#spn 5.01

[i-make-fun-of-spn-characters]

[spngeorg]

Episode 83, 5.01 Sympathy for the Devil

Welcome to Season 5, where every angel suddenly has a sword with zero explanation! That sentence sums up my general feelings about season five in a meta fashion. It’s all very Chuck.

Dean is having a really hard time dealing with the fallout of s4-- the devil’s on the loose, and it’s all because he failed Sam, and because Sam basically renounced him, trusted a demon more than him...

Sam was manipulated all last season into Doing The Thing He Did, so convinced of his own power, his own righteousness, thought he was saving the world instead of damning it... and explained away Dean’s hesitancy at all of it as “weakness.”

Cas is resurrected for the first time and is “cut off from Heaven,” gradually falling closer to humanity, and also slowly realigning his faith in his terrifying new reality.

and a bunch of other stuff! lol... it’s a season premiere, there’s lots of stuff... Becky the Really Unflattering Fan Avatar (who was more “the fan Chuck chose because her understanding of the line between fiction and reality was just as askew as Chuck’s was and that suited his purposes”), Nick the vessel of convenience for Lucifer, the return of Meg, Bobby paralyzed and in the hospital after stabbing himself to save Dean... so much... maybe a little too much...

Here’s some links that may be of interest:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

Rewatch notes from June 2019

Lizbob’s Dean and Cas Are In Love series posts for this episode (part 1) and (part 2)

September 2017, notes on retcons, destiny, and free will

Article from SpoilerTV with a page of the script

A bit on the Angel Blade retcon (post 1) and (post 2)

Listen now on AnchorFM, or wherever you enjoy podcasts!

[foxthefanboi]

Broken trust. 5x01 vs 9x12

[nancylou444]

Rich Dean wears his shirt opened up that way because Rich Sam has a thing for his collarbones like in Becky's fic.

😏😏

[destielette1]

The lack of tact runs in the celestial family 🤷‍♀️

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Bonus:

In the family by marriage too

[mittensmorgul]

I just rewatched 7.08, and while think I ran through this bit of the loop once already since 15.04 aired, I didn’t make any comments on it (must’ve been a busy day for me or something...). Anyway, the last time I posted rewatch notes for this episode was way back in July 2019:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186196686115/708-season-seven-time-for-a-wedding-sams

(actually, trying to do TNT loop math in my head, I think I may have watched 7.08 shortly BEFORE 15.04 aired, which is probably why I don’t yet have better rewatch notes yet... but please do go read what I wrote in July, because heck, 15.04 just reinforces ALL of it)

(no, really, please go read that post before continuing on this one... it’s not very long, but incredibly relevant to the transformation in Becky we see in 15.04, AS WELL AS DEEPLY RELEVANT TO THE DECEPTION SAM IS ABOUT TO BE LED THROUGH BY CHUCK OVER THE NEXT SEVEN EPISODES)

And remember, while you’re reading all of this, that the person who wrote 7.08... was Andrew Dabb...

7.08 was Becky’s Lowest Moment, but Sam... gave her the power to find her own salvation. We wouldn’t see the payoff for eight more years, but HECK WAS IT EVER SATISFYING. My only complaint here is that SAM has no idea how profoundly he was able to affect Becky’s life for the better. He and Dean remember her as “superfan99″ or whatever, the woman so obsessed she’d deceived herself into believing that Sam actually loved her back, and nearly lost her soul to a demon, and was willing to literally trade Sam’s free will over it. Sam and Dean don’t know that, after these events, she found a healthy and satisfying life, with a loving family and a thriving business, all because of this:

SAM: You roofied me! BECKY: A roofie? I'd never. We had a great time together. You were happy.

And yeah, while under the effects of a love potion, Sam hadn’t questioned anything, hadn’t worried about his own free will, in other words. Which, in context of what Lilith would ask Dean in 15.05, seems effectively along those exact same lines-- 

Ashley: It's all just so random and awful. Wouldn't it be great if everything was just planned out for you... if it was all just already decided? Dean: No, not really.

OF COURSE NOT! But back in 7.08 Becky was in that exact mindset:

BECKY: He said it wouldn't even work unless you already loved me, deep down. It just activates it. SAM: So you think I love you? BECKY: Deep, deep down? SAM: Then untie me. BECKY stuffs a handkerchief in SAM's mouth. SAM: [muffled] No. No! BECKY: You're still working through your emotions.

and then, after Guy tells her she’ll have to pay for the potion from now on, now that she’s “addicted” to her false relationship with Sam, it’s gonna start costing her directly to keep it:

BECKY: I know what I am, okay? I'm a loser. In school, in life. Guess that's why I like you so much. SAM: What? BECKY: I mean, not that you're a loser, but you had that whole character arc about being a freak, and... I can relate. SAM: [muffled] Oh, my God. BECKY: Honestly... The only place people understood me was the message boards. They were grumpy and overly literal, but at least we shared a common passion. And I'll take it, you know? Then I met you guys – the real Sam and Dean. And I started dating Chuck. And everything was... amazing. But you left, and Chuck dumped me. I think I intimidated him with my vibrant sexuality. I just want someone who loves me for me! Is that too much to ask? [SAM says something muffled. BECKY snatches the handkerchief out of his mouth.] BECKY: What? SAM: If you want somebody to love you for you, maybe don't drug them. BECKY: But I want you! And this is the only way! [BECKY takes the vial out of her pocket.] SAM: Becky. Becky, you're better than this. BECKY: That's sweet, but... I'm not so sure.

We didn’t see what happened to her from the time this episode ended, and the beginning of 15.04, but heck... it’s clear she took Sam’s words to heart and made real changes in her life. Because of what Sam told her, she became better than that.

And we had to wonder how much of what we knew of Becky before, how badly she’d been directly manipulated by Chuck into the story, because she was vulnerable, because she was susceptible back then, was a direct result of Chuck. Not just of him pulling a random obsessed fan into the story because he knew she’d do exactly what he wanted, because she was an easy mark BECAUSE of everything she confessed to Sam in 7.08, but literally because Chuck manipulated her into all of this.

Which Lilith basically says flat-out in 15.05.

And which Chuck will use to much subtler effect with Eileen over the next few episodes after that.

Between 15.04 and 15.05, these two specific women directly connected to Chuck through 4.18 (for Lilith), and through 5.01 and 5.09 (for Becky)-- and specifically connected to Chuck via themes of deception and manipulation, and even MORE specifically connected to Sam through manipulative romantic propositions... it makes me wonder how ANYONE could watch 15.06 and think everything was clearly exactly what it looked like on the surface, and not even bothering to question whether Chuck had his grubby mitts all over that entire situation from the start.

This... is Dabb’s story. This is how he’s unmasked Chuck’s manipulative treachery.

And if you think the kiss between Sam and Eileen in 15.09 “makes them clearly romantic” or think “they kissed, it’s canon!” Then Sam and Becky are equally “canon.” Because Chuck was equally complicit in both.

I mean, even if you DO feel that Sam and Eileen have some great romantic connection, I humbly invite you to at least understand why it makes me deeply, DEEPLY uncomfortable to see it that way.... Eileen may not have used a love potion here, but neither she nor Sam had known how much of her actions Chuck had been affecting-- love-potion style-- between 15.06 and 15.09. And until they sort out their own feelings from the story Chuck forced them into in order to drive his own tragic romance narrative, it’s impossible for me to feel any sort of squee about them as a romantic couple. Because Chuck is a shitty writer, and lies and manipulation are at the very core of his story.

And I’ll apologize, again, to everyone who is able to divorce these themes from 15.06 and watch it without the baggage of this specific sort of emotional manipulation. Hell, let’s call it what it is. It’s gaslighting, and it’s something I’m personally hypervigilant about, because that’s how this sort of trauma works. But it’s also literally the MAIN THEME OF S15 AS A WHOLE, and how each of the characters are coping with this theme and how it directly relates to their own past history. It feels irresponsible to me to handwave the reality here to insist that in this one instance it’s “cute” or “romantic,” just because the result is personally desirable. That’s... the whole freaking POINT.

And it’s set up in 7.08, by Dabb, and made blatantly clear in 15.04 and 15.05.

I guess I just like Eileen as a character too much to wish a noncon romance on her, even if it’s with Sam, and I can’t unsee it as that. (Especially with the fact that Chuck only brought her back to romance Sam so that he could kill her again to break Sam’s will. Chuck himself intended her as nothing more than a manipulative tool for the sake of manpain.) Will she be back of her own free will? Heck, if so, then I’ll question it, but I’ll accept her choice. I couldn’t do it, myself. It would be like Sam going back to Becky and trying to make it work with her. It doesn’t look any different to me below the surface. On the surface, it’s different because Sam and Eileen actually LIKED each other before, years in the past before her untimely death. But take that layer away, at there’s no difference in how I see what happened from 15.06 on, because none of it was actually real. All I, personally, can see is the manipulation. Yet one more reason I truly appreciate the tag “get fucked chuck.”

[oceansima]

I still remember how beautiful this show once was. It is not all bad today, but it is somehow another show, a show I still adore because of the glamour that is hiding in its core.

[super-sootica]

When a angel loves some humans