Head of the Broken Family: John in the Pilot

[briarwood]

John Winchester dominates the first season of Supernatural, though he appears in only seven of the twenty-two episodes. Much of what we learn about him we learn indirectly, through what others (mostly his sons) have to say about him. Sam and Dean in particular are unreliable narrators where John is concerned, so John’s appearance and actions in the pilot episode are important in establishing who he really is.

In the pilot we see John only in the “twenty-two years ago” flashback. There is a great deal of emphasis on John’s background as a Marine. There’s a photograph of him in uniform and he’s wearing a USMC t-shirt when we first see him. There’s a war movie on the television. Later in the pilot Dean refers to him as an ex-marine, just in case the audience didn’t get it from the first three hints. This is a huge part of John’s identity. Why is this important? There’s a conceit that “once a marine, always a marine” in a way that’s more true for the Marine Corps than it is of other military services. Though it’s not directly stated in the pilot, later in the series it’s confirmed that John served in Vietnam. These clues establish things about John and the kind of person he is that a non-American audience won’t pick up at first; as a British viewer who has no empathy for the military culture, it took me a long time.

But the picture of John’s civilian life is just as strong. A few short scenes establish him as a family man who is devoted to his children. But it’s not just a happy family: what we are shown is an ideal American family. Clues establish that Dad is the breadwinner and Mom is raising the two children. They have a nice house, with old photographs on the walls indicating that there’s a family history to be proud of. They may not be wealthy, but this is a family with a bright future, represented in a sense by baby Sammy. And this idyllic picture is utterly destroyed in our first introduction to the Winchester family.

John fell asleep in front of the TV. He is woken by Mary’s scream and dashes upstairs to find her. He enters the nursery and find everything perfectly normal: the room dark, baby Sammy awake but not crying. A dark spot appears on Sammy’s pillow. John reaches out to touch it and blood drips onto his hand. John turns to see where it’s coming from…and his entire world changes. Mary is impossibly pinned to the ceiling, a terrible wound across her abdomen dripping blood directly above her baby. As John struggles to make sense of what he sees, fire bursts out of Mary’s body, filling the ceiling and the room.

John’s reactions tell us a lot about him. There’s the moment when he falls, the shock of what he’s seeing is that great. He gathers up baby Sammy and runs from the room before he knows Dean is there. His instinct is to save the child. Why Sammy and not Mary? My guess is it’s because he knows Mary can’t be saved: a stomach wound like that would be fatal even if the fire were not. Perhaps she was dead before the flames started; it’s difficult to be certain but she’s bleeding, still and silent in her unnatural pose, her eyes open and unblinking. She does not scream when the fire starts. None of these things indicate life.

A lot of people would have frozen in that situation: John assesses it swiftly and takes the logical course: he saves whom he can. Yet when he finds young Dean outside the room, this gives him an alternative and he switches course at once. He gives the baby to Dean with the fateful order to carry him to safety. It’s just as much about saving Dean: sending Dean outside away from the fire and away from the awful sight in the nursery. John then returns to the nursery to attempt to rescue Mary. Of course he cannot save her: the flames are filling the room by the time he gets back and a ball of flame gushes out toward him, driving him out of the room where Mary is burning.

Again, John focuses his action on what is most important; he cannot save Mary, so he must save his children. He doesn’t take the baby from Dean but scoops Dean up in his arms, baby and all, to carry them away from the house before the fire explodes outward.

Finally, we see the devastation left behind: the camera pans over what is left of the house as firemen try to contain the blaze to the broken family huddled together on the hood of John’s car: young Dean is cuddling close to his father, but he is not being held. John’s arms are needed for the baby, whom he cradles close. Young Dean watches the firemen work with solemn eyes; John is utterly in shock, unable in this moment to make sense of anything that has happened.

From here on in the pilot episode all we know about John we learn from his absence, and from his sons. Dean and Sam have very different views of who John is and neither is entirely reliable.

Sam’s image is of an obsessive and ruthless man, a poor father who banished Sam from the family for daring to want an education. He sees John as a criminal. He implies that John is an alcoholic though, it’s unclear whether Sam believes that or if he’s saying it for Jessica’s benefit; either way Jessica’s lack of reaction suggests that Sam has consistently portrayed his father as a deadbeat drunk.

To Dean, John is a hero, an outlaw and something of a genius. He doesn’t always speak of John with respect (”Same old ex-marine crap”) but it’s clear that he does respect John’s authority a great deal.

So what’s the truth about Dad?

Let’s begin with the voicemail John left for Dean. From what Dean tells Sam, we know John has been out of contact with Dean for about three weeks. This appears to be typical: the motel owner in Jericho says John paid for a room for a full month. Dean didn’t worry about John until he got that voicemail. What scared him? As near as I can decipher it, the voicemail message is this:

Dean, something is starting to happen, I think it’s serious. I need to try to figure out what’s going on. It may be…[five or six words obscured by static]. Be very careful Dean. We’re all in danger.

Three things stand out for me in the voicemail. First, I think it’s reasonable to assume John didn’t realise his whole message wasn’t getting through. Whatever is in that section we can’t hear, it’s information he intended Dean to know. Second, is what John has not said: there is no order to come to Jericho, nothing to indicate John plans to drop out of sight for a while. Did he believe those things didn’t need to be said? Or was the voicemail sent before he decided to disappear? Did he in fact disappear voluntarily? From the later episodes it’s clear that John stayed in hiding intentionally but what about that initial disappearance? The voicemail suggests it may not have been voluntary.

The third thing is the end of the message: We’re all in danger. Whatever was said in that portion obscured by static, the message seems calculated to send Dean to Sam without actually spelling that out. Dean doesn’t seem overly worried about John until they find his abandoned motel room; I suspect the search was at first at least partly a ruse to get Sam to join him.

We learn a lot about John as a hunter in the pilot because the brothers follow the same trail he did, and he’s been a step ahead of them all the way. He had identified the cause of the deaths, identified the spirit, even located her grave. But he disappeared before he finished the job. We can see from the boys’ reactions how unusual, how shocking this is.

Then there’s the motel room itself. Clearly, it’s been abandoned for several days - at a guess, since right after John left that voicemail for Dean. He’s abandoned a lot in that room. Take a look at the set photography provided by SPNMedia. Parts of it seem very organised: the wall of missing persons from the Jericho case, for example, is neat and logically arranged. Then there’s the table where an encylopedia of witchcraft sits side by side with blessed wafers and a cross, an open box of what is presumably salt and what seems to be a Wiccan athame. And the bed, which shows signs of a search, or of someone having left in a big hurry.

All of this stuff was abandoned by John when he left Jericho. Presumably, the brothers collected anything the cops didn’t confiscate, but regardless, this is some valuable stuff (to a hunter) John never got back.

And yet, despite the indications that John left in a hurry, or may even have been taken by someone or something, he still left a clear message for Dean: his journal, which we are told he never travelled without, and the co-ordinates which Dean interprets as an order to rendezvous in the specified location.

The most telling exchange in the entire episode, a few sentences that sum up all three of the Winchester men, is this one:

SAM: When I told dad when I was scared of the thing in my closet he gave me a .45.
DEAN: Well, what was he supposed to do?
SAM: I was 9 years old. He was supposed to say “Don’t be afraid of the dark.”
DEAN: Don’t be afraid of the dark? What, are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark! You know what’s out there!

This reflects right back to the lesson John learned on the night Mary died: what is out there in the darkness. Before that night, of course he would have told a frightened child not to fear the dark. But now he knows the darkness is truly a thing to fear, John skips the comforting lie and goes straight to what you do about it. If that meant giving a nine year old boy a gun to defend himself, well that’s infinitely better than leaving him unprotected.

This is what both brothers, in their way, identify as John’s obsession: to find “the thing that killed Mom”. Neither of them question the reason for John’s obsessive search because both of them think they know. For Dean, the consummate hunter, find-it-and-kill-it is a goal in itself. For Sam, it’s a pointless search for revenge, since revenge can’t bring back the mother he never knew. But what is really behind John’s obsession? The answer lies, I think, in the exchange about the monster in Sam’s closet. Mary’s death, and the manner of her death, broke something inside John. He took refuge in his identity as a marine: a soldier, dedicated to protect and serve. He’s been fighting a war, but in this war he had no Corps to fall back on, no CO to tell him what to do. Only himself and his family

It’s not about revenge. It was never about revenge, although that appears to be the way John presented it to his children. I’m sure he did want revenge; I’m just suggesting that’s not John’s primary motivation. Revenge is fine and dandy, but if you’re a soldier you don’t get to demob when you get payback. You only get to demob when the war is over.

What broke in John that night has been held together ever since by his need to identify what threatens his family and keep the boys safe. In that cause, he’s made some mistakes, sure, but whatever else you can say about John, he raised his boys right.

[All screen caps from SPN Media or raloria.]

Crossposted from my blog at Devil's Trap. You can comment here or on the blog.