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Edvard's Supernatural Rewatch & Review: 1x05 Bloody Mary

In this review, I’ll be discussing suicide, survivor’s guilt, and bad dialogue.

1x05 Bloody Mary enjoys a rating of 8.4 on IMDB. It’s a strong, atmospheric episode embodying the horror-show vibe the show was intended to evoke. It was originally conceived as being episode two or three of the show, and would have made a better episode two than 1x02 Wendigo due to its themes of guilt and bereavement linking into Jess’s death and Sam’s role in it.

Mirrors are one of the defining symbols of this episode, something made painfully obvious by the incredible number of mirrors the family owns. They are both the means whereby Mary kills her victims and the means whereby characters reflect on themselves. Sam’s info-dumpage that ‛mirrors reflect our soul’ should make it explicit to viewers paying attention that Mary is a metaphor for guilt. This guilt, however, is not necessarily the guilt that comes of commission of a crime or a moral evil, but the feeling of guilt borne of not being able to save somebody, or survivor’s guilt. A person burdened by such guilt looking in the metaphorical mirror must face a metaphorical Bloody Mary waiting to pass judgement.

Quite rightly, this judgement is not just, as indeed feelings of guilt, self-blame and survivor’s guilt are unjust. A discussion of the subject on Supernatural Therapy podcast raised the topic of self-blame when in fact one is not to blame: blaming ourselves is an attempt to feel in control of something and to understand it a little better. The deaths which the ill-fated father and Charlie blame themselves for are incomprehensible.

I can say from my own experience that losing a friend or loved one to suicide is impossible to understand. Grandparents dying of age is natural, and older relatives dying of long-term illness is understandable, though unjust. But when our driving instinct is supposed to be to stay alive, a friend’s or family member’s commission of self-murder undermines completely our comprehension of the world and our reality. It’s traumatic, and the mind seeks to understand and cope with something it simply can’t handle.

Returning to Supernatural Therapy, our feelings of guilt are misplaced attempts to control and understand, but they are more negative than positive. Thus Bloody Mary is an apt villain to don the role of avenging spirit in this episode, as she attacks people who feel guilty, regardless of whether or not they truly are responsible for a death.

This episode ties itself into the Sam’s character particularly closely, as Sam feels himself to blame for Jessica’s death. At first, his guilt is depicted as completely natural: he watched his possibly-pregnant girlfriend burn to death on his ceiling and was utterly unable to help her. Anybody in that situation would be dealing with guilt on top of bereavement and trauma, so he is naturally somebody Bloody Mary would go after. However, the revelation that he had ‛dreams’ (read: premonitions) about Jess’s death for days before it happened add another layer to his guilt.

That layer, of course, being his actual guilt in taking no measures whatsoever to ensure Jess’s safety. Sam is not a blue-eyed baby in 1x01: he is a man with deep knowledge of the supernatural world and was reckless to ignore them. It is never made explicit – unless something has slipped my mind – whether Sam had any experience or knowledge of humans with psychic powers, but it is clear that he knows about the paranormal. Any Muggle would be disturbed by having exactly the same dream of a loved one dying night after night, but would likely pass it off as stress, anxiety or some such. Sam’s no Muggle, and knows better. Was having a ‛normal’ life so important to him that he dismissed and ignored warning signs that the abnormal was coming for his lady? Is Sam partially responsible for Jess’s death here?

Knowing what I know of the circumstances surrounding Jess’s death, he likely couldn’t have stopped it, even had he called Dean and John for help. But he should have called them, and chose not to. If he had done so, she might have been saved. This is death by negligence.

What makes it worse is that he is aware that keeping his visions a secret got Jess killed, but at the end of the episode acts as though he is perfectly justified in retaining his secrets from Dean. Dangerous secrets overtly related to their mother’s death and the demon responsible for killing her, information which would be very useful to Dean and John if shared, but a danger if kept quiet. He learnt that not divulging his secret is dangerous for people around him, and elected to continue not divulging said secret to Dean. Please, dear viewer, bear this in mind in series 7, 8, 9, 15 and every other time Sam gets pissy at Dean for keeping things secret from him.

He even knows in this episode that keeping his secrets almost got Dean killed by Bloody Mary, but ‛just because we’re brothers, doesn’t mean I have to tell you everything’. Sam is supposed to be the hero of this piece...

Yes, some people are genuinely like that, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them, and I sure as Hell don’t like Sam. In the first five episodes, Dean is established as a flawed, contradictory hero who actually brings something to the table. Sam’s an entitled, spoilt prick who treats his brother like a joke and an embarrassment.

Returning to the theme of suicide and guilt, one thing that is not addressed in the episode is the dad’s own relationship to the mother’s death. That she overdosed on sleeping tablets heavily implies suicide, but for about half of the run time the viewer is expected to believe the father was somehow involved in her death, i.e. that he killed her, especially as the second victim was guilty of a hit and run where a boy died. What is never addressed, however, is that his guilt and the reason Bloody Mary targeted him is that he blamed himself for not being able to prevent his wife’s suicide. Charlie is allowed the catharsis of expressing her grief to Dean and Sam, but the father is not afforded the same opportunity.

Apropos Charlie, her precise meaning when she said her ex-boyfriend got ‛scary’ is left occult. He clearly suffered serious mental health problems, something which a lot of people simply aren’t equipped to handle, especially when the one suffering is a close friend or partner. Young male victims of suicide also tend to have been very good at wearing a mask to hide: did he try taking the mask off for her, and she didn’t like what she saw? From what little information she gives us, the implication is that he threatened her with violence or that he used hard drugs or something, but the viewer is at no point privy to what she means by ‛scary’ or to the man’s side of things.

Whether or not the young man intended to frighten and manipulate Charlie by threatening her with his suicide is also unclear. ‛If you walk out that door, I’ll kill myself’ can mean different things depending on tone and context, ranging from a desperate plea for help against an overwhelming mental illness to abusive, sadistic mind games. Having lost more than one man to suicide, the idea that someone would use it as a weapon is inconceivable, but without further information I simply can’t say.

From what little information we have, the man’s suicide was not Charlie’s fault. If we assume he was threatening her to keep her with him, she was right to run. Nobody should be mistreated or burdened like that, and no relationship should be built on a foundation of such abuse. She is important, too. Even if it weren’t a threat, the situation was intensely unhealthy for everybody involved and she was very justified in distancing herself. It wasn’t her fault, and I just wish Dean had told her that in the motel room, rather than simply talking about it to Sam in the car afterwards.

Speaking of said conversation in the car, Dean’s heart was in the right place as he tried to get Sam to stop blaming himself, but he perhaps revealed his own lack of coping tools whilst doing so. Dean is intelligent and empathetic, and far more caring than people give him credit for, but he was raised in an environment where he was not allowed to talk about his fears and anxieties. Nor was he provided any tools whatsoever to facilitate understanding and processing his traumas and illnesses; John wanted him as an emotionally-dead weapon to use in his war against Mary’s killer.

Dean feels, but with no healthy tools nor anybody to acknowledge and help in processing his issues, he bottles things up and pushes them aside as best he can. Of course, the best he can is not all that best, wherefore the drinks and the sex and the gallows humour. This is John’s echo in Dean: John silenced him, and Dean therefore is not best equipped to process his own trauma at the beginning of series 1, much less counsel somebody else (though this changes as the years go by and he learns how to act without John stymieing him).

He meant well in telling Sam he can’t carry on blaming himself for Jess’s death, but the problem is Sam can’t stop blaming himself. Nobody in Sam’s situation can stop themselves feeling what s/he’s feeling, and has to simply feel it. I knew my friend’s suicide wasn’t my fault, but grief, bereavement, and survivor’s guilt are not rational and can’t be controlled by the cognitive mind. The feeling mind is the one in control, all the cognitive mind can do is make suggestions and hope for the best.

Regarding grief and Sam’s situation, Sam’s nightmare and his conversation with Dean at the beginning of the episode are about as explicit as Sam’s grief for Jess gets int eh show, and it’s not much at all. They were together for maybe two years, she was possibly pregnant with his child and died on the ceiling above him, but he doesn’t do any actual mourning or grieving most of the time. That itself is okay as some peolel take years before they’re ready to process grief and bereavement, but Sam behaves like a slightly disgruntled, moody teenager which we’re supposed to interpret as him grieving Jess’s death, but we see next to no actual grief, trauma or expression of loss.

His discussion with Dean is supposed to give us the idea that this is a recurrent event, but it is very, very far from sufficient to genuinely make us believe that Sam is anything other than a little bit sad for Jess.

We have, however, already established that Sam is partially responsible for Jess’s death, but Dean doesn’t know that. In spite of it not being the most productive thing Dean could have said, it was valid. Grieving is natural and uncontrollable, but how we react to it is at least partially within the jurisdiction of the cognitive mind. We can’t resist grief, as even denying it acknowledges its presence, but rather we have to accept it as a natural part of life to be endured and felt, but not be controlled by it.

Similarly, Mary is herself a victim of trauma, having been murdered by her lover. Understandably, her mentis is significantly non compos after the experience, and killing people she deems to be guilty is perhaps her way of trying to process what happened to her. Referring once again to Supernatural Therapy podcast, Jovanna Burke (who played Mary in this episode) states she believed Mary saw herself as a vigilante trying to get restitution for people wronged by killing their murderers, but her world-view became so skewed and she lost all concept of a grey area. For her, things were black or white: guilty or not guilty. Dean as good as says that there is only guilty or not guilty for Mary: if somebody thinks their actions or lack thereof got somebody killed, that person’s guilty. Sam, after all, didn’t kill Jess, Charlie didn’t kill her ex-boyfriend and I don’t believe the father had a part in the mother’s death.

I would add to this that such thinking sounds like a trauma victim’s survival mechanism. If things are easily understood as either / or, good / bad, safe / dangerous, the risk of danger is theoretically reduced. Think wild animals assuming humans are going to kill them: it’s safest to assume and run away.

This has been quite the lengthy discourse on mirrors, but it’s time to switch from the metaphorical and symbolical to the more practical, that being the exact nature of how the magic works. Mary was bound to the mirror she died in front of, but as long as that mirror remained intact, she was free to wonder the mirror world when summoned. In the climax of the episode, Dean and Sam summon her to her mirror in the antique shop, smash it, then face her manifest form in the real world. Dean defeats her by showing her her own reflection in another mirror, whereupon her own reflection deems her guilty of multiple homicides and kills her.

Hawk-eyed readers will have noticed already, but if Mary’s power was bound to her mirror, how then could her own reflection have killed her when the mirror binding her was smashed? Was the source of her power in her, then, rather than the mirror? If so, then how would her seeing her own reflection killed her? A ghost in Supernatural doesn’t have the power to destroy itself like that: it simply can’t. A ghost has refused the Reaper’s invitation to pass on, and can’t therefore pass on, yet Mary does. I can’t make this make sense.

One more thing about that scene is that Dean’s eyes began bleeding, implying he is also hiding a secret where somebody died. Fans made a big number out of this at the time, and Kripke promised us we would find out in due course… but we never did. This is the first instance of one of Dean’s storylines getting dropped by the show, and it’s far from being the last one.

Kripke didn't like Dean. Dean was supposed to be the dumb, womanising popular guy who always gets the women but 'treats them badly' in comparison to Sam's sensitive nice guy act. Sam was Kripke's insert, and Dean was just a character the audience wasn't supposed to like either, so he didn't bother giving Dean his own storylines. Even series 3 is more about Sam's anger and 'grief' than it is Dean's.

Now that the main points are out of the way, there are more minor points in the episode to comment on. One is the lovely cinematography, especially during the cold open / prologue. I began this review by stating that mirrors are important in this episode, and the camerawork in the beginning really drive that home. Moreover, seeing Mary reflected in so many mirrors – and indeed seeing so many reflections – blurs the line between the real world and the mirror world.

The children’s sleepover is also pleasantly lit, with very dark shadows and lots of candlelight evoking the feel of a ghost story. The shot in the library with the rays of light shining on the boys also looked wonderful, and the visual storytelling in the antique shop at the end was impressive. Said visual storytelling refers to the close up shot of a blinking red light, followed shortly after by the headlights of the police cars drifting across the wall. This is intelligent storytelling that expects the viewer to be paying attention, and it’s definitely appreciated.

In spite of my apathy for Jess as a character, the final shot of Sam seeing her on the pavement was fantastic cinematography: as with the flashing lights, it told us a story without needing to tell us anything. Sam saw her, and then she disappeared. Coming at the end of an episode about Sam’s guilt, and roughly a minute after his advice to Charlie about not blaming herself, this strongly suggests something has changed in Sam: the guilt that he was holding on to has begun to ease, or even vanish. It is, however, just a suggestion, and Sam giving Charlie a therapy session he sorely needs doesn’t mean he’s going to follow his own advice.

I wish, however, that more had been revealed about the kind of pills the father was taking in the cold open.

Speaking of the library – which we weren’t –do you remember when Wi-Fi didn’t exist? I remember. Currently I’m sitting about two metres away from my computer which is tethered to my mobile phone, typing on a wireless keyboard, using a wireless mouse in a room with no working ethernet cable or modem, listening to sounds of an oil rig on Bluetooth headphones, but in 2005 none of that was possible. There’s almost as much time between now and then as there was between my birth and ABBA winning Eurovision in Brighton in 1974.

Which is a nice segue into the soundtrack of the episode. The music in the opening is effective, being both reminiscent of the prologue of 1x01 with its minimalistic, slow piano track building tension and unease, but with an underlying hollow, howling wind sound that I can only liken to the dementors in Harry Potter.

Less impressive, however, was Mary’s dialogue, showing a complete lack of effort put into it. ‛You killed them, you’re guilty’, ‛you did it, you killed that boy’.

I rewatched this episode for the first time in 12 years in December 2020, by myself in a silent flat very late at night. I was 29, and this episode still creeped me out, making me hesitant to look at the window in case my reflection moved. Whilst it’s not my favourite episode, it’s certainly a solid effort with a memorable – if dated – antagonist in a self-contained MOTW story. Like the pilot, it showcased Kripke’s initial conception of the show as being about American folklore (although Bloody Mary is very much a British thing, too), and boasts a very atmospheric miniature horror show. It also offers character development and growth, even thought Sam’s claim that he would die for Dean is laughable in retrospect.

After once more exploring folk tales in 1x05, in next week's analysis of episode 1x06 Skin I'll be looking at how the show expands its daemonology by introducing a series staple.

#Michael's Supernatural Rewatch #spn rewatch #spn 1x05 #1x05 bloody mary #classic supernatural #dean winchester #sam winchester #survivor's guilt #suicide #dean's abandoned storylines

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