1. This episode was scary and beautiful.
2. They put him in this “panic room”, which is a spacious basement with just one gridded circular window with a vent up in the ceiling. There’s also a small peep hole in the door through which they talk and it feels like a door, literally and metaphorically, is between them now.
3. Like kroki-refur pointed out in her review of this episode, this setting looks like Hell. It’s below the ground etc. Of course, it’s a personal Hell that’s in Sam’s mind. It’s interesting that people from the overground can also break down in this private Hell.
4. Just a random thought: when he kills demons, where are they supposed to go? Back to Hell? Or to some hell below Hell? Or to a Hell’s Heaven, if they have served well?
5. Sam’s angle is he drinks blood because he has to, not because he wants to, as it helps him fight the evil and that matters more than his own safety. Dean’s angle is Sam is turning into an addict, and no amount of evil killed could justify his self-abuse. The truth is, as usual, in-between. Sam does do it for good reasons, but he’s becoming an uncontrollable addict nevertheless.
6. Sam’s got a hero complex, he’s hell-bent to sacrifice his mind, soul and body in exchange for the happiness of the human race and the world in general. To kill himself in honour of peace on Earth. “Even if I should die, everybody else remains” is his credo. Dean’s credo is “let everyone die, but he should stay”. He ought to stop Sam from killing himself. I’d argue that given a choice of the world as a happier place at the cost of his brother’s life, or the world in danger but Sam alive, he’d go for the second option without a doubt. And he’s not being selfish: what matters to him is not Sam being by his side but rather Sam being safe and sound even if he himself dies. He’s willing to take this saviour mission off Sam’s shoulders. The trouble is, Sam’s unwilling to give it away. But Dean accepts this mission nevertheless – straight from the angels. So that now the man’s got two responsibilities at once: to stop the world from going mayhem and to stop his brother from his sacrificial death-wish. And while everybody is ready to support him in this first, global mission, the second, personal one he has to tackle alone. Many people and non-people (and Sam more than anybody else) doubt if it’s worth it at all. But if there’s one thing Dean will be fighting for with absolute dedication, it’s this. And everyone else, should it be an angel, a demon, a human being or even Sam, can go and screw themselves if they think it futile.
7. Sam probably thinks that if his life could pay for a happier world, then Dean would also be happy in this world. Delusion, Sammy. Don’t you remember “What Is And What Should Never Be”? Dean was given a chance to spend the rest of his life in this model, perfect world, but he traded it for our drab, grey reality – because that’s where you both could be together FOR REAL. For your brother even Hell with you in it would be better than a Paradise without you. So who’s being more selfish?
8. The tragic truth is, they are both right. It’s morally right to want to sacrifice himself for a better future of other people and it’s morally right to want to save the person you love at any cost even if the world crumbles.
9. As for the apocalypse, Dean probably thinks as long as he’s got Sammy around, he’ll find ways to fight it. He’ll have to: as long as he has someone to fight for and to fight together with, he’s effectively invincible.
10. That’s the complexity of the characters: while all through the show Dean has been pictured as more of a classical Hero type, we now learn his motivations are, in fact, more personal than global. His main goal is very motherly: just to keep one human life intact, even if the war is lost.
11. Also, watching the show we grew to believe Sam has always been dependent on Dean emotionally, but really it’s the reverse – it’s Dean who can’t be happy in a world without his brother, it’s him who seems to suffer more acutely at the prospect of losing him. While Sam can really dare leave him alone and naively think it would be better for Dean to be without him.
12. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding between them that leads to delusions: Sam thinks Dean doesn’t believe his aims are good, so he doesn’t confide in Dean anymore and thinks his brother doesn’t trust him no longer and has this fixed opinion that whatever Sam does it’s because he’s going irreparably EVIL. He’s so desperate he quit trying to reassure Dean, and the only choice he’s left with is to pursue his mission on the quiet and ignore Dean’s disapproval. And it’s not that Dean doesn’t want demons exorcised and all, it’s just that he doesn’t think seals unbroken and monsters killed are worth Sam’s mental and physical health. They both have the same goals, only they dramatically disagree on how they should achieve them.
Sam: We’ll sacrifice my life and stop evil.
Dean: We’ll stop evil without sacrificing your life. We may have to sacrifice mine, but definitely not yours.
Sam: What? Dean, give me back my Apocalypse so that I can stop it!
Dean: No way, it’s mine. I will stop it.
Sam: Dean… *does the puppy eyes*
Dean: You’re too young for Apocalypse, Sammy.
Sam: Dean, I want to be a hero. A legend. You’ve already played this part. Don’t be so stingy.
Dean: Dude, you’re so arrogant.
Sam: Give me back my Apocalypse *tries to snatch it from Dean’s hands*
Dean: Nope. *hides it behind his back*
Sam: *does the bithface*
13. The claustrophobic panic room could only enhance his hallucinations. Maybe he started having them so quickly after he’s had his share of blood because he had used up most of its strength to get the demons out in that fight. That’s to say, it’s already less than two weeks that he can cope without his drug. Scary.
14. Three visions come to torture him (all male) and only one (female) comforts him. They are all his imagination, a picture of what’s inside him, his own contradictory subconscious talking to him – at once cursing and justifying him. And imagine if all the four hallucinations would come to him at once. Three would shout at him, and when the demon would start torturing Sam, “Dean” – I’d like to think so – would try to fight him away, no matter what. Sadly, this never happened, and Sam faced his visitors individually, and no one came to help him in his battles. That’s probably how he feels inside and what he thinks – rejected, alone, so that even his brother won’t save him.
15. LIGHTBULB! If Sam’s problem is in his own partly demonic blood, can’t you maybe give him a full blood transfusion to completely renew the substance in his veins? Fanfic!
16. Dean’s in a “Sophie’s Choice” situation: whether he chooses peace on Earth over his brother or vice versa, any of these choices cancel the other one, and any of the choices are going to be both moral and immoral at the same time. Still, he’s the one who’s never given a damn about destiny or social conventions (while Sam, on the contrary, tends to take all his destiny prophecies as an inevitability), so he chooses both options and will eventually try to save everything and everyone, even if it costs him his own life.
17. There was the commentary about “The Monster at the End of This Book” in kroki refur’s blog: if Chuck is compared to Salinger by his publisher, does it make Dean a Holden Caulfield?
Actually, yes. Holden Caulfield’s most coveted dream was to watch over children playing in the rye field and catch them if they are about to go over the cliff. Now this is practically Dean Winchester’s job description. He stops all these children of various ages from falling from the various cliffs on a daily basis. And there’s this one particularly naughty boy, who tries to go over this cliff regularly, so Dean has to watch over and catch his fall especially carefully (and think of 5.22). In other words, I want to nickname Sam “Phoebe”.
18. Wait, so when demons squeeze themselves into their human vessels, they change the body’s blood to demonic, too? Sorry, stupid me.
19. The demon Alastair Sam meets first looks like a projection of (a) his fear (you don’t get away with killing demons that easily); (b) his awareness of his own darkness (like, if he totally succumbs to it, he’ll become even worse than this monster); and (c) his nightmarish thoughts of Dean in Hell (how many times did he picture in his mind what sufferings Dean was going through while they were separated? Then again, now that he’s been subjected to this same pain as Dean was, he should know Dean’s stories were not “whining”). And it’s really painful that in this hallucination that is like “On The Head Of The Pin” in reverse, he has to deal with this demon alone. Back in that episode, Sam came to Dean’s rescue, but now Dean’s nowhere to be seen. The guy’s just not sure anymore Dean would want to save him from his troubles, so he won’t let him appear at this point in his hallucination. And he feels he’s shackled and can’t shake his bounds off, while in fact he’s free and nothing ties him – it’s a brilliant metaphor, of all the bounds only being in your mind.
20. Sam’s inner child is of course a moody teenager. This boy leaves off with “How can you run from what’s inside you?” But it’s also a reassuring phrase: Sam may have demonic nature inside, but there’s also this boy inside who still remembers they “wanted to be normal”, so nothing is really lost yet.
21. His “mother” (Jung would probably say it’s his “anima”) is the only vision who supports Sam, but, frankly, the advice “she” gives him is pretty dangerous. Don’t let anybody get in your way, even Dean. In a way, she’s a Siren, too: it’s the second time after “Sex And Violence” that this thought is being planted into Sam’s mind. Only this time he’s going to take it seriously. And Sam definitely acts on this advice in the episode’s ending. And it’s good that “Mary” justifies his behaviour, saying he’s fighting for justice rather than revenge. But calling Dean weak? Okay, we know Sam thinks Dean’s weak. But maybe his weakness is also his strength?
22. She also tells Sam what’s inside him is not a curse but a “gift”, or at least can be turned into one. These words echo Zachariah’s pep talk to Dean in “It’s A Terrible Life” (“You drive fast cars and fornicate with women… and it’s not a curse, it’s a gift… this path is truly in your blood…”). How does it qualify that to make Dean sure he was doing the right thing it took just a month of being a boring office clerk, and to make Sam sure he was doing the right thing it took a few hours of horrible, painful hallucinations? Anyway, they were both put into a hallucinatory, AU sort of environment. They are two, so nearly any event in one’s life gets echoed and paralleled by a mirroring, corresponding event in the other’s life.
23. Why does it have to be like that that just after his mother had soothed him, he throws himself into these grand mal seizures? And, Jared, how is it possible you make horror so beautiful, turning these contortions and suffering into something incredibly artistic?
24. Note that Sam has to be really tied down when he’s talking with the vision of Dean, who proves to be his worst nightmare. Maybe because Dean is the most real of all his hallucinations? Indeed, when you watch this scene, you also get confused at first: is it Dean or just an illusion of him? The real Dean has just been there, fighting Sam’s fit, after all.
25. The real Dean, meanwhile, has been out screaming for his angel to appear and enlighten him. These angels, they are so cunningly clever. The first time they offered him the Apocalypse stopper job (in “On The Head Of The Pin”), he refused. Then they took a short break, while teaching him an object lesson in vocation (“It’s A Terrible Life”), but didn’t insist on anything. And now they show up at the moment when Dean’s most desperate, and practically blackmail him. And their art is in making blackmail look like some sort of favour, a great reward they are giving him. Sly guys. Of course, he’ll have to accept your friggin’ mission now. He didn’t accept it back then because he felt he was too weak to carry it. But now when it so turns out that if he does, then his brother will be mostly freed from his bad destiny, he forgets he’s weak in a second, accepts it, and the strength will follow. You should really explore this natural phenomenon: Dean Winchester’s strength increases in ratio to Sam Winchester’s vulnerability. But don’t you ever use it against them.
25. Why don’t the angels want Sam as their chosen one to stop the Apocalypse? He’s strong enough, and willing. Why do they so terribly need Dean? For blood purity? They don’t want to afterwards say it was a boy with demonic blood who helped them out? But then again, if he does help to stop the disaster, I bet they’re going to mercifully accept his heroism for granted. Maybe say him a thank you. But not consider him a human being worthwhile living, anyway. Hypocrites they are, like politicians.
26. Ow! Do I mean to say the whole show is a metaphor of post-9/11 America
27. Angels don’t really value human life (cf. “The Rapture”), it doesn’t count which body they use. They don’t really value Sam – if he wants to go and blow his brains out for them, then let him do it. If he succeeds, it’s okay, if he loses – it won’t make much difference. And if he gets dangerous and gets in their way, they’ll just annihilate him. The angels are very robotic themselves, they can’t buy into the complexity of human feelings. But they are clever enough to understand how these feelings are crucial to Sam and Dean’s bond, and unscrupulous enough to manipulate these feelings. You don’t go do it, he’ll have to do it and die. The only way to make Dean the Reluctant Hero and play their games is to say if he doesn’t it will harm Sam.
28. Literary symmetry. Dean’s making a new deal. Two years after. With angels this time. But wants not Sam’s life, but his human soul back. And exchanges it for his ability to fight and obey orders rather than his own life. But you know what, these angels’ promises, they are very uncertain. Dean doesn’t even know what and when he’s supposed to do, if Sam will really be out of danger now. Some angels’ promises, unlike these of demons, come true in a twisted way.
29. Amazing ackting: Dean’s face when he says “I would die for him in a second” [but won’t let him become a monster] is simultaneously full of such sorrowful grief and doomy determination that it probably qualifies for one of Supernatural’s most intensely dramatic expressions ever. Frankly, he looks like a saint. And this look alone shows how much this character has changed. Could you imagine, looking at Season 1’s Dean, a car-loving, chick-charming, beer-drinking, joke-cracking boy, that some day he’ll be able to show such feeling?
And who made him do that? You, college boy.
Seriously, for Dean letting Sam go evil would mean his own life has failed. If he ever had a proper job, a vocation, a devotion, a project, a meaning of life, it was Sam and all that entails. Now if he were to screw it up again – .
30. It’s interesting that they are having doubts about their demon-detoxing therapy methods, as they see and hear what suffering it makes Sam go through.
31. Note that even in this desperate situation, when his trust has been so brutally abused by people he loves most, Sam’s still calling out for them, he’s screaming Dean’s name (hell, I’m sure that should he be dying violently, he wouldn’t be crying out for Mum – Dean would be the word), no matter what. It must hurt Dean so much, and it does: he flinches every time he hears Sam crying out for him.
32. Jared, you should play Jesus Christ, if only for physical resemblance.
33. Castiel, acting on his superiors’ orders, seen by neither Dean nor Sam, telekinetically unlocks Sam’s handcuffs, and sets him free. Anna, who seems to be Castiel’s conscience incarnate reproaches him, but her monologue ends abruptly with the appearance of two spooky angels who take her away. Heaven’s got their own police? Looks like the angelic government is trying to put more reins over its earth ambassadors.
34. Sam encounters Bobby as he’s making his way out of his prison, and tells the man he will be unable to kill him, and then adds that if Bobby really wants to help him, he should shoot him there and then. Sam’s sudden shift of moods from aggression to angsty desperation in this scene is amazing. It echoes many scenes in previous episodes where he asked people for it, and never received it. And the way Sam knocks Bobby unconscious with the shotgun’s butt after he’s refused his request, snaps back to his angry mode in a second and runs away feels like an almost direct quote from “Born Under A Bad Sign”. He acts like there’s a demon inside him, only this time it’s inherent and no detoxing can exorcise it. Scary? You bet.
35. It’s very reassuring Dean knows all of Sam’s wicked ways. However smart Sam is, Dean can outwit him in this hide-n-seek, can still have the upper hand and control over him. He even figures out he has to check out and follow the cars and motels Sam wouldn’t normally use, he’s totally able to decode Sam’s behaviour. So, Sam tries to turn right instead of left, but he should know that even if Dean may be weaker than him physically these days, his brains are certainly working properly and strategically and are not clouded by blood comedowns or anger, so there.
36. The Sam/Ruby scene. He tells her how wrecked his relationship with his brother is at the moment, and says that maybe they will take time to restore it after this whole thing is over. Now, Sam, how do you think you can postpone the looming conflict? You kill Lilith, stop the last seals from breaking, thus preventing the Apocalypse, and you all live happily ever after? Wishful thinking. He still cherishes some hope for a better future, but it’s rose-tinted, to put it mildly.
37. I mean, does he think when he kills Lilith he can just stop drinking blood that easily and go clean and kind again? Say “I’m sorry” to Dean, forget the scars and bruises? And the trickiest question is, what is he going to do with his demon girlfriend? Still date her (there’s no denying he did manage to have formed a dysfunctional relationship with her)? Or quit her? Do you really think it all ends up that utopically, Sam? Dream on.
38. Sam, if you hate yourself so much and want to die, why don’t you go and kill yourself instead of asking others to do it? Thing is, nobody will let him die now. The angels or the demons would inevitably bring him back for his mission. So no reason to torture himself and the people who love him with suicidal pleads, he should know it won’t work. Characteristically, even for Dean now the prospect of Sam dying looks like a smaller threat compared to him becoming evil.
39. The final talk. It’s interesting how Dean doesn’t want to have it when the demon girl is around. In fact, his agenda is to kill her, and while one suspects she could’ve easily flung him away when he assaulted her, she pretended to be weak so that Sam wouldn’t hesitate about who exactly needed help here.
After Sam has stopped him, Dean makes no more attempts to murder the girl. Sam suggests she should go away, and Dean seems to be more or less comfortable with this compromise. Sam’s totally the master of the game here. Don’t you ask why the man can’t kill his brother – he can’t even hurt the bad girl Sam wants to protect and seems to have formed a bond with. Why can’t he use his anti-demonic knife on Sam? No, he never even reaches for it.
40. While Dean’s all angsty and in butcher mode, Sam is actually glad to see him and willing to talk to him, like there was no Dean locking him in this jail. Sam’s just dragged some astounding information from Ruby, and he wants to share it with Dean. And obviously he wants Dean to praise him for being such a good infiltrator in the dark camp. He offers it to him like a gift, but Dean completely crushes it, ignoring Sam’s skill and class.
For Sam it’s all about the mission, and he does it good, and he’s self-effacing, and won’t understand why Dean is so disapproving. It hurts him. Dean’s main concern is that Sam’s destroying his life and soul on this mission, and he tells it to him straight away. When Sam tells Dean he thinks what he’s doing is all right, an exasperated Dean turns away with this look of incredulous horror in his eyes, his hand pressed to his face (just like he did in the famous “All Hell Breaks Loose II” opening scene, while he was mourning over Sam’s dead body), almost tearful. His distressed expression shows he just can’t believe the rave ideas his brother’s talking. And we should know by now that when Dean is on the verge of breaking down, something bad, something even he can’t tackle, is happening for real.
This episode starts with Sam the loser and Dean the winner, and ends up with a complete exchange of these positions.
The conversation typically resolves into a “Sex And Violence”-like fight. Dean verbally slashes Sam, Sam tries to stay calm but finally fails, they fight, only now it’s Sam who throws Dean against a glass partition, so that it ends up with Dean now lying helpless on the floor and unable to move.
And then he says the epic “If you walk out that door, don’t you ever come back”, Sam looks at him from the height of his wounded pride and angry arrogance, and walks out the door, leaving Dean crying and miserable on this floor, among the wretched furniture that feels like the ruins of their relationship.
41. I can clearly imagine fan girls screaming “Don’t, Dean!” at his words, and maybe trying to use their collective telekinetic powers to push Sam off that door – desirably, straight on the floor and into Dean’s arms, and won’t let him go until he’s forced to mutter something like “Nice joke, Dean”.
There are at least two possible “what if”s to this situation: (a) Dean doesn’t say anything at all, just stares, and Sam just can’t leave him like that = HAPPY ENDING; and (b) Dean says something else, Sam replies, Dean drags him into conversation = HAPPY ENDING.
As such, Dean’s miserably crushed male ego chose the worst words, and it all ended in tears. How come he used these John’s words, when he knew Sam’s knee-jerk reaction to them would be to go away? In the previous episode, he told Sam he was more like their dad that he could have ever been, but now Dean’s definitely changed his mind.
42. My idea is, it was his last weapon, some sort of moral ultimatum he was giving Sam when everything else failed. A chance he offered him to test his true intentions. He offers him an either me or “fiery demonic whatever” choice, and he’s really desperate, because it’s an absolute sink or swim situation. Uncharacteristically, he leaves all responsibility to Sam. Like, you decide and everything that I do will depend on that.
But the moment Sam decides on the darkside and leaves Dean in this cognitive dissonance (I bet Dean was secretly hoping Sam would stay: step towards the door, touch the handle, hesitate for a while, shake his head, then turn around with a pleading I-can’t-do-it-Dean look on his face), is when Dean takes his own responsibility back. Frankly, all through Season 4 he was trying to escape it, but not now. After Sam goes away, Dean has to take his own ultimate moral test. Logically, Sam’s choice suggests Dean should immediately cut all ties with his brother and hate him ever since. Like, okay, so now our ways are forever parted. You go kill yourself, stop the Apocalypse or turn into a monster, bathe in this demon blood of yours – I don’t care anymore. And I’ll just go on with saving people and hunting things. I won’t hunt you, but don’t you ever cross my path, or I’ll have to.
But, hell, it’s Dean Winchester, the man who gives destiny and normalcy a finger. So what does he do? I venture into the next episode’s territory here, but who cares: in the long run, and after much soul-searing pain the man is going to say anyway everybody’s expecting me to hate him, even him – but I won’t. I gave him the chance to choose between the evil and the good, and he chose evil. That’s his choice. Now my choice is, I take it and still love him and try to make him human again, and I’m forgiving him. And now it’s real forgiveness, not the fake one he used to get Sam in the trap.
43. So, Sammy, you maybe gave up on yourself, but your stubborn big brother didn’t give up on you and never will, and we’ll see who wins, got that? In conclusion: Sam, you’re a lucky bastard.
No comments:
Post a Comment