.” That moment tells us everything we need to know: Small friendly town. Everyone knows everyone.<\/i> The man’s phone rings, and when he answers it, the camera zooms in on his face. It’s alarming, a total break in the folksy style established. Then we get a couple of flashes of unconnected images, the man wielding a gigantic shotgun, cocking it. Violence impending. <\/p>\n He speaks into the phone, like an automaton: “All right.” <\/p>\n A bus roars past, the sound jarring.<\/p>\n Considering that what we are seeing is actually one of Sam’s “visions,” the style fits. It highlights disparate images, the way things “come at” Sam in unconnected chaotic ways. <\/p>\n The man continues on his merry way, crossing the street, a happy little smile on his face. <\/p>\n He enters a hardware store. Dennis (Eric Keenleyside), the guy behind the counter is reading a gun magazine, and behind him are racks of guns. The two men greet one another, friendly. They know each other. Everyone knows “doc,” which is why Dennis seems surprised when “doc” asks to look at a gun. <\/p>\n Dennis hands over a shotgun, and Doc inspects it. He doesn’t look murderous, just blank, which is even scarier. We get one of those gigantic close-ups Supernatural<\/i> specializes in, Doc looking down at the gun in the foreground, with Dennis a blur taking up the entire background. You yearn for distance, some air, some perspective.<\/p>\n \n Doc has reached out for the box of shells and starts to load the rifle, still saying, as though the moment hasn’t changed, “You know guns make me nervous. Always have.” When he says that, he is filmed from below, rifle looming through the screen, with a dizzying display of porcelain sinks up on the ceiling behind him. <\/p>\n \n \nDennis gets serious when he sees what is happening: “No, no, no loaded guns in here, Doc \u2026” Doc says soothingly, “It’s all gonna be okay,” a creepy refrain heard multiple times throughout “Simon Said.”<\/p>\n Other customers start looking over and it is then that Doc points the gun and blows Dennis away at point-blank range. [Question: If these visions are supposedly Weber’s payback scheme, then why does Dennis have to go? Why wouldn’t Doc just kill himself?] Screams. Slowly, on that same invisible conveyor belt, Doc looks up at the ceiling, holding the gun under his chin, saying, “It’s allll gonna be okay.” The camera keeps moving upwards, leaving him out of the frame, focusing on that sink hanging above his head. Blood splash across porcelain, gruesome!<\/p>\n
\nMax<\/strong>: For what?
\nSam<\/strong>: I don’t know.
\n— “Nightmare,” Supernatural<\/i>, Season 1<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThis is where we get into personal waters. I identify a lot with Dean, especially when it comes to his various survival techniques (sometimes labeled “unhealthy” or “denial” in some circles, but I say don’t knock it til you tried it!) My survival strategies look a lot like his (except for the drugs and alcohol). It’s a barrel of laughs being both a depressive and a pleasure-hound. You try balancing that out. I do my best. I try to prioritize pleasure. It feels like a life-or-death necessity. But now we come to Sam. Sam’s whole journey, from Season 2 onward, is almost an exact replica of my own in regards to mental health (you know, without the demon-blood, although there have been times when I, too, have felt literally poisoned by my own blood, so take it for what it’s worth.) I have a devastating psychological history, and years – literally years – wondering what the hell was wrong with me. It was only since the crack-up in late 2012, mild in comparison to other crack-ups which went ignored, where I finally got diagnosed<\/a> by a real doctor in 2013, (not with depression but with another Big Bad on the DSM), that I have actually been shown a “way out” of what seemed my logical fate (suicide, most likely, I accepted that when I was a teenager.) My doctors challenge the way I interpret things, experience things. My identification with Dean is the white-knuckling survivor in me. I am proud of her. I am also sick of her because I want to be soft sometimes too, I want to be vulnerable like other people get to be vulnerable. But I am glad she exists because without her I would have checked out years ago. But Sam? I see a mirror, which is different. If Dean’s overall Arc can be seen as a sensitive portrayal of what PTSD looks\/feels like (and also a presentation of the life-affirming survival techniques so helpful to those who suffer: 100% pleasure-focus, the music you like, the food you love, the sex that is essential to even marginal stability since sex re-affirms you are human\/worthy of being touched\/the benefits can’t even be counted, the sensual comfort of a hot shower, clean sheets, watching a movie you love 3 times in a row, whatever – it’s all there), then Sam’s overall Arc can be seen as a very effective metaphor for mental illness. It doesn’t work SOLELY as a metaphor, it also works on the literal level of a man struggling with a demonic curse placed over his cradle. But that’s the thing with metaphors. Good ones are multiple things at the same time, and Sam’s “journey” works on those levels, and is also one of the best-performed and least-condescending metaphors for mental illness that I’ve ever seen. And it is for that reason that I am glad I came to the show once I was on the road to recovery. Maybe Sam’s struggles wouldn’t have struck me as a mirror pre-diagnosis, back when I was the middle of the maelstrom. The show gets so much right about what it is like: the sense that people are worried about you all the time, watching you like a hawk, the sense that you literally cannot trust what is right in front of your eyes. In Season 2, Sam finally gets confirmation that his sense of being an outsider is not just psychological in nature, there is a physical basis for it. To know that those crazy thoughts in my head have no basis in reality but were actually part of a physical illness wreaking havoc on my spirit and body \u2026 well. That helped me relax for the first time in ever. Getting a diagnosis is a serious thing. It’s a club you do NOT want to join. But realizing that I was sick was akin to removing a gigantic anvil off my shoulders. All of this, the Dean identification (guilt\/shame\/pleasure-hound\/survival-techniques) and the Sam mirror (is-this-in-my-own-head-or-is-this-real), was an enormous part of why Supernatural<\/i> hit a very very sweet spot for me. The show came along for me at the right time (I started watching it in October of 2013.)
\nIdentification Conversation Over For the Moment<\/big><\/p>\n
\n–Jo will be rising in the narrative, along with Sam. Dean is playing support-staff to a bunch of crackpots.
\n–There are untold number of special children out there, with no way to track them. Hold me, Ellen, I’m scared.
\n–Andy ends up having an “evil twin,” who wreaks havoc in order to be reunited with his brother. It’s a fun-house mirror of the Winchester relationship. It makes Dean and Sam’s relationship look healthy although that is cold comfort. As always, Supernatural<\/i> wants those lines to be blurred. <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n