Jack’s ideal Heaven? TFW hunting trip *clutches heart*
It’s dazzlingly bright and optimism-imbued e.g. 14x06, portraying Jack’s internal/personal perception of his family on Earth: his awareness of them - how he witnesses them and knows them as they work a case in Dodge City, one of the fave key locales of Jack’s daddy Dean.
Wanek and Co continue the quite overt onset arrangements of TFW’s ever-shifting inter-relational dynamics (since S12) with two drinks distinctly placed on the Impala’s hood.
The other drink? Two straws. Okay, so two people sharing it and drinking out of it together.
Now, three drinks would’ve made sense here, obviously. Sam, Dean and Cas, three grown men, would want their own drinks. Personally, I hate sharing drinks, unless 1. resources are scarce, 2. you’re a cranky sibling who needs sustenance asap, and 3. I’m in love with you.
Sam’s fine. He’s in his element, tip-tapping away.
Dean and Cas, meanwhile, are ready for map time with Jack the newly minted hunter.
Back on Earth, TFW drink to Jack’s memory in the kitchen, (Dean’s) Heart and Home, and D/C take up the close frames of intimate familiarity as they bond.
Oh hey, two bottles! Interpersonal (romantic) bonding connotations (as established since S9. Even the bottle necks/style are TFW-reminiscent)
Throughout S13 (and carrying over into S14), we observe that Sam, Dean and Cas unequivocally occupy their roles as Jack’s three paternal figures. Of course, in 14x08 Sam is emotionally distraught after Jack’s passing. Dean, struck with grief, leaves the room out of self-guilt re: his harsh derision and mistreatment of Jack after his birth. Cas, the picture of narrative spouse-coded support, is empathetic yet firm, and he asserts to Dean that he should become the man Cas knows he can be. Strong. “Jack needs you,” he says, and in this context, Cas retains his consistent narrative place as Dean’s emotional anchor and stability in death’s aftermath, but oh my gosh I digress—
In his Heaven, Jack perceives Dean and Cas as a unit/partnership, with visual narrative depictions of them once again set apart from Independent Sam doing his business in the background.
Aka the Dean and Cas of Jack’s Heaven, juxtaposed by their living counterparts on Earth (narratively independent from Sam altogether), nudge audiences with their existence and directly call back to Sam’s very similar 13x21 dream sequence, where Dean and Cas seemingly are, you got it, a partnership:
In both Jack and Sam’s subconscious reconstruction of their perceived family, Dean and Cas are represented in a textual deep friendship. Dual partnership. Subtextual heavy-coded romantic relationship.
Looking at such (increasingly tangible) visual/storytelling patterns e.g. 14x07’s certain physical boundaries between D/C the unit and Sam—
—I’ll no doubt keep watching with wide (unsurprised) eyes, because under the relevant overarching theme Love and…Love -> one of these things, my lovely friends (complete with significant physical interaction and spousal stability by touch), is not like the other.
Two’s company, three’s a crowd.
The shared drink could very well be Dean and Cas’, and 14x08’s visual Familial vs Romantic symmetry can absolutely corroborate this reading.
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