SPN 10x03 - Soul Survivor
I generally try to avoid fandom response until writing my thoughts about the episode, because then my thoughts inevitably become in part a response to what other people think, even if that response is “those thoughts are silly.” But I’ve been chatting with people about it for days anyway, so that kind of got shot this time around. Short answer, though, is that I liked it a lot, even though I have a lot of problems with how other people are liking it.
It set the tone in a promising way that Sam went to the blood bank. (And, you know, blood shortages are a problem, but ethically, I think it’s just as defensible for Dean to get a transfusion as anyone else? And from a harm-reductionist perspective, if killing him is off the table for whatever reason….Knights of Hell are a public health menace, that’s all I’m saying.) It’s a good sign that Sam isn’t bleeding himself dry for Dean. I did boggle a little at Sam like “I’m going to feed him all his favorite snacks!” at the end - like, having that response to someone coming after you with a blunt force object is not love, it’s Stockholm syndrome - and I’m boggling a lot more at fandom fetishizing it. (“Oh, now that Sam did something which is damn near impossible, putting himself at significant risk and cheerfully taking even worse abuse than usual in the process UP TO AND INCLUDING YET ANOTHER ATTEMPT ON HIS LIFE, and insisted on going out to buy Dean treats afterward, I love him because he CARES ABOUT HIS BROTHER NOW!!” -basic Beckys.) But it totally made sense. This is Sam doing what he convinced himself Dean was doing for him five years ago. But look at the difference; just look at it. When Dean locked him down in the panic room, it wasn’t about Sam being a demon, it was about Sam being the wrong kind of human - but Sam has to think Dean was doing him a favor, was saving Sam from himself and the world from Sam, and so that is what he does to/for Dean.
Dean, meanwhile, got meaner and more aggressive as he got more and more human. He was only able to make that last run at Sam, as he admits, because he was that much closer to his usual self. I don’t really have anything to say about Dean’s viciousness - verbal or physical - that I haven’t said a dozen times before? But that was kind of what was great about it, was that it was patterns we’ve seen dozens of times already. The difference between what he was hissing at Sam down in the basement and what he has said to Sam on the regular for years now is that he wasn’t walking it back by pretending it was a joke, or “accidentally” letting Sam overhear him talking to someone else in situations where he knew Sam stood a good chance of hearing, or couching it within fishing for approval.
If anything, his efforts were weaker than usual, largely because they were obvious and partly because they were nonsensical. (“I got as far away from you as I could! I ran to the DISTANT WILDS of NORTH DAKOTA!” Another eight months and he’d have made it all the way to Cook County, Sam, BEST GET A MOVE ON.) The most interesting difference between this and his standard fare of insults was that he didn’t depend on (I don’t even think he played) the tried and true demon blood card, which fits with the interpretation that he knows exactly what he’s doing - Sam’s demon-related powers give him power over demons, and the last thing Dean wants to do is lead Sam to think about a way he hypothetically could be in charge, or even to feel like he’s taking the high road by refraining from doing something taboo.
And no, I don’t mind that Cas got there in time to protect Sam from Dean. lbr, if Cas hadn’t come into the picture we’d be hearing about how Sam didn’t really ~save Dean~ unless he used his own blood. The baseline we always seem to be working from is that Sam’s experiences or accomplishments don’t count unless he is as isolated as possible, as vulnerable as possible. Sam is allowed to be helped, and to take care of himself. What Sam did has, to our knowledge, either never been done by one person alone or (if the Mark did turn Dean into a full-on Knight of Hell) at all. Also, that was a pretty baller move. He and Dean are playing chicken in the hallway there - Dean dares him to use the knife, knowing that Sam won’t do it and with reason to believe that the knife wouldn’t work if he did, and Sam steps back and challenges him to make a move, suspecting that if he’s too human for the cuffs then he’s human enough to be restrained by an angel. Forcing him to make that move was a cool little humanity-exposure exercise.
I’m also seeing a few posts that are floating around like “that was it?” like….no? it wasn’t? And the episode told us it wasn’t, when Cas pointed out that the MoC was still in play. Sam went into avoidance about that for reasons that make a lot of sense for the character. There’s this mindset in fandom that their emotional arcs have to be resolved like and along with MotW, where it is a technical expectation that the audience feel 100% done with whatever the conflict between them is by the end of an episode. That’s an insulting underestimation of the depth of these issues.
So yeah, I think it’s a good thing that we didn’t try to share and care and learn and grow right away. I think that Sam taking a little bit of distance, both out of the bunker and in his denial about the Mark, while still feeling good about what he’d done made a lot of sense. Still, as it stands, the immediate fallout of Dean trying to murder Sam is Sam going out to buy him treats and Cas comforting him as he frets about “OMG is he mad at MEEEEEEE???” That is absolutely masterful framing of the situation. The guy makes Elena Gilbert look like an amateur.
And ahahahaha, WHAT’D I SAY. Dean’s OH SO SORRY (not sorry enough to say something to Sam, but enough to make doe-eyes for Cas) for the stuff he did as a demon, just like the S9 finale when he was OH SO SORRY (not sorry enough to say the words to Sam, but enough to make doe-eyes for the audience) for the shit he pulled while he had the Mark. I’ll be convinced that he’s trying to change when his repentance doesn’t neatly demarcate his sins by way of whether they occurred at a time when there’s a maximally exonerating external factor he can point to, for himself as much as Sam or Cas. I’ll believe he’s doing better when the give-and-take balance is not the way it is now, where Sam has just shown, at great personal risk, that his priorities are Dean, Dean, and Dean, and in return, Dean generously admits to someone else that Sam might want out. To put it in mytharc terms: Dean is still worthy of the Mark, because he is still basing his feelings about Sam on whether he is satisfied he has the power of life or death over Sam. That is what he needs to change about himself.
Which he very well might! I’m not saying this won’t turn out to have been a turning point, I’m saying it hasn’t yet, and we really shouldn’t prematurely let Dean off the hook because he fears negative fallout for terrorizing Sam even more openly than usual.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/336890.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
It set the tone in a promising way that Sam went to the blood bank. (And, you know, blood shortages are a problem, but ethically, I think it’s just as defensible for Dean to get a transfusion as anyone else? And from a harm-reductionist perspective, if killing him is off the table for whatever reason….Knights of Hell are a public health menace, that’s all I’m saying.) It’s a good sign that Sam isn’t bleeding himself dry for Dean. I did boggle a little at Sam like “I’m going to feed him all his favorite snacks!” at the end - like, having that response to someone coming after you with a blunt force object is not love, it’s Stockholm syndrome - and I’m boggling a lot more at fandom fetishizing it. (“Oh, now that Sam did something which is damn near impossible, putting himself at significant risk and cheerfully taking even worse abuse than usual in the process UP TO AND INCLUDING YET ANOTHER ATTEMPT ON HIS LIFE, and insisted on going out to buy Dean treats afterward, I love him because he CARES ABOUT HIS BROTHER NOW!!” -basic Beckys.) But it totally made sense. This is Sam doing what he convinced himself Dean was doing for him five years ago. But look at the difference; just look at it. When Dean locked him down in the panic room, it wasn’t about Sam being a demon, it was about Sam being the wrong kind of human - but Sam has to think Dean was doing him a favor, was saving Sam from himself and the world from Sam, and so that is what he does to/for Dean.
Dean, meanwhile, got meaner and more aggressive as he got more and more human. He was only able to make that last run at Sam, as he admits, because he was that much closer to his usual self. I don’t really have anything to say about Dean’s viciousness - verbal or physical - that I haven’t said a dozen times before? But that was kind of what was great about it, was that it was patterns we’ve seen dozens of times already. The difference between what he was hissing at Sam down in the basement and what he has said to Sam on the regular for years now is that he wasn’t walking it back by pretending it was a joke, or “accidentally” letting Sam overhear him talking to someone else in situations where he knew Sam stood a good chance of hearing, or couching it within fishing for approval.
If anything, his efforts were weaker than usual, largely because they were obvious and partly because they were nonsensical. (“I got as far away from you as I could! I ran to the DISTANT WILDS of NORTH DAKOTA!” Another eight months and he’d have made it all the way to Cook County, Sam, BEST GET A MOVE ON.) The most interesting difference between this and his standard fare of insults was that he didn’t depend on (I don’t even think he played) the tried and true demon blood card, which fits with the interpretation that he knows exactly what he’s doing - Sam’s demon-related powers give him power over demons, and the last thing Dean wants to do is lead Sam to think about a way he hypothetically could be in charge, or even to feel like he’s taking the high road by refraining from doing something taboo.
And no, I don’t mind that Cas got there in time to protect Sam from Dean. lbr, if Cas hadn’t come into the picture we’d be hearing about how Sam didn’t really ~save Dean~ unless he used his own blood. The baseline we always seem to be working from is that Sam’s experiences or accomplishments don’t count unless he is as isolated as possible, as vulnerable as possible. Sam is allowed to be helped, and to take care of himself. What Sam did has, to our knowledge, either never been done by one person alone or (if the Mark did turn Dean into a full-on Knight of Hell) at all. Also, that was a pretty baller move. He and Dean are playing chicken in the hallway there - Dean dares him to use the knife, knowing that Sam won’t do it and with reason to believe that the knife wouldn’t work if he did, and Sam steps back and challenges him to make a move, suspecting that if he’s too human for the cuffs then he’s human enough to be restrained by an angel. Forcing him to make that move was a cool little humanity-exposure exercise.
I’m also seeing a few posts that are floating around like “that was it?” like….no? it wasn’t? And the episode told us it wasn’t, when Cas pointed out that the MoC was still in play. Sam went into avoidance about that for reasons that make a lot of sense for the character. There’s this mindset in fandom that their emotional arcs have to be resolved like and along with MotW, where it is a technical expectation that the audience feel 100% done with whatever the conflict between them is by the end of an episode. That’s an insulting underestimation of the depth of these issues.
So yeah, I think it’s a good thing that we didn’t try to share and care and learn and grow right away. I think that Sam taking a little bit of distance, both out of the bunker and in his denial about the Mark, while still feeling good about what he’d done made a lot of sense. Still, as it stands, the immediate fallout of Dean trying to murder Sam is Sam going out to buy him treats and Cas comforting him as he frets about “OMG is he mad at MEEEEEEE???” That is absolutely masterful framing of the situation. The guy makes Elena Gilbert look like an amateur.
And ahahahaha, WHAT’D I SAY. Dean’s OH SO SORRY (not sorry enough to say something to Sam, but enough to make doe-eyes for Cas) for the stuff he did as a demon, just like the S9 finale when he was OH SO SORRY (not sorry enough to say the words to Sam, but enough to make doe-eyes for the audience) for the shit he pulled while he had the Mark. I’ll be convinced that he’s trying to change when his repentance doesn’t neatly demarcate his sins by way of whether they occurred at a time when there’s a maximally exonerating external factor he can point to, for himself as much as Sam or Cas. I’ll believe he’s doing better when the give-and-take balance is not the way it is now, where Sam has just shown, at great personal risk, that his priorities are Dean, Dean, and Dean, and in return, Dean generously admits to someone else that Sam might want out. To put it in mytharc terms: Dean is still worthy of the Mark, because he is still basing his feelings about Sam on whether he is satisfied he has the power of life or death over Sam. That is what he needs to change about himself.
Which he very well might! I’m not saying this won’t turn out to have been a turning point, I’m saying it hasn’t yet, and we really shouldn’t prematurely let Dean off the hook because he fears negative fallout for terrorizing Sam even more openly than usual.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/336890.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.