Supernatural: Dead in the Water

Into the Deep End
by
Sylvia Bond
Supernatural Episode Review, Season 1 – Episode 3

Watching this episode reminds me of watching Sleepaway Camp, one of those B movies in that string of horror flicks that revolve around stupid teenagers at a summer camp, where if you have sex, you die? Maybe it’s just the setting, with the lake and the cabin on the shoreline and people going around in boats and dying and stuff. But here, there are no stupid teenagers. Instead, there is Dean and Sam who stumble across the mystery of the drownings-but-no-bodies deaths, and test their mettle against a ghost out for revenge.

First up, I’d like to complain about the teaser. I don’t often complain, being a cheerful sort of person, but what happens, even though it has happened before and will again, just CHAPS my hide. Makes me mad, even. So here goes. At the beginning of the ep, this chick, Sophie goes into the lake. Since the lake is in Wisconsin, this water is, winter and summer, cold as glacier melt, right? But she strips down to a bikini and dives right in. She’s a varsity swimmer at her school, and as any swimmer can tell you, bikinis don’t cut it when you’re training. They come OFF, so hard core female swimmers wear one-piece suits. This scene, in the teaser, is an excellent tell that we are viewing the world with the male eye, where Girl plus Swimming equals Bikini. It only makes sense for the men. Anyway, she dies, so it doesn’t come up again. Except for me to wonder how they filmed the one scene looking up in the water as she spreads her legs. And why? Why did they do this?

The boys enter the picture soon after, so I’m like, okay, okay. And let it go. Over the remains of breakfast, the boys dither. Or at least they do after Dean flirts with the full-breasted waitress, sucking on his pen in a suggestive manner. The dither also comes after Dean encourages his brother to get a little “fun” in his life and maybe take up with said waitress. And after Sam gives his little “the trail for The Dad is getting cold” speech, which is followed by Dean’s “I work so hard” speech about how Sam has spent the last two years goofing off while Dean has been working. Which is closely followed by the now-patented eye roll that Sam gives to Dean to not only agree with his brother, but to get him to shut up. In fact, lots of stuff comes before the dither, which makes the dither that comes at the end one of the tools that the brothers use to communicate, that is, talking about a gig, when every other topic under the sun and the moon only causes arguments and discord.

The boys investigate in the town of Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin, and talk to Will Carlton, whose daughter Sophie went swimming with the fishes. Everyone is upset. Good bits abound through this ep, and here’s one. When Sam and Dean come to the door to talk to Will, brother to the dead Sophie, they introduce themselves as Agent Ford and Agent Hamill. As any Star Wars fan will tell you, and they will, those are the last names of two actors that played in a little sci-fi film back in 1977. But enough about that.

Then the boys go talk to Jake, the sheriff, who tells them that the Feds are intending to drain this beautiful lake on account of the fact that the dam is in bad shape. Instead of, er, funding the repairs on the dam, which would not only preserve what looks like a beautiful place to live, but which would also create more jobs. But in the Fed’s earthly wisdom, the former is better than the latter, so in six months, the town will be history.

In comes Andrea, Jake’s daughter, and her son and Jake’s grandson, Lucas (another Star Wars reference). Dean pulls out his best flirt, and asks her to walk them to the nearest cheap motel. Andrea doesn’t fall for it, because she’s sassy and smart. Then we get some Samtease, and there isn’t anyone who can tease Dean like Sam can. (Or really, anyone who dares.) I get the feeling that Sam saves up ammunition for a long while before he does it, because when he starts, he comes out, guns blazing. So, for example, in this scene, Dean says, “Kids are the best.” Andrea doesn’t buy it and struts off. Then Sam asks, mockingly, “Kids are the best? You don’t even like kids.” To which Dean replies, “I love kids!” Sam pauses, counting the seconds (for effect, no doubt), and then says, “Name three children that you even KNOW.” And walks off while Dean scratches his head and searches his memory for kid’s names. He doesn’t know any, of course, so Sam wins. As he should, with a set-up like that.

Then, when they’re at the motel, there’s another good bit. Sam and Dean have checked in. Sam is surfing the Internet, and not for porn, this time. He’s looking at the local newspapers, as far back as he can, to trace the pattern of the drownings. In the background, Dean is pulling clothes out of a duffle bag, shaking each garment and looking at it. And then, get this, he smells each one. EACH one. After which he tosses some on the bed, and lays others on the back of a chair. Of course, this makes sense since he and his brother wear a lot of dark clothes; sometimes you can only tell if a shirt or whatever is dirty by smelling it. And someone’s got to do the laundry, because the Winchesters sure as heck don’t have a housekeeper, now, do they.

A scene like this creates texture, and backstory, and in a really cool way, because Show could just as easily have taken care of the laundry issue with some dialog along the lines of “Gosh, we’ve got to do laundry,” and been done with it. But no. Show gives us Dean smelling dirty clothes and sorting them, sorting, mind you, which is not instinctive to the male of the species. It also develops into interesting filmed-in-my-brain scenes of the boys at a laundromat at 2 in the morning, which is okay, because I kind of get the feeling that even doing laundry with the Winchesters would be exciting.

The boys figure out that the only eye-witness to the mysterious drownings is Lucas, who watched his father drown some years back and who hasn’t talked since. Now, I’ve always said that Dean is a big kid. That his inner child is alive and well and kicking and demanding ice cream twenty-four seven. This is the explanation I always give myself when I see Dean relate really, really well to kids on the show, and I think it’s because he speaks their language. Not in that he reverts back to being seven or twelve, or whatever, but he talks to kids like they have a brain, and he talks to them with respect. I mean, there’s always that fun, if overdone, juxtaposition of the big, scary man suddenly being tamed by a meek, small, innocent kid. Like, Vin Diesel, who for years played tough muscle heads, and then suddenly, in a movie like The Pacifier, becomes a day care dad. Or Arnold in Kindergarten Cop. You get the idea. That’s what they’re doing here with Dean and I love that they do.

[nms:Supernatural CW,2,0]

During the first time this happens, Dean plays with Lucas’ plastic soldiers, making those boy noises, trying to entice Lucas into talking. When this doesn’t work, Dean draws a picture of his family. What breaks my heart is when he explains to Lucas who each figure in the drawing is. When he points at The Dad, he points for a long, long time, because his Dad is an important person in his life. In contrast, he rushes over the figure of The Mom, because she’s too painful to talk about. He explains that the third figure is his geek brother, and there’s a crack in his voice when he says this, no doubt because his brother means more to him than he could ever say. And then he points out himself, and says almost nothing. At which point he shrugs and stands up, giving up, at least for now, and completely not understanding how much he’s just revealed about himself.

In the next scene, Bill’s boy, Will, a live at home twenty-something guy, and brother to the nearly naked dead girl, offers to make supper for his dad. And gosh, golly, he’s going to make it from SCRATCH. I mean, he takes the fresh, whole fish, recently caught in the lake, no doubt, and begins to gut it, and starts by cutting off the head. What a son this guy has! But then, the spirit in the lake comes forth, fills the utility sink with brown and green and oogy water and, somehow, pulls the kid’s head under and he drowns. Please note, for the record, he drowns fully dressed.

Dean wants to talk to Lucas a second time, because he thinks Lucas knows something, and they manage to convince Andrea to let them. Here we see Dean revealing to Lucas (and to us) how he feels about his mom. He says, “Something real bad happened to my mom. I know she wanted me to be brave and I think about that every day. And I do my best to be brave.” This reveals so much about Dean, you know? How hard it was for him at the age of four dealing with his mom’s death and being suddenly put in charge of Baby Sam. That he’s struggled through fear, and through needing to live up to his mom’s expectations of him. He needs to get through to the kid, so he reveals even more than he did the last time, the anguish of his inner kid. It keeps him sweet, and makes him vulnerable. Not that I’d be telling any bad guys this. They could tie me up and make me watch football forever and I would never tell them what Dean’s weak spots are.

What’s even better is that in the background, Sam is the silent watcher, hearing what his brother his saying, storing away the true things that are coming from his brother’s heart, and fixing them away forever. I’m sure, without a doubt, that Sam learns more about Dean when Dean is talking to a little kid than he ever does when Dean is talking straight to him.
Using another drawing from Lucas, the boys figure out that the ghost is of this kid named Peter, who Bill Carlton accidentally drowned years ago. Apparently, Bill never told anyone, and didn’t even bother to bury Peter. Now Peter’s ghost is killing Bill and anyone descended from him. Kids can be so cruel, can’t they?

The boys go to check in with Bill, see how he’s doing. They hear the outboard motor of Bill’s boat, and in spite of it being too late, they try to save him. They run. Running on the beach like this should be an Olympic sport in which the boys would do quite well. Yeah, use the slow mo to see this scene, in all its grace and beauty. I did. Several times. Boys running is a wonderful thing. Dean starts out in the lead, those thighs of his pushing into the sand. Sam is behind, like a long-legged colt. And then, elbows pumping, Sammy takes the lead like Dean is standing still. It’s the legs, you see. It’s all in the legs. Oh, what were they doing in this scene? I think they were trying to stop Bill Carlton from killing himself, but they failed. Oh, well.

Jake, the sheriff, is not happy with the boys, but can’t prove that they had anything to do with Bill’s death. So, even though he could throw them in jail for impersonating federal wildlife officers (yeah, he found out), he gives them the option of leaving town. And they leave. It’s a throwaway scene, for sure. Sam and Dean, having solved the case, they think, leave town. It’s late, it’s dark, and the Impala pulls up to an intersection. You can see that Sam’s left arm is slung over the back of the bench seat, and the close camera angle and the lighting give you an idea of what it must be like to travel with these guys. There’s no fanfare, there’s no funny hats to signify that this is an important occasion, because it’s not. After this gig, the boys will drive to a motel to catch some sleep, get up in the morning, have breakfast. Sam will pull out his laptop, Dean will smell laundry, and then the boys will dither about where they should go next, and the whole cycle will start up again.

Anyway, as they’re sitting there, waiting for the light so they can turn left, Sam says, “Green,” in that tone people get when they’re telling you something obvious. Dean says “What?” like he’s not paying any attention, even though I know he is, because hell, when Sam even coughs, Dean pays attention. Then Sam says, “The light’s green,” and he sounds so bored, irritated almost, that it’s a wonder Dean doesn’t take his head off. What happens instead, is more teasing. Dean tells Sam they’re not done with this job, and that he’s concerned about the kid. Sam says, extra gently, “Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?” To which Dean responds, “Shut up.” I think Sam would be riding Dean a bit harder on all this relating-well-to-kids thing, if it didn’t, at the same time, allow Sam to see right into Dean’s heart.

While the boys drive back to town, we see Andrea. She puts her kid to bed and then takes a bath. Inevitably, in a claw foot tub, right, because all the best houses have them, and she fills the tub with water and slips in, buck-naked. We get glimpses of foot, and thigh, and arm, and neck, and toe, and upper breast, and so on. Glimpses of parts of a naked woman, as though she’s been stripped and cut up for a sacrifice. Eventually, the tub starts filling with dark goo, and lo, the spirit of the lake attacks. It kind of looks like an installment of Jaws is being filmed right there in her bathroom, because she is shaken around and tossed and starts screaming and flailing and tries to get out of the tub while she’s being pulled under. During which, the camera gives us an eyeful of just how slender and frail she is, how naked.

Eventually, Sam and Dean come to save the day, and it’s Sam, with his powerful long arms, who reaches into the tub and pulls her out, screaming and wet, on top of him. (Notice how it’s Dean who kicks open the door and then holds Lucas back. He might even be shielding the kid’s eyes from seeing too much, I don’t know. I’ll have to go back and see. But it reminds me, as it would any True Fan, of the time that Dean held on to Sam to keep him from going back into the flames to save Jess.)

At first, I’m like, wow, isn’t that embarrassing, because she’s all naked in front of two relative strangers and her little boy. But at least she’s alive, so that’s okay. But upon repeated viewings, I found myself getting pissed off. It’s not often I take the feminist viewpoint. In college, I went with the deconstructionists, because the feminists seemed so angry all the time. And even though this scene makes even me want to scream about misogynistic men, I’m not going to. Besides, there’s so many more books and blogs out there about this issue that could spell out how wrong and one sided a scene like this is, with far better grace and dignity than I could muster.

So I’ll stick with my fangirl viewpoint, and that is my stand for Equal Opportunity Naked Nudity. For crying out loud! Why is it every time a woman drowns on this show, she’s naked? And in the very same ep, a man drowns, fully dressed? Kripke and Co can’t help themselves, I’m sure, because, since Kripke is a man, and this whole thing was his idea, he can only see with the male eye. Whereas I, a woman, looking through his lens, can certainly see that his view is a little skewed. Kripke gave me Sam and Dean and The Dad, and oh, bless him for that. He gave me Winchesters and mixed it with angst, and I want to kiss him forever. But in spite of the fabbo family dynamics and the everlasting road trip and the Impala, the Impala, for pity’s sake, in spite of the love and the bravery and everything else that is non-gender based, he falls down and hard, when there are scenes like. I can’t change him and I don’t want to. But I want to shake him and say: Be brave! Be bold! Don’t take the easy route, do it right. Drown some guy, show us some thigh!!! Okay, getting off the soapbox now.

After the boys rescue Andrea, we get a scene that I like to call The Big Dive. It’s towards the end, and it’s got marvelous color and light to it, and maybe that’s because the sky was just right and the water is there, reflecting back at the sky. Jake has shown up, and as Lucas shows the boys where to dig for the bike Peter was riding the day he died, we learn that Jake was heavily involved in Peter’s drowning. (The bit where the boys dig up the bike always reminds me of the scene in Beetlejuice where Adam and Barbara dig up Beetlejuice’s grave in the little miniature graveyard.)

Anyway, Lucas gets pulled under by Peter, and Sam and Dean dive in to save the day. First, they don’t stop to take off their shoes, which surely would hamper their efforts because wet shoes are heavy. Second, while their dives wouldn’t win either of them anything close to a 10 from the Russian judge, their dives are leaps of gutsy bravado into a glacier-fed Wisconsin lake. It took my breath away when I first saw it and each repeated viewing brings back to me feelings of oh, my GOD, it’s Tarzan and his Boy!

I’m talking the early Johnny Weissmuller versions, now, not any of the later ones. I mean, don’t you remember being a kid and doing that Tarzan dive at each and every opportunity? It’s a good just-under-the-surface skimming dive, exactly right for slow moving and possibly shallow jungle rivers. But without an elephant to pull them out, Sam and Dean are on their own. They surface like porpoises a few times, bringing to mind much beloved water scenes from Flipper, and didn’t you just want to dive in with Sandy and Bud? I know I did. Don’t even get me started on Gentle Ben, okay? I can’t tell you how much I wanted to ride an airboat through a swamp. Then, when I did, it was all bugs and mud and, well, anyway. The things TV can get us interested in!

Lastly, there is the Big Save, where they rescue Lucas from a watery grave. It’s Dean’s save, though it could just as easily have been Sam’s. Show even filmed it in slow motion, just for me. Check it out. Dean’s head breaks the surface of the inky water, Lucas clasped to his chest, hair and water spilling over his eyes. Oh, grace, oh, beauty, oh, you manly thing you, saving that kid and looking FANTASTIC while doing it. In addition to which, those drops of water look like tears slipping down his face, cause Show knows I love those mantears of Dean’s.

In the end, Lucas is silent no longer, and he and Andrea express thanks with food. Then, Andrea expresses her thanks, need I point out, with a kiss on the MOUTH, but only for Dean. Sam doesn’t seem to mind that Dean gets the kiss here, and I think that’s because of what he’s learned about Dean during all of this. That Dean, being more vulnerable, needs the reinforcement of a woman’s lips on his. As for Dean, the way I figure it, Dean doesn’t care about gold medals, he doesn’t care about the Russian judge, he doesn’t even care who is looking. To him, the kiss he receives has more value than any man’s riches. It is, rather, like the crown made of olive leaves awarded to successful players in the original Olympic games. It’s not the money, dude, it’s the kiss!

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.

Never miss an update. Subscribe to Pink Raygun by Email or subscribe via RSS

Related Stuff: