2.10 “Hunted”
A man talks to his psychiatrist, his name is Scott. He tells the doctor that he can electrocute things by just touching them. He tells the doctor that “the yellow-eyed man” wants him to do terrible things, but Scott does not want to. The demon tells Scott he has great plans for him, he says. On the way home Scott is murdered by a man with a knife. Sam and Dean talk under the trees at Rivergrove, their conversation picking up where it ended last episode. Dean tells Sam that their father told him to look out for his younger brother, but more: he told him to save him. And if he could not save him, he may have to kill him.
Naturally this comes as a shock to Sam, who asks what is it that Dean is supposed to save him from, but Dean does not know. He only knows that John made him promise that he would do as he was asked. He wants them to lay low until he can figure out what is going on. Why was Sam immune to the demon virus? Did his father think that his son was going to become a demon? Does Dean? Can he, on the evidence, despite how much it hurts him, afford not to? Sam agrees to stay out of sight, but unbeknowst to Dean he leaves the motel and goes to an old house, where he breaks in, trips a trigger and dies in an explosion...
... and Ava wakes up, screaming that she has had another vision. Sam has in fact gone to the Roadhouse, where he asks Ash to see if he can track other people like him, which after some time the computer genius does. There are only four, three of which Sam knows already, and one guy called Scott Carey. Slight problem though: as we know, Scott is dead, murdered a month ago. Sam decides to go anyway and talks to Scott's father, learns his son suffered from terrible headaches and had nightmares, spent most of his time in his bedroom. Checking that out, Sam finds a collage of pictures of yellow eyes. As he approaches a motel he senses he's being followed and turns, grabbing the girl who is shadowing him. She tells him he won't believe her but she's seen him die in her dreams, as she saw Scott Carey die. He of course does believe her, realising she is one of them, but then frowns as she does not fit the profile: her mother did not die in a housefire, in fact she is still alive.
Sam tells her a little about him but she is not interested in learning why she has visions: she has a wedding to plan. He manages to convince her to help him though and steals Scott Carey's files from the psychiatrist's office. They listen to the recording of the session, where Carey describes his abilities. Dean, having been told by Ellen where to find Sam, sees he is all right and does not approach yet. He does watch though, as Gordon makes a reappearance and shoots at Sam and Ava with a sniper rifle from the roof of the building opposite. Dean tackles him and knocks him down, but Gordon rallies and knocks Dean out. Sam and Ava have heard Scott saying that the demon has told him that there is a great war coming, and they are to be the soldiers.
Gordon ties Dean up and gets him to lure Sam into his trap. Word has obviously got around about Sam, and Gordon considers him a legitimate target now. He says he's heard from demons that there's a great war coming, that some humans are going to fight on Hell's side, and that Sam is one of them. He rigs up the door with tripwires to ensure that he gets Sam, while Dean can do nothing but watch in horror. But Sam, warned by Ava, knows what to expect and evades the traps, getting into a pitched fight with Gordon, whom he eventually subdues with a rifle butt to the head. He releases Dean, but Gordon comes after them. Dean glares; he wanted to finish him off. But Sam has insurance: he has called the cops, who arrive just as Gordon is firing at them like a madman. He's quickly arrested and taken away.
Dean calls Ellen at the Roadhouse, accusing her of selling Sam out but she swears it was not her or any of her people. Plenty of hunters, she points out, pass through and use the Roadhouse and it could have been any of them. Ellen and her crew do not give up their friends. Dean is again tired, all for ditching the quest but Sam convinces him to continue. He can see his heart is not in it though. He rings Ava, gets no answer, gets worried. A short trip to Peoria, Illinois and they find Ava's house, where her fiance is dead, soaked in blood, and there is sulphur residue on the windowsill. Ava is nowhere to be found.
MUSIC
Jefferson Airplane: “White rabbit”
Carey Bell: “Lonesome stranger”
Muse: “Supermassive black hole”
Tim P and Stephen R Philips: “Swamp thing”
No YouTube video available
PCRs
Sam asks Dean does he think he's going to go Darkside? (The Dark Side is the evil part of the Force in “Star Wars”; going Darkside is now a generally accepted term for choosing the path of evil)
Sam says “I watch a lot of TJ Hooker”. (A cop show starring the one and only William Shatner, gut suitably corsetted in!)
Dean uses the phrase “funky town”, which is a codeword for the guys when one of them is in trouble. (“Funkytown” was a disco hit in 1980 for Lipps Inc.)
BROTHERS
If anything ever tested the resolve of the two siblings, this is certainly up among the hardest of them to date. Sam is being hunted by Gordon, the psycho hunter from “Bloodlust”, and tries to convince Dean that his brother has to be put down for the greater good. He tells Dean that Sam will, at some point, become evil, and he must be dealt with now. Surely now the voice of his dead father is echoing in Dean's ears: save Sam, or if you can't save him, kill him. Did his father know what might possibly be waiting for his younger son? Was he entrusting Dean with the task of making sure the demon did not get his hands on Sam? Did he believe death was better than letting his boy be used by Hell's forces against his own kind?
Last episode, Dean protected Sam and was ready --- maybe --- to kill him if necessary, taking his own life we must assume shortly after. This time he has to protect him again, from someone he can't stop. He's tied up and can only watch and wait in terror as Sam's footsteps get closer, closer to the trap Gordon has set. When he sees his brother has survived, words can't describe Dean's relief, but he's tired of the chase, as he said in the previous episode, and he really seems to want to give up now. In a staggering reversal of roles, Dean, the experienced hunter who dragged his college-boy brother along, has become the one who no longer wants to hunt, who has become tired of and probably terrified by and sickened at the things he has seen, whereas Sam, who initially wanted nothing to do with the quest, is now the one trying to persuade Dean to stay the course with him.
Of course, Sam has technically more invested in this now than he had at the start. Originally, this was more a quest for vengeance, for his mother and for his fiancee, and later for his father, but now it has become much more. Now it is a voyage of discovery, dark and scary, but Sam needs to know what his role is to be, why he is having the visions and why others like him are doing likewise. Does the demon have plans for him, and can he resist them? Is he doomed to turn on his brother, on his race, and fight against them? Is there a way out? The only answer to that lies in continuing the mission, trying to find out all he can and making as many allies along the way as he can. For Sam, it's recently become very personal indeed, and although always a matter of survival, now it's the survival of his very soul that is at stake.
The ARC of the matter
Another human has been revealed who gets the same visions as Sam, but her life does not fit the pattern, which throws something of a spanner in the works. Although at the end it does appear that she's been taken by the demon, or a demon. There's more dire warnings of the great dark war to come, and the idea that humans, some humans, will fight in this war on the side of the demons, which seems hard to believe.