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llywela
The retrospective reviews continue...
Case-establishing prologue scene is nice and short, just as I like 'em. A presumably average enough family, girl goes for a swim in the lake – and, for a varsity swimmer, her dive comes perilously close to qualifying as a belly flop – and whoosh! She's gone.
And we're onto the boys. Sitting in some random diner somewhere, their empty plates tell us that they've just had a meal that was an actual meal, and Dean is scanning the papers on the hunt for a new case. Sophie Carlton's disappearance in Lake Manitoc seems to fit the bill. Sam, however, sees this as a distraction – finding John so that they can hunt and kill the thing that killed Jessica is the only reason he's back on the road and, with the trail getting colder by the day, his frustration levels are running high. Dean, without that very fresh, raw grief as a principle driving force, is worried – about both John and Sam – but trying not to show it, and keeping Sam grounded seems like a pretty big part of his desire to find them something constructive to do.
Dean: "You know what? I’m sick of this attitude. You don’t think I wanna find Dad as much as you do?"
Sam: "Yeah, I know you do, it’s just—"
Dean: "I’m the one that’s been with him every single day for the past two years, while you’ve been off to college going to pep rallies. We will find dad, but until then, we’re gonna kill everything bad between here and there. Okay?"
Two years at college? Sam is 22 – shouldn't he have been at college for four years? Or did he go late? The timeline is a wee bit screwy…
This is a very short but very important scene. Although both boys seem calm enough on the surface – Dean more so than Sam, understandably enough, since Sam has that underlying fresh grief, still – there's a lot going on beneath and the words betray that. In the line I quoted above Dean's frustration and anxiety, about John's disappearance and a lot more besides, creeps through, just for a moment. For most of the scene this is Dean with his cool, calm and laid-back mask firmly in place, allowing a pretty waitress to distract him, although only a little – and check out that beautiful smile! – and focusing on Sam rather than his own fears over John's disappearance. And Sam, to his credit, takes what Dean is saying on board, pushes his deepening frustration aside, and gets into the potential case Dean has picked up on.
Dean: "I’m Agent Ford. This is Agent Hamill. We’re with the U.S. Wildlife Service."
*sniggers and giggles out loud*
The cover identities are frequently ludicrous. And yet, they get away with it time and again, for short periods, at least. Their lack of local knowledge about the rapidly draining lake soon sets alarm bells ringing with Sheriff Jake, though, which is not so good for them, but in terms of realism it's good to know that the lame cover stories are picked up on!
Worth mentioning the line by Sophie Carlton's brother Will, that she was "as safe out there as in her own bathtub." Nice foreshadowing there of danger still to come.
Dean flirts outrageously with Jake's daughter, Andrea, she of the traumatised young son Lucas. It's amusing because they both know it's just flirting, nothing more, nothing less – Dean flirts as easily as he breathes. It's fun for him, flattering for her and amuses Sam, so it's all good. And, once I've got over thinking of her as Fred from Angel, I really like Andrea just for the way she interacts with Dean.
Sam is scathing about Dean claiming to love children without actually knowing any, Dean makes no attempt to argue with this assessment, and I've no doubt that they don't really have that much to do with kids as a rule, given the life they seem to lead. But we see throughout the season that Dean is very good with children, and relates really well to them. Plus – all Sam's knowledge of his brother is out-of-date since they haven't been in touch in at least two years and Sam has no way of knowing what's been going on in Dean's life during that time. It seems a safe bet from the little things he says now and then that he hasn't asked, either. He's just assuming that while he was getting himself a new life at college, Dean was in some kind of time warp where nothing changed, and that's always a dangerous assumption to make about anyone or anything.
Anyway, research reveals that Andrea's husband drowned in the lake, and Lucas witnessed this, hence his trauma. He hasn't said a word since. Dean instantly empathises with the boy.
Dean: "No wonder that kid was so freaked out. Watching one of your parents die isn’t something you just get over."
No reaction shot from Sam, which is a shame.
So, off they go to the park, where Andrea is hanging around watching Lucas, who sits away from all the other children, little model soldiers set up all around him while he draws, and draws, and draws. Sam is left to talk to Andrea while Dean – not even a hint of flirting with Andrea this time – goes over to talk to young Lucas.
We hardly ever see the boys discussing who would be better speaking to who – it's an unspoken thing, automatic acknowledgement of who has the best chance of making a breakthrough with which interviewee. I like that.
"Chicks dig artists." I love Dean's interactions with Lucas. Even this early on, it's a whole new side to him that we haven't seen before or even guessed at. He talks to the boy gently but as an equal, rather than talking down to him, and, so anxious is he to connect to the boy – who is, after all, their sole eye witness, as well as being so clearly traumatised and in need of help – opens up in a way that we already know is extremely rare.
Dean: "You know, I’m thinking you can hear me; you just don’t want to talk. I don’t know exactly what happened to your dad, but I know it was something real bad. I think I know how you feel. When I was your age, I saw something…. [long pause: he doesn't – can't – go into detail] Anyway… Well maybe you don’t think anyone will listen to you, or uh…or believe you. I want you to know that I will. You don’t even have to say anything, you could draw me a picture about what you saw that day with your dad on the lake."
I don't know how old Lucas actually is, no more than maybe ten, which is actually a lot older than Dean was when Mary died. Not really important – it's still a shared experience. And I really love that when Dean shows Lucas the stick figures he's drawn of his family (naming Sam as his 'geek brother'!) he gets a little hitch in his voice pointing out the picture of his mom. "This is my family." Is. Present tense, with Mary included. And she's been dead over twenty years.
Lucas doesn't respond in any way, so Dean gives up and goes back over to Sam and Andrea, and Andrea talks some more about what happened and how Lucas has been affected.
Dean: "Kids are strong. You’d be surprised what they can deal with."
Reassurance for Andrea based on his own experience, one imagines.
And then Lucas comes over and hands Dean a picture he's drawn, although without looking at him, and you can see the amazement in Andrea's eyes that her withdrawn and traumatised little boy has actually connected with this guy, complete stranger as he is. She looks at Dean in a completely different way from that point on.
Elsewhere in town, Sophie Carlton's brother Will is struggling to cope alone with his distraught father – who seems completely lose in his grief to the point of barely even noticing that he still has one child left, who is also grieving. I really like that I'm able to feel so strongly for Will, despite being a very minor character appearing in all of three scenes. Nicely done. So, anyway, Will is busily being all domestic in the kitchen when something strange starts to happen to the sink and it begins to fill up with muddy water. Now – the sink was blatantly empty when this started to happen, and the plug was not in the hole. So why does Will plunge his hand into the water? What is that meant to achieve? It is a fatal error – he is pulled into the water by an unseen force and quickly drowns. In the kitchen sink. What a way to go!
Sam sounds so pissed off when he comes to the motel to tell Dean about it – this comes under the heading of a death on their watch. They came here to try to prevent any further deaths, and have failed, and still don't know what they're dealing with or how to stop it.
Sam and Dean try talking to Will and Sophie's dad, Bill Carlton, but he is way too lost in his own private world of grief to be of any help whatsoever.
Bill: "My children are gone. It’s…it’s worse than dying. Go away…please."
Then Dean notices something – the picture Lucas drew for him is of the Carlton house.
The boys rush over to Andrea's house to talk to Lucas again – or, rather, for Dean to talk to Lucas again. Andrea isn't so keen on the idea, but both boys give her that oh-so earnest and sincere please-believe-me puppy-eye thing that Sam is usually best at, and she caves.
Sam: "Andrea, we think more people might get hurt. We think something’s happening out there."
Andrea: "My husband, the others—They just drowned. That’s all."
Dean: "If that’s what you really believe then we’ll go. But if you think there’s even a possibility that something else could be going on here, please let me talk to your son."
This is the second episode in a row that they've had to tell the innocents involved something of what they do – the supernatural element of it. Again, this will continue. Secrets – even unbelievable ones – can't always be kept, and they leave behind them a trail of people who know a lot more than they'd probably like to about the supernatural.
Dean has another of those beautiful little talks with Lucas, this time with Sam and Andrea standing in the doorway listening. And we know that Dean is Mr No-Chick-Flick-Moments, but despite the audience he doesn't so much as hesitate here. If connecting to Lucas means baring his own soul in front of other people, Sam included, then so be it.
Dean: "You’re scared. It’s okay, I understand. See, when I was your age, I saw something real bad happen to my Mom, and I was scared, too. I didn’t feel like talking, just like you. But see, my Mom—I know she wanted me to be brave. I think about that every day. And I do my best to be brave."
And Sam is standing in the doorway listening, and, judging by the look on his face this has got to be the first time he's ever heard Dean talking about this. For Sam, as well as the audience, this is a whole new side to Dean that he hadn't seen before – or maybe just hadn't looked for before. Little brothers – especially rebellious teenage little brothers, as Sam would have been the last time they were around each other – aren't exactly renowned for putting a whole lot of thought into the psyche and motivations of their elder siblings. Families always take one another for granted.
From what we saw in the pilot, though, Dean wasn't actually in the room when Mary died. When John thrust baby Sam into his arms he was standing a ways down the corridor – he shouldn't have been able to see what happened to Mary from there. Maybe it's dramatic licence. Maybe the fire itself was enough for a four-year-old to have witnessed. Maybe he saw something inside the house when he was standing outside with Sam afterward. Or maybe, for all we know, he did go to the doorway and see what was happening inside the room but then retreated, scared, before John brought Sam out to him. Who knows?
Anyway, it works again – Lucas stops what he's doing and looks right at Dean, making eye contact for the first time, which earns Dean another of those amazed and impressed looks from Andrea. Lucas has avoided eye contact with anyone all episode so far, including his mother. The way to any mother's heart is through her children. Then Lucas hands Dean another drawing and the boys head off to track it down, presumably leaving Andrea to wonder what the heck is going on since they haven't really explained. While driving around searching for a house that looks like the one in the drawing, they talk.
Sam: "There are cases going through a traumatic experience could make people more sensitive to premonitions, psychic tendencies."
This, they guess, is how Lucas is tapping into whatever it is out there that's killing people, since he definitely seems to be drawing pictures connected to whoever is going to die next. It's an interesting theory, especially when viewed in terms of later arc developments in the season.
Dean: "Oh, college boy thinks he’s so smart!"
Perfect delivery. I love brotherly banter and bickering. Tee hee!
Sam, being Sam, tries to bring the conversation around to Dean's talk with Lucas, and not terribly subtly, either. He just comes out with it.
Sam: "You know, um…what you said about Mom…you never told me that before."
Dean: "It’s no big deal…Oh God, we’re not gonna have to hug or anything, are we?"
So Dean can open up to a little boy that he empathises with for the sake of the case, but he won't get into the deep and meaningfuls with Sam. That's too close to home, especially since Sam is still freshly grieving and Dean is very much focused on being the strong big brother holding everything together for him. Easier for both of them to just focus on the case at hand.
Lucas's latest drawing takes them to the home of a little boy who disappeared 35 years earlier. Young Peter Sweeney, then aged twelve, had been a friend of Bill Carlton's…
Mrs Sweeney: "I never had any idea what happened. He just disappeared. Losing him… You know, it’s…it’s worse than dying."
The exact same words that Bill Carlton used earlier and we cut to Bill sitting staring out over the lake, talking to himself – or maybe to something else that's out there. "You’ve taken everything, everyone. I’ve got nothing left. I didn’t understand. I didn’t believe. Now I think I do. I think I finally know what you want."
I love the conversation between the boys as they rush back to Bill's place, just talking out loud as they think, bouncing ideas off each other and reaching the same conclusions at the same time. But they get there too late to save Bill Carlton as he takes a boat out into the middle of the lake and gets flipped into the water in highly dramatic style, and vanishes without trace.
Sam and Dean are eyewitnesses to this, which is not a good thing when you are conducting covert investigations under false identities. Escorted back to Jake's station to continue answering questions there, they find Andrea very concerned about a very distressed Lucas, who is just sitting there rocking. When Jake suggests they go on home, Lucas practically hurls himself at Dean, clings to his arm, pulling at him and whimpering, terrified – locked in his world of silence, he is unable to communicate the reason for his fear. And as Andrea pulls the very reluctant Lucas away, Dean's concern for the boy is written all over his face – he can see that Lucas was trying desperately to communicate something to him, was asking him for help. He just doesn't know what it is the boy was afraid of and wanted him to do.
Jake has twigged the false identities now, which couldn't have been hard, and tells the boys to get out of town. So, not given a huge amount of choice in the matter, they head out. The case appears to be over – they are assuming that Bill was responsible for Peter Sweeney's death and that since Bill and his entire family have been wiped out, Peter's vengeful spirit will be satisfied with that. But Dean can't stop fretting about young Lucas.
Dean: "All right, so what if we take off and this thing isn’t done. You know, what if we missed something? What if more people get hurt?"
Sam: "But why would you think that?"
Dean: "Because Lucas was really scared."
Sam: "That’s what this is about?"
Dean: "I just don’t want to leave town till I know the kid’s okay."
Sam: "Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?"
Although there's an element of kid brother teasing just to see Dean squirm going on there, it seems one of the main themes of this episode is to emphasise just how little Sam really knows or understands his brother, beneath the surface. There's a lot to Dean that Sam has never seen or looked for, or that he simply takes for granted without even realising it. Like the fact that Dean cares deeply about the people he's trying to protect in every case he works – such as young Lucas.
Although Dean talks a lot about hunting and killing evil things, and comes across as very gung-ho about it, when you take a step back and actually look at him, you see that it's actually a lot more about protecting the innocent than it is killing the evil. It's all about the people. I don't think Sam really realises that, which very much stems from and suits his position as the youngest member of the family, as I said earlier. He's operating under pre-conceived notions of his father and brother that are out-of-date and probably not all that accurate anyway – how many rebellious teenagers really stop to consider what's going on beneath the surface of the people they are rebelling against? And Sam has been away a long time now – he really doesn't know his brother well at all.
Back in town, Andrea has put a still distressed Lucas to bed and is taking a bath. Now first, this must have been a tremendously difficult scene to film, so kudos to Amy Acker. Second – I take great issue with the scene, because it makes me cross every time. Andrea fills the bath almost to the brim and then just gets in – without turning the water off. I know this is important for plot reasons, b-b-but…does she enjoy flooding her house?
The bath water quickly turns to muddy lake water, and an invisible force drags Andrea under, and kudos again to Amy Acker for what must have been an appallingly uncomfortable scene to film. Young Lucas hammers on the bathroom door, unable to get in to even try to help her…
And then Sam and Dean arrive, just in the nick of time – I'm guessing Lucas heard the car, which is how he manages to open the door before they can knock, unless he really has become that psychic!
Tiny note of continuity and established routine – Dean kicks the door in, and Sam rushes inside. This happens more than once. Which means here that Sam gets to haul the naked woman out of the bathtub while Dean hangs onto the traumatised child.
It turns out that Sheriff Jake was also connected to Bill Carlton and Peter Sweeney, which means that – as the attack on Andrea proves – the Sheriff's family are in grave danger of being wiped out in the same way that the Carlton's were.
Lucas, with his odd psychic connection to Peter's spirit – I guess he must be close to the age that Peter was when he died, which possibly helps with that – leads them out to a quiet spot in the woods, close to Jake's house. There the boys dig up Peter's red bicycle, which Lucas has been drawing, over and over.
How creepy is it that Jake has lived that close to where it was buried for so many years, raised his family there, all the while knowing and keeping his dark secret.
Jake's arrival – fast becoming unhinged at the discovery of his deep dark secret, and holding the boys at gunpoint, much to Andrea's horror – reveals the truth. Jake and Bill had bullied Peter, and that bullying got out of hand one day and Peter drowned. They let his body sink into the lake, which means there are no bones for Dean to salt 'n' burn.
The standoff comes to an abrupt end when Andrea notices Lucas has wandered to the water's edge, lured by the ghostly voice of Peter's spirit. Lucas leans over and reaches out, and a ghostly hand pops out of the water, grabs him and pulls him in. Andrea starts screaming for her son, Dean and Sam dive in after him, and Jake is brought to a complete standstill when he sees Peter's head briefly surface from the water to look at him – he finally believes.
Jake wades out into the water and begs Peter's spirit to take him instead of his grandson, and it is his turn to be pulled under. Meanwhile, the boys have continued to search for Lucas, apparently to no avail, and then finally Dean surfaces holding the boy – but is it too late? Lucas seems completely limp, and Andrea's howl of despair and the anguish on Dean's face seem to indicate that it might be…
Nice little mislead. Especially followed up by Sam telling Dean that they can't save everyone. Turns out, it's just Jake he's bummed about not managing to save, since young Lucas is fine and even talking again now. And Lucas has helped Andrea make them food for on the road, which is just adorable and thoughtful, and everything, 'cause, y'know – it saves them spending someone else's money at a service station someplace and risking getting sprung for ID fraud again so soon!
Sam does the farewell talk with Andrea, since after that initial bout of flirting when they first met, Dean has been more concerned about fixing young Lucas, relating so strongly to the boy.
Dean: "All right, if you’re gonna be talking now, this is a very important phrase, so I want you to repeat it one more time."
Lucas: "Zeppelin rules!"
Dean: "That’s right. Up high. [Holds his hand up for a high five] You take care of your mom, okay?"
Dean is just so good with kids. I hope Sam has noticed this, since he was so scathing earlier. And then Dean gets his thank you kiss from Andrea, which is only right and proper since it was him that saved Lucas, and also has the added side benefit of embarrassing him, which is always fun to watch, teehee.
And the boys hit the road again!
