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December 2007
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SUPERNATURAL: FRESH BLOOD
SUPERNATURAL
Episode 3.7
Fresh Blood
Written by: Sera Gamble
Directed by: Kim Manners
Guest Starring: Sterling K. Brown, Michael Massee, Mercedes McNab, Matthew Humphrey
Plot Summary: While on the hunt for a nest of vampires, Sam and Dean run into their old nemesis, Gordon Walker. And if you thought that was bad enough...
Review:
When writer Sera Gamble and director Kim Manners team up, something wonderful happens. "Fresh Blood" bursts onto the Season 3 scene as vintage Supernatural.
Fixated on his conviction that Sam is the Anti-Christ, Gordon Walker has escaped from prison. His first stop is to threaten Bela, who last saw the boys, but she turns his demands into barter for an antique mojo bag he carries: mojo he may later wish he had.
Meanwhile Sam and Dean are hunting a vampire. The creature has already killed three people, and it's a nod back to Season 2 to see the boys so focused and intent. Dean gleefully uses his own blood to lure the vampire in, but once he's incapacitated her with a dose of dead man's blood, the vampire tale takes a new twist.
Under questioning, the girl, Lucy, swears she's suffering an overdose of some weird hallucinogenic drug, and denies the remotest understanding of vampirism. Sam and Dean are unsettled by her plight, yet with her hunger aroused and the blood of her last victim still on her face, they are unwilling to risk the loss of more human lives. When Dean steps away with his machete, we witness her death only in Sam's pained grimace.
But the boys are now armed with intel that a male vampire is stalking women at a local nightclub, and turning them by feeding them vampire blood under the guise of a new designer drug. Focused on this threat, the boys aren't remotely prepared to run into Gordon Walker and sidekick, Kubrick (3.3's 'Hunter for Christ.') The only greeting is a barrage of gunfire, which Sam and Dean escape when Dean barges into the open and draws their fire from Sam. What they don't realize is that the vampire has spotted Gordon, and he attacks the hunter from the dark.
Everything changes when Gordon regains consciousness as a captive in the hidden nest. The vampire, Dixon, quietly seethes as he blames Gordon and hunters like him for the massacre of his entire "family" and the long-ago death of his daughter. The girls he has turned are his attempt to rebuild the family he's lost. Gordon is no less scathing in his opinion of vampires, a zealot's courage in the face of certain death. Yet Dixon decides on another form of justice for the most deadly enemy of vampire kind. Blood for blood: and Gordon's anguished moans turn to a howl as the camera goes black.
Meanwhile, Sam and Dean hold a council of war and reach the grim realization that the only way to stop Gordon Walker is permanently. Dean is surprised when Sam agrees without the usual touchy-feely protest, but Sam grimly says, "I'm done". The stakes of their undeclared war are ever so much higher, now. A phone call from Bela reveals Gordon's whereabouts, but her spirit contacts have another message: the boys should run like hell and not pursue Gordon. Little do they know what has befallen Gordon.
As for Gordon, he awakens to the horrifying discovery that he has become the thing he hates most. Dixon is away, so Gordon breaks free, but when one of the newly-made vampire girls pleads for help, his look turns predatory. When he appears outside, he is wholly the hunter. Gordon resists only briefly before a hapless motorist changing a flat tire becomes the first target of his new powers - and his new hunger.
Unaware of the danger, Sam and Dean pursue Bela's lead to make an unexpected discovery. Gordon is gone, but the vampire, Dixon, simply waits on his knees, weeping before the bodies of his two would-be "daughters". The old Dean would have ridiculed a vampire's grief, but now he listens with reluctant understanding to Dixon's despair over facing eternity alone. Then Sam discovers the girls' heads were not cut off: they were actually torn off. The boys' worst enemy is now their most dangerous foe.
Gordon in the meantime returns to Kubrick's RV, where he explains what happened and in tender tones, the two agree that Gordon must die. Gordon asks only one provision: that he is allowed to kill Sam Winchester first. However, Kubrick gently declines - and Gordon promptly rips his fellow hunter's heart out. He then catches Kubrick and holds him in his arms, whispering apologies as the man dies.
Back at the motel, Dean prepares to go after Gordon with the magick Colt, ordering Sam to stay put. However, Sam has had enough of Dean's kamikaze tendencies, and the Argument of the Week flares again. Yet this time Sam's anger collapses into honest heartache: he just wants Dean to be his brother again. Fans have waited six episodes to see this moment when Dean's walls finally crumble. At last, he sees how much his erratic behavior has hurt and isolated Sam. Quietly he agrees to hole up and wait for daylight. After all, the Winchesters are strongest together.
But a call from Gordon demolishes that plan: he's taken a hostage and demands the boys come face him. Dean tries to remind Gordon that he's a hunter; he doesn't do this sort of thing. But Gordon replies with chilling simplicity, "No. I'm a monster."
Upon reaching the warehouse, the boys find Gordon's hostage easily, knowing it is a trap. They are making a good escape - but a sliding door crashes between them, the lights go out, and Sam is sealed in darkness. The clash to follow is classic horror: red lighting, Gordon's disembodied chuckles, and Sam blindly trying to engage an enemy who is nothing but shadow. Outside, Dean desperately tries to break in but is attacked by the "victim", whom Gordon has made a vampire. Dean quick-draws the magick Colt to blast her into eternity, while inside Gordon announces his intent to do two good deeds: kill Sam and then kill himself. With that, Gordon attacks, driving Sam through a wall in a burst of shattered sheetrock. Dean leaps to Sam's defense but Gordon slams Dean against a wall, fangs reaching for Dean's neck.
Sam is six-foot four of raw fury when he goes at Gordon again, taking some hellacious licks before he seizes a couple rags and a length of steel wire cable. He flips the cable around Gordon's neck, and then ... Sam Winchester pins a rabid vampire down and garrotes his head completely off.
Even Sam seems stunned by what he's done. He is battered, exhausted, and hollow-eyed when he turns to find his brother, and Dean stares back in astonishment. But they are shoulder to shoulder when they turn their backs on the end of Gordon Walker, and together stagger out towards the living world.
Later, it's a scene of classic Americana: two boys, a car, and an ice chest full of beer, and Dean with a socket wrench under the hood. But when Dean straightens to cast a speculative look towards Sam, we know something is up. Then for the first time in the history of ever, Dean invites Sam to work on the Impala. It's his job, he says, to show his little brother the ropes. After all, Dean may not be there to keep things running right.
The Class 5 gale that circumvented the globe was the collective sigh of three million SPN fans, whose hearts just broke in a thousand happy pieces.
Yet the true marvel of this episode was not just the story, but also its execution. What Sera Gamble wrote and Kim Manners envisioned became magic. The deliciously muted colors and ominous shadows of Season 2 again reclaimed the screen. Gordon's awakening to his altered state is almost psychedelic, driven by a heartbeat, drumbeat, jangling soundtrack that transports us with him. Even the worsening of Sam and Dean's situation is quietly underscored by their lodgings. Rather than risk a credit card trail, they are squatting again, this time in a storeroom in the unused wing of a seedy motel.
The cast were also at the top of their game. Sterling Brown chews up the scenery as a hunter whose fanaticism was likely eroding his soul well before the vampire stole his humanity. We feel for Gordon, even as he descends into madness. The final scene between Gordon and Kubrick played brilliantly with its queasily sensuous aura of confession, absolution, and betrayal. Lucy disturbs us with the realization that many vampires were once victims, themselves. Dixon's grief also strikes uneasy echoes, because we've seen that same selfish hunger for family in Dean. Even Bela's cameos carried surprising substance, lending interesting if belated nuances to her character.
Finally, Jensen and Jared hit their portrayals completely out of the park. From the restrained poignancy of shared looks, to the savage deliberation with which Sam pressed his attack on Gordon Walker, staring the man in the eyes as he died, these two young men own Sam and Dean Winchester. Season 3 has not been without its bumps, but the solidity of this episode gives us hope for things to come. And it soothes the aching hearts of countless fans that Sam and Dean are acting like brothers, once again.
Peace, out.
~ Gloria Atwater / ErinRua