SPN 2x01 reaction
Residual S1 thoughts: I do have some interesting character thoughts on Sam. Dean is my boo, natch, I get him. Sam, I like and have a reasonable handle on - and that dude is fucked up. Like, Scarecrow, when Dean has to try and charm the couple off to safety and he realizes he completely lacks Sam';s manipulation skills? I mean, of course he had to learn those skills, the cute little boy with the hardened warriors, of course he wanted to be a lawyer, he was an advocate from way back when. But the man who represents himself has a fool for a client - Sam is crap at actually communicating his own needs. Fortunately for him, Dean is good at drawing him out.
S2
I spent the whole episode wondering - and I'm still not entirely sure - is ghost-Dean really Dean, or is he Sam's and John's projection entirely? Dean is the one who might use the hoodoo-mojo phrase, but Sam is the one who really believes. And Dean's anger at his father sounds far more like John's deservedly guilty conscience than something Dean would let himself consciously think. And is the reaper-figure saying something Dean wants to believe or hear, that it's okay to let go?
As ever - what is the demon going to do with John's soul; what happens in the world and to the boys for John Winchester's blaze-of-glory death wish? And oh, God, how is Dean going to live with this?
I honestly can't even blame Sam for not understanding what his father's trying to do. He just doesn't want Sam getting in the way; he doesn't want to face Sam after Sam finds out. He'll leave the nasty business to Dean yet again. "Some stupid macho showdown"; "it's the same selfish obsession." get it, boo.
I love how much they call each other "dude." Seriously. It's casual and easy to miss, but it is generally a mild term of endearment, and that's how the boys use it, they're saying "I love you" whenever they bust each others' balls about the music.
"Half the time we fight I don't know what we're fighting about...I've always doen the best I could." no. fail. do not pass go, do not collect any magic bullets. He's keeping the truth about Sam from Sam, and Sam knows on some level, and they're always talking around this thing. Maybe chasing that demon really was the best he could do to protect Sam (and even then, if he was going to do that, he had no right at all to drag those children into it. He should've set up an open adoption with a nice pair of pagan lesbians to give them a stable home and do the protection spells and make sure the kids had enough god-damned FOOD.
IDK, he'll probably haunt them or whatever, I half hope he does, because this is a pretty terrible resolution to the Dean-John relationship. "You didn't complain" isn't actually a credit to Dean. I mean, it's not a mark against him, it's just a symptom of how messed-up he is. Someone with some sense of self-preservation and self-worth? WOULD COMPLAIN. And that is OKAY.
As long as Dean can accept John's excuses that family is sacrosanct, as long as you can never leave, then John really did do the best he could. But as soon as there are other types of families, other ways for this family to be a family, then oh, GOD, DEAN, conscripting a child into a war isn't abuse, it's a violation of every human rights code we understand.
John Winchester isn't a misguided father, he's a war criminal.
Dean is a communitarian in the most inextricable way. Twice over, he's lived when he should have died. Aside from all his near-death misses, there was Faith - where the young man died so he might live, and then where Layla wasn't cured so Sam could stay that way. And now this. Dean is an abomination. This is the identiy struggle - he's alive when he shouldn't be, but he doesn't have anything he wats to live for, for himself. Just his family. And with John gone, what an unbelievable burden to put on Dean. Because Sam knows that, too, and it'll swallow him whole. That's what ghost stories are about, in the end, reliving the ugly parts of history so we don't have to talk about them. John Winchester was a ghost well before he died.