Skin

While on the road, Sam gets an e-mail from his old school friend Becky telling that her brother and also Sam's friend Zach is arrested, accused of murder of his girlfriend. Zach claims that he was in another place at the same time, but the surveillance camera had taped his image in the crime scene. Sam convinces Dean to drive to St. Louis, Missouri, to investigate the typical doppelganger case. Once there, they disclose that a mutant is killing and hurting people in the neighborhood. When the shape shifter takes the form of Dean, things get complicated for the Winchester brothers.

"Supernatural" is a kind of teenager simpler version of "X-Files", with two brothers investigating supernatural events the same way Mulder and Scully did. The episodes are getting better and better along the series, and I am liking a lot this entertaining series. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Pele" ("Skin")

Geez! I am really trying to get into this show. The plot is intriguing but so far with S1 E6, I am losing endurance. This show is so cliche and predictable. Running from town to town with funds from who knows how? Showing up 400 miles later no worse for wear. Same predictable co-star opposite, small frame eye candy doll in distress. And the brothers, posing as this or that to unwitting authorities, too dense and naive to crosscheck their story. Hello! These guys are too young for just about every impersonation! You ask too much of the viewer with "temporary suspension of disbelief" Designed for the "mind on hold" viewers curious about the paranormal.

The monster of the week format is put to good use in this episode as the shapeshifter furthers the brothers' melodrama AND works as a potent thematic metaphor, in this case domestic violence being the result of socialization of men. The writing is crisp and the show does a good job of ringing out the scares from the premise. Best of all, Dean-well "Dean"-expressing resentment towards Sam is very much needed to make the characters seem more like brothers ; this is an early example of that key dynamic of the show.

Apart from that the episode contains one of the goriest, viscerally horrifying scenes of the series in the first seen transformation of the shifter. They never bothered to go as extensive as the sequence here ever again but the scene is so effective that even 15 years later you still get the creeps in the shapeshifter episodes.

Good stuff.

I did enjoy this one, even though the idea of a shapeshifter isn't very original. It was Still a fun episode.

I have to commend the visual effects here. I thought the transformation "shedding" scene was great, grotesque and unsettling body horror. Also the piles of festering goop. I watch a lot of these types of shows and I felt grossed out by it. This gives the episode more points.

Seeing Dean shirtless definitely doesn't hurt either.

One of the more creepy, dark episodes. It's an easy view and goes more into the character of Dean which has pretty much just been the comedic relief till now. The cgi was bad tho.