7.04 Defending Your Life

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Title Defending Your Life
Episode # Season 7, Episode 4
First aired October 14, 2011
Directed by Bob Singer
Written by Adam Glass
On IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1995119/
Outline
Monster Osiris
Timeline
Location(s) Dearborn, Michigan
[[{{{prevep}}}|« Previous Episode]] | [[{{{nextep}}}|Next Episode »]]

Synopsis

Sam and Dean travel to Dearborn, Michigan, for a case. Posing as FBI agents, they enter the crime scene of a man who was hit by a car and killed... on the tenth floor of his apartment building. After scanning Matthew Hammond's apartment for EMF, they conclude that a ghost is responsible and search for other clues. They find red dirt on the ground, a ten-year chip from Alcoholics Anonymous, and bank statements with a recurring charge to a place called Jane's.

Sam speaks to a woman who knew Matthew from Alcoholic's Anonymous. She tells him that Matthew—ten years sober—called her from Neil's Tavern, about to fall off the wagon. She met him there and talked him out of drinking again, but she doesn't know what caused his near relapse. Meanwhile, Dean goes to Jane's, a florist, and learns that Matthew had monthly deliveries of flowers sent to Elizabeth Duren. He also paid for three years' worth of deliveries in advance just a few days ago. He asks for her address, and is given the location of her grave: Elizabeth Duren died ten years ago at the age of ten when her then neighbor, Matthew Hammond, backed up over her on her bike. It was ruled an accident, but they suspect that Matthew was drunk and that his guilt is why he stopped drinking. They dig up Elizabeth's grave and salt and burn her bones to put her spirit to rest.

After taking care of Elizabeth, however, another local man dies in an unexplainable way. Christopher Fisher, a man who was convicted of running a dog fighting ring years ago, was found ripped to shreds in a diner bathroom by a dog that nobody saw or heard. Dean says that the man deserved to be killed by a spectral dog looking for revenge, but Sam is adamant that Christopher was a changed man who volunteered and raised money for dog shelters. At Sam's insistence, they go to the morgue, where Sam finds red dirt on Christopher's shoes that is identical to the dirt he found in Matthew's apartment.

The red dirt leads Sam and Dean to a nearby apple farm. Before they can get there, however, they're stopped in the road by a man named Warner who jumps in front of their car. They take Warner back to their motel room and learn that he was recently released from jail, where he served thirty years for killing a liquor store owner and his wife during a robbery. When he was leaving Neal's Tavern the other night he was jumped, and when he woke up, he was in a strange courtroom. It was in a barn at the apple orchard, and there were "weird symbols." While there, a judge put him on trial and sentenced him to death. Sam asks him to draw the symbols and then is pulled outside by Dean, who has reservations about helping Warner—after all, he's a murderer. Sam tells Dean that they have no right to judge others, but Dean isn't convinced. He leaves to check out Neil's Tavern, where both Matthew and Warner were before their deaths.

While Dean goes to the bar, Sam gets the sketch of the "weird symbols" from Warner and tells him that they have to go back to the barn where he was on trial. Warner refuses, so Sam sets him up in a chair surrounded by a ring of salt before leaving, already on the phone to Bobby for a consult on the symbols. When he arrives at the orchard, he goes to the large red barn that Warner described, but it's empty except for hay and a little red dirt. When he's about to leave, he gets a call from Bobby, who tells him that the symbols were Egyptian, from the Book of the Dead, and that they're dealing with Osiris, an Egyptian God who can see directly into a human heart. He weighs a person's guilt, and if he finds more than "a feather's worth," he kills them. Sam wants to hunt him down, but Bobby tells him that he and Dean need to get away before Osiris hones in on them.

Meanwhile, Dean is at Neal's Tavern flirting with an attractive bartender named Mia. She asks him what's weighing on him, and he reveals that he's feeling bad about having to go behind someone's back while on the job. She sympathizes, but tells him not to feel bad if it's something that he had to do. He slams back a few more hard drinks, but then switches to beer when she alludes that she's getting off work soon. Later, when he's outside the bar and psyching himself up for their "date," he gets a call from Sam. He picks up, but is snatched by Osiris before he can say anything. Worried, Sam continues to call Dean's cell phone until it's picked up by the bartender. Apparently, Dean's cell phone was left on the ground outside the bar, and she heard it ringing while she waited for him. Sam gets there quickly and questions her, and when he looks where she found Dean's phone, he sees more red dirt.

Back at the orchard, Sam approaches the barn, where he finds Dean chained to a chair in front of Osiris. Osiris can sense Sam's presence outside the barn, and invites him in. When Sam learns that Dean is going on trial, he insists on defending him and then objects to the fairness of the hearing. Osiris has little patience for him, but agrees to limit the number of his witnesses to three. His first witness is Jo Harvelle.

Osiris questions Jo about her motives for hunting and for going on the job that lead to her death. He tries to get her to say that Dean is responsible for her death, but she refuses, and when Sam cross-examines her, he asks her if her motivation was to be like her father, who was also a hunter. She answers that yes, she had daddy issues, and that her decision to be a hunter had nothing to do with Dean.

Characters

Definitions

Music

Quotes

Dean: Check this out - A.A., ten years. Dead and sober. Double crappy.
Dean: Wait a second, do dogs even have ghosts?
Osiris: Don’t you think that your brother dragged you back into that catastrophic mess because he’d rather damn you with him than be alone?
Jo: You carry all kinds of crap you don't have to Dean. Kind of gets clearer when you're dead.

Dean: Well in that case you should able to see I am 90% crap. I get rid of that, what then?

Jo: You really want to die not knowing?
Dean: He was right you know. That dick judge - about me. You were a kid.

Jo: Not true.

Dean: You and Sam. And I just..you know...Hunters are never kids. I was never was. I didn't stop to think about it.

Trivia & References

The title of the episode Defending Your life is also the title of a 1991 movie starring Albert Brooks. In the movie, when people die they must defend their life in an afterlife court. If they can prove they have conquered their fears, they pass on to the next phase of existence. If not, their soul is sent back to Earth.
Sam (With EMF meter): It's going crazy. Some kind of ghost maybe?

Dean: With a license? A license to kill! Sam: Really?

In the James bond books and movies, his 00 assignation (he is agent 007) indicates he has a 'licence to kill'. This is a tag line through the series, and the name of both a book and a movie.
Faran Tahir, who plays Osiris, got his first speaking role on the series Midnight Caller. This was the first series on which Bob Singer (director of this episode), Jim Michaels and Phil Sgriccia worked together. Source - Jim Michaels on Twitter
Dean: It could be Christine like.
Christine is a movie about a possessed car.
Dean: So what he causes so much misery that some dog goes Cujo on him from beyond the grave?

Bob Singer, who directed this episode, was a producer on the movie Cujo.

This may be a double reference to Stephen King - Misery and Cujo were the names of two of his novels. A third novel, Christine, was also referenced in the episode.
Dean: That sounds right - get vengeance on the guy that Michael Vicked you.
Michael Vick is an NFL quarterback who was convicted on charges related to dog-fighting.
Osiris: Quit squirming, Mr. Winchester. They're Houdini-proof.
Harry Houdini was a famous magician and escape artist.
Dean: I'd rather talk about your Bukowski-schtick at the bar.

Charles Bukowski was an American writer known for being a barfly.

Dean previously mentioned Bukowski in 5.22 Swan Song.
Gods from other religions previously appeared as adversaries to Sam and Dean in 5.19 Hammer Of The Gods. However, Osiris was not one of the gods to appear in that episode. See the Deities category for a complete guide to all the gods that have appeared.
Sam: Objection!

Osiris: grounds? Witnesses being called without prior notice.
Dean: Good One!
Sam: I saw it on The Good Wife.

The Good Wife is a legal drama on CBS that started in 2009.
Dean: Enough Ally McBeal.
Ally McBeal was a 1990s legal comedy-drama by David E Kelley.
Dean's line "I didn't want to do it alone" recalls this exchange in the 1.01 Pilot:

Dean: I can’t do this alone.
Sam: Yes, you can.

Dean: Yeah, well... I don’t want to.
When Osiris dies, his glowing eyes recall those of the Gou'ald from the Stargate TV series. The Gou'ald were an alien race who masqueraded on Earth as Egyptian gods.
Trivia tweeted by EP Jim Michaels during the episode:
  • Two different 2 highly trained attack dogs were used.
  • the farm where the barn is belongs to one of the Supernatural Dolly grips Steve Gilmour.
  • Some of the Eqyptian statues are now on the front lawn of location manager Russ "The Movie God" Hamilton's home for Halloween!
  • The explosion in 5.10 Abandon All Hope "went way too large and we had to rebuild part of a backlot for almost $20,000..."

Minutiae

Jim Michaels was a producer on Pee-Wee's Playhouse.
The first victim Matthew Hammond had a number of deer related items in his apartment including a postcard, a drawing on his pinboard, and a plaque on the wall. Unfortunately no Deer's Head was spotted.
There is a rainbow sticker on the door of Jane's the Florist, suggesting that Sam's suggestion "you go hit on Jane" was likely to have been unsuccessful if Dean did.
Christopher Fisher, when he's trying to escape the spectral German Shepherd, runs past McOwen's Irish Pub, which featured in 6.14 Mannequin 3: The Reckoning. It was the bar that Isabel Brown and her coworkers at the factory frequented.

Sides, Scripts & Transcripts

Promotion

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