Directed by Phil Sgriccia
Written by John Shiban
Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows,
which the world knows not; and oftimes
we call a man cold, when he is only sad.
— Hyperion, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
You do not know the burdens that other people carry. Longfellow wrote those words in 1839. In every era, there are expectations of what a certain thing should look like, be it joy or love or pain. Cultural norms shift and morph over the years and currently we are in a time when the “self-help culture” dictates what things should look like. So things like repression and denial and sublimation are seen as bad, or at the very least unhealthy. This is treated as fact. It is not fact. It is an opinion, a theory, a fad (albeit a long and deeply entrenched fad). And there is a lot of evidence suggesting the opposite, actually: that something like repression is a valid and useful survival technique, honed over thousands of years of brutal human experience, and not necessarily unhealthy at all. Try telling that to someone who has swallowed the self-help culture wholesale. It is as though you are speaking heresy.
I like one of my acting teacher’s definitions of “sublimate”: “You take your pain, and you make it sublime.” I have been doing that since I was a kid. Therapy didn’t save my life when I was a suicidal 12-year-old. Ralph Macchio did. Sublimation is a way of life for me. I know that a lot of it comes from loneliness (as a permanent condition, not a phase), but hell, it’s a good deal for me, because I could be sublimating through drugs or self-destructive behavior but I get so much pleasure out of culture and movies and books. It’s a win-win.
This is the landscape of the opening episodes of Supernatural‘s Season 2. John Winchester is dead. Sam and Dean are both grieving in their own ways, and neither of them can talk about it, at least not in a way that opens up space. Loss is not a monolith. Not everyone is going to be impacted in identical ways. The issue I have with the self-help culture is that it prioritizes what something looks like on the outside. And that’s why Longfellow’s words are so important to keep in mind. Sometimes a loss results in someone recoiling, hunching over their own metaphorical wound, protectively. This is not being in denial. This is an appropriate reaction to being wounded.
“Everybody Loves a Clown” is about grief. It introduces us to three new characters, Ellen (Samantha Ferris), Jo (Alona Tal), and Ash (Chad Lindberg), all of whom will be very important. It brings us a new setting, the Harvelle Roadhouse, the main patrons being hunters, and the roadhouse is a revelation, and so is the new knowledge that hunters would gather. (Tee hee). It also presents us with a random case, worked by Sam and Dean basically to kill time. The case plunges them into the world of carnival workers, which is an equally strange and vibrant sub-culture as the hunter sub-culture. Carnivals are populated by people who don’t fit into the mainstream, a culture that is fiercely protective of its own.
The case is a trifle, really, and Sam and Dean work it half-heartedly, and it’s wrapped up pretty suddenly. The first time I watched it I didn’t even realize that the monster had been vanquished. My thought was, “Wait … was that it?” But the real point is to examine the brothers dealing with grief, and the standoff that heats up between them is going to intensify over the next couple of episodes.
Digression on Grief
Joan Didion’s book The Year of Magical Thinking, about the year following her husband’s sudden death, has already become a classic of grief literature. In it, she writes:
The power of grief to derange the mind has in fact been exhaustively noted. The act of grieving, Freud told us in his 1917 “Mourning and Melancholia,” “involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life.” Yet, he pointed out, grief remains peculiar among derangements: “It never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and to refer it to medical treatment.” We rely instead on “its being overcome after a certain lapse of time.” We view “any interference with it as useless and even harmful.” Melanie Klein, in her 1940 “Mourning and Its Relation to Manic-Depressive States,” made a similar assessment: “The mourner is in fact ill, but because this state of mind is common and seems so natural to us, we do not call mourning an illness … To put my conclusion more precisely: I should say that in mourning the subject goes through a modified and transitory manic-depressive state and overcomes it.”
Notice the stress on “overcoming” it.
I wrote a lot about Didion’s book here. It helped me when I was faced with grief. One of the things people don’t tell you (although they actually do tell you, you just need to listen for it) is how disorienting grief can be. I was taken by surprise when easy things became difficult. I was totally confused as to why I could no longer read, why my brain wasn’t retaining language. I remember the day I went back to work after taking off for the death and funeral of my father, and there was a big editorial meeting, and I was supposed to take notes for the new editor of the site. She asked me to read something back, and I fumbled, looking for it. She reprimanded me in front of everyone. “Please write down exactly what I said next time.” She knew that my father had just died 5 days before. There is a word for women like her. In that moment, I was flustered and confused, and I had no presence of mind to pull her aside afterwards and say, “My father just died. Don’t you ever use that tone of voice with me again.” She would have deserved it. She would have deserved much much worse. Maybe I shouldn’t have been back at work, but this is the world we live in: If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. I need money to live. I can’t take a leave of absence unpaid. Not a possibility. I am a firm believer that the Black Arm-Band tradition should be re-introduced. Because it makes visible what is not visible. It says, to paraphrase Longfellow, “I am out and about, yes, life has not stopped, but I am handling a secret sorrow. Factor that in to your assessment of me.” In the olden days, people would wear black arm-bands, or even full mourning, for a year. It was understood that it took that long to even get your bearings again and that grief needed to be accounted for in our dealings with people suffering from it. Grief does normalize after a while, you do start to be able to process things. But it takes that long. Our culture’s bounce-right-back expectation after someone you love dies is inhuman.
Digression Over. I Will Re-visit This As We Move Forward.
“Everybody Loves a Clown” is one of those beautiful episodes where the brothers are equal in strength, flaws, expression, and objective. They misunderstand, they argue, they resist, they sublimate. The death of their father is complicated by HOW he died, something that neither of them mention in this episode, not yet. It’s an unspoken anxiety, working ON the characters, and it’s an example of how well Supernatural tracks these small-arcs. Grief is a whirlwind. And it takes some time for the dust to settle. The pleasure here comes from re-watching. When you know where the characters are going with their inquiries (did Dad make a deal? am I alive because Dad sold his soul? I gave Dad a hard time the entire time he was alive, I feel guilty, I need to make it up to him, and be the most dedicated hunter ever, etc.), you can see it all playing out in their behavior, even before they have words for it.
Grieving their dad’s death is also complicated by their already complicated relationship with the guy. Feeling, perhaps, relieved that he is dead would result in huge guilt, as we see go down. Also, having John Winchester dead means that the resentment towards him about what he put them through … it has nowhere to go now. Nowhere to go but inward. What do you do with all those feelings? And is it somehow a betrayal of his memory to even go there, even if it’s just in your own mind? In the world of Supernatural, privacy is seen as suspect. And people’s boundaries are compromised repeatedly. Hell, their bodily integrity is compromised. Your thoughts, dreams, fantasies … NOTHING is private.
Having two women enter their world in a semi-regular basis, as Jo and Ellen do, two Tough Chicks to the max, is both comforting and destabilizing. Actually, comfort itself is destabilizing. Grief doesn’t allow for it. There is no room for it.
Sam wants Dean to grieve in a different way. A way that is more recognizable to him as Grief(™). He doesn’t understand what is going on with Dean, and he turns it into “I’m concerned for you,” when really it’s not about that at all. That’s one of the most elegant things about Shiban’s script: it really understands all of these issues I’ve been babbling about. Shiban’s script understands that Sam is ALSO “sublimating,” sublimating his own feelings about his Dad’s death into concern-trolling Dean, and re-casting his father as someone to emulate in order to assuage his guilt.
The word “freak” has already come up a bunch in Season 1. It’s clearly used deliberately. Sam Winchester feels like a “freak,” and even running away to Stanford didn’t change that. Dean Winchester KNOWS he’s a “freak,” and has seemingly accepted it. Suburbia makes him want to blow his brains out. The carnival world has a similar structure, and, of course, a long history, not only in America but world-wide. A place where “freaks” were welcome, could get work, find a makeshift family. (By the way, if you have not seen the Joan Crawford film Berserk! that takes place in a carnival, what are you waiting for?) There are some great books about the history of the “freak show,” and Diane Arbus’ photographs are, of course, all about that. People argue about Arbus’ photographs to this day. Is she compassionate towards these people? Is she making fun of these people? Is she neutral? What is her stance on them? That pesky Diane Arbus, not giving us a clear thesis statement so we all can know what to think. Dammit, we have to make up our own minds??
Regardless. The carnival is an interesting corollary with the Winchester brothers, who look “normal,” but who obviously are not, who walk around bringing death and destruction behind them. They don’t vote. They carry fake IDs. They will never have retirement. They will not grow old. You know. That’s some bleak shit.
In “Everybody Loves a Clown” there’s also a twisted eternal father figure in the carnival, a guy who never dies, basically. It’s treated almost off-handedly by the brothers (“Hey, doesn’t the photo of his father look an awful lot like him?” “Hell, yes, brother, it does! Let’s go kill it!”), and nobody puts it together thematically (thank goodness) but the connections are there.
The monster in question targets children, befriending them to gain entryway into the home, and then kills the parents. The child is untouched. Orphaned, but untouched. Sam and Dean have been orphaned now. These are connections working ON the characters in invisible ways. I love it when the scripts have enough confidence to do that, to not underline connections for us, to let it stay murky and unspoken. When Supernatural is bad, the bad-ness most often comes from it being too obvious.
Phil Sgriccia directed this episode. He started out as an editor. You can see it in his directing. He knows how to piece images together, he thinks of that ahead of time, how to make those collages that work so well. Of course all directors understand editing, but it’s different than having first-hand experience. Take a look at the carnival collage that opens the episode, for example. You’ve got rides. You’ve got fire-eaters. Plate-spinners. You have clowns ogling the camera. Isolated shots of a bored dad checking his watch. A contortionist. Etc. These are editing choices, when put together make a cohesive whole, and gives you a whole world.
Let’s get down to some details.
First off, the declaration in the title is a lie.
Also, please watch:
Because why wouldn’t you.
I also leave you to contemplate this.
Words cannot express how fascinated I am by that entire album cover. I stare at it, for minutes on end, trying to … understand.
Now onto the look of the episode. As I have babbled on before, the Importance of Beauty is going to become prioritized, consciously, in Season 2. In Season 1, the goal was to make a mini-horror-movie a week. They wanted it to feel cinematic. They succeeded. It looks like a film, not a television show. It is dark and gloomy, the shadows thick and oily. But. They’ve also got these two stunning men as leads, who clearly were going to be the main reason people were tuning in, and so they figured out how to film them, pushing that envelope, pushing it HARD. Season 2 already looks different than Season 1, and they do so without sacrificing the dark scary horror-movie mode.
A lot of this episode takes place under a glaring sun. It’s a new look, an unforgiving look. And yet unlike later seasons where the colors are bright and jolly (ugh), the world seems bleached of warmth here. Under such a sun, all flaws are revealed which, coincidentally, just highlights the sheer gorgeousness of the two leads.
What is going on in “Everybody Loves a Clown” is a growing confidence in HOW they tell the story. Both Sam and Dean (and the actors that play them) are tremendously appealing. Having these confrontations between the brothers go down on a dusty road, in broad daylight, or in the junk yard at high noon, highlights the abysses in their relationship unforgivingly, and also – at the very same moment – shows their beauty in startling ways. The beauty becomes something that is not manipulated, but just exists, like a force of nature.
It’s kind of like Marilyn Monroe’s beauty in The Misfits, filmed out in the desert in black-and-white. Removed from the studio, where everything was controlled, Marilyn’s beauty is even more touching. She looks fragile, human. It’s like Marilyn Monroe, with all her glamour, stepped into a Dorothea Lange photograph.
It’s the difference between this:
and this:
Marilyn Monroe in “The Misfits”
Equally beautiful. Equally her. But completely different in style and execution.
And that’s what’s going on in “Everybody Loves a Clown”. It’s successful. So much so that each episode after this one goes deeper and deeper into that style. It’s the “look” of Season 2.
Teaser
Medford, Wisconsin
The episode opens with the carnival seen through a red balloon, the balloon coloring everything red, until the balloon pops, revealing Voila! Full spectrum of color! It’s a nice and showy effect, but it works on a metaphoric level. Grief and death lay a blanket of monochrome over the whole world. It affects all of the senses. There’s even a slight slo-mo put on the carnival crowd at the start, barely perceptible, until then it speeds up to normalcy. That, too, is what grief does. It makes everything slow down. Time itself is impacted.
The carnival is shown in a great collage: Fire-eaters, contortionists, rides, clowns everywhere. The edits are designed to be alarming. The second you settle in with one image, it leaps to another. The sound jumps from one cut to the next: screaming people on the rides, the roar of the motors. It’s cacophony. But hey, it’s a carnival, so it’s super fun times, yes??
No.
I can’t stand forced jollity which is why I have never been to Disney World despite my love of roller coasters.
A child waves at a clown she sees, standing off to the side, and unlike the other jolly plate-spinning goofy clowns, this clown stands there with a gruesome flat expression. Predatory. But when she looks again, the clown has gone. Driving home, she sees the clown out the window, standing alone in the night, waving at the car. If I ever saw such a thing, I would call the police. Pennywise? Is that you? (Stephen King’s It is everywhere in “Everybody Loves a Clown.”)
Later that night, the little girl lies in bed, with a huge black shadow on the ceiling. Not comforting. She goes to the window, and looks out. This is what she sees.
It is the stuff of nightmares. I can’t dissociate an image like that from John Wayne Gacy, unfortunately, but that’s part of the horror of the monster here. A solitary figure, in white makeup, standing on the lawn, waiting for the little girl to let him into her house. It’s horrifying.
1st scene
In a clear visual reference to Darth Vader’s funeral pyre…
Sam and Dean burn the body of their very own personal Darth Vader, and are seen through the flickering flames. It’s gorgeous. As well as pained and tragic and stoic.
In the shot of the two of them, in the same frame, you can see how both of them are wrapped up in their “secret sorrows.” Sam is crying. Dean looks distant, like he is floating through outer space, completely untethered. When a tear does fall, it slips down over his face as though his skin is hard stone. While they are both in the same frame, I look back, forth, back, forth, drinking in the different behavior. It’s fascinating. And live it up, because immediately following, we go close-up to close-up. Equally fascinating, because they’re both so good and both in such different spaces emotionally, but as I’ve mentioned, I love it when they are in the same frame.
They don’t speak for a long time, a beautiful choice. The music is the Winchester-family-emotion-music, melancholy, elegiac. Sam is openly a wreck. Dean is stoic, 5,000 miles away, and internally a wreck. He’s so much a wreck that his surface is placid, something that happens with deep trauma, and is one of those things that so many actors “miss.” (If you want to see the #1 Best World-Class High Watermark He’s-the-One-to-Beat-Now portrayal of the direct aftermath of shock and trauma, watch Captain Phillips and watch Tom Hanks in the last 10 minutes. I wasn’t even going to see the movie but so many people referenced those last 10 minutes, in a way that made me think, “Well. I have got to see that for myself.” The film is great, and those last 10 minutes represent Tom Hanks’ best work in his entire career.)
Sam seems very young here. He can barely get the words out, when he asks if Dad said anything “before …” Dean, still floating, still far away in outer space, registers the question faintly. And lies: “No. Nothing.” Sam is devastated by that, for all of his very valid reasons, and Dean is left alone with John’s whisper in his ear, but his face remains still, that one tear falling. The effect is flat-out eerie.
2nd scene
One Week Later
Overhead shot of the junkyard, with the faint sounds of Three Dog Night’s “Shambala” floating off the radio. The sun blares down. From above, we see the Impala, beaten, battered, half-destroyed, with Dean’s legs emerging from underneath.
Supernatural so often features the boys in action, running, going, doing, but there are those intimations of down-time, of stuff that happens when the episode ends: they go to movies, for example. They go to concerts sometimes. They go out to bars. Dean has sex. Sam guiltily watches porn. They argue about the Three Stooges. And Chuck Norris. Sam reads for pleasure. There’s probably a lot of lying around, waiting. Waiting for someone to call, waiting for a research librarian to get in touch, a lot of time when there’s jack squat to do. Of course we don’t SEE that, because this is a television show and we would all be bored to death just watching people live their lives with no stakes, no conflict, no nothing, going on. So the glimpses we get, and they are few and far between, are wonderful, to be treasured. Dean and Sam yelling at each other about Bruce Lee as the popcorn pops, is just one example. Naturally, Dean would have to work on his car all the time, in real-life. The Chevy Impala needs custom-made parts anyway, you can’t just bring it in for a regular tune-up, and it comes with all kinds of problems that have to be managed, handled. It would be a regular part of his life. Of course now, he’s working on it because it was totaled, but still, seeing Dean, in a sweaty T-shirt, underneath a car, a total grease-monkey, is great, because we KNOW that doing this would be a regular deal for him, but we never see it.
After the tension of the final episodes of Season 1, and the crazy mind-fuck trauma of the premiere, “Everybody Loves a Clown” sits in the middle of the wreckage, quietly, stunned, where all you can do … is what you already know how to do … and that is pick up a wrench.
Sam approaches. He does have a reason for approaching Dean, but he doesn’t get to it right away. He doesn’t come charging out with his news. Instead, he sort of ambles around next to the car, talking to Dean’s legs. The dynamic here is totally Cool Older Brother and Nerd Hanger-On. Dean is unreachable. Emotionally and literally. He’s unseen under the car. Sam needs Dean. Dean has no desire to talk right now. I am just picturing what this week at Bobby’s has been like. Dean spends his days outside, under the car, and is probably out there before Sam wakes up and stays out until night falls. Maybe comes in to take a leak, grab a beer, have a shower. Other than that? Silence. And so Sam is left to his own devices. And he is losing it. Wandering around the house. Crying. Flipping through Dad’s journal. Having brief flashes of revenge-dreams, maybe button-holing Bobby into a conversation about the demon and how they can track it, find it, get to work again. Maybe he tries to engage Dean about it, whenever Dean comes inside for 5 minutes, but Dean is monosyllabic.
Dean’s normal mode is wanting everyone to be in sync, that “Are we okay? We good?” thing I’ve mentioned. He’s not in the mood now. Like an animal who crawls off into a dark corner to lick its wounds and whimper, he needs space. He feels helpless, and of course is pissed off too, but working on the car is probably so satisfying that he can’t stop. Unlike his own heart, he can actually SEE the Impala repair itself to her true form as he works on it.
But Dean’s reaction to his father’s death, at least this initial one, is experienced by Sam as abandonment. Classic codependence, obviously, but the insidious nature of such a situation is that you can’t see it for what it is. Sam can’t let Dean be. He doesn’t know himself how to BE with Dean acting the way he is acting. Dean’s behavior has tilted the world off its axis. He needs Dean to be a certain way because then HE knows how to be.
Everyone needs Dean. When Dean gets autonomous, when Dean asserts his boundaries, everyone does a double-take. His “role” is to race into situations and handle it, manage it, keep things moving, smooth things over. Sam has internalized that dynamic as “the way things always are.” He was pissed off looking on at Dean taking abuse from Dad, he wanted Dean to get pissed off, fight back. It was Sam’s way of being protective of his brother. But seen in another light, it’s yet another example of people needing Dean to be a certain way, of not letting Dean BE. Just let Dean BE, for the love ‘a PETE.
But if Sam “let Dean be,” then we wouldn’t have a show. Also, this kind of thing is so common between siblings. Hell, I have three siblings. The triangulation/quadrangulation between the four of us is sometimes so dizzying that we just decide to not talk about it and watch a Red Sox game and our lives are the richer for it.
Sam opens the conversation by asking if Dean needs any help and Dean snorts. What the hell does Sammy know about cars. Please. Sam just stands there, and asks if Dean needs anything. Dean’s getting some bolts or plugs or tubes from a nearby table and says, “Stop it, Sam. Stop asking if I’m okay. I’m okay.” Not good enough for Sam, of course Dean is “not okay.” Sam observes that they’ve been here for a week and Dean hasn’t mentioned Dad once. Sam is brainwashed by the self-help culture. To me, not talking about Dad in the week following death is completely normal, even expected. I still can barely talk about it. I still can barely say the words and it was 4 years ago.
Dean glances back at Sam, and there’s one shot with him with the Singer Junk Yard sign in the background that is so greasy you can SMELL him, and so beautiful you want to EAT him, B.O. and all. It’s Steve McQueen. It’s Marlon Brando. It’s a movie star.
And you think maybe he is touched by Sam’s concern, because he says, “You know what, you’re right.” And it makes me laugh because there’s a shot of Sam smiling gently, and (almost) pompously. Like: “Yes. I am right. You are not okay, and I am here for you.” Sam is doing the best he can, but he is no match for the Burlesque Act of his brother, because Dean then goes on to say, “Let me lay my head on your shoulder and we can cry and hug and slow dance.” Big flashing grin.
Sam can take many things but being made fun of is not one of them, so he starts to lay into Dean. “You’re acting like nothing’s happened.”
Really, Sammy? That’s what you see going on here?
Dean is taciturn. Unreachable. And that’s the worst possible thing Dean can ever do or be. People will push even harder to get “in there” with him if he withholds himself, and it works on a feedback loop: the more he withholds, the more people push. I mean, it never stops. And that’s what happens next. Sam yells, “Don’t you want revenge? All you do is sit out here and work on the damn car!” Dean doesn’t get what the hell Sammy is going on about: Sure I want revenge, but what the hell can we do about it now, no leads, demon gone, Colt gone, Dad’s journal indecipherable, there’s nothing TO do, so I am working on the car because that is something I can actually DO. Dean is forceful enough that Sam backs off, and says that actually they do have something, a lead, maybe. Some woman left a message on one of Dad’s old cell phones 4 months ago. Dean listens to it, and there is Ellen’s voice, a voice I love, soft but with a hard-edge, the hint of a twang in it, whiskey and velvet:
“John, it’s Ellen. Again. Now, look, don’t be stubborn, you know I can help you. Call me.”
Even with John being dead, or maybe especially with John being dead, people continue to emerge from the woodwork. Even now. We met the hunter with the fantastic biceps in Season 9. An old flame of John’s. It’s still going on. Supernatural started that dynamic immediately following his death, and it increases the mystery with the character of John Winchester, who would rip pages out of his journal that he didn’t want others to see. “Everybody Loves a Clown” is our first real intimation of how big the hunter world is, and how much John had protected his sons from all of it. Sam and Dean grew up in almost complete isolation. It’s also great, considering the “falling out” that John had with Ellen, that she would call him repeatedly. It speaks volumes about her. Despite the past, and however she feels about his actions with her husband, this Demon hunt is something she is invested in, too, and “you know I can help you.”
Sam ran a trace on the cell phone and found an address.
3rd scene
Since the Impala is obviously out of commission, Dean and Sam have borrowed a “car” from Bobby, and it’s a wood-paneled minivan, with a muffler gushing smoke and screeching brakes. Also, humorously, as the “car” pulls into the dusty yard out in front of the roadhouse, we hear Captain and Teneille’s “Do That To Me One More Time” playing on the radio. So apparently the car is SO un-cool that even the radio plays un-cool music. Hysterical detail. You boys can’t change the station? So funny.
The car lurches into the drive past a strange isolated phone booth with a huge metal spiky star on the top of it, and whatever it is, it looks old-school, old-fashioned, from another time entirely. The roadhouse sits in the middle of the dust, with nothing around it. It’s a great set. It looks like the Old West. A saloon or trading post in the middle of nowhere. Eric Kripke always conceived of Supernatural as a Western, even more so than a nod to the horror genre. Westerns, that purely American invention, told the story of gruff isolated men, surrounded by vast unfriendly spaces, like Monument Valley, so perfectly captured by John Ford in most of his pictures.
John Wayne’s unforgettable entrance in “Stagecoach”
The West was a dangerous place, and self-reliance was paramount. Also the homestead, a place of safety, where you could actually control your environment. I go into that here with a bunch of screen grabs from John Ford’s The Searchers, about the importance of doorways visually and thematically.
Westerns are also intense emotionally. Everyone is on high alert. These are tough men who have seen a ton of awful shit. They are part of the Iconic Tough Guy tradition, and so are Sam and Dean. These are men who must never show weakness or uncertainty, because if they do the environment will crush them to powder. “Civilization” was a fragile veneer in Westerns, where small outposts huddled on the edge of the desert, a post office, a jail, a saloon, a whorehouse. A graveyard. These “towns” were not open to outsiders. You had to show your credentials, you had to make a big show of your benign purpose.
That’s what’s about to happen when Sam and Dean enter that roadhouse.
Dean is a rage of embarrassment because of the awful car. What he drives is a visual extension of who he is. He’s one of those guys. And driving a minivan listening to shmoopy music makes him feel helpless and pissed. “I feel like a soccer mom,” he rages. The car you drive is also an important signifier: He’s about to meet some woman named Ellen, who appeared to know his father, and he needs to bulk up for that, he needs to be protected, and how is he supposed to be protected without his Impala, which does half the job for him? It’s great.
Nobody’s around. The front door is locked. Dean picks the lock and they enter.
We see them come in from the interior, silhouetted in the doorway, like every stranger-come-to-town in every Western ever made.
They look around, curious, and a bug zapper goes off in the background, flashing blue light. But other than that, it’s dark and quiet. Too quiet.
A guy lies sleeping on the pool table. This is Ash. Ash, of course, is also the name of the lead character in the Evil Dead franchise, but I also think of it in terms of death (John just turned to ash), as well as regeneration (the phoenix rising out of its ashes.) I have a tattoo on my back of a phoenix, my favorite symbol and metaphor, so maybe I’m just sensitive to those implications. Ash is played by Chad Lindberg, a guy I remember very well from The Rookie, a movie I adore. But for now, he doesn’t wake up.
Sam goes off to check out the kitchen area. Dean wanders around, until, out of nowhere, the barrel of a shotgun emerges into the frame and pokes up against his back.
And in that moment, a meandering sexy guitar comes into play, the sound of the Western. A lonely and self-reliant sound, no band, no backup, no drums, just the guitar, twanging away on a lonely wooden porch in the middle of nowhere. It is the “mood” that Ellen and Jo bring with them. Pioneer women were bad-asses. They could haul wood, dig a well, birth babies with no anesthesia, bury the majority of those babies, have more, train a horse, shoot a gun, sew up people’s wounds, and also, oh yeah, cook for whatever posse showed up. It took a certain kind of woman who could handle that kind of life, and many Westerns show the folly of bringing more “delicate” ladies out West, before it was “ready” for them.
The Western is out of style now. We prefer a more ironic and enlightened approach to the genre, which is all good to some degree, considering the genocide that helped make the whole thing happen, but the fact remains that the Westerns of John Ford and others helped create American cinema, and insinuated themselves into the imaginations of the public, as well as future filmmakers. No one can ever make a Western without referencing John Ford (even Seth McFarlane just did so in his big ol’ bomb of a film). These images matter. These images have weight and meaning and iconic import. That’s what Supernatural taps into. In many ways, it is a hugely ironic show, but in many other ways, it is not at ALL. There ain’t no anti-heroes here. Just heroes, served straight up. Yes, grease-stained and troubled with cool hair, but there is nothing “anti” about Sam and Dean. The Iconic Tough Guy Tradition, remember: that’s where they should be placed as characters. That’s how we can understand them.
Dean breathes to himself, “Please let that be a shotgun,” and over his shoulder we see Jo, who appears to be almost child-size in comparison to the bulk of Ackles in front of her. But she is smileless and forbidding, snarking (in exactly the same way Dean would in a similar position), “No, I’m just happy to see you.”
Dean says calmly to Jo (calling her “Miss” which is so strangely adorable and formal – he can’t even see her, but her voice is a girl’s, therefore a “Miss” is dragged out) that for future reference, when you pull a shotgun on someone, you shouldn’t put it right against their back, because … and then Ninja Dean whirls around, grabs the barrel of the shotgun, yanks the gun away, pumps it once, bullets clattering out onto the floor, glaring down at her, which is when she proceeds to punch him in the nose. All in one shot. He’s really doing all that business, and she really bashes her fist into the frame, and he reels backwards at the blow. Great pantomime of business.
Dean staggers around, calling out for Sam, and also muttering to himself, “I can’t see” (he says that twice, a detail I love for some reason. Like … “Yup. It’s .5 seconds later and I STILL CAN’T SEE.”)
Sam emerges from the kitchen, hands raised in the air, Ellen behind him, holding her gun on him. The Winchester boys taken down by two purty little ladies! But they’re Pioneer Women Tough Chicks, and you come on our property unannounced, you get what you deserve, pal.
Awesome shot. Awesome placement.
Four people. Two guns. Two ladies. Two guys.
Ellen, meanwhile, has heard the names they call one another, and something sparks in her memory. She doesn’t lower her gun but she does say, “Winchester?”
Jo asks, “Mom, you know these guys?” Still nobody moves. Ellen is the one in charge here, setting the mood and tone. So when she suddenly laughs, lowering her gun, realizing that they are “John Winchester’s boys”, it’s a cue to everyone that it’s going to be okay, nobody is dying. At least not at this specific moment. Ellen is acting as though greeting someone with a gun in their face is not at all anti-social behavior, but practical commonsense, and no hard feelings, and Hey how are you, I’m Ellen and this is my daughter Jo! Similar to Bobby threatening John Winchester with a shotgun. These people don’t mess around. Dean and Sam are still hesitant, and Dean, holding his nose, glances at Jo and says, “You’re not gonna hit me again, are you?”
You wish.
4th scene
Ellen hands Dean ice wrapped in a bar rag. They’re all in a wary standoff.
Dean is quiet, because he has to ask her about his father, and he’s really not ready to talk about any of it, as has already been established. But he’s gonna have to. He has no idea who she is, and anyone outside the primary trifecta of his life is treated with suspicion, especially those who seem to know more about his own life than he does. Who can blame him. Also, Ellen is formidable. She’s one of the many formidable women who show up in the narrative, who love the boys, but who also hustle to keep them in line. In Postcards From the Edge, Meryl Streep’s spoiled movie star character balks a bit at how her director (Gene Hackman) babies her, and takes care of her. He comments, “Listen, you’d make a mother out of anyone.” Sam and Dean (and particularly Dean) are the same way. We saw it with Missouri Mosley. I know a lot of people didn’t like how “rude” she was to him, but I made my own thoughts on that clear. Besides, wanting everyone to be nice and accepting of one another is not how good script-writing works. Missouri Mosley looks at Dean and clocks him immediately as an abandoned little boy who never had a mother’s care and correction, and so she gives it. It is her way of caring for him. And his “Why are you picking on me?” reaction is part of it. He thinks it’s unfair, he’s a MAN, dammit, but he also does what she says, basically conceding her point. She looks at leather-jacket-clad Dean and thinks, “That poor motherless child.” It will happen again and again, even with Dean’s main girlfriend in the series, Lisa. Dean would make a mother out of anyone.
And this is what women (or Women ™) provide. It’s not sexist. It’s profound. None of these women are run by their menfolk. They’re fully capable bad-asses, who also, you know, Boobs and softness and ice packs and sympathy. Being cared for by a woman does not exist in Dean and Sam’s world, and never has, since their mother died. So it’s a trigger. We will see Dean resist in in the upcoming scene.
Often widowers are put in the position of having to fulfill both parenting roles, and it’s a struggle, as I know from friends who have experienced it. A good friend of mine lost his wife (very suddenly – she was in her mid-30s) and they had two children under the age of 10. It was a stark tragedy and he has done an amazing job of keeping the ship afloat, and honoring his wife’s memory, for himself and for his children, all while trying to keep on living. His daughter hit puberty and he told me he realized, “Welp, I guess I need to do some research about periods and cramps and feminine products.” And he did. He asked woman friends for advice. He took care of it. That’s a practical example, but these things go on in the aftermath of a loss like that all the time. A father’s love is as important as a mother’s, of course, but we can see how all of that was twisted beyond repair in the Winchester world. They grew up under lockdown, they grew up under siege, they grew up being taught to smash down the softness in themselves. One can imagine John’s reaction if he came across 4-year-old Dean sobbing about where was his mother and he missed his mother. One can imagine how much sympathy Dean would have gotten. He would have learned quick to smash that shit DOWN. Grieve in private, crawl away into the shadows, don’t let anyone see.
And so women open up a space. Women provide something ELSE.
Dean is not accustomed to it, he doesn’t trust it, and he feels vulnerable in the face of it. His energy with Ellen early on is fantastic, considering where that relationship ends up going. Same with Jo.
(And yes, I know the backstage stories about how Jo was set up as a love interest and then dropped because of this-this-and-this. I am interested in that only because it is somewhat interesting, and I like “making of” stories as much as the next person. But it is NOT interesting in terms of what is on the screen – that needs to live and die by itself. I make up my own mind about what works and what doesn’t. I don’t care what the creators say, in other words, because once a thing is out there in the world, it’s up to ME what I think of it. And you. And everyone else watching. Hell, in my perfect world, the one-off “relationship” Dean has in “The Mentalists” was actually “the one,” she’s the best partner for him yet, and something was opened up in that small relationship in that silly episode that was profound and true. And she’s never been mentioned again. I don’t care that her character clearly wasn’t built to be a “love interest in the future” – what is on the screen is ALL that should matter. And your mileage will vary from mine, and vice versa. Those backstage stories are only interesting up to a point, and I try to ignore them in my own analysis. I feel no obligation to ‘agree’ with the creators. For example, I love the “Ghost Ship” episode and I don’t care that they openly dissed the writing of said episode in the actual show. I get to make up my own mind. What the creator intended or what the creator thinks about what is up there is irrelevant. Interesting, but irrelevant.)
Continuity in wound-healing is uber important.
Exhibit A from “In My Time of Dying”.
Exhibit B from “Everybody Loves a Clown.”
Dean brings up the phone call made by Ellen, and wondered what she was offering help with. She seems slightly surprised that he would ask that. She clearly does not know how in the dark John kept his boys. “The demon, of course,” she says.
It’s as though she has spoken the family secret out loud. Who the hell is this woman? “What, did I miss an article in The Demon Hunter’s Quarterly – how do you know all this?” (The Demon Hunter’s Quarterly. Ha. I would like a subscription.)
Ellen, used to the plausible deniability her lifestyle requires, says, “I just run a saloon.”
But look at how Ellen and Jo loom over Sam and Dean, strapping broads with relaxed open postures, formidable, un-fazed, superb.
These are women they can actually deal with, although they don’t know that yet. Dean hates not knowing stuff. Secrets are bad bad news. Secrets are treated with scorn and derision and even the way Ellen glances at her daughter meaningfully, and says, “Hunters have been known to pass through here” is threatening to him. Why the hell have they never heard of the roadhouse?
No, seriously. I’m asking.
Just kidding. Don’t get attached to the damn thing anyway because it’s going up in smoke, and Ash will be reduced to ash, and all things considered I think it was a smart choice. But still, I love the roadhouse.
Samantha Ferris has a way of loading her lines with history and thought and opinions and feelings, all beneath the surface. The way she says, “John was like family once.” There’s a lot in there. The “once” suggests the falling-out. There is regret there. There’s a hell of a lot she’s not saying. It makes her fascinating. I was completely in love with both her and Jo from the second they arrived on the scene.
Ellen treats Dean with suspicion, and he her, both of them protect their own, both of them don’t like outsiders. And Dean’s got his own Daddy-Drama going on, making it difficult for him to address anything. His dad’s been dead 8 days or whatever. The fact that suddenly he has to deal with something new, a woman who has emerged who seems to know something … Dean clamps down. If Sam were in charge of the interaction it would go much differently.
When she says “John was like family once,” Dean does not warm to her. He says, “Oh yeah? How come he never mentioned you before?”
Ellen, again with the weight of her entire personal history, says, “You’d have to ask him that.”
Silence. And when Dean says, “Why exactly do we need your help?” Ellen’s response addresses Dean’s unfriendly tone. “Don’t let the door smack your ass on your way out.” They’re so alike. That’s what’s going on. Mush-balls wrapped in iron.
But then she realizes. If John didn’t send them here .. then why are they … oh … no … the camera slowly pulls on her face, on her realization. The fear, the denial, the hope that the answer will be something else … she asks, “He’s all right, isn’t he?”
Big revealing slanting profile of Dean. He can’t answer.
Sam has to handle it, and he does. “No.” As Sam fills in Ellen and Jo, Dean can barely deal with what’s going on. Talking about it. No. Talking about it makes it real. Talking about it solidifies what has happened. Joan Didion talks, in The Year of Magical Thinking about how well-meaning friends told her that she needed to clean out her husband’s closet, donate his clothes, his shoes. She looked at his shoes, and thought, “But he’ll need them when he comes back.” That’s grief.
Ellen takes in the two men before her. She feels their loss. She knows they’re orphans now, they have no one. She says, and she means it, “I’m so sorry.” Dean can’t take that either. It’s pity. She’s butting in where she is not wanted. Nobody needs to feel sorry for me, and I don’t even know who the fuck you are. Look at the smile he throws her. He says, “It’s okay. We’re all right.”
But Ellen understands emotions, and understands what is coming at her. She tries to push through, “I know how close you were.” The smile is gone from Dean’s face in a flash, and he says, “Really, lady, I’m fine.”
The “lady” is a great detail. Your name hasn’t even stuck in my brain, lady. Get off my back. It’s rude. Ellen doesn’t react. She tilts her head to the side, looking at him, the face, the wounds, the rudeness. This is where the Black Arm-Band Theory works. Cut people slack when they’re grieving. They know not what they do. Ellen gets that. But Dean won’t budge. There seems to be nowhere else to go in the moment, and Sam softly says, “We could use all the help we can get,” which gets him a glance from Dean. Dean just wants to be back out under the Impala. That makes sense to him, not this touchy-feely bullshit which demands too much of him. He’s not ready.
Sam is obviously the more “social” one, at least currently, and Ellen’s voice changes when dealing with him. “Well, we can’t help. But Ash can.” Ellen, without moving, calls out “ASH?” and with a jerk the sleeping figure on the pool table behind them awakens, in a pantomime of awesome. Like Dean, Ash lives his life like he is the star of an Awesome Movie of Awesome-ness. I mean, Dean’s not in that state now, and that’s part of his problem. Where’s the movie where I am awesome. Can I get myself into that movie, please? Ash looks a wreck. He looks barely sentient. Sam glances at Jo, and Jo says flatly, “He’s a genius.”
Yet another way that Supernatural messes with expectations (at least of the American brand). The Americans who think of flyover country as a no-man’s-land of ignorance and obesity. I’ve written about that snobby attitude before. You shouldn’t fly over this land anyway. You should drive through it. You’d be amazed at the diversity that is out there. You would also be amazed at how surfaces tell us NOTHING about the brain/heart/soul of the person. We’ve already seen that with Bobby Singer. How often is Bobby Singer under-estimated? Or Ash? Hell, Sam and Dean do it to him, too. Everyone does it to him. In a way, every single character we meet on Supernatural experiences that to some degree, either with supernatural beings who sneer at them, or with regular people who think … that grease-monkey can’t also be a brainiac. Or, with Jo, that small blonde thing can’t be a capable hunter. You know. This is the world we all live in, where appearances matter and define us.
With Jo’s words, “He’s a genius,” we suddenly get a cut to a brown paper folder being slammed down on the bar. We’ve jumped forward a tiny bit in time. We don’t see Ash get off the pool table, we don’t see any of that. It’s not a huge jump in time, just a minute or so, but it’s a really nice cut. Sgriccia was an editor, remember, this is how he thinks. Launch us into the next beat with no preamble. Let the audience play catch-up.
They’re all sitting at the bar now, Ash glancing down at the paper folder, his brain whirling like an automated machine. What is that. What is in there. What can I make of it.
Dean is standing, looking at the spectacle of Ash, not sure what to make of him, and he drawls, “You gotta be kiddin’ me, this guy’s no genius, he’s a Lynyrd Skynyrd roadie.” It’s friendly, with an edge. It’s also a flirt. It’s a Batting Eyelashes moment (for my primer on that, see here. I’m sorry, it’s obnoxious to keep linking to myself.) Dean flirts with everyone. It is more noticeable when he doesn’t flirt than when he does. He flirts for all kinds of reasons, only one being “let me get this woman into bed with me.” He flirts to get what he wants. He flirts to get through the door. He flirts to deal with his own anxiety. He flirts with inanimate objects. Sometimes the person he’s flirting with picks up on it and gives him a steely-eyed glare of confusion and rejection. We’ve seen that happen a bunch of times. Flirting is one of Dean’s ways of maneuvering the nerve-wracking landscape of his life. ALSO, a lot of times it works. He DOES get laid when he flirts (sometimes), he DOES get through the door when he flirts (sometimes), so hell, it’s worth it to throw it out there, see what comes back. I love the flirting moments because Dean is not completely in charge of his affect during them, he’s not completely aware of how he’s coming across. If you said, “Dean, stop flirting with the coroner,” he very well may have no idea what you were talking about. I’m not flirting, Jeez, God. But he’s an erotic muse. This is how they operate.
I mean, look at the look on Dean’s face when he says that.
It’s basically Bedroom Eyes.
And just so I’m crystal-clear: I am not saying jack-squat about Dean’s sexual orientation, and I am not saying he wants to fuck Ash. I am saying that this is how Dean operates, especially when he feels anxious or wants to get the upper hand.
He’s putting Ash down because of his appearance, at the same time that he is flirting … so he can get “on top”. It’s so bizarre.
The best part, though, is Ash’s reaction. He recognizes what is going on. He recognizes what is coming at him from Dean. He looks at Dean. He freakin’ WINKS. And states, “I like you.” And he means it. But you’re also not sure. Ash is also trying to get the upper-hand. Ah, men. Peacocks.
It’s a great little moment.
Dean doesn’t know it yet but he can relax with these people. He can be his freaky tough vulnerable Sexpot self and they’re going to ‘get it’. He can even be a grieving son. They won’t judge. They won’t punish him.
Jo is behind the bar, with shots of whiskey for all. She says to Dean, whose posture is pretty protected, “Give him a chance.” Dean has no use for Jo, not yet, and isn’t at all used to other people in his world, I love how Ackles plays that. Dean is king of his own Land, when he’s behind the wheel of the Impala, and he has a good dynamic with Sam, for the most part, and he can be intimate with Sam, and the whole world doesn’t fall apart. But this little blonde woman telling him to do something, this mullet-headed guy touching his father’s papers, this eagle-eyed woman staring right into his heart … He’s completely off his game. It’s almost like an assault, other people coming into his world.
Ash is enjoying the moment. Ash knows how awesome he is. He is used to being under-estimated. He doesn’t give a shit because he is always the smartest man in any room.
Dean decides to behave himself (sort of), and pushes the folder towards Ash: “This is about a year’s worth of our Dad’s work. See what you make of it.” There’s a grin there, a challenge, and also a flirt. It’s meant to destabilize his opponent. Dazzle Ash with the bright shining light of HIS awesome-ness. I don’t know. I don’t want to label it. I just want to love it.
Ash’s whole body language shows that he’s getting the full-frontal of Dean’s behavior and subtext. He almost has to lean back in order to fully process it. Hysterical.
Dean is still grinning at Ash in full-on Eyelashes-Bat, a challenge, but Ash is now busy looking through the papers. Ash starts to rattle off language involving words like “parametrics” and “cross-spectrum overviews,” which, well, put a fork in Alpha Dog Dean, he becomes Beta in a flash. Ash understand what he’s looking at, and says, “These are signs. If you can track ’em, you can track this demon.”
Sam keeps the encounter on the rails, because his brother hasn’t been able to stop flirting and/or being rude, and says, “Can you track it or not?”
Ash says yes, but he will need some time. And then comes one of my favorite lines in the episode: “Give me 51 hours.”
Ash gathers up John’s papers and starts off, leaving Sam and Dean stunned and quiet at the bar. Dean knows he’s been behaving badly, so he calls out, to make things better, “Hey, man. By the way. I dig the haircut.”
Ash doesn’t need Dean’s approval. He doesn’t even seem to care. He just acknowledges that yes, the haircut is awesome, and that’s why I have my fucking hair cut this way. Ash could also be seen as another erotic muse, if you tilt the lens a bit. People who carry themselves in this confident insouciant performative way are fascinating. Supernatural is full of people like that, especially in the hunter world, which I love. It’s a weird “tic” of the culture. Ash flatly acknowledges that Dean has spoken and then barks out the cliche, “Business up front, PARTY IN THE BACK,” and walks off, having “won” that encounter in every way possible. Dean is not a sore loser. Ash earned it. Dean was being a dick and he knows it.
However, there is no time to dwell on the Ash Performance-Art Piece because Dean gets a glimpse of Jo’s lower back as she walks by behind the bar. The camera moves up to her face, and she’s looking straight at him, busting him staring, but she moves on, careless and controlled. But, you know, being busted won’t stop Dean. In fact, it will make him move in to investigate the possibility even further. Which, of course, is what happens.
One of the ways to process grief is by fucking your brains out. Don’t knock it til you tried it. I don’t know if anyone has collected “stories in New York” from the two or three months following September 11th, but my guess is there was a lot of indiscriminate fucking going on. Or more so than usual. That was true for me (one such story here – don’t worry, it’s PG-rated), and it was true for a couple of my friends. Lots of grabby-clutchy-making-out with people you just met. Also a couple of people I knew who had broken up with each other prior to September 11th got back together in the months following. I bet there was a mini baby-boom 9 months later. The desire to be together, to connect, to lose yourself in someone else, all of it was a very valid reaction to the world breaking apart underneath us.
Dean sees Jo walk by. Sam has engaged Ellen in conversation, and Dean is thinking. Then decides, what the hell, let’s go give it a shot.
Sam’s sharp eyes has spotted a folder behind the bar, with the word MURDERED written on it (which, I’m sorry, cracks me up.) Ellen almost doesn’t want to give it to him. How much will she let in these Winchester boys? Are they to be trusted? How did John raise them? Like father like son? Also, they just lost their dad. She doesn’t want to overwhelm them. Her look is sharp-eyed, contemplative. So far she’s been focused mainly on Dean, but now she takes in Sam. One wonders what she sees, senses. She hands him the folder.
Now we’re over with Dean and Jo, with another elegant cut, so invisible you might miss it, but it adds to the flow. From close-up of folder to Dean sitting down into the frame, asking Jo (off-camera), “How’d your Mom get into this stuff?” His face is open, alight, telegraphing “I am benign. I come in peace. Check out my shiny green eyes and innocent face. You have nothing to fear from me.”
It’s all bullshit, and she knows it, but she keeps herself under control (Tough Chicks know how to do that, causing menfolk to then spin out of control, digging their own graves), but it’s interesting to watch Dean in action. We actually don’t see it all that much. He’s about to start hitting on her. His opener is not a “hit,” because that’s not how you get the best success rate, any fool knows that, and his opener is a question, which is also how you get a good success rate, and if you don’t know that, then don’t wonder/complain that you don’t get laid enough.
Why I love this small scene is because we can actually watch Dean start something and then think the better of it. Basically, upstairs brain working at the exact same time as downstairs brain. She is a young pretty person, and so he flirts with her because … well, he’s Dean … and the way she handles it is both a warning and a subtle message that, “I see what you’re doing. I get it. But here’s where I’m coming from. Let’s slow down.”
All flirting (all good flirting, anyway) is based on an understanding of the subtext you’re getting. Dean is brilliant at that, especially in this particular context, which is “Hitting on a woman to try to at least make out with her in about 45 minutes. Or 51 minutes. Or soon, whatever.” He should give seminars. It’s nearly impossible to picture Dean ignoring subtextual messages from whatever person he’s moving in on. Or not taking no for an answer. Or being a douche. I’m reiterating a point I already made, near the end of the “Faith” re-cap (I guess if I feel I’ve already said something, I’ll put a link to it. Sorry.) – The “womanizing” is treated as the same thing as being “sexist” in some of the fandom stuff I’ve read, and I couldn’t disagree with that more strongly. If someone is hitting on me in an unwelcome or skeevy way, then I get to say, “Please. I’m not interested,” and then they might get bitchy or hostile, which basically just proves my point that I don’t want to be with that person anyway, but a friendly come-on? Like Dean’s? It makes the world go round. Now obviously some people have different sensitivities to stuff like this (men being aggressive or at least upfront with what they want) – and that’s obviously fine, if that’s where you’re coming from. But it’s not where I’m coming from.
So this small scene is a mini-masterpiece of underplaying. There’s a silent conversation going on between the two of them, separate from the words that they’re saying. Dean looks damn near cuddly.
And in one small comment, Jo stops being a pretty blonde with an exposed lower back, and someone who has also lost a father, who also grew up with a hunter-father, AND who has been batting off the attention of men probably since she hit puberty. They’re soul mates, basically. And the behavior! The look in her eyes as she looks down at him, his look as she looks back, his vulnerability (he’s not wearing multiple layers, you can SEE him), the thoughts, the wants, all that … They both do a great job.
The words they say:
Dean: So how’d your Mom get into all of this stuff? (open, friendly)
Jo: My Dad. He was a hunter. He passed away.
Dean: (after a pause) I’m sorry. (putting the “hit” on the back burner, for the moment)
Jo: It was a long time ago. I was just a kid. Sorry to hear about your dad.
Dean can’t deal with it really. Can’t speak or even really acknowledge it, his body squirms with discomfort. And so he segues into another objective, his original objective. God, wouldn’t it feel good to just get naked for a while. I want to get naked. NOW. So easily and unembarrassedly, he says:
Dean: So. We’ve got 51 hours to waste. Maybe tonight we should …
He trails off. If she had said, “Hell yeah” in that moment it probably would have happened. It probably would also have been gnarly and awkward. But that’s the way it sometimes goes when you sleep with people you don’t know. The trailing off on Dean’s part is because he looks up at her to see how it goes over. She stares down at him. Not hostile. But certainly not welcoming or soft either. She’s intelligent and sensitive and she knows the score. And suddenly the moment unfurls all around him, his needs, the look on her face, his grief and desire to forget about it (Jo basically would be the standin for the Impala, to put it bluntly), and then the knowledge that no, he doesn’t want to do that. You see that whole entire thing unfurl on Ackles’ face. He’s not embarrassed at having tried to hit on her. Although wait, he will be in about 2 seconds. But in this moment, when he openly changes tack, he’s soft and honest. Because sometimes fucking the pain away works and sometimes it makes the pain worse. You have to figure that out for yourself.
Dean says, “Never mind. Wrong place, wrong time.” Luckily he hasn’t said too much, he hasn’t embarrassed himself totally. That was a close call!
Jo is no dummy, says, “I thought you were gonna toss me some cheap pick-up line.” Acknowledging that yes, she knows his original intentions, but kind of giving him a way out (or at least enough rope to hang himself with). Dean laughs, faintly, because that is what is expected of him but you see a flash of anxiety and “Oops” on his face which cracks me up every time I see it.
Jo is a brutal Ninja of the moment because she keeps speaking. And she says, “Most hunters who come through that door think they can get in my pants with some… pizza, a six pack, and side one of Zeppelin IV.”
There are multiple levels why this is the best retort ever.
First of all, it references Fast Times at Ridgemont High and that is always a good thing.
Second of all, Jo has NAILED Dean with his original intentions, and what that says about him, and what that says about how predictable his behavior is.
Third of all, even by referencing Led Zeppelin, she reveals herself to be a potential kindred spirit, not to mention her openness with phrases such as “get in my pants”, and Dean very well might like to talk with her about Led Zeppelin and other matters, but … but … does that mean then that he is NOT an original, as he originally thought? The star of his own awesome movie? She’s seen it all before? No, that’s not possible. She’s never seen anyone like HIM before. She can’t have. But … he can’t hang onto that, because she’s not a civilian woman. She’s grown up around hunters, which means she’s smarter than other women, has seen more, and is a little bit scarier.
Fourthly, and this goes along with thirdly: it shows the predictability of the hunter world, and its “courtship” techniques (which kind of cracks me up: nobody has time or patience to take it slow, because you’re only around for one night anyway, cut to the chase), and Dean, as bright-eyed and young as he is, is trudging down a well-trodden path. He’s acting like all the rest of them. Jo is young, she’s, what, 19, 20? She’s already got lots of mileage on her, knows how to handle the come-ons and float on through untouched, will pull a gun on a guy who gets rough with her, and basically puts Dean in his place by stating TO him what he REALLY wanted to say and do, and all this soft open “so tell me about yourself” stuff was just his obvious lead-in.
He is so busted, and he knows it. She smirks down at him, and he says, frozen, “What a buncha scumbags,” and he’s mortified, pinned down, and she STILL doesn’t let it go. She says, “But not you.” Dean is a mess. Run for your life, pal, you can’t get out of this. He shrugs, and says, “Guess not,” and she gives him a knowing look. It’s so piercing that he gulps and looks away.
The whole thing is just a great beat.
Sam, over at the bar, rescues Dean by calling him over to check something out. Ellen’s caught wind of a case and Sam has told Ellen they’ll check it out. I love that Sam makes that decision without checking with Dean.
5th scene
Dean and Sam barrel through a torrential downpour in their minivan. It’s night. The windshield wipers are going. The lights blur through the rain, and it’s incredible to think that these guys are being jostled around on a set in Vancouver, and they ain’t going nowhere. It looks totally real. It’s a pretty long scene, too. We’re over 15 minutes into the episode. The roadhouse was a lazy multi-part long scene, so obviously the case is not the priority (episode-wise). Sam has a shit-ton of lines in this car scene. It’s all case-case-case: “30 years ago there was a series of murders …” “A clown vanished in thin air …” “They were breaking down the carnival and everyone had alibis …” It’s tremendously boring. He has his little flashlight up, reading the notes out loud to Dean. Dean is lazy and unconcerned, he asks questions, he throws out ideas, “Cursed object?” and etc.
Then we have the small moment when Dean teases Sam about being afraid of clowns. “Why’d it have to be clowns?” laughs Dean.
As we saw in the prank episode, neither of them can take a joke when it’s on them. Sam gets annoyed and says, “At least I’m not afraid of flying,” and Dean says IMMEDIATELY, with dead-serious eyes, “PLANES CRASH”. J’adore. Because one second before he’s laughing at Sam but at the mere mention of his own fear, he retaliates with how logical HIS fear is. They both are such easy targets for teasing.
Then comes a serious brother talk, sort of a continuation of the argument in the junk yard. Dean says “it’s not like you” to jump on taking a case, especially when Sam has been all gung-ho to go find the demon. Why did Sam take it? Sam is confused. It’s not like Dean to be that direct, and Sam seems uncertain of whether or not to tell the truth. But he goes for it, saying, “I don’t know … it seems like it’s what Dad would have wanted.”
Dean is taken aback. But he’s in full Burlesque Act mode, which he has been this whole Impala scene (except for the “PLANES CRASH” moment which is visceral and revealed). Dean is hiding, he’s “acting,” he’s got tons of thoughts swirling around in that head, and a lot of questions, but he cloaks it behind a sort of shrug and a wink, a grin thrown across the seat, a potent pause. It’s not straight-up manipulative, but there’s a little bit of that going on. When someone throws you behavior like that, it is natural to lean in, to want more, to ask, “What?”
And that’s exactly what happens next. He doesn’t flip out or get sharp or anything more revealing, he just repeats what Sam said, “What Dad would have wanted??” And then says no more, leaving Sam hanging. Sam says, “What?”
Dean leaves it there, says, “Nothing.”
The rain pours down. Silence reigns. To be continued.
6th scene
Father and son walk through the funhouse. Son plays video games, bored, uninterested in all of the creepy things behind the glass panes. I don’t blame him, because I don’t want to look at something like this either.
Humorously, a big red plastic devil leans forward behind one of the glass panes, startling the dad. It’s sort of the low-rent civilian version of all the demons Sam and Dean are actually fighting, the ones who have, you know, murdered their loved ones. I love when the show plays with the idea that regular people are fascinated by all this stuff, and dress up for Halloween, and muck around with magic tricks, and Sam and Dean get tired of Amateur Hour, they were tired of it 10 years ago. Because they know the darkness of the real damn thing. The fun house has fluorescent paint, and mirrored glass, and it’s a dizzying and confusing space.
It reminds me of the climax of Lady From Shanghai in the Funhouse Mirror:
I’ve spoken about my love of Mirror Scenes (which we will get to in these Supernatural re-caps, because there are a lot of great mirror scenes), and Lady From Shanghai is one of the best mirror scenes of all time (second only to the brilliant shot in Citizen Kane where Orson Welles is reflected into infinity (a shot completely stolen by Supernatural for one of the “heaven’s green room” scenes).
Coincidence that two of the top most memorable mirror scenes of all time BOTH involve Orson Welles? I think not.
Reflecting surfaces will always be a potent symbol (Alice in Wonderland certainly knows that), even if here, in this scene, they are meant only to be disorienting and dizzying. While Dad is jumping out of his skin at the fake Beelzebub, the son glances up from his video game into the pitch-black glass in front of him, and sees there behind him a clown, leaning down over his shoulder. Their eyes meet through the glass. The clown, with a jingling of bells, waves. The little boy turns around but there is no clown there.
7th scene
Later that night, the father is woken up by his son standing by his bed. He opens his eyes and this is what he sees.
I don’t scare easily. But that image stalks my dreams.
8th scene
Brakes squealing, Dean’s minivan pulls up outside the carnival. More twangy Western guitar. It provides a mood, a feel, two cowboys pulling up outside a pioneer town, wondering what they will find inside. Strange dream-like images of one of the rides, whirling against the sky. Two clowns chatting.
Sam stands waiting for Dean, and a little person walks by, glaring up at him in an ominous way. Behind her, a dude walks by holding some crazy barbells.
Sam stares at the woman, she stares back. Nobody speaks. It’s from out of the Western playbook. You can’t just ride into town on a horse and expect people to greet you with a smile. State your intentions. And keep your hands away from your sides. Dean comes over during the tail-end of the Angry Stare-Off, and looks taken aback. There is nothing I love more than the brief look on Dean’s face when he gets taken aback by something. It’s one of the reasons why screen grabs can’t really capture the real fluidity of Ackles’ face, the sheer amount of reaction and thinking and double-takes he does on a moment to moment basis. Of course, when he reaches Sam he asks seriously, “Did you get her number?” And Sam gives him an “Ew, gross, stop it” look and suddenly they do not seem to be tall strapping men, but teenagers at the most.
So Dean has some new intel, wherever the hell he just was. There were two more murders the night before. Parents “ripped to shreds,” little boy left unharmed.
“Who fingered a clown,” says Sam.
So Supernatural is now responsible for putting the image in my head of a little boy fingering a clown. That is horrifying.
Dean looks up at Sam. Dean is open to the sexual potential in every moment, and is in tune with double entendre. (“Ball-washer,” Dean makes Sam say repeatedly in the SECOND clown episode, SEASONS later.)
Sam sees the flat look on Dean’s face and asks, “What?” Dude you just said a little boy “fingered a clown,” how can you not hear it.
Onto the plan. They talk it out, leaning up against a platform, the sky blasting blue above them, both of them in the same frame, Sam a bit blurred out, classic Supernatural beauty.
They’re so often cloaked in darkness in the series, or holed up in the Impala, or hiding in corners, hemmed in on all sides. Seeing them out in the world, as they are for the majority of the episode, is a great switch, especially considering the wrenching change that has just befallen them.
9th scene
Knives hurtle through the air, plunging into a target on the wall. No establishing shot, just a closeup of the target, with knives coming into it, and then we see Dean and Sam enter a red and white tent to be confronted by a man in black sunglasses (Alec Willows) standing on a small platform, hurling knives at a bulls-eye hanging in the air. Dean looks shocked, but plunges forward. And here, in this initial interaction, Dean is perfectly polite. He doesn’t flirt. He doesn’t try to do anything other than get information, and still … and STILL … the interaction completely derails in a matter of a second. This happens to Dean repeatedly. It’s so funny because he really is doing his best here, but it doesn’t matter.
He says, “Excuse me, we’re looking for a Mr. Cooper. Have you seen him around?”
The man in black sunglasses stops and says, “What is that, some kind of joke?”
Confusion. Fear. The man whips off his sunglasses, showing his staring blind eyes. Dean tries to apologize but the guy is on a roll, “You think I wouldn’t give my eyeteeth to SEE Mr. Cooper?? Or a sunset? Or anything at all?”
Dean is mortified. Sam is laughing at Dean’s distress, and I am in love with both of them.
A voice comes from behind Dean, “Hey, Barry. Is there a problem?”
Dean turns, and there’s no one there, and then the camera moves down to reveal another little person standing there, a gruff macho one wearing a pink glittery cape. That camera move is delightfully bitchy. Shameless, really.
“Barry” on the platform says, “Yeah. This guy hates blind people.”
Dean blusters and flusters, laughing, apologetic, “No, I don’t!!” He turns back to Pink Glitter Cape and says, “It’s just been a little misunderstanding …” Again, it is the wrong thing to say. These carnival people are sensitive, man. Cape-Man says, “Little??? You SONOFABITCH.”
Dean is threatened on both sides, having pissed off everyone in a matter of moments, and he calls out into the air, angry and scared, “CAN SOMEBODY TELL ME WHERE MR. COOPER IS?” He is truly frightened. Sam is laughing out loud, watching his brother stagger through the wreckage of the interaction, something that happens a lot, whether Dean tries to be polite or no. Dean “means well,” as the show keeps reminding us.
10th scene
The mythical Mr. Cooper (Ken Kramer) has been found and leads them into his trailer-office, a dark and cluttered space. There’s a tiny television. Old posters on the wall. Rickety lamps. Mr. Cooper offers Sam and Dean a seat by his desk. One of the chairs has a huge leering clown on the back of it, and Dean races to take the other chair, leaving the clown for Sam. (Apparently, Phil Sgriccia said to Ackles, “Look at the two chairs. Which one do you want to sit in?” Ackles got it and ran with it. Ahhh, acting.)
I mean, come ON. Phil Sgriccia is a genius. Sam is terrified and has to close his eyes and breathe through the fear of what is behind him. These guys spend the majority of their time in dank sewer tunnels and abandoned houses, fighting angry spirits and they are nearly undone by the most mundane fears.
Mr. Cooper wants to know if they’ve worked in carnivals before, and Sam says yes. Mr. Cooper ain’t buying it. Dean comes clean and says, no, but they need the work and “Sam here’s got a thing for the bearded lady” and he starts laughing at his own joke, he thinks he’s adorable, and he waits for the proper reaction of laughter from the other two. Because why wouldn’t they when he is being so awesome? Of course they both just stare at him. Because Dean is weird, and he is never weirder than when he is trying to be ingratiating. Dean subsides. Mr. Cooper then launches into a monologue about his “daddy”, whose picture is on the wall. His daddy “ran a freak show” until “they were outlawed.” Mr. Cooper says, filled with resentment, “Apparently, displaying the deformed isn’t dignified!”
Please watch how Dean shakes his head sympathetically in response, like, “Man, what a shame. What is this world coming to when you can’t display freaks in cages.”
HILARIOUS.
Mr. Cooper explains that “this place is a refuge for outcasts … always has been.” Taking in the two strapping bucks sitting there in front of him, he says that they should go to school, “live regular.” Dean has already given up that dream, if he ever had it, and glances at Sam. Sam’s reaction is fascinating. Mr. Cooper’s words anger him. Think about his own attempt to “live regular,” and what he has had to give up to re-commit to being a hunter. Sam is pissed. He leans away from the clown, into a giant intense closeup, and says, “Sir. We don’t want to go to school. We don’t want regular. We want this.”
As Sam talks, we see Dean lean back in his own chair, hearing Sam’s words, having a lot of feelings about it. His dreams were always about Sam. And he may very well have felt betrayed when Sam left for Stanford (we know he did), but he also had a lot of hope that Sam would get out, that Sam would be safe. Maybe the world wouldn’t be so bad if he knew that somewhere out there Sam was “living regular.” All of that has, of course, changed over the past year. And now, with John’s death, Sam is changing again.
To hear Sam say “We don’t want regular” with such conviction is upsetting. Sam is growing in strength. He chose this case, he put them on it, he is the Leader. That’s normally Dean’s role. Sam is talking about “doing what Dad would have wanted …” the way normally reserved for Dean. Dean looks shaken. He likes things to be in sync. He likes things to stay the same. I guess we all do. It’s hard to not be like, “Wait, you’re saying THIS now? But I thought you felt another way.” Sam’s transformation has been even more severe than Dean’s, and Dean really gets that in that one small moment in the office as he listens to Sam’s intense words.
11th scene
Post-meeting, Sam and Dean walk through the carnival and Dean brings it up. The way Sgriccia chose to film this walk-and-talk scene is great because it under-cuts the perhaps-obvious “Can we just talk about what just happened and also talk about our feelings?” thrust of the scene. We see them behind and through things. There is a barrier between them and us. We see them behind a yellow structure, some kind of ride. We see them through the mottled plexi-glass of a concession stand. It’s a beautiful way to show the guys in the larger world of the episode, the world of the carnival, and they’re already so wrapped up in it that the world literally imposes itself between us and them. They’re IN. It’s also, like I said, a good way to undercut and deflect what could be obvious.
Dean expresses surprise that Sam said he didn’t want to go to school. Dean has a mind like a steel-trap. He remembers Sam mooning about how he can’t wait for it all to be over so he can “go back to school.” Dean refers to school as “Wussy State,” because he can’t resist. And it’s so much a normal part of how he speaks that Sam doesn’t even react of take offense. Sam says that he’s having second thoughts. Finally, they stop to talk it out. It gets angry pretty quick.
And I just need to mention: Sam’s hair. Dean’s freckles. Both seen in all their glory in this sunlit bright scene. And the wounds. The healing cuts. It’s awesome. I get distracted.
This is a continuation of the real argument of the entire episode, the argument about Dad. Sam is now devoting himself to finishing off Dad’s work, and trying to do what Dad would have wanted, and he says such a thing again here. The argument in the rainy Impala, left unfinished, comes roaring back, and Dean says, “Since when do you give a damn what Dad wanted?” And Sam replies, “Since he died, Dean. Do you have a problem with that?”
It’s a great answer. Death does change our priorities. That’s part of the destabilizing factor of it. Dean’s missing that memo, and that’s part of grief, as well. You lose the ability to pick up on subtleties. It’s like the entire system of your body and spirit shuts down all non-essentials just in order to get through the damn experience. So Sam suddenly being a good and obedient son is putting Dean into a RAGE, too little too late, pal, and all that, but the rage is so huge that Dean backs off of it. He can’t deal. He says, “No, I don’t have a problem with it,” and it’s bitchy, rather than honest, and when Dean gets bitchy you know he’s lying. He walks off. Dean is not handling this well at all. I mentioned in “In My Time of Dying,” it is not vulnerability or sadness that freaks Dean out. He is actually okay with those things. But rage? Especially rage involving his father? Forbidden. It’s too big. It will overwhelm him.
And, of course, that’s where we’re headed in “Everybody Loves a Clown,” with the phenomenal final scene. No wonder Dean puts off dealing with it. Wouldn’t you?
12th scene
Another carnival montage, the rides, the crowds, the prizes, the cotton candy, and now Sam, in a carnival-issued red jacket, picking up trash, an EMF tucked in his jacket, with ear plugs in his ears. He looks so sketchy it makes me roar. He goes into the funhouse to check it out and is submerged into the dark disorienting world of fluorescence, blackness, and reflections. Not to mention screams and witchy cackles.
Holding out the EMF, he walks by a mirror, and we get a clear visual nod to Citizen Kane, Sam stretching off into infinity.
The EMF is buzzing, no matter what he points it at, heads and fetuses in jars. And then he is scared half out of his mind by a skeleton dropping down from the ceiling, dangling in front of him.
Look at the lighting. It’s magnificent.
13th scene
Outside, Dean is busy emptying trash into a dumpster. I mentioned somewhere else that, outside of the suits, which always seem to look strange on him, like he’s 14-years-old making his confirmation … Dean embraces costumes. Season 2 has two slam-dunk episodes, back to back, which show Dean’s 100% embrace of whatever fictional world he is asked to enter. He doesn’t just play a role. He LIVES it. He picks up on the rules of the game quick. He is a total chameleon. He’s still his odd and sparkly self, and people still react strangely to him because of that, but on the inside, he makes the adjustments he needs to make. He is good at it. There will be exceptions. Certain things spark anxiety or insecurity in Dean, bringing up his own psychodramas (phone call for Frontierland), but in general, he runs with it. Dean is so singular, so individual. A “star.” And he becomes a “star” in these mini-worlds he visits, too. And yet a part of him is so drawn to the group, to the rules of any given group, and he automatically does his best to merge with the needs of the group. You could see that as being good at his job, you could also see it as evidence of his nonexistent boundaries. It’s both. It’s part of why he’s probably awesome in bed too. He can be whatever you need him to be. He’ll do anything.
But he’s grumpy now. He’s shoveling trash. Trash is dirty. It’s getting on his fingers. Being clean is a big deal for Dean. It’s important. One thinks of Elvis refusing to ever wear jeans, EVER, because he associated it with being poor, and when he grew up, only poor people wore dungarees. You NEVER saw Elvis dressed casually. He was always immaculate. In that, you could see the poverty of his childhood, being strapped to his sharecropper mama’s back when he was a baby, no running water, never being clean enough, being embarrassed about his old and dirty clothes. Dean doesn’t have a huge wardrobe. What he wears is enough to fit in one duffel bag. Cleanliness becomes super-important when it is a challenge to remain so. No wonder the guy takes half-hour steam-showers when he has the opportunity, besides the private-moment-jerk-off factor.
Dean’s phone rings. It is Sam. Dean jokes, “What’s wrong. You sound like you’ve just seen a clown.”
Sam stands in front of the funhouse filling Dean in on the skeleton. Look at how he is framed.
It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. Don’t turn around, Sam, or you’ll have a heart attack.
The skeleton was not fake. It was actual human remains. So maybe a ghost is attached to it, or some such nonsense, I don’t know and I don’t care. The case doesn’t really matter in this episode, and even later, Dean jokes in a tired voice, “I can’t believe we keep talking about clowns.” You and me both, pal. Dean starts walking towards the funhouse, talking to Sam about human remains and EMF, and suddenly Blind Barry grabs Dean’s arm, startling him. Blind Barry is accusatory. “What are you doing here, kid.”
Dean says, simply, “I’m just sweeping,” and Blind Barry says Nope, Nope, I heard you talking about skeletons and bones and EMF. He’s sneering in a menacing way, but Dean is so shocked he can’t help but observe, almost impressed, “Blind man, your hearing is out of control.” Blind Barry warns Dean, “We’re a tight-knit group, we take care of our own problems.” Behind Dean cavorts a man in a glittery green gown on a stage. I would just like to point out the absurdity of it.
Dean feels trapped. He can’t bullshit the blind man. He started off on the wrong foot with the guy anyway. So he lies, saying he’s writing a book about ghosts with his brother.
Delayed by that interaction, Dean finally meets up with Sam outside the rictus leer of the funhouse. Sam is impatient. Dean looks beaten down with exasperation. From off-screen, we hear a child’s voice exclaim, “Look at the clown!” They see a little girl pointing off, and her mother crouching down to see. They hurry over to take a look themselves, but no clown.
The sun is going down.
14th scene
Sam and Dean have a proper stakeout, sitting in the minivan outside the little girl’s house. It’s nighttime. And here is one of those moments where the backstage story of the scene always colors (or scents, more like it) my perception of said scene. Due to the gag reel. The laughter. Ackles hanging out of the window trying to get some air. Padalecki roaring. The crew roaring. It was one of those shots. Having watched the gag reel, it is amazing that they “got it together”. But it’s great because you can feel how loose the two guys are, how spontaneous they are with each other (which is always the case), there’s something else buzzing along beneath the scene, a sort of underpinning of mania and chaos that makes everything they say sound funny. I would pick up on it even if I had never seen the gag reel. The tense argument in the carnival grounds has vanished and now they bicker about what Dean told Blind Barry, and Sam tells Dean to hide his damn shotgun, please, and back and forth, it’s so perfectly unselfconscious, the behavior rich and subtle, the relationship clear. It’s my favorite “type” of scene on the show. Because if you look at the words on the page, it could conceivably be boring: yet another scene in the car, yet another scene where the brothers discuss the case … But here, there’s a loopy energy, suggesting their lack of sleep, first of all, but also … people often deal with grief by finding things hilarious. There’s a great scene in James Agee’s Death in the Family where the family sits around, the day of the funeral, and there’s a grandfather with an ear trumpet, and everyone has to shout directly into it, and the grieving widow suddenly starts laughing so hysterically about it that everyone thinks she’s having a nervous breakdown. That’s what I feel in this scene.
So we get Dean filling Sam in on all the bullshit he shoveled at Blind Barry’s feet, about a “homicidal phantom clown.” He also uses the words “evil clown apocalypse.” There’s some connection there with Cooper, and another carnival, and maybe the spirit is attached to such and such, but they’re not sure. They stare out the window at the house. A beat passes. Dean says to himself, “I can’t believe we keep talking about clowns.”
And then the scene fades to black. Totally not Supernatural-style. It’s noticeable when they use it because it happens so rarely. Fade to black is good to denote time passing, or to say “Later that day …” but again, Supernatural usually finds more inventive ways to get that idea across. Regardless. Fade to black.
Hours later. Dean is asleep. Sam remains awake and watchful, and he suddenly sees a light come on in the house. He bats Dean awake. They watch the little girl cross through the main room. What is she doing up all by herself in the middle of the night?
The following scene is NUTS if you think about it outside the Supernatural context, or if you think about what it must all seem like to the frightened parents. I mean, yes, it’s horrifying, but it’s also hysterical.
The little girl lets in the clown through the backdoor.
Terrible and spooky angle.
She leads him down the hallway, where Dean is now hiding in the shadows. You can hear the clown’s bells jangling, a gruesome touch. She is going to take him upstairs to see her Mommy and Daddy. As she makes the turn to the stairwell, Sam leaps out and grabs the little girl, who starts screaming, and Dean emerges, shotgun raised, and shoots the clown. They’re in somebody’s home. They aren’t supposed to be there. They are grabbing a little girl and shooting a shotgun at a clown inside somebody else’s home. I am laughing as I type this.
The clown falls “dead,” and the little girl can’t stop screaming. The clown is not dead, though. It raises its head, with the same predatory dead look in its eyes, and Dean goes to shoot it again, but it then launches itself backwards, through the glass door, and out into the night. Sam is busy holding the writhing screaming little girl and that is how her terrified parents find them. Imagine what this scene must LOOK LIKE TO THEM.
Two men with guns restraining THEIR LITTLE GIRL?
I love this show.
The parents are awesome, and you barely see them, you just hear them saying, “WHO ARE YOU” “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY DAUGHTER” “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE” and Sam and Dean run off into the night, all as the little girl wails, “Mommy, Daddy, they shot my clown.”
Dying.
15th scene
I imagine a warrant is out for Sam and Dean’s arrest, following the debacle inside the home of a nice family. The car was parked outside the house. Therefore the car has to go. We see Sam and Dean hiding it in the bushes, covering it with branches, and then basically just walking away from it. I can picture Bobby being like, “You did what? I know it was a piece of junk, but you did what?” Dean has removed the license plates. They have to walk back to the carnival now.
It’s early morning.
They walk down an empty road. The following scene is full of so many beautiful visuals, placing the two men in a larger context, larger than we’ve seen before: fields, open sky, open road … It’s a Western. This is how men are framed in Westerns.
They look both small compared to sky/road, but they also loom huge because they are the only ones around. The sun haloes them, too, fuzzing out their edges. This has not been the look of the show. It’s beautiful and well-done. And perfect for the fight that is about to take place, a fight that is gorgeously played on both sides, and beautifully written.
It is the unfamiliarity of the scenery, the sort of plopping-them-down-in-the-middle-of-nowhere context that makes it possible for the truth to come roaring out. It starts out casually though. They’re just talking about the clown they just saw. It did vanish. But then it rematerialized, and it was corporeal enough to crash through glass.
We see them through waving strands of wheat. They could be villains come to slaughter an entire peasant village. They could be wandering priests in medieval times. They could be anything.
Sam gets out his phone to call Ellen, maybe she’ll have some idea of what they’re dealing with. Dean keeps his counsel. I am certain he has some feelings about attaching themselves in any way to Ellen, or in any way letting her into their lives at all. But since Dean isn’t speaking about it, Sam doesn’t know he’s walking into treacherous territory, and says, laughing, “Do you think Dad and Ellen ever had a thing?” Sam was getting that vibe a little bit (and you know what, I was, too.) Dean says, “No way.” I get the sense that it’s more of a “Let’s not talk about Dad, please” thing than anything else. I also don’t think Dean ever spent much time imagining his dad’s personal life. Maybe occasionally, but it would seem a betrayal to speculate too much. It would be being nosy. It would also maybe feel like a betrayal of his mother’s memory. Also, you know, Dad-sex. Ew. It’s also too soon to talk about Dad in the past tense. Dean is not ready yet, dammit.
Dean says, “Maybe they had a falling out or something,” and Sam, who clearly wants to talk, because that’s where HE’S at in his process (and that’s okay, too – it’s just a complete clash – they are not at the same point at all), says, “You ever notice Dad had a falling out with just about everybody?” Sam is already dialing Ellen, and Dean sort of reluctantly nods to Sam’s question, a sort of head-roll, like, “Yeah, yeah, I know, let’s not criticize Dad, though, come on …” The eloquence of the gesture. Ackles, man. Good actors don’t need words.
And here is where Sam steps wrong. Really wrong. He notices Dean’s silence, and the gesture, and the looking away, and he puts the phone down and says, “Don’t get all maudlin on me, man.”
Maudlin?
Sam has been struggling for the entire episode, and that’s what’s so good about Padalecki’s arc in this one. Yes, the episode ends, shatteringly, with Dean, but Sam’s processing is actually slower, seen in another light. He is focused on Dean, not on himself. He is not asking himself what is going on with HIM, he is focused on Dean’s entire pantomime of behavior, which is, yes, quite distracting, and Dean is Burlesquing his way through every moment, so Sam can’t quite be faulted for being drawn into the dynamic, but still: he does not have the distance to say to himself, “This is all about me. Stop focusing on Dean.” That’s why this scene is so damn good. Boy, does it “get” loss and how hard it is to process it. People do BADLY at it. They say the wrong things. They fumble. They de-focus. They prioritize the wrong things. They obsess on small unimportant things. All because the loss LOOMS, like the clown yawning over Sam’s head at the funhouse. But you can’t see it while you’re in it.
So Sam lays into Dean. He thinks he’s being helpful. He thinks this is Tough Love. He honestly does.
And it is worth pointing out that NOBODY gets to speak to Dean like this but Sam. Nobody. That doesn’t mean that Dean doesn’t fight back.
Sam says Dean is doing this “strong silent crap,” and Dean moans, “Oh, GOD”, and Sam keeps going, undeterred, “I know how you felt about the man!” It’s too much, and Dean says, “Back off. Just because I’m not sharing and caring like you want me to …” But Sam is on a roll, filled with the certainty that he is right, that he has an insight into Dean that nobody else has. That is obviously true, but he’s off the mark now. That’s why things get ugly. Don’t push someone who is grieving to show emotion. There’s enough emotion there to choke a horse. It’s being dealt with. It may be invisible but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
I just love how they are filmed coming down that road, with the gold nimbus around their heads. It’s beautiful!
Sam is going on and on about how “I don’t care how you deal with it, Dean, but you HAVE to deal with it – I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
It’s too much and Dean lets Sam have it. “The next person who asks me if I’m okay … I’m gonna start throwing punches.” There’s something Dean has wanted to say for the entirety of the episode. He’s hinted at it, he’s passive-aggressively Burlesqued it, he’s revealed it from the side, but now he addresses it head on. People who continue to think that Dean should be defined by his dislike of “chick-flick moments” (all the way back in the pilot!) don’t really understand or see how well Dean actually does deal with the shit that needs to be dealt with. He’s not perfect. He lies to himself sometimes, like everyone does, especially when he needs some privacy. But when he does decide to express himself, he is crystal clear. Connected emotionally. And insisting that he’s got fucking boundaries, dammit. And that’s what happens here. Dean’s pissed: “These are YOUR issues. Quit dumping them on me.”
He’s so right about that and Sam is so unaware that that is what he is doing that Sam stops, looking almost stunned. Wait, what? It’s a great quick look from Padalecki (not to mention gorgeous, with the morning sun hitting his face and blazing into his eye.) That’s the thing with Dean, and we get it from the reactions of others to him: People are shocked when he asserts himself. Think of how both Dad and Sam were drawn up short, repeatedly, when Dean disagreed with Dad, or sided with Sam and said so. Throughout Supernatural, seen only in the context of Sam and the Impala, Dean is a bad-ass, a hero, a brave guy, a warrior. He does the dirty work so we assholes can be safe and oblivious. He doesn’t complain. He’s Dirty Harry, he’s Han Solo, he’s John Wayne. And these are true expressions of Dean, they are definitely aspects of his “self”. But what we understand, in little taken-aback glances from Sam, or from John in Season 1, is how accustomed they are to Dean being agreeable, pliable, and almost invisibly accommodating. They don’t even know Dean is doing it until he refuses to do it, and then come the shocked double-takes.
Sam sees himself as the more honest one. He can’t help it. He feels a little bit superior to Dean. So Dean laying into him, and basically scorching the earth all around Sam’s little fantasy of how he’s dealing with Dad’s death, is devastating. Sam has been pleased to feel like he is fulfilling a role, maybe making it up to Dad, even though he’s dead. Dean lets him know that he SEES that that’s what he’s doing, but it’s “too little, too late,” after an entire lifetime of giving Dad hell, and after the last time he saw the guy he picked a fight with him. So just stop it. It’s brutal, but truthful.
Sam is shaken, tears trembling in his eyes, shining in the morning light, I mean, honestly. “Why are you saying this?”
Dean hits the roof in a line I love, maybe my favorite in the episode: “Because I want you to be honest with yourself about this! I’m dealing with Dad’s death! Are you?”
THAT’S what I’m talking about.
Sam moves away, from Dean, from the argument, and goes to call Ellen. Dean is left alone, in a new perspective, placing him alone in the frame, the wheat blurry behind him, his head rising up into the sky. After the honesty of the fight, after what just came out of his mouth, Dean does not look triumphant or righteous or even pissed anymore. He looks sad and broken. It is the diversity of experience that Jensen Ackles allows Dean Winchester, the full range of emotions in one tiny scene, that makes him the actor that he is. Other actors would not be able to allow Dean to be broken. They would be busy protecting the broken side of themselves, they would distance themselves from their broken-ness. It happens sometimes with actors, especially lead actors. But not Ackles. The second the fight is over, Dean crumbles at such a deep level that he seems to actually deteriorate before our eyes. He’s upset. Stuff is starting to shift, to come up to his own surface.
A bit of time passes, and Dean waits for Sam to get off the phone with Ellen. White clouds pile up in the sky, the golden wheat waves, and the sun burns down, casting these beautiful shadows on their faces, eyelashes, and foreheads, and hair. I mean, we’re moving into lush baroque territory here. Sam has been talking with Ellen and her guess is that they are dealing with a “Rakshasa,” which Dean has never heard of before. I went down the Google rabbit-hole, and found a lot of terrifying pictures of these undead bloodlust man-eating creatures, depicted in the Mahabarata and also on the walls of Angkor Wat and other places. But as Sam and Dean walk, Sam fills Dean in on Rakshasa lore.
It is like they are the only two people alive on the planet. It’s so eerie. Such an artistic and beautiful way to basically help us ignore that the lore is boring and nobody cares about it. I barely listen to the dialogue, I am just soaking up the visuals in this scene. Ellen has some tips on how to kill one of these things, and Dean is ready to go off and do it, and Sam says, “Before we go stabbing somebody, we need to make damn sure,” and Dean teases, “You’re such a stickler for details,” and Sam laughs. When the show is good, the show really understands the rhythm of siblings, of people who are close, of family members. They just had a huge and upsetting fight. It’s still there, but you move on, it’s part of the background, you’ll come back to it, you can’t really retreat to your corner, you have to keep moving.
16th scene
Glorious moody romantic creepy crane shot of the carnival at night.
You wouldn’t be surprised to run into something like this:
Dean and Sam have split up. Sam breaks into Cooper’s trailer, with the terrifying clown chair. And Dean has asked Blind Barry if he has any brass knives in his collection which, seriously, is so funny to me. It looks like it’s 10 o’clock at night. “Hey, man, do you have a brass knife I can borrow for a totally-undiscloed reason? I’ll give it right back. Just gonna go kill your Rakshasa boss.” Sam is busy starting to cut open Cooper’s mattress (because Rakshasas apparently sleep on a bed of insects, and I, for one, am glad that I didn’t have to see that), when the sound of a shotgun being cocked interrupts him, and he looks up and there stands Cooper. Meanwhile, Dean is led into Barry’s office and is told to check in the steamer trunk nearby. Dean opens it up, and sees a clown outfit, the red wig, the bells. It seems like that might not be a totally weird thing to be found in the trunk of a man who works in a carnival, but it looks a lot like the clown they blew away in that poor family’s house, so Dean whirls around and sees Barry standing there, staring at him through sunglasses. Dean gets it now.
So here we come to the climax, which has to be rushed through, so the episode has room for its final book-end. Dean is locked in the room with the Rakshasa, which, naturally, sucks, especially when the invisible creature starts whipping knives in Dean’s general direction. Dean barges his way out of the trailer, and please watch the fall Ackles does out the door – he falls backwards, lands on his shoulder/back, somersaults over, leaps up to his feet directly into a fast run. All in one. Hell of a stunt there.
Dean runs at top-speed across the dark empty carnival grounds, completely freaked, and it’s so awesome to see Dean freaked and RUNNING. Sam calls out his name as Dean zooms by, and Dean skids to a freaked-out halt. Sam is practically lackadaisical in comparison, sauntering over to his brother, telling him that Cooper is clean, no bugs. At this point, the camera starts circling around both of them in wide arcs. It’s a look used before in other episodes (it’s a Kim Manners “tic”), but it hasn’t been used in this episode yet, for obvious thematic reasons. The brothers are separated in their reaction to Dad’s death, therefore they are separated out into close-ups, or they are seen in the same frame, walking and talking. But that swirling dizzying camera move is perfect to show them bond together in the crisis of the moment.
Sam asks Dean if he got the … and Dean turns around to look behind him, saying “Brass blades? No. It’s just been one of those days.”
There’s nothing behind him. He got away. But watch him flinch and recoil at nothing. It’s completely involuntary, the experience back in the trailer still working on him. It’s GREAT. That’s all Ackles, people, and don’t let anyone tell you different! That’s all him, incorporating “what just happened” (or, in acting terminology – “the moment before”) in his current moment. Nailing down “the moment before” is important for all actors – even when they just enter a door – “where am I coming from? Not the backstage area but the driveway outside the house. And what just happened out there? Am I happy? Stressed? Pissed?” You always have to be “coming from somewhere,” emotionally and physically. Ackles nails both in that little involuntary wince, even though there’s nothing there that he can see. “The moment before” is important in stage work, but it’s even more important to know how to do that in television and film because you film out of sequence, you don’t film chronologically. It is up to the actor to track “what just happened” and keep that arc going.
I love Dean’s emotions, I love his humor, I love his Burlesque Act and his compulsive flirting, I love his anger, and I love his survival techniques. But the real reason I “took to” Ackles’ acting like I have is encapsulated in that small involuntary wince when he looks around. That’s a clue to me, a signifier: This actor is totally in charge of every single thing he is doing up on the screen. And he makes it look effortless.
Dean is a bit checked out so Sam takes charge. He has an idea.
The brothers run into the funhouse in a great diagonal shot, showing the gaping maw of the clown. This show is so stupid and I adore it.
Inside, the two are instantly lost in the maze of mirrors. Sam gets locked in one section and the brothers are separated. Sam heads off on a mission and so does Dean, and they are surrounded by psychotic carnival music and menacing cackling and hoots from the creepy stuff behind the glass. At the end of a dark hallway sits a manic organ, brass pipes belching steam. Too hot to the touch, so Sam wraps his hands and starts pulling on the pipes. Improvising. Dean finds Sam there, hasn’t found the monster, and says, “Shouldn’t we see his clothes walking around?” which is honestly a good (and funny) question. Sam is busy pulling on the pipes, when a knife comes hurtling down the hallway, pinning Dean up against the wall. Another knife comes. Dean is now basically crucified in the funhouse. Poor Dean. He can’t get away from knives. Knives came at him in “Home” too!
Sam starts moving forward holding the ripped-off pipe. A knife comes hurtling at him. Dean is trapped but manages to pull some kind of lever that bursts steam from out of the organ. Through the steam, you can see the vague shadow of a figure, a passing phantom, and Sam stabs at it. You can hear a scream. You can see, sort of, a shadow on the end of the pipe, impaled. Bright eyes. A doubling as it falls over into the mirror. Then, a crumpled pile of clothes on the floor, impaled on a pipe. It’s all over so quick. It doesn’t even feel like a case. It feels like just a natural extension of the family drama. Boom. Buh-bye, Rakshasa.
17th scene
Having ditched the mini-van, Sam and Dean obviously hitched a ride out of dodge to get back to the roadhouse. They sit at the bar, and Ellen is cracking open a couple of beers for them, all as two commando-types sit at a nearby table, cleaning their guns. It’s just slightly stupid. I love Ellen and Jo and I want to hang out at the roadhouse, but it is understandable that Supernatural burned it down almost as quickly as they introduced it. Story-wise, the boys are best when they are unmoored, when the only safe spot on earth is Bobby’s, and even then they don’t consider it a home base. The Impala is home-base. Having too many safe havens would lessen the tension of the show, not to mention its weird and intense sense of reality. As fantastical as the plot often is, its ace in the hole is that it feels like it could, conceivably, go on, just underneath our radar. The only way that works though is to keep the hunters in isolation, to have them like Lone Wolves in operation, sometimes intersecting, but certainly not gathering. Because hunters do not gather. (Sorry.)
Ellen says, “Your dad’d be proud,” and Sam is the one to say “Thanks.” Dean hasn’t warmed up to Ellen yet. He will. It just takes him longer.
It is at this moment that Jo appears, out of nowhere, plopping herself right up next to Dean, and staring at Sam in a meaningful way. I love her. Sam smiles back, not getting it. Dean is stoic. He knows the score. He waits it out. And Sam finally understands.
The following “type” of moment doesn’t come up often but when it does it always makes me happy. One of the ways their life is possible is (probably) by trying to give each other privacy and trying to know when that is appropriate. Their lives as siblings is not normal. Hook-ups have to happen in plain view. There is probably a lot of, “Hey, Sammy, can you kill some time before coming back to the room?” There is probably a lot of unspoken giving-each-other-space. For porn and all that goes along with it. You know. They’re grown men. So when Dean or Sam has to extricate himself from a potential hook-up his brother’s got going … comedy is the result. I could watch these two actors play such a scenario all day long.
They’re both horrible at it, too. They are not graceful. Case in point: Sam looks around, awkwardly, and says, as a farewell: “I’ve gotta go … over there … right now.”
Smooth. It’s the pauses that make it.
Dean drinks his beer. Jo works up to what she wants to say. Dean waits. He’s cool, he’s not anxious or eager, that’s part of why his “schtick” works. I always think of the comment from the woman at the SPN con: “You’re not afraid of women.” He’s not. He likes them. He likes her. He’s intrigued by her. (It’s also great that nothing DOES happen between them, except an eventual profound and deep friendship, sizzling with a bit of chemistry, but never too much, always just fun and friendly. He loves her, basically. It’s great how the relationship develops.)
He doesn’t recoil from her. He waits. He’s able to tolerate the moment, the silence. He knows who he is in these scenarios.
Dean and Jo are very much alike.
She says, “So.”
And he says, “So.”
She asks, “Am I gonna see you again?”
He says, “Do you want to?”
She says, “I wouldn’t hate it.”
Ellen is nearby, washing glasses at the bar. Dean is aware of her presence. But he’s straight up with Jo, and it’s beautiful. “Can I be honest with you? Normally I’d be hitting on you so fast it’d make your head spin. But … these days … ”
He stops. She waits. She says, “Wrong place, wrong time.” He smiles and she says, “It’s okay. I get it.”
It’s a lovely exchange.
Ash bursts out of his Man-Cave, wearing a vest and no shirt. He looks like he reeks. Sam says they’ve been working a job. “Clowns,” says Sam and Ash basically shivers, saying, “Clowns. What the f-” Camera cuts away, saving us from an R-rating.
Reminding us again that the title of the episode is a lie.
Ash plops his jerry-rigged laptop down on the bar, and says he’s put together a program tracking demon signs, so if this “fugly bastard” raises its head, “I’ll be on it like Divine on dog-dookie.”
In case you need a reminder, and in case you wonder why I love Ash, it’s because of that Pink Flamingoes reference.
Dean is amazed at what he sees on the laptop. So is Sam. Dean compulsively reaches out to touch the keyboard, to try it out for himself, and Ash doesn’t say anything, just tilts his head, staring right at Dean. Dean withdraws his fingers. Ash keeps staring, and says, “What’s up, man …”
I love their relationship. Two Tough Guys working it out. And of course Dean would immediately try to touch Ash’s laptop. And of course Dean would miss the signs that you just don’t do that.
Sam says, “Ash. Where did you learn to do all this?”
Ash then reveals that he went to MIT briefly before he was expelled for fighting. I want a spin-off of Ash at MIT. Sam says, “MIT?” and the best part is Ash’s answer, “It’s a school in Boston.” Yeah, Ash. Sam knows.
Lesson is: do not judge a man for having a mullet. Longfellow’s words which opened this post could also be taken to mean:
… and oftimes
we call a man a redneck because he has a mullet, when he is actually a genius who went to MIT.
Sam and Dean head out, but not before Ellen offers them “a couple beds out back.”
Dean is nicer now, warmer to her, he’s relaxing into the fact that, you know, she exists. She’s all right. He says no, “there’s something I got to finish.”
18th scene
Another high noon day out in the junk yard. I would bet that this scene was filmed on the same day that the opening scene was filmed. So picture Ackles and Padalecki having to keep all THAT straight. Dean is back working on the car. Sweaty and focused. Sam comes out, wandering around again. He has to talk to Dean. It’s not going to be easy because talking to Dean never really is for Sam. And here he has to say some stuff that is difficult.
And I am flat out in love with what they both look like in this final scene. Sam looks smushed and young and bruised and hurt, the cuts on his face standing out in the harsh light, his hair long and soft, and there are times when he’s near tears. Dean is very pale, and the eyelash-shadows are out of control, his wound cutting into his flesh, and he looks strong and vulnerable and open and pissed.
This is completely natural sunlight, without the softness of dawn or dusk. Here they are, revealed, exposed. It’s a very bold and brave look. You can’t HIDE in light like that. You have to really know what you’re doing to film something at high noon (it’s why it is so rarely done, and why so much of filming is done during “magic hour”, because the light does the majority of the work for you. Watch Field of Dreams. Almost every single scene was filmed in “magic hour,” racing to get what they needed before they lost the light. And that’s why it looks so “magic,” that whole film.)
But in “Everybody Loves a Clown,” they deny their lead characters that magic and protection, and it’s perfect for what is about to go down.
Sam says Dean was right, and that what’s been going on for him is guilt. “For all I know he died thinking I hate him.” He looks like he’s been crying. His eyes are swollen. Dean doesn’t rush in to argue or correct. He just listens. And emotions start coming up for Sam: “I miss him … I feel guilty as hell …and I’m not all right. Not at all.” There would be no triumph for Dean in being right. He wants Sam to be happy. He can’t separate himself from his need to protect Sam and he can’t protect Sam from this. Besides, what the hell is HE doing? Who the hell will he be without his father? All of that is between them, and Sam helps create that space, by coming out to concede that ground won by Dean, but to also say, in as loving a way as possible, “I’m not all right … but neither are you.”
Finally, Sam is able to say it in a way that is not concern-trolling. It acknowledges his own mess. But it also says, I see you, Dean. You are not alone in this.
Having said what he needed to say, Sam leaves the junk yard, leaving Dean there, looking broken, surrounded by broken cars. The piled up detritus of human lives, that which is left over, not of use anymore, out of service, broken. He doesn’t move. Sgriccia then changes camera position, and we’re inside the busted Impala, staring out the back window at Dean.
It is though we are the car. Or it’s the ghost of John whose car it originally was. That car has been haunting Dean. It is all he can do. He probably worked that stupid clown case dying to get back to the car. The car, the car, the car.
Dean is now left alone. With himself. Things have changed. Sam has spoken. And one must also remember John’s ominous whisper at the end of the last episode. All of that is working on Dean as well. The burden on this guy. The secrets. The loss. His whole life. His whole fucking terrible life.
And so he picks up a tire iron and starts smashing the Impala.
It is one of the greatest scenes in the history of the show.
He hesitates slightly before going for it, his eyes flickering in the general direction of where Sam just went. Wanting to make sure he is alone. That’s what that eye-flicker is. Nobody can see him in what is about to happen. It’s gonna be big. It’s gonna suck. It’s gonna feel awful. And it is HIS, and his ALONE.
He’s filmed from above, smashing the trunk of the Impala, and that is really Ackles doing that, that is really Ackles going to town with that tire iron. It’s thrilling, it’s terrible, it’s cathartic, it’s lonely, it’s awesome physically, and we have NEEDED it.
And it goes on … and on … and on … and the sounds he’s making, the grunts and cries … it’s primal, it’s violent, it’s a tantrum, and it’s necessary. By the end, he’s whaling on the trunk, and the camera operator can barely keep him in the frame, it jiggles around trying to find him, trying to keep him in focus and in place. Great fucking scene. Dean is not crying. What is happening goes too deep for tears.
The rage spends itself, for the moment, and he lets the tire iron fall.
He’s out of breath. He’s afraid of what he just let out, he’s afraid of everything, of what he knows, of what he feels. What is happening is too much, and there’s more where that came from.
He’s ruined the work he has done on the car.
He will have to start over again.
Thanks, Sheila! A lovely parting pre-holiday gift.
This is where I feel Season 2 really starts for me. So much is crammed into this episode! Grief, Ellen and Jo (hurrah!), Ash (yay!) and arguments, flirting, clowns, bashing the Impala. Man tears!
‘Planes crash!’
‘And apparently clowns kill!’
Love Padalecki’s emphases – he wields the word ‘apparently’ like a dagger.
The beauty parade begins in earnest here. There are some shots where I just think What the neverending heck? The scene with the brothers and Ash at the bar with Dean saying ‘Like the haircut.’ Just ridiculous.
All those walking and talking outside shots in the waving grass. All flesh is grass and all its beauty like the flower in the field. I love those scenes like I love the ones with mud – it’s the outside world, nature, you can’t fake it or build it like a set, and our characters are right in it. (Plus – not raining! Did Canada have a freak heatwave?) But the Winchesters look like ghosts, they are so pallid. From grief? Did the producers lock them in a cupboard before filming Season 2 so they blanched like endives? Was it because they had spent three months talking to fans in windowless convention centres? Who knows. But those are two pale Americans.
There’s a lot I didn’t get on first watch, but Sam leaning forward in the circus manager’s office and saying ‘We don’t want to go to school. We don’t want normal.’ I got that memo. Sammy’s bridges were burning right down.
The funeral pyre is beautiful. Romantic image – makes me think of Shelley’s cremation on a Greek beach. It’s a lot of hard work, though. And just imagine having to prepare your father’s body for cremation.
Okay, playing catchup now with all these wonderful comments!!
// But the Winchesters look like ghosts, they are so pallid. From grief? Did the producers lock them in a cupboard before filming Season 2 so they blanched like endives? Was it because they had spent three months talking to fans in windowless convention centres? Who knows. But those are two pale Americans. //
hahahaha
“blanched like endives”
So true! It makes them seem vulnerable – like I worry they aren’t wearing sunblock, along with worrying that they are going to be killed by an evil clown. I would love to hear more about those artistic decisions made – because the look is so distinctly different from Season 1 – even though Season 1 certainly had its Beauty Moments. But this is a horse of a different color.
There’s a scene on a street in Children Don’t Play with Dead Things – another fight scene between Sam and Dean – that is almost RIDICULOUSLY beautiful. Like, it’s too much – give me a second to catch up!!
Hi, Shelia-
First I wanted to let you know how glad I am to have found your site, and happy, too, that you’re continuing your Supernatural breakdowns into season 2–which may be my favorite season. I have always loved the show’s penchant for visual flourishes, and its knack for creating memorable, realistic characters and behavior in the midst of its narrative insanity. Thanks to your shot analysis approach, I’m starting to feel like I’m learning a vocabulary to explain (somewhat) the effect it has on me.
You’ve mentioned Jensen Ackles’ fluidity, and I remember another commentator talking about how we could start labeling certain episodes as “the one where Dean does that thing with his face.” It’s funny. There are scenes in which I register vividly an expression that he takes on, a half-smile or whatever. And it feels like a “big” movement with a lot of emotional impact. But then on rewatch, I realize that it lasted a split second. I remember it as huge, but it’s actually subtle and quick. No doubt a good part of this is because I do tend to pay a lot of attention to his face ( :-) ) But I think it’s also a testament to how completely he incorporates Dean into himself, and how in control he is an actor. So much so that he can give Dean those moments where he is emotionally naked. Like the last scene in this episode–which is one of the most powerful the show (or any show) has ever done.
Barb – why is Season 2 your favorite? I love it too – would just love to hear what you love about it. It’s a toss-up for me between Season 2 and Season 6. Soul-less Sam is my favorite Arc in the whole thing and was so interesting I was almost sorry when he got his soul back.
But yes, Season 2 is very special.
// There are scenes in which I register vividly an expression that he takes on, a half-smile or whatever. And it feels like a “big” movement with a lot of emotional impact. But then on rewatch, I realize that it lasted a split second. //
Yes!! I have had the same experience. He’s so PRESENT that even his smaller moments of listening, or reacting, just register so huge – but they’re really just flashes of thought in his eyes.
Wonderful to read this Sheila thank you! & thank you for highlighting that crazy somersault. I have replayed it so many times and cannot get over how well it’s done. He starts out looking behind him, his hands are flailing everywhere, he gets up and is almost running backwards a few steps and then pelts off with his elbows pointing at the sky like Shaggy Rogers. And that peeved “all right!” that starts it is hilarious. All right what? All right you want to kill me? All right! Jeez!
I love how the pyre scene is filmed almost literally through their father’s ashes. Creepy. Dean especially is inaccessible even though he is so flayed open. I don’t know how JA does it, play both those things at once. And the editor is so coy with his single perfect tear. His eye fills….almost there..cut away ….cut back to repeat a few frames…almost there…cut away….cut back…different take no tear! Augh. They hold it off to the end. The show is its own burlesque act sometimes.
Jo was set up as a love interest and then dropped because of this-this-and-this. I am interested in that only because it is somewhat interesting…it is NOT interesting in terms of what is on the screen – that needs to live and die by itself.
Now we finally start to meet female characters who were intended to be recurring. I find Jo, Bela and Ruby’s introductions all a little forced, particularly in the way they all immediately get the upper-hand. It’s an interesting pattern in the show, and it undermines my initial devotion to them (I am especially devoted to Jo and Ellen) because I feel like I can see those intentions (love-interest/antagonist/etc) pushing out at me. I feel pressured. Let them be! Let me be! Let it happen! The dynamics of reception/projection. There is age and gender stuff happening there as well. Ash and Ellen get a similarly “introductiony” introductions and it doesn’t rub me the wrong way because I don’t have that immediate feeling of them existing-for another character.
I would drink so much whiskey and smoke so many cigarettes if someone could promise me I would end up with Ellen’s voice. It’s sexy as hell.
As traumatic as that last scene is, it starts very nicely. But oh, it’s brutal — it makes me grimace in awkwardness. Too much emotion and at the end he’s got the exact same look on his face: this is not the catharsis you seek. Same as his table-clearing reaction to Kevin’s death.
Following up on comments on the previous post (which I have not replied to, apologies, and yes, A Single Man is one of my favourites of the last few years, I think it is out of this world and I resent Firth’s Oscar being for King’s Speech so much it hurts) re: masculinity, another point of comparison for Dean is I think Colin Farrell’s very strange and utterly reactive and open and needy performance in A Home at The End of the World. Very different character of course but similar undercurrents. It’s pretty telling that there’s no one analogue we can point to and say oh, that’s Dean. He is so much and a very specific one thing.
Helena you are hilarious and so right, they are so PALE — and Dean stays it for the rest of the season, why oh why can we not go back, it’s just mindblowing.
Jessie –
Dean’s somersault. And yes, “All right!!!!” hahahaha
// Dean especially is inaccessible even though he is so flayed open. I don’t know how JA does it, play both those things at once. And the editor is so coy with his single perfect tear. His eye fills….almost there..cut away ….cut back to repeat a few frames…almost there…cut away….cut back…different take no tear! Augh. They hold it off to the end. The show is its own burlesque act sometimes. //
Very good observation. They know we want to see him cry. They refuse. Ha. Or at least they just tease us, giving us a glimmer, and then taking it away. I think that’s a really smart move – because the show is so operatic anyway, you could get emotion-fatigue if you didn’t modulate all that stuff.
It is also amazing to me to see how unreachable Dean is, at the same time that he is devastated (“flayed open”). Have you seen Captain Phillips? That’s what those last 10 minutes are about – a man in shock, trying to orient himself to the fact that he is safe now, but he is in total shock – so he’s both a complete WRECK but also orbiting around his own head, in a detached state.
// I feel like I can see those intentions (love-interest/antagonist/etc) pushing out at me. I feel pressured. Let them be! Let me be! Let it happen! //
I do agree with that. I actually don’t have a problem with Bela’s entrance (I think we’ve discussed this before?) – I felt she wasn’t being introduced as a love interest, but as a Foe/Villain/Treacherous-Bad-Girl – and that intro was campy, glorious, and my reaction was: “Well, helLO there. Who are YOU??” Bela’s one of my favorite characters, though, so I know I am biased.
I am glad that the SPN folks had the good sense to realize that Jo was not romance material – and that she could still be a great character and participate in the guys’ lives, on her OWN terms – as a friend, colleague, little-sister-type – that she didn’t need to be just written off because the love-thing didn’t work out. There was a sensitivity in the writing staff, and Kripke, and all the others, to realize what DOES work (having Ellen and Jo in their lives), and what DOESN’T work (Dean and Jo hooking up, having the roadhouse be a second home).
In other words, they were able to course-correct. They didn’t try to shoehorn Jo into a love-interest role, because that was what they hoped would happen, or what they had originally talked about in the writing room – they were able to go another way.
// Too much emotion and at the end he’s got the exact same look on his face: this is not the catharsis you seek. //
YES. No catharsis. In fact, he’s almost made it worse. Because in his own way he’s so repressed – there are things he forbids himself to feel – and in allowing himself to feel them, it just makes everything worse.
I haven’t seen Home at the End of the World – but I love your observation that Dean is so specifically himself. He is his own thing. No wonder Jensen Ackles hasn’t even considered leaving the show, or moving on. Why would he?
Sheila –
This is such a wonderful gift to give just before you go on vacation. Bestest. Hostess. Evar.
What was anyone involved in that Karl Malden album thinking? The speeches of Lyndon Johnson? Of course, if someone ever says, “That woman could really fill out a pair of clown masks” we’ll know what was meant.
I love Ash so much. I miss him as much as I miss Loki/Gabriel. I associate his name with wisdom, since Odin hung for nine days on the World Ash to gain wisdom. But I’m sure that Evil Dead was on the creators’ minds. Wouldn’t you love to see Bruce Campbell in an episode? Did you like him as Elvis in Bubba Ho Tep?
Ash really is the star of his own life, that’s a great way to put it. He doesn’t resent that Dean takes a while to get clued in to how much he rules, because Ash is so certain of it himself. And then Dean gets a metaphorical extra cookie from Ash when he finally figures it out.
Grief, what an unacknowledged crippler. Every year for more than a decade, from Valentine’s Day to March 7 (when my father died) was just such a dark time for me. All sorts of ugly thoughts and resentments. And then it was a March 7 when my wife left me. I don’t think it was purposefully done on that anniversary, just an unpleasant accident. We sometimes fool ourselves with the notion that phones and 24 hour corporations and a therapeutic culture have changed the heart. We’re the same clay as our ancestors.
With the exception of the Midnight Minivan to Medford, all the Sam and Dean mourning Dad scenes are outside, in the sun. To me, that contrasted with how dark they must feel. I thought Phil Sgriccia (or John Shiban) must have chosen that on purpose – with the washed out palate (except at the carnival) to give almost a zombie movie look. The dead boys are walking in the sun, wounds and all.
You know, I took Sam’s final words to Dean slightly differently from what you did. I certainly got that Sam was conceding that he was wrong to criticize Dean for not gilding his guilt as Sam had. It would have been perfect if he had said “I was wrong to poke at you when I need to deal with Dad’s death directly myself. Sorry for trying to tell you how to mourn.” But he had to add the “I’m not all right… but neither are you.” It seemed a bit little-brotherish to me. Still, it was close enough to right that it gave Dean space to pound out his own grief and pain. Luckily, we don’t need to be perfect with family. Just close.
// “That woman could really fill out a pair of clown masks” //
hahahahaha so WEIRD.
Loki/Gabriel does come back in Season 9 for an episode – but no spoilers beyond that! I miss him too – his episodes are just masterpieces.
I love Bruce Campbell and yes, Bubba Ho Tep! My brother is friends with Bruce (my brother was on Burn Notice a couple of times in a recurring role), and apparently he does a kick-ASS Cary Grant imitation, like uncanny, and I kind of need to see it. He’s so talented and funny.
And yes, Ash! He maneuvers through life in the same way Dean does. So there can’t be TWO stars at any one moment in time – they need to negotiate that. And here, Ash is the clear star.
Dean with other men … it’s always a little bit awkward at first.
And ugh: death anniversaries. So difficult. And exacerbated in your case. I am so sorry to hear that! We need to be very very kind to ourselves during those anniversary times … Sometimes I find myself getting super irritated around January 2nd – the anniversary of my dad’s death – like the lead-up of the couple of days before are always really difficult and it’s blindsided me a couple of times. Like, what is WRONG with me? Uhm, how about January 2nd is coming up? How about you leave a lot of space for that?
Definitely a zombie look, you’re right. Those scenes of them walking down the road … no other people in sight … it’s just a country road, but somehow the emptiness seems ominous. Or just so present, highlighting their own isolation. SUCH a good choice.
// But he had to add the “I’m not all right… but neither are you.” It seemed a bit little-brotherish to me. //
I see what you mean. And in a way, it’s still insisting that Dean be a certain way, looping Dean in with what HE’S going through. It’s totally understandable – grief is a whirlwind and you can feel very alone in it … and obviously Dean is NOT all right but that’s for DEAN to figure out and experience on his own g-d timeline!
I have put off reading this until: my laundry’s done, kitchen cleaned, brownies made & delivered to homeless shelter -everything else will just have to wait!
Jessie — //I find Jo, Bela and Ruby’s introductions all a little forced, particularly in the way they all immediately get the upper-hand.//
That was my impression, too. Particularly with Bela. In her first episode, I kept thinking “Is this a crossover episode? With a show I don’t know about?” I came to like all of their characters, but their introductions were all too…obvious. They may as well have had giant blinking arrows pointed at them. I found it jarring and it took me out of the episode.
May – Bela definitely had a ‘crossover episode’ vibe, but it didn’t pull me out of it – I felt immediately that someone “new was in town”, a new foe, a new “thing” to fight – someone tricky and treacherous and AWFUL – who WASN’T a monster. Something totally new in their experience. So her Louise-Brooks-wig-tossed-into-the-dumpster, all as she’s smiling in triumph … I thought it was fabulous! I hated her but I loved her, as a villain – and that continued on for me through all the Bela episodes.
I know Jessie and I have talked about this somewhere before in some other thread – but the fact that Bela took her secret to the grave with her – that WE knew why she made that deal – and that Sam and Dean were never let in on it – fascinating, emotional – and she, the actress, was playing that secret all along. You can SEE it on her face.
I’m glad, however, that nobody slept with Bela. I did think she and Dean would have had a lot of fun together – just for a night anyway – get all that aggression out – but I’m glad it didn’t go that way. Not every female who strolls into their lives needs to be slept with. :)
Same for me, May! I’m so glad they developed the characters in different directions. Re Jo it would have done her a great disservice to keep her down the love interest path. And disservice to the show too. Expanding the universe even just a little was necessary but still risked diluting the pressure-cooker claustrophobia of the season and Secret and the relationship and Dean’s deal, etc. I don’t know how much more looking-outward the season could have supported.
// Expanding the universe even just a little was necessary but still risked diluting the pressure-cooker claustrophobia of the season and Secret and the relationship and Dean’s deal, etc. I don’t know how much more looking-outward the season could have supported. //
Really really good point.
And, side note, because Jo stopped being a love interest – she actually could, you know, keep being on the show. Ha. Because as we have seen, girls that hook up with the boys don’t stick around too long.
Sheila, I love how you describe the interactions between Dean and women. It is so gentle, and that is the exact way I see it-he is so much of a man, but you can see the softness of him. Not that it isn’t extremely hot, that is part of his appeal-that he has that openness about him.
I don’t have a son, but I do feel the way that men can be demonized. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s-and the boys I knew (coming into men) were so sweet, and like you described, had the awe of women. I do feel, as a young woman at that time, that I really held the power. Is it so different now? I don’t think so, I feel like we hear the extreme behavior, but I think most boys will still tremble at their first kiss, like my boyfriend in 1976 did.
Love the recap, love the comments-I know I repeat myself every time-but I will keep on saying it :)
Maureen – aw, thanks!
I agree – that openness he has is so touching, and the women he deals with can SEE it so clearly – even if HE feels he’s doing a good job covering it up. It makes for some great great behavior.
Jessie –
I hadn’t thought about that before, but I think you make a good point about how much of a balancing act it is to introduce new recurring characters. The creators need to decide how much of an “out” the Winchester boys get, how many prisms can there be before chaos ensues. And it also has to be a challenge when a new recurring character is introduced to have the character come up with some novel variation on Miriam Ravenwood’s speech in Raiders of the Lost Ark (or Arc), “Until I get my five thousand dollars back… I’m your goddamn partner.” Maybe they don’t need to signal tell us that this character is going to be around for a while. If they trust us to wait six episodes to find out what John said to Dean, then why can’t they trust us not to be shocked when we see someone again even if there aren’t flashing red arrows over the person’s head?
Yeah, a person has to have a reason for being there. I mean, “falling in love” is certainly a reason – and we see that in Season 8 with Sam and Amelia – she was clearly introduced as “Here is the woman Sam spent the last year with.” (I know you haven’t seen Season 8 yet!!)
And so there was some awkwardness there – they were trying to go for a screwball vibe (“Oh look, they hate each other at first, then they realize they like each other!”) – but I didn’t mind it, because the overall context was so fascinating to me, something we had never seen on the show before: Sam without Dean, Sam maneuvering life without Dean, Sam “courting” a woman without the Impala chugging outside … You know, we know that Sam DID live without Dean while he was at Stanford, but we never SAW it.
But having a woman enter that monastic lifestyle of the guys … not to mention how it messes up the structure of the show … it is not easily done!!
I had to get over my own clown anxiety with a new folder on Pinterest. The bad clowns are at the bottom, the good clowns at the start. Most of the good clowns are harlequins and pierrots. Thinking about black and white costumes got me to thinking about The Night Circus, a wonderful novel, if you’re looking for something to give you more pleasant dreams.
Ahhhh!! So great, Mutecypher!!
Hi Sheila,
I hope your family vacation is a memory-making blast.
I thank you for once again helping me see how what is depicted on the screen fits into my emotional response to the characters. Your recaps are fantastic. Though I have respond to only a few of them, I have read each one while watching the episode, setting aside that chunk of time to get it all-in-one-go, like many of your other acolytes. And I do read all the comments. Y’all are so well-read and smarticles.
In this recap you bring up how hard it is for Sam to just let Dean “be”. This is one of the reasons why I love your analysis. You let the characters “be” what they are. I cannot tell you how many sites and reviews I read (because I am obsessed with all things Supernatural and have the summer off) where the author is trying to jam his or her own agenda and judgement into the characterizations and plots. I don’t know if it’s because they’re responding “in real time” as they watch, and don’t have the benefit of knowing what’s ahead. I don’t know if it’s because they’re trying to perform a public service. (This is not politically correct, therefore it is bad-on show.) I don’t know if it is because they put themselves in the characters’ shoes and feel the morally right way they would chose is the only way. I often shake my head because I am at a loss as to exactly what show they’re watching.
Yes we (oops!) I hate seeing my favorite secondary characters go permanently, because I have an emotional stake that’s been built by phenomenal storytelling. It hurts when they go. That’s the whole idea. If it hurts me, the viewer, obviously it hurts the main characters. The writers did not do it to offend me. They did it to affect character development and plot. Notice, I said character development and not character growth. If humans only grew, jeeze, we’d be impossible to be around.
Even when you mention the current season in the comments, you are looking at the sum of (9 years!) Sam and Dean’s experiences. Thank you for letting Sam and Dean “be” the imperfect, conflicted, big damn heroes that I see on my screen.
Terri –
Your comment really makes me feel good and I am so thankful! Thank you!
These characters are so great, flaws and all … it’s best to just “let them be” because what we see on screen is so great in and of itself. I am not aware of the type of commentary you mention – but I do know that that kind of commentary is super-annoying to me in other criticism. “I disapprove of this type of behavior, therefore this film is bad.” Or whatever. I mean, Glenn Greenwald lambasted Zero Dark Thirty before he had even seen it, which makes him a charlatan in my eyes, and no better than the fundies who tried to block Last Temptation of Christ from showing in movie theaters without having even seen it. Now I’m a huge Zero Dark Thirty fan – not because I’m a fan of torture – but because it’s a masterpiece. That type of political-personal reaction to material is, somewhat, inevitable – but it should be fought against.
// If it hurts me, the viewer, obviously it hurts the main characters. The writers did not do it to offend me. They did it to affect character development and plot. //
YES.
These conflicts should be EMBRACED. We’re supposed to be hurt. That’s why the show has lasted so long, that’s why we’re invested. We LOVE these people.
Jessie & Mutecypher – I think they’ve done a better job introducing the male characters, they have felt more oraganic, maybe because they weren’t intended to stick around originally anyway. I know Misha Collins was originally supposed to do a 3 episode arc, don’t know about Mark Sheppard.
And Mark Pellegrino! God, I love him, and I miss him on the show too. He had originally read for Castiel – and was so awesome that they knew they wanted to use him somehow, and I am so glad they gave him the role of Lucifer, so meaty.
mutecypher — creepy clown pictures! I love it. One of them kinda looks like Dr. Frank N. Furter…
RE: Character introductions and love interests.
Kim, I sort of think the same way you do, that some of the male characters introduced feel more organic because they weren’t necessarily intended to be recurring characters. Their characters had room to develop naturally. It wasn’t forced. That may be some of the problem Castiel and the angels are now suffering from: they don’t necessarily “organically” fit with the story being told. But there they are anyway.
Love interests in general seem to be tough characters to do right. I can’t think of one that hasn’t stood out like a sore thumb on their introduction. I’m sure some must exist. I’m just drawing a blank at the moment. The way I see it, a Love Interest is usually just a plot device, not an actual character.
Yeah, the dynamic of the Winchester brothers is such a closed system – any person who tries to enter that duo is automatically going to be a third wheel. I get the sense that this needs to be dealt with … on a character-level. That the structure of the show is also the prison of the characters – which was what all those big conversations between Sam and Dean were about in Season 9. “This isn’t working anymore,” says Sam. “Something’s broken here.” Etc.
I don’t know – it could be interesting – it seemed like they were addressing the challenges of the characters but also the challenges of the show itself. It was pretty direct. There’s more to be explored there.
Kim –
I had only watched up to season 6 in real time, and now I’m most of the way through season 5 on my re-watching. Does that hold (the doing a better job introducing male characters) in seasons 6-9?
May – I was pleased to run across the Toulouse-Lautrec as Pierrot photo. Anything (except tuberculosis) that reminds me of Moulin Rouge is a happy thought.
@mutecypher that doll is nightmare material! Watch yourself, buddy.
@mutecypher & Kim — Yes, I think those three characters especially suffer and it’s never surprised me that there was some backlash. Female characters carry a lot of extra baggage in just wider culture; and in this show, which is in large part about Men Without Women, the meaning of female characters is overloaded. And the inability of the casting and production depts to give us female characters (one-off & recurring) who aren’t young white skinny girls with flat long hair and thin eyebrows and shiny makeup doesn’t help!
But I think Jo, Ruby and Bela are the major examples. Meg and Abbadon escape it, at least for me. Lisa is an interesting example — you don’t feel like she was intended to be anything more than a one-off in The Kids Are All Right, and so she just exists, and her subsequent appearances draw strength from that even as she’s papered over by Dean’s fantasy and the show’s requirements for her. The appearance of Amelia is also instructive, because it actually kind of works despite the vaseline haze and lukewarm hot dogs: she and Benny are explicitly set up as parallel girlfriends for the guys, so even though there’s a lot of IMPORTANT vibe around her we accept it, and she’s meant to be a bit unpleasant, so there’s not that pressure for us to find her just so fabulous and badass wow from the get-go.
// you don’t feel like she was intended to be anything more than a one-off in The Kids Are All Right, and so she just exists, and her subsequent appearances draw strength from that even as she’s papered over by Dean’s fantasy and the show’s requirements for her. //
Good point. AND, in that one episode – The Kids are All Right – it’s like the writers were dealing with those expectations and up-ending them. In Dean’s mind, she was one of his Banner Moment Hook-Ups. The memory has lasted for 8 years. He shows up with the most Bedroom-y Bedroom Eyes I have ever seen – it’s almost embarrassing – and then almost immediately he gets sucked into another dynamic with her son – and all of that changes. Within the course of the episode, his feelings change. It’s kind of an amazing arc – for one small episode – and that’s why I didn’t have a problem with the fact that she would be the one he would go to to find solace and shelter. Of course Cassie and her teapot still remain in my memory – but the way Kids are All Right operated, with the vision of family life, and a child that could be his and all that … it seemed right for Dean. I thought that they really thought about who Lisa was, and who she should be – not to mention casting. They cast her perfect. I have a bazillion thoughts about Lisa, but those can wait.
// because it actually kind of works despite the vaseline haze and lukewarm hot dogs: //
hahahahahahaha
Those hotdogs. EW. And the coloring is terrible!!
I agree that it works – I wonder if it works BECAUSE it’s a vaseline-haze flashback? That we don’t have to submit to watching them meet, etc., in real-time? Somehow it’s less awkward?
I also think the introduction of Benny was GREAT – that hug by the grave – wow wow – I won’t forget my reaction to that. “Who the hell is THAT?” And Dean has never been like that with anyone – not Cassie, not Lisa, not Sam, not anyone. It was something completely new. And why I think THAT one worked is that we were forced to deal with it without knowing who it was or how they had met. It was the opening of Season 8. So it’s almost like they “sprung” Benny on us, and left us to play catch-up: “Here is someone very important to Dean.” Again, those building-blocks of how they met were held back from us for a bit – and we were launched into the middle of their relationship. It really worked, that sense of the time having passed – and that this relationship was formed during that gap. It’s one of my favorite character introductions, along with Castiel’s first entrance.
Mutecypher – love your collection.
Clowns. Just Aagh. How have we gone from this to this?
//she’s meant to be a bit unpleasant, so there’s not that pressure for us to find her just so fabulous and badass wow from the get-go.//
Jessie – Amelia’s character and her presence in the show I like a lot, it’s just every great about her is sabotaged by that wretched flashback structure and that pee-coloured yellow filter. Although I ‘d have been very happy if the entire ‘relationship’ had been a series of flashbacks in which Sam finds ever more unlikely objects blocking that motel sink.
Amelia is a mess. Why are you shoving pieces of lime down the sink, you drunk??
But that’s why I think it’s great that Sam would look at that mess, and say, “You. You’re the one I want to hang out with.”
It’s unexpected and also a little bit freeing – just in terms of “female roles” and all that. I, too, am sick of the little boxes women are put in – and who is a “valid” love interest and all that. Anyone who was in a clear state of mind would look at Amelia and think, “Maybe now is not the time to be hooking up with her.” She’s grieving, she’s hiding, she drinks too much …
Not to mention the fact that she forces Sam to take that dog. How unethical is that?? “You hit this dog, therefore you should own this dog.” Can you imagine a vet actually saying that? Sam doesn’t even have a HOME, how can he take on the responsibility of a dog? It’s so irresponsible of her to do that, and Sam, though, walks right into it. I liked that. The Winchester guys are not white-bread normal guys. They are WEIRD. Amelia is equally as weird. I liked that.
curse you, html – I meant, to this?
Oh my God, that clown loaded so slowly and it was like a nightmare being unveiled on my laptop screen.
//who aren’t young white skinny girls with flat long hair and thin eyebrows and shiny makeup//
This is why I love Ezra Moore. Damn it, why is she stuck in 1944?
Mutecypher –
Not ignoring your question, just thinking on it. I think as May said, they cast a love interest type as oppossed to actually casting a character that becomes a love interest which is why they don’t seem to blend so to speak. They had one really good one off male character in Season 9 – Cain. They sort of set him up for a later return but now he has been cast in another show. BTW- where did you find all those clowns! So cool.
May – Just did a rewatch of Ssn9 – you’re right about the Angels. They used to be awesome, in trying to tell the story of the struggle for heaven the writers seem to have lost sight of WHO these angels are. The fight seemed to be reduced to petty squabbles. Rafael, Balthazar, even that douche :) Zachariah were able to project power and awesomeness while still being able to portray the petty, internecine conflict among the angels. I also think it was a matter of casting, maybe they didn’t have the budget to bring in stronger actors for the angel parts? Don’t know. There’s been lots of talk since the TCA tour by the cast & crew about next season. I am cautiously optimistic about next year.
Kim – yeah, the angels in Season 9 were a huge bore. I think casting is a huge part of it. They were all so young and clean-cut and boring as hell.
I think they feel obligated to keep those angels going because of the demands that Castiel puts on the story-line – Castiel needs to have an “arc” too. I get it, but I don’t have to like it. I’m bored with Castiel too. He just can’t compete, for me, with the interest I have in Sam and Dean. That was really clear in Season 9 – where I really felt that Castiel had over-stayed his welcome. I know that Misha Collins fans would disagree with me vehemently! It’s nothing against him, I do think he’s brought a good energy to the show – but oy, season 9 Angels.
Let’s get some eccentric angels back. Let’s let angels be scary again. Re-watching Season 4 is a revelation and a reminder of how boring the angels have gotten. Those angels are fierce and righteous and … mysterious. Castiel most of all.
mutecypher — //Anything (except tuberculosis) that reminds me of Moulin Rouge is a happy thought.//
LMAO!
//Clowns. Just Aagh. How have we gone from this to this?//
Helena, according to this, we can blame the Germans and a character called Pickelherring.
//I do feel, as a young woman at that time, that I really held the power. Is it so different now? I don’t think so,//
Maureen – I’ve taught 8th graders for a few years, that’s certainly how I see things for the 13 year olds in my classes. The girls have the power in the romantic area and the boys are just hopeful. It may be different in a few years for them, I don’t know. I was a long term substitute in a Marine Biology class 4 years ago – a class that was mostly taken by non-college track juniors and seniors. Of the 104 students in my classes, there were at least 6 girls out on pregnancy/new born leave at any time. I don’t know how to view that.
// The girls have the power in the romantic area and the boys are just hopeful. //
So sweet. My sister who teaches middle school says the same thing.
Whoops! Posted too early there…
mutecypher and Kim — I’m trying to think of character introductions in the later seasons, and aside from Cain in season 9, I’m drawing a bit of blank at the moment. I have a clearer memory of the first 5 seasons than the newer ones, however. I’ve found a couple of the male characters to have a similar “forced” feeling to their intros in the later seasons. I’m thinking of that terrible familiar episode, “Man’s best friend with benefits” particularly. But there have been a few episodes that have seemed a bit like back-door pilots (to me) in the later seasons, and they’ve mostly come across as forced and boring.
The problem with casting someone as a Love Interest, I think, is that they aren’t cast to be full fledged characters. They are an object for the protagonist to desire. As Jessie mentioned above, female characters carry cultural baggage, and that is particularly heavy in SPN where there are so few female characters to begin with. When the character is forced in there (as Bela apparently was—the network wanted more women in the show), it sticks out. Badly.
RE: Castiel and the angels. I think they should have had Cas stay human at the end of season 5. It made sense to return him to his angel status had the show ended there. But it didn’t. Restoring Castiel’s grace should have been the end of his character arc. I think that is why the angel storylines have been so disappointing. Their main purpose seems to be for Castiel’s plot…and that seems to change from season to season. Human!Cas would have been easier to deal with and allowed the angels and Heaven to fade into the background—with the apocalypse on hold, they would return to heaven and their status quo of mostly non-interference from before.
Basically, I think they should have made Cas human for the remaining seasons. When the show ends, his grace is restored and he returns to heaven to lead…having grown from his experience as a human. Yeah, it’s pretty unoriginal, but I don’t think what they’ve been doing with him so far has been all that fantastic, either.
// Restoring Castiel’s grace should have been the end of his character arc. I think that is why the angel storylines have been so disappointing. Their main purpose seems to be for Castiel’s plot…and that seems to change from season to season. //
Yes. Totally agree. The angels have no reason to be there anymore. And Castiel just isn’t interesting enough anymore to justify all the angel-crap. When angels would swoop in from God-knows-where, and stand there, like statues in the motel rooms, speaking in monotones … I mean, they were FABulous. And then the rogue angels like Balthazar – he was so entertaining, and really highlighted the strict nature of being an angel and what happens when one lets loose. But now? I get it, they need to justify Castiel continuing to be on the show … but it does feel forced. Even more so now – when they seem to be writing directly for the Castiel fans (“I’m very pop-culture savvy now” – EW. STOP IT.) – talk about feeling forced. I don’t like it at ALL.
One of you guys expressed the hope the comments after the 9 finale that Demon!Dean would be a merry Dean. I listened to part of an interview he did after the the TCA press tour here’s the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoz5UthLPAE
He talks about how he’s going to play Demon!Dean while still being true to his character. He gave very thoughtful answers to the interviewer.
Helena-
It was such a bizarre choice to film her like that. Like she was a fantasy when the whole point of her was that she was NOT. Fantasies: the picnic scene always reminded me of Dean’s dream of Lisa. The comparison is instructive but the execution is poor. I know they were trying to oppose the Purgatory flashbacks but yikes.
Kim-
I am trying to avoid spoilers and expectations but I must admit Jared’s words on Sam’s mission to find Dean make me pretty excited!
and it was so awkward, Sam going into fugue states every other minute as he floated back into his own past. I’d be like, “Dude, are you having mini-strokes? Could you snap out of it, please?”
//Like she was a fantasy when the whole point of her was that she was NOT. //
Or maybe Toronto was suffering from some terrible beige smog like in Beijing and there was no way of avoiding it. Dunno. I just kinda wish her character had stayed in defensive bitchy mode a bit longer rather than succumbing to love among the frankfurters so quickly. And yes … what is it about women sitting on picnic blankets that strikes such a resonant chord of fantasy for the Winchesters? I love the one with Lisa – it’s so nakedly and embarassingly a private fantasy that shouldn’t be shared it makes my toes curl.
… and I’m also trying really hard to avoid spoilers for Season 10 … I’d really like to go in knowing nothing about it at all. What are the chances of that?
Mutecypher – thanks for the warning, I’m steering well clear of Pickelherring.
Of all the female recurring non-love interests Sheriff Jody continues to knock it out the park for me, and I hope she’s up for Series 10. Now, why didn’t she get her own spin-off?
// love among the frankfurters //
You guys are killing me.
//It was such a bizarre choice to film her like that. Like she was a fantasy when the whole point of her was that she was NOT.//
My feeling on the way Amelia’s flashbacks were filmed is that they indicated that Sam was in fact idealizing her, and his time with her. Hence the candy colored world, and oversaturated light. When she finally steps into his present world, however briefly (was it in Torn and Frayed?) the romantic lighting and idealized colors are gone.
Sheila – Welcome back! //Let’s get some eccentric angels back. Let’s let angels be scary again. Re-watching Season 4 is a revelation and a reminder of how boring the angels have gotten. Those angels are fierce and righteous and … mysterious. Castiel most of all.// I agree totally, I think they ruined the character of Castiel this season. I liked the awesome Cas of ssn 4&5, it’s been kind of a downward spiral since.
Jessie –
This is my first year watching the series in real time so I’ve been having fun listening to interviews the cast have given following both the TCA and ComicCon. I feel so nerdy! I even watched the NerdHQ panel live stream. I will dampen my enthusiasm to make sure I don’t inadvertantly post anything that could be potentially spoilery. I have found it interesting to listen to JA answer questions regarding his approach to playing Dean next season, I guess I’ve just been trying to get some insight into his process.
Kim – thanks!! It was a wonderful vacation!
I’ll just say one thing and it’s speculative but here goes: It’s just a sense I have: There have been stories along the way of Ackles “standing up” for Dean, in the face of certain plot-lines and developments, protecting the character, not wanting to do something because he felt protective of who Dean was. In some cases he was right, in other cases he was wrong and had to be gently persuaded to the other side. But his devotion to the character’s integrity is fantastic and a HUGE reason why the role works so well – and the directors who understand that (Kim Manners, Robert Singer) treat his devotion with respect. He knows Dean better than anyone. So when he said, you know, “Guys, enough. We gotta bring the Impala back. This is stupid.” people listened.
Here’s my thought – Misha Collins, for whatever reason, does not have the same protective feeling about his character. I do understand that he is very tied in with his fans, and that’s a beautiful thing and a great relationship – but I think it clouds his judgment. There, that’s my thought. His fans see him as cuddly and cute and perfect and relatable – and he interacts with them in that way (and there’s nothing wrong with that)- but his relationship with his fans and how they view him has bled into the performance. He didn’t fight for the integrity of his character. Who knows, there are all kinds of reasons a character “goes” in a certain direction – and it certainly can’t all be laid at his feet. :) He may have gotten sick of Castiel as a creature with a stick up his ass and relished the transformation into more goofy humanoid type who has cutesy lines and tries to flirt and all that – that would make sense as well. It’s not entirely his fault that it’s a failure.
I think it might have been interesting to keep Castiel human. To let go of the angel thing and let him find his way as a man. But then – what use would he be to the Winchesters? He’d have to go his own way as a character, and his fans wouldn’t like that and besides he has a contract. Keeping him angelic is a sure way to keep that angel plot-line going.
I will continue on with these early season re-caps – even though it will compete with Season 10. I like the discussions about what was going on back then, and also the fun of having people re-watch along with me.
My thought here about Misha goes along with what I’ve said elsewhere: wanting to be LIKED is a common denominator for most actors. But it should be fought against when you are playing a character. Not ALL characters – I mean, Julia Roberts strolled into Pretty Woman with the goal “I must be the most lovable hooker ever and everyone must fall in love with me” and whaddya know, they did. But with some roles, you honestly have to not care whether or not people “like” you.
Both Ackles and Padalecki are TOTALLY game in this regard. Padalecki was not “afraid” to really “go there” with the demon blood plot-line and the Soul-less Sam plot-line – like, he really really DID all that – no holds barred – he knew it was important, he knew it was a great acting challenge, and he didn’t try to protect himself, or try to remind us that he was still cuddly nice Sam. And Ackles? Forget about it. He’s on another level entirely. He is aware of the tension there with his audience – who often seem to want Dean to be soft, and cry a lot, and work in a coffee shop and express his feelings – ha – and he knows that the fact that they want that from him is a slam-dunk in terms of helping to keep the character going – and yet, he REFUSES to play along. He is not swayed by the fans’ love of him, in other words, he is glad that it is there, but HE is in charge of that character, not them – he keeps his nose to the grindstone – and does what the character does – and protects who that guy is. And so the audience is so drawn in – by that burlesque act thing – of withholding at the same time he is revealing – and he is totally in charge of that and totally willing to be unpleasant, needy, angry, not-in-touch-with-his-feelings, gruff, obnoxious … all of that. He feels SAFE in that character. Of course he knows people don’t just like Dean Winchester, they LOVE him – but he, the actor, is not PLAYING it for that reason. It’s a subtle difference – but it’s certainly one of the reasons I’m hooked in. I never get the sense that when he shows emotions he wants to be congratulated for it. Emotions are painful for Dean. He tries to crush them down. THAT’S the integrity of the character.
And 10 seasons? Ackles has had to protect that. Think of other long-running series and how characters sort of fall apart after a certain point. Dean hasn’t. If anything, he has just kept developing, deepening, getting MORE fucked up. I am sure that Ackles keeps the writers on their toes. It must be a blast writing for him, but also a challenge. Because he could get bored. And then look out. You’d hear about it. He is not shy. He has made his feelings known in the past.
So everyone brings their A-game to the writing of that character. It’s essential.
My long-winded point is is that I think somewhere along the way Misha got swept away in being “liked” by his fans. It happens. And it has affected his performance and its a feedback loop with the writers – so they’re all writing for the sub-culture of Misha fans, and it feels totally out of step with both the character and the show.
It would be great if they could give Castiel some Oomph in the next season. I want his pop culture references to be wiped from his brain, too. It’s a horrible bit. :)
Sheila – I really appreciate your thoughs on Misha’s approach to Castiel vs. J2’s approach to Sam and Dean. I’ve been mulling over the possible reasons why Cas just doesn’t work (at least for me) the way he used to in the earlier seasons, and I think you really hit the nail on the head here.
Incidentally, I just rewatched Abandon All Hope recently and those scenes between Cas and Lucifer are phenomenal. Nothing actually “happens”, they just stand there, look at each other and talk a bit, but the scenes are so charged, so powerful, so suspenseful. It really brought out the difference between old!Cas and new!Cas, between the oldschool SPN angels and the new, bland ones, and it made me really sad. I mean, I LOVED Castiel (and Misha’s performance) in the earlier seasons, he was absolutely amazing. Alien, otherwordly but never over-the-top, calm but at the same time buzzing with power. I miss that a lot.
At least I’m fortunate enough to be able to differentiate between these two Cases, so new!Cas doesn’t retrospectively ruin my love of the old!Cas. Because I’d hate to hate him :)
Oh, and talking about angels – I suppose you’ve seen Wings of Desire / Der Himmel über Berlin? I know these angels are totally different from the SPN ones, but DAMN they were good. That movie just totally blew my mind.
Hunenka – Hi! I love Wings of Desire! Those angels are incredible, I love the whole conception of them.
One of the things I thought was so great about early Castiel is how strange he was – you could tell that English was not his first language, in other words. That he was not used to having vocal cords. That he was unused to having a body he had to use. The whole demeanor, the voice, the look in his eyes – almost like an animal. You look at a tiger, and the look in its eyes is alert and conscious – but it’s not “human”. That’s what his eyes looked like. I can see why everyone was totally blown away by his audition if he walked in with THAT. He is CLEARLY not a human being!!
I also loved how early Castiel always spoke in the “we” form. “That’s why we’ve arrived.” etc. He’s not singular, he doesn’t think that way.
I’ve been hard on him here – I do think he’s brought a lot to the show – and it is clear the chemistry he has with Sam and Dean (I think his chemistry with Sam is awesome – although he and Dean’s chemistry gets all the “press” – but I love love love those Sam and Castiel scenes!!). His deadpan line readings are comedy gold.
Maybe we can just chalk Season 9 up to a glitch and things will get better.
Welcome back, Sheila! I hope you had a great vacation :)
RE: Collins, Ackles, and their characters.
I don’t like to speculate too much about actors (That isn’t a moral judgement. I usually just don’t care about that sort of thing enough to think about it much)…but given the nature of SPN fandom, I’ve certainly heard more than enough gossip and rumors to form some opinions. I’ve heard complaints about Ackles’ behavior at conventions (he’s “standoffish,” “homophobic,” etc), which I always interpreted as him taking his job seriously, being protective of Dean, and of having clear and defined personal boundaries. So I agree with you there!
In terms of Misha & Castiel, I agree that I don’t think he is protective of the character, but I’m not sure his fan involvement has him worrying about being “liked.” I don’t know. He’s in sort of a weird spot. Cas was kept around because of how popular he was with the fans, but he isn’t the star: the show is about Sam and Dean and everyone else is expendable. Misha has gone from guest star, to series regular, to guest star, to series regular. I guess I’ve always blamed it more on the writers not knowing what to do with the character and being afraid to piss off his fandom. I’m not trying to make excuses. Fairly or not, I tend to lay blame at the feet of the writers first. But that is probably just the English Major in me coming out.
May – Thanks, yes, it was a great break!
Actors’ process is more interesting to me than anything else, and all of these actors are in SUCH an interesting position – playing these same characters for TEN. YEARS. Like … how often has THAT happened??
Sam and Dean are extremely consistent over the years – and so was Bobby, and the other semi-regulars. But Castiel definitely went spinning off into space. I definitely agree with you that it feels like the writers are flailing a little bit (in the last season especially) in order to justify his existence on the show. They don’t know what to do with him. But I do sense that feedback-loop I mentioned: Castiel is a clear fan favorite, and Misha engages with them, and they engage back, so in certain moments I feel like the writers are “throwing a bone” to the Misha fans (the Wookie exchange in that last S9 episode a clear cringe-worthy example) – I can almost hear the writers saying, “Oh, Misha’s minions will love this one.” And Misha plays into it. Maybe he enjoys it. I don’t know. I am more familiar with Ackles’ process than Misha’s, because frankly I find Ackles to be a more intriguing actor – but there’s a condescending quality to some of those Castiel bits recently that … if I were a Castiel fan, I’d be offended. I am sure there are Castiel fans out there who fell in love with him in Season 4, and are like, “What the hell is THIS nonsense.”
I think in an episodic show like SPN it is easy for actors to lose track of the specificity – the work load is so heavy, they never have breaks, it’s a whirlwind – but that’s what separates the men from the boys and I think Misha has gotten a little distracted by the WAY the fans love him and that has impacted his playing of Castiel. Ackles has NOT gotten distracted (hence, the “standoffish” claim, which seems completely ridiculous to me, and don’t get me started on the homophobic nonsense) – but in the midst of that nonstop working whirlwind he has maintained his meticulous and careful creation of that character – and that is practically a superhuman feat!!
But yes, total agreement that he is a series regular but he is not the star, so that puts him in a strange position.
Sheila –
I’m now most of the way through season 6 – past what I had watched earlier. I’m just wowed that Jared could pull of 11 episodes of soulless Sam without once winking. I “knew” that he had to get it back at some point, but I never felt it was a sure thing when I was watching. I watched The French Mistake Sunday night. That “Misha” sounds like what Cas has become in later seasons – yuck. I’m not even sure what to think of the fact that the writers killed him in that episode.
I’m hoping that season 9 of SPN will be like season 6 of Buffy: I can put on “Once More With Feeling” and watch it almost any time, but there aren’t any real arcs that interest me. And much of the season was depressing without being especially dramatic. But season 7 was excellent, so I’m hoping for a similar thing with SPN season 10.
But more to your point, I can certainly see the payoff for us in the audience when Jared didn’t need to make Sam likable. Perhaps it’s easier when you are one of the two indispensable characters, but if you’re Misha in the role of Cas… it may be much harder to resist being liked all the time. You can’t blame a person for wanting a paycheck and if people like your character you have a better chance of continuing to get one. I’m not looking forward to the Misha versus Jared counter-example as I watch the later seasons, oh well.
Re: The French Mistake. I loved the painting behind Sam of Jared in a cowboy hat riding a horse, when he was using “Jared’s” computer to find the items they needed to return home. Especially since Frontierland was 3 episodes into the future.
Oh my God, the French Mistake. I never EVER get sick of that episode.
“Fake Ruby??” hahahaha
Misha’s death scene in The French Mistake is one of the funniest things the show has ever done. And his rockabilly haircut and Christmas sweater!! He has one moment where he sobs to the killer angel, “I have no idea what you’re saying …” and it always makes me ROAR.
Castiel was really pointless in Season 9. He became human for three episodes, and then became an angel again, and there was a boring war with boring bureaucrats … and there is a cutesy quality to his writing, a sort of wink-wink at his fan base, that just does not WORK. Castiel is best when he’s deadpan. He is ferocious!!
// if you’re Misha in the role of Cas… it may be much harder to resist being liked all the time. //
Definitely. I don’t mean to sound like I’m being hard on him. Or that I judge him for this. But he’s the guy playing him – he’s got to take some responsibility for how that character has gone. Hopefully, there will be more Mojo for Castiel in Season 10.
And that shot of Jared with the cowboy behind him is so freakin’ hysterical I can barely stand it. I love when he looks around his ridiculous house and breathes, “I must be the star of this show.”
HA!!
That episode is such a high watermark.
Oh, and Misha’s rockabilly haircut and Christmas sweater were his idea. He has very very good instincts. But Castiel the character was adrift in Season 9 – like you say, sometimes it happens. Sometimes arcs don’t work out.
And YES to the whole Soul-less Sam arc. God, it was good. And he was good. That “fairy” episode is also a favorite of mine. The X-files inspired one. Where Sam’s soullessness was played for its comedy – and Dean is trying to teach him about empathy – Gorgeous!!
But I agree: Padalecki had to “tolerate” playing a soul-less guy for EPISODES before it was revealed his soul was missing. It’s HARD for actors to not be liked. It’s difficult – especially when fan feedback is often so “noooooooo don’t DO this to Sam!!!” I can picture Padalecki being like, “OMG the fans are in agony – IT’S WORKING.” As opposed to: “OMG the fans HATE this, can we get my soul back as quickly as possible??”
He’s got his head screwed on right as an actor.
And boy, he’d make a great serial killer. He’s quite eerie without his soul. I thought he did a phenomenal job.
Dean in French Mistake: “I’m a painted whore.”
Too many funny lines to even count!
May –
I started writing before you posted, so I didn’t see yours before hitting “post.” I think your analysis is better than mine.
“I’m a painted whore.” God, it’s too bad Dean didn’t have much time as “Jensen” – think of all the babes he could have banged. I mean, he got to rock the trailer with Tara Benchley in Hollywood Babylon – and he was a lowly PA then.
I know, I love how Jensen’s life wasn’t explored as much as Sam’s was – obviously because Sam had married “fake Ruby” so there was more comedic potential in that (I love when Jared fumbles her name: “Uh … Gen…e….vieve?” hahahaha) – all we see of real-life Jensen is his trailer with the helicopter and the aquarium. Hilarious.
I also love how Dean makes fun of all their real-life names. “Misha? Misha??” “Padalecki. What are you, Polish now?” “Jensen Ackles. What the hell kind of name is that.”
And the bad acting. Jared Padalecki’s awkward hand gestures – watch how Dean does a double-take of fear when Jared’s hand comes into view. Like: what the hell are you doing with your hands … I am so so afraid right now …
Apparently Misha started laughing so hard during the filming of that bad acting scene that he had to go take a walk in order to calm down and be able to continue.
Dying.
That bad acting was wonderful. Yes, the helicopter and aquarium in Dean’s trailer! And the Jared/Gen faux-Warhol triptychs. The sea otter benefit. “At least you two are talking.” Over and over.
Season 10 idea: Demon Dean loose in Hollywood. America, lock up your starlets.
The Alpacas. The tanning booth.
Rumor already has it that Demon Dean has some raunchy intense affair with a waitress – and I could not be happier about that development. His libido is back! Yes, he had to become a demon to get it back but it’s thrilling nonetheless. I can’t WAIT to see what he does with demonic Dean.
I have high hopes for another Soul-less Sam type arc – I would love it if it were that lengthy. Ackles said at a recent con during a panel, “I hope the writers don’t ‘wrap up’ Demon Dean too quickly.”
That’s an example of his protective nature – of his storytelling instinct – it’s also a “message”. To the writers, who, of course, are listening. :)
I love Dean’s look of disgust and pity when “fake Ruby” informs him that “alpacas are the greenest animals.”
“That joke never gets old.”
Yes, “Gen” was a wealthy person with too much time on her hands.
Not especially on topic, but something I wanted to share… beautiful young women and the trouble they can get into, here is an excellent article about memoirs from rock Star wives and girlfriends. It even mentions the Marianne Faithfull/Bob Dylan episode that Jonah Lehrer got wrong (without mentioning Lehrer). I’ve only read Pamela Des Barres’ I’m With The Band.
Oh, and if anyone was upset, I didn’t actually mean in the previous post that hot young actresses are the property of America and they can be locked up to keep them from having fun. My male privilege was showing.
Be nice, everyone.
“Nice modest digs, Jay Z.” hahahaha So much comedy gold.
“What am I? Dracula?”
The two of them together in French Mistake – they’re so in sync – just love it so much.
Ahh, Jonah Lehrer. What a sociopath.
Thanks for the link – will read! I read Pamela Des Barres’ book too.
That episode, I have to confess I’m still processing the meta-ness. What do I think of Sam and Dean saying that they’d rather be themselves in a universe with magic than be “Jared” and “Jensen” with money and prestige (but no “importance”) in a magic-less world? I don’t know what I think of the actors saying that.
So, great job, writers. They definitely nailed that. And the comedy.
And yes, the brothers are just completely in sync throughout the episode. It’s great to have a Sam/Dean conflict-free episode. Easier to love them. For a while, then it’s back to scorpions in a bottle.
I love when they “beat up the extra.” And smuggle something into the country illegally. The whole thing is so insane.
I think it was important to have “the boys” want to get out of there – just to keep the show safe, to not have them get entranced by La-La Land at all … Sort of to break that fourth wall, have some fun, a “love letter to the fans”, really – but nothing essential will change back in the fictional world. Sam and Dean would rather go back there and be themselves and be actual brothers than in this strange world of make-believe.
The devil you know, maybe …
And how ’bout Brian Doyle Murray?? So funny.
And preferring their lives, after all of the “who’d want our lives” stuff in the earlier meta episodes. It gives them something like a calming breath before whatever is coming at the end of the season (something to do with the Mother Of All, but I still have the last 3 episodes to watch).
Mutecypher — Thanks! I like your point about job security. I am sure that is a factor.
Sheila — I can see your point about Misha. And I will certainly bow to your far superior acting knowledge. I have none! The more I think about it, I would guess that he doesn’t care that much/doesn’t take it all that seriously. I think, to Misha, Castiel is a job; a good job, but a job, and his real passion lies outside of his SPN work. So, he doesn’t care as much about the “integrity” of the character, as he does about keeping his fandom engaged…for things like GISHWISHES.
(I apologize for any typos–well, more than normal–I am writing this on my tablet and I haven’t fully mastered typing on it yet)
May –
// I think, to Misha, Castiel is a job; a good job, but a job, and his real passion lies outside of his SPN work. So, he doesn’t care as much about the “integrity” of the character, as he does about keeping his fandom engaged…for things like GISHWISHES. //
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know he definitely feels like he lucked out like CRAZY with the role of Castiel – like, how often does a role like that come along? But acting doesn’t seem to be his #1 priority and it never has been. There’s nothing wrong with that – I mean, look at Angelina Jolie. I get the sense she could stroll away from acting on a moment’s notice. It’s just not her #1 interest (which is fascinating, considering how HUGE she is.) Acting is something Misha does, and something he’s good at, and he’s good-looking and everyone loves him so people want to work with him – you never hear bad stuff about him – all of that makes for a nice career. I get the sense, though, that he would have been perfectly happy as a professor, or a Burning Man organizer (ha), or a lifestyle coach or many other professions – he seems interested in a ton of things to such a degree that all of them COULD have been a full-time career.
But I get the sense (and it’s just a sense, again) that Ackles is obsessed with acting. :) And obsessed with Dean Winchester. And he also knows he “lucked out”, with this role – I mean, we’ve talked about that before. He’s so PRETTY, what other show would give him the diversity of opportunity that Supernatural does? What other show would let him be that hilarious? That weird? That Charles Bronson-y. And the stunts, and the guns, and the crying, and the torment, and the goofiness … Jack-pot!! So he protects the SHIT out of it, and creates that boundary so it’s not sullied, corrupted, weakened … NOBODY is going to “take” Dean out of his hands. He’ll fight for it.
I don’t have a tablet. I probably should get one. I fear the keyboard though!!
Sheila — I really like my tablet. My desktop is hooked up to my TV, which has been great for Netflix, etc, but not for all the reading I do, so I got the tablet. I’m still not used to the keyboard and I haven’t figured out a way to copy and paste text yet. I am also hindered by my aversion to getting fingerprints on my screen–so I’m pecking away with a stylus like an idiot.
Misha does seem like a person with a lot of different interests and passions. He seems the type to keep wanting to try new things and learn new things. I wouldn’t be surprised if he would get bored staying with almost anything after a while.
I’ve always gotten the sense that Ackles takes his job very seriously. Not in an uptight, no-fun way. He just seems really…professional. Which is something I respect (in anyone), even if I have no knowledge of the profession.
Bryan Doyle Murray was great.
“We could blow off the scene where they sit in the impala and talk about their feelings.”
“You answer the hate mail.”
“Freeze frame??!!??” – apparently not the best suggestion
“Dean Cain was like that on Lois, and that man’s a real actor….”
“He sold ‘Octocobra?’ Mother of God, they’ll buy anything.”
And all of his eye rolling. And that can of soda, everywhere.
I hate when I misspell someone’s name. And I’m using a full size keyboard. Damn.
Demon!Dean oozes sex. A one minute clip shown at ComicCon, from the third episode, which Jensen directed, has got me sitting in front of the computer with my mouth dropped open, absolutely mesmerized. Watch at your own risk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMYgQeJ1rO0
//why is Season 2 your favorite?//
Shelia-Where do I start? Oh, yeah, with “In My Time of Dying” which is such a beautiful episode for all the reasons you noted in your recap, and startled me with its quiet and its self assured depth the first time I saw it. Then, if we skip over all the great episodes in between–and I just looked at the list, and there’s not a single one that I would call weak–this episode, in which John makes his deal, is bookended by Dean’s own heartbreaking deal.
Forgive me gushing, but there’s just so much that I love about this season! The world was expanded, great characters were introduced (Ellen, Jo, Ash, Gordon, the Trickster, not to mention Bobby’s growth in importance) and became indispensable, the boys’ relationship grew in shadings and complexities. This is also the first season to start playing with the show format with stuff like “The Usual Suspects” and to add slapstick humor in “Tall Tales.”
In short, it’s where everything comes together!
I do like season 6, too, btw–I think that the show took some creative risks with Soulless Sam and the “whodunit” aspects of the overall arc–the revelations “after Eve”were shocking to me, too!
because the show is so operatic anyway, you could get emotion-fatigue if you didn’t modulate all that stuff.
Yes, exactly. We are very much in Sam’s position here. Show us, show me, expose yourself. Complicit again……….
I haven’t seen Captain Phillips, but it is On The List. My dad is off cruising (not the Friedkin kind of cruising. I think.) at the moment so I have to be sparing with my “ships in peril” films!
Because as we have seen, girls that hook up with the boys don’t stick around too long.
Thank GOD Sam never slept with her!!!!!
I totally agree about Lisa, she works really well. At times I think you can feel the writers skating up to the line of “perfect woman” but they always held back — they always kept her main priority Ben, as it should be, and that repositioned Dean too. Great move to have “son” or “family unit” be the true beacon there.
I was SHOCKED by Benny. I think I was in denial a little while that Dean could find someone like that down there. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and meanwhile I was terrified of it dropping because he was the best and the relationship was so important. You know, anyone that cares about Dean without wanting something from him is someone to treasure. Same thing with Jody and Sam; their friendship is one of my favourite things out of the last few seasons.
Not to mention the fact that she forces Sam to take that dog.
Can’t handle that! My family is Dog People! I had such a visceral reaction to that. Stink-eye forever. But, you know. It was for the best obviously. It’s implied Sam hit the dog while he was driving recklessly, ie suicidally. She saved his life, making him take that dog.
Sam going into fugue states
I KNOW so ridiculous. Dean hanging around, checking his watch: Christ, another flashback. Andale, Sam, we’re on a schedule!
Barb–
My feeling on the way Amelia’s flashbacks were filmed is that they indicated that Sam was in fact idealizing her, and his time with her.
I think that disconnect is a big part of why the audience had such a visceral reaction to her. Primed by the way Purgatory is filmed — like a nightmare, but also objectively — we expect Sam’s flashbacks to work similarly. But not so!
Season 2 is definitely in contention as my favourite! The whole second half is absolutely soars. It’s stunning.
Kim & Terri —
I’ve avoided the interviews etc but I can’t help but see a lot of stuff in gif form or short clips and I’ve been pretty excited in all the ways one can be excited about stuff like that preview clip. You know what I mean. Excited in my pants is what I mean.
// My dad is off cruising (not the Friedkin kind of cruising. I think.) //
haha As long as he’s not cruising off the coast of Somalia, he should be fine.
// At times I think you can feel the writers skating up to the line of “perfect woman” but they always held back //
Yup. She reminded me of the military wives I know, and how they are about their husband’s dangerous jobs. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to tolerate that. You have to be cool, you have to be capable – those women do EVERYTHING by themselves – it’s a different mindset in a partnership – and they can’t freak OUT or resent the fact that their husbands are gone all the time, or deployed to dangerous countries. You just can’t marry a military man and be a whiner about his job. I saw a lot of that in Lisa. When she asks him: “Are you hunting something?” and he gets defensive and flustered – and she says calmly, “I’m just asking.” She really IS there for him in a calm and un-judgmental way. But when that line is crossed, and Ben is compromised – she does what she needs to do to keep them both safe, and it’s heartbreaking for her. I liked the structure of the character a lot – although why she needed to be orange as an Oompa Loompa in Season 6 I’ll never know.
There’s this one moment between them I love – which shows the sensitivity of the writers to how that relationship operates – it’s very subtle. It’s in the Three Men and a Baby episode – and she’s basically said to him, “Go. Help your brother.” Dean is still defensive about it – he wonders if she’s not being truthful – or passive-aggressive (Dean is so used to people being bitchy about him asserting himself and he projects that on her – you can SEE it happen) – but anyway, the scene I’m talking about is right before he leaves and he is giving her a little gun tutorial. She’s in her pajamas. She is not freaked out. She is remaining calm because that’s what she senses he needs – and she wants him to be okay and feel okay. One of those compromises you make in relationships. She shows him she knows how to handle a gun.
Right before he picks up his duffel bag, he murmurs, “Bet you’re missing your boring ex right now” – and she laughs.
I love that line so much and I’m not sure I can explain why. It’s very revealing of who Dean is – that self-deprecation – his awareness of what a nightmare he can be – how he’s not weird about the fact she’s had another man – in fact, he makes a joke about it – and she laughs in response, like, “Shut UP.”
it was such a real relationship moment – and I really believed them as a couple most of all in that moment.
// You know, anyone that cares about Dean without wanting something from him is someone to treasure. Same thing with Jody and Sam; their friendship is one of my favourite things out of the last few seasons. //
LOVE this comment. I love Jody and Sam’s relationship too! It’s so grown UP. Two adults. They’re not making her some maternal figure – she’s practically a peer – and yes, there’s something really nice that comes out in her scenes with Sam in those two episodes where they’re thrown together.
And I love what you say about someone not needing something from Dean. Yes. It is the most equal relationship Dean has ever had.
In re: Sam’s flashbacks and how they were filmed:
I know I keep complaining about it but I’m pissed that the network execs – who are not artists – have won the war in the “look” of the show. And those flashbacks are a prime example. Imagine how Kim Manners would have shot them. They would have been moody, or sepia-toned – not that golden sickly haze – and they would have been suffused with sadness IN the colors – because this is a dream Sam had to walk away from. Just the look of those flashbacks gave me a headache.
And I haven’t seen any clips or interviews in re: Season 10, but I am extremely excited in my pants as well.
It was the way Dean hugged Benny beside that grave. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. After 7 seasons, I thought I knew the guy. But what I was seeing there, I had never seen before. Ackles is so damn good.
//in my pants as well.//
Are these pants as in trousers or pants as in knickers?
Somehow it’s important for me to know how these items of clothing would each indicate particular degrees of excitedness.
I believe that both pants AND knickers are involved (I can only speak for myself.)
Or, as Captain Awkward calls it – and I don’t know if she coined the phrase but she uses it all the time: “PantsFeelings.” Which just cracks me up. “So I’m with this new guy and there are clearly PantsFeelings but I’m feeling awkward about it …”
I love “PantsFeelings.”
In the States do you use pants (knickers, not trousers) to denote something of being a bit rubbish, as in, ‘The film was complete pants’ – ie the film was a load of crap. “The English football team is pants” – no translation needed.
No! We do not use “pants” in that way but I absolutely love it!
“How was your date last night.”
“Totes pants.”
“PantsFeelings?”
“Nope. Just pants.”
“Too bad.”
I don’t know why I’ve never heard the “pants” thing before – and I’m semi-familiar with slang across the pond. That one is really funny.
Yes. And to steer things round to this episode of Supernatural, if someone is totes pants or they do not give you PantsFeelings, they will not get in your pants, not even with a six pack and second side of Led Zeppelin 4. Which is not quite what is going on here, but still …
Wonderful loop back to the episode in question!
Everyone on Heaven and Earth and H ell looks at Dean and has PantsFeelings, which is part of the problem.
I’m working on the Gordon episode re-cap. It’s so weird to see “Benny” tending bar and not talking in a Louisiana drawl. But I have PantsFeelings for him regardless of the accent.
//Everyone on Heaven and Earth and H ell looks at Dean and has PantsFeelings, which is part of the problem. //
Maybe Captain Awkward could help?
//But I have PantsFeelings for him regardless of the accent.//
You mean he doesn’t speak in a Louisiana accent in this episode? Somehow my ears hear it nonetheless.
Weird.
And I can’t believe you didn’t spot Benny in Godzilla – I thought PantsFeelings transcended space, time, lack of accent, giant lizards, the lot.
I know, I still can’t believe I missed him in Godzilla, especially since I was basically counting all the other SPN vets around him.
Nope, no accent for the bartender. It’s totally jarring!
//I was basically counting all the other SPN vets around him.//
I think the only cast members missing in that film were the Winchesters.
Oh, and I can’t wait for Gordon.
Watch the clips or not, Sheila; knickers or trousers, Helena: it makes no difference. No one’s pants are going to be ready for Season 10.
Keep complaining! It sucks. Lisa being orange in S6, Dean being orange in S7 and 8, the glossy hollowness of Bloodlines; this is what the suits have done to us. I am also beginning to suspect that they have made Sam cut his hair. I think they have it out for me. Oh take me back/to my boots/ and saddle.
I love it so much when the brothers have grown-up peers and friends. I suppose that’s part of the transition from being children/youths with no friends & only fathers and father figures in your life, to adults with no fathers left. Sam is at least thirty now (I get confused about all those year-long gaps). I love it when they are mature and competent even as they are dysfunctional in other areas. I don’t want Season 10 to be all about them doing their taxes or anything (I’ve already seen that and it can’t be topped) but I would love to get that feeling more. I know we have plenty of demon drama to work through first.
Dean’s orange-ness is especially egregious. You can just feel the unimaginative bozos who think that looks good. Grrrrrr.
// I love it when they are mature and competent even as they are dysfunctional in other areas. //
Me too! It’s so real!
Here’s my sense/hope: Season 9 seemed all about the dysfunction, particularly about Dean, who became incapacitated by his own dysfunction, that they’ve been working up to basically since the pilot. “Stop hanging onto me, Dean. You’re afraid of being alone. Our relationship doesn’t work. It’s broken. Stop.” Episode after episode after episode … and you can see how well that went over with Dean.
I hope, too, that “they” got all that out of their system – and now they can move on to other things. Having Dean be demonic is going to be fascinating – and, yeah, having your brother be a black-eyed demon will have a way of making other relationship issues take a back seat. It’ll be great to see them “come together” again – same way as in Season 6 when finally … FINALLY … Sam gets his soul back and they have that killer hug at Bobby’s.
They made us WAIT for that damn hug. Dammit!
So that’s my hope. I felt that Season 9 was banging us over the head with the “relationship issues” – and I was happy about that, as I think I’ve said – because finally Dean’s shit was made explicit … so yeah, hopefully Season 10 will show some progress.
cannnnnnnnnnot waiiiiiiiiit
and leave Sam’s hair alone, suits. You have no idea what looks good. Stop it.
//I am also beginning to suspect that they have made Sam cut his hair.//
Say it ain’t so, Jessie. I mean, avoiding spoilers is one thing, but I need to be prepared for this level of studio interference.
Yours, about to stock up on extra underwear …
The things I’ve seen Helena. The horror. The horror.
Nah, just some pics out of Comic Con, seems like Jared’s cut it a bit shorter. Only a bit. But the precedent is WORRISOME.
// a bit shorter. //
Hmm. Maybe he had split ends. Anyway, it will grow back before Season 10 shooting starts in earnest. (Fingers crossed, fingers crossed.)
I remember hearing the two of them joking about how the worst part about doing the same role for 10 years straight is that they can never change their haircuts. So that’s hopeful. They both go hog-wild during hiatus, growing beards, and letting their hair go crazy, like Grizzly Adams or something. It’s kind of funny.
//hog-wild during hiatus, growing beards, and letting their hair go crazy//
Like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYbH6joe9zU
hahahahahahahaha
I imagine their wives are like, “Uhm, when are you going back to work? Shave that shit off.”
As a Red Sox fan, I was thinking something more along the lines of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_o5T-YlA0o
Those are proper beards. You could lose stuff in those beards. I’m hoping to see these in Season 10, stuck to the Winchesters’ faces.
Let it all hang out, boys.
Just wanted to share at least small contradiction in the narrative you’ve constructed for Misha, from a story he told recently. There was an episode in the midst of the cutesifying of Cas (I forget which one) where he was supposed to sit on a whoopee cushion. Misha felt so strongly that this was ridiculous and beneath the dignity of his character that he called Jeremy Carver to argue about it. About thirty minutes later, still arguing, he realized everyone was just having to stand around on set waiting for him, and they all just wanted to be done with their day and go home. So he gave up. Maybe not the right time or place to fight that battle, but he does care. And most of us Misha fans miss the badass angel of the lord from season 4 too.