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pagannatural · 26 days

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2.10 Hunted

-direct continuation from Croatoan. Sam was waiting for Dean to tell him what it was John said about him before dying. Sam looked really fearful.

-Dean is scared too. This time the camera focuses on him as he begins, “he said that he…wanted me to watch out for you” and his voice trembles as he continues, saying John asked him to take care of Sam, and save him.

Sam doesn’t understand at first. John said this kind of thing all the time, and Dean has been watching out for/caring for/saving Sam their whole lives, but Dean’s demeanor doesn’t match up with what he’s saying. When Dean finally gets to the point, which is that if he can’t save Sam, John said he’d have to kill him, Sam looks so deeply shocked and hurt and upset. It’s like his brain is both seizing upon and rejecting this information. Seizing on it because there’s a part of him that’s thinking I knew it, I knew something was wrong with me and rejecting it because it’s coming out of his older brother’s mouth.

It’s wild that Sam at no point this episode seems to question Dean’s loyalty to him. There’s a little seed of fear inside him that Dean will think he’s a monster, but he just came off a job in which Dean proved to him again that he will listen to and value Sam, not to mention choose Sam over everything else including his own life.

-Dean keeps looking down. He’s ashamed that he’s even saying this. He says “he said I might have to kill you, Sammy” like he’s pleading for Sam’s help. Sam is usually there for him when he’s scared or upset. This is the very first time Dean is saying this out loud and he’s feeling how awful and unfair that was for their dad to put on him.

-John also made Dean promise to keep this from Sam. He probably thought that was for the best for some reason but it belies his complete misunderstanding of his sons as people and as brothers that he thinks 1) Dean would be able to keep it from Sam and 2) that they’re better off not working together. There is just no way Dean could handle this on his own, he needs Sam.

-Sam gets angry. I don’t even think he’s actually angry, it’s more like he’s freaking out and it presents as anger. His fear that he’s not pure is not only becoming a real threat, but also one that caused his father to ask the one person he trusts in the world to kill him if necessary. Sam thought he and John were at least somewhat on the same page when he died.

-Sam switches to need-more-info mode, which is just so deeply Sam. Knowledge makes him feel in control and one of his deepest drives as a character is the Need to Understand. He needs to understand monsters, what makes them bad, what bad even means, why his family hunts them, what’s going on inside of himself, what Dean is thinking and feeling.

The one area that he doesn’t push or poke and seems, later this season, to actually want to protect himself from, is the nature of his and Dean’s connection. I want to assume that he did a ton of research on incest taboos while he was in high school or at Stanford, but the way he avoids understanding makes me think that it’s at the root of his shame and he’s built himself a wall around it just like the one he’d built against Dean himself in s1. The reason so much of Sam’s arc was about letting Dean in again was because his trust in Dean’s love was rattled when he went to college—Sam didn’t know how badly Dean wanted to get back together with him. Now he trusts that Dean loves him, but not that he can save him.

-Dean says he wants to “lay low” because “then I can make sure—“ and Sam cuts him off: “what? That I don’t turn evil?” When Sam says sarcastically “maybe you will have to waste me” Dean yells at him “I never said that.”

It’s the first time Dean raises his voice in the conversation. His anger seems to come from being misunderstood rather than being confronted about something true. Dean can’t imagine Sam becoming evil. I think Dean was about to say “Then I can make sure nothing happens to you” or something. He doesn’t seem like he’s actually angry either, just like he’s terrified and he’s trying to take control of a situation outside of his grasp.

-Dean begs Sam for “time to figure this out.” He says please four times. It quiets Sam. I wonder if Dean has spoken to Sam like that in the past, if he used to get Sammy to let him stitch him up by asking him to please just let him disinfect it or to please just count to 20 and it’ll be over.

-Sam runs off on his own, which is such an *interesting response since he has been running away from home since he was an adolescent. He is not one to spook easy or to look away when things get tough, but he hates feeling like he’s the problem.

*link for any curious psych nerds. runaways are more likely to have a single parent, have a negative relationship with parents, have been exposed to violence, and have a mental illness (most often depression). Sounds like Sam.

He runs away to investigate on his own for a few reasons. He’s afraid of himself and of what’s going to happen to him and he needs some control over the situation. He’s probably also noticing that this is tearing Dean up inside and he doesn’t want Dean to save him, he wants to fix it himself. If he can fix it, he can fix what’s wrong with him. He doesn’t really think Dean can do that for him, which is sort of true and sort of false. They have to do it together.

Whatever is up with Sam is and always has been intimately and inherently connected to Dean and the brothers’ love. There’s their destiny as vessels, and their love ultimately saving the world, but it’s also their bond itself. The demon caused the fire, so the demon blood in a way is responsible for delivering baby Sammy into Dean’s arms and their incestuous codependent relationship. (And I’m treating their relationship as incestuous regardless of what physically has or hasn’t happened.)

-So Sam leaves. When he goes to Ellen’s bar, Ellen tells him that Jo left to become a hunter and that Ellen told her “not under my roof.” It parallels Sam’s decision to leave for Stanford. Ellen tells him it’s not his fault, which he seems affected by. He thinks things are his fault because he’s impure. He probably thinks his and Dean’s feelings are his fault for the same reason.

-Ellen tells Sam that Dean has been calling asking about him, “worried sick.” When Sam leaves she’s like You know I have to call your brother and let him know you’re safe right?

It’s exactly what a parent would say to a runaway kid about calling their mom.

-Sam basically tells Ellen that Dean can’t protect him from who he is. He doesn’t believe Dean can save him and he will ultimately need to have faith that Dean can save him in s5.

-How does Sam have money for all this? He must be helping Dean with the hustling by now.

-Sam pockets some of Scott’s prescription meds, to use or to sell or both.

-Dean asks about Sam unprompted as soon as Ellen calls him. When he tracks Sam and spots him through the motel window he says out loud “thank god you’re okay” and then sees Ava and says “oh you’re better than okay” and smiles and I think it’s cute that Dean still thinks Sam is interested in anyone other than him.

-Gordon shoots at Sam. Dean beats Gordon up and says “you do that to my brother I’ll kill you” but Gordon hits him on the head with his very large gun (a rifle? I don’t know guns) and knocks him out cold. Dean feels strongly about not killing people except when it comes to protecting Sam then it’s totally fine.

-Sam finds and identifies the bullet shells and calls Dean for help and Ava is like Who are you?? and Sam says “my brother” like five times. It’s so fun seeing her perspective on Sam, who she thinks is crazy and probably dangerous because of his knowledge and the fact that he and his brother have a code word specifically for when one of them is being held at gun point. Dean sees Sam as his beautiful cutie pie lil guy who he is so proud of, and outsiders see Sam as the danger to society that he is.

-Sam says “harms way doesn’t really bother me” and when Ava says This is how you die! he says “doesn’t matter. It’s my brother.” Sam is bananas. It’s good for the viewer to be reminded of this fact often.

-Dean mostly keeps it together when Gordon is talking about killing Sam, because he’s trying to find a way to save Sam even now. Screen caps of his expressions don’t really do his scenes justice because his lips tremble, and you can see him breathing shakily, and glancing around, or flinching slightly. His dread is palpable. The sick, terrible desperation in Dean’s entire body when he thinks Sam is about to be and then thinks Sam is being killed by a grenade is hard to watch.

-Incidentally this is how ptsd commonly happens. Dean is usually able to act on his fight or flight response and fight/kill the threat, but here he’s tied up and can do nothing. So this would be particularly hard for him to deal with in the coming months/years. I can’t recall if the show explores that, I guess we’ll see.

-Gordon says “your brother thinks you’re some kind of saint.” Again with the outsider perspectives here. Dean sees Sam as the most precious, good, important thing in the world and Gordon sees him as weird and soft and obsessed with his brother (gay?).

-Gordon says “show your brother the killer you really are, Sammy” and Sam says “it’s Sam” before knocking him out. I love this callback to Bloodlust where Sam says Dean is the only one allowed to call him Sammy.

-Sam goes to Dean wearily and puts a hand on his shoulder. It’s almost casual, establishing contact by touching, letting Dean know he’s there. Dean could hear Sam fighting with Gordon, so he knew he was alive, but he needs to touch Sam and look into his eyes to really know he’s alive and okay. Sam helps Dean get untied and Dean ends up pulling Sam to his feet as he unties Dean’s ankles.

When Dean holds Sam’s face in his hands, his thumbs just under his jaw, Sam tilts his head back tiredly, exposing his throat. He responds like it’s a matter of course that Dean will cradle his face, like he’s done it many times before when Sam was smaller and had to tilt his head back to look up at Dean.

What is it with Dean and Sam’s neck and throat? It’s an intimate part of the body to be looking at and touching so often, but unique in that it’s not explicitly sexual. It just feels sexual.

Sam puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder again, wordlessly confirming that yes, he is okay, so Dean breaks away to kill Gordon like he said he would.

-When Sam realizes this is Dean’s aim, he tells Dean not to and pulls him away by the collar of his jacket. It’s very guard dog/master.

-Dean calls Sam a “fine upstanding citizen” for getting Gordon arrested and Sam smiles prettily.

-Sam is so cute waiting in the car while Dean yells at Ellen on the phone about how Gordon tracked Sam by talking to hunters at her bar. Mom is so mad the bully picked on his kid, and the bully is in detention but that’s not enough he wants to talk to a parent about this.

-In the car Dean warns Sam “dude, if you ever run off like that again—“

“What? You’ll kill me?” Sam jokes.

It’s nice they can joke like this about past arguments. Couples who know how to fight are more likely to stay married.

-Dean says they should go to Amsterdam (implying that he wants them to forget their worries and get fucking blazed together) and Sam does that thing where he grins and licks his lips at him. But he says he’s not just gonna ditch the job and Dean says “screw the job.” Sam tells Dean “you’re a hunter, it’s what you were meant to do.” John and Gordon have said this same thing, but I think the difference is that they meant Dean was born to kill and Sam thinks he was born to rescue. It shows the level of admiration that Sam has for Dean, thinking that he’s doing what he was born to do. You only think that of people who are very, very talented. Personally I think Dean was bred to be a hunter and would’ve been a firefighter or an ER nurse or something (wait what did Jess dress up as for Halloween? wait), but he was born to be Sam’s big brother.

Sam never felt a calling to do anything in particular, as far as I’ve gotten in the show. He’s really good at getting people to talk and convincing them of things and doing research, so lawyer fits, but he’s also said he never fit in at Stanford. When he has a normal life in s8 he works in maintenance. He must have felt so out of place as a teenager thinking Dean had found his destiny, and that it wasn’t right for Sam.

-Dean says he doesn’t believe in destiny, meaning he believes in Sam staying good. Sam tells Dean “you can’t protect me.” Dean says “I can try” and Sam thanks him. He feels loved by Dean.

-They do their Bitch/Jerk bit and Sam grins. They must have missed each other, they’re so flirty and excited to be together again.

-Sam calls Ava again and Dean looks at him suggestively and asks if Sam is sweet on her. Sam says “she’s engaged, Dean” and Dean says “so?” Okay cool so Sam being engaged would not have been an issue for Dean it really was just the blood relative thing. Cool.

-Sam chooses both Dean and hunting. Running off on his own put him at risk which puts Dean at risk, and Dean agrees to be together on Sam’s terms rather than laying low.

#samdean #supernatural #spn meta #sam and dean #wincest #spn 2x10 #playthings is next!!#ooh I’m so excited to watch playthings again I’ve only seen it once #was this one too rambly? you’ll let me know if it gets too rambly

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destielshippingnews · 1 year

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Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 2x10 Hunted

This episode is Raelle Tucker’s second solo script for the show, and while it is not terrible, it is not her best work. Miles better than her erstwhile co-writer Sera Gamble’s lamentable soap-opera offering 2x17 Heart, but falling far short of 2x20 What Is and What Should Never Be. Funnily enough, the thing I like most about Raelle Tucker’s scripts seems to be the weak point of this episode: she is a Dean girl. Her portrayal of Dean in this episode is spot on, but the way she wrote Sam made him seem like an utter dunderhead.

Let us begin near the beginning of the episode with Dean’s revelation to Sam that John told him he might have to kill Sam. Sam’s reaction to this news is exactly what I would expect from him. As has been eloquently displayed, Sam is a master at making everything about himself and whining about it, so of course he would not even see the fact that Dean’s own father has burdened him with not only murder, but fratricide – one of the gravest sins in almost all cultures. This is all in character for Sam, a guy who likes to think he is doing good but forgets that the road to Hell is paved with ignoring Dean good intentions. Sam himself knows that there is something ‘wrong’ with him, that his visions are portents of something much worse, and he still shoots the messenger. Fine, whatever, nothing new here.

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Sam abandoning Dean and running away in the middle of the night ‘to find answers about himself’ was similarly stupid, especially considering he knows at this point that people like Gordon are after him, as are Azazel and co. What could have happened here to make Sam seem much more mature, thoughtful, and actually respectful of his brother, would have been for him to say to Dean:

‘I don’t want to be around you at the moment. I know this is hard for you, and I know how much you’ve always done for me, but knowing what Dad told you has made me wonder whether I’m safe being near you. I’ve been watching you getting more violent and scary for months, and a few days ago you seemed to have no problem killing people who might have been infected. You’ve already killed innocents: remember Meg and her brother’s hosts? I do. I hate having to leave you, but I don’t know how much longer I’ll be safe around you. If I go to sleep in the same room as you, am I going to wake up with your gun pointed at me? I can’t take that risk, Dean. And I don’t think seeing the man Dad told you to kill every day is doing you any good. I’m sorry. Go to Bobby, or Ellen. But I can’t be around you at the moment.’

That would have been respectable and adult. It would have been like Buffy choosing to not have Angel in her life rather than continuing with their messy, doomed relationship. Given Dean’s behaviour and Sam’s fear of and for him over the last ten episodes, this would be perfectly understandable. What we got, however, was something quite different. Sam simply left Dean, and gave his reason to Ellen as ‘I have to find out about myself and Dean can’t protect me from that.’ In other words, since Dean cannot protect Sam in Sam’s estimations, Dean is useless and Sam does not need him. Paula R. Stiles worded it thusly:

When Ellen tells him she has to call Dean, Sam whines that he has “to find answers” and Dean can’t “protect” him from that. The self-centered, utilitarian view Sam has of Dean in this episode (He only wants Dean around when he needs him for something) is stunning. I’d forgotten how far into the episode it went.

Sam is supposed to be intelligent, caring, and heroic. This is what The Show tells us over and over again, but Kripke’s self-insert really is just an overgrown teenager. Please do not misunderstand: he is young and even if he were not, people are allowed to make mistakes and occasionally be selfish, silly, and stupid. The problem with Sam is that it is a good day if he is not any of those things. His motivation for leaving Dean had nothing to do with Dean’s recent behaviour and everything to do with 'finding out who he is'.

But even given Dean’s behaviour, I felt so sad for him. He is the one burdened with his entire moral framework being shattered after losing his father and being resurrected. He is the one showing serious signs of being driven towards ‘evil’. And he is the one abandoned, rejected, yet struggling with all his might to not become the monster he has to become.

As if Sam’s self-centred nocturnal abandonment of him were not enough, his instantaneous reaction to hearing that Dean might have to kill him is to attack Dean. Constant Readers may well remember my referring to Dean as John and Sam’s ’cat’ (and Missouri Moseley’s dog whom she would not stop kicking): people will sometimes kick the family cat in anger instead of lashing out at the person who angered them, and they do so because they know the cat cannot kick back. John did this to Dean in 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood, and Sam does it to Dean whenever he gets the chance. 1x08 Bugs, for example, with his ’cum ’n ’av a go if ye fink ye’re ’ard enuff’ act when Dean took issue with Sam bitching about him to strangers. Sam’s behaviour in this scene with his blatant aggression towards Dean, and his threat that ’you might have to waste me [because otherwise I’m gonna batter you]’ smacked of knowing full well he can treat Dean as badly as he likes with impunity.

Worse still, Dean allows it. He wastes no time whatsoever in taking all the blame and guilt Sam hurls at him, and confesses he ’deserves it’. Even this early in the show, it makes me very sad to see this because this is 100% true to life codependent behaviour. If you want evidence of a child who has been treated horrifically, here is some right here. If Dean can absolve others of any blame by taking it all on himself, then he can perhaps avoid punishments such as being shouted at or beaten: if he abases himself and crawls in the muck for other people, they might let him be. Clearly he has learnt that such behaviour is necessary in maintaining relationships with John and Sam. Only with Cas does he refuse to take on all guilt (at least all of the time), but that does not stop Cas ultimately letting Dean take all the blame for their fall out between 14x18 Absence and 15x10 The Trap.

This never stops with Dean, and it makes me sad. In this scene, he is clearly trying his hardest to maintain the only relationship he has with anybody, but to do so he must allow himself to be attacked and blame himself for it.

As much as I write this, I am aware that some readers will not ’see this’, and all I can say is: I am glad it is invisible to you. The thing about abusive behaviour and poisonous relationships is that they are often invisible to people who have no experience of them. They are the real-world equivalent of monsters: the fact you cannot see them does not mean people are not fighting them.

It is understandable that Sam be angry, but not that he direct it at Dean. I would have been over the moon if Dean had punched Sam in the face and pushed him into the river for acting like that. Especially galling was Sam’s ’Take some responsibility for yourself, Dean’, which stank of an immature little boy trying to talk big but exposing his own arse by doing so. Think of all the responsibility Sam has not taken for himself, like for example him being to blame for Dean’s taking the fall for shifter!Dean’s crimes in 1x06 Skin, or electro!Sam shooting Dean in 1x10 Asylum because it was much easier to blame Den for all his problems that to admit the fact Sam chose to travel across America with Dean. And then there is 1x11 Scarecrow when Sam ran his mouth off to a stranger about his life... Ironic, really.

All of this would be forgivable, mind you, if the show were not so adamant of absolving Sam of all responsibility, of having other characters treat him like a good boy (Ellen, Bobby, Missouri), and denying Dean the opportunity to get angry at Sam on more than one or two occasions over the whole fifteen year run. The end result is that it looks as though I am supposed to think Sam’s actions are generally good and justified while Dean is in the wrong. Even when Sam is responsible for raising Lucifer, he still tries to pass off the blame to Dean for ’being too controlling and pushing him towards Ruby’, (5x05 Fallen Idols) a claim the show makes no effort to disprove and which Dean humbly accepts.

I just want somebody to give Dean a hug and a big mug of hot chocolate. I think he will have to wait until 15x14 Last Holiday before anything even close to that happens.

Moving swiftly on before series seven Sam’s sideburns distract me too much, this episode shows that though Dean’s overblown, exaggerated archetypical masculine side as represented by Gordon in 2x03 Bloodlust was wounded and momentarily defeated, it is still alive and trying to take over Dean.

Gordon is once again the antagonist in this episode. ’Baddie’ would probably be a more fitting word, but the show ends up proving Gordon to not be completely wrong. It shows Gordon to be pathological in his willingness to believe what one demon told him about somebody he conveniently knows, and his willingness to kill people for what the might one day commit (according to a random demon because demons never lie). He also has a hate on for Sam for turning Dean against him in 2x03 Bloodlust, which likely added to his willingness to believe anything which could justify his killing Sam. Gordon seemed to believe Dean could be a companion for him, but he wanted Dean’s complete, undivided loyalty. For that reason, he sought to turn Dean against Sam and cut him off from his brother in the way that abusive, manipulative, controlling boyfriends and girlfriends do.

Gordon even attempts to convince Dean of the rightfulness and necessity of killing Sam, and apparently believes Dean will see his side and not torture and kill him afterwards.

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It is strange, then, that the show almost proves Gordon’s point right later on, given Sam’s dalliance with Ruby and the apocalyptic consequences thereof. Two things can be true at once, though: Sam is a potential threat at this point in the show, but killing somebody for an innate part of themselves or something they might do is unjustified.

Scott in the cold open is an innocent being tormented by Azazel in order for him to develop his psychic powers and become a ’soldier in the coming war’, a line which sounds nice but had about as much as pay-off as Soldier Boy in The Boys. By which I mean there is none: the Stephen King-adjacent storyline of psykids comes to nothing since all of them bar Sam die by the end of series two, and later revelations of Dean and Sam being the divinely-pedigreed vessels for Michael and Lucifer make that whole plot redundant. Scott, however, was destined to be one of the young people (who are all American because Azazel lacks a passport) forced to fight for a chance to open the gates of Hell and release Satan.

We meet Scott at a counselling session where he reveals he is one of the psychic children with a similar story to Sam: nightmares which began roughly a year ago followed by some kind of power. The counsellor seems unsure whether he believes Scott or not, given he refused to shake his hand, and afterwards Scott gets killed like a gutted fish in a car park. The killer is Gordon, but this is revealed later.

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This happens a month prior to the episode, so perhaps sometimes around episode 2x06 No Exit if we assume that there is roughly a week or so between episodes. Unlike other cold opens involving ESPkids, this one does not turn out to be a vision of Sam’s, and he does not find out about it until after he abandons his brother in the night instead of doing the clever thing and waiting and planning with Dean. His first stop seems to be Harvelle’s Roadhouse in Nebraska, quite a drive away from Oregon (where presumably Dean and Sam had their discussion after 2x09 Croatoan took place there). Here, he is essentially welcomed with open arms and firmly absolved of any wrongdoing or guilt in running away from home like a dumb teenager. The show wants us to think Sam is in danger of becoming evil, but everybody is intent on acting like the sun shines out of his arse and ignoring his bad behaviour.

A prime example of this is presented in this episode as Sam wanders in through the door of Harvelle’s Roadhouse: rather than giving him the excoriation he so sorely deserves after going AWOL whilst Big Things Regarding Kids Like Sam are in motion, Ellen acts almost exactly as she would if the writer (or script editor) thought Sam’s behaviour was good and justified. She gives him a warm smile and speaks in a quiet, soft voice as if she is a mother welcoming her son back home. Ellen enquires as to the nature of the schism between Dean and Sam which Sam deftly deflects, and rather than pushing him on the subject, she conveniently goes along with Sam’s conversation, allowing Sam to refrain from giving an accounting of himself.

Would she have done this if things were the other way around and Dean had abandoned Sam? Almost definitely not, and I am having flashbacks to Missouri Mosely in 1x09 Home. Dean would have been flayed alive, but Sam is practically welcomed with open arms and commiseration. Even after Sam shifts the topic to Jo (whom Sam had a pivotal role in getting into the hunting life. Remember: Sam also neglected to call Ellen and inform her Jo was with them, yet only Dean got the reprimanding), none of the anger she directed at the brothers (one of them in particular) is apparent.

That would have been acceptable to an extent, since he is not her teenage son and it is not her place to reprimand him, but even if his scarpering from the one person most able to protect him from Azazel did not put himself and everybody around him in danger, he has still run away without explanation and let the people in his life fear the worst. In spite of that, he gets not a single sharp word.

As if that were not bad enough, Ellen even gives Sam what amounts to an almost-apology for her behaviour at the end of 2x06 No Exit. Sam is the one in the wrong here, and not only does he get called ’Sweetie’, but he gets the almost-apology which by rights should be Dean’s almost-apology, since he seemed to be the one both Ellen and Jo specifically rejected and drove away at the end of that episode, even though Sam AND Jo were equally to blame for what happened.

Anyway, Sam went to Ellen to get help with finding other psychics like him. Ash searches for people in certain criteria: born in 1983, mother died in a house fire, etc, and manages to call up four results, two of which are dead (Max from 1x14 Nightmare and Scott from the cold open) as well as Andy from 2x05 Simon Said whose adopted mother died in a housefire. Sam decides that since Scott’s death is the most recent (one month prior), he should go to where he died to try to find answers. ...An idea which makes exactly the kind of sense that’s not, but whatever, Sam. I would have gone to find Andy since he is still alive and a possible next target, but Sam is Big Smart so my idea is clearly stupid.

Upon leaving, Ellen tells Sam she will have to call Dean to tell him where Sam is, but Sam requests she not do so. Apparently Sam is going to find out the truth about himself and Dean cannot protect him from that, which makes exactly the kind of sense that’s not, but whatever, Sam. Is this one of those déjà thingies? Anyway, Ellen is apparently a sucker for Sam’s ’puppy dog’ act because she agrees to acquiesce to his request. Personally, I want to cut his fringe off and tell him to stop shaving so closely whenever he tries that face.

Why Ellen did not ring Dean while Ash was doing his thing is beyond me. Sam would not have been happy, but what would he have done to stop her? Assaulted her in a bar full of other hunters? Good luck. Sam would have had to wait around if he wanted his information anyway, so that would have been a smart move. Why she did not ring Dean directly after Sam departed is also beyond my ken: if she is supposed to be a mother hen character, she should do some mother henning and make sure her hens are safe. Sam is safer with Dean than without, whatever Sam’s misgivings may be, so wherefore the lack of henning?

Plot convenience. And treating Sam like Mummy’s Special Little Boy. What else would be appropriate for Kripke’s s Oh-So-Sensitive self-insert? Gross. Sam’s a perfect example of spare the rod, spoil the child.

But speaking of children, Sam’s tendency to run away is likely connected to his need for control over other people, particularly Dean. If he is in control he feels he can minimise potential risk to himself, a trait apparently common among people whose childhoods were characterised by instability, neglect, and abuse. It is a truism that abused children may come to embody the worst aspects of their parents, but such is the nature of trauma: it is often passed from one person to the next like a disease. John abused his children, mainly Dean, but Sam was there too and he suffered instability, neglect, and a lack of control and direction. In order to give himself a feeling of stability and control over his life, he appears to try his hardest to exert control over those nearest to him – namely Dean. If he cannot do this, his instinct seems to be to run away.

People call Dean emotionally repressed because he does not talk about his feelings and ’lies about being ’fine’, but Dean’s problem is that while he mostly understands what he is feeling, he does not have the support or tools to process things properly, wherefor his reliance on hunting as catharsis and alcohol as a painkiller. However, he does not run from his issues (mostly): he just locks them in the room next door. Sam on the other hand talks about other people’s emotions but rarely talks about his own, and appears to be much worse at running from them than Dean is.

Apropos running, Sam’s flight from Dean leads him to Lafayette, Indiana where Scott is buried. Sam interviews Scott’s father and investigates Scott’s bedroom which is home to video tapes, cassette tapes, and novels which look like they were probably taken from Eric Kripke’s bedroom in the 1980s or early 1990s. Further investigation reveals that the wall of Scott’s closet is plastered with pictures of yellow eyes taken from magazines.

Following this, Sam receives company at his motel in the form of Ava, a psychic who had a vision of Sam exploding. She explains that she had visions of Scott’s death but thought they were just dreams until she saw a report of his death in the newspaper. After that, she tracked Sam down by searching for the name of the motel she saw on the notepad Sam used. Clever girl. Shame she will not be around for long, but still.

The actress Katherine Isabelle played Margot Verger in Hannibal (2013), as well as one of the leads in Ginger Snaps (2000) alongside Emily Perkins who will appear several times in Supernatural as Becky Rosen, the fangirl who essentially roofied Sam, tried to marry him, then tied him to a bed when the spell stopped working. Oh, and we were probably supposed to be laughing at that. At least her final appearance in 15x04 Atomic Monsters is much more grown up and socially conscious.

Returning to the episode at hand, Paula R. Stiles concluded that Azazel sent Ava the vision in order for her to prevent Sam getting killed (or at least, that is her interpretation of what the episode must be about to make sense), but if that was the case, why did Azazel not just kill Gordon? Unless it was a test or whether Sam would kill Gordon, or whether Dean would kill Gordon. That is getting into the realm of speculation once again, though, so I will leave it there.

Ellen eventually decides to call Dean, though it is unclear how much time has passed since Sam left. If the Roadhouse is in Nebraska and Sam is in Indiana, that would take a fair few hours of driving. 650 miles by road separate the state capitals of Lincoln and Indianapolis, but the location of the Roadhouse in Nebraska is not clarified, so it could be a few hundred miles farther if the Roadhouse is in the west of the state. However it may be, it appears the journey would take something like ten hours, so it must be the next day at least when Ellen rings Dean. Some pseudophilosophical preamble about ’not always being able to protect your loved ones’ is followed by Ellen spilling Sam’s whereabouts to Dean.

And speaking of Dean, I noticed Jensen’s unusual pronunciation of s while watching 1x15 The Benders last year. I had seen people mocking the way he talks before and never understood what they were talking about, but now I have actually noticed it, I am seriously casting negative judgement on people for making fun of it.

It is not a speech impediment because his speech is fine, but there is something about his s sounds at the end of a word in particular which strikes me as unusual in English. It is definitely not a sh sound, but it is a bit thicker sounding than a usual s. It is almost a palatalised sound like in Estonian, Karelian, or Russian. As well as that, he often does not turn his s into a z at the end of words like native English speakers usually do with words like dogs (normally pronounced dogz) and please (usually pronounced pleaz). Jensen’s please often rhymes with fleece, and his dogs is often pronounced with his unusual s, not a normal z. He also says cars with an s at the end, not a z. I have no idea whether this is an idiosyncracy of his, the remnants of a speech impediment, or a feature of the English spoken in his region of Texas. Now I have pinpointed it, I can hear it everywhere ranging from his work on Days of Our Lives and Dark Angel to the voiceover on The Winchesters and his performance in Big Sky. Valentine’s Day is approaching, and with it my yearly ritual of watching My Bloody Valentine 3D, so I will be listening out for it then.

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Hello, I have been studying languages and linguistics for almost two decades, pleased to make your acquaintance. And now back to our regularly-scheduled broadcast...

Sam enlists Ava’s help in getting hold of Scott’s file from his counsellor (which involves Ava squirming as she tries to act like she belongs there and Sam being an idiot and climbing around on the side of what looks like quite a tall building). They later listen to the recording of Scott’s final session together in the motel room, and this raises the topic of Azazel and psychic children. Sam tries to explain the Yellow-Eyed Demon, psychic children, and ’the coming war’ to Ava, but she understandably thinks he is a weirdo talking a load of codswallop.

Returning to the subject of ambiguous passage of time, it is unclear how long it took Dean to reach Indiana, but he rolls up outside in his noisy, rumbling car which Sam appears not to notice at all. Dean sees his brother and Ava through the window, but rather than going into the room and giving Sam the stern talking to he deserves for being a melodramatic pantaloon, he is content to sit outside in the car assuming that Sam and Ava have engaged in coitus, or are soon to do so.

This makes sense, of course, because Sam in no way deserves a stiff reprimand for his behaviour in this episode. Even the man Sam hurt the most with his actions is not allowed to to be angry at him in this episode. Raelle Tucker, I am surprised. Or was this a script editor decision? Raelle did so well with 2x20 What Is and What Should Never Be.

Enter Gordon and the beginning of a fight scene which in all honesty is a bit naff. Other than Alec X5-494 once more momentarily taking control of Jensen to reset Gordon’s brain with a nasty-looking kick to the head, it is a little silly.

Nobody in the motel seems to hear either the motel window shattering, the gunshots (which were not that quiet), or two grown men whaling on each other across the street.

Dean’s Alec’s kick to Gordon’s head should have done some serious damage and put him at a considerable disadvantage in his fight with Dean Alec, but apparently his head is so thick that Dean’s Alec’s kick did not stun him at all. Neither does Dean Alec punching him in the head following said kick do much more than make his mouth bleed a bit. Luckily for Gordon, Dean and Alec’s vessel’s skull is much more fragile than his, meaning that a blow to the head with the butt of Gordon’s rifle is enough to knock it out cold.

Alas, that meant that Alec was once more driven back to the recesses of Dean’s vessel’s consciousness where, alack, he shall remain for a long while. I love Firefly to bits, but the reason series three of Dark Angel was cancelled three days after it got greenlit was because Fox decided to go with Firefly instead, so thrilled were they to have a Joss Whedon project on their network.

Have I told you about my best friend Alec, by the way? I miss him...

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Rather than finishing his job and killing Sam, Gordon inexplicably leaves the scene with Dean and Alec’s vessel in tow without being seen and with what must be considerable head trauma quick enough that neither Sam nor Ava saw hide nor hair of him. Upon investigating the source of the bullets which nearly perforated him and Ava, Sam discovers a round and concludes somebody used a muffled rifle, much to Ava’s amusing bemusement.

Alec is alas in absentia, but Sam receives a phone call from Dean in which his vessel appears to have taken no damage whatsoever from being once more knocked unconscious with a blunt object, even though a blow to the head hard enough to cause unconsciousness is hard enough to cause serious brain damage or death. Dean is tied to a chair in what looks like an abandoned motel room, and with Gordon’s gun pointed at him he tells Sam to meet him at a certain location, but not without first informing Sam via a code that somebody has a gun on him.

What follows is probably the best scene of the episode for many reasons. Gordon attempts to justify his need to kill Sam to Dean in what sounds very much like trying to recruit Dean to his cause. He sees Dean as somebody who could be very much like him, something which shows Gordon sees all too clearly Dean’s propensity for violence and his homicidal, psychopathic potential. Why else would Gordon leave Dean alive after his phone call to Sam if he did not believe he could talk Dean around to his way of thinking? He could have shot Dean in the chest, cleaned up any blood off his face, and made it look as though Dean were unconscious if he wanted to lure Sam in, but he chose not to. Perhaps the thought of sitting in a room with a dead body which would empty its bowels soon after death was off-putting...

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Dean for his part is still tethered to ’sanity’ by his moral compass, something Gordon appears to misunderstand. Dean would kill him, as indeed he intended to after Sam untied him, and nothing Gordon could say or do would prevent Dean making him sleep with the fishes. Whilst Gordon is busy talking about how it is necessary to kill the psychic kids to save the world (’necessary evil’, ’for the greater good’ and all that) Dean’s bravado slowly fades as he realises Gordon might just be able to kill Sam (the second tripwire wipes the smile off his face) but he almost never looks scared of Gordon. Though he is tied to a chair and eventually gagged, he gives Gordon looks which say ’you are so fraking stupid’ and ’oh my god, you’re an idiot’ and I cannot help being amused. Dean has no overt power in that situation, but he seems inconvenienced rather than weak and vulnerable. Gordon on the other hand has no idea what thin ice he is skating on. He should have ganked Dean while he had the chance, but he was clearly just too sweet on him.

Yes, I am aware not everybody is gay, but neither is everybody heterosexual.

Besides that, Gordon’s seeming belief that Dean will reciprocate his lust join him on the dark side of the force after realising the necessity and rightfulness of his killing people like Sam proves that his mentis is very far from compos.

Back to Sam, he tells Ava to leave town and go back to her fiancé, then goes to the address Dean gave him. He sneaks around the back of the abandoned motel and into the room. There is an explosion and Dean roaring like an angry bull through his gag, but Gordon is not so easily fooled. A second explosion soon follows, but it turns out Sam is alive and he pulls his gun out on Gordon… and then immediately proves he really is the stupidest child in remedial English by NOT PULLING THE DAMN TRIGGER!

Have I already had this rant in this analysis, or was it the previous one? Sam’s hesitancy to pull the trigger on bad guys might have been understandable near the beginning of series one, and even in 1x21 Salvation it was understandable he missed the first shot at Azazel. Even not shooting Azazel!John was relatable, but at that point he should have learnt that trying to have a clear conscience and not harm anybody is selfish, self-indulgent, and GETS PEOPLE KILLED! This is a lesson he should have learnt multiple times, with 2x09 Croatoan being the latest, but he seems incapable of learning form his mistakes. People think Sam is the intelligent one why?

Gordon had shown his true colours in 2x03 Bloodlust, and in this very episode he had beaten Dean with a gun, tied him up, then used him as bait to lure in Sam, not to mention the two explosions which were intended specifically to kill Sam. What part of this says ‘not shooting this man the first opportunity I get’ is a good idea in this context? Gordon might believe he is justified in what he is doing, but most people would call him ‘evil’ without hesitation. Even Sam would, but Sam lets him get away with a little bit of unconsciousness. Pull the ever-loving trigger, Sam, you floppy-haired prat. A clear conscience is a luxury he can ill afford, and one which endangers himself, Dean, and all the other kids like him.

Sam unties Dean, whereupon the latter wastes no time in going to dispatch Gordon, but Sam stops him and – for some unknown reason – Dean leaves Gordon be, taking Sam’s word that Gordon has been taken care of. Once more, people are doing what Sam wants in this episode to avoid conflict, even though Sam was the reason all of this happened in the first place.

As if to prove me right, Gordon wakes up in no time and comes after Dean and Sam as they walk to the car, trying to kill them with his pistol. They run and hide behind a grassy mound, at which point the police arrive and apprehend Gordon. They find lots of weapons in Gordon’s van, and we are left to conclude Gordon will be going to prison for a long time.

Here is my problem with the scene, and it is similar to Sam risking Dean’s life at the end of 1x13 Route 666. The police arriving was not guaranteed to happen at a certain time, and if they had arrived a moment later, Gordon could well have murdered both Sam AND Dean (although he might have spared Dean death). Had Sam arrived later, Gordon might have heard or seen them and run, possibly killing Dean beforehand, or else kidnapping him again. Sam might well have been thinking of the police when he refused to kill Gordon, but his plan was too dependent on contingencies and risked Dean’s life on numerous counts.

There is also the inconvenient fact that Dean is a wanted murderer after Sam made him take the fall for Shifter!Dean’s murders in 1x06 Skin. Had the police turned up whilst Dean was still tied to the chair, things would have gone badly for him.

Stupid, stupid Sam. Even Dean praises him at the end of the episode, for which I have to roll my eyes.

After this, Dean rings Ellen, assuming she must have had something to do with Gordon finding out Sam’s whereabouts. Ellen understands Dean’s assumption, but asserts that she did not tell anybody. Any of the hunters in the Roadhouse could have overheard, and according to her many of them would have easily been able to track Sam and the psychics down.

Anyway, the penultimate scene of the episode is Dean and Sam talking in the car. Ava will not answer phone and Sam is getting concerned, and after making a comment about marital infidelity and carnal pleasure as a reward for saving the world, Dean says ‘If you ever take off like that again…’ which is the extent of the anger he shows Sam in this episode. Sam’s response to this is a laugh, as though a microbe has just started getting lippy with him.

So those people who think Dean has a history of violently abusing Sam… take a look at how little Sam cares about Dean’s threats of repercussions. He does not, not in the slightest. Does that sound like the actions of a man being ‘threatened with violence’ by his abuser? Not to me.

Bismillah give me strength...

Oh, and Dean made a men-being-raped-in-prison joke, because that is hilarious apparently. I mean, those men deserve it, after all. Sam deserved a slap in the face after his behaviour in this episode, but Dean gets a time out. Why do the writers keep giving the characters stupid lines like that? Still, at least he does not make a joke about the man who is actually raped repeatedly in 2x15 Tall Tales, but more on that sometime in March when I get to it.

Ava’s radio silence worries Sam enough that he gets Dean to drive him to Peoria, Illinois (the state next door to Indiana). At Ava’s home, they find her fiancé dead and sulphur in the window: a demon was recently there, but the exact circumstances of Ava’s disappearance and her dead fiancé are anybody’s guess. Did the demon kill the fiancé and then kidnap Ava, or did it possess Ava, kill the fiancé, and then leave? Was the demon already possessing Ava when she met Sam?

Sam finds Ava’s engagement ring on the floor, and then the end credits roll.

Not the best episode, but not the worst either. The mollycoddling of Sam irked and vexed me, as did the writer not allowing Dean or anybody else (but especially Dean) to get angry with Sam. This might be a script editor decision rather than writer decision, but I am still miffed. In hindsight, the psychic kids plot is mostly redundant and never leads anywhere. It could have done, as Lucifer could easily have used the psychics in his army to fight the ‘war’ we never actually see but hear a lot about (probably a budget problem, just like the black contact lenses etc). Dean is struggling with his ‘dark side’ or his ‘exaggerated masculine’ which is trying to deaden him to killing Sam. Dean is, however, in a better position to fight his own corner, and unless I am very much mistaken there is no point in series two after this where it looks conceivable Dean would kill Sam. Although after Sam’s gallivanting off on a jolly jaunt this episode, Dean would only have my deepest sympathies is he chose to do so.

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