1.18 "Something wicked"
Monsters under the bed? Creepy figures at the window? For one young girl in Fitchburg, Wisconsin it's all too true, as we see a horrible hooded figure with long spindly fingers approach her in her bedroom...
Sam and Dean arrive to investigate, having been given the co-ordinates by their father, but can find nothing out of the ordinary, until Dean realises that it's a sunny day, school is out and yet there are no kids playing in the park, or in the street. A woman on a bench informs them that there is a worry about some bug or contagion going around; some kids have caught it already and the parents of the others fear it's catching, so keep their kids isolated. The brothers decide to check out the hospital, and there they happen to pass the room of an old creepy woman who keeps an inverted cross on her wall.
The doctor tells them (after they've introduced themselves as representatives of the CDC --- Centre for Disease Control) that whatever the illness is, it's like pneumonia but does not respond to the usual treatment for that ailment. And it only appears to affect the children in the family, though it seems to go through all the children. The father of the girl who got sick first is there, and he blames himself for leaving the window open, though he's sure he had closed it. An idea forming in his mind now, Dean suggests that they go to the house of the latest victim --- her parents will be tied up in the hospital for some time and it's unlikely they'll be disturbed --- and there they find a strange handprint, whcih appears to be seared or indeed rotted into the wood of the sill. Dean recognises it with horror.
He tells Sam that he and their father came up against this creature before; it attacked Sam when he was young and their father left Dean watching over his brother while he pursued the creature. It was in Wisconsin too, but apparently John Winchester was unable to kill it, for the thing, called a Shtriga, is surely behind these sicknesses. A form of witch from Albania, the creature is said to feed on the life essence of children, and to be vulnerable at the moment of consumption to consecrated iron. Dean returns to the hospital, to the room of the woman with the inverted cross. Turns out it's not an inverted cross, just a badly-hung one which has fallen on its end. The woman, too, whom Dean suspected to be the witch, turns out to be nothing more than a batty old lady, completely innocent.
Back at the motel they're staying at, one of the kids begins to get sick, and the brothers know that the Shtriga is after him. The mother rushes the child to hospital while the boys research the witch, and are aghast to turn up a picture of the doctor from the hospital --- from 1890! The penny drops and it's obvious now that the doctor is their witch. And what a position to be in to enable him to feed, where children at their weakest are entrusted to his care by their parents, and where they're expected to be safest. Dean is in the hospital with the doctor when Sam gives him the news on the phone, and wants to kill the witch but knows he must wait until it's feeding to have any chance of success.
He thinks back to when he was watching over Sam, as his father had charged him to do. After a few days he was bored and left the room, and when he came back the Shtriga was leaning over Sam! He raised his gun but hesitated. In that moment John Winchester burst into the room and shot the thing, but did not manage to kill it. It got away, and Dean's father was furious at him. It's clear now that destroying this witch is not only necessary and the only way to save all these kids, but also a mission of personal redemption for Dean. He tells Sam they must use Michael, the older brother of the latest child to get sick, the one at the motel, as bait, otherwise they can never catch the witch feeding. Sam is reluctant but agrees there is no other way.
When they put the plan to Michael he is scared and doesn't want to do it, but when he realises that doing so may save his younger brother, he agrees to help. With his gun now loaded with bullets made from the iron of the crucifix, Dean bursts in once the creature starts to feed on Michael and shoots it. It goes down, but in true monster-rising fashion gets back up again and goes after Sam. However Dean shoots it again and it dissolves, rotting away.
With the death of the Shtriga, Michael's brother begins to make a "miraculous recovery", as do all the other kids in town. Their job done, and Dean's personal ghost (or one of them, at least) laid to rest, the brothers leave town.
MUSIC
UFO: "Rock bottom"
Ozzy Osbourne: "Road to nowhere"
QUESTIONS?
Although obviously the Shtriga had to be destroyed, did their father send them there more to allow Dean his chance for revenge and redemption? Or, indeed, was it his own revenge he was exacting on the thing that dared attack his son?
Did the witch recognise Sam as "the one that got away", and was that why it attacked him, the only adult it seems to have gone after? Or was it just defending itself, and turning on whoever was closest? Did it remember, and mean to make Dean pay for shooting it by finishing the job of killing his brother?
How is it that, within one episode, John Winchester is again in contact with his boys? The last episode they were working solo, from the website, now he's sending them co-ordinates. Is that not a bit too soon? Or was the fact that the Shtriga had resurfaced just too important, and seeing the chance to destroy it he had decided to break cover early?
The "WTF??!" moment
Has to be when Sam comes across the picture of Doctor Heydecker, dated 1890, and realises he is the Shtriga.
PCRs
A really clever one is thrown in when Sam rings Dean from the library, where he has been researching the path of the Shtriga. He says "Before that there was Ogdenville, before that North Haverbrook and Brockway".
All three locations are mentioned by monorail salesman/shyster Lyle Langley in the Simpsons' episode "Marge vs the monorail", when he enthuses "Well sir I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and by gum it put them on the map!" Bravo.
BROTHERS
We see more of the backstory of the brothers in this episode, and indeed are allowed a glimpse into Dean's past, where we learn just why he is so protective of his brother, and also why he slavishly obeys his father's orders. The one time he didn't, the one time he let his guard down, Sam was almost killed by this witch. Not only does that weigh heavily on his heart, but the fact that he let his father down, who was depending on him and expected him to keep his younger brother safe, hurts like an old wound. Add to that the knowledge that in letting the creature get away the first time he has inadvertently put all these kids in danger from the Shtriga, and Dean is carrying a whole lot of unresolved guilt. Seeing the loathsome creature hunting again opens up that wound, and this time Dean is prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure it never has a chance to kill again. He is obviously also driven by a desire to redeem himself, both in his father's eyes and in his own.
When Michael asks him, just prior to agreeing to help them trap the witch, if he would do anything for his brother, Dean answers yes, but it must hurt to know that when he was supposed to be protecting him he let the creature slip past him. One moment, that was all it took, and it could have ended in disaster. Dean is determined nothing like that will ever happen again, and he will exchange his life for Sam's if it comes to it.
There's a nice little piece shown in the flashback to their younger lives, which serves to illustrate the bond that was, even then, between the two brothers. Sam wants Lucky Charms, but there is only enough for one, and Dean wants them. After some sulking by his younger brother Dean gives him his own share, whereupon Sam offers him the toy in the box. Fair brings a tear to a glass eye!
The ARC of the matter
Essentially there isn't really any "arc stuff" in this episode, but it does bear a somewhat closer examination. Given what we already know about Sam, was the witch aware how important he is? Was it going up against the demon, taking it on and risking its wrath by consuming a mortal deemed somehow important to it? Or was it just a "crime of opportunity", and there was no real significance attached to the fact that it was Sam who got singled out? Had Sam been killed, would the demon have then exacted revenge on the Shtriga, or does the witch even know of its existence?
All of this is interesting, as it does paint Sam as a mortal who seems to be of great importance to the darker elements of the forces of evil, and yet Dean, also a child at the time, was not attacked. Could there be a reason why that is?
Note: This episode, as I had hoped, is a huge improvement on "Hell house". Yes, it's monster-of-the-week in a way but it's tied into the arc, the brothers' history and goes beyond the mere creature feature of the previous episode. It also offers us a red herring in the inverted cross, though anyone who's been watching the series up to now will know that things are rarely as they seem, and the simplest solution is seldom the one that you would expect.
1.19 "Provenance"
A picture paints a thousand words. Or, in this case, causes a thousand deaths. Well, maybe not a thousand, but a cursed painting is killing everyone who has ever owned it. Its latest owners are killed when we see the painting of a family, with the father seeming to move, whereupon the husband and wife who have just bought it are killed in their bedroom. When the brothers read the article and collate it with similar entries in their father's journal, they head to New York. The house has been cleaned out after the murder, and they are unable to tie down what the origin of the spirit activity they detect is. It could be a cursed object, but the house is empty now.
They go to an auction where the possessions are being sold off, and try to check the provenance --- history and ownership --- of the items, but are kicked out. Sam though has made an impression on the auctioneer's daughter, Sarah, and Dean wants him to use that to find out all he can about the articles. Sam is reluctant to use the girl that way, but agrees they have no other option. On a date with her he manages to get the provenances and later he and Dean discover that there is a painting in the collection that according to their father's journals has resulted in every owner's death. They believe they have tracked down the culprit, and set about breaking into the auction house where they steal and burn the painting. Job done right? Well, no, because when they're gone it regenerates after having been burned!
When Dean realises the next morning that he dropped his wallet while they were stealing the painting, they have to go back for it and are aghast to see the painting they had thought destroyed whole again. Sam is similairly peeved when he realises Deam had his wallet on him all along, and this was just a ploy of his to engineer another meeting for his brother with Sarah. Sam asks Sarah not to sell the painting, that they will be back, and he and Dean discuss how they should proceed. Researching the family in the painting they find out they were called the Merchants, and that the father, Isaiah, killed the rest of them in 1912. All the family were cremated, leaving the boys to wonder how the spirit of the father could still be haunting the painting? They check the original against a picture of it they find in their research, and note that the figure of the father is not in the same place in both. It appears he's moving.
When Sam calls Sarah to tell her they might be interested in buying the painting, he is shocked and horrified to find that it has been sold; her father sold it, despite her asking him not to. They race to the address of the new owner, with Sarah joining them there, but are too late: the woman has been killed, her throat slit. With no alternative the boys have to come clean and explain to Sarah their theory, and though she thinks they're crazy she comes to believe them, and then to a decision to help them destroy the thing. Sam does not want her in danger but she will not be denied.
Looking more closely at the painting they see in the background another painting, which depicts a mausoleum in which presumably the Merchants were interred, as it has their name on it. When they eventually find the right one and break in, they find that though the ashes of the family, including an adopted daugher, and toys and dolls are there, Isaiah's are not. Dean goes to check and finds that the father was not in fact cremated: due to his scandalous actions he was buried in a pauper's grave. They find it, dig up his bones and burn them. For safety's sake they decide to burn the painting too, and go to get it, but the door of the house slams shut on Sam and Sarah, trapping them inside while Dean tries to open the door from outside. Sam shouts that he has noticed that there is another figure missing from the painting: a little girl whom the family adopted. He believes it may in fact be her who is doing the killings.
As Dean tries to force the door, Sam is proven correct as the spirit of the little girl appears and attacks them with a razor. Sam hits her with an iron from the fire, and she is driven back but not destroyed. Sam shouts to Dean to return to the crypt and burn the doll they saw there, as the chances are it's made out of her hair, and may contain her spirit. At the crypt Dean has some trouble smashing the glass case containing the doll but he gets it in the nick of time, burning it and taking the evil spirit with it.
Later their research turns up the fact that the adopted girl had killed her original family and then murdered her adopted one. Seems the father wasn't carrying out the murders, but trying somehow to stop his daughter, or at least warn her victims. Sarah tells the workmen crating up the painting to burn it, and bids goodbye to Sam with a kiss at the door. Dean smirks and leaves them to it.
MUSIC
Grand Funk Railroad: "Bad time"
Steve Carlson band: "Night life"
QUESTIONS?
When Sam is trapped behind the press in Evelyn's house, with Sarah in danger why can he not use his telekinetic powers, discovered in "Nightmare", to shift the thing? He has to physically force it away from him. Is this power he has just recently discovered arbitrary, something that just happens, that he can't control? But in that episode he moved the shelf out of the way when he realised Dean could die if he didn't get there in time. Is the power linked to his fear for/protection of his brother?
The "WTF??!" moment
Probably when the boys burn the painting and then we see it, unbeknownst to them, reassemble itself in the auction house. That, or the sudden realisation that it is the little girl who was the killer.
PCRs
Dean says "You think that Daddy dearest is trapped in the painting and is handing out Columbian neckties?"
Reference to the mooted practice among the gangland drug cartels of Columbia for despatching their enemies by slitting their throats, pulling out their tongue through the gap and tying it like, well, a necktie. Ugh.
Sam: "What, like a Da Vinci Code deal?"
Reference to the novel and movie of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". Interestingly, this must in fact be before the movie is released, as Dean looks blankly at the reference and it's clear he hasn't read the book, as he mutters he's waiting for the movie.
Sam says "I'm not talking about a broken heart and a tub of Haagen Das."
One of the most famous and loved makers of ice cream
BROTHERS
Once again Sam is attracted to a woman, but apart from the memory of Jessica still raw in his mind and heart, he is beginning to see that, like Spiderman, anyone he gets close to can and usually does end up getting hurt, so he is prepared to forego any romantic attachments in order to save the people he cares about from repercussions from the dark forces they are pursuing (or is it the other way around? Sometimes it's hard to tell...) Dean of course just eggs Sam on, knowing that his brother needs someone in his life to give him a little love, and also perhaps hoping to paper over the wound of losing his fiancee in such horrible circumstances. Dean realises that Sam blames himself for Jessica's death, and hopes that loosening the lock on his heart might help lift a little of that self-imposed guilt from his little brother.
There's also a sort of veiled warning about how families don't always stick together, kind of looking back again to "Nightmare", as we see that the Merchant family, having adopted a daughter out of, you would presume, the kindness of their hearts, were paid back not only by being murdered, but having the blame placed on the father, who for almost a century lay in unconsecrated ground, shunned by the spirits of his dead family. Sometimes family is not the binding force it should be, and this episode will probably strengthen and increase the bonds between Sam and Dean.