"If you're generic enough, you'll do" : on Lisa as Dean's fantasy of an "apple pie life"

[amonitrate]

(xposted from my tumblr)

Inspired by this framing of the Dean/Lisa relationship:

IMO, the Lisa/Dean dream sequence in “Dream a little dream of me” and I’ll go as far as to say, their relationship in S6, is basically “What is and should never be” with Dean having a fantasy about a model he saw in a magazine, but that has escalated to him using

Comments

[sailoreyes67]

Thank you for saying this. I myself am not the biggest fan of Lisa as a character, but I think their relationship was absolutely, undebatably real, (and quite precious...) and it staggers me how anyone could seriously claim otherwise. I do think part of Dean's love for Lisa was connected to her giving him this life, but I also don't think that's a bad thing. She took him, and gently gave him everything he needed. There's no reason a relationship shouldn't develop out of that rather than the more typical "sweeping romance arc"! We see from Dean's actions how much she meant to him, but it honestly doesn't surprise me at all.

[amonitrate]

Thanks! I'm glad it rang true to you even if you're not a fan of Lisa. I don't know that I'd agree that Lisa gave him everything he needed, because I think that's impossible for a person to do for another person, but I do think she gave him a stable place to be at a time of crisis, and people who cared about him and who he didn't have to hide who he was and what he'd experienced from, and to me that's pretty huge.

And I agree with you that relationships develop in any number of ways, and acting like a relationship isn't real because it didn't follow the storybook romance steps is a narrow approach.

[metallidean_grl]

I am a big fan and supporter of Dean & Lisa and loved all the little tidbits of their life that Show gave us. I just wish we could have gotten more. Like you, I also wish that they would have fleshed out Lisa's character more and in turn, given us more of the time she spent with Dean