Fresh Blood: thinky thoughts

(Contains spoilers for Bloodlust and All Hell Breaks Loose parts I and II, minor spoilers for other episodes.)

"You don't understand."

"I don't wanna understand you s—"

"I was desperate. You ever felt desperate? I've lost everyone I ever loved. I'm staring down eternity alone. Can you think of a worse hell?"

There is a lot to chew on in this episode. There's the thread that's continued from last season between Dean and Gordon, and the dark mirror of Gordon to Sam. There's the interaction between Sam and Dean themselves, where Dean finally comes face to face with the fact that Sam isn't little Sammy anymore, and he needs his brother back a lot more than he needs to be protected. And there's the interplay between Dixon and Dean, which seems to be being read popularly as Dixon reflecting where Dean is now, but is he? I don't think so, I think something else is going on there.

And of course little side issues, like whether Dean would really kill Bela, and why the smashing of the cell phones? Wouldn't taking out the batteries and SIM cards have worked? Or was it so that no one could find them, use them, and accidentally summon Gordon?

And were the boys squatting again, and if so, why were the lights on in the exterior shot? And were the mattresses propped haphazardly against the windows for some reason, or just because – as has been suggested – Kripke's tired of us writing about the boys falling into bed together? (I like that explanation best of all, because it makes me laugh. Oh Kripke, as if that would stop us!) And what was Sam doing to Gordon that he didn't even struggle for the forty-seven seconds it took for Sam to razor-wire his head off? Mysteries like these may never be answered.

The other ones, though, the important ones, there are answers to those, and they don't have to do with continuity checking or ambience. Or fanfiction.

We first meet Gordon in Season Two's Bloodlust, and even at the start there are hints he isn't exactly sane. Any hunter who gets that kind of reaction from Ellen, I'd stay away from. But in his determination to protect Sam, Dean's cut himself off from his best chance at having someone around who understands him – who understands hunting, and Dean's relationship with it, the way their dad undoubtedly did. With Gordon, he can finally open up, finally let down some of his guard with someone who understands and won't judge him for it or question it.

But even before their final confrontation, there are moments that I think clearly demonstrate that Gordon doesn't get Dean as thoroughly as he thinks he does, or as Dean wants to believe he does. When Gordon speaks about the hole that John's death left in Dean, that's fine, but when he goes on to say that it's a good thing, well...maybe I'm projecting, but Dean doesn't look convinced. Heck, even when he agrees that he's "embraced the life," that last, "yeah," seems wry, at best.

Later, you can see the skepticism – almost defensiveness – on his face when Gordon starts talking about Sam, saying he's "not wrong, just different." And when he goes on, "but you and me? We were born to do this. It's in our blood," Dean looks even less convinced. With that little half-smile he looks like someone who's thinking "you don't know jack; don't tell me who I am or who my brother is."

By the end, Gordon's own actions have convinced Dean that there are shades of grey, that what Gordon's doing is more wrong than the simple fact Lenore is a vampire, when Lenore isn't hurting people. Lenore is trying to be better than her nature, and succeeding. Of course Gordon doesn't help himself with Dean by threatening Sam, but I think Dean would have seen it anyway.

What's interesting is that Gordon's behavior as a vampire isn't that different from his behavior as a hunter. Here, he tears the heads off of two young women with his bare hands because they've been made vampires; in Bloodlust he tortured Lenore as calmly as cleaning house. Here, he takes a young woman hostage in order to draw Sam and Dean to him, and he turns her in order that she should be a weapon against Dean to prevent him trying to help Sam. In Hunted, he killed a boy who'd as yet done nothing wrong, and he didn't seem to give a thought to the life of an innocent girl when he started shooting at Sam and Ava in the hotel room. He used Dean as bait to draw Sam to him and showed no concern for the fact that he was going to kill Sam in front of Dean, his own brother.

And even knowing that Gordon is capable of terrible brutality, Dean still believes in Gordon's humanity, still believes he's a hunter – that he won't kill the girl, because he doesn't kill humans. Dean believes that like Lenore, Gordon can be better than his nature (which, of course, leads to the question of whether Lucy really had to die, and whether that's an expedient plot hole or as meaningful as I think it is). But by then Gordon has already killed his friend, and has killed and fed on a human being. He's fully accepted that this is what he is: as much a monster as he believes Sam is, but with the courage to "do the right thing" and kill himself once he's rid the world of Sam's evil.

Sam, on the other hand, has yet to become a monster at all. For all that the YED tried to make him one, for all the fretting about Sammy going darkside, so far he's remained determinedly Sam. At the climax of the YED's battle royale, the point at which Sam should have gone darkside if he were going to, and knowing that the YED planned to only let one of the kids live, Sam still wouldn't kill Jake.

And look what it got him.

This season Sam is starting to lose some of his idealism, bled out of him in Dean's arms after Jake's betrayal. Because it was, arguably, a betrayal: Sam did not kill Jake when he could have, but Jake didn't show Sam the same mercy or respect, stabbing him in the back and running.

So whereas Sam lied in Nightshifter to protect someone, now he'll lie to a terrified young woman in order to get information, giving her hope when he knows there isn't any. (And mad props to Mercedes McNab – she owned that role, and broke my heart in a way even Madison didn't. She's got three movies upcoming, and you can bet I'll be in the theater for each of them.) And don't let it be lost on you that Sam let Dean do the killing. Dean is John's good soldier, but Sam is Hell's general. An AWOL general, okay, but let's don't quibble over details.

Now maybe the ends justify the means here. Maybe Lucy really did have to die, and if so, better that Sam and Dean learn what she knows so they can prevent more deaths. But it's a slippery slope, and it's one that Sam's walking closer and closer to the edge of, the closer it gets to the end of Dean's year.

And what about Dean? How much of what Sam's going through does Dean see? He's understandably distracted by his own impending doom, but he's also been in a pattern of seeing only "Sammy who has to be protected," not Sam Winchester, 6'4" of well-trained muscle, a seriously dangerous hunter who seems a lot less in need of protecting these days than Dean does.

Dean's never been able to see that. He's been stuck at four years old with his infant brother in his arms ever since Mary died. "Can't talk about this to Sammy," Dean says to Gordon in Bloodlust. "Gotta keep my game face on." But Sam knows. And Dean knows Sam knows – Sam told him so in the first episode of Season Two. Dean just won't hear it. He's fully committed to protecting Sam, even at the expense of their own closeness, but he's also blind to how much Sam already knows, and how well he knows Dean.

Sam doesn't leave much room for doubt in this episode. When Dean tells Sam to stay "out of harm's way" while Dean goes gunning for what he admits is a turbo-charged Gordon, Sam finally snaps:

SAM: Drop the attitude Dean. Quit turning everything into a punch line. And you know something else? Stop trying to act like you're not afraid!

DEAN: I'm not.

SAM: You're lying. And you may as well drop it 'cause I can see right through you.

DEAN: You got no idea what you're talking about.

SAM: Yeah, I do. You're scared, Dean. You're scared because your year's running out and you're still going to Hell, and you're freaked.

DEAN: And how do you know that?

SAM: Beause I know you!

DEAN: Really.

SAM: Because I've been following you around my entire life! I mean I've been looking up to you since I was four, Dean. Studying you, tryin' to be just like my big brother. So yeah, I know you. Better than anyone else in the entire world. And this? Is exactly how you act when you're terrified. And, I mean I can't blame you. It's just. ...

DEAN: What?

SAM: ... It's just I wish you would drop the show and be my brother again. 'Cause. ... Just 'cause.

Sam sees through Dean, to the brother he's going to lose in less than a year. He wants Dean with him now, not hiding behind bravado.

Because in less than a year, Sam's going to be in Dixon's shoes.

DIXON: You don't understand.

DEAN: I don't wanna understand you s–

DIXON: I was desperate. You ever felt desperate? I've lost everyone I ever loved. I'm staring down eternity alone. Can you think of a worse hell?

DEAN: Well.... There's Hell.

DIXON: I wasn't thinking. I just – I didn't care anymore. Do you know what that's like? When you just don't give a damn? It's like... it's like being dead already. So just go ahead. Do it.

Dean may be acting like he has a death wish – and there's a whole other conversation, whether Dean has a death wish because he's still afraid Sam's going to become a monster, and would rather be in Hell than face that – but he still cares. If he honestly didn't give a damn, he wouldn't be so scared.

And he hasn't lost everyone he loves: Sam is right there beside him, alive and whole because of Dean's sacrifice. But in less than a year, Sam will be staring down the rest of his life with everyone he loves dead, and his brother in Hell. What does he do then?

Now maybe as Dixon is saying these things, Dean's thinking of himself; or maybe he's just wondering why the hell he's listening to a vampire instead of killing him.

Or maybe he's realizing what he's condemned his brother to. Sure, Dean'll be in Hell, but Sam will have lost everything, everyone. I think what we're seeing on Dean's face in that scene is his realization that he's left Sam to a fate that may, in fact, be worse than death. Although I'm betting it's not worse than Hell.

Dean has been determined all this season to believe that Sam will be fine without him. Better off, even. But in this episode I think he's finally starting to see that Sam does need him, more than Dean realized. That he loves Dean more than Dean really knew.

So we get to the last scene, which, omg, thank you for this, Sera. Like Sam, when Dean got that look on his face I thought Sam had just handed him the wrong wrench, so for Dean to then start, without preamble, teaching Sam how to care for the Impala....

I don't even know how to talk about it. The Impala has been their home and Dean's sanctuary for so long, and now he's realizing that he really is going to be gone, and Sam really is going to be alone. So he starts teaching him to take care of the only thing Sam will have left: Dean's heart, in the gleaming black and chrome of that car.

I'mma go weep now. Carry on.