I didn’t watch Metamorphosis today on TNT. But I was thinking about it last night when I knew it was coming on. It’s such a powerful Sam episode. He bares his soul to Dean, and although we’ve seen him open up again here and there, I think it’s the last time he does it quite like that. I think this is when Sam learned that Dean was never going to really “know” him or understand how he felt. That they were always going to be separated by what had been done to him as a child. And he realized that Dean would really rather not know how much pain Sam keeps on the inside. Jensen is very good at showing Dean’s surprise every time Sam shares a tidbit of it, and at showing his rejection of it as well. Dean is the one who hates himself, only sees himself as Daddy’s hammer and on and on. Sam is the confident, superior one.
Dean has always been a hot mess. He wouldn’t have sold his soul like it was nothing if he wasn’t. But in this episode, he’s just gotten back from hell and discovered that “Sammy” died the day his soul was dragged to hell. He comes back to a Sam he doesn’t understand, mostly because he never really did. All he saw was the smart, independent little brother who left him for a better life. He refused to see the desperate guy who would rather have died than be the last Winchester standing. The guy who had to live with the fact that his whole family had died because there was something wrong with him. Dean reacts poorly to finding out just how desperate Sam is, to say the least.
And something else that occurred to me. Not only is Sam dealing with being the cause of his family’s demise but Dean, whether consciously or unconsciously, has something that he can manipulate Sam with for the rest of his life. He does it consciously in season 3 of course. But for the rest of his life, Sam will always be the guy that Dean went to hell for. To everyone. Because even though in his heart of hearts, Dean knows he didn’t really do it for Sam, that is how it’s framed and that is how Sam will see it and it is a hair shirt he can never shed. And because Sam reacted to the grief and anger of it by throwing his principals out the window and doing something Dean expressly forbid him to do, Dean can justify his own bad reaction. The words might never be spoken out loud, but it’s there. Sam betrayed Dean’s sacrifice. Even though technically, Dean made a decision that would make Sam’s life a literal living hell for years to come and was pretty much the beginning of all of the bad things that happened afterward to both of them. Sam was the betrayer, not Dean. Even jumping into hell for everyone’s sins was not framed as Sam being a hero. It was framed as what he deserved for not being the guy Dean and the show told us he was supposed to be. And it would be many seasons before anybody said differently. Is it any wonder that Sam holds all of those feelings of inadequacy inside until he’s under so much duress that he loses his grip?
And like I said, I know that he has moments in later seasons when he might let some of it out, i. e., the trials, but he is never this angry, defiant guy who still thought he had some control of his life again.















