A couple of tiny moments from 8.20

[ash48]

Man, that ep does get in. It's been a while since I've watched an ep 3 times. <3

A couple of little (tiny) reaction moments that had me thinking. (What? Obsessive? Me? Nah...)



Because I've been experimenting with gifs I've been looking extra closely at little moments.

This reaction from Sam made me think about how terrified he must have been after that very heartfelt hug from Dean. Dean's only really hugged Sam like this after one of them have returned from the grave (or elsewhere...). I wondered if Sam was thinking this was Dean acknowledging just how dangerous this is - acknowledging that Sam may well die and Dean was somehow accepting that. Sam might be thinking that Dean was getting a hug in before it's too late. And no, I don't mean that Dean has given up on Sam. This is about what Sam might have read from that hug.



zebra363 pointed this Dean reaction out to me:

This is after Charlie tells Sam that if anyone can do these trials he can. That's an eye roll! What's going on with that? He looks away as though he doesn't want to accept what Charlie's saying. He knows Sam is strong enough - maybe he doesn't want to hear someone else say it. Or something...?



While I'm here...

Awwww.... hand holding. :)

Comments

[de-nugis.livejournal.com]

I think Charlie thinks of Dean and Sam partly as fictional characters [ETA: and since she's now had significantly more real interaction with Dean, she probably thinks of Sam as Sam in the books even more than of Dean as Dean in the books], even though she knows them and knows they are real. It showed in the way she talked about what she found out through the books. Imagine if you learned that a friend of yours had had his girlfriend horrifically killed in front of him because she was tangled up in his life, and that he had had to kill another woman he was attached to at her request, would you ever say to that person something about how they had "zero luck with the ladies"? Taken as simply someone talking to someone else she knows somewhat, that remark was horrifically tasteless. But speaking as someone who has read about this stuff in a pulpy book, even if she intellectually knows it really happened, the response makes sense. And I think Dean gets this about Charlie; he's seen her treating hunting partly as a game (real role-playing) with it not quite coming home to her how real it is, even though she's gotten hurt. And he's been in her nightmare and seen her trying to deflect her guilt and grief about her mother by turning that into a shooting game.

So Dean hears her say that Sam is strong enough, he'll come through, she knows it from the books. And Dean knows that being strong enough doesn't mean everything's going to be OK with the hero riding off into the sunset. Sam was strong enough to take Lucifer, but look what happened then. Dean said it in Trial and Error: these things end with one of them dead or worse. He doesn't have to doubt Sam's abilities to realize that Sam might fail or might die or worse even if he succeeds. So he rolls his eyes a little because Charlie is certain Sam-in-the-books will make it, but Dean knows that Sam-his-brother could still die.

How's that for overreading of a single expression? But it's not so much about that one moment for me; taking a little distance from Charlie reacting as a meta fan figure and realizing that it actually makes sense for her as a fictionally real being to react that way is the only way I find her character moving rather than gimmicky.

Of course, there is the irony that Sam really is a fictional character and that for all that the possibility of a deadly outcome has to be emotionally real to Dean to be moving to us, we are much closer to Charlie's position: show is coming back for another season, Jared has a contract, there's a limit to how bad things can be for Sam!

[cherie-morte.livejournal.com]

there's a limit to how bad things can be for Sam!

Ahahaahaha, OMG, BB, you say that as if the things that have happened to bring the boys back haven't already been worse than dying.

[de-nugis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but. We know he'll be back. We know he will be able to hunt. We know Dean isn't permanently losing Sam -- he could, at the end of the series, but he won't at 8.23.

That's why I'm hoping that the Trials really are working some kind of transformation in Sam and that it sticks. Because I don't feel that there's much moral or emotional complication in what we've seen of Sam's feelings about the trials, and putting all the suspense on "will Sam survive?" when the audience knows he will doesn't have much impact for me.

[cherie-morte.livejournal.com]

He might die and spend the next two seasons as a hallucination that Sam hangs out with/hunts with/genuinely has convinced himself is really because he's just that sad?

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[fourtenpm.livejournal.com]

you know, you just totally ruined my coming up between seasons zen by making me think all the horrible ways that Sam could be brought back worse than dying. It is so much worse that whatever the show could have done.....

[ash48.livejournal.com]

How's that for overreading of a single expression?

I love it! I love looking at Charlie as a character and you've really articulated her take on Sam and Dean beautifully. I was chatting to someone on the weekend about the world that Charlie comes from and how she can get away with saying things like "I don't want to miss the broment". I said that part of her being fannish means she gets the language - which is our language. I felt that a lot of her dialogue was almost breaking the forth wall. Her saying "montage" after her dress-up montage in particular. So yeah, I think she is in between seeing them as 2 dimensional characters, living fictional stories and becoming part of these stories and therefore making them more real. Which I think is a really clever way at looking at the show's audience AND giving us an interesting character. Charlie could have easily become a purely gimmicky character - instead she's been allowed to be fun, but also have depth.

And yes yes - Sam can't die (though I think we can accept that Dean would think that it is a real possibility), so there's no real drama in that. I like that they've made it more interesting by suggesting he is changing. The big question being...into what? I have a mixture of worry and excitement as to what that could be.

Thanks so much for the thinky.