Things I Love About SPN Season 1: Faith #1

[fanspired]

Supernatural, Season 1
Episode 12, “Faith”
Written by Sera Gamble and Raelle Tucker
Directed by Allan Kroeker

Warning: image heavy post.

This episode marked another major turning point for the show, both dramatically and for many viewers. “Faith” quickly established itself as a fan favourite, and Eric Kripke himself named it as his favourite

Comments

[galatera_grass]

From here on in the brothers join hands and lead each other in an increasingly destructive waltz that pivots around their mutual inability to come to terms with one simple, painful fact of life: everybody dies. - Wonderfully noted. But I don't really like Faith. In this episode, for the first time, there is a moment when another person dies for Dean's life. It's so sad at the end. It is said that Layla and Dean's kiss was filmed, but it was cut at the end. I don't remember where I read this, maybe on Rob and Rich's last podcast. But it's a very sad scene. Sam of course did not know that this would happen, but in the future it would be so all the time. "People are dying because of us" - Sam will say this later. In the meantime, he selflessly saves Dean. The thought came that Dean saved Sam at the cost of his life, and Sam saved Dean at the cost of the lives of others. Leila, the Darkness

[fanspired]

Faith is where it begins. It sets the immutable rule: you can't cheat death. It will take its due. Whenever the brothers think they've evaded the inevitable, there is always a cost, to themselves and others, and that cost keeps increasing. Dean thinks he saved Sam's life in season 2, but in fact it was Sam's soul he effectively sold in the process. The ultimate moral lesson behind the story in Kripke's era was the destructive consequences of the Winchesters' inability to come to terms with loss. In this episode their desperate need to cling to life is contrasted against Layla's calm acceptance of death. I'm glad the kiss was cut. I don't feel it was appropriate to the tone of the scene, nor to what she represented to Dean psychologically.

As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment thoughtfully on these reviews. I really appreciate it.

[galatera_grass]

Sam still took into account the mistakes of the past, all the damage that was done by saving each other and in the final did not save Dean, as he asked. But if Sam died, it seems to me that Dean could not live in peace, he would still return Sam. Maybe that's why they made such an ending.

[fanspired]

Sam certainly learned his lesson after season 4 and, I think, by the end of season 5 Dean had learned to let go too. Unfortunately, later show runners acted as if the brothers had learned nothing from the apocalypse and Dean especially kept on making the same mistakes over and over again. Yes, I think the finale was the only way it could end given everything that had preceded it. I still think of Swan Song as the true ending, though.

[masja_17]

You always have to sacrifice something to save someone. Others' lifes or your own. Or your time or something completely different.
Some part of me wishes we could have seen Layla's fate...
The Winchesters seem to not being able to let go. They have to save each other! Until the end when Sam didn't have any way to save Dean.

[fanspired]

At one level it's true that Sam and Dean literally can't live without each other since they are, in essence, the same person but, at another, I think Kripke was using that trope to critically examine our cultural love affair with the concepts of sacrifice and heroism, and it's an exploration that begins with this episode.

Thanks so much for all your support for this series :)

[mdlaw]

That lovely thoughtful evaluation of "Faith "; however, for me it was Dean wearing Sam's hood and looking so very fragile. I'm shallow. What can I do?

[fanspired]

Don't worry, I'll be talking about that scene next! :)))

Thanks so much for reading and commenting. Lovely to hear from you!

[casey28]

Hearts for transplants can take a long time to find, and Dean only had a few weeks, so that could be why it wasn't suggested.

Sam's refusal to accept Dean's death is a nice contrast to Asylum, where he tried to kill Dean. Of course, he wasn't totally himself back then, but here we see how completely he turned it around.

[fanspired]

Maybe. Though I'm not sure that Sam wanting to save Dean absolutely means that the murder longings aren't still in the mix somewhere. Love is complex and these contradictory extremes can co-exist in complicated and twisted ways. As Cara Roberts said in "Sex and Violence": 'Haven't you ever been in a relationship where you really love somebody and still kinda wanted to bash their head in?' Under normal circumstances Sam would never act on that impulse, of course. But I agree, this episode is a correlative to "Asylum" that shows the other side of the coin so we're clear on how Sam really feels when he's in his right mind.