From MadCap's Couch - "Supernatural: Nightmare"

"My god, Dean! There's, something, on the wing! Some, thing!"

Okay, so I realize my segue from last week might be a little misleading. No, this episode is not the time that Supernatural will have a take on A Nightmare on Elm Street.

. . .that's in a few seasons.

This episode, however, ties deeper in with Sam's burgeoning psychic abilities as we learn that he has a lot more in common with a psychic they find than just being able to bend spoons with his mind.

After a short recap to remind you of things that you already knew because you watched the previous episodes, we see a car in suburbia entering a garage. A man watches the garage door go down seemingly of its own accord, the doors of his car lock, and the key turns in the ignition. With the windows and doors locked, he's unable to escape his car and asphyxiates on exhaust fumes.

Elsewhere, Sam awakens and we realize he's had another vision. He wakes Dean and they hit the road, Sam committing a felony in order to get the information on a license plate that he saw in the vision. While Sam is adamant that they'll hit on something, Dean is more skeptical. Seeing Jess and seeing visions of their old house was one thing, but the man in the vision has no connection to the Winchesters at all. They do get a name, Jim, and the address the boys can go to in Wisconsin.

When they arrive, the boys find a man being wheeled out of the house on a stretcher. Jim is dead. The onlookers believe it to be a suicide, a woman telling Sam and Dean that it's strange because he seemed so normal. Sam and Dean debate the premonition, Dean still skeptical while Sam is certain that something supernatural is afoot, he watched the man get locked in his car and die.

The next day, the boys dress up as the priests "Father Simmons" and "Father Frehley" and visit with the family. They speak with Jim's wife, now widow, Alice. She, understandably, is distraught and doesn't understand why her husband did what he did. She mentions their son, Max, is withdrawn. Sam goes to talk to him, finding him standoffish but he eventually relents and talks to him.

Parallels between Sam and Max abound!

He also claims to have woken up to hear the engine running, as confused as Alice is as to why Jim would have committed suicide. However, something is clearly up with him.

Dean, meanwhile, goes upstairs to use an EMF detector (with lasers!!!) and finds nothing. The boys regroup at the motel, finding that the Miller House was completely above board, absolutely nothing to indicate a supernatural occurrence. Sam, as they talk, starts getting a massive headache...and then a vision, this time of Jim's brother, Roger. After attempting to close a window twice, he gets decapitated by it.

The boys rush off to save the day, the only thing being sure is that Sam's visions are getting more intense around the Millers and he doesn't know why. When they reach Roger, he naturally wants nothing to do with the crazy men. Despite their efforts, he dies as in Sam's vision. Is it a curse? They're beginning to think it might be, and Max may be the next person on the list. They head off, Sam making the observation that their family is cursed, just like Max's.

Dean refutes this. Poorly.

The funniest part being that this is Season 1 and neither of them has any idea.

They return to the Miller House, Max lamenting casseroles to them before they get into his childhood. . .and it's clear that Max has some baggage involving Roger and Jim. Of the abusive kind. As before, something is clearly up with him. . .and this time, the boys manage to catch it. They decide to go check out the old Miller House and learn from a neighbor that Max definitely did not have a good childhood. There was indeed some abuse, between Roger and Jim. . .and Alice, who is Max's stepmother, and did nothing about it. . .Max definitely was getting the short end of the stick.

Sam has a vision of Max telekinetically attacking and killing Alice with a slightly wonky CGI kitchen knife.

Max is the culprit. Sam pieces everything together: he wasn't connecting to the Millers, he was connecting to Max. Sam insists they can talk to him, try to reason with him, but Dean wants to hunt him down just like any other supernatural creature they've hunted before - something that we've touched upon before as a point of contention between the two brothers.

Max Miller: Quintessential Tragic Villain

They bust in and, for once, are able to avert the vision that Sam had. They manage to convince Max to come outside with them to talk, until Max sees a reflection of Dean's gun in the mirror by the front door. Max seals the house up, takes the gun, and telekinetically throws his stepmother aside as he puts the brothers at gunpoint. Sam manages to talk Max down so that he'll talk with him for five minutes while Dean gets Alice out of the house.

Sam tries to give Max some advice about dealing with his family, only to find out that the abuse hasn't actually stopped. Now, he found the ability in telekinesis within himself and he put it to use. He was determined not to be afraid. Max tells Sam that Jim blamed him for everything...including the death of his mother, in his nursery, when he was a baby.

Oh...

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. . .

Hell of a Wham Line, delivered damn well. Jared Padalecki absolutely sells the complete shock and panic that follows.

Yes, much like Mary Winchester, Max's mother died pinned to the ceiling of his nusery and burned to a crisp. Whatever killed her was the same thing that killed Mary. Sam tries to express this to Max, saying that this connects them (and explains the visions that Sam's been having about him). They're chosen for something, though Sam doesn't know exactly what. He tries to convince Max to let his stepmother go and let them go so they can hunt down the thing that killed their mothers.

Sam offers him a hand of friendship and you can see Max almost consider it, but he throws Sam into a closet and locks him away. Max then goes into the bedroom where Dean is tending to Alice's headwound. He is telekinetically thrown aside and Max pulls a gun on it, having it float in the air and aiming at Alice. Dean intervenes, telling Max that he'll have to kill him first and Max obliges him...putting a bullet through Dean's head.

. . .only to reveal that it was another vision of Sam's. In a feat of plot convenience, Sam is able to telekinetically push the dresser aside and escape the closet. Sam gets to the scene in time, trying to tell Max again that this won't help him. Max agrees...and then shoots himself with the gun, ending his life to the shock of Sam, Dean, and Alice.

After Alice speaks to the cops, covering for the boys, Sam and Dean make their way away. Dean tells Sam not to torture himself over it, despite Sam's belief that he could have said something. There was nothing they could do, Dean insists. Sam replies that he feels they were lucky to have John as a Dad, which surprises Dean. Sam says, all things considered, the pair turned out okay. . .but it could have gone down a much, much darker road as they saw with Max.

Later, at a new motel, Sam posits the theory that whatever killed Mary and Max's mother might have wanted them - as in himself and Max. Sam tells Dean about his sudden telekinesis burst to escape the closet, which unsettles Dean just a bit. However, Dean jokingly lifts a spoon and tells him to bend it. When Sam expresses concern that he might turn into Max, Dean isn't worried: Sam has him.

As long as he's around, nothing bad is ever going to happen to Sam.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

To end the episode on a lighter note, Dean mentions where they should go next to deal with Sam's psychic powers: Vegas.

Hahahahahahahahaha! TONE!

Nightmare is a pretty good episode. It furthers the myth arc while also being a good one and done, a sign that the monsters in the world of Supernatural aren't always. . .well, supernatural. Max is a villain only because the circumstances were so stacked against him that he finally broke. Sam points this out, and the obvious parallel is there, that he might have turned out just like Max if John had been a little more into the liquor and a little less into the monster hunting.

Ah, yes! A psychic standoff! Only the third-most racist of all standoffs!

The reveal that Max's mother was killed in the same way as Mary opened up a door here that would be visited in later episodes, particularly in Season 2, to the possibility that there might be more people out there like Sam. People who were chosen. Special Children, if you will.

We'll be getting back to that.

That all said, there's not much more to say about Nightmare. It's a glance into a glass darkly as to what Sam's life might have been like if his circumstances were different and, like I said, adds to the mythos. That's really all there is to it.

Next time, Sam and Dean head over to Minnesota and find themselves hunting the most dangerous game. . .comedy rednecks!

. . .no, really. It's time for The Benders. Stick around!

Supernatural is owned by the CW and Warner Brothers.

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