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Dec. 14th, 2007 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaMiraculously, the torrent for the new episode of Supernatural was up at the crack of dawn this morning. Even more miraculously, the dl finished at the speed of light, which never happens. Anyway, the upshot is that I actually had time to watch the episode before I left for work this morning. Hooray for Christmas miracles!
Eh, festive Supernatural – what could be better? Plus, Flashback Sammy and Dean! And they even have the same little actor playing Young!Dean as last time, only two years older, of course, which makes for nice continuity. Of course, his hair is still completely the wrong colour to be Dean. And I'm not sure who the hell thought it would be okay to hire a blond child to play Little!Sam! But hey – we can overlook all that.
Um…this first reaction isn't going to be very coherent. I apologise for that. I'm trying to think thinky thoughts but coming up all SQUEE and EEP, AWW and EWW!
It kind of killed me that Dean confessed that he wanted to do the Christmas thing because it's his last – back to being all wistful and nostalgic – but then when Sam said that he couldn't do it for exactly the same reason, Dean just dropped his One Last Happy Christmas wish like a hot potato, because he won't push for anything that hurts Sam, no matter how much he wants it himself. It's progress, though, that both of them said their piece about it out loud, because it shows that neither of them is hiding anything any more – not about this, anyway. But the fact that they are both accepting Dean's imminent death as inevitable now hurts just as much as when they were both buried above their eyes in denial. :(
Oh, and then when the pagan demi-god things started cutting on Sam, man, Dean hollered more than when they started cutting him! No one is allowed to hurt Sammy! I'd been waiting for the whumping to start – they got an impressively long way into the episode before actually coming face to face with anything dangerous! The abattoir cellar was enormously EWW. Then pulling Sam's fingernail right off? EEEWWWWWW. I couldn't even look! But Dean escaped with all his teeth intact, thankfully.
If we really have skipped vast swathes of time this season, as seems to be the case, and my timeline for the first two seasons remains accurate, then Dean could be as much as eight months into his final year. It wouldn't surprise me to have the remainder of the season – or as least as much of it as the strike makes possible –crammed into a short space of time; we've had similar compressions before, after all. Just look at the arc of Dead Man's Blood through Everybody Loves A Clown, all of which take place within the space of a couple of weeks.
The flashbacks. Man. It was Christmas 1991, so Sam would have been eight and Dean 12, and they were all alone yet again. The last (and till now only) flashback we had came from Dean's POV, so it's nice to have one that comes from Sam's perspective. But, man. It really kind of hurts that adult Sam only remembers childhood Christmases as miserable – all of them presumably blending together in his head and mixed up with all his other issues about their upbringing – when it was so clear in the flashback that Dean was trying hard, with very limited resources available to him and in spite of his own doubts and insecurities, to give Sam as much of a normal, happy holiday as possible. I loved, though, that even at only eight Sam so clearly recognised what his brother was trying to do for him, even if he couldn't quite pull it off – he just didn't have the wherewithal.
Oh, and now we have the amulet origin story! Sam tells us that 'Uncle Bobby' helped him get it, that it's real special. Canon proof that Bobby knew the boys as children! And the point is that it was a gift from Sam to Dean, and that sixteen years later Dean still never takes it off – it meant a hell of a lot that Sam gave it to him that day, after everything. And it can be read as all kinds of symbolic that Sam gave Dean the gift he'd intended for their Dad. John let them both down badly on this occasion by not getting home in time, and Dean was the one who was there for Sam throughout, who at least tried to make it a proper Christmas for him, and Sam recognised that, rewarded him accordingly. He's a generous little soul, really, and it ties beautifully in with the childhood hero worship of his brother he confessed to last episode.
And then we have the fact that Sam at eight was still very much in the dark about John's hunting, and a large part of that revolved around Dean's determination to preserve as much of his little brother's innocence as he could. I'm fairly certain that it would also be about John's uncertainty over Sam's ability to not talk to outsiders about the supernatural if he knew too early, but it's pretty clear that it was mostly Dean's decision not to tell him as he grew older. After all, Dean was the one who had to field all Sam's questions while John was away, whenever he was away. And Dean was the one who had to make the enormous decision to come clean this particular Christmas after Sam got hold of John's journal, because he was there to make that decision and John wasn't, and Sam was clearly no longer willing to be fobbed off with excuses and lies. I'm fairly impressed that they'd managed to keep him in the dark as long as that, since we know he was already questioning John's absences when he was five – three more years is a long time to keep up the pretence. And the timing of it still ties in with Sam's little anecdote from way back in the Pilot episode, that John gave him a gun when he complained of being afraid of the thing in the closet when he was nine. If he learned the truth about what was out there in these flashbacks, at age eight, I can well believe that he'd start to fret about it.
Oh, and Dean is pretty heartbreaking in the flashbacks, even though we're seeing Sam's point of view, not his. At twelve he was already clinging desperately to the image he'd constructed of John the Superhero to comfort himself for the fact that his Dad had left them all alone in a dingy motel for Christmas. He and Sam were coming a poor second in their father's priorities, but Dad's work was important, he was out there saving lives, so that had to make it okay. You can imagine him telling himself that, telling himself over and over that Dad wouldn't leave them like this if it wasn't important, that saving those random other lives was obviously more important than Dad actually being at home to look after them or spend Christmas with them, that he was fine and perfectly able to take care of Sammy, didn't need any taking care of himself, not when there were those other lives at stake. It all feeds into that inferiority complex of his, and this has to be a large part of how it started. He's making excuses for John's behaviour to himself every bit as much as for Sam's benefit, trying to hide John's inadequacies from his little brother because preserving Sam's innocence is important to Dean. The way he kept repeating that Dad would be home in time, that he'd promised, that he always got home in time – how many Christmases had they spent like this already, then? Stuck in a dingy motel wherever they'd moved to this time, knowing nobody but each other, with John out hunting; did John usually manage to get home in time, and this was a one off, or was this selective memory, Dean just trying to kid himself that Dad always got there in time?
Either way, it's another stark glimpse into a bleak childhood experience. Dean's extreme reaction to Sam's mention of their mother ties into all those issues, although little Sam, at eight, has no way of understanding that. Dean's been left in loco parentis yet again, and it's Christmas, and Dad isn't home yet in spite of having promised, and Sam won't stop asking questions that Dean doesn't know how to answer, and he's only twelve and doesn't know how to make any of it right. Sam wants to know the truth, is demanding the truth, and Dean struggles to say no to him, but also wants desperately to shield him from the harsh realities of the world they live in, and those harsh realities are all tied up with their mother's death. If Mary hadn't died the way she did, none of this would have happened, and they wouldn't be in this situation now. Sam's questions are probing at issues that are painful to Dean in ways that he can't articulate – he still can't, even now, sixteen years later. So he blows.
But although Dean will blow up and get mad in the heat of the moment, he really can't sustain it for any length of time. That's still true now, as an adult. It's interesting, following on from the Something Wicked flashbacks, that there is no issue with Dean going out and leaving Sam alone this time, now that they are both that bit older. His walking out in the first place totally fits his behaviour patterns – whenever Sam starts poking at raw nerves, Dean always has to put physical distance between them.
That Dean was lying about John having come home for them with presents was obvious right from the moment he woke Sam up, all the more so once it was clear that there were gifts only for Sam, none for Dean. Sam was so willing to believe it, though, hadn't learned yet to resent John – and how much of that was about Dean's determined PR campaign in their father's favour? It would have been so easy to say 'Dad hasn't come home, so I've got these for you instead', but that would blow holes right through the façade Dean was so rigidly maintaining. However disappointed he was in John's failure to return home himself, he would do anything rather than let Sam feel the same way, needed Sam to believe in the justifications he offered, so that he could believe in them himself. And Sam was in the habit of believing Dean when he offered empty reassurance – even now he still falls for it half the time!
Kind of breathtaking how casually Young Dean admitted to having broken into someone's house and stolen the gifts he brought back for Sam. Just a shame they weren't labelled with the recipient's name, really…
So. When Dean first raised the subject of Christmas, Sam's immediate reaction was a knee jerk 'no way, Christmas always sucks', and when you look at the surface of those flashbacks, from the perspective of an eight-year-old, yeah – it was pretty sucky. But over the course of the episode we saw Sam thinking about that Christmas, probably for the first time in years, and looking back at it through the eyes of an adult. At age eight he recognised that Dean was doing his best, but that small fact would have quickly been buried beneath the weight of everything he resented about their lives. As an adult, however, he can look back and realise just how young Dean was back then and how unfair a position he was in, has been recognising for a long time now just how much his brother has done for him over the years. He's been making a determined effort this season to give a little of that back where possible.
And so at the end of the episode we have Sam giving Dean the Christmas he's asked for, even though it hurts. It's just the two of them alone together in a dingy motel again, but this time at ease with one another, with decorations and trimmings, and token gifts, just hanging out with each other as both brothers and friends. It's what Dean wanted, and he doesn't ask for much, is allowed to have what he asks for even less. And it's what Sam asked for in the last episode, although he's clearly finding the reality of living his request painful. Sam's gift for Dean is beautifully attuned to his brother's interests and passions, while Dean's gift for Sam is more jocular, but the content isn't really important, for either of them. It isn't about the gifts in themselves; it's the gesture and sentiment that counts, the fact of being together.
Oh yeah, and there was a case in there, as well. *G*
And...that was rather a lot of babble for an initial reaction! I'll have more coherent thoughts later in the week. :)
Eh, festive Supernatural – what could be better? Plus, Flashback Sammy and Dean! And they even have the same little actor playing Young!Dean as last time, only two years older, of course, which makes for nice continuity. Of course, his hair is still completely the wrong colour to be Dean. And I'm not sure who the hell thought it would be okay to hire a blond child to play Little!Sam! But hey – we can overlook all that.
Um…this first reaction isn't going to be very coherent. I apologise for that. I'm trying to think thinky thoughts but coming up all SQUEE and EEP, AWW and EWW!
It kind of killed me that Dean confessed that he wanted to do the Christmas thing because it's his last – back to being all wistful and nostalgic – but then when Sam said that he couldn't do it for exactly the same reason, Dean just dropped his One Last Happy Christmas wish like a hot potato, because he won't push for anything that hurts Sam, no matter how much he wants it himself. It's progress, though, that both of them said their piece about it out loud, because it shows that neither of them is hiding anything any more – not about this, anyway. But the fact that they are both accepting Dean's imminent death as inevitable now hurts just as much as when they were both buried above their eyes in denial. :(
Oh, and then when the pagan demi-god things started cutting on Sam, man, Dean hollered more than when they started cutting him! No one is allowed to hurt Sammy! I'd been waiting for the whumping to start – they got an impressively long way into the episode before actually coming face to face with anything dangerous! The abattoir cellar was enormously EWW. Then pulling Sam's fingernail right off? EEEWWWWWW. I couldn't even look! But Dean escaped with all his teeth intact, thankfully.
If we really have skipped vast swathes of time this season, as seems to be the case, and my timeline for the first two seasons remains accurate, then Dean could be as much as eight months into his final year. It wouldn't surprise me to have the remainder of the season – or as least as much of it as the strike makes possible –crammed into a short space of time; we've had similar compressions before, after all. Just look at the arc of Dead Man's Blood through Everybody Loves A Clown, all of which take place within the space of a couple of weeks.
The flashbacks. Man. It was Christmas 1991, so Sam would have been eight and Dean 12, and they were all alone yet again. The last (and till now only) flashback we had came from Dean's POV, so it's nice to have one that comes from Sam's perspective. But, man. It really kind of hurts that adult Sam only remembers childhood Christmases as miserable – all of them presumably blending together in his head and mixed up with all his other issues about their upbringing – when it was so clear in the flashback that Dean was trying hard, with very limited resources available to him and in spite of his own doubts and insecurities, to give Sam as much of a normal, happy holiday as possible. I loved, though, that even at only eight Sam so clearly recognised what his brother was trying to do for him, even if he couldn't quite pull it off – he just didn't have the wherewithal.
Oh, and now we have the amulet origin story! Sam tells us that 'Uncle Bobby' helped him get it, that it's real special. Canon proof that Bobby knew the boys as children! And the point is that it was a gift from Sam to Dean, and that sixteen years later Dean still never takes it off – it meant a hell of a lot that Sam gave it to him that day, after everything. And it can be read as all kinds of symbolic that Sam gave Dean the gift he'd intended for their Dad. John let them both down badly on this occasion by not getting home in time, and Dean was the one who was there for Sam throughout, who at least tried to make it a proper Christmas for him, and Sam recognised that, rewarded him accordingly. He's a generous little soul, really, and it ties beautifully in with the childhood hero worship of his brother he confessed to last episode.
And then we have the fact that Sam at eight was still very much in the dark about John's hunting, and a large part of that revolved around Dean's determination to preserve as much of his little brother's innocence as he could. I'm fairly certain that it would also be about John's uncertainty over Sam's ability to not talk to outsiders about the supernatural if he knew too early, but it's pretty clear that it was mostly Dean's decision not to tell him as he grew older. After all, Dean was the one who had to field all Sam's questions while John was away, whenever he was away. And Dean was the one who had to make the enormous decision to come clean this particular Christmas after Sam got hold of John's journal, because he was there to make that decision and John wasn't, and Sam was clearly no longer willing to be fobbed off with excuses and lies. I'm fairly impressed that they'd managed to keep him in the dark as long as that, since we know he was already questioning John's absences when he was five – three more years is a long time to keep up the pretence. And the timing of it still ties in with Sam's little anecdote from way back in the Pilot episode, that John gave him a gun when he complained of being afraid of the thing in the closet when he was nine. If he learned the truth about what was out there in these flashbacks, at age eight, I can well believe that he'd start to fret about it.
Oh, and Dean is pretty heartbreaking in the flashbacks, even though we're seeing Sam's point of view, not his. At twelve he was already clinging desperately to the image he'd constructed of John the Superhero to comfort himself for the fact that his Dad had left them all alone in a dingy motel for Christmas. He and Sam were coming a poor second in their father's priorities, but Dad's work was important, he was out there saving lives, so that had to make it okay. You can imagine him telling himself that, telling himself over and over that Dad wouldn't leave them like this if it wasn't important, that saving those random other lives was obviously more important than Dad actually being at home to look after them or spend Christmas with them, that he was fine and perfectly able to take care of Sammy, didn't need any taking care of himself, not when there were those other lives at stake. It all feeds into that inferiority complex of his, and this has to be a large part of how it started. He's making excuses for John's behaviour to himself every bit as much as for Sam's benefit, trying to hide John's inadequacies from his little brother because preserving Sam's innocence is important to Dean. The way he kept repeating that Dad would be home in time, that he'd promised, that he always got home in time – how many Christmases had they spent like this already, then? Stuck in a dingy motel wherever they'd moved to this time, knowing nobody but each other, with John out hunting; did John usually manage to get home in time, and this was a one off, or was this selective memory, Dean just trying to kid himself that Dad always got there in time?
Either way, it's another stark glimpse into a bleak childhood experience. Dean's extreme reaction to Sam's mention of their mother ties into all those issues, although little Sam, at eight, has no way of understanding that. Dean's been left in loco parentis yet again, and it's Christmas, and Dad isn't home yet in spite of having promised, and Sam won't stop asking questions that Dean doesn't know how to answer, and he's only twelve and doesn't know how to make any of it right. Sam wants to know the truth, is demanding the truth, and Dean struggles to say no to him, but also wants desperately to shield him from the harsh realities of the world they live in, and those harsh realities are all tied up with their mother's death. If Mary hadn't died the way she did, none of this would have happened, and they wouldn't be in this situation now. Sam's questions are probing at issues that are painful to Dean in ways that he can't articulate – he still can't, even now, sixteen years later. So he blows.
But although Dean will blow up and get mad in the heat of the moment, he really can't sustain it for any length of time. That's still true now, as an adult. It's interesting, following on from the Something Wicked flashbacks, that there is no issue with Dean going out and leaving Sam alone this time, now that they are both that bit older. His walking out in the first place totally fits his behaviour patterns – whenever Sam starts poking at raw nerves, Dean always has to put physical distance between them.
That Dean was lying about John having come home for them with presents was obvious right from the moment he woke Sam up, all the more so once it was clear that there were gifts only for Sam, none for Dean. Sam was so willing to believe it, though, hadn't learned yet to resent John – and how much of that was about Dean's determined PR campaign in their father's favour? It would have been so easy to say 'Dad hasn't come home, so I've got these for you instead', but that would blow holes right through the façade Dean was so rigidly maintaining. However disappointed he was in John's failure to return home himself, he would do anything rather than let Sam feel the same way, needed Sam to believe in the justifications he offered, so that he could believe in them himself. And Sam was in the habit of believing Dean when he offered empty reassurance – even now he still falls for it half the time!
Kind of breathtaking how casually Young Dean admitted to having broken into someone's house and stolen the gifts he brought back for Sam. Just a shame they weren't labelled with the recipient's name, really…
So. When Dean first raised the subject of Christmas, Sam's immediate reaction was a knee jerk 'no way, Christmas always sucks', and when you look at the surface of those flashbacks, from the perspective of an eight-year-old, yeah – it was pretty sucky. But over the course of the episode we saw Sam thinking about that Christmas, probably for the first time in years, and looking back at it through the eyes of an adult. At age eight he recognised that Dean was doing his best, but that small fact would have quickly been buried beneath the weight of everything he resented about their lives. As an adult, however, he can look back and realise just how young Dean was back then and how unfair a position he was in, has been recognising for a long time now just how much his brother has done for him over the years. He's been making a determined effort this season to give a little of that back where possible.
And so at the end of the episode we have Sam giving Dean the Christmas he's asked for, even though it hurts. It's just the two of them alone together in a dingy motel again, but this time at ease with one another, with decorations and trimmings, and token gifts, just hanging out with each other as both brothers and friends. It's what Dean wanted, and he doesn't ask for much, is allowed to have what he asks for even less. And it's what Sam asked for in the last episode, although he's clearly finding the reality of living his request painful. Sam's gift for Dean is beautifully attuned to his brother's interests and passions, while Dean's gift for Sam is more jocular, but the content isn't really important, for either of them. It isn't about the gifts in themselves; it's the gesture and sentiment that counts, the fact of being together.
Oh yeah, and there was a case in there, as well. *G*
And...that was rather a lot of babble for an initial reaction! I'll have more coherent thoughts later in the week. :)
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Date: 2007-12-15 08:49 am (UTC)He certainly had the emo down pat!
PS - I missed it and had to dl too, the torrent I used was up at 9 PM last night for me (I wonder what time it was for you?) I was so freaking excited.
I started the torrent at about 6.20am, and had finished watching in time to leave for work shortly after 8.
Also, you know what I totally loved? That they used the Christmas tree to kill them! Only Supernatural.
Yay for Christmas tree dismemberment!
And someone was wondering what Sam's freaky demon blood would have done to the pagan gods. I didn't even think about it. Hmm....
I did have a moment of wondering if they'd decide Sam's blood wasn't pure enough for their purposes or something, when it seemed like there was no escape in sight - it's so rare for them both to be captive like that without reinforcements! But that would have complicated the plot and what time was left, I guess. The simplest solution is usually the best.
Awesome festive episode, and beautifully bittersweet. Poor boys.