Right about now (the funk soul brother)
I'm finding Season 8 fascinating. And although we've explored choices before, I think this time around we're going further into the territory of identity.
It began with Kevin identifying as a prophet. 'I've only been a prophet for a year.' But in that year he grew into his own man - resourceful, courageous, as smart as ever. He regressed once Mom came on the scene - though I adored her as a woman, as a mother she just about invented identity foreclosure - but nonetheless, the neurotic Kevin we first met has expanded into a man with internal resources he never knew. He's a prophet.
Garth has become the go-to guy. On reflection, I like Garth more and more. He used to have a false sense of confidence, based on ignorance. Now he has real confidence, based on competence and the work he is doing as a community focal point. Garth has grown as a human being into someone that even Dean is starting to respect - and I've love watching that happen, too. It's a reminder of how good Dean can be with people; he was quick to realise he was being unfair on Garth, visiting his grief on him, and by the end there was, I think, a genuine affection in that smile as Garth drove away.
Dean has identified himself as the hunter. He's saying he's a 'new man', and I've seen fans write that he's a completely new person. I think that's nonsense, to be honest; ruthless hunter Dean was always a part of Dean's personality. That's the Dean who got the job done, efficiently, coldly, right from the start of the series. What's happened is that that facet of him has been fore-grounded. It's quite dysfunctional, in a psychological sense: Dean the human needs balance; Dean the hunter does not.
One problem with Dean's self-declared identity (he's best in the front seat of his car, going to a hunt with Sam beside him) is that he's attaching his sense of identity to someone else. Sam 'completes him'? Worst two words in a relationship *ever*. There's a reason the word 'romantic' often goes with 'fool'. An authentic self doesn't need anyone to 'complete' them. They're good and strong within themselves, and if another person wants to journey alongside, that's beautiful. The minute there's any of this 'completion' nonsense, there's neurosis and stagnation. There's clinging, and smothering, and neediness, and destructiveness, and co-dependence. Whoops. Dean has got to find balance again - the humour, the enjoyment in life's small gifts, the pleasure of sitting on the boot of the Impala watching the sky - and somehow he has to find a way to an identity that is his own. Not his father's (he fears that he's only John's shadow, as we saw in Dream a Little Dream), and not as half of Sam'n'Dean.
So the characters we've seen so far this series all fit nicely into this notion of identity, and looking for their true selves, their true purpose. Which is where Sam stands out as being so diffuse he's barely there.
Sam is freefalling. I've said elsewhere that I don't think he was ready for Dean to be back. I think he'd begun the process of finding who he was as a separate entity. He'd suffered the grief and shock - he called it an implosion, a decade ago we'd call it a nervous breakdown - that goes with the cutting away of your co-dependent other. He lost Dean, his constant, his lodestar, and now he had a chance to find out who he actually was, without 'the constant anxiety and dazzling terror' that was life with a man he loved (who also happened to score high on the self-sacrificing/ high risk taking scales). In other words, he'd done a lot of the hard work of clawing his way back to sanity post blood-letting, and probably, somewhere inside him, felt a sense of relief. The worst had happened. The world had collapsed on him, the thing he'd been most afraid of all his life, and he didn't have to fear it any more. Here he was, a year later and, maybe, finding his feet.
Then Dean is back, and with it all the terror, all the anguish, all the pain. And the love, of course, and the comfort, but I think Sam's head is whirling. It's instructive that he's dredged up ancient dreams - college? Really? That ship has long since sailed, and he knows it. He's acknowledged it himself. There is no such thing as an ex-hunter. There might be sabbaticals, hiatuses, but how long could he have gone on reading about cases and not responding? What distance would be acceptable - he could let a shtriga kill children two states over, but in the next town? The next suburb? So Sam is falling back on old notions of who he might be, because I think right now he hasn't got a clue.
Which is why he's so jealous of Benny. And so afraid. It's interesting, isn't it; he's been pushing feebly against the idea that his place is at Dean's side, telling Dean he was going to go, making motions toward - but the minute he realises there's actually someone who *might*, possibly, take that place? He's a spiteful, spitting, jealous (needy, clinging, neurotic) mess. While a default setting of Dean's partner is on the table, he can afford to be careless with it - when it's possibly taken off the table, Sam's panicked.
Sam's behaving so badly because he's been deeply traumatised and is a human being in a world of hurt. It's deeply unfortunate, of course, that he's visiting all this on a human being who is *also* deeply traumatised.
Good show, Show.
It began with Kevin identifying as a prophet. 'I've only been a prophet for a year.' But in that year he grew into his own man - resourceful, courageous, as smart as ever. He regressed once Mom came on the scene - though I adored her as a woman, as a mother she just about invented identity foreclosure - but nonetheless, the neurotic Kevin we first met has expanded into a man with internal resources he never knew. He's a prophet.
Garth has become the go-to guy. On reflection, I like Garth more and more. He used to have a false sense of confidence, based on ignorance. Now he has real confidence, based on competence and the work he is doing as a community focal point. Garth has grown as a human being into someone that even Dean is starting to respect - and I've love watching that happen, too. It's a reminder of how good Dean can be with people; he was quick to realise he was being unfair on Garth, visiting his grief on him, and by the end there was, I think, a genuine affection in that smile as Garth drove away.
Dean has identified himself as the hunter. He's saying he's a 'new man', and I've seen fans write that he's a completely new person. I think that's nonsense, to be honest; ruthless hunter Dean was always a part of Dean's personality. That's the Dean who got the job done, efficiently, coldly, right from the start of the series. What's happened is that that facet of him has been fore-grounded. It's quite dysfunctional, in a psychological sense: Dean the human needs balance; Dean the hunter does not.
One problem with Dean's self-declared identity (he's best in the front seat of his car, going to a hunt with Sam beside him) is that he's attaching his sense of identity to someone else. Sam 'completes him'? Worst two words in a relationship *ever*. There's a reason the word 'romantic' often goes with 'fool'. An authentic self doesn't need anyone to 'complete' them. They're good and strong within themselves, and if another person wants to journey alongside, that's beautiful. The minute there's any of this 'completion' nonsense, there's neurosis and stagnation. There's clinging, and smothering, and neediness, and destructiveness, and co-dependence. Whoops. Dean has got to find balance again - the humour, the enjoyment in life's small gifts, the pleasure of sitting on the boot of the Impala watching the sky - and somehow he has to find a way to an identity that is his own. Not his father's (he fears that he's only John's shadow, as we saw in Dream a Little Dream), and not as half of Sam'n'Dean.
So the characters we've seen so far this series all fit nicely into this notion of identity, and looking for their true selves, their true purpose. Which is where Sam stands out as being so diffuse he's barely there.
Sam is freefalling. I've said elsewhere that I don't think he was ready for Dean to be back. I think he'd begun the process of finding who he was as a separate entity. He'd suffered the grief and shock - he called it an implosion, a decade ago we'd call it a nervous breakdown - that goes with the cutting away of your co-dependent other. He lost Dean, his constant, his lodestar, and now he had a chance to find out who he actually was, without 'the constant anxiety and dazzling terror' that was life with a man he loved (who also happened to score high on the self-sacrificing/ high risk taking scales). In other words, he'd done a lot of the hard work of clawing his way back to sanity post blood-letting, and probably, somewhere inside him, felt a sense of relief. The worst had happened. The world had collapsed on him, the thing he'd been most afraid of all his life, and he didn't have to fear it any more. Here he was, a year later and, maybe, finding his feet.
Then Dean is back, and with it all the terror, all the anguish, all the pain. And the love, of course, and the comfort, but I think Sam's head is whirling. It's instructive that he's dredged up ancient dreams - college? Really? That ship has long since sailed, and he knows it. He's acknowledged it himself. There is no such thing as an ex-hunter. There might be sabbaticals, hiatuses, but how long could he have gone on reading about cases and not responding? What distance would be acceptable - he could let a shtriga kill children two states over, but in the next town? The next suburb? So Sam is falling back on old notions of who he might be, because I think right now he hasn't got a clue.
Which is why he's so jealous of Benny. And so afraid. It's interesting, isn't it; he's been pushing feebly against the idea that his place is at Dean's side, telling Dean he was going to go, making motions toward - but the minute he realises there's actually someone who *might*, possibly, take that place? He's a spiteful, spitting, jealous (needy, clinging, neurotic) mess. While a default setting of Dean's partner is on the table, he can afford to be careless with it - when it's possibly taken off the table, Sam's panicked.
Sam's behaving so badly because he's been deeply traumatised and is a human being in a world of hurt. It's deeply unfortunate, of course, that he's visiting all this on a human being who is *also* deeply traumatised.
Good show, Show.