A giant yes to everything you said. Yes, they've finally gone ahead and destroyed Dean. I don't think that's up for debate. He might as well be dead. He's pretty much worse than dead at this point. The Dean I saw at the end of 4:16 doesn't even look like he's ever going to get out of that bed. So now what?
Next week looks like kind of a silly episode. The show has a long-standing tradition of breaking up very intense episodes with lighter fare, especially towards the end of the season. Usually I find this kind of annoying and distracting but this time around I think (I HOPE) there's a rationale behind it other than comic relief. I suspect (I HOPE) that the alternate reality events of next week's episode will be a dream or a spell or some kind of Wizard of Oz deal, while in the show's "real life" Dean is still recuperating and pulling himself together. Maybe there will even be some moral or lesson in the alternate reality that will give him some sort of reason to go on. That might be kind of a quick patch-up but at least it would be something. Because you're right -- if Dean just picks himself up and dusts himself off after THIS, he's not real. And this episode meant nothing.
Ultimately though, they CAN'T "fix" him anymore. There's just not enough of him left. It would be like trying to "fix" a house that's burned to the ground. Like you said, they've gone too far. They've got the rest of this season and a whole new season ahead of them and they're going to have to rebuild Dean. They burned him down and now they can't shirk the duty of reconstructing him into a changed man. Who will still be Dean or at least Deanish at times but the same? Never.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-03-21 04:01 pm (UTC)Next week looks like kind of a silly episode. The show has a long-standing tradition of breaking up very intense episodes with lighter fare, especially towards the end of the season. Usually I find this kind of annoying and distracting but this time around I think (I HOPE) there's a rationale behind it other than comic relief. I suspect (I HOPE) that the alternate reality events of next week's episode will be a dream or a spell or some kind of Wizard of Oz deal, while in the show's "real life" Dean is still recuperating and pulling himself together. Maybe there will even be some moral or lesson in the alternate reality that will give him some sort of reason to go on. That might be kind of a quick patch-up but at least it would be something. Because you're right -- if Dean just picks himself up and dusts himself off after THIS, he's not real. And this episode meant nothing.
Ultimately though, they CAN'T "fix" him anymore. There's just not enough of him left. It would be like trying to "fix" a house that's burned to the ground. Like you said, they've gone too far. They've got the rest of this season and a whole new season ahead of them and they're going to have to rebuild Dean. They burned him down and now they can't shirk the duty of reconstructing him into a changed man. Who will still be Dean or at least Deanish at times but the same? Never.