Sam goes to therapy – twice. Turns out he has some anger issues.
Pre-show notes
I remember Asylum as being a fun haunted-house style episode. Relatively low stakes (for Supernatural)
Brooke Nevin, who guest stars in this episode, was a guest at the first ever Supernatural convention in the UK. I still have my photo with her. She was really nice, took the time to chat with everyone.
Episode Notes
We are given the local legend of the Roosevelt Asylum right at the beginning: now boarded up and derelict, the asylum is haunted by the ghosts of its former patients. Legend has it that if you spend a night there, the ghosts will drive you insane.
A couple of cops go into the derelict building in search of a group of kids who are trespassing for thrills. The kids are fine but the younger of the two cops is behaving a little oddly when they emerge. He goes home and, for no reason we can see, shoots his wife and then himself.
The Winchester brothers are still searching for John. Sam is phoning around all of their contacts. No one admits to having heard from him. Based on the previous episode, I think its safe to assume some of them are lying. As they discuss it, Dean received a text message from an unknown number: it’s coordinates, and Dean assumes the text is from John. It’s one of the potential cases John has earmarked in the journal. Dean’s ready to take off at once: either Dad wants them working the Asylum case, or possibly he plans to meet them. Sam is not thrilled.
The brothers go for a hustle this week instead of fake IDs. Dean pretends to be a reporter and hassles the surviving cop for his story; Sam ”intervenes”, then buys the cop a beer to get him talking. It’s a slick con, but you’d think a police officer would be wise to the good-cop-bad-cop routine, wouldn’t you? But The cop has confirmed what they expected: the dead officer was a good guy who had no reason to murder his wife.
Next stop: the asylum. As they wander around, Dean teases am about his ESP. He’s joking around, but there’s an underlying concern that it could make Sam more vulnerable. The conversation turns to John, and Sam points out unnecessarily that John isn’t there. He thinks they need to keep searching for him. Dean says John wants them to do this job, so they should do it.
Sam Goes To Therapy Part One
Sam makes an appointment with a local psychiatrist who is the grandson of the Doctor Ellicott who ran the asylum. He’s there to pump the doc for information, but he goes about it very clumsily. I mean, you don’t make an emergency appointment without a specific personal issue to discuss. Anyhow, the doc calls him on it, and I guess Sam gets a proper therapy session. I think we are meant to assume that Sam spent his time complaining about Dean, but if that therapist is worth anything he would have got Sam talking about Jessica. He seems a bit lighter when he leaves.
Sam did get the Roosevelt Asylum story, though. Patients rioted and a lot of people died. Some of the bodies were never recovered so we can assume the bones remain in the asylum. After the riot the asylum was closed and all surviving patients were transferred.
A couple of teenagers are exploring the asylum after dark. They split up. It’s like they’ve never even seen a horror movie. The boy, Gavin gets a nasty surprise when he makes out with a ghost he thinks is his girlfriend. The Wincesters are also on-site. There’s not much more investigating for them to do: they are simply going to search the south wing for bones and burn them. Sam encounters a ghost, which Dean shoots with rock salt. Sam thinks it’s odd that the spirit didn’t attack him. (I think it’s odd that Sam thinks it’s odd. Because they know these spirits are not killing people on site. The local legend says they drive their victims mad, and the cop managed to get all the way home before he went crazy. Why would Sam expect an attack?)
Then they find Kat hiding, and she tells them her boyfriend Gavin is missing somewhere in the asylum. The brothers split up (idiots!) to search. Sam finds Gavin, who is scared but not injured. It sounds like he encountered the same spirit Sam did. Meanwhile Dean is with Kat, lecturing her about going into haunted buildings (pot, kettle, black). The spirits separate them and trap Kat in a room. Sam comes running and says they are trying to communicate. Kat, though terrified, follows Sam’s instructions and allows the ghost to speak. The ghost’s message is “137”.
Sam tries to lead the kids out of the building, but they are locked in. He gets a call for help from Dean. He hands Kat his shotgun, explaining that the rock salt will repel spirits. She primes the gun, very badass, as he leaves them to go help Dean.
Meanwhile Dean has found room 137. Most of the paperwork scattered around is mildewed and useless, but he does find a satchel containing a patient’s journal behind a secret panel.
Oh! Ghostie gets Sammy! Jumpscare!
Kat shoots Dean! Attagirl! (Sorry, I mean for defending herself, not for shooting Dean. Although – great shot. I can’t help it, I love that moment.)
So it wasn’t Dean who called Sam. How exactly does a century-old ghost know how to use a cell phone?
Sam Goes To Therapy Part Two
This is fantastic acting from Jared. He’s saying and doing all the things Sam would, but it’s just slightly off.
So the ghost of Doctor Ellicott, the psychiatrist who makes the Nazis look sweet and gentle, essentially pulls his victims’ negative or destructive emotions to the surface, and dials them up to eleven. So the cop who was working through some marital issues kills his wife and himself. In Sam’s case there’s some long-simmering resentment boiling to the surface. His anger is really about John, but John isn’t there so he takes it out on Dean instead.
Sammy shoots Dean! But at least it’s only rock salt. Sam is having a little rant about taking orders.
“You hate me that much? You think you could kill your own brother?”
Dean
No, of course Sam doesn’t hate you, Dean. He’s just ghost-blind right now.
Dean gives Sam his gun, telling him to shoot him with real bullets and get it over with. Sam takes his time about it but he does pull that trigger.
Ha! Pistol not loaded! I knew Dean wasn’t that stupid!
Sam snaps out of it, so it’s time to find the bones. Ellicott is no match for Dean Winchester and his trusty lighter. Burn, baby!
There are actual parking spaces outside the scary, derelict asylum. Go figure.
After, Sam apologises for the nasty stuff he said, but not interestingly, for trying to shoot his brother – twice. Dean doesn’t seem to believe Sam didn’t mean what he said. But they don’t talk about it, ‘cause no chick-flick moments allowed. They just hit the road.
Later, Dean is sleeping soundly when his phone rings. Sam wakes first and answers it. It’s John.
Roll credits on a really mean cliffhanger!
Associations
Okay, so there are a lot of haunted asylum movies. My favourite is Gothika, but this episode seems derived from older stuff. The kind we used to grab from the video store in the 1980s. I don’t remember any titles but there was one with a nurse who turned out to be a psychotic patient and a final act where she walked around scratching the walls with a pair of scissors which she also used to murder everyone she encountered. Well, they didn’t call them video nasties for nothing.
(In the 1980s there were no age ratings on video rentals and I was a teenager. The guy who ran the local video store didn’t care at all what he rented to children and I watched a lot of stuff I wouldn’t touch today. There was a woman who also worked in the store, and she wouldn’t rent that stuff to me – I had to have an adult with me. But that was rarely a problem since Mum never actually watched the horror movies I rented. My mother still thinks anything that’s “not real life” – whether it’s unicorns or rampaging cannibals – is by definition for children.)
There are Easter-egg-type references to The Shining: the boiler room in the basement, the maze-like corridors. But that’s all for me.
Final thoughts
Wow. I had forgotten the brothers were fighting for most of this episode. Siblings fight – I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of being siblings – but we are starting to get a deeper picture of what life has been like for the brothers. The emotional toll that growing up with their father has taken on both of the brothers is right there. Same damage, but manifesting in different ways. Sam’s instinct is to rebel, and that must be enhanced by the years he did manage to escape and live his “normal” life. Dean embraces the hunter’s life, and that means going along with what John wants.
Question: was it really John who sent that text message? I think from what happens at the end of the episode, and in the next few eps, it’s a safe assumption – and I’ll get into John’s side of the story in those episode rewatches. But the text came from an unknown number, and given that John makes direct contact at the end of the episode, there’s at least a possibility that the text message came from a different source. If so – who…and why? Was this an early test for Sam?
