"I have these nightmares…and sometimes they come true."

[llywela]

Wow. That's an intense glimpse into family Winchester, no?

This trip back home for the lads is well timed. It couldn't have been any earlier because we needed the previous eight episodes to get to know them and their issues, the impact their past has had on them. But a deeper exploration of that past is something that needed to happen, and this is a good time for it. Also, there've been plenty of hints dropped in the past that there's something different about Sam, so it's good to see that being faced head on and admitted out loud.

The teaser takes us right back where it all began: Lawrence, Kansas, where a young mother sits amid an array of packing crates, unpacking. Her teariness over the wedding photo she unearths speaks volumes, without a single word of dialogue on the subject needed, and then a sleepless young daughter interrupts the nostalgia-fest to express her fear over the something in her closet. Mom Jenny puts aside her disbelief to humour young Sarie, making a big show of exploring said closet and barricading the closet door with a chair, before returning to her unpacking. The scamper of tiny rat-like feet lures her down to the cellar, where she finds... nothing more sinister than an old suitcase, containing old photos – of the Winchester family. Yep, this is the old Winchester family home, rebuilt and lived in once more. We really are back where it all began.

Meanwhile, upstairs in Sarie's room, the chair against the closet door is moving, all by itself. While little Sarie cowers in terror, the closet door flies open and a fiery figure begins to stalk toward her. Sarie screams...

...And an outside shot of the house shows Jenny inside, banging on the window, silently screaming...

And then Sam wakes up, confused.

Next morning, Dean is chuntering on about possible new gigs while Sam sits sketching the tree he saw in his dream, over and over, ignoring him completely.

DEAN: "Hey! Am I boring you with this hunting evil stuff?"
SAM: "No, I'm listening. Keep going."

He really isn't listening, though, studying his sketches as if they were drawn by someone other than him, and then suddenly making the connection. At the front of John's journal a bunch of photos and papers have been stuffed in behind the cover. Sam pulls out one of the photos – a copy of one that Jenny found in her basement in the teaser – and recognises the tree in the photo as the one he's been drawing all morning, the tree he saw in his dream.

SAM: "Dean, I know where we have to go next."
DEAN: "Where?"
SAM: "Back home. Back to Kansas."

As a rather startled Dean points out, that's kind of random, so Sam has to try to explain, which isn't easy since he doesn't really understand it himself.

SAM: "Okay, look, this is gonna sound crazy, but…the people who live in our old house, I think they might be in danger."
DEAN: "Why would you think that?"

Sam is at his edgiest now, fidgety and earnest and intense, and he doesn't want to explain. He just wants Dean to go along with him. But Dean is now completely confused about where all this is coming from, so out of the blue, and wants an explanation.

SAM: "I can't really explain it, is all."
DEAN: "Well, tough. I'm not going anywhere until you do."
SAM: "I have these nightmares..."
DEAN: "I've noticed."
SAM: "And sometimes they come true."

Whereupon Dean does a classic double-take. "Come again?"

The audience, of course, have known since Bloody Mary that Sam's nightmares about Jessica's death started before she died, that they were premonitions. But Sam has kept that secret from his brother all season so far, so it comes as a total bolt from the blue for Dean. Sam looks almost afraid as he confesses it, he's kept the secret for so long, not knowing what it meant, not knowing how his brother would react.

Dean's immediate reaction revolves around confusion and disbelief.

DEAN: "Sam, people have weird dreams, man. I'm sure it's just a coincidence."
SAM: "No, I dreamt about the blood dripping around the ceiling, the fire, everything, and I didn't do anything about it because I didn't believe it. And now I'm dreaming about that tree, about our house, and about some woman inside screaming for help…I mean, that's where it all started, man, this has to mean something, right?"
DEAN: "I don't know..."

Sam is getting more worked up by the minute, and this is where Dean would usually snap into reassurance mode, but he's just too thrown to manage it at the moment, caught completely off-guard and struggling to catch up.

DEAN: "All right, just slow down, would you? I mean first you tell me that you've got the Shining, and then you tell me that I've got to go back home. Especially when..."
SAM: "When what?"
DEAN: "When I swore to myself that I would never go back there."
[He turns away from Sam, gazing at the photo of their happy family way back before tragedy struck]

Dean was four years old when that house burned down, his mother died, and the world as he knew it crumbled into tiny pieces, the end of the normal, happy childhood he'd had up to that point. What we don't know is how much longer the family stayed in Lawrence before John set out on his demon-hunting vengeance-quest.

Sam has no memories of their childhood home, or of their mother's death, that's already been established. But Dean does, and the look on his face and the little quaver in his voice just kills me, and by the look on Sam's face it hadn't occurred to him how this might affect his brother, so caught up was he in the sense of urgency left by his dream. But he can't let go of it now. The last time he had a dream like this he ignored it, and Jessica died, and the memory hurts way too much for him to ignore such a powerful dream this time around. No matter how hard going back to Lawrence might be, for either of them.

SAM: "Look, Dean, we have to check this out. Just to make sure."
DEAN [reluctant but resigned]: "I know we do."

And now they've agreed on that, I find myself wondering about those other potential cases Dean was looking at – seems to me that for every possible lead they follow up on, there must be a lot more that go uninvestigated, that they just don't have the opportunity to look into, having to prioritise based on very little information. And there must also, surely, be a lot of possible leads they do follow up on that turn out to be red herrings.

So anyway, off they go. In the time it takes to change scene they arrive in Lawrence and pull up outside what was once their family home, which Sam has no memory of, but Dean does, and I wonder what's going through Dean's head now he's confronted by it once more: a physical representation of all that they lost that night.

SAM: "You gonna be all right, man?"
DEAN: "Let me get back to you on that."

I like seeing Sam recognise that he's asked his brother to revisit the scene of his greatest childhood trauma and that it's going to be hard for him, and being concerned about that. I also like Dean acknowledging, albeit not in so many words, that it isn't easy, rather than just brushing the question off as he might normally. Because this is different.

The first thing they do is go right up to the house and knock on the door, and Sam's eyes go wide when Jenny answers it, the woman from his dream, confirming absolutely that it wasn't just a dream. So he interrupts Dean before his brother can toss out one of their usual excuses to gain entry, and offers Jenny a version of the truth.

SAM: "I'm Sam Winchester, and this is my brother Dean. Um, we used to live here. You know, we were just driving by and we were wondering if we could come see the old place."

Jenny lets them in, and Sam gazes around the place in wide-eyed fascination, while Dean eyes it with rather more reticence, warily comparing the here-and-now to the home of his earliest memories. Jenny introduces the boys to her two children – Sarie, who is about ten, and toddler Richie.

JENNY: "Well uh, all due respect to your childhood home, I mean I'm sure you have lots of happy memories here, but this place has it's issues, heh."

That line about lots of happy memories strikes something of a raw nerve.

JENNY: "It's just getting old, like the wiring, you know, we've got flickering lights almost hourly."
DEAN: "Well, that's too bad. What else?"
JENNY: "Umm, sink's backed up, there's rats in the basement... I'm sorry, I don't mean to complain."
DEAN: "No...have you seen the rats, or have you just heard scratching?"
JENNY: "It's just the scratching, actually."

All classic signs of a haunted house, it seems, not that they tell Jenny that. And then Sarie pipes up about the thing in her closet. When Sam was her age and complained about a thing in his closet, John gave him a .45, we remember.... Rather than pass this advice onto Jenny, however, he simply backs her up as she reassures Sarie that of course there is nothing in her closet.

JENNY: "She had a nightmare the other night."
SARIE: "I wasn't dreaming. It came into my bedroom, and it was on fire."

Well, and that's enough to freak the boys out completely. As they walk back to the car, Sam is practically melting down, yelling at Dean like he expects him to have all the answers, but Dean is also severely rattled and has no idea how to handle this.

DEAN: "Yeah, well, I'm just freaked out that your weirdo visions are coming true."

Said in the heat of the moment, and worth mentioning because this is the only time in the course of the entire season that Dean admits he finds Sam's visions unsettling.

Jenny is definitely the woman from Sam's dream, but before they can think about what that means, there is the small matter of there definitely being something in the house – it could be the thing that killed Mary and Jessica, or it could be something else. They don't know yet. Sam is in full red alert mode, losing all ability to think straight. Dean manages to remain slightly more level-headed, if only because Sam needs him to.

DEAN: "We just gotta chill out, that's all. You know, if this was any other kind of job what would we do?"
SAM: [takes a deep breath] "We'd try to figure out what we were dealing with, we'd dig into the history of the house..."
DEAN: "Exactly, except this time we already know what happened."
SAM: "Right, but how much do we know? I mean, how much do you actually remember?"

Now there's a question. The events of that night have shaped their entire lives, but are also something that they never talk about. Ever.

DEAN: "Not much. I remember the fire, the heat…"

He doesn't look at Sam while he says it, and there's a very long pause before he manages to finish. Very impressed by Jensen's ability to convey so much with such subtle shifts in tone and expression – you can practically see the memory of the flames in his eyes.

DEAN: "Then I carried you out the front door."
SAM [surprised]: "You did?"
DEAN: "Yeah, well, you never knew that?"
SAM: "No."

Guess they really have never talked about that night, if Sam didn't know that particular detail, which is interesting, given how well known the rest of the story is to him.

DEAN: "And, um. Well, you know Dad's story as well as I do. Mom was...was on the ceiling. Whatever put her there was long gone by the time Dad found her."
SAM: "And he never had a theory about what did it?"
DEAN: "If he did he kept it to himself. God knows we've asked him enough times."

And that's another rather telling detail there, that they asked John repeatedly what he thought it was but he never had an answer for them – or, at least, never had any kind of answer he was willing to share. However, I feel compelled to point out that Mary's body bursting into flames seems to me to indicate that whatever killed her wasn't quite as long gone when John found her as he seems to believe – she didn't combust like that by herself. The fire was caused by the thing that killed her, and it had to have still been in the vicinity to do that, even if John couldn't see it.

So, in order to figure out what's going on now, they have to investigate the events surrounding their mother's death and try to work out if it's the same thing or not.

SAM: "Hey, does this feel like just another job to you?"

No, they can pretend as much as they like – this really isn't just another job. Dean doesn't answer the question, instead making an excuse to get away and heading behind the gas station to pull out his phone and make a call.

ANSWERPHONE: "This is John Winchester. I can't be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son Dean. 866-907-32-35. He can help."
DEAN: "Dad. I know I've left you messages before. I don't even know if you get them. But…I'm with Sam, and we're in Lawrence, and there's something in our old house. I don't know if it's the thing that killed Mom or not, but I don't know what to do. So, whatever you're doing, if you could get here. Please. I need your help, Dad."

He's practically in tears, and we've seen all season how much it takes to crack that tough façade he keeps so firmly in place, and the entire viewing audience – the female half, anyway – now wants nothing more than to reach into their TVs, put their arms around him, and give him a big hug and make it all better. Dean works so hard at always knowing what to do, always being able to cope with anything, but here and now this is threatening to overwhelm him, and he's got Sam relying on him to hold things together.

I love Dean more than ever in this episode. He's such a lad, a real bloke, uncomfortable with feelings and emotions, so seeing him so deeply affected and struggling with painful emotions has that much more impact. It's all in the expression, and the eyes, and the catch in his voice leaving that desperate message for his dad, asking for help.

Cut to – Jenny, talking to the plumber she's called in to fix her dodgy sink. This is a gruesome scene. The moment the guy sticks his hand down the sink, you just know what's coming next – and the toy that comes so unexpectedly to life behind him, yipping merrily, only heightens the creep factor. The sink eats the guy's hand, and gore abounds.

Meanwhile, Dean and Sam are questioning the owner of a garage nearby.

DEAN: "You and John Winchester, you, uh, used to own this garage together?"
OWNER: "Yeah, we used to, a long time ago. Matter of fact, it must be 20 years since John disappeared. So why are the cops interested all of a sudden?"
DEAN: "Well, we're reopening some of our unsolved cases, and the Winchester disappearance is one of them."

Well, that's interesting – sounds like John didn't stop to tell anyone he was leaving, taking the boys and moving away. He just did some kind of moonlight flit without bothering to tie up any of his loose ends. So the disappearing act he pulled at the start of the series really wasn't unprecedented, then. Makes you wonder how the house has been sold on in that case, unless he actually did sell that before pulling the vanishing act. It doesn't sound like he paid his working partner the same courtesy, instead simply abandoning him and their joint business completely, without a word of genuine explanation, or even fabricated explanation.

OWNER: "Well, he was a stubborn bastard, I remember that. And, uh, whatever the game, he hated to lose, you know, it was that old marine thing. But, uh, boy, he sure loved Mary. And he doted on those kids."

The boys have talked about John's 'ex-marine crap' in the past – seems he really was a marine prior to settling down with wife and family. Love Sam's little snort when the man calls John stubborn – a character trait his sons know only too well!

John's old partner talks about John's immediate reaction to the fire: in shock at first, followed by a lot of crazy talk about something having caused it, something that killed Mary – something that clearly no one else believed.

OWNER: "I begged him to get some help, but, uh..."
DEAN: "But what?"
OWNER: "Well, he just got worse and worse."
DEAN: "How?"
OWNER: "Ah, he started reading these strange old books, he started going to see this palmreader in town."

So, the boys' next move is to try to find this palmreader, and for all that this case has rattled them so badly, for all that it doesn't feel like just another job, and for all that Dean confessed in his phone message to John that he didn't know what to do, they seem to be handling it pretty well so far by working methodically through their usual procedures.

Of course, it's the thought of what they might find at the end of their usual investigative procedues that's got them so shaken. Getting there is a familiar enough process. Sam flips through a phone book to find local psychics and palmreaders, and a one of the names he reads jumps out at Dean.

DEAN: "Wait, wait...Missouri Mosley?"
SAM: "What?"
DEAN: "That's a psychic?"
SAM: "Yeah, yeah I guess so."
DEAN: "Dad's journal. [He pulls it out] Come here, look at this. First page, first sentence, read that."
SAM: "'I went to Missouri, and I learned the truth.'"
DEAN: "I always thought he meant the state."

Next stop, a visit to Missouri Mosely. The boys sit fretting in her hallway until she finishes up with a client and has time for them. Apparently a genuine psychic, she keeps them both well and truly off-balance right from the start.

MISSOURI: "Well, let me look at'cha. Woo, you boys grew up handsome. [She laughs, pointing at Dean] And you were one goofy looking kid, too. [Sam smirks at Dean, amused] Sam...[she takes his hand] Oh honey, I'm sorry about your girlfriend. And your father... [Dean cocks his head, shocked] He's missing?"
SAM: "How'd you know all that?"
MISSOURI: "Well, you were just thinking it, just now."

Really? Those particular details were at the forefront of Sam's mind at that particular moment? You wouldn't think so – surely there'd be more immediate matters taking precedence just at present. Or maybe she was digging a little deeper than she lets on.

All gentleness and sympathy with Sam, Missouri takes a much harder line with Dean, scolding fiercely practically from the moment he opens his mouth.

MISSOURI: "Boy, you see me sowing some boney tramp in half, you think I'm a magician? [Sam smirks, Dean's taken aback] I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies in a room, but I can't just pull facts out of thin air. Sit! Please."
[They all sit, and Missouri glares at Dean again]
MISSOURI: "Boy, you put your foot on my coffee table, I'm gonna whack you with a spoon!"
[Sam laughs]
DEAN: "I didn't do anything!"
MISSOURI: "Well, you were thinking about it."

Dean is discomfitted; Sam enjoys watching his brother getting a scolding. And then they get down to business.

SAM: "Okay, so. Our dad. When did you first meet him?"
MISSOURI: "He came for a reading, a few days after the fire. I just told him what was really out there in the dark. I guess you could say, I drew back the curtains for him."

So much for giving people good news, rather than the truth. Guess she must vary that policy depending on the needs of the specific customer.

DEAN: "What about the fire? Do you know about what killed our mom?"
MISSOURI: "A little. Your daddy took me to your house. He was hoping I could sense the echoes, the fingerprints of this thing."
SAM: "And could you?"
MISSOURI: "I don't…" [She shakes her head]
SAM: "What was it?
MISSOURI: "I don't know…ooh, but it was evil."

Back at the house, Jenny is on the phone trying to explain that it really wasn't her fault the plumber's hand got eaten by her sink, and you've just got to feel for her. Things clearly aren't going well for her even without anything supernatural in her house adding to her burdens.

At Missouri's, all three are at a loss to explain what is going on and why.

MISSOURI: "I haven't been back inside, but I've been keeping an eye on the place and it's been quiet. No sudden deaths, no freak accidents. Why is it acting up now?"
SAM: "I don't know, but Dad going missing and Jessica dying, and now this house...it all happening at once, it all feels like something starting."
DEAN [rolls his eyes]: "That's a comforting thought."

Lured out of the kitchen by noise upstairs, Jenny leaves toddler Richie safely secured in his playpen while she goes to investigate. Whereupon the hinges of the playpen come unhinged, the sides of the pen fall down, and young Richie finds himself free – and tempted by the allure of the juice waiting for him inside the fridge, which swings open so invitingly…

And because toddlers really have no common sense, or sense of self-preservation whatsoever, he climbs inside the fridge to drink the juice instead of pulling it out, and the fridge door slams shut behind him, the child safety lock snapping back in place and locking him inside. Whatever is in this house plays dirty.

Jenny comes back down to find her little boy completely vanished, and panics, naturally enough. But as luck would have it Richie has managed to tip over a milk carton in the fridge, and the spilled milk alerts her to his unexpected location in time to prevent the little nipper getting too cold. Jenny is badly shaken, not having the faintest idea what's going on beyond that she has the worst luck ever.

Dean and Sam choose just that moment to knock on her front door again, with Missouri in tow. Not their best timed entrance ever. Flustered and upset, Jenny isn't keen to let any more strangers take a guided tour of her home, and Dean has barely got the first sentence of his attempt to persuade her out of his mouth before Missouri smacks him across the back of the head and takes over.

MISSOURI: "Give a poor girl a break, can't you see she's upset? [to Jenny] Forgive this boy, he means well, he's just not the sharpest tool in the shed."

This is where I stick my tongue out at Missouri for being so persistently mean to Dean. I can kinda see what she's doing, though, and continues to do all the way through the episode. She fusses over Sam and gives Dean a hard time, because that's what each of them responds best to. When Sam is distressed, he needs reassurance to calm him down and keep him focused. When Dean is distressed, fussing over him doesn't help at all, it only pushes him closer to breaking point, and he can't afford that. He needs to hold together. Missouri is providing him with a distraction, something to react against.

Or, then again, maybe the writers just thought it would be comic relief.

MISSOURI: "Hear me out."
JENNY: "About what?"
MISSOURI: "About this house."
JENNY: "What are you talking about?"
MISSOURI: "I think you know what I'm talking about. You think there's something in this house, something that wants to hurt your family. Am I mistaken?"
JENNY: "Who are you?"
MISSOURI: "We're people who can help, who can stop this thing. But you're going to have to trust us, just a little."

Missouri seems to be as good as Sam at the convincing sincerity thing. That psychic mojo of hers has got to help with choosing the right moments for full disclosure.

Jenny apparently decides to trust them enough to let them wander around her house on their own, and they head straight to what is now Sarie's room, but was once Sam's nursery, where it all started. Missouri is scathing about Dean's EMF, but hey – not everyone can be psychic, and those that aren't have to have their own ways of locating evil spirits.

MISSOURI: "I don't know if you boys should be disappointed or relieved, but this ain't the thing that took your mom."

There is definitely something there, though – more than one something, in fact.

MISSOURI: "There's more than one spirit in this place."
DEAN: "What are they doing here?"
MISSOURI: "They're here because of what happened to your family. You see, all those years ago, real evil came to you. It walked this house. That kind of evil leaves wounds. And sometimes wounds get infected."
SAM: "I don't understand."
MISSOURI: "This place is a magnet for paranormal energy. It's attracted a poltergeist. A nasty one. And it won't rest until Jenny and her babies are dead."

Now that that's been established, Dean's back in determined mode – being here, in this house, with all those memories, is hard. But having a specific evil to fight and innocent lives to save provides a very clear focus of the kind he responds to best.

DEAN: "Well, one thing's for damn sure: nobody's dying in this house, ever again. So whatever is here, how do we stop it?"

Back at Missouri's, Sam stands around watching while Dean makes up little sachets of a whole variety of ingredients that Missouri has set out for him. Why Dean alone is working on this while everyone else just stands there doing nothing, I don't know. But then, Dean always is more about the practical hands-on side of the ghost hunting, with Sam's preference leaning more toward the bookwork.

MISSOURI: "We're gonna put them inside the walls. In the north, south, east, west corners, on each floor of the house."
DEAN: "We'll be punching holes in the drywall. Jenny's gonna love that."
MISSOURI [amused]: "She'll live."
SAM: "And this will destroy the spirits?"
MISSOURI: "It should. It should purify the house completely. We'll each take a floor, but we work fast. Once the spirits realize what we're up to, things are going to get bad."

While she's speaking, Dean tastes some of the ingredients he's working with, pulls a face, and spits it out. Dean and his stomach – I bet he was one of those kids that had to put absolutely everything he came across in his mouth just on the off-chance it was edible.

Missouri has got Jenny so convinced that she's willing to take her kids out for the evening and leave these complete strangers alone in her house...she really must be spooked by everything that's going on.

Left alone in the house, the three of them each take a floor to install their magic pouches, and the flaw in this plan is instantly clear: four corners, three floors – that's a lot of corners for the three of them to cover. We only actually see them trying to get one pouch installed each, though, for all that Missouri talked about the four corners of the house.

They get to it. The poltergeist is not happy about this, and launches a three-pronged stealth attack. Missouri gets a chest slammed into her, pinning her to the wall. Sam gets throttled by a cable, because Sam always gets strangled wherever strangling is an option. Dean is the only one that manages to take effective evasive action, which is just as well really, since he has an entire drawerful of kitchen knives hurled at him, which could have been nasty if he hadn't managed to dive for cover just in time.

While being throttled, Sam picks up his little magic pouch and waves it futilely at the wall, for what possible purpose I can't imagine since he hasn't even made the hole to put it in yet. Waving it at the wall isn't going to help anyone, least of all him.

Luckily for Sam, Dean has already got his pouch in place and comes racing to the rescue. Unable to physically remove the cable from Sam's throat, he opts instead for kicking a hole in Jenny's wall and shoving the pounch into it as quickly as possible. There is an immediate explosion of light (although it only seems to emanate from this one room) so I'm guessing this was the final pouch to be installed, fortunately for Sam's oxygen starved brain. With the spirit apparently expelled from the house, Dean hastily unwinds the cord from Sam's throat, and then, while Sam chokes and gasps for breath, sits holding him upright in as close to a hug as the brothers get all season.

Later, Missouri, Dean and Sam stand in the kitchen surveying the damage, which is considerable. That poltergeist put up one heck of a fight.

SAM: "You sure this is over?"
MISSOURI: "I'm sure. Why? Why do you ask?"
SAM: "Ah never mind, it's nothing I guess."

Missouri is sure, but Sam doesn't seem certain – but he's not sufficiently trusting of his own intuition to press the matter. All this psychic premonition stuff is very new to him, and he's been fretting about what it might mean since Jessica's death. Missouri might be comfortable with her abilities, but Sam really isn't. And then Jenny and the kids come home to find their house looking like a bomb has hit it.

Let us take a moment to examine this from Jenny's point of view. She's been having a run of bad luck that sounds like it was going on long before she moved to this house where, admittedly, things have been getting worse. Then these complete strangers turn up and tell her the house is haunted, persuade her to go out for the night leaving them alone in her house, and she comes home to find the house has been torn to bits.

How trusting of her not to freak out at them completely.

SAM: "Hi, sorry, we'll pay for all of this."
MISSOURI: "Don't you worry, Dean's going to clean up this mess. [Dean frowns] Well, what are you waiting for, boy, get the mop! And don't cuss at me!" [He looks back at her, taken aback once more]

Bah. Time to lay off Dean. He's done good work tonight.

Note that for all that Missouri has been gentle with Sam but on Dean's back ever since they met, it is Dean who helps her down the steps when they finally leave. Because, underneath that brash attitude and womanising habit, he's a gentleman at heart.

Later, Jenny and her family settle in for the night, only for the strange noises to start up again, worse than ever. At this point, if I was Jenny, I'd start to wonder what on earth I'd let those strangers rip my house apart for, since clearly nothing has changed and whatever they did hasn't worked.

Luckily for Jenny and her kids, however, Dean and Sam are parked up outside her house still, playing stalker.

DEAN: "All right, so tell me again, what are we still doing here?"
SAM: "I don't know, I, I just, I still have a bad feeling."

That would be the same bad feeling he had when he questioned Missouri earlier, but didn't trust enough to explain to her. Probably just as well that he does trust it enough to keep himself and Dean up half the night watching the house that should in theory be totally de-spooked now, because it means they are there to see Jenny desperately pounding on her window – just like in Sam's dream the other night. For all their efforts, they still haven't prevented the dream from coming true.

So, they go dashing back into the house, and…they open the door to gain entry. Jenny didn't lock the door when she went to bed? Huh.

Jenny is trapped in her room and Sarie sitting up in bed staring in terror at the fire monster advancing from out of her closet when the boys come racing to the rescue. Dean kicks Jenny's bedroom door down to get her out, and I never tire of watching him do that, while Sam fetches the kids. Dean and Jenny make it outside first, and then when Sam reaches the bottom of the stairs he just...stops, and puts the kids down.

SAM: "All right, Sarie, take your brother outside as fast as you can and don't look back."

Heh. Nice mirroring of John's exact words to Little!Dean in the pilot which, presumably, Sam has no way of knowing, since he didn't even know until earlier this case that it was Dean who carried him out of the house that night. He's no sooner got the words out of his mouth than something grabs him and hauls him away, leaving Sarie to run screaming outside with her brother.

Dean, of course, instantly rushes into rescue mode, because there's nothing quite like Sam-in-Peril to get Dean's adrenaline pumping. Hurriedly grabbing weapons, he axes the front door to death, since it resists all attempts to break it down. Jenny is going to have one hell of a repair bill after all this, and there now seems to be a whole crowd of neighbours gathered around watching the show, just to add to the chaos and future complications along the lines of how on earth she is going to explain any of it.

Inside, Sam is being hurled around all over the kitchen, which looks painful, and ends up pinned to the wall with the closet fire monster walking toward him, just as Dean finally gains entrance and comes hurtling in, rock-salt loaded shotgun in hand. Sam yells at him not to shoot.

DEAN: "What? Why?"
SAM: "Because I know who it is. I can see her now."

Whereupon the fiery figure extinguishes its flames with a poof and becomes the ghost of Mary Winchester.

I'm guessing it wasn't her that was flinging Sammy around the kitchen a moment ago, then, or currently pinning him to the wall. I'm also guessing Sam was halfway to figuring out she was the second spirit when he stopped and told Sarie to take herself and Richie on outside without him, not realising the poltergeist was about to grab him again. That's the trouble with having two spirits in one house – leads to unpredictability. I'm not sure why Mary was haunting the closet and terrorising little Sarie, though. That doesn't seem like benign behaviour to me, although the way she died could very well turn even the gentlest soul into a bitter and resentful spirit, I suppose.

Anyway, she greets her sons lovingly by name, and says sorry to Sam. Just what she's sorry for remains a mystery and could be any one of many things, up to and including the aforementioned haunting and terrorising. She doesn't specify.

What she does do is turn around and order the poltergeist to get out of her house, and to let go of her son, since Sam is still securely pinned, although it hasn't tried anything else since Mary and Dean arrived. Mary then envelops herself in flames once more, whooshes upward, and kind of explodes on the ceiling, but without actually damaging it in any way. A teary Sam is released, and both Mary and the poltergeist are gone, leaving two very shocked boys behind.

It really is all over now. As the boys prepare to leave, Jenny gives Dean the old suitcase she found in her cellar, and he leafs through the photographs while Sam talks to Missouri, getting nostalgic over a picture of Little!Dean holding Baby!Sammy, which is very cute.

MISSOURI: "Well, there are no spirits in there anymore, this time for sure."

But she was wrong last time, and her cleansing ritual failed, so Sam's own instinct is actually more reliable on this. I like that Missouri is fallible, though – makes her seem more accessible, somehow. She has an unusual gift, is comfortable with it, and makes the most of it, but it has limits.

MISSOURI: "Your mom's spirit and the poltergeist's energy, they cancelled each other out. Your mom destroyed herself going after the thing."
SAM: "Why would she do something like that."
MISSOURI: "Well, to protect her boys, of course."

Sam looks gutted. Mary has been gone for so many years – he's never known her – but to find her spirit still in the house only for it to be destroyed again almost at once, must be like losing her all over again. And I'm now wondering if, since Mary wound up haunting the scene of her gruesome death, could that mean the same might happen with Jessica?

MISSOURI: "Sam, I'm sorry."
SAM: "For what?"
MISSOURI: "You sensed it was here, didn't you? Even when I couldn't?"
SAM: "What's happening to me?"
MISSOURI: "I know I should have all the answers, but I don't know."

There are no answers for Sam, it seems – only an increasing number of questions. So, their goodbyes said, the boys drive away, and Missouri heads home.

MISSOURI: "That boy. Mm, he has such powerful abilities. Why he couldn't sense his own father I have no idea."

And...there's the prodigal John, sitting on Missouri's sofa looking weary and worried, and still wearing his wedding ring, 22 years after Mary's death.

JOHN: "Mary's spirit. Do you really think she saved the boys."
MISSOURI: "I do. John Winchester, I could just slap you. Why don't you go talk to your children!"

Oh, I'm right there with her on that one. I could happily slap him. Was it Dean's message that brought him there, or did Missouri call him? He can't have kept in touch with her over the years, or the boys would have heard of her or seen more evidence of her in the journal. But if she's been keeping an eye on the house over the years, John might have left a way for her to contact him if anything started happening there again. I've also heard some people argue that maybe he'd been there the whole time, but I can't see it, somehow.

It's most likely to have been Dean's call that summoned him, and yet although it was clear his sons needed his support, he chose to remain hidden from them. So was it really Dean's plea and their need that brought him, or the possibility that the thing that killed Mary was back? Which is really most important to him – the welfare of his sons, or the possibility of finding that thing?

JOHN: "I want to. You have no idea how much I want to see them. But I can't. Not yet. Not until I know the truth."

What truth? Enquiring minds are now even more intrigued than ever. What was it that killed Mary all those years ago? What was it that sent John dashing off into hiding without so much as a word of explanation for his sons? What it is that is keeping him from communicating with them even now, not even one word of comfort or advice? Why does he feel it is so important that he keeps himself hidden from them for so long, leaving them to worry about him?

Overall, an excellent episode, and there were no deaths at all. I think that must be a first, no? The plumber had that very nasty hand accident, but there were no actual deaths. Nice pre-emptive strike, boys.

Comments

[siluria]

He's practically in tears, and we've seen all season how much it takes to crack that tough façade he keeps so firmly in place, and the entire viewing audience – the female half, anyway – now wants nothing more than to reach into their TVs, put their arms around him, and give him a big hug and make it all better.

Oh god yes *meep*
And yet again, you're making me jealous with the pretty graphics.

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I'm still learning with the art. But I've improved so much since I started, it gives me great hope of one day getting as good as some other people I could name.

Ah, Dean really is the woobie of the show, no? Sam is more overtly vulnerable, but he's got Dean looking after him. Dean tends to internalise all his hurts, and he doesn't have anyone looking out for his emotional needs the way he does Sam. Therefore he's the one the audience wants to wrap in a blanket and feed chicken soup (among other things...;) )