SPN 10.03
SPN 10.03 Soul Survivor
I don't like to give up on people when they need someone not to give up on them.
-- Carroll Bryant
Dean: Sam, I know you think you're going to try and fix me, but did it ever occur to you that maybe I don't want to be fixed? Just let me go live my life. I won't bother you. What do you care?
Sam: What do I care?
Dean: You think I'm going to sit here like Crowley getting all weepy while you shoot me up? Well, screw that! I don't want this!
Dean has made a choice. He doesn't want to be a man. He would rather stay the monster. This is as disturbing to me as it for Sam to hear, because there has been that tiny part of me believing that hey, this is Dean Winchester. He doesn't give up. Not on humanity. Not on family. Not on saving people. Not on fighting the monsters, no matter how hard or impossible the odds stack up. So how could Dean, our Dean, be this beloved familiar face embracing a resolution in such total contrast to the man we know?
Is this the real Dean? Or is it just the demon inside? Are they the same thing, or separate?
Does it matter?
Sam: I never meant-
Dean: Who cares what you meant. That line that we thought was so clear between us and the things that we hunted, ain't so clear is it? Wow, you might actually be worse than me. I mean you took a guy at his lowest, used him and it cost him his life and his soul. Nice work.
Dean posits that the line between monster and man are not so different. Men alone are capable of great evil, you don't have to be a demon for that. So really, what is the supposed good of restoring his humanity? As a human Dean has been a killer for years. Now he has evolved into the next level of killer. So what?
Of course, Dean's very tactics in his subsequent barrage of verbal attacks on Sam show us just how different the man from the monster really is.
He starts with the aforementioned attack on Sam's state of conscience. Knowing how Sam has spent most of his own life feeling different, fearing he was destined to become a monster. Then he widens his scope and goes for the jugular in every possible way, targeting every insecurity and fear Sam has felt over the years.
Dean: You notice I tried to get as far away from you as possible? Away from your whining, your complaining. I chose the King of Hell over you. Maybe I was just... tired of babysitting you. Or always having to yank your lame ass out of the fire, since... forever. Or maybe... maybe it was the fact that my mother would still be alive if it wasn't for you. That your very existence sucked the life out of my life.
Sam: This isn't my brother talking.
Dean: You never had a brother. Just an excuse for not manning up. But guess what. I quit.
Sam: No. No you don't. You don't get to quit. We don't get to quit in this family. This family is all we have ever had!
Dean: Well then we got nothin'.
Kill Joy Sam. Better brothers or companions than Sam. Always having to Save Sam from everything, for all his life. Failure. Loss of family. Quitting on family. It was quite an insightful slice-n-dice, splicing direct experiences and confessions Sam has made to the sacrifices and losses Dean has suffered. Dumping all responsibility onto Sam's very existence. No one knows a good guilt-trip like someone who swims in guilt themselves.
As a side note, it fascinates me how Dean continues to hold Mary up on that pedestal of perfect victim. Sam, John, Men of Letters and Winchesters in general generated scorn, but Mary remains sacrosanct. No matter that she herself made a deal with Yellow Eyes that could have been twisted into the interpretation of selling out Sam, instead of the reverse Dean chooses to present his argument as.
So does this mean there is a tiny part of Dean that is still Dean despite the monster in the driver's seat?
Hmm. I'd say... it's complicated.
Dean: There's no point in trying to bring your brother back now.
Sam: Oh, I will bring him back.
Dean: In fact, your, uh, guilt-ridden, weight-of-the-world bro has been M.I.A. for quite some time now.
Huh. MIA for quite some time now. How long then? Since becoming a demon? Or before that? Since receiving the Mark of Cain? When did Dean give up on being Dean?
This could be simply a red herring statement, a continuation of Dean's attempts to get Sam to give up on saving him. But I do find it interesting how it fits with the other aspect of Dean's tactics.
Dean: Let me ask you this, Sammy. If this doesn't work, we both know know what you gotta do to me, right? You got the stomach for that Sam?
The old Winchester dilemma. Save or kill your brother. And Dean is opting for death. On the surface, it looks like a simple taunt at Sam for not having the resolve to kill the monster wearing his brother's face. But Dean keeps testing Sam on this front, again and again.
Sam: Cas, did you not hear what I just said? I could be killing my brother.
Castiel: Sam, he's not your brother. At least not now. You have to be prepared-
Sam: -for killing my brother.
For Sam and Dean, there isn't much distinction between man and monster. Brother.
Dean to Sam: Do it. It's all you.
Dean makes it crystal clear he'd prefer to survive as a demon, no ifs, ands or buts.
Dean: You act like I want to be cured. Personally, I like the disease.
But... yeah, there is a but. Call me nuts, but I rather had the impression that if Dean couldn't continue on as a demon, he'd rather just be killed.
And where does this crazy impression come from? Let's back up in time.
Dean: That's another question. Why would you fall? Why would you want to be one of us?
Anna: You don't mean that.
Dean: I don't? A bunch of -- of miserable bastards... Eating, crapping, confused, afraid.
Anna: I don't know. There's loyalty... forgiveness... love.
Dean: Pain.
Anna: Chocolate cake.
Dean: Guilt.
Anna: Sex.
Dean: Yeah, you got me there.
Dean: How I feel... This... inside me... I wish I couldn't feel anything, Sammy. I wish I couldn't feel a damn thing. (4.10)
Why would Dean not want to be cured? Not want to be human? Why would there even be a tiny part of "the real Dean" that could possibly want to stay opted out on his humanity? How could anything Demon Dean says be considered as even a mustard grain of truth to what Dean thinks or feels?
Sam: What the hell are we doing to him Cas? I mean even after I gave him all that blood he still said he didn't want to be cured and that he didn't want to be human.
Castiel: I see his point. Only humans can feel real joy, but also such profound pain. This is easier.
Castiel's introduction to Dean as a human affords him a unique insight into Dean's possible perspective.
Dean: Why would an angel rescue me from Hell?
Castiel: Good things do happen, Dean.
Dean: Not in my experience.
Castiel: What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved? (4.01)
He is aware of the inner pain Dean carries inside himself. How Dean doesn't expect good things in life to happen to him. How there is a part of Dean that believes he's been a monster of sorts for far longer than his soul being twisted into black smoke marks the line of delineation. Dean taunted Sam about being a worse monster, but the reflection of that accusation also holds.
It's not just the burdens and responsibilities of his human life Dean has been playing hookey from. We take it for granted, the pain Dean lives with. He usually buries it down far enough that we just assume he is okay. Most days, anyway. But the truth is, he hasn't been okay, not for a very very long time.
And for the first time in his entire life, we see something new.
Hannah to Castiel: I am very clear on my priorities. And yours.
Crowley: As much as it pains me to say this, you're useless to me dead. You owe me.
Castiel: Why did you help me?
Crowley: Purely business. Since you're five miles away from the Winchesters' clubhouse I can only surmise you're headed there, and that Dean has become a handful. Having him as a demon is causing me nothing but grief. Fix the problem.
Castiel: You're brothers. It would take a lot more than trying to kill Sam with a hammer to make him walk away.
Dean: You realize how screwed up our lives are that that even makes sense.
For the first time ever, we witness the combined efforts of a group coming together to save him. Castiel, making helping save Dean his highest priority, higher than his own well-being, higher than his own conscience in accepting another's angel grace in order to have the power to be an effective backup for Sam. Dressed up as keeping his hands clean, but the full context makes for some interesting subtext. Crowley, sentimental fool that he denies being, not stopping at having delivered Dean back into Sam's hands, but then going to the effort of aiding in powering up his natural enemy (angel) in order to help restore Dean from demon to man. And Sam. Oh man, Sam the man. Stepping up to the plate and keeping his promise. Refusing to give up on someone who needed someone to not give up on him. I am busting with pride in him right now.
Because at the end of the day, whether it was all demon, or a smidgen of Dean left somewhere in that shell housing the demon, the most important part of Dean was truly not there. And this was the part that Sam knows is his brother, the part that is worth fighting for, worth saving. Sam didn't let himself get derailed by the surface.
Demon: If you'll forgive my boldness, I could now be your wing man.
Crowley: Could you?
Demon: I too love to party, and I do love the ladies, and the classic rock and roll. Most importantly I can debauch by your side without being a personal embarrassment. You'll see what I'm worth!
In a humorous false mirror, the demon attempting to curry Crowley's favor stopped at the surface of what Dean appears to be. Party, sex, music.... But what about his heart?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a picture that struck me as noteworthy. When a discouraged Sam visited Dean's room, looking for some source of encouragement that there was something, anything of his brother that might still remain enough to salvage, the camera panned the open area and what did we glimpse? Porn out on the sette in easy sight. Pie on the bedstand table. Plain slight. Papers preumably about hunting research. All the surface of what you see, what Dean puts out in the open without regard. There's that surface again. And then Sam notices something peeking out from under a covering page of notes. Dean's pictures of his family. Concealed one layer down. Not securely hidden away, but given one barrier of protection.
Sam was right about something he said to Dean, and it's something he learned from Dean. This family is all we have ever had.
Dean's missing heart, tied all around his family. What he's spent his entire life fighting to hold together, to keep what pieces remain close to him.
A reminder that gets reinforced by our restored and rehumanized Dean after he gets cured. He's still "a bit messed up", still a bit "out of it", not really thrilled about being returned to the complications and pain that comprise his humanity. But there is also the reminder of the good that comes with the package. Yes, there is a lot of pain he's lived through, but it's not all bad. There is good there, and he keeps it just a few layers down in a defensive and protective gesture. Sure, we know, Team Free Will knows, heck most of monsterkind out there in the world knows just how much family means to Dean. But sometimes they can be fooled by the cover.
Sam didn't get fooled. He didn't let the demon derail him. It didn't matter if "it wasn't you, at least not all of you", he held onto the example his brother had set for him.
Sam: No matter what I did, you wouldn't shoot.
Dean: It was the right move, Sam. It wasn't you.
Sam: Yeah, this time. What about next time?
Dean: Sam, when Dad told me ... that I might have to kill you, it was only if I couldn't save you. Now, if it's the last thing I do I'm gonna save you. (2.14)
He saved his brother. No matter what Dean did or said. And what about next time?
Castiel: You realize one problem is solved, but one still remains. Dean is no longer a demon, that's true. But the Mark of Cain -- that he still has, and sooner or later that is gonna be an issue.
Sam: You know what, Cas. I'm beat, man. One battle at a time, you know?
Like Sam said, one battle at a time. It's not over, but Sam is not alone. And he's got Dean back at his side, humanity restored for the time being. Keeping each other human, it doesn't stop at one test, one fight won or lost. It never ends. And they're going to face the next hurdle together, as family. It's how the Winchesters roll.
I don't like to give up on people when they need someone not to give up on them.
-- Carroll Bryant
Dean: Sam, I know you think you're going to try and fix me, but did it ever occur to you that maybe I don't want to be fixed? Just let me go live my life. I won't bother you. What do you care?
Sam: What do I care?
Dean: You think I'm going to sit here like Crowley getting all weepy while you shoot me up? Well, screw that! I don't want this!
Dean has made a choice. He doesn't want to be a man. He would rather stay the monster. This is as disturbing to me as it for Sam to hear, because there has been that tiny part of me believing that hey, this is Dean Winchester. He doesn't give up. Not on humanity. Not on family. Not on saving people. Not on fighting the monsters, no matter how hard or impossible the odds stack up. So how could Dean, our Dean, be this beloved familiar face embracing a resolution in such total contrast to the man we know?
Is this the real Dean? Or is it just the demon inside? Are they the same thing, or separate?
Does it matter?
Sam: I never meant-
Dean: Who cares what you meant. That line that we thought was so clear between us and the things that we hunted, ain't so clear is it? Wow, you might actually be worse than me. I mean you took a guy at his lowest, used him and it cost him his life and his soul. Nice work.
Dean posits that the line between monster and man are not so different. Men alone are capable of great evil, you don't have to be a demon for that. So really, what is the supposed good of restoring his humanity? As a human Dean has been a killer for years. Now he has evolved into the next level of killer. So what?
Of course, Dean's very tactics in his subsequent barrage of verbal attacks on Sam show us just how different the man from the monster really is.
He starts with the aforementioned attack on Sam's state of conscience. Knowing how Sam has spent most of his own life feeling different, fearing he was destined to become a monster. Then he widens his scope and goes for the jugular in every possible way, targeting every insecurity and fear Sam has felt over the years.
Dean: You notice I tried to get as far away from you as possible? Away from your whining, your complaining. I chose the King of Hell over you. Maybe I was just... tired of babysitting you. Or always having to yank your lame ass out of the fire, since... forever. Or maybe... maybe it was the fact that my mother would still be alive if it wasn't for you. That your very existence sucked the life out of my life.
Sam: This isn't my brother talking.
Dean: You never had a brother. Just an excuse for not manning up. But guess what. I quit.
Sam: No. No you don't. You don't get to quit. We don't get to quit in this family. This family is all we have ever had!
Dean: Well then we got nothin'.
Kill Joy Sam. Better brothers or companions than Sam. Always having to Save Sam from everything, for all his life. Failure. Loss of family. Quitting on family. It was quite an insightful slice-n-dice, splicing direct experiences and confessions Sam has made to the sacrifices and losses Dean has suffered. Dumping all responsibility onto Sam's very existence. No one knows a good guilt-trip like someone who swims in guilt themselves.
As a side note, it fascinates me how Dean continues to hold Mary up on that pedestal of perfect victim. Sam, John, Men of Letters and Winchesters in general generated scorn, but Mary remains sacrosanct. No matter that she herself made a deal with Yellow Eyes that could have been twisted into the interpretation of selling out Sam, instead of the reverse Dean chooses to present his argument as.
So does this mean there is a tiny part of Dean that is still Dean despite the monster in the driver's seat?
Hmm. I'd say... it's complicated.
Dean: There's no point in trying to bring your brother back now.
Sam: Oh, I will bring him back.
Dean: In fact, your, uh, guilt-ridden, weight-of-the-world bro has been M.I.A. for quite some time now.
Huh. MIA for quite some time now. How long then? Since becoming a demon? Or before that? Since receiving the Mark of Cain? When did Dean give up on being Dean?
This could be simply a red herring statement, a continuation of Dean's attempts to get Sam to give up on saving him. But I do find it interesting how it fits with the other aspect of Dean's tactics.
Dean: Let me ask you this, Sammy. If this doesn't work, we both know know what you gotta do to me, right? You got the stomach for that Sam?
The old Winchester dilemma. Save or kill your brother. And Dean is opting for death. On the surface, it looks like a simple taunt at Sam for not having the resolve to kill the monster wearing his brother's face. But Dean keeps testing Sam on this front, again and again.
Sam: Cas, did you not hear what I just said? I could be killing my brother.
Castiel: Sam, he's not your brother. At least not now. You have to be prepared-
Sam: -for killing my brother.
For Sam and Dean, there isn't much distinction between man and monster. Brother.
Dean to Sam: Do it. It's all you.
Dean makes it crystal clear he'd prefer to survive as a demon, no ifs, ands or buts.
Dean: You act like I want to be cured. Personally, I like the disease.
But... yeah, there is a but. Call me nuts, but I rather had the impression that if Dean couldn't continue on as a demon, he'd rather just be killed.
And where does this crazy impression come from? Let's back up in time.
Dean: That's another question. Why would you fall? Why would you want to be one of us?
Anna: You don't mean that.
Dean: I don't? A bunch of -- of miserable bastards... Eating, crapping, confused, afraid.
Anna: I don't know. There's loyalty... forgiveness... love.
Dean: Pain.
Anna: Chocolate cake.
Dean: Guilt.
Anna: Sex.
Dean: Yeah, you got me there.
Dean: How I feel... This... inside me... I wish I couldn't feel anything, Sammy. I wish I couldn't feel a damn thing. (4.10)
Why would Dean not want to be cured? Not want to be human? Why would there even be a tiny part of "the real Dean" that could possibly want to stay opted out on his humanity? How could anything Demon Dean says be considered as even a mustard grain of truth to what Dean thinks or feels?
Sam: What the hell are we doing to him Cas? I mean even after I gave him all that blood he still said he didn't want to be cured and that he didn't want to be human.
Castiel: I see his point. Only humans can feel real joy, but also such profound pain. This is easier.
Castiel's introduction to Dean as a human affords him a unique insight into Dean's possible perspective.
Dean: Why would an angel rescue me from Hell?
Castiel: Good things do happen, Dean.
Dean: Not in my experience.
Castiel: What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved? (4.01)
He is aware of the inner pain Dean carries inside himself. How Dean doesn't expect good things in life to happen to him. How there is a part of Dean that believes he's been a monster of sorts for far longer than his soul being twisted into black smoke marks the line of delineation. Dean taunted Sam about being a worse monster, but the reflection of that accusation also holds.
It's not just the burdens and responsibilities of his human life Dean has been playing hookey from. We take it for granted, the pain Dean lives with. He usually buries it down far enough that we just assume he is okay. Most days, anyway. But the truth is, he hasn't been okay, not for a very very long time.
And for the first time in his entire life, we see something new.
Hannah to Castiel: I am very clear on my priorities. And yours.
Crowley: As much as it pains me to say this, you're useless to me dead. You owe me.
Castiel: Why did you help me?
Crowley: Purely business. Since you're five miles away from the Winchesters' clubhouse I can only surmise you're headed there, and that Dean has become a handful. Having him as a demon is causing me nothing but grief. Fix the problem.
Castiel: You're brothers. It would take a lot more than trying to kill Sam with a hammer to make him walk away.
Dean: You realize how screwed up our lives are that that even makes sense.
For the first time ever, we witness the combined efforts of a group coming together to save him. Castiel, making helping save Dean his highest priority, higher than his own well-being, higher than his own conscience in accepting another's angel grace in order to have the power to be an effective backup for Sam. Dressed up as keeping his hands clean, but the full context makes for some interesting subtext. Crowley, sentimental fool that he denies being, not stopping at having delivered Dean back into Sam's hands, but then going to the effort of aiding in powering up his natural enemy (angel) in order to help restore Dean from demon to man. And Sam. Oh man, Sam the man. Stepping up to the plate and keeping his promise. Refusing to give up on someone who needed someone to not give up on him. I am busting with pride in him right now.
Because at the end of the day, whether it was all demon, or a smidgen of Dean left somewhere in that shell housing the demon, the most important part of Dean was truly not there. And this was the part that Sam knows is his brother, the part that is worth fighting for, worth saving. Sam didn't let himself get derailed by the surface.
Demon: If you'll forgive my boldness, I could now be your wing man.
Crowley: Could you?
Demon: I too love to party, and I do love the ladies, and the classic rock and roll. Most importantly I can debauch by your side without being a personal embarrassment. You'll see what I'm worth!
In a humorous false mirror, the demon attempting to curry Crowley's favor stopped at the surface of what Dean appears to be. Party, sex, music.... But what about his heart?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a picture that struck me as noteworthy. When a discouraged Sam visited Dean's room, looking for some source of encouragement that there was something, anything of his brother that might still remain enough to salvage, the camera panned the open area and what did we glimpse? Porn out on the sette in easy sight. Pie on the bedstand table. Plain slight. Papers preumably about hunting research. All the surface of what you see, what Dean puts out in the open without regard. There's that surface again. And then Sam notices something peeking out from under a covering page of notes. Dean's pictures of his family. Concealed one layer down. Not securely hidden away, but given one barrier of protection.
Sam was right about something he said to Dean, and it's something he learned from Dean. This family is all we have ever had.
Dean's missing heart, tied all around his family. What he's spent his entire life fighting to hold together, to keep what pieces remain close to him.
A reminder that gets reinforced by our restored and rehumanized Dean after he gets cured. He's still "a bit messed up", still a bit "out of it", not really thrilled about being returned to the complications and pain that comprise his humanity. But there is also the reminder of the good that comes with the package. Yes, there is a lot of pain he's lived through, but it's not all bad. There is good there, and he keeps it just a few layers down in a defensive and protective gesture. Sure, we know, Team Free Will knows, heck most of monsterkind out there in the world knows just how much family means to Dean. But sometimes they can be fooled by the cover.
Sam didn't get fooled. He didn't let the demon derail him. It didn't matter if "it wasn't you, at least not all of you", he held onto the example his brother had set for him.
Sam: No matter what I did, you wouldn't shoot.
Dean: It was the right move, Sam. It wasn't you.
Sam: Yeah, this time. What about next time?
Dean: Sam, when Dad told me ... that I might have to kill you, it was only if I couldn't save you. Now, if it's the last thing I do I'm gonna save you. (2.14)
He saved his brother. No matter what Dean did or said. And what about next time?
Castiel: You realize one problem is solved, but one still remains. Dean is no longer a demon, that's true. But the Mark of Cain -- that he still has, and sooner or later that is gonna be an issue.
Sam: You know what, Cas. I'm beat, man. One battle at a time, you know?
Like Sam said, one battle at a time. It's not over, but Sam is not alone. And he's got Dean back at his side, humanity restored for the time being. Keeping each other human, it doesn't stop at one test, one fight won or lost. It never ends. And they're going to face the next hurdle together, as family. It's how the Winchesters roll.