SPN: Scenes I love . . .
Written by Eugenie Ross-Leming and Brad Buckner
Directed by Paul Shapiro
As promised, I'm returning to my rewatch posts on Supernatural's first season but, this time, in a form I hope readers will find more user friendly. Instead of attempting to review whole episodes (or al least large sections) in one go, this time I intend to just write short posts that focus on one or two frames or, at most, short scenes. The above cap is from the start of the brothers' first scene in episode 13. What I love about it is that it consciously recalls a similar one from earlier in the season, but now the brothers' roles are reversed.
"Route 666" follows two pivotal episodes that dramatised a turning point in the brothers' journey. At the end of "Scarecrow", after spending the first half of the season wrangling with his brother. Sam finally committed to Dean and the family business of "saving people, hunting things". Dean, on the other hand, who had been banging John's drum since the pilot, underwent a crisis in "Faith" and, although he never expressed it out loud at the time, I believe he exprienced a sense of disillusionment with his father and with hunting that was the start of the malaise that he finally admitted to in season 2's "Croatoan". After "Faith" we see Dean starting to quietly step back and let Sam drive the hunting, and this role reversal is presented visually in the above frame.
Here we see Sam poring over a map, laying out the route plan for their next case in Pennsylvania, while Dean is in the background listening to his phone messages. We're about to learn that he wants to change plans because an "old friend" of his is in trouble in Missouri. This is a counter-tableau to the corresponding scene in episode 6, "Skin" where Sam was checking his emails while Dean was laying out the route to Bixby, Arizona - just prior to being re-routed to St Louis. The mirroring of the two scenes underscores the parallels between two episodes that reflect each other in that the former presents Dean with the opportunity to see Sam interacting with an old college buddy while the latter reveals to Sam an important experience his brother had during his absence. It's this kind of attention to small details in season one that I found so masterful.
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