oselle | SPN 4:03: On Second Thought... (Reply)

Found myself thinking a lot about "In The Beginning" today. I think part of the reason I felt kind of disconnected from it was because it was so...sad. And it wasn't sad in a nice, juicy Oh, Dean! sort of way, it was sad. It made me sad.

I'm not saying that it was a poor episode -- quite the contrary. But it may have been just the plain saddest episode of this entire series.

Let's suspend our disbelief here and pretend this isn't a TV show, that it's real. I want to do that because some of the things I'm going to say or ask here are not things that I actually want to see brought into the show, but things that I'm observing within the discrete reality of that universe and those people. I hope that makes sense.

Some of the sadness is coming out of the continued distance between Sam and Dean. Sam seems almost nonchalant about Dean being back from hell. The only thing that seems to matter to him is whatever the heck he's doing with Ruby. There's a weird emotional flatness about him that only appears to diminish when Ruby's around. I floated the idea in some comments last week that I thought Sam went insane when Dean died. I don't mean stark-raving, rubber-room crazy but just crazy enough that the old Sam is gone forever. I think he latched onto Ruby, and whatever she had to offer, as his only lifeline -- so much so that the incredible, wonderful occurence of Dean's return has hardly had any effect on him. Consider how enormous this is! Dean's back from the grave -- back from hell, and Sam's preoccupied with Ruby.

Not only does Sam seem unaffected by Dean's return, he seems to be downright apathetic about Dean, period. I don't know if you're picking up on it but Dean's not okay. He's awfully quiet and seems to have lost a great deal of his old energy. He's sleeping a lot. He's holding things back from Sam and Sam is not noticing any of this, because Sam is hardly paying attention to Dean at all.

Meanwhile, someone sure as hell ought to be paying attention to Dean because Castiel? Is a fucking bastard. What in God's name was the point of forcing Dean to helplessly witness the genesis of his family tragedy? And I do mean "helpless" because it was clear that Dean wasn't sent back in time in order to change history -- Castiel just wanted him to see it for himself and I think that was excruiciatingly cruel. But then everything Castiel's done so far has been cruel. Take away all the "good things can happen" and "you deserve to be saved" pap that Castiel was dishing out in the premiere and what do you have? You have an angel who let Dean rot in hell for four (six?) months before pulling him out and who has made it perfectly clear that Dean's "salvation" has nothing to do with divine mercy and is far from unconditional. He's got Dean on a very short leash and Dean is afraid of him. That's something I'm not used to seeing on Dean -- actual fear. And Castiel is fucking with his head and he's doing it on purpose. I think that whatever he's setting Dean up to do will be atrocious, most likely something to do with Sam, and Castiel knows that he'll have to break Dean down in order to get him to do it.

Frankly, Sam's looking like he got the better end of the bargain here. Ruby may be using him -- but she's also (I imagine) teaching him how to harness his own power, and Sam will at least be able to choose how to use that power. Dean's options, in contrast, seem limited to being Castiel's puppet or going back to hell. Castiel wants Dean to save Sam from the "dark path" he's headed down...but who's going to save Dean from Castiel?

The very idea of destiny that came into this episode is permeated with sadness. To believe in destiny is to give up on free will, to abandon hope, to accept that your entire life, no matter what you do, has only one possible outcome. It was terrible to hear a youthful Mary tell Dean that the last thing she wants for her children is a hunter's life because destiny has already written that that is is exactly what they'll get. Even worse was Dean's heartbreaking naivete when he told Mary just not to get out of bed on that night ten years in the future -- as if that would somehow have prevented what happened. Mary was destined to die that night because the Winchesters were destined to become hunters and they're all stuck on a horrible wheel of fate that they cannot escape no matter what. And goddamn that's sad.

This show is getting deep. And I'm loving it.