SPN 4:11

[oselle]

I thought the episode had a few good old-fashioned scares (the girl thinking the dog was licking her hand...then seeing the dog across the room was especially fun) but at some point in a story like this you always start wondering if everyone has been hit upside the head with a stupid stick. I mean okay...everyone's tires have been slashed but does that mean they have no other recourse but to lock themselves in a flimsy shed? Not to mention there are very few places left in America where you couldn't walk to somewhere and use a telephone...a neighbor's house, a gas station, somewhere. I also have to wonder how any two people who had spent their entire lives in a dark basement would have developed such feral strength. You'd think between the scurvy and the rickets they'd be pretty feeble creatures.

The episode did give me the creeps because it reminded me of a movie from my childhood that made a huge impression on me, and with Eric Kripke and me being about the same age, and his creative proclivities obviously influenced by the same late-70s/early-80s pop culture that I grew up on, I wouldn't be surprised if he knew this movie too. It was called Bad Ronald and here in New York the old Channel 7 weekday "Four O'Clock Movie" used to put this flick in rotation about two or three times a year (Channel 7's cinematic library was, shall we say, skimpy). Bad Ronald was about this deranged teenage boy who for reasons I can't recall was living in the walls of an old house, walls through which he had drilled numerous little holes to spy upon the family living there, most particularly on the comely blonde teenage daughter whom he eventually kidnapped and dragged into his between-the-walls lair. To this day I can't look at exposed lathe-and-plaster without getting a little chill thinking about bad, greasy, pimply Ronald and his creepy candy-bar nibbling and spyholes and very unflattering collection of plaid flannel shirts.

Anyhoo, we ended this week's episode with yet another painful roadside chat between Sam and Dean and unfortunately it had little of the power of the one at the end of 4:10, mostly because it was essentially the same exact scene except without Dean's magnificent sobbing. This strange tendency for repetition is one of my bigger pet peeves about SPN and I wish they'd stop it already. We don't need to see the same scene over and over before WE GET IT.

Of course the revelation of this week's encounter group was that Dean did not just torture souls in hell but enjoyed it. Well, I guess you could look at this two ways. One, that Dean didn't know anything about these souls, in which case it is disturbing that inflicting misery -- just the very act of unjustifiably causing pain -- gave him pleasure. But part of me is figuring, or at least hoping that the percentage of innocents in hell must be pretty low. Let's assume that very few souls in hell are self-sacrificing Dean Winchester types or are there because of silly things religion says you go there for, like, I dunno...eating a cheeseburger on Good Friday. Let's assume that hell really is for the worst of the worst. So if Dean Winchester is putting pedophiles and serial killers and drug dealers and a few Republicans I can think of on the ol' rack well...that's not so out-of-keeping with his character, is it? Okay, Dean Winchester in life certainly didn't enjoy inflicting pain-for-pain's-sake and the demons or vamps or ghouls he eliminated a) had it coming and b) were dispatched efficiently and without unnecessary cruelty but who is to say that those souls on the rack down there didn't have that coming? And maybe Sam should open his mouth and suggest something to this effect and remind Dean that whoever he was and whatever he did down in the nether regions doesn't apply up here in the light of day because the game is different and the rules are different, and Sam had better do it fast and save both Dean and us from any more of this painfully redundant exposition for God's sake, amen.

ETA: sistermagpie points out an important correction: The Channel 7 afternoon movie was, in fact, aired at 4:30, not 4:00. Nostalgists can read all about it on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=8154195. OMG! Planet of the Apes Week! Oh, the memories!!

Comments

[morganslady.livejournal.com]

First you and I must be kindred spirits, I remeber the "4 O'Clock Movie",and "Bad Ronald"...
I mentioned on my LJ and on the supenatural.tv site,that I can understand Dean getting some pleasure out of torturing others, and let's remember he wasn't torturing innocent people, they were in hell afterall. Dean has bottled up his emotions for so long ,it would stand to reason that anger would be the first emotion to be unleashed.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I don't know how I did so well in grade school when all of my homework from Grades 1 - 8 was done in front of those awful 4 O'Clock Movies. I think I saw every movie that Vincent Price ever made, not to mention latter-day Bette Davis classics like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte and of course '70s-era shlock like the already mentioned Bad Ronald and do you remember some awful thing about a family of middle-class squares being terrorized by hippie freaks in the desert? I think Dennis Weaver played the squares' dad.

As for Dean, let's not forget that he was tortured relentlessly for the equivalent of THIRTY YEARS so if he wants to get some rocks off eviscerating a few deceased SOBs, I'm not going to hold it against the guy.

[morganslady.livejournal.com]

There was a 70's movie with DW called Duel, where he's terrorized by a trucker or it could be Terror on the Beach.. see what you started:)

[oselle.livejournal.com]

It definitely wasn't Duel. I remember lots of sand so Terror on the Beach sounds about right. That must have been made right after the Manson Family murders because it's pretty clear that's who the evil hippies were modeled on.

[kjfri.livejournal.com]

Damn woman - I knew I liked the way you think. I totally agree - I was like, "hey, wait a minute, didn't we go over this last time we pulled over?"

My other problem I'm trying to overlook is how, for the first how many episodes - Dean was just rolling along with no obvious issues about his time in hell and then, all of sudden in that Wish epi - he's all like "I remember everything" - um, exsqueeze me?

Now I don't have a lot of experience with PTSD but I would expect that he would have been having flashbacks and uncontrollable flinching/aversions to certain sounds/smells/etc throughout the season, not just all of a sudden decide he's going to be all emo about dealing just because Alistair showed up. If Alistair never showed up - would Dean ever have come clean to Sam? Makes me wonder. I would have believed it so much more if we saw Dean silently or secretly trying to deal with his issues all through the earlier episodes after he returned until he just couldn't hide it anymore, or maybe his PTSD put Sam in danger - and THEN he would be forced to come clean about it. That's this lurker's 2 cents.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Well, I kind of think that even from the very first episode it's implied that Dean really does remember everything and is just suppressing it or in denial about it. At least that's the impression that I got, although it's a little uncharacteristic of SPN to work its way through that with such subtlety. Although now that they've gotten that annoying subtlety out of the way it seems like they're going to be beating us over the head with what Dean did down in hell and how shitty and worthless he feels about it.

But now that the cat's out of the bag, where are they going to go? Okay so Dean's walking around with this tremendous guilt and this image of himself as a monster etc...so they've got to be working up to some sort of redemption, yes? And I suspect that there will be some agent of that redemption, someone who's going to come along and figuratively save Dean's soul. The question is who will that be? Castiel? Ruby? Sam? Anna?

[layne67.livejournal.com]

Let's assume that hell really is for the worst of the worst. So if Dean Winchester is putting pedophiles and serial killers and drug dealers and a few Republicans I can think of on the ol' rack well...that's not so out-of-keeping with his character, is it?

This. Yes.

Thank you. You've put me out of my misery. Why didn't I think of that before? Thank you *mwaaaah*

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I guess we're supposed to make a lot out of Dean's statement that he tortured "whoever they put in front" of him, the implication being that Dean just plain old enjoyed torturing these souls without knowing whether they were deservedly in hell or not. I think we're supposed to realize that the issue for Dean and the source of the guilt is not whether any of those souls deserved it, but how he could possibly have enjoyed it so much unless he had turned into a monster himself.

[pensive]

... basically everything you just said. Except for the horror movie which I haven't seen. "stupid stick" XD

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's a great movie. Actually I see a lot of 70s-era influence in Kripke's thinking.

[i-o-r-h-a-e-l.livejournal.com]

Just watched Bloodlust and he said there twice that he enjoyed killing those supernatural things. I guess your ideas here help answer the uneasiness of the revelation.

Btw, awesome review omg. I can never write like this. :)

[oselle.livejournal.com]

And in "Devil's Trap" he also admitted that "he didn't even flinch" when he shot the demon who was beating up Sam. Not flinching from violence and actually enjoying committing a violent act are not exactly the same things, but Dean's never been a wallflower when it comes to shedding blood and after thirty years of being torn to pieces every day it's not exactly horrifying that tearing someone else to pieces might be somewhat satisfying.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Of course I know and love Bad Ronald--but you guys, it was on the 4:30 movie, not 4 o'clock. I'm humming the theme song right now, but y'all can't hear it.:-)

Fun fact: Once I was in France and was watching this weird French movie that seemed a lot like BR to me--turned out from the credits it was based on it. (Only not half as creepy.)

Also last week on Ugly Betty Betty was annoyed at her roommate for, amongst other things, eating all the food. Amanda the roommate claimed "That was Bad Raonald."

Yes, Bad Ronald was a big favorite of mine, obviously.:-D

[oselle.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD you're right. It WAS the 4:30 movie. Here is Wikipedia to show us the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=8154195

That's unbelievable because the news came on at 6:00 so they must have been editing the hell out of those movies to show them in 90 minutes with commercials nonetheless. Then again, as the Wiki entry says, a lot of longer films were broken out over several days. How well I remember the entire week it took to air Ben-Hur (not to mention how many freaking times I must have sat through all five days of Ben-Hur throughout my childhood).

It's so funny when you start talking about this stuff because you think it's so obscure that only you remember it and then you find out that EVERYONE remembers it.