Last night's Supernatural
So another great episode! I loved the first season, but I think the show is really hitting its stride now. There's an increased depth and sophistication to the storytelling, bringing in those shades of gray that make it feel all the more authentic. It's so interesting to see the brothers reaching one of the important stages of adulthood, where family codes are broken down, reexamined, some parts discarded, some incorporated into the new, grownup sense of identity.
But before I get to that, let me start on a shallow note. How amazingly gorgeous was Amber Benson? Wow. I mean, I always thought she was lovely on Buffy, but with dark hair, she's even more striking. Also, the kick-ass vampire with the heart of gold was named Lenore!!!!!! Not that I insisted on taking that as a personal shout-out or anything. *lies shamelessly*
On a less shallow note about the character of Lenore (LENORE!!!!!), I thought Amber Benson did a great job bringing emotional depth to her, even though she didn't have that much dialogue or screen time, much as she was able to do with Tara on Buffy. She has a very sympathetic quality on screen, and that made the scene where Lenore is being tortured, and in retrospect the sequence where the other female vampire is being hunted, terrorized and beheaded, all the more repugnant.
I loved the opening of this episode, with the Impala back in business, and Dean smiling, looking as if he can finally breathe again. His eagerness to be back on the road, back behind the wheel, on the trail of another case makes so much sense. After a loss, it's natural to want to reestablish a sense of normality, and this is what passes for it in the lives of the Brothers Winchester.
Of course, things aren't the way they were, the boys themselves aren't the same, and that gradually unspools as the episode goes on.
Dean does look to Gordon to fill that void left by his father. "We're alike, you and me." That must be so seductive for Dean to hear, considering how hard he tried to be like his father. But Gordon isn't John Winchester, who had the memory of Mary's love and his sons to keep him human, and also I'm guessing just a stronger character. Not to mention, the time when Dean can pattern himself on someone else to help him find his way is over. He's his own man now, who has to make his own moral choices.
I thought it was also interesting that for all Sam is calling Dean on his search for a surrogate parent he's casting Ellen in a very motherly role, checking in like a good son, sounding her out about Gordon, taking her advice seriously. They haven't really explored in a very overt way Sam as a boy who's never had a mother, but I think you see it in how eagerly he connects with women, with Jess and Sarah and Ellen, this need for a womanly presence in his life, something he's never really had, growing up in the man's-man world of demon hunters. There was something very little boy about Sam in that scene, and it really made me ache for him.
The whole juxtaposition between Sam and Dean and Gordon is just fascinating. For the first time, the show questions the morality of the hunt. The scene where Dean decapitates the vampire is truly grotesque and chilling, the utter brutality of the act, the look of almost pleasure on Dean's face after he's finished, the way he seems to wear the gore splattered on him as a matter of pride, how deeply unsettled Sam seems by his brother's act and his reaction to it. Sam and Dean go on from there to have one of the most important conversations of their lives. Dean (paraphrasing): "Our job is to hunt down supernatural things and kill them. Sam (also paraphrasing): "No, our job is to hunt down evil things and kill them." By the end of the episode, the point is clear: for this kind of quest to be honorable it must be firmly rooted in a concern for life, with the objective clear at all times, to protect the innocent. Otherwise, it's just killing. Otherwise, the hunter becomes the very evil he started out trying to eradicate.
The most intriguing part of the whole episode for me was Gordon's line, when he's recounting how he hunted down his sister and killed her, that Dean would do the same thing under the same circumstances, gesturing with his knife toward Sam. That can be read in so many ways, and they're all so interesting. First and foremost, it shows why Dean and Gordon aren't really alike in the end. Because we can all be pretty certain that Dean couldn't bring himself to kill Sam no matter how egregious the circumstances and if he did have to destroy Sam to, oh let's say, save the world, he could never be so cold about it. In fact, it would be the end of him. It's a thin line sometimes between being a hero and psychopath, and that line is human connection. There couldn't be a more profound difference between these two men.
It's also possible to read that exchange ("you'd do the same thing") as foreshadowing. We know there's a secret about Sam's abilities, and it's possible that secret involves him being supernatural in some way. So it's possible that Dean may face this very conflict someday, where he has to sort out the difference between supernatural and evil once and for all, and make his peace with the truth about his brother. One of the processes of growing up, or really just of life in general, is reevaluating your beliefs in the face of new evidence. Dean softens his stance on supernatural things a little in this episode and may be called on to thoroughly redefine his terms depending on what happens with Sam. I thought it was also interesting that in the trailer for next week's episode he declares very adamantly, "Dead things shouldn't come back." That could be more foreshadowing about their father. Dean may have a lot of reconsidering to do in his future.
I loved how this episode showed both boys moving beyond childhood ideas and dynamics. By the last conversation, Dean has a clarified sense of their mission, has reached the understanding that their father was an actual person (one of the big milestones on the way to being a grownup is accepting that your parents are human and fallible), driven by a specific set of circumstances, a good man who did the best he could, but his way of being in the world isn't some kind of Bible for how he and Sam should go forward. They can honor their father without being him.
Sam's growth may show itself more subtly, but it's no less important. When Dean hits him, he doesn't strike back. He doesn't get angry. Doesn't start a power struggle. Doesn't threaten to leave. Doesn't do any of the "rebel without a cause" things he usually does. He just stands his ground, holds on to what he knows is right, and keeps the dialogue open, continuing to reason with Dean. It's remarkably mature and only possible as Sam moves away from the role he's occupied in the family as the combative contrarian. It makes his line "only he gets to call me that" stand out all the more (you know, besides that fact that it made fangirls everywhere squee their hearts out *g*), because it's such a sore point for him all through the first season. "Sammy" was someone he didn't want to be, shorthand for the part of his life he was desperately trying to separate himself from. At last, he seems to understand that he doesn't have disown his history to be his own person, that he can have his family and still be himself. Again, this is one of the major realizations of adulthood.
When John died in the first episode of the season, as sad as it made me, I did feel it gave the show an opportunity to explore how Sam and Dean will become their own men, and this episode was a wonderful start on that journey.