You Can’t Spell Subtext without C-A-R-V-E-R, or How Season 10 is a DeanCas Goldmine [1/10]
As always, what follows below is an interpretation, not the interpretation.
Three short words at the top of the season that summarize everything you need to know about Cas’s feelings towards and his actions for Dean in S10. In fact, it captures the very essence of the growth their relationship goes through over the course of the season, which in my opinion is a logical and necessary continuation of the exploration of their relationship in general.
Season 8 was Carver showing Dean’s love and need for Cas with Cas running away from him. This pattern ended when in 8x22 and 8x23 Cas asked him for help. Season 9 was both of them wanting to be together, but circumstances prompted Dean to feel the need to push him away no matter how guilty he felt and Cas putting duty before Dean out of guilt for his actions in Heaven. And again episodes 22 and 23 saw the shift in their dynamic when Cas gave up an army for Dean and Dean pushed him away, lost in the Mark of Cain. And so following this progression logically, season 10 finds us exploring what happens when Dean pushes Cas away. That alone is enough to show me that we have nothing to worry about. In fact, logic dictates that season 11 will be what happens when they finally come together again. But more about that when we get to episodes 22 and 23 of this season.
So, when looking at the DeanCas of it all in season 10, what we need to look for are instances that show Cas’s need for Dean, romantic parallels dealing with loss of love (by supernatural creatures), and an arc for Dean which ends in choosing Cas over duty. Black, therefore, needs to set up these elements. Like the first paragraph of a novel, a first episode creates the expectations of what is to come. And the first scene of a character reveals much of what they will go through. So, what Black needs to give us in terms of DeanCas is a set up for loss in parallels, in themes and in characterisation.
As several people have pointed out, the opening shot of Cas in the premiere episode is one that can easily be read as symbolising depression. While Cas is undeniably sick, we know that only a little later in the episode, he will set off with Hannah to find rogue angels, so while his health is severely affected by loss of grace, he is not so incapacitated that he cannot move.
No, we find Cas caught in bed with his robe on and plaid heaped on the right side of the bed (as crossroadscastiel pointed out); the hunter pattern cascades down the bed and into the vast emptiness of the righthand-side of shot, the side on which we have seen Dean time and again on his bed in the bunker, right on top of trench-coat brown (x). It is visual shorthand; Cas is mourning the loss of Dean.
When I speak of loss here, though, it is not only the physical absence that Castiel struggles with. In fact, that is only truly relevant at the start of the season and the very end when Cas is actively searching for him. Much more significant is missing Dean on a human level, it is missing the emotional, caring Dean who connects so deeply with those he loves. Through most of the season Dean’s humanity is gone or very shaky, and as was made abundantly clear at the end of season 9, this is precisely what makes Cas unwaveringly love a human Dean.
For it to be a proper theme, though, a theme that explains their separation in 10 on a story-telling level, we need more than the ying and yang of DeanCas images we get in this episode. A few visual images or throwaway lines about pie and cake in a season are all well and good, but mean precious little if the subtext isn’t part of the structure of the season. So, while Black gives us both Dean and Cas being in a bed and both being caught in wardrobe malfunctions in regrettably zoomed in, but highly giffable shots, for their stories to be set up as the trope Two Lines; No Waiting aka A-plot & B-plot, we need those moments to support parallels in the story and characters rather than exist as haha-moments . And boy do we get them.
(Now just to make sure that I don’t offend anyone, I will use seasonal A-plot for Dean’s struggle with the Mark and seasonal B-plot for Cas’s struggle with the rogue angels not because I find Cas inferior or anything, but because the Mark is the A-plot of the season and Cas’s stories first with Hannah and then in tracking Cain and a cure feed into the A-plot. It is the structure of the show, not my or the writer’s value judgment of the importance of characters.)
The main character parallels established in Black that run through the first half of the season are that of Dean & Crowley and Cas & Hannah; parallels that are established in the episode through characters’ relationships towards each other, visuals, dialogue and body language.
Firstly, Crowley as the leader of Hell wants the help of and struggles with his feelings for the not quite demon human, Dean. And Hannah as the leader of Heaven wants the help of and struggles with feelings for the not quite human angel, Cas. Both are used to track down those who are hunted, setting up the plot for the next couple of episodes and putting them on an equal level (something that I will talk about extensively in the second half of the season). Moreover, Crowley has Dean hunt down victims to prevent him from becoming a demon and Hannah’s request to Cas to help her track down Daniel and Adina will not only lead to Cas killing as well, but in Soul Survivor will eventually lead Crowley to give Cas Adina’s Grace.
Visually, the episode also goes to great lengths to parallel the two.
It is not just Cas and Dean both letting it hang, it is that they get very similar reactions from two people who mirror each other in characterization framed in shots that are also mirrored.
And then there is this one. Once again we see Dean and Cas on the left and the right side of beds, but more than that, their body position is mirrored as is their body language.
In fact, throughout the episode Dean and Cas give off the same world-weary, tired vibe that contrasts sharply with the energy of Sam, Hannah and Crowley.
Moreover, in the dialogue surrounding these shots, both express loss and/or loneliness. Dean talking to Anne-Marie about how she shouldn’t get her hopes up as he is just breezing through, is painful for her, but very much a projection of Dean’s own sense of being lost in the world. It is a sentiment echoed by Cas in his dialogue with Sam, as we saw earlier, but also in Soul Survivor when he tells Hannah that being in a Vessel can have distracting feelings and they should focus on the mission.
So, not only does the season start off with Dean and Cas paralleled, with loss crippling Cas and with a clear parallel between the relationships and feelings with Hannah and Crowley being unrequited in said feelings, we actually have Crowley, the biggest romantically portrayed partner in this foursome, be the connection between Dean and Cas and their identities.
And while this may not seem like too much in way in DeanCas, it is vital in the set up for the season. All the ingredients are there, now they need to start being fleshed out.
