4.18 "The Monster At The End Of This Book" review

Since I’m not living in the USA and mostly follow the series on this country’s TV, I don’t keep up with the show’s schedule. So, yeah, I’m awfully late with these reviews/recaps. But, hey, it gives me a benefit of hindsight. The batch of reviews for late Season 4 and Season 5 I’m going to post in this blog were all done this year. Thought it would be a good idea to not keep them to myself. So if anybody finds them useful, I’d be happy.

I owe an immense debt to the wonderful work of kroki-refur whose model of numbered episode reviews I shamelessly borrowed. I really love this model, as it permits both analysis and emotion, strict logic in breaking the text and digressions.

  1. This episode is a text within a text, film within a film, dream within a dream. It brilliantly satirises fans with their obsession, writers with their delusions of grandeur and, more than anything else, the show itself.

2. Steve and Dirk? These should be code names for you guys from now on!

3. The cover of the “Supernatural” book by Carver Edlund is pure wishful thinking. Sam, honey, what’s wrong with your hair? Never mind, this six-pack is definitely yours. Dean, seriously, we never knew you had such muscular arms, but where’s your leather jacket? Never mind. And why is this book a paperback? It deserves more respect! After all, it’s going to end up a modern Gospel.

4. “You guys are LARPing”. The boys’ life is truly unbelievable and reads like a book. And it was obviously so scary people were afraid to buy these books, leaving the publisher bankrupt. The curse of Supernatural, maybe? This book only had an “underground following”. Now imagine it was a best-seller…

5. Ever seen Dean actually reading a book? He can’t take his eyes off it! It’s a nice chance for him to learn what Sammy was doing while he wasn’t watching, no wonder he’s so excited.

6. The epic “slash” talk could be one of the funniest dialogues in the whole series. Dean’s arguing with a fan. Dean, wake up, you’ve got Dean Girls worshipping you. But he completely ignores them, it’s the slash fan that intrigues him most. He probably thinks it’s some maniac with a razorblade he’ll have to hunt and destroy. His incredulous expression after Sam’s “Like… “Sam/Dean”… together” is priceless. You’re such a prude, big boy. And Sam’s bitchface all through this conversation looks like he’s suddenly jealous of Dean Girls and slash fans. He’s angry and less than fascinated, as if these people have stolen his most cherished private dreams. He looks so hurt like he wants Dean to stand up and go beat them all, as offended as if some secret he kept has just been out. Yeah, out. Drama queen.

7. “It’s such a complete series”. Why doesn’t Dean want his post-Hell life documented? And why did they stop publishing “Supernatural” books after “No Rest For The Wicked” volume, but Chuck still keeps on writing them? It’s symbolic: what’s printed automatically becomes canon and history and you can’t alter these events. But all the recent events (that is, Season 4) have not been published in a book yet, they are in Chuck’s drafts only – does it mean you can still change them for the better?

8. “If only real men we so open and in touch with their feelings” – “Real men?” – “Oh… I mean, no offense. How often do you cry like that, hmm?” The publisher is a typical Dean Girl. The “real men” is an interesting pun. I think by “real men” she means “non-fictional” men rather than “masculine” men but this double meaning of “real” creates some confusion anyway. And when she asks “How often do you cry like that?”, it sounds like a very dubious compliment to both boys, especially Dean. He does cry sometimes, and is occasionally seen to be open and in touch with his feelings. It must be so embarrassing for him to realize such behaviour is something women think only book heroes practice. Real-men-don’t-cry revelation is such a blow for Dean’s already quite tortured, sensitive masculinity.

9. Chuck – all props to the actor who played this archetypal Mad Writer, a classic combination of miserablism and missionarism, a self-esteem rollercoaster, a neurotic, drink-dependent, nightmare-tortured man who happens to be a prophet. Very ironic.

10. A writer’s worst nightmare comes true: he faces his own characters and is afraid they are coming after him for revenge. Relax, Chuck, fortunately, your boys are in touch with their feelings and won’t hurt anybody knowingly. 

   

11. In the book, Chuck doesn’t use their last name, and it’s only when the boys tell him “Winchester” that he’s finally convinced they are not mad fans, but the real prototypes of his characters. If a book’s protagonists lack surnames, they are automatically perceived as fictional archetypes rather than real people – in this case, as stereotypical, brave, brawny, brainy hunters who come and go in and out of narrative from and into nowhere. Giving them last names would personalize these characters and make them real, and Chuck’s obviously not so keen on this idea.

12. By the way, if he knows their life in the books, and even out of it, maybe he knows their life before the books, too? Does Chuck write only their “together” actions? He doesn’t write everything he sees and misses out certain things we see in the show (Sam’s blood drinking, for instance) – then are these things really real? Can they be crossed out, mended? If he may choose not to put them down, then Sam and Dean may not do them, can cope with them?

13. And, seriously, we must have been underestimating Dean’s reading competence all this time. I mean, first it’s “The Odyssey”, now it’s Vonnegut, so maybe next season we’ll learn Dean is a big fan of Kafka or something?

14. The comic scenes (“TOREADOR” motel turning into the “  RE D” motel, the bridge collapsing just before they are going to leave the city  and literally cutting all the ways out for them; Dean leaving Sam alone in the motel room telling him to behave) somehow remind of the “bad luck” situation in the “Bad Day At Black Rock” episode. Only this time, Dean, you’re in for it just like Sam, man.

15. And, Dean, it’s a very clever idea to advise your brother to watch some porn when in a few hours’ time he’ll have to try and turn down a seductive demon woman’s sexual advances.

16. It’s good to learn that Sam’s blood addiction “scares the hell” out of him. But sad to see he has nobody to share this fear with but Chuck.

17. Sam thinks Dean is weak and won’t be able to stop the Apocalypse. He sees that the angels put a Saviour’s load on his brother’s shoulders and expect him to do something beyond his powers, so, naturally, Sam wants to share this responsibility with him. He’s lived with this sense of a mission for quite a while, and now he’s also better prepared for it. The mission demons planned for him in early seasons was destructive, so he wouldn’t accept it. Finally, now there’s a good task in store, and he wants to take this burden off Dean, take the pain for him, but the only trouble is neither Dean nor angels would recognize his eagerness, mistaking it for evilness. They don’t trust him and think he wants to mess things up, while all he wants is to help. If Sam ever asks his brother to let him give him a hand (let alone substitute him), Dean won’t let him risk his life anyway. That’s the drama: for some reason, each of them is hell-bent to deal with whatever hard task life gives him on his own because they both want to keep each other safe. But they fail to see that (a) their tasks are basically just the same, and (b) it’s only when they act together that they can cope with these tasks and, as a result, keep one another away from harm. God, you’d better be in touch with your logic, our touchy-feely boys.

18. Sam says to Chuck that Dean is not being Dean these days. Right, these days Dean tries to escape the destiny rather than face it. Unlike Sam, who’s making plans behind Dean’s back again, and it frustrates Dean, so he slams the door in exasperation and goes out to pray. Dean wants to chase the demonic temptress away from Sam, while Sam obviously yearns to kill her and can’t wait for the face-to-face meeting. Sam’s being a devil-may-care one, while Dean’s uncharacteristically cautious. They’ve reversed their roles.

19. The “Supernatural” books are gonna be the Winchester Gospels in the future? Wow. But, honestly, this show has already become a gospel for millions of fans.

20. Oh, how clever of Castiel to give Dean the exact clue how to chase Lilith away without telling it directly. He still doesn’t want to interfere with the heavenly destiny, but even this indirect advice shows how deeply he’s involved with humans in his charge. And, Sam, it’s your brother’s smart scheme that helped you get out of the battle with Lilith safe, admit.

21. Lilith’s offering Sam a deal (they give away their lives and she stops breaking the seals), but he won’t take it. Probably the only really clever thing he does in this situation. No, it’s Dean’s job to play with deals. It goes to show how depressed Dean is when, later on their way out of the city, he wonders if it would have been worthwhile to have accepted it. 

22. It’s interesting that only humans can challenge their destiny. Neither heavenly, nor hellish beings would rebel against it (apart from Lucifer himself, maybe). Even Lilith, the mightiest demon that she is, accepts the fact that she is going to die soon.

Retrospectively, she was probably offering Sam an alternative scenario. Like, you die and won’t bother anyone on this planet anymore, and I stay alive but totally reduce my apocalyptic activities, and if there’s no one able to kill me, then the last seal is safe, and Lucifer stays in his cage and no Armageddon follows. Was Lilith somehow jealous of Lucifer?  

23. Dean, why would you let Lilith escape, warning her the archangel’s going to destroy her? OK, I guess you’re not to blame here, it’s just that the writers couldn’t trigger Apocalypse four episodes earlier than necessary. Still, could an archangel really kill Lilith, if later we find out it’s only Sam who’s capable of that? Does it make Sam an archangel?