![\"b68\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/b68.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nDirected by Peter Ellis
\nWritten by John Shiban<\/i><\/p>\n
When we first met Dean Winchester in the pilot, he was cocky, brash, and bossy. Other shadings came in pretty quick, once Ackles settled into the role, once they moved to Vancouver, once the show was picked up, and on and on. The character had a pretty steep curve, if you compare what we see in Episode 3 to what we saw in the pilot. Sam’s transformation was not quite as radical (his transformation would come later). Sometimes it’s hard to remember how these characters presented themselves to us in Season 1, because so much has happened since then. We’re 9 seasons in now. But part of the fun of doing Season 1 re-caps, all as Season 9 is unfolding, is to “go back” and remember what it was like to see it all for the first time, what it was like to be in the dark about these guys, watching other elements\/shadings appear. The show had great flexibility, and it utilized it early on. The backstory was sketched in just enough<\/i> to be properly ambiguous, so that we could re-visit it, and learn more about it. Even the teaser to the pilot, which seemed so explicit in “what happened”, was later up-ended and turned inside out, as we slowly figured out what was REALLY going on in that nursery. But for me, the fun of these re-caps is to try to forget that I know what’s coming. Not always easy. But certainly worthwhile, because it is then that you can really see how well the writers and the creative team and the actors set up all the themes and motifs – EARLY – themes\/motifs which are still paying dividends in Season 9. I mean, hell, we got a flashback episode in Season 9 about Dean’s teenage years, and you would think we had already learned everything we needed to learn, but nope. There are still some intriguing blanks. <\/p>\n
But erasing everything we eventually learn, and erasing how we have settled in with this guy by now, Episode 15 of Season 1, “Benders,” is a revelation. <\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nIt’s a revelation because it is yet another moment in the slow-reveal striptease of Dean Winchester’s inner life, an admission of his motivations and not only that, his feelings about said motivations. Basically, where this guy is coming from<\/i>. The brothers are men now. They haven’t “worked together” as men before. Sam left for college at age 18, which would put Dean at 22. Before that point, Sam was a teenager, Dean the older brother, and before that, they were both children. Dad was always there, focusing them, training them, dragging them around. But now Dad is missing, and they are grown men, in the Impala together. Everything is new. It’s important to keep that in mind. Dad’s presence would have inhibited the brothers from creating a real and open relationship. He would always be intervening, correcting, adjusting. It’s hard to picture the two of them goofing off in Dad’s presence, or getting into a fight. Dad would have stepped in and said, “Knock it off” and they would have obeyed. So now they are out on a limb, without Dad. Their dynamic is changing in ways they can’t understand yet. Dad is more powerful in his absence, almost, than in his presence. <\/p>\n
Dean’s natural tendency, it feels like a moral imperative, is to fill Dad’s shoes. It’s an eldest son thing, and it’s also a codependent thing. If Dean isn’t running the show, then what the hell is his entire personality? Who the hell is he? Sam and Dean have already butted heads, multiple times, when Dean tries to set the tone, or steer the ship. Sam reminds him that he is an equal player, he’s not “Sammy” anymore, he’s “Sam”, a grown man. The show will revisit this territory constantly.<\/p>\n
How unstable Dean is is not quite clear at this stage of the game. We got a glimpse in “Scarecrow,” we got a huge glimpse in “Skin,” “Home,” but he’s not telling us his secrets yet. All of this is complicated (beautifully) by how appealing Ackles is an actor. Everyone gives him the benefit of the doubt. Everyone makes excuses for him. It’s part of what he’s doing with the character, it’s part of the sucker-punch of Dean Winchester. <\/p>\n
The dynamic is also complicated because Dean refuses to be a victim, he refuses to indulge in self-pity, and he refuses to get all mushy-mushy in emotional conversations. It’s how stars are made, being able to put all of that together. What the hell else do you think Gary Cooper was doing in his roles? Or John Wayne? It’s why someone like Humphrey Bogart was such a compelling leading man (and an unexpected one: the man was short, balding, and had a lisp. But he had such power onscreen, and one of his powers was the power of withholding<\/i>. He held back, he doesn’t “show us all.”) If Dean Winchester “showed us all” the show would have been over quick. There would be no tension. There would be no deep unresolved issues, no schisms in personality. We need those things to remain interested, to continue. <\/p>\n
One can certainly say that all that stiff-upper-lip stuff is damaging to him. One can also say that the tough-guy-stuff is a pose. I happen to not agree, not entirely, but it’s certainly an argument. I see every part of Dean Winchester – the tough stuff, the bravery, the cockiness, the arrogance – and then the other stuff he is not quite in control of, his sexualization of most moments, his flirtatiousness in situations where it is not warranted, swaggering his cock around (metaphorically – or, hell, probably literally on occasion) as a diversionary tactic – is all part of how he survived. He NEEDS those things. Until \u2026 he doesn’t need them anymore, until \u2026 these things start to kill him (which is what is happening now in Season 9). <\/p>\n
There’s that metaphor about relationships being like a dance step. When the couple is in sync, dancing the same dance, there is nothing more beautiful to experience. But when one person changes the dance step, the partner either has to adjust or stop dancing. Marriages fall apart when one partner changes the dance step (“The kids are grown, I want to go back to work” or “I’m sick of my high-pressure job, let’s sell everything, and move to a cabin in the Ozarks”). The reaction is often: “Wait a second. I thought we had an understanding here. I thought we were in agreement.” Sam, in Season 9, has changed the dance step. It’s no longer working. Sam is rising in strength and cohesion and Dean is disintegrating. That’s what happens when a dance step that one person thought was set in stone is changed. <\/p>\n
See, it’s difficult to not look ahead! But I blame “Benders,” and re-watching it in preparation for this re-cap. Because what we see in “Benders” is Dean’s clear statement of how he understands the dance step with his brother. We may have guessed, and it’s certainly been implied and suggested, but we have never heard it from him so clearly and so vulnerably. Again, there’s that thing of giving Dean the benefit of the doubt, making excuses for him, because he is such an appealing human. Nothing wrong with that. But “Benders” looks very different when seen in the context of Season 9. And Dean’s understanding of the dance step, and the role he has taken on for himself (first, given to him by his Dad, and then owned by him outright, all on his own) is the very thing that has ruined his relationship with Sam. <\/p>\n
And THIS is why Supernatural<\/i> is such a good show. Because these very subtle and emotional thru-lines TRACK. There are times when it can get repetitious, and you can wonder why nobody is moving forward, or why we are dealing with the same ol’ same ol’ thing again. That’s gonna happen in a series that lasts as long as Supernatural<\/i>. They don’t always get it right. They spin their wheels sometimes. It happens. But one of the reasons Season 9 has been so satisfying for me, personally, is that schism in Dean Winchester, the brokenness, (the qualities that also makes him beautiful – his caretaking instinct, his willingness to do the dirty work, his selflessness) – is now coming back to kill him. And that I know from my own life. I know it so well. It’s existential, it’s “why am I here,” it’s “am I worth being saved”, it’s all of the questions which come up during moments of crisis that can either help bury you or help redeem you. <\/p>\n
I’ll be honest: on my first viewing of “Benders,” before I watched the rest of the series, I wasn’t crazy about it. I didn’t like that there were no monsters, that they were “just people”. It felt like an episode of Criminal Minds<\/i> (and I love that show, nothing against it). I felt that the hillbilly family was way over-the-top in stereotyping, and I was frustrated that the Arc was somehow not even mentioned. The Arc of “where is Dad.” I wasn’t seeing it in its metaphorical power. It felt like filler, but filler from another show. Obviously I was very wrong, and how wrong I was is only obvious to me once I watched the entire series, and then went back to re-visit “Benders”. <\/p>\n
When Dean opens up to the deputy sheriff about what he sees as his role in life (looking out for Sam), there are no games, no cover-up, no bossypants behavior. Suddenly, we see beneath the veil. And what we see behind there is soft, bruised, pliable, and vulnerable. Up until now, we have seen Dean in the context of his relationship with Sam. And he’s not going to talk to Sam in this way. Sam needs him to be strong, certain, and, yes, bossy. It’s Dean’s side of the dance step. The only person we’ve seen Dean with, outside of that context, is with Cassie. And they don’t talk about Sam at all, they talk about their feelings. And racist monster trucks. You know, like any totally normal relationship.<\/p>\n
Bread crumbs dropped along the way: And then we come to “Benders”. Like I said, it’s helpful to remember how what we’ve seen in “Benders” hasn’t been seen before. Or it’s helpful to me, since I wasn’t a fan of the episode originally.<\/p>\n The whole thing is about family. Even the hillbilly stereotyping (which makes Deliverance<\/i> look subtle) makes sense if you look at it in terms of a metaphor of the ugliness beneath the surface in so many families, of the way roles are set up, of the way a “family business” (in this case, hunting) can be twisted into something grotesque. Everyone in “Benders” has family problems. Everyone in “Benders” is trying to get back to a time when things were simple, when their family was together. But dark things are afoot, dance steps are changing, and everyone starts to fall apart. The Bender family is horrifying, a closed system. The siblings in that family all have their roles and they play them with gusto, especially when in the presence of outsiders. The family unit MUST be protected. It’s not difficult to see the correlation with the Winchesters. We have seen 14 episodes where Dean and Sam try to find their father. John Winchester remains a bit of a mystery. We get that he raised his sons in a certain way, and we get that Sam fled the first second he saw his opening. We also get that Dean saw that as a betrayal. It’s the Prism theory of Storytelling that I keep going on about. The next episode after “Benders” is “Shadow,” when Dad finally re-enters the picture. That’s a whole other ball of wax. FINALLY we see the three men in the same place at the same time, and it is incredibly revealing. And then two episodes later, we get “Something Wicked,” an essential episode giving us our first flashback to Sam and Dean as kids. We’ll never see their childhood the same way again. Up until that point, we’ve had competing viewpoints, Sam’s, Dean’s, and then Dad’s \u2026 but “Something Wicked” feels more objective: Here is how it was.<\/i> Even though it’s Dean’s memory, there’s something rock-solid about that piece of the puzzle. It changes everything. <\/p>\n It changed my relationship to Dean, too. Like I said, the show wants you to give him the benefit of the doubt. He is such an appealing character and Jensen Ackles is so appealing. The show wants us to feel safe when he’s around, to take his word for it that he will take care of things, and the show wants us to revel in his casual manly heroism. But it ALSO wants to implicate us in that. It ALSO wants us to realize what we have been supporting, that what we admire in him is the thing that is most hurting him. Supernatural<\/i> is AWESOME at implicating its own audience. So yeah, I was taken with the Han Solo aspect of Dean, I love characters like that, they have a long tradition in cinema and I love them. “Something Wicked” showed me something else, and from that point on, I stopped taking Dean’s word for it about his childhood. I stopped trusting his interpretation, in other words. The show let me KNOW him a little bit better, and let me in on his secrets, let me see what he was hiding (the abuse, the shame, the scars) \u2026 stuff he would never acknowledge outright. It creates a beautiful tension which still exists now. Secrets\/unresolved stuff like that is one of the reasons why the character is such a huge HOOK. Drama is not made up of beautifully resolved and open people being all loving and open with their deep trauma issues. Drama is made up of deeply unresolved people doing the best they can with shit they barely understand. <\/p>\n Creator Eric Kripke said that Supernatural<\/i> wasn’t really about monsters. If he had to boil it down, he would say that the theme is “Family is hell.” “Benders” makes that explicit with a family of people who are, quite literally, monsters, albeit of the human variety. We could judge them, and, of course, we do. Please stop putting people in cages. And brush your teeth once a decade. Kthxbai. But “Benders” is asking us to make the connections with the Winchesters. It isn’t doing so obviously, but it is pleading with us to fill in all those glorious blanks. “Like my father and my father before him \u2026” says the brown-toothed patriarch. We remember Dean’s urgent monologue to Sam in “Wendigo”, where he says “pick up where Dad left off \u2026 the family business \u2026” It’s not so much that the Benders represent where the Winchesters could go if they went off the rails. It’s that the Winchesters are already off the rails. The things they kill may not be human, but killing is killing, and organizing your family around the shared experience of Murder is, how you Americans say, totally fucked up. <\/p>\n It is eloquent that it is Sam who is abducted and imprisoned in that cage in the barn. You would think it would be Dean, because Dean is usually more susceptible to attacks, he just walks around like he “has it coming”. But if you think about it in terms of how the Winchester family set itself up: Sam felt trapped, and had some Outside Eye on his own situation (the Outside Eye that Dean totally lacks, part and parcel of PTSD). Sam looked around at his own family, and thought, “This is messed UP.” He dug up graves, and stabbed monsters, and then packed his backpack to go to school, and he had some awareness that everything was screwed up and maybe he could choose something else for himself. His experience could be seen as being locked up in a cage by his protective father and brother. (I don’t think “Benders” is straight metaphor, but it works on that level.) And John Winchester is the patriarch, setting the tone, and probably chopping up bodies in the motel room bathroom in order for easy disposal, similar to the horrifying scene where we see the guy sawing up the body in the sink. Sam and Dean would have been watching cartoons in the next room, as Dad sawed up a werewolf in the sink, and they wouldn’t have thought any of it was weird. The little girl in the Bender family is perhaps the scariest one of all of them, and tragic as well. She is a child, and should be innocent, but she isn’t. She is part of that family too. She accepts it without question and does what needs to be done. She is violent, protective, and ferocious. She also knows how to use people’s perceptions of her (Little girl = sweet = innocent = guileless = cute) to her advantage. She is Dean. Dean was like that by the time he was 12. So of course she would then be told to watch over Dean, which she does, waving a knife around in front of his face, glorying in her power over him. He would have done the same thing when he was a child. <\/p>\n We’ve already talked a lot about Nature\/Nurture. The show seems to demand it. You cannot blame a child for crafting its personality accordingly in order to survive abuse. The child is the victim. The child cannot be blamed for trying to survive, trying to please its parent. That little girl is a monster, but she was turned into one by growing up in the closed system of her family. Phone call for Dean Winchester. <\/p>\n We get two journeys in “Benders”: Sam imprisoned, doing his best to figure out the situation, and escape, and then Dean, out there in the world, trying to get his brother back. The separation in “Scarecrow” was because Sam walked away. It was awful for Dean, but he also came to the realization that Sam needs to live his own life. A huge concession. But having Sam snatched out from under him, vanished into the ether \u2026 it’s the worst possible thing that can happen, and for the first time, we see how Dean sees his role. And how his whole life depends on that role. And if Sam does vanish, it means Dean has failed. Even if Dean could never have prevented Sam’s vanishing (and he couldn’t have) \u2026 it doesn’t matter. Dean’s role is not graded on a curve, and there aren’t actually even separate grades at all. You don’t get a B+ in protecting Sam. It is strictly Pass-Fail. <\/p>\n And we are moving into another Arc with the next episode, the return of Dad. “Benders” makes sure we remember the stakes before we start on into that hot mess. <\/p>\n 1st scene<\/big> The little Bender girl isn’t the only Dean stand-in in the episode. We meet another one, in Evan (Ryan Drescher), a little boy, sitting up late at night, watching a Godzilla<\/i> movie on late-night television, with little plastic monsters on his windowsill. (Speaking of Godzilla, yesterday was his 60th anniversary<\/a>. In other words, it was Godzilla’s anniversary on the day I wrote this post. I love it when that happens.)<\/p>\n \n \nA blue neon “Tavern” light is outside the apartment window. In a road-trip show such as Supernatural<\/i>, they could have gone “generic” with the worlds they stepped into (and actually the show has gone more in that direction in later seasons, which is a bummer). You know, generic meaning all of America seen as immaculate homogenized suburbia. Everyone lives in a nice little ranch house with a lawn, blah blah. In the early seasons, the show made it a point to take us off the beaten track, both atmospherically and economically. Supernatural<\/i> takes place in a world full of country roads, one-pump gas stations, ramshackle biker bars, junk yards, and cheese-ball motel rooms. It is an America made up of spare parts, and duct-taped together. It is not brand-name America. It is unique, hardy, eccentric. Like the music the guys listen to, metal and classic rock. This shit was built to LAST. It’s an America not often shown in prime-time television, and reality shows that take place in this particular America are usually set up as Freak Shows. Mockery being the main proponent. Supernatural<\/i> loves off-the-beaten-track, and loves the weirdo eccentricities of America, and gives us blue-collar heroes who maneuver in a very different world than the health-conscious politically-correct bottled-water-drinking enclaves on both coasts. They’re from what people on the coasts refer to condescendingly as “flyover country”, and they’re damn proud of it. You don’t fly over<\/em> this great country. You drive through it. See how homogenous it looks THEN. <\/p>\n Evan and his mom clearly live in what is probably a one-bedroom apartment, right above a tavern. I bet Mom sleeps on the pull-out couch in the main room and lets Evan have his own room. We see a glimpse of the apartment later. It is tiny, cluttered, and a total mess. There is no Dad in the picture (at least, he’s not shown in the scene, but I think it’s understood that he doesn’t exist at all). Evan stays up late, by himself, watching scary moves, all as the blue Tavern light gleams right outside his window. These are visual cues. We see so much homogenous shit on television, or when we see low-income environments, it’s patronizing. Here, it’s barely even acknowledged, except visually. But it’s part of the world of Supernatural<\/i>. Dean and Sam grew up rough, grew up on fast food, and grew up on scary movies watched when Dad was out of the room. They’re Generation X. They grew up not wearing seat belts, or bike helmets. They grew up without Internet. They grew up playing on blacktop playgrounds where they could fall and bust their head open, no padded-ground playgrounds for them. They grew up during the dying gasps of the Cold War. They learned about porn and women’s bodies by sneaking peeks at Dad’s Playboy<\/i>. (They also grew up slinging shot guns and killing ghosts, but besides that anomaly \u2026) They were probably AGOG when they were invited over a friend’s house (the one or two times it happened) and saw the nice clean living room and the refrigerator filled with food. No wonder Dean shovels food in his mouth, as though he grew up in a Romanian orphanage. He never thought there would be enough. <\/p>\n \n \nAll of this is to say: it’s the subtle choices, like making Evan and his mom live in a dump apartment, and not even making a big deal out of it, that helps give the show its depth in these early seasons. It doesn’t look or feel like other shows. Too many people in Hollywood write as though “flyover country” is just that. They need to get out more. <\/p>\n Evan hears something strange going on outside, a sound that doesn’t seem right, so he goes to the window. He looks down on the cluttered junky parking lot. The Tavern light suffuses the whole scene in ghostly blue. A guy is walking around down there, amongst the cars. The guy, too, hears something that is not right, and stands and looks around. We see his feet from beneath the cars, a totally creepy POV change, and then suddenly he is grabbed, and we see him dragged underneath one of the cars, his hands (horrifyingly) scrabbling at the pavement as he disappears. Evan sees the whole thing. <\/p>\n We cut to an overhead shot of the apartment. You can see what I mean. That is some detailed production design right there.<\/p>\n \n \nMom and Evan stand talking to two state troopers, wearing hats and uniforms that make them look like Smokey the Bear. Since we first see them from above, we don’t know immediately that it is Sam and Dean. Mom (Sadie Lawrence) is saying that the police have already been questioning her son all week, and the more he tells the story the more he believes it’s true. Evan stands next to her, thoughtful, upset, he’s been through a lot in that week. He knew the guy he saw taken. Mr. Jenkins. He also knows his mom doesn’t believe his story. He’s got an old soul, this kid. <\/p>\n \n \nSam and Dean take off their Smokey the Bear hats, ready to go in for the kill. Sam’s tactic is gentle and encouraging, “Don’t worry how crazy it sounds, Evan \u2026” And Dean is, what a shock, a little bit “off”. He usually is in these situations when he is forced to lie. He basically just wants to cut to the chase: Tell us what you saw, but he has to go this rigmarole of play-acting first. Dean says to Mom and son something about how this is a “matter for the state police,” but the way he says it is strange. No other word for it. It’s these initial stages where Dean comes off weird. Sam has to intervene. Often. <\/p>\n Evan tells them he was up late watching a movie, and he heard a weird noise, like a monster. Mom, who has already been down this path and is clearly tired of it, says, “Tell the officers what movie you were watching.” Evan says, “Godzilla vs. Mothra<\/i>,” and Sam smiles, the way you smile at a kid when you are encouraging them from your Adult Plane of Existence, while Dean starts laughing, totally enthusiastic, saying, “That is my favorite Godzilla<\/i> movie.” He is not on the Adult Plane, he meets the kid on his level, and it’s not a ploy. Dean has no boundaries, which can be problematic, sometimes it’s awesome. It makes him not treat kids like they are kids. (And, of course, kids gravitate towards him for that reason. He seems like one of them.) Who cares that the kid is 10. We need to talk about Godzilla<\/i> right now.<\/p>\n \n \nI love, too, that Dean knows all of the different versions of the film and has clearly done a compare-and-contrast exercise in his spare time. So has the kid. There’s the original, and then there’s the remake, but if you know anything about the Godzilla<\/i> franchise then you know that there are multiple ways you can interpret the terms “original” and “remake”. I’m thinking he’s referencing the 1992 remake, but that’s just a guess. Dean says, confidentially, “That’s my favorite Godzilla<\/i> movie. So much better than the original.” Evan lights up, in the middle of his grim circumstances, and agrees, and Dean, caught up in the moment, gestures over at Sam and says, “He likes the remake,” with an eye-roll and Evan looks up at Sam and says, “Yuk.”<\/p>\n And with that moment the episode has won my heart. Dean is about to say, “That’s what I keep saying,” when Sam clears his throat to interrupt the inappropriate off-topic bonding, not to mention the fact that these yahoos don’t care for the remake which is CLEARLY superior. Dean catches himself, and sort of reins it all in, in a very funny “Oh. Right. I’m a state trooper. Whoops” moment, and Sam takes over, because, once again, Dean cannot be trusted with the simplest of interrogations. At least he’s not flirting. <\/p>\n 2nd scene<\/big> \n \nSam says Dad found a lot of folklore about a dark figure who drags people off into the night. Dad also discovered that this particular county has more missing people than any other county in the state. Dean is drinking beer, looking on, but definitely more intrigued now. <\/p>\n Please look at the neon numbers behind his head. <\/p>\n \n \nSo<\/a> many levels<\/a>. Subtext. Fun. An inside joke. <\/p>\n Dean knows about “phantom attackers” and he knows they usually snatch people from their beds. Mr. Jenkins vanished from a parking lot. Sam has a broader interpretation of the Lore, which I love him for, because I love “the Lore” conversations. It sets me on Google searches too. We’ve got Spring-heeled Jacks<\/a> (which, thanks, I’m gonna have nightmares now), and phantom gassers<\/a>. These entities take people anywhere. <\/p>\n \n \nBeautiful shot. <\/p>\n Dean goes back to playing darts, and he’s seen with the big neon “MEN’S” sign above his head in the next couple of shots. We saw him framed in a similar way in “Home”. And let’s not even discuss (or let’s discuss) the whole “Men’s Room” thing in the last episode just aired in Season 9! I’ve said it before: Supernatural<\/i>, on its deepest most hidden most unspoken level, is about masculinity, and what it means to be a man, especially men like Winchesters, who were raised in a tough strong military tradition. It does not scoff at those things, those things have given us much to be proud of in our culture, men who are willing to do the dirty work for the greater good. I would never scoff at such a thing. But it also asks, repeatedly, in ways that can be heard only on a supersonic level, what COST men like this pay. It is not a question that is currently in vogue. Trust me, I am not a member of the MRA movement. I find those guys despicable. But I do think that shaming entire generations of men for cultural\/psychological traits that have been encouraged in them for centuries (for often very valid reasons, not just misogynistic ones) is really not the way to go. In fact, I can’t stand it. I don’t believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I want my nephews to grow up not being ashamed of themselves. It’s not THEIR fault American women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920. Just like it’s not MY fault that some dude sees all women as sluts and gold-diggers. That’s HIS limitation. I am proud of being a woman, and I want my nephews to be proud of who they are, too. There’s nothing worse than toxic resentful men, and that is often the result of a culture-wide shaming campaign. That’s partly where your misogyny (in its current-day virulent strain) comes from. No thanks. We need to give each other more space!<\/p>\n We recently were chatting about what the “hottest” moments in the series was for us. I mentioned Sam sucking the blood out of Ruby’s arm, because I am basically a sick individual. I’d also put the look on Dean’s face in his dream when he’s staring up at the two strippers. It’s so private<\/i>. That’s Dean alone in his Happy Place. We almost never see that. But then Max brought up the scene after the first showdown with Alistair in the church when they are protecting Anna – and Sam is sewing up the gash in his arm, pouring whiskey into the wound, and then taking a swig, all as Dean paces in the background, in agony with a dislocated shoulder. Sam finishes sewing himself up, and then goes to Dean, saying, “On three.” Dean gets ready. Sam says, “One” and then jams Dean’s shoulder back into position. And yes. That, I believe, wins, hands down for the sexiest fucking thing ever seen on this show. As Jessie summed it up: “Such butch. So arms. Very sex.” Exactly.<\/p>\n To sort of tie all this back in: The human race has continued on, has survived, because humans were able to endure pain, able to go on despite pain. Women gave birth in fields and caves, with no anesthesia. I am sure it fucking sucked. Millions of them died. But they were able to endure it, because \u2026 well, that’s how we are built. We are STRONG, not weak. John Adams’ daughter was given a mastectomy with no anesthesia. One cannot even comprehend what she went through. However, thankful to the great site Letters of Note, we have an extraordinary letter from a missionary woman in 1855<\/a> who describes her experience of a mastectomy sans anesthesia. Tough tough stuff. I forced myself to finish it, basically because if she was strong enough to survive it and tell us about it, I was certainly strong enough to get through the letter. Men endure because they can do shit like sew themselves back up, swing an axe, make themselves a peg leg if need be, anesthetize their pain with shots of whiskey, and move on to get the crops in. Whatever. This is how the West was won (from people who already lived there, granted – but, to quote Eddie Izzard: “Do you have a flag?”<\/a> KIDDING.) This isn’t just how the West was won (and the Winchester rifle, incidentally, is known as “the gun that won the West”), this is how the human race has progressed. Survived. People can get a little bit too intellectual, at times, about this, in our post-modern universe. Sometimes that’s a good thing, it’s good to question things, to examine the way things are set up, and to question the validity of the set up. Unexamined privilege is Bad News. But sometimes it ain’t a good thing. And a scene like that is fucking old-school. This kind of grit is what it takes to fucking survive.<\/i> That’s not posturing. That’s reality.<\/p>\n It is also super-hot. <\/p>\n I am interested in these questions for the ambiguity they encourage. More grey areas, please. I am interested in these questions because in addressing them, and in NOT looking for answers, but in sitting in the questions<\/em>, breathing space and room is opened up around the conversation. And we need more of that. All of us. Cut each other some slack, and stop putting the vice on one another. Supernatural<\/i> has great empathy for men who don’t know their place, who question their position, who struggle with the role placed on them by their Dad (and the larger world). <\/p>\n
\nPilot:<\/a> In the confrontation by the Impala in the pilot, Dean says, \u201cI can\u2019t do this alone.\u201d Sam says, \u201cYes, you can.\u201d And Dean replies, \u201cYeah. Well, I don\u2019t want to.\u201d
\n“Wendigo”<\/a>: Dean’s soft open reaction to Haley’s concern for her missing brother. It’s subtextual what he’s doing there, except for his one line to her, “I think I know how you feel”, but it gives us a “way in” (and with Dean, it’s hard for a “way in” because his language is often surface-level bossy pants stuff.)
\n“Dead in the Water”<\/a>: A huge bread-crumb, suggesting the level of trauma under which Dean operates. Dean tells Lucas about his mom, and how his mom would want him to “be brave”. Dean admits how scared he was when he was a kid. Sam’s role here is to look on, in growing understanding, at who his big brother is. You realize how they have never talked about ANY of this.
\n“Phantom Traveler”<\/a>: Dean is afraid of flying, which can be seen as another bread crumb leading into the forest of his psychology. But that’s about it, in this episode. There are other concerns here, having to do with Dad being missing. “Dean can help,” says Dad’s new outgoing message.
\n“Bloody Mary”<\/a>: Sam’s Arc starts to rise. Secrets. Sam admits to Dean he has a secret, a secret he won’t share. Dean’s reaction is completely inappropriate. His world starts to shatter a bit, when he starts to feel Sam’s separate-ness from him. Huge clue. We can certainly see why Dean is this way, but it doesn’t make him any less annoying. You start to feel that \u2026 he has some serious problems.
\n“Skin”<\/a>: Essential bread crumb. Through the self-pitying monologues of the shape-shifter, we get a sense of Dean’s feelings of abandonment when his brother went to college. Best of all, though, we aren’t sure if it’s true, because it wasn’t actually Dean saying it. But the show trucks in that kind of ambiguity.
\n“Hook Man”<\/a>: Kind of a filler episode, a bit stock, except for the masterpiece of editing that is the final scene (which is nearly wordless). Dean’s focus on Sam through the rear-view mirror, his worry, his sadness, his empathy towards what Sam is giving up. Dean is totally Sam-focused.
\n“Bugs”<\/a>: The episode featuring the shortest night in human history. It lasted only 10 minutes! Well, whatever, the argument between the brothers about how to interpret their childhood and how to interpret Dad’s parenting is a running theme. Sam seems logical and grown-up, Dean seems childish and resistant, also not all that bright. Dean needs to feel his childhood was not all that bad, and he needs Sam to be in sync with him. The dance step is changing, Sam is changing it, and Dean hates it.
\n“Home”<\/a>: Putting out an SOS call to Dad, in tears. Key. So much about this episode is key: Dean’s growing anxiety, his inability to hide it, his fear of what is happening to his brother.
\n“Asylum”<\/a>: The confrontation between a possessed Sam and his brother near the end of the episode is a huge bread crumb: Sam’s awareness of being bossed around, his bucking against Dean’s authority, and Dean’s willingness to do what it takes to get the job done. But it makes you wonder: if the conflict between the brothers ever comes out into the open, for real, without a Monster to blame it on (“It was the shape-shifter\/Mad Doctor talking, not me!”), what the hell is gonna happen? Hugely unstable relationship.
\n“Scarecrow”<\/a>: The conflict explodes. Sam finally rebels against Dean’s bossiness. Dean is so shocked you could knock him over with a feather, which speaks to his lack of self-awareness at this stage of the game. Dude, you should have seen it coming.
\n“Faith”<\/a>: We see Dean facing death in a kind of careless over-it way. It’s his time, it’s a dangerous gig, what are ya gonna do. A glimpse of his sense of self-worth (or lack thereof). Sam has to fight FOR him because Dean can’t do it himself. By the end of the episode, through the encounter with Layla, that dynamic has shifted just a little bit.
\n“Route 666”<\/a>: PantsFeelings and Pillow Talk. Like “Dead in the Water,” what this episode does is see Dean through Sam’s eyes, we see how much Sam has under-estimated Dean, or labeled him, or made assumptions. Dean is full of surprises, the main one being vulnerability. That’s what that episode is about.
\n“Nightmare”<\/a>: Sam’s Arc taking over again, and so we see how unstable Dean gets when Sam starts moving into areas he doesn’t understand. No one could fault Dean for worrying about Sam. If you have siblings you’re close to, you know how much brain-space they can take up, especially if one of them is in trouble. I think my own siblings in 2012 were out of their minds with worry about me, and spent a lot of time with one another talking about me. It’s embarrassing to be “the one” everyone is worried about, but that’s how families operate. “Nightmare” is complex, though: Dean promises Sam nothing will happen to him as long as he’s around. You wonder though: what price has this guy paid for his devotion to his family? <\/p>\n
\nHibbing, Minnesota<\/i><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nSam and Dean hang out at a biker bar, Dean playing darts, Sam going through Dad’s journal, and the local police reports, and talking about the case. Their conversation is punctuated by the clack of pool balls in the background. There are some pretty funny visual jokes interspersed through this pretty stock “let’s talk about the case” scene, and I’ll get to them. It’s one of the ways the directors, production designer Jerry Wanek and the DP, Serge Ladouceur, have fun. The brothers are talking about how this could be a standard missing-person’s case, “not our kind of thing”. Sam isn’t so sure. Dad had earmarked the area in his mythical journal as possible “hunting grounds” for a “phantom attacker”. Dean had somehow missed the connection, even though he probably knows the journal by heart. <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n