SPN 8.03
What did I just watch? No,seriously, What.The.FUCK.Did.I.Just.Watch??!!!!! I have never truly wanted an episode of Show to be over so badly since "Heart" in Season 2. I mean full-out pacing around the room, glancing at the clock, and shooting my television dirty looks kind of anticipation.
So I ask you dear writers, the UNIVERSE, what is this shit?! What is this THING you have put before me, this distorted, hollow return to Season 1 dynamics in which the heart has been (quite literally)ripped out?! Where the boys are pale caricatures of their younger selves, with all the same rudimentary motivations,perspectives, and desires but none of the qualities that made them either themselves or fucking lovable? What is this two dimensional relationship, these flat characterizations? Where did the growth of the last 6ish seasons go?
One thing thing I am very, very good at is finding/bullshiting emotional and psychological impetuses for the behaviors of fictional characters and figuring out a way to make them seem a) like reasonable human reactions and b) PLAUSIBLE reactions for THESE characters. I can even accept the general idea that being pushed so far down the rabbit hole CAN spit you right back out at the beginning but with far, far more apathy built in. However, Show YOU HAVE FAILED to sell me on this idea, you have FAILED to convince me that this is the most plausible and likely outcome for either of these two characters, and you insult me by assuming that I will just accept the conclusion to your season thesis (i.e. the "what would happen to the boys if they were truly and utterly alone" bullshit thesis) before you have made a convincing argument for it. Most of all you have FAILED to convince me that I should give a rat's ass about either a version of Season 1 Dean who has all the passion for the job (or more accurately for killing things) but none of the vulnerabilities, or hang-ups that made him sympathetic, or a version of season 1 Sam who has that old chip back on his shoulder, and stubborn self-focused self-determination, but with none of his sense of responsibility, or his growing empathy! Most of all I don't care or want a version of Season 1 Sam & and Dean who don't give a shit about each other!!
And I don't believe in it either! Why?! Because seasons 1-7 happened!!!!! I don't really buy that you can just casually dismiss the life you have been living and the person who you have been living it with, who has given up everything for you and for whom you have given up everything in return. I don't really believe that ONE year can somehow trump and erase the impressions of a lifetime of a horribly, traumatically intense love, or lifestyle. I don't believe that you can just hang-up Heaven, Hell and everything in between! I mean wasn't that sort of the point of Dean's character arc in Season 6??!! That one year of "normal" can't erase a lifetime of habits, fears, and enemies?! That just declaring yourself "out of the game" and simply not responding to it does not remove you from it? That people this damaged can't have nice things due to how massively damaged they are (wasn't that the whole "you and me against the world, we're too fucked-up for anything or anyone else, Sundance & Butch Cassidy theme of Season 7??) I mean for Dean, at least as his character is as of right now, this is all Hell and subsequent years of negative reinforcement of his self-image being spat back-out in his face...I can kinda see how he got here and even lead myself to believe that there was purposeful continuity between seasons...but with Sam?! Since when does Sam get a different sets of rules? This is not to say that I don't begrudge the desire for Sam and Dean to want more from their lives, or that what they want and their determination to get it differ,(in fact most of my favorite fics surround this idea), but I've always thought of it a as mutual, collaborate effort,(still with the love!!) not this return to a theme of mutual abandonment, misunderstanding, and resentment. They seem to be moving emotionally backward in this and not really caring that they are doing it. Apparently even though Sam has spent 7 years realizing just how much his decisions affect Dean (and vice versa to be fair), somewhere in that magnificent single year he has impossibly decided to set aside those years previous and resolve to not give a shit! I do not in anyway buy that Sam, even if he really and truly was whole and healed and happy in his ideal life, as long as he retained even the smallest bit of moral, social, or familial obligation or responsibility, the slightest bit of concern or love for his brother, or of the self-integrity that he once had, could ever in good conscience allow his PTSD, HurtLocker!, potentially serial-killer brother to go off on his own to die, get arrested, or otherwise come back to bite Sam in the ass in someway. There is no demon blood involved in this, there is no obvious reason for Sam's character to do this unless he really is a) that much of a selfish fuck (I mean I get that there are times when you do have to wash your hands of a situation, let go, move on, and at times let people go their own way...but this does not seem like a very Sam Winchester thing to do in so far as I understand his characterizations previous) and a victim of lazy writing, or b) far, far more fucked-up than we can really comprehend.
The thing is, one aspect that I have always admired about Show IS it's tendency to use lief motifs, reoccurring themes, role reversals, and quite literal visual and narrative parallels. It was not lost on me that in many ways this episode was a reworking of the pilot episode, that everything from the awkward "After-this-hunt-I'm-leaving!-Oh'-No-you're -not!-I-Need-You!-Oh'-No-You-Don't" car conversation to the supernatural girl sitting astride one of the brothers attempting to forcibly rip his heart out was a clear invocation of the Pilot episode. Even the brotherly bantering was similar. However, this just made the lack of...connection...of interest...of empathy...(especially in all ways that WASN'T bantering) all the more incongruous and noticeable. And perhaps that dissonant parallel was THE POINT, perhaps there IS something truly masterful and purposeful building-up here!But that may give more credit to Carver than I am really feeling charitable enough to give right now. For I maintain that I can still respect (even admire) well-crafted over-arching narrative (it is part of what made me enjoy Show in the first place)and still hate every minute of it. Because the truth is, if I hate the narrative, even a well crafted one, then what is the FUCKING POINT! It alone cannot move me to care.
I also am deeply irked by redundancy of themes and motifs THAT DON'T GO ANYWHERE or otherwise CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING MEANINGFUL and hopefully NEW to the narrative. For instance, I could have accepted season 7's return to season 2 issues, i.e. Sam's Freakishness and Deans discomfort with that, and the whole "monsters are monsters even when they do things that WE do" argument, if only they had ACTUALLY gone somewhere that more directly affected the plot or the character development (and who knows maybe IT will yet....but I'm not really holding my breath). Instead if felt forced and irrelevant considering times have changed and Sam is no longer the sole freak in the family by any means (if Heaven and Hell and their plans have taught us anything) and that the moral high-ground of what "monsters do" vs. "what Winchesters/humans do" has been largely ceded and muddied (I mean nobody has really cared about killing innocent people since season 3)
I am irked by the fact that every writer since Kripke has taken the desire to "return to the feeling of the earlier seasons" to mean to resurface issues whose time has passed in the narrative as it now stands, this season included. I am irked (and yes this is more of an issue with the horror genre in general) that women are either portrayed as non-sexual/sexually inept sacrifices or deeply sexualized monsters (Can somebody on the payroll please write a believable female character!? Please!). I am REALLY irked by the whole redundant foray into the whole "every time one brother disappears/dies/goes to *insert-Hell-Heaven-or-Purgatory* the other hooks up with some random chick" trope. It's been DONE literally to death (and having BOTH brothers doing it simultaneously is really not that much more interesting), NEVER goes anywhere good in terms of the narrative, and has just become a lazy, boring, and rather irreverent device to apply tension to the relationship between the boys. I am over it at this point.
Most of all I am tired, TIRED of waiting and hoping to see a glimmer of a relationship that I haven't really seen even a sliver of since the end of season 6 only to be continually disappointed. I am a Wincest fan, thus the relationship between Sam & and Dean is kinda key to my ability to enjoy the show; however, this is still true even WITHOUT the Wincest implications. The power of Show has always been in that relationship. SPN's uniqueness, it's refreshingness as a show is intrinsically tied-up in the idea that the central relationship for all that it is crazy, intense, passionate , and not just a little fucked-up, is NOT a romantic or a sexual one. In a society where romantic-sexual-love relationships sit atop the tier of all social interactions (and other forms of companionship are routinely marginalized), I can't even describe how important it is to be provided with a relationship that is deep, and intimate (hell, which involves SOULMATES), and complicated, but which is between brothers and friends rather than lovers. So when Show loses that, when Show forgets to make me care, or give me what I need from it, where does that leave us?
Tonight I think I fell out of love with Show, and the realization hurts. I continue to watch it, to follow it, out of a sense of obligation, in testament to what it once meant to me, and out of a niggling sense of hope that "things" could get better, could turn around, could rekindle, that the boys I loved and who loved each other are still there somewhere, but I find less and less joy in it these days (I am also rampantly cheating on it with other fandoms at the moment and have been for a while now...and if I don't stop with this protracted failing marriage metaphor soon I think I will be obligated to go lock myself up in a small dark room).
Tonight I also felt embarrassment at how much a fictional relationship in a fictional television reality can affect me. I've spent three hours and many, many pages ranting over it. I spent an entire 15 minutes after the episode having imaginary sit-downs with the characters in which I yell and scream at them for being WRONG, ALL BLOODY FUCKING WROGN. Hell, I fucking started to cry over Show when I realized how out-of love I currently was at it 0_o
In conclusion: Show I just don't know what to do with you at the moment. (I obviously need to retreat to my current happy place of depicting Sam and Dean in various forms of Rocky and Bullwinkle type incarnations)
NEW!Current Hypothesis Regarding the Twist at the End of the Season: Sam HASN'T forgotten the last 6ish years, in fact he remembers them TOO well, and now stressed and alone with no Dean to anchor him, his ONLY course of action is to embrace the good ol' Winchester coping strategy of REPRESSION, but since Sam is an over-achiever he does such a good job that he manages to completely lock away all his collective FEELINGS regarding them. The key to this repression is Amelia who is a figment of his imagination (I mean that scene in the park when Sam is running around like a crazy person screaming for Amelia only to turn a corner and have her magically appear...in a way VERY like Dream!Lisa did for Dean in "Dream a Little Dream of Me"......could suggest this)based-off of this one really bitchy vet. Thus, the twist is that the last year of his life has been negotiated through his imaginary relationship with an imaginary women who has become the avatar and focus for the last seven years-worth of EMOTION that have been redirected from his memories. Perhaps Dean even knows about this fact, hence his insistence that he and Sam stay together and that Sam has nothing to go back to accept him. Or something. Damn it, Show I am trying here!
Allez-oop!