Birthday Rewatch 2023
My birthday was last month, but I was in Japan, so I did not have time to do my traditional SPN Birthday Rewatch! So I did it today. For this rewatch, I've been watching whatever Supernatural episode is closest to Sam and Dean's birthdays, for the age I am turning.
This year was 6x12 "Like a Virgin" and 10x20 "Angel Heart."
These aren't my go-tos for rewatches, though one of my favorite fics I've ever written was based on 6x12, titled "Melissa."
I remember thinking they were only okay when I was watching while airing, because week to week you put so much on those 42 minutes. This is especially true of birthday-adjacent episodes, because Dean's tend to be near the mid-season premiere and Sam's in the ramp up to the season finale, as is true of both of these eps. You want there to be SO much in the aftermath of Sam's soul being shoved back into his body, his memories behind a wall. You want there to be SO much in the grotesquerie of the Mark of Cain and its swan song. More than 42 minutes can give. Especially more than 42 minutes can give when those 42 minutes also need to appeal to normal people, to casual viewers who aren't INSANE FOR EVERY MICROFACET OF THESE TWO AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP. (Weirdly enough, normal people exist and apparently watched this show and were able to watch and enjoy it casually. And they were the majority??? I know. Baffling to think about.)
Which is all to say, speaking from the comfort of having 15 seasons, of being able to see the full picture and the forest for the trees, these episodes are so, so enjoyable. Sam has a line in 6x12 where he's commenting that he was dead for a whole year and "nothing's changed," least of all Dean, and I was SCREAMING because forget Hell and Soulless Sam and all of that, of which Sam has no inkling. Sam is talking about a version of reality where Dean never ended up at Lisa's doorstep, never tried to do the Normal Life thing. Like, he just assumed since they were working this dragon case and everything felt fairly rote--I mean, there's dragons, but--everything was whiolly unchanged. When of course we know that the last year and a half has been one of PROFOUND pain, and change, and paths that simply cannot be unwalked. And that's SETTING ASIDE the Hell and the soullessness and the mechanism of returning a soul from Hell. And then there's Bobby, who is legitimately having a hard time letting bygones be bygones because Soulless Sam tried to kill him a little. Which in the scheme of Winchester experiences is nothing, but that doesn't necessarily speak to well-adjustment. And Bobby is so real for that, honestly. One of the things I love about SPN is its willingness to hold the least noble, least characteristic parts of someone because these parts are parts, even if they're not your archetype, or not something even you quite understand in the context of your own self-concept.
And 10x20! Mostly I remember the mini golf, but there's a harrowing sense of what kinds of devastations your story can wreak one someone else's. I love Claire because she's this aftermath that cannot fade away just because you jump town, or the human in your vessel is finally dead, or the mytharc no longer concerns any of the things that brought her into the story to begin with. What happens to the Novaks is completely fucked, but there's also something so grounded about it. Even though an angel making off with your husband/father isn't a common occurrence for people, which must surely come with its own psychological minefields in terms of one's sense of justice, retribution, deserts, etc. the impacts share their face with a good many things that might happen to a family. It doesn't make the experience any better, obviously, but I do feel like it might help Claire feel like her experiences belong in this world and can be conceptualized as something that anchors her to the people and things around her. Sam doesn't sink too deeply into Castiel's charge that he'd left home at 18 for college, so maybe he shouldn't meddle with Claire's life, since she just turned 18, too, but I feel like that kind of processing and that kind of thinking was probably what Sam needed then, too. What we've watched him some through, in the last decade.
Tragically, he tells Claire that he ended up meeting his dead mother "later in life" and that they "got along pretty well, actually." Sam has no idea what's in store a little over a year from then. XDDD
This year was 6x12 "Like a Virgin" and 10x20 "Angel Heart."
These aren't my go-tos for rewatches, though one of my favorite fics I've ever written was based on 6x12, titled "Melissa."
I remember thinking they were only okay when I was watching while airing, because week to week you put so much on those 42 minutes. This is especially true of birthday-adjacent episodes, because Dean's tend to be near the mid-season premiere and Sam's in the ramp up to the season finale, as is true of both of these eps. You want there to be SO much in the aftermath of Sam's soul being shoved back into his body, his memories behind a wall. You want there to be SO much in the grotesquerie of the Mark of Cain and its swan song. More than 42 minutes can give. Especially more than 42 minutes can give when those 42 minutes also need to appeal to normal people, to casual viewers who aren't INSANE FOR EVERY MICROFACET OF THESE TWO AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP. (Weirdly enough, normal people exist and apparently watched this show and were able to watch and enjoy it casually. And they were the majority??? I know. Baffling to think about.)
Which is all to say, speaking from the comfort of having 15 seasons, of being able to see the full picture and the forest for the trees, these episodes are so, so enjoyable. Sam has a line in 6x12 where he's commenting that he was dead for a whole year and "nothing's changed," least of all Dean, and I was SCREAMING because forget Hell and Soulless Sam and all of that, of which Sam has no inkling. Sam is talking about a version of reality where Dean never ended up at Lisa's doorstep, never tried to do the Normal Life thing. Like, he just assumed since they were working this dragon case and everything felt fairly rote--I mean, there's dragons, but--everything was whiolly unchanged. When of course we know that the last year and a half has been one of PROFOUND pain, and change, and paths that simply cannot be unwalked. And that's SETTING ASIDE the Hell and the soullessness and the mechanism of returning a soul from Hell. And then there's Bobby, who is legitimately having a hard time letting bygones be bygones because Soulless Sam tried to kill him a little. Which in the scheme of Winchester experiences is nothing, but that doesn't necessarily speak to well-adjustment. And Bobby is so real for that, honestly. One of the things I love about SPN is its willingness to hold the least noble, least characteristic parts of someone because these parts are parts, even if they're not your archetype, or not something even you quite understand in the context of your own self-concept.
And 10x20! Mostly I remember the mini golf, but there's a harrowing sense of what kinds of devastations your story can wreak one someone else's. I love Claire because she's this aftermath that cannot fade away just because you jump town, or the human in your vessel is finally dead, or the mytharc no longer concerns any of the things that brought her into the story to begin with. What happens to the Novaks is completely fucked, but there's also something so grounded about it. Even though an angel making off with your husband/father isn't a common occurrence for people, which must surely come with its own psychological minefields in terms of one's sense of justice, retribution, deserts, etc. the impacts share their face with a good many things that might happen to a family. It doesn't make the experience any better, obviously, but I do feel like it might help Claire feel like her experiences belong in this world and can be conceptualized as something that anchors her to the people and things around her. Sam doesn't sink too deeply into Castiel's charge that he'd left home at 18 for college, so maybe he shouldn't meddle with Claire's life, since she just turned 18, too, but I feel like that kind of processing and that kind of thinking was probably what Sam needed then, too. What we've watched him some through, in the last decade.
Tragically, he tells Claire that he ended up meeting his dead mother "later in life" and that they "got along pretty well, actually." Sam has no idea what's in store a little over a year from then. XDDD