Siobhan watches: Supernatural: Season One, Episode Five, "Bloody Mary"

Episode five! So, ditsy girl says that name into a mirror, people die, Sam and Dean kick that girl’s ass. Dean and Sam have moments. It’s all good.

Recapped.

**edit**

Yeah, so okay, I couldn’t not sit through this one. As much as I hate it, as much as I’m going to be avoiding mirrors and wishing my brother didn’t leave the shaving mirror sticking out over the sink before his night shifts so when I go up to bed after two solid hours of recapping seven minutes worth of footage I scare myself shitless. I will recap this motherfucker.

I haven’t even put disc two in yet. Crap. Okay. Let’s do this.

I think I’m coming to realise that it’s not in season one that they begin to call it The Road So Far. And since this is episode five, we only have the first four episodes recapped in the intro. So I won’t spend time repeating myself too much on that front.

… you know what? As of this moment, it’s 9.50 at night. I have work in the afternoon tomorrow. My head’s feeling weird – it has all day, felt dizzy on the school run this morning – so even at this point, I’m calling it a night. No, you won’t notice because I continue where I left off, but these recaps take me a few days with the starting/stopping/rewinding/typing, plus all the stuff in between like work, travel, my son, food, sleep etc. Maybe in this recap you’ll see the margins for the different days? Even if it takes me five minutes at a time. I’m already 23 seconds into 41: 30 running time (middling length episode) and the recaps haven’t finished … so yeah. Until tomorrow!

Day two, I’m knackered. Storyboarded in my head last night, and I should really crack on and finish my novel but I’m no wuss, so I’m putting this first. Also, I don’t think I was very clear last night, so let me reiterate now – I’m going to stop mentioning the intro part until they do a road so far segment and highlight previous episodes that are relevant to that episode’s topic. So from now until then, I’m skipping the first minute’s highlights, and the last minute of credits. That puts our BM viewing time at around 39 minutes. Also, episode 11 of season 9 aired last night, and I’m not streaming until I’ve suffered through this. My reward, ha!

We start in Toledo, Ohio, to the sound of little girls laughing.

Already so very, very creepy. Toledo is a real place, the fourth-largest city in Ohio.

The little girls are having a sleepover, and they’re giggling over a game of Truth or Dare, the lights off and candles lit between them. One of them picks truth, and her friend asks her about a crush she suspects the other has on a boy. She picks dare, rather than answer, and the dare changes to saying Her name in a mirror. You know the deal, say it three times and She appears and kills you.

Explanation time, it’s not the whole spectre-killing-you business that freaks me out. It’s the notion that there’s something else in the mirror that you weren’t expecting. That something was watching you brush your teeth or check your zits and you thought you had that time alone and you didn’t. Like, it always weirded me out about the Truman Show and Big Brother that there were cameras in the toilet. Same deal. I just get creeped out by mirrors, for some reason?

The girls asks her friend if that’s the best dare she can come up with? Another friend asks who She is, and we hear the legend.

I’m okay with the exposition coming from a ten-year-old girl, rather than Sam. Everyone knows this freaking legend, you sheltered freak.

For this telling of the legend, we hear that when Mary appears, she scratches your eyes out. The two girls who know the legend laugh, and the third friend asks why anyone would dare to say it. The girl who has to do the dare tells her it isn’t real, that’s why.

Harsh maybe, but this girl totally deserves to suffer for her blasé attitude. This is Supernatural, girl, it’s all real! When you see Lucifer take on Kali in a Western/Easter religion fusion death match, anything is possible.

The friend reminds her not to turn on the lights, and she takes a candle into the bathroom as she’s also reminded that she has to say the name three times. The girl shuts herself in, the wind outside rattling the window. She sets the candle down, and looks in the mirror. She says it once, mutters how stupid it is, says it again, and the candle flickers, but she makes herself look in the mirror and say it a third time.

Can I just say, her friends are in the attic. She could easily fudge the whole thing, especially if it’s so stupid. Just take a minute in the bathroom, check your hair, and go back to your friends, faking being spooked. It’s like she’s never had a real sleepover.

Although the wind continues, and the candle flickers again, the girl looking nervously into the mirror, nothing seems to happen. Someone begins to pound on the bathroom door, and she screams, as her friends laugh at her. She calls them jerks, and her dad appears across the hallway, asking the girl, Lily, to keep it down.

The dad is relevant. Oh, Lily, what have you done?

She apologises, and so do her friends. He walks away, leaving them to their slumber party. As he walks through the house, and passes mirrors, we see a veiled figure reflected back, always just out of his visibility. He goes into his own bathroom, taking some pills from the medicine cabinet behind his bathroom mirror, and closing the mirror panelled door. He takes the pills, then looks up, pausing as he focuses on the mirror. He presses his fingers to his cheeks, as though there was something wrong with them in his reflection.

This is a pretty cool twist on the myth, actually, which the myth probably needed because it is one of those stories everyone knows. If only it didn’t involve the damn reflection!

The girls have moved downstairs by this point, and are giggling over boys and crushes. Lily’s older sister walks in, calling Lily a geek as she strides upstairs. She asks if they’re having fun, and Lily says she’s past curfew. Her big sister says “Thanks, Dad,” and carries on walking up the stairs. She sees a dark, wet patch across the wooden floor. She slowly opens the bathroom door, where the wet patch is coming from, and screams.

She’s just seen her father with his eyes gouged out. He would have been bleeding from the eyeballs as well.

Okay, the next shot freaks me out. Not in the same way, but … it’s a shot of Jared Padalecki. And I know it’s a recap of Sam opening his eyes to see Jessica, but it actually looks like him in the latest series. And I know he’s the same guy, obviously, but his hair changes a lot every season, and it changes the shape of his face and there are a lot of fan jokes about how soon, it’ll be Jensen looking the same as ever, working next to Cousin It. There’s jokes in-show about Sam needing a haircut. So it’s weird to see him as older-Sam when he’s younger-Sam. I think he might be a Time Lord.

Sam is dreaming, in a very blue world. He’s laying on his bed, and Jessica is pinned to the ceiling. Her breathing is staggered, laboured. This time, when Sam relives the memory, she says hello to him, before being consumed by the flames. We hear her asking why, as Dean wakes Sam up. Sam has been lying in the Impala, asleep on the passenger seat. Dean just looks at him, and Sam asks if he was having a nightmare. Dean says yes, and Sam tries to pass it off by pointing out that at least he got some sleep. Dean tells him that they’re going to have to talk about Sam’s nightmares soon.

All I can think of at this point is that Dean wants to talk to Sam about his nightmares, but he doesn’t like the touchy-feely crap. How’s that going to work out, huh Dean? I wish Bobby was in this series, because he’d be hilarious at this point. One of his first episodes, he calls Dean a princess. Love Bobby!

Sam changes the subject to the case, looking at his paper where they’ve circled the article printed about Lily’s dad. They leave the car and enter the hospital, aiming for the morgue. As they walk in, Dean notices a sign on an empty desk, with a Doctor’s name on it. They approach the occupied desk, and greet the man sitting there. Dean bluffs that they’re med students. He explains that they’ve been given clearance to look at the corpse for a term paper. The doctor there says his colleague is at lunch. Dean asks if they can see the body anyway, and the doctor says no. They could wait an hour for him to come back, if they want.

Dean bluffs that they need to be going soon, and the paper is worth half their grade. The doctor interrupts to say no, and Dean laughs, muttering to Sam how he wants to hit him in the face. Sam steps forward, slapping Dean’s arm in reassurance as he does, and takes over.

Puppy dogs are coming out. I love how they tag team. And it says a lot that Dean will admit his feelings to Sam in that situation and trust his brother to prevent him from over-reacting.

Sam opens his wallet, and counts out some bills up to $100. Dean’s watching over Sam’s shoulder, and huffs exasperatedly as the man accepts the bribe, his whole tone changed as he leads them towards the body. Dean stops Sam from following straight away.

Dean – “Dude, I earned that money.”

Sam – “You won it in a poker game.”

Dean – “Yeah.”

I love how Dean says yeah like ‘well, obviously Sam!’ Another important part of Hunting – you don’t get paid for saving the world. Credit card scams aren’t the only way to fund the gas, food, guns, salt, lighters and motel rooms. Sometimes, you need to hustle.

Sam recaps what was said in the newspaper, and the doctor shows them the body, and says the man’s eyes had practically liquidated. The boys ask about witnesses, possible causes of death. The diagnosis is leaning towards a heart attack or aneurysm. The only thing for sure was that there was ‘intense cerebral bleeding’. Dean asks to see the police report, and the doctor says he’s not supposed to show them that. Sam gets his wallet out again.

As they leave the building, Sam speculates that maybe it’s some freak medical thing, and Dean responds by asking when is it ever some freak medical thing? They agree to go talk to the daughter.

Ahem, I had to stop writing to go to work. Back now. I’m trying not to comment on the ‘intense cerebral bleeding’ bit because well, previous blood troubles. Oh, haematology …

Dean and Sam enter the house, where they’re having a wake for Lily’s father. Dean comments that they’re underdressed, before they go into the house, looking for either of the sisters. A gentleman points them out into the back yard, where both girls are sitting with the older sister’s two friends.

Want to take bets on Dean hitting on any of them? Or do you reckon they’re underage and Dean actually has limits for that kind of thing?

They apologise to the elder girl, Donna, as her blonde friend eyeballs the boys. Their cover story is that they worked with Donna’s dad.

Brief interjection, Sam introduces them by their real names. That’s another supernatural pattern, victims and those asking for help get the real deal, the right names, the truth about their skills, their personalities … but authority figures get the lies. They’re so goddamn punk rock.

They sympathise with the father having a stroke, and Donna’s other friend says she doesn’t want to talk about her father’s death. Donna says it’s okay, and Lily raises her head at the mention of the stroke. Dean asks if there were any symptoms, and Donna said no. Lily speaks up then, saying it wasn’t a stroke because it was her fault, and Donna tries to explain to Sam and Dean that Lily’s just upset.

Sam squats down to Lily’s level and asks why she would say something like that. Lily confesses to saying it. Sam asks what ‘it’ is and Lily tells him that she said Her name in the mirror. Sam doesn’t look surprised, but Dean seems taken aback. He tells her that Donna’s right, it’s not her fault. And besides, it couldn’t be Her, because her dad didn’t say Her name, did he?

Dean doesn’t believe the story, so much. I liked how Sam and Dean spoke to Lily, because as pig-headed as they can be, they can be sensitive and kind.

Sam and Dean walk through the house, and into the bathroom, where there is still some blood in the cracks of the tiles. Sam asks Dean whether their dad ever found evidence of the legend being real. Dean says no, and enters the room. Sam bends down to examine the tiles and says kids play the game all the time, saying Her name into the mirror, but no one ever dies from it. Dean says maybe it’s just a story everywhere else, but real for Toledo, Ohio. Sam wonders if the legend began there, and Dean shrugs his shoulders.

Dean’s considering the theory, but I don’t think he believes it. Remember, Dean’s intuitive. Sam might know facts, but while they’re speculating what’s going on they’re playing to Dean’s strength. And Dean’s gut feeling is, the legend didn’t begin here. But the legend plays a part.

Sam opens the cabinet door and says it’s normally the person saying the name who is attacked, in the legend, pausing when he realises he’s looking into a mirror and about to say the name in a house where they know She has attacked. Dean agrees that he’s not heard of someone else being the victim when the name has been said before. But he did die in front of the mirror, and his wounds check out with the legend. They agree to research into it.

They hear footsteps down the hallway, and walk out of the bathroom, right into one of Donna’s friends, who demands to know what they’re doing there. Dean says they needed the bathroom, and she demands to know who they are. Dean repeats that they worked with Donna’s dad, and she says he was a freelancer, and she didn’t like their weird questions earlier. She says they have to tell her what’s going on, or she’s going to scream.

What is she, five? Or Verruca Salt?

Sam says they’re trying to find out what happened to Donna’s dad, because that wasn’t a typical stroke. They want to know what else it could be. She asks what it could be, and Sam says he doesn’t know yet. He just doesn’t want it to happen to anyone else. Dean then tells her to go ahead and scream if she wants to.

And Dean gets me in the girly-goolies again! This friend, by the way, plays a major part throughout the episode. We have to put up with her being very annoying and making me wish I didn’t wear glasses. This is the only time I remember Dean giving her a good put-down, so I’m relishing it.

She asks if they’re cops and Dean says “Something like that,” while Sam writes his number down and gives it to her, asking her to call if she notices anything strange.

This is the first time Sam’s given his number out since Jessica. Though I doubt he’s trying to tap that. It’s not very Sam.

Dean and Sam are walking through a school in the next scene, talking about if She is haunting the town then there has to be a local history of a woman who suffered a horrible death. Sam points out it’s going to be hard to pinpoint the origin in a legend so widespread. There are versions where she’s a witch or a mutilated bride, and more besides that. Dean asks what they should look for, and Sam goes for common denominators. She would have been called Mary. She would have died in front of a mirror. She would have died bloody. They need to look in local newspapers and on the public record as far back as they can. Dean says it sounds annoying and Sam says it won’t be so bad, gesturing to the computers nearby … which are out of order.

Dean saying it sounds annoying is Dean not wanting to do his research. I bet he never did homework, either.

Sam says he takes it back, it will be very annoying.

The scene cuts to Donna’s friend in the car, driving and talking on her phone, She’s saying that the guys at the funeral were cops, or detectives, or something like that. The blonde friend is in her room, talking to her on her cell phone. She calls them cute, whoever they were. This girl is called Jill. Jill asks if her friend didn’t think so? She says yeah, okay they were, but still, did they really think something had happened to Donna’s dad?

Okay, Sam at this point, can be relegated to cute. He still has to grow into his gigantor size. But Dean? Dean is like, raw sexual animal magnetism. Screw you, Jill and friend! I should probably learn their names and change them as I go along, but no, you guys basically find out names when they’re mentioned in the dialogue. I had to wait 12.35, so did you.

Jill says maybe Lily was right, and the legend is true. Not-Jill tells Jill to stop it, and Jill laughs that maybe She got him. Not-Jill says it’s not funny, and Jill laughs that Not-Jill sounds scared. So she walks over to her bathroom mirror, and despite Charlie (Not-Jill)’s protests, says the name three times.

Charlie! That’s it! I’m tallying in my head by the way, the amount of names that get repeated. So far I count Ben, Chuck, Sam, Charlie, Dean, Mary, John, Castiel (sort of, his name appears in an incantation in one of the earliest episodes) … probably Lisa too. And I thought I sucked at naming things. I thought it was funny to have two Matts. I accidentally wrote two Janies, then went back and made one a Sophie. Okay, two of those are cheats, Sam and Dean are named after their grandparents. Want to play ‘which one got the grandmother’s name’?

Charlie tells Jill to stop, but Jill goes ahead and says Her name. After the third time, Jill goes silent. Charlie calls her name over into the phone. Eventually, Jill screams, and Charlie panics, before Jill starts laughing. Jill calls her a freak, promises to call the next day, and hangs up. Charlie puts the phone down too.

In Jill’s room, she’s playing Fall Out Boy and goes into her closet, picking out outfits, not seeing the veiled figure in the mirror as she goes about her routine.

Fall Out Boy, like Busted, is one of those bands that I didn’t exactly like the first time around, but lately I haven’t really minded. Two-years-ago me would have said the bitch deserved it just for playing Sugar, We’re Going Down. Now-me isn’t such a bitch.

She goes to her vanity, and the image is there again. She heads into the bathroom, and like Donna and Lily’s dad, looks closely at her reflection, which is no longer imitating her, but moving of it’s own accord.

And now I am starting to shit myself. And I go to bed soon. Real smart, Siobhan. But seriously, you mirror image is meant to work with you, not against you! Creepy fucking writers …

Jill starts hyperventilating, as the reflection stands there and watches, and her eyes begin to stream blood, which is the only thing that matches the mirror image. The mirror image talks, saying she did it, she killed a boy. Jill starts choking, almost gagging, smearing the eye-blood around her face, but she can’t take her eyes off the image in front of her. Jill collapses on the floor, and the mirror image smiles, looking smug.

I can deal with sadistic ghosts, but why did she have to be in a mirror? Although, the effects were pretty awesome, and the director has used some pretty good techniques to ensure the actors don’t actually say the name three times in front of the mirrors. Jill said it twice and the third time we saw Charlie. Just gotta hope they managed it all in one take, right?

We’re back in Sam’s blue-tinted nightmare of Jessica’s death. But this time the flames disappear, and Sam looks up as she opens her mouth. This time, she asks “Why, Sam?” and Sam wakes up again. This time, he’s lying on the blanket of a hotel bed. Dean’s in a nearby seat, surrounded by books, and he looks up as Sam pants on waking, looking tired himself.

Sam – “Why’d you let me fall asleep?”

Dean – “Because I’m an awesome brother. So what’d you dream about?”

Sam – “Lollipops and candy canes.”

Dean – “Yeah, sure.”

Sam – “You find anything?”

Dean – “Oh, besides a whole new level of frustration? No. I’ve looked at everything. A few local women, a Lauren and a Cathryn, committed suicide in front of a mirror. And a giant mirror fell on a guy named Dave, but uh, no Mary.”

This is as close as Dean will let it get, for a while, to a proper heart-to-heart. I love the way they talk, the writers did such a good job with both of them to get the speech patterns authentic to real life. If you ever want to look at good dialogue in terms of honesty and realism? Supernatural.

Dean carries on, saying he’s looked for strange deaths in the area, that match the death they’re looking at, but there’s nothing. Dean says, maybe whatever’s happening isn’t even Mary. And then Sam gets a call. He picks up, and it’s Charlie.

They meet her in a park, where she sits by a tree, crying, explaining that Jill had died on her bathroom floor. Her eyes had been scratched out, liquefied, just like Donna and Lily’s dad’s had. Charlie tells them that she said it, the name three times, just like Lily had. She asks if she’s crazy for thinking it might be the legend, and Dean tells her she’s not crazy. She says that makes her feel so much worse. Sam tells her the basics of their theory so far, and Dean promises they’re going to stop it, but they need Charlie’s help.

I wish this was Charlie-Charlie, geek lesbian extraordinaire. She’s awesome. But we don’t get her until season seven. Sucks ASS.

And I’m calling it a night again. It’s midnight, and I’ve got a full on day tomorrow. But we’re at 16.50 now, and there’s 24.41 to go, including credits. We’re doing good for a chicken shit blogger and the three people who read her blog semi-regularly!

And I’m back. It’s been a couple of days since I did this, thanks to a combination of later shift patterns/I finished my third novel/I’m yellow-bellied chicken shit. Cannot remember where we are in the programme, can just remember I have avoided mirrors a lot at home. At least at work I’m too distracted by shoes to even care about mirror-ghosts.

Charlie crosses Jill’s room and opens her window, where Dean and Sam are squatting on the small roof below the window. Charlie waves them in, and they climb through the window. They ask her what excuse she gave Jill’s mother, and Charlie says she just needed time alone with Jill’s things for the grieving process. Charlie says she hates lying, and the boys say it’s necessary.

They turn off the lights and shut the curtains. Charlie asks what they’re looking for as they get video cameras out of their bag, and they tell her she’ll know when they do.

I’m sure that this is their stock answer for ‘I don’t have a fucking clue’ or when they just don’t want to share what they know.

Sam puts the camera on night vision, and points it at Dean. He looks over his shoulder and asks “Do I look like Paris Hilton?”

No Dean, you are so much hotter than that. But if you want to make a film called ‘one night in Winchester’ I am here for those services.

As Sam scans the mirror in the closet, he starts talking, reasoning through the evidence. The first victim didn’t summon Her. The second victim did. He wants to know how the victims are being selected, and Dean says he doesn’t know. Dean is using the EMF meter in the room and says he wants to know what made Jill say it in the first place. Charlie says that it was a joke. Dean says it’s just a matter of time until someone else says it.

Sam is scanning along another mirror within the room, and he notices a dripping underneath the frame of the mirror. He asks Dean if there’s a black light in the trunk of the Impala.

Of course there is, it’s Dean. And the trunk of the impala.

P.S. Dean, I have a black light too.

Dean crawls out of the window to retrieve the black light, and Sam takes the mirror off of the wall, tearing off the paper backing as he does so. They scan it with the black light, and find a handprint and the words Gary Bryman.

Charlie reads the name out, and Sam asks if she knows who that is. She says no unconvincingly, and Sam and Dean exchange a doubtful look over her head.

The scene cuts to Sam walking up to Dean and Charlie with a piece of paper in his hand. He starts describing the information he found out about Gary Bryman, who was the eight-year-old victim of a hit and run.

And the boy that Jill’s reflection was talking about.

Sam describes the car but says no one saw the driver or the plates. Charlie tells them that Jill drove a car matching the description. Dean decides they need to go back to Donna’s house.

We then see Sam scanning the back of the mirror that Donna’s dad died in front of. There he finds the name Linda Shoemaker. They go to talk to Donna, who confirms that Linda was her mother. She overdosed on sleeping pills. Donna yells at them to leave, upset about the boy’s questions.

Charlie asks if they think Donna’s dad could possibly have killed her mother. Sam says maybe. Charlie says she’s going to stick around and promises not to say Her name.

Dean starts doing a nationwide search, hacking into the NCIC, the FBI, anywhere that may reveal a Mary who died in front of a mirror. Sam says logically, if she’s haunting the town, she should have died in the town. Dean says there’s nothing local so it’s this way unless Sam has a better idea. Sam says there might be a pattern to how Mary’s choosing her victims, and Dean agrees that was his theory too.

Dean says both the victims were, at the very least, feeling guilty over possible accidents. Sam starts reeling off the lore he knows about mirrors, about how they’re thought to reveal your lies and secrets, that they’re a true reflection of your soul. They theorise that maybe Mary can sniff out the lie and punish you for it, whether you summon her or not.

Going back to my fear of this episode, no, I don’t have that feeling. I am honestly just creeped out by the good camera work.

Dean shows Sam a webpage that could be a possible story. They print out and analyse the photos, where there’s a similar handprint on the mirror, and a name scrawled on it too. The victim was Mary Worthington, of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her murder was unresolved.

They go to Fort Wayne, and interview a retired detective in town. The detective admits he’s still frustrated by the Mary Worthington case. Dean asks what happened, and the detective double checks that they are definitely reporters. Sam starts giving out facts from their research about the type of person Mary was and the bare facts of her death.

Dean clarifies that they want to know what the detective thinks happened, beyond the facts of the case. The detective pulls out some case studies he has copies off (not exactly legally, he admits) and they go through some more photographs. On one, there are letters on the mirror, spelling t-r-e. The detective thinks she was trying to spell out the name of her killer.

I would be sarcastic about how well this is falling into place at the halfway point, but honest to God, I just want this episode to be over. Then I can watch First Born. See why Dean’s wearing a crown. Hear Castiel orgasm over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

They ask if he knows who it was, but the detective says he doesn’t have enough evidence. However, there was a surgeon called Trevor who he suspects. Sam asks why it would be him, and the detective tells them about a diary entry she wrote about a man she was seeing. She would refer to him as T in the entries. Her last one admits that she was planning on telling T’s wife about their affair. The detective thinks it was Trevor because of the way he cut her eyes out, it was too professional. He couldn’t produce the evidence to support the theory.

Dean asks if Trevor was still alive, but the detective said he wasn’t. But he does believe Mary was trying to expose him in her last dying moments. Sam asks where she was buried, and they hear that she was cremated.

Bad news for a Hunter. Ghosts usually exist because their physical remains are in tact. Cremation should not lead to ghosts. If someone is cremated, and is still haunting, then there must be a physical object they were close enough to that they could impart some of themselves on it. Later, we will see a doll with the locks donated by the dead girl. We will see a friend of Sam and Dean’s clinging to the afterlife through a whiskey flask. Someone gets Sam’s help from her arsonist ghost brother by burning a friendship bracelet he bled onto.

Dean asks if the mirror from the pictures was in some evidence lock up. The detective says no, it went back to Mary’s family a long while ago. He gives Sam and Dean a list of their names.

Meanwhile, in the high school, Donna and Charlie are discussing the questions Sam and Dean were asking. Charlie tries to justify it, explaining they were trying to help work out what happened to her dad. They’re in the bathroom, and Charlie’s asking Donna to believe her. Donna checks that they’re talking about the legend, and Charlie agrees that it’s crazy. Donna says her twelve-year-old sister can believe this crap, but she doesn’t.

Charlie goes into the way that Donna’s dad and Jill died, saying it couldn’t just be a coincidence. So Donna turns to the mirror in the bathroom, and says Her name three times. Charlie begins to freak out, but Donna says how nothing happened.

Low blow coming up. I wear glasses man. Why would you do this to me?

Charlie asks why Donna would do that, and Donna says there must be something wrong with Charlie.

As Charlie’s walking to class, she looks in the glass panels along the hallway, and sees Her reflection in them. She checks her compact during her Chemistry class, and screams, interrupting class, when she sees Mary there. Charlie freaks out, running as she screams, and sees the reflection in the glass around the classroom, and in the reflection of her teacher’s glasses. She throws a stool at the glass partition when she looks there.

Charlie tears out of the classroom, heading for her home. Meanwhile, Sam is on the phone as he and Dean are driving in the Impala. Sam is apologising to one of Mary’s relatives, lamenting the missed chance to buy the mirror. It turns out that the mirror had been sold a week before, to an antique store in Toledo.

They’re going to rescue Charlie, just in the nick of time! Oh, those Winchesters … WHY DOES DEAN NOT EXIST IN REAL LIFE?

Yes, I’m distracting myself from the freaky-mirror-episode.

Dean works out that Mary goes where the mirror goes, and anyone in the town who has a guilty secret and is close to someone who invokes her is liable to be attacked. Sam agrees she’s linked to the mirror, and Dean asks if there’s a superstition that mirrors can capture spirits. Sam says yes, people would cover the mirrors so they spirits didn’t get trapped. Dean decides they need to smash the mirror, even though Sam’s doubtful as she can move across mirrors.

And I’m calling it, because it’s 11.30pm, Tim Minchin is on TV and I’ve written like 5k words today. We have 15 minutes and 34 seconds left to go, minus end credits.

Right, next day, let’s rock this bitch! I can’t write tomorrow as I’m going to the Harry Potter studios. Mmmmm, Butterbeer and chocolate frogs! I want this over with now! Sorry for the lack of dialogue breakdown in this, I really hate this episode. I’ll do better in the next episode.

Sam picks up his phone, and it’s Charlie on the other end of the line. They get to her house, where she’s sitting on her bed, rocking. They cover all reflective surfaces – windows, mirrors, picture frames. Everything. Sam tells her she can open her eyes, that there’s nowhere for Mary to get to her.

When she lifts her head, Sam tells her that she’s to stay put on her bed, and not look at anything reflective. As long as she follows instructions, she will not be hurt by Mary.

Sam’s whispering this, he’s really reassuring in the scene. I love when Sam’s like this. More sweet Sam, less asshole Sam, please!

Charlie tells Sam she can’t avoid reflections forever, and she’s going to die. Sam stares at her for a moment, then tells her no.

Forcing himself to lie. He should have more faith in his and Dean’s abilities.

Dean sits on the bed with Sam and Charlie and asks what happened. She starts to explain about Donna saying the name and Dean tells her that’s not what he meant. What he needs to know is what Charlie is guilty about, to make Mary target her. Charlie explains that she had an abusive ex-boyfriend, and one night they got into a fight and she broke up with him. He told her if she left he would kill himself, but she walked anyway. She told him to ‘go ahead’. And he did.

That’s such a fucked up situation. That’s what I was talking about in the final Billy and Me post, the whole if-I-can’t-have-you bit. She was right to walk away, she was right to call his bluff because there is no way it was a healthy relationship to be in if that even came up. He had problems she couldn’t sort out. And because he went through with it, he damn well won, because she gets to feel guilty and wonder if he could have been happy without her. What a dick. But because she feels guilty over such a dick, she’s now being tormented by a ghost. It doesn’t matter that I don’t find this Charlie particularly likeable, no one deserves to be in a relationship like that.

In the Impala, Dean says that the boyfriend killing himself is not Charlie’s fault. Sam says “You know as well as I do, spirits don’t exactly see shades of grey. Dean, Charlie had a secret. Someone died. That’s good enough for Mary.”

*Drum snare!*

Sam says it may not be enough to purely smash the mirror. She can move between mirrors, she may hide in them forever. Sam suggests they try to pin her down, draw her to her mirror and then break it. Dean asks how he knows it will work and Sam says he doesn’t. Dean asks how they can summon her? Sam says he’ll do it; she’ll go after him.

I think I might actually transcribe this bit.

Dean – “All right, you know what? That’s it!” *pulls over* “This is about Jessica, isn’t it? You think that’s your dirty little secret? That you killed her, somehow? Sam, this has gotta stop, man. I mean, the nightmares and-and calling her name out in the middle of the night. It’s gonna kill you. Now listen to me. It wasn’t your fault. If you wanna blame something then blame the thing that killed her. Or hell, why don’t you take a swing at me? I mean, I’m the one that dragged you away from her in the first place.”

Sam – “I don’t blame you.”

Dean – “Well, you shouldn’t blame yourself. ‘Coz there’s nothing you could’ve done.”

Sam – “I could’ve warned her.”

Dean – “About what? You didn’t know what was gonna happen! And besides, all of this isn’t a secret! I mean, I know all about it. It’s not gonna work with Mary, anyway.”

Sam – “No, you don’t.”

Dean – “I don’t what?”

Sam – “You don’t know all about it. I haven’t told you everything.”

Dean – “What are you talking about?”

Sam – “Well, it wouldn’t really be a secret if I told you, would it?”

Dean looks super pissed off at that. He’s trying to help Sam so much, he’s doing the touchy-feely crap he hates so much and Sam is intentionally being a dick about it. But Sam’s hiding something I’ve referred to before. He saw it coming (sometimes, in stressful situations, kids get intuitive blahbahblah, yeah, real subtle, Sam).

Dean tells Sam there’s no way they’re even trying it Sam’s way, he needs to forget it. Sam tells him they need to, or Charlie’s going to die. And after Charlie, there’s going to be more people. Unless they do something to stop it. Sam has to do this. Dean shoots Sam a dirty look, and he repeats that Dean has to let him.

I know it seems like I don’t like Sam when I say this – and I actually do, very much – but what a dick! He plays on Dean’s weaknesses as much as he does everyone else. He’s so damn manipulative. It probably doesn’t help me saying this when I see a lot of myself in Sam … but I know I’m a dick, so it’s okay. Right?

The boys break into the antique store, where there are hundreds of mirrors. They use flashlights to examine each one, looking for the particular frame of Mary’s mirror, which is pretty ornate. After walking around for a while, Dean calls to Sam that they might have already sold the mirror. At that point, Sam finds it, and calls back that he doesn’t think so. Dean goes back over to him, and holds a picture of the mirror up to the one Sam’s located. He agrees it’s the right one and checks that Sam’s sure about his plan. Sam just hands him the flashlight.

And holy shit, I’m about to crap myself over recapping this. Comment and tell me I’m so freaking brave. I deserve my chocolate frog/random Harry Potter shit I don’t actually need and got from Florida years ago/butterbeer.

Sam approaches the mirror and says Her name, three times, wielding a crow bar. After he does, a light beam shines into the room as a car pulls up outside. Dean goes to check it out and warns Sam to be careful, and smash anything that moves.

Dean goes out, and meets the cops outside, saying it was a false alarm, he accidentally tripped the system. When the cops ask who he is, he says he’s the bosses son. They say “You’re Mr Yamashiro’s kid?”

Meanwhile, Sam has noticed Mary in the mirrors, and begins shattering the mirrors she appears in, trying to lure her into hers. She goes into it, and alters Sam’s reflection, as she did to Jill.

Thinking it through, this isn’t the last time they use a mirror to show two different sides to Sam. Jared’s pretty good at the split personality bit. That’s somewhat worrying.

Sam’s eyes begin bleeding, as the reflection watches on. He drops the crow bar, grabbing his heart as the reflection tells him it’s his fault Jessica is dead. Meanwhile, Dean’s giving some spiel about how he was adopted. He says he doesn’t have time for the questioning right then, and punches both cops in the face, knocking them out cold.

Sam’s reflection is talking about how Sam never told Jessica the truth about who he was, about how long the nightmares have been going on. How Sam had been having the premonitions about her death for days before it happened. How he pushed them aside, desperate to be normal, and left her alone knowing what might happen. What did happen.

This is a little show-don’t-tell. Big no-no normally, but we’ll allow it because as true as all this is? It’s going to get So Much Worse.

I seem to be handling this bit better than the girl in the mirror. Maybe it’s the hair? Looks a little like mine. And now I will never use another mirror ever a-fucking-gain.

Dean comes along at this point and smashes the mirror, practically throwing himself into it.

And shit, I just remembered what the fuck happens next. So much for my Big Girl Pants.

Sam pants on the floor, eyes still bleeding, and Dean grabs him, shouting ‘Sammy’ over and over. Sam puffs out “It’s Sam.” And Dean checks he’s okay. They look at the smashed mirror quickly, and then Dean pulls Sam up onto his feet, to get him out of the shop and get him patched up.

Meanwhile, something starts crawling out of the empty, smashed frame.

Crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap!

The boys hear the crunching glass and gasping breath and turn around as Mary stands up. They both start bleeding from the eyes, gasping for breath as they grab their chests, and she limps over to them as they collapse on the floor.

Through the ridiculous pain in his chest, Dean reaches over and grabs the closest mirror he can, and holds it up in front of Mary. Her reflection blames her for the recent deaths, and Mary dissipates into shattered mirror on the floor.

This is a strange kind of paradox, isn’t it? Mary haunting the mirrors makes those who look in them face their guilt and die of it, and yet when she looks in a mirror … she does it to herself? But the entity in front of them is a reflection in and of itself … this is like a ghost-haunting-mirror wormhole. I’m giving myself a headache.

Dean throws the mirror he used onto the pile as well, and they both try to get their breath back from the near-heart attacks she gave them. He turns to Sam and says it’s got to be about 600 years bad luck.

You spend forty years in Hell, Dean … it’s not as funny as you think it is.

The next scene shows Dean and Sam pulling up in a suburban neighbourhood, with Charlie in the back. She checks that it’s really over, and Dean nods, saying yes. She thanks them, and gets out of the car. Sam calls out to her before she goes into a house, saying she should forgive herself for her ex’s death. That it would have happened no matter what she did. Sometimes, bad things just happen. She walks away, and Dean tells Sam that it’s good advice.

Heavy with the subtext of ‘take it sometime.’

As they’re driving out of town, Dean asks Sam to reveal his secret, the one he was sure would call Mary to him. Sam says “Look, you’re my brother, and I’d die for you. But there are some things I need to keep to myself.”

God, Mom, why do you want to know everything about my life! It’s not drugs, can we just leave it at that? /endSamasDeanschildparody.

They drive through the retail district, and at a street corner Sam notices Jessica there, all in white. He watches as they drive past, and as they pass a tree, she disappears, and Sam continues staring at the point where he saw her for as long as he can.