Directed by Kim Manners
Written by Matt Witten
“So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is – other people.”
— Garcin, “No Exit,” by Jean-Paul Sartre
On the Supernatural wiki , No Exit (the play by Sartre) is described as “three people are locked in a windowless room expecting to be tortured. No-one arrives, but by probing each other’s sins, dark secrets and thoughts – they torture each other.” Well, kind of, but that summary is missing a very important detail: The three main characters in No Exit (a male and two females) are dead. They have arrived in the afterlife, assuming they will be confronted with Hell-fire for the sins they committed. Instead, they are led into a room decorated, as Sartre says in the stage descriptions, in the Second French Empire style. (Hmm, something a little like the “green room” for Heaven where Zachariah puts Dean and then Adam to get them out of the way? That room, like the one in No Exit, has no windows and no doors.) In the play, there is nothing in the room except for a couple of sofas, a bronze statue on the mantelpiece, and a random paper-knife. As the play goes on, the knife starts to seem more and more ominous.
The French title of the play is Huis Clos, which can’t be exactly translated into English – “behind closed doors”, or “in camera” (the Latin term, used in law, meaning a discussion behind closed doors, “in the chamber” – which takes on interesting implications considering where Jo is imprisoned later in the episode.) As the French title suggests (and the English translation of it doesn’t), there is a trial going on in the play. Each character, individually, puts the other two on trial. There are no mirrors in the room, which becomes a big deal: how do you know who you are if you have to rely on other people to reflect you? They have heard rumors that they will have to torture one another. They don’t want to do that so they all try to sit silently, ignoring one another. That lasts for about 20 seconds.
I recently re-read it, keeping Supernatural in mind. Some fun connections, take them or leave them, they aren’t one-to-one connections, and I’m just riffing on some of the things that popped out at me:
— A “valet” shows each character to the room. Garcin (the male character) becomes unnerved at how the valet is staring at him. Garcin observes that the valet’s eyes are “paralyzed … Your eyelids. We move ours up and down. Blinking, we call it. It’s like a small black shutter that clicks down and makes a break. Everything goes black; one’s eyes are moistened…” Garcin realizes that what is going to happen in this room is going to be “Life without a break.”
— The whole unblinking thing is looped into one of Sartre’s ideas, called The Look. (I studied him in undergrad. He was required reading in our theatre history classes. And we worked on scenes from his plays.) The Look is Sartre’s ideas on what it means to be looked at, and what it means to be an object. In the play, the characters get disoriented when they can’t see themselves, when they have to rely on the others to reflect them back. I’ve talked a lot about looking/objectification with Supernatural, as well as “mirror moments,” of which Dean has many over the course of the series. The mirror is a way to touch base with himself, after being “looked at” so constantly by everyone else. His identity is completely unstable.
— The three people trapped in the room in the play have all done bad things in their past that got them there into that room. For example, Garcin, the male character, ran a pacifist newspaper and refused to fight in the war. His reasons are now irrelevant. He has shown himself to be a coward and as a coward, he must pay. You could say, “But these were his deeply held beliefs! He stood up for them!” But that’s Grey Area and there is no Grey Area in the afterlife.
— Along with that, each character pleads with the others, “But it wasn’t my fault” or “Let me tell you more about it.” No Exit, the Supernatural episode, ends with an argument about something that happened in the past, something that wasn’t Dean’s fault. And John would have been able to justify his choices as well (although the fact that he removed himself from the roadhouse circle following what happened speaks volumes about his guilt). But in the hot-house atmosphere of a room with no doors and windows, all of that is irrelevant. John will not be forgiven for being reckless, and the sins of the fathers have landed on the son’s head.
— Oh, and not for nothing but there’s a “men of letters” reference in Sartre’s play.
I mean, I could go on. Matt Witten wrote the script for No Exit as well as the Shining-inspired Playthings, and I like his style a lot.
Kim Manners directed the episode, and as we have already seen in the episodes leading up to “No Exit,” Beauty has become one of the distinguishing characters of the series. Every single shot in “No Exit” is so beautiful that it starts to feel overwhelming. While Manners’ style is perfect for the horror genre, it is also an extremely romantic style. And his love of the close-up reveals his interest in psychology, because that’s all that the close-up is about. Manners lingers on and loves the specifics of everyone’s face. He can’t get close enough.
Beauty like this is its own reward, and that’s the thing that a lot of people sometimes miss. Or they discount it, thinking that it might be a little bit embarrassing to focus so much on it. That is an error. Beauty exists to give pleasure. The old Hollywood masters used to understand that (and there are still many directors who work this way today). Beauty is entertainment, fantasy, a dream-world, a place where you can lose your way. You’re meant to lose your way. Supernatural has many strengths: the writing staff, the cast, Serge Ladouceur, the entire team who can create these different mini-worlds in each episode. But the Beauty factor is where myths are created, where things/events/people start to seem larger than they are and take on all kinds of emotional and subconscious import.
It’s not just “OMG look at the hot guys,” although that is a huge part of it. But it’s not just the hot guys who are given the Beauty treatment. It’s in every frame. Every angle. Every color choice. Wall-to-wall beauty, in other words. In that type of environment, the hot-ness of the two leads starts to seem almost … incidental. Beauty that saturates the frame to this degree ends up NOT feeling self-conscious, and I’m not sure how that works on an alchemical level, but it does. It’s like watching, oh, The Master, one of the most beautiful-looking films released in my lifetime. It’s sheer overload, that film. Every shot. Every. Single. Shot. And yet the end result does not feel like a self-conscious exercise in style. It ends up feeling disturbing rather than pleasing (which is perfect since it is the story of how a man started a cult). You get sucked into the beauty, swayed, seduced, lulled to complacency.
Obviously, No Exit (the Supernatural episode) features a lot of dead ends, and places from which there is no easy escape: tunnels, dungeons, sewer drains. But there’s also the fact that you can’t escape from your family, and that the sins of the fathers may very well indeed be paid for by the sons. It’s unfair, but it happens. There is “no exit” from that in the world of Supernatural, and any small opening of familial feeling that has blossomed between the Winchesters and Ellen and Jo is ruined at the end. Taking these people as they are, (not as we think they should be, not as we wish they would be if they just said nicer things, etc.) there really is No Exit from what ends up going down. The secret was bound to come out. And probably not in a good and healthy way. And Sam and Dean would be blamed for the actions of their father. It brings up interesting thoughts, which we’ve talked about before, about how exactly John and his two boys were viewed by the hunter world at large. You can’t tell me Ellen doesn’t have opinions – and STRONG ones – about what John exposed his sons to. She practically lives her life in total opposition to that, maybe even consciously.
This is an episode about relationships. The three main characters “in the chamber”, Jo, Sam and Dean, are all fatherless. Their fathers knew one another. Despite that history, they have never met, and never even knew of one another’s existence. Nobody quite knows how to “look” at each other. Should they be friends? Ellen said John was “like family.” Instant intimacy isn’t going to happen. But what ends up developing over the course of “No Exit” is a relationship, a delicate tendril of almost familial feeling, especially between Dean and Jo. But … well.
Hell is other people, remember.
Dead Fathers have a way of stealing the whole show, don’t they.
Now about the women.
Buckle your seat-belts. Here we go. The below is quite long, and I (obviously) am EXTREMELY interested in the topic, and it seems very important to me. I understand if others are not AS interested, but this is my party, and I’d love it if you join. I swear it is relevant to Supernatural.
Digression (Long-Ass Essay, Really) on Women in Supernatural, Iconic Tough Guys, and the Awesome Creature Known As “The Howard Hawks Woman”
We’ve been prepped properly for Jo to take a larger role. We subconsciously need Sam and Dean to have women in their lives, not just as romantic partners, but friends, colleagues.
Supernatural gets some shit for its treatment of women, but I think placing it in a specific context helps shuffle things into place, the same way that placing Sam and Dean in a specific context also helps (or should help) with not seeing their behavior as “macho posturing”. I wrote about both guys being part of the cinematic Iconic Tough Guy tradition, the John Waynes, Gary Coopers, Humphrey Bogarts. Those guys would be required to go through Sensitivity Training today, perhaps, and the folks who scream on Tumblr about misogyny may not have any use for them. Their loss. By labeling that entire Tough Guy scene as chauvinistic and patriarchal, people miss so much good stuff, not to mention (for our purposes) a lot of the various intersecting influences (cinematic and historical) that pour into the landscape of Supernatural.
What those Iconic Tough Guys created was a myth of a certain kind of manliness that is so out of style today (at least onscreen) that it can’t even be perceived properly by contemporary audiences. I went and saw High Noon at the Film Forum and the entire audience treated it as a Mystery Science Theater episode, snickering and jeering. I walked out. Oh, you people are so sophisticated, aren’t you, you’re so enlightened, you’re so superior. In the world of cinematic Iconic Tough Guys, strength and tough-ness is a natural response to the threatening environment. SOMEONE’S gotta be the Tough Guy in a dangerous world.
So. That’s my take on where we should “place” Sam and Dean, especially in Season 2, which feels very much like a Western to me. (Speaking of High Noon, there are a couple of shots in “All Hell Breaks Loose” that are flat-out stolen from High Noon.) The roadhouse is straight out of a Western. Ellen and Jo are out of a Western. Ash would be played by, oh, Walter Brennan, in the good old days. These characters stand on the threshold of a dark and dangerous pioneer. They huddle together, strength in numbers, getting ready to take that first step forward. The final episodes are a stand-off that take place in an abandoned Western town and then a country cemetery in the middle of nowhere. Classic Western stuff. Good against evil, white hat against black hat.
But there’s another element and this has to do with Ellen and Jo and, by association, all of the women who try to “get in there” with these guys. Now stick with me here. If you haven’t seen the films I’m about to mention, all I can say is: I beg of you to watch them because you are in for such a treat! They are some of the sexiest films ever made, and most of them were made before 1940. All of them were made by Howard Hawks.
Howard Hawks is my favorite director.
I’m not sure that any director who has ever lived had such a good run as he had in the late 1930s. He directed, in succession, Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings and His Girl Friday, back to back. Each one is a legitimate classic, with some of the fastest dialogue ever put onscreen. But even before that he made films that still get played today. Scarface is one of the first gangster pictures, so influential that you could say it practically invented American cinema, still deep in its love affair with organized crime. Fabulous film. Twisty sexual brother-sister relationship, dangerous awful men, dark and dirty, Boris Karloff bowling, I mean what more can you want. But then came his run in the late 30s, early 40s, that is so dazzling you wonder if someone had spiked his orange juice. After His Girl Friday, he gave us Sergeant York, Ball of Fire (a favorite of mine), and then, in the mid-40s, he “discovered” Lauren Bacall, and gave us To Have and Have Not (where Bacall gives one of the best debut performances of all time) and The Big Sleep, back to back. Again, these are great films, classics, standards. Bogie and Bacall, blazing up the screen with sexual tension so huge you want to literally die from the pleasure of it. After that came the phenomenal Red River, a Western, starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift (in his film debut). The 30s and 40s were the heyday of Howard Hawks, and he did it all: gangster films, screwball comedies, earnest dramas, noirs, action/adventure films … In the 50s, he brought us Monkey Business (with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (with Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe), and the awesome Rio Bravo, another Western, but it’s really more just a big rich ensemble piece, with John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Angie Dickinson.
Howard Hawks was primarily interested in two things:
1. all-male environments and how they operated.
2. men and women
His best films blend those two interests. So we get women barging into all-male environments, we get males pushing back, we get sexual chemistry, we get tons of great banter, and his films still, to this day, provide hope that men and women can work it out if they set their minds to it and find the right match. It’s a far more hopeful model than, say, the one provided by Judd Apatow. It is preferable, let’s say, that men and women try to work it out with as little compromise as possible. Nobody should be selling themselves out in order to hook up. A lot of other films at this time feature feisty fabulous women who have to somehow be “tamed” by the end, and listen, if that’s well done it can be very sexy (Quiet Man, anyone?), but Hawks was more adolescent than that. He wanted life and love to be FUN, dammit. He didn’t want a tamed woman. He wanted a wild woman. Watching the men and women flail about in Hawks’ films trying to work it out, and often going stark-raving mad in the process, is one of my greatest pleasures.
Hawks was so obsessed with a certain type of woman that that type is now known as “the Howard Hawks woman”. He worked on it, compulsively, in film after film after film. He wanted an actress who gave as good as she got, who did not cringe at the “insolence” of her leading man, but gave it right back to him. Not every actress could handle it. He wanted the people in his films to dish it out as well as take it. That’s where the sexual chemistry comes from.
In Bringing Up Baby we have a workaholic nerdy scientist (Cary Grant), devoted to completing his brontosaurus. Into his world strolls a ditzy heiress (Katharine Hepburn) who falls in love with him immediately and decides she MUST have him, even though he is engaged to be married the following day. She is so persistent that at one point she literally chases him through the forest wielding a butterfly net. But he doesn’t care about women. He is devoted to science! Leave me alone, crazy lady! Let me get back to my Important Male Science Business! Over the course of the film, his entire sense of self is shattered. He slips and falls on an olive in a nightclub, crushing his top hat. He trips over the curb while trying to make a dignified exit. He accidentally rips off the entire back of Hepburn’s dress, revealing her bloomers to the public. He suddenly finds himself baby-sitting a wild leopard. He wrestles with a swan. At one point, this extremely dignified man throws on a feathered women’s bathrobe (the ditzy heiress has stolen his clothes) and screams at a disapproving dowager, “I’ve gone GAY all of a sudden”.
He is the crankiest man who has ever lived in the face of all this chaos. But in the last moment, he realizes that he can’t live without her, and shouts at her, “I’ve never had a better time!”
In Ball of Fire, which is basically Howard Hawks’ retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Gary Cooper plays a dusty intellectual (try to picture THAT), a man holed up in seclusion with six other men, charged with creating a new encyclopedia. They are monastic in habit. The only woman they interact with is the disapproving housekeeper who cleans up after them. Into this stuffy sexless environment strolls Sugarpuss O’Shea (yeah, you heard that right), a showgirl with mob connections, played deliciously by Barbara Stanwyck.
She speaks almost entirely in rat-a-tat slang and Gary Cooper’s character is fascinated by her modern language and wants to incorporate it in his encyclopedia. She loosens the guys up in the house. They abandon their Serious Man Work and devote themselves instead to participating in conga lines winding through the library. She doesn’t enter their male world and bustle around cleaning up and cooking and making them realize the value of a home-cooked meal. Hawks thought that that male fantasy of women was a snooze-fest and the least sexy thing possible. Sugarpuss O’Shea walks into the self-serious obsessive world of men and teaches them to lighten up, have fun, stop taking yourself so seriously, Jeez Louise. (She is not, however, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl(™). The MPDG is a complete bastardization and insultingly simplified version of the Howard Hawks Woman. First of all: the Howard Hawks Women are, you know, WOMEN. GROWN-UPS. They are not adorable little woman-children wearing vintage sun-dresses and still playing with Legos or whatever “charming” thing it is the MPDGs do.)
Sugarpuss O’Shea, who is used to being bossed around and dominated by the surly gangster she dates, finds herself able to be SOFT and vulnerable with Gary Cooper’s character.
So they meet in the middle. Gary Cooper finds his take-charge-ness and sexuality, and she finds her vulnerability. (You will notice that the gender roles are reversed. Hawks did that all the time.) Sugarpuss completely destabilizes the Male Universe, and Hawks LOVES her for it. So does Gary Cooper.
That was how Howard Hawks saw women. Men are trying to do their Serious Men Stuff, and women stroll in and mess everything up. Men resist women in Howard Hawks’ world, HARD. And yet ultimately women are irresistible. Never forget that last line in Bringing Up Baby: “I’ve never had a better time!” I wrote about Bringing Up Baby for Capital New York and I am sure my family members are so proud that I point out that one of the characters probably doesn’t swallow. Keep it classy, Sheila. But I blame Howard Hawks! A prissy prudish woman is named Miss Swallow. If you don’t want me to “go there,” then name her Miss Smith. Love and sex should be fun, people should be doing what they can to have some fun, and stop trying to be so serious. Women were the agents of fun. Think how freeing that is for women, as opposed to the model we now get from Judd Apatow and others, where women are always seen as the OPPOSITE of fun.
The other important element of The Howard Hawks Woman is that she does not want to change her man. Women who race in and try to domesticate the situation, hanging curtains, and hectoring her man to be … less himself, don’t last long in the Hawks world. The women who survive are the ones who understand the rules of the game, play by those same rules themselves, don’t have dreams of a white picket fence either, and refuse to be excluded from the fun just because they have vaginas. The man usually treats the woman at first with a blustery standoffish-ness, trying to lord his Important Male-ness over her (it never works, the Howard Hawks Woman is too smart for that). But the man is mainly used to the OTHER type of woman, the woman who says she loves him but really she only loves him if he would change everything that makes him him. So the men are like, “Back off! I ain’t falling for your ruse, sister! You dames are all alike!” And the Howard Hawks woman grins coolly, and says, “Please, fella, knock it off. Light my cigarette and take a load off, pal. Let’s have some fun.”
We can see that in His Girl Friday, too, which tells the story of a recently-divorced couple (played by Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell). He is a newspaper editor, she was his star reporter.
She left the job because she wanted to be seen as a woman, not a “newspaperman”, and she is now set to marry someone else (a stick-in-the-mud Ralph Bellamy). You know that that impending marriage is doomed. From the very first scene, you know that Grant and Russell are meant to be together, not just because their chemistry is so insane but because both of them are such obnoxious wise-crackers that who else on the planet would put up with either of them? In His Girl Friday, Rosalind Russell strolls easily and comfortably through a 100%-male world, and she dominates. She is better at her job than any of the other reporters and they all know it. There is no sexist jeering, no resentment. They kow-tow to her, learn from her. She’s the best reporter any of them have ever met.
It is totally unfair but any woman who has tried to “get ahead” in any workplace will recognize a lot of the women’s struggles in these films (from 1938/39, mind you): You have to be BETTER than the men, tougher, stronger, in order to survive. You have to rise through your sheer talent and stick-to-it-ive-ness, and you do so under a tidal wave of stereotypes and unfair preconceived notions. Howard Hawks presents all of that with the character of Hildy in His Girl Friday, only he presents her as the fully realized success story. She is a force of nature. I wrote about that film for Bright Wall/Dark Room.
Howard Hawks didn’t care so much about what people FELT. He cared about what they DID. Men often are defined by their jobs. (We’re talking stereotypes now.) And so a certain kind of man who totally identifies himself with his profession will not respond well to a woman who strolls into that world and screws up his concentration. (So now, hopefully, you can see my ultimate point that has to do with what goes on in No Exit.)
The high watermark (for me) of the Howard Hawks style is Only Angels Have Wings.
It is a perfect film and one of my favorite films ever made. It tells the story of the dangerous early days of aviation. It takes place in some banana republic in South America, where a pilot (Cary Grant) has set up a small airline to fly the mail through the treacherous mountain passes. A bunch of pilots have gathered, and they all live and work together. It is incredibly dangerous. People die all the time. It is a tough tough world, and the only women who are regulars in that world are prostitutes, girls who are fun and know the score. Any woman who can’t “take” that life, who go gaga-eyed at the thought of “settling down” and living a safe life, have zero place in the world of Only Angels Have Wings. Jean Arthur, a stranded showgirl, waiting for her next boat, strolls into this new and dangerous world, and immediately falls for Cary Grant. I mean, who wouldn’t. But he is cautious with women, afraid of getting attached. The last woman he was with (Rita Hayworth) was awesome and he loved her but she eventually “disappointed” him by going crazy with anxiety during a very dangerous flight. Hearts were broken. And so he is done with love of that kind, it’s not for him. (Hayworth is awesome in Only Angels Have Wings too.) Over the course of the film, Jean Arthur literally loses her MIND trying to be a “Howard Hawks woman”. Can she take it? Can she love him as WELL as let him be himself (i.e. a man who does a very dangerous job). Can she not worry-wart him to death? How do you love someone but ALSO just let them BE?
It’s quite profound. If you haven’t seen Only Angels Have Wings, all I can say is … do yourself a favor.
Unfortunately, today’s rather severe concept of social justice would consign Only Angels Have Wings to evidence of male privilege, but God, by doing so, you miss so much! You miss all the fun! What courses underneath every interaction in Only Angels Have Wings is the desire for freedom, ease, sex that is fun, wild-ness mixed with the safety of being with someone who really really gets you. Can such a heaven exist? Can men and women actually work it out and be able to … BE together? Not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. There’s a lot of anxiety in Only Angels Have Wings, as well as a deep current of homoerotic energy, common with all-male groups regardless of sexual orientation (it is clear that Thomas Mitchell, one of the pilots, is in love with Cary Grant’s character, his best friend). Maybe only men will understand one another? Maybe the best thing is to leave women out of it altogether? But no! That can’t be! Men in Howard Hawks’ universe NEED women, even though they make a big show of being independent.
Howard Hawks’ women were not males-in-dresses. They were not tomboys. They were the luscious curvy epitome of femininity, except for the kooky hats and and fact that they all talked at the speed of light. His women were not hard women. Hawks didn’t really do the femme fatale thing. He was interested in the type of woman who could handle Boys Unleashed without getting grossed out or offended, who could assert herself without being a wet blanket. And Hawks presented this in a way that was fun, screwball, sexy, smart, and has never been matched in cinema. Ultimately, women are necessary, and NOT, in Howard Hawks’ world, to “keep the home fires burning.” No, no, no, Hawks wasn’t interested in domesticity at ALL. There are very few married couples in his films. There is no suburbia. Marriage is not the end-game for any of these people. Women don’t wear aprons and putter about kitchens in his films. That would be spiritual death to Hawks. Why would you want to look at your wife/partner as some kind of Mommy? What could be less sexy than that? No, his women stroll into the world of men, shoot back wisecracks, poke through male self-seriousness with teasing jokes and remind the men “Oh no, brother, you can’t pull that shit with ME.” His women are radical, renegades, career gals, subversives, thieves (like Bacall in To Have and Have Not) or, as in Bringing Up Baby heiresses with nothing better to do than try to break up someone else’s impending marriage via baby leopards and intercostal clavicles.
In Hawks’ films, men try to prop up their dignified senses of themselves and the Important Man Work they do. They puff out their chests, and bluster at the little ladies, “We don’t want you here.” The lady leans against the bar, cocks an eyebrow, and thinks, “Wanna bet?”
Back to No Exit. The vibe with Jo in No Exit has been used as evidence of Dean’s “chauvinistic” attitudes. I obviously have a different take on it. Jo feels it as chauvinistic and you certainly can’t blame her. It is enraging to be left out of the world of Action, of the world where Important Shit gets done. She wants in, and does not want the fact that she has a vagina to count her OUT. All excellent points. But if you place Sam and Dean in a Howard Hawks context, as opposed to a post-feminist modern social-justice context, the dynamic becomes totally clear. Hunting, as of this point in the series, is 100% male. (Forget that we meet female hunters later. At the point of “No Exit,” we have only seen male hunters.) Women are novelties to Sam and Dean, especially when they intersect with their family secret. Jo is younger than both of them, and so Dean (especially) resists her coming along, because he will feel responsible for her, and that might put her (and him) in danger. This is exactly how Cary Grant treats Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings, even though he is attracted to her. Dean is also terrified of Ellen. Dean may not respect authority figures like cops, but he respects the hell out of parents. As set up by John Winchester, hunting is a commando-type atmosphere, just like the one in Only Angels Have Wings, men barricaded off against soft-ness, intrusion, compromise – any of those things will get them KILLED in their line of work. Women are idolized/sainted/martyred in the Winchester Family Drama. Mom on the ceiling becomes a stand-in for all women. If you fall in love with, say, John Winchester, and then nag him about his job … well, that ain’t gonna work. It would be like marrying a fireman and then whining about why does he have to leap out of bed in the middle of the night, or how you wish he had a safer job. Honey, you married a fireman, not an accountant. Don’t put that shit on him. Hawks had no patience for women like that, and the men of Supernatural have been raised with that type of oxygen.
Women are novelties. Women could be dangerous distractions. Women might make them vulnerable. And the two of them clearly make anyone who comes into their lives vulnerable. Women are just as capable as they are (nobody says any different), but women’s presence destabilizes the world that John Winchester set up. It’s a precarious balancing act.
Lisa is a Howard Hawks Woman, in case you haven’t picked up that memo. She and Dean hooked up, and probably slept together within 3 hours of saying “Hello.” No judgment. She was wild, he was wild, good times were had. She wasn’t wild in order to impress him, she was wild because she liked being wild and she liked wild men who were up for it. She didn’t have hopes that he would stick around, or that whatever it was they were doing was going to magically morph into white-picket-fence-land. That would have been totally absurd. Dean rolled out of her bed after that weekend, they had some sexy waffles maybe, and then he drove off to meet up with his Dad, and she went on with her day, probably laughing out loud when she thought of the insane weekend she just had. Whatever went down between them was so much fun that she told a friend it was the best sex of her whole life, and Dean obviously remembers it, too, and decides to swing by for an unannounced booty-call eight years later. Amazing. Once their relationship started, the show did not soft-pedal her fears about Dean’s job, especially as a mother, but it also did not make her into the stereotypical nag. She accepted his job was dangerous and she wanted him to know he could talk to her about it and she wouldn’t freak out. And, honestly, she doesn’t, until Dean whacks her kid against the wall. We all have our limits. In a couple of their conversation scenes, Dean reacts to her as THOUGH she is nagging him – even though she clearly isn’t, and he gets hang-dog or apologetic, he feels like he’s in trouble. That’s projection on his part. This is what happens when men in Howard Hawks’ world meet women who AREN’T the stereotypical woman-in-apron-at-a-stove. They don’t know how to handle it, they can’t even perceive it. Dean keeps showing up at her door, and she keeps letting him in, because he provides something for her and for her son, and she has worked out for herself what that might mean. She accepts him, nightmares/heavy-drinking/grief and all. Dean is grateful and kind of amazed that this person has accepted him, and seems to … love him? Is that possible? Throughout their relationship, he still treats her as a novelty – he can’t help it – which would certainly get pretty old pretty quick, but still, it’s understandable why that happens. Maybe it’s because I see the whole thing through the Howard Hawks filter. I see a lot of life through the Howard Hawks filter. It’s more fun that way. I recommend it. Nobody prioritized fun like Howard Hawks.
His fantasies are mine. I don’t mind that the reality might not exist. It’s a fantasy. It’s a dreamspace, a landscape where men and women can connect, where everyone gets to be themselves and nobody loses out. His Girl Friday does not end with Hildy realizing that being a homemaker for her newspaper editor husband is actually the highest possible bliss. That would be such a betrayal of the character. It ends with the two of them hustling out of the room to investigate a mining explosion, bickering all the way. She is carrying three suitcases. He doesn’t help her with them. And she doesn’t give a shit because she is too focused on getting down the damn stairs as quickly as possible. They’re both grown-ups. To Hawks, that is Heaven on Earth. The men I have connected with have always had the same fantasy. And so we are on equal ground. Let’s have fun. Let’s BE together. Let’s not sweat the small stuff. Let us devote ourselves to the moment. Some people get very anxious in that situation. They need more, they need some kind of guarantee that Tomorrow will also happen. That’s fine, if that’s what they need! Know what you need, behave accordingly. But the common conventional set-up is not the only possibility for connection. The Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy movies, as great as they all are, are about compromise. She basically needs to settle down, relax, and, on some level, accept his dominance. The two of them manage to make that conversation fascinating, sexy, and watchable. Howard Hawks wasn’t into that. He liked wild people, he liked people who were devoted to their JOBS more than anything else (as he was devoted to his job), and what kind of partner would be appropriate for men/women like that? Is it possible to find a companion who can handle all that? Who won’t get jealous or weird when you devote yourself to your job? That’s why His Girl Friday is so electric: it’s two workaholics who love each other battling it out. And, very important, the battle is NOT that Cary Grant wants her to be a nice little wifey and give up her career. No! He wants her to come back to the newspaper, she’s the best reporter he’s got, come on, don’t throw your gift away, you maniac! To Howard Hawks, a woman in an apron at a stove was the most alienating and lonely image possible.
I’ll just leave this treatise here for possible discussion. I see much of Supernatural through the Howard Hawks lens. I clocked that dynamic right away, from the second Ellen and Jo entered the action. They are textbook Howard Hawks women. Any woman who ever “makes it” with these two guys (not just sexually, but on any intimate trusted level), are Howard Hawks women. Cassie. Lisa. Bela (although she skirts on the edge of femme fatale). Dean’s djinn-dream-girl Carmen. Charlie. Ellen. Jo. Madison. The emergency-room-doctor Sam bangs. Breaking out the whiskey? Her humor? Her cool-eyed understanding of sexual nuance and flirtation? Howard Hawks Woman all the way. Amelia is halfway there. She’s in the process of becoming a Howard Hawks woman. Her mess is part of it, her rejection of what she is “supposed” to want and be is all part of it. And clearly she is not a homemaker. Annie. Hell, Mary Campbell was a Howard Hawks woman. Jess? Not so much. She represented the possibility of safety and domesticity (nothing bad about that, she just doesn’t fit the type, which is perfect for what she meant in Sam’s life. Howard Hawks Women aren’t the only awesome women in the universe, but they are extremely specific.) And let me not forget Melanie from The Mentalists (I will continue to beat that dead horse mercilessly). She may be the most Hawks-ian woman of all, next to Pamela and Charlie, and that is why I love her so much.
Sam: We’re not FBI agents.
Melanie: I need a drink.
Dean: I support that.
That is some Hawksian dialogue right there. And then of course, there is Pamela. Pamela has stepped right out of Howard Hawks’ universe. Pamela could saunter straight into Only Angels Have Wings, no problem. She would plop herself down at the late-night all-male poker game, take the ribbing the guys give her, throw devastating barbs back, and proceed to not only win big, but drink them all under the table.
Once I Start Talking About Howard Hawks, It Is Hard to Stop.
What happens in “No Exit” is what has been happening, via slow creep, ever since John died. The Winchester’s world is getting wider. There is a relief in that, but also a tension. That relief/tension thing is inherently dramatic in nature. Women break apart the male dynamic. It is stressful but it is also healthy and necessary. For me, “No Exit” is, screw the monster, all about that.
Teaser
Philadelphia Pennsylvania
A building, seen from its exterior, with lights flickering in the arched windows. The whole episode is about the building and Manners starts us off giving us a good look at it. Inside, we see a girl on her phone, bitching to the super/owner that her lights are flickering. She just moved in. We see her from above the hanging light fixture, so she looks dwarfed down below, and the lights are going on, off, on. Hey, look, it’s Andrea Brooks, the cute girl in the tech tent in Larp and the Real Girl!
The walls of her new apartment are unfinished, showing wires and plaster, a strange and abstract background. It’s a patched-together building, in process. Everything is blue and black and bluish-white, Manners/Ladouceur/Wanek at their glamorous best.
A drop of black gooey substance drips down on her from the ceiling.
It is our first introduction to Ectoplasm. I love this article I found, especially the first sentence, which can’t be improved upon:
Ectoplasm was (or is) an odd and elusive substance that, while skeptics refute its existence at all, is reported to be totally repulsive.
There is too much awesome there to even list, starting with the parenthetical and then moving on down. Ectoplasm came to my consciousness, as I’m sure it did for a lot of people, when I first saw Ghostbusters.
In Supernatural-Land, ectoplasm is thick black goo. The black goo starts oozing out of the chrome hole-in-the-wall where her door-buzzer will eventually go. Again, it’s the details. The building, remember. The building is under construction, the building is not done, the building is in process, and open to suggestion/ectoplasm/abduction/terror. There are some gorgeous shots of the goo pushing itself through the hole, all as the lights go on and off in the background, with eerie little “fzzz”-ing noises.
The entire atmosphere is thick and beautiful. Our heroine stares at the goo, wondering what the hell is going on, and then, with a jolt, she sees a gigantic blood-shot eye peering at her through the hole in the wall.
Horror movies wouldn’t be horror movies if they didn’t feature petite blond women screaming at the top of their lungs and Andrea Brooks does not disappoint!
1st scene
The previous episode ended with an ominous breaking-out of the whiskey at the roadhouse, all to the gloomy warning of Soundgarden’s “Fell On Black Days.” “No Exit” picks up where we left off, with a high-angle shot of the roadhouse at early morning (and it seriously looks like an old set for a Western movie), a gigantic shadow from one of the outbuildings stretching across the lot, engulfing the Impala and Sam and Dean.
Maybe the two of them crashed in those bunks out back for a couple of days. Maybe they’ve been waiting around to see what Ash could come up with. Dean has clearly been spending some time reading the gossip rags, because his first line to Sam, as they pack up the trunk is, “Los Angeles, California. A young girl’s been kidnapped by an evil cult.” (He means Katie Holmes.) Watch how the camera swoops down on them in one as they start talking. It comes down behind Sam, and the shot of Dean, with the reflection in the Impala of the old-school burlesque-show neon of the roadhouse, is a classic.
Sam laughs at Dean’s joke, seeming almost surprised, Dean going all ba-dum-ching Borscht Belt with his punch-lines. (I would love to see Sam and Dean try to infiltrate the big blue Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard, but I suppose that time has passed. All signs suggest the cult is limping its way into oblivion, which means Alex and I will no longer have the fun of trying to infiltrate it. Moving on.) The brothers are distracted by the sound of something crashing inside the roadhouse, two voices screaming. Dean gets almost excited. Cat fight.
The fight is full-blown when Sam and Dean walk into it. Ellen (the great Samantha Ferris) is basically having a tantrum, and it is beautiful to see. This woman gives a shit: her every look, her every glance, her every line reading, shows her commitment to the people she loves. She is formidable. And Jo (Alona Tal), who had offered her help to Dean in “Simon Said,” is itching to get out, do something with her life, be a hunter. This fight has been simmering for months, perhaps years. So when it finally explodes, it’s enormous.
Hunters put their families on lock-down. We saw it in “Something Wicked,” we’ll see it when Dean shacks up with Lisa and Ben. It happens automatically and it seems unavoidable. Jo is not a child, she’s an adult, and she is now feeling like her mother is imprisoning her. “What are you gonna do? Chain me up in the basement?” she screams. Foreshadowing! It makes Ellen equivalent to the serial-killer ghost who actually does keep Jo locked up in the basement later. It’s hysterical and subversive.
A side note about acting: Characters like these live or die because of the actresses that play them. Ellen and Jo both cast long shadows over the entirety of the series, they are important, both to the brothers and to us. That would not be possible if Ferris and Tal didn’t go all out with their characterizations, investing the highest possible stakes for both of them. They don’t look anything alike but you believe they are mother and daughter. And you will notice that when they fight, they go for it. There is an openness there, even in conflict, that did not exist in the all-male Winchester family. That’s a fascinating dichotomy, especially considering the stereotypes that women avoid conflict by being passive-aggressive and men are more explosive. Supernatural says, like Howard Hawks says, Wanna bet?
Sam and Dean, looking on, almost appear fascinated. They don’t look concerned. I am projecting, but that’s my business as an audience member. It’s almost like: “Wow, here is a family fighting. We know about family. We know how WE fight. We know about a bossy parent. But … this looks different from what WE are used to … also, they’re GIRLS and it’s kind of awesome.”
Ellen begs Jo to go back to school, and Jo, in agony, shouts, “I didn’t belong there! I was a freak with a knife collection!” (I find myself thinking of the ominous paper-knife in the room in Sartre’s play. Knives come up again!)
Ellen senses Sam and Dean just standing there, watching as though it’s a cage match on pay-per-view, and tells them, “Bad time, guys.” Obediently, Sam even saying, “Yes, ma’am,” because they do whatever Ellen says, they back off and start to leave, but Jo stops them. It is at that inauspicious moment that a family of four wander in wanting lunch. They are wearing bright yellow T-shirts that say NEBRASKA IS FOR LOVERS (dying), and they are from another universe where all is bright and conventional. It’s Life With Father walking into a Western directed by Howard Hawks. The father says, tentatively, “Are you open?”
Jo screams, “NO” and Ellen screams “YES” at the same time and look out, the women are in charge. They are basically in charge of the whole episode, even when they get dragged into basements by 19th century serial killers. It is the first time a woman has entered and co-opted and owned the action. It’s reminiscent of “Bloodlust,” when Sam and Dean suddenly are playing co-star to a new character. Gordon runs that episode, sets the tone, pushes the pace. That’s what’s happening here too. It’s exhilarating. It’s not always successful when Supernatural hands off the show to secondary characters, because we keep wanting to get back to Sam and Dean. They have to be really good and Ellen and Jo are.
The family flounces out and then the phone rings. There is a standoff between Ellen and Jo about who is going to answer it. Jo is standing with Sam and Dean, the three of them clustered together, and Ellen is separated across the room. Ellen’s already lost the battle and she knows it.
Ellen stalks to answer the phone and Jo takes her moment of freedom, handing Dean a folder, giving him a brief run-down on the girl who disappeared from her Philadelphia apartment. Freckled Dean takes her in, takes in the whole thing. He hesitates even taking the folder and she shoves it at him saying, “It won’t bite,” and Dean says, “Yeah, but your mom might,” a line I love. We’ve come a long way from “Everybody Loves a Clown,” when Dean resented Ellen’s power and tried to protect himself from her attention. Now he knows: The woman is not to be messed with, the woman is awesome, the woman is scary, I’m not going head to head with that broad, no way.
Jo talks as quickly as possible, knowing that Ellen won’t be distracted for long. Dean flips through the in-depth folder, there are maps and old newspaper articles. He interrupts her: “Who put this together? Ash?”
“I did it myself,” says Jo.
Dean doesn’t show he’s impressed or say he’s impressed but you can see him silently adjust to this new information. Ellen’s off the phone now and she’s back, telling them if they love the case so much they can take it. When Jo tries to fight back, Ellen says, “Joanna Beth. This family has lost enough.” It is an object lesson in how to put your Entire Life into one very small line. Her words stop everyone in the room. And we get three stunning shots, one of Jo, one of Ellen, and one of Sam and Dean. Each is gorgeous in their own very specific way. You’ll see the amount of detail and care that went into each one. Ellen is barging into Jo’s closeup, a blur on the right-hand side. Sam and Dean, and the colors they are wearing, monochromatic, make them seem like one being. And Ellen is placed with the window behind her, a fuzzy green smudge of light, her face to the right of the frame. So each closeup you get is different, unique, with tons to look at in each one.
It’s a standoff.
2nd scene
Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” opens the next scene, with the Impala barreling past the screen. Your Mommy’s all right – Your Daddy’s all right -They just seem a little weird… It’s not a song of youthful rebellion and “Grown-ups don’t understaaaaand me, man.” It’s a song about how your parents have been through a ton of shit, and they actually know some shit, and they’re also kind of cool and right about a lot of things.
And then, whoosh, we get an aerial shot of Philadelphia (the second one in the episode, God bless gorgeous stock footage). I may be wrong but I believe the shot was filmed from what are known as “the Rocky steps.” I used to live in Philadelphia, and yes, my boyfriend and I would visit the museum and feel compelled to run up the steps like Rocky. We didn’t care that we were cliches. You see those steps and they demand that you run up them.
From there, we get a great shot of the building we saw in the teaser, only now the Impala is parked outside, literally jamming itself into the frame. If it were a 3-D shot, the Impala would be in your living room. I mentioned in “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things” that in Season 2, everyone involved started having fun with what they had set up in Season 1. You can almost feel everyone relax. They were picked up for another season. They were moving on to Season 2. The Impala is important, so let’s film it like it’s the most beautiful and most scary car in the world. Let’s turn that up to 11. The same with the two leads. Let’s peel back some layers and reveal them as well as mythologize them: let’s revel in the freckles, the big forehead, the pale skin, the tall-ness, the individuality of them, let’s film them like we are in love with them. That’s what goes on here. And that Impala, snarling out of the frame, is part of that reveling in style that comes with relaxation and knowing your job is semi-secure for another season.
Sam and Dean break into the apartment, and they move slowly into the space. They’re already in work-mode, busting out the EMFs, but they’re talking, too. I love that. The sense that they can do two totally different things at the same time. Sam is saying he feels kind of bad, taking Jo’s case away from her. Dean doesn’t feel bad. She did all the legwork for them. “But can you see out here working one of these things? I don’t think so.”
Howard Hawks Universe. All-male world. Dean sees Jo as a kid, practically, with a very very scary mother. We’ve discussed before how the entire world under-estimates Jo because she is a small blonde girl. She knows it. She scams truckers out of their money because they underestimate her. Dean operates in much the same way, but as far as he knows Jo has some glamorous little-girl dream of being a hunter, and he knows what a shitty gig the reality is. (This ends up not being true, and Dean maybe should have guessed that, but whatever, there are only so many hours in the day.) In the same way that Cary Grant looks at Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings and immediately thinks 2 seemingly contradictory things (1. “Hm. She’s attractive and I would like to kiss her.” 2. “No way will she fit in here, gotta get rid of her pronto”), Dean doesn’t see Jo for who she is. He knows what it’s like for HIM as a hunter, and Jo does not (and should not) fit into that world. Dean’s response to her actually has multiple levels which is usually the case with him. (You’re tiny and blonde and a girl. You cannot be a hunter. Does not compute. Also: Your mom doesn’t want you to do it, you should respect your mom. Also: I had no choice but to become a hunter. You HAVE a choice. Don’t be an idiot. And etc. But it takes the whole episode for all this to come out.) I also love that Sam doesn’t respond to Dean’s comment about Jo. Maybe he thinks, Yeah, you’re probably right. Whatever. Neither of them have time for bullshit, and Sam is busy with his EMF in the background (aaaand cue focus-pull! This is a long opening shot, my favorite kind.)
Manners has placed Sam diagonally in the frame, half in shadow, half-lit, it’s almost painterly, the way the light hits the contours of his face, with the smudgy expanse of blue-grey behind him.
Sam doesn’t have much to do in “No Exit,” but Manners makes up for it with closeups like that one. There are a lot of great reaction shots from Sam throughout the episode. He’s not forgotten.
Both Sam and Dean seem surprised by the black goo they find in the doorbell. “That’s ectoplasm,” says Dean. Which, naturally, leads to a Ghostbusters joke. Hell, it’s what I’d do, and I’ve never even seen ectoplasm. But I’ve seen Ghostbusters.
Sam is put off by the joke, because ectoplasm is serious business, man! Spirits have to be really pissed off to slime all over the place. I like it a lot when Dean tries to be funny and Sam refuses to laugh. It’s part of their “schtick” as brothers. Dean does his Burlesque Borscht Belt Act, and looks to Sam for approval, laughter, anything! and it’s shockingly vulnerable on his part and I can’t get enough of it. But it’s only funny when it’s met with a deadpan response from Sam and Dean then has to sort of flutter away to recover his bruised ego. Ahhh, humor.
They walk back out into the hallway and hear a woman’s voice coming at them, jabbering away. Sam and Dean scoot off to the side, hiding in a recess, and look at the color scheme, what they are wearing, the background colors, the whole thing. It’s almost totally monochromatic.
And of course it is Jo, talking to the super, endlessly, about what a good job he’s done with the building, and how she is excited about the apartment, and on and on. Both Sam and Dean have heard the voice, and emerge from hiding, stepping into a pool of shadows that make them both look glamorous and crazy gorgeous, and it’s one of those shots Supernatural has specialized in: cramming them both into the same frame, Dean in front, or Sam in front, with the other crowding up behind. It’s usually Dean in front because of the height discrepancy. Thank goodness both of them are over 6 feet. Imagine if they had cast a 5’8″ guy as one of the brothers. We wouldn’t get nearly as many closeups with their faces in the same frame.
Dean blurts out, “What the hell are you doing here?” (That’s another thing that happens in Howard Hawks’ world: the women are cool as cukes, and the guys are off-their-game and blustery, the opposite of cool.) Jo greets him with a huge smile, and comes at him, calling him, “Honey.” Dean is then put in the position of having to play along, and it is one of my favorite cinematic devices: Have two people who actually HATE each other have to pretend that they are married. How romantic! To have this whole other conversation going on (“I hate you, get your hands off me”, like what happens in It Happened One Night, and so many others) all as you have to smile and nod and pretend you love each other. Comedy and chemistry ensue. Because of course you DO want to touch each other, and yet, OH, isn’t he so ANNOYING, and oh, isn’t she so AWFUL … and etc.
Jo introduces Dean to the super as her boyfriend, and the super basically gives Dean this huge and obvious once-over, totally checking him out, with a big approving smile on his face. They shake hands and no one even acknowledges the moment that just happened. Probably because it happens so often. But it’s a funny strange detail. The super is clearly crushing on Jo (I mean, who wouldn’t), and so here is the guy who “gets” to be with her and hey, isn’t he pretty to look at, too, and boy oh boy, I’ll be fantasizing about them two tonight. I know, I know. Dirty mind. But there is zero reason for that actor to have such a “checking Dean out” moment than to activate the dirty minds of those of us who are watching. The super says to Dean, all buddy-buddy, “That’s quite a gal you got there.” Dean grabs her, too hard, and says, “Oh yeah, she’s a pistol,” and Jo goes all quiet and stoic when she feels him man-handling her. Her face goes totally blank. Like, Yup, I know, you’re pissed, yup, I can feel your anger in your hands slapping my ass, but whatevs, don’t care, don’t care.
Sam is a quiet patient observer to all of this, and Manners cuts to him a couple of times. He’s watching his brother tailspin, as so often happens, and he’s wondering if maybe he should step in and smooth things over. Dean can’t lie and he’s doing all this weird “acting”, saying the apartment had “great flow” (haha), and Jo is loving every second of it. She hands over a gigantic wad of cash to the surprised super. “We’ll take it.”
She’s her mother’s daughter. A force to be reckoned with.
3rd scene
From that we cut to Jo, with an extremely phallic gun being cocked in the foreground by a grumpy as hell Dean. She grins at him triumphantly, saying, “Flip you for the sofa.” Now that they’re alone inside the apartment, he can assert his status: he’s older, he’s more experienced, he’s scared of Ellen, Jo is young. He’s totally contemptuous now. He’s also leaning diagonally through the frame and the entire thing is red and grey-white so I have a hard time paying attention with the damn Vermeer going on onscreen.
Sam is behind them, at the table, letting Dean have his drama, sitting this one out. The entire thing is about Jo and Dean. Not because of romantic tension, but because Jo senses/knows that it is Dean she will have to win over, or at least fight it out with. Dean is the one giving her a hard time. She pushes back, and by doing so, she concedes his position/status, although she doesn’t quite realize that’s what she’s doing. Jo smirks that she had Ash lay a credit card trail all the way to Vegas. Which is pretty weak, if you ask me, but Sam looks semi-impressed as well as amused that Dean is taking everything so badly. Dean shakes his head disapprovingly.
The whole situation with Jo has to develop, and bit by bit, block by block, “No Exit” does so. We have these early scenes. We have the scene coming up where Dean talks to Jo about Ellen. Then we have the scene where Jo and Dean talk about their dads. Everything has to go in the proper order. If you tried to talk about your dads, before you had the Ellen conversation, it would be too much too soon. “No Exit” does a very good job of leading us through that.
Sam asks her where she got all that money, and she says working at the roadhouse. Dean snaps, “Hunters don’t tip that well” (he cuts her no slack on ANYthing, it’s awesome – she could have said, “I won the Lotto” or “I inherited it from my grandma” and he would have been equally as scornful). She laughs in his face, “Well, they aren’t that good at poker either.”
Dean is taken aback now and has to re-adjust. Isn’t that his territory? She has a wad of cash hustled from other people? He can’t really respond because it is uncomfortable being in a situation where a little blonde woman is your mirror. (Phone call for Jean-Paul Sartre.) They have more in common than he realized, but it’s not a comfortable realization.
You know. Existential Dean.
I just have to mention Sam cleaning his gun with a cast on one arm is one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen in my life.
Dean’s phone rings, and it is, of course, Ellen, demanding to know if Jo is with them. Then comes a moment directly out of the Screwball Playbook. Dean holding the phone to his shoulder so Ellen can’t hear, Jo hissing at him that she will kill him if he tells her mother she’s there, Dean hissing back, “You’re not supposed to be here” all with Sam watching silently in the background. What would we do without Sam’s calm cool watchful eye? It is such an essential part of the series. You would not be surprised if Jo and Dean started wrestling like 7-year-olds.
The pressure is too much for Dean, so he goes back to Ellen and says, Nope. She’s not here. Click.
Jo, having won that round, gives a huge toothy smile to Dean, which makes me laugh every time I look at it. Dean is a thundercloud of disapproval and anger and this is her reaction.
It’s Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn all over again. At one point in Bringing Up Baby, Grant moans, “How can so many things happen to one person?” Dean’s feeling like that right about now.
4th scene
Jo has inserted herself into the threesome, and is treating it as though it is her case. Because, duh, it is. Dean paces behind her. She has blueprints spread out across the table and is filling the guys in on the history of the building, all as she deftly flips a knife around in her hand. Dean shoots questions at her, from behind her, trying to trip her up, trying to ask a question for which Jo does not have the answer. Unfortunately for Dean, she has done her homework. Unfortunately for Dean, she has thought of everything.
And look at how the light falls on her pale skin, and how shadows surround her, except for those windows in the background. This is very careful lighting, and yet it looks totally natural. You can’t clock anything artificial going on there.
Sam is wondering if there have been any violent deaths in the building. Jo is in the process of answering that, with Dean looming in the background, and she interrupts herself, saying out into thin air, to Dean, “Would you sit down, please?”
I love Dean, I love the character. But I love him best when he is thrown off his game. It happens all the time. The character NEEDS it. Otherwise … good Lord, we’d be in trouble. We’d have an overly sentimentalized characterization, or a Lonely Man doing Important Man Stuff and oh How Hard It Is For Him, and all that. We need these characters to enter and poke holes in that seriousness, take him down a peg. I’m not sure how that works, but I am familiar with the dynamic from Howard Hawks, where Cary Grant blusters at the ladies in his vicinity, saying, “Go away”, and the ladies refuse because … who made you the fucking boss of the world? Besides, you want me here and you know it.
Jo telling Dean to sit down has all of that in it. His pacing is his way of showing resistance to her presence there and she is DONE with it.
But even better: Dean obeys. He’s still cranky as hell, but he obeys! As he sits, he tries to maintain his status as “above” her, asking her if she checked police reports, because surely, that’s something she might have missed, and oh dear, you amateur, you have a lot to learn … but Jo fires back that yes, she checked the police reports and the mortuary reports and the obits and “7 other sources,” and “I know what I’m doing.” He is still the authority figure to her, she has to impress him.
Dean says, all Tough Guy, “I think the jury’s still out on that,” and then we cut to Sam, kind of glancing at Jo to see how she’s taking it, and then going back to his work, in that classic, “I’m staying out of this one” Sam behavior.
“Could you put the knife down?” Dean says quietly, with dead eyes.
And Jo obeys.
Sam brings them all back to the topic at hand. They should scan the building. Dean takes over, saying to Jo, “You and me, we’ll take the top floors.” Jo pushes back. Bicker, bicker, bicker. Screwball, screwball. Dean, literally towering over her, the two of them surrounded by blackness, says, “This isn’t negotiable.”
5th scene
An important scene. Not everything is revealed, because good scriptwriting doesn’t work that way, but another level is reached.
Dean and Jo walk down one of the corridors in the building, and the lighting is so dramatic it’s almost ridiculous.
It turns the space into something abstract, a dramatic and stylistic nether-world, shadowy and unexpected, where Truth can come out. That’s the thing that is missed with the primary-color-brightness of season 7 and season 8 (we got more on track now with Season 9). You miss the psychological drama that darkness provides, in and of itself.
Jo holds her EMF out and up, and begins a classic Howard Hawks exchange, “So. You gonna buy me dinner?”
Grumpy Dean says, “What are you talking about?”
Jo says, “It’s just that if you’re gonna ride me this close it’s only decent you buy me dinner.”
Dean is thrown off, pissed off, maybe turned on, scared of Ellen, and has no idea how to work with anyone other than Sam. It’s no surprise, then, that his rejoinder is a lame, “That’s hilarious.”
Dean continues, “It’s bad enough I lied to your mom …” (he is so parent-identified, it’s a fascinating element to his character) “but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, you’re kind of the spirit’s type.”
The whole “bait” conversation erupts and then is moved past quickly, when Jo finally calls him on the shit he’s been flinging at her. But like the poker hustling, like the fatherlessness, like the being dominated by your living parent, like being underestimated … Jo and Dean are almost the same person. Dean is used to being used as bait. He knows it sucks. It’s okay for HIM but it’s NOT okay for Jo. Jo, rightfully, calls him on that hypocrisy, but it’s just one of those interesting subtextual things that Supernatural drops along the way, things I like thinking about. Jo as bait takes on an explicitly sexual cast. Women entrapped by men for sexual purposes. She is willing to put herself in that position if that is what it will take to save lives. Sam just doesn’t “work” as bait, and that reality is never spoken out loud or expressed, although (creepy thought), his father clearly realized that, and realized that his eldest son did “work” as bait. It’s the dirtiest secret of all in Supernatural. Dean works as bait, because he is a sexualized creature (not sexual, although that too – but sexualized), and he “works” on monsters the same way damsels in distress work on villainous men. He projects vulnerability, penetrability, get-tability … Dean uses that part of himself, participates in it, doesn’t question it, and hates it … and the thought of Jo willingly putting herself in that position … It’s so wrong to him.
Jo finally stops Dean and says, “I’ve had it up to here with your chauvinistic crap. You think women can’t do the job.”
Dean says, and John Wayne couldn’t have said it better, “Sweetheart, this isn’t gender studies.”
Dean sees Jo as a kid, filled with “romantic notions” about being a hunter. It’s so obvious, to me, an outsider, that CLEARLY she is doing this to follow in her dead father’s footsteps. She doesn’t have “romantic notions” about it. How could she? But it is not a surprise at all that Dean, who recently lost his own father, would completely miss this. Grief, remember: it disorients you. Grief impacts the brain’s capacity and resiliency. Jo’s behavior, from her first conversation with Dean when they met, all says loud and clear: “My dad … I miss my dad … I want to do what he does …” and Dean, distracted by boobs/girl parts/REO Speedwagon/dead dad, misses all of it. “No Exit” is where he understands, because he starts to be able to listen.
Dean hesitates and Jo pushes him to finish what he was going to say. He needs that push, because he’s about to get personal. He doesn’t know Jo. It’s hard for him to be intimate with people. It’s hard for him to let someone else in, especially when it comes to speaking about his family. And he looks at Jo, and whether or not he admits it yet, he sees family. So maybe he can let her in a little bit, maybe he can offer up a little part of himself to her, maybe it will help. And the part he’s offering up is very important, something he keeps hidden from almost everyone, even Sam. Gordon pumped up Dean’s need to see hunting as the only possibility for “guys like us.” That may be true, but that’s not a GOOD thing. It has taken Dean 9 seasons to really acknowledge that.
He speaks to her straight. “Jo, you got options. No one in their right mind chooses this life. My dad started me so young … I wish I could do something else.”
It’s a hell of an admission.
She seems surprised. She was fooled by the Burlesque Act he throws out, as she was meant to be fooled. That’s why he throws it out there. Jo says, “You love the job.”
“I’m a little twisted,” he admits.
She fires back, all Hawksian Woman, “You don’t think I’m a little twisted, too?”
But Dean is in the zone of truth now. Ellen looms over everything. Dean is the authority figure, giving her advice like a guidance counselor. He manages to do so, for once, without being obnoxious. He’s speaking from his own heart, from what he wished someone might have said to him along the way. (We now know that someone did -Sonny, at the Boys’ Home- and we now know what a huge turning point that was for Dean. He became an adult in that moment. He chose his own path. Yes, because of familial pressure. But there WAS a choice in that moment, and he made it.)
“Jo, you got a mother that worries about you, who wants something more for you. Those are good things. You don’t throw things like that away. It might be hard to find later.”
When they move on, they are seen through a grate in the floor, always a very bad sign. There are these random panels of colored glass in the walls, blues, and greens, and it’s such a bizarre space. Go, Jerry Wanek, seriously.
Four blackened bloated fingers reach out of the grate towards Jo’s ankles, and she senses something, and jumps. Dean stops: “What?”
Jo says, “I’m not sure,” and the way she says it is frightened. She wishes she could fire back an answer, she still needs to prove herself, but being honest in such moments is part of her proving herself. It’s wonderful because it suggests that no, Dean, is not just being a jerk. (I don’t think he’s being a jerk at all, although yes, rather obnoxious, but that’s nothing new.) His ultimate point is: Jo shouldn’t be working a case all by herself, she’s not ready, she doesn’t know enough yet, and she needs to slow the hell down if she wants to do this. It’s a lovely small moment from Tal, a good and sensitive line-reading, adding depth to what is already there. Some small energy-transfer has occurred in the last scene. She can be honest, so can he.
They smell something weird and they can’t figure out what it is, but I can barely pay attention because of the gorgeous-ness of the lighting on both sides of the scene, his and hers.
Crouching on the floor together, crammed into the same frame, they take off the grate and peer into the dark hole beyond, Dean reaching his arm in there, Jo holding the flashlight. At one point (and this is all Ackles), he becomes aware of how they are basically wrapped up physically in each other, it’s just a small moment of awareness, before he goes back to what he’s doing. Dean’s boundaries are problematic as it is, and “No Exit” thrusts him up against one of his fellow humans repeatedly. Mixed feelings. He needs her to hold that flashlight, but … yeah. She’s pressing up against me. And maybe I like the closeness of her but maybe also I’m still very scared of her mother ….
Every time I see the episode I am struck by how long he has his arm stuck in that grate, grasping around for something, with no dialogue between him and Jo. It’s a moment of sheer work, a task to be performed, and Manners lets it play out, lets Ackles grope and grasp and reach further … Through such small details, we are convinced that we are watching something that is real, that is actually happening.
Dean finally grasps onto something back there and pulls it out. It’s a nasty hank of hair, with a bloody piece of scalp attached to it. It’s adorable.
6th scene
It is just amazing how many petite blonde women are looking for an apartment in the Philadelphia area! I mean, it’s almost as if the building advertised in the classifieds: “Furnished apartments for rent. Only small blonde women need apply.”
Because here we are with another blonde woman (Lisa Marie Caruk) in another apartment in the same building. She looks through her mail. And because this is Supernatural, the camera is placed below the little kitchen island, and she walks along behind it, with objects between us and her, as well as all kinds of moody intricate lighting going on in the background, from behind the glass cupboards and below the cupboards. It looks like she is only lit by the light available. That’s not true, but that’s the effect.
She’s reading an invite she got to a Lingerie Party and, of course, black goo drips on it from the ceiling.
I’m not sure I can even express why I love this image so much, but I will try.
LOOK at that flier. It is HILARIOUS. Some prop person whipped that off in 20 minutes and it is GENIUS. LOOK at the 18-wheeler-mud-flap-women silhouettes lined up. I want to go that party. One of my favorite bras has been discontinued, and since I’m stacked I need more options. But also, the Lingerie Party with a splatter of … something on it? Some viscous gooey liquid?
Fine. I think it has been established I have a dirty mind.
Woman is eventually pulled through the grate by those bloated blackened fingers, screaming her pretty blonde head off.
7th scene
Another very good scene, another very important scene. Those who resent the intrusion of others (i.e. girls) in the Winchester lives seem to miss that it is only through these outsiders that we get other shadings of the brothers, things they don’t show to each other because 1. they know each other so well, it’s not necessary to explain oneself and 2. they’re siblings, they need SOME privacy from one another. Jo allows us to see something else in Dean, something that has been there all along, something that Gordon messed with and used, but something that will be safe with Jo. It’s great nuance. We wouldn’t get it otherwise.
Overhead shot of Dean crashed, face-down, on a chair in the main room.
Now this is going way back, but I started out talking about Dean/Sleep/Jensen Ackles’ Sleep Behavior way way back, with “Phantom Traveler”, so I won’t repeat myself. I will just point out that Dean and Sleep is almost as important a relationship as Dean and Food and Dean and Sex, and when Ackles is “asleep,” he really seems dead to the world, and his waking-up behavior is always a pantomime of beauty, his eyes coming into focus reluctantly, the rubbing-eyes-with-the-back-of-his-hands thing, sometimes he picks sleep out of his eyes for the rest of the scene … Ackles tracks that shit. When Dean sleeps, he fucking SLEEPS.
The camera spirals down on him closer and closer, the sirens filling the air outside, and the shot is meant to linger on his sprawled out face-plant, his relaxed body, his form, his sheer MANIA of sleeping. There’s no other reason to have a shot like that. Still in the same shot, he wakes up, he grunts, and turns his head, he doesn’t know where he is, and he’s disoriented. I’m not saying there was a meeting in some board room where someone said, “Let’s really make sure we focus on Dean’s sleep behavior” because that is not how many creative decisions are made. Collaboration is an organic on-the-fly process, and shit just happens naturally when a team starts to gel. Manners films Dean like a fascinating Romantic Hero, because that’s what he is, and so everything he does, including sleeping and snoring and grunting and squinting, is fascinating. Manners knows that.
Dean is at a disadvantage: he was fast asleep in the same room where Jo was wide awake. This is disorienting. Jo sits at the table, still flinging her knife around, greeting him with, “Good morning, princess.”
Shit. Dean is grumpy in the foreground, Jo is alert in the background, and it’s very funny.
Jo tells him she didn’t sleep at all, she’s been busy going over everything. Dean is making a big show of his aching joints as he lurches out of the chair, but Jo isn’t even paying attention, she’s looking down at the blueprints, flipping her little knife around. No use putting on a big act if you don’t even have an audience. And something about Jo, her seriousness, her eagerness to do well, her dedication, her obvious intelligence, the whole thing … she wants to get an A+ in Hunting, just to SHOW HIM, that’s HER whole “Burlesque Act”, and he sees it now for what it is, he sees himself in it, but it’s not just that. He sees HER.
It’s really the first time he’s ever looked at her.
He grabs his duffel bag, making a big show of his assessment of her, head back and up (“I see you now. You can see me SEEING you.”), and pulls out a huge sheathed knife in a sheath, handing it over to her. “It’ll work a lot better than that little pig-sticker you’re flinging around.”
A domesticated/conventional woman would say, tearfully, “My FATHER gave that to me. How DARE you.” But Jo is not a domesticated/conventional woman. She’s a tough Howard Hawks woman. She has feelings, but she’s not about to blurt them all over the place. It’s not the environment for that kind of stuff. Besides, she’s picking up on Dean’s motivation. He’s giving her something that he think will help her in her job, which is hunting. It’s an acknowledgement that she should be there too. So she holds her tongue and hands the “pig-sticker” over to him.
Dean catches sight of the initials engraved into the blade. Jo’s father’s initials.
One of the most beautiful moments in the episode follows, with Dean quietly taking that in, handing the knife back to Jo, saying, “Sorry. My mistake.”
Good acting isn’t necessarily about the big moments, the ability to cry real tears, the loud rage that wins people Oscars (the louder the performance, the higher the chance it will be nominated). Acting is made of details, small and real, of behavior, of choices made along the way by the actor, to make his character come across. Dean’s reaction to Jo’s knife is what that moment is. That’s Dean. (And, to bring back Howard Hawks’ style: what ends up happening in those movies that take place in all-male environments, is that the woman … once she is trusted – and she needs to earn it – trust isn’t given out, you need to prove you’re worthy of it – but once the man trusts her, she is the ONLY one who gets to see him soft, and open, and vulnerable. It’s sexy as HELL. Maybe I’m saying that from my own wonderful relationship with a quintessential Tough Guy, who said to me once, “Trust is more important than true love. I don’t trust anyone. But I trust you.”)
They exchange knives once again, no dialogue. When Jo does speak, she says, “What is the first thing you remember about your dad?”
Dad is radioactive ground for Dean. The relationship was so toxic that how on earth could he even answer that, but also, the man is dead, and Dean, as has been established, has guilt that his life was clearly saved through his father’s death. All of that is in between him and any warm-fuzzies that may have remained after everything else was torched up with Mom. His hesitation speaks volumes, and Jo pushes him, she needs to know. Dean concedes her need. It’s okay she’s asking.
A gentleness comes out on his face, and the story he tells, of his dad taking him shooting for the first time, when he was 6 or 7, is told with small hesitations, and the armor he usually leads with, the barrier on his face, is still there, but it’s been punctured. What we see beneath is vulnerable, fragile, and it doesn’t make him feel good revealing it. There’s an uneasiness on his face. That level of complexity is all Ackles’. Manners helps, with the way he films his face, close, yet off-center, Jo coming in the frame, everything soft and blurry around the face, nothing too bright. With framing like that, what happens is the face POPS out at us.
That’s what collaboration means. An actor can’t do it alone. Neither can a director. An actor needs to trust a director to capture what the hell he’s doing in a way that helps the story. You can’t see yourself as an actor. You rely so much on your collaborators to “see” it for you. A scene like this shows the breath of relaxation that I keep talking about, the show relaxing into its second season, not having to try too hard anymore, expanding on what has already been built.
What we get here is a moment that has, maybe, 10 things in it? Possibly more. There’s a small smile that tries to assert itself on Dean’s mouth, but then it goes away, his eyes lower, he glances up at Jo at one point, just to check out what’s going on on her face, how is she handling his open-ness, will she make fun of him, he looks away, and when she says, “Your dad must have been proud,” Dean changes the subject. Fantastic. It’s riveting to watch.
When he asks her about her dad, she gives a portrait of a hunter-family, one that (up until now anyway) has been invisible to us in the way the hunter lifestyle is presented. The picture she gives is equivalent to a family where the dad is a firefighter, or a miner or a fighter pilot or a lobster fisherman, some of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. Jobs where you can’t text home to let people know you’re okay, because you’re in a hole in the ground, you’re in a burning warehouse, you’re landing an aircraft on a heaving air carrier, you’re in a boat out to sea. The women at home have to wait that shit out. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend a visit to the Nantucket Whaling Museum. The women in Nantucket were BAD-ASSES, and lived without their husbands for years at a time. Years. No word. You’d get a letter a year. Maybe. And the women ran everything in that town. It was a matriarchy. Ellen and Jo are part of a world like that. You can’t be marrying a silly woman who “needs a man around” if you’re going to be a lobster fisherman, a miner, a Top Gun, or a hunter. You need a woman who knows how to fix a toilet, repair the roof, run a business, and is okay with living life as a single woman most of the time. The glimpse Jo gives us is of her father bursting through the door, Ellen smiling and happy again, Jo smelling her dad’s leather jacket … It’s quite a picture, and it provides a larger context for the audience to understand hunters. That was, at least, one of my initial reactions to these early Ellen-Jo scenes. I realized how caught up I had gotten in the Winchester Belljar (talked about The Belljar Effect in the “In My Time of Dying” re-cap), and the way the Winchester family operates seemed so set in stone I couldn’t picture another way. We get zero outside perspective, until Bobby comes along, really. Here we have more.
Both have revealed something to the other. Maybe what they reveal will come back and bite them in the ass (the episode is called No Exit, after all), but for now, there’s intimacy in the space between them, and intimacy provides a possibility for connection. She says, point-blank, and there’s no more little-girl seeking-for-approval: “You want to know why I want to do the job? For him. It’s my way of being close to him.”
If Dean gets anything, he gets that. He hadn’t thought about Jo all that much outside of “Oh. Girl. Must Flirt. Moral Imperative.” He saw what everyone else saw, a little blonde girl good with a pretend shot-gun. Jo says to Dean, still needing his permission/approval, only now it feels very very different from what has come before, “So tell me. What’s wrong with that.”
It is then that Sam bursts in, and stops when he sees the tete a tete going on at the table. Good old Sam. Dean barks, back in sleep-mode, “Where’s the coffee?” Sam informs them that another girl disappeared last night. You’d think that they would have heard her screams, considering the sheer decibel-level of what was going on with Panties/Bra girl.
8th scene
Here we have a big gigantic exposition scene, filled with photographs, newspaper clippings, blueprints, emails from Ash, a real-life serial killer (the “monster doctor” profiled in Erik Larson’s runaway hit The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
Jo puts in a call to Ash to look something up for them, and before she hangs up she warns, “If you breathe a word of this to my mother …” and he must drawl something like, “I know, you’ll tear my balls off”, although you don’t hear it, and she says, “Yes. I will. With pliers.”
I am now picturing Ash, holed up in his Dr. Badass Man-Cave, doing web searches, basically hiding from Ellen. It amuses me.
Ash fires back a list of people executed in the empty field on which the building was built.
“157 names?” says Sam, and Dean, leaning over him, says, “We gotta narrow that down,” and Sam says, “Yeah,” and Dean says, “Otherwise we’re gonna be digging up a hell of a lot of stiffs,” and I am so pleased when they are in sync, capable, and mutually exhausted and pissed.
One of the names rings a bell for Sam, as well as for Dean. It is real-life douchebag H.H. Holmes, known as America’s first serial killer, who lived in a place charmingly known as the Murder Castle (take a tour here!), who was eventually captured in Philadelphia and imprisoned in the Philadelphia County Prison, otherwise known as Moyamensing Prison. It’s an Acme Market today. There is a tiny bit of the Moyamensing Prison wall remaining. My boyfriend and I went and sought it out when we lived in Philadelphia. We did so because we were history nerds. It is true, as stated in the episode, that H.H. Holmes requested he be buried in concrete so that nobody could dig him up and dissect him, as he did to his many many victims. I’m a serial killer buff and Sam and Dean clearly are too. They fill Jo in on all the details.
H.H. Holmes is a deep lyme-filled pool of crazy, and Erik Larson covered it all in his book.
Holmes’ Murder Castle had all these hidden passages inside the walls. He would keep his victims alive for days sometimes, so there’s a possibility that Bras/Panties-Blonde is still alive.
9th scene
Every time I see this sequence, I am in awe of it, because it really does appear that they are jammed inside the walls, and I think: Where the hell does the crew go? Where is the camera operator? It’s obviously a set, and they could move the walls around, but the illusion is pretty damn complete, I’d say. I’m not a particularly claustrophobic person, although I’ve never been really tested. The final section of Stephen King’s Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption involves a crawl through a miles-long tunnel that is agonizing every time I read it, so I imagine I could definitely become Charles Bronson in The Great Escape, the brilliant hard-working brave guy who literally breaks down at the thought of crawling through the tunnel he helped build. (Oh, and speaking of The Great Escape, I forgot to mention: Jo makes a Steve McQueen reference in the former scene, and Dean faintly lights up at the reference. A 20-year-old girl in 2006 or whatever who knows who Steve McQueen is? He approves. Steve McQueen was in a bunch of iconic films, but perhaps the most beloved is The Great Escape, which will be used as a reference in the next episode, “The Usual Suspects” – and will come up again. Steve McQueen is actually all over Season 2.)
They come to a narrow passage that Dean says, almost relieved, because he is so busy protecting her and being afraid of Ellen that he isn’t really thinking like himself anymore, “Too narrow …” But tiny Jo pushes past Dean to go in there herself, and then we get the glorious awkwardness of the two of them pressed up against each other, and Dean having a MOMENT about it, her hip is jutting into his groin, and he practically groans to himself, “Shoulda cleaned the pipes.”
He sounds almost pissed at himself that he didn’t clean the pipes that morning, like he usually does, and now look at what has happened. It’s a euphemism straight out of 1930s movies. Wonderful! She wonders what the hell he is talking about, and he fumbles, “Oh, I wish the pipes were clean …” Awkward, please get off my groin before it’s too late, and she’s not buying what he’s selling, and she pushes past him into the passage, releasing him from his embarrassment (he lets his breath out a bit, like, “Phew … Close one.” Humor. Ackles never misses a beat.)
Jo pushes forward, and it’s hand-held camera, showing the passage from her perspective, the flashlight beam against the brick walls, and it’s tiny and dark. She and Dean keep in touch via cell phone, and he’s getting annoyed. She’s too far away, she’s out of his sight, he can’t follow her, Ellen is looming in his mind.
Jo is in the nasty belly of the building, when she sees black ectoplasm oozing out of a crack. It’s a flood. She says, “Oh God” and over the phone Dean hears her scream. This next bit I love because Dean runs into the hallway downstairs and starts bashing in the wall that’s right there. It cracks me up because … what if someone saw him? What if someone is inside that apartment? It makes total sense what he’s doing but it’s funny to imagine an outside perspective, a tenant coming back with their bag of clean laundry to see some raging guy run down the hall and start bashing in a wall with a sledge hammer. Uhm, do you live here? Can I help you with something?
10th scene
Sam and Dean run into each other (literally) in the nightclub-noir-lighting of the hallways, and Dean is in a panic and Sam tries to calm him down.
They burst back into their apartment, and I’m sorry, but look at the face on the screen in the laptop in the foreground.
No detail is too small!
Dean is full of guilt. He left Jo alone, he let her go into that passage. He will not forgive himself. Dean is somewhat out of commission and Sam powerfully takes over. Or tries to. Let’s talk about Holmes M.O., says Sam. What are we missing. Dean’s phone rings.
It is Ellen. And Ellen is PISSED. “You lied to me.”
The women have been in charge all along. The men just THINK they’re in the driver’s seat. I love Sam’s quick look of alarm when he hears who it is. Like, Oh shit, we are both in so much trouble right now.
Ellen says, “Put my daughter on the phone.” Unfortunately, Dean is the one on the other end, and so he says, “Sorry, she can’t right now. She’s taking care of … some feminine business.” Which is ridiculous on multiple levels. As a woman, you can say to a guy, “I can’t do such and such right now … lady-problems,” and usually they’re embarrassed or they don’t want to push further because … it goes into a realm where they have ZERO idea what you are talking about (Charlie does it with her male boss!) but with other women? You can’t pull that shit. What, you’re so busy unwrapping a tampon you can’t come to the phone? You’re out at the store buying pads and Pamprin? You’re lying in bed with a hot water bottle on your stomach and incapacitated? Please. Answer your phone. If Sam had answered, you can bet he wouldn’t have said Jo was busy with “feminine business”, and Dean winces as he says it, knowing his own lame-ness. It goes over as well as you expect.
Just want to point out that the lights behind Ellen are warm and golden, and the darkness has a warmth to it, unlike every other scene in this episode, where the darkness is pitch-black and scary. The roadhouse initially was a scary outpost full of outlaws, dark and shadowy, but in the episodes since its introduction it has become a safe haven, a homey space, which is why it needs to be burnt down immediately.
Dean, hating life, admits the situation, feels the panic coming across the line, and says, “She’ll be okay. I promise.” And Ellen says one of those things people sometimes say in the heat of the moment that you clearly would not say if you were thinking clearly: “You promise. That’s not the first time I’ve heard that from a Winchester.”
Dane Cook has a funny bit about Why Women Win Fights. The real guts of it come at around 6:35 on. In general, I don’t like “men do this” and “women do this”, but if it’s done funny? You can say whatever you want. And Cook acts the SHIT out of it, explaining how women Ninja your brains, mid-fight, and you don’t even realize it until it explodes in your face much later. And that’s what Ellen’s comment is. It’s a bomb that explodes on a delay-system. It’s huge. There’s an entire story there, a toxic wasteland, that she has been holding back, managing herself, because in calmer moments, she knows that you shouldn’t blame children for the actions of their parents. But now? The second Jo meets up with Sam and Dean, they lose her to a spirit? Oh hell to the NO, I KNEW IT, you boys are JUST like your FATHER.
It’s kind of brilliant.
The show allows Ellen to be human, too. She’s got her own shit going on. She’s a real person, and she’s racing off the phone to take the next flight to Philadelphia.
Dean is destroyed. Sam tries to soothe him, and shows him the blueprints: How about the old abandoned sewer underneath the — Dean is already out the door.
11th scene
I don’t scare easily, but this particular scene is so well-done, and so viscerally awful, that I find it terrifying. Alona Tal acts the hell out of it, and there are a couple of things I love here from her.
1. She is scared out of her mind. She is not a superhero. She is a young girl who has never been on a hunt before and she’s terrified. The small ceiling of her little chamber is covered in scratch-marks from the girls who came before, reminiscent of Brooke Smith’s horrified moment of realization in the bottom of the well in Silence of the Lambs.
2. In the midst of her terror, she never stops thinking, and trying, and scheming. (Side note: I recently saw Into the Storm, which was a shit-show, and there was one scene where a young teen couple are trapped in a building with steel bars blocking their exit. Water pours into the enclosed space. They will die if they don’t get out. They try to move the bars. They can’t do it. So what do they do? They give up, cry, and make video confessions and video goodbyes. I’ve watched way too much Supernatural but my main thought was: You kids deserve to bite the dust if THAT is your reaction. TRY HARDER to get out of there. Stop waiting to be rescued.)
3. Just like with “The Benders,” when Sam is imprisoned trying to rescue a lost guy who ends up being right there in the cage next to his … the lost Teresa is in another compartment in the sewer, and Jo has the dubious honor of informing her, “I’m here to rescue you.”
A la …
In other words, Jo is brave, resourceful, and freaked.
The way Manners films this, and the way the space is set up is so claustrophobic it’s agonizing. You never get a good look at the space until the final moment in the sequence. Jo is in a small enclosed chamber like a coffin, with a small vent leading to a larger space. But you can’t see anything. You are in that chamber with Jo, crammed up against her, and you are not allowed any perspective, you are not allowed to distance yourself from the action in any way. It’s extremely effective and one of the creepiest scenes they’ve ever done.
Jo starts crying when she sees the scratch marks in the ceiling. I love that Jo is allowed to have that moment. But what’s even more touching, is how she gets herself together and doesn’t let herself fall apart.
All we see of Jo are her gleaming eyeballs or bits of her plaid shirt through the narrow slat. And it’s infuriating, we want to see more. Jo starts calling out “Hello” and then we see another pair of eyeballs, only we have no idea WHERE they are, because we haven’t been given an establishing shot to set up the space.
When footsteps sound, Teresa screams in horror, “OH MY GOOOD HE’S COMING” and there’s something in how the actress places her voice, the experience that is behind that scream, that is bone-chilling. Jo hasn’t “met” Holmes yet. Teresa has and her scream tells that story.
Jo barks at Teresa to be quiet, and the two of them wait. It’s practically pitch-black out there. It feels like it goes on forever. From out of nowhere, a hand comes through the grate and starts grabbing at Jo, all as she writhes and screams and cries trying to get away from it.
12th scene
Wielding metal detectors and shovels, Sam and Dean stalk through the city streets, with sirens in the air behind them, and, like “Skin,” or “Shadow,” there’s something interesting to me about placing the Winchesters in a Gotham-type environment. It’s not their natural milieu. They are Western boys from the plains and they are now walking through the streets of Philadelphia in broad daylight holding metal detectors. They are freaks.
Just like the daylight scene under the bridge in “Salvation,” the color has been corrected, the contrasts highlighted, so the shadows are black and stark, the blue seems cold and distant. It’s sunlight … but it’s stylistic.
Like this.
Or this.
That’s not realistic light.
They pull up the huge sewer cap, and we see them from below, peering down the hole, and there are actual rats running on the walls. Picturing the prop team: “Okay, someone go out and get some rats …” It’s nasty.
13th scene
H.H. Holmes, having had his first paw at the new blonde bait, has now vanished, and Jo, drenched in sweat, is kicking at the walls of her prison, desperately trying to find something, anything, that will “give.” From out of nowhere, there is a huge black beard and mouth at the grate, right there, saying, almost kindly, “You’re so pretty. You’re so beautiful.”
It’s disgusting. And so well-conceived: He is there, but not there. He vanishes, but he is still present. You don’t need any special effects to create one of the creepiest monsters on the whole entire show. He reaches in again, and Jo turns her back to him and his hand closes over her face, and there’s something about the sound that Tal makes in that moment that tells me how much she has thought her character through.
It’s not a scream, it’s not a gasp of horror, it’s almost a moan of dismay and sheer endurance, an “Oh shit, this fucking SUCKS … keep it together, Jo…” The blackened hand moves down her arm, and you wonder what the hell Teresa had to endure. Teresa didn’t have a “little pig-sticker” like Jo does, which Jo now whips out and stabs the spirit in his hand. See, kids in Into the Storm? Try harder. Don’t whip out your phone and video yourself talking about how much you love your mom. Lame.
14th scene
Thank goodness Charles Bronson in The Great Escape was not a hunter who had to crawl through such a tunnel. He could never do it! Ackles really is on his belly in a tight space, jamming his way through, holding out a flashlight and a gun. It’s the kind of nuts-and-bolts physical challenge that all actors love, because you can’t fake it. You have to really do it. Poor Sam has to do it with one arm in a cast.
It looks like the only light in the scene is from their flashlights. I know they’ve done that before, and it’s always been a controversial choice (on the first bunker reveal in Season 8, director/Ladouceur/etc. wanted it to be lit by only flashlights at first, and the nitwits in charge were like, “But we spent so much money on this set!” Yeah. Duh. So you’ll up the tension by showing it first with only flashlight so you get just glimpses – and then the lights come on and it’ll be an even more powerful and impressive reveal. DUH.) The people who run the networks aren’t artists and they should not be in charge of creative decisions, especially with a show that works and has lasted this long. Once upon a time, the producers in Hollywood came out of a theatre background or a literary background, mixed with business smarts, and they knew about entertainment. For example, the great Hal Wallis (who signed Elvis Presley to a contract in 1956) produced Casablanca. He fired off multiple memos a day to director Michael Curtiz, weighing in on everything, from the color of Ingrid Bergman’s dress, to the set design. My favorite Hal Wallis choice was this one, for the famous “dueling anthems” scene.
On the Marseilles, when it is played in the Cafe, don’t do it as though it was played by this small orchestra. Do it with a full scoring orchestra and get some body to it.
I cannot count how many times I have seen Casablanca, and every time … every damn time … the big orchestra sound swells in during that scene, and I go all over goosebumps. It is strictly Pavlovian at this point. Wallis knew it would be. It is completely not a realistic sound for the rinky-dink nightclub band to make, but Wallis knew that that didn’t matter – what mattered was the FEEL, and what that music SAID.
Just for fun:
Many producers have been geniuses, and some still are. But to balk at the darkness of Supernatural and to push back on scenes lit only by flashlights … those are not artists making those calls. Those are unimaginative cubicle-sitters who have never seen a horror movie.
Regardless, we’re still in Season 2, where things are as dark as they need to be, but watching a scene like this makes me realize the transformation in recent seasons. Now, there’d be some random pointless red light glaring at the end of the tunnel, so the whole space would end up looking like a gay club in downtown Manhattan circa 1974. But this pitch blackness is perfect and real, and there are times when Ackles shines the flashlight directly into the camera, and they kept it in. Great!
Meanwhile, Jo is grabbed again, and he has his hand over her mouth, and again, the sounds Tal makes in response are so specific. She can’t deal with what’s happening, of course, and at the same time that she’s being attacked she is also trying to keep her wits about her. Her sounds tell all of that.
Not to worry, the cavalry has arrived, Sam and Dean at some gigantic dungeon door, and Dean blows Holmes away with rock salt. Frantically, Sam and Dean rush into the dark space, and it’s honestly too dark to see. They’re peering in these different slats and there appears to be a brief glimpse of a rotting corpse, super fun. Dean starts struggling with Jo’s door, and Sam finds Teresa, or, her eyeballs. There’s a small tender moment when we see Sam’s hand up against the wall, and Teresa’s eyes staring up at him. “We’re gonna get you out of here,” he says. Dean has jammed open Jo’s door, and she rolls out, slimy, wet, and wants to get out of there but good old Dean says, Uhm, not so fast, we kind of need you to act as bait, which … remember when you said that was a good idea?
I love the look Sam gives Dean. Sam is over to the side (as he is throughout this episode), hugging Teresa, and there’s a whole telepathic moment between the two actors, and Sam isn’t disagreeing with using Jo as bait, but there’s a lot of stuff going on in the look he gives Dean. “Okay, so YOU can explain this to Ellen” is just one of the things I see. It’s so brotherly. This is a relationship. They work so well together.
The next thing we see is this totally comforting shot of Jo.
She waits it out. He could come from anywhere.
I’m thinking they rigged up the joint with salt. Okay, just working this out: so they are carrying metal detectors, shovels, crow bars, huge bags of salt, as well as rope to create some kind of lever? It strains credibility. And yes, I said a show that features a serial killer come to life from beyond the grave not to mention constantly-charged cell phones strains credibility.
Next up is this totally homey and cozy shot of Jo.
I love the both non-judgmental and totally judgmental attitude the show has towards the concept of being bait. It’s so woven into the world of hunting that it’s rarely questioned or addressed head-on. But it’s there, man, and it’s sick, and it’s this strange unspoken undercurrent that has so helped create these characters.
Similar to Dean having to let the vampire get close enough to grope him in “Dead Man’s Blood,” Jo has to wait it out and let that monster loom into her from behind. I don’t care that she burst into tears in her coffin. Nerves of steel, this one. No wonder Ellen’s afraid for her. She’ll go anywhere, do anything.
What the hell happened to Teresa? Did they make her crawl through that dank tunnel by herself?
Salt unleashed, Jo scrambles to safety, and Holmes is left in his dungeon.
15th scene
I am concerned about Teresa. Did they just drop her off on the sidewalk and say, “Smell ya later?”
Jo and Sam stand over the open sewer hole and have a really nice small scene. It’s the only moment Sam and Jo have alone in the episode, and it’s interesting because obviously Dean has not blabbed to Sam about his private conversations with Jo. There hasn’t been time, first of all, but also it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Dean would share.
Sam says to her, teasing, friendly, “So is hunting the glamorous job you thought it was?” It still strikes me as strange that either of them would see her in this particular way. She’s not a civilian. Her father was a hunter. She clearly wouldn’t think it was glamorous, she saw it first-hand, and her father died doing it. Maybe those lines are left-over from an earlier draft or something because they don’t quite fit with the character Jo as she has emerged. She’s not a gaga-eyed naif. She’s inexperienced but she grew up in the life, just like they did.
But whatever, the way Sam says it is friendly and nice. I agree with you all that I wish this particular relationship had been developed more.
Jo doesn’t get offended. She knows who she is. She likes both of these guys. A lot has changed in the last 24 hours. But she looks up at Sam and she looks drop-dead gorgeous, and says, “That Teresa girl is gonna have a life because of us. It’s worth it, isn’t it?”
A fascinating symphony of expressions goes over Sam’s face. Sam is conflicted. He agrees with her, but his face tells a different story. The moment lasts about .5 seconds and Sam’s whole life is in it. And that, friends, is why Padalecki is a good actor. That’s how you keep a character arc going even though you really don’t have much to do in one particular episode.
Jo is worried about a storm washing the salt away, and Sam grins, and he looks so tough and capable and strong and over-it that I kind of can’t take it, and says, “Both very fine points. Which is why we’re waiting here.”
The sexy Supernatural music starts, appropriate because here comes Dean, backing a cement mixer truck into the vacant lot. He is driving a cement truck. And he is going in reverse. It is so STUPID and I love it best when Supernatural is freely and openly stupid, because they’ve done the heavy lifting already: they’ve created characters we care about, they’ve drenched them in romantic shadows, they’ve put them through hell, so yes, it’s okay to go silly-stupid once in a while. Supernatural would not survive without it. Or, hell, it might survive, but I would have lost interest. I’m in it for the silly.
I mean ….
That is one of the silliest things I’ve ever seen in my life.
Jo, having proved herself in the All-Male world, like every Howard Hawks woman has to/wants to do, because no way will they miss out on that fun, is relaxed now. She doesn’t have to over-compensate anymore. She can allow herself to be impressed with Dean. That man went to a construction site, after dropping off Teresa at the emergency room, I’m hoping, and stole a cement mixer, and then proceeded to drive it through the streets of Philadelphia, before backing it up (I don’t know why the fact it’s in reverse cracks me up so much) into the lot. You gotta give it to him. He’s awesome. He knows he’s awesome too. He likes that she’s impressed, but he plays it cool. “I’ll bring it back,” he reassures her.
The cement pours into the open hole and they all watch it pour, grinning, and it’s extremely goofy and entertaining.
16th scene
From Pennsylvania to Nebraska is 20 hours. 20 hours. Did they drive back straight through? Did they stop off at a motel? 20 hours. Not 5 or 6. A DAY. The Impala roars through the darkness, and Manners, knowing it’s going to be funny, breaks up the closeups in the car, causing a gentle ba-dum-ching effect. We are so used to these Impala moments, Dean at the wheel, Sam in the passenger seat.
First we see Dean at the wheel, with Jo a blur in the backseat.
Then the camera moves back to Jo, focusing on her for a bit, before sliding over to see Sam beside her, in the back seat. Hilarious.
Then we cut to Ellen, in the front seat, Sam blurry behind her. Ellen looks completely traumatized. All the heat and fire she was throwing at Dean on the phone has subsided completely, and she is cold and quiet.
But the placement is so funny and I would have loved to see that scene of them all choosing that placement. No way is she going to sit in the back seat with her daughter. Sam probably gave up his seat to her, because both boys are polite like that, but also, Ellen in the back seat would have been too submissive a position for her. The next best thing to driving, which she probably wishes she was doing, is to sit up front. Keep an eye on Dean. Separate the brothers. The whole thing is just a mess and the tension is LOUD in the silence.
Dean tries to make conversation. No response. Sam and Jo, like siblings in the back seat, exchange glances. Dean is awkward and owns all of it. He’s not apologetic, or pleading his case. He knows he is in deep deep shit with Ellen, so he Burlesque Acts his way through the awkwardness, which is always entertaining. It’s his “way.” He’s got charm, he’s dazzling, and, what the hell, sometimes it works on people. He knows, in his heart, it WON’T work on Ellen but he flings it at her anyway. No dice. I know this sounds weird but I love it when Dean fails. It’s because it’s so human, so … awkward … so vulnerable … such great behavior, any time Dean tries to “snow” someone, or flirt, or sweet-talk his way into a situation … and gets shut down. Ackles knows this territory so well. He never gets sick of exploring it.
And no matter how many times I have seen the episode I still laugh out loud when he, out of desperation, turns on the radio and you hear “YOU’RE AS COLD AS ICE …”
Dying. Supernatural at its silly stupid best.
17th scene
20 hours later, and it appears to be early morning, so perhaps they did crash in a motel along the way (Sheila, why do you care so much?), they all stalk back into the roadhouse, Ellen basically dragging Jo behind her. Dean stops her, and the look Ellen throws Dean is frightening. Cold as ice? Nah, hot as hell. It looks like she might slap him. It’s hatred and adrenaline. It’s old old stuff, the look of a pissed-off widow whose husband was stolen from her.
Dean is scared but he tries to do the right thing, saying, “Ellen, I lied to you. I’m sorry. But Jo did good out there. I think her dad would be proud of her.” Which, of course, is the wrong thing to say, although he couldn’t know that. Ellen’s viciousness in response is so strong that Dean recoils. He doesn’t know what’s happening. Something bigger is here. The way she said his last name on the phone … what is he missing? Where is this coming from?
Abashed, confused, Sam and Dean withdraw, and the women again take over. Jo, like Dean, doesn’t know the wound that has been opened up, and tries to assure her mother she’s okay, everything worked out, they were “backing me up the whole time”. Samantha Ferris is magnificent, because she’s hard and angry, and then, in a flash, soft and devastated. Something about her acting really gets to me. There’s not a lot of pomp and circumstance with her as an actress. She does the job, she understands the character, she lets Ellen live. You know, that’s the gig, but if it were easy, more people would do it.
Jo senses, too, that something else is going on here and demands to know what it is.
Ellen, who has not been in control of herself for the entire episode, for understandable reasons, tries to backtrack. She knows she’s said too much. She also doesn’t want to tell Jo the truth of how Jo’s dad died. These hunters. All the secrets. No wonder they drink.
And no matter what happens now, I can’t get the image of Ellen being “sour and pissed” while her husband was off on a hunt, and then racing to greet him at the door rapturously when he came back. That’s Ellen. And that’s what was taken from her life. She’s grieving too. Still.
Back outside, Sam and Dean hunch over the Impala in the early morning light, which, hmmm, looks exactly like the early morning light of the opening scene! Filmed on the same day? I’d lay odds yes.
Jo comes bursting out of the roadhouse and charges off in another direction, away from Sam and Dean. Dean goes after her.
There are a couple of things I love about this closing scene, and these things are pleasing to me regardless of repetition.
1. The light. It is blinding morning light, pouring over the figures in beautiful ways.
2. Her hair. It is damp and stringy. Her hair is usually curled and Veronica-Lake sleek. Not now. It makes her look like a kid in from the swimming pool.
And finally:
3. How Dean approaches her, wanting her to talk, asking her, “What happened?” When she doesn’t answer, he reaches out, and she bats his hand away, saying fiercely, “Get off me.” It’s a startling moment, hurtful, and Ackles’ reaction is so perfect that I hesitate to even break it down. It is (as everything he does is) eloquent of character. I could write a dissertation on it but this re-cap is long enough. Dean is susceptible to women, open to them, vulnerable to them, in ways he is not with men, and she hurts him by brushing him off, but he doesn’t show the hurt. He shuts down. Almost totally. And instantly. Whoosh, down goes the door, so quickly you can’t even catch it. And believe me I’ve looked. He says flatly, “Sorry. I’ll see ya around” and walks away.
You don’t get too many chances with a guy like Dean.
You couldn’t show that to a person who was not familiar with Dean Winchester and say, “That sums up Dean.” It’s not that kind of moment. But it is very very important, nonetheless. We saw it happen with Cassie, too, how he opened up, and then coldly shut her out. He burrows so far down he’d never come out. That’s how deep these things go with him.
When he walks away from Jo, he means it. He’s not waiting for her to stop him. He’s outta there. If she hadn’t stopped him, he would have kept going, jumped into the car, and roared away in a cloud of dust. Don’t talk to me that way, sister, don’t you dare make me feel like that when I’m trying to help. Fuck YOU. But all he says is, “See ya around.”
You know, people’s emotional resiliency gets compromised by trauma. It happens. You stop being able to “take” any more. You create survival techniques to survive your own life. I’ve written a lot about Dean’s survival techniques, so I won’t bore you further. They both help and harm him, as is the case with a lot of survival techniques. They serve you … until they don’t. We all have our experiences in this realm.
That “Sorry, see ya around” is one of my favorite Ackles acting moments. It lasts less than half a second. I think maybe why I love it so much is Ackles does not give a shit if you like him/Dean in that moment. Actors often betray their own characters because they are afraid of losing the sympathy of the audience. And so with someone less talented, more fearful, he would have telegraphed the hurt, so that the audience could all coo about his boo-boo. Ackles doesn’t do that. Ever. You know he’s hurt, because we know the character by now, but he does not show it. Not a tiny bit. Ackles does not give a shit about being liked, and he hasn’t for 10 years. He knows how to make you love him, but he is not afraid to reveal the other stuff. To be in his position and have that attitude, as a heartthrob, no less … is VERY rare. He cares about the right things.
Jo, upset, fills Dean in on what her mom just told her, and Dean is taken aback. What? It’s the grownups’ world now, Ellen and John’s, and there were secrets, and John was so ashamed of himself he never returned to the roadhouse and never told Sam and Dean about Ellen and Jo. He deprived his sons of that fellowship. “Like father like son” is not fair, but everyone’s all messed up in “No Exit.” That’s what it’s like when you can’t get out of where you are at.
Dean tries to talk to Jo more, but she’s upset, she’s young, and she just was groped in a dungeon by America’s first serial killer. She needs some time. The next time we see Jo it is going to be very upsetting and a lot will have changed. She stalks off into the blinding morning light, leaving Dean there, wrapped up in his troubled eyelash-ridden profile.
Epic, Sheila! I don’t have a ton to contribute about this episode. I like it a lot but it’s not a favourite. Again, no clarion moments, although Ellen and Jo are my jam. I think that sequence in the basement is terrifying, and Tal does some super fear acting. Ellen’s voice breaking every now and then is killer.
The “solution” is one of the most ridiculous ones they’ve ever come up with. Just, huh? One truckload of cement is gonna flow down half a mile of sewer pipe and empty into Holmes’s den without disturbing the salt line, which is the only thing keeping him there? And they’re all standing there ginning, arms akimbo, so satisfied. Hysterical.
Talking about looking (and let’s) — about being an object in the eye of the world — how apropos this episode for these women to be the objects of such lascivious omnipresent predatory gaze, both in their homes when they should be safe, and in their terrifying, grimy, peepholed cells.
I am glad Manners had no impulse to make any of it sexy. Jo’s shirt never gets artfully ripped; he touches her face and shoulder and that’s bad enough. Hilarious too how you pointed out that even in an episode where Holmes’s gaze and desire runs the mystery Dean still manages to get objectified by another character (instead of just the camera as per usual — although he resists that too, etc, I have nattered on this before).
I loved your digression on Hawks (is there any line more perfect than “oh, David, your sock’s on fire D-:”?). I can see that you’re talking genre, and SPN, and where it fits, and how those gender types come into play. But I’m a little confused. Who is arguing that Hawks women are not great? Are you trying to rehabilitate/recontextualise the reputations of particular female characters? But — to switch directors — is there ANYONE who likes Julia Seton more than Linda? I guess I’m not sure what you’re arguing against. Isn’t the typical argument re SPN’s women more that they’re not Hawks-y enough?* They’re not alive enough? That they exist by virtue of their function for male characters and (and this is my bugbear) for their shiny flat long hair to catch the light as they get menaced by things?
*I want ALL the women, not just the Hawksy ones
What would we do without Sam’s calm cool watchful eye?
oh gosh, I think I just died and went to heaven. Same thing, perched on the hood of the car at the end, too. Shiver me timbers.
You’re as cooold as ice will always, always make me laugh.
Jessie – so much good stuff here, so much food for thought. You help me try to clarify my ideas better, so thank you for that. I love talking about this stuff. I’ll get to the Hawks stuff in a second.
But first: YES. Sam perched on the hood! His shape!! In between Jo and Dean. Just beautiful. That’s pretty much all Sam does in this episode – hold back and watch – and he’s always doing really interesting things back there.
// And they’re all standing there ginning, arms akimbo, so satisfied. Hysterical. //
hahaha Akimbo! Yes, it’s ridiculous.
// how apropos this episode for these women to be the objects of such lascivious omnipresent predatory gaze, both in their homes when they should be safe, and in their terrifying, grimy, peepholed cells. //
Right? It’s nasty. I think that Lingerie flier adds to that … it very well could have been a flier for an open house, or a flea market – any number of other things – instead, it’s about Underwear.
// I am glad Manners had no impulse to make any of it sexy. //
TOTALLY. It’s one of the reasons why I feel myself caught up in it – because I don’t feel protective of the actresses (which is what sometimes happens when violence against women is treated sexily by a director – I start to feel protective of the actresses having to do all that) – I feel scared for the human beings in those cells. The sexual implications are totally clear and we fill in the blanks with what Holmes wants to do to these ladies – but Manners does NOT revel in it, or participate in it. Kudos.
// Dean still manages to get objectified by another character //
hahahahahaha Right?? It’s a lascivious leer from that superintendent and it’s thrown in so casually like it’s an everyday occurrence (which it is). Nobody even blinks an eye. It’s great.
In re Hawks:
I agree with all that you say. Nobody would ever prefer Miss Swallow over Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby. Hawks definitely made it “easy” on the audience that way – the choice is clear from the get-go – and we just have to watch Cary Grant catch up and figure it out for himself. And = bless you for Julia Seton!!! YES. I LOVE that movie.
So here are some further thoughts – and again, thanks for putting out your own thoughts so I can clarify my own.
I agree that I want women to be fully alive onscreen whether they are Howard Hawks women or not. But in terms of genre – which I believe that I am talking about – not real life – but genre: the only women who have a snowball’s chance in Crowley’s DMV Hell of “lasting” in the SPN universe, or even holding an audience’s interest – is the Howard Hawks Women. In a lot of ways, the strength of what they all have created in Sam and Dean – has backed them into a corner, in terms of letting other people in there. It’s a beautiful tension – but sometimes you can feel it teeter on the verge of destroying itself. Like: if this show is going to survive, we have to have more in it than Sam and Dean.
Overall, I think they’ve done a very good job with the secondary characters – Crowley and Bobby and Ellen and Jo – people like Garth and others – These people have been very well-conceived – not just as characters but as the types of people who will bring out interesting things in our heroes.
Howard Hawks’ world – as fun and free-wheeling as it is – is also very limiting. That’s part of the fun of it – it is a self-contained world with its own strict rules of behavior – and anyone who was ladylike would walk into that world and be laughed off the lot. Marilyn Monroe wouldn’t fare well there. She needs more tenderness and kindness. The Howard Hawks guys don’t have time for that. So Howard Hawks put his own fantasy onscreen. “Here are the people I find fun. Here are the kinds of women I’m attracted to. Here are the kinds of men I love.”
// Isn’t the typical argument re SPN’s women more that they’re not Hawks-y enough? //
Yes.
So I think where I’m coming from is this: I was watching the SPN fandom, via a certain bunch of Tumblrs as well as reading a lot of fanfic, before I had seen one episode. I became interested in the fandom – passionate, opinionated, obsessed – all things I recognize from my own experience in my own obsessions – and I found it FASCINATING. The fandom itself. Not in a “OMG these people be crazy” way – it wasn’t condescending on my part – but it was clear that SPN was the kind of show that launched a million and one fantasies – and people who felt passionately enough about it to go to the mat for this or that character. I had not seen ONE episode. I wanted to write about the SPN fandom, and I was gathering up examples of how it all operated.
Then, before I started writing, I watched the pilot. You know, as research.
And within the 41 minutes of that pilot, I became a member of the fandom I had been observing for over a year. Ha. KUDOS, SUPERNATURAL.
Many of the big arguments I saw in fandom – as well as the tone of a lot of the fan fic (showing Dean and Sam in a totally domesticated environment, worrying about what Valentines to get each other, etc.) – showed that there was a lot of tension between what the show WAS and what fans yearned to see onscreen. That was fascinating to me. Those GAPS, that we have discussed. The show is made for an audience to come in and try to fill those gaps.
Maybe I was reading a very specific sub-set of Tumblrs, although I tried to read all sides of every argument, but there were a lot of complaints about misogyny and Dean’s sexism, and how the show treated women. Before I watched it, I had a conception of it – based only on this sub-set of fandom – (which seemed to have a hostility towards anything blatantly male or macho or tough, or whatever you want to call it) – I thought it would be an unironic show, with tough sneering guys, and babes in bikinis writhing in the background or whatever. Just based on the commentary – it seemed like a Boy Show, made to celebrate Boys, and the fans loved those boys, but also hated a lot of the behavior of the boys.
So when I saw it – I thought – “Oh. Wait. It’s not that at all. This is Howard Hawks’ world.” These are Tough Guys being Tough about their Important Man Stuff and the women who breeze in are there to lighten the mood, give as good as they get, and take things down a peg, provide another perspective. Any chance the show gets to take Dean (especially) down a peg – they go for it. There is great irony in the show, a self-awareness – that is one of the major hooks for me. The same was true with Hawks’ man-woman stuff. He didn’t discount the importance to men of their jobs, or hanging out with other guys – all of that was sacred to him – but women needed a place too – Hawks would hate a world without women – so he obsessed on how it all COULD work if everyone was just grown-up enough and ballsy enough to say what they needed, and be funny about it, not a bore.
Men being Without Women can get rather humorless – and the show acknowledges that and has a lot of fun with it. I mean, they take so many opportunities to throw Dean, in particular, off his game. But the same is true for Sam. I mean, “I lost my shoe”???? One of the funniest moments ever.
So I think my perspective came from the complaints from fans I was reading for a good year before I watched the show. I have not watched it in real-time (until Season 9) – so there may be some difference in binge-watching the whole thing, as opposed to spreading it out over literally year, episode to episode.
Just so I’m totally clear. The fact that so much of the fan-fic focuses on domesticating these guys (at least the fic I’ve read) – is not a bad thing, or something I judge. It speaks SO WELL of the show and the tension it has created – that fans are so desperate for these guys to find happiness that they have filled two New York Public Libraries with fan-fic featuring Dean in an apron baking pies or becoming a vegan. You know? I think it’s fabulous.
So from my outsider perspective, coming to the show late, after reading fandom posts about it for a year … I find the women to be all pretty well-drawn, considering that this is a limited all-male universe with no real place for them in it – and, in general, find the women who “succeed” (meaning: they last as regulars) are Hawks-ian in nature. Nobody else would have a chance.
In terms of the writing of all of this: I think we can see the struggle in introducing women into this world in the writing of the Amelia character. I like what she represents, in terms of what Sam is drawn to … Sam whose main romance was with a sweet college student, who thought roses were lame, who was sexy and baked him cookies leaving little notes on them … his Ideal … finds himself in love with a wreck, who shoves limes down the sink. Interesting. But I sense the desire/challenge in the writing of her to make her into a Howard Hawks Woman – but it doesn’t quite work. From the get-go, she is rude, bossy, unpleasant – and then we see why, and all that. But it’s kind of foot-in-both-worlds writing. Maybe that’s deliberate. It feels slightly half-assed to me, although it works overall (in my opinion).
You know … they’ve backed themselves into a corner. Sam and Dean are SO STRONG as characters, and their bond is so strong … that throwing new people into the mix can be treacherous.
What I loved so much about Season 9 was that Sam was really starting to understand the danger of what they had created together. Sam’s realizing, “This is not working anymore. This is DISTURBING.” Over and over, those fights happened in Season 9. It was like the characters were fighting with their own genre. Becoming aware of its limitations. They were realizing “what show they were in” and they were bucking against the boundaries of it.
Anyway – please let me know what you might think of all of this!
I definitely think SPN has effed up from time to time with its female characters – but overall, they all seem quite Hawks-ian to me, and maneuver/navigate pretty fabulously in the tiny space the show can provide them.
//The “solution” is one of the most ridiculous ones they’ve ever come up with. Just, huh? //
Cement truck, who gives a fuck? (Sorry, Sheila’s mum.)
‘Doing feminine business’, indeed. I think ‘Feminine Business’ might have been a better title for this episode.
Cement aside, I love:
The wall cavities, sewers, and the dank, fetid basement
Holmes: kind of rotten and creepy and fetid with just the soupcon of Grand Guignol
Le Silence de Sam (Why in French? Must be the Sartrean influence)
How they manage to suggest being in a busy urban environment with a minimum of external scenes
That cowgirl on the Bra and pants invitation
Jo’s toothy grin
‘With pliers.’
Pretty much any conversation between Dean and Jo, especially the Dads conversation
Ellen.
Re Sartre – Remember that fabulous moment in Season 9 when they’re after the Knife of Never Letting Go or whatever it’s called, and encounter the snotty French dealer. ‘You want answers?’ he says. ‘Read Sartre. Jean Paul.’
Sheila, what you say about bait. After watching all 9 seasons, and especially episodes like the one in the Boys Home, it’s very hard not substitute the 16 year old Dean for Jo in various bits of this episode.
// Le Silence de Sam //
hahahaha
Right, I’m picturing Padalecki getting the script for this one and thinking, “What. The. Hell, guys.”
// After watching all 9 seasons, and especially episodes like the one in the Boys Home, it’s very hard not substitute the 16 year old Dean for Jo in various bits of this episode. //
Totally, right? The more I think about Bad Boys – the more I realize what an essential piece of the puzzle that whole thing really is. And of course, Jensen Ackles would have no way of knowing that Dean had had that experience – since the episode is 9 years in the future – but the character is so well-created and interesting that you can kind of flash-backward all that new information into Dean here.
There’s a lot of identification going on here, with Jo, definitely.
And yes, all you need to suggest a giant city like Philadelphia is a sidewalk with a couple of parked cars, and firetruck sirens placed in the sound-track. Boom. Urban environment.
I always forget that this is the last time we see Jo until Meg-Sam goes and tracks her down. It’s interesting to consider that Sam (possessed as he is) might have some level of resentment over how Jo enters their little world and it’s immediately the Jo-Dean Show, as though there should be no question about it. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that episode but I remember Padalecki absolutely tearing it up.
I have to disagree with you, Jessie, on the role of women in Supernatural.
//That they exist by virtue of their function for male characters and (and this is my bugbear) for their shiny flat long hair to catch the light as they get menaced by things?//
I don’t think this is true, and honestly, one of the aspects of the show that has kept me interested is its presentation of women. Yes, there are a fair number of females who fit the category of “victim” (though many fans have pointed out that the victimhood stats are about equal between men and women), but even in this category, the show has a knack for making us care about them. In general, it cares about all of its victims and its witnesses, which is why the opening teaser more often than not gives us a little vignette of a character meeting up with the episode’s monster. Many of these people are memorable, even if we only see them for 5 minutes.
Contrast this with a show like “Hannibal” (I’ve recently watched the first season). No one in this story really cares about the victims, with only one or two exceptions. To the killers, they are means to an end. For Will and the other FBI specialists, their bodies form tableaux that offer clues to the killers’ psyches–do we ever learn much at all about any of them? For Hannibal, of course, they are prey and beneath his consideration. I’m not saying that one aesthetic is right and the other wrong–I have really appreciated the latter’s ability to create nightmare archetypes in its “real” world. But the two shows take fundamentally different approaches to the ideas of victims and objectification.
Shelia, I love the comparison of Howard Hawks’ movies with SPN! I like it, too, that our show practically revels in men’s confused reactions to strong women. There’s not just one type of women being presented, either. Jo, Ellen, Lisa, Charlie, Mary, Anna, Ruby, Meg, even Amelia–they all have very specific, strong in different ways, personalities. That specificity of character is another reason I keep coming back. Even quite a few of the one-off characters exhibit this–think of your favorite psychic in The Mentalists, or one of my favorites, Jamie the waitress in Monster Movie (she’s my personal favorite for a “could have been so perfect” relationship with Dean!)
Oh goodness, how could I have forgotten Jamie? I definitely should have mentioned her. I LOVE HER, almost as much as I love Melanie. She’s terrific!
// our show practically revels in men’s confused reactions to strong women. //
I think that’s it.
It’s kind of like John Wayne having to deal with Katharine Hepburn in Rooster Cogburn. I mean, he’s John Wayne, he has an eye patch, and he is 9 feet tall, and he tries to lord it over her, and she laughs in his face, and you can feel him getting totally discombobbled. And it’s delightful to see him thrown off his game.
To me, Jo and Dean in the narrow passage resonated with the scene in Alien where Lambert is guiding Dallas through the air shafts toward the alien (once Dean and Jo separate). And then when Dean breaks through the drywall and looks down to see Jo’s cellphone on the floor, also reminiscent of Newt’s bobbing doll head when she’s snatched at the near the end of Aliens.
Ditto the comments about the cement truck. Stealing it and backing it up: cool. Thinking that it will keep H3 trapped: um.
And isn’t it comforting to know that just as Jo escaped her captor, Katie Holmes has… that does seem like one of the minority of times that Sam enjoyed one of Dean’s jokes.
Mutecypher – you make me want to see Aliens again. In the middle of Aliens is a Howard Hawks type relationship as well! Sigourney Weaver takes on the male role there – which is totally Hawksian – very very entertaining.
// Thinking that it will keep H3 trapped: um. //
H3. Hahahahaha
And yay for Katie Holmes. It was fun seeing her recently in The Giver, playing a totally brainwashed woman. Sense-memory?? I kid.
Supernatural Creep alert: This morning I’m working on my Fiction collection, looking up a replacement copy for John Steinbeck’s “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights.” Little did I know that the subtitle of this book is “From the Winchester mss. of Thomas Malory and other sources.”
That’s what I get for not being an Malory scholar–it threw me into a brief reverie, imagining some long lost Winchester Man of Letters—
Wow!!! That’s a good Creep!
Barb, you can view the entire Winchester mss here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_59678_fs001r
BTW, I live in London and my local mainline station has a direct line to the town of Winchester. I often walk into the station and that’s the first word I hear over the tannoy. Which is getting to be just a bit weird.
hahahaha
Thanks, Helena! I could get lost in that link.
Out here in the West, I’m more likely to hear an unexpected reference to the Winchester rifle. I agree, it can be weird–
It doesn’t help that my family participates, either. Example? One evening last year we were shopping for shirts for my husband, and I spotted a gaudy blue Hawaiian style on a rack. Just to be obnoxious, I started talking about how great this shirt was. My son shot me a skeptical look and said, “Do you like it because it looks like Sam’s ugly shirt?”
I must have turned 3 shades of red–had not even been thinking of SPN–but was able to reply, “Sam’s ugly shirt is pink!”
// My son shot me a skeptical look and said, “Do you like it because it looks like Sam’s ugly shirt?” //
Okay I am dying laughing right now.
Sheila – What Jessie said, Epic. This was just an awesome write-up. I wish you had a tip jar or a donation/subscription week. I get so much more from your website than I do any of the magazines I subscribe to.
Helena – That’s a beautiful manuscript. Thanks for posting the link.
Thank you so much! I’m just happy people show up to have interesting discussions. Being an obsessive is fun but it’s even more fun to share it – without anyone being a buzz-kill saying, “Jeez, it’s just a television show” or whatever.
//“Sam’s ugly shirt is pink!”//
Wait, wait – which is Sam’s ugly shirt?
Helena, you don’t really want me to attempt link-making again, do you? :-)
I’m sure you’ll remember it–he wore it mostly in Season 4, I think, and it was a white shirt with some kind of pale pink design on it. At first I thought it was paisley, but looking at an image of it, it might be some kind of Southwestern vibe. The cuffs rolled back had the same design in red. (think he might have worn it over a white V-neck or tank) It was in “Lazarus Rising” for sure–
I just found an image by Googling “Sam Winchester’s ugly pink shirt”!
I think I know what shirt you mean. He looks like a millionaire trying to “rough it” at a dude ranch, if we are talking about the same shirt.
// I just found an image by Googling “Sam Winchester’s ugly pink shirt”! //
hahahahahaha
While not one of my favorite eps I do enjoy this for the character building. We get to know the Harvelles (spelling) and some excellent Dean angst. Learning more about John is a huge bonus and tells us something more about him. He made a huge mistake, he is not the perfect Hunter he liked to portray himself to his sons. We already know he lied by omission to his sons on a regular basis, now they know how big some of those lies are. The boys now have to work this bit of info into their view of Dad.
I like Jo and Ellen, probably my favorite female characters in a long list of SPN hardy girls. They prove their mettle and earn an awesome exit at a later date.
Like you have pointed out before John keeps paying off. He is still revealing himself into the 9th season. Still impacting their lives, feeding the damage they keep stockpiling.
The whole John Winchester thing, yes, it just KEEPS paying off. Pretty incredible. It’s been 9 years. He’s still present in the show!!
The little disagreement by the car in Bad Boys – Sam getting pissed Dad left Dean here, Dean sticking up for Dad again … Fascinating. It’s so real, so well thought-out.
//I just found an image by Googling “Sam Winchester’s ugly pink shirt”!//
hahahahaha!
I agree, though: that one is ugly.
Hey Sheila,
I really love your Supernatural reviews. I especially like how much movie history, TV know-how, and acting know-how you infuse into your reviews. I’ve liked Supernatural for awhile now based on the characters–I’m always most into interesting characters, but I learn so much reading your reviews on how I’ve been hooked into the characters through acting, through lighting, through different choices, that it’s like falling in love with Supernatural again. I re-watch the episodes as I read your reviews because I love looking for what you’ve explained and thinking about what you’ve brought out. Tall order with going on ten seasons, but please review all of the episodes eventually!!
// it’s like falling in love with Supernatural again //
Yay! That’s so cool!!
So far I have not lost interest in doing re-caps! There are so many I want to talk about – but I’m so organized that I have to go in order. It would seem wrong to leap ahead to discuss, oh, Frontierland or something.
I’ll keep going!
“The Usual Suspects”, the next one, is so much fun. One of those one-offs that I really love.
Y-u-u-m-m-y. Sheila, this one is just delicious. From Sartre to Ellen the jailor, to Veronica Lake with a knife, to Dean not knowing who to be, to Sam’s watchful gaze, to “You’re as cold as ice”, to never escaping family. So much fun. And then you go and bring in Hawks! My sisters and I used to limp around the house singing “I was born on the side of a hill”. The Howard Hawks Woman- that was someone to BE, not just do.
You know what is so great about this recap (/all your recaps)? If someone were to ask me why I love Supernatural, I could print this off and give it to them as an explanation. ‘Here you go. Who wouldn’t love a show with all of this in it?” Thank you for validating my fandom.
I love Jo and Dean squished into the tunnels, that ‘clean the pipes’ moment is spontaneous and lovely. I wish more of SPN was Sam and Dean squished into small spaces with or without an assortment of other characters- the physical comedy alone would be delightful.
Sheila, I love that you highlighted that moment where Dean shuts down when Jo snaps at him. That reaction has always stood out to me and I have stopped and re-watched it just because it is so powerful. I have always read it a little differently. To me, Dean shuts down like that because of her comment “get off of me”. I think Dean has a very strict code around consent in his dealings with non-enemies. (This is chloroform recognizing, roofie recognizing, everyone-wants-a-piece-of-me Dean) So I always read Dean’s reaction as half shut down valve, when his presence and touch are unwanted, and half indignation that Jo would throw him into the ‘people who are always trying to get a piece of me’ category. Very powerful and very Dean, as you mentioned.
Whenever I come across a picture of young, just starting out JA, I can’t help but think about what he must have put up with in Hollywood in the beginning. It seems like actors can be so vulnerable, with so many people waiting to take advantage of their hopes and dreams, and here is this young guy who basically looks like a walking ball of erectile tissue… I can imagine that JA has a lot to draw on when playing Dean’s everyone-wants-a-piece-of-me feelings.
Veronica Lake with a knife! Yes! That is totally Jo!!
“I was born on the side of a hill.” HAHAHA And Cary Grant is trying to get her to be serious, and THAT is what she gives him. Dying.
// I wish more of SPN was Sam and Dean squished into small spaces with or without an assortment of other characters- the physical comedy alone would be delightful. //
Right? The boundary issues alone …
and Heather, I am in love with your reading of that “See ya around” moment. I can see that too and I love your description of it. The fact that she doesn’t say “Leave me alone” or whatever, but reacts to him touching her and says, “Get off me” …
// Dean has a very strict code around consent in his dealings with non-enemies. (This is chloroform recognizing, roofie recognizing, everyone-wants-a-piece-of-me Dean) //
Yes. Very nice. To be so misunderstood – to have someone fling your gentle hand off her arm – and he would never push himself on someone like that – It’s just so beyond for him, and WHOOSH down comes the door. It really happens instantaneously, which is Ackles’ sensitivity with that moment. He’s not even gonna go there or defend himself. He can’t.
And agree that Ackles brings a self-awareness to the “everybody wants a piece of me” thing that is extremely sensitive. I mean, he can only know what it’s like to be him, right? And he has a LOT to draw on – especially in the role of Dean. Other roles wouldn’t let him be self-aware about “everybody wants a piece of me.” It’s one of the most interesting aspects of the character. I love it so much. It seems to be something not entirely in the character’s control, and I love that.
Also, in that moment with Jo at the end:
Calling back to Cassie – Dean was like, I let you in, I told you my secrets, I let you get close to me, it’s hard for me to do that, it’s a big deal for me … and you betrayed me by recoiling from the Truth of who I was.
So after everything he shared with Jo, after the small space of connection they created … she’s just gonna shut him out like that? Throw off his arm as though it’s poison?
Pain. And he’s “tapped out” already with that kind of pain – he was “tapped out” at 4 years old. So his survival techniques leap to his defense, and he’s gone, buh-bye, sister.
Your review made my week! I, too, had a visceral reaction to Dean shutting down when Jo tells him to ‘get off me.” He doesn’t respond with “trying to please’ or trying to find out what he did wrong, as she may have expected, which is why she goes back to him and explains. Yeah, a brave acting choice because he seemed cruel there.
Heather, your comment about more scenes of Sam and Dean squished into small spaces reminds me of the scene when they are retrieving Crowley’s bones in Scotland. There’s a short, throw-away scene with them stuffed into a European car, knees up to their chins, that always makes me laugh.
// trying to find out what he did wrong, as she may have expected, //
Right. She throws his arm off, as though she can’t bear his touch, and boom, he’s done with her. It’s such a great character moment. So well played.
Sam and Dean stuffed in a tiny European car is soooo funny!
//Sam and Dean squished into small spaces //
Not exactly squished, but how about falling over eachother’s leg chains in ‘Jus in Bello’
Sheila —
ok that background really makes things clearer for me, thank you for your thoughtful response x1000!
Let me pick up on a couple of things.
But in terms of genre…the only women who have a snowball’s chance in Crowley’s DMV Hell of “lasting” in the SPN universe, or even holding an audience’s interest – is the Howard Hawks Women.
This really made your argument click for me, so thank you! I will have to think about it. I am not sure. Is Jody a HHW? Is Naomi, or Abbadon? Either way, what does it mean that they are dead — but Metatron, Crowley, Cas, Garth, Cain, etc are alive?
I love what you say about “oh, this is a Howard Hawks world” because that is not a point of reference for me at all — not a frame through which I view SPN. So you loved Bela on her first appearance; for me, that initial appearance felt like a warping of the show in order to mark the character as “feisty” or “awesome” — it felt laboured. And my knee-jerk reaction to that is fuck off! I don’t need to PERFORM feistiness to be a real person! ha ha.
I don’t think I do access some of that subset of fandom that you did, so I accept what you say re that, but I do agree and have seen that there can be a) an interpretational slippage between what a character does and what the show endorses and b) an urge for domesticity/relatability/accessibility that I don’t particularly identify with (whether this is something people want to see in the show or are happy to explore outside of the show I think varies a lot).
Sometimes I think a) is made murkier for a couple of reasons. One is that sometimes you get bad writing/production, and the show ends up doing shit like the Busty Asian Beauties gong instead of allowing lines like “Sweetheart this ain’t gender studies” to percolate ambiguously and make you frustrated.
The other reason is the industrial and production context and for me the “tiny space the show provides them” is not a Hawks-ian generic construct but a narrow band of imagining sexuality, attractiveness, and what women are for. These are not Hawks-ian women — these are women that exist to be consumed and discarded. And that is a cultural problem, I’m not saying SPN does it in some unusual way, but that’s also partly why I’m so over it. Honestly, just about every female one-dayer looks the same to me, especially if they interact with the main trio in some way. I find it so bizarre. Like this season, in the virgin episode. All those women looked like a Mabelline advertisement. Why? Same with the angel Hael. And the female hunter in episode two. The male hunter was all grizzled; the female one was using her sex appeal to kill stuff. I don’t have a problem with that per se; I have a problem with it when it happens to the exclusion of other ways of being, within a relatively toxic culture at large.
oh my god, deep breaths Jessie.
Ultimately (to answer my question re who is alive and who isn’t) if the show and the creators are more interested in male experience than female, that’s fine — but if the only kind of woman that gets to be accepted, that gets to be a person, is the HHW, isn’t that a bit of a high bar to clear?
It was like the characters were fighting with their own genre. Becoming aware of its limitations.
wow this is potent, I am gonna have to think about this!
// So you loved Bela on her first appearance; for me, that initial appearance felt like a warping of the show in order to mark the character as “feisty” or “awesome” — it felt laboured. And my knee-jerk reaction to that is fuck off! I don’t need to PERFORM feistiness to be a real person! ha ha. //
YES. That’s it exactly. It didn’t feel labored to me – she felt like any insouciant fabulous ball-breaking chick who strolls into an all-male world. She is both fascinating and the guys’ worst nightmare. They can’t prop up their awesome senses of themselves whenever she’s around. Hawks-ian all the way.
But I definitely can see your point about “performing feistiness” – I think part of the Hawks-ian thing IS performative. That’s why Amelia isn’t entirely successful – she’s trying too hard. Someone like Bela (to me) or Charlie or the one-off girls like Jamie or ER doctor – don’t have to try too hard. It seems like that IS who they are. The guys can relax with such women. And it’s not entirely realistic. It’s a genre-thing.
// a) an interpretational slippage between what a character does and what the show endorses and b) an urge for domesticity/relatability/accessibility that I don’t particularly identify with (whether this is something people want to see in the show or are happy to explore outside of the show I think varies a lot). //
Interesting. Yes. I’ve seen that too.
// One is that sometimes you get bad writing/production, and the show ends up doing shit like the Busty Asian Beauties gong instead of allowing lines like “Sweetheart this ain’t gender studies” to percolate ambiguously and make you frustrated. //
Completely cosign that. They don’t always get it right.
They also, as you mention, have some blinders when it comes to casting choices, like the chicks in the chastity episode all looking alike. There are other types of women on the planet.
One of the things I do appreciate is that when Dean and Sam hook up with someone – either for one night – or for a longer period – she’s age-appropriate for them. Not to say that Dean hasn’t banged a bunch of 20 year olds – or younger – but his main squeezes have been his age. The screen isn’t filled with 35 year old guys hooking up with 20 year olds. Amelia was a woman. Lisa was a woman. Cassie. Etc. They’re going after women their own age.
// I have a problem with it when it happens to the exclusion of other ways of being, within a relatively toxic culture at large. //
And this is definitely a problem, and I share your frustration with it. But in general, I think SPN does a better job of it than a lot of other shows.
// but if the only kind of woman that gets to be accepted, that gets to be a person, is the HHW, isn’t that a bit of a high bar to clear? //
Yes. And it’s true in Howard Hawks’ films, too. Jean Arthur’s whole struggle in Only Angels Have Wings is about that. She just can’t resist trying to take care of him and mother him. He comes into his room, and she is in there, boiling coffee for him after one of his dangerous runs, and he hits the ROOF. “WHY ARE YOU TURNING MY ROOM INTO A LUNCH STAND.” But then it all turns into sexy-sexy and all is well. But yes: very high bar to clear. In other films of Hawks’ – like His Girl Friday – you get the sense that Hildy has found her proper world. No other universe could accept her or let her BE the way the Howard Hawks world can. Every other grouping would try to tame her, make her calm down, put an apron on her. So there is some variety there.
I mean, look at what SPN finally did to Lisa. I mean, really? I dislike that plot point so much as I know we’ve discussed. It felt like they had come to the end of the road with the character (which is fine) – but the way they got rid of her … Really? I don’t think it’s sexist or anything – just sloppy. Wouldn’t everyone else in Lisa’s world remember Dean? Wouldn’t the demons remember Lisa? It was dumb more than anything else.
Oh, and I don’t see Jodie as a Howard Hawks woman. I see her as a perky upbeat can-do type of 1950s woman. With an unconventional life and conventional goals for herself. A Doris Day kind of part. Jodie shows up at the shack and fixes Bobby dinner and scrubs the floor. She’s Snow White.
oooh, Barb, let’s rumble! ha ha
Actually I definitely agree that Hannibal is doing something very different and specific with its victims, be they male or female. At times I feel like the entire show, especially season one, is just one long rumination on the inaccessibility of a real world or reality. Everything is an object. There is no difference between a human body and a cup of coffee. And you are always trying to access the real world through your senses — taste, touch, hearing, sight — but they are deceptive — a pillow is hair; the food is people; the soundtrack is droning disorientation; the man is there and not there; and you try to connect through your cognition too, or your empathy, but a face is not a face, and your empathy just decentres you more, and then holy crap! There are no subjects! There are no objects! Lawd I love Hannibal.
Of course Supernatural is trying to do something completely different, and a big part of that is how men live without women, so women coming into the mix are already going to exist in relationship to the guys. That’s not a huge thing for me, I don’t think it’s hindered Mary too much, or Ruby or Charlie. And you’re right, the show does often display a lot of caring towards its victims of the week. Maybe it’s because we’re going through these early episodes but I feel like that was especially the case in the earlier seasons — not so much now, but we’re more serialised now too. But characters like the Amy Acker character are to be treasured.
// Everything is an object. There is no difference between a human body and a cup of coffee. //
Jessie, honestly. Do you have a blog where you write regularly?
You should be writing reviews somewhere. You have a hell of an eye and an amazing way of putting things into words.
Hi Jessie –
I’m hoping to better understand what bothers you, so I’m not looking to disagree here – just probing. The characters are constantly in a crucible, Sam and Dean, of course, but often everyone else they spend time with in an episode. They’re fighting ghosts or demons or other things that go bump in the night – so the standard test that most any character is going to face is “how do they function under fear?” That’s a constant. Would you like to have “girly girls” pass that test? I think it would be possible to create a character who remains feminine and formidable – that’s how I see Charlie. But she’s just one character out of 9 seasons.
I think that any character who passes the test of functioning under fear is going to be viewed differently afterwards. That person will have had a terrifying, traumatic experience and quite possibly have been changed. If the character fails the fear test, how does the show keep that character around without them becoming a hindrance to the Winchesters – or comic relief? I could imagine a female character who was like Frank Devereaux, someone that the boys went to for help – who was neither domestic nor physically bad-ass.
If I were to list a bare minimum of traits that would make someone fit what I think Sheila is calling an HHW I would go with:
1. Likes being around men – doesn’t have to be her preference, but she likes guyness
2. Does not want to change the men she likes
3. Does not need a man/is competent at life all on her own
I think that would also be a bare minimum for any female character to stick around on SPN. Even Lisa, that Tender Trap of Domesticity, satisfies the list. So, help me out here – if you go along with my list – how is being an HHW too high a bar to stay on the show? And if you don’t like my list, help me out with your own so I can see your point of view.
And if I’m not even asking the right questions, call me clueless and point me in the right direction.
And Sheila, people snickering at High Noon at Film Forum? What a pathetic yapping chorus. Defending the new rightthink, how self-actualized.
You know what? I’m thinking of the little petite girl in “Asylum” – whom I mentioned loving – because she ends up becoming Sam’s ally, while her boyfriend is useless. She cocks the shotgun, with a suddenly serious look – like she is up to the task before her, something she never would have imagined for herself.
SPN is sometimes very good at making unexpected people do these amazing things – but I’m wondering if that was the case more in the earlier seasons and it’s become a bit rote and unimaginative now. I’ll have to watch more closely.
Like, that’s not a bad-ass Howard Hawks woman. She’s just a silly girl, afraid, being pushed around by her dumb boyfriend – and she looks like all the other girls SPN always casts. Small, thin, long blonde hair …
but she’s given this moment where she becomes Linda Hamilton in Terminator.
I talked about the high bar thing in my comment above to Jessie. I think demanding women to be a certain way or you won’t fly in this world – is definitely problematic – in real-life, and sometimes in the genre picks too. It ends up privileging male experience – fit in with us or you’ll sink, sister! Howard Hawks makes that look fun and sexy and rambunctious. SPN doesn’t always succeed there. I appreciate that the “type” of women we see on SPN is not my least-favorite type on the planet – the one made so popular by Apatow – the no-fun-at-all drip-nag who is so consumed by domestic concerns that she has missed the point of life itself – Ugh. Leslie Mann is a BRILLIANT actress and I want someone ELSE to put her in a movie other than her husband, because she can do ANYthing.
There are very few no-fun drippy women on SPN, which is a breath of fresh air for me.
But Jessie probably has more to say in this regard, from her perspective.
SPN Creep alert. I think I heard a song about Dean on the radio. It went something like,
because he’s all about that face, about that face, about that face,
He’s all about that face, no v-necks.
because he’s all about that face, about that face, about that face,
He’s all about that face, no plaid shirts.
And then something about his milkshake bringing all the girls to the yard. Or that might have been a different song.
no v-necks.
hahahahahaha
HENLEYS ONLY.
I think that, the looming of John Winchester, is one of the more amazing things about this show. I imdb’d it and JDM’s only in like 10 episodes… but he looms over so friggin much.
alli – I know, right?? It’s incredible!
10 episodes. That’s crazy.
So many interesting comments!
mutecypher: yeah, Dean’s milkshake could definitely do that.
//Not exactly squished, but how about falling over eachother’s leg chains in ‘Jus in Bello’// Yes! Love that. And then in the cell.
‘Sam and Dean in the car’ Yes that too. Now I want them to have to diffuse a bomb strapped to a large bird in the car. Maybe also while chained. I’m so weird.
//”It was like the characters were fighting with their own genre. Becoming aware of its limitations.”
wow this is potent, I am gonna have to think about this!//
Yes, I agree. Very fascinating idea and in it room for groundbreaking answers. My fear is that the show will decide that death and delirium are the only answers to the Tough Guy, but again this is more of a late season(s) fear.
Jessie, the who lives and who dies question you brought up is a very good one. Why Crowley is alive confuses me. I love the actor and performance, but it doesn’t make sense story wise except in terms of a larger arc to be.
Specifically regarding women, I think that the show has set up the idea that women have the power to heal our heroes. (By heal I mean, help keep them off the road to destruction or maybe help them find internal peace(?)) I don’t know why women alone have this power (I thought Castiel might serve this purpose, until he changed so much), even Bobby wasn’t going to be the one to throw them off the path of doom or substance abuse. By working with this idea that other men won’t affect them in this way, they can keep men around, but women must disappear or be ‘fridged’ to keep Sam and Dean in need. I am reserving judgement on the show- it doesn’t feel hurtful but some parts do bug me. If they are presenting the idea of men as non-healer types though, it is a strange and forced way of seeing the genders.
I would like to comment more but I must do work!
// By working with this idea that other men won’t affect them in this way, they can keep men around, but women must disappear or be ‘fridged’ to keep Sam and Dean in need. //
DEFINITELY an excellent point.
If it is impossible for women to change them – in some ultimate way – if their lives won’t allow it … then again, they’ve backed themselves into a corner. They ‘get rid’ of these regulars in pretty swift ways that aren’t always graceful or well-thought-out. Lisa and Amelia, in particular.
In some ways, I am grateful that the show doesn’t set up women as the “saviors” – because honestly, don’t we have enough to do in our own lives? Do we need to see another tortured male “saved” by some selfless woman who has nothing better to do than devote her life to showing a wreck of a man that life is worth living?? Lisa skirted on the edge of that. But something in the way she was written – and the way that actress played it – she seemed real to me. When she confronts him in the garage and asks him what’s going on – and he kind of lies, and hesitates – as though he’s in trouble – and she says to him, “I’m just asking.”
Very real, very good. She wasn’t nagging, or whining, she didn’t rush to him with kisses or hugs to soothe him – she kept her distance and let him have his space and just asked for more information.
I like all of those scenes a lot.
But this is all very thought-provoking, especially in terms of Crowley.
Can you talk more about that??
For all the librarians and their progeny, thanks. Keep rocking’ it.
wow!! I wish I could show that to my dad!
mutecypher- On behalf of my fellow radical militant librarians (yep, this is a phrase!), not to mention my own and all progeny, I thank you! It always amazes me how much our patrons are willing to give away, privacy-wise–there’s an expectation now that the info is being shared or tracked, and often people are surprised when we tell them about the privacy measures we use. Of course, even with our privacy policies, we can always improve.
Heather- //I was raised on the side of a hill!// God, I love that movie! After this recap, and this quote, I’m going to have to pull it off the shelf and watch it again–maybe I can talk my kids into watching it with me. Thanks for the inspiration!
I need to think a bit about your point of women in SPN being the ones to offer a healing space. I think it’s valid for the most part–but maybe it’s a different sort of “healing”? Or performed in a different manner?
Shelia–On the characters fighting their own genre. This is a rich, and I agree, potent, idea. Certainly Sam and Dean have been fighting their intended stories–destinies–almost from the beginning. You could ask whether they have ever truly succeeded, since those roles–vessels/demon/MoL–keep coming back around. In this light, Dean’s tired “what show have you been watching?” quip takes on a new dimension!
Jessie–Who’s rumblin? :-) On Hannibal, I love your interpretation: //everything is an object.// This gives me a whole new way of looking at that show–I was mainly approaching it from the question of perception, but this idea engulfs that view and changes the symbolism of “This is my design.” Thanks for the brain food–I’ll try to chew it well.
// You could ask whether they have ever truly succeeded, since those roles–vessels/demon/MoL–keep coming back around. In this light, Dean’s tired “what show have you been watching?” quip takes on a new dimension! //
I love that moment so much.
Season 9, for me, was where all of this came to a real head – in a different way than before. It had to do with their relationship and how it was set up. So what Sam was basically saying was: “Our show has backed us into a corner, man. We gotta change the rules. This is killing us.”
I mean, not really … but you know. Sam was actually grappling with the understood structure of the show – kind of interesting when you consider Metatron typing away the narrative up in Heaven.
Along the way, of course, there are those episodes where the show and its rules vanish – and we see those other possibilities. The djinn episode in Season 2 – so many others. And it’s like this huge weight is lifted. Those fantasies show up early!! It’s amazing that they realized, early on, the trap these guys were in and actually wrestled with it, in the scripts.
Barb, I hope you do get to share that movie with your children. I watched as a child and loved it from then on.
re: women as healing space/ derailing them from path of …destruction?
Maybe the Hawksian women can survive or stay on SPN because they don’t change men?
// Maybe the Hawksian women can survive or stay on SPN because they don’t change men? //
Depressing. But I think a valid point.
I may be barking up the wrong tree but I think Season 9 was a game-changer. I have no idea how long the series will last. But I hope, anyway, that all of those tortured Sam-Dean “our relationship isn’t working anymore,” “this isn’t working anymore” conversations won’t be for naught. I hope we get to revel in Demon Dean for a good long while – but I hope at least some of those issues are put to bed. There are other things to explore.
The show can take a change in attitude about their lives – and, hopefully, about women – if the guys change, then women will have more of a possibility to stay in there. Of course the fans will probably hate it – but ha! That hasn’t stopped them before.
It just feels like after Season 9, they CAN’T go backwards.
Does anyone else agree with this?
It may be different for those who have been watching in real-time over the course of the 9 years. But for me, binge-watching, Season 9 felt like a sea-change, something different, and potentially totally life-altering.
Barb – Bless you and all radical militant librarians for working to keep us safe and free.
Heather –
(in my best Richard Pryor’s Crack Pipe voice) That work you have to do, it will still be there tomorrow. Your friends want to hear more about yourIf they are presenting the idea of men as non-healer types though, it is a strange and forced way of seeing the genders thoughts. Come and tell us more. What’s work ever done for you? Okay, besides provide you with food, shelter, and clothing.
mutecypher- it is true, work is such a frustrating distraction from the important things in life… like this site and SPN interpretations, (ha ha, crack pipe voice or not).
What I was thinking was, if one of the reasons/the reason, that women don’t stay around on the show is that they are seen as possible agents of change or healing in the Winchester’s lives – what does that say about the presentation of men and masculinity? Why is it that men can’t help heal each other? The heroes have been heading down a dark path (maybe since the beginning) definitely the later seasons, and none of the men in their lives can get through to them (or maybe don’t want to). But as Sheila pointed out a while ago, we get this sense that if Charlie wasn’t off in OZ she might have been able to help, or maybe Lisa or Jo or Ellen. In terms of the mythology of the show, this special potential with women seems to stem from Mary’s death and so we have this particular concept of the world. World with women = home, intimacy, reciprocal care, softness, acceptance, and probably more. World without women (a.k.a. world with men) = hard, tough, destructive, self sacrificing, hiding weakness, control, etc. I think this is a forced dichotomy, men can be intuitive, accepting and so on, but either a) not in the world of the show, or b) not in the world of the Winchester’s (also a = b). Either way, it is a choice in how they present women and men.
This could also be full of shit – I’m not sure anymore.
// Why is it that men can’t help heal each other? //
That is some deep shit. I hadn’t even thought of that.
Sure do Sheila, it’s called The Sheila Variations! ha ha but thanks that’s super lovely. Alas time constraints and laziness have lead to a lack of independent blogging — but I think I speak for everyone when I say your work ethic, passion and generosity are very inspiring.
Sheila —
I forgot to say I find your history with the fandom so interesting and also hilarious! I have gotten into texts before through the fanfiction, but I don’t know if the disparity in characterisation or type of story was ever that large….
It’s a genre-thing.
Yes, definitely! And I think this is where I struggle sometimes. Especially for something like SPN where I am not picking up on Hawks — or Western, etc — signals. So the kind of gender essentialism that comes along with those genres can at times absolutely collapse my “generic distance” with SPN! I am coming at it far more from the perspective of buddy movies, romance, the gothic, horror — different generic gender categories at play. So I am loving getting your perspective.
I also really appreciate their age-appropriate hook-ups! I agree, the ER doctor from the siren episode is very memorable. Re: Lisa, yes, I totally agree on the glaring plot mistake. Really poor solution to the “problem of Lisa”.
But in general, I think SPN does a better job of it than a lot of other shows.
Fair enough! Let me be careful here because the casting of tertiary characters is not the hill I want to die on WRT Supernatural and gender, because I’m way more interested in how the characters of Sam and Dean figure variously as masculine and feminine. THAT is the gender hook of the show for me. BUT if we’re talking representation of women, I do heartily call bullshit on casting practices, and the “kind” of female character that calls for it, and the way that character is sexualised. This tangenital to the HHW argument, although both are about a cultural/generic world where a range of types of men is permitted, and only one kind of woman (or two if you count the “wrong” kind).
mutecypher —
Thank you for your gentle probing!
I think the idea of “how do they function under fear” is a great one, a great lens for analysing characters — but in terms of female representation, I think it already kind of stacks the deck in favour of the “right” kind of female representation. In fact I think Supernatural works pretty hard to have “strong” but “feminine” characters — these are loaded terms obviously. The question is more, where is the older butch lady who is scared of monsters (as we all should be!) but is still “a person” for the show?
I would define the HHW a little more narrowly — I don’t see Naomi in all her technocratic competence and authority, as a HHW, but she “stuck around” for a while at least — but let me turn it around. What is it about the show — and the culture at large — that does not require male characters to clear that hurdle? Why is diversity (of form, personality, function) so easy with male characters?
Why is masculinity assumed to have a place, but femininity has to earn it, or trade other goods (such as sexuality) for a place? Why, for instance, was the fandom in “The Real Ghostbusters” almost entirely male (except for Becky, who had a romantic subplot), and the other significant female character introduced as a sexy thing for Dean to hit on?
Jessie – I mean, it was this strange totally unconnected obsession for me – observing the SPN fandom. That hasn’t really happened to me before. I mean, I am aware of the intense fandoms for Captain America and other things – but I don’t sit around reading their fan-fic having never seen the damn movie. There was something about the intensity, commitment and sheer volume of posts that got my attention.
The real “war” that got my attention was some Destiel battle – that was my first introduction. A sort of split in the fandom – the Destiel fans were extremely upset about something, I can’t remember what – and the other parts of the fandom were telling them to relax, get over it, get out of the fandom, you’re crazy, we hate you, go away. Tears were shed! Drama! I thought, “Wow. These people GIVE a shit. and who is Destiel again?” I checked the cast list and found no mention. Hmmm. Curiouser and curiouser.
So that was the start. Very strange skewed position to enter the show.
And those particular battles – the Destiel-focused ones – seemed to touch on a lot of issues I already found fascinating. How fantasies work, how entertainment loops into that, the expectations we have of what’s onscreen – a lot of these people had very severe checklists of stuff they needed to see – this is just an impression but many of them seemed almost HURT by the very show they were watching. “Why can’t they make these people better and fit into my checklist??” (Granted: many of these people I was reading were probably 16, 17 years old.) I thought, “Hm. This is kind of a microcosm of all of entertainment, seen through a super-serious social justice lens.”
But I am grateful to all of those screaming raging crying Tumblr fans because they were the reason I finally decided to watch.
// how the characters of Sam and Dean figure variously as masculine and feminine. THAT is the gender hook of the show for me. //
Yeah. All of that is super fascinating and I cannot get enough of it.
Casting directors, in general, need to do way way better. Especially in a show like SPN which does not take place in a homogenous world (like, say, The Sopranos). It’s a road show. There is no home base. For 8 seasons anyway. There should be no limits on who you cast for what part.
//tangenital//
Is that a real word? Because if it isn’t it should be. For all kinds of reasons germane to casting decisions in SPN.
LOL Helena that sure was a Freudian
penisslip!Heather —
Very interesting comments on the “healing role” of women, or at least some of them — Abbadon was no Panacea! — definitely Sam and Dean must be kept in need; and where women are associated with the domestic, or perhaps more accurately for this show the concept of safety? security?, that element must definitely be eliminated on the regular. You know I think Garth occupies a similar “healing” place almost to Charlie in that sense. If Garth and Charlie had been around during season 9 none of this business would have happened! You are definitely not full of shit!
Barb —
“This is my design” is such a fascinating line in a very rich show! I would be interested to know what you meant by “approaching it from the question of perception.”
Re season 9 and fighting genres —
I agree that Season 9 feels like a Rubicon — hopefully they don’t make us eat our words.
I am throwing out ideas here, but perhaps part of this genre crisis is that we are no longer in a road movie. We have found a home, in the bunker. At the same time, the apocalypse ebbs, the ticking of the time bomb slows — and given a chance to breathe (and to explore what domesticity is, without women? To confront desire vs destiny?) the coping mechanisms and categories fail…
I think the crisis still would have occurred if the inciting event of Dean letting Gadreel into Sam (this show…) hadn’t happened. There still would have been a general feeling, I think, of “too much”, especially from Sam. Without the impelling force of the road movie, or the buddy movie, or the caper movie, or the action movie, or even really the horror procedural — well we are left then with SPN’s other genres, namely, romance and melodrama :-D Time for some FEELINGS to be FELT!
// If Garth and Charlie had been around during season 9 none of this business would have happened! //
Yes! Totally agree!
And the set-up of the show – Sam and Dean together, which, for seasons, was the character’s saving grace (“at least we have each other” “at least we keep each other human”) – is no longer the case. At all.
So they’re up there without a net – having torched the one thing that the show kept coming back to. I mean, they have done this before in other ways – getting rid of “safe” elements and thrusting them into chaos and new situations. But Season 9 felt different to me. I’m glad others feel the same way.
They have had those arguments before, but not like THAT.
// Without the impelling force of the road movie, or the buddy movie, or the caper movie, or the action movie, or even really the horror procedural — well we are left then with SPN’s other genres, namely, romance and melodrama :-D Time for some FEELINGS to be FELT! //
That’s interesting, and sort of goes back to what we were talking about earlier – that the guys themselves (Sam especially) is like, “I don’t want to be in this show anymore.” hahaha
The bunker was awesome in its novelty, but we all know how long that lasted.
Wherever you go, there you are … or whatever the saying is.
This is not a show about monsters or demons – it is a show about characters, right? Sam and Dean. The linchpins. And while some of this is obviously just ramping up the conflict so the show can continue – a lot of it feels really organic to me. Season 9 in particular. Those repetitive fights – with practically the same lines being said – I couldn’t believe they were allowing that to go on, stretching it out over multiple episodes. I was in heaven. It was totally character-based.
I don’t know – it almost seems like the characters were dictating to the writers how they should be written (as opposed to the other way around).
Just a sense.
What they all have created over 9 seasons, the accumulation of it … they allowed it to just SIT there, in Season 9, its unbelievable mess and wreckage – total impasse … these two characters we know so well and love staring at each other as though they are strangers. Wondering if they can ever go back.
I don’t know – I know there is a plan here, obviously, and the Arc of the season had been plotted out – but something about those repetitive arguments felt outside of all of that. Organic. The conflict between the characters so huge that the issue of Gadreel, and even the Mark of Cain, became secondary.
I may not be explaining it right. But I, for one, was in heaven. ANOTHER episode ending with ANOTHER “we are at an impasse” conversation? Holy shit, they have confidence in what they are doing to keep circling the same ground. That was my impression anyway.
Jessie –
Thanks for the response. I get your point, especially when you write it as //Why is diversity (of form, personality, function) so easy with male characters?// I can think of Missouri from season 1, or Ezra Moore in season 7, or Julia Wilkinson, the former nun, in season 9 as not of the “type” – but “not failing all the time” isn’t the same as being successful. And we don’t get to see any of them again.
And I second that emotion with respect to Garth and that possibility of his presence having a healing effect on the Winchesters. I would even put Sonny from Bad Boys up for nomination as a possible healing male presence – but I don’t see him established as someone they’ll return to.
//Why is masculinity assumed to have a place, but femininity has to earn it, or trade other goods (such as sexuality) for a place? Why, for instance, was the fandom in “The Real Ghostbusters” almost entirely male (except for Becky, who had a romantic subplot), and the other significant female character introduced as a sexy thing for Dean to hit on?//
I want to respond that the guys in that episode, Barnes and Damian, have to earn a place by burning the bones and saving Sam and Dean – but I notice that you say “masculinity” and “femininity” – not “men” and “women.” Help me out with the distinction you are trying to make. As for all of the other attendees being guys at the convention, I took that to be some sort of joke, but I wasn’t quite sure what the joke was. “Guys are more likely to be lame wannabes?” “Women usually have better things to do?” I don’t know. I don’t know anything about the real fandom beyond what I see here, and based on that, I’d think about 85% of the attendees should have been female. In which case, if your point is that there should have been a bunch of women there of all shapes and sizes – not just a crazy one and a hot one – then I can easily agree. And I’m projecting forward to “Time For A Wedding” when I call Becky crazy.
I’m up to Meta Fiction in season 9 (yo, Gabriel!, haven’t learned what happens with Abaddon) – and I can certainly see that your questions about who lives, who doesn’t, why does it seem different for males, is a good one. Garth gets the possibility of returning with some super-helpful powers. Crowley, not dead or decisively dealt with. Lisa given that WTF sendoff (I’m with you Sheila, how does that get managed?), Amelia given … I don’t know .. lime-scented bath soap? We do have the hope of Charlie coming back, and I hope she does soon because Oz had that same yellow-green blech as Sam’s season 8 flashbacks. No one should be trapped in that. Except all of the season 9 angels. They can live with those colors.
Lime-scented bath soap. Dying laughing.
I love how we all can’t stop talking about those Lysol colors in the flashback.
I hadn’t thought of the fact that all the fans at the convention are male. Interesting. Maybe they (whoever “they” are – it may just be the unspoken culture of the behind-the-scenes part of the show) – maybe they found it easier to make fun of nerdy men rather than nerdy women? (Becky notwithstanding – who really takes the CAKE.) Clearly SPN knows its own demographic and knows that most of them are women/girls. So that’s an interesting choice to me. We can point the finger at these nerds – give a couple of them a Hero’s Quest to reflect our two heroes – and keep the possibility of romance or sexy-times to a minimum. Dean gets the moment with the woman at the bar. Which is mainly interesting because of her observation that he doesn’t seem afraid of women. She’s there to give us outside perspective of Dean (something I always appreciate – like: how is he PERCEIVED by others?)
Nerd Males are an easy target. Fish in a barrel, maybe. So that was, perhaps, a lazy choice I hadn’t picked up on before.
Maybe they didn’t want to alienate their bread-and-butter by totally making fun of their main fan base, which is women and girls? I mean, that episode almost crosses that line. I like the inside-joke feeling of it, and I love the alternate Sam and Dean – not to mention Chuck, whose presence on the show I still haven’t gotten over missing. I don’t know, though. It’s strange.
I’m fine with SPN making fun of its fans. It’s all in good fun, a kind of “we’re in this together” thing – with French Mistake being the High Baroque version of that.
Another wonderful recap Sheila!!
I find myself hoping that season 9 was a game changer in regards to the brothers unhealthy relationship. Those “our relationship isn’t working” conversations did feel significant and Sam especially seemed to be getting to that place of questioning their relationship and saying “Something has to change.”
Of course as soon as Dean dies, Sam immediately goes to summon Crowley. When I first saw that I was thinking “Nope, he didn’t actually learn anything at all!” As the summer has progressed though and I’ve had time to think about it, I’ve actually considered a few possibilities and speculations about the upcoming season 10 and where Carver maybe going to go in the relationship between the two brothers.
When Crowley made his little speech….”You’re brother is downstairs right now trying to summon me….make a deal, bring you back….it’s all become so expected.” I honestly think that was Carver’s acknowledgement to the audience of the “expected” Winchester pattern and he proceeded to turn that on it’s head with the last scene of the show.
I also think that Carver is going to delve further into the psyche of Sam in season 10. I think that Sam Winchester at the very core of who he is operates from a place of unresolved guilt and has been since the end of Season 3. Sam didn’t save his brother from hell and he has never saved Dean in the really significant ways that Dean has saved him. Dean made a deal that saved him from death, Dean stayed by his side through the whole demon blood thing…anger, strained relationship, and knock down drag out not withstanding….Dean was still by his side when Lucifer’s cage opened. Dean and the brotherly bond they shared enabled Sam to wrestle control back from Lucifer so that he could jump in the cage and stop the apocalypse. Dean made a deal with death and got Sam’s soul back. Dean…whether Sam wanted or appreciated the fact….saved his life again by summoning Gadreel.
Sam wasn’t able to stop Dean from going to hell, nor was he able to bring him back from hell. Sam didn’t even look for him when he was in purgatory, and now he is going to probably take on the guilt that because of their strained relationship he didn’t stop Dean from taking on the whole Mark of Cain. I think Sam is going to go into overdrive next season to save his brother. I think he is going to NEED to save his brother to find some sense of self worth. He realized a lot of it in that church at the end of season 8…he realized how much he had “let Dean down” but I think it goes deeper than that. The fact that Dean was able to talk him down from completing the ritual I think proves it. Dean’s speech to him was beautiful…the fangirl in me squealed with delight over that speech…but I think the subtle undertones were clear. “You die and I’ll be destroyed and you will let me down again.” In the face of the guilt and failure that Sam constantly feels he chose what his brother wanted instead of what would be better for the world.
Wow, I just realized I have kind of written a mini novel here. It’s nice to have someplace to be able to talk about Supernatural in depth!
Michelle – thanks!
Yeah, I don’t think Sam was going to make a deal at all. It was Crowley’s assumption.
and yeah … all of that sets us up very powerfully for Season 10. That whole last section of Season 9 – the final 6 or 7 episodes – acted like a giant funnel for all of this CRAP (sorry) – too big for anyone to deal with, too urgent for anyone to slow the hell down and consider carefully their next move – and it was all relationship-based. Sam and Dean, breaking up.
So we shall see where they take us with that.
Sheila –
Jody is Snow White. I like that. Pamela did call Sam “Grumpy.” I guess that’s why she’s a psychic.
Yeah, Jody is maternal without being saintly – she has a job – she has lost her family – she is lonely – she wants to date again – she is a can-do kind of woman – she treats the strangest supernatural event with an analytical air, wanting to help if she can.
Of course she has the most lackadaisical Sheriff’s job I’ve ever heard of. She can take off for weekends at a time to go hang out in abandoned houses with the Winchester brothers. What, being a Sheriff is like being a temp? You make your own hours? In what universe?
Still. I love her. Who doesn’t love Snow White?
Jessie–this comment really hits home for me: //we are no longer in a road movie. We have found a home, in the bunker. At the same time, the apocalypse ebbs, the ticking of the time bomb slows — and given a chance to breathe (and to explore what domesticity is, without women? To confront desire vs destiny?) the coping mechanisms and categories fail… //
I think this may be key, especially since the bunker initially had a positive affect on both our boys. It also provides an alternative possible end game to the //death or delirium// that Heather brought up–personally, watching the first 7 seasons I was convinced that the only way to end the story would be with the (permanent) death of one or both of the Winchesters. The only other possibility I saw was a bittersweet end with both standing but forever outside the comforts of community, a la John Wayne in “The Searchers.” Now, though, I think that the MoL offers a way for them to rebuild their family and community and leave a true legacy. If they can overcome their trained secretiveness. If they can successfully meld hunters with librarians (Bobby Singer Wing, anyone?) If they can confront the crisis of their relationship. If Charlie comes back and can help them build— if if if–
With regards to Hannibal and perception. Much of the time over the course of the first season, we are in Will’s head, and we get visual cues that tell us when he is “seeing” the design of the crime. As he becomes more unstable, his empathy takes him uncomfortably close to the killers, until at one point he thinks he may have committed a murder himself. At the same time, as he gets closer to Lecter, he both sees and doesn’t see Hannibal’s reality. His waking dreams become a visual clue for him of the truth to which his conscious is blind. The deer becomes a Stag (which has so many mythological connotations, often associated with an unattainable quest!) but this stag follows Will. The answers to his quest are already before him, but he doesn’t see it until it’s too late for him–and even then, it’s presented symbolically.
Then you have the food–where do you even start with that? Just the dichotomy between the decadent, gorgeous way it’s presented and the viewer’s knowledge of what it actually is. I found myself repelled and yet hungry. Perception again, this time on the part of the viewer rather than the character.
SPN uses this sort of dichotomy, too, all the time, but I think their main concern is how perception skews people’s relationships/self-worthability to see the truth of the supernatural world when it intrudes on our own.
Barb –
// watching the first 7 seasons I was convinced that the only way to end the story would be with the (permanent) death of one or both of the Winchesters. The only other possibility I saw was a bittersweet end with both standing but forever outside the comforts of community, a la John Wayne in “The Searchers.” //
I have definitely leaned in both of those directions myself. But I agree that the whole Men of Letters thing was an awesome addition to the mix, not to mention the information they get about their dad from their grandfather. He didn’t walk out on his son. He was trapped in the wrong time.
You could almost see a whole change in attitude with Dean when he would inform whoever: “We’re legacies.” He stood taller. He was proud.
It was very vulnerable, and it made me nervous for him, but it was a perfect detail from Ackles. He seems to be working on that thematic level too. That the Men of Letters provided a way out, or at LEAST an alternative.
Oh, and mute cypher – in re: the jeerers at the High Noon screening – I know. They were just so eager to show how “above” it they were, how knowing, how modern. They ruined the experience for me.
Funny thing about High Noon: You probably already know this, but here it is anyway –
It tells the story of a lonely sheriff (Cooper) whose town is threatened by three villains and he cannot put together a posse of men to fight back. One by one, everyone turns him down, for various reasons. They’re too scared, their family needs them, this is a villain too strong to go up against, let’s just wait it out, etc. So Gary Cooper ends up having to go up against the villains alone – and that one great shot of him alone in the empty town square – the camera rising higher and higher and higher so he looks TINY – is the one referenced in “All Hell Breaks Loose.” (The reference shows up in Frontierland, too.)
High Noon came out in 1952 – as the whole Blacklist thing was heating up, HUAC, Hollywood directors and writers being harassed, called into court – it was a very paranoid time. High Noon came out of that atmosphere, and it could be seen as almost a metaphor for the lonely man standing for his principles, even as everyone else turned away.
Well, good old Howard Hawks was outraged by High Noon. He thought it was bull shit. Buncha cowards cowering in their houses? He was outraged. He was still pissed off about it, years later, in interviews.
So he made Rio Bravo, with John Wayne, in retaliation. Rio Bravo was Hawks’ “answer” to High Noon.
Pretty funny. Two great flicks, two totally different sensibilities, both starring iconic tough guys who had been in over 200 Westerns between them … it’s fun to sort of let the films talk to each other, let the films duke it out.
I am laughing so hard at Destiel not being in the cast list!
I am starting to see some nastier stuff hit my dash in the last couple of days re being for or against Misha/Cas, him not being in the 200th episode, etc. Nooooooo! Have you ever heard of the Ray Wars? Similar thing. People are STILL angry about it. Different text — different internet — different dynamics — it got very personal at times. But it’s fascinating stuff.
The guys themselves (Sam especially) is like, “I don’t want to be in this show anymore.”
Should be interesting to see how this goes, considering the discussion on his purpose in summoning Crowley and Michelle’s interesting observations on his drives — and then there are the spoilers coming out of previews etc that I am trying to avoid but to imply this “Sam goes to extremes to find Dean” trope.
Part of me — a big part! I make no apologies ha ha — wants the show to double down on the twisted “Sam and Dean keep each other human” thing — we have talked about this complicity, this hook — and who knows where the story will go but whatever happens, unless they burn it down a la Harvelle’s, I think would HAVE to be coupled with a sense of the bunker as a place of synthesis and resolution.
This ties into Barb’s musings on the end of days — and our previous musings on Sam and Dean and the masculine and feminine, and how that links to John/Mary, MOL/Hunter, brains/brawn, etc etc — even heaven/hell, corrupt/pure. If we are talking legacy now, perhaps the legacy of S&D is miscegenation.
mutecypher —
but I notice that you say “masculinity” and “femininity” – not “men” and “women.”
Well, to be honest, I was just being careless with my terminology! I probably ought to have said male and female. Just, you know: the assumed background of the world is male; women are an “event” (and that event is generally related to sexuality). And to be clear, I wouldn’t trade the characters of Demian and Barnes for the world.
. In which case, if your point is that there should have been a bunch of women there of all shapes and sizes – not just a crazy one and a hot one – then I can easily agree.
Yes, this is basically my point!
Barb —
Oh, poor Will. His struggles are heartbreaking. And you know what’s cool is we’re talking about symbol and perception, hallucination/dream and reality but that stuff happened to his body. He trembled, he sweat buckets. His brain was on fire. I think that is so cool. And Hannibal….fuckin Hannibal…always had his double-windsor knot looking perfect.
Jessie – I went down the rabbit hole with that Ray Wars link. Wow. I knew the Due South fandom was intense (I adore Paul Gross) – but I had not heard of that. Holy mackerel.
Yes, I got wind of the whole 200th episode Misha thing too. I’ve heard from some Castiel/Misha fans since I started doing re-caps (no one commenting here regularly) – the show for them starts in Season 4 and they seem anxious that I won’t get it right or that I haven’t seen this one tiny clip from this random convention to show what really fascinates THEM – like, they’re already trying to push me to talk about it a certain way. These aren’t mean emails. They’re sweet and anxious – they feel defensive about Castiel, I guess. :) I don’t watch a lot of convention clips – and am not overly fascinated by Castiel, although I don’t resent him or anything stupid like that. He’s a big part of the show, but in terms of Dean-friends, Benny is far more interesting to me than Castiel is.
I don’t see the show in an either/or way – and that’s one of the things I really have to work hard to put into words. I do my best. I love the big messy ensemble and all its parts – even when something doesn’t quite work – the things that DON’T work are sometimes as interesting as the things that do.
// wants the show to double down on the twisted “Sam and Dean keep each other human” thing — we have talked about this complicity, this hook — and who knows where the story will go but whatever happens, unless they burn it down a la Harvelle’s, I think would HAVE to be coupled with a sense of the bunker as a place of synthesis and resolution. //
I’m with you. That’s what I want – I think the show can “take” it now. They’ve made their point, repeatedly. I’m actually excited for Sam to take a more pro-active role – he was rather RE-active throughout Season 9 (although Padalecki is such an excellent RE-actor – he makes it as active as possible).
I’m pretty excited about all of those possibilities.
// Just, you know: the assumed background of the world is male; women are an “event” (and that event is generally related to sexuality). And to be clear, I wouldn’t trade the characters of Demian and Barnes for the world. //
Me neither.
Let’s picture a Sam and Dean not played by these two amazing sensitive actors. Let’s picture a Sam and Dean who DON’T suggest all kinds of destabilizing gender stuff in the performances. It just would not be a show I was interested in. I’m okay with Boys in a world without Women – which is why I was totally fine with Wolf of Wall Street, when so many others were criticizing it for its misogyny. But … that’s a boys-club world, Scorsese has always been interested in how fucked UP men are without women, and he doesn’t let us off the hook – he also (thankfully) does not cast women as saviors, women who pluck the men out of their Bad Boy stuff and have nothing better to do with their time than coach a man in how to be a better person. Yuk. Nope. The women in Scorsese’s little bell jar are just as trapped as the guys.
Not that Sam and Dean are those guys. They aren’t. (Although I would love to see both of them cast in that kind of material. They’d both be amazing.)
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is what comes out of men being unable to imagine women in any three-dimensional context. The MPDG is there only to show our male hero some life lessons, how to be spontaneous, how to do silly things, how to twirl around in the sunshine and laugh freely … whatever. It’s totally infantilizing. At least the Howard Hawks Women had, you know, JOBS, and also were total motor-mouths who gave the men a hard time. The MPDG has nothing better to do with her life than be totally open and available to some arrested-development Man-Boy.
Don DeLillo is a great American writer and he has yet to write a female character who appears to be real. He can imagine all kinds of things. But he cannot imagine a woman outside the context of how a man – attracted to her – imagines her. It’s a huge issue in male literature – as well as the literary world, where female writers – who often are blowing their male counterparts away in terms of three-dimensional writing – are ghettoized, their books given “beach read” covers … and they are not treated seriously. Or AS seriously.
All of this comes from an entrenched belief that male experience is the default and women are the exception. This has got to change. And men have GOT to be a part of it, and not be like, “You women are always whining about something” – which is often the response. (Not from you, mutecypher – not talking about you!!)
I was reading a book blogger. Male. I like his writing. I’ve gotten a lot of good suggestions for books to read. I noticed, over the years, that he ONLY read male writers. He didn’t even seem to NOTICE this. I mean … this is so common I can easily see red if I think about it for too long.
Women (studies have been done) are far more adventurous readers – mainly because we have to be. The canon is made up of men. We read male writers from the time we are able to read. (I love the canon, by the way.)
And this guy – a huge reader – could not even see how blind he was. I didn’t mention it. Because it’s his own personal blog, and he is under no obligation to widen his personal reading.
And then a couple of years ago, he must have realized it himself – and he said that over the course of the following year, he would read books ONLY written by women. He had realized he didn’t read enough female authors, had no idea what they were doing, and that was bad. I felt like holding a parade in his honor. And it was SO FUN to watch him discover all of these amazing books – not just “serious” books – but really really popular books written by female authors – one of my favorite writers is Elinor Lipman. her books are given chick-book covers – no male would be drawn to it (and I myself am turned off by those types of covers) – but she is a brilliant social commentator and I read everything she writes.
Anyway, he discovered her – during his year-long corrective course – and he fell in love with her writing and her books.
I didn’t say anything to him about any of this – I was just proud of him, from afar, for realizing he had some privileged thinking going on, a male-default blinder on, and he worked to correct it. And he had a blast doing it.
Wow. Lecture over. Sorry!!
//Part of me — a big part! I make no apologies ha ha — wants the show to double down on the twisted “Sam and Dean keep each other human” thing — we have talked about this complicity, this hook — and who knows where the story will go but whatever happens, unless they burn it down a la Harvelle’s, I think would HAVE to be coupled with a sense of the bunker as a place of synthesis and resolution.//
Perfect, Jessie. I was wandering off on a big tangent about home and the bunker and how it’s a both place of synthesis, as you put it, but also an important arena of conflict in and over which Season 9 battles were fought., and you’ve given me an in! I had even deleted a line about the bunker burning down – good god, what is going on here? Anyway, this is what I wrote:
So, Jessie mentioned that with the end of the road movie aspect of SPN (which I’m still mourning, but hey) but what’s at the end of the road is always an interesting question, and if we are at the end of the road, have our heroes come home or just backed into a dead end? The end of the journey for Odysseus was home and family, for a medieval knight on a quest it might have been killing a monster or finding the Holy Grail, for the hunters in SPN-world, home is either somewhere in the past or where the hunter’s past will finally catch up with him. Home is imagined as a place of love and safety, but in SPN it’s fragile, easily penetrated and destroyed. The world of hunters is, with a few exceptions, one of exiles, refugees and fugitives in which it’s almost safer to be permanently on the run. How could you possibly be safe, except in somewhere between a prison or a fortress?
The infinite, Borgesian spaces of the bunker can contain and/or embody the conflicting ideas raised in SPN about home, family and the end of the trail, ‘where the hell this is all going’: it’s patrimony’; it’s a ‘perfecting’ of Sam and Dean’s hunting life through the work of the Men of Letters; it’s a place of refuge and it’s also an arena, for final conflicts about family, identity, etc to be played out. It’s a mixture of castle, hobbit hole, archive, research lab and radar outpost. Whether you regard it as home or waystation will depend on your point of view, what you want out of life, or at least, what you think you can get out of it. And any refuge can become a prison – which is what, is what in Season 9, it becomes, a huis clos, with hell being your family.
Not for nothing is it conceived as an entirely masculine space – you could read it, well, I definitely read it, as an extension of Sam’s and Dean’s own bodies and psyches: fortress like, under layers layer of protection, but nonetheless penetrable if you know how, Sam’s body being the ultimate Trojan horse allowing destruction to enter in the form of Gadreel.
Just pursuing the idea of the bunker’s labyrinthine structure, I think I’ve waffled on about this before, but there are two kinds: labyrinths which allow you to enter and exit in a single path in a magical or spiritual journeys of meditation and transformation, and mazes, in which you can get thoroughly lost and which may well have a monster in the centre. So, the centre is either the turning point from which you exit back into the world, or it’s where you meet your doom. The arrival at the bunker seems to have marked the beginning of these two very kinds of different journeys to the centre (to the meaning of life, to how they want to live their lives) for both brothers. For Sam it’s more of a labyrinth from which he was able to see an exit, Dean however, enters a maze, a broken labyrinth which offers an illusion of escape but is really a trap, and turns into the monster (or minotaur) at the centre.
Let’s just say, if Sam has to turn into Ariadne in Season 10, I’ll be very happy, though, as we know, it doesn’t end well for her.
Helena – this is such rich food for thought. I love the labyrinth conversation – which has kind of always been an element in the show, made material and visible via the bunker.
// The arrival at the bunker seems to have marked the beginning of these two very kinds of different journeys to the centre (to the meaning of life, to how they want to live their lives) for both brothers. //
Yes! The bunker behavior never ceases to fascinate. It highlighted the differences – not just in personality and hygiene and habits and all that – but in how these two guys view the world and their place in it. There is an external journey and an existential one. Sartre? Go away, please. Tout suite.
Sam’s seems to have been the external journey in Season 9 – although brought about by becoming a Trojan Horse (love that): But his struggles are physical, mainly. The way he is starting to understand the world and his relationships are somehow corporeal. Even the split with Dean. It’s grounded in reality, something he can practically touch. Meanwhile, Dean has spun off into space, after his brief glorious respite downloading recipes and wearing bathrobes. I may be missing some subtleties. But this has to do with my sense of Sam, shattered as he was by the trials and then being bunk-buddies with Gadreel – is that he has become more complete. Whole. Somehow. That scene at the end of the Garth episode by the Impala – he just seems to … together, so … complete. Strong and sure. Self-knowledge.
Whereas Dean is in pieces. He turns away from any conversation and you can see there it is again, the horror of what it’s like to be him – it’s in the mirror, he can no longer find escape/comfort in those external things. Even the music that he loves so much is now listened to on headphones – not out there in the air, free, shared with other people in the Impala.
Somehow – not sure how this works – but the bunker made all of this possible. These issues have always been at play, even in the Impala and all the crazy hotel rooms. But as we’ve been talking about in this thread: the bunker seems comforting and awesome at first. The best part is that SPN seems to be saying: “Yes. It is. But the problem is not that they don’t have a home base. The problem is inside.” Which is why Season 9 was what it was, right?
The show has always had a maze-like quality, especially once the angels came into play and we lost the more formal “monster of the week” structure – or, we didn’t lose it, but it shifted drastically.
And so the Bunker is the manifestation of all of that. So far I’ve been very happy with the explorations of what a home-base means to these guys – and it’s great, especially in light of how much of the fan-fic features purely domestic scenes for these guys. At least the fan-fic I’ve read. Sam and Dean and Castiel going Christmas shopping. Or whatever. This is a real fantasy in the show – for the characters – for Dean – and so here it is provided, and look what it ends up bringing about.
Total freakin’ chaos. Worse than it’s ever been.
I love that.
Back to Odysseus. Who is Penelope here? I wonder if “Penelope” is just The Past. Nobody alive could ever BE that for them. I probably shouldn’t loop Sam and Dean together either. I think Sam could, possibly, find a Penelope – someone at the end of the quest. Dean, not so sure. Dean’s Penelope is … himself? I don’t know. Sam’s point seemed to be, throughout those arguments in Season 9: “You don’t want to be alone. You did this because you’re afraid of being alone.” On and on, over and over. Something I sensed from the pilot, something we all sensed.
End-Game is always an interesting thing to discuss and speculate about.
And apologies for the inordinate length of that post. Every time I tried to make it shorter it just got longer :-(
Sheila –
I knew the High Noon versus Rio Bravo story. The movies speak to each other like books in the MoL library. I vastly prefer Rio Bravo , but I think that’s a temperament thing. It’s funny, I think the best thing I ever read on being able to separate an aesthetic evaluation from a “resonates with my world view” evaluation was an essay by Ayn Rand. Not usually someone associated with nuanced differentiation. If I remember correctly, she used Marty as an example of a work that was of high quality but didn’t resonate with her.
Now I’m thinking of your Anne Fadiman “Re-readings” series and daring myself to re-read “Atlas Shrugged.” Later. Much.
My Snow White/Grumpy comparison was a nod to some earlier discussions about how it might or might not be good if Sam and Jody had a deeper relationship. And Jody, she’s maternal but she’s also Mel Gibson: she gets some sort of torture in every episode she’s in. Stake in the chest, kid killing her husband, beaten by a vampire mom. I watched “Alex, Annie, Alexis, Ann” last night – yeah she has an odd sheriff’s gig. It’s good to be king, but it doesn’t suck to be sheriff, either. Except for the gods and monsters part.
Also, every time I see her I can’t help but flash back to the “Lucifer Rising” episode, with the first showing of the Green Room, when Dean makes some quip about the room representing “the suite Life of Zach and Cas.” Back in season 4. And then Jody, intro’d in season 5, is played by Kim Rhodes, who was the mom on “The Suite Life of Zach and Cody.”
Jessie – thanks for making sure your ideas get into my hard little head. I appreciate it. //women are an “event” // But, just speaking for myself and not necessarily all men, women really are. I think that about ⅔ of the goal of civilizing us is to prevent the Tex Avery eyes-popping-out reaction. Feel free to hit me with a large mallet, if we ever meet.
Interesting recent essay in the NYT somewhat on that topic. I hope it’s not behind a pay wall.
And I really like the “we’re not in a road movie anymore,” what happens when there’s the MoL lair to come back to, thing that’s going on in the comments here. Keeping in mind that I haven’t seen the last 3 episodes of season 9 yet, I’m wondering if Crowley’s question at the end of season 8 will come into play in season 10, “how do I even begin to ask for… (forgiveness)” with respect to Sam and Dean. Both Winchesters need that. Maybe I’ll be able to watch the last 3 episodes tonight and get up to speed on that discussion.
Helena – mazes and labyrinths. Great analogy. It’s probably too much to hope for an episode with a chaotic goblin king played by David Bowie at the center of a labryinth.
Mutecypher – I, too, prefer Rio Bravo – Hawks’ world is always the world I want to step into. But yeah: it’s kind of great: Hawks’ sense of outrage and rivalry pushing him to make his own response. “No. THIS is how it should be done.”
// I think that about ⅔ of the goal of civilizing us is to prevent the Tex Avery eyes-popping-out reaction. //
hahahaha And I agree with that, although it’s okay, on a personal level (for me, anyway), to be an “event” in a specific guy’s life. That’s fun and seems right. Because he is an event for me too.
It’s when it is presented as the only way men can imagine women – that it gets reaaaaally problematic.
I saw a funny interview with George R.R. Martin recently and he was asked about his female characters – and how they are so well-conceived, and so human and complex. (I agree with that.) And Martin said, totally casually, “Well, I’ve always just thought of women as people.”
The audience roared – but that’s the thing. That’s how radical a statement that is. It’s unbelievable – and so many men cannot see it – because they don’t really see women as people. I mean, they DO, they don’t want to round us up and live in The Handmaid’s Tale – but … in terms of imagination – they just go blank when it comes to women’s inner lives.
We’re in a pretty low-point right now, culturally – ironic, considering we’ve gone through so much cultural upheaval to get equal rights, etc. But the depiction of women in 1930s films is FAR more diverse and imaginative and complex than what is going on now. 1930s films were DRIVEN by their female stars. And the space has gotten much much smaller in the intervening years for women. I think some of that is a reaction to the women’s movement – a sort of “Oh yeah? Well what about US” thing from men – and sometimes really really interesting films come out as a result of male confusion about their place in things. Like Raging Bull or Taxi Driver – Woody Allen films – a lot of those 70s and early 80s films were really about male anxiety. It’s very honest. I have no problem with that.
Now we get male resentment, not anxiety, and that I do have a problem with. and so women are then depicted in a hostile and really narrow-minded way – something almost unthinkable back in 1930s films, when women were everything: they had jobs, they were wives, they were go-getters, they were heartbroken, they were cunning and resourceful, they were ditzy and clumsy – they ran the gamut. And now, films remind us over and over again: “Here is what we think of you women. Here is how we value you.” It’s extremely mean. Kind of like how African-Americans were depicted on film after the Production Code came down in 1932. Before then, we had diverse and interesting characters. After that? Shuffling and grinning porters and doormen.
I’m definitely talking in generalizations – there are still complex women onscreen. But culturally we’re in a very backwards period right now!
I love the line in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – when she says to him, “I’m not a concept, Joel, I’m just a fucked up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind. I’m not perfect.”
Too many male writers see women as concepts.
And so what happens is: you’re a woman. You are seen as a concept by the culture at large. You are then punished for not playing that role good-naturedly. Why aren’t you being a concept like you need me to be?
In general, I don’t think SPN participates in that in an egregious way. It’s there, to some degree, but that comes from the genre, and the Men Without Women thing. At least that’s my take on it. It’s not quite so interested in pigeon-holing us. We’ve got friendly strippers, we’ve got resourceful sheriffs, we have gay computer-hackers, we have Tough Chicks in biker bars.
The question really seems to be, eventually – who is interesting enough to “last” in this extremely specific universe set up by Kripke et al? Who can take it? Who will the audience ‘take’?
I’m very interested in hearing from people who have been watching the show in real-time from the beginning – because it seems to be a very different perspective on all of this. One I appreciate.
Since I got into this by Googling “Destiel” and coming up with fan-fic and wondering, “Wow. Now … why are all these people so upset?”
You know, it’s a weird and funny stance to start from.
Jessie –
Just to be clear, I understand that even if one were to interpret my “but women really are an event to a number of us” in as benign a way possible, to have the show treat them that way is a big part of what’s meant by male privilege or privileging the male gaze.
mutecypher – //It’s probably too much to hope for an episode with a chaotic goblin king played by David Bowie at the center of a labryinth.//
Funny you should say that.
It actually occurred to me a couple months ago that there has never been a Labyrinth-themed episode, and (correct me if I’m wrong) goblins have never been the MOTW. As Labyrinth has been a favorite movie of mine since I was about 8 (long before it achieved cult status), I really think this needs to be rectified, and I have a story idea for an episode involving a CPS social worker (a role often referred to less-than-affectionately as a “baby snatcher”) who is a single mother whose own baby is taken by goblins – and it turns out that a disgruntled client summoned the goblins as revenge for this social worker removing her children. And maybe the social worker loses her job because she releases confidential client information to Sam and Dean in order to help find her baby, and she ends up being a recurring character because, you know, she has years of investigative experience and would be able to look less threatening in some situations (i.e., a woman with a baby on her hip will look far more normal asking questions of other parents in the park than a man who is there with no kids). In my fantasy version of this, this character may or may not be played by me. I admit nothing.
Ahem.
Anyway, I would imagine that a David Bowie appearance in the episode might be prohibitively expensive, although it would certainly be awesome. (Possibly even more fun if he played a red herring character.) I would settle for a couple David Bowie songs in the episode soundtrack.
You are clearly the only person for that role.
Natalie –
//In my fantasy version of this, this character may or may not be played by me. I admit nothing.//
If anyone asks, you have my vote!
I finally googled Destiel. Oh.
And I finished season 9 last night. Demon Dean, bring him on! Poor Gadreel.
Oh my god, my timing has been soooooooooo bad lately!
I haven’t had a chance to read everything yet, but I wanted to jump in on one thing before I forgot: the mostly male attendees at the in-show SPN Con. It must have either been an in-joke or a cheap joke directed at the male-nerd stereotype, because the SPN Cons I’ve been to have been 99.9999999% women. I hope it was an in-joke, because the male-nerd stereotype ticks this geeky I-love-scifi-and-comicbooks chick off.
And since I’ve seen many die-hard SPN fans in person, I can tell you that most of them were between the ages of 20-50, not teenagers (who’d never be able to afford it). I’m sure there are more teens online, but many of the very active people in fandom I met were older women with children.
(I have been to three different SPN conventions in three different cities…which makes it sound like I’ve been more involved with fandom than I actually ever was. I had friends who were active, so mostly I observed from outside. I’ve only ever paid to attend one SPN Con, which was the first one I went to. I wasn’t all that impressed. The other two were just excuses to meet up with friends and I sort hung around the outskirts.)
Natalie,
You be the CPS social worker and I’ll be the baby. Especially if they can get David Bowie to guest star. “I saw my baby, crying hard as babe could cry. What could I dooooo?”
//Who is Penelope here? I wonder if “Penelope” is just The Past. Nobody alive could ever BE that for them.//
Good question! The answer just might be that ‘Penelope’ is different things to each brother, because of the fundamentally different nature of their journeys, of their fundamentally different experiences and concepts of family, and of their fundamentally different ideas about relationships. Maybe for Dean ‘Penelope’ is indeed the past, or more simply, his mother. He spins his own Penelope/mother out of memories of love, out of desire, loneliness and need. (For that reason I find the episodes where the memory of Mary is corrupted and used against Dean painfully fascinating, but that’s a whole other paragraph.) For Sam, ‘Penelope’ may once have been Jess/Princeton/a normal life, but he is able to move on – from Jess, from Amelia, and his ‘Penelope’ is probably the future itself, where he is autonomous, able to choose for himself, and finally free of the shackles of family-induced guilt. (I hope I’m not falling into the trap of reducing women to concepts here, by the way. But Supernatural does like to play with both archetypes and stereotypes, so there’s that.)
Maybe we need to go beyond Penelope to Ithaca itself. Ithaca is both Odysseus’s past and future. Ithaca is the place of family, but just break that idea down a bit: matrimony and patrimony, parents and children, loyal servants and treacherous infiltrators. There are such gaps between dream (past) and reality (present) that Odysseus has to fight to possess Ithaca again.
But before I can go any further with this thought I have to go to bed because it’s very, very late.
When Mary is used against Dean, it’s so painful – it’s tarnishing the memory, the one thing he has. I agree – those scenes are fascinating and awful.
One thing I can say about the women in Supernatural that I actually appreciate, as messy as it sometime is: Women are not put into the position of being the only ones who can “save” our boys. They try, because, duh, they love them – and they want their men to be happy – but, as we see, it never works. In a way, that’s a relief – from all the films where women’s only purpose in life is to prop her man up, and be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and be totally supportive even though he’s a douchebag having a really really hard time!
So Lisa was an opportunity. Cassie. Amelia. These were women who loved them, and came into their lives in a significant way. No dice.
I actually would be pretty annoyed at this point if either man were “saved” by the entrance of some perfect woman who showed him the path to peace. Gag. After all THIS? It’s STILL on women’s shoulders to un-do this freakin’ mess? No thanks.
A long while back – Jessie made a comment – I should try to track it down – that that final shot of Hollywood Babylon, the guys walking towards the fake sunset – like, THAT’S the true ending of the show, and it happened in Season 2. So looking forward – to an image like that – there can be anything else around it – girlfriends or wives or an orphan they took home from the streets – that doesn’t really matter – what matters is the two of them.
“Penelope” could be their relationship (not now, God knows, but in its ideal state) before things went to shit. two little boys firing off firecrackers. Knowing that someone is out there who “gets” you like that – being okay with being separated – knowing that bond is always there. Having some perspective about it. That Hollywood Babylon shot was all about that weird campy perspective – the trompe l’oeil effect – creating some distance, distance for them, distance for us. Very very satisfying.
// Ithaca is the place of family, but just break that idea down a bit: matrimony and patrimony, parents and children, loyal servants and treacherous infiltrators. There are such gaps between dream (past) and reality (present) that Odysseus has to fight to possess Ithaca again. //
You can feel some of that with the introduction of the bunker, right? A safe place. No one can get in. But now, of course, EVERYONE has gotten in. Kevin’s ghost, Crowley, Dorothy, Gadreel – I mean, is there anyone in the United States and in the supernatural world at this point who HASN’T been inside the bunker??
The safe haven is already vulnerable. But it seems to be the key to a lot.
Go to bed!! :)
Did a quick search of the word “sunset” in my Supernatural comments (thank you WordPress for allowing me to do this) and found the comment of Jessie’s I remember:
“Sheila, you assume them to be walking into the sunset together! You are not alone. [Link to the Hollywood Babylon sunset shot.] The show has surely played its hand. I would bet my unborn children the last image is them driving off together in a long shot. It may be triumphant, it may be bittersweet, they may continue as road warriors or they may be driving off to be someone’s husband, but that’ll be it. I will admit the slight possibility that there is one alive clutching a memento of the other as he drives, but the production offices should have received my threats by now and are shredding those pages.”
Well Sheila the ensuing discussion has made me wonder! Perhaps now the final shot is the bunker door closing behind them (EXCEPT NO-ONE IS GOING TO THE UNDYING LANDS OK). At any rate the vibe still stands — perhaps “they were never in fact homeless” transfers to the bunker.
Sheila —
Yes, the Ray Wars were epic. Passion and investment. Due South has been basically consigned to the dustbin of televisual history but I think it’s due for a critical reappraisal: it’s really fucking strange (especially in the last two seasons) in ways that presaged a lot of what Quality Television ended up doing ca 2000-2007, except it was way weirder and more playful doing it. And Paul Gross is indeed fabulous and nuts, and CKR was doing some very compelling things with tough guy (not quite Tough Guy) masculinity that reminds me a lot of Dean. He was CONSTANTLY being undercut. It is hilarious and tragic, he is basically a mess.
I’m pretty excited about all of those possibilities.
100% with you!
Women (studies have been done) are far more adventurous readers – mainly because we have to be.
And film viewers too. Ridiculous. “Well women will see anything but men only see men movies so we need to make more men movies.” Good on that blogger — and I will have to check out Elinor Lipman, never heard of her.
Helena —
Your tangent is a stunner and I can’t contribute anything to it except to say thank you! Also to wonder how much scope there might be to trouble the bunker, to make it eerie in that Borgesian way. As Sheila notes it has already been invaded by every man and his ghost. What does a “true” home in SPN look like then? The “problem of home” in SPN is that it is constantly under threat. For a happy ending, must the bunker be completely safe, completely a sanctuary — or can it be more porous? Can it be both home and a TARDIS of bookshelves that occasionally spits up an entertaining parasite to kill in between burger eating contests?
mutecypher —
Thanks for the discussion, and I agree with your addendum! And for the article link — too long to read at work right now but I look forward to checking it out.
Ooooh…. Kathrine Hepburn and Rosalind Russel. Two women who are in my ‘top five women I want to be when I grow up’ list. I now need to watch *all the Hawks movies*!
Another excellent recap that makes me proud of the Show I love, and of the fandom that supports it. :)
//And Paul Gross is indeed fabulous and nuts, and CKR was doing some very compelling things with tough guy (not quite Tough Guy) masculinity that reminds me a lot of Dean. He was CONSTANTLY being undercut. It is hilarious and tragic, he is basically a mess.//
I, er, spent quite a large chunk of this summer watching the entirety of Due South for the first time, because basically, dammit, Paul Gross (and one or 2 actors from SPN are in it including the lovely lady cop from The Benders as well as CKR.) Definitely due for reappraisal. CKR was a great character – basically a leading man playing second fiddle to Benton, and Benton Fraser always hovering a bat’s wingbeat away from camp or bonkersville. Let’s say he makes virtue unexpectedly weird and interesting. Due South is also a great complementary watching to SPN – a superficially very different concept of masculinity and heroism, but actually following the exact same pattern book, utterly bound up with paternal role models, and to cap it Gross playing Benton as this oddly masculine-feminine figure. Anyway, that was my summer, how about yours?
Heather –
You’re right, there should be some of this in the bunker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvyNOg4jSRg
Helena –
Should we also be looking for who is Stephen Dedalus, who’s Poldy, who’s Molly? That would take some series high wire work in the Library of Babel! Way beyond me. In what way is the MoL bunker like Dublin? Great libraries and plenty of booze! And anyone can go there.
Who is Circe: Lisa or the various djinn (none gave him advice on how to get to hell)? Would Ajay the Reaper be a better Circe, since he got Sam into Hell? The folks who ate the Leviathan’s “Turducken Slammers” are the Lotus Eaters. The Leviathans are the Laestrygonians. The Benders are Polyphemus the Cyclops (maybe…).
This is a great lens for looking at SPN!
And I’m clueless about who or what would be Penelope.
I’ve thought about this
Circe=Ruby
Argo=Baby
The Benders=Polyphemus
Nausicaa=Lisa, possibly
The Sirens=The Sirens
And Ithaca=The Bunker
Possibly. Except …
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
The last lines…
Maybe not so much the bunker, then. A beautiful poem. Can you read it in the Greek?
Alas, no.
Isn’t the Minotaur the guardian of the 7th circle of hell? Maybe we haven’t left Dante yet. So maybe we are about to visit the sins of violence.
Or, Daedalus would be the MOL, and maybe there is no Penelope and that is the point and goes back to our earlier, ‘world without women’ bell jar.
Love the Due South connections. I have often thought of Benton in our discussions of how Dean is objectified in SPN. Due South was all over messing with the gender expectation that men objectify, and aren’t objectified. Do you remember this moment?
http://youtu.be/paD5yffBhwo
go to 2:30 … I still remember this and I watched it when it first aired!
Except Benton is more Elizabeth Taylor, while Dean is more Brigitte Bardot to me.
This is fun.
mutecypher, thanks for the link to the song, that just made my morning.
Heather, Helena: Never Forget.
Helena your summer sounds aweeeeeesssssommmmmmmmmeeeeeeeee
David Bowie, Labyrinth, The Odyssey, Hannibal, DUE SOUTH. I…I have found my people.
//Heather, Helena: Never Forget.//
Jessie, how could I? It got to the point where I was confusing up episodes of DS and SPN, so firmly were they binding together in my mind. And weirdly, you were dropping Due South musical references here and there on these boards, and I was thinking ‘is there an echo in here?’
Oh I wish I was in Sherbrooke now……
re labyrinths, I found this cartoon.
Good find Helena.
hahahaha labyrinths are awesome; so are myths, so wonderfully demented.
//Isn’t the Minotaur the guardian of the 7th circle of hell? Maybe we haven’t left Dante yet. So maybe we are about to visit the sins of violence.//
Dante’s journey through the circles of Hell is the perfect labyrinthine journey – Hell is a deadend/prison for its denizens, but the beginning of a liberation/a new life for Dante, who is being led through and eventually out of it. And we are definitely about to visit the sins of violence.
I love that SPN world is basically that of the Renaissance, plus internet and muscle cars – a world where the classical mingles with the Christian in truly Dantean fashion. Spells and Lucifer and archangels and Zeus (‘Hello, Zeus.”Oh, hello, Prometheus.’) It never really stubs its toes over scientific explanations, on ‘well, how does time travel work, then?’ They just get on and do it.
Plus it’s also in Tough Guy and Chick world, and Howard Hawks World too. It’s very … elastic.