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

[oselle.livejournal.com]

But part of it, well. It's just Sam.

The big problem with this is that...I mean, look. I've always been a Deangirl but part of that is because I don't think the show has ever done a good job of "selling" me Sam's character. And now they're making it worse and I don't think the writers see that at all. If their intention is for us to see Sam as a selfish, callous brat then they're doing a great job but I can't imagine that's what they want.

[janissa11.livejournal.com]

If their intention is for us to see Sam as a selfish, callous brat then they're doing a great job but I can't imagine that's what they want.

No, I'm sure it's not. ::sigh:: I mean, I don't know what to say. I feel personally as if I'm inextricably caught between canon and fanon, between first season and fourth. Sam HAS changed, radically, and maybe there's some validity to the remarks that some people have a tougher time adjusting to those changes than others. I don't want Sam to be a fly in amber. But I do want to see him -- incorporate things, learn, and such instances as the insistence on Dean telling him about Hell suggest that for all he has encountered, gone through, and god knows that's a pile -- he hasn't really changed his perception that the world honestly DOES revolve around him.

I dunno, I wish I could be more reassuring. :-/