From MadCap's Couch - "Supernatural: Bloodlust"

"Dr. Blake...Dr. Strange...you're needed in Ward 3.
Dr. Blake...Dr. Strange."

So, last week, we dealt with clowns. Now, we deal with something infinitely less terrifying - vampires.

We begin with a "Then" segment set to Journey's "Wheel in the Sky" as we get a recap of the last few episodes of Season 1 and the previous ones of Season 2 - in particular In My Time of Dying. When we finally come to "Now", a frightened woman is running through the woods with someone or something in clear pursuit. When she ducks behind a tree it seems that the danger passes by her, only for her to turn around and be decapitated by someone wielding a hand scythe.

She will not be getting ahead in this episode.

Elsewhere, Dean brings the fully restored Impala back on the road to AC/DC's "Back in Black" and it seems he is in much better spirits than we saw him in last week. Sam comments on this, Dean mentioning that he's got no reason not to be - he's got his car, they've got a case, and things are looking up.

Sam and Dean pose as a pair of reporters and interview the best sheriff ever about a series of murders and the cattle mutilations. After laughing off their belief that they might be connected, the sheriff schools them on gravity before kicking them out for failing their Deception checks.

They luckily do manage to pass their Deception checks on a morgue attendant and go checking the decapitated head for clues. Checking the mouth, they do find something curious - a retractable fang. It's clear they aren't after crazed Satanists this time. At a bar they find...Benny from Season 8! Actually, no, it's Eli...but we'll get to Benny later. Much, much later. Interestingly enough, when Sam and Dean entered there was a man sitting at a table smoking a cigarette. When they leave, we get a long static shot of the now empty chair...a hunter is on the prowl.

Sterling K. Brown plays Gordon so well.
He's a great villain to watch.

He stalks the two a distance, but Sam and Dean being Sam and Dean know when they're being tailed and get the drop on him. They demand that he show his teeth and, eventually, he relents to prove that he's not a vampire. It seems they patch up well enough, the man introducing himself as Gordon and revealing that yes, he is a hunter. He makes a passing mention of John and expresses some condolences. After that, they get down to business, although Gordon discourages Sam and Dean from hunting with him. He has this one covered.

Later, at a saw mill, Gordon attacks a vampire and nearly gets put through a saw for his trouble before Sam and Dean intervene, having tailed him there. It is a decision they will one day come to very, very much regret. . .more on that later. As Sam pulls Gordon out, Dean pins down and then beats on the vampire a bit before decapitating it with the saw, Sam looking in dull surprise at Dean's action.

At the bar, Gordon buys a round and they talk. While Dean and Gordon toast a hunt well completed, Sam doesn't feel like celebrating. When Gordon makes the mistake of calling him Sammy (only Dean gets to call him that), the conversation goes a bit sour, leading Sam to ditch to go back to the motel. Dean even gives him the keys to the Impala.

As Dean and Gordon exchange backstories (Gordon in particular mentioning his dead sister and the vampire that killed her - remember this for later) and Dean confides in Gordon that he's not handling John's death very well, Sam calls up Ellen and gets some bad news about Gordon - namely that he's a complete lunatic and they need to skip town at the first opportunity.

The talk between Dean and Gordon gets a little philosophical, Gordon saying that hunting is a black and white sort of thing. No shades of gray.

Okay, so...remember when a bunch of cannibal rednecks kidnapped Sam? This is a slightly more believable version of that...in a bit. Sam goes to get a Coke. He gets jumped when he gets back to the room. Despite putting in a good effort, they take him down and take him away. The cloth sack over his head is taken off by Benny...I mean, Eli...and it seems that Sam's number is up when he's saved by Tara from Buffy! Actually, she's called Lenore and she's a vampire.

Lenore orders Eli not to kill Sam and explains their situation - they're vampires that feed on animal blood rather than human. Lenore just wants the hunters to leave them alone, and she's brought Sam here to ask him to let them leave and not follow them. As a show of good faith, Lenore has her vampires take him back to the motel without a scratch.

Not the first or last Buffy alumni to grace Supernatural, but always a welcome site.

Dean and Gordon are planning out what to do when Sam returns. He and Dean step out and Sam informs him of what he's learned. Dean drops the title of the show in an argument as to whether or not they should kill the vampires, Sam thinking they might just let this one go. This ends up devolving into Sam going on a tirade about Dean using Gordon to fill the hole left by John. Dean takes it well...out of Sam's face via a well-timed punch.

When they re-enter the motel, Gordon is gone and he took the keys to the Impala! As Dean hotwires the Impala, Sam recounters the path that he definitely did not memorize while he had a sack over his head and they head off after them.

Back at the farmhouse, the vampires are packing up. Eli expresses some reservations about their situation, but Lenore insists that killing the hunters will do no good. More will just come. Unfortunately for them and Lenore in particular, Gordon has arrived.

Also, side note, in the transition scenes, Sam and Dean cross a bridge that looks suspiciously like the one from the Pilot episode and Hook Man. I could be wrong, maybe Vancouver just has a lot of bridges that are suspiciously similar? 

Regardless, Lenore gets jumped by Gordon who uses Dead Man's Blood to paralyze her, tying her up and torturing her to find out where the rest of her nest is. Sam and Dean arrive mid-torture, and Gordon pulls a machete on Sam when he tries to intercede. When Dean starts on a speech about how this vampire isn't the one that killed Gordon's sister, Gordon tells him that the vampire didn't kill her. It turned her. Gordon's first kill was his own sister. Apparently, Gordon knew about the vampires using the cattle mutilations...and didn't care.

To illustrate his point, Gordon grabs Sam's arm and cuts it, the droplets falling into Lenore's mouth and revealing a hideous, anglerfish-like mouth. However, despite everything, Lenore manages to hold her urges back and refuses the call of the blood. Sam gets Lenore out while Dean holds Gordon back at gunpoint. This leads to a tussle due to Dean being an idiot and letting his guard down with Dean working out some clear frustration on Gordon.

Gordon attempts the "We aren't so different" speech. It doesn't work.

Dean ties Gordon up and he and Sam wait until the vampires are well and truly away. Dean gives the traditional Dean Winchester goodbye - that is, a punch across the face - and Dean tells Sam that he's good. The pair leave the farmhouse, Dean offers Sam a free punch for being a dick earlier (Sam takes a raincheck), and the boys wax philosophical about their hunting and the thought that maybe they killed things that didn't deserve to be killed. Dean tells Sam he was by instinct going to kill every one of the vampires. Sam says he didn't, and that's what matters.

The boys drive off in the Impala to another adventure.

And the adventure continues...

Bloodlust is a bit more Dean-centric of an episode, as we've had more than a few in this Season. It does a really good job touching on the morality of hunting through comparison between Sam, Dean, and Gordon. Breaking it down with Freud's id, ego, and superego, we can see a near-perfect cross section of Dean as a character in literally just this episode.

In this analogy, Gordon is the id. He sees no complexity in the world of hunting and is very much driven by his own wants. He is an instinctual killer, driven by his deep seated need for revenge after the turning of his sister into a vampire, and he justifies his actions as being right without regard for anyone or anything that might be destroyed as a result.

Sam is the superego. He is taken in by the vampires, who are able to cast enough reasonable doubt to him that he is able to determine what is morally right. He is essentially acting as Dean's conscience for this episode. He does not trust Gordon from the beginning and calls Dean out on throwing his eggs (metaphorically speaking) into Gordon's basket on seemingly a whim.

It's easy to call Dean the ego in this equation, but I think it's a little more complex than that. True, Dean serves as the balance between the two. We've seen him playing both sides. Dean is more inclined to be id driven. He is very much in the camp of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll, and he often gives himself over to those vices to fill an emptiness in himself that nothing else seems to be able to.

However, we have seen signs of a better nature even this early on in the show. There's his clear love for his brother Sam and devotion to John, but there are also humanizing moments like musing over Tom's body back in Devil's Trap. Other moments like this are sprinkled about throughout the first two seasons and indeed the rest of the series.

In this scenario, I'll reference a line from a movie I reviewed earlier this year: "I am but a shadowy reflection of you. It would take only a nudge to make you like me. To push you out of the light." In this scenario, Gordon is the shadowy reflection of Dean. Interestingly Dean never denies that he's like Gordon. Even at the end, he tells Sam that he was going to give in to that instinct - give in to his id - and kill the vampires without a second thought. Sam, however, being his Jiminy Cricket, affirms that he didn't. Unlike Gordon, Dean was able to choose and decide not to kill Lenore and her nest for crimes they hadn't committed.

Choice. It's the important distinction between the two.

. . .and yes, I'm dipping a little bit into the well of The Passion of the Nerd with that one. I wasn't intending it when I started, but I have to give credit where it's due. He is a big inspiration for these reviews.

Mind you, some of the questions that are raised by this episode about the morality of the hunting life are examined, played with, and even subverted on multiple occasions throughout the show. We'll get to that when we get to that and the discussion of that can continue.

Next week, however, we'll be continuing with our final Supernatural review of Horror Month 2021. From demons to reapers and killer clowns to vampires, it all comes down to the emissaries of the walking dead...the zombie!

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things! Be there!

And, if you haven't had that vampire itch scratched, maybe check out Seattle By Night?  I hear they're having a...hell of a time...