Trollheart's Note: Gaaahh! This max character limit is really starting to get on my tits! 
Now I have to split this post up into two, and it was only slightly outside the limit. But I can't shorten it anymore to make it fit while still retaining all the bits I want to post, so here we go again... 
1.06 "Skin"
An old friend of Sam's contacts him to ask for help. Her brother has been accused of murdering his girlfriend, but she doesn't believe he's capable of such a thing. Arriving at Rebecca Warren's house (Sam knows her as Becky) they investigate and are told there is a security tape which shows Zack arriving home just after 22:00, the murder having been committed a half-hour later. Becky tells them that although the tape clearly shows Zack arriving home at 22:30, he was with her till way after midnight. The brothers believe there might be a Doppelganger --- an identical double ---- involved, which would explain the disparity and Zack's apparent ability to be two places at once.
With Sam pretending his brother is a detective, they ask to see Zack's house, and Becky admits she has the security tape --- which was made with the CCTV in a store adjacent to her brother's house --- that she took it from the lawyer's office. They all watch it and Sam and Dean notice Zack's eyes light with an eerie luminescence. There is also the matter of the next-door neighbour's dog, who, up until the murder, had been a pleasant and friendly animal but who now barks and growls at anyone who comes near. Dean realises that although the tape shows "Zack" entering the house it does not show him leaving. Meanwhile, the Doppelganger has struck again, this time attacking a woman who has been left at home while her husband goes to a meeting. Called back at the last moment by a cancelled flight, he is distraught to see his wife tied up and beaten, aghast as she shrinks from him as he frees her, pleading with him not to hurt her any more, and finally confronted by an exact double of himself, who knocks him out with a bat.
When the boys find out about this second incident, they realise they're not dealing with a Doppelganger after all, and change their hypothesis. Perhaps it's a shapeshifter, a creature able to assume any form it wants? But where is it going when it has killed? On both occasions the trail ended when the brothers tried to follow it, and Sam thinks maybe the sewers would be a viable way for the thing to get around, and an easy way to disappear once it's perpetrated its evil crimes. They go down into the sewers and find discarded skin, leading them to the conclusion that the shapeshifter may shed its skin as it changes.
They come across the thing in the sewers, and armed with the only thing that will kill a shapeshifter, a silver bullet, they go after it. It escapes though, and on the surface takes Dean's shape, trying to trick Sam into helping it. Sam is wise to it though and holds his gun trained on it, but there's a tiny smidgeon of doubt in his mind that this isn't really his brother, and he's unable to shoot the shapeshifter, allowing it to get the drop on him. The shapeshifter takes him to its lair and goes off to see if he, in Dean's form, can score with Becky. Meanwhile Sam hears Dean (the real Dean) groan and knows they've been imprisoned together. Great: two heads are better than one, and they're soon free.
In Becky's house, the shapeshifter tries to ingratiate himself with Becky, but she is suspicious. After all, prior to this she hadn't even known Dean, and it was his impersonation of a police officer that angered her so much she pulled them off the case, afraid it would damage her brother's upcoming trial. When the shapeshifter is unsuccessful at flirting with her however he goes for the direct approach, knocking her out and then tying her to a chair so he can cut her. However Sam and Dean know that the shapeshifter is likely to go for Rebecca, and phone in an anonymous tip to the police. A SWAT team is soon at the house, and the shapeshifter barely manages to escape.
However when Sam later thinks he's speaking to Rebecca, it is in fact the shapeshifter again (confusing, no?) and "she" knocks Sam out, and changes back into Dean's form, intending to kill Sam and have it blamed on his older brother. But the real Dean, who has re-entered the sewers and found the real Rebecca in the shapeshifter's lair, turns up just in time and shoots the creature in the heart with a silver bullet.
After explaining things to Rebecca as best they can, the boys leave. The murder Beck's brother was being tried for will be blamed now, unfortunately, on Dean, who the police now believe dead, as once the shapeshifter died it remained in Dean's form. Zack will be released, and Dean ruminates on how it sucks that he won't be able to be present at the burial of the shapeshifter. After all, how many people get to attend their own funeral?
MUSIC
Iron Butterfly: "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"
Lynyrd Skynyrd: "Poison whiskey"
Filter: "Hey man, nice shot"
Free: "All right now"
QUESTIONS?
None really: self-contained episode, although now that Becky knows what Sam and Dean do for a living, is that likely to make her a target of their enemies?
The "WTF??!" moment
Probably right at the beginning really, when we see the killer turn to face the SWAT team and it's ... Dean! Of course, later we learn the truth, that it's the shapeshifter in Dean's form, but it's quite a shock initially.
PCRs
Just the one: Dean mentions "the Vulcan mind meld?"
A reference to the ability of the Vulcan race in Star Trek to communicate telepathically and read minds.
1.07 "Hook man"
It's that old urban legend come to life: you know the one, where the boy and the girl are out dating and stop in a forest or somewhere. They hear a noise, the guy gets out, the girl hears banging on the roof of the car, turns out the guy is hanging and his feet are drumming on the roof? But this is Supernatural, and around here, urban legends always have their basis in horrific reality. So it proves with this one: a shadowy figure with a hook for an arm watches the lovers and although we don't see him attack the guy, it's pretty obvious that it's him who has strung up and killed the kid. The girl runs off.
Dean and Sam, reading about the case, think it could be an invisible creature, as the woman in the article, whose name is Lori Sorensen, says she saw nothing and no-one outside. They decide to investigate, and arrive at the campus Lori and her late boyfriend went to. When they talk to Lori and get the full story, they decide that it could be the Hook Man legend. Checking through records of arrest in the area over the last hundred or so years, they come across one of a preacher who was so incensed by the local prostitutes that he killed thirteen of them, and hung some of them upside-down from trees as a warning. His arm was also lost in an accident, and replaced by a hook. As a final confirmation, the incident took place at the same road as this murder occurred. Sounds like they have their man. Trouble is, this happened in 1862.
They go to check it out, but are arrested by the local sheriff for carrying firearms. Meanwhile Lori wakes from her slumber party to find her roommate dead, and scrawled in blood on the wall the words "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?" --- this refers to when she came home and found her roommate asleep (as she thought) and went straight to bed --- along with four crosses. As Dean and Sam are released on the understanding that Sam was being hazed as a pledge, they see the police responding to a 911 and hear it's Lori again. Making their way into her house they wait till the cops are gone and find the writing on the wall, literally. They now know this is "classic Hook Man legend", but are surprised that the creature left its haunt, as it's supposed to stay where it died and just catch people along that path.
They try to find out where the preacher, Jacob Karn, was buried, but there is no grave so the chances of finding it and destroying the body are zero. There is also a strong smell of ozone in the air. Checking further into the history of crimes in the town they find there were two more clergymen arrested for the murder of prostitutes or other "undesirables", but who both claimed some "invisible force" was responsible. Murder weapon in both cases was a sharp object. So now they're beginning to suspect the reverend, Lori's father, might be inadvertently summoning the Hook Man, the spirit picking up on his repressed emotions and troubled view of society. As a man of God, Reverend Sorensen would deplore the state of the world, and be anxious to protect his daughter. This could be all the Hook Man needs to manifest.
Having no other choice but to try to find the unmarked grave, they split up and Sam goes to talk to Lori, while Dean heads to the cemetery noted in the report and is lucky enough to find one with the cross symbol that was scratched on the wall engraved into it. He begins to dig. Once he finds the corpse he sets it alight and stands back, watching it burn. Meanwhile, Lori's father takes exception to the time she is spending with Sam, and she gets annoyed at the preacher. Suddenly, the Hook Man appears and attacks her father. Lori screams and Sam pursues the creature into the house. He shoots it and it turns to dust.
The preacher is wounded but still alive. When Sam meets back up with Dean he asks him in annoyance why he didn't burn Jason Karn's corpse, but Dean says he did, and with salt too: the nightmare should be over. Then Sam wonders about the metal hook: perhaps that is the source of the Hook Man's power. They check and find that when Karn was executed his effects were all sent to St. Barnarbas' Church --- which coincidentally is the same church Lori's father preaches at, and where they both live. Reading the parish records they find the hook was melted down, but they don't know into what, so to be on the safe side they break in and destroy everything silver.
They find Lori crying in the chapel (anyone mentions that Elvis song gets a slap!) and she admits she believes herself responsible for the two deaths and one injury, that she was angry but she thinks her anger was misplaced. She believes she is the one who should be punished, and indeed at that the Hook Man comes for her. As they battle him and frantically try to work out what silver item has been missed in their purge of the church inventory, they notice a silver necklace around Lori's neck. She says it's a church heirloom, her father gave it to her. Snapping it off, Dean legs it down to the basement where he melts it, and just at the last moment the Hook Man dissolves.
MUSIC
Split Habit: "Merry go round"
Quiet Riot: "Bang your head (Metal health)"
Low Five: "Noise"
APM: "At rest"
APM: "Royal Bethlehem"
Paul Richards: "U do 2 me"
Boston: "Peace of mind"
QUESTIONS?
None really: self-contained again, as many of the first season episodes are.
PCRs
Dean compliments Sam: "Nice job, Dr. Venkman!"
He's referring to Venkman, one of the characters in the movie "Ghostbusters".
Dean tells Sam: "Dude, I am Matlock."
Matlock was one of those eighties terrible private-eye TV shows, this one about an attorney who solved crimes. Yeah. Matlock is seen to be beloved of the seniors in "The Simpsons"; when they are asked by the mayor what they enjoy, one of the main concensuses seems to be "Matlock!" so much so that the new expressway is named in his honour.