I feel so slow on the uptake. It seems now like the theme of Season 15 is Dean and the nature of love/trust/family, terms outlined by AltMichael last season: Jack isn’t family, and Dean was relieved at his death. Cas is a deadweight who does nothing but fuck up. And Sam will eventually abandon him.
I don’t know if they consider the Eileen storyline to have wrapped up the abandonment issues; I hope not, because that’s pretty weak sauce and it’s the biggest, most longstanding pillar of Dean’s character. (Also funny: Sam hooks up with Eileen and Dean heads off to Purgatory and immediately tries to find Benny.) And maybe I’m just imposing order where none actually exists. But I wonder if that’s not going to be the chief conflict at the end.
I don’t know. I peeked at the comments on the official twitter this past week and had to laugh. Along with all the outraged Cas fans and outraged Sam fans demanding the show remember there are characters other than Dean, there were also the outraged Dean fans asking for a little less attention from the writers, who are ruining him. I’m not sure I agree with that – yes, I’d love to see more of Sam, but Dean is recognizable and also understandable to me. One loss after another, and not only do you learn not to bother to want things, but you draw a bright line around the few things you won’t concede. It’s always been Sam, and of course with so little time left, Dean will collapse his forces around the citadel. Sam is it. Everything else is expendable. Jack, Cas, Amara, fake Bobby and fake Charlie and Eileen, Caitlin and every other person on earth can go.
If the echoes of Michael in s14 are intentional, then he has already conceded Sam, too, or knows he’s going to have to. He is really just fighting so Sam will have the opportunity to leave him, hopefully in the far distant future.
Throughout the episode, I kept thinking back to Atomic Monsters: the parents fighting so hard to keep their son alive, and Dean cutting his head off for the greater good. The image of Dean talking Sam to his knees at the end of s10 is one I haven’t gotten over, and every time I see it echoed it upends me.
The way Calvert played all those awful scenes, in the bunker and the car, was fantastic. Dean thanking Jack in the Impala just smished me flat.
I am going to miss Amara! This innocence that lets her think she can just take Chuck out for a spin around creation to change his mind checks out against her belief that Dean just needed to hang out with Mary to get fixed and also that of course Dean would have
zero objections to being consumed by her. It all seems to work on paper, Amara! Swallow played her realization of Dean’s duplicity so well. I really hope we see more of her than a creepy black eye in the next few episodes.
Always love to see Rachel Miner. Good work establishing in advance how they’re going to summon her to Earth to take Cas. And Serafina was a fun angel (as was Tallie!) which we haven’t seen in a while.
It’s a hard episode to say I liked, as battered as I feel. But it has kept me sad, uneasy, and thinking since it aired.
I agree with most of your comments, Jenny. I’ve been thinking and honestly hoping that this is the way that the show ends. I’ve been hoping that the writers finally realize and admit that SPN is about Sam and Dean and only Sam and Dean. While I enjoy seeing Rachel and Amara and Jack (and next week it looks like we get Charlie and Bobby, all of whom are my favorite supplemental characters in the series), I hoping that what we are seeing is a symmetry between when the show started and how it ends. It is emotionally devastating (and I don’t use that word lightly) but also extremely satisfying if the writers do it right. We now that Jensen and Jared can handle and convey the emotional weight that will be necessary to celebrate and honor the canon that has been created over the past 15 years, but to me, the best ending should be only Sam and Dean embodying the lyrics:
Carry on my wayward sons
There’ll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don’t you cry no more.
Yeah, I don’t mean to endorse everything I see in Dean right now. I’m just saying that I get it. I love Jack – he is a household favorite and I find his story interesting and moving and thematically consistent as an echo of Sam’s and Dean’s story. But I felt an intense relief when Dean said he wasn’t family, as much as my heart broke for Jack. Because it felt true to who and where Dean is and what we’ve seen on the screen – that bond isn’t there, just like I haven’t seen it with Cas, either, all protestations to the contrary. I think if just Cas had attached himself to Jack, Dean never would have bothered. Dean thanking Jack, too, felt honest.
What you’ve said here is what I’m hoping for, too. I think Dean’s Heaven would in large part consist of memories of Sam choosing him, over and over. It’s how I want this to end, them choosing each other, one last memory to live in.
// But I felt an intense relief when Dean said he wasn’t family, as much as my heart broke for Jack. Because it felt true to who and where Dean is and what we’ve seen on the screen – that bond isn’t there, just like I haven’t seen it with Cas, either, all protestations to the contrary. //
My feelings are similar to yours, Jenny. I find Calvert to be such a likable actor and I have enjoyed his “take” on this character – although the writers haven’t done him many favors! Dean has never really been all that into Jack – even though there was that one scene where they went fishing – Jensen killed that scene … but it’s like they never BUILT on that. How complex and interesting would it have been if Sam and Dean basically really did “adopt” Jack – I mean, it’s THERE, but it doesn’t feel consciously there. Both of their thwarted lives – neither of them get to be fathers (although Ben was Dean’s son, put that on my tombstone!!) – and yet that aspect of it wasn’t really forefronted … another opportunity lost.
// I think if just Cas had attached himself to Jack, Dean never would have bothered. //
When Dean told Sam that Jack wasn’t family, I thought of the time when Dean was possessed by AltMichael, and Jack was so blase about the necessity of killing him. Of course, Sam and Cas are both smart enough to realize that killing Dean to stop the murderous archangel might be a necessity, but it would be an agony, not just something you just shrug and do because it’s practical (which in turn reminds me of what Dean said to Soulless Sam about being human -“‘Are you just supposed to sit there in the dark and suffer even when there’s nothing to be done at that moment?’ . . . ‘Yes. You sit in the dark and you feel the loss.”) I think a lot of the significance was that Jack didn’t have a soul at the time (if I remember correctly), but, still, he didn’t have a connection with Dean that would have made it nearly unbearable to have had to end his life.
//It’s a hard episode to say I liked, as battered as I feel//
I’m with you Jenny. Dean abandoning Jack to Billie’s fate was an ugly thing. It’s hard to have listened to 4 or 5 seasons of “we save the world, that’s what we do” and then have Dean become so focussed on giving himself a sense of free will that essentially everyone and everything is expendable. From hubris to hypocrisy. I don’t know what folks in the official twitter feed were identifying as ruining Dean – but that change is a challenging one for me to like. I can look back at the season and see it building, though. I’m hoping that development of Selfish Dean becomes a source of tension that is resolved in the finale. I’d like the same embodying that Carolyn describes.
It’s hard to have listened to 4 or 5 seasons of “we save the world, that’s what we do” and then have Dean become so focussed on giving himself a sense of free will that essentially everyone and everything is expendable.
It’s really the first part that works my nerves – we’re the guys who break the rules, we’re the guys who save the world. Maybe it’s self-soothing, maybe it’s a lazy, camera-ready gloss. But the constant rejoinder of “you’re not doing this for anyone but yourself” – from Crowley, from Chuck, from every randomly generated demon – it’s more than fair. And at every tough choice, Would you let the world die to save, say, Rowena? Eh, maybe. Would you let Dean die? No. If we hadn’t had to listen to all the self-congratulation – and again here is where I think binging very much altered the experience, because I have not internalized this trend as part of my understanding of the characters yet – this collapse into essential dualistic selfishness wouldn’t feel like such a betrayal. It tallies with the guys who stopped the trials and removed the mark and made deal after stupid deal.
I don’t know how to weigh Free Will vs. Chuck’s Gonna Destroy Everything as a motivator here. I feel it’s pretty muddled. Dean at least has the cover of trying to solve both problems with Jack’s plan, and to be fair, most of the world would have been saved under Billie’s extremely rule-driven regime. Just not Jack. Not Amara. Not the alt worlders. Not Eileen. And not, in the end, Dean and Sam. That this last is what draws him up is maybe a bigger victory for selfishness than letting Jack go through with it would have been.
(The Twitter complaint, from what I gathered, is mainly that Dean deeply loves Jack and his extended found family and would never agree to a plot that sacrificed any of them. Which I don’t necessarily agree with – that he has that relationship with Jack or that he wouldn’t make those tough choices.)
// If we hadn’t had to listen to all the self-congratulation – and again here is where I think binging very much altered the experience, because I have not internalized this trend as part of my understanding of the characters yet – this collapse into essential dualistic selfishness wouldn’t feel like such a betrayal. It tallies with the guys who stopped the trials and removed the mark and made deal after stupid deal. //
Interesting point. I really hear what you’re saying. I haven’t internalized that trend either.
// I don’t know how to weigh Free Will vs. Chuck’s Gonna Destroy Everything as a motivator here. I feel it’s pretty muddled. //
Yeah. I don’t really understand that. It’s just not clear. In my comment way below I said that the early arcs were so simple it was practically A to B. And the show was better then, I think we can all agree.
One overall objective. Post Kripke, every season had a different Big Bad. and that worked pretty well too until Season 12.
But this … this is too complicated and abstract. I can’t BELIEVE in any of it. I blame Chuck. He’s been writing the show since Season 12.
I used to bitch about Metatron sticking around – but I SO prefer Metatron to Chuck. Metatron as “writer” made so much more sense because he WAS a scribe.
Sorry to be mean but I think Chuck still being around has something to do with his popularity at cons. I like Rob Benedict but God as written wore off within 2 episodes. He’s just bored, he’s “over it”. He’s been “over it” for three years now. HOW is this interesting?
// The Twitter complaint, from what I gathered, is mainly that Dean deeply loves Jack and his extended found family and would never agree to a plot that sacrificed any of them. //
“Dean deeply loves Jack.”
“extended found family” – I would have bought that back when Ellen and Jo and Bobby and Charlie were around. Yes. Absolutely. But now? He barely talks to Cas at all.
Dean has never really been into Jack! I don’t know what these people are really seeing. Besides, he thanked Jack – and it was very emotional – and THAT made sense to me – AND it made sense to Jack.
I used to bitch about Metatron sticking around – but I SO prefer Metatron to Chuck.
Hahahahaha it’s the angels all over again – I was so let down by personalityless Raphael and motiveless Balthazar until I got to Naomi, who disappointed me until I met Bartholomew, etc etc – time and distance have done a lot of work here.
Dean has never really been into Jack! I don’t know what these people are really seeing. Besides, he thanked Jack – and it was very emotional – and THAT made sense to me – AND it made sense to Jack.
It was so freakin’ SAD. That conversation and the one in the Mrs. Butters episode – “I am TRYING” – were so good, maybe my favorite moments of the season. It’s just sick and unresolved and everyone is hurting and I don’t want it to be resolved. I don’t see how any happy resolution could feel real.
Jack matters to Sam because Sam sees himself in him (and so maybe can also see his way to loving/forgiving himself, if anyone is interested in Sam’s story anymore… anyone?), and for Sam’s sake Dean tried, he really did, but he can’t get there and it sucks but that’s what it is.
(This is also what I meant above – if just Cas had developed these strong paternal feelings for Jack, I think Dean would have left them to it. But since it meant so much to Sam and Sam identified so strongly with Jack, Dean felt he had to try.)
// I’m hoping that development of Selfish Dean becomes a source of tension that is resolved in the finale. //
I feel like this is what Dabb and his team have been going for – overall – but I haven’t liked it because I sense a hostility behind it – they don’t really like Dean, and they don’t really get him. “I killed Hitler!” and AGAIN he just mentioned it. that’s just not Dean. They don’t really get it – they have his lYRICS but they don’t hear his MUSIC.
I can’t explain it. It’s just OFF. Jensen is so good that he adds the recognizable Dean to everything he does – he had a couple of those floating disoriented moments he does so well in this past episode – but that’s all him.
And Dean has been selfish before – the times he’s gotten tired and been like “fuck it I can’t do this anymore” – or when he cries at his dad’s grave in Season 1 djinn world – “I don’t want this burden – why can’t somebody ELSE be in charge” – or when he chose to be “selfish” and live with Lisa and Ben and let Sam “go” (even though he never did) – every other time, Dean’s selfishness came from somewhere. an exhaustion, an overwhelming sense of trauma and loss, a bone-tired-ness with everything he’s experienced – I just don’t feel that now. The Mary storyline was so damn BOTCHED it left nary a trace in either Sam or Dean – something I couldn’t have imagined possible.
Mary being killed by Jack – okay – that left Dean angry. But the whole Mary thing was so awful and Words with Friends and etc. that even that didn’t provide the emotional maelstrom that, say, John’s death gave in Season 2.
So this “Dean is Selfish and abandoning Jack and pulling a gun on Sam” thing feels … phony. It feels superimposed. I’m just not feeling it.
// The way Calvert played all those awful scenes, in the bunker and the car, was fantastic. Dean thanking Jack in the Impala just smished me flat. //
That was my favorite scene. Well and some of Amara’s reactions to Chuck’s words. Her sense of betrayal and hurt really crushed me.
// Swallow played her realization of Dean’s duplicity so well. I really hope we see more of her than a creepy black eye in the next few episodes. //
I hope so too – I agree she played it so well. I am really hoping that wasn’t her final end although I fear it might be. :(
// And Serafina was a fun angel (as was Tallie!) which we haven’t seen in a while. //
Yes! She was so good, just all wrapped up in the fumes of her own sensuality – it was a very funny choice. It reminded me of Balthazar a little bit.
// But it has kept me sad, uneasy, and thinking since it aired. //
Me too.
What are your thoughts on Dean pulling a gun on Sam? I’m having a hard time getting past it but maybe I’m missing something.
I do like that the last two episodes have upped the tension between Sam and Dean – which I have really missed – I guess I’m having a hard time figuring out what the real issue is. Sam cares about … Eileen? Jack? Did he mention Charlie and Bobby too? But those were AU Charlies and Bobby’s so … aren’t they gone?
I feel stupid that I don’t get it. Any enlightenment along these lines is welcome.
What are your thoughts on Dean pulling a gun on Sam? I’m having a hard time getting past it but maybe I’m missing something.
THIS IS AWFUL BUT!!!!! my feelings are basically … nothing? I didn’t buy it as a credible threat at all. It basically registered as “Sam I would very much like to go through that door and so I am producing this item and waving it in such a way to communicate the sincerity of my desire to you in a clear and unmistakable manner.” I mean I can’t even engage with it as a genuine possibility. He just had two brutal conversations about how his concerns begin and end with Sam, and I am supposed to believe he’s going to shoot him? I’m sorry, I just don’t.
On top of that, during this whole scene – Jack is Dying! Dean might Kill Sam!! Sam repeats Chorus Beginning at What about Me??? – my focus was entirely on Chuck and most specifically Amara. Chuck and Amara was the drama, the stakes in it for me, something new and important that I hadn’t seen before. If Dean with a Gun was meant to be played straight and meant to be dramatic in itself, it just totally flopped for me. You can’t have these meta moments with the writer speaking to us, saying “this is it, this is my ending, Dean lost in his rage…” without undercutting the reality and power of what’s happening “on stage” – you’re basically telling us that none of it is real or important. To me, it was all something for Amara to react to.
That’s awful, isn’t it? That what should be such a violation of Dean, of Sam, of their relationship, has no substance at all? I mentioned the end of s10, “close your eyes, Sammy,” as something that is still messing me up 5 seasons later, this image I can’t shake, something that – even though it was almost entirely driven by the external MoC – has irrevocably shaken my relationship with Dean Winchester. It was seismic. Everything I’ve thought about Dean since then has had to take that moment into account. But Dean pulling that gun just glanced off me and barely left a scratch.
My partner and I just discussed this and she 100% bought it, and has been wondering just wtf Dean is so mad about, exactly. We’ve been going around about that question for days now, and the realization that we interpreted that scene so differently – she has to be right and I have to be wrong about this, right? They wouldn’t do something so enormous if it wasn’t supposed to be accepted as sincere and credible? – has cleared a lot of this up.
Man, what if Dean had actually shot him? Even if Cas immediately healed Sam? Even if Dean missed – gun knocked aside, whatever? I would be far more shaken up, far more frightened of Chuck right now, far more worried about what this is doing to Dean.
I guess I’m having a hard time figuring out what the real issue is
Oh man, I have no idea. I can’t work it out either. Here’s
what I’ve got:
– Chuck has been directing the shitshow that is the Winchester Family Story with special attention and won’t stop until Sam and Dean kill each other. Chuck must be stopped!!!
– But Chuck is going to destroy the world anyway and so everyone dies regardless. Chuck must be stopped!!!!
**They agree up until this point**
– Jack can kill Chuck and Amara and save the world but then he dies
**Sam’s off the bandwagon and wants a new way, Dean is still on board**
– Sam finds out Billie will be the new God and “send everyone back where they belong” BUT THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SAVED
**Dean still likes the plan**
– Everyone back where they belong means angels (presumably including Cas?) back to Heaven, demons to Hell BUT THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SAVED
**Dean’s fine with that**
– Eileen dead again BUT THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SAVED
**Still okay with Dean**
– Fake Bobby and Fake Charlie back to their vanished world, so also dead/lost in the vast reaches of space? BUT THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SAVED
**Fine, says Dean**
– And Sam and Dean, premier disruptors of the Natural Order, both dead/in Hell/never born? Anyway it’s not good, BUT THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SAVED
**here Dean lowers the gun, as expected**
I don’t have any clue how Sam weighs all these bad outcomes – Jack dying was enough for him to balk. I think Cas and Eileen weigh more heavily with him too, but I can’t really buy that the alt worlders do? If they were still the idea of Bobby, the idea of Charlie, then maybe I would buy it. But they’re their own persons who we don’t know or care about. Regardless, Dean won’t stop until Sam is a casualty.
I don’t think I was as put off by Dean pulling out the gun as others were. Certainly it showed his desperation…but I, too, never believed that he would pull the trigger. To me it echoed other times that Dean has tried to scare Sam into doing the “right” thing. The fist fight in When the Levee Breaks. Metamorphosis and “I would want to hunt you.” Sometimes he goes for pure shock factor to bowl Sam over.
There’s something interesting to me about seeing Sam forced into the role Dean played at the end of season 5…and the end of season 8!…the recalcitrant witness to the world-saving sacrifice. Sam throwing himself into the pit to stop Lucifer or close the gates of hell was A-OK with Sam, but anyone ELSE taking on a voluntary sacrifice from misplaced guilt, fully understanding the risks and consequences, is anathema. Meanwhile, Dean hasn’t shifted much from the end of season 5 or 8…the gates of hell open and close, Death changes faces, entire universes burn away, and all this can be dealt with until Sam becomes a casualty.
Those themes make sense to me. All the rest, the collateral of Billie and Eileen and the alt-world, is just swirling plot points.
As a big noisy scare tactic – that’s how I saw it, too, with clumsy framing provided by Chuck. I’m really glad I’m not the only one!
There’s something interesting to me about seeing Sam forced into the role Dean played at the end of season 5…and the end of season 8!…the recalcitrant witness to the world-saving sacrifice. Sam throwing himself into the pit to stop Lucifer or close the gates of hell was A-OK with Sam, but anyone ELSE taking on a voluntary sacrifice from misplaced guilt, fully understanding the risks and consequences, is anathema.
This is interesting! Watching Dean make the Sam-saving sacrifice at the end of s3 messed him up so much, it’s impossible for him to tolerate. He kind of bewilderingly and without explanation agreed to Dean becoming a soul bomb in s11, ramifications of which were never really dealt with. And he agreed to kill Rowena, but only after she played the “would you let Dean die” card. Dean in the box, Jack going black hole, Cas taking the Mark – he just can’t sign on.
This seems like a consistent response from him when lined up with how he relates to Jack overall, but so underdeveloped :( I have to take some hope from how unwilling he is to let someone else shoulder that burden.
Yish, there’s so much meat here that they’re never going to get into. Would have really liked to see how Sam squares Dean’s feelings towards Jack in light of how Sam identifies with him.
//there’s so much meat here that they’re never going to get into.//
I think you’re right, Jenny. I’ve learned to take it as a victory as long as the Show opens more doors than it closes. I can swim in lacuna for days. For me, the truly unsalvageable episodes are the ones that try to say something Definitive that turns out to be both unspecific and profoundly boring (we’re the ones who save the world, etc).
For what it’s worth, it’s been really fun to track your comments here as you binged through the series. I appreciate your ability to “find the poetry,” as Jessie says. I bookmarked your comment on an earlier post about Dean v Hell/High Water/Heaven/Earth/Sam/himself, for the sake of Sam, because that is really my guiding light forever when it comes to this show.
I’ve learned to take it as a victory as long as the Show opens more doors than it closes. I can swim in lacuna for days. For me, the truly unsalvageable episodes are the ones that try to say something Definitive that turns out to be both unspecific and profoundly boring (we’re the ones who save the world, etc).
I think that’s exactly it, the issue with the last few seasons: all the doors closing. No uneasiness about Sam’s faith in a god who rejects him. No discomfort about Mary’s deal to save John. No festering wound about John and how he felt about them. No sense of the meaning of lifelong itinerants adjusting to staying in one place. No drive to restore Mary because we are assured “she’s complete”. Everything’s “complete”. All these uncomfortable, dissatisfying issues tied up with a bow. The last few seasons have been entirely about Closure, and Closure is something I have never really believed in. The potential of the show has been in the difference between what we see and what the characters tell us we’re seeing.
Which is why I’m into this unhappy, dissatisfying turn with Dean and Jack – this is going to leave a bruise, it’s going to ache when rain’s in the forecast. And this show has always been best when the aches linger.
I appreciate your ability to “find the poetry,” as Jessie says. I bookmarked your comment on an earlier post about Dean v Hell/High Water/Heaven/Earth/Sam/himself, for the sake of Sam, because that is really my guiding light forever when it comes to this show.
Oh gosh. Binging this show has been like an intensive therapy program for me – I bring a lot of baggage to the viewing experience, and as I said to Jessie, I’ve put a lot of emotional work into watching this show. I’m not going home emptyhanded!
It’s impossible for me to entirely separate my feelings for Sam Winchester from those for my own baby sister. It’s impossible for me to view Dean’s choices without the faint tint of the lens of my relationship with her shading things. And there is nothing I wouldn’t fight for her. It’s been my job my whole life. It drives her bonkers sometimes. Sometimes she’s the one I have to fight. Just as often, she’s the one fighting for me. So this throughline, this part of Dean, it’s lit up in neon for me. It’s what the show’s about.
Anyway. Thank you for talking to me! Especially on a tense day like today. Your thoughts on the show are like a balm, but like a tangy, articulate, thought-provoking balm. It blows my mind how smart and insightful this comment section is.
I’m pretty conflicted about this one. On the one hand it’s nice to see some actual conflict on the screen again, and things really start to feel enjoyable when Sam and Dean are fighting, or having tearful heart to hearts.
BUT
For me, a lot of the emotional stuff is not landing, because I agree that in these last few seasons the writers just are not getting Dean right. I can see that it’s purposeful, that what they are going for is that Dean is super messed up over not having agency for his whole life or whatever. But I don’t really FEEL it. As a viewer the recent season has honestly just been so poorly executed that I still feel all previous seasons to be more accurate, and the big “reveals” or “truths” of this season are so pathetic. Sam doesn’t want to do Billie’s plan because Alt World hunters will disappear? Because Eileen would go back to being dead? These are weak, weak arguments for me, Bobby and Charlie aren’t even REAL Bobby and Charlie, so honestly, who cares? Also, if Dean has felt all season that he does not have agency, that his choices aren’t really his but rather Chuck’s how in the hell have they even been able to put together this plan??? How have we not seen more angst over THAT? Are his current choices his choices? It certainly seems like they are not given Chuck’s turn around at the end, but it also seemed like he thought they were ALL SEASON. So, as a viewer I’m not sure what to do with that.
Perhaps once everything is said and done I will be able to come to terms with these final seasons, but as I watch this all unfold, I am genuinely disappointed to find that I don’t really like it.
// I can see that it’s purposeful, that what they are going for is that Dean is super messed up over not having agency for his whole life or whatever. But I don’t really FEEL it. //
YES. I said exactly the same thing up above! I feel just the same way. I don’t FEEL it. I appreciate Jensen’s playing of it – his work is always beautiful – but the story around it is just not landing. and yes, the writers don’t really “get” Dean.
// Sam doesn’t want to do Billie’s plan because Alt World hunters will disappear? Because Eileen would go back to being dead? These are weak, weak arguments for me, Bobby and Charlie aren’t even REAL Bobby and Charlie, so honestly, who cares? //
I KNOW. I wouldn’t be surprised if they found a way to bring Maggie back, a character universally reviled. also, hasn’t Chuck described all the other worlds? Does the AU not count?
Sam didn’t make much sense here either – I’m not sure what his beef is – unless it’s that he doesn’t want Jack to sacrifice himself – which makes a sort of sense, even if I don’t really feel it emotionally. He legit cared for Jack, more than Dean ever did.
// Are his current choices his choices? It certainly seems like they are not given Chuck’s turn around at the end, but it also seemed like he thought they were ALL SEASON. So, as a viewer I’m not sure what to do with that. //
I know. I feel like this past episode’s “script” was supposed to be written by Chuck. who – like Dabb – seems not to understand Sam and Dean AND to resent that Sam and Dean are central AND resents that Sam and Dean have been very well-established already – by writers who really understood them. I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel there’s some almost overt hostility in what has happened in the last 4 years.
I for one don’t care at all about what is shown on screen because it’s completely shallow. Once past the text, the basic plot, this is yet another nothing episode : the direction is non-existent, the sets and locations are completely tame, there’s really no action – just a bunch of people standing there and talking to one another about how serious the situation is (it really isn’t though), the dialogues are lame and boring, the humor completely absent, the actors seem tired and bored as well and in the end there’s no subtext at all, the episode has absolutely nothing to say.
I know it’s a whole issue for the show for 4 years now but as we are fast approching the ending this… emptiness seems more glaring than ever. It’s not the appropriate setup for a grand finale, it’s completely anticlimactic.
But really what is absolutely baffling to me is that I can’t seem to find just ONE negative review for this episode from the Supernatural community : it’s like everyone found this episode astonishing while it’s just the pinacle of Andrew Dabb and others efforts to deconstruct the show.
People don’t seem to actually care about what is happening on screen anymore they could just read the episode screenplay instead for a similar result.
I made myself a reason : there’s really no way for Andrew Dabb to actually give a propre ending to this once great show but still I can’t help to feel once again letdown even though Supernatural quality has already hit rock bottom.
I don’t know if you visit the website “Previously TV” forums, but I can tell you that 90% of the fans there were extremely dissatisfied with this episode. The thread is full of pure hate and disgust for what the show and characters have turned into. Here’s the link for anyone interested: https://forums.primetimer.com/topic/112561-s15e17-unity/?tab=comments#comment-6426556
I haven’t watched it yet and part of me feels like I should just skip it to save myself a rage fit from seeing how the show is crawling to the finish line.
Thanks for the link I have to admit I’m not that deep into the fandom so I find it a bit reassuring to find out that the vocal minority doesn’t seem to be anything more than that.
I really dislike this aversion for “negativity” (meaning constructive criticism) that seems to have overun some parts of the internet nowadays.
// just a bunch of people standing there and talking to one another about how serious the situation is (it really isn’t though) //
This is so true. and yet another episode where the majority of it takes place in the bunker.
I was so excited by Adam’s little hippie-dippie shop – at least it was a change of scenery.
// But really what is absolutely baffling to me is that I can’t seem to find just ONE negative review for this episode from the Supernatural community : //
I’m following different people on Twitter then. Many people are underwhelmed. and have been upset all along about what has been done to Sam and Dean.
// while it’s just the pinacle of Andrew Dabb and others efforts to deconstruct the show. //
the deconstruction aspect has been so upsetting. Nobody asked for the show to be deconstructed. People who disliked the original three seasons – who feel the show started for real when Cas showed up – have been hostile to the idea that the show is about the brothers. Dabb took that to heart. He cares about teenagers. Wayward girls. Sam and Dean just standing around, or reading books, being peripheral characters in other people’s stories.
It’s amazing, when you look back on the pilot – SUCH a strong pilot – and yet somehow Dabb et al have been unable to find enrichment from this pilot – when all the OTHER showrunners were able to. It’s an endlessly multiplying source – and Dabb hasn’t been able to explore it at all. It doesn’t interest him.
I haven’t read your comments yet but here’s my take:
I look back with great longing of the arcs of yesteryear and their clear simplicity of all of it.
1. Find Dad. Reconnect as brothers.
2. Grieve Dad. Dean keeps a secret for almost the entire season. Sam has psychic powers.
3. Find a way to reverse Dean’s crossroads deal.
4. Dean returns from dead. Sam addicted to demon blood. The angels arrive.
5. Angel war. Michael vs. Lucifer. Complicated in some respects – those RINGS – the whole “who is going to allow himself to be raped” undercurrent/tension … but the simplicity of the concept was there – I never ever got as confused as I am now.
These simple season-wide arcs continued to Season 9, and most of 10.
One or two overall driving plot-points – one major objective, one or two problems to solve – and then let the main relationship be the main story.
Now? Billie? The Empty? Chuck as … who the hell is Chuck? He is literally SHRUGGING in his scenes. None of this matters to him. Really powerful choice, Dabb!
Amara – I have an issue with her outfits and miss her caryatid-Martha-Graham initial conception – but she was heartbreaking to me in this episode. She seemed to really want to find balance, to work with the brothers. Her ending infuriated me. Like … that’s it? She’s now submerged into her brother? Trapped again? That’s it? That was your solution, Dabb? How INTERESTING it would have been if the whole thing played out in reverse – if SHE subsumed CHUCK – if SHE was the last person standing.
If this writing team is faced with two choices, they always take the least interesting one.
Both she and Jensen were actually playing their primal connection – HARD – even though Dabb et al had zero interest in actually exploring it.
Dean pulling a gun on Sam. Cocking it. What are they GOING for here? I don’t get it. Is this Chuck’s version of the story and characters? Is it Chuck’s script we just watched? Is that why it was so bad? Is that why we had those random title cards?
I liked sexpot Adam in the … head shop? … with the sexpot angel – Jensen murmuring “What’s happening” when the two of them started making out – made me legit laugh. But again – what was the purpose of that trip? It just …pfffft. Fizzled into nothing. Jack lies crouched in the bunker corridor, having “taken” the rib … and then it doesn’t seem to really matter in the end.
The fight between Sam and Dean was pushed – not by them as actors – it just felt really really on the nose. and also … I just couldn’t tell where either of them were coming from.
What exactly is Sam’s issue? I cannot figure out what the hell is going ON.
Why are the brothers at loggerheads? Is it because of freakin Jack? I felt all this RELIEF when Dean said “He’s not family” – but because this is DABB we’re talking about, I get the feeling that HE thinks (Dabb thinks) that we the audience are going to be like “Oh boo hoo, poor wittle jack being rejected by that mean toxically-masculine Dean” … when in reality I felt like “You’re damn straight he’s not family.”
The whole Jack storyline … now I like him as an actor. But he has so clearly been kept around because they mistakenly think that tweens will want to watch this show. and who knows, some of them maybe do – but their core audience are NOT tweens. Jack has his fan base, and okay that’s fine. But his persistent presence has hurt the show. Yes, let’s have this all-powerful being show up and then never ever allow him to use his powers – and be mopey for three years straight – and need constant pep talks. He’s the new Cas. Episodes upon episodes have involved CAS giving JACK pep talks. When Cas was the one who needed pep talks ever since he got tuberculosis in Season 8 or 9 or whatever.
I am mainly IRRITATED by how CONFUSED I am. I am generally an intelligent person. I am fine with complex plots. But this doesn’t feel complex – it feels confused and also … EXPEDIENT. They’re just throwing shit at the wall. “Hey let’s have there be a key to Death’s library that somehow no one ever thought to look for before.” You know. It’s just … instead of Sam and Dean having to work TOGETHER to figure this out, and maybe form an alliance with Amara – which would have been interesting and unpredictable – you have them separated out … doing all this random shit … and then having this big blow-out fight where Dean pulls a gun on Sam.
I’m actually rather upset. And upset about what they chose to do with Amara. Chuck is a boring serial killer, with NO stakes in what is happening. He literally does not give a shit. He’s just mildly irritated that Dean and Sam don’t follow his script. That’s his beef. (EYE ROLL). Amara, though, has high stakes. The highest.
To get rid of the high stakes person and keeping the low-stakes person is classic Dabb.
I have disliked the “chuck as writer” thing from the jump. It is hostile towards the real characters created by kripke, who lived in the real world, living lives we all connected with. Now it’s just … one of many … and so it calls all of those beautiful early seasons into question. That’s what is so horrible.
Mainly, I’m just lost. Sam and The Empty – I don’t know what’s going on there – Billie has been working some end game? Okay but … what’s her gig? putting things back together the way they were? To get rid of the AUs? Aren’t they already destroyed? and who CARED about the AUs anyway?? – (speaking of Death: they got rid of the first Death and then cast – well, she’s beautiful but her line readings are all the same. I just don’t FEEL anything from her. These people don’t know what they’re doing. They just didn’t know how to write the first Death, with his wonderful wit, and eccentricities – this generic figure with generic “sinister” line readings is the best they could come up with.
I’m being harsh. JA and JP played it beautifully – but it felt empty. The situation around them is empty – and nothing they do as actors can combat that.
I’m sorry to be so negative. I always dislike plot-heavy episodes and I have no investment in this plot anyway. So there’s that. I just am disheartened by how empty it all felt.
I just couldn’t tell where either of them were coming from. What exactly is Sam’s issue? I cannot figure out what the hell is going ON. Why are the brothers at loggerheads?
I too feel like I have been rendered thick and insensible by this season, but eventually I realised (many hours after watching) — this argument between Sam and Dean was meant to be the culmination of Sam’s fratricidal visions at the start of the season. Chuck has been writing all the alt-versions (which are his drafts, I think?) to kill each other, and now, finally, our versions are at that point. As great as the argument in the car at the end of the last episode was, and as much as J2 tried to sell this one, it felt forced because it was forced. It’s another example of “if it’s badly written and isn’t supported by the episode or season then that’s because Chuck’s writing it and he’s a bad writer.” A frustrating viewing experience even if individual moments deliver.
(I hate that Sam and Dean have become now and forever “our versions” of Sam and Dean. If I wanted to watch Fringe I’d watch Fringe!!)
I enjoyed reading everyone’s take on this one! I agree that conversation between Dean and Jack in the car was a barnstormer and I don’t want to think too carefully about it because right now I’m willing to accept what it tells me about Dean’s motivation and I suspect it doesn’t quite hang together. Also it’s hilarious that he was straight up thanking Jack for killing himself so that he and Sam could have a break and a Kit Kat.
Jenny I love how you can find the poetry in it, I feel like poetry is far far beyond me in response to these episodes haha.
Sheila I think I’m coming from the exact same place as you but I had the opposite reaction here. I’ve spent the whole season pointing at stuff I see and going slack-jawed huh? what? why? who? And this episode Frankensteined all those bits together into what appears to be a plot and I was just relieved to feel like I knew what was going on and what the goal is. A lot of the specifics are absolutely whiffed but it built some momentum to a climax that directly involved Sam and Dean, and I liked the division of everything into little contained one-acts instead of trying to force it to cross-cut cleanly. Even though it was yet again a bunch of scenes of people talking at each other as Paul says, the conversations were forced to have a structure, a rise and fall. Made them put a bit of effort in.
Also, great point about the dangers of a bored core character. I’m sure we were talking about this with respect to Crowley’s Bored Years, or the Cashmere Angels, or maybe flat-affect Mary? Anyway there were plenty of examples for Dabb & Co of how it’s not a great idea. And now there’s a surplus of angels again? Aaaaaaaaanyway. Let’s not get into that or the inanity of ‘a key to Death’s realm’ etc ad nauseum.
To end on a positive — while Adam’s shop felt kinda ungrounded, divorced from even the new cheaper reality of the show, I was charmed by all the performances and dynamics. Alessandro Juliani getting all loosey goosey has definitely been missing from my life up until now.
I think I’m coming from the exact same place as you but I had the opposite reaction here. I’ve spent the whole season pointing at stuff I see and going slack-jawed huh? what? why? who? And this episode Frankensteined all those bits together into what appears to be a plot and I was just relieved to feel like I knew what was going on and what the goal is.
This is me, too. It’s like trying to critique a bad freshman composition when you can’t even figure out what the kid is trying to do. I feel like I’ve twigged on now – thank you Davy and Meredith for doing such tough synthesizing here – and I’m almost delighted.
Jenny I love how you can find the poetry in it, I feel like poetry is far far beyond me in response to these episodes haha.
I’ve lost all credibility with you, haven’t I? 😂 Look, I have put a lot into this and I’m not leaving unless I get something back.
“Why are the brothers at loggerheads? Is it because of freakin Jack? I felt all this RELIEF when Dean said ‘He’s not family’ – but because this is DABB we’re talking about, I get the feeling that HE thinks (Dabb thinks) that we the audience are going to be like ‘Oh boo hoo, poor wittle jack being rejected by that mean toxically-masculine Dean’ … when in reality I felt like ‘You’re damn straight he’s not family.’ ”
In theory I can get behind both sentiments? (Albeit less because of Jack himself, and more because of what he means to Sam.) Like, Jack is a young kid who’s genuinely trying to be good! And of course Sam would want to guide/protect such a person! But if someone KILLS YOUR MOM, it’s 2000% reasonable to want nothing to do with them even if it WAS an accident!
But unlike earlier Sam-Dean conflicts, where both sides were written as nuanced/sympathetic…the writers SO CLEARLY want us to pick a side that I end up taking the other just out of spite. Poor Dean.
This comment section is wonderful, and I love it! So glad I’m not the only one left cold by these new episodes, but also appreciate hearing what worked for people!
What it really comes down to for me finally, and this is going to get really big picture, is that despite the title, this show is about humanity, people. The thing that’s been missing from Dean since Dabb took over is what Sheila would talk about in her recaps, his vulnerability, his openness to everyone and everything, his lack of boundaries. Dean was always the brother that was looking for connection, that got INVOLVED with people. There has been very little of that Dean in recent seasons, he’s just cold and angry and pulls guns on people constantly now. Sam has always held back a little, he was always corrupted with that demon blood and always so relieved to have rules and structure since it never seemed like he could TRUST himself, cuz, ya know demon blood. All of this is gone, obviously. Which has been maddening since Jack is basically the vehicle for ALL OF THIS to come back. But instead of leaning into Jack’s humanity they have been leaning into his angel-ness (like I honestly can’t believe that Sam has never had a conversation with Jack about how he used to have “powers” but then he realized they were bad and he didn’t need them). During Dabb’s run their solutions at the end of each season have been very dependent on supernatural intervention, which always feels wrong, see ridiculous puppet angel fight.
So I keep hoping that all of this has been on purpose to drive home the message that they’ve been doing it wrong and they need to get back to being brothers and just people, and all this confusion about free will is really that Chuck is making it up, they’ve always had free will or whatever. Look I can barely even talk about it the show is so muddled right now, but essentially, we can’t control God, we can only ignore him. Which is what I have been hoping they would do. The only way to win is to not play, which was suggested by the goddess in the billiards/luck episode. But we’ve got what 2, 3 episodes left? I’m not sure they’re gonna get the memo in time and I am terrified of what the final end will look like.
Anyway, this is my big-picture frustration with the show and I just needed to get it off my chest!
I think that’s exactly it, the issue with the last few seasons: all the doors closing. No uneasiness about Sam’s faith in a god who rejects him. No discomfort about Mary’s deal to save John. No festering wound about John and how he felt about them. No sense of the meaning of lifelong itinerants adjusting to staying in one place. No drive to restore Mary because we are assured “she’s complete”. Everything’s “complete”. All these uncomfortable, dissatisfying issues tied up with a bow. The last few seasons have been entirely about Closure
Jenny, this is so perfectly put. Paradoxically, this is why, surprising myself, (LATEST EPISODE SPOILERS) I don’t mind Cas’s big confession in the abstract. It was intended to be Closure, but as a reveal of a long-held pining, it actually opens doors, gives a bit of juice to the last severalmany years that Cas has been feeling these feelings. I have questions! When did it start? How did it evolve? Did Sam ever suspect? I feel pretty bad for Cas: he’s been hanging for years now around the edges of Dean’s life, while Dean is alternately dismissive or angry or professing brotherly love towards him. This is Dean’s love, apparently? The liminal edges of Dean’s love as it shines elsewhere? I dunno, it’s pretty tragic. Get a better love object, Cas!
That’s all in the abstract. In the particular I could hardly open my eyes and my face has been in permafreeze cringe. It was just too much emotion out of nowhere for me, a real OTT “Is this because I’m a lesbian?” moment that does Cas a disservice. I probably would not have enjoyed a plotline this season that hints towards Cas’s pining, but if they’re gonna do it, *do* it, instead of making his last significant episode about the restoration of his Faith via Jack, and then giving him about half a minute an episode since then. As the culmination of a character arc it feels a little pathetic and the way it was presented makes it look like a bone thrown to a section of fans just to give them a little treat at the end. Not sure whether they feel there’s a lot of meat on there considering it only happened so that he could die.
I will say, I thought Jensen reacted magnificently: nonplussed, troubled, sad. I liked him on the floor at the end too numb to answer his phone and I’m interested to see where this all goes next week.
That’s the big news out of the ep, I guess! I’ll admit to being surprised they actually went there. I found most of the rest of it pretty silly and dull. Some lovely closeups of Sam and I liked that scene with D&S connecting in the library where Sam was in his lovely black v-neck. The Jack driving scene was cute. They’ve given up trying to differentiate Charlie and Bobby from their OG counterparts. The music under and dramatic editing of the “urgently texting Eileen” scene was risible, as was the silo and yet more unfortunate canon-fodder refugees. We’re in a Raptured world now but I expect to open next week with fifty more refugees and a coterie of before-unseen angels, because that seems to be how it works.
As for heading towards the end, I think Cas dying for good is the first time I’ve felt like it was actually the series ending and not a standard season finale run. Here’s hoping these rejigged COVID eps are focused and personal!
This was Pam’s first time watching an ep as it aired, so we both went in innocent and unspoiled. What an ep for her to start with!
In our particular, we were much like Dean watching Adam and Serafina: what’s happening???? This combined with world events has had us in a state of giddiness ever since. We had to watch the ep again tonight because neither of us could remember anything else that happened. What a couple of days it’s been!
I confess to being shocked and a bit offended on Castiel’s behalf, and on behalf of decent fathers everywhere. In a show lousy with lousy dads, Cas was their only real avatar. I could get behind the sentiments in a sort of Dean Winchester: The Invention of the Human way, that understanding the phenomenon of love not as some dutiful adherence to a vague divine instruction but as the desperate, overpowering force Dean lives, it opened up a world of being and connection and pain and joy, like learning to read and learning to speak all at once. And that was in there, kinda, with the brief mentions of Sam and Jack, and it echoed Anna and Hannah, who both yearned for that aspect of the human experience but ultimately surrendered it. It would have, as Jenna outlines in her excellent comment above, leaned in to humanity.
But it was so self-contained, his feelings for everyone but Dean apparently collateral and without purpose or intent on their own. He learned to drive, but never took the car any further than a spin around the block. Get out there and use what you’ve learned! I felt that it dismissed most of his character, most of his several-years-long arc, the transformative power of his relationship with Jack, like the character exploded into personhood but then ultimately imploded back into being a simple accessory to Dean. Who, as you noted, has not been particularly rewarding of this depth of devotion.
I will say, I thought Jensen reacted magnificently: nonplussed, troubled, sad. I liked him on the floor at the end too numb to answer his phone and I’m interested to see where this all goes next week.
I agree about JA’s performance. Very subtle, believable and thoughtfully portrayed. Unfortunately somewhat difficult to key in on in the face of the lightshow happening in front of him, and confusing and dissatisfying to those coming into the scene with little context. From reviews and analyses I’ve read, it’s clear we’re still living in Lloyd Dobbler’s world and any other outcome is hateful. An insurmountable mismatch of desire, though, and all of the grief entailed, does feel like a relic from the show’s more glorious past.
It is still hard to remember anything else that happened. I was shocked when Donna vanished. I wonder where “away” is for Chuck; it’s gotta be pretty crowded by now. I wonder whether Jack is meant to be the new Death for what will undoubtedly be laboriously explained reasons, though I don’t recall either Bucky Haight or Billie wilting plants in their wake; I think only Amara did that. Bucky did take out a whole pizzeria, I suppose.
Really curious/anxious/excited about what’s coming.
Jenny somehow I missed this reply and all I have to say is that I would have been oooooooooooover the mooooooooon to see Wendigo Roy wilting plants in the final episodes. And it is a shame that Death never got to take God down with the sheer power of his bitter disappointment. Well met, again! :D
Oh, Helena, no, no. He’s not leaving you. You hear me? He’s gonna be with you, every step of the way, when you’re out there living, and fighting, every day, right (meaningfully clasps your elbow) here, according to The Smiths.
“It was just too much emotion out of nowhere for me, a real OTT “Is this because I’m a lesbian?” moment that does Cas a disservice. I probably would not have enjoyed a plotline this season that hints towards Cas’s pining, but if they’re gonna do it, *do* it, instead of making his last significant episode about the restoration of his Faith via Jack, and then giving him about half a minute an episode since then.”
YES! I so agree with this Jessie! I will admit to being all in on the whole Destiel thing, so for me it seemed less out of the blue, BUT these last few seasons have been terrible at tracking the interpersonal b/c they are so busy with, I dunno, the ensemble? The plots? It’s very similar to the beginning of the season when Sam killed Rowena. This had been foretold, we knew it was coming, but instead of using the lead up time to remind us of the shared bond over their fear of Lucifer to really play up the emotional toll, the writers thought some weird flirting btwn Rowena and Ketch would be appropriate. Any time they approach something meaningful they shy away from it at the worst possible moment!
As much as I have loved the relationship between Dean and Cas these many years, when I watched the most recent Cas/Jack centric episode when they were all talking at each other in the bunker all I could think was that these 3 actors used to have some chemistry, but this scene is just dead, dead, dead! It doesn’t feel as though there is any spine anymore (to use Sheila’s term), it seems as though the writers have a hard keeping track of whatever it is everyone wants from one episode to the next.
So did I watch Supernatural this past Thursday or Avengers Infinity War?
I’m sure the Chucknos snap was supposed to produce angst and heartbreak but it actually produced the opposite in me. For one brief, giddy moment as the AU hunters poofed out of existence, I actually felt excited and thought “Show is really going to Road House them all!”
After Donna poofed away (the only character that actually caused me a pang with her disappearance) and it was revealed that Chuck caused everyone to vanish…my excitement has now faded. I now think it was a Supervengers/Twilight Zone crossover and that Chucknosthony has snapped everyone to the cornfield. I think they will all be back however…..probably not onscreen, but I think all their characters will be safely returned. Sam and Eileen can have a texting reunion to round out their off screen relationship and her off screen disappearance. This is why it was impossible for me to feel any of the “high stakes” I was supposed to be feeling during the whole Sam/Jack portion of the show. I don’t care about the AU hunters or AU Bobby and Charlie. They’ve shown nothing of Sam and Eileen’s “relationship” on screen and so I can’t connect with Sam’s despair over her disappearance because they are barely giving me any glimpses into Sam at all anymore.
I feel so disconnected from the characters sometimes and I’ve noticed that feeling more this season than any other. When Castiel was in his final moments, I almost felt like I was coming at it from the perspective of analyzing Misha’s acting performance and Jensen’s response to it, rather than watching Cas say goodbye to Dean forever.
I have more thoughts on that scene, but it’s after midnight and my tired brain isn’t quite coherent enough to dive into it right now.
I’m still clueless how to actually feel as a viewer about the Dean-and-Cas scene itself…but as a fan, I’m a bit heartbroken to see the show be this public a laughingstock.
And now the “homophobic Jensen” thing has started up again. Great.
(All countered, obviously, by the *HUGE* relief/catharsis of the election results. Weird mix of emotions)
I feel so slow on the uptake. It seems now like the theme of Season 15 is Dean and the nature of love/trust/family, terms outlined by AltMichael last season: Jack isn’t family, and Dean was relieved at his death. Cas is a deadweight who does nothing but fuck up. And Sam will eventually abandon him.
I don’t know if they consider the Eileen storyline to have wrapped up the abandonment issues; I hope not, because that’s pretty weak sauce and it’s the biggest, most longstanding pillar of Dean’s character. (Also funny: Sam hooks up with Eileen and Dean heads off to Purgatory and immediately tries to find Benny.) And maybe I’m just imposing order where none actually exists. But I wonder if that’s not going to be the chief conflict at the end.
I don’t know. I peeked at the comments on the official twitter this past week and had to laugh. Along with all the outraged Cas fans and outraged Sam fans demanding the show remember there are characters other than Dean, there were also the outraged Dean fans asking for a little less attention from the writers, who are ruining him. I’m not sure I agree with that – yes, I’d love to see more of Sam, but Dean is recognizable and also understandable to me. One loss after another, and not only do you learn not to bother to want things, but you draw a bright line around the few things you won’t concede. It’s always been Sam, and of course with so little time left, Dean will collapse his forces around the citadel. Sam is it. Everything else is expendable. Jack, Cas, Amara, fake Bobby and fake Charlie and Eileen, Caitlin and every other person on earth can go.
If the echoes of Michael in s14 are intentional, then he has already conceded Sam, too, or knows he’s going to have to. He is really just fighting so Sam will have the opportunity to leave him, hopefully in the far distant future.
Throughout the episode, I kept thinking back to Atomic Monsters: the parents fighting so hard to keep their son alive, and Dean cutting his head off for the greater good. The image of Dean talking Sam to his knees at the end of s10 is one I haven’t gotten over, and every time I see it echoed it upends me.
The way Calvert played all those awful scenes, in the bunker and the car, was fantastic. Dean thanking Jack in the Impala just smished me flat.
I am going to miss Amara! This innocence that lets her think she can just take Chuck out for a spin around creation to change his mind checks out against her belief that Dean just needed to hang out with Mary to get fixed and also that of course Dean would have
zero objections to being consumed by her. It all seems to work on paper, Amara! Swallow played her realization of Dean’s duplicity so well. I really hope we see more of her than a creepy black eye in the next few episodes.
Always love to see Rachel Miner. Good work establishing in advance how they’re going to summon her to Earth to take Cas. And Serafina was a fun angel (as was Tallie!) which we haven’t seen in a while.
It’s a hard episode to say I liked, as battered as I feel. But it has kept me sad, uneasy, and thinking since it aired.
I agree with most of your comments, Jenny. I’ve been thinking and honestly hoping that this is the way that the show ends. I’ve been hoping that the writers finally realize and admit that SPN is about Sam and Dean and only Sam and Dean. While I enjoy seeing Rachel and Amara and Jack (and next week it looks like we get Charlie and Bobby, all of whom are my favorite supplemental characters in the series), I hoping that what we are seeing is a symmetry between when the show started and how it ends. It is emotionally devastating (and I don’t use that word lightly) but also extremely satisfying if the writers do it right. We now that Jensen and Jared can handle and convey the emotional weight that will be necessary to celebrate and honor the canon that has been created over the past 15 years, but to me, the best ending should be only Sam and Dean embodying the lyrics:
Carry on my wayward sons
There’ll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don’t you cry no more.
Yeah, I don’t mean to endorse everything I see in Dean right now. I’m just saying that I get it. I love Jack – he is a household favorite and I find his story interesting and moving and thematically consistent as an echo of Sam’s and Dean’s story. But I felt an intense relief when Dean said he wasn’t family, as much as my heart broke for Jack. Because it felt true to who and where Dean is and what we’ve seen on the screen – that bond isn’t there, just like I haven’t seen it with Cas, either, all protestations to the contrary. I think if just Cas had attached himself to Jack, Dean never would have bothered. Dean thanking Jack, too, felt honest.
What you’ve said here is what I’m hoping for, too. I think Dean’s Heaven would in large part consist of memories of Sam choosing him, over and over. It’s how I want this to end, them choosing each other, one last memory to live in.
// But I felt an intense relief when Dean said he wasn’t family, as much as my heart broke for Jack. Because it felt true to who and where Dean is and what we’ve seen on the screen – that bond isn’t there, just like I haven’t seen it with Cas, either, all protestations to the contrary. //
My feelings are similar to yours, Jenny. I find Calvert to be such a likable actor and I have enjoyed his “take” on this character – although the writers haven’t done him many favors! Dean has never really been all that into Jack – even though there was that one scene where they went fishing – Jensen killed that scene … but it’s like they never BUILT on that. How complex and interesting would it have been if Sam and Dean basically really did “adopt” Jack – I mean, it’s THERE, but it doesn’t feel consciously there. Both of their thwarted lives – neither of them get to be fathers (although Ben was Dean’s son, put that on my tombstone!!) – and yet that aspect of it wasn’t really forefronted … another opportunity lost.
// I think if just Cas had attached himself to Jack, Dean never would have bothered. //
Wait – can you elaborate on that?
When Dean told Sam that Jack wasn’t family, I thought of the time when Dean was possessed by AltMichael, and Jack was so blase about the necessity of killing him. Of course, Sam and Cas are both smart enough to realize that killing Dean to stop the murderous archangel might be a necessity, but it would be an agony, not just something you just shrug and do because it’s practical (which in turn reminds me of what Dean said to Soulless Sam about being human -“‘Are you just supposed to sit there in the dark and suffer even when there’s nothing to be done at that moment?’ . . . ‘Yes. You sit in the dark and you feel the loss.”) I think a lot of the significance was that Jack didn’t have a soul at the time (if I remember correctly), but, still, he didn’t have a connection with Dean that would have made it nearly unbearable to have had to end his life.
Carolyn –
// I hoping that what we are seeing is a symmetry between when the show started and how it ends. //
It feels somewhat like that’s the way it’s going. It’s hard to tell though because the plot is so overly-complicated!
//It’s a hard episode to say I liked, as battered as I feel//
I’m with you Jenny. Dean abandoning Jack to Billie’s fate was an ugly thing. It’s hard to have listened to 4 or 5 seasons of “we save the world, that’s what we do” and then have Dean become so focussed on giving himself a sense of free will that essentially everyone and everything is expendable. From hubris to hypocrisy. I don’t know what folks in the official twitter feed were identifying as ruining Dean – but that change is a challenging one for me to like. I can look back at the season and see it building, though. I’m hoping that development of Selfish Dean becomes a source of tension that is resolved in the finale. I’d like the same embodying that Carolyn describes.
It’s hard to have listened to 4 or 5 seasons of “we save the world, that’s what we do” and then have Dean become so focussed on giving himself a sense of free will that essentially everyone and everything is expendable.
It’s really the first part that works my nerves – we’re the guys who break the rules, we’re the guys who save the world. Maybe it’s self-soothing, maybe it’s a lazy, camera-ready gloss. But the constant rejoinder of “you’re not doing this for anyone but yourself” – from Crowley, from Chuck, from every randomly generated demon – it’s more than fair. And at every tough choice, Would you let the world die to save, say, Rowena? Eh, maybe. Would you let Dean die? No. If we hadn’t had to listen to all the self-congratulation – and again here is where I think binging very much altered the experience, because I have not internalized this trend as part of my understanding of the characters yet – this collapse into essential dualistic selfishness wouldn’t feel like such a betrayal. It tallies with the guys who stopped the trials and removed the mark and made deal after stupid deal.
I don’t know how to weigh Free Will vs. Chuck’s Gonna Destroy Everything as a motivator here. I feel it’s pretty muddled. Dean at least has the cover of trying to solve both problems with Jack’s plan, and to be fair, most of the world would have been saved under Billie’s extremely rule-driven regime. Just not Jack. Not Amara. Not the alt worlders. Not Eileen. And not, in the end, Dean and Sam. That this last is what draws him up is maybe a bigger victory for selfishness than letting Jack go through with it would have been.
(The Twitter complaint, from what I gathered, is mainly that Dean deeply loves Jack and his extended found family and would never agree to a plot that sacrificed any of them. Which I don’t necessarily agree with – that he has that relationship with Jack or that he wouldn’t make those tough choices.)
// If we hadn’t had to listen to all the self-congratulation – and again here is where I think binging very much altered the experience, because I have not internalized this trend as part of my understanding of the characters yet – this collapse into essential dualistic selfishness wouldn’t feel like such a betrayal. It tallies with the guys who stopped the trials and removed the mark and made deal after stupid deal. //
Interesting point. I really hear what you’re saying. I haven’t internalized that trend either.
// I don’t know how to weigh Free Will vs. Chuck’s Gonna Destroy Everything as a motivator here. I feel it’s pretty muddled. //
Yeah. I don’t really understand that. It’s just not clear. In my comment way below I said that the early arcs were so simple it was practically A to B. And the show was better then, I think we can all agree.
One overall objective. Post Kripke, every season had a different Big Bad. and that worked pretty well too until Season 12.
But this … this is too complicated and abstract. I can’t BELIEVE in any of it. I blame Chuck. He’s been writing the show since Season 12.
I used to bitch about Metatron sticking around – but I SO prefer Metatron to Chuck. Metatron as “writer” made so much more sense because he WAS a scribe.
Sorry to be mean but I think Chuck still being around has something to do with his popularity at cons. I like Rob Benedict but God as written wore off within 2 episodes. He’s just bored, he’s “over it”. He’s been “over it” for three years now. HOW is this interesting?
// The Twitter complaint, from what I gathered, is mainly that Dean deeply loves Jack and his extended found family and would never agree to a plot that sacrificed any of them. //
“Dean deeply loves Jack.”
“extended found family” – I would have bought that back when Ellen and Jo and Bobby and Charlie were around. Yes. Absolutely. But now? He barely talks to Cas at all.
Dean has never really been into Jack! I don’t know what these people are really seeing. Besides, he thanked Jack – and it was very emotional – and THAT made sense to me – AND it made sense to Jack.
I used to bitch about Metatron sticking around – but I SO prefer Metatron to Chuck.
Hahahahaha it’s the angels all over again – I was so let down by personalityless Raphael and motiveless Balthazar until I got to Naomi, who disappointed me until I met Bartholomew, etc etc – time and distance have done a lot of work here.
Dean has never really been into Jack! I don’t know what these people are really seeing. Besides, he thanked Jack – and it was very emotional – and THAT made sense to me – AND it made sense to Jack.
It was so freakin’ SAD. That conversation and the one in the Mrs. Butters episode – “I am TRYING” – were so good, maybe my favorite moments of the season. It’s just sick and unresolved and everyone is hurting and I don’t want it to be resolved. I don’t see how any happy resolution could feel real.
Jack matters to Sam because Sam sees himself in him (and so maybe can also see his way to loving/forgiving himself, if anyone is interested in Sam’s story anymore… anyone?), and for Sam’s sake Dean tried, he really did, but he can’t get there and it sucks but that’s what it is.
(This is also what I meant above – if just Cas had developed these strong paternal feelings for Jack, I think Dean would have left them to it. But since it meant so much to Sam and Sam identified so strongly with Jack, Dean felt he had to try.)
// I’m hoping that development of Selfish Dean becomes a source of tension that is resolved in the finale. //
I feel like this is what Dabb and his team have been going for – overall – but I haven’t liked it because I sense a hostility behind it – they don’t really like Dean, and they don’t really get him. “I killed Hitler!” and AGAIN he just mentioned it. that’s just not Dean. They don’t really get it – they have his lYRICS but they don’t hear his MUSIC.
I can’t explain it. It’s just OFF. Jensen is so good that he adds the recognizable Dean to everything he does – he had a couple of those floating disoriented moments he does so well in this past episode – but that’s all him.
And Dean has been selfish before – the times he’s gotten tired and been like “fuck it I can’t do this anymore” – or when he cries at his dad’s grave in Season 1 djinn world – “I don’t want this burden – why can’t somebody ELSE be in charge” – or when he chose to be “selfish” and live with Lisa and Ben and let Sam “go” (even though he never did) – every other time, Dean’s selfishness came from somewhere. an exhaustion, an overwhelming sense of trauma and loss, a bone-tired-ness with everything he’s experienced – I just don’t feel that now. The Mary storyline was so damn BOTCHED it left nary a trace in either Sam or Dean – something I couldn’t have imagined possible.
Mary being killed by Jack – okay – that left Dean angry. But the whole Mary thing was so awful and Words with Friends and etc. that even that didn’t provide the emotional maelstrom that, say, John’s death gave in Season 2.
So this “Dean is Selfish and abandoning Jack and pulling a gun on Sam” thing feels … phony. It feels superimposed. I’m just not feeling it.
// The way Calvert played all those awful scenes, in the bunker and the car, was fantastic. Dean thanking Jack in the Impala just smished me flat. //
That was my favorite scene. Well and some of Amara’s reactions to Chuck’s words. Her sense of betrayal and hurt really crushed me.
// Swallow played her realization of Dean’s duplicity so well. I really hope we see more of her than a creepy black eye in the next few episodes. //
I hope so too – I agree she played it so well. I am really hoping that wasn’t her final end although I fear it might be. :(
// And Serafina was a fun angel (as was Tallie!) which we haven’t seen in a while. //
Yes! She was so good, just all wrapped up in the fumes of her own sensuality – it was a very funny choice. It reminded me of Balthazar a little bit.
// But it has kept me sad, uneasy, and thinking since it aired. //
Me too.
What are your thoughts on Dean pulling a gun on Sam? I’m having a hard time getting past it but maybe I’m missing something.
I do like that the last two episodes have upped the tension between Sam and Dean – which I have really missed – I guess I’m having a hard time figuring out what the real issue is. Sam cares about … Eileen? Jack? Did he mention Charlie and Bobby too? But those were AU Charlies and Bobby’s so … aren’t they gone?
I feel stupid that I don’t get it. Any enlightenment along these lines is welcome.
What are your thoughts on Dean pulling a gun on Sam? I’m having a hard time getting past it but maybe I’m missing something.
THIS IS AWFUL BUT!!!!! my feelings are basically … nothing? I didn’t buy it as a credible threat at all. It basically registered as “Sam I would very much like to go through that door and so I am producing this item and waving it in such a way to communicate the sincerity of my desire to you in a clear and unmistakable manner.” I mean I can’t even engage with it as a genuine possibility. He just had two brutal conversations about how his concerns begin and end with Sam, and I am supposed to believe he’s going to shoot him? I’m sorry, I just don’t.
On top of that, during this whole scene – Jack is Dying! Dean might Kill Sam!! Sam repeats Chorus Beginning at What about Me??? – my focus was entirely on Chuck and most specifically Amara. Chuck and Amara was the drama, the stakes in it for me, something new and important that I hadn’t seen before. If Dean with a Gun was meant to be played straight and meant to be dramatic in itself, it just totally flopped for me. You can’t have these meta moments with the writer speaking to us, saying “this is it, this is my ending, Dean lost in his rage…” without undercutting the reality and power of what’s happening “on stage” – you’re basically telling us that none of it is real or important. To me, it was all something for Amara to react to.
That’s awful, isn’t it? That what should be such a violation of Dean, of Sam, of their relationship, has no substance at all? I mentioned the end of s10, “close your eyes, Sammy,” as something that is still messing me up 5 seasons later, this image I can’t shake, something that – even though it was almost entirely driven by the external MoC – has irrevocably shaken my relationship with Dean Winchester. It was seismic. Everything I’ve thought about Dean since then has had to take that moment into account. But Dean pulling that gun just glanced off me and barely left a scratch.
My partner and I just discussed this and she 100% bought it, and has been wondering just wtf Dean is so mad about, exactly. We’ve been going around about that question for days now, and the realization that we interpreted that scene so differently – she has to be right and I have to be wrong about this, right? They wouldn’t do something so enormous if it wasn’t supposed to be accepted as sincere and credible? – has cleared a lot of this up.
Man, what if Dean had actually shot him? Even if Cas immediately healed Sam? Even if Dean missed – gun knocked aside, whatever? I would be far more shaken up, far more frightened of Chuck right now, far more worried about what this is doing to Dean.
I guess I’m having a hard time figuring out what the real issue is
Oh man, I have no idea. I can’t work it out either. Here’s
what I’ve got:
– Chuck has been directing the shitshow that is the Winchester Family Story with special attention and won’t stop until Sam and Dean kill each other. Chuck must be stopped!!!
– But Chuck is going to destroy the world anyway and so everyone dies regardless. Chuck must be stopped!!!!
**They agree up until this point**
– Jack can kill Chuck and Amara and save the world but then he dies
**Sam’s off the bandwagon and wants a new way, Dean is still on board**
– Sam finds out Billie will be the new God and “send everyone back where they belong” BUT THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SAVED
**Dean still likes the plan**
– Everyone back where they belong means angels (presumably including Cas?) back to Heaven, demons to Hell BUT THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SAVED
**Dean’s fine with that**
– Eileen dead again BUT THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SAVED
**Still okay with Dean**
– Fake Bobby and Fake Charlie back to their vanished world, so also dead/lost in the vast reaches of space? BUT THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SAVED
**Fine, says Dean**
– And Sam and Dean, premier disruptors of the Natural Order, both dead/in Hell/never born? Anyway it’s not good, BUT THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SAVED
**here Dean lowers the gun, as expected**
I don’t have any clue how Sam weighs all these bad outcomes – Jack dying was enough for him to balk. I think Cas and Eileen weigh more heavily with him too, but I can’t really buy that the alt worlders do? If they were still the idea of Bobby, the idea of Charlie, then maybe I would buy it. But they’re their own persons who we don’t know or care about. Regardless, Dean won’t stop until Sam is a casualty.
I don’t think I was as put off by Dean pulling out the gun as others were. Certainly it showed his desperation…but I, too, never believed that he would pull the trigger. To me it echoed other times that Dean has tried to scare Sam into doing the “right” thing. The fist fight in When the Levee Breaks. Metamorphosis and “I would want to hunt you.” Sometimes he goes for pure shock factor to bowl Sam over.
There’s something interesting to me about seeing Sam forced into the role Dean played at the end of season 5…and the end of season 8!…the recalcitrant witness to the world-saving sacrifice. Sam throwing himself into the pit to stop Lucifer or close the gates of hell was A-OK with Sam, but anyone ELSE taking on a voluntary sacrifice from misplaced guilt, fully understanding the risks and consequences, is anathema. Meanwhile, Dean hasn’t shifted much from the end of season 5 or 8…the gates of hell open and close, Death changes faces, entire universes burn away, and all this can be dealt with until Sam becomes a casualty.
Those themes make sense to me. All the rest, the collateral of Billie and Eileen and the alt-world, is just swirling plot points.
As a big noisy scare tactic – that’s how I saw it, too, with clumsy framing provided by Chuck. I’m really glad I’m not the only one!
There’s something interesting to me about seeing Sam forced into the role Dean played at the end of season 5…and the end of season 8!…the recalcitrant witness to the world-saving sacrifice. Sam throwing himself into the pit to stop Lucifer or close the gates of hell was A-OK with Sam, but anyone ELSE taking on a voluntary sacrifice from misplaced guilt, fully understanding the risks and consequences, is anathema.
This is interesting! Watching Dean make the Sam-saving sacrifice at the end of s3 messed him up so much, it’s impossible for him to tolerate. He kind of bewilderingly and without explanation agreed to Dean becoming a soul bomb in s11, ramifications of which were never really dealt with. And he agreed to kill Rowena, but only after she played the “would you let Dean die” card. Dean in the box, Jack going black hole, Cas taking the Mark – he just can’t sign on.
This seems like a consistent response from him when lined up with how he relates to Jack overall, but so underdeveloped :( I have to take some hope from how unwilling he is to let someone else shoulder that burden.
Yish, there’s so much meat here that they’re never going to get into. Would have really liked to see how Sam squares Dean’s feelings towards Jack in light of how Sam identifies with him.
//there’s so much meat here that they’re never going to get into.//
I think you’re right, Jenny. I’ve learned to take it as a victory as long as the Show opens more doors than it closes. I can swim in lacuna for days. For me, the truly unsalvageable episodes are the ones that try to say something Definitive that turns out to be both unspecific and profoundly boring (we’re the ones who save the world, etc).
For what it’s worth, it’s been really fun to track your comments here as you binged through the series. I appreciate your ability to “find the poetry,” as Jessie says. I bookmarked your comment on an earlier post about Dean v Hell/High Water/Heaven/Earth/Sam/himself, for the sake of Sam, because that is really my guiding light forever when it comes to this show.
I’ve learned to take it as a victory as long as the Show opens more doors than it closes. I can swim in lacuna for days. For me, the truly unsalvageable episodes are the ones that try to say something Definitive that turns out to be both unspecific and profoundly boring (we’re the ones who save the world, etc).
I think that’s exactly it, the issue with the last few seasons: all the doors closing. No uneasiness about Sam’s faith in a god who rejects him. No discomfort about Mary’s deal to save John. No festering wound about John and how he felt about them. No sense of the meaning of lifelong itinerants adjusting to staying in one place. No drive to restore Mary because we are assured “she’s complete”. Everything’s “complete”. All these uncomfortable, dissatisfying issues tied up with a bow. The last few seasons have been entirely about Closure, and Closure is something I have never really believed in. The potential of the show has been in the difference between what we see and what the characters tell us we’re seeing.
Which is why I’m into this unhappy, dissatisfying turn with Dean and Jack – this is going to leave a bruise, it’s going to ache when rain’s in the forecast. And this show has always been best when the aches linger.
I appreciate your ability to “find the poetry,” as Jessie says. I bookmarked your comment on an earlier post about Dean v Hell/High Water/Heaven/Earth/Sam/himself, for the sake of Sam, because that is really my guiding light forever when it comes to this show.
Oh gosh. Binging this show has been like an intensive therapy program for me – I bring a lot of baggage to the viewing experience, and as I said to Jessie, I’ve put a lot of emotional work into watching this show. I’m not going home emptyhanded!
It’s impossible for me to entirely separate my feelings for Sam Winchester from those for my own baby sister. It’s impossible for me to view Dean’s choices without the faint tint of the lens of my relationship with her shading things. And there is nothing I wouldn’t fight for her. It’s been my job my whole life. It drives her bonkers sometimes. Sometimes she’s the one I have to fight. Just as often, she’s the one fighting for me. So this throughline, this part of Dean, it’s lit up in neon for me. It’s what the show’s about.
Anyway. Thank you for talking to me! Especially on a tense day like today. Your thoughts on the show are like a balm, but like a tangy, articulate, thought-provoking balm. It blows my mind how smart and insightful this comment section is.
I’m pretty conflicted about this one. On the one hand it’s nice to see some actual conflict on the screen again, and things really start to feel enjoyable when Sam and Dean are fighting, or having tearful heart to hearts.
BUT
For me, a lot of the emotional stuff is not landing, because I agree that in these last few seasons the writers just are not getting Dean right. I can see that it’s purposeful, that what they are going for is that Dean is super messed up over not having agency for his whole life or whatever. But I don’t really FEEL it. As a viewer the recent season has honestly just been so poorly executed that I still feel all previous seasons to be more accurate, and the big “reveals” or “truths” of this season are so pathetic. Sam doesn’t want to do Billie’s plan because Alt World hunters will disappear? Because Eileen would go back to being dead? These are weak, weak arguments for me, Bobby and Charlie aren’t even REAL Bobby and Charlie, so honestly, who cares? Also, if Dean has felt all season that he does not have agency, that his choices aren’t really his but rather Chuck’s how in the hell have they even been able to put together this plan??? How have we not seen more angst over THAT? Are his current choices his choices? It certainly seems like they are not given Chuck’s turn around at the end, but it also seemed like he thought they were ALL SEASON. So, as a viewer I’m not sure what to do with that.
Perhaps once everything is said and done I will be able to come to terms with these final seasons, but as I watch this all unfold, I am genuinely disappointed to find that I don’t really like it.
// I can see that it’s purposeful, that what they are going for is that Dean is super messed up over not having agency for his whole life or whatever. But I don’t really FEEL it. //
YES. I said exactly the same thing up above! I feel just the same way. I don’t FEEL it. I appreciate Jensen’s playing of it – his work is always beautiful – but the story around it is just not landing. and yes, the writers don’t really “get” Dean.
// Sam doesn’t want to do Billie’s plan because Alt World hunters will disappear? Because Eileen would go back to being dead? These are weak, weak arguments for me, Bobby and Charlie aren’t even REAL Bobby and Charlie, so honestly, who cares? //
I KNOW. I wouldn’t be surprised if they found a way to bring Maggie back, a character universally reviled. also, hasn’t Chuck described all the other worlds? Does the AU not count?
Sam didn’t make much sense here either – I’m not sure what his beef is – unless it’s that he doesn’t want Jack to sacrifice himself – which makes a sort of sense, even if I don’t really feel it emotionally. He legit cared for Jack, more than Dean ever did.
// Are his current choices his choices? It certainly seems like they are not given Chuck’s turn around at the end, but it also seemed like he thought they were ALL SEASON. So, as a viewer I’m not sure what to do with that. //
I know. I feel like this past episode’s “script” was supposed to be written by Chuck. who – like Dabb – seems not to understand Sam and Dean AND to resent that Sam and Dean are central AND resents that Sam and Dean have been very well-established already – by writers who really understood them. I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel there’s some almost overt hostility in what has happened in the last 4 years.
I’m disappointed too.
I for one don’t care at all about what is shown on screen because it’s completely shallow. Once past the text, the basic plot, this is yet another nothing episode : the direction is non-existent, the sets and locations are completely tame, there’s really no action – just a bunch of people standing there and talking to one another about how serious the situation is (it really isn’t though), the dialogues are lame and boring, the humor completely absent, the actors seem tired and bored as well and in the end there’s no subtext at all, the episode has absolutely nothing to say.
I know it’s a whole issue for the show for 4 years now but as we are fast approching the ending this… emptiness seems more glaring than ever. It’s not the appropriate setup for a grand finale, it’s completely anticlimactic.
But really what is absolutely baffling to me is that I can’t seem to find just ONE negative review for this episode from the Supernatural community : it’s like everyone found this episode astonishing while it’s just the pinacle of Andrew Dabb and others efforts to deconstruct the show.
People don’t seem to actually care about what is happening on screen anymore they could just read the episode screenplay instead for a similar result.
I made myself a reason : there’s really no way for Andrew Dabb to actually give a propre ending to this once great show but still I can’t help to feel once again letdown even though Supernatural quality has already hit rock bottom.
I don’t know if you visit the website “Previously TV” forums, but I can tell you that 90% of the fans there were extremely dissatisfied with this episode. The thread is full of pure hate and disgust for what the show and characters have turned into. Here’s the link for anyone interested: https://forums.primetimer.com/topic/112561-s15e17-unity/?tab=comments#comment-6426556
I haven’t watched it yet and part of me feels like I should just skip it to save myself a rage fit from seeing how the show is crawling to the finish line.
Thanks for the link I have to admit I’m not that deep into the fandom so I find it a bit reassuring to find out that the vocal minority doesn’t seem to be anything more than that.
I really dislike this aversion for “negativity” (meaning constructive criticism) that seems to have overun some parts of the internet nowadays.
My gig is constructive criticism!
Although I don’t know how constructive I’ve been here.
I liked the last two episodes – even though this feeling of “who the hell cares about CHUCK” thing has been going on for two years now …
I had a feeling that the wrapping-up of the season would feature a lot of boring shit like this – and it really pains me to say this.
Thanks for the link – I’ll give it a read!
// just a bunch of people standing there and talking to one another about how serious the situation is (it really isn’t though) //
This is so true. and yet another episode where the majority of it takes place in the bunker.
I was so excited by Adam’s little hippie-dippie shop – at least it was a change of scenery.
// But really what is absolutely baffling to me is that I can’t seem to find just ONE negative review for this episode from the Supernatural community : //
I’m following different people on Twitter then. Many people are underwhelmed. and have been upset all along about what has been done to Sam and Dean.
// while it’s just the pinacle of Andrew Dabb and others efforts to deconstruct the show. //
the deconstruction aspect has been so upsetting. Nobody asked for the show to be deconstructed. People who disliked the original three seasons – who feel the show started for real when Cas showed up – have been hostile to the idea that the show is about the brothers. Dabb took that to heart. He cares about teenagers. Wayward girls. Sam and Dean just standing around, or reading books, being peripheral characters in other people’s stories.
It’s amazing, when you look back on the pilot – SUCH a strong pilot – and yet somehow Dabb et al have been unable to find enrichment from this pilot – when all the OTHER showrunners were able to. It’s an endlessly multiplying source – and Dabb hasn’t been able to explore it at all. It doesn’t interest him.
I haven’t read your comments yet but here’s my take:
I look back with great longing of the arcs of yesteryear and their clear simplicity of all of it.
1. Find Dad. Reconnect as brothers.
2. Grieve Dad. Dean keeps a secret for almost the entire season. Sam has psychic powers.
3. Find a way to reverse Dean’s crossroads deal.
4. Dean returns from dead. Sam addicted to demon blood. The angels arrive.
5. Angel war. Michael vs. Lucifer. Complicated in some respects – those RINGS – the whole “who is going to allow himself to be raped” undercurrent/tension … but the simplicity of the concept was there – I never ever got as confused as I am now.
These simple season-wide arcs continued to Season 9, and most of 10.
One or two overall driving plot-points – one major objective, one or two problems to solve – and then let the main relationship be the main story.
Now? Billie? The Empty? Chuck as … who the hell is Chuck? He is literally SHRUGGING in his scenes. None of this matters to him. Really powerful choice, Dabb!
Amara – I have an issue with her outfits and miss her caryatid-Martha-Graham initial conception – but she was heartbreaking to me in this episode. She seemed to really want to find balance, to work with the brothers. Her ending infuriated me. Like … that’s it? She’s now submerged into her brother? Trapped again? That’s it? That was your solution, Dabb? How INTERESTING it would have been if the whole thing played out in reverse – if SHE subsumed CHUCK – if SHE was the last person standing.
If this writing team is faced with two choices, they always take the least interesting one.
Both she and Jensen were actually playing their primal connection – HARD – even though Dabb et al had zero interest in actually exploring it.
Dean pulling a gun on Sam. Cocking it. What are they GOING for here? I don’t get it. Is this Chuck’s version of the story and characters? Is it Chuck’s script we just watched? Is that why it was so bad? Is that why we had those random title cards?
I liked sexpot Adam in the … head shop? … with the sexpot angel – Jensen murmuring “What’s happening” when the two of them started making out – made me legit laugh. But again – what was the purpose of that trip? It just …pfffft. Fizzled into nothing. Jack lies crouched in the bunker corridor, having “taken” the rib … and then it doesn’t seem to really matter in the end.
The fight between Sam and Dean was pushed – not by them as actors – it just felt really really on the nose. and also … I just couldn’t tell where either of them were coming from.
What exactly is Sam’s issue? I cannot figure out what the hell is going ON.
Why are the brothers at loggerheads? Is it because of freakin Jack? I felt all this RELIEF when Dean said “He’s not family” – but because this is DABB we’re talking about, I get the feeling that HE thinks (Dabb thinks) that we the audience are going to be like “Oh boo hoo, poor wittle jack being rejected by that mean toxically-masculine Dean” … when in reality I felt like “You’re damn straight he’s not family.”
The whole Jack storyline … now I like him as an actor. But he has so clearly been kept around because they mistakenly think that tweens will want to watch this show. and who knows, some of them maybe do – but their core audience are NOT tweens. Jack has his fan base, and okay that’s fine. But his persistent presence has hurt the show. Yes, let’s have this all-powerful being show up and then never ever allow him to use his powers – and be mopey for three years straight – and need constant pep talks. He’s the new Cas. Episodes upon episodes have involved CAS giving JACK pep talks. When Cas was the one who needed pep talks ever since he got tuberculosis in Season 8 or 9 or whatever.
I am mainly IRRITATED by how CONFUSED I am. I am generally an intelligent person. I am fine with complex plots. But this doesn’t feel complex – it feels confused and also … EXPEDIENT. They’re just throwing shit at the wall. “Hey let’s have there be a key to Death’s library that somehow no one ever thought to look for before.” You know. It’s just … instead of Sam and Dean having to work TOGETHER to figure this out, and maybe form an alliance with Amara – which would have been interesting and unpredictable – you have them separated out … doing all this random shit … and then having this big blow-out fight where Dean pulls a gun on Sam.
I’m actually rather upset. And upset about what they chose to do with Amara. Chuck is a boring serial killer, with NO stakes in what is happening. He literally does not give a shit. He’s just mildly irritated that Dean and Sam don’t follow his script. That’s his beef. (EYE ROLL). Amara, though, has high stakes. The highest.
To get rid of the high stakes person and keeping the low-stakes person is classic Dabb.
I have disliked the “chuck as writer” thing from the jump. It is hostile towards the real characters created by kripke, who lived in the real world, living lives we all connected with. Now it’s just … one of many … and so it calls all of those beautiful early seasons into question. That’s what is so horrible.
Mainly, I’m just lost. Sam and The Empty – I don’t know what’s going on there – Billie has been working some end game? Okay but … what’s her gig? putting things back together the way they were? To get rid of the AUs? Aren’t they already destroyed? and who CARED about the AUs anyway?? – (speaking of Death: they got rid of the first Death and then cast – well, she’s beautiful but her line readings are all the same. I just don’t FEEL anything from her. These people don’t know what they’re doing. They just didn’t know how to write the first Death, with his wonderful wit, and eccentricities – this generic figure with generic “sinister” line readings is the best they could come up with.
I’m being harsh. JA and JP played it beautifully – but it felt empty. The situation around them is empty – and nothing they do as actors can combat that.
I’m sorry to be so negative. I always dislike plot-heavy episodes and I have no investment in this plot anyway. So there’s that. I just am disheartened by how empty it all felt.
I just couldn’t tell where either of them were coming from. What exactly is Sam’s issue? I cannot figure out what the hell is going ON. Why are the brothers at loggerheads?
I too feel like I have been rendered thick and insensible by this season, but eventually I realised (many hours after watching) — this argument between Sam and Dean was meant to be the culmination of Sam’s fratricidal visions at the start of the season. Chuck has been writing all the alt-versions (which are his drafts, I think?) to kill each other, and now, finally, our versions are at that point. As great as the argument in the car at the end of the last episode was, and as much as J2 tried to sell this one, it felt forced because it was forced. It’s another example of “if it’s badly written and isn’t supported by the episode or season then that’s because Chuck’s writing it and he’s a bad writer.” A frustrating viewing experience even if individual moments deliver.
(I hate that Sam and Dean have become now and forever “our versions” of Sam and Dean. If I wanted to watch Fringe I’d watch Fringe!!)
I enjoyed reading everyone’s take on this one! I agree that conversation between Dean and Jack in the car was a barnstormer and I don’t want to think too carefully about it because right now I’m willing to accept what it tells me about Dean’s motivation and I suspect it doesn’t quite hang together. Also it’s hilarious that he was straight up thanking Jack for killing himself so that he and Sam could have a break and a Kit Kat.
Jenny I love how you can find the poetry in it, I feel like poetry is far far beyond me in response to these episodes haha.
Sheila I think I’m coming from the exact same place as you but I had the opposite reaction here. I’ve spent the whole season pointing at stuff I see and going slack-jawed huh? what? why? who? And this episode Frankensteined all those bits together into what appears to be a plot and I was just relieved to feel like I knew what was going on and what the goal is. A lot of the specifics are absolutely whiffed but it built some momentum to a climax that directly involved Sam and Dean, and I liked the division of everything into little contained one-acts instead of trying to force it to cross-cut cleanly. Even though it was yet again a bunch of scenes of people talking at each other as Paul says, the conversations were forced to have a structure, a rise and fall. Made them put a bit of effort in.
Also, great point about the dangers of a bored core character. I’m sure we were talking about this with respect to Crowley’s Bored Years, or the Cashmere Angels, or maybe flat-affect Mary? Anyway there were plenty of examples for Dabb & Co of how it’s not a great idea. And now there’s a surplus of angels again? Aaaaaaaaanyway. Let’s not get into that or the inanity of ‘a key to Death’s realm’ etc ad nauseum.
To end on a positive — while Adam’s shop felt kinda ungrounded, divorced from even the new cheaper reality of the show, I was charmed by all the performances and dynamics. Alessandro Juliani getting all loosey goosey has definitely been missing from my life up until now.
I think I’m coming from the exact same place as you but I had the opposite reaction here. I’ve spent the whole season pointing at stuff I see and going slack-jawed huh? what? why? who? And this episode Frankensteined all those bits together into what appears to be a plot and I was just relieved to feel like I knew what was going on and what the goal is.
This is me, too. It’s like trying to critique a bad freshman composition when you can’t even figure out what the kid is trying to do. I feel like I’ve twigged on now – thank you Davy and Meredith for doing such tough synthesizing here – and I’m almost delighted.
Jenny I love how you can find the poetry in it, I feel like poetry is far far beyond me in response to these episodes haha.
I’ve lost all credibility with you, haven’t I? 😂 Look, I have put a lot into this and I’m not leaving unless I get something back.
“Why are the brothers at loggerheads? Is it because of freakin Jack? I felt all this RELIEF when Dean said ‘He’s not family’ – but because this is DABB we’re talking about, I get the feeling that HE thinks (Dabb thinks) that we the audience are going to be like ‘Oh boo hoo, poor wittle jack being rejected by that mean toxically-masculine Dean’ … when in reality I felt like ‘You’re damn straight he’s not family.’ ”
In theory I can get behind both sentiments? (Albeit less because of Jack himself, and more because of what he means to Sam.) Like, Jack is a young kid who’s genuinely trying to be good! And of course Sam would want to guide/protect such a person! But if someone KILLS YOUR MOM, it’s 2000% reasonable to want nothing to do with them even if it WAS an accident!
But unlike earlier Sam-Dean conflicts, where both sides were written as nuanced/sympathetic…the writers SO CLEARLY want us to pick a side that I end up taking the other just out of spite. Poor Dean.
This comment section is wonderful, and I love it! So glad I’m not the only one left cold by these new episodes, but also appreciate hearing what worked for people!
What it really comes down to for me finally, and this is going to get really big picture, is that despite the title, this show is about humanity, people. The thing that’s been missing from Dean since Dabb took over is what Sheila would talk about in her recaps, his vulnerability, his openness to everyone and everything, his lack of boundaries. Dean was always the brother that was looking for connection, that got INVOLVED with people. There has been very little of that Dean in recent seasons, he’s just cold and angry and pulls guns on people constantly now. Sam has always held back a little, he was always corrupted with that demon blood and always so relieved to have rules and structure since it never seemed like he could TRUST himself, cuz, ya know demon blood. All of this is gone, obviously. Which has been maddening since Jack is basically the vehicle for ALL OF THIS to come back. But instead of leaning into Jack’s humanity they have been leaning into his angel-ness (like I honestly can’t believe that Sam has never had a conversation with Jack about how he used to have “powers” but then he realized they were bad and he didn’t need them). During Dabb’s run their solutions at the end of each season have been very dependent on supernatural intervention, which always feels wrong, see ridiculous puppet angel fight.
So I keep hoping that all of this has been on purpose to drive home the message that they’ve been doing it wrong and they need to get back to being brothers and just people, and all this confusion about free will is really that Chuck is making it up, they’ve always had free will or whatever. Look I can barely even talk about it the show is so muddled right now, but essentially, we can’t control God, we can only ignore him. Which is what I have been hoping they would do. The only way to win is to not play, which was suggested by the goddess in the billiards/luck episode. But we’ve got what 2, 3 episodes left? I’m not sure they’re gonna get the memo in time and I am terrified of what the final end will look like.
Anyway, this is my big-picture frustration with the show and I just needed to get it off my chest!
I think that’s exactly it, the issue with the last few seasons: all the doors closing. No uneasiness about Sam’s faith in a god who rejects him. No discomfort about Mary’s deal to save John. No festering wound about John and how he felt about them. No sense of the meaning of lifelong itinerants adjusting to staying in one place. No drive to restore Mary because we are assured “she’s complete”. Everything’s “complete”. All these uncomfortable, dissatisfying issues tied up with a bow. The last few seasons have been entirely about Closure
Jenny, this is so perfectly put. Paradoxically, this is why, surprising myself, (LATEST EPISODE SPOILERS) I don’t mind Cas’s big confession in the abstract. It was intended to be Closure, but as a reveal of a long-held pining, it actually opens doors, gives a bit of juice to the last severalmany years that Cas has been feeling these feelings. I have questions! When did it start? How did it evolve? Did Sam ever suspect? I feel pretty bad for Cas: he’s been hanging for years now around the edges of Dean’s life, while Dean is alternately dismissive or angry or professing brotherly love towards him. This is Dean’s love, apparently? The liminal edges of Dean’s love as it shines elsewhere? I dunno, it’s pretty tragic. Get a better love object, Cas!
That’s all in the abstract. In the particular I could hardly open my eyes and my face has been in permafreeze cringe. It was just too much emotion out of nowhere for me, a real OTT “Is this because I’m a lesbian?” moment that does Cas a disservice. I probably would not have enjoyed a plotline this season that hints towards Cas’s pining, but if they’re gonna do it, *do* it, instead of making his last significant episode about the restoration of his Faith via Jack, and then giving him about half a minute an episode since then. As the culmination of a character arc it feels a little pathetic and the way it was presented makes it look like a bone thrown to a section of fans just to give them a little treat at the end. Not sure whether they feel there’s a lot of meat on there considering it only happened so that he could die.
I will say, I thought Jensen reacted magnificently: nonplussed, troubled, sad. I liked him on the floor at the end too numb to answer his phone and I’m interested to see where this all goes next week.
That’s the big news out of the ep, I guess! I’ll admit to being surprised they actually went there. I found most of the rest of it pretty silly and dull. Some lovely closeups of Sam and I liked that scene with D&S connecting in the library where Sam was in his lovely black v-neck. The Jack driving scene was cute. They’ve given up trying to differentiate Charlie and Bobby from their OG counterparts. The music under and dramatic editing of the “urgently texting Eileen” scene was risible, as was the silo and yet more unfortunate canon-fodder refugees. We’re in a Raptured world now but I expect to open next week with fifty more refugees and a coterie of before-unseen angels, because that seems to be how it works.
As for heading towards the end, I think Cas dying for good is the first time I’ve felt like it was actually the series ending and not a standard season finale run. Here’s hoping these rejigged COVID eps are focused and personal!
“Is this because I’m a lesbian?”
Hahahaha I had forgotten all about that.
This was Pam’s first time watching an ep as it aired, so we both went in innocent and unspoiled. What an ep for her to start with!
In our particular, we were much like Dean watching Adam and Serafina: what’s happening???? This combined with world events has had us in a state of giddiness ever since. We had to watch the ep again tonight because neither of us could remember anything else that happened. What a couple of days it’s been!
I confess to being shocked and a bit offended on Castiel’s behalf, and on behalf of decent fathers everywhere. In a show lousy with lousy dads, Cas was their only real avatar. I could get behind the sentiments in a sort of Dean Winchester: The Invention of the Human way, that understanding the phenomenon of love not as some dutiful adherence to a vague divine instruction but as the desperate, overpowering force Dean lives, it opened up a world of being and connection and pain and joy, like learning to read and learning to speak all at once. And that was in there, kinda, with the brief mentions of Sam and Jack, and it echoed Anna and Hannah, who both yearned for that aspect of the human experience but ultimately surrendered it. It would have, as Jenna outlines in her excellent comment above, leaned in to humanity.
But it was so self-contained, his feelings for everyone but Dean apparently collateral and without purpose or intent on their own. He learned to drive, but never took the car any further than a spin around the block. Get out there and use what you’ve learned! I felt that it dismissed most of his character, most of his several-years-long arc, the transformative power of his relationship with Jack, like the character exploded into personhood but then ultimately imploded back into being a simple accessory to Dean. Who, as you noted, has not been particularly rewarding of this depth of devotion.
I will say, I thought Jensen reacted magnificently: nonplussed, troubled, sad. I liked him on the floor at the end too numb to answer his phone and I’m interested to see where this all goes next week.
I agree about JA’s performance. Very subtle, believable and thoughtfully portrayed. Unfortunately somewhat difficult to key in on in the face of the lightshow happening in front of him, and confusing and dissatisfying to those coming into the scene with little context. From reviews and analyses I’ve read, it’s clear we’re still living in Lloyd Dobbler’s world and any other outcome is hateful. An insurmountable mismatch of desire, though, and all of the grief entailed, does feel like a relic from the show’s more glorious past.
It is still hard to remember anything else that happened. I was shocked when Donna vanished. I wonder where “away” is for Chuck; it’s gotta be pretty crowded by now. I wonder whether Jack is meant to be the new Death for what will undoubtedly be laboriously explained reasons, though I don’t recall either Bucky Haight or Billie wilting plants in their wake; I think only Amara did that. Bucky did take out a whole pizzeria, I suppose.
Really curious/anxious/excited about what’s coming.
Jenny somehow I missed this reply and all I have to say is that I would have been oooooooooooover the mooooooooon to see Wendigo Roy wilting plants in the final episodes. And it is a shame that Death never got to take God down with the sheer power of his bitter disappointment. Well met, again! :D
I miss Death :-(
Oh, Helena, no, no. He’s not leaving you. You hear me? He’s gonna be with you, every step of the way, when you’re out there living, and fighting, every day, right (meaningfully clasps your elbow) here, according to The Smiths.
Best Morrissey voice: ‘Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my hee-eead ’.
“What, what, what’s this, Dean? You tryina, what, bind me, Dean? You got some god rock and you’re gonna bind me? That’s not buddies.”
“It was just too much emotion out of nowhere for me, a real OTT “Is this because I’m a lesbian?” moment that does Cas a disservice. I probably would not have enjoyed a plotline this season that hints towards Cas’s pining, but if they’re gonna do it, *do* it, instead of making his last significant episode about the restoration of his Faith via Jack, and then giving him about half a minute an episode since then.”
YES! I so agree with this Jessie! I will admit to being all in on the whole Destiel thing, so for me it seemed less out of the blue, BUT these last few seasons have been terrible at tracking the interpersonal b/c they are so busy with, I dunno, the ensemble? The plots? It’s very similar to the beginning of the season when Sam killed Rowena. This had been foretold, we knew it was coming, but instead of using the lead up time to remind us of the shared bond over their fear of Lucifer to really play up the emotional toll, the writers thought some weird flirting btwn Rowena and Ketch would be appropriate. Any time they approach something meaningful they shy away from it at the worst possible moment!
As much as I have loved the relationship between Dean and Cas these many years, when I watched the most recent Cas/Jack centric episode when they were all talking at each other in the bunker all I could think was that these 3 actors used to have some chemistry, but this scene is just dead, dead, dead! It doesn’t feel as though there is any spine anymore (to use Sheila’s term), it seems as though the writers have a hard keeping track of whatever it is everyone wants from one episode to the next.
So did I watch Supernatural this past Thursday or Avengers Infinity War?
I’m sure the Chucknos snap was supposed to produce angst and heartbreak but it actually produced the opposite in me. For one brief, giddy moment as the AU hunters poofed out of existence, I actually felt excited and thought “Show is really going to Road House them all!”
After Donna poofed away (the only character that actually caused me a pang with her disappearance) and it was revealed that Chuck caused everyone to vanish…my excitement has now faded. I now think it was a Supervengers/Twilight Zone crossover and that Chucknosthony has snapped everyone to the cornfield. I think they will all be back however…..probably not onscreen, but I think all their characters will be safely returned. Sam and Eileen can have a texting reunion to round out their off screen relationship and her off screen disappearance. This is why it was impossible for me to feel any of the “high stakes” I was supposed to be feeling during the whole Sam/Jack portion of the show. I don’t care about the AU hunters or AU Bobby and Charlie. They’ve shown nothing of Sam and Eileen’s “relationship” on screen and so I can’t connect with Sam’s despair over her disappearance because they are barely giving me any glimpses into Sam at all anymore.
I feel so disconnected from the characters sometimes and I’ve noticed that feeling more this season than any other. When Castiel was in his final moments, I almost felt like I was coming at it from the perspective of analyzing Misha’s acting performance and Jensen’s response to it, rather than watching Cas say goodbye to Dean forever.
I have more thoughts on that scene, but it’s after midnight and my tired brain isn’t quite coherent enough to dive into it right now.
I’m still clueless how to actually feel as a viewer about the Dean-and-Cas scene itself…but as a fan, I’m a bit heartbroken to see the show be this public a laughingstock.
And now the “homophobic Jensen” thing has started up again. Great.
(All countered, obviously, by the *HUGE* relief/catharsis of the election results. Weird mix of emotions)