Things I Love About SPN Season 1: Asylum #3
Supernatural, Season 1
Episode 10, “Asylum”
Written by Richard Hatem
Directed by Guy Bee
Continued from #2
Warning: image heavy post.
Next scene finds Sam in a patients’ waiting room and, as he’s invited into the office, the camera picks out a sign on the wall that identifies the doctor as James Ellicott, linking back to the Sanford Ellicott name plaque from the end of the last scene. On the doctor’s desk there is a photo of a man with a young boy, whom we assume to be father and son. It appears psychiatry is the family business.
Here we see a continuation of the family photograph motif first introduced in the pilot, and again in the previous episode, suggesting a thematic fathers and sons parallel. Is it my imagination, or does James look uncomfortable? The pose and the possessive grip on the shoulder almost give the impression that the boy is being held there against his will. Perhaps it’s because he’s been forced to wear that hideous bowtie and cardigan for the photo. Did his father pick those out for him, I wonder? If so, the man’s a sadist . . . 😉
Sam also seems uncomfortable, doubtless nervous about being in a shrink’s office:
“Thanks for seeing me at the last minute” he tells the doctor but, when Ellicott asks him how he is, he replies “things are good”, which begs the question, why did he need to see a psychiatrist so urgently then? You’d think he’d at least have come in with a pre-prepared neurosis to talk about. Luckily, he isn’t short of personal material to draw on. The doctor asks him what he’s been doing and Sam fishes for something to say.
“Just been on a road trip with my brother,” he reveals.
“And was that fun?” Ellicott asks.
Sam hesitates.
“Loads,” he says “You know, we...ahh...we...met...a lot of ...interesting people. Did a lot of ...ah...interesting things…”
Sam’s struggle to hold a smile on his face whilst internally screaming is priceless. A cap doesn’t do justice to Jared’s performance, so here’s a gif for it:
Changing the subject, Sam tries to get Ellicott to talk about what happened in the south wing of the asylum, but the doctor assumes this is an avoidance tactic, so he points out that they’re there to talk about Sam, who acts almost surprised at the suggestion! Nevertheless, Ellicott promises to tell him all about the Roosevelt riot, but only on the condition that Sam reveals something honest about his relationship with his brother:
Now there’s a leading question! And Sam’s response . . .
. . . is left to our imagination as the scene cuts to Dean waiting outside for him.
It seems Sam found plenty to discuss since Dean complains “Dude! You were in there forever. What the hell were you talking about?”
And I’m sure after all that time with a mental health professional, getting things off his chest, Sam’s feeling much better and his issues with Dean are resolved . . . (Spoiler alert: nope.)
Sam claims the time was spent talking about the hospital and he relates that the south wing was where the criminally insane were housed. During the riot a number of inmates and staff were killed, and some bodies were never recovered - including that of Ellicott Sr. - because the patients “stuffed (them) somewhere hidden”.
DEAN
So, to sum it up, we've got a bunch of violent deaths and a bunch of unrecovered bodies.
SAM
And a bunch of angry spirits.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.10_Asylum_(transcript)
“Let's check out the hospital tonight,” Dean says, and we cut direct to said hospital, where we see movement and a torchlight from behind a set of double doors . . .
But when the doors open, it isn't Sam and Dean who walk through them.
Nice bit of defeated expectation.
Setting us up to expect Sam and Dean, then substituting the teenagers instead may suggest a parallel is being drawn, and it seems they have this much in common, at least: one is gung-ho to explore the asylum, while the other is here under protest. We learn the young man (Gavin), has brought his girlfriend (Kat) to the “creepy . . . yet terrifying” hospital in lieu of a date, when she was expecting to go see a movie.
You know how those kinds of movies usually end, don’t you, Gavin?
“C'mon, it'll be fun” he says. [Spoiler alert: no, it won’t]
When Kat expresses reluctance to explore further, he naturally suggests she waits while he goes on ahead. “Let’s go die. I'm just gonna be a minute,” he assures her. “Nothing's gonna get ya, I promise.”
I have to say, I really like the young actors who play this couple; they’re immediately engaging, injecting heaps of personality into their roles.
As Gavin penetrates deeper into the asylum his flashlight ominously begins to cut out just as a shadowy figure that looks like Kat appears behind him. He assumes his girl got scared without her manly protector, and he responds eagerly when she kisses him. But then Kat’s voice is heard in the distance, calling out for him, and he steps back to discover the woman he’s been kissing is not Kat, but a stunt double spirit with a deformed face and a bad wig.
While Gavin freaks out we cut back to the double doors where the teenagers first made their entrance, and the tableau of torchlight and movement behind the doors is repeated.
And this time it really is Sam and Dean . . .
The mirroring of the two scenes once again encourages us to expect some kind of mirroring of fortunes between the two pairs of characters.
We get one of those ubiquitous scenes from season one that establishes the mechanics of hunting. The EMF metre makes an appearance, lighting up like Christmas, and Sam remarks “this place is orbing like crazy”, as we catch a glimpse of multiple light sources on his camera viewfinder.
I miss those early references to actual paranormal lore that helped to help convince us of the reality of the supernatural world.
Just in case the audience has forgotten, we’re reminded of the procedure for eradicating ghosts:
SAM
If these uncovered bodies are causing the haunting...
DEAN
We gotta find ’em and burn ’em. Just be careful though. The only thing that makes me more nervous than a pissed off spirit... is the pissed off spirit of a psycho killer.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.10_Asylum_(transcript)
Love that last line 😊 It does raise the question, though, since the brothers were able to explore the hospital without any problems earlier, why did they need to wait until nighttime, when the spirits are active, to come back and search for the bodies? Seems to me they could have saved themselves a heap of trouble if they’d just done the salt ‘n burn during the day. Still, I guess we wouldn’t have had a story then.
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