Supernatural: Pilot

Slipping the Surly Bonds of TV
by Sylvia Bond
Supernatural Episode Review, Season One – Episode One
“Pilot”

In the beginning, Kripke came up with a pretty basic premise: two brothers, a black Impala, and a whole lotta saving people, hunting things on the longest road trip ever. There were other variations on this theme along the way, but this is what was finally filmed for the Pilot episode. And then the thing took off like it had wings. Up into the long, delirious, burning blue and has not had to land since.

At 45 minutes long, the ep has plenty to take in. Some moments in the Pilot are so iconic-worthy that they have since taken on a life of their own. Like biplanes, classics since the day they were born. Plus the context of the road trip allows for as many permutations as a dozen good cop shows. The Boys (Sam and Dean) are never stuck in the city or state or even a single job. Unlike Starsky and Hutch, Sam and Dean are free to move from town to town. This opens up the entire of the United States, so instead of being stuck for years in one place, Dean and Sam get to head out to Anywhere, U.S.A. They go to places like Manning, Colorado, Lincoln, Nebraska, Chicago, Illinois, and the list goes on and on. And all the time the open road beckons them. They know every exit, every gas station, and every weird motel from coast to coast. The one place they can’t go is home, because it no longer exists as they knew it. Which is kind of interesting considering the theme of the monster of the week (MOW) for this ep is that she is a ghost who can’t go home.

The opening sequence (a flashback to 22 years ago) depicts a typical evening at the Winchester house in Lawrence, Kansas. The Mom and older brother Dean (at a silky-haired and tender four years of age) kiss baby Sammy goodnight. In comes Dad (at not yet quite The Dad status on account of he seems rather gentle and domestic here) and he hauls wee Dean up in his arms. There’s some good father/son discussion, after which Dad totes wee Dean off to tuck him into bed.

A couple of things keep this scene from being saccharine enough to start a cavity. First is the delicious peek at Dad’s bare skin and a tat and it looks like there’s more than one. He’s a former Marine, so the tats don’t surprise me; they create an instant context of a grittier, less domestic past for this character. The second little tidbit that cuts the sweetness is when Dad swings Dean up and they agree that no, baby Sammy is not big enough to toss around a football. Dad actually rolls his eyes. He’s laughing at himself, at Dean, at the whole silliness of the conversation. Dads are sometimes removed from the daily grind of childrearing, so this Dad is enjoying himself thinking Dean is a pretty funny kid. (The only thing missing is that even though we see the parent’s room, and Sam’s room, we never get to see Dean’s room! I imagine it’s decorated with football stuff, though.)

Right after that, the fun starts. You’ve seen it or heard tell of it, the scene where The Mom burns to death on the ceiling, where Dad places baby Sammy in wee Dean’s care, and the barks out the command to take the baby outside. It’s at this moment I can see the first stirrings of The Dad begin. The whole father/commanding officer combo, the start of it all. What I love here is wee Dean’s almost unheard reassurances to baby Sammy that everything’s going to be all right, even though it’s not. This is followed up by The Dad’s terrible gallop across the lawn, scooping both boys up in his fatherly arms. The Mom is dead, the house is engulfed in flames. And what’s left? The family Winchester sitting on the hood of the Impala, The Dad, wee Dean, and baby Sammy.

I’ll admit that the fist time I saw this scene, I was not EVEN intrigued. From what I could tell, with my sad experiences in TV, it was a soap opera setup, three men living in a house with no female input. Seen it before, thanks, but no thanks. Hey. Knock it off. How was I supposed to know that the series had wings? Looking at this scene now, I’m practically in tears and something jumps in my throat at each crucial milestone.

Flash forward 22 years. We are at Stanford, celebrating Halloween. Young Sam is being congratulated for being so scary-smart he passes his LSATs. He might have a full ride if his law interview goes well. In spite of being played by the dorky guy from Gilmore Girls, Sam’s got good prospects, a hot girlfriend, and look, there’s a photo of The Mom and The Dad that I guess didn’t get burned up in the flames. Aw, isn’t it sweet that he kept it? (As for the guy who plays Sam? Yeah. No longer dorky. Not even close.)

Yeah, it’s a little weird that Sam doesn’t like Halloween, though he sure did want those popcorn balls, didn’t he? Yeah, it’s strange that no one in his family seems to care how well he’s doing in college. Yeah, it’s easy to see how his face falls and his whole body grows still when he talks about them. But heck, he’s got darling Jessica to help him through the difficulties of not getting along with his family. He’ll be fine. Won’t he? They kiss and it’s awfully mushy.

The whole scene plays like a box of untold secrets. If I’d been able to get past the soap opera kissing at this point (I really expected Days of Our Lives music to swell in the background), I would have been able to see the small details and have been intrigued enough to continue watching. Would you believe that I turned it off at this point back in 2005? I have very little patience for drek – though I’ll admit that sometimes my ability to judge drek isn’t all that sophisticated or even well developed.

But I was saved from myself because sometime in 2007, I was tied to a chair by friends and fed beer. I managed to make it through my first episodes (Skin and Heart) by the sheer dint of two things: my friends’ promise that it would get darker and thus better fast, and second, Sam and Dean themselves. (Who are beautiful and gorgeous in all ways.) Believe me, by the time I saw the light, I felt really foolish thinking how in the hell did I miss this? Well, I ‘ll tell you. The only reason I watched Show in the first place was because my sister had recommended it to me. Keep in mind that her idea of a good movie is The Brainsmasher, so when it looked like Show was merely another version of the O.C, I blamed her and got out of there fast. (Maybe I should have called my friend in Houston, who always knows what’s good, even though one of her guilty pleasures is Dawson’s Creek, so go figure.) What I wanted was more along the lines of Due South, X-Files, and Starsky and Hutch. Well I’ll be darned if I didn’t get the best of all three. Plus Sam and Dean, who are, as you know, my own true loves.

When I saw the Pilot for the second time, I was a True Fan and a Deangirl at heart, although Sam continues to sway me to being his girl and his alone. He’s jealous like that. Anyway, the ep continues with Sam at home with his lovely Jessica, when he hears a noise. His instincts hove into view like a watchful beast and it’s easy to see that he has not forgotten any of his training. (Which is interesting, considering how much he later complains about being raised as a warrior.) He proceeds to beat the crap out of the intruder, who, as we all know, is brother Dean, no longer wee but still silky haired. Dean bests Sam and tops him. Then he mocks little brother, at which point Sam proves that he’s not lost his touch, and turns the tables and slams Dean to the floor. Whereupon we are given the iconic, “Dude, get off me.” Considering that Dean is always touching Sam, this is pretty funny for him to say. Doth the gentleman protest too much? (Plus the contest of who’s in charge continues to this day, and it’s fun to watch them scrabble for lead place.)

This ease and familiarity evidenced by the brothers during the sparring bespeaks of many many MANY years of practice at the behest of The Dad and can you imagine it? “I don’t CARE if your nose is bleeding, get up and do it again.” And again. And again. And then one more time after that. And each time you do this you get to beat up (or are beaten up by) your brother or your dad. This is the warrior way; this is your world. No wonder Sam left home, which leads me to question why exactly it was that Dean did not?

It’s interesting to watch that Dean’s eyes never take in Jessica’s bountiful breasts. Either because he respects all women (debatable), or because there’s simply no way he’s going to trespass on what he considers Sam’s territory. Also, I love the way Dean deadpans about The Dad being missing in just such a way that Sam knows the wind is blowing foul. (Ackles is an expert at wordless communication. I put it off to those ginormous eyes of his.) Implications abound and the boys slink off into the alley to discuss the missing Dad.

The conversation the brothers have is a little on the exposition side, but since there is tons of background here, I’ll let it go. For example, we find out that Sam left home to go to college and because he wanted to stay safe as well as normal. He didn’t appreciate being given a 45 pistol at the tender age of nine, regardless. Dean on the other hand never left home. Home in this case being The Dad, Sam, and the Impala. The only time he did leave (canonically) was when he went to New Orleans on a voodoo job. Since he’s perfectly capable of hunting on his own, I think this is what happened. The Dad MADE him go, because the Winchester version of moving out is going on a hunting trip by yourself. And it was time.

Dean is terribly sweet as he explains that sure, he could hunt for The Dad, but he doesn’t want to do it by himself. I think, personally, that he hates being alone. That or The Dad and Sam are his whole world. Some explanation might be found in the fact that Sam has a picture of The Mom and The Dad on his dresser in the apartment. Later we see that The Dad carries around a picture of himself and his two young sons. Dean, on the other hand, has no pictures of anyone, so it might be that he prefers to have the real thing sitting right next to him. As in, pictures mean nothing, and only blood will out.

When Sam diffidently explains about his interview at law school, I get the impression that Dean is somewhat startled at how much he doesn’t know about Sam’s life. What he does know, I think, is that Sam can’t resist a puzzle, so he presents it to him. When Dean opens the trunk, Sam is right there. And man! The stuff Sam can do, like hear EVP on a tape recorder before it’s been run through the machine that extracts it.

It is out of love for Dean and not for any affection for The Dad that Sam agrees to go with Dean. Jessica is worried; Sam packs up anyway. He packs that knife, the one you see in the promo poster, this ep, and no other place. It makes a metallic sound in spite of the fact that it is not sheathed nor comes into contact with any other metal. On top of which it looks rather like a reaper’s scythe. There’s something significant here, but look to fanfiction to explain about the blade for we’ve not seen it from that day to this. And either he was given the blade by The Dad and kept it through four years of college OR even more interestingly (considering he wanted to leave the whole Winchester thing behind him) he purchased it AFTER he left home. Either way he’s still got the thing; it’s oiled and sharp and ready to go.

The road trip the boys take gives us even more good story telling and factoids woven in rather than being part of some stiff exposition. The car, for starters, is just THERE, and it is never explained why on earth the Boys are driving a car that’s surely got over 100,000 miles on it, gets terrible gas mileage (12 MPG), and is almost 40 years old. There’s the oft-told story of how Kripke was going to use a late ’60′s model Ford Mustang but decided in favor of the kind of car that when it pulls up beside you at a lonely intersection, you’d be rolling up your windows right quick. Plus, there’s more room in an Impala to store everything the Boys need. Not to mention, you could put six dead bodies in the trunk. If you stacked them right.

More facts come up in the gas station scene. Dean eats crap for breakfast and participates joyfully (and without any noticeable remorse) in the somewhat lucrative practice of credit card scams. Sam disapproves, but then, at this point, he does of everything. Which is part and parcel of him standing outside the fire, looking at the Winchesters as an outsider might. Stuff the Winchesters do is illegal, not normal, not safe, scary, and dangerous and Sam wants no part of it. It’s interesting to think that Sam who has never known normal practically from birth embraces it with both arms. While Dean, on the other hand, has known normal, but clings to weird like a drowning man.

Most iconic of all scenes, I think, is the discussion about Dean’s cassette collection, which he holds on to like an old, cold lady does her shawl. That Dean has cassettes instead of CDs is amazing (and amusing) to Sam and he hesitates not one bit to give older brother crap about it. The fact that all the songs are heavy metal as well begs the question as to why Dean’s tastes are frozen in the late ’70′s. Dean, as is typical of him, doesn’t give a rat’s you-know-what about what Sam thinks of his taste. He slams the cassette case into the box and says, yeah, you know what he says: “Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.” (But hey, kids? Don’t ever try this in real life, okay? You will get lambasted, trust me.)

The scene on the bridge where the boys meet the local law is also telling. Dean is willing, more than willing, to put on a fake badge and create a string of lies. What bothers Sam is not the lies but the disrespect with which Dean treats the lawmen. Watch Sam’s face as the boys stomp off the bridge. He looks ready to chew nails. Dean, to snap him out of it, chuffs him across the head. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time. I personally think that Sam treats authority figures with respect (and expects Dean to) because that’s part of his master plan at being normal. As if, in a normal world, no one dissed the police or made disparaging remarks about Federal marshals. Sorry Sam, it doesn’t work like that.

We get to see the boys researching together, both in the café scene and at the library while they search the Internet. While they’re at the café, talking to strangers, they act as if they are two parts of one body. They even say the same thing at the same time, and don’t appear to think anything of it. Later, they do research at the library. Dean looks particularly scruffy here, in keeping with how I imagine he might look while on the road. (Dean of Season Three looks far less scruffy, I think, than he should.) Sam, on the other hand, fits right into the scene, as though he’s always lived in a library like this. There, when no one watching, there is more friction between them. Dean proves that he’s, frankly, horrible at the multi-layered thought processes that searching the Internet can sometimes require. Sam, on the other hand, yeah, he knows that sometimes a single word change can open up whole new vistas. Watching the boys do this foreshadows the uphill battle they’ll have to learn how to work together. Dean, for my money, is already in his half of the harness; all he’s got to do is to convince Sam to put on his. Permanently.

That night they go back to the bridge to check things out. Two fun things occur here. Dean and Sam have a very intense dither. Sam thinks that keeping The Mom’s memory alive is silly; Dean thinks otherwise. He slams Sam up against a bridge pylon with enough intensity to shake the whole bridge. And I love how close they are, how inside of each other’s personal boundaries they push. And how after, they separate like two young rams having gone at it in springtime. Their breaths huff out in clouds, and they glare. (Whoever filmed this must have known what they were doing because the slamming maneuver tells its own story about how worked up the boys are. Plus, lucky me, it’s in many, many more eps after this.) The second fun thing is when the Impala starts on its own and chases the boys down the bridge. Watch them run. I did. Over and over and over again. Long-legged Sam is in the lead in short order as always. But Dean? Those churning thighs of his are powerful enough to leave dents in the pavement.

They reach the motel in Jericho and find The Dad’s leavings. There’s old hamburger, the mess, the “do not disturb” sign that tells me he never lets the maids in. There’s much research on the walls, enough of it to tell me The Dad was on to something a little bit trickier than the Woman in White, who is our very first Monster of the Week (MOW). All that research makes me think of The Dad’s patience to talk to every one concerned and connected with the dead guys. Sam, naturally, takes all of this in and figures it out right away what’s going on, what The Dad was after. (And I don’t think it’s that Dean is stupid or oblivious. But when I watch this scene, Dean seems absorbed in the paper on the walls for its own sake, and as a way of connecting with The Dad. Sam, being more objective at this point, takes one look at it and unlocks the puzzle. Plus, when he apologizes to Dean we get the whole, “No chick flick moments,” from Dean. And then the classic bitch/jerk exchange, which is Winchester-speak for I care, I really care.)

Check out the photograph that Sam finds tucked inside the mirror over the dresser. The only way it could have gotten there is if The Dad put it there. It’s got a wrinkle and a fold; I’ll wager that The Dad carries it around in his journal until he gets to each motel. Then he carefully takes it out and puts it up somewhere where he can see it from anywhere in the room. (There are other pics in the journal as well. The two I can mostly see seem to be of The Dad as a Marine. I think it’s to Show’s credit that these small details are in place. They don’t move the plot forward, but boy do they tell us about the characters.) In the picture are The Dad, who holds Sam on his lap, and Dean. They are dressed as if for camping; the background looks like it might be early autumn. But they are not camping, as we know. Instead they are staying at a backwoods cabin, or perhaps in a skanky motel somewhere. They look pretty happy being together, for all that they are dressed in Salvation Army seconds. Okay, honestly? The Dad looks happy. The boys look a little dubious about the whole thing. Or maybe it is just that they are tired from training in sparring, guns, map reading, fire building, bow hunting, etc. They all look like they could use a hot meal and a bath. I wonder what Sam makes of the memories that pile up as he looks at this picture, which he does for some time. I just know that I adore this picture beyond reason; it tells a story about their lives that pulls me into it.

One particularly fun scene is where Dean gets arrested. There’s something so very bad boy about him getting slammed down onto the lid of a police car. More adorable is his quick phone call to Sam to cheese it on account of the cops are coming. Sam, who ran away from home to find normal and safe now finds himself trapped in a motel room with evidence to hand that the Winchesters (and thusly him) are not only not normal, they are dangerous. Where he hides or how he manages to get out of there is not shown, though I have images in my head of those long legs disappearing through a very narrow bathroom window. And Sam sweating from head to foot. (And what’s wrong with that, I ask you? Nothing.)

At the police station, Dean is confronted with The Dad’s journal. Which, as you may or may not know, is one of The Dad’s most prized possessions. He never lets it out of his sight. The fact that he has now is not lost on Dean, and he proceeds to bullshit his way through the interrogation. (Perhaps not very well but with much Deanish charm.) When Sam calls in a fake emergency, Dean is able to get free, even though he is handcuffed to the table. How? Because The Dad’s journal has paperclips, and that’s all Dean needs. Watch him climb down from that wall, almost one-handed, a bejeaned and fast monkey. Then watch him pull out The Dad’s journal. Where did he stuff it? In his pants. Oh, Dean.

Sam’s scene with Mr. Welch is pretty good too, showing us two things. First, that Sam can get anyone, even a crotchety widower, to talk to him about the most personal subjects. Second, that while talking to this guy, Sam does not hesitate to deal in hard truths, like Mr. Welch’s unfaithfulness, and the fact that his wife probably killed their kids. Watch Sam bring Mr. Welch to ground with the power of his eyes and his voice. He steps fairly quickly into this role of getting the information the Boys need, and he’s not afraid to press it. And third, that the guest stars on this show simply rock. The guy who plays Mr. Welch puts his all into what is, surely, a one off acting gig, but he never plays it shallow. He sets the precedent for excellence, and sets that bar so high, the next guest actor will need wings to fly over it. (And, lucky for us, most of them do. Such is the quality of Show.)

While Sam’s driving the Impala, he picks up the ghost. She wants to go home, but she can’t. The she attacks Sam, and boy can he scream! (Padalecki always goes deep for his screams. I appreciate that about him, he goes all out.) Dean arrives to rescue Sam, shooting Casper in the face, cause he’s a freak like that. Supposedly the ghost can only attack you if you’ve been unfaithful. Sam says that he has not been, not ever. And she replies, “You will be.” I’ve never figured out what that means, nor heard any theories about it that made any sense. If Sam will be unfaithful to Jessica, at this point, it would only be to her memory. No one expects you to remain faithful to a dead chick, even one as saintly as Jessica, so what’s up with that. However, before we get any answers, Sam drives the Impala into the house, thus taking the ghost home once and for all.

As they drive off, I get a lovely, iconic moment of Sam and his maps. The moment is so imbedded in my mind that sometimes I dream about it. There’s nothing much too it, really. Just Sam with the flashlight tucked beneath his ear, his shoulder crooked up so he can use both hands to set their course, a little like, hell, exactly like, a skilled navigator upon whom the pilot (that’s Dean) depends. But in the circle of that flashlight, Sam is absorbed by the squiggles and lines and boundaries, and I realize it’s the paper that makes him feel safe. Paper is patient and it never bites you.

Sam wants Dean to take him home. Dean doesn’t want to; he wants Sam to stay with him. But, because he loves Sam more than life, he takes Sam home. Sam is welcomed by the classic pile of chocolate chip cookies and the sounds of Jessica showering. As he sits on the bed and eats a cookie, his mouth moves in such a way that it’s vicarious gastronomy. You can almost taste the butter and the salt and the fine tartness of semi-sweet morsels. Alas, as he lies back on the bed, St. Jess is on the ceiling, dripping blood, and then she bursts into flames. We then get to see a repeat of the opening sequence, wherein Dean rescues Sam from the fire. There is much shrieking and struggling, but Sam is safe, even though Jess is dead and his little normal life is now in ashes. Sam is a beautiful wreck and takes the firsts steps towards his final destination of going darkside.

Overall, this is one of my favorite episodes. I think because it was their first episode that they filmed, there’s a purity to it. Show is not trying to recreate last week’s success, nor overcome any earlier failings. Show doesn’t even seem much worried whether people will like it or not. Show merely comes forward and says I have a story to tell about two brothers, and here it is, you can take it or leave it. I left it the first time around, and I will be forever grateful to my friend in Houston for insisting that I give it another try. I hate to think about where I’d be without Show. Plus, I like to imagine that somewhere, out there, there are two brothers in a black Impala, driving along roads shadowed by sun-split clouds, chasing the wind along, and doing a hundred things that I have never dreamed of.

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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