General Sam meta and thoughts on S4

[ginzai]

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,

Comments

Re: 1/2

[ginzai]

Dean started drinking constantly and having nightmares and Sam saw that even before Dean told him that he remembered anything about Hell.

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.