By: Ivy Dahl
*Warning: this review includes spoilers
Summary:
The first episode of ‘Supernatural’ begins with a normal family consisting of John Winchester, the father, Mary Winchester, the mother, and two young brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester. Mary puts Sam into his crib before later coming back to check on him and seeing a man, who she assumes to be John, holding him. She goes downstairs and to her horror, sees John laying asleep in the living room. She sprints back up the stairs and John wakes up to his wife’s screams.
He runs up to Sam’s room and is momentarily relieved to see Sam safe in his crib, but notices a drop of blood fall on Sam’s forehead. He looks up and sees Mary on the ceiling, suddenly bursting into flames. He grabs Sam and then Dean before running out of the house onto the sidewalk, only able to watch helplessly as the house burns down.
The show cuts to Sam 19-years-later in his first year at Yale university, happy with a girlfriend and bright career prospects of becoming a lawyer. But one night he hears strange noises coming from his and his girlfriend’s apartment, and upon venturing out of his bedroom he immediately starts sparring with a shadowy, unknown intruder. Pinned to the ground, he looks up and realizes it’s his older brother Dean, who he hasn’t seen for a year after leaving for Yale.
Dean tells him that their father, John, has gone on a “hunting trip” and hasn’t returned. Sam immediately understands what Dean means. After their mother died, their dad started hunting monsters and trained him and his brother to do the same. So hunting for them means monsters and not animals. Dean wants Sam’s help to find him, and Sam reluctantly agrees, not eager to disrupt his normal life. Dean tells him that their dad disappeared while investigating multiple disappearances that happened over the span of twenty years on the same highway.
The next scene is of a teenager driving down a dark road when he sees a woman wearing a white dress standing by the road. He pulls over and offers her a ride, and drives to an abandoned building at her request. She mumbles “I can never go home” before vanishing into thin air. The man, terrified, accidentally crashes through a bridge.
Sam and Dean are at a gas station, a quick stop sandwiched between yesterday’s day of long driving and tomorrow’s. They start driving again and come across a bridge with a crashed car and lots of cops on it. Dean pulls the car over, and pulls a fake ID out in front of the cops, beginning to question the cops, while posing as a US Marshall. A cop said that he knew the latest victim and that his girlfriend is putting up missing posters for him.
Sam and Dean track down the victim’s girlfriend, Amy, and lie to her that they are his uncles who are looking for him also. They go to a diner where they run into Amy’s friend, who mentions a local legend about a girl who died on that highway and how her ghost now hitchhikes on that highway.
At the local library, Sam and Dean research online and come across an article about a woman who committed suicide after her two kids mysteriously drowned. Sam and Dean go to the bridge where people are disappearing that night and while they wait, they get into an argument about their mom after Sam dismisses her. They are interrupted by the figure of a woman dressed in white at the other side of the bridge throwing herself off it. They run over to where she jumped and see nothing below them. A loud roar of a car engine brings their attention to their car on the other side of the bridge, which has started driving towards them with no one in the driver’s seat. With no other option, they dive over the side of the bridge into the water. Though dirty, they escaped the ghosts’ attempt to hurt them.
Sam and Dean try to check into a motel when the clerk mentions another man who rented a room for a whole month.
The pair of brothers find the man’s motel room, and immediately recognize it as their dads. The one he was staying in before he disappeared. It’s covered in investigative papers, and has a salt line in front of the door, which is known to ward off supernatural creatures. They conclude from this that their dad was trying to keep something out. They see that their dad solved the case and conclude that the woman they read about in the article was in fact the ghost, and their dad must have burned the woman’s body to get rid of the ghost, but it was somehow still around. Sam tracks down and talks to the dead woman’s husband to try to find where she’s buried. Sam learns that his dad visited the husband a couple of days ago to ask the same questions. He figures out that he was unfaithful to his wife, which led to her ending herself and their kids, before becoming the ghost known as the woman in white, who kills unfaithful men on the highway.
Dean is interrogated at a police station and told he’s a suspect in the men’s disappearances. They show him a journal they found in his dad’s motel room. Dean’s interrogation is interrupted by a phone call and the police officer leaves Dean handcuffed to the table he’s sitting at to answer it. Dean picks his handcuffs with a paper clip and escapes before anyone can notice he’s missing. The first thing Dean does is call Sam, who’s driving in their car. Dean immediately calls him out as the one who made the phone call to distract the police officer. Dean also tells him that their dad left their journal behind, even though he usually goes nowhere without it.
There were also coordinates within the journal and their dad has left to go to them. Suddenly, the woman in white appears in front of Sam’s car, and then next to him in the passenger seat of his car. She asks to be taken home. When he refuses, she takes control of the car and drives it to the abandoned house. When there, she attempts to seduce him, which Sam refuses.
Enraged, she starts to transform into a horrible monster, but is stopped suddenly by the appearance of Dean. Dean shoots her. Sam is startled and drives the car straight through the house, getting pulled from the wreckage immediately afterwards by Dean. The ghost pins them down with telekinetic powers and is about to hurt them, when the ghosts of her children show up. The kids snatch their mother into the netherworld. Sam and Dean, now free, get into their car and drive off.
On the way back to Sam’s apartment, they figure out that their father is in a place called Blackwater Ridge from his journal, and Sam decides to not follow his trail and expresses his desire to return home. Dean doesn’t like this decision, but respects it and drops Sam off at his place.
Sam returns home to his and his girlfriend’s apartment, laying on their bed, glad to be done with his family drama. A drop of blood falls onto his forehead. He opens his eyes and sees his girlfriend on the ceiling, bursting into flames. Dean appears, saving him from the sudden fire by pulling him out of the house. Devastated by what happened to his girlfriend, Sam decides to go with Dean and find their dad.
Review:
‘Supernatural’ is an amazing, iconic tv show, which clearly shows even in the first episode. It sets up an interesting, complex brother relationship between Sam and Dean. It also establishes unique world building with the portrayals of supernatural creatures and ways to fight against them, as well as creating a compelling question of how the brothers are going to find their father.
The first episode also explores how Sam and Dean reacted to their father’s monster hunting training in different ways, with Sam rejecting it and Dean embracing it.
I would give this episode a 10/10. You can watch ‘Supernatural’ on Netflix.
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