Love hurts... SPN 6.14 Mannequin 3: The Reckoning. Part 1
If anything, a working weekend and a wacked up on-line connection helps put certain things in perspective and strike a semblance of perceptive equilibrium. A couple of preliminary notes first, before we proceed with the episode overview.
Granted, I'm a what you might call consistent Dean/Lisa 'shipper (as in I've always believed, and continue doing ( Read more... )
I wouldn't really prefer to indulge into discussion whether I perceive Sam's character negatively by default. Primarily 'cause it was NOT definetely my intent to come across that way in the overview. If I remember correctly, in one other comment on my overview you pointed out that you prefer to perceive Dean and Sam as parts of a unified protagonist.
Well, my take on the show narrative structure is just methodologically different. I do view both these characters as *separate* protagonists in their own right, whose mutual interaction, nonetheless is the heart matter of both plot, system of conflicts and respectful characterization itineraries unravelling.
That said, as an individual viewer I find it preferable and more compelling to relate to the chracterization framework of Dean not only on rational-cum-analytical but on the emotional level too. Whereas my perception of Sam is founded mostly on a measure of 'rational detachment' (I do acknowledge full well the role, level of complexity and profound significance of this character but my li'l heart doesn't go pitter-pat whenever Sam is concerned. For the most part, anyway). Hence, while interpreting this chracter I'm aware of being usually inclined to take his actions/words/motives at face value, with minimum cognitive glossing over involved. So it being not my specific intent to nit-pick negativity (and trust me, it's not!) in his chracterization framework and my mind wired not to block it deliberately due to emotional attachment - chances are that aspect of negativity might actually be withing the fabricated interpretative planes on the offer by the show 'text'.
I'm not being presumptious here (I hope!) or claiming my individual interpretation to be the one and only possible reading, but since I'm extensively trained in textual and communicative analysis, I'm more often than not aware how my individual perception works.
In Sam's exchange with Dean several communicative and verbal factors align (choice of grammatic tenses, choice of wording, intonation, micro- and macro- context) that allowed me to conclude that Sam used his own experience from the previous episode, 6.12, as a reference pattern to identify the scenario of Dean's imminent experience of 'brushish with the past'. Moreso, the outcome of Sam's symmetric experience is referred to once again later on in the episode and not contextually nor explicitly denied as un-anticipated or un-expected by Sam.
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