spn 4x8-4x16: Dean post
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.
( there's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear )
( there's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear )
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 RIGHTEOUS MAN, about how NOBODY COULD COMPARE to those Winchesters, that's a huge slam on EVERYONE EVER who dealt with a demon out of desperation, intentionally or not. Really, the guy who gave up his own life and soul to save his wife, who never hurt anyone but CANCER, that wasn't righteous? Bela, who as a CHILD offhandedly mentioned how she would like please not to be RAPED BY HER FATHER any more, she had it coming? Gross. A lifetime of physical violence is the only way to be "righteous" in this theology, apparently.
SERIOUSLY. The only thing I can consider is that RIGHTEOUS MAN = WARRIOR MAN FOR GOOD. Like there's angels and there's demons and then there's meat. And Dean is more than meat? Clearly angels and demons don't give a fuck about your average run of the mill person. So maybe it's more about The War and a power for good going to work for the other side. And these rules don't seem so much defined by ~God (if there is one?) but by what Lucifer needs to break free from his cage. And that would make sense, wouldn't it? For one of the good warriors to come on over, come on over, baby. /thoughts
Which reminds me again how Alistair said they were hoping that it would be Dean's father who would break the first seal. Again, another warrior dude who's been killing demons as The Righteous Doth Kill for his entire life. So this isn't righteousness of humility or even grace, but righteousness of wrath. This is a world where you kill everything and that means you're the winner. Not exactly recognizing the sweet and gentle Good. All the big players are dicks.
We even see this in what it does to Sammy and his acquisition of power. He has to be come The Biggest Baddest Lyingest Dick to win the day. So yeah, I think Lucifer is winning by corrupting the other side's army. Like with Urial. And on the flip side, here's Sammy beating the demons because he himself is corrupted -- and that clearly isn't going someplace good (or is it? is this the twist? God?).
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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. Like there's angels and there's demons and then there's meat.
YES.
We even see this in what it does to Sammy and his acquisition of power. He has to be come The Biggest Baddest Lyingest Dick to win the day.
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So what I love about Dean is his consistency. He likes what he likes. He always picks scissors because he always picks scissors. And there's this line in 4.19 when it happens again and Sam picks rock because that's how you beat Dean (adjusting to scenarios, right?) and Dean later goes, "Why didn't I pick paper?" And it's like he always picks scissors, that's why.
So maybe that's part of it? That he returns from hell and just throws himself into his routine. Because he's hungry, he eats, he wants sex, he has sex. I dunno. And maybe the idea is that when he was in hell, he had needs like NO MORE TORTURE and VENTING HIS PAIN ON OTHERS TO END HIS OWN PAIN. And he did that.
And maybe that shell disconnecting himself from others kept on going when he returned from hell? I dunno. I need to rewatch the season again, clearly.
There's just something about how Dean just keeps moving forward with his routine and his feeding his needs. And maybe the difference between 2.01 and his return from hell is that early season 2 was this slow spinning descent into venting his pain by thrashing demons. But we don't get to see that evolution from hell. Instead we see him having come out the other side and he's still... Dean. Because he wants what he wants, he goes after what he wants. He follows orders, from Dad, from his stomach, from his sex drive.
I'm not really sure how to add that up, tbh. My memory of his characterization in s4 isn't like my BtVS knowledge where I can identify a scene by Buffy's hairstyle.
Maybe the angst is more about how doing all those horrible things didn't change him essentially. He's Dean, even after 30 years of torture and 10 years of dealing it out. And if Sammy can't see a difference beyond Dean being ~weaker (which LOL okay -- surviving hell with your sanity intact destroys all your arguments, Sam, TRY HARDER SMART BOY), then it's like -- what is Dean? Has he always been a monster? And what's the difference between a Righteous Man and a Demon? What's the difference between Dean venting his pain on demons and Dean venting his pain on victims in Hell? He's still the same, the method is the same, and that he comes out the other side still the same? OH.
Is he nothing more than a weapon you point? So who gets to pull his trigger, the demons or the angels?
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So we see what happens in Season 2 when Sam is there for Dean. Then we see what happens in hell when Sam's not there. And Dean just falls into the abyss of his MY PAIN OH MY PAIN. It makes me think of the high school flashback episode when his girlfriend "Caroline" (LOL TVD) tells him he's just a sad lonely boy pretending. And so Season 4 Dean is just all surface pretense and underneath he's castigating himself -- but not in huge way, not in a deeply philsophically way but more in an "am i a monster?" way because even that has to be about Dean.
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. (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.)
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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.
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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!!???
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