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.

Red Sky At Morning: thinky thoughts

(Contains spoilers for all aired episodes of season three of Supernatural.)

"Can I shoot her?"
"...not in public."

Let me start by cheering the apparent demise of "Look, Dad's gone now. We have to carry out his legacy. And that means hunting down as many evil sons of bitches as we possibly can" from the previouslies. I cringe every time it plays – it's such a total over-sell, like if it were in a comic book it'd be distractingly bolded and the character's face would be set in an expression that's supposed to be stony and fiercely determined but winds up just looking constipated. Was the line even in any episode, ever? It's the only time I remember hearing Jensen overdo it, and it grates.

It's not the only thing that seems overdone this season, though. I admit it, I miss the dark blues, the greys, the washed-out greens of the first and second seasons. Not only did they add to the mood of the show, but it meant that when there was color, it popped. The blood red or poisonous ocher of the demons' eyes. Gordon's red plaid shirt, washed out but still impossible to miss in the shadowy colors of the episode. The vivid green grass and blue sky of the wishverse in What Is And What Should Never Be. Even the sleek black gleam of the Impala stood out against the dark, soft, faded colors of the world she drove through.

Now, almost every place they go looks like the wishverse, and along with the noticeable decrease in classic rock – did they run out of material they could get the rights to? – it's changing the feel of the show. But maybe that's the point. A lot is changing this season – a lot has to, just from a story-telling perspective. Things are heating up, and Sam and Dean have to change, have to grow, or the story stagnates into a re-tread of itself.

And growth hurts. No one ever says "hey, it's a learning experience, I'm growing as a person," about something that's fun and easy. And not many people move forward in their personal growth from height to height. One of the many things I love about this show is that it faces the wrongness and failures in its heroes. Dean is damaged, and Sam does have a darkness in him that we've barely glimpsed, and that may have nothing to do with the YED. Sam is damaged, too.

And this season, Bela's around to point that out to them. Well, or to Dean, at least. Oh sure, others have done it too – Bobby springs to mind, God love him. But that's the thing – he loves the boys. Bela doesn't give a damn, so she can go further and say more.

The show is still struggling with how to fit her in, but her character does make sense. It's actually kind of impossible to believe that there would be no one trying to make money off the same things that the hunters either fight or use. Seriously, a gun that can kill anything? And no one's going to want to buy or sell it? Come on.

But Bela isn't there simply because someone realized she must exist, she's there to be Dean's foil, to shine a light on the parts of his character that the writers don't want us to miss, don't want to let us gloss over. And maybe at first glance we'd think the light's trained on their differences: where Bela's focused on separating people from their money, Dean is focused on helping them, protecting them, saving them if he can. Where Bela looks at a guy and sees cannon fodder, Dean sees someone he has to try to save even though the guy insulted the Impala and is clearly a paranoid moron. Bela couldn't care less what happens to him, or to Dean, or to anyone else. She doesn't care that the price of the hand comes at the cost of people's lives every thirty-seven years when the Espírito Santo comes back – she's got a buyer for it and that's all that matters.

Dean, on the other hand, cares. She says he's doing this out of vengeance and obsession, and maybe he was once, but not anymore. However tired he is of the job, he can't not care. It isn't in him.

Their differences, though, throw into sharp relief the ways that they're alike. And they are very alike. They're both cocky and smart-mouthed, and hiding their hearts behind walls six feet thick. They're both smart and extremely capable, too. Bela's an accomplished manipulator, an excellent pick-pocket, and a pretty good shot. And she can pretend all she wants that Dean's stupid or incompetent, but he's still the one she goes to for help. He's the one who disarms the alarm and steals the hand, and he's the one she comes running to when she sees the ship and knows she'll die. He's just as competent as she is, maybe more-so, and she knows it.

And – bonus! – she's even more sexually aggressive than Dean is, and wow, does he not know how to handle that. She's hot and she wants to have angry sex with him, and that should be an automatic win, right? But he can't let her be the one to say it. He can't let her be the one who wants it, all on her own, for herself. He can't let her beat him to the come-on. So what's he come back with? The prototypical feminist response to men like Dean: "Don't objectify me."



AHHHHAHAHAHAhahahahahaomg*snarf* And the look on his face! So confused, such wounded pride! L.M.A.O. Dean, dude, remember this the next time you're hitting on some sweet young thing whose name you'll forget before you tell her goodbye in the morning – if you even stick around 'til then.

But anyway, back to the point.

For all their differences, Dean and Bela are alike in more than just superficial ways. So when Dean tells Bela she's damaged and she throws it right back at him, it sticks, because they are alike. He is damaged, and there's no getting away from that. They're both broken somewhere down deep.

That's reiterated in the final conversation between Sam and Dean in this episode. Since last season Sam and Dean have been slowly changing places, with Sam becoming the determined hunter and Dean just wanting a normal life – something he's so sure he can't have that he gives up his soul so Sam can have it, except Sam doesn't want it now, he just wants his brother beside him. And now, with less than a year to live, Dean's started talking. Well, or at least, started to start to.

"I want you to know I understand why you did it," he begins. "Why you went after the Crossroads Demon." Sam sighs in an oddly Deanish fashion, but Dean seems oblivious, or presses on anyway, determined. "Situations were reversed I guess I'd've done the same thing." Cue irritated eyeroll from Sam. "I mean I'm not blind," Dean goes on in a lovely piece of irony, because wow, how blind is he when it comes to this with Sam? "I see what you're going through with this whole deal. Me goin' away and all that. But you're gonna be okay."

"You think so," Sam says. It's not a question. More a, "wow, you're really fucked up if you think that."

Dean ignores it. "You'll keep hunting. Y'know, you'll live your life. You're stronger than me. You are."

And either Dean's too intent to notice how angry Sam is getting, or he sees it, but he can't let himself acknowledge it. Dean has to be right about this, or else he's going to Hell for nothing.

"You are," he insists, "you'll get over it. But I want you to know I'm sorry. I'm sorry for – putting you through all this, I am."

Fangirls everywhere sigh with adoration. Dean has apologized to Sam. Now it's Sam's turn to tell Dean it'll be okay, he's going to find a way to save him, and then there'll be that moment when there's a hug sort of stranded in the air between them, and then the credits will roll.

Except that Sam's had enough. "You know what, Dean," he says. "Go screw yourself."

Dean's surprised. Fangirls are shocked. But Sam's got every right to be angry. That isn't to say that Dean didn't have the right to sell his soul – it's his soul, he can do what he wants with it. But it's a symptom of his deep crazy that he thinks Sam could ever, ever be okay with it. It's nuts, and it totally dismisses the deep and profound love that Sam has for Dean.

And it really pisses Sam off.

"I don't want an apology from you," Sam says, and he's getting angrier with every word. "And by the way, I'm a big boy now, I can take care of myself."

"Oh well excuse me," Dean starts, but Sam just rides right over him.

"So would you please quit worrying about me? I mean that's the whole problem in the first place – I don't want you to worry about me Dean, I want you to worry about you. I want you to give a crap that you're dying!"

Because this is what it all comes down to for Sam and Dean, and I expect that this is what's either going to damn them both or save them: Sam and Dean each cares more for the other than for himself. Dean wants Sam to live, and Sam wants Dean to live and to want to live. So Dean sells his soul to save Sam, and Sam...

...Sam shot Casey without blinking, even though she was just standing there, wasn't doing anything. He shot the Crossroads Demon like a parting insult. Killed two human beings and hasn't shown an instant's remorse.

And I don't think it was for the sake of the people whom the demons in them had yet to corrupt; he didn't have the look of a guy who was doing something because it was right. Sam has a little fallen angel on his shoulder, and a love so fierce he'll kill for it. It's looking more and more like he's going damn himself to save Dean, and what's Dean going to do when that happens?

The storm's still coming, and Sam and Dean are smack in the middle of it. Red sky at morning, indeed.

Supernatural: It isn't Buffy Lite.

(Note: Post contains spoilers for the television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer.)

"Saving people, hunting things. The family business!"

I started watching Supernatural late in the game, I'm sad to say. Oh, I'd been hearing about it from friends for months, this amazing show about two guys out killing monsters. I heard it was snarky, funny, scary, and smart. I thought it sounded like a low-rent Buffy with two boys instead of one girl kicking ass, which seemed like kind of a poor trade. I turned it on a couple of times, but I didn't really pay attention. Somehow I'd gotten the idea that the main reason to watch it was because the guys were hot (admittedly, I might've gotten that idea because of the amount of salivating folks were doing over how hot the guys were), and it just wasn't reason enough. So I'd have it on while I was puttering on the computer or doing laundry or whatever, glancing up from time to time to look at a hot guy or two, and you know, it's like trying to understand a story by only reading every sixth or seventh paragraph: it just doesn't work. Of course you don't understand what's going on, and of course you don't care about the characters.

So one night when I had nothing to do, I remembered – near 10:00 PM, which is, east coast time, almost at the end of the show – that it was the season finale and I'd thought maybe I would watch it. So I turned it on...

...and was almost instantly hooked. I had no idea what was going on – the tall guy was pinned to a wall screaming his brother's name while some goddamned good-looking man with demonic yellow eyes was killing the other brother with his brain. And what the f**k?? Dad, don't you let it kill me? That's their DAD? I could not look away. These must have been the best performances any of those three guys turned in all season, because they held me there as tight as old yellow-eyes had Sam and Dean pinned.

From that moment through the end of the episode, I saw almost everything that my friends had been seeing all season long, in one super-condensed rush. It wasn't just two guys out killing monsters. It was two brothers so fiercely devoted to each other that either would give everything to save the other. It was a father desperate to save his boys and destroy the thing that killed their mother. It was a son searching for a way to hold his family together against terrible odds, and another torn between his father's quest and his brother's desperate need for his family.

Also, demons. Monsters. Legends. Myths. And these weren't nice white-bread middle-class kids with normal lives trying to figure out how to navigate from adolescence into adulthood whilst killing monsters and saving the world. Don't get me wrong, I think Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a brilliant television show, and that even the occasional wrong note it hit was better than 90% of what's been on TV in the last two decades. But Supernatural is different in some very important ways. Not necessarily better – although as much as I love Buffy, I do prefer Supernatural – but definitely not a re-tread, not at all.

First, there's the milieu. Buffy The Vampire Slayer is set in Sunnydale, which, despite being located on a Hellmouth, is a pretty bucolic place. Very middle-America, very middle- to upper-middle-class. Not much in the way of poor white trash on Buffy. The closest we got to that, if I remember right, was Xander, who slept outside each Christmas to avoid his family's drunken arguments, whose parents were alcoholics and whose father tore out his heart in a nightmare sequence in season four. The clothes were fashionable or even trend-setting, the houses clean with well-kept lawns, and for the first several seasons one of the biggest obstacles between the heroes and saving the world was their curfew. And when the parents were no longer around to pay the bills, decent jobs turned out to be pretty easy to come by.

In fact, Sunnydale looks a lot like the idyllic world of Dean's wish late in season two of Supernatural. It certainly looks nothing like the real world of Supernatural, with its two-lane blacktops and roadside diners, motels with questionable décor and vibrating beds, cars tricked out for weapons and holy water and days and nights on the road. Curfew hasn't been an issue in years and "normal" ended in fire and blood when Sam was still an infant. At the age when Buffy was trying out for the cheerleading squad or Willow was wrestling with whether to seduce her boyfriend, Sam and Dean had already been living for years like nomadic soldiers, hunting and killing with their father and trying to make ends meet on credit card scams, card games, and hustling pool. After all, no one pays you for getting rid of their poltergeist. If you're lucky, they don't try to have you arrested.

Second, there's the focus. Like many great shows, Buffy had an ensemble cast and did terrific things with it. Supernatural has, basically, two guys. That's it. Two guys, and some folks who drift into and out of their lives, who provide help or conflict or just a little friendly advice. Even the secondary characters are admirably well-realized, like father-figure Bobby, who wears his love for — and exasperation with — the boys on his sleeve, or Ellen, too whiskey-voiced and plain-spoken to be maternal in the way television usually gives it to us, but who's undeniably maternal anyway, yet still treats the boys like equals.

I have a feeling that the writers have detailed backstories for every character who's thrown into the mix, whether for one episode or many. We may never know what that backstory is, but someone does, and it comes through in the richness of the characters.

But no matter how many great secondary characters there are, Supernatural is about Sam and Dean Winchester, and that focus stays razor sharp. It lends an urgency to events that an ensemble show doesn't have. You don't get to stop and breathe, or curse, when the show cuts away from your favorite storyline, you don't have three characters off getting the glowy orb to save the world while two others get the trap ready, you just have Sam and Dean. It's on them. Whatever happens, whoever they're going to save, they're the ones who have to do it.

And who are they saving? Where Buffy had an apocalypse imminent every season, Supernatural didn't start to show signs that the world was in danger until near the end of season two, and it's only now in season three that we're starting to learn the nature and extent of the jeopardy.

Supernatural isn't so much about saving the world, it's about saving the people in the next town over. Saving who you can. The prostitute who's attacked by a werewolf; the little girl whose ghostly friend wants to keep her there forever; the parents whose children don't know not to let the clown in at midnight; the plane-load of people who'll die if Sam doesn't get that exorcism done before they crash.

And it's a show about family, about what we'll do for the people we love, what we'll do for our families. How far we'll go to save them.

And sometimes, that was what Buffy was about too, especially after the show introduced a kid sister for Buffy, Dawn. At the end of the episode "The Gift", wherein Dawn must (in theory) die in order to prevent the ritual that will end the world, is the following exchange:

GILES: (quietly) If the ritual starts, then every living creature in this and every other dimension imaginable will suffer unbearable torment and death ... including Dawn.
BUFFY: Then the last thing she'll see is me protecting her.[ref.]

Now that is a show I will never stop watching. And it's woven through every episode of Supernatural. In the season one finale, Dean has to kill a man who's possessed and about to kill Sam. Afterwards, Dean and Sam have this exchange:

DEAN: Hey, Sam?

SAM: Yeah?

DEAN: You know that guy I shot? ... There was a person in there.

SAM: You didn't have a choice, Dean.

DEAN: Yeah, I know. That’s not what bothers me.

SAM: .... Then what does?

DEAN: Killing that guy, killing Meg.... I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t even flinch. For you or Dad, the things I’m willing to do, or kill, it just.... It scares me sometimes.

And now, season three, Dean has made the ultimate sacrifice: he's sold his soul to the devil to get Sam back from the dead. He has a year to live, and Sam has a year to find a way to break that deal, because Dean won't risk even trying. Not when the demon promised him that if he did, Sam would drop dead on the spot.

And what about Sam? Well, we don't know yet.... In the first two seasons, we learned that one of Hell's generals had plans for little Sammy, but the boys shot those plans to hell along with the demonic general himself. There are demon hunters who are hunting Sam, who think he's the anti-Christ. There are demons gunning for him too, who want to take out the human who was supposed to be their leader.

But Sam's biggest danger may be from himself, and the things he's willing to do to save Dean.

Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki have been consistently turning in their best performances, and the writers are taking us down a very dark path.

I'll be going with them every step of the way.