"As long as I'm around, nothing bad is gonna happen to you."

Today's 'previously on' recap focuses on Sam's strange prophetic dreams, and how little he understands these unusual abilities of his that have so unexpectedly manifested. A way of letting viewers know they are in for a touch of seasonal-arc progression in this episode.

Somewhere in America – no caption to tell us where in any more detail than that – a man drives home and parks his car in the garage. We are given a nice clear zoom in on his rear license plate. This is important; the director is making sure we can see it. Michigan plates. I guess that answers the question of where in America we are, or at least narrows the options. The man fusses around in his car until he hears the garage door closing, whereupon he looks a little alarmed. He didn't close it. So who did?

He is even more alarmed when the car locks itself, trapping him inside. He tugs on the locks. They refuse to budge. Then the engine turns itself on, and it takes him a while to be alarmed about this. He wastes valuable time frowning in bewilderment as the key refuses to turn. The radio switches itself on, and he wastes even more time puzzling over that. Far too late, he realises the dangers inherent in sitting in a car in an enclosed, poorly ventilated space with the engine running. Fumes are pouring into the car through the vents. He tries again to get the car doors open, or the engine turned off. The key snaps in his hand. He is trapped, and choking. He tries to block the vents, but it is too little, too late. By the time he thinks to try kicking the car window, he no longer has the strength for more than the feeblest of attempts.

We switch briefly to a perspective outside the car as he slowly collapses. Someone is watching, perhaps…?

Trapped inside his car, the man continues to choke, passes out, and is soon dead.

And then Sam wakes up, with flashes of the previous scene dancing through his mind. He sits bolt upright, confused and alarmed. Then he starts to move, turning on the light and waking Dean by the simple expedient of grabbing the arm hanging out of bed and shaking it vigorously. Then, while his sleep-fuddled brother mumbles a not unreasonable query as to why he's been woken up in the middle of the night, Sam leaps into frenzied action, stuffing clothes and other belongings into bags.

SAM: "We have to go."
DEAN: "What's happening?"
SAM: "We have to go. Right now."

Notice that the moment Sam says 'we have to go' Dean is instantly on guard, losing the bulk of his sleepiness and snapping onto the alert for whatever is going on that Sam seems to think necessitates a midnight flit from wherever they are right now.

Dean obviously doesn't take a huge amount of persuading, as the next scene sees the Impala speeding along the freeway, with Dean at the wheel, while a very tense and agitated Sam impersonates a police officer by telephone, trying to run the license plate he saw in his dream – saw clearly enough to remember in very precise detail. Hence our close-up shot of it earlier.

DEAN: "Sammy, relax. I'm sure it's just a nightmare."
SAM: "Yeah, tell me about it."
DEAN: "No, I mean it. You know, a normal, everyday, naked-in-class nightmare. This license plate, it won't check out, you'll see."

Dean wants to convince Sam that it's just a nightmare…but he still got up and started driving in the middle of the night, just because Sam wanted him to. Taking Sam's fears and visions seriously on the one hand, while trying to reassure him they aren't real on the other.

SAM: "It felt different, Dean. Real. Like when I dreamt about our old house and Jessica."
DEAN: "Well, yeah, that makes sense. You're dreamin' about our house, your girlfriend. This guy in your dream, you ever seen him before?"
SAM: "No."
DEAN: "No, exactly. Why would you have premonitions about some random dude in Michigan?"
SAM: "I don't know."
DEAN: "Me neither."

But the license plate checks out – the car is registered to one Jim Miller in Saginaw, Michigan. Sam gets the full address, anxious frown firmly in place, tension levels rising fast. Alarm flashes through Dean's eyes, but he keeps playing it cool. They are still a couple of hours away from Saginaw. Sam frets, and asks Dean to drive faster. He obliges.

The Impala pulls up outside the Miller house some time later to find the place swarming with police, and a body bag being zipped up around the unfortunate Jim Miller. Too late. Sitting in the car, Sam shakes his head, looking distressed. Dean, since Sam can't see his face, looks absolutely stunned. The boys exchange worried glances.

Titles.

Swinging into action, the boys exit the car and start to mingle among the crowd of neighbours and passers by milling around the street gawking at the distressed Miller family and their police attendants. One of the gawkers, when questioned, turns out to have as loose a tongue as they could hope for, freely telling these total strangers all the gory details that have emerged since the body was found, no more than an hour or two previously. Which couldn't have been all that long after Sam had his vision.

WOMAN: "I saw him every Sunday at St. Augustine's. He always seems – seemed so normal. I guess you never know what's going on behind closed doors."

Never know what's going on behind closed doors – there's a nice bit of foreshadowing for you, given the dark secrets the Miller family turn out to be concealing. And the St Augustine's comment is also important information about the family that the boys can make use of, as we will later learn.

Watching the grieving family, Sam becomes increasingly angry and upset, and storms away from the crowd of onlookers. Dean follows, worried.

DEAN: "Sam, we got here as fast as we could."
SAM: "Not fast enough. It just doesn't make any sense, man. Why would I even have these premonitions, unless there was a chance that I could stop them from happening?"
DEAN: "I don't know."

We'll just glide past Sam's dodgy grammar there: it's the event he sees that he wants to stop happening, not the premonition – although he would probably quite like to stop the random premonitions as well. And Dean just doesn't have anything up his sleeve to reassure his brother on that particular point. This is new and scary territory for them both. So Sam's next recourse is to switch to a more practical line of enquiry.

SAM: "So, what do you think killed him?"

As if Dean is going to have any idea, since he's not the one who watched it happen in a premonitory dream. But when Sam is feeling troubled or worried, he always turns to his brother, expecting him to be able to deal with anything.

DEAN: "Maybe the guy just killed himself. You know, maybe there's nothing supernatural going on at all."
SAM: "I'm telling you, I watched it happen. He was murdered by something, Dean. It trapped him in the garage."
DEAN: "Well, what? A spirit, a poltergeist, what?"
SAM: "I don't know what it was. I don't know why I'm having these dreams, I don't know what the hell is happening, Dean."

Sam is getting seriously worked up now. Dean just eyes him worriedly, not knowing what the hell to do.

SAM: "What?"
DEAN: "Nothing, man, I'm just worried about you."
SAM: "Well, don't look at me like that."
DEAN: "I'm not lookin' at you like anything. Though I gotta say, you look like crap.
SAM: "Nice. Thanks."

Another solid diversion tactic in action there, and it works – the insult neatly distracting Sam from noticing Dean's main concern. Sam is getting himself worked up into a real state, worrying about what his premonitions mean, and why he's having them. His inability to control them also contributes to his agitation – the premonitions just happen to him, without his participation or consent, and all he can do is try to solve the riddle he's been so unexpectedly presented with. And Dean is also seriously worried, but prepared to push that aside because Sam needs him to be strong, provide reassurance, and take a firm lead on this.

In high-pressure situations where Sam isn't feeling hard-done-by or rebellious, he automatically looks to Dean to take charge. But there's nothing Dean can do or say about Sam's premonitions that will help, so he rises to the occasion by focusing on the purely practical: working out what's going on here, rather than worrying about why they came.

DEAN: "Yeah, well. Come on; let's just pick this up in the morning. We'll check out the house, we'll talk to the family."
SAM: "Dean, you saw them, they're devastated. They're not gonna wanna talk to us."
DEAN: "Yeah, you're right. But I think I know who they will talk to."
 
And…this is where that gawker's comment about St Augustine's becomes relevant, because we immediately cut to the next day, and…

SAM: "This has got to be a whole new low for us."

Woot! Hot boys dressed as priests! Sam's got his hair all slicked back off his face for once and it looks really funny.

Jim Miller's brother Roger opens the door, and Dean introduces himself and Sam as 'Father Simmons and Father Frehley', teehee, new junior priests at St Augustine's. Roger instantly swallows this, so it's clearly a credible lie. See how important it is to pay attention when interviewing random gawkers near the scene of a potential supernatural event.

Roger isn't exactly thrilled to have priests in the house, however, not feeling in the mood for spiritual comfort having just lost his brother. Jim Miller's widow welcomes the priestly visit, though. Sam instantly starts spinning his mild-mannered sympathy mojo, while Dean lays it on thick in his own inimitable style.

The Miller house is absolutely crawling with visitors. Now personally, if I'd just suffered a bereavement, I might want a little time to myself before being descended upon by the sympathetic hordes. Especially if those sympathetic hordes thought it was perfectly acceptable to make themselves at home in my house and force me to play hostess. But the hordes do insist on descending.

Dean immediately digs into the free food. Because, well, this is Dean. And it's free food. He's not going to just leave it lying there. Sam disapproves, but Mrs Miller doesn't seem to mind. Not even when Dean starts to ask her about her husband, talking with his mouth full. Looking genuinely shocked and devastated, she says that they were happy and that she can't understand why her husband would kill himself. It was their son, Max, who found him, she tells them, indicating a young lad of indeterminate age – late teens? Early twenties? – sitting all by himself in a corner of the room, watching the bustling masses busying themselves in his house.

Sam heads over to talk to Max, leaving Dean to continue questioning Mrs Miller, complimenting her on her home and using that as a way of sidling into questions about the house, hoping to unearth evidence of paranormal activity. Mrs Miller seems a little confused at the questions, but answers readily enough. Nothing odd about the house at all, she tells him. It's always been perfect. With that line of enquiry shot down, Dean excuses himself to use the bathroom – although not before grabbing another little sausage from the buffet on offer, because: free food.

Sam, meanwhile, is very gently questioning the rather weedy and odd-looking Max, who also tows the family line – they were normal and happy, and he doesn't understand why his dad would kill himself.

No stranger to grief himself, Sam sympathises. "I know it's rough, losing a parent. Especially when you don't have all the answers."

Upstairs, after checking that he's all alone and unobserved, Dean whips out a very nifty high-tech gizmo, an infrared thermal scanner with criss-crossing green laser beams. Where they heck did they get that, and why haven't we seen it before? He scans every room, but nothing registers. He'd be better off trying to get into and scan the garage where Jim Miller died, wouldn't he? On hearing footsteps, he quickly hides the device and tries not to look shifty, but it's only Sam. With the house and family providing no clues, they make tracks out of there.

At the latest motel, the complete blank they've drawn so far is discussed in detail. Sam pins pages of research all over the walls, while Dean keeps himself busy stripping down, cleaning and reassembling his gun collection. He makes this essential maintenance look absolutely effortless, and very sexy.

DEAN: "Hey, man, I told you I searched that house up and down. There were no cold spots, no sulphur scent, nada."
SAM: "And the family said everything was normal?"
DEAN: "Well, I mean, if there was a demon or a poltergeist in there, don't you think somebody would've noticed something? I used the infrared thermal scanner, man, there was nothing."
SAM: "So, what, you think Jim Miller killed himself? And my dream was just some sort of freakish coincidence?"
DEAN: "I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that there's nothing supernatural about that house."

While Dean continues his gun maintenance, Sam has by now given up pinning things to the wall and flopped onto the bed to brood and fret. Grimacing, he starts to massage his temples as if a migraine is coming on. Since Sam has his back to his brother, whose attention is mostly focused on what he's doing, Dean doesn't notice at first. But as Sam tries to continue brainstorming, only to falter due to the pain in his head, Dean quickly becomes concerned, asking, "What's wrong with you?"

In response, Sam slides off the bed onto his knees on the floor, clutching his head in pain. Dean promptly rushes over to him, but Sam kind of looks right through him, and…

Flash! We have waking vision for the first time. In the vision, Roger Miller is arriving home with an armful of groceries, which he dumps on the counter in his kitchen, and then takes a swig of a beer. A dark shape passes the door behind him, and the kitchen window opens up all by itself. Perturbed, Roger goes over, closes and locks it. He resumes his unpacking of groceries. The window unlocks itself and opens wide once more. Roger is puzzled, and wanders over to investigate. This is never a good idea when such bizarre things start happening. He tries to close the window again. It refuses to budge. So, being an idiot, he sticks his head out to take a look.

Viewers everywhere start screaming at their TV sets: "Don't stick your head out! Don't stick your –"

Too late. Lying on his back across the windowsill, he's a sitting duck as the window comes crashing back down once more, decapitating him. Blood splatters. The head bounces and rolls. It is gruesome.

Flash!

Back at the motel, a pained and panicked Sam gasps, "It's happening again. Something's gonna kill Roger Miller."

Cut to: the Impala speeding along a road, night. Sam, eyes half closed and voice sounding almost slurred, is on the phone, getting an address for Roger Miller. At the wheel, Dean shoots worried little sideways glances at him.

DEAN: "If you're gonna hurl, I'll pull the car over, you know, 'cause the upholstery –"

That's guy speak for 'I'm really worried about what these visions are doing to you, but can't express that concern verbally, so I'll dress it up in code instead.'

Sam insists that he's fine. He doesn't look fine. He looks like a man with a really bad migraine. Dean mildly goes along with this declaration, clearly not believing a word of it, whereupon Sam gives in and admits the truth.

SAM: "Dean, I'm scared, man. These nightmares weren't bad enough, now I'm seein' things when I'm awake? And these visions, or whatever, they're getting more intense. And painful."
DEAN: "Come on, man, it'll be all right. You'll be fine."

Dean, King of Denial. It comes so automatically to them both – Sam frets and fears the worst out loud, while Dean internalises and reassures.

SAM: "What is it about the Millers? Why am I connected to them? Why am I watching them die? Why the hell is this happening to me?"
DEAN: "I don't know, Sam, but we'll figure it out, okay? We face the unexplainable every single day. This is just another thing."
SAM: "No. It's never been us. It's never been in the family like this. Tell the truth, you can't tell me this doesn't freak you out."
Pause. Dean keeps his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
DEAN: "This doesn't freak me out."

When Sam is distressed, he instinctively seeks reassurance from his big brother, secure in the knowledge that it will be freely given, because when Dean sees his little brother distressed, he instinctively offers reassurance, whether he believes his own words or not. In counterpoint, when Dean is troubled about anything, he tends not to seek any kind of reassurance from anyone, instead clamping down and denying for all he's worth, even to himself.

That says a lot about their very different personalities, but also suggests a lot about their very different experiences growing up. For all that Sam concealed his first premonition from Dean for so long, he is obviously well used to being able to take his fears to his brother. Dean didn't have a big brother to turn to; there was only his dad. And everything about Dean says that, either because of who John was or how Dean perceived him – probably a bit of both – he didn't feel able to confess fear or weakness of any kind to his father. So that now, as an adult, carrying those fears all by himself and confiding them to no one is so much a part of who he is that it's never likely to change.

The Impala pulls up outside Roger Miller's apartment block just as Roger arrives home with his armful of groceries. This impeccable timing proves to be of no use whatsoever, though, as Roger refuses point blank to talk to the 'priests', hurrying into the building and slamming the door in their faces. The boys yell their good intentions at him, to no avail. Sam despairs, but Dean thinks fast, racing around to the side of the building with Sam hot on his heels.

There's a gate blocking the way. Dean kicks it down. There aren't many doors in the course of the season that prove able to resist Dean when he is really determined to get through. They race through, climb up onto the fire escape, and then sprint up several flights of stairs. They've almost reached the floor Roger Miller lives on when a sickening squelch and thump tells them they are too late. Sam freezes in horror. For the second time in as many days he has been unable to prevent a death he saw in a premonition from taking place. I like that in a show, that they aren't able to save everyone. Dean keeps his head, pushes past Sam, and, after taking a moment to be horrified at the gory scene, starts wiping their fingerprints off the handrail, which is a touch of real-world pragmatism that you've just got to appreciate. They don't want the cops to know they were there.

Sam is still frozen to the spot, in shock. Dean snaps him out of it with a crisp, direct order to wipe down their fingerprints, an order he mechanically follows, while Dean finds another window and carefully climbs inside to examine the scene more closely – taking care not to leave any more fingerprints in the process.

Later, back down on the ground, the brothers walk back to the car, discussing the absolute lack of supernatural clues at both scenes. Sam is still very tightly wound up, so absorbed by his distress over what's happening that he's oblivious to just about everything going on around him. When they get to the road he doesn't even notice and carries on walking, so Dean casually sticks a hand out to stop him stepping under a passing car. Such a tiny, randomly humdrum, perfect detail, especially since neither makes any comment on it, simply continuing their conversation without missing a beat. Dean is very determinedly staying calm, in contrast to Sam's deep agitation.

SAM: "I saw something in the vision, like a dark shape. Something was stalking Roger."
DEAN: "Well, whatever it was, we can be sure it's not connected to their house."
SAM: "No, it's connected to the family itself."

They discuss a few possible perps, and Sam wonders whether Max might be in danger, since all the men in his family are being killed off.

SAM: "Well, I know one thing I have in common with these people."
DEAN: "What's that?"
SAM: "Both our families are cursed."

Cursed. Sam really does see nothing but bad in their family situation. But he should know better than to say things like that to Dean, who won't ever agree with a word spoken against their family, since he won't allow himself to do anything other than appreciate them just the way they are, warts and all.

DEAN: "Our family's not cursed. We just…had our dark spots."
SAM: "Our dark spots are pretty dark."
DEAN: "You're…dark."

Teehee. He totally had no comeback there. So lame. But Sam looks a little brighter now, so Dean's determined reassurances and dogged support are clearly having the desired effect.

Next day, the priest outfits are back. Fantastic! This time, faux-priests Sam and Dean are the only intruders to the Millers' grief. Max, playing host while his mother rests, explains that he sent away all the other well-wishers, after acquiring a surfeit of tuna casserole. People do so like to offer practical support in times of distress, and food is always the standard to fall back on.

Pulling the sympathetic junior priests routine again, the brothers carefully interview Max regarding his father and uncle, and he talks relatively freely about how they used to live next door to one another when he was younger. But then when asked if his childhood memories of that time are happy ones, if there was anything unusual he can remember, he freezes up, stiffly insisting that everything was perfectly normal, and they were all perfectly happy.

The boys leave, discussing this reaction. Check how Dean instantly loses the dog collar, the moment they are out of sight.

DEAN: "Nobody's family is totally normal and happy."

Oh, I like that line. It's so true. And another reason Dean appreciates his own family so much – it's his family, all he has, and, seeing clearly that there is no such thing as the perfect family, he makes the most of what he's got. Sam, on the other hand, still has his idealised vision of perfect normality to strive for, having not yet acquired that layer of cynicism and pragmatism his brother has.

DEAN: "Did you see when he was talkin' about his old house?"
SAM: "Sounded scared."
DEAN: "Yeah, Max isn't tellin' us everything. I say we go find the old neighbourhood, and find out what life was really like at the Millers'."

While finding the address, the boys apparently also take some time to change out of their priest outfits. Amazingly, on locating and visiting the Millers' old neighbourhood, they instantly happen upon a neighbour who has lived there long enough to remember the family, and is willing to talk about them openly to these complete strangers. Who could be dangerous stalkers for all he knows.

NEIGHBOUR: "So, uh, what's this about? That poor kid okay?"
SAM: "What do you mean?"
NEIGHBOUR: "Well, in my life, I've never seen a child treated like that. I mean, I'd hear Mr. Miller yellin' and throwin' things clear across the street. He was a mean drunk. He used to beat the tar out of Max. Bruises – broke his arm two times that I know of."
SAM: "And this was going on regularly?"
NEIGHBOUR: "Practically every day. In fact, that thug brother of his was just as likely to take a swing at the boy, but the worst part was the stepmother. She'd just stand there, checked out, never lifted a finger to protect him. I must have called the police seven or eight times, never did any good."

I fail to see how a browbeaten wife unable to control her drunken and abusive husband can be considered worse than the abusive husband himself. She was probably also scared of him if his rages were that bad. Anyway, Dean instantly picks up on the use of the word 'stepmother' there. The neighbour explains that Max's real mother had died, in a car accident, as far as he knows, and then asks Sam if he's all right. Because Sam has started to grimace and clutch at his head once more – sign of an imminent vision.

Instead of taking the time to explain this bizarre behaviour as migraine or anything, the brothers just very hurriedly thank the man for his time, and Dean starts to bundle Sam back to the car, quick smart. They don't quite make it before…Flash!

Vision time again. This time we're in the kitchen at the Miller house. Mrs Miller is chopping vegetables, upset and on the defensive, while Max stands around upbraiding her for her passive contribution to his childhood torment. A large knife on the work surface starts to rattle, then leaps into the air. Shocked, Mrs Miller backs away. The knife follows, hovering milimetres from her face, that very sharp tip aimed right at her eye. She is terrified. Max is crying and slobbering with anger.

MAX: "For every time you stood there and watched. Pretending it wasn't happening!"
MRS. MILLER: "I'm sorry!"
MAX: "No, you're not. You just don't want to die."

Squelch again: knife right into the eye, through the head, and into the wall behind. It's gross.

That's not exactly the kind of death that can be written off as accidental or suicide. I doubt Max has put that much thought into it, though. He's driven by despair, and by now incapable of rationalising. All he can see is his own pain, and this is his attempt at bringing it to an end. His distraught attitude throughout, it is now clear, was brought about by despair, not grief.

End of vision, and we cut to Sam and Dean in the Impala, driving. That neighbour they were speaking to was still staring at them when Sam went into the absence seizure of his vision. I wonder if he asked any more awkward questions or offered to call an ambulance or anything before they managed to make their getaway. I also wonder how long the absence seizure part of the vision lasts – the glimpses we've seen have looked like absence seizures, anyway, with the staring into the middle distance at something only he can see – and how frantic Dean gets while it's going on, since there's nothing he can do to bring Sam back out of it. Just has to wait it out. The first time especially must have been awful, not knowing what was happening or how to help.

Sam is now somewhat post-migraine again, although apparently not as badly as before. Now that he's finally had a clear image of what's going on, they have a little more to go on as they speed to the Miller house in hope of saving at least one life on this gig.

DEAN: "How's he pullin' it off?"
SAM: "I don't know. It looked like telekinesis."
DEAN: "So, he's psychic? He's a spoon-bender?"
SAM: "I didn't even realize it, but this whole time he was there. He was outside of the garage when his dad died; he was in the apartment when his uncle died. These visions, this whole time, I wasn't connecting to the Millers, I was connecting to Max. The thing I don't get is why, man? I guess because we're so alike?"
DEAN: "What are you talking about? The dude's nothing like you."
SAM: "Well, we both have psychic abilities. We're both –"
DEAN: "Both what?"

Sam stops himself from saying what he's probably thinking – that they are both freaks, both cursed, or something like that. Maybe he's finally noticed that Dean takes offence at any derogatory remarks about their family and lifestyle. Sam has identified strongly with Max pretty much since they first met, mainly on the strength of sympathising with the other boy's grief and apparent confusion over everything that was happening around him. Learning that they have psychic abilities in common only strengthens that, despite the discovery that Max was actually responsible for his father and uncle's deaths. Dean, on the other hand, focusing on the 'murderer' part of Max's character profile, sees no similarity between them whatsoever.

DEAN: "Sam, Max is a monster. He's already killed two people, and now he's gunnin' for a third."
SAM: "Well, with what he went through – the beatings. To want revenge on those people, I'm sorry, man, I hate to say it, but it's not that insane."

It figures that Sam would be able to identify with the desire for revenge – his burning need to take revenge for Jessica's murder has been his principle driving force all season. But identifying to the point almost of justifying Max's murder of his family… That's taking it a wee bit too far. As Dean points out.

DEAN: "Yeah, but it doesn't justify murdering your entire family."
SAM: "Dean –"
DEAN: "He's no different than anything else we've hunted. All right, we've gotta end him."

Second time in three episodes that Dean has suggested killing a human being who has crossed a line, using supernatural means to kill others. Kind of makes you wonder. Has he killed before? Is he simply playing devil's advocate, tossing the idea out there for Sam to shoot down? He sounds perfectly serious about it. Can he just honestly not think of any other way to solve the problem?

It's a very murky area, and Dean is used to operating on a very black and white playing field: if it's evil of the supernatural variety, you kill it so that it can't kill anyone else. Place a human into that equation, and things get more complicated – they've had a few cases lately where living humans were behind the supernatural cases they worked, and it's got to be frustrating to know that their hands are tied in those circumstances. Most of their cases, in fact, involve spirits or creatures that were once human. They may have become something more than that either in death or as a result of their actions in life, but they started out as human. That's got to also play a part in Dean's thinking. Stop the human before it develops into something more, something worse? For a guy who thinks mostly in black-and-white terms, that's pretty grey.

He's on relatively safe ground making a suggestion like that with Sam around to employ his ethical veto, mind. Although I'm not convinced Sam is quite as entitled to ride the moral high horse as he generally makes out. He's just as capable of murky decision-making as his brother, given the right circumstances.

SAM: "We're not gonna kill Max."
DEAN: "Then what? Hand him over to the cops and say, 'Lock him up, officer, he kills with the power of his mind'?"
SAM: "Forget it. No way, man."
DEAN: "Sam –"
SAM: "Dean. He's a person. We can talk to him. Hey, promise me you'll follow my lead on this one."
DEAN: "All right, fine. But I'm not lettin' him hurt anybody else."

So Dean takes a gun with him, tucked into his waistband, into the house of a psychotic, homicidal telekinetic. Yeah, that'll work well. Dean doesn't always think things through, especially when he's stressed. For all that he gives such a good impression of being relatively calm, he's been worried sick about Sam all episode. And they are about to walk onto dangerous and unfamiliar ground.

In the Miller house, the scene we saw in Sam's vision is just beginning to play out when Dean and Sam come busting through the door.

"Fathers?" Mrs Miller asks in confusion, while they stand around trying to act as normally as possible given that they just kicked her front door in, which isn't exactly what you'd call priestly behaviour. Max is startled and dismayed, having not expected any interruptions.

Sam takes the lead, and Dean lets him, as promised. He's a bit flustered, but still works his sincerity mojo for all he's worth, persuading Max to come outside for a private chat, just for a few minutes. Max heads for the door. Dean opens it for him. And then disaster strikes as Dean's jacket falls open and Max sees, in an inconveniently located mirror, the gun concealed beneath.

The door slams shut again, and so do all the window shutters. Alarmed, and really not thinking clearly now, Dean pulls out the gun, and Max promptly yanks it out of his hands with his telekinetic power, picks it up, and points it at the two interlopers. Instant hostage situation. Impulsive, Dean starts to move toward him, and it's Sam's turn to throw out a warning hand.

When a now very bewildered Mrs Miller tries to ask what's going on, Max telekinetically tosses her aside. Sam starts to talk, trying to calm Max down and persuade the other man to trust him, to allow him to help. The mild mannered sincerity thing is harder to keep up at gunpoint, but he makes a valiant effort, and Dean is still sticking to his promise of following Sam's lead. It has to be Sam on this – he has a much more subtle touch than Dean, necessary when dealing with someone so severely unbalanced, plus it was Dean who had the gun, which loses him a lot of trust points with Max.

Sam tries to explain about his visions, a notion Max instantly rejects as crazy. That's rich coming from a boy with telekinetic powers. Sam points this out to him, only a little more tactfully than I just did, and says he's there to help.

Max is desperate and panicked, having been found out. "No one can help me!" he cries.

Sam offers to talk to him, just the two of them. "We'll get Dean and Alice out of here."

Aha! Mrs Miller has a first name at last. Dean, who has stayed quiet but worried looking throughout, instantly protests against the idea of Sam being left alone with Max, but Sam silences him with the tiniest of gestures, which amuses me. Max also doesn't like that idea, though, and the chandelier above them starts to rattle ominously.

MAX: "Nobody leaves this house!"
SAM: "And nobody has to, all right? They'll just…they'll just go upstairs."
DEAN: "Sam, I'm not leavin' you alone with him."
SAM: "Yes, you are. Look, Max, you're in charge here, all right? We all know that. No one's gonna do anything that you don't want to, but I'm talkin' five minutes here, man."
DEAN: "Sam."

Sam waves a warning finger at him again, and Dean falls silent again. If it's that easy to make Dean shut up, why hasn't Sam tried this tactic years ago? Max finally agrees to the five minutes alone Sam is asking for and Dean, with no choice but to acquiesce, helps Mrs Miller upstairs out of the way.

Cut to – a letter opener standing itself up, point down, on a coffee table and starting to spin on its tip. Alone with Max now, sitting opposite one another in the lounge, Sam attempts to reason with the murderous telekinetic. He makes a decent enough start, gently sympathising with him for what he went through at the same time as equally gently insisting that he has to stop what he's doing, let his stepmother go. Max protests that while Alice might not have beaten him herself, she's a part of it too. Sam tries to appeal to him by agreeing that those who hurt him when he was growing up deserve to be punished, but…

MAX: "Growing up? Try last week."

Completely taken aback, Sam looks stunned and disgusted when Max shows him the fresh bruises concealed beneath his shirt, and has no real idea how to try to continue handling this. He's out of his depth here. Max keeps talking now he's started, about his helplessness as a child, about how the discovery of his telekinetic powers seemed like a gift. Then, the previous week, his dad had got drunk and beat him again, for the first time in a long time. "And then I knew what I had to do," he says. That was the point at which Max snapped, it would seem.

Sam asks why he didn't just leave. The spinning letter opener drops to the table once more with a clatter. Sam is empathetic enough that he can usually imagine himself into other people's shoes, imagine what they are going through accurately enough to feel his way through a conversation like this, but it isn't really working this time. He has no parallel experience of his own to draw on, and really can't understand Max's situation. Sam was able to walk away from his family because they had taught him how to be strong. Walking away from an abuser, who has only ever taught you how weak you are, is never that simple.

MAX: "It wasn't about getting away – just knowing that they'd still be out there. It was about not being afraid. When my dad used to look at me, there was hate in his eyes. Do you know what that feels like?"
SAM: "No."
 
There's pity in Sam's eyes and voice now. He has no idea what it's like to be hated by a parent, although he does understand fear, only too well. The fear he grew up with, fear born of knowing the dark things lurking in the shadows out there, was part of the reason he left his family in the first place for the safety a normal life at Stanford seemed to offer. And he has been horribly afraid all episode, of what his premonitions and visions might mean.

Max goes on to explain that his father blamed him for everything, up to and including his mother's death.

MAX: "There was a fire. And he'd get drunk and babble on like she died in some insane way. He said that she burned up. Pinned to the ceiling."
 
Shocked, Sam switches, instantly: from deepest sympathy and concern to stunned and almost fevered intensity of the 'I am not alone' variety. It's Sam's turn to talk now, words tumbling out of his mouth, telling Max that what his dad saw was real, that it happened to his mother too…

Max scoffs that Sam's dad must have been as drunk as his, and Sam looks almost offended at the notion, rejecting it out of hand – with much the same look on his face that Dean gets when Sam calls the family 'cursed', in fact. John wasn't such a big drinker, then, in spite of what Sam said to Dean in the Pilot.

SAM: "No, it's the same thing, Max. The same thing killed our mothers."
MAX: "That's not possible."
SAM: "This must be why I've been having visions during the day. Why they're getting more intense. 'Cause you and I must be connected in some way. Your abilities, they started six, seven months ago, right? Out of the blue?"
MAX: "How'd you know that?"
SAM: "Because that's when my abilities started, Max. I mean, yours seem to be much further along, but still, this…this means something, right? I mean, for some reason, you and I – you and I were chosen."

That line about the abilities developing and Max's being further along than Sam's is significant. Sam's premonitions have been very patchy up till now – just those two premonitory dreams about Jessica and the house in Lawrence, the vision he saw of Jessica at the end of Bloody Mary, and the vibes he felt about the ghosts in their old house. All very few and far between, until the sudden explosion of nightmares and waking visions he's had in this episode. The visions happen to him at irregular intervals, without any warning and without him being able to do anything about it. But Max, in much the same time span, has clearly learned to control his ability and to make active use of it, rather than passively enduring and then acting on it later as Sam has to.

Sam is getting way too excited now about finding someone else like him, about not being as alone in his freakdom as he'd believed he was – about the prospect of finding answers. He doesn't see that his fervour is freaking out the already distraught and unstable Max even more than he already was.

Not unreasonably, Max asks what Sam thinks they have been chosen for, and Sam hesitates. He has no answer to that question, for all that he'd dearly love one.
 
SAM: "I don't know. But Dean and I, my brother and I, we're hunting for your mom's killer. And we can find answers. Answers that can help us both. But you gotta let us go. You gotta let your stepmother go."

Although it makes sense in this context to express it in that way, I'm not sure that Dean sees himself as hunting for their mother's killer quite so specifically. Dean sees himself more as a hunter of evil in general, with their mother's killer one of many targets, albeit one that as a family they have an especial vested interest in. Vengeance for Mary – and Jessica – isn't his prime motivation the way it is for Sam and John.

Sam is just so desperate to get through to Max, to connect with him, and it so nearly works. For a moment, Max starts to look like he's really taking in what Sam is telling him. But then…

MAX: "No. What they did to me…I still have nightmares. I'm still scared all the time, like I'm just waiting for their next beating. I'm just tired of being scared. If I do this, it'll be over."
SAM: "No, don't you get it? It won't. The nightmares won't end, Max, not like this. It's just…more pain. And it makes you as bad as them. Max, you don't have to go through all this by yourself."
MAX: "I'm sorry."

Sam's eyes widen, but almost before he's had time to register his dismay, Max has telekinetically tossed him into a handy nearby closet, and shoved a heavy cabinet in front of the door. Sam is trapped, banging on the door and yelling at Max in vain. But Max has already left the room. He believes, truly believes, that killing his stepmother is necessary to end his own torment, and with Sam contained and out of action, Dean is the only thing standing in his way now.

Upstairs in a bedroom, Dean is making a stab at cleaning up Mrs Miller's bleeding head wound when the door opens, all by itself. This is never a good sign. Max slowly walks into the room, looking spaced out and distraught, almost drunk on despair. The door closes behind him. Dean takes a step forward, and is promptly tossed hard into the wall, leaving quite an indentation. Ouch. That's got to hurt. Dean is always being thrown into walls. He starts to pick himself up almost at once, though, groaning.

Max, meanwhile, has pulled out the gun he took from Dean earlier. Bringing that thing into the house was such a bad idea. Fumbling, clearly unused to handling guns, Max points it at Dean as he gets up and strides toward him again. Dean then stops, looking stunned, as Max lets go of the gun and it continues to float there in mid air. The gun cocks itself and turns to point at Mrs Miller, who cringes and pleads with her murderous stepson.

Dean promptly moves to stand between Mrs Miller and the gun, that darn hero complex of his completely subsuming all common sense. He just can't leave someone else in peril if there's anything at all he can do about it, no matter how much danger this means placing himself in. The gun immediately points itself at him again.

MAX: "Stay back. It's not about you."
DEAN: "If you want to kill her, you gotta go through me first."

Never call the bluff of a madman.

Max considers, for just a moment. But he's killed twice already, twice too often to care about collateral damage now. "Okay," he says, almost casually.

The trigger is pulled. The wall is splattered with a lot of blood and gore. And Dean collapses to the floor, a neat little bullet hole right through the middle of his forehead.

Viewers everywhere shriek in horror and disbelief, before remembering that Dean is one of only two leads this show has and is therefore unlikely to be killed off halfway through the season, and that Sam has been having visions all episode.

Flash!

Right on cue, we flash back to Sam in the closet, in the grip of another vision. Viewers everywhere breathe a sigh of relief. Sam doesn't, because he just saw his brother die, a mere two episodes after moving heaven and earth to keep him alive….

"No. No!" Sam bellows. And the cabinet trapping him is thrust away from the door. Whoa! Spontaneous telekinetic moment for Sam!

Sam freezes, gasping, wondering what the heck just happened. He gives the door an experimental tap. It opens. He is free – but is he in time?

Upstairs, Dean has just moved to get between Mrs Miller and the gun.

MAX: "Stay back. It's not about you."
DEAN: "If you want to kill her, you gotta go through me first."
MAX: "Okay."

It's like an action replay, except that this time Sam bursts into the room just before the trigger is pulled. Frantic, Sam pleads with Max, trying desperately to get through to him.

SAM: "No, don't! Don't! Please. Please, Max. Max, we can help you, all right? But this, what you're doing, it's not the solution. It's not gonna fix anything."

Crying again, Max stares at him for a very long moment – it looks as though Sam is finally connecting with him, finally getting through….

MAX: "You're right."

Sam's relief doesn't last long. The gun spins, and Max blows his own brains out instead of killing his stepmother or Dean. Or Sam. Case closed in highly unsatisfactory fashion.

Later, the Miller house is crawling with police once again, and Mrs Miller proves herself an accomplished liar, telling them that Sam and Dean are family friends she called to help when Max attacked her, that she doesn't know where Max got the gun – and Dean has the grace to look uncomfortable at that last. The truth is, though, that even if Dean hadn't taken the gun into the house, it probably wouldn't have changed much. There were plenty of other things Max could have used as weapons, and he was already too far gone to be reached. Mrs Miller sobs that she's lost everyone as the officers tell the boys they can go now – no more questions.

Sam is still pretty spaced out about it all, worn out by his visions and shocked at the outcome. As they walk back to the car he wants to dissect the whole thing, all the wrongs and the rights, blaming himself, wishing he could have done more to help.

SAM: "If I just said somethin' else. Gotten through to him somehow."
DEAN: "Don't do that."
SAM: "Do what?"
DEAN: "Torture yourself. It wouldn't have mattered what you said, Max was too far gone."
SAM: "When I think about how he looked at me, man, right before…. Should've done something."
DEAN: "Come on, man, you risked your life. I mean, yeah, maybe if we'd've gotten there twenty years earlier."

Sometimes there really is nothing you can do. It's usually Dean who beats himself up over not being able to save everyone – although he tends to do so a lot less verbally than Sam – but this time Sam's the one taking it all to heart. All those painful premonitions, finally finding someone else like himself, someone else whose life had been touched by The Demon, and there was nothing he could do. But Max's pitiful situation has, at least, forced him to re-evaluate his own childhood. "Well, I'll tell you one thing – we're lucky we had Dad."

Amusingly, he says it almost like he expects this revelation to be news to his brother, despite the fact that Dean has never resented their father or how he raised them the way that Sam generally does.

Dean is amazed. "I never thought I'd hear you say that." I'll bet he didn't, the way Sam usually grumbles about John.
 
SAM: "Well, he could've gone a whole 'nother way after Mom. A little more tequila, a little less demon hunting, and we would've had Max's childhood. All things considered, we turned out okay. Thanks to him."
DEAN: "All things considered."

Finally, Sam has realised that, whether he agrees with or understands John's choices and actions or not, his father has always had his best interests at heart and is motivated by love for his children. Given that Jim Miller learned to hate his own son after The Demon devastated their family, that's no small thing.

Back at the latest motel, the boys pack their bags ready to leave town, and I love that throughout the conversation they continue to wander around the room, gathering belongings and stuffing them into their bags. Action dialogue always feels so much more natural than static dialogue. Sam can't stop thinking about what he's learned as a result of meeting Max and, again, wants to share his thoughts and fears with his brother. Which is healthy.

SAM: "I've been thinking: why would this demon, or whatever it is, why would it kill Mom and Jessica and Max's mother, you know, what does it want?"
DEAN: "No idea."
SAM: "Well, you think maybe it was after us? After Max and me?"
DEAN: "Why would you think that?"
SAM: "I mean, either telekinesis or premonitions, we both had abilities, you know? Maybe it was after us for some reason."

Given what little they know about this demon and how it operates, the fact that it has twice now come after Sam and killed the women closest to him, this is not an unreasonable assumption to draw. But it is never possible to draw truly accurate conclusions from so little evidence. Sam's speculations can only hurt him, since he has no way of knowing for sure. Dean would rather bury his head in the sand and not speculate at all about what they can't confirm. For now, he's more interested in easing Sam's mind.

DEAN [very firm]: "Sam, if it wanted you, it would've just taken you, okay? This is not your fault. It's not about you."

Sam confides his fears, and Dean reassures. It's what they do. This episode really highlights the way in which Sam at times relates to his brother more as a pseudo-parent than a sibling. And although Sam is right to fear that The Demon's interest is in him, based on what little he knows, Dean is right that if it wanted him, physically, it could very easily have taken him. They – and we – know far too little about its motivations to draw any firm conclusions at this stage.

SAM: "Then what is it about?"
DEAN: "It's about that damn thing that did this to our family. The thing that we're gonna find, the thing that we're gonna kill. And that's all."

Dean has a wonderfully black-and-white way of thinking, very much a practical soul. He prefers to stick to what he knows rather than borrowing trouble by speculating about what he doesn't.

But that's not all. When Sam first started having his premonitory dreams, he tried to hide them, even from himself, and pretended they weren't real, they weren't happening. It took a second premonitory dream, months later, for him to come clean and admit to himself it was happening, and tell his brother about it – and, really, he only told Dean because he had no choice. He felt compelled to act upon his dream out of fear, because he'd ignored the first one and Jessica died, and acting upon it meant telling Dean the truth, because he needed his help. He would have preferred not to share the painful truth, afraid as he was of what it meant. Maybe afraid of how Dean might react, given how he felt about it himself. But he's way past that now. No more secrets – the latest development is shared with Dean immediately. Sharing the secret means sharing the responsibility, letting someone else help carry the load.

SAM: "When Max locked me in that closet, that big cabinet against the door…I moved it."
DEAN [laughs]: "You've got a little bit more upper body strength than I give you credit for."
SAM: "No, man, I moved it. Like Max."
DEAN [taken aback]: "Oh. Right."

Dean has got no reaction prepared for this. It's just alarming. But Sam is worried and afraid, and we've seen so many times that Dean won't have that – he'll always find a way of hiding his own fears so that Sam can be reassured. Protecting Sam from whatever comes along is one of his central driving forces. He grabs a spoon and holds it out. "Bend this."

"I can't turn it on and off, Dean." Sam is irritated at the suggestion, which is a step up from being afraid of himself, and probably pretty much the reaction Dean was hoping for.

DEAN: "Well, how'd you do it?"
SAM: "I don't know; I can't control it. I saw you die, and it just came out of me, like a punch. You know, like a freak adrenaline thing."
DEAN: "Well, I'm sure it won't happen again."

That's such a typical Dean reaction. If you don't have any answers, just take refuge in denial and pretend everything's okay. But Sam is still, understandably, fretting about what all this means. The more his abilities develop, the further they take him from the normal life he craves so badly and the less he understands about himself. He's just left with this heavy burden of fear and apprehension about what all it could mean.

SAM: "Aren't you worried, man, aren't you worried that I could turn into Max or something?"
DEAN: "Nope. No way. You know why?"
SAM: "No. Why?"
DEAN: "'Cause you've got one advantage that Max didn't have."
SAM: "Dad? Because Dad's not here, Dean."
DEAN: "No. Me. As long as I'm around, nothing bad is gonna happen to you."

And that's typical Sam, so absorbed in his fears for himself that he can't see what's right in front of his nose: that he isn't alone in all this. Sam really does take his brother's unswerving support for granted.

Dean is at his absolute big brotherly best throughout this episode, continuing an ongoing character trait that's been apparent right from the start. We've seen many times that Dean will do anything for Sam: kill the monsters, forgive the shooting, let him run off alone on a wild goose chase while Dean handles the case at hand but still be big enough to make the first move, check that Sam's okay and tell him what he needs to hear. For all his apparent scepticism at the beginning, Dean has gone along with everything Sam said or asked for in this episode. Sam has a nightmare about a random guy in Michigan; Dean gets up in the middle of the night to check it out. Sam asks Dean to let him take the lead with Max, and Dean goes along with this request, respecting his brother's people skills and trusting him to be able to get through to Max. And here, again, we have Dean telling Sam what he needs to hear to reassure him. This doesn't freak me out, you're gonna be okay, I'll protect you.

As long as I'm around, nothing bad is gonna happen to you – it's kind of worrying when a character says something like that, I have to say.

Having made this promise, Dean slides straight on into active diversion mode. "Now then, I know what we need to do about your premonitions. I know where we have to go."

He looks so serious, Sam is completely taken in. "Where?"

"Vegas." Dean smirks. Sam takes a moment to process that, and then scoffs and goes on out to the car, the distraction having worked perfectly – he's been completely jolted out of his fit of broody introspection. "What?" Dean protests, following. "Come on, man. Craps table. We'd clean up."

But as Dean turns to close the door behind him, with Sam safely out of sight, the fear and worry he's just so successfully lifted from Sam's shoulders is written all across his own face instead. Something he can't explain is happening to his little brother, and there's nothing he can do to stop it, and no one he can turn to for help or advice. Taking the responsibility and worry from Sam means carrying it himself. And there are no answers anywhere in sight.


September 2006

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