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1.08 – Bugs
1.08 – Bugs
Writers: Rachel Nave, Bill Coakley
Director: Kim Manners
First aired: Tuesday November 8, 2005
After a construction worker is killed by insects burrowing into his brain, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) investigate the town’s history and find that the new housing development is being built on sacred Indian land. The Indians put a curse on the land after their reservation had been ravished and destroyed. Sam and Dean must find a way to survive and kill the deadly swarm of bees, locusts, spiders and beetles.
The episode was written by Rachel Nave & Bill Coakley and directed by Kim Manners.
RECAP
The mystery
A gas worker digging at a new housing development hears a strange buzzing from the ground. When he investigates, he falls through the ground and breaks his ankle. While his partner gets some rope to pull him out, beetles swarm all over him – even into his eyes, nose and mouth. When his partner returns with the rope, the man is dead – his brains were eaten by bugs.
House hunting
When the guys investigate the sinkhole, Sam finds several beetles, but Dean is unimpressed. They decide to check out the open house in the new neighborhood. They’re greeted by Larry, the developer – he liked the development so much his family was the first to move in! Sam gets the hard sell from Linda, the real estate agent and another resident. Dean is surprised to see a jar full of bugs in the house, which Larry disapprovingly attributes to his son, Matt. Sam sees Matt setting a tarantula crawling toward Linda to scare her. Larry chastises Matt, while Sam and Dean look on. Sam remembers their dad being equally harsh with him, but Dean thinks he’s overreacting.
Buzzing
The guys find out others have died in the area – from bee stings. They decide to test out the facilities by squatting in an unused house for the night. Linda takes a shower – and is interrupted by a swarm of spiders. She freaks and smashes through the shower door, but she can’t escape. She dies. The guys find spider corpses when they investigate her house. Later, the guys see Matt getting off the school bus and heading away from his house. They follow him into the woods, where he’s again looking at bugs. He tells them he’s tracking insects for an AP science project, and that the bugs are acting weird. He leads them to a grove buzzing with insect life. Dean pokes at a mound of worms, which collapses. When Dean probes the ground, he finds a skull.
Family dynamics
Sam and Matt bond over being misunderstood by their respective fathers. Sam tells Matt to hang on for two years until he gets to escape to college. Dean is incredulous – Sam should tell him to stick with his family! Later, Sam confronts Dean – he knows Dean is upset about what he’s been saying about their father, but Dad was always disappointed in him. He wanted a normal life, and Dad didn’t approve. Dean tells Sam that’s not the case – Dad was worried about him, and always swung by Stanford to check up on him when he was in the area. Sam is incredulous – why didn’t their dad every contact him? You can dial a phone too, responds Dean.
Bones
The guys take the skull they found to the university, where an anthropology professor identifies it as about 170 years old and Native American. At a nearby Indian reservation, the guys hear about a massacre that took place when the US Calvary relocated a tribe. The attack took place over six nights in the valley where the housing development now stands. The Calvary killed the entire tribe, and the chief cursed the ground, saying nature would rise up against any white man who tried to occupy the land, and visit six days worth of death on the interlopers. On the night of the sixth day, non survive. The guys figure the bugs are exacting revenge for the massacre – and that they’ll be mounting their final attack tonight.
Cursed
You don’t break a curse – you get out of its way. Larry and his family are the only people left in the development, so Dean lies about a gas leak to get them to get out. Larry isn’t buying it. Sam calls Matt, who is already freaked out by the weird insect behavior. He agrees to try to get his family out. Dean warns him to lie, but Matt tells his dad the truth. Larry is livid. The guys try to get them to leave, but it’s too late – the insects swarm. Now they have no choice but to outlast the swarm, and hope the curse expires as sunrise. They run into the house and try to stop up all the cracks, but bees work their way through the fireplace. Dean finds some bug spray, which he uses as a flame thrower to keep the bugs at bay while they shut themselves in the attic. Termites chew through the roof, and insects keep attacking. The people huddle under the eaves and spray the bugs until sunrise, when the insects depart. Everyone survives.
The aftermath
The government closes down the development while they investigate the bones, and Larry pledges no one will live there. Even though he’s lost a lot of money, he’s happy that he’s finally bonded with his son. As for Matt, he throws away his bug samples – insects freak him out now. Sam admits that he wants to find their dad, so he can apologize for past transgressions.
GUEST STARS
 Andrew Airlie as Larry Pike imdb.com | gallery |
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 Michael Daingerfield as Dustin Burwash imdb.com | gallery |
Jim Byrnes as Professor imdb.com | gallery |
Jimmy Herman as Joe White Tree imdb.com | gallery |
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Mi-Jung Lee |
IMAGE GALLERY
Official Episode Stills:
Episode Screen Caps:
MUSIC
“Rock of Ages” by Def Leppard,
“No One Like You” by the Scorpions
QUOTES
Sam: Well, Dad never treated you like that, you were perfect. He was all over my case. You don’t remember?
Dean: Well, maybe he had to raise his voice, but sometimes you were out of line.
Sam: Right! Right, like when I said I’d rather play soccer than learn bow hunting.
Dean: Bow hunting’s an important skill!
Dean: Growing up in a place like this would freak me out.
Sam: Why?
Dean: The manicured lawns, “How was your day, honey?” I’d blow my brains out.
Sam: There’s nothing wrong with normal.
Dean: I’d take our family over normal any day.
Dean: Kinda hungry for a little barbeque. How about you? (Sam glares at him) What, we can’t talk to the locals?
Sam: And the free food’s got nothing to do with it?
Dean: Of course not, I’m a professional!
Dean: Hunting’s our day job. And the pay is crap.
Sam: Yeah, but hustling pool, credit card scams. It’s not the most honest thing in the world, Dean.
Dean: Well let’s see. Honest…fun and easy. (pause) It’s no contest. Besides, we’re good at it, it’s what we were raised to do.
Sam: Yeah, well, how we were raised was jacked.
Dean: (after winning at gambling) Work, work work. No time to spend my money.
Sam: Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
Dean: Huh? (confused)
Sam: Human Mad Cow Disease.
Dean: Mad Cow…. wasn’t that on Oprah?
Sam: You watch Oprah?
(Dean looks embarrassed)
Sam: The question is, why bugs and why now?
Dean: That’s two questions.
Dean: Hmm…looks like there’s only room for one. You want to flip a coin?
Sam: Dean, we have no idea what’s down there.
Dean: All right. I’ll go if you’re scared. Scared?
Sam: Flip the damn coin!
Dean: Call it in the air, chicken. (lips coin)
Sam: (catches coin) I’m going…don’t drop me.
Dean: So you found some beetles in a hole in the ground. That’s shocking, Sam.
Dean: (towel wrapped around his head) This shower is awesome.
Larry: Let me just say. We accept home owners of any race, religion, color or…sexual orientation.
Dean: We’re brothers.
Real Estate Agent: We accept home owners of all race, religion, color, or sexual orientation.
Dean: Right. Um, I’m going to go talk to Larry. Okay, Honey? (smacks Sam on the butt)
TRIVIA
There is no “Oasis Plains” in Oklahoma.
Right after Sam has been in the hole, he and Dean are talking in the car. Sam talks and you see they drive by a pickup truck, Dean talks, and when Sam talks again they drive by the exact same truck at the exact same spot.
When Dean and Sam are at Linda’s house, Dean bends down to pick up a towel that is on the floor and a whole bunch of spiders fly out of it. You can tell the spiders are rubber because they kinda bounce of the floor a bit when they land.
They were in the attic fighting off the bees and yet no one got a single bee sting.
It was raining for two days and yet when they are walking through the woods with Matt, there is no mud. The ground isn’t even wet. It can’t be very warm since they are wearing jackets. It’s unlikely the ground dried given that.
They were really dealing with real bees in this episode. However Jared and Jensen had to wear normal clothes. Yes, they did get stung. Jensen got stung first and Jared laughed at him, but then Jared sealed his fate. He went to sit down, and then he got a bee sting on his bottom.
The town of Oasis Plains is a fictional town in Oklahoma.
ALLUSIONS
Dean: Yeah, the whole Timmy-Lassie thing.
Lassie was a Emmy-winning TV show based on a boy (Timmy), the profound connection between him and his collie (Lassie) and his ability to come to the aid of those in trouble.
Sam: You watch Oprah?
The Oprah Winfrey Show is a long-running daytime talk show with many celebrity guests. The topics on the show are mainly geared towards women — hence Sam’s astonishment with Dean being familiar with the show.
Dean: Like Willard?
1971 movie (remade in 2003) about a lonely man who uses his unusual bond with the rats he lives with to exact revenge on the coworkers who put him down.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
The victim is first diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which is a rare and uncurable condition that degenerates brain matter. It is also related to BSE, commonly known as mad cow disease, which is why Sam refers to CJD as “human mad cow disease”.
Dean: (to Sam) You’re like the blonde chick in The Munsters.
Marilyn Munster was the blonde-haired, all-American member of the Munster family, a family of monsters, and therefore considered herself the freak.
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