"You're like a walking encyclopaedia of weirdness."

Well, this was a change of pace. After the slapstick of Tall Tales and the high-octane thrill ride that was Born Under a Bad Sign, here we have an entirely self-contained, contemplative and mellow offering. Say what you like about this show, it is never afraid to try something different and explore diverse styles of storytelling.

Then.

"Storm's coming, and you boys, you are smack in the middle of it," says Bobby, leaving out the part about their daddy also being smack in the middle it, what with John being dead and gone for quite some time now, and therefore no longer in the eye of the storm with them. Dean goes on to remind everyone, as always, that the boys are picking up where John left off, with the saving of people and hunting of things, and this voiceover is accompanied by a variety of images of the brothers saving random people and hunting random things.

The random clips of people saved and things killed continue as Sam insists that they have to save as many people as they can, before remarking that he and Dean have seen things most people couldn't even dream about. Dean states that if it's supernatural they kill it, end of story, that's their job, and when Sam counters that their job is hunting evil – as opposed to random killing of all things supernatural – Dean insists that these things are all the same, not human and that they must exterminate every last one of them. Sam wearily observes that their lives are weird, and Dean can only agree. And all of this is, of course, entirely relevant to the episode, and to the actions and reactions of the brothers throughout, so be sure to take note of all the character information contained in this recap, if you hadn't already fully understood the differing personalities and beliefs of the brothers from your watching of the series thus far.

Now.

A young couple drive along a remote country road by night, completely and utterly lost, not that the navigating husband is willing to admit to that last detail. This is David and Molly McNamara, and they are celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary in not quite the manner they'd envisaged. 'The House of the Rising Sun' starts to play on the radio as David and Molly argue about whether or not to turn around and find someone to ask for directions, bickering in affectionately irritable marital fashion until David starts to get amorous and thus distracts Molly's attention from the road just enough to cause an accident. Both look up in time to see a man standing in the road, too late to avoid disaster – Molly swerves and the car goes off the road, slipping down a bank and crashing into a tree.

Some time later, Molly wakes up alone in the wrecked car, and I swear, the first time I saw this, completely unspoiled, the moment she woke up I suspected she was already dead and a ghost. Everything that happened afterward only served to reinforce that suspicion, so it was reassuring to have my theory confirmed at the end – not so much a twist in the tail for me! So…yeah: she's a ghost. But she doesn't know that. She truly believes she survived the accident and that it only just happened.

Molly wakes up alone in the totalled car, dazed and confused, and starts to panic about her missing husband. There is snow on the ground, let us note, and it is raining pretty hard – an early clue as to the season. Molly starts to wander randomly through the woods in search of David and happens upon a tumbledown little cabin that has definitely seen better days, and if she had any sense at all she would run a mile immediately. But there's a light on, and she's desperate for help finding her husband, so she knocks on the door and then enters. Inside, the metal table is bloodstained and the collection of knives on the wall is not what you'd call inviting, so, again, the sensible thing to do would be to get as far away as possible, but then Molly sees the man from the road standing with his back to her. Relieved to think that she didn't kill him, she apologises for the accident and tries asking if he's okay, but as she talks we see that the man has a gaping stomach wound, and as he turns to face Molly, he starts dripping blood from the mouth as his face decays away in ghostly fashion. Finally realising that going into the creepy cabin really wasn't her best idea ever, Molly screams, as is only to be expected in the circumstances.

Titles.

Terrified, Molly races through the woods and finally reaches the road, where she sees a car approaching. Desperate, she runs out into the road right in front of the car, waving her arms and shouting for help. In the Impala, Dean curses, slams on the brakes and stops just in time to avoid hitting her. Molly reacts with shock to the near miss, gasping with fear as the car screeches to a halt just inches from her, and then recovers to start hammering on the passenger window. "You've got to help me," she gulps, and Sam hastens to reassure her and ask what happened.

Everyone stands around in the rain as Molly stammers her way through the sorry tale of the intro, while Sam and Dean shoot meaningful glances at one another. And the scenes like this are just so well done, because we're seeing the brothers from Molly's external point of view, and so on first viewing they both seem a little off. But when you watch again with the benefit of hindsight, knowing what they know, their reactions and silent communication are just perfect.

"Did he look like he lost a fight with a lawnmower?" Dean asks when Molly reaches the bit about the man chasing her.
"How did you know that?" Molly gasps, while Sam looks exasperated at his brother's lack of subtlety.
"Lucky guess," is all Dean can offer as a response. And already we can see that Dean isn't all that concerned about sparing the feelings of this apparent innocent victim, or about dressing up apparently weird questions, observations or actions to make them appear more natural, whereas Sam is making much more of an effort to treat Molly with kindness and sympathy, as a person.

We've met the brothers mid-job, something I always enjoy – they already know what's going on here and what they are looking for, but the audience has to play catch up because we aren't given any insight into that knowledge at this early stage. The entire episode comes to us from Molly's point of view, observing the brothers from the outside and not making a whole amount of sense of them, which is why some of their basic characteristics appear a little exaggerated – Molly has no context in which to place them. I really enjoy a strong outsider perspective, and we get that in this episode.

Sam very gently asks Molly her name, and even more gently suggests that they take her back into town with them, but Molly shakes her head and refuses to go, not until she's found her husband. She's not leaving here without him.

That's the end of Plan A for the brothers. So, they agree to take Molly back to her car and everyone gets into the Impala, shortly thereafter pulling up at the crash site a way down the road, although how Molly can pinpoint the exact spot given that it's dark and that one spot of woodland roadside looks pretty much like another is beyond me.

Everyone heads to the spot where Molly left her car, and they are all moving so carefully, I'd guess that thin layer of snow they are walking across was pretty icy the day this was filmed. Reaching the crash site, Molly is beyond disturbed to see that her car has disappeared.

While Molly stumbles around in bewilderment, Sam hisses at Dean that they have to get out of there – 'Greeley' could show up at any second.
"What are you going to tell her?" Dean hisses back.
"The truth," Sam offers.
Dean is incredulous at the notion. "She's going to take off running in the other direction."
And it's only at the end of the episode that we are able to place this exchange in its proper context and understand what they are talking about. It's also one of only a couple of instances in this episode that we are allowed to see something that Molly doesn't see.

Molly interrupts to tremulously insist that this is definitely where she crashed the car and that she doesn't understand how or why it could have disappeared or who could have taken it, and that they have to believe her. Sam adopts his best 'buck up' tone to assure her that they do believe her – that's why they want to get her out of here. Molly insists again that she has to find David, call the cops or something, and Dean promptly seizes on that notion as a way of getting her out of the woods, offering to take her to the police station. "Best way we can help you. And your husband."

Notice how helping the husband is kind of an afterthought there. And also notice how keen they are to get her away from the highway – resolving the Molly situation first before coming back for Greeley later is definitely Plan A.

Molly reluctantly agrees, and they all get back in the Impala to drive on through the pouring rain. Sitting in back, a depressed Molly tells the boys how it's her wedding anniversary – "Hell of an anniversary," Dean observes, a little blunt still but not unsympathetic, although he is kind of exasperated about her getting upset, since he's not all that fond of weeping females at the best of times, even less so when it's a dead weeping female – and about the dumb fight she and David had been having just before the crash. "It's the only time we ever argue, when we're stuck in the car," she sighs.

Sam snorts. "I know how that goes." He and Dean do, after all, spend more time in the car together than they do just about anyplace else. Dean promptly shoots him a little look that's almost offended at the notion that being stuck in the car with him for hours on end might not always be a pleasant experience, and it's amusing as hell.

Molly isn't paying any attention to either of them, lost in her own thoughts and distressed at the thought that the last thing she said to her husband was to call him a jerk. Sam is all sympathy and compassion. "Molly, we're going to figure out what happened to your husband, I promise."

He sounds so sincere, no wonder Molly is reassured. Of course, it turns out later that despite his apparent sincerity Sam isn't being entirely honest here, for he and Dean already know perfectly well where David is, but aren't telling Molly for fear of scaring her away.

At this point, the radio turns itself on in classic 'spiritual activity close by' fashion, and starts playing 'The House of the Rising Sun'. Dean and Sam frown at each other and confirm that neither of them turned it on, Dean grumbling at the unspoken confirmation that this is ghostly activity and not just Sam fancying a bit of background music, and Molly starts to get freaked, because this was the song playing when she crashed her car. She freaks even more when the music cuts out into static and EVP, and a disembodied voice starts to whisper: "she's mine."

The brothers exchange worried glances, and then see the man involved in Molly's accident earlier standing in the road just ahead. Molly is horrified and Sam mildly alarmed, but Dean, instead of swerving or braking, just steps on the gas to plough straight through the spirit, which discorporates on impact into a cloud of black dust. Awesome! Molly is completely flabbergasted, and the boys are not what you'd call comfortable, either.

"What the hell just happened?" Molly exclaims in shock.
"Don't worry, Molly, everything's gonna be all right," Sam tells her in a tight voice, totally not answering the question.

But things look a long way from being all right when the engine promptly starts to cut out. The Impala! It has never broken down before, but this malfunction is caused by ghostly intervention. I guess running down an angry spirit might not have been the best idea after all. "Spoke a little too soon, Sammy," Dean observes, pulling over to the side of the road as the engine gives out entirely. And that was such a gratuitous 'Sammy' you've got to love it. Dean isn't anywhere near the main focus of this episode, but he is awesome throughout, at his absolute snarkiest, most professional best.

With the car refusing to re-start, Dean and Sam both look rather alarmed, realising that 'he's' not going to let 'her' – Molly – leave. Bang goes Plan A once again.

"This can't be happening," Molly quavers, as everyone gets out of the car.
"Well, trust me, it's happening," Dean tells her in matter-of-fact fashion, popping the trunk and wedging a shotgun to hold the hidden compartment open in classic season one fashion that we so rarely see these days. Fantastic. I've missed seeing that. And how telling it is that he makes no effort whatsoever to conceal the secret stash from Molly, and that Sam is totally unconcerned about this, as well. It's only later that we learn why there's no fear of exposure here. She's not a real person anymore, and they both know it.

Molly sees all the weapons and is horrified, immediately imagining the worst. She backs off, mumbling in fear that she's got it covered from here, and Sam promptly realises what she's thinking and tries to calm her down and cover up, which completely doesn't work. It's always great to see Sam pulling his reassurance routine, with the deep voice, big eyes, sympathetic expression, and walking so slowly toward her, hands out, like she's a skittish horse or something.

"It wasn't a coincidence that we found you, all right," he tells her at last, since vague reassurances aren't working. Molly stops, wondering what they are talking about.

"We weren't just cruising for chicks when we ran into you, sister, we were already out here. Hunting," Dean elaborates, at his absolute bluntest. Dean's attitude toward Molly is perhaps the biggest clue of all that she isn't what she seems to be. Whether she knows it or not, she's a spirit and part of the case they are working, end of story, as far as he's concerned. And when you take into account just how much Dean loathes unnatural dead things, he's actually treating her extremely well – he's just not going out of his way to be overly concerned about her or her feelings because, well, she's already dead, even if she doesn't know it. There's not all that much saving to be done here, so for Dean this is all about the practicalities of the matter, and thus he remains detached from her as a person, keeping his focus on the task at hand.

"Hunting for what?" Molly grits.
Sam flounders a little, unable to come up with a convincing lie or evasion, while Dean just shrugs and answers the question. "Ghosts." Because trying to hide the truth about that from Molly really doesn't matter, any more than concealing the weapons stash did.

Sam is rendered completely speechless at this no-holds-barred frankness, and stutters adorably: "Duh…don't…sugar…coat it…for her." Hee. When Sam tells the truth, he at least tries to be a bit gentle about it.

Molly has pretty much reached the limits of her tolerance and tells them they are nuts.

"Really? About as nuts as a vanishing guy with his guts spilling out," Dean unsympathetically points out. "You know what you saw."

Where Dean is sticking firmly to regarding Molly in highly matter-of-fact fashion as just another part of the case and problem to resolve, Sam very much tends toward viewing her as the person she once was and still believes herself to be, scared and confused, and thus treats her with a lot more compassion. He explains that they believe the spirit they ran into is that of Jonah Greeley, a local farmer who died fifteen years ago on this highway.

"Just…stop," Molly mutters, not wanting to hear this. If she was at all open to the concept, this is where she might start to realise the truth. But she doesn't want to know, and so remains ignorant.

"One night a year," Sam continues. "On the anniversary of his death, he haunts this road. That's why we're here, Molly. To try and stop him."

So, if the haunting only happens on one night a year…how long have they known about it, then? When was the pattern put together? Have the details of this case been sitting in John's journal for years, waiting for an opportunity to be in the right place on the right day to do something about it? It can't be that Sam has only just put the pattern together now because there would have been nothing in recent papers to set alarm bells ringing, if the haunting only happens for one day a year – the pattern must have been identified at the very least a year ago, and a note made to come check it out at the appropriate date the year following, circumstances permitting.

"And I suppose this ghost made my car disappear, too?" Molly disbelieves.
"Crazier things have happened," Dean notes, swatting affectionately at Sam in another tiny, understated, throwaway moment of private communication that takes on fabulous meaning once you have the benefit of hindsight.

"I'm all filled up on crazy," is all Molly has to say, deciding to go get the cops herself and leave these madmen far behind.
"I don't mean to be harsh, but I don't think you're going to get too far," Dean tells her. "Plan A was trying to get you out of here. Obviously that didn't go over too well with Farmer Roadkill."

Episode title – drink!

Seeing Molly's resolve weaken, Sam employs his super-special puppy-dog-eyes to implore for her cooperation, since Greeley isn't going to let her leave this highway. "You're serious about this, aren't you?" she quavers.
"Deadly," says Dean.
"Every year, Greeley finds someone to punish for what happened to him," Sam explains. "Tonight that person is you."

Molly protests that she didn't do anything, and rather than explaining at this juncture that in fact Greeley punishes her every year because she really isn't as blameless as she believes, Sam says that it doesn't matter. "Some spirits only see what they want," he gently tells her.

And that remark was totally aimed at Molly, who is very much seeing only what she wants to see, but she still doesn't get it, doesn't realise her own situation, instead leaping to the conclusion that Greeley must have taken her husband. Sam sighs, and doesn't try to correct this misapprehension, instead assuring her that they are going to help, if she helps them first. I really like that, all the way through, not once do the brothers make any promises to Molly about helping her search for her missing husband out here – whenever she talks about needing to find David, they always sidestep the issue and twist things around so that it sounds like they are helping her search, but in reality are continuing their own hunt for clues and for Greeley while making sure they keep her where they can see her. It's pretty cleverly done.

Molly leads the brothers to Greeley's hunting cabin, and Dean heads on in to have a look around. "Huh. Seemed like a real sweet guy," he snarks on seeing the bloodstained table and the knives. Sam then wanders in from his snooping around outside, reporting that there are no markers or headstones nearby, and Molly wonders why they are looking for Greeley's grave.

So they can dig up the corpse and salt and burn it, Dean tells her, still very blunt. There's no point pussyfooting around or hedging the truth to protect the innocent, since Molly doesn't have any ever after to be concerned about what she's learning here tonight; it really doesn't matter what they tell her. Sam explains in more detail, that it'll help Greeley's spirit move on, which – especially given her situation and what they need to do for her, too – is the kind of sugar-coating he was talking about earlier. Molly wonders if that will save David.

"Well, this is what'll help both of you," Sam replies, all vague and non-committal on that point, because, as I said, at no point do the brothers actually encourage her when she talks about saving David.

Molly wonders how they are going to find the grave, and Sam explains that Greeley's wife claimed his body when he died, but no one ever saw her again, so all they have to go on is the assumption that she would have brought him back here, to their property. The trouble with that theory is that the Greeley's had a thousand acres, so the grave could be anywhere.

"This is really what you guys do, you're like Ghostbusters," Molly gapes, still incredulous.
"Yeah, minus the jumpsuits." Dean rather curtly brushes her off again, and his dismissiveness of her seems so insensitive until you know the truth, at which point the character consistency just becomes awesome. "Look, lady, this is a fascinating conversation, but this highway's only haunted once a year and we've got till sun-up to wrap it up, so let's move it along, okay? Great."

They move on out once more, Molly sticking with Sam and Dean wandering off on his own, all of them searching for Greeley's house, in hopes that maybe he is buried there. "Look for a road or paths, or something. Stay close," Sam cautions Molly. Heh. Caretaker/shepherd mode is usually more Dean's style, but here the ghost-sitting is totally Sam's job, and there's no doubting that both Dean and Molly are much happier with it that way, Dean because he doesn't like interacting with a ghost, and Molly because Sam's kindness is way preferable to Dean's brusqueness. Sam the ghost whisperer – Dean's little digs about that are another clue as to Molly's real identity.

Following Sam deeper into the woods, Molly is distracted by a ghostly whisper calling her name and stops, doubling back, convinced that it is David. Being an idiot, despite knowing that there's a very dangerous ghost out there somewhere, she doesn't bother to call her giant of a bodyguard to accompany her, and Sam doesn't notice that she's stopped following him and continues on his way. Molly wanders off on her own, calling for David – but runs instead into Greeley, who grabs hold of her. Molly screams, and suddenly a shotgun appears out of nowhere, pointed right at Greeley's head.

"Whoops." One one-handed shotgun blast later, and Greeley is discorporated again. Badass!Dean! Woot!

Molly gasps, badly shaken, as Sam runs up behind her, having finally realised that he's lost her. "Hey, are you all right?" Sam calls, and at first glance it seems he is saying it to Molly, as he's right by her when he says it, but when you watch again it is clear that the question is directed at Dean, who has his full attention. And once you know that Molly is a ghost that makes sense, because Dean was the only one of the pair who might have been in any actual mortal danger from an encounter with Greeley. Only when Molly continues to babble about her husband does Sam address her, promising that she is going to see David again. And that's still a vague promise, because he isn't saying anything about where, how and when she will see him, or under what circumstances.

Meanwhile, Dean has spotted something. "Follow the creepy brick road." Hee. Dean gets all the best lines in this episode, as usual.

"Plain salt keeps away spirits?" As the intrepid trio follow the path Dean has spotted, Molly starts questioning Sam about the rocksalt shotguns, and it's entertaining to be seeing this from the outsider's perspective, where it really does sound far-fetched. Plus, it gives the show a chance to explain about the salt once again, for new viewers.

"Most cultures, salt represents purity, so it repels impure and unnatural things," explains Sam, the font of all knowledge. "Same reason you throw it over your shoulder." He's kind of like a sponge where information is concerned – just soaks it all up.

"You know, just once I'd like to round the corner and see a nice house," Dean remarks as they reach the tumbledown house that the Greeleys once lived in, now lying derelict. Heh. This time it is Sam who goes on in with Molly while Dean checks for grave markers outside. Nice mix 'n' matching of chores, there. The door is unlocked and the contents of the house covered in layers of dust, everything just left lying around in everyday fashion, undisturbed. No one bothered to pack up and move out, it seems.

"Any headstone outside?" Sam asks when Dean joins him in the house.
"Yeah, right," Dean scoffs. "Is it ever that easy?"
"Guess not," Sam sighs as the brothers start poking around the deserted house. It's great to see such casual and natural banter between them again – that's been rather lacking recently, with circumstances bringing more of an edge to their interactions. Seeing a staircase, Dean suggests that Sam and Molly check upstairs for anything to tell them where Greeley was buried, while Dean himself continues to search downstairs.

The bedroom Sam and Molly find upstairs turns out to be absolutely littered with papers. "Great," Sam mutters. Any one of those papers could contain the vital information. Molly, meanwhile, finds a photo album and calls Sam over to have a look at it, and Sam seems awfully out of breath in this scene, for no apparent reason.

'Dearest Marion,' begins a handwritten letter accompanying the photographs of Greeley and his wife. It's a love letter, and Molly is enchanted by how beautiful it is, wondering how a man capable of writing so tenderly can turn into such a monster.

Sam hesitates before replying, clearly wondering just how to handle this question and this subject, and once you know that he knows she's a spirit herself but she doesn't, his gentleness and carefulness in explaining this here takes on new meaning, and you start to realise that Sam really has drawn the short straw with this assignment. He's better at dealing sympathetically with people than Dean, as a general rule, and as a result finds himself in this situation – having to explain angry spirits to a confused spirit without letting on that she's a spirit in case that pushes her over the edge. Spirits are unpredictable, and Molly only really differs from the norm inasmuch as she doesn't know what she is – mid-job, caution really is necessary, just in case. Not to mention the fact that they need to keep her where they can see her in order to deal with her later.

Plus, he really does feel for her, and although Molly believes that he's talking so sympathetically about Greeley here, it is clear that he's mostly thinking about her with these words. And it's just so perfectly Sam to care so much, when making the fact of her death and ghostdom sound less dreadful is pretty much all he can do for her, even here when she doesn't know he's talking about her.

SAM: "Well, spirits like Greeley are, uh…like wounded animals. Lost and in so much pain they lash out."
MOLLY: "Why? Why are they here?"
SAM: "Well, there's some part of them that's keeping them here. Like their remains, or, um, unfinished business."
MOLLY: "Unfinished business?"
SAM: "Yeah, uh – could be revenge. Could be love. Or hate. Whatever it is, they just hold on too tight. Can't let go. So they're trapped, caught in the same loops, replaying the same tragedies over and over."
MOLLY: "You sound almost sorry for them."
SAM: "Well, they weren't evil people. A lot of them were good, just…something happened to them. Something they couldn't control."

Oh, Sam. Over and above any empathy he'd have felt for Molly's situation anyway, something external turning good people bad against their will or control is something he feels strongly about for his own personal reasons, of course, and this gentle speech is in many ways a thinly disguised commentary on his own situation and that so-called destiny of his that he's so afraid of.

"Sammy's always getting a little J. Love Hewitt when it comes to things like this." Dean has arrived, and breaks the sombre mood completely. And that's another pretty gratuitous 'Sammy' right there. Is that Dean's way of letting Sam know that he knows this is getting to him a little, despite the teasing words? Winchester-style communication.

"Me, I don't like 'em. And I sure as hell ain't making apologies for 'em," is all Dean has to say about the nature of ghosts, and he's totally looking at Molly when he says it, and she totally doesn't get that he's including her in that blanket statement. And just look at the expression on Sam's face as he says it.

Sam connects with Molly, empathising with her as a scared victim, whatever else she might also be, and viewing her as a person, able to imagine himself in similar circumstances. Dean, on the other hand, can't – or is unwilling to – move past the fact that she's a spirit, something dead and unnatural, not a person.

It isn't as straightforward as simply saying that Dean views everything in black and white, as opposed to Sam's shades of grey. It's just as much about being the man in command of the operation, needing to retain full focus on the task at hand, while Sam, lacking the extra responsibility of being in charge, has the luxury of being able to get emotionally involved. Dean doesn't want to start seeing Molly as a person; that would be counter-productive in terms of getting the job done. It's not as if they can save her, other than to help her move on. But there's also no getting away from the fact that he just really, really doesn't like ghosts, or anything supernatural, no matter how much he might be inclined to sympathise with Molly's predicament if he allows himself to think about it. Dean knows and fully understands everything Sam told Molly about spirits being good people who got trapped – he was a whisker away from that kind of unlife himself, even if he doesn't remember it – but overriding all that is his deep-seated mistrust of the supernaturally unnatural undead.

Anyway, it seems that neither brother has succeeded in finding anything to suggest where Greeley might have been buried, although it isn't as if Sam actually did that much poking around before stopping to talk to Molly. So Dean being Dean, more interested in resolving the case than in putting Molly's mind at ease, immediately spots something that Sam hasn't – something hidden behind an empty cabinet. You've got to love the nonchalant way Dean tosses his shotgun to Sam, who catches equally casually, in order to free up a hand for pulling the cabinet aside. This reveals a small doorway, locked from the inside.

If the door is locked from the inside and no one has entered the house since, who pushed the cabinet up against it?

Dean nonchalantly stands with his back to the door and kicks, backward, turning to see if it worked. It didn't – the door remains sturdily locked. Hee. Embarrassing failure at door-kicking-in is even better than successful-first-time door-kicking-in. A little annoyed by this failure, he tries again, harder this time, and this time the door gives way, as most of them eventually do, because there are very few doors that can resist Dean for long. Sam silently hands Dean his shotgun once more as he prepares to lead the way into the room he's uncovered, and that whole interplay with the shotgun is so casual and natural and underplayed, it's gorgeous, really emphasising the feel of the brothers in this episode as a well-oiled team, completely and utterly in sync with one another, and at the top of their game.

"Smells like old lady in here," is Dean's foremost assessment of the room, as he sweeps aside years-old cobwebs to venture further in. "And that would explain why," he adds as his flashlight picks out the remains of Mrs Greeley, hanging from a ceiling rafter. "Well, now we know why nobody ever saw her again."

And isn't it awful that nobody checked up on Mrs Greeley, that there was no one who cared enough to ever venture out to the property to see if anything had happened when she stopped going into town after her husband's death, that she could kill herself out of grief for her husband and her body never be found for all these years since? This episode is all about the human tragedy behind the ghost story.

"She didn't want to live without him," Molly murmurs sadly. Dean shoots her a sideways look. He's not entirely unsympathetic to her situation, despite being so very much focused on his goal of resolving the haunting, ever the pragmatist.

Sam, though, is completely caught up in the whole human tragedy aspect and asks Dean to give him a hand cutting the old lady down, rather than just leave her there like that. Dean, it seems, would be quite prepared to leave her in the final resting place she chose for herself, but Sam insists that she deserves to be put to rest. And when considering how hard-hearted Dean comes across here, it's as well to remember that they are operating on a very tight timescale, so what he's mostly being is intensely practical, just as much as perhaps not thinking it matters all that much what happens to this years' old corpse that's so irrelevant to their job. The haunting here only happens for one night a year, so stopping to dig and then refill a grave will eat up very valuable time that they might not necessarily be able to afford.

They take the time to bury Mrs Greeley, though, because Sam wants to, and we've seen many times that Dean always finds it hard to say no to Sam. Turns out, Sam's desire to give Mrs Greeley a decent burial involves Dean doing most of the dirty work – from manhandling the corpse while Sam handles the more delicate task of cutting the rope to laying the corpse out in the grave they've dug for it.

With Mrs Greeley decently laid out in her new resting place, Sam starts to fill in the hole, while Dean brushes himself off and catches his breath having just clambered out of the grave after laying her out. Molly asks Dean what'll happen to Greeley's spirit if they lay him to rest, too.

"Lady, that answer is way beyond our pay grade." Dean totally evades answering the question.
"You hunt these things but you don't know what happens to them?" Molly presses the point, and it's that question, alongside the human tragedy aspect, that's pretty much the point of this episode.
"Well, they never come back. That's all that matters," says Dean, bending to the task of helping Sam fill in the grave.

For Dean, that really is all that matters – removing spirits from a world they no longer belong in and thereby preventing evil things from hurting anyone ever again. Not knowing what becomes of them afterward is entirely beside the point, and not something he's by nature especially inclined to think about, being unknowable as it is. It's already been well established that pragmatic Dean tends to believe in what he can see and disregard what he can't, and I love how much this episode picks up on character points from earlier episodes such as Houses of the Holy and explores them just a little deeper.

Besides, from Dean's point of view, what's the point of wasting breath trying to explain the unexplainable to a spirit anyway, especially when that spirit will itself have to be laid to rest as well. They can't risk scaring her off.

But Molly doesn't seem satisfied with that answer, and Sam, noticing, tries to soften it for her. The more thoughtful Sam is far more inclined by nature to mull over these kinds of issues than his brother is, and believes it matters that Molly should understand it as far as possible, given what she doesn't know she's facing. And he's so honest about his own lack of knowledge; that's marvellous. It's all about hope. "After they let go of whatever's keeping them here, they just go," he tells her, leaving Dean to fill in the grave alone while he talks. "I hope some place better, but we don't know. No one does."

"What happens when you burn their bones?" Molly wants to know.

"Um, well my Dad used to say that was like death for ghosts," Sam offers, while Dean keeps shooting him frustrated but resigned little glances that he's getting sucked into explaining all this, or at least trying to. Dean's staying well out of it himself. And it makes me all kinds of happy to hear Sam mention John like that, such a tiny and throwaway reminiscence, devoid of any hint of the rancour with which he used to speak of his father, or of the guilt and remorse he struggled with earlier in the season. Those wounds are healing, leaving him free to remember John simply as Dad, with all his strengths and weaknesses.

"But truth is we still don't know," Sam continues. "Not for sure. Guess that's why we all hold onto life so hard, even the dead. We're all just scared of the unknown." And now he makes eye contact with Dean, further silent communication going on there that Molly is not a party to. They each know why the other is reacting to her the way that he is, and it's pretty significant that they are each allowing the other to react as he does without comment or complaint.

As Sam resumes digging, Molly quietly says that the only thing she's scared of is losing David, and the boys pause in their digging, both of them, uncomfortable, knowing that this need to see David is what's keeping her here – exactly as Sam tried so gently to explain to her earlier – and that she and her beloved husband can never be together again, and their faces are just perfect, but still she doesn't realise there's a problem there.

Later. Inside Greeley's house, Dean slumps in a chair, thinking, while Sam prowls disconsolately around and Molly studies the photo album again – that photo album and the insight it gives her into who Greeley was before he became an angry spirit really has struck a strong chord with her. It's poignant that she's having this opportunity to understand who Greeley was in life, since as the driver at the wheel she was responsible for his death and also, inadvertently, his wife's suicide. Just a terrible, tragic sequence of events.

Sam is feeling very uncomfortable with the whole situation, and quietly tells Dean that he thinks they should tell Molly about her husband. Dean promptly counters that they can't. Sam argues that it is cruel to let her pine for him like this, that he doesn't like keeping her in the dark, but Dean firmly insists that it's for her own good, and this argument is so very, very in character for them both. It's also only the second time in this episode that we've been allowed to see something Molly doesn't, and we still don't have the proper context to place it in. What we glean from this on first viewing is, again, that the boys know a lot more than they are letting on, and only with hindsight do the full meaning of the stances they are each taking become apparent.

Sam empathises with Molly very much, her situation resonating with him strongly; the secret being kept from her is regarding who she is, and he knows how that feels, and it is so Sam that he feel this bad about it. But Dean is in full-blown general mode, keeping himself detached in order to remain fully focused on getting the job resolved safely and successfully. It's all about retaining control of the situation. He can't afford to get emotionally involved, even if his natural antipathy toward spirits didn't automatically prejudice him against it anyway.

"Look, man, I know you feel guilty, all right, but let's just stick to the plan," says Dean, rising from the chair to look Sam in the eye, physical reinforcement of his authority and the plan-of-action they've already agreed on. "Let's get her out of here and then we'll tell her."

"Tell me what?" Molly overheard that last part, which kind of blows the whole secrecy thing just a little. "What aren't you telling me?" Both brothers are struck dumb, unable to come up with a suitable excuse or lie, and Molly gets more and more agitated, realising that they know something about David and are keeping it from her.

Sam sighs, and begins, "Molly –"
But Dean cuts him off. "Sam, don't."

Molly starts to get angry at the idea that they are keeping things from her so she doesn't mess up their hunt, and from her point of view all the secrecy and withholding of the truth looks as suspicious as hell. From the brothers' point of view, though, not only is she a loose canon as a frightened victim getting underfoot, she's also a potentially dangerous spirit herself if she reacts badly to the truth. And, if they are to put her to rest, they need to keep her where they can see her until they have freed her from the other spirit trapping her here.

Molly angrily declares that they don't care about her or her husband. Sam, who has connected with her so strongly and feels for her predicament so deeply, immediately protests that that isn't true, while Dean, who isn't allowing himself to feel anything for her, not with the case unresolved and still potentially very dangerous, remains silent. Molly insists that they tell her the truth.

The brothers are spared from having to answer by a burst of noise from another room, resolving into 'The House of the Rising Sun' once more. Molly fearfully cries that Greeley is coming, and Dean tells Sam to stay with her while he goes to check out the source of the unexpected music. It turns out to be coming from an old jukebox-type radio thingy that isn't even connected to a power source – the cable has been chewed right through. It seems dereliction allows the rats to run amuck with the electrics. Then the sound of the wind whipping up outside calls Dean's attention to a nearby window, which is frosting over in unnatural fashion to reveal words written on the glass with a ghostly finger. "She's mine," whispers a disembodied voice, just in case he can't read or something.

Everyone hesitates, anxious, and not sure what move to take, not knowing what the spirit will do next, since it is clearly here, both angry and unpredictable. Sam steps away from Molly, toward Dean, which is not the most sensible thing Sam has done in this episode, because Greeley promptly takes the opportunity presented to him, breaking a window and dragging Molly out through it. Having turned his back and stepped a little too far away from her, Sam reacts too late to either grab her or blast Greeley full of rocksalt, and by the time the brothers have leapt out of the window in pursuit, both spirits have vanished. Undeterred, they give chase, dashing through the dark, icy woods until they reach a clearing, where they draw to a halt, admitting defeat.

"This guy is persistent," Dean grumbles as they return to the house, and now the different outlooks of the brothers regarding this case come into sharp relief.
"We've got to find Molly," says Sam, allowing emotion to cloud his judgement just a little.
"We've got to find Greeley's bones," Dean counters, and for anyone watching who hasn't figured out yet that Molly is a spirit herself, that sounds tremendously uncaring, since on the surface she seems like nothing more than an innocent victim now in terrible danger. But once you know the truth, this is simply Dean's pragmatism rising to the fore. It isn't as if they can save her life or anything. Of the two spirits, Greeley is the most dangerous; therefore eliminating him as a threat is the priority, and will also release Molly anyway. "And, uh, no pressure or anything but we've got less than two hours before sunrise."

See how taking an hour or so, or however long it took, to dig and refill a grave has lost them valuable time? If they didn't manage to resolve the case in the narrow timeframe open to them, what then? Would they just have to chalk it up to experience and make a note to return again next year, always supposing they were free to do so on the date in question? Presumably so.

Then Sam spots something in the photo album that Molly was looking through earlier – it's a photograph of Jonah and Marion Greeley standing outside the hunting cabin, dated February 6^th 1992, just a couple of weeks before the accident. There's another little love note tucked in alongside the photo: "Marion, I love you more as I write this than I did last night when we spoke with deep and tender love, Jonah." Cheesy, but it's the little details like that really drive home who the Greeleys were before tragedy struck them.

Anyway, what Sam has noticed about this photograph as significant is that today there is a tree right where the couple are standing in the picture. Sam has such a good memory for obscure details like that. He comes over all, 'why didn't we think of that sooner?' to which Dean's all, 'the huh?'

"It's an old country custom, Dean, planting a tree as a grave marker," Sam practically shouts, as if everyone should know that.
Dean just looks at him, resigned to Sam's enormous geekdom. "You're like a walking encyclopaedia of weirdness."

Sam is momentarily rendered speechless once more, but then… "Yeah. I know," he admits, with a roll of the eyes. Hee. The fact that Sam acknowledges it is even more amusing than Dean saying it.

Greeley's hunting cabin. Molly is all strung up by the wrists, still pleading to know where her husband is. The need to know that David is safe is what has kept her here all these years. Greeley menacingly tells her to worry about herself rather than her husband. Molly continues to plead, this time for herself, protesting that she didn't do anything to him, that she knows about his wife, that hurting her won't bring his wife back.

"My wife's gone," Greeley agrees. "All I've got left's hurting you." And with those words he digs a grimy fingernail into her chest, opening a deep slash. If she weren't already dead, she'd need to be seriously worried about that turning septic, he's so filthy. Ghostly filthy, though, so maybe that wouldn't count anyway. Molly screams and begs to be let go. "You're not going to leave," Greeley tells her. "You're never going to leave," and he slices her belly this time. It's all a bit nasty, and Molly screams some more. She doesn't know she's already dead, and the pain she's feeling is real.

Reaching the cabin, with shovels and shotguns and assorted other ghost-hunting accoutrements in hand, the Winchester brothers hear Molly screaming and see her predicament through the window, and even though she's a spirit and therefore already well and truly beyond saving, she doesn't know that, and they can't just leave her to suffer. So Sam tells Dean to go get her, while he starts digging for Greeley's bones beneath the tree, which means that Dean is heading into danger, as usual, while Sam has the safer task, as usual. But on this occasion it was Sam who suggested this particular division of labour, probably out of habit more than anything else, rather than Dean making the overt decision to put himself in harm's way rather than Sam. It also means that Sam will be the one salting and burning, for once, which rarely if ever happens.

Inside the cabin, Molly stares in fear and trepidation at her tormenter, only for him to discorporate right before her eyes as a shotgun blast rings out, and the dust clears to reveal Dean. Yay! Another total badass moment for Dean in this episode.

"Oh, thank God," Molly quavers.
"Call me Dean," quips Dean. Hee. It's the nicest and most natural he's been with her yet.

But then Greeley reappears right behind him, and Molly is struck dumb with terror, so rather than shouting something useful, like 'he's behind you,' she just gulps incoherently and makes frantic eyes to indicate that something is wrong. Dean turns just in time to see the ghost smile nastily and gesture with one hand, and then staggers as if he was just hit with something sharp and heavy, a cut opening up on his cheek. Now, spirits that can do that without even touching just aren't playing fair. Dean has been smacked around so much this season already, mostly by things possessing supernatural strength and abilities, against which his mere mortal-ness is a distinct disadvantage. But that mere mortal-ness against such supernaturally heavyweight opposition is one of the things that make Dean so special.

"This guy's really pissing me off," Dean mutters, giving Greeley his best steely-eyed, now-I'm-mad glare, while Molly continues to gulp incoherently behind him. Greeley raises both hands this time, at which Dean goes flying, crashing into the wall, as has always been typical for Dean-style encounters with pissed off spirits, the shotgun dropping from his hand on impact. And he looks in some pain, as an indication of just how hard he hit the wall. Those bruises will be sore in the morning.

Outside, Sam has just unearthed Greeley's skull when Dean bellows "hurry up, Sam" from inside the cabin to indicate that things aren't going well and that a little haste might be in order. Just as well the grave is so shallow, in that case.

Inside, Dean tries to get up again and finds that he can't, that same telekinetic force that tossed him now holding him firmly in place. Still smiling nastily, Greeley holds out a hand and one of his hunting knives comes flying into it. Dean sees this and is, understandably, rather alarmed, still unable to move. If Sam hadn't wanted him to come in here and rescue the dead chick, he wouldn't be in such danger. They could have salted and burned Greeley's bones without the old man ever knowing what they were doing, his attention being focused on Molly. But, on the other hand, if Greeley 'killed' Molly, or she believed that he had because she thinks she's still alive and therefore able to die, her spirit might have vanished for another year, preventing the brothers from helping her to move on, so maybe she did need rescuing after all.

Outside, Sam sprinkles liberal quantities of salt over Greeley's bones as, inside, the old man's spirit takes hold of Dean's coat with one hand and raises the knife in the other hand to strike his killing blow, and visually this scene is so reminiscent of Born Under a Bad Sign that viewers start to get all kinds of déjà vu about it. Dean grabs Greeley's wrist to hold him off and grapples desperately as Sam, outside, pours gasoline over the skeleton before dropping into the grave a couple of lighted matches. Job done.

Inside, Greeley is still struggling with Dean, the spirit's supernatural strength versus Dean's rather bruised musculature. Then Greeley realises something is wrong and falls backward, stumbling away as he bursts into flame from the feet up and screaming in agony before he finally vanishes in a puff of flames, the knife falling harmlessly to the ground. Molly yelps and screams at the sight, which totally isn't going to set her mind at ease at all about the fate of ghosts laid to rest when she finally learns what she is.

And then it's all over. Except that there are still ten minutes of the episode to go, which means that even viewers who hadn't suspected Molly's true identity from the start realise that there's another twist to come.

The intrepid trio head back to the Impala, all rather damp as it is still raining heavily. "Oh, baby, it's been a long night," Dean wearily greets his beloved car, looking rather stiff and sore after his collision with the wall and tussle with the spirit earlier. Dean talking to the Impala will never not be adorable. Sam, sombre and morose, opens the rear door for Molly, but she refuses to go anywhere until they tell her what happened to her husband. Deeply troubled after so much has happened with no sign of David, she accuses Sam of letting her search for her husband while knowing the whole time that Greeley killed him. And, um, she's half right, it has to be said.

Looking very, very sad, Sam tells her that David is, in fact, alive. And, rather than being curious as to why he makes such good news sound so bad, Molly lights up with delight and jumps right into the car so they can take her to him.

In town, the Impala pulls up outside a random house, and Sam softly tells Molly that David is inside. So…his wife died just outside this random town and he decided to move there? Molly is confused, not understanding how or why David could have got there from where they crashed. She still believes that her accident happened earlier that night. Sam gently tells her that she'll understand soon.

Excited at the thought of seeing David again, Molly hurries up the path – but stops short when she sees a man moving around inside. "It can't be," she gasps. Behind her, the brothers exchange sympathetic glances, and this is one of those scenes where the difference in height is particularly pronounced. Also, Dean still has a trickle of dried blood running down the side of his face from that cut Greeley gave him, which is nice injury continuity that doesn't always happen. And it's still pouring with rain, so they are all getting really damp, and it shows, which I love.

Anyway. The David that Molly can see through the window is fifteen years older than the David she was with when she crashed their car. Worse still, there's a woman with him, with whom he looks happy and settled, loving and loved, and Molly doesn't know what to think. Sam quietly tells her that the woman she can see is David's wife, that fifteen years ago the two of them hit Jonah Greeley with their car. David survived.

"What are you saying?" Molly chokes.
"We're saying that there isn't just one spirit haunting Highway 41," Dean tells her, and now that the salting and burning of Greeley is over and this is all that's left to wrap up the job, even Dean's being pretty gentle with her now. "There are two: Jonah Greeley and you."
Molly doesn't want to believe it, but Sam goes on to explain that for the past fifteen years, on one night a year, she's been appearing on that highway…

Molly protests that it's impossible. It was their anniversary – February 22^nd….
"1992," Sam agrees, and Dean adds that it is now 2007. I love it so much when we are given on-screen dating of episodes. I mean, it just adds a shade of depth and understanding to certain sequences of events – like Sam's temper snapping in Scarecrow taking on new meaning when you consider that the emotionally draining events from Bugs through to Asylum and onto Scarecrow itself have taken place in a period of just three weeks, so small wonder his frustration and despair have hit breaking point.

And, I'm sidetracking. Ahem. Back to the story At this point we cut into a series of flashbacks, as the awful truth finally dawns on Molly.

Driving along, Sam gives Dean the low-down on Highway 41: twelve accidents over fifteen years, five of them fatal, all on the same night. Each time, witnesses gave the same story about why they crashed – a woman being chased into the road by a man covered in blood. Two ghosts.

Fading to…Dean and Sam researching at the library – Sam working the microfiche with Dean hovering at his shoulder – and uncovering newspaper reports about the deaths of Jonah Greeley and Molly McNamara on Highway 41.

Fading to…Dean and Sam suited up and undercover, questioning David and learning that Molly was cremated, and then outside wondering what's keeping her here if not her remains.

Fade to…Molly waking up alone in the car, remembering the accident; Sam telling her that 'some spirits only see what they want'; Molly searching for David; Molly running into the road, the Impala screeching to a halt just in time to avoid hitting her, and Molly's reaction. "Dean, I don't think she knows she's dead," Sam realises as Molly starts hammering on his window begging for help. And the looks on both their faces are perfect for that moment, filling in a tiny but oh-so crucial gap in a scene we've already seen the bulk of.

"What are you going to tell her?" Dean hisses. The truth, Sam suggests, but Dean protests that she'll take off running in the other direction, and only now do we understand exactly what they both meant by that.

"Some spirits hold on too tight, can't let go," Sam tells Molly, in the Greeley's bedroom.

Flash back to the present, both brothers giving Molly looks of deep sympathy for her loss as she once and for all realises the awful truth. She asks about Greeley, and Sam elaborates on what he told her earlier. Each year Greeley does indeed punish someone for his death – chasing and torturing them – and each year that person is her. Molly almost sobs that she doesn't remember any of it.

"Because you couldn't see the truth, Molly," Sam tells her, and she realises that was why Greeley wouldn't let her off the highway: because she killed him. "I killed us both." And she did, and it's such a sad moment – such a very human tragedy lying behind such the ghost story.

The sun starts to rise as Molly asks why the brothers waited so long to tell her the truth. Dean tells her she wouldn't have believed them, and she snaps that they needed her as bait. Neither actually denies that, Sam simply telling her that they needed her, but she really wasn't used as bait, certainly in the calculating way she implies – Plan A involved bringing her here and trying to move her on before going back for Greeley, we remember. Molly only became part of the search for Greeley's remains when the brothers were unable to get her off the highway, at which point keeping her close and not scaring her away became crucial because that would blow their chances of possibly ever being able to let her spirit find rest.

Molly is distressed, still thinking of her husband, now lost to her forever. Sam tells her that they brought her here so she can move on, but she insists she has to see him, to tell him…

"Tell him what?" Sam very reasonably asks. "That you love him? That you're sorry? Molly, he already knows that." Oh, Sam. John is so clearly foremost in his thoughts there. He continues that they won't stop Molly if she wants to go in there, but Dean adds that she will only freak David right out for life if she does. "David's already said his goodbyes, Molly. Now it's your turn," says Sam. "This is your unfinished business."

Molly wonders what she's supposed to do, and that's a very good question. There are no remains to burn. How does a trapped spirit move on once it becomes conscious of the need to do so?

"Just…let go?" Sam offers, not entirely sure. "Of David, of everything. If you do that, we think you'll move on."
Sniffing and sobbing, Molly adds a 'but' to that: "But you don't know where." She saw what happened to Greeley's spirit earlier, and she also knows that these two don't have all the answers.

Sam admits that no, they don't, but sticks to his point that she doesn't belong here and has suffered long enough. "It's time to go." Bless, Sam is totally playing Tessa to Molly's Dean, a la In My Time Of Dying. Molly sniffs and sobs some more, but nods her head in agreement and starts to walk away, and the sun is just coming up, so that as she walks and fades, she seems to vanish into the light. And there's something a little cheesy about a spirit moving toward the light, but also strangely fitting, as well as reminiscent of how the spirit of Father Gregory moved on in Houses of the Holy, especially after Sam's conversations with Molly had such resonance with that episode. In this show every spirit is unique, but they all fall within certain set parameters, although each has its own individual twist on those rules.

And, with Molly successfully moved on at last, the case really is now closed.

"I guess she wasn't so bad," Dean allows once it's all over, all gruff and manly. "For a ghost." He hesitates slightly before continuing: "You think she's really going to a better place?"
He's eyeing Sam closely as he asks that, and it kinda seems like he's mostly asking because he wants to know what Sam's thinking, especially after that devastating loss of faith Sam suffered in Houses of the Holy. But maybe Dean too would like to believe in a better place in the hereafter, whether he'd ever admit it or not.
"I hope so," says Sam.
"Well, I guess we'll never know. Not until we take the plunge ourselves, huh," Dean remarks, pragmatic to the end.
"It doesn't really matter, Dean." Sam still sounds very sombre. "Hope's kinda the whole point."

And that kinda sounds like Sam is starting to recover a little of his lost faith, or is at least trying to, which is a positive sign, even if it does also seem like he's not finding it all that easy, with so much weighing on him. And just look how flyaway his hair is in this scene – so cute!

"Well, all right, Haley Joel." Dean's had enough seriousness for one night, and breaks the melancholy atmosphere in his usual inimitable style. Heh. He's called Sam Haley Joel before. "Let's hit the road."

It is still pouring with rain as the brothers get back into the Impala and drive away into the closing credits.

What I really like about this episode is the sheer ordinariness of it. There's no mytharc complication or angst, nothing goes wrong – it's pretty much textbook stuff, and both brothers are shown to be on top of their game, working like a well-oiled team. The case is resolved totally satisfactorily and safely – apart from a touch of the requisite Dean-whumping, of course, but minor battery seems to fall under the heading of 'normal state of health' for Dean! It's just a bog-standard ghost story, plain and simple: identify the spirit, locate the remains, and salt 'n' burn. On the surface, at least. But beneath that this is a story about where those spirits came from, who those spirits came from, and about the fine line that can exist between good and evil. About how every bog-standard salt 'n' burn haunting has personal tragedy at its core. Scratch the surface of the ordinariness, and this is a fascinating little tale.


March 2007

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