SPN Ep Rxn 8.01: The Spiral of Doom
I used to do pretty much frame-by-frame reviews, with speculation and a detailed plot synopsis and a list of important technical and creature details. This is not one of those reviews.
I used to be a Dean girl. It took me a until Season 5 to warm up to Sam.
I didn't like Sam from the episode we met him, when he accused his absent father in front of his girlfriend who didn't know any better and his brother who worshiped the ground John walked on of being an irresponsible ineffectual careless drunk. That is multiple layers and dimensions of passive-aggressive, whiny, and out-of-line. And how he was pretty much solely motivated by revenge, playing at being the nice, normal guy when he really couldn't give a damn about people dying in the woods in Colorado. And the thing with the EMF meter -- could Sam make one out of a broken WalkMan? No. Shut your trap, Sam.
Sam, I say, is an asshole.
But the thing about Sam is, the longer we know him, the easier it is to forget he's an asshole because he tries so extremely hard all the time to be a good person. Sam is a constant titanic battle between good and evil, and it's not just demon-blood evil, it's regular evil, it's the evil in every one of us as we get on the bus and stare at our co-workers' food in the fridge and resent people for being more good-looking than we are. Sam tries so hard to be a nice guy that it shocks us when he is anything but. Sam works at being the hero.
Usually.
Most of the time.
The thing about this titanic battle is, sometimes evil wins. No -- frequently, evil wins. Sam gets knocked down, hard: he gets addicted, he falls into revenge spirals, he plays blame games, he believes what he wants to hear . . . and then he gets back up again. You ain't never gonna keep him down. Sam's quest to become a better person is like Wile E Coyote pursuing the Roadrunner. It's great television.
Because Sam works so hard at being the good guy, but he seems to be born to be an asshole, we get some seriously weird behavior patterns. Two of my favorite recent Sam moments come from Season Seven, Time For A Wedding (seriously) and are as follows:
The evil: (Dean and Garth approach Sam and Becky.) Sam: Who's the temp?
Who's the temp? I could spend paragraphs unpacking the many dimensions and mechanisms of disrespect, derision, contempt, and patronism embedded in those three flippant syllables Sam tosses off so effortlessly. Sam talks over Garth like he's not even there. He impugns Garth's status as a legitimate hunter. He questions Dean's judgment in hunting with anyone but Sam. He mocks Dean for lacking the confidence to hunt alone. Sam is just . . . mean. And it's subtle mean. How do you call somebody on a casual insult like that? It's effortlessly, perfectly mean; it takes talent. And Sam wasn't even paying attention; he really has nothing against Garth.
The good: Sam (gritting his teeth through it) forgives Becky.
This was above and beyond the call of duty. Forgiving Becky? After what she'd planned to do? Becky was unhinged, and misled, and a pawn, and needy and lonely, but few people, few good people, would have it in them to spare a kind word to her after this episode. A naturally nice person, in whom kindness and compassion flows like a bubbling spring, would feel righteous anger at the violation Becky planned and inflicted, and, listening to their anger because it is so rare, might make an exception to their habitual kindness and turn their mercy away. Sam sucks it up, forges past the volcano of anger and resentment he lives with every day, and forgives her anyway, because Sam doesn't expect being a good person to be easy. Sam works really, really hard at it. Often he does the right thing when few others would bother.
When Sam's on his game, he's magnificent. When he's not paying attention, he's a petty, arrogant, passive-aggressive little boy -- you know, Lucifer's perfect vessel. When he's alone, all bets are off. Sam's an introspective, self-made hero who screws up, often and majorly, but keeps trying to fix his mistakes. That's why most of my ficlets are about Sam now.
This season, I think Sam may have fallen into evil again. There's a relevant saying I heard somewhere that goes something like this: "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." Turn that saying on its head, and we have, "Stupidity can do as much damage as malice, far more commonly." Thus we have the lesser vices, apathy, disinterest, selfishness, short-sightedness, laziness, despair, willful blindness, deliberate helplessness. Easy vices. Soft and inviting as a snow-bank when you're freezing to death. Weakness.
Dean, by contrast, is the Righteous Man. Saving people, hunting things, looking out for Sammy. In the early seasons, Sam talked sweet, but Dean pointed them at people who needed saving. When Dean breaks down, it's gradual, irresistible, and usually the result of outside forces. Being a hero seems to come naturally to Dean. If Sam's spiritual battle is two wolves fighting, Dean's is a diamond constantly getting caked in manure and wood glue (the manure being the bitterness and PTSD life piles on him, the glue being the illusions and denial Dean wraps around himself). Dean's internal conflicts are not so often "what do I do now" as "am I strong enough to do what I know is right".
Dean has principles. When he compromises them, it's under duress and it's temporary. Sometimes his devotion to his principles is a little unsettling, especially when he's applying them to other people he cares for; look at his interactions with Castiel after he returned from the watery grave. Look at Sam's first detox, and "At least he'll die human."
But by the end of Season 7, Dean was losing his edge. I mean, the fight with the snake women in Adventures in Babysitting -- ouch. And the drinking, the revenge quests, losing sleep . . . Purgatory was a much-needed boot camp. Dean took a level in badass and returned raring to go and ready to strike terror into the heart of the darkness once again.
Wait, Dean Winchester took a level in badass?
On second thought, that doesn't sound so great.
We've seen Dean Winchester X-Treme Editions before: the resistance fighter of 2014, and Caucasian Blade. They were both awesome, but slightly less than desirable as brothers, friends, and team-mates. They were missing some essential part of humanity. Dean's always, when it comes down to it, had room in his principles for Sam, a little mercy and tolerance, but not anymore. Maybe it's not a diamond under all that manure and wood glue, but a knife. Knives cut.
Sam and Dean's reunion this season is a weird full-circle to their reunion in Season 1, with Sam being the soft civilian and Dean being the hardcore hunter, only this time, it's pure. Under his mild mask of propriety, Season 1 Sam was an angry, resentful young man who slid effortlessly into revenge and bloodlust. Under his badass jacket and the screaming vocals of AC/DC, Season 1 Dean was a desperate, loyal son and brother who just wanted his family back together again. By this time, Sam's had plenty of hard years to learn just how little joy and freedom he deserved out of life, and Dean's had so many disappointments, betrayals, and losses to maybe give up on faith in his family altogether. This time, I think Sam really is soft, and Dean is hardcore, in ways they could only pretend to be eight seasons ago.
I used to be a Dean girl. It took me a until Season 5 to warm up to Sam.
I didn't like Sam from the episode we met him, when he accused his absent father in front of his girlfriend who didn't know any better and his brother who worshiped the ground John walked on of being an irresponsible ineffectual careless drunk. That is multiple layers and dimensions of passive-aggressive, whiny, and out-of-line. And how he was pretty much solely motivated by revenge, playing at being the nice, normal guy when he really couldn't give a damn about people dying in the woods in Colorado. And the thing with the EMF meter -- could Sam make one out of a broken WalkMan? No. Shut your trap, Sam.
Sam, I say, is an asshole.
But the thing about Sam is, the longer we know him, the easier it is to forget he's an asshole because he tries so extremely hard all the time to be a good person. Sam is a constant titanic battle between good and evil, and it's not just demon-blood evil, it's regular evil, it's the evil in every one of us as we get on the bus and stare at our co-workers' food in the fridge and resent people for being more good-looking than we are. Sam tries so hard to be a nice guy that it shocks us when he is anything but. Sam works at being the hero.
Usually.
Most of the time.
The thing about this titanic battle is, sometimes evil wins. No -- frequently, evil wins. Sam gets knocked down, hard: he gets addicted, he falls into revenge spirals, he plays blame games, he believes what he wants to hear . . . and then he gets back up again. You ain't never gonna keep him down. Sam's quest to become a better person is like Wile E Coyote pursuing the Roadrunner. It's great television.
Because Sam works so hard at being the good guy, but he seems to be born to be an asshole, we get some seriously weird behavior patterns. Two of my favorite recent Sam moments come from Season Seven, Time For A Wedding (seriously) and are as follows:
The evil: (Dean and Garth approach Sam and Becky.) Sam: Who's the temp?
Who's the temp? I could spend paragraphs unpacking the many dimensions and mechanisms of disrespect, derision, contempt, and patronism embedded in those three flippant syllables Sam tosses off so effortlessly. Sam talks over Garth like he's not even there. He impugns Garth's status as a legitimate hunter. He questions Dean's judgment in hunting with anyone but Sam. He mocks Dean for lacking the confidence to hunt alone. Sam is just . . . mean. And it's subtle mean. How do you call somebody on a casual insult like that? It's effortlessly, perfectly mean; it takes talent. And Sam wasn't even paying attention; he really has nothing against Garth.
The good: Sam (gritting his teeth through it) forgives Becky.
This was above and beyond the call of duty. Forgiving Becky? After what she'd planned to do? Becky was unhinged, and misled, and a pawn, and needy and lonely, but few people, few good people, would have it in them to spare a kind word to her after this episode. A naturally nice person, in whom kindness and compassion flows like a bubbling spring, would feel righteous anger at the violation Becky planned and inflicted, and, listening to their anger because it is so rare, might make an exception to their habitual kindness and turn their mercy away. Sam sucks it up, forges past the volcano of anger and resentment he lives with every day, and forgives her anyway, because Sam doesn't expect being a good person to be easy. Sam works really, really hard at it. Often he does the right thing when few others would bother.
When Sam's on his game, he's magnificent. When he's not paying attention, he's a petty, arrogant, passive-aggressive little boy -- you know, Lucifer's perfect vessel. When he's alone, all bets are off. Sam's an introspective, self-made hero who screws up, often and majorly, but keeps trying to fix his mistakes. That's why most of my ficlets are about Sam now.
This season, I think Sam may have fallen into evil again. There's a relevant saying I heard somewhere that goes something like this: "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." Turn that saying on its head, and we have, "Stupidity can do as much damage as malice, far more commonly." Thus we have the lesser vices, apathy, disinterest, selfishness, short-sightedness, laziness, despair, willful blindness, deliberate helplessness. Easy vices. Soft and inviting as a snow-bank when you're freezing to death. Weakness.
Dean, by contrast, is the Righteous Man. Saving people, hunting things, looking out for Sammy. In the early seasons, Sam talked sweet, but Dean pointed them at people who needed saving. When Dean breaks down, it's gradual, irresistible, and usually the result of outside forces. Being a hero seems to come naturally to Dean. If Sam's spiritual battle is two wolves fighting, Dean's is a diamond constantly getting caked in manure and wood glue (the manure being the bitterness and PTSD life piles on him, the glue being the illusions and denial Dean wraps around himself). Dean's internal conflicts are not so often "what do I do now" as "am I strong enough to do what I know is right".
Dean has principles. When he compromises them, it's under duress and it's temporary. Sometimes his devotion to his principles is a little unsettling, especially when he's applying them to other people he cares for; look at his interactions with Castiel after he returned from the watery grave. Look at Sam's first detox, and "At least he'll die human."
But by the end of Season 7, Dean was losing his edge. I mean, the fight with the snake women in Adventures in Babysitting -- ouch. And the drinking, the revenge quests, losing sleep . . . Purgatory was a much-needed boot camp. Dean took a level in badass and returned raring to go and ready to strike terror into the heart of the darkness once again.
Wait, Dean Winchester took a level in badass?
On second thought, that doesn't sound so great.
We've seen Dean Winchester X-Treme Editions before: the resistance fighter of 2014, and Caucasian Blade. They were both awesome, but slightly less than desirable as brothers, friends, and team-mates. They were missing some essential part of humanity. Dean's always, when it comes down to it, had room in his principles for Sam, a little mercy and tolerance, but not anymore. Maybe it's not a diamond under all that manure and wood glue, but a knife. Knives cut.
Sam and Dean's reunion this season is a weird full-circle to their reunion in Season 1, with Sam being the soft civilian and Dean being the hardcore hunter, only this time, it's pure. Under his mild mask of propriety, Season 1 Sam was an angry, resentful young man who slid effortlessly into revenge and bloodlust. Under his badass jacket and the screaming vocals of AC/DC, Season 1 Dean was a desperate, loyal son and brother who just wanted his family back together again. By this time, Sam's had plenty of hard years to learn just how little joy and freedom he deserved out of life, and Dean's had so many disappointments, betrayals, and losses to maybe give up on faith in his family altogether. This time, I think Sam really is soft, and Dean is hardcore, in ways they could only pretend to be eight seasons ago.