6.02, Two and a Half Men.
I'll start this one with a reminder from my post about 6.01 this morning:
From the moment Sam shows up at Dean's house, it's clear that even after a year of "normalcy" that Dean is barely holding on. But this also all speaks to the Performing Dean mask that Dean had possibly sold to Sam just a little bit too successfully for his entire life. (but more on that in the report from 6.02, since that's the main takeaway from that episode...)
With his soul, Sam had at least had enough empathy to see and understand how his behavior affected and influenced Dean, but without his soul... ehhhhhh... he's unfortunately absolutely CONVINCED of the soundness of his own cold, calculating assessments. The trouble with that is he can't even begin to see how his calculations are based on numbers that just do not add up, and he lacks the humanity to see his own essential failure here.
And again, it's not Sam's fault, but boy howdy does it make it hard to like Sam much here...
I know this is all intentional, hinting at just how messed up Sam is, and the fact that only Dean seems so profoundly bothered by Sam's un-Sam-like behavior says an incredible lot about the imbalance in their fundamental relationship. The proof through his own "logical" assumptions of Sam's wild misunderstanding of who Dean is as a person, how the sum total of his life experience was so profoundly different from Sam's-- largely through Dean's efforts at parenting and shielding Sam from the worst of their young lives and how much Dean clearly sheltered Sam from experiencing the same loss of his entire childhood that Dean experienced... it's all painfully illustrated in just a few exchanges:
[Dean is grabbing different baby products]
Sam: So how do you know all this?
Dean: Uh, Lisa's got a baby niece. So I've been on a few milk runs.
Sam: Huh.
Dean: Shut it.
Sam: [laughing] I just said, 'huh.'
Dean: I just said, 'shut it.'
This... this is obviously a lie. I mean, think back to the first time we met Dean in 1.01, when he was two months shy of his fifth birthday and had Baby Sam shoved in his arms and was told to take his brother and never look back... Do we really, REALLY think John Winchester assumed the "mother" role to baby Sam here? Or do you think Dean began assuming a lot of the baby care himself? How long do we really think it was before Dean started getting left while John went out "learning the truth" about what happened to Mary and started leaving Sam and Dean behind? I mean, clearly he couldn't leave a five year old to care for an infant alone, and they did have a long string of "babysitters," but honestly, how much do we think Dean started protecting and caring for Sam to fill in the clear gaps in care here? And look, the fact that Dean makes this excuse that he learned about baby care second-hand during his year of "normalcy" with Lisa, rather than through his own "the story became the story" and "sanitized for Sammy" years of caring for his own little brother... well, that just cements how much Dean actively STILL tries to keep this truth about their lives from him even now.
SAM: Dean, you're just going to make it cranky again.
DEAN: Shh, it's working. Okay, if I put you down, you gonna be a man about it?
DEAN puts BOBBY JOHN down in the crib. BOBBY JOHN goes to sleep.
SAM: Huh.
DEAN: What?
SAM: You're just, uh, actually, not awful at that.
DEAN: Dude, I'm barely keeping that thing alive.
SAM: No, no, no, seriously. You've got a whole Dr. Huxtable vibe coming off of you. You're like... father material.
And of course Dean brushes this off. But like... Sam is honestly shocked by how competent Dean is with small child care. Dean brushes it off as a result of his recent interactions with Ben, but playing Dad to a teenager is MILES different from caring for a helpless baby. NONE of the skills dean displays with Bobby John are even REMOTELY things he would've learned from caring for Ben... and Sam just... buys it...
except, he doesn't buy the lie Dean's trying to sell himself:
SAM: You mean Ben.
DEAN: Yeah, I mean Ben. I mean, I know he's not my kid, but I don't know, I'm starting to feel like yeah, he is. Then I think about the way we grew up, I don't know, I kind of feel like I have a chance to do something different with Ben, you know?
SAM: You sure about that?
DEAN: What do you mean?
SAM: Look, you clearly care about the kid.
DEAN: But?
SAM: But moving them around? Keeping them on lockdown? I mean, you do have them on lockdown, right? How is any of that different from how we were raised?
DEAN: So you're saying... I'm not shoving anybody into this life, okay? This is temporary.
SAM: Dad always said it was temporary, Dean. He said it for 22 years. Look, I get it. You want to watch out for them. That's great. I'm just asking, how do you do that and not turn into Dad?
Because what Sam can see that Dean can't is that Dean is attempting to protect Ben not in the way that John failed to protect Dean himself, but how terrifyingly similar his attempted care of Ben resembles exactly SAM'S experience being raised by John (and by proxy, Dean). This is the "story became the story" attempt at parenting that Dean learned to apply to Sam. Even though it wasn't Dean's experience AT ALL. Dean was the one John took shooting when he was six. He was the one who knew the truth about monsters and hunting while being told to make up lies to tell Sam about it all, to hide it from him as long as possible, letting Sam live a much more sheltered life until he reached a point where he just couldn't anymore.
DEAN enters the garage. The trunk of the Impala is open and BEN is holding DEAN's sawed-off shotgun.
DEAN : What the hell? Hey, hey, give me that.
DEAN takes the gun from BEN, puts it back in the trunk, and closes the trunk.
DEAN: What do you think you're doing?
BEN: I just wanted to see it.
DEAN: Listen to me. Don't ever open this trunk. Do you understand me?
BEN: Okay, sorry. But I don't get it. You had your own rifle when you were my age.
DEAN: Ben, mark my words. You will never, ever shoot a gun, ever.
BEN: I know what's going on. You think something might be coming for us.
DEAN:There's nothing coming for us.
BEN: I could do what you do. You could teach me how to shoot--
DEAN: Shut up about the freaking gun, okay!
BEN: Okay. Sorry. I'm sorry.
Well there's a heck of a lot of the worst kind of foreshadowing there, but also a heck of a lot of insight into the difference between Sam and Dean's respective childhoods. It makes me think very hard about 3.08, and how we learned Sam finally uncovered the truth about John, hunting, and monsters... and the fact that Dean (even at age 12, nearly 13) felt that was a result of his own personal failure.
And here we are looking at just another incarnation of that same broken family dynamic, playing out because Dean is basically flying by the seat of his pants here.
