#rchl

[friendofcars]

01.11 (Scarecrow)

this is the blatantly american gods one. also i went ahead and finished season 1 without taking notes on the latter half of the season. now im going back to justify another rewatch to myself. 

probably the contrast with the time-ambiguous apple pie midwestern styling of the town but my god is the guy who gets sacrificed in the cold open the strongest visual indicator of early-mid 2000s we’ve seen so far? well probably not actually but it slapped me in the face here. 

i like that the episode in which sam and dean split up for the first time since reuniting in the pilot is marked by car trouble, even if it’s not them having it. the set-dressing of the orchard wants to remind you that they grow apples specifically. and lots of them! and i love the “architecture” of the orchard too (the trees arching towards each other, sort of claustrophobic, sort of alluring and creepy as tunnels  are, also sort of alluding to some kind of covered altar/chuppah/canopy/arch under which you get married. oh basically an aisle. anyway maybe this is not commensurate for the cultural background of the pagan entity in this episode but i mention this all because they sacrifice couples. we can’t get into wedding death stuff right now. i don’t have time to reenact the contrapoints twilight video essay. 

also i feel like the feature of the vanir skinning and wearing its victims gets lost aside from it adding to the horror in the beginning and then the tattoo serving as a clue for dean later. it’s a gross and intriguing detail that could have been in conversation with my beloved skin episode but the vanir has no interiority and the developed antagonists in the episode are, of course, the people murdering to serve it. anyway. this is going to be a long entry. we haven’t even hit the title card yet. and i think this marks a stretch in the season that explores monstrous behavior from humans (this is a series-long theme, but it really comes to a head with the woman controlling the reaper for her own religious crusade in faith, the benders, max’s family in nightmare and what their abuse drives him to do in response…plus vengeful spirits of hateful people, like the doctor in asylum, the racist guy whose spirit powers the truck in route 666, etc.). i’d like to think more about thematic and tonal blocks in this season and the series as i go forward, but i think that has to be done retrospectively.

i know i mentioned this at the end of the prior episode but sam being the one to pick up when john finally calls is sooooo. it gets you right in the gut. sam being more vigilant, easier to wake, more restless at the motels was established as early as in episode 4 (we learn about sam’s mental state in the wake of jess’s murder and also have a notably drawn-out and glute-centric shot of dean’s sleeping body) anyway that was then and this is now and sam is the one who hears the phone ring. sam chafes at being told to stop looking for john, obviously, and dean, once he takes over the call, follows orders without hesitation. 

they start driving to indiana. sam is driving! it’s always so interesting to me (genuinely; not ‘interesting’ as ‘contradictory’ or ‘nonsensical’) that the current dean is both 1. deeply committed to their solitary, secretive family as a son, brother, soldier, etc. and 2. largely exercises his commitment by serving the particular family mission (not tracking down the demon, nor avenging mary, but saving people and hunting things) by turning outward from the family to help what are, to the winchesters, civilians, which they deem worth saving but also threatening to the familiar structure if they become too close to the winchesters. so, dean simultaneously reinforces and destabilizes the family by following john’s orders and going on hunts that lie at least partially outside the direct mission of hunting the demon. sam, on the other hand, positions himself within the narrower scope of the family mission (the demon) with the ostensible goal of leaving hunting (the family) behind after they find and kill it. so, when sam is less willing to go on hunts to save others in favor of only pursuing the demon, he turns his back on those that represent the life he wants to join when this is “all over” and of course the allure and tragedy is that it never is. or won’t be for a very long time. this feels harsh on sam. in fairness to him he really does try to think for himself. he is skeptical and demands answers and proof and i appreciate the empirical attitude. he raises the fair point that he is so fresh in grief. he is john in 1983!!!. he so resents being a soldier. i don’t think john would take orders well (post mary’s death) either. but i just really like the contrast in their attitudes and roles within/outside the family and i love season one of this stupid show  things get so flipped around in the last couple of episodes too. delicious.  (except by this point in the season it’s exhausting how fleeting the women are, and meg’s appearance really emphasizes this to me. a lot of the women sam and dean meet on the road are smart, capable, brave, etc. but they are largely static, and they stay where they were found*, like landmarks, while the brothers move on to the next hunt. but, when we meet meg, she’s also on the road! she’s mobile, she appears in multiple episodes, although i still think she is underdeveloped. and it’s interesting that the most prominent on-screen female character halfway through the season is 1. traveling and 2. An antagonist. i wish we got more exploration into the tensions between meg and her father! it would have added even more texture/foil to the development of the winchester family dynamics in the last few episodes. anyway we haven’t even seen her yet.

i can’t hear it but the subtitles say a wolf howls right when sam tells dean he wants to be left on the side of the road. ok lone wolf. we’ll see you soon. 

ok now we get to see dean hunting by himself and learn a little bit about Dean and his Relationship to Small-Town Mid-American Community Life. first, scotty sees right thru his alias. disarmed! “we don’t get many strangers around here” close-to-surface subtext: dean = stranger. Oh i miss my trc adam ronan strange/stranger/estrangement unheimlich theory…i’ll go back and write the essay one day because it’s never too late. maybe we can tie in the winchesters too. it centers on magic and family and domestic vs. public spheres sooooooo

dean is still talking to scotty, absolutely impervious to the dean charisma and possibly all outsiders. 

meanwhile, sam is, by various sources of design, doing better at socializing. we meet meg, briefly!

dean makes some progress on his solo hunt because emily recognizes the prior victim’s tattoo. she is the only young resident of the town (that we see, if i remember correctly). she is also the closest thing to an outsider they have (adopted into a resident family), and she is later deemed disposable. raises a lot of questions about the security and prosperity of the town vs. its presumably aging (or stagnant; do these people die?) population. do they not keep young people around/have kids so they won’t have to sacrifice them in a pinch? ok per a later scene, the sacrificed people might have to be outsiders.

there are so many apples on the ground. oh emily lost her parents in a car accident. i….have seen this episode 3 or 4 times and never occurred to me to doubt this. but it’s of no consequence to the rest of the episode so i’ll move on. she also reminds us that dean and sam are orphans now. 

meg again! says a lot about sam’s current state that he is 1. so understandably affected by grief and anger and 2. so unsuspecting of and open to meg. it marks a difference between john and sam; john’s grief moves him to become more isolated, suspicious, pulling the family unit tighter and tighter; sam’s grief (in this episode at least) moves him to strike out on his own and connect with someone outside the family, who (conveniently) understands and empathizes with his woes. i need to consider meg as a brief anti-dean…. at the bus terminal, sam debates calling dean but puts his phone away when he sees her, and she’s sitting on the floor in a highly staged “cool/casual” posture, light(er)-haired, dark open jacket, necklace(s), jeans… but she listens to sam! she hears him out wrt his frustrations with his family. it has to be deliberate.

ok back to dean absolutely floundering at trying to save the next sacrifices and coming off as a creep (though scotty and the cop do him no favors in that regard). we are told “hey if sam was here he could handle this easily because he’s better at small talk and being normal”  which is emphasized via his easy connection with meg, which is made possibly only by his naivete and her ulterior motives; dean’s knowledge and inability to share the complete truth alienates him. oh i think he resents that so bad. ronan looming in the distance, secrets and lies!

oh this episode also posits the car as a [fallible] refuge (car breaks down, couple has to exit, they get killed walking through the orchard while trying to find help).

the brothers are on speaking terms again. it’s been a day-ish. unclear who called whom, but they’re talking as if they parted ways cheerfully. sam doesn’t even grimace at getting called a sidekick. they’re so content discussing the facts of the case, hypothesizing about the monster’s lore, etc. for all the strife involved, they love the problem solving and the research. by the end of the phone call i have to believe dean called sam (to apologize, which sam has to actually say for him [sam also apologizes to dean in the same breath], and to say sam was right about needing to do his own thing and go his own way. the limited bus schedule is saying otherwise but that’s ok don’t worry about it). dean also implies he wishes he could stand up to john like sam can and does and always has, etc. but again, it’s something he can’t say out loud. is this the first crack in the soldier facade? i don’t remember. 

then, some dialogue re: a morbid interpretation of sacrifice for family/the common good, sam sacrificing his independence and own motives by returning to dean, etc. these are not equivalent but they sure are presented together deliberately. also, because the prior sacrifices are all couples, and dean passes through alone and is haphazardly paired with emily due to a lack of other options, we are reminded how uncoupled he is. this bears a variety of implications that i won't explore here. and in the end this saves the protagonists, since the vanir kills emily’s aunt and uncle anyway. hmmm

*emily does leave her town in this episode, a noticeable departure from the established pattern. she leaves the dying town and gets on a bus to boston, and sam gets back in the car with dean (who is not in the mood to show any emotional vulnerability whatsoever re: sam deciding to stick with him)

evil meg reveal! meg resenting father’s orders reveal! ok bye

[friendofcars]

i did nothing productive today but wash my hair and watch another episode, the latter of which barely counts, but now i am going to sleep for a delicious eight hours

01.10 (Asylum)

ten minutes into this episode and have had largely nothing to say, in great contrast to it taking multiple hours to get through the prior one. dean did just utter the phrase “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the most notable character development stuff occurred in a motel conversation about john’s reticence/absence, dean’s willingness to go on a job they can only assume he’s assigned them, etc. i am surprised that neither of them thought oh, maybe these coordinates are a trap. dean is rattling off pop culture references at what feels like 4x his usual rate. 

“we’ve always gotta follow dad’s orders?” “of course we do” oh lord. every second of every episode i look forward to the deconstruction. or at least the breakdown of the outward-facing obedient son soldier dogma. :)))))))

clever good bar patron / bad bar patron song-and-dance to make the surviving cop trust and talk to sam. this therapist is not fucking around. finger on the pulse of the sore spot (dean) IMMEDIATELY. although sam does a good job of making it seem like his interest in the asylum is a decoy/deflection. fun little scene. 

there’s a shot i found striking on my first watch: sam and dean come through a doorway in the hospital, sam bearing a flashlight and dean a gun, and i don’t think it accurately summarizes their roles, but i think it accurately summarizes a particular depiction of their roles. does that make sense. it’s what they want you to think about them. sam seeks knowledge, truth, a path forward. dean is the hunter. no nuance :) the girl they rescue asks sam if dean is his boss. 

ooooh imposter on the cell phone. certainly casts doubt on the john text that kicks off the episode. also we have another (unfortunate?) case of a fairly direct parallel between a couple (the cop who shoots and kills his partner) and sam (who shoots, with rock salt) dean, both due to influence from ellicott’s spirit. i am simply reporting the facts. they do this in the next episode too i swear. ellicott’s crumbly spirit having a yellow eye is curious but surely coincidental. also idk i think the bar is on the floor but it is kind of refreshing to have the evil asylum spirit be the abusive doctor and not the patients. 

dean sleeping soundly while his ringing phone wakes sam, who answers and intercepts the call from john….

[friendofcars]

a lot of words about a fraction of what goes on in episode 9

01.09 (Home)

i’m certain this is thoroughly coincidental because i do not have faith that the pre-series timeline was fleshed out this early in season one but i am in the mood to roll around in and over-interpret details so i will mention that the little girl’s shirt that she wears at the beginning of the episode has “73” on it, which is, according to various wikis and blogs (i am in the mood to detail-dive but not verify the timeline of the entire series im sorry), the year that john returned to lawrence from war and mary made the deal with azazel to save him. just making that known given the very literal homecoming (to lawrence!) that happens in this episode. it is not, of course, the year in which the house burned. 

as previously mentioned i do actually love when spn wallops the audience over the head with parallels/foils to the winchesters. this episode directly centers around family, (breaking cycles), and grief as haunting. of course. a single-parent family (dead dad, for variety) and two kids. the older sister (who is still so little) is hypervigilant and losing sleep.

ok how on earth is there a chest of winchester family memorabilia in the basement after that fire. although i feel that perhaps azazel could have selectively protected items from the fire in efforts to trap mary’s spirit in the house. i’m making things up with no textual evidence to back them up. i’m confabulating. but it is kind of mad that there is a photo of john in this family’s basement but of course there is. coming back from later in the episode to clarify that the entire house did not burn down and was remodeled instead of rebuilt entirely. i suppose if an upstairs bedroom burned, the basement may have been the leats affected part of the house (?) also, the sequence of revealed photos is interesting: first john alone, then john and mary, then all four winchesters. “little sammy” but just regular old dean who is four. i think. anyway the sequence of photos feels a little patriarchal a little biblical you know, and again, i doubt this had been fleshed out so early, but perhaps contradicts the actual origin story of the winchesters’ relationship to the supernatural, which started with mary instead. also interesting that there is no john and mary and dean pre-sam. 

the mildly sinister shadows of the tree branches reaching across the house…i love it. did they do that in the pilot too? i did not mean to take months and months to rewatch s1 but alas. so i forgot. back to horrible nightmare vision-having sam! he draws said branches (oooh family tree visual symbol im getting it) on a notepad in their room at “sleep easy motel” well i don’t think they’ll be doing that. they also have a copy of the four of them outside in front of the house?? 

i do not remember sam confessing to dean about his prophetic nightmares directly in relation to jess’s murder so early on but i suppose he had to here. dean swore to himself he’d never go home. pilot constance welch YOU CAN NEVER GO HOME!!! dean introduces himself to the woman living in the house (im sorry woman and daughter the show has not given you names yet. jenny and sari! well i would not have come up with either) as a federal investigator (? sam cuts him off) but sam cuts right to the truth and tells her their names and that they used to live in the house. i don’t think he has conscious memories of the house (i don’t think that is developmentally possible save for some demonic interference). he did used to live there. wait this is so genesis 3:23 by the mountain goats. i used to live here!! 

the unlocked fridge….the monkey toy…oh lord. i do not want to watch the upcoming garbage disposal scene. at the gas station, dean tells sam that he carried him out of the burning house; this is news to sam. dean calls john asking for help (alone, under the guise of going to the bathroom); despite frequently appealing to john’s authority in conversation with sam, dean clearly feels vulnerable asking for help, especially given the circumstances. the subsequent phone call is reminiscent of prayer. there are stacks of tires in the scene…things are, after weeks? months? on the road, stagnant. John’s grief is holding them in place. the voicemail tells the caller to ask dean for help if they can’t reach john. this is diabolical given that john is literally in town. i think it’s much too on the nose to be overtly true but i checked the silhouette of the faceless mechanic (in the scene when they’re talking to john’s old business partner) to see if the person looked like john. who knows. the framing of the scene certainly makes it look like the brothers are being watched, though, which is more important that the literal details. 

in the same scene, we learn a bit more about john before and directly after mary’s death: he was stubborn, competitive, loving, and after the fire, appeared paranoid to his friend when he started theorizing and researching the occult, etc. this is not necessarily news and is certainly not shocking, but it does underscore how much perception of john changed from the vantage point of a stand-in for the lawrence community. this, of course, is explained fully by the trauma of the fire/mary’s death alone, but also correlates with changes to soldiers’ psychological states upon coming home from war (even if this doesn’t line up with john’s actual timeline, the allegory is prominent. the marines are mentioned in this patch of dialogue, even.). we also get a sense of how abrupt/unexplained their exodus from lawrence was. 

not to discredit missouri’s perception and knowledge, but her detailed understanding of their current situation is only because she’s been in contact with john, no? sam is delighted at missouri coming for dean’s dignity over and over lol. “something’s starting” ronan i hear your voice everywhere.  there is such a nice conveniently child-sized space on the refrigerator shelf. and the irony of the safety lock on the fridge… even relates a bit to the general horror themes re: fears of letting things in vs. out. internal vs. external threats… dean really does not like having his intelligence insulted.

at some point in the episode i noticed the complete lack of rock music/recognizable non-series-specific soundtrack. i like this choice. it’s a strip-things-down-to-the-heart episode. it’s a return to the time before they were driving frantically all over the continental us with music blaring in the car. i love when the sonic landscape gets to be melancholy and understated. 

 the reconstructed home as an infected grief-wound drawing in more pain…i love this episode. i think the dual haunting is also a nice parallel to the dual quest of the first season…finding john and also finding what killed mary and jess. two distinct heads of the same snake. the poltergeist in this episode is not inherently connected to the winchesters aside from the house drawing in its malicious energy/pain, but the overlapping mysteries of sinister forces and unreachable loved ones is overtly relevant.

Missouri, Sam, and Dean each take a floor of the house when expelling the poltergeist. Missouri goes to the basement (foundations, secrets, burial, preservation?), Dean works on the ground level and is shown in the kitchen (interesting that he takes the most visually domestic part of the house because the return to Lawrence is most vulnerable for him specifically), and Sam goes upstairs and gets strangled by a serpentine electrical cord, ostensibly in an office/study room, though I could not tell definitely. For upstairs I think of dreams, proximity to the sky, ambition!!!; it’s also the floor where his nursery was and where the bedrooms still are. I also have not really commented on a key fact of the episode: Sam is actively forming his only conscious memories of this house/home. Dean is reliving the turning point of their childhood, and Sam is experiencing glimpses of it in situ for the first time. I don’t know why I’m capitalizing things now. I took a shower and exposed clarity and formality….I don’t know. Sorry for the inconsistency. 

The episode concludes with parallelpalooza. Sam insists on lingering after they ostensibly defeat the poltergeist the first time, thereby allowing the brothers to save Jenny and the kids (pilot: Dean lingers after bringing Sam back to Stanford, thereby allowing Dean to save Sam from his burning room). Dean escorts Jenny out of the house; Jenny is blonde and Mary-ish; Dean could not lead his mother out of the house the first time this happened, obviously. Sam carries the kids out of the house until he has to confront the poltergeist and tells Sari to take her brother out as fast as she can (which, obviously, is what John tells Dean in the pilot). Sam notably leaps from oblivious infant (that sounds uncharitable but I mean it simply) to delegating adult; he is never Dean, carrying someone else over the threshold. This disparity marks a gap in understanding between them. 

Mary sacrifices herself. Dean watches his mother burn again!!!!! Sam’s only in-person interaction with his mother is with her spirit. How long had her spirit actually occupied the house? Did John’s grief trap her there? Could he have learned who killed her if he had stayed? “Your mom destroyed herself going after that thing” oh dear. John’s refusal to go home even though he knows his sons are there…no words. 

[friendofcars]

this morning i got a text that essentially said "hi rachel i sent the revised manuscript to all our co-authors. can you please also intensely copy edit and revise the entire thing because of your writing skills" YES!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN!!!!! AND I WILL!!!!!!!!!! :D

[friendofcars]

at maybe 11 pm last night i deliriously took a break from making my ugly ugly conference poster to make a beautiful beautiful custom mug design for my coworker who is defending his dissertation soon. i would like to share it

[friendofcars]

well…..of course

[friendofcars]

rambling but ultimately incomplete thoughts on ep 8, which gave me a headache

i have seen that this is a generally unfavored episode but i remember thinking it was a good sam character development one at least; we will see if my assessment holds. there are some tidbits about wealth/class early in the episode. the gas/power workers laboring in the new development/neighborhood comment on the nice in-progress houses and how they couldn’t afford to live in them. sam and dean, in their first scene, have contrasting attitudes re: dean hustling billiards and committing credit card fraud, which sam deems a dishonest living. dean also refutes that the way they were raised was bad, presumably to a. be contrarian and b. keep the scene at a light banter. 

sorry to the oklahoma gas and power co. but your sign logo is ugly. and the text spacing on the neighborhood sign is weird. Anyway. sam ribs dean about only wanting to go to the open house because of the advertised free food. this feels….uncharitable given the earlier conversation about making money and their unstable childhood. 

documenting some things for future reference

dean SAYS he would hate a normal, suburban life and prefers the winchester hunting lifestyle

sam compares the developer, who disdains his son’s “unusual” interests (bugs, arachnids) and deems him unsuitable to sell the suburban American dream home fantasy, to john…

and dean doesn’t see it at all, doubling down on the assertation that john never treated them ‘that way’

but sam argues that though dean was ‘perfect,’ john was highly critical of sam and his interests (e.g., learning sports over hunting skills); dean agrees with john’s priorities

this is all interesting and, if memory serves, contradicted (or at least fleshed out much further with varying degrees of supporting and conflicting details) later on. memory is a tool and a weapon. 

next scene: sam driving! the episode is on sam’s side, thus far. we are definitely seeing things skewed towards his pov, which is interesting, because the skew feels particularly prominent in this episode. not bad, just interesting. 

also thinking about how in all previous episodes (excluding the pilot, which lacks the ‘civilian point of contact’ of subsequent episodes) said ‘civilian point of contact’ (often a mirror for one of sam and dean or both/the winchester family) is a young woman, aside from lucas in dead in the water and the bug guy (instantly forgot his name  - max???), both of whom are children and not men. this is obviously not a coincidence. it serves a male vigilante power / protecting ‘the innocent’ fantasy (even in cases like lori in the previous episode, who is….not not innocent but also has her moral righteousness and judgment used for violent castigation). im seeing it with my eyes. and that ‘the innocent’ is played by someone white and thin. we will continue to monitor. 

also is anyone going to remind the audience that arachnids are not insects. or are we using ‘bug’ colloquially for both. i thought bug = insect only but im no entomologist. oh the kid’s name is matt lol oops. even he is not refuting that all of the deaths have been insect-related. oh well. 

this episode is scrambling my brain re: characterization honestly. (note from future me: i eventually get there dont worry)

dean keeps refuting sam’s criticisms of john’s parenting, disagrees with sam’s advice to matt that he take advantage of college and leave his family (who, from our limited glimpses, do not respect him or take him/his interests seriously), rejects “normal life” (but indulges in the steam shower and the free bbq), and embraces the fringe hunting lifestyle BUT also pokes fun at sam for aligning with “the weird” (interest in /comfort with bugs). i think this sums up to the net of 1. trying to keep your family myth alive for sanity’s sake (it’s in dean’s interest to uphold john as reasonable and rational at this point in the series) and 2. masking discomfort of the reminder that sam and dean had very different relationships with john, regardless of the accuracy of the relationships’ portrayal by either of them in this episode……3. being the older sibling and having access to a longer period of context for your parent’s actions and perhaps receiving more information about john’s perception of sam, which may or may not have aligned with how he treated sam (which is ultimately more consequential)...4. i have a headache. obviously the hypocrisy and contradictions are on purpose. but im getting dizzy untangling them anyway.

also this is somewhat resolved/subverted when dean tells sam that john was keeping an eye out for him at stanford and that their relationship is a ‘two-way street’  and sam shutting john out was….equally bad as john kicking him out??? what a mess lol. But now we really get to the heart of it. dean perceives sam’s rejection of john as rejection of their family (debatably true) which is rejection of DEAN! i know what you are. a ronan. it all does make sense. back to the bugs and non-bugs.

joe immediately classifying dean as a liar and sam as not is KILLING dean lol i know what you are. a ronan. then dean coaching matt to lie to his father to get his family out of the house (prominent subtext: fathers are not to be reasoned with because it is futile). 

also interesting that the bugs are attributed to the curse but the winchesters’ hunting skills are futile….they are not uniquely prepared to keep bugs out of a house more than anyone else, really. strange, strange outlier of an episode in this regard. also there is absolutely no way that they were in the house with the bugs for eight hours. hello. am i missing something. 

ok when i said this episode was skewed to sam’s pov…..perhaps it was editorialized by john bc holy moly the generosity of the ending dialogue towards him lol. well i suppose it would be boring if they had unpacked the horrors of the winchester family by episode 8 of season 1.

[friendofcars]

when an adaptation either discards or does not understand your favorite motifs in the source material, you may still find them in completely unrelated art. which is fun and soothing