So you know that first phone call you get around four on some Sunday afternoon, and your friend is all over the moon because her meth dealer boyfriend took her out for a perfect romantic dinner and told her all about how he's going to leave his fiancee?
And then that second phone call which inevitably comes two weeks later at four o'clock Sunday morning, and how - shocking twist - he didn't? And you love that friend, and you were up anyway for some ungodly reason, and she's crying and shit, and you're so busy trying to figure out how to get through to her that you don't even WANT to say you told her so? Only you still haven't figured it out a week later when she calls to tell you about how he just hasn't been himself lately and it's all going to work out she always knew it blah di blah blah?
No reason. Just asking.
Because it looks, unsurprisingly, the two monologues from Dean and Sam - well, no, really just Dean - are people's big take-aways from this. And that's cool, because I do think the speeches tell us valuable things about the characters. I just want to unpack and re-contextualize both of those scenes, because, slippery when wet. These two speeches are a fascinating study not in how the boys are to each other, but how the boys do and don't see and value each other.
Dean to Sam:
Dean: We’ve been down roads like this before, man. With Yellow Eyes, Lucifer, Dick Frigging Roman. We both know where this ends; one of us dies. Or worse.
Sam: So you just up and decided it's going to be you.
Dean: I’m a grunt, Sam. You’re not. You’ve always been the brains of this operation. And you told me yourself, you see a way out. You see a light at the end of this ugly ass tunnel. I don’t. But I tell you what I do know, is that I’m going to die with a gun in my hand. Because that’s what I have waiting for me, that’s all I have waiting for me. I want you to get out. I want you to have a life, become a Man of Letters, whatever. You with a wife and kids and grandkids, living until you’re fat and bald and chugging Viagra. That is my perfect ending and it’s the only one I’m gonna get. So I’m gonna do these trials and I’m gonna do them alone. End of story.
I'm a lot more interested in what Dean doesn't say.
- He doesn't acknowledge that Sam HAD that safe life - after all, it doesn't look like he had to fend off any demon attacks at the Kermit house; certainly he found it easy enough to keep the supernatural safe from Amelia.
- For that matter, Dean does not mention Amelia; he does not mention any of the other times he has interceded in Sam's safe life; he at no time acknowledges the sheer number of times Dean himself has, volitionally, put Sam at grave risk. ("I've spent the last decade yanking you into the line of fire because I want you to LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE.")
- And for all the thought he's supposedly put into the life he wants Sam to have, he doesn't know his own brother well enough to know what Sam would want to do. Hey, Man of Letters, sounds good enough, right?* Anyway, Dean says Sam wants it, so Sam wants it. Of course, as they saw with Henry, being a MoL, let alone the last surviving MoL, is anything but safe.
- Note that there was nothing said about Sam's abilities. He says that Sam is "smart" in some nonspecific way and then goes on to talk about Sam's ~feelings. The implication there is: I can do it and you can't.
What Dean wants is not for Sam to be safe, but to live on Dean's terms. The big nasty surprise Dean came back to this fall was that Sam could exist without his express permission. Dean tries to do an end-run around this shocking development and re-establish his dominance by saying HE wants Sam to do what he's been sniping all season at Sam for having done. Dean will do the trials, whether Sam likes it or not, and then if and when Sam does live on, he will have done so with Dean's approval. I am sure Dean believes he is - very much wants to be - a person who would throw it on the line for Sam's happiness. But as a great philosopher once said,
EVERYBODY LIES.
Sam: Closing the gates. It's a suicide mission for you. I want to slam hell shut too, okay? But I want to survive it. I want to live. And so should you. You have friends up here, family. Hell you've even got your own room now. You were right, 'kay. I see light at the end of this tunnel and I’m sorry you don’t. I am. But it’s there. And if you come with me, I can take you to it.
Dean: Sam, Be smart.
Sam: I am. And so are you. You’re not a grunt, Dean, you’re a genius. When it comes to lore...you’re the best damn hunter I’ve ever seen. Better than me, better than dad. I believe in you, Dean, so please, please, believe in me too.
(both quotes from the superwiki, emphasis mine)
Meanwhile, Sam, covered in blood and throwing himself into a suicide mission, is still the one giving the ego-stroking pep talk. And not just any pep talk! You were RIGHT, in your bullshit little rant up there, Dean! Dean, you're the BEST HUNTER EVER. You're a GENIUS. I think Sam is sincere there,** if only because he can't let himself criticize Dean at all to protect himself from knowing what's going on with them? For Dean to get out of the way of Sam stepping up and doing what must be done, Sam must first prostrate himself before Dean's sense of superiority.
The other issue, of course, is that while Sam sees Dean kindly, he does not see Dean accurately. Dean is a great hunter, but hardly the best. Sam is somewhat closer to the truth about Dean's intelligence - Dean is a very bright guy who's spent his whole lifetime stunting his intellectual potential, for a lot of self-protective reasons. If he's a grunt, then he doesn't have to try and be a Man of Letters and maybe not be quite as good at it as Sam, then he doesn't have to wonder what he gave up all those years ago when he dropped out of high school.
In any event, Dean's particular genius is not in lore. Lore is research and reasoning, which is Sam's end of things (Sam has to give Dean credit for Sam's own expertise). Dean's best-developed brain skills are "people smarts" or "EQ" or whatever. Dean is very good at reading people/monsters, and at almost instinctively knowing how to get them to show their weak spots. This is a very important life skill for anyone, and a survival skill for hunters. Dean is not a great hunter because he is physically strong and brave (though he is those things). He is a great hunter because he is good at sussing out and exploiting the interests and weaknesses of others.
And ultimately, that's what I see going on here. Maybe Dean has turned a corner and wants to live up to the things he's saying about his relationship with Sam, but years of behavior suggest quite the opposite. I get why Sam buys it. There are people who are very, very good at this - at knowing when to say the right things, to make the big romantic gesture and make you feel like the center of the world, because they're charmers, they're so amazing and everyone adores them, and they say they care about you. And I actually think that's quite a tragic trait in a non-sociopath.
So anyway, this is me sending up a flag for any other skeptics out there. I think those speeches were a setback to the brotherly relationship I'd like the boys to have, because it obscured the real issues between them. Note that I don't think this is an issue with the writing. I think that this episode has been meticulously set up throughout the season - with Sam having safe and Dean showing that he doesn't like that; with Sam proving that he can walk away now that the Lucifer thing is over (and so being involved affords him more agency than he's had at any major stage in the story).
I'm not saying don't hope for the best. I sure do, at least for Sam's sake. I'm saying if you're making a big to-do about how Dean's big florid speech was totally the "right" representation of this relationship, you should really think twice about judging our friend up there.
*
There are smaller moments in which it was a very nice episode for Dean's emotional arc. I actually think his nihilism at the end of the episode there was a direct reaction to his growing comfort in their little home. The bittersweet joy we see him take in nesting comes through beautifully. But because we're firmly in his POV, we're encouraged to ignore the self-indulgence of it. He flagrantly didn't partake in Sam's slow and steady study marathon, abdicating all level of responsibility for rebuilding the MOL network to Sam so he could go to his room and stroke his shaft. For all he's spent all season berating Sam for not being able to do the impossible, Dean is a goddamn slacker whenever they get to the Batcave. You can't alphabetize? Don't know how to sweep a broom?
I would have loved more than anything for Sam to be half as bad as his rep and take Dean at his word. If there's something Sam can do, he does it, even if he shouldn't (see S4). Sam's year off is really crucial to having set this up, because it's the first time he's actually chosen to get involved in the fight. He was always dragged into the center of it against his own will and to his own detriment. More importantly, he's regaining confidence he had and then lost throughout S3/4. And now, everyone's involved in it together - if they are being had by Naomi or Crowley or whoever else, they're all in it together, and so he can't blame himself for whatever happens.
The scenes with Kevin on the boat (Fizzles' Folly! bwahaha!) are a lot of fun. From the outside, they can both tell that their traditional approach of keeping a whole face in the grindstone isn't really sustainable. Dean pushes Kevin to do what he needs to handle the task at hand; Sam tries to talk Kevin into paying attention to his long-term well being; Kevin doesn't pay attention to any of it except the shower and the No-Doz. (Really, Dean, you couldn't buy the boy vitamins for pep?)
Kevin, Sam, Dean - they're all picking different stories they're telling to themselves about what "over" is. There's no over; it's never over. For Dean, it's over when he dies, and this is the hill he wants to die on. For Sam, it's over when this fight is won. For Kevin, it's a lot more complicated. He doesn't know about the existence of the other tablets yet, though surely if he could let himself think about it he would know that the risk of being a prophet doesn't end once he accomplishes this one task. He's just not at the point where he can let himself acknowledge it, which is fair but going to bite him in the ass, and probably sooner rather than later.
I really enjoyed the VOTW family and Ellie, unsurprisingly, except the major dubcon issues, between dead guy roping in big sis, and little sis wishing her way into bed with him. THE SADDEST THING, though, when Sam's handcuffing them and just says "we're here to help" with his rueful little face.
SO ANYWAY Sam will do the trials! Intellectually I think this has been really smartly set up throughout the season, and I think it allows for a change in the power dynamic between the brothers which has been necessary for a very long time, since way back in S3. And I think it's been deliberately set up throughout the season, and I'm really excited to see the payoff.
*(I'm not sure I blame Dean entirely for not knowing what Sam's dreams were? I don't think Sam knows what his dreams are. I don't even know that he was that attached to the idea of becoming a lawyer, way back at Stanford, as he was about attaining respectability in a way that would make him totally useless to the hunter community. This is a deeper tragedy, though.)
**Consciously sincere, maybe, but he does still position himself as a better hunter, when that will pad Dean's ego. "It's a suicide mission FOR YOU," implying that it wouldn't be for Sam. I'm sorry, I thought the good hunters were the ones that won fights?
THIS SHOW IT'S KILLING ME, every episode makes me want to meta and meta and I just fall right down the rabbit hole and I COULD JUST GO ON AND ON. Like, I just feel as if...I'm in good hands, you know? I feel like the things that have concerned (sometimes seriously) me about this narrative are being questioned and complicated and making me even more fond of everything that came before. This is how long-runners should go.
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