Things I Love About SPN Season 1: Scarecrow #5 (final)

Supernatural, Season 1
Episode 11, “Scarecrow”
Teleplay by John Shiban
Story by Sean Patrick Smith
Directed by Kim Manners
Continued from #4


Warning: image heavy post

In the next scene we find the town folk discussing the necessity to sacrifice Dean and another victim, who turns out to be Emily. It’s raining, and the scene closes with a striking overhead shot of the conspirators gathered under their umbrellas.

In the “Then and Now” podcast, Robert Singer and Jerry Wanek explained this was an homage to Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent. It’s an interesting tidbit for two reasons: first, it isn’t a typical SPN pop culture allusion, being a wartime espionage thriller rather than the usual horror movie (but the war reference may not be as utterly random as it first appears); secondly, the movie features a climactic scene where an antagonist sacrifices himself so the heroes may live. It may be the allusion is being used to contrast that act of self-sacrifice with the act of murder that the town folk are calling sacrifice. It may also be an ironic nod forward to the episode’s resolution where Dean and Emily are saved when the scarecrow takes two of the conspirators in their stead.

While Emily is interred with Dean, “for the common good” according to Ma Jorgenson, Sam grows anxious about the radio silence from Dean and announces to Meg that he’s going to Burkitsville. She’s put out about it:

MEG: But I don’t understand. You’re running back to your brother?

The guy you ran away from? Why, because he won’t pick up his phone?
Sam—come with me to California.
SAM: I can’t. I’m sorry.
MEG: Why not?
SAM: He’s my family.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.11_Scarecrow_(transcript)




Aww. Poor abandoned Meg.

Funny how the same expression that seemed sad on first viewing looks more like an angry sulk in retrospect.


Meanwhile, back at the orchard, Emily can’t understand why her aunt and uncle have turned on her.

The juxtaposition of the two scenes points up the contrast between what family and sacrifice mean to Sam, and what they mean to the Jorgesons.

For Sam, it means giving up his own goals to go stand behind his brother, whereas the Jorgesons have a rather different definition:

EMILY: I’m your family.
STACY: Sweetheart, that’s what sacrifice means. Giving up something you love for the greater good. The town needs to be safe. The good of the many outweighs the good of the one.
(Ibid)

Here we have another unusual pop culture allusion, this time to the sci fi movie, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and the famous scene where Spock sacrifices himself to save the crew of the Enterprise. 

Again, the act of self-sacrifice is being contrasted with that being forced upon the sacrificial victims. And the choice of a sci fi movie to make this point may not seem so odd when we remember that Star Trek is one of the most popular quest romances of our time, and Spock’s story as it is presented in this movie is a perfect example of the hero myth. Always an outsider in the series because of his Vulcan heritage, Spock is forestalled from entering the chamber by Dr McCoy who objects that no human could tolerate the radiation within. Spock responds: “as you’re so fond of observing, doctor, I am not human.” Yet afterward, at his funeral, Kirk declares “of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most human.” Hence the former outsider’s sacrifice qualifies him to receive the (dubious) reward of being included within the community of humanity.

The nobility of sacrifice is popularized in fiction over and over again, and here may be a clue to the relevance of the earlier war movie allusion. The hero myth has been employed throughout history as a propaganda tool to persuade young people to go to war. It presents warfare as the adventure that will test their worthiness to be received into the adult community. They will do battle with monsters (the demonized enemy) and, if they prevail, they will return to a hero’s welcome. Should they fall, their sacrifice will be eternally honoured in the community memory and, thus, they will achieve immortality.

Bearing in mind that, at the time of writing, young Americans were fighting in Afghanistan as part of the US War on Terror, it seems this episode is picking up the political theme that was first introduced in "Phantom Traveler": as the townsfolk of Burkitsville leave the victims tied in the orchard as an offering to the scarecrow god, Dean yells after them “I hope your apple pie is freakin’ worth it!” and that, in a nutshell, is the political message behind the episode and, ultimately, the whole of Kripke’s story.

The town of Burkitsville is an allegory for the apple pie life and, just as the town’s prosperity depends on spilling the blood of the young couples, so American families were persuaded that the sacrifice of their young men and women was necessary for the continuance of their way of life. This theme continues as an undercurrent in the series for the rest of Kripke’s tenure, subtly deconstructing the hero myth it superficially appears to tell.


But to return to this episode, as we know, Sam turns up in the nick of time to save the day. When Dean asks how he got there, he admits to stealing a car. “Ha! That’s my boy!” he laughs. It’s significant that Sam is showing his influence, and Dean acknowledges it as such. As he returns and accepts his brother’s quest as his own path, Sam is beginning to embrace the shadow.

They are prevented from escaping the orchard by the townsfolk, but as the Jorgensons try to persuade the young victims to accept their fate, the scarecrow takes the Jorgesons instead. It makes sense when you think about it, since the offering is supposed to be a fertility rite, that the scarecrow would take the only people present who were actually a couple. Maybe the townsfolk should have thought of that. If they’d truly taken responsibility for the greater good of the town and the Jorgensons had willingly offered themselves up in the first place, that would have been a true sacrifice.

Emily and the brothers return to the orchard the next day and quickly locate the sacred tree that’s the source of the god’s power since it’s conveniently marked with Nordic runes (not Vince’s tattoo design as Superwiki suggests!)

As Sam douses the tree and Dean lights a branch to start the fire, Emily claims the honour of setting the brand to the tree.

“You know, the whole town’s gonna die,” he reminds her.

“Good,” she replies.

Sam also seems to think the town deserves to be punished. “And the rest of the townspeople, they’ll just get away with it?” he asks as the brothers see Emily off on a bus to Boston.

“Well, what’ll happen to the town will have to be punishment enough,” Dean responds. It’s understood that the brothers kill monsters, not human beings. Sadly the distinction doesn’t remain so black and white for much longer.

Dean asks Sam if he needs a ride somewhere, and that’s when Sam gives him the big speech. This is Sam, finally, officially answering the call to the quest:

SAM: No, I think you’re stuck with me. (They stop at the car.)
DEAN: What made you change your mind?
SAM: I didn’t. I still wanna find Dad. And you’re still a pain in the ass. (DEAN nods.) But, Jess and Mom—they’re both gone. Dad is God knows where. You and me. We’re all that’s left. So, if we’re gonna see this through, we’re gonna do it together.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.11_Scarecrow_(transcript)

So, Sam commits to “saving people, hunting things” with Dean as his true calling. It’s unusual because finding the Father is a typical goal of the hero’s journey but, in this case, John has given his sons a different mission. For Sam, Dean and John represent two different paths: Dean is the path of Salvation, while John is that of Revenge, which John didn’t originally want his sons to have any part of. It’s the typical parental command of “don’t do as I do; do as your told” but perhaps he was right. Every wrong move that Sam subsequently makes is when he chooses the path of revenge over just sticking to the family business.

It's interesting how soon after the phone call at the bus station Sam makes his decision. It's like the moment Dean gives him permission to choose his own path, he chooses Dean. It seems to illustrate the old adage: if you love someone, let them go; if they come back they're yours forever.

Dean’s eyes look suspiciously shiny as he listens to Sam, and his voice cracks a little when he responds, but he passes it off as mockery. He lampoons being overcome with emotion at Sam’s speech to cover the fact that . . . he is overcome with emotion at Sam’s speech. He turns away suspiciously quickly afterward.

I wonder how many fans thought for a moment the brothers really were going to hug. I suspect show was deliberately teasing the possibility. In the “Then and Now” podcast for “Scarecrow”, Bob Singer describes the dynamic of this episode as “the classic love story: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back”, candidly acknowledging they employed romantic tropes in telling the boys’ story.

Sam responds to his brother’s mockery by knocking his hand away and affably reminding him “you should be kissing my ass; you were dead meat, dude!”

“Yeah, right,” Dean scoffs.  “I had a plan. I’d have gotten out.”

“Right,” Sam retorts, skeptically.  He watches Dean get into the car, half smiling, half exasperated, but before climbing into the passenger seat he takes a last look back at the bus stop.

Is he wondering if he made the right decision? I'm sure we all thought he did at the time, but then we didn’t know that Sam was committing to a destiny that would eventually damn him.

In the episode that follows, “Faith”, Dean makes the memorable comment “I’ve seen what evil does to good people”. Over the next five seasons we have the same experience as we watch the effects of “fighting the good fight” on these two good men as their values are slowly corrupted and we begin to question whether the cause they’re fighting for is really worthy of their sacrifice. In the pilot, Sam was presented to us as an ‘everyman’ figure whose very name conjures a generalized notion of America. In this way, his fate is metaphorically linked to the fate of a nation, and the brothers’ story becomes a meditation on the effects on a culture of a prolonged state of warfare, dramatizing the moral that we become that we hate.

In the season 5 finale, the brothers’ story is revealed to be not an epic romance after all, but a tragedy. Dean, who has done everything the myth has asked of him, is required to sacrifice his brother, his family, for “the greater good”. And Sam, who began the current episode insisting on his right to go his own way, ends “Swan Song” by casting himself into a cage for all eternity so Dean, and the rest of the world, can have that apple pie life.

The hollowness of the hero myth and its promised rewards is ultimately exposed in Dean’s last conversation with Castiel in “Swan Song”, when he echoes the sentiments of every soldier who’s ever lost a comrade in battle: “Where's my grand prize? All I got is my brother in a hole!”

And Castiel reminds him that Sam’s sacrifice was necessary just to preserve the status quo: “You got what you asked for, Dean. No paradise. No hell. Just more of the same.”

As we wonder whether “more of the same” really justifies the price paid for it, Dean’s words from this episode seem to echo through the seasons to Kripke’s finale:

“Scarecrow” has one last surprise for us before the credits as we cut to a van driving along a dark highway while the classic chords of Bad Company play (and continue to play over the following scene). This is one of SPN’s great rock soundtrack moments but, unfortunately, it’s replaced on Netflix and Stan with “Autumn’s Descent” by Push, which just isn’t the same, so if you’ve only seen season 1 on cable or streaming channels, dude, you need to get the DVD!

Doubtless we thought we’d seen the last of Meg, but now we find her riding shotgun to another shady van guy. At least, we think he’s the shady one until Meg invites him to pull over and she pulls at a freaky looking bowl decorated with tortured, screaming faces.

The faces of the damned perhaps?




OMG!!!
I did not see that coming! Did you see that coming? I did not see that coming!

As she stirs the blood in the bowl it becomes clear that Meg has been acting under direction, and she’s angry. She doesn’t understand why she’s been required to let the brothers go. But, as she listens to a reply we can’t hear, she becomes submissive and obedient in a manner that somewhat mirrors Dean’s conversation with his father at the beginning of the episode:

 

So, although she’s been playing the part of the rebellious child to ingratiate herself with Sam, it turns out she’s actually more like Dean, the dutiful “good son”, following Dad’s orders. Now we finally see the significance of the song "Puppet" that was playing on her Walkman in her first scene: Meg is as much Azazels puppet as Sam is.

This exchange acquires more interesting implications when we discover in upcoming episodes that Meg is a demon, which gives the address of “Father” additional significance since Satan is often referred to as the father of demons and is addressed as “Father” in popular culture by demons and Satan worshippers alike.

This is the first suggestion that before the Lucifer plot was introduced later, and Azazel was downgraded to a mere lieutenant, the original dramatic intention was that he wasn’t just a demon, he was the Demon, i.e. the Devil. I’ll be talking more about the symbolic implications behind the yellow eyed demon and the significance of the name Azazel - in theology and in pop culture - when we discuss the season finale.

This scene also raises the question, if he didn’t want Sam stopped, what was Azazel’s real goal in this episode? At the end of season 2, he reveals to Sam that “I needed you sharp, on the road, honing your skills,” so maybe the irony is that he and John actually want the same thing for Sam at this point.



I hope you've enjoyed this recap of “Scarecrow”. As always, I look forward to hearing all your thoughts and impressions of the episode. Did you enjoy it? What were your favourite things about it?

I'll start reviewing the next episode, “Faith”, soon. Please follow the "episode rewatch" tag to be notified when new updates are posted.

PS

As some of you may be aware, a while ago I started writing an AU quest serial in the style of the show’s first season, but based on the premise that John and Mary never married, and Dean was brought up a civilian while Sam was raised by the Campbells. My characters take a different road from their show counterparts, but their story contains occasional echoes of the original. Since “Scarecrow” represented an iconic moment from the classic hero’s journey myth, it stood to reason that my characters must face a similar challenge at that point in their quest, and so it happens that their path also leads them to Burkitsville in the second week of April. However, they encounter some very different twists and turns along the way.

If anyone would be interested in reading (or re-reading) my reimagining of the Scarecrow episode, it’s still available on AO3:

Episode 4: Together





Summary: Everything changes. Everything stays the same. Tensions mount between Sam Campbell and Dean Winchester until an explosive quarrel drives the friends apart. Sam finds himself drawn to a pretty stranger while Dean confronts a sinister scarecrow. You think you know this story. Think again. Read on AO3

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