More on 4:09

[oselle]

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?

Comments

Re: well...sam getting on with his life is what dean WANTED him to do

[janissa11.livejournal.com]

What's Sam got that compares to that?

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

[oselle.livejournal.com]

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.

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.