"I don't want to die. I don't want to go to hell."

"Look, Dad's gone now, and we have to carry out his legacy. And that means hunting down as many evil sons of bitches as we possibly can."

Then.

In an I'm-going-to-die-soon fit of nostalgia, Dean looked up an old fling by the name of Lisa, who was rather surprised to see him after so many years. "If you want to stick around for a while," she offered, after wacky adventures and re-bonding. "You're welcome to stay."

But, having seen how settled her life had become during the intervening years, and having learned that he was not the father of the child she now turned out to have, Dean declined the offer. "I can't. I've got a lot of work to do, and it's not my life."

Dean and Sam met Bela Talbot, a high-class thief specialising in obscure supernatural artefacts.

"Sam, if you want to break Dean free of that demon deal, you ain't gonna find the answer in no book," Bobby reluctantly cautioned, and Sam wearily wondered just where he would find the answer, in that case. "Kid, I wish I knew," Bobby sighed.

"I've been busting my ass trying to keep you alive, Dean," Sam complained in the face of his brother's mile high walls of denial. "And you act like you couldn't care less."

"I don't want you to worry about me, Dean," Sam furiously shouted. "I want you to worry about you. I want you to give a crap that you're dying!"

Dean learned from Ruby that every demon was once a human soul, corrupted by the fires of hell, their humanity burned away leaving no trace, and that the same thing would happen to him. Dean realised that for all the promises she'd made to Sam, Ruby had no way of saving him, and she confirmed that this was the case. Dean looked crushed as this last hope of salvation was extinguished.

Now.

Today's episode opens on Bobby, flashlight in hand and in full hunting mode, cautiously poking around a house that bears a remarkable resemblance to his own, except for being a lot less shabby and cluttered. There is something in the house with him, moving around just out of eyeshot. I love when the show does that.

Bobby warily opens a set of sliding doors and steps into the kitchen. Instantly, a piercing shriek rings through the air and a woman wearing white tackles him to the ground and starts smacking his head against the floor.

I love that she's wearing white. It's such efficient colour coding on the show – any time we see a woman wearing white, it is a sure sign that she is either dead or evil or both.

The scene of this woman attacking Bobby flickers out, and we see Bobby now lying asleep in bed in some random motel. The maid lets herself in, apologises when she sees him sleeping, and then becomes concerned when he doesn't so much as twitch at the disturbance. Is it just me or does this seem like a slightly better class of establishment than the Winchester boys usually visit? We know for a fact that they never let the maid in, anyway.

The maid tries to wake Bobby. We flash back to his dream, helpless on the floor with this woman wearing white screeching and slamming his head against the floor, over and over. The maid starts to shake him, worried now. He doesn't wake. She calls for help.

Titles.

Bar. It's not the liveliest of joints ever. Sam sits alone, nursing a glass of whisky and looking as depressed as hell. This is more or less the exact same mood that we left him in last episode, which is nice continuity. We saw in Malleus Maleficarum that Sam seemed to have completely lost all hope, and Sam doesn't wear defeat well.

Dean comes into the bar, rapidly scans the place, and relaxes the moment his eyes fall on Sam. He didn't know where his brother had gone, and that's nice continuity, as well, that tension across his face and shoulders whenever he doesn't know where Sam is, and the way it melts away the moment he has his brother in sight once more. "There you are, what you doing?" he wants to know.

Sam is drunk, but not as drunk as he was in Playthings. That was angry, over-the-top, semi-belligerent and self-pitying drunk. This is sullen, melancholy drunk. Still drunk, though. It's only the second time in the show that we've seen Sam drunk, and both times he was at his lowest ebb, facing a bleak future that terrified him and unable to see any way out of it. Drinking is his way of trying to numb the pain a little.

Sam drunkenly shrugs that he's just having a drink. Dean bemusedly points out that it's two in the afternoon and Sam is drinking whisky. Sam mutters that he drinks whisky all the time. Dean counters that he doesn't and, remembering his reaction to the notion of Sam drinking whisky in Born Under A Bad Sign, I think it's safe to say that Dean's assessment of his brother's drinking habits is the accurate one here.

"What's the big deal? You get sloppy in bars and hit on chicks all the time, why can't I?" Sam slurs.
Dean glances around the bar, incredulous. "You've got slim pickings around here. What's going on with you?"

Sam's lip trembles and he glances from Dean to the whisky glass a few times, never meeting his brother's eyes, before he finally manages to reply. Drinking is also Sam's way of removing enough inhibitions that he can broach the hardest subjects of all, the ones that will hurt both himself and his brother badly. "I tried, Dean," he croaks, leaving Dean none the wiser as to where this is coming from. "To save you," Sam explains, staring straight ahead, eyes misty.

Dean sighs, rolls his eyes, and sits down, because this just turned into a different kind of conversation entirely, but he doesn't try to get out of it in any way. This kind of talk requires fortification, though and he calls to the bartender for a whisky of his own – "double, neat." Dean is a whisky man, even if Sam isn't.

"I'm serious, Dean," Sam mumbles.
"No, you're drunk," Dean tells him.
"I mean, where you're going, what you're going to become…" Sam tearfully wibbles, shaking his head in disbelief and denial. "I can't stop it. I'm starting to think maybe even Ruby can't stop it."

Dean lifts his eyebrows a little behind Sam's back and says nothing. He already knows perfectly well that Ruby can't help him.

So how much does Sam really know, we have to wonder? This current despair is clearly born of the revelation in Malleus Maleficarum that demons are created out of hellfire-corrupted human souls and that this is what will happen to Dean after his crossroads bill comes due, which begs the question of whether Sam extrapolated this fact for himself, based on Tammi's conversation with Ruby held in front of him, or if Dean clarified the point by de-briefing Sam on his later conversation with Ruby. He clearly doesn't know that Ruby told Dean straight out that she can't save him, but it's hardly surprising that Dean hasn't shared that little gem of bad news, although this in turn means that both brothers are now hiding facets of their interaction with Ruby from each other.

I can't honestly see Dean being able to verbalise any of what Ruby said to him, not to Sam, not when it's because of and for Sam that it's happening. However Sam worked it out, it more than explains why he is now is even more depressed than he was last week. It's awful to see Sam giving up so completely, Sam of all people, who is so stubborn and determined and never admits defeat.

"Well, really, the thing is no one can save you," Sam rambles on.
"That's what I've been telling you," Dean gruffs, unable to look at him, always with the stiff upper lip in the face of Sam's distress, not to mention unwilling to hold any kind of deep and meaningful conversation while his brother is drunk.
"No, that's not what I mean," Sam counters. "What I mean is: no one can save you because you don't want to be saved." And now he does look Dean in the eyes, hard eyes. "I mean, how can you care so little about yourself?" he demands. "What's wrong with you?"

Dean gives a little exhalation of surprise at the sudden flip from admission of defeat to laying of blame. His self-esteem issues really aren't something he can get into with Sam; he can barely acknowledge them to himself. Denial is, after all, a staple of the Winchesters. He looks away, and then glances back to see Sam still staring at him with this horribly hurt and forlorn expression on his face, and has no idea what to say. There's nothing he can say.

Saved by the bell. Dean's phone rings, and he answers. "Yes, this is Mr Snyderson." Is that the name this particular phone is registered to? A specific alias he's using at the moment, or that he's agreed to use in this eventuality? Or is he just so used to going by such a wide variety of false identities that he can wing it no matter what name he is addressed by? "What? Where?" he barks out in response to whatever the person on the other end is telling him.

Road. The Impala zooms along. It's now dark, so I'm guessing the boys have already been on the road a few hours, if they left immediately after taking the call and stopped only to pack.

Hospital. Bobby lies comatose, the Winchester boys standing beside his bed. While Sam anxiously asks the doctor what the diagnosis is, Dean can't tear his eyes off Bobby's face, and he looks so distressed it's heartbreaking, arms folded tight across his chest in defensive posture. Losing the people he is close to is his greatest fear; it's why he is so reluctant to get close to anyone outside of his immediate inner circle. But he's come to rely heavily on Bobby's support since John's death, and this is hitting him hard.

The doctor explains that they've tested everything there is to test, but Bobby seems perfectly healthy. "Except that he's comatose," Dean points out.

"Mr Snyderson, you're his emergency contact," the doctor says, and there's something about that detail that really breaks my heart. Because Bobby seems to know absolutely everybody in the hunting fraternity, but Dean is the one he has listed as his emergency contact, and that speaks volumes. I think…the boys fill a hole in Bobby's life every bit as much as he does for them. "Anything we should know? Any illnesses?" the doctor continues, clearly hoping that this random layperson will be able to provide a clue that all their fancy medical tests haven't picked up on.

Stumped, Dean can only tell the man that Bobby never gets sick, doesn't even catch cold, and Sam asks if there's anything the doctor can do.

"Look, I'm sorry, but we don't know what's causing it, so we don't know how to treat it," the doctor admits, and, I have to say, his bedside manner is miles better than the doctor in In My Time Of Dying when he told Sam that Dean probably wouldn't wake up. He sounds like he actually cares. "He just…went to sleep, and didn't wake up."

The brothers exchange worried glances, and then look back at Bobby, lying comatose in his bed.

Motel. The boys walk right in to Bobby's room, no lock picking necessary, so I'm guessing that the management gave them a key on account of the whole emergency contact thing.

"So what was Bobby doing in Pittsburgh?" Sam wonders.
"Well, unless he's taking an extremely lame vacation…" Dean remarks.
"I mean, he must have been working a job, right?" Sam finishes.
"You'd think there'd be some sort of sign," says Dean, looking around. "Research, news clippings…a freaking pizza box or beer can."

There is no sign of occupation at all, we see, as the boys open drawers and the like and find them completely empty. Finally, Sam opens the closet and finds the evidence they were looking for – what little clothing Bobby has unpacked hiding his research notes pinned to the wall behind.

"Good old Bobby, always covering up his tracks," Dean smiles.

On first glance the boys are unable to make any sense of the notes and clippings. Dean picks out a picture of an obscure kind of plant, but his usual botanical knowledge lets him down, as he recognises neither the picture nor the name. Sam spots an obit for one Doctor Walter Gregg, a university neurologist, and takes it down to read. Dean wonders how the man died. "Actually they don't know," Sam says, reading. "They say he just went to sleep and never woke up."

Since that is exactly what is going on with Bobby right now, this is not comforting news. Noting the familiarity of the symptoms, Dean snatches the clipping from Sam's hand to take a look himself.

Sam employs his analytical brain to start breaking down the information they have. "So let's say Bobby was looking into the doctor's death, you know, hunting after something…"
"That started hunting after him," Dean finishes.

That's twice in this scene that one brother has completed the other's thought. They are incredibly in sync this season.

Dean proposes that Sam stay here and work through Bobby's research to see what sense he can make of it, while Dean goes and looks into Doctor Gregg.

University. Doctor Gregg's office. Dean's wearing a suit. Again. Those suits are getting a hell of a workout this season, but it saddens me in a way that Dean has become so accustomed to wearing them. I always enjoyed his discomfort with such formal attire. He questions Doctor Gregg's lab assistant, commenting on what a shock his death must have been for her.

"But still, go in your sleep, peaceful – it's what you wish for," she remarks.

Dean offers a tight smile in response, knowing damn well that he isn't going to get a peaceful ending no matter how much he wishes for it, and asks about the doctor's research into sleeping disorders and dreams. Lab Assistant frowns that she already went over all this with the other detective – "a very nice older man with a beard." Everyone likes Bobby. Dean presses her to go over it again, but she snips that she's busy. She seems very defensive, very unwilling to talk, as she icily suggests that they do this later.

Two can play at that game. Dean's affable demeanour hardens just enough to get his point across as he casually agrees that yes, sure, they could do this later, if she comes down to the station to get her statement on tape, do it all official like.

Lab Assistant crumbles. "Look, I didn't know about Doctor Gregg's experiments," she says. "Not until I was cleaning out his files."
"These experiments…the ones he was conducting on sleeping?" Dean guesses.
"No one knew, okay?" she defends. "Not the university, not anybody. I already spoke to a lawyer, and he told me that I can't be held liable for anything."

Whatever these experiments were, they've certainly got her spooked! And the fact that she's spoken to a lawyer about her own protection from fallout gives a good idea of just how bad she thinks it could be.

Improvisation is Dean's strong suit, so he plays along. "Maybe you couldn't," he warns. "But that was before the new evidence came to light…" Lab Assistant anxiously asks what this new evidence is. "I'm not at liberty to say," Dean tells her, both because he's making this up as he goes along and because such vagueness will alarm her all the more.

Lab Assistant can't believe this is happening to her, protesting that she's just a grad student and that this was just a gig to cover tuition. Dean nods understandingly and lays it on the line, sternly cautioning that this could go on her permanent record, unless she hands over the doctor's research….

Apartment. Pittsburgh City Police Department, Investigations, says the warrant badge Dean holds up for the person who just answered his knock at the door. Robert Plant is the name he has signed to this badge, for those of us keeping track of Dean's classic rock IDs. He used the same badge in Bedside Stories earlier this season.

"Look, I don't know what the RA said, but I was growing ferns," the young man he is visiting insists, before he can be accused of anything. His name is Jeremy, we will later learn.
Dean chuckles. "Easy, Fish, that's not why I'm here." Heh.

Jeremy expresses his relief, and wonders what this is about, in that case. Dean explains that he wants to talk about Doctor Gregg's research; Jeremy was one of his test subjects.

Jeremy confirms that this is the case, reaching into the fridge and pulling out a couple of beers. He offers one to Dean, who hesitates and glances toward the door as if expecting someone to bust him drinking 'on duty', but then accepts. He uses his ring to get the lid off; I love that.

After taking a swig of the beer, Dean gets back to business, observing that Doctor Gregg was testing treatments for Charcot-Willebrand syndrome. Jeremy explains that he can't dream, that he had a bike accident as a kid, banged his head, and hasn't had a dream since, until he took part in Doctor Gregg's study. Dean asks what the doctor gave him. "This yellow tea," Jeremy recalls. "Smelled awful. Tasted worse." Dean asks what it did.

"Just passed right out," Jeremy replies. "And I had the most vivid, super-intense dream. Like a bad acid trip, you know?"
"Totally," Dean grins, and then remembers that he's supposed to be a police officer. "I mean no."

The implication that Dean has dropped acid at least once in his life is interesting. Because, on the one hand, I can see Dean kicking back like that at least once as a teenager or in his early 20s, most probably while Sam was away at school and John had taken off on a solo hunt leaving him alone; his own brand of rebellion, in a sense, reacting against the abrupt loss of his usual responsibilities. But, on the other hand, we've never so much as seen him drunk, for all that we have seen him indulging in a few heavy drinking sessions. So I really can't see it as any more than a one-off, because Dean just doesn't enjoy loss of control, and in depth experimentation with the drug scene would be too dangerous to be risked.

Jeremy continues that he dropped out of the study right after that because he didn't like it: it kind of scared him. Dean reflects on this.

Hospital. Dean sits at Bobby's bedside just watching him sleep, and he's all hunched over and miserable, and man, the look on his face breaks my heart into little pieces. For all that he's a social animal by nature, Dean avoids getting close to people for this exact reason. He gets close to someone, and they inevitably either reject him or up and die on him. We already knew he felt that way. But since John's death, he's gradually come to rely on Bobby's gruff but unconditional support, able to do so, perhaps, because he has known Bobby since he was young, so the love and trust was already there. We don't know just when it was that Bobby and John had their falling out, what it was about or how long it lasted, but Dean felt able to turn to Bobby for help in Devil's Trap without hesitation, in spite of this estrangement. So then to see him sitting by Bobby's hospital bed like this, just watching him sleep, it's just gorgeous and intense – so much conveyed with no dialogue whatsoever. His eyes and face say it all: the crushing inevitability of losing the people he is close to combined with almost desperate desire to not let it happen again.

Sam wanders up to the doorway and pauses for a moment, watching Dean watch Bobby with understanding in his eyes. Sam knows how close Dean is to Bobby, and Sam, too, has come to rely on Bobby's support over the past couple of years; he's the only real friend either of the brothers has these days, their only port of refuge in any given crisis.

It only takes a second for Dean to realise he isn't alone any more, and he turns to acknowledge his brother's presence. Sam asks how Bobby is, and Dean reports no change, asking in turn what Sam has come up with. Sam observes that now he has the information Dean provided about the doctor's experiments, Bobby's wall is starting to make a lot more sense. The plant Bobby had highlighted, silene capensis, is also known as African dream root, he explains. "It's been used by shaman and medicine men for centuries."

"Let me guess, they'd dose up, bust out the didgeridoos and start kicking around the hanky?" Dean quips.
Sam snorts, amused in spite of himself. "Not quite. If you believe the legends, it's used for dreamwalking. I mean: entering another person's dreams, poking around in their heads…"
"I take it we believe the legends?" Dean cuts in.
"When don't we?" Sam shrugs. Hee. Quite.

Sam continues that dreamwalking is just the tip of the iceberg, that this dream root is some serious mojo. "You take enough of it, with enough practice, you can become a regular Freddy Krueger. You can control anything: you can turn bad dreams good, you could turn good dreams bad."
"And killing people in their sleep," Dean adds.
Sam nods. "For example."

So, the brothers continue to hypothesise, bouncing ideas off each other old style, supposing this doctor was testing the stuff on his patients, and one of them got pissed about it and decided to pay him a little visit in his sleep. "He goes nighty-night."

Sam wonders how Bobby fits into this – if the killer came after him, how come he's still alive? Dean can only sombrely admit that he doesn't know.

Into Bobby's dream again, and his face is all scratched up now, but he's still fighting for his life, pressed against the door of the closet he is hiding inside so that the spirit woman screaming like a banshee on the other side can't get through. He's freaking out more than we have ever seen Bobby freak out, grabbing anything he can get hold of to barricade the door, and bellowing for help. The camera pans back into the closet, which has now become a long, empty corridor, with no one there to provide aid.

Dean and Sam pedeconference out of the hospital. "So, how do we find a homicidal Sandman?" Dean wonders. Sam grimly observes that it could be anyone. Dean narrows it down – it has to be someone who knew Doctor Gregg and had access to his "dream 'shrooms". Could be one of his test subjects, Sam proposes. Dean agrees that it's possible, grumbling that the doctor's research is pretty sketchy, lacking accurate records of how many subjects he had or who all of them were.

I really appreciate it when the show does this: allows Dean to do his share of the research and know what he's talking about, rather than just leaving it all to Sam. Dean might not enjoy the bookwork, but we learned early in season one that he is more than capable of doing his fair share of that side of the job.

Sam offers an ironical snort to the mix. "In any other case we'd be calling Bobby and asking him for help right now," he sighs, reminding us again how much they've come to rely on Bobby's wisdom and knowledge since season one, when they had no really close contacts to turn to in the absence of their missing father.

Dean stops dead. "You know what: you're right," he announces, with the look of one who has just had a lightbulb moment. "Let's go talk to him."
Sam offers up his very best 'my brother is insane' eyebrow lift of incredulity. "Sure. I think we might find the conversation a bit one-sided."
"Not if we're tripping on some dream root," Dean counters.
Sam can't believe he's hearing this. "You want to go dreamwalking inside Bobby's head?"
"Why not? Maybe we can help," Dean enthuses.
"We have no idea what's crawling around in there," Sam protests, the voice of reason.
"How bad can it be?" Dean shrugs. He wants to do this, and isn't going to listen to any words of caution.
"Bad," Sam insists.
Dean rolls his eyes. "Dude, it's Bobby."

Sam hesitates a moment longer, and then caves, but points out the next logical flaw in the plan: they don't have any African dream root. Dean thinks about it for a moment, and then groans.

Dean: "Crap."
Sam: "What?"
Dean: "Bela."
Sam: "Bela? Crap."

Heh. I like that exchange. However, I'm less fond of the suggestion that the boys would ever call Bela for help. They know her too well for that. They hate her too much for that.

Sam: "You're actually suggesting that we ask her for a favour?"
Dean: "I'm feeling dirty just thinking about it, but yeah."

Meh. I like their reluctance, but overall this is the one plot point of this episode that I really can't get on board with. Why would they ever believe that Bela would be willing to help anyone out of the goodness of her heart? They know damn well that she doesn't do anything unless there is something in it for her. She doesn't help people; she helps herself. The last contact they had with her was when she sold them out to Gordon Walker and Dean threatened to kill her. Before that she shot Sam and was willing to see him die of the rabbit's foot curse rather than miss out on the profit she could make by selling it, and when they saved her life she reduced it to a business transaction so that she wouldn't have to feel obligated. Why would she ever agree to help? Why would it ever occur to them to ask her for help?

I get that the writers want Bela to be a very definite antagonist and that's why she is being made so irredeemable. But the result is that they frequently have to dumb the boys down in order to shoehorn her into stories, and that just doesn't work for me.

Motel. Sam is alone in the room, tapping away on his laptop. There's a knock at the door. Sam goes over, opens it a crack to see who's outside, then turns away rolling his eyes with disgust as he lets Bela in.

"Bela. I didn't think there was a chance in hell you'd show up," Sam greets her, hands on hips.
"Well, I'm full of surprises," she coos, reaching for the belt on the mac she's wearing. "Though truthfully, you want to know why I'm here?"

She starts walking toward Sam as she undoes her coat. Sam backs away, wary.

"Because of you," Bela purrs, eyes glued longingly to his face as she removes her coat to reveal black lacy underwear beneath. Viewers instantly realise that they are in dreamland and start shouting 'Huh?' at the screen. Sam hasn't even had any dream root yet! Where is this coming from?

Having said that, Sam did admire her 'style' at the end of Red Sky at Morning. But that was before she sold him out to Gordon Walker and almost cost both him and Dean their lives! Still. He's a guy – a guy who lives like a monk most of the time, moreover. Lusting after an attractive woman is to be expected. It's just the Bela part that seems to come out of left field, but she is both good-looking and intelligent, and would have been on his mind as he fell asleep, due to that decision to ask her for help.

Sam does the whole not knowing where to look thing as Bela drops her coat, and asks what she's doing. She whispers that she can't stop thinking about him, and he is startled, but has no time to question her further as she leans in for a kiss. And, just like that, he stops thinking and just goes with the flow. They drop onto the bed, kissing passionately, Bela gasping Sam's name…

"Sam! Wake up!" Dean shouts.

Sam wakes up with a dopey smile plastered all over his face to find that he's sitting in a hard-backed chair, flopped forward across the desk in uncomfortable fashion, and has drooled all over his own hand. Hee. He hurriedly straightens up, all shocked and horrified at himself for having a sex dream about Bela, and hopes Dean hasn't noticed.

Lounging behind Sam in a comfortable armchair, researching, Dean grins. "Dude, you were out," he remarks. "And making some serious happy noises. Who were you dreaming about?"
"What? Nothing! No one!" Sam instantly over-protests.
"Come on, you can tell me," Dean wheedles. "Angelina Jolie?"
"No!" Sam insists.
Dean wrinkles his nose. "Brad Pitt?"
"No!" Sam vehemently protests again, snapping his head around to glare at his brother. "No. It doesn't matter."

Heh. The dream might have come out of nowhere, but Sam's comic reactions are fantastic – Jared Padalecki is really maturing beautifully as an actor this season.

The brothers 'whatever' at each other, as Dean gets bored of teasing and brushes it off, remarking that he called Bela. Sam freezes and tries without great success to act casual as he asks what she said, if she's going to help.

"Shockingly, no, which puts us back to square one," reports Dean. "I've been trying to decipher the doctor's notes. Unfortunately, he has worse handwriting than you do. You gonna come help me with this stuff?"
Sam squirms and wriggles in his seat, glances down at his crotch, and dissembles madly. "Yeah. Yeah, just give me a sec," he blusters, fidgeting. Hee.

There's a knock at the door. Dean goes over, opens it a crack to see who's outside, then turns away rolling his eyes with disgust as he lets Bela in.

"Bela, as I live and breathe," he sarcastically remarks.
"You called me, remember," Bela caustically replies, as Sam covertly drops a hand into his lap by way of camouflage and remains glued to his seat, because he can't stand up without giving himself away, as it were.
"I remember you turning me down," Dean reminds Bela.
"Well, I'm just full of surprises," Bela chirps, nodding a greeting to Sam, who shuffles in his seat and can't meet her eyes as he mumbles a hello.

Bela hands over a jar of African dream root to Dean, commenting that it is nasty stuff and not easy to come by. And…I know that the end of the episode reveals her true motive for cooperating, but I still can't quite buy that the boys would ever believe she would help someone without there being a profit in it for her, however anxious they are to find a speedy solution to Bobby's situation.

"Why the sudden change of heart?" Dean wonders.
"What? I can't do a little favour every now and again?" is Bela's pert rejoinder, as she undoes and removes her coat. Sam's eyes widen, remembering his dream. This time, however, she proves to be fully clothed underneath.
"No, you can't," Dean insists, glaring at her with the appropriate amount of venom and mistrust. "Now, come on. I want to know what the strings are before you attach them."
"You said this was for Bobby Singer, right?" Bela explains. "Well, I'm doing it for him, not you."

Dean wants to know why. Bela offers her most innocent and vulnerable look, the one he should absolutely know better than to trust, as she tells a touching little story of how Bobby saved her life one time in Flagstaff. "I screwed up and he saved me, okay? Are you satisfied?"

Dean and Sam shrug at one another. For most normal people that would be considered more than enough motivation to return a favour, but I still can't quite believe that they would fall for it coming from Bela. They saved her life once, and she gave them money rather than gratitude, and then took the very next opportunity to sell them out to their most dangerous human enemy. Bela doesn't do favours or obligation, and they know it. She doesn't do anything that isn't going to turn a profit for her, and has never given them any reason to believe that she ever would.

"So, when do we go on this little magical mystery tour?" Bela smirks.
"Oh, you're not going anywhere," Dean immediately tells her. "I don't trust you enough to let you in my car, much less Bobby's head. No offence."

And…even as he is saying how much he doesn't trust her, he opens the closet door and puts the dream root into the safe set into the wall inside it, right in front of her. And we see that the Colt is already in the safe. Why? Since when do they keep it in a random safe? It is always either in the trunk or about their persons. Why would they put it into a safe in a hotel room, just because the safe happens to be there?

Bela grumbles that it's 2am, asking where she is supposed to go. Man, they really are burning the midnight oil on this one. Because it's Bobby, and they can't risk wasting any time. "Get a room!" says Dean, knowing how far below Bela's usual high standards the place is. "They've got the magic fingers, a little Casa Erotica on pay-per-view, you'll love it."

Bela is furious, grabs her coat and bag, and storms out. Sam promptly leaps to his feet to stutter, "nice to…seeing you…Bela," at her departing back. Hee. Dean looks at him like he just grew a second head.

Later. Sam carries two mugs of yellowish tea over to where Dean is sitting on one of the beds. It looks really gross. Dean jokes about dimming the lights and the Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd, and Sam has no idea what he is talking about. Bless. "What did you do during college?" Dean disbelieves.

It's been a long time since Sam's time at university was referred to in any way. I like that it is always referenced so casually; it's a long time since it was a source of tension. Water under the bridge.

Dean goes to drink, but Sam suddenly remembers that he's forgotten a vital ingredient, and pulls out an envelope containing a few strands of Bobby's hair.

"We have to drink Bobby's hair?" Dean is incredulous.
"That's how you control whose dream you're in," Sam explains. "You've got to drink some of their, uh, some of their body."

That's gross.

"Well," Dean decides, staring at the hair. "I guess the hair of the dog's better than some other parts of the body." Word. "Bottoms up."

The brothers chink their mugs together in a toast, and then down the foul-looking concoction in one gulp. From the looks on their faces, it tastes as bad as it looks. They sit side by side on the twin beds, fighting the urge to heave.

"Feel anything?" Dean asks, eyeing his mug appraisingly.
"No," Sam admits. "You feel anything?"
"No," Dean agrees, lifting the mug right up to his eye for inspection. "Maybe we got some bad schwack?"

Then Sam notices something, and wonders when it started raining. Dean goes over to the window to have a look, and raises an even better question: "when did it start raining upside down?"

Dean turns, gaping in amazement, to find that the motel room has turned into the inside of someone's house. It looks kind of drab, mostly because the film uses such de-saturated, faded colouring to emphasise the nightmare factor. Both brothers' jaws hit the floor. Dean turns to see that the window he was just looking out of has turned into a fireplace. "Okay, I don't know what's weirder: the fact that we're in Bobby's head, or that he's dreaming of better homes and gardens," he remarks, looking totally weirded out.

Sam keeps looking around, and recognition hits. "Wait. Imagine the place without the paint job, more cluttered, dusty, books all over the place…"
"It's Bobby's house," Dean realises.

It kind of kills me that he's whispering, like he's afraid of being caught trespassing, when coming in here was his idea in the first place and finding Bobby is the whole point.

Dean starts calling for Bobby, but it's still more of a hoarse whisper than a proper shout, and Sam turns about, looking worried, because there's something moving around just out of eyeshot. Sam also calls for Bobby, in the same hoarse whisper that Dean used, as if that way they can attract Bobby's attention but not that of anything dangerous that might happen to be hanging around.

"Dean?" Sam calls. "I'm going to look outside."
"No, no, no, stay close," Dean immediately and very sensibly protests, because everyone knows that you don't split up in situations like this. It's the first rule of horror.

Sam insists he will be fine, suggests that Dean continue looking around inside, and reminds his brother that they need to find Bobby. Dean reluctantly gives in, cautioning his brother not to do anything stupid.

Sam opens the front door and steps out into a Technicolour dreamland, the colours bright and over-saturated in vivid contrast to the interior of the house. The house is painted pastel blue, the garden is full of gaudy flowerbeds, birds are singing, there's no junkyard…Bobby's Chevelle is parked nearby, looking showroom new in contrast to it's normal, beat-up appearance – and the same blue as the house! – but otherwise the place is unrecognisable. Sam stares, bemused, and the front door slams shut behind him. Alarmed, he tries to open it, but to no avail. He shouts for his brother, and can see Dean moving around inside, but Dean shows no sign of being able to hear him calling and thumping on the wall. So Sam grits his teeth and gets on with looking around.

Inside, Dean opens the sliding doors to the kitchen, and continues searching for Bobby, calling out for his old friend. He whips around on hearing a movement behind him, but there is nothing there. Then a tremulous voice calls from behind a door nearby. "Who's out there?" It's Bobby.

Dean takes note of how badly scratched up the door is, and tries the handle, calling: "Bobby, you in there?"
"Dean?" comes the incredulous reply.

Bobby opens the door and comes out, spooked as anything, and peers warily around, wondering how the hell Dean found him. Dean explains that he and Sam got their hands on some dream root. Bobby has no idea what he's talking about. Dean tries reminding him about Doctor Gregg and the experiments, but Bobby still doesn't remember.

The lights start flickering, and Bobby nervously warns Dean to hurry and grabs his arm to haul him along as he starts to take off down the hallway. Dean pulls him back to ask what's going on.

"She's coming," Bobby quavers.
"Okay, you know this is a dream, don't you?" Dean carefully tells him.
"What? Are you crazy?" Bobby disbelieves.
"It's a dream, Bobby, none of this is real," Dean repeats, getting loud.
Bobby is staring over Dean's shoulder, and points, fearfully. "Does that look made up?"

Dean turns to see a dark-haired young woman wearing a white dress and multiple stab wounds walking down the hallway toward them. Bobby turns back to his cupboard and starts rattling the door, but it is stuck.

"Bobby, who is that?" Dean asks, watching the woman advance.
"She's…she's my wife," Bobby timorously replies, eyes fixed on the woman, his expression a marvellous combination of grief and guilt and horror.

Motel. Dean and Sam lie flopped across their respective beds, out cold. Dean even still has his mug in his hand.

Dream. Out in the picture-perfect Technicolour Garden, Sam continues to wander around randomly.

Inside. All the vicious attacking and running away seems to have stopped for the time being.

Bobby's wife mournfully murmurs, "Why, Bobby? Why did you do this to me?"
Dean stares back and fore between the two of them. Bobby gazes at his wife. "I'd rather die myself than hurt you," he tells her
"But you did hurt me," she insists. "You stabbed that knife into me."

Yikes. Dean looks rather shocked and concerned, as witness to all this.

"Again and again," Mrs Bobby continues. "You watched me bleed, watched me die!"
Seeing that Bobby is completely transfixed, Dean tries to get his attention. "Bobby, she's not real."
"How could you?" Mrs Bobby mourns.
"You were possessed, baby," Bobby tearfully says. "You were rabid, and I didn't know what I know now. I didn't know how to save you."

Oh, but this backstory this explains so, so much about Bobby. Every hunter does what he or she does because of some personal tragedy or another. That much was already clear, long ago, and now we learn that Bobby was forced to kill his wife because she was possessed and rabid and deadly. That's harsh, so horribly tragic. I'm amazed he escaped with his life, knowing what we do about demons, and am going to guess that those earlier scenes of her attacking him in the kitchen were an action replay of what happened that day: that the demon physically attacked him in much the way we have been shown and he grabbed the knife in self defence, not knowing what had happened to cause his wife to behave like this, stabbing her to stop her killing him. Not that stabbing a demon would kill it, but clearly the incident was enough to satisfy this one. It completely explains why demons are Bobby's area of expertise: a demon cost him his wife, and he didn't know how to save her or even that he could, so now that he's dedicated his life to becoming an expert in the field, trying to keep the same thing from happening to other people.

What's going on right now must be his worst nightmare, by that token, with so many demons out there on the loose since the devil's gate opened. And then when you look at what the dreamscape tells us about Bobby's past, with the tidy house and beautiful garden, and then compare that image to how it is now, with the clutter of books and the dust and the junkyard, still living there all alone doing his thing, it hits hard. Every hunter becomes a hunter as a result of personal loss. Every episode of this show tells the story of someone's personal tragedy.

Right now, Bobby seems to be caught between rationality and blind panic, between the past and the present. He recognised Dean automatically, but the details of his most recent hunt seem to have deserted him entirely, trapped as he is in this replay of the worst day of his life. He might have known about the doctor's experiments, but he wasn't expecting this attack. It blindsided him, and he's been too busy dealing with the trauma of these memories, the trauma of being confronted by the supposed spirit of his dead wife, to rationalise how the situation came about or to question Dean's unexpected presence.

Mrs Bobby shouts that he's lying, that he wanted her dead. "If you'd have loved me you would have found a way!"

Bobby starts to sob that he's sorry, and Dean decides this has gone far enough, grabs his arm, and hauls him out of the room, slamming the sliding doors shut behind them as Mrs Bobby starts to shriek once more and pursue.

DreamGarden. Sam is still wandering randomly. He turns just in time to see a young man – experiment subject Jeremy, who Dean met earlier – swinging a baseball bat, which catches him hard across the upper arm and chest. If he was a normal height, that would have been his head.

Motel. Sam's comatose body twitches in reaction to the impact. Doctor Gregg died as a result of his dreamwalk, we remember. Unlike Dean's Djinn-powered experience in What Is And What Should Never Be, if you are killed in this dream, you don't wake up: you die. Sam is in very real danger here.

DreamGarden. Sam falls to the ground, clutching at his arm where the bat caught him. He wonders who the other man is. It's Jeremy, Sam. You didn't meet him earlier because you and Dean were doing the efficient time management thing by dividing chores and handling them solo, then de-briefing each other later. Jeremy, in turn, wonders who Sam is, pointing out that he doesn't belong here. I'd say that goes for them both, in point of fact.

Sam makes more or less that very point, snarling that Jeremy is in his friend's head. Almost snarling, anyway – the pained grimace and gasp detracts somewhat from the overall effect.

"You've got poor choice in friends. This is self defence," Jeremy defends. "He came after me, he wanted to hurt me."
"Maybe because you're a killer," Sam vehemently point out.
"You should be nicer to me," Jeremy warns, looking a little, well, insane. This guy is an absolute fruitloop, no question. "In here, you're just an insect. I'm a god," he gloats

DreamHouse. Mrs Bobby is screaming and hammering on the sliding doors. On the other side, Dean is using his body to barricade the door, while Bobby just stands around looking stricken. This experience has really knocked him for six.

"I'm telling you," Dean attempts again. "All of it – house, your wife – it's a nightmare."

As he speaks, Dean finds a random plastic tie lying around nearby, and uses it to secure the door, thus freeing himself up to move around a bit.

"I killed her," Bobby quavers, still trapped in the moment he has been forced to relive.
"Bobby, this is a dream," Dean insists. "And you can wake up. Hell, you can do anything."
"Just leave me alone. Let her kill me already," Bobby murmurs, walking toward the door.
Dean grabs him by the collar and shakes him, not unlike the way Bobby shook him when he first learned of the deal. "Bobby, snap out of this. Now! You've got to snap out of this, now! You're not going to die. I'm not going to let you die. I'm not going to let you die; you're like a father to me. You've got to believe me, please!"

Viewers everywhere wibble as their hearts break. The fact that Dean has come to rely on Bobby as a father figure in no way detracts from the relationship he had with John. After two and a half seasons the show has made it very clear how devoted Dean was to his father, in spite of everything, but John is gone now, and Bobby's gruff, steady support has gone a long way toward filling the gap he left behind. And wow. This is Dean, and he finds it so hard as a rule to come out and say what he feels about anyone, so the fact that he has been able to say it so openly here speaks volumes both for how fond he is of Bobby and how worried he is right now. He really needs to get through to the older man, for all their sakes.

Behind the door, Mrs Bobby is still howling her fury. Dean holds Bobby's eyes, desperate and silently pleading, and the combination of face and eyes and words slowly manage to break through.

"I'm dreaming?" he incredulously asks.
"Yes!" Dean confirms. "Now take control of it."

Bobby hesitates, glancing back to that door where his wife can still be heard screaming and growling and pounding, and then screws up his face in concentration. The pounding and howling stops. Dean opens the door to check, and finds Mrs Bobby gone.

"I don't believe it," Bobby breathes, amazed.
Dean lets out a heavy sigh of relief, and takes a moment to collect himself before responding. "Believe it. And would you please wake up?"

DreamGarden. "Sweet dreams," Jeremy intones, raising his bat for what he's no doubt intending to be a killing blow. On the ground still, Sam braces himself. The bat begins its downward arc…

Hospital. Bobby jack-knifes upright with a gasp.

Motel. The brothers jack-knife upright with a gasp. Dean still has the mug in his hand. Talk about a death grip.

There's a lot of rapid breathing as everyone reacts and processes, and Dean notices that he still has that darn mug clutched tight in his fingers.

Hospital. Bobby leafs through a bunch of research papers, while Dean shuffles awkwardly at his side, because while Sam was off being attacked by a psycho dreamwalker, Dean was experiencing Bobby's private and personal tragedy, and that's an issue on which they need to clear the air now. But talking about stuff like that doesn't come easily to Dean, hence the shuffling before he manages to get the words out.

"Hey, Bobby," he awkwardly begins. "That, uh, that stuff. All that stuff with your wife. Did that actually happen?"

Bobby's head snaps around to look at him, but he sees nothing but honest concern in Dean's eyes. His own are shrouded with guilt and remorse and grief, and he has to look down and away before he can reply.

"Everybody got into hunting somehow," he evades, and that's answer enough.
"I'm sorry," is all Dean can say, because he's known Bobby for so many years, but never heard this tragic origin story, which is clearly something Bobby considers intensely private, so he's sorry both for what happened and for intruding on it.
"Don't be sorry." Bobby is quick to reassure this young man who is the closest thing to family he has. "If it weren't for you, I'd still be lost in there. Or dead. Thank you."

Dean kind of twitches a little, because he's never really sure what to do with gratitude, and nods, and they understand one another.

The difference between John and Bobby really is striking, all the more so now that we know that they both lost beloved wives as a result of demonic interference, albeit in very different ways. Bobby clearly learned early on what had happened to his wife, and then focused on continuing to learn more and more, relying on knowledge as his greatest weapon, something tangible and positive he could focus on. It took John years to find out what had killed Mary, in contrast, and in the meantime all he could do was lash out blindly at anything remotely supernatural; no less of a task to focus on than Bobby's, but perhaps less cathartic because none of it brought him any closer to understanding what had happened to Mary, not for many years.

But the personality difference is also striking, and would also have played a big part in their very different reactions. John was so grim, vengeful and bull-headed, often behaving as if he was the only one ever to be bereaved, as if his own loss was worse than anyone's, and that made him some kind of righteous crusader with the world against him. He was a good man, but very damaged, and deeply flawed. Bobby, in contrast, is a bluff, gruff kind of guy, also damaged and also flawed, but a hell of a lot steadier than John was, even-tempered and patient, and lacking that obsessively violent vengeful streak. It makes you wonder if that enormous difference makes it easier or harder for Dean to lean on his father's old friend in John's stead.

Sam wanders into the room to find his brother sharing this quiet moment of understanding with Bobby. We've seen before that Sam is kind of on the outside of this relationship, the child to their adult, that they understand one another on a level that Sam just isn't a part of.

"So, Stoner Boy wasn't in his dorm," he announces. "My guess is he's long gone by now."

Bobby gruffs that he isn't much of a stoner, naming the young man as Jeremy Frost, and explaining that he's some kind of genius, with an IQ of 160. "Which is saying something considering his dad took a baseball bat to his head."

That would be that 'bike accident' Jeremy claimed to have had when he talked to Dean, covering up his own daddy issues. Bobby shows Sam a picture of this 'father of the year', who died before Jeremy was 10, and explains further that the injury gave Jeremy Charcot-Willebrand, and he hasn't dreamed since.

"Until he started dosing the dream drug," Dean guesses. "How did he know how to dig up your worst nightmare and throw it at you?"
Bobby shrugs. "He was rooting around in my skull. God knows what he saw in there."
"Yeah, how'd he get in there in the first place?" Sam wonders. "Isn't he supposed to have some of your hair, or something?"
"Yeah," Bobby sighs with the self-deprecating air of a man confessing to idiocy. "Before I knew it was him, he offered me a beer. I drank it. Dumbest frigging thing."

I kinda like being shown that Bobby is fallible. He's always had the answer for everything up till now, and the boys owe him so many favours it isn't funny. It's nice to see them being able to return a little of that.

Dean looks slightly alarmed on hearing Bobby's words, recognising his own mistake. "Oh, I don't know, it wasn't that dumb," he offers. The others look at him.
"Dean, you didn't," Sam disbelieves.
"I was thirsty," Dean excuses, looking guilty.
"That's great!" Sam snaps. "Now he can come after either one of you."
"Well, we'll just have to find him first," decides Dean. Sam shakes his head in disbelief.
"We'd better move fast," Bobby cautions. "And coffee up. 'Cause the one thing we cannot do is fall asleep."

Two days later. Night. The Impala drives along a typical Supernatural deserted road, with Dean at the wheel, ranting that "this Jeremy guy's not a frigging ghost, so where can he be?"

Sam is the one member of the team who has been able to sleep over the past couple of days, although whether he has taken advantage of this or not is another matter. He mildly asks if Dean would like him to drive. "You seem a little…caffeinated."
"Thanks for the newsflash, Edison," Dean snarls.

Dean's phone rings, and he struggles, in his current sleep-deprived and over-caffeinated condition, to get it out of his pocket and answer, which doesn't improve his mood.

"Tell me you got something!" Dean shouts into the phone.
"Strip club was a bust, huh," Bobby mildly remarks, on the other end. Bobby doesn't seem to be suffering nearly as much as Dean from the sleep deprivation and caffeination. "That was our last lead," he muses.
"What the hell, Bobby?" Dean yells, frustrated.
"Don't yell at me, boy, I'm working my ass off, here," Bobby promptly chides him, and Dean instantly apologises and sighs that he's tired. "Well who ain't?" Bobby reminds him.

Behind Bobby, in the motel room, Bela is laying out tarot cards. Why is she still hanging around? It's been two days. Why are the others not suspicious of the fact that she's still hanging around? Just how well behaved has she been over these last two days to lull them into such a false sense of security? Still, if no one's getting any sleep, at least Sam won't have had any more dirty dreams about her…

Where are they all staying, come to that? Bela has her own room, obviously, but the boys hijacked Bobby's, so how is that arrangement working out now Bobby is out of hospital? I suppose the fact that they aren't sleeping anyway renders it a moot point.

Dean asks what Bela's got, and Bobby relays the question. "Sorry," she shrugs. "Sometimes the spirit world's in a chatty mood, and sometimes it isn't.

This thing of Bela's about getting her information from the spirit world is such a crock. I really hope it backfires on her one day.

Bobby reports the lack of leads back to Dean, whose frustration boils over. "Great! Well, I'm just gonna go blow my brains out now!" he snaps, hanging up. It's probably just as well Bobby knows Dean well enough not to take him seriously there!

At the motel, Bobby turns back to Bela. "Let me ask you something? What you doing helping us?"

It's only now occurred to him to ask that? Or has he just been patiently biding his time, pondering the oddity?

"Bobby, I'm surprised you don't remember. Flagstaff?" Bela promptly coos, eyes wide and innocent and sincere. She's good at what she does, you have to give her that. And she's got one hell of a nerve.

Bobby accepts the false memory she is implanting here, for now, but looks puzzled still, unconvinced. If only he were slightly more unconvinced, enough to act on it. For now, though, he's sleep deprived and distracted by the case, and willing to accept her explanation at face value.

The Impala continues to drive along that typical Supernatural deserted road, until Dean pulls off into a nearby clearing in a copse of trees, and turns the engine off. "That's it. I'm done," he announces, lying back in his seat and wriggling to get comfortable.

Sam is nonplussed. "What are you doing?"
"Taking myself a long overdue nap," says Dean.
"What?" Sam disbelieves. "Dean, Jeremy can come after you."
"That's the idea," Dean tells him.
"Excuse me?" Sam disbelieves again.
"Come on, we can't find him, so let him come to me," Dean explains, with the air of a man who has long since run out of patience with this whole no sleep, cat-and-mouse game.
"On his own turf, where he's basically a god?" Sam protests, taking Jeremy's own description of himself at face value somewhat.
"I can handle it," Dean calmly reassures him, eyes closed.
"Not alone, you can't," Sam decides, reaching out to pull a few strands of hair out of his brother's head.

Having the hair pulled wakes Dean up a little, and he grumbles to know what Sam is doing. Sam announces that he's going in with his brother. Dean immediately tells him that he's not, automatically trying to pull rank. Sam glares as he demands to know why not, pointing out that at least then it would be two against one.

So…Sam has a supply of dream root tea just hanging around in the Impala, in case of need?

Dean hesitates just long enough for his very real discomfort with the idea to be evident, before admitting to a very good reason not to want Sam joining him on this. "'Cause I don't want you digging around in my head."

Dean's head is a messed up place to be, and they both know it, but Sam isn't going to back down on this point, because providing backup against a dangerous enemy is more important. "Too bad," he shrugs.

Dean does not look happy, but gives up the argument in the face of his brother's resolve.

Later. The Impala is still parked in that quiet clearing in the woods. The brothers lie flopped against their respective car doors, fast asleep. Sam wakes up, and glances blearily around, then wakes his brother. Still more asleep than awake, Dean wonders what they are still doing there. Sam has no idea, but he thinks there is someone out there.

The brothers get out of the car and very cautiously start exploring this random little patch of woodland they are parked in.

Wonderfully, the Mamas and Papas start singing Dream a Little Dream of Me in the background. Episode title – drink! Hearing the music coming from nowhere in the middle of the woods, Dean is surprised. He's even more surprised when he turns around to see Lisa Braeden from The Kids Are Alright sitting in an actual spotlight nearby, with a picnic all laid out around her. She's wearing almost-white dress, as if we hadn't already worked out that she isn't real. Dean stares in amazement, Sam at his shoulder.

Lisa smiles. "Hey. You gonna sit down? Come on – we only have an hour before we have to pick Ben up from baseball."

This little snippet is repeating a point rather than telling us anything we didn't already know, although it has to be enormously revealing for Sam. Here, Lisa is filling the role that Carmen played in the What Is And What Should Never Be fantasy; a different woman but representing the exact same longing: for security and stability, a home, a family, someone to love. A future. Then, the fantasy picked a random image of a woman Dean had seen in a picture, rather than selecting any one of his many casual girlfriends to play the part of his dream woman. None of those casual flings have had that kind of meaning to him; he's always careful not to let them. But this fantasy, in contrast, is picking up on the relatively fresh memory of Lisa, who was once a casual fling but whose transformed life really struck a chord with Dean, a life that he could perhaps have had, if only things were different, a life that really brought home to him everything he has missed out on and is going to miss out on. The meaning is much the same, in both fantasies, each of them representing a hidden yearning that he tries not to acknowledge even to himself but that his current situation is really driving home. The difference is that this time Sam gets to see it, too.

Taken aback, Dean turns to glance at Sam, abashed, muttering that he's never had this dream before. He's embarrassed to have Sam witnessing such a private desire, which speaks volumes for how much it really means to him. Sam, in turn, looks a little touched, and a little concerned, and a little uncomfortable about seeing this, a scene so sweet and so greatly at odds with what he might have expected from his highly sexed brother.

Who would ever have thought, two seasons ago, that out of the two of them it would be Sam that had the sex dream in an episode like this, while Dean was the one dreaming about a loving girlfriend/wife and family to call his own?

"Stop looking at me like that," says Dean, determinedly not looking at Sam, who has taken a couple of steps toward him.
"Sorry," Sam murmurs, thinking better of anything he'd been about to say.
"Dean, I love you," Lisa interjects, rosy and smiling and picture perfect.

Dean is very uncomfortable both having to see this himself, and having Sam see it.

Then the music disappears, and Lisa and the picnic and the spotlight flicker out of existence, leaving the brothers alone in the dark woodland. Dean wonders where Lisa went. Nearby, Jeremy pokes his head out from behind a tree. Sam sees him and gives chase, with Dean hot on his heels.

Jeremy vanishes. Dean and Sam run through the woods, and quickly lose each other. At length, Dean stops, turns, and finds that he is in a motel corridor with the walls and doors painted to represent a forest. It's wonderfully bizarre. "Okay," he frowns, nonplussed, as the camera pans away from him down the hallway.

DreamWoods. Sam is still running through the trees, trying to find Jeremy. He realises that his brother is no longer with him, and calls out for him, but there is no reply.

Dream Motel. Dean slowly wanders down the hallway toward the door right at the end, which swings open as he approaches. He enters, and it's the same motel room they've been using as their HQ for this case, the vivid greens and blues subdued somewhat by the de-saturated cinematography of the dreamscape. There is someone sitting at the desk with his back to the door.

"Jeremy?" Dean calls, but it isn't Jeremy. The man at the desk idly flips the lamp on and off a few times, and we see that it is Dean.

DreamDean stands and turns, and man, he's cold and aloof, and the contrast between him and the real Dean, standing opposite staring at him with anxious surprise, is immediately apparent. And yet they are both Dean. Kudos to Jensen Ackles for making the separate incarnations of his character in this episode so very distinct and for conveying so much with his body language and intonation and facial expressions.

How weird it must have been to film this scene, just playing off thin air twice over.

"Hey, Dean," DreamDean casually greets his counterpart.
"Well, aren't you a handsome son of a gun," Dean snarks, instantly falling back on his time-honoured defence of humour in the face of this unexpected and unwelcome development.
"We need to talk," DreamDean solemnly announces.
"I get it. I get it. I'm my own worst nightmare," Dean shrugs, going all pop-psychology on himself. "Is that it, huh? Like the Superman Three junkyard scene, a little mano i mano with myself?"
"Joke all you want, smartass," DreamDean calmly says, impassive. "But you can't lie to me. I know the truth. I know how dead you are inside. How worthless you feel. I know how you look into a mirror and hate what you see."
Dean reacts, keeps his game face on. "Sorry, pal. It's not going to work. You're not real."
"Sure I am. I'm you," DreamDean evenly tells him.
"I don't think so," Dean insists. "See, this is my siesta, not yours. All I've got to do is snap my fingers and you go bye-bye."

He snaps his fingers. DreamDean just looks at him, all guess again. Dean takes in the failure, and tries again. DreamDean looks down, shaking his head with a wry snort. Dean keeps clicking his fingers, growing alarmed that it isn't working.

"I'm not going anywhere," DreamDean tells him when he finally gives up. "Neither are you."

The door slams shut, and Dean is a little alarmed as it locks itself.

"Like I said: we need to talk," DreamDean announces, holding up a sawn-off shotgun to emphasise his point.

DreamWoods. Sam wakes up in the Impala, and looks across to see Dean asleep alongside him. He calls his brother's name and smacks his arm to wake him up, but the camera pans across to show us that it is now Jeremy slumped in Dean's place, eyes wide open. How dare a non-Winchester or Winchester-affiliate sit in that seat! Jeremy turns, looking menacing, and Sam just has time to react with wide-eyed shock before he is smacked with that baseball bat once again.

Sam falls out of the Impala onto the grass and tries to crawl away.

"Boy, you just don't know when to leave well enough alone, do you?" Jeremy drawls, coming around to Sam's side of the car, bat in hand.
"You're a psycho," Sam gasps, rolling onto his back but still scrambling away from the other man.
"You're wrong," Jeremy insists.
"Yeah? Tell that to Doctor Gregg," Sam retorts.
"The doc? No, no, the doc's the one who got me hooked on this stuff, and then he took it away," Jeremy explains, as if that makes the murder all okay.

Hooked? Is this dream root addictive, then, in which case should our boys really be using it multiple times? Or was Jeremy unable to give it up for psychological rather than chemical reasons, because he craved the ability to dream so much having lost it so early in his life? Is it the power or the drug he finds so addictive? The power, I'm going to guess, judging by the context.

"I needed it, and he wouldn't let me have it," he defends.
"So you killed him," Sam points out, his tone conveying just what an extreme reaction this might be considered by any rational person.
"I can dream again. You know what that's like? Not to be able to dream?" Jeremy raves. "You never rest, not really, it's like being awake for fifteen years."

If only the guy didn't have this inexplicable compulsion to explain himself in such detail, he could have killed Sam several times over already. It's a terrible affliction suffered by many baddies in television and film, alas for them.

"And let me guess," Sam snarks, wearing the disgusted expression both he and his brother reserve for evil humans as opposed to supernatural evil. "It makes you go crazy."
"I just wanna be left alone," Jeremy snarls, hefting his baseball bat. "I just wanna dream.
"Sorry. Can't do that," Sam tells him, trying hard to sound tough, which isn't easy considering he's on his back on the ground still.
"That's the wrong answer," says Jeremy.

And all of a sudden Sam's arms are pulled from under him so that he is dropped flat onto his back, and he looks across to see that his wrists have been tied to metal pins hammered deep into the ground, likewise his ankles.

"I'm getting better and better at this," Jeremy remarks. "Stronger and stronger all the time. "So you and your brother? You're not waking up. Not this time. I'm not going to let you."

DreamMotel. Dean and DreamDean slowly circle one another.

"I mean, you're going to hell and you won't lift a finger to stop it," DreamDean accuses. "Talk about low self-esteem! Then again, I guess it's not much of a life worth saving, now, is it?"
"Wake up, Dean," Dean rather desperately mutters to himself, listening to this harsh monologue. "Come on, wake up."
"I mean, after all: you've got nothing outside of Sam," DreamDean continues. "You are nothing. You're as mindless and obedient as an attack dog."
"That's not true," Dean tries to deny, but he's getting severely rattled now, as his dream self delves into his deepest insecurities and lays them bare.
"No? What are the things that you want?" DreamDean asks, going straight for the jugular. "What are the things that you dream?"

The direction is really effective here, the camera focusing on DreamDean's profile, close-ups of his mouth and eyes as his words slice deeper and deeper, with Dean trying so hard to keep his game face intact in the face of this verbal onslaught.

"I mean, your car?" DreamDean continues. "That's Dad's. Your favourite leather jacket? It's Dad's. Your music? Dad's. Do you even have an original thought? No. No, all there is, is watch out for Sammy! Look after your little brother, boy! You can still hear Dad's voice in your head, can't you? Clear as a bell."

I love his John impression, all gruff and brusque. But man, he's really striking at the heart of his own self-loathing, at the part of Dean that has never allowed himself to want anything because he was never allowed to have anything that he wanted, at the part of him hates himself for so meekly accepting his meagre lot in life without question or complaint, at the part of him that is too afraid of losing what he has to ever look for more.

"Just shut up," Dean finally manages to say, a warning, trying to shrug it all off with a smile, to pretend his counterpart's accusations haven't cut him to the quick.
"But, you think about it," DreamDean presses, not letting up for a moment. "All he ever did was train you. Boss you around. But Sam? Sam he doted on. Sam he loved."
"I mean it. I'm getting angry," Dean quietly bites out, a second warning.
"Dad knew who you really were," DreamDean goes on, impassive. "Good soldier and nothing else. Daddy's blunt little instrument." He raises his voice now. "Your own father didn't care if you lived or died! Why should you?"
"Son of a bitch!" Dean yells.

Finally losing it, Dean strikes out and shoves his counterpart hard against the wall. "My father was an obsessed bastard!" he bellows, hitting and kicking his counterpart repeatedly, using the sawn-off as a blunt instrument to beat his other self down with. "All that crap he dumped on me about protecting Sam, that was his crap, he's the one who couldn't protect his family! He's the one who let Mom die, who wasn't there for Sam, I always was! It wasn't fair. I didn't deserve what he put on me. And I don't deserve to go to hell!"

Man, this scene is a doozy. The psychology is beyond fascinating! There's so much to say, I don't even know where to begin. There's nothing new here, of course, nothing we didn't already know, that the show hasn't already laid out in detail over the last two and a half seasons. John's obsession consumed him, destroying any semblance of balance he might have retained in his and his sons' lives after Mary's death. We already knew that. John relied heavily on Dean from a dangerously early age to pick up his parenting slack with Sam. We already knew that. Part of John's obsession revolved around the need to protect his sons, but he was unable to do so at the same time as pursuing his greater obsession, which was hunting, so he transferred his child protection issues onto Dean's young shoulders. We already knew that. The result of Dean's childhood trauma, the years of instability, John's neglect, and that 'look after Sam at all costs' brainwashing is this deep-seated insecurity and lack of self-worth that we have seen Dean struggling with throughout the show. It's not new.

But hearing it from Dean's own mouth? To have the floodgates open and all that long-repressed anger and resentment come pouring out? That's new, and huge. Dean has always, always kept this stuff bottled up tight inside where he wouldn't have to deal with it, has always tried hard to focus on whatever positives he could glean from his life while pretending the negatives didn't exist. He has never allowed himself to face up to how much bitterness he's had tucked away inside all these years, for fear of losing even more. But now for the first time, pushed over the edge by the goading of this dreamscape counterpart and by the impossible burdens he's been labouring under for the past couple of seasons, by the terrible, terrible knowledge of what lies ahead of him at the end of it all, he's finally letting all come flooding out. The only other time in the show he has even come close to a similar outpouring was when SpiritDean yelled at John, in the hospital in In My Time Of Dying, and then, as now, he was safe to do so because no one else could hear him.

And we're still only getting half the story, of course. This is a dream, a nightmare, deliberately twisted into a worst-case scenario that focuses on everything that's wrong with Dean's life, his deepest fears and doubts and disappointments, while disregarding anything remotely positive, such as his very deep love and devotion for his father and brother. One of the things I love most about this show is the complexity of the characterisation, how each character is allowed to have strengths and weaknesses that coexist inextricably, allowed to experience powerful conflicting emotions over extended periods of time, how very, very real and believable their issues are. The last few episodes have seen both brothers plunging deeper and deeper into hopelessness and despair, fertile ground for Jeremy to dig into in order to push Dean over the edge.

BANG! Dean shoots his counterpart in the chest with the sawn-off, twice. That's twice in the show that he has shot himself, in a sense! DreamDean slumps against the wall, seemingly dead.

It's anvilicious as hell, of course, this kind of physical confrontation with a dark double, representing a more metaphorical facing of personal demons, but it's very effectively executed. Dean has needed this catharsis for a very long time now. The rage easing off now he's unleashed it like that, he takes a few breaths and stares at his own dead body in the perfect silence that follows.

DreamWoods. Jeremy is laying into Sam with a vengeance, hitting him over and over with his baseball bat. If death in this dreamscape translates into death in the real world, I hope that doesn't go for bruises, as well! Tied down, all Sam can do is lie there and take the beating, grunting and groaning with each impact, and straining at his bonds.

DreamMotel. Dean takes a couple of steps toward his own blood-splattered corpse, unsure what to do or think or feel. Suddenly, the supposed corpse opens a pair of demon-black eyes, and Dean about jumps out of his skin.

"You can't escape me, Dean," DemonDean shouts, and kudos once more to the actor, for this incarnation of his character is different again. "You're gonna die. And this? This is what you're gonna become!"

Dean is shaken.

DreamWoods. "You can't stop me," Jeremy gloats, as Sam continues to lie on his back, tied to the ground. "There's nothing I can't do in here."
"Because of the dream root," Sam gasps, in pain because the guy has been beating the hell out of him. Jeremy nods that that's right. "Yeah, well you're forgetting something," Sam tells him.
"What's that?" Jeremy idly wonders, raising his bat to strike again.
Sam manages to lift his head and look his attacker in the eye, vengeful and triumphant despite his situation. "I took the dream root, too," he exults.

Jeremy just has time to process this statement before a man's voice can be heard bellowing his name from nearby in the woods. It's Jeremy's father, and we remember that Sam had a good look at his picture, earlier, all the better to reach into Jeremy's mind and conjure this nightmare. Jeremy is horrified. It's clever work by Sam, by the way, to not only work out how to manipulate the dream like this, but to have figured out this strategy while in the middle of such a severe beating. Necessity is the mother of invention, I guess. This is the man who hit Jeremy in the head with a baseball bat, we remember, and caused the brain injury that led to all this, the worst possible thing he could have been forced to confront. Sam is very ruthless this season.

Jeremy's father continues to berate him, and Jeremy shrinks in fear of his abusive parent, very successfully distracted…then turns just in time to see Sam swing the baseball bat at his head.

Back in the real world, Jeremy gasps and jerks on the cot in whatever place he has holed up in. It looks like a basement someplace.

DreamMotel. DemonDean stands, eyes demon black, face still splattered with blood, and grins evilly at Dean.

DreamWoods. Sam swings the bat at Jeremy's head a second time, hard. Unable to defend himself following the first crippling blow, Jeremy goes down.

Real world. Jeremy convulses and dies. Wow. I think that's the first time in the show that a free-willed human has been killed directly by one of the brothers. Unless demon-possessed or otherwise transformed somehow, they usually end up dying as a result of whatever supernatural nastiness they have been messing with, thus keeping the boys' hands clean. Not this time, though, and it was gentle Sam who killed him, although there is no mention whatsoever of the potential significance of this at any point. I wonder how long it'll take to find the body, and what will be made of it?

Woods. Dean and Sam wake with a start, breathing hard. They glance at one another and then away again as they slowly calm down from their respective experiences.

Motel. Bobby and Sam wander along a hallway. "So, you did a little dreamweaving of your own in there, huh?" Bobby remarks. I love how even-tempered he is, always with the measured response, never overreacting. Except when confronted with his dead wife, of course. Just takes new and potentially disturbing information on board and mulls over it until he has all the pieces of the puzzle. Dean confessed to Bobby in Sin City that the Yellow-Eyed Demon had taunted him with the possibility that Sam might have come back different, and Bobby offered reassurance at the time but filed the information away, is now creating a new subfile for this incident, probing for information without making a big deal out of it.

"Yeah, I just sort of concentrated and it happened, you know," Sam sighs, room key in hand.
"Didn't have anything to do with your…you know, psychic stuff?" Bobby gently presses.
Sam looks surprised, and offers a cautious no, followed by a hesitant: "Well, I don't think so."

It is the first time this season that Sam hasn't rejected out of hand the suggestion of his psychic powers still being with him in some form.

"Good," is all Bobby says, with a little nod. Bobby managed to manipulate his dream, as well, but only when he had Dean cheering him on, so to speak, and while Sam was distracting Jeremy. Dean wasn't able to manipulate his at all, so Jeremy had clearly learned from that experience. So does it mean anything that Sam managed to manipulate the dreamscape so effectively, or not? It remains to be seen, but the idea has now been planted in Sam's head and he is no longer quite so certain that his psychic powers are gone after all, which is potentially interesting.

In the motel room, Dean hangs up his phone looking pensive as the other two walk in, and asks if they've seen Bela, since she isn't in her room and isn't answering her phone. Sam shrugs that she must have taken off.

"Just like that? That's a little weird," Dean remarks.
"You ask me, what's weird is why she helped us in the first place," Bobby rumbles, singing from my hymn sheet.

Dean shrugs that he thought Bobby saved Bela's life. Bobby has no idea what he's talking about. Dean starts to get a bad feeling as he tries to remind Bobby about 'the thing' in Flagstaff. Nonplussed, Bobby says that the thing in Flagstaff was an amulet; he gave her a good deal, that's all.

Was this before or after he realised just who and what she was, I wonder, since he spoke of her so scathingly in Bad Day at Black Rock.

Both brothers are confused, wondering what the hell kind of game she was running this time. Bobby advises them to check their pockets. Since he was working pretty closely with Bela as well, I'd suggest he take his own advice, but maybe he knows he doesn't have anything with him worth stealing. The boys instantly dig their hands into their coat pockets, and Bobby rolls his eyes. "Not literally."

Dean has a sudden, horribly realisation. "No, no, no, no…" He rushes over to the closet, to find the safe door is unlocked and the Colt gone.

"The Colt! Bela stole the Colt!" Sam barks the obvious.
"Dammit, boys!" Bobby vents his frustration. But he was there working with her most of the time, while they were out doing the legwork, so I'd say he takes some of the blame as well for the universal letting down of their guard.
"Pack your crap," Dean instructs Sam, wasting no time on self-recrimination.
"Why? Where we going?" Sam wants to know, still too distracted by the shock of the theft to follow his brother's train of thought.
"We're going to go hunt the bitch down," Dean growls, as if it should be obvious.

I do like Bela, in principle. She's an entertaining character, and her abrasive manner always sparks well off the characters she interacts with, resulting in a lot of snappy and caustic dialogue. She's fun. The trouble I tend to have with her is the way she is written into storylines, because she has been set up as such an extreme antagonist that it strains credulity to imagine any of these people giving her so much as the time of day, never mind trusting her enough to work with her. This double-cross is just another example of the lead characters being dumbed down in order to accommodate her, but I thoroughly approve of the set up it now leads to, adding a new layer of intrigue to the season, as well as creating ongoing difficulties for our heroes in fighting this demon war without their most effective weapon. Not that the Colt is infallible, but it was practically all they had going for them, and now it's gone, and I like that; it was getting too easy for them to just resort to the Colt at the drop of a hat, and now they aren't going to have that any more.

Plus, finally, we now have a cast-iron reason for the brothers to actively seek Bela out, so in theory shouldn't have to shoehorn her into stories like this against all reason any more. It's a shame, in one sense, that she couldn't have stolen the Colt earlier and thus fitted into the ongoing mytharc earlier, but the Colt had to be re-established and dependence on it formed in order for the theft to achieve full impact.

Outside. As the boys load up the trunk, Dean remarks that he was wondering what Sam saw when he was in his head. Well, he knows Sam saw the Lisa Braeden fantasy, so it would be everything that happened after that that's got him a little concerned. That showdown in the DreamMotel with his DreamSelf would be more or less exactly why he didn't want Sam in the dream with him in the first place.

Sam shrugs that all he saw was Jeremy, who kept him separated from Dean. "Easier to beat my brains out that way, I guess. What about you? You never said."

Off the hook and safe in the knowledge that his meltdown went unwitnessed, Dean quickly says that he saw nothing, was just looking for Sam the whole time. It is so in character that he doesn't tell Sam the truth about his disturbing experience.

The brothers get into the car, ready to head off on their Bela hunt. But instead of turning the engine on, Dean becomes pensive once more and calls for his brother's attention, with an embarrassed little cough as he announces that he's been doing some thinking.

To his credit, Sam doesn't make the obvious joke there, just lets Dean say what he needs to say.

"And…well, the thing is…" It takes a moment for Dean to get the words out, studiously not looking his brother in the face as he says: "I don't want to die. I don't want to go to hell."

This is such an enormous breakthrough for Dean. Ten episodes into the season, and he has never yet so much as said out loud that he's afraid of what lies ahead of him. His growing fear, dread and horror has been pretty blatant, but he's never admitted it, never faced up to it. Never said the words that make it real. He especially hasn't said it in front of Sam. It's such a messed up situation that he's in, and Dean's head is messed up enough to begin with. Telling Sam that he's afraid places additional pressure on his brother to find a solution, and he's seen all season how much pressure Sam is already placing on himself. He has never believed that there is any way out of his deal, and would rather Sam remember him facing his fate with dignity than in fear and trembling, won't have Sam be left with the guilt of knowing that he failed to save Dean from a fate he was dreading. And telling Sam that he doesn't want to die, doesn't want to face the consequences of his choice sounds too close to implying that he regrets the decision he made that night. Sounds too much like: 'at the time I would have done anything to save you, but now I've had time to think about it, I really don't want to pay the price – I don't think you're worth paying the price.' When Dean places so much more value on Sam than himself and could never regret choosing Sam's life over his own. He just isn't made that way.

But it has been increasingly evident all season that he isn't fooling anyone with his stoicism; Sam made it very clear at the start of the episode that Dean's awful resignation to his fate is hurting him far more than openly dreading it ever could. His dreamscape experience forced him to confront a lot of issues that he's been repressing madly for years, forced him to face up to the inherent unfairness of his situation and to the fact that he really does deserve so much better than he has ever been allowed to have, to confront the reality of what lies ahead of him.

Actually going one step further and sharing this realisation with Sam, though, that's a major breakthrough. And Sam's reaction here is beautiful, by the way: no questions, no comments, no pushing for more than Dean is able to say, his expression so gentle and loving it's gorgeous. He's waited months and months to hear these words, and the contrast between his reaction now and his drunken despair at the beginning of the episode is sharp. He'd completely abandoned all hope, and presumably having run out of ideas and places to look was a part of that, but Dean's resistance also factored heavily into the equation. It is impossible to save someone who doesn't want to be saved. So now that Dean is no longer resisting, that gives him renewed hope, even if it is a bittersweet hope, with the options available to them being so slim.

"All right," Sam quietly says, nodding. "Yeah. We'll find a way to save you."
Dean nods, relieved, his ability to hope feeding off Sam's. "Okay. Good."

And that's a beautiful moment between the brothers, but it isn't the note we end on. Instead we fade to black and white as the blood-splattered DemonDean from the dream opens his demon-black eyes and snarls as he voiceovers, "You can't escape me, Dean. You're going to die. And this? This is what you're going to become."

Dean doesn't want to die and go to hell and become a demon, and he's finally managed to not only admit this to himself but to say it out loud, but that doesn't change the fact that it is what is going to happen, very soon, and for all Sam's reassurance there is no sign of salvation anywhere. His demonic future is going to continue to haunt his dreams, of that there can be no doubt.

Looking evil, DemonDean casually snaps his fingers, and takes us to black.

Boy, that was a doozy of an episode!


February 2008

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