SPN 10.03: one battle at a time.
SPN 10.03
Well… that happened. (and it was awesome.)
(SPOILERS follow)
1. let me ask you: which one of us is really the monster?
Apart from that peculiar moment toward the end when the black was leeched away from Dean’s eyes after the final injection of purified blood, there was never a point where one could clearly delineate between demon!Dean and human!Dean. Even the final conversation between Dean and Castiel had me feel uneasy enough that I fully expected Dean’s eyes to flash pitch-black once Castiel left. It’s hardly surprising that the only thing his returning ‘humanity’ did to Dean was enable him to escape the trap and try to kill his brother freely. In an episode-and a season, really-which is constantly trying to redefine what we mean by ‘human’ and ‘monster’, the contrast between Dean clinging to the last vestiges of his demonic strength to smash his brother’s head in, and Crowley’s minions making principled stands against an autocratic ruler, is telling.
We all know that Dean is a master manipulator, but he never fails to impress when he really gets to work. His accusations of Sam being ‘worse than [him]’ are essentially meaningless from any logical standpoint, but he knows to appeal to Sam’s inherent sense of guilt and worthlessness well enough to throw him off track. His use of the word ‘monster’ is just as deliberate as his use of the same word in 4.21, or 4.04, or any of the times he’s even insinuated that Sam might be something Other; he knows the associations Sam’s brain will make, and he presses the button hard.
(To the people who’re taking Dean’s accusations at face-value and talking about Sam being ‘worse than he ever was’-yeah, I’ve seen the posts-please don’t let Dean play you, too.)
What’s more frightening is, even after he’s cured, he doesn’t really make a token effort at an apology or a conversation with Sam-not that I was expecting him to-but he asks a sympathetic and brainwashed Castiel, does he want a divorce? That line completely threw me. It’s about as flippant and horrible as his Teen Mom joke in 9.11, except worse, because it’s clear that he remembers the kind of vicious abuse, both physical and verbal, that he threw at Sam from under the umbrella of demon-ness, and his first question is not is Sam ok? but what, the bitch wants to leave now? DID SOMEBODY SAY SHOW DOESN’T KNOW WHAT IT’S DOING?
And another thing: Dean knows exactly what would make Sam walk away. God knows Sam’s tried to do that, so many many times, only Dean’s always gone after him and dragged him right back. He knows that he can just say, I know I tried to kill you, but baby, that wasn’t really me-I was a demon, I was desperate, I was drunk, I wouldn’t be able to go on without you-fuck, fuck, I’m going to stop here before I completely creep myself out.
2. … and then i’m going to get drunk.
SAM, DARLING. If nothing else, I hope this experience will help him realise that the kind of vicious abuse that Dean hurled at him is pretty much an amplified version of what Dean’s been saying to him for years.
The scene did inspire some comparisons to 4.21, but let’s look at how Sam handled ‘saving his brother’. He had it planned out meticulously: he hired/blackmailed/threatened a priest to bless already screened blood from a hospital so that he didn’t mistakenly complete the trials when he used his own blood; he used a set of sterile syringes, and while he didn’t exactly employ universal precautions, at least he wasn’t pricking the same dirty syringe in and out like he did with himself in 8.23; he had thought enough to ensure that he got Dean’s blood type; and when he saw that it was hurting Dean to the point that it might actually kill him, he stopped, hesitated, reconsidered. At no point was he very far away from where Dean was sitting (except, probably, to marshal his resolve by looking at Dean’s pictures after his brother viciously beat him down), and he doesn’t fight back. Contrast this to the forced detox in 4.21. No contest. Sam Winchester is bloody magnificent (although he doesn’t need to be, and I just want him to get away from Dean ASAP).
I don’t know if he lowered the knife because he saw Castiel, or if he was really ready to let Dean kill him. I don’t really think Sam knows the answer, either.
About Lester. Ahahaha. When I wrote this (in the middle of the night, half-asleep), I wanted to write a Sam so scoured and depleted by his brother’s expectations that he starts to bend his own reality and principles around that perceived Winchester Ideal: you can go dark, just as long as it serves searching for/resurrecting family; you can live, just as long as you don’t actually live. Sam in the show fares a little better than the Sam in my story: he tempts Lester with the idea of a Faustian deal, and it seems as though he did mention consequences (Lester says, ‘my soul is yours’ to the demon, and it’s pretty obvious that that can only be a bad thing.), and while he actively enabled Lester to do the deal (to correcting his Latin from the bushes, LOL), he was genuinely upset that he couldn’t stop him from going ahead with it. I mean, on a scale of Winchester Transgressions Against Humanity, that doesn’t rank all that high, and certainly doesn’t put him ahead of either demon!Dean or human!Dean.
(I find this talk about how Lester was a sleazeball anyway, so Sam tricking him into a deal is not such a bad thing, to be really uncomfortable? Sam didn’t exactly now how odious Lester the MRA really was-he isn’t the master at reading people like his brother is-but even if he did, it doesn’t change the fact that he did manipulate a man when he was vulnerable.)
And at the end! Sam just wants to buy his brother a burger and get shitfaced drunk. Probably alone. Oh, sweetie. Please run away as fast and as far away as you can.
3. ‘enough’ is what we have.
Castiel is so tragic. It’s so obvious that, more than anybody, he’s modelled his idea of humanity after Dean Winchester. that’s what humans do, he says, as he refuses to admit that he’s in poor health and puts both himself and Hannah in repeated, avoidable danger. you’re brothers, and that excuses anything, he says, after having cannibalised yet another one of his own siblings. He excuses Dean yet again because Dean’s logic is what he knows, and I can’t even really be angry at Castiel for it, just unbearably sad. There is so much that Castiel has to unlearn, and for that he needs to stay away from the Winchesters.
4. … well. i didn’t see that coming.
Oh, Crowley. I think he was really invested in Dean partnering him because he sees Dean stuck in that strange space between demon and human-much like himself-and he feels that if he can get Dean committed to his cause, he can generally feel better and more secure about himself. As Crowley gets more and more human, his idea of ruling Hell also becomes more human-he conducts court, dresses his advisors and bodyguards in recognisable human clothes.
(He and Dean apparently have poured their hearts to each other-Dean appears to have an intimate knowledge of how Crowley broke down during the third Trial, something Crowley is ashamed about, and it’s a mark of how much he’d invested in Dean that he’d tell the man these things.)
There is a general sense of discontent in the fandom that SPN has essentially neutered its demons, made them banal instead of truly dark/dangerous. I think the point of the last several seasons is that evil can be pretty banal, and doesn’t necessarily come with black eyes and easy labels. Particularly in the present political climate, the very people professing themselves to be heroes and saviours can be worse than the ones who are traditionally associated with evil-for instance, in this episode, both the crossroad demon that Sam strings up and the minion who burns himself in front of Crowley, prove themselves to be far more principled and moral than the four main characters. Even Meg, whom everybody likes to hold up as representative of whatever the hell they want Show to be, had strong familial ties, and a devotion and loyalty to Lucifer that drove her actions. The more human Crowley gets, the more unpredictable and needlessly cruel that he gets.
It’s kind of awesome.