Things I Love About Season 1: Skin (Part 1)
Supernatural, Season 1
Episode 6, “Skin”
Written by John Shiban
Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill.
WARNING: This is a very dark and confronting episode. It contains images of sexualized violence and deals with overt themes of misogyny and violence against women.
My review does the same.
John Shiban is one of the unsung heroes of the Supernatural. After Eric Kripke and Sera Gamble, he is the third member of the triumvirate that laid the foundations on which the show was built. Sadly, he left after the second season and I personally feel that was a substantial loss to the writing team, but he left a legacy of several great episodes and “Skin” is arguably his best. It is a powerful and deeply psychological character study, highly revealing in its primary narrative and darkly suggestive at the subtextual level.
Robert Duncan McNeill was well chosen to represent Shiban’s text visually. Some of us may remember him as the cute navigator on Star Trek: Voyager. Turns out, he’s a damn good director, too. The opening scene of “Skin” is a masterpiece.
In a dark and shadowy house, somewhere in St Louis MO, a young woman is tied to a chair, bound and bloody:
A shot of her hand shows her clinging in anguish to the arm of the chair:
As her captor flourishes a wicked looking blade . . .
We’re then shown a series of equally disturbing images: a bloody smear on a wall . . .
A bloodied phone, off the hook, implies an attempt has been made to call for help and been thwarted .
There’s more . . . but I’ll save the more gruesome visuals for later.
Meanwhile, a pair of booted feet is seen approaching the building stealthily from the lawn outside.
Fear not, fair damsel! Rescue is at hand!
Perhaps our intrepid hunters, Sam and Dean, are here to save you!
Oh.
No, it’s a swat team.
What am I watching here? A procedural cop show?!
Armed and armored, the cops break into the house and find the girl who points them in the direction of her fleeing attacker. They pursue and finally corner him as he’s trying to escape through a window.
“FREEZE!
DROP THE KNIFE!”
The attacker turns . . .
OOWWW MAAAYYY GAAAAHHHHD!!!
IT’S DEAN!
IT’S DEAN IT’S DEAN IT’S DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAN!!!
Oh, OK. With 20/20 hindsight it’s pretty obvious now, but back when we were watching for the first time, when this was only the sixth episode, and we hadn’t yet obsessed over every square inch of Dean to the point where we could recognize him instantly from a partial ear shot . . .
Or a shadowy figure that flits across the background for a fraction of a second . . .
Or a reverse silhouette . . .
Back then, the final reveal shot that closed the teaser was pretty damn shocking.
Wasn’t it?
No? Just me? Everyone else saw it coming?
OK, then.
But didn’t we all spend the next few frames with our minds racing? What happened? How did we get to this? Why is Dean terrorizing a young woman? Perhaps all is not as it seems. Perhaps he’s possessed, or perhaps she’s actually a monster who only appears human . . . but then why wouldn’t he just gank her? Why all the images of sexualized violence and torture . . . you know, back then, when torturing monsters wasn’t just a pretty average Thursday?
Well, turns out, (spoiler alert) it isn’t really Dean; it’s a shapeshifter. So that’s OK then.
Or is it?
Remember back when we were re-watching the pilot and we talked about literary doubling, and how the images of Dean in shadow linked him with the Jungian shadow, and implied he might represent an unexpressed side of Sam’s psyche? Well, the trope of doppelgangers can similarly be used to explore the hidden depths of a character, often a dark alter ego that needs to be fought and defeated. So, we can expect this episode to reveal hitherto unexpressed sides of Dean’s character.
Wait . . . the shifter represents the dark side of Dean . . . who already represents the dark side of Sam? That’s . . . pretty confusing.
Oh, that’s nothing. Wait until seasons 3 and 4 when we get shadow characters who represent Sam and Dean’s distorted projections of each other, whose own shadow sides are then further de-constructed into additional shadow characters who . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself. Suffice to say, there’s a level at which the show tells the story of an increasingly fractured psyche, and can be read, psychologically, as a representation of a mental breakdown. Or maybe it just likes to take a trope and run with it, ad absurdum, because that’s just the way it rolls :P
But for now, let’s keep it simple. This whole episode is another manifestation of the show’s ongoing mask theme. The shifter is a handy device that allows the writers to unmask Dean, to peel away the outer skin of Dean’s persona and show aspects of his character that he would not normally choose to reveal about himself. Many are disclosed overtly in the primary text, but there are others that may be inferred from the subtext, and some of those are . . . pretty grim. The dark, monstrous, repressed depths of Dean’s psyche - exposed and nurtured in Hell by Alistair, and exploited by the angels in season 4 - are already subtly pre-figured in Skin.
As Bobby would say, this ain’t gonna be cute. But, for the sake of clarity, I intend to examine mostly the explicit content first before going back and exploring the darker themes implicit in the material.
By the way, this episode also contains some early examples of the show’s many great musical moments, starting with Iron Butterfly’s “In a Gadda Da Vida” which plays over the action in the opening teaser. (Unless you watched it on Netflix or Stan, in which case you got “Good Deal” by Mommy and Daddy, which is OK but not really the same somehow.)
It’s a stock dramatic story-telling device to get the reader’s/viewer’s attention: start in the middle of the action, then go back and show how we got there. It’s a card SPN likes to play now and then, and it plays it well.
The scene opens with a beautiful panning shot, starting with a typical ‘route 66’ type road scene with the Impala subtly picked out in the background, crossing the SureGas sign in the foreground, then moving down to capture the car drawing up at the pumps.
In the car, Sam checks his phone while Dean lays out the route for the next leg of their ‘road trip’: “All right, I figure we’d hit Tucumcari by lunch, then head south, hit Bisbee by midnight . . .” When Sam fails to respond, Dean pauses and adds “Sam wears women’s underwear” to get his attention. Sam absently replies that he’s busy, and an interesting conversation follows:
SAM: I’ve been listening, I’m just busy. (He is checking e-mails on his PalmPilot.)
DEAN: Busy doin’ what?
SAM: Reading e-mails. (DEAN gets out of the car and starts to fill the tank with gas.)
DEAN: E-mails from who?
SAM: From my friends at Stanford.
DEAN: You’re kidding. You still keep in touch with your college buddies?
SAM: Why not?
DEAN: Well, what exactly do you tell ‘em? You know, about where you’ve been, what you’ve been doin’?
SAM: I tell ‘em I’m on a road trip with my big brother. I tell ‘em I needed some time off after Jess.
DEAN: Oh, so you lie to ‘em.
SAM: No. I just don’t tell ‘em….everything.
DEAN: Yeah, that’s called lying. I mean, hey, man, I get it, tellin’ the truth is far worse.
SAM: So, what am I supposed to do, just cut everybody out of my life? (DEAN shrugs.) You’re serious?
DEAN: Look, it sucks, but in a job like this, you can’t get close to people, period.
SAM: You’re kind of anti-social, you know that?
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.06_Skin_(transcript)
A couple of things occur to me about this exchange. First, once again it is Dean rather than Sam who is advocating honesty in relationships, although he takes it a step farther this time, implying that it’s better to have no relationships at all than to lie to your friends. Further, his definition of lying includes lies of omission, i.e., keeping secrets. This strikes me as interesting, considering this is the first conversation we’ve seen the brothers have since the closing scene of “Bloody Mary” wherein Sam asserted his right to keep secrets from his brother. Is it possible Dean is passive-aggressively taking a poke at Sam for not telling him everything?
Secondly, Sam’s response to the implication that he should ghost all his friends is to accuse Dean of being anti-social, which may seem ironic since Sam is often thought of as the natural introvert of the partnership but, at this stage, Sam has - or has had - a social life; Dean is the one who has been isolated from society.
Incidentally, apropos of “Bloody Mary” and its possible nod toward an abusive dimension to the brothers’ relationship: early signs of a controlling partner include constant criticism, an insistence on knowing everything about you, and attempts to isolate you from friends and loved ones. https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/friendship-20/201506/20-signs-your-partner-is-controlling (It’s disturbing to note how many times in the coming seasons we watch Dean tick the boxes listed in this article.)
And one other thing: anti-social behaviour and social isolation are commonly associated with serial killers. https://oladoc.com/health-zone/5-common-traits-of-serial-killers/
The brothers’ exchange is interrupted when Sam reads an email from a friend whose brother has been accused of his girlfriend’s murder. Dean’s immediate response when he hears the friend is female.
In any other context this would seem like a casual throwaway, a typical Dean remark that we’d probably dismiss with a chuckle and an eye-roll . . . but, following in the wake of the opening sequence, and prefacing the content of the email, does it seem so harmless?
Basically, the psychological subtext of this whole scene throws up a bunch of red flags that are designed to tempt us into entertaining the possibility that the monster we saw in the teaser truly was Dean.
One other detail I noticed in this shot for the first time (as I re-watched the episode for the nth time for this review) is how prominently the amulet is picked out, hanging down from Dean’s neck as he leans in to read over Sam’s shoulder. It’s a subtle detail that nicely foreshadows the climax of the episode when the amulet becomes a distinct feature in the show for the first time.
On receiving the news that his friend has been arrested, Sam insists on high-tailing it to Missouri to help. Dean argues that St Louis is 400 miles behind them, and this isn’t their kind of thing. Sam insists. Dean gives in.
Some fans might argue that Dean can’t resist Sam’s puppy dog eyes, but wouldn’t you say that’s more stubborn bitch face #17? I would suggest that faced with a determined Sam, and in the absence of any direct orders from his father, Dean’s default is to take the path of least resistance, merely resorting to passive-aggressively venting his annoyance with a dramatic squeal of the tyres as he pulls a high-speed one-eighty and heads back in the direction we saw them come from.
And the scene ends with the Impala driving into the distance as the camera focuses on a “drive safe” sign in the foreground, in a nice reversal of the scene opening.
Cute touch, Robert 😊
When Sam and Dean show up at Rebecca’s house in St Louis, we find there has been a status reversal. Normally, when the brothers knock on doors, we’ve been used to Dean positioning himself in front with Sam backing up the rear, but this time Sam’s taking the lead.
Sam doesn’t introduce Dean, so he pointedly forces himself into the conversation wearing the charming face and smile he seems to reserve particularly for attractive young women. It seems he’s decided she is hot. Becky barely acknowledges him, however. Maybe he’s not her type. And maybe that’s because she’s an uptown girl who isn’t looking for a downtown man
Rebecca’s house is a striking contrast to the work-a-day homes and blue-collar settings that have dominated the previous episodes. This place is practically a mansion.
(nice shot too)
Dean can’t help remarking on it, but the tone of his apparent compliment is laced with just a hint of sour-grape snark that he possibly intends only Sam would pick up on. When Sam asks after Becky’s parents, we learn that they spend half the year in Paris and are flying home for the trial. Clearly Sam has been moving in very different circles while he was at college. And now, back around a college friend, he seems in his element and continues to take charge of the conversation. When Rebecca offers beers, he abruptly squashes Dean’s impulse to accept. He unilaterally offers to help with Zac’s case, casually dropping Dean into the role of a cop, a move he clearly hasn’t discussed with his brother beforehand.
Nevertheless, Dean grudgingly goes along with the pretext, limiting his rebellion to claiming to work in Bisbee Arizona, a needling reference (that only Sam would understand) to the place where Dean thinks they should be right now. And, only once Rebecca is out of earshot, he has another go at Sam about honesty in relationships. “You’re a real straight shooter with your friends,” he says sarcastically.
It seems improbable that Dean truly cares how Sam relates with his friends. More likely he is projecting his own issues about Sam’s reticence rather than confronting them directly. Projection seems to be one of the themes of this episode. After all, a shape-shifter projects an image of the person whose features he borrows.
Using the pretext that Dean is a detective, Sam persuades Rebecca to let them break into the crime scene. The ferocious barking of a neighbour’s dog begins to persuade Dean that the case may be supernatural after all when he learns its behaviour changed around the time of the murder. “Animals can have a sharp sense of the paranormal,” Sam supplies, for the benefit of those of us who enjoy all that lore stuff. Dean asks Rebecca if she can get hold of a copy of a security tape that appears to incriminate Zach, and it transpires she already stole it from the lawyers. Once again, we’re examining the moral grey areas of hunting. We’ve already talked about the occasions in previous episodes where breaks in the case have relied on ordinary people being willing to break the rules. Now the stakes have been raised as we discover a civilian who has broken the law, albeit an act of petty theft.
During the examination of the crime scene, we see a number of photographic images of Zach with his girlfriend, and one with Rebecca and Sam which neatly fades into a shot of Zach himself . . . apparently. Except we find him outside on a street across from an apartment block where a man is farewelling his young wife as he leaves for work. We know this can’t be the real Zach, who is currently under arrest, so this is our first direct clue that we’re dealing with some kind of doppelganger. As fake-Zach watches the wife going back indoors, his eyes snap like the shutter on a camera lens, and they turn a luminous white colour.
Once more, eye colour becomes an indicator of the supernatural, and I'm reminded of the old saw that the eyes are the mirror of the soul.
Meanwhile the brothers are watching the videotape with Rebecca and Sam asks her for the beers she offered before, and we get one of those nice little instances that telegraphs the brothers are on the same page when Dean immediately side-eyes Sam, knowing there’s something up.
“What is it?” he asks once Rebecca is safely out of the way in the kitchen. Turns out the camera has picked up fake-Zach’s spooky eyes, and we’re treated to a little more Supernatural lore. We learned in “Bloody Mary” that a mirror can capture an essence of the soul, and now Sam exposits that photos have a similar quality. It’s interesting because both mirrors and cameras capture and project an image of reality, which is also what the shape shifter does. Doubtless this is why the show depicts his eyes snapping like a camera lens.
So, here, we’re looking at an image from a medium that is projecting an image
of a creature that is projecting an image of Zach. Mind officially blown!
At this stage, however, Sam and Dean only conclude that they’re dealing with a dark doppelganger of Zach’s. They’ve yet to discover it’s a shifter.
Incidentally, Dean looks very sexy in his lucky red shirt in this scene. I believe it makes its first appearance in this episode which, as we know, turns out so well for Dean. :P
Bright and early the next day, Dean and Sam are found searching the street outside Zach’s apartment. While investigating the scene, the brothers learn that there has been a second attack nearby with the same M. O. and they begin to suspect they’re dealing with a shapeshifter. “Every culture in the world has a shapeshifter lore,” Dean says - a phrase that is becoming familiar as it is repeated in each episode to emphasize the universal nature of these archetypes from the collective unconscious - He references “legends of creatures who can transform themselves into animals or other men” and Sam responds with examples like skin walkers and werewolves, a suggestion that prepares us for the later revelation that shifters of all kinds can be killed with silver bullets.
Confirmation of the shapeshifter hypothesis comes when they pursue the creature into the sewers and discover gooey deposits that they conclude are shed skin. The fact that the shifter lives underground, in the sewers, is also symbolically significant since it implies the creature resides in the murkiest and most foul depths of the unconscious. Interestingly, though, skin shedding can be a symbol for rejuvenation and new life. The shifter does this in a literal sense, of course, since it’s the process by which it takes on a new form and appearance, but the image can have more positive associations, and this may be important later.
At this point, an angry Rebecca calls, having discovered that Sam has lied to her. Dean takes the opportunity to reinforce his view that Sam should distance himself from his Stanford friends:
DEAN: I hate to say it, but that’s exactly what I’m talkin’ about.
You lie to your friends because if they knew the real you, they’d be freaked. It’s just-it’d be easier if-
SAM: If I was like you.
DEAN: Hey, man, like it or not, we are not like other people.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.06_Skin_(transcript)
Interestingly, the brothers have a similar conversation in season four but, by that time, it has undergone another of those ironic reversals:
SAM
Yeah, but the normal rules don’t really apply to us, do they?
DEAN stares.
DEAN
We’re no different than anybody else.
SAM
I’m infected with demon blood. You’ve been to hell.
DEAN looks away.
SAM
Look, I know you want to think of yourself as Joe the Plumber, Dean, but you’re not. Neither am I. The sooner you accept that, the better off you’re gonna be.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/4.15_Death_Takes_a_Holiday_(transcript)
This time it’s Dean who wants to think of himself as normal, and Sam who insists they’re different. But in season one it’s in the pejorative sense that they’re freaks living on the fringe of normal society, in season four it takes on the hubristic sense of imagining they are above natural law.
But, to return to the current episode, Sam and Dean revisit the sewers in quest of finding and killing the shifter, but they are taken unawares. The creature attacks and injures Dean before making its escape. When the brothers pursue, they lose sight of their quarry and decide to split up . . .
Cos that’s always a really good idea . . .
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In Part 2, I'll be looking at the shapeshifter as a "truth teller", a device for expressing Dean's unspoken feelings about himself and Sam. Continue to Part 2.
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