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Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 2x01 In My Time of Dying

(Spoilers up to 15x20 Carry On)

(I wrote an essay about John's abuse of Dean to accompany this analysis. You can find it here. An addendum to this analysis can be found here.)

Introduction (Wherein I waffle perhaps a bit too much)

I have a lot of negative things to say about Supernatural, and I have always been up front about this, in both my analyses and when talking about the show with family, friends, and strangers on the internet. It made a great first impression in my Media Studies class at the end of 2008 when we watched 3x13 Ghostfacers whilst studying the horror genre alongside Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set and 28 Days Later. I got the first three series on DVD for Christmas in 2008 and devoured them within a week or two. Well, most of them, at least.

I am sorry to say I got bored. I generally enjoyed the aesthetic but the lack of plot in series one was to the show’s detriment, as was the fact that most monsters were just ghosts or people with contact lenses. I was also significantly younger and had not yet developed the ‘thicker skin’ I was told to develop, and the gay jokes in the show bothered me. I did not want that in my spare time.

The big thing which turned me off, however, was the turn towards Abrahamic mythology, particularly the Christian version. Buffy and Angel had their own mythologies which drew on real-world folklore but adapted it into Joss Whedon’s own – forgive me for using this cliché of an adjective – almost Lovecraftian mythos. In the Buffyverse, demon gods used to rule the Earth and magic was as natural a part of life as breathing. However, the Shadow Men created The First Slayer Sineya tens of thousands of years ago as a weapon to fight the demons and drive their gods from the Earth. Eventually, the last pure demon was defeated, but not before infecting a human with his spirit. This act created the first vampire.

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In the Buffyverse, the pure demons and demon gods were driven to other dimensions and universes, where most of them remained for the rest of eternity, with a few notable exceptions. The demons in Buffy and Angel are descendants of pure demons, but they are mixed with other things, including humans. Rather than being the spirits of humans who had the humanity tortured out of them in Hell as they are in Supernatural they are more akin to the ‘monsters’ in Supernatural.

Bear with me, I will get to the point very soon. In spite of the existence of demons, ‘gods’, alternate dimensions, magic, and real evil in Buffy and Angel, there is no definite ‘Hell’ nor ‘Heaven’. There are bad places and good places, but there is no implication that ‘sinners’ go to the bad places and goodies go to the good places. It is a mythology completely separate to Christianity. This pleased me greatly.

The Superverse, however, is very much an Abrahamic universe. Or perhaps a Zoroastrian-Abrahamic one, since Abrahamic mythology is heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism. As such, there is a definite Heaven and a definite Hell in the Superverse. I could write tens of thousands of words about Dean’s deal to save Sam in 2x22 All Hell Breaks Loose Part II, the things which led to it, and the consequences thereof, but in 2008/2009, it did not work for me. The definite idea of Hell bored me, as well as the fact that I had seen characters going to ‘Hell’ several times in Buffy and Angel. For this reason, I unfortunately lost interest in Supernatural, and my DVDs eventually ended up being given to a friend (who still has them 11 years later).

However, a friend at university really liked the show. She liked it so much she bought a complete collection of Lovecraft’s work from Waterstone’s after watching the Lovecraft episode. One of my professors also mentioned the show once: he taught a course on the history of vampires in fiction, and used to talk about Buffy a lot. By 2015, few of the new students had watched Buffy, so he used Supernatural instead. I unfortunately did not get to attend that course (although I did get to do a bitching course on representations and influences of the Norse people and mythology in popular culture), but because people around me were mentioning it again, I decided to give it another go. After all, it was freely available on British Netflix at the time, I had enjoyed some of the show, and I had very fond memories of Jensen.

After a break of over six years, I started watching again with 2x01 In My Time of Dying. As I have written elsewhere, Jensen’s performance in this episode grabbed me by the viscera and he has refused to relinquish his grasp in the seven years since. He managed to portray Dean as both a charismatic and devilishly charming man with a Devil May Care attitude, whilst also giving Dean incredible depth, vulnerability, humanity, and relatability as a broken, hopeless man who loved everybody except himself. His performance in 2x20 and 2x22 was as good as anything Sarah Michelle Gellar ever gave us in Buffy, and he was just getting started.

While these analyses are chiefly about the show in general, it will not have escaped anybody’s notice that they are also heavily focused on Dean and Jensen’s performance. They are both analyses of Supernatural and character studies of Dean. I have stuck with the show because of him, nothing else. Misha is a great actor (when the show gives him lines, screen-time, and something to do), and Mark Shepherd did a fine job with what became an increasingly stupid character. But as far as I am concerned, Jensen is the show. I cannot talk about it without also talking about him. The plot of the show is frequently lacklustre and suffers from poor planning, the supposed main protagonist is either as dull as ditch-water or downright repellent, and it always seemed as though the show was at war with itself over what it wanted to be. I can forgive all of that, though, because Dean is in it, and Jensen did an incomparable job bringing him to life.

This episode is where I started watching Supernatural again. As I prepare this for posting, it is just over four hours until my thirty-first birthday. When I first made notes on this episodes, hoping to follow in Paula R. Stiles’ footsteps and one day to write and publish my analyses, it was December 2020, my first Christmas in a foreign country. It has now been almost fourteen years since I first watched Supernatural, and a little over a year since I wrote and published my first analysis. I have been looking forward to getting to this point, the first real milestone. So let’s get started!

The Part Where the Analysis Starts (and the Waffling Continues)

First things first: death. Throughout the course of The Show’s run, Dean and Sam die many times, their deaths being so frequent and numerous that their deaths becomes metaphors for spiritual deaths, metamorphosis, and change. This is in keeping with many mythologies and religions. One in particular which springs to mind is Celtic mythology, or more specifically accounts of Gaulish philosophy and beliefs around death as described by Ancient Greek sources. ‘Death is but a point in eternal life.’ The belief was that death in this world was only the death of the physical body, and that the spirit would be reborn in the Otherworld. Irish and Scottish traditions of holding a wake for several days after a death are intertwined with this ancient Celtic belief, though traditions of viewing the deceased and holding vigils are by no means exclusive to the northwestern fringes of Europe.

Few main characters’ deaths in the show are actual endings (one reason why 15x20 Carry On is a travesty) but death remains a source of anxiety, fear, pain, and loss. Once again, I must invoke Paula R. Stiles’s commentary: she has likened Dean to a Christ character. Not only does he take on the burdens and suffering of everybody around him, but he defies death by refusing to stay dead. He also suffers incredible survivor’s guilt, inferiority, and suicidal ideations, and when he meets Tessa again in 4x15 Death Takes a Holiday, he will indeed tell her ‘I wish I had gone with you’. Dean upsets the ‘natural’ order of life and death, as Jesus did in Christian mythology. However, Dean does not do this in order to upset the ‘natural order’, but rather to save others from suffering.

Dean also becomes the enemy of death, as Jesus is described. Castiel is credited several times within the show as being the one who broke the narrative by disobeying orders, but he did so because of Dean: Dean was always the source of chaos and disruption, like a boulder thrown into s stream. It does not want to be there, and it is not there of its own volition, but the flow of water is irreversibly changed regardless.

I believe it was once again Paula R. Stiles who made this comment (I do have my own ideas, I swear: it just so happens that loads of ideas I and she have had come together in this analysis and it would be bad to not give credit where credit is due) but the problem with Dean’s death in 15x20 Carry On was not the fact he died, but that he died for nothing. His death was meaningless, and undid all his character development. A (super-)natural end for his story would have been for him to pick up the scythe and become the next Death. He did, after all, spend time as a reaper in 6x11 Appointment in Samarra, and he was (as far as we know)the first reaper to be killed after Whatsherface whom Lucifer killed in 15x19 Inherit the Earth.

Here is a link to her review where this is discussed:

Had this been the case, The Show could still have had its gross, nostalgic, and weirdly incestuous death scene in the barn, and not have had 60% of the fandom hating the ending. Dean’s death could have meant something other than ‘If you suffer decades of trauma and suicidal ideation, just die. Heaven awaits, you can go there and be at peace’. (Dean’s death in 15x20 was indirect suicide, by the way: he allowed himself to die of a treatable wound, convince me otherwise.)

Anyway, I have decided that Death is going to appear to me in Dean-form when my time comes. This is just how things are going to happen.

Did you see the GIF? That. I cannot wait.

(For the sharp-eyed among you: yes, an archangel is apparently powerful enough to kill Death, but not God’s sister, even though Death outranks God.)

Perhaps Dean’s aforementioned chaotic, catalystic nature is why Death should take such an interest in Dean: he upsets the order, but at the same time wishes he had not done so (either that, or the same older-men-having-a-creepy-obsession-with-Dean through-line the show has. Thanks, Chuck). John died to bring Dean back to life, and Dean hated him for it (survivor’s guilt and bereavement), yet did not hesitate to do the same to bring Sam back to life, offering himself up as the metaphorical sacrificial lamb. This fascinates Death, and perhaps Death even saw somebody to take up his mantle if he should die.

Dean’s interactions with Death are among my favourite parts of The Show. The reason for this is that Death is never once shown as an antagonist (Billie notwithstanding), but rather an inevitable, inexorable certainty. Usually I am not a fan of the show’s demythologisation of monsters and deities and really wish Kripke would read something other than Neil Gaiman (I love Stardust, Coraline, and Odd and the frost Giants, but Neverwhere left me cool and I simply could not finish American Gods), but I have a very soft spot for a humanised Death who likes pizza and fast food, and who treats Dean like a favourite nephew. For all the bad in Supernatural, this is certainly a stroke of genius.

Death is part and parcel of the horror genre. Death is almost always depicted as something to be feared, run away from, and to have nightmares about. Some horror films also revolve entirely around horrible, painful ways of dying. Death itself is sometimes the main antagonist, such as the Final Destination films. This is completely understandable as the main driving urge of life forms is to avoid death at all costs. In spite of this, most life-forms have no concept of life and death, but rather run on instinct.

Humans, however, are different. We are aware of life, and are therefore aware that life ends. This is the cost of consciousness and awareness: the price of knowledge is the knowledge of death. Most people seem to spend their whole lives either avoiding the thought of their own death, or terrified of its inevitable approach. It is understandable that death be depicted as the horror of all horrors.

I am not scared of my own death. I do not want to die a painful death, but turning the lights off for the last time does not scare me. I do not believe in any kind of Hell or punishment after death, nor any kind of Heaven. I could be wrong, but I doubt there is anything other than nothingness on the other side of death. That is not too bad. I spent the first 13.4 billion years of the universe not existing, after all, and that did me no harm. (And see above RE: Ghostbusters!Dean).

Losing somebody is another matter altogether. In my analyses of 1x11 Scarecrow and 1x12 Faith, I briefly discussed losing a friend to suicide, as well as the impact of losing my uncle to suicide. I have lost other friends to suicide, and some of my friends have lost their friends in the same way (one of the reasons why Dean’s suicidal ideations and tendencies are so visceral for me). I suppose I used to fear death like anybody else, but losing a friend to suicide put an end to that. On the last flight I was on, the turbulence was really bad and my concern was not for me dying, but rather annoyance that I had only just got my hands on the Dean with Baby Funko Pop which was currently in the hold and would get utterly destroyed in an aeroplane crash. My friends would also have to find somebody else to look after their cats while they visited their families. If Death were coming to get me, fine: at least I would no longer have to worry about my future. But at the very least spare my Dean pop.

Depictions of death as an antagonistic, malevolent force do not do anything for me. Though J.K. Rowling’s name is mud at the moment for what definitely appears to be a strong dislike of trans women based in a deep-seated, trauma-based phobia of men, I still enjoy The Tale of the Three Brothers. Death in it is certainly tricksy, but only in a metaphorical sense. The eldest brother’s pride was his downfall, whereas the middle brother’s inability to cope with loss ended him. The third brother lived well and humbly, and eventually met Death as an old man, welcoming it as an old friend.

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Similar concepts and struggles are present in Tolkien’s works, perhaps as a response to losing his parents when he was a child, and two of his closest friends in World War I. The elves are immortal, but their fate is to remain in the world until the end of time, unable to change or forget what came before whilst the world around them changes and moves on without them. Either they sail west to The Undying Lands, or they remain in Middle-Earth and fade away to nothing but powerless spirits. Men (with the older meaning 'humans', rather than 'adult male human', which is a newer meaning) on the other hand lead short lives full of change and happenings, and upon dying are released from the Earth and permitted to go… wherever it is men go. Many men wish they could stay longer, and many elves wish they could be released.

The fourth book of The Silmarillion, the Akallabeth, relates the story of Númenor, where men of the houses of the Edain were granted lengthened lives of up to 500 years as reward for their role in the wars against Morgoth during the First Age of Middle-Earth. However, though death was supposed to be a gift for the race of men, the Númenoreans grew jealous of the elves’ mortality (with Sauron whispering in the ears of their nobles towards the end). Eventually, a huge Númenorean fleet under the command of King Ar-Pharazon sought to take it for themselves by conquering Valinor, which they believed would make them immortal like the elves. This ended in disaster for the Númenoreans.

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For those of you who do not care for Tolkien’s work, I will not apologise for that aside, but I will reassure you that it has a point.

Anne Rice wrote Interview with the Vampire after her infant daughter died of leukaemia. Naturally, the novel deals heavily with death, loss, and the afterlife, (as well as minority demographics and same-sex relationships, but that really is a different story). The vampires in Anne Rice’s novels are incapable of moving on from who they were at the time they died, and eventually grow weary of longing for a time and place which no longer exists. Armand (a red-haired Ukrainian ‘teenager’ in the novels) is the oldest ‘living’ vampire at the time Louis meets him some time at the end of the 1800s. Armand is roughly 400 years old at this time. The vampires in Anne Rice’s novels lose the will to ‘live’ and find ways to end their lives.

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Humans are not meant to stay, and even those who are grow weary of life in a world which is ever-changing and forgetful. The immortal long to not be on Earth any more. This is why Dean’s interactions with Tessa appealed. Dean might have superficially seemed scared of the reaper at first, but as I said above, his fear was not for himself. 1x12 Faith showed clearly that Dean was willing to sacrifice himself to save others, and that he did not fear his own death. Dean is not scared of dying, and Tessa is not a malevolent force in this episode. She does not need to be: Dean is going to die, and all she need do is encourage him to let go and move on. She is not evil, but neither is she good. She just is.

At the beginning of the episode Dean wanted to live for other people, but after learning and accepting the futility of resisting death, he was ready to go. The ‘Yes’ was just behind his teeth. After all, had he chosen to remain, there was no way he could return to his body. Rather he would linger, lose his sanity, and become the kind of ghost he and his brother used to hunt

Then Azazel dragged Dean back to life at the last minute. His body was alive, but Dean was essentially dead. Not for the first or last time this begs a comparison to Buffy, particularly the end of series five and beginning of series six. Buffy dies, only to be resurrected and returned to Earth, a Hell compared to where she was before. She is forced to undergo a painful adjustment to life after accepting death, all the while engaging in self-destructive behaviour as part of depression and possible suicidal ideation.

This describes Dean as much as it describes Buffy. Dean let go, and effectively died at the end of the episode, only to be dragged back and burdened with the bereavement of John’s death and the responsibility of killing Sam. In 4x15 Death Takes a Holiday, Dean will tell Tessa he wished he had gone with her. Dean’s behaviour over the next few episodes make this very clear.

But discussions of the next few episodes can occur in their own analyses. This episode begins exactly where 1x22 Devil’s Trap finished, with Dean, Sam, and John in the remains of the Impala. The possessed man exits the lorry and goes to the car, presumably intending to ensure the Winchesters are dead. Sam pulls the colt out and points it at the demon, who does not seem perturbed at all, certain as he is that Sam is ‘saving the bullet for somebody else’. The colt is supposed to be terrifying to demons, as it is (at this point in the show) the only thing which can actually kill them. Rather than filling his pants with shepherd’s pie, the demons just does not care. This strips the colt of its power in the narrative: if the demon does not care, why should I?

Furthermore, the demon also seems utterly stupid, a problem which riddles demons (and angels) throughout the whole run of the show. This is something I noticed long ago, and Paula R. Stiles is in complete agreement: they make snarky comments and act bad-ass, but for the most part they are far less threatening than they are idiotic and annoying. They do not know when to stop talking and do something.

Moving swiftly on in case the stupidity is contagious, Sam stated in the final scene of 1x22 Devil’s Trap that the hospital was ten minutes away, yet in the second scene of 2z01, it appears as though many hours have passed and the emergency services still have not got any of the Winchesters to hospital. By the time John is in the ambulance and Sam is on the stretcher, Dean should be long gone and in intensive care. Emergency services would not have waited until everybody is out of the car before airlifting all of them at the same time.

Most of the medical and emergency service information such as that above is taken from Paula R. Stiles’ analysis of this episode. Rather than crediting her every time I refer to her review in this analysis, I will credit her in advance.

So begins the two main plots of the episode: Dean lingering on the edge of death, and John and Sam’s attempts at saving him. As the plots unfold, salient ideas and plot points are introduced which subtly set the scene for later in both series two and the show as a whole:

- Dean’s eventual resignation to death, or even his willingness to die

- deals with demons to resurrect the dead

- the secret John whispers to Dean before his own death

These are all elements which are critical to the advancement of the show past 2x21 All Hell Breaks Loose, and lay the groundwork for series three and four. I have said on more than one occasion that Supernatural is poorly planned and that the writers have frequently stated that they usually do not know how a plot line or a series arc will end. This being the case, the beginning of series two does a good job of at least looking planned. This is definitely a positive in this episode, and bodes well for series two, which is thematically and structurally stronger than series one.

Dean is doomed to die in this episode, as the doctor at the beginning makes clear to Sam with his signing organ donor papers comment. However, his attitude towards his fate is markedly different than in 1x12 Faith, where he offered no resistance to death, and even ran straight towards it. Here, he says very clearly ‘Screw you, doc, I’m waking up!’ What has changed?

His conversation with Tessa at the end of the episode makes it clear: his family needs him. Note that he never once says anything to her about wanting to live for himself, hoping for fat grandchildren or anything like that, but rather than he needs to do things for other people. He wants to return to life in order to protect John and Sam and defeat Azazel. Even in death, his identity is still all about other people.

Sam, too, wants Dean alive (strange, because often he seems like he would be so much better off if Dean were dead and Sam able to lead his own life. Was that not the entire point of the 15x20 Carry On?) and takes active steps to both communicate with him and to help him combat the reaper.

Something hinted at but underused in this episode was Sam’s psychic abilities: he repeated Ghost!Dean’s line about ‘laying some mojo’ on Dean almost verbatim, and caught echoes of Ghost!Dean talking and shouting at various points. On the one hand, I am glad that Sam was not able to directly communicate with or see Ghost!Dean, as this allowed Dean the separation and isolation necessary to go on his journey towards death. On the other hand, Sam had a vision of Dean’s death in 1x14 Nightmare and that caused him to display telekinetic powers, but Dean lingering on the edge of death here did nothing to enhance Sam’s powers. Something is a little off there.

John is an enigmatic figure in this episode. He does not cry, shout, beat his breast, or do much at all to betray his thoughts to anybody, and Sam of course sees this as indifference. Paula R. Stiles comments that John’s lack of visible emotion makes him seem cold and calculating. My own interpretation is that John finally realised how much he truly loved Dean. He was wracked with guilt over his treatment of his firstborn for the preceding twenty six years and had no way of expressing any of this. He is shown to stay at Dean’s bedside for hours, though sitting at a distance and not physically interacting with him. Compare this with, for example, Alec and Rachel at the end of Dark Angel 2x11 The Berresford Agenda for a stark contrast.

In my essay about John’s abuse of Dean, I compared him to Denethor in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Boromir was Denethor’s favourite son, and Boromir’s death (along with what Sauron had been showing Denethor in the palantir) broke him. Faramir – Boromir’s younger brother and Denethor’s younger son – was a disappointment to him, and Denethor showed him nothing in the way of love, care, or pride, until it was far too late.

This is what I see in John here. Certainly on the face of things it can be interpreted as a father’s act of love for his son, but given everything I have written about John and Dean in my analyses of series one, I do not see things this simply (whatever Jensen says about it). I also do not believe that what John did was a good thing, nor do I believe it redeems him. More on that later.

After trying to start another argument with John (at least if was on Dean’s behalf this time), Sam is sent to Bobby for ingredients for a protection spell. At Sam’s behest, Bobby had towed the Impala to his salvage yard, where he believes it is bound for the scrap heap. Sam, however, sees the Impala as a metaphor for Dean, and refuses to give up on it as long as one part is still working. Following this, he requests the ingredients from Bobby, who does not at all look pleased at what he sees on the list. It is not a ‘protection spell’, but rather a summoning spell. Whether or not this summoning spell is specific to Azazel, or whether it can somehow be adjusted to focus on summoning one particular demon, is not clarified. What is also not clarified is where John got the ritual from. Azazel is no grunt, so I struggle to believe low-level demon-summoning rituals will work on him, meaning an Azazel-specific summoning is the more rational conclusion. But if so, where did John get the ritual from?

Meanwhile, Ghost!Dean speaks to John in, asking him to help save him. John, of course, cannot hear his invisible son, an apt metaphor for their entire relationship. Dean – perhaps emboldened by his invisibility – allows his anger, sadness, and betrayal to come out. Not a single word out of Dean’s mouth is false. ‘Aren’t you going to do anything? ...I have done everything you’ve ever asked. ...What kind of father are you?’

And yes, it is time: Jensen’s acting, Dear Reader! Dear Reader, Jensen’s acting. That is all.

Sam returns from Bobby’s and starts an argument with John who he thinks wants to summon Azazel in order to have ‘some stupid, macho showdown’. As in 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood, John argues right back rather than keeping his cool, but this time he can be forgiven since his son is dying. Ghost!Dean bears witness to all this, growing more anxious and angry as the argument escalates. He does his best to shut them up by shouting (providing an insight into how communication worked in that family), but they cannot hear him (just like in 1x20). Perhaps because of his heightened emotions, he manages to knock the glass of water onto the floor, smashing it.

A moment later, he collapses in pain, clutching his chest. It is revealed that his body is having a heart attack, and a spirit (the reaper) is hovering over him. Sam hears echoes of Dean’s shouting as the reaper knocks him back. Not much comes of this after this episode, which is a shame. There was an opportunity for Sam to have access to the spirit plane as part of his powers, perhaps to even be able to astral project or easily communicate with spirits. This never comes to fruition, and I am left wondering whether the reason Sam heard Dean was not because of Sam’s powers, but rather Dean being an unusually strong spirit I am honestly not sure whether the writers even considered this, and nothing is ever made of this potential..

Soon after, Ghost!Dean is still wandering around the hospital. The cut scenes involved a pointless scene where Ghost!Dean considered watching a woman getting her breasts examined. This was silly, but an interesting aspect which was completely cut from the final episode was Dean seeing a dying man covered in blood on a stretcher in the corridor. How this fit into the overall story of the plot is not clear to me. Anyway, Dean soon witnesses a real death as the blonde nurse (or was she a receptionist? Or a doctor? I have no idea) dies alone on the floor in a private room. It is also not made clear what she died of. Paula R. Stiles wrote that it was an asthma attack, but I and several members of my family are asthmatic. Asthma definitely can kill, but the woman did not sound to me like she was dying of an asthma attack. Her voice was too clear, and there was no wheezing whine or rattle as air tries to pass through the tiny gap left in her inflamed throat.

My mother has been suffering with a flare up of asthma this year. My asthma can be bad, but hers was so bad that every breath sounded like a cold draught under a rattly, wooden door. The dementors in the Harry Potter films sounded like depression, but add to that the sound of one’s middle-aged mother about to have a possibly-lethal asthma attack, and it would be truly horrific.

Soon after this, Dean meets Tessa. Tessa is a reaper, but poses as a young woman to try to help Dean accept his death and move on (to Heaven, presumably). Tessa is not especially comforting or even all that patient with Dean, however, though neither is she entirely cold. After dropping the act, she is mostly matter-of-fact with Dean. This is hardly the treatment he deserves, but given reapers perform psychopomp duties numerous times a day for ever, it is understandable she comes across as reading from a script.

I am reaching the end of this analysis, so it is time to discuss John’s trade. The episode builds towards a suspenseful bit of drama wherein Dean is debating whether or not to go with Tessa, and John making a deal with Azazel to save Dean. The viewer does not want Dean to die, but the cost of Dean’s resurrection is the magic boom stick which is the only hope of killing Azazel. More on that in a moment: whilst this is a good bit of drama, it is also a stupid character moment.

Sure I can understand it on an emotional level, but John believed the colt was the only hope of killing Azazel: once he gave it up, he would probably never get it back and be unable to stop Azazel. Idiotic, but understandable.

However, John also agreed to trade both his own life and the colt for Dean. Certainly Dean is worth at least that, but the end result is that John would be dead and not have to deal with the problems his actions caused. Instead, his sons would be burdened with carrying on his fight because of actions he willingly took, almost definitely knowing said actions would make things harder for his sons. Furthermore, john would also be freed of the burden of becoming a filicide by making his son become a fratricide.

By his own confession, John knew a lot about Azazel’s plans for the psychic children. He knew enough for his last words to Dean to be something along the lines of ‘You might have to kill your brother’ (but also: ‘Look out for Sammy’, of course. It would not be prudent to die without first reminding your eldest son of what his only purpose in life is: to be his brother’s keeper). The viewer does not find this out until 2x10 Hunted when Dean finally tells Sam what has been bothering him, but this is what John said. John knew a lot of what was to come and the ugliness which would ensue, but he surrendered his own responsibility and fobbed it off onto Dean.

You should have let Dean die, John.

A casual viewer who is not paying much attention will of course miss much of this, and will simply see John put Dean’s well-being above his quest for revenge by sacrificing himself. The exact stipulations of the agreement between John and Azazel are left occult: it is unclear whether John explicitly knew and agreed to being dragged to Hell as opposed to simply ending his life to save Dean. If John did not know, it was an act of selfless love to end a life characterised by selfish disregard of his sons’ needs. If he did know, it is an even greater act.

At least from John’s perspective. The last two and a half decades of his life were spent grieving Mary, and, in spite of his ill treatment of Dean, the thought of losing him too was too much for John to bear. I can believe that - at least at that point - Dean’s life was more important to him than anything else, but in sacrificing himself to save his son, John shifted the burden of responsibility from himself to Dean. The things he knew about Sam were no longer his cross to carry, but rather Dean’s.

That said, does John’s sacrifice here make up for his twenty-three years of child abuse? My answer is no. Nothing could ever possibly make up for the damage he inflicted on his boys; what he did formed the men Dean and Sam are, and that cannot be ‘corrected’. I will use another example to illustrate my point.

Angel is a television show about a vampire cursed with a soul whose motivation is making up for all the suffering and death he caused as a soulless vampire. But there’s never a point where he’ll be able to say he’s saved enough people to counterbalance the multitudes he killed. It’s not a task with a set goal or deadline; it’s a commitment to being a different person and never going back to what was before. There can never be an end to his redemption, but rather his striving for unattainable redemption is his redemption. It is the legend of Sisyphus retold in modern dressing.

I do not believe John’s sacrifice redeemed him, but it could be seen as the first step on a long, long road. Some are very fast to forgive John everything for this, and would brush aside all my commentary either because it contradicts what they want to see or they are just not thinking about it all that deeply. John’s sacrifice does not make him father of the year or the best dad ever. I can understand his heart might have been in the right place for once, but even without hindsight it was the wrong decision. Trading the colt alone would have been a bad move, as it left him and his sons undefended against Azazel, but for the reasons discussed above, trading his life for Dean’s was a bad idea.

Kripke was going for something here. He wanted it to be a grand, sweeping, emotional moment where the father sacrifices himself for his son. However, he was clearly not paying enough attention to the story he was actually telling nor the characters involved, because he did not succeed in delivering what he apparently wanted. Doyle’s sacrifice in Angel was far more impactful, even though the episode it happened in was a hot mess. Buffy’s sacrifice in 5x22 The Gift was a brilliant ending to a well-constructed plot-arc. John’s death was… not.

I discussed in my essay on John’s abuse of Dean that Jensen’s acting was informed by him ‘believing Dean knew John loved him’. The only scene in the whole show where I can see Dean perhaps ‘knowing John loved him’ is in the penultimate scene of 2x01 In My Time of Dying. However, the scene in question shows their relationship was incredibly unhealthy, with Dean forced to take on the role and responsibility of a life-partner for John. That Dean had to comfort John as a child in a manner which a husband or wife should do was presented as something to warm our hearts and make us forgive John a little because he valued and loved Dean really is yet another example of Kripke not telling the story he intends to tell. I expect he wanted it to be a heart-warming moment, but it bordered on incestuous and revealed just how unfit John was to be a father.

That John was being kind to Dean, showing him pride and love, clearly deeply unsettled Dean (note, Dear Reader, that people are usually only kind and loving to Dean when either he or they are about to leave him). He did not believe it was John speaking, so strange was John’s behaviour to him.

This was John’s goodbye to Dean. Sam never got to say goodbye to John (well, expect in 14x13 Lebanon), as John sent him out of the room to get his some coffee while he laid the burden of fratricide on Dean. This is hard for Sam, but given the fact he had more in the way of restitution and redress from John between 1x16 Shadow and 1x22 Devil’s Trap, I can only care so much.

The episode ends with John’s death. Good riddance to bad rubbish. If you missed my post on John's abuse of Dean, you can read it here.

Thus endeth my twenty third analysis of Supernatural, and my first of series two. I have three hundred and two episodes left to go (plus the two god-awful episodes right at the end). My upload schedule will slow down soon because a) my summer holiday is over and b) I have resumed editing the second draft on my novel. I will continue writing and posting these analyses (even if nobody reads them), but I will soon go back to one every 1-3 weeks to give me time for other things. Wish me monsters.

#Youtube #edvard's supernatural guide #spn 2x01 #s02e01 #supernatural 2x01 #2x01 in my time of dying #dean winchester #john winchester #sam winchester #death #reapers #tessa #interview with the vampire #Tolkien #middle earth #the silmarillion #dark angel #spn meta #meta analysis

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