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

[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.