SPN 9x12 - Sharp Teeth
I don’t actually have that much to say because Garth = meh
The Watsonian interpretation of Garth being shitty to Sam and clinging to a sugar-coated picture of Dean is that people (particularly naifs like Garth) do tend to take people’s projections of themselves as objective truth. People like Dean tend to have a knack for getting other people to think that ~he only gets like this because he can’t help himself, he doesn’t really mean any of it. Abusers don’t actually announce themselves as abusers. Meanwhile, we know that Sam has an unfairly, heartbreakingly low opinion of himself, and if you act apologetic or ashamed, people assume it’s because you do have something they would thing you ought to be sorry for or ashamed of.
On a Doylist level….between this episode and what I recently caught of the Bad Boys drama, I kind of think Glass has Julie Plec’s Elena problem? He was too close to a certain type of person for too long not to know how they operate, but for whatever reason he is really invested in protecting this person’s rationalizations. It’s John when John’s around and Dean when he’s not. Obviously it’s both less intrusive and more frustrating, since he’s not in charge, since the weird characterization-warp isn’t the controlling vision of the characters, but like, there are other people who should be catching it. (Also maybe we could afford to be a little classier than OMG STFU FU WARBLGRBL?)
As much as I liked seeing Sam take some steps toward standing up for himself, I was cringing at how he’s really not able to wrap his head around the little status plays that Dean does constantly. I don’t think it took any conscious effort for Dean to play him like a fiddle about whether they’d ever get back together at all, with the whole “I’m staying away ~for your own good” garbage. Like, if Sam gets the time and space I think he still needs, then it’s a tacit acceptance of Dean’s patronizing “protection;” if he’s going to avoid feeling weak in that way, then he ends up back in Dean’s clutches to be manipulated. Or like…the way he just sits down in the passenger’s seat of the Impala at the end, because apparently Dean couldn’t follow him back to the bunker? Sam, baby.
I do think he handled that conversation as well as possible, though, and Dean’s continued avoidance of responsibility for his abusive behavior was great. I will say, though, I don’t think it’s quite so simple as “Dean’s not responding because he doesn’t think what he did was wrong.” If he didn’t care that much, he would spit out a formal but insincere “I’m sorry” and qualify it or walk it back the way he always does. He is avoiding apologizing because he does know how bad he fucked up, and if he gives up the “we both know I’m always right” fiction then he loses his place at the top of the heap.
I already wrote out most of my thoughts on Sam’s regret of not closing the gates, but there’s one thing I want to add.
Sam has internalized, completely, Dean’s “HOW DARE YOU try to live a life consisting of anything other than flinging yourself on the sword” hateful garbage from the beginning of S8. I do think a big part of it is that he’s sincerely like “this wouldn’t be happening if I had gone through with killing myself.” He is thinking that regardless of even arguable truth: in tonight’s episode, he blames himself for Garth’s predicament, though closing the gates would not have had any impact on the werewolf situation, because werewolves are not demons, acto established rules of the ‘verse they don’t belong in or go to Hell. (Those still maintaining the farcical premise that Dean gives a shit about Sam’s well-being were probably startled when Dean did not point this out to him, but that’s neither here nor there.)
But it’s also a coping mechanism. He’s wrapping in “I should be dead because finishing the trial was the right thing to do” with “I should want to be dead because if I’m glad to be alive that means I don’t have the right to be mad about Gadreel.” I reiterate, neither of those statements are logical - if Metatron supported their closing the gates there is VERY good reason to doubt that it was a smart idea, and ofc Dean gaslighting Sam for weeks and weeks showing that it was about Dean’s ego and not Sam’s life - but feelings are feelings, they don’t have to be logical. Self-blame is his reflexive response to Dean’s abuse.
Concerning all the things he said before deciding to stop the trials, I think Dean’s behavior actually reinforced all of those feelings of inadequacy. Which is the risk we all take in moments of vulnerability, that the person will just be like “yup, you do totally suck!” I think he’s suppressing all of that as much as possible. Because if he remembers it, his choices are (1) capitulate entirely to the submissive object-role Dean has assigned to him or (2) acknowledge just how badly things have been going with Dean for a very long time. And he’s not in a place to do either of those things, he’s making it All About Gadreel not just because that was a big fucking deal, but because that allows him to put off doing the reevaluation I think he knows he has to do eventually.
Sam rolling in that anger at Dean for Dean’s part in convincing him not to close the gates is in part what it says on the tin - Sam thinks he should be dead, and he hung in there because Dean said so. Ancillary to that, though, I think it’s also that Sam is feeling disillusioned because he went on the freaking suicide mission because he really, sincerely, 100% believed that Dean means the shit he says, about “ass on the line, fighting the fight, any and all self-preservation and you might as well be stomping around shanking civilians yourself.” When Dean threw the mission aside for the reasons that he did, he was also admitting that it was all bullshit, he only meant those things insofar as was convenient to keep Sam jumping, which WE have known for ages, obviously, but I think it's good Sam is catching on.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/327321.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.