1.14 "Nightmare"
Sam wakes from a horrible nightmare and tells Dean they have to go. He has had a dream about someone in Michigan who needs their help. As they drive there (Dean still a bit sleepy and thinking his brother is overreacting) Sam calls the police station and gives them the number plate of the car he says he saw in his dream. To Dean's unease it checks out and they get a home address, but by the time they arrive the guy is being taken away in a bodybag. They ask what happened, and are informed the man committed suicide. Sam doesn't believe it though: he tells Dean that in his dream, the guy was trying to escape and was being trapped in his car by something.
Posing the next day as priests (which Sam notes is a new low for them) they gain access to the house and talk to the man's family. They are told Jim, the victim, was a normal guy who nobody would have expected to have taken his own life. It transpires that it was his son, Max, who found him and Sam goes to talk to the kid. Dean tries to find out how long the family have been living here, and is told five years. He then floats the idea of strange noises, electrical outages that usually denote some sort of spiritual activity in a house (see "Home") but is told that no, there was nothing like that going on.
As they try to figure it out later, Sam is suddenly shaken by another nightmare, though this time he's awake and it causes him intense pain. He sees Roger, Jim's brother, being killed by having his head cut off when he leans out a window and it slams down on him. The boys race to try to prevent it but are too late. When they talk to Max though and he tells them everything was all right between his father and his uncle, the brothers detect something in his tone that speaks about their previous home, and they decide they should check it out. When they get there they are told a tale of child abuse by one of the old neighbours, that Max's father and indeed his brother used to beat the boy, and that the mother would stand by and do nothing. They also learn she is Max's stepmother, his real mother apparently having died in a car crash.
Just then Sam has another vision, and things become clearer. He sees Max attack his stepmother with a knife, but he's not holding it. He's controlling it, almost as if he were capable of telekinesis. Sam watches horrified as Max tells his stepmother she did nothing to stop the abuse, and wills the knife to drive through her eye and into her head. They race back to the house and stop Max but he uses his telekinesis to trap them. Asking for a moment to talk to him alone, Sam explains that what he's doing is wrong, that the people who beat him in the past are dead now ... and Max tells them that the abuse continued, right up to the time he killed his father. Sam says he understands, but then Max says that his father hated him, blamed him for his wife's death.
How could he do that, asks Sam, and Max tells him tearfully that she died in his nursery, bursting into flames. Sam is speechless for a moment, then tells Max that the very same thing happened to him and Dean, and that they must be connected somehow because the same demon is after them for some reason. Max finds it hard to take in though, and despite Sam's assurances that they can help, he traps him in the room and goes up to where his stepmother is hiding with Dean. He levitates Dean's gun out of his pocket and points it at his stepmother. Dean steps in front of her and he shoots, killing Dean.
But of course that was a vision Sam was having. However it will come true if he doesn't hurry. He slides the bookcase Max had blocked the door with away, legs it up to the room, banging on the door. As he gets in Max is about to shoot Dean (because he's protecting the stepmother) but Sam talks to him, pleads with him to stop, and Max nods, turns the gun around and ends his own life.
As they leave, Sam wonders why this demon is after them. He blames himself for Max's death, but Dean tells him it wasn't his fault. Sam says at least they had a good parent to look after them when their mother died, unlike Max. "A little more tequila", he postulates, "a little less demon-hunting, we could have ended up like Max." He then tells Dean that he was somehow able to move the bookcase just by thinking about it, and worries that he may be turning into something he can't control, perhaps like Max. Dean laughs it off, saying that as long as he's around nothing will happen to Sam.
MUSIC
The Bob Seger System: "Two plus two"
The Bob Seger System: "Lucifer"
QUESTIONS?
What does the demon want? It's clearly now not just Sam and Dean, as they now have evidence it was after at least one other child...
What are Sam's visions? Where are they coming from? And will they continue?
How did Sam move that bookcase? Is he going to manifest other powers too?
The "WTF??!" moment
When Max tells Sam about what happened to his mother, and we realise that what happened to Sam and Dean is not unique.
PCRs
Just the one. Again, it's a pseudonym related one. Dean introduces the two "priests" with "Good Afternoon. I'm Father Simmons, this is Father Frehley."
Gene Simmons and Ace Frehley, members of heavy metal/glam metal band Kiss.
BROTHERS
As much as the last two episodes have basically focussed on Dean, this one centres on Sam, as we learn about his visions; that the one about Jessica is not the only one he had and that he has now progressed to having these nightmares in the day, when awake. We also find that he is manifesting new powers, witnessed in the removal of the bookcase through the power of his mind. Although he shrugs it off, Dean has to be concerned. Not only is his brother now showing signs of being even weirder than usual, but they have met someone else who has gone through the same trauma as they, and it seems what happened to them happened to others too.
So why did it happen? Their quest to hunt down the demon has just got a lot more complicated than a simple thirst for revenge. Now it's answers they need, and though it no doubt scares him what's happening to Sam, Dean is the elder brother and vows to keep him safe, no matter what.
He also must be somewhat relieved to see Sam's attitude towards their father softening, considering the events of "Scarecrow" that led to the parting of the ways, if only temporarily. Sam now seems to realise how hard it must have been for their dad, to have lost his wife and yet held the family together. Max's dysfunctional family are a clear indication this did not necessarily have to be the way things turned out, and he is grateful.
The ARC of the matter
Here I'd like to introduce a new section. Up to now, the episodes have been pretty much self-contained, and unlike Babylon 5 few if any of the ones that have gone before tie in to the main storyline (with the exception of the pilot of course) so there has been no discernible arc to follow. This is the first episode where the possibility of a deeper, more involved storyline makes itself apparent, and some clues to the larger plot can be gleaned.
There are still self-contained episodes, but as the series develops and moves into season two and beyond the arc will begin to come more to the fore, integrating itself into the stories and tying what may have seemed like random events together, until we finally see "the big picture". For any episodes that do this, I'll be talking about them here. If an episode doesn't impact on, or advance or present clues to the arc, I won't run this section, but in the ones that do, I'll be looking at the implications both on the previous episodes and those yet to come.
Here we get the first clues that Sam's nightmare about Jessica's impending death was not in fact a one-off, or even in his mind. He discovers that he
can see into the future via dreams, he can see when people are in danger and having ignored this in the case of his fiancee, to his and her cost, he resolves not to let anyone else die if he can prevent it. This "power" obviously freaks Dean out, but he covers it well.
By the end of the episode we've also learned that Sam is not the only one developing abilities, and although Max dies, it can be surmised that there are more than just he and Sam in America, perhaps the world, who have these powers. We also learn, or are given a hint, that Sam has certain other powers, such as some form of telekinesis, which he uses, instinctively and almost involuntarily, to move the bookcase and escape from the room in order to rescue Dean --- or is to to try to save Max? Or both?
1.15 "The benders"
Sam and Dean have come to Hibbing, Minnesota, where there has been a strange report of a man, Alvin Jenkins, going missing, and a boy who says he saw him being dragged under his car by "a monster". Sam notes that their father marked the area in his journal as a significant spot for monsters; this county has the highest disappearance rate per capita of the whole state. While they consider what to do, Sam goes back to the car but does not return. Panicked, Dean searches for him to no avail, and has to ask for help from the local police. When he mentions Sam's name (giving his real name for once, as otherwise Sam could not be properly tracked down if he has been taken) the sheriff, Kathleen, remarks that his brother, Dean, is on record as dying in St. Louis as a suspect in a murder (see "Skin") --- Dean is clearly uncomfortable being reminded about the shapeshifter but tries not to show it. There are bigger problems for him to deal with. The security traffic camera footage turns up a suspicious looking black truck (no, not the same one from "Route 666"!) which has equally suspiciously new plates, indicating it must be stolen. It drives off with what can only be described as a whining growl, the sound the kid they interviewed said the thing that grabbed Jenkins made.
Meanwhile Sam has awoken to find himself in a cage, and surprisingly Jenkins is in one opposite, alive. He talks to him but before he can get any sense out of him some men in black walk in, open his cage, throw in some food, lock it again and leave. Sam is amazed to see that they appear to be dealing with humans, not monsters, for once. When Jenkins' cage is opened and he escapes, Sam warns him it may be a trap --- it was too easy --- but Jenkins does not listen and heads for the woods, where he is set upon by a band of men who appear to be hunting him. Sam hears his dying scream.
Dean's ruse of impersonating a police officer to get the deputy to help has been sussed, and she is ready to turn him in, but because her own friend also disappeared three years ago and was never found she feels a sort of affinity for Dean's loss of his brother (though she still doesn't know who Dean is, just that he's not who his fake ID says he is) but she handcuffs him to the police car when they arrive at the spot they believe Sam may have been taken to. She heads into the woods alone, despite Dean's desperate protestations. When she comes across a rundown house and talks to the little girl who answers the door, Kathleen sees that Missy is dirty and unwashed, and the girl tells her that her mother is dead. Just then her father comes up behind and knocks Kathleen down with a shovel.
She wakes up in a cage next to Sam, but Dean has got free and joins them, looking for some way to open the cages. He goes back to the house but is captured and tortured by the family, who are basically redneck inbreeds who hunt people for fun. Who woulda guessed, huh? The father sends his boys to kill both Sam and Kathleen but in a fight the father and his boys are killed and the brothers and Kathleen escape yadda yadda yadda...
Note: Before I get to the music and such, I'd just like to point out this is a truly awful episode. It's Supernatural's "TKO" (see my Babylon 5 features) or "Infection" even. The only thing that's slightly good about it is that we've been conditioned, up to now, to expect ghosts and creatures and demons and all manner of horrible, otherworldly things to be responsible for the disappearances/deaths the boys investigate, so from that point of view it throws you for a loop somewhat to find it's nothing more behind this than redneck hillbillies. Perhaps you could remark the worst monster is Man? But really, this is a third, no, fourth-rate ripoff of every girl-finds-backwoods-cabin-and-comes-across-mad-rednecks movie you've ever seen or heard of. It's trash, and returns for a brief, depressing moment to the monster-of-the-week format, though even then it's worse than anything that has come before. There's no story arc, no advancement of the relationship between the brothers, nothing. Just a story that should have been buried and never let sully this great series. Shame.
MUSIC
Joe Walsh: "Rocky Mountain way"
QUESTIONS?
Just the one: who wrote this crap, and allowed it to get within a billion parsecs of Supernatural??
The "WTF??!" moment
There isn't one, apart from see above.
PCRs
Just the one. Jenkins says he's waiting for "Ned Beatty time".
Rather appropriately, this refers to the movie "Deliverance". Also appropriately, he's right, as it happens...