Supernatural: Time Heals All Wounds... if you have enough of it
I did a double trawl through the episodes of Supernatural season 5 this afternoon, partly to nab screencaps to make icons and partly to do some fact checking. Alas, due to a misunderstanding between myself and VLC half the screencaps ended up in a black hole so there wasn't much iconage, but I found a lovely, lovely casting spoiler for an upcoming episode so I can't feel grumpy. I've not seen it widely reported as yet, but it's on the actor's website which is good enough for me. :-)
Also, the research meant that it wasn't a total waste of time. I present a timeline for the great Winchester separation of 2009. It's different from what you might think.
At the end of 5x04, when Dean hands Sam back the magic demon-killing knife as a symbol of his return to the hunt, he says to him "I'm sure you're rusty."
That surprised me a little, because I didn't have any great sense of where we'd actually got to in time elapsed, and it seems like only two episodes ago when Sam bailed in order to get his head together. There is, however, a great opportunity in that the story picked up in "May" only seconds after last season's finale, and had the whole of the summer break to play with in the show while catching up to real time. So I went back and looked for time clues, to try to determine how long Sam and Dean were actually apart.
14 May 2009 (confirmed)- Sam's cellphone shows the date when he checks it and finds he has a voicemail from Dean. The showdown with Lilith takes place that night, as does Lucifer's escape. (4x22: Lucifer Rising)
15 May 2009? - Having (presumably) landed in Baltimore after their soul plane excursion, Sam and Dean drive to Chuck's place in search of Castiel. I don't think where Chuck lives has ever been stated, but it would seem to be within easy driving distance of Maryland since he's still picking bits of angel out of his hair when they arrive. He lives like a slob but you'd expect him to have cleaned up a bit after the archangel intervention if it was any later, and he does comment that "this has been a really stressful day".
I figure Sam got the hex bags for their hotel later the same day, before the angels had a chance to catch up with them again. (5x01: Sympathy For The Devil)
16 May 2009? - At least one night with Lucifer courting Nick seems to have taken place before Chuck contacts Becky and asks her to take a message to Sam and Dean. After her visit, Bobby arrives. According to Google Maps, which seems to believe in superhuman drivers, it'd take Bobby just over a day of non-stop driving to get from his presumed home in South Dakota to somewhere approximating Baltimore, so if they called him as soon as they got off the plane (before midnight on the 14th, as the car radio says 11:58) it wouldn't seem impossible for him to get to their hotel with the Impala while it was still light on the second day.
He wouldn't have had a lot of time for sleep along the way, but maybe that took his guard down just a little bit and gave the demons an opening to possess him.
It's a busy day for visitors, as Meg and her minions show up that evening while they're hitting the books. Bobby goes to hospital, the boys go to John's lock-up in upstate New York. (5x01: Sympathy For The Devil)
19 May 2009? - According to the conversation between Sam and Dean, Bobby has been in hospital for three days when Rufus calls him to ask for reinforcements in River Pass, Colorado. Referring back to the events at John's lock-up, Castiel says "this week".* (5x02: Good God, Y'All)
21 May 2009? - They know that Rufus is in trouble. At a push, again according to Google Maps' speed-demon-no-sleep estimations, they could get to Colorado in a day and a bit of driving, taking it in turns at the wheel while the other one slept. All the events in River Pass take place during a single day though, so it's more likely that it took them a little longer and they got to the bridge early on the following day. (ETA 1/11/09: Especially as they both appear to have changed their clothes in the meantime, which suggests at least one motel stop along the way.)
The polluted river, the shooting star, and the demon hallucinations started the previous Wednesday, which on these calculations would have to be 13 May 2009, the day before Lucifer's release. Did the Horsemen anticipate by a few hours? It's either that or you push the events of the episode back by a week... which conflicts with the timeline for Bobby's stay in hospital. (5x02: Good God, Y'All)
22 May 2009? - I doubt they got out of River Pass to have that long solemn talk at the picnic table until the following day. There'd have been too much clean-up to do, they'd have had to have hiked back to the Impala, and the law wasn't in hot pursuit for once. (ETA 1/11/09: Plus, there's been yet another clothing change.) (5x02: Good God, Y'All)
But, conflicting dates notwithstanding, it seems likely that Sam and Dean had gone their separate ways by the end of May.
So, how long was it until they got back together again?
23 August 2009 (confirmed) - The date is shown on Sam's PowerBook-that-runs-Windows-Vista while he's browsing an online version of the Book of Revelation. The episode takes place over the course of a week, and we're maybe a couple of days into it at this point. (5x03: Free To Be You And Me)
The only exact dates given in 5x04 are in 2014. The signs on the Croatoan virus hot zone in Kansas City said that it'd been locked down on 1 August 2014. The newspaper that Zachariah is waving around in the car after Dean escapes Kansas City says 4 August, though we've no idea whether it's that day's paper or just one he thought had particularly button pushing headlines. It's likely that he aimed for the significant event of future!Dean's endgame run on Lucifer rather than five years to the exact day though, so it doesn't really tell us anything... though Dean says he comes from the "tail end of 2009", which confirms that it's the second half of the year, and suggests later rather than earlier.
Best guess on the reunion therefore is a minimum of late August, with Sam calling Dean immediately after his visit from Lucifer.
That would mean that Sam and Dean were apart for at least three months, which is plenty of time for the rawness of their arguments to have scabbed over. Time enough for them to miss each other, and remember all the reasons they liked each other as well as the things that irritated and annoyed them. Time enough for them to be ready to mend fences, once the right reason for getting back together presented itself.
I think it's a shame that the passage of time doesn't show up more obviously on screen, because the reunion in "The End" would seem a lot more earned if it did.
* We'll gloss over the fact that Dean's "glamour shot" x-rays in "Good God, Y'All" have a date of ?4-09-2009 on them. Assuming we're doing dates in American, that makes them a month early. If we're using unit-progression dates like sensible people *g*, it'd be September which is definitely wrong for only a few days after Lucifer's rise. They basically make no sense, though alas I spent a fruitless half hour replaying that scene to catch the first couple of digits. :-(
Also, the research meant that it wasn't a total waste of time. I present a timeline for the great Winchester separation of 2009. It's different from what you might think.
At the end of 5x04, when Dean hands Sam back the magic demon-killing knife as a symbol of his return to the hunt, he says to him "I'm sure you're rusty."
That surprised me a little, because I didn't have any great sense of where we'd actually got to in time elapsed, and it seems like only two episodes ago when Sam bailed in order to get his head together. There is, however, a great opportunity in that the story picked up in "May" only seconds after last season's finale, and had the whole of the summer break to play with in the show while catching up to real time. So I went back and looked for time clues, to try to determine how long Sam and Dean were actually apart.
14 May 2009 (confirmed)- Sam's cellphone shows the date when he checks it and finds he has a voicemail from Dean. The showdown with Lilith takes place that night, as does Lucifer's escape. (4x22: Lucifer Rising)
15 May 2009? - Having (presumably) landed in Baltimore after their soul plane excursion, Sam and Dean drive to Chuck's place in search of Castiel. I don't think where Chuck lives has ever been stated, but it would seem to be within easy driving distance of Maryland since he's still picking bits of angel out of his hair when they arrive. He lives like a slob but you'd expect him to have cleaned up a bit after the archangel intervention if it was any later, and he does comment that "this has been a really stressful day".
I figure Sam got the hex bags for their hotel later the same day, before the angels had a chance to catch up with them again. (5x01: Sympathy For The Devil)
16 May 2009? - At least one night with Lucifer courting Nick seems to have taken place before Chuck contacts Becky and asks her to take a message to Sam and Dean. After her visit, Bobby arrives. According to Google Maps, which seems to believe in superhuman drivers, it'd take Bobby just over a day of non-stop driving to get from his presumed home in South Dakota to somewhere approximating Baltimore, so if they called him as soon as they got off the plane (before midnight on the 14th, as the car radio says 11:58) it wouldn't seem impossible for him to get to their hotel with the Impala while it was still light on the second day.
He wouldn't have had a lot of time for sleep along the way, but maybe that took his guard down just a little bit and gave the demons an opening to possess him.
It's a busy day for visitors, as Meg and her minions show up that evening while they're hitting the books. Bobby goes to hospital, the boys go to John's lock-up in upstate New York. (5x01: Sympathy For The Devil)
19 May 2009? - According to the conversation between Sam and Dean, Bobby has been in hospital for three days when Rufus calls him to ask for reinforcements in River Pass, Colorado. Referring back to the events at John's lock-up, Castiel says "this week".* (5x02: Good God, Y'All)
21 May 2009? - They know that Rufus is in trouble. At a push, again according to Google Maps' speed-demon-no-sleep estimations, they could get to Colorado in a day and a bit of driving, taking it in turns at the wheel while the other one slept. All the events in River Pass take place during a single day though, so it's more likely that it took them a little longer and they got to the bridge early on the following day. (ETA 1/11/09: Especially as they both appear to have changed their clothes in the meantime, which suggests at least one motel stop along the way.)
The polluted river, the shooting star, and the demon hallucinations started the previous Wednesday, which on these calculations would have to be 13 May 2009, the day before Lucifer's release. Did the Horsemen anticipate by a few hours? It's either that or you push the events of the episode back by a week... which conflicts with the timeline for Bobby's stay in hospital. (5x02: Good God, Y'All)
22 May 2009? - I doubt they got out of River Pass to have that long solemn talk at the picnic table until the following day. There'd have been too much clean-up to do, they'd have had to have hiked back to the Impala, and the law wasn't in hot pursuit for once. (ETA 1/11/09: Plus, there's been yet another clothing change.) (5x02: Good God, Y'All)
But, conflicting dates notwithstanding, it seems likely that Sam and Dean had gone their separate ways by the end of May.
So, how long was it until they got back together again?
23 August 2009 (confirmed) - The date is shown on Sam's PowerBook-that-runs-Windows-Vista while he's browsing an online version of the Book of Revelation. The episode takes place over the course of a week, and we're maybe a couple of days into it at this point. (5x03: Free To Be You And Me)
The only exact dates given in 5x04 are in 2014. The signs on the Croatoan virus hot zone in Kansas City said that it'd been locked down on 1 August 2014. The newspaper that Zachariah is waving around in the car after Dean escapes Kansas City says 4 August, though we've no idea whether it's that day's paper or just one he thought had particularly button pushing headlines. It's likely that he aimed for the significant event of future!Dean's endgame run on Lucifer rather than five years to the exact day though, so it doesn't really tell us anything... though Dean says he comes from the "tail end of 2009", which confirms that it's the second half of the year, and suggests later rather than earlier.
Best guess on the reunion therefore is a minimum of late August, with Sam calling Dean immediately after his visit from Lucifer.
That would mean that Sam and Dean were apart for at least three months, which is plenty of time for the rawness of their arguments to have scabbed over. Time enough for them to miss each other, and remember all the reasons they liked each other as well as the things that irritated and annoyed them. Time enough for them to be ready to mend fences, once the right reason for getting back together presented itself.
I think it's a shame that the passage of time doesn't show up more obviously on screen, because the reunion in "The End" would seem a lot more earned if it did.
* We'll gloss over the fact that Dean's "glamour shot" x-rays in "Good God, Y'All" have a date of ?4-09-2009 on them. Assuming we're doing dates in American, that makes them a month early. If we're using unit-progression dates like sensible people *g*, it'd be September which is definitely wrong for only a few days after Lucifer's rise. They basically make no sense, though alas I spent a fruitless half hour replaying that scene to catch the first couple of digits. :-(