Hell - is other people: Dean in No Exit
No Exit, the title of this seventh episode of Season two, is also the title of a play by existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. In the play, three people are locked in a windowless room expecting to be tortured. No-one arrives, but by probing each other's sins, dark secrets and thoughts - they torture each other (sort of a thinky version of the Saw movies).
The quote - Hell - is other people - is the tagline for the play: And in many ways I think this sums up what most torments Dean.
The episode opens with a young woman being terrorised and then taken from her apartment. She is not safe in the one place she should be - her home. And from who are we at most risk (emotionally and physically) at home? People we are close to.
The apartment building is a metaphor for our relationships. No matter how well we know another person there can be secret spaces in the relationship.
Think about Dean’s relationship with Sam. We have no doubt of Dean’s love for Sam. But since John’s death, there has been something dark in the nooks and crannies of behind this relationship. Sam will push at a spot on the wall (and Dean has many walls), a hidden door opens, and a dark place is revealed - Dean’s anger, his guilt, his own self loathing.
After the credits, we have a short opening scene that tells us a lot about the boys’ life now. It is somewhere between a day and a couple of weeks after the events of Simon Says. Sam and Dean are about to leave the roadhouse. They are relaxed, in a good mood.
Dean: A young girl been kidnapped by an evil cult?
Sam: Girl gotta name?
Dean: Katie Holmes
Sam: That’s funny! But for you - so bitchy!
They are hitting the road without a job or destination in mind. The roadhouse has become a place to get info, but it’s not a base, or a home. As they are about to leave they hear Ellen and Jo fighting.
Dean: Of course, on the other hand - catfight.
Despite the innuendo, I don’t think Dean is excited by the prospect of seeing a ‘girls wrestling in jello’ type catfight. Dean hears a family argument and reacts in his long practised role as family mediator, not worried that it’s not his family.
And we have the “Nebraska is for Lovers” family, reminding us that from the outside we can’t see the complex relationships that make up a family - they are just reduced to a t-shirt slogan.
Here we have three references - the Winchesters, the Harvelles, and the dorky family - to the hell is other people theme. Family can be the source of both our greatest joy and greatest pain. Just ask Dean. His family has been the source of all his happiness - and his hell. Sammy and John arguing, Sam leaving him, John giving his life for him.
Skip ahead to Philadelphia and the Dean and Sam and Jo hunt, although as widely observed Sam is out at getting coffee for much of the episode.
This left Dean and Jo with plenty of alone time, much to the hysterical objections dismay of what we shall call the rabid frothing at the mouth slightly more enthusiastic portions of the fandom. For many fans Hell - is other people was embodied by Jo’s major role in this episode.
What have seen of Dean and Jo’s relationship before this episode? After their first meeting in Everybody loves a clown, Dean articulates our expectations:
Dean: Can I be honest with you? See, normally I'd be hitting on you so fast it'd make your head spin. But these days... I don't know.
My feeling is that by making the potential for attraction here explicit, the writers gave the relationship, and the viewers, space to move beyond it. If it hadn’t been stated we would have been waiting for Dean to do exactly that.
However it also means that Jo is a reminder to Dean of the different, painful place he is in now. She is hell in her own way. One where flirting or bedding a pretty girl doesn’t bring him pleasure. And by my reckoning he hasn’t had any action since that threesome at the beginning of Provenance - which could be almost 6 months ago by now (Dean - I can help, ask me how)
We see Jo again at the beginning of Simon Says - and you can read anteka’s great meta and the comments for some discussion on that.
The relationship between Dean and Jo in No Exit is quite interesting. While there is some flirtatious dialogue -
Jo: It's just if you're going to ride me this close it's only decent you buy me dinner.
and later…
Dean: Should’ve cleaned the pipes.
- there is no sense of this being a relationship bubbling with sexual tension. The very fact that they make these jokes without awkwardness I think indicates this.
I certainly got the sense of Dean treating Jo more as a younger sibling, possibly in ways he treated or wished he had treated Sam in their younger days. He is protective without treating her as helpless. He listens to what she has to say. Dean disapproves of her disobeying her mother, but doesn’t betray her to Ellen and in this I think we get a small glimpse of what hell his life would have been trying to obey and please John, while not betraying Sam and his rebellious ways.
After dismaying Jo’s claim of misogyny, Dean makes a little speech about his view on whether hunting is a valid lifestyle choice
Dean: Jo, you've got options. No one in their right mind chooses this life. My dad started me in this when I was so young... I wish I could do something else.
Jo: You love the job.
Dean: Yeah, but I'm a little twisted.
Jo: You don't think I'm a little twisted too?
Dean: Jo, you've got a mother that worries about you. Who wants something more for you. Those are good things. You don't throw things like that away. Might be hard to find later.
I see two readings of this. What Dean says to Jo echoes what we heard Dean say to Sam in season one:
Skin:
Dean: I really wish things could be different, you know? I wish you could just be….Joe College.
Scarecrow:
Dean: Sam. You were right. You gotta do your own thing. You gotta live your own life.
Something Wicked;
Sam: I wish I could have that kind of innocence.
Dean: If it means anything, sometimes I wish you could, too.
But in Season Two, Dean is in a different place, and I hear him also speaking about himself in his words to Jo. Hunting is not the simple pleasure it used to be, something he could call the family business. It has cost him his father, threatens Sam and has become morally opaque.
And when Dean says: Jo, you've got a mother that worries about you. Who wants something more for you. Those are good things. You don't throw things like that away. Might be hard to find later.
Could we interpret this to mean that at some point John encouraged Dean to do something else - maybe even with the words Your mother would’ve wanted more for you…
And was this was something Dean rejected and may he now be re-examining or even regretting this decision?
Next morning see Dean and Jo sharing stories of their dads. I feel sadness in this scene that I felt when Dean was opening up to Gordon in Bloodlust. Dean feels he has to stay strong for Sam, yet this removes from him the one person from whom he could get support, share his memories. And is that not hell?
Dean shares this reminiscence with Jo:
Dean: I was six or seven, and he took me shooting for the first time. You know, bottles on a fence, that kind of thing. I bulls-eyed every one of them. He gave me this smile, like... I don't know.
(Just let me watch that again - god Jensen’s freckles are just so damn lickable in this scene).
Dean’s reaction to his father’s smile is unusual - why doesn’t he know what the smile meant? He was proud says Jo. I wonder whether even at that young age Dean couldn’t accept that he could do something right, something to please his father? That is heartbreaking. More likely I think that smile was tinged with sadness, sadness from John in knowing what lay ahead for Dean, sadness in himself that he was proud that his six year old was a good shot.
We do get to see Sam and Dean together, working well as a team in this episode. But of course we know there are things hidden between them, a shadow on their relationship that is yet to be faced.
An interesting shift occurs by the end of the episode, in the family car trip from hell. Sam and Jo as the kids in the back seat Ellen and Dean as mum and dad in the front. Dean is now in the role of “father” to Jo - a role that takes on added significance in the final scenes as Ellen tells Jo that John Winchester was responsible for her father’s death (whether he was in fact I think remains to be seen).
After they return to the roadhouse Dean says to Ellen:
Dean: Ellen? This is my fault. Okay? I lied to you and I'm sorry. But Jo did good out there, I think her dad would be proud.
Let’s reflect on Dean’s ability to put himself in the place of peacemaker. He takes responsibility to smooth things over with Ellen,and protect Jo, but also because he does feel responsible. I think he also doesn’t want to lose Ellen’s friendship and he is hurt when she dismisses him.
At the end I think we see clearly the hell other people can be. As Dean goes to comfort Jo:
Jo: Get off me!
Dean: Sorry. See you around.
Right there - Dean snaps back into himself almost as if he has been physically hurt. What comes after - hearing about his father hurts too, but I am struck by how he withdraws so quickly from her, and into himself at that comment. It speaks of someone who has been hurt before, who almost expects to be hurt.
Dean likes people, craves contact with people. He is good with kids, loves women. I think his bar room scams at pool and darts are a way he chooses to make money because it gives him a reason to interact with people. Yet he lives a life that limits his ability to form friendships or relationships, both by its nomadic nature, and by the well the whole killing demon thing. His family is at the centre of his life, and yet they too have been the source of his greatest pain - from Mary’s death onwards. Hell…is other people may be true for many of us, but especially for Dean Winchester.