One of the great things about this show is the interaction between the two main characters. I mean, yeah, the plotlines are interesting and I love the look into urban legends, but what keeps me coming back is the characters. Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki are two skilled actors and the byplay between them on screen is amazing. I have a hard time with the quotes threads because while there are amazing moments, often, it is not the lines themselves, but the delivery that makes it so.
Pilot:
Introduction to the Winchester family. We find out that after the boys' mother's death when Dean was 4 and Sam was exactly 6 months, their father began the search to find and kill what took his wife. John Winchester raised his sons to be warriors and fight supernatural creatures. Sam broke away from this and went to college (Stanford). Days before his law school interview, Dean steps back into his life and Sam goes with his brother to find their father. Though they do not find their dad (who leaves them his journal with a set of coordinates), they lay to rest a Lady in White who had been taking unfaithful men along a stretch of highway. Once home, Sam finds his girlfriend, Jess, in the same manner that his mother had been killed. He leaves school and joins Dean on the road. I have this one on my iPod
Windigo:
Sam and Dean head to the coordinates their father left them in his journal, Blackwater Ridge. They stop by the ranger station to assess the situation and find out that a camping party may be missing at that spot. When they talk to the sister of one of the missing campers, Haley, they learn she is planning on hiking up there with a guide herself. The boys join the hike to Blackwater Ridge. Once there, they find a destroyed camp site. With a little digging, they figure out that what has taken Haley's brother is a Wendigo (used to be a man on the edge of civilization but turned to cannibalism in hard times and became like a monster). Of course, Dean (and Haley) get taken by the Wendigo but Sam finds them by following Dean's trail of M&M's. There they find Haley's brother still alive but weak. Sam is to lead the others to safety while Dean lures the creature in another direction. As is typical, the creature follows Sam and the others but Dean swoops in and saves the day.
Dead in the Water:
In a small Wisconsin town, people keep dying in the local lake. Instead of the lake monster the Winchester boys originally think it might be, it turns out to be the spirit of a young boy who was drowned in the lake decades before by 2 bullies. All those who had died were connected to the bullies. The remaining of the pair sacrifices himself to save his grandson from the lake spirit.
Phantom Traveler:
Planes keep crashing 40 minutes into the flight. What could be causing it? Well, a demon, apparently. Sam and Dean get to exorcise a demon mid flight. In the end, John Winchester passes on the torch. His voice mail has a message telling those who call that he cannot be reached but to contact Dean in an emergency. In this episode, we get to see the first real weakness Dean shows and it makes him just a little more likable.Also on the iPod.
Bloody Mary:
The Winchester boys get to look into the case of the Bloody Mary legend, and lay the real Mary to rest after she kills people who have secrets where someone dies. Dean finds out he doesn't know everything about Jess's death.
Skin:
This is an interesting episode. Men are coming home from work and finding their ladies killed by someone who looks like them. The culprit is a shape shifter who can look like anyone. Things get exciting when he shifts into Dean and tries to kill Sam's friend Rebecca before turning on Sam.
Hook Man:
The guys come face to face with the original Hook Man in a small college town as coeds are dying.
Bugs:
Strange, bug related deaths are happening in the new subdivision of Oaisis Plains. Is the son of the real estate developer behind things or is it something more sinister, like a old Native American curse? Sam opens up to Dean about how he feels their father sees him.
Home:
Sam starts dreaming about bad happenings in his old home, the one he does not remember. The Winchester boys take their first trip home since the death of their mother 22 years before. Something strange is happening in the old homestead and it is up to the boys to find out what and save the new owner and her kids.
Asylum:
The guys check out a haunted abandoned asylum. While there they become trapped inside and must find and destroy the remains of the doctor who had run the place. Sam has his own run in with the doctor's spirit and gets a little trigger happy on Dean's ass.
Scarecrow:
John Winchester calls his sons to give them the names of several couples who have disappeared in the same area over several years. Dean is ready to go but Sam (recognizing the area code from which their father called) wants to join dad on the hunt for what killed Jess and their mother. Sam goes his own way and Dean continues on the hunt. The town at the center of it all has been sacrificing couples to a pagan god to ensure fertile crops in a very old school fashion. When Sam cannot contact Dean, he rushes back to help save the day.Downloading this one to the iPod right now
Faith:
While saving 2 young children, Dean takes a shock from an amped up taser. This brings on a heart attack and causes serious damage. The doctors give him weeks to live but Sam refuses to accept their diagnosis. He takes Dean to a Faith healer who cures Dean. Dean has doubts about the process and they find that the a Reaper is taking a healthy life for each person saved. They guys find out who is controlling the Reaper. Once it is freed, it takes the life of the one who had chained it.
Route 666:
After getting the call from an old Flame, Dean pulls Sam along to investigate the death of Cassie's father. Several more men are killed in the same fashion before the guy's find the spirit responsible and the reason why. Dean finds a new spark of hope that he has a chance with Cassie.(I swear my sister and I have had that same conversation as Sam and Dean near the end.)
Nightmare:
Another vision leads Sam to a murder and a possible connection to the Yellow Eyed Demon. Sam faces the knowledge that he, too, could go bad someday and with a new power.
The Benders:
While looking into a history of disappearances in a town, Sam vanishes. Dean teams up with a local cop whose brother vanished the same way several years before. Together, they stumble onto the culprits and it isn't the supernatural forces that Sam and Dean thought it would be.
Shadow:
It's a locked room mystery. The boys investigate 2 murders that happened behind locked doors with the alarms set and no trace of the killer was left. While doing research on one of the victims, Sam runs into a girl, Meg, that he met while separated from Dean during Scarecrow. The boys find something hinky with this and find out that she caused the killings to draw them (and thus their father) into a trap.
Hell House:
The guys check out a haunting in Richardson, TX. After initial recon, they think it's a fake and decide to leave but before they go a girl is killed in the house. They find that the basis of the haunting isn't typical; it's a fake that became real. The Winchester boys also take out some on the road boredom with a few pranks. First time I saw that, my response was that's not Richardson. It wasn't. This one is on the iPod too.
Something Wicked:
Dean gets a chance to finish something started years before when they were kids and that has always bothered him. They get notice from their father to check out a small town. Turns out children are slowly dying of a mystery disease that spreads through families with out affecting the parents. Sam gets to see why Dean is the way he is while they investigate the creature, a striga, who is killing the kids.
Provenance:
Another locked room murder but it is not the demon based one as before. Here there is something hinky with an old painting. Each family that buys it is killed the first night it is in their home. Sam also meets a nice girl who is tied to the investigation and helps them solve the case.
Dead Man's Blood:
Turns out vampires are real and that they haven't been hunted to extinction yet. The Winchester boys join forces with their father against a pack of vampires when a fellow hunter is killed. They are after a fabled gun that the hunter possessed that the Winchesters hope could kill the demon who killed their mother.
Salvation:
Helpers of the Yellow Eyed Demon are after Hunter friends of the Winchesters but Sam has a vision where another family suffers the same fate as their own did 22 years ago. They split up to cover both fronts. Sam and Dean go to find and help the family while John goes after the demons. John gets taken hostage by the demons and Sam and Dean need to find him.
Devil's Trap:
Still being held hostage by demons, John's fate is unknown to the boys. They enlist the help of an old family friend to capture and interrogate one of the demons, Meg (from Scarecrow and Shadow). By doing this, they find and rescue their father but is it all too late. Is he hosting a demon now?
