S1E14- Nightmare

Woaaaaah man, Sam's getting waking visions? Things just got real.

Telekinesis! Premonitions! What kind of crazy skills will turn up next!

On a serious note though, I really feel awful about what had happened to that kid. It all harkens back to my statement before, in the "Dead in the Water" post, about what awful things people can do to each other.

I have mixed feelings when it comes to the step-mother though. I know it's easy to say "She's just as bad as the abusers, she didn't do anything to stop it, she could have alerted someone, she could have tried to protect him, etc." But it's likely she was just as afraid of being beaten herself, or didn't know how to stop him, or maybe she had tried, when he was sober, to talk him into getting help so he wouldn't drink any more. It's hard to know.

Yet it's easy to see Max's perspective too. Living a life of fear, always afraid that maybe the next beating would go just a step too far, become something he wouldn't be able to recover from, and his stepmother did nothing to prevent that from happening, so it does make sense that he would blame her, and what to take revenge on her the same way he took revenge on his father and uncle.

And Sam! Between the waking visions and the sudden burst of telekinesis when he had that vision of Dean being killed, the boy's going to turn into a Swiss army knife of abilities if he's not careful. (And as much as Dean is clearly freaked out, despite his protests to the contrary, he's damn lucky Sam was able to do that, or he would have had a bullet in his head.) I was particularly fond of their discussion about the whole thing, Dean's input specifically. "You have something Max didn't have... Me. As long as I'm around, nothing bad's going to happen to you." That entire bit practically screamed out his older sibling protection instincts; it was a good dollop of heart-warming emotion that just sneaked up on you and laid you out with one punch.

Also: cameo alert! Beth Broderic, from the 90's TV series of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.