Directed by Philip Sgriccia
Written by Ben Edlund
Published in 1975, Kenneth Anger’s cult book Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood’s Darkest and Best Kept Secrets
Every word in Hollywood Babylon should be taken with a grain of salt, as should every image in the Supernatural episode from which it takes its title.
Here are the opening paragraphs. It relates.
WHITE ELEPHANTS – the God of Hollywood wanted white elephants, and white elephants he got – eight of ’em, plaster mammoths perched on mega-mushroom pedestals, lording it over the colossal court of Belshazzar, the pasteboard Babylon built beside the dusty tin-lizzie trail called Sunset Boulevard.
Griffith – the Movie Director as God – was riding high, high as he’d ever go, over Illusion City, whooshing up a hundred-foot-high elevator camera tower, giant megaphone poised to shout the command to the thousands below, the CAMERA-AH ACTION-N-N! to bring it all alive ….
Belshazzar’s Feast beneath Egyptian blue skies, spread out under the blazing Southern California morning sun: more than four thousand extras recruited from L.A. paid an unheard-of two dollars a day plus box lunch plus carfare to impersonate Assyrian and Median militiamen, Babylonian dancers, Ethiopians, East Indians, Numidians, eunuchs, ladies-in-waiting to the Princess Beloved, handmaidens of the Babylonian temples, priests of Bel, Nergel, Marduk and Ishtar, slaves, nobles, and subjects of Babylonia.
Griffith’s Vision of Babylon!
A mare’s nest of scaffolding, hanging gardens, chariot-race ramparts and sky-high elephants, a make-believe mirage of Mesopotamia dropped down on the sleepy huddle of mission-style bungalows amid the orange groves that made up 1915 Hollywood, portent of things to come.
The Purple Epoch has begun.
And there it stood for years, stranded like some gargantuan dream beside Sunset Boulevard. Long after Griffith’s great leap into the unknown his Sun Play of the Ages, Intolerance, had failed; long after Belshazzar’s court had sprouted weeds and its walls had begun to peel and warp in abandoned movie-set disarray; after the Los Angeles Fire Department had condemned it as a fire hazard, still it stood: Griffith’s Babylon, something of a reproach and something of a challenge to the burgeoning movie town – something to surpass, something to live down.
The shadow of Babylon had fallen over Hollywood, a serpent spell in code cuneiform; scandal was waiting, just out of Billy Bitzer’s camera range.
Phew! You got all that?
Intolerance, which came out in 1916, by the way, is incredible. Even better, unlike Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, from 1915, it DOESN’T feature the world being saved by the KKK. Everybody wins! I reviewed it when the restoration played in New York. Well worth seeing. I’ll get back to Intolerance in a second. I swear it relates.
(Gentle reminder and a Pep talk to myself since I do tend to go on and on: Part of the fun for me in doing these re-caps is following the tangents in my own mind. And part of the fun is also watching you all do the same, or take what I’ve written and go off on your own tangent. These are the discussion points that interest me. The show’s cinematic panache was one of the hooks for me, how it called to mind noirs, Westerns, screwballs. They play with that explicitly, with black-and-white monster movie episodes, and Looney Tunes episodes and “B” Western episodes. I almost swooned with delight when I saw Jensen Ackles in some out-take on the Season 10 gag reel swagger into the room doing a pretty good John Wayne imitation. (Ahem. I called it.) A lot of the commentary that I’ve seen out there on the show in fan forums and elsewhere is purely psychology-based, and I get that. I do. I’m fascinated by that too! It’s rich stuff. But post after post after post about PTSD and codependency and trauma gets a little old and it also creates a filter of “victim” for the characters that I think is not accurate, it’s the wrong filter. I say this as someone who came to the series late, having been drawn in by one of the Destiel fan wars whose decibel-levels reached my ears through osmosis, and my expectation before I watched even one episode is that it would be drowning in Man-Tears and Macho Pain. When “Phantom Traveler” came along and I laughed out loud, I knew I would keep watching. I’m a film critic. I try to write my reviews not as “and then this happened and then that happened” book reports. I try to examine WHY something works – or doesn’t – and how we get the story through visual information. If you only read the Tumblr posts, you’d think Supernatural never ever ever was funny. “Hollywood Babylon” presents a challenge on all of these levels, due to the sheer amount of cinematic stuff/references going on.)
It should be obvious why Episode 17 of Season 2 was named after Anger’s book. The memory of those studio lots go back a long long time. Many of the studios formed in the early decades of the 20th century are still with us, albeit in other conglomerated forms. For example, Warner Brothers was founded in 1904 as a film-distribution operation (many started that way), and the movie studio was opened in 1918. 20th Century Fox was formed in 1915 (if you believe some stories), and then in 1935 merged with Fox Film (which had actually been formed in 1915). 1915, 1935 … whatever: that studio logo has been around for 100 years. Rather extraordinary, especially in a town that doesn’t respect its history, a town devoted to make-believe, where yesterday may as well be ancient history. The studio Sam and Dean visit also has a long long memory, haunted by a tragic screen starlet of the 1930s. As Anger showed, a lot of deep dark shit went down on those studio lots.
Intolerance is four simultaneous stories of religious/social intolerance throughout history. One unforgettable sequence shows the fall of Babylon (the magnificent set described in the excerpt above).
Another connection to Supernatural: In the Castiel-backstory episode The Man Who Would Be King, his “I remember when we crawled out of the surf, I remember the turmoil of ancient times” inner monologue is interspersed with footage from Griffith’s Intolerance, the fall of the walls of Babylon. See if you can recognize some of it.
So someone on the Supernatural staff knows his Griffith and knows his Kenneth Anger. And for that, I am forever grateful.
“Hollywood Babylon” is the first “meta” episode, and the “meta” episodes have a loony mood that might turn off a newbie (it’s all inside jokes) but are love-letters to fans who will “get it”. The episodes do everything but wink directly at the audience (and in Fan Fiction Dean does turn right to the camera, with a deadpan “Are you fucking kidding me” expression.) The crew of the fake movie have the same names as the crew on Supernatural. Every line, practically, has a reference to the reality of the Supernatural show itself. It uses clips from former episodes. It turns the show inside out.
There are almost too many movie references in “Hollywood Babylon” to count, and I’m probably missing some, but here are the ones I caught: Creepshow, Metal Storm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn , Poltergeist, Boogeyman, Ghost Ship, Three Men and a Baby, Critters 3, Feardotcom. There’s also TV references, Gilmore Girls, Beverly Hillbillies (Dean and Sam are definitely stand-ins for those people, Kansas boys thrown into Hollywood), Lois and Clark. Those are just the verbal references. There are also multiple visual references to former Supernatural episodes.
But the cinematic references are just as intense, overwhelming at times, including the Gone With the Wind sunset that closes out the episode. Starkly red, achingly beautiful, and entirely fake. But romantic as hell, with Sam and Dean strolling towards it. A self-consciously iconic image. (Self-conscious in the best sense: it’s created on purpose.)
For me, that is THE image of the entire show, all 10 seasons of it. It’s the only one that really matters. If you boiled the rest of it down and poured it through a sieve, that sunset image is the one that would come through intact. It’s the dream we value and hope for FOR them. Two guys walking towards the sunset. Alive and together. Romantic, stalwart, mythic, singular, and also … fake. They’re not real people. They’re characters on a television show. That shot has it all.
Sgriccia stole a lot from Postcards From the Edge, creating illusions and trompe-l’œil jokes. Some of the shots are Pure Cinema, fake as hell, but glimmering with the magic of Make-Believe (fake full moon, night sky, blues/blacks of the backgrounds – these are beautiful beautiful shots, entirely created.) Only the “pepper steak” scene and the graveyard scene take place outside that studio lot (although both of those scenes are also filled with the Fantasy La-La Land of Hollywood.) In every scene, Sgriccia inserts something fake, a reminder. Even in a somewhat nothing scene like Sam and Dean looking at news clippings of the dead starlet, in the background someone is busy painting a gigantic white flat bubble-gum pink. These details give the frame visual interest, of course, important in a talky information-only scene, but it’s also a reminder that nothing is real.
Some Supernatural episodes deal heavily with the reality of their fucked-up awful lives. This is not one of those episodes, to put it mildly. It’s a relief after “Heart,” which Dean admits in the opener: “I thought that after Madison you could use a vacation.” He’s talking to us, too.
“Hollywood Babylon” has one of the largest casts of supporting recurring characters since it takes place mostly in one location. We feel like we are walking into a (somewhat) well-oiled machine, with people who have been working together for a while (the detail of the Polaroids is wonderful: very realistic.) There are producers and PAs and sound guys and first ADs and writers and cast members. It’s really impressive.
I always think of “Hollywood Babylon” and “Folsom Prison Blues” as part of the same little arc. They don’t have the same mood, we go from glammy-hollywood-fakery to a grim monochromatic prison drama, but they both involve Sam and Dean going deep undercover, immersing themselves into a foreign world, pretending to be other people for a long stretch of time, and having to roll with the punches (sometimes literally) when they come. It brings out REALLY interesting things in the brothers’ behavior and reactions, which I’ll get to.
Those two episodes represent a “caesura” as well. A breather before we plunge into the final stretch.
Teaser
The trompe-l’œil starts immediately. There’s a rickety old shack in the woods. A creaking porch swing. Dark trees. A full moon. A girl (with a 70s flip of the hair and 70s-ish clothing, putting her in the style of one of the great Horror Eras) wanders around with a flashlight, her panicked breath high in her throat. It’s Cabin in the Woods. It’s Evil Dead. She calls out for her friends, and the names are so funny. They’re perfect fake movie-character names. Mitch. Ashley. Brody. Todd. Wendy. Kendra. Logan. These are not real people.
There are some stalker-in-the-bushes point-of-view shifts, used so terrifyingly in Halloween but part of the Horror playbook in general. And then a fake scare, and “Brody” informs “Wendy” that everyone is dead. So Wendy is, of course, a “final girl.” (There’s a movie coming out called Final Girls and I’ll be reviewing for Roger Ebert.) Brody runs for his life, and Wendy’s calls for him are a bit badly-acted, if you’re looking for that kind of thing. “Bro-oh-dee!” Elizabeth Whitmere, as “Wendy” and also the actress playing “Wendy”, does a great job at being both convincing and nooooot quite convincing. It is in the second viewing that you can see that she is “acting.”
Left alone, she panics, and then comes the real scare, which results in the funniest fake scream in history.
The illusion shatters. There’s a hilarious cut where we suddenly see the camera operator, the focus-puller, and the key grip right up in her grill, filming her horrible scream with deadpan and (check out the camera operator’s face) slight anxiety, like, “Uhm, what?”
The director (named McG, one of the exec. producers of Supernatural) takes off his headset and calls “CUT” before murmuring what we’ve all been thinking, “What the hell was that?” McG is played by Regan Burns, who is never EVER out of work. His resume is constant, he’s worked on practically every television series out there. He’s awesome, the perfect blend of smarmy sycophancy (when necessary) and practical smarts/sarcasm (when necessary). Miss Tara Benchley, the actress, knows her scream sucked. It’s embarrassing to be bad in front of a lot of people. Behind her, by the way, is the water tower structure from an earlier episode, making me think a hot ladylike Southern-belle crossroads demon is lurking on the premises. As she heads towards the director, she’s handed a bottle of juice by some anonymous guy who turns out to be the original screenwriter (Ben Ratner), only here he’s seen in passing. He’s acting like a PA, a clear indicator of his gigantic fall in status. He is hating his life. He should be in the chair beside the director. Instead he’s handing out juice like a “slave.” But that’s only clear later.
I love seeing McG’s irritation at the monitor, and then his switch in mood as he approaches his actress. He leads with compliments. Actors need confidence, it’s a smart approach. But that scream sucked and he needs her to pick up her game. It’s a small problem-solving scene and it turns out that Tara Benchley is not stupid or a bad actress. It is that the SCRIPT is bad and she is having a very hard time making it real for herself. (It’s a nice little critique/analysis of the work of actors. Of course you’re gonna suck in a project like this. Even Laurence Olivier would be sunk.)
McG tries to build her up, showing her the “concept sketches” for inspiration which …
I can’t even. Look at the butt-crack on that dame.
Who on earth would look at those images and go, “A-ha! I know how to play my role now!”
It’s so stupid and so funny.
I also love the AD: “10 MINUTE RE-LOAD FOR CAMERA AND SOUND.” Those people RUN the set, as I saw in action during the filming of my own short.
On a short break, Tara joins her fellow actor (Andrew Francis) off to the side. “Brody” is talking to what appears to be an electrician, wrapping up some cords, and talking about the “weird vibe” he gets on the set sometimes. Tara is, at first, wrapped up in her own thoughts, her worries about her performance. But she gets sucked in. What is this guy talking about? It’s so much fun to watch the electrician’s monologue about how the stage is haunted, knowing that he’s actually a plant. He kills it. (He’s played by R. Nelson Brown. I love his long straggly grey hair. I love how he’s doing the job he was hired to do: spread rumors, be spooky and insinuating.)
Next up, we see Tara from high above, practicing her scream, which is almost as funny as the bad scream earlier. I really like that Tara, as she is written, is not a bimbo. She’s smart. She cares about her work. She knows she’s been in some stupid stuff, but it’s a living. She wants to do well. (It’s details like this that help make Supernatural. It would have been very easy to make fun of Tara in “Hollywood Babylon”; after all, they’re making fun of everyone else. She could have been portrayed as stupid, narcissistic, self-important, a Meryl Streep wannabe, so we all could tee-hee about the silliness of actors. Nope. I’m not a huge fan of the whole “comedy must punch up” rule. There are no rules in comedy, except that it should be funny. If something’s funny and it punches down, I’m laughing. Punching up is more radical and destabilizing, from Moliere on down the line. But “Hollywood Babylon” punches up, for sure. The main targets are the “suits.” The episode does not “punch” at Tara, and I really like that.)
Again: the scene looks so fake, beautifully fake. The “moon,” the “trees”. It may seem elementary but look for elements of fakery in every scene. Every close-up has a glimpse of something behind it, beautiful and fuzzy maybe, but fake: a light, a scaffold, a Centurion, whatever. Sgriccia never lets up: it must never ever seem real.
Tara then sees both the spooky electrician guy, dead and hanging from the rafters, and some kind of holographic after-image flickering above him. A “movie,” if you will.
The button of the scene, which we’ve all now felt coming, is Tara screams bloody murder, and McG, back at his monitor, hears it, glances up, and shouts with approval, “Now THAT’S what I’m talking about!”
In order to register onscreen, an actor’s terror must be real. Jamie Lee Curtis was so terrified in Halloween that her performance is nearly unbearable. She is US. As it stands in the opening sequence of “Hollywood Babylon”, the film they are in the process of making has zero reality to it. No real terror. It is made up of tired cliches, old tropes, they’re all just going through the motions. Through the next couple of days, under the influence of The Beverly/Kansas Hillbillies, the film gets better, more original. It starts to incorporate some eccentric details – just as the real Supernatural did in its own short history: the importance of salt, the exorcism rituals, the porous boundary between Hell and Earth. These are REAL to Sam and Dean, FAKE to the movie people, but it all BECOMES real – or at least real-er. Maybe Hell Hazers: The Reckoning will be an okay movie after all. Everyone on the production at least seems more jazzed about it.
So Tara’s scream is real. But it is registered as fake (i.e. acting) by McG. But Tara is ACTUALLY traumatized. Maybe that’s good acting. The mirrors of fakery go off into infinity.
1st Scene
“Hollywood Babylon” contains a ton of cinematic devices, appropriate to the Hollywood atmosphere. There are multiple crane shots, for example, (most episodes contain only one). The scenes are complexly structured so the illusion is that Sam and Dean have entered a hermetically sealed world FILLED with people. There are janitors and extras and PAs and secretaries on scooters, and rolling clothes racks, and astronauts, and tourists. There is a long one-shot “walk and talk” (broken up into two pieces), in this first scene, Sam and Dean strolling through the bustling movie studio, talking about the case, with crazy shit going on in the background. I love “walk and talks” (the actors do too) because they add to the sense of reality. This first scene is highly choreographed and yet it looks natural.
It starts with Sam and Dean on a little tourist van, riding through the studio. The in-jokes (Gilmore Girls! Lois & Clark) come fast and quick. Sam is somewhat grim, basically tolerating the tour, waiting to get to work.
Flip-Flopping Character Arcs
The flip-flop of the brothers’ roles throughout Season 2 are fascinating, one of those secondary arcs Supernatural is so good at, a flip-flop that has nothing to do with plot, but with character. Dean is the work-horse. The grunt. It’s the only thing he knows how to do. (“Shadow.”) Sam is on the margins of that and always has been. He had a taste of the life outside. He has an outside perspective. Dad dying changed that. Dean starts to unravel. He starts to get tired. He wants to take a vacation, see the Grand Canyon, get laid. This is part of the burden of carrying Dad’s whispered secret around with him for 9 episodes. The burden of protecting Sam from the truth is too much. Dean wants out, maybe if they get out the Reality could be avoided. This frayed quality of Dean’s concentration, as well as the natural operation of grief which causes Radar Misfires, leaves him vulnerable to a seductive predator like Gordon. Sam’s reaction to Dad’s death, the guilt at being the rebellious son, having a bad relationship with his father, makes him double down in trying to “make it up” to Dad. He becomes the more gung-ho one. Let’s work, let’s honor Dad. This ruffles Dean’s feathers. Oh, NOW you want to please Dad? After being such a jag-off to him your whole life? These are all tiny dips and sways of the season, fascinating to track.
Their world widens precipitately (Ellen, Jo, Ash) at the same time that the two of them are in the pin-light aftermath of grief. (Those of you have experienced the death of a parent will know what I am talking about.)
Season 2 features ideological clashes, most noticeable in “Croatoan” but present throughout. Dean’s secret becomes unbearable (and Ackles has no language to verbalize it for 8 episodes: that’s a beautiful acting job, because you can FEEL it even though he doesn’t speak it.) Dean’s gung-ho nature is back in operation in “Croatoan” but it is the dying gasp of his ability to keep that secret (finally revealed at the end of that episode.) The exhaustion that follows, once that secret is out, is also understandable. Dean’s wanting to give up is destabilizing for Sam, because Dean was always the rock, the motivator, and he looks up to his big brother, even as he rebels against his influence. There are times in Season 2 when the brothers are beautifully in sync (“The Usual Suspects,” “Playthings,” “Nightshifter“) but that abyss between them cannot be bridged, at least not permanently. “Houses of the Holy” represents a philosophical and spiritual divide, which I absolutely LOVED that they took the time to explore. Sam prays, believes in God. Dean, who has seen too much shit, is taken aback. But then he starts to wonder … Intimacy and vulnerability is once again possible between the brothers in “Houses of the Holy,” which then just intensifies later in “Heart.” But before we have earned our way to “Heart,” (and that episode really represents an EARNED catharsis: if it had come anywhere else in the season, it wouldn’t have “fit.” We needed to WORK to get to that final sequence in that episode.) we have a ways to go. “Born Under a Bad Sign” is the first real glimpse we get of the ramifications of Dad’s whisper, and is prophetic of the final episodes. Dean is caretaker again, the grunt, the protector. “Tall Tales“, with all its bickering, brings the brothers back into intimacy again. (You don’t bicker like that with a stranger.)
And “Roadkill” is a startling Point of View shift, unexpected and tremendously moving. We are thrust totally outside of the brothers’ experience, perceiving them and “meeting” them through the perspective of the ghost of Molly. The Point of View shift allows us to see them fresh: Dean’s macho sarcastic burlesque, now at the forefront. (Refresher course on Dean’s “burlesque”, my own shorthand: I wrote about it here, somewhat, but I really went into it here. It is extremely important. I think some people think the burlesque is “false,” or Dean “overcompensating” – hell, there’s a joke about it in “Playthings.” I think there is some truth to that. HOWEVER: just because something is “fake” does not make it untrue. I will get into this at LENGTH later in this re-cap because it is the key to “Hollywood Babylon.” In terms of Dean’s Burlesque: Not everyone walks around quivering with sensitivity all the time. The current trend of declaring one’s sensitivity and fragility is recent, and in many ways bucks against thousands and thousands of years of human development. We didn’t make it as a human race by declaring our sensitivity. We made it because we were able to gut it through unimaginable losses. Dean’s “burlesque” is a survivor’s technique, and I’m all for those, since I’ve used them myself. It can be a trap, too, no doubt about it, but baby-bathwater, etc. Also: part of the fascination of Dean’s character is that interior tension between his feelings and his actions, his sense of truth and his fear of LIVING that truth, his insistence that the present is the only thing that can matter and his past-haunted interior world, which will be explored in-depth coming up, of course. We have needed to go there. We need to be let into Dean’s world. The burlesque is not all there is, and how satisfying/painful it is when we get to see beneath it. Every element of this is TRUE. The burlesque is not a “lie” and neither is Dean crying at the grave. BOTH are true. I’ve said it before: the show is not “either/or.” It is “both/and.” Human beings, in general, have a hard time with “both/and”, humans are drawn to “either/or” like a magnet, but if we are going to “make it” further as a human race, we need to learn to tolerate “both/and.” Ahhhh, Sheila’s Soapbox.) The burlesque in “Roadkill” is his persona, writ large. It’s the Dean of the pilot. Because of Dean’s burlesque, Sam’s sensitivity, kindness and patience is then highlighted even more. The brothers work in tandem, with different strengths. Both are right in “Roadkill.” But again, what is important about “Roadkill” is that we are removed from their experience. After episodes and episodes of being so close to them that it is damn near claustrophobic, we are on the outside – not as far on the outside as in “The Usual Suspects,” but similar.
After that breather, we are then thrust into the most intimate episode of all (in the season thus far, anyway – it will get more intimate later): with “Heart.” Here, those flip-flopping arcs of commitment and acceptance (“This is our lives. This is our lot in life. There is ‘no exit’ for either of us”) and denial and resistance converge. Sam gets a glimpse of what he wants (what he has forgotten he wants, through his own grief for Jess), and goes for what he wants, and the implications are enormous. Dean looks on, supportive, happy that his brother is getting naked again. Good for Sam. Dean fucks like he’s trying to fuck for both of them. But what ends up happening is that Sam realizes – finally – that he DOESN’T have one foot outside the Winchester Fate. He was in total denial. In “Heart” he understands how scary he is, what a nightmare he is for those whose lives he enters, and he accepts his Fate. Acceptance is hard though. It’s a wrenching break with everything he has hoped for. AND, in response to that (because the brothers are always responding/reacting to one another), Dean becomes protector again, only this time with a tragic sense of loss. After all this time of him heckling Sam about going to college, or bitch-slapping Sam for being a bad and undevoted son, we see that Dean always wanted Sam to get out. He was invested in the fact that Sam COULD get out: that is part of being a protector. This life is okay for DEAN, but Sam is BETTER than this, and maybe if Sam got out and was happy out there in the world somewhere, the years of being Sam’s protector would actually MEAN something. (At the same time, he NEEDS Sam beside him, doesn’t ever want him to go, doesn’t ever want to be alone. Coming up, his couple of scenes with the fake “Carmen” shows what Dean yearns for. Someone to talk to, someone who “gets” him and protects HIM lovingly, as Carmen does, through hamburger-offers and listening to him work a problem out.) But Dean is in conflict about Sam. He is so sorry that Sam didn’t get his chance out there. So that slow push-in to Dean’s face at the end of “Heart” shows his OWN acceptance that that ain’t ever gonna happen. Sam will not get out. Dean has “failed” in that job. And underneath all of THAT, is the sense of Dean’s self-loathing, in spite of the burlesque. He doesn’t deserve to get out. He’s a piece of shit. He will never be good enough. He will never be clean enough. He takes half-hour long showers not just to jerk off and enjoy the water pressure, but because he stinks of death all the time and will never get rid of it. The burlesque has been created to NOT feel these things. (To complicate this even further: Dean also thinks that he is awesome when he’s in the zone of his job or picking up women. He flirts with everyone, male and female. He is surprised when women don’t notice him, because he is Teh Awesome. He glimmers with confidence. In “Tall Tales” we saw his perception of himself during a pick-up, and I wanted to hide my eyes because I was so embarrassed for him. His perception of himself is not that he is a grubby loser-outcast. He is Indiana Jones. Philip Marlowe. James Bond. He is the Star of an Awesome Movie Starring Himself. His love of pleasure is sincere. All of this working together makes him a rich and human character. We don’t always “make sense”, and we don’t have personalities that are made up of jigsaw puzzle-pieces that all fit together perfectly. Humanity doesn’t work like that.)
These flip-flops not only increase dramatic tension (you never know which way each of these guys is going to go: they buck the cliches set up so strongly – too strongly almost – in the pilot.) but strike me as unbelievably realistic in such a supernatural-monster type of show. I see it all coming not from the big plot points like Yellow Eyes or Sam going darkside – but from the fact that their father has died. And grief is crazy-making. Literally. There’s a reason people used to wear black armbands for a YEAR. A message to the outside world: I am not at 100%. I will need help getting through this. An acknowledgement of just how long it takes to regain your equilibrium. I went into this ad nauseum in “Everybody Loves a Clown.”
It’s gorgeously done, these flip-flopping character arcs, and represents a real sense of PLANNING on the part of the whole team.
Flip Flop Over
We get another example of the flip-flop in the tour bus scene. Dean is agog, excited, a little kid, trying to bond with the little kid sitting next to him (who is patently uninterested in the old guy babbling at him about Creepshow). Sam barely looks at his surroundings.
Speaking of Creepshow, more George Romero. You’d think Dean would have enough horror in his real life. He probably watches George Romero films like they are a documentary. Speaking of George Romero, I interviewed Martin Scorsese’s long-time brilliant Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and you might find it surprising what George Romero’s favorite film is.
When the tour guide chirpily informs the customers that maybe they all can see the stars of Gilmore Girls, Sam looks alarmed and uncomfortable and jumps off the bus. Inside-joke #1. Jared Padalecki’s dry subtle wit is sometimes ignored in the face of Jensen Ackles’ broader slapstick, but in many cases it helps the humor of Ackles’ stuff LAND. JP is so smart.
Dean Burlesque Alert: Sam glances back at him sharply before he disembarks. Dean mis-reads the look and gives him a happy thumbs-up. (Dying.) Then he realizes Sam means business, and before he goes to get off the bus, he grins happily and chummily at his non-friend, the ice-cream-eating-deadpan boy, who ignores him. Oh, Dean. This is Dean as Awesome Star of His Own Autobiography.
Now begins the long walk-and-talk (actually two of them), one of the most impressive in the series thus far. In the rain-swept studio of Canada, the brothers walk along, completely divergent in focus and attention. Dean is a movie fan, scanning the crowds for stars. Sam shoots him down. This dynamic will become even more extreme during the Grand-Opera Burlesque of Dean as devoted PA – which I’ll get to. I have a TON to say (what a shock). Dean is funny as PA but Sam’s reaction to it is almost funnier. It’s the classic Straight Man technique. It’s the Straight Man who helps the joke land, the master class of that being husband-and-wife comic team George Burns and Gracie Allen. George Burns was perhaps the best Straight Man who ever lived, he helped CREATE the “type”, but he couldn’t do it without Gracie’s loony spacy cluelessness.
Cary Grant said he learned how to play the Straight Man from watching the Burns and Allen vaudeville act:
George was a straight man, the one who would make the act work. The straight man says the plant line, such as “Who was that man I saw you with?” and the comic answers it: “Oh, that was not a man, that was my uncle.” He doesn’t move while that line is said. That’s the comedy line. The laugh goes up and up in volume and cascades down. As soon as it’s getting a little quiet, the straight man talks into it, and the comic answers it. And up goes the laugh again.
Cary Grant was a Leading Man, but watch him play Straight Man to Katharine Hepburn’s ditzy screwball dame in Bringing Up Baby. Grant learned from the best.
Padalecki is often the Straight Man to Dean’s Screwball and he is excellent at it.
There are more crane shots, showing the scope of the scene, plus long sections of the two actors walking along conversing. With Centurions and Astronauts hovering around them.
I mean …
Dean is enthusiastic at first, trying to pump Sam up (protector). Vacation! “Swimming pools and movie stars!”
Your humble roots are showing, Dean.
Sam’s a gloomy Gus. We came here to work. None of that fun business. Grief again. There like a palpable fog. Dean, with all his Burlesque, gets it. He acknowledges the fog, in a change of tone, “I thought that after … Madison …” It’s always touching when he tries to open up, or not swirl about in Loud-Mouthed Denial that Everything is Great. And, interesting, unlike Sam, who was bullying Dean into expressing grief the way Sam thought he should in “Everybody Loves a Clown,” Dean accepts that Sam isn’t in the mood. “Okay, okay …” Back to business. These are the unexpected character moments that the show does so well (and Ben Edlund in particular. Think of Dean boy-crushing on Ronald in “Nightshifter.” A less sensitive writer would have had Dean be the one to be frustrated with Ronald’s amateurish messing up of their case. Nope. The characters are deeper than that.)
Sam fills Dean in, and Dean mentions the connection to the movie Poltergeist, which Sam doesn’t get. Dean is shocked and insulted. How can you be an American and live in our culture and NOT know about the curse of Poltergeist? Hell Hazers references Poltergeist by using a real Latin chant in the script, similar to the rumor that they used a real skeleton in Poltergeist, the (supposed) source of the curse. Interesting side note: Shirley MacLaine came and spoke at my grad school. She said she was offered one of the lead roles in Poltergeist and she turned it down, because she had a bad feeling about putting children-actors through that. She said she didn’t feel it was good “karmically.” I’ll just leave that there.
Dean’s in the zone now, snapping his fingers at Sam to hurry up with the details. When Sam mentions that “Tara Benchley” saw the body, Dean stops as though stung with an electric cattle-prod.
Oh dear.
He rattles off her credits at Sam, thrilled, turned on. Sam hasn’t heard of any of it. Straight Man.
The Straight Man function throws the ditzy sidekick back onto themselves. There is no cooperation in their particular brand of lunacy. They are alone. Which is what happens here. Dean gets embarrassed at what he has revealed, and informs Sam (with a long blink of the eyes, which helps make the humor: it looks like he’s lying. So funny) “I’m a fan of her work.” No response. Dean is left swinging in the wind. He adds, trying to sound professional, “She’s very good.” And walks off, because he needs to preserve his dignity. Too late, but I appreciate the attempts.
Next we see studio exec Brad Redding (Gary Cole), giving the director and one of the producers (Jay Wiley) his “notes.” (Later, when he talks to McG, he says that he has “not problems … but questions …” and my God, that is so real, so exactly what someone like Brad would say. He wants to be diplomatic, he also wants to sound like he’s a thoughtful artist, but he also wants his own way. And the TONE. The smooth smooth tone.) Behind the conversation, Sam and Dean enter the sound stage, and a dude carrying a huge plant walks in front of them, his entire body hidden. Fakery. Every scene, every moment. Go, Sgriccia.
Brad is wondering if the film could be a little “brighter.” (We all know this is a dig at the critique from the CW-network about Supernatural, so no need to go into that here.) McG and producer stand there, openly confused. Brad then adds flattery/sycophancy: “McG, you know what I’m saying. You’re a MASTER.” McG has already gone a couple of rounds with this asshole, you can tell in his open frustration and lack of subservience: “This is a HORROR movie,” his tone as though he’s talking to a toddler. Unflappable Brad says, “Who says horror has to be dark?” (Uhm … everyone?)
Catching a glimpse of Dean standing there with nothing to do, Brad calls out: “Green Shirt Guy!” Almost shyly, Dean approaches, and Brad, popping pistachio nuts or whatever into his mouth, says “Could you get me a smoothie from craft-y?” The look on Dean’s face is: Was that English? Sam saves the day, and drags Dean off, and Cole looks after the two hunks with a quizzical mean-spirited expression. “They’ll let anyone in this business,” he snarks, which is hilarious of course because those two characters are the stars of the actual show that they all are on.
Again, Padalecki’s Straight Man strength:
Dean: What’s a PA?
Sam: (with a look of alarm and almost fear, he’s in enemy territory, masked by a grim acceptance of the reality) I think they’re kind of like slaves.
Speaking of PAs, my cousin Emma has been a PA on The Good Wife and Girls for a couple of years. If you’re walking down a Manhattan street, and it’s blocked off for shooting, and you see a freckled slim young woman, wearing a headset and telling you you can’t walk on that block, that’s probably my cousin Emma. She also made it to the freakin’ Daily Mail because Lena Dunham Tweeted a picture of her and she’s also in the picture of Dunham walking along and laughing (Lena’s holding onto Emma.) Lena Dunham loved her so much that she had Emma (who is also a rapper) appear on an episode of Girls. So yes, PAs may be slaves, but it can also be a career opportunity! (As Dean discovers, to Sam’s surprise. This will be Dean enjoying subordinating himself to the collective, an aspect of Dean we have rarely seen. It’s fascinating, and I’ll get to it.)
2nd scene
The scene really is a continuation of the second scene, but I’m listing it as the next scene because there are a series of “wipes” that bring us into the studio proper. Wipes!! Supernatural NEVER uses “wipes.” It’s so old-school (“wipes” are really out of style now, and are usually used only in comedies. The Brady Bunch used them a lot, for example. There’s something funny about them, not to mention totally fake. “Wipes” don’t exist in real-life, only on film.)
Dean now appears carrying a tray of ridiculous smoothies. The music has kicked in, high-anxiety horror-climax music, as Dean offers smoothies to passing people, rolling his eyes, and scanning the scaffolds above. Up he goes, as the entire crew gets ready to start rolling again, voices shouting from off-screen. Dean has no idea what’s going on, and looks startled when all the lights go out.
Then we get the slate, right in our grill, with all the inside-joke details.
1. Scene 6, Take 6. Because … the Devil.
2. Director: McG (producer of Supernatural)
3. Cameraman: Serge L. (actual DOP of Supernatural)
4. And, sadly, the note that it’s shot on 32mm. Supernatural is digital now, and we saw the results in the color schemes of Season 7 and 8. Orangey-bright. Plus lemony Lysol haze for Sam’s fugue-state flashbacks. The “suits” won. Digital doesn’t have to look as flat and bad as that. They switched to the Red camera in Season 4, and it’s one of the most film-ic of seasons, absolutely gorgeous. The stuff of fantasies. High high-end shit. That lasted until Season 6 (the Red is super-expensive), and the drop-off in visual quality in Season 7 was EXTREME. They appear to be somewhat back on track now (Season 9 looked better), although they still like to feature brighter-colors than they did in those early seasons, making dingy warehouses look like 1980s heavy-metal music videos. But no matter. Moving on.
The fun of the structure of “Hollywood Babylon” is we get to know the story of Hell Hazers and we can see it develop. Some of the developments are so dumb and so funny (“They must have SUPER-HEARING”), but it is cool to see the scene in its first incarnation here, and then how it changes, under the influence of Sam and Dean working that case.
There’s Wendy, there’s Ashley (an adorable Alycia Purrott) and Brody, huddled in the cabin, playing around with a Latin chant because “it’ll be fun.” As the scene progresses, Dean climbs the scaffold, and McG looks on from the side, Gary Cole hovering over him with his coffee. (Guess he never got his smoothie from craft-y.) Dean sees a projector screen up there in the rafters, wonders about it, and far down below, Tara Benchley starts laughing about all the Latin, she can’t get through it. I’ve joked about that before! The actors must look at a script (mainly Padalecki) and think, “Oh great. Latin again.”
I love the shot of Ashley laughing.
It’s a moment of levity, right? But it’s filmed with such spookiness that it looks like it’s her Last Laugh on this planet. This is what I mean about the over-the-top style of the episode. Her laugh is not a moment in Hell Hazers, it’s a “real” moment, but it’s filmed as THOUGH it’s part of a horror movie. Brad Redding would want it brightened up so we can see her pretty face.
Sam and Dean meet up at the craft-y table.
Dean is already eating. As they touch base, someone flips a switch somewhere, and the night-sky, with its clouds and full moon shows up on the screen in the background. A casual “atmospheric” detail but because this is a “meta” episode it places them in a fake version of their real lives. They barely even mention it or notice it, one of the funniest things about it. Dean’s done his initial EMF work, and is now focused on the extraordinary spread of food, which he is in the process of devouring. Dean’s a dog. He has a childlike soul devoted to pleasure. He cannot believe how delicious the sandwiches are and offers one to Sam, with an “in the zone there is nothing else for me but this food” look on his face, which Sam clocks (Straight Man) and says, “Maybe later.” Sam as Grown-Up, Dean as Kid.
Dean’s Food Burlesque practically warrants its own category, although Compulsive Flirting with Inappropriate Men/Monsters (morgue attendants, Wendigos, vampires, grizzled unsmiling dudes in small towns, Roy the Wilderness Guide) is high on the list too. He’s more successful with women but he can’t help trying to charm everyone when he’s in that mode. It’ll get him through the door. But with food Dean goes somewhere more primal than sex (although the two are connected, as the next moment will show!)
Sam, as always faced with his Big Brother’s Food Zone, is grossed out and startled to silence. Dean seems to be losing focus. HOWEVER: Dean can do multiple things at the same time (something Sam, who is more ascetic and monastic, cannot understand.) To Sam, Dean seems to be goofing off, getting phone numbers of pretty girls at bars, rolling around on Magic Fingers, etc. Or, like my favorite relationship of Dean’s: Amy the police officer in “Shadow,” whom we never see. Sam thinks Dean is derailing into Spring Break, when Dean is ALWAYS working. How easy would it be to make Dean a “partier” and Sam a “serious guy”? Cliches. This is so so clear in “Hollywood Babylon” and then also “Folsom Prison Blues” when Dean gets so sucked into his role that you think he will never come out.
That’s the best part of Dean as PA. He loves it, the camaraderie of it, but he ALSO uses it to get information. He’s smart. He befriends everyone in a matter of hours. People confide in him about their love lives, for God’s sake. Like, he’s that involved in the community. The sound guy becomes his BFF. He learns what dailies are and is given copies. And etc. etc. This is one of the most beautiful “Deans” we’ve seen yet. A side we have not yet seen or even perceived. “Folsom Prison Blues” gives us another aspect of it, his absorption into the world and its rules. He fits in in prison. He’s not disturbed by that fact. He’s a chameleon (he learned that young) and it’s how he’s survived. But “Hollywood Babylon” lets us see that aspect of Dean in a positive and human light. For me, it was a revelation. Dean can be so AWKWARD sometimes. He’s not awkward here at ALL. His PA role sets something in him loose: the social Dean, easily social, though, not forced/flirty/awkward. He’s usually such a singular figure, the weirdest guy in any room. Here, all of that vanishes. Everyone’s weird in Hollywood. This atmosphere suits him. Dean as PA is also a counter-point to Dean’s narrative that he is no good for any other kind of life. “Hollywood Babylon” shows that he would be good at anything he tried to do.
In the middle of their conversation, Dean sees Tara sitting by herself, his eyes go completely dead, a shark spotting its prey, and he’s off, leaving Sam in the dust. On his way over, Dean grabs a stack of new script pages from a PA passing by (like, how would he know how to do that?? His awareness of the rules of the world happen instantaneously.)
The following scene with Tara is great because Dean is acting (an awareness of what he looks like, his gleam to others, the magnet he is) as well as sincerely starstruck, AS WELL as trying to get information out of her. This is what I mean when I talk about playing multiple objectives. Many balls in the air. Play it all simultaneously. But what Ackles brings to it, the destabilizing unusual thing about his work, is the awareness of what he looks like and how to use it. This is mostly Female Territory.
He acts shy. And he IS shy. He hands her the pages, and there’s a great moment when she looks up and gets a load of the Hunk towering above her. She is stunned. He knew she would be. His looks are a gift, an accident, but he uses them when he needs to.
Truman Capote tells a story about walking through the streets of Manhattan with Marilyn Monroe, who had a scarf around her head and sunglasses on. She had the ability to turn “off” her stardom (this was at the height of her superstar status) and circulate in heavily populated areas as Norma Jean.
Truman Capote remarked to her how strange it was that nobody recognized her. She got mischievous and said to him, “Do you want to see ‘her’?” Meaning: my star self? Capote said yes. She took off the scarf, and he watched her “turn it on.” She had no lighting instruments, no costume, her hair was in braids. But suddenly there was Marilyn Monroe(TM) and slowly people started recognizing her and flocked to her, moths to the flame, until she was mobbed. It’s a reminder that Monroe’s stardom had nothing to do with costumery or the accoutrements of studio lighting/sets. It was hers, an internal thing she could manipulate. She understood what she had.
And that’s what we see Dean do here. (I often compare him to Marilyn Monroe. What other actor would be compared to both John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe and have it be true on both counts? What is more different than John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe?)
She’s friendly (you get the sense that she’s friendly with everyone, the set is her “family”. The Polaroids show that), but also more open to him than he would be if he looked like Paul Giamatti. That’s the reality. She commiserates, supportive, “First day?” and he says, “Yeah. My big break” which is kind of a tragic line. Being a PA is your big break? She gets that, his innocence. It’s so touching and unexpected.
As Dean caves and tells her he’s a “big fan” of her work, we move out of the close-ups into a wide shot, showing the fake beauty all around them. The romance is intense. Almost unbearably intense. The colors are blues and blacks, the lighting is “moon”-light. It’s one of my favorite shots in the episode, second only to that sunset shot.
He compliments her on her work in Boogeyman, and in such a nice and realistic moment of compulsive self-deprecation-modesty (actors become expert in that because everyone and their mother lets them knows that bragging is Bad Manners) she says, “That was a terrible script!” This leaves Dean hanging a little bit, and also suggests that Dean may have bad taste, which she seems to sense and then thanks him sincerely.
Pause. She is silent. He is silent.
It’s only a second or so, but Supernatural builds these pauses in. I treasure them. In those pauses lie the emotions.
Dean now goes in for the kill, asking her about the dead guy, but he keeps that Marilyn Monroe gleam on his face (you can almost SEE him do it), to keep Tara captivated, open to him. He’s used to alienating people in these situations. It happens all the time. He can’t blow this one. Gleam It Up. High-Wattage-Charismatic Dean. Sometimes this very thing is such a turn-off to the random strangers he questions. What does this guy want with me? What’s with the bedroom eyes in the middle of an interview? But Tara loves it. Maybe, too, she has wanted to talk about it to someone who actually wants to hear. Someone who won’t prescribe antidepressants or condescend to her. This Gleaming Man-Boy seems to want to hear. She hesitates though. I see lingering trauma on her face. Dean mis-reads it, he’s crossed a line.
Watch for all the pauses built in here, too. Not back-forth-back-forth. There’s room for those little spaces. I love “little spaces” in scenes. Most directors are afraid of them and most television execs are afraid of “dead time” to a pathological degree. But “little spaces” are not dead time. We hold our breath to see what happens next if those “little spaces” are filled with intention and unspoken thoughts.
When Dean asks “What happened?” he’s still putting that Gleam on his face, the “acting” part of him, even though underneath he’s the Investigator we’ve seen in other episodes. It’s all in HOW he says “What happened?” He wants to know, but he is still prioritizing his dazzling surface. He keeps it there for a while. He’s in charge of his Gleam. This is all Ackles, by the way. Nobody told him to do it this way. (I mean, what would a director say anyway? “Hey there. Please be in charge of your Dazzle-Gleam.” Uhm, no.)
Gloomy subservient Walter, the screenwriter, comes by again, walking between the two of them, throwing Dean a “who the hell are you” look and handing Tara yet another bottle of juice. It’s great how Walter keeps popping up on the sidelines. No wonder Dean thinks he’s a PA.
Once Tara starts opening up, Dean can let go of the Gleam a little bit. They’ve actually started to just talk, person to person, about Frank. She shows Dean her scrapbook of Polaroids, and once they’re out of close-up there’s a beautiful shot of her, in her chair, with a random glowing-blue flat in the background. Always those glimpses of created reality. The blue-sky is flat. Beautiful, but fake. And maybe, as we finally get to see in “Fan Fiction” years later, fiction is one of the ways Sam and Dean make peace with their past. They enter their own “story.”
The second Dean sees the grinning face of “Frank” in the Polaroid, his whole expression changes, and now he is back to regular old Dean. He knows that face.
3rd scene
HUGE change of mood and venue: camera at ground-level, red tile floor, light through the windows (not a studio lot), knock at the door, feet walking past the camera, all as Frank croons “I’ve Got the World on a String,” such a funny example of Supernatural‘s perfect taste in music. First of all: “Frank.” The most obvious. The song also places “Frank” in an imaginary Rat Pack world, even his house is decorated in a 60s style. And it also is “Frank”‘s inner monologue: he is WORKING, man, in this tough town. He just had a great gig playing a fake electrician, AND he’s playing “Willy” at a dinner theatre. He’s got commerce AND art going on at the same time. He’s “having it all”! Now the episode DOES “punch up” (or down, considering your perspective) at this actor. Especially with his Wall of Vanity showing him in all these different costumes.
That wall KILLS. ME. Either this real actor already had photos of himself in different roles, or they created them for this episode (I’d bet the latter) and how much fun did they have making this? Sad clown? Pirate?? SO FUNNY.
I can’t get enough …
But before we get to the wall, there’s Dean and Sam at the door. Dean takes the lead because Sam has never seen a movie in his life and he doesn’t even know what they’re doing there. Suddenly “Frank” is being called “Gerard St. James” by Dean (a name on the level of “Ashley” or “Brody” come to think of it. Dean and Sam with their fake badges are amateurs compared to these people.) Dean starts off strong: “You were in Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn.”
The poster for that film looks like a Hell Hazers concept sketch.
![[1983] - Metalstorm - The Destruction of Jared-Syn (2)-640x484](https://www.sheilaomalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1983-Metalstorm-The-Destruction-of-Jared-Syn-2-640x484.jpg)
Gerard St. James played a nameless role akin to “spear-carrier” but Dean clocked him. (I looked up the character list of Metalstorm and while there is no character listed as “Desert Soldier #4,” there IS a character called “Cyclopean Intruder”, which I think is totally fabulous.
Look at their faces:
Sam is basically trapped in his brother’s universe of movies and fan-gushing and references he doesn’t understand.
And Dean’s not schmoozing. He really does recognize the guy and thinks he’s been great. But he also IS schmoozing. Notice, though, the difference in approach here from the gentle-delicate-open-Gleam of his approach to Tara. Dean doesn’t flirt with Frank. He gets in the door with enthusiasm and also the fact that Frank is taken aback and gratified that anyone recognizes him or remembers him in these anonymous no-name roles.
And of course it is Sam who stands there looking at the wall of personae. With no expression. I love Padalecki so much. Dean has already sat on the couch, making himself comfortable. (Dean, maybe wait for Frank to sit down?) Frank is open about the whole scheme. He was hired to spread rumors about a haunted film set, hired to fake his own death.
Look at the decor. Frank barely has a career but he’s decorated as though he’s Dean Martin. So although the episode “punches down” at him, they don’t put him in a hovel or a grungy railroad apartment. He’s done well, he’s got residual checks, he works. Or who knows, maybe he’s house-sitting for a producer. Either way: the decor kills me. We only get one glimpse of it but that’s enough.
Frank is super-proud. “They say I’m the new Lonely Girl.” Lonely Girl was an actress trying to create “buzz” through “new media.” Dean may know his pop culture, but he does not know contemporary technology, and words like “buzz,” “new media,” “Lonely Girl” … suddenly he’s an Old-Fogey. Sam, though, is barely listening to any of this. He sips his coffee, simmering with irritation that this guy had faked the whole thing. Sam’s been duped. He’s pissed.
Dean, though, is more open. Because … Dean.
There are shots of Dean listening to Frank, and his “openness” is (ironically) shown in a gorgeous shot that hides half of his face in shadow. This is the subtlety and sensitivity of the Supernatural style. It shows their film noir smarts. Film noir is one of the most emotional of film genres, even more so than melodrama, because film noir adds layers upon layers of neuroticism and passion and repression and human evil onto the story. Film noir is paranoid and psychological. To put your lead character, your supposed hero, in shadow – where we only see half of his face – is completely destabilizing to even the idea of “hero,” which was part of the unspoken/unplanned mood of film noir. You would think that after WWII, America would have had enough of trauma and would want happy musicals and romances again. Nope: the first reaction to those post-war years was an intense darkening of the mood. The need for optimism and sanitization came about 10 years later.
The shot of Dean listening to Frank …
is not strictly a noir shot, but it has echoes of it. The effect here is less controlled than the best noirs: it’s natural light from the window creating that dark shadow – but it’s still not really a realistic look. This is the casual (and yet not accidental at all) gorgeousness that Serge Ladouceur specializes in.
When “Frank,” who can pass muster as a pirate AND as a sad clown, informs Sam and Dean: “Frank and Willy … totally different characters,” that’s it for Sam. Sam’s had it. Sam’s closing-down of the conversation is one of my favorite bits in the episode. It’s so subtle, but so well-acted. He manages to be irritated, but then hide it, not give the game away. But his coffee cup is placed on that damn table: they are OUT of there. Especially since he senses Dean would hang out there all day if left to his own devices.
Dean follows Sam’s lead but can’t help but ask: “What was it like to work with Richard Moll?”
Uhmmm …
Sam throws him a completely confused look. He doesn’t know who Richard Moll is. He has never heard of Critters 3. He doesn’t know who Jared-Syn is. He’s never seen Night Court. He is lost.
But how cool, how strange, that Frank has what can only be described as a weird response to the question. He looks blank. A veil goes down in his eyes. Then he says, “Gentleman’s gentleman,” quite a vague answer. He looks like he’s lying. He was never an extra in that movie. Maybe he was projected in on a screen. Maybe it was just a guy who looked like him and here he is taking the credit. Who knows. It could be any number of things, but that reaction is WEIRD.
Not all mysteries are meant to be solved. Some of them just sit there, creating an atmosphere of uneasiness, prevarication, lying, dissembling.
It’s not quite the answer Dean wanted. He wants more, a detail, an anecdote. It’s awkward. Frank has somehow closed the door on Dean. “Yeah?” Dean says, as though he’s satisfied with the “gentleman’s gentleman” bullshit, but you can tell he wants more, and then he laughs to himself, as though he’s satisfied, then he says to himself, “All RIGHT,” then he glances at the flier, and says to Frank, in a weird chummy thumbs-up kind of way: “Pepper steak.”
Burlesque. Awkward. A spiral of behavior. I feel like it will never end. So does Sam. You just have to wait it out as Dean dials himself down.
4th scene
Thrust back into Hell Hazers, Ashley moves into the frame, and Mitch (Torrance Coombs) heads to the door, saying “We must have brought them back from Hell with our chanting.” Thanks for the exposition/explanation! Meanwhile Dave the “sound guy” (Graeme Duffy, another Smallville alum) hears something weird over the headsets, an echoey roar/moan. The scene continues: “We’re not going anywhere until we find Wendy and her sister.” Camera pulls back, way back, so we see the fakery in its entirety.
McG calls Cut and the sound guy calls out “No good for sound”, a comment greeted with groans on the set. (This is so accurate, by the way. The sound guy’s job is so important, but more often than not he is a bummer-wet-blanket because a distant plane flew overhead, a car alarm went off 2 blocks away, and they won’t be able to use what they just filmed. Sound guy’s comments are always met with groans.) First AD remarks to script supervisor, “Another costly sound delay” then shouts instructions to everyone, and the sound guy, who has to be the bummer on the set, it’s his job, calls back, “THANK YOU.” Great little sequence: this is how it is.
During the small break as everyone goes “back to 1,” Gary Cole takes his moment to pounce on McG. Bluetooth in his ear (such an obnoxious and perfect detail). McG can barely contain his eye-roll. Gary Cole sees it, but pretends it’s something else. He’s that egotistical. “I’ve got some … not problems … but questions …” McG: “Like what.” Lulz….
Here is where we get our first glimpse of Marty Flagg (Michael B. Silver), the guy who re-wrote Walter’s script, probably assigned to do so by Gary Cole. He’s busy tapping away at his phone on the sidelines. Silver does an excellent job with his part: I love his transformation into Hero. I love, too, how you don’t hate him, as slimy as he is. He’s kind of friendly, and willing to play the Beta to Sam and Dean’s Alpha, when things get dangerous.
Gary Cole does not understand how the creatures from Hell hear the chant. “What, do they have super-hearing? It’s a logic thing. The rules don’t track.” Yes, because the rules must track in a movie about monsters and demons. But actually: they DO, in many cases even more so! Supernatural does a far better job of explaining the “rules” than Hell Hazers does, but the challenge is the same. McG can see he won’t win this battle, so reaches out to Marty, who doesn’t even look up from his phone as he says, “What about we throw in an explainer?” (And how funny is it that “They must have SUPER-HEARING” is considered an “explainer.” What does “SUPER-HEARING” even mean?)
After this small power struggle, Gary Cole is already uninterested, moving on to the phone call in his ear. It’s so obnoxious. He just wanted to win his point. McG is left sitting in the starkly beautiful set, murmuring, “Suits,” a release-valve for the Supernatural team in their battles with CW. But it’s the beauty that strikes me. Content is interesting – but FORM is more interesting. Not “what” – anyone can pick up on “what.” But HOW.
Gary Cole goes off into the isolation of the set, and as he fiddles with his phone (wedding ring on display, by the way: the guy is a sleaze-ball), the ghostly film star Elise Drummond (Morgan Brayton) appears in black-and-white. In an Anne Tyler book (I can’t remember which one), Tyler describes a female character as having the kind of face that is now out of style, the face of 1930s and 1940s movies: a Jean Harlow face, a Talulah Bankhead or Clara Bow face. The times dictate what’s “in” for women’s looks. And Morgan Brayton looks like someone from the 1920s. Her bone structure, her eyes, the shape of her lips.
Gary Cole sees her, takes her in, assesses her, and asks “Has McG seen this?” Moving in, he notes that her bruised throat should be “red.” She stares at him unblinkingly and he’s so self-absorbed he doesn’t see anything weird about it. But it does seem weird when she won’t go away and materializes right behind him. He’s deadpan in response. (Really ambitious egotistical careerist men often have low libidos. I live in New York. Trust me. I’ve done field research. Go to a small-town in hard economic times or a slower-paced city and you’ll have much better luck with the menfolk. This has been your Libidinous Tip for the Day.) He has no double-take on her beauty, no “gleam” like Dean would (before he blew her away with rock salt, that is). He’s uninterested. Until she drops her robe. Then he “gets” it.
Back on set, they are “going” again, now with the bone-headed changes suggested by the “suit.” Good sport Ashley asks, “I don’t understand. If they were in Hell, how could they hear our chanting?” Good sport Mitch says (for me, one of the funniest line-readings in the episode), “They must have SUPER-HEARING.” Right on cue, Gary Cole plunges through the set ceiling, hanging by his neck. Mayhem ensues.
Ashley gives a great “real” scream. Mitch almost starts crying and bolts. Gary Cole is seen swinging from high above (a pretty brutal shot), as well as closer up, his bluetooth falling on the floor, a nice ruthless “button” to the scene. Nobody will mourn him. He was a douche. So subversive to kill the “suit.” Not as subversive as killing Eric Kripke in “The French Mistake,” though!
5th scene
The last scene ended with a close-up of Gary Cole’s dead face. The next scene starts with yet another scene from Hell Hazers. There’s no scene of “Oh my God he’s dead,” no scene of Sam and Dean inserting themselves into the event, no scene of McG making a speech. Right on back to filming.
Out of sequence, “Wendy” babbles about salt, how “I read in that book” that salt keeps ghosts away. Meanwhile, Marty, the so-called sleazy writer, is the only one who seems disturbed that they have continued filming. Maybe shut down for a day, out of respect? He murmurs this to the producer Jay, who brushes it off with the great line, “We had a moment of silence at breakfast.” Brutal.
Meanwhile the Hell Hazers scene has taken a turn, and Wendy is stating, “I love you” and Mitch says back, “I know,” the Han Solo/Princess Leia exchange used by Supernatural in more episodes than I can count, and is still going on now. It’s so great because it undercuts sentimentality. Let the fans be sentimental, that’s what fans are for. The show, though, must resist or we’d drown in syrup. When Supernatural decides to be sentimental (and that sunset shot coming up is the most bold example, although Sam and Dean having eggnog through the window in the Christmas episode is up there on the list), it’s heart-cracking, and unforgettable, because it so rarely “goes there.”
Who knows how you get from “WE NEED SALT” to “I love you/I know.” I don’t have “problems …” with it, just “questions …”
Tara’s concentration is off and she calls out “Can we cut? Please?” McG doesn’t quite like that, and calls out “Cut.” He murmurs to his assistant, “Only I can say cut.” (He didn’t seem to notice that someone else far more inappropriate yelled “THAT’S A CUT!!” from the side in a bellowing voice).
Welcome, Dean as PA.
So let’s get the timeline straight. Dean and Sam headed out to interview Frank. Maybe they’re gone when Gary Cole swings. The crew probably broke for the day. The following morning, Dean puts on his headset and by, say, 11 a.m. he’s an old pro. He’s chewing on taquitos, chatting on his headset, wearing a Hell Hazers T-shirt, and screaming “THAT’S A CUT” into the void.
It’s this moment that MAKES the moment for me.
The first time I saw the episode this whole Dean Headset Burlesque was too much for me . I couldn’t get past it. I kept rewinding. My favorite PA moment is “They’re aWARE …” I’m not sick of it yet.
McG tries to calm Tara, and she confesses her issues with the dialogue: “Why would a ghost be afraid of salt?” And Dean, comfortable in his own skin, in his new job, in his new community, laughs a bit to himself, chewing on his food. He’s been eating constantly since he arrived. Ha ha, look at the Hollywood people not understand my job and how SMART I am to understand the importance of salt.
McG throws the question out to Marty, who responds blithely, “I’m not married to salt. We still thinking condiments?” (Hilarious line.) Walter, standing near Dean, fumes, looking through his original script. It’s the first time Walter is prioritized in the frame. He basically enters the story at this moment. He murmurs to himself, “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me …”, getting Dean’s attention, who still has his mouth full, but his eyes widen. Guys, this is high-end slapstick. Cary Grant played slapstick and it always looked real. He could moan to himself in Bringing Up Baby, as he clung to a crumbling dinosaur skeleton, “Ohhh, how can so many things happen to one person?” and you BELIEVE it. Dean’s bug-eyed-mouth-full noticing of Walter is slapstick like that.
Steam comes out of Walter’s ears and he storms off past Dean, getting a quick “Woah” look from Dean. Not a suspicious look. But a humorous gossipy look. And this is when Sam comes up and Dean laughs to Sam, commiserating, mouth full, “Walter’s a little testy for a PA, don’t you think?”
Sam has no idea what Dean is talking about. It’s like Dean hasn’t even spoken. Sam’s all business, asks Dean how things are going. Dean starts to gush about the film and Tara’s performance, how she’s stepping up her game, using “sense memory.” Dean, stop talking. Immediately.
Maybe the funniest line reading in the entire episode is Padalecki: “Dean, when I ask how it’s going, you know I’m talking about the case, right?” (with a half-whisper at the end). “We don’t really work here.” Padalecki’s tone is patient but firm. He’s talking to a child, reminding the child of the chores that still need to be done. But trying to be kind, because he recognizes that he is talking to a CHILD, not an adult. I think it’s the patience that makes it so funny.
Dean, enthusiastic in a shy-teenager way (it’s the shyness that makes it: how much HE is surprised at how much he is enjoying himself) tells Sam he really likes being part of the team. Sam stares at Dean like: “Who are you. And what have you done with my brother. Because I need to speak with him about serious matters.”) When Dean is vulnerable, there is no one more vulnerable. And Dean’s happiness is even more vulnerable than his sadness.
And now comes the Pantomime that I treasure. It can’t be captured in a screen grab because it is made up of so many different elements. Sam whispers to his brother. Dean appears to be listening although his face has gone slack. Then we realize he’s listening to the chatter on the headset, because he clicks on his mic, says “Copy that” (right in the middle of Sam’s story), and then switches focus back to Sam, moving his headset out of the way, like, “You were saying?”
Even more than Dean with the Food, Sam does not know what to do with this Dean. Any conception he had of his cranky Alpha brother has been destroyed by Dean-On-His-Headset wearing a Hell Hazers T-shirt. Sam did not see this one coming. (As with “Route 666,” it is Sam’s outside perspective that gives us the clues on how we should perceive Dean. Is this out of character? Is this in character? Etc. Sam, in a weird way, is more open than Dean. We don’t need a “guide” to understand what’s going on with Sam. But Dean? He’s got layers and locked rooms and dungeons in that psyche of his. So when Sam is taken aback by his brother – as he is here – as he will be in “Folsom Prison Blues” – as he will be even later in the final scene of “What Is and What Should Never Be” – we get a huge clue on who Dean is in his world, how Dean is perceived by those who know him best. And by “those” I mean Sam. Because Dean doesn’t tell Sam everything. Dean keeps secrets. He hates secrets, but he keeps a ton of them.)
In a way, Dean as PA is the most revelatory information we could ever receive about him. As with Dean being afraid of flying, there’s no turning back once we see Dean as PA. That particular Dean will always exist, providing shadings of understanding about his character.
And again, it is Sam (Straight Man) who helps the comedy land. He has continued to talk, thinking that Dean is talking to him, but then realizes, wait, what? “Copy that??” Dean’s on a roll though. There is some shit going down on his headset and it needs to be handled. He clicks on the mic again and says, dominantly, “They’re aWARE.” Who’s “they”? And what are they “aware” of? And how does Dean know this anyway? Ben Edlund is a genius. Ackles ROCKS that headset behavior.
His brother is so overwhelming in his headset behavior that Sam loses track of his own objective. He wants to get Dean to focus, but Sam himself is starting to lose it. Because his brother is barking, “They’re aWARE” into the headset and, honestly, there’s no coming back from that.
HOWEVER, and this loops into what I was saying before, and this is my favorite part: Sam has had to gently remind his brother that they don’t “really work here.” Underestimate Dean at your peril. Telling Sam he wants to show him something, he starts off, saying into his headset, “Copy that, I’m on my way.” (I love how that world, fake as it is, accepts Dean. No questions asked. How rarely does that happen for him? No wonder he loves it.) Sam can’t get past the “copy that” stuff (neither can I), but he follows Dean over to the sound guy’s sound board. Dean’s on a first-name basis with everyone. There’s suddenly history there. And nobody balks at Dean, or recoils from his instant-intimacy. A film set is all about instant-intimacy.
“Dave, can you play him that thing you were playing me earlier?”
That may be Dean’s most revealing line. In between sandwiches and juice and smoothies and tacos, Dean has been busy.
And Dave doesn’t balk. He says “sure” and hands the headset to Sam. (The fact that Dave doesn’t balk, that the other PAs gossip freely with Dean around the craft table, that people trust him – and the fact that all of this is a bit of a surprise to me, having seen Dean bungle so many interactions through his awkwardness/flirtation/too-intimate behavior – is one of the most beautiful surprises of “Hollywood Babylon.” Ackles has created a character we think we know. And we do know quite a bit. But this Dean is unexpected. It is through the graceful reveal of the unexpected – while remaining completely believable – that you get to 10 seasons. This is a show about character, not plot. I’ve never forgotten Dean as PA. It remains a valid “option” for him, in my own mind. Maybe he could work his way up to a stunt coordinator, or a weapons-trainer, like my cousin’s husband is on various television shows. Rarely do I look at Dean and think, “Well, you would fit in in normal civilian life.” But here, on a Hollywood set, full of transients and people with fake names and ALSO people who are used to bonding with others quickly – something Dean actually CAN do – he fits right in.)
Sam underestimates Dean all the time. Siblings have a way of doing that. It’s sometimes impossible to adjust your childhood conception of your siblings (especially a younger one to an older one). But Sam puts on that headset, and then, suddenly, the camera does an almost complete 360 around Sam’s head as he listens (a Kim Manners type of shot, emotional, fluid, attention-getting). The camera ends with a beautiful dark profile of Sam, and then, even better, the camera moves across the intervening space to Dean’s face, watching Sam listen, nodding at his brother like, “Right??” Phil Sgriccia got his start as an editor. That is a very important fact to appreciating his style. He understands the flow of the camera, and he understands how to put scenes together. It would have been easier, maybe, to film that circle around Sam and then CUT to Dean’s face looking on. Right? That’s how it’s normally done. It’s more “efficient”. But to keep it all in one, to flow from Sam’s face to Dean’s, is far more eloquent. Up until that moment, the scene has been about Dean being off in his own experience and Sam bumbling around trying to get Dean back on point. But in that one-shot flow from Sam’s face to Dean’s, they come back together again. It’s beautifully conceived and constructed.
Quick cut then to Sam and Dean walking through the dark studio, ladders and lights all around them. Dean, headset and all, is now in the lead. He’s the one with all the “connections” on set. He’s not just been eating and schmoozing and yelling CUT. Dean knows what to do next.
Sam and Dean hustle through the raw Canadian weather to I’m assuming Brad’s now-empty trailer, which 1. Dean knows where it is and 2. Dean has no hesitation just walking on in there. Dean, knowing his way around, heads straight to the DVD player, popping in a DVD. Sam is just along for the ride, man. Dean’s Burlesque, once it gets going, is impossible to stop. Sam does ask, “Where did you get the DVD?” and Dean then babbles on about the love life of Cindy and Drew. He’s friends with both of them. “Drew dubbed me an extra copy.” So Dean is strolling around the set, after being on the job for less than a day, all told, and asking favors, making friends. “Hey, Drew, can you dub me an extra copy of that?” And you know Drew did it happily. Dean didn’t have to flirt his way through the door on that one. He can RELAX. It’s changed his whole life.
Sam, again, seems slightly stunned at the high-school-romance knowledge displayed by his brother, but then the dailies start. And we get to hear the “They must have SUPER-HEARING” line again. (Like, how does “super-hearing” explain anything? What does it even MEAN? I have not … problems … but questions.)
Frozen into a screen-grab, there stands Elise Drummond, caught on film. Dean murmurs, “It’s like Three Men and a Baby all over again.” I remember that whole “ghost on film” thing. I saw that damn movie in the movie theatre. Pre-Internet, the “ghost” thing spread by osmosis. Later, we rented the movie again to see the ghost for ourselves.
That is fucking creepy.
And remember when Steve Guttenberg STARRED in hit Hollywood movies? A long-gone era.
Sam, again, does not know the reference, has never heard of it, does not know the rumor, is at sea in a storm of cultural references. It’s like going to college made Sam Amish or something. Dean pushes the point – “Spirit photography?” Now that’s a reference that Sam definitely should know. But he is drawn into the ghostly white female figure on the screen. Just as Dean recognized “Frank,” Sam recognizes her.
6th scene
Now comes my favorite backdrop. I think it’s my favorite because as Sam and Dean talk, we watch it being created. So behind this somewhat prosaic exposition conversation (interrupted with more Headset Burlesque) is a flat being painted pink. Something is being created in the background. It’s the beginning of what will be the sunset that we see later.
The most iconic image of Sam and Dean is coming. And the set-dressers and painters are getting ready for it. They don’t have much time. (So: the fake set-painters on the fake movie are preparing the fake sunset for the TV-characters who have their own TV show – only in the context of the TV-show, of course they aren’t on a TV show at all, this is their life (until we get to “French Mistake”, that is), and we perceive the TV show as the “real” world in all of this, the real-lest thing in this “fake” world of filming Hell Hazers. Meta as hell.)
Sam has printouts ready from his research to show Dean, but Dean is taken up with his walkie-talkie, responding to queries with “Go for Ozzy!” (Ozzy is in this movie? What, does he play the Devil?)
Dean babbles right AT Sam (the most embarrassing part of it, especially because Sam isn’t like, “Wow, Dean, you are SO COOL”): “Have a 20 on Tara. I think she’s 10/100.” The lingo. I can’t stand it. But it’s this look that is so mortifyingly vulnerable.
Sam, again, can’t even speak. (Straight Man. Padalecki rivals George Burns here. Dean’s humor wouldn’t be as funny without these stunned reactions. It makes Dean seem even more crazy.) Sam has given up the “We don’t really work here” reminder. Dean is too far gone for that. After Dean’s “Copy that,” (he’s a little kid playing with gadgets), Sam has to take a second to wait for Dean to focus back on him.
I love the props of fake newspaper clippings, fake Internet sites, and fake research. These people do not skimp on the details.
As someone who spends a large majority of her time researching forgotten or long-lost stars (phone call for Gaby Deslys), I can attest that that is exactly what those search-results look like.
Dean, who has been so enjoying a break from the grime and death and gross-houses of his regular job, looks deflated: “We’re digging tonight, aren’t we?”
Again: Dean as Kid, Sam as Adult. Dean is bummed he has to do his chores.
7th scene
A split-scene showing Jay getting killed by some axe-chopped ghost and Dean and Sam digging up Elise’s grave. The “split” is great because it shows that the problem is much larger. Elise is a symptom not the cause. Sam and Dean are barking up the wrong tree.
The Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Sunset Boulevard is the oldest cemetery in Los Angeles and is a must-see if you’re ever out there. Even better, they have “movie nights” in the cemetery, with old movies projected on an outdoor screen, and you can lie in the grass with a blanket and a bottle of wine or whatever, communing with the ghosts (for real) and celebrating the history of Tinsel Town. It’s a wonderful ritual. You can check out their website for details.
Even as Sam and Dean head through the cemetery (beautiful shot, the flashlights cutting through the fog), Dean is still starstruck. He’s bought a map. He hates cemeteries. He’s never there except to dig up decomposing bodies. This is his favorite cemetery in the world.
Meanwhile, back on the set, Jay says goodnight to McG with “You’re kicking ass and taking names”. He seems sincere. I guess.
Johnny Ramone, strange as it may be, is indeed buried at Hollywood Forever. Dee Dee’s there too. It was quite a somber moment when the “last Ramone” died last year. End of an era.
I went to Hollywood Cemetery when I was out there in 2009 and while I mainly wanted to see the graves of Marion Davies, et al, I love the Ramones and went and found his grave too. Had a “moment.”
Dean wants to go find Johnny Ramone’s grave and Sam makes a crack about “digging him up” (Sam is so over Dean’s starstruck attitude.) Every other grave makes Dean stop in his tracks. This place is so cool! Sam keeps them on track, and they wander among the graves, discussing Elise Drummond and why she has suddenly come out of hiding. It doesn’t make sense. (Maybe she has SUPER-HEARING.)
Overhead shot of Sam and Dean digging (it’s been a long time since we’ve had one of those), with the ominous music starting up again.
Humor: Jay is next seen bitching about how he hates the dailies (after calling McG a genius literally 5 minutes before). Seen on the set again, with the haunted full moon above him, long shot, he tells Bob (Singer?) on the phone that he’s “kicking ass and taking names.” Uh-oh. Jay’s a douche too.
Back at the grave, Sam and Dean salt and burn the bones of Elise, with that overpoweringly sexy point of view we’ve gotten before.
It looks like they’re pissing on her bones. A reminder:
Meanwhile, Jay bites it by being sucked into a gigantic fan on the set, resulting in an awesome blood-splatter.
(Not as awesome as the smiley-face blood splatter from Season 10, which immediately become my favorite blood-splatter of all time.)
Fake Hell Hazers: The Reckoning Trailer
Without warning, we go into the “meta” world of the fake trailer, so well-done down to the male voiceover. (Is there any other kind of voiceover? No. There is not. It’s shocking, really. It’s a Male Monopoly on the level of Standard Oil and women voiceover artists should take it to the Supreme Court.) The trailer makes fun of horror sequels and re-boots, the endlessness of them.
“AND THIS SUMMER THEY’RE COMING BACK AGAIN TO SETTLE THE SCORE …… AGAIN.”
Made up of footage from what we have just seen them filming, as well as footage from prior Supernatural episodes (a fun “Hey I recognize that” game), it also features the other credits from the producer: Cornfield Massacre. Monster (Racist) Truck. Charlie’s Angels. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. Because that’s a career that makes sense. The title emerges in a burst of flames (like the title of Supernatural in Season 2) all as Mitch says, “We must have brought them back from Hell… Again.” Guys, stop bringing monsters back from hell. Learn your lesson.
The most meta moment is the credits screen.
Rated R due to Humor Meant For Fans Only.
8th scene
McG arrives on set the following morning, the place swarming with cops, and asks everyone to huddle around. His mood is faux-sincere but he concedes that they do need to shut down production. He makes a ridiculous rousing St. Crispin’s Day speech.
Dean gets so sucked into the emotion of it, he’s so much part of the team, that we are graced with this moment:
Ackles is funny.
9th scene
I love that Dean and Sam have a couple of days off now and they spend it hanging out in this producer’s trailer (stocked with amenities), and they totally are not supposed to be there but they’re there anyway. Dean enters, all business, totally at home, going to the fridge for a drink. Sam has been watching dailies for six hours and has become part of the couch in the process. His spirit is broken. He wonders if the ghosts are trying to shut down the movie “because it sucks.”
But Tara’s Latin chant gets Sam’s attention. Finally. He sits up, into this gorgeous close-up, a rival to the Dean shot in Frank’s house. Dean notices Sam’s change of focus, and waits. Suddenly alert.
10th scene
Scenes getting shorter now as the case comes together. Martin the screenwriter paces in his office, posters on the wall of Hell Hazers and Monster Truck, as well as Carnivore Carnival.
The best detail though is the woman scraping Jay’s name off the opposite office door. He has been dead barely 24 hours. Perhaps the most brutal critique in the entire episode.
There are a couple of things that are great (and unexpected) about this scene.
Martin’s susceptibility to flattery and camarederie. He is not Gary Cole. He actually, somewhere, cares about his work, wants to be good, and wants people to like what he does. He was surprised at the callousness of not shutting down for the day when Gary Cole died. He’s not soulless. He’s a hack, and he’s not an intellectual (although he does correctly use the term “force majeure”, so maybe he’s an intellectual in hiding), but he’s not a douche. Gary Cole would have sent the “boys” packing to get him another smoothie. Martin, though, invites them in to talk. Yes, it’s because they flatter him (and lie to him), but still, there’s something endearing about it.
When Sam awkwardly stutters out that “they read the script,” Martin actually looks vulnerable, waiting for the verdict.
It’s a heart-crack from a very unexpected place.
He cares what people think, even lowly PAs. Poor Sam. His expression kills me. He looks worried, that’s what makes it so funny.
Martin is genuinely thrilled that “you guys liked it.” The best scripts introduce “the unexpected.” (Which is, ironically, the problem with Hell Hazers, until Marty introduces those changes learned from Sam and Dean.)
Sam and Dean bumble around lying, complimenting him on the “details” and Martin over-eagerly agrees: “Color me guilty, I am a total detail buff.”
Oh, Martin. I’m sorry.
Sam mentions he loves the incorporation of “Enochian” rituals. (“It’s funnier in Enochian.” I highly doubt that, Castiel.) The mood shifts, and Martin looks irritated and also … a little bit hurt. They compliment something that WASN’T from him. He’s actually disappointed. All that stuff was from “Walter, the original writer.” Dean is confused. That grumpy pudgy guy? “I thought he was a PA,” says Dean, who thought he knew everything about his PA family.
Martin gives the background to Walter, listing out the criticisms of Walter’s script which, incidentally, were the criticisms of Supernatural. No love interest. 90% exposition.
11th scene
Hanging out in a fake suburban front yard, complete with white picket fence always in the background (a reminder of the future the brothers will never have, the future Sam just gave up for good in “Heart.” Why else would they put that random picket fence there that has nothing to do with the film apparently being shot? It’s a great subliminal detail), Dean and Sam read through Walter’s original script Lord of the Dead. Dean is sitting in one of the canvas-backed chairs, wouldn’t surprise me if it was McG’s.
In a “SO THERE” to the CW, and to the show’s critics, Dean murmurs, “They should have kept Walter’s original script. It’s actually pretty good.”
Sam, as always, is not interested in the quality of the script. What worries him is the How-To nature of it.
Watch for the focus-shift between foreground and background. It happens twice in this first shot, and it’s gorgeous. Never underestimate the importance of the focus-puller. Gena Rowlands said that the most important person on any John Cassavetes set was the “focus-puller.” If the focus-puller misses the teeny window, if his timing is half a second off, the moment is lost.
The shot also, like that circle around Sam earlier that then moved to Dean in one, puts the brothers together: in sync now, communicating, the same goals and thoughts.
12th scene
Walter has summoned Marty (in Enochian) to meet him on set, and Marty shows up impatient and rude. “I’m working on the script,” he tells Walter. I’ve written a script. I’m working on getting it produced right now. I feel for Walter. If I knew Enochian I might summon something to get rid of a Marty too if Marty turned my script into a vehicle for Reese Witherspoon or added dream-sequences or changed the characters from 35-year-olds to 25-year-olds. (I already fought that battle: I put references to their ages in the dialogue. Not just in my own character description. An experienced playwright told me long ago, “If you think it is ESSENTIAL in your script to have them drink a cup of coffee – not tea, not whiskey, but coffee – then you MUST put it into the language of the script. ‘Want some coffee? This coffee’s good. I hate coffee.’ It’s much harder for them to cut if you’re put it in the dialogue.” Never forgot that.)
Walter seethes behind a bush.
Supernatural Meta:
Walter: It was real.
Marty: Who gives a rat’s ass about real? We’re talking about ghosts here, Walter. There’s no such thing.
3 seconds later, Marty realizes the error of his words. His scream rivals Tara’s. Dean shows up at the last minute, blows away the ghost with a shotgun-blast of salt, and is filmed in a heroic fashion, towering over Martin like a God. Like Huron, King of the Cyclops in Jared-Syn.
Martin looks up at Dean (I just realized: “Dean Martin”) with the same gaga expression Tara gave Dean earlier.
I’m not saying Martin is gay, maybe he is, who knows, but either way he is open to the power and possibility and REALITY of the Male Erotic Muse. (See that old Schtick post I wrote for the “erotic muse” stuff. This is pure Ackles. Think of the pilot. He was not written that way originally.) Not a lot of men are open to the Male Erotic Muse. It’s why Dean gets weird reactions from men. Martin even gives Dean’s whole body the once-over. Martin crushes on Dean from that moment forward. Dean’s used to this. Echoing the “I love you” “I know” exchange, Martin gasps, “You are one hell of a PA” and Dean helps Martin up, saying flatly, “I know.” And he does.
Sam, though, in a beautifully aggressive movement, strides towards Walter, taking control. Walter heads up the scaffold, and he’s sweaty, and truly pained. He’s a ruined desperate man. “They take your script … and then they CRAP ALL OVER IT.”
Dean glances at Martin to see how Martin will take that. Martin shakes his head and grins at Dean, like, “Nah. That’s not what I did.” He feels the need to defend himself to Dean, his new Hero.
Details. Behavioral character-based details like that. I’m in Heaven. But there’s more:
Walter asks Sam and Dean to leave, and Dean calls out, “Can’t do that. It’s not like we like him or anything. It’s a matter of principle.” Watch Marty hear that. It hurts a little bit. Why would his Hero not like him? He must prove himself to this Greek God of Heroism! That comment hurts his feelings!
When the ghosts show up and stagger towards Dean like zombies, Dean puts his shotgun up and murmurs, “Come on, come ON”, summoning them closer (his hottest most Clint Eastwood moment in the episode).
Marty’ll jerk off to that moment later and I don’t blame him.
But the ghosts keep coming so the three men flee, finding shelter in the cabin, breathing a sigh of relief that they now have walls between them and THEM.
Another favorite line-reading is Dean’s completely convincing quoting of Die Hard, complete with infuriated eye-roll at the end of it.
It is then that they collectively realize that one side of the cabin is open. It’s a set. It’s not real.
Mirrors of reality/fakery go off into infinity.
Dean loads up the shotgun, grim and stoic, albeit with feathery eyelash-shadows going down his cheeks. Marty huddles into a crouch position behind Sam, shocked that ghosts are real, when he just declared that they weren’t.
You guys.
Michael B. Silver is so great.
He’s got his own little character arc in operation.
They wait. It’s a Western standoff. Marty starts to contribute, though. He’s not just a damsel-in-distress. He finds his balls. “How is Walter controlling them??” It’s a good question and Sam gets an idea, pulling out his cell phone. Marty, who has been on the phone literally in every second since the episode began, barks, “What are you DOING?” You’re making a call NOW?
Sam holds his cell phone camera out in front of him, scanning the open end of the cabin, revealing the fake Super Moon and then, there, a staggering ghost. Shouting and pointing “THERE”, Dean shoots in that general direction. It’s innovative, dumb, funny, and involves the movies, in a way. They stave off the ghosts using the movie screen. (Watch Marty’s face off on the side during this whole sequence. He cannot believe what he is seeing. He is SO glad he is with Sam and Dean.)
When the time comes for Marty to step up, he’s ready. He’s scared, but he’s ready. Sam hands off the phone to Marty – “You get the idea?” Marty says, “Yeah!” And Softie Sheila gets tears in her eyes because she is proud of Marty. I need a nap.
Marty does a good job.
Sam chased Walter out into another part of the lot and he’s impressive and firm when he corners the frantic playwright. “It’s over, Walter,” he says, with that blue-sky flat behind him and tarps and other accoutrements of movie-making. The detail in every background!
Respect the Mask
You ready?
Here we go.
Sam and Dean seem real to us. We visit them every week. Their world seems real. The show is realistic about their challenges as brothers and as men. It does not shy away from heavy dark psychological stuff. (Or humor.) But place them against a fake background or – one of my hooks of the show being its rich cinematic style – place them in a visual universe that highlights the cinematic tradition from which these characters emerged (a mix of screwball, Westerns, melodrama, film noirs, the 1940s prestige “women’s pictures”, 1970s corrupt cop movies, and silent-film slapstick routines), and they seem Realler Than Real. THAT’S what the movies can do. Just because something is “fake” does not make it “not true.” As a matter of fact, the “mask” of make-believe (placed in every frame in “Hollywood Babylon”) is what MAKES the truth come out. I just wrote about this in a piece about Doris Day and James Cagney in the excellent and painful Love Me or Leave Me: Kabuki masters work with masks. They have rituals associated with different masks. The masks are treated with the ultimate respect because it is through the mask – hiding the whole face – that the truth of the Human Condition can come out.
It’s the literally magic transference of the real into make-believe that then allows the REAL “real” to exist.
Supernatural, in every episode, adds little cinematic nods to movies/TV shows of days gone by, partly because it looks great, and partly because it adds a level of Mythic Iconic Status to the two lead characters that they might not otherwise have. There’s a self-consciousness to the style, but everyone working on the show is such a master that it seems perfect/natural that the show should look like that. (“Hollywood Babylon” is a defense of the choices they’ve made thus far.)
But Supernatural does not often admit that the show is wearing a Mask. To do so constantly would be to turn the show into an ironic wink-wink snark-fest, which it is not. It is a Melodrama and, ultimately, a Black-Hat-White-Hat Western (the style I think it owes the most to, story-wise.) When Supernatural DOES admit to the Mask (in the “meta” episodes), a KIND of truth comes out that is not to be found elsewhere. I’ll just speak personally although we went over this last season: Like most people I was desperately worried that the famous necklace would never make an appearance again. Please don’t forget the necklace. Please please. Oh me of little faith. When the necklace appeared again in “Fan Fiction,” it was a FAKE version of it – and yet it contained even MORE emotional truth than the original necklace. It had become an Icon, a Mythic Talismanic Object that meant MORE than itself. Meaning was there before, yes, but it had more to do with plot and content – something that doesn’t interest me all that much. Yes, it had sentimental value (but Supernatural expresses sentimentality, usually, through gritted teeth, part of its power.) The necklace was a remnant of their past, etc. But “Fan Fiction” acknowledged its HUGE status not in the actual story but in the enormous subtextual emotional lives of the characters. The OBJECT doesn’t matter, as Dean acknowledges in “Fan Fiction”. It is what the object MEANS, and the meaning exists WITHOUT the object. The necklace BECAME its own symbol, in other words, and it DID that through being FAKE, a FAKE necklace meant to REPRESENT the real.
I don’t look to the future that much with the show, I go where it wants me to go, generally, but I had really felt that something would be “missing” in the show if it ended without a return of the necklace.
In “Fan Fiction,” the necklace returned. A fake one. By the end of the episode, I felt “complete” with the necklace arc. I don’t need to see it again. Closure. TRUE closure, not sentimental (i.e. Dean finding said necklace and crying, Sam giving Dean the necklace again and crying, etc.).
The necklace removed itself from the real into the fake, and by doing so, it became true. Not just “real”, but true, because the fake is truer than the real.
The Mask does not conceal. It reveals.
/ Respect the Mask
Walter unleashed the forces that devour him.
Walter so wanted to be in the movies. Well, he got his wish.
13th scene
Although we don’t see this, Marty went home after his afternoon with the Die Hard boys, abuzz with inspiration. He sat down at his desk and rapped out new dialogue, new plot points, incorporating the cellphone spirit photography. I can see him smiling in delight at his own innovation. He’s happy! He’s doing something good! We see the results in the next scene, “Ashley” holding out her cell phone and screaming “THERE” to Mitch who blows the ghost away. Granted, Marty still feels the need to put in all that exposition (which he said he hated in Walter’s script): “The video must pick up their frequencies in the way that our eyes can’t.” It reminds me of the first season’s scripts of Criminal Minds where the investigation team stands around explaining the different profiles not to cops who don’t get it, but to each other. “No, an arsonist usually works alone, is usually impotent, is usually a white male.” In a realistic script, Mandy Patinkin would say, “I KNOW already.”
McG can barely contain himself. It’s the best thing he’s ever seen in his life. And because he is the director (Grrrrrrrrr) he’ll get all the credit. But the sense of excitement is real on the set. You can see Marty laughing behind McG. Now they’re all “in.” Yes, a bunch of people had to die, but the show must go on!
Sam, standing off to the side next to Marty (on his phone, of course). Where the hell is Dean?
Oh. Right.
There’s that beautiful fake moonrise behind them, and Sam has an expression of incredulity mixed with quiet almost gentle sarcasm. He murmurs to Marty, not looking at him, “You find out there’s an afterlife. And this is what you do with it?”
Marty grins up at Sam: “I need a little jazz on the page.”
I love Marty. Sam is so imposing, such an unembarrassedly male guy, and Marty has seemed silly and pampered. Not anymore. They’ve been through something together, and Marty can hold his own a bit now.
It is at this point that Herb Alpert arrives.
My parents had this album in their collection (vinyl, of course) when I was a kid. “Green Peppers,” the song that closes out “Hollywood Babylon” is on this album.
When we were little kids, my sister and I used to put on my mother’s two formal dresses (from high school, that she still had hanging in her closet, with huge puffy tulle skirts and tiny waists: she had made them!) and make up dances to Herb Alpert songs from this album. (I was slightly scared of the cover. It seemed dirty. Literally. I was a child but I knew whipped cream was sticky). I’m sure my mother, who had worn those dresses to church sock-hops when she was 17, 18, when her date was the handsome teenage boy who would later be my father, washing the dishes in the kitchen, hearing Herb Alpert blasting from the turn-table down the hall, knowing that her grade-school-age daughters had put that record on, must thought that Time and life were a very Surreal Affair indeed.
14th scene
There’s a “whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on” (perfect timing!) in Tara’s trailer. The second the case was solved, he went to find Tara. They had that date from their first eye contact. Sam approaches the trailer from the side, the door opens, and Dean lurches out, shrugging on his jacket, exuding an air of lazy satisfaction. (Similar to his “I’m fucked out” vibe in “Provenance.” Or maybe a kinder less vulgar way to put it is, in the words of Elvis Presley, he’s “wearing that loved on look.” The look is unmistakable.)
Tara, tying her robe together, stands in the doorway, looking beautiful, happy, and also “wearing that loved on look.” Sam, as always, has to witness his brother’s conquests at close range. He’s used to it, but he never really gets used to it. Dean has no shame. He turns back to look up at Tara, and gives her this expression.
It’s a brag. He know he’s good. She’s good too. He just made her happy, she made him happy, that was super-fun and they both needed it. She drawls, “You’re one hell of a PA,” and instead of saying “I know” (which would tip his brag right over the line), he says, “Thank you.”
This is Sam looking on.
What would we do without Jared Padalecki’s Straight Man brilliance? The Straight Man is often overlooked in the dazzle of the slapstick partner but the “button” of the scene is Sam’s.
The following expression on Tara’s face alone should put to rest forever the complaints that Dean is a “user.” Being promiscuous does not make you a “user.” There’s a prudish reaction to Dean’s active sex life that strikes me as damn near reactionary.
This is not a “used” woman. Or, she is, she has been “used”, but she’s HAPPY about it. There’s a difference.
Dean swaggers off. And so does Tara, by the way. She watches him go, and her smile is happy, but also proud. The way you sometimes are proud when the sex you’ve just had is great, and also totally random. Like, you didn’t wake up that morning thinking you’d have sex that day. But you did. And the world seems friendly and you made it happen.
Sam follows his swaggering sexual brother with an expression on his face as serious as Richard Nixon’s. Watch for it. Dean swipes a sandwich from a passing tray, and the two brothers then turn left and walk unexpectedly right into THIS.
I think I’ve said what I need to say about that shot. It is the ultimate in “Respect the Mask.” There are few shots in Supernatural with as much emotional and make-believe-cinematic resonance.
As they are just about to walk INTO the sunset (literally), the flat moves, rolling back, revealing itself as an illusion (all while sending off reverbs of emotion in the audience – the true purpose of illusion), and revealing the outdoor lot, its sparkling rain-wet brilliance, golden sun-rays and dappled clouds above its expanse, and the magical gate leading to nowhere and everywhere.
SHEILA! AT LAST! *stops writing Othello essay and goes to read*
You’ve been a good sport, Wren! Have loved talking literature with you too. :)
But yes, this one’s been on the back burner for months. I had a random day free, knocked this shit out.
(I’m like a third of the way through now.) In the absence of recaps I’ve been poking around your books- I just Kavalier & Clay based on your recommendation and loved it. You have a really wonderful range of stuff on here. And I seriously can’t express how much I love that SOMEONE has taken the time and effort to articulate all this incredible stuff about SPN. Haha I think you’ve opened my eyes to a great many things about it, particularly cinematography-wise.
Short version- love your recaps :) and book stuff too.
Thank you SO MUCH, Wren. Compliments like yours do help make it worth-while although it is so much fun for me to geek out on cinematic devices. But I do admit that when one writes 80,000 words – it feels really good to have it acknowledged. :)
Supernatural (to me) demands this kind of depth!
Welcome :) things like this give me hope for the internet. Finally someone who does not tell people what they should like. It’s very refreshing. Not to say encouraging.
And I totally agree. All the teeny-weeny nuances.
And by the way, having just read your thoughts on Tara Benchley, I’m reminded of poor JP in House Of Wax. Have you seen it? It’s kind of hysterical. Admittedly I shut my laptop after figuring out, one hour in, that slasher movies are NOT my thing. But still- literally the epitome of what you described with poor dear Tara.
I have seen House of Wax!! Long time ago though.
(Of course that makes me think of: “Four score and seven years ago …. I wore a funny hat.”) And Sam wrestling with Gandhi.
Fallen Idols was an awful lot funnier once I figured out precisely what House Of Wax was lol. But oh god what an awful film. (JP’s moustache! Dear god.)
Sheila, this recap is both immensely erudite and hilarious, and I revel in the fact that somehow you have joined the dots between Rebecca West’s defense of saucy burlesque stars and Supernatural. Thank you, your mission on this planet is accomplished.
Cannot think of a moment in this episode I don’t find funnier with each viewing. I swear if I ever hear anyone say the words ‘Pepper steak’ in real life I will collapse and die of laughing.
Likewise ‘superhearing,’ ‘tractor crash victim’ ‘gentleman’s gentleman,’ and ‘mini phili cheese steak sandwich.’
hahahaha Rebecca West. She has a line in that piece, something like, “Please give me my straight-backed chorus girl,” and I just love it. I feel the same way!
// Thank you, your mission on this planet is accomplished. //
Totally, right? (Now I sound like Marty.)
“Tractor crash victim.” HA.
“They must have SUPER-HEARING.” (Crash comes Gary Cole.)
WHY is that so funny to me every time I see it?
Yes, this one only gets funnier! “Testy” as a descriptor for Walter is a little gem.
Yes – “testy.” And how Dean already knows what a PA should be like. Too much …
Finished! Now I can comment properly. Hehe.
First off- this made me laugh out loud many, many times, but never so much as-
//Dean is already eating.//
Because of course.
Also, you have a ‘favourite blood splatter’? Oh-kay…
Anyway- what a double act those two are in this episode. It took me a couple of watches to warm up to it, since I went straight from Heart to this, and I found it pretty jarring on first watch. But multiple watchings and this recap have really illuminated it for me.
Love the Samulet digression. Dean throwing the amulet away BOTHERED me, and it’s kind of incredible- an illustration of how good the show can actually be- that they managed to resolve it without tipping into sentimentality. (Speaking of which, when would you say that the show HAS been sentimental? In a bad way?)
JA is sublime throughout this whole episode. They both are. You could turn the sound off and it would hardly be any less funny. That to me is good acting.
Laughing at the Marty Arc.
And your meta digression strikes me as… weirdly profound???
Realising I should have probably have double-spaced my paragraphs. That’s really bugging me.
// Dean throwing the amulet away BOTHERED me, and it’s kind of incredible- an illustration of how good the show can actually be- that they managed to resolve it without tipping into sentimentality. //
I absolutely agree. I’m with you and a lot of other fans – the amulet HAD to be resolved. In my lack of imagination I thought it would show up in the last episode (whenever that was), Sam pulling it out of his pocket, “I saved it for you” and blah blah … I guess I still don’t entirely trust the show? Because that would be Syrup! The way they resolved it was so so so much better. I actually teared up!!
In my opinion, the recent-seasons handling of Castiel is the ultimate in sentimentality. (And Hannah made it worse.) It feels like it’s geared only towards the hard-core Castiel fans (not that I dislike Castiel – I don’t!). When Castiel was the fierce weird deadpan “Other” in the earlier seasons, he so FIT in the Supernatural world. Once he started knowing pop culture, and bonding with children, and saying “Wookie” and all the rest – I felt it was a betrayal of the character and pandering to the fans who find that kind of thing really cute.
Even the really emotional arcs – like Dean and Lisa, or Dean and Sam and Dad – or Dean back from Purgatory and why didn’t Sam look for him – are never played for sentimentality. There’s always that practical BITE to them.
// You could turn the sound off and it would hardly be any less funny. That to me is good acting. //
I so agree with this!! Dean’s Headset Behavior. Sheer Pantomime. You don’t need language. Although I can’t live without, “They’re aWARE.”
Another episode that tips ALMOST into sentimentality – but does it so well that it becomes pure raw sentiment – is Bobby and Rufus strolling through Bobby’s near-death experience. The wife stuff, in particular.
But it’s so well done and it’s so revealing of who Bobby is – it’s devastating – that it never has that manipulative feeling that “sentimentality” usually does.
Oh, God, Death’s Door. Like- I had tears streaming down my face the whole way through. It’s so poignant, but what a fine line they walk. With actors more sentimental than Beaver and Williams it could have been the most awful trash. But then I love that the writers trusted them enough to write lines like that. They knew they could handle it.
// With actors more sentimental than Beaver and Williams it could have been the most awful trash. //
ABSOLUTELY.
I’m just thinking about this now and maybe I need to write more about it: I think “sentimentality” comes when the ACTORS are “wallowing” in their emotions (unlike most human beings, who desperately try NOT to feel pain.) When the actor gets swept up in his own character’s arc – as opposed to trying to survive and problem-solve the Arc. I think, too, that when actors show self-pity – it’s not good. Unless the character is a self-pitying martyr-type character.
Don’t feel sorry for your character is good advice to any actor.
So Beaver and Williams – neither of them felt sorry for their own characters – they were trying to get the hell out of there.
So so so good.
Here’s a good example: and JP told this one on himself, which makes me like him even more. In the commentary track to “In My Time of Dying,” he said that he initially was going to play his last moment with his Dad – when John asks him to go get a cup of coffee – with some meaning to it. Like, a meaningful look, a sense of “We’re okay now, I love you, Dad” – some BEAT, in other words.
Kim Manners, also a genius, said, “No. Just leave.”
JP’s initial choice is the ULTIMATE in “sentimental.” Manners knew better and JP was smart enough to take that direction. I think he learned a lot from that. He was still a super-young actor at that point – although he had had some good long-lasting jobs – but this was the most serious thing he had ever been in. Hard to remember that, but it’s true.
To go along with my comment above: JP was feeling sorry for his character in that moment with John. He was feeling sorry for Sam.
So JP wanted to somehow “show” that this … this right here … would be the final moment he would have with his Dad. And oh, how sad it was.
But SAM doesn’t know it’s the final moment. He should just leave the room.
That choice leaves open all kinds of other possibilities for Sam once John has died – later regret, guilt, all that – because he didn’t really clear things up with his father.
//I guess I still don’t entirely trust the show?//
I have this problem with a lot of things I love very much- I’ve been worried that Season Eleven will be awful, for instance (set to rest somewhat over the trailer. Also- Dean has a Magic Mike reference. I literally saw it and thought- Sheila.) Anyway-
endeavouring, after the not-car-crash-even-though-it-should-have-been of Fan Fiction, to trust the show.
And oh, yeah, of course. Forgot about Castiel. I agree- though I think it improved somewhat towards the end of Season Ten (the scene where he got his grace back? I sometimes go back and watch just that bit. Wonderful. The music. The library. Everything). But there’s a couple of scenes where I just feel… embarrassed… like the bit in Reichenbach (otherwise a favourite of mine) where he gave the small child a giant smile and discussed snot rockets. Cringe. And the Season Nine scene where he sang to the baby. It felt too blatantly like fan-service, much as I hate that term.
What did you think of the Sam and Dean scene in the s10 finale- Sam on his knees crying, Dean telling him to close his eyes, et cetera? Perhaps it’s sentimental, but I really did like it anyway- I felt that real heart went into it, cheesy as that sounds. From the actors, the writers- everyone. (Of course I’m a huge sap, so there’s that.)
So many fans say how ‘betrayed’ they feel by CHARACTERS’ particular arcs (particularly with some of Sam’s- soulless, demon blood, not looking for Dean). And I just don’t get that- like, guys? That sort of stuff is why the show is still around? It’s when the integrity of who a character actually /is/ was compromised, like I felt with Cas, that annoys me. Though I like his characterisation right through to Season Eight. I even don’t mind the human arc.
//’They’re aWARE.’//
I’m dead. You’ve killed me.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I mean with Castiel. The fan-service part. Part of the great thing about Sam and Dean is that we WANT all these things from them (catharsis, openness) – but they REFUSE to give it, or give it to us in dribs and drabs – and instead of feeling sentimental it feels like the valid reactions of these two particular guys.
I love the moment you mention from the S10 finale. In general, I don’t find anything JA or JP do to be sentimental. Even their most operatic moments. They are both geniuses.
I think we’ve discussed Soulless Sam before – it’s one of my favorite Arcs in the whole thing! There are other Arcs that don’t mean much to me – but I get that it’s an ensemble show, so they’re trying to please everyone.
For example, The Colt. I LOVE the Colt. I think a lot of people are like, “Oh my God not this again.”
I think it’s hilarious – a classic McGuffin. (Hitchcock’s word for an object that gets the plot rolling but doesn’t really matter in and of itself.)
I wish they had explored Castiel’s human-ness even more. There was a bit of a drippy ABC Afterschool Special mood – him doing his laundry with sad-face, and bonding with homeless people – but I thought it had interesting things to say about Humanity, the Soul, and Emotions.
//They are both geniuses.//
AREN’T they? I recently tried to induct an old friend into the show- but we only ended up mutually infuriated- after getting to In My Time Of Dying she insisted that the Js were bad actors because they ‘didn’t cry enough’. Or something to that effect. Luckily she is lovely and we avoided an actual quarrel haha. But that’s the sort of thing that really irritates me- especially coming from people who are CONVINCED that they are right. (Another reason why your recaps are basically manna.)
I was rather unimpressed with the s10 finale- with the exception of the cinematography and the motel-trashing/lamp abuse scene- until that moment. That was what helped it ‘land’ for me- not saying it was a favourite, but I like it despite slight shoddiness.
The Colt! I absolutely agree. In Frontierland it came up again and I felt as I would bumping into an old and dear friend on the street. Hehe. (I used to be one of those gun-hating people- to be fair, I’d been traumatised by my father shooting a rabbit in front of ten-year-old me- but anyway, TMI. But SPN has made me appreciate guns. And cars. I’ve been corrupted.)
//There was a bit of a drippy ABC Afterschool Special mood – him doing his laundry with sad-face, and bonding with homeless people //
When you say ABC I think of Once Upon A Time. Ugh. And lol. I didn’t really mind the bonding with homeless people bits tbh, but the whole thing felt a teeny bit preachy. I love the scene with him and the woman in the church, though- you know the one? It’s in I’m No Angel. Wonderful. One of the reasons (along with Blade Runners and Soul Survivor) that Buckner & Leming get a pass, in my book.
// she insisted that the Js were bad actors because they ‘didn’t cry enough’. //
Oh dear.
I mean, the best thing about Supernatural – which I didn’t even really realize until I started writing re-caps and one by one you all started showing up – :) – was just how RICH the show really is.
Everyone comes at it with their own filter – and the show can TAKE that diversity of response. Sure, I think some fan factions are way off base – but that’s their business. I’m certainly not here to tell them they’re wrong. As long as people are getting pleasure out of it – HAVE AT IT. A good work of art will ALWAYS produce a variety of responses. I mean, people have been arguing about the Mona Lisa for centuries. Not that, you know, SPN is on the level of Mona Lisa … hahaha But you know what I mean.
Maybe it’s that “both/and” thing I talked about. I’ve seen some fans (mainly in the Tumblr universe) take an “either/or” approach. It can get very hostile. Some fans hate Sam. (There was one lady who used to comment here who was one of those people – she hated Sam – she was so Dean Dean Dean that anything Sam did irritated her because she wanted Dean always to be propped up/comfortable/happy. I tried to tell her – “But Dean always being happy would not be dramatic … tension is part of what helps drama operate.” Anything Sam did that “upset” Dean made her hate him, even if Sam had a point, even if it resulted in a really really good scene. Eventually she stopped commenting – I’m not sure why – maybe because the conversation here was too “both/and” as opposed to “either/or”. Again, I’m not saying she’s wrong – I mean, I think she is very wrong – but I wasn’t telling her to not watch the show in whatever way she wants. HOWEVER: I do think she’s missing out on the true rich-ness of the story by taking an “either/or” approach.
I see that a lot – not just with SPN. People get very positional. Boy do they love their “either/or.”
I think good writing is writing that is strong, and states the case strongly. You’re probably learning that having to write term papers, etc. That’s how I learned it! STATE YOUR CASE. Back that shit up with examples!! :)
And any opinion stated strongly – will generate good discussion (hopefully).
I have learned so much from listening to everyone commenting here – the nuances, the different perspectives. It’s one of those things where I go back to re-watch an episode and think, “Oh! This is the moment Helena talked about.” Or whatever.
It’s super fun!
Guns and Cars. Yes. Aesthetic objects. Filmed accordingly. I was so happy when the Colt came back in Frontierland. I felt the same way – “Oh, hi there, you!”
// I love the scene with him and the woman in the church, though- you know the one? //
Oh God, yes – one of my favorite Castiel scenes. Very profound.
//Laughing at the Marty Arc// Marty and Headset Dean. Its own story in those few scenes. Marty who didn’t realize he was sexually attracted to men until that moment (although I think he is a low libido, high ego character too so maybe he never gave it much thought?) Dean waiting all his life to quote Bruce Willis in the perfect situation and BOOM. Back to Flirting with Inappropriate Men.
“You find out there’s an afterlife and this is what you do with it?” Oh Marty.
Haha! Head cannon accepted that Dean inwardly squeeeed like a fangirl by quoting John McClane.
Paula – yes, definitely Marty is a low libido guy, glued to his phone.
Then Dean appears …. towering over him ….
//The current trend of declaring one’s sensitivity and fragility is recent, and in many ways bucks against thousands and thousands of years of human development. We didn’t make it as a human race by declaring our sensitivity. We made it because we were able to gut it through unimaginable losses.//
Sheila, this is so, so true!! This is a really interesting concept to me, because in my life-I have known people who have had truly horrific things happen to them, but you would never know it by the way they lived their lives. It always has amazed me when I get close enough to them to find out their stories-and I am awed by their strength. I also know people who focus on every slight done to them, and cannot let any of that go. They are the victim, and seem stuck in that role.
I also love what you are saying about “both/and”. I don’t want to get too political, but I feel this is something we are lacking in our current political climate. To see both sides of a situation, and while you might not agree with the other side, understand they have a reason to believe what they do. I feel the “both/and” mentality is where we should strive to be.
I am still at the beginning of your recap, but I have the day off…watch out!
This is off topic, I’m not on twitter but I happened to see your tweet on Sterling Hayden-whom I love. You mentioned his voice, and I totally agree with you, I know it sends shivers down my spine. I could listen to Hayden and George Sanders forever! I know Jim Beaver mentioned his book Wanderer, it is in print, so I ordered a copy. I haven’t seen all his movies, but one of my favorites is So Big. Such a sweet, strong performance.
Maureen – I know, when Jim posted about Hayden’s autobiography I thought – how have I not read this before?? So glad to hear your thoughts on Hayden too. Boy, was he sexy. And that voice.
That final shot of Asphalt Jungle always kills me. That guy was so bad, such a “heavy”, but all the time, all the time, he just wanted to get back to Kentucky. That objective was filmed with zero sentimentality. So when he finally did get back there, it was devastating.
Hmmm, So Big. I haven’t seen that one. I will rectify that!!
And in re: sensitivity. I know. Maybe my resistance to that whole thing comes from my own problems (I barely remember an entire decade due to the bad-ness of it) – but I try to focus on the survivor part of it. I don’t always succeed. But I come from tough stock, tough people. I value toughness of spirit, toughness of mind. I value openness too, of course – but not at the expense of other values.
And in re: “both/and” and politics: It’s funny you should say that. I’m re-reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton (I just saw the Broadway show) – and boy, was that an “either/or” world too!! I’m reading about the presidential election of 1800 – which actually puts the viciousness of our political climate to shame. These people felt they were engaged in a life or death philosophical war and they set out to not only win the office – but destroy their opponents utterly. (And they succeeded). That election was BRUUUUUUTAL. So I agree – the current climate is awful – but I just read that section and I almost felt better. Like, “Well. This has always been going on. From Day One. It was worse back then. So maybe all this nastiness is – unfortunately – just another day at the office.”
But I agree with you: I wish, at least on a personal level, that people could at least START with “both/and.”
In improv comedy they call it the “Yes And” rule. Someone initiates a scene and you step into it. You should always take a “Yes And” approach to what someone else set up. Then the “scene” can happen. An example of saying “No” would be:
Two people enter a scene. One person says, “Doctor, I have a headache.” The other person says, “What are you, crazy? I’m not a doctor. I’m Genghis Khan.”
This happens all the time in improv – you see actors holding onto their own ideas of how a scene should go, they say “No” to the set-up from someone else – and POOF – the scene dies on the vine.
But say “Yes And”?? The sky’s the limit.
It’s such a good rule – not just for improv – but for personal associations, business associations, even regular interactions with people you don’t know that well. Most good conversations – not debates, but conversations – start with “both/and.” People who can ONLY talk in “either/or” (and I know a lot of them, since they’re all critics – and I include myself in this!!) can be tremendously boring. Or tiresome. Oh well – you get a bunch of “either/or” people in a room and they have a blast debating stuff until the cows come home. So I get it.
But I definitely think “both/and” is the better way to go.
So glad to find another supernatural re-cap from you, Sheila! (not like I check every day or anything…) I swear I’ve learned more about writing for the screen, big or small, from your re-caps than any book, webinar, etc. I know you put a lot of effort in and thank you!
Thank you so much, bainer!!
“Now THAT’S what I’m talking about!” Can’t wait to read.
:)
So many things I love about your re-cap, Sheila. But let me start with The Wall of Frank. Those pics are priceless and how much time they must have spent creating each of those poses. I’m sure they had a list of them in the script but this actor totally immersed himself in sad clown and salty pirate and they are AWESOME.
//hermetically sealed world FILLED with people// all those people. This is what threw me off when I first saw the episode. Sam and Dean’s world is always small. A few witnesses or LEOs at a time. Their small family. Few friends. The Roadhouse seemed crowded but when you think about that, it was only a few scattered hunters who don’t really talk to each other. In these scenes, all the activity and interaction are a shock and yet the brothers blend right in.
Gary Cole. I love him. The swarm. The smoothness. The Bluetooth. And now thanks to you, I will never be able to see his scenes here without thinking low libido.
So does The Wall of Frank rival The Cheesehead Wall of Fame in Nightshifter? Hmmmm, not sure which I love more.
Gary Coooollleeee! Gary Cole! He is Just. The. Best. I mean, Harvey Birdman. What a treat. His face is almost horizontal in some scenes the smarm is weighing on him so heavily.
Yes! My favorite Gary Cole? Cotton McKnight and “the Helsinki episode of 1919”. Dude was only in that movie for a few scenes playing straight man to Jason Bateman and still owned it.
Effin A! A commentary combo second only to Willard and Piddock in Best in Show!
“The awkwardly feminine from the possibly Canadian” I’m crying.
BTW no slight on Canadians here (looking at the lovely Lyrie). Just great unexpected random offensiveness that is Dodgeball.
I’m really OK with everything you wrote about that guy that said stuff in that that thing. Also: I’m not even Canadian (yet).
So I chose to only remember “lovely.”
(I’m pretty sure some genuine Canadians come here from time to time, though.)
hahahaha Castiel gif.
The Wall of Frank is so so funny to me – I’m so glad we got to see the whole thing – the private dick – the cowboy. HA!!!
And yes: the large over-populated world of the film set, and how Dean and Sam just sneak on in. Similar to ” Folsom Prison Blues” – a complex crowded world, and the two of them just work it. Dean more than Sam, really, but he’s living out both his Steve McQueen fantasy AND his James Garner fantasy!
and yes: Gary Cole! He’s just perfection. Popping those nuts in his mouth. Horizontal leaning. “Not problems … but questions …” Like, Gary Cole the actor KNOWS how funny that is but he plays it so straight.
Faith was the episode where I realized I had (finally) fallen in love with those guys.
Holywood Babylon was when I knew that whatever they’do, i’d just follow them there. I’ve had doubts sometimes, but was always proven right to keep sticking around. This show is so confident, and it also trusts US so much. 11 seasons did not happen by chance. I love them. (And I love these conversations do much).
Trust was mentioned up thread too and I think that’s important. It is a mutual trust between show and fan, that the casual viewer doesn’t get or give. Is this why so many people get scared off by fandom? I love our conversations here too.
// it also trusts US so much //
I think that’s really true. The high watermark of that was “Fan Fiction” – which both acknowledged us, but also provided surprises – for me, anyway. It gave me what I wanted without me knowing how much I wanted it.
Carry on My Wayward Son group number. Sheila = Puddle on the Floor.
I have so much more to say. I’m stuck in “real life”. (What is Real anyway)
Remind me to defend Once Upon A Time! :)
Haha, sorry Lyrie :) I have a grudge against OUaT for being brightly coloured.
you’re a genius Sheila! you’re kicking ass and taking names!
I really enjoyed your thoughts on the real. Every time I watch Sam, Dean and Molly run through those extensive foggy woods in Roadkill and have arguments outside those huge buildings, I find myself thinking, surely, surely that’s not a set. It can’t be. And then alooooooong comes Hollywood Babylon!
So much to love in this one. So many MOMENTS. Food hanging out of mouths. Screams. Dailies. Smoothies. Morgan Brayton’s FACE (the glamour shot)! JA’s amazing voice work in his first conversation with Tara.
I love love love your thoughts on Dean fitting into Hollywood so neatly and how much this brings to his characterisation. Who would have thought, huh? Who could have imagined? He’s chameleon, comedian, corinthian and caricature. (Bowie here revealing himself to be such a huge Supernatural fan he wrong a song about it three years before Kripke was born. Also notable for his rechristening of the bunker as the Mind-Warp Pavilion).
a Black-Hat-White-Hat Western (the style I think it owes the most to, story-wise.)
Can you talk more about this? It’s not where I would go first-up. Do you mean story-wise narratively or thematically? Do you think it applies to the bunker seasons as well? I really love all the genre stuff that populates the Supernatural salad bar and I’m so curious how people load their plates.
Thank you for highlighting Sam’s dismissal of Gerard and his fake fangirling of Martin! They crack me up so much. Poor guy is just trying to work. He’ll take the CASE!. He seems so heavy in this one. Like, there is a baffled lightness to his bemused reactions to Dean, but his presence is really solid. Putting coffee cups down; slumped on couches; hands behind his head. I love his comic exit to his last scene with Martin. Dean is having this whole THING and Sam’s still there, patiently taking up space (always a sign of a good SPN episode). In his final confrontation with Testy Walter he doesn’t even fit in the frame.
Dean, oh Dean. Give it a rest, it’ll chafe.
// Dean, oh Dean. Give it a rest, it’ll chafe. //
Ha! You have good eyes! :)
It also occurs to me that Westerns can (in a weird way) handle ambiguity. Some of the most ambiguous films are Westerns: because what IS good, when you’re wiping out a whole other people? And CAN a monster be somewhat good too? In a so-called black and white world – how does one deal with ambiguity? When there is a clear villain – how does that change who we are, our responses to things?
And what does a life of always always fighting do to a man? It’s like that great line from Unforgiven: “It’s a hell of a thing killing a man.” Men who always fight are ruined for any other kind of experience.
Westerns present these issues and dilemmas in stark clarity. They are not buried in “messages.” They are human stories against a vast and hostile backdrop. But the vast-ness allows for unbelievable ambiguity. A recent Western that I loved a lot was The Homesman. Totally woman-focused – what that life did to women, the strength of women, but also what happened to women who were broken by the hardships. Men baffled on the sidelines – trying to help – but also … well, in that case, it’s WOMEN who are the “other.” To these men, women are a big ol’ mystery. Place a woman in a giant endless field (like Tommy Lee Jones does in The Homesman) – her head rising above the horizon – giant thunderclouds rearing up in the distance – and you automatically get a Mythic image somehow – of womanhood, nature, hardship, survival – there are echoes of every story ever told in it.
Not sure how that works.
Anyway. These are my 10 – or 20 – or 50 cents.
Thank you thank you Jessie! It matters a lot that people like these posts – for real, yo.
So glad to hear you mention JA’s voice work in that scene. Slam-dunk. Imagine how it could have been over-played in an “Aw shucks” way by a less genius actor. He did it so subtly. But manipulatively too. But also honestly. Like … what? He’s so good.
Hahahaha in re: Bowie!!!
// Who would have thought, huh? Who could have imagined? // Exactly!! I never saw THAT Dean coming. He’s so easy, so comfortable. I never doubt his competence in his job – but he’s so awkward socially – that PA Dean was such a breath of fresh air. What a wonderful conception, right? Edlund knew what he was doing.
Okay, so here’s the deal for me with Westerns (and I think it applies to the bunker as well – sort of the stand-in for all the forts threatened by wild Apaches in Westerns):
More than any other genre (in my opinion – I’m not saying I’m right at all – this is just how I see it): Westerns have the vastness and capability to handle ANY issue – better than any other genre. (I think horror films run a close second – especially now – with things like Babadook – a treatise on grief – It Follows – a treatise on female sexuality – and more.) Even more than strict “issue” pictures – which Melodramas were a lot – women in the workplace! political corruption! Adoption! Interracial relationships! – Melodramas and 1940s women’s pictures were all about taking on important “issues” – But Westerns did all of that, too – and did so by placing them in a Mythic landscape – a pioneer land, a borderland, surrounded by threats. (I understand Westerns of that style are out of fashion now – but they still have that power – they still have a lot to teach about story).
Urban crime noirs also took on big issues – corruption, crime, politics – but their scope was smaller: the dark city streets, private detectives, showgirls, corrupt cops.
Westerns take place in un-marked frontier-lands. Domesticity and sweet little demarcated yards do not exist. People put their stakes down wherever there’s a little bit of water. There’s a VAST difference between outside and inside – it’s the difference between life and death. I know I mentioned The Searchers so much it must be tiresome – but Supernatural really reminds me of The Searchers (and Dean of Ethan Edwards. There’s a whole detailed post in that – maybe I’ll write it up someday). I wrote this small thing about the abyss between indoors and outdoors in The Searchers: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=25214
To me, that’s classic Supernatural. Westerns dealt with that explicitly: the indoors a sanctuary, but that sanctuary is always fragile. The boundaries are porous. Danger is everywhere. Death always wins. Any triumph is usually momentary.
And so you have the Black Hat psychopath villain strolling into a fragile pioneer town – already surrounded by dangers out there in the desert. The Black Hat psychopath may have some unexpectedly tender qualities (just re-watched the original 3:10 to Yuma and Glenn Ford is the epitome of this) – but he’s a bad dude. Civilization is at stake. Civilization is not seen as solid in Westerns. One individual on a gun rampage can upset the whole thing. So the White Hats have to come down HARD on anyone who threatens civilization. It must be crushed like a bug. Sometimes the threat is from Indians – (using the terminology of the day) – but more often than not the threat is from other whites, bad men who want to take advantage of the cracks in the fragile system. Who terrorize innocent people. Monsters.
I think the main thing about Supernatural is its taking place in this nether-world border-land. The brothers detached from everyday reality, driving on the interstates through snug towns far off in the distance – they have nothing to do with that. They are the ones who protect “us” from all that is out there. Even more so than crime films or Melodramas, Westerns are interested in the fragility of humanity, the omnipresence of death, and the inhospitable nature of the surroundings.
And that Western world RUINS men for ” civilization.” Even the White Hats. They’ve seen too much ugliness, genocide. Ethan Edwards is the prime example – at the end, he is seen through that doorway – everyone inside, safe, domestic, warm, together – but he must walk off alone.
There is no other genre that that moment would have as much resonance as a Western – because the Western ITSELF is so vast.
anyway, would love to hear responses to this.
You’re so good with behavioral stuff, Jessie. YES: hands behind his head. Maybe there’s something here I missed again – something really highlighted in Frontierland. Sam’s casual un-forced masculinity, and Dean’s “posing”. At least in some situations. Dean’s not posing here at all, but he’s devoted to the Make-Believe in a way Sam never really seems the need to do. I LOVE that contrast.
“patiently taking up space.” Totally – arms crossed. What a hunk.
and holy shit, missed Dean’s last “whoa pretty girl” look.
“It’ll chafe.” HA. Yeah, really. He JUST had sex. He’s not done. Very good catch!
Oh my goodness Sheila I love your brain! Gorgeous. I totally understand where you’re coming from now. What you say about the capacity of Westerns makes a lot of sense – how there is an underlying structure of wild/civilised that can support any number of themes and stories, that is so cool.
Would you say that in Westerns that no matter how much time we spend away from the home & with the heroes and villains, the perspective is from civilisation, from the town, the innocents, the place our white hat defends? Our hero rides off afterwards — Ethan leaves. Seems like in Supernatural we stay with Ethan (and it’s the home that’s strange).
We’ve talked about Dean and John Wayne figures — can you think of a Western archetype Sam fits into?
– It totally sucks that we never get to see Sam and Dean in the desert. It’s like a whole quarter of the country doesn’t exist. Thanks, Vancouver!
– That Bowie song resides in an overstuffed folder in my head labelled Dramatic Songs About Sam And Dean.
– All these Sam thoughts remind me of this classic.
I’m glad my ramblings made sense.
To me, Sam is like Gary Cooper in High Noon. Or any of the “sheriffs” who populate Westerns. A family man maybe. A church-goer. Nominated by his community to be a Sheriff because he’s the obvious choice. (In Frontierland, for example, Dean gets that nomination – which is so funny – because it really seems like Sam should be the one. A nice “comment” on that whole trope.) The Sheriff was a strong stalwart sure guy – who races around trying to get other people on board, to “do the right thing.” He has sure ground beneath his feet, a belief in the good-ness of what they all were trying to attempt (populate a desert, etc.)
Dean, though, is the Gun-slinging Outlaw roped into helping the Sheriff (the typical John Wayne part). John Wayne played individualists, non-conformists, men who rarely fit in in white-picket-fence land, even when they aren’t villains. Sometimes he played career-military men who have lived in a fort for 40 years. So … he’s not a regular person. But mainly, he played that outsider outlaw/good-guy. Such men are necessary when fighting a war – people team up with such men almost like they’re doing a deal with the Devil. But when that picket fence closes again, the Ethan Edwards of the world have to walk off into the desert. They are barred from entry.
But Gary Cooper in High Noon? He is the Moral Center of that new world. He’s engaged to a pretty and sweet Quaker gal (Grace Kelly) – who is against violence in principle, but of course then shoots the bad guy in the final moment. Everyone around Gary Cooper in High Noon prevaricates, dissembles, puts off responsibility. Gary Cooper never stops trying to get everyone on board. (There’s a huge cinematic nod to the most famous shot in High Noon coming up in the old-Western-town finale in Season 2. Placing Sam in the position of Lonely Brave Sheriff combating the gathering forces of darkness.)
I think most Westerns, yes, prioritize civilization. What happened out West was a fight to the death to put those picket fences in the dirt. Wars were fought, a genocide occurred, to achieve Picket Fence Normalcy. So it’s always ambiguous. At what COST do we get to put up these picket fences? Many Westerns (the earlier ones, anyway) did not deal with that ambiguity. The Indians were the “bad guys,” the whites were good. But in the 40s and 50s, we started getting all that ambiguity (a reaction to what had been revealed in WWII? Man’s ultimate inhumanity to man? Maybe a reaction to film noir’s rise as a style – how much film noir wallowed in ambiguity and neuroticism). And John Wayne made that transition. He now played tormented outlaws, who were still gruff and certain, but sometimes devoted to the most horrible cause in the world (like in The Searchers, where his racism was the driving force. Unbelievably shattering to our understanding of what John Wayne “meant.” And he was brave enough to PLAY that shit. The West was won through brave hearty people – but ALSO won through racism. Really really disturbing – and The Searchers is ambiguous and ambivalent – John Wayne brought his natural authority to it, and we’re so used to him being the “good guy” – that to watch his single-minded focus in The Searchers is devastating. Because at some point we realize, “Wait a second … this guy is a MONSTER.” The whole world of certainty crumbles – because it’s John Wayne playing that part. It makes us doubt every other Western we’ve ever seen. Amazing.
and about civilization: yeah, most Westerns end with an assertion of civilization’s power. Yes, people died, but the railroad is secure, the cattle are safe, the homes are intact. It’s a fantasy, though – and that final shot of The Searchers shatters that fantasy.
You cannot ask men to fight those dirty dirty battles and then expect them to stroll into a little home and be normal and domestic. I mean, Dean gave it his best shot with Lisa and Ben, right? He almost made it.
The Homesman is really interesting – I reviewed it for Ebert – I’ll find the link – because the wildness of the landscape in the majority of the film has such authority, such unbelievable emotional desolation – that when civilization finally arrives in the final half-hour – the little neat buildings and picket fences look RIDICULOUSLY inadequate to holding off the forces of anarchy.
Of course, we know that “civilization” did win – those gigantic desert states WERE populated.
But in The Homesman it’s really pointed out: wildness is still out there. There are forces out there that civilization cannot control at ALL. Picket fences are tooth picks. It’s silly to invest any hope in them doing any good whatsoever.
also, the John Wayne character does not judge “floozies.” He’s comfortable with floozies, and show-girls, and con-artist dames. He’s not a Moral Authority type. He likes fun women and doesn’t judge overt crazy sexuality when it’s coming right at him. He’s enthusiastic and supportive. That makes me think of Dean too. An unexpected “twist” on the “hard” man. Lots of hard men sideline women, sneer at them, use them, judge them. John Wayne rarely did. But he also didn’t really “do well” with sweet little home-makers. He always knew that he wouldn’t quite fit in in that world. (The John Wayne character, I mean. Not John Wayne, the man, who loved being married so much he did it 4 times. :) )
If you haven’t seen The Homesman, I really recommend it. Tommy Lee Jones has made a wonderful feminist film, filled with respect for the position of women in such a brutal world: the tough-ness of women, the individualist nature of pioneer women who worked their asses off, but also how such a life can break women, how a community tries to deal with “madness,” especially when it’s women going mad. The movie kind of came and went, but I absolutely loved it.
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-homesman-2014
Okay I just re-read my review of The Homesman and realized I talked about “either/or” “both/and.”
This is not a coincidence!!
The book group I facilitate read “The Homesman”, but I haven’t seen the movie. Yet. One of the things that troubled me about the book was the POV shift, from the woman who’s leading the trip back east to the character Tommy Lee Jones plays in the movie. It seemed abrupt to me–but the author never sentimentalized him, and the jarring contrast between him and the preacher’s wife at the close, in which she is praising him and he is trying to live up to her idea of a Hero, really fits into what Jessie and Sheila are talking about with Westerns. Civilization vs. Wildness. The “protector” who can’t fit into the world he protects. The Winchesters so epitomize this as well!
I don’t think I have any special notions on this, living where I do, but I will say this about the Western genre–it captures the sense of the timelessness of the Land. As you say, those little towns perched on the precipice of a desert, which will sweep them away in the end. When I lived back East the feeling of History could be overwhelming to me. Out here there is really only a sense of Time.
Another great movie metaphor (not as mythic as the ending scene of The Searchers, but still–) that brings up all of these associations is Gene Hackman’s house in “Unforgiven.” That man had no call to be building a house, and the house knew it–think of that funny/awful scene with Hackman and the reporter and all the rainwater coming into the first floor kitchen!
(Please forgive me spamming your threads, Sheila! I was so excited to see the recap the other day, but I’m at a library workshop, and this is the first chance I’ve had to read it. I find I have all kinds of thoughts bubbling around in here. As always, this recap–and the associations you draw between our “boys” (who really are boys at this point) and these iconic figures just make me want to yee-ha with joy!)
I know, Barb — yee-ha!
Barb – very interesting thoughts on the book of The Homesman which I haven’t read. I agree: when that spinster character leaves the action (a shocking moment) and The Homesman takes over – it is definitely jarring (but also a reminder of why it is called what it is.)
I missed her presence – but perhaps that’s also part of the point: Women are necessary. We need them. The world is colder without them. Not to be patriarchal but: we, as a culture, need to take better care of women. It’s essential.
(which may sound elementary because – duh – women are people – but I think sometimes men, especially men in Westerns – forget all that. They need women at home, to remind them that home still exists – but as a life-force, a necessary part of civilization – as well as their differing perspective – so important to contextualize what the hell it is to be a human being … sometimes those tough cowboy guys forget that.)
Sorry Sheila, only had a chance to get around to this now —
I LOOOVEEEE what you say about Sam-as-Sheriff, and Wayne, who doesn’t judge Dean for being a floozy…. Westerns are a huge gap for me (the only Western I ever saw as a kid was Blazing Saddles, sooooo) so I find your comments fascinating. And every time you talk about Wayne and The Searchers I get chills, because I have seen that one, and I thought it extraordinary, but without being able to place it in its full context I don’t have access to its full power.
So Sheriff Sam and White-Hat Dean got me really excited. And then I was thinking…doesn’t it also work the other way around? With upstanding Dean, family man, community leader, troubled but solid. And Sam entering the scene as The Stranger.
One of the most iconic moments for me in the whole show is Sam’s return at the end of Season 5. I still practically faint just thinking about it. Warm suburbia in the house, and then in the darkness the Other appears. And as an audience we cheer for this disruption of normalcy, the nuclear family, and we know, we know that there is a thread inside that house that Sam could pull and unravel the whole thing completely. Blows my mind. Picket fences are, as you say, toothpicks.
(As an aside, this moment is clearly something that happened only because they got a sixth season — they have said that they just threw it in there planning to figure out later — and this is why Supernatural would be such a different and potentially lesser beast if it were the carefully curated Prestige Cable Television that some fans including Past Me wish it were).
Sam the Siren, Sam the Sheriff. I think it’s so cool that these characters have the capacity to work like that, that they contain enough that you could use them to such oppposite effect depending on what lens you look at them through. Hardly news, we’ve talked about this a lot.
Thanks again for your thoughts on Westerns!! And The Homesman is DEFINITELY on my list.
Sam is a Stranger trying to be a Sheriff, but he has no problem doubling down on Stranger if he thinks he needs to. It’s of the reasons he’s so compelling. And you can see or read or write him at any point on that contiinuum, which is one of the reasons why I love the character and the show so much. That is very, very rare, in my fannish experience at least.
// I still practically faint just thinking about it. //
Moment at end of Season 5.
Yes. Will never forget my first time through watching the series. That whole episode wrung me dry – but that final moment … I just GASPED. Pain, piercing pain … that separation … letting Dean go … but something else there – you’re right, Sam as Stranger in the Night.
// would be such a different and potentially lesser beast if it were the carefully curated Prestige Cable Television that some fans including Past Me wish it were). //
Very cool point!!
Maybe it’s that element of chaos – that they run with as opposed to avoid – that I respond to – it also helps create that enormous swamp of ambiguity/ambivalent that we keep talking about.
It also helps make the “new information” – that would certainly have been welcome seasons before (like – why wouldn’t Death say to Dean, “Oh yeah and there’s this thing called The Darkness …” or The Leviathans for that matter) – anyway, that “new information” is forgivable (to me) BECAUSE of that sense of chaos/making it up as they go. And, because of the sometimes haphazard-ness of the plot – the show ends up ultimately being about the brothers and their PsychoDrama and that’s what I care about. The high point of that being that moment at the end of Season 5. So …. eerie.
And in re: Sam as Sheriff. I think you’re right. The characters can flip-flop within that genre. Dean as Happy Homemaker, for one. Dean as Suburban Step-Dad, but still drawn to the wildness of the desert out there – trying to believe in safety, but he’s seen too much.
When Sam retreats into domesticity (let’s never discuss the Lysol lemon-haze again) – he brings with it his gigantic MESS. That’s what that relationship was all about (the reason I liked that little arc, as awfully filmed as it was). For me, it was so revelatory in terms of the Sam character – who seemed the more domesticated one, at least as he is set up in the pilot. Then they destroyed the certainty of Sam’s character – with Ruby, and sucking blood out of her arm. And then Soulless. I’m still trying to figure out how to articulate the Sam character – but because we haven’t gotten to Season 3/4 yet – I haven’t really “gone there.”
The conflict/comparison seems to me to be:
Dean, with all his burlesque, somehow comes off as the more emotionally transparent. Heart on sleeve, awkward liar, unable to hide his pleasure-loving flirty self, even as he puts on the mask. The macho-ness does not come off as a pose – it’s a legit part of him and he wears it well. But it is so OBVIOUS that this man has secrets, hidden pain, locked doors back there in his mind. So even though he keeps secrets, he wears those secrets on his sleeve.
Sam, on the other hand, is also seemingly transparent. It seems that what you see is what you get. That’s being destabilized seriously in Season 2 and it will just get worse. Sam’s secrets though are in the PRESENT (hiding Ruby, hiding demon blood, etc.) Dean’s secrets are in the PAST. Maybe that’s why I equate him with John Wayne – Wayne strolls into the frame, carrying his entire life with him – and that’s bold and very vulnerable. He’s not just a gruff tough-guy. He brings with him a past that he prefers not to speak about. (The buried love-story hidden in The Searchers, his unspoken longing for his brother’s wife. No dialogue between them about it, but it’s so clear that he loved her once, and had to let her go – and that loss has marked him forever. Not just his racism and hatred makes him have to walk away into the desert alone – but because he loved once, and that experience was IT for him. THAT’S why he can’t enter the domestic circle in that last scene. Wayne wears that loss on his sleeve – the way he kisses his brother’s wife on the forehead, the way they say goodbye – it’s right there for all to see – and Ward Bond has a great moment when he witnesses that goodbye, and turns slowly back to sipping his coffee, a look on his face like, “Private moment over there. Let’s just pretend it never happened.”)
So Sam as Sheriff is then toppled over – and now we get this tired sad-eyed giant – who has a sense of truth – vibrating on his skin almost – really really clear in Season 8 and Season 9 – where he is re-claiming his Sheriff self.
Sam’s journey is somewhat external (no less fascinating) – and Dean’s is almost entirely internal.
I don’t know – these are some initial thoughts in response. Still working it out.
// that they contain enough that you could use them to such oppposite effect depending on what lens you look at them through. //
Yeah – it’s just so great – the way they set up the story and the characters in the pilot is so wonderful – because there is flexibility there – almost IN SPITE of the somewhat obvious “typing” going on in that script.
Look at the mileage they’ve gotten in turning Sam the Sheriff into Black Hat and turning Dean the White Hat into Black Hat. Funny that only in the fantasyland of Frontierland does Dean become Sheriff – and then only by accident and because he just happens to be standing right there. Ha.
Because I don’t get the sense that Dean always sees himself as the Sheriff. He sees himself as a more iconic Hero, but afraid and knowing all along that he is actually the Black Hat. Maybe that starts to come about when Dad is knocked off his pedestal and Dean starts to acknowledge what was done to him by his father. “Dream a Little Dream”? Dad was no White Hat. No Sheriff either.
Think you will love The Homesman. It trucks in myths and flexible story and flexible complex characters – and it’s a “male gaze” (Tommy Lee Jones) poured through the most empathic lens possible. There’s some non-sexual nudity in it (tremendously upsetting) and he films it with sensitivity and compassion – you can tell the actress trusted him totally. He is not objectifying her battered body – he is weeping for her. Jones said he wanted to pay tribute to his own ancestors – the women who were so strong and so capable and so independent – these are the women from which he sprung.
But he does not soft-pedal what happens to women when they are so definitively “other-ized.”
// And you can see or read or write him at any point on that contiinuum, which is one of the reasons why I love the character and the show so much. That is very, very rare, in my fannish experience at least. //
Absolutely.
In a lot of ways, Sam is the key to the motor running underneath the whole series. Dean’s dazzle sometimes gets the most attention. But imagine what that dazzle would look like without Sam. It just wouldn’t have the same function. And Dean’s single-minded focus on Sam – so “dysfunctional” and almost pathological – just adds to the feeling (for me) that Sam is the key to the whole thing. Not just plot-wise (nursery burning up, demon blood) but emotionally.
Sam was the “key” for John as well. Dean was practically irrelevant to John, except in how he could use him/rely on him/set him to work. :(
//Sam is a Stranger trying to be a Sheriff// I love this whole thread. This theme goes all the way back to S1 Hook Man. Sam stepping up to do the right thing, being the one to confront Bloody Mary in the mirror, to be the Sheriff. Yet that heroic action is steeped in dark mystery, he has a secret that continues to fester and he doesn’t easily disclose it. It drives him to make amens. Our first glimpse of Sam as Stranger.
//that element of chaos – that they run with as oppose to avoid// and this is another reason why the Winchesters will never be true White Hats in the classic Western way as those who work to avoid, diffuse or order the chaos first and then only as a final solution, eliminate it. The Winchester way is to run towards it, seek it out, be intimately involved with it and then stomp it out of existence. Yes, they are protectors of the innocent but in a bury-my-hands-in-the intestines-of evil-and-yank-it-out way. Even Sam in his most doubtful Thomas moments of “is killing monsters the right thing to do?” has that ruthless element.
More Scorsese and The Departed. “We can become cops or criminals.. But when faced with a loaded gun, what’s the difference?”
John Winchester. Not a White Hat. Not a Black Hat. So true. Going back to organized crime family, he is Don Corleone. Did he start as a bad guy? Did he enjoy the violence? In the end it doesn’t matter. All that matters is family, pride, protection.
Is Dean irrelevant to John? I think instead that he views him as an extension of himself without separation. Sam is separate and whole outside of John, but Dean is that piece of you that you don’t realize is crucial until it’s gone, like John’s right leg (ok, terrible analogy but hear me out). Who gives a lot of thought or love to their leg? It exists, it’s part of you. But when you lose it? Holy shit, your world changes dramatically. The potential loss of Dean throws John into another mindset. How do I survive without this piece of me?
All right so I just came back from my run and I was thinking about this whole concept some more.
Jessie, you mentioned that the characters can “take” being seen through these different lenses – of genre, even character – that whole flip-flop thing.
Back to Sam standing outside Lisa’s house at the end of Season 5:
We just saw Sam fall into the pit. Right? Then Dean heads to keep his promise, and there he is through the window passing out dinner rolls. Probably heart-broken inside, but keeping his promise. (heart-crack).
Then that shocking final shot.
So on my first viewing – I immediately assumed that Sam had made it out, somehow, and had re-appeared as basically a Watchman, a protector over Dean’s happiness/safety. (And maybe Soulless Sam also had that goal – but maybe not. Castiel certainly did.) But before I knew that Sam was yanked out without his soul – I saw that moment as Sam protecting what he saw inside that window. Knowing that he needed to “break up” with his brother-wife in order to let Dean be happy. It was the only way.
And so now HE was on the outside. (That final shot of The Searchers again. Sam cannot enter that domestic scene. But Dean – fascinating – COULD. Chameleon. And not in a sociopath way, but … he’s just fluid that way.)
Then of course once you see Season 6, that final moment of Season 5 looks a little bit different. Or maybe not. Either way, the lens of perception has shifted. They’re so good at that.
So in that final moment of Season 5 – depending on your perspective – Sam is Sheriff AND Stranger. The look on his face is so opaque. It is a projector screen for the audience – we get to do with it what we want.
He’s Sheriff, no he’s Stranger, no he’s Sheriff … or he’s both.
I think Dean is (somehow? still working it out) more transparent.
NOBODY does opaque and blank like Jared Padalecki. Or, okay, that’s not quite true – but blank characters like that are really hard to do – Soulless Sam is a kind of masterpiece of acting, especially since Sam is such an established character.
And FINALLY: normally I don’t like to put in considerations of what Kripke et al meant to do, or felt they failed to do – because I like to make up my own mind about how I feel about what’s on the screen. However, that 5-season arc is pretty obvious and I probably would have picked up on it even if I hadn’t known the backstory.
Even though the show went on – I think it’s fascinating to consider that that is where they felt it ended. It’s so revealing. It is an inversion of what we might have expected – Dean as the lonely man out in the wilderness (that monologue in Shadow about how the fight will never end, and how it’s all he’s fit for) – and Sam as the guy still able to look back at Jess and college with some regret.
However: Kripke et al saw that final moment as Dean entering the sanctuary of the indoors, with Sam out in the wilderness.
That’s some world-class storytelling right there.
There’s that quote JA has mentioned from Kim Manners: “Give them what they want but in a way they won’t expect.”
Brill.
Paula:
I like the Godfather analogy – which also speaks to Supernatural’s irresistible pull towards organizational structure. In The Godfather, that criminal family was more organized and loyal than the cops – except they were totally murderous people.
// In the end it doesn’t matter. All that matters is family, pride, protection. //
Sounds good, right? Ha!! But totally chilling in that mobster context – and in the context of SPN a lot of the time.
Re-watching Season 10 now – and there’s that weary pep talk that Dean gives Crowley about how family has your back, doesn’t try to hurt you, etc. That scene is so messed up, more messed up than I remember. Because he’s telling this to CROWLEY.
// Sam stepping up to do the right thing, being the one to confront Bloody Mary in the mirror, to be the Sheriff. //
Good callback to Bloody Mary! So right!! Dean’s the one who gets all the mirror moments now. But the first one was Sam’s which says a lot.
I think Westerns have a lot more ambiguity than they are given credit for. Some are definitely way too shallow and good vs. evil – but some are monstrous visions of what life out there does to a man, how it ruins him for regular life, and what it means to be so violent. In that viewing diary thread we’re talking about 3:10 to Yuma which is a great example. Forgive me, Westerns are (obvi) one of my favorite topics.
Van Heflin plays the classic White Hat. A regular good guy with a wife and kid who has to go after the Black Hat. And yet underneath his nice-guy-ness is a SWIRL of neuroticism. He watches the Black Hat hold up a stagecoach and randomly kill a bunch of people. He does nothing to stop it. He wants to protect his sons – but in the context of the movie, it makes him seem weak (which is totally messed up, if you think about it. That life out there was so brutal that even protecting your family starts to seem questionable). His wife and his sons kind of … recoil from him because of his passivity in the face of a bad man. He spirals down into a neurotic anxiety about his masculinity. He has to prove himself a man again. (Modern audiences may eye-roll at this – but it’s really well done and has a lot to say about the fragility of masculinity.)
Then there’s Glenn Ford, the Black Hat, who kills those innocent people in the beginning without blinking an eye. He bullies the passive Van Heflin into letting him have their horses. He rides off, a “real man”, a man of action. And entirely evil. But THEN in the next scene when he and his gang have a drink in a bar, we see him zoom in on the pretty barmaid. Not totally in a lecherous way – but he finds her softness and beauty touching. Through her, he can access his own softness. The gang rides off – and he makes a critical error (he’ll end up being surrounded by White Hats because he lingered). He sticks around to flirt with the barmaid. Their scene together is high high eroticism, rubbing their cheeks together, gasping with almost relief at being together. (They met 20 minutes before.) Then they go into the back room and have sex (which you don’t see, of course. This is the 50s.) But when they say goodbye there’s a longing there. You feel the goodness in that Black Hat.
And then there’s the standoff between Black and White Hat that makes up the majority of the movie. They are holed up in a room together, and Black Hat is forced to lie on the bed, as White Hat holds a gun on him. (Erotic.) Black Hat starts whispering about White Hat’s emasculation, his lack of manliness and White Hat actually gets sucked into that – he can’t bear the shame.
White Hat is “redeemed” by his relationship with Black Hat, weirdly. He becomes less broken because of that relationship. It’s pretty radical.
Anyway, there’s a great and neurotic MIX in the best Westerns, which I feel is in operation in spades in Supernatural.
Like we’re talking about Sam as Stranger/Sheriff. Dean as Black/White Hat. John too.
I agree with your comment about Dean and John. Maybe taking for granted is a better term – maybe I meant to say that Dean’s happiness and well-being is irrelevant to John – at least in terms of sparing his son from the dangers and horror. He ropes him in. Faced with Dean’s death, he burdens him with the secret.
In a way, though, he knows Dean can handle it. Dean is sensitive but he’s strong too. John’s faith in him is not mis-placed.
Just some thoughts!
About the original 5-season arc again: In other words:
All along, they had Dean moving towards suburbia and relationship. When it seems like that would be Sam’s journey – since he had been drawn to it before and Dean never had been.
But they planned to end it with Dean inside a little house with a woman and a child, and it wasn’t a great love story, maybe the best part of it, not a sweeping “OMG I found the woman I love” – but it was a comforting scenario – and judging from what we see through the window, Dean takes on that role. He’s not shivering and shaking at the dinner table. He’s participating, passing out the food.
Sam is now banished. But Sam will be okay out there because … Sam.
Then, of course, because renewal of series … it moved on from that. But it’s an interesting view into the original concept. Hard to ignore.
Sheila – I agree about what you say about the complexity of Westerns in portraying good and evil. Perhaps the distinction is the White Hat doesn’t seek out violence as the first choice. It may be lying under the skin, waiting for its moment to appear and when unleashed, it can be ugly and brutal, or it allows brutality to happen, but there is that initial resistance. I won’t be the first one to cross that line.
You’re right. Dean telling Crowley about family is so very messed up. That also makes me think of our earlier discussion of fragile sanctuary. Family, especially in Westerns, is this ideal, a bubble in a harsh world, a sanctuary for their souls. But it’s not, it’s a liability that will be pressed by bad guys or an unstable platform that will collapse when you least expect. Whenever I see a happy family in a Western, I become anxious. Something bad will happen and it is inevitable, just like every SPN episode ever written.
Ha – right – so this supposed “frontier” which is about putting the picket fences down and valuing civilization and the family – is a myth, a fantasy, always threatened.
The genre VALUES family but doesn’t really BELIEVE in it – and this is truly messed up.
It really creeped me out…Dean giving that Crowley that pep-talk. Dean has given that speech before to other people – and it’s seemed hopeful or delusional or pathological or inspirational – any number of things – but it has never EVER seemed empty – the way it does in that scene.
Thank you guys so much for such thoughtful responses! I have finally found time to read them properly. I don’t have a whole lot to specifically add — love the discussion of the black hat-white hat dynamic; all great buddy combos have that wonderful complementary thing going. In Supernatural the qualities that are in operation as complementary are just never static!!
Wayne strolls into the frame, carrying his entire life with him
Totally get this, this is a great description of Dean.
Sam’s journey as external, love that observation. His appearance has certainly changed an immense amount over the years! He was almost gaunt at times last season despite feeling more massive and present than ever.
Pain, piercing pain … that separation … letting Dean go …I saw that moment as Sam protecting what he saw inside that window.
I find it amazing that that was your feeling! My overwhelming feeling was ~HERE COMES TROUBLE!~ I was heartbroken but I was also gleeful. This says more about my own identifications and what I get out of the show — but I read exactly what I wanted to into that opacity. Something electric and queer and subversive.
The other thing about strangers is that they are not fully one of us but they are not fully other, either. They live on the border. They are a threat because they won’t settle and they won’t make themselves available. This is a very queer (as opposed to hetero- or homosexual, which are knowable categories, you might not like them but you know what they are) position to be in — Shane Phelan talks about this extensively — which is why I talk about Sam as the queer in the show — not in terms of his boning dudes but in terms of the place he occupies in the narrative. Good but corrupted. Human, not-human. Opaque. Unknowable. Season after season — what is he? The Problem of Sam.
We get a bit of a privileged inside view and I think this is shifting now, he is becoming more the Sheriff. When he opened up to Charlie about his feelings in that episode last season it was incredible.
Love your recaps as always, Sheila. Season 2 is my favorite season and Hollywood Babylon is one of my favorite episodes of that season. Makes my day.
I also had to share something that I thought was interesting in light of your following comment:
//Padalecki is often the Straight Man to Dean’s Screwball and he is excellent at it. //
I have never been to a Supernatural Convention but You Tube almost always have videos submitted by the fans who do attend. What strikes me in the videos is that JP and JA play opposite roles of straight man and comic. JA is almost always the straight man, setting up JP’s stories or episodes. JP is Gracie Allen – the ditz who is secretly a blooming genius and JP is the more guy is has to react and roll his eyes or give a deep sigh at his partner’s insane antics. In the last video of their convention in NJ, JA actually says “let me set it up for you” to JP when they are relating an incident that happened at set and JP starts laughing before he even tells the story.
I’ve noticed this- so funny! It makes the episodes even sillier- knowing that in reality JP is a MANIAC and JA is constantly eye-rolling at his antics.
Ha! Yes – very good point! JA is the big brother keeping the spazzy younger brother in check but also “setting him up”. I love that contrast in real/characters-they-play. They have amazing chemistry.
This is delightful and erudite and actually not at all off topic.
OMG! Wonderful. Are you a Sherlock fan? I noticed a Johnlock gif in that post.
No- not Johnlock- Sherlolly. (Geddit right, Wren.) (Sorry for the tangent, Sheila.)
More a fan of etymology – I love that someone has identified the ‘rules’ for how fan names work.
Plus I love that scene in FanFiction where Sam is saying ‘How about Sastiel? Samstiel?’ and Dean says ‘You’re gonna that thing where you just shut the hell up – forever.’
I LOVE that scene. Actually, I love Sam and Cas’s relationship. But JP’s little pondering face! So funny.
Ha – yes, I don’t use the lingo at all – not my thing, but it is a fascinating sub-culture of linguistics!
thanks for the link! Fandom is a fascinating thing to study because it evolves fast and often in response to technological change.
I have never been able to get on board with portmanteau names.* I recall a huuuuge dustup over them back in 2002ish when “Spuffy” somehow became the label of choice for Spike/Buffy shippers. Lines were drawn in the sand. Chaos reigned. History has proved the winner.
*Having said that & following on from Wren below I find the Sassy diminutive for Sastiel tooth-rottingly endearing.
Maybe one day the word slash will become one of those etymological curiosities whose sign status has slipped from iconographic to symbolic because the orginal iconographic relationship (the forwardslash in Kirk/Spock) has become obsolete. Much in the same way that a handset icon will soon bear no resemblance to the way we actually make phone calls.
// Lines were drawn in the sand. Chaos reigned. History has proved the winner. //
Roaring with laughter.
Fandom+linguistics! … Am I in heaven?
Ha – I know, me too!
Helena, Lord Of The War Cry!
Possibly of similar interest, an interview with the guy who has created a couple of the languages for Game Of Thrones.
http://www.npr.org/2015/09/26/443170619/meet-the-man-who-invents-languages-for-a-living
//Helena, Lord Of The War Cry!//
That’s me!
That article looks greeeeaaatttt – not listened to the whole thing but I love his comments on hearing people speak his created languages – actually worrying, did I get this right?
// They’re perfect fake movie-character names. Mitch. Ashley. Brody. Todd. Wendy. Kendra. Logan. //
Ha ha, I love this!
“Brody? Brody? Where are you, Brody? No, Brody, we have to find my sister.” So, what’s this guy’s name, again?
// Dean’s Burlesque: Not everyone walks around quivering with sensitivity all the time. Dean’s “burlesque” is a survivor’s technique //
About that and the both/and: that’s part of what makes the show so rich and so TRUE. Who are those people who think we are such simplistic creatures? There’s something really annoying that seems to go with that hippie-self-help trend: you have to strive for perfect interior peace, but you have to do while reveling in your own misery. Um, what? I’m super tired of having (well-meaning) people tell me I’m “fragile” because I cry openly or consider I’m a psychopath because I can tell some grim shit with a smile. Well guess what? I’m BOTH a damaged survivor – the key word being survivor – AND tough as fuck. AND a clown. Of course! How else do you survive? How else do you function? (when you’re a fuck up, I mean). If people can apply these very restrictive views on a live human being, no wonder they’re puzzled by a complex fictional character. But I don’t get it. Dean – and Sam, too – are such rich, layered characters.
Really interesting, too, what you say about Dean as a PA. Dean & people is such a fascinating subject. It seems endless. Again, with the mask/lie bringing the truth: because he’s “playing” a DA, he feels totally confident about immersing himself in that world. When he’s not Dean-the-failure-that-let-Dad-and-Sammy-down, things are so easy for him. In a way, acting make him more himself. True/false. Haaaaa.
// Catching a glimpse of Dean standing there with nothing to do, Brad calls out: “Green Shirt Guy!” //
And that, too me, is hilarious. You see those two guys walking in a studio, in real life, I mean. You see a guy looking like Jensen Ackles, how can you think for a second he’s a fucking PA? Have you SEEN him?
// The following scene with Tara is great because Dean is acting […] as well as sincerely starstruck, AS WELL as trying to get information out of her. This is what I mean when I talk about playing multiple objectives. //
ACTING! All this “sense memory” and other talk like that make me laugh even more now that I’m reading Stanislavsky.
When Tara tells Dean what she saw, she has that moment of hesitation, she turns away from Dean and the camera and she smiles, a nervous smile that means “I know this is gonna make me sound like a nutcase”, then you can see she is pissed of being put in that situation (“they’re all scared I’m a diva having a nervous breakdown”, she thinks), but she decides to confide in that pretty stranger and it feels good to be able to just say it. She does all this in 2 seconds, and it’s something I never get tired of watching. It’s so unpredictable, it can’t be scripted, it’s so real. I just love this moment.
// Quick cut then to Sam and Dean walking through the dark studio, ladders and lights all around them //
I absolutely LOVE this transition that starts with their shadows on the wall (a gorgeous deep blue), and because there are different spotlights, it makes 4 shadows on the wall instead of two. You can read so many things into this.
// 8th scene: Dean gets so sucked into the emotion of it, he’s so much part of the team, that we are graced with this moment //
And the guy standing behind JA with a slate in his hand is the real McG. This is so great.
// This is not a “used” woman. //
If THAT was what being used looked like (and felt like), I wouldn’t mind being used.
Someone today said “they had to be aware” and I just burst into laughter for no apparent reason.
I’m not even going to talk about Once Upon a Time (I love OuaT) because that post is already too long. Sorry.
// Someone today said “they had to be aware” and I just burst into laughter for no apparent reason. //
hahahahaha I can’t tell you how many times “They’re aWARE” comes into my head in various personal interactions. And unfortunately no one would get it if I made a joke!!
// So, what’s this guy’s name, again? //
HA!!
// ’m super tired of having (well-meaning) people tell me I’m “fragile” because I cry openly or consider I’m a psychopath because I can tell some grim shit with a smile. //
I hear you, girl. Both/and. Very very important. I notice “either/or” a lot in the realm of criticism and – sometimes it fits for sure – you have to be able to state disagreement strongly and stand your ground – but when it’s used too much the critic stops being a critic and becomes an activist for a particular cause, a propagandist. “This film is good because it’s about something I care about.” Well …. not necessarily. A film can be bad AND be about something you care about. Keep those critical thinking skills going.
But when “either/or” is used for humanity … shudders. This is tyranny, genocide, war … it all stems from that.
// no wonder they’re puzzled by a complex fictional character. //
I know. There’s so much more rich-ness and depth and revelation there if you let go of what you expect. Like I had no idea Dean as PA was even possible. (Or Soulless Sam, for that matter.) But how great and how revelatory were these story-lines? Same with Sam hooking up with Ruby. Fans saying it was “out of character” – to quote Princess Bride, I’m not sure that phrase means what they think it means. Also, a character that stays the same means that we would be watching CHiPs instead of Supernatural. So I don’t understand that criticism at all. Feeling protective of characters you love is natural. But being personally PISSED when they act in a way you don’t approve of … so so silly. You’re missing out on so much.
Also, this is the problem with the “relatable” “likable” criticism. A character doesn’t have to be “likable” to be effective. He has to be WATCH-able. Entire movies are dismissed because none of the characters are “relatable” and that drives me crazy.
// When he’s not Dean-the-failure-that-let-Dad-and-Sammy-down, things are so easy for him. In a way, acting make him more himself. //
Really good perspective!!!
// You see a guy looking like Jensen Ackles, how can you think for a second he’s a fucking PA? Have you SEEN him? //
Hahahahaha yeah, really. Thank goodness Tara and Marty look at him and realize his beauty, otherwise Hollywood Babylon would tip right over into completely un-realistic.
The fact that you are reading Stanislavsky is so so genius to me.
Good catch with the shadows! Now that’s some film noir shit – where the shadows are so far away from the bodies that they look like disembodied psychological nightmares.
Whenever someone makes a Princess Bride reference I feel morally obliged to clap.
*claps.*
It fits in almost every circumstance!!
//we would be watching CHiPS instead of Supernatural// hahahaha. Even Starsky and Hutch had better character development than Ponch and Jon. Some people desperately need that consistency, hence shows like Matlock and Walker Texas Ranger never die. These are the same people that always eat McDonalds drive through because they know exactly what they are going to get, and that Big Mac will taste the same whether they are in San Francisco or New York. I hate it, that lack of complexity or uniqueness, but I get the reason behind it.
That Princess Bride quote never gets old.
// Some people desperately need that consistency, hence shows like Matlock and Walker Texas Ranger never die. //
Yes, that’s very true. Complexity/ambiguity is (and maybe always will be?) very destabilizing and people have a really hard time with it.
Oh Shelia what a pleasure to read this! I’ve been waiting for this one, I love this episode, and I am FINALLY in a place to read it and comment somewhat close to posting. Had a beautiful baby; nuf said I imagine. Sent beautiful baby with Daddy to in-laws for dinner, have an adult moment to myself, got enough sleep to understand three syllable words, and I am treated with this. So wonderful.
I love the connection you have made the with the real/fake, illusion/enlightenment, mask/truth possibilities in performance and in this show particularly. There is an interesting contrast with the use of mirrors in the show also. Are there any actual mirrors in this episode?
The Martin love is great. He is such a fun character. I get the sense that he actually is a believer, like as a kid after watching E.T. he kept checking his shed and hoping, but that life and superficiality knocked the believer out of him and turned him cynical. But then his worshipful crush on Dean ‘The Hero” gives him away.
There are so many elements that you mentioned or that others mentioned that I want to agree with and add my two cents to, but it is just too much for elaboration. I just want to say:
yes to Dean fitting in and swiss-army-knifing his way through that world is so endearing and JP’s performance watching him is so funny. The look on his face watching him eating…
yes to Dean’s ‘I am a beautiful, susceptible, earnest babe’ soft lips flirtation right after the opposite move stealing the papers
yes to the picket fence and fake suburbia they get so comfortable in
yes to the cabin with no fourth wall…hmmm
yes to Sam’s expression when the amulet is smashed, “uh, I wouldn’t have done that..”
yes to the beautiful, flushed and comfortable Tara in her robe and the remarkably lusty nostril flare Dean does leaving so satisfied,
and so on and so on.
//“They’re aWARE …”// it is SO perfect, was it ad-libbed or scripted?
Missed y’all.
Congrats Heather!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, congratulations! And good for you that you got a bit of adult time.
Congratulations!
Congrats!
Heather!!! So good to “see” you again and congratulations!!!
Hmm, I don’t think there are any mirrors in this episode. Maybe it’s because the whole episode is a mirror!
In my re-watch of Season 10, I am so happy because there’s a mirror moment in almost every episode. Season 9 too!
// But then his worshipful crush on Dean ‘The Hero” gives him away. //
hahahahahaha Yes!! It’s a life-changer, his interaction with Dean. Marty will never forget it!!
// the remarkably lusty nostril flare Dean does leaving so satisfied, //
He really is a snorting stallion in that moment. I love it.
and yes, Dean and Sam hanging out in suburbia – SUCH a good detail. They could just as easily have made them chilling out in the rickety cabin – but that wouldn’t have that other underbelly-element to it. It’s like they’re at some lazy barbecue, the kind they never get to go to.
Congratulations, Heather!
Congratulations, Heather! I don’t know you , except from here, but a new baby is
a joyful, if tiring, time:)
Thank you all. As always, this site is filled with such generous and supportive folks. Cheers!
Oh my God, this recap is magnificent! Every time I think, “oh, I’ve got a pretty good handle on this episode, I don’t really think I’ve missed anything,” you take me to a whole new level of understanding and appreciation, Sheila! This is among my most-watched episodes – how is it that there’s so much I missed??
// just because something is “fake” does not make it untrue.//
I don’t really have anything to add to this statement, but I wanted to stand up and applaud when I read it. This and the part on masks make me think of V for Vendetta – the whole thing about how lies can be used to reveal truths.
I’ve been working with many of my clients on challenging cognitive distortions (something that I’m guessing you’re familiar with, since you’ve mentioned how helpful cognitive therapy has been for you), and I’ve actually used the “either/or vs. both/and” idea in some of those sessions when challenging black and white thinking. Thank you for that inspiration!
I love Regan Burns – in this role and all others I’ve seen him in. He is the reason I can stand watching Dog with a Blog with my niece, which would otherwise be a typical obnoxious Disney-tween show. (Well, to be fair, the talking dog is pretty entertaining, too.)
Natalie – Hi!! And thank you!
This episode is such a goof but it’s also so deep!!
I love that you use “either/or” “both/and”. I hadn’t thought of it in terms of cognitive analysis – My main “way in” to that kind of thinking was improv comedy – as I think I mentioned up thread somewhere. I always thought their “Yes And” rule of play was not just good theatre, but profound and perfect for life.
“Both/and” certainly makes for better conversations!
I think our conversations here, as a group, are very “both/and” – not a lot of “YOU’RE WRONG” – actually none of that – and it’s why these conversations are so great!
// lies can be used to reveal truths. //
Great, right? And that lies, or “fakery”, somehow is where Sam and Dean are set free – things are unleashed that were held in check – understanding grows. Even that final scene in “French Mistake” – how they realize they matter in their real lives. Even though – ha – the mirrors again: JA and JP are actors, and they “matter” – but in the context of that episode, the characters they play realize they don’t want to be the real guys PORTRAYING said characters. Hilarious and meta and great.
I don’t know Dog with a Blog – it sounds hilarious.
I went to go look up his resume and just loved seeing it – he’s been on pretty much everything.
“This is a horror … movie ….” all drawn out like Gary Cole can’t hear him. so funny!
In re: my comments above to Jessie about Westerns:
how do others see this story? And its structure? Fairy tale? Horror? Family Melodrama?
I mean, I think they’re all in operation at different times – for me, it’s a Western – but some will see other things I don’t.
Fragile sanctuary. I’d never thought of this as a Western theme but you hit this on the head. The fort or the house provide this illusion of protection. I’m safe in my small cave, and that’s what the bunker is. I would also add the Impala to the list of fragile sanctuary. You have this feeling that it will be alright if they can just make it back to the car. S10 finale is classic for the non-existence of that protection. They jump in the car and you’re relieved for them. Why? They can’t outrun it. It’s like the prairie house when a blizzard is bearing down.
Also love your white hat analogy. That’s why Westerns are complicated. The good guys aren’t really good, they just have better intentions. I think that why I appreciate Westerns more as an adult than I did as a child, that emotional context.
// S10 finale is classic for the non-existence of that protection. //
So true!
Sanctuaries don’t exist. The Steins made it into the bunker. (Although honestly, everyone makes it into the bunker. Who HASN’T made it into the bunker??) And The Steins just kicked the door down. Really? It’s that easy?
Ha.
But it just drives the point home. Any time Dean and Sam are lulled into a sense of safety … look out.
But the Impala is the most continuous sanctuary, right? It being destroyed at the end of Season 1 is a great example. I love Kripke’s memory of getting more letters during the hiatus worried about the Impala than worried about Sam and Dean.
“The most protected place on earth.” I think Larry Ganem left out a few footnotes to that claim. As a side note, did it bother you that Abaddon never attacked the bunker? She was looking over Larry’s shoulder when he wrote down the coordinates for Sam. If anyone should have been able to kick in the front door, it was Abaddon not the Frankenweiners.
Hell, they are more protected in skeevy hotel rooms. A little like outpost on the Pony Express.
Yes, it seemed like Dean and Sam would come home and Abaddon would by asleep in one of their beds. Terror! Perimeter breached!
I was also sure Rowena would get herself in there.
But boy, if you can just kick the door down …
For me it always circles back around to the gothic, particularly in these early seasons. Secrets returning from the past. Punishment of moral crimes. Repressed desire and emotion. Fucked up families. Blood as metaphor and currency and talisman. Physical and spiritual isolation. Unbearable love. Horror and terror in the home.
This is the mileau of their cases and the tenor of their lives.
So that and also a buddy cop comedy.
Ha ha! How is that possible? It is a Western Gothic Noir where the Buddy Cops go on Quests and have Melodramatic and Postmodern conversations about their Family Dramas that somehow turns itself into Myth.
Yes – you’re right – Gothic is a powerful story structure – all these other types of stories we’ve mentioned are also “handled” by the Gothic. Only weirdos like David Lynch are able to combine the Gothic with the domestic-rom-com. Creepiness ensues!!
AND IT’S A ~*ROMAAAAAAAAAANCE*~
I swear, every time you use the term “brother-wife” I lose it.
I think the first time was during our discussion of “Bloodlust” and the little domestic squabble at the bar table. “You go home, dear.” “Don’t stay up too late.” Eye -roll from brother-wife. Dying …
Lol I think so. You half expect Dean to turn back to Gordon and go “WOMEN, amirite?”
Thank you for the congrats and welcome folks.
Natalie://Every time I think, “oh, I’ve got a pretty good handle on this episode, I don’t really think I’ve missed anything,” you take me to a whole new level of understanding and appreciation, Sheila! This is among my most-watched episodes – how is it that there’s so much I missed??//
I know exactly what you mean here! Hahaha.
Sheila, I thought your comment about Westerns having the potential to deal with all themes was very interesting. There is something about stories told in environments wear the elements are so potentially treacherous that highlights humanity. As for SPN, yes there are so many similarities to Westerns, but I also think the quest nature of the shows narrative is also important. I need to think more on this.
Ooh yes. Quest!!
Arthurian Holy Grail stuff. Those stories too have the vast-ness to contain ALL.
Thank you for that!
I think, too, the thing about the genres we’ve all been discussing: they have all of these atmospheric elements (hostile wilderness, dark shadows, etc.) – but these genres somehow are able to handle THE MOST operatic and intense of emotions – and the emotions don’t seem overblown (as sometimes they do in melodramas, or realistic stuff) – the emotions have to be huge enough to compete with or fill up the vastness of the environment. That’s one of the things I love about real strict genre stories, when done well: they are perfect containers for the most outrageous and WILD emotions.
And that’s definitely true for Supernatural. It’s not just the supernatural element and all the tension and “horror” – it’s a much larger mythic environment – created by these story elements and landscape elements – that makes their grandiose and gigantic emotions that much more … mythic? Universal?
The stories tap into something so primal. Like cavemen painting on the sides of caves primal.
There’s a reason we all respond to it so strongly.
A lot of the chatter on fan forums and stuff has to do with ins and outs of all the plots. (It’s the “and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened” brand of commentary. Honestly, my eyes glaze over. Not here, but elsewhere. It’s ALL plot.)
For me, SPN made me think of other things, SO OFTEN. Every other scene has some reference, “nod,” tribute – either visually or story-wise. And they do it so gracefully.
It’s so rampant with associations that honestly I get overwhelmed by it sometimes.
and somehow – to bring it back to “Hollywood Babylon” – these self-conscious “this is a story” Meta episodes – make all of this so explicit it’s practically blinding.
There’s such LOVE in them, and self-aware humor, and commenting-on-something but in a way that is affectionate, not snarky. They are Love Letters not to the fans or the show but to the very concept of “Story.” They are really really good at that. It’s a real sweet spot of the show, for me.
// these self-conscious “this is a story” Meta episodes […] There’s such LOVE in them, and self-aware humor, and commenting-on-something but in a way that is affectionate, not snarky. […] //
I wonder it that’s partly due to the fact that they’re not on cable tv, Netflix, etc. Or, even, come to think of it, because they were not taken as seriously as shows like House MD, that started around the same time (Kim Manners was PISSED). Because genre shows are so often looked down on, and SPN did not present itself like a show that had the ambition to be “better” or “more”. I feel like it started very humbly, and like a child that nobody’s really worried about, it got away with more than it would have if it had gotten more attention. And how can you be snarky when you’re not taken very seriously? When the only people listening to you are those who really love you, if you’re commenting, you can only be kind and in on the joke. Right?
God, I don’t think I’m very clear.
//SPN did not present itself like a show that had the ambition to be “better” or “more”.// this makes perfect sense. those shows had goals/ambitions while SPN is true storytelling.
Lyrie – you’re very clear!
// I feel like it started very humbly, and like a child that nobody’s really worried about, it got away with more than it would have if it had gotten more attention. //
Yes! In a way, its small audience and its small network has been a Godsend for its fans. They do get away with so much, it’s unbelievable. What other show could possibly EVER do something like “French Mistake” and have it make any sense at all? Or my God “Changing Channels.”
Like, are you serious??
*lurches out of cave with a post-Hamiltion-cast-recording-Leslie-Odom-Jr.-worshipping hangover*
*blinks blearily up at the fake moonlight*
*pop culture whiplash ensues.*
However, still enough braincells to note:
JA pretty.
JP funny.
Sheila awesome.
Commenters all those things, too.
Also:
Congratulations Heather.
*shambles back into cave to watch episode, hugging Sheila’s post plus comments*
HA!!
Hamilton and SPN together? I’m in heaven.
This whole conversation about Westerns, White hat/Black Hat, sheriff, stranger, Sam, Dean, Dad, external / internal is sooooo fascinating.
It’s also one of these occasions where I’m reminded that Supernatural is so American, and I’m not. Which doesn’t make it less fascinating – it just probably is fascinating in a different way, for me.
That’s also something I catch myself thinking so often about this site in general, not just the SPN posts. Sheila’s site is so AMERICAN to me. I think Europe, and people of my generation and younger in particular have a strange push/pull relationship with that (maybe France even more? It seems to me that there is a huge anti-USA feeling in France in general. I’ve often had to justify my love for America). I grew up knowing stuff about that land, by osmosis, because of the movies, and tv. Yet, it’s still foreign to me. I’ve been living in Canada for more than 2 years (I know, Canada and the US are different. Still, lots of things in common), and I still discover things where I go “oh, it’s just like in the movies!”
Because Sheila’s writing is so organic, it speaks to people beyond their nationalities. And because you’re all so smart, great conversations arise, that are interesting for everyone. As a result, I feel like I have a new understanding of that culture. Like someone kindly lifted the curtain and led me backstage, even if I’m not entirely supposed to be there. I did not comment on the posts about 9/11, because I have nothing to say about it, it’s not my place. But I’ve kept thinking about them almost daily. 14 years later, I finally start to understand what it might have been like, for you.
Wow, Sheila. Sheila. I’m so glad you exist. I’m so glad you write with such sincerity. I’m so glad I found this place. The internet is amazing. Supernatural is amazing. Movies, books, theatre, STORIES, and all our conversations… I’m so grateful!
Lyrie – what an interesting perspective. I didn’t even know I was doing it. But I guess it’s just part of my perspective, due to my citizenship – interesting!
And I thank you all back for showing up here and discussing stuff with such depth – some of the best conversations ever on my site.
//Dean, with all his burlesque, somehow comes off as the more emotionally transparent. Heart on sleeve, awkward liar, unable to hide his pleasure-loving flirty self, even as he puts on the mask. //
//Sam, on the other hand, is also seemingly transparent. It seems that what you see is what you get. That’s being destabilized seriously in Season 2 and it will just get worse.//
Sheila, it’s not fair that you keep adding more and more thinky thoughts in addition to your already comprehensive and wide-ranging post!
So, my take on Dean is that he’s an extrovert. To grossly oversimplify, he gains energy by interacting with others.
Digression: I think this was borne out, motif-wise, by the absolutely fabulous recurring food scenes in this ep. Dean started out as a slave bearing smoothies. He did not bother to drink them. I think JA showed Dean’s general distaste for them. If we explain his distaste for character reasons, I would guess that Dean has little use for beverages that don’t contain caffeine or alcohol. For metaphoric reasons, Dean was not yet feeling he was part of the team, so no “nourishment” yet. For pun-ny reasons, Dean is not smooth. Next up: Dean was stuffing his face with philly cheesesteak sandwiches. Because they’re delicious. Metaphorically, he was beginning to draw energy and pleasure from his interactions on set. Pun: cheesy beef – he was about to go talk to Tara Benchley, with his patented cheesecake/beefcake burlesque. And then the taquitos. A whole ”wonderful” plate full of them. At this point Dean’s embedded himself in the crew and even admitted to Sam that it felt good to be part of a team. Dunno if it was meant to be a visual pun, but taquitos are in essence a diminutive phallic symbol, and Dean’s eating them when Walter is first prioritized in the episode. Make of that what you will. The final food scene is at the end, when Dean grabs some sort of wrap out of a passing tray just after he leaves Tara’s trailer. First of all, it’s a much bigger phallic symbol than the taquitos. Secondly, it’s more substantial and likely more nutritious than all that other junk food he’s been eating. Metaphorically it indicates that his connection with Tara was more meaningful and nourishing, even if it could still be considered fast food and not a full meal. And finally, it was a WRAP. (Oh, the pun pain!)
And while it is possible that I am waaaay overthinking this, I believe Ben Edlund is fully capable of putting all these layers into a seemingly side-joke motif. After all, he worked under Joss Whedon, who rarely let a script out of his hands without every aspect carrying three or more layers of meaning or purpose.
/End food digression
OK, I got distracted from looking at why Dean seems more transparent than Sam. I think Dean’s default is that he wants to express his emotions and share his secrets. As an extrovert, he’d gather strength and comfort from doing so with non-judgey people. (The only things he wouldn’t want to express are fear and the understandably negative Dad/family emotions that got warped, subverted and suppressed in the bell jar.) When Dean doesn’t share something, whether it’s an emotion or a secret, he has to fight against his natural inclination and it understandably results in awkwardness and burlesque-ing.
Sam, on the other hand, is an introvert. Similarly oversimplified, he expends energy when interacting on a superficial level with others.
I believe Sam’s introversion is a direct result of his internalization of feelings/problems set off by his demon blood. In another lovely character reveal by a Ben Edlund script in 8×21 “The Great Escapist”, Sam confessed to Dean that even as a child he felt tainted and unclean. It makes sense to me that Sam’s natural inclination is to keep secrets and not inflict the bad stuff inside of him on other people. Further, I think Sam does not trust himself or his instincts on a fundamental level. It’s one of the reasons why he is always thinking things through before he acts. It’s why he feels safest when he’s moored to someone – usually Dean, but in the pilot it was Jess – whose instincts he feels safe in trusting. (Jess’s last name was Moore, right?) But even when he’s with someone he trusts, he will still try to keep his worst self and his darkest secrets to himself. The guy is a secret-keeping master. He didn’t tell Dean about his visions until he absolutely had to. He never did tell Dean about his demon blood from the yellow-eyed demon. Dean had to learn about it from his angel-sponsored time-travel field trip over a season later.
That’s why Madison was so devastating. She was beautiful and impressive and she saw him at his near-worst and still wanted him. So he dared to reach for what he wanted and plunged into the relationship and the unknowable risk of it. And then it ended in the worst possible way.
When I first saw HB, it seemed rather jarringly out of sequence. Why wasn’t Sam more affected by grief? However, in looking at it with your behavior lens in mind, I believe I saw a few breadcrumbs with larger implications. First of all, we never saw Sam interact with anyone without Dean present. We never saw his researching or his morgue sneaking. Sam could barely make eye contact with Frank/Gerard at his swinging 60’s pad. Sam could barely muster the energy to lie to Marty about his script, even if that was clearly the way to get the info they needed. He and Marty seemed OK in the end, but Sam still barely looked at him. And finally, Sam could not muster any sympathy for Walter. I believe pre-Madison Sam would’ve. You pointed out that Sam was aggressive in his approach to Walter. I agree. And I believe that is Sam’s unfiltered self coming through because he didn’t have the energy for sympathy, compassion or understanding. Sam’s responses to Dean were funny as all hell, but his interactions with everyone else were kinda worrying. So that’s why I think Sam is as transparent as mud.
Grief affects people in varying ways – that often don’t make sense to people who think grief should “present” in one way. In a lot of people, all extraneous functions shut down. Death is a trauma – my doctor told me that the reason I wasn’t able to read, or retain anything, during the year following my dad’s death – was because death is such a trauma that you can actually see it on brain scans. It has the similar effect to a concussion. people are rarely transparent following a loss. There’s a shutting down that happens and I agree – we can see that in his behavior in Hollywood Babylon. His business-like manner, his distancing himself from emotional involvement in that world. Folsom Prison shows that too.
I still think Sam is much more “what you see is what you get” than Dean – especially during the period I’m talking about – which is why it is so upsetting when he starts keeping secrets and indulging in the dark side. Or losing his Soul, the ultimate. But even THERE – and this is the most chilling – “what you see is what you get.”
It’s interesting to watch the clash of all of this in Season 3, which I’m rewetting now. Both of them keeping MASSIVE secrets. Dean’s fear of death, Sam’s secret about demon blood and his dark side. Awesome.
It also occurs to me watching Season 3 just how much SPN has lost by making Hell explicit and boring. It’s stunning to watch these earlier seasons – the fear of those crossroads demons – the unknown quality of it all – how they emerge from the pit – an unknown place – the sheer mystery surrounding Hell and demons. Now they’re a bunch of minions wearing corporate suits. It’s really noticeable going back and watching those earlier seasons.
Not wacky about it. I get it, the story needed to shift – but SPN lost a lot in that transfer.
Jessie –
that thread above was getting cumbersome to reply to – I couldn’t find the beginning of it to hit “Reply” – this is a GREAT discussion.
Your thoughts on the queer-ness of Sam is so fantastic that I thank you for really explaining it. That stuff isn’t on my radar as much as it should be – although I do look for those signifiers – really clear in those old films I keep talking about – but definitely in operation in SPN in SPADES.
The outsider, the “other” – YES. I think that’s what I was trying to say about transparency/non-transparency. Sam has always felt “other.” Since he was a kid. Dean really hasn’t (I mean, he does now – but in terms of Season 1, 2 not so much). He was immersed in his world/life from the beginning. He knows he’s different from regular folks – and he’s glad of it. (That “I’d blow my brains out if I had to live in suburbia” comment from BUGS.)
Sam’s other-ness is not so much on the table now, is it – in the later seasons. Would be interested to hear your thoughts on that. Dean has gone into other-ness – which perhaps was always there. Somewhere on some other thread – I think I said that Sam’s issues were physical and Dean’s were emotional, to simplify. (Really clear in Season 9 and then totally up-ended by the Mark.) Even Dean’s draw towards death in Season 3 takes on an emotional context – how he can’t even admit he wants to be saved, etc. Sam’s draw towards darkness has a physical basis, something he is unable to fight with his emotions.
Back to Sam, especially here in Season 1, Season 2 – there’s that thing we’ve talked about how it’s often Sam who gets the double-takes. Ellen, etc. “There’s something different about him.” Gordon, too. Would you say that that goes to the subtext of queer-ness you’re talking about, the stranger, the “other”? Dean get the double-takes because of the weird flirting and the OBVIOUS denial. Like, who do you think you’re kidding Dean? Everything is right there to be seen. But Sam ….
Then we have the fascinating inversion of all of that – giving us the unexpected – with Sam being unquestionably masculine, his insecurities have nothing to do with manliness – whereas so much of Dean’s torment DO have to do with that. Sam can “fit in” in a man-only world (Frontierland) and Dean is thrust on the outside.
God, this show. This show.
But would love to hear more from you on all of this.
And agreed: Sam is looking gaunt. Interesting too – I see flashbacks from Season 1 (watching Season 2 and 3 now) – and the change between JP even THEN is extreme. He still had baby fat in Season 1 – in his face. Season 3, it vanished. A reminder of just how young he was when he started this show.
And JA? his beauty is timeless – but I absolutely LOVE the tiny intimations of crow’s feet he’s got going on now. What a stud.
Also, that Dean is the one who is usually clocked as gay, or at least fluid in his sexuality.
Sam’s “thing” goes much deeper. I don’t know. The true outsider.
and LOVE your thoughts on the close of Season 5. I think it reveals my true DENIAL about what was to come. “Oh yeah … he’s a guardian angel now … yeah, that’s right …”
That’s one of the reasons why the opening episodes of Season 6 were almost unbearable for me. Sam’s response to the reunion with his brother. Sam’s difference. Dean’s openness, confusion, hurt. I thought: NO. NO. NO.
Soulless Sam is one of my favorite arcs – wish Demon Dean had lasted that long. Mess up our expectations and hopes, SPN. Torment us!!
Love it!
Sam’s other-ness is not so much on the table now, is it – in the later seasons.
Would be interested to hear your thoughts on that.
I have described Sam as the other in the past and I think he is in a lot of ways. But in this discussion I’ll keep on in the stranger mode because the thing about the other is that you know them. Or you know at least one great thing: they are not you and from there you can extrapolate. Thing about the stranger is that they are a foreign friend.
So where is he now? This is the great question for the stranger. When you live on the border what do you do? Do you decamp, choose a side? Assimilate, or other yourself completely? Or do you make the borderlands your home? This is what I see Sam doing in the latest seasons. I think this is why he feels (to me at least) powerful, solid, in ascendancy as a man. Even when he’s fucked up/is fucking up. He doesn’t want normal anymore. He refuses to assimilate but he knows himself not to be a monster.
Living in the borderlands requires great flexibility and temerity. It is a rejection of the certain and stable and embracing of incoherence, plurality and contradiction.
They’ve been basically in unending crisis but at the moment Sam’s acceptance of his inbetween status seems to take the form of being a man of letters and shacking up with his brother. And this is essentially what the show wants us to desire – their weird exclusionary thing, precarious and dangerous and special. Complicit again!
I must go to bed but I will try to get to the rest tomorrow!
hello everyone. what a masterpiece you have written sheyla and these ” young guns ” writers… y’all look like the ” magnificent seven” aiming to futher and futher away posts… when i can’t understand the language of any given book, and this masterpiece and their posts is such a thing, i create like a mental movie with a scenary and characters that flow with the energy so like in this case i can relate the chapter to all of you.
congratulatins to the mom and the baby, hope u healing is working good and to these new generations ” kick ass”.
I was so thrilled to find your review of this episode posted as it is a favorite of mine. JA and JP have incredible energy between them onscreen and this episode is a perfect example. I devoured your words and had to then read all our fellow fans responses. As usual I have little to contribute but chearleading.
Dean was a revelation in this episode and I agree Sam was grief. Copy That.
Thank you once again.
Most of your re caps are boring now but I still love spn and jensen and dean, sam is annyoing and cas is boring he always was lame and misha is a bad actor. And shelia you are lame and annyoing. Elvis was lame too btw. Jensen is a better actor than misha and jared. I’m done with reading your bullshit recaps and the bullshit replyes from other annyoing cunts you talk too. Bye bitches
I’ll miss our talks.
Hah!
You guys, I was watching Sleepy Hollow, and look at the monster of the week! It looks a lot like the monster from the sketch, right? It’s sooo ridiculous, so funny!
You’re right!
Omg I was just distracted by th post above. I forgot this is the thread with the troll. The original annoying cunts comment, ha. Good club to belong to.
Right?
Helena’s reply is so perfect. I love you, annoying cunts. <3