Oh my, so much to unpack here. This was an amazing episode, even brought me to tears which normally they don't. Lots of the familial stuff and character development for Sam and a little bit for Dean. No damsel in distress in this one and no leachery so all-in-all, an excellent episode for me.
So it starts off with some construction guys working at a development of high-dollar houses. They are talking about how they wish they could afford something like this when one of them falls into a sinkhole. His leg is broken, and he hollers at his friend to help him get out, he's too far down to reach, so the friend goes for a rope. That's when the bugs start crawling on the guy in the hole. The friend rushes to the truck and reaches it just about the time the guy in the hole starts really freaking out and hollering for help even more as more bugs appear crawling up his shirt. By the time his friend (Travis, his part is really short-lived but his name is important because it shows up later) gets back, the guy in the hole is dead and he's bleeding from every orifice in his head. The title hints that the beetles had something to do with it, but the mystery element is really high here because you don't know why the bugs are attacking.
Cut to the Winchester boys. Sam is waiting outside a bar and Dean comes out proudly displaying his winnings from hustling pool. Sam expresses displeasure that they need to earn their money by scamming people. He asks Dean would it hurt to get a "day" job, to which Dean replies that hunting is their "day" job. Then Sam shows Dean the newspaper article he's been reading about a mysterious death a couple of towns over in Oklahoma. So they head that way.
Sam and Dean arrive to the site of the death armed with little information than that the authorities are crediting the death to "mad cow" disease even though it takes years to manifest. The boys talk to Travis to get the DL on his friend's death, posing as the guy's nephews. Once they learn everything they can from Travis, they head to the scene of the death. They find the hole, cordoned off with yellow caution tape, and they investigate. Sam comes out with a beetle and Dean gives him a "you're kidding me with this, right?" look and Sam proceeds to explain that beetles sometimes eat human tissue, the caveat being that it's usually dead tissue, not living, and that they would have had to work in a large group. The first thing they rule out is ghosts. If it were a vengeful spirit there would be evidence of activity, and they're not finding any. Plus, there's no precedent for ghosts using bugs. Dean asks if Sam thinks someone might be controlling the bugs. Sam says maybe. They need to talk to the locals.
They find an open house which is offering a free barbeque to prospective home buyers, so the brothers pose as interested parties to gain access. This is where things get a little interesting, because everyone they meet assumes they're a couple. Dean corrects the first person to make this mistake, and Sam claims they're trying to find a home for their elderly father. However, the next time the mistake is made, typically alpha-male Dean actually is the one to roll with it giving Sam a playful pat on the rear and calling him "honey". Later in the show, Dean comes out of the shower with a towel on his head, further breaking the "gender norm" and the norm for his character. I have to say, I liked seeing this side to Dean, although the part where he acts a bit self-righteous was less than ideal, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So, the boys talk to Larry, the developer who set this whole neighborhood's construction underway, and he introduces them to a woman whose name I couldn't be bothered to remember simply because the significance of her character was to point the boys towards the red-herring of the show, Larry's bug obsessed son Matt.
Right about the same time that Dean is figuring out that Larry's son has a thing for bugs, Sam is talking to the real-estate lady previously mentioned when Matt tries to scare her with a tarantula. Sam puts the nix on this operation and takes a liking to the boy who seems to think his father is ashamed of him (he's probably right, because Larry certainly acts like it). Sam tells Matt that things will get better, eventually and we can see that Sam identifies with the kid.
From the party they've gleaned that another person died the previous year from an allergic reaction to multiple bee stings. So they're pretty sure that someone is controlling the bugs and they're pretty sure that someone is Matt, but they need more. They get what they're looking for the next day (after squatting in one of the empty houses where Dean likes the shower a little bit too much, this is where we get the towel scene). The real-estate lady was attacked by spiders in the shower. The boys have a suspect. They follow Matt as he gets off the bus and heads into the woods. He asks them if they're serial killers. They respond in the negative and he seems to believe them because he immediately acts comfortable with them enough to show them what is going on with the bugs. He says he's been studying them since his family arrived at this place and they're acting strange. He brings the boys to a place where there are swarms of various insects and there they find several very old skeletons. During the conversation with Matt, Sam tells him he will eventually get away from his overbearing father when he goes off to college. Dean takes offense to this (this is where I think Dean gets a little bit self-righteous), because Sam has expressed that he feels a kindred spirit in Matt, which he confirms later as they walk to the anthropology department of a nearby college. Sam says their father was disappointed that Sam wanted a "normal" life instead of being a hunter. That he wishes his dad had been proud of him. Dean expresses displeasure that Sam told Matt to look forward to getting away from his family because Dean thinks family is the most important thing and that family should stick together. The anthropology professor tells the boys that the skeletons appear to be about 150 years old or older and that they are probably Native American judging from their structure. Dean asks if there have ever been any tribes that would have lived in this area and the professor stresses that "officially" there aren't, but that several tribes were relocated by white settlers and that the boys might find their answers by talking to some of the Native Americans that live about 60 miles away.
The boys head there and find an old man playing cards. The first thing he does is call Dean a liar. I like this dude. Then Sam asks him if there were ever any NA who lived in the area of the deaths. The man asks why they want to know. Sam says bad things have been happening and he thinks it might be related to some NA skeletons they found. The old man weaves a tale which brought me to tears about how the Calvary came to relocate his peoples 200 years ago. Not everyone was willing to relocate, so the Calvary raped and pillaged and murdered for six nights and on the sixth, they killed everyone remaining in the village. As he was dying, the village chief cursed the land. He swore that the white man would never again set foot on that land and that if he did, when the sun and the moon were equal in the sky, nature would rise up against him for six nights.
The boys figure out that this happens every year around this time, the curse takes effect. Sam ponders "how do you stop a curse?" but Dean says that you can't, "You get the hell out" or words to that effect. Anyway, they try to convince Larry to get his family out by claiming there's a gas leak, but he isn't buying it. He asks who's there and Dean claims to be Travis from earlier, but Larry has worked with Travis and he's not buying it. Sam then gets hold of Matt and tells him to get his family out, somehow he has to convince Larry. Dean says to tell him his side hurts and he needs to go to the ER, but when they get there the family is still there and Larry is yelling at them to get off his property. Matt apologizes, saying that he told Larry the truth. Dean tries to convince Larry, but he's not listening, not until it's too late to leave as the bug swarm approaches.
So the Winchesters hole everyone up in the house trying to seal off all the cracks, but they don't figure out the flue is open to the chimney until they hear the bugs coming through it, so everyone hauls ass upstairs. Dean holds off some of the bugs with bug-spray and a lighter. They make it into the attic, but then they see that there are termites eating through the wood. Eventually that part of the roof caves and the boys find something to block it off with a piece of metal and a beam, but that eventually fails and just when everyone thinks they're doomed, dawn breaks and all the bugs dissipate.
The boys show up to the house as Larry and his family are loading a moving van. Larry says he's going to make sure no one ever lives here again, and that the place has been shut down while the government investigates the bones the boys found. Larry says he's not really sad even though this turned out to be a really big financial disaster and he looks over to his son who's throwing out all his bug paraphernalia. Sam goes over to talk to him. Turns out the whole almost being killed by swarms of insects turned him off them. "Now they kind of creep me out" he confesses. Sam says he'd be disturbed if that weren't the case and laughs. After they say their goodbyes to the family, Sam and Dean talk some more about their father. Sam says he wants to find their dad so he can apologize for all the nasty things he said to him, and Dean says they'll find him, Sam will apologize and then five minutes later they'll be back to being at each other's throats.
Okay, so side characters in this were really interesting. Larry less so than Matt, but that might just be because I understand the "weird" kid syndrome far better than the "I'm just doing what I think is best for you" overbearing parent. I'm giving side characters a 9/10, creep element was also pretty high, but I really don't like bugs. So horror/suspense also gets a 9/10. I don't have to take any points off for misogyny, so yay! Sam and Deans development was also really high in this episode and I'm going to give that a high 8/10 as well. Mystery, well even though we knew it was bugs, there was a high mystery factor in figuring out why they were attacking and the reveal was all I could have hoped for so I'm giving that a perfect 10/10. So all-in-all, this episode rates a solid 9/10. And I believe that is the highest rating I've given one of these shows since I developed this system.
That's it for now, tune in next time... wait, how many episodes left in the first season? J/K see y'all later, thanks for reading.
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