Great, great episode. “Sex and Violence” concerns Sam and Dean’s investigation of a series of murders in Bedford, Iowa. The episode begins with the death of Vicky Benson at the hand of her meat tenderizing mallet wielding husband, Adam. Sam and Dean interview Adam, who tells them that he is despondent over the death of his wife and that he wants and deserves to die. He says that Vicky became victim because Jasmine, a stripper he met while at a friend’s bachelor party, told him to kill his wife. He describes Jasmine as being the woman of his dreams. Sam and Dean next head to the Taylor County Medical Center, where they meet with the alluring Dr. Cara Roberts. Sam and Dean learn that Jim Wiley and Steve Snyder, two men who executed similar attacks on their wives, had frequented the Honey Wagon Bar, the same strip club as Adam Benson. Thanks to Doctor Roberts, Sam and Dean learn that the blood work on all three men showed extraordinarily high levels of oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter. It has recently been linked to behaviors such as bonding, trust, and anxiety.[1] Some have theorized that it plays a role in love, as well, while others have sought to profit from these associations by marketing oxytocin love and trust potions. See, for example, Vero Lab’s “Liquid Trust”

Sam and Dean head to the strip club, where they ask about the strippers described by the men: Aurora, Ariel, and Jasmine. They come up empty even as we see hapless Lenny Bristol meet up with beautiful Belle. Belle convinces Lenny to kill his infirm mother, the most important woman in his life. We see the killer at work. Belle persuades Lenny that his mother is in the way of their being together forever, and that he must bash in her brains. Lenny complies. Meanwhile, back at the strip club, Sam explains his theory to Dean that a siren, like those of Greek myth, is working the town and luring men to kill on its behalf. In classical myth, the sirens lived on an island called Siren scopuli and lured passing sailors to their death by their haunting song. Distracted sailors would scuttle their ships on the rocks surrounding the island.[2] Both the melody and the words of the sirens’ song were enchanting. It was designed to impart wisdom and to cause a quickening of the spirit.

In Greek myth, sirens were composite creatures featuring the head of a female and the body of a bird, likely associating the beautiful voices of the sirens with the singing of birds. Siren origin varies depending upon the source. Some sources describe them as springing from the blood of Achelous, after Achelous was injured in battle with Heracles. Other sources credit them as being the daughters of Phorcys and Terpsichore, the muse of dancing. Still others describe them as the punished playmates of Persephone, turned into half-birds by Demeter when they failed to interfere with Persephone’s abduction by Hades.[3] Over time, sirens gradually began to be described as more human and less bird, with their allure increasingly stemming from their physical appearance rather than their song. Eventually, they lost the association with birds entirely and instead became associated with mermaids. In certain languages, the word for mermaid still shows this connection.[4] In Supernatural, the siren’s true physical appearance is neither that of bird nor fish. More than anything, it looks like nosferatu.

Just as sirens’ physical description and origin story has varied over time, so too has their name and number. Homer refers to two sirens in The Odyssey[5], and only one – (Himeropa (“arousing face”)) – by name, while others refer to as many as four: Thelchtereia (“enchantress”), Aglaope (“glorious face”), and Peisinoe (“seductress”), or, in Italy, Parthenope (“virgin”), Leucosia (“white goddess”), and Ligeia (“bright-voiced”). Supernatural takes a more comedic approach: its siren masquerades as strippers named Aurora, Belle, Jasmine, and Ariel – the Disney Princesses (the last of whom, incidentally, was a mermaid renowned for her beautiful singing voice).

With a bit of Bobby-assisted research, the boys learn that they will need the blood of one of the siren’s victims if they hope to defeat it, as “real” Sirens must be hoisted by their own petard[6]. Specifically, they must be dispatched using a bronze dagger coated with the blood of a victim presently under the siren’s own spell. Pretty specific. The sirens of myth were not quite so difficult to avoid or defeat – there were any number of ways to get around them. In The Odyssey, upon Circe’s advice and Odysseus’ order, Odysseus’ men used wax to plug their ears. Odysseus chose not to deafen himself, but instead tied himself to the mast of his ship so as not to be lured by the sirens but so that he could still hear their song. In another myth, the music of Orpheus helped the Argonauts avoid sirens. Jason is advised by Chiron to escape the sirens with the assistance of Orpheus, who is able to strum his lyre and sing a song so beautiful that it drowns out the competing song of the sirens. For some reason, even after Sam and Dean deduce that they are dealing with a real siren, they take no precautions at all. Perhaps they don’t expect to fall victim, the hunter becoming the hunted. To take a line from T.S. Eliot out of context, “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me.”[7] Fortunately, Bobby’s timely arrival at the end of the episode saves Sam and Dean anyway.

Sam and Dean head back to the Medical Center, where they encounter Special Agent Nick Monroe. Agent Monroe challenges Sam and Dean’s fake FBI credentials, but they are a step ahead as Sam gives Agent Monroe a business card bearing the phone number of Assistant Director Bobby. Bobby chews out Nick for questioning Sam and Dean’s jurisdiction. Sam and Dean decide to divide and conquer. Dean takes Agent Monroe back to the strip club, while Sam meets again with Dr. Roberts. Dean and Nick hit it off, talking of cars and music, while back at the medical center Sam and Dr. Roberts hit it off as well: Dr. Roberts comes on strong, and she and Sam wind up having sex. As Dean later points out, she is very much Sam’s type. Dean suspects her as the siren and, once he learns that she has seduced Sam and that Sam may be under her spell, he decides that he must take on the siren without Sam’s help. He calls Bobby for backup and then enlists the aid of Agent Monroe. Together, Dean and Monroe canvass the town, looking for Doctor Roberts. They find her that evening entering a cocktail lounge, but Dean learns too late that Agent Monroe is the siren. Poor Dean has not been able to catch a romantic break lately. First, (in “Criss Angel is a Douchbag”) he gets punk’d by a few geriatric magicians and is sent to The Chief for a little S&M. Then, in this episode, he tries to flirt with attractive Dr. Cara Roberts but is “c-blocked,” at least from his perspective, by his own brother. To make matters worse, although he’s finally involved in an investigation concerning strippers and alluring beautiful women, Dean does not get the benefit of the attention of a Disney Princess come to life. Instead, the siren manifests itself as a young brother-type. It’s interesting, because it shows that although Dean fashions himself a Lothario, the love he craves more than anything is the familial love and attention of a brother, not that of a woman. However, the brother of his dreams is not a doppleganger of Sam; it’s just some outwardly ordinary guy who is into cars and music. The differences between Sam and Agent Nick Monroe are telling. By observing how the siren manifests to Dean and looking at the differences between Sam and Agent Monroe we can deduce how Dean truly feels about Sam. During Dean’s absence in Hell, Sam installed an iPod mount in the Metallicar. Agent Monroe never would have done such a thing. Dean asks Agent Monroe to accept something at face value and just believe Dean, and Agent Monroe says that he does. Dean finds this “refreshing.” Sam keeps secrets from Dean. This rankles Dean, who points out that in the past they never would have kept secrets and always would have had each other’s backs. Agent Monroe keeps no secrets from Dean; he shares every lead with him. Of course, it turns out that Agent Monroe is keeping a huge secret from Dean; that he is really the siren, and the leads he provides to Dean are really subterfuge designed to keep Dean from suspecting the truth. Dean, in his love-addled haze, doesn’t see this.

Dean, under the siren’s spell, is convinced that he can not trust Sam any longer and that he must kill Sam. Sure enough, when Sam arrives back at the hotel, Dean puts a blade to Sam’s throat and is fully prepared to cut to kill. Instead, the siren decides to pit Sam and Dean against each other, seducing Sam and telling the two entranced boys to fight it out. The survivor will get to stay with the siren forever. The boys do their best to kill each other, but Bobby arrives just in the nick of time. He nicks Dean’s arm with a bronze dagger, and then throws the dagger at Nick. The siren dead, the boys move on.

For my money, this was one of Supernatural’s best episodes thus far this season. After first watching, I was ready to give it a solid 4 Metallicars. Now, having rewatched, I’m going to give it 5 out of 5. Here’s why I’m bumping it up a Metallicar: I think the episode is intentionally vague as to whether Cara is a siren or not. I didn’t catch that the first time around. On first watching, I was feeling all proud of myself for immediately being suspicious of Cara. I was spotting what I thought were clues left and right. The fact that she had only been in town for two months. The hyacinths she had in her office. Her rather blatant seduction of Sam. Her deceased former husband. Her night-time visit to Lou’s Cocktail Lounge. All of the clues that the writers so carefully laid, I bought into. Therefore, I was pleasantly blindsided when Agent Monroe turned out to be the siren. It wasn’t until I watched again that the thought struck me that just because Agent Monroe is a siren doesn’t mean that Cara isn’t one, as well. Sam and Dean discuss that sirens are generally solitary, and so the brothers assume that they are looking for one woman and we, the audience, are lead to think there is just one siren at work. Just as the number of sirens in classical myth is questionable, I think the number of sirens in this episode is questionable, too. On rewatch, the dialog of the episode seems crafted very carefully and deliberately to leave the possibility open. Sam decides not to say goodbye to Cara before leaving, but I suspect that the brothers left Bedford, Iowa, with one siren still at work. Had Sam decided not to “love ‘em and leave ‘em,” and had he returned to see Cara again, he’d find himself acting on Cara’s demand. Instead, he ultimately triumphed by choosing to drive off with Dean to points unknown.

Again: 5 out of 5 Metallicars. March can’t come soon enough.

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[1]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin

[2]. (Virgil V, 846; Ovid XIV, 88)

[3]. (Ovid V, 551). See http://www.pantheon.org/articles/s/sirens.html

[4]. e.g. Spanish, French, Italian, Polish or Portuguese, where the word for mermaid is siren, sirena, syrena and sereia, respectively.

[5]. The Odyssey, Book 12 [36] (as translated by A. T. Murray) “Then queenly Circe spoke to me and said: `All these things have thus found an end; but do thou hearken as I shall tell thee, and a god shall himself bring it to thy mind. To the Sirens first shalt thou come, who beguile all men whosoever comes to them. Whoso in ignorance draws near to them and hears the Sirens’ voice, he nevermore returns, that his wife and little children may stand at his side rejoicing, but the Sirens beguile him with their clear-toned song, as they sit in a meadow, and about them is a great heap of bones of mouldering men, and round the bones the skin is shrivelling. But do thou row past them, and anoint the ears of thy comrades with sweet wax, which thou hast kneaded, lest any of the rest may hear. But if thou thyself hast a will to listen, let them bind thee in the swift ship hand and foot upright in the step of the mast, and let the ropes be made fast at the ends to the mast itself, that with delight thou mayest listen to the voice of the two Sirens. And if thou shalt implore and bid thy comrades to loose thee, then let them bind thee with yet more bonds.”

[6]. To be harmed by one’s own plan to harm another. The phrase is perhaps most famously used by Shakespeare in Hamlet. Hamlet literally kills the messenger by intercepting and re-writing his death warrant to instead name Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the unfortunate messengers that brought the warrant to him. The phrase dates back, however, to medieval siege warfare. A petard is a type of bomb. Engineers would dig trenches next to enemy battlement gates, place a petard in the trench, and then use a hoisting engine to lift the bomb over the gate, hopefully to explode on the other side. On occasions when the bomb exploded prematurely, killing the engineer, the engineers were said to have been hoisted by their own petard.

[7]. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot, 1917, a poem which begins with an epigraph taken from Dante’s Inferno, more specifically from a meeting between Dante and Guido da Montefaltro, who was damned to the Eighth Circle of Hell for providing false counsel to the Pope. The meeting between Dante and Guido takes place following Dante’s meeting with Ulysses (Odysseus), who is condemned to Hell as well.