The Transformation of John Winchester
This is maybe a weird time to post season 1 meta, but I was reading moodymuse19's picspam on Top 19 Moments in Supernatural and it's making me all thinky and more in love with my show.
At the end of Season one Devil's Trap, we see Sam, who up until that point was so consumed with revenge even at the cost of his life, make a conscious decision to put family first. And we also see Papa Bear yell at him for it.
I’m surprised at you, Sammy. Why didn’t you kill it? I thought we saw eye-to-eye on this? Killing this demon comes first - before me, before everything.
Then comes Season 2, In My Time of Dying, where John Winchester, Mr. Killing-YED-Comes-Before-EVERYTHING make that same choice, choosing to not only hand over his life, but also the colt, the only thing that he knows that will kill Azazel to the very demon himself. Why? To save his son's life. I can't help but think that Sam's choice really made John think, and realize what his true priorities were. Which is not to say that the boys haven't always been #1 on Papa's list, I just think that he had a really distorted view on what that meant.
Which makes sense, Mary, for all we know, was a stay at home mom. The way this usually works is that the mother provides the emotional support and the father provides for the physical.
Going off of that, it makes sense that when his wife dies that's what John focuses on. He wants his children to be safe, so as they grew, he taught them how to hunt, and that killing the YED was the most important thing. Because I think that at the beginning it wasn't just about revenge with the YED. Mary was killed in SAM's room, and in John's journal he mentions an incident where a demon tries to take Sam. John at least guessed that the thing out there that killed his wife wanted his youngest as well. Which explains why he completely lost his shit when Sam told him that he was planning on leaving, which to John probably sounded something like, "Hi, Pops, I'm going to go off by myself and sit in class all day so I can forget everything you taught me and become vulnerable to everything I've been fighting all my life and hey, is your eye twitching?"
I also think that at the beginning that he wasn't capable of giving them the emotional nurturing they needed, and when he finally got to the point where he could, it had been pushed back on his list of priorities so much that he just forgot about it, which helps explain why he could so easily go from having a mindset where he is teaching his children to protect themselves, to instead training the troops.
So this is John's mindset when Sam goes off to school and becomes normal and then has the same tragedy befall him. When he see's his son next he's gotta be a painful reminder to John of himself in those early days, with the same pain and desperation and burning anger. And then later, miraculously Sam, angry revenge obsessed Sam, refuses to go in for the kill, that instead of doing the one thing he was trained his entire life to do, he instead says, "No, sir. Not before everything."
And I think that really resonated with John, starting in Bloodlust he began noticing that these were his children, and that maybe his obligations to them aren't what he had been thinking they were. When Sam refuses to kill Azazel I think that he reminds his dad of what's important, of what his goal was when he first started hunting, protecting his family.
So when Dean goes into a coma instead of reacting like his commanding officer, he acts like a father.
Somewhat unrelated, but all of this season 1 musing made me think of this; Season 4, when Sam's having his hallucinations in the panic room, who do you wish had also shown up besides, or maybe instead of, the people that did? For me, I would have loved to have S1 Sam so they could have had a puppy dog look-off. Come on, it would have been EPIC.
S1Sam: But dude, don't you see what you’re doing is wrong?! *puppyeyes*
S4Sam: Man, don't you get it? I have to, it's the only way! *puppyeyes*
S1Sam: *PUPPYEYES*
S4Sam: *PUPPYEYES*
It would keep going until Cas showed up and be temporarily be blinded.
Dean: Cas? What the hell are you doing here? Are you ok?
Cas: ...Dean.....the cute.....it was too much.......