From MadCap's Couch - "Supernatural: Bloody Mary"

What's that in the mirror? In the corner of your eye?

Y'know that whole thing about "even if you don't believe in it, you probably shouldn't be screwing around with it?"

Welcome to this episode in a nutshell.

We begin with four girls of preteen age playing a game of Truth or Dare, one of them being dared to go into the bathroom and say "Blood Mary" three times, segueing into a discussion of the various versions of the Bloody Mary legend. One of the girls goes in with only a candle for light.  She says the name twice, the candle begins to flicker, but she keeps on saying it a third time...whereupon her friends start to beat on her door because their grade A assholes.  The girl, Lily, comes out and they have a laugh, though her father arrives and asks her to keep it down.

Mr. Shoemaker, as he's called, is suddenly stalked by Sadako from The Ring, who appears only in mirrors...okay, yes, it's Blood Mary, but the style is (according to the showrunners at the time) admittedly done up to look like The Ring and the Japanese original film Ringu, so bonus points to them on that.  At the very least, it does look scary.  She appears only in mirrors at first, as per the legends.

Mr. Shoemaker, while taking some medicine, notices veins suddenly becoming more prominent in his face.  Downstairs, Lily's older sister sneaks in past her curfew and comes upstairs to find...a puddle of blood gushing out from under the bathroom door.  Opening the door, whatever she finds within makes her scream.

The teaser ends with Sam in bluescale, dreaming of Jessica's death as her voice demands to know "Why, Sam?".  However, he is woken up by Dean.  They're in Toledo, Ohio and have come to investigate the Shoemaker death.  Posing as med students, they bribe their way in and see the corpse.  The eyes have been liquified, and he suffered from intense cerebral bleeding.  They check the police report, too, and Sam brings up that it could very well just be a freak medical accident.

Dean reminds him of the universe that they're in.  They decide to go talk to the daughter.

They arrive smack in the middle of a wake, awkwardness abounding.  Donna, the older sister, is questioned by Sam and Dean with the usual stuff...and then Lily injects, insisting that it all happened because of her, because she summoned Blood Mary.  The boys check the house, discussing the Blood Mary legend and Sam saying that John never found evidence that there was any truth to it. They also mention how it's a strange variation on things for Shoemaker to be the one who died, seeing as Lily was the one to say the words.

The woman who was comforting Donna earlier comes up and gives the boys the third degree, not believing their cover story.  Sam confesses that they're investigating, and gives her their number.

More discussion of Blood Mary follows, the boys hitting the books.

Charlie, Donna's friend, is talking to another of their friends, Jill.  She teases her for thinking that Blood Mary could have killed Shoemaker and even goes into her bathroom to say the chant, ending with a scream and a laugh because asshole.  Charlie is naturally peeved as Jill is visited by the Sadako in her mirrors.  In one of them, as she gazes at her own reflection, her eye begins to bleed. As her reflection taunts her about a boy she killed.  She dies as her reflection looks on.

Charlie became the envy of every fangirl in a single scene.

Then, it's back to the bluescale dreams of Sam Winchester as Jessica once more burns on a ceiling and demands answers of Sam before he awakes. We get some brotherly snark as Sam deflects about his dream, focusing on the story.  Dean, however, has found nothing to match to the legend while Sam was sleeping.  He thinks that whatever's happening has nothing to do with Mary, it's just a coincidence...until they get a phone call from Charlie, who tells them of Jill's fate.  Jill did indeed die in the exact same matter as Mr. Shoemaker...after saying "Bloody Mary".

They manage to enlist her help, and Charlie helps them get into Jill's home to check around. In Jill's room, Sam and Dean break out the nightvision cameras and go checking with the EMF detector. On bathroom mirror, Sam finds markings and - with a black light - pulls away some of the backing to reveal some handprints and a name "Gary Bryman".  Charlie says she has no idea who that is.  In the next scene, however, Sam has hit the books and determined who Gary is...or rather, was...an eight year old boy who was killed in a hit and run two years ago.

Charlie recognizes it because of the vehicle mentioned...Jill's vehicle.

Back at the Shoemaker's place, Sam and Dean check the bathroom mirror and find a similarly hidden name - Linda Shoemaker.  They confront Donna, who says that her mother OD'd on sleeping pills and wants to hear nothing to the contrary.  The three begin to see links, since both Jill and Mr. Shoemaker had apparently murdered.  Dean begins checking through every database, even national, hoping to find some kind of connection.

Sam and Dean theorize that Mary, or whatever she is, punishes people with a very dark secret who gaze into the mirrors.  Eventually, thanks to the magic of the writers wanting the characters to advance in the plot, Dean hits on something - the death of a "Mary Worthington" in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where a handprint identical to those found at both Jill's and the Shoemakers' home was found at the scene, pressed into a mirror.

At Fort Wayne, Sam and Dean speak to an ex-cop who had worked on the case in question.  He questions their backstory of being reporters, but Sam - being the badass bookworm that he is - is able to make the story float with the facts that they've garnered thus far.  With that, the cop reveals his own personal view of what happened, taking out some old files for them.  He mentions some of the writing in the mirror near the handprint "Tre", and that it likely points to a man who had been a surgeon at the time by the name of Trevor Samson, who Mary was having an affair with.

Unfortunately, they were unable to prove it was him.

However, Mary was not buried - she was cremated.  Her mirror, however, was not destroyed or kept in an evidence lock up...but returned to her family...

We return to Donna and Charlie, Charlie trying to insist to Donna that Sam and Dean were only trying to help.  And Donna, being an infinite dumbass, says "Bloody Mary" three times to the mirror in their high school bathroom...which oddly causes Charlie to be stalked by Sadako.  In class, Charlie actually witnesses Bloody Mary in the mirrors, freaks out, and flees.

Back in the Impala, Sam has just wrapped up with Mary's brother, who is no longer in possession of the mirror, having sold it a week ago to an antique shop in Toledo.  There is some talk about the old urban myths about mirrors trapping spirits before Dean comes up with the plausible solution - find the mirror and smash it.

Lucky for him, the bad luck won't kick in for about five more seasons anyway.

They get a call from Charlie and rush to aid her, covering up every mirror and reflective surface in the motel.  Sam tries to calm her, even doing his best to assuage her fears that she's going to die.  Dean, on the other hand, questions her...not about how she came to be tormented by Mary, but why she is being tormented by Mary.  She has a backstory about a boyfriend who she got into a fight and he threatened to kill himself, her telling him to do so before leaving.  She feels horrible about it, obviously, not having believed that he'd actually do it.

"Sammy...so much porn! So fast!"

Her causing the murder directly or not, Charlie has a secret and thus is a target by Mary.  Sam comes up with the idea to summon Mary to her mirror and destroy that one.  Dean questions how that would even work, since she seems to be jumping around to all sorts of different mirrors.  Sam insists that Mary will come after him, and Dean finally decides to confront him about Jessica...namely that Sam blames himself for her death.  He tries to insist that it wasn't his fault and he shouldn't blame himself, though Sam cryptically says that he could have warned her and that Dean doesn't know the whole story.  Though Dean insists that he shouldn't do this, Sam is adamant.

Thus, the pair break into the antiques shop.  Inside, they find lots and lots of mirrors and begin to search for the right one...unaware that they've tripped a silent alarm.  They do find the mirror, however, and it's time to get to work.  Sam does the chant and prepares a crowbar...and we cut to commercial.

However, I have Netflix, so...

We come back, and Dean notices the lights of a cop car that just pulled up, instructing Sam to smash anything that moves before going to deal with it, rolling the heck out of his Bluff check, but the cops aren't buying it. He knocks them  out and heads back in.  In the mean time Sam, on the other hand, takes Dean's advice to heart and starts taking out mirrors while Mary torments him. True to form, his reflection begins to torment him over Jessica's death as his eye begins to bleed.  The secret is revealed: Sam's nightmares about Jessica aren't new, he's been having them for days before her death and he did nothing about them.

But because we need to finish up the episode, Dean drops in at the opportune moment to smash the mirror into a bunch of tiny pieces.  While Sam is not in the best of conditions, he's alive, and the pair start to leave...though not before Sadako comes through for the final showdown, inflicting pain on both the boys and seemingly gaining the upper hand before Dean grabs a mirror and shows her her reflection in it and her power works on her as well - the secret that she killed all those people making her dissolve into CGI jelly that Dean then drops the mirror down on.

Dean figures they have around 600 years bad luck after all this. And he's right, but it'll take about five years to star-oh, wait, I already did that joke.

Needless to say, we get the wrap up.  Charlie is free to live without fear of Mary's attacks and Sam tells her she ought to forgive herself for her boyfriend's death, saying that sometimes bad things just happen, some advice that Dean hopes Sam will take to heart.  Dean also asks to hear Sam's secret, but he keeps it to himself, and sees an apparition of Jessica on a street corner that then disappears...it is clear this is something Sam will carry with him for a long, long while...

Bloody Mary effectively serves as the first Sam-centric episode since Pilot. Supernatural does have, for better or for worse, a sort of formula to it.  Some episodes are Sam-centric, e.g. they focus on Sam and his subplots for the season, and some are Dean-centric, doing the same for him and it is generally quite easy to point out which one is which.  And yes, this does - to the show's credit - continue even into the Post-Kripke era.  It's a great tool that allows us to see from the two different perspectives of the brothers throughout the trials and tribulations that they face.

Okay Sam, the mirror is prone. Roll your attack.

Blood Mary is the first continuation of Sam's character arc from Pilot, wherein we learn more about Jessica's death - namely the prophetic dreams about it beforehand that Sam was having, which will be developed on later in the season, and Sam not being able to forgive himself for her death.  As I say, we'll get into that more later.  As for the episode itself, it's pretty good.  While defeating Mary by showing her her own reflection might seem a little cheesy, keep in mind that we're still in the early days of the show and that the rules for ghosts have not been written in stone quite yet.  It's also several steps above the usual "salt and burn" response we get in later episodes and seasons.

So yes, definitely give this one a watch.  Next week, we're going to get introduced to a new creature type and an event will  occur that will haunt Sam and Dean for years to come.

...seriously, just ask any Supernatural fan.  The writers will not let this one go, even after everyone else - including Sam and Dean - has long since stopped caring about it.

Supernatural is the property of the CW and Warner Bros.

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