Supernatural: Red Sky at Morning

Take Warning, My Brothers by Sylvia Bond
Season 3 – Episode 6
“Red Sky at Morning”

I made a list of the things I miss from last season, those essential elements that Kripke originally set up. It’s a long list, so I won’t include every item here. Just a few that you might recognize, even if you only tuned in halfway through last year. I miss the boys doing their own research in ratty hotel rooms. I miss them in bleach-stained blue jeans. I miss them ordering who-knows-what in grotty diners. I miss them going into creepy, dark places as jauntily as if they were walking into the local stop-n-sip, taking the place apart to find the thing that’s been hurting kids. I miss episodes that scare me, I miss the boys bouncing flashlights around, I miss dark, moody lighting that added angst to entire scenes without anyone moving a muscle. I miss the brothers looking at each other expressing volumes of love and affection without saying anything. But given that all things must change, at the very least I’m looking for an equivalent of those things I miss and want to put a check mark by, hoping that the current ep will have them.

Okay, there’s a plot. A three-masted clipper ship displays itself to bad people (those who have killed a relative), who die soon after, choking on water. There’s the requisite scene of a woman in a shower and you know she ain’t got no clothes on as she dies. The scene where the pirate-looking guy attacks her has non-consensual overtones, and down she goes, drowning.

There’s a guy who gets it too, but here’s the difference. First, he’s not nekked. Second, as he leans over the ole-bathtub-filled-with-gunky-water-trick, the pirate-looking guy does not shove him against the bathroom wall for a quick fondle. No, the guy merely gets choked, end of scene. (He should have been more attentive. Don’t lean over gunky water like that, dude!) I bring this up because it so clearly points out how T.V. is often filmed with a male eye in anticipation of being viewed by male eyes, including on this show, which completely ignores the fact that most of its viewers are female. (I had to point this out, because otherwise, I would feel that I had let the side down, if you know what I’m saying.)

Well, maybe Show doesn’t entirely ignore it. After all, Show has brought me Dean and Sam who, whatever they are wearing or doing, are about as sexy as it gets.

Plot continues. Dean and Sam interview Ms. Old Lady (aunt to shower woman), who takes a shine to Sam. She wants to know how someone could die in a shower, and I want to tell her that people can drown in as little as an inch of water, but she can’t hear me. She’s busy drooling over Sammy with a none-too-secret fire in her eyes.

There’s a walk and talk between the boys, ties undone as they stroll the wharf, taking in the fresh sea air, discussing the ghost ship and Alex, who is helping the old gal. Dean teases Sam about his girlfriend (the old gal) and calls him a cougar hound. What exactly is that? Well, I looked it up. It’s a dog that you use to hunt cougars with and they are fearless. Sam is fearless, I’ll grant you, and I guess he’s hunting whatever is coming for Dean. Then Sam says, “bite me,” to which Dean replies, “not if she bites you first.” The implication here is that Dean would bite Sam if he is, at the time, bite free. Okay, I’d buy tickets for that.

Then, the Impala goes missing, courtesy of Bella (Who is Alex, natch, and I’m dying to call her Smella.) Dean freaks out about the Impala being gone, and I can’t blame him, seeing as the car not only holds his favorite toys, it’s his home. The only real home he’s known for 22 years. If you’ve ever been on a roadtrip for any length of time, you’ll know what it’s like. Things move. Motel rooms change. You keep checking for your keys, like, all the time, and your world narrows down to those few things that you won’t be able to replace if you loose them. In Dean’s case, those things are (in no particular order): Sam, the Colt, and the Impala. Bella has recently shot one of those, and has now taken another. Why on earth isn’t she dead yet? I don’t mean to be unpleasant, but there it is. Dean wants to shoot her, (and I want him to too!), but Sam says, “Not in public,” which has a boatload of connotations behind it, not least of which is what is Sam willing to allow Dean to do in private?

Smella (I’m just calling her that, okay? She bugs me.) can’t be trusted and yet the boys blithely converse with her. The only thing saving the scene is Samhair, defiantly in place, flipping up over Sam’s ears and every which way, like the fairies have been at it. His glare in Smella’s direction is pretty fine too. As is Dean’s reply to her snotty comment about Dean not getting enough hugs from his Dad. His answer? No answer, and that’s as it should be. Because not only is it not true, she doesn’t deserve the truth. (Or, in keeping with a mighty fine line from A Few Good Men, she couldn’t handle the truth!) Dean might not have gotten many hugs or verbal praise, but he knows his father loved him, more than anything. So Smella can just go jump in a lake. (Besides, she’s wearing high heels. Since she’s not a hunter, merely an annoying bimbo, the high heels make sense. Doesn’t make me dislike her any less, though. And Smella deserves a smack. Only Dean gets to call Sam a Drama Queen, you got that?)

[nms:CW Supernatural,3,0]

The boys stake out house of the brother of dead-in-bathtub-but-not-nekked guy, and get caught. The brother tries to take off in his car. Sammy runs (Run, Sammy, run!) to help the guy, but they are too late. My favorite bit here is where Dean shouts, “Sam!” so that Sam ducks so that Dean can shoot at the pirate-looking guy. Sam does this ever-so-cute move when he’s ducking, which is to curl up into a ball and cover his head with his arms. He’s done this before, and when it happens, it reminds me that when bullets and glass go flying, the boys could really get hurt. Dean’s smack of frustration against the car seat is also good. It shows me Dean’s passion about his work, and the fact that he cares so very much. Far more than Smella, who is only in it for the money. (Dead guy deserved to die. He insulted the Impala and called it crappy. Apparently he’s never searched the Net and priced one of those babies, as practically every fan of the show has done, because if he did, he’d know that there was about 20 grand of well-loved, finely-tuned, heavy metal muscle car sitting just off his driveway. So yeah, he deserved it.)

Did I mention that I miss the ratty motel rooms that the boys usually stay in? Yeah, I do. This time around, the boys are squatting in an old, abandoned house. I say it out loud, “They’re squatting!” and cringe as I hear myself because the word squicks me. Don’t ask, I don’t know why. I’m saved by the fact that Sam is reading a book (always a comfortable sight) and Dean is lolling about in a chair. Not quite as good as him lolling about on a bed, messing up the counterpane, but since I’m a True Fan, I will put up with this. For now. (Plus, he’s fondling something that goes click when he puts it down. What it is, I don’t know, but it’s like a little piece of candy for my brain.)

Unfortunately, Smella trots in, mocks the boys, and then suckers them into working with her. She’s got all the facts, and if the boys help her, she will help them put an end to the ghost ship. There’s a hand of glory, courtesy of hanged man, and if they can get the hand, they can salt and burn it and thus break the cycle of people seeing the ship and dying. But why on earth are my boys allowing this idiot to do their research for them? Why are they sitting around with their thumbs up their you-know-wheres like this? Could someone call Kripke and ask him, please?

Bella gets the boys into a charity ball where the hand is kept. Enter Dean and Sam in tuxes. This is when I realize there ain’t never going back to days of bleach-stained jeans. Not when the boys march around for half an ep in tuxedos in brightly lit rooms, drinking from wine flutes, and dancing to strains of Hernando’s Hideaway. The last time I saw Dean drinking from a wine flute, he was chomping on mini-quiches with swagger and flare. This time around, he’s still got swagger and flare (and sticking his chewing gum any old where), but when he asks Bella not to treat him like an object, it’s all I can do not to snigger and inform him that if he’s gonna dress like that, he should expect what he’s getting. (Especially as he waltzes down those stairs like a girl on her way to a prom. By candlelight, no less. Oh, I do love Deanskin by the glow of candles.)

Okay, he doesn’t really waltz down the stairs like a girl, he prowls down the stairs like a panther. Like, yeah, like James Bond on his way to meet Pussy Galore. And he turns down her offer of angry sex, because he knows, as I know, that Winchester boys don’t sleep with roaches. Still, it’s pretty cool to see Dean realize how good he looks. The only thing that tops it is the realization, some long, stomach-tightening seconds later, that Sam, sweet Sammy, is also going to be in a tux. Dean looks dapper right enough, but Sam looks like a little boy in his father’s suit. Don’t get me wrong, he’s all cute and about ten feet tall, but his lovely Samhair has been plastered down with what looks like Brylcreem. His hair, apparently, did not want to go along to the ball, and this is how he attempts to manage it. (I love him anyway.)

Bella is Dean’s date (which she does NOT deserve, and neither does he), while Sam escorts Ms. Old Lady, who, frankly, has about the best taste of anyone I’ve ever seen. Sure, there’s a running joke as she flirts and gropes poor old Sammy, but I really can’t say as I blame her. Not that I’d be groping Sam in public, I’m not that kind of girl, but as Ms. Old Lady is all aquiver and practically throwing herself at Sam, I have nothing but empathy.

Sam announces that there are limits to what he’ll do, to which Dean remarks that Sam is playing hard to get, which he thinks is awfully cute. As Sam downs a flute of wine like a drowning man, I wonder what Sam’s limits are, and who defines them, him or Dean? Anyway, while he’s dancing with the old gal (he suffers through this with marvelous dimples, as Padalecki shows us some classic, non-verbal comedy), she whispers dustily in his ear what she knows about the dead brothers, that they deserved what they got in the biblical sense. Which turns my brain, because that phrase usually has sexual connotations. Is she implying that the dead brothers had sex with each other? Or does she mean biblical as in “vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord?”

There’s interaction between Bella and Dean as they throw one-liners and sneak upstairs for the opportune moment to get the hand of glory, but frankly, she bores me. I can only see her underbite, the exaggerated English accent, the badly combed hair, and I long for her demise, simply long for it. The only thing that saves the scene for me is the cavalier way Dean tosses her on the couch, like he could care less.

Dean gets the hand (which he handles the way he handled Smella), then she snatches the hand off of Dean (once again showing how Dean lets his guard down around her, and what’s up with that?), and sells it for lots and lots, cause that’s what she does. Then after she and the boys part ways, Dean turns to Sam and says, “You stink like sex.” Let’s stop and discuss what this means. Obviously, Dean is giving his brother grief (like he’s not already had enough for one evening), but I wonder just how is it, exactly, that Dean knows what Sam smells like after he’s had sex? Or is this one of those questions I really don’t wanna ask? (Maybe at least not out loud.)

Back at the squat, the boys argue about the missing hand. Sam tries to be funny by informing Dean that the roach got one over on “you” rather than “us,” but the joke falls flat. Poor Sam realizes too late that he can’t take it back. Smella shows up, and it turns out she did something nasty to some relative and has seen the ship. (There’s an interesting reference here to Cain and Abel, which is the story of two brothers vying for their father’s affection. This is not the first biblical or brotherly reference in the show, nor is it likely to be the last. I just hope that Show doesn’t forget it planted this particular seed, because I would love to see the showdown between the brothers about, well, frankly, everything. I just hope Show doesn’t take the story too literally.)

Bella doesn’t have the hand that can save her, she’s bound for death, and I cheer very loudly as Sam and Dean announce that there’s not much they can do to help her. Ah. Wait. It’s Dean who says that, with some relish, and Sam, being Sam, winces and hesitates and looks perfectly miserable at having to announce that yeah, there might be something that could be done.

What is his DEAL? Why doesn’t he just let her die? It’s not like he doesn’t know she deserves it. Hell, he even asks her what she did, because he knows that’s the only reason she saw the ghost ship. So he knows. And Dean knows. And what do they do anyway? They perform a ceremony to save her. In the graveyard. In the rain. (Where Dean starts out the night laconically propped up on a headstone, sawed off shotgun on his shoulder.) By the time they are done, Smella’s puked up enough water to fill a thousand skank-filled bathtubs, and the only thing that saves the scene is close-ups of Dean and Sam’s faces. In the rain. Everyone drips. I am happy.

But it kills me how kind Dean is to Bella as she’s puking. He’s doing the whole hand-to-the-shoulder thing, as if listening to her isn’t making him want to puke too. Cause you know it is. Ever help someone who is throwing up? Then you know how it goes. There’s nothing grosser, and you only do it for the ones you love. So I don’t really buy it that Dean was being so solicitous towards Bella, especially not after she shot Sam, stole the Impala, and lifted things off of Dean’s person that he should have been more attentive to. She’s the last person he’d be helping like this. It’s totally out of character. (Or is he just that freaking noble?)

The Throwing of the Dean this week was particularly remarkable. The ghost guy tosses Dean high and far like a Scottish caber into a large, grey pillar-shaped headstone and just at the moment he lands, his sawed-off shotgun goes off. It makes a nice loud bang, too, which startled me. Dean, alas, shows no sign of wear and tear, and I wonder if the Blood and Contusion Artist was out to lunch.

The boys are back at the house after the whole ceremony works like a treat. I like watching Dean roll and crumple his laundry before he stuffs it in his duffle bag. Sometimes he smells his laundry before he puts it in there, or at least he used to. Hey, it’s the guy way of telling whether something is clean or not. They actually, I’m told, wear things more than once!

Then I cringe as Bella comes in to pay them for their help. Her and her underbite are showing signs of humanity, and it’s rather like watching the Ferengi (who were evil in the pilot of Star Trek: TNG) become the wily, clever, money grubbing but harmless allies in later episodes. Oh jeeze. What a way to ruin a perfectly good villain! I simply don’t care about her anymore.

Dean smells the money just as Sam reminds him that they don’t know where the money has been, and this makes me giggle. But mostly I’m worried about the implications of them taking money for a gig. I mean, isn’t the heart of who they are the fact that they save people and hunt evil for free? Doesn’t the lack of silver changing hands normally indicate a somewhat higher ground? And don’t we want the boys to be on higher ground than Smella? But the boys take the money and go to Atlantic City, and that, yadda, yadda, yadda, is it.

Plot aside, the ep has tidbits that I would like to discuss in quiet detail. Because that’s what they were, they were quiet. Like Kripke was slipping them in, hoping we wouldn’t notice, when all along he’s got some storyline that’s going to come to fruition any second now. Any second now. Yeah. Let me check my watch. Aaaaaaany second now. Wait for it.

We do get those tuxes (dead sexy, those boys). And several cool scenes about the Real Story. For a True Fan such as myself, the plot-of-the-week is the medium by which I am able to get the Real Story. Rather like bread is the medium to get butter into my system. The Real Story, as I’m sure everyone knows, is the fact that Dean made a dumbass deal with a crossroads demon and is going to die in a year. That is, if Brother Sam doesn’t save him first, which he is determined to do, and frankly, I don’t think he’s worried about what it’s going to cost him. (If he is worried about cost, then he isn’t Sam and I’m watching the wrong show.)

De rigueur for this season, we see several heated conversations that take place in the Impala as it rockets down the highway. (I would like to add that I also miss heated conversations that take place standing still. With the boys near a body of water, or leaning over the top of the parked car, or even, best of the best, when Dean pulls over to the side of the highway because he can’t take it anymore and has to spill his guts.) This week’s conversations-in-a-metal-box-going-seventy give the scenes an interesting claustrophobic feel, so I’m jiggy with that. For the moment, cause, you know, I’m still waiting for the Fruit of Kripke’s Brain to come rolling across my screen.

In the first conversation, Dean asks Sam if there’s anything Sam wants to say. (He’s been waiting since Maple Springs, and it’s interesting to think how many miles they’ve driven in silence.) Sam says no, and then Dean mentions that one of the bullets is gone. I love how Show isn’t saying exactly how many bullets Dean made, but I reckon Show doesn’t want to paint itself into a corner. I also love it that Dean’s gone and checked on the Colt, keeping tabs. I picture off-screen scenes where he takes the gun out and pets it, smoothing his thumb over the chamber, and then counts the bullets with careful eyes. He’s depending on this gun with an intensity I don’t think even he is aware of.

Sam’s a fair liar, and I wait for him to pull the wool over Dean’s eyes about the missing bullet. Only he doesn’t, cause the evidence is too clear for him to deny it. He says “yeah” and “well?” like that’s going to be enough answer for Dean, which it is not. It occurs to me (as it does from time to time) that the boys aren’t getting along this season. They have goals that are, at this point, mutually exclusive as so few things seldom are. Sam’s is that Dean will live, and Dean’s is that Sam will live. But Dean and Sam have both seen Spartacus (cause it’s got some great fight scenes), so they must be aware of the potential for disaster when two guys try to out-sacrifice each other in order to save. (Like Spartacus and Antoninus did.)

Sam has shot the crossroads demon because she was a “smartass,” and then Dean, in a voice lined with hope asks, “Does that mean I’m out of the deal?” Sam replies that he would have told Dean so, were it true, and you just have to know he means it. For all their fussin’ and fightin’ they still are brothers, and they look out for each other. Sam insists that he’s gonna do whatever it takes, even if he thinks Dean is being a jerk. Oh, boys.

The second conversation. Boys drive. In car. At night. The radio gives us the current weather, and in my next life, I’m going to be the local weatherman. Those guys are always wrong, and yet they keep their jobs. What’s up with that? And what’s more, what’s up with the radio? What happened to rock music lending a throbbing backbeat and a theme to connect this ep to every other ep? I should have added that to my list of things I miss. I’ll add it now, shall I?

In said car, Dean tells Sam that they can’t save everybody. This is true, but lately, Sam’s been feeling like he can’t save anybody. You know he’s thinking about Dean, right? I do. And Dean does, too. That’s what matters, for all this scene is so short.

The last conversation is the saddest of all, even though I get one of my favorite things, and that is Sam tracking their route on a map by flashlight. Dean starts talking. Yeah, talking. This is so not like him, even though I appreciate that he admits he understands why Sam shot the demon. He then refers to his dumbass deal as “me goin’ away and all that.” Like, hello, Dean, you’re going to die at the end of the year, remember? It’s not just you goin’ away, like you’re planning on leaving town.

Dean continues in this vein, and when Sam finally breaks out of his desire to start bawling, he tells Dean to go screw himself. This makes me shout horray! Cause I was just about to tell Dean to shut his cakehole myself. For Pete’s sake, Dean, this isn’t helping!!! Sam’s voice rises as his heart is ripped apart at the thought of Dean’s dying, and he says, “I don’t want you to worry about me, Dean, I want you to worry about YOU.”

In response to this expression of fealty, Dean shoves anything he’s feeling down hard to a dark corner of his psyche, and the cameraman, who loves me, doesn’t forget how much I enjoy seeing Dean’s face lit with shadows like that. As if the devil himself were working the lights.

Why don’t they just admit how scared they both are? Oh, wait. They’re Winchesters, and they don’t do that. But I know they are terrified. Sam’s terrified of loosing Dean, because I think the guilt alone would eat him alive, but more than that, he loves his brother beyond measure, and while he used to could sorta go back to his old life without Dean, now there is no old life. For Sam, there is nothing but Dean.

As for Dean, he breaks my heart. He’s trying to share his thoughts with Sam (or, heaven forbid, his feelings), and while Sam and I both agree that he was talking dribble, at least he was trying. And then he shuts down. The camera pans back from Sam’s astonished face, and then it whips over to Dean, who has an expression rather like Greta Garbo did at the end of Queen Christina. The non-expression of the black hole variety where there’s so much that’s not there that the viewer has to fill it with everything she can. And, that being me, I fill it with all the lost time not shared, and the memories not created, and what was and what will never be, and it almost makes me cry. Lame, right? Getting all worked up over a T.V. character!

But that’s Kripke’s strength, getting me all worked up like that. But what is he doing? The show is beginning to feel like the Nothing is taking over, and oh, Atreyu where are you now, when everything’s gone wrong somehow? But I have this tatoo, see, about my fealty to Kripke, but one wonders, and I’m now referring to myself in the third person. It’s all this tension and doubt floating around, and it really makes me quite mental, you know. Yes, quite mental.

Sylvia Bond is a ten-year technical writing veteran with too many degrees under her belt to count. She lives in Colorado, but does not ski, preferring instead to spend her money and time at the annual Great American Beer Festival, taking road trips across the United States, and reading historical fiction from the comfort of her fluffy green arm chair. She has been involved in fandom since 1993 and been writing fanfic since approximately 1993. What she finds most amazing about fandom (besides the open heartedness of fans and the sheer amount of creativity) is how visible fandom has become. “In my day,” she says, “we had to hide behind P.O. boxes to get fanfic. But nowadays, people wear t-shirts that shout their affiliation and share their shiny toys on the internet.” It’s a wonderful world.

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