From MadCap's Couch - "Supernatural: Heart"

Hello, I'm your love interest for the evening.

No Nancy and Ann Wilson in this one. Sorry, guys, but we already got our one big special guest star this season.

Still trying to figure out Rick Springfield playing Lucifer later on.

Anyway, let's get into Heart.

Heart begins with a view of San Francisco, California. There's a lively party at a bar. A woman named Madison gets hit on by her boss, who she coolly manages to work around. However, while she laughs with her friends, she sees a rather unkempt man who frightens her, clearly recognizing him from somewhere. She proceeds to leave, only to get a jump scare dog before driving off. The surprisingly clean-faced hobo pursuing her.

The next day at work, whilst getting water for the coffee pot, she spies some blood on an office door and peers in to find her boss dead, looking as though he'd been mauled to death by an animal.

Indeed, Sam arrives at the morgue and asks the mortician, getting her opinion (way, way off the record) that it was a wolf attack. Sam deduces that the heart was missing, something we'll circle back to in a bit.

Pictured: Me and Tina watching murder shows.
(I'll leave you to figure out who is who)

Sam and Dean do the exposition recap, there have been several deaths in the San Fran area over the past year - mostly women - all with their hearts missing. Hearing that the lunar cycle syncs up, Dean is giddy for a chance to hunt a real, live werewolf. Sam teases him good-naturedly about this.

The boys visit Madison, meeting her neighbor Glen in the process, and question her about the death. When asked about Nate having had any enemies, Madison mentions her ex-boyfriend Kurt went a little crazy after they broke up and it led to an incident. Sam and Dean decide to pay Kurt a visit. After they've left, Madison sees Kurt outside by a tree in a very Michael Myers-esque fashion, just staring at her. Then somehow, without her looking away, he's suddenly disappeared.

There's creepy and then there's "wait, how did he do that?".

Breaking into Kurt's place, Sam and Dean search and are stalked by someone using a fish-eye lens while not finding any human hearts hiding behind the ice cream. Dean checks the wall outside, finding claw marks in the stone. Out on the street, a cop walks down a dark alley after hearing a fence rattle and gets jumped for his apparent inability to watch a horror movie and know not to do that. A gunshot alerts Sam and Dean, but they find the man maimed.

The boys quickly return to Madison, realizing that she is in danger if Kurt is the werewolf. We get another appearance from Glen before heading in. Sam and Dean have a game of rock-paper-scissors that Dean loses (because he always picks scissors) in order to see who stays with Madison and who follows the lead to go to Kurt's body shop.

Immediately, we get them sparks between Sam and Madison, Madison's interest in him made abundantly obvious when she dumps a pile of panties from a laundry basket and begins folding them right in front of him.

Dean calls and teases Sam about being a stiff (heh) before telling him that he's gotten a lead on where Kurt might be and is going to pursue that.

Back at Madison's, she and Sam settle in to watch a soap opera. While he's at first resistant, Sam gets into it by the end. Sam asks Madison why she was with a guy like Kurt, given all of her very positive traits. Madison eventually tells him that she was too insecure to leave him, but her perspective changed after getting mugged...something that opened her eyes.

Sam thinks she's unusual, not in the crazy way, but in the impressive way. It seems they're about to get somewhere when Dean comes a cock-blockin'. He's found Kurt...and is at a strip club, which can only end well.

Madison turns in for the night, the signals still firing and Sam being resistant as ever. He looks back at one point to see that Madison's door is, in fact, open...

"Hey, you guys wanna buy some Thin Mints?"

Meanwhile, Dean is hanging out outside Kurt's apartment when someone breaks in. Dean busts down the door and charges in to find Kurt dead...with Madison, fully in the throes of being a werewolf, looming over him. After a short struggle, Dean gets knocked unconscious. When he awakes, he calls Sam and tells him to check Madison's arm for a mark Dean gave her with a silver knife.

A confused Madison asks where her pajamas have gone and Sam goes to lock the door, telling Madison that he's not going anywhere and neither is she. A short time later, Madison is tied to a chair and Sam is pulling a Dean and needling her heavily while she is apparently ignorant, saying that monsters don't exist. When Dean arrives, they talk and Sam poses the theory that Madison may not be aware of her state as a werewolf.

Sam doesn't want to put Madison down if he can save her, citing a theory from John's journal about killing a werewolf's sire and severing the bloodline potentially curing a victim. He remembers Madison mentioning being mugged and questions her about it, learning that it was about a month ago and she was apparently bitten on the back of neck by the mugger and indeed it's a werewolf bite.

Finding out her mugging occurred around the same place the other murders happened, Sam and Dean have a point to work from. Sam resolves to shoot Madison if it doesn't work, but he asks Dean to go out and hunt down and kill the werewolf to at least attempt the theory. Madison asks Sam to let her go, and he explains the situation to her. He promises that, if things work out, she'll never see him again after they cure her.

On a street, a woman is getting stalked. In Madison's apartment, the full moon touches her and she gets loose, though Sam manages to trick her into a closet. The woman on the street isn't so lucky, getting attacked by...Glen, who Dean empties several silver rounds into the heart of, killing him. When dawn comes, Sam opens the closet and Madison seems...fine. It should be over now, Sam says, reiterating his promise that she'll never have to see him again. He leaves...and Madison looks conflicted.

Later on, Dean tells Sam that Glen knew nothing about what was going on, that maybe his subconscious mind was being brought out by the wolf when he attacked those women or turned Madison. He teases Sam about his feelings for Madison, which Sam refutes. She soon comes out to knock on the Impala window and lightly mocks the boys for their choice of a conspicuous car for a stakeout. They decide to wait out tonight together to see if Madison turns.

Madison has come to the conclusion that Sam was, in fact, telling her the truth. As Dean cuts the tension with a joke, we dissolve to the night. The moon rises, but Madison does not turn. Sunrise comes, and she shows no sign. She's cured! Madison is elated and Dean finds an excuse to bounce because he knows what's about to happen.

Frankly, uh...well...

They're*

Yeah, that. That's what happening. And bang they do, only a moment of tension and indecision before Sam gets his first sex scene of the series. Don't get too excited, kids, it's network TV. Afterwards, the two lay in post-coital bliss and all seems well, until Sam awakens...and wolf Madison escapes through the window.

Oopsie daisy!

Getting Dean, Sam tells him that he already contacted Bobby, who apparently knew that severing the bloodline wouldn't work. While Sam insists that they need to find something to save her, Dean is pretty adamant on having to kill her now even in the face of Sam comparing his own situation to hers. Madison calls Sam, apparently having found a phone booth (in 2007?!) and the boys go and get her.

A terrified Madison recounts that she doesn't remember anything, possibly even having killed someone last night. Dean tells her, rather than taking Sam's sugar coating, and tells Madison the truth: there's no cure. I will argue that he's lying when they've exhausted every other source, though. . .albeit, their source is Bobby, so that helps with the credibility a wee bit.

Seeing no other way out, Madison picks up Sam's gun and tries to hand it to him, imploring him to kill her before she hurts someone else. While Sam resists at first, she eventually convinces him. Queensrÿche's "Silent Lucidity" plays as Sam prepares to do what he must. Dean and Sam have a tearful moment where Dean offers to do it, but Sam says he has to, Madison asked him. Dean gives him the gun with a knowing nod. The episode closes on Dean shedding his one perfect tear, the music suddenly stopping as we hear a muffled gunshot.

. . .I'm not crying. You're crying!

Sniff, sniff...

Heart is a tear-jerker of an episode and no mistake. Emmanuelle Vaugier does well as Madison, slowly coming to accept her situation and eventually being the one to make the decision for how to approach it in the end. She and Jared Padalecki also have some very good chemistry, something which I think would have become more apparent if she'd made other appearances. Alas, that never happened, although it admittedly would have interfered with the structure of the show to some extent. Either way, we can now chalk Sam up for 0:2 for love interests who have died horribly.

The addition of werewolves to the show's lore that were used here...and then not again until Season 8. Kind of a bummer, really, since they were a really interesting take on them. You have the traditional things like the lunar cycle and the being killed by silver bullets, but then some interesting changes such as the taking hearts from their victims. Of course, the beginning of the episode implies that werewolves are pretty rare to begin with - Sam and Dean haven't seen one since they were kids.

I would be remiss as well if I didn't mention the final scene. Jared Padalecki gives what is probably one of the most heart-wrenching performances he has as Sam, resolving himself for what he has to do. Not just on the level of having to kill Madison, who he clearly has more than a little feeling for, but also on the level of Sam having yet another instance this season of someone whose destiny has led them in a bad way with only one way out of it.

Not only has someone else he cares about died, but here he feels it was directly because he couldn't save them...and, as we heard in his drunk ramblings in Playthings, damaging further his belief that he himself can be saved. We're getting closer to the finale. . .one wonders if Sam will ultimately be proven right about his dark fate.

Next time, Sam and Dean do Hollywood! The boys find themselves on a haunted movie set in LA and sadly there isn't a single vampire with a soul there to help them out. Next time, Hollywood Babylon!

Be there!