Finally we get some semblance of closure for Sam and an idea that he might be able to one day get past his feelings of guilt over Jessica's death. This episode has a pretty big creep factor, although the monster is something we've encountered before (we see a lot of different types of ghosts), this ghost is different because there are no bones to burn since the body was cremated. I'm getting ahead of myself. The main thing I didn't like about this episode was the recurring damsel in distress trope where the boys put themselves in danger to save some girl. In this episode, the most important characters are the main characters with the only real exception being Charlie, the girl who ends up needing saved.
The show starts off with some 12-year-old kids playing truth or dare. One girl is dared to go into the bathroom and say "bloody Mary" in the mirror, a superstition we've all heard. Just in case we haven't, however, the girls clarify what will happen in order to frighten their friend. The girl does it, and nothing happens apart from her friends jerkishly banging on the door to freak her out. The girl's father, however, starts having a creepy woman with ratty black hair show up in any reflective surface he passes (mostly mirrors). It comes to a head when the man notices something weird about his own reflection as he's looking into the bathroom mirror. The scene cuts to the 12-year-olds and and older girl walks in. The one who said "bloody Mary" teases her that she is past curfew, but the teen ignores her and heads upstairs. Once there she finds blood leaking out of the bathroom but appears unperturbed by it at first. She curiously opens the door further to find even more blood and then her eyes fall on something that makes her scream. The audience is left to imagine what has happened to her poor father who is no doubt the victim of Bloody Mary. All this, the candle light, the creepy ghost figure popping into reflections and finally the large amount of blood without showing the body, all up the horror element.
The next seen shows Sam and Dean. Sam is having yet another nightmare about Jessica's death. Dean lays into him a bit, but Sam brushes it off like it's nothing. It is obvious Dean wants to help Sam but doesn't know how. This is a good Sam/Dean moment, and there are quite a few of those in this episode. The first stop for the boys is the morgue where they have to bribe an orderly to be able to see the corpse. Evidently weary of their fake ids the boys pose as college students instead of federal agents this time. The orderly tells them how much blood there was on the guy's brain and that his eyes were melted in their sockets. He thinks it was an aneurism. As they're leaving the morgue, they discuss the possibility that it is just some freak medical thing and not a hunter thing, but they both agree that is unlikely. Next stop is the funeral where they talk to the guy's daughter who discovered the body. She is with a few of her friends. Sam and Dean pretend they worked with the father and ask if there were ever any signs of an impending aneurism. The younger daughter then says it was her fault because she said "Bloody Mary" that night. The boys look at the bathroom where the man died and are found there by Charlie, one of the daughter's friends. Charlie threatens to scream if the boys don't tell her exactly what they are doing. They say they think something ominous might have happened and they don't want it to happen to anyone else. It's pretty obvious from the moment that Sam gives her his number (in case anything happens to shed light on the situation) that this is going to be the episode's damsel in distress. I really wish they wouldn't do this every episode, it's kind of wearing on my patience.
A friend of Charlie's is mocking her and says "Bloody Mary" three times in the mirror, after which she is attacked. Sam and Dean go to investigate and find a name on the back of the mirror she was killed in front of. They find out the name belongs to an 8-year-old boy who was killed in a hit and run. Charlie tells them that it was her friend who was driving the car. They boys go to the first victim's house and find the name of the man's wife on the mirror. The daughter tells them her mom overdosed but that it was an accident. The ghost is punishing people by revealing their secrets and killing them. The boys find that a woman named Mary was murdered in front of a mirror, but it was in Ft. Wayne Indiana. They go to speak to the lead investigator on the case. He tells them that Mary's eyes were cut out with surgical precision and that her diary indicated that she was planning to tell her lover's wife about their affair right before her murder. She was able to write the letters TRE on the mirror before she died, and the investigator thinks that she was trying to out her murderer. The boys try to track down the mirror, sure that if they smash it Mary will be vanquished. They find out that it was sold to an antique shop in the town Mary is currently haunting.
Before the boys get back, Charlie has an argument with the daughter of the first victim and that girl says "Bloody Mary" in front of the school's bathroom mirror. Charlie then begins seeing Mary in reflective surfaces and starts to freak out. She smashes the window at school, then sees Mary in her teacher's eyeglasses, screams and runs out of the building. When the boys return, they put Mary in a room without any reflective surfaces and tell her they're going to vanquish the ghost. They ask her what happened, and she tells them that her boyfriend committed suicide after a fight. Now they know that Mary only cares that there was a secret and someone died.
On the way to the antique store, Sam tells Dean he thinks the only way to make sure Mary doesn't keep appearing is to make sure she's in the mirror when they smash it. He tells Dean that he thinks Mary will come after him because of Jessica's death. Dean tries to talk him out of it, obviously worried. This is another good Sam/Dean moment. Besides, Dean reasons, he knows everything about what happened to Jessica so it isn't a secret. Sam then says that he hasn't told Dean everything and then refuses to divulge his secret because then "it wouldn't be a secret".
They boys break into the antique store, but they trip the alarm. The cops show up before Sam is finished saying "Bloody Mary" and Dean goes to deal with them. Sam is set to smash the mirror, but he is surprised that instead of seeing Mary he sees his own reflection telling him what he did. It turns out Sam didn't only keep the fact that he was a hunter from Jessica, he was also having premonitions about her death for days before it happened. Dean tries to convince the cops that he's the owner of the shop's son, but it isn't working and so he chooses to knock them out instead so he can go back and help Sam. He returns just in time and smashes the mirror. Sam is saved. But Mary crawls out of the frame and attacks both boys. Sam manages to hold up a nearby mirror, which causes Mary to see her own misdeeds and vanquish herself.
After telling Charlie she's safe, Sam tells her that her boyfriend's suicide was "absolutely not her fault" and by so doing, we see that Sam is starting to forgive himself as well. Still, as they drive out of town, he refuses to tell Dean what the audience now knows and he sees a mirage of Jessica on the side of the street just before the credits roll.
I have decided to start rating various parts of the show, then giving a whole grade to it, based on the individual grades. For horror/suspense this episode gets a 9/10 (the creep element is high, but not the highest we've seen) for side characters, this episode gets a 6/10 (most of them were kind of predictable and I didn't like the damsel in distress trope once again. Would it have killed them to make this character a guy whose girlfriend died? I mean, they wouldn't have even had to change the name.) For main character bonding this episode gets a very high 10/10 (there were lots of really good moments and you can see how much the boys care for each other). For misogyny this episode gets a -2 out of -10 (one Paris Hilton joke and the damsel in distress trope). And finally, for mystery, this episode gets a 7/10 (it was pretty predictable, but some of the mystery elements were good). Overall, this episode gets a 6/10.
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