from the episode transcript:
DEAN: I knew it. Ellicott did something to you.
SAM: For once in your life, just shut your mouth.
DEAN: What are you gunna do, Sam? Gun's filled with rock salt. It's not gunna kill me.
SAM shoots DEAN in the chest. The shot blasts him backwards through the hidden door to fall on the floor.
SAM: No. But it will hurt like hell.
but later, there’s a second shot:
DEAN: So what are you gunna do, huh? Are you gunna kill me?
SAM: You know what, I am sick of doing what you tell me to do. We're no closer to finding Dad today than we were six months ago.
DEAN: Well, then here. Let me make it easier for you. (He holds his Smith & Wesson toward SAM.) Come on. Take it. Real bullets are gonna work a hell of a lot better than rock salt.
SAM points the gun at DEAN's face.
DEAN: You hate me that much? You think you could kill your own brother? Then go ahead. Pull the trigger. Do it!
SAM pulls the trigger. The chamber is empty. He tries again, and once more. DEAN uses a right cross to knock SAM to the ground and struggles to get up.
DEAN, moving to stand over SAM: Man, I'm not going to give you a loaded pistol!
SAM stares up at him. DEAN delivers a vicious right cross to knock SAM out, almost falling as he does so.
so the sam hater is wrong, but both are true in a sense. sam knows about the rock salt and intentionally shoots dean to hurt, but not kill, him. but sam later shoots dean with what he thinks to be a loaded pistol, except nothing comes out.
for the second, dean goads him to shoot and clearly emptied the clip and chamber subtly before this (i suspect that dean wouldn’t bring an unloaded weapon into the asylum, so i’m assuming he had to have unloaded the weapon inside of it in order to distract/get the better of sam). sam is heavily under the influence of dr. ellicott and dean knows this, even says so right before egging this conversation on.
i remember being shocked when sam took the second shot the first time i watched because i wanted him to overcome his anger and for their brotherly bond to prevail over ellicott, and when that didn’t happen i spent a long time wondering how dean felt about it (how sam felt about it) and don’t recall there being many fix-it fics, for which i’m eternally disappointed.
i think it speaks to that notion of them “just starting to be brothers again” at this point in the narrative. they’re so estranged from one another in early season 1, there’s so much sam doesn’t know about himself and his family yet, and so much of his bond with dean he’s still re-forging. so many secrets and mutual resentments between them. this scene wouldn’t be possible later on. later, sam overcomes lucifer for dean in a similar scenario.
there’s this incredible growth in their bond that takes place from s1 to s5, from sam shooting dean (with an unloaded weapon but with the intent to kill) while under an outside force, to later overcoming the strongest outside force imaginable that’s literally in control of his body in order to save dean instead.
i do wonder (and wish there was more meta about, like i wish there were more fix-its for) how this moment catalyzed a change in their dynamic. if sam harboured guilt over it, despite knowing it was ellicott’s influence. if that helped catalyze his obsessive need to save dean a few episodes later in Faith, or if that was always going to go the way it did (probably yes, but the trajectory is still worth exploring, right?)
anyway using this moment to be anti sam or prop up dean is kind of ridiculous, but there’s a lot of meat in Asylum that still gets overlooked because the episode just has so much to it already to unpack (like sam and the psychiatrist, and dean flirting with sam about being the hotter psychic, and more).
