Monsters of Television

“It’s not fair, and…you know, it hurts like hell, but…it’s worth it.”

I really believed that this was the best sandwich Dean's ever eaten.

I didn’t cry while watching this episode on the bus. Really. I didn’t. It was allergies.

Okay.

I totally cried. When Dean sees Mary. When he talks to John’s grave. When Sam’s all “Dude, we’ve never been friends. We see each other at holidays. What are you doing right now?”

No. I’m not crying just thinking about it. I have allergies. Pollen’s been really bad this year. No rain and all. You know how it is.

Sniffle.

All kidding aside, I enjoyed the episode (although I’m not kidding about the crying. I totally did). It’s a nice button on Dean’s arc this season, and I couldn’t ask for a better episode going into the finale.

These sorts of dream episodes are always tricky to land. For instance, I really loathe “Normal Again” from Buffy season 6 since the stakes (that Buffy was dreaming her life as a slayer) never really clicked for me, and veered a little closely to snow globe gazing (even though, technically, Buffy is part of that snow globe). On the flip side, the finale of Newhart is a masterpiece of executing dream silliness (genre expectations do play into this, I think, but that’s for another post).

With this episode of Supernatural, however, the challenge of the episode isn’t so much whether or not it’s a dream (we know it is, and so does Dean) but how attractive that dream is, how much Dean, and us for that matter, want to stay in that dream. And it’s a really attractive dream, filled with a hot nurse girlfriend, mom, great sandwiches, and a job that doesn’t care if you don’t show up or not.

But the core of the show, the core of Dean as a human being, is not there: his relationship with Sam. I admire the show for restraining itself from the obvious ways of depicting the relationship between this universe’s Sam and Dean. Dean isn’t a bum or a barfly who has screwed up his life and is the shame of his family, but someone who just lives a fairly simple but comfortable life.

And Sam and Dean don’t hate each other. This would’ve been so easy to do, and so boring to watch. Instead, they’re just strangers. They see each other on holidays and on Samantha’s birthday. I love it. It’s a much harsher thing to happen to Dean than being hated. Being hated mean there’s emotion to the relationship. Here, in this episode, there’s only distance.

So it makes the scene between the two of them, where Sam maps all this out for Dean, so tough to watch. They’ve fought before so it would’ve felt familiar and safe to both Dean and to us. That there is no relationship at all is actually worse than there being a strained one. But, deep down, I have to think that that’s what Dean wants. With no relationship, Sam can be with Jess and finish law school and lead out the life he wanted.

This scenario, really, feeds into Dean’s sense of sacrifice to protect his family in any way he can, and even in the dream scenario, it’s about Sam living out his dreams, and not him. What Dean’s dreams are, we have no idea, and maybe Dean himself doesn’t even know. There’s a sadness to this that betray’s Dean’s normal bravado, but I love that the episode allows us to draw that connection instead of spelling it out for us.

How hard must that scene have been to play for Ackles and Padalecki? I mean, they’re the only constants on the show as actors, the only one who have to deal with whatever hell the writers have come up with that week. I can only imagine that they’ve bonded as friends in this environment, so to have to work that kind of scene had to be hard (but it’s done so well).

Ackles does basically own the episode (he’s in every scene it seems). Between sandwich eating and crying at John’s grave, he hits so many different beats and all of them just work for me (does this make me a DeanGirlBoy?). And while people give it a lot of flack, I chalk up his time on a soap.  Soaps are often a good training ground for having to hit certain beats and hit them quickly and concisely since you only have so many takes and time to get it right (just look at Nathan Fillion for more proof), and I think that’s where a lot of Ackles’ timing and skill comes from.

With many Dean’s concerns wrapped up in this episode (though not all of them), I can only assume that the finale focuses on the Sam, psychics, and Azazel. I cannot wait.

Remember that I’ll have two other folks — Charlotte Howell and Cory Barker — joining me in giving thoughts on the finale and the season as a whole.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• “My God. Barbara Eden was hot, wasn’t she? Way hotter than that Bewitched chick.”
• “The Djinn? You’re…drinking gin?”
• Appreciate the clever use of the college professor to give Dean someone to talk about the djinn. No one else to have this exposition chat with.
• I don’t even care that there was no grass being mowed. That scene was amazing. AND SO BRIGHT. That had to be the brightest day in Vancouver history!
• “No that, look, that’s alright man, I-I just.. You know I’m not asking you to change. I-I just I don’t know, I guess we just don’t really have anything in common.You know?”
• “I’m dating a nurse. That is so…respectable.”
• Really liked all the call backs to earlier cases that they stopped. I’m also shocked that Dean’s learned how to use a computer.
• “All of them. Everyone that you saved, everyone Sammy and I saved. They’re all dead. And there’s this woman that’s haunting me. I don’t know why. I don’t know what the connection is, not yet anyway. It’s like my old life is coming after me or something. Like it like it doesn’t want me to be happy. Course I know what you’d say. Well, not the you that played softball but…So go hunt the Djinn. He put you here, it can put you back. Your happiness for all those people’s lives, no contest. Right? But why? Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero? What about us, huh? Mom’s not supposed to live her life. Sammy’s not supposed to get married. Why do we have to sacrifice everything, Dad? It’s…yeah.”
• So how nicely did they capture the pilot in that sequence with Sam rifling through the silver?
• “‘Why is it our job to save everyone? Haven’t we done enough?’ I’m begging you.”
• “Auntie Em. There’s no place like home.”