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
Entry tags:
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
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.
That's exactly how I feel. For most of this whole series, I've been firmly in the center, where I could see the perspective of both brothers. I could see when Dean screwed up, and when he had a point- and I could see the same thing for Sam.
But this time.
I totally disagree that Sam deserves to be treated like this. What happened to "I still owe you a serious beat-down, but you're my brother and that doesn't change"???
I agree Dean should be pissed. They've spent most of the whole series pissed at each other for one or another reason. But "We will NEVER be what we were before"?? "I don't trust you"?? He didn't say 'I don't feel like I can trust you yet', or 'this is gonna take some time and you're not my favorite person right now'. He basically said go fuck yourself Sam, I don't give a shit any more. At least, that's what I heard.
I've always loved Dean. I still do, but right now I'm firmly on Sam's side.
Sam did the wrong thing. But based on all the evidence of how things turned out (they were being screwed over and manipulated BY BOTH SIDES), he could just as easily have been *right*.
no subject
Me too! I felt so bad for Dean a lot of last season, with Sam hurting him mentally, and then physically, openly lying to him and ditching him for Ruby. Even then I could see that if Dean hadn't been so open in his complete mistrust of Sam, if he had given Sam the chance to explain about his powers rather than just dismissing them and demanding he stop dead, maybe things could have turned out differently. Although the demon blood drinking was always gonna be a hard sell :)
Dean's timing of his "we will never be the same" speech sucked, coming right after Bobby had given Sam a little hope that he wasn't being disowned (Bobby does a grand job of the father figure in the boy's lives). And I have to wonder if Dean isn't punishing Sam for hurting him. Yes, he could have said that it'll take time before they can get back to where they were, even if he doesn't feel that way at the moment. He bullshitted Bobby to make him feel better, but can't do the same for Sam?
What happened to "I still owe you a serious beat-down, but you're my brother and that doesn't change"???
I know! It has only been a couple of days, and I can't see Dean doing a complete about turn on what he said in such a short space of time.
I've always been a fan of both boys, never favoured one over the other, although I've been able to see when one of them is more in the right or wrong than the other. Dean's words will have cut deep, and maybe that was his intention, to make Sam feel some of the pain he's gone through, but I have a hard time believing that Dean truly meant what he said. It smacks of gut reaction and a need to lash out.
I'm sure they'll work things out in their own dysfunctional way, but I think it'll be a bumpy right for them and us along the way.
These guys should sign up for family therapy!
no subject
In point of fact I think Dean talked to Sam now because it was the perfect timing - the case was over. Dean was trying to focus on the "job" the whole time. They are "off the clock" as they leave the hospital. The fact that Bobby gave Sam a free pass does not mean that somehow Dean shouldn't have told Sam his own feelings.
In fact that's been a problem of Dean's whole life - it never being "the right time" for HIS feelings. It's always "there are bigger fish to fry" and that goes back to his childhood when John had him convinced that if he ever let his guard down something terrible would happen. There is always someone else who is supposed to take precedence--it's been Sam and John and the work. And he's finally, for the first time in his life, stopped and decided that HIS feelings about this DO matter.
I mean seriously when would have been "good timing" for this? There is never a good time for this.
no subject
Dean has NO idea if he can ever trust Sam again. When someone does what Sam did, sometimes there is NO regaining that trust. It wasn't a single bad decision made in a moment of madness, Sam made choice after choice after choice, lie after lie.
It's not up to Dean to "be nice" to Sam and give him hope in my opinion, not now, not at this point. It's up to Sam to do the heavy lifting in the relationship this time. Sam needs to start EARNING back that trust before Dean can decide whether or not he feels will be able to trust him again.
Dean was being honest, he loves Sam. I thought that was blatantly obvious but he cannot trust him. That's why he was so sad when he was speaking. He wasn't angry, he was sad.
I think it's unrealistic and unfair to expect that of Dean.
I see no difference between what Dean in Lucifer Rising and here. Dean didn't say Sam wasn't his brother. And I think it was very clear that Dean still loves Sam and that is precisely why it hurts him so much that he cannot trust Sam.
But facts are facts - there are some things that even familial relationships cannot come back from. And Dean's not a mind reader. Dean has a right to be that hurt by this. What Sam did was no small little betrayal.
In any case, Dean is right - they will never bee what they were before. That could be a good thing in the end, it might be better but Dean has no real reason to believe that right now.
You know what, even if Sam had been right, I think Dean would have felt much the same way - because even Sam being right doesn't excuse the lies and sneaking around and calling Dean weak and accusing him of cowardice.
Sam would have been right but it would still have destroyed his relationship with Dean.
no subject
I'd love to know- how would you like to see this play out for them, over the season?