General Sam meta and thoughts on S4
So I think I need to rewatch S4. As in, all of it. From Lazarus to Lucifer and yes, that unfortunately includes Yellow Fever and ASS and CAIADB. There are just so many interesting themes and nuances that keep getting brought up and even each of the MOTW throwaway episodes does something to refer to the overall mytharc in some way or another, that it sort of necessitates a second run through.
I mean, just look at 4x04 for one example. It's practically Sam's entire seasonal arc right in a nutshell: Dean tries to kill Ruby, Sam saves her life, there's a confrontation about what Sam's been up to and what he's been lying about, punches are thrown and Dean almost leaves, the concept of Sam becoming a monster is brought up for the first time in the season, and so on. There's literally nothing that goes to waste in that episode; each thematic element brought up is a reference to a major overall part of the arc for S4 as a whole, especially in regards to Sam's story.
And then there's the character of Jack. Jack, the regular Joe with his wife and his nine to five job who happens to have something dark in his blood, something that causes him to turn into a creature not quite human. Jack tries to resist it, but Random Old Hunter Dude Who Isn't Bobby triggers him into actually becoming a monster, whereupon he eats ROHDWIB and goes practically orgasmic over the taste of Dean's blood. Jack, like Sam, is able to resist any temptation to become something other than human until an outside agent tips him over the edge. In both cases, it was their own choice to fall, but it can certainly be argued that they would have stood a far better chance of not doing so had ROHDWIB and Ruby/Zachariah not given their respective nudges.
Jack was a human who just wants to keep his normal life but is instead forced to become a blood drinking creature of darkness and rage and violence. It's the thought of his wife's murder that was the final straw for Jack, provoking his transformation and even learning that she's actually alive isn't enough to stop him from sliding further down that path. There's no longer any call for revenge, but Jack can't help himself and winds up doing some truly horrific things. Huh. Sound familiar, perhaps?
And that's just 4x04.
It's interesting to me, how very much of Sam's story we see in retrospect and how very little of it is directly displayed by Sam himself. I'm sure this was deliberately done and I rather like it, the more I think about it. I mean, ALL of the MOTW episodes have some sort of lesson wrapped up in them, and in almost all of those episodes, the "lesson" is related to Sam, not Dean.
MoTW episodes were 4x04, 4x05, 4x06, 4x08, 4x11, 4x12, 4x14 and 4x19. Of these, the Sam lesson episodes are 4x04 (Jack), 4x06 (we learn a lot about Dean's fears here, but Sam's behavior is of far greater interest to me especially in what he's become not only willing to do, but also with what no longer sees an issue with), 4x08 (be careful what you wish for and there are no easy solutions), 4x12 (death or brotherhood, but you can't have both), 4x13 (practically the Sam ep of the season and a grim lesson in how the road to Hell is paved with good intentions), 4x14 (oh, issues abound here), and 4x19 (family is all you can count on, but don't hesitate to use your kid brother as bait if necessary). I mean, the only Dean!centric MOTW episodes really are 4x05 and 4x11. You might could argue for 4x02 and 4x17 as well, but I'd file those under mytharc episodes because they involve the angels and the Seals. And true, we learn a lot about Dean during some of those other MOTW eps, to be certain.
I mean, we see Dean regain his memories of Hell in Yellow Fever and certainly a few of his issues are brought up in Sex & Violence and Jump the Shark, but I'd argue the "lessons", such as they were, applied far more strongly to Sam than it does Dean in both those cases. The overall theme of 4x14 is how you can love someone but no longer know them and be miserable in their company (as related to Sam by Dr. Hot Lady) and in 4x19 it's a tie between revenge leading you to do terrible things (again - common theme this season) and highlighting the (not very positively spun) concept of Sam as John 2.0, with the idea that you can't have a normal life and be a hunter and that family comes above all - except again for when you need to use your unexperienced kid brother as bait.
Dean's story is very much told up front, typically during the mytharc eps and in contrast Sam's story is hidden and cloaked. We see it in glimpses of other characters and in flashbacks, but rarely from Sam's own perspective. It's an interesting choice to make in terms of storytelling, but IMHO it's a very sophisticated one. Certainly there was nothing so subtly done in S1-S3.
I think this ties in perfectly with the repeated concept of Sam lying to himself. Over and over again we hear characters call Sam out on this, but Sam persists on hiding both what he's doing as well as his true motivations, both from others and from himself. Sam's theme this season has been one of deception and the dangers therein, for Sam alone and for those around him. I sort of love that his true motivations are so hidden away that we don't even get to see them from Sam himself, but that they have to come from third parties.
Not all of Sam's story is like that, of course. Some of it is very much out in the open and one of those themes that most interests me is Sam's general growing sense of apathy with humanity as a whole. We move from the Sam who was so desperate to save Jackin 4x04 to the 4x15!Sam, who lied with a straight face to the dead boy Cole in order to manipulate him into helping them and who honestly believed that the rules for the rest of mankind no longer apply to him (or Dean). The sheer contrast there is just startling. At the very start of the season, we have a Sam who talks about how saving people feels good and in the very end, he's willing to kill a woman who is begging and pleading for her life. That's a drastic change and it happens over the course of a mere eight months.
I think Jack and his failure to overcome his "true" nature was a huge turning point in Sam's mind. It had to be a slap in the face, given how stubbornly Sam pinned his hopes on the man and how dangerous he became when he fell. Go figure, that episode also has one of the very few moments of protective!Sam we get this season: Jack threatened Dean's life, and from that second on, Sam was willing to kill him. We get a very opoen moment of concern on Sam's part when he's locked in the closet; he looks panicked over the thought of what Jack could have done (this interestingly also on top of panic Sam displays at the concept of Dean leaving him earlier in the episode). Dean was knocked out and bleeding, sure, but he was not in immediate mortal danger when Sam set Jack ablaze. I wonder if that moment also had something to do with Sam's increased distance from Dean as the season progressed.
Or then again, maybe not. Or perhaps it's not that simple. It wasn't really until after ITGPSW that Sam became a bit more spiteful about Dean, a bit more willing to perceive his brother as "weak" and somehow reduced from his pre-Hell self. This was also the episode when Uriel broke the news about how Dean actually does remember Hell and that Dean had been lying about it. It had to hurt, the thought that Dean either didn't trust Sam enough to open up about it or couldn't talk about it, for whatever reason. I'll bet you though that he looked back on the bit where Sam had to save Dean in 4x04 and again in Monster Movie and Yellow Fever in a different mindset then he had when the events actually took place. And maybe that has a bit to do with Sam's dispassionate response in Yellow Fever as well - three times in as many episodes he had to save Dean's ass. It had to be feeling a bit overdone by that point.
Which, okay, still doesn't explain why Bobby was such an ass in YF, but still. Something to think about.
All of which is a lot of Sam thoughts from someone who is very much a Dean!girl, but what can you do? Dean's absolutely my favorite Winchester, partially because his logic typically makes such sense to me. I can follow each step he takes because it's often what I'd do myself. OTOH, trying to suss out what Sam was thinking and when is a a much more difficult exercise. Thankfully, I enjoy puzzles.
Well, there's that and also reading the beautiful Sam-centric story Wind Shear by the ever talented samidha, which is just a gloriously dark and gritty look into Sam's mind during the summer that Dean was dead. It very much makes me have thinky thoughts. Highly recommended, if you've not read it already.
So yeah, I think I am going to have to rewatch all of these episodes, if for no other reason than so that I can get properly into Sam's head space so I can write the follow up to Wisdom to the Mighty, Succour to the Brave. Even if it means rewatching Yellow Fever.
God give me strength.
I mean, just look at 4x04 for one example. It's practically Sam's entire seasonal arc right in a nutshell: Dean tries to kill Ruby, Sam saves her life, there's a confrontation about what Sam's been up to and what he's been lying about, punches are thrown and Dean almost leaves, the concept of Sam becoming a monster is brought up for the first time in the season, and so on. There's literally nothing that goes to waste in that episode; each thematic element brought up is a reference to a major overall part of the arc for S4 as a whole, especially in regards to Sam's story.
And then there's the character of Jack. Jack, the regular Joe with his wife and his nine to five job who happens to have something dark in his blood, something that causes him to turn into a creature not quite human. Jack tries to resist it, but Random Old Hunter Dude Who Isn't Bobby triggers him into actually becoming a monster, whereupon he eats ROHDWIB and goes practically orgasmic over the taste of Dean's blood. Jack, like Sam, is able to resist any temptation to become something other than human until an outside agent tips him over the edge. In both cases, it was their own choice to fall, but it can certainly be argued that they would have stood a far better chance of not doing so had ROHDWIB and Ruby/Zachariah not given their respective nudges.
Jack was a human who just wants to keep his normal life but is instead forced to become a blood drinking creature of darkness and rage and violence. It's the thought of his wife's murder that was the final straw for Jack, provoking his transformation and even learning that she's actually alive isn't enough to stop him from sliding further down that path. There's no longer any call for revenge, but Jack can't help himself and winds up doing some truly horrific things. Huh. Sound familiar, perhaps?
And that's just 4x04.
It's interesting to me, how very much of Sam's story we see in retrospect and how very little of it is directly displayed by Sam himself. I'm sure this was deliberately done and I rather like it, the more I think about it. I mean, ALL of the MOTW episodes have some sort of lesson wrapped up in them, and in almost all of those episodes, the "lesson" is related to Sam, not Dean.
MoTW episodes were 4x04, 4x05, 4x06, 4x08, 4x11, 4x12, 4x14 and 4x19. Of these, the Sam lesson episodes are 4x04 (Jack), 4x06 (we learn a lot about Dean's fears here, but Sam's behavior is of far greater interest to me especially in what he's become not only willing to do, but also with what no longer sees an issue with), 4x08 (be careful what you wish for and there are no easy solutions), 4x12 (death or brotherhood, but you can't have both), 4x13 (practically the Sam ep of the season and a grim lesson in how the road to Hell is paved with good intentions), 4x14 (oh, issues abound here), and 4x19 (family is all you can count on, but don't hesitate to use your kid brother as bait if necessary). I mean, the only Dean!centric MOTW episodes really are 4x05 and 4x11. You might could argue for 4x02 and 4x17 as well, but I'd file those under mytharc episodes because they involve the angels and the Seals. And true, we learn a lot about Dean during some of those other MOTW eps, to be certain.
I mean, we see Dean regain his memories of Hell in Yellow Fever and certainly a few of his issues are brought up in Sex & Violence and Jump the Shark, but I'd argue the "lessons", such as they were, applied far more strongly to Sam than it does Dean in both those cases. The overall theme of 4x14 is how you can love someone but no longer know them and be miserable in their company (as related to Sam by Dr. Hot Lady) and in 4x19 it's a tie between revenge leading you to do terrible things (again - common theme this season) and highlighting the (not very positively spun) concept of Sam as John 2.0, with the idea that you can't have a normal life and be a hunter and that family comes above all - except again for when you need to use your unexperienced kid brother as bait.
Dean's story is very much told up front, typically during the mytharc eps and in contrast Sam's story is hidden and cloaked. We see it in glimpses of other characters and in flashbacks, but rarely from Sam's own perspective. It's an interesting choice to make in terms of storytelling, but IMHO it's a very sophisticated one. Certainly there was nothing so subtly done in S1-S3.
I think this ties in perfectly with the repeated concept of Sam lying to himself. Over and over again we hear characters call Sam out on this, but Sam persists on hiding both what he's doing as well as his true motivations, both from others and from himself. Sam's theme this season has been one of deception and the dangers therein, for Sam alone and for those around him. I sort of love that his true motivations are so hidden away that we don't even get to see them from Sam himself, but that they have to come from third parties.
Not all of Sam's story is like that, of course. Some of it is very much out in the open and one of those themes that most interests me is Sam's general growing sense of apathy with humanity as a whole. We move from the Sam who was so desperate to save Jackin 4x04 to the 4x15!Sam, who lied with a straight face to the dead boy Cole in order to manipulate him into helping them and who honestly believed that the rules for the rest of mankind no longer apply to him (or Dean). The sheer contrast there is just startling. At the very start of the season, we have a Sam who talks about how saving people feels good and in the very end, he's willing to kill a woman who is begging and pleading for her life. That's a drastic change and it happens over the course of a mere eight months.
I think Jack and his failure to overcome his "true" nature was a huge turning point in Sam's mind. It had to be a slap in the face, given how stubbornly Sam pinned his hopes on the man and how dangerous he became when he fell. Go figure, that episode also has one of the very few moments of protective!Sam we get this season: Jack threatened Dean's life, and from that second on, Sam was willing to kill him. We get a very opoen moment of concern on Sam's part when he's locked in the closet; he looks panicked over the thought of what Jack could have done (this interestingly also on top of panic Sam displays at the concept of Dean leaving him earlier in the episode). Dean was knocked out and bleeding, sure, but he was not in immediate mortal danger when Sam set Jack ablaze. I wonder if that moment also had something to do with Sam's increased distance from Dean as the season progressed.
Or then again, maybe not. Or perhaps it's not that simple. It wasn't really until after ITGPSW that Sam became a bit more spiteful about Dean, a bit more willing to perceive his brother as "weak" and somehow reduced from his pre-Hell self. This was also the episode when Uriel broke the news about how Dean actually does remember Hell and that Dean had been lying about it. It had to hurt, the thought that Dean either didn't trust Sam enough to open up about it or couldn't talk about it, for whatever reason. I'll bet you though that he looked back on the bit where Sam had to save Dean in 4x04 and again in Monster Movie and Yellow Fever in a different mindset then he had when the events actually took place. And maybe that has a bit to do with Sam's dispassionate response in Yellow Fever as well - three times in as many episodes he had to save Dean's ass. It had to be feeling a bit overdone by that point.
Which, okay, still doesn't explain why Bobby was such an ass in YF, but still. Something to think about.
All of which is a lot of Sam thoughts from someone who is very much a Dean!girl, but what can you do? Dean's absolutely my favorite Winchester, partially because his logic typically makes such sense to me. I can follow each step he takes because it's often what I'd do myself. OTOH, trying to suss out what Sam was thinking and when is a a much more difficult exercise. Thankfully, I enjoy puzzles.
Well, there's that and also reading the beautiful Sam-centric story Wind Shear by the ever talented samidha, which is just a gloriously dark and gritty look into Sam's mind during the summer that Dean was dead. It very much makes me have thinky thoughts. Highly recommended, if you've not read it already.
So yeah, I think I am going to have to rewatch all of these episodes, if for no other reason than so that I can get properly into Sam's head space so I can write the follow up to Wisdom to the Mighty, Succour to the Brave. Even if it means rewatching Yellow Fever.
God give me strength.