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supernatural 3x05, bedtime stories
Why doesn't more of my flist watch Supernatural? You all suck.
So, I might've loved this episode a whole lot. And even though none of you care (except maybe one of you) I am going to say why in excessive detail.
So, some unknown number of weeks ago, Dean Winchester ("desperate, sloppy, needy Dean") said no to his brother's corpse, drove to a crossroads, summoned a demon, and made a deal. Sam came back, and Dean has a year, and then he'll go someplace much worse than death. And some huge part of Dean is okay with that - he did his job, he thinks, he kept his little brother safe, and he's so tired of losing the people he loves. He's tired. So it's a burden lifted, and he's happy (manic with it, the freedom) and maybe he's scared too, you can't tell, he'd never let it show. He'd never let Sam see.
Not long after, Azazel (!) slips some poison in Dean's ear - how sure are you that what you brought back is one hundred percent Sam? And it only struck me now, how perfectly that bookends season two, knowing what their father whispered to Dean just before he died, thanks to a deal of his own (and oh, Dean, why didn't you stop to think of what that deal did to you? that's how this family loves, though - their whole lives are a testament to that).
I'm going to speculate a little, though. Azazel wanted Sam, yes, and we saw too well (Max, Ava, Jake) how easily these would-be children of his could be twisted. But Sam died. Azazel died (and unlike Sam, remains dead). We are told Sam's (demon-blood-granted) powers are gone. Last season's threat - that Sam was something a little bit less than fully human, that he might become something terrible - is not this season's threat, for all that the end results may be the same. Azazel's poison is just a decoy; it is, like everything these demons say, a truth-coated lie.
Tonight, when we first saw our heroes, it was mid-fight. Dean's freedom has lost its glittering edges; Sam just won't go along with it. It's no longer giddiness: it increasingly looks like desperation. Though not nearly so much as what simmers under the surface of Sam. But Dean doesn't want to, can't hear it: he even resorts to because I'm older, and I said so! (Needless to say, Sam doesn't listen; children so rarely do, and certainly never in fairy tales.)
But first things first: there's this town, and this psychotic killer, and at least three people are dead. All signs point, quite literally, to the big bad wolf. But like Azazel's words to Dean, it's misdirection. Really, it's just a little girl, and she doesn't even mean to do what she does, but she's so desperate, and her father won't hear her, won't let her go, he loves her too much, she's all he has left.
"I should have let her go a long time ago," this father says when it's finally all over; "You know, what he said, that's some good advice," Dean says to Sam moments later. "Is that what you want me to do, Dean? Just let you go?" Dean doesn't answer; he thinks it's pointless, that Sammy just doesn't want to listen to reason. He completely misses the other thing Sam's saying, the thing Sam's been saying all along. The thing he won't hear: that they are both their father's sons.
Years and years ago, Azazel wanted Sam and so he killed Sam's mother (Dean's mother, John's wife) and John Winchester gave up his whole life and became something a little bit terrible as he raged a zigzag path across the country with his little boys, seeking vengeance. Dean and Sam grew up with guns and monsters, holy water and salt, and nothing but each other, and John. There were no Disney-fied fairy tales for these boys. Dean was the good soldier, irreverent but dutiful, and this is what he learned about family, about love, from John: you give up everything you have for them until you don't have anything left to give.
Sam was the prodigal, of course; he tried to leave, but there's no getting out. Sam was too young to know his mother; his loss was not like John's and Dean's. But loss caught up to him eventually, and this is what he learned about love, and loss, from John: you give everything you are until you have destroyed whoever or whatever took that love away from you.
Dean lost his mother, and then he lost his father, and then he would've lost Sam but he gave himself instead. Sam lost Jessica, and his father, and now he's going to lose Dean because Dean couldn't let him go, and he has a year for that to do what Azazel never could - to turn him into something a little bit terrible (more than a little, I fear) as he destroys anything and anyone who would take Dean from him. This time it's not because he's something not entirely human or entirely Sam: just the opposite. Tonight it was Sam's turn to stand at the crossroads, and the demon he summoned might as well have been wearing a long red hood, because Sam isn't quite who they thought he was, and he was never, ever going to let her live.
In short (too late!): AWESOME. And: this is why I watch television.
The huntsman and the grandmother and Red Riding Hood
sat down by his corpse and had a meal of wine and cake.
Those two remembering
nothing naked and brutal
from that little death,
that little birth,
from their going down
and their lifting up.
-from Anne Sexton's "Red Riding Hood"
So, I might've loved this episode a whole lot. And even though none of you care (except maybe one of you) I am going to say why in excessive detail.
So, some unknown number of weeks ago, Dean Winchester ("desperate, sloppy, needy Dean") said no to his brother's corpse, drove to a crossroads, summoned a demon, and made a deal. Sam came back, and Dean has a year, and then he'll go someplace much worse than death. And some huge part of Dean is okay with that - he did his job, he thinks, he kept his little brother safe, and he's so tired of losing the people he loves. He's tired. So it's a burden lifted, and he's happy (manic with it, the freedom) and maybe he's scared too, you can't tell, he'd never let it show. He'd never let Sam see.
Not long after, Azazel (!) slips some poison in Dean's ear - how sure are you that what you brought back is one hundred percent Sam? And it only struck me now, how perfectly that bookends season two, knowing what their father whispered to Dean just before he died, thanks to a deal of his own (and oh, Dean, why didn't you stop to think of what that deal did to you? that's how this family loves, though - their whole lives are a testament to that).
I'm going to speculate a little, though. Azazel wanted Sam, yes, and we saw too well (Max, Ava, Jake) how easily these would-be children of his could be twisted. But Sam died. Azazel died (and unlike Sam, remains dead). We are told Sam's (demon-blood-granted) powers are gone. Last season's threat - that Sam was something a little bit less than fully human, that he might become something terrible - is not this season's threat, for all that the end results may be the same. Azazel's poison is just a decoy; it is, like everything these demons say, a truth-coated lie.
Tonight, when we first saw our heroes, it was mid-fight. Dean's freedom has lost its glittering edges; Sam just won't go along with it. It's no longer giddiness: it increasingly looks like desperation. Though not nearly so much as what simmers under the surface of Sam. But Dean doesn't want to, can't hear it: he even resorts to because I'm older, and I said so! (Needless to say, Sam doesn't listen; children so rarely do, and certainly never in fairy tales.)
But first things first: there's this town, and this psychotic killer, and at least three people are dead. All signs point, quite literally, to the big bad wolf. But like Azazel's words to Dean, it's misdirection. Really, it's just a little girl, and she doesn't even mean to do what she does, but she's so desperate, and her father won't hear her, won't let her go, he loves her too much, she's all he has left.
"I should have let her go a long time ago," this father says when it's finally all over; "You know, what he said, that's some good advice," Dean says to Sam moments later. "Is that what you want me to do, Dean? Just let you go?" Dean doesn't answer; he thinks it's pointless, that Sammy just doesn't want to listen to reason. He completely misses the other thing Sam's saying, the thing Sam's been saying all along. The thing he won't hear: that they are both their father's sons.
Years and years ago, Azazel wanted Sam and so he killed Sam's mother (Dean's mother, John's wife) and John Winchester gave up his whole life and became something a little bit terrible as he raged a zigzag path across the country with his little boys, seeking vengeance. Dean and Sam grew up with guns and monsters, holy water and salt, and nothing but each other, and John. There were no Disney-fied fairy tales for these boys. Dean was the good soldier, irreverent but dutiful, and this is what he learned about family, about love, from John: you give up everything you have for them until you don't have anything left to give.
Sam was the prodigal, of course; he tried to leave, but there's no getting out. Sam was too young to know his mother; his loss was not like John's and Dean's. But loss caught up to him eventually, and this is what he learned about love, and loss, from John: you give everything you are until you have destroyed whoever or whatever took that love away from you.
Dean lost his mother, and then he lost his father, and then he would've lost Sam but he gave himself instead. Sam lost Jessica, and his father, and now he's going to lose Dean because Dean couldn't let him go, and he has a year for that to do what Azazel never could - to turn him into something a little bit terrible (more than a little, I fear) as he destroys anything and anyone who would take Dean from him. This time it's not because he's something not entirely human or entirely Sam: just the opposite. Tonight it was Sam's turn to stand at the crossroads, and the demon he summoned might as well have been wearing a long red hood, because Sam isn't quite who they thought he was, and he was never, ever going to let her live.
In short (too late!): AWESOME. And: this is why I watch television.
The huntsman and the grandmother and Red Riding Hood
sat down by his corpse and had a meal of wine and cake.
Those two remembering
nothing naked and brutal
from that little death,
that little birth,
from their going down
and their lifting up.
-from Anne Sexton's "Red Riding Hood"
no subject
God, this episode was better than sex.
I was thoroughly hoping for Sammy's demon side to manifest itself slowly over the first 12-15 episodes, but the route they've chosen is imminently darker: what if it really IS just all Sam, cutting a swath for humanity to get at his golden prize, and not caring at all who falls in the way so long as Dean doesn't?
I never thought the episode would come in which Sammy, darling Sammy, would be the Big Bad Wolf. Bigger and badder, in fact, than even Dean. Right now, Sam is the stuff that nightmares are made of.
Big, beautiful, murderous nightmares. :)
Also: Padalecki is knocking this storyline OUT OF THE PARK, and I love it. Same for Ackles. Oh, boys. How I love you.
no subject
I didn't see this coming for Sam either, but I should've. His Rage Against the Impala moment in Everybody Loves a Clown notwithstanding, Dean usually turns this stuff inwards. Since the pilot Sam's gone the other way, itching for revenge, ready to destroy. That Sam is the one more able to empathize with victims, to get people to talk, to be the butt of Dean's "you're such a girl" jokes distracts from the fact that deep down, Sam's far more ruthless than Dean.
Padelecki is amazing me; it's like all the rough edges of his acting talents have been worn away. Ackles has always impressed me, so I'm not surprised that he continues to. There were really important silences last night - Sam's in the beginning in the car when Dean orders him to stop trying, and Sam says nothing; both of them in response to the third brother's "can you imagine how that feels, losing your brothers?" and then Dean's against Sam's "you want me to just let you go?" They might not have said anything, but so much got across anyway. I might have whimpered. :)