1.04 "Phantom traveller"
Tapping into the fear of flying many people have, this episode sees a man named George boarding an airliner --- who is himself uneasy about taking a plane --- be possessed by a strange, black mist-like creature, and under its influence while in flight, he opens the emergency door and the plane goes down. Only seven survive, and Dean and Sam are called in by the airport manager, who says that their father once helped him with a ghost he had in his house, and as he can't contact John he has turned to the two sons. They ask for all relevant information on the crash, and listen to a strange sound on the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder): a low moaning, whistling sound. The investigators have taken that to indicate some sort of technical problem on the aircraft, leading to its downing, but Jerry, the airport guy, is not convinced.
Listening to the CVR recording the brothers make out the words "No survivors" and are convinced there was some otherworldly explanation for the crash. They go to see one of the survivors, in fact the guy who last saw George as he opened the emergency exit. He has checked himself into a psychiatric hospital, as he believes he has gone mad: there is two tons of pressure behind the emergency release --- how could one man have opened in midflight? He also tells Dean and Sam that George had weird black eyes. The boys visit George's widow, but can find out nothing interesting about him: he was just an ordinary guy, a dentist on his way to a conference.
They next pose as Homeland Security in order to get access to the plane's wreckage. They find some sort of odd residue on the emergency exit and take it back with them for analysis. Meanwhile, the pilot of the downed plane, who is one of the survivors, is about to take command of his next flight. As he does, the weird black entity seeps into his eyes. He quickly loses control of the small aircraft and crashes into a field. The brothers meanwhile have identified the substance on the door as sulphur, clear evidence of demonic possession.
Travelling to the scene of the second accident, they again find sulphur traces in the wreckage, and conclude that the demon, which is obviously taking possession of people, is going after all of the survivors of the original crash, to ensure nobody escapes. With this information in hand, the brothers contact all of the remaining survivors to see if any intend flying that day. Only one does, the stewardess from the original flight, and unable to stop her the boys have to board the plane themselves, in order to exorcise the demon and save everyone on board. One small problem: big bad Dean has a fear of flying!
Onboard the plane the boys think it may be the stewardess, Amanda, who the demon has possessed but their test --- pronouncing God's name in latin backwards --- does not support that hypothesis. After checking most of the passengers they come to believe it's the co-pilot. Trying to explain the situation to Amanda at thirty thousand feet is not easy, but she believes them --- partially at least --- as she says on the original flight she thought she noticed something weird about George's eyes, but had just shrugged it off. She helps the boys lure the co-pilot out and after some trouble with air turbulence they perform the exorcism that forces the demon to exit the man's body. As it does, it screams at Sam that it knows what happened to his fiancee, but Sam finishes the ritual after Dean drops the book they have been reading the verses from, and the demon vanishes, an electrical charge buzzing around the plane before it rights itself.
Back on the ground, Dean is interested as to how Jerry got his number, and he says he got it from their dad's voicemail. The brothers are surprised at this, since last time they checked their father's voicemail was not working. They call it and do indeed get the voicemail, with the additional message that if someone is in trouble they can call Dean. This is a big relief to them, as it means their father is still alive and out there somewhere. Still, why hasn't he then contacted them directly?
MUSIC
Black Sabbath: "Paranoid"
Rush: "Working man"
Nichion Sounds Library: "Load rage"
QUESTIONS?
Was the demon just playing on Sam's fears when it said it knew about his fiancee, or does it really know what happened to her? And what
did happen to her? We saw her explode into flames: what else can there be?
Is John Winchester alive, and if so, why has he not contacted his sons? Is he trying to prevent attention being drawn to them? Is he unable to get in touch? Is there another reason?
The "WTF?!!" moment
Sort of not really one here, but the climax of the story with the turbulence and Dean dropping the prayer book is pretty stunning: the whole exorcism scene on the plane is pretty breathtaking.
PCRs
As Dean Sam and Jerry discuss the poltergeist their father helped Jerry out with some years back, a passing employee remarks "Poltergeist? Man, I love that movie!"
Referencing the eponymous horror flick that had most of us checking under our beds back in the eighties.
As the boys "suit up" to look more respectable if posing as members of the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Bureau --- don't you ever watch "Air crash investigations"? --- they investigate any aircraft disasters, crashes, downed aircraft etc) Dean mumbles "Man, I look like one of the Blues Brothers!"
A reference to the cult 80s film of the same name, starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
When Dean is trying to get Amanda the stewardess not to board the plane the possessed co-pilot is flying, he calls her and tells her there has been an emergency with her sister. He pretends to be a doctor, and uses the name James Headfield.
This is far too close to James Hetfield, lead vocalist with Metallica, to be coincidence, especially given the fact that the band were namechecked by Sam as he perused Sam's "dubious" choice of music in the car in the pilot episode. (Just to back this up, later on the plane as Dean tries to remain calm he is humming, and Sam asks him if it is Metallica he's humming. It is.)
As Deam tries to explain to Amanda about the spirit possessing the co-pilot, he remarks "I don't have time for the whole "The truth is out there" speech right now".
Another reference to the X-Files, of course.
1.05 "Bloody Mary"
Investigating the death of a man whose eyes appear to have liquefied, Sam and Dean speak to the dead man's daughters, one of whom blames his death on her sister, saying that on a dare she faced the mirror in the bathroom and spoke the words "Bloody Mary" three times. There is a legend about a vengeful spirit who will come for anyone who does that, but the older sister does not believe such stories. Later two of the other girls are messing about, talking on the phone, and one, Charley, listens as the other, Jill, making light of the legend says the name three times while standing in front of a mirror. She screams, and Charley screams back, but then she laughs as it was all a joke. When Jill hangs up the phone though, she sees her eyes begin to bleed. She is found dead the next day.
Gaining access to Jill's room the boys shine a blacklight on the mirror and reveal on the back the name "Gary Bryman" carved on it. There is also what looks like a handprint. Turns out he was an eight-year old who was killed in a hit and run, and Jill the one driving the car. Back in the house where the original death took place, they reveal another name: "Linda Shoemaker". This is the wife of Stephen, the man whose death brought the boys here, and they're told she died of an overdose, though they wonder if the father killed the mother? There is another handprint to accompany the name.
The brothers are forming something of a working hypothesis now. As both victims of "Bloody Mary" were involved in fatal acts that may have gone unpunished or even unknown, she must be wreaking revenge on those sort of people. This would lead to the conclusion that she too was murdered and her killer never brought to justice. They turn up the name Mary Worthington, and find that indeed she was killed: her eyes were removed with almost surgical precision, but no-one was ever charged with her murder. She did apparently manage to scrawl three letters on a mirror --- "tre" --- which could refer to a surgeon whose name is Trevor Sampson. This also fits in with the fact that she was having an affair with a man whom she referred to in her journal only as "T", and that she had intended to tell his wife.
Donna Shoemaker is angry with her friend Charley for having stirred up trouble and bringing the boys in on the case, thus reopening the old wound of her mother's "tragic" death. She snaps "Bloody Mary" three times in a mirror in front of Charley. Nothing happens but it scares Charley, and a few moments later she starts to see the apparition in every reflective surface: mirrors, windows, glasses ... and her eyes begin to bleed. Sam and Dean meanwhile have tracked down the mirror on which Mary Worthington wrote, but just then they get a call from Charley, who is hysterical, and they have to take her to their hotel.
They cover all reflective surfaces so that the ghost has no medium through which to travel and wreak her vengeance, and Charley admits that her boyfriend committed suicide over her, something the harpie may blame her for. Dean and Sam leave her in the hotel and go to find the original mirror. Luckily it was sold to a shop in the town, so they break in and smash every mirror while calling her name three times, forcing her eventually into the only mirror left, the one she wrote on. When Dean smashes this --- as Sam's eyes begin to bleed and he drops to the floor --- he thinks he has saved the day, but Bloody Mary comes out of the mirror in person, so to speak. Dean grabs one more mirror and reflects her own image back at her, finally destroying her.
MUSIC
The Rolling Stones: "Laugh? I nearly died."
Def Leppard: "Rock of ages"
Fall Out Boy: "Sugar, we're going down"
QUESTIONS?
What is it Sam is hiding from Dean about Jessica's death. When he faces Bloody Mary in the mirror, she taunts him by saying
"You never told her the truth—who you really were. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? Those nightmares you’ve been having of Jessica dying, screaming, burning—You had them for days before she died. Didn’t you!?! You were so desperate to ignore them, to believe they were just dreams. How could you ignore them like that? How could you leave her alone to die!?! You dreamt it would happen!!!"
Can that be true? Could Sam have had foreknowledge of what was about to happen, and if so, why didn't he warn Jessica, move, do something?
Although it's not totally integral to the plot, the murder of Mary Worthington seems to have sparked the malevolent spirit that drew her into the mirror. So was she killed by the surgeon? Was it Trevor Sampson? We're never told, but if it wasn't then perhaps her quest for vengeance has been misplaced. Although she was killed and her murderer never brought to justice, so perhaps in the long run it doesn't really matter who killed her, just that her death went unavenged, spurring her to a supernatural killing spree. Still, the facts do seem to stack up.
The "WTF?!!" moment
When Dean smashes the mirror at the end, and Bloody Mary lunges OUT of it at him!
PCRs
None
Note: This is a dark episode, light on laughs and very bleak. It opens on a girls' slumber party, truth-or-dare but it quickly turns chillingly horrific and as the secrets come out and the story unfolds, it's pretty clear this is a serious one. That's probably borne out in the fact that there are no PCRs at all in this, and the only moment of light relief that comes in the whole thing is when Dean rushes outside, as they ransack the shop near the end, and claims to be the owner's kid. A disbelieving cop squints: "You're Mr. Yamashiro's kid?"
There's even a dark subtext in the story, as if the main plot wasn't bleak enough, hinting that Sam may have known about Jessica's impending death, as he follows through on the guilt that must be eating him up inside by trying to sacrifice himself to Bloody Mary, or at least being the decoy. As the episode ends, it looks as if he sees Jessica standing on the road, but as she disappears we're no wiser as to whether she was really there, or if his tortured brain is just playing tricks on him.