Supernatural 4.19 Jump The Shark

"There's only one thing you can count on. Family."

In direct contradiction of what might be expected from an episode with such a tongue-in-cheek title, this is a powerful and intense offering, completely subverting the usual TV trope of introducing a secret sibling by using it in tandem with an almost flawless blend of season one themes and back story as a catalyst for weighty character exploration, with a twist in the tail of the story that serves to protect the status quo of the show's structure. The concept behind the story is beautifully executed, and it is especially impressive that the episode manages to emphasise both how divided Sam and Dean have become and how much of an indivisible unit they are, which is no small feat.

All in all, the string of amazingly strong episodes in the second half of the season continues apace.

Then

Sam'n'Dean jumped through a stained glass window in rather spectacular fashion to escape the demon Alistair.

"You left," John snarled at Sam. "Your brother and me, we needed you. You walked away, Sam. You walked away!"
"You're the one who said don't come back, Dad," Sam angrily retorted.

Sam and Dean shot a shtriga in tandem.

John apologised to Sam for not accepting their differences, but Sam countered that they weren't different, not any more, acknowledging for the first time how much he had in common with his father.

Dean shot a rakshasa. Sam fired a flamethrower at a changeling. Interesting that these shots are used, given that they are both, in effect, misses, since the creature was killed in neither instance – the shot of them shooting the shtriga was also not the actual kill.

Sam drank Ruby's blood, after pleading that he needed it. Dean despairingly asked if he even knew how far off the reservation he had gone, how far from normal and human. Sam's eyes shone black after drinking Ruby's blood. Castiel warned Dean that his brother was heading down a dangerous road. Dean flailed in anger and desperation after seeing Sam using his powers, and told him it had already gone too far. "If I didn't know you, I would want to hunt you," he mourned. And he doesn't even know about the demon blood yet…

Now

A blonde woman dressed in scrubs runs in terror through the hallways of her home, past a photograph of herself with her teenage son, which she knocks off the shelf as she dashes on into the bedroom.

Funny how the layout of her house so strongly resembles so many motels we've seen on this show, not to mention the upstairs of Bobby's house…

The woman flattens her back against the locked door as someone or something pounds furiously on it, trying to get in. Finally the hammering stops. Relaxing very slightly, she pulls a closet across the door to keep whatever is out there out and then backs away in fear and reaction, dropping onto the bed trying not to hyperventilate.

Beneath the bed, someone is watching.

Oh heck, that's a clue right there, isn't it? It's a clue that whatever is after the woman is a two-man operation, having one outside the bedroom door and one under the bed. But since the hammering on the door stops before we get this view, well, it vagues it up just enough that it could be the same thing, somehow transporting itself about the place in the blink of an eye…. It isn't though. There are two of them, and this was a clue.

Anyway. That hidden someone lashes out and catches hold of the woman's ankles, dragging her inexorably under the bed. As she thrashes, she tips her bedside table over, spilling its contents to the ground…those contents including a rather unexpected photograph of a smiling John Winchester.


Dun!

Titles

Morning

The Impala is parked up in a very pretty spot at the edge of a river or estuary of some kind.

Yeah, Dean has a bit of a thing for these scenic locations, doesn't he? He finds them quite often.


Dean is slumbering in the front seat, with Sam already up and about, sitting on the hood brushing his teeth as best he can, out here in the middle of nowhere. Oh, bless him, and there is a little toiletries bag on the hood alongside him, a bottle of mouthwash sticking out. Heh.

While Sam continues to brush away, behind him we see Dean wake up and begin to move, stiff, groggy and uncoordinated after spending the night in the car. Sam turns to watch as his brother manages to open the door that he is leaning against and rather gracelessly falls out, emitting a sleepy grunt of surprise as he hits ground. Hee. "Hey. How'd you sleep?" Sam calls, far too chirpily, by way of good morning.

Hey, maybe that's another of Sam's demon-powers – the ability to appear fresh as a daisy after sleeping in the car all night! Or, okay, so maybe he's just been up and about long enough to get past the stiff and bleary stage, what with the minty fresh toothbrushing, and all

"How'd you think?" Dean blearily grumbles, stiffly clambering back to his feet and hanging onto the car for support while trying to stretch out some of the kinks in his back. "I'm starving, let's get breakfast."

Ah, Dean. Always thinking of his stomach.

"Where?" Sam shrugs, around the toothbrush in his mouth. "We're, like, two hours from anything."

You know, I really, really love this scene. I love that we are given this snippet of insight into domesticity, Winchester-style, both the austerity and the normalcy of it. The brothers seem to have quite literally just stopped to sleep wherever they were when they got too tired to drive any longer, because home is where the Impala is – and each other, of course. It emphasises their rootless, hand-to-mouth existence, that they really do have absolutely nothing outside of each other and the contents of that car, and that they are so used to living like this that they take it completely for granted. There is an air of routine about it, a scenario they have lived through many times before and expect to re-enact many times in the future. For them, this is completely normal.

"But I'm hungry now," Dean complains, rather adorably sounding all of five years old. Sam helpfully suggests that there may still be a sandwich in the back seat, and Dean promptly dives in to find it, heedless of the fact that this sandwich is no doubt no longer as fresh as it should be, after an un-refrigerated night in the car, and probably squashed flat after having Sam sleeping on it. The fact that it is tuna does put him off, however, his overreaction to the mere smell of it hilarious.

Right, so this means that twice in two episodes now that we have been given insight into Sam's eating preferences. It has only taken four seasons to gain this knowledge, but we now know that Sam likes cob salads and tuna sandwiches, in preference to Dean's burgers and pies!

Dean has no sooner complained about the sandwich being undesirable, sounding endearingly disgruntled, than a phone starts to ring. Sam finally stops brushing his teeth and spits as he turns to see Dean leaning back into the car, groping around in the glove compartment in search of the ringing phone. This takes a little while, since there are several phones knocking around in there to choose from.

Remember the last time a phone rang in the glove compartment? Yeah, it was John's old phone, way back in Bad Day At Black Rock, when Dean told us he kept it charged up in case any old contacts called. That was quite some time ago now, though. John's been dead, what – two and a half, getting on for three years. You'd think word would have got around by now. Regardless, it is John's phone that is ringing, again, revealing that his sons still keep it charged up and in credit, just in case, even now.


"Isn't that Dad's phone?" Sam frowns as Dean bashes his head on the car door while extracting it. Oh, Dean. He's just so not a morning person. Except for when he is. Jensen Ackles' comic timing is superb, with Jared Padalecki the perfect straight man for him to bounce off.

What I really love about the physical humour in this scene is how natural it is, flowing from the situation and the characters, rather than being shoehorned in, and that it sits so comfortably alongside the emotion and drama that the scene shifts into, the transition absolutely seamless. I also love that Sam and Dean's fraternal dynamic is so much more at ease in this scene, more like their old selves, than for a long, long time now. It is reassuring to have this reminder of what their relationship can be.

Dean nods but says nothing, like he doesn't trust himself to speak, face like thunder, because anything connected with Dad stirs up all kinds of difficult emotions, even now – maybe especially now, after Alistair's cruel taunts about John and hell. He answers the call, and a quavering voice on the other end asks if this is John.

"He can't come to the phone," Dean gruffly vagues. "Can I help you?"

The quavering voice stammers that it really needs to speak to John. "This is Adam Milligan, he knows me."

"Well, sorry to be the one to break it to you, pal," Dean wearily explains, all hunched over and tense. "But John died, more than two years ago."


You know, by my calculations it is getting rather nearer to three years now, but we'll let Dean have that one because he isn't wrong, it was more than two years ago, and he clearly isn't awake enough to perform complex mental arithmetic in the name of strict accuracy, plus it really isn't clear what month it is in Show timeline anyway in this episode. It must still be spring, however, as come summer 2009 it will be three years since John's death.

Sam starts to pay rather more serious attention to the conversation as Dean flicks uncomfortable side eyes toward him for moral support before asking the caller who he is.

"I – I'm his son," quavers the quavery voice of Adam Milligan, and Dean is as utterly, utterly thunderstruck as he should be upon hearing those words from the voice of a complete stranger.


Windom, Minnesota. Day

The Impala pulls up outside the cunningly named 'Cousin Oliver's Diner'.

You know, I'm not really sure how I feel about all the background fun-poking going on – 'jump the shark' as the title, 'Cousin Oliver's Diner' and all that – while the actual storyline itself is played completely straight. I love that the storyline is played completely straight, because it should be; it is intense and angsty and a very serious issue. And…I know that the writers were very aware that the introduction of a secret sibling is a well-trodden trope in TV land, one of which viewers are, quite rightly, somewhat wary. They wanted to get in first and make all the jokes themselves, but in the background, rather than making a big deal out of them, because the way they have chosen to play this trope is clever and in-keeping with existing canon and characterisation and has no lasting impact on the structure of their show. It is their way of telling viewers to relax and trust them, because they are subverting the trope rather than falling victim to it as a lame gimmick to draw ratings, as is more usual. I just kinda wish they hadn't tried to be so cheeky and had just ignored the history of the trope completely in favour of doing their own thing – in particular that they'd dreamed up an episode title that suited the storyline rather than tipping a wink to the history of the trope.

Anyway. Wearing a worryingly blank expression and steely eyes, both a sure sign of emotional turmoil, Dean stomps around to the trunk and starts assembling an assortment of weapons, while Sam attempts to placate.

"Dean, best I can tell, Adam Milligan is real," Sam mildly offers, clutching at the file of research he has somehow assembled while they travelled. "Born September 29th 1990 to Kate Milligan, no father listed on the birth certificate."

September 1990. Dean would have been eleven and Sam seven when this kid was born, then.

"He's an Eagle Scout," Sam continues. "Graduated from high school with honours and currently goes to the University of Wisconsin. Biology major, pre-med. Dean. You listening?"

"This is a trap," is all Dean has to say. Slamming the trunk, he heads into the diner, leaving Sam to regard his departing back with dismay and concern.

That's been something of a familiar theme this season, Sam watching and worrying as Dean seems to be falling apart, but it might perhaps behove him to remember how often his brother's instincts on such matters tend to be proved correct, regardless of any emotional distress he might be experiencing at the time. At the end of the day, Dean turns out to be completely right about this. It is a trap, a damn good one – and the brothers fall right into it.

Cousin Oliver's Diner

Entering the diner, with Sam at his heels, Dean quickly scans the room before selecting a table over in the corner. He whips one of the chairs away, which allows him to control where Adam sits when he arrives, and then waits for Sam to take the corner seat before sliding in after him, facing the door, so that they have a good view of the entire diner. It's a really nifty moment of preparation, completely un-remarked upon, highlighting how well trained the brothers are, how easily it comes to them – well, Dean, in this instance, but both of them in general – to scope out unknown territory they enter and prepare for all eventualities. I really like how subtly and unobtrusively the extremity that is their lives is being emphasised, setting up a sharp, sharp contrast with what we will learn of Adam's life, once he appears.


"Dean, I'm telling you, the kid checks out," Sam wearily insists.

"Great, so he's an actual person on the planet Earth," Dean irritably huffs. "Sucks he's got a demon in him."

I like that Dean has this immediate hostile reaction to the very idea that this Adam might be a long-lost brother, before he's even met the kid, because it is so in keeping with his character and history, his utter focus on the closed circle of his family as it has always been, his rejection of change of any kind, and his mistrust of anything that appears to threaten the foundations of what little security he can claim. Dean already knows that John wasn't a saint, has spent almost three years since his father's death coming to terms with his imperfections, but that doesn't make it any easier to face the prospect that there might be even more he didn't know about the man, more to resent, more to have to find a way to forgive – or not, as the case may be. His chronic lack of self-esteem also plays into it, as this Adam not only claims to be John's son but also claims that John knew him, but Dean never knew he existed, and that automatically flags him up as an enormous threat to Dean's claim on his father's trust and affection, in which he was never confident at the best of times.

Plus, of course, this entire season has been one long rollercoaster of emotional turbulence, so that another blow of this kind really was the last thing Dean needed right now, and it figures that he would immediately reject it as bearing any kind of truth. For one thing, his ability to trust just about anyone or anything has been badly eroded in recent weeks and months, and for another, it is far easier to suspect foul play and get mad about that than it is to face up to still more anger at his long-dead father, to confront a potential truth that would require a major shift in his already shaky worldview. Dean has too little to cling onto as it is.

Also, it isn't as if this kind of thing hasn't happened before, with various supernatural entities using one or other Winchester to lure the others into a trap in the past. John might be long dead, but has still been used against his sons as recently as Long Distance Call. One way or another, Dean's knee-jerk paranoia here is entirely justified.

Sam's reaction, on the other hand, is almost the complete opposite of Dean's. He seems to see little or no reason to doubt Adam's story, is completely open-minded about the prospect of a new sibling and what this might imply about the sins or indiscretions of the father, and is wholly focused on information-gathering and keeping Dean at least reasonably calm. The tone that he strikes is mild and unthreatening; he's not looking to fight, but rather seems concerned by the effect all this is having on Dean, and is endeavouring to be supportive but fair and not make the situation any worse, if at all possible. Dean's daddy issues are familiar territory, of course, which makes this a kind of distress that Sam is relatively at ease with, thinks he knows how to handle, as opposed to his brother's post-hell trauma, which overwhelmed him with its magnitude and intensity and the weight of his own guilt.


On the other hand, for all that Sam's extreme reasonability in this scene is a useful and needed counter-balance to Dean's paranoia, it is hard not to wonder at his complete lack of reaction to the prospect of a secret sibling crawling out of the woodwork. He's not upset, he's not angry, he's not curious, he's not excited. He's just completely composed – detached, even, as if this puzzle is every bit as impersonal as the majority of jobs they work. It makes sense that he would not have the same hugely negative reaction as his brother, since Sam lost all his illusions about John a long time ago and, lacking Dean's inferiority complexes and crippling dependence, has less reason to feel threatened by Adam, plus has worked hard since John's death at understanding his father better. He has worked through a lot of his old anger toward John and made what peace he can with his memory, come to terms with his father's weaknesses as well as his strengths. But…no, it's more than that. As loud and agitated as he is, Dean's knee-jerk suspicion and anxiety in fact feel healthier than Sam's utter equanimity, which serves as just another reminder of how disengaged he has become, the way he holds himself increasingly aloof, locking all his emotions away so that nothing can touch him.

A waitress arrives with glasses of water and menus, offers a smiling welcome, but Dean immediately cuts her off with a curt "we're actually waiting on somebody." Thus rudely interrupted, she all but throws the menus down and flounces away, and I kind of love her for that attitude because it tells us so much about who she is and how she feels about customers in general, and is so throwaway, a tiny interaction with a blink-and-you-miss-her character that nonetheless makes her feel like a real person. Sam offers half-hearted placatory thanks in the general direction of her departing back, knowing that it is already too late for damage limitation, and then watches in disbelief as Dean empties one of the glasses into a handy nearby plant pot and tucks it between his legs to covertly re-fill with holy water from his hip-flask.

"One sip of Jesus juice and this evil bitch is going to be in a world of hurt," Dean calmly announces, all tightly controlled rage and offence and determined practicality, and I love that he is being so pro-active, taking firm and decisive defensive measures because he believes so strongly that this is a trap. It's another step in the right direction toward renewed self-determination, moving away from the apathy of his depression, however fragile he remains.


"And what if he's not possessed?" Sam asks as Dean opens up a tightly wrapped bundle, and I'm not entirely sure if he really is so certain that there is no reason to suspect anything or is just playing devil's advocate, since Dean is paranoid enough for the both of them, and I do worry about his closed-off state of mind, but on the other hand I love how open-minded he is being, willing to wait and see what comes of this meeting, not wanting to rush into any snap judgements. He is making no defensive preparations himself, just in case, but he doesn't need to, since Dean already has that angle well and truly covered, so is focused on counter-balancing the scales by trying to prepare his brother for the possibility that this might be real.

"Then he is a shapeshifter," Dean insists, although I'm not entirely sure where he's got that idea from or why a shapeshifter would play a trick like this. The package he is opening contains real silver silverware, and Dean switches this for the cutlery set out on the other side of the table, which he drops to the floor beneath his chair. "Look, either way, this thing is going to bleed," he scowls. "I mean, using Dad as bait? That's the last mistake of its short, pitiful life."

Oh man, he is just so, so deeply offended by the mere notion of his father's memory being used as bait for the trap he is convinced this is. It is equal parts genuine, heartfelt offence at such a ploy, and instinctive rejection of the idea of his dad having fathered another child, channelling the fear and anger this concept inspires in him into deep affront, because outrage at having his father's memory slighted in that way is something he can at least express out loud, whereas he couldn't even begin to articulate the internal conflict he feels over the prospect of having a long-lost brother. Not least because saying it out loud would lend credibility to a concept he wishes to reject out of hand.


Sam regards his brother thoughtfully and sighs. Dean gives him a blank look, not understanding why Sam isn't on board with his defensive measures. "What?" he frowns. "What?"

"Dean," Sam very carefully opens. "Listen. There's an entry in Dad's journal from January of 1990, saying he's headed to Minnesota to check out a case. That's roughly, oh, about nine months before the kid was born." Coincidence, Dean insists, but Sam isn't so sure. "Next two pages in the journal – torn out."

Torn out? They are very messily torn, as well, despite the fact that a) the journal is a ring-binder, from which it is possible to remove pages without leaving any trace that they ever existed, and b) it is actually much easier to tear pages out cleanly than it is to leave such messy remains!

Of course, the brothers must have noticed that entry and those torn pages before, but never knew the context or significance of them until now. Clearly, John had written up what we will learn was a ghoul hunt in some detail, but then when he later learned of Adam's existence he decided to destroy all evidence connecting him to this place at that time, perhaps in part to protect Adam, perhaps in part to protect himself, to ensure that the boy's existence was hidden from his older sons, as well as anyone else.

John's original hunt here in Windom took place in January 1990 – the beginning of January, we will later learn. Dean was still ten years old at the time, not eleven until the end of the month, and Sam was just six. That places the case squarely within the same time bracket as Something Wicked – and it is interesting that the recap reminded us of that episode without showing any flashbacks of the boys as children, since those flashbacks provide a visual for just how young and vulnerable they were when they were presumably left alone, again, in a grotty motel room, while John was away working this job – and getting Adam's mother pregnant.

Dean stares at the journal for a moment and then rounds on his brother. "You're not actually buying this, are you?"

Yes, Sam is buying it, because his research and memories of his father tell him that it is more than plausible. Dean still maintains that it is a trap. In the end, it turns out that they are both right, in a way, which satisfies me, because I always appreciate it when they argue completely opposing points of view but both have a valid argument, rather than one being definitively right and the other definitively wrong. Sam's acceptance of the truth in Adam's story is right, because Adam Milligan really is – or was – their half-brother. But Dean is completely right that this is a trap, and the twist in the tail of this story is that we never actually meet the real Adam at all, but rather a ghoul wearing his form and using his memories to impersonate him. Thus it is never possible to tell how much this Adam's actions and reactions mimic those of the real Adam and how much they are carefully designed by the ghoul to lull Sam and Dean into a false sense of security. It seems safe to say, though, that the information he imparts is probably true, while the emotions he displays prove the ghoul to be an extremely good actor.

"Look, man, I don't want to believe it either," Sam somewhat defensively retorts, although he still isn't showing the slightest sign of being bothered at the thought of a secret sibling to back up this claim. "I'm just saying: it's possible. I mean, Dad would be gone for weeks at a time, and he wasn't exactly a monk."


It really is remarkable how powerful John's influence on this show remains, even now – he died almost three full seasons ago and we are still learning new things about him, still seeing his memory affecting his sons in different ways.

Logically, it really shouldn't come as a surprise that there could be another Winchester floating around out there. The hunting lifestyle does tend to lend itself to the sowing of wild oats – Dean is proof positive of that, and Dean always did model himself on his father, after all, as he acknowledges later in the episode. We have already seen an episode where Dean thought he might have fathered a child along the way without ever knowing it – is it really so surprising that the same could have happened to John, but without him being let off the hook? However devoted he was to Mary's memory, 23 years would have been a very long time to deny himself passing intimacy along the road, especially having cut himself off from just about every other avenue of comfort and companionship, and even with the best will in the world accidents can happen – just one reason promiscuity tends to be frowned upon in respectable society. So, no, it doesn't come as a surprise to hear that John did not remain celibate all those years and, having accepted that, it is only a step further to accept that Adam really is his son.

What is hard, however, is reconciling the comfort John may have found with random women he met along the road with the knowledge that his sons would have been left home alone just about every time.

We have long known that John was in the habit of leaving his sons alone for extended periods from a very young age. In All Hell Breaks Loose, Dean implied that John would be gone for days at a time by the time Sam was just five years old. John's absence in the Something Wicked flashbacks, when his sons were ten and six, was of several days' duration, and by the time we get to the After School Special flashbacks, with the boys in their teens, he was staying away for several weeks at a time. Now, leaving children alone like that for any reason falls under the heading of criminal neglect, no question, but John clearly always felt that he had no option if he wanted to both keep his family together and continue with his quest. The lives that he saved justified the neglect of his sons, in his mind, and Dean, upon whose young shoulders the burden of responsibility fell with John away, has always clung to that justification, the better to hold his feelings of rejection and resentment at bay.

But with Adam now providing proof positive that John's absences included time spent with random women as well as working jobs, which begs the question of just how often he delayed returning to his children while he took time to indulge himself, having left them alone in some grotty motel…well, it is an affront to his neglected sons. There are no two ways around it. That sense of betrayal is just one of the reasons Dean is reacting so badly to this. Even though he has set so much of his hero worship behind him and learned to recognise his father's faults, having his nose rubbed in it like this strikes at a very raw nerve.

Dean rolls his eyes as Sam elaborates on his theory with a casual shrug. "Hunter rolls into town, kills a monster, saves the girl – sometimes the girl's grateful."

He sounds so very nonchalant about it, this entire conversation highly reminiscent of a similar conversation way back in Everybody Loves A Clown in which Sam wondered whether John had ever hooked up with Ellen, clearly amused by the idea, while Dean rejected the notion out of hand. Sam has always had a different outlook on his father than Dean, never having known the gentle, loving man John was before the fire and having no memories of Mary at all. It has always been clear that John's relationship with Mary is something of an abstract concept to Sam, something he understands intellectually but which has no personal emotional resonance for him. He never knew the happy family he was once a part of, and so, despite their entire lifestyle being founded around the quest to avenge Mary's death, the thought of his father with other women means very little to him, just another facet of his screwed up life. Moreover, Sam lost all his illusions about John a very long time ago and has always been quick to see the worst instead of the best, although he has grown to understand his father rather better these days, and of course he was not the one left to bear the burden of responsibility in John's absence.

All around, the thought of John making time with random women while his motherless sons were home alone is just not the kick in the teeth for Sam that it is for Dean. It is, however, the kind of thing that once upon a time he would have instantly seized upon as evidence against his father, just another source of resentment to harbour and brood over. How times have changed. Now he barely even bats an eyelid, is completely blasé about it.

Dean scowls his annoyance. "Well, now I'm thinking about Dad-sex, stop talking," he growls. He's not denying the possibility that John may have hooked up with Adam's mother all those years ago, he knows his father that well, but he doesn't like being made to think about it, the gross dad-sex being only one of the reasons why. He's just so very annoyed by this, the idea that John not only fathered this boy but knew about it and kept it secret for who knows how many years.

Dean's childhood experience and relationship with his father were completely different than Sam's. He remembers enough of the happy family the Winchesters once were to be painfully aware of what was lost the night of the fire. He witnessed first hand the change in John after Mary's death, from caring, fun-loving dad to harsh, unyielding drill sergeant who demanded unquestioning obedience and required his son to live up to impossible expectations. He experienced the sudden and shocking dislocation of his life from everything he had ever known, total loss of security, at an extremely vulnerable age. As a result he has always clung desperately to whatever connections could still be drawn between before and after: the sacred concept of their family as a family, John's abiding love for Mary, parallel to his own – the belief that John was driven by love, both for his dead wife and his sons, even if it wasn't always easy to discern, with the fact that their entire lives were always focused around the fact of Mary's death and John's quest to avenge her strengthening her position in their lives. So while he might be willing to accept, intellectually, that John satisfied his manly needs with other women and that this was not a betrayal of his love for Mary, the thought of John having a child with someone else, a whole new family, is breathtakingly painful for Dean to accept.

"Maybe he slipped one past the goalie," Sam suggests in a small, meek voice, with a nonchalant shrug. Hee. Bless, he sees this as totally plausible, but also sees clearly that it offends and annoys Dean, and therefore is apologetic and Sammy about it at the same time as being totally unyielding on his point, not least because it is a golden opportunity to tease his brother. And I love that he uses a football metaphor there – or soccer, to Americans. It's a nice callback to both Bugs and Bad Day At Black Rock, where were learned that Sam played soccer as a child.

Dean glares. "Dude!" And Sam smirks at having successfully got a rise out of his brother. Heh. This exchange is gold because it is laden with deep, meaningful character exploration and still manages to weave in a touch of light-hearted, brotherly interaction of the kind that we are severely starved of this season.

A teenage lad wanders into the diner, looking tense and hesitant, and both brothers freeze the moment they lay eyes on him, realising that this is him: Adam Milligan, their supposed long-lost secret brother. A walking bombshell.


Wow, he is nicely cast as a younger brother of the Winchester boys, with hair close to Dean's in shade, but floppily styled more like Sam's, while his general demeanour and outfit are so much like the Sam of season one it is startling, every inch the mild-mannered, unassuming student.

Throughout the episode, Dean's reaction to Adam is rather easier to read than Sam's, being loud, in-your-face and obvious, his inferiority complex and low self-esteem shouting for attention in a way he never felt able when his father was alive. But once we look past Dean's agitation and bluster, it is clear that Adam in fact tells us far more about Sam than about Dean, the character designed to demonstrate how much Sam has changed since we first met him, the comparisons and contrasts subtle but highly significant.

"Adam?" Sam speculatively calls, and the boy responds to his name, confirming that he is, indeed, Adam. He wanders over to their table and takes the seat Dean left for him, regarding the brothers quizzically as Sam introduces them.


"So, um. How'd you know my Dad?" Adam wonders, looking suitably shell-shocked, since he just found out about John's death. He remains stricken and lost throughout the conversation, the news of John's demise coming on top of what has already been an extremely bad week for him; the ghoul is an excellent actor, and puts on a fantastic act with which to fool Sam and Dean.

Since Dean doesn't seem interested in idle conversation, and is practically radiating hostility, Sam fields the question. "We worked together," he offers, as brightly as he can manage, and it's more or less true, for a given value of true.

Accepting this readily enough, Adam drops his eyes, hesitantly moves on to the big question. "How'd he die?"

"On the job," Sam blusters, at which Adam frowns and queries that he thought John was a mechanic.

"Car fell on him," Dean brusquely interjects by way of brushing the subject off, deadpan, appraising eyes fixed upon the boy.

The smiling waitress, Denise, wanders over to greet Adam by name and bring him a glass of water, which Dean hastily appropriates, claiming extreme thirst, since he wants Adam to have the glass of holy water he prepared for him earlier. Rolling her eyes at Dean's continued lack of social graces, the waitress offers Adam his usual, to which he agrees and greets her by name, and then she sashays away to fix the order, having neatly established Adam's credentials as a well-known member of the Windom community.

Looking tired and sad, Adam reaches for the glass of water Dean had set at his place, and the brothers watch closely as he takes a sip. Even Sam, for all his affability and willingness to accept Adam as genuine, is practically on the edge of his seat with tension as he waits to see if the boy will react to the holy water.


Adam drinks the water with no effect whatsoever, thus proving that he is not possessed. Of course, we already know that higher level demons are unaffected by holy water, so the test is not foolproof, but this caveat is not broached. He has passed the test.


"So, uh – when's the last time you saw John?" Sam wonders, while Dean, looking slightly stunned that Adam has passed the first test, surreptitiously reaches into his inside pocket, pulls out a gun, and holds it in his lap beneath the table, just in case. Dean remains convinced that this is a trap – wants desperately for it to be a trap, to not be real. The one would be so much easier to deal with, emotionally, than the other.

I'd like to know what he thinks he is going to do with the gun, though, given that they are in the middle of a crowded diner. Even if Adam did react to the silverware, it would hardly be appropriate to shoot him on the spot!

"I don't even know," Adam admits. "Couple years?"

Well, since John has been dead rather more than two and a half years, that figures. It should, in fact, be rather longer than that, since he dropped off the radar and severed all contact with everyone more than three and a half years ago.

Sam asks what made Adam decide to call John now, and Adam anxiously admits that he didn't know who else to call. "He's the only family I've got," he quavers, and elaborates. "My Mom's missing."

Sam sympathises and asks for how long, while Dean rather less sincerely offers that it is tragic, and then cuts right to the chase, not the slightest bit interested in Adam's sob story. "If you're John's kid, how come we've never heard of you?"


"Because John and me didn't really know each other," Adam admits. "Not until a few years ago, anyway. […] My Mom never talked about him. I knew some stuff."

"What kind of stuff?" Dean frowns, back to looking and sounding deeply offended at the thought of this boy being a son of John Winchester and knowing anything at all about him, especially if it is something Dean does not know.

"My Mom's a nurse. And Dad came into the ER pretty torn up – hunting accident, or something," Adam explains, and the reaction shots of both Dean and Sam throughout this little speech are perfect, each of them mentally filling in the blanks. "I knew his name, John Winchester. That's about it."

Let us break this information down. John first came to Windom in (early) January 1990. The chances are high that his sons, then aged ten and six, had been left alone in a motel someplace while he worked the case. We have seen, in flashback in Something Wicked, that there were contingency plans laid down for if John's return was delayed in any way: after a certain number of days Dean was to call Pastor Jim, who would presumably then have to make arrangements to either collect the boys or travel to be with them while they awaited John's return, and would also no doubt have to make inquiries as to what might have happened to him. However, depending on how far away they were and what Jim himself was doing at the time, there is no guarantee that he could have got to them quickly, or even that he would be at home to take the call straight away. We have also seen, in flashbacks, how stressful it was for the young Dean to be left to bear such responsibility alone, having to be a parent to little Sammy day and night despite being only a child himself, always afraid that this time he might have to make the judgement call that it had been too long, that John was in trouble rather than just late, that his dad might not come back this time. We also know from having watched Dean and Sam for four seasons that the Winchesters tend toward stoicism, preferring to self-treat their wounds wherever possible, with hospital being the option of last resort. There can be no doubt that they learned this from their father, so that the same pattern can be projected back onto him.

Therefore, if John was injured badly enough to require hospital treatment back in January 1990, the chances are good that this meant his return to his sons was delayed beyond what he had estimated when he left. He may or may not have been able to make alternate arrangements for his sons, either letting them know he would be late or calling in support from a friend, before Dean had to make the decision that it had been too long and make the call himself. Either way, however, Dean would have been desperately worried, either fearing or knowing that his dad was hurt, even if the sheltered young Sam remained largely oblivious – plus, the longer John was away, the greater the chance that his sons would run out of both supplies and money to buy more. So for John to then further extend his stay while he indulged in an affair with his nurse, no matter how brief, is both grossly irresponsible and insulting to his neglected young sons, Dean especially.

Also, examining the story from this angle really drives it home that John really could have got himself killed on any one of the jobs he worked over the years, leaving his vulnerable young sons completely alone in the world – with a good chance that they might never even know what happened to him.

"We're not exactly a nuclear family," Adam concludes with a shrug.

"Yeah, well, who is these days," Sam offers, sliding effortlessly into sympathy and sincerity mode, the better to keep the boy talking and learn as much as possible.


Dean remains less than impressed by the concept of Adam as John's son and his and Sam's brother. "So, when did you, uh, finally meet him?" he asks, scepticism written all over his face.

"When I was 12," Adam replies. Angry and upset and deeply unwilling to believe what he is hearing, Dean lifts the gun from his lap, still hidden beneath the table, and levels it at the boy as he explains: "My Mom had one of his old numbers, and after I begged her, God, 24/7, she finally called him. When John heard he had a son, he raced to town – I mean, he dropped everything, he drove all night."

Oh man, Dean's face upon hearing those words. Up till this point he has focused on being annoyed, refused to acknowledge the possibility that this boy and his paternity might be real, but now…now the betrayal hits him, in a way that Sam can have no part in.


If John first learned of Adam's existence when he was 12, therefore in 2002/3, Sam would have already been away at Stanford and estranged from his family, out of the loop, but Dean was still with his father at that time, living and working at his side, the two of them all they had with Sam gone – or so Dean thought. So for John to have dropped everything and rushed to Windom when he heard about Adam, without Dean knowing anything about it, means that John must have lied to him about where he was going and why. It was then another two or three years after John's meeting with Adam that he so abruptly went into hiding, prompting Dean's journey to Stanford to reunite with Sam back in the Pilot. All those years, John kept both Adam's existence and his visits to the boy a secret from his oldest son, despite working so closely with him as partner. Man, that's depressing. No wonder Dean is so hurt. Given their circumstances and family situation, Dean's intense loyalty and aspirations, it was an enormous betrayal.

All Dean ever wanted was his family, and Sam's departure had shattered that dream, leaving him nothing but his father to turn to for whatever love and support he could claim. We have seen how hard Dean has always striven to be the son his father wanted him to be, loyal and obedient to a fault, desperate for approval. We have also seen how hurt he has been by the realisation of how much his father kept hidden from him. Now here is yet another example, maybe the biggest of all – the fact that John discovered he had another family and made time to get to know them and be with them, and yet completely shut Dean out of this important part of his life, left him alone without so much as a word while he spent time with them, lied to him, despite the fact that he must have known that Dean was insecure and hurting badly in the wake of Sam's departure.

When John heard he had a son, he raced to town – I mean, he dropped everything, he drove all night. That 'everything' that he dropped includes Dean. We know that it was during Sam's time at Stanford that Dean first started working solo gigs. John's rush to Minnesota upon learning of Adam's existence could well have been the very first time Dean worked a job alone with no one to guard his back, brought about not because John thought he was ready or as an expression of trust or pride in his ability, but because John needed Dean to pick up his slack and be otherwise occupied while he went to meet Adam.

Further, John tore the pages relating to the 1990 ghoul hunt out of his journal to ensure that Dean – or anyone else who might care to look – would never have any reason to connect him with that place or time, an extra precaution to keep Adam's existence a closely guarded secret, demonstrating just how much he never wanted his older sons to know about Adam, just as it is equally clear that he never told Adam about them.

So why the secrecy? We know, of course, that John was always paranoid about the safety of his sons, and the same must have been true of Adam once John knew that he existed, for all that Adam had no connection to the supernatural the way that Dean and Sam did, after the way their mother died. Still, he would have been concerned, but his ability to protect this new son was limited, since Adam and his mother were rooted in so-called normality, never dreaming of the things John confronted every day. Taking precautions to ensure that no one would ever connect Adam to him would have been one of the few protective measures open to John…but, on the other hand, it could be also argued that if he really did not want Adam connected to him in any way, he should have stayed as far away as possible, because each time he visited would have left a potential trail for others to follow. Can't have it both ways, but John wanted his cake and eat it too – wanted to keep his newfound son hidden, but also to know him and be a dad to him, if only for a few days a year, because it was all he would ever be able to give the boy and he knew it.

Surely it could hardly have harmed Adam if his brothers, at the very least, knew he existed, but telling them about each other would likely have seemed to John like the thin edge of the wedge. There was too much that he could never explain to Adam or his mother about the lives he and his other sons lived – better to say as little as possible and avoid opening that can of worms by keeping his sons apart. Only by keeping the truth from Adam could John ensure that at least one of his children enjoyed a normal, happy childhood such as he had so completely failed to provide for the other two. Equally, confessing his indiscretion to Dean, Mary's son, whose childhood had been wholly surrendered to John's quest and who never complained once about the sacrifices demanded of him, would likely have felt like betrayal, of both his son and his dead wife. How, after the lives they had led, could John bring himself to show Dean the comfortable, normal life his long-lost brother led, rubbing his nose in what he had lost when his mother died – especially with Sam having already run away to seek out just such a life for himself?

So, to spare himself all of the above, John chose the path of least resistance: he lied. Now, he must have been deeply conflicted, wanting to take responsibility for this newfound son and do what he could for him, while unable to walk away from the revenge quest and vocation that had consumed him, to which he had devoted so much of both his and his sons' lives. Sam was already away at Stanford and out of the equation, that fact in itself already a source of inner turmoil, but Dean was still with John, and deserved his father's trust and honesty, yet Dean inhabited the supernatural world, while Adam inhabited the 'normal' world. So John made a decision to keep those two worlds strictly segregated…which meant that Dean lost out yet again, lied to and deceived by the person he trusted and respected most in the world. And now he knows.

"Well, that's heart-warming," Dean despondently grates out, bleak eyes directed down at the table rather than at Adam. He maintains that distance throughout the conversation, determinedly avoiding eye contact, whereas Sam's attention is completely focused on Adam.

Adam's meal arrives and he asks if the brothers mind him eating, which cheers Dean up a little, because now is his chance to see if Adam reacts to the silver – and it's interesting that this scene infers shapeshifters would be affected by the mere touch of silver, rather than it having to actually cut them to have any effect.

First, Adam whips his napkin out from beneath the cutlery without touching it, which Dean finds disconcerting. He carefully, surreptitiously cocks his gun, keeping it trained on the boy, while Adam obliviously picks up his knife and fork and continues talking as he starts to eat. "He would swing by once a year, or so," he explains. "You know, call when he could. But still."


Adam turned 12 in September 2002 and made contact with John some time after that. John died in the summer of 2006. Therefore, if John visited his secret son only once a year or so, they could only have met a handful of times in total, and Adam does not give any indication of how often John called, 'when he could' being pretty vague.

Adam also offers no indication that he has attempted to make contact with John since those calls and visits stopped, which must have been at least three years ago – but this is the ghoul, of course, not Adam. It is in the ghoul's interests to play completely dumb, so we cannot know for sure whether or not Adam ever did try calling before now, if maybe he got the 'call my son Dean' message in seaon one and was crushed to realise just how much his father had never told him about his life and other family, or if John's visits and calls were always so intermittent that he simply drifted away almost without Adam noticing and the boy came to the conclusion that he couldn't be bothered any more – we have no way of knowing how he reacted to John's disappearance from his life at all.

The silver cutlery has no effect on Adam whatsoever. Dean's expression says curses, foiled again, as he clicks the safety back on the gun and puts it away.

"He taught me poker and pool, and bought me my first beer when I was 15," Adam reminisces, and yeah, that does sound like John, although I have to wonder how Adam's mother felt about the influence he had on the son she'd raised alone. But with Adam, those lessons were purely for fun: father-son bonding the only way John probably knew how after the toll life had taken on him, especially given how little time he had to spend with Adam. For Dean and Sam, though, being taught pool and poker was about learning to hustle for cash, learning to survive. The difference between the harsh regime by which John raised his older sons and the brief snatches of father-son bonding he enjoyed with Adam is stark.

But hang on…John bought Adam his first beer when he was 15? Adam turned 15 at the end of September 2005, just days before John disappeared from Jericho, prompting Dean's journey to Stanford to ask for Sam's help looking for him in the Pilot. Now, it is just about possible that John snuck a quick visit to Adam for his birthday before travelling on to Jericho to work that fateful job, sending Dean on to New Orleans without him, but the very tight timeline and distance involved makes it unlikely. Therefore it seems rather more likely – and more hurtful – that he went to see Adam after he had already severed contact with his older son and dropped off the radar, refusing to return any calls, at a time when Dean was already frantic with concern about him. Maybe it was his final visit to Adam, John's way of saying goodbye…but it is still more than he gave his older son, and seems strange given his reluctance to speak to anyone he knew during those last months of his life, for fear of who or what might be watching.

"And, uh – he showed me how to drive," Adam continues. "Dad, he had this beautiful '67 Impala –"

Um. Just when, exactly, is John supposed to have taught Adam to drive? We know that by the autumn of 2005, when John disappeared, Dean already had possession of the Impala, with John having switched to the truck, although we don't know when this switch took place. Adam doesn't actually say that John taught him to drive in the Impala, but he implies it, which begs the questions of how old (or rather, how young) he was when John started teaching him and when exactly John gave the Impala to Dean. If Dean did not get the Impala until fairly late…what exactly was he supposed to do while John went off to play at being a fun dad with Adam? Hang around random motels kicking his heels all alone? Work solo gigs without transport?

Heck. Adam might even have been the reason why John gave the car to Dean, a passive aggressive way of both gaining the freedom he needed to visit his youngest son in secret and of assuaging his guilt over lying to Dean, without Dean ever knowing it.

"Oh, this is crap," Dean explodes, unable to take any more of this, and he has every right to be furious with what Adam is revealing here, John's entire relationship with the boy an enormous betrayal of the relationship he had with Dean.

Adam takes offence. "I'm sorry, but who the hell are you to call me a liar?"

"We're John Winchester's sons, that's who," Dean spits, gesturing furiously at himself and Sam. "We are his sons."


Point made and bombshell dropped, Dean glowers, daring the boy to challenge him, while Sam shuffles, looking both abashed and hopeful, waiting for Adam's reaction. Adam gapes in amazement. "I've got brothers?"

"No, you don't have brothers," Dean immediately denies, still refusing to acknowledge that this boy has any connection with himself and Sam. "Look, man, I don't know if you're a hunter, or what kind of game you're playing here –"

"I have never been hunting in my life," Adam protests.

"Whatever," Dean dismisses. "I'm out of here. Come on, Sam."

It is a very Dean reaction to try to escape when it all gets a bit too much, needing to put distance between himself and the source of his emotional turmoil. He stands and strides toward the exit, but Sam stays seated, and we don't get to see how he would have played this – if he would have supported Dean and gone after him, maybe tried to mediate, or if he would have just let Dean go and continued questioning Adam alone. There is no close up on Sam's inner conflict. Instead, Adam calls after Dean, "I can prove it."

Adam's house

With Sam peering over his shoulder, Dean stands and stares at a photograph of John and Adam together – John and Adam together at a baseball game, moreover.


"He took you to a baseball game?" Dean chokes out.

"Yeah, when I turned 14," Adam reminisces, smiling fondly at the memory, and oh my God, Dean's face, I can't even begin to describe his reaction to this revelation, especially as Adam continues, "Dad was around for a few of my birthdays."

John Winchester, who made a habit of leaving his young sons alone in grimy motels for days and weeks at a time, who failed to make it home in time for Christmas in the A Very Supernatural Christmas flashbacks and probably numerous other occasions as well, given that he raised sons who know little or nothing about how holidays are celebrated. John Winchester, who raised his sons to be warriors, who admitted that he was more of a drill sergeant to them than a father…that same John Winchester made the effort to spend quality fun time with Adam on his birthday each year after finding out that he existed.

Now, technically, John could not have spent more than two birthdays with Adam, three at the very most, since Adam was already 12 before he made contact with John, John disappeared just days after the boy's 15th birthday, and then died before he turned 16. From John's point of view, making the effort to be there for Adam's birthday each year, no doubt his one visit per year, was probably the least he felt he could do after missing out on his newfound son's entire life. He knew that he could never be a proper, full-time dad to Adam, could never tell him the truth about who he was and what he did. Those stolen moments on Adam's birthdays were pretty much all he would ever be able to give the boy, and perhaps he also felt that those stolen moments, just one visit or two per year, were also an opportunity for himself, a second chance at being a dad, just a dad, the way he had never felt able with Dean and Sam after Mary's death.

But, again, the flip side of that is that every time John took off to play happy families with Adam, to spend time hanging out being normal and having fun, indulging himself with a taste of the kind of life he had once had, he lied to the son who had been robbed of his entire childhood, who was completely shut out and left to work dangerous jobs all alone, denied even such brief snatches of normality. It was what John believed would be best for Adam, no doubt, but stands as just another example of John taking from one son to give to another, just as he had throughout Dean and Sam's childhood. There can be little doubt that it was also what was best for John, allowing him to tidily compartmentalise his life. Once again, however, what might be best for Dean was completely disregarded.

Quiet, because this is sensitive, Sam refers to the journal. "September 29th 2004. One word: Minnesota."


I like Sam's attitude in this scene. He has so many bad childhood memories himself, resented John for it almost his entire life, but understands his father far better these days than he once dreamt possible and knows that this is hitting much harder for Dean, who had to shoulder so much responsibility from such a young age, who hero worshipped their father so intensely, and who was the one John lied to every time he went to see Adam. So rather than air any grievances himself, Sam is apologetic and subdued, not bearing any grudge against John, focusing instead on Adam.

Dean tries to compose himself and get past this, but he can't and you just know that he's remembering what he was doing on September 29th 2004 while John was taking Adam to that baseball game, as well as remembering every birthday and Christmas John missed, every holiday that he and Sam spent cooped up in grimy motel rooms, with no gifts, no celebrations, no nothing, a childhood that revolved around training and looking after Sam, with neither the time nor the opportunity for fun and games. He stares down at the picture, John's smiling face alongside Adam, just another father taking his son to see a game for his birthday, and damn. Dean's been teetering on the edge of breaking point for quite some time now. He really did not need this.

"He took you to a freaking baseball game?" he repeats, barely able to comprehend such utter betrayal, that John would have made the time for such a frivolous outing with Adam, after denying such normalcy and frivolity to Dean his entire life, after drumming into him that saving the lives of others was so much more important than his personal happiness. It's heartbreaking. Dean was made to sacrifice his childhood, subordinating his needs to those of his family, and he never complained once because John taught him to believe that helping others was worth the cost. He did everything John ever asked of him, became the person John needed him to be, co-parent and soldier, all the while hoping against hope that if he could somehow meet every expectation laid on him, no matter how unreasonable, he might someday manage to earn his father's approval – maybe even catch a fleeting glimpse of the gentle, fun-loving father he'd lost the night of the fire. And now he learns that John gave Adam that gentle, fun-loving father without hesitation and asked for nothing in return. Talk about reinforcing an already deep-seated inferiority complex!

It doesn't matter that Adam had his dad only in brief, stolen moments for a few short years; it's about quality, not quantity. All his life Dean felt that he came at the bottom of John's priorities, way behind Sam, revenge and any random innocent lives that could be saved by hunting. He will inevitably interpret this as Adam also placing above him on that scale of priorities. It's a simple enough equation, after all: innocent lives were more important than Dean's comfort and happiness, but Adam's comfort and happiness were apparently more important than innocent lives, ergo Adam was more important than Dean.

From where John was standing, of course, it wasn't anything like as simple as that, and wasn't his intention at all; he was just muddling through as best he felt able, reacting to developing situations rather than planning a strategy for life and fatherhood. But from Dean's point of view? Damn, the betrayal hurts.


Adam doesn't see what the big deal is. "Yeah. Why? What'd Dad do with you on your birthday?"

Well, there certainly weren't any baseball outings involved. Oh man. Dean can't answer that question, turns wide eyes upon Sam in mute appeal for him to change the subject, and Sam obliges. "Adam, you said you called Dad because your mom was missing? How long has she been gone?"

Three days, Adam replies. Dean asks who was the last person to see Kate, snapping back into business mode, because a missing person is a missing person regardless of whatever intense personal issues he might have floating around. But his tone remains gruff and brusque, signalling his deep unhappiness with this situation. As Adam explains that their neighbour saw Kate come home Tuesday night, but that she then failed to arrive at work the following day, Dean's eyes land on another photograph in the room, a picture of a smiling John hugging a smiling Kate, and his face falls even further.


Now, I can understand the photographs of John with Adam scattered about the place, since the relationship Adam managed to build with his father on the few occasions they spent together clearly meant something to the boy. But this photograph of Kate with John and the picture she had of him beside her bed seem strange to me. John was little more than a one-night stand that she had almost two decades ago. She made a conscious decision not to tell him that she was pregnant, despite having a contact number for him, kept his son's existence secret from him for twelve years and even then only saw him a handful of times before he dropped off the radar again, presumably without warning. He has been dead for almost three years now, so we know it has been at least that long since the Milligans heard from him, and since they didn't know he was dead they would not know why he had broken contact – from Kate's point of view it would surely have looked like he had rejected and abandoned her son, just when Adam had got used to having a father in his life. So why would she keep his photograph beside her bed, after all this time?

The photographs suggest, of course, that once John started visiting Adam he built up some kind of relationship with Kate, too, if only a good friendship for the sake of the son they had in common, and this strikes hard at Dean's fierce devotion to the concept of his family, his reverence for his mother and support of John's holy quest to avenge her. That John had a secret relationship with Adam was bad enough, but that this secret relationship included Kate, too, cementing the notion of them as a family, a new, secret family that John created for himself in stolen moments, just when Dean had had his dream of family togetherness shattered…well, it compounds the betrayal.

I'm just not sure this concept and the abundance of photographs really tally with the history Adam relates, however, or the fact that the Milligans appear not to have attempted to contact John to find out why his visits and calls stopped.

Under Sam's careful questioning, Adam explains that Kate's supervisor at the hospital called the police to report her missing, and Adam then drove down from Wisconsin as fast as he could. "I should have been here," he mourns, and Sam looks sympathetic, since that is a sentiment he can totally relate to, what with guilt and regret being such familiar emotions to all the Winchesters.

Dean again strives manfully to keep it together as he asks what the cops are saying, but, man, he's just so upset about all this – the deep, dark implications behind Adam's mere existence, never mind the relationship he had with John.


Adam relates that the police have searched the house but didn't find anything. He struggles to hold back tears as he insists that his mother wouldn't leave without telling anybody. "It's like she just dropped off the face of the earth, you know?"

Yes, they do know, only too well, of course, and Adam's situation provides a strong contrast with that of Dean and Sam. 'He's always missing and he's always fine', Sam dismissed back in the Pilot when John first went missing. For John, disappearing off the face of the earth was entirely in character, he had made a lifestyle out of taking off and leaving his sons alone and completely in the dark. For Kate, on the other hand, such a disappearance is entirely out of character. Both were single parents to their sons, and this contrast between the two helps to drive home the stability and normalcy of Adam's life in comparison to the instability and extremity of Dean and Sam's upbringing.

Also, although we know with hindsight that this Adam is fake, his grief and anxiety feel very real, reminding us that however hurt Dean feels about John's relationship with the boy, Adam is nonetheless an innocent victim that the brothers would feel compelled to help even if he weren't their half-brother – in fact, his status as an innocent victim is just about the only thing keeping Dean here, while the half-brother thing makes him want to run away as far and fast as he can and never come back.

Later

Dean busies himself in Kate's room shifting furniture around to peer behind, presumably checking for possible hex bags or other such clues as to what might have happened to Kate Milligan. In the process he finds himself face to face with yet another happy family photo of John, this time with both Adam and Kate, on a fishing trip, just another snapshot of the utter normalcy he shared with the Milligans whenever he visited.


It's a nice little touch of continuity that the Milligans have pictures of John fishing and at a baseball game, after seeing similar pictures – fishing and softball – in Dean's dreamscape in What Is And What Should Never Be. It suggests that Dean's subconscious in that episode constructed the image of John in a normal life from what he remembered of his father's interests before the fire, and that John likewise drew on his long-buried love of such pursuits to help him bond with Adam.

Dean gazes at the photo, just another symbol of his father's betrayal, every photograph of John in this house rubbing it in painfully, and I can't remember when I've been so angry with John. I understand the difficult position he was in, trying to do right by this son he'd never known about, trying to protect and shield him, because he wasn't part of the hunting life and had no reason to share the family curse. But from Dean's perspective it just plain hurts, because he lost everything, was made to sacrifice everything, and received nothing in return but abandonment and deception, and he asks for so very little, but never seems to be given anything at all. Damn.


A creaking floorboard alerts Dean to the fact that someone else has come to the room, and he whirls around to see Adam lurking in the doorway. Adam clears his throat a little to signify his discomfort with this whole 'we're long lost siblings who don't know each other at all, but I need your help, and it is awkward' situation, and Dean does likewise, sticking firmly to the business at hand, because it is safer territory by far. He asks about the nightstand being knocked over, if anything else was disturbed, but Adam says no and that the sheriff says there was no sign of a break in. Dean doesn't quite manage to suppress his eye roll at this, keeps scanning the room thoughtfully, and Adam catches this reaction. "What? You think the cops missed something?"

"Maybe. They don't have my eyes," Dean confidently smirks. Heh. Dean's dismissive attitude toward the police is very consistent, because he knows so much that they don't know. He summarised it best in Nightshifter: 'They're doing our jobs, only they don't know it, so they suck at it.'

"You're a mechanic," Adam points out in a very even tone. It isn't a question; he's just making the point that Dean's certainty that he can solve this mystery better than the police doesn't really tie in with his cover identity. It is one of those moments where hindsight makes it clear that the ghoul's cover is slipping slightly; it knows that Dean is a hunter and is toying with him, just going through the motions of playing at being Adam. But it isn't obvious that the reaction is wrong, because Adam could easily be too shell-shocked and numbed by his mother's disappearance and father's death to react properly to inconsistencies in the brothers' story.


I love this cover story of being mechanics. It played out that way as a result of the conversation earlier, of course, claiming to have worked with John, when Adam knew him as a mechanic. It's just really fitting, because John was a mechanic before Mary's death, and Dean totally is a mechanic, even if it isn't his profession, and it ties in completely with the family business thing again – it's what the young Sam claimed the family business was in the After School Special flashbacks, since he couldn't tell the truth. Mechanic has apparently been code for the real family business for a very long time, maybe for John a way of hanging onto what little he could of his former identity, not to mention the only normal occupation he was qualified for if he needed a real job to earn an honest living from time to time. Heh, Sam would probably have a bit of a hard time proving it if anyone challenged him on his mechanic credentials, though, no matter how much Dean managed to teach him before his death!

Dean coolly agrees that he is, indeed, a mechanic, not bothering to even try to explain why he believes he, as a mechanic, would have better investigative skills than the police, just leaving it lying there as fact, unexplained, just as he wouldn't attempt to explain to any other civilian on any other job. Dean is very determinedly treating this as just another case and Adam as just another civilian; he might be a half-brother, but he is not an equal, is not family.

Adam shuffles awkwardly. "Dean. What else can you tell me about Dad?"

Dean just about manages to keep his game face firmly in place. "You knew him," he evades.

"Not as well as you," Adam points out, since at the end of the day he only had a handful of visits from John scattered over a period of no more than three years, whereas Dean was raised by the man. But he has hit upon an intensely sensitive nerve, because the mere fact of Adam's existence and those handful of visits only serves to drive home to Dean how much he didn't know his father, and oh Dean.

Dean fixes hard eyes upon the boy. "Trust me, kid. You don't want to know."


Kid. As terms of address go it is both dismissive and distancing, because Dean doesn't want to know Adam, doesn't want to acknowledge him as a brother, doesn't want to get attached to him in any way, because it hurts to even think about how they are related. He just wants to focus on the case, because Dean needs that kind of focus when things get emotionally painful. Besides, even if he could bring himself to open that can of worms, how would he even begin to explain his relationship with John? Adam is a complete civilian and knows nothing of the world the Winchesters have inhabited all their lives. How could Dean begin to tell him about the childhood warrior training, the bleak itinerant lifestyle, the never-ending tragedies, the demonic dealing, hell and angels and all the rest of it? No, Adam wouldn't want to know – it would destroy his memories of the fun father he knew so very briefly.

Sam saves Dean from having to talk to Adam any longer by appearing in the doorway at that moment to wave a piece of paper meaningfully at his (older) brother. Pleased to have this escape route provided, Dean grunts at Adam to give them a minute and follows Sam back out into the hallway, where they proceed to hold a conversation wherein their voices are not nearly lowered enough considering Adam is right there in the bedroom, not five feet away, with the door wide open.


Sam has talked to the cops, who confirmed what Adam has already explained: that they have no leads on Kate's disappearance. This does not come as a shock to Dean, whose derisive attitude toward the police's ability to investigate just about anything remains very consistent. Sam has, however, unearthed a photocopied newspaper article reporting on the case John originally investigated in Windom. There were 17 grave robberies, he explains, and he even has visual confirmation of John's presence, directing Dean's attention to the background of the grainy photocopied picture attached to the article, which is dated 9 January 1990, two weeks before Dean's 11th birthday. There, lurking behind a police tape among a crowd of gawkers, is John, in all his grainy, photocopied newspaper quality photographic glory.


"All right, so he was hunting something. What?" Dean wonders.

Sam has no idea, shrugging that those were the pages he tore out of the journal. And, you know, two pages seem like an awful lot for just one hunt – John wasn't always so expansive with his notes. He clearly had a lot to say about this one, before deciding that it wasn't safe to keep any information connecting him with Windom. Sam continues that last month the corpse-snatching started up again, with three bodies disappearing from the local cemetery.

"So, whatever he was after, he didn't kill it. It's back," Dean surmises, and both brothers seem to feel that this is a reasonable assumption, which makes for a wonderful contrast with Sam's shock in Something Wicked that John might not have managed to kill something he was hunting. Both have come to understand their father rather better these days, as a fallible human being.

I don't think it occurs to either of them for a moment, however, to wonder if Kate's disappearance might in fact be unrelated to that original case. They learned long ago not to believe in coincidence.

Sam muses that whatever the creature is, it also seems to have stepped up its game to fresh meat. It seems that Kate Milligan is not the only local to go missing this week. A local bartender by the name of Joe Barton has also vanished without trace.

Dean thinks about this for a moment, and then takes the photograph of Joe Barton that Sam has unearthed back into the bedroom to show Adam, who frowns that he doesn't think his mother knows the man. So, there's no obvious connection there, although no one stops to consider the possibility that Adam's mother might have acquaintances he is unaware of.

While huffing his frustration and trying to think where to look next, eagle-eyed Dean notices something – scratch marks on the floor, leading under the bed. He instantly moves to investigate, asking Adam to give him a hand moving the mattress for a better look. I love the way he relates to Adam as just another innocent connected to a case he's working, because it is so in character. He is completely professional when focused on solving the mystery, it's the other stuff he can't deal with, so as long as he doesn't let himself think about the past and their shared parentage he can interact with Adam and work the job.


Beneath the bed is a vent, just about big enough for a person to fit through. Dean looks at Sam, who doesn't even have to meet his eyes to know what comes next.

Rock, paper, scissors. Yay! I love when Show remembers its character continuity and calls back to old episodes. And it's such a fabulously brotherly thing. Of course, Sam wins, because Dean always goes for scissors and Sam knows that Dean always goes for scissors and so always opts for rock, and the habit is so ingrained Dean just can't break it whether he wants to or not, so why they even bother is beyond me, but his frustration at losing is adorably cute. Once again, Jensen Ackles nails the physical comedy, successfully lightening up even such an intense episode with humour that is neither forced or out of keeping with the storyline. "Every time," Dean grumps, while Sam flicks an amused smile at Adam. Hee!


Ventilation shaft

Dean prises the grate off the vent and pokes his head down, swinging the flashlight around to take a quick peek before dropping both the light and his gun into the shaft and then wriggling his own way down, head first, and wow that is a seriously confined space in there. I'm not even sure Sam would fit, being that much bigger again – it's a tight enough squeeze for Dean. I love that there are blood smears here and there along the shaft, but that Dean does not mention them to the other two, presumably not wanting to alarm Adam unless absolutely necessary, despite the fact that any blood at all does not bode well for Kate's chances of survival.

"Why didn't I throw paper?" Dean ruefully asks himself as he crawls along. Hee. I've always loved Dean's habit of talking to himself when he's alone.


He reaches a t-junction. One way leads to another vent, this one opening out near the ceiling of the lounge downstairs. The other heads on into the guts of the house – and is full of blood and hair and torn flesh and bone fragments, clear and present evidence that this is no longer a missing person case but murder, a full-blown monster hunt.

Dean lets his head thud against the wall of the shaft in dismay. Dean really hates it when people die and he can't save them, always has, but this time there are even more layers of poignancy because Kate was Adam's mother, and like it or not Adam appears to be his half-brother. She was all the family Adam had, so if she is dead the boy is now left all alone in the world to mourn, something both Dean and Sam can relate to. And if Kate is dead, that means Dean and Sam can't just find and return her to Adam and then put this whole case behind them, they could find themselves responsible for Adam, because he is their little brother and is all alone in the world, which is a whole huge can of worms to be staring into and the absolute last thing Dean wanted. He doesn't want to be related to Adam and he doesn't want any more responsibility landing on his shoulders. All in all, the evidence of Kate's death stirs up a lot of conflicted emotion, from sorrow to resentment.

Motel

At the motel-of-the-week, Dean busies himself cleaning his guns, which is always a nice, safe chore for when he needs to take his brain off the hook for a while. In a nifty little touch of continuity there is a smear of blood on his thigh from having crawled through the bloody ventilation shaft.


There is a knock at the door. As Sam moves to answer it, Dean turns to see who it is – and the camera pans past a card on the nightstand advertising happy hour at the Sonny Buono Lounge, this card bearing an old photograph of Show's late executive producer and director, Kim Manners, and oh, the motel is even called Kym Manor. Perfect. It's a lovely, understated, blink-and-you-miss-it tribute to a much loved and missed member of the production team.

"Who the hell are you?" a freaked Adam demands, barging into the room the moment Sam opens the door.

Dean quietly flips a rag over the shotgun he'd been cleaning before Adam sees it, while Sam tries without success to calm the teenager down.

"Don't tell me to take it easy, okay!" Adam yells. "My house is a crime scene! My Mom's probably dead, and you two! You tell me to call the cops, but you've got to bail before they show? So who are you, really?"

Silence. Sam is standing behind Dean, but Dean still manages to flick uncomfortable side eyes toward his brother, who looks equally uncomfortable. As divided as they have been of late, their non-verbal communication skills remain in top form. Neither is sure which way they should jump here, because this isn't just another random stranger they've met on a case and will soon be leaving behind, but someone with whom they are connected, like it or not, and the decision to tell or not to tell the truth is irrevocable, something that will have lasting consequences for them all.


"Cops didn't know where to look for my Mom, Dean, but you did," Adam rather accusatorily continues, since no answer appears to be forthcoming. "And I heard you talking earlier, something about grave robberies."

He hesitates, eyes falling upon the muzzle of the shotgun poking out from beneath that rag Dean had tried to hide it under.

"You're not mechanics," he rather belatedly realises, making it a flat, wooden statement rather than a question. He looks to Sam, rather than Dean, for confirmation of this rhetorical statement, which is a nice touch, because Sam has been so much more open and friendly with him throughout, so of course he would default to Sam when seeking guidance on what the hell is going on, even though it is clear that both brothers have been lying to him, or at the very least withholding important information. "I just want to know what's going on," he fretfully adds as Sam drops his eyes, torn over what to do.

Dean half turns his head to cast meaningful side eyes in Sam's direction once again. Adam adds a tearful 'please', and Sam is conflicted.

Dean is very definitely and obviously leaving the ball in Sam's court here. He is content to interact with Adam as a random innocent connected to a job they are working, but as soon as they step outside that territory he backs right off, just does not want to deal – back to retreating from self-determination, in fact, because everything about Adam is pushing all of his buttons, hard.


"We're hunters," Sam finally says, and Dean reacts with exasperation that Sam is telling the truth, even though he totally left it up to Sam to make the decision of what to do.

"Sammy!" he objects. Such a gratuitous 'Sammy', that one: Dean reinforcing his fraternal relationship with Sam in opposition to Adam.

"He deserves to know, Dean," Sam insists, hard and determined, because Dean left this up to him, which means it was his decision to make, and he made it, because Sam has strong opinions about Adam and this situation as well, even if they aren't as loud and obvious as Dean's.


While Dean shakes his head in disbelieving dismay, Adam suspiciously asks what Sam means by the term 'hunters'. Ah, such a loaded question.

Fade to:

Later

Nice establishing shot of the Impala parked outside the motel, with Adam's truck nearby.

In the room, Adam sits and stares at nothing, freaked. "Okay, so," he says, in too calm, too measured tones, "Basically, you're saying that every movie monster, every nightmare that I've ever had – that's…all real."

"Godzilla's just a movie," Dean gruffly interjects, and the camera pulls back to reveal that Dean has removed himself from both Sam and Adam's proximity completely, has retreated far away to the other side of the room, while Sam and Adam are sitting close together on the twin beds – as Sam and Dean have done so many times – for the de-brief. The direction is excellent; it is so very in character, and really hurts to see Dean establishing that distance straight away, at this first stage of initiating Adam into the family business, determinedly keeping the boy at arm's length even as Sam draws him close.


Sam sighs and looks tired, because he'd really like a little support from Dean on this, but instead is being left to carry the load alone, because telling Adam the full unvarnished truth was his decision, not Dean's. He patiently continues his explanation. "We hunt them. So did Dad."

Adam's anxious eyes slide away from Sam's as he takes this in. Away on the other side of the room, Dean rolls his eyes, tense and agitated. Finally, Adam nods. "Okay."

"Okay?" Dean disbelieves, harsh and cynical, because he is dealing with a torrent of tumultuous emotions and has no target other than Adam to vent them. "That's it?"

"What am I supposed to say?" Adam mildly asks, and again, this is another of his line-readings that is just a little off, once you know that he is fake. It's very subtle, but it's there, the ghoul just playing the part, getting some reactions spot on but not making quite as much effort for others and you know, Dean is right about this under-whelmed reaction being not quite right, for all that it can be explained away by Adam's shellshock.

"That we're liars, that we're crazy," Dean suggests, exasperated. "Nobody just says 'okay'."

"You're my brothers," Adam shrugs, looking at Sam, sat just across from him in an almost identical pose. "You'd tell me the truth, right?"


Oh, such a loaded question.

"Yeah," Sam immediately assures him, and he means it completely and absolutely does not see the irony in the statement, since viewers and Dean know damn well just how little his word is worth lately. And yet I can't help enjoying the way he is with Adam here, so measured and steady and quiet and so Sam.

"Then I believe you," Adam says, very simply and sincerely.

Dean's eye roll of exasperation is both amusing and heartbreaking, Sam making such a show of being honest with Adam, because they are brothers, when for months now he has done nothing but lie to the brother who died for him, and he and Dean both know it, even if Sam refuses to admit it, and yet he could make that promise of fraternal honesty and solidarity with a completely straight face and not acknowledge or apparently even notice the hypocrisy at all – all this on top of the revelation of John's lies and deceptions. Yeah, the notion of family being trustworthy is looking pretty laughable from where Dean is standing right now.


Judging by the look on Adam's face, he senses that there's subtext here that's going over his head completely, but he sets it aside and focuses on what really matters. "Now, what's with my Mom?"

"We're not sure," Sam admits. "Something's in town stealing bodies – living and dead – but we don't know what."

"There's a long list of freaks that fit the bill," Dean chips in.

"You think maybe she might still be alive?" Adam asks, grave rather more than hopeful, the ghoul just going through the motions of reactions that might be expected of Adam, but the question alone is more than enough to tug at the heartstrings of both his long-lost half brothers.

Dean might not be what you'd call accepting of the teen as a brother, but he knows how it feels to lose loved ones and can't look the boy in the face. Full-blown horror begins to creep across Adam's face as he turns to Sam, who likewise can't hold his eyes, and likewise can't say the words out loud. You know, it seems fitting that it would be tragedy that forms the first bond of sorts between the long-lost siblings, since tragedy is what being a Winchester is all about.


"Oh," Adam says in a very quiet voice, hanging his head. "How can I help?" he brokenly mutters.

"You can't," Dean very firmly tells him, appraising eyes now fixed on the boy.

Adam's head snaps right back up. "This thing killed my Mom. If you're hunting it, I want in," he insists, and oh, yes. He is so John's son, we all think at this stage, with this instant thirst for revenge. It is so very fitting for Adam to have inherited this vengeful streak, even though we never meet the real Adam, of course…and this stated desire for revenge is also the ghoul being completely honest about what it is working toward, if only the brothers knew it. Clever writing.

Dean is having none of it. "No," he insists, very categorical about this refusal to allow Adam anywhere near the hunt.


Sam attempts to placate. "Dean, look, maybe –"

"Maybe what?" Dean angrily snaps.

"He lost his mother. Maybe we can understand what that feels like," Sam snips, getting loud and enunciating very clearly in the way he always does when he gets heated.

Dean pushes to his feet, John's journal in hand, and advances on Sam to furiously dispute the point. "Why do you think Dad never told us about this kid, Sam, huh? Why do you think he ripped out the pages?"

"Because…" Sam trails off.

"Because he was protecting him," Dean shouts, loud and angry, so very angry with so many things, and yet unable to act upon that anger. He is angry with John for his many failings, and yet feels compelled to respect his wishes and support his desire to protect Adam from the hunting world. He is angry with Adam just for existing, for being his brother and leading such a sheltered life, and yet is determined that the youngster will not be doomed to the kind of life he and Sam lead. And he is angry with Sam for offering Adam honesty when lately he does nothing but lie to Dean, but he can't call Sam on it, not here and not now, because they've had that argument too many times already and it never gets them anywhere, would only distract them from the issue at hand.

There is a quiet, still moment, Adam squirming in discomfort at having his long-lost brothers fight over him, before Sam offers a rebuttal. "Dad's dead, Dean," he points out.


"It doesn't matter," Dean flails, flinging the journal down onto the bed. "He didn't want Adam to have our lives, okay? And we're going to respect his wishes."

How much must it have hurt to say that, honouring John's wishes in the same breath as admitting how awful their own lives have been – in front of Adam, even? Such a tangled mess of conflicting emotion, resentment and disillusionment warring with his deeply ingrained impulse to support his father and sitting alongside his instinctive desire to protect Adam from the kind of suffering all the Winchesters have endured. That protective urge is directed toward the boy not as a brother, but as a young person afflicted by tragedy, someone with the potential for a bright future ahead of him, if only he can avoid getting sucked into this gruelling, thankless life – in much the same way that Dean once tried to warn Jo Harvelle off the hunting life. It has been a long time now since Dean thought of this life as anything but a burden and a trap, a far cry from the satisfaction he once drew from it. There's something bitter and almost masochistic about it, this determination to do what he sees as the right thing by both John and Adam despite the way John's lies and betrayal and Adam's existence have hurt him – proving himself the better man, if only he could see it. Equally, his desire to keep Adam ignorant and innocent also harks back to his fervent attempts at preserving whatever he could of Sam's innocence, by shielding him from harsh realities, throughout their shared childhood and on into adulthood. The whole universe seems determined to trample all over Dean at every opportunity, but when everything else is stripped away, this, the gut instinct to protect, is what remains.

"Do I get a say in this?" Adam pipes up.

"No," Dean and Sam chorus, Dean angry and Sam firm, waving a hand at Adam to hold on for a moment while he discusses this with Dean, and man, the sibling dynamic is right there, three-way, Sam transformed into the middle child in almost exactly the same way that he was by Jo's presence in No Exit. But it's all moved on a step, the dynamic similar but different, because the circumstances are different, Dean and Sam have both changed since those days – in fact, in some ways this is more like parents arguing than older brothers, and that fits the ever-warped Winchester dynamic, too, because Dean was a parent to Sam and now Sam is stepping into a similar role with Adam, teaching him and showing him the ropes.

Dean turns and strides to the door, tiredly snapping at Sam to "babysit the kid."

"Where are you going?" Sam demands, annoyed.

Grabbing his coat, Dean yells that he is going out and slams the door behind him.

Left to babysit, Sam turns back to Adam with an abashed sigh at having such a blazing row right in front of him, when he'd been trying so hard to make a good impression and ease the boy into things gently. "Is he always like that?" Adam mildly asks.

Sam huffs an exasperated little laugh. "Welcome to the family."

You know, I almost wish that Sam had defended Dean there, made excuses for his brother's bad temper and hostility, because there are reasons why Dean is acting like this, reasons that the sheltered Adam could never begin to understand, and many other, gentler sides to him that Adam will never get to see – not least because this is not really Adam. But on the other hand, I love that Sam didn't try to explain, because where would he even start? There's honesty and there's honesty, and Sam might want Adam to know the truth about what's out there, but he shows absolutely no inclination toward bonding with the boy on a deeper level, sharing anything personal about himself or their family. This is about what Sam sees as practicality, not fraternal emotion.

Adam looks conflicted, because he didn't ask to be related to the Winchester brothers any more than they asked to be related to him, and his whole world is falling apart all around him. Sam knows what that feels like, and the way he has always tried to deal with it is by seeking to exert whatever control he can over his life – and lately that has meant divorcing himself from normality and turning himself into the ultimate soldier. He makes a decision and pulls his gun out, shows it to Adam. "Here. I'm going to teach you a few things."


Adam's eyes drift from Sam to the door Dean just went through. "Uh…Dean said…"

Heh. I kinda love that he automatically defaults to Dean as the authority figure of the family. Sam has very much been in take charge mode in recent episodes – for much of the season, in fact – and Dean has let him get on with it, too depressed and traumatised to protest. But Dean has been very much playing the oldest brother card in this episode, and it seems Adam has got the message loud and clear.

"I know what Dean said," says Sam, the 'and I don't care' unspoken but implied as he holds the gun out for Adam to take. "And I know what it's like to want revenge."


The contrasts and comparisons between this Sam and the Sam of the Pilot are striking. Here, just as then, Sam comes across as reasonable, mild-mannered and sympathetic in comparison with his brother's loud, brash ill temper. But here, just as then, once you scratch the surface you soon hit rebellion, ruthless resolve, and that oh-so vengeful streak of his. There is something bullish, almost mutinous, about his determined defiance of Dean's fervent wishes and authority. Sam is just as convinced he is right about this and determined to go his own way regardless of what anyone else thinks as back then he was convinced he was right to walk away from his family in pursuit of his dreams. Another example would be Scarecrow, in which Sam was likewise convinced he was right – on that occasion that he was right to walk away from innocents in danger to pursue the fool's errand of a possible lead on the ever-elusive John.

'You're a selfish bastard, you know that?' Dean told his brother back then. 'You just do whatever you want. Don't care what anybody thinks.' The words were harsh, but the general summing up of this aspect of Sam's personality was very accurate, and this scene is just another example of Sam doing what he wants to do regardless of what anyone – his brother – thinks, no qualms at all about going behind Dean's back.

Sam has never been a man inclined toward compromise of any kind. He clearly identifies with Adam, another mild-mannered student whose life has been torn apart by the supernatural through no fault of his own, and, rightly or wrongly, is projecting his own issues onto the boy. Sam's life has spiralled downhill ever since Jessica's death at the hands of Azazel, to the point where he knows that going back is now impossible for him. He can never again be that wide-eyed youngster with such fervent hopes for a bright future. Here, seeing Adam in a similar position, instead of encouraging the boy to achieve what Sam was unable to, to rebuild what he can of his old life instead of sacrificing everything he could have been to revenge, he instead encourages him to follow in Sam's own footsteps, seeking to re-create the boy in his own image, as it were.

Sam has come to believe that attempting to escape the supernatural is completely futile, that the only way to deal with it is head-on, regaining control over his life by honing his skills as a hunter any way he can, equating power with control and associating ignorance with danger. By choosing to tell Adam about the supernatural and beginning to teach him how to hunt, he is seeking to give the boy the tools Sam feels he needs to regain control over his life, to protect himself. Yet he is fast becoming so fixated on this plan of action, teaching Adam how to protect himself, that he completely ignores all other possibilities. Certainly he has all but forgotten about the case itself, that the best way to protect the boy here and now might be to find and destroy the thing that has already killed his mother before it can turn its attention to her son. If they were to focus all their efforts on that, then once it was all over they could all take stock and make plans for the future with a clear head, with Adam able to make an informed choice about what he really wants to do, rather than being railroaded into anything by either of his brothers, based on their own issues, while he is too shocked and grief-stricken to think clearly.

This is less about what may or may not be best for Adam, in either the short or long term, and more about Sam's own feelings and attitudes, his sense of frustration and fatalism finding an outlet. I know what it's like to want revenge, he says, and so is encouraging Adam to act upon that desire in the way that Sam has always preferred, because he has ceased to see the validity of any other option. But he has forgotten, or chosen to disregard, how all-consuming that desire can be, the way it can warp a person, blinding them to all other considerations and restricting possibilities and potential. He has forgotten the need for balance, is encouraging Adam to commit himself to this course of action without (yet) detailing any of the costs involved – as ever, Sam's idea of full disclosure only goes so far.

Sam's core personality is much the same now as it ever was, but his outlook and expectations have become the polar opposite of what they once were. The Sam we met in the Pilot would barely even recognise himself now, would be absolutely appalled by his demon blood habit, the wanton use of his psychic powers, his ruthlessness and growing callousness – and maybe this Sam would look down on the person he once was as naïve, because if he doesn't distance himself from those hopes and dreams the memory of what once might have been would crush him.

Mausoleum

Having walked out on Sam and Adam, Dean, predictably enough, has focused right back on working the case. When Dean storms out it is always about cooling off, not walking away. Putting some distance between himself and Adam and working this as just another job is soothing for him. Long lost half-brother or no long lost half-brother, there is a monster snatching corpses and killing people in this town, and Dean intends to find it before anyone else dies – without requiring them to sacrifice their innocence to learn how to defend themselves, because that's what hunters like him are there for.


There, again, is that fundamental difference in approach of the brothers. Sam believes in empowering the individual, even if it means robbing them of their innocence, preferring even painful knowledge over blissful ignorance. Dean, on the other hand, believes in protecting the individual, standing between them and danger like a shield, preserving both their life and their innocence, even if it means denying them knowledge, seeing that knowledge as a burden they should not be made to carry and are better off without.

Both have pretty blatant double standards, however, with each reserving the right to completely reverse this general approach if it suits him. Hypocrisy is as much a Winchester staple as self-sacrifice.

So, in the spirit of working the case, Dean has found a funeral director to take him on a tour of the recent grave robbery sites. He has also taken the time to change out of his usual garb into a suit and tie to play at FBI – it actually looks like the kind of tie Dean Smith would have worn, leading me to wonder if Dean pilfered at least some of his alter ego's wardrobe before leaving his fake life behind.

The tomb they are currently visiting was built in 1926, the guide announces, and four generations of one family were interred there. "Tell me, Agent Nugent," he smoothly adds, pulling a business card out of a pocket, the consummate salesman. "Have you thought about where you might like to spend eternity?"

Ha. I love that the funeral director is taking the opportunity to drum up business, but not as much as I love and hurt for Dean's response. He turns away from the man, grim. "All the damn time," he very honestly admits. Of course he does. He has already died and been resurrected by angels, knows the horrors of hell first hand but has also learned that heaven is real and not necessarily the paradise of repute, given the ruthless attitude of its representatives, who want him only for what he can do for them in payment of an impossible debt rather than for his own sake. He has long since given up thinking of death as offering any kind of surcease, expects his life to be short and brutal, and believes his fate to be grim and frankly hopeless whether he lives or dies, appallingly depressing though that thought is. Of course eternity weighs on his mind.


Also: Agent Nugent? He's used that one before!

Moving further into the tomb to poke around, Dean asks if the man has any idea who might be responsible for the three missing bodies. 'Sick, deranged hooligans' is his best guess. Bending to take a closer look at one of the damaged sarcophaguses, Dean notices a viscous fluid running down the side of it. Embalming fluid. It seems that whatever took the corpses also tore them open. Ick. Dean ponders what this might mean.

Bar

Ah, now this is a gorgeous, atmospheric little scene.

Dean wanders in and sets himself down at the bar, attention drawn to a collection of pictures on the wall, mostly featuring the missing bartender Joe Barton. A rather motherly looking barmaid drifts over and pulls him a beer, unbidden, informing him that the first drink is on the house for cops. Feds, too. Dean glances down at his white shirt, stripy tie and dark jacket, and asks if he is that obvious, just a hint of a smile playing at the edges of his mouth at the thought of how awesome he clearly is at impersonating a Federal Agent.


"I know all the local badges," Barmaid explains. "And you've got that 'law-and-order' vibe."

Heh. This woman labelling Dean a fed on sight stands as a nice contrast to Jamie in Monster Movie, who saw straight through his disguise – the difference in Dean's whole attitude and demeanour in the two episodes being the greatest contrast. Back then he was still basking in the glow of the miracle of his resurrection, had yet to regain his memories of hell and was blissfully unaware of the demands that would soon be made on him. He was cheerful and flirtatious, full of vim and vigour, and Jamie was unable to take him seriously as a supposed federal agent. Now, though, worn down and hollowed out by the events of the season and the burdens weighing heavy on his shoulders, he exudes the weary, care-worn attitude Barmaid clearly expects to see in a federal agent, fitting his false identity perfectly.

Reflecting on the irony of the camouflage versus his real life situation, Dean snorts and glances down at his tie again, while Barmaid wonders what the FBI is doing in Windam.

You know, randomly, that shirt she is wearing, white with red roses embroidered on the shoulders, is very similar to a shirt Mary wore in In The Beginning.

Dean shows the woman a picture of Joe Barton as he explains that he is looking into the man's disappearance and assumes she knew him, since they worked at the same bar and all. Barmaid looks pained and agrees that yes, she knew him a little – she is his wife, Lisa Barton. Dean wasn't quite expecting that, but rolls with it, offering a sympathetic nod as he puts the picture away again and asks what she can tell him about Joe's disappearance. She gives him the same story that she apparently gave the sheriff, that Joe stayed late at the bar the Friday before last to do inventory, but then never came home. Dean asks what the police have turned up, which – just the same as the investigation into Kate's disappearance – is nothing.

"Truth is, I was scared they stopped looking," Lisa tiredly admits, offering Dean a wan smile. "But now you're here."

Dean offers a world-weary smile in return. He might not be an official investigator, but he is looking into her husband's disappearance when everyone else seems to have given up, and although he knows damn well that her Joe is most likely every bit as dead as Kate, he stands a better chance than the police at giving Lisa at least some kind of closure, so his role here isn't entirely faked. His attention returns to the wall of photographs opposite, one in particular, which shows Joe in a police uniform. On being questioned, Lisa confirms that he was once a deputy, a long time ago.


Dean puts the pieces together and asks if Joe happened to work the grave robbery case back in 1990, and Lisa confirms that he did indeed – it was Joe who found all the exhumed bodies where they had been stored, and he won an award for it.

Okay, so given that we later learn that the case back then, just as now, involved ghouls, and that ghouls eat the corpses they exhume, why were so many corpses dug up all at once and then simply stored? Was it, in fact, merely eviscerated remains that Joe found, rather than intact corpses? But it would still make more sense for them to take the odd one or two here and there, which would be less likely to draw attention, than to take so many all at once. Then again, maybe it takes that many corpses, being so decomposed and all, to make a truly filling meal!

"That was an interesting case," Dean observes, regarding the photograph of Deputy Joe thoughtfully, and noticing the same news article Sam showed him earlier also pinned to the board, including the grainy shot of the crime scene, with John lurking among the crowd. He asks if Joe ever told Lisa how he did it, and she replies that most of the time he would say it was good, solid police work, but that after a few beers he would admit he had a little help from a 'specialist', of whom he would never give any more details.

Dean stares at the news article, at his father's grainy face staring back out at him, and understands something of how the events must have played out, a rare but not unique example of cooperation between hunter and small town law enforcement. He asks if the cops ever found who stole the bodies and Lisa says no, but when she asked Joe about it he would say not to worry, that "we took care of what done it."

Dean nods, looking thoughtful, easily reading between the lines of Lisa's story and no doubt thinking about his father, both John's strengths and his weaknesses, both of which have made themselves known through this long-ago case. John's journal says so little, but between Adam and Lisa Dean has now learned so much about how this case must have gone down, even if not specific details. He knows that John worked with the young Deputy Joe Barton to find the stolen corpses and kill or incapacitate the creature responsible, he knows that John was hurt badly enough to require hospital treatment, and he knows that John then indulged in a brief fling with his nurse, which resulted in Adam. All this while Dean and Sam, aged just ten and six, were home alone in a grotty motel someplace.


As a child, Dean clung to the belief that his Dad was a superhero and that the lives John saved were worth any hardship; believing that was the only way he knew how to deal with the harsh realities of a bleak lifestyle characterised by neglect and abandonment. As an adult he knows that things were never quite as clear-cut as he once wanted to believe, has years worth of pent-up resentment and anger to work through still, yet can't help but always return to that basic tenet, the prime directive of his life: that saving innocent lives balances out any amount of personal suffering. John neglected his sons shamefully, the expectations and burdens he heaped upon Dean's young shoulders were tremendously unfair, his motivations were maybe never quite as pure as they could or should have been, and Dean knows all that, intellectually, at least – but here in this town, back in 1990, whatever the rights and wrongs of his actions in general, John achieved a positive result that prevented further suffering. So where should the line be drawn between right and wrong, between conflicting needs and priorities? Where John is concerned, Dean has always found it incredibly hard to judge.

It really is fascinating how strongly John's influence shines through in this episode, considering he has been dead for almost three years now.

Motel

At the motel, Sam and Adam sit on the twin beds in companiable fashion, cleaning guns.


"Sam," Adam quietly, gravely asks at length. "How did Dad really die?"

It's a fair question. Having been told this much, Adam deserves to know. Sam keeps his eyes fixed upon the shotgun in his hand. "Demon," he very brusquely replies. For Sam, too, John's death is not an easy subject.

Adam looks bleak. "You hunted it down? Got revenge?"

You know, it is fascinating to explore the double meaning behind so much of what ghoul-Adam says. Adam the human would ask these questions as well, would want to know how his father died and what his brothers did about it, but this is not Adam, it is the ghoul using Adam to find out how its nemesis died, testing, carefully and repeatedly broaching the subject of revenge, which is what this entire episode is all about. Again and again the ghoul raises the subject, and it is so cleverly written, because it makes perfect sense for Adam, as a son of John Winchester, to focus on vengeance for his dead mother, while also demonstrating clearly how much it is on the mind of the ghoul working undercover to achieve its own revenge.

"Dean killed it," Sam says, still focused on the shotgun in his hand, still reluctant to go into any detail.

"So it's over for you," Adam concludes.

Sam stills, gives that statement a little thought before he turns to look Adam in the eye. "It's never over," he grimly states.


This is the function that Adam serves in this episode: he holds a mirror up to Sam, providing a sharp reminder of who he used to be and who he has become, how greatly he has changed since we first met him. The Sam of the Pilot was much as Adam seems to be, mild-mannered and unassuming, but has now hardened almost beyond all recognition, become every bit as obsessed with revenge as his father ever was.

Revenge is never over, Sam says, and it is a very telling statement, revealing so much about his state of mind right now. The theme of revenge has been woven throughout the show right from the start, and right from the start it has always been clear that a heavy price must be paid for the pursuit of it – we saw it clearly in John, his transformation from loving, gentle father to harsh, driven drill sergeant, a transformation this episode has reminded us of. The change in Sam highlighted in this episode provides further evidence of the toll taken by the pursuit of revenge, a process that began in that first episode, with Jessica's death, and has been gradually escalating ever since.

There were many other factors playing into the changes in both John and Sam, but that desire for revenge was both the trigger and driving factor for both, and in Sam escalated alarmingly after Dean's death, when he no longer had his brother to keep him grounded – and I can't help but remember the wise words of the vampire Luther, way back in Dead Man's Blood in season one: 'Revenge isn't worth much if you end up dead.' It also isn't worth much if you lose everything you have and everything you are in its pursuit.

All of a sudden, the lights go out and the room is plunged into darkness, while ominous knocking sounds can be heard from the ventilation system. While Adam stutters his bemusement, Sam instantly hits red alert, cautioning the boy to be quiet and stay where he is while Sam investigates. He scopes out the entire room plus bathroom, shotgun at the ready, but there is no one in sight, while those sinister knocking sounds continue.

At length, Sam takes a long hard look at the ventilation shaft up near the ceiling, remembers how Adam's mother died, hisses that 'it' is in the vents and hurries his young half-brother out of the room, quick smart. Before following, he takes a quick random pot-shot up at the vent en route, just in case of a lucky strike, I suppose, or as a warning shot – or, you know, to encourage the neighbours to call the police or something.

Parking lot

Sam hurries Adam down from the first floor to the parking lot and over to Adam's car, since Dean has taken the Impala. As they run, Adam tosses Sam the keys when he asks for them, not questioning for a moment that Sam should be the one to take charge and drive, even though it is Adam's car.


But as Sam hastens to unlock the door, something grabs his feet from beneath the car and starts to pull him under!

Adam yells and runs to grab Sam's arm, trying to pull him back out – nicely played by the ghoul, because the Impala is just pulling into the parking lot, so it would look mighty suspicious to Dean if he just stood there licking his lips, while reacting with fear and trying to help cements his credentials as the long-lost brother.

Between them, Dean and Adam manage to haul Sam back out from under the car, and Dean then grabs Sam's dropped shotgun and reaches down to rip off a quick blast.

Whatever was down there appears to be gone. The trio sit and catch their breath, exchanging looks of alarm at the escalating situation – Dean looks worriedly to Sam, who meets his eyes with equal concern and then looks worriedly at Adam, who meets his eyes and then drops to the tarmac, exhausted with all these dramatic goings on.


Later

Adam pulls his car back to reveal that he had parked over the top of a drain, the cover of which has been removed. It was from this drain that Sam was attacked, which – wow the thing got down into the sewers fast from the motel ventilation shafts!

So, bearing in mind that this was a deliberate trap, the ghoul and its sibling working together to separate and then kill the brothers, them arguing and Dean storming out played right into their hands. It is worth wondering why they are going after Sam first – Dean is just as vulnerable each time he goes off alone in the episode, but Sam is attacked first every time. It is probably because the ghouls are wary of the brothers, knowing them to be hunters, and believe two against one gives them a better chance of success. Whenever Dean goes off alone in the episode, Sam stays with Adam, who has no pretext for leaving; therefore to achieve the desired odds of two against one, Sam has to be the first target.

Dean cautiously approaches the drain, shotgun at the ready, and crouches to investigate. Traces of blood around the rim of the hole tell him that he winged it, but likely no more than that, and Sam didn't get a good look. Both are completely stumped as to what this thing might be.


Adam eyes the two for a moment, and then hesitantly asks if they should go after it, but Dean says no – in the maze that is the sewer system, it will be long gone.

"All right," says Sam, staring straight ahead, deep in thought. "We don't know what it is, but we do know who it's going after. Joe Barton. Adam's Mom."

"And Adam," Dean finishes. "It was under his truck, just waiting for him."

That's a pretty big conclusion to jump to, based on the evidence. Both Adam and Sam were standing beside the truck, but it was Sam that the creature went for, not Adam, yet neither Dean nor Sam questions that Adam, as the common denominator in two out of three attacks, was the main target. They are now both taking him at face value, an innocent caught up in something terrible through no fault of his own, and their assumptions stem from that belief, leaving them both wide open to the ghouls.

"It set a trap, and I walked right into it," Sam wearily drawls, annoyed with himself. He's right, and yet still doesn't know just what the trap really is, or that Adam is manipulative bait, rather than innocent bystander.


"It doesn't matter," Dean soothes. "You're right, there's a pattern. Joe Barton was a cop," he explains, the Winchester brothers fading into background with the camera focusing on Adam's impassive face as Dean continues the brainstorming, "So we've got him, Dad's girl, and his son."

All the people John knew in town, Sam nods, following his brother's line of reasoning. They are so close to the truth and yet so far, because they have entirely ceased to question Adam's identity. The ghoul has adopted the perfect disguise to mislead them – talk about working undercover!

Dean shrugs that at least they know why it is back, and the camera remains focused on Adam's profile, which doesn't so much as twitch as he leadenly states, "It wants revenge."

He is speaking absolute truth, coming right out and telling them what he and his sibling are working toward, and they don't even know it.

Milligan house

The Intrepid Trio head back to Adam's house. Adam ducks under the police tape across the door, determinedly playing at the good little law-abiding student. Dean, characteristically, just rips it off as he strides through, and brusquely tells Adam to grab his stuff before they hit the road.

Adam obediently heads upstairs and Dean watches him go with an unreadable expression on his face before turning back to Sam, who is busily elevating his ankle, which must have been wrenched when it was grabbed earlier, and I really love that not a single word is said about it, ever. Throughout the background of this scene we see Sam resting his ankle on a chair and beginning to strap it, but if you listened to the dialogue without watching you would never know that there was any injury anywhere in sight. It speaks volumes for how matter-of-fact both brothers are about minor injuries, taking them completely in their stride as being all in a day's work – practically their normal state of health.


"We shouldn't leave," Sam feels.

"Yeah, stay here where the kid's mom got ganked, good one," Dean disagrees. Sam is serious, but Dean is having none of it. "No, Sam," he insists. "We're going to take the kid, we're going to drop him off at Bobby's, and then you and me are going to come back here and finish what Dad started."

That plan reveals so much about Dean. There's the ease with which he defaults to Bobby as someone he can turn to for aid (and babysitting duties); Dean needs that father figure, needs to know he has someone in his life he can turn to when the going gets tough to relieve at least a little of the pressure he is under. There's also his reluctance to engage with Adam in any way, not even referring to him by name, wanting to keep him at a distance, the greater the better – and South Dakota to Minnesota is a pretty big distance. There is the need to clear up John's perceived mess, since the brothers have concluded that he must have not completed the kill back in 1990 for whatever reason, and certainly whatever is here now appears to be going after anyone he was connected with back then. And there is Dean's need to focus on the case as a case, rather than thinking about Adam as a person and half-brother.

Then again, though, if the thing is going after Adam – as the brothers believe – there is no reason to think it won't just follow him out of town if he leaves. So Sam has a point here.

Pulling a support bandage out of a field kit from his duffel, Sam asks how they are going to finish the job. "We've got no leads, no witnesses. We do have what this thing wants."

That's a pretty defeatist attitude. They can hardly claim to have looked under every stone for clues – Sam especially has given the case itself barely any thought or attention since he started focusing on Adam. They have solved plenty of similarly baffling cases in the past, and if Adam weren't around to provide such a distraction would be free to continue digging for information until they learned more. But Sam has already set his mind on a particular course of action and, as usual, tunnel vision has set in. He just does not see any other possibilities, focused on the plan he has chosen to the exclusion of all else.

Frowning as Sam's meaning hits him, Dean turns away from his perusal of the photographs on the fridge, takes a quick glance toward the hallway in case Adam is lurking in the vicinity, and then rounds on his brother in disbelief. "You want to use the kid as bait? That's why you want to stay here?"

"Maybe it'll come back," Sam suggests, staring grimly off into space. "We could train Adam. Get him ready."

The contrasts between this conversation and a similar conversation they held way back in Something Wicked, in season one, are stark, with the role of each brother completely reversed. Back then Dean was the one who advocated telling the truth to a young innocent and using him as bait, since they knew the monster was going to come after him anyway. But in that instance they knew a lot more about the creature than they do here – specifically knew that it could not be killed except while feeding. They needed the child, had no way to destroy the creature without him, and it was clear throughout that the necessity of using him in this way was something Dean bitterly regretted, even as he argued in favour of the plan. Here, in contrast, he vehemently argues against using Adam as bait, despite the fact that Adam is a lot older than young Michael was and, thanks to Sam, already knows the truth. It is worth wondering where his reaction stems from: maybe that he doesn't want Adam in particular to be used that way, seeing it as a betrayal of what John had tried to achieve for the boy, or maybe more that he can't quite believe Sam is the one making the suggestion.

Sam has also reversed the stance he took back then. In Something Wicked Sam was appalled at the idea of using a child as bait, however necessary it was – he wanted to preserve the boy's innocence and later mourned for what Michael had lost. Here, in contrast, he doesn't bat an eyelid as he so coldly suggests using his newfound half-brother as bait for a monster they don't even know anything about, not even what it is – seems almost to relish the idea as much as Dean grieved over it back then. This dispassionate stance tells us so, so much about where Sam's head is at. However accepting of Adam he might appear to be, however much he has come across as sympathetic and approachable, it is all surface rather than substance. Emotionally he is very much holding the boy at arm's length, just as he tends to with Dean lately, keeping his heart as untouched as he possibly can in an attempt to avoid further hurt. He has become so very disengaged.

We could train Adam, get him ready, Sam suggests, as if a few hasty lessons could possibly prepare the boy for whatever it is that seems to be after him. What Sam is proposing is not the same as Dean's suggestion in Something Wicked. Then, the child was strictly bait, with the brothers making use of the fact that the shtriga was going to go after him anyway, whether they were there or not, and focusing all their efforts on protecting him. Their investigation had been exhaustive, so that they knew in advance of the operation exactly what the creature was, how it operated and how it could be killed. It was strictly a one off, after which Michael would be free to live the rest of his life in peace, knowing that there were heroes out there as well as monsters.

Here, in contrast, Sam seems to have already given up on investigating the creature itself, seeing it as almost incidental to the wider world of the supernatural; his argument is more about preparing Adam to defend himself in general, as if he has a target painted on his back for all and sundry to attack. For Sam it is all about being ready for whatever might strike next – or not being ready, as the case may be. He sees his younger self in Adam, and remembers only too vividly what ignorance cost him, sees here an opportunity for Adam not to make the same mistakes that Sam feels he made – the chance to achieve vengeance, to take control of his life and not be a victim again. It's all about Sam, not about Adam, and not about this case. Dean's issues with Adam might be louder and more transparent, but Sam's are right there when you look for them.

"He could die, Sam," Dean objects.

"We could all die, Dean," Sam dismisses, annoyed. "Even if we do kill this thing, there are tons of other freaks that want revenge – on Dad, on us. If they find the kid, he's dead. He's not ready."

Wow, that's bleak. Cold and bleak and very revealing.

'The kid'. As when Dean says it, the epithet is all about establishing distance, about dealing with the practicalities of Adam's existence and predicament while remaining emotionally detached from him. He sounds cold and impersonal, which is Sam all over this season, but it still hurts to hear. He truly has given up hope of anything better, ever, for any of them, and from where Sam is standing it makes perfect sense. Revenge is never over, he told Adam earlier, and if that is true for Sam then it must be true for others, as well, particularly the creatures they make a career out of hunting; therefore trying to walk away is never going to work because they will always be able to find you and if you turn your back and lower your defences you will be easy prey. Constant vigilance is the only way to even begin to guarantee safety. It is a depressingly bleak outlook, particularly coming from Sam, who as late as Criss Angel Is A Douchebag was still looking for a way out, for a future in which it would be possible to walk away. No wonder he is trying so hard not to care about anyone or anything.

It is also worth considering that Sam has there very neatly put his finger on the ultimate pointlessness of revenge in that statement of its self-perpetuating nature, and yet even as he says it he shows no sign of comprehending what it actually means: that the healthy thing to do is walk away before being sucked into a downward spiral of tit-for-tat vengeance that can only result in doom for all concerned. Sam is already caught in that spiral and can see no way out – no longer even understands that there is such a thing as 'out'. That's why he can't see any other option for Adam that will give him even a fighting chance of survival.

"I'll do it," Adam surprises them both by announcing, having quietly snuck back downstairs without either brother noticing. "Whatever it takes, I'll do it. I want to do it."

Now, the real Adam might or might not have been offended to hear Sam talking about him so dismissively, might or might not have similarly volunteered in this way to help kill the creature that murdered his mother, but this is the ghoul and of course he doesn't want to leave. In addition, volunteering to play bait has the advantage of making Adam look brave and noble – and very Winchesterly, what with that desire for revenge being such a familial trait – while the ghoul knows full well that he isn't in the slightest bit of danger at all.

Once again Dean's hand is forced, which has been a recurring theme throughout the show. Time after time, Dean has to rely on the cooperation of his family to achieve his goals, and that cooperation is usually hard if not downright impossible to come by, whereas they can easily force him to follow their chosen course of action just by carrying on and doing it anyway, thus requiring him to join them or be left behind.

Dean and Sam exchange glances.

Woods

Sometime later, Dean and Sam have found a nice remote location in the woods someplace for an impromptu shooting lesson by way of inducting Adam into the family business.

Sam is conducting said impromptu shooting lesson, that is. Dean, once again, has removed himself from the bonding session, opting instead to watch from the outside.

Sam goes first, by way of demonstration, impressing Adam by ripping off three neat bull's-eyes in the target they have painted on a random no trespassing sign a short distance away. And, ooh, nifty, there's a really arty shot, looking back at Sam and Adam through a bullet hole. Very nice.


"It's easy," Sam breezes. "Just feel the recoil and time the trigger pulls. Three times."


Sam is enjoying this. He likes being able to show off his skill and impress the kid and be the big brother, gets a kick out of being able to pass on his knowledge and expertise just as Dean once did for him, to have a little brother looking up to him with trust and respect the way he looked up to Dean throughout their shared childhood and adolescence. Sam enjoys any kind of leadership role, and Adam's status as younger brother provides the perfect opportunity for it, with none of the history and baggage of Sam's relationship with Dean to get in the way. It makes for a cleaner, less pressured relationship in a way that is simply impossible with Dean at present, no matter how their roles twist and reverse.

It is really interesting to consider Sam's interactions with Adam throughout this episode, the way he simultaneously keeps his emotional distance while revelling in the opportunity to play at being the big brother, this dichotomy symbolic of Sam's immense inner turmoil all season. We have seen in recent episodes just how isolated Sam feels, that he badly misses and mourns the close bond he and Dean once shared, even as he perpetuates and deepens their divide with his lies and dismissive behaviour, pushing his brother away more and more as time goes by. Lies beget bigger lies, and Sam really has manoeuvred himself into a corner with his. He longs for Dean's support and he longs for Dean's trust, but has robbed himself of both and cannot see any way out of the mess he is in, believes wholeheartedly that he has no choice but to stay the course no matter how painful it is. As heartbreaking as it is, he cannot see any way of fixing things with Dean, but now there is Adam, a complete blank state, offering the possibility of a fresh start, as it were. Although Sam maintains emotional distance, ever fearful of giving his heart and risking further hurt, Adam provides him with a substitute for Dean in much the same way that Ruby does, allowing him at least some semblance of everything he can't have from Dean right now: trust, respect and companionship on Sam's terms, no complications.

Adam takes the gun and gets ready, looking every inch the awkward teen who has never handled a gun before. Sure enough, his first shot goes wild…but the three that follow all hit the target, including one bull's-eye. "Beginner's luck, right?" he chirps, while Sam cheerily assures him that he is a natural. Oh, but man – this unexpected skill is another clue. The ghoul is playing games, practically signalling himself, yet neither brother sees it, completely sucked in by his cover identity and what it means for them.


Lurking all alone alongside the Impala in his self-imposed isolation from this fraternal bonding session, Dean watches and broods, the scene before him hitting hard for numerous different reasons. This isn't what John wanted for Adam, and we are going to respect his wishes, Dean told Sam earlier, only to have that desire and his authority undermined completely. Whether it be necessary or not, whether it be truly what Adam wants or not, Dean will see this as letting John down – and as letting Adam down, too, seeing him being sucked in despite all efforts at protecting him, without any way of understanding what he is getting himself into, when he could have had at least a chance of a normal life, even if it wasn't possible for the rest of them.

Watching Sam teaching Adam must also be a sharp reminder for Dean of simpler, happier days when he took that role for Sam and Sam allowed himself to be taught, guided and protected, the days when Sam still needed him, clung to his support instead of pushing him away. With Sam now taking on that role for Adam, engaging the boy's trust and respect without acknowledgement of how badly his lies and emotional distance have hurt Dean, Dean no longer knows where he stands, feels pushed out by the relationships both his father and brother had and have with this young interloper, the cuckoo in the nest. Dean has always defined himself by family – by his role as caretaker of the family – and must feel completely lost now. And on top of all that, he can see clearly just how much Sam is becoming more and more like John all the time, in both the rigidity of his thinking and his tendency toward secrets and evasions, and, as much as he worshipped his father, it worries him tremendously to see Sam following a similar path in life.

Adam's house

Back at the house, Sam and Adam leaf through various books of supernatural beasties while Sam regales his newfound brother with tales of his and Dean's derring-do. We enter the scene just as Sam is telling Adam how they lit something on fire with a homemade flamethrower, so I'm guessing we're talking about the changelings here, rather than the rugaru, since I can't see Sam sounding so blasé about that one.


Somewhat awed, Adam questions the homemade flamethrower part, and Sam smiles that they are easy to build. That's easy for him to say, since Dean is the one who always does the building! Sam offers to show Adam how to build his own flamethrower, while Dean shakes his head off in the background.

Sam is starting to look engaged again in these last couple of scenes, not just putting on a show of sympathy and affability for Adam but enjoying himself, teaching and imparting knowledge – although still not opening his heart to Adam, never once sharing anything personal with the boy, focused rather on playing the role of strong, confident mentor. He really believes that this is for the best and is relishing the chance to help Adam avoid the mistakes he believes he has made, believes that this newfound brother will be better off knowing as much as possible, because Sam equates knowledge with control and independence…but there is also a dark undercurrent to Sam's delight in teaching Adam, driving a wedge between this boy and the safe, normal life he has always led, the kind of life Sam once so desperately craved and was not allowed to have.

The culture shock is starting to set in for Adam – or, you know, the ghoul is feigning it, because it is appropriate. "This is some job you've got, man," he incredulously snorts.

Seeing an ideal opening to deliver a rousing pep talk and mission statement, Sam takes a moment to gather himself up into lecture mode, wholeheartedly embracing his adopted role as teacher. "Being a hunter isn't a job, Adam," he instructs. "It's life. You're pre-med – you've got a girlfriend, friends?" Adam nods, silent and serious, focused on Sam's speech. Sam shakes his head, holding the boy's eyes. "Not any more, you don't," he insists, deadly serious. "If you're really going to do this, you can't have those kinds of connections. Ever. They're weaknesses. You'll just put those people in danger, get them killed." His eyes slide sideways toward Dean, who looks exasperated, as he finishes. "It's the price we pay. You cut 'em out and you don't look back. There's only one thing you can count on. Family."


Again, this is a hugely revealing speech, telling us so, so much about Sam's state of mind right now. Dean made a similar statement back in season one, although both his expression and execution of the concept were and are markedly different, but Sam has now internalised the lesson completely, to the point where he will not allow himself to get emotionally attached to anyone at all – even to Dean, in some ways, because his love for his brother makes him vulnerable, which scares him. He has loved and lost, in violent circumstances, too many times already, and holds himself increasingly aloof.

As speeches go, it is an extremely harsh one, a bleak and unforgiving mission statement, Sam finally making the drawbacks and austerity of this life clear to Adam, now that the boy has already agreed to it without having possession of all the facts. It is a wakeup call, an attempt to shatter any remaining illusions Adam might be harbouring – and, as such, is in many ways aimed as much at Sam himself as it is Adam. Sam sees Adam as his younger self, the naïve dreamer who was so foolish to believe he could ever escape his family legacy and lead a normal life, and it is that vision of his own younger self that he is really addressing here, an object lesson that he would dearly love to deliver to spare himself a lot of heartache, but instead must live vicariously through Adam.

Sam is also directing this speech as much toward Dean as toward Adam, and it is especially telling that it is as he states 'it's the price we pay' that he turns his eyes toward his older brother. He is clearly hoping that Dean will read between the lines and understand the sentiment behind his words, the explanation of his attitude as well as the statement of his absolute commitment, both to the hunt and to their family. Knowing how much family and togetherness mean to Dean and how much Dean always wanted Sam and John to get along, no doubt he hopes that it will help set his brother's mind at rest, on some level at least, that it is what Dean wants to hear – that Dean will approve. For all his independence of thought and deed, Sam still longs for his brother's approval…which only makes it all the more sad that he has himself sabotaged his chances of receiving it again any time soon. Even now, with this statement, Sam's efforts only serve to achieve the opposite result than he was hoping for, as, far from approving of Sam's new, hard line approach, Dean sees only further evidence of how much his little brother has changed – and not for the better, in his eyes.

There's only one thing you can count on: family, Sam says, reminiscent of a similar statement by Dean, way back in Dead Man's Blood back in season one, when he declared them stronger as a family. It is true, but only when they are united, and both have forgotten that of late, instead pulling away from one another – Sam especially, alas.

Dean can't take any more and calls Sam into the hallway to talk in private, thus giving Adam a welcome break from the intensity of his induction into the family business.

"What the hell was that?" Dean incredulously demands, and Sam looks blank, doesn't see what the problem is. "Hunting is life?" Dean reminds him, still incredulous. "You can't have connections? Dad gave you that exact same speech, remember? It was just before you ditched us for Stanford. You hated Dad for saying that stuff, and now you're quoting him?"


Dad gave you that exact same speech…man. Not only was Sam using Adam as an avatar for a lesson he would dearly love to deliver to his younger self, he was using him to drive home a lesson his younger self was given, but chose to disregard – a second chance to get it right, by helping Adam to learn from Sam's perceived mistakes, re-creating the boy in his own current image.

It is a lesson that Dean himself tried to reinforce for Sam more than once back in season one, but his opposition to Sam's version of it here is twofold: partly he is dismayed by the extent to which Sam has embraced the concept, and partly he is drawing a clear distinction between those already caught in the life and those who don't have to be, Adam falling into the latter category in Dean's eyes. Back when Dean was delivering a similar 'no connections' message, Sam was already back on the road and pursuing the hunting career he'd been raised for, effectively trying to lead a double life by maintaining his links with his old friends back at Stanford, so that in Skin, for example, Dean's objection to Sam keeping in touch with his old friends wasn't about putting them in danger but was about Sam protecting himself from the consequences of the lies he must inevitably tell them.

For Dean, avoiding connections with outsiders isn't a hard and fast rule but is about self-preservation, since he always knows both that he must always move on and leave them behind and that they will not believe the things he knows to be true. Sam's version here is far more fatalistic and absolute, hard for Dean to reconcile with the Sam he knew all his life, who fought so hard and so bitterly against such strictures – the Sam who would once have regarded Adam as an innocent to be protected, not a soldier to be trained.

It has been a long time since Sam's acrimonious departure for Stanford was raised, especially in such hostile terms, the fact that Dean still remembers it as Sam 'ditching' his family being very telling. Adam really has got Dean highly wound up and on edge, bringing a lot of painful memories to the fore, including the fact that Sam wasn't around at the time that John found out Adam existed. The reason Sam wasn't around was because he had utterly rejected his father's life lessons, so that Dean's dismay and disbelief here go hand in hand with frustration and anger at how pointless all that bitter fighting between his father and brother ultimately was, since Sam has now come to agree with John so completely.

Sam looks a little dismayed and defensive at having his past thrown in his face like this, but meets the accusation head on, flings it back with a belligerent, "Yeah, well, turns out Dad was right."


Dean still can't quite believe he is hearing this coming from Sam, especially since he has himself revised his opinion on so much of what John said and did. "Since when?"

"Since always," Sam fiercely insists. He has become as firm an adherent of John's teachings as Dean ever was, for very different reasons that are every bit as unhealthy. "Dean, when I look at Adam, you know what I see?"

"A normal kid," Dean firmly states. That's what he sees and that's what he wants to preserve, something he was unable to achieve with Sam due to the circumstances of their life, but Adam is different, wasn't raised in the shadow of the supernatural – doesn't have to be doomed to this the way they were.

"No." Sam shakes his head, utterly implacable. "Meat. Because to the demons and monsters out there, that's all he is.


Wow, that's a brutally harsh, ruthless and horribly fatalistic outlook to be carrying around. It is reminiscent of John in Dead Man's Blood admitting that after Mary's death all he could see was evil, everywhere, and that this blinded him to all other considerations, drove him to become drill sergeant instead of father.

"I hated Dad for a long time, I did," Sam fiercely continues. "But now, I think I understand him. So, we didn't have a dog and a white picket fence, so what? Dad did right by us; he taught us how to protect ourselves. Adam deserves the same."

Sam has lost the ability to hope, and now sees only recklessly foolish naivety when he looks back upon his youthful dreams and ambitions. Where once he believed it was possible to walk away and lead a normal life, as if the supernatural did not exist and certainly was not his or his family's responsibility, he now feels that escape of any kind was always impossible and that if only he had accepted that earlier his loved ones would not have suffered and died. This combines with his increasingly dispassionate attitude, his growing determination not to allow himself to form emotional attachments, since they can only lead to further pain down the track, because the world is full of evil things and revenge is never over. Thus his attitude toward Adam here, although still inspired by the very best of intentions, is more like that of the drill sergeant John admitted to becoming than brother, resolved upon stark practicality rather than individuality or emotion, with the narrowest possible focus.

Sam is getting heated, because this really means a lot to him. He is trying to make Dean understand what he is thinking and feeling, but all he succeeds in doing is worrying and alarming his brother all the more, because this new and oh-so ruthless attitude is so very far from the gentle and idealistic young man Sam used to be. Dean shakes his head in dismay, really can't believe he is hearing this. "Listen to yourself, man," he sighs, eyeing his brother with deep concern.


"You think I'm wrong?" Sam snits. He also can't quite believe what he is hearing, because he thought this is what Dean always wanted: for him to agree with John. It is an incredibly simplistic, black-and-white outlook, recognising none of the nuance, none of the depth and complexity of the issues involved here. Utterly blinkered.

"I think it's too late for us," says Dean, a stark, sad statement. "This is our life, this is who we are, and it's fine, I accept that. But with Adam? He's still got a chance, man. He can go to school, he can be a doctor –"

It isn't the first time Dean has spoken with such resignation of the life he has been enmeshed in since childhood. As long ago as No Exit, at the start of season two, he laid it on the line for young Jo Harvelle: 'No one in their right mind chooses this life. My Dad started me in this when I was so young…I wish I could do something else.' Having accepted early on that there was no way out for him, when we first met Dean at the start of the show, his natural optimism and zest for life saw him dwelling only on the positive aspects of his lifestyle, the freedom it afforded him and the satisfaction he drew from his life-saving work. Since then, however, an ever-decreasing spiral of tragedy and sacrifice has seen that natural optimism and zest for life gradually whittled away until they are now all but gone, and where once he still hoped that Sam might one day have something more, that hope has long since been extinguished.

'Our family is not cursed, we just had our dark spots,' Dean once protested, back in Nightmare in season one, but he has since reversed that opinion completely, knowing now that he and his brother were doomed before they were even born. The demonic deal Mary struck to save John's life set the ball rolling, the Yellow-Eyed Demon marked Sam in his infancy, and John's decision to raise his sons as hunters then sealed their fate.

Adam, though, Dean sees as entirely external to the curse of the Winchesters, having absolutely no connection to that legacy of hunting and demonic dealing, as he stems from a different line entirely. He isn't a Winchester and he isn't a Campbell, he is a Milligan. To Dean, Adam is no different than any other innocent they encounter from case to case; all they have to do is resolve this specific problem and he can go on with his life in peace, doesn't have to be dragged down with the rest of them.

"What makes Adam so special?" Sam spits. He sounds jealous – why should Adam have what Sam was denied? But this question also ties in with Sam's belief that they are all cursed, Adam included, that the monsters won't leave Adam alone because he isn't special, he's one of them.


"What, are you jealous of the kid?" Dean pointedly asks.

"Are you?" Sam bats back, equally pointedly.

Both have hit home because both are right. It cannot be doubted that they are both jealous of this newfound brother, for very different and entirely personal reasons. For Dean, Adam is a living symbol of his father's betrayal, and his pain and bitter resentment lead him to keep the boy at arm's length at all times, accepting him as a responsibility but not as family, even as he tries to do what he sees as best for him. For Sam, meanwhile, his fierce desire to remove Adam from his safe, normal existence might appear to him to be the only logical way to ensure the boy's ongoing safety, but is motivated just as much by envy that Adam has always had what Sam craved so desperately but was always denied, and an almost vindictive wish to take it away from him, because if Sam can't have it then why should Adam.

The brothers each back off and spend a moment simmering quietly, shooting hurt and angry glances at each other.

"Dean." Sam picks his words carefully, trying to explain why he feels so strongly about this. "All this? It's not real. The Dad Adam knew? He wasn't real. The things out there in the shadows, they are real. The world is coming to an end – that's real. Everything else is just part of the crap people tell themselves to get through the day."

Once again we remember John in Dead Man's Blood, admitting, 'after your mother passed, all I saw was evil, everywhere.' Similarly we remember Sam at the end of Houses of the Holy, brokenly confessing that, 'there's so much evil out in the world […] I feel like I could drown in it.' Sam has been teetering on the brink of this dark pit of despair ever since Jessica died, but it was Dean's death followed by the beginning of the Apocalypse that finally pushed him over the edge, to the point where he truly believes that safety and so-called normality are no more than illusions, illusions that he has paid a high price for pursuing and will not be deceived by ever again. That brittle narrow-mindedness has always been a facet of Sam's personality, but now that it has turned toward such intense fatalism it has led him to a truly dangerous place to be, psychologically.

"Dad didn't have a choice with us, okay," Dean fiercely hisses. "But with Adam he did. Adam doesn't have to be cursed."

Sam snorts. "He's a Winchester. He's already cursed."


Once upon a time Dean furiously argued against any notion of their family being cursed. Now he has fatalistically come to believe it. He does, however, see no reason why Adam should be included in that, because he might be John's son but he is not family, whereas to Sam, being John's son makes Adam a Winchester, that blood connection cursing him even if he does not bear the name – of course blood would be what counts for Sam, given the significance of his.

Dean shakes his head in denial. "No. No, whatever's hunting Adam, I'm going to find it," he insists. It's a classic Dean impulse, wanting to fix things for his family, wanting to protect the innocent. He may not regard Adam as a brother, but does acknowledge him as John's son, and thus sees this as something he can do for his dad, as well as for Adam as an innocent victim in his own right.

"You already looked everywhere, Dean," Sam coldly snips. It's not exactly a vote of confidence in his brother's ability to solve the case, and again does not acknowledge the fact that Sam himself has made next to no effort whatsoever to find out what this creature is. It's just a cold, flat, morale-sapping statement of negativity, designed to undercut and diminish – not even a hint of encouragement or support, no suggestion of compromise or teamwork. Sam does not expect Dean to be able to protect Adam, and that is hurtful, but ties in completely with Sam's character progression and attitude this season. Once upon a time Sam clung to Dean as a shield, believed that his brother could protect him from anything, but then Dean died and Sam was left alone and now looks back on his younger self with scorn, can no longer see his brother as anything but human and fallible. Dean couldn't save himself, and he couldn't save Sam from what he has become, so why should he be able to save Adam? It is typically Sam to have become so blinkered, so focused on his brother's weakness that he can no longer see his strengths, has all but forgotten how skilled a hunter he truly is, in spite of it all.

"Well, then I'll look again," Dean firmly insists, and pushes past Sam to walk out of the house, leaving his brother to stew in frustration.


Damn, but the brothers just can't see eye to eye on anything any more, and absolutely cannot make each other understand their respective points of view. This argument in particular was fascinating, especially since, as so often in the past, they each had valid points to make, with no clearly defined right or wrong in either of their positions. The debate also served to underline just how much both brothers have changed in their outlook and motivation over the years – as well as just how much the seeds of who they have become already existed in who they always were.

Cemetery. Night

Dean drives off to the cemetery to take another look around the ransacked crypt he investigated earlier, presumably on the off-chance that he might spot something he missed last time, now that he doesn't have a chaperone hanging over his shoulder.

It's hard to really see much of what he's doing, since pretty much the only lighting in this scene is his flashlight, but the gist is that he has a pretty good look around in search of anything out of the ordinary – desecrated tombs aside – that might possibly be a clue. He doesn't immediately spot anything, and heaves a weighty sigh of despondency…but then almost immediately gets his second wind when something catches his attention. Tucked away in the far corner of the crypt, right down almost at floor level, one of the stone blocks in the wall has been disturbed.


A short time later, Dean has managed to lever the stone out of the wall to reveal a tunnel. He takes a moment to reflect on how much it sucks to have to crawl through yet another confined space, shakes his head at his bad luck, and starts crawling.

The tunnel opens out into another crypt, every bit as pitch dark as the other, this one with skeletons randomly strewn around the floor, evidence of further grave disturbance that the authorities have not yet discovered – clearly the lair of whatever the creature is.

"Home, sweet home," Dean snarks, because Dean can never resist talking to himself when he is alone, and he starts poking around for any clues as to what this creature might be or where to find it.

Within moments he has stumbled over something, quite literally – the bloody remains of the unfortunate Joe Barton. There isn't much left of him: an arm, some guts and gore, and his distinctive spectacles, which allow Dean to identify him.

Okay, thought the first: I really hope that when this is over Dean remembers to make an anonymous call to give Lisa Barton closure on her husband's disappearance. And thought the second: Dean's getting his fingerprints all over the crime scene again!

"Sloppy Joe," Dean ruefully remarks, just to ensure that we know he knows who this is. Then, before he can continue his search, a sound from the other end of the tunnel draws his attention, and he hurries back to it just in time to see the stone blocks being replaced at the other end. Without stopping to think, he hurriedly rips off a few shots, aiming for what little he can see past the stone being manoeuvred into position…but succeeds only in triggering a minor cave-in that blocks the tunnel completely, effectively trapping him in the crypt.

Once again it is clear that the ghouls feel safer working as a pair – either that or they both want in on the kill. Dean would have been easy prey here, being alone and trapped, yet they choose to go after Sam first, because he has got the Adam-ghoul with him, with no excuse for leaving to join his fellow here with Dean, whereas this one is free to move around as it pleases, so can join Adam to gang up on Sam, leaving Dean here to deal with later.

"Oh, son of a bitch," Dean groans when he sees the blocked tunnel. He quickly scans the room once more, sees no obvious way out, and tries his cell phone, but there is no reception, of course. "Son of a bitch," he sighs again, realising that he is trapped with no way of summoning help – whatever this is can pick him off at its leisure, and Sam is on his own guarding Adam.

Adam's house

Back at the house, Sam and Adam are busily preparing themselves for whatever might try to attack again, laying down salt lines at every door and window and sealing up all the vents but one, getting all set up for a siege. Finally Sam is satisfied that they are in control of the situation – if anything tries to come after Adam, there is just the one way into the house, through that final vent, and they intend to be ready for it.


Almost immediately, they hear the back door swing open downstairs.

Adam's all, "you were saying?" and Sam is adorably flustered. He's trying to take charge and prove himself capable by teaching Adam and protecting him, so to be immediately proved wrong is not good for the ego. Of course, it could be Dean coming back for all they know, since he is immune to anti-monster devices, but you have to wonder why they didn't lock the doors, as not all monsters are held back by salt and the like.

Then a woman's voice calls Adam's name and he reacts immediately, recognising his mother's voice. Sam is alarmed, knowing damn well that there is no way Kate is alive and that this is definitely a trap, but Adam doesn't listen, charging out of the room and downstairs to join her.

Kate has come in the back door, stepping right over the salt line, which…again, it might have been a good idea to lock the door, as well, since salt doesn't repel everything! Okay, maybe she had a key, scrounged from the corpse of the real Kate, but even so, her ability to walk right into the house, past all Sam's defensive measures, only goes to demonstrate the dangers of his inflexible outlook. He was certain that he had prepared for all possibilities, but without having put any effort into finding out what the enemy was had no way of knowing what he was trying to repel, and thus could not prepare adequate defences. All his efforts at impressing Adam serve mainly to highlight the flaws in his current way of thinking.

So, Kate stands there looking tired and afraid, babbling that she got away, and Adam rushes to her, ignoring Sam's yells of warning, throws his arms around her. Sam follows, shotgun at the ready, and shouts for Adam to step away from her, voice gruff with his alarm. Adam is equally alarmed to see a gun trained on his mother and shouts a protest, but Sam frantically shouts back that it isn't his mother. Kate expresses fear upon seeing this stranger in her house with a gun, and Adam is torn.


Crypt

Dean tries shoulder-charging the heavy door of the crypt a few times, but it is sealed tight, no way through.

Giving up, he starts to explore the crypt once more, noting the skeletons strewn around the floor, presumably tossed out of the tombs. This begs the question: why? Why take the skeletons out of their coffins? After all the blood in the vent and now seeing Joe Barton eviscerated, it is clear that whatever this is it is after flesh, but the skeletons don't have any, so why move them…?


In the spirit of finding the answer to that question, Dean pushes open the heavy lid of the nearest coffin, and recoils from the stench within.

There, concealed within someone else's coffin, lies the bloody corpse of Kate Milligan, all her guts hanging out, partially consumed.

Adam's house

Since Kate is well and truly dead, it is clear that Sam's panic upon seeing her supposedly alive and well back in her house is more than justified. He rails at her to get away from Adam, notKate whimpers and clings to her 'son' in fear, and Adam tries to placate, attempts to convince Sam that it is really her. Sam is certain, though – there was too much blood for Kate to have survived, and she certainly shows no sign of injury now.


I love the tension of this scene, with everyone gabbling at once and no one in control. It all adds up to a nicely effective air of crisis – and is excellent character continuity for Sam, who never copes all that well when his carefully laid plans go awry or when he has to focus on more than one voice or task at a time. He tries to grab Adam and pull him away from the creature…but Adam uses the opportunity to pull the shotgun out of his hands.

"Shoot it!" Sam yells in frustration, afraid for Adam and furious at losing control of the situation, while notKate pleads that he is crazy and it is really her, both of them calling to Adam over the top of one another, while Adam swings the gun wildly back and fore between the two of them, frantic with not knowing what to do, torn between mother and newly-found brother. "Shoot it, it's not human!" Sam yells.


But then, gun trained on notKate, Adam's expression changes, fear and panic giving way to a triumphant smirk, the transition from frightened victim to victorious monster brilliantly executed. "I know," he says…and whips around, slamming the butt of the gun into Sam's chin, knocking him out.

Whoa. That was a twist I totally did not see coming, first time around, confirmation that Dean was right all along: Adam is not real, this was a trap, and the brothers walked right into it.

Adam and notKate smirk at one another, pleased with their success.

You know, it is worth wondering why the charade was continued for so long. Adam could have taken Sam out easily almost as soon as they were alone, since he was so completely unsuspecting. Still, the two ghouls seem to prefer working as a partnership rather than alone, so maybe that is reason enough: he was waiting until his partner returned before making his move.

Crypt

Dean heaves open a second coffin…and finds inside the bloody, eviscerated corpse of the real Adam Milligan, the half-brother that he never actually got to meet in person.


Pressing a fist to his mouth in horror at both the stench and the sight, Dean looks distraught. He might have rejected Adam as part of his family, but had acknowledged him as a half-brother, and either way finding him dead sets up a whole new set of painful complexes about having failed both John and Adam, despite the fact that the boy was already dead long before Dean even knew he existed.

It is the perfect twist in the tail of this story that Adam has been dead all along. It allows the writers to use him for an in-depth exploration of the brothers' ongoing character development, an opportunity to pause and take stock of where they came from and where they now stand before we head into the season finale, but without any lasting impact on the structure of the show or the Winchester family, and without burdening the brothers with any responsibility for his death. Given the ridicule and suspicion with which the 'long lost sibling' trope is usually regarded within television, it is especially impressive that by the time we realise Adam is dead it becomes a source of deep sorrow and regret to realise that every interaction notAdam has had with the brothers was a lie, that they will never know the real Adam and he never even knew they existed.

It doesn't take Dean long to get over the immediate shock of finding Adam dead and realise that Sam is alone and unsuspecting with the thing that killed him and took his form. Panicking, with all his protective big brother instincts in full force, he starts hurling himself against the door once more, desperate to get out and get to Sam before it is too late.

The door won't budge. Dean flails and despairs and tries to figure out what the hell he is going to do, and then he notices something – a stained glass window set in the roof, for no apparent reason. Glass = breakable = potential escape route, if only he can find a way of reaching it. He rushes into action.

Heh, and the image on the stained glass window is an angel. So, we have Dean trapped in a tomb, having to fight his way out, with an angel above him – oh, the imagery!

Adam's house

Sam regains consciousness to find himself securely tied to a table, bound hand and foot, with duct tape across his chest and legs for good measure.


You know, Sam has spent an awful lot of time in bondage, over the seasons. He seems to have acquired a gash in his side while he was unconscious, but otherwise is uninjured – so far. Ominously, however, a variety of knives have been laid out alongside him.

NotKate is perched on the edge of the table alongside Sam, picking her nails with a silver knife.

"No wonder none of the tests worked," Sam grimly notes. "You're not shapeshifters. You're ghouls."

Again, Dean was completely right about the trap. His downfall back in that initial meeting with Adam was that he did not prepare enough tests, having no way to prepare for every eventuality (and, like Sam, confining his suspicions to a few more obvious possibilities only) and having to fight against Sam playing devil's advocate at every step. Then once the brothers had taken the bait and accepted the truth of notAdam's story, they were easy prey.

NotKate sniffs that she finds the term 'ghoul' racist, and then slides off the table to lean in close, sniffing at Sam and nibbling at his ear, disturbingly, deliberately provocative, while he strains and writhes and huffs but is unable to escape the unwanted attention. "Fresh meat," she gloats. "So much better than what we're used to.


"I should have known," Sam grates out. "It was the fresh kills that threw me. Ghouls don't usually go after the living. You're just filthy scavengers, feeding off the dead, taking the form of the last corpse you choked down."

"And their thoughts," interrupts notAdam, drifting into the room at this point. "And their memories."

Okay, I really do not understand why a ghoul would need to take on the appearance of its last victim, still less absorb its thoughts and memories. Where is the benefit of that, other than to allow for this storyline? If they only ever eat corpses, they don't need to fool anyone, and if the corpses they normally consume are rotted, surely the appearance they take on would normally be similarly ghastly, which again would be of no benefit to them, serving only to horrify anyone they encountered rather than allowing them to blend in – plus, it makes little sense that memories of any kind can be plucked from the head of a long-dead corpse, given what we know of how death works on this show.

On top of all that, since rotten flesh is the staple diet for ghouls and always has been, I'm not so sure they would be so delighted by fresh meat.

Another thought: it was clear from what we saw of their corpses that neither Adam nor Kate was completely consumed, nowhere near, so I wonder just how much the ghouls have to eat to obtain the form and memories.

"Like Adam, for instance," notAdam continues.

"We are what we eat," notKate chirps.

"Monsters," Sam growls as notAdam slices his arm open.


We are what we eat. This is the point of the ghouls in this story: to provide an unsubtle commentary on Sam's eating habits this season. The ghouls are what they eat, taking on the form and memories of their victims, and Sam labels them monsters for it. We are what we eat is a theme that has run through the show since the early days of season one – in only the second ever episode we encountered the wendigo, which started out human but became a monster after turning to cannibalism, damned by its consumption of human flesh. Similarly, and perhaps more tellingly, earlier this season we met Jack Montgomery in Metamorphosis, a seemingly ordinary man who had the potential to turn into something monstrous within him from birth, but only made that transformation when he crossed the line and consumed human flesh.

Sam has been drinking the blood of a demon from the veins of a corpse. So if we are what we eat, what might this mean for him?

NotKate leans in and sucks blood from Sam's arm – in exactly the same way that we saw Sam drinking blood from Ruby's arm, emphasising the point. Here, the ghoul is drinking Sam's blood because she is a monster…but since Sam also drinks blood, what does that make him?

"You use that word a lot, Sam," notAdam snarls, slamming his knife point down into the tabletop beside Sam's head, much to his alarm. "But I don't think you know what it means."

"His blood, it tastes different," notKate interjects, once again hammering home the point that we are what we eat, and Sam has been consuming demon blood. This comment about the taste of his blood suggests fairly definitively, and extremely alarmingly, that Sam is experiencing very real physical chances as a result of his consumption of demon blood, emphasising the point that we are what we eat, and that what Sam eats could well be damning him. In On The Head Of A Pin we saw his irises turn demon black after drinking Ruby's blood. The power that he wields, which has been growing in strength with each 'hit', is demonic in nature and attribute. However good his intentions, the impact on both body and soul are fast spinning far out of his control. He is being changed, becoming something else, something other than human – once his greatest fear – and it only remains to be seen just how far those changes will extend and whether the results could ever be considered worth the cost.

Makes you wonder, in fact, if as a result of drinking Sam's blood the ghouls might also take on certain demonic attributes – if they were to survive the episode, that is.

NotAdam continues. "Our father was a monster? Why? 'Cause of what he ate? He never hurt anyone, Sam. Living, anyway."

Well, that may or may not be true, but grave desecration does cause distress to the bereaved. There were 17 corpses stolen in the case John originally investigated, back in 1990, which can hardly be considered harmless, and sounds rather more like a creature spinning out of control than one just doing what it had to do to survive.

And here, again, there are parallels to Sam, who is consuming something he fears might turn him into a monster, but has never actually hurt anyone – not anyone human. Everything he has done, every decision that he has made, he can still justify to his own satisfaction as being for the greater good: saving lives and preventing the Apocalypse. The changes in his personality highlighted by this episode have been gradual, building on characteristics that he already possessed, such as pride and arrogance, rather than being something completely new, so that it is almost impossible for him to recognise just how much he has changed – just as it is impossible for us to know just how far those changes are a result of his circumstances, the demon blood, or a combination of the two.

Yet he still cannot countenance the idea of telling Dean what he is doing. It is the only sign we have that he is aware that his motives are not entirely pure or that what he is doing might be wrong, despite all justification.

"No, he was no monster," notKate picks up the tale. "But the thing that killed him was. A monster named John Winchester."

There are still more dark parallels there: siblings seeking to avenge the murder of a loved one. Show is not subtle in its comparisons!

The blurring of the line between right and wrong, hunting and murder, is a theme Show has played with on numerous occasions, winding through the seasons. It is interesting – and unsettling – to consider the ghouls' take on it, having been raised to believe they were not monsters, because they did not kill anyone, but then making a conscious decision to cross that line and become monsters in the pursuit of revenge and a perceived better lifestyle, switching from survival to murder.

It is a line that has been increasingly blurred for Sam, too, over the past couple of seasons, as the stakes have grown ever higher, as he made a conscious decision to do something he once considered monstrous, as his mission-focus has become more and more pragmatic and absolute. The questions the ghouls raise regarding the choices he has made and what he might be becoming are chilling.

Crypt

Dean's desperate escape attempt continues. Having hauled a coffin onto a ledge right beneath the skylight, he breaks a pole off the side of it, then pauses to catch his breath, muttering, "Holy crap," at all the exertion.


Then he clambers up onto the coffin and uses the pole to smash the glass window up above, showering himself in glass. Finally, he wedges his pole into the stone frame of the window and uses it to swing himself up and out, rather like a gymnast hoisting himself up onto the high bar – you know, if a gymnast wore biker boots and carried a gun. Very nice. Shame it's so dark!

Adam's house

NotAdam sticks his finger into the hole in Sam's side, prompting much squirming and a howl of pain, then sucks the blood off his finger as if it were a lollipop.

It is interesting that despite the frighteningly great power he has demonstrated of late, Sam appears to be completely unable to use that power against the ghouls here, not even to free himself from his bonds. He insisted in Metamorphosis that his powers only work on demons, but as we have seen the 'special children' using their powers on non-demonic targets before now, it is worth asking the question of why Sam's appear to be so limited. Is it a restriction Ruby has somehow built in during their training sessions, or a subconscious barrier created by Sam himself as part of his self-justification? Maybe a combination of the two – hopefully the show will someday provide some kind of explanation.

"Thanks to your daddy," notKate taunts. "My brother and I grew up on our own. At least we had each other."


The parallels with Sam and Dean continue, the brothers having had to grow up largely on their own while John was off on hunts, but at least they had each other – forging a co-dependency every bit as unhealthy as that these ghoul siblings share.

"Like you and your brother," notAdam adds, just to hammer home the parallel. "Inseparable."

"Actually, it was very hard to get you on your own," notKate nods.

Oh, the irony. It is really interesting to consider this point of view, though. To us, the division between the brothers has been apparent all season, growing wider and wider all the time, yet it is clear that to an outsider they appear as close as ever. They certainly remain physically close, rarely splitting up, if nothing else.

"Like you said, Sam," notAdam deadpans. "The only thing you can count on is family."

NotKate sucks on Sam's blood some more, clearly not concerned about how 'different' it tastes, as she and her brother continue their tale of woe, spitting that for 20 years they lived like rats, graveyard after graveyard, all that stinking flesh.

You know, I fail to see what their problem is here. The episode has strongly implied that this is how ghouls live anyway, regardless of whether or not they have a parent. It is their natural habitat, and as such might not be appealing to a human but would be completely normal to a ghoul. I can understand them wanting revenge for their father, but not for their lifestyle, which doesn't seem to have changed after his death.

Then one day, notKate continues, they decided to move up to fresher game, while notAdam adds that they knew just where to start. He pokes the tip of his knife into the cut on Sam's arm and wiggles it around just so he can hear Sam scream. Eh, but this episode is not shy with the torture, just as On The Head Of A Pin wasn't.

"Revenge. It's never over, is it, Sam?" notAdam snarks, taking great pleasure in being able to throw Sam's own words back in his face.

"First it was John's cop friend," notKate elaborates. "And then his slut. And then his son."

"Then I called John," notAdam continues. "But the son of a bitch was already dead."

NotKate leans in to stroke Sam's face, and he is unable to pull away from her touch as she cheerfully tells him that he and Dean will have to do instead, notAdam ominously adding that Dean won't interrupt them this time, which has got to leave Sam wondering what notKate might have done to his brother after he went off on his own.

"We're going to feed on you nice and slow. Like we did with Adam," notAdam gloats.

"Oh, and by the way, he really was your brother," notKate taunts. "You should know that."

"He was still alive when we took our first bites," notAdam vindictively adds.

"And he was a screamer," notKate exults.

Oh, poor Adam, murdered purely because he was John Winchester's son and for no better reason than that – validation of Sam's paranoia on his behalf, in a sense

Enough with the talking. The ghouls raise their knives and slice Sam's arms open – vertical cuts along the vein. Yikes!


Sam screams and writhes, his blood dripping into bowls that have been carefully laid out for the purpose. NotAdam cautions him not to struggle, or he'll just bleed out that much faster.

Dean chooses this oh-so critical moment to come rushing to the rescue, right in the nick of time, charging into the room with a loud yell and blasting notAdam with a barrel full of rock salt. Even though he is in the middle of bleeding to death, Sam has the presence of mind to call out that they are ghouls, valuable information which tells Dean how to kill them. Finally, something approaching teamwork and cooperation between the brothers! It doesn't happen often enough these days.

Apparently, ghouls can only be killed by a direct headshot. Dean dispatches notKate quick smart, blowing her head right off her body…but then rushes to Sam without stopping to remember that he shot notAdam in the chest, not the head, and therefore did not kill him, that he is turning his back on a dangerous enemy…

NotAdam charges at Dean and the two of them go crashing through a glass door into the next room, leaving Sam bleeding out on the table.


Dean manages to overpower notAdam, grabs a lamp stand and swings it at him, but the ghoul evades the strike. NotAdam then gets in a few powerful blows before Dean manages to regroup and fight back, grabbing another lamp off the table and knocking the ghoul down with it, then raining blow after blow down upon the creature's head.

Sam is still bleeding badly, tied to the table, but Dean seems almost to have forgotten all about him, focused on pulverising the ghoul's head to ensure that it is dead. God, so much anger being vented here: anger at the ghoul for killing Adam, anger at Adam for existing, anger at John for so many things – anger at life and the universe in general for everything it keeps throwing at him. Dead, hopeless eyes, giving in to what has to be done, to the violence and the pain, and…damn.



Finally Dean stops hitting, satisfied that the ghoul is dead, and Sam then calls out to him, breaking the spell.

Instantly coming back to himself, Dean drops everything and hurries to his brother's side, cutting his bonds and easing him into a sitting position, grabbing napkins off the sideboard to wrap tightly around Sam's wounds to staunch the bleeding and keeping up a steady stream of meaningless reassurances the whole time. "All right. Here we go. Here we go. Hang on, buddy. All right. All right."


"Thank you," Sam woozily gasps, and oh my heart sings to see such brotherliness, almost like old times. It happens so rarely these days.

It would be nice to think that both brothers would take lessons away from this experience, that Sam especially would take note of the fact that Dean was right from the start about the trap, successfully worked the case despite Sam's lack of cooperation, and succeeded in rescuing Sam when he couldn't save himself, in spite of Sam's lack of faith in him – that not everything has to be hopeless.

"That's what family's for, right," Dean breathlessly reminds him, transferring responsibility to keeping pressure on the wounds to Sam himself while he dashes off to do…well, we aren't told – maybe to find something more effective than napkins to bind Sam's wounds, or to grab a med kit from the car, or something, while Sam is left to reflect on his close call.

Woods

Sometime later, Sam is back on his feet and not looking too much the worse for wear, watching as Dean adds the final touches to a funeral pyre for Adam.

You know, Sam lost a hell of a lot of blood there, so it would be interesting to know if they self-treated the wounds or bit the bullet and went to hospital for professional aid and a blood transfusion. You would think the severity of the injury would call for the latter, but it would also set all kinds of alarm bells ringing and potentially raise suspicions of a suicide attempt, which could lead to psych evaluations, and all kinds of complications.

Also, the potential impact of such blood loss on Sam's blood-borne powers is well worth bearing in mind leading into the next episode.

I also find myself wondering what the brothers have done about the other bodies, since they clearly went back to the crypt to retrieve Adam. Kate Milligan and Joe Barton also deserve to be laid to rest in peace, and Lisa Barton deserves closure, so I sincerely hope they made an anonymous call to tip off the police.

"Sure we should do this?" Sam asks.


Dean snatches the bottle of accelerant out of his brother's hand and douses the linen-wrapped corpse. "Ghouls didn't fake those pictures," he gruffly snaps, although his anger is very clearly not directed at Sam but rather a manifestation of his inner turmoil over Adam's life and tragic fate. "And they didn't fake Dad's journal. Adam was our brother. He died like a hunter; he deserves to go out like one."

Well…he didn't really die like a hunter. He died a victim of something he didn't even know existed. But it was a supernatural death, is what Dean means, and that connects them in a way that Adam's safe, normal life never could. This funeral pyre, a hunter's funeral, is the only mark of respect and acknowledgement his brothers will ever be able to show him, and coming from Dean the gesture is pretty huge.

Sam stares ahead, steely-eyed. "Maybe we can bring him back," he suggests. "Get a hold of Cas, call in a favour."

What? What? Does he seriously think that would be a possibility, that angelic might is something that can be bartered with? Even the suggestion is reminder of how far Sam has fallen from the standard he once maintained, how much he has come to believe that he is set apart from normal humans, that a different standard – one largely of his own devising – applies to him and his.

Dean flicks disbelieving side eyes toward his brother. "No. Adam's in a better place," he says, lighting the match to set the pyre alight.

He said much the same thing to Pam as she lay dying at the end of Death Takes A Holiday, that she was going to a better place. He meant it then and he means it now, a far cry from the Dean who railed against the deaths of anyone close to him, who sold his soul to bring his brother back to life. He knows better now. Those that achieve peace and move on, who can avoid both hell and Apocalypse, they are the lucky ones.

The brothers stand and watch, grim, as the corpse of the little brother they never knew burns, a farewell to both what might have been and what never was.


"You know, I finally get why you and Dad butted heads so much," Dean grimly observes, staring into the fire. "You two are practically the same person."

Strange that he says 'finally', when he has observed the similarities between John and Sam more than once in the past. Perhaps the resemblance is clearer to him now than it ever was, with this case driving home many less than stellar personality traits Sam shares with his father: obsessive tendencies, a predilection for harbouring secrets, willingness to lie through their teeth to protect those secrets, superiority, autocracy…the list goes on and on. In the past, the traits Sam shared with John were largely overshadowed by others that were all his own, such as his youthful idealism, and the fact that the relationship he had with Dean was always very different than the relationship Dean had with John. Now, though, with the traits they share having come to far outweigh those that they don't, shining through loud and clear on this case in particular, the resemblance is more glaring than it has ever been.

"I mean, I worshipped the guy, you know?" Dean wistfully continues. "I dressed like him, I acted like him, I listened to the same music. But you are more like him than I will ever be. And I see that now."


It is true. Dean has spent most of his life trying to shape himself in his father's image, despite being a completely different personality type, hoping against hope that the effort might earn him John's approval, even as it meant sacrificing any hope of ever leading a normal life. But since John's death Dean's disillusionment with his father has steadily grown, as he has slowly re-evaluated both the man and their relationship and found both severely wanting. As his hero-worship has fallen away, he has come to understand just how deeply flawed John was, as well as how little he really knew him – this case especially heavily underlining that last fact, much to Dean's bitter regret. While his love for his father remains steadfast and true, he has learned to allow himself to be angry at all the ways in which John let him down...just in time to see Sam following in John's footsteps, something Dean would never have wanted for him even in the best of times, still less now.

Sam considers this for a moment. "I'll take that as a compliment," he decides, driving home Dean's point, if only he could see it, for once he would have screamed in fury at such a statement.


Dean continues to stare into the fire, despondent. "You take it any way you want," he sadly says, too tired and unhappy to argue any longer, knowing damn well that Sam is going to think what he wants to think and do what he wants to do regardless.


Damn, that's depressing. Sam might choose to take it as a compliment, having come to appreciate John's foibles in a way he never could before, but Dean certainly does not mean it as a compliment. Rather it is a statement of deep regret. In just the same way that age and experience have seen his disillusionment with John steadily growing, so this season has seen him becoming ever more disillusioned with the brother he has always adored so very much. Gone is the trusting, idealistic, gentle-hearted little brother Dean knew all his life, helped to raise and worked so hard to protect. In his place is a virtual stranger, one every bit as battle-scarred and damaged as John ever was, a man who cloaks himself in secrets and lies, refuses to trust even Dean, operates a strict need to know policy that runs on the premise that no one but Sam needs to know anything, and appears to be plummeting head first down the road to destruction. Dean feels completely and utterly helpless, not knowing how to even begin to save Sam from himself any more, not least because Sam does not want to be saved – doesn't even realise that he needs to be saved.

'The only thing you can count on is family. Once upon a time that was true for the brothers in just about every regard, but these days it seems less and less true all the time. Even so, Dean came through for Sam in this episode, in spite of it all, and this may be – hopefully – symbolic of a greater reunion further down the track. Sticking with the ones you love, no matter the cost, has always been the heart of the show, and the hope must always be that their bond of family love and loyalty will always see the brothers through in the end.

Overall, this was a fantastic episode. Solidly standalone, it nevertheless provides the perfect platform from which to launch the run-in to the season finale, playing on themes of family and of revenge and of choice that have been woven throughout the show from the beginning.



June2009

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