Spoilers ahead, plus discussion of non-consensual sexual relationships and invading people's privacy with telepathy.
I am discussing the episode not from an in-story viewpoint, but from a real world viewpoint, looking at the mechanism of how things were filmed and the culture of the show and TV industry at the time.
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In this episode the brothers meet another psychic kid, Andy. Andy is portrayed as a good guy. He's totally average, has friends, doesn't stand out at all. In a high school show he would be the nerd loser type, with a couple of close friends, who never gets the girl but is fundamentally a decent person. A bit like Buffy's Xander, but less good looking. Compared to the Brothers Winchester he's short and scrawny, he has none of their charisma and glamour. He's got a van with a painting of a Barbarian Queen riding a polar bear on the side. He's that sort of dude.
We find out he has telepathic powers - he can make people do things. For example, give him their coffee, let him into the police records department, borrow their car (Dean's car, for reference), and tell him whatever is on their mind. Sam is the only one immune to his powers. We see that Andy reads philosophy, he talks about the ethics of telepathy (a bit), he says he has never used to harm anyone and that he has certainly never used it on his possibly-girlfriend, Tracey.
Andy has an evil twin, Webber, who is using his power to force people to commit suicide, in order to persuade Andy to become close to him. Webber is clearly the bad guy, and Andy is positioned as the friendly telepath who harms no one. He's certainly not positioned as a danger to anyone.
Now here is the start of my point.
So, with all that in mind, I find it interesting that in the first scene where we see Andy, he's leaving an attractive woman's flat in the morning, with the implication that he has had a one night stand with her. It's not explicitly stated that is what has happened, but given the show's attitude to sexual relationships (hello Dean), and our cultural understanding of a bloke leaving a woman's flat first thing in the morning, wearing a happy grin, I think we can assume that Andy and unnamed woman had a lot of sex.
Andy is presented as a sort of lovable loser. An everyday guy who becomes the secondary hero in the episode (the Winchesters being the heroes obvs). All the cues indicate that this sort of guy is not usually successful with women. So how did he have this one night stand? I guess we assume that he used his telepathic powers to get this woman into bed.
That's a bad thing. That's rape. If telepathy were real, there would be laws about it, stating that using telepathy to get sex is rape.
Now my point.
Given that Andy is portrayed as the good guy it's astounding/interesting to me that this particular opening scene with him was filmed in the way that it was. The episode goes to such pains to show us that Andy is basically a good guy, using his power in a harmless way. I wonder if no one picked up on the implications of the one night stand scene, or if someone did but was ignored. It just screams of everyday sexism and this stuff just not being on the writer's or director's radar.
It was filmed in 2006, I don't feel that there is much excuse for being ignorant of gender politics back then, but I accept that many people were.
I think of how the supporting women in season 1 were portrayed, how they were mostly supporting characters but were given agency, proper roles and were treated with respect, as characters and actresses. I see that changing in season 2, mostly due the show moving away from a monster of the week episode, but that we get recurring female characters in the form of Ellen and Jo (who in my opinion are truly magnificent).
I wonder what sort of atmosphere it was on set, I wonder how the women involved in the show (n any capacity) felt. Was it noticed and ignored, did it feel like yet another micro-aggression, did any of the men notice it and feel uncomfortable with it. How did the set culture compare to other American TV shows being filmed at the time.
I have no answers, I'm just curious.
Note - I feel it needs to be said that the episode, and to some minds the whole show, doesn't examine the abusive nature of telepathy - in that most sensible emotionally literate people can figure out that using mind manipulation powers on other people is a pretty awful thing to do.
I am discussing the episode not from an in-story viewpoint, but from a real world viewpoint, looking at the mechanism of how things were filmed and the culture of the show and TV industry at the time.
.
.
.
.
.
In this episode the brothers meet another psychic kid, Andy. Andy is portrayed as a good guy. He's totally average, has friends, doesn't stand out at all. In a high school show he would be the nerd loser type, with a couple of close friends, who never gets the girl but is fundamentally a decent person. A bit like Buffy's Xander, but less good looking. Compared to the Brothers Winchester he's short and scrawny, he has none of their charisma and glamour. He's got a van with a painting of a Barbarian Queen riding a polar bear on the side. He's that sort of dude.
We find out he has telepathic powers - he can make people do things. For example, give him their coffee, let him into the police records department, borrow their car (Dean's car, for reference), and tell him whatever is on their mind. Sam is the only one immune to his powers. We see that Andy reads philosophy, he talks about the ethics of telepathy (a bit), he says he has never used to harm anyone and that he has certainly never used it on his possibly-girlfriend, Tracey.
Andy has an evil twin, Webber, who is using his power to force people to commit suicide, in order to persuade Andy to become close to him. Webber is clearly the bad guy, and Andy is positioned as the friendly telepath who harms no one. He's certainly not positioned as a danger to anyone.
Now here is the start of my point.
So, with all that in mind, I find it interesting that in the first scene where we see Andy, he's leaving an attractive woman's flat in the morning, with the implication that he has had a one night stand with her. It's not explicitly stated that is what has happened, but given the show's attitude to sexual relationships (hello Dean), and our cultural understanding of a bloke leaving a woman's flat first thing in the morning, wearing a happy grin, I think we can assume that Andy and unnamed woman had a lot of sex.
Andy is presented as a sort of lovable loser. An everyday guy who becomes the secondary hero in the episode (the Winchesters being the heroes obvs). All the cues indicate that this sort of guy is not usually successful with women. So how did he have this one night stand? I guess we assume that he used his telepathic powers to get this woman into bed.
That's a bad thing. That's rape. If telepathy were real, there would be laws about it, stating that using telepathy to get sex is rape.
Now my point.
Given that Andy is portrayed as the good guy it's astounding/interesting to me that this particular opening scene with him was filmed in the way that it was. The episode goes to such pains to show us that Andy is basically a good guy, using his power in a harmless way. I wonder if no one picked up on the implications of the one night stand scene, or if someone did but was ignored. It just screams of everyday sexism and this stuff just not being on the writer's or director's radar.
It was filmed in 2006, I don't feel that there is much excuse for being ignorant of gender politics back then, but I accept that many people were.
I think of how the supporting women in season 1 were portrayed, how they were mostly supporting characters but were given agency, proper roles and were treated with respect, as characters and actresses. I see that changing in season 2, mostly due the show moving away from a monster of the week episode, but that we get recurring female characters in the form of Ellen and Jo (who in my opinion are truly magnificent).
I wonder what sort of atmosphere it was on set, I wonder how the women involved in the show (n any capacity) felt. Was it noticed and ignored, did it feel like yet another micro-aggression, did any of the men notice it and feel uncomfortable with it. How did the set culture compare to other American TV shows being filmed at the time.
I have no answers, I'm just curious.
Note - I feel it needs to be said that the episode, and to some minds the whole show, doesn't examine the abusive nature of telepathy - in that most sensible emotionally literate people can figure out that using mind manipulation powers on other people is a pretty awful thing to do.
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