Bible Entry 1x01: The Pilot
Here you go! Bible Entry #1!
1x01 The Pilot
Boring Production CrapOriginal Air Date: 9/13/05
Writer: Eric Kripke
Director: David Nutter
Guest Players
John Winchester: Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Mary Winchester: Samantha Smith
Jess: Adrianne Palicki
Constance Welch (Woman in White): Sarah Shahi
Joseph Welch: Steve Railsback
Troy Squire: Ross Kohn
Amy Hein: Elizabeth Bond
Sheriff: R.D. Call
Sam's "voodoo" Friend: Hunter Brochu
What Time Is It?The opening flashback takes place on November 2, 1983. The remainder of the episode takes place between Halloween Night and November 2, 2005. November 2 is The Commemoration of the Souls of All the Dead (All Souls Day) in the Catholic calendar.
Now, Which One Was That?On November 2, 1983, Mary Winchester died in her younger son's nursery, before her husband's eyes, pinned to the ceiling and burned, along with the nursery itself. Her son, Sammy, was carried out of the house by her older son, Dean, and her husband John never got over her loss or what he'd seen that night.
Instead, John began to seek knowledge about the thing that killed his wife, and travelled the country in search of answers and evil to hunt. He raised his sons as warriors, and Dean followed in his father's footsteps with talent and an ability to obey orders. Sam seemed to lack the ability to obey orders, and left the family to pursue a college degree at Stanford.
On Halloween, four years after John told his younger son that if he left he wasn't to bother coming back, John himself is missing, and Dean comes to Stanford to get his little brother so they can find their dad together. Sam has a life, a girlfriend, and a law school interview on Monday, but he agrees to accompany his brother on one quick trip to see if they can find out what's become of their dad.
They travel to Jericho, California and find that the town has been home to a Woman in White (the spirit of a woman who drowned her children because her husband was unfaithful, and now stops and kills unfaithful men when she finds them) for the past twenty-five years. This was the hunt their father was on.
But their father isn't in Jericho anymore. He's left them enough to solve this case, though, and he's also left them his journal--the book in which he's detailed his entire journey in the search for the demon who killed his wife. He never goes anywhere without that book. But in that book, he's clearly left Dean instructions in the form of coordinates. Once the Woman in White is dispatched (after a nice bit of peril for Sam), Dean wants to set out for those coordinates immediately, but Sam insists on going back to Stanford and his law school interview.
Once home, he finds his normal life intact, with a plate of cookies and a love note waiting for him. Except that when he goes upstairs to bed, he finds his girlfriend pinned to the ceiling, where she reenacts the horror scene that took his mother from him 22 years before.
After the loss of his girlfriend, revenge is the only thing on Sam's mind, and he and Dean set out to follow the trail their father has left them...
All the Niggling Little Details
- The picture of John and Mary that's on Mary's side of the bed shows John in BDUs. He wears a USMC t-shirt the night Mary burns. Really, do we need Dean to make his "ex-marine" crack? Thought not. We got it. John was a marine.
- Sam's crib mobile starts going by itself, right before the clock stops. Is it part of the electric phenomena that surround the demon, or is it Sam making it move for his own amusement?
- Sammy's nursery and Sam's college bedroom are each the rightmost room on the upper level of their respective houses when viewed from the front.
- The plume of fire that launches out and seems to trap or engulf John is the same as the flame jet that chases Dean and Sam from Sam's college bedroom.
- Sammy's nursery is decorated with framed pictures of cars and trucks. The clock is also transportation-themed. His mobile is sports-themed.
- The halls in the Winchester house are lined with old family portraits.
- The television is showing a war movie while John sleeps in his armchair.
- After the fire, when John is holding Sammy and Dean is at their side, they're sitting on the hood of the Impala.
- Sam has the framed photo from John and Mary's bedroom on his dresser. How it escaped the fire, I'm not sure--though it's in a totally different frame, so it could be a print of the same photo.
- Sam's LSAT score is a 174--that is indeed "scary good," since the max one can get on the LSAT is a 180, and thelalaprincess tells me that a 174 puts him in the 99th percentile for the test. He's such a smarty-pants! Or possibly, he has no life.
- Was Jess an artist? There appears to be a whole little studio in their bedroom area, as the camera pans over the room on its way to Sam and Jess in bed.
- When Dean first opens the trunk of the Impala, there does not appear to be a lock to the fake bottom that holds their guns.
- Dean comments that Dad's been missing for three weeks at this point. He didn't think to worry until the voicemail.
- Dean also says that he was in New Orleans, taking care of "a voodoo" jig. Three weeks before Halloween 2005 would have been October 10--six weeks after Hurricane Katrina.
- Sam packs a scythe-like thing (the one the promo shot shows him with) into his backpack as he's packing. So... He kept it in their apartment and Jess never noticed? Does he have a lockbox there, too?
- When Constance kills Troy, his blood is all over the inside of the car windows, yet when the cops find the car, it's clean. Oooo. Spooky.
- Dean's idea of "breakfast" is apparently a Mountain Dew, Doritos, and some kind of candybar. Very healthy!
- For all his protesting, Sam seems to enjoy the hell out of jumping off that bridge--once he's sure Dean's okay.
- Both boys seem pretty shocked by the condition of John's hotel room--maybe Dean had never seen his dad's research habits before? Or maybe not to this extent.
- Metallicar is always with us--the "hunters picture" that Sam finds pinned to the hotel room mirror has the three of them.... sitting on the hood of the Impala!
- Constance was 24 when she died, right? But the kids at the end of the episode have got to be about six or seven. And her husband was 30. That means that Constance was probably sixteen or seventeen when she first got pregnant.
- Joseph Welch says John came by "three or four days ago."
- When Dean escapes from the police station, he's carrying a holster belt with a gun in it. Thinking that's not his. Dad's journal is in the inside pocket of his leather jacket, which becomes a customary place for it as they travel (see "Wendigo").
A note before we begin: The Official Supernatural Site has a nice little notebook (it's in the back floorboards of the Impala) that has information on a number of the myths they use in the show.
- EVP: Stands for electronic voice phenomena. It's a supernatural artefact found on electronic recordings (always after the fact, never heard during the recording period) which is thought to be the voices of ghosts and spirits in the vicinity.
- Jericho, California -- Well, I couldn't dig up anything specific about paranomal events in Jericho, CA, mostly because there is no Jericho, CA. Ha, ha, ha, on us. In the Holy Bible, specifically the Book of Joshua, Chapter 6, Jericho was a heathen city laid seige to by the Peoples of Israel, who were led by Joshua. God came to him and told him to circle the impenetrable city walls every day for six days. On the seventh day, they were to circle the city seven times with the ark of the covenant and have marching before the ark seven priests blowing seven ram's horns, and the walls of Jericho would fall and victory would be Joshua's. And it was. Numerologically, however, seven means nothing in this particular episode. Sad, huh?
- Woman in White -- There really are a ton of legends of the Woman in White. Also called "La Llorona," she is pretty much as Sam describes her in the episode, with one noteable exception--I can't find much on her going after other unfaithful men (except in one Mayan legend). In Mexico, La Llorona is a woman who either falls in love with or is seduced by a local man, who later leaves her and their many children. Sometimes he leaves her for another woman, sometimes he leaves her because he can't support her and the children, sometimes he just wants to get away from her. At any rate, left alone, she chooses to kill her chidren rather than let them starve. She can be heard crying near the Rio Grande, according to one legend, which is the river in which she drowned her kids. She is known to drown people she comes into contact with, in an attempt to replace her missing children. A good link for the La Llorona legend is here.
- Longitude 35, Latitude -111 -- Um... yeah, see, that's in Arizona. Seriously--look!
- "Bert Aframian and his son, Hector," Dean tells Sam, when asked what dummy credit cards Dad and Dean are using now.
Sorry, couldn't find anything interesting about the name "Aframian." - "Ted Nugent" is the name Dean gives the cops when he's arrested. come on, kids, we all know who Ted Nugent is, right? No? Well.... Go check on his fans. They'll tell you who he is.
- Sam/Sammy Battle: Dean calls Sam "Sam" 9 times, and "Sammy" 8 times. So, this week, Sam wins!
Sam: Yeah? When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet he gave me a .45.
Dean: Well what was he supposed to do?
Sam: I was 9 years old. He was supposed to say “Don’t be afraid of the dark.”
Dean: Don’t be afraid of the dark? What are you, kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark! You know what’s out there!
Dean: Yeah, well, Dad’s in real trouble--if he’s not dead already, I can feel it. I can’t do this alone.
Sam: Yes, you can.
Dean: Yeah. Well, I don’t want to.
Dean: Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you’ve done?
Sam: No, and she’s not ever going to know.
Dean: Huh. Well, that’s healthy.
Policeman: You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall. Along with a whole lot of satanic mumbo jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect.
Dean: That makes sense. 'Cause when the first one went missing in ’82, I was three.
Counting the CostPain Quotient:
- Dean jumps off the bridge into the truly disgusting water. I count that as a hurt. Also, he gets pinned by Constance's dresser, same as Sammy. Might be slightly singed and flashback-traumatized by Jess's flaminess.
- Sam gets heart-squished by Constance, drives through the front of the building (hurt because he actually asks Dean to help him out), gets his legs pinned by the dresser that Constance throws at them, and then Dean smacks him in the chest, site of the aforementioned heart-squishing! I think Sam wins in the hurt department. Also, must have been a little singed from Jess's flaminess.
The Bad, the Ugly, and the Dead: Constance Welch's spirit is resolved when she is confronted by the spirits of the children she killed. So... 3 Dead Bad Uglies if you count the kids as uglies (I mean, come on, they looked pretty evil to me, but that might just be because they were dead).
Metallicar Watch: Dean shoots out both front side windows trying to save Sam from Constance (which makes his whining at Sam for damaging the car kind of silly, really). Then Sam drives Metallicar through the front of the Welch family home, but the only lasting damage we actually see from that is the broken headlight as they're driving down the highway on their way back to Stanford. Because Metallicar has amazing regenerative powers! *g*
Zippo Count: No Zippos were sacrificed in the making of this episode.
Sacrificed on the Altar of Whoops!
- Eric Kripke said at the 2005 Paley Festival that Dean's comment that it had been two years since he'd bothered Sam was a writer's error. They had originally planned to have Sam in his junior year of college, but decided that no one would buy a 22-year-old as a junior. So... yeah. According to Kripke, the brothers hadn't spoken since Sam left for college.
- October 31, 2005, was a Monday, meaning that, if Jess died on November 2 (as her tombstone says in a following episode), she'd have died on a Wednesday. According to the storyline presented, Sam would have returned home in the wee hours of the morning on Monday, for his interview... Which, you know... Oops. FYI, November 2, 1983 was a Wednesday as well....
- Did I mention? 35, -111, in Arizona? Yeah. Oops. According to chaneen (and also buffyspazz), the unaired pilot had them in Two Guns, Arizona, so this is a case where they changed the location in only one place, instead of say, changing the journal and the line and the place. Still a big mother oops in my mind! *g* Thanks chaneen!
- This might just be Dean's lack of housekeeping skills and not an actual gaff, but when Sam's denigrating Dean's cassette collection, he singles out Metallica, and Dean grabs that tape case from him, but the song that starts when he puts the tape in is "Back in Black" by AC/DC. Again, says chaneen, they originally used Metallica's Enter Sandman there, but Metallica wouldn't give them the music rights. So... AC/DC. *g*
- This one from kiwi7: Stanford doesn't give entrance interviews, unless the Law School does something different than the rest of the school. Figuring Kripke never proudly wore the cardinal, and therefore figured Stanford was like all the normal schools out there. *g*
- The pididdle (the one, lone broken headlight) on the Impala is on the left side when Sam crashes it (crashes it, I tell you! *sob*) into the house, but is on the right side when they're driving back to Stanford.
"What Cha Gonna Do" by Classic
"Speaking In Tongues" by Eagles Of Death Metal
"Ramblin' Man" by Allman Brothers Band
"Back In Black" by AC/DC
"Highway To Hell" by AC/DC
"My Cheatin' Ways" by Kid Gloves MusicWhat Did They Just Say?Official Heavy Metas
Dean -- Woman in White --DEAN! by zortified
Sam -- SAM-Woman in White by kronette
John -- On the Dangers of Normal: John Winchester by deannie
Please comment with suggestions, omissions, and additions.
And volunteer to do "Wendigo," somebody--my wife's afraid of my OCD tendencies when I do these *snerk*.