Supernatural: Hook Man

May 19, 2021 10:56 AM - Season 1, Episode 7

Sam and Dean investigate an age-old urban legend known as the Hook Man when they learn that the spirit of a 19th century pastor with a hook for a hand and a twisted sense of morals seems to be meting out punishments to everyone in the vicinity of a minister's 18-year-old daughter. 
posted by orange swan (2 comments total)

Dean: [looking around at a sorority house party] Man, you've been holding out on me. This college thing is awesome!
Sam: This wasn't really my experience.
Dean: Let me guess. Libraries, studying, straight A's?
Sam: [nods]
Dean: What a geek.

Dean: [outside a sorority house, and about to sneak in] Dude, maybe we'll see some naked pillow fights.

My guess is that if Dean ever had gone to college, he would have been an unbearable frat boy, focusing his efforts on partying and getting laid, putting minimum effort into his studies, and relying on his fraternity connections to land him a cushy job after graduation. As it is, he sees women basically as extras in his own personal universe-sized porno.

I'm not sure why melting the silver would have gotten rid of Hook Man. The silver had already been melted down from its original form, and that didn't do the job. I suppose it would help if Lori at least wasn't wearing the silver from the hook anymore.  

Sam is grieving over Jessica much more than I remembered him doing. As he would. He loved her, they had a good relationship, it's implied that they would probably have gotten married, and it was very likely his first serious relationship, so it looms especially large in his mind, and on top of that Jessica's death was a horrible traumatic experience for which he feels responsible.
posted by orange swan at 11:10 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I gotta admit this and the previous episode had me worrying a little bit about the show being too dogged in their reliance on urban legend plot devices and leaning a bit more into what I find frequently to be the less interesting side of the horror movie-like atmosphere the show started out with. Some of that comes from my not liking to see violence mixed with titillation, or even really hinted as coming from a shared place of reference, but while some of that does continue in the show, they manage to keep it to a bearable level of cultural reference, as the legends and movies they are drawing from are so often based on that mixture.

Anyway, the point being that this part of the run was more impressive for the level of craft they were putting into the show and getting to see how Sam and Dean's characters and their relationship developed than in pure enjoyment of the stories themselves.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:54 AM on May 20, 2021 [2 favorites]