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<\/a><\/p>\n\nDirected by Philip Sgriccia
\nWritten by Sera Gamble<\/i><\/p>\n
“The Kids Are Alright” is an important episode wrapped in the entertainment of a Monster of the Week. The Monster of the Week aspect (ignoring how the episode loops into not just the season-wide Arc, but the next four – count ’em! – seasons) is one of the nastier scenarios Supernatural<\/em> has indulged itself in (Kripke joked that he couldn’t believe they were allowed to do it). <\/p>\n It’s so well-done that I think as I watch: “The mother of that little girl will never be okay again. She will never forgive herself. She will always know, forevermore, that she had THAT in her. How could she live with that?” It wouldn’t surprise me if she became an alcoholic. <\/p>\n \n \nThat’s not sadness. That’s madness. <\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n The episode has a hell of a lot going on in it already (although, for me, her Arc takes over every time): Dean and Lisa, Sam and Ruby, the looming reality of Dean’s “deal,” Ruby’s dangling-carrot promise to Sam, Mary Winchester’s fate rising from the deep, “It’s always been about you,” says Ruby to Sam. Side note: amazing, since Dean is the focus of everyone’s worries in Season 3. It will be Sam’s turn in Season 4. But her comment loops into my overall feeling – that I have expressed repeatedly: Sam is the Key to Everything. Sam is the key to the show, the linchpin. Dean’s the show-stopper with the emotional melodrama. But Sam is “the one.” It’s stated as explicitly as it ever has been in “The Kids Are Alright,” with Ruby’s cryptic – albeit crystal-clear – words. Now that the Psychic Kids malarkey is over, and Yellow-Eyes is dead … Sam may have felt a sigh of relief, a little bit of the pressure off, time to focus on Dean. Not so fast … says Ruby.<\/p>\n In “The Magnificent Seven” (my re-cap here<\/a>), the reality of what was let out of Roger Corman’s Cemetery<\/a> starts to hit home. What else will be coming at them? “The Kids Are Alright” is a breather, but – as I said earlier – is maybe the most important episode in the season, at least in terms of the seeds planted, seeds that will not blossom until Season 6. Season 6! The patience! Lisa is not introduced as a character who will rise to such importance that Dean makes the choices that he does. She’s introduced in the context of Dean’s ongoing dying-wish sex drive, AND she is not interested in him at ALL for the majority of the episode. She’s a peripheral-player in the Monster of the Week plot. But there are signs, one visual motif in particular, that show Kripke et al were working towards an End Game with her. They know where they are going. The Ruby Arc does not pan out until the end of Season 4, and will involve two separate actresses. (I wrote a lot about Ruby – and her hair – in the re-cap for “The Magnificent Seven.”) <\/p>\n Digressions. As always. <\/p>\n 1. It’s introduced as a “thing” early on in “Dead in the Water” (recap here<\/a>). His interactions with children are illuminating on a variety of levels. Both brothers are good with children, but Dean’s trauma is so un-managed that it makes the interactions that much more intense. He ends up parenting himself during the encounters. He can’t help it. Trauma recognizes trauma. He has no boundaries anyway, so he sees himself in these ankle-biters going through scary shit. Pure nostalgia does not exist for Dean. He never was a child (as he just recently said to his mother). Children sense his sensitivity, childlike in nature. It’s that “un-managed” and un-handled … THING … in Dean: children sense that. Because they aren’t “managing” and “handling” their anxieties and fears, either. They’re just experiencing them. But Dean also feels his own strength when dealing with these tiny human beings. He’s big and strong, he’s there to protect them. He’s strong and he knows how to be gentle. (Think of the interaction with the traumatized boy in the barn in “Bad Boys.” That is probably the purest example of it.)<\/p>\n 2. Fatherhood isn’t on his radar as an option. Neither is “settling down.” In “Bugs” he made a crack about how he would want to blow his brains out if he had to live in some gated community. Lisa, of course, lives in a gated community (on a yoga teacher’s salary? As a single woman with no husband in the picture? How does she afford that house? Does she now own a yoga studio? Lisa and her non-existent work life has always bugged me. As does her generic House Beautiful decor. Usually the set decoration is more specific. Moving on.) And out of nowhere, Dean is drawn to the primary colors and green grass of that world. He has no future (especially so in Season 3) but he heeds the call anyway, and steps in as father figure to Ben when (he feels) Lisa is falling short. (So inappropriate.) <\/p>\n My first-time watching, I did not sense how huge Lisa and Ben would become. That’s good storytelling. They did not telegraph where it was all going, but the emotional groundwork was set up. Every cell in Dean’s body wants to stay. The strength of his emotions surprise even him. Clearly, his reaction to Lisa and Ben is intensified by the “deal.” What will be his legacy? What will he leave behind? <\/p>\n \nI’ll talk more about Lisa when the time comes.<\/p>\n \n \nBut for now: I appreciate how much thought and care was clearly put into developing the character, and casting the right woman (Cindy Sampson). The writers on Supernatural<\/em> knew – from the get-go – that Dean is a weird man, and knew that any woman he attached himself to, or loved – Cassie, Lisa – had to be unique, her own woman, not generic. Your garden-variety woman could not deal with Dean at all. And vice versa. This takes a sensitive writing staff to understand the complexities of a man who romper-rooms with floozy waitresses but has the capacity to fall in love with someone as spiky and volatile as Cassie. I mean, I know men like this and have been both a floozy waitress AND a spiky-volatile love object … so the Dean thing with women is quite realistic but rarely managed well in fictional characters. <\/p>\n Lisa was going to be a huge deal in the future, they all knew that even if we didn’t, so they had to get her right<\/i> on the first try. They do. <\/p>\n The most perfect thing is that Lisa and Dean don’t have chemistry. At all. The chemistry existed only in the past and in Dean’s fantasizing mind, but in the present moment, it is clear that Lisa is not into him at all. She’s not “playing hard to get” in order to hide her sexual attraction. She is LEGIT annoyed at his presence. (I find this so entertaining.) Thank you, Sera Gamble. Ackles is so gorgeous that it would be a turn-off if women constantly fell over like ninepins. (I’ve written about this aspect of the characterization before: How often Dean’s “burlesque” DOESN’T work. That’s why I love the Burlesque.) There isn’t any sexual heat between Lisa and Dean – shocking, seeing as Dean has sexual heat with a plate of pancakes. With inanimate objects. With randos on the street. With his car. But here … zip. Dean adjusts. Dean adjusts to everything. The lack of sex-sparks is one of the reasons why the situation is believable, and also makes possible the explosion of emotional warmth that eventually comes.<\/p>\n Except for the spectacle of Dean mowing the lawn in “What Is And What Should Never Be” (recap here<\/a>), we’ve never seen primary colors like this in Supernatural<\/em>. I look at this …<\/p>\n \n \nand think … “Wait, what am I watching again?” <\/p>\n The Lisa\/Ben\/Dean sections are warm and bright, with thick green grass, sunlight, bright balloons, water glasses with bright orange and pink flowers on them. This is a world of sunlight and safety. It’s made to look as appealing as possible. Who wouldn’t WANT to enter that house, in an area of the country where a single mom on a yoga teacher’s salary can afford such a place (because clearly she’s bought it. She can’t be RENTING in that community, can she? Sorry, I’ll move on.) These bright colors represent a deliberate choice on the part of Sgriccia\/Ladouceur (even more so since they film in Vancouver where blue skies are hard to come by). I remember the episode being disorienting on my first time watching because of the brightness of the colors (little did I know that the moody darkness I loved so much would not last). <\/p>\n But there’s a whole other sequence in “The Kids Are Alright” having to do with Sam and Ruby. And those colors are different. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/k36.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDean and Children<\/h1>\n
Initial Thoughts on Lisa<\/h1>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nColors: A Schizo-Episode<\/h1>\n
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