lollin @ ur specific episodes because the question seems to be, “Andrew Dabb – did he fall off???” lmaooooooooooo
Alright.
First off: why didn’t Sam look for Dean while he was in Purgatory?
A few reasons and none of them are pleasant, so that’s your warning.
1 – The Promise. Sam is always wondering when the right time is to take The Promise seriously. Remember that S08 is quickly followed up by S09′s autonomy-violating introductory chapter, so it’s no surprise that Sam is willing to take The Promise seriously. After all, he forced Dean out of the game between S05 and S06, himself (or at least he believes that Soulless!Sam was “himself”), and then he goes blithely on into Season 9 with no reason to think that Dean would directly violate everything he stands for by stuffing an angel into him. For Sam, there really was reason to take The Promise seriously at that time. To everything there is a season and there was no reason for Sam to assume – staring down the barrel of the absence of his friend Cas, and his brother Dean, his father-figure Bobby – that it wasn’t the right time in life for him to hang up his gun belt. After so much loss, how could he really expect to keep plugging away? He had no one to watch his back. He probably thought that all three deaths were on him somehow. And, as we were about to see when he bumped into Amelia for the first time, this all also drove him to an emotional breaking point.
2 – This show puts too much fucking stock in Crowley. And keeps doing it. Crowley was the one to show up and say “they’re GONE GONE GONE and so am I” and leave Sam alone. A gaping absence sat in Crowley’s wake. The big-bad was taken care of. Dean, Cas, Kevin, Meg, even Crowley – all fucking gone. Since they keep cramming Crowley onto the promotional posters and material for the series well into S12, we have to accept that they think he’s an essential part of the story (I still don’t know why and I remain on #TeamCasKillsCrowley because I sincerely want to see it happen). That understanding, unfortunately, drives us to the conclusion that, when Crowley says something, we have to measure the value of the statement with an unfair weight on the pro-side. He did want Dick dead. He did contribute to that. And the way the show has been telling the story since then, Crowley thinks he belongs in the fucking storyline. So, unfairly weighted in that way, Sam had a reason to believe Crowley when he dusted his hands and said “You are well and truly on your own.”
3 – Sam had reasons to believe Crowley…. not the least of which is that there have to be side-effects to spells… and all of S06. Due to the time-crunch and Cas’s slow recovery, they didn’t consider the consequences of bone-zoning Dick. Purgatory, for all Sam knew, did = death. Sam had no proof otherwise. To our knowledge, everything outside the realm of earth is death. They had to die to go to heaven. They had to die to go to hell. And Sam is still under the assumption (probably always will be) that he’s bad and his death means nothing less than an eternity in hell without any convenient layover in Purgatory, first. Dying isn’t the way to save Dean and the whole point of Season 6 was “it’s really fucking hard to get into Purgatory.” (Which is why 08.19 is rightly considered a massive cop-out!!!)
4 – Winchester lives sometimes take place in real life. If your friends think Sam could have yanked a reaper out of the veil and demanded a ride to Purgatory after researching it or something, please remind them that Sam Winchester is, in fact, a human boy who was in mourning and then met a smart, clever, beautiful woman and, yes, despite what anyone may think, he has a right to a chance at a happy life. If they don’t agree with that, they can fucking stuff it.
5 – The presence of the Leviathan, not to mention the episode title of 07.23, both made the point of telling us it was Survival of the Fittest. Dick’s plot for SucroCorp was all about culling the weak and using humanity as meat stocks for what he thought of as the superior race – Leviathan. Now, this is my weakest defense, so that’s why I’ve saved it for last. When in doubt? Fall back on the shithouse show writing. So, Kevin was considered skittish and weak, people have been accusing Dean of being a weakass suburban soccer dad since S06, not to mention his best friend Cas has been gone to him so long that the weaker, crazier version of him that’s emerged is cold comfort. Castiel is not entirely useful. Dean is only grinning and bearing it. But, even after getting his soul back, Sam has been strong. Sam will always be strong, imo, but the show is telling us, flat out, that, at the end of Season 7, he his the sole survivor and therefore the fittest. He’s still standing. He remains alive. So, perhaps it is Sam’s duty to go on. To keep living for the people who can’t anymore. In the absence of the supposed master-race, when the Leviathan couldn’t cut it, Sam Fucking Winchester could cut it. Now, I do consider Sam stronger and fitter than everyone else. To my mind, the canon reads like everyone else is on a path to destruction but Sam will find himself chagrined to be the one left alive at the end of all of it, telling their stories, teaching new hunters, writing down books worth of knowledge. I don’t buy the storyline Jensen dreamed up (that so many people seem to like) about Dean handing the Impala’s keys off to a stranger and revving a motorcycle off down the road, alone. Frankly, I don’t see how Dean is physically, emotionally, or spiritually strong enough to go on, on his own, for the rest of his life. Considering that’s the logical conclusion of the whole story arc, I kind of buy Sam not looking for Dean in Purgatory, though I never did 100% buy that he’d be able to step away from Hunting for the rest of his life. Now that we’ve seen how Mary couldn’t even give it up after having a kid, I’m pretty fucking sure I’m right about that.
In conclusion, if people hate Sam for not looking for Dean when he was in Purgatory, I have to wonder what the fuck more they want from the guy who literally jumped in a hole to save the fucking world. Sam deserved his peace and it’s not like that peace was an easy one. It’s not like he could sleep through most nights. He couldn’t accept Amelia’s dad being nice to him without pressing the scar on his hand in case it was one of Lucifer’s delusions. And when he realized it wasn’t gonna work out with Amelia and her husband hanging out in the periphery, he couldn’t even have that peace he’d found. Dean didn’t go trying to drag Sam out of hell and that might throw them onto even footing as far as the show is concerned. But if Sam never even went back to Rufus’s cabin (where he ended up finding Dean), I still would have understood.
We circle back, all the time, to the idea that what’s dead should stay dead. It’s not as if multiple resurrections take any merit away from that principle. Yes, maybe the earth is only still around because the Winchesters protect it. But it’s just as possible that the Winchesters only have to protect the earth because their continued existence puts it in danger. That’s what the entire Supernatural universe is about – the unknown weight of the two sides of that argument.
In agreement with you that S09 and S10 were bad to Sam – hell, they were just bad in general. S11 at least let Sam out from the back seat. And, despite the torture, the show seems to feel like doing him more justice in the current season so long as he agrees that not-hunting is no longer an option.
11.10 The Devil in the Details – Let’s face it, the return of Lucifer was, more than anything, about pandering to the people who wanted to see Pellegrino’s Lucifer come back. I had really hoped we put him to rest again by proving that he doesn’t know how to be anybody except Hallucifer anymore but, judging by last week’s ep, it would seem I’m out of luck. As far as torture-porn goes, you look at 12.01 and 12.02 and think this is the worst shit they’ve done to Sam on the show until you turn around and look at 11.10 and 11.17 again. Putting Sam back in Lucifer’s company is fucking torture. Making him say The Big No to him again is not just boring but unnecessarily cruel, doubly so after the bullshit pulled by Gadreel. Forcing him into a cage to talk about their time in hell like it’s a set of fun, fond memories when it was actually guaranteed horror and torture (and possibly endless rounds of sexual assault if you follow the theory on Hallucifer’s innuendo), is flat-out disgusting. Asking Sam to save the world this way again – I repeat – is both boring and insulting. There was a definite clock running down on a predestined apocalypse when Sam agreed in 05.22. Simply judging by the fucking episode number, we know the same’s not true for 11.10. So much was up in the air at this time and there’s plenty of time, still, for kicking around more options. So this episode was just poor, overall. Gratifying as it was to see Sam say “no” and mean it and not try to sacrifice himself, it was ruined by Pellegrino’s ham-handed new cartoon Lucifer that they’ve somehow decided is the best version for current canon. It makes no sense. This version of him acts like Hallucifer who – we have confirmed – was not real. Even if Hallucifer was Sam’s projection of Lucifer as he had come to be in the cage during their time together, I still find it hard to believe. The way Lucifer was before Swan Song does not balance out with the unhinged version of him. Plus he’s the fucking Devil and we don’t have to believe anything he says or does.
11.17 Red Meat – Much as it was, yes, torture porn, and probably satisfying to the rabid fucking five-year-olds who still somehow hate Sam, I loved 11.17 for doing him true justice. After the lifetime of beatings Sam has taken, yeah, I do think it would take unloading a few full clips in him to fully kill him. He has become a tough bastard and he was pretty damn tough to start off with. I believed and cheered every moment of that episode. Again, the show is tiring itself out and you can’t place six more episodes after a truly life-threatening ep and expect us to think one of the main characters really has died. But even without being able to suspend that disbelief I hurt for him and I felt every one of his labored breaths stagger and sear up my own throat as he struggled. It felt so good because Sam kept slugging. He kept killing the fucking bad guys as he bled out because as long as he was still breathing and blinking he knew it wasn’t the end yet and he fucking well could. I know it was a hard ep. And, yes, I hate that we’re still beating the shit out of the man who sacrificed himself to save the world – the man who keeps trying to sacrifice himself for everyone else – but I did really fucking love the ep. It ranks up there with 02.12 and 08.17 in my book.
(I must mention that it also lends to my not-so-secret theory that the Winchesters are accidentally making themselves immortal. It’s already a fact of this universe that messing with death and with the body’s limits and with mortality itself has varied consequences. In my ideal ending to the series, Sam and Dean have simply died and come back so many times that they kind of get passed over by death at a certain point and stop dying entirely. They make a different species out of themselves completely by accident and end up guarding the world forevermore with Cas and whatever other hunters they accidentally train to be as good as them.)
(No, I still haven’t written my Highlander AU.)
11.23 Alpha and Omega – God owes Sam, Cas, and Dean more explanation and repayment than he will ever give, bottom line. We didn’t get Cas’s talk with his father and we got our poor lil Sam all excited and stuttery about having their Heavenly Father over to visit but we didn’t get a truly fulfilling conversation with them. God just confirmed that he was ignoring the hopes and prayers. Just confirmed that he hasn’t given a shit until now. And Sam didn’t deserve that. Sam is better than his own maker and so, on the other hand, I think this episode served a better purpose. I don’t see Sam quitting in S12. He’s endured the ultimate in disappointments and he knows, now, that he’s a more conscientious and caring person than his own God. I think that has driven him to accept that his best is more than enough. That he is more than enough and that he is as good as anybody can be. Probably better.
12.01 Keep Calm and Carry On / 12.02 Mamma Mia – So in all honesty, I’m not ready to relive these episodes. Please don’t make me lol. The torture. THE TORTURE. It was unnecessary. We could have done so many other things. Shit, we could have simply started the season off with monsters of the week every fucking week and ended EVERY damn episode with ~mysterious figures~ coming up behind them killing everyone we saved. That would have been plenty sinister enough and would have been frustrating in a way that was worthwhile. We did not. DID NOT. need to see all that torture happen to Sam. He has literally been through worse. He’s been through worse as recently as SEVEN EPISODES AGO. So it was just basically time for Dean to reconnect with Mom and hook her back up to her hunting wires in the present day. The introduction of the British Men of Letters also has me wondering both ways since the season break – either they’re a commentary on the totalitarian type of regime our country signed up for in allowing Trump’s win, OR they’re commentary on what happens when you let foreigners into your country. The management of this show is so fucked up that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was either one or both. Regardless, they can’t torture Sam in a way that hurts more than coming up behind the people he left safe in their beds after a hunt and capping them. He clearly has a place to pile all these endless amounts of physical and psychological pain (or, you know, the writing is bad and they’ve just decided they can’t be bothered admitting that Sam should shop for a psychologist or have a best friend or a significant other DON’T GET ME STARTED) so the real hurt is still yet to come – when they realize the people they’ve been helping take a foothold in their own territory have actually been “sweeping up” after them. How fucking livid is Sam gonna be? (Looking forward to it, gotta admit.)
12.04 American Nightmare – The end of this episode was crushing. The end of this episode is why I can’t wait for Sam to find out what the BMOLs have been doing and chase them to the coast like they’re the Indominus Rex and Team Free Will is a family of raptors and Mary is lurking in the water about to eat the bad guy alive. He deserved to have Magda in his life. Someone to talk to; someone who would need to talk to him, too. Ripping Sam Winchester’s potential friends, family, lovers, students, and mentees away from him is doing nothing but pissing me off and I really hope the end of the season is all-out war with the BMOLs instead of this wet-noodle Crowley/Lucifer bullshit.
I think I had more to say along the way, but I’ve now spent a couple hours organizing my thoughts here and they got lost. Anyway, thanks for asking about these. I know I don’t have especially hot takes on Season 12 thus far, but, to be fair, I haven’t watched the eps as many times as I’ve been able to watch the eps of previous seasons. The unfortunate side-effect of getting a real job over the past two years lol.
kototyph 