Further Thoughts on "Heart"

   The past few days I've been pondering "Heart" again. I've been trying to figure out how the boys cleaned up their mess at the end. Debating that also has gotten me thinking about the other side characters that were brought into the story. I've come to the conclusion that these characters, the neighbor and the boyfriend, have more significance than I had initially thought. Though we are given little to no direct information about these characters or the events after the fade-to-black, I think enough clues are given to infer a great deal.

Her neighbor, Glen: He has few lines or appearances in the episode, but those he does have are significant. We start out meeting him as the somewhat creepy friend who has a slight crush on Madison and who wears overtly religious t-shirts. When we see him again, it is when he has attacked a girl in the park, and Dean has shot him. His most significant line is (paraphrasing) "Oh, no. It's happened again." This statement, combined with his earlier characterization, leads me to several speculations. Most obviously, he had some idea about what was happening to him. I wonder if the reason Madison survived his attack was because of his feelings for her. Could he have possibly come to himself in the midst of attacking her (as he did after being shot)? He comes to see her after her boss' mysterious death. It seems he could be checking up on her because he knows he attacked her and possibly suspects that she attacked the other man.

Now, about those t-shirts. There is no real reason to have Glen wear these shirts unless we're supposed to gain some insight into his character through them. In light of Sam's comments in previous episodes about wanting to save himself by saving others, I wonder if Glen is trying to save himself through religion.

Her Ex-boyfriend, Kurt: We find out even less about Kurt than we did about Glen. Mostly we just see him following Madison around and lurking creepily. So what purpose does he serve, other than adding another character we can suspect of being a werewolf? Why is he following his ex around? Is he really just obsessed with her or is it something more? I wonder if he had seen changes in her behavior, besides her new found confidence. I think he did and began following her to keep an eye on her.

After the fade-to-black: Very little time passes from when Sam and Dean walk into the kitchen to when Sam returns and the shot rings out. We know he shot her in the heart (from Dean's statements at the episode's opening) but I can't get over the fact that she must have still been wearing his shirt. There wasn't enough time for her to have changed it. This and the amount of DNA Sam has left around her appartment over the last several days, has a high probability of causing Sam trouble with the authorities in the future. Given the boys' quick exit at the end of "Tall Tales" when there was no tell tale gun shot to tip off the authorities, I have come to the conlusion that they did not stick around to clean up their mess after shooting Madison.

What does this mean for Sam? In "The Usual Suspects," Detective Ballard basically tells Sam that the police have no reason to hold him. She did do one seemingly innocuous thing though: she gave Sam a glass of coffee, which he drank and left behind when he escaped. Now, I have watched enough cop shows over the years to know the only reason a detective gives something to a person of interest while he is being interrogated is to get either fingerprints or DNA. Either of those they can then enter into the system and see if there is anything that can be used to hold the person. I think it is a fair assumption to say that both Sam's prints and DNA are on file now. When the authorities begin investigating Madison's death, I think Sam will quickly be linked with her murder. With the death of Madison's neighbor, boyfriend, and boss, and Sam's snooping around the morgue, Sam will also become a prime suspect as the serial killer. His disappearance coinciding with the end of the murders will not help dissuade them from this.

The net result? The next time Dean and Sam have a run-in with the authorities, instead of Sam being considered relatively innocent, both brothers will be suspected serial killers.