Directed by Charles Beeson
Written by Matt Witten
“Playthings” was the first episode directed by Charles Beeson, and the guy had a field day with it. What a fun episode. A director’s dream.
The “homage” episodes are pleasing on a whole different level of goofiness and association. Even if you don’t get all the references, hopefully the material is handled in such a compelling way that it will at least pique your interest. There are clear visual references in the final episode of Season 2 to “High Noon”, for example – the whole thing is basically a take-off on the desperate last stand in Western films, mixed with … The Breakfast Club. But then there are the entire episodes devoted to homage: The “monster movie” episode. The X-files episode. The Looney Tunes episode. Changing Channels. The Western episode. The homage to Groundhog Day. The recent Clue episode (which I really enjoyed. I like Supernatural best when it is goofy.) The “mannequin” episode with its moody cheesy melodramatic music-video-Dean-driving-and-thinking scene, straight out of a 1980s movie. Say, like …
That whole episode hailed from 1987, no later. The high-school-musical episode. Even the “Christmas special” episode, with its flashbacks and art-direction and shmoopy final shot. All of these represent, for me, high points of Supernatural. It’s a chance for everyone on the team to show off, for sure, but it also adds so much to the overall texture. It’s also just super-fun. (It works so well in “Playthings” that “Playthings” is one of my favorite episodes in the entire series, for reasons both clear and … somewhat mysterious. In other words, I don’t know what is going on, I don’t care, but I know I love it, and re-visit it constantly, finding the same pleasure in it. Criticism is fun, it’s fun to unpack meaning – but at a certain point, it is the overall effect that IS the most pleasurable part of it, and to pick it apart is to lessen the impact. I resist. It’s like trying to break down what is so enjoyable about a perfect piece of cheesecake. Just eat the damn thing and be thankful it exists.)
What seems to happen in these episodes where they recreate a specific set of references, either dear to Kripke or Jerry Wanek or the writer or Bob Singer or a mixture of all of them – is that everyone is set free in really unpredictable ways. The episodes I listed above are dazzling, not just visually/production-design, but because of what the limitations of the homage DO to the characters/plot. Limitations are good, limitations can set you free (way more than an attitude “do whatevs you feel like doing” can). Limitations forces you to focus, to zoom in, to choose carefully.
Thirtysomething once did an entire episode in Hitchcock-style (it was a Halloween episode, if I recall correctly), and they often messed with the conventional structure of the show so much that it HAD no conventional structure, part of the fun of Thirtysomething. They had fantasy sequences, dream sequences, they did a Rashomon-inspired episode – with the same event seen through the viewpoint of three separate witnesses. The episode “Melissa and Men” is about Melissa’s desperate loneliness happening at the exact same moment as a career triumph: it is one of my favorite episodes of thirty something, and in one fantasy sequence, Melissa is shown giving a slide show to an audience showcasing all of her failed relationships. Melissa wears a tuxedo, her schtick is Borscht-belt wisecracks. The audience – made up of her friends and family – are dressed in mourning: nobody laughs, they look up at her with compassion and pity. It’s a terrifying scene, straight out of All That Jazz, and it tells the story of loneliness and disappointment FAR better than a more straightforward approach would.
Supernatural is lucky in that it is not hidebound to convention. After all, it is a show about fighting monsters. So while there is “realism”, there are always those little quotation marks about the word. The structure of the show was solid enough that very early on they felt they could afford to mess with what they had set up. I am not sure that Supernatural would have lasted as long as it has without that sense of freedom to mess with the structure. Each episode is new: you just don’t know what you’re going to get, week after week.
So while everyone gets to pull out all the stops creatively in these homage episodes, and film in black-and-white, for example, and research old Warner Brothers monster movies, or completely change the style of filming to mimic old Westerns, or whatever the challenge any given episode brings … what happens alongside all of that (and it’s a somewhat mysterious process) is that the show itself, its underlying emotional architecture, is allowed to operate on multiple intersecting levels, obvious and invisible, almost dream-like in their power and influence. The homages remove Sam and Dean from the world of the show and place them in a familiar-to-us context (Looney Tunes, Frankenstein, whatever), and – almost like an improv game – we get to see how characters we have come to know interact with an environment that WE know so well. They enter OUR world. I don’t know: it’s still mysterious to me, how it all works and why it works so well. It’s a sort of Charlie Kaufman meta-ish commentary on itself and on our culture as a whole, accepting that Sam and Dean are ostensibly part of that culture, and we assume that they are “real” people … and yet here they are, running around in a Dracula movie all of a sudden. It’s a cultural swamp, and Supernatural wants to swim in it.
These homage episodes become creative Mission Statements, then: Here is what WE are interested in. Come along for the ride. I know I’m not the only one who glories in the multitude of cinematic references in Supernatural. It certainly was one of the major hooks for me.
And so in “Playthings,” from the first shot practically, they announce their intentions. If you’ve seen The Shining you get it instantly. If you haven’t, then there’s plenty else for you to look at, but once you GET those references, the pleasure only deepens. You understand what they’re doing, you understand the fun they’re having, the sheer breadth of creativity on display in keeping as close as possible to the original source material (Kubrick’s movie, not King’s novel: there are important differences, and “Playthings” sticks closely to the Kubrick. The only thing missing is the snow.) The most important connection being, of course, the hotel-replica a replica of the maze in the movie.
Stylistically, “Playthings” doesn’t announce itself in a splashy way, like the monster movie episode does, or the X-Files episode, etc., with different opening credits or different music. They hadn’t quite gotten there yet in terms of confidence in what they were doing, maybe they were testing the waters, seeing how far they could go, and perhaps they wanted the references to be submerged and subconscious, working ON the plot from behind-the-scenes rather than anything more visible or obvious (kind of like how “Hibbing 911” was an ode to Bob Dylan).
Dean walking around the hotel with the old guy, looking at pictures, and having a drink in the bar is a perfect example: the scene is exposition, explaining the back-story of the hotel, but what it really was was an homage to Jack Nicholson’s nocturnal surreal wanderings through the Overlook Hotel, his conversations with the old bartender Lloyd in the “Gold Room”, with the light shining up from beneath the bar surface … just as the light shines up through the bar surface in the hotel in “Playthings.” That scene with Dean in the bar, and then walking around with the old guy, are beautiful scenes, beautifully shot, and they work by themselves as Objects of Beauty, they work alone as images, separated from what they might have to do with The Shining. You can appreciate the Beauty without knowing the inspiration for it. But it’s better … so much better … when you know The Shining because then all of those references can unlock associations, flights of fancy, trains of thought like “maybe it’s about this … or maybe what about THAT connection”, thoughts that don’t necessarily lead anywhere, or don’t “add up” to anything, but an episode like “Playthings” isn’t supposed to “add up.” It’s a part of the journey. It’s really a mood-piece, more than anything else. (I have a beef with the whole needing-things-to-add-up way of watching things that seems to be quite prevalent currently, in our age when Inference and Irony has gone so out of style that people link to Onion articles spluttering with outrage, never once thinking to check the source. And then when they are busted on it, they continue with the outrage: “Well, it might as WELL be true.” Or, worse, being pissed they were tricked, and saying something like, “Why isn’t the site labeled as a joke? GOD.” Uhm, yeah, that’s satire. Ugh. It’s a very literal way of approaching any given piece of material, and there are film-makers who operate in that environment almost solely, like Christopher Nolan, who has almost ZERO subtext in his movies. No, not “almost”. NO SUBTEXT. It’s why I find some of his films insufferable.) But Supernatural is all about mood and irony and inference, and so the references in “Playthings” are not A to B, they don’t line up neatly. And there is no satisfaction when you put certain pieces together. You’re still left where you started, with a vague uneasy feeling that things are about to get ugly, that maybe these guys are about to crash and burn, and it’s all filmed so beautifully you don’t even know your own name anymore. That’s “Playthings.”
So the style is both both literal and poetic, real and a dream. Stanley Kubrick in a nutshell (if you could put him in a nutshell). The larger framework of The Shining cracks open the episode in really fun ways, so that what we get in Sam and Dean is the urgency of their bond, their closeness – maybe too close, closer than siblings should be, the way the power flip-flops (Dean on top, then Sam, then Dean, then Sam), and the demands they make on one another. If you only watched “Playthings,” without knowing anything else about the series, you might think that those two guys onscreen were not related, and were straight men slipping away for some hot homosexual action, feeling shameful about it, like the guys in Brokeback Mountain. And protesting too much in the “we’re just brothers” moment because they felt ashamed. And then one of them getting wasted as a way to deal with the shame. I’m just saying: Remove the larger context, and that is the way they are filmed in “Playthings.” I’m not a Wincest person at all, but those tropes are easily perceivable. One of my problems with the “bro-mance” thing, or with “everyone is gay unless proven otherwise” way of looking at things (not in fanfic – of course people should do whatever they want in their own fantasy lives) is that such a viewpoint has a difficult time incorporating and understanding intimacy between men that is not of a sexual nature. (Or, it also has a hard time admitting that sexual attraction IS part of platonic friendship. You don’t have to fuck someone to be like, “I would like to fuck that person.” And that goes on regardless of your sexual orientation.) It’s true that homoerotic subtext has been around since the beginning of cinema, hell, art itself, but in cinema it’s unavoidable because the milieu is so visual, and so sexually-charged because of bodies in movement through space. The Celluloid Closet (a wonderful documentary) has to do with unpacking a lot of those symbols, ignored for decades because … well, you know, the “closet” of the title. These sexual undercurrents exist in all interactions (an acting teacher of mine used to say to us, when we were stuck in a scene, “Every single scene is either Fight or Fuck. Pick one.” It was a great way to try to break through any impasse. You either want to fight the person opposite you, or you want to fuck them. Try one of those objectives, see if they work.) May be too simplistic, but useful nonetheless. I tend to see acting in that way myself, and basically just accept that almost every interaction has a sexual component to it, expressed or otherwise. Sexual fluidity (more so than our strict modern understanding of “orientation”) is one of the wellsprings of art, in general. (I was just babbling about that the other day in this post about Christopher Marlowe and Seamus Heaney’s observation that Marlowe’s sexy-as-hell language and imagery – explicit, not subtextual – and way more fluid and destabilizing than anything that one would call heteronormative – and how that energy opens up space for those that follow. That’s true of most works of art that have any staying power.)
Have any of you seen The Big Year? I keep meaning to write it up. It basically came and went, and nobody really talked about it, but it’s fantastic, and a really beautiful film about a bunch of competitive bird-watchers, but what it’s really about is friendship between men. And how that works, and the difficulties men face with it, especially when in the context of competition. It’s a beautiful counter-point to the Judd Apatow vision of male-bonding which wore out its welcome almost immediately upon arrival. Friendship between men, openness and honesty between men … what does that look like? How do men themselves deal with it, especially if they were raised by someone like John Winchester? Buddy-movies, at their best, help male characters be close to one another, be intimate, be open, and the best DO deal with the fluidity of sexuality that is part of the human condition. Supernatural is really really strong in this arena.
To connect it again to The Shining, which I think everyone on board wants us to do:
In the movie, Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall are married. Theirs is a claustrophobic marriage. Open truthfulness is somehow not possible with those two. She hovers and simpers and whines, and he smolders and eventually goes batshit insane. Nicholson plays a frustrated writer with major writer’s block. Duvall wanders around in long plaid dresses, whining. I don’t think that’s a mischaracterization. (She’s great in the film. It’s a really disturbing and courageous performance.) Nicholson treats Duvall with patience bordering on contempt, at first, until finally he loses his patience until all he has left is contempt and then murderous rage. She seems like a pretty silly person to him (and kudos to Shelley Duvall for being brave enough to actually play her like a rather silly person, hovering around him, annoying him, interrupting him. If the movie works as it’s supposed to, you SHOULD be as annoyed at her as Nicholson is. I mean, the woman does not deserve to get chopped up with an axe … but you can see how he is driven to it. It’s a sick relationship.) The couple are too close to be able to extricate themselves from their particular dance-step: her as hovering nagging wife, him feeling all the pressure to not only be the provider but get his inspiration back. There’s a sexual component to all of it, a buried sexual resentment, a feeling from him that he has been emasculated by his failure, by fatherhood, by her … I mean, there’s a reason people are so obsessed with The Shining that an entire documentary has been made highlighting different crackpot theories (the most crackpot one being that The Shining is Stanley Kubrick’s confession that he helped fake the moon-landing footage in 1969.)
Sam and Dean are not quite at that point, but in the episodes leading up to “Playthings” we start to see how their partnership is too close for either of them to maneuver freely, that maybe the claustrophobia is starting to wear them down. Going back to The Shining, when Jack Nicholson’s character gets a winter-season job as a caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, cut off from the world by snowdrifts, you think: Maybe his wife should have stayed in town. Maybe this was a terrible idea. Maybe marriage and monogamy is too claustrophobic, maybe men and women cannot at ALL get along in such close quarters, and we need outlets other than one another. But marriage is seen as so absolute, one person must meet all of our needs … no wonder most people get divorced. It’s a ridiculously high bar to set. And Sam and Dean are, as Bobby observes soon, like an “old married couple.” Dean snarks back, “Married people can get divorced.” The fact that two brothers are treated as a married couple by everyone they meet – strangers and the people in their lives (and it’s still going on, remembering Sheriff Mills’ comment to Sam that “you two have found each other, most people would love to have what you two have …” or whatever, and Sam’s non-verbal response to the comment, great) – anyway, the fact that they are constantly mistaken for a gay couple, and that everyone treats them as though their bond should never be questioned … I mean, this is the linchpin of the whole show. It feels like their bond should never be questioned, and yet it is constantly questioned. I love that. It provides huge tension.
Even now, mid-way through Season 2, early in the series as a whole, their relationship has started to grate. Dean still feels in charge. His father put him in charge of Sammy. Sam has resisted that, and yet he also relies on it, as we will see – viscerally – in the scene in “Playthings” when he gets wasted.
Connecting Sam and Dean to Nicholson and Duvall is meant to make us question the right-ness of their relationship, is meant to make us wonder if maybe they shouldn’t take a break from each other. Dean’s feelings have gone that way, although he assumes that they should stick together WHILE they take a break. Sam breaks the rules by running off by himself. It is their pattern.
All of this is intensified in unconscious ways by the fact that for the duration of the case in “Playthings,” they stay in a family-owned hotel with deep roots. The hotel has been passed down through generations. Family pictures line the walls. Family heirlooms. Sam and Dean have not emerged from a family like that. Their parents are both dead. They know nothing about their mother’s side of the family, or their father’s for that matter. They grew up in complete lock-down isolation. They have a couple of creased family photographs in their wallets, and there are Legos stuck in the grille of Dean’s Impala, but other than that, they have no roots. Investigating a family with roots that go back a century, who have stayed on the same patch of ground for decades, brings up fascinating reactions in both of them. Dean is the one who has the line speaking that subtext, during his scene with the old geezer, but it’s running like a river throughout. Unspoken, but felt.
Because they present such intimidating and capable faces to the world, that attitude runs deep for them. In some ways, it IS who they are. People like that are sometimes ambushed by their own depths. They avoid confrontation with their own weak spots, their vulnerabilities. Sam gets wasted, on purpose. Maybe to deal with his pain, his fear of going dark side, but maybe, too, so that he is able go into a space of honesty, in vino veritas. Only when really drunk could Sam have the courage to say what he says. Staying in an old weird hotel, surrounded by family heirlooms, makes them feel like orphans. As they are.
And, finally, the real story of “Playthings” is about two sisters, one alive, and one long dead. The dead one has remained a haunting specter, wanting to re-join her sister, at all costs, wanting to stay together. The living sister has spent a lifetime trying to ward her off and keep her out. Now the dead sister has targeted a member of a new generation, using her as a way to keep the family together. The living sister, undone by a stroke, can no longer keep at bay the machinations of her dead sister. Finally, the living sister agrees to sacrifice herself in order that the siblings will get to stay together, in the afterlife of being ghosts, I guess, and the episode ends, hauntingly, with two little girls jumping rope in a misty garret room. Together again, together forever. One does not need a PhD to see the disturbing connections to Sam and Dean.
But for whatever reason, those plots and themes don’t matter to me here. It’s not my area of interest. “Playthings”, instead, is a deep pool of pleasure. It’s cinematic and intelligent, it’s sexy and submerged. There are motivations at work here that I still can’t quite perceive, and every time I watch it I see something new. I treasure it.
Teaser
“Playthings” starts with an impressive shot of the hotel, looking grandiose and singular, a real announcement of Place. It’s not friendly-looking or cozy. It looks intimidating, and wrapped up in itself, wrapped up around its history and its secrets.
Architecture is extremely important in “Playthings”: the location is extraordinary and used beautifully and intricately. Over the course of the episode we get to know the lay of the land: where things are, the hallways, the balconies, what’s around the corner, where the bar is in connection to the lobby, the stairways, the attic hallway. Back to The Shining, in Room 237, the documentary I mentioned, one woman talks about her obsession with the hotel, and how that obsession drove her to create floor plans for it, to try to understand the layout. In so doing, she discovered what she calls “the impossible window” (more here), seen in the back-office scene where Nicholson is interviewed to get the job.
According to her floor plan (and also to what we see on screen), there should not be a window there. The window makes no sense architecturally: that should be a flat window-less wall, because behind there should be the elevator banks, if I am remembering correctly. A lot of the stuff in Room 237 is so crack-potty that I lost interest, but her obsession with architecture caught on. The space is so important in The Shining. The hotel is so huge that it seems we can never orient ourselves, and then we get the repeated scenes of the little boy riding his Big-Wheel around the hallways. If you follow his trajectory, you understand where you are, you understand exactly where you are in connection to all of the other spaces you have gotten to know. And so it’s perfect that there is a window where there should be no window. Maybe you won’t notice it (I sure as hell didn’t), but what I did notice was that the scene made me feel uncomfortable. Everyone was talking small-talk, pleasant and amiable, but the overall effect ended up being sinister and uneasy. Now, of course, after watching Room 237, all I can see in that scene is how strange it is that there is a window there, and that it adds to the feeling that something is not right.
Supernatural has only one standing set at this point, and that’s the roadhouse. Next up, we’ll get Bobby’s house as a regular stop-off point, but Bobby’s house isn’t really shown that much in its entirety: we only really get to know the kitchen and that main room, although there is one scene in the upper hallway at one point: but we never see bedrooms, or bathrooms, or what the upstairs is like. The bunker is a more complete set, and we have discussed in the comments section how we should make up floor plans for the thing. They are still having fun withholding the bunker’s layout from us, while also allowing us to get comfy with what we HAVE seen. This is how you work with space. Up until the bunker, though, outside of Bobby’s house, there are no regular sets. Everything is either a location shoot or a set built in Vancouver. And God do Serge Ladouceur and Jerry Wanek know how to milk a location for every single drop of ambience and power. The angles, the choices, the backgrounds, every single prop, what we see, what is blurred out … These are all used consciously and gorgeously, whether it’s a diner setting or a doctor’s office. The sets don’t look cheap or generic. They look real, like three-dimensional worlds already in full operation when Sam and Dean enter them. That’s what the Hotel needs to be like. It also needs to be scary, ominous, mysterious, with creepy-ass angles. We get all that. That location is milked DRY. I never get sick of all of the proliferating angles and point-of-view shots that give us altnerate views of the lobby, or the restaurant area – that looks COMPLETELY different in the daytime than during Dean’s nocturnal ramblings – but it’s the same damn space. Great!! It’s one of my favorite locations in the whole series.
The Hotel is the most important character and the episode does a great job of orienting us, not to mention underlining and reiterating the architecture with the replica of hotel in doll-house form. What we see in real-life we then see in miniature. Life is occurring out there in the world, but a little girl is also moving her dolls around in the same space. So who’s the puppet? Is there a puppeteer at work? Who’s in charge? Are we in charge of who we get to be, or is Destiny running the show? The Yellow-Eyed Demon re-entered the conversation in “Hunted,” and there’s one shot of the little girl staring into the doll-house (shot from inside the doll-house, so she looks enormous) that makes me think of what life might feel like to Sam and all the other Blue Roses out there. They think they are in charge of themselves, their lives feel real to them, but they are being manipulated from the outside.
The doll-house could be the stand-in for Jack Nicholson’s staring at the model of the maze in The Shining, imagining he sees his wife and son, in miniature, running around in there, lost and panicked. He is the Minotaur.
The teaser gives us a creepy evocative setting, a mood of melancholy, one of the most horrifying deaths ever shown in the history of Supernatural, and also, very important to connecting us to The Shining, two creepy little kids.
I wrote a whole article about creepy kids in cinema, starting with the glorious grand pooh-bah of them all, little Rhoda in The Bad Seed (played by an extraordinary Patty McCormack). But of course, I had to mention the Grady twins in The Shining, who provide some of the most inexplicably terrifying moments in the film. Like, they’re just two little girls in identical blue dresses at the end of the hallway. Why are they so scary? They just ARE, that’s all.
They are meant to call up the famous image of Diane Arbus’ twins.
All of that is at work in the two little girls in “Playthings” (both young actresses are amazing), and one of them is given a line that is a direct echo of the twins calling out to Danny in The Shining.
We get pretty much everything in the teaser, every clue is dropped in plain sight, but presented so casually it takes a while to put it all together.
We see Susan (Annie Wersching) dealing with a guy who is helping them move their stuff. He expresses regret that they are selling the place: his parents and his grandparents both got engaged there. The music is elegiac and creepy. It is the end of an era. She is regretful, distracted. She is watched by the two perfect little girls sitting on the balcony above the lobby. (Again, I am obsessed with the layout. It keeps me awake at night. No, not really. But, yeah. Sort of.)
The two little girls are Tyler (Matreya Fedor), Susan’s daughter, and Maggie (Conchita Campbell), also assumed to be a daughter, and Tyler’s older sister. The episode “stings” us. We don’t know that Maggie is imaginary until halfway through, and Sam and Dean don’t get that memo until almost the very end. It’s beautifully done, and I’ve examined the episode for moments when they slip up, but they never do. The best example is when the two little girls go skittering and giggling through the foyer. Tyler bumps into Sam as she passes by. She is corporeal, then. Sam reacts to being bumped. Maggie is there, too, we see her, but she never touches Sam. It is merely our assumption that two actual little girls run through that lobby.
And here it begins. The little girls watch the moving man walk by with deadpan faces, and afterwards, Tyler whines to her mother, “He’s going to take our toys??” Mother says patiently that they have plenty of toys, still. Maggie, looking murderous, mutters to herself, “Son of a bitch,” and Tyler echoes her, “Son of a bitch.” It is the second “Son of a bitch” that gets the expected reaction, although you don’t notice it the first time through. Tyler fobs off the blame onto Maggie, and Susan indulgently scolds Maggie as well. It’s a great trick. Maggie is CLEARLY real, according to this scene, but when you watch it a second time through, you get that you have just assumed it.
Already, in the mood of the teaser, we get the message of what will be the most important thing coming up, and that is the Hotel itself. It’s filmed lovingly, lingeringly. (Watch for how the camera is always moving: slow pan-ins to the shelves of dolls, a slow pan-in to the doll-house steps, a slight circling movement as Tyler comes to the dollhouse – the camera is always moving, just slightly. Often there are no characters in sight, we just get a slow tracking shot of various hallways, a shelf full of dolls, etc. It gives an eerie effect. Like the objects are alive. Like the Hotel is alive. It’s straight out of The Shining playbook.)
We then see Tyler playing with her doll-house, a gigantic exquisite exact replica of the hotel. She takes a figure and places him in a chair in his room, peering in at him with her gigantic head. She’s like Alice in Wonderland, a monster to the tiny beings surrounding her. She moves on with her serious play, all as old-fashioned dolls (some beautiful, some terrifying) stare down on her. When she goes back to the man’s little room, he is no longer in his chair. She discovers him on the ground floor and his head has been turned totally around.
Maggie is nowhere to be seen, but we don’t notice that the first time around.
Tyler hears her mother’s piercing scream and runs to look down on the lobby from the balcony, through the chandelier. (Architecture. Layout. Orienting us to the lay of the land.) The guy lies sprawled at the foot of the stairs, his head twisted completely around. His expression is one of screaming horror. When Susan calls up at her daughter, “Tyler, don’t look!” I wish she would include me in her warning, because I have no desire to see that either.
1st scene
Peoria, Illinois
I’m going to be real honest.
Besides the holidays and my personal life and my other writing, I think there’s a reason I took so long to get this recap up. I won’t apologize, we all have lives, and I do this in my spare time for fun – and IT IS FUN. But “Playthings” really hits some kind of sweet spot in my psyche, something really really pleasurable, and I think on some level I haven’t wanted to talk about it. Because maybe in talking about it I will lessen the magic and mystery of it. This doesn’t have to do with the plot, or the case, or really any of the scene-work, it’s all good, it’s all compelling television. For me, though, “Playthings” is like a deep pool, sometimes one thing gets reflected up, sometimes the water shivers into refraction and I can’t see squat, sometimes another thing comes into clarity. It’s all part of the same thing. I don’t like to prioritize one reaction over the other. I just try to go with the flow. And I guess that’s challenging to write about.
Because my actual experience of the episode runs along the lines of:
OMG the dark wallpaper and the shadows on Sam’s gorgeous face and look at that weird twinkle in Dean’s eye and what the hell with the shadows in that doll-room and wait, what’s happening in the background with all those portraits and OMG OMG that pool is so creepy and yet so beautiful and what the hell there’s a ball gown hanging on the wall and for some reason that makes me feel erotic pantsfeelings I don’t know why I am not in control of myself I love the lights under the bar and how Sherwin and Dean are lit from underneath and I love the sadness that is also somehow super sexy here …
In other words, in case it’s not clear: The episode feels like Pure Sex to me. I’m sorry if that’s embarrassing to hear. Even more so than any of the more sexually explicit episodes, where Sam or Dean bone some lucky lady (or werewolf, as the case may be) … or even in the darker episodes where we get glimpses of sexual dominance and using people as sexual bait … “Playthings” feels like Sex on a Stick, and I guess I prefer Sex on a Stick to go un-analyzed. Like cheesecake, it is meant to be devoured, not picked apart.
I’ll work through it. But that’s part of what I feel when I watch this first scene. I can barely listen to what they are saying. I am drawn into the color scheme, the dark rust and the green-glass wall-divider, and the paper cups of coffee and their clothes … they both look somehow cozy … which works plot-wise, too, since they’ve been holed up in Peoria for a month tracking down Ava’s disappearance. But they both look sleepy and cozy and there are Henleys involved and there are flashes of intensity, flashes of teasing (that go over well, or don’t), and everything feels extremely intimate. The casualness of true intimacy. There have been a couple of episodes now of separation and stress, arguments and pain, so the way they deal with each other here is like a soothing balm or something, intensified by the presence of a henley.
I realize I sound like a lunatic.
There’s a gender studies feeling to some of the episode, too, or … it lends itself to gender studies analysis, and that’s intensified by all the connections to The Shining (which is, in many ways, about the battle of the sexes). Formal gender studies is not my milieu, but I can feel it at work. There is the totally female world of the household, with its dolls and doll-house, and the four females who live there … no father-figure, no males on the ground except for the servant, and a gown hung on the wall of Dean and Sam’s room, a gown that looks so huge it dwarfs the two of them, the “why do they think we’re gay” conversation, the “You are kind of butch” comment, and then the completely passionate confrontation when Sam is wasted, and clinging up at his brother like a desperate lover. Things are getting all mixed up. There are messages in the environment, symbols, and these things are working ON Sam and Dean, two males who live in a mostly all-male universe. Like I said, not my milieu, and not really my bag, either, but I can feel it operating. To those of you more tuned into that stuff, I look forward to hearing your take.
All of this is intense enough but what puts me over the edge is that as the first scene comes up, and as the camera scrolls over Sam and Dean’s Wall of Ava, we hear “Voodoo Spell” by Michael Burks. It’s such a perfect choice that my soul aches. It connects us to the revelations of “Crossroad Blues,” that’s for sure, and I like to think that Sam is playing the song on the radio, having decided to bone up on all those brilliant bluesmen who make up the fabric of American culture (after being shamed into it by Dean’s monologue about Robert Johnson). Of course the song also works as foreshadowing, plot-wise, and the fact that Sam and Dean will discover that hoodoo spell-work is going on in whitebread Connecticut, but as I said earlier, “Playthings” for me works outside its plot, even outside the characters. It’s a swamp of emotional associations. There’s something going on here that is not literal and is 100% psychological.
First, though, let’s take a look at the glorious slow pan across Dean and Sam’s serial-killer-homicide-detective-where-the-hell-is-Ava wall. Just like with John’s serial-killer-wall, there is some great detail revealed when you slow it down into freeze-frame.
The Post-It notes. Their handwriting. I love handwriting. Instead of searching for monsters, they are searching for Ava. The Post-it note about where Scott was killed is overlaid on a neighborhood map which looks, huh, suspiciously like a MAZE, don’t it.
The motel room here is dark, womb-like, manly, nothing whimsical. It’s like an old-fashioned study where men in smoking jackets would have a tumbler of Scotch at the end of the day. Sam is on the phone with Ellen, looking at his laptop, immersed in the search for Ava. He feels responsible for Ava (as well he should. That guilt is what propels him. Look out when either Sam or Dean feel guilty about something. They will do anything to make things right.)
Dean enters, bearing coffee. To go gender-studies for a second, it is the stereotypically female support-my-great-man-as-he-works role. Sam has moved somewhere beyond Dean, you can see it in how Dean takes in his brother, makes short comments, kind of letting Sam do what he needs to do, keeping his observations to himself (momentarily). Because he knows his brother, and because he would behave the same way if he had told Ava to go home she’d be safe there, he would act the same way. Their stopover in Peoria, then, has been initiated by Sam, and gone along with by Dean (and not in a grudging way. Dean gets it, he gets the importance of Ava, even as he can’t stand what it all might imply about Sam.)
Look how beautiful.
Look how specific.
Dean is almost gentle, as he hands the coffee to Sam. Sam changes the subject, mentioning that Ellen brought up a possible case in Cornwall, Connecticut. A guy fell down the stairs, his head turned completely around. Dean is only mildly interested, because he’s listening on a deeper subtextual level (as he usually is to Sam, part of the intrusive “let’s-take-our-emotional-temperature-every-other-minute” thing that they do.) Sam wanting to work, that it would be good for them to work? Who is this creature? (This is the kind of switch-back that gets a little repetitive sometimes in Supernatural, but it hasn’t had a chance to get repetitive yet at the time of “Playthings.” These moments are about their Roles and how their Roles have been Set Up, since they were kids: Dean the gung-ho workaholic, Sam the kid to be protected, and also the one who Wanted Out. These roles are still in operation, and still cause problems, or, at the very least, double-takes.)
And, as most New Englanders know from grade-school ghost stories, and now most Supernatural fans know, Cornwall Connecticut is a famously and distinctly creepy supernatural place. You can read more about it here.
Besides all of this, they are both shot like the gorgeous sexy romantic leads that they are, which creates an intimacy with the audience, an intimacy that feels easy and natural as opposed to in-your-face and insistent.
I can try to work out what I mean by that, but I’ll just let that stand. It has to do with the Importance of Beauty, and the “We Had Faces Then” conversation, way back in the “Shadow” episode. I don’t want to be misunderstood: This is not about them being good-looking. Their good looks are a dime a dozen in the world of Hollywood. I’m not interested in that.
It is more about
1. How they are filmed
and
2. How they the actors understand and work with their own good looks.
We’ve discussed this before, how the show treats them sexually. It’s not overt. The Sam-as-Centaur moment stands out. That’s a beefcake shot. Dean is never treated in a beefcake way. He’s more cheesecake. These are deep conversations, and sorry to keep linking to things that explain it, but I do think it’s helpful to define (at least) my own terms. In this conversation with my good friend Mitchell, we discuss Burt Reynolds, among other things, and we talk about his naked Cosmo spread, which is “cheesecake” as opposed to “beefcake” and that is not how men were treated then, or really ever, and it started to change the way Hollywood treated men. Now, you get tons of “cheesecake” shots of the latest Hottie, but back in the day, men were not treated this way. That gender-split is still in operation in Supernatural. The way the show treats their bodies is fascinating. They’re always so covered up with clothes. We rarely see their chests, and when we do, I’m interested in the emotions that go beyond OMG hot bods. Because it’s deliberate, what they’re doing, and the actors are aware of it, and collaborate in it. Both Ackles and Padalecki get it. Dean takes off his clothes, and he looks soft, revealed, vulnerable. Cheesecake-shot. Sam takes off his clothes and he seems formidable, strong, impenetrable. Beefcake-shot.
Hollywood was born and made itself in how it figured out how to film its female stars. D.W. Griffith, controversial though he may be, went in close close close to Lillian Gish in Birth of a Nation, and, voila, modern cinema was born. There are those who dismiss all of this as “male gaze” and that just saddens me so much. It assumes that I, as a woman, can’t also glory in a woman’s beauty, her perfect form, her performative persona, that I need women to be covered up, or somehow protected from the “leer” of the male gaze. Sure, some male gaze is leering, but some is absolutely appreciative. A leer can be instructive and artistic too. Men have complicated feelings about women, and that goes into their art. Have at it, bros. Lots of GREAT art has been done in that arena. Whatever way you slice it, the “gaze”, male or otherwise, is the engine on which Hollywood is run: men started out playing second-banana to the ladies, and that is still the case a lot of the time. I talked about this a lot in my first post about Jensen Ackles, connecting his performance (and, more importantly, how he is shot), with Lana Turner’s famous first entrance in The Postman Always Rings Twice, a perfect example of what cinema was basically MADE to do, and that was prioritize what we look at, and how we look at it. Cinema was born when it realized it was not theatre. The early silent films, for the most part, were still filmed in proscenium, glorified plays. People entered from one side, played their scene, exited from the other. But the innovators like Griffith and Eisenstein and Dreyer understood that cinema was not about action, it was about psychology, and the close-up is the one difference between film and theatre, the one thing that theatre cannot do, and that is CONTROL where you look. The directors of Superantural CONTROL where the audience looks, and controls HOW we see things, and the results are beautiful and messy and moody and emotional. The action almost becomes irrelevant, when put on the scale beside the MOOD created.
The scene work here is beautiful and intricate, unexpected and true. If you did not know they were brothers, you would think they were a couple. I don’t think that’s an error, I think it’s deliberate. I am not saying the subtext there is then literal: I think that’s a misunderstanding of visual cues and symbols. What these “tropes” suggest is intimacy, and the fact that it reads as couple-ish is deliberate, because the close-ness of the brothers is, actually, a problem, and also their salvation. It is the engine of the whole thing.
Dean commenting on Sam wanting to get back to work, a gentle tease, “I thought you’d be looking out rainy windows …” Sam cracking a smile but then getting back to his intensity, his feeling that he needs to “save as many people as he can.” He is referring to “going dark side,” suggesting that he realizes now that it is an inevitability. The search for Ava has shown him his Date with Destiny. This puts a fire under Sam. Dean can relate, but again, he relies on teasing to take the edge off. “I’m officially uncomfortable now,” says Dean. Sam laughs again, with almost a shy upward-glance at his brother.
I am still discovering things in this scene and don’t really care to unpack it anymore although I look forward to hearing the thoughts of others.
There’s a gentleness at work here, a give, that, again, I find sexy. Or, sexual, to be totally clear.
2nd scene
Sam and Dean emerge from the Impala, in front of the Pierpont Inn on what looks like a biting rainy type of day. They are peeked at by the camera from beyond the gate, they are stared at from across the driveway, the camera stalking them like a jealous lover. As they emerge from the car, they’re viewed through the little metal carousel-thingie over to the side, a visual foreshadowing of when the thing goes haywire later on.
Dean is thrilled at the sight of the hotel. It’s a nice place, and they are going to get to stay there. Good times! A haunted house. It’s going to be a great gig! (Kind of like Jack Nicholson feeling hopeful and excited about his caretaking job and how much freedom and comfort it will allow him. Keep dreaming, pal.) Sam is grimmer, more businesslike. He’s got a lot on his mind. It’s so not like Sam, but he’s probably already itching for a cocktail. Things are getting intense. Meanwhile, Dean goes off into a reverie about Daphne in Scooby Doo. Whispering to himself, “Love her.”
It was Helena who described Dean Winchester as “Beowulf and Scooby Doo” and I think that definition stands as the ultimate explanation of the character and his intricacies.
And boy does Sam have good eyes. Like crazy good to clock that quincunx on the inside of the standing vase by the door.
I mean, really? I get they’re good investigators but that’s a stretch. I do love the moment he sees it though, and calls out to Dean to check it out. Dean looks at it and murmurs, “Five spot.”
I have no idea what he is talking about but I know that HE knows what he is talking about and I love it when they are good at what they do.
They walk inside, and we get a very interesting view of them in the lobby area, with the balcony and its window above it shining down, so you get, again, a lay of the land. Susan is welcoming and yet slightly sad, telling them that they may be their last guests. The hotel is closing. Sam and Dean both have the spidey-sense going.
Then comes the awkward moment when Susan assumes that they are antiquers and that they are a couple. Comedy ensues. A symphony of behavior ensues. Dean is taken aback, Sam isn’t, but her assumption that they will want a king-size bed changes everything, and they both splutter – “No, no … we’re brothers. We’re brothers.” She’s mortified. Dean has been thrust into a wormhole of gender anxiety which Ackles plays like the subtle comedic mastermind that he is. He is worried. He doesn’t get it. “What did you mean when you say we look the type?”
You can see his eyes glance down at his clothes. (And watch her face: right before the camera cuts away, her eyes go up to his hair. It’s hilarious.) This isn’t a new thing for him or for Sam. People across the nation, working motel-front-desks, assume they are a couple. It happens all the time. Dean is so discombobbled that Sam has to take over the interaction, and asks her about the vase outside and its history. She’s like, “Don’t ask me.”
Dean has not recovered.
What is great (and funny) about the moment is that he is not offended, but confused. Dean has a Burlesque Act, remember, and much of it is unconscious, he uses it to survive the world and the Leering Male/Monster Gaze that comes at him constantly. But then when this regular woman seems to make all these assumptions about him, he is taken aback. How the hell is she getting a gay antiquer from me in my leather jacket? Is it the necklace? What is it?? There is worry about what he is putting out there, his self-presentation.
Mortifying moment over, Susan hands him his credit card, saying, “Thank you, Mr. Mahogoff,” such a stupid joke, which is why I appreciate it. My old good friend Pat McCurdy — (Obnoxious self-promotion alert: Years ago, Pat wrote a duet for the two of us. We recorded it in a little recording studio in Milwaukee. It’s on one of his albums. Wanna hear it? We were kindred spirits.) — has written a song about the various euphemisms for masturbation, and it is a crowd favorite. There’s something cathartic about singing out all of those phrases. He wrote verses for male and female. I am mainly disappointed he did not use my favorite euphemism on the female side: “dialing zero.” (I can’t take credit for that, an old flame of mine used the term, throwing it at me during a phone call when I was clearly full of anxiety – “You’re stressed out, just take a bath and dial zero, you’ll be fine” – I was like: What the hell are you talking about? Call the Operator? How will that help me? He explained, and I am STILL laughing. Of course one would need to have grown up using rotary phones to even understand the reference.) Using “Mr. Mahogoff” as a name on a credit card is so juvenile I adore it. Dean makes a joke about masturbation later, all part of the sexual-intimate-too-intimate swamp of “Playthings,” so masturbation is swimming in the subtext from the start.
Perhaps Dean’s gender-anxiety is so acute that he does not catch the reference to The Shining when she gives him a key to their room, “Room 237.” Dean has made tons of references to The Shining in the series thus far, even resorting to calling Jack Nicholson “my man Jack” (stop it, Dean), but of course I think the Shining references here were meant to be hidden and subtextual as opposed to admitted outright. Anyway, whatever, Dean, still perturbed and worried about why everyone thinks he’s gay, takes the Room 237 key, all as an old geezer sidles up behind them to take their bags, saying, “Let me guess. Antiquers?”
Aaaand scene.
The old geezer is named Sherwin (John R. Taylor), and he drags their military-style duffel bag up the stairs, all while spouting a monologue about the history of the inn. Presidents slept there. His parents worked there. He grew up here. It’s such a shame. All as the bag clanks up the fancy-schmancy stairs – it’s probably all of their shot-guns and weaponry.
The Sherwin-dragging-the-bags-sequence is a clear nod to The Shining, with the expansive tour given in the start of the film, a way to show the audience the lay of the land, and to get the backstory. The camera moves slowly, ahead of Sherwin and “the boys,” practically leading them down the hallway to Room 237 (which, naturally, is the key to the mystery in The Shining.) Sherwin is not sinister. He’s a kindly old man, who also is not shy about standing there with his hand out, waiting for a tip. He’s almost disappointed in Dean. Come on, sonny, I just dragged your bag of guns down a hallway, I’m too old for this.
Once ensconced in Room 237, Sam settles down to work, getting out all of his papers on the case. Dean, though, still a bit perplexed and disturbed by TWO separate people mistaking him for a gay antiquer, looks around the room. What he sees does not comfort his mood. In his comfy henley, he stares up at the gigantic stretched-out gown on the wall (kind of like something Amanda Wingfield would wear to the dinner with The Gentleman Caller in Glass Menagerie. Just riffing. Don’t mind me.) It is absolutely ridiculous and you can practically hear the snickers of Jerry Wanek and production design/set-decoration. It’s the most random thing possible, and it makes it look like the gown was sewn for a woman who is 8 or 9 feet tall. The Female LOOMS over the Male, in other words. Dean is dwarfed, completely. I love his quiet murmur, his back to the camera, staring up at it, “What the …”
Sam hasn’t even given it a glance. It’s interesting to me that Sam is less concerned with presentation, in terms of gender. This is made most explicit in the Western episode, when poor Dean is so eager to appear manly and old-fashioned and Western that every single person clocks him as a faker on his journey through that episode. It is the most vulnerable Dean has ever been in the entirety of the series, and that includes his big cry-face closeups. It’s almost unbearable to watch him in that episode. You just want to tell him to relax. But Sam fits right in, without worrying about it, without having to “show” anything. He doesn’t need the costume. He “fits in” with the stereotypical male world, far easier than Dean ever has. BUT, and this is an important but, when they are clocked as gay, or when Sam is forced to pretend he is gay, even for a second, he queens it up a bit. He can’t seem to help it. Dean never does. Dean often sets Sam up as the butt of the “this guy is so gay” jokes, which he does in this episode when he gives Sam a fictional doll collection at home. But it happens in the Christmas episode, too, when he sets Sam up as a Christmas-wreath-obsessive. It’s all part of the teasing of brothers, sure, but it is Sam’s reactions that I find so interesting. Dean somehow is NOT as susceptible as Sam is, and I’m still not sure how that works, but I do like thinking about it. When Sam has to pretend he’s gay, there is an alteration in his behavior, a sort of “commenting on” the gay-ness that is not present at all in Dean in the same circumstance. This is a swamp of associations, and I’m not expecting clarity, I don’t think it’s BUILT for clarity or explanation. How these guys understand gender will never be at the forefront of their own consciousness. It’s not the world they come from, it’s irrelevant in their world-view. But it’s certainly fascinating for me to think about, as an observer.
“That’s normal,” says Dean, staring up at the dress, and I’m dying laughing. No. It’s not normal. I would be freaked out by it, too, although it’s made for a lady. It’s okay, Dean, it’s okay, relax.
Sam reads out some information about the case. Dean, overwhelmed by the monstrous gigantic shape of the dress on the wall, isn’t even listening. Maybe he wonders: Why did they put us in THIS room? Does EVERY room have a huge ball-gown pinned up on the wall? Or did they think I, as a gay man, would really really like the gown? Should I be taking this personally?
Dragging himself away from the Outsized Female on the wall, he goes over to his bed, sits down, and then collapses into it, the springs giving way. Classic Ackles burlesque. It startles him, annoys him, he is thrown off his game, or … he is STILL thrown off his game. He hasn’t gotten back ON the game since he was mistaken … TWICE … for a gay antiquer. Maybe he needs to cut his hair differently, he saw how she glanced at his hair. He doesn’t know what he’s putting out there. He needs to adjust. Pronto. Sam is not concerned at all. Dean vows to get him back for this later (which he does. That’s how I read the “He has a doll collection” scene. Payback for what goes on here.)
The conversation that follows is one of those stock SPN conversations: “what are we dealing with?” “who’s doing the hoodoo?” “Could it be Sherwin?” “Is it connected to the sale of the hotel?” These conversations are built into every episode involving a case, and could easily become rote. But they aren’t because of what the actors bring to it (also, the directors allow for pauses. Extremely important, in terms of creating a certain kind of contemplative pace. These conversations usually do feel like brainstorming sessions, both of them thinking, turning ideas over, throwing ideas away. It’s a way to watch them collaborate.)
Dean participates, but the anxiety is never far from his mind. And he finally speaks it out, attempting a joking tone, “Of course the most troubling question is why do these people assume we’re gay.”
(Yes, Dean, that is the MOST troubling question. Screw the guy whose head turned totally around, the MOST troubling thing at the Pierpont Inn is that everyone thinks you’re gay.)
But it is Sam’s calm response that is great: “You are pretty butch. They probably think you’re overcompensating.”
You can feel him teasing Dean, that’s definitely there. He’s not reassuring Dean in any way. But he is also making an observation. The brothers don’t sit around and talk about their Sexual Personae (thank you, Camille Paglia) with one another. Why would they? People who do that are kind of douchey anyway. It’s kind of squicky, you’re talking about someone else’s identity and also how they “present” to the world. That’s not really a siblings kind of dynamic, which is what makes this moment so fascinating.
But even more fascinating is Dean’s response. To beat a dead horse into the ground, this is all Ackles. This is a CHOICE. He may have had other reactions in the one or two takes they did, there isn’t enough time for more, but this was one of his choices, and this was the one that made the cut.
He laughs, in surprise at what Sam just said to him. Nobody really talks to him like that. This is not a usual topic of conversation at ALL. Maybe the last time someone made an observation about how he “presented” to the world was his father, a long time ago. Other than that, the only things who make comments about Dean’s persona and how he appears to them are monsters, and it’s always in a threatening context, so one can hardly blame him for not wanting to be commented upon. As the series goes on, we will meet more and more people who “get to be” intimate with the tough-cookie Dean Winchester. Bobby is “allowed” to make observations, Lisa is also allowed, Castiel is (sort of) allowed, although Dean feels superior to Castiel because Castiel has no life experience, so Dean takes his observations with a gallon of salt. Benny is allowed to talk to Dean about himself. But other than that? You don’t get to do that with him. It’s extremely threatening for him. We saw it in “Everybody Loves a Clown” when Ellen tries to be sympathetic about John’s death. Bam goes the door in her face. People who don’t know him, one-off characters, often make observations to his face, and it always cracks him a little bit. I am thinking of my girl in “The Mentalists”, whose observations about who he presents as in the world are met with confusion at first (You can see all that?) and then openness and accessibility. She takes the right tone. She does not judge. She is just observing. She’s also adorable.
So to break down the choice here (kind of against my will, because the moment is so pleasing without talking about it):
He doesn’t balk, or do a double-take, connoting “What the hell did you just say to me?” He doesn’t say, “Overcompensating? What the hell?” There is no defense mechanism at all.
He laughs, turns inward for a second, saying to himself, “Right” (fascinating, awkward, almost a way to buy time for himself, to figure out what to say next), and then glances back up to Sam, still laughing a bit. It is an extremely vulnerable moment. He doesn’t seem hurt or pissed. He seems busted. And Sam is safe for him, Sam is not judging him even though the words may seem like judgment. They aren’t. They’re just an observation. You present as pretty butch, dude, you know it, I know it, so maybe people assume you’re overcompensating. That’s probably what’s going on. You know I’m right, come on, you can’t hide from ME, pal. Sam isn’t saying Dean IS overcompensating, but that it presents as such.
Dean’s ideas of masculinity are tortured, although I don’t see him in the way that a lot of, say, some of the folks on Tumblr I’ve run into seem to. I won’t belabor the point, I’ve beaten it into the ground already. I don’t see him as a “womanizer”, at least not in the way it seems to be thrown around. “Womanizing” connotes someone getting used, and I see his hook-ups as mutual-using, the best of both worlds, really. If more people had happy-shamefree-sex-times, the world would be a better place. Sex isn’t just supposed to operate in a monogamous relationship. There’s a prudish quality to some of the commentary about him, a judgmental attitude towards promiscuity (even when there’s consent involved, and even when condoms are involved, as there always are with Dean) that is a turnoff for me, and also one of the reasons I decided to write about him, before I ever thought of doing re-caps. I admit I take that aspect of Dean personally, since my survival techniques in my own sometimes-tortured life, have looked like his, and it has worked for me, and I recognize myself in some of that. So I’m coming at it from a personal place, as I imagine those who interpret his behavior as callous “womanizing” are coming from their own personal place. But there are layers in all of this, of course, beautiful Henley-covered layers. If you picture John Winchester’s reaction to the delicacy of his son, the emotional delicacy I mean, his clear sensitivity, his wear-heart-on-sleeve thing, as well as the sexual hothouse vibe he puts out, probably from a young age … and how John would have interpreted it … I don’t think it’s a done deal that John would have judged it, although he might have. But we do know that John used it, even worse than judging it. He didn’t use Sam in the same way, and not just because Sam was the younger one, but because Sam didn’t give off the unstable fluctuating open sexuality that Dean did. John clocked it early. I don’t think it’s as black-and-white as Dean is gay and lives his life in the closet. Have at it with your fanfic, that’s what fanfic is for, but that’s not what I see in the performance. It’s too literal for me. I think that he is suggestible and open, an erotic muse, pan-sexual in a way, a person who suggests sexual things to other people (and monsters and demons, et al), merely by entering a room. He’s Marlene Dietrich. He’s Brigitte Bardot. He’s Elvis Presley. And Dean knows it on some level, uses it, but it’s still all pretty subconscious and automatic.
So Sam is clocking him on something, in a gentle “just making an observation” way, and Dean’s reaction shows that Sam hit the nail on the head.
He looks about 12 years old.
3rd scene
In “Playthings”, scenes lead into one another with camera movements, long gliding camera movements, introducing this or that different space to us. It’s the clearest nod to The Shining, especially those low to the ground tracking shots, a direct replica of little Danny’s careening through the hallways of the Overlook Hotel.
Compare to …
Dean and Sam stroll along that upper hallway, and once again, with all of the objects around them, all of the lamps and tables and portraits, Sam sees another quincunx, buried within another vase on a table. Good eyes, Sam, seriously! Knowing they need to ask more questions of Susan about the hotel and her connection to it, the knock on the door marked “Private.”
There is no privacy in Supernatural.
Doors are meant to be opened. The Shining is all about doors opening too. The movie is full of doors, doors closed, doors opening, doors opened halfway, ajar, suggesting terrible things beyond. There’s a reason it says ‘PRIVATE’ on that door, but Sam and Dean sweet-talk (not really) their way in anyway. You can see Susan does not want to let them in, and they convince her. It’s skeevy! But neither of them have boundaries either, with each other or with the world and the things they hunt … and “Playthings”, for me, somehow – in its construction, its long low tracking shots, its slow pan-ins to disparate objects … somehow the whole thing destroys MY boundaries. That’s what those camera movements set out to do, to create a world, weave a web, trap you in it. I know I keep saying “Sam and Dean are grown men” but I think it’s so accepted that these guys are joined at the hip that it is important, on occasion, to acknowledge just how weird their situation is, how unnatural, how claustrophobic. We REALLY get that later, when Sam gets wasted, and the camera moves in so close to both of them that it completely destabilizes the entire relationship.
And here is where Dean gets back at Sam for the “butch” comment, and maybe, subconsciously, tries to get back at Susan for making the observation in the first place. He’s having a little fun with his persona now, in order to get what he wants. He’s free with it. Fine, I’m a gay antiquer, and “this one over here loves dolls”, and etc.
Dean is only able to beg (and he does beg) because he is doing so on Sam’s behalf. His gay lover’s behalf, in other words. Sam is mortified, suddenly looking like the little brother that he actually is, and Dean throws gleeful looks at him, completely wrapped up in his act, having a blast, especially when he sees Sam’s pissed-off expression.
Sam’s male-ness is impenetrable whereas Dean exudes penetrability in the way females do. I’m talking stereotypes now. I am not sure if I would have loved the show as much as I do if it didn’t “go there” in these psycho-sexual gender-roles ways. It’s played for humor, but it’s also commenting on something, commenting on the perception we have in terms of gender, especially since these guys are in the Iconic Tough Guy Tradition. Those Tough Guy movies in the past always had homoerotic subtext (or almost always did: note the relationship between Cary Grant and Thomas Mitchell in Only Angels Have Wings. Cary Grant plays an obvious big straight guy in the picture (the kind of guy who also may be said to be “overcompensating”). His best friend, Kid, is played by Thomas Mitchell, and Mitchell is CLEARLY playing the relationship as one of unrequited love on his part.
His unrequited love is made explicit in one scene when he and Bonnie Lee ( Jean Arthur), who is Grant’s love interest – commiserate on how to make it through the times when they know Grant is up in the air making a dangerous flight in his airplane. Here’s the exchange:
Bonnie Lee: You love him, don’t you, Kid?
Kid Dabb: Yes, I guess I do.
Bonnie Lee: Why can’t I love him the way you do? Why couldn’t I sneer when he tries to kill himself, feel proud when he doesn’t? Why couldn’t I be there to meet him when he gets back? Why couldn’t I… What do you do when he doesn’t come back when you expect him to?
Kid Dabb: I go nuts.
Bonnie Lee: Gee whiz, you’re a great help.
Can you see now why I was putting off this re-cap? MY MIND GOES EVERY WHICH WAY when watching “Playthings.” It’s too much! Give me a rest! Please!
When Sam and Dean enter her private apartment, basically against her will, the point of view shifts drastically, to that of a child. There are terrifying leering dolls in the foreground. Dean pretends he is not freaked out. “That’s not creepy at all.” Susan laughs. Just like the huge swooping gown on his wall, Susan’s room is an homage to Girlhood. Dolls and doll-houses and little girls and tea parties and little rocking chairs, and Dean looks like a giant amongst these little delicate things. He bumbles around in the Female World of Objects, clumsy and freaked out, but drawn to it and intrigued.
Sam is drawn to the doll-house, which looms in the foreground of his shot, impressive and detailed, taking up a huge amount of space in the room. Talk about surrounding yourself with the past. This goes beyond having family photos on the wall. This is a monument to the past, a desire to re-create the past in miniature, re-live it. The doll-house is totally obsessive. The hair on Sam’s neck is probably rising up, there’s something really off about all of this, not to mention the quincunxes sprinkled throughout the house in totally-invisible-yet-visible-to-him spots.
Tyler has joined them. Dean tries to be open when she approaches, but he looks awkward. Sam, too, seems awkward, as he asks her about the broken doll. Dealing with kids is not natural, or maybe it’s because she’s a little girl. They don’t quite know how to talk to her. She’s forthcoming, though. She’s babbling about Maggie and Grandma Rose. At the name “Grandma Rose,” there’s a slow zoom-in to one of the dolls (the camera has a life of its own throughout, taking us away from the people and into the architecture and objects), and then, startlingly, we see an old woman in some room, seated in a chair, silhouetted, the light around her.
It’s a direct replica of a scene in Psycho, of the vision of Norman Bates’ mother, the key to the whole thing. Here’s how Bates’ Mum is shot:
It’s a strange omniscient moment, creepy and haunting, showing us something Sam and Dean can’t know, the shot whispers a secret in our ear. Susan interrupts the question about Grandma Rose, no, they can’t talk to her, she’s very sick right now, she can’t take visitors. Her reaction brings both Sam and Dean up short, Dean shot from below, from Tyler’s point of view, beautiful and heroic-looking, open and vulnerable, with light on the side of his head.
Naturally, Grandma Rose has piqued their curiosity. As they walk back down the hall towards Room 237 with its Looming Gigantic Femininity dwarfing their essential male-ness, the two of them are placed off-center. It’s extremely weird framing, making everything look unstable. It’s like “the impossible window” in The Shining. Even if you are not clocking the architecture specifically, something tells you that all is not well.
They’re talking about dolls and hoodoo and hidden Grannies. Dean gives out assignments. He’s going to find out more about “boomin’ Granny” (which, bless him for the reference …)
.. and tells Sam to look up obits, researching if she’s ever “whacked” anyone before. Sam nods, Yup, sounds like a plan, and they go their separate ways, Dean walking off, giving his parting shot, “Don’t go surfing porn, that’s not the kind of whacking I mean.”
Brotherly teasing, bordering on inappropriate, like, please stop shaming me about that one time I watched Casa Erotica and you busted me, honest to GOD, let me have some BOUNDARIES, but it’s also a callback to Dean’s comment to Coddling-Predator-Gordon about how Sam feels guilty surfing Internet porn. There’s a weird lack of boundaries in both: that he would say that to Gordon, that he would then joke about it with Sam. I like the continuity, whatever the hell it means. It’s also just a joke, I realize, and gives us yet another opportunity to see Padalecki get frustrated and pissed, which is always entertaining. Sam is such a huge target. He’s capable and competent but Dean can “get” him. Sibling stuff. It’s also a joke because of COURSE Sam wouldn’t check out of the job they were doing to surf for porn. Of COURSE he’s more responsible with time-management than that! (Which, then, is called back to later when Sam DOES behave irresponsibly and gets wasted mid-case. So it’s all connected.)
Working the long arc: Dean’s burlesque has a way of taking over, and his burlesque is very strong in “Playthings.” He’s busted on his persona, he tailspins into anxiety, he keeps obsessing over it, and keeps getting back at Sam for the comment. Not in vicious ways, but just to have a little fun with his big-target little-brother. But put that scene-stealing Burlesque aside and watch Padalecki working his own long arc. These are the invisible arcs and motivations that are so important to the show and are completely in the hands of the actor. Up until now, the two of them have been talking about hoodoo, quincunxes, the case, as well as Dean’s sexuality. But underneath all of that, which we saw in that intense first scene, is Sam’s dread and worry: Can he be saved? Is it too late? Can his brother help? What is going to happen? What is he going to turn into? Will he be able to stop it?
It’s difficult because of how their relationship is set up (they don’t talk about stuff, Dean is the “take care of it” guy) and also because Dean is burlesquing his way through every moment. It’s almost like you would have to sit Dean down and say, “would you please stop? I’m having some ISSUES here.” That’s the symbiosis of the relationship. Dean’s burlesque is so strong in “Playthings” not only because of the ball-gown looming on the wall but because of Sam’s completely unspoken struggle: Dean is reacting to it. Strongly and unconsciously.
These types of beats should not be attempted by amateurs. It takes professionals.
4th scene
A beautifully-put-together sequence, I’m in awe of it. We start off in the foyer again, with Susan signing over the hotel to some dude, asking him what they plan on doing with it. He says they plan on demolishing it. She is dismayed. Oh.
Then we cut to Tyler, playing by the doll-house, humming “Ring Around a Rosy” to herself, the camera circling her from above, her and her tea set. (Watch the camera moves in each shot: they all go together, each one a note making up a chord. There are multiple scenes here, but because of how it’s shot the impression is given that it’s all one thing.)
Tyler moves to the dollhouse, and we get an incredibly detailed view of the interior. She has placed a male doll in one of the rooms, sitting on his bed. The camera moves in on him slowly, and then we switch to the real guy, the guy we just saw, sitting in his own room on the bed, loosening his tie. Over all of this we hear Tyler humming.
It’s all presented as part of a game. People are dying. Little girls are in charge of the fate of others, using their girlie toys.
Then, there is another incredible shot of Tyler, looming in the open space of the doll-house, staring in at the doll, who is now hanging from the ceiling fan. She’s a little girl, but imagine seeing that at your window. You’d scream your head off.
She’s the Minotaur now. Or at least that is how she is presented. Reminiscent of …
The scene closes out with a shot of the real man, seen through the ceiling fan, strung up by his own tie, still struggling (horrible), struggling until he finally goes still.
Gorgeous.
5th scene
I am trying to put the timeline together. When Dean and Sam visited the Private apartment, it was daylight. It was also still daylight when the guy who just hung himself checked in. But hours have passed since then when we pick up the action. It’s nighttime, and Sam peeks out the window at the EMTs taking the body out of the hotel. Dean is down on the front steps of the hotel, but where has he been all this time? When Dean returns to Room 237, Sam is trashed. Has Dean had dinner in the big empty restaurant? Wandered the grounds a bit? And what was happening with Sam during all that time? Did he Google around for a while, before finally being unable to hold back his desire for oblivion?
I don’t need these questions answered. I’m not disturbed by questions, especially not in an episode like “Playthings” which SUGGESTS way more than it outright TELLS. I like the gap. I like that they have been doing shit off-screen for a while, and when we re-join them, both of them are in totally different headspaces.
Sam doesn’t appear drunk when he is at the window. But if you weren’t picking up on his long arc in the episode, the feeling of dread and inevitability, it might be confusing. What’s up with Sam?
Meanwhile, on the front steps, I love how Ackles plays the small scene with Susan. The beauty is in the details and the subtlety. Another guy has died. He is deep in thought, he is concerned, his eyes are thinking thinking thinking, and he’s listening listening listening, and when she says “I don’t understand” he suddenly zooms his focus in on her: “What?” It’s a great investigative moment, a “tell me more” intensifying of interest and focus.
She offers to give them a refund and Dean says, “I don’t scare that easily.”
Later in the episode, Dean shows exasperation with Susan’s slowness to understanding. He even calls her “sister” at one point, a clear sign of his impatience. (And thank goodness, because Tyler was, at that moment, hovering over the pool with her imaginary friend. So it’s a good thing he smacked Susan around a bit. Kinda like this.
It’s for your own good, sister, we don’t have much time!
But here, he is the epitome of accessibility and openness.
6th scene
Here is where Beeson and Ladouceur have the most fun, in my opinion. The next thing we see is Sam through the open doorway of his motel room, the key (with its red plastic label dangling) still in the lock. Maybe the most famous shot in The Shining, replicated.
My Movie Nerd Self could not be happier.
Along with The Shining connection, Sam seen in this way, the back of his head to the camera, is almost like Grandma Rose upstairs (or, Norman Bates’ mother). There’s a malevolence to a shot like that. He looks totally mysterious, unknowable, closed to us. We can’t get inside there with him, it is the back of his head. This is the moment where the episode shifts, where it lays out its emotional cards. It’s a hell of a scene, brilliantly played by both.
Very rarely do two men get to play such a scene together. It shivers with danger and intimacy and the sense that everything is too close, too much. Normally men are more formal with one another, even in macho movies where it’s all about male-bonding. Actually, especially in those movies, where male sense of self is propped up by the other males who regard him as cool and tough and impenetrable … etc. Male identity in those movies requires a Hall of Mirrors. The really good buddy movies, like Butch Cassidy (the most famous example) play with those expected tropes, and suffuse it all with beauty and the possibility of a kind of intimacy that men can never know, outside of wartime conditions. I’m not saying that’s reality and that’s how men live out in the world – that’s not the case – but in terms of their representation in cinema, it often IS that limited.
A scene like this is usually played by a man and a woman, and usually characters who are lovers. An intense and emotional conversation, under the influence of alcohol, where one person falls apart and the other one tries to hold everything together, and the emotional stakes are high on both sides, and there’s lots of touching, and holding onto each other’s faces, and grabbing onto collars, and begging and pleading, and saying “Promise me … promise me …”
Men don’t do this. Not like this. And, to bring it back to specifics: Sam and Dean don’t do this. Sam has definitely put Dean to bed when Dean was wasted. And probably both Sam and Dean took care of their Dad when he got too drunk. But to have Sam check out to such a degree that Dean has to take care of him? How many times has that happened? I’m thinking almost never. I’ll talk more about that in a minute.
Dean barges in through the door, urgent, and goes straight to the duffel bag. They have to figure out what is going on here NOW because someone else is dead. Sam is seen in the background, a blur, and his posture is sprawled out, not Sam-like at all. Dean doesn’t notice. But the entire mood of the episode has changed.
The second Sam opens his mouth, Dean turns around. Sam is clearly drunk. His whole face looks different. He is being rude, like he doesn’t give a shit. Dean can’t believe it. I love that Dean can’t believe it. I also love the image of Dean doing whatever “boomin’ Granny” investigation he was doing, all as Sam ordered a bottle of Jaeger from Sherwin and started putting down shots all by himself. Pretty sad.
Dean feels slightly abandoned. The case is urgent and Sam has checked out. The scene then swerves, mightily, into Sam’s urgency and terror. It sweeps away everything else. Slowly, methodically, almost counter-acting the total emotional chaos of the scene, the camera moves in closer … closer … closer … with each exchange. We’ve got a very intense scene and it’s filmed almost totally traditionally: long shot to medium shot to closeup to REALLY FREAKIN’ CLOSE.
Dean tries to be the voice of reason. Sam refuses to listen. There’s a feeling of threat here, that Sam is speaking out stuff that shouldn’t be spoken out. He’s breaking the rules. That’s why he got drunk, so he COULD say what needed to be said. That guy just hung himself. He couldn’t save him. He wasn’t in time. Ava is gone. He couldn’t save her. He wants to save everyone before the lights of his humanity go out. I mean, this is all stuff we know, no need to reiterate it. The script is pretty on the nose, the script is saying what has been simmering inside for a while now.
Sam’s drunkenness, the urgency of the case itself, not to mention Dean’s reaction to Sam going off the rails, all helps to create a Space of Truth. Sam is blabbering about what Dad whispered to Dean, and Dean snaps, “Dad’s an ass. He never should have said that. You don’t do that. You don’t lay that kind of crap on your kids.” It’s an exhilarating moment of clarity, something he would have resisted saying in a calmer moment, but blazing with truth and resentment. Sam says, “Everyone around me dies.”
Sam is a pretty buttoned-up guy. He keeps himself in check. He was able to have an entire loving relationship with Jess without ever divulging his real story. Dean could never have pulled that off. The second he felt a Love Thing for Cassie he had to spill the beans. Sam’s crack-up, then, is SO against the “rules,” the unfair rules in the Winchester Family, the rules that all families have, especially where there are multiple siblings.
I’ve said before that when Sam goes off the rails the entire WORLD falls apart. It happened when he went to Stanford. It is happening again. Dean discounts himself as being important: As long as Sam is okay, the world will be okay. Dean truly believes this, it is his reality. If Sam has always seen Dean as the big brother who will look out for him (whether he needs it or not), then Dean has always seen Sam as the younger brother he has sworn to protect.
But let’s not forget that Dean also sees Sam as admirable and impressive, an individual strong enough to stand up to Dad, strong enough to go his own way, something Dean never allowed himself to do. Dean COUNTS on Sam to be that impressive admirable person. He NEEDS that Sam to exist. There’s hope for the whole world if Sam is okay. No pressure, right?
So when Sam stops being okay …
It’s not just that Dean doesn’t know how to protect Sam. It’s that his vision of Sam is that of a person who is staunchly okay, so much his own man … a rock star, really. Dean looks up to Sam. He admires him.
After the crack about Dean being butch, Sam begs him here to be even more butch: take care of it, Dean, promise me you’ll be man enough (my words, tapping into Dean’s anxiety about being enough of a man, or being a man like his father was, all that) to take care of it. You owe me that. You owe Dad that. Promise me. Promise me you’ll take care of it.
Padalecki runs this scene. He is the one who needs to be managed, controlled, and he is not in a space where that is possible. Dean is put in the position of having to wrangle his brother, on multiple levels: talk him off the ledge, make him go to sleep, and then finally … promise him that yes, he will do as he asks. He’s forced into it. Padalecki’s intensity, with tears about to fall at every moment, is superb. That’s been there since the first scene. These guys are so amazing together: the trust that it takes to pull something like this off.
The intense intimacy of the scene is completely new to Supernatural. If a scene like this had shown up in Season 1, it would have been pushing it. It would have felt manipulative, or pandering: OMG look at hot tortured guys crying. That’ll get the Tweens hooked!
You need to EARN a scene like this, and they did, painstakingly, meticulously, through Season 1, and the first half of Season 2.
7th scene
After putting his gay antiquing boyfriend to bed, Dean heads out into the quiet hotel, going down the stairs, crossing the empty foyer, moving into the lobby. Architecture. It is clearly all one location. Something about the light, and the craziness of the former scene, suggests that it must be midnight, 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock in the morning. Things happen at those hours that would not happen otherwise. Intimacy and confession becomes possible. That’s what happens in Nicholson’s increasingly surreal wanderings at night through the Overlook.
Dean crosses through the foyer area into an adjoining room (where the camera already is, it’s like it’s waiting for him), and as he enters, the camera moves so we see what he sees. We see the room. It is the first time we’ve seen it, a strange and surreal bar off to the side of the old-fashioned almost Victorian feeling foyer area.
The light beneath the bar surface as well as the symmetrical framing is the give-away that it’s meant to suggest the “Gold Room” bar in The Shining. And of course Jack Nicholson interacts with a bartender there, a man who you wonder … is he real? Or dead? Isn’t the hotel totally empty? Where the hell did he come from? Good questions.
Supernatural did a superb job mimicking the Gold Room, even on such a small scale. All you need is a couple of properly placed lights, the perfect framing so that the bar seems to beckon you from the end of the room, and that light underneath the bar, shining up into Dean’s face and Sherwin’s face. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s also Dean re-joining a world he feels more stable in, the Male World, where he is working a case, and asking questions, commiserating with another male, even if it’s an old geezer like Sherwin. At least here, drinking whatever Sherman has poured him, golden and soothing in the glass, he remembers who he is, he has removed himself from the sexual hothouse of the room with the gown on the wall and his brother pleading at him to make promises he’s not sure he can keep.
Sorry. Can’t help it:
Sherwin may look slightly creepy, lit from beneath, just like Lloyd looks creepy in The Shining … we’re meant to wonder if he’s the one behind it all, if he resents being put out of the only home he has ever known …
… but he’s open to Dean, and calm, pouring him a drink, man to man. Not condescending to him, or leering at him, or being weird in any way. I am just realizing now as I write this how rare it is that Dean is treated without all that surrounding strange-ness, and how refreshing it is when someone just leaves him be. Sherwin leaves him be. And of course Dean sees an opportunity to work the case, and takes it, engaging Sherwin in leading questions, listening on multiple levels, but the scene itself has that nocturnal insomniac feeling to it, everyone else asleep, everyone else haunted and tossing and turning upstairs, or passed out cold, while these two men go about their business quietly downstairs.
Sherwin takes Dean on a tour of the photographs on the stairway. Dean is carrying his drink with him. I love that detail. The formality of being a guest in the hotel has lessened. He can carry his drink around with him. Dean is, just like he was on the front steps with Susan, open and vulnerable. Not in a smushy way, just accessible, quiet, taking everything in. His antennae are out, but it’s too late for anything other than information-gathering. He’s feeling slightly soothed by the drink, he’s calming down a little bit. He’s in the moment. Sherwin is divulging some stuff about Grandma Rose, who is going to be put into a nursing home after living here her whole life. Sherwin says to Dean, “Wouldn’t you be sad if you were put out of the only home you know?” Dean shrugs (with his face) and says, quietly, somehow managing to seem vulnerable instead of indifferent, “I don’t know. I never really knew one.”
Honesty.
The past is being torn down, eradicated. Places have memories too.
There’s an interesting moment when they look at the photos in one of the rooms off to the side of the foyer. Dean looks at an old-fashioned photo of a Little Cupid baby, and is drawn to it. He asks who it is.
Sherwin reaches for the photo behind the Cupid photo, bringing it out, and saying, “That’s Rose, when she was a little girl.” But it was pretty clear Dean was asking about the Cupid photo, the Cupid photo was in the front. It’s a graceful moment, a clue, if you will, that whatever is going on in that Cupid photo is important, it’s something that Sherwin does not want to talk about. There is a staunch denial there, something Dean barely picks up on. He doesn’t say, “No, I meant the Cupid …”
“The other one”, the Cupid, has been totally eradicated. She is not to be mentioned. The wound is still fresh. The photo that Sherwin took out to show Dean he then moves, placing it on the mantel. A fascinating gesture, and I don’t know what it means, and I don’t care to. I just like that he moves it. There’s a lot going on here behind the scenes, a lot of secrets. One could even suggest, if one wanted to go really crazy, that old geezer Sherwin guessed what was going on, and guessed that Sam and Dean are not who they say they are, and that he brought out that specific photo to start Dean on the right path of questioning. Could be. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter, but Sherwin’s gestures in every moment in this scene tell the story of his whole life.
And honestly I don’t care about the plot. I care about the mood and the beauty and the energy everyone is able to create in that scene. It’s quiet. It’s all exposition. It’s conversation. It’s two men talking. And yet there is an ease in it, a comfort, a sense of give and take, and also a sense of things peeking out from the periphery, begging to be dealt with. It’s subtly handled, really really soft touch, barely there, even with all the stylistic nods to the Overlook and Lloyd and all the rest. It’s my favorite scene in the episode.
And I still can’t really say why (after all THAT, Sheila??). I just love it, that’s all.
8th scene
Only Jared Padalecki could make puking look hot and sexy.
Dean finally puked in Season 9 (if you don’t count his electric-blue vomit while going through the vampire-cure), and he looked devastated, his shoulders hunched over himself and his pathetic spot on the floor, crushed and humiliated by the natural processes of his body. It was an awful moment. Granted, it wasn’t because he was drunk, but still. It’s an object lesson in what these two actors bring to their roles intrinsically. Neither of them would have to WORK on these things. Or even think about them. As Mike Nichols (I think it was, although most directors say this) – 90% of your job as a director is to cast the thing well. And then what you should do is get out of the way of your actors.
So anyway, Sam is puking, hovering over the bowl, and he looks both hot and gross at the same time, and we can all just ponder the mystery of that.
Check out the random owl.
I love this show.
I won’t read into it, because I don’t think it’s there, I think it’s just a prop that everyone found funny and perfect and random, but that owl does make me think of this, I can’t help it.
The scene is a “Morning After” scene. Dean comes in (again, where has he been? Breakfast with his new best friend Sherwin? A quick swim in the pool? What?), and starts laughing when he hears Sam heaving and groaning. Dean finds it awesome, because it’s always great when your little brother embarrasses himself, especially a little brother who has been judgmental in the past about your own copious imbibing.
Dean doesn’t dare bring up the drunkenness in any way other than teasing and torturing, because that might cause Sam to remember what went down last night. Dean, his face to the camera, Sam a blur in the background, says, “You probably don’t remember a thing about last night, do you …” And that would be a negative, and Dean sighs with relief to himself, the momentary closing of his eyes a “tell” as to how intense that experience was for him, how much he did NOT want to deal with it.
Off the hook and in the clear, Dean sets in to torturing Sam by telling him that the best cure for a hangover is …
So let’s tally it up: in one episode, Dean has made references to Scooby Doo, The Beastie Boys, and Weird Science.
Dean comes over to the bathroom door, filling in Sam on what he learned about Granny last night. He glances in, winces at the nastiness, but keeps talking. I love the whole Germ-thing with Dean, his fussiness about it, his cleanliness, his obsession with it. People could get all Freudian if they like but that seems a bit complicated to me. If you grow up poor, if you grow up surrounded by stinking mould on motel room walls, if you never get a REALLY hot shower … then simple creature comforts like cleanliness are going to take on huge importance. But I love Dean’s sudden flashes of squickiness, this from a guy who slices off the heads of vampires looking murderous and unfazed. Of course it’s also just a way to make Sam feel worse. Like, ewww, you stink, you’re nasty and other adult reactions like that.
Sam doesn’t give a shit, though. He staggers to his feet, putting his hand on the toilet bowl, super-gross, Dean would never do that, he gets freaked out by phone booths. Sam, upright finally, lets out a sigh, and I love how that sigh (and Sam’s awful breath) HITS Dean in the face, and Dean leans back, grossed out, saying, “You need to brush your teeth first.”
Sam is not shamed by it. He shrugs, with his face, like, “Huh. Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”
Nice scene. Short, sweet, funny, deep.
9th scene
Next up we see the Private doorway, shown at a sharp angle, with the shadows of Sam and Dean approaching, casting themselves across the door before their figures are even seen. So yeah, THAT’S a comforting image that tells us: “Sam and Dean are the good guys.” Right? Right?
Wrong!
They pay lip service to civilization by knocking on the door a couple of times and calling out her name. When there is no answer, they break in, looking incredibly sketchy and sneaky.
Time to talk to Grandma Rose, whom they have guessed is somewhere in that Private space with all the creepy dolls, and despite the fact that Susan, already freaked out and alone in the world, has told them expressly that her mother is not to be disturbed, they disobey. They are going to break into someone’s home and go interview a decrepit old lady. They don’t have a leg to stand on, and that’s what’s so funny (disturbing/great) about this scene.
As they enter the room, they are clearly being watched by that doll on the top shelf. What is her DEAL.
The point of view is eloquent, telling us everything we need to know, visually.
And not to get too granular because this is already unforgivably long, but just watch the camera moves in this next section. It’s subtle, but the camera is never static. It moves, it pans, it tries to peek around corners, it adjust itself, and sometimes it moves ahead of the characters, into the emptiness of the hallway or towards Grandma Rose. Sam and Dean are behind the camera, in other words, the camera is leading the way. It creates a maze-like effect, through the doorways, up the back stairway, down the creepy hall, into the room … it’s a fairy tale, a little old woman hidden away in a garret … it’s Norman Bates’ mother … you never know what secrets people are keeping …
I mean, that’s the plot, but we GET the plot in those verrrrry subtle camera moves. The camera is almost restless, and yet there’s a formality to the structure, to the edits, to how one shot flows into the next.
It’s perfect.
See? I get overwhelmed by “Playthings.”
Beyond that open door is Grandma Rose, as they approach her from behind. Dean is not good with such moments. He is not good with old people, first of all. They freak him out. And he is not good with that first approach where you have to say, “Hi, here’s what we need from you.” He always takes the wrong tone. He feels impatient, and dealing with a fairy-tale-Granny is not his strong suit. Sam takes over (without a word, I love that, it happens naturally) and leans in gently, but the second he sees the lost look on her face, he realizes what has happened. Whoever Rose once was, she is now gone. Or at least unreachable to them.
Sam pulls Dean aside for a conference: “This woman’s had a stroke.” I love how their shadows are cast on the slanted ceiling behind them.
Their whispered conversation is held off to the side, as they glance back at Rose, and they continue to do so, the back of her head facing them, like Norman Bates’ mother, like Sam in Room 237. The repeat of the shot is great. But it’s funny too: they are whispering about hoodoo in plain view, with her right there. “Hoodoo’s hands on, you need to build an altar and stuff …”
They are both SO out of line, and I love it.
“She could be faking,” says Dean, looking at Rose.
Sam says, “What do you want to do, poke her with a stick?” and Dean shrugs (again, with his face, one of my favorite Jensen gestures/expressions). What would be the harm in gently – gently, man, gimme some credit – poking her with a stick?
It’s so funny I am laughing out loud as I type this. Sam hisses, “Dude, you’re not gonna poke her with a stick!” and that makes me laugh even harder.
And it is at this moment that Susan’s voice interrupts them, “What are you doing here?” and Sam and Dean are completely busted. Like, there’s no way out of it. There is no excuse that either of them could come up with, either on the spot, or given hours of lead-time. They are WRONG, they know it, and their behavior is all, “Oh – sorry – we were just …”
You were just what?
You were just about to poke that old woman with a stick, THAT’S what.
Susan rushes to Grandma Rose’s side, and says accusingly at Sam and Dean, “She’s scared out of her wits!” Dean’s small glance at Rose, like, “Really? You’re getting that from that vegetable?” is so inappropriate that I never get sick of it.
When she threatens to call the cops, Dean goes dead: okay, fine, we’re outta here. He’s not even defensive. There’s nothing to defend.
In the next second, we see the Impala roaring away, splashing up puddles, all as Susan stands on the front steps watching, to make sure they’ve gone. I am assuming Sam and Dean just circled the block and came back through … umm … the back driveway … so that Sam could then, yeah, creep through the bushes … and get there just in time to fling Susan out of the way of Christine on the rampage.
It’s a deus ex machina moment that is a bit too “machina,” if you know what I’m saying.
Regardless, the two of them peel out like they mean business. It’s a feint.
10th scene
The next cut is a beautiful one. We go from Susan on the front steps, watching the Impala driving off, to a closeup of silvery jacks tossed onto a floor, a ball dropping, and hands scooping them up. It’s just a great mood-changer, and the “establishing shot” that lets us know where they are doesn’t come until a couple of lines in (and when the establishing shot comes in it is a stunner, one of two real “LET US SHOW OFF” moments in the whole episode. Most everything else is super subtle, working on a slow deep burn, but suddenly, voila, it’s showtime. Naturally the moment occurs after Sam and Dean have left the premises.)
It is also when we learn that Maggie is imaginary. Because Sam and Dean are now (supposedly) gone (although we all know they are put-putting up that back driveway as we speak), the reveal about Maggie seems even more frightening than it would otherwise. Because the Heroes have left the scene. Everyone is now unprotected. Her murmured “Sonofabitch” in the first scene is now mirrored in her line that closes out the scene, a flat-affect dead-eyed almost sneer to Tyler, “I don’t like her.”
Bring on the creepy little girl in curly pig-tails. She has a long history in cinema! Because we all know that there is nothing more terrifying than a little blonde girl in a black velvet dress and shiny Mary Janes.
11th scene
As Susan packs up her car, she is stalked by the camera inside the hotel. She’s outside in the drive, the camera peering at her from the black interior. Looks like the rainy morning has cleared up, because the sun is now out! The camera never stops! Suddenly we are far across the yard, totally on the opposite side, looking at Susan and her car from afar. It’s all incredibly destabilizing and … it’s just weird, that’s all. “Impossible window” weird. You can’t “settle in” to a proper point of view. Sherwin drives up in a HUGE red pick-up truck, circa 1959, gleaming and candy-colored, and Dean would have loved it if he saw it. Susan and Sherwin have a chit-chat interaction, nothing substantial, but with worlds of feeling underneath. They are saying goodbye to each other, to their whole lives, and to their past. How do you put that into words? You catch a glimpse of it in Sherwin’s eyes as he leans back to his steering wheel.
Meanwhile upstairs, with the hotel-doll-house that is clearly not coming with, Tyler plays with a windup horse, a sentry man, a guard, who totters up and down in front of the front steps. A sentry, trying to keep everyone safe. But he keeps running into things and getting stuck. Tyler has to turn him around. Keep him on the right path. As a guard, he’s no good. I think Tyler senses something, some weird threat, an undercurrent of codependent … too-much-ness in her friendship with Maggie. Very Margaret-Atwood-Cat’s-Eye, that thing that girls can do to one another. Maggie has been saying mean things to Tyler about her mom, Maggie has been acting in an increasingly possessive way, and Tyler is so small she doesn’t know how to deal with it. Maggie is a bigger girl than she is. Maggie clearly knows better than she. But Tyler is torn. She’s not sure what to do. Maggie does not want to let her go, and Maggie will not come with. Something feels very wrong. Tyler wishes her sentry would keep on the right path, and stop bumping into the steps. Maybe she’d feel better then.
As the scene moves on, as the camera comes down on the other side of her, Tyler goes out of focus, and the miniature swing set in the foreground comes into focus. A focus-pull like that is used in Supernatural all the time, usually in Sam-Dean scenes to go from one face to the other. It’s quick, efficient, and helps with the spontaneity of their scenes: it’s not the Battle of the Closeups. But here, a focus-pull feels tremendously wrong, and Tyler seems in danger, and then one of the little swings starts swinging by itself.
Wonderful effect. Tyler turns and notices it. The other swing starts swinging too.
Then we switch, suddenly, back outside, to that long far shot, of the front yard, and Susan packing up her car. In the foreground, a tree starts thrashing with the wind, and then, dizzyingly, we leave that point of view, and suddenly are back with Camera-as-Stalker, peeking out the front door at Susan, a big black thing in the foreground, the doorframe. Susan wraps her coat around herself, and even outside of the plot – what we get from these visuals (beating my old drum again) is a woman all out of place, being unmoored, disturbed, she doesn’t know where she stands. Without the hotel, where the hell is she? She’s flying around in space. Across the yard, from inside the hotel … there’s nowhere for her to land.
Now comes the first big special-effects set-piece of the episode, which has the classic Supernatural grit (all of this can be done very cheaply), and humor (basically a playground runs amok.) It’s scary, but also ridiculous. Why is a seesaw going up and down by itself so … horrible? And swings hurtling up and down, and the little carousel whirling as though … what … it’s going to come off the hinges and come galumphing across the yard at her like a prehistoric beast? It’s just so …. Supernatural, and they use what they have (as all good horror films do: there are such an abundance of cliches in the genre. How do you keep it fresh? Well, yeah, see The Babadook, and see how a coat hung on a wall was so frightening that I jumped out of my skin in my own home – twice – when I saw this.) The best horror films uses whatever environment it takes place in in innovative ways. Supernatural, a road-trip show, is great at that.
But before the Playground Comes to Life, she strolls over in that direction, seen only partially, the sign blocking her from our view. It makes me want to peek around it to make sure she is okay. Tiny choices like that, all along the way, create a creepy mood, a semi-violent mood, the world conspiring against the character, making us feel like we are in a slightly out of control visual space.
To give my favorite example of this: there was an early screening of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Maybe it was an invited audience, I can’t remember. The film was so over-the-top and so … what would you call it … harrowing? … that there was some concern that it might not go over with audiences, that they would reject it, or (worse) that they would laugh. I should do some digging to find the genesis of this observation, and forgive me, I will do so, but here is how I remember it. Maybe it came from Robert Evans, who produced. Anyway, at this early screening, the first time a “public” would see it, this person stood in the back, behind the audience, basically to watch the film from the back of the theatre AND gauge the audience reaction. (Similar to what Steven Spielberg did with Jaws, and he describes standing in back, seeing a person stagger out of the theatre, go to the bathroom, throw up, and then return to his seat. That’s the moment Spielberg knew Jaws would be a hit.) So here is the audience watching Rosemary’s Baby for the first time. There’s a scene where Rosemary is talking on the phone. It’s a benign scene, nothing terrifying going on plot-wise, but Polanski placed Mia Farrow sitting on the edge of a bed in the next room, filming her through the doorway. She was only partially seen by his camera. I couldn’t find a bigger screen grab, but this is the moment I am talking about.
And the observer in the back row saw with his own eyes the entire audience lean to the right so they could see around the corner.
That’s when whoever this was (sorry!) knew the movie would be a smash. The camera angle was so anxiety-provoking that regular people with educations who understood the nature of reality were stressed out to such a degree that they collectively thought they could see around a corner on a two-dimensional image. Incredible!
So then we are treated to the Revolt of the Playground. One by one each object is activated. They’re activated down in the yard, and they’re activated up at the doll-house, too. When the little carousel starts twirling, there is a big orchestral chord accompanying it, like it’s the scariest image ever put to screen, and it’s one of those hilarious Supernatural touches.
Along with all the Playground chaos (and she is seen through things, objects going crazy in the foreground, spinning and twirling), her car starts up by itself and then tears across the yard at her, about to mow her down, which is when a certain plaster-cast-hungover-gay-antiquer leaps into the space and throws her out of the way. Way to wait til the last minute, pal. Dean comes running up, and they all hustle back into the hotel. As they enter the bar, which now looks completely different in the daytime, elegant and stark, she sits down and demands whiskey. Which I love. It’s just one word: “Whiskey.” Sam heads to the bar, murmuring, “I know the feeling.” Makes me laugh.
The situation has become too urgent to “sugar-coat” it for her, so both Sam and Dean have a matter-of-fact way of dealing with what is going on: “We thought it was hoodoo – but now we know it’s a spirit,” says Dean, as though she’s already on board. Her line, as she takes the whiskey, staring up at Dean, trembling, is, “You’re insane.”
Dean shrugs. Sure, whatever, I’m insane, it’s been said, but you would do well to listen to me, sister. Sam is equally as formidable: “Just answer the question” he says to Susan when she wants to know why he wants to know something. These types of reactions give the show and their performances variety. Their responses to things, as is true with all of us, depends on the circumstances. Here, they are both slightly impatient. I like that.
The two of them in sync. The two of them unafraid of how they come across. The two of them in the zone of their work. Dean gets tripped up on his words at one point, he starts to go off on a tangent, but then can’t complete it – “Oh, forget it …” he says, and Sam swoops in to take over and keep everyone on point.
Pleasure. How to describe pleasure? I don’t know, people. But there it is.
It is here, finally, where they learn that Maggie is imaginary. They never actually saw Maggie. They just assumed her existence. Where is Tyler right now?
11th scene
Upstairs in Grandma Rose’s attic room (you might think it would be better to keep a woman in a wheelchair on the ground floor …) Maggie stands in front of Grandma, and there’s a silent standoff between the two figures. Tyler enters the room, worried, and there is a fantastic shot with all three of them in the frame, and look at how they are placed. Everyone’s sizes look “off”.
It is as though three separate figures have been Photoshopped into one space. Maggie looks enormous, Tyler looks miniscule. It’s like those scenes in The Hobbit where Ian McKellan is made to look 8 feet tall through CGI-trickery or standing on boxes or however the hell they did it. Tyler is anxious, telling Maggie she shouldn’t be in here, and Maggie’s eyes never leave Rose’s. It’s a very compelling little performance by this creepy little girl. And as she exits with Tyler, she is given a spin on the words The Grady Twins call out to Danny in The Shining … “Let’s play … we’ll have tea parties … forever … and ever … and ever …”
12th scene
Susan, with Sam and Dean on her heels, runs into her apartment, and all of the dolls are broken and cracked on the ground. We get a couple of huge close-ups of shattered dolls, random isolated doll eyeballs, all with swiping-high-pitched violin punctuations of music. It’s hilarious.
I mean, look at that doll in the foreground.
Susan is in a panic and now Sam and Dean basically merge into one human being, firing questions at her about “Maggie,” throwing glances at one another, but with no time to really think about it. Who is Maggie? Susan provides the final piece, in a moment of dawning horror, that her mother had a sister named Margaret who drowned in the pool. Pool? What pool?
More in-sync stuff between Sam and Dean, who practically eye-roll at this piece of information, something right under their noses that they had missed, the key to it all.
13th scene
Now follows an intricate DIFFICULT sequence at the indoor pool, difficult especially since a minor is involved in filming it. Clearly they used stunt doubles for some of it, but still: Tyler had to do some of the action herself, we can see it is her, and Padalecki was totally in charge of her safety while the cameras were rolling. Both actors have talked about the stress of such moments, the sense of responsibility they feel. It helps clarify things. In such moments, acting becomes secondary. An acting teacher of mine in college used to say that acting was “the reality of the DOING.” Harder than you think. Many people think acting is about “feeling,” but it’s not. (Another acting teacher of mine would say to the class, “Remember. The name of the job is ACT-or. Not FEEL-er.”) I’ll talk more about that in a minute, because it is where Jared Padalecki shines the most, in my opinion.
The sequence opens with a terrifying image of Maggie and Tyler viewed from beneath the plastic covering on the pool.
If that doesn’t make you thrash about in sympathetic claustrophobia then there is no hope for you!
The second show-off shot of the episode starts from below them, at pool level, moving up to the side, and around and then behind them, until the camera stares down onto the pool with their little heads in the foreground. There must be a green screen in effect here, yes, or maybe they were invisibly bungee-corded to something: however they did it, the illusion is complete. It’s a terrible shot, especially because of that deadly plastic covering the water. Beeson knew he had to create a sense of precarious danger, and did it in a way elegant and flowing: one shot, up and around. Dizzying. And, again, a gorgeous use of an actual location. Superb location, old-fashioned, Art Deco, black swaying trees seen outside the arching windows/roof. It’s beautiful, but also symbolic of a world long dead.
The two little girls talk. There’s a definite conflict of interest at work. Maggie is unswayable. Tyler pleads. There seems to be no way around Maggie’s desires. The lines are full of codependent (I prefer symbiotic) anxiety. “Why don’t you just come with us?” “Because I can’t leave here. And you can’t leave me.” “Please. I don’t want to be alone.” Maggie’s calmness is deadly. She does not plead. She just states the facts. Tyler is no match for her. Meanwhile, with a swift change in music, Susan, Sam and Dean run across the yard towards the pool-house. We get another swooping up from below shot of the two little girls, and now we see the three figures, banging at the glass doorway trying to get in. The glass is shatter-proof. Sometimes we see what Susan, Sam and Dean see: JUST Tyler on the other side of the railing, and then sometimes we see Maggie, too. Maggie pushes Tyler, who falls into the plastic, immediately getting tangled up in it underwater.
I find it nearly unbearable to watch.
Dean nearly puts out his shoulder trying to bang through the glass. Nothing will break it. The sequence is masterfully edited, especially since they would not put a little girl in plastic under the water: that’s not her, but the illusion is totally complete that it IS her. Dean and Susan run to a side door, and Dean, again, cannot but through. I mean, Jeez, just take out a shotgun and blast through the glass, I have HAD it with this spirit.
As the adults become more and more frantic, there’s a beautiful and haunting shot of Maggie, holding Tyler underneath the water. It’s a long shot.
There’s one moment where Tyler comes up for air, and it is clearly the young actress, and then Maggie gently pushes her head down under. I keep harping on the fact that children are doing what is a dangerous sequence, and how careful Supernatural was to protect the young children in their midst. It is a grave responsibility. Ackles talked a bit about the moment in “Dead in the Water,” where he has to emerge with the little boy in his arms from under the water, and his feet were being held by a scuba diver underneath, and the scuba diver basically propelled the two of them to the surface. But one cannot get around the fact: I have a child in my arms underwater. Let’s get this shot in the can, and let’s emerge with everyone intact, shall we?
An atmosphere of “well, what’s the worst that can happen” or “let’s get the shot no matter WHAT” leads to a permissive and dangerous environment that allowed Sarah Jones to be killed. I was very touched when I saw the Tweet-ed image from the Supernatural team, everyone participating in the Slates for Sarah viral thing that overtook the industry in the wake of that completely avoidable event. It wasn’t an accident. It was criminal negligence.
As gripping as the sequence is, I am mainly impressed and moved by how well it works, considering the multiple challenges, mainly being working with two children in a watery location.
And I can’t get over how wonderful is the image of Padalecki launching himself up and over that balcony, down into the water.
There’s something satisfying about seeing an actor clearly doing his own stunts. You need to be good at it, and you need to be able to be believable while leaping/running/jumping … and some actors are better at it than others. But seeing him, with the cast on his arm, charge over that balcony … My heart swells. And then he too is in the plastic, struggling to get out of it, and we see Tyler’s little body, now floating, face down, and it’s awful.
Sam, underwater, batting the plastic away from him, swims towards her and grabs her and the two of them emerge, slo-mo, a visual callback to Dean emerging slo-mo from the water holding a child in “Dead in the Water”. It’s an incredibly upsetting image. She looks so small, her body is lifeless and splayed out, and Padalecki clutches her, and bless that child for understanding her job, playing “dead,” trusting Padalecki (who I’m sure made her feel like this was all going to be fun, and let’s have fun doing it), and all the myriad things she needed to do in this very complex scene. The team took care of her, made her feel safe, let her (and her hovering parents, I’m sure) know that she was safe, and she does an amazing job.
But still … this is tough stuff to watch. Children are often protected by their innocence which is why, under the right circumstances, they can be tremendous actors.
Sam emerging from the water with Tyler in his arms is one of those moments I find impossible to separate from the real-life circumstances of filming it. And I don’t even know the backstage stories. I don’t need to know the specifics. I just know that filming with children is hard, frustrating, and challenging, and filming with children in a dangerous sequence like this is nervewracking for everyone involved. I’m sure there were divers right off-camera, ready to pounce, I’m sure a lot of it was stunt doubles, but there are moments when it is obviously her, and emerging from beneath the water is one of those moments.
In that moment, that little girl had total trust in the team around her, and in Padalecki. She was not afraid. This was make-believe. They let her think it was so, and behind-the-scenes, behind her back, they worked to make sure she was safe, rehearsing it, going over it, treating her with respect, but also not giving too much responsibility to her. The responsibility here is all in Padalecki’s hands.
In this moment, Padalecki’s entire concern is keeping her safe. Her the actress, her the real-life human. It ends up LOOKING like Sam rescuing her – and I suppose, in the imaginative magic of the moment, that IS what is happening. A transference from reality to make-believe. That’s the beauty of acting, especially in action sequences that are not faked or CGI-ed to death. Gary Cooper used to say that he loved doing Westerns because they involved so much stuff that couldn’t be faked: you have to really ride a horse, you have to really jump up on that horse, all of the action parts of Westerns were really freeing for him as an actor because he didn’t HAVE to use his imagination: the reality was right there in front of him.
So I guess I’m saying the actor-concern for the little girl in his arms is PART of why the moment is so powerful.
My throat closes up every time I see that shot.
As the two emerge from the water in slo-mo, Dean and Susan finally burst through the side door and race down the stairs, also in slo-mo, just like Amy Acker’s slo-mo charge down to the bottom of the dock. The episodes have a lot in common. Sam lays Tyler’s body down on the side of the pool, and there are all these beautiful jagged shots, with huge faces, Sam’s, Susan’s, looking down at Tyler, reacting, living. It’s pure emotion what’s going on here.
And now I remember, because the episode for me has been about constant distraction (hahaha ballgown, butch, henley, OMG light underneath the bar, insomniacs, beauty, softness, family roots, orphans … Sam looks so hot … the owls are not what they seem, dolls! so funny! and etc., as should be obvious from this re-cap that is all over the MAP!) – but I remember, dimly, like a gong going off underwater, that Sam wants to save as many people as he can. That being unable to save Ava has become a symbol, a terror, his failure writ large. If he can save as many people as he can, then perhaps he will be (slightly?) absolved from what he will do when he goes dark side. I think Sam has pretty much admitted to himself by now that he WILL go dark side, and he is so afraid of it. This goes back to my feeling of Sam’s-situation-as-metaphor-for-mental-illness, one of the reasons why I would have avoided the show like the plague if I had seen it when I was crazy and undiagnosed. All of that urgency and terror is here, in Sam’s reaction to Tyler’s floppy little body on the side of the pool. Dean is really nowhere to be seen in this tiny sequence of shots, or at least he is not prioritized. Sam is prioritized. This is about him.
14th scene
Maggie, who has been “called back” by Rose, stands in the garret, with another great camera angle, tilting and strange. The figures are foreshortened, making them equal in size. How does one kill a spirit like Maggie? That possibility was never really explored. Regardless: Grandma Rose seems calmer now. She knows what she needs to do, what she can do. Maggie says to her sister, “You kept me away for so long. I thought you didn’t love me anymore.”
They stare at one another, and information passes between them, something understood, an old connection, their old bond. Maggie sees what she needs to see, and says, calmly, “Okay.” Great line-reading. Scary as hell.
It’s emotional terrorism, what Maggie is up to. “If you do this for me, I will let them go.”
The moment connects us with Sam asking Dean to do something, asking Dean to kill him if things get bad enough. It is asking too much, but it is also part and parcel of “protect Sam”, at least in the twisted-up Winchester universe. Here it is in the sisters’ standoff.
Meanwhile, Susan hustled up the stairs to go “get Grandma,” and Dean and Sam, left behind in the Room o’ Shattered Dolls are confused. Where did Maggie go? Did she just vanish? That doesn’t seem right. No, it doesn’t. You’d think they might know Grandma Rose was next on the chopping-block. Their brief conversation is interrupted by Susan’s scream of alarm up the stairs. They pound up the stairs, and of course, Boomin’ Granny is boomin’ no more.
15th scene
Back on the front steps again. Back with an ambulance again, and a coroner’s truck, Granny’s body being taken out. The EMTs in Cornwall must be like, “Maybe we should just park the truck outside the Pierpont Inn at all times, because these constant calls are getting to be ridiculous.” Eyeroll from dispatch: “Murder at the Pierpont Inn, guys.” Crackle goes the radio: “Again? On our way. Whatevs.”
The glances of communication between Sam and Dean, such pleasurable textural unspoken stuff, have been great this whole episode, and here, talking with Susan and Tyler, it continues. They’re not sure if Maggie had something to do with Granny’s death. But it’s possible. Glance between them. My favorite is the hesitant glance Sam throws in his brother’s direction, not quite pointed, not quite focused, before looking back at Susan and saying, “Susan, I’m sorry.” It’s the glance beforehand that adds that small bit of depth, of relationship. Dean is off-screen. That’s Padalecki’s understanding of the three-dimensional world, and the multiple relationships going on. Sam knows something should be said, it’s something HE wants to say for his own reasons, of guilt, of not getting there quick enough, and he also just knows it needs to be said, but he knows Dean won’t do it… so he takes that moment to check in, before surging forward. It’s a symbiotic automatic check-in. Both actors do this stuff all the time, connecting the characters on an almost psychic level, whether the person is on-screen or not. It’s great stuff, I love it.
Dean, meanwhile, puts his focus down on Tyler, asking her if she sees Maggie anywhere. He’s slightly uncomfortable, she’s a little girl, he’s not quite in sync with her, but he’s on the level, he respects her perspective.
As Susan and Tyler move to the cab, Sam sort of reaches out around her to open the car for her, which makes him a heartthrob, end-stop. She must get that memo too because she turns suddenly, and buries herself in Sam’s arms, a big big hug. Sam is slightly taken aback, but it is Dean’s silent reaction that is the classic.
I mean …
Nobody is having enough sex in Supernatural so a moment like a hug takes on supreme significance and as Dean and Sam walk to the Impala, Dean starts teasing Sam, just as he teased him about Ava. And about the art-dealer. And about … everyone. Sam is a big target. He doesn’t take teasing well, and it’s part of their “schtick” as brothers, obviously. Dean’s like, “Hey man, she likes you, she’s a hot MILF, good for you …” So inappropriate, but I love Sam’s self-deprecating response to the teasing, “That’s all she needs.”
In a funny way, it’s a respectful comment. “Yeah, this traumatized woman really needs a gay-antiquer-who-has-a-date-with-the-Devil to make everything all better…”
Dean is back in the burlesque. He teases Sam about her, he teases Sam about how Sam has been the Hero of the Episode, Dean COULD have been the hero, but he CHOSE not to be, etc. Dean then says, “Feels pretty good getting back in the saddle, doesn’t it” as though it was his idea all along to take the case, and it’s one of those great symbiotic moments, it doesn’t “make sense” if you think everything should line up neatly, if you are confused by mess. But mess is what Supernatural is all about: these guys are so close they ARE each other. It’s hard to separate yourself out from the context of the relationship. So a literal script would have had Sam say that line, calling back to the first scene, where he encouraged Dean to take the job: “See? Isn’t it good to get back to work?”
But something nasty and ugly has been unleashed in the course of “Playthings,” something that spoke its truth during that drunk scene, and so the roles have been switched again, or at least merged. They are so completely merged that they don’t even know who is who anymore. Dean seems to think it was his idea to get back to work. I love the confusion of it, it’s so real, it’s so siblings-ish. Sam goes along with the teasing, good-naturedly, and all seems to be well until they reach the car, and you can see Sam “go there” before he speaks.
He reminds Dean of the promise Dean made last night. Dean pretends to not understand. Dean reminds Sam how wasted Sam was. “But you weren’t, Dean … and you promised.”
Such a little-brother thing to say, such a touchingly innocent thing to say, almost like a child speaking to a parent, and yet the stakes are life-and-death, and Dean is his big brother. A promise means something. Dean knows that. He kept his father’s promise to not tell Sam about the whisper, he kept it as long as he could, and despite his anger at being given that burden, he probably also feels guilt about having broken that promise. These are guys with strong old-fashioned moral codes. You don’t get out of a promise easily.
The show has gotten much mileage out of the promises they make to one another. It’s still going on.
They get back in the car, and the rain falls, and they are enclosed in the Impala, and you feel that claustrophobia again, the same feeling between Maggie and Rose … a sense that your word is binding, you cannot get out of this, you and I both know you promised last night, and I take that seriously, and I know you do too. Dean doesn’t speak though. He’s filled with thoughts, concerns, things he wants to say, but Sam is a closed-door, it’s the end of the discussion for Sam. It’s pretty fierce. The fact that Dean doesn’t speak, just turns the key, and starts the car, creates a tiny emotional cliffhanger, something Supernatural does repeatedly. The feeling is extremely uneasy. You want more to be said. But nope. This is episodic television. Drag that shit out, and make us wait for it.
And the epilogue! The love I feel for the epilogue! Back we go into the architecture, the empty hotel being packed up, the camera leading the way, moving into the main room towards the portrait on the mantel … the space empty but filled with ghosts and memories … the camera us, our eye, drawing us on … exactly as Kubrick did throughout, in all of those hotel hallways in The Shining, where the hotel actually starts to feel like a sentient beast. A long patient panning-in shot to the portrait on the mantel. Then we get that low tracking shot along the downstairs hallway … and then another one along the upstairs hallways … towards Grandma Rose’s bedroom … and then it takes us around the door where we see two little giggling girls, jumping rope, happy, forever and ever.
We get our final shot of the golden-ringleted staring doll, and then, in a reverse of movement, the camera draws back, back, around the corner, and out of Grandma’s room, into the dark hallway, so that the girls have vanished out of sight. Still there … but not visible.
Blackout.
What does it all mean?
Damned if I know. Damned if I care. But it pleases. And most of the pleasure it provides comes in the pauses, and the unspoken thoughts, the mood created … carefully and beautifully … the colors onscreen, the colors consciously left off (creating a mood of chilliness and autumnal grieving, mitigated only by the warmth of the colors in the scene with Dean and Sherwin), the associations and connections it unleashes in my own mind… personal and artistic … and I’m sure if I wrote this re-cap tomorrow (bite your tongue, Sheila), it would come out very differently, with different connections made, different associations emerging from the swamp, new things perceived and sensed.
I will re-visit it again and again. The pleasure is the only thing that really remains the same.
That’s art, I guess.
//Because my actual experience of the episode runs along the lines of:
OMG the dark wallpaper and the shadows on Sam’s gorgeous face and look at that weird twinkle in Dean’s eye and what the hell with the shadows in that doll-room and wait, what’s happening in the background with all those portraits and OMG OMG that pool is so creepy and yet so beautiful //
My actual experience of reading this recap:
“OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG! Just OMG!!!!!!!!”
Thank you, Sheila, for the sheer pleasure of reading this!
Oh Helena – ha! Thank you! I need to take a nap – I don’t even know what I WROTE.
“Playthings” is like being submerged in a pool trying to bat your way out of a plastic pool covering. I get all mixed up!!
Fabulous about it is the nature of the hotel and the vibes/feelings/associations it sets off. I think it’s one of those rare episodes in Supernatural where the setting is a character in the drama, slowly revealing its own secrets, to the extent that there is actually another representation of it in the form of the doll’s house.What I also like is that crossing of the threshold between public and private space within the hotel, and what you come to realise is the intensely female and feminine nature of it. Sherwin’s monologue focuses entirely on the women of the family, that’s all we see in any detail of the family photographs, and the likewise the plot, such as it is, winds entirely around the female family members, grandmother, daughter and grand-daughter, nested together like a matrioshka doll. No wonder Dean invokes the spirit of Daphne before entering. Susan, this elegant, private, self contained, porcelain complexioned woman, has imbued the hotel with a decorous femininity, but in the private living space of Susan’s private apartment this runs absolutely riot, and it’s something she takes utterly for granted. And then the Winchesters in their size 13 boots come barging into this psychodrama of Not Being Able to Let Go. Hilarious, and very rich.
I love how you put all this! Yes: these symbols of masculinity and femininity are all over the place – and it throws Dean especially into a tailspin, even though it’s Sam who gets drunk on purpose. Or maybe it’s both of them flying off the rails. I think it’s both.
// And then the Winchesters in their size 13 boots come barging into this psychodrama of Not Being Able to Let Go. //
HA!
No wonder everyone flips out.
//I don’t even know what I WROTE.//
Haha! What you wrote was perfect. Me, on the other hand, I left out the beginning of the first sentence in my last post. Seriously, though, absolutely wonderful.
Have a lovely nap!
I just re-read what I wrote and I don’t remember writing some of it. I went into some kind of fugue state. I will let it stand!
It’s such a great episode, loopy and dark and funny and weird.
// where the setting is a character in the drama, slowly revealing its own secrets, to the extent that there is actually another representation of it in the form of the doll’s house. //
Yes! It’s soooo obsessive.
… in the way little girls can be obsessive about their toys, and their “little things” – things in miniature – which I know I was obsessed with when I was little. Maybe little boys have that too – but here, it is seen as Strictly Female, to create your own world in miniature, where you loom over everything like a God. A little swing set – better than swinging on the actual swings outside – let’s play with the replica inside. I totally get that.
// No wonder Dean invokes the spirit of Daphne before entering. //
I love that observation! Daphne the cartoon and Daphne from Greek mythology … if we really want to go there.
//Maybe little boys have that too //
Oh yes, definitely.
That doll house is simultaneously dream and nightmare … a child’s dream but a potentially nightmarish arena of voodoo and sympathetic magic. I like how the episode seems lead towards the little daughter as unwitting instigator of all the killings, with the dolls house as her witches’ cauldron, but then something more ambivalent emerges – the dolls house becomes more of a witness to what’s going on, with the little girl unable to understand what it’s telling her.
The episode does work a kind of charm, doesn’t it, which is due in large part to its setting. The episode is set almost entirely within the different spaces of the hotel, each with their own mood and tale to tell.
I like what you say about the scenes with Sherman – he emerges as just a likeable old guy with a deep love for the hotel and its history and a profound affection for the family that has run it, just plain sad about what’s going to happen now, and respectful of the family secrets. There is indeed a lovely, calm energy in that drinking scene between Dean and Sherman, just drinking and shooting the breeze about old, lost times.
// the dolls house becomes more of a witness to what’s going on, with the little girl unable to understand what it’s telling her. //
Yes! Even with the “sonofabitch” clue in the teaser – the way it’s all filmed seems to lead us through the maze of images – to make us think Tyler is the one “in charge.”
That’s why her little motorized sentry is so touching to me. The image suggests that she knows they all need to be protected, that something should be “on guard” outside. She does her best.
// There is indeed a lovely, calm energy in that drinking scene between Dean and Sherman, just drinking and shooting the breeze about old, lost times. //
Definitely. It’s a pause – so few shows allow for pauses like that scene. Of course it’s all exposition but it’s not filmed like it’s exposition. It makes me want to crawl into the scene, and walk around with them, listening to the stories in each photo. Like time stands still for a second.
I was trying to think of another episode that prioritized location so much – and I thought of Asylum. The majority of the episode took place in one location – that’s a rarity in SPN – you can tell the thought that went into it. Or who knows, maybe they found the location of the hotel first, and built the episode around it. Either way … it’s great.
//I was trying to think of another episode that prioritized location so much//
Asylum is a good call. Hmmm… Also the Oz episode with Charlie in Season 9 is set almost entirely in the bunker and we even get to discover more bits of it. The Clue episode might be another, although it doesn’t pack quite the same weight, for me at least. And that spooky hotel in Season 7(?) – the one with the fancy lady.
Prostitute? :)
Yeah, that’s pretty much a one-location episode too.
I think before “Playthings” the only ones are “Asylum” and “In My Time of Dying” is mostly hospital. And that also has a great use of architecture and space. Real location: they used the crap out of it.
Oh, this episode is a delight to the senses. A delight to the senses! An early and continuual favourite that never fails to please. It has a self-contained neatness of story, a singularity of aesthetic purpose – all of which you’ve so well outlined. I just adore it. I wouldn’t change a bare second of it.
And of course I was one of Those who never fully recovered from Sam touching Dean’s face, which counts as possibly the most erotic image of the show for me – over and above even the shoulder relocation scene we were talking about ages ago. Well that one had a different energy, very masculine, very butch. Probably it was overcompensating.
Anyway it’s all heartbreaking and That Scene finishes up with an awful beautiful foreshadowing of All Hell Breaks Loose 2 in which Dean, in bedside vigil, rubs his hand over his mouth in despair.
I am unhappily in No Position to respond properly – you raise so many interesting questions! This writeup, this episode – I am like Helena. It’s so rich as to be overwhelming, and Sam is too much to bear, especially in that extreme off-centre shot you’ve included as he’s pulling Taylor from the water.
Briefly then:
I love how nothing maps too neatly to The Shining. Sherwin is Lloyd and Hallorann, etc.
Great observations on houses, hotels and history.
Every actress KILLS it.
I think Dean would have put Sam to bed plenty of times, really – but they both would have been much younger. Another of the resonances that makes that scene so intense and uncomfortable.
Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam.
Jessie –
ehmagerd, that screen grab of Dean’s face …
// a singularity of aesthetic purpose //
I like that. I think that’s what I just spent 20,000 words trying to say. And you’re right: it doesn’t map neatly to The Shining, although these associations float up – it’s more of a visual environment, a movie-mad-visual environment, meant to spark up thought and feelings and aesthetics – Something like that could be so … arch and clever – you know? And it’s just not. It’s like a dream, poetic and deep and mysterious.
// over and above even the shoulder relocation scene we were talking about ages ago. Well that one had a different energy, very masculine, very butch. //
One of the most butch things I’ve ever seen in my life. Raw sexual power – and the will to survive. The only way human beings could ever make it this far is by being as tough as that. Rowr.
For me, the vampire smearing his blood over Dean’s lips goes into an eroticism that is so explicit and sexual that I have never recovered. I never saw the show the same way again after that. It was disturbing – and an assault – blah-di-blah – but it was still sexy, that’s the Dean thing, the disturbing Dean thing. I think it’s great.
And yes, I didn’t mention the final beat of That Scene, with Dean by himself, hand over his mouth. Definitely echoed later in the season, yes!! The vigil!
// in that extreme off-centre shot you’ve included as he’s pulling Taylor from the water. //
Gorgeous moment. It’s one of my favorite moments in the episode – that intense smudgy blue all around him. Bah, can’t take it. and something about the cast on his arm throughout kills me. Jared Padalecki is so IN his body. And it’s such a HUGE body – he’s very graceful with his huge-ness. Natural. Dean’s body language is much more performative – not self-conscious – but … I don’t know … presenting himself.
Jared’s plunge over that railing is breathtaking.
// Every actress KILLS it. //
YES. I left out the actress who plays Rose – I’ll look her up and add it to the re-cap because she’s marvelous too. By the end, she’s damn near heroic.
And I love the slight humor of Susan’s line reading of “You’re insane.” She’s such a serious sad person … it was nice to see something else going on there, something that came out of losing her cool after being attacked by her own swingset.
// I think Dean would have put Sam to bed plenty of times, really – but they both would have been much younger. Another of the resonances that makes that scene so intense and uncomfortable. //
Oh, yes, of course, when they were little kids. Tucking Sam in. So, uhm, yeah. Intense.
I echo you: SAAAAAAM!!!!!
A wonderful recap. And I’m just so pleased that you caught Mr. Mahogoff. Nothing gets past you.
Especially if it’s a reference to sex, I’m on it.
My mother would be so proud. (i.e. mortified and confused.)
//And I’m just so pleased that you caught Mr. Mahogoff.//
I googled Mahogoff, thinking it was another obscure rock alias. The result broke my internet.
//My mother would be so proud. (i.e. mortified and confused.)//
Sorry, Sheila’s mum!
hahaha I know -Dean’s shaking things up a bit with that alias!
I’ll be nice and not start riffing on Pat McCurdy’s song – all the other euphemisms that could have been in there.
Sheila, I liked your duet with him. I initially thought it was the masturbation song, so I got a kick out of the pounding bongos in the intro. Glad MY mom doesn’t read this.
He definitely just scratched the surface with his euphemisms. I know he kept a running tally of additions, things people would shout out during the show, to add to the list, and sometimes he would add them during live shows. I hadn’t heard of the majority of them! “Dialing zero” remains my personal favorite, especially because it is based on technology that is now obsolete.
I love those crazy bongos at the beginning of our song. So goofy! Thanks for listening!
//Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam.//
Aaah, that lovely ’70s style, blue, slightly country and western shirt Sam wears in the drunk scene, with the white piping over the breast pockets, and not being quite long enough to cover his underpants …
I love that shirt on him! And yes, the underpants. Manly but childlike. Like, pull up your pants, kiddo.
Ok I gotta say more things.
On Taylor and who is in charge:
I love how you see Taylor in jeans or whatever at the end and it’s a shock. When I first saw it I took it completely for granted that the two girls would be wearing these ridiculous old timey clothes. The influence of Maggie, so oppressive and felt even in retrospect, and you don’t question it because the mood is so effectively set by the production team. It helps that Sam and Dean’s clothes don’t date.
On places:
Beware what you bring to The Overlook. I feel the same relief when Sam and Dean make it out of there that I do when Wendy and Danny do, but no-one emerges intact. That they used The Shining in the service of this episode, which is about women and loss and stasis, is remarkable – no misogynistic rage, no partners-turning-on-each-other.
On humour:
-I don’t know if they show has ever had a better punchline-edit one-two than the cut after Sherwin’s “let me guess: antiquers?”
-Dean’s smiles, trying to get Sam to admit to his love of dolls, slay me.
-See also Sam’s muttered drunken “stupid.”
-the doll’s eye in the severed doll’s hand ha ha ha
// The influence of Maggie, so oppressive and felt even in retrospect, and you don’t question it because the mood is so effectively set by the production team. //
Wow, so true! And her in jeans – yes!! She’s freed up suddenly – she doesn’t have to dress like a doll anymore. Fascinating!
// That they used The Shining in the service of this episode, which is about women and loss and stasis, is remarkable – no misogynistic rage, no partners-turning-on-each-other. //
Right!! The analogy really works best as visual cues – and a sort of celebration/monument to The Shining and its influence on the horror genre. But like you said, it’s not neat, it’s not one-to-one.
Women are overwhelming in “Playthings” – I mean, Dean and Sam are outnumbered: there are three live females, one ghost female, and 5,000 female dolls, not to mention a ball-gown on the wall of their room. But it’s not hostile – it’s more of a swamp of associations of femininity that these really masculine and yet fluid guys get to swim around in.
All of that adds up to Extreme Pleasure.
I need to look for Sam’s drunken mutter – I missed it.
I like his gesture when he first speaks, revealing his drunkenness – “you’re bossy.” It’s hilarious. Like, that’s the closest they get to the “you suck” rage of The Shining.
The doll’s eye in the hand makes me laugh out loud every time I see it – especially with that huge Psycho-violin-swipe. HYSTERICAL.
Jessie –
That Key and Peele episode reminds me. I friend of mine (the same guy who went to biz school with Michael Lynton) mentioned that he got a bit grumpy with an indifferent flight attendant on a recent flight, and she later came over to fill his drink order. He had some Key and Peele skit up on his computer where Key was dressed as a gimp (Helena can look that up re: Pulp Fiction). He was pretty embarrassed. Gotta be careful what you watch on a flight.
hahahahahaha
//5,000 female dolls,//
And that means 10,000 little staring eyes
… aaaand there goes any prospect of a good night’s sleep tonight.
shivers …
hello sheila and hello everyone. greetings from northen spain. i just wanted you to know that I am reading about your supernatural “variations”, I am watching the supernatural show, I am keeping an eye on JA and I have been summoned from Limbo by YOU, Sheila.
Like, Catholic limbo? Or emotional limbo? Either way, thanks for reading and commenting!
I thought I’d watch again and see if I could pick up any trivia. I noticed that in the teaser, when Taylor is picking up her figures by the doll-house, she says “good night Tabitha” to a doll she puts in a cradle. I don’t know if this was a wink at Stephen King’s wife or a shout out to the baby on Bewitched (or heck, her spinoff show). It probably had nothing to do with the woman that St. Peter raised from the dead in Acts. I learned that the circular saw was invented by a woman named Tabitha Babbitt. I couldn’t have built my deck without her invention, so thanks Tabby B! If this were “The Benders” I might think that the circular saw reference was intentional.
I also learned that a quincunx is called a 5 spot since it looks like the dots arranged on a 5 in a deck of cards, or on a die. In hoodoo, a quincunx is used to fix a spell or a thing in place. So perhaps Maggie could have left the place if Grandma Rose had removed the quincunx? Don’t know. But spirits are usually bound to a place in the SPN-verse, so probably not.
I learned that our pal Sir Thomas Browne wrote a short work titled “The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincunciall Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mystically Considered.” It’s only a little longer than the title. In this work he remarks on the quincunx shape and how the ancients used it to lay out orchards and gardens, how the hyades (the head) of the constellation Taurus is a quincunx, and how it would be a shame to omit that “the whole body of man, which upon the extension of arms and legges, doth make out a square, whose intersection is at the genitals. To omit the phantastical Quincunx, in Plato of the first Hermaphrodite or double man, united at the Loynes, which Jupiter after divided.” So he didn’t omit that. He describes the Macedonian Phalanx as a form of quincunx, a square in shape but with the individual men arranged in a quincunx. He described pyramids as a kind of quincunx. They are everywhere, if you squint just right.
When Sam was worshipping the porcelain deity, Dean teased him about mixing whiskey and Jaeger. Sam commented that he could still taste the tequila. If the boy mixed all of those, it’s lucky he had any stomach lining in the morning.
I did find it odd that the two of them said that the guy had “hung” himself instead of “hanged.” But I may be getting into Grammar Nanny territory with that.
The name of the realtor who drowned in the bathtub, whom we don’t meet, was Joan Edison. I couldn’t find any notable people with that name, but I did find out that there were 9 people in the US named Joan Edison in the 1990 census. You can make 57 english words with the letters in her name, with the longest being “joined.”
I also noticed that Dean says “son of a bitch” when he tries to kick in the door to the pool, and that “son of a bitch” is apparently his character’s trademark phrase in the Changing Channels sitcom. I don’t recall him using that a lot, but now I’m going to be paying more attention going forward. Did he pick up a potty-mouth from Taylor?
I also love that Dean can happily and unself-consciously indulge in Purple Nurples when he wants to get fun and frisky (not getting the butch vibe from that, Sammy), but becomes completely self-conscious when he’s assumed to be gay. Admittedly, it’s much weirder when he’s assumed to be gay when he’s with his brother. You’re an odalisk Dean, just deal. I think they try to play the “you two must be gay” a bit too much with the Benedict Cumberbatch/ Martin Freeman Sherlock, but maybe that’s just me.
Wow, I love how you are following these references down the rabbit hole.
Tabitha as Stephen King’s wife makes a LOT of sense! I’m gonna go with that one in my own mind. At least for the next 5 minutes, and then I’ll switch. But Bewitched is probably swimming around in there too.
And I LOVE the Sir Thomas Browne stuff. Thank you!!
// “The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincunciall Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mystically Considered.” //
That is fabulous.
// You can make 57 english words with the letters in her name, with the longest being “joined.” //
Wow.
“Sonofabitch” is definitely something Dean uses a lot!! – in lieu of other more natural curse words like “Motherfucker” or “cocksucker” – which he probably would say if it wasn’t on the CW.
// Admittedly, it’s much weirder when he’s assumed to be gay when he’s with his brother. //
Yes! That’s that whole other level of weirdness – that keeps coming up – for me, it was really there in Sam’s face of almost revulsion when Sheriff Mills says “you two have each other … a lot of people want what you guys have …” It’s not revulsion like, “Ew, Dean” or even “ew, gay” – but … are you honestly saying that my brother and I are like a married couple? That we operate like a married couple, and are perceived as such? Something is WRONG with this picture. That claustrophobia again – of the whole entire relationship. !
I have not seen Sherlock so I cannot weigh in.
Ah my new-years’ present :)
So happy you made it! AT LAST! I was waiting for this specific recap… Oh GOD.
This episode is ART. In so many ways. There is the *fun* trope … “Unfortunate Implications”. One of my all-time favorite tropes. It’s here. All so dark, and vague. Uncertain. The parallels are delicious, and as an architecture student… well. You can only imagine. I could put “Playthings” on repeat for all day long.
BTW. I read somewhere that someone actually spotted even a specific “Flowers In The Attic” ref, during one of the Tyler-Doll-House scenes. I read it like ages ago (and, ahh, I think I was around 13?…. a decade. aggh ) so I don’t remember – but something about a doll named Tabetha. If it’s true – they made the full-run with claustrophobia between sibilings. YES.
Troopic – glad it was worth the wait!!
// and as an architecture student… well. You can only imagine. //
Wow, of course!!
Flowers in the Attic, hmmm, it has been referenced ad nauseum in the comments section here – and I read it, but I can’t remember a Tabetha. Maybe one of our FITA aficionados can weigh in.
// “Unfortunate Implications”. One of my all-time favorite tropes. It’s here. All so dark, and vague. Uncertain. //
Ha! I like how you put that, and I totally agree.
This was on the internet this very day – a contest to design a Shining style maze for real.
Oh my gosh, that is so cool! I’ve never been to the hotel, although it’s on my list of places I’d like to visit.
I’m checking out the Stanley Hotel website and see that the ribbon-cutting for the maze is happening at the end of April this year, so hopeful designers better get cracking!
On the Wikipedia page for “quincunx” – I found a reference to James Joyce’s short story “Grace” – which naturally I had to track down. Seamus Heaney (in the book of lectures I’ve been doing excerpts from, actually) referred to the 5 medieval kingdoms of Ireland as a quincunx – the kingdoms being Connacht, Munster, Leinster, Ulster, Meath – my father made us memorize those kingdoms in order to receive our allowance as kids – Incidentally, the allowance ritual was the subject of my very first published piece in The Sewanee Review in 2006.
Then, of course I had to pull out “Grace”. In “Grace,” a group of friends basically trick another friend into attending a Catholic retreat. Language was all about associations for Joyce – so all the “quincunx” associations (The points of the crucifix and the wound in Christ’s belly, maybe?) are wonderful. Anyway, here’s Joyce: and I love his obsessiveness: he tells you where everyone is, front, behind, to the left, so the quincunx is totally formed in your mind’s eye before the word is even said.
“In one of the benches near the pulpit sat Mr Cunningham and Mr Kernan. In the bench behind sat Mr M’Coy alone: and in the bench behind him sat Mr Power and Mr Fogarty. Mr M’Coy had tried unsuccessfully to find a place in the bench with the others and, when the party had settled down in the form of a quincunx, he had tried unsuccessfully to make comic remarks. As these had not been well received he had desisted. Even he was sensible of the decorous atmosphere and even he began to respond to the religious stimulus.”
That’s a beautiful bar at the Stanley Hotel.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8327/8129218186_65035a8cb6_z.jpg
Also, this image of a bridal photo from the Stanley Hotel made me think both of the dress in Sam and Dean’s room, and how cold that poor woman must be.
http://www.kern-photo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/wpid-jennifer_steve_wedding_stanley_hotel_estes_park_photography_04-2010-12-9-18-432.jpg
hello. well it is writing Limbo. ten years straight. not writing. not publishing…as i am in the supernatural realm now i will expect the unexpected. i can’t give feedback on spain fanfic cause i am a lone ranger and don’t blend with it.
about the Impala. the name “baby” it is being translated as “bebé”, little baby,…
your hosting place it is just amazing and i haven’t had so much fun from reading for ten years, i am telling you !!!
Mercedes – so nice, thank you so much!!
sheila, hi,
Unfortunate Implications on TV Tropes (just in case)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnfortunateImplications
Unfortunatly (ha!) there is no Supernatural section there…. :(
But, you know…. There is a lot on the show. :)
//Maybe one of our FITA aficionados can weigh in.//
Is there more than one? That said, I appreciate that you didn’t call me out by name ;-)
I don’t actually remember a Tabitha in FITA. I’ll glance through my copy when I have a chance, but for this episode, if that name was meant to be a reference, my money’s on it being a Stephen King reference.
I do think there is a different literary reference in this episode though, and I will be back when I have more time (and hopefully this migraine is gone).
Looking forward to it – I missed it if there was one.
Maybe Shirley Jackson ? Like … We Have Always Lived in the Castle? That book freaked me out. And if I recall there are two sisters in a big huge house.
Ahem (clears throat, reaches for whisky bottle) I’ve just gotten over my fear of horror movies enough to finally watch The Shining, and if I were reviewing it on Tripadvisor, it would be to say I’d probably rather stay at the Grand Budapest Hotel. No seriously, I enjoyed it thoroughly and can see why it’s an object of obsession for some. I loved the use of music and silence – the way the sound worked (and sounded) reminded me a lot of ‘Under the skin’. I see what you mean about Shelley Duvall playing a sort of annoying, interfering woman, but if I were her I’d have stuck something sharp and pointy in my husband a lot sooner. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey (on the big screen, restored print – wow!) recently, and got the same feeling of foreboding and of a game of cat and mouse being played out in an extraordinary setting.
Working my way through horror classics – Night of the Demon next!
// if I were reviewing it on Tripadvisor //
Ha !!
Oh I definitely would rather stay in Grand Budapest.
So psyched you saw it, Helena !!
How about that INSANE first shot? Of the car driving – and then the camera in a helicopter veers off the cliff? It’s so audacious, so freaky.
I guess I related more to Jack Nicholson’s character throughout because when I’m writing I don’t want to be bothered. If I had a partner like that, I’d blow my brains out. Can’t you see I’M WORKING? Or at least TRYING?
Not fair – but it’s a great movie about obsession, I think. AND – how about how he hasn’t written anything at all? Except for all of those freaky pages?? That is one of the scariest moments in cinema. Pure madness.
I think, too – that there’s a comment there about the infantilization of women through marriage. Like, there she is, playing and romping with her son through the maze – giggling and laughing – a normal image, a normal mother-son thing – but somehow … she just doesn’t seem like an adult. Marriage has stripped her of power. Of agency. I love Shelley Duvall.
Good luck with Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. Those two movies, frankly, are almost too scary for me to watch. Still.
So envious about seeing 2001 restored print – I always keep my eyes open for screenings. That movie, man …
And talk about Under the Skin sound design. That silence that isn’t really silence … the hum underneath everything …
mutecypher, I love that K&P story! Mortifying.
Sheila, ermagherd, I know. I can never look at it just once. Like that rat with the pleasure button (not a mahogoffian eupehmism). & I know exactly what you mean about the vampire blood schmear, I had just the same reaction. It is so shockingly overt.
I love what you say about JP, his body and Sam! Because Sam does move through the world very easily despite his fraught relationship with the stuff of his body. Perhaps that inward-focus allows it. And so when he does have to self-present – I love your notes on how he kinda queens it up, I’ve always found it such a hilarious discordant note! It’s not so evident anymore but it pops up again in Tall Tales, funnily enough through Dean’s kinda butch eye.
Helena, welcome to the Shining! One thing I love about it is how Wendy laboriously drags Jack through the hotel and locks him up. So funny. And what we all want her to do! Not her fault the hotel’s playing a different game. And how great is 2001 on the big screen? I liked it before but when I saw it a few years ago at the movies I finally felt like I Got it. It was overwhelming.
// I’ve always found it such a hilarious discordant note! //
It really is! It’s so automatic, too. I think it’s because – just stereotypically – nobody ever assumes he’s gay when he’s by himself. Whereas it happens to Dean all the time. He’s hit on – by everyone – all the time. So Dean just sort of accepts that fluidity in himself in a way. Sometimes with an eye roll of “oh God, this again”, or here, with anxiety – but he never “goes gay”. Ha. Sam, though, is so taken aback that he suddenly … I don’t know … he can’t incorporate it into his presentation of self at all. It’s so funny.
Oh God, Tall Tales. That Purple Nurple double-scene. Soooo funny – talk about Presentation of Self, and Persona … So hilarious, but also so revealing about how they see each other!
In re: Kubrick – I’m a huge Eyes Wide Shut fan too.
Jessie – thanks,really enjoyed it! As is usual with horror films I’d built it up in my mind into something basically unwatchable. But of course it’s the opposite of unwatchable, very satisfying on every level. Little things like noticing the hotel manager is very snazzily dressed with love beads as he wraps things up with Jack as the hotel closes. I love that it was all a set, none of it real at all. Just adds to the pleasure somehow. I was particularly looking out for the scrapbook featured in the Terror and Wonder exhibition, and gave a sigh of pleasure to see it. Picked up Night of the Demon at the same time, not realising that both featured Ken Adam as set designer.
My next Kubrick challenge is Clockwork Orange … one day, one day.
It was wonderful seeing 2001 really big – something about the sheer scale of it and the stately, almost glacial pace, plus the majestic soundtrack, touched a lot of pleasure buttons.
Clockwork Orange is nasty. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it. A real zeitgeist movie – the psychedelic 60s run amok, so licentious, so despicable. My favorite scene is the “Milk Bar.” You’ll know it when you see it. And you’ll probably wish you’ve never seen it. Women are just … nonexistent in that world. Or … they’re just “things.” It’s really disturbing.
I just watched Barry Lyndon this past fall. It just cracks me up that Kubrick decided to do THAT in the white-hot heat of his fame. It is so gorgeous, like you have stepped into a gigantic tapestry on a wall – and the real candlelight – he didn’t use any artificial lighting in the night scenes – just candlelight, and it’s one of the most memorable parts of the film. But, it’s like 3 hours long. And the pace is glacial. I just love that Kubrick did whatever the hell HE wanted to do, hang the critics. Kinda like Godard. I really respect that!
Playthings is a great episode and I love it. The drunk Sam/face grasping scene fills me with thrills me for “reasons”. I’m a big fan of Winchester brother touching (we like when they hug!) and Playthings is like a golden treasure.
For all the love I have for that scene, I have equal questions as to how it came to be. Was it written to be so homoerotic or was that a directors choice, or the actors choice. I can’t be the only one who really thought that Sam was going to kiss Dean. Was it designed as ‘fan service’ – to give a thrill to a certain segment of the viewing audience? These questions run through my head whenever I catch the episode.
Pat – I’ve talked a lot about old Tough Guy movies – buddy movies, Westerns from the 30s, 40s – I talked about it here too. SPN is in that genre – and scenes like that drunk scene, with homoerotic subtext, has been part of the genre since it was born. Especially since in the 30s and 40s, all of this stuff was closeted. (See The Celluloid Closet, also mentioned above.)
Especially in a film (or TV show) that features an all-male universe – Men Without Women – or where women are really peripheral – these intimate male-male relationships, even between brothers, is going to be sexually charged.
// was that a directors choice, or the actors choice. //
I would say neither, alone. That’s not how television works. Television is a collaboration. Everything – every scene, every line, every shot, every angle, every casting decision – is run by Kripke or Singer, and then also the network suits. Dailies are shown every day to the network while they are shooting each episode. Everyone weighs in. On everything. In that environment, there’s no one individual responsible for any one thing. The writers are in the zone with Kripke and Singer – the ones who were best able to align themselves with the vision from those two guys are the writers who are still around 9 seasons later – the directors work with the vision already set up (and this is Beeson’s first episode). None of it would work if any of these parts were out of sync.
But was there a meeting where someone said, “Let’s have a really homoerotic scene to get the fans talking?”
I highly doubt it.
Just like I’m sure Thomas Mitchell in Only Angels Have Wings (mentioned in the post) didn’t need to be told that his character was in love with Cary Grant, or that he needed to play that explicitly.
Everyone knows what show they’re making. Everyone sits around in the writer’s room talking about tropes and ghost stories and movies and subtext. It becomes the air that the entire team breathes.
JA and JP see a scene like that on the page and they know EXACTLY what to do with it.
It is definitely pushing the envelope – and it’s what the scene needs. What fans project onto it is their business.
I think the fact that fans do so much projecting is a real strength of the show. I don’t agree with half of the theories I read, and I get the sense that some fans prefer their fanfic world to … you know, the actual damn show, but it’s certainly potent material that engenders enough fanfic to sink Prince Edward Island.
My cousin is an executive producer, show-runner, and writer for television. My brother also writes for a television show. The stories they tell … every joke, every line, everything, has to be run by the head writer, subjected to brutal review by all the other writers, then it goes to the show runner, then it goes to the producer and then it goes to the network, and then it comes back to you and you have to rewrite the whole thing. In an hour. It’s amazing anything ever gets done at all. It’s also amazing that anything is GOOD.
Just one of the small miracles of SPN which has been pretty consistently good for 10 years. Gotta be some kind of record.
In my opinion – “Playthings” shows a giant leap forward from everything that came before. It’s elegant and quiet, it’s an homage, it’s deep, it’s also very bold – like that drunk scene.
It feels to me like the episode represents a moment where everyone – who had been working so hard for a season and a half – realized that they were an ensemble, that their process was working well, that they had a nice fan base … that they could RELAX a little bit.
That’s what I feel in “Playthings.” A kind of release, a loosening of the reins. Really really confident episode.
I almost quit Supernatural because this was so harrowing-both Maggie and the pool scene. I simply could not deal. And Rose! Poor Rose, successfully keeping Maggie at bay for so long and then being rendered a powerless witness. Holy cow.
VB –
Rose is such a touching character. It took a lot of strength to do what she did – but she must have lived in total panic for those final years. Picturing her carving quincunxes into the vases all around the hotel in the dead of night … pretty tragic.
I am scared of the water. Dead In the Water and Phantom Traveler were the points where SPN finally piqued my interest: I’m not necessarily scared of monsters (specially not of the wendigo, come on!). But water, or a crashing plane? Just like with crazy people, I AM shit-scared. Creepy Little Girl can work too.
Creepy little girl drowning another little girl? Someone send help, please. Specially when I’ve been watching The Shining the same day. Nerve-wracking.
I love how this episode is shot, although I didn’t notice as many things as Sheila did – of course. To me this episode evokes a lot of smells. I feel like I can smell the place: the dust, the old wood, the smells of old places and maybe of too old mattresses, the chlorine in the pool, rotting dead leaves outside. Don’t mind me, I don’t know what I’m saying.
About The Shining:
What a nightmare. After deferring watching it for years, I finally brought myself to do it something like ten years ago. I had worked in a video store, and the mere sight of the cover scared the shit out of me. The little girls are creepy, sure, but the crazy violent father struck too close to home. Is that why I had absolutely NO recollection of the movie? Upon re-watching it, I can safely assume that yes, it was my brain giving me a break. I just remembered being extremely annoyed by Wendy – and even by Shelley Duvall. Today, I really loved Duvall’s performance, and I found Wendy a much less simplistic character than what I remembered. After all, sure, she whines and cries. But she also uses the baseball bat! I was rooting for her!
Time is a friend.
I love the impossible window detail – amazing!
In the movie, Danny watches Roadrunner. I wonder if it symbolizes a quest for the divine. I like the loop.
// There’s a gentleness at work here, a give, that, again, I find sexy. Or, sexual, to be totally clear. //
I’m having trouble concentrating on what is being said in the first scene, because I want to EAT THEM UP BOTH. When it cuts to the next shot and we see the Impala, I was so worked up I found myself thinking «hell, I’d fuck the car too. » What does that even mean? Supernatural has not only messed with my head and broken my soul: it did something strange to my sexuality. So, there. Pantsyfeelings all around.
// […] Christopher Nolan […] It’s why I find some of his films insufferable. //
Maybe it’s the sexually charged atmosphere, but I could kiss you all over.
// He laughs, turns inward for a second, saying to himself, “Right” (fascinating, awkward, almost a way to buy time for himself, to figure out what to say next), and then glances back up to Sam, still laughing a bit. It is an extremely vulnerable moment. He doesn’t seem hurt or pissed. //
No, he seems lost in thoughts. Or just lost. That little moment always breaks my heart, for some reason. Vulnerable, yes. I can’t really say why, but I see something sad. Poor guy. It’s not easy being him.
// He teases Sam about her, he teases Sam about how Sam has been the Hero of the Episode, Dean COULD have been the hero, but he CHOSE not to be //
No, Dean, you couldn’t have been. Because to me this episode is also Gilmore Girls gone very, very wrong. A hotel, a single mom with a little girl, in Connecticut? Susan even looks a little like Lorelai Gilmore. Sam is the Dean who has to save Rory-Tyler. In my mind, it does make sense, I swear.
About one-location episodes :
// I think before “Playthings” the only ones are “Asylum” and “In My Time of Dying” is mostly hospital. //
They must have loved this place, because the two episodes were shot in the same abandoned hospital, if I remember correctly.
Lyrie – Hi!
// Creepy little girl drowning another little girl? Someone send help, please. //
Ha. I know. How wonderful were those two little actresses with one another? From the first moment, they created this great little relationship. I loved them. But yes, scary together, and scary especially in a pool.
// maybe of too old mattresses, the chlorine in the pool, rotting dead leaves outside. //
But I know just what you mean!! It’s so true what you say – that’s the care that has been taken with the environment. That wind has a bite to it. And whatever Dean is drinking in that nocturnal scene looks golden and soothing, you can almost feel his soft gentle buzz, in comparison to the raging Jaeger-tequila-whiskey drunkenness of his brother. It’s a great counter-point.
// Upon re-watching it, I can safely assume that yes, it was my brain giving me a break. //
Fascinating how that can happen!! The family drama is extremely harrowing. And also that the little boy is picking up on all of it, and trying to escape that hotel by racing his Big Wheel around that maze … Nicholson is so out there, so beyond the pale – it’s all so claustrophobic, even though that hotel is so huge you would think they would be able to escape one another. It’s pretty brutal.
For me, the most moving moment in the movie is when Shelley Duvall shoves the son out of the small window into the snow. She will save HIM, even if she has to die. It’s heroic and desperate. And little Danny outside, with that huge huge drift going up the wall … it’s just terrible. I loved how Danny leapt off the path in the maze, so that his tracks basically just disappeared.
// When it cuts to the next shot and we see the Impala, I was so worked up I found myself thinking «hell, I’d fuck the car too. » //
hahahahahaha I know!
// It’s not easy being him. //
I think, in examining the moment, it’s how he looks down – and then his eyes sort of drag up to glance at Sam again – almost like he’s wondering if Sam will have turned to judgment or something … and there’s the smile … It’s an extremely open moment, SO unexpected – it surprises me every time I see it.
I stayed at the Stanley Hotel in 2004, and drank at that wonderful bar. I even had a ‘ghostly’ encounter. It really is a most atmospheric place, almost as spooky as the Pierpoint Inn. I wrote about my ghost: http://itsjustapie.blogspot.ca/2012/04/ghost-story.html
Alison!! That is such a great story!
I hate to admit this, but I’m not sure I’ve seen The Shining all the way through. Not because I find it scary (I don’t), but because it is one of the movies that my mother…ruined?…for me. She absolutely hates the film for how it deviated from the book (my nerd-rages are an inherited trait). Her biggest beef is Kubrick killing Dick Hallorann: “He’s supposed to live! Danny and Wendy are supposed to go live with him!” So every time I see it, some part of my brain is always saying “wrong, wrong, wrong.”
I have seen The Big Year, though, and quite liked it. (I’m thinking it was probably on your recommendation, Sheila).
Mutecypher – I agree with you, RE: Sherlock. That joke got old, and oddly homophobic, fast.
RE: The womanizing, closeted “antiquer” Dean Winchester —
I have a lot of thoughts about this (probably not surprising as I’ve mention them before). A couple of my SPN-watching friends are fairly sure Dean is gay and I’ve always disagreed with them. I know that part of my reaction is my visceral dislike of gender-stereotyping, and my (perhaps unfair) tendency dismiss theories I think are based on those sorts of assumptions, but I’ve just never gotten that vibe from Dean. Not really. And I just don’t think it is supported by the text. Bisexual or pansexual, maybe, but not closeted homosexual.
My impression is that other men (most significantly his father) have directly or indirectly given Dean a hard time about his more “feminine” traits and this has made him unsure of his masculinity and uncertain in his interactions with men. So Dean seeks male approval and tries hard to fit in. Dean really craves these sort of familial bonds (brotherly or father/son) and that creates all sorts of weird power dynamics in his relationships with men (especially if they are creeping on him).
I guess to me it seems that, while Dean’s sense of his masculinity is insecure, his sexuality isn’t. He isn’t homophobic. He accepts that men are attracted to him, and isn’t disgusted or offended (sometimes wary though…in a way that suggests past bad experiences). Plus, in the end, Dean just has too damn many (shameful secret!) wife/girlfriend fantasies to have no romantic interest in women.
It’s the incest thing that offends and disgusts him.
I was going to write more, but now my cat is determinedly sitting on my arm, making typing difficult. So I’ll have to stop my rambling, abruptly here. *everyone silently thanks my cat*
May – I really like your thoughts on Dean’s sexuality/masculinity – and it’s pretty much what I see too.
// is my visceral dislike of gender-stereotyping //
That’s one of the things I REALLY dislike about the “Dean is gay” stuff I see – which amounts to labeling him as gay because he likes to cook or has watched Titanic or has a pink iPod. This from people who purportedly hate “labels” of any kind, at least according to their Tumblrs. It’s a weird thing, and a huge turnoff. I think, too, there’s a real hostility towards straight male sexuality in some of the commentary I’ve read – a tendency to treat it with suspicion, as though coming on to a woman = sexual assault. Granted, many of these people writing this balderdash are probably very young – and steeped in Tumblr hysteria – God love ’em – but it’s not what I SEE onscreen, at all.
// He accepts that men are attracted to him, and isn’t disgusted or offended (sometimes wary though…in a way that suggests past bad experiences). //
Yes, that’s what I see too. What does it feel like to have been sexualized by others from before you could even process what it meant? The fact that he is as healthy as he is, sexually – in that he is not a user, or careless with his own safety, and all the rest – is a miracle, considering the amount of lechery he has faced.
So anyway, I appreciate your commentary a LOT!!
I love it when cats put their bodies in between you and whatever you are working on. It’s so hilarious.
May, I like your insight on Dean’s sexually, and I pretty much agree with everything. (hi, cat!)
// how about how he hasn’t written anything at all? Except for all of those freaky pages?? That is one of the scariest moments in cinema. Pure madness. //
I knew it was coming (one of the rare things I remembered), and still I was terrified. But it might also be because I dread to end up just like him – an obsessive crazy person typing endlessly the same bullshit.
// In my opinion – “Playthings” shows a giant leap forward from everything that came before. It’s elegant and quiet, it’s an homage, it’s deep, it’s also very bold – like that drunk scene. //
It’s amazing how SPN is generally underestimated. Some shows get much more praise for much less, in my opinion. Supernatural is humble – if that makes any sense.
I hadn’t realized I missed that show. It’s my first real break since I discovered it last summer. I thought maybe I would watch Playthings and I would like it but the magic would be gone. It’s still here. I love love love them. I can’t wait for January 20.
// But it might also be because I dread to end up just like him – an obsessive crazy person typing endlessly the same bullshit. //
That’s it, exactly!!
Also that there are so MANY pages with the same thing typed over and over … sometimes written out as poems, sometimes in paragraph form – like he is changing what the words look like on the page, but they are the same words …
Total insanity.
Alison –
Great story!
May –
I’m not sure why the Sherlock/Watson gay thing got old so quickly. Perhaps because Sherlock is such a fervent member of the Senior Anti-Sex League (not at all a rebel from the waist downwards). Watson is looking for love. But Sherlock was a cold fish even with Irene Adler (which, jeez, I wanted to climb through the TV and share all my secrets with her). Or maybe it’s because they have it happen every freaking time they meet someone.
Maybe Jessie can weigh in with her //Freeman increasingly to me seems like he’s always impersonating Jack Lemmon’s Daphne hiding in different genres of movie/tv// comment and clear it all up.
Okay, I need to start watching Sherlock. Clearly.
//Maybe Shirley Jackson ? Like … We Have Always Lived in the Castle?//
Oh, God, I really wish it was something that classy. (And actually, I think that’s the only Shirley Jackson I have not read yet, but based on what I know of the plot, it wouldn’t surprise me if SPN was referencing it in Playthings. I love Shirley Jackson so much, though. I could probably spend hours discussing the significance of the different iterations of James Harris in her short stories, and her stories about racism and sexism. I mean, had the concept of racial microaggressions even been intoduced in the 1940’s? I am in awe of her genius.)
But, no, I grew up in the 80’s, and as such, Scholastic Apple paperbacks were a staple of my youth. There was an author named Betty Ren Wright who wrote scary books for late elementary school girls. And my very first thought when I first watched the teaser for Playthings, even before all the Shining references were obvious to me, was, “Huh. This reminds me of The Dollhouse Murders.” (Plot summary here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dollhouse_Murders)
At first this struck me as a coincidence, until I googled the book to refresh my memory of the plot – two sisters, one of whom is in a caretaking role towards the other, who solve a murder mystery after seeing the deaths re-enacted by dolls in a haunted dollhouse, which just happens to be an exact replica of the house they’re in.
And then I looked up some of Betty Ren Wright’s other books that I remembered reading and one in particular stood out – Ghosts Beneath Our Feet, about a girl who, along with her mother and stepbrother, goes to stay with a relative in an economically depressed and nearly completely abandoned former mining town. The few residents who remain are immigrants and their children who still talk about “the old country” – which just happens to be Cornwall, England.
Again, could be coincidence, but I lean towards thinking Playthings is a deliberate nod to those books, although I haven’t been able to find any other fan theories connecting this episode with the books. I like to imagine that Matt Witten got bored in the car during a family vacation, maybe the battery died on his game boy, and he picked up his kid sister’s copy of The Dollhouse Murders and discovered that it was actually a cool story :-)
Incidentally, I also think that the entire Looney Tunes episode is one big reference to Say Anything. All that’s missing is a shot of Sam holding up a boombox that’s blasting In Your Eyes.
// I am in awe of her genius. //
You and me both! We Have Always Lived in the Castle is haunting – and cold as ice. No fat on that story. I should have mentioned it in this re-cap but I got so discombobbled as it was.
I haven’t read The Dollhouse Murders but I really like that association! I think the writers on SPN are so smart – and add so much by bringing in their own passions and associations – // I like to imagine that Matt Witten got bored in the car during a family vacation, maybe the battery died on his game boy, and he picked up his kid sister’s copy of The Dollhouse Murders and discovered that it was actually a cool story :-) // I love this idea!!
Okay, now I need to watch the Looney Tunes episode again. I remember being totally flattened by it – that scene inside the television, the climax – so on the nose, but SO powerful. At least it was for me. And then “Ode to Joy” – although honestly it doesn’t make sense that Castiel would know what THAT was and not “pop culture.” So, what … Castiel is a “snob” culturally as opposed to totally ignorant? Didn’t really make sense – but it didn’t matter to me. It knocked me OUT. Also, it’s the episode where JA got to say the immortal words, “What’s up, doc?” and I honestly died and went to some sort of weird Bugs Bunny heaven.
Mutecypher — //I’m not sure why the Sherlock/Watson gay thing got old so quickly. Perhaps because Sherlock is such a fervent member of the Senior Anti-Sex League//
I think that is definitely part of it. I also think it’s the fact that Watson continues to act…almost offended…still, each time he hears it. There may only be a few episodes each series, but a few years at least are supposed to have gone by, right? You’d think that if people were always assuming you were a couple, at some point, you would just stop reacting to it. Or, at the very least, your reactions would change. Sam and Dean are a good example of that. SPN may keep making the jokes 10 years in, but Sam and Dean react to them differently in 2014 than they did in 2007. Yes, SPN has had the benefit of running for 10 years, but still.
(As much as I enjoyed Sherlock at first, I’m starting to sour on it. Same with Doctor Who. I think I’m getting tired of Moffat and the fast-talking, kinda sexist, look-how-clever-I-am characters and stories. Particularly when the fast pace only really serves to hide how clever the story/character actually isn’t.)
Continuing my cat-interrupted thoughts from last night…
I’ve always figured that Dean’s tough-guy persona was an attempt to hide the fact that he is a huge nerd. He geeks out over pop-culture stuff constantly. Appears to be big fan of Star Wars, Star Trek, and The Lord of the Rings. References Spider-Man (“with great power comes great responsibility”). Hell, he watches anime (probably mostly hentai, but still). Look at the joy he got out of LARPing. He would have a field day at Comic-Con, but is ashamed to admit it.
Sam is almost the opposite. He is supposed to be the family nerd and has constructed a persona that is in opposition to the traditional tough guy (aka John)…but, since he’s actually a lot like John, being a “tough-guy” comes naturally.
May – yes, with Dean’s nerd self!! His judgment of nerdy stuff, but then his clear intelligence and encyclopedic brain – his immersion in culture of all kinds.
// Look at the joy he got out of LARPing. He would have a field day at Comic-Con, but is ashamed to admit it. //
The latest iteration of this gorgeousness is him rocking out to the musical (and the image of his “mother” getting burned up) and then being busted on it by the stage manager. HILARIOUS. He refers to it as “Andrew Floyd Webber” crap but then gets caught up in it.
I love how he clearly thinks LARPing would be cool from the get-go – you can see him drawn to it – but then he has to put on another kind of face for Sam. It doesn’t seem “cool.” And as we’ve discussed before – Dean is NOT “cool.” At all.
//I’ve always figured that Dean’s tough-guy persona was an attempt to hide the fact that he is a huge nerd.//
100% agreed!
The Moondoor episode will always be one of my favorites solely due to Dean’s barely suppressed delight in getting to participate. That split second smile when Charlie tells him he will have to put on a costume. And the entire battle strategy scene near the beginning, especially that brief telepathic contact between Dean and Charlie during Sam’s “we need to focus on the case” speech. It will never get old.
// that brief telepathic contact between Dean and Charlie during Sam’s “we need to focus on the case” speech. //
When he moves the plastic tank, giving her a look, which she understands …
Definitely in my Top 5 moments in the entire series.
May –
I think you’re right about Watson’s reaction being the turn off. That’s what has deflated the joke most of all. Your comments about Dr. Who: I have to confess that’s my general reaction to the show in every incarnation. Dr. Who is like Tom Sawyer in the last half of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, just too freaking rococo for Coco Puffs with the plans. Or like Tom Cruise explaining Scientology to Matt Lauer, “There’s so much more to it than the 4 books you’ve read, you shallow fool.” Clearly lots of folks disagree with me on that one.
Sheila — //That’s one of the things I REALLY dislike about the “Dean is gay” stuff I see – which amounts to labeling him as gay because he likes to cook or has watched Titanic or has a pink iPod. //
Yes! That ticks me off. (And if characters turn out to be gay, canonically, because of this sort of thing, I’m very disappointed.)
//What does it feel like to have been sexualized by others from before you could even process what it meant?//
Exactly! And this is why I think Dean gets along with women so well. Why his hook-ups always seem respectful and mutual. I knows what it’s like to be objectified and doesn’t like it.
Most definitely – he understands being objectified in a way few men really can. He gets it. He probably couldn’t put it into words but he operates from a place of understanding. And women get that he is safe because of that. It’s a weird thing, and beautifully JA – his contribution. The role isn’t really WRITTEN that way – or, it is now – but it didn’t start out that way – and then the writers started responding to what JA was doing, and so now we have what we have. It’s great.
mutecypher — //Your comments about Dr. Who: I have to confess that’s my general reaction to the show in every incarnation.//
LOL! You’re not totally wrong there. I watched Doctor Who as a kid and again with the revived series. The Doctor has always had a manic quality to him. I guess I find it more over-the-top now. It could just be a personal thing, though, in that it’s something that was always there and I’m only noticing now. It might also be the Doctor/Sherlock combo has worn me out.
“I knows” good lord. HE knows. HE!!!!
That’s just embarrassing.
Oh, the gif. You have a gift with the gif.
May –
I’ve reached the conclusion that Hugh Laurie’s Dr. House is the definitive non-Basil Rathbone Holmes.
//The Doctor has always had a manic quality to him//
Perhaps, although some of the earlier ones were marvellously distrait. I loved Dr Who as far as Tom Baker, (it’s not an urban legend that kids hid behind the sofa when the theme music came on – I remember doing this). Thereafter, not so much, and the new generation, Christopher Eccleshare onwards (I like him as an actor, but no) broke my Dr Who. I liked Baker’s languid, Wildean air, and I loved Jon Pertwee for his waspish but authoritative manner – for me it encapsulated perfectly what a Timelord should be. (And the Daleks were the Nazis, the scariest thing you could imagine in their real or fictionalised form.)
The newer iterations do seem uniformly manic – it as if they’re afraid if everyone stops running around and waving their hands in the air we will stop watching. As I get older I realise I appreciate shows which incorporate moments of stillness, where characters just kick back and do bugger all, to all intents and purposes. You have to earn these moments for them to work – and Supernatural certainly does.
//That split second smile when Charlie tells him he will have to put on a costume.//
Natalie, I love that costume.
// it’s not an urban legend that kids hid behind the sofa when the theme music came on – I remember doing this //
I love this, wow!!
// I appreciate shows which incorporate moments of stillness, //
Oh, YES.
Speaking of Sherlock, I’m hoping that this is good.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/kareem-abdul-jabbar-to-publish-a-novel-about-sherlock-holmess-brother-mycroft/?_r=0
Go Kareem.
Helena –
Your comments about stillness, I was reflecting recently that some of my favorite moments in the Star Wars series are in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke is just in his X-wing quietly talking to R2. As Gandalf says, the deep breath before the plunge.
Helena — //Perhaps, although some of the earlier ones were marvellously distrait.//
This is true. My first Doctor was Tom Baker, and I clearly remember some of McCoy’s, so that has coloured my perceptions a bit. (Though I was watching Doctor Who before I could really watch TV–apparently I was mesmerized by the opening music when I was a toddler–I’m not actually old enough to remember watching Baker’s in real time. I would have seen his episodes as re-runs airing on Canadian TV.)
Helena & mutecypher, RE: Stillness — I agree completely!
//apparently I was mesmerized by the opening music when I was a toddler//
I still love the original theme music – it’s an incredible piece of work, it still sounds like nothing else, and it still gives me the shivers.
Want to shout out a big Hello and Welcome to our new friend Mercedes from Spain.
I like everyone it seems loves this episode and for pretty much the same reasons.
The only space I can find where I might add some insight or observation is with the famous much loved scene where Sam is clutching at his brother. This is one of the most Mother and small child scenes between the boys I have seen. At least that is how I have always read it. I know it is a favorite of the fans what with Sam clutching at Dean, but the intimacy of the scene reads more adult and child than anything else. It is the grabbing and clutching that makes it seem that Sam is a child begging a parent to fix things, make them right, promise.
Well that is all I can add. Except my thank you to Sheila for this marvelous review.
Grean – Along with Elvis, the Supernatural posts have brought a truly international audience to my site – and I absolutely love it!!
I agree that there is a beautiful and touching parent-child dynamic there – something that has been there from the beginning but NEVER that clearly. It’s upsetting to see how upset Sam is – and how Dean is doing his best – but also with the whisper of his own father in his mind … Sam is basically echoing John’s command – and what a disturbing thought THAT must be.
You are most welcome, Grean – it took a while for me to put it up, but it’s been worth the wait for me to hear everybody’s fascinating comments!
And now on to “Nightshifter.” MANDROID.
//No fat on that story.//
I think that could probably be said of all her stories. If I had to describe Jackson’s writing with one word, I think that word would be “taut.” She does not waste a syllable. And even her humorous writing can be unsettling. I first read Charles in 5th grade (I think we read it in class, actually), and at the time, I only got the humor out of it, but reading it as an adult, I feel a mildly sinister undercurrent in it, the introduction of the outside world into the insulated family unit, a darker side emerging from the sweet little boy she thought she knew. Jackson could make the most banal, ordinary things – a little boy misbehaving at kindergarten, a shopper buying a rare book – seem menacing. Amazing. (And don’t even get me started on her mental illness/instability stuff. Very obvious Freudian influence to much of it – consistent with what would have been popular knowledge at the time – but incredibly ahead-of-its-time insightful in many ways.)
Re: Dollhouse Murders, I forgot to mention possibly the biggest parallel to the Winchesters – that the sister who is in the caretaking role is so enmeshed with her sister that she is unable to form any healthy peer relationships outside her family.
The Looney Tunes episode – I love that one too (Castiel’s interpretation of Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner? Hilarious! And also . . . kinda sorta . . . profound?), but it took me a while to see the Say Anything reference, and it came in stages. First I thought the whole corrupt nursing home administrator stealing from his patients kind of reminded me of Say Anything, and then I caught the fact that the nursing home guy’s name was Dr. Mahoney (the equivalent character in Say Anything having been played by John Mahoney, of course, in one of my favorite movie performances ever), and then I realized that the whole Sam/Amelia/Amelia’s dad thing was an almost direct parallel to the Lloyd/Diane/Diane’s dad story, just with a different ending. And minus the awesome “I’m incarcerated, Lloyd!” line. The actress who played Amelia even looks a litle like Ione Skye and even has a similar sort of almost speech impediment.
//When he moves the plastic tank, giving her a look, which she understands //
That was the exact moment I meant! I can’t tell you how many times I have watched that scene, and the delight just never fades.
Helena, I love the costume, too!
I have a lot more that I want to say about Playthings and The Shining and Kubrick and old houses and dollhouses and the Winchesters and sex, and more that I want to respond to from everybody’s comments, but only so much time!
I will say that I have not always been a fan of Kubrick (Sheila – I really trust your opinions, and I am re-evaluating my perceptions of Shelley Duvall’s performance in The Shining based on your discussion of it here, but I don’t know if it’s possible to convince me that Eyes Wide Shut was actually worth the hours I spent watching it), although I actually adore A Clockwork Orange. Like, with a passion that sort of disturbs me. I did soften towards Kubrick a little when I discovered that, thanks to him, the little boy who played Danny didn’t know it was a horror movie.
Natalie – Ha – I absolutely love Eyes Wide Shut and think it’s major Kubrick – and its brilliance was overshadowed by his death as well as the weirdo-ness of Cruise and Kidman and their divorce and “we lived with Kubrick and worked out our sex lives” kind of tabloid stuff that was around at the time – but yeah, I’m slightly in the minority on that one, probably, but I love it! Sidney Pollack! Really effed-up anxious movie about female power. Envy and emasculation, all that. But I have definitely had people do a double-take when I hear how much I love that one. So I get it.
That rape scene in Clockwork Orange is almost too much for me to deal with – and is the most upsetting thing I think Kubrick ever put on film. Something about the rote-ness of it – or something – I don’t know. I felt like watching the movie my eyes were propped open too forcing me to look, like that torture device! Certainly brilliant though. I love how surreal it all is.
And braaaa-VO for your Say Anything connection in Looney Tunes!! If I ever get to that re-cap, somewhere around the year 2019, I will have to include your analysis and will make sure to give credit. Mahoney! Nursing home! Amelia’s dad. Totally missed ALL of that.
In re: Shirley Jackson: She died relatively young, right? I’ve read some interesting things about her. Her sense that domesticity was a world of trauma and entrapment is just palpable – still. You’re right, she takes something banal and makes it so ominous. I mean, even all the gossipy chit-chat in The Lottery – it all feels so OFF.
Mental illness stuff – like what? Haunting of Hill House? I actually haven’t read that one – but would be curious to hear more of your thoughts on that when you have the time.
// that the sister who is in the caretaking role is so enmeshed with her sister that she is unable to form any healthy peer relationships outside her family. //
Hmmm, interesting – so although I’m thinking about Rose and Maggie – it’s also obviously about Dean, right, and his role of care-taker – how limiting it is, how lonely. That final shot of him after he puts Sam to bed … It’s interesting and great how much mileage SPN is STILL getting out of this brother dynamic: I take care of you. No, I take care of you! We need a break from each other! But who am I without you?
All of that seems to be a bit “handled” at the moment but I’m sure they’ll both eff that up somehow in the episodes to come.
// I have a lot more that I want to say about Playthings and The Shining and Kubrick and old houses and dollhouses and the Winchesters and sex, //
I can’t wait.
No pressure. :)
// And now on to “Nightshifter.” MANDROID. //
Yes. YES! I love this episode so much (and that guy) (i love it when he comes back to haunt Dean) (and Henriksen, too) (and the poor terrified girl that almost get killed and the remark about community theatre, I think?) God, that second season is SOOOO good.
// For me, the most moving moment in the movie is when Shelley Duvall shoves the son out of the small window into the snow. //
Absolutely! I love that she’s terrified, almost – almost – powerless, but she will fight until the end, at least for her son. They are so little, this window is so small, the snow and the hotel and the madness so big.
// And little Danny outside, with that huge huge drift going up the wall … it’s just terrible. I loved how Danny leapt off the path in the maze, so that his tracks basically just disappeared.//
I love that he’s so smart. Self-preservation!
I told this story on my blog: a week ago I dreamt I was escaping my own father. I was running from a huge house, running in the snow, in the woods. I didn’t remember this from the movie at all, but I knew I was going to re-watch it, although I didn’t allow myself to think about it too much. Brains, amazing little pieces of meat, right?
Lyrie – holy mackerel, in re: your dream. Wow.
and yes, Agent Henricksen – one of my favorite characters on the show! And he’s in, what, three episodes? He’s a total wrench in the works, fantastic actor, great stuff!! And the final moment in the parking garage. Awesome.
“We’re so screwed!”
I remember that sinking feeling: this shit is getting serious.
Yes!
Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Season 2 : brain = in a frenzy
Season 2 is probably my favorite? And this upcoming stretch of episodes – up through the end really … it’s a real high-point. I fluctuate – I love Soul-less Sam Season too.
Agreed!
I think my favourite seasons are 2 and 5. I love when it goes intimate, like in seasons 6 and 10, but I also really love things get epic and unavoidable. Angels! Apocalypse! The Horseman of Death! But I can’t watch it too often. I don’t know why, but it tends to put me back in a depressive phase – that’s what happened the first time I saw the it. (Yup, I’m Cray Cray).
Soul-les Sam: Clap Your Hands If You Believe? Just thinking about it makes me laugh. And in that episode there’s one my favourite moments EVER of Jensen Akcles’ acting.
My #1 favorite moment actually comes from that episode too! Which moment is your favorite??
I have a lot of faves from that episode:
I like the literally-insane way Dean says “bright light” when he is recounting what happened to Sam. He seems 100% unhinged. We’ve never seen that Dean before. Also the look on his face after he sees all the little fairies and he backs out the door. It’s like the scariest thing he has ever seen. And then of course there is “Do you have bigger cups” which is perhaps the funniest moment in the entire series – second only to maybe “I lost my shoe.”
But my #1 favorite JA moment in all 10 seasons cannot be captured in a screen-grab since it is the transition of expression that is important. He emerges from the clock place, talking with Sam – he’s hissing urgently – says the words “bunch of fairies” – then gets self-conscious, looks around quickly – and then right after that, as he walks offscreen, his face goes dead.
I know you know the moment I mean!!
It’s as funny as the shit Cary Grant pulls in any of his screwballs – the internal reaction shots, the conversation he is having with HIMSELF.
I just looked up Matt Witten on imdb and discovered that his first screenwriting credit was in the early 90’s, so unless he was some kind of child prodigy, it probably wasn’t his kid sister’s copy of The Dollhouse Murders that gave him the idea to incorporate it into the episode. So maybe he read it with a daughter or niece or something, or someone else on the writing team was familiar with those books or something. Regardless, I’m still pretty sure it was a deliberate connection :-)
It sure sounds deliberate to me.
Oh, Clap Your Hands If You Believe! I LOVE that episode. I think my favorite moment is when Dean tells about his fairie encounter:
//
Sam Winchester: Talk to me. What happened?
Dean Winchester: Well, uh… There was this, uh… God help me, Sam, there was this bright white light.
Sam Winchester: It’s okay. Safe room.
Dean Winchester: And then – and suddenly, I was, uh… I w- I was in a different place. And there were these beings. And they – they were – they were too bright to look at. But I-I could feel them pulling me toward this sort of… table.
Sam Winchester: Probing table!
Dean Winchester: God, don’t say that out loud!
Sam Winchester: Right. Uh, so what did you do?
Dean Winchester: I went… crazy. I started hacking and slashing and slashing and firing. They – they actually seemed surprised. I-I-I don’t think anybody’s ever done that before. Yeah. I had a close encounter, Sam. And I won.
Sam Winchester: You should take a shower.
Dean Winchester: I *should* take a shower. I gonna – I gonna take a shower now.
//
He looks so insane hahaha, it’s so funny. “And I won!” Hahaha, I’m laughing as I type this. The bigger cups moment is also great.
Back to Playthings, phenomenal recap!! Loved reading this and all the comments! I’ve never seen The Shining (I’m too chicken), but will definitely do so now. And this:
May: // Exactly! And this is why I think Dean gets along with women so well. Why his hook-ups always seem respectful and mutual. I knows what it’s like to be objectified and doesn’t like it.
//
Sheila: // Most definitely – he understands being objectified in a way few men really can. He gets it. He probably couldn’t put it into words but he operates from a place of understanding. And women get that he is safe because of that. //
YES!! That’s it exactly. I never understood the commentary that Dean is ‘sexist’ or a ‘homophobe’ or whatever other nonsense. I even find it sort of irritating, because if you look at it like that you miss so much of the good, deep stuff that SPN is so excellent at.
And I love the mandroid ep too. Henricksen! Those guys, so competent. I love that.
Rije – Thank you, glad you enjoyed the re-cap!!
I love when Soulless Sam places his hand comfortingly on Dean’s knee, and it’s so weird. The whole concept of Sam having no soul was so upsetting – and in that episode – they showed the humor of it. J’adore.
In re Playthings:
// I never understood the commentary that Dean is ‘sexist’ or a ‘homophobe’ or whatever other nonsense. I even find it sort of irritating, because if you look at it like that you miss so much of the good, deep stuff that SPN is so excellent at. //
That’s where I’m coming from. I am glad to see so many of us here!
// I have a lot of faves from that episode: //
Me too! All of the above, sure. Also, when Sam interviews people at the beginning: « If you want to add glitter to that glue you’re sniffing, sister… » (I don’t remember the rest). Priceless! He’s so mean, without wanting to, it’s just brutal honesty. HA!
// I know you know the moment I mean!! //
I DO! (And when I read this, my dog looked at me with a mix of fear and pity : « There she goes laughing hysterically staring at an inanimate object again. Humans. »)
So funny. I can’t think of another actor who does these things – internal conversations as you call them. Probably because I’ve never seen a Cary Grant movie. I’m a very uneducated person, but I’m working on it.
Yes, Rije, that’s the one! I love this whole scene so, so much!
First, he repeats what Sam just said, he’s VERY annoyed.
Then there’s when he tells his story to Sam. Everything Rije quoted, all the expressions, everything: they both are HILARIOUS. I LOVE, when Dean says « I started hacking and slashing,… » how he’s still scared re-living the moment, somewhat incredulous, and a little proud.
My in-laws visited last September, and I tried to explain to some friends on twitter what my relationship with them was. My mother-in-law is a very controlling, manipulative person, to the extend that she becomes violent or threatens to kill herself in the rare cases things don’t go her way. They almost never not go her way. The family circle is afraid of her – everyone. Before coming to Montreal, we lived with them for more than a year. As you can imagine, that went well. Yes, woman, I will cook my own meals and wash my underwear myself, and just because I live at your place does not give you the right to rummage in them, for fuck’s sake (these are just details, it’s much more than that, really). In more than 40 years, I must have been the only person who stood up to her. She yelled in my face, she tried to « kill herself » and I « let » her. Nothing worked. Nobody had ever seen that. Now, they loathe me, but they also treat me with the respect that fear normally instills. Just because I did not let her treat me like a fucking child. I illustrated my explanation with the clip of this scene, because I feel like I know EXACTLY what Dean went through!
My bestest favourite moment is just before he tells his story. He’s pissed. He’s going to sit down on the bed. He’s mimicking Sam because he’s annoyed. He looks at the bed and realizes it’s still warm from his soul-les brother fucking Patchouli in it. He stops, answers Sam and goes to sit on the other bed.
I can’t explain why, I’ve always found that little moment, the way he turns his head, everything, so satisfying. I heard in the DVD commentary that it was not scripted. Of course, it wasn’t scripted: Jensen Ackles just living the moment, in total comedy mode. This guy!
Lyrie – all I can say is, you are in for such a treat when you see a Cary Grant movie! He is his own thing – the best movie star ever, one of the greatest actors ever to practice the craft – Like my friend Mitchell said once, “If, for 80 years, people keep predicting that so-and-so is ‘the next Cary Grant’ – guess what, there is no such thing. There’s only him.”
True.
And yet JA is in that wheelhouse. There are VERY few actors who operate in that wheelhouse. I think Will Smith does, actually – although some of his film choices are unimaginative. But he has the same elegance and humor – he is both hugely physical (Cary Grant was a tumbler, an acrobat) – and wickedly witty. He’s a leading man. He can carry a film. But he has a softness to him too – an attractive accessibility. I don’t think he’s picking films that really highlight that now – but I still see the resemblance. George Clooney, maybe, but he is more “Late” Cary Grant – the dapper caddish guy whom women love. He’s also extremely funny. But still: it’s an old-school style of acting that is no longer in vogue – it’s based on sheer force of personality. And JA is able to do that. He’s also sexually fluid – like Cary Grant was. He is not Clint Eastwood, in other words. There’s a feminine quality at work, a strong strong strain of it, that makes him accessible and open in really interesting ways.
Anyway!
“You should take a shower.” Ha.
And Lyrie – wow, your mother in law! She sounds extremely narcissistic – very very upsetting for everyone involved. I am so sorry you have had to deal with that! But how wonderful that a clip from SPN can help clarify the situation – that’s kind of brilliant.
and yes, JA moving from one bed to the other. BRILLIANT.
Speaking of The Big Year, which I mentioned in the re-cap, Patchouli has a very funny small role in it, a kind of prissy wife who honeymoons with her bird-watching husband in a shack in the middle of the Yukon and basically freaks out over how dirty everything is.
Grean — // This is one of the most Mother and small child scenes between the boys I have seen.//
Yes! This is one of those moments that I file away as evidence for my crack pot SPN theories: Dean is Sam’s mother figure, and Dean as “the good father.”
(The Dad-Dean theory is an evolving, ongoing theory that can only really be properly assessed once the show is over and we see where Dean ends up. The basics of it are, in a world of terrible fathers, Dean exists as THE positive example of fatherhood. Had the show ended in season 5, it would have wrapped up my theory nicely, with him staying as Ben’s dad. Dean leaving Lisa and Ben, and Bobby evolving into their surrogate father, have affected the theory somewhat, into more of an end-game idea for Dean.
This theory is why I would find the show ending with Dean having a child so emotionally satisfying.)
May – your thoughts on Dean as the good father role-model in SPN just warm my heart so much. I love the way your mind works. You help me see other things in that whole Arc – thank you so much.
thank youuuuuuuuuuuu. i think i have broken the world record guinness on binging spn seasons in english, spanish, sheila’s recaps and reading the chapters’s scripts. it is the only way to truly understand JA and JD’s drawls.
i understand the british accents perfectly but americans… maybe it is because they are from texas but they sound like dean talking dog?
i am not quite there with the binging but it is close to one month taking all in one stride.
thank you all again.
Mercedes –
Jensen and Jared are both from Texas, but as Sam and Dean they don’t speak with anything that we Americans would call a Texas accent. There are a lot of regional accents here, but Sam and Dean have general TV American accents – essentially placeless, to us. I’m sure you hear much more British English in Spain than American English. I’m not saying that to make it sound like you ought to be able to understand them, I’m only suggesting that the difficulty is probably not from something that would be considered an accent here.
Are you referring to them when they are speaking at conventions? I don’t know their non-character voices, so perhaps they do have a twang in real life.
Yes, they both lost their Texas twangs in the process of becoming actors, although you can hear it sometimes in convention clips. Kind of like Cary Grant being a Cockney person and morphing that natural accent into Cary Grant-placeless-speak.
Well hello All,
I know that I am very late to the party when there are so many interesting thoughts and comments I want to respond to that I eventually stop even trying. Sheila, I loved your interesting and enthusiastic re-cap and really appreciated that your response to the episode was kaleidoscopic and not laser focused as I think it highlights the strength of the show and it speaks to how you have managed to create this wonderful space where everyone can share their different takes on SPN safely. You talked about this episode being like a dreamscape and I think that is bang on- and what a powerful place for a show to be. You have often spoken about the creators (all included) giving the audience space with the story and characters, through subtext or a variety of other methods I wouldn’t have thought of before reading these re-caps, and for me “Playthings” fits tightly into that sweet spot. There is so much room for the audiences’ judgement in this episode that it practically IS a dreamscape.
We’ve talked before about how the show encapsulates opposites or dualities, especially in the case of Dean, and that is how I read this episode. It is The Shining and it isn’t, it is a beautiful hotel and a horrible hotel (seriously, that Wuthering Heights/ Miss Havisham dress on the wall… yikes!), that doll house is adorable and terrifying, even Grandma Rose is an old woman and not by the end. Even the way the brothers are with each other, very gentle throughout, but then the two standout BM moments both punctuated with the promise of execution – bam! I love that about this show.
Anyhow, I really enjoyed the conversations around femininity, sexuality, the quincunx, Doctor Who’s music (I was behind the sofa), Sam grabbing Dean’s face (I thought I was the only one), the henley, etc.
One quick observation: I see Dean’s whole “why do they think we are gay?” Sam’s comment, and then Dean’s adorable reaction in a slightly different way. To me Sam’s comment, “you are pretty butch, they probably think you are overcompensating” is actually kinda kind. Because, that isn’t really why strangers think Dean is gay. Don’t strangers think Dean is gay because he is unbelievably pretty, downright luscious really, with a lack of sexual rigidity. How many times would Dean have been called pretty, or pretty-boy around Sam? How many times has JA been called that? In the heteronormative world that is seen as a slight to his masculinity. So for me, Dean’s reaction is all of the things you folks mentioned, but with relief that Sam didn’t go there.
So looking forward to “Nightshifter” recap because I dig the episode and it has one of my all time favourite character moments. When Dean is watching Ronald explain his conclusions and he is so openly projecting admiration and appreciation, it warms my heart. I love that part of Dean, the beautiful shinny part, that they slowly reveal. It is like the nerd/geek/fan part- his willingness to appreciate and ‘play’ with others. Love it- and feel it here often.
// but with relief that Sam didn’t go there. //
Oh, Heather. My goodness. That is marvelous. Wow. I am going to have to think about that. I really really see what you are talking about. So yes, in terms of Dean’s anxiety as well as his “pretty-boy” experience – basically being judged for being so pretty, and diminished and objectified – Sam NOT mentioning that at all, and instead calling him “butch” – which is flattering in this context … it is very kind. Fabulous – thank you.
I also love your list of dualities in the episode. YES. And if you drew out all of those multiple associations in a diagram – hmm, might we not see a quincunx?? But yes: it’s a beautiful MESS of associations and I love that the episode basically refuses to be pinned down. Adore that.
// and he is so openly projecting admiration and appreciation, it warms my heart. //
YES. Love that so much. And his feeling for Ronald, his connection with him – and that nerd/fan thing … it was so strong that of course Ronald would be one of the ones who would come back to haunt him. The relationship was set up so strongly. That whole entire scene in Ronald’s apartment – both Sam and Dean – and Ronald … I mean, come on, it’s comedy gold!
There’s something I can’t quite unsee now I’ve ‘seen’ it, which is a white dress pinned to a wall is … Mary Winchester, or Jess. I mean, it looks like Miss Havisham’s nightie, or a fake ghost, or maybe just what the average antique likes would like to see on a hotel bedroom wall, but it’s also the Winchesters’ mum.
I love that Sam has his dark night of the soul, wrestling with Dad’s promise, with that looming his head. No wonder he emptied the mini bar and didn’t switch the lights on.
I also love JP’s drunk body language. Kind of looselimbed and mumbling and unbridled and vehement in a way he never is when sober. The only other major drunk acting scene I can think of is with the crossroads demon in Season 4, which is so over the top I imagine Sam is channelling what he imagines Dean’s behaviour would be in the same situation, all that arm waving and ‘come and get me, bitch.’ Although we know Dean’s behaviour with crossroads demons has been very different.
I’m enjoying everyone’s thoughts about Dean’s ‘why does everyone think we’re gay’ although still not sure what to make of that exchange – which just adds to the pleasure. For instance, I note that it’s Dean who says ‘we’ and Sam who says ‘you’ – that people perceive the two as a gay couple because of Dean, not him. It’s funny in a brotherly, bantering way, like ‘your problem, dude,’ and also getting back at Dean for every time Dean has teased him about his behaviour.
But I’m very interested to know what Sam’s definition of ‘butch’ would be, or Dean’s for that matter. (My guess would be that he would describe himself as ‘awesome’ rather than ‘butch’.) And then there’s ‘overcompensating’: Sam’s forensic verdict seems to imply that people can’t take Dean for real. He’s is, somehow, something other than meets the eye, the implication being, possibly ‘less than meets the eye.’ To paraphrase Sheila, his burlesque is constantly being busted, in a way that doesn’t implicate Sam. (And somehow, we’re also back to the idea of Dean being constantly underestimated.) And at this Dean is basically rendered speechless. Which again is fascinating, and not just for that delightful ripple of inarticulable responses we see pass over his face.
To wrap up this rambling post, I don’t know why this exchange about sexuality is in this particular episode but I can’t help connecting it with the drunken extraction of promises later on, and the shadow of Dad hovering over it all. Dad is the ultimate measure not just of masculinity (however you choose to define it) but of personhood in the Winchesters’ lives. Whether they choose to submit to it or reject it, both have to dance around the roles allotted to them by Dad. It’s sad, jarring, heartbreaking, whatever, to see Dean first reject Dad’s promise as crap then feel he has to give it again to pacify his brother. Ditto Sam, having done all he could to step outside the Winchester belljar, seeing him accepting the truth Dad never revealed to him, and extract that promise from his brother. And in a striking visual parallel that Dad’s and Sam’s promises are extracted by physically entwining themselves around Dean, like he’s a creature lost in a predator’s coils. Ah, families …
Helena –
// There’s something I can’t quite unsee now I’ve ‘seen’ it, which is a white dress pinned to a wall is … Mary Winchester, or Jess. //
Now I can’t unsee it either.
I wonder why it didn’t occur to me? It seems soooo obvious now, right? Like – what else COULD that mean?
Oh Jerry Wanek, you trickster.
It’s fabulous, though – it’s treated humorously, and it certainly seems plausible that that type of inn would have a gown on its wall (although I’ve stayed in plenty of old B&Bs and inns and I have never seen a damn gown on the wall – ha) – but of course: woman pinned to wall above their heads!
The only other really drunk scene – only it’s not drunkenness – is when Sam is drugged in the mental hospital and loses control of himself and is all giggly and loosey-goosey. (When they’re both in the mental hospital, I mean, not when Sam is locked up. Sorry – I don’t really do titles, I’m bad at it.)
I love the “vehemence” too – especially in those first moments, when he’s in the chair. It’s just so different from his normal self. Sam doesn’t strike me as particularly uptight, but he is definitely not a hot-head. There he suddenly seems unpredictable and almost childish. It’s great.
// For instance, I note that it’s Dean who says ‘we’ and Sam who says ‘you’ //
I love that too!! Sam doesn’t answer with, “Well, we travel together, we’re both super-hot with cool haircuts … ” He’s like, “This is about YOU.” But not with judgment or anything.
It’s just a sort of gentle “come on – your burlesque is a burlesque – everybody knows it – it’s okay, but people see through it …”
Sheila — //May – your thoughts on Dean as the good father role-model in SPN just warm my heart so much. I love the way your mind works.//
Aw, thank you! That means a lot. While most of my SPN-watching friends were furiously shipping Dean/Cas, I was thinking “Dean is such a great parent. He needs to knock someone up.” It’s nice to find a place to share my weirdo thoughts. And feed them! Your recaps and everyone’s insights in the comments are so fantastic.
Speaking off…
Heather — //Sam’s comment, “you are pretty butch, they probably think you are overcompensating” is actually kinda kind. Because, that isn’t really why strangers think Dean is gay. Don’t strangers think Dean is gay because he is unbelievably pretty … In the heteronormative world that is seen as a slight to his masculinity. So for me, Dean’s reaction is all of the things you folks mentioned, but with relief that Sam didn’t go there.//
This is brilliant. I love it. And, when you think about it, Sam and Dean are actually rather kind to each other, in their teasing (another way their sibling relationship seems so real). They don’t actually go after each other’s weak points, unless they are really angry and lashing out. They actually kind of tease each other in safe ways that skip over insecurities.
// While most of my SPN-watching friends were furiously shipping Dean/Cas, I was thinking “Dean is such a great parent. He needs to knock someone up.” //.
hahahahahaha
hi mutecypher and hi sheila. oooooh accents… in my homeland there are not british or american speaking citizents. i live up northen spain, like in the scotish highlands, kind of remote and misterious and full of myths and legends…
i learnt english in england. i lived there for a few decades.
i haven’t seen much of conventions footage… now Crowley and that blond archaengel… that’s music to my ears . at least i understand them properly.
it’s o.k. with the text in sheila’s re-caps and the chapters scripts it would do.
the conventions’bits are full of background noise. i am only interested in watching jensen taking comand of the stage and addresing the audience. wish he would do some ” a night with jensen ackles” like ” a night with danny kay” or with ” sir peter ustinow”.
Heather, I too love your interpretation of that moment. It made my heart swell with love for Sam when I read it. I may have even choked up a little. I had always seen that as a little throwaway comic moment, but looking at it through your filter, it’s almost unbearably sweet (in a good way).
Helena, I got chills from the idea of the dress on the wall representing Mary. I think you’re right.
May, I’m working on ideas to get us there re: Dean as a father. When SPN finally hires me on as a consultant, I’m planning a minor coup.
// When SPN finally hires me on as a consultant, I’m planning a minor coup. //
Oh, sister-wife, I’ve got your back !
May –
//While most of my SPN-watching friends were furiously shipping Dean/Cas, I was thinking “Dean is such a great parent. He needs to knock someone up.” //
LOL
Sounds like you are living “The Midnight Court” that Sheila writes about in the Seamus Heaney book excerpt above. Same for you, Natalie. How dare Dean deny you his… (censored for Sheila’s mom).
Helena: Now that you’ve said this, I can’t not see the dress as the doomed women. Wow!
By the way, I only saw your Benny-based Christmas card today. BRILLIANT!
I’m a little jealous of the people who got to grow up with Doctor Who.
Lyrie, glad you like it. It’s never to late to see Benny in a Santa hat :-)
Lyrie, glad you like it. It’s never too late to see Benny in a Santa hat :-)
Oh Helena, OMG Mary on the wall! Yikes-o-rama! And your beautiful monsters of the week- delicious! Golem and Boy… I love them.
mutecypher: I agree about House/Holmes. It was such a good adaptation to the character and method. And the ending… wow.
Heather –
About the only episode of “House” I disliked was the series final. He should have died for his sins; not become The Misanthrope Peter Pan, never having to grow up. But that’s something about which reasonable people can disagree.
Helena –
Let me add my OMG to Mary/Jess on the Wall. That’s an excellent observation.
Natalie — //I’m working on ideas to get us there re: Dean as a father. When SPN finally hires me on as a consultant, I’m planning a minor coup.//
Excellent. Let me know if you need back-up. I’m pretty sneaky.
Helena, add me to the list of people who can’t unsee the dress on the wall as Mary. I’d also like to know how Sam defines “butch.”
I suspect that Sam would view John as a sort of definition of a type of…I want to say blue collar…masculinity or butch-ness (that he rejects), as much of Dean’s persona is based on copying John. I’m actually rather fascinated by how Sam views Dean. He respects and admires him, yet underestimates him as well. And he desperately wants him to be a certain way (not John).
I think a part of Sam still hero-worships Dean, and wants that Dean to always be there. I also think that Sam isn’t insecure in his masculinity because Dean doesn’t really fit in. If Dean was his role model growing up, and Dean didn’t fit that masculine stereotype, then why would Sam care if he did? If that makes sense.
mutecypher — //Sounds like you are living “The Midnight Court” that Sheila writes about in the Seamus Heaney book excerpt above. //
LOL!
// I also think that Sam isn’t insecure in his masculinity because Dean doesn’t really fit in. If Dean was his role model growing up, and Dean didn’t fit that masculine stereotype, then why would Sam care if he did? //
Wait – I got lost for a second – could you talk more about that?
I’m fascinated by how Sam sees Dean, too – I think that’s why it got a wee bit tiresome in those early episodes of Season 9 to yet again have it be Dean worrying about Sam, hovering over Sam … Once Season 10 started, it was awesome to have it be the other way around. It made me realize how we haven’t really seen that all that much – Dean coming back from Purgatory wasn’t the same thing, since Sam really wasn’t all that available to him, emotionally or otherwise when Dean returned. He was too busy eating hot dogs and spaghetti and digging lime slices out of the drain in a sickly-yellow haze of nostalgia.
I guess what I’m saying is: We have had a lot of Sam being “the problem” – and it’s always interesting because they both are so good. But when Dean becomes “the problem” – all kinds of new stuff becomes possible.
But anyway … if you come back to this – could you talk more about what you mean by that comment? Preferably with gifs attached to it?
mutecypher: I didn’t have specific good or bad feelings about the ending…just definitive surprise.
//He should have died for his sins;//
What a fascinating idea, that Holmes should pay for his sins, so outside of typical expectations for that character. I missed a great deal of the final season…generally post car-in-house, I think I caught 50%. To me the ending was all about Watson, er, Wilson, getting his ending. House paying for his sins makes him seem so… human, a reality the show never ended up creating. There were moments when it seemed like he could be tamed, but that really wasn’t achieved.
Have you tried Elementary?
Heather –
//Have you tried Elementary?//
No I haven’t. I like Lucy Liu when she’s on Futurama. Do you recommend Elementary?
Sheila: // I am so sorry you have had to deal with that! //
But it’s OK, because, you know: “I won.”
Helena: // It’s never too late to see Benny in a Santa hat :-)//
Very true. :)
mutecypher & Heather, RE: House and Holmes.
I have to admit that I never really got into House, mostly (and unfairly) because of my disinterest in medical dramas. I do watch Elementary, though. I…like it much more than I thought I would. It’s a well done crime procedural (a genre I will stoop to watch! So much Law and Order…). Miller’s Holmes is a very human Holmes, while still being very, well Holmesy, and I like Liu’s Watson a lot.
It’s evening here, and due to work stress and homebound craziness, I have just finished reading this wonderful recap and everyone’s thoughts. I had to imbibe it in sips over the last couple of days instead of devouring it as I normally do. Also, I’m feeling a little bit blasted because last night after the kids went to bed I sat down and rewatched the episode and then followed up with The Shining. Way too many thoughts running around my noggin to line out here, but here’s a few random observations.
May and Grean–I agree with your thoughts on the parent-child relationship coming to the fore in Sam’s drunken confrontation with Dean, though I can certainly see the subtext Shelia talks about in her recap as well. The intimacy of the scene lends itself to both interpretations; for me on a personal level, it resonates strongly as a caretaking moment, and a moment in which Sam places his complete trust in Dean. Perhaps because I am the mother of two boys, the way in which the show has established the Winchesters’ family dynamic–in which Dean usually takes the parental role, though not always, by any means–is a powerful filter for my understanding of the story. The scene brings that relationship into sharp focus for me. Sam seems so young here, so much more open than usual, his expression both needy and trusting. In response, Dean re-shoulders the burden put on him by his father, and against his own feelings, accepts the responsibility that Sam is begging him to take. It’s funny, troubling, heartbreaking, and sadly beautiful all in a few brief moments.
Also, I was so happy to see everyone talking about Shirley Jackson here! While I was watching the movie, a line from The Haunting of Hill House kept creeping through my mind: “Journeys end in lovers’ meetings.” I’m not sure if this has any bearing on Playthings, though it certainly describes Jack’s reaction to the Overlook. It feels like there should be some connections here–anybody? We Have Always Lived in the Castle echoes through the episode for sure, and perhaps could be read as a dark mirror to Sam and Dean’s relationship.
Helena–Yes! to how Kubrick uses sound and soundtrack throughout the movie. I was struck by that especially in the scene in Room 237, how the music in that scene seems wild and echoing like a distant windstorm. And then, later, the wind itself replaces a musical soundtrack. Talk about nothing wasted–since I had seen the film once or twice before, I spent a lot of my viewing last night trying to pay attention to how it was filmed and presented (Thanks, Shelia, for giving me a few tools in this regard!). With the exception of Shelly Duvall’s final run through the hotel turned horror fun-house, every shot is so beautifully considered, used to create unease or shock. One thing I had never noticed before was the camera movements when Jack is battering at the doors with his axe. The camera follows the axe’s trajectory–I almost clapped my hands when I saw that! And yes, some piece of my mind was mentally comparing the scene to Dean with his hammer in season 10–though I don’t remember if the camera moved in that scene. “Here’s Johnny/I like the disease” indeed!
Lastly, Alison–great story! I have also visited the Stanley, though I did not have the privilege of staying the night there. My son and I took the ghost tour there with a friend of ours, several years ago now. It is a beautiful building, to be sure, though I was oddly disappointed to not have to drive up to the top of a remote mountain to visit it! It does dominate the town of Estes Park, at least, being built at the base of a mountain, looming over the downtown area on its hill. We didn’t see any ghosts, BUT–
At one point, the guide asked my son and me to stand with him, a little separated from the rest of the group, and hold out our hands palm up. We were in the nursery wing–which looked very much like the hallway in Alison’s photograph, though I’m not sure it was on the same floor as she describes. Playful ghostly children have been reported in this hall, and the guide wanted to see if they would “join hands”. All of a sudden, my son said that he’d been touched. The guide, a believer in the ghost orbs you sometimes find in photographs, asked me to take a picture of my son. When I tried, my camera would not work–I could not get it to turn on.
Power of suggestion and a faulty camera, sure–though I tried again a minute later, and the camera worked fine, and continued to work fine for the rest of our trip. The picture I got of my kid in that hallway is one of my favorites–his eyes are wide and he’s looking right up at me, but there’s an excited little smile on his face.
Barb – wow, another awesome story about the hotel. Now I really must go!!
Thank you so much for reading, and adding all of these thoughtful comments. Seriously it’s such a rich conversation!
I so love your observation that Sam seems young in that scene, he really does – begging “promise me” – this is what kids do, and it is so touching because he’s usually so capable, kind of like a rock. The “long arc” he’s working, of Sam slowly breaking down … JP has been letting that work on him and he really just goes for it in that scene. Dean in caretaker role is beautiful, too – a burden, and also just … what he does, through long years of training and instinct. Only never quite in this way before!
And totally agreed in re: Shirley Jackson. This conversation has made me decide to re-read a couple of her longer works this year – Haunting of HIll House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. She’s a master!
Lyrie –
//But it’s OK, because, you know: “I won.”//
General MacArthur was right, ” In war there is no substitute for victory.” You go!
mutecypher: //Do you recommend Elementary?//
I suppose I am a fan of trying something to see if you like it… kinda explains my 20’s. But I don’t know that I would recommend it without reservation. As May was saying, it is a very human Holmes, which I dig. In some ways it reminds me very much of the original stories: the awareness of social convention/protocol, the emphasis on the mentoring of Dr. Watson, and the use of the home space. But the show places an emphasis on human growth and development which is different from the rather static Holmes of the originals. I like contemplating the human consequences of being a person like Holmes, and I like stories about healing… so those are the parts that I enjoy. Plus everyone is very pretty. All of this being said, I have been having a lot of trouble staying awake for the second half of the episode when I watch it on the regular schedule. Either because it is just too late for me now (this idea makes me a little sad) or I am less compelled.
Barb: //his eyes are wide and he’s looking right up at me, but there’s an excited little smile on his face.//
What a wonderful memory for him to have. Lucky kid.
Sheila — //But anyway … if you come back to this – could you talk more about what you mean by that comment? Preferably with gifs attached to it?//
Yes! Sorry. I sort of lost track of myself there. I’ll try to explain it better, though I’m not quite sure I’ll succeed. It’s one of my newer crackpot theories and isn’t quite fully formed, yet.
Sam basically had a choice between two role models growing up, Dean and John. We know that he has issues with his father and that, at least when he was very young, emulated Dean. This is pretty typical younger sibling behaviour, but Sam seems to have maintained this higher opinion of Dean vs John, as we see in the Christmas episode, through most of his development. So, to kid!Sam, Dean was awesome and the way to go.
As he got older, he would have become more conscious of how other people treated Dean, how Dean tried to fit in with their Dad, etc. That must have been weird to him, as he has all these negative experiences/associations with John, positive ones with Dean…and there Dean is, trying hard to fit in with John and the people like him. So it’s sort of like, any group’s rejection of Dean (for what Sam sees as positive traits) would make Sam…not care about their opinion and not care about fitting in with them? Sam doesn’t ever seem to want to be like John (just wants his acceptance) and shows little interest in socializing with other hunters.
It basically comes down to something like:
– Dean and John are/were very different
– Sam picks Dean (sans butch persona) as the better way to go
– Sam sees Dean adopt a persona to try fit in, and it not really work
– Sam thinks “fuck you, assholes, Dean is awesome and you are terrible” and stops caring about fitting in with “the guys” (ironically, not caring about fitting in is a very stereotypically masculine thing to do, so Sam fits right in)
I hope this makes more sense. I still feel a bit jumbled, though.
(I also wonder, when thinking about this, if Sam would have see Dean’s persona–trying to be something you’re not–as futile, which in turn fed his own freak fears. “If Dean can’t be accepted, what will happen to me?”
Also, also! The way Dean pokes fun of Sam in the early seasons, for being sensitive, understanding, nerdy, all sound a lot like Dean poking fun at himself. If Sam has a persona, it is non-butch Dean.)
May – THANK you. That was great!
This is a lot to think about. I love it! I really see what you are talking about. This is a whole unplumbed area: How Sam views Dean. Dean is so burlesquey and scene-stealer-y that sometimes it becomes all about how Dean views Sam (and the plot often goes that way too) – just the way the chemistry works. I just re-watched “Bad Boys” and there’s so much to love in it but one of my favorite elements in it is watch Sam “get to know” Dean, learn more about him, see him in a new way. Those moments of discovery, slow dawning realizations – that he had underestimated his brother (for sure) but also … The look on his face when he sees Dean’s name-tape on the bed. It’s so touching. The expression on Sam’s face as he looks over the Impala at Dean in the last scene. Great.
There’s probably more there to learn and discover – it’s something I’ll keep on my radar for sure.
I like the thought of role models, too, and how Sam interpreted all of that growing up. John/Dean were the parental figures – Dean almost the motherly figure, as we’ve discussed. So yeah, Sam would resist anyone/dislike anyone who made his heroic brother feel bad – “who wants to fit in with those assholes,” etc. that’s why (now that I think about it) – I find those beginning episodes in Soulless-Sam season SO UPSETTING. like I can’t deal with it. The way the Campbells treat Dean, and how Sam never says anything, or sticks up for Dean, he lets Dean swing in the wind. (Of course Sam has no soul – but remembering what it was like to see those episodes for the first time – that whole section just reverberates with the feeling that Sam should be sticking up for Dean, standing beside him. And never mind the whole “not looking for Dean in Purgatory”thing. These are complex relationships)
So Sam easily fitting into that super macho Campbell world – and Dean being perceived as “delicate” – despite his toughness and capabilities … it’s all really really well set up, now that I think about it. It’s kind of all ABOUT this.
Anyway, thank you – I like your thoughts.
Actually “Nightshifter” has some interesting brotherly stuff I’ve been thinking about to prepare for the re-cap. Competence and nerdiness and the sort of flow of power between them – one is Alpha, then the other, then back … It’s a good episode about the relationship even though most of it is unspoken.
Just a heads up for the readers here… SPN has been picked up for another season. Jensen and Jared both tweeted the news.
Yup. Saw that. Lyrie left it in the Open Thread comments section for Season 10. Go on over there to discuss if you like.
Sheila, I’m glad it made more sense this time!
//Dean is so burlesquey and scene-stealer-y that sometimes it becomes all about how Dean views Sam//
Yes! This is why, though I’ve been watching for ages, the theory is still newish (and I’m probably forgetting a bunch of stuff that work against it). Plus, being the oldest myself, I find it easier to jump into Dean’s perspective (re: the family stuff) than Sam’s, so Sam remains a bit more mysterious to me.
I definitely think Sam’s view of, and relationship with, Dean is very complex and changing (Dean’s is rather straight forward). It’s probably mostly unconscious, and full of guilt and obligation, as well as deep love and admiration. He makes a lot of assumptions about Dean, which strike me both as brotherly and as a sign of hero-worship (in the sense that he has created an image of Dean in his mind that doesn’t necessarily mesh with the real thing).
Anyway, it’s fascinating and I love all the new insight everyone else here brings. And I can’t wait for “Nightshifter.”
Pat — SPN will never end!
Yes, I’m the oldest sibling too – I think that identification factor is a part of it.
I like those moments when Sam really sees Dean. His reaction to seeing his brother varies – sometimes he remains separate, sometimes he’s compassionate, sometimes he’s annoyed, or humorous … but it all comes out of one of those weird moments when you SEE someone that you know so well in a fresh new way. Sometimes when I’m hanging out with my siblings I suddenly get that perspective – we are all so close, when we’re together it’s like we merge into one being – but those moments of separation, of “wow. There she is” or “There he is” – as their own human being … it’s something that you can only really understand if you have siblings – it’s such a specific relationship.
“Playthings” really really plays up the little-brother thing in that drunk scene. More often than not, Sam resists Dean’s “bossiness” – because it takes away from his own sense that he is a grown-up. And Dean can be very very bossy. To the point that he forgets Sam is a separate human being.
All of the brotherly conversations so far in Season 10 have been FASCINATING because of the sense that they are tiptoeing into a new landscape … something fresh … where maybe they can still be close, yet they are separate. There isn’t anything threatening about separate-ness.
Of course I am sure that will all change, yet again, but I have really enjoyed their dynamic in Season 10 so far.
The Christmas episode, too. Again, Dean’s burlesque steals the show – but the whole thing hinges on Sam’s perception of Dean. That’s why that episode packs such a huge punch (for me). It’s SAM. And his resistance to Dean at first – and finally his submission, his sense of give for his big brother.
There’s a lot there.
Barb, I think your encounter was even more ghostly than mine. Your son must have been so excited! I would love to go back. It’s a beautiful town.
I understand that Stephen King was not pleased with Stanely Kubrick’s vision of The Shining (1980) and produced a miniseries that aired in 1997 that was filmed at the Stanley Hotel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_%28miniseries%29
Fans of The Shining might be interested in this article, tracing the Gothic elements of the film
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/english-and-drama/2015/01/gothic-shining.html
It’s a wonderful exhibition – lots and lots of books and manuscripts, as well as film ephemera, lots of pictures and paintings, even costume.
The exhibition also included this treat for book lovers – Sir Julius Caesar’s Travelling library.Just scroll through for lots of pictures of this exquisite minibookcase.
I’ve seen that exhibition Helena – it’s amazing to see Kubrick’s notes. And Dr Dee’s mirror, Mary Shelley’s redraft of Frankenstein, Clive Barker’s drawings for Hellraiser… incredible stuff. And a vampire killing kit from the Royal Armoury – erm, glad we have that just in case.
I really love when Supernatural makes clever references like this. The Shining is one of my favourite films. Really looking forward to your Nightshifter recap, Sheila :-)
Hi Emma
Wasn’t it great?
I also realise I’ve posted a link that looks exactly like the travelling library I saw but is a different one.
Since we were speaking about Kubick and 2001 it caught my eye that Stephen Soderbergh has posted a recut of the film on his website.
http://extension765.com/sdr/23-the-return-of-w-de-rijk
Haven’t had a chance to watch more than the first few minutes yet.
Sheila,
I’m rewatching Supernatural and my love for this episode has only increased. Your comments are great and interesting. Especially the bit about Sherwin. Now I can’t stop thinking about his behavior. I don’t know why but I think he suspected Sam and Dean from the beginning. His entire body language in that bar scene seems a bit off like he knows too much. A man that obsessed with the place must have had some idea of what Rose was doing over the years and like a good servant, he kept it a secret.
I did take a lit criticism course in uni and while I have my own issues with queer theory, Playthings is fascinating in its push-and-pull dynamics. Nothing is static between the brothers. Active and passive, dominant and submissive (yes, in the sexual sense too, because this episode goes all the way there), central and supporting – it keeps shifting. The Feminine destabilizes them because it brings out such terrifying reactions. The last time I saw it was in Season 1, Home. Mary’s specter loomed all over there.
It’s interesting how Dean goes after the dolls even when he teases Sam about having a doll collection. Sam on the other hand goes for the replica house. Home, comfort, safety, and stability are entirely alien to him, no wonder he’s attracted to it. He wonders if he and the other special kids are also someone’s playthings. The episode ends with a still of a doll looking like Maggie. Well, the brothers will never be free from each other. And I’m sick because I love this interpretation.
Since I am a younger sister, I understand Sam a bit better here. We younger siblings do hero-worship our older siblings. They are our constant, our wall, you get the point. And when anything disturbs that, we are shaken. Nope, you can’t fall ill. Nope, you can’t be dating him seriously. At the same time, we are the first to know when something’s off with them and call them out on their nonsense.
It pains me to see Sam ask Dean to kill him if he goes bad. Some have called Sam selfish and cruel for doing so but I understand his motivations. Nobody likes inevitability thrust upon them. In fact, this episode opens up a whole conversation about Destiny and Free Will all over.
And of course, boundaries (or a lack of them) are also important. We know Dean has a skewed sense of boundaries but Sam isn’t exactly healthy either. Sure he had a separate life, kept his visions a secret from Dean for a while, and stood up to Dad, but trauma messed it up. In fact, one way I understand Sam’s character is how trauma eats away at his sense of Self, and of course, boundaries are an important part of it.
Maggie and Rose parallel with Dean and Sam but I don’t think it’s a straight parallel. Sam, like Rose, kept out Dean and Dad for a while. But he had to go with Dean in the end, there was no escaping him. If I’m being especially cruel I’ll even say that his hesitance cost him Jessica. Dean tries to keep out his discomfort with Sam’s old life (Skin really exposed that), his psychic abilities, Dad’s whisper, and Sam’s insistence on killing him. But he never really can.
It’s interesting how the brothers never really tried to kill/exorcize Maggie. I know they aren’t exactly at their peak and it could be a continuity error but I think the events have paralyzed them. Subconsciously, they know that Maggie must have her pound of flesh. She’s just as deranged as them. I love how Maggie stops drowning Tyler the moment she hears Rose call out for her. She doesn’t even care about anything else. What a perfectly twisted love!