"You're kind of anti-social, you know that?"

[llywela]

Episode six, Skin, is directed by Robert Duncan McNeill of Star Trek: Voyager fame. Since McNeill's character Tom Paris was one of my favourites in that show, seeing his name on the directing credits of this episode gives me a geek thrill!

Ahem.

The episode opens on the very grim scene of a bloodied young woman tied to a chair in a darkened room by a knife-wielding assailant, while police close in. While the heavily armed cops search the house, the knife-wielder stealthily makes good his escape. Finally cornered at a window, he turns to face the officers now holding him at gunpoint. And…shock, horror! It is Dean.

One week earlier…

The Impala pulls into a gas station. At the wheel, Dean is chuntering on about where they are headed next, while Sam plays with his palm pilot and ignores him completely.

DEAN: "All right, I figure we'd hit Tucumcari by lunch, then head south, hit Bisbee by midnight. [SAM does not respond.] Sam wears women's underwear."
SAM [not rising]: "I've been listenin', I'm just busy."

Sam is busy checking his emails, emails from his old college buddies. Dean is kind of taken aback at the notion of such communication and, while he's busy filling the car up, the brothers debate their very different perspectives on the subject.

DEAN: "Well, what exactly do you tell 'em? You know, about where you've been, what you've been doin'?"
SAM: "I tell 'em I'm on a road trip with my big brother. I tell 'em I needed some time off after Jess."
DEAN: "Oh, so you lie to 'em."
SAM: "No. I just don't tell 'em…everything."
DEAN: "Yeah, that's called lying. I mean, hey, man, I get it, tellin' the truth is far worse."
SAM: "So, what am I supposed to do, just cut everybody out of my life? [DEAN shrugs.] You're serious?"
DEAN: "Look, it sucks, but in a job like this, you can't get close to people, period."
SAM: "You're kind of anti-social, you know that?"

Very different perspectives on the subject that tell us a lot about Sam and Dean as individuals. Sam's right. Dean's outlook on life can be very bleak at times, although his nomadic lifestyle and highly secret occupation do seem to render that necessary. If he isn't able to stay in one place long enough to get to know people all that well, and has to lie to most of them about virtually every aspect of his life anyway…well, cutting himself off the way he does would become a defence mechanism.

Then Sam opens another email that stops him dead in his tracks. The message is from an old college friend, Rebecca Warren – seems her brother has been arrested for murdering his girlfriend.

DEAN: "Dude, what kind of people are you hangin' out with?"

Rebecca insists that Zack didn't do it, and Sam believes her, because Zack was also his friend, and he's determined to go to St Louis to help in any way possible. Dean, not seeing how they can help in any way since it looks like a straightforward, cut-and-dried homicide, protests that St Louis is 400 miles behind them, but Sam gives him the puppy eyes look…

And before long they are in St Louis, visiting Rebecca, because Sam has Dean wrapped around his little finger in a way that only the baby of the family can ever achieve. There are both pros and cons to being the youngest.

Rebecca explains that this is her parents' house – she'd been staying over for a long weekend when this all happened, but is now taking the rest of the semester off to try to help Zack, and I'm glad she's explained this because I was curious about what they were doing in St Louis when they are friends of Sam's from Stanford and surely it's still term time. But now I'm curious to know how easy it is to just take a year or a semester off from American university and then pick back up again later.

I don't take to Rebecca at all, right from the first moment she appears. Neither does Dean, I'm glad to see. I don't see anything about her that suggests she and Sam are close friends. She feels superficial, and I don't really see her as the type Sam would hang out with. But maybe she's different at school and when not under the stress of her brother being wrongly arrested for murder.

Rebecca tells the boys the whole sorry tale of how Zack came to be arrested for murdering his girlfriend, but despite the existence of security tape footage placing him near the scene of the crime at the appropriate time, she insists that he was with her and could only have done it if he was in two places at the same time. Dean still seems half-hearted, not convinced that there's anything they can do here, but Sam is all earnest desire to help in any way possible, no matter what he has to say to convince Rebecca of his ability to do so.

SAM: "You know, maybe we could see the crime scene. Zack's house."
REBECCA: "Why? I mean, what could you do?"
SAM: "Well, me, not much. But Dean's a cop."

Dean's face is a picture, but he plays along with Sam's lie and Rebecca agrees to let them see the crime scene – Zack and Emily's house – and disappears to get the keys, which gives Dean time to get a little dig in at Sam.

DEAN: "Oh, yeah, man, you're a real straight shooter with your friends."
SAM: "Look, Zack and Becky need our help."
DEAN: "I just don't think this is our kind of problem."
SAM: "Two places at once? We've looked into less."

So, Rebecca takes them to see Zack and Emily's house, and now I'm confused because if Zack was a friend of Sam's from Stanford, and Sam only dropped out – took time off, or whatever – earlier this academic year, why does Zack have a house of his own, living with his girlfriend in St Louis? Rebecca is still very hesitant about letting the boys into Zack's place, and it is only the fact that Dean is supposedly a police officer that sways her. Since it is a fairly recent crime scene, the place hasn't been cleaned up yet and there's a lot of blood splattered around, which is nice and grim. Rebecca seems suitably traumatised by the sight of it all.

In the photographs scattered around the place, Zack looks nothing whatsoever like his sister. There's even a photo on the fridge of Zack and Rebecca with Sam, presumably at Stanford, but to me that comes across as trying too hard to make them all plausibly friends. We never actually get to meet Zack in this episode so don't get to see how well Sam interacts with him. Sam stares broodily at the photo of himself with Zack and Rebecca, and we remember that the dead girlfriend connection would be enough to arouse his sympathy for his friend, Jessica's death still being so fresh.

If Sam was a close friend of Zack and Rebecca, he should have known Emily, as well, I'm guessing. There's not much sign of obvious grief about her murder, though, from anyone – it is discussed only as the source of Zack's current predicament, rather than as a tragedy in its own right.

There's a lot of low-level plot discussion at Zack's house, about Zack having had a break in a week before Emily's death, with some of his clothes stolen, and how the neighbours' previously very sweet dog has been completely spooked ever since Emily's death. Hearing this, Dean starts to show signs of genuine interest in the case for the first time – seeing the first glimmering of possibility that this might be their kind of gig after all. Animals, apparently, can have a sharp sense of the paranormal. Getting a look at the damning security tape might help clear things up, and it just so happens that Rebecca has got it – she stole it off the lawyer's desk because she wanted to see it for herself. But doesn't her lawyer need it to work on the case?

Then we cut to…Zack, who we recognise from the photographs, free as a bird and watching a young couple bid one another farewell in tender, loving fashion as the fella prepares to head off on a business trip. Watching them, Zack gives a wicked smile, and his eyes glint silver, just for a second. Seems Sammy is right about this one, sure enough.

Watching the security tapes, Sam very smoothly gets Rebecca out of the room by asking for a drink and some sandwiches, and I love that Dean instantly recognises this for the diversion tactic it is and heads over to see what Sam has spotted. A close up of Zack on the tape, played slowly, clearly shows that silver glint in his eyes – definitely unnatural.

SAM: "Remember that dog that was freakin' out? Maybe he saw this thing. Maybe this is some kind of dark double of Zack's, something that looks like him but isn't him."
DEAN: "Like a Doppelganger."
SAM: "Yeah. It'd sure explain how he was two places at once."

So we cut back to the young couple from earlier: the fella arriving back home early, because his flight was cancelled, to find his wife bound and gagged, covered with blood – and terrified of him. Confused, he turns around – to see himself standing there, wielding a baseball bat.

Sam is all over this case, so earnest and focused and determined, and it's adorable, while Dean grumbling about being dragged out at 5.30am to follow up on a hunch is equally adorable. He agrees that Sam is right about there probably being a trail the real killer left when he departed, that the police wouldn't have looked for because they'd caught Zack inside. It's just the hour he objects to. Sam is a morning person. Dean really isn't. Sam prowls around energetically out back of Zack's place, very quickly picking up a trail of blood. Dean just lets him get on with it and sits on the hood of the car drinking coffee, scanning the area with his eyes rather than join in such lively early morning activity. The trail ends rather abruptly, but before they can discuss what that means, the sound of sirens disturbs the early morning hush.

Now, those sirens could be anything. But the boys, being alert to anything and everything that could even remotely be connected, instantly hop back into the Impala and follow. They join the gawkers outside the home of the couple we saw previously, and pump them for information under the easily believable guise of being indecently nosy.

Then, when things have quietened down a bit, Sam resumes his prowling for clues, while Dean asks around some more.

DEAN: "Hey. Remember when I said this wasn't our kind of problem?"
SAM: "Yeah."
DEAN: "Definitely our kind of problem."

'Our kind of problem' being of the 'in two places at the same time' variety. I like that Dean so easily admits he was wrong. He's wide awake now, all right. Coffee must have kicked in, or possibly the adrenaline rush of definitely being onto something here, and the two of them rattle off shapeshifter theories and possibilities in that brain-storming fashion of theirs.

SAM: "Let me ask you this – in all this shapeshifter lore, can any of them fly?"
DEAN: "Not that I know of."
SAM: "I picked up a trail here. Someone ran out the back of this building and headed off this way."
DEAN: "Just like your friend's house."
SAM: "Yeah. And, just like at Zack's house, the trail suddenly ends. I mean, whatever it is just disappeared."
DEAN: "Well, there's another way to go – down."

Heh. What is it with this kind of show and sewers? Everyone seems to spend time splashing around in 'em at some point or another. The boys head down and start exploring, and very quickly find shapeshifter evidence.

DEAN: "You know, I just had a sick thought. When the shapeshifter changes shape, maybe it sheds."
SAM: "That is sick."

I love how grossed out they get by some of the things they encounter in their work.

There is one sure way to kill a shapeshifter – silver bullet to the heart. Nice and precise, that – clears up the whole 'what if it's not a direct kill?' issue about silver bullets and whether or not any kind of hit would kill. Apparently not, not in this 'verse. It's gotta be the heart.

Then Sam takes a call from a very irate Rebecca, who has been talking to her lawyers about going to the crime scene, and found out that Dean isn't a cop, and is absolutely furious, and nothing Sam can say will placate her. Family loyalty comes first, which is only right and proper – her brother's case has to be her top priority. But still, it seems a very brittle kind of friendship they have, superficial.

DEAN: "I hate to say it, but that's exactly what I'm talkin' about. You lie to your friends because if they knew the real you, they'd be freaked. It's just – it'd be easier if –"
SAM: "If I was like you."
DEAN: "Hey, man, like it or not, we are not like other people. But I'll tell you one thing. This whole gig – it ain't without perks."

The perks of the job, in this instance, revolve around use of weapons and the thrill of the kill, apparently.

Now suitably armed, they head down once more, and soon find themselves close to the creature's lair. They can tell this because of the many heaps of bio-waste it has left lying around after shedding, along with random clothes scattered here and there. Sam turns to say something – and there the shapeshifter is, standing right behind his brother. Stealthy creature, clearly. Sam yells, Dean spins, but not quickly enough, and the shapeshifter smacks him hard into the wall before running for it.

Sam shoots after it, but is clearly a suck shot in these conditions (dark, enclosed space, very tense, fast moving target) and misses. Wonder how many silver bullets they have to spare?

Sam gives chase. So does Dean, but more slowly, having bashed his shoulder rather painfully against a pipe. By the time they reach the surface, there is no sign of the creature. There is also no comment whatsoever about all these shady looking young men emerging so unexpectedly from the sewers for no apparent reason. Plenty of passers by, but none of them so much as spare the brothers a second glance.

As they split up to search for the shapeshifter, Dean is still favouring his left arm, although only very slightly. This is important. Watching the brothers work the streets on their search is amusing because they are so very different in their approach to it. Sam keeps his gun hidden, but his hand on it, and looks tremendously shifty. Dean, on the other hand, carries his gun openly as he stalks the streets, looking so completely professional that no one would dream of questioning his right to do so.

It is now dark. Where did the day go? Have they stopped to eat at all?

One completely fruitless search later, the brothers meet up once more. Or do they? As they head back to the car, passing headlights fall on Dean, revealing the glinting silver eyes of the shapeshifter…

Sam, however is oblivious to this. Yet, as they approach the car and 'Dean' doesn't seem to be behaving in any way differently to the real thing, Sam seems to get suspicious and starts asking questions about previous hunts they'd been on, trying to catch him out.

Not!Dean appears to answer all questions accurately and sufficiently casually, and, apparently satisfied, Sam – who for some reason is in possession of the car keys (was it Sam that drove them here, then?) – tosses them to Fake!Dean. He catches them left-handed – and we remember that Dean had hurt his left shoulder – opens up the weapons compartment in the trunk and is well impressed with what he finds therein. And then turns around to see Sam holding a gun on him.

SAM: "Don't move! What have you done with him?"

Me, I'm now well impressed by Sam's ability to figure out in about ten seconds flat that the shapeshifter isn't Dean. And it wasn't just the key catching that did that, because he was already suspicious.

SHAPESHIFTER: "Dude, chill. It's me, all right?"
SAM: "No, I don't think so. Where's my brother?"
SHAPESHIFTER: "You're about to shoot him. Sam, calm down."
SAM: "You caught those keys with your left. Your shoulder was hurt."
SHAPESHIFTER: "Yeah, it's better. What do you want me to do, cry?"
SAM: "You're not my brother."
SHAPESHIFTER: "Why don't you pull the trigger, then? Hmm? 'Cause you're not sure. Dude, you know me."
SAM: "Don't."

Turns out the shapeshifter is rather nifty in the violence department and, when the attempt at convincing him fails, takes Sam out easily. Bet that wasn't in the initial game plan.

Sam comes to in the shapeshifter's lair, quite securely tied up. The shapeshifter then smacks him around a bit for no apparent reason, but Sam seems mostly to be concerned about his missing brother, which is nice to see. It's usually Dean fretting about Sam rather than this way around.

SAM: "Where is he? Where's Dean?"
SHAPESHIFTER: "I wouldn't worry about him. I'd worry about you."
SAM: "Where is he?"
SHAPESHIFTER: "You don't really wanna know. [He chuckles.] I swear, the more I learn about you and your family…I thought I came from a bad background."

Turns out, the shapeshifter has the ability to tap into the thoughts and memories of the people it impersonates – downloading them, almost. Can't help wondering how that works – it took Dean's form after hitting him down in the sewer tunnel. So is physical contact necessary first? Or is it able to just look at someone and hack into them, somehow?

However it does it, this ability of the shapeshifter provides us with some meaty insight into Dean's psyche, albeit an insight that comes via the rather warped and twisted interpretation of the shapeshifter.

SHAPESHIFTER: "He's sure got issues with you. You got to go to college. He had to stay home. I mean I had to stay home. With Dad. You don't think I had dreams of my own? But Dad needed me. Where the hell were you?"

This is the first time it is so implicitly acknowledged that Dean had ambitions of his own that were sacrificed for the sake of his family, putting their needs ahead of his own desires, only to have that sacrifice trampled upon when they each, in turn, up and abandoned him. Which tells us what? That putting the people you love ahead of yourself is a bad thing because it leaves you vulnerable?

It's pretty obvious that hunting is much safer in pairs or groups rather than individually, which has got to be a big part of the reason Dean has stayed working alongside John for so long – it was either that or leave John alone to potentially get himself killed. When he was of an age to be going off to college, Sam would have only been fourteen – back then, Sam needed Dean to stay and help John, and whatever his own dreams might have been I doubt he would have stopped to think twice about making that decision. Family comes first. And then once Sam was gone, John would have needed Dean to stay even more – until whatever it was that sent him running into hiding so abruptly, without so much as a word of explanation. Nope, he was well and truly trapped by that over-developed sense of family responsibility he's got, and the satisfaction he gets from helping people along the way is – or was – secondary to that.

SAM: "Where is my brother?"
SHAPESHIFTER: "I am your brother. See, deep down, I'm just jealous. You got friends. You could have a life. Me? I know I'm a freak. And sooner or later, everybody's gonna leave me."
SAM: "What are you talkin' about?"
SHAPESHIFTER: "You left. Hell, I did everything Dad asked me to, and he ditched me, too. No explanation, nothin', just poof. Left me with your sorry ass. But, still, this life? It's not without its perks. I meet the nicest people. Like little Becky. You know, Dean would bang her if he had the chance. Let's see what happens."

It's impossible to judge, though, how much of this really does come from Dean, how much is the shapeshifter trying to undermine Sam, and how much it is projecting its own issues onto whatever it is learning from that psychic connection it has established with Dean. It seems safe to say, though, that there is at least a grain of truth in there that all this is based on, however much it is twisting that truth in its interpretation.

Makes me even more furious with John for up and leaving the way he did with no explanation. Because it is clear that if he had just taken the time to call Dean and tell him what he was doing, Dean would have accepted it – he might not have liked it, he might have felt hurt and worried, but he'd have accepted it. He trusts his dad. Just vanishing without a word of explanation after they'd worked so closely, side by side, for so many years – that's downright cruel.

So, the shapeshifter off and heads over to Rebecca's place, presents a charming, smiling face, and swiftly talks his way around her unsurprisingly rather frosty welcome.

Meanwhile, back in the lair, Sam is busily completely failing to free himself from his bonds when he hears someone coughing somewhere behind him. It's Dean, also all tied up, and – he's been unconscious all this time? Just how hard did that thing hit him? Sam has been awake for ages. He's lost his over-shirt, jacket and necklace, which reminds us that the shapeshifter has stolen those in order to more convincingly pass himself off as Dean. Sam is adorably cute, laughing aloud with relief that his brother is okay after he'd been so worried.

DEAN: "That better be you, Sam, and not that freak of nature."
SAM: "Yeah, it's me. He went to Rebecca's, lookin' like you."
DEAN: "Well, he's not stupid. He picked the handsome one."

You know, people who talk themselves up so much generally do so to cover up low self-esteem.

The shapeshifter seems to be charming Rebecca pretty well just by telling her the truth about himself over a glass of wine – just not admitting that he's talking about himself, since he's still pretending to be Dean. And thus the audience is given some insight into how it became what it is.

SHAPESHIFTER: "Evolution is about mutation, right? So, maybe this thing was born human but was different. Hideous and hated. Until he learned to become someone else."

Back down in the sewers, Dean swiftly makes very impressive headway on his ropes while Sam just yammers away about the shapeshifter and continues to fail to free himself, which amuses me immensely, since Dean manages to get loose in no time at all.

SAM: "I don't know. It was like he was downloading your thoughts and memories."
DEAN: "You mean, like the Vulcan mind meld?"
SAM: "Yeah, somethin' like that. I mean, maybe that's why he doesn't just kill us."
DEAN: "Maybe he needs to keep us alive. Psychic connection."

It doesn't really need to keep Sam alive, though, since it isn't impersonating him. Unless it is keeping its options open in that regard.

Dean gets both of them free, and they now have the problem of saving Rebecca without either weapons or transport – which means calling the police and setting them on the trail.

DEAN: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're gonna put an APB out on me?"
SAM: "Sorry."

By now, the shapeshifter has succeeded in creeping Rebecca out completely and, when she tries to call the police, he makes his move, capturing her and tying her up…

And now we find ourselves right back at the beginning again. This was where the episode began: Rebecca bruised and bloodied, bound to a chair, Shapeshifter!Dean standing over her with a knife and the police S.W.A.T. team entering and hunting him through the house. This means the events thus far have taken place over the period of an entire week. Didn't seem like that much time was passing.

Despite being cornered by an entire S.W.A.T. team, the shapeshifter manages to escape and flees back into the sewers once more. Once down there, the creature shows signs of weakness for the first time, staggering around…

And we get to see Not!Dean take his shirt off…

*sigh*

Even if it isn't the real Dean, it is still very nice to see, albeit briefly. Swiftly followed by the very gross, and apparently very painful shedding-of-the-skin, which kinda spoils the pleasure of having all that bare flesh on display.

Elsewhere, later the same night, Sam and Dean stand watching a news report in a shop window – a news report all about Dean being wanted for attempted murder, complete with artist's impression of the wanted man. Dismay is written all over their faces in very large letters.

DEAN: "Man, that's not even a good picture!"
SAM: "It's good enough."

Dean's frustration and indignation at the situation he now finds himself in shines through loud and clear.

DEAN: "I wanna find that handsome devil and kick the holy crap out of him."
SAM: "We have no weapons. No silver bullets."
DEAN: "Sam, the guy's walkin' around with my face, okay, it's a little personal. I wanna find him."

At least they know the police got there in time to save Rebecca, which is small consolation for Dean compared to the idea of the shapeshifter in possession of his car…

DEAN: "The thought of him drivin' my car."
SAM: "All right, come on."
DEAN: "It's killin' me."
SAM: "Let it go."

As in Phantom Traveler, I love seeing Sam playing the voice of reason to an agitated Dean, 'cause it's just too amusing.

They head to Rebecca's on foot and, sure enough, the car is there. But so are the police. Since Sam isn't a multiple homicide suspect, he stalls the police while Dean makes good his escape. Sam also demonstrates here that Dean isn't the only one that can bark orders when he thinks he knows best.

SAM: "Look, they can't hold me. Just go, keep out of sight. Meet me at Rebecca's. Dean! Stay out of the sewers alone. I mean it!"

Exactly why the police take such an intense interest in Sam, I don't know. Surely just walking down the street isn't a crime, even if it is in the middle of the night and in the vicinity of a recent attempted murder. It's not like they actually catch him trying to get into the car – he never gets anywhere near it. They have no way of knowing it was his destination.

Anyway, as daylight comes, Dean returns to find the car now unguarded and is able to retrieve some weapons from the trunk. Since the shapeshifter has his keys, he presumably picked the lock. I'm guessing he hated having to do that, it being his own car and all.

DEAN: "I'm sorry, Sam. But you know me – I just can't wait."

Dean has a habit of talking to himself when he's alone. That could be another reason he needed Sam to rejoin him on the job – too much time spent alone, especially since he shies away from forming any kind of meaningful bond with just about anyone outside the family, would be seriously unhealthy. He needs someone around to talk to, to keep him sane!

So he heads back down to the sewers alone, rather than waiting to meet up with Sam and check on Rebecca first. Probably just as well, since down in the creature's lair he finds Rebecca herself, tied up and scared.

How the heck did the shapeshifter get hold of her when presumably she would have been taken to the hospital and on release should have been provided with a lot of police support as the victim of attempted murder just last night and her attacker still on the loose?

Back at Rebecca's house, Sam is sitting having a beer with…Rebecca. Except that it is now Shapeshifter!Rebecca. Things are getting very confusing now. What the heck time is it? A little early for Sam to be drinking beer, surely? Or has it been that long? If so, what on earth have both boys been up to all day? Why isn't Sam curious to know why Rebecca is so un-traumatised about having been tied up and tortured by someone she should still believe is his brother no matter what he tells her about shapeshifters? Why isn't he wondering where Dean has got to, since they were supposed to be meeting there? For all he knows, Dean could have run into the police and been arrested by now, hence his non-appearance. Shapeshifter!Rebecca is way too calm (and uninjured) to be convincing, and yet Sam seems completely taken in, thus leaving himself defenceless, whereupon she knocks him out with an empty beer bottle. That'll teach him to drop his guard while working a case like this.

The real Rebecca, down in the sewers with Dean, is appropriately traumatised by her experience, but far less afraid of Dean than she should be, seeing as the shapeshifter was wearing his face when it tortured her.

REBECCA [crying]: "I was walking home, and everything just went white. Someone hit me over the head, and I woke up here just in time to see that thing turn into me. I don't know, how is that even possible?"

I suppose seeing that happen would probably convince her that it wasn't really Dean himself that attacked her, but still, you'd expect there to be lingering trauma at the sight of his face. And again – why was she walking home alone, anyway? We've already seen that the police were patrolling doggedly outside her house all night – shouldn't she have been escorted right to the front door, if not assigned a sympathetic officer to sit with her until she felt more secure?

Dean unties her, and I'm happy to see that, even if he did choose to disregard it, he does remember what the arrangement was with Sam – and realises the danger Sam is now therefore in.

DEAN: "Come on. Can you walk? Okay, we've gotta hurry. Sam went to see you."

Back at Rebecca's house, a big pile of gloop indicates another skin shedding session has just taken place and, sure enough, the shapeshifter has turned back into Dean once more.

Presumably, therefore, it is able to change at will. But the shedding session we saw previously looked like something it couldn't control, something that just happened periodically. How much time it gets in each skin before needing to shed is unclear.

Of course, the reason for changing shape this time is so the programme makers could have a fight between Sam and Not!Dean, because that's just so much more entertaining to watch than a Sam and Rebecca fight would be. The shapeshifter even has Dean's necklace and jacket back on – it brought them with it? So it must have planned this, even though it had no way of knowing that Sam would be there. Or did it? How close to Dean does it have to be to delve into his mind? Does it need to be wearing his face to do so? Has it been monitoring the brothers all night? In which case shouldn't it know that Dean is on his way now…?

The plotting of this episode is just way too confusing to attempt to make sense of. Best to just accept it and not question too deeply.

SAM: "What are you gonna do to me?"
SHAPESHIFTER: "Oh, I'm not gonna do anything. Dean will, though."
SAM: "They'll never catch him."
SHAPESHIFTER: "Oh, doesn't matter. Murder in the first of his own brother? He'll be hunted the rest of his life."

That's grim. This is how the shapeshifter entertains itself: making people suffer doubly by not just being tortured and murdered, but by being tortured and murdered by their loved ones, and then sitting back and watching said loved ones take the blame while it moves onto the next target.

I love Sam's faith in his brother's ability to evade capture, though, even while he's staring right at the prospect of being killed horribly by Dean's doppelganger. First, though, the shapeshifter moves him around a fair bit, securely bound but without actually harming him in any way, and monologues at him for a while. Maybe the talking is part of the torture routine, before starting in with the knives – first it has to try to break its victim by playing the role of the hard-done-by loved one seeking revenge. Even though Sam knows full well what it is, it still periodically talks to him as 'Dean' instead of as itself, switching back and fore between the two personas almost randomly. Very schizophrenic, but then, wearing other peoples' faces and downloading their thoughts would be.

SHAPESHIFTER: "I must say, I will be sorry to lose this skin. Your brother's got a lot of good qualities. You should appreciate him more than you do."

It seems to be important to the shapeshifter that its victims should not only believe it is their loved one harming them, but that they should believe they brought it on themselves by treating that loved one badly in some way – projecting its own issues about being hated and un-appreciated onto the people it impersonates.

Can see why Dean would appeal to it so much, in that case, Dean's sense of identity and self-worth being so closely tied up with the family members who each, in turn, walked away, left him behind, and broke all contact with him. If Dean hadn't made the first move, would Sam have ever overcome his pride and hurt sufficiently to try to try and find out if his father and brother were even still alive?

Sam finally manages to break out of his bonds – and why exactly does the shapeshifter leave a knife sticking out of the pool table within easy reach of him, anyway? That's just asking for trouble. While they fight, the shapeshifter insists again and again that he really is Sam's brother, still doing its best to mess with Sam's mind, while Sam steadfastly refuses to fall for it.

SHAPESHIFTER: "Not bad, little brother."
SAM: "You're not him."
SHAPESHIFTER: "Even when we were kids, I always kicked your ass."

The shapeshifter gets the better of Sam relatively easily, and I think this may be the first time we see Sam getting strangled. It certainly isn't the last; Sam gets strangled an awful lot. Luckily for him, Dean shows up in the nick of time, silver-bullet loaded gun in hand, and shoots his doppelganger right through the heart, killing him dead.

Killing something that looks exactly like yourself must be well creepy.

While Rebecca rushes to see that Sam is all right, Dean is mesmerised by the creature wearing his face – this is the first time he's actually come face to face with it. Grim, he takes his necklace back (and, hopefully, his car keys, too, although we don't see that). That necklace is important to him, for reasons left un-stated – this episode is the only time we ever see him without it.

So, at least one of Sam's old college friends now knows the truth about what he's been up to since taking the year off.

REBECCA: "I can't believe it. I mean, I saw it with my own eyes. And, I mean, does everybody at school – nobody knows that you do this?"
SAM: "No."
REBECCA: "Did Jessica know?"
SAM: "No, she didn't."

Sam's response to the question is very subdued, and we remember that this is a sore point for him, in spite of the resolution about Jessica's death he achieved at the end of Bloody Mary.

I'm glad to hear Rebecca mentioning Jessica at last, since she is meant to be a close friend of Sam's and must therefore have also been a friend of Jessica, at some level at least, and hasn't seen Sam since immediately after Jessica's death. I know she's been caught up with her own family troubles, but you'd maybe have expected her to say something a little sooner – even if only a gentle question along the lines of 'how've you been doing?' that Sam brushed off and tried to keep things strictly business rather than be drawn on the subject. Even if they were keeping in touch by email, it's the kind of thing you instinctively ask when seeing someone in the flesh for the first time following a still recent bereavement.

REBECCA: "Must be lonely."
SAM: "Oh, no. No, it's not so bad. Anyway, what can I do? It's my family."

Given the opportunity to express regret at how things have turned out and the fact that he's been sucked back into this life, Sam instead opts for the stiff upper lip approach. Makes me wonder what he's told Rebecca about why he's dropped out of school and resumed this life – does she know the full story? I'm guessing probably not. She then tells him that everybody at school really misses him, and Sam looks wistful, admitting that he misses them, too.

He chose to leave, though, which is important to remember in those moments scattered through the series when he seems so resentful of this life – he made the decision to drop out of school so he could hunt Jessica's killer, and he made that decision himself. Hunting everything else along the way with Dean is passing the time until they find it, as well as honing his hunting skills, since he was away from the job for quite a long time. And he's pretty much on board with that most of the time.

DEAN: "So, what about your friend, Zack?"
SAM: "Cops are blamin' this Dean Winchester guy for Emily's murder. They found the murder weapon in the guy's lair, Zack's clothes stained with her blood. Now they're thinking maybe the surveillance tape was tampered with. Yeah, Becca says Zack will be released soon."

Well, that can't possibly be good for Dean, and I'm amazed they are both so blasé about it. Or – no, actually, I'd expect Dean to just brush it off because that's what he does. Easier to pretend you don't care than to actually acknowledge the real impact of something. I'm surprised Sam is so casual about it, though, using it as an opportunity to tease, rather than for concern about what this could actually mean for Dean, long term. Sam can be kind of blinkered, at times.

DEAN: "Sorry, man."
SAM: "About what?"
DEAN: "I really wish things could be different, you know? I wish you could just be…Joe College."

Aww. I love when Dean does that, all supportive of Sam and what Sam wants from his life and regretful for Sam's sake of how their lives have turned out. Especially since here it comes hard on the heels of Sam teasing him mercilessly about the not-very-funny subject of Dean being on police record as a dead serial killer, which can only isolate Dean even further from the kind of normal life he's never really had the opportunity to have. Dean is so much more aware of his brother's emotional needs than Sam is in return. Inevitable, I suppose, because of their relative positions in the family – the older sibling with a lifetime's habit of looking out for his kid brother, and the kid brother accustomed to being looked after and to not being responsible for anyone but himself.

SAM: "No, that's okay. You know, the truth is, even at Stanford, deep down, I never really fit in."
DEAN: "Well, that's 'cause you're a freak."
SAM: "Yeah, thanks."
DEAN: "Well, I'm a freak, too. I'm right there with ya, all the way."

So…Sam is now acknowledging that he found that normal life he craves so badly hard to adjust to, that he didn't really fit in with it? That's something of a turn up for the books. But, as later episodes will reveal, the acceptance of his family's less average way of life that he displays here doesn't mean he's giving up on that dream of one day having his normal life back again, even if he did find that he didn't really fit into it last time.

Sam can be complicated. Dean is very complicated. And that's why I love 'em!