The other J2 and Deconstructing Brodependency
I love this scene. So okay, Jenny (The Sam mirror in this ep) is the bookish one who’s having a crisis of faith about the spell, because the two sisters are fumbling along trying to make this thing work to get their mom back. (heavy handed much?). Jamie (the Dean mirror) is trying to encourage her. She can totally do it because empty epithet about how great they are! I’m just going to post the dialogue mostly because, like the witch girls, Yockey and Tapping literally use a hammer on the starstruck audience in this episode.
Okay, so hammer to the head:
“So we were maybe too optimistic.”
“Don’t bail out now, Jenny.”
“I’m not, but if this goes wrong who knows what could happen.”
“Look, if you don’t think you can do this then it’s time to make a phone call.”
“No. I’m not asking for help.”
TRAIN WHISTLES
“We’re doing this for mom. She taught us everything, sacrified so much for us; sacrificed so many people for us. She was an amazing witch and she deserves to be alive, and gorgeous, and with us, and with this book we can absolutely bring her back.”
“I know. Just...just don’t yell at me.”
“Listen. I’m sorry. I know I’m the big sister and I’m supposed to be the strong one or whatever...”
“Yeah?”
“I just really miss her.”
“I do too.”
“I know. And I like really believe in us.”
“Jamie...I just want her back so bad.”
“And we’re going to get her back, even if we have to cast every spell in this book and crush the skulls of like a million people to make it happen.”
Let me remind you of how we opened. Dean brings Sam a bunch of books (just as Jamie gets Jenny the Black Grimoire:
“So this is everything that even mentions some alternate reality, so there’s bound to be something in here that talks about the apocalypse world, right?”
“Yeah maybe.”
“Dude.”
“I’m just saying, Dean, Jack was our way over there, obviously, so with him gone...”
“Okay well Jack’s been gone before. We found him once, we can find him again.”
“No no, he didn’t run away. He is literally in an alternate reality.”
“Okay so we’ll just come up with a plan B. You said it yourself, we just keep our heads down and do the work.”
“You said that.”
“And I was right. Yeah. You read, do your Sam thing, and I’ll go for a beer run.”
“Yeah.”
“We should probably loop Cas in at some point.”
“We’ll fill him in when he calls, he checks in every day.”
Okay, so what I’m saying is that the two conversations mirror each other, and are meant to. Jenny/Sam want their Mom back and are looking in old spell books. Both are willing to do almost anything to achieve their goal, but with the girls, their mother also held a sort of John role as well. It’s funny, because you see, just as John impressed a ‘you do anything for your family’ ethos in the boys, clearly Jenny and Jamie were given a similar ethos from theirs, only instead of breaking the law, witch girls count love in the number of bodies dropped.
The spell books aren’t the solution, of course, and doing the spell without Rowena/Jack/Cas is pointless, and it’s not going to get your mom back, it’s going to make it a thousand times worse. (i.e. you need to learn to depend on people who aren’t your sibling)
So Jamie/Dean, while being the grown up/older sibling, are holding things together for the sake of the younger, who at once bears all the load of having to do the work. Jenny/Sam are stubborn and prideful, because they’ve been taught to value their independence (”There’s no I in Team” Lucifer says to Cas), but the older sibling also depends on them having their shit together, and is more fragile than they try to make out. Jamie saying “I just really miss her” is transposed to Dean, effectively, because even though he’s not showing it - he’s being strong for Sam’s sake - we all know he didn’t react well to finding out Mary was being tortured in hellworld.
So Jamie/Dean both suggest bringing in help, and Jenny/Sam refuse. And Jamie/Dean both use empty epithets and encouragement to drive them along: “I like really believe in us--and we’re going to get her back, even if we have to cast every spell in this book and crush the skulls of like a million people to make it happen.”/“Okay well Jack’s been gone before. We found him once, we can find him again--Okay so we’ll just come up with a plan B. You said it yourself, we just keep our heads down and do the work.” These are empty. They’re “I believe in you and that’s enough” when that only ever leads to zombie moms (or the release of the Darkness, or Sam almost dying, or--well, you get the point).
Jamie and Jenny really screw up, and they rely on the thinnest of good luck in their experiences to get them through life. Hell, they cheat their way across the country and leave a trail of bodies behind them using only the things their mother taught them. Three rules. They don’t pay for their own gas. It leaves such a thin line between this J2 and the Winchesters that the whole thing is impossible to miss.
And where does their codependency lead them? To stabbing each other to death. That’s where it leads--to a point where they can’t take it any more, and where their luck runs out. They get outmatched, someone else wins the damage roll, and that’s it, lights out.
I’m sure there’s a lot more mirroring them in this ep, but I wasn’t able to appreciate just how much until the rewatch, and I wanted to come and scream it at everyone a little bit. It’s so clever. (I would also be screaming about Rowena’s relationship with the boys but it seems like folks have got that covered, haha, I’m taking a back seat to enjoy all that for the time being.)
Besides, episodes which tear apart the brodependency are wonderful. As much as I love Dean and Sam together, I want them to be independent units who won’t shatter into pieces if they’re not, you know? But also I don’t want them to stab each other to death with knives...
Incidentally, that’s two episodes in a row where Sam is SO FRAGILE and yet ready to fight to defend himself that it’s actually shown to the audience via. his clothing. Pics under the cut:
