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.
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Sam has a lot of things working against him. One is the way he approaches obstacles, challenges, and frustrations: he looks for novel solutions. When Sam sees things he doesn't like, he tries to find a way to change them, even when the outcome would be huge and totally unknown, and by necessity his mistakes are going to have serious consequences.
Sam also has terrible luck. Dean didn't get any flack when he bent the rules of the universe and bound Death. Dean gets Cas, Sam gets Ruby. Sam is, more often than not, Dean's foil. So we see Sam's mistakes more often and in a different light than Dean's. I still think Sam can be arrogant, inconsiderate, and contemptuous, but Sam works on avoiding that, and Sam is more often placed in situations where his faults are highlighted. It's kind of his thing.
When Dean makes mistakes, there is usually some extenuating circumstance or past trauma to blame. It makes it harder to find Dean guilty of wrongdoing. On the flip side, from the way the show is written, Dean is much less likely to have to own up to his mistakes. We the audience have rarely been put in a position where we need to be mad at Dean. Bad things happen to Dean.
Dean has a stable core. The typical Dean character arc is, "Dean sticks to his guns over X and he loses hope and he contemplates giving up and it sucks, but in the end he still sticks to his guns and X is proven right." Or sometimes, "Dean's creed says he has to do X but he knows in his gut that's wrong and Sam is giving him the sad eyes, so he looks at the spirit of the creed and figures out that he has to do Y instead." Dean's policies may change, like when he spared Lenore, and his outside mask has been eroding steadily away, but his core principles are only refined and clarified, not altered. Dean comes with a blueprint, a creed, a code. Dean interprets and clarifies the code, but he doesn't edit it. There are good and bad sides to that.
The good is that Dean is difficult to lead astray. The bad is that he doesn't take charge of his personal flaws and needs, and he is frankly frightening when he starts demanding other people to adhere to his creed the way he does. So, yeah, self-righteous. But also righteous, because he generally adheres to what he believes is right (with frequent exceptions for Sam).
I haven't seen 8.02 yet (gimme twelve hours), but from what I saw in 8.01, Dean's merciless streak has gotten a whole lot more . . . undiluted. He doesn't seem to have the sense of inadequacy and frustration that had been weighing him down lately; he doesn't have illusions about how Sam does and doesn't conform to Dean's creed; he doesn't have qualms about enforcing standards he'd previously let slide and fighting over territory he'd previously left unclaimed. I think we're seeing a purer Dean, who is missing many of the traits that we loved in him, the quirks that distracted us from his flaws, and the weaknesses that gave him excuses or held him back.
I guess my main point is, I like the changes we're seeing in Dean because I think it's an opportunity for Dean and the writers to explore who he really is and what it means, morally, that he is who he is, and whether that is a good thing or not.
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