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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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 look on Sam's face when he lied to Cole in 4.15 showed just how bad he felt about lying to the kid (and I don't think it was necessarily completely wrong for him to lie, because in that situation time was of the essence and the kid wasn't showing any signs of being reasoned with). That whole episode wasn't so much about his apathy with humanity but his new comfort with a morally gray area and his willingness to believe that it's all right for him (and Dean) to occupy that area because of their positions in thwarting the upcoming apocalypse. He chose to believe (and lie to himself about) that rules don't apply when you're doing something for the greater good and that's how Ruby and Zach got him right where they wanted him in the end.
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....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.
I think Sam's attitude about Dean being weaker after ITGPSW came from a place of shame-fueled defiance - Dean gave him a look of absolute horror after he exocised Samhain with his mind, even though it was the only way to stop him and save the town. Sam was deeply ashamed to let Dean see him do that because deep down he knew it was coming from a bad place; and that shame manifested into defiance, in an attitude of 'how dare you judge me when you wouldn't have been able to stop Samhain yourself'. As for YF, that was two episodes after 4.04, at the end of which he decided to stop drinking demon blood - Sam was detoxing (although this detox wasn't nearly as violent as the later one and he was trying to hide it). Detox + brother with ridiculous fears (even if those fears were ghost-induced) does not equal a lot of sympathy from Sam.
This is all coming from someone who is an unapologetic Sam!girl. I love Sam; even when he breaks my heart with his decisions I understand and sympathize with the reasons why he's making them.
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The look on Sam's face when he lied to Cole in 4.15 showed just how bad he felt about lying to the kid
I'm not sure I read quite as much regret into Sam's expression as you do. To me it was more distaste - it was a job he didn't want to be doing, but distaste for being in an unfortunate position is different than outright regretting it. I see a huge measure of apathy in regards to humanity in Sam's actions there. Perhaps alone it wouldn't work quite so well as an example, but it slots in readily with the other signs we have of the same: Sam's not even wanting to say goodbye to his lover in 4x14, Sam having no sympathy for the incest babies in 4x11, Sam being willing to sacrifice humans to feed from in the later episodes, Sam thinking that the normal rules don't apply to him, and so on.
Sam's attitude has very much been one of superiority, especially in the latter half of the season. We see this most readily with his views on Dean - Sam definitely believes himself to be the stronger, better, smarter man between the two of them and says so, often - but since thematically Dean is linked with humanity as a whole, it comes across to me as Sam asserting his superiority over all mankind. Perhaps not consciously to that extreme, but it still fits and comes across in his actions and the choices he makes.
And that attitude I very much feel was yet another lie to himself, for that matter. At Sam's true core self, I don't believe for an instant that he really thinks himself superior to anyone. IMHO, Sam has always had something of an inferiority complex, particularly when it comes to Dean, but that Sam has consciously or not covered it up with an attitude of superiority that he doesn't actually feel. There of signs of that all the way back in the first season. S4 is just where it (along with so many of Sam's other negative traits) is magnified almost past recognition.
I do think there's a measure of wanting to do this to save the world, but that doesn't seem to be his primary goal. It's more of an incidental; Sam wanted Lilith's head on a plate long before he was led to believe that by killing her, he could save the world. There's a certain amount of resentfulness there as well ("don't these people know what I'm doing for them? How can they be so ungrateful?") to Sam as well that further distances him from a noble savior figure and more so instead ties him into that superior attitude. That he's doing this to "save the world" is just one more of his lies, and an interesting thing to remember, given Dean's comment in 4x07 about how there's nothing more dangerous than some a-hole on a holy mission.
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I don't see apathy and distaste so much as resignation and a choice of detachment. By the time we got to 4.14 and 4.15, Sam was eyeballs deep in the demon-blood-drinking and at this point he believed (as he said in 4.22) that he wasn't going to survive the endgame but the sacrifice of his life/soul was necessary to stop Lilith. In his point of view things had to be done and he had to do them, even if he didn't like it. The choice of detachment with his lover is a very understandable one: the YED killed Jessica, he had to kill Madison, and he was pushing himself toward a confrontation with a horrible evil - he had no reason to believe his further involvement with her wouldn't end badly for her, so best not to try at all. As for the incest babies, he was more focused on saving the family and Dean to outwardly express feeling sorry for them and that episode was more about Dean's issues - he felt bad, even sorry, for Dirk the angry ghost in 4.13.
I do think there's a measure of wanting to do this to save the world, but that doesn't seem to be his primary goal. It's more of an incidental; Sam wanted Lilith's head on a plate long before he was led to believe that by killing her, he could save the world. There's a certain amount of resentfulness there as well ("don't these people know what I'm doing for them? How can they be so ungrateful?") to Sam as well that further distances him from a noble savior figure and more so instead ties him into that superior attitude. That he's doing this to "save the world" is just one more of his lies, and an interesting thing to remember, given Dean's comment in 4x07 about how there's nothing more dangerous than some a-hole on a holy mission.
No, Sam didn't start out wanting to save the world by killing Lilith - he wanted to save Dean. He couldn't stop her from taking Dean's soul so all he could do was focus on killing her, on punishing her, on getting justice on Dean's behalf. When Dean came back so broken Sam's helplessness about not being able to make Dean feel better manifested itself further into hunting Lilith because it was all he could do. As for the perceived superiority complex, I don't think Sam's resentfulness had anything to do with him seeing himself as a noble savior or being an asshole on a holy mission - he was upset because he was being told he couldn't act like a Winchester. John destroyed his life that was to hunt the thing that killed his wife and sacrified his life/soul to save Dean; Dean embraced the hunt and sacrificed his life/soul to save Sam; now Sam was being told it was bad for him to give up who he was before for the sake of avenging his loved one, that he was being evil-bad-wrong when he was jeopardizing his life/soul to, in his mind, save Dean. He was following the examples his father and brother set and was angry (and probably insecure, as he's always been insecure about his place in the family) when everyone judged him for them.
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My personal take on Sam is that he's made up of countless layers, the majority of which he wasn't even aware of by the end of the season and all of which goes back to his theme of lying to himself. He acted the part of a martyr in 4x22, but I believe that was merely the top-most of these layers - and the most false of them. Under that is the superiority and aggression, both of which went deep, and under those was a sheer layer of pure rage. All of which worked to disguise what was at his true core, those emotions that he didn't even allow himself to feel because they simply hurt too much: guilt and self-loathing and pain and horror and shock, and yes also a suicidal drive.
But a suicidal drive is different than the "woe, I must martyr myself" attitude at the very top of his layers - it's darker and crueler (towards Sam) and far less comforting. Being a martyr gives a certain level of satisfaction that tends to tinge on self-righteousness, especially when you are describing yourself in that manner. It's not a compliment to be termed a martyr. I think though that his certainty that things would never be the same again, that he really had burned his bridges, was a reflection of that suicidal inner core, but one vastly warped by the other, darker surface emotions he's been driven by this past year.
As for the good doctor, I think you're reading a level of attachment and affection there that I honestly didn't see. They weren't in love, it was just a one night stand but that Sam didn't call, wasn't even tempted to call, shows a huge change in his character. It's very much a detachment from her, true, but tied in with all the other events, IMHO it goes right back to Sam's belief that the normal rules no longer apply to him.
That Sam would show more overt horror over what happened with Dirk makes perfect sense to me. Sam didn't drive him to his death, but he was in several ways the catalyst that tipped him over the edge. While I don't see anything particularly wrong in Sam's actions there, I can easily see why Sam would be so struck by how much of an impact his own actions had. That it related to Sam personally, and to a crowning moment in Sam's past, was what allowed Sam to react in that manner.
When Dean came back so broken Sam's helplessness about not being able to make Dean feel better manifested itself further into hunting Lilith because it was all he could do.
But Dean wasn't broken when he came back. Dean was very much just Dean, somewhat changed (more sympathetic and less prone towards violence as shown in 4x02) but not broken. It wasn't until after he got his memories back that he started to slide and even then it wasn't until Sam learned some of what those memories pertained to that his views on Dean changed.
I don't think killing Lilith had much to do with Dean at all, really, or if it had, that urge had faded long before Dean's resurrection. Otherwise, we would have seen Sam be far more affected by Dean's death. Sam didn't seem to mind Dean's return (most of the time), but neither did he react as one might expect to getting his brother back from Hell after four months. It was as though Dean had just been on vacation for a few weeks for all the attention and concern Sam showed.
Also, Dean didn't give up who he was to be a hunter; he didn't have any other choice. Sam's change in personality though was a choice, and an alarming one. I also think he felt insecurity about his position in family and that was a deep set, long felt emotion. However, to me that was very much tied into his core emotions, the things that he didn't consciously allow himself to experience, even if they still tended to flavor his actions.
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I'm not reading a level of attachment between Sam and the doctor - I'm reading his desire not to get attached or to encourage attachment on her part. And since it was a one-night stand (most likely on both their parts), I don't see how his failure to call can be interpreted as him believing the "normal rules" don't apply to him anymore. After all, how many one-night stands did Dean call back? Does that mean Dean always thought the "normal rules" don't apply to him? No, of course not. The truth is we've never seen Sam have a proper one-night stand so we don't know how he normally behaves under those circumstances; I'd say the one-night stand itself was the behavior that was different from how Sam normally acts and that shows his deliberate choice to remain unattached.
But Dean wasn't broken when he came back. Dean was very much just Dean, somewhat changed (more sympathetic and less prone towards violence as shown in 4x02) but not broken. It wasn't until after he got his memories back that he started to slide and even then it wasn't until Sam learned some of what those memories pertained to that his views on Dean changed.
Dean came back different and Sam saw that. Dean started drinking constantly and having nightmares and Sam saw that even before Dean told him that he remembered anything about Hell. Sam said it back in S3's Fresh Blood: he knows Dean's behaviors, when he covering up his emotions, and what emotions he's covering up. Just because Dean didn't act openly broken doesn't mean that he wasn't and it doesn't mean Sam didn't pick up on that.
I don't think killing Lilith had much to do with Dean at all, really, or if it had, that urge had faded long before Dean's resurrection.
I see it very much like how John became a hunter: it started out as a way to avenge his wife and protect his kids and, while it may have turned into something more (things both selfless and selfish), at the core it remained about the revenge and protection. Sam's motivations may have broadened, but at the core it was remained about avenging Dean.
And while I understand that Dean didn't give up who he was to be a hunter, I disagree that he "didn't have any other choice". He did have a choice - he could have walked away when he turned 18 and John couldn't have made him stay; maybe it wasn't a difficult choice for him to make, but it was still a choice to stay with the family and not see what else was out there. Also, I agree Sam's personality change was alarming and the decisions he made were his choice, but the personality change itself wasn't a choice. He didn't decide "I choose to be horrified, grief-stricken, angry, and mixed-up about my brother's death!" It's a real disservice to the character to judge him solely on his behaviors without taking into account the underlying motivations just because you find the behaviors so out-of-character and alarming.
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Of course Dean came back different. But he didn't come back broken. We have no signs that Sam noticed the nightmares prior to 4x08 nor that Dean was drinking heavily before that point. Dean didn't have full access to his memories until the end of YF so his NOT being broken makes perfect sense. That didn't stop Sam from treating him as though he were broken before then and Sam's view on Dean only grew worse afterward.
I'd also argue that even after Dean got his memories back, he wasn't broken. Battered, yes. In a bad mental place? Absolutely. But the closest we've ever seen Dean be to breaking was the final hospital scene 4x16, after he'd been physically smashed down, had the trauma of learning about the first Seal, and was told by an angel that he, Dean, was expected to stop all of it but that they weren't going to give him any information on HOW he was to do so after he'd already gone several weeks with Sam's very callous and demeaning attitude making it quite clear that he had no faith in Dean's abilities either. It took all that to get Dean close to breaking.
If Dean had been broken, he'd never have been able to face Alistair without flinching so many times. He'd have crumpled when Alistair told him about the first Seal. Dean didn't. He was perfectly able to continue the job and would have except that Uriel released Alistair early.
Sam read a lot of weakness into Dean's behaviors because SAM needed Dean to be broken. If Dean wasn't broken then Sam couldn't dismiss Dean's disapproval or admit that he really didn't give a damn as to Dean's opinion on the topic. And frankly, I don't think he much did, at least not by the middle half of the season. Not consciously, at any rate. Caring about Dean's opinion was one of those things he locked down in his core self, but it wasn't at all a factor in Sam's day to day choices. If Dean were broken though then that meant Sam could neatly sidestep the entire issue: he could make his own choices and force Dean to live with them because Sam knew better. It was another lie to himself. And it's one that's going to come back to bite him majorly now that Dean's been proven right about all of this.
He did have a choice - he could have walked away when he turned 18 and John couldn't have made him stay
I think you really don't get a fundamental tenet of Dean's characterization. Dean didn't have a choice about leaving, not in the classic sense of it, at any rate. Leaving at 18 would have left Sam unprotected and would have removed a significant amount of support from John. It would have placed them both in danger. And given that we see in ASS that the Sam-John conflict was already brewing, it would also have meant removing the stabilizing element from the family. With all those factors in place, Dean - in his mind - most assuredly had no choice at all. Dean wouldn't be Dean were he able to make the choice to walk away knowing that Sam and John would be in a considerably worse position for his departure.
He didn't decide "I choose to be horrified, grief-stricken, angry, and mixed-up about my brother's death!"
True, this was also not really a choice on Sam's part. However, it was very much a choice to do what he did while being horrified, grief-stricken, angry, and mixed-up about his brother's death. Sam chose to follow Ruby's advice about Lilith. Sam chose to give up on saving Dean from Hell and he gave up within a month of Dean's death.
Honestly, you're over simplifying Sam's behavior by ignoring the more negative factors of it in favor of pushing for an unrealistically positive portrayal.
Sam is a good man. He's also bullheaded, prideful, has a temper with trigger points that gets him in trouble and he's a control freak, but he's a good man. He wants to do the right thing. He's smart, tenacious, cunning and powerful AND he's done some terrible things this past season that showcase HUGE character flaws. By denying those and his true motivations, you diminish Sam to nothing more than a puppet, weak and ineffective.
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I also think that was shameful defiance, but I'm not so certain there wasn't anything else they could have done. They could have tried a regular exorcism and they had Castiel as back up (I wouldn't count on Uriel). Sam didn't bother to consider either option; instead he took a unilateral action that involved him breaking his promise to Dean about using his powers and that he did so at the very first opportunity afforded to him makes me wonder exactly how long he ever intended to keep that promise. Sam managed, at most, a month without using his powers and I'd argue it was far less than that - a couple of weeks, tops.
IMHO, the shame there wasn't because he knew using his powers was wrong because he definitely didn't see them in that light at all. To be fair, what reason did he have to believe that? Show was very careful not to give us any concrete reasons to distrust Sam's powers until the very end of the season. Sam thought he was doing good; he was saving people. Why wouldn't he use the most powerful tool he had in his arsenal? Plus there's the sheer satisfaction he must have felt at using something primed for "evil" to do "good". It's easy to see how Sam was seduced.
No, I think the shame there was because he got caught. If Dean hadn't walked in then, I don't think Sam would have told him how he defeated Samhain. I'm pretty sure that would have been yet another lie by omission from Sam this season, if Sam had had any choice in the matter.
I do agree though that the defiance was spurred on by "how dare you judge me when I was strong enough to stop it and you weren't". It's the beginning of that strong/weak dynamic stirring. Again though, just as Sam is blind to later in the season, there's no reason for us to believe that there weren't any other options available to them.
As for YF, I'm not sure how heavily Sam was detoxing there or whether we're supposed to read that into his actions. I take YF as just a gross misuse of characters across the board. I could see Sam acting in that manner due to detox if it had been Sam alone, but it wasn't. It was Bobby as well and their nonchalant attitudes didn't solely tie into Dean - it was to the ghost as well. For all that Dean was the one called a dick in that episode, Sam and Bobby were the ones who seemed to most fit that title: callous, cruel, cold, and willing to force a victim (albeit now a twisted one) to undergo the same horrific death he'd already once gone through. It was drastically OOC for both men and they had to tweak the laws of canon just to make it work. In every other episode, the use of iron causes a ghost to disintegrate when touched, it doesn't drag them along. It was just a weak episode over all.
I adore Sam, in S4 more than ever. He just intrigues me so much now and trying to figure out his motives has been a fascinating exercise. So please be an unapologetic Sam!girl - it makes our discussions that much more fun. :)
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They didn't figure into the picture - Dean may have been somewhere in the vicinity, but Sam was all alone when he faced off with Samhain. He didn't have Castiel as a back-up because Castiel told him and Dean that he was there to DESTROY the town if Samhain rose; and Castiel may have had Dean's back if he asked but he could barely bring himself to shake Sam's hand, so it's fair to say Sam couldn't have counted on Castiel for help. As for a regular exorcism, for all of those on the show the demon is first restrained - Samhain was beating the crap out of Sam, nowhere near being restrained or even letting Sam get out all the words he needed to exorcise him. Sam did try using the knife first, but it was knocked away from him and he had to choose between attempting to get around Samhain to get the knife - risking the deaths of him, Dean, and the entire town - or using his powers, which he knew could save them all. It was kind of like Dean in Devil's Trap where he killed that demon - and the demon's host - because it was the heat of the battle and kill or see Sam killed.
No, I think the shame there was because he got caught. If Dean hadn't walked in then, I don't think Sam would have told him how he defeated Samhain.
The shame was more visible because Dean caught him, but it was always there. No one is ashamed of being caught unless they were ashamed of the action in the first place. I do concede he was sorry he was caught, but being ashamed doesn't mean being sorry - shame is knowing you're doing something you think is wrong; sorry means you'd go back and do something different under the same circumstances. Sam's always been ashamed of his powers, even back in season one, but by ITGPSW he'd come to believe the only way they (and he) could be redeemed was if he used them against Lilith and the demons who wanted to bring the Apocalypse.
Again though, just as Sam is blind to later in the season, there's no reason for us to believe that there weren't any other options available to them.
Sam did have other options, but by the time the season started he was already well into a downward spiral that started when Dean died. Everything he did this last season ties back to the same reason why Dean soul his soul at the end of S2 and refused to help get out of the deal for much of S3: his brother was violently taken from him and he didn't deal with it well. Expecting someone in that mindset to behave rationally without any emotional support is unreasonable.
I do think the show did Sam a great disservice by actually showing us almost every bad action and decision he made without making his motives clearer.
I stand by my belief that Sam was detoxing in YF. I've never detoxed from demon blood, but if it's anything like my caffeine detox I can say if I had to hide my misery and jitters from everyone I wouldn't have a heck of a lot of patience or energy for anything else either. I agree it was out-of-character for Bobby to be so nonchalant, but as for their method with dealing with the ghost: it was crunch time. Dean had a couple of hours left and there was no way they could have burned all the remains - they didn't have any other options and didn't have the time to think up/test anything else.
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Sam was only alone because Sam had set it up that way. And while Uriel was all for some hardcore old fashioned smiting, Castiel seemed far more approachable. Plus, the destruction of the town was to PREVENT the rising of Samhain; by that point it was already too late, the Seal was broken. What could it have hurt to ask Castiel for help?
Also, why shouldn't he have tried to get the knife back? Or why not disguise himself ahead of time? Samhain wasn't able to see him when he had the blood on his face, why not again here? Samhain might have been charging Sam but it didn't seem like he was moving fast enough that Sam couldn't have dodged him and he knew that the knife had done damage.
I think that Sam told himself he had no choice but to use his powers and he probably even believed that, but that doesn't make it the truth. Sam's theme this season has been one of self deception and I see no reason not to include the necessity of using his powers here as one more lie he told himself.
No one is ashamed of being caught unless they were ashamed of the action in the first place.
Except that he didn't look ashamed until Dean showed up. He looked in pain but there wasn't any shame until he caught the expression on Dean's face.
I think the shame there wasn't because he used his powers, but because he gave into the temptation so readily and because he'd broken his promise about them.
I think Sam in the early seasons was completely unnerved by his powers, not ashamed of them. There might have been some shame once he learned a bit more about their origins with Azazel, but before that it was mostly the discomfort of them taking him one step further from his much desired state of normalcy. Which isn't shame really, so much as discomfort. He was very much taking pride in them by 4x04, and even earlier judging by the flashback in 4x09.
That he took so very much pride in his use of his abilities makes me think he wasn't at all searching for redemption. I think he was using his powers because they felt good. Saving people felt good. He admits to as much in 4x01, before he first learned of the looming apocalypse at all.
Expecting someone in that mindset to behave rationally without any emotional support is unreasonable.
I don't fault Sam at all for acting irrationally that summer, but that doesn't change the fact that Sam and Sam alone was responsible for each of the decisions he made, including not coming to his senses after Dean was returned from Hell. If we're supposed to believe that Dean's death caused his downward spiral, than Dean's resurrection should have done something to reverse it. It did not.
Sam wasn't addicted to the demon blood in YF. He wasn't fully addicted to it until around 4x20, given that he showed no signs of withdrawal in 4x17 when he spent three weeks without any blood at all. Either the withdrawal was extraordinarily fast or it just was fairly mild and either way Sam in 4x06 had far less exposure to the blood than Sam in 4x17. Between that and Bobby and the fact that YF was the first and only episode Kripke has ever semi-apologized for, I've got to conclude it was bad writing here, not a sign of the dire straits that Sam was in.
I think you're ascribing far too much of Sam's unfortunate behavior in S4 to the demon blood, and not enough to Sam himself. I do definitely believe that it and Sam's powers had a negative effect on Sam's psyche, but I think it built up over time. Ruby herself confirmed (jubilantly, even) that it was Sam's decisions made of his own free will that had brought them to where they were at, that it really was Sam alone. Not the powers, not the demon blood, but SAM.
And that doesn't make Sam a bad person, just one who has made some huge mistakes. Putting it all on the demon blood cheapens his storyline and weakens Sam's character.
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Are you suggesting that Sam contrived to fight Samhain alone so he could use his powers? Because that's absolutely ridiculous.
What could it have hurt to ask Castiel for help? Also, why shouldn't he have tried to get the knife back?
Asking Sam to go to Castiel for help at that point would be asking him to trust Castiel far more than what was reasonable. Castiel was there because the town was supposed to be destroyed - there was absolutely no reason to believe his orders would change just because Samhain rose (the easiest way to stop Samhain would have been to destroy the town. Beyond that, Sam and Castiel had just met, at which point Cas seemed repulsed by the notion of shaking Sam's hand, called him the boy with the demon blood, and then spoke only directly to Dean. Not a whole lot of reason for Sam to trust Cas as back-up.
As for the knife, yes it was a choice for Sam to use his powers instead of diving for it and it wasn't an unreasonable choice. Samhain was a powerful and dangerous demon who could have no doubt killed Sam (no matter how slow he seemed to be moving) and if Sam was killed going for the knife Dean would have had to face Samhain weaponless and most likely would have died himself. Then the whole town would have died. Given the options, the powers must have seemed like the best choice - and Sam did save everyone.
Except that he didn't look ashamed until Dean showed up. He looked in pain but there wasn't any shame until he caught the expression on Dean's face. I think the shame there wasn't because he used his powers, but because he gave into the temptation so readily and because he'd broken his promise about them.
Just because Sam wasn't weeping and slumping to the floor as he was overcome with self-loathing doesn't mean he wasn't ashamed. Of course he was ashamed that Dean saw him and that he broke his promise, but at his core he was ashamed that once again he proved himself to be the "freak" of the Winchester family by having these powers in the first place. In his family, supernatural = bad; and anything associated with the YED = worse.
He was very much taking pride in them by 4x04, and even earlier judging by the flashback in 4x09. That he took so very much pride in his use of his abilities makes me think he wasn't at all searching for redemption.
When was he taking pride in them in 4.04 - when he was telling Dean he was a "whole new level of freak"? I have no doubt if felt good for him to use them to save people - that was part of the redemption. He said it himself: it was his way of taking something bad and having something good come out of it. More importantly, it was his way of taking power back from his victimizer, the YED; his way of saying, "You may have forced this blood into me to make me do evil things but I'm taking that violation and doing something good with it!"
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I'm suggesting that Sam was responsible for being in a situation where he was on his own.
As for Castiel, there was no reason not to trust him and several reasons to do so. If nothing else, he saved Dean from Hell and was willing to give them a chance to solve the Samhain problem in their own manner. I think you're reading the repulsion in that scene; had Castiel been disgusted by Sam's touch, I doubt he would have so warmly clasped Sam's hand with both of his own.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the matter of Sam and the knife. Personally, I feel strongly that he had other options that he did not explore and that this is yet one of several incidents in Sam's general trend to fallback on his powers and act unilaterally - a tendency that ultimately led to the great detriment of Sam, Dean, and the world at large. You obviously feel otherwise.
I also think you're reading far too much into the matter of Sam's shame. There's nothing in that scene to make a viewer believe that Sam was inwardly angsting over what John had led him to believe as a child, particularly when we've seen time after time that Sam was the Winchester most willing to accept the supernatural as potentially good.
his way of saying, "You may have forced this blood into me to make me do evil things but I'm taking that violation and doing something good with it!"
Exactly. By reclaiming his abilities, he was able to take pride in them and in what he could do with them. I don't think he was doing it for any form of redemption though, not at that point.
By 4x04, Sam's true emotions had been long since been locked away to the best of Sam's ability where they couldn't hurt him any longer. To need to be redeemed, he would have needed to have done something he felt guilt over and Sam had done nothing. The only thing that could inspire Sam's need for redemption might have been failing to prevent Dean's death, but if that were the case than again, it should have been alleviated somewhat by Dean's resurrection and Sam should have been more concerned with Dean in general in early S4. Sam's behavior didn't change with Dean's return, nor did he particularly even seem to care that Dean was back.
I don't buy that Sam felt he needed to be redeemed simply for having been contaminated as an infant. Throughout S1-S2, Sam wasn't so much ashamed of his abilities as terrified of what they might lead him to become. That wasn't so much an issue in S3, partially because Azazel was dead and partially because in his desperation, Sam was willing to consider any number of things that would have been unthinkable before. Was there shame there? I think so, to an extent. However, there wasn't so much shame that he would require redemption before he ever even used those gifts of his own free will.
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I agree that Sam is responsible for his decisions, but not "coming to his senses" after Dean came back isn't tied a decision - it's tied to emotions. And Sam's emotions aren't so shallow that all that grief, anger, confusion, rage, and guilt instantly go away just because Dean's back. And he did slowly start to get better: he reconnected with Bobby, got off the demon blood, encouraged Dean to open up about Hell, and even started to open up himself about the stuff he went through during the summer. It was only when his relationship with Dean got more distant and fractured (something was was equally Sam and Dean's fault) did he revert.
I think you're ascribing far too much of Sam's unfortunate behavior in S4 to the demon blood, and not enough to Sam himself.
I've never believed the demon blood itslef had the power to fundamentally change Sam; however, he's addicted to it and that addiction has had a profound influence on him (and we'll have to agree to disagree about him being addicted in YF - addiction doesn't just happen overnight, especially addiction that triggers that violent of a withdrawl. That we didn't see him go through withdrawl in 4.17 doesn't necessarily mean anything because the events of the episode took place 3 weeks after he and Dean vanished from their lives so he could have gone through the symptoms already.)
I think you're focusing too much on Sam's decisions at face value, using only the most obvious gestures to explain them and not really looking beneath the surface. Not taking into account just how much his emotions, circumstances, and past experiences influenced him doesn't do justice to the deepness and complexity of both the storyline and the character.
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Very true. What I'm arguing is a more complex blend of emotions than what you seem to be advocating. At his inner core, absolutely those emotions were still raging and undoubtedly continue to do so past the finale. Sam hasn't forgiven himself of anything. However, that pain is so deep and so powerful and so very, very disabling that he's covered it up with a thick shell of emotions that are easier to experience. And those emotions weren't particularly pretty. It's that self deception coming back.
If Sam's emotions were as clear and clean cut as you're suggesting, then the constant theme of having people telling Sam to stop lying (to himself and to others) would not have been present.
I don't agree that Sam was "getting better" in the early half of S4. He did reconnect to Bobby to an extent, true, but he only got off the demon blood because the alternative was that Dean would leave, his encouragement to Dean to open up about Hell came across more often as attacks to distract his brother from asking about his own summer than true concern at Dean's experiences and he very carefully left out significant parts of information when he revealed anything of concerning his activities with Ruby. There was a huge amount of lying by omission in 4x09 and given how calculated that was and how quickly after that that his behavior worsened, I can't take it as a sign that Sam was improving.
As for the addiction, frankly we don't have enough evidence in canon to take it one way or another. We know of four instances where Sam either refused or was denied blood for an extended period of time. It's only during the last of these though where Sam showed any drastic signs of detox. Two of the other times, we don't see his reaction. The other occasion was in 4x16 where Sam had evidently gone for weeks without a fix with no change in his behavior.
Sam very specifically points out that Ruby had been AWOL for three weeks in 4x21. He had been getting his fix from another source during those three weeks and unless demon blood has preternatural preservatives, he was harvesting blood from other possessed people - a rather disturbing thought. Either way, the withdrawal there was by far the most devastating that we've seen for him. If Sam had truly been hooked in 4x17, especially since he'd not been getting any blood as Sam Wesson, then his withdrawal there should have been even worse than we saw in 4x21. Unless, of course, the withdrawal was milder when he wasn't as hooked or he went through it than three weeks, in which case, his behavior in YF can't be chalked up to withdrawal.
Sam's a very complex individual, which is why I like him. He's particularly so in S4, when he spends the vast majority of the season in denial of his own true motivations and we have to read into what he says, and doesn't say, and then decide whether we can even take his words as the truth. That so much of his story is told through the tertiary characters doesn't help to clarify things either. Personally, I enjoy that storytelling technique; I think it was both sophisticated and generally well penned.
I very much am looking below the surface when I contemplate Sam's character but it seems that you're oddly eager to ascribe all or most of the guilt and responsibility for Sam's mistakes to people or issues outside of Sam himself.
Sam is made up of layers, layers that start with pain and guilt and fear, but are covered up with self righteousness, pride, and anger, with that pride being very much the primary emotion felt. On top of all of those is the sense of martyrdom, which in turn is the falsest emotion displayed. You're cutting out the pride and arrogance Sam has repeatedly shown in S4 in favor of pretending that only those core inner emotions played a role in Sam's behavior. That very much weakens Sam as a character because it denies him the chance and the responsibility to claim his mistakes and use them to grow.
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