...no, not my home. Sam and Dean's.
I can't go home again. Not after the incident...
If you remember the Pilot episode (which, really, why would you? I reviewed that five years ago), Sam and Dean did originally live in a lovely home with their father John and their very not burned to death mother Mary. However, Father Dennis Kibbler from Amityville 4 ruined it by setting Mary on fire and seemingly burning the house to the ground.
And yes, for the record, I will be referring to Fredric Lehne as the various other characters he's played until we actually learn the name of his character. It's slightly more entertaining than calling him "the Yellow-Eyed Demon". In this episode, we get a recap of Mary Winchester's rendition of "Dancing on the Ceiling" and all that it led up to, namely Sam and Dean in the present surviving on machismo, angst, and a tidal wave of estrogen that comes from their female followers.
After the recap, we get a cold open of a woman checking her daughter's closet for a monster. Alas, there's nothing there and she tucks her in...although at her daughter's insistence, she puts a chair in front of the closet door after checking it. Smart kid, really, given the world she lives in. This is, after all, the world of Supernatural and (as the tagline of an awesome film from 1985 once said) there are a great many reasons to be afraid of the dark.
Unpacking things downstairs after, the mother hears a tapping noise and goes into the basement to find a wooden chest holding some Winchester family mementos. Back in her daughter's room, the chair begins to move of it's own accord...and the closet doors do much the same, and fire erupts within. Naturally, the little girl screams...
Sam awakens suddenly after a dream about a woman knocking her fist against a window...the window of the Winchester house, in fact. Later, Dean finds Sam aloof to his mentions of a new job. Sam redraws the tree from his dream and realizes from a photo that it is the tree that was outside that it is, in fact, their childhood home. Dean is skeptical and Sam eventually relents that he has been having nightmares...and that sometimes they come true.
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| Missouri - a character that should have been in more episodes. |
In particular, he dreamed about Jessica's death for weeks before it actually happened...which we touched upon back in Bloody Mary and helps to fill in a gap that that episode left behind: namely that we knew Sam felt guilty over Jessica's death, but we weren't 100% clear as to why. This episode confirms it.
Dean tries to call it a coincidence, but Sam refutes it. He theorizes that whatever was menacing the woman in his dream might be what killed their mother and Jessica. Eventually, Sam convinces him and they head out. When they arrive the woman, Jenny, greets them and Sam is truthful about their identities despite Dean's attempt to begin with a cover. She lets them in, telling them about the photos she found. She has recently moved into the house, as established earlier, with her daughter Sari and her son Ritchie.
She mentions that the wiring is going out...lights flickering. While she thinks there are rats, she's only ever heard the scratching.
Sari, on the other hand, tells Sam and Dean about the thing in her closet: something on fire.
Sam pegs this to be a malevolent spirit haunting the house. Dean tries to calm him and look at this like an actual hunt. The pair analyze the case and discuss the night that their mother died, namely Dean telling it since Sam was six months old at the time. They decide that they have to figure out what happened that night to figure out what's happening now.
In a sad scene, Dean calls John to no answer and leaves a message to him showing vulnerability for one of the first times in the series as he admits to his father that he has no idea what to do.
Jenny has a plumber come to look at the pipes. Creepy things follow and get capped off by him losing his wedding ring in the garbage disposal and...yeah, no, he ain't got no hand as a creepy monkey with cymbals toy that no mother would ever buy for their child claps cheerfully.
Dean and Sam question a guy at the garage that John used to work with, finding out that John started speaking to a palm reader in town. When Sam checks the Yellow Pages and hits on the name "Missouri Mosley", which Dean recognizes from John's journal. Missouri, it turns out, is an actual psychic. She's essentially a sassy black Zelda Rubinstein and is, as a consequences, absolutely awesome. She tells Sam and Dean about introducing John to the world of the supernatural and how John asked her to try and find out what killed Mary.
She doesn't know...but she knows that it was pure evil.
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| "Hold perfectly still, Sammy. Her visual acuity is based on movement." |
Back at the house, Jenny is apparently in some legal trouble for the plumber being down a hand and the malevolent presence in the house decides to start screwing with her son by trapping and locking him in a fridge...which begs the question as to why the fridge has a lock on it, but never mind. After holding the tension for a full two minutes, she gets Ritchie out of the house.
Sam, Dean, and Missouri arrive and Missouri manages to get vague and mystical and manages to coax Jenny into letting them back in the house. Missouri begins to trace the evil (and mocks Dean's use of an EMF detector) and finds that whatever is menacing Jenny and her kids isn't the thing that killed Mary. However, it's not one spirit...but two. Because of what happened to their mother, a poltergeist has come into the place...and it won't rest until Jenny and her kids are dead.
The second, however...Missouri can't pinpoint. They get a bag of herbs together to put in the walls for each cardinal direction of the house. Jenny and her kids get out of the house for a bit and Sam, Dean, and Missouri get to work to get rid of the poltergeist. As Missouri predicts, it starts catching on pretty quick to what they're doing and the objects begin to attack them...rather like in Amityville 4, ironically enough.
They managed to pull through and get the bags into the walls and the threat is seemingly ended...except that we have eleven more minutes left in the episode.
Sam asks Missouri if she's sure this is over, and she asks why...and he just brushes her off. Jenny is less than pleased about the state of her house, and Missouri browbeats Dean into cleaning up the mess they made fighting the poltergeist. Sam, Dean, and Missouri leave and Jenny settles in...with the music telling us that this is definitely not over. That night, her bed shakes...
Sam and Dean are still watching outside at Sam's insistence and it's a good thing, too as they witness the very scene from Sam's dream of Jenny beating her fists against the windows. The fiery figure appears to Sari in her bedroom. Sam manages to save her and her brother, mirroring John in telling Sari to take Ritchie and run outside just before he's dragged back inside by the malevolent force. Dean, of course, pops open the trunk and goes Commando in order to save his brother (the Schwarzenegger movie. Please remove your mind from the gutter), breaking down the door while Sam gets telekinetically thrown around by the poltergeist...and stalked by the fiery figure...who it turns out is...Mary.
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| This girl was on fire! |
Yes, Mary Winchester is one of the two spirits. Dean in particular is stunned to see his mother once again after so many years. She addresses her sons, in particular telling Sam "I'm sorry", but we get no elaboration on it and Mary gives him a mournful look before turning around and going toe to toe with the poltergeist, ending it's existence.
As Sam is no longer pinned to the wall, he declares that it's over.
Jenny gives Dean the family photos while Sam and Missouri have a chat. Missouri explains that they did indeed see their mother, and that Mary sacrificed her existence to kill the poltergeist and save her sons.
...those of you who have seen later seasons may just be laughing a lot.
Missouri has no answers for Sam about his abilities, however. Sam and Dean head off, Missouri telling them not to be strangers. She returns to her home...and speaks to John, who has apparently been in town the entire time. Jeffrey Dean Morgan gives a hell of a performance as John is told that Mary did indeed save the boys and he looks to the wedding ring that he still wears with his face the very picture of a man in mourning. Missouri berates him for not going to see his boys, but he declares that he can't talk to them again...not yet. Not until he knows the truth.
Home is a pretty good episode on the whole. It, like a lot of episodes in Season 1, is a good little one and done that still manages to have ramifications for the episodes yet to come some of them further away than others. Missouri was a neat character and I really wish they had done more with her (I've heard she appears in Season 13...but I haven't seen it as of this writing). Mary being the second spirit was a good twist, not actually foreshadowed all that well. Even the CGI fire effect is pretty well done...at least more so than anything in Bugs or the Leviathans in a few seasons' time.
Next time, we'll be heading with Sam and Dean to rural Illinois. In a refreshing change from this episode, something that involving ghosts is afoot!
...I joke, but it is refreshing considering the cluster the show becomes later with sameyness.
Supernatural belongs to the CW and Warner Brothers.
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