Episode Details

Supernatural Season 7, Episode 3, The Girl Next Door recap 🦊 After escaping a Leviathan-run hospital and three weeks of telenovelas at Rufus' cabin, Sam sneaks off to work a case alone, and it leads him straight back to his first teenage crush, Amy (Jewel Staite from Firefly), who also happens to be a kitsune, on Denim-wrapped Nightmares, a Supernatural rewatch podcast. Plus, this one was directed by Jensen Ackles!

The episode opens with Dean high on morphine in Sioux Falls General, a countdown, and a VERY loud leg reset. Bobby (all cleaned up in a suit) busts the boys out in a hotwired ambulance, just steps ahead of Dr. Gaines and his head nurse. Three weeks later, Dean is hooked on a telenovela, Sam is quietly grounding himself through his hallucinations, and a newspaper headline sends Sam out on a solo hunt. Flashbacks take us to 1998, when teen Sam tracked a kitsune and met a girl at the library who'd change everything.

Episode Highlights:

• Bobby's reassuring little face pat: you got this, kid
• Dean and Bobby, devastated over Ricardo in their telenovela
• Dean cutting off his own cast with a circular saw (typical)
• A My Bloody Valentine commercial on the motel TV (Jensen plug, anyone?)
• Sam's FBI alias: Lars Ulrich
• Teen Sam asking his big brother how to talk to girls
• Young Sam saving Amy from a couple of creeps, and Amy's freaks speech
• The kitsune claw effect (subtle, but so cool)
• Dean, Amy, and a choice that broke our hearts (we guess that pre Bloodlust Dean is back)
• A very Kill Bill ending

The verdict: written by Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin and directed by Jensen Ackles, who gave us a poster-worthy low-angle shot of Bobby at the gas station and a camera that rides right out of the morgue drawer. But the choppy flashbacks didn't give us enough time to care about Sam and Amy. We wanted more of their bond, less of teen Sam researching.

In the lore segment, we dig into the kitsune of Japanese folklore: how a fox grows up to nine tails (one every 100 years), becomes a golden, heavenly tenko at 1,000, serves as a messenger of Inari, shapeshifts into beautiful women, and possesses people who wrong it. Plus, its weaknesses: dogs, too much sake, and losing its hoshi no tama, the glowing star ball holding its soul. (Bonus points for the Lovecraft Country shout-out.)

"You know what I find? Plain old people taste fine, but everything's better with cheese." – Chet, the credit card Leviathan

Your turn, hunters: Was Dean right? And would YOU fall for the white coat effect? Tell us in the Spotify comments, leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts (it's how new hunters find us), or send us fan mail. Bonus points for fandom fun facts we missed.

Sources:

• https://supernatural.fandom.com/wiki/The_Girl_Next_Door
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
• https://sakura.co/blog/what-is-a-kitsune-japans-shapeshifter

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Denim-wrapped Nightmares is a Supernatural rewatch podcast hosted by Berly and LA, breaking down every episode of the Winchester saga with lore deep-dives plus cast and crew interviews. Special thanks to David Fesliyan and Fesliyan Studios.

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