Written by Sera Gamble
Directed by Robert Singer
“Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.” — John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV, Lines 677-678
The writers’ staff for Supernatural are well-versed (pun. sorry.) in The Bible and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as every urban legend, supernatural entity, and unexplained phenomena ever reported on the planet. The backlog of data must be extraordinary, entire hard drives filled with “Let’s Maybe Use This Obscure Spirit-Demon From the Appalachian Region Some Day”. Supernatural has to be one of the funnest (and most rigorous) research-based writing jobs in television. We had to read Paradise Lost in high school, and it was only when I went back and re-read it that I truly understood the EPIC SIZE of it all, plus the distilled purity and transcendence of its imagery/language.
What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
So much in literature and language as we know it comes from Paradise Lost. The first example that comes to mind is the stunning:
Yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible.
William Styron’s book about his depression is called Darkness Visible, and ever since it came out I cannot read Milton’s lines without thinking, “If that isn’t a perfect description of depression and despair I don’t know what is.”
The Supernatural writers have a lot of fun with Milton. Anna Milton, of course. The bar named Milton. This verse – taken from Jewish religious texts and the Old Testament – helped create Season 7:
or that Sea-beast
LEVIATHAN, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th’ Ocean stream
… (shivers …)
Castiel’s entrance is straight out of Milton. Ferocious warrior angels. There are a couple of episode titles that quote Milton, including the two-part finale of Season 2. (Milton uses past tense though: “broke” not “breaks.”)
All Hell Breaks Loose, in Supernatural, refers to literally just that, opening the Gate to Hell in the cheese-ball-Roger-Corman-esque cemetery, letting out an “army” of demons. There’s a personal Hell as well (it’s always the personal that gives Supernatural its extra charge.), the Hell of loss. “All Hell Breaks Loose, Parts 1 and 2” is the first time a Winchester brother actually dies. Dean came close in “Faith,” (a turning point in the series, in my opinion, a declaration of intentions, or, at the very least, a testing of the waters to see if the show could “take” its own spiritual ramifications. “Faith” introduced “faith” into the series. That wouldn’t really bear fruit – “Houses of the Holy” an important stepping-stone along the way, although faith there remained a philosophical debate – until now: with a cross-roads demon, a “deal with the Devil,” Dean’s deal, Sam’s resurrection, and then the truncated Season 3, with Dean’s march towards Hell – which then, of course, basically predicts the entry of the angels in Season 4. If there’s a Hell, then there must be a Heaven. All of that is really set up in Parts 1 and 2 of the Season 2 finale.)
In Milton’s poem, just before kicking Satan out of the Garden of Eden, the angel Gabriel asks Satan why the other inhabitants of hell hadn’t broken out of the underworld and accompanied him to the garden: “Wherefore with thee came not all hell broke loose?” (Book IV, Line 916.)
Illustration by Gustave Doré for Paradise Lost: Gabriel banishing Satan
“Hell”, in Milton’s context, does not mean Hell the place, but the inhabitants of Hell. And so there’s that double meaning in the Supernatural title: There’s the common vernacular: “The shit hits the fan” “Everything goes nuts” “Here comes Chaos.” But it’s also Miltonian: a door opens, and “Hell” streams into this world, including John Winchester (in a cheese-ball effect).
What’s Dead Should Stay Dead. You Sure About That?
Part 1 and Part 2 are separate and distinct in so many ways (Part 1 taking place almost entirely in that ghost town, Sam dominating, Part 2 is Dean-dominated, taking place at crossroads and in abandoned buildings). If you think about it: Part 1 very well could have been the finale, leaving the audience with “OMG Sam’s dead.” But the real cliff-hanger is Dean making that deal. That’s what puts Season 3 in motion. Dean goes against everything he’s been saying for the entire season, post-John’s-Death, most particularly in “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things”: “What’s dead should stay dead.” Dean knows about the deal his father made in exchange for his own (worthless) life. There’s that Guilt aspect of it. But also: messing with the natural order, according to Dean, is wrong and in direct contradiction to their mission. Hunters restore people’s lives to what is natural, not supernatural. How do you reconcile that with what John Winchester did? What Dean is now about to do? Oh, so the rules apply to all of the people you help but not to you? You make an exception for your own family? Although it’s always been clear that Dean will do what it takes to protect his brother, this is the first time we’ll see the LENGTHS that he will go. When Dean was dying, Sam took him to a quack faith-healer. When Sam is dead, Dean trades his own future for his brother’s life. You see the disconnect, already in place. If Dean had died in “Faith,” I think Sam would have “let him go.” He would have cried and mourned, but Demon Deal? I’m not sure about that.
The other thing that is so important about Part 1 is what we learn about Mary. “It’s you,” she says to the dark figure in the nursery. It changes everything we thought we knew. Mary (Samantha Smith) haunts the series so much that it seems like she’s a regular cast member. (And I, for one, am happy to see that potential being explored again, from the Season 11 finale. Dean has never recovered from that loss. He’s almost 40. He’s not a Mama’s Boy. He’s a traumatized orphan. Still.) Mary’s death is burned into his (and our) brains.
On Episode Influences
“All Hell Breaks Loose” Part 1 is the closing-out of the Psychic Kids Arc, something Season 2 has been driving towards (off and on) from the get-go, starting in Season 1 with “Nightmare”, and the suggestion that something might be “wrong” with Sam. Some of this doesn’t really make sense (mainly being the attitude that Sam is a freak, a monster, something to be hunted – especially since hunters clearly utilize psychics. Hello, the sexy Pamela. But whatever.) Sam’s tendency to go off the rails takes up much of the first half of this entire series. Sam can “go dark,” and he tries to do the right thing by engaging in wrong behavior. Sam realizing he is connected to other people, other “kids”, outside the Winchester Belljar (TM). (Belljar Effect babbling here, but mainly here.)
As the “blue roses” start to emerge in the series, first Max, and then Andy from “Simon Said” and then Ava from “Hunted”, Sam realizes he is not alone. There’s probably a comfort in that, along with alarm. Dean and Bobby look at him with fear and sometimes suspicion. They hate his “powers”. The other Blue Roses accept it. They don’t have to be alone, a freak, there are “more of us” out there.
I’ve spoken before how the Blue Roses Arc doesn’t really do it for me, although I love each individual “kid”, including the new ones that show up here. Its motley-crew of superheroes, its kid-soldier-dystopian-narrative, was an attempt to make something happen, but then everyone realized it didn’t work, and it seems that Kripke put his foot down, so they dropped it as unceremoniously as they burned down the roadhouse. A “demon army” of “special” “kid” soldiers … I grew out of the appeal of that in junior high. Nothing against junior high sensibility, but it just didn’t feel as real to me as the Winchester Family Drama and Sam learning that he has been “chosen” (which will then be flipped in Season 4, when Dean is “chosen.”)
Putting a bunch of “freaks” together in one place calls to mind many things, including:
and the most obvious:
It’s an adolescent fantasy: that which makes you “weird” makes you also The Best The Brightest (quoted by Yellow-Eyes later). You’re not just different, you’re awesome and powerful! Your high school peers might bully you but at night you swoop through the skies saving Mankind. There is potential there, but not enough, not in THIS story about two brothers. Like “Faith,” it feels like the writers/Kripke were testing the waters of what they had created. “Is the story about THIS?” “Can the story ‘take’ THIS? Or will it fall apart?” And they have to do that in full view of their audience. So here, in Part 1, they felt the need to kill this Arc off, to clear the way for Part 2 and Season 3.
There are shots in Part 1 that are so Breakfast-Club-ish, the majority of the “kids” in the same frame, that it’s practically a direct replication.
Too bad they didn’t just smoke a joint, blast some music, put on eyeliner, and dance.
But more so than the Breakfast Club, the main influence on this episode is Fred Zinneman’s 1952 movie High Noon, starring Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado, Harry Morgan, and Lee Van Cleef.
It’s a terrific movie, albeit with an extremely controversial backstory surrounding its production (look it up). It was a tense and terrible time, the Hollywood Blacklist a black mark in the history of the US, not to mention Hollywood. The community has not recovered totally. (The Coen brothers’ latest, Hail, Caesar!, takes place during that time, and lampoons it, risky when you consider that when Elia Kazan won a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, FIFTY YEARS after his testimony before the HUAC, FIFTY YEARS, there were still people in that audience who refused to stand up for him. In protest. He was not forgiven. I’m sure that all of those scowling movie stars remaining in their seats would have behaved PERFECTLY in such a terrible time, and would have WILLINGLY sacrificed their careers in order to do the right thing. Morons. I’m sorry. I hate that superior attitude towards the past. Kazan was a complicated man, a liar (he admitted it), who did shitty things, and is also one of my artistic heroes. I can reconcile those things, no problem. I actually got to meet him and held it together just long enough to shake his hand before falling apart in an alleyway half an hour later, sobbing. He’s a hero.
High Noon starts off showing three men waiting around under a tree, the desert surrounding them, all as Tex Ritter sings “Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darling,” composed by Dmitri Tiomken (it won the “Best Music” Oscar).
The former Sheriff of this small town (Gary Cooper, who won an Oscar for the role) has just married a young Quaker girl (Grace Kelly), and turned in his badge. Time to be a family man. But then he realizes that a criminal he brought to justice (who was supposed to be hanged) “got off” on a technicality, was pardoned, and has returned to wreak his revenge with two sociopath buddies. The Sheriff races around the town trying to drum up support for the coming standoff. All he finds are excuses, and closed doors. People hiding in their houses, refusing to get involved, refusing to take the risk. Refusing to stand up to the Bad Guys. (You see the blacklist connection. People like Howard Hawks and John Wayne HATED High Noon and made Rio Bravo – another great film – as a “Fuck you” to High Noon.)
So The Sheriff – an almost elderly man – must face the threat by himself. He is a lone figure, that fact highlighted by one of the most famous shots in cinema: the following crane shot:
Robert Singer knows his High Noon inside and out. (Singer also directed “Monster Movie” and there’s a moment in the final sequence that is a total steal from High Noon.) There are so many crane shots in All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1 that you wonder how they got everything done in time. What the crane shot does is dwarf the characters down below, surrounding them with ominous space above them, a void pressing down, making them look more vulnerable than ever.
It’s hard to make Gary Cooper look vulnerable, it’s hard to make Jared Padalecki look vulnerable, but those crane shots do:
I mean, look at that replication. Even the curve in the road in the background is the same.
Sam Winchester is Cooper’s Sheriff (Cooper, too, had great long gangly expressive legs). Sam has to do much maneuvering to keep everyone together, to rally the troops, especially Lily, who has one foot out the door from the start. Ava and Andy are somewhat useless, although they step up when Sam gives them tasks. (Putting aside the fact that Ava is possessed. We don’t know that for the majority of the episode.) Like The Sheriff, Sam is a strong and stalwart man, independent and brave and gun-slinging, who also has a yearning for domesticity, love, marriage, safety. This yearning is not shared by his brother (outside of the unexpected Djinn fantasy in the episode before this one). Dean is more like an outlaw on the outskirts of town than a stereotypical Hero, one of the ambiguities of the character. Sam, like The Sheriff, turns to face the threat head-on.
It’s not just story-wise that “Part 1” resembles High Noon. It’s the setting itself, the frontier ghost town, the Wild West atmosphere, the signs with obsolete terms like “Cobbler” over the doors, the rickety wooden sidewalks, a one-room schoolhouse, roads drowning in mud. I’ve always felt that Supernatural had more in common with Westerns than with the horror or paranormal genre. (I thank Jessie and Helena for their thoughts on the influence of Quest narratives on the series.) But in terms of the Western: Over and over again in Supernatural we are presented with standoffs between White Hats and Black Hats, only to realize that the colors are usually grey. (This happens in a lot of classic Westerns as well. Unlike their reputation – from people who barely watch any Westerns at all – they’re not all simplistic stories justifying genocide. Those stories exist as well, but the best Westerns, like The Ox-Bow Incident or Who Shot Liberty Valance or High Noon or Red River or – most importantly – John Ford’s The Searchers explore ambiguity and guilt and community and violence and man’s-inhumanity-to-man. (Ethan Edwards, John Wayne’s character in The Searchers, to me, is the #1 best analogy for the Dean Winchester character in existence – mixed with Helena’s “Beowulf and Scooby Doo”.) In The Searchers, Ethan is a murderous racist, who goes so far into the world of violence, revenge, hatred that in the famous final last shot (the most famous shot in American cinema) he stands in the doorway of the house, unable to step over the threshold inside. A life of violence has unfit him for civilization. He cannot undo it. He is destined to wander alone. He has banished himself.
The High Noon connection, both visually and plot-wise, drives “All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1” far more than The Breakfast Club does. Sam: alone against the gathering storm, vulnerable on those muddy streets, the perspective from high above dwarfing him, the disparate group of people who need to be organized and made brave by his leadership. His allies – Dean and Bobby – far away. He finds an ally in Jake (their conversation at night over the rusted tractor is a highlight of the episode). Sam trusts him. It’s a fatal mistake. Grey again, not black and white.
Scene 1
The mood starts strong with one of my favorite sets in the entire series. The two-booth cafe in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a moat of water.
Genius conception, it shows just how conceptual the team was early on. (Not so much now. Now they might have just placed the scene in a regular diner, a “literal” set, not evocative of anything. This set is not literal. In any way, shape or form. It makes no sense, except in terms of the mood it creates. Sam is about to go “through the looking glass” when he enters that cafe.) It’s brilliant.
Boston’s “Foreplay/Long Time” takes us through the re-cap into the Impala, where it blasts from the radio its lyrics about Time and “distant highways”. The radio fizzes out after the lyrics “I’ve gotta be on my way,” followed by a glimpse of Sam through the cafe windows. This A-to-B commentary could be way too obvious if it weren’t so simply done. You barely notice the prediction in the lyrics.
I like how Dean notices that the windows of the cafe are suddenly empty of people (nice percussion effect beneath) as the camera pans quickly back and forth between the windows). I know I keep drumming this home but I think it’s important and many people find these individual re-caps first as opposed to the whole she-bang, so I think a little repetition is in order: You can do SO MUCH even if you have very little money. Low budget forces you to be creative. And all they do here is show empty windows, and make the camera zoom back and forth anxiously (Dean’s point of view) and it’s truly eerie, and it cost barely any money at all. (I just reviewed a very frightening film called The Fits – which you all should see – filmed on a micro-budget, and another example of how much you can do if you know the story you are telling and use whatever it is that you have carefully.)
I also like how the trees gleam with silvery-wetness on the periphery of that strange little cafe. Once inside, Dean comes upon the carnage, all to the accompaniment of what sounds like – but is not – a Tammy Wynette song. It’s “Stand By Your Man” – although it’s not. It’s so bizarre and creepy, the sound from another world, bringing us into a lonely country & western world, perfect for the ghost town to follow. It’s one of the creepiest and most effective sequences in Season 2.
Look how effective, how pared-down, how bare-bones the opening is:
–a quick joke about pies
— an eye-roll from Sam
— music (from Boston to Tammy Wynette)
— empty windows
— red booths
— carnage
— silver-gleaming-wet trees
— Dean helpfully informing us that it’s “sulfur”
— the moat
— and then – my favorite – a dissolve (Supernatural so rarely does them that they always stand out), where we see Dean’s face looking around worriedly on the left side, as Sam’s face emerges – upside down – on the right side, You can’t create a shot like that in the editing room. You have to plan for it. Place the heads just right, make sure they are the same size in the two different shots, slowly dissolve from one to the other. It shows the porousness of our world, the fluidity of time and space.
This type of shot is commonly used in cinema in a romantic context. I’ll just leave that there.
Dean fades out, and Sam is alone: asleep, on his back, upside down, until the camera starts pulling back AND spiraling (I love it when they do that), so we get the God’s-Eye-View (lots of that in this episode).
More importantly in terms of otherworldliness:
1. It is now daylight.
2. It is no longer raining.
But most importantly: Legs.
Visual things to notice:
As Sam heaves himself to his feet, confused, reaching for his cell phone, the grey background buildings press in around him. Not of this era at all. You can’t get any perspective on where he is. Until suddenly, once again with feeling:
A stunning shift from micro to macro. So scary.
As Sam wanders along the raised wooden sidewalk, there are often blurry objects in between us and him, a common trope in Supernatural (and horror movies and thrillers) because it gives a sense of unease: the person is being watched (or stalked). Singer is very smart with camera moves, and there’s one dolly-shot where Sam walks down the sidewalk, the camera following along below. (Laying those dolly tracks in that unbelievable mud had to be quite a task. But the shot provides interest, movement, some energy on the screen. A camera move like that HELPS the actor tell his story. It’s incredible just how much variety Singer gets in 41 minutes of television, avoiding cliches, or – conversely – embracing cliches – the dissolve, the dizzying crane shots – because they work in the context of what he is trying to do.)
Enter Andy (Gabriel Triggerman). It is so good to see him again. If there’s one thing I love about the Psychic Kids, it’s that they bring real-life eccentricity and humor into the grim commando atmosphere of the Winchester brothers, who rarely interact with civilians outside of saving them. It brings out great things when people who don’t “play by their rules” saunter into their environment. It happened with Charlie. With Garth. It happens with Andy and Ava. Chess pieces topple.
Watching Sam dealing with Andy is funny ecause Andy, still stoned, is freaking OUT right AT SAM.
“Calm down.”
“HOW CAN I CALM DOWN?”
And now enter poor Ava, who has been having a grand old time ever since Sam and Dean lost track of her, and has now locked herself in the woodshed, getting ready to give her Academy-winning performance as the secretary from Peoria.
Because I’m obsessive and because I care about WHY things work and HOW they work when they do: Outside the shed Sam looks around, picks up a rock, bangs at the padlock until it cracks, flips back the padlock, opens the door and out pours Ava. It’s shot all in one: the camera moving down with Sam’s gesture for the rock, back up, and Padalecki has to really slam on that padlock (which, of course, is a break-away prop of some kind), and then fumble to get it open. A lot of directors are afraid to do things “in one” like that, regardless of the fact that it helps in establishing that what we see onscreen is really happening. It’s easier to control things if you cut it all up into different shots: Sam at door. Shot of Sam’s hand picking up rock. Close-up of rock banging on padlock. Back to shot of Sam banging. And etc. I love Singer’s naturalistic approach, prioritizing the fact that Jared Padalecki can play it all in one, and it’ll be a much better sequence – with a better flow – because of it.
Katherine Isabelle, already so wonderfully funny in “Hunted,” is truly great in this episode, where she has to transform later, where everything up until that point has been a manipulation and imitation. And Sam bought it. Only a year later, and he’d be tossing holy water in her face before she even emerged from the shed. He’s not there yet.
There’s a tiny moment, gone before you miss it, that makes me laugh every time. It’s all Katherine Isabelle’s talent. She’s babbling on and on, not perceiving that Andy is there. At one point, after she realizes that her fiancé must be “freaking out” she goes to start weeping into her hands, and then suddenly sees Andy. Watch her double-take. It’s tiny. But it’s hilarious. She looks almost … grossed out.
As each person arrives, Sam has to expand his leadership. Here, Sam and Andy are the leaders, initiating Ava into the weirdness of their situation. With each additional person, that collective sense grows more inclusive. Lily is never incorporated, but that’s her choice. She’s killed the person she loves. Andy killed his brother but his brother was a psycho and it had to be done. Jake has killed people probably in Afghanistan, but that’s war, it’s part of the job. Lily is traumatized, and, like many traumatized people, cannot think straight. It was her first kill and it was someone she loved.
The fragile coalition of three is about to get larger: a voice calls through the grey mist, and Sam, Ava and Andy run off, following the voice.
Second crane shot in the episode (along with director credit, which makes me happy. It’s a stunning shot and he should take the credit for it.)
Jake (the wonderful and imposing Aldis Hodge) and Lily (Jessica Harmon, so hilarious in Dog Dean Afternoon in a totally different character), arms wrapped around herself, hands tucked into her sleeves (a nice touch: to keep herself from touching anyone), emerge from around a corner. Once Sam takes over, there are shots of each Breakfast Club Blue Rose member, either shocked at Sam’s knowledge (Jake and Lily), or quietly listening because they already know (Ava and Andy). Singer goes from one face to the other and back during the course of Sam’s monologue, letting us settle into the grouping, get used to the new faces. They’re all wonderful actors.
Jake and Sam, looking at each other, have a sense of “You. You’re like me.” (Reminiscent of Dean’s interaction with the soldier who fought in Fallujah coming up next season. “Takes one to know one.” You don’t get “that look” being a secretary.) It’s moving, too, how over the course of the episode there is no posturing or competition between Jake and Sam, even in the fight at the end. Jake doesn’t fight Sam’s leadership because he is equally strong and Sam recognizes it. They bond together to keep the rest “in line.” They’re men, the others are kids. We’ll see examples of this throughout.
When Andy takes over the interaction, explaining his “gay porn” story, there’s a shot where he’s babbling on and laughing and Jake and Lily stand off to the side, staring at him with “What the hell” looks on their faces, and it’s almost as funny as what Triggerman is doing with his performance.
I mean … things are life or death here, Andy. You want to dial it down a notch?
Nobody acts in a vacuum. Reaction shots (like Ava’s when she first sees Andy) add texture and reality even if they’re not presented in close-up. As Andy talks, there’s a moment of eye contact between Sam and Jake. It’s great. They “check in” with each other. A message passes between them: “Okay. We’re the grownups here and these people are kids. It’s up to us to take control. CLEARLY.” They’re both only 23 years old, but Jake is a war veteran and Sam was born into a violent world that sucks. They’re hard and tough. I love that glance between them. Everyone awkwardly tolerates the gay porn story, and it pisses Lily off. She’s gay, although we don’t know it yet, so obviously the story is totally rude on many levels, but also: she killed her girlfriend by touching her, and Andy has been out there having a BLAST with his “special power” and it’s all hilarious to him. She already tries to leave before Sam stops her, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was that moment that decided her: No way am I aligning myself with that bozo.
Although the scene is mostly catch-up on stuff we already know, and Padalecki has to shoulder the burden of that, he is so capable here, so “casually masculine” (a phrase stolen from my friend Mitchell, who loves this type of masculinity, as do I – and it’s a great contrast to the totally NOT casual masculinity – because nothing he does is casual – of his brother.) Sam stands there and owns his power. Gently. (How does he pull it off?) He does many things: he fills people in. He shares many looks with Jake, the two unofficial Fathers of this motley crew, and tries to keep Lily with the troops. It’s a beautiful acting job, the kind at which Padalecki in particular excels.
Scene 2
Dean and Bobby stand outside in what appears to be a typhoon, studying a laminated (thank you Helena for pointing it out) map. They are soaking wet and Bobby’s jacket billows out behind him in the gusts of hurricane-force winds. Maybe you all could sit in one of your vehicles, seeing as it’s so windy that there are basically white-capped waves on that nearby pond? No? Okay, suit yourself.
Great shot though.
Soon to be ashes Ash calls Dean. When we leap to the roadhouse, before panning up to Ash’s face, we first see this.
What the hell, Wanek.
The creepy monkey remains blurry in the foreground as Ash hisses in a totally sketchy manner into the pay phone. No cell phone. Which cracks me up. A scowling hunter enters the roadhouse wearing a cowboy hat on and gives Ash a dirty look, and this sort of moment is why Eric Kripke was happy to see the roadhouse go. I get that, it is a bit Hogwarts-ish and removed from the isolated world of the Winchesters, but I still love the roadhouse and love that Pamela and Ash would choose to hang out there in Heaven.
Bobby and Dean leave Bobby’s tow truck in the middle of that wind-blown field. Wouldn’t it be better to take separate cars?
Scene 3
Lily stands wrapped up in her misery, as we hear the argument that has erupted between Sam and Jake about Demons and Demon Armies. Jake, at this point, has not revealed his special ability, and nobody even asks. It’s a mini-Clash of the Titans, and Jake stalks off into Frontierland. Watch how Lily watches him go and then looks to Sam. Because who else are you gonna look at to know what to do next? Gay Porn Andy? She gets the hierarchy immediately. We leave the Four Samurai Blue Roses behind and follow Jake through the Wild West, where he is drawn into a schoolhouse by a creepy little girl (is there any kind) staring at him through the window.
While “Frontierland” was a ready-made “set” that the Supernatural crew infiltrated, there still needed to be set design for the interiors, especially here with a stunning 360-degree pan where the entire space has to be seen. The pan is broken up into three parts but filmed in one: it swings around the space, giving us a glimpse of not only the room but Jerry Wanek’s gorgeous work. The paint/wallpaper peels off the walls in big loose fragments. There’s an empty blackboard and beyond is a room, dilapidated bookshelf, a table, a lantern, dust-laden, light streaming through the dirty windows. After that 180-degree pan, the camera picks up Jake again, moving into the space. There is the sound of children giggling and the camera pauses a bit, when it reaches Jake, before it starts moving again, whipping around him, much faster now, slowing down AGAIN as Jake hears a scratching sound, before speeding up once more to reveal the once-empty blackboard behind Jake that now looks like this:
No cuts! That’s Serge Ledouceur and his camera operator! It’s as much up to the actor to pull that off as the camera operator. The actor has to be in sync, he has to modulate whatever is going on, feel the camera and work with it so he doesn’t get ahead of it or fall behind, slow down, speed up, he and the camera are one. As the camera swings around the room, a prop guy feverishly switches out the blackboard, and the sheer trick of it, the theatricality of it, pleases me. That’s all you need to do to create an illusion with no cuts, just one circle of a camera move and two blackboards.
In my first viewing I was confused by creepy little girl: Sam wipes her out with a fire poker, but then a column of black smoke catapults out of the room. Iron kills ghosts. I know that much. Does it kill demons too? Black smoke means demon. And I missed the almost throw-away exposition about the Acheri so I had no idea what was going on. Once I figured it out I looked up the Acheri Demon and the Wikipedia page has this terrifying illustration:
I don’t ever need to see THAT in my lifetime, thankyouverymuch. The Acheri comes from Native American folklore (appropriate for the Wild West setting of the episode) and appears as a little girl who attacks the weak and the sick. An interesting concept since she attacks the strong intimidating soldier Jake first. She doesn’t go after what might be obvious, at least not at first. But right now, she senses what is to come for Jake.
Sam’s “That was a demon”, said directly to Jake in a firm and almost triumphant tone, is the only time that Sam comes off as a peacock. Sam has the expertise, at least in THIS. Jake almost died. Sam is right to throw that in Jake’s face. He needs Jake to believe.
Another Breakfast Club shot.
Sam is a good leader: he gives people a minute to absorb what just happened. He talks to Jake, but then realizes Andy’s having a moment, and says, “You okay, Andy?” Sam pays attention to everyone. Nobody left behind. It’s his responsibility.
Scene 4
A rumble of thunder brings us into the next scene, where Jake and Sam stare at a big bell in the middle of town. Sam recognizes it as Cold Oak, South Dakota, a “town so haunted that every single resident fled.”
Ava’s response from offscreen? “Swell.”
And this is the element the Psychic Kids bring. It’s great. Sam and Dean are so powerful that it needs to be undercut from time to time (when they’re not undercutting it themselves).
Side note: I have traveled through South Dakota numerous times. I camped in the Black Hills and elsewhere. There are some pretty ghostly towns there, once you get off the beaten track, although Cold Oak is a fiction. Look at this Wikipedia page: List of ghost towns in South Dakota. Take your pick! A haunted state!
Visual side note: I adore the shot of staggered profiles. You rarely see so many people onscreen at one time in Supernatural.
The following confrontation between Lily and Sam (and the others) is complex and emotional. A group argument. “Don’t say ‘we'” Lily yells at Jake, a great line, with reverberations throughout the episode. (There’s Yellow-Eyes saying “She walked in on us,” to Sam, creating an intimacy, a collusion between them that is disgusting. There’s Jake saying to Sam in the final scene, “Not ‘we’, Sam.” It’s the group vs. the individual. It’s “we” vs. “I.” That’s a very High Noon theme. Sticking together is irrelevant anyway, since they’ll get picked off one by one. Maybe “I” is better than “we.” )
Sam and Lily’s fight starts one place and goes another. Both adjust, change, to the shifts in information. Lily opens up about what happened (angrily, throwing it in Sam’s face like a weapon). Sam moves into startled empathy for the horrible thing that just happened to her. Empathy is as much a part of the job as competence and killing (as Season 6 explores in-depth). Padalecki’s voice changes. His eyes change. Lily stops being part of the group, she becomes an individual to him, she carries a world of pain just like he does. You can see it happen. When he references Dean, Padalecki’s face suddenly, out of nowhere, looks very young.
Without subtlety of acting like that? Sorry, the show would be stupid.
Nerdy detail: “Get the hell out of Dodge”, said by Lily, has a Western-genre history: it refers to Dodge City, Kansas, where a lot of Western movies were filmed. The TV show Gunsmoke (one of the longest-running TV shows ever – 1955 to 1975 – take THAT, 12-season Supernatural) always had people shouting at one another “get the hell out of Dodge.” The show was so popular that the phrase moved into the vernacular of the culture, similar to, say, “Not that there’s anything WRONG with that.”
Scene 5
Extremely Wild Bunch opening shot:
The ambiguous saviors/freaks moving on into town to take over. Jake asks for clarification. He’s military remember: chain of command is in his blood. The “salt” exchange is reminiscent of the same conversation in “Hollywood Babylon”, although here salt is non-negotiable and cannot be exchanged with another “condiment.” Sam explains to Jake that salt is better than guns, adding “It’s a brave new world.”
Aldous Huxley’s dystopian book comes to mind, of course, although the real reference-point – and where Huxley got his title – is Shakespeare’s Tempest, and it’s from one of my favorite speeches in all of the great speeches Shakespeare wrote. Miranda, daughter of Prospero, the magician and sorcerer, exclaims:
“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world
That has such people in’t!”
An interesting dichotomy because in his book Huxley creates what seems to be a fun world where the population is busy with entertainment, parties, drugs, free love. Huxley took Miranda’s hopeful words, from one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote, words that express our possibilities, our goodness, what we CAN do if we stop being so awful, and turned it inside-out into something sarcastic, ironic, an eye-roll. “Brave new world, yeah, right. Sheeple.”
To me this adds a couple layers of meaning to Sam’s reference. The Blue Roses Wild Bunch: “goodly creatures?” Evidence of “beauteous mankind” or …?
As expected, Lily hangs behind as the others enter a broke-down building. The camera moves in on her ice-pale face. And so she had just placated Sam (another layer to their argument, seen in retrospect). Sam’s strength of will was overpowering and it was easier to just say “Fine” than risk being, oh, tackled by Jake.
Speaking of which, I just wanted to mention:
Imagining Dean having to deal with Lily paints a very different picture. He’d turn into John Winchester Drill Sergeant in a second. That might have worked better. Sam’s empathy obviously failed to convince.
Scene 6
Buh-bye roadhouse.
You can almost feel Kripke’s glee in showing the carnage. Including the charred monkey. Ash-es to ash-es. Literally.
Scene 7
Now we get something we rarely get in Supernatural (there was a great one in “Folsom Prison Blues”): a horizontal pan from one scene into the next. Hard to do. Requires planning (can’t be created in the editing room), and proper perspectives so everyone is the same size. You pan from the woods, through a wall-barrier, meeting up with Sam strolling through the house, the same size as Lily. It’s an effective cinematic flourish. There are so many characters, each has a thru-line, you have to connect it all up somehow (Singer also uses brief shots of exteriors to move us from one scene to the next.)
The props and set dressing in the room are well-chosen: an enamel jug, a rusty knife, a greened mirror on the wall, a fire poker (thank goodness every room in Supernatural has one!). Ava and Sam have history. They also have the same “ability”. Ava is offended, almost defensive when he gives her a look, like “Are you having a vision?” The show’s attitude towards Sam’s visions has always seemed slightly contrived to me, as well as not quite adding up. The hunters truck in the supernatural all the time. They go to Pamela when they need help. They don’t SHUN Pamela as an agent of Satan. In retrospect, the fact that Ava is summoning the demon to string up Lily … makes the moment truly chilling.
Line-reading alert from Isabelle: “I’m fine … except for every single thing that’s happening!” She laughs, in a way that makes her look like a lunatic. Sam laughs. He likes her.
I’m so happy for Andy that he found the bags of salt. He deserves to redeem himself after his monologue that made everyone write him off as a loser. Even Jake laughs. Look at how Andy shows the bags right to Sam: See, Sam? Didn’t I do a good job?
The shot of the four of them rushing outside, once they realize Lily is not with them, and then when they see what’s out there … is beautiful collective work. Simultaneous reactions. We see this before we see what they see.
Looking at that is even more upsetting than seeing the terrible (and beautifully done) shot of Lily dangling. Dead Lily is one of the worst (i.e. brutal) images Supernatural has ever given us. It’s bleak, final, inhuman. Space dwarfs the human form. We are inconsequential.
Shakespeare again, King Lear this time, another late play:
As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods. They kill us for their sport.
It’s Sam Ava appeals to, Sam she fights with. In a time of chaos, human beings gravitate towards leaders. Jake, staring up at Lily, now knows the score. There will be no getting out.
My favorite moment of this terrible scene is the coda:
The remaining Four Samurai head back inside, and Jake says to Sam, “I’ll get her down.”
The worst job, but Jake’s a grunt. Grunts do the worst jobs without hesitation.
It’s a beautiful moment of shared Leadership side by side.
This scene flows into the next scene between Andy and Sam. Robert Singer says in the commentary track that he doesn’t like this scene, doesn’t like shooting day-for-night (nobody does) and also doesn’t like to place two people in the frame and have them talk. That camera should ALWAYS be moving: DO something with what’s onscreen: ADD to it. Don’t DISTRACT, but add. However, compromises must be made in an 8-day shoot, so such a scene has to stand. It’s an interesting insight into the mind of a director.
Along with the salt, this is Andy’s big moment. But then he has to deal with the fact that Dean signs his bogus credit card receipts “David Hasselhoff”, although who could make out that chicken scratch is anyone’s guess. Singer’s feelings notwithstanding, it is funny to watch these two guys play out the scene in real time, like the now-favorite dinner-table-birth-control scene in Season 11, where – when the camera was on Dean and Sam at the same time – you just didn’t know where to look, there was so much great behavior.
My favorite moment. Padalecki is adorable.
Scene 8
Dean freaks out on Bobby before he is … penetrated … by Andy. Just telling it like it is. Jensen Ackles, whom we haven’t seen much in the episode, plays the bombarding of the visions as though it is a brain aneurysm. It LOOKS painful. He bounces back when the vision subsides, but then it pushes into him (sorry) again, and he doubles over, holding his head. It’s nice work and reminds me of the scene in The Bionic Woman after the little thingamajig is put into her ear, and it fucks with her depth perception, creates nausea, makes her double over holding her head, running through the rain. Dean as Bionic Woman. It works. Bobby is suspicious that it’s a vision, and okay, I’ll skip over how that doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe the writing-staff and Kripke hadn’t realized that Pamela would come into the picture. Or maybe Sam is another case entirely: something is wrong with Sam and his visions are in no way benign, they are indicative of something much much darker. I still don’t like it, but I’ll justify it, fine.
Finally:
It’s a scene anchored by profiles. Boom. Boom. Boom. (Supernatural looooooves its profiles and we get more than one an episode, but it’s fun to see them all in one scene.)
Elegant and symmetrical.
Scene 9
Oh, oh, oh, how I love the opening shot, a strange and slightly distorted pan down (a mini-crane-shot again) into the night streets of Cold Oak, all the way down to the ground. There’s a trick in that pan: the background seems to recede at the same time the camera moves. It’s dizzying, like your eyes are playing tricks on you. It’s a very fancy shot and a wonderful transition into the next scene, quiet and intimate (one of the best scenes in the episode). The transition is filled with silence and dread: fear of nighttime, of emptiness, of what you can’t see yet, of a traumatized band of misfits waiting out the night, no cavalry on the way.
Jake and Sam, banging on the machinery to break off weaponry, casually masculine the both of them, work in silence for a bit. The lighting is beautiful. They work with a lantern over their head, surrounded by shadows. The following scene is simply shot, a decision that Singer made because it was so well-written and the actors were so prepared (Singer said they got it on Take 1), the soft space of listening so present. It’s a quiet moment of communication between two strong men, Leaders: they aren’t Leaders because they pushed their way to that position, they’re Leaders because … that’s what they are.
They recognize it in one another. It’s not even a question. They’re not Frodo. They’re Aragorn. If you’re Aragorn, you can’t say, “No thanks, not today, I’d rather by Frodo.” Everyone looks at you and KNOWS you’re Aragorn automatically.
It’s a love scene, really.
Men rarely talk to one another like this in cinema, television, whatever. Often relationships between men involve jostling for position, one-up-man-ship, guffawing dude-bro-ness. I don’t mean to exaggerate. There are clearly many many examples of other kinds of dynamics, but it’s rare enough that a scene like this stands out. It’s unexpected. One talks, the other listens. Sensitive work from both actors, vulnerable in a very un-fussy way.
When Jake tells Sam how much he could lift, Sam starts to laugh, and Jake does, too. It’s so relaxed! They’re both so handsome, they can afford to let down their guard with one another. It’s such an open space that Jake tells Sam how much he appreciates Sam’s behavior. So much of good leadership means “keeping calm” even though he knows Sam is “freaked out.” Sam is taken aback at Jake’s perception and Jake says, “I’ve been in some deep crap before myself. I know the look.” Ava and Andy do not and cannot see outside of their own panic. Sam is the Dad, and they’re children, and children don’t perceive what’s happening beneath the surface in a parental figure. It’s a lovely moment, and Singer lingers in it, going back and forth between Sam, who takes it in, and Jake, quiet, certain. The pause is built in, and in that pause, Sam decides to open up about his anxiety, because he knows Jake won’t flip out. Panic is catching and Andy and Ava would freak. Jake won’t. The power shifts slightly, and Jake picks up the slack, without hesitation: “It doesn’t matter if we believe it. All that matters is that they do.”
Think about that concept for a second.
Silence bookends the already-quiet scene.
Scene 10
From the get-go with that low camera angle, you know something is off, and it’s offset by the almost-romantic glimmering of candlelight on Sam and Ava’s faces. Here is where Ava-Demon pulls out all the stops and it’s fun to watch Isabelle’s performance knowing what she’s doing, the levels she’s working on.
Also, the placement of their heads as they talk:
Profiles again, facing each other, but staggered in space. Singer finds variety in what is a visual “tic” in the show, and this is a beautiful example (just like the staggered three faces of Lily, Andy and Ava).
My favorite part of the scene is how Sam stands up to break the news to her about her fiancé. He knows he will need to be tall for this. Or … taller. He needs to be steady so he can catch her when she falls. He knows it’s coming and he gently readies himself for it. No wonder so many of us find Sam such a touching and beautiful character, and Padalecki such a beautiful actor. Owning his power, being responsible for it, understanding what it means to others, and all in a gentle way. It’s one of the reasons why his opening scene in Season 6 is so scary, so … AWE. SOME. The entire world breaks apart.
I’ve said it before: Sam is the key to the whole thing. He is the axis. Everything depends on Sam being … okay. As the Demon says, “It’s always been about you.” Maybe we’ve all been brainwashed by Dean. And John. But Sam’s bodily integrity has always been on the table, and it’s extremely threatening when it’s compromised.
It’s different with Dean. He’s compromised just by walking into a room.
You can almost hear Ava-Demon smiling into Sam’s chest as he hugs her.
Scene 11
Ready for an endless monster monologue?
There’s an exterior shot of the buildings transitioning us into the next bit. There’s so much going on and so many different characters Singer knew he needed those transitions. Jake and Sam to Ava and Sam back to Jake and Sam and my God, who can keep track. The brief still people-less transitions help.
The Blue Roses stand watch. Well, Andy doesn’t. He sleeps with his head on the table. Jake stands, holding the piece of iron he wrenched off the tractor. Ava sits, seemingly consumed with her own sadness, but at this point, I can see the facade. Whatever is happening is hollow. It’s not clear the moment sleep overtakes Sam, a nice and scary touch. Sam seems to be awake when he suddenly sees Yellow-Eyes. But nobody else can see him. Yellow-Eyes, with that chummy sinister quality, almost campy (although not nearly as campy as Grandpa Campbell-Demon), steps into his key light just like Joan Crawford. A demonic Joan Crawford.
Okay, so no need really to break down WHAT is said. I mean, it’s too many words (aren’t these monologues always too long …), and it explains too much, but we need it, and at least it does shed some light on what has been happening literally from the opening scene of the first episode. The essential puzzle piece provided. Or, a couple. Multiple.
Mary: “It’s you …”
The look on Sam’s face when he hears that.
Dripping blood into the baby’s mouth (I could do without the shot of the baby – the innocent baby who is unable to consent to being used in such a manner – sucking on – albeit fake – blood).
Sam realizing what has been wrong with him all along and it’s worse than he could have anticipated.
Yellow-Eyes: “I’ve been rooting for you.” Hunger Games situation.
That’s quite a lot for one scene.
A couple of specific observations, because I’m not in this thing for the plot.
— The lighting, when they emerge outside, looks artificial, like a stage-set. There’s light where there should be none. It feels “off.” It looks fake. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I’m saying it’s good because this is a dream.
— This observation is so so granular but that’s how I roll: When Sam says, “What? You gonna kill me?” it’s a challenge, and he opens his arms. But I love how he lowers his arms. It’s … awkward. It’s … stiff. He looks like a little kid pushing his chest out, acting like a Tough Guy. He is looking at the entity that destroyed his family. Dean flings himself at danger, shouting sexual come-ons, and it’s as honest as the tears he sheds, or his burger-devouring and sex-hookups. Sam is tough, but in this moment, he’s acting. It’s all there in how he lowers his arms. He doesn’t lower his arms completely. They remain arched out slightly at his sides. The power which comes so easily with Jake, with Ava, with Lily, has gone stiff. Told you it was granular.
— The opening part of the conversation is filmed in one take. It takes some time to get to a cut, and when the cut comes, it’s to Yellow-Eyes, who is the dominant one. I know I go on and on about this but I am sick and tired of the quick-cut school of filmmaking. When it’s relied on too heavily it’s lazy and it sucks all the spontaneity out of interactions.
— “I don’t need soldiers. I need soldi-ER. I just need the one.”
“Why?”
“Well, I couldn’t just come out and say that, Sam, could I? I needed to let everyone think they had a fighting chance.” I think what you mean to say, Demon, is: “Well, I couldn’t just come out and say that Sam, could I? Because then we wouldn’t have had a Season 2 at all.”
The line should have been cut. It’s terrible and it admits openly the flaws in the Psychic Kids Arc. Maybe they thought they should face it head-on, but it comes off as weak script-writing. Cut “I couldn’t just come out and say that”. Problem solved.
— I adore the wash of grey behind Yellow-Eyes. Surreal and abstract. Not real.
There’s a nod to David Halberstam’s masterful The Best and the Brightest, THE book to read about the debacle of Vietnam and the failures of policy-makers. It’s the Vietnam-era’s version of Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August (the yet-to-be-topped chronicle of the lead-up to WWI).
The “best and the brightest” were the people in Kennedy’s administration who continued under Johnson, who had the reputation of being the most intelligent team of people ever to inhabit the White House. These “best and brightest” led us into one of the biggest disasters in 20th century American history. It’s a pretty cynical remark from Yellow-Eyes, a sneer towards the phrase’s real implications.
Padalecki keeps his eyes on Yellow-Eyes hands the whole time as the Demon monologues endlessly. He’s not just locked on the Demon’s face. He’s ready. Sam struggles with all kinds of reactions to what he hears, trying to cover them up as they bombard him. There’s a moment where he goes almost dead (point-blank, “You ruined my life”: I love the flat-affect choice Padalecki makes, as opposed to tears, or yelling. It’s more believable).
“What about my mom?”
“That was bad luck.”
A thread dropped, or a Demon lie? It could be either. It feels like a dropped-thread to me, although maybe Mom was always going to burn up on the ceiling. Either that or Hell Hounds. She wasn’t supposed to walk in. Sure, okay, I’ll buy it. Under protest.
Yellow-Eyes saying “She walked in on us” is so disgusting with such sexual connotations that I recoiled from it (and it’s why I don’t like the shot of the baby, in that surrounding context. I know the baby had no idea what was happening but that’s no excuse. It’s even more of a reason to shield the baby from the sickness of the interaction.) What is so gross about the “she walked in on us” line is the word “us” because it creates the context of a relationship, as though “they” were up to something together, as though it was a special shared moment – a sexual-vibe between them – dripping liquid into the other’s mouth, come on – as opposed to a total violation that has impacted this man on such a profound level that he’ll never ever get over it. Screw you with your “us”!
The re-creation of the nursery, down to the deep blues with the circle of gold from the night-light is thrillingly on-point. The entire situation is a nightmare, forcing Sam to watch the horror which helped create the Belljar of his family.
Sam is a cursed child. From the cradle. Like in a fairy tale. He didn’t stand a chance.
The look on Mary’s face when she runs back into the nursery: she’s panicked but also … she’s not surprised. Samantha Smith nails the complex moment, because it’s a hell of a reveal. Mary was expecting him, Mary knew “him”. When she says, “It’s you,” my blood ran cold the first time I saw it.
Way to keep a secret, Supernatural, and way to hold your cards (the Mary as hunter card, in particular) very close to your chest.
Scene 11
Short transitional exterior shot again, of the wind-mill where Lily was found, allowing us to segue into the next scene, the “searching for Ava” scene.
This is a great shot, a tricky one:
The camera is low as Jake and Sam come out of the house towards the camera. By the time the actors reach their marks, the camera is now staring UP at them. They look like the epic Leaders that they are. Jake gives Sam a task (no different from an order), just like Dean does: Jake doles out the assignments. And Sam takes it! All understood between them. Jake as Dean stand-in. Still in the same take, the camera follows Sam as he walks off, then he walks out of the frame, the camera remains still, and Ava emerges from behind a building in the background.
Broken record: The creep-factor is Upped because it’s done in one. She is “revealed.” (Also, Isabelle has been hiding behind the building as the scene between Jake and Sam happens, waiting for her cue: kicking it old-school.)
Scene 11
Poor Andy. Isabelle once again has to wait off-camera for her cue so that she can be revealed where a second ago she was not there. Her back is to the camera, calling to mind the silhouette of the Demon standing over Sam’s cradle. She pushes an aisle in the salt-line lazily, gently, lackadaisically.
I was surprised at how painful it was to watch Andy die. Andy never hurt anybody. He expressed true concern about where Ava had been, and is slightly mixed up because everyone was yelling for her so loudly. He’s no dummy. Isabelle’s entire body language has changed. Her demeanor. Her gestures. The frantic energy is gone. Her voice is low and centered. Ava is so clearly gone that even stoner Andy senses it. When it vanishes, it is so obvious that something else is standing there in her place.
The worst part is the blood filling up in Andy’s mouth as the Acheri rips him to shreds. His blood flying across the room and splattering against the window is pretty gross too. He basically exploded.
The final shot is both funny and horrifying. The camera moves in on whatever it is that has taken over Ava, and she looks at dead Andy with a flat almost reptilian expression, and once the camera is in her face, she opens her mouth and screams.
The scream is both phony and convincing, simultaneously. It’s a better scream than Scream-Queen Wendy’s in “Hollywood Babylon.”
By the time Sam races back to the room, Ava’s turned on the Waterworks. But maybe Sam sensed something all along. Or maybe he’s still too trusting. He didn’t consider, right off the bat, what she’d been up to for four months. You can bet that Bobby wouldn’t make that mistake, kewpie-doll tear-streaked face notwithstanding. When she drops the mask, it’s a magnificent little piece of acting. She’s still got tears on her face, and the best moment is when she flicks them away with her fingers, like, “Enough of that nonsense.” It’s so “at odds” with what she looks like, pale and girlish and adorable.
“If you’d just quit your hand-wringing and open yourself up, you have no idea what you can do.”
That’s the crux of the struggle for Sam. That’s the struggle that will last for half of the entire series. (I’ve missed that struggle a little bit, but I have also enjoyed watching Sam come into his own, become a man, make the compromises he needed to make, however difficult. It’s been a fascinating character arc, although Dean is usually the scene-stealer with his drama and denial and obnoxiousness and desperation. But consider the transformation of Sam from here to Season 10, 11. It’s unbelievable. In many ways, Dean is still stuck. That’s his tragedy. That’s his trauma. But somewhere along the way, Sam un-stuck himself. Maybe it won’t last, but it’s still been a nice dynamic, explored from so many angles.)
When Sam does “open himself up”, the results are catastrophic. This conversation is a pretty important part of his growth-spurt, his understanding of what he’s up against in himself. Demon Blood. Now this.
When Dean is a Demon he spends his time drinking to excess, getting into fights, Bogart-ing the mic at karaoke, and quick-and-dirties upstairs. With Sam, I’m thinking, it would be a very different story. Sam would mean business.
Scene 12
Take-away of this obligatory mini-scene: Dean cocking the gun.
Scene 13
The final break in the fragile “We”. The only ones left are Jake and Sam. Sam is still naive, because if Yellow-Eyes appears to him, then wouldn’t he be appearing to the others as well? (Jake has had an encounter with Yellow-Eyes, it turns out). Trust No One seems to be the safest path, but learning that lesson is never easy. Jake says, to Sam’s departing back, “Not ‘we’, Sam” and the coalition falls apart for good. Jake doesn’t turn evil. He’s concerned about their viability. He knows they will not be allowed to leave. He trusts Sam, but everyone is vulnerable. Every man for himself. When Sam insists he won’t “turn,” Jake says steadily, “I don’t know that.” (Terrific line-reading, said in the heat of a powerful confrontation, but his voice remains low and steady, impenetrable, undeniable.) Jake is a formidable opponent. It’s been a nice relationship arc for them, although now it’s about to go south, which I suppose is part of the Arc, part of what makes it epic.
Jake pushing Sam through the air is … well, it’s fine. But it makes me glad that the show did not continue in this vein into a Wonder Twin Powers Activate Super-Kids realm. The story-line is contained to one episode, and it works with what they had been setting up, but it’s already worn out its welcome.
I’m not complaining though because Sam sprawled in the mud gives us a wonderful Legs Moment. I especially like how one sprawled leg pivots back and forth on its hip-hinge, helplessly, as he lies in the mud. Akimbo.
Fight-choreography-wise, these two strong capable actors kill it.
The fight is uneven, Jake being Iron-Man, and Sam’s left arm is rendered useless at one point, and so Padalecki has to incorporate that deficit into his movements. (The best example of this is when he picks up the iron bar and swings it into Jake’s face, and he does it almost casually, gracefully, even with his left arm hunched against his chest.) Lou Bollo is stunt-guy-fight-choreographer and one of the strengths of Supernatural‘s many (many (too many?)) fights is that each one comes out of its own unique context. Okay, maybe not each one, there are a couple of obligatory ones along the way, but for the most part: The surrounding CONTEXT is what creates the fight, and makes one fight different from the other. The surrounding atmosphere is utilized (the fences here, the wooden walls). This is why Lou Bollo is so in demand. Because it’s a skill: reading a script, with “fist fight” listed in the stage directions, nothing else, and he has to come up with ideas of “Okay, how is this fight different from another fight?” “How would Sam behave in this fight?” “What are the strategies for survival/winning going on in the fight?” One of my favorite things about the fights in Supernatural is that thought is built into them. They aren’t just swinging away like action figures. They’re strategizing, they’re upset, they’re out of breath, they’re in pain (both Ackles and Padalecki are fearless and talented physically, maybe because they’re athletes – and athletes have an intuitive understanding of what their bodies can do, and HOW their bodies move through space. Fight scenes require grace, even if the fight itself is messy, and both actors are extremely graceful. Athletes usually are.)
When Dean calls Sam’s name offscreen, Sam turns into the light, a poignant image.
Every time Jake thrusts that knife into Sam’s spine, I wince. I almost can’t look. The sound of the knife going in is terrible. The twist of the knife is devastating. It’s so final. There’s a squish in the sound, too. An irrevocable squish.
Padalecki’s reaction to it is one of those moments that show why I love actors so much. It’s an example of what I call the “Bang Bang You’re Dead” school of acting.
What that means is: Watch little kids playing in a backyard. They’re playing Cops and Robbers, and a kid holds out his finger as a gun, shouts, “BANG BANG YOU’RE DEAD” and another kid arches his back and swoons dead in the grass. With no hesitation. These are some of the best and most accurate death scenes on the planet. They are un-analyzed, not worried about, there’s a sudden and fearless propulsion of the body, falling into space, and a TOTAL belief in the Make-Believe of it. Total belief in Make-Believe is hard for grown-ups, and many acting classes are about getting grown-ups to remember what it’s like to be an unselfconscious kid. This is most clearly shown in fight scenes which are ALL pretend, for the safety of the actors. (William Holden’s death scene in Sunset Boulevard, discussed at that link above, is my favorite example – although Jared Padalecki’s arched-back-scream is on the list as well.)
Consider the teamwork it requires to make such a moment happen. This is the real turn-on. Ardis Hodge has no knife in real-life, but he crouches at Padalecki’s back, turning his fist into Padalecki’s spine. The knife is real to Hodge. The knife is real to Padalecki. It’s not there. Padalecki launches his body into Bang Bang You’re Dead mode. And remember, he still has to keep that left arm stiff and useless. When he falls to his knees, that arm is still frozen. It’s a moment the two actors have to create together. It takes tremendous trust.
When Sam falls to his knees, head thrown back, the camera moves up into that God’s Eye position, allowing the finality to sink in, calling to mind a couple of equally epic shots:
When Dean gets to his brother, there’s a beautiful shot of Bobby – another Leader who understands the separation of tasks in moments of crisis, doesn’t have to think twice about his job in this terrible scenario – taking off after Jake through the mist.
As Dean hugs Sam and shakes Sam and talks to Sam, in comes the heartbreaking “Winchester Family Horn Music”. That “Horn” theme (is it me, or is it reminiscent of what is known as the “binary sunset” theme in Star Wars?) is used sparingly so when it comes up, it is meaningful and poignant/painful. It creates a sense-memory in the viewer, a “cue” to the KIND of emotion the scene is meant to invoke. Not every emotional moment between the brothers can “take” that theme. The “Horn” theme comes in when things are in their final stages, there are goodbyes to be said, distances to be accepted, waves of grief and awareness of tragedy, the entire history of this poor family playing itself out. The “horn theme,” whenever it comes, seems to be emanating from the characters, as opposed to something coming from outside. Powerful.
“I’m gonna take care of you. I’m gonna take care of you …”
Ackles puts two different inflections on that repeated phrase, evidence of his sensitivity to text as an actor. Emphasis and inflection can make or break a line-reading. It’s the second “I’m gonna take care of you,” its reassuring motherly tone, its small arch up mid-sentence, that really expresses the panic and helplessness. He’s reassuring his already-dead brother.
Meanwhile, the body language of both actors is eloquent: Sam going slack, head lolling back and forth, Dean clutching at his brother’s head, or at the wound in his brother’s back, pressing in on it, as though that will do any good.
Now about choices, and this goes back to Robert Singer:
All of the regular directors on the show are gifted. Kim Manners was a genius. Maybe the only true genius at the helm. But Robert Singer is an artist and where Robert Singer shines is his understanding of narrative (a very old-fashioned talent), and his appreciation of his actors and what they can do. Even the one-off characters (the girl slurping on her soda in “Monster Movie”, for example) have something special, that added “something” to them.
My perspective on this comes from me having worked with many directors in my time as an actress: There are directors who don’t know how to talk with or help actors (and you’re on your own, and that’s fine: Bad unhelpful direction is worse than anything. You just prefer that a bad director stay out of your way), and then there are the directors – rare – who DO know how to talk with and help actors. Kim Manners was one of those too. The story of how he talked to Ackles about the scene in the hotel room in “Shadow” – and how he had to encourage Ackles to go with what Manners felt the scene needed – and Ackles’ resistance to that because he felt protective of Dean (even then, in Season 1) – and Manners’ RESPECT of Ackles’ protective stance, but still: Ackles needed a push to get where Manners wanted him to go. Respect had already been established between the two men, actor and director. Ackles trusted Manners. And so he “went there” in that scene, because Manners encouraged it, and it’s one of the most memorable and important scenes in Season 1. Smart actors have their own “take” on things, especially if they are good. There are dictatorial directors who won’t take the time to discuss things with actors, and take a “Just do it” approach. (Many audience members have contempt for actors, usually people who have never acted. Oh well, if you want to pretend you’re an expert on something you’ve never done, be my guest, but I ain’t listening to you, that’s for sure.) The “just do it” approach can also work, can jump-start an actor. Making a television show, making a movie, is grown-up time, not nursery school. No time for coddling. Actors need thick skins. You’ll never last if you don’t have it.) Manners had to step in to get Ackles to do what he wanted him to do, and it worked.
Robert Singer is open about how he is drawn to character and relationship, mainly. It’s almost like he “tolerates” the rest of the story-lines (the plot points, the ghosties and ghouls) in order to get to the good meaty stuff of human emotions and family dynamics. When Singer speaks of these actors, it is in a tone of praise, and awe, at how far they go into their moments, and how vulnerable they are. Acting is hard. Not everyone can do it. Robert Singer can’t do it, but he knows that without good actors, his job would be irrelevant. (Amazingly, not all directors feel that way. Actors are almost in the way of their main interests – cinematography, shot set-ups, camera lenses.)
Singer’s tendencies are why the scene between Jake and Sam over the tractor is so effective. The actors are the priority, not fancy camera moves. Stand back and let them do the work. Those tendencies are made crystal-clear in the final moment of the episode: He keeps it simple at first: back and forth between Sam and Dean, seeing each one over the other’s shoulder. When Dean realizes Sam is “really truly dead”, the camera moves up up up, away from them, into the final God’s Eye crane shot of this crane-shot-heavy episode. They look tiny.
In a way, a shot like that – at least here – gives Dean privacy. That may seem like an odd thought. But that’s how such moments can work. (In Taxi Driver, Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle calls up Cybill Shepard at a pay phone in a hallway and asks her out. You hear her voice on the phone. She’s turning him down. As she turns him down, the camera moves back down the hallway, away from him, hunched on the phone, until it goes around a corner so he can’t be seen anymore. The moment of rejection is so painful for Travis and the camera has to scoot away from it. And WE don’t want to see it either.)
So the crane-shot not only gives Dean privacy in the worst moment of his life, it gives us a second to comprehend the magnitude of what has happened (strengthened by the Winchester Family Horn Theme.)
But. BUT!
It doesn’t end there, although it’s the logical place to end: looking down on the brothers, camera moving up, like the trajectory of Sam’s soul escaping his body. A shot like that assures us: It’s over.Not only could it work, it WOULD work.
BUT!
Singer shot Dean shouting “Sam!!!” in huge closeup, his chin hunched on his brother’s dead shoulder. He probably futzed with that shot, putting it into the sequence just before the crane shot.They probably re-cut this sequence a bunch in the editing room in order to find the perfect moment, endings being more important than beginnings.
The God’s Eye shot would work. But it would be a cliche.
The way Singer chose to end it ultimately is not a cliche. And, even better, it’s more devastating, it thrusts us back into intimacy with Dean’s agony. The most important thing (to Singer and to us) is the relationship. We get that from the crane shot looking down on their huddled embrace, Dean’s hands moving on Sam’s back helplessly, but two things happen that puts the final sequence over the edge:
At the height of the crane shot, the Winchester Family Horn Music drops out completely. It’s terrible – terrible! – the silence leaves us no place to “put” our feelings. The lack of music stops everything up, keeps us trapped, gives us no respite, provides no relief. It also removes the story from its Epic nature, and puts us back into the reality. Right after the music drops out, we are suddenly back down on the ground, up in Dean’s grill, as he tearfully screams his brother’s name, with a slight echo on his voice (his scream goes into a void, the void where Sam once was), and the screen cuts to black on that.
Picture the scene ending with the crane shot. It’s fine. But the sudden silence punctuated by Dean’s echoing voice, and the brutal closeup (which denies Dean privacy in his grief, forcing us to confront it), puts us into another mood, bleak, hopeless, and … suddenly, after an episode all about Sam, now it’s all about Dean.
Dean is going to dominate Part 2. The desperate closeup – and more than desperation – the FEAR in his face – will make him do what he does in Part 2.
Which, in turn, will lead us into the entirety of Season 3. The opening shot of Part 2 is classic swoops-circle Kim Manners, showing both characters in one dizzying arc of movement: a Manners signature, who is another director who understands Story, and understands that a circling-spiral of movement, after a God’s-Eye view of Sam, spiraling down and then Arc-ing over to Dean standing in the doorway, is far more devastating than two separate shots, one of Dead Sam and one of Crying Dean would ever be.
The opening scene of Part 2 is Dean Dean Dean Dean, with some of the most gorgeous closeups in the season, in the look we expect from Manners, the face almost painted by the velvet-black shadows around it, and the bruised-looking shadows under his eyes.
So Singer’s brilliant choice to end Part 1 on that closeup of Dean flows us directly into the first scene of Part 2.
Season 3 is all about Dumb-Deal-Making Dean, and that starts – as so much else starts in the series (the brothers’ suicidal impulses, the savior complexes, the abandonment terror, the stupid choices made so they don’t have to walk through this painful world alone) with the final closeup of Dean in Part 1.
I hope the effectiveness of the final choice – closeup of Dean not God’s Eye – is clear. I’ve spoken too much about it already, but it’s one of those moments where my response to Robert Singer’s work (and his sensitivity and intelligence) is a grateful:
I haven’t fully read or digested this recap yet, Sheila, but
a) I can already tell it’s magnificent (full Citizen Kane applause from me)
b) I love that Legs is now an adjective, nay, an aesthetic criteria applied not just to Supernatural but pretty much everything. ‘How was the film?’ ‘It was very Legs.’ ‘Sounds like a must-see’ ‘Yup.’ Job done.
(‘High Noon’ is extremely Legs. The pins in that film, and not just Gary Cooper’s – pretty much all the male characters have magnificent fetlocks.)
// an aesthetic criteria applied not just to Supernatural but pretty much everything. ‘How was the film?’ ‘It was very Legs.’ ‘Sounds like a must-see’ ‘Yup.’ Job done. //
hahahahaha I know! And it’s become our own self-contained shorthand. We all know what it means. I love it!
agreed in re: High Noon. Cowboys in general – with their gangly bow legs and swinging their legs over horses and swaggering with their holsters … It forces the Legs Issue.
And Cooper’s legs, in any situation … even a tuxedo … all angles and straightness and eloquence.
He’s got Le-e-egs and he knows how to use ’em.
I wish I could incorporate “Legs” into my paid reviews.
Oh god, I wish you could. Like the Ebert thumbs-up!
“Along with the exquisite set decoration, Tom Hiddleston does some excellent Legs work in Crimson Peak. It’s a highlight.”
“Make sure to see Hondo in its run at the Film Forum. John Wayne’s Leg Moments are not to be missed.”
Hahaha, you guys! Sometimes I think about you randomly, like, in the metro: “Helena would have appreciated that leg moment I just witnessed.”
hahaha
Thank goodness we can share this obsession and we have now named it properly!
‘High Noon’ is extremely Legs.
It sure is!
Ha. Perfect!
Also that screencap of Dean and Bobby by the windswept lake gives me flashbacks to every Scottish family holiday I had the misfortune to be taken on (slightly too many.) We didn’t even have laminated maps back then.
Is Scottish Crowley going to emerge from one of those tidal waves?
I love how Bobby and Dean are blatantly wet. No umbrellas over them, wet faces and shoulders. It’s pretty raw. They don’t even notice!
And so much glorious mud in this episode!
Is this the muddiest episode? Tie with The Benders?
Definitely peak mud.
This episode makes me feel so cold and damp and hungry. When Ava says she could kill for a sandwich I can hear my stomach rumbling in sympathy.
Yeah – and nobody gets to eat! Not even Dean so he’s hungry too.
I haven’t read it yet, but knowing it’s here has already made my day brighter.
Erin – so nice of you to say! Thank you! And thank you everyone for your patience.
I’d better put down some more thoughts while the iron is hot
1) first time round I had NO IDEA the psychic-kids-assemble idea was a) a Thing or B) actually a Bad Thing until I listened to the commentary and heard Kripke et al shooting it down in flames. The potential for an X Men Assemble arrangement never struck me at all. I always feel a bit dumb about that. But yeah, I’m glad it never happened.
2) Aldis Hodge is so sympathetic as Jake. Hodge creates such a grounded and complete character, one you root for almost till the end of Part 2. He is also such an interesting mirror for both Sam and Dean at various points over the two episodes. In this ep he’s firstly the level-headed take-charge comrade who seems to conjure the absent Dean through sheer contrast in character. He then gives us a premonition of the Sam who, in trying to defeat his enemy, plays into his hands and succumbs to him. Also he’s a grunt, like Dean is a grunt. And in Part 2 he also mirrors Dean in that he’s forced to barter himself. In Jake’s case it’s for the safety of his family. At one point he even says similar words, ‘What do I have to do?’
2) Gabriel Tigerman lolloping around like a stoned bunny, waving his curled fingers around like little paws. Poor Andy indeed, he really does feel like a sacrificial (exploding) innocent lamb here.
Two Andy moments I particularly love:
– The first encounter with Sam makes me laugh everytime, particularly the way Sam throws away his stick and looks at his hands and tries to wipe them on … something, anything.
Andy can’t stop giggling at ‘David Hasselhoff’ – I don’t care what Singer says about the scene as a whole, Tigerman makes this a very endearing bit of business.
3) When Dean has his ‘vision’ and Bobby reaches out and touches him – such a normal gesture in all the madness, and yet it leaps out. This has never happened before! Things must be really bad!
4) The otherwordliness of the settings, right from the beginning – diner in a moat, Frontierland, the burned wreckage of the roadhouse.
DINERMOAT! My favourite set in the world! Let’s build a diner in an estuary! I once stayed near Carrigafoyle Castle and it’s all I can think of whenever I see DINERMOAT now.
I know, I know, it’s just rain (and maybe even in the same gravel carpark as the Roadhouse) but the other thing I find HILARIOUS about this episode is Bobby’s apparent thought process going into his first scene. My adoptive son! Taken by a demon! Grab your research, Bobby, and to the car! Oh, but don’t those clouds look nasty. Time to dig out Ol’ Lammy the trusty laminator. Now where are the…. goddamn why don’t I ever keep the sheets with the box. Bobby, you idiot, you gotta tidy this study up. …… Dean! Stand with me now under the second coming of the Flood and look at this map! Look at it! It’s blank Bobby. ha HA HA! Yeeeeeeeeessssssssss. Bobby’s still got it.
//Carrigafoyle Castle //
Looks draughty
On the plus side, 24/7 Tammy Wynette
That castle is gorgeous – it reminds me of Clonmacnoise in Ireland – another crumbling ruin surrounded by reflective water.
Diner moat is definitely a high point. Like, the owners know the place floods – so they build a ramp over the moat. And nobody questions it. Is there a sign off the freeway for that joint? How did Sam and Dean even know it was there? I love, too, that it doesn’t have a real name. It’s not “Flo’s” or “Jack’s Pancake House.” It’s CAFE. That’s all you need to know.
// Dean! Stand with me now under the second coming of the Flood and look at this map! Look at it! //
HAHAHA
//Time to dig out Ol’ Lammy the trusty laminator.// omg
// Dean! Stand with me now under the second coming of the Flood and look at this map! Look at it! //
I think what we need, REALLY need is: Sheila’s recaps, and right after, Jessie’s summary of the whole episode.
Helena –
In re: #1. It snuck up on me. When they were each presented as individual stories – each one illuminating something about Sam – I didn’t really notice the group-creep that was happening. Part 1, with all of them in one place – particularly, for some reason, Jake’s Superman-level of strength – kind of pulled me out of where I wanted to be. I realize it’s not all about me. :) It just felt … contrived. All wonderful actors, and the group dynamic is great – but … It’s funny, I usually take some time to listen to the commentaries – (meaning, not right after the episode) – because I want to make up my own mind. It wasn’t until I listened to it that I realized just how quickly they dispensed with the entire Arc. It was like Boom, boom, boom, they couldn’t kill those kids off quick enough. And you realize it was a writing staff going, “Okay, we’ve written ourselves into a corner, we’ve got to stop this NOW before it’s too late!!” I could only really see that – as well as the burning of the roadhouse – long after I first watched the season. I also don’t want Kripke and everyone else to influence my responses!! I don’t have to go along with them! But in the case of the Psychic Kids, I was in sync. It’s almost like you can feel that the series was about to go one way and then it swerved back into the main relationship. I’m sure there have been many other swerves along the way – but not one as obvious.
#2. I love your thoughts on Jake as either Sam or Dean mirror!! These guys are so entrenched with one another, so Bell Jar-red that anyone coming in reflects some aspect of it – and it’s especially interesting when it’s someone as strong and as capable as they are. There’s a quiet recognition that happens … and since Jake is not presented as a villain – but as a guy in a tough spot who is doing what he’s doing to save his family … well, there’s just not that much difference between him and the brothers. When Sam kills Jake, I think back on the quiet conversation over the tractor, and it’s painful.
#2A. Yes, Andy is so funny – so himself! He’s thrust into this crazy serious situation but he’s still this weird kind of happy-go-lucky stoner boy, who can giggle at the Hasselhoff signature. I need to look for Sam wanting to wipe his hands. Sam dealing with Andy is so so funny to me. “My 4th bong load …” Sam’s expression.
#3: Good catch!
#4: So otherworldly – it does not take place in our world. It’s like the diner in a moat is the gateway, neither here nor there. It’s a really moody episode – and I need that, because the wonder-twin-powers thing sometimes threatens to derail into the Purely Silly.
But it’s all working up to that final moment …
//I’m sure there have been many other swerves along the way – but not one as obvious.//
Jo who was supposed to be a love interest for Dean? I’m glad they dropped it, because I love their relationship.
// Gabriel Tigerman lolloping around like a stoned bunny, waving his curled fingers around like little paws.//
Best description of Andy.
In a way, the entire lead-up of Season 11 towards some kind of real merging between Dean and Amara feels like a swerve – but honestly that feels like an accident – like they couldn’t figure out what to do, and show-runners jumping ship caused a huge distraction.
But yeah: Jo as love interest is a good example – and I’m glad they kept Jo on as long as they did – despite the fact that she wasn’t what she was clearly set up to be.
Cassie vanishing into the mist of the racist truck was another definite swerve – that seems to have to do with everyone wanting to forget that that episode even exists. But the final line from Dean – a hopeful “maybe this goodbye won’t be permanent” – suggests an open-ended situation, where they could conceivably bring Cassie back in. Now, though, in the full development of Dean and his psychological messed-up-ness … that line doesn’t quite ring true, although he plays it beautifully. (The end scene in the car – sunglasses, grin, nap – feels more Dean-like – at least, Season 1-2 Dean-like.)
Just starting the recap but have to say that you’re going to make me go back and read Ulysses and Milton now. Never thought I’d ever say that as an adult or as someone without a required reading list. And I’m kind of loving it.
Paula – ha! I re-read Milton the year it was his 400th birthday because … I have nothing better to do with my life? It’s still tough-going but the language!!
Also he wrote one of my favorite poems of all time: Sonnet To His Blindness.
and Ulysses! Yes! “Stately plaid Dean Winchester …”
I had to memorize “On His Blindness” in school. Great poem – his frustration and then the comforting acknowledgement that God does NOT “exact day-labour, light denyed.”
Oh man that poem. “stand and wait …”
Going blind is one of my biggest fears. That poem is comforting – as well as horrible.
//This type of shot is commonly used in cinema in a romantic context. I’ll just leave that there.// snort out loud
This recap is terrific, Sheila, because so much was going on in the episode and it was great to read the scene by scene breakdown.
Ava flicking those tears from her cheek was an amazing choice and Katharine Isabelle was so adorable and evil. How often does that happen together? I never thought that Ava had something like a demon possessing her so the idea intrigues me. To use the Hunger Games analogy, Ava seemed a lot like Joanna. Extremely damaged and willing to do what it takes to survive. She was forced to do it again and again, and get better at it by expanding her arsenal, sort of a Stockholm Syndrome girl for Yellow Eyes. In the end, she enjoyed it and embraced the dark (whereas Joanna went crazy but held onto her hatred of TPTB). Your analysis makes me think I missed something. Was there something else to it like possession, something else that was in Ava? Perhaps, because we didn’t hear Yellow Eyes mention anything about her being a contender. So was she just a prop?
We lost Andy and Ash at almost the same moment in the episode hurts my heart.
Legs. Definitely a great legs episode. You had me at ‘akimbo’.
// Was there something else to it like possession, something else that was in Ava? Perhaps, because we didn’t hear Yellow Eyes mention anything about her being a contender. So was she just a prop? //
What an interesting thought. I’ll have to think about it. I hadn’t really considered it either – maybe she “snapped” pretty quick, once in the Demon’s clutches – and therefore Yellow Eyes sensed she was weak, too malleable, and he’d just use her to get the others, as opposed to pushing her into a Leadership position?
I just re-watched Red Meat and honestly, it has to be the Grand Pooh-Bah Legs Episode of All Time. On both sides. Their legs flail, bounce, creak, sprawl, buckle under, stagger … it’s overwhelming.
Amen to this. It was overwhelming. As if protective Dean and hurt Sam were not enough, let’s heap on LEGS in every single scene. Like sprinkles on my sundae.
Red Meat is really superb – it played like a bat out of hell, even the second time.
The last scene where they come back to Dean’s face and he does the desperate hair grab when he yells Sam is my second favorite in the whole series. Everytime it breaks my heart. So much goes on in this ep, so much exposition and reveals and then it narrows down to this intimate moment. What a ride.
That very last moment is amazing, just the way you and Sheila say. Not only are they wise enough to not end it on the bird’s-eye, they are wise (and cruel) enough to not even end it on Dean crying Sam’s name. No, they hold out, for a few…more…seconds. Devastating and just stomach-clenchingly uncomfortable.
// No, they hold out, for a few…more…seconds. //
Yes! Very important – so subtle, really – but really it just makes the whole thing so final.
//they hold out, for a few…more…seconds//
Sound cue: thunder rolling in the distance…
I love the parallel with the end of scene 1 just before the fade-out. It’s a clue, a foreshadowing of what’s coming. Dean stands there in the ghost town that was the Sunnyside Cafe parking lot in the dark, wet night and cries, “Sam!?” It echoes. No response. He’s so utterly alone…
Oh yeah – hadn’t quite clocked that, even though it’s obvious. It’s totally a mirror moment, bookends of abandonment.
// is my second favorite in the whole series. //
Paula – what’s your first? If you’ve mentioned it, I can’t remember it.
Yes: killer shot!
Dean’s speech to Sam’s dead body is my #1. This is why I love watching these two eps back to back. Moving from all that action and all those Blue Roses (like you said, so many people in those shots, it’s jarring) back to this intimacy. We know this – when it’s just Sam and Dean – but we don’t KNOW this (at least when you watch it the first time). The pain and the loss is so deep. And Bobby is in the background for both in his way. He tries so hard to help, to comfort, but even though he is the closest thing to family for them, he is still not part of that twin orbit that only consists of Sam and Dean.
“I screwed it up …” what happens to Dean (JA, really) in that moment … I remember watching that scene for the first time and barely being able to breathe. And then the conversation that follows and Dean rejecting Bobby and pushing him off – great GREAT scene. It really all plays like just one scene.
This is a really hard scene for me to re-watch as is “Death’s Door” with the environment around Bobby gradually fading away. It makes me feel emotionally claustrophobic; like you I find it hard to breathe.
The finality of death.
When the books go blank in Bobby’s house …
A clear steal from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – which I love. The fragility of memory. Very very claustrophobic – really evocative of how death is 1. natural and 2. something we all fear.
Can we talk about Dean’s demon deal? You mentioned in the recap and it got me thinking. We recognize that Sam wouldn’t have done this, that he would have let him go. But would Sam have felt the same way if he was the one brought back by John’s demon deal instead of Dean? Again, John Winchester looms over every scene. Dean feels ‘I shouldn’t even be here’ because of that. Two questions – would Sam have that same guilt if John had done it for him? And would John have done that for Sam if it was him in that hospital? I love John but have a sneaky suspicion that he might have let Sam go.
// Again, John Winchester looms over every scene. //
Really interesting point – I hadn’t considered that. He looms over Sam because of the whispered command to Dean …
I’m thinking back on the hospital scenes in the first episode – and there’s an interesting dual-focus in John, who seems so remote – because he’s planning what he’s going to do. Sam railing at him. Dean Ghost hovering at his side. Like they both don’t know what he’s going to do – after all that time with him, after feeling like they know how he will react (because they spent their childhoods trying to anticipate his moods and behavior) – they still don’t know.
John knows about Sam and has known for a long time. How long? Clearly before he reunited with his sons in Season 1. He didn’t find it necessary to inform Dean – or to reach out to Sam to give him a head’s up. Is John a fatalist? A kind of “whatever will be will be” kind of guy? Or is that just when it comes to Sam? Vengeance because Sam “left”? Or his macho belief in himself – that he can go it alone – and only he can fix it.
He certainly seems to believe Sam is doomed anyway. And puts the responsibility of that on Dean’s shoulders (terrible).
Thinking about all this, I think John would definitely have let Sam go. One more problem out of the way. Too cynical??
//Is John a fatalist? A kind of “whatever will be will be” kind of guy? //
To me, I always saw that as that thing some (a lot?) of parents do: treat their kids as if they’re unable to handle heavy stuff. That kind of complex and maybe hypocritical decisions, that seem to come from a place of love, but where there’s definitely an element of control, also. Even the way John tells Dean and not Sam, deals with YED without consulting anyone… It’s debatable, and I’m not saying it’s just that one thing, but I see a will to be the only one with control.
// Thinking about all this, I think John would definitely have let Sam go. One more problem out of the way. Too cynical??//
I agree with you. And again, it’s complex: it IS one more problem out of the way, and it is, also, oh you know, what people normally do when someone dies.
//a will to be the only one with control// John truly believes that he is the only one to fix it and that in his mind, he must protect his boys through isolation. This is a point I always struggle with is with John Winchester. Is control his personal coping mechanism, something intrinsic to John that trauma has unleashed and magnified or is it a thoughtful strategy to protect the boys? Either way, enormously unhealthy. Dean is 26 at that point – TWENTY SIX – not a child, and yet he still hasn’t trusted him with these details.
Lyrie – I just finished reading The Girls – this terrifying and great new novel clearly based on the Manson murders. One of the reasons Manson got away with it, and why he kept that group so under control, is that nobody was allowed the “full picture.” He dispensed commands but he scattered them, or only gave people mysterious fragments: “Something has to be done …” “I want you to go handle it” … and so “information” then became something amorphous, not-know-able, AND it increased his power because he was seen as the only one who knew everything.
Up until the very end, John seemed to be operating on that level. And – maybe this is going too far – but by telling Dean something and making him keep a secret – it drove a wedge between the brothers. It kept Dean split from himself and his natural impulses (one of the main goals of a cult) – and it kept a full relationship from flowering between the siblings.
If you’re forced to keep secrets – because someone else asks you to … you can’t be close with anyone. Every moment you have, that secret will be present.
// Is control his personal coping mechanism, something intrinsic to John that trauma has unleashed and magnified or is it a thoughtful strategy to protect the boys? //
Paula – yeah. That is the question! It’s probably both – at the same time – or, whatever he does he can so fully justify that the question becomes irrelevant.
Also, there’s the natural human parent mistake – of failing to realize that your children are now adults.
Plus the fact that Sam still seems to be “the key”, the focus. Dean is expected to not care about himself as much as he cares about Sam. (And Dean obeys – it’s part of him, that expectation.) That great line from Bobby in the next episode – “Do you really have that low an opinion of yourself?” Ouch. But I love it: the series just comes out and SAYS IT.
That line goes deeper than plot – it’s psychology. I loved Season 3 because in a lot of ways it is Dean’s journey towards valuing his own life – for himself. Saying “I want to live” is a huge deal for him – he can’t say it for episodes upon episodes – it’s up to Sam to say it.
An amazing character detail!
“valuing his own life – for himself. Saying, ‘I want to live'” — we’ve seen him unable to articulate his desires for himself before relating to things like dreams of a future or a wife and kids but it even goes to his very LIFE.
That’s one of my favorite parts of Season 3. It really lays it out so clearly – and it starts in All Hell Breaks Loose Part II with that speech from Bobby.
It can’t be clearer than that – AND it’s true.
It’s weird to have the hero of a show – not the anti-hero, but the hero – value himself so little.
Great.
//Can we talk about Dean’s demon deal?… would Sam… would John…//
Would Mary… Viewing their stories in the rear view mirror, I can’t help but consider the ‘Winchester Family Demon Deals’ collectively. I just watched the season 3 episode (Red Skies?) where Sam summons the crossroads demon and attempts to renegotiate the deal. “What is it with you Winchesters?” I’m pretty sure demons, Bobby, Crowley, Cass and many others have uttered those words. In this epic battle of good vs evil that they are locked in, the Winchesters have special knowledge, ‘super powers’, supernatural powers that they USE to fight the forces of evil. But it’s like Superman (Christopher Reeve) thinking what good is it to have these powers if I can’t save Lois Lane? It’s such a temptation to rationalize, but using those powers for themselves is the slippery slope. Interesting that it is soulless Sam in ‘Clap Your Hands’ who observes, “When has a deal ever been a good thing?”
I think that Sam with his grey area thinking is/has been MORE willing to cross the line or make the deal than black-n-white thinking John and Dean. John and Dean know with certainty that it’s wrong (black, not gray) and they agonize. It’s a deal they’re only gonna make once. Crossing that line they become the thing they hunt. (Hence also comes the ‘fear’ of Sam’s powers. It’s us vs them, life or death ingrained in John, no doubt, during his 2 tours in Vietnam and taught to Dean.) Consider Dean’s response to the Book of the Damned which had the power to save him from the MOC. He’d rather be flung into the sun or outer space, but not Sam. (Is this also part of the tension between hunters and men of letters?)
As for your suspicion that John would have let Sam go, I think of it more the other way round. You know I love John Winchester, Mr. Giant-bag-o’-trauma. Do you remember our conversation about parentification? (I think that’s the term, where a child becomes like a parent to the adults around him.) We see little Dean comforting his mother in heaven. I have no doubt that little Dean was John’s wife and mother in many ways that stole Dean’s childhood. “Dad, wake up. You’re having your nightmares again.” Sam’s in the other bed sleeping like a rock and stealing all the covers til Dean just moves to the chair or the floor. Could John have prevented that seeing as Dean was already behaving that way before Mom died? It’s not so much a question of whether John would have let Sam go, but, having the ‘super power’, he COULDN’T let Dean go.
//(Is this also part of the tension between hunters and men of letters?)//
Sorry, Melanie, I’m going on a tangent, but man, THAT is something I really wish they would explore. Since we’ve known them, they’ve gone from owning 2 pairs of jeans each and a car to living in a bunker with a private library, a garage full of classic cars, and wearing Dead Guy Robe. They went from blue-collar to middle class. That’s something Sam aspired to, and Dean probably never contemplated. There’s a tension between those two worlds, and probably what it means to each brother, that is very interesting – at least to me.
Absolutely. The way the 2 groups have a common enemy, but their hugely divergent approaches to how to fight that enemy set them completely at odds. Hunters use “brute force” where MOL use their intellect. Hunters use weapons, knives, machetes, colt revolvers, shotguns loaded with rock salt, and the ever-ready iron fire poker. MOL use incantations, spells, wardings, cursed objects and magic. Hunters live in dirty motels or off the grid cabins, criss crossing the back roads in old cars and beat up trucks, swilling beer and rot gut whisky at honky-tonks and dives. MOL live in their nice safe anonymous homes, but gather at their state of the art secret clubhouse, parking their pristine cars in the secure garage, and proceed to conduct their vital business all while sipping their top shelf whiskey from crystal glasses. There is very much a socio-economic divide, yes a class divide.
Psychologically hunters fear what they perceive to be the willingness of those MOL to cross over that distinct line of us vs them by using magic and spells. MOL mistrust the hunter reliance on physical force. Sam and Dean represent the union of those 2 world’s, literally Campbell and Winchester and yet they also constantly demonstrate the clashing contrast.
Consider Dean with his GED and give-em-hell attitude compared to Sam with his college degree and plans to be a lawyer. I also sense an American wild west Frontier identity with the hunters vs the entitled, old world European parentage of the MOL, albeit embraced in an American best and brightest kind of way with their super computer and high tech tracking systems. Interesting the introduction of the British aristocratic WOL in the finale going James Bond or UNIT on Sam’s ass. I forsee they will have to address some of these issues as that world of class and privilege inevitably clashes with Sam & Dean’s synthesized world of hunter and letters.
// I forsee they will have to address some of these issues //
I hope so.
Sam and Dean are proof that hunters use brute force 1/ because someone has to ; 2/ because sometimes, were they better informed, has they ACCESS to the information, they would do things differently. Hunters are not stupid – they just don’t all have a Bobby. It’s not that they don’t have the brains, it’s that they don’t have the means.
It’s also interesting, the act of going from one category to the other. Some people will always feel out of place, others feel like it was their right place all along, some feel like they are betraying the group they come from… This is never simple, and I’ve found few examples of that being explored in fiction. When it happens, like it did in SPN, it just happens, and the shift is not acknowledged. But I think it is HUGE in one’s life, that change. And I can picture once-Stanford-Sam being very comfortable with the fancy People of Letters, but Dean? That should be fun and painful.:)
I also “foresaw” Michael getting out of the cage last season, so don’t hold your breath…
//an American wild west Frontier identity with the hunters vs the entitled, old world European parentage of the MOL// this is an interesting way to think of it. Previously I thought of MOL as this stereotype of intellectual elitism, as college professors who learn for learning’s sake and have little working experience versus the working man. Six of one, half dozen of the other. This analogy is more apt now and certainly gives them a lot more to play with when it comes to hunter and MOL lineage. Can’t wait to see this explored further.
Speaking of lineage, when they showed Lady Toni’s board and the tiny Winchester family tree, all I could think was we would get to meet Grandma Millie this season and get more Henry flashbacks.
Lyrie,
//I can picture once-Stanford-Sam being very comfortable with the fancy People of Letters, but Dean?//
And yet, which brother has a memory foam mattress, flat-screen TV with Netflix, and wears the dead guy robe emblazonned with the coat of arms? It’s always interesting how these guys surprise us. Remember how easily Dean slipped into the role of PA in Hollywood Babylon?
Paula,
Even our American //stereotype of intellectual elitism// was inherited from Oxford and Cambridge (imho). My favorite line in the new x-men movie, “The only thing American about this place is that it used to be British.” Hahaha.
It begs the question. I thought Henry was also a mechanic. If so, why are the MOL inducting him? Is it solely based on legacy (like the divine right of kings)? Is Henry the working man’s scholar? Unfortunately my back story for John and Millie is very sad starting with the night the police show up at their door asking if she knows the whereabouts of her husband, Henry, or Miss Josie Sands who are wanted for questioning in connection with the multiple murders and subsequent arson at the Moose Lodge…
I forsee they will have to address some of these issues
I can just picture it, Melanie!
INT: A BOARDROOM
REGINALD, a MAN OF LETTERS, 50s, attractive and looking sharp in a suit, takes a seat at the head of the table. He looks around at the gathered men and women, a shadowy cabal of magic and righteousness. Reader, meet our antagonists for the season!
REGINALD: Fellow Men of Letters, I have assembled you here in our darkest hour of need. We have a Winchester Problem. These hunter scum are filthy and insensible. We must take urgent action.
MARJORIE – 40s, attractive, sensible pant suit, hair in a bun – does not appear convinced.
MARJORIE: Point of order–
REGINALD: The chair does not recognise you, Marjorie. There’s no time for your dilly-dallying.
Muttering around the table.
HORACE (white, 25, attractive) raises his hand.
HORACE: How much time do we have, sir?
REGINALD: Oh, three-to-four acts an episode, seven episodes tops.
POL (People of Letters)
“a shadowy cabal of magic and righteousness”
aka: MEGAPOL
Need to see this Jesse, but I think you left out a word… “Shadowy, somewhat misogynistic cabal”
I think of “the mechanic” as John’s stepdad. Whoever that person that person was, he is clearly alive when John is back from Vietnam so it can’t be Henry.
Dilly dallying is one of my favorite mom phrases.
Lyrie – I totally agree. There are fascinating elements there that were sort of hinted at – but not explored.
And now here they are … finding a retirement community appealing?
Imagine Dean and Sam in Season 1 and how they would have reacted to that retirement community, with its plush brown carpets and pictures of flowers on the wall.
Okay, I’m getting rather lost in this thread – but I want to comment – you guys are on a roll!!
I’m gonna move this thing down-thread so we can continue.
I would love more Henry flashbacks!
The “tiny” family tree. Hah.
Jessie:
// 40s, attractive, sensible pant suit, hair in a bun – //
hahaha
The Men of Letters spend a lot of time sitting around a board room table.
Oh, SPN, and your suspicion of systems and power! Please try to imagine another scenario!!
//Dilly dallying is one of my favorite mom phrases.//
Hahaha, so great!
Melanie – I like your final thought there.
// It’s not so much a question of whether John would have let Sam go, but, having the ‘super power’, he COULDN’T let Dean go. //
Dean is essential – not just as his hunter sidekick, but for … reflection? Assurance? Evidence that he exists? Parentification, for sure.
That’s why I’m so interested in those years when Sam was at college and John and Dean were going it alone. The bond – codependent and sick though it may be – would have gotten even stronger in Sam’s absence. Also their sense of betrayal that Sam would leave them would have bonded them together. Now why on EARTH would Sam want to leave what must have been a LOVELY atmosphere like that one??
So all three of them tied together, a tangle of wires. Dean and John looking at Sam, Dean and Sam, John and Dean, John and Sam … Sam the outsider. John knows it before Dean knows it. Dean is blindsided by Sam “abandoning” them. John probably wasn’t – he may have been pissed, but nor surprised.
These dynamics are still working themselves out – it’s why there’s still a queasy sort of jolt any time Dad comes up. (Castiel asking them about John being a good father, etc. You can see both of them – grown men – not know what to say, or struggle with all of these conflicting emotions.)
I actually don’t think it’s all that helpful to view John as a villain. At least it doesn’t help us access Sam and Dean’s complex experience of him. Maybe both can be true at the same time, I don’t know.
I’m more interested in how Sam and Dean see him – not in my opinions on his parenting skills.
This is a good episode, and the acting is often wonderful, Isabelle in particular – her double-take at first sight of Andy, yes!! Hodge’s solidity and outward calm! – but I can feel the script labouring to get us from scene to scene and some of the transitions (Sam: sure do wish m’bro was here!) and set-ups such as Andy happening to go on about sending gay porn are quite awkward and difficult for the actors to handle. And yet…Andy was stoned and the behaviour is great so it has it’s elegances too and I have to give Gamble credit for doing so well with what had to be a tough episode.
All of which is to say thanks Sheila for going so far into all the graces of the visuals and direction! What a great read this was. I don’t think I ever fully noticed that gorgeous shot of Sam looking into the light after Dean calls his name. That is a STUNNER. Singer really earns his bucks here and makes it feel strong and unique.
I don’t feel like there is a lot running ‘under’ this one, despite the way it reaches backwards and forwards across the seasons. And I think that also speaks to the way Sam functions in terms of plot and Dean in terms of emotion (cf part two) in these early seasons, which you talk about. But. The line “it’s always been about you” and Sam’s queasy, not-questioning, not-denial response of “what” is flip side of the Riverside Chat Of John’s Impossible Death Commands is so huge for me and so key to Sam’s own perspective on what’s happening to him.
I think my favourite/most hated moment of the whole episode – and this harkens back to the first ep of the season and Manners’ refusal to let JP “have a moment” with John before his death – is the way at the end Dean desperately tries to catch his brother’s eyes, but JP keeps sliding his gaze away, closing his eyes. Oh god, that lack of connection kills me.
Thanks again, loved it!
//(Sam: sure do wish m’bro was here!) //
Not a transition exactly but Sam’s line to the group about where they are suddenly goes all caps ‘Cold Oak North Dakota A TOWN SO HAUNTED THAT EVERYBODY LEFT – DID YOU ALL GET THAT???’
Similar to Sam and Dean constantly informing us that yellow dust on window sill is “sulfur.”
As though any of us at this point would be like, “WHAT is that yellow stuff??”
// (Sam: sure do wish m’bro was here!) //
hahahahahaha
Yes, there are definitely creaks and cricks along the way. This was a plot episode – plus that Mary backstory episode – so you’ve got that, as well as 5 random people wandering around – each interacting. Not much subtext because this is all action – and I’m more drawn to subtext episodes, as I think a lot of us are.
But consider this standoff episode with what we just witnessed in Season 11. I mean … come ON, people, get it TOGETHER.
Yeah, it’s a shame there’s so much plot, really, because the setting is so evocative — you know, they’re in this Western town, isolated, at the edge of humanity, resisting or embracing a change in their own nature under the pressure of the environment — that is the plot for every special kid in this episode and it’s rich ground to walk but it still feels kind of isolated — maybe because they have to spend all that time on introductions and running around being shocked and getting the mythology and backstory in there too, which (IMO) fits with but isn’t quite that theme. So the setting doesn’t quite feel connected to the theme and that doesn’t quite feel connected to the story. I don’t know — these penultimate episodes are usually a little (or a LOT) clunky because of plot.
// getting the mythology and backstory in there too, which (IMO) fits with but isn’t quite that theme. So the setting doesn’t quite feel connected to the theme and that doesn’t quite feel connected to the story. I don’t know — these penultimate episodes are usually a little (or a LOT) clunky because of plot. //
Yeah, totally agreed. We just saw the worst example of that to date in Season 11.
Plot overtakes Theme. It’s the Theme that keeps this thing running.
Hey, I watch for the plot.
I’m so sorry. (doubly sorry if my link doesn’t work!)
Barb – ha!!
Go, Piper.
// I don’t feel like there is a lot running ‘under’ this one, despite the way it reaches backwards and forwards across the seasons. //
That’s a much better way to say it – I feel the same way.
And yeah, Sam in the light –
It reminds me of a moment in Bug’s Life. Two moths float towards a bug zapper.
One, in a tough-guy New Yawk accent: “Larry! Larry! Don’t look at the light!”
Larry, in a daze, floating towards his doom: “Ican’thelpitit’ssobeautiful….”
ZAP.
// And I think that also speaks to the way Sam functions in terms of plot and Dean in terms of emotion (cf part two) in these early seasons, which you talk about. //
Interesting. Yes. They really play with this dichotomy don’t they – we could see it in Season 11, too – Dean with the heart, Sam with the action – although it fell apart in the end, they got a lot of mileage out of that essential difference between the brothers.
// The line “it’s always been about you” and Sam’s queasy, not-questioning, not-denial response of “what” is flip side of the Riverside Chat Of John’s Impossible Death Commands is so huge for me and so key to Sam’s own perspective on what’s happening to him. //
This is pretty huge. Sometimes I lose the thread-line of these revelations – but yes: that Riverside Chat leads us right to here – very good structure – and it’s amazing how long they make us (and Sam) wait to know the truth.
// Manners’ refusal to let JP “have a moment” with John before his death //
Brutal. And so smart.
// Dean desperately tries to catch his brother’s eyes, but JP keeps sliding his gaze away, closing his eyes. Oh god, that lack of connection kills me. //
I know!! Deprivation! Total deprivation.
Like I said to Paula above – I just re-watched Red Meat – just as good as I remembered – and the same thing happens there. He comes back and Sam is gone. It’s heart-wrenching. Still. That’s what was amazing to me about this episode – it still killed me, the thought of them being separated. And that one really did feel final – even though it wasn’t. Great job with direction – the slo-mo fall (legs) …
And after all the talk about how it’s Dean’s job to protect Sam – over and over and over again we get that – to see Dean shaking his brother in this final moment in Part 1 – you get what a losing proposition that has been – how John has almost set Dean up to fail.
//the slo-mo fall (legs)//
“the slo-mo fall (legs)”
THE SLO-MO FALL (LEGS)
I mean…
If a leg falls in a forest and noone is around to hear it …
Oh my OH MY
Here it is.
///and “Hell” streams into this world, including John Winchester///
Well I have to say, that in my mind, when Pastor Jim met John Winchester – that was his thought: “And all hell broke loose and brought this man to my porch. Damn.”
///This type of shot is commonly used in cinema in a romantic context. I’ll just leave that there.///
We know. The irony/weirdness/improbability/??? of it isn’t lost on us, the long term fans, for over a decade now XD
///Soon to be ashes Ash///
RUDE :( i’m still not over him. He was so awesome. I loved the roadhouse :(
///As the camera swings around the room, a prop guy feverishly switches out the blackboard///
I miss this so much….
///Imagining Dean having to deal with Lily paints a very different picture. He’d turn into John Winchester Drill Sergeant in a second. That might have worked better. Sam’s empathy obviously failed to convince.///
Very interesting observation. Very rarely does the fandom give the credit the “sergeant” attitude deserves, especially when it come to John Winchester. It is sometimes a great necessity. It calls to mind the end of season 11, when everybody – including CHUCK ALL MIGHTY – glance at DEAN for further instructions.
///Dean freaks out on Bobby before he is … penetrated … by Andy. Just telling it like it is. Jensen Ackles, whom we haven’t seen much in the episode, plays the bombarding of the visions as though it is a brain aneurysm. It LOOKS painful.///
True, I had never seen PAIN onscreen so PAINFUL. JA has no hesitations when he gets to play this stuff. Like you’ve said before – “he throws himself out there”, no reprecautions of “looking weak”.
“The Best And The Brightest” – what an interesting piece of reference I had no idea about! ThanQ for that!
///“What about my mom?”
“That was bad luck.”///
I think this one? Honest. Hadn’t Mary came in, hadn’t she died – Sam was “easy for the picking” from the get go. The moment YED realized John was “onto him” and dragging the boys all over the USA – he kicked himself, and had to adjust his entire plans.
///Jake as Dean stand-in./// I would dare say, that there is ALWAYS one when Sam is alone. Always. From Ruby to Grandpa Campbell. There’ always a “Dean”. Sam NEEDS A DEAN.
Ahh, Ava. When she reveals herself – it was almost traumatizing. I still remember it. It is etched to my brain, that’s how GOOD Isabelle’s acting is.
And – the last SHOT. Still makes me shiver. I mean, it always made me shiver. The sheer memory of it – that scream is SUPERNATURAL.
I like it that they ended this like that – in the light of s11 – this is especially strong – the brother’s relationship – is beyond GOD. That scream? It defied god.
It defied Satan, Hell and Heave. Even Purgatory.
Magnificent recap as always!
I’ll be biting my nails for the second part, as it is a two-part thing, and one can’t exist without the other.
I am IN LOVE with how WELL you describe Sam’s softness, and how it became his undoing.
“Too good for this world” comes to mind.
I remember adoring this episode for the scenery as much as the acting. Some people downplayed it as a cheap western stuff, but I loved it. The off-white, the WHITE the grey. Too perfect. I miss this so much. Now I have to go a rewatch that episode. :’)
Troopic – :) I mean, that dissolve of faces looks like a Nicholas Sparks movie poster.
I miss Ash too. How great was it to see him SEASONS later? How weird must it have been for him, the actor, to “get back into” that character he hadn’t played in years? So good.
and yeah, Halberstam’s book is great. I’ve always loved his writing but this is the best one. It’s chilling – and Yellow Eyes using that phrase is cynical and sneering. Like Princess Bride – That doesn’t mean what you think it means …
// The moment YED realized John was “onto him” and dragging the boys all over the USA – he kicked himself, and had to adjust his entire plans. //
Hmmm. I have to think about this. I think it’s the “bad luck” that throws me. It was always about getting access to Sam. Right? I’m probably missing something. But it feels like they’re missing something too.
// It calls to mind the end of season 11, when everybody – including CHUCK ALL MIGHTY – glance at DEAN for further instructions. //
Right? And how they keep it together for everyone during Croatoan. Or any other crisis situation. Where does fandom think they learned such tough leadership skills? It does come in handy. And empathy didn’t work on Lily. Maybe she did need to be tied up in a room so she didn’t get herself killed.
// I am IN LOVE with how WELL you describe Sam’s softness, and how it became his undoing.
“Too good for this world” comes to mind. //
Thank you!! I love that softness. It’s so true. And a perfect example of how these Demons use the BEST that is in these brothers – their love for one another, their kindness and humanity – AGAINST them. Yuk.
Let me know if you have any observations after you watch the episode again! Would love to hear!!
I would love LOVE LOVE too – and I’ll be on it as of tomorrow morning, I just came back from work. ;______;
///I think it’s the “bad luck” that throws me. It was always about getting access to Sam. Right? I’m probably missing something. But it feels like they’re missing something too.///
I’ve recently (two days ago?…) written a post that just touches on the subject. It’s actually about the “fridging” trope and how it’s actually DIDN’T happen to Mary and Jess but DID happen to John Winchester. As a part of my line of logic I touched the subject above, so to ummmm – cite myself –
“The fact that (YED) killed (MARY), bit him in the ass – he had to go and make circles and backtrack and rethink his plans and SEND BRADY TO FIND A JESS TO KILL in the first place.
Because killing Mary? Big mistake. It propelled John into hunting, and Sam and Dean into what they are – and that is NOT an easy target, for either Lucifer not Michael. Seriously, go and rewatch “In The Beginning”. He didn’t want Mary dead. He even wanted to assure her an apple pie life. As long as he isn’t “interrupted”.
I think, as time passed, and YED had to run all over the USA for little Sammy, he cursed himself to hell and back for killing Mary and not being stealth enough.”
That, and the fact her memories of Dean’s plight to not go into Sam’s room in the future was wiped from her mind – make me believe the YED never intended to kill Mary. As it turned out – he probably had to kill many more Mary’s – all the burnt women over their baby’s cribs – because mothers sense when their child is in danger, maybe? Hmmm.
It also occurred to me that we never discovered what Ash wanted to tell Sam…? did we….?
Huh – your theory about John being the target all along is very intriguing.
// It also occurred to me that we never discovered what Ash wanted to tell Sam…? did we….?
//
Yes – it’s the map with all the X’s on it – that will then be revealed to be the gigantic Devil’s Trap. I guess Ash had figured it out. Why he couldn’t just tell Dean over the phone … Like some hunter is tapping the main phone of the roadhouse? Come on.
Ash had to be sacrificed because that roadhouse had to GO.
//there is ALWAYS one when Sam is alone. Always. From Ruby to Grandpa Campbell. There’ always a “Dean”. Sam NEEDS A DEAN// or a Jess? Good point. Sam shows us constantly that he can be alone and is independent but he’s fairly dysfunctional on his own, like there is no balance in his life.
Jess was a very much “Dean” replica. Tons of meta sank their teeth into this little twist.
From her seemingly humorous tendencies to her (accidental) birth date.
If you grow up in a cult, there will always be a void that needs to be filled outside of that cult-grouping.
Plus, cults tend to make people mis-trust their own radar. They need that strong leader to let them know what to think.
I think there’s a lot of evidence that Dean and Sam’s “radar” is way off in the couple of seasons following John’s death. I wrote about that in Everybody Loves a Clown. I don’t think Gordon would have been successful with Dean if he had come along in Season 5 or 6 – because the First Grief (which is so disorienting) had subsided.
Sam’s spidey-sense about Gordon was right-on – but John’s death didn’t affect him in the same way. Dean is flailing in the void. Enter Gordon.
I’m so grateful you bring up the “cult theory” – not a theory by far now, just a plain fact – it explains so much.
Every time the brothers seem to separate, one finds a “replica” of the other to cling too. Especially Sam.
But, what I’m trying to say, is, that after you explained, long ago – the belljar and the cult effect – it made the whole Winchester family thing so much clearer.
One thing I do NOT agree on – and that is that John influenced a separation on the brothers, that
// it kept a full relationship from flowering between the siblings.//
I think that the exact opposite happened – they were constantly ripped off from anything REAL every few weeks maximum a month or so, while Dean was already “over it” – in a way that he just didn’t expect to find “friends” or whatever you would call it – Sam did.
I think they were very close at childhood, they were the only constant. John would leave them alone for so long.
I have a theory – inside John’s little cult was another one – a “subculture” – samandean.
They had their own language and their own jokes. Things that not even John was privy to.
Think about it – two kids and one adult. That’s it, that’s all there is.
And while John and Dean had a mutuality of a commander and his sergeant, Dean and Sam had their own little world.
Poor Dean had to juggle between the two, like a chameleon – the middle man – as we already know so well.
He knew the most there was to know of both sides.
As much as John kept away from his sons – the same was going on on the other track. I think John was practically oblivious to their inner world. Was it a choice, though? On some level, I think it was.
There is also something aggressively skewed here – two kids 4 years apart being each other’s only constant – I think that drags out Dean’s “childishness” and Sam’s “seriousness” – Dean was always trying to simplify his talk and behavior for a smaller sibling, while Sam tried to keep up with the “grownups”.
I would theorize here, that, while Sam was the one who wanted “friends”, he wasn’t very good at getting to know people. We actually saw how reclusive he was. I think Dean, for all kinds of useful reasons (money, booty – whatever) would have found himself in some group (if they were staying long enough) or in the company of somebody – of his approximate age.
Enter “this is my little brother Sam”.
So in my mind, if Sam got to “hang” with others, ever, these were people of Dean’s age.
I think he developed this kind of “adultness”, to fit.
I dunno. I’m still working this out.
In any case, until some point – I think they were very close. something happened though – I guess it was Sam’s strive for independence. The poor thing was practically torn. And eventually, he had to go or he would’ve imploded.
I love your point about Dean’s “childishness” and Sam’s “seriousness.”
Yes – Aslan – I agree – it’s a really good point!
Troopic – fascinating stuff!
I totally agree that the “samanddean” subculture was strong – and still is – the ESP that must have been going on!! But because of the cult – they couldn’t “just” be brothers – which is why (for me anyway) – when memories come out that feel like they are normal childhood memories (Sam breaking his arm, Dean biking him to the emergency room – or playing with Army Men and Legos and all the rest) – it’s so poignant you want to lay down and die. Because they had so little of that.
So I guess what I’m trying to say – awkwardly – is that the roles John assigned them kept them from being as close as they might have been. A cult requires lying – lying to the outside world, lying to yourself, and lying to other people in the cult. (“I’m doing great. I love being an OTVII!” – one example). So Sam and Dean lie – almost automatically – to one another – “I’m doing great.” “You good?” “I’m fine.” Just now – just in the last 2 or 3 seasons – they’ve stopped doing that – and it’s been wonderful to watch them break that conditioning.
I just watched All Hell Breaks Loose Part II – and there’s that “what else did the demon say to you” thing – and Sam doesn’t mention what was said.
I don’t know – there’s something about the secretiveness of a cult – PLUS the total lack of privacy/boundaries (these two grown men lived in one room for their entire childhood – yes, different motels – but always one room – no privacy) – so it creates a clusterfuck of raw honesty and secretiveness.
The bond that was their childhood – that nobody else can understand – means they are bonded forever – but talking openly, and allowing things like uncertainty – is still really difficult.
And of course Dean’s suspicion of Sam wanting to be independent goes to absurd lengths. He is visibly annoyed that Sam takes a run every morning. hahaha And never mind the “woman” factor. Outside of one-night hook-ups, a girlfriend or a partner threatens to derail the whole thing. “You told her the family secret???”
It’s all very rich, isn’t it?
// I think that drags out Dean’s “childishness” and Sam’s “seriousness” – Dean was always trying to simplify his talk and behavior for a smaller sibling, while Sam tried to keep up with the “grownups”. //
Troopic – this is a fabulous observation!
First Grief – but wouldn’t that be Mary’s death? Or is it because he was a young child when he lost his mom but an adult when he lost his dad who was his hero? (Jess was Sam’s First Grief. Also Sam’s relationship to John wasn’t the same as Dean’s.)
Oh, sorry – by “First Grief” I meant “first wave of Grief.” The immediate grief post something horrible happening – a loss – the “second wave” is different – things start to settle in, the reality becomes apparent, the dust settles. In the “first wave” it’s like you’ve been hit over the head with an anvil – you don’t know which end is up.
I think both brothers show evidence of that throughout Season 2 – only they can’t name it.
I’m just speaking from personal experience – the first year after my Dad died was totally surreal – and nobody had prepared me for it. I thought “grief” would mean “tears.” But it wasn’t that at all. It was like I had a concussion. I also accidentally let a sociopath man into my heart – it was bad judgment on my part – and normally my radar is great – but I was completely skewed to the side by the “first wave” – I didn’t recognize the signals. And sociopaths do what sociopaths do – and he DESTROYED me. QUICKLY. I am not normally “prey” like that. I attribute it all to the maelstrom that is the First Wave.
Sorry for the confusion!!
I get it! It’s so funny how you can look at words and a different meaning gets into your head than what the writer intended.
Yeah, the result of First Grief: you’re pole-axed. And that leaves you vulnerable. I’m sorry someone took advantage of your sorrow.
I have learned that when you are vulnerable like that, Bad People find YOU. It’s really chilling. It’s almost like you draw them to you in your distress. Or they have some sixth sense, they sniff you out.
… shivers …
But thanks. Yeah, it sucked. Good riddance to sociopaths!
“When you are vulnerable, bad people find YOU.” I wonder if this plays at all into SPN; most hunters become hunters because of some horrifying violence that shredded their lives. Now they live on the edge of darkness, often succumbing to it. Is evil drawn to them? Evil certainly seems drawn to the Winchesters. Yes, they seek it out, but in turn it often seems to follow THEM. (And that’s not their fault, like Dean seems to indicate in 10x 23; death and destruction doesn’t follow them because they’re BAD; they are GOOD — to quote Sam.) I’ve always assumed that they’re always in danger because they seek out evil to destroy it, (plus the whole Azazel thing and the bloodlines and the vessel destiny, etc.), but your thoughts on grief and vulnerability made me think about it in a different way.
Yeah, it’s an interesting question. Over and over again – whether it’s demons or vampires or werewolves – we get the memo that once they catch your scent, or clock you, you become a “mark.” You’ll never be safe.
And are others not susceptible to it?
I mean, according to SPN, the world is literally on the verge of apocalypse every 8 months – so it seems like no one is safe.
In terms of bad things finding you – the Winchesters are pretty much doomed. Sam and Dean were born into a doomed family already.
He needs this “Dean” presence so much so in his life that as a child when he’s forced to be alone he “summons” an imaginary friend… Sully was not like Dean on the surface or maybe we should say on the surface Dean was not like Sully, but in the quiet down times when he wasn’t being everybody’s mom and wasn’t Dad’s 2nd in command hunting monsters…
..then yeah, Dean was a playful goofy Sully. I can see that. for Sam? Yes, Totally.
Thanks Sheila for a wonderful recap. Your insight into Padalecki ‘s acting choices is really making me appreciate him more.
Lying in bed with the flu – this has made my day!
I’m so glad!
//“The shit hits the fan”//
has to be one of my favourite expressions of all times.
// Some of this doesn’t really make sense (mainly being the attitude that Sam is a freak, a monster, something to be hunted – especially since hunters clearly utilize psychics. Hello, the sexy Pamela. But whatever.)//
Maybe that’s a terrible source of tension in the hunter community, some being against, other for? Who knows.
Or maybe it’s just the psychic kids linked to YED? We can’t trust what Gordon says. Maybe we could discuss that over a beer with the 2 guys we met in season 11, now that they’re retired. Just an idea.
I love Ava and Andy so, so much.
// I still love the roadhouse and love that Pamela and Ash would choose to hang out there in Heaven.//
Oh I hope that’s where I’m going too.
//As the camera swings around the room, a prop guy feverishly switches out the blackboard, and the sheer trick of it, the theatricality of it, pleases me. That’s all you need to do to create an illusion with no cuts, just one circle of a camera move and two blackboards.//
Like in the 1st episode of the season, with the oui-ji board. So simple, so efficient – and so great for those of us who think of what is going on on set.
//Look at this Wikipedia page: List of ghost towns in South Dakota. Take your pick! A haunted state!//
Road trip!
//“Don’t say ‘we’” Lily yells at Jake//
And the two times she yells at him, she points her delicate, white, oh-so-dangerous finger at him, and… I don’t know, it’s almost nothing, but I love that detail.
OK. I’ll read and re-watch the rest later, because this old lady has to sleep.
And also, I’m scared of watching the rest. I don’t want to see the end of poor Andy. I don’t want Sam to die. And Ash… I’m not ready.
// Maybe we could discuss that over a beer with the 2 guys we met in season 11, now that they’re retired. //
I can’t help but think – Yeah, how long will peace on the horse ranch last? As sad as that is.
That Ouija board moment is one of my favorite SPN shots ever. Gorgeous.
Lily’s finger – yes! Peeking nervously out from her pulled-down jacket sleeves – her silhouette is so eloquent.
//You can almost feel Kripke’s glee in showing the carnage. Including the charred monkey. Ash-es to ash-es.//
Dean: “You see Ellen?”
How horrible is that, to have to look through all those pieces of building and bodies to look for someone you love.
STOP TREATING ASH’S DEATH SO CASUALLY SHELIA!
No, but really.
I loved the Roadhouse. I get why it had to go, but I’m glad it was there for a while. I like the possibilities it created, in the outside world – the other hunters, Pamela the awesome psychic, Jo and Ellen,…
“Shelia” hahahaha You kill me, you “annoying cunt”(TM).
I was sorry Ash had to go too – he was kind of a stand-in Bobby, if you think about it – or he “was” Bobby before Bobby started to really rise in the narrative as the go-to information guy.
You don’t even have to use the quotation marks. We know. I love being your annoying cunt. How great is that?
Forever yours,
Your annoying cunt.
The phrase rings down through the ages …
The dissolve makes me think of this shot from Apocalypse Now! Not what they had in mind, I suspect. But my reaction. I think the spinning God’s Eye view made me think of helicopters.
“Cold Oak. Shit. I’m still only in Cold Oak.”
“I wanted a mission. And for my sins they gave me one.”
Andy as the Dennis Hopper character. The Vietnam/Best and Brightest reference. I’m not sure what to do with Jake in his uniform. He’s not Lance or Col. Kilgore. That’s about as far as I can go with this. Thankfully.
Oh, there’s a quick shot of a sign as Sam and Dean pull up to the cafe. It’s the Sunnyside Diner. <"Life can be so sweet, on the sunny side of the street." Don’t mind the puddles.
I liked Ava quoting Born Under A Bad Sign, “if it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.” Evil sounds cooler quoting the blues, rather than, say, Taylor Swift. Although Jake quoting “band-aids don’t fix bullet holes” could have been nasty if done with the right tone, “if you live like that you live with ghosts.” And if Taylor had written the song a decade ago.
And Lyrie, I like the image of Ash and Andy sharing Moby Dick’s bong in heaven. That’s a happy thought. But anyone named Lily makes me think of Penny Dreadful. And that brings on the mourning. At least John Logan is involved in the Patty Smith Just Kids series.
Sam getting stabbed. That really is horrible, clench and squirm moment. I’ll agree with everyone on that one.
Love that shot in Apocalypse Now!! (RIP Michael Herr. Good timing.)
//But anyone named Lily makes me think of Penny Dreadful.//
Stop. I. Can’t.
Especially because Lily… I must say, I didn’t trust Billie Piper very much, I wasn’t thrilled by her acting in season 1. But that really changed with that season 3 – she had some pretty huge monologues and I think she did a great job. And what a great story line Logan wrote for her! Amazing!
But we’re digressing. (Oh, what a surprise :) )
Bah – still haven’t seen it yet – even though Wes Studi is in it now! It hadn’t yet aired when I interviewed him, I don’t think – this is the next one I need to catch up on, after Homeland. And Homeland is – actually – slightly tiresome, except for Rupert Friend as Peter Quinn ohmygodohmygod. That’s basically why I’m watching at this point.
Watching that season and knowing you had interviewed him, there are some things I would have REALLY wanted asked. Because. Well. You’ll see.:)
Ooh! Intriguing!
I asked him about it – the news had just broken, I think – or, recently broke – and he said, “Yeah, I got the offer and thought, ‘Indians in Victorian England? What?’ But yup, we were there!”
Lyrie, I love Billie Piper, Rose was a favorite DW companion. I don’t get Showtime so haven’t seen PD. How does it compare to “Ripper Street”? Or another I haven’t seen but is on Netflix, “Peeks Blinders”?
Melanie –
So, there’s Timothy Dalton, Eva Green, Josh Hartnett (who is excellent), and Billie Piper through all three seasons, with Patti LuPone in seasons 2 and 3, Wes Studi in season 3. A very literary atmosphere. Well developed characters. Beautifully filmed. Themes of faith, free will, forgiveness, the attraction of evil, the weight of guilt… The actors who play Dr. Frankenstein and John Clare and Dorian Grey and Mr. Lyle (much beloved by Lyrie and me) aren’t known to me, but they have made unique, living characters.
And only 27 episodes to watch the entire series. I’m not familiar with the series you mention, so I can’t compare them. But I think it’s a very good show.
So $22 just for season 1. It sounds great, but now it’s going off Showtime maybe Netflix or Amazon Prime will pick it up. It’s definitely going on my watch list. Thanks, Mutecypher
You ought to try Ripper Street on BBC America and Netflix. Matthew McFaddyen (Mr Darcy, swoon) as the inspector, Jerome Flynn as his sergent, various and sundry other characters in the immediate aftermath of the ripper murders in Whitechapel.
I don”t know those shows either, but Mutecypher sold PD well. Very complex characters, and very, very complex relationships, amazing acting, every single frame of the show a gorgeous image, the show is inspired and revisits, among other things, Gothic literature. It’s a gem, really.
//John Clare//
as in the poet John Clare?
//as in the poet John Clare?//
Yes!
The grass below, above the vaulted sky.
Above Vaulted Sky is the title of one of the episodes, I think. ;)
Melanie –
If you think you might be bingy, and if it’s offered where you are, it might be cheaper to get a month-to-month subscription to Showtime and watch all seasons rather than spending $22 for just one season.
Helena –
Frankenstein’s creature takes the name John Clare because of his love of the poet, so the character isn’t the poet. Just to be clear.
Let’s see… what else can I mansplain?
Sunnyside Diner. Good catch, Mutecypher. The audacity of that place to call itself a cafe. A cafe is striped awnings, tiny tables for 2 on a Paris sidewalk not a trailer on cinder blocks in the middle of an ambitious mud puddle aspiring to be Lake Pontchartrain. (I was gonna say Lake Michigan, but it needed to be a muddy lake.)
So, this is an episode that I’ve re-watched MAYBE once. It seriously stresses me out and remains to me the most horrifying of either of the brothers’ deaths. Like, I can’t even handle it. (No Rest for the Wicked is a close second on the horrifying death factor, but even that was a direct consequence of this one, so AHBL is harder for me to watch.)
That said, I love the point you raise here:
//What is so gross about the “she walked in on us” line is the word “us” because it creates the context of a relationship, as though “they” were up to something together, as though it was a special shared moment – a sexual-vibe between them – dripping liquid into the other’s mouth, come on – as opposed to a total violation that has impacted this man on such a profound level that he’ll never ever get over it.//
With all the sexual and consent connotations of possessions and implied rape and etc. on this show, it’s hardly surprising that they went here, but in this scene, Yellow Eyes is a perfect analogy for a pedophile grooming a victim. This is exactly the kind of manipulation that they use. Not even just the use of the word “us” suggesting that Sam was “in on it” or enjoyed it (which pedophiles will totally do, e.g., “I could tell you enjoyed it, you wanted it, you can’t tell anyone because you’re responsible for this happening, too”) but also the “I’ve been rooting for you” part – implying that the relationship between them is somehow special, elevating Sam above the others. Everyone wants to feel special and validated. Predators know exactly how to exploit this. Sam talks to Dean seasons later about how he always felt “not clean” and how maybe he knew somehow that he always had demon blood in him. This happens people who were sexually abused in infancy, because any kind of trauma, even pre-conscious memory trauma, has a profound impact on brain development and how we deal with stress. The impact can be even more profound in infancy and early childhood because the brain is still laying down new neural pathways at that point. As an adult, these victims won’t necessarily remember the abuse and won’t necessarily understand why they behave the way they do (i.e., in Sam’s case, voluntarily drinking demon blood from Ruby). This article explains what happens pretty well: http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cyconline-apr2009-perry.html (I still don’t know how to do the hyperlink stuff.)
This also makes Mary’s “It’s you” that much more horrifying. In cases of sexual abuse by a caregiver or parent, when one parent is not a participant in the abuse, they’re often (but not always) aware on some level at least that something is not right. It reminds me of the mothers (because, honestly, it usually is mothers) who turn a blind eye to their new boyfriend abusing the child until they’re forced to confront it.
I think this is going to make a REALLY interesting dynamic next season, as well. Up until now, even knowing what they’ve learned about Mary’s deal, Mom has always been Saint Mary to the boys. Now they’re going to have to deal with a flawed, human Mary who made some mistakes and selfish choices. She concealed her past as a hunter. She turned a blind eye to whatever Yellow Eyes was going to do, even though she had ten years to try to stop it. The idealized image they had of Mary is going to shatter into a million pieces.
I can’t even talk about Andy and Ava yet. I’m working up to it.
Or Ash.
This is fascinating!
Almost everything “supernatural” thing on the show is a great metaphot for a real-world “thing”. This one is a “thing” I never thought about. It actually makes a lot of sense!
Natalie – as upsetting as it is, I am always grateful to you when you weigh in with comments such as this one. That vibe is so there in the show – although buried in “plausible deniability” – the feeling is there for the taking, if you want to pick up on it – and I clearly do, and I’m glad to hear others elaborate on it. It’s so disturbing.
And it’s weird because Dean has so often been seen as “the problem” – he’s the drama queen, the scene stealer, the one who wears his damage on his sleeve. Sam? Not so much. But look at what happened to him. And how destabilizing that is for Sam. He thought he was solid, whole. He’s not. He’s been infiltrated, penetrated – and maybe he always KNEW that, sensed it – but now it’s been confirmed. He will never feel clean again.
Isn’t there something in the Metatron episode (the first one) where Sam, hallucinating, goes on and on about being clean? They’ve totally dropped the “demon blood” thing – they never reference it anymore – like: “Hey, I’ve got the Mark of Cain, you’ve got demon blood, we’re doing great …”
Sam not feeling clean, though …. interesting coupled with Dean’s obsession with cleanliness … his own person, the bunker, his car … and Sam not giving a shit about those things … It doesn’t all line up perfectly – and neither should it.
// Now they’re going to have to deal with a flawed, human Mary who made some mistakes and selfish choices. She concealed her past as a hunter. She turned a blind eye to whatever Yellow Eyes was going to do, even though she had ten years to try to stop it. The idealized image they had of Mary is going to shatter into a million pieces. //
I actually hadn’t thought about it quite that way. I’m very excited. Sam and Dean haven’t really had a conversation about that, have they? Like: “What was Mom thinking …” She’s on the pedestal, still. This should be (hopefully) very interesting and rich.
Right? The potential is so great! I hope they don’t fuck it up. I’m sorry, but after the end of season 11 we got, I’m not trusting them 100%.
Freaking Mary Winchester!!!
Sam is such a mini-Mary as Dean is a mini-John…
OK. Here’s me, begrudgingly admitting that just maybe it will be an interesting season.
//I hope they don’t fuck it up.//
FREAKING MARY WINCHESTER!!!
//Sam not feeling clean, though …. interesting coupled with Dean’s obsession with cleanliness …// ahhhhhh, why did you say this? Now I can’t stop thinking about it.
There is definitely something there with the cleanliness thing. It shows up in Season 1 in different ways – and it’s still with us. Someone on the writing staff is really smart about this stuff – and what cleanliness means to people who have been abused when they were kids – it can’t be unconscious or accidental, can it?
I wonder if Natalie could weigh in, or has any thoughts.
But there’s something definitely there.
Much of the cleanliness obsession is obviously played for laughs. Dean bustling around in the bunker. Dean taking half-hour long showers. Sam letting a dog sit in the back seat of Dean’s car. There are so many examples. And it seems like – logically – Dean would be the carefree slob and Sam would be the neat-nik. A less intelligent show would have made it gone that cliched way.
Instead – we’ve got THIS – where cleanliness, sure, is played for laughs – but it also tells its own story – and it’s also psychological.
They don’t ever make it explicit – or have the guys explain themselves either – which is good too – since much of this is unconscious on the characters’ parts too.
Issue of cleanliness – such an interesting point! I’m thinking of John’s put-down remark to Dean about not keeping the Impala perfect and Sam noticing that Demon!Dean trashed the Impala. Other images: Dean going to the disbarred doctor to stop his heart so he could meet Death – what a horrifying set (it reminded me of the creepy doctor in Minority Report) and Dean wanting to bathe in Purell in Mommy Dearest. I suppose it’s silly to start listing examples when there are so many, but specifics are enlightening and build a fuller picture. I agree that it’s often played for laughs, but there definitely could be deeper meaning here.
// but specifics are enlightening and build a fuller picture. //
I totally agree. The cleanliness issue has always been one of the most interesting underlying continuous “tropes” – and it flip-flops –
We should keep a running database. I’m always excited when it shows up – who are these guys? How do they relate to their bodies, their pasts? Cleanliness has a lot to do with that.
I wrote a series of essays about “bling” – too lengthy to go into now – I’ll provide links in a second. “Bling” is often denigrated – and there’s often racism involved in critiques of it. It bothers me. It’s middle-class snootiness. Someone like Elvis – who grew up poverty-struck, strapped to his share-cropper’s mother’s back – the second he got money, what did he do? Buy shit-tons of bling. A message, a warning: I will never go back there again.
His cars were immaculate. His clothes were immaculate. He never wore blue jeans (denim being the clothing of the poor in his era). He sparkled with jewelry. People who don’t get it say this is garish, or “nouveau riche” or evidence of his lack of taste. It drives me crazy.
He grew up never being clean, he grew up with no running water. Being clean is VERY important – to all of us, but especially to someone who grew up surrounded by dirt and starvation.
Dean’s jewelry (which he no longer wears) also struck me as similar to that. Flashes of individuality and beauty – things that were meaningful to him – a way of saying, “I get to define myself. Not those motel rooms that were the landscape of my childhood. Look at me. I am beautiful.”
I don’t know – it’s a swirl of associations – but it’s really interesting to think about!
I love looking at people with understanding and compassion instead of snobbery and judgmentalism: “Look at that self-indulgent idiot covered in bling” is an easy way to dismiss someone instead of finding commonality, instead of looking for REASONS why someone makes the choices they do.
Yeah, I could see Dean wanting to differentiate himself from the grungy, run-down motels in which he grew up.
The jewelry point is so interesting, especially in light of comments up-thread where we acknowledge how hard it is for Dean to articulate (or even think) of desires for himself and his own life. His purpose is to protect Sammy. His music, his car, his coat are his dad’s. Where is DEAN? Yet there he could have been, seen in those bits of individuality that he wore, ways of saying “‘I get to define myself'” (as MORE than Sam’s big brother and Dad’s soldier?) and “I am beautiful” (instead of “I’m crap” – like in Defending Your Life) and “I’m unworthy.”
So then the question for me is when did he start taking those things off? When did they disappear and why? Did he feel satisfied with who he had become so he no longer needed an outward display to acknowledge it? Did he give up? Was it crushed out of him (“I’m tired, Sam. I’m tired of this job, this life”)?
I just saw this quote and thought it applied to your statement about people mocking the “nouveau riche”: “I believe that appreciation is a holy thing–that when we look for what’s best in a person we happen to be with at the moment, we’re doing what God does all the time. So in loving and appreciating our neighbor, we’re participating in something sacred” – Fred Rogers
I guess I’m fixating on that point because I’ve considered such display as crass and vulgar in the past, but I’d rather be the sort of person who has understanding of others not condemnation.
Aslan:
// Yet there he could have been, seen in those bits of individuality that he wore, //
That’s how I see it, for sure. They’re almost talismanic – and the necklace is definitely a Talisman – but everything else – the ring, the bracelets: little markers showing who he is and what he likes = the choices he’s made (“I like this ring and I like what it looks like on me.” Or “This is my lucky ring” Or: “These bracelets are cool. Imma wear them right now.” John doesn’t wear jewelry like that. If you wear the same ring every day, the same necklace every day, the same bracelet – like Dean does (or did): that’s saying; “I like these things.” Even more of a statement for a man, gender-norms being what they are (at least in their world). The jewelry marks him as slightly eccentric (in a world that is already eccentric. I mean … Ash??) – and – I hesitate to use the word – but “soft.” Not as in weak, but as in … caring about what’s on him, what he looks like. Not vain, but open to the possibilities in his appearance and taking care with it. I don’t know. Something along those lines.
// Did he feel satisfied with who he had become so he no longer needed an outward display to acknowledge it? Did he give up? Was it crushed out of him (“I’m tired, Sam. I’m tired of this job, this life”)? //
It’s interesting, right?
Now I know that JA wanted to stop wearing the jewelry because it was a pain in his ass as an actor. BUT as I have said a bazillion times: IF we didn’t know that, if we had no idea of any behind the scenes commentary from the actor – how do we interpret it? (This is my preferred way to go – who cares what JA says? I care mostly about the information onscreen – because then sky’s the limit in terms of interpretation.)
The necklace is obvious. It had to go after Castiel was such a douche about it.
It seems to me that something happened to him along the line – Going to Hell, probably – that … cauterized something in him – hope, maybe? Something shifted. There was the “I’m special” arc in Season 4 and 5 – so heady and disorienting … but then maybe he seemed so far away from the person he was, early-mid 20s … time to put those signifiers away and find new signifiers.
I know I look at pictures of myself in my 20s and it’s like memory lane, just in terms of my jewelry. Stuff I would never wear now but that were extremely symbolic and important to me then. A gigantic chunky peace sign. What? But I loved it, especially with a bikini top and baggy beat-up jeans. Gigantic hoop earrings. This chunky green glass ring, and all kinds of other rings, that I wore all at once, because it was the 90s and that’s what we did.
That was the jewelry that the Me Then wore. If I put on that jewelry now, it would be like stepping back in time … to a person I once was, who loved those things, who chose those things specifically because I liked what they looked like. It’s a strange thing.
Neither Dean or Sam is a fashion-conscious guy, obviously – but Dean is pricked with these little sparks of “fashion” in his jewelry – that somehow makes him seem more vulnerable. Maybe it’s a tiny little bit of vanity/pride – (“I really like what this ring looks like”) – and that bit of vanity makes him vulnerable. (Or, even more vulnerable. Poor guy.)
Aslan – that Fred Rogers quote brought tears to my eyes. What a beautiful man.
If you’re interested, I was on a roll with the Bling posts for a couple of weeks – it all started with someone criticizing Straight Outta Compton, and NWA’s bling – which drove me crazy – these guys came from nothing – flashy rings and cars seemed like aggressive “I am NEVER gonna be poor again” symbols to the world. Materialism is a beautiful beautiful thing to those who came from nothing!
http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=106446
http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=106845
To bring it back to SPN: Dean is very very attached to his “things.” His perfect room in the bunker, the carefully positioned Scotch tape (makes me want to cry!), his beauitfully organized porn magazines and records … I love that “nesting” episode – it’s as close as the show ever got to saying: “Yes. You’ve been sensing this quality in him all along. Here it is, straight-up.”
Not necessarily “bling” but in the same ballpark: a concern with cleanliness, appearance, and having things look nice.
You know what I just noticed? That pic of Elvis in the upper right corner of this page titled Elvis Essays: look at how prominent that ring is.
Aslan – yes!
Elvis’ hands always literally sparkled. I love that aspect of him – his vanity and pride. It came from having nothing. He loved his rings but it was also: “Look at me. I can meet with jewelers and buy the ring I want. Two years ago I slept in the same room as my parents.”
//SAM
You used to read to me, um, when I was little, I— I mean, really little, from that— from that old, uh… Classics Illustrated comic book. You remember that?
DEAN
No.
SAM
Knights of the Round Table. Had all of King Arthur’s knights, and they were all on the quest for the Holy Grail. And I remember looking at this picture of Sir Galahad, and, and, and he was kneeling, and— and light streaming over his face, and— I remember… thinking, uh, I could never go on a quest like that. Because I’m not clean. I mean, I w— I was just a little kid. You think… maybe I knew? I mean, deep down, that— I had… demon blood in me, and about the evil of it, and that I’m— wasn’t pure?
DEAN
Sam, it’s not your fault.
SAM
It doesn’t matter anymore. Because these trials… they’re purifying me.//
I really liked the trials and that Dean was so adamant that he be the one to take on those trials, but for Sam, even though he didn’t seek it out, they took on such a deeply personal journey of being refined in a forge, in fire. I sometimes wonder if part of Sam’s anger with Dean wasn’t just because Dean let Gadreel into him, but also partly because Dean talked him out of completing that purification that his soul so desperately needed.
Definitely purification of his uncleanliness. Burning out the impurities.
//because Dean talked him out of completing that purification that his soul so desperately needed// I agree 100% with this, Melanie. Gadreel was the most obvious, most heinous point of contention but this was sitting beneath the surface of every argument that season and why Sam had difficulty explaining his anger to Dean, and Dean had difficulty understanding it.
Sam’s need for purification and Dean’s lack of self esteem are like dark twins. Deep seated and drives them to ridiculous lengths that the other brother can recognize but not truly understand.
Troopic – Would love to see a link to your Azazel essay. //Kripke knows his pre-canonized-bible sources// I think we talked before on another thread about how smart Kripke is despite his gushing fanboy persona.
///I think we talked before on another thread about how smart Kripke is despite his gushing fanboy persona.///
Especially for this. We, fans, write the most articulate, interesting theories. Just look at the talkbacks on this very page.
The culture of diminishing fans and fandom as “stupid” and un-intelligent is a bias.
To be a good fan, you need some brains.
And I’ll be more then glad to link it! I’m half way through, btw and it’s fascinating.
Uh-oh. I gave all my brains away in the Great Dean’s Shower Sequence of 2015.
// Uh-oh. I gave all my brains away in the Great Dean’s Shower Sequence of 2015.
//
I have yet to recover.
OK now this all just propelled me into writing a long-ass essay on Azazel (still a work in progress, if you wwant I’ll link it when I finish it) . Apparently, as his pre-demon- still an angel-form from olden scripts he was known to be a tempter and the sire of many Nephilim – half man half gods – and thus – giants.
He was also accused of, wait for it – having sex with children and animals. He was cast out and bound to someplace till the end of times.
Kripke knows his pre-canonized-bible sources…
Probably thought – “hmmm how I double the creep factor? Lets read some old Dead Seas Scrolls. Ooooooh, Azazel was accused of pedophilia. I’m so using that.”.
Kripke you KRIP.
We love you.
Nice!! (and awful!!) Nice and awful = Supernatural in a nutshell.
Okay I’ve read it now. Deep breaths.
As always you put into words things that I haven’t been able to verbalise or even been able to explain to myself. Like for instance why the “Us” felt so wrong and even in that moment turned my stomach in an almost visceral way. And the fact that it never registered, not for a second that Aldis Hodge was not holding a knife. I have watched that scene more times than I care to admit and I absolutely know that Jake plunged a knife into Sam’s back but my engagement was such, and the acting so good, that it never entered my mind that Aldis did not stab Jared. I watched it again last night, and even now with my “watch the action, not the emotion” glasses on, I will still stake my last breath that I see the knife, and that I see it twist.
And as for the “Winchester Family Horn Music”. I have tweeted Jay Gruska on multiple occasions on the hell he plays with my emotions with “Americana”. I have the soundtrack in my car, and my response to this theme is almost Pavlovian at this point. There is simply no getting past it now.
I love that song too, but honestly in the last seasons I’ve felt a few times like they used it in a manipulative way, and that always pisses me off. It is such a precious song that I don’t want it to be overused, if that makes sense.
Can you think of an example when it hasn’t worked for you?
(This is not a challenge to you, like ‘En garde’!” Ha!!. I am just curious – because these nuts-and-bolts things about tropes really matter – and I agree that something special should not be overused or become ‘schtick.'”)
I have a pretty terrible memory and I haven’t re-watched seasons 10 and 11 since they aired, so I can’t pin down the precise moments. I just recall thinking once or twice “we got it, we could’ve done without it, guys, don’t try to force my feelings.”
I’ll keep my eyes and ears peeled.
They have to be so careful with it now. It’s become an expectation so if it’s used incorrectly then the “moment” is ruined. They were really clever with it s09e23 (when Dean died) when the opening motif moved into extended horns, and again with the cellos in s10e03.
If I’m being brutally honest though, I felt like I was being manipulated into emotion in last season’s finale – we knew it was coming from the horn buildup and we knew there was going to be a Sam & Dean Moment™. I still reacted the same way, I can’t help it now, but I think that moment didn’t need it, and probably would have been better for it.
// They were really clever with it s09e23 (when Dean died) when the opening motif moved into extended horns, and again with the cellos in s10e03. //
I need to watch S 10 Ep 3, you all are leaving me in the dust with your memory capacity!!
But yes: Dean dying in Season 9 – the horns were tragic and epic – the Winchester Fate writ large.
I’ve always thought about it as their “family” theme. As in, the depth of our love for those most dear to us, those who are our family. So I was extra-special moved when it started playing in the post-episode dedication of the season in memory of Kim Manners after he passed. Such a beautiful acknowledgement of his meaning to the show, cast, and crew.
Erin –
// even in that moment turned my stomach in an almost visceral way. //
It’s so disgusting, right? Like, stop saying “us” – and then I love that Lily says the same thing to Jake. People insisting on their individuality – their separateness – but the world isn’t cooperating, the world is looping them in together into an “us” and a “we.”
and I love watching Aldis Hodge, knowing he’s “faking it.” It just pleases me so much – that actors do what they do – submit so totally to Make Believe that we out here totally believe. It’s so GENEROUS.
Thanks for breaking this up. I always look forward to a new lesson in “Understanding Cinema and TV” :)
I must say, I loved each and every psychic kid individually, even Max and that guy Scott that died in the teaser of one episode. I’m still, after all this time, sad that Andy isn’t still part of the series, or that Ava turned out to be evil (even though she was a GREAT baddie). However, the whole psychic kids storyline made no sense whatsoever, unless Azazel himself was kept in the dark as to what they were supposed to do, or he created all the ones that weren’t Sam just for shit and giggles. Whatever, it’s in the past and shows that even Kripke himself mightn’t always have got things right, just like every other showrunner.
But now, thanks to your review, I understand WHY that last scene has such an impact, why it leaves me unable to blink, and why I sit there for a few seconds with my mouth hanging open once the credits roll. That final close-up and that yell just make such a difference to what it would have been had they left it at that crane shot.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your knowledge.
Juppschmitz – Okay, I am totally blanking now on Scott in the teaser. ?? Help?
I, too, loved each kid – Max was heartbreaking – and Andy and Ava were kooky and relatable. The series really needs at least some people from the outside world to add perspective, breaths of fresh air.
// or he created all the ones that weren’t Sam just for shit and giggles. //
Right? There’s something unfinished about it – like, they had a vision of all these superpower kids but didn’t take the time to really flesh it out and then were like: “Oh well, this isn’t working, let’s kill them all off.”
// That final close-up and that yell just make such a difference to what it would have been had they left it at that crane shot. //
I know!! Even re-watching it as I have done quite a bit – I always get “lulled into” the swoon of that crane shot and sometimes forget that that final moment is coming – its desperation and its echo.
I think “Scott in the teaser” is in reference to the opening to “Hunted”, with the perfect White Rabbit music cue.
Oh that’s right!!
I never liked this episode, but… Thank you, Sheila, for your beautiful, provocative exposition. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your insights into the technical, acting, and directorial choices that have gone into this. Even more so, I appreciate the connections to Milton, Tennessee Williams, HUAC, High Noon, Aldous Huxley, Breakfast Club, etc, etc. I can see how smart these people really are and I feel in good company of the other smart people here who also enjoy this show. When I read your comments I don’t feel as if I’m awkwardly horning in on a bunch of teen twi-hards.
Why did I never like this episode? Well for one, too many implausables, and really, Jesse, you nailed it,
//these penultimate episodes are usually a little (or a LOT) clunky//
I began watching Supernatural around season 7 or 8, hopped around with various reruns, before finally discovering the power of the Netflix binge (thank you SPN and my children for that). So it wasn’t until I began reading Sheila’s blog that I began to notice these patterns. The penultisodes are obviously the place for unloading all those awkward plot lines that didn’t work, throwing in all the last minute mythology that you weren’t able to work in during the season, killing off characters who can’t come back next season due to book tours, and generally coralling all the characters into position for the finale.
The psychic kids never made sense to me. Yeah, maybe a couple of backups in case the Sam thing didn’t work out, but a generation competing? If it didn’t HAVE to be Sam and later Dean, John & Mary, Michael/Lucifer, Heaven/Hell, then why wait millenia to spring the boss if it could be just anyone? I liked the individual stories and they worked to point up the danger that Sam was in, what he might become as a result of the demon’s interference. Ava, just a secretary from Peoria, was especially good. I feel pretty sure that YED had a chitchat with her months ago. Also pretty sure SHE killed her fiance’, Brady (not a lucky name in this show). Even so, she and the other “blue roses” (I like that analogy) were an implausable plot point I was happy to see tossed on the pyre.
I was not so happy to see Ash and the Roadhouse tossed out so unceremoniously. It was just a blip, an aside. We didn’t even get to give it any attention because Sam’s dead… Curse you penultisode!
The most disappointing implausable for me was the nursery scene. We finally get to see what the terrible thing that the YED did to helpless baby Sam and it’s a few drops of blood…what?!? Aside from the creepy pedophile vibe it seems so wimpy, ineffective, and frankly vampiric vs demonic. When Sam says, “You mean I have demon blood in me?” My response was, “No, Sam, you would have pooped that out in an hour.” It’s not a virus like the croatoan (even vampirism is treated implausibly like a virus that can be transmitted and cured, as well). If YED had possessed John and impregnated Mary then Sam would be John’s biological child, but potentially have demon blood or genes or something evil. I guess that whole Rosemary’s Baby is just too dark for SPN except they went there with Jesse, so… How did YED know Mary would have a baby exactly 6 months old exactly 10 years from the day she made the deal? That’s retrospect thinking, I know, but I have no other perspective. It’s implausible and disappointing that Mary’s death, their whole lives, the Supernatural universe revolves around this one weak, stupid, unbelievable plot point. Arghhh! Really, Kripke? I understand that Sam as the epic hero had to have a tragic flaw – being tainted by the YED. I’ve just had to get past it for the sake of all the rest that I love (that and the LEGS).
“It’s you.” This nursery scene also triggers the beginning of my anti-Mary Winchester feelings. I tell myself it’s the writers’ fault. It is completely implausible to me that a loving mother would leave her children (and husband) so vulnerable.
Natalie, yes, yes, yes…
//Up until now, even knowing what they’ve learned about Mary’s deal, Mom has always been Saint Mary to the boys. Now they’re going to have to deal with a flawed, human Mary who made some mistakes and selfish choices. She concealed her past as a hunter. She turned a blind eye to whatever Yellow Eyes was going to do, even though she had ten years to try to stop it. The idealized image they had of Mary is going to shatter into a million pieces.//
I can accept and get past the other implausabilities, but I don’t want to accept this Mary.
// I don’t feel as if I’m awkwardly horning in on a bunch of teen twi-hards. //
hahahahahahaha
Well, thank you! I may be reading stuff into it that isn’t there – but that’s just testament to the depth and richness of these scripts and their symbols.
// If it didn’t HAVE to be Sam and later Dean, John & Mary, Michael/Lucifer, Heaven/Hell, then why wait millenia to spring the boss if it could be just anyone? //
Yeah, for me, it doesn’t add up – and it feels phony. If he didn’t need soldiers (plural) and just needed one – then … what exactly has all this been about? You can’t honestly believe that Andy would in any way, shape or form, be “the one”? Maybe it’s just fun creating chaos – but that seems pretty random to me, and not a strong motivator at all.
And yeah, the roadhouse. Boy, when they want to get rid of something, they use a scorched-earth policy. Let’s WIPE IT OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH. Sometimes it is extremely unceremonious. I felt that way with Castiel wiping Lisa and Ben’s memories clear. They were done with Lisa and Ben, and that was the best they could do to make sure we would never have to see either of those characters again. Never mind that wiping their memories clean made no sense – and would have put them in even more danger (because wouldn’t demons still have their scent? And now, they would be helpless because they would have no idea). And what about the pictures of Dean pinned up on the bulletin board? And the fact that Lisa’s new boyfriend was killed on her living room floor? Wouldn’t people in Lisa’s life say shit like, “How are you doing with all of your grief?” “Do you miss Dean ever?” What, she’s gonna say, “Who’s Dean?” It was phony – and seemed desperate. “Let’s finish this arc, we’re done with it.”
And I don’t know, I think we’re supposed to have ambiguous feelings towards Mary? Like, the show sets her up one way (saint in a nightgown) … and the more we learn, the more that image is shattered. Of course it’s not shattered for Sam and Dean, because she’s their mother, but for us it’s a different story.
I wasn’t wacky about the whole “we set Mary and Dean up in Heaven” thing. Sometimes it’s not a good thing to tie up all your loose ends. In a world where Free Will exists, there is such a thing as Shit Luck, and Shit Luck is even more frightening than Destiny.
//I think we’re supposed to have ambiguous feelings towards Mary.//
I get that “ambiguous feelings” = interesting/non-boring story. “We’re supposed to have…”, but does anybody? Thank you, Natalie, for saying what you said above, but for years I have felt very alone in the Ambiguous Feelings for Mary Winchester Wasteland. OK. So my feelings for FREAKING MARY WINCHESTER have not exactly been ambiguous, but still everyone else has been prostrate at the altar of St. Mary and burning the effigy of Demon John.
I just hope the Ambiguous Mary storyline doesn’t fizzle out like the Ambiguous Amara storyline did.
//“We’re supposed to have…”, but does anybody?//
Yes.
Of course you do because, you, Lyrie, and the others here fall into this category: //I feel in good company of the other smart people here who also enjoy this show.// Whereas the rhetorical “anybodys” sought in my question above fall mostly in this category: //as if I’m awkwardly horning in on a bunch of teen twi-hards.// I sound like an elitist, annoying cunt when I say that. (If the shoe fits…)
// I sound like an elitist, annoying cunt when I say that. //
hahahahaha
I cannot tell you how happy it makes me that everyone has absorbed our troll’s phrase and throws it around willy-nilly.
But yeah: I think Mary is an INCREDIBLY complex subject – which is why I’m excited for its exploration in Season 12. Come on, Andrew Dabb. We’re counting on you.
I think a lot of people have ambiguous feelings towards her! Especially the more we learn.
But Sam and Dean don’t – and that’s what’s interesting and makes for tension/conflict and why so many of us are intrigued by what that confrontation might be like coming up. I hope it’s explored.
I believe you’re the one who said Dean had “oedipus issues’ and was a “Mama’s boy” – clearly out of your frustration at Mary’s return in the S11 finale (If I’m putting words in your mouth, just tell me.) I don’t agree with that – not to take away from your feelings and interpretation!! Just giving my take now. Dean’s attachment to his mother is separate from whether or not Mary was a good mother, etc. Whatever you or I might think of Mary’s choices and behavior – to DEAN she’s the one good thing – the one good memory he has. He NEEDS to saint her – it’s one of the only things he has, and he has lived his life trying to avenge her death.
I’m sure I have opinions and feelings about my own life and people might think, “Wow, she is in denial” or “She is deluding herself” or even “How can she have LIVED that and have such a WRONG interpretation of it” (well, I know for a fact that friends and family DO feel that way about some of my interpretations, and they’re right – but they’re not bipolar, so they try to go gentle on me – but the fact remains.) These interpretations not only feel real to me, they often are the only things I’ve been able to hang onto when the storms come. But maybe someday I’ll go, “Wow, I was so wrong about everything” – but that moment won’t come … until it comes.
That’s what gives tension to characters, or inner conflict … or, better yet: tension between the characters and the audience – which is so great, and which SPN revels in.
Kinda like: “So you think Mary Winchester’s a saint in a nightgown? GET A LOADA THIS.”
And so then we have to deal with OUR feelings – and then we watch Sam and Dean deal with it THEIR way – and it’s frustrating and painful and great and all the rest. It’s good storytelling.
This also goes with the John Winchester thing. The fact that people despise him … I mean, I get it.
But I’m more interested in how Sam and DEAN see him .. and how they deal with him – than in my opinions on his parenting skills. So you watch those grown men deal with each other in Season 1 – and you watch Sam and Dean fight out the interpretation of their childhood – and that’s how families work. We make excuses for one another. Even in – or especially in – abusive upsetting situations.
I’m sure most of us have had friends who have an abusive partner – emotional or physical. And she or he makes excuses for the partner. And it’s like, “Enough already. Why can’t my friend see what the rest of us sees? Why the EXCUSES for that POS?”
That’s why I love watching Sam and Dean have those little internal shifts any time Mom or Dad come up. Dean’s use of the word “brainwashing” … I literally got goosebumps because it was the clearest admission of what had been done to him, the true atmosphere of his childhood, what was taken AWAY from him before he even knew any other options.
Mary has not been “dealt with” – not for a long long time. Complexity was added to her character in those two time-travel episodes. Mary is constantly used against them – mostly Dean – by manipulative demons and angels and all the rest – because it’s their softest most vulnerable spot – their untouchable spot. Don’t you touch her. Don’t you use her against me. Don’t you DARE. That’s not being a Mama’s Boy. That’s being a traumatized 4-year-old whose mother was ripped away from him. Or being a grown man who never got to know his mother.
I have very ambiguous feelings about Mary – and it’s been interesting watching both Sam and Dean kind of skirt around it. That seems natural to me. Why would they WANT to throw away the memory of having a mother who loved them – or, even a martyred mother … It’s hugely threatening to admit that your “perfect childhood” might not have been so perfect. People are in therapy for years trying to get their heads around stuff like that.
two (or three) cents.
Oh, Sheila, I feel really special that you remember my comment (better than I do). Hahaha
I did use the words “oedipal” and possibly “Mama’s boy”, but I was attempting to sarcastically express my eeewww reaction to that scene and to Dean’s portrayal in that way. I also used the phrase “damsel-in-distressing” (even my predictive text remembers better than I do – creepy). I felt both Dean and Mary were set-up in that final scene in a really skin-crawling way that is unfair to either character regardless of my less than ambiguous feelings for FMW. I understand that it was meant to be somewhat awkward as sister!god Amara had never known a mother and didn’t really understand the pictures in his room. Or invading his head (poor Dean, penetrated again) she misinterpreted his longing to fill the mom shaped hole in his heart, because she’s never experienced the loss of a parent.
I’m afraid I was being a little/a lot trollish: “How dare they make my poor sweet Dean, (who only loves the OC that is suspiciously like me in AAOOO) look like a creepy, oedipal, mama’s boy saving his damsel-in-distress, clearly too young for him mama at night in the woods in her Victorian nighty.” Hahaha
They could have made it awkward, but they chose to romanticize/sexualize the awkwardness and I feel that was just gratuitous on their part. (And I’m still a little angry about it.)
As for our own parent/child relationships they can’t help but inform our thoughts on the characters we see portrayed in movies, TV, and literature. Everyone has parents such as they are. We aren’t in a Brave New World yet. As my 3 daughters are in their young 20s becoming adults, I have become keenly aware of how paradoxical that parent/child relationship is. Both joy and heartbreak existing at the same time. The wise Mutecypher once told me, “If they’re not breaking your heart you’re not doing it right!” When your child gets angry with you, disagrees with you, wants to get away from you, wants to vote for Bernie (what!) it hurts like hell and you’re like, “what did I do wrong?” But then you realize that the alternative is a child who never grows up, never becomes the beautiful individual they are meant to be. From the child perspective you love and respect your parents (more so as you get older), you cringe away from hurting them, but it’s so necessary to sometimes just get really angry, even lash out. It’s just part of the process and doesn’t mean we don’t love, in fact it likely means we love more. Who has the energy to be angry with someone you don’t care about? Well, a lot of people apparently, but not me.
I feel somewhat parental towards Dean and Sam and I love that joy/heartbreak paradox of their feelings towards their imperfect parents. I ascribe to the philosophy that all of us are a jumble of nature, nurture, trauma, and triumph. Rather than blaming ‘family of origin’ or childhood traumas I try to embrace all the influences in a person’s life that have shaped them into the person they are today. Dean & Sam are a wonderful, fictional example of that. I say wow! the world needs these guys who can battle monsters. Their suffering sux, but were I a denizen of that fictional world I would be grateful for the people they have become.
Geez, Melanie, stepaway from the Netflix…
There’s a wise mutecypher? Who knew?
All this talk about cleanliness, and then jewelry/appearance is really great!
In my mind, it is also related to class – that’s because that is an important topic to me, and we all project our own stuff, at least partially. I mean, filth is in the job description: blood, severed heads, digging rotting corpses… They do it without flinching. But then when he has to use a public phone, Dean is worried about germs? That’s hilarious, and not at all incoherent, for me – I have examples of people EXACTLY like that. It’s just interesting layers.
There is a good post somewhere on tumblr on the subject… unfortunately I can’t seem to find it so I’l paraphrase:
“Dean Winchester on a job that involves finding the dismembered body parts of a victim in the trash, rummaging it while humming, but then totally gets disgusted be a banana peel”
I think it sums it.
btw JEWELRY.
I’m so glad that it was mentioned. This is one of the main things that bother me with the post-Kripke Dean: no jewelry. It seems off. There si just no good explanation to them vanishing like that.
Also, I sometimes theorize they are.. well.. loot.
//There is a good post somewhere on tumblr on the subject…//
Of course, there is!:)
Great paraphrase/quote.
Sheila, When you were listing your gangs of freaks standing together facing off the forces of evil I couldn’t help but think that one gang really can’t be left off that list: Black Bart, the Waco Kid, Ms. Lili Von Schtupp, et al…
“Excuse me while I whip this out.”
I don’t know why, even in serious moments, but SPN always seems to me to be shouting out to Mel Brooks. Is there a connection behind the scenes?
Ha!!
Blazing Saddles? That’s the real Frontierland.
Mel Brooks just turned 90!!
Ok, as promised. The link to my Azazel Meta-Essay:
https://www.tumblr.com/customize/archtroop?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Farchtroop.tumblr.com
(Part 1 mind you. What the hell am I subjecting myself to? Oh, yeah, the literal Hell.)
Have fun and let me know what you think! I need to go and start the other half. @_@
Thanks – looking forward to reading!
Melanie/Lyrie, et al – carrying this down from upthread because it got too long and I got confused:
// I also sense an American wild west Frontier identity with the hunters vs the entitled, old world European parentage of the MOL, albeit embraced in an American best and brightest kind of way with their super computer and high tech tracking systems. //
The Europeanization of the Men of Letters has been really interesting – and, ha, after Charlie made her comment, now we have women of letters too – they figured out right away they needed to back off of that sexist shit, or Tumblr would go after their ass.
I also think that the hunters – with their commando atmosphere – and the Men of Letters – with their brainiac atmosphere – and the divide therein is similar to, say, the Marine Corps, or Navy SEALs and, say, the Air Force … or, at least the feeling that some of the armed forces branches have to the other branches – which is too deep and detailed a subject to go into. To boil down a hugely complex subject: “we camp out in the dirt, we eat MREs, we never take showers … while you all hang out at Air Force Bases in Thailand and go to strip clubs. WE’RE the REAL warriors, pussies.”
Macho. Making a virtue out of deprivation. And, in a way, at least for hunters – deprivation keeps you sharp, keeps you focused. You don’t get soft. Comfort can lull you to sleep.
Clear class issues all around – and it would be good to explore that fuller. Sam and Dean are on the crossroads of that. Raised one way, finding out later that there’s this whole other tradition they’re a part of … that they, too, can wear a robe and sleep on memory foam mattresses and have a telescope that would be the envy of NASA if NASA ever saw it.
It would have been interesting (too late now) if one of the guys – I’d assume Dean, but it actually might have been more interested if it had been Sam – had actually balked at the bunker … who MISSED the old dirty moldy world. After all, it’s all they knew. If moldy walls and stale Twinkies is all you know … it wouldn’t be 100% easy to walk away from it. Consider kids who grew up in, say, Romanian orphanages under the worse kinds of conditions – adopted by nice middle-class American families – but the kids still hoard food, steal, and all the rest. You’re not gonna snuggle up in a clean bed after a childhood like that without some complex feelings and reactions.
But it’s too late for that now. Still, it would have been interesting. Sam sneaking out to have a night or two in a grim gross motel, just to remember who he is, where he came from.
Yeah, I can see Sam missing the dirt and Dean clinging to comfort. We always come back to Sam and his complex, calm macho-ness – he knows who he is, he can be comfortable living in the dirt AND talking to the Queen – versus Dean, so out of place in a lot of environments, at least on a interpersonal level.
Right!!
Sam fits in everywhere (which is so weird when you consider how weird he is) – but yeah, his “calm macho-ness” (a great phrase – reminds me of the “casual masculinity” thing, the phrase from my friend Mitchell) helps him. He doesn’t have anything to prove.
Dean, on the other hand …
Mmm. You’re wearing a blanket, Dean. Stop.
Lyrie:
// It’s also interesting, the act of going from one category to the other. Some people will always feel out of place, others feel like it was their right place all along, some feel like they are betraying the group they come from… This is never simple, and I’ve found few examples of that being explored in fiction. When it happens, like it did in SPN, it just happens, and the shift is not acknowledged. But I think it is HUGE in one’s life, that change. And I can picture once-Stanford-Sam being very comfortable with the fancy People of Letters, but Dean? //
Right, it’s like an Oliver Twist thing – living on the streets to palatial mansion! Will you always feel like a visitor? Will you ever ever relax or will you always wonder when it will be taken from you? Or you will be taken from it?
Especially with children.
This goes back to the cleanliness conversation up above.
Dean has a memory of living in a clean house. Sam doesn’t. When Dean gets settled into the bunker, he goes on a cleaning jag. He continues that jag. He practically wears an apron. He’s living the life of his dreams … and maybe HE didn’t even know how much he wanted it, yearned for cleanliness, hot showers, neat-ness, his own things around him.
Sam, though? He doesn’t give a shit.
I always thought that was hysterical – and disturbing – and GREAT. Just a GREAT detail from the SPN writers – one of my favorite things, that hasn’t been “developed” – because it’s not the sort of thing you really develop on a show like this – but it definitely creates a tension.
The bunker brought up all kinds of issues in that one “nesting” episode – but those issues appear to have vanished.
I mean, what is more middle-class than considering which retirement community you will eventually join?
///I always thought that was hysterical – and disturbing – and GREAT. ///
I’ve also noticed that. And I agree.
Sam knows nothing else. Even his place with Jess, if you look closely, was a bit of a mess. Great detail.
Right?
He just doesn’t care. It’s not in him to care. Nor SHOULD he care if he doesn’t want to.
Dog hair in the car? Who cares?
Dean as Neat-Nik has always been so entertaining to me – but I also like all of the psychological implications of it. Clearly.
oh! A very good gifset summery of Dean’s, “cleanliness” btw, HERE:
http://babybrotherdean.tumblr.com/post/146729051388/theinevitableblastwave-dean-winchester-is-a
You’ll notice that half of it was probably not in the script, just JA’s doing. How the writers and the actors work together to create a fully-fleshed character is always amazing to me.
Also, Dean getting out of the phone booth: me, in the metro, everyday. #NeatFreaks
// Also, Dean getting out of the phone booth: me, in the metro, everyday. #NeatFreaks //
Oh man, me too. Especially now in the summer when NYC is so gross and sticky and stinky. The subways are like incubators of grossness and I wipe my hands compulsively any time I have to touch one of the subway-poles.
Other people! Bodily fluids! Germs! Gross!
//Come on, Andrew Dabb. We’re counting on you.//
You’re right, Sheila, since clearly the SPN staff is reading us – after all, they did give me my Benny back in season 10, if only for one episode* – we should encourage them. Come on, Andrew Dabb, WE BELIEVE IN YOU!
*What do you mean, deluded? I’m sorry, English is not my first language, I do not understand what you mean, OK, thanks, goodbye.
hahaha Well, I’m convinced that the Elvis references that started popping up (Dean as “Mr. Presley?” not to mention the sandwich) is because they’re all reading here.
I enjoy being deluded!!
A friend of mine, who is an over-thinking nerd like us, wrote a very long, very detailed post on Reddit about two characters in a show he loves. He was contacted by someone asking if he’d be OK giving his email address because one of the producers wanted to congratulate him for his thoughts on the shows. And he did receive the email from the producer! How amazing is THAT?
That is so so cool!!
After my review of Hunt for the Wilderpeople at Tribeca – where I called out the editors specifically for their contribution – I got an email from one of the editors of the film thanking me for even noticing – because usually editors are ignored (even though they are crucial!!) “I edited that scene you mentioned,” he told me.
It made me feel good – and is a reminder of why I do what I do. Not to get praise – but TO praise. If it reaches the intended praise-ee then so much the better!
I’m pulling this down here because I love Sheila’s comment: //when they want to get rid of something, they use a scorched-earth policy. Let’s WIPE IT OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH. Sometimes it is extremely unceremonious//
*ahem* Chatlie in a bathtub? That was at least as unceremonious and abrupt as Ash in the fire. Perhaps someone should warn these secondary characters against the call that goes “Hey Winchesters, I have info for you but can only tell you in person”.
I wonder if scorched earth is a policy handed down in some secret SPN policy manual from showrunner to showrunner. Is there a sign in the writers’ room “No Sacred Characters – Valar Morghulis” with a little footnote in the corner “except Jody and Donna, at least until the next mid-season finale then all bets are off”
Yeah, and the way Charlie’s death came about really bugged me. It felt phony. And Cas was useless and that was stupid. What exactly was Rowena doing that Charlie found so unbearable that she had to get out of there? Slightly bitchy comments? Come ON. You can’t put your headphones on? Someone is hunting you out there – you can’t tolerate some bitchy chatter?
And THEN she goes to the motel and sits at the window so everyone can see her.
I hated that she died – but I hated that Bobby died too – and I accept that no one (except Sam or Dean is safe) – but if you’re GOING to kill someone – please don’t “show your hand” so transparently like you did with Charlie. “We must get rid of her so let’s make this super-smart woman who’s been a Ninja for over a year, dodging her pursuers, suddenly make all these bush-league mistakes.”
Nope!!
and Donna and Jodie. Ugh.
It was the lazy writing that made her death so stupid. Okay, the story needed an event that hit Dean so hard he went full MOC, even hating his brother and unable to be stopped. A RageMonster. But as you pointed out, the lead up to Charlie being alone was STUPID and lazy. And not letting her die with a room full of dead enemies to show she’d been fighting to the death? So easily done but no, dead in a bathtub which I happen to believe the writing duo thought was a clever play on the Trope. Because they think they are clever. My head cannon: after the split Charlies left Oz, the *real* intact Charlie stepped out. (From behind the curtain? Sure, why not.) And her story goes on.
I think instead of a full blown spin-off they need to do short cycle stories following these characters. Like 6 episodes for the summer hiatus: Charlie in Oz, Samuel Colt – Hunter in the Old West, The Early Years: Bobby & Rufus, Henry Winchester: A Man of Letters. And if they *really* want to find a storyline for Cas, then do it this way, on his own.
*Sigh*. Thank you all for the opportunity to vent.
Kathy – // which I happen to believe the writing duo thought was a clever play on the Trope. //
Interesting! Huh, that never occurred to me. I don’t like it if that was part of the reasoning. Charlie deserved way better than that.
I love your idea of short cycle stories – that would be great! There are definitely characters I’d like to see more (and less) of.
I want FRANK DEVEREUX to come back. Man, I miss him.
Kathy – Love the idea of mini-seasons for all of those. Maybe even Stanford Sam with Colin Ford? Or how about the Campbells after they arrived on the Mayflower (his could be a little darker because they probably had something to do with the Salem witch trials at some point).
AND FRANK. Never enough Frank. Such a bristly hedgehog of snark and conspiracy theories that made Bobby look cuddly by comparison.
Stanford Sam will always be an intriguing possibility. Maybe now Young Sam is almost old enough to play a college student we could get some flashbacks. It’s a big “missing” for me!
And we also have an excellent Young Dean now.
Come on, Andrew Dabb. We’re counting on you!
I’m not sure what has happened, but all the pictures in your posts have stopped appearing for me! I’ve tried multiple browsers and various computers, and still have no luck. Just wanted to let you know in case it actually is something you can fix (if you want to bother).
Rebecca – hmm, thank you for letting me know. I have only heard of one person who also has this issue and I was unable to figure out why this might be. I wonder if it’s a hosting issue. I’m not a technology person – I’m so sorry. I’ll send a note to my hosting place and see if I can get to the bottom of it.
Thank you for letting me know!!
Is it only Supernatural or does it happen in other posts?
Ok, I’ve sorted out the pattern, at least. If I do a google search and link directly to an episode’s post from the search results list, then everything shows up just fine.
If I go to the page on your blog that has the list of episodes for the season, and click on the episode link there, only the film clips show up.
Not very technical myself, so I have no suggestions, but I figured I’d let you know in case it meant something to you!
Today it started working again, both for 2.22 and then, when I came back, for this one, too. No idea what it was. Sorry!
weird! I’m glad it’s working again!
Hello Sheila!
I started watching Supernatural an year back, I am currently revisiting it. Thank you so much for your in depth, nuanced analysis. I am not a cinematography student so I am probably missing out on a lot of what you say but your reviews are truly accessible and are a good perspective when I write. Writing is somewhat like directing a movie in your head, I suppose. Many of your comments about Sam’s character being an allegory for mental illness hit close since I struggle with depression.
I think the Jake as a substitute for Dean is telling (I can easily see Dean serving in the Marines) and all the more painful when he betrays Sam in the end. His last steps are towards Dean, the one who for all intents and purposes raised him.
Ila – hello! Thank you for reading and thank you for your nice comment. I am very glad you’re enjoying the recaps! I’ve been doing a re-watch too of Season 1 and Season 2- it’s such rich territory, I just love it!