Recap of Supernatural
Season 7, Episode 3
The Girl Next Door
- Sam: But you still feed.
Amy: On the dead. I'm a mortician. I know. Not sexy, but, you know, health benefits. I quietly take what Jacob and I need. No one gets hurt. But it can be risky, feeding like that, especially for a kid. Jacob got sick. He was dying, and the only way to fight it off was...
Sam: He needed fresh meat.
Written by Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin.
Directed by Jensen Ackles.
Air Date: October 7, 2011.
After being sprung from Sioux Falls General by a perfectly alive Bobby, Dean and Sam join him and lay low for three weeks while Dean's broken leg heals. In that time, Sam has still suffered hallucinations, but has kept them quiet. While collecting food, Sam discovers the return of an unknown serial killer and takes off on his own to find her.
Body Count:
For this episode = 2 kitsunes and 6 humans.
For the series so far = At least 700 humans (of which 6 were witches), 88 demons, 55 angels, 36 Jefferson Starships, 34 ghosts, 26 vampires, 19 zombies, 14 gods, 9 hellhounds, 7 skinwalkers, 6 changelings, 5 shapeshifters, 4 ghouls, 3 djinn, 2 Arachnes, 2 dogs, 2 kitsunes, 2 werewolves, 1 crocotta, 1 dragon, 1 fairy, 1 Khan worm, 1 lamia, the Mother of All, 1 okami, 1 phoenix, 1 Purgatory creature, 1 rakshasa, 1 rawhead, 1 reaper, 1 rugaru, 1 shtriga, 1 siren, 1 wendigo, 1 whore of Babylon, and 1 wraith.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Amy's mother. John's also mentioned as someone who's unpleasant to be around when drunk.
- Actor Allusion: While Dean's asleep in front of the TV, it announces that My Bloody Valentine is up next, which Jensen Ackles starred in a remake of.
- The cashier in the convenience store Sam was in is wearing a Batman: Under the Red Hood T-shirt. Jensen provided the voice for the titular Red Hood.
- Addictive Foreign Soap Opera: In the opening credits, Dean, who is sidelined with a broken leg, is raptly watching a Spanish-language telenovela.Dean: Dude...RicardoBobby: What happened?Dean: SuicidioBobby: Adios, ese.
- Apologetic Attacker: Dean says he's sorry to Amy after he stabs her.
- Asian Fox Spirit: Perhaps unsurprisingly, the portrayal of the monster is almost wholly inaccurate. Here, the kitsune is presented as a being of human appearance with the ability to transform its hands into deadly claws. Amy and others like her must feed on human brains in order to survive and can only be killed with a stab to the heart. About the only thing the show's kitsune have in common with the mythical creature is their foxlike eyes. The kitsune of folklore is an intelligent fox with a range of mystical powers depending on the story, most notably shapeshifting. It often plays pranks, and has never been associated with brain eating in any way, shape or form. Also, "kitsune" is simply the Japanese word for "fox". The idea is less that there's a whole separate race of intelligent and magical foxes than that some foxes are particularly intelligent and magical.
- Attack Hello: Sam returns to his hotel room, opens the door...and a punch from his brother sends him flying.
- Birds of a Feather: Young Sam and Amy bond over their wandering life, Abusive Parents and freak natures. Amy even asks Sam to run away with her. "We can be freaks together."
- Brain Food: What the kitsunes eat.
- Do You Trust Me?Sam: You don't trust her, fine. Trust me.
- Facial Dialogue: Dean's face twitches when his brother mentions that Amy works in a funeral home. That's the information he uses to track down and kill her.
- Fantastic Racism: What leads Dean to murder Amy.
- Fatal Attractor: Even young Sam isn't immune to dating monsters.
- Femme Fatalons: The kitsunes have this.
- First Kiss: Implied for Sam (he had to call Dean for advice on how to talk to girls)
- Flashback
- Girl Next Door: The title of the episode, and Amy shows all the decency of this trope, forming a genuine attachment to Sam and only killing in defense of her loved ones.
- Harmful to Minors: Amy's son witnesses his mother's death.
- Hellish Pupils: The kitsunes when they die.
- The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: The Leviathans are tracking the phony credit cards used by Sam and Dean.
- Indirect Kiss: Young Amy treats the injury on Sam's head by pressing a soda can on it, then she drinks from the can.
- I Did What I Had to Do: How Dean justifies himself.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Young Sam, of course.Young Sam: Are you guys cool? Can I have a normal life for five minutes now?
- Averted with adult Sam: "I spent a lot of my life just trying to be normal but come on — I'm not normal."
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Young Sam claims he learned how to fight from watching a lot of Bruce Lee movies.
- I Owe You My Life: Sam figures he owes Amy a pass because she killed her own mother to save him. Dean unfortunately has no such restriction.
- I Resemble That Remark!: Dean is asleep while a wildlife program plays on television."The wilderbeest lounges, lazy and self-content, and is oblivious to the fierce predator that stalks him from the shadows..."
- Kick the Dog: Dean, at the end of the episode. He lies to Sam, finds Amy and stabs her. Her son sees, but he lets him go as he hasn't hurt anyone, yet.
- Meaningful Echo: "One day the other shoe will drop."
- Monster Is a Mommy: Present!Amy is catching fresh meat not for herself but for her young son, who is ill and can only get better with live brains.
- Must Have Caffeine: Young Sam orders a "triple red eye" after being kept up doing research in the library for Dad and Dean.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Amy's mother realises she's hiding someone in the house when Amy readily agrees to them moving again.
- Foreshadowing: Likewise when Dean readily accepts Sam's argument that Amy shouldn't be killed, it's a sign that he's got another agenda.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Young Sam easily defeats two bullies bigger than he is.
- Pull the I.V.: Dean does this once he comes to in the morning.
- Rescue Romance: Young Sam and Amy.
- Self-Made Orphan: Amy murdered her mother to defend Sam. It helps that she was an abusive shrew.
- She Is All Grown Up: Sam's childhood friend. Sam has gotten a lot bigger too, as Amy notes.
- Shoot the Dog: What Dean thinks he's doing.
- Shout-Out:
- The name Sam's childhood friend is using in the present day is Amy Pond. The Pond part is an alias she chose deliberately because of Doctor Who.
- Jimi Hendrix and Picasso are name-dropped.
- Kill Bill: After Dean kills Amy in front of her child, he tells the kid to look him up in a few years.
- Dean references Girl, Interrupted when talking to Bobby about Sam's mental problems.
- Tempting Fate: The store owner says people come there for snacks. He ends up being snacked on by a Leviathan. With cheese.
- Vegetarian Vampire: Amy works as a mortician so she can get access to the corpses' brains. She doesn't eat live brains, and is only harvesting them at the moment to cure her sick son. And even then, only criminals.
