blue_icy_rose: (Default)
blue_icy_rose ([personal profile] blue_icy_rose) wrote2007-03-16 01:31 am
Entry tags:

Supernatural - Roadkill

I'm putting this behind a cut because it's long. So....


First, let me just say that I really liked tonight’s episode. (Or last night’s, if you want to get technical.) I didn’t see the twist at the end coming and actually had my own theory that was shot to hell once we found out what Molly’s deal was. Basically, I thought it was awesome and was happy with having new episodes back.

I’ve read various reactions to Dean’s actions/behavior tonight and it got me thinking and I realized that I wasn’t really surprised by it. I actually thought that we were set up to start seeing the boys as they were tonight with the previouslies. So that’s where I’ll start.

I think it’s safe to say that fans of this show recognize certain lines with no problem. And one of the most well known lines is something that Dean said in the very beginning of season one, during the episode “Wendigo” I believe. It’s become a catchphrase for the fandom. “Saving people, hunting things. The family business.” Throughout most of season one, it was one of the first things we heard. Tonight, I heard, “I think Dad wants us to pick up where he left off,” and I finished the sentence with Dean. I know that line. For Dean, it’s more than just a line. He says this with such conviction that you know he believes what he’s saying. It’s not just something that he’s saying to Sam. It may very well be something that John has been drilling into him since he was young, we don’t know. All we know is that he believes it and that’s one of the most important things to remember.

And the other is the sentence itself. Look at the way it’s worded. “Saving people, hunting things.” That’s the job for Dean and I think he very much applies it to spirits. Sam says in this episode that just because a spirit is doing something bad doesn’t mean that they were bad people. Were, as in past tense. To both the boys, spirits aren’t people any longer. Their attitudes about it are different but it’s there in the back of their minds. Spirits are something separate from people. Going by what Dean says, that leaves only one option: spirits are things.

We also see this exchange (or something close to it since I know I don’t have the exact dialogue) in the previouslies:

Dean: Our job is to hunt anything supernatural.
Sam: No, our job is to hunt anything evil.

And right there is more evidence of how the boys think differently. In “Bloodlust” Dean isn’t distinguishing between good and evil. He’s distinguishing between people and things. It’s not until the end of that episode that he even starts to think that this mindset isn’t the right one. Sam, on the other hand, has already been thinking about this. We don’t know for how long or what brought it about, but we know that Sam’s mindset is different from Dean’s. Maybe it was being away for four years, maybe it was seeing Mary’s spirit in “Home” or maybe it’s Sam realizing that because of his powers, he could be considered supernatural. We’re not given any insight as to how Sam came to think this way and why Dean thinks differently, it just is.

The other thing that I think should be considered is that while we’ve seen that not all spirits are evil, there’s only been one spirit that hasn’t killed anybody and that’s Mary. In “Home” she saves the boys by using whatever energy she has left to go after the poltergeist. And while the priest in “Houses of the Holy” wasn’t evil, he still killed people. Granted, they weren’t innocent people but they were still people. His intentions may not have been evil but in the end, he was still responsible for causing these people’s deaths. The same can be said about Molly. Molly didn’t even realize that she was dead, she just came back every year and relived the same thing over and over. She only thought she was asking for help. But the fact is that for years, she was the cause of people’s death. Not because she was evil and definitely not on purpose but she did get these people killed. For Dean, I think that’s all he sees. People are dying and no matter how good their intentions are or whether or not they’re doing it on purpose, they’re still killing people and his job is to save people.

There’s no denying that Dean’s character has grown since the first episode of the series. Things wouldn’t be very interesting if it hadn’t. But in this aspect, I think he’s only just starting to grow. Right now, he still thinks very much in black and white (except for when it comes to his brother). As far as he’s seen (and as far as we’ve seen), only one spirit has ever actually been good, has never killed a person, and that’s his mother. So the idea of treating any spirit as something other than a “thing” that he needs to kill is still new. I think that Dean comes across as being much more harsh in this episode as a result of that. He wasn’t thinking of Molly as a person. This was just his job and he had a certain amount of time to do that and to hell with the pleasantries.

There’s been quite a few other explanations for Dean’s behavior in the episode that I think work really well, like the fact that a lot of what we saw was through Molly’s perspective and so, to her, Dean may have seemed like a complete ass. There’s also been mentions that he may still be dealing with the fact that he almost became a spirit and that also goes back to his “What’s dead should stay dead” thought process and the guilt over John’s death. Add in the fact that this is just the way he’s been raised to think and I don’t think tonight was completely out of character for him. He may be more open about being able to believe whether or not something is evil but even then, he’s still struggling to break through that mindset of anything supernatural needs to die. And if he were raised to think that way, to try and open up more, to act differently would be like going against John and his orders, something Dean doesn’t like to do.

I don’t know if any of that made sense or not. This may be completely confusing to read since I pretty much wrote this as I was thinking of it but it did help me put tonight’s episode and the boys’ different attitudes into perspective. And I’m sure I could go on to write about Sam but I won’t since I was mainly setting out to offer an explanation for Dean’s actions. I'm not justifying his actions, this post was just me trying to see the reason behind them (or the possible reasons).

And now, I’m going to go back to writing my fic. I just had to get this typed up since I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And, well, obviously this is just what I think so feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. ^_^


That being said, let me just finish this post by saying I can't wait for next week's episode! I'm completely taking over the TV upstairs so I can watch it on big screen. *is gleeful at the idea*