SPN 9.16: you don't know what it's like to be human!
SPN 9.16
yay! took me some time to warm up to this episode, but i think at the end of the day (in general terms, in the final analysis, not to put too fine a point on it), there wasn’t much in it one way or the other it was pretty decent.
i’m still having a fairly tough time organising my thoughts here, so i’ll be a little more on the fly than usual.
1. we open the episode with both sam and dean actively pursuing the first blade. i’m not sure at what point sam decided to put his hunt for gadreel on hold to help dean with his latest mission, but it might have been when he learned of the implications of dean possessing the mark of cain. dean’s far too along this road for sam to ignore, and besides, killing abaddon was kind of the goal before the whole gadreel thing.
1.5. it’s a bit of a rhythm that they’ve settled into; sam being more or less content to leave things as they are, and dean doing his best to distract himself from the elephant in the room.
2. hah. crowley. addicted to human blood! they didn’t show him this dependent before, but maybe once he escaped and was free to feed his addiction, it escalated. but it’s really interesting, right? i mean, both the effects of the blood and the withdrawal manifested physically-as in they had concrete physiological effects. where exactly is the blood acting as an agent and why?
"purified" human blood was meant to change crowley back into a human soul, but the transformation was interrupted before the final dose. so crowley’s caught somewhere in between, the "human" part of him craving for that final shot. that probably manifested as physical symptoms in his vessel, idk.
It’s interesting how the show defines “human”-crowley feels guilt and empathy and gets weepy while watching casablanca and gives himself without fight to an “addiction” that he probably needn’t have encouraged in the first place-therefore his soul is changing, he is human. it’s a pretty narrow definition for a soul, and crowley seems more blissed out than anguished when he injects the blood. (and it’s not even the blood he actually needs.)
3. sam and crowley. right.
i did follow a little of the liveblogging (ok, i read through some liveblogs a few hours after the show had actually aired), and there was much hullabaloo over sam’s attitude towards crowley. and having actually watched the episode, i have to say: really? arre yaar, if people are actually going around saying sam was being “unfairly mean” in this episode to the demon that tricked him, manipulated him, tortured his friends, killed the people he’d saved, is a constant reminder of what he failed to complete, and set up his brother to get the bloody mark of cain… i don’t even know what to say. what sam felt this episode was not just reasonable, but an indicator that he isn’t so bloody ashamed of his anger that he’d sacrifice his very justified hurt and horror at the altar of his brother’s bloody grand mission.
what i found more interesting is how the show framed crowley’s addiction, and how samndean responded to it. how sam went along with dean’s “act more like i expect you to! now shut up and go cold turkey from this drug i have no idea about!” it’s not entirely surprising, given sam probably still thinks that dean was right to force that horrible panic-room detox on him in s4 (so much so that he volunteers for a repeat in s5). sam internalises awful shit about him, after all. plus, there are a couple of important differences:
a) crowley’s a demon, and is unlikely to keel over and die
b) sam fuckin hates crowley
(although crowley’s apparent crush on sam is several shades of creepy and, uh, adorable.)
4. albert “i’ve even got a spell to make the sun shine outta your ass!” magnus was funny.
how do you retcon a storyline that’s less than a year old, i have no idea.
5. mark of cain and dark!dean, woo!
it does seem to be having some effect on his mind, though i suspect it’s more loosening the barricades than causing any actual changes.
a little tangent, here: i saw a quote from padalecki somewhere (i gave up trying to avoid actor-related stuff after i joined tumblr. it’s everywhere.) about how the current mark of cain storyline mirrors sam’s demon blood arc in s4 and how sam “sees in dean what he saw in himself then” (to slightly paraphrase). i don’t actually see any obvious paralells? i really don’t (but then again, i am pretty dense). but look at the phrasing in the end-i don’t know if it was intentional, but it’s a very clever way to put it. what sam saw in himself-well, then, yes, that changes the picture. it still doesn’t make dean’s situation all that similar, but it helps to understand how sam’s seeing the whole thing.
6. a couple of criticisms before i sign off:
a) camerawork was awesome, although i think the editing was a bit wonky? scenes ended abruptly, and the episode meandered from one plot point to the next. was a reason why it took so long for me to warm up to the episode.
b) lola’s incarnation? not very fond of that choice. also, did anybody else find that “flirting” between dean and the museum lady extraordinarily creepy and off-putting? not to mention completely unnecessary?
7. haha. SPN is divided into “sam” and “not sam”. damn straight.