Reading through your Sam tags after your excellent post regarding 8.23 I was struck by a weird thought. Do Sam and Dean even really like each other? Do they genuinely understand each other? I am coming to the conclusion that while they care for each other due to circumstance I donāt think they would be āfriendsā in a normal life. Thatās such a depressing thought to me but so often what they want/believe seems to be at odds held together by the thread of āheās my brotherā. I feel like, irl we would be saying they need to cut off the toxic relationship. Lisa did say this and I think she was right.
I think we can conclude that Dean thinks he and Sam wouldn't be close if not for everything that's happened, given his djinn dream in 2.20 shows him and Sam are estranged. The show tells us there are other realities where Sam and Dean aren't closeāfor exampleāLebanon and (sort of) The French Mistake, but it also shows us HunterCorp Sam and Dean who live a very different life and had a very different upbringing, but are still close.
I think Sam and Dean would agree that shared experience is part of what makes them close in their universe, and in another, their childhood experiences might have torn them apart, but that didn't happen. I also think Sam especially makes it pretty clear that he prefers a world where he and Dean are close.
See 2.20 "What Is And What Should Never Be" when Dean tells Sam about the djinn dream:
SAM: So we didn't get along then, huh?
DEAN: Nah.
SAM: Yeah... I thought it was supposed to, to be this perfect fantasy.
DEAN: It wasn't. It was just a wish. I wished for Mom to live. That Mom never died, we never went hunting and you and me just never uh... you know.
SAM: Yeah. Well, I'm glad we do. And I'm glad you dug yourself out, Dean. Most people wouldn't've had the strength, would have just stayed.
And the end of 6.15 "The French Mistake":
DEAN: You know that if we drop Virgil,Ā get the key, then this might be it.Ā We might be stuck here.
SAM: No, we'll figure outĀ a way back.
DEAN Yeah, you wouldn't be thatĀ broken up if we didn't, though.
SAM: What?Ā Don't be stupid.
DEAN: Well, I'm just saying. No hell below us, above us only sky.
SAM: Dean, our friends are back there.
DEAN: Yeah, but here, you got a pretty good life. I mean, back home, the hits have been coming since you were 6 months old. You got to admit, being a-a bazillionare, married to Ruby, the whole package. It's no contest.
SAM: No, you know, you were right. We just don't mean the same thing here. I mean, we're not even brothers here, man.
We can also point to 4.17 "It's A Terrible Life", when Zachariah again makes it so Sam and Dean aren't brothers anymore, and forces them into a fake life, and Sam ends up asking Dean to hit the road with him and become a ghost hunter, while knowing nothing of their history:
SAM: We should keep doing this.
DEAN: I know.
SAM: I mean it. There gotta be other ghosts out there. We could help a lot of people.
DEAN: Right, we'd be like the Ghostfacers.
SAM: No, really. I mean, for real.
DEAN: What? Like, quit our jobs and hit the road?
SAM: Exactly.
DEAN: How would we live?
SAM: Uh...
DEAN: You gotta be kidding me. How would we get by? With stolen credit cards? Huh? Eating diner food drenched in saturated fats? Sharing a crap motel room every night?
SAM: That's all just details.
DEAN: Details are everything. You don't wanna go fighting ghosts without any health insurance.
SAM: All right. Um. Confession.
DEAN: What?
SAM: Remember those dreams I told you about with the ghosts?
DEAN: Yeah?
SAM: I was fighting them.
DEAN: Okay.
SAM: With you. We were these, like, hunters, and we were friends. More like brothers, really. I mean, what if that's who we really are? I mean, you saw us back there, working together. The ghost was scrambling people's brains. What if it scrambled ours?
DEAN: That's insane.
SAM: Is it? Think about it for just one second. What if we think this is our life, but it's not?
DEAN: Hey, man, the ghost is dead and we're still standing. I mean, I'm sorry, butā
SAM: Look, all I know is this isn't who we're supposed to be.
DEAN: No. I'm Dean Smith, okay? Director of Sales and Marketing. I went to Stanford. My father's name is Bob, my mother's name is Ellen, and my sister's name is Jo.
SAM: When was the last time you talked to them? To any of them?
DEAN: Okay, you're upset. You're upset, you're confusedā
SAM: Yeah, 'cause I only moved here 'cause I just broke up with my fiancƩe, Madison. But I called her number and I got a damn animal hospital.
DEAN: Okay. What are you saying? Are you trying to say that my family isn't real? Huh? That we've been injected with fake memories? Come on.
SAM: All I know is, I got this feeling in my gut. And I knowāI know that deep down, you gotta be feeling it too. We're supposed to be something else. You're not just some corporate douchebag. This isn't you. I know you.
DEAN: Know me? You don't know me, pal. You should go.
One interesting thought that emerges here is whether Dean feels differently than Sam about this, and a secret part of him might prefer more distance from Sam. But I think the fact that Dean's 2.20 djinn dream transitions into an estranged Sam figuring out something is up with Dean and hitting the road with him, and Dean being genuinely touched by Sam's rejection of the French Mistake universe shows that isn't so cut and dry. I think there are definitely points where Sam and Dean want nothing to do with each other, but I also think that's brought about by circumstances and betrayals rather than a general dislike of each other as people. I think there are points where Dean doesn't like Sam but still loves him, but I think if we catch them on an off day/week/apocalypse, we're also making inferences from a biased sample. It's not easy to be a good brother when apocalypses are happening and demons are after you and want to wear you as a meatsuit and you've been through incredible grief/torture/pain/loss on top of a bunch of childhood trauma and evil forces are trying to use you for evil and you feel like a monster and it's all accumulating over time and you never actually have the space to deal with it as much as you wait for breaks where you can finally breathe. Does that mean you abandon each other because your relationship is "toxic" or do you give each other grace because your lives are fucking insane? Like I definitely think there are things Sam and Dean don't get about each other, but I also think experiencing a lot of trauma together is something that makes you understand other parts of each other in a way no one else ever will, and there's a comfort in that that I'm not willing to paint as toxic.
I also think Sam and Dean tend to conflate hunting with each other, so if one wants to hunt and the other doesn't, it influences how they feel about being close to each other. For example, despite grieving Sam for a solid year, when Sam actually shows up in 6.01/6.02, Dean promotes distanceāin the opening of 6.02, when Sam asks for his help, Dean refuses until a baby is mentioned. I also think Lisa's analysis of the situation in 6.06 is colored by the fact that she doesn't have all the details, and the idea that Sam is the catalyst for Dean ditching normal keeps coming up, but is frustratingly misleading. Trying to grasp normal for Dean... Sam isn't the problem. The problem is decades of cumulative trauma and Dean's belief that he is a monster and a danger to the Braedens both directly and indirectly through retaliation from his enemies (Dean also says some of this under a truth spell in 6.06 and to Ben in 6.14). Soulless Sam doesn't help with that, but "co-dependency" isn't what drives Dean away.
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