(no subject)
After seeing Simon Said, and then reading marinarusalka's post about Sam's powers, something that's been bugging me about Sam's visions or powers really coalesced for me. I'm sure I'm not the first person to think about this, but it really bugs me that Sam's powers are so damn limited. If Sam is psychic in any way beyond the visions - as is implied in Home - we really have no idea how that works, but his visions are becoming more and more clear cut - certainly what Sam thinks about them is pretty defined by now. He has blinding visions of people dying that are connected to the Demon somehow. He appears to have no control over them whatsoever and can't really actively use them. What makes me crazy about this is that it's a totally different kind of power to any of the other mystery kids. Okay, we only have three other kids so far, and two different powers - Max, Andy, Weber; telekinesis and mind control, respectively. But both of those powers are distinctive by virtue of their very broad use. Max can't just move things that are connected with the Demon; he can move anything. Andy can't just mind control other special children; the reverse seems to be true. Both powers are being controlled voluntarily and being made extensive use of. Whereas Sam's powers? As marinarusalka said, he really views himself as passive, kind of the victim of visions. Visions that have a really limited usefulness, IMO.
There are three ways I can think of to explain this, and I don't really like any of them.
1. Kripke et al didn't want Sam's visions to become the focus. Actually, I do really sympathise with this. It's been done, a lot, and it requires an episode structure that's way too rigid for the show IMO. Sam's visions do seem to centre around people being hurt, it's not true precog because he doesn't get any moments of mundane daily life or any real hints of the future, just how to save people; if he was somehow able to rig it so that he could have semi-regular visions of people to save... we'd pretty much be watching Angel or Tru Calling or half a dozen other shows.
2. Maybe the reason Sam's visions are so limited in scope is that he really doesn't want to acknowledge them or use them at all; he only gets the visions that absolutely 100% HAVE to come to him, like maybe there are all these moments out there talking and Sam's only hearing the ones that are getting up, coming over, and shouting in his face. He probably doesn't want to hear them all talking, but maybe he could learn how to hear the moment shouting on the other side of the room.
3. Sam just thinks the visions he's getting are demon-related. This is almost directly counter to what the show seems to be telling us, but there's another way to look at it: all the visions he's getting are related to him. They're either of him and the mystery kids, or they're of things related to him - his old house, particularly. (I always thought that in Home the relationship to the Celine Demon was pretty sketchy, and this is basically my response to that.) I'm not sure how this is particularly helpful, but it seems like that's maybe something Sam could learn to use better than something that's only related to what the demon does, because omfg it's SO DUMB. Jeeze.
Bleh, none of these really satisfy me. The other theory I'm digging is that Sam's visions are something separate from his Mystery Child powers. In Home Sam exhibited run-of-the-mill empathic psychicness, the kind Missouri uses every day. (And how much does it drive me CRAZY that Sam seems to have TOTALLY FORGOTTEN about that? it wasn't a VISION, you dumbass) Sam ignores or has forgotten that in favour of his way-more-dramatic visions, but what if it's that talent - which would be much more general, much more voluntary, and much more controllable - which is his real Mystery Child gift, and the visions are something else, brought on maybe by the trauma he experienced as a child and again with Jess (which is maybe why the other kids don't have them): maybe something like Lucas in Dead in the Water, who formed a connection with the thing that killed his father, enabling him to, yanno, save the day. Because Sam is a dumbass and isn't paying attention he hasn't noticed.
*sigh* I know, it's a little far-fetched. It's just... the inconsistency drives me nuts. Not only do Sam's visions really suck, as Andy pointed out; they're also incredibly limited and quite often totally useless. STUPID STUPID.