Supernatural: All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1

The Small Rain Down Can Rain

by  Sylvia Bond

All True Fans know this episode as the One Where Sam Dies. No lie, he dies. In retrospect, we all know that he lives, but at the time, oh man. Watching Sam die at the end of this ep was like watching the semi run into the Impala at the end of Season 1. It went beyond impactful, proving that there are some episodes that, like the movie Schindler’s List, you only need to see once. Yeah, the episode was that good, and I’m of the staunch opinion that most TV out there is, in comparison and in the sage words of Wednesday Addams, puerile and lacking the Aristotelian Unities. Show, I’m glad to say, is not and does not.

Still, that I needed to watch this ep again to review it had me crawling towards my writing deadline with about as much enthusiasm as an unwilling bride going down the aisle at a shotgun wedding. Not that my love for Show (or indeed the boys) has waned, more in that that in knowing what I know about what happens to the boys after this ep, watching it sends me beyond the edge of experiencing just too much sorrow and pain. Because it is here, this is the moment when everything in Sam and Dean’s life begins a hasty and jagged edged slide into unparalleled darkness, where there is no redemption or rest or surcease. And neither boy deserves a life even remotely that hard. Not after all the people they’ve saved.

Given what we know now about the boys’ history, the opening scene is especially poignant. Dean and Sam stop at a café. In the rain. Dean sends Sam inside with some money so that Sam can get him a burger with extra onions and also some pie, because Dean loves him some pie (which he adorably pronounces pah). There’s good brotherly banter between them as Sam complains about sharing the car with the smell of those onions (both from Dean’s breath and, one assumes, Dean’s farts). Both Sam’s prissy glare and Dean’s confident, big brother smirk are priceless, especially in light of the fact that it will be a good long time before we see either. And never again with as much innocence as we see here.

I mean, seriously, are you ready for this kind of darkness? I wasn’t. Just looking at the pictures made me want to cry all over again. Because that exchange between them is their last real moment together before, yeah, all hell breaks loose and both of their lives become ripped to pieces and nothing will ever be the same again. Two seconds later, Sam is gone and the café is littered with dead bodies, puddles of fast-cooling blood, and worst of all, sulphur, which is a sure sign of a demonic presence.

Dean’s job, which was always to protect Sam, is now to find him so that he can protect him once again. Dean as big brother is, needless to say, frantic, and when I say frantic, I mean getting no sleep and not shaving and going at a thousand miles an hour each day, looking at maps and standing in the rain, and being on the phone with Ash, and trying to do a million things at once to figure out where Sam has gone.

There’s two things I like about this scene. The first is Ash on the phone. Ash is a wonderful character. I’m not sure if it’s the mullet, or the gravelly, pot-stained voice, or the fact that he’s not impressed by much because he’s three times as smart as anyone around him, and also instantly knows where the nearest Waffle House is within any 50 mile radius. (Have you had their scattered, smothered, and covered hash browns yet? Oh, you should, you really should.)

Anyway, I like Ash, I like him being smart, and here, as he’s all freaked out, because that tells me that something is really up. He refuses to tell Dean over the phone, and yeah, it’s a little like one of those frustrating scenes where one character tells the other character, “I talk about it over the phone, meet me by the warehouse at midnight, and I’ll tell you what I know.” Which is really just a writer’s trick to stretch out the plot a little because who in their right mind would imagine that the phone line is already bugged? The FBI can’t get a tap on the phone that fast, and if the demons you imagine are following you want to know what you know, then they already know it. The meeting places, besides, always lead to the death of the person refusing to tell what they know over the phone; it’s as sure a sign as a guy in a red shirt of impending doom.

The second thing I like is Dean. In the rain. I have a penchant for directors (and producers and makeup people, etc.) who understand that if it’s raining, the characters should get wet. There’s no point in trying to hide the fact that it’s coming down cats and dogs in Real Life and that there are huge lakes of puddles under everyone’s feet, and the sky is full of angels. Weeping. (This is almost as frustrating as fake rain, which always falls in a circle around the actor instead of on the actor, and no one gets wet.) So props to Show for keeping it real and giving me the other thing I have a penchant for and that is Wet Dean.

Ackles might be standing under some kind of canvas tarp to keep the camera from getting wet while they filmed this scene, but whether the Makeup People spackled the actor with some substance to make him look rained on, or Ackles actually went out and danced in the rain makes no never mind to me. I’m happy either way because Dean looks damp and bedraggled, a rain-dappled mess with his hair spiky with wet, circles under his eyes, and rainwater dripping down his face like a precursor to tears. As he should look, all things considered. It’s this detail that demonstrate that Show is paying attention to what it is doing. (And giving me what I like, of course.)

Dean and Bobby drive to The Roadhouse to meet up with Ash. Naturally when they get there, the place is burned to the ground on account of Ash wearing his red shirt and all. I did sing a little hosanna at the time because I and The Roadhouse did not get along. Hunters passing through The Roadhouse a time or two, as Ellen once said, I could get behind. Instead, I felt that Show was trying to create in The Roadhouse a fixed spot where Hunters might gather, perhaps for future episodes, but it always seemed a little forced to me because Hunters, like moose, don’t gather. So I was glad to see the demise of The Roadhouse, although now it makes me a little sad because I miss the relatively carefree good old days with Ellen and Ash and Jo (oh, yes, her!), even though Dean never much liked “those people,” as he called them.

Dean and Bobby strut amongst the ashes checking the bodies, which seems a little risky given that the wood is still smoking, which would indicate that it’s still hot, flammable hot. At any rate, they look for Ellen but don’t find her. They do find Ash’s corpse, which is easily identifiable on account of the watch he wears. Ash doesn’t seem the type to care what time it is, so the whole watch wearing thing (and I don’t think we ever saw him wearing a watch before), is, like Sam’s money clip, a tad much like a plot device. At the same time, it leaves me hope that maybe the body they identified wasn’t Ash. (Uh, is there a pun there? Can you see it?) It’s been two seasons since this moment, and I’m still waiting for Ash to return.

Dean and Bobby have a conversation that might approach Dithering Status, had Dean been talking to Sam. But no, Sam is missing, and we can only call what occurs between Dean and Bobby a discussion. (Not, as you might note, capitalized.) In the midst of this somewhat frantic exchange, Dean has a vision. No, he’s not turned in to a Sidekick Kid, but it does give them enough clues as to where Sam is. Part of the scene flails at dubiousness, because from Dean’s description of : “I see a bell with an engraving on it,” Bobby somehow instantly knows that the engraving is of an oak tree and that Sam is in Cold Oak, South Dakota.

How does he know? Most bells have engravings on them, either dedicating them to someone or to mark an historic event. I could have bought Bobby’s knowing exactly which bell it was (among the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands that exist) had Dean given Bobby more details, as in: ”It’s a brass bell and I see an engraving of a tree, and it looks old…” As it was, my suspension of disbelief was stretched pretty far.

Still, Magical Bobby’s vast knowledge of bells leads Dean and Bobby straight to Cold Oak, where they soon stumble upon Sam, battered and bruised and staggering from his trials without his Dean, and we’ll get to his story in a minute, but first, a few words about Dean. Dean is the best big brother, ever, hands down. He takes his job of looking out for Sammy very, very seriously, and never a moment passes that that duty escapes his mind. He’s always attentive to it, even, alas, at great cost to himself.

Being someone’s savior like that is a burden and while Dean’s willing to shoulder it, I don’t think he realizes how much it costs him. Never more so as when he feels he’s fallen down on the job and Sammy is in danger and it’s All His Fault. Not that it is Dean’s fault; the demon took him when Dean happened to glance away for a bare second, which could happen anywhere, any time. But in Dean’s mind? He probably feels he deserves what he’s going to get, and he will never, ever forgive himself for what happened to Sam. And he just does not need that! (And it’s not even that he’s as pretty as he is that I think this.)

As for Sam, my beloved boy, he arrives, as he soon realizes, in Cold Oak, with his clothes soaked through by the damp ground and his Samhair doing wonderfully artistic things in the damp air. As a Samhair episode, this one ranks pretty high, there’s so much variety and loveliness there, that I found myself quite distracted from the serious and dire circumstances in which Sam finds himself. For not only has he been transported to Cold Oak without a visible means of transportation, he has the company of not only his old pals Andy, the gentle lad with mind control powers, Ava, the fresh-cheeked gal from Peoria, but also his new friends Jake, the soldier from Afghanistan, and Lily, the chick who gets hung from the windmill. They are, they discover, all Sidekick Kids, and they spend a lot of time in the cold, damp environs actively arguing who has the worst “gift” (Windmill Chick does), why they are there, and whether they should try to leave or whether they should stay together.

My favorite reaction, besides Sam’s pragmatic one, is Andy’s. Like Ash, he’s one of those secondary characters that Show casts and writes for so well, underplayed and subtle, and Andy’s sunshiny nature is a welcome respite of the darkness all around him. I always laugh at his insistence that he doesn’t remember anything past his last bong, and that he feels he’s woken up in Frontier Land, or his attempts to tell the story (mostly to Sam) of planting gay porn into the mind of someone who he feels was mean and rather deserved it.

He still retains his innocent demeanor and bright outlook from before and willingly steps in line behind Sam’s leadership. Not so easily the rest of the gang, who don’t believe Sam about the demon, don’t want to believe, or don’t care. A lot of their willingness to follow Sam depends on the needs of the plot, but in general, the group displays some pretty realistic effects of group dynamics, going apart and coming together as they adjust to each other and their circumstances.

But dry, psychological observations aside, I couldn’t get over how huge Sam’s eyes looked in this ep, almost as if he was trying very hard to retain his wide-eyed innocence as long as he could. But in spite of his attempts, in spite of his desire to hold onto his belief that the world is a beautiful and gentle place, in spite of his insistence on being shocked each and every time he is hurt by a punch in the jaw or the death of a loved one, Sam knows more about what’s happening to them than he cares to.

He takes it as his job to keep his little flock of Sidekick Kids together, but naturally one of them, Jake, takes off and is instantly beset by a child demon, and it takes Sam rescuing Jake to show everyone else that they’re all in Serious Trouble and that Demons are Real. Next up, Lily decides to go it alone and the next thing we see is her hanging from a windmill. It’s like watching one of those thrillers where one by one, each of the characters die.

It’s Sam’s leadership abilities that are being put to the test here. Normally, he’s second in command, and while he may balk and chafe in the harness, both he and Dean know that Dean’s the lead wolf, pretty much most of the time However, and as I’ve observed before, on his own, he stands a little taller and takes his place at the head of the line. Even Jake observes, at one point, during a cozy little tete a tete in a barn, that Sam’s got the right idea on how to make things work, how to keep things calm.

But Sam’d much rather have Dean there, and there’s a very cute scene where Sam says to Andy that he’d give his arm for a cell phone. Then Andy says that he might be able to send a message through his mind if Sam had anything of Dean’s, or anything Dean touched. At that point, Sam pulls out a receipt that Dean signed, and it’s interesting that Sam’s got one of Dean’s receipts in his pocket, (is Sam the keeper of them, and if so, why? It’s not like they ever have to balance their respective checkbooks!). At the same time, it seems rather short sided of Andy (and Sam!) to not realize that both of the qualities in an object that Andy is looking for (that is, anything of Dean’s, anything Dean’s touched) can be found in Sam himself. I mean, right?

Sam and Ava soon have a little chat, their faces lit by firelight. As a leader, he takes it upon himself to inform Ava that her fiancée is dead and naturally, Ava falls apart and clings to Sam, and who wouldn’t, given the same opportunity. Sam is stoic and tall, and it grieves him tremendously to cause anyone pain, even if it is something as pragmatic like what he’s doing here. Sam rises to the occasion though, probably thinking that if this is as hard as it gets, he’s doing pretty good. But even Sam knows (and his face reflects this) that it’s going to get a whole lot darker before it gets lighter. And it might not ever get lighter.

Critical to the story is what happens next. The YED shows up to give Sam a little pep talk about how the YED is rooting for Sam and how Sam is his favorite, and how he needs a leader for his demon army. Sam, as he follows the YED outside, is at turns terrified and aghast, and, deliciously, really, really pissed off. One of my favorite bits is when the YED points and gestures as he’s walking towards Sam and Sam’s eyes never leave the YED’s hands, as if it were the hands that are the source of the YED’s power. My other favorite bit is where Sam tells the YED that he ruined Sam’s life, and his eyes narrow and his chin comes up, and just Get the Hell Out of the Way when Sam does that because it’s now that the inner darkness comes to the fore and if Sam felt he had any leverage at all, he would have made good his threat and torn the YED to shreds.

Then the YED, in a charitable mood, takes Sam back in time to the nursery where his mother died on the ceiling. It’s a high-dev instant replay, Sam is told, and there’s nothing he can do to change any of what happens there. I love the image of Sam’s nursery filled with shelves of plush lovies, which tells me he was a well loved child. The Mom enters sleepily to inquire after Sam, only to realize seconds later that she’s talking to the YED she met before she and The Dad were married.

The gifts Sam receives from the trip into the past are dark. First, he gains the knowledge that he was fed demon blood as a baby, and I’m still not sure whether this tainted blood becomes, in the future, a seed or a trigger or what. I just know that in Sam’s mind it’s the Worst Thing Ever and puts a yet another really huge brick in the wall between him and Being Normal. The second gift is seeing with his own eyes the creepy reality of a woman being pulled up a wall and smashed against the ceiling. No kid needs to see his mother die, let alone in a horrific way like that.

But what I love about this scene, what I have always, always loved, so much so that I have anticipated writing about this next bit for about two years, is the coolness of what happens next. The Mom is on the ceiling, and the YED says that he doesn’t think Sam wants to see this part. The YED waves his hand for them to get transported to their own time. But between that moment and the next, where Sam wakes up back in Cold Oak, there is a second where Sam could have watched his mother die, with blood dripping out of her abdomen and everything. But, being Sam, he takes the harder path, and that is not watching. He pulls his eyes away and his chin drops to his chest, almost in submission. Since then, I’ve always carried in my mind’s eye the strength behind that gesture, and felt that running through Sam’s character, underneath all that softness, was an iron backbone. Anyone else would have succumbed to the temptation. Not Sam. (And I always wonder whether this was the director’s choice or Padalecki’s.)

Sadly, all the fun must end as Ava turns out to be very much aware of the YEDs desire to have one of the Sidekick Kids battle their way to the top. Also sadly, she’s able to get rid of Andy pretty quickly (and with lots of blood and gore). When Sam finds out what she’s done, his face once again holds that shocked expression that mirrors his surprise at being tricked once again. He so longs for it to be otherwise, but the world is not a gentle place. Jake quickly steps in and snaps Ava’s neck for her, leaving Sam and Jake to realize that it’s down to the two of them.

Naturally, Sam is willing to negotiate and parlay and make a deal with Jake because he feels that together the two of them can best the YED. He even places his rusty knife on the muddy ground and convinces Jake to put his rusty iron bar down too. It is so Sam, so like Sam to trust like this, and so like his destiny to be proven wrong once again as Jake punches Sam in the face hard enough to throw the dear boy 50 feet. (Well, it is Thursday, and we must have our dose of Sam whumpage!) The battle ensues, and Sam does his best, lashing out with those long legs of his, and just for a moment, you think he’s won. After all, this is Show and this is Sam, and the good guys always win, right?

Oh, how wrong that idea is! At the very last moment, the brothers are reunited, but not in a way either of them (or me) would have wanted. Dean appears, calling for Sam and distracts Sam long enough for Jake to bury the knife in Sam’s back. Look away if you are squeamish because this is the moment, so horrible and wrong, that to me it feels like it’s tainted everything that happened after. (Which it has.)

Sam tumbles to his knees and Dean runs as fast as he can to catch him. And catch him he does, in his capable big brother arms, but it is too late, because Sam is already fading away, eyes flicking, unable to focus. I could not describe this scene and do it justice, really, but what struck me most was the paleness of Sam’s skin, and the rim of blood lining his lips. And the way Dean held Sam and shook him and pushed back his hair, half-scolding in his disbelief, and held on some more, even though it is totally obvious that it was far, far too late for anything to be done.

There is grief, and then there is Dean in this scene, already aware, yet still in denial. As for Dean’s mantear of pain, this was one time when I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want Sam’s death to be the reason it was there, but I’ll admit, it was perfect. Dean was perfect. Sam was perfect. Hell, the whole thing was perfect, and perfectly sad and I hated enjoying it at all, because at the time, I had no idea how Show was going to get the brothers out of this particular pit of despair.

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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