"What were you thinking, shooting Caspar in the face, you freak!"

Okay, so I'm not even going to pretend to be reacting to all this as if it was the first time of watching. This recap is coming with the benefit of considerable hindsight, and will be written as such, analysing the characters and their actions and reactions from the perspective of having got to know them extremely well over the course of the first two seasons.

Lawrence, Kansas – 22 years ago. This is the origin story. There's nothing quite like a gnarly old tree casting shadows by moonlight to make a perfectly nice normal house look creepy as hell. Inside, pretty blonde housewife Mary Winchester brings her four-year-old son Dean to say goodnight to his baby brother, Sammy. Dad John arrives to join the goodnight party, and it's all very loving and affectionate and homey, the picture-perfect apple-pie family. And it's all about to go to hell in a hand basket.



Left alone, baby Sammy enthusiastically contemplates his toes, and is too little to be creeped out when the mobile above his crib starts moving all by itself, the clock on his wall stops, giving the time as 8.10, and the nightlight starts to flicker.

In bed, Mary hears Sam fussing over the baby monitor; 8.10 seems rather early for Mary to be in bed, but maybe a little time has passed since the clock stopped. Or maybe Sam's not giving anyone much sleep and they're all knackered and thus opting for early nights. Anyway, thus roused, Mary sleepily calls for John to see to the baby, only to find that John's not in bed with her. She gets up to see to Sam herself, this shot giving us a nice view of the photo of John and Mary taking pride of place beside the bed.

Half asleep, Mary stumbles into the nursery, where a shadowy figure she presumes to be her husband is standing over the crib, back to the door. Mary wonders if Sam is hungry, is shhh-ed, stumbles back out, still only half awake, and sees a light flickering at the top of the stairs. She goes and taps the shade, like that's supposed to do anything to fix the light itself since flickering generally indicates a problem with the bulb or wiring – or, in this show's mythology, something supernatural nearby – and then notices that the TV is still on downstairs. Further investigation reveals that John has fallen asleep in front of the TV, and therefore isn't upstairs in the baby's room…

Rather than raise the alarm and tell John about the intruder, Mary simply turns tail and sprints back upstairs to save the baby herself, no time to lose. She reaches the nursery, and…

Downstairs, John is woken by his wife's scream and it is his turn to sprint up to the nursery, wherein he finds baby Sammy gurgling contentedly in his crib. John relaxes, no doubt believing he must have dreamed the scream, or that it was part of the film – until he sees blood dripping onto Sam's pillow. He looks up, and this is where the story truly begins, for Mary is pinned to the ceiling, her stomach sliced open, still struggling silently to breathe, and John collapses to the floor in disbelieving horror.

Up on the ceiling, Mary's body bursts into flames, and here begins the Curse of Women Wearing White. In this show, if a woman is ever seen wearing white it is a sure sign that she is either about to die, or is evil. Sometimes both.

John remains on the floor, frozen with horror, until Sammy's cries rouse him. He snatches the baby up out of the crib and stumbles out into the hallway, where he finds a very confused Dean wondering what's going on. John thrusts baby Sam into Dean's arms, and issues a crisp, direct order. "Take your brother outside as fast as you can. Don't look back. Now, Dean, go!"

This is the single most important formative moment of Dean's life. He's been looking after Sam and trying not to look back at what he's lost ever since this night.

With the responsibility for saving his baby brother's life resting on his infant shoulders, Little Dean turns and starts to run downstairs, carrying a burden far too big and heavy for his four-year-old arms, while John returns to the nursery despite the fact that there is blatantly nothing more he can do for Mary. It's kinda symbolic of how the rest of their lives will work out, in fact: Dean doing his best to take care of Sam, carrying burdens that should never be his, while John remains frozen in the moment of Mary's death, unable to see anything else. The flames appear to engulf him.

Just how Little Dean manages to get out of the house is anyone's guess. Did people in Lawrence not lock their doors at night in 1983? Plus, he can barely manage to hold the baby as it is, never mind getting a hand free to open the door, even if he was tall enough to reach it… And I'm over-thinking. He manages to get them outside and turns to look up at the flames, clutching his baby brother tight. "It's okay, Sam," he reassuringly pipes, setting something of a precedent for himself.

John dashes out through the front door, having miraculously managed not to burn to a crisp, snatches the boys up and whisks them away mere seconds before the upper windows blow out.

Later. Firefighters tend the blaze. John sits in a daze on the hood of his '67 Chevy Impala cradling baby Sam, Dean tucked against his side, trying to come to terms with the end of the world as they knew it.



Stanford University, present day. It's Halloween 2005, in fact. A pretty blonde by the name of Jessica tries to hurry her boyfriend Sam along to a Halloween party. She's wearing a skimpy white fake nurse's uniform, but it's too early in the series for viewers to be concerned about the implications of her wearing white. Sitting casually on the dresser is the same photograph of John and Mary previously seen on their bedside table, thus confirming for the audience that Jessica's Sam is baby Sammy from the teaser, all grown up, in case we were in any doubt. How that photograph survived the fire is anyone's guess, though.

Sam rolls his eyes at the notion of the Halloween party, and, unlike his girlfriend, has not bothered with a costume. "You know how I feel about Halloween," he mildly protests, without elaborating any further.

Halloween party. The place is jumping, Sam the only one not in costume, as Jessica drinks to "Sam, and his awesome LSAT victory." Embarrassed, but pleased, Sam tries to brush off his academic prowess, but Jessica is having none of it, boasting to their drinking buddy about his scores being "scary good."

Drinking Buddy exposits for us that, as a result of his excellent scores, Sam can take his pick of any law school that he wants, and Sam admits that he has an interview here at Stanford on Monday. "If it goes okay I think I got a shot at a full ride next year." Jessica reassures him that it will go great, cementing her for viewers as the loving and supportive girlfriend. Drinking Buddy teases Sam about being the golden boy of his family, but Sam brushes this off with a casual "Oh, they don't know…we're not exactly the Brady's."

So, Sam's estrangement from his family is established. It's probably significant that the photograph he chooses to display in his apartment is of his parents in happier times, the mother he never knew, rather than a later picture of himself with his father and brother, the broken family that he actually grew up in. Drinking Buddy wanders off to get another round of shots, and Jessica takes the opportunity of a moment alone to deliver a little pep talk, telling Sam how proud she is of him and how well he is going to do.

Sam: "What would I do without you?"
Jessica: "Crash and burn."



Later that night, Sam and Jessica lie asleep in bed. Sam is woken by a faint noise and goes to investigate, creeping silently through the house until he sees the silhouette of the intruder. Sam's silhouette attacks the intruder's silhouette, and there's a lot of chop-socky fighting in which it's difficult – thanks to the darkness of the scene – to make out much of anything beyond the fact that mild-mannered genius Sam obviously knows how to defend himself.

Finally the intruder gets the better of Sam, pinning him on the floor…and grinning down at him. "Whoa, easy, tiger."

And thus we are re-introduced to Sam's older brother, Dean, who has grown up to be several inches shorter than his little brother.

Sam snips his surprise about his brother breaking into the apartment in the middle of the night. Dean laughs that Sam is out of practice, so Sam promptly swings and rolls, turning the tables and pinning Dean in his turn. Proud to see that Sam can still hold his own, rather than annoyed at his little brother getting the better of him, Dean just laughs again, and the brothers regain their feet. Estranged Sam might be from his family, but this mini-fight with Dean speaks volumes about their upbringing, a lifetime of well-trained brotherly sparring prior to the estrangement.



"Dean, what the hell are you doing here?" Sam wants to know.
"Well, I was looking for a beer," Dean evades, clapping his hands to Sam's shoulders as if measuring how much his brother has grown. They haven't seen one another for quite some time – anything from two to four years, depending on whether you believe or disregard the continuity error made in the first couple of episodes – making this something of an awkward reunion. Accordingly, Sam is instantly defensive and on guard, while Dean hides whatever he's feeling about this little reunion beneath a studiedly careless and casual manner.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Sam snippily repeats. Sam is very earnest by nature, in contrast to his brother's cheerful laid-backness, and their vastly different personalities are apparent right from the start in this their first scene together. Dean is clearly pleased to see Sam, but the reverse is very definitely not true, and only in part due to the breaking and entering. Sam has been estranged from his family for a reason – or, to be more accurate, estranged from his father and their way of life, with Dean caught in the crossfire.

"All right," says Dean. "We've got to talk."
"Uh, the phone," snits Sam.
"If I'd called would you've picked up?" Dean mildly but pointedly asks.

Sam is saved from having to answer that question when Jessica enters in the room and turns the light on, scantily clad and understandably a little concerned to know what the meaning is of this midnight disturbance. Rather perturbed by this collision of the old life he'd left behind with the new one he's built for himself, Sam stiffly introduces Jessica to Dean, but not Dean to Jessica. Jessica is not a part of Sam's old life, in any way, and he wants to keep it that way. She recognises the name, however, and is surprised, clearly having never expected to actually meet Sam's brother. Makes you wonder exactly what Sam has told her about his family and why he isn't in touch with them.

"You know, I got to tell you, you are completely out of my brother's league," Dean cheerfully leers at Jessica, because she's hot, because it'll embarrass and irritate Sam, which is his sacred duty as the older sibling, and out of habit. And you can tell that he's just flirting for the sake of it and because it's expected of the image he likes to project, rather than being in any way serious, by the way he instantly switches it off again, completely cutting her out of the "private family business" he's come here to discuss.

Sam is having none of it, and goes to stand at Jessica's stand, making a very clear visual statement about where his priorities and loyalties lie. "No, whatever you want to say you can say it in front of her." Using her as a shield behind which he can hide from the life he left behind, without her even knowing it. He knows Dean can't talk about their family openly with Jessica in the room.

"Dad hasn't been home in a few days," says Dean, editing his story for Jessica's benefit, but Sam determinedly misunderstands, sarcastically brushing this off as their dad 'working overtime on a Miller time shift, he'll stumble back home sooner or later.'

It kinda makes you wonder if John really was a heavy drinker at times, prone to disappearing off on days-long benders, or if this is merely the cover story Dean and Sam learned to use growing up to cover John's true activities in the presence of outsiders, a euphemism Sam is now trying to hide behind. 'Unreliable drunk' isn't an image that jibes well with John as we will come to know him over the course of the season, but that isn't saying much. John always remains something of a murky character; we never really learn all that much about who he truly is.

Of course, it could even simply be Sam's way of desperately trying to keep reality at arm's length, not wanting to hear what Dean has got to say, not wanting to comprehend what has brought his brother here so unexpectedly. He left his old life for a reason, and has remained estranged from his family for the same reason.

Anyway, with Sam playing dumb, Dean tries again, selecting his words very carefully. "Dad's on a hunting trip. And he hasn't been home in a few days."

Realising that this conversation is going to happen whether he likes it or not, that Dean is deadly serious about whatever brought him here in the middle of the night and that maybe it's something he needs to know, Sam stops trying to hide from whatever is happening. But he still isn't going to let Jessica have any part of it. "Jess, excuse us. We have to go outside."

For whose sake is Sam lying to Jessica about who he is and what his family does? For hers, to protect her from it? Or for his, because he wouldn't expect her to believe or understand even if he did try to tell her the truth, and is afraid of losing her? Or even because he just doesn't want to think about his family, who they are and what they are doing out there, without him? Easier to pretend they don't even exist, even to himself.

Outside. Dean and Sam head down the fire escape, Sam protesting vociferously about how Dean can't just break in, middle of the night, and expect him to just hit the road with him. Dean feels that Sam is missing the point entirely. "You're not hearing me, Sammy: Dad's missing. I need you to help me find him."

I love that Dean automatically calls Sam 'Sammy'. It feels so natural and brotherly, and warms the cockles of my heart every time.

Dean is asking for help, for support, to not be left alone with this. He's worried, even if he's not really letting it show. After a lengthy estrangement, after that comment about Sam not answering his calls, it has to have taken a lot for him to come here like this. But Sam can't see it, too surprised and annoyed at this turn of events, too proud and stubborn to let go of the past, too determined not to allow his safe, happy new life to be interrupted. "You remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the devil's gates in Clifton? He was missing then, too. He's always missing and he's always fine."

"Not for this long," Dean insists. "Now are you going to come with me or not?"
"I'm not," Sam firmly tells him, flat rejection of that request for help, and Dean wants to know why. "I swore I was done hunting. For good."
"Oh come on, it wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad," Dean protests, rolling his eyes. His past tense there is all about Sam – for Dean the hunting has been ongoing throughout their estrangement. For most of his life, in fact.
"Yeah?" Sam snits. "When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet he gave me a .45…I was nine years old. He was supposed to say 'don't be afraid of the dark'!"
"Don't be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark, you know what's out there," Dean snorts. The supernatural evils that lurk out there in the dark are something he completely takes for granted.

Sam takes the point, because he also grew up knowing only too well how dangerous the dark can be, but continues to voice his protest against their absent father, expositing for the benefit of the audience that after Mary's death John became obsessed with finding the thing that killed her. "But we still haven't found the damn thing. So we kill everything we can find."
"Save a lot of people doing it, too," Dean calmly observes. That, right there, is what keeps Dean going, his primary motivation and greatest source of comfort in a difficult life.

To Sam's way of thinking it is pointless; from Dean's point of view, they've saved a lot of people. Dean isn't in this for the revenge, however much he supports his father's vengeance quest – he's in it for the lives he saves. That's one of his most consistent character points that shines through all season, delivered to us in a nutshell right here in the Pilot. That Sam just wants to get on with his life unfettered by the past is equally a consistent character trait, spelled out for us here so early on, unable to understand why his father and brother feel that knowing about things that go bump in the night should make their family responsible for trying to save people from them. All Sam wants is a normal life to call his own.

Sam seethes, and pulls out the big guns. "You think Mom would have wanted this for us? The weapon training? Melting the silver into bullets? Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors!"
"So what are you going to do?" Dean wants to know. "You're just gonna live some normal apple-pie life? Is that it?"
"No, not 'normal', safe," Sam insists. It's interesting that he makes that distinction, states outright that safety from the dangerous way of life he was raised in is what he is looking for from his new life, because this is, I think, the only time he denies that normality was his ultimate goal.

Just how honest is Sam being here? Was it safety he craved, as he claims, or was it normality he was seeking, as Dean suggests and as Sam himself later acknowledges? Both safety and normality are relative terms, very much in the eye of the beholder, and the two are not necessarily interchangeable. To Sam, normality is what other people have, something he aspires to. For Dean, their family has its own version of normality, which he has learned to be satisfied with and draw comfort from. For Sam, living a normal life among normal people represents safety from the dangers his family actively pursues; for John, as we learn much later in the season, teaching his sons how to hunt and keeping them on a tight reign represented the only kind of safety he could see for them after his wife's bizarre and horrific death. All three define their own versions of safety and normality, and the contradiction between those definitions is where the greatest source of conflict in the family arises

"And that's why you ran away?" Dean accuses. He was part of the life Sam ran away from and severed all ties with, and over the course of the seasons to come we will learn more than enough about Dean to know how deeply that rejection must have hurt.
Sam, though, sees things quite differently. "I was just going to college," he points out, reasonably enough. "It was Dad who said if I was going to go I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing."

The bitterness of that memory is plain to see, for both brothers. Stubborn Sam and stubborn John, with Dean the peacekeeper of the family stuck in the middle, unable to separate the warring factions. Just what led up to and caused Sam's lengthy estrangement from his family is sketched out vividly for us here; later episodes will colour in that sketch in far greater detail. Never once is it suggested that Dean had any part in the arguments that lead-up to Sam's departure. It was John who told Sam to go and not come back, in the heat of that final dispute. But Sam's pride and refusal to back down played just as big a part in their continuing estrangement.

"Well, Dad's in real trouble right now. If he's not dead already. I can feel it." Dean brings them back to what, for him at least, is the crucial point in all this. It has taken John's disappearance to bring him here in search of his brother, and beneath that laid-back exterior enormous anxiety about what might have happened to his father is concealed. "I can't do this alone."
"Yes, you can," Sam insists. And he believes that, absolutely. It's the belief of the little brother that his big brother can do anything, needs nothing. Sam and Dean have never known each other as adults; when Sam left he was still the child of the family, Dean one of the authority figures in his life, and he's still regarding his brother with those eyes – a pseudo-parent, rather than a fallible and vulnerable person, an equal.

Dean's eyes slide away from Sam's as he mutters, "Yeah, well, I don't want to." And that is probably the most emotionally honest thing Dean says about himself for most of the season, if not the entire show. Dean's life has been shaped by loss and rejection, and his greatest fear is losing what little he still has, of being left alone. It was that fear that brought him here tonight.

There's a pause while Sam struggles with himself, wanting so desperately not to get dragged into this, but unable to just turn his back on his brother, at least not when he's appealing for help face to face like this. He might have found it easier if Dean had tried the phone. "What was he hunting?" he asks at last, opting for full disclosure before making any decisions.

Cut to: Dean opening the trunk of John's old '67 Chevy Impala, now passed on to the next generation, to reveal a hidden compartment stuffed full of weapons of all shapes and sizes. While Dean searches for something, Sam wonders why his brother hadn't gone with their father to wherever it was he disappeared from.

"I was working my own gig," Dean nonchalantly explains. "This voodoo thing down in New Orleans."
"Dad let you go on a hunting trip by yourself?" Sam disbelieves, still locked in their shared past as the juvenile sons of a controlling parent, and forgetting that during their estrangement life has gone on for his brother and father as well as for himself. A lot has changed since this broken little family was last together.
Dean shoots him offended side eyes, and reminds him of the time that has passed since they last saw one another. "I'm twenty-six, dude."

LOL at the delivery. But it's important to know that Dean can and has hunted alone. He just doesn't like to, and, given how dangerous it is, hunting alone is clearly a lot less safe than it is possible. Sam, on the other hand, unless he's indulged in a spot of moonlighting since he arrived at Stanford, which seems unlikely given his attitude, has never hunted except under John's supervision and direction. That much seems clear from his reaction to the notion of Dean hunting alone. And he's been away from the hunting lifestyle for some time now. So, while both boys were extremely well trained in the art of hunting as they grew up, it is clear that Dean has considerably more practical experience than his brother.

Dean then exposits for the benefit of both Sam and the audience that John had been investigating a possible case just outside of Jericho, California – ten disappearances in the past twenty years, all men, all along the same five mile stretch of road. "It started happening more and more, so Dad went to dig around. That was about three weeks ago. I haven't heard from him since, which was bad enough, but then I get this voicemail yesterday."

So John has been out of contact for three weeks, rather than the few days Dean told Sam in front of Jessica. Dean seems to consider this lack of contact a cause for concern. However, given Sam's – admittedly biased by anger and resentment – comments about John's frequent disappearances while they were growing up, it is unclear how much of his concern is generated by this being a break in their usual habit while hunting separately, and how much is simply about Dean's need to keep tabs on his father and brother, whether they habitually comply with him or not. Dean definitely seems to feel that it is out of the ordinary, or at least deeply undesirable, for John to remain out of contact for so long. With Sam gone, the two of them would be all they had, which would make touching base regularly all the more important. If your personal universe is so small, the need for contact increases. That's how Dean seems to feel, anyway; whether John felt the same way and acted accordingly during their years alone together is anyone's guess.

Dean plays the message for Sam. It is very garbled, but a few words can be made out. "Dean… Something big is starting to happen… I need to try and figure out what's going on… Be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger."

It was this message that sent Dean here in search of Sam's help, rather than John's lengthy silence. He received the message just yesterday, he said. It could almost have been designed to alarm him, and it seems natural, given the doom-laden content, that his first instinct would be to try and find the father he is accustomed to working with so closely, to regroup rather than scatter in the face of danger. Especially since there is nothing in the message to warn him against doing so, or to indicate that John intends to do his 'figuring out' alone and in secret. The message reads as a heads-up, rather than a farewell.

Given that later in the season we will learn that John has deliberately gone into hiding, ruthlessly cutting off all contact with his son, you'd think he'd have gone about severing the tie a little more neatly. If he'd actually come out and said 'I need to drop off the radar for a while and won't be able to keep in touch', I'm pretty sure Dean still would have worried about what was going on, but at least he'd have known that John's disappearance was planned and not brought about by some terrible catastrophe that his father needs saving from. John really does handle just about everything extremely badly in season one!

I wonder just where Dean was when he received the message: in New Orleans still, waiting for John to join him there, or somewhere in between, possibly at a pre-arranged meeting point? It does seem that just about the first thing he has done on receiving the message is to come looking for Sam to help him search for John, rather than check out Jericho by himself first – and he's possibly come a very long way to do so, so it's probably just as well Jericho is at least in the same state as Stanford. Dean doesn't want to be left alone. And it isn't unreasonable, given the content of John's message, to fear that something terrible might have happened to him and to feel that taking backup on the search would be wise.

"You know there's EVP on that?" Sam says of the message, as naturally as if he hadn't been protesting against everything connected to his former way of life just a moment ago.
"Not bad, Sammy," Dean grins. "It's kind of like riding a bike, isn't it? All right. I slowed the message down and ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what I got."

He plays the modified version of the message. "I can never go home," breathes a woman's voice.

"You know, in almost two years I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing." Dean is not above using emotional blackmail, now he's made his case for the validity of his concern about their father.

The writers have admitted that the two year thing was a mistake – since Sam is 22, it must be more like four years since he's been away at school. But it stands in canon that it has been two years since the brothers had any contact, rather than four, thus inspiring all kinds of fanfiction speculation about what that contact might have involved!

Sam sighs, torn between what he wants to do, which is go on pretending that his family don't exist, and what his conscience is telling him, which is that he can't turn his back on them if they need him. He opts for a compromise, telling Dean that he'll go to Jericho and help look for John, but has to be back first thing on Monday. Dean wonders what's first thing Monday that's so important.

"I have this…I have an interview." Sam kind of hedges around the subject, whether because he's afraid of Dean's reaction, or because he's unwilling to get into a lengthy discussion of the subject.
"What, a job interview? Skip it," Dean shrugs.
"It's a law school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate," Sam snippily informs him, clearly put out about his brother's casual attitude toward the notion of jobs and interviews and the entire way of life he aspires toward so much. "So, we got a deal or not?"

Inside. Sam packs an overnight bag, and has just barely deposited a wicked curved blade in it when Jessica wanders into the room. Kinda makes you wonder where he's been stashing that since they've been living together, if she ever stumbled across it and how he explained it away. Jessica is taken aback to see that her boyfriend is taking off in the middle of the night, but Sam tries to brush it off as just a little family drama, nothing to worry about. "He's just deer hunting up at the cabin," he casually lies. Anything rather than have her know the truth. It probably says quite a lot about Sam, his background, and his relationship with Jessica, that he lies to her so easily. "He's probably got Jim, Jack and Jose along with him, and we're just going to go bring him back."

At this stage, it seems fairly apparent that Sam is going along for Dean's sake more than anything else, rather than because he actually wants to see his father again, after what we've learned of their parting argument. John's final message was what swung the argument, raising enough concern for there to be no further question of the need for a search mission, but it is for Dean and out of a latent sense of filial duty that Sam agreed to go, rather than for John himself.

Jessica's primary concern is Sam's interview on Monday, since he's insistent that whatever's going on with his father isn't a big deal, and she doesn't know his family at all but does have a huge emotional investment in his future and well being. Sam blithely assures her that he'll make the interview, no problem, but Jessica tries to get him to slow down and actually talk to her about what's going on. Her concern is really sweet. "Sam, please. Just stop for a second. You sure you're okay…? It's just…you won't even talk about your family. And now you're taking off in the middle of the night to spend the weekend with them? And with Monday coming up, which is kind of a huge deal…"

Sam smiles, and reassures her that everything is going to be okay, pecks a kiss to her cheek, and leaves, Jess calling after him to at least tell her where he's going.

Jericho, California. I wonder how far it is from Stanford? A young stud is cruising along in his car, chatting to his girlfriend on his phone, when he sees a young woman, dressed in a floaty white dress, dancing dreamily at the side of the road. She's also flickering in and out of focus, but this seems not to concern him at all as he tells the girlfriend he will call her back, pulls over, and asks the woman if she's all right. He does notice static on the radio, but doesn't know what a bad sign that is. This early in the first season, neither do viewers.

"Take me home," the Woman in White breathily tells him. She's beautiful, and alone in the middle of nowhere, wearing a flimsy dress rendered all the more revealing by its ragged condition, so he is only too happy to comply. A very nicely done shot from behind the car shows the woman getting in and closing the door – becoming invisible as she enters the car; the passenger seat remains empty. She gives Young Stud her address, and then lies back and heaves her bosoms at him, while he tries to not look and to remember that he has a girlfriend. His resistance doesn't last long. "Will you come home with me?" she breathes, and he's all 'hell yeah', foot on the gas and away.

At the end of Breckenridge Road, as directed, Young Stud pulls up outside a dilapidated old property, long abandoned, and protests that this must be a joke, she doesn't live here – no one lives here. "I can never go home," the Woman in White mournfully proclaims, revealing herself as the voice on John's message earlier. Young Stud peers quizzically at the house once more and then turns back to the woman, only to find that she has disappeared completely.

He goes to look for her, suspecting some kind of prank, not noticing a ghostly handprint on the windscreen that slides away into nothing once more seconds later. A shot from inside the house pans over a photograph of a young woman with two children as Young Stud approaches the house, only to be startled out of his wits by a couple of equally startled birds flying out. Giving this whole thing up as more trouble than it's worth, he legs it back to the car and drives away as fast as he can. But he hasn't gone too far before he notices an uninvited passenger pouting at him from the back seat – the mysterious Woman in White. He slams on the brakes, smashing through the barrier across a disused bridge – so clearly he was driving aimlessly, rather than actually noticing where he was going – and the car screeches to a halt. The car rocks and Young Stud's screams fill the air as blood spurts all over the car windows.

Morning. The Impala is parked up at a dilapidated gas station in the middle of nowhere, Sam lounging in the passenger seat as Dean wanders out with hands full of chips and soda for breakfast. Sam declines, busy rooting through an elderly cardboard box of cassette tapes. "So, how'd you pay for that stuff?" he pointedly asks, rather too loudly, so you'd have to hope there's no one passing by who might hear. "You and Dad still running credit card scams?"

Of course, he already knows the answer. But he's planning to go to law school – he's making a point of his disapproval of yet another aspect of the life he left behind. And also expositing for the benefit of the audience just how the dysfunctional Winchesters keep themselves financially solvent, as well as letting us know just how much of a contrast the life he has chosen for himself is to the life he was raised to lead.

"Yeah, well. Hunting ain't exactly a pro-ball career," Dean casually defends as he finishes filling the tank with gas. "'Sides, all we do is apply. It's not our fault they send us the cards."

Heh. Amused in spite of himself, Sam wonders what names they wrote on the application this time. "Bert Aframiam and his son, Hector," says Dean. "Scored two cards out of the deal."

Sam laughs; his return to the road with his long-estranged brother is a temporary arrangement, and he can therefore afford a little fond nostalgia. "I swear, man. You've gotta update your cassette tape collection," he announces.
Dean wonders why, looking genuinely puzzled and a little wary as to what Sam is about to say about his music.
"Well, for one, they're cassette tapes," Sam tells him. "And, two: Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica? It's the greatest hits of mullet rock."
Dean snatches a tape from him and pushes it into the player. "House rules, Sammy: driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole." Hee.
"You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old. It's Sam," Sam insists, and the banter is so natural and brotherly it's fabulous, but always there's that slight edge brought about by years of estrangement. They don't know each other any more, are still feeling their way around this reunion, temporary as it is, brought about only by necessity.

Very pretty establishing shot of the Impala zooming toward Jericho to the chorus of AC/DC's Back in Black.

Sam hangs up the phone and reports his findings to Dean. "All right, so there's no one matching Dad at the hospital or morgue, so that's something, I guess."

Dean notices a clutch of police vehicles gathered around the end of the bridge, marking the scene of Young Stud's demise last night, and pulls over to take a look, spider-sense tingling. Then, decision made, he pulls a box out of the glove compartment, rifles through a variety of fake IDs contained within, and pulls out one appropriate to the situation at hand. Sam huffs in frustrated disbelief and trails in his wake as he heads off to investigate.

At the scene, divers in the river have found nothing, and a search of Young Stud's car is proving similarly fruitless – it is completely spotless, all that blood we saw last night vanished without trace. No clues. The sheriff and his deputy conversationally exposit for us that Young Stud, whose name was Troy, was dating Deputy's daughter, Amy, who is dealing with his disappearance by putting up missing posters downtown.

Dean and Sam wander up in time to hear most of this, and Dean launches into the conversation with a confident swagger, commenting on a similar disappearance the previous month, the one that drew John here to investigate, and holding up his fake federal marshal badge by way of explanation for his presence.

The Sheriff looks suspicious. "You two are a little young for marshals, aren't you?"
"Thanks, that's awfully kind of you," Dean laughs it off, and switches back to business before any more questions can be asked. It's all about confidence. Most of the time, you can get away with just about anything as long as you look as though you are meant to be doing it, and Dean has clearly had plenty of practice at the whole fake identity thing.



Sam might disapprove, but now that Dean has taken this course of action he smoothly joins in, the two of them questioning the officers about the previous disappearances and lack of any connection between victims. It seems local law enforcement has been unable to come up with any kind of plausible theory for what's going on, a fact Dean is quick to mock. "Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys."

Whereupon Sam stamps on his foot as he politely thanks the officers for their time, both brothers working hard not to let their game faces slide as they head back to the car, what with the cops already looking suspicious. As soon as they're out of earshot, Dean smacks Sam across the back of the head.

Sam: "Ow! What was that for?"
Dean: "Why'd you have to step on my foot?"
Sam: "Why'd you have to talk to the police like that?"

Eh, boys.

"Come on, they don't really know what's going on." Dean slides in front of Sam, bringing him to a halt, to explicate his motivations here. "We're all alone on this, I mean, if we're going to find Dad, we've got to get to the bottom of this ourselves."

At this point, I suppose, there is every reason for the boys to fear that John might have become yet another victim of whatever is making all these men vanish along this stretch of road. They have no way of knowing what happened to him, why he has disappeared so unexpectedly and without warning, why he has broken off all contact. Which is, of course, exactly why John should have offered even a tiny bit more information in his parting voicemail message for Dean. 'We're all in danger' really doesn't cut it.

Rather than responding, Sam jerks his head to warn Dean of newcomers approaching – FBI, escorted by another local officer. "Agent Mulder, Agent Scully," Dean snarks as they pass. Dean always reacts to authority figures in this way, becoming brasher and cockier and even more of a smartass than usual. The boys head back to the car, that local officer watching them go, brow creased with suspicion.

Downtown. Amy and a friend are, indeed, putting up missing posters for Troy. It's kind of sad that she'll never know what happened to him. Dean lies through his teeth to get her to talk to him, saying that he and Sam are Troy's uncles and are also looking for him.

They take the girls into a quiet little coffee shop to talk, and Amy tells the story of her last phone call with Troy. Notice how Dean has taken the lead on the investigation up till this point, but now sits back and lets Sam take over – the first example of what will be an ongoing practice for the brothers. Sam's sympathetic manner is far better suited to questioning witnesses than Dean's bluntness. And, for all his protests, Sam is sliding back into the job as effortlessly as if he'd never left it. He wasn't kidding when he said John had raised them to do this. It's second nature, however much he disapproves in principle.

Dean's face is a picture when Sam compliments Amy on her necklace, which is a pentagram, and tells her it is protection against evil, rather than being a symbol of evil, as her parents apparently have presumed. Dean cuts in at this point to get the conversation back on track, pointing out that something very odd is going on, and asking if they've heard anything. The girls shift uncomfortably, and the friend awkwardly offers that with all these guys going missing, people talk.

"What do they talk about?" Dean and Sam ask, in unison. Hee. The very first snap. Best of all is that they don't react, don't even seem to notice that they did it.

The friend tells them a local ghost story of a girl who was murdered on Centennial Highway, whose ghost now hitchhikes that same stretch of road, and that anyone who picks her up disappears forever. The brothers exchange meaningful glances. This is exactly the kind of thing they wanted to hear about.

Library. Dean is at the computer, searching the archives of the local Jericho Herald for this mythical murder on Centennial Highway. The search comes up blank. Sam shoves him out of the way so he can take over. "Such a control freak," Dean mutters, smacking his shoulder to illustrate his disgruntlement. And yeah – in episodes to come, Sam does prefer to do the research himself rather than trust his non-college educated brother to know what he's doing in that regard, despite the fact that Dean has been doing this long enough that he must surely be able to handle the research alone if need be.

Sam exposits that angry spirits are born out of violent death, suggesting that maybe they aren't looking for a murder… His search for a suicide along Centennial Highway comes up trumps: in 1981, it seems, 24 year old Constance Welch jumped off Sylvania Bridge and drowned in the river, after her two young children accidentally drowned in the bathtub. The bridge pictured is the same bridge where Troy disappeared.

Sylvania Bridge. Night. Dean and Sam come to check out the scene.

"So this is where Constance took the swan dive," Dean notes, looking down at the rushing water below.
"So you think Dad would have been here?" Sam quietly wonders. For all that he's seemed to get into working the case once Dean started, he is here specifically to find John, not to finish John's last hunt for him along the way, and he's on a deadline. Coming here to help Dean out was a one off thing, after which he returns to his life, and so the faster they manage to find John, the easier it'll be for him to walk away again.

"Well, he's chasing the same story and we're chasing him," says Dean, for whom finishing this hunt while searching for John is just a matter of course, something he wouldn't even question. They just have to keep looking, work the case, and hope it leads them to John. It might take a while, but Dean seems okay with that. Other than the whole 'dad's missing' thing, this is, after all, pretty much how he lives his life. John's disappearance is a major concern, but the case itself is just another job, a day in the life.

That established, Sam wonders what they do now, since this appears to be where the trail ends.

"We keep digging till we find him. It might take a while," Dean tells him. He'd obviously prefer sooner rather than later, but finding John is his number one priority, no matter how long or how much effort it takes. He's quite prepared for the long haul. But finding John isn't Sam's number one priority, and he's only committed as much time to the search as he has to spare before getting on with the rest of his life.

Sam: "Dean, I told you. I've got to get back by –"
Dean: "Monday. Right. The interview. I forgot. You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just gonna become some lawyer? Marry your girl?"
Sam: "Maybe. Why not?"
Dean: "Does Jessica know the truth about you, I mean does she know about the things you've done?"
Sam: "No, and she's not ever going to know."
Dean: "Well, that's healthy. You can pretend all you want, Sammy, but sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you are."
Sam: "And who's that?"
Dean: "You're one of us."
Sam: "No, I'm not like you. This is not going to be my life."

They are both making very valid points here, and the fact that both are right, in their own way, probably contributes a lot to the tension of this scene. Sam's lack of honesty about his past will always cast a shadow over his relationship with Jessica, and deepen his estrangement from his family. For as long as Jessica remains ignorant of Sam's past, he can never allow her to have contact with his family, which means also avoiding contact with them himself. Any attempt to balance the two could only end in disaster. But, on the flip side, how on earth can Sam tell her the truth? The truth sounds so insane – it would likely be the end of their relationship. And he is right to believe that he has the right to choose how to live his own life.

Dean: "You have a responsibility –"
Sam: "To Dad? And his crusade? If it weren't for pictures, I wouldn't even know what Mom looks like. What difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom's gone. And she isn't coming back."

What a difference even a year makes. Sam here at the start of the show is operating from a position of not understanding his father and brother's motivations in the slightest. He never knew his mother, and knows only the impact her death has had on his life, while lacking any real perception of the emotions that underlie the fallout of that event he has no memory of. His mother is just a story, a face in a picture – he has no experience of her to relate to, and this never-ending quest for vengeance is the only life he ever knew before college, something he couldn't truly understand and so sought to escape from.

Dean, on the other hand, was old enough when Mary died to remember his mother and know what he had lost, old enough to witness first hand the seismic changes her death brought about in his life. He clearly remembers enough of life before losing his mother to feel personally invested in John's crusade – both for John's sake and for Mary's. So the suggestion that it has all been for nothing, coming on top of his worry about John's disappearance, and the turbulent emotions of his tense and temporary reunion with Sam and this heated argument it has led to, is the final straw. He grabs hold of Sam's jacket and slams him against an upright of the bridge.



There's a moment of silence, Sam a little shocked and Dean struggling to find words for what he's feeling right now. "Don't talk about her like that," he says at last, letting go of Sam and taking a few steps backward, putting much needed space between them after their spat.

This is the only time in the course of the season that we see Dean this worked up over Mary, but this little burst of anger isn't just about her, and isn't just about Sam's apparent disrespect for her memory and the fact of her murder. It's about the fact that Sam walked away once and only came back reluctantly now, the fact that Sam plans to walk away again whether they manage to find John this weekend or not. It's about the fact that John has disappeared without trace or explanation. It's about the fact that if they don't find John and Sam returns to Stanford, Dean will be left alone – not just for the duration of a case, but permanently. It's about the loss of his family, which is all he has.

A moment later the attention of both brothers is dragged back to the matter at hand, as they see the spirit of Constance Welch herself standing on the side of the bridge and stepping off. They run over to have a look, but she has vanished. And then Dean's car starts up, all by itself. Sam's all, "who's driving your car?" and Dean pulls the keys out of his pocket in silent demonstration of the weirdness of this turn of events. The car starts, and speeds right at them. They run for it, legging it down the bridge with the car getting closer and closer, and finally are forced to jump right over the side of the bridge in order to avoid collision – Sam manages to grab onto the side to avoid falling any further, but Dean goes over into the rushing water below.

Very pretty establishing shot of the bridge at night.

Having saved himself from getting wet, Sam pulls himself back up to safety and starts yelling for his brother. Way down below, Dean crawls out of the water and flops down on the muddy bank, offering an ironic "I'm super," and an okay sign in response to Sam's anxious calling.

Later. Caked in mud – and god knows what else – Dean checks out the Impala's engine and confirms that whatever the ghost did to it, it seems all right now. "That Constance chick, what a bitch!" he loudly snarls, apparently in hopes that the spirit is still within earshot to take note of his irritation.

"Well, she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure," notes Sam. "So where's the trail go from here, genius?"
Cold, wet and muddy, Dean just waves his hands in the air, all 'do I have to think of everything?'
Sam sits beside him on the car's hood, and sniffs, rather deprecatingly. "You smell like a toilet," he informs his brother.

Cut to: a random motel someplace in town. It is now the next morning. A credit card bearing the name of Hector Aframiam lands on the sign-in register, as Dean asks for a room. He's now dry but still caked in mud, clearly hasn't changed out of his wet clothes since landing in the river, so presumably the brothers at least found somewhere warm to shelter while waiting for the place to open, or he'd be hypothermic by now! The elderly proprietor studies the card, and wonders if they are having a reunion. "That other guy, Bert Aframiam. He came in and bought out a room for the whole month."

Bingo! A clue, just when the trail appeared cold. Having seen the way jobs tend to work out over the next couple of seasons, though, I find myself curious about John taking a room for the entire month. The average haunting doesn't take anything like that long to resolve, so it seems kind of a long time to commit payment to.

Sam picks the lock of the room registered to Bert Aframiam. I guess even though they are family they couldn't exactly ask the motel guy to give them a key to someone else's room. I'm also going to assume that they managed to sneak a look at the register in order to figure out which room it was.

While Sam enters the room and puts his lock-picking kit away – I wonder how much use he's had for that at Stanford – Dean stands around outside with his back to the door. Keeping watch while Sam picked the lock, I guess, and then daydreaming. Sam snakes a hand out, grabs his collar, and yanks him inside the room. That remains one of my favourite shots in the show! So much fun.

Inside, the brothers gape at the contents of the room, which is, frankly, a tip: bed unmade, open suitcase carelessly dropped across it, books and other random clutter piled around the place, leftover food cartons lying around haphazardly, and all kinds of notes, pictures and newspaper cuttings pinned to just about every inch of wall space.

"Whoa," says Sam. Either he's forgotten what a slob his father can be, or this kind of mess is not typical of John. It definitely indicates that he left in a hurry, either without taking time to pack or intending to return.

Dean gets a whiff of half-eaten hamburger discarded carelessly, and concludes that John doesn't seem to have been here for a couple of days at least, while Sam takes note of the lines of salt on the floor and cats-eye shells. "He was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in." And with this physical evidence of John's sojourn here and abrupt departure in front of him at last, Sam is starting to look as worried as Dean has been all along.



The brothers examine the paperwork strewn across the walls. One wall is devoted to the Centennial Highway victims, newspaper cuttings and whatever in the way of biography John had managed to cobble together. "I don't get it," says Dean. "Different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities… There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?"

Sam, meanwhile, has wandered off to look at some of the other notes taped to the wall, including a copy of that article about Constance Welch's death they found at the library. Above it is a handwritten headline: 'Woman in White'. Sam takes a closer look. "Dad figured it out," he realises. "He found the same article we did. Constance Welch: she's a woman in white."

In a nice touch, Dean promptly turns back to the wall of victims, remarking: "You sly dogs!" Hee. I like that he doesn't have to ask or be told what a Woman in White is – immediately understands upon hearing the description. He's been in this game for a long time. And Sam also recognised what the name meant as soon as he saw it, underlining what we've been told about how they were raised.

"All right, so if we're dealing with a Woman in White, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it," says Dean, getting down to business, but apparently forgetting that there's been another disappearance since John came to investigate, meaning that whatever he did here, he didn't resolve the haunting.
"She might have another weakness," Sam ponders.
"No, Dad would want to make sure," decides Dean. "He'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?"

The article doesn't say, but Sam offers that if he were John he'd go ask her husband. He's been out of the game for a few years, but the experience of a lifetime dies hard. Dean suggests that Sam try to find an address while he goes and gets cleaned up. Clearly they intend to stay in John's room, despite having – presumably, although we never saw the transaction completed – paid for one of their own.

As Dean heads for the bathroom, Sam calls after him, and rather awkwardly tries to apologise for what he said earlier about their parents. Not wanting to get into all that again, not least, presumably, because those very deep differences of opinion still exist, Dean cuts him off with a casual 'talk to the hand' gesture and an affectionate request for "no chick-flick moments."

And no bearing grudges against the family, either; the impression is that for Dean, once an argument is over, it's over, no apology necessary. The words don't matter: the sentiment is there and they both know it, and it's over now – move on. Sam clearly felt the need to say it, though, but just as clearly isn't bothered by the brush off and as they cheerfully call each other names it all has an air of familiarity about it, as though they've done this a thousand times before.

Sam chuckles. "All right. Jerk."
"Bitch," Dean cheerfully counters, heading for the bathroom.

No matter how long they've been estranged, they are both falling back into these long-established brotherly patterns with immense ease. The awkwardness born of years of estrangement remains, though. They have never interacted as adults before; Sam was still a headstrong, rebellious teenager when he left.

Left alone, Sam laughs, and then notices a faded old photograph tucked into the frame of a mirror on the wall. It's a picture of John sitting on the hood of the Impala, a barely school age Sam sitting on his lap and Dean alongside them. I really wish they'd at least keep the hair-colour consistent when they show us pictures or flashbacks of the boys in their childhood! A half-smile tugs at the edges of Sam's lips at this reminder of happier days, and I love that John didn't just have the picture stuffed away in a wallet, but put it up there on display in the room where he could see it. That's the side of John that I love, the part of him that's just a father, nothing more, and nothing less.

But he didn't take the photo with him when he left; presumably he was in that much of a rush that he didn't have time. The fact that he left so much behind has got to increase the concern his sons are feeling for his welfare right now.

Later. Sam listens to a voicemail message from Jessica as a now-clean Dean exits the bathroom stating his intention of heading out in search of food. Outside, Dean comes to a halt when he sees a cop car nearby, the motel proprietor pointing him out to the sheriff and deputy he met yesterday. Hurriedly turning his back, he pulls his cell phone out and hastily calls Sam, who finishes listening to Jessica's message just in time to take the call.

Dean: "Dude, five-oh. Take off."
Sam: "What about you?"
Dean: "Uh, they kinda spotted me. Go find Dad."

With that parting injunction, he puts the phone away and turns to the approaching cops with his most innocent expression. Which isn't saying much, because Dean doesn't really do innocent. "Problem officers?"

They ask where his partner is, and he plays dumb, although the anxious expression that flits across his face as the deputy approaches his motel room door probably doesn't give quite the cool, collected impression he'd have hoped for. Inside, Sam sees the cop approaching and flees.

"So," remarks the Sheriff. "Fake US Marshal. Fake credit cards. You got anything that's real?"
"My boobs," Dean snarks with a grin. He just can't resist rubbing authority figures up the wrong way. Moments later he's finding that game face slightly harder to keep up as he is slammed face down onto the hood of his own car to be handcuffed while his rights are read to him.

Police station. An older officer whose name badge identifies him as Pierce brings in a box of evidence as ammunition in his interrogation of Dean, who is refusing to give so much as his real name. "I told you, it's Nugent. Ted Nugent," he smilingly insists. Dean's aliases are always ridiculously, wonderfully google-able.

Officer Pierce: "I'm not sure you realise just how much trouble you're in here."
Dean: "We talking like misdemeanour kind of trouble, or, uh, squeal like a pig kind of trouble?"
Officer Pierce: "You're got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall, along with a lot of satanic mumbo jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect."
Dean: "That makes sense. 'Cause when the first one went missing in '82 I was three."

Undeterred, Officer Pierce goes on that he knows Dean has partners, and that one of them is an older guy, who could have started the whole thing. "So tell me – Dean. Is this his?" He reaches into the box he brought in with him and pulls out a leather-bound journal, all kinds of bits of paper sticking out of it, and drops it on the table in front of Dean, who freezes at both the sight of it and the use of his real name, and tries hard not to react.

"I thought that might be your name," Officer Pierce continues, starting to leaf through the journal in search of a particular page. How long has it been since Dean was arrested, if there has been time for a search of his motel room and for this journal to have been found and looked through? We get tantalisingly brief glimpses of random pages in the journal as Officer Pierce leafs through, revealing photographs and sketches, newspaper cuttings, lots of writing and scribbling. Officer Pierce scoffs at the general content being "nine kinds of crazy. But I found this, too."

He shows Dean a particular page, blank but for his name and the number 35-111, written in large letters and circled in black. "Now. You're staying right here until you tell me exactly what the hell that means."

Dean stares at his name for a moment, and then schools his features into the blankest expression he can muster.



Elsewhere. Sam is busily following Dean's instructions, working the job in hopes of finding John. He's found the new address of Constance Welch's husband, Joseph, and come to pay him a visit.

"Yeah. He's older, but that's him." Joseph makes a positive identification of John from the faded old photo Sam shows him, the photo John had left tucked into that mirror frame in his motel room. Further evidence of just how close John had been to resolving this case before his abrupt disappearance. So…I know the boys had a bit of a head start, since they came into this on the back of what John had already established, but if they've got this far in just a couple of days, what the hell was John doing for the last three weeks? It clearly wouldn't have taken him anything like that long to work this case, unless of course he didn't stumble upon the Constance Welch story quite so easily. But he was clearly here until very recently – his room was only abandoned a couple of days before the boys arrived, and Dean only received that warning message the day before he went to Stanford for Sam. So how slow was John working the case if he only made the crucial breakthrough immediately before his disappearance, too late to actually finish the job?

Two seasons on and I still desperately want to know what the sequence of events was leading up to John's disappearance. What happened here in Jericho to send him rushing off into hiding, without finishing the job, without stopping to pack, offering Dean only a vague and garbled caution without actually telling him anything he needed to know to warn him off?

Anyway, Joseph elaborates that John had visited him three or four days ago, claiming to be a reporter. Sam goes along with that story, claiming that they are working on a story together, and Joseph wonders what the hell kind of story it is, given the weird questions John was asking. Sam tries a leading question of his own in hopes of further clarification, and Joseph obligingly confirms that John asked where his wife was buried.

"And where is that again?" Sam asks, as casually as he can manage.
"What, I got to go through this twice?" asks Joseph, clearly upset at having his tragic past raked over like this.
"It's fact checking. If you don't mind," Sam smoothly lies.

Joseph tells him that Constance was buried behind their old house on Breckenridge Road, adding that he moved from there because he couldn't bear to live on in the house where his children died. He looks absolutely tiny standing next to Sam, who is a giant. He never remarried, he tells Sam. Constance was the love of his life. This actor is only in this one scene, but does an excellent job – he really makes me feel for this man and his decades old tragedy.

Sam thanks Joseph for his time and heads back to the Impala, struggles with himself and what to do for a moment, and then calls after him. "Mr Welch, you ever hear of a Woman in White?" That's…kinda bold, especially for Sam, just laying the weird right out there in the open. I suppose he's running out of options, and with Dean arrested he's all alone trying to finish this job despite being several years rusty. As far as we know, Sam has never worked a job alone like this.

"It's a ghost story," he continues. "Well, it's more of a phenomenon, really. Um. They're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years. Dozens of places. In Hawaii, Mexico, lately in Arizona, Indiana. All these are different women, you understand. But all share the same story."

He's been advancing back toward the startled Joseph while speaking, his height decidedly intimidating now. Joseph is angry, tells him he's talking nonsense, and starts to walk away, but Sam follows and continues his exposition of the legend. "You see, when they were alive their husbands were unfaithful to them. And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children. Then once they realised what they had done, they took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man they kill him, and that man is never seen again."

Joseph stopped dead in his tracks at the word 'unfaithful', is now almost trembling with grief and anger – and guilt – spluttering that maybe he made some mistakes but Constance never would have killed her own children, never.

Having received the confirmation he needed to back up John's theory, Sam looks sympathetic and troubled as Joseph gives him his marching orders. Behind every ghost story is someone's personal tragedy.

Police station. Dean is insisting that the numbers alongside his name in John's journal are his high school locker combination, nothing more sinister than that. Officer Pierce looks as bored of this farce as Dean is – since it is now dark out once more, and therefore evening, they must have been at this all day, so I can't say I blame him – so he's only too glad for something else to do when one of his colleagues sticks a head around the door with news of a 911 call reporting shots fired. He asks Dean if he needs to go to the bathroom and, on receiving a negative response, handcuffs him to the table before heading out.

Left alone, Dean spots a paperclip sticking out of the journal, right in front of him, picks it up and smirks.

Minutes later, what appears to be the entire police department of Jericho – all three of them – depart the station in response to that 911 call. Free of his restraints already, Dean watches them go, and then makes good his escape down the fire escape, with a stolen gun belt slung over his shoulder, because of all his own weapons being in the car, and John's journal stuffed into the back of his jeans.

Centennial Highway. Sam is driving toward the old Welch place on Breckenridge Road when Dean calls from a payphone. Did the cops confiscate his cell phone, then? He definitely had it on him when he was arrested, as he used it to warn Sam, but you'd think he'd have retrieved it while he was stealing the gun. After all, he blatantly has his own phone back in later episodes, as John is able to give his number for folk in need to get in touch with him, and his ex-girlfriend calls him on it in Route 666. Still, it's a minor point.

"Fake 911 call, Sammy. I don't know, that's pretty illegal," Dean teasingly tuts by way of greeting.
"You're welcome," Sam grins, clearly highly chuffed with himself for providing a successful diversion for his brother's escape. Sam can voice as much disapproval as he wants of this lifestyle, with all its inherent dangers and illegality, but when he's actually in the thick of a job like this he blatantly gets as much of a kick out of it as Dean does. His resentment isn't so much about the job itself, but has a lot more to do with John's attitude toward both it and his sons, and his own desire to make his own choices in life.

Not allowing Dean to get a word in edgeways, Sam starts to rattle off his findings regarding Joseph Welch's infidelity, confirming John's theory of a Woman in White, and the location of Constance's grave behind the old house, which he's assuming would have been John's next stop. Frustrated, Dean tries to interrupt, asking him to shut up for a second, but Sam's on a roll now, thinking aloud, wondering why John wouldn't have destroyed the corpse yet….

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," says Dean, finally managing to pass on his own news. "He's gone. Dad left Jericho."
Startled, Sam asks how he knows.
"I've got his journal," Dean explains, and Sam immediately notes that John doesn't go anywhere without it. "Well, he did this time," Dean tells him.

Sam asks what the journal says, and Dean sighs that "it's that same old ex-marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going…"
"Coordinates," Sam also sighs, sharing his disappointment that Jericho has turned into such a puzzling dead end on the Dad-hunt. "Where to?"

Dean doesn't know yet where the coordinates point, not having ready access to a map right now, and Sam wonders what on earth could be so important that John would just skip out in the middle of a job. It is clearly highly aberrant behaviour, even from a man who has made being enigmatic into an art form.

So just how often has John pulled this vanishing act and left the boys to figure out where he's gone? Although Dean's anxiety implied that being out of contact for so long was a worrying thing, Sam's words earlier added to this suggests it's actually a fairly regular occurrence – the big difference this time, perhaps, is that broken-up phone message he left for Dean that sent him rushing to Stanford in search of Sam's support. Dean didn't sound happy about the fact that he'd gone three weeks without hearing from John before that frantic message, but maybe that was more Dean not liking to be out of regular contact with his family – needing to know that they are safe and well, and preferably where he can see them – rather than it being unusual to go so long without hearing anything. And that thought, in turn, drives home how very lonely it must have been for Dean since Sam left, if John has always had a habit of being away and out of contact for weeks at a time, and knowing how much Dean needs and craves contact with the few people in the world he's close to.

"Dean, what the hell is going on?" Sam wants to know, and then drops the phone, slamming the brakes on with a loud gasp and curse as the spirit of Constance Welch suddenly appears in the middle of the road before him. The car slams right through her incorporeal body before screeching to a halt.

In the payphone, Dean shouts into the phone but gets no reply. In the car, Sam tries to catch his breath – and is then both shocked and alarmed to see Constance sitting right behind him, demanding to be taken home.

When Sam doesn't immediately comply, Constance repeats her demand, more forcefully. Sam firmly tells her no, whereupon the car locks itself, trapping him inside, much to his consternation, and then starts driving itself, which freaks him out even more. After he'd worked so hard to create that nice, normal life for himself where nothing like this ever happened to him, just two nights in his brother's company and he's already being abducted by a homicidal spirit. Kinda adds weight to his whole argument about seeking safety in normality.

Sam tries steering, to no avail, and is unable to get the doors unlocked. With Constance flickering slightly in the back seat, the car drives itself all the way to her old house at the end of Breckenridge Road, where the engine switches itself off.

"Don't do this," Sam quietly appeals to Constance.
But her attention is on the house, rather than him. "I can never go home," she mournfully says to herself.
"You're scared to go home," Sam realises, putting the pieces together. He turns to talk to her further, only to see that she has disappeared again.

A moment later Constance has reappeared in the front of the car and launched herself at Sam, rubbing against him, begging him to hold her, while he struggles to escape.

Sam clings to what he knows of the Woman in White phenomenon. "You can't kill me," he insists. "I'm not unfaithful. I've never been."
Unconcerned, Constance leans close to whisper in his ear: "You will be."

I kinda suspect that the main reason she has gone after Sam is the same reason she attacked both brothers on the bridge – he's been digging into her past, trying to find a way to get rid of her. He's a threat. And so she adjusts her raison d'etre accordingly in order to encompass him, meting out punishment for possible future indiscretions, rather than anything he's actually done or is intending to do.

With the ghost on top of him, pinning him down and kissing him fiercely, Sam is unable to escape, unable to reach the keys in the ignition. Suddenly the ghost sits up once more, her face becoming skeletal, and then vanishes. Sam has only a second to wonder where she went before pain explodes in his chest and he rips his shirt open to reveal five holes in the t-shirt beneath – finger prints of the spirit, who is trying to dig her hand into his chest and rip his heart out, by the looks of it. Because her husband's infidelity and the deaths of her children felt like having her own heart ripped out, I guess. That's nasty!

Sam gasps and writhes in agony, and all seems lost. But then Dean turns up right in the nick of time, firing at the spirit with his stolen gun – shattering his own car window in the process. I'm going to assume he stole a car in order to get there so fast. I like his confidence in his own marksmanship, firing at the spirit like that with Sam right alongside it.



Irritated, the spirit appears and disappears a few more times, Dean firing at her every time, and then vanishes completely, releasing Sam. He doesn't hesitate for a second, starting the engine. "I'm taking you home," he grits, driving the car straight through the decaying wooden wall into the house, much to Dean's surprise and alarm.

Gun at the ready, Dean hurries into the house through the gaping hole in the wall, and hastens to help Sam out of the car, all gruff concern about his little brother after the combination of ghost attack and crashing the car through a wall.

Across the room, Constance picks up the photograph of herself with her children. It really must be said that if she was only 24 when she died, she must have been a real child bride to have children as old as that – both look school age!

Dean helps Sam out of the car, whereupon Constance's attention turns to them, her expression turning angry and petulant as she tosses the photograph aside and slams a dresser into them, pinning them both to the car. The brothers strain to push it aside, but it won't budge; Constance has them at her mercy, and things are looking pretty grim. But then the lights start flickering, and Constance turns to see water pouring down the stairs. She looks up to see the ghosts of her murdered children standing hand-in-hand at the top of the stairs. "You've come home to us, Mommy," they chorus.

A moment later the children appear at Constance's side and throw their arms around her. She screams, their three figures blur and merge, and then there are all kinds of nifty special effects as they basically melt into the floor. Or something. The three spirits manage to destroy one another, anyway.

With the ghost gone, Dean easily shoves the dresser aside, Sam remembering to help too late to actually put any weight behind the push, and they go take a closer look at the puddle where Constance disappeared, both breathing hard with all the exertion and adrenaline and whatnot. "So this is where she drowned her kids," Dean realises.
Sam nods. "That's why she could never go home. She was too scared to face 'em."

Case closed, the boys get to do that manly brusque affection thing, where they praise and thank each other without actually having to say the words as such.

"You found her weak spot. Nice work, Sammy," Dean wearily approves, slapping a hand to his brother's chest – right over the wounds of Constance's attack.
Sam groans and grimaces in pain, laughing. "Yeah, wish I could say the same for you. What were you thinking, shooting Caspar in the face, you freak?"
"Hey, saved your ass," Dean points out, which is true – in the lifesaving stakes, this early in the season, Dean is now ahead by one – before turning his attention to his beloved car. "I'll tell you another thing: if you screwed up my car, I'll kill you."

On the road. Night. Have these boys slept at all since leaving Stanford? Amusingly, given Dean's dire imprecation at the end of the last scene, the Impala now has one headlight out. It's even more amusing because both were still on and fine after crashing through the wall. Maybe trying to get the car back out caused more damage.

By torchlight, Sam is working out the coordinates left for Dean in John's journal. "Okay, here's where Dad went," he confidently states. "It's called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado." Dean asks how far it is, and Sam calculates the distance to be around six hundred miles.

"If we shag ass we can make it by morning," Dean suggests, shooting a hopeful look at Sam, who umms and ahhs guiltily for a moment before stuttering into silence, unable to actually come out and say 'you're on your own'. "You're not going," Dean realises, disappointment in his eyes. He already knew what Sam's intentions were, of course, but had clearly hoped, given the circumstances, for a change of heart.

"Dean, the interview's in, like, ten hours. I've got to be there," Sam reminds his brother. It's about priorities, and where their respective futures lie. For Dean, family is everything, no matter what it costs; for Sam, his own chosen lifestyle and future prospects come first.

Dean looks away, muscles in his jaw working as he bites back everything he'd like to say to his brother and composes himself. John has disappeared and Sam wants out, wants to return to that new life in which Dean has no place, which leaves him facing a future completely alone. "Yeah. Whatever. I'll take you home," he tells his brother, quietly accepting that Sam's home is at Stanford now, with Jessica and his friends – a life that doesn't include Dean or John, or anything connected to them, in any way, shape or form.

On they drive.

Stanford. The Impala pulls up outside Sam and Jessica's apartment building, Sam gets out, and there's a moment of awkwardness.

"You'll call me if you find him," says Sam at last. Notice his use of the word 'if' there. Dean nods, apparently not quite trusting himself to actually speak right now. "Maybe I can meet up with you later, huh," Sam offers, and Dean breaks his silence to agree that maybe he can, although they both have to know that it isn't going to happen. The safe, normal life Sam has created here can't coexist with the danger and uncertainty of his old life, in which Dean is still so deeply enmeshed.

The lines of communication have at least been reopened now, but you have to wonder how long that would last once Sam got back into his regular routine. He knows that Dean might never find John, that John could be dead already and they might never know what happened to him. If Sam gets into law school as planned, meeting up again later is just never going to happen, and they both know it. There is no way Dean can ever be a part of Sam's new life, not the way Sam plays things at present. Dean is going to be completely on his own now, and not by his own choice. Of all the family, Dean is the one most consistently and deeply affected by the choices the people around him make, John's and Sam's stubborn self-centredness meaning that he almost never gets to choose what he wants for himself, their interests and desires overriding his every time.

Sam starts to walk away, but Dean calls after him on impulse, giving it one last shot. He really doesn't want to be so completely abandoned by his family. "Sam. You know, we made a hell of a team back there."

Yeah, that case in Jericho has to be the first time they've ever worked a job alone together like that, as partners.

Sam agrees that they did indeed make a hell of a team, but offers nothing more than that, and Dean doesn't push it, accepts the decision his brother has made. Message received loud and clear, Dean drives away, alone, heading toward a lonely and uncertain future. Sam watches him go, clearly feeling bad about it, but just as clearly relieved that he's well and truly out of the game now, just as he's always wanted. The deepest desires of these two brothers are mutually exclusive, and Sam gets his own way at Dean's expense. It isn't the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

Sam lets himself into the apartment, calling for Jess. Sitting on the table waiting for him is a batch of homemade cookies bearing a note that says 'missed you, love you'. That's sweet. He takes one and heads into the bedroom. Rather chillingly, we hear the shower come on at this point, adding to the impression of safety and normality, the life Sam has chosen for himself.

Happy to be home, Sam drops his bag and flops down on the bed, eyes closed.

A drop of blood drips onto his forehead, followed by another. Sam opens his eyes…and horror floods across his face. For Jessica is up on the ceiling, just as happened to Mary 22 years ago, stomach sliced open. Also wearing a white nightgown, just for the symbolism.

Sam starts yelling in horror, Jessica's body bursts into flames, and Dean kicks the door down. I really wish they hadn't cut out the scene of Dean noticing that his watch has stopped and turning the car around, because he knows what a bad sign that it. His return makes no sense without it.

In the bedroom, Sam is frozen to the spot, staring up at Jessica's burning body, shouting her name, making no attempt to escape the fire. Dean races into the room and sees what has happened, takes a second to recover from the sight of Jessica up on the ceiling just like his mother so long ago, and then grabs Sam and bodily hauls him out of the room.

Okay, so that's twice in this episode that Dean has saved Sam's life, and twice he has carried his little brother out of a burning building.



Later. Fire trucks abound as the blaze is brought under control. Dean watches the hustle and bustle, and then returns to Sam, who is busying himself messing with weapons in the hidden compartment in the Impala's trunk. Dean just looks at him and what he's doing, says nothing – there's nothing he can say. His eyes say it all for him. Sam meets his eyes, grief and despair and resolution written all over his face, and it's a really powerful little moment, no words needed.

Composing himself, Sam drops the shotgun he'd been messing with into the trunk. "We've got work to do," he announces.

Damn, but I always forget until I re-watch it just how much I love this episode!


August 2007

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