Supernatural: Skin pt 2
Images borrowed from here because my efforts to screencap anything would be laughable.
Sam: Where is he? Where’s Dean?
Shape-shifter Dean: I wouldn’t worry about him. I’d worry about you.
Sam: Where is he?
Shape-shifter Dean: You don’t really want to know. I swear, the more I learn about you and your family … I thought I came from a bad background.
Sam: What do you mean, learn?
Shape-shifter Dean: He’s sure got issues with you. You got to go to college. He had to stay home. I mean - I had to stay home; with Dad. You don’t think I had dreams of my own? But Dad needed me. Where the hell were you?
Sam: Where is my brother?
Shape-shifter Dean: I am your brother. See, deep down, I’m just jealous. You’ve got friends. You could have a life. Me? I know I’m a freak. And sooner or later, everybody’s going to leave me.
Sam: What are you talking about?
Shape-shifter Dean: You left. Hell, I did everything ever Dad asked me to, and he ditched me too. No explanation, nothing; just poof. Left me with your sorry ass. But still, this life? It’s not without its perks. I meet the nicest people. Like little Becky. You know, Dean would bang her if he had the chance … Let’s see what happens.
Sam wakes up bound in the shape-shifter’s lair, with the shape-shifter himself pottering about nearby in Dean’s form, so we get our first look at how he lives - and our best guess at who he is. He is even more marginal than Sam and Dean - their cheap motels and abandoned houses start to look like acceptable accommodation compared to the disordered sewer tunnel in which the shape-shifter makes his home - and his lair stands in stark contrast to the landscape above ground. One of the first things that the episode establishes is that this is a nice area: Dean compliments Rebecca on her (parents’) home as soon as he arrives, and the reason her mother and father aren’t in this episode is because they are hurrying back from Paris where they live for part of the year. Alex, the shape-shifter’s second victim, is a professional man who wears a nice suit and drives a nice car (I can’t identify it, but it looks modern and shiny). The source of his resentment is obvious simply by juxtaposition, and while his extreme poverty is an excellent reason to be annoyed it is not at all a good reason to go out and kill people.
As for his personality, it becomes immediately clear how difficult it is to pin down shape-shifters. He isn’t really anybody at all. While his own experiences are lurking in his brain somewhere, he is already assimilating Dean’s experiences into his persona - so this is both ‘really’ Dean and ‘really’ someone else. And he hasn’t got all of Dean down yet, so this first encounter is still a rough sketch. The things he says are true enough, but like Sam’s story to his friends in the opening scenes, they aren’t the whole truth. It’s no surprise that Dean is holding a bit of a grudge about Sam’s flight to university: back in Dead in the Water he expressed resentment that he got stuck with John while Sam was off having a life. Nor is it unexpected to find him worrying about being abandoned - the threat of Sam going back to his friends has been running constantly through the episode.
But there are glitches, too - for a start he uses ‘this life isn’t without perks’ in the opposite sense that Dean does; Dean embraced the idea of just getting stuff, however horrible, done on his own on behalf of people who would never appreciate what he’d done for them; the shape-shifter views Dean’s loose connections as an opportunity to get to people. The shape-shifter talks about Dean staying home, which he clearly has not done because he has no home to stay in. ‘Staying home’ mightn’t have been so bad for Dean: when he constructs a fantasy life for himself in What Is and What Never Should Be he will place himself not far from his childhood home, and while that life isn’t perfect it’s good enough to be seductive. Dean has only a little more holding him to the world than the shape-shifter does. While his personality is much more strongly defined, he doesn’t think so; he’s always worrying about whether he counts and whether he matters. Only having someone nearby who knows him alleviates this at all. Which brings us to Rebecca: ‘Dean would bang her if he had the chance’ the shape-shifter says, and this is probably true, because the occasions on which Dean turns down an offer of sex are few and far between. On the other hand, I’d also say she’s one good ‘anything for my brother’ speech away from becoming Dean’s new platonic best friend. Or there’s another option: since Rebecca is Sam’s friend, Dean is something of a background figure to her - and he’s happy enough to stay that way, just trailing along after Sam until the job is done. This could go any number of ways, because right now Rebecca isn’t anything much to Dean at all.
The shape-shifter only took Dean’s form as a matter of self-defence - unlike the others, he wasn’t carefully selected prey. Now that he’s got him, he feels as though he may as well do something with him, and he goes after Rebecca because she’s the only woman in the area whom Dean can even name. He doesn’t know Dean very well, so he tries to fit him into the pattern he’s been following, working from the resentful assumption that everyone has what he doesn’t. Talking with Sam, he is simply rehearsing - trying on his ‘Dean face’ to make sure he gets it right for the main event. And he seems to be leaving Sam alive so he can come back and impersonate him once he’s finished destroying Dean. He’s right about Dean’s issues, as far as that goes, but there’s a whole lot he’s missing. He doesn’t yet see that, whatever issues Dean may have with Sam right now, he also relies on him to ground him - and there is as much love and pride in there as there is anger. The shape-shifter is going after Rebecca because he’s trying to force Dean into a paradigm where he doesn’t fit at all - so in his first attempt he misses the point. If you want to go after Dean, Sam is obviously your main target. And he’s also your most dangerous foe.
It’s also worth noting at this point that, six episodes in, the search for John is going nowhere fast. Dean might have complained about retracing their steps 400 miles - but there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t do it. For all they know, John might be in St Louis! It’s as likely a place as anywhere. The shape-shifter expresses Dean’s fear of abandonment, but right now Dean is solid enough - it’s John who has vanished. John has, as the shape-shifter puts it, gone ‘poof’; he already lurked on the margins of the world and now he seems to have stepped right out of it. He’s ignoring his children, in later episodes we will determine that he hasn’t been in touch with any of his known contacts (the ones who are still speaking to him). At this point in the story, the supernatural is all that matters to John. It’s no wonder Sam and Dean have no idea where to begin looking for him; by rejecting the people around him he has effectively ceased to exist.
Shape-shifter Dean: I know what you’re going to say.
Rebecca: Oh, you do?
Shape-shifter Dean: Well, no, not exactly. But I can take a guess. Get off my porch?
Rebecca: That’s about right.
Shape-shifter Dean: I admit it: we lied. I thought I’d try to explain myself. Sam told me not to come, but, you know, I thought - what the hell, I have to try.
…
Rebecca: What did you call it?
Shape-shifter Dean: A shape-shifter. Yeah, maybe we’re crazy. But what if we’re not? I mean, look, you said it yourself that Zach was in two places at once. Now tell me how that can happen.
Rebecca: Okay, so, this thing … it can make itself look like anybody?
Shape-shifter Dean: That’s right.
Rebecca: Well, what is it, like a genetic freak?
Shape-shifter Dean: Maybe. Evolution is about mutation, right? So, maybe this thing was born human but was different … hideous and hated … until it learnt to become someone else.
…
Shape-shifter Dean: You’re a nice girl, Rebecca. I mean, I liked you. Believe me, that makes this harder. But I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.
We follow the shape-shifter back to Rebecca’s place, where it becomes painfully clear that he is impersonating the wrong brother. It isn’t Dean who feels the need to explain himself to Rebecca, it’s Sam. While the shape-shifter looks like Dean, he is currently operating as Sam’s ‘dark double’ - something from outside infiltrating her life, despite the fact that he doesn’t feel he belongs there. The effect is odd - you can’t simply twist Dean’s problems into Sam’s by force of will - but he isn’t really either of them. His attempt to define what he is gives us the strongest sense of the shape-shifter as a person that we’ll ever get - whatever else you may say about him, he’s clearly thought about this. But the thing is, he’s wrong: he doesn’t know anything about his own origins, so it’s hardly surprising that he doesn’t know anything about himself. Insofar as he is human, the shape-shifter is the product of evolution, but his abilities come from somewhere else: Eve’s magical tinkering (really, you’d think the bizarre psychic downloads would be a big clue that something beyond the purely natural is going on here - how would that even work without magic?). Since the youngest person we ever see her work her magic on is a boy who couldn’t be too far from his teens, and it looks as though she prefers to work with adults, it’s entirely possible that the alpha shape-shifter has something the others do not: a face of his own.
Still, while his awkward conversation with Rebecca may be the point for the audience, it’s certainly not the point for the shape-shifter himself: almost immediately he takes steps to alarm her, giving him a pretext to be ‘angry’ and attack her. Of course, he undermines the idea that he ever intended to do otherwise in his explanatory speech to her: whether she’s nice or not doesn’t matter; this is what he has to do because he is not ultimately fuelled by loneliness but hatred.
Shape-shifters, we will discover, seem to reproduce mostly by rape: they impersonate women’s partners, seduce them under false pretences and then leave the couple to raise the cuckoo as their own - at least some of the time with disastrous consequences, as two of the three shape-shifters who operate as major characters (the baby gets a pass, since he’s too young to talk and only develops his powers after his mother’s death anyway) say things that suggest tragic childhoods. The situation between the false Dean and Rebecca is odd anyway, as the two barely know each other, but he has already assaulted two women who had long-term partners. The behaviour of those other shape-shifters suggests that he has the knowledge to get close to these women if he wants to - but that’s not his major concern. He can be any of these men that he wants - except that he can’t really be them, not forever, so he feels he has to destroy them instead. A shape-shifter who is acting out is generally the product of some trauma: unlike most other ‘monsters’, there is nothing about them that is inherently monstrous - they don’t need to kill to feed, nor, like their werewolf cousins, do they suffer from temporary insanity. It’s possible that there are perfectly nice shape-shifters out there, whose parents managed their conditions relatively well - maybe even shape-shifter children conceived knowingly.
This one’s rage at his inability to be anybody in particular becomes apparent when the police interrupt his torture session, taking us back to the episode’s opening scene, and he uses the skills he’s downloaded from Dean’s memories to fight his way free and flee back into the sewers. Supernatural doesn’t scare me, but I have to give them points for sheer ickiness in the scene where the shape-shifter sheds Dean’s skin - now a big liability for anyone wearing it: the thing with the teeth is pretty high on my list of ‘things I never need to see again’ (and yet in the course of writing this I have watched it four times; what this says about me I do not know). The sheer repulsiveness of the image emphasises the shape-shifter’s self-loathing: he feels discarded, and everything about him is disposable - hair, teeth, fingernails, basic body structure. There’s nothing about him that is more than skin deep, and with a bit of force you could tear his identity apart. They tend to be especially fragile around the ears.
Dean: Man, that’s not even a good picture.
Sam: It’s good enough.
Dean: Man!
Sam: Come on. They said attempted murder. At least we know …
Dean: I didn’t kill her.
Sam: We’ll check with Rebecca in the morning, see if she’s all right.
Dean: All right, but first I want to find that handsome devil and kick the holy crap out of him.
Sam: We have no weapons. No silver bullets.
Dean: Sam, the guy’s walking around with my face, okay? It’s a little personal. I want to find him.
…
Dean: I’m sorry, Sam. But you know me - I just can’t wait.
It turns out that the shape-shifter has kept Dean tied up just metres away from Sam - and while he is busy trying to kill Rebecca, they liberate themselves and head out to assess the damage. Which is fairly extensive, all things considered. Rebecca is alive, which is definitely a good thing - but between her and the cops who tried to apprehend the shape-shifter there are plenty of people to provide descriptions, and thus there is already a sketch of Dean doing the rounds on the news. Dean complains about the quality of the artwork; Sam thinks it’s good enough to mean trouble. And the thing is, they’re both right. That picture will be good enough for anybody else - certainly good enough for the cops pursuing them - but it’s still a picture of someone else; it’s not Dean’s face they’re showing, it’s the shape-shifter’s. The shape-shifter has robbed Dean of much of what he owns: he’s taken his weapons, some of his jewellery and about 18 of the 19 layers of clothing that Dean insists on wearing everywhere. This is Dean stripped down, and obviously so, stomping along beside Sam - who has kept almost everything. But while the shape-shifter is nobody once he has stripped down, just whichever new identity he has assumed, at his core Dean is clearly still Dean.
We’ve just watched the imposter do a number of un-Dean-like things: threatening Sam, attacking human women, killing police officers. But now we are watching the real version be very much himself in an effort to take back his identity. He and Sam are clearly complete innocents in dealing with the police. They’ve obviously been picked up before - we saw it in the Pilot - but they have no idea how to behave as actual wanted criminals. It never occurs to either of them that the police would expect the suspect to go back for his possessions (and while I agree with Dean’s assessment of procedural cop shows, this is one situation where a bit of familiarity with CSI or Law and Order might have come in handy), and so they are split up again when Sam gives himself up in order to give Dean time to escape. Despite Sam’s plea that Dean wait for Sam to meet up with him before confronting the shape-shifter, Dean is too much on edge to linger. It’s a good thing, too: Sam has stopped by to check on Rebecca before re-joining his brother - but Rebecca is not herself. Dean finds the real Rebecca tied up in the shape-shifter’s lair, meaning that Sam is once again in the monster’s hands. Succumbing to his irritation and rushing off to confront the shape-shifter is perhaps not the wisest move … but it is Dean being himself, and right now that’s more important than wisdom. Because Dean is Dean and Sam knows that, they’re going to live.
Sam: What are you going to do to me?
Shape-shifter Dean: Oh, I’m not going to do anything. Dean will, though.
Sam: They’ll never catch him.
Shape-shifter Dean: Oh, it doesn’t matter. Murder in the first? His own brother? He’ll be hunted the rest of his life.
Having had a bit more time to stew in Dean’s memories, the shape-shifter has finally caught on: though he (she?) wears Rebecca’s form long enough to catch Sam off guard and knock him out, by the time Sam is conscious again he’s switched back to looking like Dean. This is what would destroy Dean - killing Sam would take away Dean’s link to the world. And even though he wouldn’t have harmed Sam himself, he’d still blame himself for not being able to save him - in Dean’s head, that would be as good as fratricide. But while he may have worked out the best way to hurt Dean, he still hasn’t established a practical means of actually going about it - he only has his previous murders to work from, and none of his earlier victims were anything like Sam. All this time Sam has been thinking of his differences to ‘normal’ people as something shameful; right now, they’re the best defence both he and Dean have. The shape-shifter only knows one way this can go: he has the right face and voice, so the victims assume. They beg and plead and they ask him why, incapable of fathoming the sudden change in their loved one’s behaviour. Since he has to escape from the scene of the crime and move on to other murders, the shape-shifter never gets to see the grief and misery of the men he impersonates - but he gets to see this: that he’s convinced someone close to these people that they are sadistic killers. But Sam doesn’t follow that script at all. Though the shape-shifter repeatedly speaks as Dean in an attempt to confuse and disorient Sam, Sam is having none of it: obviously, this is not Dean, because Dean would not try to kill him. Simple as that.
While Sam puts up an excellent fight, ultimately he can’t fight off the shape-shifter: this particular battle is Dean’s, not his, so he simply manages to stay alive long enough for Dean to arrive on the scene and shoot the monster. Sam’s victory on Dean’s behalf is an emotional one: the shape-shifter doesn’t get the satisfaction of seeing doubt and fear; he hasn’t the slightest chance of convincing Sam that his murder is what Dean really wants. There’s a nice moment where Dean takes his necklace back from the body of his dead twin - it suits the way the story has gone. Dean can’t take everything back. His reputation and his clothes, both things the shape-shifter stole, are ruined. But he can have his necklace. And he never lost Sam.
Rebecca: So, this is what you do? You and your brother … You hunt down these kinds of things?
Sam: Yeah, pretty much.
Rebecca: I can’t believe it. I mean, I saw it with my own eyes … I mean, does everybody at school …? Nobody knows that you do this?
Sam: No.
Rebecca: Did Jessica know?
Sam: … No, she didn’t.
…
Dean: Sorry, man.
Sam: About what?
Dean: I really wish things could be different, you know? I wish you could just be … Joe College.
Sam: No, that’s okay. You know, the truth is - even at Stanford, deep down, I never really fit in.
Dean: Well, that’s because you’re a freak.
Sam: Yeah, thanks.
Dean: Well, I’m a freak, too. I’m right there with you all the way.
Sam: Yeah, I know you are.
Dean: You know, I’ve got to say - I’m sorry I’m going to miss it.
Sam: Miss what?
Dean: How many chances am I going to get to see my own funeral?
The story ends on conversations that bookend those of the beginning: for both Sam and Dean the worst has happened, and the world has not ended; their identities have been attacked - but they are still here. The whole thing is a mess and a tragedy, but they have the consolation of understanding each other better, even if no one else does. Sam has both lost and gained something here: his fictional Sam is gone. That was an identity he spent years constructing and at one point intended to inhabit forever, and now, within the space of a week he’s been forced to abandon it completely because the space it occupied has been invaded by monsters. But on the other hand, he’s found the courage to reveal an uncomfortable truth. Admitting to Rebecca that he never told Jessica the truth about his life isn’t the same as telling Dean about his visions - but it’s a start. Rebecca didn’t scream and run away; she didn’t refuse to ever speak to him again. That door is still open to him. Now that he’s told the truth once, he can find the strength to do it again - and in just a few episodes he will.
Dean, on the other hand, has been held responsible for the murder of Zach’s girlfriend Emily as well as the assault on Rebecca (although presumably Alex is still screwed, since Lindsay lived and could describe her attacker). Neither he nor Sam take this very seriously at the moment: he is considered dead and thus is not being actively pursued, and there’s no immediate idea of Dean trying to live away from the hunt where he might be noticed. But still, there are glimmers of understanding as to what that means. Now Dean, who has been officially branded ‘abnormal’ in the worst possible way, can better understand Sam’s desire to be perceived as normal - and so now he can admit that, as much as he may have resented being left behind, he does wish that Sam could have escaped, so that at least one of them could have a life; he might have disappeared entirely if Sam had done that, but Sam wouldn’t have. The fictional Dean at the end of the story mirrors the fictional Sam at the beginning: this character is not of Dean’s making, but he is nevertheless not going to go away. Dean Winchester the serial killer will probably haunt him for the rest of his life. Both he and Sam are struggling to find ways to define themselves in a hostile world, and they are allowed to hold onto very little; it’s a very easy place to drown and disappear. Sam’s dreams of a normal life are already shattered: Dean’s are getting thoroughly stomped on before he’s had a chance to express them.
Given the way their story arc goes, Dean’s final words are unsettling: he will in fact have more opportunity than he likes to observe ‘his own funeral’ - not a ceremony, no, but the way in which the people react to his death. Mostly, Sam and Dean define themselves in relation to each other: they have limited opportunities in which to define themselves as anything else - sons, fathers, spouses, friends - but they are always brothers. While that can be a great asset to them, it can also be an obvious weak point. The shape-shifter wasn’t especially bright or complex, but even he eventually worked out that Sam’s death would be the key to destroying Dean. So naturally the converse will be true: it is Dean’s death that destroys Sam.