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,
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ASS was one of my least favorite episodes this season on account of how I am a HUGE Dean!girl and I very much felt that Dean got the shaft, both as a teenager and as an adult. I didn't much care for the actor chosen for teen!Dean (not on account of skill but because he looked too old to play the part, especially with such a wee!Sammy in tow), most of both Deans' jokes fell flat to me (which cheerleaders are legal? From a 30 year old man who is playing their teacher? Um. Ew.), teen!Dean's petulant claim to be a "hero" in the middle of a busy high school hallway, and so on. All of that rankled. I adored wee!Sam but the portrayal of Dean just completely soured the episode for me.
we don't get to see the real Sam at all until the last five minutes of the finale when he finally comes to his senses
I think this is EXTREMELY significant. I can't imagine S1!Sam leaving Dean alone the first night he gets him back from Hell, just as I can't imagine S2!Sam lying about Dean's dying wish. And even beyond the deception issues, S4!Sam just... Well, he just didn't seem to care that Dean was back. On occasion, he even seemed to resent it. Sam didn't react as though he'd just gotten Dean back from Hell, he reacted as though Dean had spent the weekend off by himself.
Which is one of the reasons I love that fic I recced above so much - it goes very neatly into why Sam might have been so detached and is a very believable answer, IMHO.
It's odd how S4 finally made me really like Sam
Oh, this. *g* I didn't much care for Sam before (in huge part because, as you mention, there was Dean to distract me) but S4 has made me love him. I don't think I've ever been as angry at a fictional character as I was when Sex & Violence aired - Sam was unbelievably cruel during that fight - but trying to figure out why he would say such things and how he could even believe them was what led me to be so intrigued by his character and from there honestly grow to love him.
I love your comment too about how everything thinks that Dean is the dysfunctional one! It reminds me a lot of the Trickster's words to Sam in Mystery Spot.
There's a huge amount that can be said for Ruby acting as a replacement for Dean in S4. I mean, that's a whole other meta post in its own right, and an epically large one at that. If Sam was John 2.0 in S4, Ruby was Dean 2.0 - the new and "improved" version who didn't argue with Sam, followed his orders, and told him exactly what he needed and when he needed it to shore up his confidence. I've got a lot of theories about Sam and his relationships with Dean and Ruby and Sam's own flaw of being a TOTAL control freak.
I like the idea that Sam, as hugely independent as he is, does better when there's someone he can bounce off of. For all that Dean in S1-S2 seemed to hold the Winchester family above the rest of the world, he's the one who more readily now opens up and embraces others here in S4. Dean, whether on purpose or against his will, has been given bonds with Castiel, Anna, Bobby, and Alistair. Sam only has Ruby. As a result, it's such an insular relationship that it kept getting more and more twisted and made it that much harder for Sam to see the light.
Re: Dean & Hell: I got the impression it was part because he didn't want to fess up about liking to torture souls but also in large part because he's right. Sam really could NEVER understand that. 30 years of torture... I mean, *I* can't understand that and I'm a relatively objective outsider. Telling Sam would only hurt him and it wouldn't make Dean feel any better, so why talk about it?
Only then Dean spoke with Anna, who sort of DID understand and that got his hopes up about Sam, and well. We all saw how THAT worked out.
Bobby's rant INFURIATED me, no lies. I'm not at all ashamed to admit it. There's a small (but increasingly vocal) portion of the fandom who agrees. :D
And thanks for responding - your comment was a lot of fun to read and respond to! I'm definitely going to meta again; I'm ridiculously verbose and can't ever seem to shut up, so more meta is pretty much a given. *g*
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