In the tenth episode of the eighth season of Supernatural, A LOT HAPPENED IN THIS EPISODE, Y’ALL. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Supernatural.
Trigger Warning: For talk of race fetishism, body horror/gore, nonconsensual medical procedures, queerbaiting.
LORD TOO MUCH JUST HAPPENED. Let’s chat, everyone.
Two Feet In
Seriously, I thought this whole episode was going to focus solely on the fracture in the Winchester relationship. BUT NO. However, I do recognize what a huge development this is for the show as a whole, since this feels like the closest Sam and Dean have come to truly walking away from one another. At times, the reasoning for this felt a little muddled, and perhaps that’s because there is a lot going on in “Torn and Frayed.†Part of it is also because I feel like the writers drop the ball a bit on specific issue, despite that they nearly address it! (Am I allowed to call this the “E.L. James Problemâ€? I feel like I’ve earned that.)
So, here’s the only part of this that made me scratch my head. I understand the direct parallel between Sam/Amelia and Dean/Benny. Both men are stuck, more or less. They are challenged by their allegiances to one another and to the people they respect and trust. (AND LOVE. GODDAMN IT, HOW IS BISEXUAL DEAN WINCHESTER NOT CANON AFTER THIS SHIT? What the fuck, that is the most deliberate use of queerbaiting I’ve ever seen on this show. How the hell do the writers create these “romantic†relationships that they purposely compare, only to completely drop the ball on calling Dean’s relationship with Benny romantic? Booooooo, boooooo, BOOOOOOOOOO.) Both Winchesters are also flawed in their approaches to these relationships, and the writers have no problem demonstrating that. Sam slept with Amelia, despite that he knew she was married. He knew it was a mistake, and he did it anyway. Dean… well, here’s the thing. I totally get his anger at feeling like Sam is abandoning him again. After finding out that Sam didn’t spend much time at all looking for him, Dean has every right to feel further betrayed by Sam running away again.
Except DEAN SENT HIM RUNNING AWAY AS A TRICK. And while there’s a brief moment in this episode where this is acknowledged, it’s quickly passed over and Dean goes back to being angry again. Sam was dealing with his heartbreak over Amelia on his own, and then Dean sends him right back to her, KNOWING THAT HE ONCE HAD TO DO THE SAME THING WITH JESS EXCEPT SHE TURNED OUT TO BE DEAD. Like, that’s super fucked up, right? Sam has a whole lot of trauma around that incident, and Dean basically triggered him in order to get him to go away. So it seems particularly crass to me that he then goads Sam about Amelia when Sam wouldn’t even be conflicted about her if Dean had not fooled him into going to Texas.
That’s not to say that the heart of the conflict is then negated. Sam had to realize that he couldn’t stay with Amelia and build a life with her. Plus, the events of this episode influenced his decision to stay with his brother instead. Hell, both of them had epiphanies: they were torn between two lives, and it was making them sloppy hunters and terrible brothers.
So they chose each other. I really liked that conversation near the end of the episode where Dean could admit that he was jealous and Sam could admit that he was horribly distracted. I said on video that it was possibly the most mature conversation these two goobers have ever had, and I’m sticking to it. Let’s also take a moment to admit that Dean’s break-up scene with Benny is a goddamn break-up scene, and let’s take a moment to shake our fists in anger at such a cowardly refusal to not make that romantic. And I don’t mind calling the head writers cowards here because this is the same show that’s totally cool making gay and queer people the punchline more than it’s willing to make them ACTUAL CHARACTERS. There is nothing here that would disrupt Dean’s characterization to confirm that his affinity for Benny was romantic. It doesn’t need to be a sexual thing either. (HELLO, SUPERNATURAL, ASEXUAL PEOPLE ALSO EXIST. Not to say that Dean is asexual. He’s not! He’s just got a ridiculous and disgusting fetish for Asian women, which this show needs to get rid of immediately. Seriously? A fucking gong when he opens his laptop? What the fuck???) It’s just… bah, you got so close, and then you jettisoned in the opposite direction. BOOOO.
Naomi
HAHAHAHAA I WANTED MORE, I GOT MORE, AND EVERYTHING HURTS. Amanda Tapping is, unsurprisingly, incredible in this role. I just love the ways this show has toyed with the angel’s mythology, and what we see here fits in with what we know. Namely, angels are jerks. While the reveal of Castiel’s subservience is shocking, the IDEA of it is not. The angels have always stuck to such rigid hierarchies, so it makes sense that they’d do so in a physical sense. How else can you have such an obedient force at your disposal? The angels are programmed through some form of heavenly lobotomy, and that includes Castiel. “Torn and Frayed†finally tells us how Naomi is able to control Castiel. She drilled a goddamn hole in his head, y’all. Any angel can be controlled through this method, so I’m curious how long this might have gone on. If these angels were always programmed to protect the Word of God, do they have other “Factory Settings�
Of course, this season’s arc is advanced even more by the reveal of the Angel Tablet, which means that ANGELS COULD BE PERMANENTLY SEALED IN HEAVEN, TOO. I feel pretty comfortable, then, stating that this puts the angels in direct opposition to the Winchesters in some sense. While the Winchesters are deeply invested in closing the Gates of Hell, I think they might also be interested in closing Heaven, too. Aside from Cas, when has ANYONE had a good experience with the angels? Without some massive overhaul in how angels think of humans, they’re always going to be a risk.
It’s kind of amazing to me that the show has taken angels so far in this negative direction without earning the ire of LITERALLY EVERYONE, but I suppose all my lovely spoiler blockers could have also prevented me from seeing the reaction to how Supernatural uses Christian theology liberally. Still, I want more, and I feel SO TERRIBLE for Castiel. He looks utterly broken at the end of “Torn and Frayed,†and it’s not okay. AT ALL.
The video for “Torn and Frayed†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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