eachdraidhean (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eachdraidhean) wrote2009-09-11 08:44 pm
eachdraidhean) wrote2009-09-11 08:44 pm
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Sympathy for the Devil Review and a little Meta on Sam and Dean
I’m blaming the flu on my hyper-emotionalness (yes, i know it isn't a word, but it fits!) when watching anything right now. I swear, I would start sniffling at Location, Location, Location if Kirsty and Phil showed the buyer of the week the perfect cottage and they didn’t want it. *rolls eyes at self*
So, onto the matter at hand, and bear in mind that I'm completely unspoiled for the rest of the season, so musings and hopes and fears are based on this episode only, and whatever's gone before.
Sympathy for the Devil!
Loved the introductory montage and adore the new swirly bloodsplattery titles :)
I wondered how they were going to escape the convent, and beaming them onto a plane, and as it turns out, GOD beaming them onto a plane, was a novel way of doing it. Poor Dean! Being saved by his own phobia!! It was interesting that the cartoon that was playing on the plane was Yosammity Sam being told by the devil that he could use a man like him. Don’t like the foreshadowing possibilities of that at all!!
Poor chuck really was having a stressful time, what with Castiel exploding "like a water balloon of chunky soup" and finding one of his molars in his hair. Eeeww! The look on Dean's face when he found out that Sam's eyes turned black wasn't a good one, and Sam looked as if it were just one more thing to add to the list of ways he'd screwed up.
I have to wonder about Sam's powers. Ruby said he never needed the demon blood to increase their strength, so is he able to access them now? Has he not tried, apart from when he tried to kill Ruby back in Lucifer Rising? She said he'd shot his payload on the boss, but it doesn't make sense if that one act used them up. Not to me, anyway.
Zachariah is proving to be a damn good bad guy, and I liked Dean shooing him and his minions away using the same method Cas and Anna use. Then Sam was hesitant about telling Dean that he found out how to make the hex bags from Ruby :(
I'm going to leave all my comments about Sam until the end :)
Ah, the fan girl, Becky. I felt squirmy/embarrassed at her reading slash out loud!! And that was a very unique way for Chuck to get a message to the Winchesters. I cracked up at Dean not being how she expected him to be (What?!?! Is she out of her mind to be disappointed at Dean!!), and at the exchange with Sam.
“Becky, can you, erm, quit touching me?”
“No.”
But that’s enough. I get the joke and the gentle ribbing, but it did pull me out of the story, so I hope that’s the end of it.
Again, I'll get to Sam and Bobby at the end.
I was surprised that Dean didn’t catch on to Bobby being possessed earlier, as what he said to Sam was a complete contrast to what he said to Dean in LR. I thought Dean had caught on when he got up to find the address for the storage space, because the scene reminded me of when Grandpa Samuel is possessed back in “In the Beginning”, and I thought Dean had twigged, but it was the mention of his Dad getting him thinking about the lock up and then damage was done.
Bobby is creepy as a demon and awesome as he fights it, breaking free of the demon’s hold just long enough to kill it, but having to stab himself in the process! Wah!! It says a lot about how he feels about Dean, that he’d rather sacrifice himself than let the demon kill Dean.
I like the new Meg.
“Is that peanut butter?” *smirks*
And I’m assuming she’ll be hopping back into that particular meat suit again.
They left Bobby alone at the hospital!! I know it had to be done, but just for the record, it was Sam that wanted to stay.
I knew we'd see the lock up again someday, it was too awesome a place to to use it more than once :)
So Dean is Michael’s sword? Or as Dean puts it, he’s an angel condom. Zachariah has some strange definitions of Dean giving consent to being Michael’s vessel. Surely there’s some clause in there to it being freely given and not through blackmail or coercion? I loved Cas sweeping in to save the day, all alive and everything and scaring Zach with the possibility that God is back in the game. And for carving sigils onto the boy's ribs :)
Not much to say about Lucifer yet. Poor Nick is the perfect vessel for him. Despairing over the loss of his wife and child, it doesn't take much for the silver tongued angel to talk him into giving his consent. It'll be interesting to see what happens now!
And at the end, Dean's speech to Bobby took me in too. There's more of a strength in him now. He's not back to the old Dean, and he still looks weary, but there's a touch more of the old attitude about him. So I was thinking yeah, great! He's throwing himself into this, and Sam was obviously taken in too, by his suggestion they look for the colt (another plot possibility, perhaps?), so I was a little deflated when he admitted it was all for Bobby's benefit.
So, on to Sam ...
I felt so bad for Sam all the way through the episode. He needs to talk, even if it is only words and they can’t really make up for what he did, but Dean doesn’t want to hear it. You could see that need in him when Bobby arrived and my heart was breaking when he did spill everything to Bobby *gets tissues*. I expected Bobby to give him something to cling to, even a stern telling off, but in a fatherly way followed by a hug or at least an arm squeeze, especially after what Bobby said to Dean in Lucifer Rising. That Dean was a better man than his father, and that he shouldn’t give up on Sam.
So it came as a total shock when Bobby told Sam what he’d done was unforgivable, and that after it was done, he should lose his number. The devastation on Sam’s face was heart wrenching, and as he suggests he leave, he looks as low as I think we've seen him since the flashback to what happened after Dean died, almost without hope. And yes, there was sniffling on my part.
But despite everything, and the tensions between them, Dean and Sam worked together through the episode. It's like Dean is giving Sam something to keep his mind off things when he says they have to approach the Lucifer problem as any other hunt. They are together pulling weapons out of the trunk before heading into the lock up. Then Sam looks more stricken by the second as Zach tells Dean he's chosen to be Michael's vessel. He's just got Dean back, this time after pushing him away himself, and he's having to face the possibility of losing him AGAIN!
The sliver of hope you can see on Sam’s face as he listens to Dean talk about how they can take both sides on, and then that gorgeous smile when Bobby, the real Bobby, tells him that he’d never push him away, are soon lost, driven away by Dean's words in the most painful scene.
Finally, Dean lets Sam know exactly how he feels, and it’s like a punch in the gut. He can’t forgive Sam for choosing a demon over him, can’t trust him, an doesn’t think they can ever go back to how it was before. That last shot, pulling back to show them standing so far apart? Gah!!
Please, someone!! Stick Bobby in a wheelchair and get him into the parking lot stat to kick Dean’s ass!!
Thing is, I get it, I really do. Sam lied to him and pushed him away again and again. He told Dean he was weak, he had a good go at strangling him, and he did choose Ruby over Dean again and again.
But Sam didn’t know he was freeing Lucifer. He thought he was stopping Lilith from breaking the final seal, and in the process, getting revenge for taking Dean away from him. His methods were suspect, and he knew that himself, but at the end of the day, he didn’t know. He was played by both demons and angels, manipulated and used to break the final seal. So yes, he may have chosen a demon over Dean, but Dean wore his mistrust of Sam on his sleeve from the second he got back from Hell and did some pushing away of his own.
And Dean also tells Cas back in Lucifer Rising that he’d “take Sam as is”. I don't believe he's taking that back. In the lock up, when Zach breaks Sam's legs, Dean looks ready to murder the angel for hurting his little brother. After Cas arrives and makes Zach put them back together, Dean straightaway turns to check on Sam. The bond is still there. A tenuous one, subconscious maybe, and only apparent when instinct comes into play, but it's not gone.
So what I’m taking from the exchange in the car park is that Dean is hurting, and rightly so, and he needs to keep his distance from Sam for a while to avoid getting hurt again. But Sam needs something to hold onto.
This could end badly. Lucifer is out there, and may, as Ruby said, be very grateful for Sam’s part in his release. If Sam doesn’t get the forgiveness he needs from Dean, he may turn away from him again, with disastrous consequences.
But what I hope is that this season is all about the boys regaining the trust they once had in each other, because I think they’re going to need it. Dean may have been bullshitting Bobby with hisgung ho, lets take them all on speech, but really, that’s the only way it can go down. The boys need to trust each other to be ready to fight both sides, and I only hope they get to that point in time!
Start A Business
So, onto the matter at hand, and bear in mind that I'm completely unspoiled for the rest of the season, so musings and hopes and fears are based on this episode only, and whatever's gone before.
Sympathy for the Devil!
Loved the introductory montage and adore the new swirly bloodsplattery titles :)
I wondered how they were going to escape the convent, and beaming them onto a plane, and as it turns out, GOD beaming them onto a plane, was a novel way of doing it. Poor Dean! Being saved by his own phobia!! It was interesting that the cartoon that was playing on the plane was Yosammity Sam being told by the devil that he could use a man like him. Don’t like the foreshadowing possibilities of that at all!!
Poor chuck really was having a stressful time, what with Castiel exploding "like a water balloon of chunky soup" and finding one of his molars in his hair. Eeeww! The look on Dean's face when he found out that Sam's eyes turned black wasn't a good one, and Sam looked as if it were just one more thing to add to the list of ways he'd screwed up.
I have to wonder about Sam's powers. Ruby said he never needed the demon blood to increase their strength, so is he able to access them now? Has he not tried, apart from when he tried to kill Ruby back in Lucifer Rising? She said he'd shot his payload on the boss, but it doesn't make sense if that one act used them up. Not to me, anyway.
Zachariah is proving to be a damn good bad guy, and I liked Dean shooing him and his minions away using the same method Cas and Anna use. Then Sam was hesitant about telling Dean that he found out how to make the hex bags from Ruby :(
I'm going to leave all my comments about Sam until the end :)
Ah, the fan girl, Becky. I felt squirmy/embarrassed at her reading slash out loud!! And that was a very unique way for Chuck to get a message to the Winchesters. I cracked up at Dean not being how she expected him to be (What?!?! Is she out of her mind to be disappointed at Dean!!), and at the exchange with Sam.
“Becky, can you, erm, quit touching me?”
“No.”
But that’s enough. I get the joke and the gentle ribbing, but it did pull me out of the story, so I hope that’s the end of it.
Again, I'll get to Sam and Bobby at the end.
I was surprised that Dean didn’t catch on to Bobby being possessed earlier, as what he said to Sam was a complete contrast to what he said to Dean in LR. I thought Dean had caught on when he got up to find the address for the storage space, because the scene reminded me of when Grandpa Samuel is possessed back in “In the Beginning”, and I thought Dean had twigged, but it was the mention of his Dad getting him thinking about the lock up and then damage was done.
Bobby is creepy as a demon and awesome as he fights it, breaking free of the demon’s hold just long enough to kill it, but having to stab himself in the process! Wah!! It says a lot about how he feels about Dean, that he’d rather sacrifice himself than let the demon kill Dean.
I like the new Meg.
“Is that peanut butter?” *smirks*
And I’m assuming she’ll be hopping back into that particular meat suit again.
They left Bobby alone at the hospital!! I know it had to be done, but just for the record, it was Sam that wanted to stay.
I knew we'd see the lock up again someday, it was too awesome a place to to use it more than once :)
So Dean is Michael’s sword? Or as Dean puts it, he’s an angel condom. Zachariah has some strange definitions of Dean giving consent to being Michael’s vessel. Surely there’s some clause in there to it being freely given and not through blackmail or coercion? I loved Cas sweeping in to save the day, all alive and everything and scaring Zach with the possibility that God is back in the game. And for carving sigils onto the boy's ribs :)
Not much to say about Lucifer yet. Poor Nick is the perfect vessel for him. Despairing over the loss of his wife and child, it doesn't take much for the silver tongued angel to talk him into giving his consent. It'll be interesting to see what happens now!
And at the end, Dean's speech to Bobby took me in too. There's more of a strength in him now. He's not back to the old Dean, and he still looks weary, but there's a touch more of the old attitude about him. So I was thinking yeah, great! He's throwing himself into this, and Sam was obviously taken in too, by his suggestion they look for the colt (another plot possibility, perhaps?), so I was a little deflated when he admitted it was all for Bobby's benefit.
So, on to Sam ...
I felt so bad for Sam all the way through the episode. He needs to talk, even if it is only words and they can’t really make up for what he did, but Dean doesn’t want to hear it. You could see that need in him when Bobby arrived and my heart was breaking when he did spill everything to Bobby *gets tissues*. I expected Bobby to give him something to cling to, even a stern telling off, but in a fatherly way followed by a hug or at least an arm squeeze, especially after what Bobby said to Dean in Lucifer Rising. That Dean was a better man than his father, and that he shouldn’t give up on Sam.
So it came as a total shock when Bobby told Sam what he’d done was unforgivable, and that after it was done, he should lose his number. The devastation on Sam’s face was heart wrenching, and as he suggests he leave, he looks as low as I think we've seen him since the flashback to what happened after Dean died, almost without hope. And yes, there was sniffling on my part.
But despite everything, and the tensions between them, Dean and Sam worked together through the episode. It's like Dean is giving Sam something to keep his mind off things when he says they have to approach the Lucifer problem as any other hunt. They are together pulling weapons out of the trunk before heading into the lock up. Then Sam looks more stricken by the second as Zach tells Dean he's chosen to be Michael's vessel. He's just got Dean back, this time after pushing him away himself, and he's having to face the possibility of losing him AGAIN!
The sliver of hope you can see on Sam’s face as he listens to Dean talk about how they can take both sides on, and then that gorgeous smile when Bobby, the real Bobby, tells him that he’d never push him away, are soon lost, driven away by Dean's words in the most painful scene.
Finally, Dean lets Sam know exactly how he feels, and it’s like a punch in the gut. He can’t forgive Sam for choosing a demon over him, can’t trust him, an doesn’t think they can ever go back to how it was before. That last shot, pulling back to show them standing so far apart? Gah!!
Please, someone!! Stick Bobby in a wheelchair and get him into the parking lot stat to kick Dean’s ass!!
Thing is, I get it, I really do. Sam lied to him and pushed him away again and again. He told Dean he was weak, he had a good go at strangling him, and he did choose Ruby over Dean again and again.
But Sam didn’t know he was freeing Lucifer. He thought he was stopping Lilith from breaking the final seal, and in the process, getting revenge for taking Dean away from him. His methods were suspect, and he knew that himself, but at the end of the day, he didn’t know. He was played by both demons and angels, manipulated and used to break the final seal. So yes, he may have chosen a demon over Dean, but Dean wore his mistrust of Sam on his sleeve from the second he got back from Hell and did some pushing away of his own.
And Dean also tells Cas back in Lucifer Rising that he’d “take Sam as is”. I don't believe he's taking that back. In the lock up, when Zach breaks Sam's legs, Dean looks ready to murder the angel for hurting his little brother. After Cas arrives and makes Zach put them back together, Dean straightaway turns to check on Sam. The bond is still there. A tenuous one, subconscious maybe, and only apparent when instinct comes into play, but it's not gone.
So what I’m taking from the exchange in the car park is that Dean is hurting, and rightly so, and he needs to keep his distance from Sam for a while to avoid getting hurt again. But Sam needs something to hold onto.
This could end badly. Lucifer is out there, and may, as Ruby said, be very grateful for Sam’s part in his release. If Sam doesn’t get the forgiveness he needs from Dean, he may turn away from him again, with disastrous consequences.
But what I hope is that this season is all about the boys regaining the trust they once had in each other, because I think they’re going to need it. Dean may have been bullshitting Bobby with hisgung ho, lets take them all on speech, but really, that’s the only way it can go down. The boys need to trust each other to be ready to fight both sides, and I only hope they get to that point in time!
Start A Business
no subject
I see the distinction you're making between Sam and his powers, and I agree with it. I've always thought Dean had faith in his brother. But what John said to him plus the YED's taunts, I've felt those lingered with Dean. This is, of course, my interpretation and perspective. It would be very interesting to hear what the writer's think and feel about this kind of stuff.
IMHO he crossed the line from sympathetic into "that's just wrong" when he lied about them and brought up that Dean not wanting him to use them was "practically your dying wish" Oh yeah, oh yeah, I remember this. Yeah, I agree, that certainly set the precedent for Sam lying and misleading Dean and was out of line. Sam did do some pretty sketchy things, but Dean also let Sam down. Quoting
I don't think it's coincidence at all that the very first time we hear Sam talk about how Dean was "different" or about how Dean was too weak to handle the situation was in 4x12, the episode after Dean confessed to 'enjoying' torturing other souls in Hell. While I totally agree with this, I don't think it was necessarily because of Dean's confessions, but rather his reaction to them (e.g. the crying). And I don't think the writers did right by Sam by cutting off the scenes right after Dean's confessions. We never got to see Sam's full reaction or his thoughts on the matter. His development was cut off in that aspect.
Dean enabled a LOT of Sam's bad behavior, IMHO because of his one esteem issues. Oh yeah, totally agree with that. Dean and his issues, oh boy.
Hmmm I am going to have to think about this some more, especially when I am not sleep-deprived :)