By: Eric Kripke
**Spoilers**
If you have not yet watched this episode, please go and do so before proceeding.
And this episode brings us full-circle, dragging Sam and Dean back to their childhood home in Lawrence where Mary Winchester burned and their lives as Hunters began. Oh, yeah, and Sam is having premonitions too - freaky visions of the future that leave him with blinding headaches and the knowledge that someone is about to die horribly. Just when you thought his life couldn't get any worse!
I am amazed at just how much foreshadowing is packed into this one little episode. If you thought that some of the lines didn't quite make sense, hang on because explanations are coming. If some of the actions and back-stories seemed strange, hang on because explanations are coming. If you cried when Sam and Dean saw Mary, hang on because we all cried with you. This episode is emotional and beautiful and I really don't know why, whenever I first watched the season, I didn't think much of it.
Well...actually I do. Like I said earlier, this episode contains a lot of foreshadowing and leaves us with more questions than it answers. Usually stories where the characters go back home or back to ground zero (or both) are stories that fill in missing chunks of back-story for characters ad plot elements and seek to tie up loose ends. Home does none of those things. It doesn't tell us anything that we didn't already know from the pilot, it lays down plot elements for later in the show without bothering to explain them leaving us with questions, and is just generally a dark and sad episode in general. Also, I know it's a reference to Poltergeist and all that, but did we really have to do the arm in the garbage disposal?! That was just nasty...
Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:
- The episode opens in Lawrence, Kansas with a woman and her two daughters moving into the rebuilt Winchester home. Just with that one piece of opening text and scenery, we're already on the edges of our seats because we know what happened in that house and we don't want to see it happen again. Add in a little girl who thinks she sees something in the closet of Sam's old nursery and you have have gripping but quietly understated opener!
- "Please, God, don't let it be rats?" The (rather morbidly) funny thing about that statement was that all of us pray exactly the opposite whenever we hear a skittering, knocking sound in a house on the show. Why is it never rats?
- The fact that the finding of the Winchester's old pictures (and what looks like a Father's Day card made by Dean) is juxtaposed by the eerie creaking of the closet doors and the manifestation of a flaming spirit makes for a game of emotional ping-pong. Are we to be nostalgic? Sad? Frightened? Curious? Everything at once? Usually I would complain about a scene that leaves me unsure of what to feel, but I think that it actually works here. Despite having the back-story of the Winchester family recounted to us in every episode recap, we really know little more than the new occupants of the house about what's going on here. So the fact that the focus is put squarely on Mary, John, Dean, and Sam is a good thing that helps draw us into the scenario.
- I find it interesting that Sam drew such a beautiful sketch of a tree in this episode when, in later seasons, he will struggle to play a convincing artist when Dean sends him in to gather information on a suspect. Case of mysteriously disappearing talent or just a sign that he wasn't paying attention in the later stories?
- "I have these nightmares...and sometimes they come true." Cue the game-changer for the entire series. Right here. This is where the stuff hit the fan, so to speak. The tiny stone that started the avalanche. The...well, you get the point.
- Poor Dean was honest-to-goodness scared of going back to Lawrence. And not comically plane-scared either. Sadly, properly scared. It makes sense, though. Sam wouldn't remember the fire (he was only a baby) but Dean was at least four years old whenever their house burnt down. Memories like that don't just get lost the way your first time using scissors does. I'll bet he remembers more than he cares to let on.
- We're not even ten minutes in and already this episode is packing on the emotional kickers. As a word of advice from the Feels Doctor, you may want to have a supply of tissues and ice cream on hand for this one.
- Dean physically winced whenever the woman (Jenny) assumed that he and Sam have a lot of happy memories in their childhood home. Ouch.
- "How much do you remember from that night?" "Not much. I remember the fire, the heat...and then I carried you out the front door." "You did?" Somehow I find it very sad that Sam didn't even know it was Dean who carried him out of the fire. We sort of get the impression that neither John nor Dean talked about Mary or about that night very much (for obvious reasons) and, as a result, Sam is left bewildered as to why they are fighting this war and not really knowing anything about the woman Dean and John fight so hard for. It's a tragic picture.
- Dean's teary message to his father just hits me right in the heart.
- Why, episode, why did you have to do the garbage disposal thing? Why? I'm having a hard enough time as it is keeping my dinner where it should be, what with my heart pounding in my throat and all. You didn't have to add that!
- Oh...and the wind-up monkey? Not only does it bring back to mind The Empty Child from Doctor Who, but the fiendish laughter as the man bleeds to death only adds to the horror of the scene. A double threat!
- Missouri Moseley. This is a character that, to date, has only had one appearance on the show and has never been referenced again...and yet she had quite the following among SPN fans. It's probably because she's a no-nonsense psychic who isn't afraid to put the fear of God into both John and Dean Winchester. I wonder what happened to her in the end.
- She's also quite business savvy about her psychic gift:
- She is definitely someone I would love to see come back to the show. With her dynamic personality and clear love for the Winchester boys, she would be a valuable ally. I don't understand why they didn't utilise her more as she was very well-received by fans. Scheduling conflicts?
- Sam was clearly amused by her scolding Dean for putting his feet on her coffee table before he even did it. The dangers of knowing a psychic, I guess...
- That little boy who climbed into the fridge was pretty dumb. I may have been young and foolish at one time, but even at that age I knew that you don't climb inside the refrigerator just in-case the door shuts on you.
- I have to say that the shots with the lighting and shadows just right transform the Winchester house into some kind of haunted mansion. It's actually kind of beautiful...in a creepy, help-we-might-die kind of way.
- It was interesting the way Missouri compared the Winchester home (the place where real evil had walked) to a wound that had now become infected.
- This episode contains the first positive usage of hex bags in the show as Sam, Dean, and Missouri plan to use herbal compounds to cleanse the house of the malevolent poltergeist. Well, herbs and crossroad dirt. Hmmm...
- So the poltergeist got Missouri with a dresser, Dean with the cutlery drawer, and Sam with the cord of a lamp. Why does Sam always end up being the one to get strangled?
- "Don't you worry...Dean's gonna clean this up. Well what are you waiting for, boy? Get the mop! And don't you cuss at me." The side-effects of working with a mind-reader...you can't even grumble inside your head.
- I should have known, whenever Sam, Dean, and Missouri left peacefully with a quiet thank-you from Jenny that the ride wasn't over yet. Conflicts on this show are NEVER resolved that easily.
- Mary's apology to Sam was filled with such love and such sorrow that it left me blinking back the tears that were started by Sam shielding those kids from the burning ghost and Dean rushing back into the cursed house for his brother.
- It's even worse whenever you realize that this is the first time (that he can remember) that Sam is getting to see his mother face-to-face. Even his picture of her from the pilot episode burnt in his apartment fire.
This episode is a seething mess of emotions that will take you on a roller-coaster ride from terrified to confused to crying all within the 42 minute running time. It's also a dark story, bringing to the foreground again the murder of Mary Winchester and the shadow it casts over Sam and Dean's lives, as well as introducing Sam's visions and psychic ability. Missouri creates some much-needed comic relief (because Dean clearly wasn't in the mood this week) but she never seems like a cartoon-y figure. Jenny and her kids are likable people, if a bit bland and under-developed. And the ending scenes with Mary sacrificing herself for her sons and the implication that she's only remained a kindly spirit so long for the love of them is deeply touching. I give Home a solid 5/5. We even got to see the elusive John Winchester for the first time non-flashback and got a clue as to why he has cut off all contact with his boys, even as he rushed to their secret aid after Dean's call.
What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?
Well...actually I do. Like I said earlier, this episode contains a lot of foreshadowing and leaves us with more questions than it answers. Usually stories where the characters go back home or back to ground zero (or both) are stories that fill in missing chunks of back-story for characters ad plot elements and seek to tie up loose ends. Home does none of those things. It doesn't tell us anything that we didn't already know from the pilot, it lays down plot elements for later in the show without bothering to explain them leaving us with questions, and is just generally a dark and sad episode in general. Also, I know it's a reference to Poltergeist and all that, but did we really have to do the arm in the garbage disposal?! That was just nasty...
Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:
- The episode opens in Lawrence, Kansas with a woman and her two daughters moving into the rebuilt Winchester home. Just with that one piece of opening text and scenery, we're already on the edges of our seats because we know what happened in that house and we don't want to see it happen again. Add in a little girl who thinks she sees something in the closet of Sam's old nursery and you have have gripping but quietly understated opener!
- "Please, God, don't let it be rats?" The (rather morbidly) funny thing about that statement was that all of us pray exactly the opposite whenever we hear a skittering, knocking sound in a house on the show. Why is it never rats?
- I find it interesting that Sam drew such a beautiful sketch of a tree in this episode when, in later seasons, he will struggle to play a convincing artist when Dean sends him in to gather information on a suspect. Case of mysteriously disappearing talent or just a sign that he wasn't paying attention in the later stories?
- "I have these nightmares...and sometimes they come true." Cue the game-changer for the entire series. Right here. This is where the stuff hit the fan, so to speak. The tiny stone that started the avalanche. The...well, you get the point.
- We're not even ten minutes in and already this episode is packing on the emotional kickers. As a word of advice from the Feels Doctor, you may want to have a supply of tissues and ice cream on hand for this one.
- Dean physically winced whenever the woman (Jenny) assumed that he and Sam have a lot of happy memories in their childhood home. Ouch.
- "How much do you remember from that night?" "Not much. I remember the fire, the heat...and then I carried you out the front door." "You did?" Somehow I find it very sad that Sam didn't even know it was Dean who carried him out of the fire. We sort of get the impression that neither John nor Dean talked about Mary or about that night very much (for obvious reasons) and, as a result, Sam is left bewildered as to why they are fighting this war and not really knowing anything about the woman Dean and John fight so hard for. It's a tragic picture.
- Dean's teary message to his father just hits me right in the heart.
- Why, episode, why did you have to do the garbage disposal thing? Why? I'm having a hard enough time as it is keeping my dinner where it should be, what with my heart pounding in my throat and all. You didn't have to add that!
- Oh...and the wind-up monkey? Not only does it bring back to mind The Empty Child from Doctor Who, but the fiendish laughter as the man bleeds to death only adds to the horror of the scene. A double threat!
- Missouri Moseley. This is a character that, to date, has only had one appearance on the show and has never been referenced again...and yet she had quite the following among SPN fans. It's probably because she's a no-nonsense psychic who isn't afraid to put the fear of God into both John and Dean Winchester. I wonder what happened to her in the end.
- She's also quite business savvy about her psychic gift:
- She is definitely someone I would love to see come back to the show. With her dynamic personality and clear love for the Winchester boys, she would be a valuable ally. I don't understand why they didn't utilise her more as she was very well-received by fans. Scheduling conflicts?
- Sam was clearly amused by her scolding Dean for putting his feet on her coffee table before he even did it. The dangers of knowing a psychic, I guess...
- That little boy who climbed into the fridge was pretty dumb. I may have been young and foolish at one time, but even at that age I knew that you don't climb inside the refrigerator just in-case the door shuts on you.
- I have to say that the shots with the lighting and shadows just right transform the Winchester house into some kind of haunted mansion. It's actually kind of beautiful...in a creepy, help-we-might-die kind of way.- It was interesting the way Missouri compared the Winchester home (the place where real evil had walked) to a wound that had now become infected.
- This episode contains the first positive usage of hex bags in the show as Sam, Dean, and Missouri plan to use herbal compounds to cleanse the house of the malevolent poltergeist. Well, herbs and crossroad dirt. Hmmm...
- So the poltergeist got Missouri with a dresser, Dean with the cutlery drawer, and Sam with the cord of a lamp. Why does Sam always end up being the one to get strangled?
- "Don't you worry...Dean's gonna clean this up. Well what are you waiting for, boy? Get the mop! And don't you cuss at me." The side-effects of working with a mind-reader...you can't even grumble inside your head.
- I should have known, whenever Sam, Dean, and Missouri left peacefully with a quiet thank-you from Jenny that the ride wasn't over yet. Conflicts on this show are NEVER resolved that easily.
- Mary's apology to Sam was filled with such love and such sorrow that it left me blinking back the tears that were started by Sam shielding those kids from the burning ghost and Dean rushing back into the cursed house for his brother.
- It's even worse whenever you realize that this is the first time (that he can remember) that Sam is getting to see his mother face-to-face. Even his picture of her from the pilot episode burnt in his apartment fire.
This episode is a seething mess of emotions that will take you on a roller-coaster ride from terrified to confused to crying all within the 42 minute running time. It's also a dark story, bringing to the foreground again the murder of Mary Winchester and the shadow it casts over Sam and Dean's lives, as well as introducing Sam's visions and psychic ability. Missouri creates some much-needed comic relief (because Dean clearly wasn't in the mood this week) but she never seems like a cartoon-y figure. Jenny and her kids are likable people, if a bit bland and under-developed. And the ending scenes with Mary sacrificing herself for her sons and the implication that she's only remained a kindly spirit so long for the love of them is deeply touching. I give Home a solid 5/5. We even got to see the elusive John Winchester for the first time non-flashback and got a clue as to why he has cut off all contact with his boys, even as he rushed to their secret aid after Dean's call.
What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?
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