Supernatural: The Girl Next Door
September 19, 2021 6:36 AM - Season 7, Episode 3 - Subscribe

When Sam reads in the newspaper that three men have been found sans their brains in Livingston Park in Lincoln, Nebraska, he takes the Impala and tracks down a boyhood girlfriend of his, whom he believes may be responsible.

Quotes

Dean: [falls out of his hospital bed] Ah! [looking at his cast] Wha--?
Bobby: [comes into the hospital room] You okay?
Dean: Bobby, you're alive.
Bobby: Of course, I am. Why are you on the floor?
Dean: They gave me morphine. A lot.
Bobby: [helps Dean up]
Dean: Hey look, a monster broke my leg.

Chet: Do you see any other strange charges on your statement? The May 27th charge to "Mistress Magda", perhaps? Oh. Sorry for asking.

Young Amy: Me and my mom bounce around a lot, too. She's all about, like, "letting the wind be our guide."
Young Sam: Like a hippie?
Young Amy: Minus the peace and love.

Young Sam: We're always on the road... I've seen the world's biggest Ball of Twine twice.
Young Amy: Three times! Not that big.
Young Sam: Right?

Amy: You got tall, huh?
Sam: Small talk? Really?

Sam: You find anything weird about the brains?
Cop: Like what?
Sam: Like... missing.

Chet: Plain old people taste fine, but everything is better with cheese.

Dean: Where's the pie?
Sam: You got cake. That's close enough, right?
Dean: ...

Trivia

This is the second episode of Supernatural directed by Jensen Ackles.

Jewel Staite's character is named Amy Pond, a nod to the Doctor Who character who is seen as both a child and an adult. Jewel Staite also played a character named Amy in The X-Files episode "Oubliette" (ep. 3.8).

In the scene where Dean is at the convenience store, the man behind the counter is wearing a shirt of Batman: Under the Red Hood, which starred Jensen Ackles as the voice of Red Hood.

When Dean calls Bobby to tell him that Sam, "Left me here like Jimmy Stewart." This is a reference to Hitchcock's 1954 film Rear Window, in which Jimmy's character is stuck in a wheelchair while his girlfriend checks out a suspected killer's apartment.

When the leviathan credit card customer service guy is on the phone with a customer he mentions a charge to "Mistress Magda". In the episode "Swan Song" (ep. 5.22), when Dean calls Chuck, he answers thinking it's Mistress Magda.

Over the loudspeaker in the hospital, "Dr. Todd Aronouer" is paged. Todd Aronauer is one of the show's producers.

Dean's missed calls appear on Sam's phone under the name Lars Ulrich. Lars Ulrich is the drummer for the band Metallica.

Two movies, featuring two of the series actors, are subtly referenced near the beginning of the episode. The first one is My Bloody Valentine, starring Jensen Ackles. An advert for it plays on the TV when Dean is sleeping. The second one is Girl, Interrupted, in which Misha Collins had a minor role. Dean calls Sam that when talking about his deteriorating sanity.

The name on Sam's credit card was Lemmy Kilmeister. Lemmy was the lead singer of Motörhead.

It was established in the "Fallen Idols" (ep. 5.5) that Dean cannot speak Spanish. However, Dean is seemingly following the telenovela he's watching in the first scene in the cabin. The implications are that the antenna television in the cabin can only receive signals from a Spanish-language TV station and since that's all Dean has been able to watch during their three weeks there, he has picked up some of the language.

Of all broken bone injuries, broken leg bones generally take the longest to heal. Judging from the cast Dean is wearing, his leg is broken above the knee or just below the knee, and the break was bad enough to warrant the doctor realigning the bone. At the end of the previous episode, when Sam and Dean are in the ambulance, the EMT referred to Dean's injury as a "compound tibia fracture". Even mild fractures take 6-8 weeks to heal. Severe breaks can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months to heal. Dean and Sam can't have been in the hospital very long because the leviathans would have eaten them. Also when Dean's leg is being dressed the doctor mentions that Sam has been taken for a head scan, and indeed Bobby intercepts Sam being wheeled back down to his room, indicating that the boys can only have been at the hospital for several hours. The caption reveals that they have been in the cabin in Whitefish for three weeks, and Dean says to Bobby that his cast is coming off in five days. This is biologically almost impossible given all the other factors detailed above.

The Leviathan pouring the melted cheese on the store clerk may be referencing a scene in the Game of Thrones episode "A Golden Crown", which aired earlier the same year, wherein a character is treated in the same manner, albeit with melted gold instead of cheese.
posted by orange swan (7 comments total)
 
Always nice to see Colin Ford. Fourteen-year-old Sam was amazingly good at research. That was probably the first time Sam ever kissed a girl, and that's how it turned out for him. Yikes. Every aspect of the Winchesters' lives has to be fruit of the poisoned tree.

More indication of what John Winchester was like as a father: "You don't want to see my dad when he's drunk," and Sam not wanting to speak to his father on the phone.

The unrealism of Dean's compound tibia fracture healing so quickly was annoying. I know this show is fantasy, but you do have to stick to the facts sometimes. Human medical details ought to be accurate.

Dean was soooo into that Spanish soap opera, to the point of looking on the verge of tears over the character's suicide.

Poor Amy and her poor son. They didn't ask to be born that way. But I don't know why she would have reproduced. For an ethical monster, that's an unethical decision. Perhaps she was hoping to have a normal baby?
posted by orange swan at 6:44 AM on September 19, 2021


Maybe she was thinking that she could teach the kid to be good.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:42 AM on September 19, 2021


Dean is incredibly well coiffed for having been beat up, transported to the hospital via ambulance, and having just come out from general anesthesia. And how did he pull his pants on over the cast without having to slit a leg?

I like Bobby's new haircut.

That coarse plywood blade on the angle grinder is not an appropriate substitute for a cast saw.

Sam's hand that Dean sewed back together should have swollen to the size of a breadbox for weeks afterwards and would need months of rehab/ physio.

Sam: "I thought you said most of those books were one of a kind."
Bobby: "Yep. That's why I stashed copies all over the place."

Colin Ford physically reminds me of a young Edward Furlong from Terminator 2, but seems to have grown up looking normal unlike the really unfortunate Furlong.

Traditionally, Kitsuni can have non-Kitsuni human offspring, albeit usually with special powers. But Kitsuni have a weakness for tofu and rice, not human pituitary glands. Credit due, though, fox spirit stories commonly have a (actual) romantic angle, sometimes ending bittersweet.

! That's the library (Lynn Valley, since replaced) that I grew up in.
posted by porpoise at 10:40 AM on September 19, 2021 [1 favorite]


This was an important episode for explaining how Sam's point of view differs from Dean's. He's able to see the shades of grey easier, in part because of his experiences with Amy. Like a lot of the relationships on this show, I wish this one had been given a bit more time to breathe. It would have been nice to see Amy stick around for a bit.
posted by sardonyx at 2:07 PM on September 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


Maybe she was thinking that she could teach the kid to be good.

And how was she planning on overcoming her child's physiological needs?
posted by orange swan at 3:28 PM on September 19, 2021


would have been nice to see Amy stick around for a bit

For sure, especially given that she's played by Jewel Staite ('Firefly,' 'SG:A,' and it looks like she's currently top billing on a reasonably successful show).

Emma Grabinsky as youngAmy was good, too. Both actors have colouration and features that are consistent with Kitsuni - even though they're from Chinese/ Japanese folklore.

child's physiological needs

If the father wasn't Kitsuni, it appears the monster-ism is traditionally recessive. Given that the kid needs brains, maybe eventually get him to get into the "family business" of running a mortuary? I guess why she had to kill again was that a growing kid/ sick kid needs fresh pituitaries or something, or more "stuff" than she could compile from dead brains/ current business volume?

If it's just pituitary gland hormones, most of them have been available in recombinant form since the 80s. Not that I expect the writers to have thought beyond "brains."
posted by porpoise at 4:03 PM on September 19, 2021


They may be full of lies about pituitary glands and compound fractures. 100% truth that the World's Largest Ball of Twine is not that big, except I guess compared to all the smaller balls of twine.

The more I think about Dean killing Amy the screwier it seems. I didn't WANT to see him kill a little kid, but that little kid was alive because his mother fed him. Maybe Dean had reason to think a juvenile kitsuni can't live off dead tissue long-term and eventually Amy was going to need to start killing people again, but that's not what anyone said; it sure came across like he thought killing people was in her nature so she could be legitimately killed, and her son might avoid that if he never started killing people in the first place. But if Amy's not there to feed him, what did Dean think Jacob's next move was going to be, go get a job as a mortician? Is he hoping he'll just starve quietly out of sight somewhere? And I don't think any of that was even the point of the story or why Sam or Dean made the choices they did, it's just hard to square whether Dean thought this would lead to overall fewer dead people or if he's just see monster>kill monster, especially if he perceives it as a situation Sam helped create. (Also, if the big scary professional monster hunter with impeccable monster judgment wants to go around stabbing people he should maybe remember to close the door first.)

The Leviathan pouring the melted cheese on the store clerk may be referencing a scene in the Game of Thrones episode "A Golden Crown", which aired earlier the same year, wherein a character is treated in the same manner, albeit with melted gold instead of cheese.

Between this and the dragons it's cracking me up that Supernatural and Game of Thrones could end up in this shambling accidental conversation on either end of the genre spectrum where GoT is doing tits and dragons But Fancy and Supernatural's golden crown is a delicious bucket of nacho cheese topping in the back of a gas station.
posted by jameaterblues at 10:21 PM on September 20, 2021 [1 favorite]


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