Supernatural: Pilot

Dean: "I can't do this alone."
Sam: "Yes, you can."
Dean: "Yeah. Well, I don't want to."

It took me some time to get into this show, but something just kept me watching. I think it was Dean. Jensen Ackles is as cute as a retriever puppy, and Dean, prickly on the outside but with a soft, chewy emotional center, is my favorite character. It took me longer to warm up to Sam, but I'm plenty warm now.

The pilot began and ended with the same event: the most important woman in their lives burning on the ceiling, and Dean taking Sam out of the house and out of his old life. From the start, Daddy Winchester gave Dean responsibility for his baby brother. Sam is an adult now, though, and Dean's tendency to think he knows what's best for Sam, and Sam's certainty that Dean most certainly does not, is the dramatic core of their relationship. I had a similar tension with my sister, who was exactly like our mother and was always telling me what to do. Even though I like Dean more, I tend to identify with Sam.

Although we jumped immediately from twenty-two years ago to the present, the dialogue gave us tidbits about what happened in between. Raised like warriors. Weapons training. Credit card fraud to fund a life on the road. Dean followed in his father's footsteps, while Sam rebelled and went to college. (Again, exactly like my sister and myself. Except for the warrior bit and the credit card fraud.) Dean has embraced his illicit but heroic calling. He thinks Sam should be out living on the edge and hunting evil like he does, not going to some namby-pamby law school.

The monster plot was the fallout of a tragedy: a "woman in white" who killed her children and committed suicide because her husband was unfaithful. (Overreacting a bit, don't you think?) The fairly scary "woman in white" couldn't go home again, much like Dean and Sam.

At the end of the episode, Dean and Sam still didn't know who killed their mother and Jessica. Their father was still missing. Sam may not want to be like his father and brother, but he's very good at the hunting, and he's on board now. But probably not forever.

Bits and pieces:

-- Sam is 22. Dean is 26. Dean is four years older, but Sam is noticeably taller. That felt odd to me at first.

-- The burning women on the ceiling turned me off immediately; killing off female characters in a horrible way just to provide motivation for male characters always bugs me. I eventually got over my pique, though. As I said, something about the show kept me watching.

-- Why didn't Mary Winchester wake her husband when she realized there was a man in baby Sam's room? She was right there at the bottom of the stairs, definitely within easy earshot, and her husband John was an ex-Marine. Why did she silently turn and run back up the stairs?

-- The brothers now have their father's weird ass journal.

-- Dean's Impala has Kansas license plates.

-- It's not all that obvious because the scenes go so quickly, but watch for the incredible changing baby in the opener. They used at least three different babies for baby Sam, and they didn't look much alike.

-- This week's itinerary: Lawrence, Kansas, which is where the story started; Stanford, which is in Palo Alto, California; Jericho, California.

-- Dean used the aliases Hector Afranian and Ted Nugent.

-- One of my favorite bits is the way the brothers masquerade as someone in authority. Here, they were federal marshals. And yes, they did look too young to be federal marshals.

Quotes:

Sam: "What would I do without you?"
Jessica: "Crash and burn."

Sam: "When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in the closet, he gave me a forty-five."
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: "Don't be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark."

Sam: "Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Metallica... it's the greatest hits of mullet rock."

Dean: "Agent Mulder. Agent Scully." A nod to the X-Files people on the staff of this show.

Dean: "That Constance chick. (screaming) What a bitch!"

Sam: "Sorry."
Dean: "No chick flick moments."
Sam: "All right. (pause) Jerk."
Dean: "Bitch."

Sam: "What were you thinking shooting Caspar in the face, you freak?"

I usually don't rate pilots, so no rating this time,

Billie