3x11: No Words Just Flaily Hand Gestures
You guys you guys you GUYS! OMFG! OMG. O. M. G.
----------- *beeeep*
That's my freaking heart flat lining. Jesus. This episode killed me. There are so many golden moments and lines soon-to-be indoctrinated into fandom's conglomerate of catch phrases, I don't know where to begin.
When Dean died on Wednesday and Sam closed his eyes and opened them again and said, "I'm supposed to wake up" in that tiny, broken voice I pretty much screamed "NOOOO!" at the TV. Then when Sam's I'm-gonna-be-dark-n-dangerous montage was playing I shrieked, "WHAT?!" Then I had a moment of blind panic, thinking that somehow Kripke had decided to condense the rest of S3 into two pre-strike episodes or something equally as nonsensical because how could they know they were going to lose all those episodes before the strike (I was overwhelmed by the drama/angst/death, OK?). Then I realized three months had passed during Sam's montage and totally started laughing my head off because...
Click to viewTeam America World Police is awesome XD!
OK, sorry. This is "serious" SPN business. *makes a face*
Sam without Dean was chilling. The way he walked. The way he stood. The way he freaking ate his food (Oo, Sam actually ATE something).
We all know that Sam and John were similar--which is why they butted heads so much--both were stubborn, revenge-driven (at least Sam in S1 who was there to find Dad but also to get "the thing that killed Jess"), but this episode highlighted just how easy it would be for Sam to walk down that same road as John without Dean as his mediating force. You see, it's so perfect: Sam balances Dean and Dean balances Sam; without one of them the Winchester teetertotter comes crashing down. I love that The Show showed the Sam and John parallels visually instead of using dialogue or *gasp* an interior monologue (one of my personal pet peeves).
For example: the Impala's new trunk was reminicent of John's Truckzilla's hidden cache, very organized and military and sterile with everything having a proper place. But what I found disturbing was not only that Sam had become John (as Dean said in "DaLDoM", an obsessed bastard), he superceded John exponentially. Not only was the Impala's trunk spotless, all the weapons were almost arranged symmetrically, but, you guys, at the center of the weapons box on the lid (with all the guns pointing toward it) was a silver crucifix. And right then I started getting the Kubric vibe. OK, so I think we get the Christ imagery, Kripke.
John's weapon stash in "Dead Man's Blood" (1x20). All caps from marishna.
Then the motel room. Sam's cleaning only his Taurus with the gun cleaning kit lying out perfectly in front of him on a perfectly made bed like he's performing surgery. This is a far cry from the usual weapon cleaning ritual:
Dean in his messy glory in "Nightmare" (1x14).
The whole time Sam NEVER blinks. Seriously watch! The case documents are line up on the wall spaced out equidistant from each other in a grid with tiny tiny tiny labels centered over or lined up along the edges of the adjacent pieces of paper. Sam wakes up and the covers aren't even rumpled, like he's just slept on his back in one position all night like a dead person (because, you know, without Dean, Sam might as well be dead, or ... heh ... maybe he's just "dead inside" *snorts*). But THEN. OMG. Sam not only makes his bed, he stops to straighten out the wrinkles (when normal!Sam left his bed rumpled and unmade at the end of the episode I might've cheered loudly). And that's when I knew things were NOT GOOD for Sammy, that the college boy, bleeding heart was lost. *goes emo because Sam can't* So, yeah, I've been gleeing over dark!Sam since last season, but now that he showed up on screen my knee jerk reaction is to want S1 Sam and his emo-hoodies back.
Sam without Dean becomes a shell. He moves mechcanically, thinks methodically, goes through the motions of living. Sam essentially a monster with tunnel vision focused only on "getting Dean back". He's a thing that looks like Sam but beyond that, isn't Sam. Isn't a person in the sense that he has shut off the empathetic side of himself that's capable of seeing the grey between the black and white and cares about staying on one "good" side of the "good"/"evil" line. Non-humanized demons clearly understand that they're doing "evil", but they don't give a damn. They'll kill anyone or anything to get what they want. Just like Sam. And I love that everything in that motel room reflects that: the hard lines, the squareness of the bed, the dresser, the mirror, the wall hangings, the TV, the case documents on the wall. It's all sparce, rigid lines and things stripped to the bare essentials, unyielding ... just like Sam without Dean.
Even though Sam was the one who sought out "normal" by leaving for Stanford, I think Dean's much more grounded in "the normal", the dirtiness of life, the tangible. Dean has always taken more pleasure in the physicalities of life (drinking, eating, sex, music, pie and having things ... his ring, his amulet, John's leather jacket, the Impala), whereas Sam tends to be more of an idea person. Someone who lives in his head, who doesn't necessarily need things, but needs more emotional and mental (nontangible) things like stability and security (I think there's a more in depth meta about this. Does anyone know who wrote it?). So, to me, it fits that without Dean--the anchor to the "normal" physical rest of the world--Sam drifts off into his head. Looses his grip by degrees and disturbingly doesn't really seem to care. The fact that Sam eats alone in his room instead of at a diner or even at some crappy fast food joint echoes the loss of "the normal" that Dean provided and screams self-imposed estrangement/isolation.
Then the trickster had to say these lines: "Dean's your weakness. The bad guys know it, too. It's gonna be the death of you, Sam. Sometime you just gotta let people go ... and like it or not this is what life's gonna be like without him."
*wibbles*
Then the trickster had to throw in the Travis Bickle reference. Ack!
Bickle is the protagonist in Scorsese's "Taxi Driver", a schizophrenic Vietnam vet who drives a taxi in New York City. He's isolated and lonely. And after being rejected by a woman (Betsy) he gets violent and angry. Distressed by the filth and moral decay of the city (i.e. life), he buys guns for his self-proclaimed personal war. He tries to save a child prostitute who doesn't want to be saved. Then it all goes to pot after that. There's obsession, death and blood, and Travis ends up killing a bunch of people, but not the guy who he originally set out to kill. The end of the movie has multiple interpretations having to do with morality and sin and forgiveness and stuff that's deep and meaningful in ways that are probably over my head.
Here's an exerpt that I found to be especially interesting in light of the God, fallen angel, avenging angel angle (lol ... angel angle) SPN has taken this season (if you want to read more about Travis Bickles and some fandangly cinematography-related analysis of "Taxi Driver" go here):
"...in Taxi Driver the two nouns of the title are actually synonymous : the cabbie and the cab fuse together. The taxi car becomes the embodiment of Travis' schizophrenia. It protects and isolates him from the outside world which he loathes and rejects. Travis compares New York to an open sewer. He wishes that a flood would wash away the filth. He compares Betsy to an angel. He sees himself as God's lonely man. All the flowers he sends to Betsy for forgiveness are returned untouched and embalm his apartment like a funeral home. All these religious allusions reinforce his torment. In his deceptive nocturnal outings, he seeks without ever reaching a form of obsessive redemption, maybe to exorcise his war experiences in Vietnam."
Any way you slice it, it doesn't look good for Samsquatch. :(
And finally before I fall asleep at my computer. ZOMG. Yellow. Everywhere. Yellow motel room, bedspread, yellow diner, yellow uniforms. Yellow flowers. I think Sam might've been wearing a light green and yellow stripped shirt in his scene with Bobby (anyone? anyone?). A while back I was spazzing out about yellow (not associated with red) and how it seemed to be associated with Sam and his psychic abilities. Now I'm wondering if yellow might be indicative of something more malicious. Psychic abilities, yes, but what are the implications of those abilities? Recall that every single PsyKid from the 1983 generation turned into a murderer, including Sam (OK, Scott didn't kill a person but he fried the neighbor's cat). Recall yellow is half of the color combination (red/yellow) that seems to be associated with all things demonic. Could yellow be a precursor color, a visual foreshadowing of darker things? *ponders*
Now randomness:
Was it just me or was there a preoccupation with spitting and dential hygiene this epidsode? :)
This episode was filmed in Steveston. Sam and Dean walk out of the diner and turn left down the same street that spirit!Jess stood on at the end of "Bloody Mary" (1x05). The blue and white "George's Taverna" awning is visible in both scenes.
Jess in "Bloody Mary" (1x05).
hugemind,
sadelyrate ... the FLAMINGOS! *dies laughing* Crack!meta meets canon FTW.
Oh, and it looks like we have the return of the yellow/red/blue monkey statuettes a la Roadhouse! *glee*
Ellen's favorite monkey that was practically in every Roadhouse shot. This one is from "AHBL-1" (2x21).
I seem to remember that J/J/Kripke refered to the trickster AND the shapeshifter as types of demons. Can anyone confirm that I'm not totally insane and making this up?
This episode was awesome. But how could an episode suck when it involves hugging, man tears, Dean doing the head bob from "Night at the Roxbury", badass/unhinged!Sam, and BOBBY! *manic smiley faces* I can't wait for next Thursday! Our show rules so very much.
