SPN 9x4
In which I am, as usual, quite pleased with the episode and extraordinarily grumpy with fandom.
When I first watched Time for a Wedding, I didn’t like it. And…I still don’t love it, I’m not entirely sure it succeeded in what I suspect it was trying to do, but I do at least respect the concept. Sam’s wedding takes place two episodes after he finds out about Amy, and one episode after he not only takes Dean back as his partner but caves to Dean’s judgment completely. Time for a Wedding is meant to make us extremely uncomfortable with the idea of someone distorting Sam’s sense of reality until he goes around telling everyone he’s so lucky to have this person love him so much because “[he’s] the dick.” After catching up with the rest of fandom toward the end of S7, I started to think that the episode was sending up a flag to viewers who were uncomfortable with SamnDean, and the use of Becky specifically was an (arguably inappropriate) indictment of the segment of fandom that, like Becky, was and is content to sigh over “broments” without much caring about Sam’s perspective aside from his being a smiling, admiring sidekick to his partner. Again, not sure it worked for me, and I do find the episode too difficult to rewatch, but it feels entirely too apropos to be a total accident (and even if it happened subconsciously rather than deliberately, the parallels are there). I am less sure as to whether name-dropping Becky during this arc was intentional, though the way the scene lets Sam’s reaction linger for several uncomfortable, unfunny seconds suggests it might well have been.
Jeez, Sam had his bitch pants on this week. AND I LOVED IT. Because, like we saw last week with his actions/Zeke’s comment that showed how badly he wanted to be useful, this week he’s trying to prove that he’s not stupid. This was precipitated by Dean’s skepticism that Sam could come up with anything useful, with that incredulous “this was…your idea?” when Sam figured out how to use the machine to track the angels. The question was probably somewhat prompted with Dean being worried about an idea which could help or hurt Cas possibly coming from Zeke, but to Sam it’s “omg I can’t believe YOU would think of this” - particularly in light of Dean’s supposedly one-man brainwork on the last case. In the Zeke cover-up of the week, Charlie was the hero and the witch got the drop on Sam. It’s still undermining Sam’s confidence in his hunting skills. It’s a little thing, but I don’t think it was just force of habit that Sam handed off his gun to Dean when they went off after the witch? I think he was falling back into the pattern of letting Dean steer him because he believes that he sucks.
I just loved how dissonant and noncommittal it was. Sam ostensibly feels good about the partnership and his place in it, but with resentment and frustration I’m not even sure he’s aware of leaking out of him. He tells Dorothy that they write their own stories, and then holds up a book that someone else wrote for her - he embraces the idea of living on his own terms even though we know he’s not, a poignant parallel to Cas last week attempting to have faith in April and ending up getting skewered for his troubles. He’s hesitant, even fearful, to set down roots in a home, even if he says he’s fine with it by the end of the episode - he knows something’s not right, he’s heard the name “Zeke.” He’s afraid to let his guard down and accept what he has now as good, and he’s right to be worried about it, he’s right to feel unsafe. The bunker is the safest place in the world from almost every threat, except the one that’s hidden deep within its walls.
It’s just creepy, how the adjustment to this “normality” is happening. I think that this was the real turning point in the Zeke situation. The episode reminded me forcefully of Sam’s statement that he’s okay with dying as long as nobody else gets hurt because of him. Because nobody died due to Sam’s unconventional rescue from death; and now it’s “both Cas and Charlie are alive because Sam is hosting Ezekiel.” If there is or has been a moment where Sam could be convinced to go along with what’s happening, it’s this one. Dean’s choice to stay silent is about Dean and Dean alone.
That said, I do think Zeke is stringing Dean along. Sure, I’ll do this FOR YOU, just so you know YOU’RE the one dragging this out, I am put out by your NEEDS so don’t bother asking me ANY QUESTIONS, just accept that ALL the decisions around here happen on MY terms. Basically Dean is getting a taste of his own medicine, which would be fine if he wasn’t making sure Sam was even more vulnerable to the whole thing than he is.
THE RITURRRZZZ HATE SAM BECOZ HE DOESN’T GET A ROOM/FRIENDS/WHATEVER: I have been arguing against this based on my analysis but now I have an episode and dialogue backing me up so let’s do it. Sam being uncertain about relaxing and enjoying things was, to me, a consistent part of the character; there was a REASON his room looked the way it did, and it was because he was afraid to start feeling comfortable. He didn’t set up his room right away last season because he was still healing over Amelia, and then he didn’t expect to live long enough to care (or, I suspect, want to lay down too many roots that would make him not want to die by the end of the trials). THIS MAKES SENSE. And then….look, you don’t go from “willing to die” to “happily planning for a future with the person whose ‘disappointment’ and ‘anger’ drove you to attempt suicide in the first place” in a month! Same with Dorothy. Do we really think he would have let his guard down and opened up to her at all if he thought she was going to be around? I would say it’s unlikely. Because the people who try to become a part of Sam’s life tend to turn up either using him or dead or both. (Case in point: Amelia. Things worked with her because he assumed they were temporary and desperate; when it sunk in that things could be or even were real between them, he ran for the hills. Twice.) This is not Sam being personally victimized by THE RITURRRZZZ, this is characterization with the strength and subtlety to pull at your heartstrings.
(Sometimes I feel a little silly being, like, the Sam Whisperer, because all this seems so obvious to me that I am almost tempted to assume that people who “just don’t get this ~characterization??!?” are being disingenuous. But far be it from me to be uncharitable, so. HERE IS YOUR EXPLANATION, MY DUCKS.)
So, SWEET ADA LOVELACE, I loved it. The show really is making an effort to deal with its Woman Problem (though a less charitable soul than mine would be more and more inclined of late to suspect that much of the “feminist” criticism is actually a fig leaf for people sulking about not having their fanon coddled) and I appreciate it a lot. It was packed with deliberate self-insert opportunities, in a way that signaled not only that Charlie was a wish-fulfillment character, but was really honest about why she was necessary as a wish-fulfillment character. Like, the script leaned hard on just how sexist it would be to romanticize the “Men” of Letters setup, and not only was it critical of the kind of nostalgia-porn that leads people to openly envy the Mad Men, but it punched a lot of holes in the accepted narrative of that time, both in terms of Dorothy being a hunter and in terms of Dorothy puncturing her father’s rosy mythologizing about Oz. And I think being able to see yourself in the narrative somehow is a really important way into a narrative, even if that character isn’t the one you relate to the most. I had a really hard time getting into the first couple of seasons; I think I got and stayed emotionally invested in large part because of the introduction of Bela. I am not a whole lot like her, and my POV character became Sam very easily by the middle of S4, but I needed some way in that I just wasn’t getting in those early episodes. And in this episode, I wasn’t deep in Charlie’s or Dorothy’s head the way I was in Sam’s, but I just did enjoy things so much more because they were both there.
I especially liked that Charlie and Dorothy…had reasonable disagreements and it was fine? You know? It wasn’t like, they were artificially at odds with each other, or they had to get along perfectly because femaleness is so bizarre and alien that it trumps all other personality traits. They were just set up to have a great partnership, in part because they were both so straightforward about having different approaches and points of view. That’s an extraordinarily healthy interpersonal dynamic, and a sharp contrast to the SamnDean of recent episodes, which now more than ever is superficially peaceful and rotten at the core. I feel like they’ll fall pretty easily into a Castle-and-Beckett kind of dynamic. (Or a Castle/Beckett kind of dynamic! I KNOW WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS BUT LET ME HAVE MY DREAM OKAY.)
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/313986.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
When I first watched Time for a Wedding, I didn’t like it. And…I still don’t love it, I’m not entirely sure it succeeded in what I suspect it was trying to do, but I do at least respect the concept. Sam’s wedding takes place two episodes after he finds out about Amy, and one episode after he not only takes Dean back as his partner but caves to Dean’s judgment completely. Time for a Wedding is meant to make us extremely uncomfortable with the idea of someone distorting Sam’s sense of reality until he goes around telling everyone he’s so lucky to have this person love him so much because “[he’s] the dick.” After catching up with the rest of fandom toward the end of S7, I started to think that the episode was sending up a flag to viewers who were uncomfortable with SamnDean, and the use of Becky specifically was an (arguably inappropriate) indictment of the segment of fandom that, like Becky, was and is content to sigh over “broments” without much caring about Sam’s perspective aside from his being a smiling, admiring sidekick to his partner. Again, not sure it worked for me, and I do find the episode too difficult to rewatch, but it feels entirely too apropos to be a total accident (and even if it happened subconsciously rather than deliberately, the parallels are there). I am less sure as to whether name-dropping Becky during this arc was intentional, though the way the scene lets Sam’s reaction linger for several uncomfortable, unfunny seconds suggests it might well have been.
Jeez, Sam had his bitch pants on this week. AND I LOVED IT. Because, like we saw last week with his actions/Zeke’s comment that showed how badly he wanted to be useful, this week he’s trying to prove that he’s not stupid. This was precipitated by Dean’s skepticism that Sam could come up with anything useful, with that incredulous “this was…your idea?” when Sam figured out how to use the machine to track the angels. The question was probably somewhat prompted with Dean being worried about an idea which could help or hurt Cas possibly coming from Zeke, but to Sam it’s “omg I can’t believe YOU would think of this” - particularly in light of Dean’s supposedly one-man brainwork on the last case. In the Zeke cover-up of the week, Charlie was the hero and the witch got the drop on Sam. It’s still undermining Sam’s confidence in his hunting skills. It’s a little thing, but I don’t think it was just force of habit that Sam handed off his gun to Dean when they went off after the witch? I think he was falling back into the pattern of letting Dean steer him because he believes that he sucks.
I just loved how dissonant and noncommittal it was. Sam ostensibly feels good about the partnership and his place in it, but with resentment and frustration I’m not even sure he’s aware of leaking out of him. He tells Dorothy that they write their own stories, and then holds up a book that someone else wrote for her - he embraces the idea of living on his own terms even though we know he’s not, a poignant parallel to Cas last week attempting to have faith in April and ending up getting skewered for his troubles. He’s hesitant, even fearful, to set down roots in a home, even if he says he’s fine with it by the end of the episode - he knows something’s not right, he’s heard the name “Zeke.” He’s afraid to let his guard down and accept what he has now as good, and he’s right to be worried about it, he’s right to feel unsafe. The bunker is the safest place in the world from almost every threat, except the one that’s hidden deep within its walls.
It’s just creepy, how the adjustment to this “normality” is happening. I think that this was the real turning point in the Zeke situation. The episode reminded me forcefully of Sam’s statement that he’s okay with dying as long as nobody else gets hurt because of him. Because nobody died due to Sam’s unconventional rescue from death; and now it’s “both Cas and Charlie are alive because Sam is hosting Ezekiel.” If there is or has been a moment where Sam could be convinced to go along with what’s happening, it’s this one. Dean’s choice to stay silent is about Dean and Dean alone.
That said, I do think Zeke is stringing Dean along. Sure, I’ll do this FOR YOU, just so you know YOU’RE the one dragging this out, I am put out by your NEEDS so don’t bother asking me ANY QUESTIONS, just accept that ALL the decisions around here happen on MY terms. Basically Dean is getting a taste of his own medicine, which would be fine if he wasn’t making sure Sam was even more vulnerable to the whole thing than he is.
THE RITURRRZZZ HATE SAM BECOZ HE DOESN’T GET A ROOM/FRIENDS/WHATEVER: I have been arguing against this based on my analysis but now I have an episode and dialogue backing me up so let’s do it. Sam being uncertain about relaxing and enjoying things was, to me, a consistent part of the character; there was a REASON his room looked the way it did, and it was because he was afraid to start feeling comfortable. He didn’t set up his room right away last season because he was still healing over Amelia, and then he didn’t expect to live long enough to care (or, I suspect, want to lay down too many roots that would make him not want to die by the end of the trials). THIS MAKES SENSE. And then….look, you don’t go from “willing to die” to “happily planning for a future with the person whose ‘disappointment’ and ‘anger’ drove you to attempt suicide in the first place” in a month! Same with Dorothy. Do we really think he would have let his guard down and opened up to her at all if he thought she was going to be around? I would say it’s unlikely. Because the people who try to become a part of Sam’s life tend to turn up either using him or dead or both. (Case in point: Amelia. Things worked with her because he assumed they were temporary and desperate; when it sunk in that things could be or even were real between them, he ran for the hills. Twice.) This is not Sam being personally victimized by THE RITURRRZZZ, this is characterization with the strength and subtlety to pull at your heartstrings.
(Sometimes I feel a little silly being, like, the Sam Whisperer, because all this seems so obvious to me that I am almost tempted to assume that people who “just don’t get this ~characterization??!?” are being disingenuous. But far be it from me to be uncharitable, so. HERE IS YOUR EXPLANATION, MY DUCKS.)
So, SWEET ADA LOVELACE, I loved it. The show really is making an effort to deal with its Woman Problem (though a less charitable soul than mine would be more and more inclined of late to suspect that much of the “feminist” criticism is actually a fig leaf for people sulking about not having their fanon coddled) and I appreciate it a lot. It was packed with deliberate self-insert opportunities, in a way that signaled not only that Charlie was a wish-fulfillment character, but was really honest about why she was necessary as a wish-fulfillment character. Like, the script leaned hard on just how sexist it would be to romanticize the “Men” of Letters setup, and not only was it critical of the kind of nostalgia-porn that leads people to openly envy the Mad Men, but it punched a lot of holes in the accepted narrative of that time, both in terms of Dorothy being a hunter and in terms of Dorothy puncturing her father’s rosy mythologizing about Oz. And I think being able to see yourself in the narrative somehow is a really important way into a narrative, even if that character isn’t the one you relate to the most. I had a really hard time getting into the first couple of seasons; I think I got and stayed emotionally invested in large part because of the introduction of Bela. I am not a whole lot like her, and my POV character became Sam very easily by the middle of S4, but I needed some way in that I just wasn’t getting in those early episodes. And in this episode, I wasn’t deep in Charlie’s or Dorothy’s head the way I was in Sam’s, but I just did enjoy things so much more because they were both there.
I especially liked that Charlie and Dorothy…had reasonable disagreements and it was fine? You know? It wasn’t like, they were artificially at odds with each other, or they had to get along perfectly because femaleness is so bizarre and alien that it trumps all other personality traits. They were just set up to have a great partnership, in part because they were both so straightforward about having different approaches and points of view. That’s an extraordinarily healthy interpersonal dynamic, and a sharp contrast to the SamnDean of recent episodes, which now more than ever is superficially peaceful and rotten at the core. I feel like they’ll fall pretty easily into a Castle-and-Beckett kind of dynamic. (Or a Castle/Beckett kind of dynamic! I KNOW WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS BUT LET ME HAVE MY DREAM OKAY.)
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/313986.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.