#shtriga

That aside, <em>shtriga </em>is derived ultimately from the Latin word <em>striga</em>, a word meaning <em>witch</em>, itself from the word <em>strix </em>meaning a screech owl. The shtriga in Albanian and general Slavic and Balkan folk lore is a witch with vampiric qualities, such as the one in this episode which drains the life force of its victims. The word <em>striga </em>is also cognate (related) with the Romanian <em>strigoi</em>, an unquiet spirit who has risen from the grave. Unlike the female shtriga, strigoi are usually male, and are men who died a violent death, or died by suicide. They are also associated with a number of ‘magic’ powers, such as flight and transforming into animals, and fed on human blood. Dracula is the canonisation of the strigoi as the definitive archetype of a vampire, and everything from Anne Rice to Buffy has adjusted and adapted this version for their own ends.

Interestingly, Anne Rice’s first vampire novel <em>Interview with the Vampire </em>featured a kind of vampire very much like strigoi in Bulgaria: Louis and Claudia encounter a red-haired traveller named Morgan whose wife had been turned into a vampire. These vampires were feral and animalistic compared to vampires like Loius and Lestat, as they had nobody to guide them.

Coincidentally, strigoi were usually red-haired and blue-eyed, likely due to the fact that people in Europe and the surrounding area have often been uncomfortable with red-haired people (especially red-haired men). Other than Judas frequently being depicted as red-haired, the genes for red-hair could lie dormant for several generations until appearing out of nowhere, even to dark-haired parents, immensely disconcerting for people who know nothing about recessive genes or alleles. ‘Why is this baby which came out of my blonde wife’s belly red-haired? Nobody in my family is red-haired! Where has this baby come from?!’ This is perhaps one of the reasons for the animus against red-haired people in Britain and Ireland, and American television shows whose writers watched an episode of <em>South Park</em> and did not understand that <em>that </em>kind of colourism is virulent in Britain.

Anyway, discussions of shtriga and strigoi bring me to the title of this episode (yes, I have written almost 700 words and I am only just getting to discussing the title): <em>Something Wicked </em>is a reference to <em>MacBeth</em> and the quote ‘By the pricking of our thumbs/something wicked this way comes’. This was uttered by the Weird Sisters, the three witches who curse MacBeth (‘Weird’ here being an alternative spelling of ‘wyrd’, meaning <em>fate</em>, cognate with German <em>werden</em>, Dutch<em> woorden</em>, and old-fashioned Swedish<em> varda</em>, all meaning ‘to become’, as well as one of the Norse Norns named Urd, ‘what will be’). This is not the most meaningful link possible, but it shows an amount of thought put in: an episode about an Albanian witch having a title related to Scottish witches, fate, and curses. Interesting.

Even without that link, <em>something wicked this way comes </em>is suggestive enough of approaching evil, which sets the tone for what is at times a genuinely creepsome episode. 1x18 <em>Something Wicked </em>is another episode which shows that Supernatural <em>was </em>good at doing the horror genre in its early years before it became a fantasy-horror. Even though I did not remember which show I had seen it on until I rewatched this episode at the end of 2020, the visual of the clawed hand through the curtain in the cold open stuck with me for twelve years. The imagery was exceedingly effective childhood nightmare material. The only thing which let the cold open down was revealing a tiny bit of what the shtriga looks like: horror works best when it is left to our imagination, because little is scarier than the unknown. Case in point: Lovecraft, whose work is incidentally a significant influence on how angels and their relationship with god are depicted in Supernatural.

Moving on, the episode starts once again with Sam being pissy. John has sent the two of them on a case in Wisconsin, but Sam cannot find anything in newspapers or on websites to indicate anything is happening in the area. He is (understandably) frustrated with John sending him on a wild goose chase again (or so Sam thinks, because Sam knows everything, apparently), but he is by no means obliged to remain in the car or to keep following Dean. He has left before (remember 1x11 Scarecrow), and he is free to do so again at any time should he so choose. Despite that, he holds Dean accountable for the result of his own inaction, surrendering thereby his own agency and making himself an object of Dean’s actions.. I understand Sam still does not like Dean, but this is on Sam, not Dean.

Dean, for his part, simmers with irritation at his younger brother’s bitching, doing his apparent best to remain calm (like an abused husband), though eventually he shuts Sam up with intentionally puerile logic (‘I’m the older brother, so I’m right’), like Eddie’s logic bomb in The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands.

After canvassing the town centre for something awry, Dean and Sam draw a big fat nothing, until Sam manages an impressive and sightly unrealistic leap of logic in noticing the play park is near deserted at 4 in the afternoon. After learning from the one mother in the park that a supposed bug is going around among the children and ONLY the children, Dean and Sam go to the hospital posing as FBI agents.

One thing I do not like about Dean and Sam’s disguises and fake badges is the silly things like ‘bikini inspector’ written on them. This is funny as a joke, but in actuality it would be an utterly stupid idea. Luckily for them the woman at reception was either stupid or lazy and did not check the badges properly, And yes, I noted that Sam was pissed off at Dean for the ‘bikini inspector’ badge. Are you forgetting you are also an adult, Sam? That you are part of this business, too? That you should not be leaving all of this earning money, buying suits, and making disguises to Dean? Hm? Are you forgetting? Yeah, forgotten. Understood. Now see above, RE: agency.

In addition to pissy, Sam is also dismissive of Dean’s suspicion of the creepy old lady at the hospital. At this point in the show, Sam should know better, and this just seemed like the writer trying to manufacture a little drama. On the one hand, Dean has been dismissive of Sam before, but on the other hand, this world is much more familiar to Dean than Sam, and this should be apparent to Sam by now.

This brings me onto a point of discussion which has been gnawing at my brain for a while: Dean and Sam are brothers, and it is perfectly understandable that the two have issues and baggage with each other. However, this makes their relationship over the entire show poisonous – I have said before that Sam is the narcissistic abuser and Dean is the co-dependent abused – and genuinely unpleasant to watch, especially given how their brotherly bond is said to be the heart of the show. If that is the case, it is a sick heart which needs to be put out of its misery. THIS should have been <em>the </em>episode where that happened. There is one moment in this episode where a switch should have flipped in Sam’s brain regarding Dean, a moment where all his illusions and resentment fell away and he saw Dean for who he is, not as the image of an older brother he has in his mind. All their squabbling and such up to this point would have been completely understandable and forgivable if only it had ended here and their relationship has undergone a sea-change. That moment is when Dean revealed to Sam what happened with the shtriga in 1989, and how John made Dean take the blame for all the intervening years.

But more on that in due course. In the hospital, Dean and Sam happen upon the father from the cold open who believes his daughter has pneumonia or something caused by her window being open at night. This leads Dean and Sam to investigate the house from the cold open (with Dean’s home-made EMF readers, I noticed. Did you notice, Sam? I noticed), and for some reason they changed out of their FBI outfits in order to do so. A search of the girls’ bedroom reveals nothing whatsoever, until Dean examines the window and finds a long-fingered handprint burnt or rotted into the window-ledge outside. How on Earth the dad missed this is quite beyond my ken, but Dean sees it and it triggers a flashback to 1989/1990 when Dean was 11 or 12 years old.

Whether this is a flashback Dean is having is left unanswered: it could just be a memory for him, but the way the ‘flashback’ is framed, and the fact Dean looks zoned out implies he could very well be right back in that moment while looking at the handprint. The moment in question is John leaving Dean and Sam in a motel room by themselves, with Dean having explicit instructions to not leave the room, not to answer the door to anybody, and to ‘shoot first, ask questions later’. Oh, and of course, that ‘watching out for Sammy’ was the most important thing of all.

John then leaves his boys to fend for themselves, whilst knowing full well that a monster was on the loose which hunted children just like his sons. There is absolutely no excuse or justification for John having wilfully endangered his sons. Pastor Jim was only three hours away, and they would have been safe there with an adult who knew about monsters and demons.

In spite of this, I have seen and heard justifications and apologia defending John’s actions. ‘He tried his best’ – sorry, but he did not try at all. ‘Parenthood is hard’ – John was not being a parent, and he was not treating his children as sons. They were tools to him. ‘John loved his kids’ – yep, abusers often love the people they abuse. ‘Dean and Sam needed to learn to fight demons and monsters’ – okay, so the ends justify the means. Never mind the ruined childhoods, the damaged psyches, Dean’s (C-)PTSD and various suicide attempts, and Sam’s bi-polar, OCD, and self-destructive issues. They grew up able to kill stuff, so everything is justified.

Apologia like this sounds like it is coming from people who have not got the foggiest what abuse and trauma entail. I have no intent of entertaining the notion that John was anything less than an abusive father who groomed his eldest son to be his weapon whilst ablating said son’s independence and self-worth utterly. He might have favoured Sam, and Sam’s issues with John seem rather normal compared to Dean’s, but Sam is also wounded and damaged by his para-militaristic upbringing. It is also irredeemable that John heaped so much responsibility on Dean when he was almost definitely still pre-pubescent.

Why, I ask you (as if I do not already know the answer) would John elect to leave his sons unprotected with a monster he was hunting on the loose? The fact that Dean and Sam have to research the shtriga later on implies very clearly that John gave them no information about the danger they might have been in. Why would he choose to leave his sons alone and clueless rather than with the Pastor Jim whom Dean was instructed to call if John did not return? He was only three hours away, after all. And why did John manage to arrive at <em>the </em>opportune moment as the shtriga fed on Sam?

He used his sons as bait.

The ‘flashback’ ends with poco!Sam staring at the telly while poco!Dean prepares for several back-to-back days of that burden of responsibility I mentioned a moment ago. Back in 2006, Dean shows Sam the shtriga’s handprint and tells him ‘Dad wants us to finish the job’. Read: John wants Dean to clean up John’s mess, and wants to rub Dean’s face in the ‘fact’ that Dean failed. He is trying to teach Dean a lesson in responsibility by parading his ‘failures’ in front of him, when the one who failed was John.

Someone impale that man on spike, please.

At the motel check-in, the boy named Michael makes an utterly rib-tickling, hilarious, and droll gay-joke at Dean and Sam’s expense – calling them ‘two queens’ – which had me… well, rolling my eyes. Note that it Dean who is far more frequently made the butt of gay jokes in this show than Sam, I wrote elsewhere that Jensen’s characters are frequently the butt of gay jokes – Alec, CJ, Dean – and that Jensen was made the butt of a gay joke live on telly on Christmas Eve in 1997. The ease wherewith his co-worker made the jibe and Jensen’s apparent exasperation suggested it was far from the first time this had happened to him.

I do not for a second think he is homophobic and I refuse to have THAT discussion again without damning evidence. I can, however, understand completely his defensiveness around gay jokes, bi!Dean, and Destiel (as discussed elsewhere): it must be hard to feel that everything you do is being made into a joke at your own expense. I can sympathise. That being said, I remember very clearly watching this episode as a far younger man sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2008 and being uncomfortable with both the brat’s hilarious jest <em>and </em>Dean’s offended reaction – ‘<em>What’d you say?’</em> - which sounded oh so much like a homophobe whose honour has been tarnished. Of course a homosexual or bisexual can have exactly the same reaction to somebody making a joke out of him/her. The next time I remember something similar happening was 2x11 Playthings, and as an older and far more exhausted homosexual I can see something else in his reactions: fear that his act is not working and that people can see the ‘worthless’ man behind the disguise.

However, the boy’s unpleasant exterior hides something reminiscent of Dean as he is seen making food for his younger brother while his mum is elsewhere. This triggers Dean’s second flashback, and this one does not show Sam in a good light. Sure he was only 7 or 8 in the flashback and 7-8 year olds are annoying by nature, but his spoilt whining is more irritating than it should be given the dire circumstances he and Dean find themselves in.

Dean is the second parent at this point, and Sam is his responsibility. Dean has not eaten and is very hungry, whereas Sam apparently <em>has </em>eaten and gripes that he has not had any Lucky Charms. Being the parentalised child he is, Dean caves to Sam’s entitled moaning and gives him the last of the Lucky Charms, clearly exhausted and resigned to always sacrifice his own comfort and well-being for Sam. Poco!Sam offers poco!Dean the toy from the box (since when did Lucky Charms have toys in them? Was it a leprechaun toy?) which the viewer is <em>supposed </em>to think is cute, and at the very least <em>does </em>suggest a mote of consideration on Sam’s part, but it does not stop the annoying little kid being the annoying little kid.

“I want Lucky Charms!” Frak you, adorable child actor.

I have said this before and it warrants saying again: Sam is utterly clueless about the true nature of his upbringing, and given what Dean was made to endure, it makes it very difficult for me to empathise or sympathise with him.

Apropos sympathising and empathising, this episode shows us once more that Dean is able to build rapport fairly easily with children, as he did in 1x03 Dead in the Water and tried to do again in 1x15 The Benders. In 1x03 he bonded with the child over childhood trauma and selective mutism, and in 1x18 he bonds with Michael over Michael’s guilt and feelings of responsibility for what happened to his younger brother. Part of the reason for this is that Dean has decades of experience after having raised Sam, but it is also due to the fact that men are just as good or bad with children as women are. Surprising, I know...

Michael in this episode is a Dean-mirror, as Max was in 1x14 Nightmare. Michael feels he failed his brother because he was not able to help him, as Dean felt guilty for not being able to save Sam from the shtriga. Dean can see part of him reflected in Michael and wants to prevent him living with the same guilt and shame Dean has lived with since John let him take the blame in 89/90. I wanted to write that Dean quickly reassuring Michael that he is not to blame suggests something about Dean, since he is no unwilling to absolve himself of any guilt, but Michael is utterly ignorant of the world of monsters at this point. Dean knew nothing about the shtriga in 89/90, but he <em>did </em>know about monsters: this small detail is one of the things which stop him letting go of the guilt John imposed on him. Dean was a child younger than Michael when the shtriga attacked, but he cannot forgive himself for failing, in spite of him being so quick to reassure others. He <em>knows</em> he was a child, and the way he talks to Michael tells me clearly that he <em>knows</em> he was not to blame. 3x10 <em>Dream a Little Dream of Me </em>gives us Dean’s true, unfiltered thoughts on John and his parenting, but this fact does not mitigate the guilt and shame John has inflicted on him.

It does not take Sam long to find out information on the shtriga in the local library, discovering attacks every twenty or so years in Wisconsin. Attacks in places such as Ogdenville, North Haverbrook, and Brockway, towns also renowned for their monorails.

Whilst Sam is in the library looking at newspapers on microfilm, he is talking loudly on the phone to Dean who is at hospital with Michael’s mum and younger brother while Dr. Heidecker does a check up on the boy. Sam spots Heidecker in the photographs in newspapers dating back to the late 1800s. Dean realises he is in the room with the shtriga, and his face goes through a whole laundry list of emotions in the scene following: fear, anger, sadness, distress, and – I promise I will keep it short this time – Jensen conveys all this with simply a tightness in his voice, a quiver of his lips, and a whole host of micro-expressions. He shakes subtly, his breathing is heavy and his nostrils flare. Dean is dangerous when he needs to be, and there is a very good chance he could have actually ventilated Heidecker right there and dealt with the consequences later. This man was indirectly responsible for John ‘never looking at Dean the same way again’, and there he was standing right in front of Dean. Dean, however, does nothing. Riveting.

The scene which follows is <em>the </em>scene where Dean and Sam’s brotherly relationship should have undergone a fundamental change. After returning to the motel, Sam asks Dean why the case is effecting him so badly, and this is where Dean’s evasion of Sam’s questions ends. Dean lets his defences down and allows Sam to see some of the man hiding behind his mask. I have to admit, when I watched this scene I thought Jensen’s acting was strange. Everybody has a bad day, and I wondered whether this was one of his. Then after a moment I realised Jensen was acting weird because <em>Dean</em> was the one having an off-day. He was triggered and not his usual self.

Dean holds himself entirely accountable for failing to shoot the shtriga when he had the chance. He blames himself for Sam nearly dying, and he reveals to Sam – for the first time ever, I think – that John did not like him.

Paula R. Stiles mentioned in the review of this episode that John may well have had regrets about what he did to his sons in this episodes, and he may well have considered it all his fault (as he bloody well should), but this does not in any way mitigate the fact that he did not confess this to Dean on the spot. To put my own spin on her point, John never said ‘This was my fault for leaving you alone, you are <em>not </em>to blame.’ Instead, he hugged Sam with tears in his eyes, and glared at Dean with utter disgust and contempt. John might have been ashamed of himself, but he let Dean take the blame, passed on the shame to him, and did nothing to alleviate it. Worse, eighteen years later he rubbed his face in it by sending <em>him</em> to Wisconsin to ‘take care of unfinished business’.

To clarify, John passed his parental responsibility off to Dean when Dean was roughly 11 years old, and then proceeded to let Dean take the blame for failing to carry out <em>John’s </em>responsibility. I wrote a few lines ago that John might have known <em>John </em>was truly to blame, but not only did he hold Dean accountable for his own A* parenting, but almost two decades after the fact <em>knew</em> Dean felt guilty about it and <em>still</em> allowed him to take the blame. John abused his son as a prepubescent in the late 80s, but refused to allow the wounds to heal in the mid 2000s.

This is not the first time John has sent Dean on a hunt in order to rub his nose in Dean's 'wrongdoing': as others have pointed out, the first hunt John sent Dean on was to kill the ghosts of gay nuns.

Dean is <em>desperate </em>to kill the shtriga to make up for what he believes was his mistake. He blames himself for children in hospital and will hold himself accountable if they die. He also holds himself responsible for making things up with his abusive father. A brainwave struck me while writing this review: Dean loves Sam and wants to keep him safe, but as discussed on numerous occasions, John has instilled in Dean the false belief that his only worth is in sacrificing his own safety, well-being, and even his life for Sam. Dean is driven by this false belief, hoping to be worthy of John’s love one day, because John’s disgusted glare is etched into Dean’s memory.

But moreover, Dean wants to keep Sam safe to make up for his ‘mistakes’, absolve himself of his guilt, and to attempt to get back to where things used to be. That night in 1989/1990 is a trauma which keeps repeating itself over and over in Dean’s mind, and he longs for a change to do it again, but make it end differently. He loves Sam, but his motivations for sacrificing himself for him are not entirely other-centred: he wants to do it because he believes his own resolutions may thereby come to fruition. Dean’s behaviour is that of an abused, traumatised character, but he is not a mindless automaton as some explanations may lead one to believe.

Following Dean’s revelation, Sam attempts to comfort and reassure him that it was <em>not </em>his fault. Dean does not want to hear it, being of the firm opinion that he deserves to feel bad and that it truly was he who failed in 89/90. <em>This </em>is the moment which could have wholly changed my view of Sam as it could have been a game-changer for the brothers’ relationship. Sam should have blithely ignored Dean's ‘Don’t’. This was <em>the</em> moment for the divide between the brothers to vanish, for Sam to aggressively take Dean's side and lay into John. Sam is not afraid of gainsaying John, so this was moment for him to fight for Dean and to show him somebody cared.

Sam: No, Dean. <em>You</em> didn't fail. <em>Dad</em> failed the moment he left his kids as bait instead of leaving them with Pastor Jim. He failed the moment he passed off his parental responsibility to his 10 year-old son. He failed the moment he blamed <em>you</em> for <em>his</em> mistakes, and you've been living with this guilt and shame because of his Grade A parenting. This is <em>his</em> unfinished business, not yours. He is responsible for those kids dying, not you. But we're going to save them by cleaning up his mess. You and I are going to do what he couldn't. You are going to kill the shtriga, because you're a better man, human, and hunter than Dad could ever be.

Dean: <em>chick flick moment</em>

Sam: And that home-made EMF reader you made is bitchin!

This is what should have happened. Sam finally had an opportunity to see beyond the mask Dean was forced to wear and espy the wounded man behind it. It was his chance to realise ‘My brother is an actual human, and he needs me’. How much different would the show have been if Dean and Sam had acted like brothers who actually liked each other and cared for each other like… well, like adult brothers, as opposed to their unpleasant and poisonous narcissistic abuser/co-dependent abused dynamic which has me wanting to tear my rich, voluminous, bouncy hair out in chunks. A Sam who actually truly cared for Dean, had his back, fought his corner, treated him with dignity and respect, and generally enjoyed being around him would be the kind of Sam I would not heap scorn on in almost every analysis I write.

Alas, alack, and alay, this is not what transpired. Instead, Sam meekly obeys Dean’s request for silence, and no more is said on the matter until the end of the episode when Sam says ‘Sometimes I wish I could have remained ignorant’. Sam, my dude, my guy, my tone-deaf man, you had a chance for some real character development there but you elected to ignore it in favour of a good vintage whine. <em>After! Dean! Revealed! All! That! To! You! You! Make! It! About! Yourself!</em>

Sam, the one whom John hugged and showed love and affection which Dean never had, wishes he could have ‘remained ignorant’. I swear by Gandalf’s magnificent, luxurious beard, I am going to haemorrhage…

Back to the scene in the motel room, Dean suggests using Michael as bait to get to the shtriga. Sam is dead-set against the idea for some reason, mostly for silly moralistic reasons. Dean is completely on the money with this suggestion: the shtriga’s modus operandi is to go through families, meaning the shtriga is going to target Michael next whether he is used as bait or not. Sure they could get Michael out of harm’s way, but then the shtriga would just find another victim and Dean and Sam would end up having to use another child as bait. OR the shtriga would get suspicious when it sees Michael is missing and skedaddle for another twenty or so years, possibly resurfacing roughly at my time of writing this in July 2022.

Rather than using Michael as bait, one of the brothers could lie in wait in bed for the shtriga, but the shtriga was only vulnerable whilst feeding, and in order to feed it would have to get close enough to whoever was lying in bed to see him. It would see Dean or Sam is in the bed and flee before anybody could pop a cap in its persqueeter (told you I would be using that). Sam’s objections amount to the plan not being the plan Sam would prefer to use, but he offers no useful alternative. This is not the last time Sam will object to a plan simply because it is not the one he would prefer of does not produce the result he would life to see, e.g. the Mark of Cain in series 10, or Dean and the Malak box in series 14. In both instances, Dean was being a responsible, rational grown-up who saw his utter lack of options and chose to minimise the possible damage he could wreak after his inevitable loss of control over himself. Both times, Sam stuck his oar in because it was not what <em>he </em>wanted to happen, though he had no better options or plans. And no, Castiel was not guiltless here, either.

And that is not even <em>touching </em>on the Dean’s plans with the Jack!bomb in 15x16-17, but returning to the point, before anybody calls Dean a hypocrite for using Michael as bait, the situation with Michael in 2006 and Dean in 1989/1990 was fundamentally different. Dean told Michael exactly what was what and what the danger was, and gave Michael the choice to act as bait or not. After his initial hesitation, Michael commendably stepped up and offered to act as bait, entirely of his own volition. Furthermore, he knew Dean and Sam were waiting and watching in the very next room, and that they were observing goings-on through a video camera.

Michael showed balls of steel in the room by himself as the shtriga entered and slowly crept towards him. The shtriga should have perhaps been slightly suspicious of Michael sitting upright in bed whilst wide-awake, but that is a minor gripe. A slightly less minor gripe is that it always seems to be <em>Dean </em>thrown around by the monsters. It happens to Sam sometimes, but Dean is winning by a country mile and I do not get why.

With Dean momentarily indisposed (perhaps <em>that </em>is why he gets knocked about so much – otherwise, he would end the fight in a heartbeat) the shtriga grapples with Sam and attempts to drains his life force. It starts working in spite of Sam’s struggles. Of course the shtriga was never going to get Sam in this episode because of plot armour, but I was still hoping it would not be Sam who ventilated it. This episode was about Dean’s baggage and Dean’s story: for that story to have a satisfying ‘conclusion’, it had to be him who ganked the shtriga.

And gank it he did. With a whole clip of bullets. Some catharsis for Dean, especially considering the shtriga was clearly a metaphor for John’s abuse: it attacks children, drains them of their vigour, and leaves scars which last a lifetime.

It also creeps into children’s bedrooms late at night, but do let us not go too far down <em>that </em>trail of thought.

The shtriga (presumably) dead, the life force of all the children it has consumed escapes it. Where it goes is left untold, but we can assume that at least some returned to the children it was stolen from.

The next morning, Michael’s younger brother is apparently miraculously healed, and Dr. Heidecker is nowhere to be seen. After Michael and his mother leaver for hospital in their car, Dean and Sam are left alone in the car park outside the motel. Sam, as mentioned earlier, wishes he could have been spared the knowledge of monsters, and Dean predictably wishes that Sam could have remained ignorant, too. Dean does not vocalise a wish of that nature for himself, but it need not be said. Attentive viewers know. Following this, Dean and Sam get into the car and drive off whilst Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Road to nowhere’ plays on the soundtrack.

This song is relevant because of the lyrics:

I was looking back on my life

And all the things I've done to me

I'm still looking for the answers

I'm still searching for the key

The wreckage of my past keeps haunting me

It just won't leave me alone I still find it all a mystery

Could it be a dream?

The road to nowhere leads to me

These lyrics are clearly relevant to Dean’s baggage, but it is not the song I would have chosen for him to drive off to. I am very well aware that it is far from the classic rock the show liked to make use of for aesthetical purposes, but <em>It’s a Sin</em> by The Pet Shop boys would have been my choice.

Father, forgive me

I tried not to do it

Turned over a new leaf

Then tore right through it

Whatever you taught me

I didn't believe it

Father, you fought me

'Cause I didn't care

And I still don't understand

So I look back upon my life

forever with a sense of shame

I’ve always been the one to blame

For everything I long to do

no matter when or where or who

has one thing in common too

it’s a sin

I was actually compelled to listen to that song on repeat when this realisation struck me, and it confirmed my belief that it describes Dean perfectly (if we allow artistic license with ‘sin’, since Dean is irreligious). I am also very aware of what ‘sin’ exactly is being referred to in the song: Dean’s line about John never looking at him the same again fits as a perfect metaphor.

Constant readers will remember my analysis of 1x12 Faith when I discussed Dean’s behaviour as a negative image of John’s treatment of him. In that analysis, I wrote the following:

<em>Dean believes he is worthless, but at the same time is entirely responsible and accountable for other people’s suffering. He does not try to help or save others because he wants to be the hero or wants to have control over their lives, but because he believes the only thing he is good for is getting hurt so other people do not have to. If that means sacrificing his life, then so be it: his life is worthless anyway, and even his dad never shows him anything resembling love.</em>

<em>Up until this point in the show, Dean’s mask has mostly stayed firmly on around Sam. He presents himself as a larger-than-life, unnaturally strong and charismatic hunter with a Devil may care attitude, but he does this because it is what others need of him. He has to make Sam believe Dean is stronger than he is and that Dean can protect him, because that was always his role. He must be seen to be capable (which of course he is), but to do this he must downplay and conceal any weakness to maintain the illusion. The reason for this is that any hint of weakness runs the risk of the people he loves seeing him as flawed, casting him aside, and replacing him.</em>

<em>I said in 1x09 Home that I will save most of my ire for John until a later, and the later date is fast approaching. We see little direct evidence of John’s mistreatment of his sons, the elder in particular. However, the other side of Dean presented in 1x12 Faith is all the negative image we should need. His facade falls away to reveal a weak, small, broken, and very human man. His eyes are sunken, his skin is grey, his jokes fall flat, he sits like a sick man with breathing problems, and the viewer is forced to look at the man behind the mask.</em>

John’s treatment of Dean in this episode gives the viewer a very clear idea of what life with John must have been like for Dean, and exactly why he ended up the man he is. Dean built his personality around things and behaviours he believed would make John look at him like a son he loved again. It failed, though, as I do not believe John really loved Dean at all. Trying to be a son John would love made Dean obedient like a mindless lackey, which made John loose all respect for him. Sam fought John and disobeyed. As difficult as their relationship might have been, at least Sam showed John behaviour John could respect.

Dean, in contrast, looked weak and pitiful to John.

Thus concludeth my analysis of the eighteenth episode of <em>Supernatural</em>. Though not the best the show has to offer, it is certainly one of the better ones and gives an insight into Dean’s psyche which is sorely needed in order to understand <em>why </em>he seems to blindly follow John’s orders. It bears some similarities to an early episode of <em>Buffy, </em>namely 2x18 <em>Killed by Death</em>, where a demon from German folklore is making children sick, but this episode of <em>Supernatural</em> is more than a stand-alone episode like that episode of <em>Buffy </em>was. It fleshes out established relationships and characters in order to help us understand them better. Nothing within this episode exists solely for the episode’s sake, but for the sake of the characters.

It also gave us Dean’s wee little red tie, as well as our first introduction to poco!Dean and poco!Sam, whom we will be seeing again in 3x08 <em>A Very Supernatural Christmas</em>. Poco!Sam was irritating, but the fact he was so spoilt is surely a testament to poco!Dean’s skills at keeping him shielded from John and the outside world.

We are also a mere handful of episodes away from Supernatural’s first series finale, and while this episode does not progress the plot, it does deepen the viewer’s understanding of the dynamics between Dean, Sam, and John, as well as revealing a lot of the unpleasantness haunting the family. The shtriga was, after all, a literal monster which had been haunting Dean since his childhood. As well as that, it also helps us understand more of why exactly Sam would have wanted to get far away from John (and by extension Dean). The viewer will need this for the last three episodes of series one.