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pagannatural · 1 month

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2.04 Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things

-“Yeah right—stuck with those people making awkward small talk until you show up? No thanks”

Clingy Dean is my favorite. He’s going through a hard time and he only wants to be around his Emotional Support Sammy

-At the hotel, Sam does that thing he does where he tells Dean he can see through him and he knows that he’s feeling some type of way about their dad’s death. This is a common romance trope. He knows Dean so so well.

-Every single episode now Sam has pushed Dean to talk to him. I wonder if he suspects that there is more to it than grief for Dean.

-It’s so interesting how their different ways of caring for each other come out—in s1 Dean was always worried about Sam because he’d just lost Jessica. He was patient with Sam and didn’t push him, but it was clear he was noting how much he ate and slept, and he did things like letting Sam sleep while he researched or offering food or letting him drive or putting on music he likes to doze to. Sam needs that respectful caregiving. Sam, however, is relentless when he sees that Dean is suffering and won’t let Dean ignore it. Dean needs that so that he can’t lie or turn away.

-Dean finally looks at Sam head-on after evading him the whole conversation, and Sam kind of draws back. Not fearfully, more like when the person you’re walking with suddenly stops so you do too.

-Sam says “you wanna take another swing? Go ahead, if it’ll make you feel better.” He sounds a little bratty, almost condescending. Like, You wanna do it again since you loved it so much? Since you felt so good after? (Dean didn’t.)

Underneath that, though…there’s softness, like Sam really would let Dean hit him again. He needs Dean to give him something. That punch in the face just didn’t last and he’s desperate.

Dean leaves and I think he’s feeling pretty exposed right now. He’s a liar and his lies don’t work on Sam.

-Sam is a kicked puppy when Dean leaves him. He looks much more devastated here than he did after Dean punched him and walked away. At least when he punched him he didn’t ask to be alone after.

Sam is so worried about Dean. His expression is pleading.

-When Dean comes back, Sam is watching something called “casa erotica 4.” He’s watching it with what looks like scholarly interest, or like he’s trying to figure out the plot from the first three movies he missed. Did he think maybe erotica would make him feel less sad about Dean? Evidently it’s pay per view so Sam had to have actually sought this out. He hasn’t done more than kiss anyone since Jessica died, so maybe this is meant to remind the viewer that he’s horny. So to recount, this episode he’s horny and he’s pleading desperately with Dean for something. I’m just contextualizing.

-Sam says “where the hell were you?” which is something an angry girlfriend would say.

-Dean is very indignant that Sam thought he was wrong about the case. Dean was right, and tells Sam he does actually know how to do his job. Sam used to openly look up to him so of course this is important to him, that Sam still thinks he’s capable.

-Their fights are just SO good. Sam is yelling at Dean that he’s scary and erratic and if this hadn’t been a case “you would’ve just found something else to kill” which gets Dean’s attention. Last episode he basically told Sam that he needs him to keep him from his violent impulses, from just being a killer. Dean walks away again until Sam says “Please—Dean—it’s killing you. Please.” I wonder if Sam says “please” to Dean like this only when he really, really needs him to listen because he knows that it works. Dean finally stops and looks at him, almost reproachfully. His kryptonite.

The fact that Dean feeling unhappy is such an issue for Sam that he’s fighting and begging and asking to be punched makes me want to hurl myself into the sun. He REALLY needs Dean to be okay. If Dean ever tried to pull away from him when they were kids, or ever seemed like he was refusing to talk about something bothering him, Sam must have lost his damn mind. And that’s exactly how Dean would’ve coped with feelings for Sam.

-Sam says they’ve already lost their parents. He says “I’ve lost Jessica. And now I’m gonna lose you too?”

If someone said to you “I’ve already lost my girlfriend. And now I’m going to lose you too?” It would probably feel like you were in a similar role to their girlfriend.

It’s also wild that Sam is comparing their parents’ and his girlfriend’s horrific and violent deaths with Dean just simply not talking about his pain. Like, Jessica burned to a crisp on my ceiling and now this? Emotional distance when I’m sad?

-The way Sam nods when Dean says “I’m being an ass and I’m sorry” is very baby brother. It’s similar to the way he nods when Dean asks him if he’s hungry when he comes back from the dead, just more cross.

-Dean tells him “I hear you” but right now they have a zombie to catch, and he starts walking, leaving Sam crestfallen.

-Dean thinks that Angela’s description of Neal being a shoulder to cry on and understanding what she’s going through sounds like Neal is in “unrequited ducky love” with her and your honor that’s exactly how Sam is treating Dean in this very episode, if only Dean would accept his shoulder.

-Dean says the following while making uninterrupted eye contact with Sam:

Okay!

-Sam tells Dean his plan was “pretty sharp” so now Dean can stop worrying that Sam doesn’t think he’s good at hunting

-Episode theme is “what’s dead should stay dead.”

Dean eventually pulls over and gets out of the car to tell Sam they both know John traded his life for Dean’s. Dean thinks he should be dead and that Sam thinks so too.

This conversation is heartbreaking because Dean asks what Sam could possibly say to make it alright, and when Sam struggles with something but doesn’t speak, Dean seems to take this as him agreeing.

Sam clearly doesn’t agree that Dean should be dead or blaming himself. Sam looks frustrated and worried and upset that Dean could even think that. For one thing Sam just sees things differently and probably hasn’t bothered questioning John’s death very much, and for another Sam chose Dean over John so many times that we can safely assume he’s at peace with this exchange. But he couldn’t possibly say anything right now to make Dean understand, so he just listens.

-Dean’s guilt over John dying for him weighs heavily, and keeping things from Sam is slowly ripping him apart. It will be important in later episodes that Dean struggles so much to keep anything from Sam.

-The way Sam looks at Dean here. He loves him so much. He looks resolute, and I wonder if he’s thinking that he’s going to show Dean he wants him and doesn’t blame him.

#samdean #supernatural #spn meta #sam and dean #spn 2x04 #wincest

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destielshippingnews · 1 year

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Edvard's Supernatural Guide 2x04 Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things

Spoilers us to Supernatural 15x17 and Buffy 6x07

This episode brings the ‘Dark Dean Arc’ to a close (sort of) with the show’s first zombie episode. Zombies were not originally the reanimated, flesh-eating corpses first presented in Night of the Living Dead, but originated from voodoo folklore. A voodoo zombie is a reanimated corpse used as a slave by a powerful wizard. The Romero zombies which have been a staple of horror fiction since 1968 are a blend of this idea and the pre-Victorian era idea of a vampire.

I discussed this in my analysis of 1x18 Something Wicked and referred to the different varieties of vampire in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (to my shame, I have not read the following books yet). There are the Stokeresque vampires such as Louis, Lestat, and Claudia who are highly intelligent, as well as the vampires of the Theatre des Vampires, but in comparison to them are the ‘wild’ or ‘feral’ vampires Louis and Claudia encounter in far eastern Europe. These vampires had nobody to guide or ‘train’ them upon their awakening from the dead, but rather were left to crawl out of their own graves and haunt the forests and villages preying on people. Echoes of strigoi are easy to hear, and it is this mixed with the voodoo zombie which gave rise to the modern zombie.

Zombie!Angela – the reanimated woman – is not much like either. She is nobody’s slave, nor subject to anybody’s will as her voodoo counterparts, but rather she is an embodiment of grief, bereavement, and survivor’s guilt. This is precisely the role of the dead in Stephen King’s Pet Semetary which Dean so aptly references: survivor’s guilt is as good as a revenant which gets angry, violent, and ends up wanting to kill us.

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Given Dean has recently been resurrected and his behaviour becomes more distressed and traumatised, the parallels between him and Angela should be blindingly obvious. She is an extreme version of Dean, as Gordon was in 2x03 Bloodlust, but whereas Gordon revealed the damage Dean could do to other people, Zombie!Angela’s most important function is revealing precisely how much Dean wishes he were dead. The end of the episode has Dean staking Zombie!Angela back into her coffin (a nice reference to strigoi lore) and growling ‘What’s dead should stay dead’. Dean regards himself as dead, and his staking of Zombie!Angela was his suicide by proxy.

This is the pinnacle of the ‘Dark Dean Arc’ as it shows the viewer just how deeply recent events have effected him. Other than this, Dean’s behaviour in the ‘Dark Dean Arc’ do not generally stand out to me as being especially ‘dark’. Chainsawing the vampire to death in 2x03 was a perfectly rational act, as was concluding the Greek professor resurrected his dead daughter. I understand what the writers of these last three episodes were trying to do with Dean, but in my opinion they have not quite succeeded: he is clearly not doing well, but he is not as ‘scary’ as Sam claims. This comes later with everything he does in 2x20-2x22.

One of the reasons, perhaps, why the metaphor of Zombie!Angela sucking the life out of plants and goldfish around her and killing the people who wronged her does not quite land with me is because Dean is not doing any of these things. He did go from 0-60 in two seconds with the professor when he (understandably) concluded the professor in Ancient Greek had used Ancient Greek magic to resurrect his daughter, but Sam’s antagonism and insistence Dean behave in a way convenient to himself is far more consistent and aggravating. This is another instance of the show telling us one thing but showing us something quite different.

Maybe I simply relate to his perspective too much, but he is not ‘being as ass’ as he says to Sam: an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is completely normal. Call me a turd in Dean’s butt if you will (who else’s butt would I want to be a turd in, after all?), but the problem here is not Dean’s behaviour so much as it is the complete lack of stability and support in his life.

Sam relies on Dean to be the older brother / father figure who makes decisions and whom Sam can blame when things go wrong. Sam ‘loves’ Dean, but only when he is about to lose him: Sam needs the semblance of stability Dean can give him, but nobody is around to provide Dean support or stability. Bobby eventually tries, but forces poisonous expectations of stoicism, repression, and self-sacrifice on him, i.e. ‘I’m sorry your feelings got hurt, princess’ (after Sam tried killing him in cold blood in 4x21 When the Levee Breaks). Dean is supposed to be the strong one, the stalwart for everybody else. He is the centre, and when he cannot hold, everything else unravels.

If Sam cared, he would hand Dean a hammer and say ‘Go smash cars in Bobby’s yard. Get it all out. Smash up Baby if you need to as well. This appears to be how you need to process your grief, so get to it.’ He would not patronise and undermine his brother by trying to turn his bereavement into a foundation-level psychology lesson. Rather than being harangued in the middle of a suburban street like a naughty little boy, what Dean needs is somebody he can rely on to be strong for him when he needs it.

Considering his recent bereavement, he is still perfectly competent to lead an investigation by himself whilst his brother is pooh-poohing his every decision, treating him like a child, and generally being completely tone-deaf and myopic.

Somebody is going to write an essay about how I blame everything on Sam at some point, aren’t they? Great.

Having said that Zombie!Angela is a Dean mirror in this episode, it will not have escaped my readers’ notice that it was Angela’s lover who brought her back to life, not her father. This is an odd choice by the writer to reflect Dean’s grief at losing and being resurrected by John. I am quite sure it was not intentional for the writer to imply such things, but since Dean and John are being paralleled with a romantic couple (Zombie!Angela’s willingness in said union being unclear) my mind is going to back to my essay on John’s abuse of Dean and the show’s subtle implications of sexual abuse.

With that disgusting thought firmly in your mind, let us continue discussing Angela for as moment. She begins the episode crying about her boyfriend Matt whom she caught cheating on her with her flatmate Lindsey. What we are shown, however, is that Angela seems mighty intimate with Neil: their hand-holding in the cold open was decidedly not platonic. She was broken up about Matt cheating on her, but she does not appear to be the poster girl for faithful monogamy either. This is followed by the most horrific part of the episode – Matt entering Neil’s house uninvited without taking his shoes off! – only to find Angela has scarpered. She gives Matt one final lachrymose phone call, then crashes and dies.

And that, children is the moral of today’s episode: don’t text and drive!

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After 1,400 words, it is finally time to get onto the episode proper. The first scene after the opening credits shows Dean and Sam in the car discussing visiting Mary’s grave. Sam wants to visit, Dean does not. Sam’s rationale is that is has some meaning to him, which is fair enough, but as with previous episodes his grieving seems very paint by numbers. To be fair to him, he has never done this before (Jess? Never heard of her...) and appears to be using conventionally-accepted, formulaic displays and actions as his way of coping in the hopes it will get him through it. As I said in 2x02 Everybody Loves a Clown, it looks like he is putting on a bit of a performance, and he comes across as very immature. I will allow this because nobody should be expected to be mature, rational, or even tolerable at all times when grieving.

Dean is against the idea of visiting Mary’s grave because it is not Mary’s grave. It is just a headstone erected by a family member he has never met in memory of a woman who burnt up on the ceiling and left no remains to be buried. This is also perfectly acceptable and understandable, and Dean should not be expected to go to Mary’s grave. This is completely fair, but it is also fair for Sam to want to. Dean seems to understand Sam’s rationale perfectly well, but does not want to say ‘visiting Mary’s grave would be too painful for me, so I’d rather stay as far from it as possible’.

It is understandable that Dean be irritable with Sam in the car precisely because Sam is being irritating AND trying to get Dean to do something he does not want to do, but Sam should be allowed to go visit his mother’s grave without Dean’s grumpiness. Sam’s claim that ‘nobody asked you [Dean] to come’ was utterly hilarious, by the way. Sam, my brother in Christ, Dean is the driver.

(I watched this episode after watching the first four episode of The Winchesters, and Mary’s death hit different after that. I liked Meg Donelly instantly as Mary, and Drake Rodger won me over as John. The story takes place in an alternate universe to Supernatural, so that Mary and John is not the same Mary and John from Supernatural, but still… I can understand completely why Dean does not want to visit his mother’s grave.)

Dean is right to say that the grave is meaningless, but funnily enough Sam is also correct to say it is meaningful, but it is only meaningful because Sam gives it meaning. Mary is not buried there, but it is the place Sam wants to go to show his respects for her, and that means something.

I named a star after my friend last year. It does not, of course, mean anything. There is no official ESA or NASA database which will record one particular star in the constellation of Aquarius as being named ‘Thomas’, only databases owned by private companies. The star named Thomas in my database might be named Jamal or Sakura in other databases. But the constellations we know in the sky are just the ones from Ancient Greece, and the names of the stars and planets from Ancient Rome and the mediaeval Arab world. They are not the same as Sámi constellations or Aboriginal names for the stars, so this is nothing new whatsoever. I have given that star meaning, and it does not matter than other people might see it and call it Nipple or Foreskin. For me, its name is Thomas and you can try taking that from me if you really want to.

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At the graveyard, Dean stumbles across a gravestone which says 'Loving father', and after giving it a telling look, finds a dead tree surrounded by a ring of dead grass and soil. In almost uncharacteristic stupidity, Sam refuses to believe it could possibly have anything to do with the supernatural, insisting instead that the perfect circle of dead grass and the dead tree in the graveyard their mum is ‘buried’ must have a perfectly mundane explanation. This is obtuse, facetious, and downright dumb. Evidence of the supernatural was right in front of Sam’s dumbass eyes, but he was too intent on being Mr Smart Smart and undermining Dean’s assessments to even entertain the notion that the obvious abnormality in front of him was abnormal.

He does exactly the same later in the episode when interviewing the Greek professor, Angela’s father. Dean inquires about whether the professor has seen anything strange etc, to which the professor response is ‘I see her everywhere’. Dean’s supernatural senses are tingled, but Sam essentially says ‘Shut up, Dean’ by claiming ‘It’s perfectly normal’ to see your dead daughter everywhere… in a universe where ghosts actually exist and both Dean and Sam have decades of experience fighting them. If Sam’s skills in psychology were not clearly languishing somewhere in lower remedial, I might suspect him of conscious gaslighting.

Dean – Sam is sure – is simply searching for a supernatural explanation for a natural phenomenon so that he can feel in control of something and have something to fight. Getting Dean’s paw in his face after trying to psychoanalyse him in the car park in 2x03 Bloodlust clearly did not teach Sam that treating one’s bereaved brother like a dehumanised test subject is gross, as he does exactly the same in this episode, twice. The first time does not end well for Sam, as Dean does not stand for his crap in this episode.

I noticed long ago that Demon!Dean was not actually all that bad at all: the only reason other characters wanted to turn him back to Human!Dean was because Demon!Dean knew how to say ‘No!’ to other people and was determined to live his own life on his own terms. That fits with my assessment here that Sam’s biggest problem with Dean is that he will not behave in a way Sam deems appropriate and comfortable. Dean responds to Sam’s nonsense with appropriate anger, and Dean’s anger is not uncontrolled rage, but rather cold and scary. Sam question ‘Are you sure this is about a hunt? Not about something else?’ is met with a cold-eyed, calm ‘What else would it be about?’ which was clearly a German Shepherd growling at a chihuahua. Sam, however, does not know how to read Dean nearly as well as he thinks, as his ‘pfft’ reaction was the exasperation of a parent dealing with a petulant, stupid child.

Dean had wasted no time in finding out who was buried in the plot of dead land, and their next stop is the aforementioned Greek professor, Angela’s father. Dean is understandably suspicious from the moment the professor opened the door, but Sam of course is determined to be a combative contrarian and dismisses Dean’s suspicions as mentioned earlier. The visit at the professor’s home turns up nothing tangible (though perhaps Angela actually HAD been lurking around his home after being resurrected, this is never made clear), but attentive viewers will catch the fact that, after the professor says ‘Family’s everything, I’m lost without her’, the camera cuts to Dean. This coupled with Dean confession to Gordon in 2x03 Bloodlust that ‘I’m not alright’ and that there is a ‘hole in him’ tell us quite a bit.

Please remember also that Gordon exploited Dean’s vulnerability to control him rather than acknowledging and helping him with it. Dean was a tool for him to use, just like with John.

Moving on, Sam’s obnoxious, bloody-minded blockheadedness finally becomes too much for Dean to deal with in the motel room afterwards. He wants to dismiss Dean’s suspicions yet again by claiming ‘You’ve got a patch of dead grass and nothing else. ...There’s no reason for it to be unholy ground.’

I can only stare at my screen in utter bewilderment at this line of argumentation. Why would there need to be a reason for it to be unholy ground for something to be unholy ground?

Dean: I found a dead body!

Sam: What do you mean ‘you found a dead body’? There’s no reason for the body to be dead. You’re making stuff up.

Holy ground can be unhallowed, unconsecrated, or generally made into unholy ground. Why does this need explanation? And ‘dead grass’? It was a perfect circle of dead grass and a dead tree connected with a fresh grave. Is he serious? Is he really being serious? Even Scully was not this sceptical: she would not have concluded it to be a supernatural event, but she would surely have conceded there was something wrong.

Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, but Sam has really been trying to get the most out of his foundation psychology course and has been treating Dean as his guinea pig to analyse for weeks, if not months. What Sam should do is be like the rest of us weirdos and write a blog. And learn to read the room.

Then of course comes a moment Deancrits LOVE: Dean gives Sam a look which could easily be interpreted as anger, to which Sam responds ‘You wanna take another swing at me, go ahead…’ Of course, this line has also been used to justify the claim that Dean regularly beat Sam, or at least used the threat of it to control Sam. However, this was clearly a reference to Dean punching Sam in 2x03 Bloodlust, and not to any history of abuse at Dean’s hands. In my ears, it sounded far more like ‘you’re stupid and can only work through your problems by punching things’, or perhaps ‘What’re you gonna do, punch me again, you brutish oaf?’ because we all know Sam thinks Dean has the IQ of, well, a squirrel.

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As in my analysis of 2x03, I will ask a few questions: does Sam act like he is scared of Dean using violence against him? Does he show fear of Dean at any point? Does he show Dean the same obeisance, obedience, and deference Dean showed John? No, he does not. And would Sam continue his frankly disrespectful pestering of his elder brother incessantly for weeks if he were scared Dean would use violence against him? No.

Dean’s response to this is not to punch Sam, but to shake his head and leave the room. which looks like long-suffering exhaustion and offence. Sam clearly has an image of Dean in his mind, and is incapable of seeing the real person standing in front of him. I can relate.

Dean will get his moment of vindication soon enough, but first a short scene involving Angela’s boyfriend Matt getting killed. His death is off-screen, and the viewer does not get a clear view of the attacker, but the reflection in the screen and the video paused on Angela’s face tell us clearly enough that Angela has somehow killed Matt.

Dean uses a card to gain illegal entrance to Angela’s home and ends up interviewing Lindsey, Angela’s ex-flatmate. He is clearly competent enough to do this kind of thing alone, and insightful and perceptive enough to eventually work out that Lindsey might have been the one Angela’s boyfriend was copulating with. This of course, makes it satisfying when Dean gets to rub in Sam’s face the fact that there is a case for them to solve, and that Dean was, in fact, right. ‘Sam, I know how to do my job, in spite of what you might think!’

Does Sam offer a proper apology for his behaviour? Nope, of course he does not. He says ‘I’m sorry’, but his behaviour does not reflect the sentiment. In fact, he goes on to be just as contrarian in 2x05 Simon Says in refusing to believe Dean’s assessment that Andy is not responsible for the killings, but more on that later.

One also wonders why exactly Sam was so quick to hide the fact he was watching porn from Dean. Whether or not Dean is really into sex as much as the show tells us he is, shaming or mocking somebody for watching adult entertainment is hardly something he would do. ...One also wonders why Sam did not lock the door if he was watching porn. Maybe he enjoys the idea of getting caught.

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Dean and Sam conclude Angela has become a vengeful spirit, and decide to burn her remains. However, there are no remains in her coffin, but this is when Dean finds the Ancient Greek symbols on the inside.

They conclude Angela’s dad the Greek professor is behind it, but before confronting him, they go to the library to do some research. The viewer is not shown this, but Dean brings it up during the course of his conversation with the professor.

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This conversation between Dean and the professor is supposed to be the apogee of Dean’s bad behaviour in the episode (or at least so the episode TELLS us). He is combative and hostile to the professor from the outset, and gets aggressive, ending by shouting and getting threatened with the police. This is the only part of the episode where Dean’s behaviour is out of line. It was rational and sensible to conclude that the professor was the one who resurrected Angela based on the evidence he (and Sam) had available to them, but the evidence was circumstantial and indirect. Dean jumped the gun, but his reasons for doing so were also understandable: John had brought Dean back to life after he died in a car accident, so it stood to reason that another father would resurrect his dead child after she died in a car accident.

However, the professor was a stand-in for John and Dean started taking his anger out on him. I see this as traumatised behaviour from a severely damaged man, but that does not negate the fact it was antisocial, threatening behaviour on somebody else’s property.

Once more, note the reference to Stephen King’s Pet Semetary, a story about revenants as an embodiment of bereavement and survivor’s guilt eventually killing the living. Angela is like one of the revenants in that book/film, but as much as I have stated repeatedly that Dean’s behaviour is not that bad overall in this episode, I can see that if he were to continue down the road he is on, he may well become a real danger to himself and others. Dean’s statement that ‘what’s dead should stay dead’ is both a reference to Angela AND himself, after all.

On the subject of Sam, he did have a difficult job in this scene. Perhaps he had also reached the conclusion that the professor might be involved, but had to be a counterbalance to try keeping Dean calm. He was right to focus on trying to keep Dean under control in this scene, and if he had not, there is a chance things might have got violent. Might. Annoying and contrary as he is in this episode, he actually did a good thing. However, he was so certain that the professor had nothing to do with Angela’s death, but based on nothing. Dean was absolutely correct that the flowers being alive does not mean much: the professor could have been keeping her otherwhere. Sam’s insistence the professor is ‘innocent’ is naïve, but in this instance Sam was actually correct.

Dean’s reason for making the conclusion he had was undoubtedly coloured by the fact he was positive John had resurrected him. This maybe blinded him. Perhaps he knew straight-away that John’s death was linked to Dean’s resurrection, and maybe even suspected it was a trade. Misguided and potentially dangerous as it was, it is understandable that he would not be able to see anything else. It is like when you lose a friend to suicide, and then stay in an empty, exhausting ‘relationship’ because the other guy has all the warning signs of being a Prime Suicide Candidate.

After diffusing the situation and getting Dean out of the professor’s house, Sam thinks it a good idea to harangue his brother in the middle of a suburban residential street whilst the police are apparently on their way. This dumbass decision is even stupider when we remember Dean has been a wanted killer since 1x06 Skin, no thanks to Sam and Middle Class Privileged Girl allowing him to take the fall for the shapeshifter’s crimes. Sam once more insists upon bringing up John’s death after weeks or months of Dean asking him not to and clearly finding the subject aggravating. ‘If you bring up Dad’s death one more time,’ Dean says while clenching his fist, ‘I swear…’

I know I give Sam a lot of flak for his incessant badgering of Dean to grieve in a way Sam wants him to, or to have conversations Dean does not want to have, but I am not so myopic I cannot see that perhaps Sam needs to have these conversations, and has nobody else to have them with. Sam is always very involved and up in other people’s business about their problems and emotions, but rarely talks about his own in any way. It is not Dean’s responsibility to do whatever Sam needs him to do at the expense of his own integrity or comfort, but Sam likely needs some reassurance from his elder brother, the only person he really has left who will not reject him.

Sam himself says he is scared of losing Dean in this very scene, and that is the only thing which gets through to him. Dean remembers he is needed and that somebody at least cares about some parts of him, and that cools him down a little. Alas, it is only when Sam believes he is at risk of losing Dean that he shows he cares in any way. How much different would things be if Sam were less like a nagging fishwife and more like an actual adult mature supportive protective brother.

Is that enough? Can I go back to either blithely ignoring or heaping scorn on Sam now?

Moving on, the show soon reveals that Angela has indeed been resurrected by somebody at the university, but rather than Angela’s father being the culprit, it is Neil, the ‘friend’ from the cold open. Dean and Sam soon find this out when – based on Dean’s insight from Lindsey’s diary (or ‘journal’, they seem interchangeable here) – they turn up at Lindsey’s flat just in time to rescue her from a vengeful Zombie!Angela. Dean and Sam do not take long to work out who resurrected her, and this leads them to discover her hiding place in Neil’s basement. This is where Dean finally concludes that Neil and Zombie!Angela are making the beast with two backs.

After meeting Neil at his office and letting him know they know, Dean notices the dead plants in the office and concludes Zombie!Angela is somewhere very close. Dean talks loudly about his and Sam’s plans to cast an antispell at Angela’s grave, ensuring she hear him wherever she is, then urges Neil to come with them. When Neil refuses (and his lack of protestations that Zombie!Angela is ‘alive’ is confession enough that he is responsible), Dean compels him to leave as quick as he can, but not to make ‘any sudden movements’.

Of course, Neil dies almost straightaway after Dean and Sam leave, and if Angela was anything like as clingy and suspicious as Zombie!Angela, I can see why her ex wanted to get away from her.

Jokes aside, Zombie!Angela’s murder of the man who resurrected her is an expression of Dean’s anger at John for doing the same to him. Dean is angry at John, an anger he believes he will never be able to truly express or receive restitution for. In 2x01 In My Time of Dying, he was ready to die and was a hair’s breadth from moving on. He was almost peaceful at the end with Tessa, only to be dragged back kicking and screaming, and then be forced to lose John AND be burdened with what John told him. He has every right to be furious with John after that, whether or not John brought him back out of love. Dean is suffering now because John forced him to do so, so it is no surprise he resembles Zombie!Angela, and even one of the dead in Pet Sematary (if only vaguely).

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The ‘antispell’ Dean spoke about in Neil’s office was a ruse to lure Zombie!Angela into a trap. Dean and Sam working together in this scene was a reminder that they can work well together when the writers are not trying to make Sam look like the heroest hero who ever heroed. The most noteworthy part of the scene is that Dean stakes his narrative mirror Zombie!Angela into her coffin and says clearly ‘what’s dead should stay dead’. This is a metaphorical suicide, like when Buffy almost danced herself to death in 6x07 Once More with Feeling.

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The episode ends with Dean finally opening up a little about what has been plaguing him. He is grieving John’s death, his own death, and struggling with the burden of what he might have to do (though he does not tell Sam this). Dean knows John sacrificed himself for him, and there is nothing Sam can say or do to make that better. Please remember what I wrote about Dean’s grief in 2x02 Everybody Loves a Clown.

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As for Dean’s ‘single man tear’ immortalised by the obnoxious private school girls in 10x05 Fan Fiction, it does not exist. One tear falls from Dean’s eye in the final scene, but both eyes are wet and the camera cuts away before anything more can happen. There are significantly more than one tear in 2x20 What Is and What Should Never Be when Dean is talking to John’s grave...

plenty more in 2x22 All Hell Breaks Loose Part II when Dean is talking to Sam’s dead body...

way more in 4x11 Family Remains when remembering what happened to him in Hell...

14x18 Absence after Mary dies...

way more in 15x17 Unity when Dean is about to use Jack to kill Chuck...

Maybe I take things too literally and the humour is supposed to be that the idea of a ‘single man tear’ is ridiculous, but it does not seem that way to me. Men are supposed to ‘show more emotion’ and ‘talk about their feelings more’, but when it happens, too many people are quick to mock the manner we do it because it is not how women do it.

This episode advanced the story a little in allowing Dean to finally feel ready to open up a bit and allow somebody to get closer. However, Dean’s bereavement and grief are far from over (if it can be said that ‘bereavement’ is ever over at all), and things will only get worse for him as time goes by. That, however, if a story for another time, as this concludes my analysis of 2x04 Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things.

But before I leave, can I hug and make collages with GriefCounsellor!Dean? I never had grief counselling, so I would like to see whether it helps. For science, of course...

#edvard's supernatural guide #spn meta #spn rewatch #spn 2x04 #s02e04 #2x04 children shouldn't play with dead things #dean winchester #sam winchester #supernatural #zombies #pet sematary #Youtube

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