Good stuff from S8: the very first scene of the season

[brightly_lit]

So, kalliel has inspired me to post about my favorite moments of season 8, since she's doing the same and it's always fun to revisit moments from a season and get someone else's thoughts on them.

It should be easy for me to narrow it down, seeing as how now, 18 episodes into S8 on DVD, I'm so disappointed with it that I'm having a hard time finding the motivation to finish the season. It doesn't even feel like watching Supernatural anymore. :-( Which is a story for another time, I guess, but it makes a brightly_lit sad.

But here begins a collection of the things I DID like, starting at the very beginning: the very first minutes of the season, which made me clutch my heart with delight--so good!! Another monster in the woods circling the tent and terrorizing the campers, as we've seen before so many times on SPN, from the very first episodes of S1 ... only this time, the monster is Dean!

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Feral, like a cornered animal, SOO far from the Dean we've always known and loved. He casually steals their stuff, because he's forgotten what it's like to be a civilized human being (having just been threatened at gunpoint by someone who's undoubtedly unbalanced, and possibly completely insane, the campers probably figured they got off easy), and disappears into the night. ARRGHHH, everything I could have wanted from Dean's return from purgatory!

There was so much potential in this, to explore the always-uneasy question on SPN (I touch on this a lot in my fic) of whether monsters always deserve to die. Sam and Dean have killed some monsters just because they were monsters, when whether they deserved such an end was very much at question. (I never could bear the way they terrified the ghost in the "fear virus" episode to death when he only became what he was because he'd already been so cruelly tormented with fear in his life.) When Dean COMES OUT OF PURGATORY ACTING LIKE A MONSTER ... what do you do then? The writers could have taken this in a deep and brilliant direction. Would Sam begin to wonder if he should be hunting Dean? Would Sam and Dean become the monsters other hunters were hunting ... and might the other hunters' perspective be justifiable? Would the black-and-white values John instilled in his sons be forced to become shades of grey? What would this mean for these characters? Instead, the writers dipped a toe into the question of whether all monsters deserve killing here and there using Benny, then completely abandoned the whole notion, *le sigh*. Oh, well.

Yes, the first scene was fantastic. If only what followed hadn't involved cheesy music and "Dude, you're ... freakin' alive," and interactions between the brothers that didn't make sense and are never, to my knowledge, explained. Dean sure remembered how to act civilized quickly, and Sam seems ... not excited to see Dean again. wtf?? I mean, even if he REALLY didn't want to hunt anymore and he felt like Dean was all that was tying him to hunting, couldn't he ... I don't know ... find some balls and tell his brother he's out? Even if he was that much of a coward (and we have no reason to believe he is), he still wouldn't be HAPPY Dean was dead just so he didn't have to hunt anymore. I mean, eek. The whole thing feels off. (So now I know what everyone was talking about when they said Sam not looking for Dean never sat right with them!)

BUT AT LEAST THEY DID MANAGE TO WORK IN ONE LAST DICK JOKE. ("I guess standing too close to exploding Dick sends your ass straight to purgatory"--rim shot!) Seriously, though. The dick jokes made me happy.

Perhaps you will also like to share your favorite moments from S8?

Comments

[kalliel]

This is like, the lamest most irrelevant possible comment to this post ever, but I feel like I need to tell someone that between me working through/daydreaming an S8 fic I'm planning to write, and then reading this post, I've solved all of my Dean-related S8 woes and I am so happy and kind of impressed. :D

Because it's like... So. After 7x23 I was concerned that Purgatory was going to magically upstage all of Dean's other problems that had evinced themselves in S7. WHICH, TO BE FAIR, IT TOTALLY DID. XD But having long since recovered from the trauma of being proven right on that count (I think I got over that shortly before S8 even started, so it was nice to have that preemptively out of the way, XD), I'm finding myself intrigued rather than appalled by the whole Purgatory thing, now. Because Yes yes yes so all the things you just said.

But at the same time, all the things you just said have already played out in S6, through at least the first half of S7. Which isn't to say they shouldn't have gone there in S8, too, because the complexity of the Winchesters is fairly based on exactly that kind of reiteration--but the fact that they present what is essentially the diametric opposite of that has actually ended up being fascinating to me. I maintain that in the first half of S6, Dean was basically the worst person ever, the evil bastard. XP (<3!) Because Sam didn't have a soul, it sort of gave Dean free range to be as shitty to soulless!Sam, as well as every one around him, as he wanted. Because soulless!Sam is soulless, he doesn't care; and if soulless!Sam is soulless, Dean has neither the peace of mind (because having a soulless brother is no one's idea of a good time) nor reason to check his behavior. He's unmoored without Sam, as it were. As so goes around being worse than soulless!Sam who HAS NO SOUL, and honestly just scary. This idea was being simultaneously mediated by Lisa's "emasculating" influence (and I mean this in the sense that this is how soulless!Sam and the Campbells perceived it, and perceived it negatively), but good lord. It's this whole ordeal that made me feel like the second half of S6 was going to be extremely rough--when in actually it ended up probably being the healthiest S/D have been with each other...ever. XD Cue S7 and killing Amy and swearing revenge on Dick Roman and all that jazz, though my feelings about S7 are less "you're scaring me, guys" and more "well, this is the worst year of your lives, isn't it?"

My point being, Dean's worst was precipitated by something very counter to Purgatory--dramatic change (the year with Lisa, even if it was a much calmer year than a year in P, was also probably a lot more stressful, or at least more stressful in ways Dean is particularly vulnerable to), and Sam's erasure (either by virtue of being in the Cage, or being soulless thereafter). Whereas we might conceive of Purgatory as reasonably static. All monsters, all the time, 360 degree combat 24/7, yadda yadda. But since you apparently don't need to eat, sleep, or shave in Purgatory (unless you're an angel?), there's some degree of stasis in that sense. And you don't really need to think about a whole lot outside of "don't die" and "find Cas"--and bonus! Sam's probably FINE.

Not to downplay Purgatory sucking, because it seems like it does; it just sucks in ways that are reasonably familiar and manageable. WHICH SAM CAN ATTEST TO, HAVING HAD AN UNCOMMONLY LOVELY, TRANQUIL STROLL THROUGH IT IN 8x19. XDDD So I don't even know if Purgatory truly felt "pure" so much as "basic."

I don't mean to actually buy into Dean's whole schtick with that, because that would be basic in an entirely different register, but I do think it presents an interesting problematization. Like, "I am a monster and the apple pie life is a fantasy!" is an oversimplification, just as much as "I am apple pie, and the killing monsters life is a nightmare I'd like to leave behind" is, but I actually kind of life the idea of that playing out with its various attendant complications intact.

That and I just really like S6, so any potential call-backs to that are A++++ in my book. XD

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I am SOO happy to hear this was of benefit to you!!

(unless you're an angel?),

Yaaaasssss, I love all this easy-come, easy-go with their own lore, rules, mythology, continuity. It's all out the window now ... but yet, I can't help but think they could hire one of these fans with a memory for every single detail of the show to say, "You can't have Dean creeping around in a house with vampires hidden from their view because DEAN HIMSELF said he could hear blood pumping a block away when he was a vampire," etc., etc., etc.

And YES, I so loved Sam's single easy encounter in purgatory that didn't so much as muss his hair, and that he was able to traverse the whole thing in a single day! What route did Dean take?!

(As for purgatory feeling "pure," I just wanted to mention that I liked the way that came full circle with Sam feeling "purified" by his own purgatory-esque dealings with the trials.)

But this is fascinating, because I perceived Dean completely different in early S6. Yeah, he was a dick to Sam (less even than now, though, in my book, except, you know, when he nearly beat him to death), but what I saw was him seeing Sam suddenly acting so ... Deanly, and feeling like he then had to take on Sam's role as it had been for the whole rest of their relationship. Sam's calling out strangers, accusing them of terrible things to get them to confess to what they've done, and here's Dean, for once the guy going, "Um, maybe we shouldn't traumatize the poor lady?" Like, "Hold back, Sam." When Sam became the bad cop, Dean had to become the good one, which I found interesting, because Dean had always theoretically wanted Sam to be more "like him," and once he was, Dean found it made him really uncomfortable, as if he intuited on a certain level that there must be some sort of equal-and-opposite balance between them. (I will say, however, that the fic I JUST wrote tonight, "Donuts on the Run," does tap into the idea that soulless!Sam is pretty much the moral equivalent of regular ol' Dean, which may or may not relate to what you're saying here.)

Regardless, I am so happy that I was able to help you come to terms with something you'd been grappling with!! Is that the best thing ever, or what?! :-D