Iām on S2x20 of my rewatch - āWhat Is and What Should Never Beā and Dean is trapped a ādreamā by the Djinn. So, I canāt remember the exact details about Djinns in the SPN universe, but it seems itās trapping Dean is a dream of his own subconscious.
What I find both interesting and sad, is that his dream consists of Mary being alive, Sam & Jessica engaged, and Dean is living with Carmen. Apparently Dean works at a garage (I donāt get the impression he owns it or manages it). While he has a happy life picked out for Sam, his own life seemsā¦. stilted.
He sees himself as a mechanic, not an owner. He sees himself with a girl he thinks is too good for him. In the dream he asks her how did her end up with such a cool chick and she responds āI have very low standardsā. Those are her words, but itās his subconscious. And he sees himself (subconsciously) as the family fuck up with a strained relationship with Sam.ļæ¼ it also shines a light on the fact that without hunting, he and Sam have nothing in common. Which brings me back to something I believe and have mentioned before, that Dean and Sam donāt actually like each other. They love each other as brothers, because theyāre family, but that doesnāt necessarily mean they like each other or would be friends if it wasnāt for being a hunting family.
I would absolutely love to know the writersā intentions with the dream sequence in terms of the Dean character.
It was directed by Eric Kripke, so yeah, do you have its special episode feature, the DVD commentary?
Eric's commentary is always very good; you learned a lot. Off the top of my head for this one:
the idea was from a Buffy episode.
his idea about Dean as a loser was far worse than this one.
he got a lot of pushback from other writers. Their point was why Dean would want to stay then. The remaining ones left were the ones on which he put his foot down. He said that if everything is fine, it will be a boring episode of television.
he even got pushback from J2 about the lack of a bond between the brothers.
I think there was one part where I cringed: how he understood why people saw winc*st subtextājust ugh.
the djinn actor was great; he allowed the tattoos (henna? I think) on his body for the whole duration of filming, but it caused him a bit of trouble in his day-to-day life.
studio wanted sex scenes between Dean and Carmen; Eric said no.
Here's the transcript (the link is wonky, so try a few times). That said, I suggest the audio one here; it is much more interesting to hear EK's voice; he is very good at telling stories.
