season one of spn is so funny to me. sam and dean will literally show up to the crime scene in some fuck ass flannels and dean is in his leather jacket and the cops are like "who the hell are you?" and dean will be like "oh, us? well we are obviously from the us fish and wildlife service who else could we possibly be???"
meanwhile theyre in the craziest outfits known to mankind with no badge or anything, so the cops will ask for their IDs and they'll hand them the most unconvincing fake id you'll ever see. the thing will be crumpled to no return and look like it was all hand written by a toddler and SOMEHOW THE COPS STILL BELIEVE THEM??
and then, they'll start questioning the victims family like "aw man :( I'm so sad for you :( that must be really hard :( so like what happened? and on a completely separate note, did you see anything? feel a temp drop? did you feel a cold spot? did you see something weird? like a creature mayhaps? like a ghost? did you see a ghost? do you believe in ghosts? please tell me it's a ghost?" like that's a totally normal line of questioning for a random drowning from two members of the us fish and wildlife service.
maybe lucifer never even told azazel to give sam demon blood and azazel just caught, like, every fourth word and misunderstood the whole plan. your honour in his defence he was busy texting
Purgatory isssss Vietnam and i will not be convinced otherwise!
in this essay i won't because i'm not american and am not equipped to root through the various generational traumas the vietnam war inflicted on america and how that impacted American Masculinity but like,,,,, it's there! it's super there. idk if this comparison is super obvious if you are american but i'm going to explain myself anyway
(before i start, i will be talking about the idealised and fetishised idea of the vietnam war, not the actual realities of the actual real conflict. this post is about how the spn writers are weirdo american men, not geopolitics)
eye mean,,, obviously the racism that runs through all of spn- there are creatures living alongside us who look like us and talk like us but are actually Dangerous Monsters Who Must Die- but keyed up to 11 because this is a land of monsters/non-humans/them-not-us
and as a part of that, we never see any child monsters in purgatory despite child monsters existing and also dying. because this is the Ideal vietnam which is only a wild battleground and not a place people, families and non-combatants live. only populated by savage non-americans who are hell bent on killing 'Our Boys'
benny fits into this too. being Other but also an ally. not someone whp can be entirely trusted at first and definitely in it for the personal gains that Fighting For the USofA could bring him, but through their shared experiences bonding. y'know, he's one of the good ones! like the (north? i think?) vietnamese allies america had on the ground
even washing all the colour out of the scenes until it's almost black and white??? like the footage that was broadcast to americans of the war?? i'm connecting the dots
purgatory not as something you beat but something you endure and then escape?? literally it is an idealised vietnam war were you don't have to confront that america super didn't win because the victory and horrors came in getting out
the way post-purgatory dean is treated like a Movie Veteran with his new brotherhood forged in blood and his thousand yard stare and his sullen drinking (all portrayed by jensen ackles who mustn't look any worse than slightly dishevelled or muddy in any shot) and that whole 'it was purer there' bullshit that i have definitely seen in other media portraying vietnam vets. they really gave him glam war trauma and it feels uncomfortable. it feels fetishy
not going to go further than "i think american men who didn't go to vietnam for whatever reason (including age! the lack of a big existential war to go fight in has really done a number on the self-perceptions of generations of american men) have a real chip on their shoulder about it and a resulting pretty gross mythification of the vietnam war because of it. maybe it's because they felt isolated from the Manly Men they idolised irl because of that lack of trauma?" when theorising WHY they did this because, again, not american.
TLDR later season dean winchester really was the writer's fetish doll to be The Most Masculine American Man and it's weeeeeeiiird!
actually like as a samgirl I also think gadreel should have hung around and helped out more because I would love to see him complete the trifecta. sam turning a corner and almost bumping into gadreel in the library five feet from where he'll work with lucifer and 20 feet from where he'll work with toni. also a huge win for me because I Know dean would feel extremely defensive and personally attacked by sam's discomfort and I think the atmosphere in that room would be nauseating.
i see a lot of (wonderful, godtier) thoughts on here about sam relapsing with the demon blood during the demon!dean arc and how that could play out. i love it, BUT