Directed by Tim Iacofano
Written by Ben Edlund
Sam: You and I are chosen.
Max: For what?
Sam: I don’t know.
— “Nightmare,” Supernatural, Season 1
“Simon Said” is the only episode from Tim Iacofano, and the first episode written by Ben Edlund, who, naturally, has become a gigantic part of the show, producing, directing, writing, the whole nine yards. Edlund is a thoughtful brainy guy and brings an interesting and contemplative energy to the moral and ethical side of Supernatural, the “Big Question” side.
Sam’s psychic visions, connected to Yellow-Eyes, were set up in Season 1, starting with “Nightmare,” where Sam tried desperately to talk Max, a pained (putting it mildly) telekinetic kid, off the proverbial ledge. “Nightmare” revealed that the powers Sam was “given” were somehow connected to these other kids out there, and it was all somehow connected to the demon.
I’m not crazy about the “special children” Arc, although I love all of the individual actors chosen to play the various “children”, and I love “Simon Said.” It’s one of those episodes that is always pleasing, no matter how many times I have seen it. It’s goofy, anarchic, and the strong links having to do with siblings, angry brothers, family secrets, all that – is looped in gracefully. The performances are all excellent. Andrew’s a great personality and it’s wonderful to see how he brings out different things in Sam and Dean. You get the sense that Dean could actually be friends with Andrew, if the situation were a little different, and if Dean ever had friends.
The psychic kids plot-line doesn’t really reveal much, though, and is a bit too X-Men for my taste. Or Wonder Twin Powers Activate. Or Island of Misfit Toys. Supernatural spent a lot of time and effort in setting up that Arc, and then appeared to drop it, killing everyone off in a 24-hour period. It’s the benefit of working on a show where everyone dies anyway. It wouldn’t work on Dawson’s Creek. You’d have to make someone go to Europe on an exchange program to get rid of them. But on Supernatural? This Arc ain’t working, aw, fuck it, just kill ’em all. Or, conversely: dammit, we don’t like the roadhouse after all, what the hell are we supposed to do with it now that we’ve spent so much time setting it up? Uhm, torch it to the ground, yeah.
Gabriel Tigerman, who plays Andrew, the psychic kid in “Simon Said”, gives a funny and well-observed performance of a lackadaisical guy who has been given this weird ability, and uses it to con people, get off his back, give him coffee, do him favors, have sex with him. He clearly roofies women with the power of his mind, and it just goes to show you I am an empty shell that I find it kind of charming. He leaves them smiling and waving to him longingly from upstairs windows! Unlike Sam, Andrew does not operate under a weight of shame or “Why has this happened to me?” Dean finds Andy harmless, entertaining, and also somewhat admirable. Sam, though, looks at Andrew and sees a mirror. There’s a reason the whole episode starts with Sam splashing water in his face and staring at his own reflection. Sam is afraid that whatever Andrew does will somehow say something about HIM. Sam is self-conscious about his “gift” in a way that Andrew is not.
Sam, as played by Padalecki, is a 6 foot 4 hulk of insecurities and floating potential rage, flecked with a dry sense of humor and an ability to see the big picture. It’s a wonderful character. But when this ability starts to raise its head, it re-asserts to Sam that he is not normal, he has never been normal, he felt judged by Dean and Dad in his childhood, and he is afraid that Dean will judge him now. These wounds are old. They won’t heal back up just because he and Dean are on better terms now. A little different is okay, Dean gets a little different, but THIS different? Part of Season 2 is the slow reveal of what actually is “wrong” with Sam, and what happened to him back in the nursery on the night his mother died. Sam sensing that something is “different” about him ends up having a physical basis.
Identification Conversation, Personal In Nature. Skip If It’s Not Your Thing.
This is where we get into personal waters. I identify a lot with Dean, especially when it comes to his various survival techniques (sometimes labeled “unhealthy” or “denial” in some circles, but I say don’t knock it til you tried it!) My survival strategies look a lot like his (except for the drugs and alcohol). It’s a barrel of laughs being both a depressive and a pleasure-hound. You try balancing that out. I do my best. I try to prioritize pleasure. It feels like a life-or-death necessity. But now we come to Sam. Sam’s whole journey, from Season 2 onward, is almost an exact replica of my own in regards to mental health (you know, without the demon-blood, although there have been times when I, too, have felt literally poisoned by my own blood, so take it for what it’s worth.) I have a devastating psychological history, and years – literally years – wondering what the hell was wrong with me. It was only since the crack-up in late 2012, mild in comparison to other crack-ups which went ignored, where I finally got diagnosed by a real doctor in 2013, (not with depression but with another Big Bad on the DSM), that I have actually been shown a “way out” of what seemed my logical fate (suicide, most likely, I accepted that when I was a teenager.) My doctors challenge the way I interpret things, experience things. My identification with Dean is the white-knuckling survivor in me. I am proud of her. I am also sick of her because I want to be soft sometimes too, I want to be vulnerable like other people get to be vulnerable. But I am glad she exists because without her I would have checked out years ago. But Sam? I see a mirror, which is different. If Dean’s overall Arc can be seen as a sensitive portrayal of what PTSD looks/feels like (and also a presentation of the life-affirming survival techniques so helpful to those who suffer: 100% pleasure-focus, the music you like, the food you love, the sex that is essential to even marginal stability since sex re-affirms you are human/worthy of being touched/the benefits can’t even be counted, the sensual comfort of a hot shower, clean sheets, watching a movie you love 3 times in a row, whatever – it’s all there), then Sam’s overall Arc can be seen as a very effective metaphor for mental illness. It doesn’t work SOLELY as a metaphor, it also works on the literal level of a man struggling with a demonic curse placed over his cradle. But that’s the thing with metaphors. Good ones are multiple things at the same time, and Sam’s “journey” works on those levels, and is also one of the best-performed and least-condescending metaphors for mental illness that I’ve ever seen. And it is for that reason that I am glad I came to the show once I was on the road to recovery. Maybe Sam’s struggles wouldn’t have struck me as a mirror pre-diagnosis, back when I was the middle of the maelstrom. The show gets so much right about what it is like: the sense that people are worried about you all the time, watching you like a hawk, the sense that you literally cannot trust what is right in front of your eyes. In Season 2, Sam finally gets confirmation that his sense of being an outsider is not just psychological in nature, there is a physical basis for it. To know that those crazy thoughts in my head have no basis in reality but were actually part of a physical illness wreaking havoc on my spirit and body … well. That helped me relax for the first time in ever. Getting a diagnosis is a serious thing. It’s a club you do NOT want to join. But realizing that I was sick was akin to removing a gigantic anvil off my shoulders. All of this, the Dean identification (guilt/shame/pleasure-hound/survival-techniques) and the Sam mirror (is-this-in-my-own-head-or-is-this-real), was an enormous part of why Supernatural hit a very very sweet spot for me. The show came along for me at the right time (I started watching it in October of 2013.)
Identification Conversation Over For the Moment
“Simon Said” is loosey-goosey, eccentric. It starts with REO Speedwagon and ends with Soundgarden. It goes from benign to malignant, in other words.
A couple of things are “set up” here:
–Jo will be rising in the narrative, along with Sam. Dean is playing support-staff to a bunch of crackpots.
–There are untold number of special children out there, with no way to track them. Hold me, Ellen, I’m scared.
–Andy ends up having an “evil twin,” who wreaks havoc in order to be reunited with his brother. It’s a fun-house mirror of the Winchester relationship. It makes Dean and Sam’s relationship look healthy although that is cold comfort. As always, Supernatural wants those lines to be blurred.
Similar to the view of family seen in “The Benders,” Supernatural wants you to make disturbing connections. Andy could be seen as a Dean-standin, only without guilt or shame, although Weber could also be connected to Dean, the focused tough guy willing to do anything to keep his family together (and also, perhaps, having to be in the position of killing his own brother, let’s not forget that.) Think, too, of the sketchy shit Dean will pull with the women who dare to come into Sam’s life. (Yes, in the future, but that’s also part of what I’m saying here: While Weber is a “worst-case scenario” for Sam’s destiny, he also is revealing the dark side of Dean’s position. Nobody picks up on THAT, though. It’s buried in subtext.) Sam and Andy are connected because they both have special abilities, and also Sam very well may have read some Kant and Heidegger as well. They have the same inquiring mind. But Weber is a possible outcome for Sam, Sam can’t avoid that fact, no matter how much Dean tries to talk him out of it. His gifts COULD be used in the way Weber uses his. It’s a quadrangulated maze of inter-sibling-connections, very well-designed. Supernatural trembles in the grey area between good and evil. When man is pushed, who knows how far he will be willing to go? If family is everything and risking all for family is seen as the highest good (as is the case with Sam and Dean), then Andy’s “evil twin” is living by that code as well. Sam and Dean fight it out. Dean’s point is: “Yeah but you’re NOT evil and you DON’T kill people” but Sam recognizes that as the half-truth that it is. Sam’s “situation” is about to take over, and Dean is hanging on to his version of events as best he could. Everything depends on it.
And suddenly, like an ice cube down the back, “the man with the yellow eyes” re-enters, an entity we have seen, an entity we fear. He’s only mentioned here but it’s a cold wind from beyond the grave. A lot of stuff comes churning to the surface, the maelstrom of John’s death starting to dissipate, with new and unknown threats announcing themselves, before vanishing into the ether again. What’s out there? What are the missing pieces? How is Sam connected to all of it?
Teaser
We see a man (Blu Mankuma) walking down a sidewalk, underneath a clock-tower, looming in the foreground, already an ominous camera angle. A passerby greets him, “Hey, doc.” That moment tells us everything we need to know: Small friendly town. Everyone knows everyone. The man’s phone rings, and when he answers it, the camera zooms in on his face. It’s alarming, a total break in the folksy style established. Then we get a couple of flashes of unconnected images, the man wielding a gigantic shotgun, cocking it. Violence impending.
He speaks into the phone, like an automaton: “All right.”
A bus roars past, the sound jarring.
Considering that what we are seeing is actually one of Sam’s “visions,” the style fits. It highlights disparate images, the way things “come at” Sam in unconnected chaotic ways.
The man continues on his merry way, crossing the street, a happy little smile on his face.
He enters a hardware store. Dennis (Eric Keenleyside), the guy behind the counter is reading a gun magazine, and behind him are racks of guns. The two men greet one another, friendly. They know each other. Everyone knows “doc,” which is why Dennis seems surprised when “doc” asks to look at a gun.
Dennis hands over a shotgun, and Doc inspects it. He doesn’t look murderous, just blank, which is even scarier. We get one of those gigantic close-ups Supernatural specializes in, Doc looking down at the gun in the foreground, with Dennis a blur taking up the entire background. You yearn for distance, some air, some perspective.
Doc has reached out for the box of shells and starts to load the rifle, still saying, as though the moment hasn’t changed, “You know guns make me nervous. Always have.” When he says that, he is filmed from below, rifle looming through the screen, with a dizzying display of porcelain sinks up on the ceiling behind him.
Dennis gets serious when he sees what is happening: “No, no, no loaded guns in here, Doc …” Doc says soothingly, “It’s all gonna be okay,” a creepy refrain heard multiple times throughout “Simon Said.”
Other customers start looking over and it is then that Doc points the gun and blows Dennis away at point-blank range. [Question: If these visions are supposedly Weber’s payback scheme, then why does Dennis have to go? Why wouldn’t Doc just kill himself?] Screams. Slowly, on that same invisible conveyor belt, Doc looks up at the ceiling, holding the gun under his chin, saying, “It’s allll gonna be okay.” The camera keeps moving upwards, leaving him out of the frame, focusing on that sink hanging above his head. Blood splash across porcelain, gruesome!
Poor Doc! Taken down by an evil twin, of all things, for just doing his job.
The teaser then shivers and whites out, and we see Sam, hunched over a sink, splashing water on his face.
Sink to sink. Nice work, Supernatural.
Dean bursts in telling Sam to “zip it up” (Boundaries! What if Sam was mid-dump, Dean? Also, where’s the fire?), but stops, when confronted with Sam’s emotional state.
1st scene
Radio DJ cackling, as the Impala careens through the night: “Rockin’ Nebraska. Your source of the classics … all night long!” Thank you, DJ, for telling us where we are in the United States, because it wasn’t at all clear where we were in “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things,” and I need to know where the Winchesters are so I can make my own little Casablanca map in my mind (which was then copied so memorably in Raiders of the Lost Ark).
Whatever happened outside that stanky bathroom (a rival to the one seen in Trainspotting, although Trainspotting takes the cake), Sam has filled Dean in on what he saw. They have nothing to go on except the Blue Ridge clue. Sam has suggested going to the roadhouse to check in with Ash about demon signs. Dean is, naturally, resistant to that. He’s not a roadhouse fan. Those people know too much about them as it is. Also, if Dean accepted the truth of Sam’s visions, then he would have to accept Sam’s different-ness, and add to that the ominous echo of John Winchester’s pre-death whispered warning … well, you can understand why he takes the tone he does. Remember what he said to Gordon: “I gotta keep my game face on …”
But Dean comes out with his fears about the other hunters at the roadhouse. Is walking in there announcing that Sam is a “freak” with “demonic connections” the best choice? That word again. It’s a constant. Sam is hurt. He already knows he’s different, and now his brother is confirming it for him? How much further will this go? Will Dean end up feeling compelled to hunt him? It’s the not-knowing that is so terrifying. The demon said he had “plans” for Sam. Having no glimpse of what that could mean, being bombarded from seemingly outside with violent visions involving strangers … NOBODY would want this crap.
Dean sees Sam’s hurt face at the word “freak” and slaps him on the knee, grinning, “I’ve always known you were a freak.”
Segue to the lit-up roadhouse at night, motorcycles outside, old-school neon shining through the dark. An oasis. Filled with hunters oiling their guns at the table.
Quick cut to a video game, involving deer-hunting (connecting us to the teaser). The deer peeking out between the trees are blown away, one by one, points racking up. We pull back and we see that it is Jo, shotgun in hand, playing the game, which is called “10 Point Buck.” This is the America Supernatural lives in. A grumpy grizzled old guy stands by watching this purty little lady rule the roost. He slaps over the cash he owes her, telling her that was his room money for the night. Jo, grinning, pockets the cash and saunters away, hustler that she is. Similar to Dean, whose soft beauty causes people to underestimate him and write him off (so that, consequently, he gets away with murder), Jo knows how to win. She is used to being underestimated. Fine, underestimate me all you want, big boy, who’s sleeping in his truck tonight?
Considering where “No Exit,” the episode following “Simon Said” goes, Ellen (Samantha Ferris) and Jo (Alona Tal) need to be brought back in in a meaningful way, their characters underlined and beefed up, so we’re ready for them to take a larger space in the brothers’ lives. If we had jumped straight into “No Exit” from “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things” we wouldn’t be ready for it.
Ellen walks over to the poor hunter/trucker and clicks on the high scores screen to show him what’s what: “You just got yourself hustled, Ed.”
God bless the props person who made that screen. Also, consider how much time Jo has logged on that game to get good at it. Consider Jo out in the woods doing target practice by herself, readying for hunting, already itching to live that life. But mostly: Ellen keeps Jo on a pretty short leash. Similar to John, Dean and Sam, Ellen and Jo still live together, I’m assuming, they work together, and Jo, who is around 20, 21, doesn’t have the independence that other young women her age have. Her mother is also her boss. Jo went to college for a while, but, like Sam, she didn’t fit in. It’s a funny thing, hunting. Kids grow up fast. But they are also over-protected. At the same time that Ellen keeps a sharp eye on Jo, she also just lets Jo be Jo. She isn’t wishing for a daughter who isn’t a hustler, for example. Ellen is proud and amused that Jo is good enough at this dumb video game to hustle another man out of his room money. To Ellen, that is evidence that she raised her daughter right, her daughter is nobody’s fool.
And now comes one of my favorite shots in the entire series, as complicated as anything they have ever attempted. There are others, but this one is at the top of the list. It’s swoopy, sexy, and all one take, the camera never resting on one face for too long before moving on. It had to take hours to get it right. There are three main people involved: Sam, Dean and Jo, and they all have lines, exquisitely timed by the actors in collaboration with the camera operation, but then there are also extras, seated at nearby tables, who get their own passing-over shots.
So let’s break it down into its parts, but the fun of it is to watch it as a whole. It looks effortless. A take like this is bold and ambitious.
Dean and Sam burst through the front door, and we see them from within the bar, the camera moving in close to both of them. Dean is looking around, all buttoned up, face telling no tales. He’s walking into enemy territory. He glances down, and the camera follows his gaze, moving away from Dean and down to a nearby table where two hunters sit, map spread out on the table, and one guy has a knife pointing down at the map (hahaha). Both guys look military and tough as hell, and they glance up at Dean as he stands there, taking them in. Not friendly on either side. The camera moves away again, coming back to Dean who has continued on into the bar while the camera was off him, and now moving forward into the bar, the camera behind him now, as he walks right into the path of Jo, who grins at the sight of him, teasing, “Just can’t stay away, huh.” The camera keeps moving, only this time around Dean’s back, so we’re now on his other side, and he laughs at her comment, saying, “How ya doin, Jo?” which is when Sam rushes into the frame at Dean’s side, saying urgently, “Where’s Ash?” The camera moves back to Jo, and she says, “In his back room,” and we see Sam rush that way behind her, out of the scene, Jo snarking after him, “I’m fine…”, her head turned towards the camera to watch Sam go off, and there is a brief pause on her face, beautifully shadowed, before we move on, Jo turning back to look at Dean, the camera now moving around behind Jo, looking up at Dean, who awkwardly tries to explain his brother’s behavior. He is awkward because 1. he doesn’t know how to explain Sam’s behavior and 2. Jo has boobs and he gets thrown off by their proximity. He says, “Sorry, we’re kind of on a bit of a time table.” The camera has finally remained still for a moment, still on Dean, and we see him awkwardly stop talking, not sure what else to say, that soft and open thing he does, the sexual thing having been already acknowledged the last time they were together, and it sort of sits there between them, and, letting that moment expand, he moves on past Jo, and again, the camera lets him pass by and then turns onto Jo, her face plunging into darkness so you can’t see what she’s thinking, as she watches him go.
Finally, after all that, we get a cut. We see Sam’s hand banging on Ash’s door, with a sign on it saying DR. BADASS.
Long Takes
Long takes like that work on an audience in a subliminal way even if you don’t notice that there have been no cuts. Long takes create a tension, an almost high-wire-act of “how long can this go on?” in an audience. That take in Supernatural is “only” 25 seconds long and so really isn’t long enough to be placed in the pantheon of long takes, but consider that most takes are around 2 seconds long to get a sense of how long that one is.
Long takes in cinema is always a fun conversation. Off the top of my head:
There’s the famous long Steadicam shot through the club in Boogie Nights (and Boogie Nights is filled with long takes.)
The gigantic 7-minute long take that opens The Player, introducing us to every single character and every single story-line that will be explored throughout the film. Could not find a clip of that take.
Jean-Luc Godard included a killer long shot in Weekend moving alongside a traffic jam that gets increasingly absurd as it continues (the only clip I could find of it cuts off only halfway through the entirety of the shot). The traffic jam goes on … and on … and on …
The famous long take leading us into the Copacabana in Good Fellas.
There’s the famous opening to Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958), one of the best long takes ever filmed. Yes, it’s a “showoff” shot, but seriously, if you can pull something like that off, show off all you want.
Brian De Palma loves long takes. There’s a 12-minute long tour de force in Snake Eyes.
Hitchcock filmed Rope continuously, with crazy long takes. I believe there are only 10 cuts in the entire film. Each take is about 20 minutes long. Extraordinary. Here’s a video explaining the transition moments, where cuts are hidden.
I didn’t see it but True Detective recently had a 6-minute take that got everyone talking. I’m not sure if this could be considered a “take” due to the special effects involved, but the opening sequence of Gravity, 12 minutes long, is all one shot.
Steve McQueen’s Hunger featured a 17-minute take, two actors, 28 pages of dialogue. A tour de force.
Then there is The Russian Ark, a film from 2002, the entire 99-minute movie, with literally hundreds of characters, done all in one continuous take, filmed all over the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, an astonishing accomplishment and dizzying to watch. Here’s the trailer.
(The entire film is on Youtube.) 99 minutes. One take.
Compared to all of that, the take in Supernatural is nothing, a blip, but it is beautifully executed and I do believe it’s the longest single take in the entire series. If I come across a longer one, I’ll be sure to point it out.
/Long Takes
Chad Lindberg re-enters the scene as Ash, the genius-level PBR-drinking computer-geek who made such a memorable entrance in “Everybody Loves a Clown.” He lives in the back room of the roadhouse and has a sign on the door saying DR. BADASS, like he’s Lucy Van Pelt with a mullet.
The roadhouse brings us into an eccentric hunter world, a community of weirdo lone wolves, a world which Sam and Dean have had no awareness up until now. I’m not sure how that is possible, but whatever. Ultimately, the roadhouse is interesting but not all that useful. It’s not useful in connecting us to the main Spine of the thing, which is Sam and Dean. Everything introduced needs to somehow either illuminate or propel that Spine forward. Don’t get me wrong, I love the roadhouse and love the characters who inhabit it, but the hunters-gathered atmosphere of the roadhouse was completely contradictory to the real structure of the story, Sam and Dean traveling in isolation. Naturally, as the show went on, the ensemble grew. But there was still that sense that hunters, in general, were isolated from one another by design. Only when we get the secret society of the Men of Letters in Season 8 are we introduced to a gathering of men (and one woman) who were devoted to understanding/fighting the supernatural collectively. But the way that was introduced had a huge pay-off on a ton of levels: it counter-acted the “brawn” aspect of hunting, nurtured in Sam and Dean by their father, and also, speaking of which, brought John Winchester back into the story, as a man who missed his true legacy. So satisfying on multiple thematic and character levels, dovetailing with the spine that has been present since the pilot.
But hunters oiling their guns at some roadhouse? No. It’s a dead-end.
Ash is locked in his room. He appears to be listening to some kind of sporting event from 1940. We see the door from inside the room, and all the lights are off, the locks prominent. We learn in a couple of seconds that Ash is also naked. Or nakedness is implied. Sure, he could be wearing boxers or briefs or, more likely, a Speedo, but as my acting teacher in college used to say when actors were faced with making a choice, “What does more for you?” Ash being naked is the clear winner. So. Is he masturbating to the 1940 World Series, being, at heart, a Cincinnati Reds fan? I don’t judge it, I just need to know.
Dean appears in the frame, and knocks on the door aggressively, calling out, “Ash,” and Ash opens the door a crack, revealing his naked torso. Both Sam and Dean visibly recoil and look away like fluttery Victorian-era housewives. Ash is unconcerned. He takes his time, glancing from one to the other. Dean refuses to look. He is offended and pissed. Sam, though, after a second, deals with the reality in front of him and turns back to naked Ash, pretending that what is occurring is not actually occurring, and starts to speak to Ash as though Ash is totally clothed. Sam says, “We need your help.”
Ash grins and says, “Well, hell, then. I guess I need my pants.”
Ash closes the door. Dean, meanwhile, has not moved from his looking away pose, he’s staunch about not looking, and Dean walks off, still looking away. It’s such a funny pissed-off exit. It’s like Dean has been hit with the Pause button from the moment Ash appears.
Dean saunters through his own life as though it is an Awesome Movie (when he’s having a good day, that is), making a Burlesque Act out of things like playing music, eating French fries, or hitting on the ladies. But he would never reveal himself naked to two strange guys as the 1940 baseball announcer drones in the background. Ash is way more “out there” and free than Dean is. (And this is the good stuff that the roadhouse brings: fun, release, eccentricity … all things the Winchesters could use in their own lives a little bit.)
Cut to Sam’s drawing of the Blue Ridge logo on the bus, which Ash is now looking up on his computer. No establishing shot leading us into the next part of the scene, just some closeups of Sam’s drawing, and the corresponding web page for the bus line. Ash recites to Sam what he has learned in the 2 seconds it took to look it up. That’s a bus line from Guthrie, Oklahoma. Now we cut to the two guys at the bar, laptop open, Sam huddled in beside Ash, arm in a cast. Dean is nowhere to be seen at first (I love that, because he is, indeed there, they just hold him back). Sam asks Ash to check Guthrie for signs of demonic activity. Ash starts clicking around, “You think the demon’s there?” “Maybe,” says Sam. Ash is confused, something isn’t adding up about this, and as he clicks, he says, almost to himself, “Why would you think that?” And then we hear Dean, tired and annoyed, “Just check it.”
Suddenly we get our first establishing shot, of the three guys, the bar behind them, Jo working. Dean is standing, looming over Ash. When he speaks like that, Ash leans his entire body over on the diagonal in order to take in the spectacle of Dean’s personality, because it is, indeed a spectacle. We’ve seen that kind of behavior from Ash before. He needs to stand back in order to take Dean in. Dean puts out so much shit that he is not aware of (the best part being that Ackles is aware of it), and nobody really calls him on it, because in the Winchester Belljar that’s just how Dean is. But Ash isn’t used to it yet. Look at Chad Lindberg turn himself into a diagonal line.
Sam is leading the Winchester duo right now. Dean’s grumpiness has put him out of commission somewhat (Dean just wants to get the hell out of there), and Sam asks Ash to do a search in Guthrie for 1983 housefires starting in baby’s nurseries. Ash looks at Sam. Dean looks uncomfortable and glances around, wondering if anyone is eavesdropping. Jo sure is. Ash says, “Why would I be looking for that?” He really wants to know. Sam slaps a beer bottle down and says, “There’s a PBR in it for you,” and Ash says, “Give me 15 minutes.”
Schtick. Entertaining, as all good schtick is.
Exterior shot of the roadhouse, motorcycles gone, Impala parked right out in front, a “time has passed” little insert shot.
Jo stands over the lit-up jukebox. The bar is closed now, or winding down. The only people left are Ellen, Jo, Sam, Dean, and Ash. Jo clicks a choice on the jukebox and slowly, terribly, the goopy opening chords to REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” float out through the bar. Dean, hunched over a glass of beer, looks up. He is offended. Well. He’s offended by everything currently but hearing this song is the culmination of it. Dean feels like the song is being played AT him (one of the unfortunate byproducts of no-boundaries.) He also feels like maybe this might … be a come-on? He’s not sure. Whatever it is, he does not like it.
“REO Speedwagon?” he bitches.
“Damn right, REO,” Jo says. “Kevin Cronin sings it from the heart.”
“He sings it from the hair. There’s a difference,” says Dean, being a douche, although he has a point.
In Googling for an image, I came across a short interview where Kevin Cronin is asked repeatedly about his hair. Enjoy.
Jo is shot in a romantic way, her face taking up the right side of the screen, all soft shadows and contours, and behind her the blue neon lights blur into one dreamy background. It’s one of the ways we are “prepared” for Jo to enter into the guys’ lives, for what goes on in “No Exit.” She is starting to be a person.
Jo glances behind her into that blurry blue, looking at her mother, behind the bar, washing glasses.
There’s a lot of things going on here. Jo has a crush on Dean, and who can blame her. She plays it cool, though, like the Tough Chick that she is. He has acknowledged that in better circumstances he’d be hitting on her left and right, so, you know, there’s that between them. Having a confession like that be out in the open can relax a mood a little bit. But there’s more. There’s the whisper of the Winchester family tragedy, swirling around that bar, holed up in Sam and Dean’s brains, not shared with anyone. Jo is sensing it. She’s got her own losses to deal with, her own unfinished business. She and Dean are a lot alike. The bickering about REO Speedwagon is flirtation but it also has a sibling-ish quality that will continue to unfold, especially in the next episode.
It’s a strange and fun dynamic, and I love that it went the way it did. I have friendships like this one. Where sexual attraction is acknowledged but in a fun way and you’d never do anything about it because Reasons. I am grateful that the folks at Supernatural didn’t try to make the show a “monster a week PLUS a romance a week” kind of show. It could have gone that way. But the hook-ups in Supernatural are few and far between (at least the ones we see. I always assume that Dean is hooking up in between episodes, that’s a given, but Sam? He lives like a monk. I’m actually concerned.) Women remain a rarity.
Jo, having established her mother is otherwise-occupied, goes straight for her question, which was evident on her face earlier when she was eavesdropping. “Your mom died in a nursery fire, right?” As always, when the word “your mom” or anything in that realm comes out of someone else’s mouth, even Sam’s, Dean has a small explosion of feeling. It’s a small soft assault, his loss has not been incorporated, he cannot hear it mentioned without experiencing it on some tiny level all over again. Ackles tracks that shit. It’s extremely consistent.
Jo knows she’s walking into an extremely grumpy atmosphere when she decides to talk to Dean. She’s ready. He’s kind, not as rude as he would be to Ellen (who gets under his skin in a way he can’t control) but does ward her off – “This is a family thing.”
“I could help,” says Jo, who has had it with play-shooting at pretend-deer.
“I’m sure you could,” says Dean, “but we gotta handle this one ourselves.”
He’s nice about it. And then, with that open-ness he has to sexual possibility and flirting, says, “Besides, if I ran off with you, I think your mother might kill me.” Ellen hears the word “mother” and glances over, giving Dean a confused look. He smiles at her, like, “Heyyyy … what’s up.” It’s all so revealing! He doesn’t even care that Jo, the purty little lady, is SEEING all of this spectacle. And this, my friends, is why he is such a posse-magnet. Forget the baby greens and the freckles. It’s that openness, that lack of fear to just LIVE in that space, that possibility, with humor and acknowledgement, that makes women feel safe. This guy is, in military terms, “a friendly.” Jo laughs at what she’s seeing on Dean’s face and says, “You’re afraid of my mother?” Dean nods, still smiling like a lunatic for Ellen’s benefit, “I think so,” and Jo starts laughing.
What is that, a 10-line exchange? Look at how much there is in it. Plus, beautifully filmed, with darkness all around their big gigantic heads.
Sam races into the frame, telling Dean they have a match and it’s time to go. There’s a nice little good-bye moment with Jo, and the boys exit, leaving Jo alone and a little bit sad-faced. Think of the hard work she has been putting into gathering evidence for the hunt that will take up the next episode. Think of how she has been WORKING that case, hiding it from her mother, wanting to go to Philadelphia immediately and get started. Dammit, she’s done some good leg-work, she wants to get in there. The little sad-faced closeup of her that ends the scene could be read as “Boo-hoo I have a crush on Dean” but I don’t see it that way at all. I see it as a young woman, stuck in a job where her mother is her boss, and she’s feeling hamstrung about her own future. Dean and Sam are friendly (unlike the other hunters at the bar, who either hit on her or completely ignore her), and are busy working cases. She could “come with.”
Kevin Cronin’s crooning carry us into the Impala, driving off towards Guthrie, Oklahoma. Dean is now singing “Can’t Fight This Feeling” with some gusto, and I am dying laughing. It goes on for some time and Dean is very into it, Sam not saying anything, but wondering … What the hell, Dean. It’s a precursor of the mind-control that will overtake Dean later in the episode. Dean is susceptible to outside influence.
Sam, reading with a flashlight, looks over the printouts provided by Ash. There’s Andrew Gallagher’s Oklahoma license. Gallgher was born in 1983, just like Sam. “Also lost his mother in a nursery fire 6 months later … also like me.” Dean listens. He doesn’t like this at ALL. “How did you even know to look for this guy?”
Sam, looking gloomy but focused, says, “Every premonition I’ve had, they’re not about the demon, they’re about the other kids the demon visited.”
Max Miller was killing people. Maybe Andrew Gallagher is too. Sam is connected with these psychos. Sam hates it and Dean hates it too. They want this Arc to GO AWAY. It is important, again (and I forget it sometimes) to factor in John’s whisper. It is there in Ackles’ behavior, and it will still be many episodes before Dean acknowledges it. He plays the hell out of it anyway. Sam is at least willing to consider there is a connection with these other kids, whatever that may say about him. Dean rushes in to say, “No, Max was a psycho … you’re not like that …” and etc.
There’s a long conversation where Dean grills Sam on what else he knows about Andrew Gallagher. The lights blur by outside the windows, it is like they are the only men alive. Andrew Gallagher was behind on a lot of bills but there are no “collection agency flags.” It appears that Andrew Gallagher was allowed to just not pay all of his bills. Something doesn’t sound right about that.
We then get a very artsy segue, not usually used in Supernatural: the camera moves down over the hood of the car, into the blinding white headlights, which then morphs into the inside of a white china coffee cup, filling with coffee.
2nd scene
The camera pulls back and up from the coffee cup into a weird diagonal shot from above the table, where we see the waitress, a young woman named Tracy (Chiara Zanni), filling the cups of coffee and talking to the two suited-up men in the foreground, saying that no, sorry, you’re not gonna get anything out of Andy because nobody ever does.
Sam and Dean, all bound up in their cheap suits, listen. Dean corrects her incorrect impression, throwing bullshit her way about being lawyers who represent Andrew’s “Aunt Lita,” who has left him some money in her will. As they sit and talk, a guy joins their table uninvited (and he has already crossed by in the background, predicting his omnipresent hovering-eavesdropping-creepazoid personality). This is Weber (played beautifully by Elias Toufexis), and he’s got a blunt baby-face reminiscent of James Cagney, with the same flat-affect in the eyes, covered up with lots of chatter. He is immediately buddy-buddy with Sam and Dean, calling Dean “bro,” saying “man” to the both of them, mistaking that kind of language for intimacy and it makes me cringe a little bit. It’s so well done by Toufexis. It’s such a clear “type.” I’m sure we all know guys like that. You can see Dean take in the spectacle, maybe wondering what it is he is sensing going on there. He’s extremely perceptive. Weber is like, “He got me backstage passes at Aerosmith, bro!” He loves having the inside scoop on Andy. But he was not invited into the conversation and there is some hint of that in how Tracy patiently reminds Weber that there are tables that need bussing. There’s history there.
Tracy, having gotten rid of Weber, tells the two “lawyers” at her table that Andy doesn’t work there anymore but he can be found on Orchard Street. “Just look for a van with a barbarian queen painted on the side.”
Come again?
“She’s riding a polar bear. Kind of hard to miss.”
3rd scene
Dean introduced himself as Nigel Tufnel in “Asylum”. Spinal Tap is probably a movie he knows by heart.
Suddenly, Spinal Tap’s “Stone Henge” overtakes the soundtrack, all as we get crazy close-ups of the artwork on Andrew’s van. Parked on some idyllic Main Street America.
Then we get a movie-star shot, of the Impala, and we see Dean through the little round side mirror, staring over at what, presumably, is the psychedelic van. It’s a monochromatic shot, all blacks and whites, and his face gleams out of it.
Dean says, “I’m sorry, I’m starting to like this guy. That van is sweet.” An alternate life, unfurled, before Dean. Imagine living in a van painted like that. How bad-ass would that be, thinks Dean. Then, we’re suddenly in the back seat of the Impala, Dean throwing a grin of appreciation over to Sam, who responds with a stone-cold unamused expression.
Beauty Lament Part Deux or Troix:
Look at this shot of Dean looking over at Sam.
We know the man is flesh and blood, we don’t need to see his flesh all warm and pink and … orange … to understand that. As a matter of fact, he’s better in the shadows. I’ve gone on about this ad nauseum but it’s only because such a scene today would be all primary colors, every bit of shadow siphoned out of it. The no-shadow-bright-color choice makes no sense stylistically (this is a horror show, not a Teen Beat cover shoot), and also makes no sense artistically, especially when the look was so strongly set up in these first seasons.
This shot of Dean was done with color film, but except for a soft glow of flesh-tones on his forehead, it’s mostly black and white. It’s a great and stylish look. He looks great, his eyes pop, the car looks awesome and fierce. There are still well-constructed shots in Supernatural, and there is still beauty to be had, but not like this.
Or this.
These guys are not primary color guys. They are nocturnal. They are pale and unaccustomed to sunlight. They look way too vulnerable in the daylight, and the show is starting to have fun exploring that. But we need those shadows, man.
Dean is trying to take a jokey tone, mainly to counter-act his own anxiety about Sam’s visions, as well as a sense that anyone who owns that cool a van is probably not a killer. Sam is pissed off about basically everything. He’s freaked about the visions, and the comment from the demon, and he’s scared of what he might find once he finds Andrew Gallagher. What if Andrew is another monster like Max. That means he’s connected to them. The demon said so. His visions have not been wrong yet. And it’s frustrating for him to feel Dean’s resistance to that. “We don’t know what Andrew Gallagher is yet,” says Dean.
It’s a good fight. What Sam is saying is that he is somehow connected to these other “kids,” and Dean re-iterates, “You’re not a murderer, Sam, you don’t have it in your bones.”
Well, now isn’t that a fine-line distinction. The episode will re-visit it at the end. Sam is not interested in kidding himself or ignoring the fact that “Last time I checked, I kill all sorts of things.”
“Those things deserved it. There’s a difference.”
It’s that moral quandary that will continue to grow as Sam’s visions draw him further and further along. It’s a moral quandary that is at the heart of the show, in many ways. Your job IS you. There is no separation. Dean and Sam are still young here, but think of what the job has done to them by Season 9, how different they are, how much more battered and bruised. By that point, they’ve done enough sketchy stuff that they have scorched their own high ground. And the high ground is already tenuous here.
You can see that in the big movie-star tormented troubled closeup of Dean that follows, as he turns away and looks out the window.
Sam is at the center of “Simon Said” but Dean’s reactions to it are an important part of helping the story land. We see there that Dean knows what he is saying is probably bullshit.
Spinal Tap blares again when Sam sees Andrew emerge from a doorway across the street. Dean and Sam watch the eloquent pantomime that follows, sharing quizzical glances before looking back, as if hypnotized. Gabriel Tigerman is so great. First of all, he is wearing a long silk robe with some kind of decoration on the back, maybe a dragon, and it’s broad daylight and he is completely unconcerned that he is basically strolling down the street in sleepy-time wear. He glances up at a second-story window, and there, like Rapunzel, is a happy blonde, long leg exposed, as she waves goodbye to her friendly grubby hookup. He waves back. Impressive. Smile on his face, he saunters on down the street, and then says Hi to some guy who approaches, and it is clear from the interaction that Andrew says, “Hey, man, can I have your coffee?”
And without a word of protest, or even betraying a reaction that it’s a weird request, the guy hands it over. Big smile, Andrew’s like, “Thanks!” and continues on his way under a beautiful ominous grey sky. There on the corner, he sees the Doc, from the teaser, and they greet one another happily, shaking hands, the whole nine yards.
Sam recognizes Doc from the vision. Dean and Sam split up, Sam following Doc, and Dean tailing Andy.
Look at this shot.
Showoffs.
Anne of Green Gables waits, Impala engine idling, watching the Barbarian Queen rev up across the street.
Meanwhile, Sam falls in behind Doc.
The Barbarian Queen gallops away with the Impala in hot pursuit (and, side note, I love it when you can tell it is obviously Ackles driving. They use a lot of doubles for the scenes where the Impala is seen from a distance or whatever. But here, it’s him peeling out. Like Gary Cooper said, about why he loved to do Westerns, “It’s real. You can’t FAKE riding a horse.” I like anything that grounds us in reality.)
We leave Sam stalking the Doc, and pick up with Andrew and Dean. Dean is basically tail-gaiting by now, and please notice Andy’s license plate.
They reach a dead-end and Andrew stops the van. Andrew emerges with a friendly open smile to the man who has been following him in the scary car, and approaches, all as Dean grabs for his silver gun. Dean seems strangely … indifferent … to the approach from a probable monster. That impression grows stronger as Andrew leans his head in the driver’s side, something that would normally get a ton of pushback from Dean, especially since Andrew is resting his hands on the top of the car, and he’s all up in Dean’s grille. But Andrew assumes the Alpha role and Dean goes so Beta that he becomes practically invisible.
Andrew greets Dean, “Hey!” And Dean says, “Hey hey” in response, and it’s so awkward and jovial the way he says it. Something in him, far deep, doesn’t like how close Andrew is, or how Andrew is clutching on the door and leaning in at him. If he were in his right mind he’d lash out or take control of the interaction. Meanwhile, Andrew raves about Dean’s car. “Impala’s best year, if you ask me! This is a serious classic!”
It’s disarmingly enthusiastic. Compliment Dean’s car, or have KNOWLEDGE about Dean’s car, and Dean is putty in your hands.
Dean, all smiles, admits proudly, “I just rebuilt her too. Can’t let a car like this one go.” Andrew leans in and whacks Dean on the arm, saying, “Damn straight!”
There is so much that is WRONG about the interaction! The best part of how Ackles plays it (as well as in the following scene where he blurts out the truth to Andrew) is that he is playing both levels: the level where he is completely under mind-control and cannot stop himself, and the level where panic from his conscious mind is screaming at him that this is all wrong. It reminds me of Jim Carrey’s increasingly bizarre antics in Liar Liar, as the truth REFUSES to stay hidden, as he twists himself into pretzels trying to hold it all back.
Dean is definitely off his game if he allows someone to whack him around like Andrew does. Dean does NOT do casual touch. Even his girlfriends probably have to tiptoe around him before hugging him. And never hug him from behind with no warning. But he submits here! Sure, whack me on the arm, no problem, bro!
Andrew, in love with the car, leans in at Dean and asks, “Can I have it?”
Dean replies, good-naturedly, “Sure, man!” and gets out of the damn car, leaving the keys in it, watching as Andrew takes his spot at the wheel. Dean closes the door, saying stuff like, “There you go!”, and Andrew is grateful saying, “Thanks” as he drives off, leaving Dean standing alone and lonely in the middle of the street. (Watch Ackles’ hands in the long shot as he stands back to let Andrew get in the car. Those are alarmed hands, they go from clenched-up fists into flared splayed-out fingers, the only outer sign from within that this whole thing is totally wrong. How does one make one’s fingers terrified? That’s how. Yet another example of Ackles’ intuitive brilliance with physical stuff, behavior that will read in a long shot.)
There is nothing right about this picture.
Meanwhile, Doc has now answered his phone from beneath the clock tower. Sam hovers behind, gangly, looking around wildly, trying to come up with a plan. He sees the bus go by and leaps across the street ahead of it, into the hardware store. Sam, in full view, pulls the fire alarm by the door and then exits, standing on the front steps, watching as Doc, at the bottom, hears the alarm and, confused, turns away from his mission. Sam is ssuch an outlaw that he has no fear of anyone running out and saying, “HEY. DID YOU PULL THAT ALARM? WE JUST SAW YOU DO IT.” Please. It’s so very firmly and casually bad-ass. Sam looks off after Doc, and then, like something out of a bad dream, sees the Impala approaching down the road. There is Andrew, driving Dean’s car, talking into his cell phone, like he’s a movie mogul. Sam is dumb-struck.
Doc, now across the street, answers his phone which has rung again. He listens. His face is blank.
At the very same moment, Sam has dialed Dean, who is now standing aimlessly beside the Barbarian Queen, all gangly himself, pacing, arms every which way, confused and pissed and violated, “Andy asked me for the car and I just let him take it.” “WHAT?” “He full-on Obi Wanned me! It’s mind control, man!”
Dean turns names into verbs. He “Swayze-d” the glass. He has been “Obi Wanned.” (These aren’t the droids you’re looking for …)
Meanwhile, Doc steps into the street and gets hit by a bus, hurtling by at way too fast a speed for a residential area. Sam sees it all. Screams fill the air.
“Simon Said” has a somewhat silly heart (and Supernatural is GREAT at silly, one of the things that makes it stand out so beautifully – I like it best when it’s loose and silly), but one of its serious aspects is its complicated and in-depth presentation of the idea of fate, destiny, and free will. How do these things interact? How do they play out? If you avert one fate, will another one come screaming down the pike? Is there no escape? These questions impacts all of the characters we see. Doc. Andrew. Weber. Sam. Dean. Sam stopped Doc from slaughtering Dennis and himself in the hardware store, and yet, 5 seconds later, he died anyway. You shouldn’t mess with Fate because it always gets its own way in the end. This concept is even scarier when it concerns your personality, how you are made. What if it is just the way you are? Like being born left-handed or colorblind? Sam is starting to get that picture, Andrew has already full-on accepted it, Dean is Anti-Destiny, life is all about choices. We’ll see how THAT all plays out.
It’s rich rich territory, it’s still being explored.
4th scene
Shot from low to the ground, we see Doc lying on the sidewalk, an ambulance at the curb, EMTs covering him up, the camera moving over Doc to Sam and Dean, nearby, squatting down, looking on. Dean has regained his bearings somewhat after being Obi Wanned, but now Sam is crushed. Dean has that patient wait-what’s-happening-with-Sammy-now alertness that is so much a part of Ackles’ sensitivity to his role, and to the relationship.
Sam feels guilty. “I should have stayed with him …” He thought Doc was “past” it but whatever was working on him was determined to get the job done. It’s awful. Why would this kindly gentleman have to die anyway? Sam is trying to wring his hands but he can’t, because of his cast. His hands, though, are restless, betraying his own emotional state. Dean can’t help.
5th scene
Andy walks into the dark and moody coffee shop, and he is actually wringing his hands as well. As he passes by Weber, Weber calls out joyfully, holding up his hand, “WHATTUP, DAWG.” Weber. You’re trying too hard. Andrew shuffles by, leaving Weber standing there with his hand up, high-five thwarted. Tracy, working at the waitress station, sees Andy approach and her energy with him is kind, almost motherly. It’s clear that they once dated, from the hints she gave to Sam and Dean, and that something went down between them. But whatever it was wasn’t so toxic that their bond was destroyed. (I dated a guy like Andrew once. I recognize her vibe with Andrew from my experience with that guy, beautiful, smart, doomed.) She sees his emotional state and is concerned, open to him, sweet. Andrew says, shaking, “Dr. Jennings … died.” She is shocked and sorry, very gentle with Andrew, understanding his sensitivity. He says he didn’t know what to do, he just wanted to see her. She reaches out and takes his hands, saying, “I missed you.”
They are in their own little world, kind and caring. There are dark closeups of each of them, very close, with the head of the other person in the scene taking up half the screen, connecting them. She says, the thought occurring to her for the first time, “Some guys were here this morning looking for you.”
I am no forensic psychologist but Andrew seems palpably innocent to me. It’s a very graceful red herring. I don’t get the sense that the actor is playing Andrew in a way that is meant to “trick” us, in other words. Sketchy illegal stuff notwithstanding, he does not seem like a murderer. It’s a real strength of the episode.
6th scene
The first shot here of the scene is super-fun, once you’re looking for that kind of detail. The camera appears to be inside the Impala, but it is not, it is standing on the street outside it. Sam and Dean approach from across the street, Dean saying, “Thank GOD,” at the first sight of the car, and he reaches the car, clutching the side of the door like it’s his long-lost wife, peering into the car’s interior, hungrily, anxiously, looking for anything that is messed up. Dean says, “Baby, I’ll never leave you again,” and suddenly, whoosh, the camera is moving, swooping around the back of the Impala, all the way around to the driver’s side, and pushing in on our guys, Sam standing at the hood, Dean standing by the door. Watch that camera swoop!
Dean is relieved and says, “At least he left the keys in it,” and Sam, sounding almost murderous, says, “Yeah. Real Samaritan this guy.”
Dean has been Obi-Wanned by a guy in a silk robe with a cool van. Dean seems strangely unperturbed by that fact. He was more worried about his car being touched by someone other than him. But now he has the Impala back, and they have been provided with some good Intel about how Andy might be operating. Dean seems pretty cut-and-dry, all things considered.
Sam’s comment, though, shows he’s taking it all extremely personally. You would think Dean might be the one to go that route, since he was just co-opted mentally AND handed over his car. I love that Dean is not in a personal rage about his boundaries being so completely compromised. He’s over it already. He got the Impala back. So let’s work the case. Really, Dean? No anger about being taken over like that? It’s funny to me, and very revealing. Equally as revealing is Sam seething about Andrew, not giving Andrew Brownie points for leaving the keys in the car. Sam needs to label Andrew as evil in order to dissociate himself ENTIRELY. He is NOT like me.
Dean’s putting it all together: Andrew seems to use verbal commands to get people to do things. That’s how it worked on him. Sam is still upset about Doc, and says, “Andy must have called Doc …” and suddenly Dean withdraws a little bit. Gently. Something isn’t right and he puts on the brakes.
“I don’t know … I just don’t know if he’s our guy.”
Dean is usually so gung-ho. Sam calls him on it. “You had O.J. convicted before he even got out of his white Bronco …” (which, incidentally, makes Dean smart). Dean goes on his gut feelings. Sometimes it leads him astray, sometimes it makes him vulnerable, sometimes it makes him right. He sticks to that, saying, “I just don’t think he’s the stone-cold killer type. And O.J. was guilty, by the way.”
O.J. went on his White Bronco spree in 1994 when Sam was 9 years old which would make Dean 13 at the time. The image of Dean, 13 years old, watching the news footage with Sam, as they sat eating the last of the Cheetos in some dumpy motel while Dad was out hunting, Dean saying to his brother, “Oh man, that is one guilty mo-fo.” is extremely pleasing to me.
It’s a mild conflict. It will get more intense as the episode continues, but right now, Dean is stating his gut-feeling and Sam is pushing back. That kind of thing makes for good team-work in any investigative situation. Whatever the case may be, they need to track Andy down. How to do that. Dean lights up. His freckles blaze in the noonday sun. He has an idea.
7th scene
I wish we had had a shot of Dean driving that van back to town. You think he might have inspected what the hell was going on inside it, but maybe he was too disoriented. We are inside the back of the van when Dean picks the lock and opens the doors: We pan past a silver disco ball, as sexy disco music starts playing. There is a psychedelic tiger mural on the wall, there are colored-bead curtains, rugs placed as a bed. Dean is impressed. He thinks it’s fanTASTIC. Sam is not impressed. He starts picking through a pile of books. Dean, meanwhile, rhapsodizes about the whole thing, trying to convince Sam that anyone who has chosen to decorate in this way could not be a serial killer. But really what’s going on is Dean thinking, “This is fucking COOL and I want to have a sleep-over in this truck because it is RAD.”
Dean is lost in contemplation of the tiger. Murmurs to himself, “I like the tiger.” And I’m cracking up.
Sam says, “Hegel? Kant? Wittgenstein? Pretty heavy reading, Dean.”
And what does that prove, Sam? I have Mein Kampf on my shelves. Whaddya say to THAT? The point is that Andy is not only smart, but smart enough to read some of the densest most challenging psychological/moral/ethical writers who have ever put pen to paper.
Dean sees another object and reaches for it. It is a gigantic glass bong. “Moby Dick’s bong,” Dean announces approvingly.
Aaaand scene!
8th scene
Dean and Sam sit in the Impala, staking out the van, Dean with his mouth full, throwing the foil into the backseat with disgust, saying, “You know. One day I’d love to just sit down and eat something that I don’t have to microwave at a mini-mart.” It’s a funny line and he says it funny (I especially like the little sniff he gives afterwards), grumpy and also longing at the same time. Dean is not one for longing for other realities. His longing for stuff is buried deep, way deep. We see the depth of that in “What Is and What Should Never Be” later in the season. To walk around wishing that things were different is just bad juju for a guy like Dean and he doesn’t indulge in it often. But here he does, briefly. I like it. It adds texture, layers, to the character who so often seems to sashay through the shit of his life as though it’s a screwball comedy or Burlesque act with feathers and curtains. Also it’s great because Sam doesn’t even respond.
Sam is wondering out loud why would Andy kill Doc Jennings?
Dean, participating in the investigation, continuing to insist on his own gut-feeling, says, “If it is Andy.”
Sam is frustrated with the entire dynamic: There should be no argument about whether or not Andy has mind-control powers because he mind-controlled DEAN. Of COURSE it’s Andy doing the killing. Dean holds his ground. They are interrupted by a hand slapping down on the top of the car, scaring them both half to death. They don’t scare easily.
There stands Andy, at the passenger side. Hands, once again, all over the Impala.
Now comes some Ackles schtick. The second Andy appears, you see Dean get startled, and then kind of melt. Sam, on the other hand, keeps his cool. Dean is susceptible. He’s already been mind-controlled by the guy. And who knows, maybe he found it a little bit pleasant. Handing over the wheel to someone else for 10 minutes. I don’t know. But the second Andy appears, you see Dean succumb. It’s not even a question. Andy is angry, demanding to know who they are and why they are following him. Sam throws the bullshit at him about being lawyers, and Andy interrupts: “TELL THE TRUTH.”
Which is when Dean blurts out, “We hunt demons.”
Sam is shocked. Andy is shocked too. Dean can’t stop himself and then begins a rambling panicked monologue about how Sam is his brother and Sam “thinks you’re a murderer” but Dean isn’t so sure, and now he’s getting afraid because maybe Sam is right … and as he speaks, a smile gleams tightly on his face, a smile of anxiety and fear, making him look absolutely insane. He turns everything into one sentence, the way a little kid does, connecting things with “and” or a little hitching breath, and he has completely lost control of himself. And the best part of the schtick is that he knows he has lost control. You can see it flaring manically in his eyes. Phone call for Jim Carrey again.
Dean continues babbling. He would keep going forever, it is a runaway train, and finally Andy says, “Leave me alone”, walking away. Dean collapses, his boundaries back, the mind-control effect leaving him exhausted. It’s a great piece of bizarre physical acting.
Even with the cast on his arm, Sam looks enormous and incredibly threatening as he goes after Andy. Andy is panicked, shouting, “Leave me alone,” hoping his mind-control echo will shut down Gigantor In Flannel.
But Sam keeps coming, holding out his arms, taunting Andy, “It doesn’t seem to work on me, Andy.”
Sam, looming in the frame, with Dean a little blur in the background, tells Andy that he knows: You can do things with your mind, can’t you, Andy. It started a little over a year ago, right?
It’s midday. The sun beats down, creating all these dramatic shadows, and the Impala gleams in the background, flaring up into Sam’s face. It’s either a deliberate choice or one of those “happy accidents” (coined by Arthur Penn) that happens onset and is then exploited and used by the creative team. With that flare of light, Sam’s next vision is already approaching. There it is, announcing its presence.
We get no insert close-ups of Dean to suggest what he might be feeling listening to all this. It’s left up to us to guess, a nice detail of the scene, leaving us a bit adrift without outside perspective. Sam demands of Andy, “Why did you tell the doctor to walk in front of a bus?”
At this moment the screen shivers to white, Sam wincing in pain as the vision breaks over his head. A woman. Something bursting into flames. Dean has moved closer, but he’s broken up and blurred, the screen fractured. We’re totally in Sam’s experience now.
Suddenly, the vision takes over, clarifies itself. This particular vision is more horrifying to me than the Doc one. There’s something about the way the woman (Rachel Wainwright) immolates herself, the matter-of-fact quality of her behavior, the growing horror from the gas station attendant as he realizes what she is about to do, her almost comforting gesture to him before she lights herself on fire … it’s terrible and extremely well done.
Sam, writhing in pain, has collapsed, and it is at that moment, right on cue, that fire trucks scream by on the nearby street, Sam and Dean both getting the spidey-sense that it is connected to the vision. I think it’s a stretch, but whatever, Supernatural, sure, I’ll play. Dean races off to follow the fire truck, and Sam “keeps an eye” on “this sonofabitch”, meaning Andy, who is upset, baffled, stoned, and scared.
Chaos at the gas station. Firemen, fire trucks, Dean leaning against the gas station, calling Sam, with the mayhem in the background. “What’s up with your visions, man, this wasn’t even a head start.” Sam can’t explain it. He can’t control what’s happening. In case we missed the memo, Dean says to Sam, “We were with Andy the whole time. It’s gotta be someone else.”
Let us stop for a moment to revel in the simple yet eloquent beauty of this shot, and how it’s set up. The face is huge, and on that slight angle the show favors, with the background blurred out to an almost poetic level in the background, all greys and blacks. Those two blurry black letters look like “JA” to me. I’m just saying. It’s a completely natural look. No tricks. Stubble, freckles, whites and greys popping the face out at us, silver ring, nothing to distract, everything in balance. This shot lasts for one second, but that’s the thing with slowing the show down. You realize again and again how beautifully it is put together.
Sam and Andy, seen through a chain-link fence: Another new look for the show is the leaf-dappled look, we don’t get a lot of that, and it’s thoughtfully done here. They are at a dead-end with random parked vehicles around them, and trees above. It’s a calmed-down moment of recognition between the two freaked-out “freaks”.
It is interesting to consider the differences between Max and Andy. Andy, from an outside perspective, leads a chaotic small life. He has no home address. He grifts people. He drifts about. He has to hustle coffee from other people. And yet he seems to have found a form for his life that suits him. The mind-control thing has helped. It greases the wheels. He is not operating from a sense of revenge or payback, the way Max was, who has used his powers to murder his family. Andy has escaped that. Sam, too, so far has escaped that. Maybe Andy is hopeful news. Maybe the powers given to them for some unknown reason can be benign in nature. Maybe it IS up to “us” which way it goes.
Sam is such a moral guy, though, concerned about ethics, wanting to make things right, a great quality but an Achilles heel. He is willing to consider the ambiguities of his position, something Dean is not willing to do, at least as far as Sam’s visions are concerned. Dean studiously keeps his distance from the visions, although he has come to grudgingly accept that they exist. But deeper than that, Dean will not go. It’s too threatening and brings back Dad’s whisper in ways that probably keep Dean up at night.
But here Sam has a moment or two to chat with another “psychic kid,” who is NOT a psycho like Max was. Andy is doing some sketchy stuff with his mind control, but he’s ultimately harmless. Sam doesn’t get it: Andy could “have anything” and he still “lives in a van.” Why? Andy is genuinely confused by Sam’s confusion, and watch Tigerman play that. He finds the right note for it. He’s not commenting on the character of Andrew or condescending to the character, making him some sort of know-nothing idiot savant.
Sam seems to find some comfort in the conversation. “Maybe there’s hope for both of us,” he says, ruefully, as the Impala comes chugging up the dead-end like a snorting dragon of doom.
Since the next scene is about exposition, not inherently interesting, let’s take a second to appreciate the stark look they’ve achieved.
It’s reminiscent of the blasted-open sunlit look of “Everybody Loves a Clown,” but with some subtle differences. Dean’s face is blasted by the sun and yet behind him is total blackness. The same is true for Andy. Sam’s forehead casts a shadow that completely shades his eyes. Yes, mid-day is bright but it doesn’t really look like THIS. It’s color-corrected, bleached of warmth, contrasts highlighted, colors drained. In Season 8 or 9, we’d be treated to bright green leaves in the background and pretty orange-tinted faces, choices that make zero sense considering the operatic emotions and the horror movie genre. I will continue to point it out. Not to be a bitch but because Beauty is there to be reveled in. To paraphrase Casablanca, at least we have Season 1 through Season 6! Nobody can take it away from us!
The clues point to Holly being Andy’s birth mother but, as Dean says, they’re in sealed records locked up in the county clerk’s office.
“Well, screw that,” says Andy, showing his emotional kinship with both Winchesters.
9th scene
Dean and Sam are busy pulling out boxes of files in the dark cluttered archive office, as the security guard worry-warts on the side. He shouldn’t have let them in there, it’s not allowed … Andy leads the security guard out of the room, reassuring him it will all be fine, and there’s a spooky little mind-control echo on his voice. You know. Because mind-control announces itself via echo. As a beautiful coda, once the guard submits totally and starts off, Andy murmurs, having fun with his own gift, making fun of it, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for …”
And forget it, Dean is in love. It’s so rare to see him find something funny, or charming, or surprising … something that pleases him, I mean. He’s so armored-up against bad stuff that the good stuff sometimes can’t find a way in either. But for whatever reason, perhaps because he is so busy consciously counter-acting Sam’s worry and anxiety in his role as comforting Big Brother, he is pretty chilled out in “Simon Said.” He likes Andy. He likes Andy’s disco ball and tiger mural. He’s jealous that Andy got laid yesterday. And now Andy is mind-controlling a security guard using a line from Star Wars? In order to help out the Winchester brothers? Dean is in heaven.
Sam huddles over the records, and confirms that Holly Beckett was Andy’s birth mother.
Andy’s says, dazed: “Does anybody have a Vicodin?” I would be very surprised if Dean would answer “No” to that hypothetical.
Andy is afraid of what it all means, he didn’t murder anyone, he swears, he needs these male models to know! Dean, lit-up in blue from the one light source, surrounded by black, says, “We believe you.”
It’s a movie poster, presented like it’s no big deal, as it isn’t in the context of Supernatural, where every other shot has startling Beauty thrown into the mix, the whole show pulsing with it. It’s insane.
Sam glances up at Dean’s tone. Investigators must beware of confirmation bias. In these repeated disagreements (not really arguments), Sam and Dean challenge the confirmation bias of the other. It’s what a good investigative team should do.
Sam has found out more. Holly Beckett gave birth to twins.
Andy leans back, pondering out loud, “I have an evil twin …” and I am in love with that line and with Andy. He’s trying to wrap his mind around having an evil twin. The shadows are thick, and it takes a while to even perceive that Dean is standing over at the copy machine.
Sam keeps reading out loud from the file, and Dean, in tune with Andy’s emotions, almost as though Andy is a child, says, “How ya doin’ Andy. You still with us?” It’s caring.
There’s one fluorescent light in the background. It appears to be the only light source except for the lamp on the desk. You get some great effects. Every shot in this small sequence is beautiful.
The twin’s name is “Anson Weems” (no wonder the dude changed it) and Dean has already ordered a picture to be sent over from the local DMV. Out it comes, Dean looks, and calmly hands it over to Andy, saying, “Hate to kick you while you’re freaked …”
10th scene
Instead of showing us the license photo, we cut to a shot of WHATTUP DAWG Weber in the cafe, alone with Tracy, with the same pitch-black background and one overhead light structure.
He’s a creep, played creepily by the actor, a guy who has such rage in him but thinks he needs to cover it up by being “whattup dawg” about life, but nobody buys it. (Note to guys like this: Nobody ever does.) From the beginning, Tracy appears to treat him with a mixture of condescension and weariness. She’s sick of him lurking around in the corners. Here, he goes personal, saying to her, “Hey, Trace?” Nicknames can be forced intimacy, one of the sure signs of a predator (“He’s the only one who gets to call me Sammy,” Sam to Gordon).
Weber says, “I’ve seen you guys together. It seems like there’s still something there … ” He tries to sound casual. He fails. She’s busy cleaning glasses, but her posture has stiffened. There’s something about how his head moves, the way he seems not at home in his own body, overcompensating for that by acting all loose and open… it’s a very nice performance. He asks “Trace” if she and Andy were ever serious, and she says no, they weren’t. Weber calls in his mind-control voice-echo chip.
11th scene
The Impala roars through the night, Andy sitting in the back seat, hunching himself over the front seat, peeking in between the brothers. It’s endearing. People rarely sit in that back seat. There’s more lying down that goes on in that back seat than anything else, I’m wagering. Andy is a homeless mess in many ways, but he’s now part of the Winchester duo, somehow woven into their relationship and that so rarely happens it’s pleasing to witness.
It took a while (well, 2 or 3 scenes), but it’s there now. It is going to carry us through the rest of the episode, to those scenes on the bridge (nighttime and daytime). “Simon Said,” and its emotional/thematic resonance, connecting it to the larger Arc, depends on Andy. The same thing happened in “Nightmare.” It’s one of those guest spots that actors dream about, the ones that are not purely plot-driven, but theme-driven.
Andy tells Sam and Dean that Weber showed up in his life only 8 months ago, “acting like he’s my best friend in the world.” Dean is confused, eyes on the road. The lighting is beautiful, darkness then light, darkness then light … these car scenes are poetry on stationary wheels, I tell ya. Why didn’t Weber just come out and say he was Andy’s brother? What the hell? Meanwhile, Sam has started wincing, quietly, and then with increasing urgency.
In Sam’s vision now, we see Tracy exit a car into the night, wearing only a white slip. When the real thing goes down, her dress is still on, and so Sam’s vision takes us a little bit further along than we actually get in the episode. The threat of rape hangs over the interaction with Weber, and either it’s a continuity glitch or it’s one of the ways that the vision gets garbled through Sam’s brain. (The vision of Doc is not one-to-one identical either.)
Suddenly we see Tracy standing on a railing with an absolutely dizzying shot of the river below. I’m no fan of heights. These scenes give me vertigo. Well-done, green-screen team.
Then comes an enormous panning shot, moving up over a dam, water running down the side, the camera going up and up and up and up, going up for what feels like forever, until we see Tracy, tiny, standing on that railing, high up in the sky, arms out.
She jumps. We see the body fall against that gigantic man-made background.
Reminiscent of this.
Back in reality, Dean is now yelling, “SAM!”, pulling the car over. Sam opens the door, looking to escape, make it stop, clutching at his head, hunched over. As always, Padalecki plays these visions as a painful brain-storm, almost coming at him from the outside, an injury like any other, and yet rising up from within him. It’s well-conceived and well-played. As Dean runs around to the passenger side to grab onto Sam, who is now falling out of the side of the car, I love the brief glimpse we get of Andy in the backseat, so scared, looking at Sam, glancing at Dean, wanting to help, not knowing what to do.
12th scene
Weber’s chugging gas-guzzler (I love how new cars are such a rarity in the world of Supernatural that they practically don’t exist.) moves slowly out onto the dam that we saw in Sam’s vision. Weber is at the wheel, Tracy in the passenger seat.
Weber has reached out to touch her thigh and he says the worst thing I’ve ever heard, “I take my ladies here. They like it.”
“My LADIES?” Stop talking, dawg. Oh my God, stop.
And it’s a small thing, but Toufexis nods slightly when he says “They like it” and it’s one of those casual tiny moments of genius from good actors that I love. A little nod like that tells us so much about the character, and it’s also a “tell”, something the character is not completely aware of. Those are not easy lines to pull off. “I take my ladies here. They like it.” Really? But the small inward-looking nodding-to-himself (almost as though Weber is trying to convince himself) is beautiful. She is tense and scared and starts crying. He tells her to stop crying. She does.
Look at this shot.
It’s so simple. The screen is literally FILLED with their two heads. No space, no air. His blurry face looming like a monster rearing up behind her.
Almost comfortingly, Weber says, “I get what you see in him. He’s a genius. The books he reads? But he is MY family.”
All along, I was as confused as Andy was, as confused as Dean was in the car. Why would Weber come into Andy’s life and be so … weird? Is he socially inept? Or is it something more sinister. When he says “MY family” we feel the sinister underpinnings of Weber’s behavior, and it also, eerily, connects us to Dean, although that may very well be retrospect talking and should be ignored (or at least taken into account). Whichever way you look at it, Weber’s view of family is distorted.
“You can’t have him,” he says to Tracy, and he’s like a jealous lover.
I don’t know, kinda sorta like Dean faking an SOS text to Sam from Amelia. Retrospect, as I said. But that’s the beauty of the show and its multiple layered associations. The plot doubles back, and the connections multiply the more times you watch it. Sometimes shows simplify with repeat viewings. Supernatural doesn’t.
13th scene
Sam probably gasped out to Andy and Dean what he saw, and Andy said, “That must be at the Douchebag Dam just outside of town!” Knowing they don’t have any lead-time anymore with Sam’s horrible visions, Dean probably drove 90 miles an hour to get there in time. Silent and grim, the guys get out, and go to the back of the car to gather up their arsenal. The plan has been set and we the audience are left out of it. It’s almost over-the-top sometimes, the night-time effects they go for, with one light source through the trees, refracting and pouring down through the black on our guys, but still, I never get sick of it.
It makes my heart ache just looking at it. It’s so beautiful it almost makes me anxious. It’s not necessarily an easy or comfortable head-space. Beauty like this is more unstable than that.
Supernatural does not have a huge budget, and if there is one great lesson learned from these early seasons, it’s that you don’t need a huge budget to have a really good-looking show. You have to be innovative, and you also have to have a memory of “how they used to do it” before everything was digitized.
Sam and Dean have a quiet pow-wow as they go through the weapons, Sam saying to Dean that Dean should hang back. Dean, surprisingly, says “No argument there.” He’s been Obi-Wanned enough for one day. Incorporating Dean’s susceptibility into their planning is part of how they operate. It’s funny how often it comes up. I recently watched the “cursed object” episode with the ballet slippers, and it’s just totally accepted that Dean wants to put on those slippers and he should NOT touch them, and Sam takes a very stern tone with Dean, and Dean snaps out of it. It makes me laugh every time I see it because Sam isn’t being judgmental, he just realizes that Dean is open in a way that he sometimes isn’t. Dean knows it too.
Andy insists on coming with Sam. It’s non-negotiable. In his shlubby silk-robed way, he is as strong-willed as Sam and Dean.
Back in the Creep Car, Weber is making Tracy unbutton her dress and you can hear him breathing off-screen. It’s terrible. Then he says to her, “Slower …” This is the second scariest sexual behavior we’ve seen on the show, the first being John using Dean as bait in “Dead Man’s Blood”. In the comments section to “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things,” we started talking about the Women in Refrigerators trope that has been getting a lot of attention lately (you can go check out the conversation there). Putting women in sexual danger as a plot-point, or as a “device”, or as a way to motivate the male characters emotionally, is as old as Drama itself. There’s nothing new. The problem is the over-use of it currently by unimaginative directors who have not figured out how to create three-dimensional male characters who have emotional depth, and so, I know, let’s have his wife be raped/abducted, then he’ll get to cry! Yes, it’s a horribly reductive view of women, but it’s also terribly reductive of men, because men are then perceived as shallower than envelopes. If it is going to be used as a plot-point, it should be motivated and backed-up. However, sexual danger is a reality for women (and for Dean), and we shouldn’t expect art to present us with a Utopia where that shit isn’t going on. A creep like Weber, who feels ownership over his brother, will hate this woman who has his brother’s very real affection, and try to sully her and “own” her himself. It’s exactly what a loser like this would do, the first thing he would think of. Both actors play it straight, very real, very awful.
It’s very Two Gentlemen of Verona, with Weber being the despicable Proteus.
Weber says to her, “I want you to listen to me. When we’re done here … I want you to go over to the edge of the dam. Okay?” She nods okay. He’s very gentle, touching her face, saying, “You’re gonna think you can fly. And you’re just gonna step right off.”
As he told his other victims, he tells her: “I want you to tell yourself: Everything is okay.”
And this is when Sam crashes through the window of the car with the butt of his silver gun, punching Weber in the face.
So let’s talk about this scene. Things very quickly spiral out of control. It’s a hell of a sequence. There are four people on that bridge. Emotions run high in each one of them, both because of the situation at hand, and also because of what it might MEAN. Add to that the fact that two people on that bridge have mind-control abilities and you have a mess.
What is amazing about this final confrontation is that Sam and Dean are not involved in it at all. Sam is knocked out, and Dean has hung back in the shadows. With both Winchester brothers out of commission, the two OTHER brothers, the fun-house mirror replicas of the Winchesters, take the stage fully. They argue on the bridge. They fight about their abilities, they fight about their non-existent relationship, they fight about what Weber is doing with his gift. There’s a ton of plot that is given here, plot that explains Weber’s motivations throughout the episode (“Those people needed to die – they kept us apart!!”), as well as the revelation that “The Man with the Yellow Eyes” visited Weber in a dream, telling Weber about the big plans laid out for him. It’s a ton of talk, the entire episode handed over to two one-off characters. It’s pretty incredible, when you think about it. The show has done that on occasion (most recently with the Season 9 Ghostfacers episode – but even there, we have some backstory with the Ghostfacers, they are recurring characters.) Andy and Weber are ultimately fighting about what it means to be family, and what it means to be ‘special’ in this particular way, issues that are on Sam and Dean’s minds as well. But it’s set up subtly enough that you aren’t bashed over the head with the similarities (the way I felt was going on a little bit with the Ghostfacers ep. in Season 9, although I didn’t sneer at that episode the way I saw some other fans did – I thought there was good stuff in it). These similarities/reflections exist in the ether, in between the molecules, it is the symbolic landscape where the Winchesters live, interacting as they do with so many different kinds of people. The opportunities that the show has, to highlight the underlying conflict between the brothers, through these one-off characters … is many. Sometimes it’s awkwardly done, it’s too on-the-nose. Other times, like here, it’s emotional enough in its own right to stand on its own.
The chaos that ensues on the bridge involves Sam attacking Weber, duct-taping his mouth, and Andy hustling a weeping Tracy out of the car. Andy then tries to attack Weber, hysterical with rage, and Sam then has to handle Andy, pulling him off of Weber. Then, out of nowhere, Tracy, still being Obi-Wanned by the Duct-Taped-Dawg, picks up a nearby branch and bashes Sam on the back of the head. Sam falls like a stone. Andy is horrified and confused, screaming at Tracy, “STOP IT”, and there’s that mind-control echo again so consider how confused this poor young woman must be. Under orders from two people at the same time.
Tracy, left alone on her own conveyor belt of inevitability, walks over to the side of the bridge and gets up on the railing, as she was originally commanded to do.
The worst shot of the entire episode is right … about … here.
NOPE is all I have to say to THAT.
We have Andy begging Weber not to hurt her, and Weber finally revealing his cards, his end game. We see his true face. “Tracy’s garbage. They all are. We can push them, make them do whatever we want!”
Sweet (relatively) harmless Andy stares at his long-lost brother in incomprehension. And a small gesture from him I love: when he does speak, he says, “Are you really this stupid?” (and he seems to be really asking that question), and his arms are raised, in a sign of peace, but his hands, outstretched, are in a little curling-fingered claw – an almost-pleading gesture, like, “Man … really?” Every time I see that gesture, I like it. It’s very human.
Andy doesn’t understand why Weber wouldn’t just call him up and say, “Apparently we’re brothers. Let’s get together!” Weber says he has been wanting to tell Andy for so long, “bro,” but “he wouldn’t let me.” “Who??” “The man with the yellow eyes,” says Weber, as though the answer is obvious. Meanwhile, as if on cue, Sam wakes up from his comfy spot on the pavement.
Brother Fun-House Mirror
These are brothers who were separated at birth. Andy lost his adoptive mother. He has gone off the rails in many ways. But his ability came along and gave him the opportunity to make his life easier and to not deal with uncomfortable realities like debt collectors. When he was in a relationship with Tracy, he didn’t use mind-control on her. That was a line he wouldn’t cross. You could certainly argue over whether or not he gets Brownie points for that, and I think the show wants us to be on the fence about all of this. The point is that Andy has some consciousness of the moral responsibility of his ability. Weber has not had an easy time of it either but his “ability” has made it worse. He probably didn’t have a good personality to start with, but perhaps that is an unfair assumption. Whatever the case may be, his ability has turned him into a little despot, a creepy predator, a violent weirdo, who somehow thinks if he can remove everyone who came in between he and his brother, THEN they will be able to be close. Whatever might have been possible is destroyed before it even started.
You don’t have to reach too far to look for connections with the Winchesters. There’s a “there by the grace of God” thing going on here (as happened as well with Max), but there’s also a warning. Dean’s attachment to his brother is, yes, a holdover from his father’s training in childhood. But we all are taught things in childhood that we then either assimilate naturally until they become no big deal or we let go and find our own way. I was ordered to hold my brother’s hand every time we crossed the street – EVERY. TIME. – even if it was our little tree-lined cul de sac with no traffic – and so I did. Then, at some point, he was able to cross the street by himself and my role changed. Shallow example but you get my point. Some seem to see any criticism of Dean as unfair, but I don’t enjoy that kind of analysis, personally, it’s just not fun for me. I realize it’s fun for others. I’m not saying my way or the highway, it’s just that I don’t watch the show that way (or much of anything else in that way). I like conflict, drama, messes, and relationship. There are two protagonists in Supernatural: deeply flawed, messed-up, lovable (sometimes), trying-hard, tough guys, with flannel and freckles, and tears and humor, and so we get a blend, a mesh, conflict, we see things through the prism, or from opposite sides, things are turned inside out, examined. Dean is not a saint and his traumatic childhood doesn’t make him one either. (And Ackles, to his great credit, does not “protect” Dean – or himself as an actor – by making excuses for Dean or trying to plead Dean’s case to an audience. He lets Dean be a mess. He is not afraid of darker elements.) And by Season 8, Season 9, some of the shit he pulls looks a lot like what Weber has pulled. And eventually it becomes irrelevant that John trained him a certain way. Time to change that dance step, pal, if you want a relationship with your brother or with anyone else.
That’s what Season 9 was all about and it was painful and grim and lusciously self-indulgent. Forget the demon/angel tablets and lost grace and Metatron – all that really mattered in Season 9 was the crack-up between the brothers and Dean’s descent into the pit, his own habits of survival turning into a huge monster in its own right and swallowing him whole, and I know I’ve said it before, but here goes; I felt it was about time, long overdue, and there was a strange swooning catharsis for me in all of it, awful as much of it was. It was gorgeously played, beautifully perceptive, and made a ton of sense. It was, for me, anyway, a HUGE pay-off after seasons of wanting some kind of crack-up of that degree to come, feeling that it HAD to come, go that way, it was inevitable, right? This is probably my own Identification talking, so take it for what it’s worth. The warning is here, early on, in the character of Weber, about the possible end-game of Dean’s particular situation. The scene on the bridge could also be read as the Two Sides of Sam battling it out, the special ability’s positive manifestation duking it out with the evil manifestation of the same ability. But the dark twisty brother thing … the codependent thing … That’s what I’m present to now.
I talk a lot about Dean’s thing about wanting people to be in sync, his “Are we okay? Are we good?” thing. It’s a beautiful quality and it’s how he operates in relationship, you can see it with Lisa, you can see it with everyone. He’s extremely giving, he’s extremely in tune with other people’s emotional weather. But that same desire to be “in sync” can also manifest in wanting to control the actions of others. This is life as we all know it: the very thing that is our biggest strength is often our Achilles heel. Or the things that protected us when we were children start to actually HARM us when we’re adults. I’m not sure even Ben Edlund would have been aware of how deep this one little scene on the bridge could potentially go once the show reached 9 seasons, but considering Edlund’s writing – he writes for depth and he writes for ambiguity. Ambiguity means things continue. Once things are clear, everything ends, any playwright or writer can tell you that. This is especially true in a long-running television program like this one that depends on emotional suspense (rather than physical suspense). The emotional suspense of the Winchester brothers relationship is the ultimate hook. It should be everywhere, in every scene, and in the really good episodes, it is. Edlund plants seeds, he’s very good at that. He may not even know what the hell is supposed to grow from that seed, but he knows that it will flower into something. Maybe a rose bush, maybe belladonna (“the porn star?”), but whatever the case, Edlund is very good at creating that murky murky depth through which people can find associations, or, better yet, swim in ambiguity. At least that’s what I’m present to when I watch this scene and think about the brothers in Season 8 and Season 9, YEARS away. THAT’S good writing.
Brother Fun-House Mirror Over. For Now. It Will Return. Ad Nauseum. Exeunt.
Sam is starting to come to again, and then suddenly, we are with Dean, trotting through the patch of trees overlooking the dam, like the Ninja Assassin that he is. He is holding a scary-looking sniper’s rifle, complete with gun-sight and it is a thing of beauty, really. As Dean clicks the gun into position, crouching in the bushes, Weber on the dam senses something not right, glances up and way over in Dean’s direction.
Says quietly, “Bye bye …” and Dean, expressionless, puts the gun under his chin. He doesn’t even hesitate.
Digression on Immunity/Susceptibility. In the Words of Mae West: “Aw, You Can Be HAD.”
One of the ongoing motifs of the show is Sam’s immunity and Dean’s susceptibility. (Both of these qualities can also be inverted and reversed, as we will see. As Season 2 and 3 go on, it is going to be Sam’s susceptibility that takes center stage, but his susceptibility takes a different form than Dean’s – and Dean’s is also more constant, it’s practically an ingrained part of his personality.) Sam’s susceptibility has a physical basis, almost like he was born with FAS or something: he is drawn to the dark side, to Ruby, to demon blood, because it is in his blood. Dean’s susceptibility comes from his personality, from maneuvering his terrible childhood that destroyed any sense of agency or boundaries, and it is something he seems to be aware of and tries to work with as best he can (by wearing 3 layers at all times, for example). Dean is “get”-table.
The men who are perceived as “get”-table like that is a short list. One of Cary Grant’s earliest breaks was being cast as man-candy in a couple of Mae West films. She was the star, he was the boy-toy.
In She Done Him Wrong, Cary Grant plays an uptight police inspector investigating Mae West’s vaudeville theatre for corruption and lascivious behavior. He trades barbs with Mae West in the most famous scene, and she stands on the step above him. West was extremely short, Grant was extremely tall, and the positioning makes them eye to eye. She drools with lust in every line (it is how men treated Marilyn Monroe onscreen, it’s very strange, still, to see a man treated this way). This is the scene that has one of the most mis-quoted lines in cinematic history. Everyone thinks Mae West said, “Why don’t you come up and see me some time?” People will go their grave swearing they heard it that way. But in fact she says, “Why don’t you come up some time and see me?” He puts her off, and she starts up the stairs, gives him a voracious LOOK, and observes, “Aw, you can be had.”
It was strange and sexy and hot to have a woman talk to a man like that, and to have it be friendly as opposed to menacing. Mae West was not a femme fatale or a man-eater. She was a sexually experienced woman who knew how to take care of a man in the sack and understood her own sexytimes needs as well. To cast a 6 foot tall hunk as her scratching post … It is impossible, for example, to picture John Wayne in the same role. Sexy as Wayne could be, you would never say to him, “You could be had.” He very well might belt you across the mouth if you tried. But Cary Grant was penetrable, sexually ambiguous, more beautiful than any woman ever was, and somehow … soft. Not weak, mind you. But soft. This destabilizing and dazzling mix of qualities would end up being his stock-in-trade as a leading man, the greatest movie star in the world, and it showed up early, before he even became a star.
My point in that digression (and it reminds me that I compared Jensen Ackles to Cary Grant in the first post I wrote about Ackles) is to say that Dean Winchester, to quote Mae West, “can be had.” That’s the perception of him. He knows it, everyone else knows it. It’s awesome, it’s problematic, it works for him, it works against him.
Immunity/Susceptibility Digression Over.
We hear a gun-blast, meant to make us think that Dean went the way of Doc Jennings in the teaser, but no, Andy has swiped up Sam’s silver pistol and shot his evil twin in the back.
Brother killing brother. Cain and Abel. You do the math.
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I am so into the new out-in-the-sun look the show has embraced. They still futz with the colors so nothing’s too bright. Everyone looks pale and, frankly, anemic. I also worry about sun-block. But the shadows are stark, creating a vulnerability that counter-acts the tough fix-it vibe of the brothers. They look like mushrooms, huddled under a tree, alive, but vulnerable as hell. Andy is busy Obi-Wanning the investigating cops, saying to them, “He shot himself and you all saw it.” The three cops all nod like drones. “Yup.” “That’s what we saw.” “Uh-huh.”
Dean and Sam, waiting for Andy against the railing, have mixed feelings about watching the “ability” in action. We are given that impression from one line from Sam:
Sam: Look at him. He’s getting better at it.
That is some efficient scriptwriting, Edlund. I like your style.
Andy heads back over to Dean and Sam, but stops when he sees Tracy, seated in the ambulance, wrapped in a blanket. He smiles at her and, beautifully, she looks away. Good. I remember being afraid, in that way I sometimes get, that the show would make them have a little “I’m sorry” “It’s okay” conversation which would have completely wiped out all of the moral and ethical dilemmas that had been so carefully set up. No, it can’t be that easy! Oh, me, of little faith! We need to see the COST that Andy has paid. We need to see that his ability comes with a price, and the price Andy paid was the trust of a nice woman who truly cared for him. I don’t blame her. What the moment also says is that if you are blessed/cursed with an ability, use it wisely or don’t use it at all. There is a sad moment of Andy realizing what has happened, realizing that that friendship is over, and he is in that mood when he reaches Sam and Dean. He says to them, “I never used my mind thing on her … until last night. She’s scared of me now.” He’s smiling but you know he will cry later, tiger mural watching over him kindly.
Andy only used mind-control on her to save her life, but blah blah, excuses, excuses, Supernatural features tough men who have strong moral compasses who have mixed feelings about good intentions. Being an ethical person means you make choices, and you consider other people when you make those choices. The beauty is that the choices can be explained and excused away, but that doesn’t mean that tough moral men don’t feel like shit about it afterwards. I like the moment a lot.
Now comes a nice long juicy pause. There’s a ballet of behavior between Sam and Dean. Both these guys are so good at these moments, easy, fluid, connected. Dean takes in what Andy has said, and then looks up at Sam. It’s Sam’s vision, Sam’s ability. Dean has been support-staff all along, and that little glance Dean throws Sam, is giving, in the way that he sometimes is. He’s got a lot of feelings right now, a lot of shit to say, but it is Sam’s moment. Andy is “his” to handle.
Sam gives Andy his phone number, telling him he doesn’t have to be alone, call him up anytime. Andy looks lost and lonely between their departing figures. He calls out to them, “What am I supposed to do now?”
Dean says, “You be good, Andy. Or we’ll be back.”
Clint Eastwood. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Said simply, almost gently, but no nonsense about it, man, none at all. It’s a kind good-bye AND a threat and amateurs need not apply for a line-reading like that.
Dean and Sam have a little wrap-up conversation as they head to the Impala, filled with the moral dilemma of the Supernatural world, all with the morning light sun haloing the sides of their heads, blasting them on their cheeks and brows. Sam says that he was right after all, Andy is a killer. Taken with no context, that is correct. Andy killed a man last night. But to Dean context is important. (Sometimes. Sometimes he doesn’t care about context at all. It’s fun to see when he decides to value context, it’s always interesting.) Dean is like, Please, Andy is a hero, he saved Tracy’s life, he saved my life, come on. Sam, who read his Kant, who read his Wittgenstein, sticks to his guns: Don’t try to twist language to say that Andy didn’t actually kill someone, because he did. Dean pleads his case. Yeah, but he was PUSHED to do it.
Well, isn’t that a nice little trap set, and Sam springs it right back on Dean: “Weber was pushed too! So was Max. I was pushed, too, by Jessica’s death.” It’s easy to look at a Wendigo and know that that thing has to GO. But if you change the angle of the prism, you can see where Max is coming from, or Weber. In fact, you HAVE to be able to do that. Sam is starting to accept, starting to integrate his gathering knowledge into a wary understanding of himself. Or at least he’s trying. Dean doesn’t make it easy.
Imagine how LOUD John’s whisper is in Dean’s ear right about now.
“Given the right circumstances, everyone is capable of murder.” Sam says.
I love it because the stakes are always so high. You don’t have high stakes? You have no drama. Supernatural has the stakes of demons and apocalypse and monsters, but the real stakes are emotional. Even a small philosophical discussion about whether or not being pushed into murder makes you a “murderer,” and the fine distinction between being a monster and being someone who was pushed … has enormous emotional consequences on both sides. It’s why things get so hot between them, and both actors are so in touch with that subtext. It’s ALWAYS there. Having that subtext always there makes Supernatural feel, to me, like sitting next to a bowl of Sweet Tarts. (In case it’s not clear, I love Sweet Tarts so much that I can never allow myself to have them, not even one, because I will then proceed to eat so many that I will have to go to the hospital and get my stomach pumped. I am helpless in the presence of Sweet Tarts.) Supernatural is that pleasurable, that ridiculous, and possibility of overdose is high!
What is on the table here, in this wary little argument over the Impala in the bright sunlight, is Sam’s fate. They both know it. They can’t see the whole picture. Max gave a terrible dark glimpse of it. Andy lightened the load (somewhat), Weber counter-acted that. But Sam cannot avoid examining the connections. It would be irresponsible to do so, and irresponsible to take a black-and-white “Well, Weber was evil, Andy wasn’t” view of it. But Dean … Dean! Hating every second of this! Because what will happen if Sam goes dark … how will he handle it? What will he do? How will he bear it?
Dean sees Sam’s worry, and I do too but I am more struck by the light gleaming in Padalecki’s one eye and Dean’s unearthly gorgeous paleness.
It’s all a bit too intense for so early in the morning so Dean becomes the big brother again, and says, “Quit worrying about it.”
Sam won’t be put off so easily and says, “I heard you when you were talking before – you’re just as scared as I am.”
The scene ends on a light note with some hilarious line-readings from these guys that feel so real, and so welcome, like as long as they’re teasing each other the world is tilting correctly on its axis. The intensity of the moment shatters and it is because of Dean’s ridiculous response: “That was mind control. It’s like being roofied, man, it doesn’t count. No. I’m calling do-over.”
Hearing a huge tough guy say that, dead serious, to another huge tough guy, helps me rest easy at night because I know that comedy is alive and well, and I don’t have to worry about it disappearing. Dean also, you may notice, has experience being roofied. I don’t think he’s speaking hypothetically here. We’ve discussed that before. There’s that funny bit about roofies in The Purge. But besides that, the more we get glimpses of what they were like as kids, or that they even WERE kids, the better. It counter-acts all the serious grim jaw-line stuff, which, don’t get me wrong, is awesome, but would get a bit ridiculous without goofiness. It’s also welcome sibling banter after the clusterfuck of the Twins on the Bridge.
Even better is Sam’s response, “What are you, seven?”
And I love Dean’s blunt big-brother reaction, “Doesn’t matter. Look, we keep doing what we’re doing, and blah blah it’ll all work out.”
That that is his response to “what are you, seven” is perfect. So brotherly, so real.
Dean’s phone rings. “Ellen …” he says. He listens to what she’s saying and his face changes. At that moment we hear the gloomy chords from Soundgarden’s “Fell on Black Days,” starting up underneath.
Speaking of which, Superunknown, the monster 1994 Soundgarden album “Fell on Black Days” came off of, turned 20 this year, which makes me, a Generation X-er, incredibly massively old! Anyone who was in their 20s in 1994 probably made out with someone to “Black Hole Sun” at some point. I mean, how could you avoid it. You were 25 years old and it was always on the radio. That right there ups your odds. I was in heaven during the “grunge era” because suddenly the clothes I had always worn were hip! And they were the most comfortable clothes for girls imaginable! Little kilts and ripped thick black stockings and big boots, and plastic barrettes? I was doing that in high school! Doc Martens and flannel were suddenly IN? For GIRLS?? It was Nirvana! (And Soundgarden. And Sleater-Kinney. And all the rest of ’em.) Here, Dave Grohl talks about what it was like hearing “Black Hole Sun” for the first time. That album was huge.
“Fell on Black Days” carries us through to the end, it is the ending’s connective tissue, with its doomsday predictions, its depressive yet aggressive mood, that macho yet somehow recessive Seattle-Boy sound. As the next scene follows, so rich with behavior and Beauty I can barely keep up with what is happening, “Fell on Black Days” is that Big Something approaching from out of the darkness, the Thing that no one can see yet, but everyone can feel.
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What we need to talk about when we talk about this last scene is mood. Supernatural was so good at creating overall Mood in these early seasons: a simple combination of music choices, blurred-out dark backgrounds, and gigantic troubled faces … plus good acting … all of that adds up to Mood. It borders on camp, let’s say that, and I find camp extremely pleasing when it’s done in this way. I mean, Dean’s bulky leather jacket, collar up, so big he’s almost lost in it, combined with the dark background and the little fuzzy lights off to the right-hand side … It borders on self-parody without tipping over into it.
They seem to create mood by treating each situation seriously, and by paring down the script into its barest essentials. People don’t over-explain themselves (unless they’re Monsters in the third act – then they can’t shut up!). There are lots of portentous pauses as people share glances, look from one to the other, communing with themselves, their secrets, their angst, and almost reluctantly joining the conversation.
Ellen’s insistence on knowing what is going on and what the hell these boys are tracking is met with resistance from Dean, and it’s fascinating behavior from both Ferris and Ackles. His family instinct and protective instinct is telling him No No No No do not tell these people about Sam’s visions … No No No. But Ellen has a natural authority over him because she’s a woman, she’s maternal (although tough as nails), and she refuses to back down in the face of his attitude. We are ALL involved in this, Dean. It’s not yours to handle alone (echoing what Sam said to Andy back on the bridge).
Ash has spilled the beans to Ellen on what he had been pulling together for Sam and Dean. The Demon is not “just” Sam and Dean’s. Everyone has lost something to that sonofabitch. Sam and Dean have been raised to be secretive and to hoard information. Bobby has already shown an alternative. Ellen, Jo, and Ash are adding to that. Dean’s every instinct is a closed door. Sam, who had some time in the outside world, where everyone didn’t spend the majority of their energy keeping gigantic secrets, is not as threatened. When Ellen asks if they think it was the demon who killed Gallagher’s mother, Sam says, “yes,” and Dean says warningly, “Sam.” Ellen’s eyes are now riveted on Sam, Sam being willing to talk. She ignores Dean and says to Sam, “Why?” Dean interjects, “None of your business.”
Maybe my favorite moment in the episode is Ellen’s reaction. She doesn’t look over at Dean. She has registered his words, but her eyes remain on Sam. Then she turns to Dean and says, “You mind your tone with me, boy,” and it’s so tough that you understand why Jo obeyed Ellen when Ellen told her to leave the room. Samantha Ferris rules. It is such a sharp rebuke that Dean stops, flattened by it. He’s not completely in charge of himself right now. Sam and Dean have a way of doing things, and they have both clamped down as a reaction to their father’s death. Ellen and Jo are there (story-wise, anyway) to help keep them open, to stop that process a little bit, to let some air into that bell jar. It makes me think of the great moment between Ellen and Dean, seasons later, when she tells him that the so-called demons called her a “black-eyed bitch.” Dean mistakes this for her having been hurt by being called a “bitch” and he registers surprise – “That’s a little thin-skinned for you …” and she clarifies what she meant. I love that moment, it shows how far they have come. It shows his respect for her toughness, and that he is “allowed” to say stuff like that to her. And she is “allowed” to slap him across the face for not calling her more often. His reaction to being slapped and scolded? A submissive Southern-boy “Yes, ma’am.”
It’s a great relationship. It starts here. Everything else is just bratty prelude.
“No secrets or half-truths here,” she says to Dean. Dean, reprimanded, doesn’t like it, but subsides. I mean, what else is he gonna do? She’s formidable.
Sam, who has waited the moment out, explains what they have learned. He also explains about his abilities (all as Dean shakes his head a little bit, hating that this is now “out.”) Ellen listens, like a hawk.
“I have visions,” says Sam. “Premonitions.”
Ellen, alarmed, glances at Dean, who quickly glances at her, like a thundercloud of resentment and shame. Yup. That’s what’s goin’ on, sister. I hate it.
“These people, these psychics, are they dangerous?” asks Ellen.
“No,” Dean says. “Not all of them.” But he has already established himself as an unreliable narrator. Ellen looks back to Sam for confirmation, and Sam says, “But some of them are.”
Dean finally interjects with something useful, that they have established a little bit of a pattern, that all of the kids had house fires on the kids’ sixth-month birthday, but Sam, reluctantly, as though he wishes he didn’t have to truth-tell, says, “That’s not true.” Dean is surprised. It’s not like him to miss something that big, and the fact that he has tells us how discombobbled he is.
Look at this shot of Sam. It’s an Edward Hopper. Neon. Darkness. A lone figure.
Weber did not lose his parents in a house fire, Sam says, looking from Dean to Ellen and back. Ellen says, “Which breaks pattern.”
… Which I can barely process because of the Sheer Level of Outrageous Beauty going on here.
It’s ridiculous, that’s what that is. I’m almost embarrassed. Thank God he has on so many layers.
Jo has returned from her mother-enforced errand. Ellen, Dean and Sam have plunged into gloomy silence, and with that, Soundgarden starts surging up again.
“Who knows how many of ’em are out there,” says Dean, joining the group at last. Maybe here, he doesn’t need to keep his game-face on. Maybe here he is actually among friends. Maybe. It’s a start.
Ellen says, “Jo, honey? Better break out the whiskey instead.” She doesn’t look at Jo when she gives that order, she keeps her eyes on Sam and Dean. Without breaking down the moment into its different parts, all I can say is that it consistently gives me goosebumps, and it is 90% because of how Ferris says it, and 10% because of Chris Cornell rising from the deep around them. The moment also is a shared understanding that beer isn’t the proper chaser for bad news of this magnitude. We need the hard stuff for this.
These are serious people.
Suddenly, after all that, we get our first establishing shot of the bar, filmed from above.
It makes them look vulnerable. Like easy targets.
It’s a hell of an ending because up until then everyone in the scene, Sam, Dean, Jo, and Ellen, have been isolated from one another via close-ups. Emotionally, they are all in separate places. Where Ellen is at emotionally is not where Dean is at, and Sam is not where the other two are at, and etc. The entire scene reflects that separation by being close-up to close-up to close-up (which is where I get overstimulated because it’s so much behavior, it’s a huge bowl of Sweet Tarts, and I’m on my way to the hospital having over-dosed …)
But now we pull back, way back, and they are together in the frame, a group at last, but they also look like sitting ducks.
It is there the episode ends, four small people huddled at odd vulnerable angles throughout the very dark frame.
Fell on black days, that’s for damn sure.
Simon says I HAVE to get my homework done and I CAN’T cancel my plans tonight to play on the internet – so I am anticipating that I will be up most of the night reading the recap of one of my favorite episodes. I’ve been looking forward to this one!
hahahaha
I can’t wait to talk it all out. It’s one of the episodes I never get sick of!!
I don’t have a fact-checker – clearly – I got so swept away by my memories of Soundgarden that I called “Fell on Black Days” “Black Hole Sun”, although the last line of the re-cap shows that I actually did know what song I was talking about. It’s been corrected. Blame that one time I did ecstasy, right around the time I was listening to Soundgarden non-stop.
Carry on!
I don’t know if you ever edit your stuff after you post it, but in the scene in which Sam and Dean are checking out Andy’s Barbarian Queen on a Bear van, rather than saying that Dean finds it “fantastic” I thought it should be “VANtastic” just because.
I don’t think Dean is unhappy about Sam’s choice of women because he REALLY liked Sarah (we haven’t met Madison yet, but Dean was totally supportive there too). It wasn’t Amelia that Dean disliked, it was how Sam became after he met/got involved with Amelia.
I have always believed that Citizen Fang had equal parts of brother v brother; Sam stood by while Martin BASHED Dean in the head and then chained him to a radiator.
I mean THAT was breathtaking to me. The call from Amelia was low, but Sam was already hunting Benny and Dean knew Benny was innocent. SAM then took Martin’s car and left him alone in an area where they both knew was a dangerous vampire. (Not that it was Benny) So on my scale Sam was behaving badly from the get-go (sending a just-out-of-the hospital Martin to watch Benny; if Benny WAS a bad guy Martin was incapable of protecting himself; if Benny WASN’T a bad guy Martin may have killed an innocent man; either way Martin was acting like he was off his meds or at least that was the way I read Martin, a VERY unreliable narrator, whom SAM put in harm’s way). IMO Sam was acting jealous of Dean’s friendship with Benny, and to me that was pretty weird, sort of like how Sam bitchfaced Gordon thru the bar scene in Bloodlust.
That dam shot was beautiful and gave me vertigo BUT I don’t think that there are any canyons like that in OKLAHOMA for fuck’s sake. I’ve been thru Oklahoma. Flat flat and more flat and then MORE flat.
I liked Ellen and I liked the strength she evinced. She KNEW how to deal with Dean; Dean responds to strength, and while every ounce of him believed that they needed to keep the whole Psychic Kid on the downlow, he responded to Ellen’s argument that this was HER business now too. I very much like how Ellen and Ash and Jo tried to protect Sam and Dean from others finding out about the PsyKid backlash; Sam was in danger of being killed (other hunters felt like Gordon) and Dean being killed trying to protect Sam.
I listened to Fell on Black Days THREE times while I was typing this. You are right, fantastic song and IT FIT. Thank you for posting the link.
I think Dean HAD to feel that Andy was ok just because he was willing Sam to be ok. He didn’t care about “Andy’s brother whatshisname” to quote Azazel. Just finding the bong meant that ANDY was self-medicating in a non-aggressive manner. Whatshisname gave off SO MANY weird vibes.
I never caught before that Anson did not approach Andy directly because Azazel told him not to do it.
I think Max AND Anson were screwed before we ever met them; there was no hope there. Part of me always wished that Sam and Dean had taken Andy with them. It might’ve made grifting easier (just talk the other guy to losing at pool, for instance; he would never notice it). I liked Andh very much as a character.
// I don’t think Dean is unhappy about Sam’s choice of women because he REALLY liked Sarah (we haven’t met Madison yet, but Dean was totally supportive there too). It wasn’t Amelia that Dean disliked, it was how Sam became after he met/got involved with Amelia. //
See, that kind of thing – making an excuse for what to me is inexcusable behavior, for me it leads to a dead-end. It’s just not satisfying for me, in terms of analysis. It clearly is for you, so go for it! :)
I LIKE that Dean behaved inexcusably, evave – It adds texture, depth, complexity. It’s almost funny.
It’s CONFLICT. He’s flawed. He’s a great character.
And “it wasn’t Amelia that Dean disliked” – how could he dislike her when he never met her? His behavior was inexcusable, sending that text was inexcusable.
I LIKE that it was inexcusable – and that may be where we diverge on how we watch the show.
Obviously, feeling protective of Dean is a huge part of why the show works and why his character is so loved. And I love him too.
But it’s much richer (for me anyway)- not to mention funner – and more interesting – not making excuses for them when they mess up, but seeing HOW they mess up and how that impacts their relationship, and the Story, and the various Arcs.
I love it when Dean behaves badly, messes up, is not his best self, whatever … Same with Sam. I love it when they miss the mark, when they do bad things, when they fail to be their best selves, when they hide things, behave badly, etc.. It’s where Drama comes from.
It also makes those moments when they are in sync that much more poignant!! And don’t even get me started on A Very Supernatural Christmas. I mean, honestly! On any other show, such an episode would have drowned in sappiness. That one? It’s just sheer perfection. But we need those moments of conflict in order to get the pay-off of the brothers being in sync. It’s a balancing act. I love all phases of it.
Anyway I made my point in the re-cap and feel no need to go around in circles about it. :) I’ve said my bit!
“Fell on Black Days” is just so … ominous. That opening guitar. And Chris Cornell had the best voice coming out of the grunge scene – like a Robert Plant kind of voice. A great rock and roll voice.
I also like how the bus line has a mountainous name. Because we all know how many mountains there are in Oklahoma!
// I think Dean HAD to feel that Andy was ok just because he was willing Sam to be ok. //
I think that’s part of it, sure. To counter-act Sam’s gloomy outlook. But I also think Dean flat out thought Andy was cool, his decor was cool, the silk robe was cool, it all was extremely cool. Dean wouldn’t mind living like that, if he could! Getting stoned and reading books and getting laid and wandering around with nowhere else to be?? Heaven!! :)
I forget the joy and silly factor of the earlier seasons. After the joyless angels the memory of the silliness of the show is welcome.
Alli – I know! You can feel them try it out a bit in Season 1 – and they’re getting more confident now in Season 2 with it. SPN has long seasons – they can afford to get silly once in a while. And God, think how silly it eventually gets. I mean, Changing Channels? French Mistake?
Speaking of Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine’s line ,”That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man, If with his tongue he cannot win a woman,” seems like a low bar to clear when the man can Obi-Wan.
I watched Godzilla again a couple of nights ago (hey look, it’s Benny) and was just in awe of the beauty of the scene where the paratroopers do the halo drop and they have the red smoke streaming as they are falling through the clouds into San Francisco. Beautiful. And then I started musing on the scene in Maleficent where she rises through the clouds and the sun is shining behind her. We are story-telling animals (and story-listening ones) and the beauty would be less powerful without the narrative – but when a compelling story is coupled with beautiful images, it seems like such a gift to experience. And it makes re-experiencing the story all the richer as you get to go beyond the plot. As part of the golden age of Television we are in, we can experience the stories again whenever we want, we don’t need to wait for reruns in July. Just doing some blessings-counting here.
Thanks for pointing out the beauty in SPN. It’s good for the soul – whose power, we learn in later seasons, we cannot begin to imagine.
I was always so thrown by the forgiveness exchange at the end of Two Gentlemen of Verona. Proteus has behaved like a complete and utter SOCIOPATH – and when Valentine discovers it – he is rightly horrified. Then Proteus says, “I am so sorry. Please forgive me.” Valentine cries, “You are forgiven!” And the play ends.
We have seen Proteus calculate and scheme to completely ruin his supposed best friend’s life and “all is forgiven”??? Really??
And oh man, that halo drop in Godzilla!! That’s one of the great things about CGI, when done well. It can present a situation that one would never ever be privy to – and that scene is a perfect example. It was STUNNING.
Here in SPN? They’re just basically tilting lights so that there are shadows on these guy’s faces. I mean, that’s the level of technicality with some of this shit – but it’s so well done. Old-school!
But then there’s something more complicated – like that long take as they walk into the roadhouse.
That definitely took some maneuvering. It’s so beautiful!
This is an interesting episode, and it sticks in my head possibly most because Dean getting whammied is maybe our first glimpse of the way the show plays with alternate reality personalities. I don’t love the episode; something about it seems kind of muted. But Tigerman is fantastic, and I find the visions really brightly memorable: the eriness of the opener and Mankuma’s performance, and the bizzare way the woman on fire is rugged and gloved up (for stunt purposes obviously, but it’s so weird looking). Like she’s the Invisible Man. The slow way she collapses creeps me out so much.
God, that sink Sam is washing his face in is so gross! The diviest of bars!
The shadows are so thick at Harvelle’s. Gorgeous. And this is supposed to be the friendly place! Dean’s guardedness writ large. Ash is watching a 1940s baseball game projected by a strobe light, what the hell.
It’s interesting how little Sam and Jo interact in this episode — I don’t think they even make solid eye contact — considering what ends up happening between Meg!Sam and Jo. I look forward to watching the next one to track that a little more. It’s an interesting relationship.
Long takes: I immediately thought of Playtime, not because it has any 7 or 12 minute takes, but because there are so many of a minute of two, and the rhythm of them is so consistent. The whole thing just unfolds so evenly it feels like every chapter is one long take.
Hooray for Liar Liar! A true staple of my early days. We quote it constantly. “I’m an inconsiderate prick!”
Sam in this episode. His intensity going after Andy in that first confrontation is kind of thrilling in its drive and purpose. I love that hand he throws up to keep Dean by the car, his not yet insistence that there is something wrong with Andy — and he’s right of course. And then, in the final scene, in contrast, he goes to that unique soft steely place, delivering the trufax about his situation. Breaks my heart. Earlier he was forceful physically; later, the way JP’s hunched down, looking up at Ellen from under his brows, unlike Dean — he looks so tiny but he’s as much a moral/emotional force in the scene as Ellen.
Andy is doing some sketchy stuff with his mind control, but he’s ultimately harmless.
You say that maybe he’s using his ability to get sex at the start, but I don’t think I can go there with you. I’m all for moral ambiguity, and I don’t need the show to wag its finger at bad behaviour, but if he’s really supposed to be an innocent, a good guy at heart…taking sex is not in the same category as grabbing a guy’s coffee!
It’s so hilarious how the penultimate conversastion takes place with that sign behind Dean. Turbulence ahead indeed.
Great recap and fun read Sheila, thanks — and thanks for your digressions! It’s so interesting to hear how people involve themselves with a text. I have some levels of identification — mostly centering around being an older sibling — but I think a lot of my investment comes not from identifying not with the characters through a kind of equivalence but through identifying with my own vision of it, some strange a priori projection of my own investment.
Stockholm syndrome, is what I’m saying.
What are your feelings on the Psychic Kids arc in general? Do you like it? Not care about it? Something doesn’t gel for me there.
// the bizzare way the woman on fire is rugged and gloved up (for stunt purposes obviously, but it’s so weird looking). Like she’s the Invisible Man. The slow way she collapses creeps me out so much. //
I know! Yes, she’s all suited-up, and the way she reassures the gas station attendant – it’s so FINAL. Very very creepy.
// And this is supposed to be the friendly place! Dean’s guardedness writ large. //
Yes! People literally are emerging from those black shadows – no possibility of ever seeing anything as a whole. It’s a great look.
// Ash is watching a 1940s baseball game projected by a strobe light, what the hell. //
hahaha I know. There’s so much going on there. And I love that it’s all happening while the bar is open and filled with people.
// It’s interesting how little Sam and Jo interact in this episode — I don’t think they even make solid eye contact — considering what ends up happening between Meg!Sam and Jo. I look forward to watching the next one to track that a little more. It’s an interesting relationship. //
It really is, right?? That scene between Sam and Jo (or Meg Sam and Jo) – it makes me think that Padalecki is so so good at playing that dead-eyed type of entitled psycho. It’s not an automatic fit – because he seems so hunky and so … like, what on earth could HE have to be resentful about? But he is truly terrifying in that scene. And I think there’s some expression there of buried resentment that Dean is always “the one” who seems to get the ladies – or at least get the attention. Like, Sam is also under-estimated. I’d have to watch that scene again. They both play it so well.
And Jo digging the bullet out of Dean’s bicep and telling him to stop being a baby about it? Forget about it. I’m toast.
Playtime!! Yay! Perfect movie – every single element planned within an inch of its life – and yet it feels so weirdly spontaneous. Like, the world is conspiring against the characters to show them that ALL is comedic. Even a traffic jam around a little roundabout!
And Liar Liar! Yes!
“Do you know why I pulled you over?”
“Depends on how long you were following me!”
// His intensity going after Andy in that first confrontation is kind of thrilling in its drive and purpose. I love that hand he throws up to keep Dean by the car, his not yet insistence that there is something wrong with Andy — //
Very thrilling! The way he holds his arms out at Andy – “It’s not working on me, Andy!”
It occurs to me that Dean and Sam have that “right/not right” thing going on here too that we talked about in the last episode. Dean is right that Andy is not the monster – that would be Weber – but Sam is right too. It just makes for great complex conflict.
// unique soft steely place, delivering the trufax about his situation. Breaks my heart. //
Yes, there’s a moment where he’s confessing to Ellen about his premonitions – and he almost looks like a little kid. Like he’s telling Ellen about a bad thing he’s done, that he doesn’t want to confess. But he HAS to tell her. Even with Dean trying to ward him off. It’s such a great scene. The behavior is overwhelming.
It’s that last scene where Dean “gets” Ellen and lets her in. It’s interesting that it had to get to that point – her using that tone with him – but in that way, she got his attention, and got his respect. The relationship really starts in that moment – the glance he gives her about Sam’s visions. LOVE it.
// I’m all for moral ambiguity, and I don’t need the show to wag its finger at bad behaviour, but if he’s really supposed to be an innocent, a good guy at heart…taking sex is not in the same category as grabbing a guy’s coffee! //
I know, I know! I admitted I was an empty shell! I feel bad about it! :)
Jessie – roaring at that sign behind Sam and Dean. I try to pay attention to backgrounds but I missed that one. That is awesome.
// think a lot of my investment comes not from identifying not with the characters through a kind of equivalence but through identifying with my own vision of it, some strange a priori projection of my own investment. //
Fascinating!! There’s that level for me too – and for me, that’s the most interesting level. Where identification has nothing to do with my response – but I’m engaging with the story on some kind of mythic operatic level. It’s not a story, it’s a Story (™).
And yeah, definitely Stockholm Syndrome!!
Oh and now, finally, I realise where that first early post on Dean’s and the show’s beauty was taken from! Season two is so FULL of gorgeousness I never quite locked it down to an episode!
That was my first inkling that Supernatural was out of control in the best way possible. Dean, in that huge jacket, brooding at the bar. Outrageously gorgeous.
I have no beef with the Psychic Kids arc; I feel it closes out Act 1 quite nicely, and the way they retrospectively hooked it into the major arc was cool (if you don’t look too closely). So part of its power is that it kind of acts as a way to measure the scale of the wider universe. We find out The Plan, and it’s so horrible; and then we find out it’s just the bottom rung of the stepladder. In terms of how it plays on screen, I am a sucker for Fellowship, Assemble! stories where everyone has their own power etc, so I don’t mind that; and I really enjoy meeting all of Sam’s dark mirrors. Ava in particular, of course. And anything that doesn’t work in the lead-up (the Cold Rock scenes in AHBLP1 are great but also kind of a squib, really) is overshadowed by its Consequences, which as we all know, open up delirious chasmic rifts.
Even a traffic jam around a little roundabout!
Ha ha, yes! Farting chairs, loose tiles: the world is a place of farce and folly. What a brain Tati must have had; to want it, and then to execute it. Like that great Attenborough anecdote you posted. I could never be a director. To be that on, for that long. Impossible.
I admitted I was an empty shell! I feel bad about it!
Ha ha! I will admit in turn that if I had Andy’s powers you can bet I would be drowning in free coffee.
[Andy’s] arms are raised, in a sign of peace, but his hands, outstretched, are in a little curling-fingered claw
Ooh, watch yourself, it’s the claw! Ooh, the claw’s coming atcha. You’re scared of the claw.
// We find out The Plan, and it’s so horrible; and then we find out it’s just the bottom rung of the stepladder. //
Yes. And those final two episodes are killer. I love all the “kids.” It’s a diverse universe – and it’s interesting to see how each one individually incorporates their gift (or not). I love that old ghost town. It’s so unbelievably scary and strange.
// I really enjoy meeting all of Sam’s dark mirrors. Ava in particular, of course. //
Yup. Ava is AWESOME. That scene between the two of them in the motel room … it’s just so much fun to see Padalecki have to deal with her energy, and her humor – to see this little woman saying, “Okay, dude, you’re NUTS and I’m OUTTA HERE.” He’s sort of patiently waiting out her freak-out. It’s beautiful. (Also, I love that blue blue blue motel room.)
In re: Playtime: the tiles! Yes. I love when that snooty fashionable woman stalks across the restaurant, and her foot gets stuck. hahaha She yanks her foot free, without blinking an eye, and then keeps sashaying away. That restaurant scene is total anarchy. I want to watch it again right now!
Boy, if I had mind-control? I know I wouldn’t MURDER anyone but I cannot promise that I wouldn’t go semi-sketchy with it. Definitely I would somehow finesse it so I never had to pay for a coffee again (or a movie). “No, no, it’s okay, I don’t have to pay to see 5 movies a week – seriously I don’t … thanks so much … buh-bye.”
And yes! THE CLAW!! God, Jim Carrey. Come on.
I love it when he grabs the air freshener out of the tow place and sniffs it aggressively right at the guy behind the counter. hahaha Makes me laugh every time I see it.
I like what you say about Consequences and chasmic rifts.
I like how they hold that back – the entire season being a build-up – “Simon Said” is sort of the ominous warning bell, even more so than “Nightmare.” The ultimate question – what does the demon want – is sort of trembling in the air … making everyone extremely uneasy. I need to take a look at the episode breakdown coming up – I’m forgetting the order, and how these things are all revealed and in what order.
I love Season 2 a lot. It’s got a great flow.
“The PEN … THAT I AM HOLDING IN MY HAND … IS RRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEOYAL BLUE.”
I mean, who does that??
Me! Whenever someone asks me what colour something is, or I am trying to think of a word! I am super annoying! I love the air freshener gag. And the out-takes too! Overactor! That shit he howls when cop pulls him over is so emphatic. I try to put that much feeling into my curses. Like the It’s Always Sunny crew.
My friend Jen and I quote it all the time too. And his reaction to Overactor! “They’re onto me!!”
And making that disgusting sucking sound when he is in the elevator with the hot babe with the “huge jugs”? Roaring.
Post-coitus:
“That was wonderful. How was it for you?”
“I’ve had better.”
Oh my gosh, that super cut is great.
One line I quote all the time from Liar Liar is:
“STOP BREAKING THE LAW, ASSHOLE!”
Ha ha, yes! And “I’m kicking my ads, do you MIND?” whenever asks you a dumb question about what you’re doing. And we always sing the “I’m so happy today” birthday song instead of the Patty and Mildred’s number.
Goddamit I wish Sam and Dean could swear. I generally argue that the limitations of their industrial context make for a more intriguing show but that is one area where I feel pain!
Totally in re: profanity. There was such a catharsis in that Ghostfacers episode where every other word from them is bleeped-out. So funny. You could totally tell that JA and JP relished the opportunity to let it all out.
I do like that “douchebag” is somehow still allowed. Even in an episode title! Ha! “Douchebag” is such a childish swear, and still has a very high currency in Rhode Island (and maybe elsewhere, I can’t speak to that) – so there’s a familiarity with that insult that is funny to me. Reminds me of watching Red Sox games with a bunch of drunken yahoos. Every other word is douchebag.
//Boy, if I had mind-control? I know I wouldn’t MURDER anyone but I cannot promise that I wouldn’t go semi-sketchy with it.//
Hahaha!
The way powers are dished out is so unfair – Sam gets agonising death visions, others can zap cats to death, but Andy gets the power to wangle free sex and coffee. Andy comes across as such an innocent – he really doesn’t want much, and for all his sketchy lifestyle he can draw boundaries. Life is sweet with superpowers, and apparently consequence free. But then he has to kill someone and can lie to get away with it … you can see how slippery slope that could be. But still, when it comes to the great psychic kids dance off, the worst thing he has managed is to send gay porn images to a bloke who gets on his tits. Andy, more than any of the psychic kids, strikes me as a sacrificial lamb, a naturally sweet person who manages to somehow stay sweet when everyone else (Sam excepted) has twigged that either it’s every one for himself, or worse – kill or be killed. Lovely, engaging performance from Tigerman, such a lot of warmth and humour.
I love Tigerman too – sorry he had to go, and all the rest of them. It would have been interesting to see how they might have all worked it out amongst themselves if, you know, they hadn’t all bit it.
You wonder what happened to Andrew in between this episode and that ghost town. Things started getting darker for him probably immediately, I imagine. The bloom off the rose with his free-coffee-and-sex ability.
I love how things from season one, and two, still resonate in season nine. That things that happened literally ten, nine, seven years ago, can *still* inform the story we’re watching.
That’s one of the best things ever about this show.
Also – Dean’s Obi-Wanned babble to Andy is the best scene *ever*, especially when Sam says “Dean, shut up!” and Dean says “I’m tryin’.” and then just…keeps on talking.
And then Andy says “Just leave me alone,” and Dean says “All right,” and then clutches at this head and makes this *noise* and Sam is just ‘for fuck’s sake! bitchface bitchface’…..
Makes me giggle every time.
Tabaqui – // That things that happened literally ten, nine, seven years ago, can *still* inform the story we’re watching.- //
I know!! It’s really rather amazing – and it doesn’t feel like they’re just re-hashing the past – it’s that this stuff legitimately keeps coming up. I love that too.
Dean: “I’m trying.” hahahaha and he IS, you can SEE him trying. So so funny.
One thing they did in the Kripke years was introduce something, then just get rid of it.
I LIKED the Roadhouse. It was cool to meet other hunters. They used Ash too much as Deus ex Machina, but they could’ve toned that down, it wasn’t that he had superpowers, he could write good programs. It was on a par with Bobby knowing how to read about 50 languages INCLUDING Linear A (probably). I never figured out how he could do that but so what.
The PsyKids intrigued me, because in the end when they were turned on they ALL had the same powers basically. Jake only used his super strength once, he was all on the mind control like Andy (and Ava).
If anybody knows WHAT Sam was intended to do to save Dean from The Deal (I mean they had precis — I don’t have one of those crazy diacritical marks but you know what I mean) which Kripke storyboarded out I would LOVE it. I know Dean was never intended to go to Hell because Sam made a different Deal and then Dean was supposed to spend the next season saving his brother. Was it “give himself over to the power of EVIL” and agree to be the Boy King?
I agree with whoever talked about Sam/Meg and Jo in Born Under a Bad Sign. That was really really good. Part of me wishes we could’ve seen MORE Sam/Meg (or would you say Meg/Sam?) because it was interesting the way Sam/Meg was hitting on Jo and she just wasn’t interested. I don’t know why people didn’t like Jo from the beginning (from what I hear) because it was organic to me, the fact that Jo and Dean had so much in common. Maybe he would’ve always felt like she was a little sister BUT there would’ve been no lies. Of course, they would’ve broken up rather quickly because Dean would’ve catted around but HEY at least explore the option.
I like the airless Sam/Dean dynamic, but I also like it when they show the Hunter world. I liked Devil May Care and that Dean knew/met other hunters. Sometimes I am surprised they aren’t getting calls from other hunters when they run into something the other hunters can’t handle. I wonder who is the new Garth, somebody needs to “be” the FBI boss or whatever.
Anyway, it does bug me that Kripke had like a 5yo’s attention span, PsyKids: no I’m bored; Roadhouse: no I’m bored; Boy King: no I’m bored.
Agreed about the Ghostfacers episode. “remember those beep beep beeps from Texas and the Tulpa” “oh yeah, THOSE beeps” — I wish they could’ve done it. Sometimes I DO wish Supernatural had been on cable like Showtime just cause of the language (I have come to agree with you that it is so scary seeing Dean without his minimum 3 layers — keep that boy covered) not the sex. They had other “found footage” types of episdoes, why didn’t they do that again?
//Here in SPN? They’re just basically tilting lights so that there are shadows on these guy’s faces.//
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if the budget for the halo scene was greater than the one for an entire SPN episode. Doesn’t change what is or isn’t beautiful, though. You know.
TGoV – you get to the end and it’s “that’s it?”
“… were man but constant, he were perfect.” Man? What about you, Proteus? I’m pretty sure that the jibe in “Shakespeare In Love” about comedy, love, and a bit with a dog was a poke at TGoV.
The only opera I’ve ever seen was Baz Luhrmann’s version of “La Boheme” that he did in San Francisco before taking the production to New York. Mimi gets sick, dies fairly quickly, a character sings some Italian version of “oh no, she’s dead” and the curtain drops. No prolonged arias of despair, regret, or better hygiene. Just “she’s dead, show’s over.” TGoV isn’t quite that abrupt, but close.
It’s too early in the discussion to have digressed so much. I think I’ll re-watch the episode tonight and see if I can come back with something more on point.
Hey – I saw that La Boheme – it was on PBS, I think. I remember being kind of blown away by it.
I remember watching this episode and holding my breath during the scene when Weber and Tracy were in the car, and he’s obviously about to rape her. I couldn’t remember any other situation in the series that had gone there – there were implications of sexual assault in other episodes, but I don’t remember any actual rapists as bad guys up to this point. Tracy’s reactions are horrible, and the actress is doing such a good job here. The moment that really gave me the chills is when he orders her to stop crying, and she does. She is not even allowed to react physically to the horrible thing happening to her.
I went back to the episode to see if I a line I remember hearing from Weber really was there, and it was. After the “I take my ladies here. They like it.”, he stops, almost smiles to himself, them admits “Well, I like it, so…”.
I guess right there is the reason why Andy’s use of his powers to get sex doesn’t feel nearly as sketchy. Andy wouldn’t say that – he wouldn’t be that indifferent to the feelings of the women involved . My guess is that when Andy wanted to use his powers to get laid, he wouldn’t mind-control women into obedience – he would mind control them into finding him incredibly attractive, and from there proceed as people normaly do in that case. These women probably left the experience a bit confused (“Wow, how did THAT happen? That guy’s not my type AT ALL!”) but not feeling used or violated, and they probably had some fun in the process.
I, too, absolutely LOVE Dean’s moment of helpless sincerity in the car. How devasted he is that he can’t shut his mouth. It’s hilarious!
Alex – “moment of helpless sincerity” hahahaha His eyes look so panicked!
// “Well, I like it, so…” //
Ewww! Yes! Awful.
I also hate when he says matter-of-factly, “When we’re done here …”
You’re right – SPN doesn’t use actual rape as a plot-point all that much, or as “Here is how you know this is a Bad Guy” thing – (well, except for that horrible scene with Meg much later).
Implied rape is literally everywhere – it’s a very sexually violent-feeling show at times (to me, anyway) – but this scene with Weber and Tracey is the closest the show has gotten to it. There’s also that scene in Houses of the Holy when Dean appears to avert a rape in progress before flying off in pursuit. I’m glad that, in general, there isn’t TOO much of that going on in the show – it would be way too “women in refrigerators” and “damsels in distress” and “dum-dum-DUM here are Sam and Dean saving all the little ladies” if you know what I mean. “Oh thank God, you got here just in time before that poor girl had to get raped!” etc. You see that all the time on other shows and SPN, in general, stays away from it.
It’s used rather sparingly – and I think that’s a good thing.
Of course, on the “implied” end of the scale, all bets are off. Sexual violence is implied all over the place.
Supernatural Creep alert: Just watched a movie that I have to review this week and there was one character in it named “Doc Jennings.”
I mean, come on.
Paula, I just want to ask one last thing about the fake text from Amelia and it relates to the stuff Sam did in the episode. I AGREE that Dean did something really bad; further on down the line he tells Charley and SHE says that was about the worst. He KNEW it was bad. In the cabin scene after Sam gets back, Dean tells him if he really doesn’t WANT to hang out with him, “do the job” to get out, because halfway in “gets you dead” so I felt he actually expected Sam to go away, or not even to have come back. He didn’t read “anxious” for Sam to be hanging around to me.
I felt in that episode DEAN actually realized things were so toxic and something had to change. I don’t think he was trying to hang on to Sammy.
Do you feel differently? I am curious how you read that whole episode (which is probably ‘WAY up the scale on the spoiler alert).
Did you think Sam siccing Martin on Benny and the way THAT whole thing went down (Martin using poor Elizabeth as bait — to me that showed HIS instability) was NOT as heinous as Dean throwing Sam back into his hurt over Amelia?
I understand that we disagree on all of this. I am not being argumentative here. You make such good textual arguments most of the time I end up seeing things your way. (Sort of like the business with Dean and Ellen — I always felt Dean would’ve made more sense with ELLEN as a partner, she would’ve loved mothering him and he would’ve loved the mothering PLUS she was MUCH “sexier” to me than Jo, who always came across as a little girl; of course Jo was already interested in Dean so it would never ever have happened. I think Dean needs an “earth mother” type of woman like his mom or Lisa who became an earth mother, taking care of him in the prequel to Season 6.)
Oh yeah: I got John Winchester’s Journal AND it was put out by the show so it IS considered canon, just stuff we didn’t see but the backstory for the characters.
That last scene, when Ellen forces the truth out of them AND promises to be an ally (at least I think she did) and Dean is so wigged out about the Hunter Community getting into their business…in the Journal John writes that he did not like to have the boys around the hunter community because there were hints that people were picking up about Sam. And that was part of the reason “take care of Sam” was Job #1 for Dean. Anyway, some hunters broke into their motel room when John was off on a job and they were going to kill Sam and Dean in the Journal killed one or two people. He was supposed to be 11 or 12 I think. John got there at the end and took out the survivor, Sam never understood what was going on (I think Dean hid him in a closet or something asap when it all went down). Do you think they were “playing” that in the Roadhouse scenes, that Dean really wanted nothing to do with these people?
The whole book is interesting; John is a very sympathetic figure in it.
So please, if the discussion doesn’t bore you, respond with your reasoning : I promise I will chew and digest everything you have to say here.
I never realized that Anson was either going to or did rape Tracy. She was a nice woman. I am so glad she survived all of this.
Paula? Do you mean Sheila? :)
I got a little lost there at the end of your comment. I haven’t read John’s Journal.
I don’t feel like you’re being argumentative and I wouldn’t care if you were. :) Like I said in the post – I’m just putting out my way of thinking and analyzing and then we all can talk about it. I write these re-caps because this is how I think and see things and it’s fun to try to put it all into words. Lots of different viewpoints here. I’m not sure what you’re asking though and I’m not even sure there’s an answer.
I don’t think the scales have to equal out all the time. As in: Dean did something bad, but Sam did something equally bad. I just don’t look at “Text” that way at all, it’s not a turn-on for me, it’s not how I engage with the show or the story lines or the characters. (I realize a LOT of people do engage with the show that way – but I don’t).
So – I guess for me – bottom line: Dean sending that text was totally shitty. End-stop. Inexcusable. I don’t care what Sam did. Dean sending that text was shitty. And sure he knew it was shitty. He probably knew it while he was doing it. He’s a smart man and he feels guilty about everything, which shows he has a moral compass. And Charlie’s a friend and he can admit it to her. But I’m still just gonna say: That was shitty of him.
Shrug. That’s kind of the end of it for me. I don’t have much else to say.
Like I said before though – I think it’s AWESOME that Dean does shitty things sometimes. And that’s one of the shittiest things he’s ever done on the show.
It was great. It helps deepen the character, the relationship, the conflict. I don’t know. Don’t really feel there’s much else to say about it, for me.
Or maybe someone else reading here will have another perspective on the whole thing. I’ve pretty much said my piece but I am sure there are other opinions about it.
Oh yeah, the show is starting again on TNT on Tuesday. I don’t think I can get thru THREE of your reviews while/after watching because I DO have to eat and stuff but I am so glad these early episodes are here for me to chew over while I am watching.
Sorry about using Not Your Name. We are having a forest fire nearby and I am a little bit breathless and coughing coughing coughing so I took some cough syrup and am happy happy happy now but I think I miss the little things.
I do not bake after syruping. I do not cook after syruping. I do not drive. I will take a nap now.
Yeah, you are right in that one shitty thing doing brother does not negate or equal the other shitty thing doing brother. I just have a harder time dealing with Sam’s here because I liked poor Elizabeth (ex-waitress has sympathy for other ex-waitress, like Tracy).
Oh I DID clean out the kitty litter after syruping and am still happy.
//Hey – I saw that La Boheme – it was on PBS, I think. I remember being kind of blown away by it.//
I looked it up and his 1993 Sydney Australia version was filmed for PBS, I imagine that’s the one you saw. Mine was in San Fran. in 2002 or 2003. I remember the big Moulin Rouge sign from the movie was a prop. For all I know, it might have been from the 1993 version and then used in the movie.
I enjoyed it also, I was only struck by the abrupt ending. The tragedy and drama worked well in the opera, but I had a hard time with the timing of the comedy in the piece. I mean, I’m reading the supertitles above the stage and that has a certain timing and then there’s the timing of the singing and what sounds like the line endings (not speaking Italian, I’m only guessing) and then the timing of the double-takes or pratfalls. When am I supposed to laugh: when I finish reading, when the singer finishes the line, or when someone reacts? I think I tried to keep it in until everyone else did. It was a novel experience for me and I wasn’t sure how to process reading and listening and watching all at once while being a good member of the audience by laughing at the right times. I suspect if I saw more operas I’d get the hang of it. Wagner, that’s the ticket. My impression is there’s not a lot of jollytime with him.
//Supernatural Creep alert: Just watched a movie that I have to review this week and there was one character in it named “Doc Jennings.”//
Supernatural Creep syndrome symptom #367 – Seeing copies of ‘Capital’ around the place and constantly misreading Thomas Piketty as Taymoh Penikett.
hahahahahahaha
Helena, you crazy.
mutecypher, I cannot help it. I am in the grip of something more powerful than myself.
Is it just me, or does this episode have some X-Files vibes to it? The score reminds me of some of the more whimsical X-Files episodes, and then there’s Dean’s intuition and Sam’s skepticism (so very Mulder and Scully, respectively). Also – I love that Dean was right. Sam may get visions, but Dean’s gut is pretty damn reliable.
I adore Andy. As far as the moral ambiguity of using his powers for sex, my read was that he probably only used his power to nudge women who had shown a slight interest in that direction, and he probably never thought too hard about how sketchy that was. I get the feeling that if you told him that would he was doing was kind of rapey, he would be genuinely shocked by the idea. It just hasn’t occurred to him. Given how it ends for him, he’s really kind of a tragic character – just a lovable loser with potential who was unfortunate enough to get caught up in something that was way over his head, probably before he was even born. (Ava, when she came along, actually kind of reminded me of Tracy, which, given the fact that Ava is the one who kills Andy, I wonder if that was deliberate.)
As the child of an adoptee, I also have to add that I love Andy’s reaction when Dean snaps at him about not mentioning that he was adopted. Andy’s response to that seems so real to me – he’s irritated by it, and just kind of, “what the fuck, do you expect me to introduce myself to everyone with ‘Hi, I’m Andy and I’m adopted’?” My entire family knows that my mom was adopted, but it’s not something that comes up frequently in conversation. I have friends who probably have no idea, not because we’re trying to hide it, but because it’s just not relevant most of the time. I can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s just not something that’s in the forefront of my mind at any given time that I would think to mention unless the topic of adoption comes up.
“This one goes to eleven” is a part of my family’s lexicon; it’s a line we reference almost as frequently as any quote from The Big Lebowski. That said, within the past year, I found a new favorite song about Stonehenge: http://youtu.be/mbyzgeee2mg
Also: Dean singing REO Speedwagon. DEAN SINGING REO SPEEDWAGON. This cannot be emphasized enough. God, I love this episode so much. (And the little smug smile when he says to Jo, “He sings it from the hair.” That smile, to me, says, “You just revealed so much to me, and I totally have the upper hand in this exchange.” And it pretty much takes less than 30 seconds for him to lose the upper hand.)
// And it pretty much takes less than 30 seconds for him to lose the upper hand. //
hahahahaha I know. Classic!
The dynamic between Dean’s gut-feeling and Sam’s skepticism is really interesting, yes – and I love how they fight it out over the course of the episode. Neither one is wrong, really.
I forgot about the moment with Dean saying “you didn’t mention you were adopted.” Tigerman just plays the entire thing so believably – “lovable loser” is a good way of putting it. And the way he says to his twin, “Are you really this stupid?” Like, he still can’t wrap his head around being THAT evil … it does not compute for him at ALL.
One more thing: can you imagine the meeting between Weber and YED? Weber must have been like, “Finally, people will fucking respect me.” And then they still didn’t, because he was an entitled little shit. That character reminds me so much of my soon to be ex-brother-in-law. Thank God no one’s handing him super powers.
// That character reminds me so much of my soon to be ex-brother-in-law. //
Ugh. So sorry.
Weber does have that angry almost disappointed vibe at times – he thought having the ability would change everything. Nothing has changed. I love that guy’s face. It’s very expressive, especially when he’s all like, “Oh, hey, I’m totally harmless, just asking a casual question, no big deal …”
Ew!
mutecypher:
//Wagner, that’s the ticket. My impression is there’s not a lot of jollytime with him.//
Laughing so hard at this! Very good choice. If you go with the ring cycle, you will have lots of practice.
Sheila,
Great recap and gorgeous screen grabs! That beauty has GOT to be why the show got its hooks in so deep; beauty like that just opens me right up.
The things that I really like about this episode:
The “Ring of Gyges” nature of the story – what would you do with the power to get away with anything?
The performances- as you have all discussed so well. Particularly the shtick.
The gleaming Beauty
Ash reacting. So awesome.
The ‘now you know the truth and if you feel compelled to do something about it you will be dealing with me’ look that Dean gives Ellen and that gives me the chills.
How it fits into the larger arcs.
But I find the character of Andy to be an uncomfortable mix of contradictions so despite the warmth of the performance, he doesn’t sit well with me.
Oh, and I like Ellen ordering up the whiskey at the end. It feels like an authentic act to create camaraderie.
Heather –
// The ‘now you know the truth and if you feel compelled to do something about it you will be dealing with me’ look that Dean gives Ellen and that gives me the chills. //
What a PERFECT way to describe it. You really capture the depth of that eye contact exchange there. Yup.
That whole last scene – just delicious with behavior like that. They’re all so good.
// It feels like an authentic act to create camaraderie. //
Totally. And also an acknowledgement that “This is Bad Bad News.” I think both Dean and Sam have been having that sense, but they are in the bell jar with each other, and all busy protecting/denying, all that stuff – but here is an outside eye, saying, “Guys. This is serious.”
It’s almost comforting, in a weird way. They aren’t in it alone.
// That beauty has GOT to be why the show got its hooks in so deep; beauty like that just opens me right up. //
I know. The same is true for me.
I just am in love with what this damn thing looks like!!
When they killed off Ellen and Jo and Bobby and Kevin, I was so sad. I liked all those characters.
Does anybody know if they die due to “story being done” or the actor has other stuff coming up (didn’t Bobby go right to Justified?) or if there is just some contract issue?
It seems to me they kept Castiel because they really liked the actor, but actually haven’t known how to make his plots interesting (no more angel wars, please no more angel wars). I understand that they were using him sparingly because since he is an angel when he showed up everything would be smited or something. But I think these guys are professional writers, they should find something interesting for him to do. I found his Crazy Cas storyline interesting; he could do stuff, but he didn’t want to so “I follow the bees.”
I “think” they killed Ellen because the actress had other work and could not commit the way they wanted her to; I don’t know why they killed Jo. Again, I would’ve liked just a little something something between Jo and Dean. Like a kiss, and then they realize they can’t because they couldn’t bear hurting each other. Like WHY did she have to dump being his friend because his daddy shot her daddy in the head? Made no sense to me.
And Kevin: I wept when they killed Kevin. Really. Was there an organic reason to end Kevin’s storyline or was it just the vehicle of brother angst? If brother angst, that sucked big time for me (and it did anyway).
Of course it sucked big time. It’s Supernatural. It’s supposed to suck! Everyone dies! No one’s happy! Happiness lasts for half an hour, tops. That’s the show.
It didn’t surprise me at all that Jo realizing John got her father killed would bring that reaction. She just found it out, like, 2 seconds ago. She’s 20 years old. Made perfect sense to me. Besides, it was a great scene.
CONFLICT is what makes the show what it is. Not people being friendly and loving and accepting. The HOPE for that is what keeps some people hooked but if the characters ever achieved it, the show would end immediately. Perhaps in the final half hour of the series, whenever it ends for real, the characters will come to some resolution, some catharsis, some sense of peace/hope/moving on. But until then? It’ll be conflict, drama, 24/7. That’s the show.
There are all kinds of reasons why actors don’t come back. Some get too busy, or get other gigs. Maybe an actor is like, “I don’t want to work in Vancouver.” Or whatever. Sometimes an Arc plays itself out and it’s time for a character to move on. It’s time for the show to let it go and explore other things. Sometimes it feels arbitrary to me, other times not. It’s one of the things about having a long-running TV show where the fans remember EVERYthing. Everyone gets attached to the characters – and because of the nature of SPN, anyone can come back at any time. Death is not final. There are flashbacks, dream sequences, the whole nine yards. It’s kind of fun. I love it when people return.
Natalie –
Please send this image to Ylvis. It explains Stonehenge.
Oh God. I had never seen that before. I might have a nightmare now.
Oh, wow, mutecypher. That is awesome. But I think it might raise just as many questions as it answers. ;-)
Stonehenge is in the news today!
Yes, hot off the press, Stonehenge really is … a circle.
Oh rats, the link didn’t work. Here ’tis
// “We maintain the grass with watering when it’s very dry in the summer, but our hosepipe doesn’t reach to the other side of the stone circle.//
That just blows me away.
Isn’t it amazing that something as well-known as Stonehenge can still have things discovered about it? It’s like the controversy over the age of The Great Sphinx of Giza. Egyptologists say it was built about 2900BC, but geologists look at the rock and surrounding strata and say it was built about 5500BC, only a 26 century difference in data. No one knows of a civilization that early with the (wait for it)… competence to build such a structure. Maybe the Sphinx is like some humongous Hello Kitty toy that the giant inside the earth is holding. If you think about it, Egypt is about where one of his hands would be.
Gives a more ominous meaning to the notion that we should tread lightly on the Earth.
and wasn’t there some huge revelation about Hello Kitty this past week as well? I don’t even know who I am anymore.
Yes, just as Kate Bush was in the news (hey, thanks everyone for those YouTubes – she’s done a lot of striking stuff) so Hello Kitty is in the news. She’s British, and not a cat.
I mean, really? No. Some things should not be revealed.
Hi Sheila,
I’ve just found your commentary on “Supernatural”. I love how you bring in cinematic history to your recaps. I look forward to them (no pressure!)
I was wondering about your take on Dean killing Amy Pond. You keep mentioning how horrible it was when he faked that text from Amelia to Sam. but killing Amy was a real shock to me. I hated Dean after that and I hated that Sam seemed to forgive him so easily and accept the “don’t be a bitch about it” that Dean gave him.
Sam had every right to give her a pass; she had saved his life by killing her own mother! She was only killing known nasties themselves (very ” Dexter”) and only to save her son.
That Dean killed her, in front of her son, was horrifying. And the level of “control freak” that he reached to not trust Sam should have broken the relationship right there.
I understand ‘the show must go on’ and ‘the boys’ had to be brought back together but I still feel that betrayal was worse than anything Dean has ever done to Sam.
Your thoughts?
Bainer – Thank you! I am glad you found them and are enjoying them. They’re so fun for me to do too. Wish I could put them up with more frequency but, you know, Life, etc.
I think, in general, that was a very tough time for both brothers and neither of them were operating at their best selves. In general, I don’t look at the show in an adversarial way – meaning; “I don’t like so-and-so” because of this or that action. I tend to look at what the Story is trying to do, and how it is manifesting. All I care about is whether or not is interesting and watchable. Does that make sense? I certainly have my opinions. But I don’t know – I don’t lead with a judgment about whether or not I “agree” with one side or the other.
And that whole fight (about Amy, and the episodes that followed) was GREAT. And Dean’s tailspin into nightmares and guilt was GREAT. And Sam suddenly committing himself to running and health was GREAT. It was a fascinating “break-up”, in a way – a precursor of things to come. Necessary in many ways. So I don’t tend to react to story lines in that particular way. I may be missing your point so please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
I thought Dean was justified in killing Amy because she had killed 4 people. But I was far more interested in what that action opened up – in terms of their relationship, Dean’s psychology, his drinking intensifying, his bold-faced lie to Sam and how bad he felt about it (he can’t hide ANYTHING) and Sam’s separating himself from his brother – distancing himself – in what seemed, to me, a rather healthy way. A sort of “This is you, and this is me” kind of thing.
I can certainly understand why Sam felt Dean’s lie was unforgivable. And Padalecki was just awesome in that whole arc (they both were). I’m mainly in love with that whole story line because it was well written, well played, and really really worked thematically.
I guess I don’t see it as “either/or” (if it’s interesting, that is). I see it as “both/and.” The best story lines in SPN are “both/and” (in my opinion). When both brothers are right (depending on where you stand), and both brothers are wrong (also depending on where you stand). That’s where you get the best and most revealing conflict. It’s a grey-area show.
And I loved “but quit being a bitch.” Ha. I love that whole fight outside the museum in general – both actors were wonderful in it. That’s a very very good episode, one of my little favorites.
So maybe I didn’t answer your question – but maybe it’s not really to be answered. It’s such a rich conflict, such a painful one – and I also loved how that lie stretched out over multiple episodes. You really could see how it was haunting Dean and how Sam could sense that something was wrong. Liked that arc a lot.
Thanks again for reading and for commenting!!
and I agree – her son witnessing the murder – goosebumps of awful.
Twist that knife into our main characters’ hearts, SPN! Keep on twisting!
Thanks for replying, and so quickly! Yes, both brothers were in the right and could both justify their actions. That is what makes this show keep on ticking, no doubt, not to mention the feelings!
I just felt like it was almost out of character for Dean. I’m surprised no one has ever asked JA about that. It may well be that it was out of character in how I read the character so was shocking to me because I need him to be something he’s not! More sympathetic to Sam, maybe, less controlling? Maybe I need him to be a hero who always does the right thing. . .but then it wouldn’t be “Supernatural”.
I wonder if the son will be brought back. Goosebumps, yeah, when he said the “only person I’m going to kill is you.” And, I swear, at that moment, I thought he should!
I guess that’s why the show is heading into it’s tenth season.:)
// because I need him to be something he’s not! More sympathetic to Sam, maybe, less controlling? Maybe I need him to be a hero who always does the right thing. . .but then it wouldn’t be “Supernatural”. //
I think that’s a very insightful point – and is definitely one of the reasons why the character of Dean is so riveting. People definitely “put a lot of things” on him – the audience, his family members – and he tries to live up to it – sometimes fails – and then there’s all this flailing about in the audience. He’s not an anti-hero. he’s a HERO. So why he is so dark and gloomy? And why does he do bad things sometimes? It’s like some of John Wayne’s later roles, when suddenly that heroic figure he had created in Westerns, started cracking – and he was allowed to show some doubt and ambivalence. Some of his best work was done in those later Westerns, like The Searchers (a character that has a LOT in common with Dean Winchester. I refer to Ethan in The Searchers all the TIME when I watch Supernatural). We have expectations of our heroes. We want them to be a certain way. But there are these figures who … mess with that. And it’s not out of character. It’s the actual Myth cracking apart, our expectations of a certain type of character.
I didn’t think it was out of character for him. I think he saw her as a monster who was going on a rampage and Sam’s judgment was clouded so he had to step in. It was the LIE (to quote Nixon) that was the unforgivable thing to Sam.
And of course that whole dynamic has been playing out over all of the seasons and it finally (finally!) came to a head in Season 9, when Dean cracked. Which I couldn’t get enough of, grim as it was. It had been building up since the beginning!
I love how they substitute guano when they wanna talk about how fucked something is. I totally use it now.
Everyone else’s comments nest all pretty and I’m the outta step one. Really?
Yes, reading your recaps makes me accept what happened to Dean in season 9. It seems so inevitable now. I’m looking forward to how they play it out.
Speaking of the imagery of the show – did you find Dean/JA was made to look unattractive in season 9 (as unattractive as JA can be)? His hair seemed too short on the sides and there were some very downright ugly colours, like the mustard yellow jacket. I’m not sure how intentional that would be, but after reading your recaps I’m guessing everything is intentional. I wonder what the purpose would be. . .to show the ugliness inside?
Oh yeah, he looked like shit. Red-rimmed eyes. The scraggly half-assed beard. The whole thing. I was in heaven. I imagine it was a mixture of a couple different things. Ackles being totally in charge of his character, knowing that this transformation was necessary – mixed with him being a new dad and totally sleep-deprived. That’s my guess anyway. He seems completely blasted-open. The trauma is finally too big for him to put on any kind of game face.
It was awesome.
Sigh – I hate change. I want them to be young and beautiful forever. I know this sounds like a total obsessive fan girl but I like to see JA and JP in candid photos looking happy and normal. It’s reassuring somehow.
I’m about to embark on my own journey into writing a TV series proposal. By obsessing and burrowing into the nitty details of a favorite show like “Supernatural” that has captured and inspired my imagination (like the “X-Files before it), I’m learning a lot. That’s why I especially appreciate all the work you put into your recaps, the acting, writing, lighting, directing – the historical details – you supply. Thanks!
Good luck with what you’re writing!
Yeah it’s interesting how certain scenarios/themes can be interpreted differently by different viewers—something I’m glad Sheila always points out. It definitely keeps things interesting and in that compelling gray area, as opposed to reducing one brother to the Good One and the other to the Bad One. I love how flawed they both are.
So yeah, regarding the Simon Said/Citizen Fang comparison, it’s interesting because I saw the “No one will come between us!” parallel between the two episodes as well—except Weber reminded me more of Sam than of Dean. From my perspective, Sam came off as the controlling, possessive brother who was determined to do almost anything to rid the new Brotherly Figure from Dean’s life. It was fascinating to see Dean develop another healthy bond outside of Sam in S8—a brotherly bond, no less, which pretty much tops the Meaningful Relationship scale with Dean, imo. (And then for him to acknowledge at the end of Torn and Frayed that it might be in Sam’s best interest to go stay with Amelia after all, which was a nice Scarecrow parallel.)
I found Sam’s jealousy in Citizen Fang likewise very interesting. The lengths these brothers will go sometimes . . . Especially once Sam’s actions resulted in a mentally unstable hunter getting killed, an innocent woman almost getting her throat sliced and left traumatized, and a reformed vamp who had established a quiet, rehabilitated life on his own getting that life ripped out from under him—and Dean left punched out and chained to a radiator—all because Dean formed a threateningly “close” brotherly bond with someone else.
Then AGAIN, it gets more shady than that. Dean’s Special Someone was a vampire, which is shady by nature. But if it hadn’t been for that vamp, Dean would’ve rotted alone in Purgatory. But if Dean had been more honest about developing a friendship with Benny. . . but is it so terrible to have a friendship that is only your business and no one else’s, because boundaries? Ugh, shades of gray everywhere!
But it’s interesting what actions stand out or resonate more with certain viewers. Dean, for instance, has done certain things that I found borderline unforgiveable (he’s no saint, as Sheila pointed out). Yet perhaps what I found to be despicable from Dean, others may find excusable . . . which makes for such a fun discussion.
Anyway I love your reviews Sheila! And please never stop emphasizing the Beauty. It’s one of my favorite things about your writing. Every time I finish one of your recaps, I have to go rewatch the episode and appreciate all the gorgeousness I missed :)
Breezy – some really really fascinating points here! The whole Benny thing was just perfectly designed, so deep!
And how the Benny bond mirrors the Amelia bond – and how WEIRD they both are with one another about all of it – added onto the fact that Sam didn’t look for Dean in Purgatory … It was a lot of fun watching all of that go down. Dean sneaking away to take phone calls from his BFF, and Sam going into a fugue state every other minute remembering his lost love/dog.
The brothers were so … separated … They looked at each other differently. It was a real “break.” I thought it was extremely well-conceived.
And I like the perspective that Sam is jealous of Dean bonding with someone else in a brotherly way (as you say, that’s the ultimate relationship for Dean). Yes, yes, it’s a vampire – ha – but also that Dean has closeness with someone else … It’s just so totally out of context for Sam to deal with that. Sam has always been the ONLY person that Dean is REALLY interested in. What is it like to have your older sibling so entirely focused on you? It would be annoying, smothering, but it would also be all that you know.
Speaking of Beauty:
“No Exit” is next and it’s a doozy, Beauty-wise. The freckles! The shadows! The closeups! It’s all deep blues and blacks, the whole thing – and everyone’s skin is super-pale, and the shadows like Crayola-black. I’m in love with it. Every frame is gorgeous.
Breezy,
Good point about the havoc Sam unleashed upon Benny. He didn’t kill him, though. Because Dean asked him not to. It’s not an either/or situation, the shades of grey keep us talking about these characters. Can’t wait for season ten.
Do you think Sam and Dean will sort everything all out between them?:)
Bainer –
I think the ultimate “sorting out” will probably come in the final moments of the final episode of the series. Not until then.
But it would be nice if certain elements were put to rest after, you know, Dean becomes a damn demon. You know, maybe let some shit be bygones and move on. I can’t wait to see how all that goes down.
I loved SAM’S whole thing in Season 9 too – his fury, his “I’m done”, and then his kind of being forced into letting that go a bit, and reaching out again to Dean, in concern. THAT’S a relationship. You put grievances aside when someone is really in trouble. I found it very moving.
I would definitely like certain issues that have been festering over the course of Season 8 and Season 9 to finally be addressed and sorted out. I would like to see some catharsis and reconciliation between them. Wiping the board I guess? Like Sheila, I was thrilled to see Dean’s descent, since a breakdown of some kind has seemed inevitable for so long. But I don’t know if I’d like the brothers to continue suffering the way they did in S9 for much longer, if that makes sense.
So yes and no. I hope things get sorted out between them, but I honestly don’t see a happy ending for Dean. I’m not usually so nihilistic when it comes to fictional characters. But Dean Winchester? He’s just been through too much for too long and seems so irrevocably fucked up, that I can’t picture him becoming a whole and complete person living a healthy and full life. Not like I can picture with Sam. Of course, a “healthy life” doesn’t have to equate married with children. I guess i’m speaking more in terms of Dean’s decade-long mental deterioration that he’s white-knuckled to the point that he couldn’t anymore.
But maybe his Mark of Cain descent and demonization will prove me wrong? Maybe S10 will be the Rock Bottom that he finally hits, and he has nowhere to go but up? I can’t imagine how he’ll bounce back from being a Demon though. He was barely functioning before he took on the Mark of Cain, which seemed like a sort of anti-depressant stabilizer that he coasted on ’til his death in the finale.
But yes, I’m very excited to see what happens! The promo clip made me miss both brothers so much :)
I’m not sure the suffering that happened in Season 9 could be sustained – I couldn’t believe how long it lasted myself (and like I said, I loved it – felt it was overdue, and loved how it was played). But it lasted almost the entire season, with no let-up. BOLD. They have such trust in their audience to let their lead character get THAT dark. I loved it.
But I think they may have explored that as far as it could go. The only way it could have ended was the way it did.
We’ve discussed before in comments sections Dean’s prospects in the future.
I love how worried everyone is about him. That was my point in the very first post I wrote about Ackles/Dean. It’s rather extraordinary to have a classic hero – be a character people are so concerned about. It doesn’t happen often.
I still think Dean should knock someone up and raise a kid. That is literally the only thing I personally can imagine that he could do, and be good at, and be semi-okay. It would take his best qualities and give them a focus. It would force him to not think about himself.
I said that a while back in the comments section and someone flipped OUT – NO, THAT’S A HORRIBLE IDEA – Ha. But a couple of other folks agreed with me.
Who knows. I’m not on the writer’s staff. :)
It’s just one of the things that floated through my head as I watched Season 9.
Which goes to show you how insane this show is. I watch Season 9, and watch Dean kill a bunch of demons, get a huge Mark on his arm, drink secretly, torture an angel, retreat emotionally, and I think, “That man needs to be a father. PRONTO.”
hahahaha
What about you? Do you think the writers are going to shoot for some sincere reconciliation in S10?
evave2 –
Let me pick up Sheila’s //Or maybe someone else reading here will have another perspective on the whole thing.// gauntlet. For me, one of the biggest conflicts on the show is “who will Sam and Dean become?” There’s the standard physical peril that they face that’s part of any action-oriented show. But more than that is the question of what sort of people will their choices and actions cause them to become. With the physical peril, we could have in the back of our minds, “well if Dean dies, he’ll get to go to a paradise where Casa Erotica I through IXLX is continuously broadcast on You Don’t Have To Pay Per View,” or “if Sam dies, it’s wienies and spaghetti every night.”
Except…
The characters we love also have the possibility of becoming someone awful. The years of stress without relief, the temptations thrown by the various Masters of Temptation, the normal human desire to just have some love and security if only a little bit of something is compromised, the “I like that creature/monster/person so the rules are different” rationalizations … this is just delicious stuff that the writers and creators have decided to do with the show. Our heroes may become people who don’t end up in heaven! That’s some serious cliff-hanger action!
The writers want us all riled up. That’s why they have Dean and Sam do terrible things to each other. The writers have picked up that JA and JP can find a way to be watchable without always being sympathetic, and that we viewers will keep our eyeballs glued to the telly. It’s Break Up/Make Up sex the writers want to have with us, the little pervs. And here we are, begging for it again.
I’m not suggesting that you don’t get so worked up by what Sam and Dean do to each other. Just recognize that getting worked up is part of what’s keeping you watching.
It’s why I decided that my Marmaduke and PBR(amended): The Garth And Ash Chronicles is a bad idea. No conflict between the leads. Just imagine the typical long car ride conversation:
“You the man.”
“No, you the man!”
“No, We The Men!”
“Hell yeah!”
“We should stop for some brews.”
“And waffles!”
It would last 2, maybe 3 episodes.
// Marmaduke and PBR(amended): The Garth And Ash Chronicles //
I am roaring with laughter. I still want to see that spin-off.
Question for Sheila: if Andy served beer and M&M’s to the women he Obi-Wan’d, would you still be as cool with his seductions?
I am such an empty shell, I probably would be fine with it, yeah.
No, just kidding.
Any guy who hovers over me serving me beer and M&Ms is to be treated with outright suspicion. What are you up to, pal??
Breezy,
I do feel the need for some reconciliation between Sam and Dean. I’d like to see them working smoothly, seamlessly, like the professional team we’ve seen them become in the first few seasons. At least for a little while!
mutecypher,
I could totally watch a few long car rides of Sam and Dean reminiscing over forgotten childhood joys/pranks/whatever. Getting waffles and brewskies. Sure, taking out a monster-of-the-week or two on the way. Then I’d be ready for another threat to the world that tests their moral character and familial bond to the max. Nine seasons is a lot!
I’d love to see some simple Monster of the Week cases again! Crazy motels, diner food, the Impala, back to the beginning structure of the show. There were only a couple of those in Season 9.
mutecypher, the best thing about your Ash/Garth dialogue is that I’m pretty sure I knew which one was which.
hahahahahaha Me too!
Breezy, I literally never thought about the possibility that Sam felt threatened by Dean developing relationships with Andy or Benny and that could have been what was driving his actions and his mistrust in Dean’s judgment. It’s possible that it didn’t occur to me because the first time that dynamic was set up was with Gordon, and Sam was right not to trust Gordon, but now that I’m thinking about it, there was a “that’s MY brother” undercurrent to Sam’s reaction to Gordon, too. Thanks for giving me a whole new way of looking at these episodes!
// It’s possible that it didn’t occur to me because the first time that dynamic was set up was with Gordon, and Sam was right not to trust Gordon, but now that I’m thinking about it, there was a “that’s MY brother” undercurrent to Sam’s reaction to Gordon, too. //
Right?? “He’s the only one who gets to call me that.”
That episode is so disorienting because of Dean’s psychodrama and Gordon’s manipulations. And yes, Sam had the right spidey-sense about Gordon. But there was maybe something about Dean bonding with someone else – leaving Sam out of it … that didn’t sit well with Sam, and had nothing to do with Sam’s spidey-sense about Gordon.
I don’t know, man! This stuff is so DEEP!!
bainer –
Yes, we need the tension and the fun episodes, both. And in season 10, a musical episode!
Shuffle off to Buffalo! I am so excited that I’m almost afraid.
Season 9 was pretty one-note grim. A couple of goof-offs, but in general – suuuuper serious.
I hope Demon Dean is a RIOT. We need it. Hell, Dean needs it.
Natalie–
Yeah it seems to be a tricky line to walk for the boys. In some instances, the “Bros vs. The World” paranoia and possessiveness is right on the money (Gordon, Ruby). But in other cases, their possessiveness gets in the way of either brother developing a wholesome, long-lasting relationship.
I’d really like to see SAM develop some intense camaraderie with other characters, even though he’s more “complete” as a person and is not quite the father figure/brother figure magnet that Dean is. But I think Sam would benefit from some strong “brotherly” bonds with other non-Dean people (even characters like Garth, Krissy, and Charlie seem to have a more Dean-centric connection to the show, which sometimes makes the Winchester/recurring character interactions seem imbalanced, imo).
So I’m glad they developed the Sam/Cas dynamic more in S9. Hopefully we’ll get a little more Sam/Jodie too. Maybe even some Sam/Ghost!Kevin?
I just really want some nicely developed character relationships for Sam. Because since he did choose The Life over Amelia, in 8×10, then he deserves to develop relationships with people inside that life the way that Dean has. I think it would make his world a lot less claustrophobic–and less Dean-centric, so that when Dean DOES bond with his next slew of inevitable surrogate brothers/fathers on the road, it’s not such a perceived threat to Sam. They both need more people in their life.
Totally agree with all of your thoughts here.
// I’m glad they developed the Sam/Cas dynamic more in S9. Hopefully we’ll get a little more Sam/Jodie too. //
Yes. I like the Sam/Cas dynamic better than the Dean/Cas dynamic (especially recently) – you can almost see Sam taking on an older brother thing with him. There has always been a very interesting thing between Sam and Cas, and I very much liked the episodes in Season 9 when it was just them. And Sam/Jodie, yes yes yes.
Dean is such a powerhouse. He’s just one of those people – he’s around and people seem to get sucked into his orbit. That could just be a function of Ackles’ charisma, but it also seems to work for the character. However, you’re right, it’s a bit out of balance.
Sam’s isolation from other bonds is also problematic for him. I mean, that one scene in Season 9 when Dean barges into Sam’s room and Sam pulls a gun on him – I saw that and thought, “Sam, maybe you need to get your own apartment. This clearly isn’t working anymore.”
evave2 –
To amplify a bit on what I was saying, the episodes we are talking about in season 2 are when the personal peril, the threat to their characters and souls, begins. In season 2 this is focussed on Sam and the notion that something in his person, his blood, may make him evil. With Sam, it seem like the big question is, “Is he fated for something – good or evil?” Dean, channeling Sarah Connor’s “there is no fate but what we make for ourselves,” is more about his choices. Sheila and others have remarked on that difference between them. SPN’s creators were exploring that stuff 7 years ago, and they’ve gotten really good at putting the boys into soul-peril.
It’s not uncommon for an author to take time in the early part of a novel to almost teach the reader how to read her – if the author has an uncommon way of writing or thinking. I don’t know if there was a plan to teach us, the audience, how to understand the characters and their perils – or if we (the writers and the audience) just gave each other the sort of feedback that led to where we are today.
Heather (the Heat!) –
//If you go with the ring cycle, you will have lots of practice.//
I have a friend who lives near Seattle and it’s common for their opera to put on a part of The Ring Cycle every season or so. As part of it, the opera company offers a day of tutorials on Wagner’s view of German mythology, his leitmotifs and so on. He’s said the tutorials are very good, and help with the appreciation of the opera. So, I have that on my to-do list. In keeping with the artist teaching the audience how to understand his work…
Those tutorials sound amazing, mute cypher – wow! Context is sometimes so important with stuff like that.
Kinda like the online reading guides to Finnegans Wake. They can get a bit much, but it’s just one of those books where you need to understand WHAT you are reading BEFORE you read it. Just a little bit of context to take the edge off – otherwise it is totally impenetrable. I mean, it still is, in many ways, but at least you have a sense of the method behind the madness.
First off, I wrote like a ‘6’ paragraph missive here that I deleted and did not send: is it ok to curse? FUCK. It was good, lemme tell ya.
Thank you for everybody who responded to my interest in Citizen Fang and the behavior of both brothers; I disliked Sam’s behavior more than I disliked Dean’s. BUT I appreciate others feel differently and that’s not why I am writing now.
Oh, Bainer: they are introducting a new character named Cole in Season 10 and they said he knows nothing about the Supernatural. Before I read that bit I thought he might be Amy’s son Jacob. THAT KID will show up someday to eat Dean’s brains. But for now, Cole is not Jacob. But that would be an awesome plot IMO.
Bainer: good luck with your script/show. Sheila has given me so much to think about in explaining acting choices, directing choices, writing aims. I am understanding the show on a whole different level now.
First off, I am much more like Sam than I am like Dean. I appreciate HIS appreciation for learning and research. Jared is such an exceptional actor; I don’t see him “acting” I see him “being” and whenever I see Jared in a convention video or something I realize again and again that Jared is not SAM. Everything is so organic and understated. Jared has created a real person to me.
Yesterday I mentioned John Winchester’s Journal, which is a book put out BY THE SHOW. There are Supernatural books, but these are licensed, not “part of the show” and in that sense, the Journal is “canon” (put out by the writers) and the books are not.
There is a scene in which a Hunter named Anderson is following Sam around and John confronts him. There has been scuttlebutt in the Hunter “world” that Sam is not human or fully human. Sam was with ANOTHER Hunter named Silas who also felt something was “wrong with Sam” and Silas ended up torn limb from limb. Anderson believed Sam did it (John never figured out who/what did it either) and was going to kill Sam. John confronted him; John was disabled; Dean comes up and shoots him in half with a shotgun. John is proud yet scared, what has he done to his son?
This is a process question: Kripke approved the book, this was his background for the characters. Does the performance of “Dean” come out of Kripke saying, this is Dean’s background or does it come from Jensen feeling his away around the character? When I read about Kripke’s set up, the Dean he envisaged had NO redeeming characteristics at all, the tough guy grifter. Dean gave the character an internal life.
Jensen came from Dark Angel where he played Alec; I could “see” Alec in the beginning of the series and it wasn’t until Asylum (for me) that it was pure unadulterated “Dean.” The actor creates schtick for the character (or it may be that there is still the Alec schtick but I just don’t see it anymore, Dean is a much more complete character?).
Does the writer tell the actor about the character? Does the director get the actor into the character? Does the actor create the character? By that I mean did Kripke tell Jensen that Dean had killed a man when he was 12yo in order to protect Sam and then how did Jensen bring that into Dean?
Again, I don’t see Jared acting at all (I know he is) because his Sam is so complete and organic. I see Jensen “becoming” this character of so many parts. But which comes first, the chicken or the egg? I hope those of you who understand how a drama is constructed can give me some insight here. And here’s hoping I don’t delete again (I think my original comment was much better but probably less clear than this one.) and I look forward to any body who CAN responding.
Evave – I’m sure Ackles made up his own backstory, and no, Kripke would not be dictating to him anything. Maybe Ackles read the books, but I’m imagining he didn’t. Imagination is far far better than something that concrete. Anything Ackles can imagine is way worse than anything Kripke or anyone else could have dictated to him.
The one person who knows the most about Dean Winchester is Jensen Ackles. The writers are now writing for him, especially – I mean, that happened early on – Season 1, when they realized what they had in him. He could handle ANYthing. Sadness, rage, sexiness, fear, comedy – he could do it all. That would have been somewhat apparent from his audition, I imagine.
But no. Nobody is giving Ackles a printout from some book put out by the show saying, “Incorporate this into your character.” That is not how acting works.
Ackles’ imagination is just as potent as any book put out by the show and he has done his homework. He is a very homework kind of guy. He PREPARES. That includes the emotional reality of any given scene – and also his imagination – He has imagined every single step of Dean Winchester’s life before the show starts. He knows everything. And these are meant to be secrets. These are meant to work ON him, as opposed to him revealing them consciously. It’s one of the reasons why Dean is such a rich character, because Jensen Ackles has filled in all of the blanks for himself. You can SEE it on his face sometimes, whether or not he has lines to illuminate it.
And the chicken and the egg develop around one another, at the same time. If you watch Season 1, you can almost see it happening. Dean is created/written in very broad strokes in the pilot. Wendigo almost immediately brings in other stuff to play – there’s a softness there, there’s that sexual openness – the way Dean sexualizes moments with everyone (especially in the one little confrontation with Roy) – and the whole “You pretty girl, let me flirt with you” thing – it was already quite different from what was set up in the pilot. It was nuanced. Shadings. Next comes Dead In the Water, and then Phantom Traveler. Look at how in those 4 episodes, what we saw in the pilot was totally up-ended, deepened – our own expectations of him overturned. It was a delightful “reveal” of the character. Dean Winchester was “built to last.” That guy we saw in the pilot would never have lasted 10 seasons. He’s too one-note.
But the pilot plus the three episodes following? That’s an in-depth character. That guy is built to last.
And yes, a lot of that is strictly on Ackles’ shoulders. If they had cast another guy, a less sensitive actor, we wouldn’t have cared at all. It would all be cliched, or sentimental, or too broad … it wouldn’t have that weird ambiguous depth that Ackles brings to everything – and nobody would care and it would have been canceled after 2 seasons.
Oh I remember now what I commented and lost: Bainer, Carver said that he was writing a three-year arc (Seasons 8-9 were approved and Season 10 looked pretty good) and has said his arc would split the brothers apart and then bring them back together “better than ever” whatever that means.
What it means to me is that one time this past year my husband came upstairs to live- watch Season 9 and said, I won’t stay if the one guy yells at the other guy, do you know if the one guy yells at the other guy? I am in a later time zone so I was reading a live-blog at the time which ended with the blogger commenting no brother yelling at the other brother. So I told my husband, no the one guy does not yell at the other guy and then he watched with me. Who knows, maybe they do fix it somewhat? Of course Dean might need a lobotomy to forget some of the stuff Sam said (and it never ceases to amaze me that in a family I can be screaming red-faced snot running down my face and then 6 minutes later saying want to help with dinner? and it will all be under the bridge — it’s not really “forgiving” as just “letting go” and making dinner) or Sam might need a forgetting spell to forget about Gadreel, but hey. Family.
I know conflict drives plot, but I for one would like a half dozen episodes at least in which nobody says nothing to nobody in a mean fashion. To quote Dean, I ask myself, when is decapitation not my thing?
// I know conflict drives plot, but I for one would like a half dozen episodes at least in which nobody says nothing to nobody in a mean fashion. //
Drama has never worked like that in the history of Drama.
bainer – //Speaking of the imagery of the show – did you find Dean/JA was made to look unattractive in season 9 (as unattractive as JA can be)?//
I have to say it never even occured to me that someone could find season 9 Dean/JA unattractive. For me, season 9 Dean – with the weathered look and the deep wrinkles and the stubble and all in all more than just rough around the edges – is the hottest Dean has ever been. Not the most beautiful (that would be season 2), but definitely the most attractive. …Except for that hideous mustard yellow jacket. That was really horrible.
There’s no profound meaning to my observation – I just wanted to leave it here since this comment thread seems to have the “we see things differently” vibe. It’s fascinating, and thought-provoking, and I absolutely love it.
Wait – which jacket? I think I’ve blocked it out.
Oh, and by the way, sorry (again) for how my comments don’t “nest” properly. I am the only one who gets to “reply” – for some reason – and nobody can figure out why that is. It didn’t used to be that way and it suddenly changed and my programming friend can’t figure it out.
So just do the best you can – it helps to quote the person you’re replying to – It ends up working okay although it’s slightly awkward. Just thought I’d mention it.
//Except for that hideous mustard yellow jacket. That was really horrible.//
Hunenka – agree on Season 9 Dean. Loved that gaunt, wild-eyed, stubbly ancient mariner look. Bonkers and beautiful. And that jacket … mmm, jackets are clearly some kind of barometer of the Winchester pysche. Bad jacket choice=trouble. But maybe they chose that colour because it hides baby sick .. who knows.
//Drama has never worked like that in the history of Drama.//
Sheila, 10 minutes after reading this I’m still laughing – partly at myself, as I tend to flinch and look away from conflict onscreen between characters I’m invested in. What a waste of drama! Your recaps have really helped me look at the conflict onscreen and look for the drama, what’s happening for the characters and why. Very enriching – thank you!
// Bad jacket choice=trouble. //
hahahaha God, I could use a barometer like that.
In re: Drama:
hahaha I mean, imagine if Hamlet and Claudius worked it out?? Or if Lady Macbeth had decided to not be mean. You know.
I think definitely with SPN we are meant to look at the screen and go (out loud, if necessary): “Oh come ON you guys – kiss and make up – tell the truth – STOP IT.”
I mean, all of the “How are you doing?” “Okay” or “What’s wrong” “Nothing” scenes … What is amazing to me is that JA and JP never get sick of playing such repetitive scenes and always manage to find specificity and subtlety in all that. But God, watching it … I’m a much more blunt person than either of them – I could not handle the silence, the things not being said. (Maybe that’s why I respond to that Mentalist woman so much?? She looks at their body language and speaks the truth – and both of them are baffled that they give so much away. But you can tell that Dean is looking at her like, “I kind of NEED your perspective right now …”)
It’s like a slow-motion car crash. You watch and you go, “Guys. This little moment here? Where you don’t tell the truth? It’s going to come back and GET YOU. Like it always does, FOR THE LOVE A’ PETE.” But … but … it’s been 8 seasons, 9 … and they’re still saying “I’m doing good” when they CLEARLY are not doing good, or saying “Nothing” when the other asks “What’s wrong” and BAHHHHH these guys.
hahaha When someone walks into that dynamic – like Garth – or Charlie – or (still beating that drum) the Mentalist girl – and actually is not afraid of either of them, and gets right in there and says what they see and says what’s on their mind … It’s so cathartic, for me as an audience member. I’m like, “Thank GOD that SOMEONE in this universe is willing to speak the truth to these yahoos. They clearly need the help.”
You know, it’s kind of like star-crossed lovers stories. There’s that tension – where you feel like you the audience could make it all right if the fictional characters would just let you intervene.
If only Romeo hadn’t such and such. And what would have happened if the Friar hadn’t gotten involved? And if only Juliet KNEW what we in the audience knew!
This whole tragedy could have been averted if someone had just slowed everything down and talked it out!
But noooo. It can’t be stopped. And when it works, it’s horrible to watch. It makes you feel helpless.
And I, too, loved Dean’s grizzled watery-eyed grimness in Season 9. I did think he looked like shit, albeit beautiful. He looked like he wasn’t sleeping at all, drinking too much, and probably crying a lot in private. Rough. There were times when I thought, “Dude. You need to splash some water on your face. Now. And please stop wearing that plaid shirt immediately. It’s bad news for everyone involved.”
mutecypher:
//I have a friend who lives near Seattle and it’s common for their opera to put on a part of The Ring Cycle every season or so. As part of it, the opera company offers a day of tutorials on Wagner’s view of German mythology, his leitmotifs and so on. He’s said the tutorials are very good, and help with the appreciation of the opera. So, I have that on my to-do list. In keeping with the artist teaching the audience how to understand his work…//
The tutorial is a good idea; a way to make something possibly esoteric into a more accessible pleasure. I also love the idea of the drawn out, ritualized set up. They don’t just put on the shows but have this entire EVENT. Even folks familiar with The Rings would probably love the opportunity to enjoy it in a new way. I fell in love with it when I was a kid because: Story, Music, Extremes, Beauty. And possibly, I was weird.
My mother just gave me a book on Scandinavian Folktales which I am looking forward to reading. One of the stories is called The Great Puke. How is that not great?
The Great Puke!! I love it! You’ll have to fill us in.
//I think definitely with SPN we are meant to look at the screen and go (out loud, if necessary): “Oh come ON you guys – kiss and make up – tell the truth – STOP IT.”//
Oh god, yes. The conflict it arouses in us viewers is as great as whatever is going on in the show. ‘No, Sam, don’t say that – and aaagh, Dean, don’t do that (and change that jacket while you’re about it.)’
By the way, I love Dean’s forensic ‘bullet point’ technique for dealing with Sam’s arguments – there was one in ‘Everybody loves a clown’ and one in the previous episode to Simon Says, where he goes ‘This thing you said? Sorry, dude, totally unrealistic. And that thing you said, sorry, won’t work. And the other thing you said, I’ve done that already, thanks very much for the suggestion.’ Doesn’t come up very much, but love it when it does. Kind of comes back, and not in a good way, in Season 9 with the ‘Since when was enjoying one’s job not permissible?’ line of argument.
//I’m like, “Thank GOD that SOMEONE in this universe is willing to speak the truth to these yahoos. They clearly need the help.”//
Absolutely. We all just need to shout a bit louder at the screen and eventually they’ll hear us.
// ‘This thing you said? Sorry, dude, totally unrealistic. And that thing you said, sorry, won’t work. And the other thing you said, I’ve done that already, thanks very much for the suggestion.’ //
hahahaha
Ahhh, logic. Yeah, it’s like he’s trying to organize their floating argument into a Power Point presentation. He’s quite a fearsome foe, you need your shit together to argue. Like Sam over the car at Mom’s grave, looking at Dean’s expression and thinking, “Uhm, yeah. It’s too early in the morning for me to go up against that.”
//And please stop wearing that plaid shirt as well//
That red plaid shirt came up in every Season 9 episode where something really bad happened. That shirt is cursed! Get rid of it!
It really is. I hate that thing. Burn it in the incinerator. Put on a henley. You’ll feel better.
//Ahhh, logic.//
Honestly, logic is so hot.
So true. That whole competency thing again (thanks, Jessie).
Logic plus henleys?
I can’t stand it.
//Logic plus henleys?//
Aagh, are you reading my mind?
They’re trying to overwhelm us and drown us in awesome. It’s almost unfair. I can’t catch up.
Sheila – //Wait – which jacket? I think I’ve blocked it out.//
The one he was wearing in 9×21. The color was really fugly and the cut was really weird, and it totally spoiled the badass Dean-kills-Abaddon scene for me. (Okay, so it was also spoiled by the fact that it was painfully obvious Abaddon wasn’t really impaled on Dean’s Blade. It looked so weird and unconvincing. Up until the point when Dean goes batshit crazy on her cropse and then gets this lost little boy look once Sam makes him stop. THAT I loved.)
Sheila, I KNOW there will be conflict, even if it’s Dean making a joke about Sam’s hair.
I meant the level of nastiness in Season 9 could be turned down somewhat. I look back on the “early days” and while they disagreed, it wasn’t as nasty as Season 9.
They can disagree, they can argue, hell, they can throw punches. Sam can say that Dean made lousy lasagna. Dean can argue that Sam is wearing his hair so long because it is starting to thin (THAT will start a full on prank war, in which Sam will Nair Dean) — I don’t care. I LOVE that stuff. That is real (husband last night: I think you needed a little more salt in my birthday dinner; me last night: WHAT) but I would like them to mostly get ALONG for a few episodes. Season 3 had some pretty intense feelings going on, Sam was SO PISSED that Dean was going to hell for him.
Bobby was right, How will Sam FEEL ABOUT YOU DYING? HORRIBLE. And that was something Dean did to him, not just FOR him. So I don’t mean conflict-free. I mean, nasty bitchy shitty crappy bringing up you forgot to flush to toilet AGAIN free.
//“Sam, maybe you need to get your own apartment. This clearly isn’t working anymore.”//
LOL! So true. I’d love to see the brothers living in their own apartments (which of course would be right next door to each other), but I guess different bedrooms is progress :)
Also, I agree with your response above that Dean becoming a father would be the best possible outcome for him. He could continue to devote himself to another person, but in a healthier way. I’d love to see that! Especially if that someone was a daughter. Plus, there’s gotta be mini-Deans all over the US by now, I’d imagine–so not at all unrealistic.
//Yes. I like the Sam/Cas dynamic better than the Dean/Cas dynamic (especially recently)//
I’ve been curious about what you think of the Dean/Cas relationship (it’s my personal favorite on the show–mainly because of the insane chemistry between Ackles and Collins) but I’m glad it was put on the back burner last season, since its absence made Dean’s isolation and descent more believable (and it allowed for some much-needed Sam/Cas). But, of course, you’ll probably want to save your thoughts on Dean/Cas for later episodes :)
I can’t remember where we had the “Dean should be a dad” conversation – maybe Natalie will remember – but yes, we thought Dean having a daughter would be perfect. Honestly, what else could this guy do? I mean, he could hire himself out as a mercenary in the Middle East. He’d fit right in there. But … what else?
All I really need for him (to be honest) is to get his necklace back and drive off into the sunset in the final scene. I trust the show will put me through Hell before we get there … but wherever he is heading, homelife, kid-raising, whatever, I’ll be fine with it – as long as he has his necklace back, and he’s behind the wheel. Everything else is just details.
// Plus, there’s gotta be mini-Deans all over the US by now, I’d imagine– //
Ha. As responsible as he is with his promiscuity, that’s gotta be true.
I like Dean and Castiel – I just have a problem with Castiel’s story lines recently. I REALLY disliked the angels in Season 9 – bureaucratic, boring, they all looked alike, I couldn’t tell them apart, and I YEARNED for Uriel and Balthazar and all the other scary freaky dangerous angels. it was a huge mis-fire from where I’m standing and weakened Castiel’s presence on the show. I stopped caring completely. Now, this is just me. I know he is very loved by his fan base and I think he brought a lot to the show in those early seasons, when he was very “Other” and frightening. I like THAT Castiel. The one who seems very “other,” otherworldly, powerful, clueless, deadpan. But I really dislike some of the story lines recently, and him suddenly being “pop culture savvy” – Just really disliked it, it felt pandering to me. Rubbed me the wrong way.
But those early seasons, he’s great. I mean, he the actor is always interesting – and those scenes with Sam in Season 9 were my favorites involving Castiel. The guinea pig? Ahhhhhh. LOVED it.
And I totally agree that Dean needed to be isolated in Season 9. Charlie dispatched to Oz. There is no way she would take one look at Dean post-Mark of Cain and not pull him aside and say, “Dean. What the hell.” As it is, Dean was left totally open to Crowley’s grooming, and predatory movements. Yikes.
I hope my wording isn’t too strong. :) I honestly don’t want to alienate anyone with my own strong opinions. But the Season 9 angels were a 700 Club Snooze-fest to me. It felt like I was forced to watch an Amway sales-rep meeting every time they came onscreen. I realize, new regime, all that, but story-wise, it just didn’t work for me at all.
//For me, season 9 Dean – with the weathered look and the deep wrinkles and the stubble and all in all more than just rough around the edges – is the hottest Dean has ever been.//
I gotta agree with you there. I didn’t think Ackles could get any more attractive, and then “First Born” happened . . . It was like discovering a whole new world, lol. Like “here, meet Rugged Dean.”
The beard in the werewolf episode pretty much put me over the edge.
Breezy — I guess different bedrooms is progress :)
IS IT THOUGH
Evave —
In the words of FJ McMahon, we all wish for peace and happy times. But resolution is far away — we will be rejoicing over crumbs for some time yet — and even when it comes the text itself will never provide all the answers you seek, it is bottomless that way. Meanwhile, if the whys and hows and the why nots and the shoulds and the ughs and the aarghs niggle at you so, maybe write your own versions? I am sure there are people out there who would like to read them :-)
Jessie – I am crying with laughter at that first gif. hahahaha You find the perfect illustrations. I can’t stop looking at that. What the HELL is that behavior. It’s beautiful.
and you make a great point about fan fic. Some of the best I’ve read delves into all of this stuff in a way the show never would, because it’s not that kind of show, and there isn’t time for it, and yadda yadda. But those yearnings are THERE – in that subtext – which is why we all can’t seem to stop talking about the show!
I just watched The Pilot on TNT this morning and after all the intense stuff over the years it strikes me (first how young they are, they are KIDS) how “untogether” they are. I don’t think Sam likes Dean very much, he seems ashamed of him. Actually ashamed. And not of their sketchy past. He disrespected his father (Miller time, the 3 Js) but he disliked/was ashamed of Dean. Dean mostly doesn’t respond to it (when Sam apologizes, no chick flic moments). Sam has REMOVED himself from the proceedings.
And it’s like Sam has no epiphany in the Pilot either: the scene on the bridge, in which Sam is saying even if they killed YED, Mom would still be dead and Dean gets pissed? Because at the end of the episode he sees Jessica burn up (oh yeah, maybe Mom will still be dead, but if we stop it, nobody else will be: that was never Sam’s understanding of what they were doing, while disreputable Dean SAW THAT).
The first half-dozen episodes Sam is putting up with Dean. Considering how Dean is “in charge” of the hunts it still surprises me how Sam is barely keeping his contempt (and I feel it is contempt as well as being ashamed Sam is portraying) off the radar.
Gosh the first four episodes (which Sheila referenced above for the actors getting into their roles) are so so good.
//I like Dean and Castiel – I just have a problem with Castiel’s story lines recently. I REALLY disliked the angels in Season 9 – bureaucratic, boring, they all looked alike, I couldn’t tell them apart, and I YEARNED for Uriel and Balthazar and all the other scary freaky dangerous angels. it was a huge mis-fire from where I’m standing and weakened Castiel’s presence on the show. I stopped caring completely. Now, this is just me. I know he is very loved by his fan base and I think he brought a lot to the show in those early seasons, when he was very “Other” and frightening. I like THAT Castiel. The one who seems very “other,” otherworldly, powerful, clueless, deadpan. But I really dislike some of the story lines recently, and him suddenly being “pop culture savvy” – Just really disliked it, it felt pandering to me. Rubbed me the wrong way.//
I actually agree with everything you said. I think the introduction of Castiel and the angels is probably one of the best and worst things to happen to the show. It provided for some incredible stakes in S4 and S5, and some interesting discussion about God, heaven, and fate. But post-S5, I felt the writers have been really floundering with the angels (S9 being the biggest misstep). They became so disinterested with the angel civil war, that they killed one of the “leaders” off screen!
If the angel story line was removed from S9 and we only focused on the Mark of Cain, brother angst, and civil war between Crowley and Abbadon, I would’ve enjoyed the season much more.
As for Castiel, I love the character (and especially the actor) but his continual existence on the show has become more problematic over the years. And he has become a bit flanderized? I guess is the word. The thing is, I don’t really have a solution for the writers, because I understand the desire to keep him as a regular . . . but does his presence require the other angels as well?
Yeah, I’m with you on all of that. He’s there because he’s a regular and fans love him – but Season 9 was just Eh. It goes to show you how much it didn’t work for me that I didn’t care at all about the lost grace. Usually they were much better at making me at least nominally care about the off-screen angel dramas.
Maybe it would have been better to let Castiel stay human longer. You know, keep the angels out of it – especially if they were going to be so unimaginative with the angels (Naomi and Metatron being the real exceptions). I don’t know. Every time Cas’ story-line took center stage in Season 9, I felt the whole thing grind to a halt. I think sometimes certain story-lines (like Dean and Mark of Cain) take on such enormity in the writer’s room that it’s a challenge to focus on anything else. You know? That whole thing, and Dean’s whole journey, and Sam’s reaction to it – was so well-conceived and drawn-out and thought-out … and the Castiel stuff felt totally tacked on.
Hopefully the writers are aware of that – I can’t imagine they’re not – and will do better in Season 10. Let’s have angels be scary again. Fearsome. “Other.” If they’re gonna be on the show, they have to be something more engaging than an Amway sales-rep meeting.
Sheila,” I can’t remember where we had the “Dean should be a dad” conversation – maybe Natalie will remember – but yes, we thought Dean having a daughter would be perfect. Honestly, what else could this guy do? I mean, he could hire himself out as a mercenary in the Middle East. He’d fit right in there. But … what else?”
Dean did have a daughter and Sam shot her:) I guess that ties back in with the discussion of Sam also resenting another possible bond to Dean. Granted, that episode set it up so that we, as the audience, were rooting for Sam to shoot her, to get there in time. However, Sam still notes that Dean was going to give “her a pass”. Not allowed.
Oh yeah, I know. But that wasn’t really a normal situation. What is, on this show. :)
Just spit-balling a fictional character’s alternate futures. As you do.
God Jessie, love that gif and the whole ‘hot funeral directors’ look.
Season 9 minus column:
too much plaid
bad jackets
god awful boring angels
pointless Cas
not enough Charlie episodes
Season 9 plus column
beards, and Cain’s curly moustache
wild, red eyes
wrinkles
Jody, Sheriff of Awesome
a whole episode featuring a little old lady being schmoozed by Sam
talking dogs
lots of shadows – even if they are the wrong colour, it’s a step in the right direction
Crowley even more evil than ever
cornflakes for breakfast
lots of pain and anguish
pink iPod
ehh, pretty evenly balanced, I reckon.
Yeah, all in all, I loved Season 9, Amway Angels notwithstanding.
I love your tally!!
Season 9 cons
angels (yawn)
plaid shirts
Castiel being pop culture savvy, the Wookie comment still embarrasses me
the dumb-looking heavenly jail at the end – it was very Land of the Lost, a papier mache jail
Season 9 pros
Yes to the cornflakes. Chased with whiskey.
Hi-tech coffee pot
pink iPod
the bunker, in general
Dean’s room, in general
Charlie
Garth finding happiness – although that’s bittersweet for me. Bye bye Garth?
Every scene involving Crowley
Cain in a beekeeper’s suit
Cain shucking corn
Cain
Cain
Cain
Dean taking on all of those demons at once in Cain’s kitchen
Dean’s beard and red-rimmed crazy eyes – that scene in the kitchen at the end of The Purge is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. Brutal. Great writing, great acting.
Sam’s staunch completeness – becoming really separate, really himself
Jodie – that whole vamps episode was great.
The look on Dean’s face when he first stands off with Metatron. He was so orange he looked like a bot. Very creepy.
Dean shouting YOU YOU YOU at a mailman.
Oh, and Crowley and Sam penetrating one another with red and black columns of smoke. I will never ever get sick of it.
And yes: shadows. The look is getting back on track. Season 7 was the nadir of primary colors.
There was more than one “Dean should be a dad” conversation, but the one that I said I thought it needed to be a daughter was in the Something Wicked comments, I think. And the whole idea was that it needed to be a daughter he would actually raise from infancy, not a monster baby that grows from birth to 16 in 3 days ;-)
Right. It’s the details that get you every time.
Yes, I would like a baby but not a monster baby, honest to GOD.
//Let’s have angels be scary again. Fearsome. “Other.”//
I just rewatched Season 9 (can’t you tell) and the one angel who did fall into that category – just – was Gadreel. I felt there was a lot of the weirdness (if not humour) of early Cas about him. His character got more intriguing as it went along, and there was a strong and interesting mirror of Dean in the way he’s basically groomed by Metatron. There was that weird diction and physical awkwardness, like he wasn’t quite confident of human language or comfortable in a human body, or any body, come to think of it. No Balthasar or Uriel (master of the loaded pause) but the best of a bad lot.
Gadreel was definitely great and should be in my “pro” column. I loved the weird diction, and the tone of his voice – like a larynx and vocal cords were new to him and he would just as soon start screaming in Enochian.
He was lovely and it was a great and yes, very strange, character.
I also loved his black leather jacket. No plaid for him.
Love your additions.
//Cain
Cain
Cain//
You do realise he wears a sort of proto-henley? Please bring him back. I will give them the Mona Lisa, Alaska and my costco card if money is a problem.
Crowley – ‘I ask for reading materials and you give me this?’
Cornflakes for breakfast scenes – it is like watching bears handle a toy tea set.
“I ask for reading materials …”
One of the funniest line readings in the whole series. I fall over laughing.
I love how Crowley is this funny scruffy demon, so entertaining, but also soooo sinister. Season 9 was a great Crowley season.
And yes! Cain wore a henley. Which is strangely meaningful to me, which means I need to get off the Internet immediately.
//He was lovely and it was a great and yes, very strange, character.//
And he wrote ‘Capital,’ so there’s that.
Sheila, I think you forgot one other angel in season 9 that was absolutely unforgettable – the heroic, determined Tractoriel riding his equally heroic iron steed.
hahahahahaha
Oh you people with your awesome gifs!!!
Sheila –
No, seriously, I think they wasted some great potential with Tractoriel when they let him reach Dean in that episode.
Here’s what should have happened: in 9×01, Dean prays to the angels for help, and we see Tractoriel decide to answer that prayer and embark on a long, dangerous mission, riding his powerful yet very slow tractor. Then, as the season progresses, we see him continue his journey bravely, riding across the States in his search for Dean Winchester. And finally, in 9×23, just as Dean and Metatron are about to have their face-off, Tractoriel arrives, runs Metatron over with his tractor and saves Dean.
Sam and Dean solve the Mark of Cain situation, thank Tractoriel for his help, drink beer on the Impala’s hood and watch Tractoriel ride off into the sunset.
// riding his powerful yet very slow tractor. //
Laughing.
I like this a lot. It would be hilarious if he had come roaring in as a callback to that original prayer from Dean. “I’m here. What’d I miss? Is it too late??”
Tractoriel’s journey – like the angelic The Straight Story?
Helena – jinx! You beat me to the punch with that comment!!
D’oh!
Loved that film.
Oh, wonderful movie.
Kind of like Wild Strawberries, just with farm machinery.
Sheila, Helena –
Yes, exactly like The Straight Story! Only much more epic, of course.
And then they could make a spin-off about Tractoriel and all the other angels who, inspired by his bravery, chose to join him in his travels across America to fight evil.
I like the guy who’s having breakfast with his family and basically gets up and walks out. I’m outta here, gotta go.
Helena –
//I will give them the Mona Lisa, Alaska and my costco card if money is a problem.//
Costco, insane libraries, Hello Kitty – you Brits have all the cool stuff.
//talking dogs//
//Dean shouting YOU YOU YOU at a mailman.//
I would add:
Dean playing fetch with Sam and scratching behind his ears.
Dean arguing with a mouthy pigeon and then pulling his gun on said pigeon while horrified civilians look on.
Sam having to give a belly rub to a belligerent terrier to get him to talk.
“The tall drink.”
I suddenly need to go watch that episode again.
The fetch. Sam’s reaction to it – ‘what is your problem …”
The way Dean scratches himself.
And yes, Sam’s sort of put-upon expression as he is forced to pleasure the terrier.
SO SILLY.
//I like the guy who’s having breakfast with his family and basically gets up and walks out. I’m outta here, gotta go.//
Yes, I completely forgot about him! His poor wife and kids though – they just watched him leave without a word and then later his body was found somewhere in New York. I was hoping they’d actually adress the massive angels-taking-vessels issue more, ideally from the humans’ perspective. As in, the Winchesters talking to some of the affected families and explaining what happened. I love Winchesters interacting with civillians and telling them about the supernatural world. (That was probably the only good thing about Bloodlines – bored Dean and Sam’s “Basically, we chase down evil and we cut its head off.” How many times did they have to go through that conversation?)
// I was hoping they’d actually adress the massive angels-taking-vessels issue more, ideally from the humans’ perspective. //
I know! It’s one of those weird loose-ends! Earlier, there was more justification about it – the vessels invited them in, prayed for it, whatever … but seems like THAT sure went by the wayside.
I always thought that Dog Dean Afternoon was like an actors’ dream of a perfect exercise for a class.
And now, Jensen will do HIS “dog.” All of you, watch his scratching and LEARN.
That You You You stayed with me for quite a while.
//“Basically, we chase down evil and we cut its head off.” //
Great line.
But as I keep pretending that episode never happened. I forgot to put this in the debit column. Your mileage may vary, of course.
More on the plus side:
Dean’s whole ‘always adios’ monologue in the chastity group.
Spirit of Bobby in the season opener. ‘Yip, yip yip, amiright?’
Sam: ‘This is where you hug me back’
Sam, ‘I lied.’ Slowly emptying that bottle alone in the dark library.
Tara’s lovely weekend with John Winchester.
Oh yea. Always adios.
Tara’s biceps.
Boys’ home.
Dean teaching little boy how to shake hands.
Albert Magnus’s house. And his creepy hair. And general creepiness.
Shower scene.
Dean’s first kiss.
Crowley reading ‘Little women.’
Deans face when he first holds the blade.
The young actor who played young Dean. And yes first kiss!
The use of a Lou Reed song during Crowleys stint as a junkie.
Wasn’t Crowley crying watching Casablanca? That too.
Gah! I’m so far behind!
re: Dad!Dean and Jealous?Sam
I am also a member of the “Dean needs a kid” team. (If I were in Sam’s place, I’d be—irresponsibly—poking pin-holes in all of Dean’s condoms. Just desperately trying to divert his smothering attention from me.)
For it to work, it would probably have to be Dean’s biological child, and the mother would have to be out of the picture. Were the mother around, or if it wasn’t biologically his, I would bet Dean’s self-loathing would drive him to distance himself from the kid for its “protection”—much in the way he left Lisa and Ben.
What’s funny though, is that Sam doesn’t really seem to consider the parenthood option for Dean. He does when he thinks he’ll be trapped in Hell, but otherwise…not so much. I could be off base, but it does strike me as jealousy on Sam’s part, of someone taking his place. It is part of my Dean-is-Sam’s-mother-figure theory. The rage Sam feels about Benny, or the quick way he killed Dean’s Amazon-Daughter, always seemed to me to be a bit more than just anger at Dean’s hypocrisy.
Oh, and the Amazon-Daughter…am I the only one who thinks that it perhaps should have been a bigger deal than it was? It was sort of set up as Amy=Amazon-kid: Dean killed Amy Pond, so Sam killed Dean’s monster-daughter? I don’t know.
May – hi!!
// always seemed to me to be a bit more than just anger at Dean’s hypocrisy. //
Yes. I agree. All part of that twisty old dynamic. They’re both so stuck in it. I’m thinking back now on that great conversation in Season 1 in Shadow – where Sam is like, “what are you gonna do when this is all over?”
It’s hard to picture Sam saying anything like that now.
For me, Season 9 was about Sam breaking away – or as I call it, “changing the dance step” – and any relationship that is as enmeshed in that one will find change really challenging. (Uhm. Understatement.)
And there’s that final conversation in the Impala about Dean’s daughter – Sam pissed off. Dean defensive. Sam trying to brush it off – “she wasn’t really yours” and Dean is like, “No. She WAS mine.” And it’s an extremely deep moment as I recall. Almost sad. They’re both extremely separated. Dean had a child. Now he doesn’t. Sam killed the child. And yeah, that fact just kind of sat there, undeveloped.
The whole thing was rather intriguing to me – and speaking of Beauty, sorry, I get distracted:
That motel room is absolutely TO DIE FOR. And there’s one long shot where Dean goes to answer the door (and it’s his daughter) – and as he moves across the room, he is silhouetted against all these different backgrounds – the dark green walls, the big windows with the night outside, and then into the shadows – and it is STUNNING. Every single second of that cross across the room is a painting. It pleases me every time I see it.
Boy you guys make me like Season 9 a lot more; there were a lot of good scenes there.
Nobody mentioned it, but I really liked Jodi and A4; you don’t know if she kept the girl or if the girl went home (didn’t she just have a grandmother?) or just went to school or something.
But the emotional scenes of Jodi and A4 really were spot on, and Mama Vampire was so powerful a performer. Oh yeah: Look at me, bitch. THAT line reading sang for ME.
There is only one thing you need to put in the pro column, and it’s standing in the shower in extreme closeup.
I’ll be the dissenting voice on DDAfternoon….I need to quarantine that episode from the rest of the series to remain sane. Just let me put on my nerdrage hat….ah. Cosy. So what, all animals speak the same language, and they can access that language with a simple spell, and can do so to get witnesses to any crime, and they all have dumb voices (I will give Leslie Jordan a pass….barely…) and lame gender stuff, and dogs are basically humans in a dog body, and so are other animals, and Dean is not a vegetarian for evermore after this? NOooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOooooo.
It had some really strong moments so it makes me sad but it must be erased from the mythology entirely. Sorry guys the tribe has spoken. Same for the way Reapers were retconned, which is a damned shame and another example of the devolution to mundanity those creatures that ought to remain always Other have undergone.
Maureen — ha ha ha poor Kirk!
Jessie – Yes. That closeup really wipes out anything on the con side, frankly. Yowza.
// devolution to mundanity those creatures that ought to remain always Other have undergone. //
Well put!! Yes, that was horrible. A big error.
I agree that the dog voices were pretty bad – and I also wondered why they all spoke the same language. but still. Dean playing fetch and yelling at the mailman. I’m a simple creature and it makes me laugh. (I also liked the “douchebags wear sunglasses at night” thing – that chick’s line reading in the cafe was super hilarious.)
But agreed on all other counts.
Breezy, Sheila, Natalie (I feel like I’ve forgotten someone) — re: Sam’s isolation.
Count me among the people who would love to see Sam’s friendships expanded. SPN is oddly Dean-focused that way, probably because of the Dean/Ackles charisma that Sheila has wonderfully pointed out. Then again, it fits their characters. Dean needs those relationships in a way Sam doesn’t. Not that Sam isn’t incredibly lonely. His walls are just much higher and thicker. Dean draws people in, while Sam keeps them at a distance. (This is another one of those areas where Dean and Sam remind me of me and my sister, though this time reversed. I’m the oldest and have Dean’s protective streak–amongst other things–but my personality is closer to Sam’s: I keep people at a distance, intentionally and unintentionally. My sister draws them in like a magnet. People love her.)
It’s fascinating where Sam opens up (a bit). The way he seems to really enjoy taking on a big brother role (for Adam, Cas, etc.)…that is the kid!Sam who worshiped his big brother.
It’s funny, but I always wished we got to see Sam and Jo interacting more. Yeah, Meg!Sam made things awkward, but I’ve always had this feeling that Sam/Jo would have worked better than Dean/Jo. Not that I think Jo needed to be paired off with one of them (I think she is great as a friend/sister). But they could have bonded over college and their over-protective Moms.
May – I really like your thoughts here. Dean’s “drama” sort of sucks all the oxygen out of the room. I think, yes, it is because of the man who is playing him – and it’s a huge testament to Padalecki that he has made it work for himself, and doesn’t mind that sometimes-imbalance. He knows it’s a great role, he loves the job, he’s a smart cookie.
But I lOVE seeing Sam without Dean. Sam and Jodie scenes? Sooo good. Now that would be a good couple – never bought her crushing on Bobby. She’s somehow perceived as older – but who cares? Sam is old as the hills inside. I think the show seemed unsure of what to do with Jo at first – and they were definitely pushing the flirt thing with Dean – and working that out in the writer’s room – and so yeah, there were missed opportunities to develop that relationship with Sam.
There was so much resistance to Amelia – but I’ve already gone on about why I liked that relationship so much. I feel like I’m misunderstood sometimes when I say stuff like that – it’s a disconnect for some reason. It’s probably my problem, I’m not explaining it well. I didn’t like the relationship because I thought it was healthy or good or I approved of it. I don’t watch the show that way at all. I liked the relationship because it gave us an opportunity to see Sam totally without Dean, and to see who he was in the aftermath, and who he would be drawn to, what he found comfortable. I thought that was fascinating. Because it was extremely specific – and so was she. Any other guy with his head on straight would have taken one look at her and thought, “Girl, why are you telling me to take the dog? Why are you bitching at me for cleaning out your sink? Why are there empty bottles around?” But Sam was drawn to her. Her mess appealed to his mess. He could be useful to her – he could “hide out” with her – they were in their own little refugee camp.
The show so easily could have made Amelia some perfect woman – you know, jogging with her iPod with perky little tits, and cooking, and being understanding and lovely with him – but that would not have revealed anything about Sam. It wouldn’t have been right at all. In her own way, the character of Amelia helped reveal some really really essential things about Sam – first, how far he has come from the guy in the pilot. “Normalcy” is no longer in the cards. And the tiny glimpse he gets of it with Amelia – a picnic blanket, a happy dog – is so piercing to him it stops him in his tracks. But he isn’t afraid of her mess. He is drawn to it.
Fascinating glimpse of who he is and what he has grown into.
I would definitely like to see more opportunities like that in the season(s)? to come. It’s always so interesting when the brothers have to adjust, let someone else into their circle. Charlie or Garth or Kevin …
But yeah, Dean tends to be the focus and that doesn’t always serve the story.
May 9/2/14 6:11 pm and 7:56pm
I agree so much on Jo/Sam; I think when they met Sam was giving negative vibes to Jo.
I don’t however think they would’ve bonded over college (Sam appeared to love it or to BELIEVE in it even if he admitted later he always felt like a freak — teenage alienation, who’d a thunk it? while Jo hated it from the get-go, I’m the freak with the knife) BUT the overprotective Moms, oh yes. I mentioned previously that I thought Ellen and Dean worked better for me, she got thru his defenses and he ACCEPTED her hugs like in All Hell Breaks Lose2 and War Good God Y’all.
That’s interesting about Dean/baby: I felt he would’ve made a good parent to Bobby John from Two Men and a Baby.
I got a whole different vibe from Jump the Shark: while Sam “seemed” to be more accepting of Adam he was seething with resentment of what he saw as Adam’s apple pie life and was trying to suck him into “the job” and he and Dean had words about
it. BUT I agree for most of the episode I was getting the big brother vibe from Sam to Adam.
Re your statement about jealous!Sam and Benny: hell to the YES.
May, one more thing: I was discussing this with an author and she felt that what was going on with Sam and the mothering from Dean was that when Dean hit his teen years he went girl crazy. And was thus removing himself from Sam, not that he didn’t do his JOB but that Sam was no longer Dean’s sole focus of attention. A lot of the problems with John was related to Dean also becoming more a john-worshipper. I don’t know if that tracks with you but I can see Sam feeling more and more peripheral to Dean at that time.
I watched the Pilot today and was struck by how “removed” Sam was from Dean. I didn’t feel he respected/liked his brother AT ALL. He was coming down from the mountain to “help” but he was not going to hang out with his brother. Almost everything he said to Dean was dismissive, still with the credit card scams and the mullet-rock tapes. From the get-go I got that Sam didn’t want to be there and I could never figure out why Dean wanted him there. Seeing Pilot again I looked at it MUCH more Samcentrically and I could see all of Sam’s reservations. I really can’t see why Dean came for him. There had been no contact at this time for YEARS.
On the other hand, Sam had no curiosity about what happened to his Dad. If Dean had never come for him, or Dean never contacted him, would he have just let them both go and never wondered/worried/checked into it? That question is haunting.
Wow once again I am late too the party and really don’t have any thing to contribute.
I do feel that there is always a bit of embarrassment Sam feels about Dean. How is this guy my brother vibe. Not that he doesn’t love Dean but yes especially in the early seasons. He doesn’t really respect Dean, not personally, professionally yes. That is how I read him early on.
Ackles made Dean such a full and rich character in just 3 episodes, my initial attraction to Sam melted away. Dean was so much. I give the actor all the credit for that, he wasn’t written charming and with hidden depth.
This was a fantastic episode and I too really liked Andy. Great acting all around in this ep. The boys were gorgeous and I think one of my favorite scenes was the Dean handing over the Impala to Andy. Blew my mind. That though is how set the characters were in our minds already, we all knew that Dean was not himself and what easier way to show how powerful Andy was than by that little exercise in control. Sam warning Dean off and Dean obeying was another great scene. Dean trusted Sam to intervene. Loved that whole bit.
By season 9 Sam and Dean have been through so much they shouldn’t by anyone’s standards be functioning on any level. That they can speak in complete sentences on occasion and not blow off innocent bystanders heads indiscriminately is a testament to their strength of character and sheer putting one foot in front of the other approach to so much crap.
No one has brought it up and yet I have to say that Dean behaving badly, Sam behaving badly in season 8 should all be chalked up to “damn that was a horrible, no good, very bad year”. Dean slogging through the gore of purgatory and Sam being bored to near numbness by Dr. DrinkMe, made for a disaster in the making.
I am down with the majority and find Dean all weathered and beaten down ultra sexy. I thought hell, he always looks extra fine to me when he is all bloody and messed up. Something about that perfect face, marred, the look in his eyes all little boy lost just does it for me. Is it the sullied look? I give up trying to figure it out.
I kind of want them to go out in a blaze of glory, Butch and Sundance style as they take out the threat to humanity once and for all or just die trying. Call me old fashioned or over dramatic and I don’t care if its been done so many times before.
I wouldn’t imagine Dean would make a fit parent for anyone at this point in his life. He has been used up and personally I think he needs a break from being responsible for others. I gather he is supposed to get that break as Demon Dean but that is going to have a shit ton of guilt attached to it.
Favorite bits about Season 9, most people already named them.
Spoilers
I will add the finale, I felt that blade as it slid into Dean, Ackles made me feel it. Horrible, gruesome, slow death. Crowley sitting in Dean’s room talking to his dead body. Super creepy and moving, Mark did a fantastic job in that scene.
Magnus, he was uber sleezy and he creeped all over Dean. They could have done more with him. Also Abbadon, I felt they short changed her, she was so sneeringly, menacing in the beginning of the season. I was sorry they let her mend her body so thoroughly, I imagine the early scene between her and Dean when she was manhandling him would have been even more awesome with her all stitched together like a Frankenstein monster. Gadreel should have had some interaction with Sam. Actually except for the Guinea Pig line I wasn’t taken with Sam and Castiel’s interaction. Felt forced to me. I want Sam to make a friend that is his alone. Maybe this season. Safest place on the net to discuss this show is right here.
I managed to just run on and on.
Thank you, as always for a marvelous review and forum.
Grean – I am also drawn to a “blaze of glory” ending – it certainly has ton of precedence, as you say – Butch Cassidy and Sundance – Thelma and Louise. I’m not sure they’d actually go there though …. it would be so controversial!! but I think it would be a bold and audacious ending!
Crowley talking to Dean’s dead body. Shivers. And boy, does Ackles lOOK dead. Holy mackerel. And then Sam crying into his whiskey like Waylon Jennings or Merle Haggard. That whole final sequence … soooo well done.
In general, Castiel’s entire presence on the show is feeling forced right now – I know we’ve all talked about that.
Maybe the “lost grace” arc will give him something more interesting to do. I hope.
// Safest place on the net to discuss this show is right here. //
You’ve mentioned you feel safe here before – and that really makes me happy!
Fandom should be a happy safe place! We all own this damn thing together, however we may differ on the particulars.
I kind of love that it’s not this huge hit show – that it has this weird underdog status. It’s fun.
Jessie and Sheila –
There’s also “I always knew I’d find the source of all evil at a vegan bakery.” My apologies, Jessie, but I don’t think you and I are going to see eye to eye on this one ;-)
May –
Once again, we are on the same wavelength, although my brain is now desperately trying to devise a scenario in which Dean gets to live happily ever after with the mother of his child. And also a scenario in which the mother of his child is me. (Don’t judge.)
//I’d be—irresponsibly—poking pin-holes in all of Dean’s condoms.//
Ha!
I have to watch the Amazon episode again. I think I’ve only watched that one once. I’m currently doing a re-watch of all the season 3 episodes that traumatized me so badly the first time around that I couldn’t bring myself to watch them again. It’s amazing how much it’s possible to miss in the first viewing. (Side note: Dean’s FACE in Jus in Bello, when Henriksen says he shot the sheriff. He physically cannot resist the punchline. It made me laugh out loud, even in the face of the sucker-punch ending that I knew was coming.)
I am also an oldest child with a nurturing/protective streak who tends to be a little “elbows out” in dealing with others. I think that’s actually part of why *I* respond so strongly to Dean – his openness and vulnerability is the draw, because it would make ME feel safe to be less guarded with him.
// And also a scenario in which the mother of his child is me. (Don’t judge.) //
hahahaha No judgment!
// I’m currently doing a re-watch of all the season 3 episodes that traumatized me so badly the first time around that I couldn’t bring myself to watch them again. //
I’m so curious to know more of your thoughts. Season 3 is one of my favorites – if not maybe my favorite. I fluctuate. But Season 3 is always a playah.
“But you didn’t shoot the deputy?” Seriously. He could NOT RESIST. I also die laughing. It’s so Dean. It NEEDED to be said.
//Breezy — I guess different bedrooms is progress :)
IS IT THOUGH//
LOL!
Sheila
I just stumbled across your blog about three weeks ago. I read one Supernatural post and then proceeded to spend every spare second that I had (and even quite a few spare seconds that were supposed to be spent doing other things) reading through all the others. You are wonderful!!!
I love Supernatural…I was a late comer to it though. It was a show that I always knew I would enjoy watching but could never seem to find the time. I always kept it in the “I’ll definitely watch this some day” category. Last fall, after some not fun life stuff, I was definitely looking for a distraction to get my mind off some things and I decided that someday was finally here. I was looking forward to having a show that I knew I would have nine seasons to watch. I started watching then and I finally just finished season 9 about 2 weeks ago. Wow…is all I can say…..what a journey.
Reading your recaps have made me enjoy and appreciate the show even more. The things that you bring forth about lighting, the camera, the break down of the facial expressions…wonderful….simply wonderful.
Thank you so much. I’m glad I found your blog and I look forward to reading more in the future and maybe even jumping in to some of the discussions. Thank you!
Michelle – awww, that’s so nice of you – thank you!! I’m glad you found them!
Like you, I came to it only last fall. I was curious about it, but not really intrigued – I was really more curious about its passionate fan base and thought to myself that I’d like to write about the fans of this little niche genre show – but in order to do that, I should probably watch a couple of episodes. You know. As research.
But after the pilot, I thought, “Well. Here goes the next chunk of my life because I need to watch the whole damn thing now.” Ha!!
But I’m so glad I did. It’s been such a rich fun show to dive into – and these re-caps have deepened my appreciation, for sure – as well as started up these amazing conversations with the people who show up here. It’s been awesome!!
Please feel free to jump in. It’s a great group of people. :)
Thanks again!!
I’ll be working on “No Exit” at the end of the week. I am buried in Real Life until tomorrow, circa 3 p.m. Wish me luck. :)
Sheila — Thanks! I agree about Sam and Jodie (I was going to mention it in my last comment but got sidetracked…). I’m not sure how old Jodie’s character is, but that shouldn’t and doesn’t matter. Both Sam and Dean are ancient inside, anyway.
I also agree that Amelia was a very telling choice on Sam’s part and think the relationship was very interesting, despite some missteps in its execution (hi yellow flashbacks).
I’ve always had a wary suspicion that Jodie, Ellen, and Charlie are well-liked in fandom because they are not perceived as potential romantic partners for either Sam or Dean. Of course, that attitude is probably also why their characters have developed better—they are given more room to develop naturally than a forced love interest would be. But that could just be the cynic in me talking (typing).
RE: Jealous?Sam and the Amazon-daughter. I love the way Sam’s relationship with/to Dean shifts over the seasons. Being distant, then clingy, then distant again…it hints at his inner life. And it just feels like such a real sibling relationship.
With the Amazon-daughter, what struck me as off was that she actually hadn’t killed anyone yet. She was what, 3 days old or something? She didn’t get a chance. I guess to me it came across as the writers writing themselves into a corner (sort of like with the whole “what to do with Cas…” issue). Once she was introduced, she had to die. Again, I’m having trouble articulating exactly why that stood out. It just didn’t sit well with me.
Evave2 — I think that is an interesting theory. I have to admit that much of my interpretation of Sam and Dean is filtered through my relationship with my sister, so I’m sure I have tons of personal biases. My sister and I are three years apart and it was just the two of us for years (we were in our early teens when our brother arrived). Our parents were very, very young and things weren’t always great … I’m not going to moan about my childhood, but I’ve related to some of Dean’s experiences and can get defensive about his big-brother behaviour (“Yeah. Dean is right. You should listen to your big brother, Sam. RESPECT THE AUTHORITY OF THE OLDEST CHILD.”). But it has also made me oddly sympathetic to Sam’s position. Sam is the way he is because it is how Dean & John raised him.
Basically, I see Sam as having taken Dean for granted for much of his life. Not in a petty way, but in the way kids often take their family (mothers in particular) for granted. I think, at heart, Dean represents Sam’s sense of home. He wants to be separate from Dean, to live his own life, but to know Dean is always there to come back to if he needs him. I see Sam’s jealousy as driven from insecurity and guilt—he has come to understand all that Dean has done for him, feels guilty about it, and wants Dean to have a happy life without him…but also fears a loss of unconditional love. I think it’s fascinating.
Natalie — //And also a scenario in which the mother of his child is me. (Don’t judge.)//
Not judging. Just telling you to get in line. I was here first.
//I am also an oldest child with a nurturing/protective streak who tends to be a little “elbows out” in dealing with others. I think that’s actually part of why *I* respond so strongly to Dean – his openness and vulnerability is the draw, because it would make ME feel safe to be less guarded with him.//
Yep. Same here. He’s the perfect combination of similar but different.
Your gifs always make me laugh so hard.
//Little kilts and ripped thick black stockings and big boots, and plastic barrettes//
Still waiting for this style to come back. We’re due for a wave of 90s nostalgia, right?
Dan- you and me both. I mean, I basically still dress that way. The second pointy-toed shoes came in, circa 1996, it was all over. It was so relaxing to have my natural style be “in”!
It was a short-lived moment of fashion triumph.
Reading what so many of you are saying, why you identify with Sam or Dean more…
gosh, I was just going to reveal something really personal and I don’t know if any of you want to know it. Sorry, even writing THAT is an intrusion.
Sheila has been so brave to discuss her issues here. It’s not that I can’t share, but I don’t know if you would want to hear it. Like that person on the bus who needs to tell you all.
Anyway, the show has been brilliant in its delving into these two guys’ family matters.
I MISS John, but he was always an outsider here.
I am rewatching the show in TNT, it began yesterday. I am trying to be more Samcentric (I came in on When the Levee Breaks, and in that episode Sam is at his absolute worst so I was colored to dislike him and every time I began at Pilot I just saw him beating Dean to a pulp while he was screaming at Dean about his weakness and about Hell torture and stuff — not the best place to meet Sam) and I am wiping away all my previous ideas. Sam knew about his taint and wanted normal. He could fake normal better than Dean (or John — who gruffly just overrode everybody in his way — you know, Dad had a falling out with everybody) but he was always faking.
When many people go to college they are trying to build a new persona for themselves, especially if they go to a school they don’t know anybody. I felt Sam inventing himself but knowing what was inside was not what he was projecting. I think a lot of freshmen pretend to themselves they ARE that person until they BECOME that person; Sam never really did.
It stood out to me that Sam had a picture of Mom and Dad in his apartment, but there were no pictures of Dean; we went to Dad’s motel room and there was a picture of John and his boys as kids. Sam picked it up (to show it around and find if his Dad had been there); maybe he carried it, maybe not. But as Dean, when he finally had his own room at the MOL bunker, put up a picture of Mom and HIM, we didn’t see a picture of John and him. MOM was why Dean did stuff. Dad he had inside of him (maybe he didn’t need a picture?) and it was HOW he did stuff.
Anyway, Sam was so dismissive of Dean in the Pilot. It hurt to watch. He just KNEW Dean could fuck up his life. But for me I question: WHY did Dean need Sam with him to look for John? For the plot, Dean didn’t have a girlfriend to cheat on so Woman in White Constance would not have picked him up. SAM who loved Jessica was her target.
Anyway the Pilot set up Sam as super-hunter and Dean as muscle. I wish they had put in the scene where Dean’s radio fritzes out and he realized the Demon was coming for Sam and goes back to save him.
Sheila, you saw the outtakes from the Pilot, right? It was I think they longest episode ever, but why were those scenes cut? From a dramatic standpoint they added more to Sam how he fit in with his girlfriend, buddy and college. I really thought the scenes belonged there.
Evave – so sorry you went into moderation. I’m not sure why. Sometimes IP addresses are flagged as spam-mish by my spam filter (which I upgraded yesterday) – You were not the only one lost in moderation jail, there were a bunch of others. – I was booted off my own site yesterday and not allowed to comment for a while. I was like, “Uhm. This is MY site. Lemme back on!” . Anyway, sorry.
The scenes in the pilot that you mention were cut due to time constraints. They only have 41 minutes or whatever and they had a lot of ground to cover. I’m amazed that the music collection scene in the Impala WASN’T cut and am very glad it wasn’t. It has nothing to do with the plot, but is very good character wise – and the “character scenes” are usually the ones to bite the dust.
So they made some choices. “If we keep the music scene in the car – then we have to lose this this and this.”
Sheila –
//I’m so curious to know more of your thoughts. Season 3 is one of my favorites – if not maybe my favorite. I fluctuate. But Season 3 is always a playah.//
Don’t get me wrong – I think season 3 is awesome. But I came into it already having seen Lazarus Rising and a couple other season 4 episodes, so I knew from the beginning that Dean was not going to get out of his deal. It made the entire season really stressful for me, and other than Bad Day at Black Rock and Mystery Spot, I did not find after I finished the series that I was too eager to go back to those episodes right away. Jus in Bello was definitely the most stressful of those episodes for me, because I did. not. see. that ending coming. I knew better by that point than to expect that it was going to end on a happy “everybody lives” note, but like I said in my last comment, that ending was just a complete sucker punch. It may have been worse for me than the episode of ER when Carter and Lucy were stabbed by David Krumholtz – which is saying something, since I had the flu when that episode aired and the shock of it was compounded by a 102-degree fever.
May –
//Not judging. Just telling you to get in line. I was here first.//
What are your thoughts about being a sister wife? I’m just floating ideas here. I think we owe it to ourselves to explore every possibility before knock-down drag-out catfighting ensues ;-)
//I’ve always had a wary suspicion that Jodie, Ellen, and Charlie are well-liked in fandom because they are not perceived as potential romantic partners for either Sam or Dean.//
I definitely agree with this. However, I’m pretty sure that Dean probably considered the possibility of sleeping with each one of them at one point or another. Especially Ellen. Sam may have. I’m not as sure about him.
Oh yeah, Season 3 totally stressed me out too. Also Dean’s “whatever, I don’t care” thing stressed me out – and then finally he was like, “Sorry, yes, I do care,” and by that point time has almost run out … I couldn’t believe the final shot of the season the first time I saw it. Up until the very last moment, I thought he’d somehow get out of the deal. I was new to the show then. :)
And definitely, Dean has thought about sleeping with all of those people. Basically, anyone on the show … Dean has thought about sex with them. Sam too, probably, but he feels guilty about it.
sister-wife.
hahahahahaha
May, Natalie – So is Annie Hawkins a role model for you? She got to bone both brothers. Or is this another situation where Dean is getting the lion’s share of the attention?
I think Bobby got the lion’s share of attention with Annie, not Dean.
I’m surprised they all didn’t sleep with the same person more often – I love that the show addressed the insular nature of the hunter world. That would probably go on a lot.
Also, Annie wasn’t nuts. She was in good shape, but she didn’t go Terminator Linda Hamilton like Tara or the woman we see in Are You There God, It’s Me Dean Winchester (that has to be the LONGEST TITLE in any season). She was normal. If I think I could die at any moment due to my job (I mean, this is not computer programming) I might sleep with all the hot guys around. I LOVE Sam when Dean told him about Annie. And Bobby and Annie. And when Dean just responded, “Huh.”
She was a free spirit, and I was so glad the show didn’t slut shame her. The brothers didn’t tell Bobby because they figured he was an older guy and may not have their sexual equality ideas. Dean gets the slut-shaming.
That’s another thing that Sam disrespected about Dean in Season 1 (I just saw it this week, so it is fresh in my mind): in Wendigo, when Dean got Haley’s contact info, he accused Dean of looking for a hook-up. He had no idea if Haley was cute or not, just thought Dean was trying to get laid. Shut up, Sam. Then in Dead in the Water, the waitress (btw, did anybody ever have a waitress with those bazoongas and bootie shorts?) was hitting on Dean but in a cutely flirty way and Dean was just responding to HER and Sam comes up with the cock-blocking. THAT was male slut-shaming to me. Now Jessica had just died and I can understand wanted to get on with the finding of the John (closely analogous to the wearing of the Green) but it seemed a little gratuitous to me.
Yes, I loved that scene in the restaurant with Sam and Dean where they discuss Annie.
In regards to the rest: we watch the show in such a different way, I’m not sure what else to say except I respectfully disagree with your interpretation of a lot of those events! Vive la difference!
And sorry – again – about moderation. I’ve been bombarded by spam and when you ban IP addresses from constant spammers, sometimes good people get thrown in the mix. I’m trying to sort it out now. I tried to sign on yesterday and they thought I was a spam-bot.
Supernatural creep syndrome symptom #507 – when you read a comment from the imcomparable and learned Jim Driver on someone else’s website … and you get goosebumps
.. and of course I mean Jim Beaver. D’oh! (Who the hell is Jim Driver?)
Girl, you just sent me on an anxious Google search trying to find out who Jim Driver was.
Dying ….
Jim Beaver is also a film historian – and sometimes I’ll be looking through IMDB for something, some old Western or noir – and the plot summary will be by Jim Beaver. I love that! I’m like, “Hi, Bobby!!”
Maybe he’s another hunter Annie hooked up with ;-)
It would be very challenging to keep them straight – she’d be sending sexts to one, thinking it was the other, and vice versa.
ha ha, oh Sheila, you be droppin shit I ain’t got time to pick up.
wait, what am I doing?? I’m sure I’m doing it, whatever it is.
Sheila — //Your gifs always make me laugh so hard.//
LOL! I’m glad. Jessie’s gif skills filled me with jealousy, and inspiration, and now I’m hording all the gifs I find for the apocalypse.
Natalie — //What are your thoughts about being a sister wife?//
Well, it would be easier for two of us to fight off all the others in line… Then there’s the fact that we are practically the same person. So, yeah. I’d consider it.
// I’m pretty sure that Dean probably considered the possibility of sleeping with each one of them at one point or another. //
Oh, definitely. I agree with Sheila and think Dean considers the possibility of sex with anyone he meets. Like it is just one of the assessments he makes when he meets someone, even if it is just to think “NO. GROSS.” He’s Tina from Bob’s Burgers.
Mutecypher — //May, Natalie – So is Annie Hawkins a role model for you? She got to bone both brothers. Or is this another situation where Dean is getting the lion’s share of the attention?//
LOL! Maybe… I’m just saying that Dean would make good babies. I’m being perfectly logical about it.
Sheila — //I’m surprised they all didn’t sleep with the same person more often – I love that the show addressed the insular nature of the hunter world. That would probably go on a lot.//
It probably does. I’d bet they’ve slept with the same person more than they realized, though probably not as much as we think…There is probably more overlap with Dean, John, and Bobby (the idea of which would probably gross Dean out to no end) than Dean and Sam.
Your fabulous gifs got you in moderation jail. I rescued you.
I love how Pamela is like, “Let’s all get in bed together, big boys.” It’s kind of radical. And they laugh! Not that there’s history there, sleeping with the same lady (at the same time?) – but it’s still funny and kind of admitting that dynamic.
No way would Sam and Dean not be total cat-nip for other hunters. It’s like in high school, in senior year, when a new guy joined our class. He played soccer. He was hot. Or at least he seemed hot to all of us. We had all been in school together for 12 freakin’ years at this point – and were sick of each other – there was nobody new to crush on by the time we were seniors.
So this poor guy enters our class, and he was pretty shy – but it was as though Elvis Presley had joined our grade. We all went CRAZY trying to get his attention. EVERYONE wanted him. But that was really only because we lived in the isolated compound of a high school, which felt like a cult more than anything else at that point – and he was NEW and FRESH and “who would he pick??? Pick me! Pick me!”
Poor guy. He just wanted to play soccer and graduate.
May — Oh Tina, I love her so much!
Sheila — Just Dean, thinkin’ indiscriminately bout sex.
Oh that. Yup, I’m definitely throwing that shit down.
Sheila — //Your fabulous gifs got you in moderation jail. I rescued you.//
Thank you! I was caught smuggling too many links. The Man just doesn’t appreciate art, man!
Jessie, Tina is my hero.
I wish we could upload gifs right into the comments section – kind of like on Get Off My Internets. Those comments threads over there are Gifs Heaven.
I have to say, Sheila, I love the way you promote healthy sexuality. The guys deserve more healthy sex.
But I thought Sam was sort of a stick in the mud in the sex business (today I saw him turn down Lori the preacher’s hot daughter in Hook Man); was Annie supposed to be in the Year of the Soulless Sam?
Yes! There’s that line: “She was stressed … I had no soul …” one of Padalecki’s funnier line readings.
Everyone’s sexuality operates differently, though. Sam’s is his, Dean’s is his, Charlie’s is hers, and on and on, healthy sexuality means you do what feels right to you. Sam has sex when he wants to have it, doesn’t when he doesn’t. Sometimes Sam wants to and then doesn’t. He holds back. What’s healthy for Dean would be bad news for Sam, and vice versa. What you call “stick in the mud” may be Sam wanting to be responsible or not being into it. Or any number of fascinating reasons (more fascinating to me than Sam being a “stick in the mud”, I mean). Everyone’s mileage may vary in the realm of sexuality and there isn’t one way to be “healthy” about it. I am completely against that viewpoint. People who choose celibacy also have a sexuality, and their choice is as healthy as anyone else’s, if they are being honest about it and it works for them.
It’s one of the more interesting and subversive subtexts of the show … and I totally love that: How much it is about sex, without even showing all that much of it.
May 9/4/14 10:10 am
You are right: I think Sam and Dean have almost no overlap in the girls/women they sleep with. If one were to show a slight interest the other would back off.
Hey, I am watching Home and it just occurred to me (after this discussion) would Dean have done his immediate, yes/no/maybe with Missouri and she caught it and he KNOWS why she’s offended? That suddenly makes real sense to me.
Boy, I can suddenly put that episode in context because I have HATED Missouri from the get-go, and if SHE caught an image of Dean thinking about her THAT WAY, well she might not be able to get around it.
I don’t see the interaction with Missouri in that way at all. I explained how I feel about her in the re-cap. I wish she had come back as a reference point for the brothers (although she’s such a busy actress, it’s not surprising she wouldn’t be available for a recurring role) – and I loved that at least they mentioned her name in The Mentalists. A little Missouri interaction goes a long way!
Sheila there is a time and place for that sort of business. And that time and place is called Playthings.
Indiscriminate sexy-times thoughts, you mean? I love that episode so much. The dress on the wall? Come on.
I definitely need to re-watch The Shining to prepare for that re-cap!
Sheila –
//I think Bobby got the lion’s share of attention with Annie, not Dean.//
I was suggesting that Dean might be getting the lion’s share of May’s and Natalie’s attention. I do agree that Bobby appeared to have gotten the lion’s share of Annie’s attention. I thought the show did a very nice job of making her cool/interesting/sympathetic without suggesting anything negative about her having enjoyed the affections of the three main characters. It brought up the likelihood of shared partners within the insular group. And was just funny. And made sense with the way normal folks might cope in such a terrible life. You could imagine that a woman who was a hunter might also be attracted to guys who were hunters and some foxhole stress relief could become an unacknowledged perk of the job.
Thanks for bringing up Pamela. Happy thoughts.
//Basically, anyone on the show … Dean has thought about sex with them. //
I think he’s had sex-thoughts about some of the food: the mini quiches in “Provenances,” the little sandwiches in “Hollywood Babylon,” Purple Nurples.
// I was suggesting that Dean might be getting the lion’s share of May’s and Natalie’s attention. //
hahaha My bad!
Hopefully there is always room for one more sister-wife but that’s gonna be a pretty crowded compound.
And I’m with you – I loved the matter-of-fact handling of Annie, and if the brothers were taken aback it was really more like, “Uhm, you had sex, first of all, so Ew. and I also want to ask you everything about what she was like with you – to compare notes with what she was like with me – but yeahhhh, let’s not go there.” It was beautifully awkward.
And yes, definitely, to Dean and food!!! Dean and sleep too. Dean and his car as well. Dean and the giant Slinky. Dean and the ballet slippers. Dean and good water pressure. Dean and everything.
Like that quote I put in one of the re-caps from Fiery Pantheon, this novel I love: “She would bat her eyelashes at the Empire State Building. She would flirt with anything in shoe leather. She would flirt with the Grand Canyon.”
Annie probably knew her Andrew Marvell:
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp’d power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Ohhh, that’s perfect!! I love that one.
“I was a fancy lady.”
“A hooker?”
[Offended response. Wash, rinse, repeat.]
“A fancy lady”, oh god yes that was funny.
Up there with “Belladonna? The porn star?”
It ain’t a “tea cozy and tweed jacket with elbow patches world ” they’re in.
Hey Evave2
I don’t know that Sam was necessarily being a stick in the mud in Hookman…he was grieving. Jess hadn’t been dead for very long and he wasn’t even remotely ready to go there. He was attracted to the preacher’s daughter but he didn’t want to be……..the pain of Jess was way too fresh.
One of the things that I honestly loved most about Supernatural was that they showed Sam having a true grieving process over Jess. He didn’t talk about her that much, but her loss was a shadow over everything he did. I think that they stayed very true with Sam’s character and they showed the proper portrayal of grief that he would have gone through.
Michelle – I love that about Supernatural too! The respect it had and the patience for all these different ways of grieving. It also helps to not make the death of Jess merely a plot-point, or a device to get the whole thing started. It’s really relevant to who Sam is – and seasons later – she is still referenced. I appreciate that so much!
Little details like that help me TRUST a show. It happened early for me, in Season 1 – when I realized that everyone involved was really interested in making this as real as possible – whatever situation was onscreen, emotional or physical. And Sam’s grieving of Jess was a big big part of that. When I see writers/creators respect the characters that they created like that – both Sam and Jess – as briefly as we see her – I start to trust. I can relax. Okay, they are interested in the things I’m interested in, too – they are thinking deeply about what they are doing. I mean, sometimes they’re not – they threw Cassie into the mix and then never mentioned her again – you can’t win ’em all with episodic television. But they realized that Jess’ death needed to be played out – through the characters – and we’re seeing the same thing go on now in Season 2, with John’s death. These early episodes are all about that.
And it fluctuates. Death isn’t one thing, grieving doesn’t look one way, it’s a mix – it’s totally disorienting. People who think it should look one way … I don’t know, maybe they’ve never experienced it? I don’t know. But I love Supernatural for not shying away from that stuff.
Or “Let me guess… antiquers?” from Playthings.
//Yes! There’s that line: “She was stressed … I had no soul …” one of Padalecki’s funnier line readings.//
Kind of a Hemingway thing.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
The behavior in that whole scene … so delicious. Dean’s behavior with the phone. Sam’s humor. The eyebrows going up.
It’s so grown-up or something. I love them both.
Sheila — //I wish we could upload gifs right into the comments section – kind of like on Get Off My Internets. Those comments threads over there are Gifs Heaven.//
I don’t know. I’d love it—because, if it wasn’t terribly obvious already, gifs appeal to my sense of humour—but it could become too much of a good thing. I’d quickly descend into gif madness. Within an hour I’d be booted off the site for everyone’s sanity and be left alone with my internets collecting and organizing more and more gifs sitting in the dark giggling to myself like a maniac my precious gifs…
Or, you know, too many gifs just might cause the comments to load slower or something. Yeah.
// Within an hour I’d be booted off the site for everyone’s sanity //
hahahahaha
I can just see it – you’d no longer leave comments that had any language in them. A gif would suffice!
Anyway, keep linking to them – you find such great ones.
mutecypher – //I was suggesting that Dean might be getting the lion’s share of May’s and Natalie’s attention.//
Not even gonna lie. That’s totally true on my part. I would like to be BFF’s with Sam, and I certainly wouldn’t turn him down if there was anything more on the table, but Dean’s definitely the one I’m really attracted to. (Which is kind of weird, because usually, all else being equal, I’m going to go for the guy with long hair. But then, that can be easily solved if Dean just wears his LARPing wig.) Also, May makes a good point that Dean would just make good babies ;-)
//I think he’s had sex-thoughts about some of the food: the mini quiches in “Provenances,” the little sandwiches in “Hollywood Babylon,” Purple Nurples.//
Definitely. (I saw an interview with Jensen Ackles in which he said that the Dean/food thing stemmed from him eating the food at the wake in Nightmare as a joke during one take, and then the writers jumped on that and made his appetite and complete and total abandon while eating part of the character. But it works so well for the character. “I’m not well-adjusted, I’m just well-fed.”)
May – we could definitely join forces and fight off the competition. And then get pregnant at the same time and raise our babies as twins and teach Sam how to change diapers so he can babysit. (If I put this much thought and effort into reality, I probably would have kids by now. And also be a millionaire. Lol.)
And yeah, the only difference I’ve really discerned between us so far is that you want to cut Sam’s hair (which I will not allow, sorry) and that my sibling arrangement is actually almost the exact opposite of yours. My sister and brother are only 3 years apart, but I’m 10 years older than my brother (the baby).
Sheila – //Dean has thought about sleeping with all of those people. Basically, anyone on the show … Dean has thought about sex with them.//
I agree – but I would be willing to bet there were some pretty elaborate fantasies about Ellen. I’m not sure why I think that, but I do.
//Hopefully there is always room for one more sister-wife but that’s gonna be a pretty crowded compound.//
Join the party! I’m estimating that there are probably at least 10 bedrooms in the bunker. I mean, you’ve seen the size of the garage – there were a lot of people working there at one point. I think the real challenge is going to be baby-proofing.
// I would be willing to bet there were some pretty elaborate fantasies about Ellen. //
He definitely gravitates towards strong women. Who could throw him around, basically.
We are now at the point where we are baby-proofing the bunker, and that’s it, I am in love with this comment thread.
// I think the real challenge is going to be baby-proofing.//
“Dean Jr. got out all the Hands of Glory again.”
“Whose Dean Jr? Yours, mine, Sheila’s, that chick from the Wikia’s?”
“Samurai swords off the table! And no, you cannot put your sister in the dungeon room!”
(This is something I know a little about–)
Natalie, RE Dean’s “I’m not well adjusted, I’m just well fed.” YES! I think that is one of the keys to this character.
Oops, the consensus was the Dean needs to be the father of daughters…
“Little Deanna got out all of the Hands of Glory again!”
“Whose little Deanna….”
//We are now at the point where we are baby-proofing the bunker, and that’s it, I am in love with this comment thread.//
You know what’s awesome? I surreptitiously checked the comments during my class, and then not only had to NOT laugh out loud, I had to keep a completely straight face. I don’t think I was entirely successful.
mutecypher, I am generally opposed to namesakes, so I actually have some names in mind, but I suppose I’d have to discuss them with Dean and my sister wives. May can have Deanna if she wants ;-)
Barb, I’m thinking no samurai swords until at least age 5.
Natalie –
So you all aren’t going the George Foreman route and naming all the kids with the same name?
Basically, anyone on the show … Dean has thought about sex with them. Sam too, probably, but he feels guilty about it.
You know, it occurs to me that I may have misunderstood your intended meaning, here. I guess that’s just how my brain rolls….
Oooh, now I see where you were going with that. Yes, I meant “Sam thinks about sex a lot too …”
But now I can’t wait to discuss Playthings.
mutecypher –
That just sounds confusing to me. Although I would not be opposed to Thing 1 and Thing 2 onesies. Just throwing that out there. Also, a Sweet Child O’Mine onesie and a Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner onesie. I’m pretty sure Dean would approve of both. (Swayze always gets a pass.) And now that I’ve reached new highs (or lows, depending on your perspective, I guess) of ridiculousness, I’m off to bed :-)
A Sweet Child o’ Mine onesie is brilliant.
Highs/lows … it’s all the same!!
Natalie — //And then get pregnant at the same time and raise our babies as twins and teach Sam how to change diapers so he can babysit.//
You really have put a lot of thought into this. When someone else shares your delusion, it means you’re not crazy, right?
Also, I realize I’ve received a lot of backlash for my thought-assault on Sam’s hair…I’m not saying I would give him a buzz cut! Just trim it a bit (or a lot).
Natalie & mutecypher — RE: naming imaginary children. //So you all aren’t going the George Foreman route and naming all the kids with the same name?//
LMAO! I’ll pass on Deanna, thanks. Also, I know we decided that Dean should have daughters, but since there are going to be a lot of us creating his brood…well, it’s just an instinct, but I feel like I will probably be a son maker.
Sheila — // We are now at the point where we are baby-proofing the bunker, and that’s it, I am in love with this comment thread.//
Natalie — //And now that I’ve reached new highs (or lows, depending on your perspective, I guess) of ridiculousness, I’m off to bed :-)//
Truly, this is the greatest of comment threads. Yes, people are silently judging our mental health and slowly backing away from us. But I regret nothing.
// I will probably be a son maker. //
That’s it. I’m dying laughing.
I think Manny Ramirez named a couple of his sons Manny as well. Hysterical.
Okay, I’m off to the beach for the day. Clearly I need to get “No Exit” up as soon as possible, because we have gone off the rails. I love going off the rails, though. Zero judgment.
I’ll work on it this weekend. Love “No Exit” – the blues, the blacks, the freckles, Jo’s knife behavior, the overhead shot of Dean crashed on the chair … it’s a major major Beauty-Heavy episode.
I love that Sam gif – “YES.” hahahahaha
But the ocean calls.
Let me know how the baby-proofing goes. I’ll check in later.
It’s an off-day if I don’t make SOMEONE silently judge my mental health and back away slowly.
Sheila, have fun at the beach. We’ll save some baby-proofing tasks for you. No one likes a slacker sister wife.
May, I, too, love the Sam gif. And his hair is not open to negotiation.
//You really have put a lot of thought into this. When someone else shares your delusion, it means you’re not crazy, right?//
I just found out I’m mildly anemic. I’m blaming this entire conversation on insufficient oxygen to my brain.
Have fun at the beach, Sheila!
Natalie — //I just found out I’m mildly anemic. I’m blaming this entire conversation on insufficient oxygen to my brain.//
Then what is my excuse, Natalie? What is my excuse?
Baby-proofing the bunker! Holy shit-balls that is so funny. You all crack me up.
But I have a suggestion… Okay, you are going to want Daddy Dean to have a purpose other than hunting and worrying, for his sanity and to keep him home. So what if he channels Construction Dean and builds a house (or series of houses, depending on what you sister-wives would prefer) on top of the bunker. With a secret entrance into the bunker, a la bat cave. This way you can decide whether or not to raise the kids in the life. Also, there would be a lawn for the children to play on and Dean to cut.
The bunker is underground right?
Anyway, you all have my support. I’ll babysit.
Hmmm, and I was just commenting to my teenage daughter about how nice it was to find a discussion of Supernatural that was so mature, academic even in its analysis. I won’t mention this thread:) Or that I would so be in line as another sister/wife. Maybe all the daughters could be called Samantha. Then we could have: “Sammy, put that sword down!” “Sammy! I told you not to open those boxes.” “Sammy, why don’t you ever listen to me. I’m your big brother, I mean Dad, god damn it!”
// I won’t mention this thread:) Or that I would so be in line as another sister/wife. //
hahahahahahaha
The comments thread to both Bugs and Route 666 reach a height of silliness (if I recall) that they are still a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
I love everyone’s suggestions (and offers to babysit) so much! I have spent the last two days checking for updates on my phone and laughing out loud and having no explanation when people look at me funny.
May – //Then what is my excuse, Natalie? What is my excuse?//
Folie à deux?
As always an awesome recap!! I love reading (and rereading) them, can’t wait for the No Exit one (but, no pressure!). I’ve nothing further to add to the discussion other than that it’s great :-)
Anyway, I don’t know if you (meaning all of you) have already seen this behind the scenes video of SPN season 9, but it’s HILARIOUS: http://vimeo.com/105413733
I mean, the mud masks, the tai chi, the wigs, the music, the stunts…. love it.
this was wild