Directed by Kim Manners
Written by Eric Kripke
“There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” – Francis Bacon
For this episode, I’ll be going over ground I’ve covered – extensively? – in two other re-caps mainly, although it’s everywhere: Season 1’s “Shadow” and “Devil’s Trap. It has to do with Beauty. Are y’all bored yet? In the best films, beauty is not set-dressing or superficial. It is thematic, which is why you hear film critics talk about it so much. In the right hands, style IS story (or a huge part of HOW the story is told.)
Kim Manners was a risky director with a dramatic painterly style. You can clock his shots in a line-up. The shadows have texture, softness, depth: they creep, they flow. It is a difficult look to achieve (otherwise we’d see it more often). Robert Singer has a great visual style, too, lots of nods to films from the past, but his interest lies mainly in the intricacies of relationships. Kim Manners is interested in what goes on in the backs of people’s heads. He is interested in memories and how those memories blot out the world. He is interested in the spaces between people: what happens in between? Is that space taut, or slack? Does it vibrate with electricity? What’s the current across that space? His use of the spiraling camera move is scene-stealer-ish, but it calls attention to itself only so it can do what it is meant to do: make palpable the space between people, and how people reach across that space. OR, how the space around people vanishes, leaving an inky-black void. The void blots out distractions: the only thing remaining is the characters’ emotional experience.
In a more conventional style (close-ups, medium shots, and back), even with very good acting, individuals are cut off from one another, there is no sense of the space in the room, or that characters inhabit the same space. But a spiraling camera move allows us to see one person, then another person, and where these people are in relation to one another. Style does not necessarily dictate substance. But sometimes it does. Every frame in the episode (even, maybe, the Roger-Corman-dry-ice cemetery at the end) expresses the substance.
And THAT’S what’s to keep in mind with Manners, more so than any other director on the series.
To compare to other directors: The Coen Brothers: whatever movie they make, the style expresses the substance. Some people think they are slaves to style, or that their movies are ONLY style. I disagree. The style of Inside Llewyn Davis is not the style of Blood Simple is not the style of Hail Caesar. PT Anderson’s style, one of the most lusciously aesthetic in the business, also shifts from film to film, although he has his “tics” like most great directors do. Alfred Hitchcock’s style does not change from film to film, but his style always expresses the substance, because he chose material in line with his sensibility.
In terms of Supernatural: Think of recent seasons. The lighting is sometimes flat and “realistic”. The settings are not transformed by the Mood of the series, but used only for their function. (The first scene in “The Purge” with Donna and the donuts is extremely entertaining but NOTHING in terms of its style. Nowheresville. Look back on the pilot to the scene where Dean and Sam interview the goth girls. It’s a NOTHING scene. But my God. That STYLE.
“All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2” is a tour de force from Manners, after the pre-amble of Robert Singer’s mud-soaked High Noon Part 1. The psychic kids are gone (mostly), the way cleared for what really matters: the brothers. First up: we have Sam dead on the bed, with Dean boo-hoo-ing over him. The first time (with “Faith” a testing of those waters) a brother has died outright. And secondly: Dean’s crossroads-deal, which single-handedly creates the Arc of the next season. What also matters is Sam’s REACTION to the deal, and Dean’s reaction to that reaction, and on down the hall of mirrors. Samuel Colt, Devil’s Trap, Hell, Demons … That’s the plot, but that’s not the story.
Kim Manners’ style buries us, traps us, smothers us. How to film tragedy and operatic emotion? Make it as beautiful as you possibly can. Beauty also illuminates one of the dark subtextual things running through the series: The Winchesters flirt with death, seduce it, court it, run towards it. They bargain with it. They play chess with it.
Playing chess with death. “The Seventh Seal,” Ingmar Bergman (1957)
Death appears as a sexy girl at a crossroads. Or a Reaper whispering that there is peace, if only one would submit. Sylvia Plath wrote about death like it was her longed-for lover. Her terrifying poem “A Birthday Present” opens with the line:
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking‘Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!’But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
In a life filled with trauma and anguish, is it any wonder that they run towards oblivion, arms outstretched? Isn’t it better to choose as opposed to having that choice made for you?
As Dean tells a devastated Bobby later, choosing death will mean his life meant something. He will “go out” obeying his father’s final command. (This was one of the things that disappointed me in Season 11: how the Amara arc fizzled out. After episode upon episode showing Dean yearning for Amara, and Amara telling him he was “the one,” and how awesome that was – for me, anyway – and definitely something we’ve never seen before – turns out the whole thing was a feint, and it was actually CHUCK who was “the one.” Good to see Chuck (I guess?) but not good to see Chuck take over the whole damn narrative. When it was DEAN she wanted, when it was DEAN that wanted her …. THEN we had something. Oblivion, death, nothing-ness, the End of Being, peace, bliss, Dean’s yearning for all of these things … represented by a woman in a boobalicious black dress and an interpretive-dance style of walking. Dean’s yearning for Amara was consistent with his death-wish throughout the series, sometimes barely managed, always a secret coiled up in himself, away from prying eyes. His ace in the hole. His check-mate.)
If you had to boil Dean Winchester down to his essence, you’d find most of it here in “All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2.”
Such deep and OLD emotions require the painterly style of Goya. Or Rembrandt.
Rembrandt, “The Supper at Emmaeus”
Or Caravaggio.
“The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist,” Caravaggio, 1608
… or the genius whose quote opens this re-cap, Francis Bacon, whose work is so beautiful, so violent, so drawn to decay, so erotic … that it is the Death Wish made Manifest.
Kim Manners has a lot in common with these guys.
In searching for art images that remind me of Kim Manners’ distinctive style, I came across a fascinating link: Rembrandt Lighting in Photography. This is what we get in the closeups of Dean in the opening scene. Although Manners often created a look that was a scene-stealer in and of itself, his was a purely emotional and psychological style.
So I’ll be talking a lot about that.
1st scene
Part 1 was grey too, but it was a living grey, mud and sky and rain. This grey is lifeless. Dead. Decay. Starting with a God’s-Eye omniscient point of view of Sam, the camera circles down and around until it rests flush with the bed, looking across Sam’s body at Dean, leaning in the doorway. HOW the story is told helps create powerful emotional reaction (whether you are explicitly aware of it or not), and that camera move is a heart-breaker.
There are religious connotations to the imagery, the body laid out with a mourner watching over is reminiscent of a million religious paintings and triptychs around the world.
The final moment of Part 1 had Dean shaking the body that no longer houses his brother, trying to jolt Sam back in. Dean could feel him leave, though. He could feel that Sam was no longer there. And what an absence Death is.
The lighting on Sam is like that “Rembrandt Lighting” article. Christ in the tomb. This iconography matters, it works ON us: the associations it calls up may be subconscious, but those are the most powerful associations of all.
If Sam’s body is lifeless, then Dean’s energy is lifeless, too. He’s been crying for probably two days. He’s cried so much he’s made himself ill. You can hear it in his voice when he talks to Bobby, his voice nasal, thick, his nose stopped up from sobbing. His whole head is filled with tears. Imagine trying to create what your voice sounds like when you’ve been crying for two days. That’s what Ackles pulls off.
I’ve written before about Manners’ adoration of beautiful faces. Look at how lovingly he filmed Gillian Anderson in The X-Files. To him, she was a Sistine Chapel Madonna and needed to be treated accordingly. Nobody is so beautiful that they can’t be ruined by a director who doesn’t know how to film them properly. Watch the first season of X-Files before everyone figured Anderson out, figured out just what a Babe she was. She almost looks dumpy in some of the episodes, she’s wearing block-y suits and pale white tights. WHITE TIGHTS? It’s unforgivable. Manners approached her face not just with care, but with love and appreciation. He painted her with his camera. It’s like he had been dreaming about her at night, obsessing over her coloring (because who wouldn’t?), and how he could film it so that the whole world could see what he saw. If this sounds objectifying or male-gaze-y … grow up and welcome to Hollywood. I’m actually not against objectification. I enjoy beautiful things myself. If it’s pornographic, then sure, that stuff can be damaging. And when it’s the attitude of the GOP nominee, well …
But the male gaze also gave us the Mona Lisa. It gave us this …
Marlene Dietrich, “The Blue Angel,” directed by Josef von Sternberg. My life would be much the poorer if von Sternberg had not been so 100% OBSESSED with Marlene Dietrich.
In these opening scenes in “All Hell Breaks Loose Part 2”: Manners has obsessed on Ackles’ face, its almost … delicate? quality … its paleness and the bright green eyes and what all that would look like surrounded by black velvet shadows, and how that would highlight him like a jewel. Because what is the story? Dean’s alone-ness, Dean’s grief, Dean’s desperation, so desperate it leads him to the crossroads.
Our responses to beauty are not un-complicated. Most of us are not beautiful like Ackles or Dietrich is. Beauty like that can summon and beauty like that can also alienate. Interestingly, Supernatural deals with that all the time in scenes with Dean (most especially), one of the unexpected quirks of the show. If Dean sashayed into every room and people fell over like nine-pins … well, okay. That’s one obvious way to go. But boring and expected. (Manners to Ackles: “Give them what they want but give it to them in a way they won’t expect.” That’s it.) I’ve known about 3 people, off the top of my head (one of whom I dated), who were so beautiful that I could actually see how their beauty operated in a room. People would withhold how awestruck they were, they would almost recoil. A friend of mine who looks like Christy Turlington has an entirely different experience of the world and other people, because when she walks into a room, she turns heads, but people are also afraid to talk to her, or men make a point of ignoring her to show that her beauty doesn’t work on them. Elaine Dundy writes about this phenomenon in her book about Elvis, Elvis and Gladys. Elvis’ beauty showed up early, as a child, and he developed into an exotically stunning teenager, and while, yes, he was very shy, Dundy theorizes that it was his beauty that isolated him from his peers. Beauty – like athletic ability – like mathematical genius – is an aristocracy. We live in a society that is supposed to be a meritocracy, but beauty doesn’t play by those same rules (“eye of the beholder” notwithstanding). All people are NOT created equal on the Beauty-Spectrum, and so non-beautiful people have REACTIONS to Beauty that are not just “OMG pretty pretty.”
People sometimes re-coil from Dean, because Beauty like his comes across as a demand. And often Dean IS demanding, he wants attention, sexual connection, he wants to be acknowledged as funny, or cool. More often than not, the response he gets from people who don’t know him is: “What the hell does this guy want from me?” Beauty creates intimacy without any relationship behind it. The fact that Supernatural incorporates this very human and strange reaction to the Beauty of Others is one of its weirdest and most insightful qualities.
And so there is a kind of queasy pleasure in seeing Beauty suffer. Nobody understood this better than Alfred Hitchcock, who cast the most beautiful people in the world in his films, and then proceeded to make them suffer horrible fates, getting stabbed in showers, groveling in the dirt hiding from a cropdusting plane. Hitchcock understood that audiences love their beautiful movie stars, but they also love it when their beautiful movie stars are made to pay – just a little bit – for how unlike us they are. Hitchcock knew he had no beauty himself. He was a bit of a sadist.
Manners isn’t a sadist, but he loves pain most of all, because pain makes us human, pain connects us. Dean’s pain is the source of the episode, and so Manners lingers on it, circles around it, obsesses on it, blurring out the background in fuzzy greys, or obliterating it in velvet-blacks, so that our confrontation with it – and our feelings about it, whatever they may be – cannot be avoided. Alongside all of that, though, is also an awareness of the effect of eyelashes and freckles and eyes and how the light plays on all of this. (Serge Ledouceur, of course, is Manners’ most important partner in this.)
Look at the variety there. The exploration of an actor’s face, and how shadows fall on that face.
Another thing that happens – in this scene and the scene that follows when Dean talks to Sam – is that Ackles is free to move, within his closeups. The camera is not set on a tripod in a rigid way. The movements are so slight you can barely perceive them at times, but the camera follows him. Gently. Adjusting when Ackles moves, and so Ackles is free to do what he wants to do, because he knows the camera operator won’t miss anything. Trust. This is most evident in the moment when Dean suddenly stands up screaming, “WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?” His movement is wild and unfettered. It’s done in one, and the camera doesn’t miss ANY of it. THAT IS COLLABORATION.
In the second most famous scene in White Heat, James Cagney’s character, in prison because he’s a total sociopath, learns that his beloved mother has died. What follows is one of the greatest pieces of acting ever caught on celluloid. No contest.
Apparently, right before they filmed the scene, Cagney went over to the cameraman and murmured the order, “Follow me.” Cagney knew that once it started going for him – once the emotion started happening – all bets were going to be off, in terms of what he would feel like doing, where he would go, and he needed the cameraman to be ready. And the cameraman was. Not only does Cagney’s acting make me cry, but the cameraman’s work – invisible, un-celebrated – but watch for it – its slight shifts right, its slight adjustments so that Cagney was always in the frame, also makes me cry.
So in this first scene in Part 2 with Bobby: Watch for the slight and sensitive shifts, the emotional and intuitive collaboration between cameraman, focus-puller, and actor. I cannot overstate how important this is. The camera work here is so good, so responsive to the actors, that it makes the scene a living breathing entity.
So let’s talk about Jim Beaver. I was lucky enough to get to see Jim Beaver as “Big Daddy” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof this summer in the beautiful Berkshires. I am not surprised that Beaver is as amazing onstage as he is on television and in film. He started out in theatre. “Big Daddy’ is a MONSTER of a role. He talks for about 10 pages straight in Act II. That entire scene is a two-hander because Big Daddy’s desperate objective is to get through to his son.
The scene here with Dean is very similar. Bobby —
— is worried about Dean’s fatalistic attitude. He’s got to get him back on track because something huge is coming down the pike – Sam or no Sam – and he needs Dean focused, and he needs Dean to believe (at the very least) that the world is worth saving.
— is worried about Sam lying there dead. Sam’s body needs to be dealt with, like, yesterday.
— is worried that Dean might be tempted to follow in his father’s footsteps and make a deal.
— and FINALLY! Bobby loved Sam too! He is devastated, but there is zero space for him to feel any of that because Dean’s emotions have sucked up all the oxygen in the room.
Dean can be ferocious and intimidating Other people might miss the heartbreak driving it, or be scared off. But the way Beaver plays the scene, all you can see in his eyes is heartbreak, and how much he can perceive Dean’s heartbreak, wishing he could take the pain away. It’s a great scene, because even as Dean pushes Bobby away (at one point literally), it is clear that both men know what is really going on. Dean averts his eyes at one point, a fleeting moment of shame and reticence, when he apologizes to Bobby. These are intricate little emotional details, so important to conveying the relationship, the circumstances around the circumstances.
There are some reaction shots of Jim Beaver in this scene – and the one out in the junkyard – that kill me.
The scene ends with a couple of really intense focus-pulls. (Supernatural uses focus-pulls a lot when the brothers are standing side by side, or when they’re in the Impala together. I adore focus-pulls. Clearly.) Here, Bobby and Dean stand across the room from one another, an abyss between them (member what I said about Manners being obsessed by the spaces between people and what happens in that space?) The focus is on Dean in the background, uncomfortable in his own skin, with Bobby a blur in the foreground – until Bobby turns towards the camera, and then Dean blurs out, leaving us with Bobby’s helpless-yet-cantankerous-response. Relationship. That’s what a shot like that is about.
Dean’s glance left towards Sam orients us for what we see next: totally his point of view: Sam lying in his Rembrandt-lit death bed, Dean a fuzzy blur in the foreground. The scene ends with a dramatic focus-switch, Dean turning his head into the profile, taking up the whole screen, Sam now a blur in the background. A classic Supernatural shot.
Whether we are aware of the underlying nuts-and-bolts, whether or not we are even aware that these things represent choices, the visuals ground us in emotional reality better than words ever could, and better than back-and-forth closeups. These characters cannot let one another go. They cannot be alone. Even the camera moves won’t let them be alone. Nobody gets to have their own closeup. There is always someone else pushing in on the side.
2nd scene
Aldis Hodge returns as Jake, freaked-out runner up to Sam in the Demon Army Leader Sweepstakes. He’d probably prefer being in a war zone to this. Fredric Lehne returns as Yellow-Eyes, a little bummed out that Sam wasn’t “the one” after all. (None of this adds up entirely, especially once it becomes clear, seasons later, that all of it – Mary – John – was foreordained. Oh well.)
What is interesting in Jake (and Hodge’s playing of it) is that although he just murdered one of the leads of the series, he’s clearly not a villain. Not everyone is power-hungry, although demons think otherwise. The scene here is a mirror-image of the scene in Part 1 between Yellow Eyes and Sam.
When Jake says to Sam at the end of this episode, “You can’t be alive. You can’t be” – it has already been established, without a shadow of a doubt, that Jake is smart and capable. He, like Sam, is a professional killer, so you believe what he says. That’s very important and why his comment gives everyone serious pause. If it were Ava babbling “You can’t be alive, I killed you”, everyone would write her off as hysterical. I can do without the juvenile “which Super Hero Kid will be the last one standing” plot-line, but Jake’s role is crucial.
I don’t like demon lines involving “I will eat your skin” “I will pull out your liver and boil it for supper”. Let me SEE it, please. All talk no action.
Like almost every scene, you always see a blur of the other person on the side in every close-up. This helps create a sense of complicity, pressure.
3rd scene
Here is the apex of Pain = Beauty. The visual style is practically self-indulgent, all those circles, gentle camera adjustments, blackness and blurry glimmering background lights. And Dean’s words are self-indulgent, the camera moves reflecting his reality. Here we see the self-pitying side of him, raw and unprotected, when normally it’s covered up. The “I guess that’s what I do” kind of comment. I understand that some fans get defensive on Dean’s behalf when I say stuff like this, and that’s fine, but I just want to reiterate that I don’t watch the show as The Dean Show, and it is the complexity in the character, his flaws, his tendencies to sell himself out, and – yes – how annoying he sometimes is – that hooks me in. I feel zero need to DEFEND Dean, or make excuses for him. I would defend my brother against criticism, but Dean is a fictional character.
I know about this kind of self-pitying language and it does come up in times of crisis and grief, and it’s a cop-out, however automatic. That automatic cop-out is Dean’s Achilles heel, the pit from where he makes his most foolish decisions, it is the weakness and brokenness in him, re-enforced by his father. It’s twisted: Dean was given one job, and he did it to the best of his ability throughout his life. Meanwhile, no matter what he did, it wasn’t good enough for his father. And despite all the work he did, Sam jumped ship for college (A) and now has died (B), under his watch. So the “bulking up” of child-Dean into a warrior has not resulted in a strong man, but a very weak man. It’s quite an insightful observation. Perfectionism comes out of self-loathing. Self-loathing is such a wretched emotional condition that human beings will do anything – up to and including suicide – to avoid feeling it.
So for me, while this is obviously a very sad scene, and Ackles does an amazing job with it – it’s the layers that make it so powerful, and it’s the layers that have resonance and legs. This is NOT just grief we’re seeing here. Because Dean wouldn’t just be feeling grief, anyway. This is part of his father’s legacy: anything bad that happens is because you have somehow failed, what can you do to make it better next time? That’s all well and good when you’re talking about a pop quiz in American History, but when it’s about the death of your brother … well, that is a hell of a thing to put on a kid’s head, right? What we are seeing is the CRUX of the character. This is the fatalism of Dean (which he normally doesn’t show because he’s too damn BUSY), as well as the “Let the world end” attitude that Bobby found so alarming in the previous scene.
I can’t help but watch this scene and think of all that is to come in future seasons. And how Dean’s choice to ‘save’ Sam in Season 9 nearly ruptures the brother’s relationship for good. It doesn’t start here with Dean’s crossroads deal, it starts way before that. It starts with John Winchester and his sacrifice of Dean’s childhood so that Sam would be safe. Dean is not even allowed to have a proper grieving period, because all he is aware of is that he has disappointed his Dad and let down Sam like he has let down everybody. (Remember that amazing comment in “What Is And What Should Never Be” – “I’ll make it up to him. To everyone.” His self-perception is completely incorrect.)
The feelings this scene brings up in me are extremely ambivalent – I know many people cry all the way through, and I get it! – but I can’t. This scene is one of the reasons why the standoff between the two Deans in “Dream a Little Dream of Me” is so fucking cathartic. Dean screaming about the burden put on him in childhood and how he didn’t deserve that is the flip-side of this heavy heavy scene.
Manners films Dean as though he is trapped, you will notice. When the camera moves from Sam over to Dean, there’s a moment where the screen goes completely black. Nobody onscreen. It’s a radical choice! A total void. The camera circles Dean, it never stops moving (there’s only one fully stationary shot in the sequence): all of this gives the impression of Dean like a butterfly pinned on a piece of black velvet. With us, the scientists peering down at his death throes, taking notes. Manners pushes it to the limit, especially in the stunning opener which makes it looks like Dean’s head is floating through outer space like something out of 2001.
Film director Stanley Donen was asked when he came and spoke at my school: “How do you work with Audrey Hepburn and NOT fall in love with her?” Donen paused for a second and said, “You don’t.”
That’s what I feel when I see how Manners films Ackles. It has nothing to do with sexuality or actual romantic love. Or, it does, but not in any literal way. What it has to do with is Beauty and aesthetic appreciation. How rare it is to see something so beautiful, and what a privilege it is to figure out the best way to present it, to help an audience to see what you see.
Photographers talked about Greta Garbo that way. It would be like a nature photographer going to the Grand Canyon for the first time. The challenge – and a beautiful challenge for any artist – was to take the Garbo “thing” and somehow TRANSLATE it into a photograph. Photographers obsessed on this, on her in particular, because she was such a mysterious alluring figure.
Manners circles Ackles obsessively. There are no un-beautiful angles. He hides most of Ackles’ face. He surrounds him with blackness. He has him lean forward into a band of light. He peppers the background with blurry lights. He goes monochromatic, so that we’re almost seeing a black-and-white image, or at least something in shades of grey, with the skin pale enough that the eyelash-shadows give an incredible impression of fragility. It’s an incredible canvas. Manners knows it. He relishes it. This is not just narrative smarts. It’s artistic appreciation.
I’ve already mentioned one of my favorite moments: Dean standing up, with the camera staying low peering up at him, and then his freak-out, the camera making sure to capture it all. Why does this please me so much? I guess it’s because I love the unsung heroes who are in charge of the equipment, who know their job, who represent the best of collaboration. Cameraman’s inner monologue: Okay, so shit’s gonna get crazy once he stands up for that last line and I have no idea where he’s going to go. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss it.
4th scene
We’ve got a couple of great things in this scene.
We have a crane shot to end all crane shots…
… echoing the crane shot that began the crossroads scene in “Crossroad Blues.” Not until halfway through Season 3 will Dean even admit that he’s scared and that, yeah, maybe he feels like living. Dean is embarrassed to admit his life means something to him. He feels like his life is nothing.
The crane shot minimizes him.
It does so in a dizzying way, too: It starts on the ground and then teeters up to a dizzying height, FAST. This is reflective of Dean’s experience in the moment (as are the jump-cuts when he’s digging in the dirt. Supernatural rarely does jump-cuts. They always stand out). The minimizing God’s-eye crane shot then vanishes to a shot of Dean from below, staring around him, another example of how the film-making creates the emotional disorientation of Dean at this moment: he is tiny and worthless, he is also huge and filled with heroic purpose. BOTH are true. Simultaneously.
The dizziness continues in the one-shot that follows, Dean looking up and down every gravel road hitting that crossroads, the camera circling around him, looking down the road, then back to Dean, circling back around to look down another road. I am so in love with this shot! How complex it is! The number of focus-pulls! And then, when she does show up, it’s from behind his body. Was the actress crouching in the gravel, below-frame, and then rising up, making sure her body was hidden by his? It’s a visual trick, and it doesn’t appear to be a special effect, and I love it so much I want to kiss it on the mouth.
Ona Grauer is the sexy crossroads demon this time. Jeannette Sousa played the crossroads demon in “Crossroad Blues” and I talked in the re-cap about her ladylike arch-ness, her formidable steel-magnolia sexuality. A Southern belle. Underestimate the tactical abilities of Southern belles at your peril. Grauer’s crossroads demon is different. Her vibe is more of a tough-chick who probably hangs out on St. Mark’s Avenue in the East Village. (St. Mark’s Avenue as it was in 1983, that is. Before gentrification.) A CBGB’s tough-chick. Who then marries really well and moves to Park Avenue, but still has the aura of subversive nightlife around her. New York is full of such women. There’s something about her that suggests experience and loads of it. (She also reminds me of Elizabeth Banks, and that is always a good thing.)
But, as she admits herself, there’s something about Dean.
Kim Manners feels it, too. You can almost picture her getting the “call” from Dean, and taking a second to revel in the anticipation. A shiver of pleasure. This is not only going to be fun, but it will also be an opportunity to get her rocks off. Even if it’s just a kiss. Because she knows what he wants. She’ll make him work for it but she’ll end up giving it to him just to get that kiss.
The casting of peripheral actors has always been really important on the show, helping to ground it in some kind of reality (which is why the bad-acting United Colors of Benetton angels and the preppy demons are so disappointing. None of them can pull off a credible line-reading.) And these crossroads demons are excellent. A lot of real thought has been put into who they are, what their roles are, what they can and cannot do, and how they operate. They are all smart. They make deals. They’re standing at a blackjack table and they hold all the cards. They are intractable, and quite frightening, but the scenes are a come-on. Sealed with a kiss. There’s something about these rules … like: this is the way this is gonna go that makes for an explosive sexual power play.
And of course, Dean brings to almost every interaction this weird mix of constant sexual readiness and an aversion to being touched … This mix, which he is not in control of at all, puts him in a constant bind. It makes him such a compelling and bizarre figure. His aversion looks like desire. And maybe – because his boundaries were compromised so young before he even knew what a boundary was – it IS desire. And maybe this makes him sick to his stomach. The draw of the dark side. His “come and eat me, I taste good” come-ons to monsters, etc. … it’s a way to let off that particular brand of steam. He knows everyone “wants” him. It makes him really uncomfortable. But – like Marilyn Monroe – he uses it to get where he wants to go. The crossroad demon’s relentless sexualization of every comment creates an oppressively sexual atmosphere, and he has to just stand there and take it, tolerate it, because he needs something. Her blatant objectification of him makes him recoil, and if he wasn’t so stressed out he might even roll his eyes. But – and this is not something in the script, it’s not something Manners would tell Ackles, it’s not something that is ANYwhere except in Ackles’ sensitivity in understanding the character he plays and the backstory he has filled in for Dean – Dean is used to this. This situation is familiar. It’s probably been going on since he hit puberty. Who knows what situations he has found himself in. We may not know, but ACKLES knows. The most explicit the show has ever gotten on that score is when the Head Vamp, in his crazy Nest, offers a private tour of the place to newly-turned Dean, the implications clear, that sex is part of the price you pay for being in this particular Nest, an initiation rite, if you will, and there’s a look that flashes across Dean’s face, and it’s not at all a look of horror or shock. It’s a look of, “Oh. This again. I know what this means. I’ve done this.” There’s shame, disgust, on Ackles’ face, and you can also see a little veil go down over the light in his eyes. Almost an “Okay, I know what you want, let’s go get ‘er done so I can get out of here.” The entire backstory of Dean – his nastiest most secret secrets – is there in that expression. And I won’t go too far down this path but I will say: shame also occurs – the worst kind of shame – if you feel desire in abusive moments, especially if you are already a boundary-compromised person, as Dean undoubtedly is. In a milder way, it’s there too in this scene, an almost gathering up of his forces in the face of the come-on: “Oh, you want to fuck me? Get in line, bitch. I’ve been dealing with come-ons like this since I was 13.” In other words, my God, there are too many words already: her purring possessiveness and drooling appreciation of him (reflected also in how Manners films him) is very familiar ground to Dean. And he uses it when he has to, and here he has to. Beauty like his has its drawbacks but here it works in his favor, and maybe it is his best bargaining chip.
An acting teacher of mine would say to us students, if ever we were stuck in a scene: “Every scene is Fight or Fuck. Pick one. See where it gets you.” Your objective is to Fight. Your objective is to Fuck. If you’re stuck, if the scene is not working, pick one of those objectives, play it 100% and see what happens. In my years as an actress, I have never come across a scene where that isn’t true, and where my teacher’s advice failed to work. This crossroads scene has a little bit of both. On both sides. Fight AND fuck. That’s what’s going on.
BUT, and it’s a huge but: what is tragic about this scene is how Dean low-balls himself, once it becomes clear that she’s not going to give him the standard 10-year deal. He negotiates downward. He’ll accept anything. I have to think that Sam, in a similar situation, would say, “You know what, demon? Fuck you.” Not because he didn’t want to save Dean, but because he values himself in a way that is impenetrable (I use that word deliberately). Dean is taken aback at her refusal to give him a deal. He did not see this one coming.
“It’s a fire sale. Everything must go.”
“Keep your gutter soul. It’s too tarnished anyway.”
Devastating.
But isn’t that how Dean already feels about himself? This is just confirmation of what he already knew.
I keep going back to Season 9, when this tendency of Dean’s finally creates the rupture to end all ruptures. I have to admit to being baffled at some fans’ dislike of that particular Arc, how it was “out of character” or whatever for Sam to be so stern about it. But saying something is “out of character” somehow assumes that human beings always act according to some linear plan of how their personality is laid out, when OBVIOUSLY that is not true. And there is such a thing as “character development”. People change. Sam had changed enough to say, “Y’know what? I have had it with this. I cannot take it anymore.” I loved Season 9, and loved Sam’s refusal to play out the same old script, because it gave us this rich relationship stuff that we never would have had otherwise. It left Dean swinging in the wind, where he NEEDED to be, at long last.
… only to die and then become a Demon.
The guy can’t win.
Dean’s heroic selflessness is his Achilles heel, and here we can see it in flagrant operation. He values himself so little he’s willing to bargain down his life-sentence. 10, 8, 5 … Bobby clocks him on this attitude later. Sam clocks him on it in Season 3, when he asks his brother quietly, “What’s wrong with you?” (One of my favorite lines in Season 3.)
The complexity is in the playing of it. I would even venture to say that the complexity of it is entirely in Ackles’ performance. Another actor, without Ackles’ depth, wouldn’t even begin to ask himself the questions – or answer said questions – the way Ackles has done, in his own private homework time, that would result in such a layered performance like you see in this scene.
5th scene
I love Sam in a white shirt. This shot is a stunner.
In Year One of any serious acting class, a teacher will talk about “the moment before.” The “moment before” means: what are you doing right before you walk into a scene? Where are you coming from? Nobody walks into a room a blank slate, ready to start a scene. Everyone comes from somewhere, and that somewhere has to be as real to the actor as the scene itself. What was Dean’s “moment before”? What was Dean’s ride home like? Well, you don’t even need to ask. It’s all there on his face.
Dean is a terrible liar, maybe even the worst: surprising since he spends the majority of his life carrying around a fake badge. As always with Ackles, the truth can be found in the eyes, the way they detach themselves, float around, looking for escape, unable to look the other person in the eye. It says a lot about Dean that he is unable to lie, that somehow – even with all his training – he hasn’t mastered it.
I know I mention this ad nauseum but it strikes me as extremely important:
— Dean dated Cassie for, what, 6 weeks? He fell in love with her probably on Night One, and spilled the beans because he could not lie to her. He was incapable of being intimate with her and not tell her the truth. No wonder he sticks to one-night stands.
— Sam dated Jess for most of college, planned on marrying her, and never told her jack-squat. Same was true with Amelia. Sam is capable of being in an intimate relationship while also not giving up anything . Sam is a much MUCH better liar than Dean.
It is one of those unexpected quirks in the characters that I find so gratifying and watchable. If those who twit-twit about things being “out of character” were in charge of character creation, then Sam would clearly be Mr. “I Need to Be Honest With You My Love About Who I Am”, and Dean would be the sketchy withholder, but thank goodness they AREN’T in charge, because the way it’s played out is far more interesting. The cramped terrifying circumstances of their childhood have shaped (warped) the brothers in completely unexpected and different ways (Dean being a neatnik, Sam not giving a shit, the list goes on).
If you watch the shot progression: at first they are together in each other’s shots, and then Dean tells the lie, and after that, they are separate in their big close-ups. Once they start eating pizza, Sam tells HIS lie. Dean senses the lie, and suddenly we move back into Manners-Land: Dean’s huge profile dominates the screen, Sam a blur in the background, curving camera moves as Dean shifts, focus-pulls between the two characters – and, finally, two E-NOR-MOUS closeups that end the scene (with the Manners stamp of foreheads cut off.)
When the final confrontation comes, Dean slips, and he slips big.
“You almost died in there. I mean, what would I have –”
Honestly, it’s quite an unbelievable bit of acting there. (It’s hard to “act” stopping yourself from saying something without seeming like it’s planned beforehand. Try it.) Dean’s words are desperate, and – the worst part – it’s all about HIM: What would I have done if you died? This came up in that great scene in the hotel room in “Shadow.” It will come up again and again until finally Sam has to say to him, “Enough,” over and over in Season 9, the most clear time being the stunning final scene in “The Purge.”
Anything we need to know about Dean is here.
6th scene
Boy, Bobby sure was nearby to open that door, wasn’t he!
I love that Manners chose to show Sam and Dean in the same shot standing in the doorway. There’s so much going on in the triangulation of looks shooting across that small space: Bobby’s horror, Dean’s shame, Dean lying badly, Sam being “Aw, shucks, I’m alive”, Bobby lying badly, Sam being oblivious … it’s awesome behavior. As Dean moves past Bobby, we get three shots, one after the other:
(You see how each shot has a blurry figure on the periphery? What happens when you use a “look” like that as often as Supernatural does: when the camera finally goes in super-close, it really MEANS something. If you use close-ups too much, they cease to have the impact they SHOULD have.)
Once the men gather in the other room, it starts with a doozy of a shot: starting on Bobby, moving over to Sam, swooping back to Bobby. These choices add some “pop” to a scene that might otherwise lack tension, and it also highlights the acting in a way that feels subtle and organic: Bobby dealing with a shit-ton of worries, Sam recovering from an injury and yet gung-ho, Dean shame-faced … Triangulation again.
Bobby’s eyes BLAZE at Dean: “I’m gonna beat the crap out of you, boy!” As they walk outside into the junk yard, into the unforgiving sun (a la “Everybody Loves a Clown”), Dean faces his fate calmly, resigned. What he can’t say to Sam he can say to Bobby. “What else was I supposed to do?” He looks … the word I want to use is smushed, but that’s not really right. This is Ackles adjusting his own internal weather so much so that his face changes (like what happened when he lied to Bobby at the doorway).
Beaver is so phenomenal here, so heartbroken, that it’s hard – for us, and for Dean – to even look at him. Remember how Bobby started out on the series? We’ve come a long way since then. He’s not just there to “fill out” the brothers’ story and to “fill out” the hunter world. He is now here on his own terms, in his own right, with his own relationship to these “boys.” It’s essential. Imagine the show without him.
It takes a Bobby at this stage in the game to ask the question: “Do you really have that low an opinion of yourself?”
In many respects, this kind of talk is just not in Dean’s vocabulary. Value myself? What? I don’t have time for that shit!
The miracle (and yet another welcome unexpected quirk) is that Dean’s survival-techniques involve pursuits which are pleasure-loving for the sheer sake of pleasure: eating, drinking, sex, music, sleep. Dean’s love of these things is uncomplicated and pure. Somehow, somewhere, along the way, Dean managed to cordon off a little area in himself where those things could live and breathe. John ruined Dean’s life, but somehow – somehow – he did not kill Dean’s capacity to feel pleasure. Kind of astonishing when you really think about it. This is why I love Promiscuous Dean, and am confused at times at the fans who think he’s in denial, or overcompensating, or whatever. But … it’s fun. He’s having fun. Good for him. Feel good. Make someone else feel good. Who the hell CARES why? At least he’s not overcompensating by becoming a dictator in a banana republic. Jeez Louise, let’s get some perspective. Granted, I was a happy floozy myself in my younger days: rejecting the “norm” of boyfriend-girlfriend relationships was the best choice I could have possibly made because I had had nothing but trouble and ABUSE in the “normal” set-up, but I wanted to have fun and I did have fun. It saved my life, really, during some very dark years. It was a safe space. “Walks of shame” don’t always involve shame, you know.
Jim Beaver’s work in this scene makes me cry. That’s what it looks like to believe 100% in imaginary circumstances. He holds nothing back.
As powerful as this scene is, I also love how both characters drop it totally when they hear something approaching through the cars. They both go from intimate emotions to high-alert action in a flash, and it’s hot as hell. They move as one to crouch behind a car, and then pounce on the unseen figure, only to find that it’s Ellen.
Hey, Ellen, I know you’re traumatized and all, but haven’t you ever heard of calling first?
7th scene
The opening shot – with the shot glass sliding back and forth on the table – is so satisfying to my B-Western loving-heart that – again – I want to kiss it on the mouth. (With its consent, of course.) The lighting is stunning too: there’s “natural” light coming in from the window, giving us this beauty of a look.
… and also this.
The Rembrandt effect. The Vermeer effect. It LOOKS natural. It is so not natural. It takes so much work to create light that looks this natural!
It’s good to see Ellen again, and her tough-girl steely gaze staring across the table at Bobby. It’s a standoff in a saloon. There’s a great cut to Dean after Ellen says “And I got to live. Lucky me.” Survivor’s guilt. His deal: how little time he has left. From Dean’s perspective, what can the words “I got to live. Lucky me” even sound like? Great choice, reminding us, again and again, of the other level going on during the Season Finale Fireworks. THE thing that will carry us through Season 3.
When they move into the next room, the Beauty levels leap off the charts.
There are FOUR people involved, Manners and team cannot get enough of exploring the variations, the framings and groupings, the looks that pass from one to the other to the other and back, the way the light falls on each face. The actors all have different complexions and tones. Padalecki and Ferris are ruddy-brown complexioned, Beaver and Ackles are pale but in different ways. Two of them are tall, the other two not so much. They stand, they sit, they lean forward. Sometimes, as elsewhere, you see one person blurring out the side of someone else’s closeup. The connections between the four. The close-ups show that connection but also show their giant BRAINS at work, putting together the pieces. It’s a feast for the eyeballs.
At first, you get the long-shot, the view of all four of them. Finally, as they realize what the map reveals, and what they must do … Manners goes close to each one in succession, close-up to close-up… So pleasing!
As with so many of Manners’ episodes, “All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2” is about many things, but what it is REALLY about is the FACES.
But my favorite shot may very well be this:
It looks like they are the last four people on earth.
It reminds me of this.
“Supper at Emmaus,” Caravaggio, 1601
This is the thing with Beauty: how it beckons, how it destabilizes, how it stirs stuff up – both alluring and disturbing. The Sirens’ song was so beautiful that sailors crashed into the rocks even though they knew the rocks were there. They could not resist the beauty, they risked the danger because of it. That’s how Beauty at this level operates. It’s not “beautiful” like a fashion shoot. It’s beauty that has “strangeness in its proportion.” High high level of artistry going on here.
8th scene
I may be in the minority, but it’s always good to see the Colt! And I love the magical music that starts like clockwork whenever the Colt is even mentioned. I’m a Colt fan. Jake heads to the cowboy cemetery, and steps into a Roger Corman film, a la The Terror in 1963, which … if you have not seen … my God, do yourself a favor. It features Jack Nicholson wearing a black cloak and a bicorne hat saying lines like: “I am a representative of the government of France!” Of course you are, Jack.
Here is a set from The Terror.
And here is the cowboy cemetery.
Just calling it like it is, folks! I’m making fun, but I actually love that Supernatural allowed itself to go Corman-esque. That it doesn’t worry all that much about making something look “realistic.” They don’t have a lot of money and sometimes it shows and that’s okay. Roger Corman is responsible for raining Monster Movies down on our heads, movies that dominated drive-in theaters for 20-30+ years.
Not a bad guiding star, actually.
We move into the land of dry-ice and blue-black shadows. We move into the land of black careening smoke-columns and a dead-father hologram wrestling with a demon. We move into a land where a demon is shot with a slo-mo bullet and then he “shorts out” and for a brief flash, his skeleton glows white.
There’s a wonderful (although teetering on the edge of the cheese-ball) panning shot of the Magnificent Four emerging from the dry-ice-blue-black towards Jake, guns drawn. (Sue me, I’m not as into the Final Climaxes as I am all the other stuff, the little twists and turns of emotional realities with which these people REACT to the climaxes. But moving on.)
Here is where we see Jake as a formidable presence of authenticity. Sam knew Jake, they had that conversation together as they … pulled apart a tractor or whatever it was they were doing. Sam knows that Jake is smart and truthful and good. He trusted him, with good reason. Dean’s shifting-eyed shame-faced lying falls apart in the wake of Jake’s open shock when he sees Sam alive. Sam glances, alarmed, at his brother, who can barely meet his eyes, who has that soft smushed look again, a pure giveaway. (Watch just how MUCH Ackles’ face changes in those moments, here and in the moment in the doorway with Bobby. Something – strength, confidence, SELF – has left him. He looks like a different person.) Again: great close-ups, great obsessive filming of these beautiful emotional faces.
In my re-watch there’s something that strikes me as so interesting, and also a little bit sad. Sad because over the course of the seasons the brothers have gone so far “off the reservation” that there’s really no turning back. What was once unthinkable has become normalized. Torture, for example. It was a line they did not cross. Until they did. They continuously have arguments about the morality of what they do. And how it’s a job, and they have to do it, but they can’t ENJOY it too much. I am thinking of the “LOOK AT ME BITCH” moment in Alex Alexis Annie and how Sam called him on it afterwards. It’s an interesting moral and ethical conundrum, and I am so glad that the show explores it. So many other shows – monster-killing shows – NEVER ask questions about the ethics of it, or what such a “lifestyle” would do to those living it.
Watching Sam kill Jake, and then continue shooting long after Jake is dead, with that stunning and mad-man close-up of only Padalecki’s eyes with, gorgeously, one fleck of blood-splash on his cheek … It’s chilling. And you know when Bobby, Ellen, and Dean are afraid of you, you are freakin’ SCARY. I can’t help but think that no one would blink an eye now. Too much has happened. Too many lines have been crossed.
The show has really allowed itself to develop, hasn’t it? Has allowed these questions to continue to live, and nag and torment the characters, so that they have to wrestle with it? Let it go … fight it out … disagree … give in …
If I can look back on my first time watching this episode, I do remember feeling a prickle of alarm watching Sam’s coldness. The blank-ness of his face. The nothing-ness in his aspect as he over-killed Jake. I’m not sure I would feel that prickle of alarm now.
I mean, look at this. It’s terrifying and it is so so beautiful.
It’s madness. The Siren song of the darkness. The draw of the blood. The promise made years ago, now fulfilling itself.
Supernatural allows for silence. For pauses. It doesn’t fill the screen with noise, chatter, snappy dialogue, at every second, afraid our attentions will wander. It trusts itself enough to allow those pauses in the material, because there is nothing more interesting to watch than people thinking, listening, considering one another. There’s a great long pause after Sam shoots Jake, where Dean and Sam stare at each other. Dean looks blasted-open and freaked out. Sam is an unrepentant unrecognizable thundercloud.
The camera goes back, forth, back, forth. Nobody speaks! There is no underlying music either! How great is that! We are allowed to fill in all the blanks. A pause like that lets us enter the scene, makes us participants, not just viewers. Sam no longer needs to be inhabited by a demon to look like a dead-eyed killer as we saw in “Born Under a Bad Sign.” He has that in him, naturally. Terrifying everyone who knows him, even hardened hunters like these three.
Enter Roger Corman dialogue:
“Oh, no…”
“Bobby, what is it?”
“It’s hell!”
“It’s a Devil’s Gate! A DAMN DOOR TO HELL!”
I mean …
Wind roars. Thunder cracks. Lightning flashes. King Lear enters screaming:
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
As the four flee, Ackles does an amazing somersault over a headstone, launching his body into the stunt at full speed. Eric Kripke must have pinched himself on occasion over the first three or four seasons as he realized just how much they struck gold with these two leads. The two actors probably had just one “chemistry read” before they got cast and started filming. It’s a crapshoot. You hope for the best, and these guys are better than the best. One of their shared strengths: Their bodies are HUMAN bodies, not superhero bodies. When they do fight scenes, they get out of breath, they are clumsy, they slip. They get hurt. This kind of thing grounds the show, makes us worried for them, care about them. They are so clearly mortal. Also it’s really cool to see Ackles do a flying somersault (or slide on his knees across the grass into a grave or do this crazy pull-up through a hole in a crypt-roof, or flip in the air over a gate – you have your favorite moves, I have mine.)
As “all hell breaks loose” – literally – there’s a moment where Dean, in the midst of the chaos, stops to make sure the Colt is loaded. A lightning-flash illuminates him. Similar to the moment where he and Bobby stopped their conversation in the junkyard to investigate the threat … this moment is pure ACTION. Like any soldier, you have to keep your cool, get your gear ready, prepare for the worst/best. Manners captures it, too, in a way that feels spontaneous: we are “catching” Dean in action through a lightning-flash. (A great recent example of an episode that did this really really well was “Safe House” in Season 11, an action-packed episode, where Dean was very very BUSY throughout: fighting, shooting, stabbing, medical kit stuff, surgical procedure, gathering branches – like, no time to think, no time to linger on any emotions at all. Even his traumatized look back at dead Sam was cut short because he simply did not have time. You have to have actors so in the zone to create all of this, and you have to be so on point with camera moves and set-up in order to CAPTURE that.
To sum up: I love Dean checking the bullets in that gun, in the midst of a King-Lear-Storm-Surge.
Dean would be so totally dead from hitting that tombstone with his noggin! But, similar to the claw-scratches in “Shadow” so deep they would mess up the brothers’ pretty faces for life, there are some things we must just skip over and forgive. How many times do they need to be reminded that they should bungee-cord their weapons to their wrists? But of course they don’t because … well, how would these stand-offs ever move forward otherwise?
Once the demon starts his monologue, the episode moves out of Roger Corman’s world and into the more purely Supernatural messed-up abusive father-figure psychological shit-show that we all know and love. Both Sam and Dean are pinned against something, the Colt is in the demon’s hands and it’s a lot of fun watching Lehne’s relish in the wise-cracking cadences of his character. A snarling demon is not nearly as menacing as one who plays mind-games, and says stuff like, “Atta boy, I knew you had it in you”, like some demented high school soccer coach.
The demon had enough face-time with Sam in the previous episode. Now, he’s all about Dean. And, as we know, whenever any monster is all about Dean, Dean finds it nearly impossible to maintain his boundaries. He gets sucked in. He is susceptible (I’ve written about his susceptibility a lot before, I just can’t remember where. Sam is susceptible too but in an entirely different way and it manifests itself differently. Sam’s is physical, Dean’s is psychological, although there are variations within that as well.) Dean repeatedly finds himself in the position of having to tolerate a monster getting up in his grill, of having his boundaries abolished. But what’s really happening in this small scene is that the demon VOICES (for us, in case we missed the memo) Dean’s nagging worry that Sam may be different now, that he’s not 100% Sam anymore. Dean does his best to stay stone-faced, although his lips tremble, and by the end open worry floods into Dean’s expressive eyes. Just like the CBGB’s crossroads-demon, Yellow Eyes makes a comparison between Dean’s shitty deal and John’s shittier deal.
Speaking of John … here come the spirits! There appears to be an old-fashioned nurse wearing sensible shoes strolling by in the ethereal plane.
The demon quotes Dean back to Dean, the mantra “what’s dead should stay dead,” the main conflict at the heart of “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things,” complicated by Dean’s fear about how he “shouldn’t even BE here,” as he said to Bobby earlier in this episode. His father made a deal so he could live. The guilt is tremendous. He wishes he were dead. He SHOULD be dead. He alREADY feels like his life is worthless. He is categorically and ethically AGAINST raising people from the dead, and yet here he is, the living embodiment of it, AND he just chose the very same fate for Sam, AND, inadvertently, he has now presented Sam to the demon on a silver platter. It couldn’t be worse.
The scene is played in super-close close-up, and both of them do extraordinarily intimate work.
Look how Dean’s face is half-lit and half-in-shadow. This is Serge and Kim Manners going to town with Beauty. This look has vanished from the show, so we should appreciate it fully. Who knew that Jensen Ackles’ face could become iconic/Epic when plunged into shadow and lit carefully? Nobody else got that about him before he arrived on this show. He was always cute but in my opinion he “vanishes” a little bit in more boring lighting. It’s the combination of role and how he is filmed that has turned him into what he is. (Cue mention of Gillian Anderson in X-Files again. Both of these actors are enormously talented and stunning to look at, but still, it took a very specific and careful eye to film them right, to figure them out, to do what was necessary, and to say: Look. This is no ordinary face. See my “Shadow” re-cap for the Lecture on Faces. I am so sorry to keep mentioning my own writing. It feels weird but I know newcomers stumble over these posts out of order, and so comments like that are for those people.)
The hologram of John appears. I can’t help it, it looks stupid to me! But my God, how I love the glorious sight of Jeffrey Dean Morgan wrestling with a black cloud of smoke. It makes me love actors even more. You’re paid to do a job. You do it.
The music begins its John-Williams-esque imperial march towards climax, approaching the moment we’ve been waiting for (for us Colt fans, we want to see if that gun is all it’s cracked up up to be.) First, Jake had a Dirty-Harry focus-switch with the Colt. Now it’s Dean’s turn. (I should keep a running list of Dean’s Dirty-Harry-focus-switch shots. There were a couple of great ones near the end of Season 1, and a couple great ones in Season 2. I suppose such shots are dependent on the Colt being the Weapon of Choice, because a Dirty-Harry-focus-switch wouldn’t really work with, say, a bottle of holy water.)
Nevertheless:
Dean looks like an emptied-out angel-faced emotionless avenger when he points that gun at the demon, and it is one example out of hundreds how Ackles chooses his emotional trajectory extremely carefully. None of this is random. In the playing of it, it “just happens,” but these all are choices. Remember, they’re filming out of sequence. He has to keep the episode’s emotional Arc in his brain, so that he knows, “Okay. So the scene before this I’ll be really hyped up – even though we haven’t even filmed it yet – so in this one, I need to dial it down a bit, be a little wiped out … ” All of that continuity is on him. Nobody else is in charge of it. (Same with Padalecki. Both of them are extraordinary in terms of emotional continuity. Think of some performances that you don’t feel are well-modulated, that start at a fevered pitch and then just keep going up and up and up. If you start at the top, that leaves you nowhere else to go.) Here we are, in the climax of not only the episode, but the first two seasons, and Ackles dials it so far back that his face becomes a pale echo of itself. He has become an essence, an action/need made manifest. He IS the Colt.
I point stuff like this out ad nauseum because 1. Ackles makes it look like the ONLY choice any intelligent actor would make and 2. other actors mess up moments like this all the time, they go too strong, they over-act, they push and 3. he makes it look so easy we get swept away in it. If there’s one thing Clint Eastwood never does, it’s PUSH. Ackles knows his Dirty Harry very very well, and also knows the moral-ethical-conflicts in a character like Dirty Harry: Dean embodies the same conflicts. But when the time comes to kill, all of the conflict floods away, drains out of his face, leaving him pale and empty, his hand does not tremble, he is 100% calm.
And yes. Beautiful too.
The Winchester reunion has its resonance, in particular Dean’s face as he stares at John. I love the choices Jeffrey Dean Morgan has made, in his emotionally-full and yet strangely ambiguous smile as he looks at Dean. It’s the look desperate Dean has always yearned for. One can assume John knows about Dean’s deal: that knowledge makes John’s prideful nearly-tearful expression almost … well, not sinister, but definitely complicated. And Dean? Dean looks shattered.
However, we need to discuss this shot.
Suddenly – (and thankfully briefly) – we find ourselves in an Eight is Enough episode, where Mom and Dad – who have been fighting all episode, make up, and laugh over how silly the fight was, all as little bowl-cut Nicholas stands between them, beaming up at his reconciled parents. Cue end-credits. Which is fine. IN EIGHT IS ENOUGH. But it’s so bizarre to see it here!
Yes, it works on a metaphor, for SURE: Dean was Sam’s Mom-figure, Sam never had a Mom, so if John was the hard-ass disciplinarian Dad, then Dean played Mom (running interference, protecting, shielding, etc.). There are undeniable sexual and romantic implications to this, and for me all of it is in that crazy shot and the shots following, of tears rolling down faces, and sentimental music, and long meaningful looks, etc.
I’m not saying these things shouldn’t be there. I kind of love that they are (although I still think that shot pushes it.) The show has a murky subtext, on which we all are free to project whatever we want. I’m not a Wincest person. I’m not really a “shipper” at all. I ship the SHOW. (Okay, fine, I admit I ship Dean and Melanie-from-“The-Mentalists”, which is the most ridiculous and pointless ship I’ve ever heard of, but I can’t help it. “I need a drink.” “I support that.”) So I’m not invested in a ship, I’m interested in story operation, and this story operates on an infinite number of levels. Even in our comments sections here, it’s incredible what people bring TO the show. Projection and analysis is the beautiful name of the game. (This is why Supernatural so often reminds me of old movies, because old movies worked far more on the level of Fantasy and Projection than movies today do.)
SO. I’m not saying that that one shot is a literal representation of what is ACTUALLY happening in the family. I am saying that all of these implications are THERE on an unspoken level, like all of the swirling undercurrents in “Playthings,” I mean, come on, and how you put it all together is up to you: Dean in the Mom/Wife role, Sam in the role of peace-maker between warring “parents,” John as Unfair Father Favoring One Son Over the Other.
None of these people have any boundaries. Nobody is allowed to really be themselves or talk to each other openly. They are not a family of individuals, they are One Unit. The end result is you have two sons who lie all the time, two sons who are broken and can’t talk about it, two sons who are basically unfit to re-join civilization ever. (John Wayne in The Searchers.) And yes, Family as Cult has sexual implications, and the show TRUCKS almost SOLELY in implications! Unspoken connections, fluidity of symbols, ambiguity and ambivalence, sexual subtext in 90% of the interactions. The show is all about boundary-less humans trying to maintain their shapes, their physical integrity, trying to stave off penetration. The threat of rape is constant. So don’t blame me if I look at this Family Triangle, especially Sam’s goopy expression in the middle, and think not “Oh my God, this is so emotional for me”, but instead, “Wow, this is super fucked up.”
Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s face, that smile, those tears … the intimacy of it … it’s moving, it’s so moving, and it is also a sick example of the family dynamic, in particular the John-Dean relationship. It’s a suffocating expression. I could think about it forever. I am thinking about it now. (Another byproduct of the show’s style and its use of Mariana-Trench-deep subtext is that many of these questions are not meant to be answered definitively. I prefer multiple possibilities happening simultaneous to “No. Here is what is happening here, and only this.” I have my opinions, for sure, but John’s smile/tears is one of those moments where no matter how times I watch, I think: “Holy shit. That’s beautiful. And I also want to run from it screaming into the night.”
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” – Francis Bacon
As John de-materializes into whatever he de-materializes into, there is one of my favorite shots in the episode, and certainly one of its most dramatic. Even melodramatic. It is a shot so obsessed with its own beauty that it justifies its existence, solely because it is so beautiful.
And, tellingly, although we may expect the focus to shift from Dean to blurry Sam … it does not. This time, the focus stays on Dean. This is Dean’s relationship with Dad. This is not a shared experience, it is Dean’s alone.
Sam is free to grieve openly, cry openly. He has complicated feelings about his father, but when he faces loss, he is able to feel it fully. Dean is not. His feelings are ambivalent, and when Dean gets ambivalent, he destabilizes almost entirely. With all of his training, he is not able to BE with ambivalence. His feelings about John are perhaps shameful for him to admit. The relief he might feel at his father’s death. The flashbacks of being belittled/emasculated/used as a child. And now his father’s self-sacrifice so that he could live. Another trap! This is why (again) the screaming fit he has in “Dream a Little Dream of Me” is so devastating, so satisfying, so long long overdue. However, true catharsis does not seem possible for Dean. This makes him so human. We are marked by life, whether we like it or not. Some scars ARE forever (although not the ones made by a werewolf, apparently. Those heal up lickety-split.)
Supernatural operates in the realm of the Epic, in the classical sense. (I count Westerns as Epic as well.) The lost Father. Orphans in the Storm. The battle between Good and Evil. Manners pushes that hard with the slow (almost imperceptible) push-in on Dean’s face that closes out the scene. Sam is openly in tears. Dean is very still, emotionally exhausted, his face looks like it’s had everything siphoned out of it. His expression somehow floats above reality. Dissociated.
I wrote (at length, what else is new) about “wound continuity” and how Dean’s wounds are sometimes so beautiful that they look like they almost feel good in the “Folsom Prison Blues” re-cap. Maybe that attitude is just me. Maybe I’m a sadist like Alfred Hitchcock and I like it when my Beautiful People suffer juuuuust a little bit, and have cuts in their foreheads, or bruises on their cheekbones. Sure, I’ll cop to that incredibly creepy viewpoint. The show drove me to it!
Both men look shaken up as they stare down at the still-smoking demon. Dean is a little unsteady on his feet. Sam looks about 10 years old, glancing in awe at his big brother. Dean basks in the glow of his father’s proud tearful gaze, and that makes me so sad for him. That’s his trap, and that’s also his comfort. This is the double-bind of Dean. He could not be tougher, and he could not be more fragile. After the Corman-finale, Manners takes the wheel again, and Dean crosses around the body to join Sam, a nice gliding camera move to catch it, putting the brothers in the same frame, the famous signature of the show: brooding profiles. Two in one this time!
It’s very touching when Padalecki makes the choice to revert to childhood, to an attitude of Sam’s hero-worship of his brother, looking at his brother for what to do next. How many times does he say, “What now?” (Not so much anymore, but for many seasons, this lasted.) Here, Sam is so undone he doesn’t know what to do, he needs his big brother to take charge. It takes willingness to be as vulnerable as Padalecki is here, especially since he is such a huge man, such a naturally hunk-y jock-y guy. But if you go way back to his audition tape, which I’m sure we’ve all seen: what is most apparent in Padalecki, even more so than his good looks, is his ability to be vulnerable. He does it without strain. He does it without self-congratulation or pushing. It’s just part of who he is as an actor and a man.
Dean’s vulnerability is different, and when Sam looks at him like that, he is able to snap back into his comfort zone. As always, his Mother is never far from Dean’s mind. He dreams about her, remember. His whole life has been devoted to avenging her death. To honoring her memory. Killing the demon is so major that neither brother really knows how to handle it. Best of all: the sense of triumph is chastened, quiet, because of all they have lost. There’s no giant euphoric hug. No teary-eyed high-five. Just bafflement, quiet, and a semi-awkward awareness of the Absence: the Absence of the villain they have been tracking since they were 4 feet tall. The villain who sat at their makeshift dinner table for two decades, always present, always on their minds. Now … he’s gone. What a radical way to close out an Arc, yes? What a grown-up approach. Hugging in triumph would be “off”, since so many people have died in order to make the moment happen. Sam and Dean would do anything to have their mother back. This is NOT a triumph. It is what HAD to be done, and that’s Dean’s attitude when he crouches down and speaks, speaking through loss and rage at what has been taken from him.
9th scene
While Bobby and Ellen extremely quietly do … whatever … off-screen for the 5 minutes this scene takes place, Sam and Dean, heading to the car, have the confrontation that had been building since Sam “woke up” and saw his back-wound. The colors are almost monochromatic, a look I love, used to stunning effect for almost the entirety of “Roadkill,” no small feat.
When Sam starts the conversation, I find Dean’s expression so interesting. There’s almost a giddiness there, but it’s a calm giddiness – he’s not thrown or defensive – not yet – the calm that comes from having made a decision, from knowing your father approved of that decision, a calm that comes from having just checked something “off the To-Do List.” It’s a fascinating choice. Self-destruction, self-sacrifice … he knows who he is when he is doing that. He knows why he did what he did. He did what he had to do, end of story.
This scene is so well-written. I love how pauses are built in. I love how questions are left unanswered – especially THE question – so that the answer comes visually (Dean’s face) as well as intuition (Sam guessing), as opposed to verbally.
It’s the kind of scene where the actors would take one look at the script and think, “Hell, I won’t have to do anything. This shit will play itself.”
Sam: You know, when Jake saw me, it was like he saw a ghost. I mean, you heard him, Dean. He said he killed me.
Dean: I’m glad he was wrong.
Sam: I don’t think he was, Dean. What happened after I was stabbed?
Dean: I already told you.
Sam: Not everything.
Dean: Sam, we just killed the demon. Can we celebrate for a minute?
Sam: Did I die? Did you sell your soul for me like Dad did for you?
Dean: Come on! No!
Sam: Tell me the truth. Dean, tell me the truth.
Dean: Sam.
Sam: How long did you get?
Dean: One year. I got one year.
Sam: You shouldn’t have done that. How could you do that?
Dean: Don’t get mad at me. Don’t you do that. I had to. I had to look out for you. That’s my job.
Sam: What do you think my job is?
Dean: What?
Sam: You save my life over and over. You sacrifice everything for me. Don’t you think I’d do the same for you? You’re my big brother. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. And I don’t care what it takes. I’m gonna get you out of this. Guess I have to save your ass for a change.
Their intuitive playing of it is what makes it look so effortless, so endlessly interesting to watch. Padalecki’s emotion is palpable, and it comes to him very easily. He is extremely fluid with it. (Watch how tears flood his eyes when he hears about the roadhouse. It happens in real time, on-camera, no cut-away. An open channel between his emotions and the expression of said emotions.) The same thing happens here. You watch the transformation, the realization, and with that realization, tears, fighting against the tears, and also not being able to tolerate Dean’s passivity in the face of what Dean has done. (This conversation will then spread out over the first half of Season 3. Why is Dean so ready to give up on himself? “What’s wrong with you?” Sam asks quietly.)
Stylistic note: Behind Dean, is a lit-up space of floating mist, whites and greys and silvers, back-lighting him. Behind Sam is pitch-black-ness. These things matter. They work on us whether or not we are aware of them. Dean, still dissociated a bit, but relieved, the light has opened up a bit, the demon is dead, they’ve survived. Sam, lost in the knowledge of what Dean has done, and also holding the secret of demon blood deep within him. No light for Sam. Just blackness.
The “Don’t get mad at me. Don’t you do that” plea from Dean surprises me literally every time it comes. Dear Erik Kripke: I have no idea if you are directly responsible for that particular line, for choosing the words “Don’t get mad at me” especially, as opposed to something like “Get off my case” “Get off my back about it” … I have no idea if it was you (I’m guessing it was) or someone else’s input, either way, it’s such a bold choice for a character like Dean, such an under-cutting of his tough-guy commando style, such a blatant expression of need, such a child-like vocabulary (“Are you mad at me?”), how unbearable it is for him to think that Sam would be “mad” … please please don’t get mad at me … Total power-shift, startling.
Dead Horse Beaten Yet Again: this is why screaming at himself/his father in “Dream a Little Dream of Me” rips the roof off of the character. Dean allows himself to feel rage. Finally he allows himself to express – or, the expression explodes out – his feeling that what was asked of him when he was a kid was too damn much.
When Sam says he’d do the same thing for him, Dean’s “What?” is also touchingly sad. The thought had not once occurred to Dean. He almost doesn’t know what Sam is talking about. It’s almost like he wants to coach Sam: no, don’t you dare sacrifice yourself for me, that’s not what our lives are about, I’m nothing, you’re what matters … but then there’s also that soft-smudgy-ness in Dean, a shyly pleased expression when he realizes that someone actually cares about him like this. Dean, didn’t you know? But Dean only understands conditions. Dean making the demon-deal is almost redundant. He alREADY was asked to give up his life so that Sam could live. He was 4 years old at the time.
This stuff to me, is far more thrilling than a “Demon Army” being unleashed into the world.
It’s a powerful ending to a Season. Maybe one of the most powerful, since there are multiple Arcs in the air:
— Demon Army
— Dean’s deal
— What is the Problem with Sam? (I know I’ve written about The Problem of Sam somewhere, and how he really is the Key to the whole thing, but forgive me, there are just too many words and I don’t know where it is!) Sam’s psychic abilities vanish, the demon blood rises, carries him through two seasons … and somehow … even with all of that … Dean always seems the more susceptible.
That’s the magic trick of the Winchesters. That’s the flip-flop, the unexpected, the warped mirror of their relationship, their personalities.
“Three Studies for a Self-Portrait,” Francis Bacon
Note from Sheila: I know it’s insane that this re-cap just happened to be finished on the week of the Season 12 premiere but it just worked out that way.
As I’ve done before: I will put up separate little posts for the new seasons’s episodes so people can chat about those there, and leave the discussion here for this particular re-cap. Thank you for playing along with that. I appreciate it! I LOVE when people share their own reactions to these old episodes, and (for me) it’s more fun when we separate those two things out.
Thank you so much for sticking around, even though the posts have been few and far between. My writing career has kind of exploded this year. I’ve had to put the blog on the back-burner.
I appreciate all of you: your patience, your encouragement, your enthusiasm, your excitement when I do post (these things matter a lot to me, that you like what I’m doing!) but most of all: your own insights and reactions, and reactions to my take as a launching-pad.
Enjoy. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2.
OH MY GOD, SHEILA, THIS IS SO AWESOME!!!
that’s it, gonna have to cancel this week just to read and enjoy all of this to the max.
no worries. I cancelled the rest of 2016. So you got plenty of time. Everything’s going to be okay now.
(IT IS SO AWESOME!!!)
(Deep breath)
WYOMING???
IT’S NOT A STATE!
“Wyoming’s not a country.” hahahaha
AHHHHHHH, when I’m sitting in my meeting today, they’ll think I’m taking notes on the speaker when really I’m looking at Sheila’s recap on my iPad under the table and writing furious notes about how much I love this. Can’t wait.
You all are awesome.
I love the excitement!! Thank you!
This week would definitely be a good week to cancel because UGH.
Come back and talk – would love to hear!!
I was so excited when I saw she’d posted this, but then I had to wait forever until I had enough time to read it and savor it! So now I’m done with the delicious recap and I get to start on the delectable comments!
Sheila, I love that you do this! I love that you treat this show with respect and appreciation. I so enjoy reading your insights!
Aslan – Thank you!! I really think it deserves so much respect! I’m happy to pay tribute and – even more – so happy that people like what I’m doing. It really means a lot!!
OMG you posted the re-cap! *runs off to grab a mug of coffee and snuggles up to read*. Thanks Sheila, this is turning out to be a supernatural week!
Thank you!!! A very supernatural week!
The business of faces and emotion are what this episode is about and you kill it in this discussion. Thank you so much! I love the resonances with other art (I’ll be seeing that Rembrandt triangle everywhere now). I picked a hell of a day to come home early sick that’s for sure. Such a great read. I really enjoy every one of your thoughts and connections. And unintentional or not, with your comments on Dean’s mother always being present, very timely!
I always tend to forget about 80% of this episode. It really is all about maybe four key scenes of blistering aesthetic and emotional intensity. So despite the fact that the shadow’s on Sam’s face in Bobby’s house drive me wild with desire there are whole chunks of it that are just kind of…empty. No humour. Just dot-joining without really having the time or energy to make dot-joining a “thing” as they do in other episodes. Being the end of the season they were probably coming up hard against time.
It perhaps goes without saying that I think the rationing of time and energy was a logical and successful choice. Watching this on a crappy laptop in bed ten years ago is one of the most memorable TV viewing experiences of my life! I was SHOCKED and WRECKED at the end of it and the power of its strongest moments is undiminished even as you feel the script working at times.
Dean’s pain is the source of the episode
Yes, absolutely — and what a thing to do in a finale of a season of television. “All hell breaks loose” and sets up the “work” of the next season: all of that stuff is the excuse that allows the clamouring personal hell to break loose in the characters and their relationships here and next season (and the way these personal plotlines reduce/expand into the mythological plotlines of S4 is a miracle of storytelling).
So, for me this episode truly belongs to all the varied shades of shattered despair that JA brings to the table. He is astonishing. Raw and dissociated. You believe absolutely he would violate the borders and bounds of nature (in this episode about supernatural entities crossing boundaries) in pursuit of relief; that relentlessness in his connection to another human being, what Joanna Newsom calls love’s neverdone-ing, godawful lawlessness. It ain’t pretty, but it’s beautiful and terrible as the dawn. THIS IS A WEIRD SHOW.
Every word you say about his performance and the way it’s filmed is spot on. God, that silver almost holy light behind/on him in S&D’s last conversation! I think you called a similar look on his face in Croatoan a “fallen angel” look (this whole episode is That One Thing Dean Does With His Face). God, his blue/red eyelids in his first scenes! Assisted by the writers being so smart with words like “mad” and the content of his bedside monologue, which had me breathless the first time I saw it and gathers more shades the longer the show goes on and the older I get.
Yes on Manners and how vivid he is on the spaces between people, what’s on their minds. The focus switch at the start, and then [t]he scene ends with a dramatic focus-switch, Dean turning his head into the profile, taking up the whole screen, Sam now a blur in the background. That body is on Dean’s mind at all times whether sharp or blurry. Even when it’s not in the frame it’s present. Manners is a master.
Back to performance and things that no one but Ackles (and an editor) can control, the very last second of that initial sequence in the…whatever rotting body of a cabin they found for Sam is Dean’s minutely shaking head, like he just can’t cope with how the momentous things that have happened to him are not registered as momentous by Sam. How can Sam just charge forward? How can he not see? It is so emotionally precise. JA is so good! Augh!
Some briefer thoughts:
– Love how they shot Jake’s dream through the woozy haze of the fire.
– The deal scene is devastating start to finish. She is in absolute control the entire time. Every iteration of the word bitch in this episode is Dean losing it.
– This episode being, essentially, about Dean, what is happening to Sam plays out through Dean. Big chunks of this episode become yet again people not telling Sam about himself and his wrongness. While, of course, he’s being closemouthed about his own secrets and worries.
– On those lines thank you for highlighting my favourite tiny bit, the triangulations when they rock up at Bobby’s! All those feelings and gazes! Bliss!
– Both Bobby’s and the demon’s hands on Dean’s face. Neither do I want! Even though Bobby is coming from a caring place! Ahh!
– I always get struck by the lighting and arrangement on those tombstones like fanned-out attendees to the crypt; just waiting.
– He has that in him, naturally. Terrifying everyone who knows him, even hardened hunters like these three.
And there it is. Never gonna go back to Stanford now.
– I’m not sure I would feel that prickle of alarm now.
I still feel it, watching this shot, knowing his youth and with the chill of Meg!Sam and the trauma of Madison’s execution still in recent memory! To recapture in recent seasons — well, Dean’s slaughter of Abbadon was not so disturbing despite the bloodbath. Maybe our most recent trip to this domain was demon Dean exchanging a knife for a hammer, or tied in the back of the Impala calmly promising to eviscerate Sam. Although, ahem, my reaction to that latter moment was a little more complicated.
Okay, time for me to take a breath. Once again, and again: thank you! Thank yoU!
//– He has that in him, naturally. Terrifying everyone who knows him, even hardened hunters like these three. And there it is. Never gonna go back to Stanford now// hmmmm, here’s an interesting thought – was he always the nice, quiet student at Stanford? This is the first episode where we witness unrestrained violence in Sam, and Dean’s reaction to YED’s words make it seem that this “darkness” is new. BUT imho it seems that it was right beneath the surface of his rebellion and stubbornness, and he is always threatening to boil over. We know that he and John had screaming matches with each other, and Dean’s reaction in S1 when the two argue is to physically separate them, as if he’s done it many times (think I said to Sheila before that if Dean wasn’t there to balance out the situation, to provide Sam an anchor, John would have been dead on some motel room floor). Would be great to get a peek at Sam’s world at Stanford and how well he really dealt with everything (please, if you’re listening, Mr Dabb).
Ooh, yes, please (Mr. Dabb)! Sam is something of an enigma to me. I feel like I know Dean and could, for example, write for that character, but not Sam. It’d be great to see him at Stanford, away from Dean.
When the future looked rosy and bright and monster free! (and no Dean).
// BUT imho it seems that it was right beneath the surface of his rebellion and stubbornness, and he is always threatening to boil over. //
Paula – I really really like this line of thinking.
I have also been hopeful for some filling in the gaps of Sam at Stanford – and now that we have a good “young Sam” maybe that’ll be a possibility.
It’s also so great how big emotions – rage – loss – even love – manifest themselves totally differently in these two brothers. A testament to the sensitive writers but also the actors. It’s endlessly fascinating to watch all of these variations.
It’s such a cool thought, Paula! And I can really see him living in that anger at Stanford.
As for seeing it in the show, I still don’t really want them to fill in the gaps (sorry Paula & Sheila) — I’d rather have Schroedinger’s College in which all possibilities are equal.
What’s interesting to me is that Sam kills Jake — brutally — because he (apparently non-fatally) stabbed Sam. He hurt Sam, and now he appears to be working for Azazel (even though Sam knows first-hand about the coercion and manipulation there). It feeds from John’s mission, the mission he adopted after Jess’s death, prefaces his revenge mission on Lilith for me. Season 4, Sam’s powers, that was all about REVENGE for a wrong done to him not justice or rescue. And it went down so badly — it’s been really interesting to see what a 180 he took after S6 — abandoning revenge for grave wrongs as a motivation — he has worked with and allied with repeatedly his torturers/assailants/antagonists since then: Crowley, Rowena, Cole, LUCIFER, God, probably others I’m forgetting about, potentially even this Bevell lady. Hell, even Dean.
So this point in time, shooting Jake, is interesting to me because it’s such a clear marker — he’s in it now. Revenge overtakes school as an assertion of the self and Sam’s claims to his own importance (cf Dean’s lack of those claims). He won’t start thinking about school or the future again until, like — god, does it come up with Amelia? I am sure he’s mentioned school in the last few years, just once. And does school mean something different now that he seems to have less need or capability of asserting his own self-worth or being away from those who would and have harmed him?
Ahhhhh Jessie there is so much here to discuss and unpack!
I also went back to look for the little shaking of the head thing he does at the end of that shot – so good!! I love your word for it: PRECISE.
IT. KILLS. ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jessie:
// The business of faces and emotion are what this episode is about and you kill it in this discussion. //
I am so glad to hear you agree. It’s clearer and clearer the more I watched that that was really all that matters. None of it would really work, of course, if the acting wasn’t as good as it was. But, like, every single character gets a gigantic closeup – not just the stars. So awesome.
// So despite the fact that the shadow’s on Sam’s face in Bobby’s house drive me wild with desire there are whole chunks of it that are just kind of…empty. No humour. Just dot-joining without really having the time or energy to make dot-joining a “thing” as they do in other episodes. Being the end of the season they were probably coming up hard against time. //
Agreed on both points (the shadows on Sam’s face,and the dot-joinings.)
I guess this is what I meant when I said that the emotional resonance is what I really remember from this episode – what stayed with me – and the Plot – the closing-up of the psychic-kids arc especially – just doesn’t matter. There was always something lacking in that arc, anyway. But those key sequences – Dean talking to Sam’s dead body, the scene with Bobby and Dean in the junkyard – the crossroads scene – that last scene between Dean and Sam … my GOD. How many television shows go an entire season without having even ONE scene with that much power/intricacy/beauty? And here they all are in one episode. Amazing!
the dot-joinings
thinking of the top image on this post — literally! ha ha. Probably not on purpose but still pretty cute.
the emotional resonance is what I really remember from this episode
ABSOLUTELY. I sometimes even forget that the murder of Azazel is meant to be the emotional climax of not just the episode but two full seasons. But despite the Dirty Harry shot and the slow-mo brimstone drama of the bullet and the subsequent John Winchester “catharsis” or resolution (which the cheese greatly mitigates, I can barely watch it) that whole plot point and narrative is completely eclipsed. Maybe if they had gone a different way with the character stories and focus in the next seasons Azazel’s death would feel more important; and/or maybe if JA wasn’t such a good actor that those scenes feel like you’ve been shot yourself, and are bleeding out for the rest of the episode.
Ha! Yeah, the dots join the entire COUNTRY of Wyoming!
// I sometimes even forget that the murder of Azazel is meant to be the emotional climax of not just the episode but two full seasons. //
I know!! He’s practically incidental by that point. I’m not sure that was the effect they were after – or maybe they realized (smartly) that it’s the journey not the destination that would hook all us suckers in – and what the demon MEANS as opposed to the actual quest to find/kill him. And certainly the entire Season 2 thing of “raising a Demon Army to … do whatever” really doesnt pan out – or have much “oomph.” It just doesn’t land – for me anyway.
By contrast: the appearance of the despicable Alastair in Season 4 – and THAT whole psycho-sexual-violent-drama … that, for me, took over the entire thing so completely I could barely BREATHE. Not that Azazel isn’t awful – he is – but … Well, I like the fact that – in a way – killing him IS an anti-climax for Sam and Dean, who seem confused and adrift once the deed is done. I love that vibe – it seems very human and real to me. Alastair is a whole other story.
// which the cheese greatly mitigates, I can barely watch it //
I know! And the wind blowing Sam’s hair … I just can’t. Sap-heaven.
// and/or maybe if JA wasn’t such a good actor that those scenes feel like you’ve been shot yourself, and are bleeding out for the rest of the episode. //
Exactly. As always with him – the psychological reality takes precedent. Same with JP – but it manifests differently because Sam is a different character without all that melodrama churning up inside him.
Jessie:
// and the way these personal plotlines reduce/expand into the mythological plotlines of S4 is a miracle of storytelling). //
It really is. I’m still kind of gob-smacked by it – how well it all ties together – just just plot-wise, but psychologically. They were so committed to creating these rich complex characters – maybe that wasn’t the initial thing at the get-go, or the “pitch” to various networks – but look at how quickly the complexity started racking up. It’s fascinating. And here we all still are, watching.
// that relentlessness in his connection to another human being, what Joanna Newsom calls love’s neverdone-ing, godawful lawlessness. It ain’t pretty, but it’s beautiful and terrible as the dawn. THIS IS A WEIRD SHOW. //
hahahaha It seriously is.
I think this loops into some of the feelings I have watching Dean talk to dead Sam. Because it’s NOT a catharsis, even though a tear falls. Like, what is going on with this man is so far beyond tears that it can’t even be expressed. Ever. That’s just a tiny flicker of outward manifestation – not even skimming the surface. I think maybe that is one of the reasons I was disappointed by how the Amara arc ended up not panning out (I’ve been re-watching Season 11 – unbelievable just how off the rails it went) – because whatever Amara was touching in him had to do with that “godawful lawlessness” – the same thing the Mark touched but in a different way – Dean’s susceptibility to these things – his yearnings for peace, reconciliation. The dude is fucked, basically.
and look how early that fucked-up-ness showed up. It’s only Season 2!
So glad to hear others who respond viscerally to those focus-pulls. They’re unbelievable – so dramatic and emotional, so important.
yes, completely — no catharsis at all. The depth of it, the barrenness, the neverdone-ing lawlessness — that scene is more about a terrible ongoing annihilation to me more than anything we could conventionally describe as grief (as grief is generally presented to us on screen). This fits more with the discussion on transparency, expectation and self-pity below so I might take it down there. But if we’re talking Amara — post Hell, demonisation, the Mark, the critiques of his ideas of sacrifice and martyrdom — he’s compelled towards a more peaceful annihilation: a relief and rest and unbeing that — well, that I think we all find ourselves yearning for occasionally. Not to die, but to not be, to relinquish responsibility: because everything, always, is Dean’s job, and he never even had to be told.
// Big chunks of this episode become yet again people not telling Sam about himself and his wrongness. While, of course, he’s being closemouthed about his own secrets and worries. //
Fascinating observation! So true!
If Part 1 was the Sam Show, this is the Dean Show – but (tellingly) it’s still All About Sam.
// Both Bobby’s and the demon’s hands on Dean’s face. Neither do I want! Even though Bobby is coming from a caring place! Ahh! //
So so true! Don’t touch him! He doesn’t want to be touched!! Stop it!
// knowing his youth and with the chill of Meg!Sam and the trauma of Madison’s execution still in recent memory! //
Good call. Sometimes it’s hard for me to keep season-continuity in my head – and one of the best things about SPN is that it maintains continuity like that. Emotional continuity. I mean, sometimes they forget (end of Season 11 – ARGGHHHH) – but in general they don’t leave characters (or audience) hanging. They lead us through that emotional maze.
The wrongness of Sam … interesting because it doesn’t REALLY come out until Season 4, when … it becomes the whole damn point. So good. I love Season 3, and I love Season 4.
// Maybe our most recent trip to this domain was demon Dean exchanging a knife for a hammer, or tied in the back of the Impala calmly promising to eviscerate Sam. Although, ahem, my reaction to that latter moment was a little more complicated. //
hahahaha
Dean picking up a hammer was truly awful.
My compliments and adoration to Sheila for writing these recaps and making this a safe place to comment about all aspects of Supernatural, philosophical, technical and beauty. I feel like I’m back at university, sitting in a coffee shop or pub, talking deep thinky thoughts about the movie we’ve just seen with my friends.
I’d like to throw some comments out there. Some are directly related to the current re-cap. Others I’ve been waiting to post, and well, better now than never….
Focus Puller anecdote: JA told this story at a convention years ago. At the very end of the scene where Dean sends Bobby away there is a shot where Dean, leaning over the chair, looks to the side and the focus switches to dead Sam lying on the bed. The focus then switches back to Dean, just in time to catch the one perfect tear hovering on his lashes, then falling running down his cheek. Apparently the focus puller just knew he’d captured the tear and did a little jig in celebration. I just love the collaboration involved in these scenes. It reminds me of Sheila’s post about ‘Heart’.
During a recent convention (Vancon 2016) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntxBRiF4nIA it’s the first question on the clip). Hey – I’ll get my Supernatural fix where I can find it! – JA and JP were asked what they thought they brought to the characters they portray on the show, and what they thought the other person added to their character. Usually they deflect in their answers, but this time a proper response was given, in particular by JP. The whole time, I’m sitting in front of my laptop saying “but that’s what Sheila says!” and squee-ing like the fangirl I am. So to highlight their replies:
JP uses Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey to aliken Sam and Dean to Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. Not a new concept as we all know. What I found interesting is that JP feels that he brings empathy for other people’s journey to the role. While Luke’s story was about his own journey, Supernatural has been on the air long enough that Sam can connect with other people’s trials. In terms of JA’s contribution, JP feels that he’s introduced facets of vulnerability and sensitivity into the roguish hero™, not found in any other character but Dean Winchester. YAY Sheila!!!! These are the hallmarks of JA’s acting that you have so wonderfully highlighted in your re-caps!!!
So, what does JA think JP brings to the role…. His intellect. He layers it into the performance in subtle ways. In my reading of the show, and pointed out by Sheila as one of JP’s strengths: his ability to listen, reflects that intellect. This plays into the empathy angle. JP, and thereby Sam, truly listens to other people. On screen and in life this is a priceless gift. All too often I find myself not really listening to someone else, merely waiting for a pause so that I can interject my own point of view.
JA’s reply to what he brings to the role, was his usual deprecating self, but JP didn’t let him get away with it. At the same time, and given the ongoing discussion in Sheila’s blog about the importance of BEAUTY, JA’s initial response, despite being played for humour, is actually spot on.
JA: “what do I bring to the role… My ruggedly handsome good looks”. While the audience and JP laughed, there is an element of truth to the statement. JA knows what he looks like, as Sheila has shown us. But he uses that, is in collaboration with the director, cinematographer, camera and focus puller. Elements of the character, story would not be there if JA did not look the way he did, if he was not completely in control of using that.
So, onto the bit that had me squee-ing… As JA finishes his ‘good looks’, JP lightly pushes him off his chair, and JA turns that into a roll, and stands up saying “And Dean’s ability to pratfall”. By this time I’m holding my breath! JP refuses to play this down and says words to the effect that JA’s mastery of the comedic elements of the script are part of what has kept the show going for so many years. If not for that, it would have gotten so bogged down in the melodramatic that it would have been too depressing to watch. Cue Sheila’s post of the schtick of JA, me squee-ing and feeling good.
Thanks again Sheila – keep us posted!
Foxy Lady – Ha! Thank you for the dispatches from convention land! It’s always nice to get confirmation that what you perceive in the show is what they MEANT to do!!
// But he uses that, is in collaboration with the director, cinematographer, camera and focus puller. Elements of the character, story would not be there if JA did not look the way he did, if he was not completely in control of using that. //
It’s such a beautiful thing, isn’t it!
Thank you so much for reading and commenting!
I had a mini revelation while watching this episode; I remember watching the scene where Dean talks to Sam’s dead body and thinking “who IS this guy?”. I had already seen JA do amazing work – he was a diamond in the rough, with new and exciting layers of awesomeness coming into the light, but watching him try to hold it together in the face of his brothers death was just… on another level. The absolute desolation! Who was this actor who looked like he’d been awake for a week and had the weight of the world on his shoulders? How can it be the same man I’ve been watching for going on two years – he had “that” in him? I was blown away. Also, props to Kim Manners for his seeing a gem and making it shine. All of the side characters were excellent in the episode.
Back when this aired, I didn’t know a lot of people who were fans of the show – no one in my family had even heard of the show. I remember feeling like SPN fans were in a secret society and smugly thinking that the rest of the world was missing out – that we are so blessed to have this phenomenal actor all to (our)myself.
JP is scary in his scene where he kills Jake, but so vulnerable when he turns into the little brother while asking Dean about his one-year deal. Both of these actors never fail to impress me.
Thank you for this, Sheila. I appreciate how much work you put into these recaps.
Oh, and thank you for continuing the individual episode comment threads. I can hardly wait until this Thursday to see how the Mary Winchester story line unfolds and discuss the show with the great people who come here.
Pat, so well said, I couldn’t agree more about your reaction: who IS this guy? How could I not have realised this was in him? Amazing! Both the character and the actor!
Pat – // Who was this actor who looked like he’d been awake for a week and had the weight of the world on his shoulders? How can it be the same man I’ve been watching for going on two years – he had “that” in him? I was blown away. //
I definitely had a similar response.
// Also, props to Kim Manners for his seeing a gem and making it shine. //
That made me tear up!
//Okay, so shit’s gonna get crazy once he stands up for that last line and I have no idea where he’s going to go. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss it.// This is exactly my emotion when watching this. The airlessness of that scene – all the WALLOWING – between Dean’s pain and Sam’s still body (Rembrandt lighting? perfect description, Sheila). I always find myself holding my breath when Dean talks, so when he stands up at the end, my body reacts to it. My heart thumps and my hands want to reach out to pull him back down.
//what is tragic about this scene is how Dean low-balls himself, once it becomes clear that she’s not going to give him the standard 10-year deal. He negotiates downward. He’ll accept anything. I have to think that Sam, in a similar situation, would say, “You know what, demon? Fuck you.” // again, that crossroads scene is so visceral and I feel a physical need to jump in when he starts low-balling. I can’t remember ever feeling that protective in this way with Sam. Sam may do things that concern us or we disagree with as viewers, but his personal boundaries and self protection are firmly in place. There is no vulnerability. It’s locked up tight in the vault, where all his secrets are kept from Jess or Amelia.
That actress who plays the crossroads demon is so amazing (a CBGB’s tough chick – omg, perfect again!). Aren’t crossroads demons usually an ideal manifestation of the person calling them? A glamor to further the attraction to the deal? She is perfect for Dean – mature, curvy and mouthy. She looks like she’s seen things in life (as opposed to the sexy little silphs or sharp-featured men that usually show up) and doesn’t Dean love a woman with experience?
//a woman in a boobalicious black dress and an interpretive-dance style of walking// HAHAHAHAHAHA so true
//I should keep a running list of Dean’s Dirty-Harry-focus-switch shots. There were a couple of great ones near the end of Season 1, and a couple great ones in Season 2.// Another great one of these in Southern Comfort with Dean possessed by the spectre (in front of that awesome Nascar wallpaper. such a gorgeous shot. such heinous wallpaper.)
Yes, with black goo coming out if his ear! (you’re welcome)
Even with wallpaper and black goo, still ridiculously attractive and acting the hell out of the scene.
Okay why am I not remembering this. It sounds fabulous.
Oh! Yes, of course. Now I remember. Awesome. I love that scene.
//Don’t get mad at me. Don’t you do that.// Sam’s childish excitement before this exchange made me concerned for Dean (again). First time I watched, I thought this is such a victorious moment for them and so horribly bittersweet, because Dean doesn’t plan to tell Sam he sold his soul, so what’s to stop Sam from taking off, going back to school? *heart crack*
Paula – wow, you know, I forgot about Sam saying “can’t wait to go back to school when this is over” – way back in Season 1!! They’ve never really referenced it again – but of course, of COURSE that would probably flit through Dean’s mind. I have to go back and watch that scene in “Shadow” again – in many ways, it’s one of the most important scenes in Season 1, at least in terms of psychology and relationship.
// I can’t remember ever feeling that protective in this way with Sam. Sam may do things that concern us or we disagree with as viewers, but his personal boundaries and self protection are firmly in place. There is no vulnerability. It’s locked up tight in the vault, where all his secrets are kept from Jess or Amelia. //
Hmmm – coming back to this thread now that I have a free moment – Paula – this is kind of along the lines of what I keep trying to say – I made another comment down below about it – the protective feeling Dean brings up is really so startling – not at all how he’s set up in the pilot – and I honestly feel that this was JA’s contribution alone, the depth he brought to it – which then was reflected in the writing – a two-way current. Kind of like: “Oh, so yeah, he’s showing us this, so let’s go THERE now.”
I think, yeah, it’s the sense that Dean’s boundaries are compromised already – always – and so we feel the need to race in and protect him. Sometimes that comes out in funny ways (Frontierland!! Help!) and other times it’s dreadfully serious.
// A glamor to further the attraction to the deal? //
Totally true! I love how they’re all slightly different, but all with the same energy – seething sex, with these sudden flashes of cunning: these are deal-makers. EVERYONE is susceptible to persuasion. I love how this demon finally caves a little bit and says “I could get in a lot of trouble for this …”
Dean’s beauty working for him. She finds him irresistible. She goes against her orders to give him a one-year deal …. basically so she can kiss him. Ha. At least that’s how it plays. It’s deliciously awful.
Sheila: this has me so excited I can hardly think straight. I may come back to say something with more intelligence/substance later. For now:
That Plath poem. SHIVERS.
That Bacon quote. Oh my God. SPN all over.
And this bit- //Kim Manners’ style buries us, traps us, smothers us. How to film tragedy and operatic emotion? Make it as beautiful as you possibly can. Beauty also illuminates one of the dark subtextual things running through the series: The Winchesters flirt with death, seduce it, court it, run towards it. They bargain with it. They play chess with it.//
You’re killing me. This is stunning. Thank you.
Wren – thank you! Good to see you again!
Very glad to hear the random quotes, etc., I threw into this piece resonate for you! The episode is so rich in associations.
Would love to hear more of your thoughts, if you care to share!
I hadn’t heard the Plath poem before. “And I think it wants me.” Wow. Chilling.
And aren’t the Winchesters always being wanted? By Azazel, by Lucifer, by Michael, by Death. (Death said it was quite the honor to be collecting Sam in 9×1.)
The poem I thought of was Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” It’s so quiet and civil, so gentle, but I’ve always found it creepy as hell.
I remember I had to read that Emily Dickinson poem in high school and it scared the crap out of me.
It’s funny – I have started the preliminary blocking out of the re-cap for Magnificent Seven – and I wrote this whole thing about how Dean is wanted by everyone – nobody ever leaves him alone – there’s so much attention on him – which is intensified by the fact that he’s the “problem” that needs to be solved in that season. And he just cringes away from all that attention.
But yes: you can see it in both of them. They are stalked. They are KNOWN. I remember the shock – way back in the early seasons – when demons would show up and know their names. (This is before I got used to it.) It was so creepy, to think that they were “marked” like that.
HOW DID I MISS THAT THIS HAD BEEN POSTED FOR NEARLY A FULL DAY?!?
I’m actually not finished reading yet (in fact, I’m still on the first scene), but before I get too far and too lost in all the things I want to respond to and therefore lose all ability to respond coherently:
//People sometimes re-coil from Dean, because Beauty like his comes across as a demand.//
I just finally got around to watching Melissa McCarthy’s Spy, and comedy aside, I actually found it to be largely about how we respond to and judge and compartmentalize people based how they look. For the most obvious example, everyone – even the people closest to her – assumes that McCarthy’s character loves cake and has cats because she’s overweight. I could actually write an entire essay just about the use of cake in the movie and how I think its use to highlight assumptions about people based on their looks was deliberate, that’s not even my focus right now. Instead, I was fascinated by a fantastic scene with Morena Baccarin, who is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, and who I would posit has a similar awareness of her beauty and its uses to Jensen Ackles and frequently explores this in the roles she plays. In this scene, McCarthy and her best friend are in a bar when Baccarin’s character walks in, and they immediately start talking about how bitchy and stuck-up she is. Then she walks up to their table to greet them, and she is the exact oppsite of bitchy and stuck-up. She is completely oblivious to her “beauty privilege” (e.g., immediate service from the bartender who ignores McCarthy and her friend – an experience I’ve actually had as the “fat friend” at the bar, men lining up to light her cigarette for her even though the bar is non-smoking, etc.), but she is also sweet and genuine and complimentary to the characters who were just tearing her down behind her back. (Those who have seen the movie may question my judgment here based on a later reveal, but I would argue that the reveal doesn’t strip this scene of its sincerity.) It was a level of insight that I wouldn’t have expected from a comedy (although we are talking about Paul Feig, so I probably should know better), and probably something I wouldn’t have even noticed before I started reading and discussing here obsessively.
Anyway, I apologize for the off-topic digression, but I thought it was an interesting example of how beauty is perceived and received by others, to say nothing of looks in general, that I’ve rarely seen explored that way outside of Supernatural.
Great example, Natalie!
This movie has a lot of gems regarding expectations for women, and that is definitely one of them.
Natalie – I love these observations – in particular that moment in Spy, which I really liked as well.
// but I thought it was an interesting example of how beauty is perceived and received by others, to say nothing of looks in general, that I’ve rarely seen explored that way outside of Supernatural. //
I so agree. I just think it’s so strange and unique that a show like Supernatural, of all things, would interrogate/contemplate/mull on such esoteric things. TV and entertainment is so filled with beautiful people that honestly it’s a skewed universe – where we’re supposed to pretend that Michelle Pfeiffer not wearing makeup in “Frankie and Johnny” is an ugly duckling. Kathy BATES played the role on Broadway. Now Kathy BATES playing a romantic lead … THAT would be a revolution. But no, instead, we have to pretend to buy that Michelle Pfeiffer is a plain Jane. (I love her acting. But I love her best when she gets to utilize one of her strongest assets – which is her Beauty.)
So in Hollywood, beauty is taken for granted in this weird way – and it’s so accepted that you can literally feel red-carpet commentators not know WHAT to say when they see Melissa McCarthy on the red carpet. Their viewpoints are so skewed, so in the bubble, that their vocabulary vanishes. It’s gross and sick and dehumanizing and all the rest.
And here’s this little show on the CW network actually asking questions about Beauty, and presenting little scenarios – comedic or disturbing or whatever – where the looks of the leads are actually acknowledged, and the effect they have on others is acknowledged. (My friend Mitchell jokes that while he loved Clint Eastwood’s “The Changeling,” he refused to look at it as a realistic film in any way shape or form because the audience is asked to believe that Angelina Jolie doesn’t turn heads any time she walks into a room.)
I think, too, that acknowledging the looks of the leads of SPN – it’s a way to include the fans, who clearly respond to these guys aesthetically. Right? But it’s NOT in the way you expect. We almost never see naked skin. They do not gratify our prurient urges. :) Or, if they do show us skin – we then recoil going, “Oh noes, they’re too vulnerable!” It’s fascinating to me.
//It has to do with Beauty. Are y’all bored yet?//
No.
So, you know, I still haven’t re-watched WIAWSNB or read the re-cap, and I haven’t finished All Hell Breaks Loose 1. I’m currently watching the show with my boyfriend, and we’re almost at the end of season 2, and I’m dreading it. Like, can we stop after Folsom Prison Blues, please?
And I think this episode is even worse – it taps into some of the worst stuff for me. I haven’t finished reading this re-cap yet, and I’m like “oh shit, right, hadn’t seen that because it hits a bit too close to home.”
Fun times!
//“oh shit, right, hadn’t seen that because it hits a bit too close to home.”//
I totally relate to that!
// I’m like “oh shit, right, hadn’t seen that because it hits a bit too close to home.” //
I really relate to this, too, Lyrie. Season 4 for me is like that. Also Season 7, when Sam goes nuts. I said this somewhere else – but I honestly think I would not have been able to get through Season 7 if I started watching it pre-bipolar-diagnosis.
I would have been watching it as an autobiographical documentary – hahaha – as opposed to a fascinating escape of great storytelling/beauty/character-development.
/Part 1 was grey too, but it was a living grey, mud and sky and rain. This grey is lifeless. /
Makes me think of William Gibson’s great first sentence in Neuromancer: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
And speaking of Mr. Gibson, he talks about one’s soul “being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical ” as a description of jet lag. I was thinking about that line when you talked about Sam being so cold when he killed Jake. Perhaps his soul hadn’t caught up with him yet from wherever it was before his resurrection. A nice foreshadowing of the Soulless Sam arc.
Thanks so much for posting this beautiful re-cap. I’m glad your writing career has taken off this year and I am grateful you’ve found a way to give your audience what it wants at a time we didn’t expect! Thanks for the extra effort to make this happen.
FWIW, I saw that Dean used his US Wildlife Service, Agent Ford picture ID to summon the crossroads demon. That was his ID in Dead In The Water. Not sure of the Deeper Meaning, if there is one. Perhaps, back to Kripke’s initial conception of Han and Luke, with Dean’s blustery charm and self-loathing.
Thanks so much!
I still want to be able to make time for writing-just-for-pleasure but sometimes it’s just not feasible anymore.
and yeah: interesting to consider the moment when Sam kills Jake. For me, I have to put myself back into the mindset of how I watched it the first time, before I knew just how dark Sam was going to go – and how much more shocking it all would become.
I like the thought above from Paula that Sam has always been a little bit angrier, a little bit more uncontrollable – than either Dean or John ever even perceived – that maybe that’s part of the disconnect too. How in a family you are assigned a “role” and how that role lasts long past its usefulness. Sort of: “Sam, but you’re not like this!! I can be like this, but you can’t!”
Definitely the way Manners chose to film it – with those crazy eye-ball blood-splash close-ups – there is definitely a supernatural element to the moment, but I think we’ve seen that the supernatural just exacerbates what already exists in a person.
// And Dean’s words are self-indulgent, the camera moves reflecting his reality. Here we see the self-pitying side of him, raw and unprotected, when normally it’s covered up. The “I guess that’s what I do” kind of comment.[…]
I know about this kind of self-pitying language and it does come up in times of crisis and grief, and it’s a cop-out, however automatic. That automatic cop-out is Dean’s Achilles heel[…]//
OK, here comes dum-dum: I do not understand the concept of self-pity, of cop-out, of how it is a cop-out, of why it’s a weakness? Why is that comment self-pity? Why is self-pity bad? Or erroneous?
Other folks will have their own interpretations, but to me, self-pity is tied to a number of problems. In this case, Dean thinks that he is simultaneously so important that everything that happens is due to him, and he is also so worthless that every blame rightly accrues to him because Sam is so much more important. Self-pity combines an inflated sense of one’s influence and power with an underestimated sense of one’s efficacy. It’s like shooting two arrows: one that misses high and one that misses low. And if one has any self-awareness, these errors are acknowledged internally and then amplified to make that self-knowledge an added source for self-loathing.
This seems like something that CS Lewis beat into the ground in The Screwtape Letters.
Your analogy of shooting arrows is beautifully on point. Everyone has some self pity, but the range of Dean’s self pity is what makes it tragic. When his shot goes high, it launches into the sky (“How many do you have to save? All of them.”) and when it’s low, it buries itself in the dirt at his feet (“Maybe my life can mean something.”)
Thanks Mutecypher and Paula. Of course, everyone will understand this differently, and it’s interesting for me to read your thoughts, guys, because this is a complete blind spot for me. So while I do understand self-pity, in other contexts, here I don’t quite get it. Kinda, but not really. Interesting. I’m going to have to re-read this and think about it.
Lyrie – would love to hear your thoughts once re-thunk. :)
// And if one has any self-awareness, these errors are acknowledged internally and then amplified to make that self-knowledge an added source for self-loathing. //
I think that’s a much more concise and effective way to describe what I have been trying to say.
and good call with Screwtape Letters.
Lyrie – I like the discussion that follows, and everyone else’s input!
For me, and let me try to put it into words:
Self-pity is focused on Self in a way that – weirdly – becomes almost grandiose. Like, you are the center of the Universe, and the universe somehow has it “in” for you – so even as you are putting yourself down, you also feel this huge sense of how important YOU are. (I speak from experience!) To me, self-pity is literally poisonous. It ruins moments that could be pure – even sad moments. So grief, for example. Grief is a normal human thing, and we need to experience it fully. But Dean’s training and self-loathing turns that grief into something that is about HIM – which, in turn, leads to his desperate desire to FIX the situation. yes, to save Sam, but also to bail HIMSELF out. (This is what Sam clocked him on so powerfully in that final scene in The Purge. This stuff runs so deep – I wonder if they are “past it” now? I kind of hope not. Although it is good to see them as in sync as they were in Season 11.)
I’m not saying self-pity is bad, or that it should be judged. It’s just a cop-out- not even a conscious one – and Dean’s tendencies in that direction are a natural and organic result of how his father raised him. Dean is not allowed to have normal emotions. Anything he feels about himself is seen as extraneous. And – strangely – what happens then is his feelings turn inward. He takes out the shovel and digs his own emotional grave. Saying “I guess that’s what I do. I let down the people I love” is so painful – because it’s such an unnecessary pile-on to what is alREADY an emotional situation.
And when Dean operates out of that space – he’s extremely unstable and he makes stupid and rash decisions.
I’m trying to remember: in terms of all of the seasons, was the last time he did this the time he invited Gadreel into Sam?
He’s done self-destructive things – taking on the Mark, etc. – but that wasn’t out of self-pity and fear of losing Sam. Maybe indirectly it was, but not directly.
He hasn’t really made a choice out of that fearful self-pitying “please don’t leave me alone” standpoint since then, has he? Or am I missing something?
and of course I could very well be wrong about this. Or, people may disagree with that take. I’m open to that discussion – especially since I might not be expressing myself clearly enough and people here and the discussion here generally tend to help with that.
Man, Beaver breaks my hearts. He brings a mix of tenderness and toughness that is so compelling. It was already there in Deadwood.
//I may be in the minority, but it’s always good to see the Colt! //
Are you kidding? I LOVE that thing.
(yeah, OK, i’ll stop for tonight.)
Thank you shelia, every one of your re-caps is a gift.
C’mon, you’ve got one more comment in you before bed time.
We Colt fans have to stick together.
Okay, side note:
I’m reviewing a film that opens next week called A Valley of Violence. A Colt is featured. And Samuel Colt is mentioned by name.
Honestly I want to write this whole paragraph in my review about Supernatural – but I probably won’t. Or maybe I will. Because those who “get it” will certainly appreciate it.
Also, the Colt in the movie is treated as reverently as the one in SPN. I’m betting there was an SPN fan involved!
I love this freaking thing so much, I bought this book this summer. I’m morally conflicted, but I can’t help it: it’s so beautiful!
And now that I’ve seen Colt’s drawings and letters during the process of creating the revolver. So ingenious!
Sweet!!
And at the bottom, “People who bought this book also bought” — Winchester, American Legend. *smile*
I need to get this book.
Okay, I haven’t read it yet but I have to tell you something. Ever since I discovered these essays, I have been building up to this moment. I have wanted, nay, needed this episode. And I will now read it slowly and savour it, like holding a good bourbon around in my mouth before I swallow it.
And now, I am just going outside and may be some time.
Erin – hahaha You are awesome. I hope it does not disappoint.
As you are someone with such a powerful response to the episode – I do hope you weigh in!!
// this crazy pull-up through a hole in a crypt-roof//
When is that?
Dean did this amazing athletic move during the episode “Jump the Shark”, where he is trapped in an underground crypt with his brother Adam’s body. This clip is pretty dark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqlNn3keges
What. a. Move. Thanks a lot, Pat!
One thing these re-caps are great for is reminding us (or making us realize) how amazing some of the stuff happening on the screen are. We’re so used to seeing exceptional characters doing exceptional things (and exceptional actors depicting those), we sometimes forget how amazing it is.
If I had to pull myself up to survive, well, I would die.
That’s the one!!
This is something I’d like to explore and I’d love input:
Dean is so transparent, right? But there’s also that “burlesque” that I go on and on about. My first post about him was really about that burlesque. From the get-go we’ve seen beneath that surface – and JA has created a character who is vulnerable to the point of fragility (whereas JP has created a strong man who is extremely vulnerable/sensitive – it’s different) – and yet even with all that transparency, his monologue to dead Sam was such a revelation to me that I almost couldn’t believe it was happening the first time I saw it. I was wrecked. Even though the show (and JA) had been telling me all along (“This guy is fragile. This guy is a mess. This guy has been damaged by his childhood. etc.”) – I still found it shocking – and upsetting – to SEE it as clearly as I saw it here.
So there’s something there about his transparency – and how even though we PERCEIVE him as transparent, and everything he thinks/feels is on his face – it’s still a surprise when that veil comes down.
He’s mysterious. Like Garbo – one of the most expressive actresses – was mysterious.
Did anyone else feel that way?
For me, the quintessential Dean ploy was taunting Eve with “bite me,” after he had ingested the Phoenix ashes. He was willing to be transgressed, to be penetrated, to be that vulnerable, in order to accomplish his mission. His vulnerability and transparency don’t matter to him. They exist. The transparency can be used. It’s a tool.
We get seduced by his immense skill as a hunter, by his physical prowess, and that makes it easy to forget his sensitivity. To a great extent, I like the Daniel Craig version of James Bond for similar reasons: M’s comment in Casino Royale about him being a blunt instrument, and then Bond falling in love with Vesper. That conflict or dichotomy of vulnerable and invulnerable – the invulnerability being suggested due to extreme competence at a task.
It’s easy to forget that the beer, burgers, and boobs guy can also differentiate between the Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five versions of Vonnegut. Since the show is so action-oriented we often see more of the first part – and only get the second part during the BM scenes. Dean can be contrasted to Tom Stall, Viggo’s character in A History of Violence. Tom has his loving family – that I thought he truly cared for – and that insane skill at violence. But they are separated in time. He had one time in his life, and then has the other – with the movie being about when those worlds collide.
But Dean is so different because he is vulnerable and transparent without the requirement of being in love. It’s not a thing that gets uncovered by someone. I’m am sure it was amplified when he had that brief thing with Cassie (and I’m sure it’s all over the place when you ship him with Melanie). That is, for me, such a wonderful and unique aspect of his character.
It’s also a think that he is aware of, and makes use of when he does the thing that he feels defines him: hunting monsters. But he isn’t a continually self-aware, self-conscious person. He can pause and know who he is (outside of the terrible undervaluing that leads to season 3 and so many other incidents) – but he is mostly in the moment. Due to his immense physical competence, I think. And his knowledge of his looks.
There’s a ton to be said about this, I think I’ll pause here. Dean and JA are an amazing thing.
// His vulnerability and transparency don’t matter to him. They exist. The transparency can be used. It’s a tool. //
I like this.
It’s his Burlesque aspect. I mean, if this is something he can’t control – if he has always generated this response from others – he accepts it, he uses it.
and so we feel this weird protectiveness towards him because we wish people/monsters would stop treating him in such a horrible manner. Ha. It’s weird – it’s like watching a family member or something be treated disrespectfully, and then wondering why that person doesn’t MIND IT more. Or say, “Hey. Knock it off.”
// and I’m sure it’s all over the place when you ship him with Melanie //
hahaha I mean, look at what happened in that last scene. She picks up his hand and looks at his palm and he literally melts into a puddle. She hasn’t even SAID anything yet and he’s a goner. He listens to her – and he doesn’t even believe in that stuff – but he BELIEVES her.
The wonderful Tina clocked it in him: “I should go. Before you fall hopelessly in love with me.”
I guess I ship the two of them too, in a very informal way. They write Dean’s women really well.
// But he isn’t a continually self-aware, self-conscious person. He can pause and know who he is (outside of the terrible undervaluing that leads to season 3 and so many other incidents) – but he is mostly in the moment. Due to his immense physical competence, I think. And his knowledge of his looks. //
That’s very insightful!
//It’s his Burlesque aspect. I mean, if this is something he can’t control – if he has always generated this response from others – he accepts it, he uses it.//
I think he has a zen sort of “the best way out is ‘through'” attitude when his schtick gets him in trouble. He just keeps schticking, burlesquing (new words, dibs!). He’s the opposite of the adage that Instapundit likes “the first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.”
Dean just keeps digging. Much to our enjoyment, often.
And Tina. Yeah, she nailed him (well…).
// He’s the opposite of the adage that Instapundit likes “the first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.” //
Hmmm – maybe Instapundit should have taken that advice in the aftermath of his “run down protestors” tweet??
I snark, I snark.
I agree with that thing about the hole and to stop digging. It’s great how sometimes that comes off as tragic in Dean in SPN – and sometimes it’s hilarious. In Frontierland, he starts at the bottom of the hole, starts digging the second he puts on a blanket as clothes, and then cannot – for the life of him – get out of the hole, nor does he even perceive that HE is the cause of all of his problems in that episode.
sooooo funny. All JA!
Have only read half of the comments – will come back for more discussion – thanks all.
and thanks for (as always) hanging in there with me, since I honestly don’t post all that often.
I appreciate it!
I think Dean’s veil dropped for me in On the Head of a Pin.
First it was when he heard Alastair tell him that he opened the first seal. Later it happened when Dean told Cas that he wasn’t strong enough to be the righteous man who would stop Lucifer. It showed on his face, the horror and self loathing of these revelations. It was gut wrenching to see blustery, heroic Dean so crushed by circumstances — he caused the goddamn Apocalypse.
// Later it happened when Dean told Cas that he wasn’t strong enough to be the righteous man who would stop Lucifer. //
One of my favorite moments in the series as a whole. Excruciating.
I think he is conscious of his vulnerability. But his transparency? I’m not sure. He knows he’s bullshitting people (well he is and he isn’t), with his Burlesque act, but the way demons or pissed-off FBI agents can get under his skin without him seeing it coming has me thinking he has no idea other people see SO MUCH. I feel like he wouldn’t be able to function if he knew how much we see.
// He knows he’s bullshitting people (well he is and he isn’t), with his Burlesque act, but the way demons or pissed-off FBI agents can get under his skin without him seeing it coming has me thinking he has no idea other people see SO MUCH. //
I really like this, Lyrie! This may be one of the keys: how he is both aware of it, and then also blind-sided. Like: how can you SEE THIS IN ME??
Dean, don’t you know that everyone can see it? From a monster to a barista who talks to you for 10 seconds?
// I feel like he wouldn’t be able to function if he knew how much we see. //
Fabulous. So true!
//I still found it shocking – and upsetting – to SEE it as clearly as I saw it here.//
Couldn’t it be because when that veil is off, we see wounds which are so deep that it’s practically unbearable? (and because it’s so TWISTED) I’m having a hard time remembering how I perceived this scenes the first time, but I know that up until season 9, I kept being surprised and amazed by that. #ThePurge
And thanks to this place where we share things, because everyone’s perception can be so at times, I keep making discoveries.
//THIS IS A WEIRD SHOW.//
Indeed.
// I’m having a hard time remembering how I perceived this scenes the first time, but I know that up until season 9, I kept being surprised and amazed by that. #ThePurge //
Seriously. The Purge, man, The Purge.
// And thanks to this place where we share things, because everyone’s perception can be so at times, I keep making discoveries. //
Me too!!
Yeah, everyone’s perception can be very.
So glad you know what I mean even when I forget words.:)
The first time Supernatural came on my radar was when we were on vacation and my husband was watching Roadkill on TNT. I wanted to go out and explore the area we were in and didn’t have time for some tv show, but my first impression was that The tall one was cute and nice and that his brother was a jerk. The next day AHBL2 was on and I came into Dean’s monologue over Sam’s body. That made me sit down thinking who is this guy! I think we went out during the next commercial break and I didn’t think much about it again until hubby bought the seasons 1-6 box set and I have been a fan every since. I guess my point is that if I had just watched Roadkill then I wouldn’t have been so attached to the show. But I watched that one scene and I was open to watching more.
When I watch the opening scene, I wonder what happened between the end of AHBL1 and 2. Did Bobby have prod Dean off the ground and get him moving on after Sam died? Would Dean let Bobby move Sam? Or was it an issue of “Don’t touch my brother?
Thank you Sheila for posting this recap and giving us such a safe place to discuss this great show.
Tonya –
// The tall one was cute and nice and that his brother was a jerk. //
Ha!!!
I am trying to imagine what my reaction would be if Roadkill was my introduction!! Dean is such a jerk in that! The episode is so totally from Sam’s point of view – so great – but yes: skewed totally in terms of a full depiction of the characters.
// Did Bobby have prod Dean off the ground and get him moving on after Sam died? Would Dean let Bobby move Sam? Or was it an issue of “Don’t touch my brother? //
Ugh. What a painful thought.
I am assuming, too, that that abandoned rat-trap of a house is in that ghost-town – which is just so depressing to contemplate. That they STAY there in that horrible place, with Sam dead. Ava and Andy and Lily buried nearby. Just AWFUL.
// Thank you Sheila for posting this recap and giving us such a safe place to discuss this great show. //
You are most welcome. I get so much out of these discussions.
I never thought about that old house they’re holed up in with Sam’s body still being in Cold Oak. Ugh. I don’t know which Winchester death scenario is worse, never leaving Cold Oak with Sam’s body, Sam burying Dean in some field in Illinois (didn’t the imply that he did this by himself?), or Sam driving eight hours back to the Bunker with Dean’s dead body in the back seat (after cleaning up all the wounds). Door #3 gets my vote.
// how Dean’s wounds are sometimes so beautiful that they look like they almost feel good in the “Folsom Prison Blues” re-cap. Maybe that attitude is just me. Maybe I’m a sadist like Alfred Hitchcock //
Maybe. After all, I did want to smack Dean the first time I watched the pilot, because he was to damn cocky, but really also because he was too damn pretty.
But I think, for me at least, there’s also something along the lines of “survival is sexy.” Like, you’re bleeding and instead of whining you keep going? Extremely sexy.
Holy shit, that gif.
Definitely the lack of whining is somehow key. That scene in the hotel room from Season 4 where Dean’s shoulder is out, and Sam sews himself up, and they pour whiskey into Sam’s wounds …
I haven’t yet recovered and I first saw the scene 3 years ago.
But aesthetically too … Dean’s face looks beautiful with bruises/cuts on it. I’m sorry.
As always – a delight.
I am late to the party, but oh my! So happy to read it!
As always, you have the hawk eye perception of the series, like non other.
First of all, one thing that bugs me, I really think that the S11 episode you meant wasn’t Safe House, but Red Meat. I don’t remember a med kit in Safe House.
Now, for the episode. As much as AHBL P1 was SAMSAMSAM, P2 screams DEANDEANDEAN.
And I love it, to see each of them get the time dedicated to them and their innards, as I call it.
Again, each time you harp a little bit more on Dean’s //“Oh, you want to fuck me? Get in line, bitch. I’ve been dealing with come-ons like this since I was 13.”// I cringe some more.
It was discussed. It was mentioned, on numerous, various platforms. But is NEVER talked about in full, as in an actual THING, it is a well guarded dark-deep secret of Dean. And I suspect, that JA is the sole person who knows the actual extent of “IT” (deliberate choice here. Stephen King and all).
As for Hologram-Dad and the “family reunion”. You put it well, how unbelievably alien their dynamic is, how boundary-less their family is. How warped were their roles, all three of them, growing up. This is my favorite CRUX – the Winchester Family Dynamics, prior to Pilot. I NEED TO KNOW.
Dean Winchester gives a whole new meaning to the idea of being “Married into a family”. He practically puts it on its head, being MARRIED TO THE FAMILY.
Every time we see him with that ring he has (well, had), which screams “wedding band”, I can’t think of anything else but the loyalty of a wife. It’s how he wears it.
And then, we get John, playing with his ring, deep in thoughts about Mary.
Shivers run down the more perceptive viewer’s spine.
(John’s ring is a bulky manly man ring. Dean’s is a double band, flatter in its design. Much more elegant.)
One of the reasons I miss jewelry so much on the show. They are silent storytellers, even if only in speculation.
As you always put it very well, this show THRIVES, LIVES, EXISTS on speculation and subtext.
Dean’s broken self at the sight of Sam’s lifeless body – A brother? A mother? A spouse?
All rolled into one? What is this? Why is it so EPIC? Bigger than universe?
I once, in a lengthy post, applied the attributes of god/demigod figures of ancient religions to Sam and Dean: They were many times a “royal couple” of sorts, who are, by our, human/primitive ways of thinking, are “siblings, and are opposites who stir changes upon the world, who seek to be together or otherwise – fight, and each such “turbulence” is an avalanche, a volcano, an epidemic of biblical proportions.
In the Amara & Chuck story line, it was so, OH SO evident to me – how The Darkness was God’s sister, but also his Up-Bringer, and he felt TRAPPED by her and her presence, how she wanted God to herself, and didn’t mind his CREATION. How familiar. How EPIC.
I remembered the Babylonian tale of creation, of Tiamat. It struck so familiar.
How much one is devoid of direction and main advisor and any stabilizing force without the other.
As far as beauty goes, I just have nothing to add. You cover this ground too well, I have no words. All too true. It hurts, how true it is. And I miss it so much.
The later seasons forgot that. Manners took so much with him.
Last thing I would like to add – Dean’s glowing empty-shelled saint-ness: that light, cold, light bluish light, he gets. Each brother is sinisterly rooted in the opposite realms of this “holly”: Dean in that crippling sainthood, and his connection to heaven – which literally leads him to HELL, and Sam – stemming from the HELLISH contamination of his very life force, into becoming this pure thing later on – the one who really shows what redemption looks like.
Opposites. amazing, EPIC. Greec tragedy on modern TV.
Troopic- oops, you’re right – Red Meat! I’m horrible with show titles. You all amaze me. So thank you.
So sorry to make you cringe in re: Dean’s familiarity with sexual violence!! It’s weird how strongly this comes across – even without all that much language to support it. So agree that that is mainly JA and what he brings. There’s that comment he made a million years ago along the lines of “Who knows what Dean did to keep food on the table …” But you know that HE knows.
I’ve always thought that the greatest acting involves secrets. The greatest acting does NOT “show all.” It may be very revealing – even cathartic – but there is still something there that has NOT been expressed and that’s why it’s so fascinating and people keep coming back. JA definitely qualifies.
// This is my favorite CRUX – the Winchester Family Dynamics, prior to Pilot. I NEED TO KNOW. ///
Ha. I know! Have you been watching Season 12 yet? I won’t say anything if you haven’t.
// Every time we see him with that ring he has (well, had), which screams “wedding band”, I can’t think of anything else but the loyalty of a wife. It’s how he wears it.
And then, we get John, playing with his ring, deep in thoughts about Mary.
Shivers run down the more perceptive viewer’s spine.
(John’s ring is a bulky manly man ring. Dean’s is a double band, flatter in its design. Much more elegant.)
One of the reasons I miss jewelry so much on the show. They are silent storytellers, even if only in speculation. //
This is so brilliant. I want you to talk more about this!!
Why don’t I remember John playing with his ring? Tell me when! I love your observations about the difference in the rings. I definitely miss Dean wearing that ring – and Dean wearing all of these talismanic things – the necklace, the ring, even the little leather-type bracelets he’d wear. All so personal to him, you knew there was a story behind every one.
// Dean’s broken self at the sight of Sam’s lifeless body – A brother? A mother? A spouse?
All rolled into one? What is this? Why is it so EPIC? Bigger than universe? //
It really is. And Dean really is brother/mother/wife. I mean, we make jokes about calling them brother-wives – so silly and yet … why else would we make these jokes? It’s all there!! Member Dean’s weird comment to Sam a couple seasons back, can’t remember when: “Where do you go all this time? Do you have a woman I don’t know about?”
If there’s one “habit” I for one would be relieved to see them break – it would be this one. Or if not BREAK it, then at least ACKNOWLEDGE it as a “thing.” But of course it’s so much a part of their natural dynamic that they barely notice how weird it is.
And after Sam cures Deanmon, Dean say to Cas, “Does Sam want a divorce?” Such a unique way to put that. It jumped out at me. It was obviously his way of trying to make a joke out of something that would horrify him (Sam leaving him), but it just seemed an unusual phraseology.
I remember that! Yes – very interesting.
Their relationship really is set up like a marriage – and it’s the kind of marriage that I would never want: stifling, you always have to be together, you never can take vacations alone … etc.
Sorry, your comment is so rich – I’m addressing each of your thoughts one by one:
// I once, in a lengthy post, applied the attributes of god/demigod figures of ancient religions to Sam and Dean: They were many times a “royal couple” of sorts, who are, by our, human/primitive ways of thinking, are “siblings, and are opposites who stir changes upon the world, who seek to be together or otherwise – fight, and each such “turbulence” is an avalanche, a volcano, an epidemic of biblical proportions. //
Incredible. This is very thought-provoking.
// How much one is devoid of direction and main advisor and any stabilizing force without the other. //
This continues to play out in all kinds of ways, doesn’t it. There is so much mileage in it.
I guess it is one of the eternal issues of our universe, in general: order vs. chaos, the individual vs. the group, lightness vs. dark, ignorance vs. enlightenment – can these things ever be reconciled? Or incorporated? Or are we doomed to live in a world with eternal opposites? I’m thinking “eternal opposites” is the right answer – since people have been making stories about these things since the first days of Storytelling.
Supernatural for sure taps into that deep epic well. For me, it’s what sets it apart from many of the other supernatural-inspired monster-killing episodes. It’s the sibling relationship – and certainly what these two actors bring to it – the EMOTIONS are as big as the threat of Apocalypse.
// It hurts, how true it is. And I miss it so much.
The later seasons forgot that. Manners took so much with him. //
I know. :(
// Dean in that crippling sainthood, and his connection to heaven – which literally leads him to HELL, and Sam – stemming from the HELLISH contamination of his very life force, into becoming this pure thing later on – the one who really shows what redemption looks like. //
Brilliantly put, Troopic!!
//There’s that comment he made a million years ago along the lines of// – there is a good tumblr blog, called The Fandom (de)Bunker. They wrote about it – http://fandomdebunker.tumblr.com/post/57789469298/the-rumor-that-jensen-said-that-dean-might-have
I’ll copy paste the exact wording for the question that’s they received – “Is it true Jensen once said he thought it was possible that Dean’ might’ve turned tricks when he was younger?” (exact paraphrasing).
>>The rumor that Jensen said that Dean might have turned tricks is CONFIRMED.
>>The rumor originates from an interview he gave with the Australian magazine TV Week in 2008 during season 3:
“Dean’s a bit of a pool shark and also a bit of a gambler. It doesn’t really show it all the time, but it’s definitely implied that there are poker games and pool matches that they can win some money on. And who knows? Dean’s a promiscuous kind of guy. Who knows how he drums up the funds that they use?” (source: http://www.buddytv.com/articles/supernatural/supernatural-star-discusses-fu-17304.aspx )
The quote implies a certain amount of ambiguity, allowing room for fan interpretation; however, given that Jensen did in fact suggest the idea, this rumor is CONFIRMED.
>>Notes:
>>The original TV Week interview doesn’t seem to be available online. However, we do consider Buddy TV a reliable source.
Given the ambiguity, Jensen’s statement was mostly likely made in order to stimulate interest rather than state a fact about Dean’s background. As ever with cases of Word of God, we remind you that questions not confirmed in canon remain interpretive, no matter what the actors or TBTB say about the matter.
As you can see, it’s up for interpretation.
//I’ve always thought that the greatest acting involves secrets.//
I accept that, and will now on adopt this statement. So true. It makes it all so real – just s in life – we never know why people do what they do, not always.
//Ha. I know! Have you been watching Season 12 yet? I won’t say anything if you haven’t.// I HAVE. I get up early to catch it up by torrent. No way I’m waiting for any local tv company to stop scratching its ass to deliver me anything watchable as it is. Sorry. *incriminating self shamelessly*
And yes, I’ve been spiraling out of my mind with thinky thoughts. But that will have to wait.
//Why don’t I remember John playing with his ring? Tell me when! I love your observations about the difference in the rings.//
Here is the gif: http://66.media.tumblr.com/c89f20dea523550b39abec3bf1746259/tumblr_inline_mnmw8wd5N01qz4rgp.gif
(literally wrote /john winchester ring/ in google image search)
If I remember right it was in Salvation? I can’t find it right now.
In any case, as for Dean’s ring – SuperWiki took care of that:
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=Dean%27s_Ring
Notice how fans immediately clocked the resemblance between Dean’s ring to Mary’s.
//Member Dean’s weird comment to Sam a couple seasons back, can’t remember when: “Where do you go all this time? Do you have a woman I don’t know about?”//
For the life of me, if I had the actual phrasing I would’ve found it, no doubt. But yes, they go there. Like, in Season 11, when Dean asks Crowley if “Sam wants a divorce”, etc.
//Sorry, your comment is so rich – I’m addressing each of your thoughts one by one:// You have no idea how much that means to me ;__;
http://archtroop.tumblr.com/post/144944207597/could-the-lanterns-wich-were-placed-beside-sam-and
It is a bit anachronistic, but some of it comes across.
Also, when you mentioned in your recap about Dean “becoming the Cold/Dean IS THE COLT” It reminded me of the very intricate notion of “Dean as a Weapon”.
A VERY interesting read:
http://archtroop.tumblr.com/post/144661957867/weapons-and-dean-winchester
And last but not least – Dean and Sam’s bond as a Warrior’s Bond:
http://archtroop.tumblr.com/post/142201856427/sam-and-dean-are-warriors-see-their-bond
I will be more articulate about Sam and DEan and god-hood/ancient myths, but I have to scram. Hope any of this will be interesting!
Troopic:
// No way I’m waiting for any local tv company to stop scratching its ass to deliver me anything watchable as it is. Sorry. *incriminating self shamelessly* //
So frustrating but very glad you found a workaround.
Thanks for all the “thinky thoughts!” You are a wealth of information!
and, huh, John’s ring-twist. Now I need to find the moment. It’s fascinating.
As I said in re: secrets: I like to keep all of this swirling around in an ambiguous mystery – I have no need to clock it all down – In many ways, it can’t BE clocked – but I do remember that JA comment in re: sex for money. Even if I hadn’t seen that quote, I think my mind would have gone there because of how he plays the role. I watched “Twihard” again last night. That scene with the Head Vamp? Sorry: JA quote or no, fan obsessive analysis/guesswork or no: the whole thing is on JA’s face after the vamp offers to give him a free tour.
JA puts Dean’s entire life of sexual compromise on his face.
It’s gorgeous.
And thanks for all the links!! I will read! You’re the best!
// It makes it all so real – just s in life – we never know why people do what they do, not always. //
I so agree: that’s what makes both of these actors’ work so interesting.
They don’t reveal all their secrets.
They are not EXPLICIT.
This is why so much of their work reminds me of actors from the 30s and 40s – when “censorship” was more in play in terms of the treatment of subject matter. Self-censorship, really.
But if you watch those old movies, they are getting away with so much – stuff that would slip past the fuddy-duddies at the studios.
For example – in Gilda, from 1946: it is absolutely explicit (of course without a sex scene, but still: as explicit as you can get) that the main romantic relationship in that triangle of characters is between the two men. That the men are far more interested/obsessed in one another than in Rita Hayworth. I don’t know if you’ve seen it (it’s fantastic!) But it’s really about a gay relationship somehow acting itself out THROUGH the emotional torture of the woman caught between them. It’s super sick.
And – even better- apparently the two actors playing those roles were completely aware of that subtext, not freaked out by it, and played it openly. This is very rare for “back then.” And bold.
But still: it was 1946. So most of it was through innuendo, little pauses, glances – and neither of those male characters would ever just come out and SAY it.
There was so much of that back in the Golden Age of Hollywood – the power of SUGGESTION. Suggestion is so much more explosive than actual explicit action.
And I think we can definitely see that in how JA and JP play the roles, and how the whole crew/writers treat the material, especially these personality and backstory issues.
I get that fans want to nail it down. I don’t think it can be, as you say. And the ambiguity of it is what makes the show such a damn HOOK. There’s so much that they are NOT saying.
The warriors’ bond link is very interesting – and definitely is in line with how I see these guys – and this also speaks to some of the conversation we were having in the comments section to last week’s episode, in regards to trauma and lack of consent in sex and all the rest.
These guys are warriors and if they stopped to get freaked out every time a monster messed with them – or, as in Sam’s case last week – put a sexual fantasy into his head without his consent – then they’d never make it as hunters.
These guys are DIFFERENT from the rest of us. I know a couple of guys who are combat veterans. I know one guy who is … well, I’m not sure what to call him … Special Ops, I think is the term. Although he would never use it. He is a survivalist to the degree that he always has tools on him. In case … something happens. He has seen the craziest shit, the majority of which I do not know.
There is a quality to him – an enjoyment in the simple pleasures – a good glass of whiskey, Elvis songs, Maureen O’Hara and Lauren Bacall – he’s obsessed with UFOs and airplanes – he loved Prairie Home Companion – he cares about people, and he is a natural protector – he’s open and funny in a very PRESENT way …
These things do not seem to “go” with a guy who has been in every war – covert and open – that the US has engaged itself in since the 80s. But he knows that life is precious, because he has seen firsthand how fragile it is.
And yet he is also always on high alert for any threat that might be in any room. When we were going out, we had to sit by the Exits in a movie theatre. Just one example. And when we walked together on a sidewalk, he always made sure to walk on the Street side. Just in case … a car came barreling onto the sidewalk? I have no idea, but he placed himself between me and … whatever might be out there. He did this naturally.
So it’s just a different mindset. Not a civilian mindset.
I mention that guy’s appreciation of simple pleasures – he didn’t just enjoy Lauren Bacall movies – he had seen them all – every single one of them – just to show that civilians sometimes have a conception of the “warrior class” that is completely misinformed – because they don’t KNOW any soldiers. In the US, this is most common on the coasts.
So it’s a totally foreign world to them, and they judge people in the military as Boo-Yah Macho Rednecks – totally incorrect. Of course there are macho rednecks in the military – but there are macho rednecks in every profession. The military is just as diverse as any other profession (especially now that barriers to women advancing are starting to dissolve).
For my part, I think there are more blatant assholes on Wall Street than in the military.
So, for example, a combat veteran who likes to sip on whiskey and listen to Prairie Home Companion – doesn’t “fit” with the stereotype ignorant people have.
But this guy lived in a tent in Northern Afghanistan with bombs raining down around on his head. Of COURSE he would appreciate simple pleasures afforded to him while he lives in a peaceful nation.
I don’t know … it’s an interesting topic and means a lot to me.
… and, it’s part of how I have always interpreted Sam and Dean. I’m from a “service” family – most of my Uncles served in Vietnam. So it was just a regular everyday thing to me to have Uncles who had seen some horrible shit, and yet there they were flipping burgers on the grill and playing with their kids.
And war? They did not talk about it.
I appreciate so much the details you bring up, the attention you have t0 all my ramblings. SO MUCH.
I am a talker, and rarely people trully listen, because, as people say, my material is “heavy”. So at last, I had found an outlet.
My father served a short time in Afghanistan (on the USSR side of things). All he ever said about it was, “yeah there were mine fields. So what. I run quickly”. Unfortunetly, the border patrol confiscated his contacts list, so he never saw any of his brothers in arms ever again. Russia is huge. If you don’t have a number or some kinds of coordiantion, you are lost.
That’s his sad story.
I agree with you completely on the ambiguity. It’s stronger then anything. It’s like how erotica is stronger then explicit porn – it entices our minds. Our fantasies are that much stronger than anything else.
The power of suggestion is imense.
J2 play it, breath it.
I hope it will last forever, wherever they go. I just can’t stand so much of tv now, It’s FLAT.
Their tv? ROUNDED.
How is that for reference…
Times of the box-like-tv’s vs. the flat tv’s.
As for “nailing it down” – that’s what we got fanfiction for! :)
Troopic – well, I am very happy to listen to you. You bring a lot of value to these discussions – everybody does, which is what is so great – everyone has their own singular “in” to this show.
Agreed in re: rounded.
Even what just happened this past episode. Deep. Complex. It feels TRUE. Upsetting, sure, but TRUE. Everyone understands these characters – knows that’s the main reason everyone watches – and so Ghost Shmost, Monster Shmonster – the main thing is to keep those characters rounded, three-dimensional.
It’s amazing how well they’ve done it (overall.)
Troopic, I thought someone might mention the divorce statement! I brought it up earlier in the thread because I hadn’t read down this far yet! I thought Dean was talking to Castiel not Crowley though.
Also, now I need to get my hands on that Gilda film. Sounds provocative!
Watching “Gilda”.
The CANE!
“Who’s she?”
“A harpy”.
“How would you classify me?”
“A peasant.”
XD I’m already laughing!
Oh wow, what a way to introduce the lady into the story! “Sure. I’m decent”. Right. XD
You know, I was born in 1990.
I guess you can be very proud.
-upon completeing watching it, though, I’m confused.
…did Gilda just .. won?
I’m so excited you just watched it! I’m thrilled!!
I think the whole film is very confusing. In fact, that was the point I tried to make (and embrace) in my essay about the film for Criterion:
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3878-the-long-shadow-of-gilda
You can read the whole thing there, but here’s the paragraph about confusion:
I don’t know if she won. I think only a delusional person could call that a happy ending. I would imagine that the second they got away – they broke up. Like, can you see those two with each other??
I am pretty sure that Gilda is probably doomed to have a pretty unhappy life. Although she has the best survival skills of those three leads. She’s TOUGH.
Isn’t Hayworth a MARVEL???
Seriously: so excited you watched it! I am very proud! :)
And, looping back to SPN:
I think SPN works on that Gilda level. The innuendoes are so strong – it’s like a dog whistle – we ALL can hear it – but the language sometimes conceals as much as it reveals.
It is so clear that the two men are in love with each other, and using Gilda as a pawn between them in some kind of sick game. We get all of that – through the visuals, and even some of the language.
This is similar to what we were just talking about in re: Dean maybe having sex for money. Even without that comment from JA – in fact, that comment just confirms for me what I already see on the screen – what I can SEE him playing. But it’s never spoken outright.
Sometimes that’s frustrating, sure – you’d like some of it to be acknowledged – but honestly, if you resist being explicit, you get away with much more subversive stuff – like you say, in re: erotica and porn.
It’s amazing how that all works.
You would be pleased to know, that while reading your comments yesterday as I walked back to home from work, I walked right into a wall in the dark. Just so you know.
As for Gilda:
Now I need to go and read your commentary. I see where you are coming from =)
And oh yes! That Hayworth guy, what a little fox!
As an artist, two small moments are etched into my mind, artistically-wise: the opening with dice – beautiful! And the moment when the detective’s guy hand (I think?) pops behind a column to light Johnny a cigarette.
Plus, the washroom attendant! What a character!
I scored him from the start. “esta muerte!”, and he comes out, making that noise, like something exploded faintly or expired, brushing away non existent dust with his brush…
You walked into a wall!!!! Ha! Oh my God I am so sorry but that is so so funny.
Oh man, the washroom attendant is the best. He is the only person in the entire movie who is at least somewhat in touch with reality.
I enjoyed reading this so much! A few disjointed thoughts that I didn’t find any place to insert in the above discussions:
“Isn’t it better to choose as opposed to having that choice made for you?” — Good point. Totally reminds me of them as Team Free Will.
I do wish they’d listen to you about how to film Dean. There is a huge difference in how the show appears now.
“That’s beautiful. And I also want to run screaming from it into the night.” Yes. Thank you, Sheila. I love the things you notice and the way you sum them up.
“Dean looks blasted-open and freaked out. Sam is an unrepentant unrecognizable thundercloud.” Great depiction. It shows Dean’s vulnerability and reminds me of many times in the show where Sam says, “I’m not sorry” and acts like he’s not sorry. Then I always end up surprised when sometimes later he admits that he was VERY sorry (like in the church where he confesses to God that his greatest sin was how many times he’s let Dean down. (I wonder if this is what Dean describes as “you’re angry; you’re self-righteous” in 5×18.)
I’ve always been intrigued by the quietness of this huge climax in which they finally kill the Yellow-eyed Demon. It IS very “grown-up” as you put it. And I’ve always loved, from the moment I heard it, Dean’s “What?” to Sam’s question about what HIS job is as a brother. Ackles truly communicates that it never crossed Dean’s mind.
And I have a couple thoughts on our protectiveness toward Dean and about his feelings toward his mother, but I think I’ll put that on the post about 12×3.
Sorry I’m a couple weeks late in commenting here! Love reading everyone’s insights!
Aslan – I love comments whenever they come!!
I think that if you had to boil down the whole entire 12 seasons into one theme, or one conflict – it would be Free Will vs. Destiny. Would you agree with that?
// There is a huge difference in how the show appears now. //
It really is a startling difference, isn’t it?
// I love the things you notice and the way you sum them up. //
Thanks! Does that moment make you feel the same way too? It’s so intimate it’s great, but it’s also too intimate and too twisted. No air to breathe in that kind of intimacy.
It’s interesting in re: Sam letting Dean down. That just came up last season too with the Purgatory reference!! I love the consistency and continuity of that particular “issue” with Sam and how many angles they’ve explored it from. It’s quite a deep subject, isn’t it. Sam “got out.” He was made to feel guilty for even wanting to get out. And once he did get out – he was shunned. (As far as we know. Maybe there was some intermittent contact.) When he gets back in, he’s angry and traumatized and still in blame-mode against Dean and his Dad.
BUT. That starts to change. Dad’s death changes things. Sam is suddenly gung-ho hunter. Lots and lots of guilt. About what that relationship was like, about how he had hurt his father, blah blah. (Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that John Winchester’s head-trip raising of his sons was bullshit. In the Bell Jar, which is where we want to be to understand them – Sam was PRIMED to become consumed with guilt for having left the family, disappointed his dad, etc. So he had a lot to prove.) And then right around this episode is where it really starts to change – as Dean is now the damsel in distress – and Sam has to “step up”. Not just because it’s the right thing to do – or that he loves his brother – but that he feels GUILTY. Dean sacrificed everything, Dean took it on the chin …
The fact that Sam keeps feeling haunted – periodically – about how he hasn’t been there for Dean like Dean has been there for him – speaks to just how unresolved an issue this is.
And honestly – sometimes people get defensive when I say this, feeling protective towards Dean – as you mentioned here, and I look forward to reading the comments on the new episode – I was only able to see it a couple of days ago:
Having to be there for your family member to the degree that Dean expects is … well it would be horrible. It would drive me insane. I would flee into the night from that kind of pressure. (This is why I found Season 9 so exhilarating, as upsetting as it was and I wanted them to “make up” etc. I found it cathartic because FINALLY at least one of them had the sense that the way this was set up was no longer working, did not help, and they needed to re-adjust. And of course Dean would resist because that would activate a feeling of “Is he mad at me?” ah, those words …)
Of course this is how their family is set up – and this is what is normal to them.
// And I’ve always loved, from the moment I heard it, Dean’s “What?” to Sam’s question about what HIS job is as a brother. Ackles truly communicates that it never crossed Dean’s mind. //
It’s so sad.
Also, in re: Sam letting Dean down, or perceiving that he’s let Dean down:
This has a lot to do too with how Dean has developed, as played by JA. Dean is obviously strong and tough and brave. But he also hides things like a little kid hides them, or an animal crawling off to lick his wounds. What that does is create a certain barrier between him and even the people who love him. Like the scene between Bobby and Dean in the junkyard in this episode. Dean holes up deep inside himself – makes CRAZY decisions from that place – and then seems surprised/taken aback that people love him as much as they do. I just re-watched some of the Lisa episodes and that relationship fascinates me – and how he immediately goes to “You’re kicking me to the curb” when she wants to have a relationship talk or whatever. When no, she just wants to TALK about things.
Dean has that effect on people.
So he’s strong – but he brings up this protective and frustrated thing in the people who love him – who want to get through to him, or – who just want him to KNOW that they love him and that they aren’t going anywhere.
We see this over and over again – and it’s really great when we can see it in operation in the Dean/Sam relationship.
I am thinking of the killer last scene in Love Hurts. Both of them are sooooooooo good in that scene.
One more: speaking of Bobby and Dean in the salvage yard when they hear an intruder, “they both go from intimate emotions to high-alert action in a flash, and it’s hot as hell.” I’ve always loved that sudden shift and love that you noticed and pointed it out.
Men of action!! No time to dwell! Always on high alert!
Love it.
(in my honor’s defence, it was pitch black)
Just dropping a comment that I’ve discovered your posts, Sheila, since starting my own re-watch in 2022. You make such poignant observations about the relationships in this show that I’m seeing it all with fresh eyes; you’ve put into words what I couldn’t for myself and I have such a better understanding of why it is I’ve loved Supernatural since opening night in 2005. Thank you for these recaps! (And for giving me a crash course in filmmaking and media review. What a wealth of knowledge you’ve collected on this blog over the years! Thank you for sharing yourself so openly.)
KJ Nerrie – thank you so much! I love to hear from people who discover these old posts and take the time to comment. I did put so much blood/sweat/tears into them – it was such a fun project while it lasted, and I got to put so much of what I knew/thought into them – Supernatural is such a great show for those kinds of projections.
The beauty of those early seasons – the beauty of the lOOK of it – is something that still startles me. I wish that look had continued – it was so strongly established from the pilot – and was one of my ways in – and then, poof, the show no longer looked like that – which just underlines my opinion that Kim manners and the rest were ARTISTS – not technicians – and achieving the dark glamorous look they did was very difficult and not easily replicated. I also think the later teams basically didn’t understand horror as a genre and preferred to swerve the show into YA fantasy land which was such a disappointment (to me anyway).
at any rate – so glad you tripped over these re-caps and that you’re getting something from them. It means a lot!