The first line of Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella, “The Metamorphosis”, succintly sets the stage for the story to follow: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” Erik Kripke’s 2008 Supernatural episode, “Metamorphosis”, follows similar themes: on one level it tracks the literal metamorphosis of monster-of-the-week Jack Montgomery from man to rugaru, while on another level it explores the similar changes Sam must confront because of the demon blood coursing through his own veins. At times, the episode is a bit heavy-handed: Kripke takes great pains to make sure the parellels been Jack and Sam are not lost on his viewers. For example, there’s some superfluous exposition between Dean and Sam, where, en route to confront Jack, Dean tells Sam “[Jack's] got something evil inside, in his blood. Maybe you can relate.” But, for the most part, the episode is deftly woven and transcends what in lesser hands could have been a run-of-the-mill “hunt the monster” episode, becoming something more.

On the surface level, the episode concerns unfortunate adoptee Jack Montgomery’s birthright as a rugaru. Jack, it seems, is the son of a monster hunted down by demon hunter Travis some 30 years prior. Travis took down Jack’s dad way back when, but Jack was later born to Jack’s dad’s trophy wife and put up for adoption. Despite knowing that the rugaru trait is genetically passed, Travis didn’t try too hard to hunt down the child. Three decades later when he finally locates now-grown and struggling-not-to-transform Jack, Travis enlists the help of Sam and Dean to finish the job. 

Travis schools Sam and Dean on Rugaru lore. Sam does some additional research of his own, learning that the transformation need not take place if the afflicted individual never eats human flesh: If they manage to control their uncontrollable hunger, the pre-metamorphosis rugaru can avoid becoming a full-blown Monster with a capital M.

The episode doesn’t really go into it, but Rugaru legends are interesting and some background information does help elucidate where Kripke is going with the episode in the larger context of the series. Rugaru (spelled many different ways, according to various cultures) are typically described as werewolf-like creatures with the body of a human and the head of a wolf. In fact, the term arguably derives from the French word for wolf, loup, and the word garou – describing a man that metamorphosizes into an animal. In Cajun lore, where rugarus predominate, the term “loup garou” is often used. In some stories, the rugaru is said to hunt down and kill Catholics who do not follow the rules of Lent. In others, it is said that if you break Lent seven years in a row, you become a rugaru. Lent is the 40 day long period of fasting and prayer culminating in Easter, the 40 days representing the time Jesus spent wandering the desert enduring temptation by Satan. Here we have Sam, dealing with the temptation to use his demon-granted powers.

The Native American wendigo is similar to the rugaru in concept. Supernatural explored the Wendigo myth back in 2005, in the second episode of the first season, and more recently wendigos were given the treatment by the Fear Itself episode “Skin and Bones,” one of the better episodes in that middling series. Although there are various rugaru myths, many of them, like those concerning the wendigo, deal with cannibalism. This episode of Supernatural is no different.

In a direct reference to David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of the horror classic, “The Fly” (which traces its lineage back to Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” as well), this episode of Supernatural features a scene set in a bar. In “The Fly,” Seth Brundle, well on his way to being fully transformed, gives a patron of the bar a compound fracture while arm-wrestling over the attention of a barfly. In this episode of Supernatural, Jack gives a patron of the bar he’s frequenting a compound fracture, as well – pulverizing the unfortunate lout’s hand and wrist, caught mid-punch – again over a barfly.

Were there other classic horror movie references in this episode? Perhaps. It’s a stretch, but in the scene where Sam and Dean break in to the random damsel-in-undress’s apartment to rescue her, thinking that she’s being attacked by an increasingly maniacal Jack, the doorframe gets badly shattered and the camera lingers on it a bit. Made me think of another famous Jack, and a similarly treated door in the movie version of Stephen King’s “The Shining.” An intentional parallel? Almost certainly not – I chalk it up to happy coincidence. 

This episode was set in Carthage, Missouri. Why Carthage? It seems an odd choice for locale, especially considering that rugaru myths are primarily based out of french Louisana and the surrounding area, where rugaru roam wild in the swamps – well south of Missouri. Was Carthage a random choice for this episode, or was it more carefully selected? Perhaps it is an allusion to the ancient Mediterranean city of Carthage, which was arguably notorious for its child sacrifice practices. Supernatural is certainly exploring child sacrifice recently: last episode we saw a number of parents-to-be, incuding Sam and Dean’s mother Mary, sacrifice their future children to Azazel. This episode, once again, explored child sacrifice in another way – Travis couldn’t bring himself to kill Jack’s dad’s wife, pregnant with Jack. Thirty years later, Jack’s wife Michelle, also pregnant, is spared death at Jack’s own hand and flees the scene. The series is asking “at what point is violence justified? Can you kill a monster before it becomes a monster, or does preemptive self-defense make you a monster, too?” 

Much like the episode preceding it (“In the Beginning”), this episode is about fate, and choices, and bloodlines. Gregor Samsa, Kafka’s unfortunate monster, didn’t have a choice: He just woke up one day, a monster. Sam didn’t have a choice: He was fed demon blood in his crib. Despite Sam’s research to the contrary, Jack didn’t have a choice, either: his condition was genetically passed to him, just like he passed it to his unborn child. Sam, though, believes that there is a choice: Even if you can’t choose what you are, you can choose how you act. As he tells Jack in the minutes before torching him mercilessly, “It doesn’t matter what you are. It only matters what you do. It’s your choice.” Ironically, he doesn’t allow Jack to make that choice. Just as it looks like Jack is going to choose life, stepping away from the helplessly unconscious Dean, Sam ignites him anyway. Perhaps Sam realized that Jack had already made his choice: that Jack had fully and irrevocably turned into a monster after chowing down on a Travis manwich. Or perhaps Sam was acting out of anger – anger that he, too, has no choice: No choice but to be a Hunter, like his parents and his grandparents before him. No choice but to be the pawn of Azazel, whatever that demon’s endgame may be. Although Sam promises Dean at the end of the episode that he is shelving his powers and will not be using them, this is not going to be an easy road for Sam. After all, we just spent an hour seeing how Jack had no choice. And last episode, too, was all about how Destiny is set, and as hard as you may want to try you really can’t swerve your car off the road paved by Fate. Even if your car is as cool as the Metallicar.

Supernatural is on a roll this season. At the risk of diluting the meaning of a perfect score by granting it to too many episodes, I nonetheless once again give this episode 5 out of 5 Metallicars.