SPN: Elaborate and Unhinged Recaps: PILOT
Alright, let’s fucking go.
Supernatural first aired in 2005, so throw on some hip hugger jeans and a lace cami, like every female guest star, put a plaid shirt over it, internalize some toxic masculinity, and don’t worry about buckling up because this car was made in 1967 and seatbelts are for pussies.
PILOT:
THEN:
22 years ago, in Lawrence, Kansas, Mary Winchester died gruesomely, on the ceiling of her bedroom, on fire. Her husband, John Winchester, gives their six-month-old son, Sam, to their four-year-old son, Dean, so that John can continue to yell impotently about Mary. This sets the pattern of his entire parenting strategy.
John spends the next couple of decades dragging his sons around the country in his extremely sweet car hunting monsters and searching for revenge. Dean spends the next couple of decades raising Sam and idolizing his father. Sam spends the next couple of decades hating his life and trying to escape the family business.
NOW:
Sam left his family behind four years ago, he lives with his very nice girlfriend, Jess, (Adrianne Palicki), he’s about to graduate from Stanford. He’s going to law school. Dean breaks into his apartment wanting Sam’s help because…
Canon facts about Dean Winchester:
Liked Blanche on the Golden Girls
Reads Vonnegut
Addicted to a “Grey’s Anatomy” type medical drama called “Dr. Sexy.” Dr. Sexy is a man. Just saying.
Hates procedural cop shows. Also hates cops.
A girl he hooked up with once made him try on her pink satin underwear. He was into it.
Would take a bullet for Scooby Doo.
Is afraid of flying.
Always throws rock in rock-paper-scissors.
Sam goes with Dean to look for their father. Sam says he has to be back Monday. He has a law school interview. LOL, Sam, that’s not gonna happen.
Canon facts about Sam Winchester:
Scored a 174 on the LSAT.
Terrified of clowns.
Liked Sophia on the Golden Girls.
Always wins ‘rock-paper-scissors’ against Dean.
Every woman he’s ever slept with on screen is dead. You hop in bed with Sam, you’re gonna get brutally murdered. You kiss, smile at, or have chemistry with Sam, you’re probably gonna get murdered.
The actual MOTW (monster of the week) part of this episode is great, but it’s not super important.
They deal with the ghost John was hunting, they find John’s journal, John is still missing. Dean drives Sam back to Stanford, he asks Sam to stay with him and keep trying to find their dad, who is trying to find the demon who killed their mother. Sam, gently, refuses. He doesn’t even remember their mom. He thinks John’s a lost cause (He’s not wrong.) He’s out of the life. (Ha.)
Sam goes into his apartment. Jess isn’t there, but she has made cookies (because of the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, presumably). Sam eats a cookie and lies back on their bed with relief.
A drop of blood lands on his face.
It’s Jess, having made the deadly mistake of sleeping with Sam, she’s on the ceiling and she bursts into flames. Sam screams, Dean bursts in and drags Sam out of the burning building, again. ~SYMMETRY~
The building burning in the background, Sam looks into the camera trunk full of occult weapons, grim.
“We’ve got work to do.”
END
There are a ton of important quotes from this episode. Most notably:
“Dad’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”
Sam: When I told Dad I was afraid of the thing in my closet he gave me a .45!
Dean: Well, what was he supposed to do?
Sam: I was nine years old! He was supposed to say, ‘Don’t be afraid of the dark!’
Dean: Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark, you know what’s out there!
Sam: You really need to update your cassette tape collection
Dean: What, why?
Sam: Well, for one thing, they’re cassette tapes. And for another; Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Metallica? It’s the greatest hits of mullet rock.
Dean: You know the rules, Sammy. Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.
“No chick-flick moments.”
“Jerk.” / “Bitch.”
“Dad wants us to pick up where he left off, you know. Saving people, hunting things. The family business!”
Important things introduced in this episode:
Uhh, it’s the pilot, so, like, everything?
*Sam and Dean, obvs. Personally as an eldest daughter I over-identify with Dean (Dean is 100% an eldest daughter) even tho I didn’t have to literally raise my younger sibling in a series of shitty motels and survivalist hunting cabins while my alcoholic and obsessive father jerked off to revenge against a demon for twenty years. This is a core point of contention for the rest of time: Dean raised Sam. It hurts him deeply that Sam left, that he wasn’t good enough for Sam to stay. Sam is not ungrateful for everything Dean did for him, but unlike Dean, Sam was capable of seeing that their life sucked and John was a terrible father by many metrics. It takes Dean 8 seasons to even admit that John wasn’t “father of the year”, 12 seasons to admit that the way John raised them “wasn’t fair.” I love Dean so much. Also, Jensen Ackles is beautiful and knocks it out of the park every episode for 15 years.
Sam and Dean and their relationship is the core of the show, so it’s a good thing Jared and Jensen actually like each other because when they were cast for chemistry no one thought they’d have to do this for 15 fucking years. They do, tho, they’re friends, they’re both from Texas and they both live there. Hopefully their wives like each other, I have no idea.
*The Impala. God, this car is beautiful. The entire show is about jerking off to baby boomer nostalgia and this black 1967 Chevy Impala is the centerpiece. They never give it up despite being federal fugitives for almost all of the show. I guess law enforcement never noticed this guy wanted for multiple felonies is driving a car that’s one of maybe 40 left on the road. Apparently in the original pitch it was some other classic car, but Kripke talked to a friend who was like, no, it has to be an Impala. “You need to be able to fit a body in the trunk. You need a car where, when you pull up next to someone at a stoplight, they lock their doors.” That was God, presumably, speaking to Kripke through a drinking buddy.
The trunk has a secret compartment that you lift up, prop with a sawed-off shotgun, and rummage around in for various illegal weaponry, occult paraphernalia, and fake IDs. It’s very cool looking and I want one.
Later in the run of the show the car is called “Baby,” which is what Dean calls it all the time, but early on fandom called it “the Metallicar.” I still have a button pinned to my key lanyard that says “Metallicar.”
*Dad’s Journal. Kinda self-explanatory, it’s the journal John’s been keeping since he started hunting monsters until he leaves it for Dean in the pilot. It’s the show’s bible for a long time. They look up monsters in other lore books and get new contacts and new info, but the journal stays.
*The life on the road. The way Dean and John live is by running credit card scams and hustling poker and pool. Sam disapproves. He can and does do it, though, obviously.
There’s only one motel room in this episode, but the weirdly decorated motel rooms are definitely a theme going forward. Mostly they’re just background but some are pretty great. At one point they walk into an Elvis themed room, stop, look around, and Dean just says, “huh.”
They lie constantly to investigate these strange happenings. They have a box full of fake IDs for various law enforcement agencies, they fake being journalists, college researchers, friends and family of the victims, prospective home buyers, priests…
They eat almost exclusively in 50s style diners. This sounds great, until you remember that they’ve been doing this their whole lives. Dean makes fun of Sam for eating salad occasionally, because of all the internalized toxic masculinity, and also because he doesn’t give a shit about his own life expectancy. (SOB.) This entry was originally posted at https://ghostrunner.dreamwidth.org/7366.html.
Supernatural first aired in 2005, so throw on some hip hugger jeans and a lace cami, like every female guest star, put a plaid shirt over it, internalize some toxic masculinity, and don’t worry about buckling up because this car was made in 1967 and seatbelts are for pussies.
PILOT:
THEN:
22 years ago, in Lawrence, Kansas, Mary Winchester died gruesomely, on the ceiling of her bedroom, on fire. Her husband, John Winchester, gives their six-month-old son, Sam, to their four-year-old son, Dean, so that John can continue to yell impotently about Mary. This sets the pattern of his entire parenting strategy.
John spends the next couple of decades dragging his sons around the country in his extremely sweet car hunting monsters and searching for revenge. Dean spends the next couple of decades raising Sam and idolizing his father. Sam spends the next couple of decades hating his life and trying to escape the family business.
NOW:
Sam left his family behind four years ago, he lives with his very nice girlfriend, Jess, (Adrianne Palicki), he’s about to graduate from Stanford. He’s going to law school. Dean breaks into his apartment wanting Sam’s help because…
Canon facts about Dean Winchester:
Liked Blanche on the Golden Girls
Reads Vonnegut
Addicted to a “Grey’s Anatomy” type medical drama called “Dr. Sexy.” Dr. Sexy is a man. Just saying.
Hates procedural cop shows. Also hates cops.
A girl he hooked up with once made him try on her pink satin underwear. He was into it.
Would take a bullet for Scooby Doo.
Is afraid of flying.
Always throws rock in rock-paper-scissors.
Sam goes with Dean to look for their father. Sam says he has to be back Monday. He has a law school interview. LOL, Sam, that’s not gonna happen.
Canon facts about Sam Winchester:
Scored a 174 on the LSAT.
Terrified of clowns.
Liked Sophia on the Golden Girls.
Always wins ‘rock-paper-scissors’ against Dean.
Every woman he’s ever slept with on screen is dead. You hop in bed with Sam, you’re gonna get brutally murdered. You kiss, smile at, or have chemistry with Sam, you’re probably gonna get murdered.
The actual MOTW (monster of the week) part of this episode is great, but it’s not super important.
They deal with the ghost John was hunting, they find John’s journal, John is still missing. Dean drives Sam back to Stanford, he asks Sam to stay with him and keep trying to find their dad, who is trying to find the demon who killed their mother. Sam, gently, refuses. He doesn’t even remember their mom. He thinks John’s a lost cause (He’s not wrong.) He’s out of the life. (Ha.)
Sam goes into his apartment. Jess isn’t there, but she has made cookies (because of the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, presumably). Sam eats a cookie and lies back on their bed with relief.
A drop of blood lands on his face.
It’s Jess, having made the deadly mistake of sleeping with Sam, she’s on the ceiling and she bursts into flames. Sam screams, Dean bursts in and drags Sam out of the burning building, again. ~SYMMETRY~
The building burning in the background, Sam looks into the camera trunk full of occult weapons, grim.
“We’ve got work to do.”
END
There are a ton of important quotes from this episode. Most notably:
“Dad’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”
Sam: When I told Dad I was afraid of the thing in my closet he gave me a .45!
Dean: Well, what was he supposed to do?
Sam: I was nine years old! He was supposed to say, ‘Don’t be afraid of the dark!’
Dean: Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark, you know what’s out there!
Sam: You really need to update your cassette tape collection
Dean: What, why?
Sam: Well, for one thing, they’re cassette tapes. And for another; Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Metallica? It’s the greatest hits of mullet rock.
Dean: You know the rules, Sammy. Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.
“No chick-flick moments.”
“Jerk.” / “Bitch.”
“Dad wants us to pick up where he left off, you know. Saving people, hunting things. The family business!”
Important things introduced in this episode:
Uhh, it’s the pilot, so, like, everything?
*Sam and Dean, obvs. Personally as an eldest daughter I over-identify with Dean (Dean is 100% an eldest daughter) even tho I didn’t have to literally raise my younger sibling in a series of shitty motels and survivalist hunting cabins while my alcoholic and obsessive father jerked off to revenge against a demon for twenty years. This is a core point of contention for the rest of time: Dean raised Sam. It hurts him deeply that Sam left, that he wasn’t good enough for Sam to stay. Sam is not ungrateful for everything Dean did for him, but unlike Dean, Sam was capable of seeing that their life sucked and John was a terrible father by many metrics. It takes Dean 8 seasons to even admit that John wasn’t “father of the year”, 12 seasons to admit that the way John raised them “wasn’t fair.” I love Dean so much. Also, Jensen Ackles is beautiful and knocks it out of the park every episode for 15 years.
Sam and Dean and their relationship is the core of the show, so it’s a good thing Jared and Jensen actually like each other because when they were cast for chemistry no one thought they’d have to do this for 15 fucking years. They do, tho, they’re friends, they’re both from Texas and they both live there. Hopefully their wives like each other, I have no idea.
*The Impala. God, this car is beautiful. The entire show is about jerking off to baby boomer nostalgia and this black 1967 Chevy Impala is the centerpiece. They never give it up despite being federal fugitives for almost all of the show. I guess law enforcement never noticed this guy wanted for multiple felonies is driving a car that’s one of maybe 40 left on the road. Apparently in the original pitch it was some other classic car, but Kripke talked to a friend who was like, no, it has to be an Impala. “You need to be able to fit a body in the trunk. You need a car where, when you pull up next to someone at a stoplight, they lock their doors.” That was God, presumably, speaking to Kripke through a drinking buddy.
The trunk has a secret compartment that you lift up, prop with a sawed-off shotgun, and rummage around in for various illegal weaponry, occult paraphernalia, and fake IDs. It’s very cool looking and I want one.
Later in the run of the show the car is called “Baby,” which is what Dean calls it all the time, but early on fandom called it “the Metallicar.” I still have a button pinned to my key lanyard that says “Metallicar.”
*Dad’s Journal. Kinda self-explanatory, it’s the journal John’s been keeping since he started hunting monsters until he leaves it for Dean in the pilot. It’s the show’s bible for a long time. They look up monsters in other lore books and get new contacts and new info, but the journal stays.
*The life on the road. The way Dean and John live is by running credit card scams and hustling poker and pool. Sam disapproves. He can and does do it, though, obviously.
There’s only one motel room in this episode, but the weirdly decorated motel rooms are definitely a theme going forward. Mostly they’re just background but some are pretty great. At one point they walk into an Elvis themed room, stop, look around, and Dean just says, “huh.”
They lie constantly to investigate these strange happenings. They have a box full of fake IDs for various law enforcement agencies, they fake being journalists, college researchers, friends and family of the victims, prospective home buyers, priests…
They eat almost exclusively in 50s style diners. This sounds great, until you remember that they’ve been doing this their whole lives. Dean makes fun of Sam for eating salad occasionally, because of all the internalized toxic masculinity, and also because he doesn’t give a shit about his own life expectancy. (SOB.) This entry was originally posted at https://ghostrunner.dreamwidth.org/7366.html.