Things I Love About SPN Season 1: Faith #3
Supernatural, Season 1
Episode 12, “Faith”
Written by Sera Gamble and Raelle Tucker
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Warning: image heavy post.
(Continued from #2)
Two doctors appear in this episode. One is played by a black actor, the other by a woman. Supernatural has often been accused of lacking representation but I feel, in the first season at least, it made more effort than many other shows of its time. I’m probably opening a can of worms by raising this subject, but it’s important and will become an especially big issue next episode, so I’d really appreciate hearing other people’s thoughts on the matter.
In confirming that Dean’s heart is fine, the doctor reveals a young, athletic man of his age died of a heart attack the previous day “out of nowhere”. Dean has a bad feeling about it and he’s probably right because he’s wearing his red shirt, and that’s never a good sign.
“Look, Dean, do we really have to look this one in the mouth?” Sam asks. “Why can't we just be thankful that the guy saved your life and move on?”
It’s interesting because Sam’s the one who usually insists on “due diligence” in later seasons; maybe this episode is where he learns that lesson. He’s also skeptical about the spirit Dean saw because he thinks he should have seen it too.
It's troubling that he seems to be getting a little cocky about his powers now.
But Dean employs a little conscious irony, and turns the tables on Sam:
“I’ve been hunting long enough to trust a feeling like this,” he insists. It’s a great exchange because it highlights the difference between faith (belief accepted without evidence) and trust, which is earned through experience. Sam’s response to Dean embraces a little of both, I think. He accepts Dean’s belief, without evidence, because he trusts his brother’s experience. “Yeah, all right. So, what do you wanna do?” he asks.
Sam goes to check out the heart attack victim, and discovers from a stopped clock that he died the same time Dean was healed:
Dean meets with Roy Le Grange and his wife, Sue Ann, and learns that Roy started healing people after his own cancer was miraculously cured.
But Dean also wants to learn why Roy picked him out of the crowd to be saved.
And here the emphasis shifts from the heart as a physical organ, needed to keep the body alive, to a classical symbol: the traditional seat of feeling and qualities such as goodness, honour and courage - the qualities required of the questing hero.
ROY
Well, like I said before, the Lord guides me. I looked into your heart,
and you just stood out from all the rest.
DEAN
What did you see in my heart?
ROY
A young man with an important purpose. A job to do.
And it isn't finished. (DEAN looks slightly surprised.)
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.12_Faith_(transcript)
It’s ironic because, of course, the most immediate job Dean has to do is put a stop to Roy’s healing practices. It raises the question: did his father send him here to do precisely that? If, as I speculated before, Joshua learned about the healer from John, it’s quite possible John also knew about the deaths. Sam puts it together by checking the local obits, and we know from the previous episode, “Scarecrow”, that John is highly adept at using obits in a similar manner to put a case together. All that being allowed, it would mean John knowingly sent Dean to benefit from another person’s death before putting a stop to the killings. In an episode that’s all about moral dilemmas, I think it’s quite likely that the writers were consciously exploring that issue.
And then, of course, there’s the issue of who might have been saved in Dean’s place had he not been there: Layla, for example, whom he learns has been waiting to be cured of her brain tumour.
When he returns to the motel, he finds Sam sitting at his laptop looking shamefaced, anticipating how his brother is going to respond to his discoveries.
Sure enough, Dean is aghast.
“Dean, the guy probably would've died anyway,” Sam points out, “and someone else would've been healed”.
It’s an important distinction for the audience - I’m sure we’d have all been a little uncomfortable if someone had been killed specifically to save Dean, wouldn't we? - but it’s cold comfort for Dean who’s now pretty sure who would have been healed instead of him. In this way, the audience is made complicit in the brothers’ moral dilemma. We might be content to see some rando die to save Dean, but how do we feel about him taking Layla’s place?
I suspect, like Sam, we want Dean to live “whatever it takes”, but therein lies the rub. We have a tendency to identify with the Winchesters’ choices, no matter how morally questionable they are. And these choices keep returning with stakes that are raised ever higher and higher: the Winchesters or another person, other people, other beloved characters, the world?
Should we share Sam’s shame?
From the information Sam has gathered, Dean recognizes what they’re up against: “We’re dealing with a reaper,” he says, and this realization is intercut with another scene where we witness the reaper taking a young woman’s life and giving it to an emphysema sufferer. It’s another one of Supernatural’s great musical moments as Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” plays over the dramatic action, obviously the only fitting choice for the revelation.
Unless you’re watching it on Netflix or Stan etc., in which case you get “Death in the Valley” by Death Riders.
Dean’s life was taken from a man of his own age, but now we’re seeing a young girl killed to save an old man. Does that make it worse? Later it’s revealed there’s a moral equation involved: Sue Ann is choosing victims she perceives as immoral. Does that make it better? She thinks it does. The story continues to engage us in these moral choices. Significantly, we later learn that the young woman was an abortion rights advocate, which is another situation where the rights of one life are weighed over another. Doubtless that’s no accident either.
And, finally, the episode is establishing an immutable law that remains unbroken right up until Sam drops into the Cage in “Swan Song”: a life for a life. The ledger must balance: if one person is saved, another must die. Death won’t be cheated.
I hope you've enjoyed the rewatch of these scenes. As always, I look forward to hearing all your own thoughts and impressions. Please click here to continue to the next segment.
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