While it may feel uncomfortable to come out of the premiere right after Dean telling Sam that he can't trust him anymore, but I'm happy. I liked the premiere and I think that this is a good place for the boys to be in for the upcoming season.
Dean is not on a self-righteous tirade or looking down from his high horse at Sam. He isn't lording Sam's guilt in the apocalypse over him. He's actually not even trying to address what happened, but Sam is the kind who needs to talk and Dean is the kind that needs to go to his cave and think before making an emotional judgment.
This isn't even about 'forgiving' Sam for accidentally triggering the apocalypse at all. It's about Dean not being able to trust Sam, and given Sam's behavior over the past year, he doesn't have reason to. Does that mean he shouldn’t trust Sammy again, ever? Obviously, NO, as that's one of the things they have to work on over the course of the season. Was Dean unnecessarily harsh with Sam? I don't think so.
Sam spent the episode giving various people puppy eyes because he needs to have an outside person tell him that it's okay, or that he should never be forgiven, or anything. It's waiting for that judgment that feels so awful to him. And unfortunately, Dean isn't interested in dealing with the actual guilt of bringing on the apocalypse. Who in this HASN'T broken a seal by accident? Dean is interested in the fact that their relationship has changed, they've been trying to ignore it for a year, and it is never going to go back to the way it was.
But is that necessarily a bad thing? In their old relationship, Dean flat out values Sam more than himself, more than practically anything. He doesn't seem to realize that he deserves to be more than Sam's protector or the one who chases after Sam (which is fair to neither of them, because what a burden on Sam). In their old relationship, Sam wants Dean to stop treating him like a kid and trust him (…oops). In their old relationship, they are at once distanced and codependent. It's not a relationship that should be continued as it was, but could become something better and stronger.
There are several reasons that Dean shouldn't trust Sam right now. The first of which is that last season Sam badgered Dean to tell him about what happened in Hell, and once he did, Sam started calling Dean weak and acted as though it was a burden. Emotionally, Dean shouldn't trust Sam. Then, despite the urging of Dean, angels, the profit, practically everyone around him, he follows Ruby and according to her, he didn't need the demon blood to use his mojo, and all she had to do was point him in the right direction, and every time he would make the 'right' decision. He was also lying to Dean for the better part of that year. In judgment, Dean shouldn't trust Sam. They've squabbled before, but never has Sam, once his brother was down, choked him in rage. In self-control, Dean shouldn't trust Sam.
On the other side, when it comes to his powers, SAM shouldn't trust DEAN unless he needs very specifically slanted advice because Dean has consistently proved to him that he can't handle his brother taking on demonic qualities. I think last night's episode begins to show Dean trying to deal with this. 1) Asking if Sam was okay in such a way that implied that he wanted to know if Sam was jonesing for bloood, but not in an accusing way and 2) Not flipping out the way he has before when he finds out that Sam's eyes went black (cause that would be kind of a big deal). The third piece is in the phone call that Dean gave to Sam trying to make amends (although Sam doesn't know about that). But it's not enough, yet.
Even though in the past Dean has been cooler about accepting Sam's demonish abilities, in Sam's recent memory, Dean can't necessarily be trusted to handle it. Even though in the past Sam has had Dean's back and been able to listen when Dean eventually opens up, in Dean's recent memory, Sam can't necessarily be trusted to do that.
Yes, Sam was tricked, but Ruby was telling him what he wanted to hear. We saw from the Trickster that Sam would be headed down that same destructive path if Dean died. I don't think Sam's motivations for going after Lilith have been that well analyzed, honestly. It's not just Winchester stubbornness, or a desire for the hunt. I think, and I don't really care if others agree with me, that it was a John-Winchester-like drive for vengeance. We saw how Sam tends to identify with his father when it comes to matters of vengeance, in S1 over Jessica and later in S4 we also saw Sam identifying with John in "Jump the Shark."
I think that it actually didn't matter whether Dean was alive again or not. Lilith killed his brother, and when Sam got him back, forty Hell-years later, he was not the same person. Sam was still mourning the loss of his brother after Dean came back because the brother he knew was gone, or different, which for Sam is a big deal. Sam and Dean have a very strange relationship because Dean has been everything to that boy that he could. Mother, father, protector, brother- Mary was dead, John was obsessed with the hunt and vengeance, but who stayed home to look after Sammy? You didn't see Sam's interest in killing old Yellow Eyes spike after he found out that he was responsible for taking and torturing John.
Sam was never really an orphan until Dean died. And seeing Dean as gone or broken would go a long way to explain Sam's out of character dismissal of Dean as too weak or not able to fight the way he should. He's still trying to save Dean.
Sam doesn't need to be coddled about what he did, and in fact I think the coddling wouldn't help much for Sam at this point. When possessed!Bobby ripped Sam a new one, Sam didn't even fight, just took it, and left to lick his wounds. At some point after you've done something bad, as Dean should well understand (since he made it his mission to save as many as he could last season even though he knew it could never make up for what he'd done), you need penance. You need something to DO to make things right, even if your actions are small and can't really make up for things.
So in the end, I don't think Dean did anything wrong in telling Sam how he feels after being asked repeatedly to address the issue. Dean has laid his feelings down, and now Sam knows what he has to do if he wants things to be better between himself and his brother. This is where the boys need to be if they want to make things better.
Like Dean could stay mad at Sam for long about anything anyway. He obviously still loves his brother, or he wouldn't be trying to keep his trap shut to keep from hurting him with how he feels. Sam will do things to earn Dean trust in him, and Dean, through learning to trust his brother again, will hopefully, now that he's had Sam knocked our of the center of his world, can start to see Sam with the respect Sam wants.
xenachakram12, for YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!