‘Humor. It is a difficult concept. It is not logical.” - Saavik

It’s All About Jo, Isn’t It? Damn.
by Sylvia Bond
Supernatural Episode Review, Season Two - Episode 6
“No Exit”

Simply because you’re rich enough to buy a loft in a chi-chi old building in an up and coming area of Philly, it doesn’t mean you deserve to die. You don’t deserve it, even if you are young and blond and have a self-aggrandizing tendency to snap at the maintenance guy over the phone about lights and switches. Because, as everyone knows, maintenance guys and IT guys are this country’s lifeblood, and far be it from me, or anyone, to treat them ill. But that’s how this ep starts, and the blond chick in the artsy fartsy condo is the first one to go. Screaming.

Once she’s dead, the ep moves to the Roadhouse, out front of which Sam and Dean are packing up the Impala and trying to decide where to go next. (Dean’s suggestion is that they go to California to save Katie Holmes, ha ha.) Their lives must be full of a lot of this type of conversation, the whole “where to next?” or “where do we go from here?” as though they were in a never-ending version of “On the Road” with Jack Kerouac, and time and place have less meaning than friendship and redemption. I long to go with them, each and every time.

What bugs me about this scene, though, is the fact that if the boys are packing to go, which they seem to be, then that must mean that they slept in the back room as Ellen once suggested. (What was the room like? I truly want to know, otherwise, I’ll just spend several hours imagining the room that the boys shared: a little, seldom-used room with a rust-lined sink, one bureau, two twin iron bedsteads, and a single window overlooking a back field. Instead, Show denies me this, because that’s what Show does.) Then why does it seem like when they enter the building, Ellen and Jo are completely surprised to see them there?

Jo and Ellen are fighting about, ostensibly, the same things all mother and daughter duos fight about, and that is, whose life is it anyway. Only in this case, the fight is about how Ellen doesn’t want her darling Joanna Beth to be a hunter, which is a little different than the usual mama’s darling who wants to go off to California to be a beautician. Jo shows Sam and Dean her research about the nasty building in Philly, Dean is impressed, and Sam stands by glowering at Jo, which is what he does for pretty much the entire ep.

Possibly the funniest moment in the ep occurs when a family of four wearing t-shirts that say, “Nebraska is for lovers,” enters the Roadhouse, thinking that they might rest their road weary selves and get a bite to eat. Instead, upon seeing and hearing the argument, they realize that this is not the place for young families let alone lovers, and indicate that they’re going to hit the Arby’s down the street. What I love is that the family is so young, so new at this that they actually thought that Nebraska would be a good place for a little road trip, cause they got the t-shirts and everything! Also, I’m tantalized by the thought of their being an Arby’s not far from the Roadhouse. I mean, who doesn’t love Arby’s with their thinly sliced beef, black cows, potato cakes, and of course, Arby’s sauce? Dean and Sam do, for sure, because it is the least fast foody of all the fast food places they could choose from.

But presently, as the argument between Jo and Ellen escalates, the point of the episode becomes clear: It’s about Jo, her struggle to become a hunter, and all the things mothers want for their daughters. (Ellen thinks the Harvelle family has lost enough, which seems strange in light of the fact what the Winchester family has lost.) At school (with her knife collection that made her feel like a freak), Jo probably had a taste of what it was like to know more, be faster, and have seen more than most of her classmates. Now back in the hunter’s world, she wants more of this kind of power and so she’s going after it. But she’s crossing over fences to play with dogs who are much bigger, meaner, and wiser than she and will no doubt find herself hip deep in trouble.

In retrospect, with miles of episodes between us, I can like Jo; she’s a scrappy little thing with a brave heart, good intentions, and snapping, bright eyes, though at the time, and when watching this ep, I have a hard time accepting her as being interesting enough to focus this much attention on. (The actress who plays her is pretty in all the right ways, with a luxuriant head of hair and a sassy smile; she seems to understand just how young and green the character is.) I just didn’t enjoy an entire episode devoted to a character that was clearly not Sam or Dean. Call me single minded, call me a fangirl, call me whatever, but I’ve long felt that this episode, however interesting, rather weakened Season Two’s strong batting average.

Be that as it may, we’re stuck with the whole focus on Jo, and so on we go. Sam and Dean take Jo’s research and head out to Philly to see what’s been killing blond chicks. Once there, they dither boyishly and check out the missing chick’s apartment. Of course the hysterical line, “It’s the staypuff marshmellow man,” is delivered with much drama and sarcastic agony, which, given its source, indicates that Dean feels entirely comfortable doing his job with Sam at his side. And then along comes Jo, insinuating herself into not only the gig, but also the dither! She’s got some nerve, I’d say, except she’s brought enough money to allow them to rent the condo of one the dead girl. What’s annoying here is watching her play with her knife, like that’s going to impress anyone, and that damn, toothy, prideful smile, like she just didn’t make Dean lie for her (which makes him, to his credit, extremely uncomfortable and why on earth is Dean lying for a stupid girl whom he hardly knows, I ask you?) The only saving grace is watching Sam glare some more at Jo.

Lord, no one can glare like that boy. It’s like watching a pit bull watching you from the other side of the fence. If he could get at you through the holes in the chain link, he would. Same here with Jo. And I can’t figure if he’s peeved simply because she’s there, making herself useless and obnoxious, or whether it’s because she’s SO got the hots for Dean, and for some reason that bothers Sam. Not that he’s opposed to seeing Dean hook up, gracious, he’s seen that plenty of times. But I think it’s Jo herself that bothers him with her whole “I come from a hunter family, therefore, I am one of you.” She’s got notions of grandeur, and pretensions of belonging, she’s a poseur and so durn obvious. But Sam’s a gentleman, so he merely glares.

Early the next morning, we get a ceiling-cam shot of Dean screwed up like a pretzel and trying to sleep on the fold out comfy chair. It always peeves me mightily that if Jo got the bed (so much for equality of the sexes!) and Dean had to sleep in the chair, that Jo never actually SLEPT. If that was going to be the case, then why didn’t she give up the bed and let the boy get a good night’s rest? And where did Sam sleep? On the floor? This question has never been answered to my satisfaction.) At any rate, I love it that the first thing out of Dean’s mouth is, “Where’s Sam?” Dean knows what’s important, and it’s surely not bratty Jo tossing her pig sticker around like it’s going to scare anyone. Dean shows her HIS knife, which is big and manly, and then finds out that the pig sticker once belonged to Bill Harvelle, and then the whole scene unveils itself as to being what it’s really about, and that is Dad issues.

Oh, we know that Dean has Dad issues (or, in Dean’s case, The Dad issues), now we learn that Jo does, too. For some reason her idea of fun morning conversation is to reminisce about how her Dad reminded her of Steve McQueen, and how she loved the smell of his leather jacket. That Dean responds to her question when she wants to know what first comes to his mind when he thinks of The Dad surprises me. Why on earth would he share something like that with such an annoying person? But I want to hear the answer, because I can imagine all sorts of interesting scenarios of danger and daring do and all that. Instead, I get the softness in Dean’s eyes as he regales her with the tale of how The Dad took him shooting for the first time when Dean was five or six. Shooting at bottles on a fence, where Dean bulls eyed every one. All well and good, right?

Sadly, no. Or, in my case since I’m a mean fangirl and like to see angst, it’s happily no. Dean says that after he got all bulls eyes, that The Dad smiled at him…and then Dean’s voice trails away and his face falls, rather like something was amiss on that day. Like, maybe The Dad wasn’t really proud of him? Or, most likely, the expression that John gave his son was a sad one, because he’d trained his boy so well, that at six he was crack shot. A crack shot for killing evil sonsofbitches and saving people from their own frailties, and with no life to call his own. Not that Jo would ever understand anything as subtle as Dean’s expression, no, she’s too gung ho on being a hunter and, literally, too blonde even for that.

The door opens and in walks Sam. Dean’s voice goes back to its normal, early morning growl as he asks, “Where’s the coffee?” Sam glares at Jo, delicious in periwinkle; Dean is equally stunning in his raspberry shirt. What is Jo wearing? I’m afraid I don’t care. It’s at this point I must bring up Show’s inability to make any real use of Sam’s character this ep. Sam stands to the back, he stands to the side, he throws in a comment or two, lets Ash do his research for him long distance, and if this dearth of Sam is the result of increasing a secondary character’s role, then I don’t want it! But I note, that in spite of this, in spite of being relegated to the back row, Padalecki still comes up with the goods. In fact, perhaps because of the paucity of lines to speak and actions to perform, he’s gone and refined Sam down to quintessential elements. He uses his height and strength of presence and the steadiness of his expression to demonstrate that Sam could easily become a colossal pain in Jo’s side if she makes one wrong move or puts Dean in danger in any way. And I like the fact that Sam’s glares sent her way are a thing of grace and beauty, just like him. Sam barely talks to Jo as they research, and all of his important observations are directed at Dean, which is as it should be. If Sam talks to Jo at all, it’s with a “you better be out of my hair when tomorrow comes” gleam in his eye.

One of my favorite conversations occurs in the hallway, as Dean and Jo check out the building. She’s making flirty comments about him riding her so hard he should buy her dinner, and then she turns right around and slams him for being such a chauvinist. It’s a cheap trick she plays, because you can’t have it both ways, you know? Anyway, she thinks that Dean’s being protective because she’s a woman and women can’t do the job. Then he turns around and says, as clear as daybreak, “This ain’t gender studies. Women can do the job fine, amateurs can’t.” Then he goes on to tell her that she should take the options that life is giving her, and she comes back with the fact that he hunts so why can’t she, yadda, yadda, yadda. What I love though, is the succinct tone of Dean’s answer. I’m sure lots of men have come up against the whole “you think I can’t do this because I’m a woman,” argument, and it takes a real man to not only know when this isn’t true, but to admit when it is. (Is it ever, though?) I think Dean is one of those men. Hunting is one of those occupations that seems to be non-gender based, if you’re adept and skilled, nobody cares whether you sit to pee or you stand. Can you kill the MOW? Can you exorcise a demon? You’re hired, end of story.

Eventually, using Sam’s brain and Ash’s computer (for some reason), the three of them figure out that a mass murderer was once hung on the plot of land where the artsy farsty condos now stand. (The picture of a murdered woman that Sam pulls up is, I must note, actually of Elizabeth Stride who died on September 30, 1888, in London, England. Her death purportedly came at the hands of Jack the Ripper, who was also a serial killer of some repute. Show should know, really, that anyone interested in supernatural stuff is also likely to be up on creepy stuff like old mortuary snaps of serial killer victims. Tsk tsk, Show, for trying to slide that one by us.)

Jo and the boys go clomping around the building in great haste because it turns out that the MOW had a tendency to keep young women alive for days, and that the last VOW (victim of the week) might still be alive. Sam goes off on his own, and Dean and Jo (sadly) are clomping together behind the walls, which is very dusty and spidery-webby, much to the credit of the Set Dressers. It also reminds me of the Wes Craven film, “The People Under the Stairs,” where much of the getaway chase action takes place in a setting just like this. Anyway, at one point Jo tries to squeeze past Dean, and the fit is so tight, he says, to himself, “I should have cleaned the pipes.” Which means who-knows-what-the-hell; fangirls have been debating this for ages, and if anyone could tell me for sure, then I’d be happy to call that person my friend. In the meantime, my fangirl brain can make up a whole bunch of naughty reasons, none of which are suitable to discuss in polite company.

Jo goes off stupidly on her own and gets grabbed by the MOW, who, by the way, in case we forgot, has a thing for petite blondes. I simply can’t feel for her on account of she totally ignored every bit of training she might have ever gotten, plus she ignored Dean’s warnings to stay with him. She deserves it, just a little, don’t you think? But at least it allows Sam and Dean to hook up again and do a little research, JUST the two of them, which is the way it always should be. Sam looks particularly tawny and luscious in this scene, made all the more beautiful by his absence as he trots out what he knows about the sewers of Philly. Alas, THEN comes the phone call from Ellen, who has found out ALL from Ash, who, apparently, folds like a cheap suit. (Ash isn’t really in this ep, except, sadly, in spirit.) Dean says “sorry” and promises to get Jo back, at which point Ellen barks out “That’s not the first time I heard that from a Winchester.”

Thusly, a part of a secret is out, and while we don’t (at this point in the storyline) know exactly what happened, we find out enough here to tantalize and tease. Ellen is angry enough to chew nails and spit them out at the next Winchester she sees, because Sam and Dean have taken Jo under their wing, lied to her about it, and now they’ve lost Jo. The reasons why she’s completely immune to the Winchester’s charm becomes clear: from her perspective, Winchesters not only lie at will, they put you and your loved ones in danger. To see my darling boys through her eyes is a scary prospect indeed, because it is somewhat true. To do their job, they just might put you into danger, after sweet talking you and batting their pretty eyes at you, and then Sam will lean in close, and tip his head in that endearing way he has, say something soft and convincing, and you will be as helpless as a fish on a hook to resist him. And then you might end up like Jo, trapped in a cement coffin, essentially buried alive, with no way out. Welcome to the Winchester’s world, schweetie.

On the hierarchy of being important, Jo is not. I’ll just be honest and say that if it were Sam or Dean trapped in the metal coffin, I’d be a whole lot more worried. But it’s just her, so I’m not. While she’s being buried alive (defending herself from the pervy MOW who, with his brittle, blackened skin, yellow teeth, and nasty beard, reminds me a lot of the dead guy in the 1986 camp horror movie “House”), Sam and Dean are on the hunt. They go prospecting through the streets of Philly trying to find the sewer line that will lead them to the underground bunker where they’ve cleverly deduced that Jo is being kept.

That’s a bit of a stretch of believability, on account of where did they get the metal detector, and how come no one notices them carrying so much gear through the daylit streets of Philly? But never mind that just now, Dean and Sam are unbelievably handsome against a blazing blue sky, and then they do a reverse Shawshank Redemption maneuver by crawling through sewer pipes to get to Jo. (Because if they don’t find Jo, Ellen will tear them to shreds with her teeth. And did I forget to mention? She’s flying in as fast as she can to make sure of her daughter’s safety. There’s nothing scarier than a mother who’s protecting, or avenging, her offspring.)

Naturally, Sam and Dean arrive just in time to save the day, shooting salt at the MOW, and getting both Jo and the other chick, Theresa, out of there. I like the moment where Sam picks up Theresa to carry her to safety, she practically disappears in his manly arms. Like, GUH, right? Then Dean decides that it would be a good idea to use Jo as bait, because the MOW still likes blondes. She’s not adverse to it, and Dean shows his true hunter colors. I’m not saying he’s putting her at risk just to avoid doing it himself, he’s never that cruel or uncaring. But it does show a certain amount of opportunism, as well as a tendency to use the tools at hand, regardless of what they are. The motto seems to be get the job done, and hang the danger.

Once the MOW is trapped by the line of salt (a LOT of salt, handily strung up in canvas rolls that encircle the entirety of what looks to be an octagon with a circumference of roughly sixty to eighty feet - now where the hell did they get that much canvas?), Jo shows her plucky spirit by barking at the MOW from her side of the fence, we get a bit of outsider perspective. Sam asks, “Is it as glamorous as you’d thought it would be?” and Jo allows that it’s a bit grittier than she thought, but she still likes it. What I like here is the way Sam is so businesslike about what he does, not complaining about having been up for who knows how many hours, or bragging that once again he and his brother have prevailed against the forces of evil. Plus he’s smiling, at last, because he knows he will soon be rid of Jo.

And then there’s the hotness of Dean backing up the cement truck. I don’t know many a man who didn’t, at the age of three, dream of being a backhoe driver or a dump truck driver; the cement truck is a cousin to that. There’s something about a man who frowns in concentration when performing the manly act of positioning a HUGE piece of machinery exactly where he wants it, expressing man’s dominion over nature and all that. But aside from the sexiness of that, there’s something interesting about the way Dean drives the dump truck and about the way Sam unhooks the chute to direct the cement into the hole in the ground: did The Dad teach them this? Did they pick it up along the way? I’m sure Show just wrote the whole concept in because it would be amusing to watch the three characters standing around the hole as the cement fills it in, chuckling like the Scooby-Do kids at the end of a successful ghost hunt. Maybe I read between and behind the lines too much, but man, there ain’t nothing sexier than a guy who knows his way around large machinery!

Then of course, there is the drive home, with the four characters in the Impala. Sam’s in the back seat where he used to ride when the family was young, and I’m not sure what my obsession is about this, but I would kill or die to ride in the Impala, even with Ellen pissed as hell and no music to ease the passage of time. There’s a strange dynamic at work; Dean and Sam are completely cowed by Ellen’s anger, and I can’t say I blame them. She’s pretty scary when she’s pissed.

Once back at the Roadhouse, Dean tries apologizing for the trouble and the mess, but Ellen snaps out, “Don’t you say that!” Then she sends them outside so she can yell at her daughter some more. Ellen compares Dean to The Dad when she spits out a warning to Jo, “Like father, like son.” This is quite a mouthful to say, and if Ellen is so angry at John, then why on earth would she have been so welcoming to his boys? Only to turn on them when the chips are down? After all, Dean did bring back his bait alive and safe.

Then comes the confrontation between Jo and Dean as she comes out of the Roadhouse and spills out a tumble of emotional breakage when she tells Dean how her dad died. Bill, apparently, was bait on some gig gone wrong, and The Dad made some mistake and got Bill killed. Now, it could be that this bespeaks of John’s casual attitude towards keeping those close to him safe, as if he said to himself, “Well, I got three friends, I can spare one.” On the other hand, we don’t know Bill’s side of the story. Plus, anything John told Ellen at the time surely contained a great deal of grief and was received with a great deal of anger, which might have skewed the memory, just a tad. And hunting is hard; accidents are common. You don’t go out hunting without knowing the risks. Obviously, Ellen blames John totally for Bill’s death, but it does seem a little out of proportion for her never to consider how easily it could have gone the other way. As for The Dad, he is a darkly flawed character with the best of intentions; but you know what I like best of all? The fact that The Dad, long dead and with NO lines whatsoever, still dominates the landscape of this ep. It makes me wish that I had created this character!

And where is Sam during this conversation? Waiting by the Impala, for some reason not a part of this at all, as if he wasn’t even there, or isn’t related to The Dad, who supposedly did this horrible thing. If you’re going to relegate Sam to the back row, at the very least, maintain the fact that this is the Sam and Dean show NOT the Jo and Dean show, by having a conversation or two between the brothers as to what a pain in the persqueeter Jo is. Or something! Meanwhile, Jo gives Dean the cold shoulder, he walks away, and says, “Fine.” There’s strength there to be able to walk away from of all of Jo’s neediness. Plus, he’s the ultimate badboy with the collar of his leather jacket turned up, bravado and flair in the face of her emo.

But in spite of the pretty, I wonder, at the end of it all, what does it mean and why Show would present it like this. I mean, yeah, John made a mistake, but what exactly Dean (and Sam) is supposed to do about it (besides feel guilty as heck) is beyond me. Should they walk around for the rest of their lives wearing hairshirt on account of something that happened when they themselves were barely out of short pants? Many a fangirl has said to me how weak they feel this episode to be, especially in comparison with the heavy hitting success that is Season Two. This ep gives us a lot of things we didn’t want nor need. We get backstory about a secondary character nobody liked in the first place. We get more drek thrown at The Dad for the sake of drama, blackening his character almost beyond redemption simply so we could watch Ellen come apart. And, most importantly, we get the boys APART, barely interacting with each other, not even to ask to pass the salt.

The problem is not, really, that the entire episode is about Jo and her dad issues. The problem is, more, that while doing this, Show doesn’t, at the same time, delve into what effect this has on the boys. Which, and surely no one would disagree with me on this one, would be far more interesting, and would and could be part of developing their characters. In spite of this, if I look, then I can find, and who could entirely dislike an ep that contains a grumpy, just-awake Dean doing his best in the face of Princess Jo, or a coffee-bearing Sam glaring at anyone who tries to hurt his Dean? Plus, we get some lovely Samhair in this episode, all swirly and untamed, not to mention many freckleishiuos close-ups of Dean. Because, in the end, this is a Supernatural ep, and on any given day, that is more than enough for me.

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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