SPN S1 E5 Summary: “Bloody Mary”

OMG, Bloody Mary! We used to play this all the time as kids… with much different results.

We start out in a darkened room, with a bunch of girls sitting around some candles. They’re playing truth or dare, which leads to one of the girls daring another to say “Bloody Mary” in the bathroom mirror. The girl tasked to do so is a total skeptic. But of course she does it because you don’t pass up a silly dare like this. And we get a flickering candle flame, and then the girls pound on the door to scare the living shit out of her, which makes Dad tell them to tone it down. See what you get for being a skeptic?

And now a creepy goth silhouette is showing up in every mirror Dad passes. Dear oh dear.

Poor Dad ends up dead in the bathroom in a huge pool of blood, which gives us our first counts.

Blood and Gore: 1

Revenge from Beyond the Grave: 1

Responsible Eldest Daughter screams. And scene.

We cut to Sam having nightmares about Jessica dying on their ceiling. Dean wakes him up, and then there is a very brief moment where Dean tries to tell Sam they’re going to have to deal with his issues and Sam blows him off.

“Healthy Processing Of Our Emotions”: 1

They’ve arrived in Toledo to check out Dad Shoemaker’s mysterious death. First, they finagle their way into the morgue. They try a cunning ruse posing as med students, but end up resorting to old-fashioned bribery to get past the desk dude. Guy’s no fool. Dean gets a Toxic Masculinity count for wanting to solve the issue through beating rather than bills.

Toxic Masculinity: 1

Turns out Dad Shoemaker’s eyes “practically liquefied.” And he had massive intracranial bleeding. I think we’ll give them another count for gore for relishing the details so very much.

Blood and Gore: 2

They then crash the wake to talk to Donna, the daughter. Everybody’s going with the stroke story except for Lilly, who tells the guys she blames herself because she said Bloody Mary in the mirror. Dean’s all, “No way it can be Bloody Mary!” and I’m all, “Dude, dead herring. We already know it’s Bloody Mary. EVERYBODY knows it’s Bloody Mary.” For those who don’t spend as much time on The Sporkings of Das Mervin & Co. as I do, “dead herring” is what they call those “Couldn’t possibly be the thing everyone knows it is!!!” moments.

The boys go to check out the death scene, and have a Voldemort moment when Sam and Dean refuse to say “Bloody Mary” in front of the bathroom mirror. They ponder the fact that millions of kids have played this game without fatalities and bat about a few theories as to why it would be happening now. They get totally busted by Donna’s friend Charlie (no, not that Charlie), who calls bullshit on their cover story and forces them to reveal they’re investigating Dad Shoemaker’s death. They tell her to call them if anything weird comes up. Then they head over to the library to see if they can find a local Mary who died in front of a mirror.

Meanwhile, Charlie and her friend Jill are on the phone (bad Charlie! Distracted driving!) and Jill’s giving Charlie shit over being all superstitious. Jill, who resembles every blonde victim in a horror movie ever, says Bloody Mary in front of her mirror and screams to freak out her friend. Of course, Bloody Mary shows up in all of her mirrors right afterward. Oops.

You Bloody Fool: 1

She realizes her mistake when her own reflection in the bathroom mirror starts bleeding from the eyes and tells her “You killed that boy!” Unfortunately, she doesn’t have time to do anything with this knowledge, because she dies in the established fashion.

Blood and Gore: 3

Revenge from Beyond the Grave: 2

Meanwhile, Sam wakes from yet another nightmare about Jessica, yells at Dean for letting him fall asleep, and refuses to deal with the fact he’s quite fucked up.

“Healthy Processing Of Our Emotions”: 2

Image shows Sam lying in bed, staring at the ceiling with a forlorn expression. He's just gotten done saying he was dreaming of "lollipops and candy canes."
Dean’s found a few people who died in front of mirrors, but none of them are Mary. He didn’t even find any deaths-by-bleeding-eyeballs. They’re on the verge of giving up the whole notion when Charlie calls to let them know what happened to Jill. She wants them to tell her she’s insane for thinking it’s actually this Bloody Mary bullshit, but of course they can’t, so way to make a girl feel good, there, fellas. They enlist her to help them break into Jill’s bedroom, where they play with typical ghosthunter equipment. Sam finds some drippy stuff on the mirror frame with the night-vision camera. They peel the paper backing off the mirror and use a black light to reveal a bloody handprint and the name Gary Bryman. Turns out to be a little boy killed by Jill in a hit and run. They black light Dad Shoemaker’s mirror and get the name Linda Shoemaker, who supposedly overdosed on sleeping pills. OR NOT.

Dean expands the Mary-who-died-in-front-of-mirror search nationwide while the boys talk about the folklore of mirrors and decide that Mary’s probably punishing people who did something bad. They find an unsolved crime in Fort Wayne, IN with the same handprint, and go talk to the detective who worked that unsolved murder. Turns out she was murdered by someone who cut her eyes out. Subtle. She’d tried to write her killer’s name in her blood, but died before she could reveal him. Extra-subtle. She was cremated, but the mirror lives on and was returned to her family.

Meanwhile, Donna and Charlie are arguing about Bloody Mary in the school bathroom. Donna jumps right to saying “Bloody Mary” three times to the mirror.

You Bloody Fool: 2

And now Charlie’s being stalked. She sees Bloody Mary in her compact mirror in the middle of physics class, freaks out, breaks every reflective surface, sees Mary in her teacher’s glasses, freaks out more, and runs away. Poor kiddo.

Image shows Charlie, a young woman with light brown hair, screaming at her professor.
This image sums up most of my high school career.

Sam and Dean driving back to Toledo. Sam, posing as a potential buyer, has just found out from the owner of the mirror that it was sold to an antiques dealer in Toledo the week before. They decide Mary must have been trapped in the mirror when she died. Sam tries to puzzle all this through while Dean’s all “Smash!”

Toxic Masculinity: 2

Ah, yes, basically Dean’s solution to every problem.

Charlie calls, and they go to her rescue, stashing her in their hotel room with all reflective surfaces covered. Sam is very gentle and reassuring. Dean plays not-as-nice cop and winkles Charlie’s bad secret out of her. We find out that she got in a fight with her boyfriend, broke up with him, and he threatened to commit suicide if she didn’t come back. She didn’t come back. Now she blames herself and I will have SO MUCH TO SAY ABOUT THIS BULLSHIT ZOMG.

Toxic Masculinity: 3

Swimming in Sexism:

Yes, I am giving that an infinite Sexism count, because for fuck’s sake.

Dean has the decency to tell Sam that shit’s not really Charlie’s fault. No, Dean, it is not.

Image shows a white hand holding a microphone towards the camera. It's in the bottom right of a black background. Caption in white letters beside it says, "Say that again. Louder, for the people in the back."
(I made this meme from a public domain photo, and you are totally welcome to steal it.)

Unfortunately, spirits are like fundamentalists in that they’re legalistic assholes who can’t see shades of gray.

Sam thinks they need to do more than just smash Mary’s mirror, since she can hop into any ol’ mirror she wants. He comes up with the brilliant idea to summon her himself. Dean about has kittens. He does the patented Dad thing of pulling the car off the road. He reads Sam the riot act over blaming himself for Jessica. He tells him to put the blame where it belongs: on the thing that killed her. Then he invites Sam to take a swing at him for dragging him away. Damn it, Dean, you were doing so well…

Toxic Masculinity: 4

“Healthy Processing Of Our Emotions”: 3

We find out Sam’s keeping secrets from Dean. Oooo.

“Healthy Processing Of Our Emotions”: 4

Dean doesn’t want to do this, Sam insists, so they go break into the antiques store to summon a spirit. Takes them a while to find the right mirror because there are about a thousand mirrors in there. Also, they have set off the security system.

You Bloody Fool: 3

Sam finds the mirror, says the magic words, and they prepare to smash. Only she doesn’t show up. The police do. Dean goes to take care of them. He tries to pose as the owner’s son, which might have worked a bit better if the owner’s name wasn’t Yamashiro.

I really should’ve started a Dude, You Are So Busted count.

Inside, Sam catches a glimpse of Mary in another mirror and starts smashing mirrors willy-nilly, which doesn’t help much. He begins bleeding from the eyeballs, and his reflection accuses him of killing Jessica.

Blood and Gore: 4

Outside, Dean is having no luck with the “I’m adopted!” story, so he solves his dilemma by punching out the cops instead.

Toxic Masculinity: 5

Sam’s reflection tells us Sam was having those Jessica dying on the ceiling dreams for days before she was killed, which is his huge guilty secret. He is about to surrender to his fate when Dean comes galloping in and smashes the mirror. We know Sam will be okay when he gets mad at Dean for calling him Sammy. The brothers stumble out, and everything would’ve been great if Mary hadn’t clawed her way out of the mirror frame behind them. Both brothers start bleeding from the eyes.

Blood and Gore: 5

See? Breaking all those mirrors really does cause you to have super-bad luck.

Dean grabs a mirror and turns Mary’s reflection against her, causing her to kill herself for killing all those people. She dissolves in a shower of mirror fragments. Dean tosses the mirror away, shattering it, and tells Sam they’ve earned at least 600 years of bad luck, which explains Seasons 2-11.

The next day, they tell Charlie everything’s over, and then Sam gives her the “forgive yourself” lecture, showing he’s finally starting to admit that sometimes, shit happens and it’s not really your fault. D’aw. Personal growth.

Dean tries to winkle Sam’s secret out of him, but Sam refuses. Then he sees Jessica standing on a street corner in her white nightie. So I’m going to say he’s not really in a healthy place just yet.

“Healthy Processing Of Our Emotions”: 5

Fin.

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SPN S1 E5 Summary: “Bloody Mary”
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