I wasn’t expecting to see vampires again so soon after the last time, but I can’t say I was disappointed.

In Red Lodge, Montana, a young woman is running from something in the woods (with all the typical looking back and tripping that make these scenes so annoying). She hides behind a tree until it seems as though she might be safe. But when she emerges from her hiding spot, a man is waiting for her with a sickle in hand. A moment later, her body and her head go their separate ways.

In the next scene “Back in Black” by AC/DC is blasting as the Impala comes into view. The car looks fantastic, and the boys are looking surprisingly happy, especially Dean. He’s got his baby back (this is the first time he’s called the Impala “Baby,” which is how I’ll be referring to it going forward). Even better, they have a case: investigating a series of bizarre murders.

Pretending to be reporters, they talk to the sheriff about the ongoing murder investigation. So far there have been two human heads found, as well as several cattle deaths where their bodies were drained of blood. The boys suggest there might be some satanic cult rituals taking place. The sheriff laughs until he realizes they’re serious, and then he goes into a slightly TMI description of what happens when a cow dies in the field. After that, he asks what paper they said they were with. The answer? Weekly World News (or World Weekly News, as Dean calls it before adding that he’s new). I’m not sure why they would choose this particular tabloid when they could’ve said literally anything. Sometimes writers just really want to use a joke. Then again, who’s to say Bat Boy [external link] isn’t the one responsible? The sheriff kicks them out of his office.

From there they put on some lab coats and head to the morgue. Apparently they were serious about it being a satanic cult, because they mention a case in Florida where the victims were marked on their foreheads. So they take a close look at the woman’s head.

Dean: “Maybe we should, uh, look in her mouth. See if those wackos stuffed anything down her throat, you know—kind of like the moth in Silence of the Lambs.”

Sam: “Yeah, yeah—go ahead.”

Dean: “No, you go ahead.”

Sam: “What?”

Dean: “Put the lotion in the basket.”

Who knew Dean was squeamish? But even though Sam gives in and does the gross bits, Dean is the one who notices something under her lip. Seeing what appears to be a cut or an opening in her gums, he presses down on it, causing a fang to extend. She’s a vampire.

I have to applaud the makeup department—the fang popping out of the gum was perfectly executed. It also still makes me feel sick to think about it (it’s a trypophobia thing, so consider yourself warned if that’s an issue).

Although it’s odd that the murder victim was a vampire, Sam and Dean figure vampires are responsible for all the other killings in town, so they switch to vampire-hunting mode. While questioning a bartender in the hopes of getting a lead, they catch the attention of a man sitting at a nearby table. A bit of cat and mouse ensues, ending with the boys pinning the man against a wall until he shows them his teeth; they relax once they realize he’s a hunter (and also not a vampire). Meanwhile, he already knows who they are and offers his condolences about John. It’s becoming apparent that there’s a whole network of hunters the boys know nothing about. It seems strange that John kept them out of the loop.

The hunter is Gordon Walker, and while he’s happy to meet them, he makes it clear these vampires are his and he doesn’t want to share.

Dean: “Well, man. I’ve been itching for a hunt.”

Gordon: “Sorry. But hey, I hear there’s a chupacabra two states over. Go ahead and knock yourselves out.”

He’s not completely rude, though—he does say he’ll buy them a drink “on the flip side.”

Of course Sam and Dean aren’t going to let a hunt go just because someone tells them to. They catch up with Gordon just as a vampire is about to run him through with an industrial buzz saw. In the end Dean beheads the vamp, looking a little too intense as blood splatters on his face. Gordon’s impressed; Sam is worried.

Afterwards they head out for that drink Gordon promised. Sam isn’t happy about how the hunt ended, but the other two tell him to lighten up and have some fun with the job. “It’s not like it was human.” At this point Sam decides to head back to the motel, leaving Gordon and Dean to swap manly (hunting) stories. Gordon shares how he got into hunting after a vampire broke into their house and took off with his sister. He eventually caught up with the vamp, and it became his first kill. He advises Dean to hang on to the pain of losing John because it’ll help him with hunting.

Meanwhile, Sam calls Ellen to find out what she knows about Gordon. She says he’s a good hunter, but when Sam tells her they’re kind of working with him, she immediately warns him not to do that, insisting that Gordon is dangerous to everything and everyone around him. Too bad they didn’t have that information a few hours before. (There’s also a second Silence of the Lambs reference made, which seems a bit sloppy when different characters randomly bring up the same old movie.)

After their talk Sam grabs a drink from the vending machine. From the camera’s POV we can tell someone is watching him—and so can he. With a lot of looking around, he goes back to his room and closes the door. That’s when he gets jumped and knocked out. When he comes to, he’s tied to a chair (which you’d think would be impossible, given the size of him). Also in the room are a man and a woman, Eli and Lenore (played by another Buffy alum Amber Benson, AKA Willow’s girlfriend, Tara). They’re vampires.

Instead of killing Sam, Lenore talks to him, explaining they’re not like other vampires. For one thing, they don’t kill humans and they haven’t had human blood in a long time. When Sam questions how they’re not starving, she says they drink cow blood—and it’s disgusting. But they do it because vampires are almost extinct, and she and her group want to stay under the radar—and alive. She tells Sam they’re leaving town that night, weirdly echoing something John had said about vampires.

Lenore: “I know your kind—once you have the scent you’ll keep tracking us. It doesn’t matter where we go. Hunters will find us.”

Sam: “So you’re asking us not to follow you.”

Lenore: “We have a right to live, we’re not hurting anyone.”

Sam tells her to give him one good reason why he should believe her, so she lets him go, having Eli take him back to the motel unharmed. Sam’s shocked to discover that all monsters aren’t necessarily monstrous.

When he gets back inside the motel room, Gordon and Dean are there, looking at a map and trying to pinpoint the location of the vampires’ nest. Sam asks if he can talk to Dean alone, so they head outside where Sam tells him what just happened. He thinks they need to call off the hunt. Dean, however, is adamant that the vampires have to die.

Dean: “If it’s supernatural, we kill it. End of story. That’s our job.”

Sam: “No, Dean, that’s not our job. Our job is hunting evil. And if these things aren’t killing people then they’re not evil.”

This isn’t the first time Dean is willing to kill anything he considers evil, even if that something is a human. I hate to say it because I really like Dean, but he would’ve been terrifying in the era of witch burnings. What makes it even worse is that he sides with Gordon—a guy he just met—over Sam, his own brother. But Sam realizes that Dean is just latching on to a man who reminds him of their father. He keeps trying to talk to Dean about the need to deal with John’s death, but Dean refuses to even hear it.

They’re still arguing as they head back into the motel room and discover that Gordon is gone (hey, he really is like John). They agree he’s probably going after the vampires: Sam wants to stop him, while Dean wants to lend a hand. Luckily Dean is at least willing to give Sam the benefit of the doubt, so they head out after Gordon.

As the vampires are packing to leave, Eli and Lenore are having their own version of the argument between Dean and Sam. Eli wants to stay and fight, insisting hunters can’t be reasoned with. But Lenore points out that killing them won’t solve anything. Her hope is that if vampires can change, then so can hunters.

Unfortunately Gordon shows up before they can even finish packing. He grabs Lenore and shows her his bloody hunting knife, before plunging it into her chest.

“Dead man’s blood, bitch.”

Well, what’s a little misogyny on top of the rest of Gordon’s hatred? We see it in how he speaks to Lenore, as well as the way he tortures her to find out where the other vampires are. Aside from repeatedly poisoning her with dead man’s blood, he cuts her all over, and finally announces to Sam and Dean when they show up that he’s about to “start in on the fingers.” So far, Supernatural seems uncomfortably comfortable with showing female characters getting tortured. Problematic? In light of actors and fans alike eventually criticizing the show for its treatment of the women onscreen, I think maybe this scene was on the gratuitous side.

Anyway, seeing the shape Lenore’s in, and Gordon’s casual attitude about torturing her, Dean’s not so sure anymore about the hunter. Both he and Sam try to get Gordon to relax, but all this accomplishes is to get him to trade up to a Bowie knife with the intent of killing Lenore.

Gordon: “I just sharpened it, so it’s completely humane.”

Clearly he’s taking this all very seriously. Sam steps forward to get Lenore, but Gordon turns the knife on him. Dean tries to get his focus off Sam, saying he knows how Gordon feels, and that the vampire that killed his sister deserved to die. Before he can make the case that Lenore has done nothing wrong, Gordon laughs. It seems that the vampire didn’t kill his sister—it turned her. And he hunted her down and killed her himself.

Dean: “You did what?”

Gordon: “It wasn’t my sister anymore. It wasn’t human.”

Dean is horrified that Gordon killed his vampire sister, which is an interesting contrast to Angel, where [spoiler] there’s sympathy for Gunn when he had to do that, but also a mutual understanding that he had no choice, no matter how much it hurt him. Here, Gordon is gleeful and the others think he’s a monster for his actions. Are they troubled by his attitude, or because he killed his sibling? For Dean, I think it’s more the latter.

As the story comes out, Sam realizes that Gordon knew all along that these vampires were harmless—he just didn’t care. And he really doesn’t. Gordon retorts that just because vampires can be nice for a little while, it doesn’t change who they are. To prove it, he grabs Sam’s arm and cuts it, then holds it over Lenore so the blood drips on her face.

Of course she reacts as one would expect of a wounded vampire: her fangs come out and she starts hissing. She looks and sounds like a nightmare. But then she retracts her fangs and mumbles that she won’t drink Sam’s blood. Gordon still doesn’t care—but Dean does. He turns a gun on Gordon and tells Sam to get Lenore out of there. Gordon can barely hold himself back from going after them, but Dean keeps him in check, and soon only the two of them are left.

Now, manly stories are swapped for manly fighting, with both guys putting down their weapons. Well, Gordon sticks the knife into a table, and Dean unloads his gun. A second later Gordon has the knife back in hand, while Dean’s ammo is on the floor. What? But Gordon is so honourable! Sigh.

As they fight, Gordon tries to convince Dean that they’re alike, that they’re killers. Dean’s not interested. He manages to daze Gordon and get him into a headlock, then runs him head first into a wall with an insincere “Whoops, sorry.” After that he ties him up and keeps watch over him until daylight, which is when Sam finally gets back. He confirms that Lenore and the other vampires got away safe, so Dean lets Gordon know they’ll call someone in two or three days to come untie him. Then he punches him, knocking him over, along with the chair he’s tied to.

Outside, Dean has a moment, thinking back to all the hunts he’s taken part in:

Dean: “What if we killed things that didn’t deserve killing? You know the way dad raised us…”

Sam: “After what happened to mom, dad did the best he could.”

Dean: “I know he did. But the man wasn’t perfect. And the way he raised us to hate those things, man, I hate him. I do. When I killed that vampire at the mill, I didn’t even think about it; hell, I even enjoyed it.”

He also admits that he’d wanted to kill Lenore—and all the vampires. But, Sam points out, he didn’t. And that’s what counts.

I liked this episode quite a bit more than “Dead Man’s Blood” [linked above]. The reversal of the episode’s monster works well. Some might have us believe that all humans are inherently the good guys, but “Bloodlust” shows that it’s one’s actions that count, not the circumstances of one’s birth (or rebirth, in the case of vampires). Although this is a lesson we all should have already learned, it still needs to be repeated as often as possible. Amber Benson also does a good job as Lenore, whether as the principled leader of the group, or the starved vampire in the presence of blood. I hope we see her again, as well as other creatures that defy our stereotypical concept of evil.   ASB