i just rewatched 1.14 nightmare, the episode where sam is parallelled with max - the first of the other gifted children we see, who was brutally abused by his father and uncle his entire life. by the end of the episode, sam is saying that even though he and max were clearly linked, sam is the lucky one, because he and dean had john and not max’s dad. “well, it could have gone a whole nother way after mom. a little more tequila, a little less demon hunting, then we would’ve had max’s childhood.”
dean doesn’t say, “dad? he never wouldve hurt us”. he doesnt say “dad was nothing like max’s dad”. he doesnt try to distance john from the comparison or try to tell sam off for implying that maybe a john that was just a little more drunk wouldve been hitting his sons. he doesn’t say anything, actually, just does this
and them sam continues on to say, “all things considered, we turned out okay…thanks to him.” dean STILL says nothing here, face pretty blank. he looks back at max’s house over his shoulder, and then back at sam, to say “all thongs considered,” before he gets into the car and the WHOLE time his face is just….sort of stony. and theres a tiny pause where hes clearly thinking about something in the middle shot here before he looks back at sam:
and im just. it seems uncharacteristic to me that dean has nothing to say about sam saying their dad wouldve hit them if he was just a little farther gone, OR about sam finally saying that john was a decent dad to them (which. he wasnt, but thats beside the point). theres no anger response or attempts to separate john from max’s dad despite the fact that sam is saying, he was one shot away from it, one level of breakdown away from it, we wouldve been bruises and broken bones like max. and there isnt any i told you so, no “exactly, sammy, i told you, dad was always good to us” moment of victory or satsifaction from dean. just a blank silence, a sniff, a shrug, and the conversation is done.
there are moments in the series where the way dean trails off about john can be read as implying violence, and moments about john being prone to alcohol as a coping tool, and i just…..the way dean says “all things considered” is just a bland agreement with sam. he doesnt even say, “yeah, we were lucky we had dad, huh” or anything like it. he just looks at that house and theres a MOMENT where he pauses before he looks back at his little brother and says yeah, we sure did turn out alright, this conversation is over. and i cant help but overanlyze the intentional steady emotionlessness of dean’s face, his silence about the comparison, the way he looks over his shoulder at the house where max’s abuse happened just after sam says “thanks to him”……we know that sam and dean werent treated the same way by john, and werent subject to the same exact sorts of abuse and i cant help but think of that in this scene
germansingergirl
gracieabrams
turnnoffyourmind
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
blakekathryn
