Mild spoilers for Buffy 6x01-6x02, Dead Boy Detectives 1x01, and Supernatural series 6.
Series six gets underway with a soft reset. All the previous series finales ended on cliffhangers which necessitated the wrapping up thereof at the beginning of the next. This is in fact how almost all series of Supernatural end, making series six a rarity in not having to begin by completing last series' storylines. This allows the characters to start afresh in a new situation, but requires reintroducing the world and characters. Buffy and Charmed did this pretty much every time and mostly succeeded. Both shows also underwent unexpected renewals and the need to continue stories ; Buffy was supposed to end with series 5 and Charmed with series 7, but went on longer.
6x01 Exile on Main Street generally succeeds in reintroducing the show and characters as well as where they are now in their lives, but unlike Buffy 6x01-02 Bargaining Parts 1+2, it has never struck me as especially interesting or memorable. Paula's own review of this was written soon after the episode first aired, and she and her commenters were of the opinion that the episode and its storylines all put Dean at the centre and promised a Dean-centred plot, while Sam came across almost like an uninteresting, unlikeable afterthought. However, this was likely unintentional on the part of Sera Gamble, the new showrunner and official Samgirl. In another universe, Raelle Tucker became showrunner, not Sera Gamble, and in that universe the viewers were treated to a true renaissance of the show. Alas, we are not in that universe, meaning we must endure the tedium of yet another Sam Done Come Back Wrong plot.
In the hopes of avoiding seeming excessively negative, let us begin with some positives. Lisa is by far my favourite addition to the show in this episode, although given the competition that really is not saying much. Her role in the show is mostly to be Dean's lady love, but in spite of her relatively marginal position, she is a surprisingly likeable and believable character. What really made her stand out is the fact that she is one of exceedingly few people in the show who treat Dean with basic dignity and respect, and does not seem to value him solely for what he can do.
When he turned up at her doorstep at the end of 5x22 Swan Song, he was a complete wreck but Lisa took him in anyway. For a year, she looked after him and most likely dealt with damage and trauma which would have had most people running screaming in the opposite direction. I think I can count the number of times I have seen women caring for men like this in media on one hand and still have a finger or two to spare. It makes a lovely change for a heterosexual couple in a show to actually be mutually caring. If there were more instances of men and women treating each other like fellow travellers and partners on telly, relations between men and women in real life might just be a little healthier.
Lisa was also the only one in the episode to afford Dean the opportunity to make his own choices about whether to stay or go without any attempt at manipulation. I can see why some people ship Dean and Lisa together, even 14 years after her last appearance in the show. She and Dean act like a genuine loving, supporting couple who have helped each other through rough times and have grown stronger together.
But loving each other does not equal a future together. The love Dean and Lisa have for each other feels like what they needed and wanted at that time, but not something which would last forever. Dean's expression when he wakes up says everything I need to know about him; he is dead inside and going through the motions. None of his issues have gone away, and he is unable to feel at peace in his adopted life. His interaction with Lisa in bed feels detached and distant. He cares about her, but is disconnected. It seems like their relationship would end in an amicable separation after a few years.
Of course the idea of romantic, passionate love which lasts a lifetime is perhaps a luxury ideal which people in pre-modern times could not necessarily afford. Two of the main characters in the novels The Emigrants are the married couple Karl Oskar and Kristina. They love each other, build a life together, have many children together, and emigrate from Sweden to Minnesota together in 1850, but other than that I cannot say what interests they share with each other. They share no hobbies or personal passions with each other, and perhaps to a degree their relationship is transactional. 'I love you because you fulfil this role I need in my life which allows me to perform my role.' Their life together gives them meaning, purpose, and stability i.e. raising the children, building a community in America, etc, which was probably all most people in history have been able to hope for. They had duties and fulfilled them, but would that be enough in the modern western world?
I am reminded of The Corpse Bride and an analysis I read many years ago. Emily and Victoria are two different kinds of love. Emily represents eros, i.e. passionate romantic love, especially young love, which is intense and strong but doomed to fizzle out and leave nothing behind. Victoria, however, represents agape or caritas, a selfless, charitable, holistic love and admiration like an old married couple, a parent for a child, or Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Emily ultimately found peace at the end of the film, freeing Victor from his vows and enabling him to marry the humble, quite Victoria, i.e. passion died, but charitable admiration kept going.
The point being I do not believe Dean and Lisa would have lasted more than a few years. What, other than Ben, do they share together? Do they like to talk about films they have watched? Do they talk about politics and history? I do not see a holistic foundation to build decades on.
This is not necessarily a fault with the writing, and not a criticism. Sometimes relationships of all kinds are like that. I also do not think that Dean truly wanted to stay with Lisa long-term. Dean (presumably) promised Sam in 5x22 Swan Song that he would go and live with Lisa and live a normal life, meaning Dean was there out of duty to his dead brother. Not for a single moment in the episode did Dean look happy or content in his life with Lisa. The first shot of them shocked me a few years ago when I rewatched it. Dean wakes up from a nightmare and stares at the ceiling, then he puts a metaphorical mask on while Lisa kisses him good morning, and then as soon as she leaves their bed the mask slips and Deans thousand-yard stare returns.
When Lisa is not looking, Dean allows his face to reflect how dead he feels inside. It reminds me very much of the song Going through the Motions from the musical episode of Buffy. Which in return reminded me that Dean is suffering serious depression. After having lived with clinical depression for almost twenty years, the condition has long since become my normal so the word rarely comes to mind and I have to come up with different ways to describe the experience. Rather like Going through the Motions which says without saying it that Buffy is suffering depression. That felt real.
And since I have already made a few metatextual references, perhaps a reference to Brokeback Mountain is in order. Dean is this episode gives Ennis vibes. There is always somewhere else Ennis wants to be, someone else he wants to be with, something else that he is waiting for which he cannot get with his wife. He lives with an emptiness and a longing and does not belong in his own home. I suppose Dean and Lisa also give vague lavender marriage vibes, with Lisa giving Dean 'permission' to go off and 'do what he needs to do' while she will be waiting when he gets back.
However, Lisa is not in the story just to serve Dean's story. She is not the deepest or most interesting character, but she has her own life and does her own things. She also prioritises the safety of her son Ben over her relationship with Dean, which makes her feel real. Furthermore, one of the reasons she likes Dean is that he is good for Ben; she has high praise for Dean as a partner, but also as a stepfather for Ben.
And before moving on from the subject of Ben, he is Dean's biological son and you cannot convince me otherwise. Jensen's claim that Ben is not Dean's biological son holds no water. He claimed that if Ben were Dean's son, Dean would not have left, but this is utter hogwash and why I do not privilege actors' interpretations. Dean would have to know Ben's his biological son for that to be relevant, and furthermore it implies Dean does not really care about Ben because they do not share genetics. 'Family don't end in blood, but it don't start their neither'. Pfft. Apparently family starts and ends with blood on this show.
By the way, Dean's son is gay. Like father, like son. Change my mind.
On to some negatives. The Campbell cousins introduced in this episode appear to be there for other reason than mocking and belittling Dean and his life. Apart from the subtle homophobia of Gwen saying Dean has 'delicate features for a hunter', the Campbells show no respect for Dean at all, nor do their words and actions have any repercussions. If somebody called them out on being insufferable twits, perhaps in the form of slapping the stupid right off their faces, this would be more forgivable. As things are, their hubristic stupidity has me glad they are just red-shirts brought in to act as cannon fodder. They cannot die soon enough.
There is no way they are unaware of all the things Dean had done before retiring, nor that he is the most renowned hunter alive, but they talk down to him as though he were wet behind the ears. All of this of course while calling themselves 'professionals' whilst showcasing nothing but idiocy. They are bullies and should be taught what happens when chihuahuas yap at German Shepherds. They are the most annoying peanut gallery in existence.
This was a weird writing choice from Gamble. Dean is one of the draws to the show, so what made her think the audience would enjoy him being dunked on by amateurs? It reminds me of the stupidity at the beginning of series 3 when Dean got violently assaulted by the hunter Isaac and, rather than showing any concern while Dean was on the floor, Bobby strolled right past him and shook Isaac's hand. Are we supposed to be able to relate to any of these characters or not? If Bobby really were 'like a dad to Dean', he would have put Isaac on the ground right next to Dean.
Worse, perhaps, is the gross invasive violation of most of this happening in Dean's own home while they were unwelcome guests. The lion, the witch, and the audacity of these bitches. The sheer gumption. The last thing I would ever do when going into somebody's home is sneer at and mock his and his lady's hobbies and choices of decoration. Even so, what is wrong with playing golf? As Paula commented, the Campbells have their roots in Scotland, as does golf, so a family that into their own history would likely be involved with golf anyway.
Galling also is Sam joining in with bullying Dean. That was the life Sam wanted Dean to live before he 'triple Lindied' into the cage (what a stupid turn of phrase for such a serious event. Somebody should have stopped Kripke), and then when Sam returned one of the first things he did was mock his brother for trying his hardest to fit in. Dean cannot win for losing, can he?
I was probably supposed to laugh at this, but I have enough experience of being bullied and shamed to not find this puerile playground crap amusing. None of it got a laugh when I watched this episode with friends at the beginning of the year either. That nobody called anybody out for deriding Dean implies the viewer was perhaps supposed to agree with the assessment that Dean had become soft, suburban, and civilised. This in spite of the fact he had been shown being anything but just ten minutes prior, but whatever I suppose. I should stop paying attention to my lying eyes.
Btw, the 'delicate features' line is something I would refer to as 'toxic expectations of men'; don't have 'delicate features'... said a woman in an episode written by a women, just so you know. Gwen asking 'yours or your wife's' about the magazine also set my homophobia detector off. One thing which I love about Dead Boy Detectives is that while Edwin is rather stately and theatrical, nobody makes fun of him for it or uses it as humour-fuel. Well, nobody but the boys who killed him in 1916, but they were the bad guys. ('Mary Ann' is a Victorian slur for a gay man, a bit like 'Nancy' nowadays, replete with (negative) connotations of 'effeminacy'. Also used for young boys 'used' as catamites in prisons.)
#edwinSacrifice #deadboydetectives #netflix2024 #supernatural #mystery #intrigue "Delve into the gripping tale of Edwin's sacrifice to He
(The subtitles for this video are rather bad)
If one wanted to do some literary analysis, one could say that the Campbells are acting as manifestations of Dean's own doubts, and are vessels for the expression of Dean's own comments about his life. That does not make them any less of a bag of dicks, but at least gives them a bit more relevance and purpose in the show. But why did it have to be cousins the viewer has never heard of before and who were supposed to be dead anyway? If memory serves, Meg and The Loquacious Terminator killed all the Winchesters' relatives at the end of series one. Apparently they missed the most annoying ones. And it is quite the lazy tactic to introduce family members never mentioned before, a little like 'Ursula's crazy sister' in The Little Mermaid 2.
To summarise that last few hundred words, Sam made Dean promise to leave hunting, and then he, Bobby et al kept Dean in the dark about Sam's return for a year. Supposedly, they were happy Dean got out and wanted to let him have a 'happy' life. Then suddenly they decided they needed him and wasted no time in bullying and manipulating him into leaving his home and doing what they want. they do this by shaming and guilting him, as though he were selfish and lazy for *checks notes* doing what others made him do. Never mind the fact that he never really wanted it in the first place.
The more I write about the characters, the happier I am they are not around for long. Except Sam, but at least this iteration of Sam is more upfront about being an absolute bell-end.
At least Bobby had the decency to look ashamed at keeping Dean in the dark, as he should. Dean spent a year grieving the death of his brother and dealing with sundry other traumas and damage. A man in his position could easily have done serious harm to himself, up to and including suicide, and the people who were supposed to care about him were content to just let him stew in bereavement. As if that were not bad enough, they all removed Dean's ability to make informed choices about his own life, exactly as they had always done. That should remind you of his rage at finding out God was writing their lives for his own amusement. Every single person involved in that year-long deception deserved to lose a few teeth... but of course because this is Supernatural and Dean is a pushover when it comes to family, there are no repercussions. Instead, the episode has Dean blaming himself for everything, and claiming he put Lisa and Ben in danger.
Thank Allah's magnificent taint for Lisa in this episode. In the context of the Winchesters, Campbells, and Bobby, she really does shine as a beacon of human decency and maturity. The only one to give Dean a choice, and the only one to refuse to allow him to shoulder all the blame for himself. She knew precisely what she was letting into her home in 5x22 Swan Song, and she owned that.
Something the episode did well was introduce the beginnings of the story for series six. IN her review, Paula commented on the djinn acting weird and their lore having changed since 2x20 What is and What Should Never Be. She concluded Gamble had likely forgotten the lore or could not be bothered to find out that e.g. a knife dipped in lamb's blood is needed to kill a djinn. One also has to wonder how the djinn killing their victims so quickly in this episode benefits them, as the M.O of djinn in series 2 was essentially that of a spider: put them to sleep with venom then feed on the victims. However, Samuel et al do comment on demons' behaviour being weird, and this is part of the story of the Mother of All and Purgatory which is coming up.
The episode also has the Campbells kidnapping one of the djinn at the end of the episode which is something that will reoccur several times as the show goes on. For once, it seems the writers had something of a plan, but more on that in due course.
Speaking of Sam (which we were not), he takes umbrage at the fact Dean tried to free him from the cage, as if there was ever any version of events where Dean would not try to rescue his brother from the cage. This is exactly what should have happened with Cas in 15x19 Inherit the Earth because anything else is out of character. Once more, Dead Boy Detectives made a mockery of Supernatural for this. If your brother, sister, friend, parent, partner, or dog were in Hell or a similar place and you knew it was possible to go and try to save them, would you try? Of course you would.
Which makes Sam's betrayal between series 7 and 8 even worse, and one more reason why Dean should have pulled the trigger in 8x06 Southern Comfort.
Further to the subject of Sam, remember how he pestered Dean to get him to talk about Hell at the beginning of series 4? Well, now he does not want to talk about the cage. To quote Paula: Sam Winchester, thy name is hypocrite. Perhaps 'hypocrite' seems unfair, and to be clear it is not strictly speaking the hesitation to talk about his experience which makes him a hypocrite. Rather, it is his neglecting to apologise for not wanting to talk about it, or offering an explanation to the effect of 'I understand now why you refused to talk about Hell when you came back. I am unable to talk about it, and I regret trying to play therapist and patient with you.' Alas, this would require Sam seeing his brother as a valid human worthy of respect. But as those of you watching ahead know, this Sam is not quite Sam as he used to be.
Apropos Sam's time in the cage: the writers just had to make it So Much Worse than Dean's. They also spent way longer on its impact on Sam and his attempts to recover, whereas Dean's time in Hell has not even been mentioned for a very long time. While it was still a topic of conversation, it was barely discussed or dwelt on at all, much less shown, and its deleterious effects on Dean's mind were mostly used as humour fodder in 4x06 Yellow Fever.
A character I have barely mentioned so far is Samuel, Dean and Sam's grandad whom Dean met in 1973 in 4x03 In the Beginning... Other than that, Dean had no relationship with him, while Sam had presumably spent most of the preceding year with Samuel. I do not remember my reaction when first watching this episode because it was some time in early 2015 when I was preparing for my final exams at university. I think it intrigued me, and of course I recognised him from The X-Files, but the choice of Samuel feels a bit arbitrary at first. Why was he brought back from Heaven in particular? And why does he seem so shady? The fact that one of his very first interactions with Dean is him manipulating and guilting his grandson ('maybe now's not the time for golf') does not endear him. His motivations, well revealed, make him look stupid, because we have just seen the same thing happen with Adam in 5x18 Point of No Return.
After just over 3,500 words, it is time to draw this to a close. A few final points are that Sam is stupid for cutting his forearm for the spell, almost as stupid as all those times he and Dean cut their palm for blood. Cutting your forearm risks opening very important arteries and veins and thereby losing a lot of blood, as well as damaging ligaments which let you move your hand and fingers. And cutting your palm is going to risk damaging all the nerve endings, as well as having a gaping wound on a part of your body which moves and gets use a lot and therefore will be slow in healing. A much better option if one's own blood is needed for spellwork is to cut the outside of the arm.
Apropos blood, the effect of the djinn venom on Dean was to make him see his deepest fear, which was losing Lisa like John lost Mary, and of Azazel turning Ben into a psykid like he did to Sam. Interestingly Sam did not personally figure into this in any way, as one might have expected given some writers' insistence that Sam is the only person Dean cares about. Dean's behaviour around Lisa and Ben shows signs on paranoia and hints of control, in a vaguely similar way to how John controlled poco!Dean and poco!Sam.
This latter is part of the reason why Dean insisted he had to leave Lisa and Ben, in order to avoid inflicting the same damage on them that John did him. Dean is, of course, scared he is a bad person and that the cycle of abuse will continue. This is the same reason why Bobby did not want to have children of his own, and anybody who has watched Dead Boy Detectives will recognise the same in Charles. While understandable, it is a shame the show did little to challenge Dean on his fears. In fact, the messy ending Dean's time with Lisa and Ben will have later in the series is ultimately blamed on him being in their life in the first place. ...As if he does not already have enough guilt to start his own religion.
To her credit, Sera Gamble chose to let Dean stay with Lisa and Ben at the end of the episode. This choice is messier, but allows the possibility for Dean's fears about the monster lurking within to be challenged, as well as to heighten possible drama. It was also a refreshing change for Dean not to be Sam's doormat and to completely abandon his own life as soon as his brother turned up.
What a shame it did not last.
It is also worth noting that the episode is told mostly from Dean's point of view, and his grip on reality became skewed after the first few minutes when the dinn disguised as a waitress infected him. And in case you missed it, Dean's friend Sid said he had been buying him drinks for a year. A man had been buying Dean drinks for a year.
Like father, like son.
You can read more of my analyses here:
Series 1
Series 2
Series 3
Series 4
Series 5
Series 6
Sundry
You can read Paula’s review here and Demian’s here.
