Season One

1x01 Pilot

• the woman in white can’t return home because she killed her kids and she’s afraid of retribution
• Sam is afraid to return home. he can’t decide which home to return to
  • Dean is one home
    • Dean represents the family Sam left. dad is missing and mom is dead, so Dean is left behind to represent all of them
  • jessica is the other home
    • jessica represents the new life Sam created for himself at stanford. he has friends and a girlfriend and “his whole future on a platter”
  • what is Sam afraid of?
    • the visions he’s been having of jessica’s death—revealed 1.05 bloody mary
    • afraid that dad (and Dean) is disappointed in him, doesn’t want to see him—revealed in 1.08 bugs
  • Sam progression:
    • doesn’t want to go with Dean; doesn’t care that dad is missing
      • until Dean says “he doesn’t want to look for dad alone”
    • goes with Dean to jericho. reminds Dean about the interview several times
      • until he starts having fun with the hunt, after they jump off the bridge
    • becomes reluctant to return to stanford, but is still committed to returning
      • until he sees jessica dead on the ceiling and his apartment catches fire
    • returns to Dean to keep hunting, motivated to find jess’s killer

• the woman in white was driven to insanity because her husband cheated on her
• Sam is unfaithful to jessica because he ran off with Dean, leaving jessica to die
  • Dean portrays a seductress; jessica is the spurned wife. cheating on jessica directly resulted in her death

1x02 Wendigo

• hailey wants to save tommy
• Dean wants to save and protect the people from the wendigo. it’s intrinsically important to him to save as many people as he can
• Sam is NOT intrinsically motivated to save people. his goals and ambitions are more important to him than protecting others

• the wendigo is a monster who is also a hunter
  • Dean “did bambi or yogi ever hunt you back?”
  • hints at the idea that hunters are also monsters
• Dean has been raised a hunter: he’s good at tracking, has working knowledge of folklore and monsters, and is proficient at research. hunting makes Dean confident and calm
• Sam has also been raised to hunt, but he quit and left the life behind. hunting agitates Sam because it’s not what he wants to do
• roy is also a hunter, but his inflexibility and unwillingness to believe in monsters gets him killed. too cocky, too self-assured
  • a foil to Dean’s easy confidence

• sub-theme: family bonds
  • hailey’s parents are dead, so they’re “all they have.” she insists on joining the search for tommy, even when the local sheriff and wildlife services refuse to do anything to help.
  • Dean’s mother is dead and dad is missing—Sam and Dean are on their own together for the first time
    • a parallel between tommy and John is drawn because they’re both missing, and hailey/Dean are both the intense, driving forces behind searching for them
    • Dean is sympathetic to hailey wanting to help search because he shares her determination to keep her family together
• sub-theme: following orders
  • John gives Dean the order to go to blackwater ridge to hunt, and Dean follows unquestioningly despite Sam’s reservations
    • Sam
      • doesn’t want to participate in the hunt
      • tries to leave when they find out dad isn’t there
      • is willing to let tommy and others die by abandoning the hunt
      • Sam is not willing to blindly follow orders
    • Dean
      • takes John’s order as law
      • wants to see the hunt through to the end despite dad not being there
      • convinces Sam to stay
      • Dean will follow dad’s orders even if they contradict his own wants and needs

1x03 Dead in the Water

• bill becomes despondent and suicidal after losing his two children and his godson; both he and peter’s mother say losing a child is worse than dying
• peter is specifically targeting bill and jake’s descendants in order to make them feel the pain of losing a child
• jake sacrifices his own life to save lucas from peter
  • this implies that John would sacrifice his life to save Sam and Dean, which he does in 2.01 in my time of dying

• lucas is the trauma-riddled survivor of peter’s attack on his father. he now can’t speak, is sullen and isolating, and has developed mild psychic powers because of the experience
• Dean connects with lucas on the grounds of losing a parent. he lost his mother when he was young
  • Dean emphasizes being brave in the face of trauma and fear because it’s what their parents would want for them
    • “i think about that every single day”—implies that Dean is afraid and fearful often, and that it’s okay to be afraid

• Dean “you can’t bury the truth. nothing stays buried”
  • this is in response to jake and bill trying to cover up peter’s murder. they literally buried the bike to cover their tracks, and they’ve metaphorically been burying the truth across the years to prevent their actions from being uncovered
  • if this episode is about John, then this quote reflects that John himself has a secret which will inevitably come to light. this is later first revealed in 1.21 salvation, when we see that John knows about Sam’s destiny as connected to Azazel. season 2 is also about that truth being dug up by force now that John is no longer alive to keep it buried. he wanted Dean to keep the secret but he can’t, and as Sam and Dean both discover the truth about Sam’s fate, they’re drug further into its orbit and tensions grow
  • this line is foreshadowing Sam’s destiny, the fact that John knows about it, and that it will be revealed forcefully when tensions are at their highest and lives are at stake
    • John leaves Sam and Dean to their own devices in season 1 because he caught wind of Azazel for the first time. Azazel is going around creating a new generation of special children. in this way Azazel is paralleled with peter. John also offers himself up to Azazel to save Dean’s life in 2.01 in my time of dying which reflects jake offering himself to peter to save lucas, who parallels Dean

1x04 Phantom Traveler

• demons exploit people’s fears to worm their way inside of them
• Dean professes at the start of the episode that he’s not really afraid of anything
  • when Sam produces the knife from under Dean’s pillow, he insists that it’s precaution, not fear
• Dean is revealed to have a crippling fear of flying. “why do you think i drive everywhere?”
• Dean and Sam fall into rigid roles while hunting, which don’t change even when Dean is terrified of being on the airplane
  • Dean assumes the active, physical role of investigation and fighting
  • Sam assumes the passive, intellectual role of research
  • this suggests that Dean is also afraid of putting Sam in a position where he could get hurt or killed, choosing instead to put himself in harm’s way in order to protect Sam: Dean is afraid of losing his family
• Sam and Dean call John’s phone at the end of the episode and get his answering machine, which instructs the caller to call Dean instead
  • Sam is angry at this, but Dean looks upset and hurt. this implies that Dean is also afraid of John abandoning him: Dean is afraid of losing his family
• Sam’s fears are not revealed
  • until the next episode

1x05 Bloody Mary

• bloody mary targets people who have caused someone’s death and have kept their involvement a secret
  • charlie’s abusive boyfriend threatened to kill himself if she broke up with him
  • jill killed a child in a hit-and-run a few years ago
  • donna and lily’s father killed their mother with a sleeping pill overdose
• Sam had been seeing visions of jessica’s death for days before it actually happened, but he did nothing about it because he didn’t believe they would come true
• Sam refuses to tell Dean about his visions—“you’re my brother, and i’d die for you, but there are some things i need to keep to myself”
  • Dean responds with shock, implying that Sam has never (to Dean’s knowledge) kept secrets from him
  • expands on Dean’s fear of abandonment because secrets drive people apart; this moment reminds Dean that they’re not as close as he wants them to be
  • he responds by trying to cling tighter to Sam, manifesting this through control of Sam’s actions
• mary causes her victims to bleed from their eyes and hemorrhage from their brains
  • could be symbolic of Sam’s visions: the eyes see, the brain is psychic

• charlie feels guilty that her boyfriend committed suicide, thinking she’s to blame
• mary is killed by Dean turning the mirror on her, exploiting her own guilt at killing her victims
• Sam feels responsible for jessica’s death because he didn’t do anything to prevent it

1x06 Skin

• the shapeshifter feels like a freak because he doesn’t fit in with the world and because he’s a monster
• the shapeshifter tells Sam that Dean “knows he’s a freak”
• Dean tells Sam that he (Sam) is a freak, but it’s okay because Dean is a freak also

• the shapeshifter has been targeting romantic couples, assuming the likeness of the boyfriends, and torturing and killing the girlfriends
• the shifter tells rebecca that “everybody needs a little human touch every now and then”
• the shifter also tells rebecca that all he (both Dean and himself) wants is to be loved
• when the shifter attacks Sam, he does it wearing Dean’s skin, implying that they are a romantic couple or at least close enough to one to count

• the shifter inflicts psychological torture on his victims by using their boyfriends’ faces to hurt them, representing a betrayal
• Sam is revealed to be lying to his college friends about what he’s doing, which Dean claims will end up hurting them in the end
  • it does, and their lies to rebecca jeopardize zach’s case, possibly condemning an innocent man
• the shapeshifter discusses Sam leaving for stanford as a betrayal of his brother, by abandoning him and leaving him at home with John while he got to live his dreams
• the shapeshifter reveals to Sam that Dean feels abandoned by their father

1x07 Hook Man

• this is the first episode where christianity makes a real appearance in the setting and development of the story: jacob karns was a preacher, he latched onto peachers in death, both damsels are devoutly christian, and the sense of morality all of the killers exhibit are rooted in christianity
  • this is also the first episode that suggests that Dean is atheist, while Sam is christian
• lori (unknowingly) causes the ghost to attack people who she thinks have sinned: her boyfriend for coming on too strong, her roommate for trying to “turn her into a party girl,” and her father for having an affair with a married woman
  • lori says she feels cursed because people around her keep dying, and Sam relates to this. this implies he feels that he’s cursed
• lori believes she’s summoning an avenging angel due to her sense of morality and then prays to be punished for her own sins

• lori believes that when you do something wrong, you should be punished. this belief causes the spirit of jacob karns to manifest and kill the sinners around her extrajudiciously
• hunting is a form of vigilante justice, where the hunter plays the role of judge, jury, and executioner
  • like 1.02 wendigo, this episode suggests that hunting is similar in nature to what the monsters themselves are doing

• lori gets into several arguments with her father about him trying to control her life and being too overprotective: he doesn’t want her to go to a party at her sorority, he tries to keep her home as much as possible, he calls her while she’s on a date
• the episode opens on Sam trying to locate John through missing persons databases or traffic violation records, and he’s visibly frustrated
  • Dean’s relative calm (“dad doesn’t want to be found”) contrasts Sam’s growing frustration
  • this episode takes place immediately after the shapeshifter reveals to Sam that Dean feels abandoned by John
• lori calls her dad a hypocrite for preaching faith while having an affair. she believes people should be punished for their sins
  • this resembles Sam’s argument in pilot that John was a bad dad for raising his kids to be hunters. this could imply that Sam thinks John should be punished for raising his kids unethically

• lori repressing her discomfort toward the people around her is what leads to jacob karns enacting the justice on her behalf
• Dean is repressing his feeling that John betrayed and abandoned him
• Sam is still keeping his visions a secret, the Sam visions which are connected to jessica’s death

1x08 Bugs

• the land has been cursed by a euchee indian
  • Dean says “you don’t break a curse. you get out of its way”
  • notably, it’s Sam who asks how to break a curse
• Sam’s visions are a sort of curse, especially since they’re demonic in nature and passed down to him from mary’s deal with Azazel

• matt and larry have a tense relationship, largely because larry doesn’t think matt’s interests are appropriate
• Sam and John have a tense relationship. Sam reveals that John kicked Sam out when he told them he was going to college. he also believes that John wouldn’t want to see him again
  • Sam believes that John and Dean have a good relationship with each other, that Dean is the golden boy of the family
  • Sam believes that John is disappointed in him
    • Dean is confused and angered by this because Dean believes John loves Sam more than him and that Dean is the fuck-up of the two
    • matt also says larry is disappointed in him
• Dean defends John from Sam’s accusations and also defends larry from Sam telling matt he can escape from his family via college
  • Dean believes family should stick together, no matter what
• matt and larry reconcile at the end of the episode because larry realizes that family is more important than his ambitions. matt gives up his interest in bugs
  • this implies that the way to reconcile the differences between Sam and John is for John to give up on his own ambitions (hunting Azazel) in favor of being with his family, and that Sam needs to sacrifice his “interest” (his pursuit of independence)
    • this is exactly what happens in 2.01 in my time of dying
• Sam says he wants to apologize for what he said to John when he left home because he feels guilty about their fight

1x09 Home

• jenny moves away from wichita after her husband dies to get a fresh start because she’s having trouble coping with his loss
• according to the owner of the garage John used to co-own, John “just vanished” shortly after mary’s death (quote from deleted scene)
• Dean swore to himself that he would never return to lawrence, kansas, and he spends much of the episode uncomfortable and wanting to leave the town behind

• Sam reveals his visions to Dean at the beginning of the episode in order to persuade him to return to kansas
• Dean is consistently shown as unfamiliar with magic while Sam is more open to it
• missouri picks on Dean uniquely and shows more compassion and sympathy to Sam
• Sam is stuck in a liminal space between Dean’s hunting style and missouri’s magic since he’s a hunter with psychic powers

• Sam’s first vision was about his girlfriend, and his second vision is about his childhood home
• Sam and Dean don’t return to lawrence until Sam finally reveals his powers to Dean
  • this being the episode where mary reappears hints that mary is connected to Sam’s powers
• Sam can sense mary’s ghost (and the poltergeist) even when missouri can’t
• mary only appears in her true form once Sam can “see” her, and thereupon she saves him and Dean by killing the poltergeist
  • it could be retribution for being unable to save Sam when she died

1x10 Asylum

• ellicott’s victims are made homicidally angry, playing off their existing frustrations and amplifying them to deadly levels
• when ellicott was alive, he tried to cure his patients through their anger
  • could imply that Sam’s anger is dangerous and the buildup of it will have explosive consequences
  • nothing can be solved with anger and violence
  • the patients trapped in the asylum are notably nonviolent, and they help solve the case with Sam advocating for them
• Sam’s anger with John becomes directed at Dean at the start of the episode because Dean wants to follow John’s orders to check out the asylum instead of continuing their search for him
  • it’s later implied Sam has complicated feelings toward Dean while in his fake therapy session
• Sam’s anger is additionally directed at Dean because of him trying to control or boss Sam around (“and Dean? he’s your boss?”)
  • Dean is acting like John in his absence, so Sam’s anger toward John is displaced onto Dean who is emblematic of him
• Dean gives Sam a gun to shoot him dead with: “you hate me that much? you think you could kill your own brother?”
  • at the end of the episode it’s revealed that Dean thinks Sam really does hate him enough to kill him, and that the anger ellicott intensified is rooted in something real
  • related to the small betrayals Dean has perceived from Sam over time, and the distance between them that Dean sees as abandonment and an absence of love
• the episode starts with Sam being angry that John is jerking them around and then ends with Sam picking up Dean’s phone to hear John on the other line—a tidy loop tying all of Sam’s rage to John

1x11 Scarecrow

• Dean claims that one male and one female are sacrificed to the vanir annually “like some kind of fertility rite”
• Dean is chosen alongside emily as the stand-in sacrifices once Dean saves the first couple chosen
  • emily is the black sheep in town, as she’s left out of the goings-on with regards to the vanir. she’s kept in the dark, and as a result has to develop her own sense of self independent from the rest of the town
    • because of this when Dean is questioning the residents, she speaks up against the good of the collective because she doesn’t know better, because she’s developed her own individuality in the absence of being included in the collective, and this otherness that was imposed upon her without her knowledge or consent becomes the scapegoat which leads to her sacrifice
    • Sam, like emily, was left out of the family and sheltered from the knowledge that John and Dean shared. due to this, he was forced to develop independently from them instead of being subsumed into the collective. he’s forced into an independence he doesn’t want, and then he’s punished for it by being abandoned by his family
• Dean utilizes emily as the passive intellectual in Sam’s absence, getting information from her both during the investigation phase and once they’ve been captured. this parallels Sam’s role in their dynamic
  • Dean calls Sam his “trusty sidekick geek boy [who does] all the research”
• Dean mentions that the townspeople are “fattening [the sacrifices] up like a christmas turkey.” could parallel the way Meg is pushing herself into Sam’s good graces before presumably leading him to the slaughter—importantly also that she wants to “sacrifice” Sam and Dean together.
• Dean and emily are forced to be sacrifices for a fertility rite, portraying them as lovers who will give life to the town (allegory for the family). by paralleling Sam and emily through their roles in the story, it implies that Sam and Dean are lovers whose sacrifices can make their family prosper

• the townspeople are in collective agreement to sent one couple who passes through town to the slaughter every year, turning a blind eye to their deaths in order to reap the rewards of the god’s blessing
• emily’s aunt says this exact thing to her when tying her to a tree to be sacrificed to the god
• the vanir harvests the skin from its victims to use for itself, so it is actually “the many” in a very literal way
  • additionally the vanir has no distinct personality and doesn’t have much direct screen time as the antagonist. this can also support the collectivism the vanir represents
  • the antagonists are also the townspeople as a collective, because they all participate in the ritual murders
• Meg fabricates a story that her family “wanted what’s best for [her]; they just didn’t care if [she] wanted it,” causing her to strike out on her own
  • she’s paralleling Sam’s conflict of family vs independence
  • Sam rejects this independence and consequentially Meg in order to return to the family
  • “at least we’re living our own lives, and nobody else’s”
• the case is given to Sam and Dean by John. Dean is willing to follow the orders, but Sam is intent to follow John to california instead. in the end, Sam’s decision is the wrong one, and he falls back in line by choosing adherence to family (good of the many) over his own wishes (good of the one)
  • the fact that the god is killed and the town is left to rot at the end of the episode implies that Sam and Dean choosing family is the ultimately harmful decision, because the decision that saves people is letting the town (family) be destroyed and the decision that kills people is letting the town (family) prosper
  • Sam stealing a car to find and save Dean is indicative of Sam falling in line with his family’s values, choosing the family over the self
  • Sam giving up on california to return to his family is a redemption of 2003 when he gave up on his family to go to california
    • aunt stacey says “sacrifice means giving up something you love for the greater good”
    • Sam gives up what he wants (finding dad and Azazel) for the greater good (saving Dean and conforming to the family)
• Dean accuses Sam of being a “selfish bastard” when Sam makes to leave for california instead of helping the case and ignoring John’s orders
  • “you just do whatever you want. you don’t care what anybody thinks”
    • Sam responds “that’s what you really think?” which Dean confirms. relates back to 1.06 skin where the shapeshifter accuses Sam of being selfish for leaving Dean and forcing him to abandon his own dreams—jealousy
    • later when Dean calls Sam he apologizes and says Sam was right. rewording his first statement: “you’ve always known what you want, and you go after it. you stand up to dad, you always have. hell, i wish i [could do the Same]”
  • Dean threatens to “leave your ass” when Sam starts walking off, mirroring what we know John told Sam when Sam left for college (1.08 bugs, 1.20 dead man’s blood)
    • both times, Sam is headed for california
    • threats of abandonment and alienation are useful in convincing people to fall in line and conform to the majority
    • the townspeople abandon the annual sacrifices by breaking their car, giving them false directions, leaving them stranded, and ignoring their screams for help
• Dean subverts the theme by letting Sam leave, apologizing to Sam, and saying he admires Sam for his willpower to stand up to dad
  • this ironically is what causes Sam to return to the family
    • implies that what Sam wants is not actually independence but respect, and he will happily take a destructive family environment as long as he’s respected and included and made to feel like he belongs there
    • Sam offers to return during their phone call when he thinks Dean is asking for his help—he wants to be wanted and needed
  • Dean accepts individuality as an option and Sam accepts conformity as an option, which leads them both back into each other’s arms
• Sam and Dean both stare at their phones longingly, wanting to call each other, before deciding against it
  • indicates that they’re both thinking about the conflict: do i conform or do i rebel?
    • Dean wants to rebel because John betrayed him. he’s clinging onto a sense of normalcy, hoping that John will give him love if he conforms. he wants to be rewarded for being a good son
    • Sam wants to conform because he wants a place to belong, but John and Dean are denying him of that. Sam doesn’t care about independence but rather respect, so as long as he isn’t getting the respect he needs can’t conform to the family and has to make his own decisions
• harley and stacey jorgeson end up becoming the sacrifices to the vanir at the end of the episode. because they represent the motto of the town and therefore John’s teachings, this can represent John being sacrificed to Sam and Dean’s increasingly complicated feelings about family
  • John does end up sacrificing himself for Dean in 2.01 in my time of dying. this could be an early indicator of his decision