601: Exile on Main Street, Part1/2
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ONE YEAR AGO...
Click to viewNOW...
I want to take a moment at the onset to say--
Fandom,
To every single of you who has said this episode felt "off" and you weren't sure what to make of it? You are absolutely right! I personally spent the whole hour waiting for the episode to start. In the words of a friend, "NOTHING HAPPENED". Well, well...
Now... consider that they did that on purpose. Phil directed this and he knows what he's doing. Okay... let's do this thing.
Screencaps by cybel and the tumblr credits are in the photobukkit if you click and for gifs, well, your guess is as good as mine.
Past and present has been stewing in my brain for so long that I'm having some difficulty coming to words about it; so much has happened since and so much is coming.
It feels like a long time ago and it feels like last night.
I imagine that's how Dean feels, too.
How do you just get over something like ... the only person you trust with your life has to give in to the one thing that you both fear the most and let it take over, to save just one of you, after years and decades of fighting against it. It comes back to haunt you, every night. Forever. That choice. That wondering if you've done the right thing or if you should have fought harder, done more, asked one more person, before you surrendered and stuffed your father's memory in a box along with his voice in the back of your head asking you over and over again why you're giving up and hearing that because he asked me to isn't good enough. You don't get over that. Surviving. Not when it should have been you, too. It might as well have been all three of you.
I love the closeups because this is still a Show about Dean and Show didn't forget that it's about Dean and as much as I love Lisa and wouldn't mind seeing her in the frame at all, I think it also reinforces that he's alone in his head most of the time. I think that the feeling Phil was going for was for Dean to be surrounded by renovation and change and progress but Dean's in the middle, frozen and unable to really move on. /geek
*clears throat*
But the monsters keep coming. Whether you're raised in the life or not, they keep coming. It's like they just can't get enough Winchester blood.
I laughed and groaned when I heard his alarm clock because that's what I wake up to.
Every morning. EXACT SAME BEEP. I HATE IT. I HAVE TO GET UP. TO MAKE IT STOP.
Geeky observation time: this opener is a great montage between Dean's old life and Dean's new life. The old life is dark and faded like a pair of worn out jeans. Most of Dean's life in those days was tinted that color, especially the day he went back for Sam. Dean's life now is saturated like Sam's African Root dream and like Dean's djinn hallucination, stark and vivid and disorienting with pops of reality slipping through once in a while.
Apple pie is a dream. He promised Sam that he would live the dream. So he is.
There are two Deans. They look the same. The scenes don't really lead me to judge Dean about the two sides of him one way or another. Only someone who knows Dean would see what's under that shiny surface. It's amazing, isn't it, that Show can let everyone know that this is all about mirrors when they don't have a single character looking into one the entire time? /lots of geek
That metaphorically, Dean is asleep even when he's awake.
They are simply stating a fact about life: that time stopped moving when Sam died.
That it's all still happening right now, all over again, every time he grabs a crowbar, he's putting a ghost to rest, every time he cooks a meal for more than himself, he's twelve and making Sam's breakfast, every time he goes to work, he's wishing he still had his partner, every time he hands someone a beer, he thinks of Sam spinning the cap on his brewski while they work on keeping their house in order...
The mirror of the other life is still the reflection he sees in the mirror every morning... that is, if he were spending any time looking in the mirror lately, which he isn't.
ALL HE SEES IS SAM.
EVERYWHERE.
That life was real, and everything else, what he lives now, is the dream.
How pointless that would feel.
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Tears For Fears - Mad World .mp3
Found at bee mp3 search engine
How pointless, that is, if you don't have something to protect -- if you don't have a future. And a future needs normal in order to grow. To Dean, normal is stability, maintaining a status quo. He's never had the kind of normal to give that other people think of as normal. Dean's normal isn't keeping up with the Jonesy's. Dean's normal is giving someone security, something to hold onto when the sea gets rough, reminding them that hey, just because you might be a freak doesn't mean you're not normal. The best Dean could ever do for Sam was the illusion of stability. Sam always knew that and appreciated how hard Dean tried, but he always wanted to get out and find the real thing for both of them. He did get out, only to discover that it didn't really exist.
Dean didn't get a chance to learn that in quite the same way as Sam. Dean is still trying to provide stability for the future by keeping secrets buried and doing for Ben that he used to do for Sam.
Ben can have a future that Dean will never have, and a kid needs a dad. Someone to show him the ropes of being a man and being a good dad himself someday. Someone to show him that - hey you might bang a nail all day and make minimum wage - but being the kind of guy who runs into a burning house to help a neighbor is what makes someone a hero.
He's driving a FORD F-150? Really, Show? Now you're just messing with me.
Isn't it weird that the people we look up to and want to be like... have lived long enough to get there themselves and don't want it and wouldn't wish it on anyone?
Hmm. All that from a montage. I might need another metaphorical bong hit now. Ah, mirrors. Illusions are shattered so easily.
Murder books and the face in my nightmares
Blood and tears and the enemy's right here
Sickened, broken, blood shed, murder your children
Torture, treason, never falling out of war
Standing on a broken glass!
Sing my angel, life has slowly slipped away
Killing fields and I'm starting to miss you
Pornography's all I got for a bedroom
Sickened, broken, blood shed, murder your children
Torture, treason, never falling out of war
Standing on broken glass!
Sing my angel, life has slowly slipped away
Life's so fragile a revolution taking place
Bullet shells and famine and stab wounds
I wish I could do more than write you
Sickened, broken, blood shed, murder your children
Torture, treason, never falling out of war
Standing on broken glass!
Sing my angel, life has slowly slipped away
Life's so fragile a revolution taking place
WHATEVER. OMG, JENSEN IS SO HOT.
Dear Lid,
What about Dean? Isn't that who we're talking about here?
DEAN IS HOT. FOCUS, PEOPLE.
-Dean, who would like to remind everyone how smoking hot unavailable guys are
It's all so very Sandman, I keep waiting to see people with their eyes plucked out.
I don't know anyone in their neighborhood who leaves their blinds open that late at night. That's weird to me, Show. *squints*
And I really wanted there to be one time when Dean looked out that front window and saw Sam standing in the yard looking in at him, because you know, Sam did that a lot after he came back. It's the reason that he doesn't miss Dean the same way that Dean misses him. He sees Dean all the time. He's been watching over him without Dean knowing it. He knows Dean is safe. And he'll know the minute he isn't.
I really wanna know how this relationship got so far. I mean, to never say anything really solid about anything about where you came from or what you used to do and yet still win the trust and sincere friendship of the guy next door?
Ah. Work. Sharing the job. I betcha that Sid got Dean that job. Sid might even be his boss. Hey Dean, is Sid's wife's name Nancy? Let's say it is. Also, I am liking the shifty eyes. You're so good at this game, Sid doesn't know you're constantly casing the joint. Not that it, you know, helped in this case, but hey. Chicks, unavailable guys, who knew. He clearly has no idea who Dean really is, but he still trusts him and I really wish that I knew what it was that Dean did to gain that trust. It must have been something pretty unusual for a guy to do. Maybe he went out of his way somehow for Nancy, or whatever her name is, when she ran into some kind of problem -- maybe she went to Lisa's because she was afraid someone was in her house and Dean went over with a baseball bat and checked all the rooms -- and now they keep the blinds open between their houses just to keep an eye on each other.
Yeah, I like that. /in my head
Man, and this year I swore to myself these were going to be shorter.
That Sid doesn't know jack about Dean also means this: Lisa isn't talking anymore, either. He didn't pull into town as "The Dean" this time. Here's the deal with Lisa. She moved. She changed neighborhoods, changed her son's school, just so that Dean could come back. The first time, even eight years after her son was born, everyone in that neighborhood knew about Dean: knew his name, that he was a drifter, that he was this awesome "best night of my life" man who had this reputation that was obvious from the moment he drove down the street. Lisa's fantasy about Dean was just as strong as Dean's fantasy was about her. And that kinda thing? You can't do that. You can't live that way for long. It eats up the people around you and it can eat you. She changed everything about her way of life because she saw how self-destructive that was. And if I was Ben? I'd be all for it if it meant maybe having Dean back. It goes both ways for Dean and Lisa... that's the awesome part.
I thought nothing about a girl hitting on Dean and touching him on the arm like that, and I haven't heard of a single person who thought it was suspicious.
GOOD JOB, SHOW.
Hey, DJ SAM! We're back in hero mode and suddenly the high source lights shift to behind his head again, like they normally are... halo effect. /more geek
I loved Dean here, that he heard screaming and went in to help someone and maybe being a little rusty about it and looking not a little freaked out without having someone there to back him up. Oh, Dean. No partner for you. At least, not so much literally like this, with the hunting.
What I didn't expect upon re-watching it was how much more sharply Dean's fears come into focus.
Which drives home one of the other platitudes that Show loves to address: that knowing may suck more than not knowing, but it also empowers you to make it suck less.
Now that I know that Dean was beginning to be affected by a djinn right then, that he heard screaming and went in to help someone and maybe being a little rusty about it and being not a little freaked about going it alone... then I realized that he's gone it alone plenty of times... so that means that the first thing that scares the crap out of him, his biggest fear, is having nobody he can rely on, no one he can trust.
He's just an exile, walking on Main street.
Oh, DEAN.
And he's walking between plastic sheets that blur all the exit signs and all of a sudden I have Sarte and Plato playing a game of chess in my head for Dean's soul and it looks like this:
Sam: Do you remember when we used to just hunt Wendigos?
Dean: No, not really.
-Two Minutes To Midnight
I guess he remembers it now. It was the first time they didn't have anyone they could rely on or call for help. He and Sam had to figure it out for themselves and they had to protect three people at the same time. Now it's happening all over again.
He tries to find out about something that isn't anything to worry about and to do it he has to stay up too late and drink too much. It's the first non-recreational drink I think I've seen him with and it makes me wonder: is it the fear making him drink, or the hunting? Hm.
All I do know is, he looks the most uncomfortable at the point he realizes that he's lying to Lisa about it and that his trustworthiness, or lack thereof, is the only barometer he's got left. That he's gonna call himself a loser for doing it, because lying is what his dad used to do to him (although we always heard about his drinking but never actually saw it...hmmm again). And Lisa, bless her heart, cuts him some slack because she knows that he's gonna beat himself up about the lie enough for both of them. And that's when I really wanted this to work out and started to hope that he can stay somehow.
I imagine Sam wanted it, too, since he's lying just as much if not more than Dean, here, by not making his presence known.
So the next morning, maybe there actually was a scratch on the pole. He just saw four. And maybe there actually was a smear of mud on the garden shed and a quiet growl coming from inside. Sometimes our fears amplify things into something that it's not, simply because we're of a mind to believe it in the first place for whatever reason.
*cue doe-eyed puppy from Yellow Fever*
Wait, wrong one.
Ahem.
And then he puts his finger in the slug bait and calls it sulphur and I'm all LAWL, DEAN, PEST CONTROL FAIL. *hugs him*
This time, Lisa calls him on his strange behavior and he culps to one inauspicious moment where he may or may not have just aimed a .45 special at a Yorkie. He tries to tell her that he's just feeling haunted and she listens without question, probably because she's heard this a couple dozen hundred times.
Go, Lisa! And she could take that and run with it, turning the tables on Dean and trying to take care of him. I know more people, me included, would have said, "Are you on the drugs? Because if not, I know this guy..."
But she doesn't. Because she knows that's not what Dean needs. He needs to do something to feel like someone is benefitting from having him around, that he's keeping someone alive and safe. So she does what he asks, to help him. Not to mention, Dean's spidey sense has probably come in handy more than a few times since he's been around, so it's best to play it safe, right?
*wibble*
Lisa, can you stay? I think Dean might need you to help with some... um...
Yeahhh.
[Part Two]