Supernatural S01 E05 – She Who Must Not Be Named

Previously: The Winchesters had their first encounter with a demon, which led to a rather traumatic plane flight.
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Bloody Mary

Kirsti: I have no qualms about saying that this episode freaks me the fuck out, and I didn’t even grow up in a country where trying to summon a ghost in the bathroom mirror at a sleepover is even a thing. (S: Lucky.) We open in Toledo, Ohio where a trio of 12 year old girls are playing Truth or Dare by candlelight. One of the girls, Lily asks for a dare and is told by her friend to say Bloody Mary in the bathroom mirror. Here, random friend, have a gold star!

Anyway, the second friend asks who Bloody Mary is, and there’s some confusion over the background but the gist is that if you say her name three times in the mirror, she appears and scratches your eyes out. “So…why would anyone say it?!” asks the second friend, who’s clearly the only sensible one here. 1430 for you, girl. (S: Yep. That girl would have been my bff.) Lily says that it isn’t real. She grabs a candlestick and heads for the bathroom. She pauses after the second “Bloody Mary” because the candle starts flickering. She says it the third time and stares scaredly into the mirror. Her friends hammer on the door and she shrieks. She rejoins them and calls them jerks.

From upstairs, her dad asks them to keep it down. They apologise, and we follow Mr. Shoemaker (seriously) down the hallway. He passes a mirror and we see a girl similar to the one from The Ring lurking in the corner of the reflection.

Sara: Oh hell no. Another one of those watch-from-behind-a-pillow kind of episodes.

K: Don’t worry, Sara. The number of those decreases dramatically after season 1.

Anyway, the camera pans around to show there’s nothing behind him. He continues down the hall, with Ring Girl appearing in every reflection. He heads into his bathroom, and we get a shot of a medicine cabinet filled with pill bottles. He closes the cabinet door and looks at his reflection. There are some veiny scratchy looking things under his eye. He pokes at them.

Cut back downstairs to the teenage girls. A slightly older girl walks in, Lily’s older sister Donna. There’s some sisterly sassiness, then Donna heads upstairs. We see a massive pool of blood coming from underneath Mr. Shoemaker’s door. Donna slows as she sees it. The Piano of Ohhhhhh Shit does its spooky thing as she pushes the door open and screams bloody murder.

Sara: Bloody Mary murder, if you will.

K: Badoom ching!

Meanwhile, Sam is dreaming about Jessica’s death. It’s the same sequence as happened at the end of the pilot – he’s lying on the bed, blood drips on his forehead, he opens his eyes to see Jess on the ceiling. Except this time, she asks him why before she bursts into flames. He wakes with a start in the Bromobile. Dean says that eventually they’ll have to talk about his nightmares, but for now they’ve got a mysterious death to investigate.

Cut to the morgue. Dean notes the name plate at an empty desk, then tells the morgue attendant that they’re med students from Ohio State and that Name Plate Doctor was meant to show them Mr. Shoemaker’s corpse for a paper. Morgue Attendant says that they’ll have to wait for Name Plate Doctor to get back from lunch in an hour. They claim that’s too long to wait, but the guy won’t budge. Eventually, Sam pulls out his wallet and hands over a bunch of $20 notes. The guy agrees. “Dude, I earned that money!” Dean mutters to Sam. “You won it in a poker game…” Sam replies.

Inside the morgue, I stop to gag because the corpse has no eyeballs. Morgue Attendant informs us that they liquified, and I gag again. Sam asks for the cause of death, and Morgue Attendant says that the doctor isn’t sure, but maybe a stroke. Mr. Shoemaker’s whole head was full of blood at any rate. Gross. Dean asks if they can see the police report, and Morgue Attendant gets all “I’m not supposed to.” Sam reluctantly pulls out his wallet again.

As they head out of the hospital, I flail a little because it’s totally the same hospital set that they use in S02 E01, and Sam wonders if it’s genuinely a freak medical thing. Dean pffs in response, and Sam agrees that they should go talk to the family. Cut to them gatecrashing Mr. Shoemaker’s wake in jeans and leather jackets. Awkward. They head outside to talk to Donna, who’s sitting with a couple of her friends and Lily. One of the friends gives Dean a “HELLO, SALTY GOODNESS” look. (S: Smart girl.) The boys claim to be colleagues of Mr. Shoemaker’s and ask if he ever showed symptoms of a stroke. Lily says that it wasn’t a stroke, it was all her fault. Sam crouches down next to her and asks why she thinks that. She tells them that she said Bloody Mary right before he died. There’s a “Wait, WHAT?” pause before Donna says that it’s not her fault. Dean backs Donna up because Mr. Shoemaker wasn’t the one to say Bloody Mary.

The boys head inside and upstairs to where Mr. Shoemaker died. There’s still some dried blood on the floor. They discuss how there’s never been any proof that the legend was true, and how the legend says that the person who says Bloody Mary dies. They decide that the case is worth further investigation. One of Donna’s friends, Charlie, comes upstairs and confronts them about all their weird questions and their dodgy cover story. They admit to her that they think something happened to Mr. Shoemaker. She asks if they’re cops. LOL NOPE. Sam gives her his phone number and tells her to call if she notices anything weird.

Sara: If everyone called the boys when something weird happened, their phones would never stop ringing.

K: Right?! Cut to the public library. Sam says that it’s going to be tricky to research because there are so many variations on the legend, but that the one thing they all have in common is a woman named Mary dying in front of a mirror. Helpfully, the library’s computers are out of order, forcing them to do things the hard way. Cut to Charlie’s car that night. She’s on the phone to Hello Salty Goodness Girl. HSGG doesn’t care about whether Sam and Dean are cops, she’s more interested in the Salty Goodness factor. She jokes that maybe Bloody Mary did kill Mr. Shoemaker. Charlie sounds scared, so HSGG taunts her by walking into the bathroom and saying Bloody Mary three times. Then she screams down the phone.

Charlie panics, and HSGG laughs hysterically, then says she’ll call Charlie the next day and hangs up. She goes into her closet, and we see Ring Girl in her full length mirror. HSGG sits down at her dresser, and we see Ring Girl reflected in the mirror and the TV. HSGG heads back into the bathroom, and when she bends down to the sink, her reflection stays behind, staring at her. HSGG straightens up and panics when she sees her reflection with blood coming from its eyes.

HSGG reaches up to feel blood on her own face. “You did it. You killed that boy,” her reflection says. HSGG gasps for breath and collapses on the floor as her reflection watches with cold satisfaction. Fade to black.

Sara: Girl, you were specifically told that something shady was going on, and you said the damn thing anyways. THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS. 

K: “Don’t say the thing” is a good rule of thumb in Supernatural. So…yeah.

After the Not Commercial Break, Sam has another nightmare about Jessica and wakes with a gasp. On the other side of the motel room, Dean looks concerned. Sam asks if he’s had any luck with the research, but nope. There’s also no history of weird bleeding eyeball (*gag*) deaths in Toledo. Dean wonders if they’re barking up the wrong tree. Just then, Sam’s phone rings. He answers and we cut over to a park where a tearful Charlie is filling the boys in on HSGG’s death, including the part where she Said The Thing. She asks if she’s going crazy, and they reassure her that she’s not – she’s just in an episode of Supernatural! Also, they need her help.

Cut to Charlie walking into HSGG’s room. She opens the window so the boys can climb in, and tells them that she hates lying to HSGG’s mother about why she’s there. Wait, so HSGG lives at home but had an en suite?? Now I feel ripped off… Anyway, Sam pulls out a night vision enabled video camera to check the mirrors for…IDEK. This, apparently:

Dean’s wandering around with an EMF meter. He asks Charlie why HSGG Said The Thing, and she says that it was just a joke. In the bathroom, Sam’s camera picks up a trickle of something on the bottom of the mirror’s frame. He asks Dean if they have a blacklight. Cut to Sam ripping the backing paper off the mirror and scanning it with the blacklight to reveal a handprint and a name – Gary Bryman.

Later, Sam informs Charlie and Dean that Gary Bryman was an eight year old who was killed in a hit and run two years earlier. He describes the car that did it, and Charlie realises that it was Hello Salty Goodness Girl. The boys exchange a look and Dean says they need to go to the Shoemakers. There, they examine the mirror where Mr. Shoemaker died and find the same handprint, plus the name Linda Shoemaker. Cut to them questioning Donna, who tells them that Linda was her mother and she took an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. She yells at them to get out. Charlie says that she’ll stay, and they tell her not to Say The Thing before they leave.

Motel of the Week that night. Dean’s doing a nation-wide search for women named Mary who died in front of a mirror. Sam suggests that maybe Mary’s punishing people who have a secret where someone died, and it’s to do with folklore about how mirrors reveal all your secrets, which is why you shouldn’t break them. (S: That’s some hunch.) (K: Contriiiiiiiiivance!!) Just then, Dean finds something. He prints out crime scene photos (because apparently they have a photo quality printer that they lug around in the back of the Bromobile for such occasions) of a woman lying in a pool of blood in front of a mirror featuring the same handprint and the letters “Tre.” He tells Sam that the woman’s name was Mary Worthington and she died in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Segue Magic to them in Fort Wayne, interviewing the now-retired homicide detective who investigated Mary’s death. They’ve told him that they’re reporters and that they know the basics of her case – she was nineteen, had won a few beauty pageants, and dreamt of becoming an actress. Also, she lived alone, got murdered, and had her eyes cut out with a knife. NYARGH. They ask the detective what he thinks happened.

Sara: If someone murdered me and cut my eyes out with a knife, I would haunt everyone for the rest of my life, too. I feel you, Mary.

K: YUP.

He pulls a case file out of a cabinet and does the typical “I’m not meant to have this” routine. He pulls out the picture of the handprint and the “Tre” and says that he thinks Mary was trying to spell out the name of her murderer. He suspected Trevor Sampson, a local surgeon. Her diary mentioned that she was dating a man she referred to as T, and the last entry said she was going to tell his wife about their affair. But they could never prove that it was him. Sam asks where she’s buried and the detective says that she was cremated. Dean asks about the mirror, and the detective tells them that it was given back to Mary’s family. They ask if he has her family’s details.

Cut to Charlie and Donna walking into the bathroom at school. Donna’s pissed about the whole Sam and Dean investigating thing, and that Charlie’s crazy to believe Ring Girl’s responsible. She turns to the mirror and Says The Thing, even as Charlie begs her not to. (S: Girl, did you not see our That’s What Happens tag?) Nothing happens, and Donna storms out. Charlie walks down the corridor to class, and we see Ring Girl reflected in the window. Fade to black.

After the Not Commercial Break, Charlie’s in science class. She opens her powder compact and looks in the mirror, only to see Ring Girl behind her. She screams and starts running around the room. She sees Ring Girl in a window and smashes it with her chair. The teacher grabs her and tries to calm her down, but she sees Ring Girl reflected in his glasses, and runs away screaming.

Bromobile. Sam gets off the phone with Mary’s brother, and informs Dean that the mirror was sold to an antiques store in Toledo a week earlier, so clearly Mary’s spirit is tied to the mirror. Dean postulates that Mary’s spirit got sucked into the mirror when she died because of an old superstition, and says they should smash it. Sam’s not so sure. Just then, his phone rings. It’s Charlie. Cut to the Motel of the Week. Charlie’s curled up on one of the beds, her eyes covered, as the boys close the curtains and cover the mirrors and glass fronted pictures. Sam tells her that it’s safe now because Mary can’t get her if she doesn’t look at something reflective. She reluctantly uncurls herself, and says that she’s going to die because she can’t avoid reflective things forever.

Sara: I think I could hang out in a motel, just staring at Dean and Sam for the rest of my life. I could make it work.

K: Just don’t look too closely at their eyes in case Ring Girl is reflected in them…

Dean tells her that they need to know what happened, and Charlie’s all “DONNA SAID THE THING!” But that’s not what he means. She tells them that she had a boyfriend who clearly had some…issues. They got in a fight, she broke up with him, and he told her that if she left, he’d kill himself. She left, and he did. Charlie cries and curls back up into a ball, still blaming herself for leaving.

Bromobile. Dean tells Sam that it’s not Charlie’s fault, but Sam points out that Ring Girl probably doesn’t give a fuck because someone died and Charlie had a secret about it. He goes on to say that he thinks that smashing Ring Girl’s mirror might not be enough, that they need to summon Ring Girl to the mirror and THEN smash it. And that he’ll be the one to do it. Dean pulls the car over, and informs Sam that Jessica’s death wasn’t his fault and to stop blaming himself. Sam says that he could have warned Jess, and Dean pffs. Sam tells Dean that he doesn’t know everything, and refuses to say any more because if someone else knows the secret, Ring Girl might not turn up.

Cut to them breaking into the antiques shop. There are mirrors everywhere. Dean pulls out the crime scene picture for comparative purposes, and they start looking for Ring Girl’s mirror. Meanwhile, the Zoomy Cameraman shows us that the silent alarm has been tripped. Sam finds the mirror, and Dean asks if he’s sure. He hands Dean the torch in reply and Says The Thing, raising his crowbar as he does. Fade to black.

After the Not Commercial Break, light filters through the store. Dean goes to investigate, telling Sam to smash anything that moves. It turns out to be the LOLPD, investigating the silent alarm. Dean goes out to meet them, and tells them that he’s the boss’s kid and he accidentally tripped the alarm. “You’re Mr. Yamashiro’s kid??” one cop says in disbelief.

Back in the store, we see Ring Girl behind Sam. He’s looking in a different direction though and doesn’t see her. She moves to another mirror. He catches the movement and swings the crowbar. Another mirror, another crowbar smash. He faces Ring Girl’s mirror again and encourages her to choose that one. Suddenly, Sam’s reflection moves independently. It tells him that he’s responsible for Jessica’s death. Sam is having trouble breathing, and there’s blood trickling from his eyes. He drops the crowbar.

Outside, Dean tells the cops that he was adopted, but they’re not buying it. He sighs, says he doesn’t have time for this, and knocks them both out. Inside, Sam’s reflection says again that it’s Sam’s fault, because he was having nightmares about Jessica’s death for days before she died and never said anything. Dean’s crowbar smashes the mirror, and he yells Sam’s name. Sam’s now on the floor grimacing in pain. Dean helps his brother up and they head towards the door. But it’s not over – Ring Girl crawls out of the frame.

Sara: OMFG with this show. I don’t even care that this looks exactly like that movie. Still terrifying.

K: YUP. Dean stops as he hears her crunching over the broken glass, and they turn to see her coming towards them. They both grunt in pain and start bleeding from the eyes again. Dean grabs a mirror from the wall and forces Ring Girl to look at her own reflection. “You killed them, all those people! You killed them!” it tells her. Ring Girl chokes and melts into a puddle of mirror fragments on the floor. Dean smashes the mirror. “This has to be like…what? 600 years bad luck?” Dean says. Fade to black.

Sara: Mr. Yamashiro is going to be super pissed when he comes into work tomorrow.

K: Pissed and also hella confused. Especially with those unconscious cops out the front.

After the Not Commercial Break, they’re driving Charlie home. She thanks them, and Sam tells her to forgive herself for her boyfriend’s suicide, because sometimes bad things just happen. She smiles and heads inside. Dean tells Sam that he should take his own advice as they roll out. On the way out of town, Dean demands to know what the secret about Jessica’s death was. Sam says that he’d die for his brother (OH GOD, CODEPENDENT SIBLING SHOTS) but there are some things he needs to keep to himself. He looks out the window as they drive, and sees Jessica in a Pretty White Virginal Dress, standing next to a lamppost. He stares at her, and she disappears as they turn the corner. Fade to black.

Sara: I wish this meant Jess was still alive, but I’m not feeling very hopeful.

K: I did NOT remember there being so much eyeball trauma in this episode. That was most unwelcome. Also, as I was writing this, my printer decided to install a bunch of updates and I nearly wet my pants in fear when it started running. So…that was a thing.

[Editor’s Note: Both our Wednesday’s shows have now referenced or featured Paris Hilton. Weird. Almost as weird as Kirsti constantly ending up will all the eyeball episodes. LOL. – Lorraine]

 

Next time: One of Sam’s friends is accused of murder. Could something…supernatural…be responsible? (Let’s be honest – it’s highly likely) Find out in Supernatural S01 E06 – Skin.