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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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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