A family in crisis, a broken kid and a shocking connection with the Winchesters. Let’s re-watch Nightmare!
Pre-show notes
This episode includes a scene where Dean is shot in the head and his head basically explodes. I was at a convention where Jensen talked about filming that scene. They didn’t expect to be allowed to show that moment: the network censors would insist it was cut. So they went all-out on the practical effects, for fun, figuring they would only get to keep at most a couple of frames. So Jensen had this bag of gore stuck to the back of his head, and it had to explode and hit the wall behind him, making it appear his brains were blown out. According to Jensen, the resulting splatter was bigger than anyone expected – and they weren’t told to cut it! So what we see in the episode, albeit for less than a second, is the full blast.
Episode Notes
Sam has a nightmare in which a man is killed by an invisible force. He wakes Dean in the middle of the night and insists they hit the road: he wants to get there before the man dies. But when they do reach the location, it’s too late. It seems as if Sam dreamed about the death as it was happening. Sam is confused: he thinks he has these premonitions so he can stop them (which I suppose is what would make sense from the folklore, but actually there’s no logical reason that would be the case).
They show up at the house the next day, dressed as priests, to talk to the family. Dean knows all the cliches but does an awful impersonation. He tries pumping her for information – and interestingly he’s describing a poltergeist (what they faced last time Sam’s premonitions took them somewhere). He sneaks off to snoop around with his EMF meter but finds nothing. Sam talks with the boy, Max, who found the body. Max is upset and not talking much.
The usual techniques are getting them nowhere. Dean found nothing in the house, and Sam’s research has found nothing weird in its history. But as they talk, Sam has a sudden onset headache that drives him to his knees. He sees a man – Roger Miller, the brother of the first victim – putting shopping away as his sash window opens itself. As the man tries to close the sash, it comes down on his neck with such force that he’s decapitated.
This is the first time we’ve seen Sam in this kind of pain from his visions and he’s a bit freaked out by it all – as is Dean, though he’s not admitting it. Sam wants to understand why he has now seen two men in the Miller family die. Dean protests that they’ve seen the unexplained before, but Sam retorts that it’s never been “in the family” before. Except he’s wrong, isn’t he? Mary and Jessica’s deaths count as being part of the family, and we will learn later of many other examples where the supernatural has come hunting for the hunters.
Once again the brothers rush to the rescue. This time they get there in time, but Roger, who thinks they’re priests, doesn’t want to listen to anything they have to say. They rush to save him, but are too late: Roger dies exactly as Sam saw. Dean looks around the apartment and finds no evidence of anything.
Back in disguise, they go back to the Millers’ house in the morning and interview Max. They are trying to find evidence of a family curse. Max says everything in the past is fine and normal, but it’s clear he’s lying this time. The brothers talk to the Millers’ former neighbour and learn that the boy was badly abused by his father and uncle. Sam has another vision, this time seeing the stepmother die – and this time it’s clear that Max is doing it. He’s telekinetic.
Sam thinks he’s been seeing what Max is doing because they are alike. Dean doesn’t see the similarity. Dean thinks they need to kill Max, but Sam isn’t having it: Max is human and Sam thinks he can be talked down. It’s interesting that they both have this if it’s supernatural, we kill it mentality – drummed into them by John, I guess – but they each draw the line in a different way. Dean’s is good vs evil: Max is evil, so he has to go. Sam’s is humans vs monsters: Max is human, so even if he’s evil he can’t be killed.
This time they do reach the scene in the nick of time and interrupt what would have been the stepmother’s murder. Sam tries to talk Max down but when Max sees Dean’s gun he freaks out. Sam tells Max about his visions and persuades Max to listen to him. Dean does not want to leave them alone, but he agrees to let them talk in private. Max reveals to Sam that the abuse never stopped and that’s why he’s been killing everyone. He says he will stop when everyone responsible is dead. Clearly he’s traumatised and not entirely sane.
But as Max keeps talking he reveals a shocking detail: that Max’s biological mother died in exactly the same way as Mary and Jessica. Sam gets all excited and recognises there is a connection or a bond between them because of what happened to their mothers. They both have powers.
“For some reason you and I were chosen.”
Sam
But Sam’s choice of words: chosen, is a huge red flag.
Sam isn’t getting through. Max is determined to finish what he started: he sees it as the only way to be free of the fear. Sam tries, but it’s not going to work. Max is too far gone. Max locks Sam in a closet and goes after his stepmother. We see him point Dean’s gun at her and leave it floating in the air. Dean tries to intervene and Max kills him – then we realise that what we’ve seen is Sam’s vision. Sam breaks out using telekinesis and gets there just in time (again) and this time Max turns the gun on himself.
Sam is devastated that he couldn’t find the right words to save Max. He says they are lucky they had Dad – Max has shown him what their lives could have been like after Mary’s death if John were a different person. Sam is still being thinky though. He’s figured out that the demon that killed their mothers must have been after the babies, and now he’s wondering if he’s going to turn evil like Max.
Associations
This is the first episode where I don’t have strong associations with anything else. It’s the first one that’s wholly Supernatural for me.
Yes, there’s Carrie. The telekinetic teenager who takes a bloody revenge on her tormentors, sure. But the resemblances are superficial.
Final Thoughts
In Faith, we saw hints of a darker side to Sam in that he was willing to cross a line for the sake of saving Dean’s life. I think Nightmare is where we see the first hints that Sam is capable of going truly dark.
It’s that word, chosen. Because Sam already knows that a demon killed Mary (and we are assuming that Jessica’s killer is the same). Being chosen by a demon can’t possibly be a good thing, but when Sam says that to Max, he’s excited. Yes, a big part of that excitement is having found someone else like himself, maybe another clue for his hunt. But even that should give him pause because Max is at best broken, at worst evil. Sam isn’t quite in touch with the big picture here. I’m not suggesting Sam did anything wrong here. It just shows potential.
Sam’s psychic ability started with dreams, then became visions and now he has added telekinesis. He’s not exactly in control of any of it, as he says to Dean at the end. He is also paying a price for it – those headaches look brutal. It’s hard to tell if Max had a cost to his power. He doesn’t look healthy, and I suspect that using that power was doing some internal damage.
Dean is not happy with Sam’s increasing psychic abilities but he’s still making light of it to Sam’s face. Dean’s attitude to Sam’s psychic thing bothered me but knowing where this is going to lead them both I have a little more sympathy for Dean’s position. Having something supernatural in the family would be disconcerting at best.
