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More on 4:09
I haven't seen anyone else mention it yet, but when Sam told Dean that Ruby had "saved his life," did you think (as I did) that we'd find out she stopped Sam from committing suicide?
When Sam said that, and then in the next scene we see him drunkenly staggering to his decrepit room, I was absolutely certain he was planning to kill himself. Now, I'm sure there are viewers who would have hated this angle and would have found it completely OOC for Sam but it would have worked a whole lot better for me.
First of all, it would have shown us a truly despairing Sam, one who had given up all hope and decided that if he couldn't bring Dean back he could at least be where he was (assuming that suicides go to hell in SPNverse). Of course a rational-thinking Sam would have known this is the last thing that Dean would have wanted but here's the thing: suicidal people are not rational. Suicidal people do not see options. And seeing Sam so completely undone that he considered suicide his only course would, for me at least, have been very compelling.
Second, I think it would have been a much better re-introduction of Ruby as a mentor because she could have saved him by reminding him that this was exactly what his brother had died to prevent. Giving Sam a reason to live not just to kill Lilith but because this is what Dean would have wanted. As it is, that idea only comes up later, after Sam has already welcomed Ruby back and become her student and...boyfriend. As written, the idea of "what Dean would have wanted" is almost an afterthought.
Bleh, the more I think about this episode the more I loathe what they've done with Sam's reaction to Dean's death. That was the worst thing for me about this one -- not the necrophilia, not the Mary-Sueing of Ruby, not the logic gaps, but the wholly unacceptable way they've portrayed Sam as just moving on with his life while Dean's dead and writhing in hell. Is there a point at which Dean's going to wonder about that, too? Or is he also so dazzled by Ruby that it really doesn't matter to Dean that his brother mourned him for one lousy month and then apparently forgot all about him in favor of his shiny new life with a hot girlfriend and cool powers and an iPod in the Impala and all that?
Re: well...sam getting on with his life is what dean WANTED him to do
But I think there's a substantial difference between Sam in Mystery Spot and Sam now. Sam in Mystery Spot was an automaton -- a loner, a vigilante, a juggernaut. Sam now isn't that. The keen edge of desperation and rage we SAW in that ep are not noticeably present here. Here we have a Sam who is, if anything, softer in some ways -- he's got a lover, even if she is demonic; he's been social (one reference to seeing a movie over the summer ain't much, but it's revealing); he takes pleasure in things -- something that the earlier MS Sam quite evidently did not.
Those two versions of Sam are strikingly different, you know? You say he's enraged, furious -- but I think that was Sam in Mystery Spot, not our Sam now. This Sam seems rather more integrated into his post-Dean life, very much so -- he has coped and gotten on with it.
So for me -- and your mileage will vary, and that's absolutely legitimate -- I simply don't buy that Sam is insane with grief any longer. Maybe he got that out of his system in Mystery Spot, saw what he could become and did not allow it to happen again. I honestly don't know. But I feel badly for Dean here, and -- as
But Sam alone can and DID function perfectly well, within parameters. It might not have been optimal, I'm certain it was not. But it WAS livable. And that's a stark contrast with Mystery Spot.
Re: well...sam getting on with his life is what dean WANTED him to do
I guess my problem with Sam is that I'm just not seeing the "survivor warrior" part this time around. There's a coolness between him and Dean that suggests he grew to like his new life -- it's not just survival, he actually liked his life with Ruby and Dean's return has proven to be an inconvenient interruption.
If anyone should have rage in him at this point, it's Dean -- 25 years of self-sacrifice, cast into hell for his brother's sake, horrifically tortured for months, raised up to be a divine pawn in some unexplained game, under perpetual threat of being sent back to hell and now more than a little unwelcome in the life of the only person he's ever really cared about. What's Sam got that compares to that?
Re: well...sam getting on with his life is what dean WANTED him to do
I'm sure by Sam's estimation they're more than equal. But that don't necessarily make it so.
I was so encouraged by Dean's reaction to seeing Sam doing the exorcism w/ Ruby. It was so STRONG, so HONEST. To now see Dean forced to try to accept Ruby as a good guy -- when one of his last living memories before Hell was of her screaming about visiting him down there -- is monstrous. The longer the show refuses to allow Dean to be honest, the closer it edges to the shark tank. Perhaps the show wants us to see Ruby as a good guy, but the Dean the show gives us in all his forgiving nature, his eternal and never-ending tolerance of all Sam's behavior, suggests that the real saint here is Dean.
Why not just let him be pissed? Ackles would play the hell out of it (as it were), and it would BLAZE off the screen in its honesty. Not this milquetoast Dean, tugging his forelock at Lady Ruby.
Re: well...sam getting on with his life is what dean WANTED him to do
Yes, and wouldn't it be interesting if after all Sam's poking about what happened in hell, Dean suddenly remembers that Ruby was down there with a ringside seat? Though of course that's not going to happen...if anything, we're going to get some revelation that Dean himself committed such unspeakable acts in hell that he "understands" Ruby now. Or, even worse, that he looks to her as a shining example of redemption: if she can be a "good" demon, then there's hope for him, too.
Let me state for the record that I loathe this idea.
Ackles would play the hell out of it (as it were), and it would BLAZE off the screen in its honesty.
YES, gives me goosebumps just thinking about it but damn...you KNOW that at least a third of the fandom would then be bitching about "oh, here we go again with Dean's issues." As if no matter how much of a pounding he takes, he's supposed to just keep on going -- an uncomplaining, self-denying and unbreakable little bulldog.