Recap of Supernatural
Season 3, Episode 10:
Dream A Little Dream of Me
Written by Sera Gamble and Cathryn Humphris.
Directed by Steve Boyum.
Air Date: February 7, 2008.
The wind howls as Bobby searches for something in his house, flashlight in hand. He’s attacked by a screaming woman as it is revealed Bobby is dreaming. A maid comes into a hotel room and cannot revive him.
Dean finds Sam drinking whiskey in a dive bar at 2 in the afternoon. Sam is despondent about Dean’s impending damnation, and the fact he can’t stop it. He’s also angry that Dean doesn’t seem to care. Dean then gets a call about Bobby and they drive to see him.
In Bobby’s hospital room, a doctor tells the brothers that Bobby is sleeping and can’t wake up. The brothers search Bobby’s hotel room for evidence of a case, and they find his research African Dream Root and a doctor who died in his sleep.
Dean questions a grad student of the deceased doctor, who reveals that he was involved in dangerous experiments that the university was ignorant of. Dean also speaks to one of the doctor’s subjects, who couldn’t dream because of a brain injury. As they drink beer together, the test subject reveals that thanks to the doctor’s research, he had lucid, vivid dreams, but he also says he quit the study because the dreams scared him.
At Bobby’s hospital room, Sam arrives with research on the African Dream Root and how it was used for dream walking and killing people in their sleep. They figure someone killed the doctor but they don’t know why Bobby would be still alive. In his dream, Bobby is fighting but also crying for help. Sam and Dean discuss what to do and decide to obtain some of the root and enter Bobby’s dream and to question him. They decide to call Bela to get the root.
Later, Sam answers the door at the motel and Bela arrives in a trench coat, which she removes to reveal lingerie. She kisses Sam and they begin an intense sexual encounter until Dean wakes Sam up. Dean remarks that Sam was making happy noises and questions him. He also says that Bela turned them down, but Bela arrives for real with the African Dream root. Sam can’t look at her, and Dean is suspicious of her motives. She says she’s helping them for Bobby’s sake. Dean kicks Bela out of their hotel room so they can take the dream root in tea, along with some of Bobbys’ hair, which is how they will enter his dream.
Thinking the dream root hasn’t worked, Dean looks out the window to see it is raining upside down. The brothers then find themselves in a better-decorated and better-maintained version of Bobby’s house. Sam goes outside into a brightly lit yard while Dean searches the kitchen. Dean finds Bobby, who is terrified and being stalked by his beautiful, dead wife. She’s angry Bobby killed her, and Bobby apologizes saying she was possessed. Dean leads Bobby away, and Sam is attacked by the test subject Dean questioned. Dean talks Bobby into waking up, and all three wake up.
At Bobby’s hospital room, Dean gently questions Bobby about the dream, and Bobby confirms that was why he got into hunting. Sam arrives and says he couldn’t find the grad student. Bobby reveals the test subject, Jeremy, is a genius and he was hit by his father. He also reveals he shared a beer with him, so that’s why he could enter Bobby’s dream, which was stupid. Dean says not so stupid, as he did the same thing. Bobby says they can’t fall asleep or Jeremy will kill them.
Two days later, Dean is irritable as he drives around with Sam. He decides to go to sleep and confront Jeremy, and Sam insists on going into the dream with him. Bobby is with Bela, suspicious of why she’s helping them.
In Dean’s dream, Sam and Dean come upon a radiant Lisa who has set out a picnic for Dean, saying they only have an hour before picking up Ben. Dean insists he’s never had this dream before, and Sam looks sympathetic. Lisa tells Dean she loves him before disappearing. Sam sees Jeremy and chases him.
Dean finds himself in a long hallway. Dean enters a door and finds a vision of himself. Dean quips that he’s his own worst nightmare. Evil!Dean mocks him and says he’s dead inside. Dean insists he’s in control and can wake up with a snap of his fingers, but it doesn’t work.
Sam confronts Jeremy, who admits to killing the doctor when his supply of dream root was cut off. He wants to be left alone, but Sam won’t because of the murder. Sam is suddenly tied up. Sam summons a vision of Jeremy's father, who terrifies Jeremy to death.
Evil!Dean taunts Dean about his self-hatred and how without Sam he has nothing. He mocks him for his clothes, his music and his life resembling his dad’s and his dad still loving Sam more. He says his father saw who he really was and didn’t care whether he lived or died. Finally, Dean snaps and says John was an obsessed bastard who couldn’t take care of his family. He shouts that he always took care of Sam and he doesn’t deserve to die or to go to hell before shooting Evil!Dean. Evil!Dean wakes up with black eyes and tells Dean that this is what he’s going to become.
Dean and Sam wake up. Bobby asks if Sam’s dream weaving had to do with his psychic stuff, and Sam doesn’t think so. Dean realizes Bela has taken off, and they find that Bela stole The Colt. Later, as the brothers pack up, Dean lies and says he spent his dream looking for Sam, but he also says he doesn’t want to die or go to Hell. Sam says they will find a way to save him, but Dean has a vision of Evil!Dean snapping his fingers.
Body count
For this episode = 1 human.For the series so far = At least 236 humans (of which 3 were witches), 17 ghosts, 9 demons, 10 vampires, 6 changelings, 3 gods, 2 shapeshifters, 2 werewolves, 1 djinn, 1 rakshasa, 1 rawhead, 1 shtriga, 1 wendigo, and 1 zombie.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents:
- Jeremy, whose father beat him with a baseball bat.
- Dean finally acknowledges that John was "an obsessed bastard".
- All Just a Dream: Bela having feelings for Sam and their sexual encounter.
- Badass in Distress: The villain manages to trap Bobby in his dream and then trap a dream walking Sam. It seems averted with Dean since for a while he's in control of his dream until he meets his evil self.
- Backstory: We learn that Bobby became a hunter after he was forced to kill his possessed wife.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Jeremy and Sam, Dean and Evil!Dean, Bobby and Karen.
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: After willingly taking some dream root Sam uses the power of dream weaving to summon an apparition of Jeremy's abusive father to distract him long enough to beat him to death.
- Beneath the Mask: All season Dean has been making light of his upcoming death and damnation and pretending that he couldn't care less. Once he is confronted by his Evil Twin Dean finally explodes letting loose all of the anger he has held back for his father and saying that he doesn't deserve to go to Hell. This finally leads Dean to admitting at the end of the episode to Sam that he doesn't want to die and Sam resolves to find a way to save his brother.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Evil!Dean reveals these, and reminds Dean that he is destined to become a demon.
- Catapult Nightmare: When Sam and Dean wake up after Dean gets Bobby to realize it was a dream.
- Chekhov's Gun: Jeremy offering Dean beer, which Dean accepts. Bobby later reveals in a Wham Line that Jeremy got his DNA, and is therefore able to enter and manipulate his dreams, because he also accepted a beer from Jeremy. Meaning that because Dean had taken Jeremy up on his offer, too, Jeremy now has access to Dean's DNA and therefore his dreams.
- Cannot Dream: Ironically, Jeremy had this as his backstory; his father hit him in the head with a baseball bat and the resulting brain-damage left him unable to dream. When he starts taking African dream root, he starts dreaming again.
- Death Seeker: Dean has been this all season, but he snaps out of it this episode.
- Distressed Dude: Sam gets tied up and beaten with a baseball bat.
- Doppelgänger: Dean meets his demonic self in his dream.
- Dream Sequence: Literally—all three of Our Heroes, plus the Villain of the Week, share a dream.
- Dream Walker: With the help of African dream root and a body part, anyone can enter someone else's dream.
- Dream Weaver: Jeremy and, in the end, Sam. Lampshaded by Bobby. "So, you did a little dreamweaving of your own there."
- Dream Land: And Jeremy's gotten really good at controlling it.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Sam getting drunk at a bar after realizing that he might not be able to prevent Dean's death.
- Ethereal White Dress: Bobby's wife wears a flowy, white nightgown, all the better to emphasize the blood from her knife wound.
- Erotic Dream: Sam has one about Bela.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: This is how Bobby realizes that Bela wasn't just helping out to repay a debt to him: He didn't save her life in Flagstaff, he just gave her a good deal on an amulet.
- Evil Twin: Dean encounters a dream version of himself that is what he fears he'll become after he goes to Hell.
- Foreshadowing: " You can't escape me, Dean!. You're gonna die!, and This, this is what you will become!. "
- Hidden Depths: The brothers' inner selves, once again, appear the opposite of their outer projections. The outwardly more respectable and sensitive Sam dreams of wild sex with the criminal Bela while outwardly hedonistic Dean has a chaste dream of a picnic with the family-oriented Lisa.
- Homoerotic Subtext:
- Dean wonders if Sam is dreaming of Angelina Jolie...or Brad Pitt.
- Dean's self-hatred, coupled with the Ambiguously Bi moments from other episodes, can be read as a struggle with his sexuality. There's no doubt he's attracted to Lisa and the idea of a family, but the way he tried to mold himself to his father's expectations and was never the "loved" son despite this mirrors a lot of LGBTQ stories.
- Idiot Ball: The Winchesters get this with respect to Bela. She sees where they keep their one-of-a-kind, legendary monster-killing artifact (a motel safe) when they open it in front of her and then quickly proceed to knock themselves out using the dream root she brought them, leaving it unprotected. What did they think would happen?
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Bobby became a hunter after his wife was possessed by a demon.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Dean has dreams about a normal life with Lisa and Ben.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: First Bobby's mind, then Dean's.
- The Lost Lenore: Bobby's wife, Karen, is this to him.
- Never Sleep Again: Once Bobby explains about the beer, he and Dean both know that they've given the dream walker everything he needs to kill them in their sleep. They resolve not to sleep again until they find away to counteract his abilities. Dean lasts two days before he decides to screw it and go to sleep anyway as a way to draw Jeremy out.
- Or Was It a Dream?: Everyone's awake and the "monster" is defeated, but the cut-to-credits is Dean's demonic doppelganger snapping its fingers.
- Safe Cracking: Bela steals the Colt from the motel safe.
- Ship Sinking: Bela's theft of the Colt, which makes the Winchesters legitimately plan on hunting her down and killing her, ends any potential hook-ups she might have had with the boys before they even start. Funnily enough, happens in the same episode that has...
- Ship Tease:
- Sam has an Erotic Dream about Bela saying she came because she can't stop thinking about him, and they kiss and have sex. Sam wakes up with a dopey grin, drooling, and seems to be both flustered and excited to see her in person later on.
- Lisa is the woman of Dean's dreams. Literally.
- Shout-Out: Dean remarks that meeting his Evil!Twin is a lot like the ending of Superman III.
- String Theory: The brothers find Bobby's work on the case neatly laid out on the back of his motel room closet's door.
- Themed Aliases: Dean's Pittsburgh City Police Dept. badge has him as Detective Robert Plant.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Evil!Dean delivers this to the real one.
- Title Drop: A variation: Cass Elliot's version of "Dream A Little Dream of Me" plays during Dean's picnic dream.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Being killed in a dream by a dreamweaver kills you for real.
