spn 4x8-4x16: Dean post

[pocochina]

OKAY. I STILL LOVE HIM, I SWEAR. But I'm having big issues with Dean's arc and with the way the show is handling it.

Comments

[angearia]

PREACH. YES. I've been having similar issh.

Well, and this:

It's not that he's screwed up by hell, or by his life before it.

See, it bugs me how it doesn't seem like he is all that screwed up? Just, that should've seemingly made a bigger dent in his behavior. We got a bigger reaction from him post near-death experience and the loss of his father.

I dunno. That scene when he confessed the truth to Sammy, I felt for him because of the DEAN PAIN and Jensen Ackles sold it, but I couldn't help thinking in the back of my mind how it felt inorganic. There's been signs of Sam's arc blazoned across the sky for the entirety of Season 4 which is why 1.9 and 1.16 are so AMAZING. With Dean, I'm just not feeling that same wicked attention.

I have huge, huge narrative and philosophical issues with the way Dean's specialness implicitly shits on everyone else who's been preyed on by the hellhounds. The only takeaway I get from his description of the torture is that nobody could possibly deserve it - but then all the yapping about the

[pocochina]

See, it bugs me how it doesn't seem like he is all that screwed up? Just, that should've seemingly made a bigger dent in his behavior. We got a bigger reaction from him post near-death experience and the loss of his father.

Mmmm, I agree. I'm not seeing how it was a good choice to make him have suffered forty years in the desert hell? Because if he were going to really deal with that, he'd be catatonic, which might drag on the plot a bit. Four months of unimaginable torment, and him giving in after three, that'd still be believable that it would mess with him. But I feel like the show doesn't have faith in us that we'd sympathize with that kind of suffering? So then it has to be TOTALLY UNKNOWABLY HUGE AND HORRIBLE.

The alternative reading is that no, actually, it's that his kill-or-be-killed life before hell was SO fucked up that he adapted to hell entirely too easily? But that throws a big old kink in the way we're supposed to admire freaking John. Which:

The only thing I can consider is that RIGHTEOUS MAN = WARRIOR MAN FOR GOOD

[angearia]

Okay, I'm maybe having thoughts on Dean? Gonna throw them your way

[angearia]

Also, to connect the disparate threads here, Dean in hell was without his emotional support. The only person who can draw Dean outside of his own lonely angsty pain is Sam

[pocochina]

He's just so lost inside his own head and Sam's the only one who can bring him out. Only he comes back to find a Sam who's not the same, who's keeping secrets and who Dean can't feel like he can fully rely on. So now Dean's just spinning in his own pain.

Yeah. I think they're both seeing each other clearly for the first time in some ways. Sam's always been able to lie and keep secrets, how else could he live their life? But Dean never knew what that did to Sam until he was on the business end of it.

There's the identity crisis, too, because he's built everything he doesn't hate about himself around protecting Sam. But Sam doesn't need him or anyone else. So what's left of Dean? He was so willing to throw his own life away so he'd never have to answer that question, but now he does.

(And I presume Castiel might figure into a new source of support for Dean? Or at the very least, a new way to get Dean out of his own head.)

Their dynamic is a thing of beauty. BEAUTY.

[pocochina]

There's just something about how Dean just keeps moving forward with his routine and his feeding his needs.

Yeah, that's huge and could be super-interesting. He's really good at going through the motions and putting on the persona. To a point where - he shouldn't be that good at it. Nobody should. And he never should have had to be, this isn't a new development. And to me, that's the fascinating story, not AND THEN HE WUZ JESUS OK!!???