Miracles do happen, but in Supernatural there’s usually a very dark side to the miraculous.
Pre-show notes
I needed a break before this one. I know this one will hit me hard. I mean, not as hard as a certain season two episode, but close.
Faith is one of those episodes that feels like a monster-of-the-week but is in fact laying groundwork that will pay off in three or four seasons. There was definitely a long-term plan for this show.
Episode Notes
The episode opens mid-hunt. The brothers are chasing a creature that has taken a couple of children. It’s rushed and feels insignificant but for what happens to Dean. But following on from the previous episode it does seem significant that they are hunting together so well: it appears that Sam has come around to Dean’s way of thinking.
Dean apparently doesn’t know it’s dangerous to fire a souped-up taser when you’re soaking wet and ankle-deep in water. He gets electrocuted in a fairly spectacular way. Sam is there almost immediately and gets him to a hospital. The doctor says he had a heart attack and there’s not much they can do. Now I’m no doctor, but Dean is young and fit: he should be an ideal candidate for a transplant. I mean, he isn’t because of their lifestyle but the doctor doesn’t know that detail.
So Sam and Dean have to face up to the idea that Dean is dying. Dean makes a pretty pathetic attempt to keep the tone light, but he’s practical, and talks like he’s accepted it. Sam is in denial. And that leads us to this exchange, which will be super-significant down the road:
DEAN: I know it’s not easy, but I’m gonna die. And you can’t stop it.
SAM: Watch me.
Sam being Sam, he goes straight into research mode and the camera pans across all the stuff he’s been reading: cutting-edge medical data on heart procedures. But he’s not just reading. Sam is also calling around everyone he knows who might be able to give him a magical solution. He leaves a message on John’s voicemail explaining the situation and saying he’s “going to do whatever it takes” to fix Dean. But one of their old contacts does come through: Joshua tells them about a faith healer in Nebraska. Dean has checked himself out of the hospital and Sam insists they go, calling the guy a “specialist”.
I don’t know. This all feels off somehow. I mean, if I were John, hearing that would scare the shit out of me. And Sam seems way too optimistic. I want to say that Dean seems too fatalistic, too, but if his heart really was badly damaged he’d be feeling like crap, so I guess I understand his attitude.
Dean is really pissed off that Sam has brought him to a faith healer. He’s saying all the things I think (and sometimes say) when someone makes me go to church. They encounter a pretty girl, Layla, outside the tent, which lifts Dean’s spirits a little. Despite Dean’s protests they go in to the service. While the reverend is preaching, Dean makes a sarcastic comment which the preacher overhears: it makes him focus on Dean and he invites Dean to come forward. Dean does not want this guy to heal him, but bows to pressure from Sam and the other worshippers. Dean admits he’s not a believer, and the preacher tells him he will be. He lays a hand on Dean while he prays and Dean falls to his knees. It’s obvious from the crowd’s reaction that this men’s the magic is happening. As Sam rushes forward and Dean opens his eyes, we see a ghostly old man behind the preacher.
After Dean is “healed” they go to a doctor to confirm it. Doc says there’s nothing wrong with his heart, but mentions that a young, athletic man dropped dead from a heart attack just the day before. Dean does not think this is a coincidence. Sam wants to forget it and move on – meaning he doesn’t think its a coincidence, either, but he’s in denial. Dean keeps pushing and Sam agrees to investigate.
Dean goes to visit the reverend, Roy, and his wife, Sue Ann. She’s one of those creepy church ladies who looks like she’s all sweetness and light but will poison your cookies if you’ve been bad. Roy seems sincere, but his story is definitely weird. He was blinded by cancer, came very close to dying but miraculously recovered, and then discovered he could heal. Dean wants to know why Roy chose him to heal. Roy says that he’s guided by the Lord, and that when he looked into Dean’s heart he saw:
“A young man with an important purpose, a job to do. And it’s not finished.”
Roy LeGrange
That’s another of those lines that is going to stand out even more in a few seasons. So the question is just who was really guiding Roy in that tent?
Leaving Roy’s house Dean meets Layla and her mom again. Mom is very resentful that Dean was healed instead of Layla. She really doesn’t get the concept of God’s will, does she? She basically feels like she’s entitled to a miracle. Now I’m no Christian but I know that’s not how it works. We learn that Layla has an inoperable brain tumour. She is dying and Roy is her only hope.
Meanwhile Sam has some bad news. For every person Roy has healed someone else has died. Sam doesn’t know how, but somehow Roy is trading one life for another. Dean is really pissed off. He says they are dealing with a reaper.
Cue possibly the best use of music in the whole season – Don’t Fear the Reaper plays as Roy heals an elderly man and a young woman jogging drops dead.
The brothers figure out that Roy is using black magic to control the reaper. Dean is all for killing Roy, but Sam isn’t prepared to cross that line. They agree to track down the spell and figure out how to break it.
Sam breaks into Roy’s house while the service is beginning. Dean heads into the tent. He has to prevent Roy from healing anyone else – since that means another victim will die. Of course Roy selects Layla this time. Dean tries to talk her out of it, but Layla doesn’t listen. As Sam tries to save the next victim, Dean starts a fire. He’s not happy about it, and the victim is still dying. Dean realises Sue Ann is controlling the reaper, not Roy.
Roy is going to heal Layla in a private meeting that won’t be interrupted. Dean is tempted to let it happen; he feels Layla deserves to be healed. But Sam says they can’t – he’s happy to play God for Dean, but not for someone else. I’m not saying he doesn’t have a point, but it’s a bit hypocritical just the same. Once again the brothers split up – Sam will find the dark altar and destroy it. He finds that Dean has been designated the reaper’s next victim.
Sue Ann is monologuing like a Bond villain. She’s definitely crazy.As Roy attempts to heal Layla and the reaper goes after Dean, Sam catches up to Sue Ann and destroys her cross. The reaper appears and kills Sue Ann. Layla isn’t healed.
Dean isn’t sure they did the right thing. He has a last conversation with Layla, who tells him you can’t only have faith when miracles happen, and that she’s okay. Dean tells her he will pray for her.
Associations
The monster the brothers are hunting when Dean is electrocuted is a Rawhead. Rawhead and Bloody Bones is a Cornish creature that hunts children: it’s the thing that hides in cracks in the walls, or under the bed.
The story of the faith healer whose power has a dark origin reminds me a lot of the James Herbert novel, The Shrine, which I read a long time before Supernatural was made. In that story, the healer is a young girl who is healed and then finds she can heal others. The community believes she’s doing God’s work and she becomes a magnet for those who need help, but it turns out that what is working through her is nothing good. Recently The Shrine was adapted into a film, The Unholy, which stars our own Jeffrey Dean Morgan (John Winchester).
Dean and healing
Dean has a real self-esteem problem, doesn’t he? He genuinely doesn’t believe he deserves to be healed. This is hard to unpick, because if he believed the opposite, well, that would just be arrogance. But Dean lives a life of heroism. He saves lives. If there’s a great cosmic scale out there, at this point Dean has a lot in his favour. So if anyone “deserves” a miracle, he should be on the list.
After the healing, he’s saying it’s not acceptable to trade another life for his – and that’s fine, I get that. But he didn’t want the healing before he knew that. Why not? There’s another episode, a few years ahead, where Dean witnesses a darker kind of miracle and shows a real reluctance to accept what happened as God’s will, and I think that moment clarifies for me what’s going on with Dean in this episode, because it fits in with my own experience.
Had I been in Dean’s position in this episode, I wouldn’t have wanted that healing, either. In fact the only way I would have gone into that tent in the first place is unconscious and in chains.
We don’t know much about what Dean’s early religious upbringing was like, but I think it’s fair to assume it was typical of Midwestern America: a wholesome Christian faith without much questioning. Dean lost his mother in a very traumatic way when he was a little boy. I lost my Dad when I was six and I had so many people tell me that he was with God, or God decided it was time, or he’s in a better place with the angels. Those platitudes make adults feel better, but children don’t always think that way. It didn’t make me feel better. What I heard was that God decided to put me and my family through this pain. My childhood atheism was my revenge. I knew that the God I’d been taught about – a good God who loved me – didn’t exist. My father’s death was all the evidence I needed for that. I wasn’t quite sure whether that meant God didn’t exist, but if he did, I knew he wanted attention, so that’s what I denied. If he was real, he was a monster and I hated him. So I behaved as if he didn’t exist, just like you’re supposed to with bullies.
When a Dean lost his mother, he probably heard a lot of the same platitudes. I doubt he took it any better than I did, but unlike me he has a lot more direct experience of evil in the world, of death and terror. How can you live that life and believe in a benevolent God who takes a personal interest in you? It’s logical for Dean to see a joyous Christian belief as either a delusion or a cynical deception – so of course he wants no part of it.
That doesn’t mean self-esteem didn’t play a role in Dean’s initial rejection of Roy’s invitation. However hostile he might be on religious grounds, he’s still a young man who is dying, and Roy is offering hope. Dean doesn’t feel he deserves it. The part I don’t understand is why he feels “deserve” has any part of it. Most of the people he has saved didn’t deserve the bad things, so why would it matter whether he, or anyone else, deserves the good?
Final thoughts
Supernatural does seem to have a problem with religion, doesn’t it? We are only 12 episodes in and we’ve had a pastor’s daughter unconsciously being host to a serial killer’s ghost (Hookman), a pagan god still demanding an annual sacrifice (Scarecrow) and now a faith healing pastor whose powers come from black magic.
Why did Roy choose Dean to heal? Was he really seeing into people’s hearts? Was he guided by something? We know that Dean is important to the grand scheme and it’s certainly possible that he’s on the angels’ radar at this point. Roy’s explanation does support that theory: that Dean has an important purpose.
I was never a huge fan of the music in this show. I don’t hate classic rock, but I have bad associations with a lot of it. This one, though, with Don’t Fear The Reaper playing over that scene, is simply brilliant.
There is so much in this episode that will pay off further down the line. Sam’s determination to find a cure for Dean, and his willingness to shrug off how it happened as long as Dean is okay. Dean’s unwillingness to believe he deserves to be healed. And that ominous hint of destiny.
