SPN--Season 4 Rewatch
Rewatch of Supernatural 2022
Season 4
General Observations-I remembered this season as the one where Sam and Dean’s relationship falls apart because they don’t communicate, and started this rewatch looking for the signs. Interestingly, it felt different than I remembered it.
( Season 4... )
Season 4
General Observations-I remembered this season as the one where Sam and Dean’s relationship falls apart because they don’t communicate, and started this rewatch looking for the signs. Interestingly, it felt different than I remembered it.
( Season 4... )
Well, we assume that by 'it' he means what happens to Mary and baby Sam, but by the end of this episode and the beginning of the next one it appears that what he really means is that Dean's supposed to stop Sam.
> Man to John: ‘Say hello to your old man’-that was retconned…
Indeed. It was retconned when Jeremy Carver was show runner, who wrote this episode, which itself does a major retcon of the original John and Mary backstory. Looking back, I start to see a pattern here. I'm never a fan of retcon at the best of times, and I'm not a great fan of this episode for that reason.
> Dean’s face when he realizes mom is a hunter
I have to say I never bought Amy Gumenick as Mary. Partly because I felt she was too young for the role. I felt the same about Matt Cohen as John at first but he had so clearly researched JDM's performance that he really managed to sell himself in the role and he won me over. But Amy lost me right here when she put up her little dukes and so clearly had never thrown a punch in her life. Gotta say though, it was really a failure of direction and/or the stunt co-ordinator not working with her to get a convincing fighting stance for that moment.
> In episode commentary Kripke said the idea was to show time is a closed loop and that Dean going back in time is what got YED to notice Mary
It could be argued that Castiel was the one who actually started the apocalypse since, if he hadn't sent Dean back in time, Azazel wouldn't have found Sam, and the apocalypse probably wouldn't have happened. So, was the angels' true intent here to send Dean back for the express purpose of making sure Sam was infected? o_O
> Dean punches Sam, first time he calls Sam a monster: ‘If I didn’t know you I would want to hunt you’
Important parallels back to Bloodlust here. In that episode Dean punched Sam but he apologized later and offered to let Sam punch him back. Here he punches him not once, but twice. There's no apology. In Bloodlust, Gordon Walker saw no shades of grey - only black and white: if something was supernatural it had to die. When Dean first punched Sam in that episode he echoed Walker's sentiments:
DEAN
What part of 'vampires' don't you understand, Sam? If it's supernatural, we kill it, end of story. That's our job.
SAM
No, Dean, that is not our job. Our job is hunting evil. And if these things aren't killing people, they're not evil!
In Bloodlust, Dean differentiates himself from Walker when he takes Sam's part and allows the vampires to go free, but here he implies Sam deserves to be hunted, even though he isn't killing people, purely because he's using supernatural powers. We're being shown that Dean's time in Hell has turned him into Gordon Walker.
It's also important that Dean thinks he's justified in his righteous anger because he's been told to stop Sam by an angel, so he assumes he has God on his side. So the angels are overtly setting the brothers against each other at this point (juxtaposed with Ruby claiming she didn't want to get between them in the previous episode).
The parallel between Jack and Sam is indeed poignant since it could be argued that treating Jack like he was a monster is exactly what turns him into one. And doubtless the self-fulfilling prophecy leaves a mark on Sam's psyche whispering to him that there's no hope for him.
I need to take a break now, so I hope you don't mind if I come back and respond to the rest of your post at another time. I want to thank you so much for recapping these seasons in detail, and I hope you don't mind me waffling on at such great length in response but I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk about these episodes as I find them fascinating, and I'll probably never get around to recapping them on my own page.
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...(In the Beginning) which itself does a major retcon of the original John and Mary backstory.
Not sure what you are referring to as the original John and Mary story--all we ever saw was Mary burning on the ceiling. I know I saw somewhere that Kripke intended Mary to be a hunter all along, and this episode makes Mary's 'I'm sorry' to Sam in Home make sense.
So, was the angels' true intent here to send Dean back for the express purpose of making sure Sam was infected?
Whoa.
We're being shown that Dean's time in Hell has turned him into Gordon Walker....It's also important that Dean thinks he's justified in his righteous anger because he's been told to stop Sam by an angel, so he assumes he has God on his side. So the angels are overtly setting the brothers against each other at this point (juxtaposed with Ruby claiming she didn't want to get between them in the previous episode).
You analysis goes way deeper than mine and gives me a lot to think about!
The parallel between Jack and Sam is indeed poignant since it could be argued that treating Jack like he was a monster is exactly what turns him into one. And doubtless the self-fulfilling prophecy leaves a mark on Sam's psyche whispering to him that there's no hope for him.
This is exactly what I thought.
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It wouldn't be the first time Kripke claimed that something that was clearly an afterthought had actually been planned from the beginning :P He has since admitted that many of the claims he's made from time to time about 3 or 5 season plans was largely BS and myth-making. The impression I get is that he had a very clear idea of the story he wanted to tell in moral terms, but in terms of actual plot I think he had a broad but flexible plan for the season he was working on, and a general idea of the trajectory he wanted to take in the following season, but I'm not convinced he ever thought further ahead than that because there was never any guarantee he'd get more than that. I certainly don't believe there was any plan in season 1 that Mary would turn out to be a hunter in season 4. I suspect they didn't even come up with the idea that Sam was infected with demon blood until season 2. I can't prove any of this but, for me, neither of these ideas fits comfortably within the context and themes of season 1. It's strongly implied, both in the pilot but especially in "Salvation", that Sam's powers are innate and that the children are being chosen for their psychic abilities, and that the demon has plans to pervert those powers to his own ends. The mothers are irrelevant except for ritualistic purposes; the infants are satanically baptized with their mothers' blood (which serves an important purpose metaphorically that's rather marred by the later substitution of the demon-blood plot).
It's in the nature of the writing process that some things are planned and foreshadowed, while others just seem like a good idea at the time and are justified later. Mary saying "I'm sorry" feels like the latter to me. I honestly don't think Kripke himself truly knew what that meant when he wrote it. It just seemed like a good idea at the time, tbd later. (There's another moment like that in "In My Time of Dying" but I'm still hoping to recap that episode myself so I'll put a pin in it for now :)
Again, as I say, I can't prove any of this. It's just the very strong feeling I get from the text.
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