#1.10 asylum

[aliveboydean]

taking that sam line from 1.10 about john being so bad with technology he can barely work a toaster and deciding that the reason john wasn’t calling them back in s1 is because he got a new phone and can’t figure out how to work it. that’s why he ends up finally calling them from a payphone

[samtoys]

1.10 Asylum

[samtoys]

1.10 Asylum

[lionheartednightengale]

man ellicot didn't go after dean, who was alone. the ghost FAKED a phone call to sam. it could tell he was angry, that he was the one that could be pushed.

(and i love the trio that is asylum->scarecrow->faith for the sam character arc)

[lionheartednightengale]

sam winchester went to one (1) session of forced therapy when he was 22 and decided he was Fixed. no more issues for him ever again

[deancasdeancas]

just watched 1.10 and i’m already annoyed with sam holding everything against dean like he personally is keeping sam from john.

get a grip my guy not everything is about you.

[darkstar6782]

Fade to Black - 1.10: Asylum

“Dean… you want any help with that?……Dean?”

“No, Sam.”

“Dean… can we at least talk about this?”

“Not now, Sam, I’m busy.”

“But… Dean…”

“Jesus, Sam, can you give me a few minutes here? Go take a walk or something!”

*************************************

Dean winced as the hotel room door slammed behind his brother, then slowly finished peeling off his shirt and reached for the tweezers in the first aid kit. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Sam’s help; he just figured his little brother could do without the complete visual of exactly what the results of shooting his big brother in the chest with a shotgun shell full of rock salt looked like. Though it probably looked worse than it felt… Scratch that, it felt exactly as bad as it looked, and once the bruises started to show, it was only going to get worse.

He hissed and groaned as he carefully plucked each piece of rock salt out of his chest with the tweezers, reveling a little bit in the fact that, with Sam gone, he didn’t have to man up and be all stoic and silent about it. When it came time to wrap his chest in bandages, though, he kind of wished he hadn’t chased his brother off. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to do this kind of patch job on his own, though—he’d never forget the cracked ribs he’d sustained going after that poltergeist in New Haven a little over a year ago—so he managed, then he slumped back on his bed, pulled the covers up to his chin, and waited for Sam to come back. The kid wouldn’t have gone far.

He wasn’t entirely sure why Dad being missing was suddenly making Sam so angry when he’d been pretty mellow about the whole thing for the past few months, but Dean wasn’t going to apologize to the kid for doing his job and following orders, and he wasn’t about to talk about what had gone down at the asylum. They’d both made mistakes on this one: they never should have split up in the first place, for starters; Sam’s anger had left him wide open to Elicott’s influence; and Dean should have picked up on the fact that something was wrong with his brother well before Sam had been able to pull a gun on him. It was best just to learn from their mistakes and move on.

But when the first thing Dean saw as soon as he closed his eyes was the look of fury on Sam’s face as he’d pulled the trigger on Dean’s pistol, he started to get a little worried that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

*************************************

Sam winced as he slammed the hotel room door behind him, then made a beeline across the street to the closest convenience store. A couple of aspirin and a big bottle of water later, the throbbing in his head and jaw were slowly starting to fade, though he knew the bruises he’d sustained would be around for longer than he cared to think about. He’d gotten off lightly, though, and he knew it. When he thought about the pain that he would be in right now if Dean hadn’t had the presence of mind to unload his gun…

Suddenly, Sam was on his knees in the dirt behind the store, eyes burning and stomach heaving as everything he’d eaten for dinner, along with the aspirin and the water he’d just downed, ended up on the ground in front of him. After what felt like hours of retching and dry heaves, his stomach finally stopped turning itself inside out and he slumped against the wall, sobbing and sucking in air in harsh, burning gasps as he tried to get himself back under control.

He knew it wasn’t entirely his fault—Elicott’s ghost had simply pushed emotions that were already there into overdrive—but Sam didn’t know why he was so angry all of a sudden. He had spent at least an hour with that psychiatrist, talking about Dean, and somehow all of the good things that he’d meant to say about his brother had ended up morphing into bad things: he was controlling, he didn’t listen, he would rather follow orders than think for himself, he never seemed to be able to take anything seriously…The list had gone on and on, and he’d come out of the whole thing even more angry and resentful than he’d gone in. Even now, though he would have expected breaking Elicott’s curse to have dissipated the anger somewhat, he could still feel it, simmering just below the surface of his skin, like an itch that he was now too afraid to scratch.

Dean would be well within his rights to leave him here, and Sam wasn’t entirely convinced that he shouldn’t, but he didn’t want to be left behind. He still wanted a chance to fix this. Though he knew Dean had been planning to get some sleep before getting back on the road, the thought that he might have changed his mind sent just enough of a jolt of panic through Sam to have him pushing himself to his feet and stumbling back around to the front of the convenience store. When he saw the Impala still parked in front of the hotel, he let out the breath he had been holding. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, wincing as he rubbed over his swelling jaw, then squared his shoulders, and crossed the road again.

Dean was asleep when Sam entered the hotel room. He was lying on his back, which meant that he would probably sleep like crap and wake up complaining about it, but he didn’t appear to be in any pain, and his hands weren’t clutching any weapons, which meant that he didn’t feel like he had anything to fear. Sam breathed a sigh of relief—Dean hadn’t been afraid of what Sam would do when he came back—as he went into the bathroom to wash out his mouth and take more painkillers. He changed into pajama pants and a clean t-shirt, got into bed, and closed his eyes. Maybe all of this would look a little better in the morning.

But when the first thing he saw in his dreams was the look of terrified betrayal in Dean’s eyes as he’d pulled the trigger on that empty pistol, he knew that getting past this wasn’t going to be that easy… for either of them.

[darkstar6782]

1.10: Asylum - My Rewatch Review

I must admit to loving the ‘haunted asylum’ trope when it comes to horror movies, so I have always really enjoyed this episode’s setting and use of the asylum as a means of addressing the growing conflict between the brothers when it comes to the mission they each want to be on. As much as I hate to see them fight, this episode finally brings to a head the conflict between Sam and Dean that has been simmering below the surface for a while; Sam wants answers, and revenge on the thing that killed Jess, and knows that finding their father is the best way to accomplish both of those things, while Dean is determined to trust that his father knows best, and is doing what he has to, and will find them when he’s ready. After spending the last nine episodes setting up how Sam feels about his dad, and his childhood, and the conflicts that arose between them when he was growing up, delving a haunted asylum is pretty much the perfect setting to bring all that unresolved conflict to the surface; because if there’s one thing we know these boys don’t do well, it’s talk about their feelings.

And I find the contrast between the confrontation in this episode and the one in ‘Skin’—where Dean was the one forced (sort of) by a supernatural entity to tell Sam what he really thought of him—to be very telling of the way both of these brothers view one another, themselves, and the relationship they have with one another. In ‘Skin’, we get no real evidence (except for the possibly-coincidental mention from Dean of him and Sam being ‘freaks’ at the end of the episode) that Dean knows what the shifter told Sam while wearing his face. It doesn’t seem like Sam ever told him, or if Sam ever really believed that Dean was actually jealous of him or had dreams beyond hunting. In contrast, Sam remembers everything he said while under Elicott’s influence in this episode, and, more importantly, even though he says he didn’t mean it, Dean definitely thinks he’s lying and almost certainly takes everything Sam said to him to heart. He may know that Sam wouldn’t have actually shot him if he hadn’t been mind-controlled, but if the shapeshifter had been telling the truth about Dean’s fears and feelings with regards to Sam leaving for college, then Sam in this episode, and in a fair number of subsequent episodes, either consciously or unconsciously plays into all of those fears and then some, seemingly without even realizing it. And to have the whole thing happen in an asylum, triggered by a doctor who was trying to cure his patients of their anger issues... the foreshadowing of the conflicts that are going to arise in the brothers’ relationship going forward is almost too perfect.

I also love the way this episode flips the script on the ‘couple exploring the haunted house’ trope. Having Cat be initially wary, but then ultimately the stronger, less easily scared character was a nice change, as was having her being the one who knew how to wield a shotgun. I also loved Dean chastising her about going into a haunted house by asking her if she’d seen a lot of horror movies; it’s a tiny bit of meta of a sort to have him acknowledging that the things that you see in horror movies in their world can actually turn out to be real.

I do have one major nitpick with this episode, of course. Though I realize that complaining about things like this in movies and television is as useless as wondering how these characters don’t have permanent brain damage from the number of times they are knocked unconscious, I hate to break it to Dean, but, it doesn’t matter what a shotgun shell is filled with: if you take one point-blank to the chest, it will probably kill you. And, to further add to this nitpick, the fact that he miraculously recovers from such a significant injury in less than a day (it doesn’t seem to affect him at all by the next episode, which picks up directly where this one ends) is almost more annoying. Sam may not have killed his brother, and they both may be choosing to avoid the hurtful words that Sam hurled at him, but the significance of the fact that he shot his brother point blank in the chest (even if, by the laws of the Supernatural universe, they both knew it wouldn’t kill him) shouldn’t be so easily glossed over by healing the injuries it would have caused him and pretending that it never happened. Especially given the plot of the next episode, it makes Sam seem a bit more heartless than I feel he would be if the injury caused by the major conflict in this episode had remained an issue.