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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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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