oselle | Abandon All Hope (Reply)

ghyste mentioned this post that appeared on

spn_heavymeta, about how hope is what is lacking on this season of SPN. The post focuses entirely on the relationship between Sam and Dean but I've been thinking about it and I've realized that hope of almost any kind has been entirely drained out of the show.

Sam and Dean -- I see no future there at all. In my opinion, the bond that once existed between them died as soon as resurrected Dean walked back into Sam's life. Frankly, it died before that and I know the exact moment it happened: in "I Know What You Did Last Summer," when Ruby admitted that she couldn't help Dean at all but she could show Sam how to get revenge on Lilith instead...and Sam's eyes lit up, as if revenge on Lilith were his most dearly held desire, far more important than doing anything for Dean, or trying to do anything for Dean, or even keeping up the barest pretense of doing anything for Dean. Dean was water under the bridge, let him go. And don't even try to tell me that Sam was already hopped up on demon blood by then, because there's no evidence that he was. When Dean finally did come back, Sam spent most of Season 4 choosing Ruby over him, culminating in that motel room beat-down where Sam left his battered brother on the floor to follow Ruby off to perdition.

I have no idea what was going on between them in Season 5 but episodes like "Dark Side of the Moon" were particularly brutal, as they revealed that Dean has never been at, or even near, the center of Sam's mind. Sam's fondest memories, in fact, were those that had nothing to do with Dean...and often revolved around being as far away from Dean as possible. The ending of the season (series?) showed a brief glimpse of old times, with Dean risking his life to back up his brother and Sam remembering enough of their past to resist Lucifer's impulse to beat Dean to death. Nevertheless, last week's confession by "soulless" Sam that he didn't care about Dean hardly came as a surprise, since it's been a very long time since Sam has seemed to care about Dean at all.

But the relationship between Sam and Dean isn't the only hope that's died. Going back to "Dark Side of the Moon," that episode gave us one of the bleakest visions of heaven that I've ever seen in any work of fiction (leaving aside anything by Philip Pullman, please). So there's no hope there -- even the righteous will find their ultimate reward consists of nothing more than reliving past glories in an eternal loop. Forever and ever and ever. It makes you sad for all those souls that Sam and Dean have salted-and-burned into the great beyond, because they were all better off here as wandering spirits than trapped forever in an endless rerun of their own life.

Something as elemental to the show as the love of John and Mary Winchester has also been trashed. Even in Dean's "happy" memory he recalled that his parents were fighting, to the point where they seemed to be almost on the verge of separating. As for John himself (a difficult character to begin with) I still don't know what to make of him and Adam. The resurrected Adam bitterly claimed that John was just some guy who passed in and out of his life once in a while to take him to a baseball game, which seems like a retcon considering the happy-smiley photos Adam's mother had of John around the house. The impression this viewer gets is of a man who was perfectly capable of acting like a dad when he wanted to, which wound up screwing all three of his sons -- the two who never saw that affectionate side of him, and the one who never benefitted from his hard-won knowledge and so was left defenseless (along with his mother) against the very evil that John had devoted his life to hunting.

Okay, so...Sam and Dean have nothing to hold them together. John Winchester was a selfish prick who was ready to walk out on his wife and two young sons. Heaven itself blows. What's left?

I'll tell you what -- Lisa. Lisa and Ben. Family. But not the family you expected, or at least not the family I expected. I expected Winchesters, not Mr. and Mrs. Dean Winchester, but that's what we're going to get. Why else would the show destroy anything and everything else worth believing in?

I feel especially cynical about this because I suspect this is...spite writing. It's writing with an agenda, and I've always believed that no one writes well if they're writing with a motive other than good story-telling. And the motive here is to finally stick it to the audience, or at least to that part of the audience that never warmed up to Cassie, Jo, Bela, Ruby, Anna or any of the interchangeable Maxim girls who have wandered in and out of this show.

I've long gotten the feeling that the writers have resented the way their female characters have not been accepted by the audience, and they have not been shy about blaming that rejection on the audience, rather than holding themselves accountable for it. From Sera Gamble euphemistically calling the viewers "protective" of Sam and Dean, to Genevieve Cortese saying that she was warned the audience would hate her because she was a girl, to Misha Collins claiming that the only reason Castiel became popular was because he wasn't a girl, the message has come through loud and clear. They're pissed off at us, and now it's payback time. Over the past two-and-a-half seasons, the show's landscape has been stripped of all hope...except one. The kind to be found at the side of a good woman.

So those of you who are holding out hope for a real reconciliation between Sam and Dean? Driving off into the sunset to a classic rock soundtrack? Saving people? Hunting things? Forget about it. The only bonding that's going to happen between these two guys will be at Dean's wedding reception, the only hope will live beneath the conjugal roof, and everything that this show was supposedly built on will be dismissed as worthless in comparison to that inevitable domestic bliss.

Payback's a bitch.

ETA: I realize from some of the comments, and from re-reading this post, that it could sound as if I'm saying that everything the writers have been doing for the past few years has been part of a deliberate conspiracy to screw the audience by having Dean wind up with a girlfriend. That's not what I mean...please read the comments below for more clarification. I apologize for any unnecessary confusion/alarm/outrage.