“Bert and Ernie are gay” is such an insane line to be said specifically by Dean to Cas in a show where the queer reading of their relationship with each other is often shut down by other fans and the goddamn network itself, in a scene where Dean is weirdly obsessing over Cas’ sex life and virginity, in a conversation led by Dean, sparked by him using his previously established pick-up line on Cas.
It’s in the way that Dean says it, the way it implies that Dean had been ruminating on and possibly even debated with someone over this in the past, and came to the confident conclusion that, indeed, Bert and Ernie are gay. He knew it for certain.
It’s in the way that this was a dialogue from a time when Bert and Ernie being gay for each other was only a speculation, but never close to confirmation. At least not until much later, in 2018, when one of the former writers, Mark Saltzman, confirms the queer subtext to be deliberate at least on his part, having modeled his writing of their relationship after his own queer relationship, only to be shut down by the network the very next day.
And it’s the way that—god—it’s the way that if Dean had said this then (and even now) within the fandom, or just in any setting with more pop-culturally adept people than a conversation with Cas in a dark abandoned house, and especially about a children’s show…he would’ve been called “fucking delusional”, he would’ve been told to “stop projecting your perverted fantasies onto these characters”, he would’ve been told “you’re just reading too much into it”. He would’ve been told all the things that destiel fans have been (and still are) told by the people who view any queer reading of Dean himself and Cas, of their relationship, and of the show as a whole as mere fan fiction, instead of something done by the show and its creatives with intent. Because that’s simply what it’s like to read into queer subtext in shows, queer subtext that is forced to be mere subtext by the same people who insists that they’re not there are all.
And who knows, maybe Dean have said this while in some sort of community for geeks. Maybe he was also in the trenches insisting that so and so characters are queer, though probably just not as much we are (he can’t worry about that too often since he’s got work to do and apocalypses to avert). Still, he very clearly has some strong opinions on many of the media he engages with, and is happy to express some of them. What he likes most, what he deems best, what he deems true. Swayze always gets a pass, Zeppelin rules, cowboy boots makes Dr. Sexy sexy. Bert and Ernie are gay. He clearly cares about this stuff because he’s passionate about it, just like how many of us are passionate about this show (among many others). It’s not far fetched to think that he’d argued about this before (and have been told he’s wrong).
This seemingly small comedic part of Dean’s dialogue says so much about him. It shows that Dean himself reads into and welcomes the possible queer subtext within the media he engages with, on top of engaging with other more explicitly queer media, like Thelma & Louise, which he giddily references in the same episode (specifically to compare his relationship with Cas to that of Thelma and Louise’s).
To me, that piece of dialogue is like a little hidden note written by the writers, put in a place where they know the queer fans would go to (where many others wouldn’t), saying: “We know you’re here, and we know why. We’re the ones who carved this little path and lit the guiding lights to this place, to what you see”. We know you’re reading into this very dialogue, and we want you to know that the conclusion you’ve arrived to are within our intentions for this story and these characters.
In 2009.
