WFB Deja Vu Review – Supernatural 9.04 “Slumber Party”
I hatched the idea of the WFB team watching Supernatural’s season 9 reruns because the premier episode “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here” was laden with hidden implications that could only be understood after knowing the outcomes of the various storylines. The theory was that the Supernatural writers might have introduced key motivational themes or foreshadowed events much earlier in the season than we originally detected. That theory was resoundingly proven during “Slumber Party”. During Tuesday’s live tweet rewatch party, I felt as if I was watching the story for the first time! So much of the dialogue was layered with double or even triple meanings! So what did we all see?
Nightsky
Overall
What a phenomenal episode. So many layers that we couldn’t see or understand until we saw the entirety of season 9 unfold:
Possession – Dean’s eyes flashing green and being taken over by the witch. Foreshadowing of finale? At the time, we focused on the witch’s possession of the brothers as a parallel to Sam/Zeke but it paralleled the present plot for Sam AND foreshadowed the future plot for Dean. The witch’s assumption of Sam and Dean’s body and soul (or mind?) was an even more perfect parallel to the Mark of Cain because Dean’s eyes changed color and his actions were not his own, yet she didn’t actually possess him, i.e. the witch didn’t enter as demons and angels enter their vessels. She either mind-controlled him or actually changed him, as the Mark has changed Dean. Also, twice someone said “I know you’re in there” to the witch’s victims, but the original personality wasn’t able to assert itself against the evil power. Very scary implication for Demon!Dean…and Sam.
Books! – Dorothy was openly resentful of her father’s books but Charlie vehemently defended them. Later episodes had Metatron trashing the Carver Edlund books (i.e. Kripke’s story). Such a strong focus on someone else writing about a character’s life. Which leads us to …
Story!! – Sam: “It’s our story, so we get to write it”. What an incredible foreshadowing of Metatron’s belief that he could control people’s lives by dictating their story, and his downfall when Team Free Will wrote their own version and thwarted him. Dorothy also said “…but I know the truth…” when she was talking to Charlie about the rewrite of her life in the Oz books. That seemed to reflect Dean’s version of the truth versus Sam’s version, or Castiel vs. Gadreel, or Castiel vs. Metatron… I totally missed how much the truth of books and the individual nature of a story were themes in the first half of season 9.
Sam and Dean just look and act so normal here. Everything post-“Purge” now seems so harsh. Hadn’t realized how much I miss these boys or how dark the second half of S9 became. We watched Dean change slowly but seeing him before the Mark really accentuates Dean’s rage and the stark contrast. Jensen has been commenting on how much he missed the “old” Dean. I had not realized how well Jensen had morphed into the angry, dangerous Dean.
Strong female duo of Dorothy and Charlie foreshadows the second female duo of Sheriff Mills and Alex/Annie.
Random Thoughts
Commodore 64! How many of the younger viewers actually understand that reference?
Cut out the witch’s tongue. Don’t mess with Dorothy! Hunter to the core.
Love that the lethal weapon was a woman’s accessory. More power to the female persona/characters.
Gerry
I’m glad I rewatched this one, because I liked it much more this time around. Last time, I thought Charlie was just a bit too Mary Sue as she jumped into hunting – and I still think Robbie Thompson needs to be wary of how much of a self-insert character she is.
This time round, I focused much less on Charlie and much more on how Thompson is playing with the idea of story and the way that resonates with where Sam and Dean are in their own narrative. There are so many resonances with Thompson’s “Metafiction.” I love it when the arcs show signs of tender loving care, instead of lore shifting under everyone’s feet.
Thompson really highlights the idea of owning one’s own narrative, which is another way of defining free will, a key theme in Supernatural. Sam and Dean took control of their own stories in seasons one to five, as they refused to play their fated parts. Now they have to define who they are, not just who they are not. I think Sam in particular is still struggling with this part of his story (and so are the writers).
I also loved Sam’s exploration of the concept of home. Sam and Dean both identify the Impala as home. If Sam had not, he could not have defeated Lucifer in “Swan Song.” But the MOL bunker offers its own sense of home at this point in the story, at least to Dean. Sam is resistant. In a lovely moment so inappropriate for heart baring discussion, but so necessary, Sam tells Dean he didn’t have the same experience of home Dean did. And his own attempts to make one have been disasters.
Dean tells Sam that they have to work with they have, not with what they wish they had. It’s a fair point. Sam has always seen the mundane world as an ideal, and his experience with Amelia was coloured by the arrival of Don as the fly in the ointment, rather than an evaluation of how he fit that life. If he lets go the idea of a Hallmark home, will the home he defines for himself be more authentic and therefore more satisfying? I’ve always thought Sam’s arc is a journey to being comfortable in his own skin rather than trying to be somebody else. It is a step forward to see Sam allow Dean to see him dropping his defences to view the bunker as home.
And that of course was so sad, because the bunker has been compromised. It’s no longer safe. There was so much foreshadowing in this episode, from possessed Sam and Dean to books being both false and true at the same time. The author is both dead and communicating truth through time. We will see later the Winchester Bible can be burned, but burning books doesn’t destroy their power.
False and true at the same time also ran through Dean’s story. We see him abusing Sam’s control of his own narrative by bringing Gadreel back into the story to save Charlie. Gadreel is both hero and villain, roles he will continue to balance until he makes his final choice. And that illustrates the shades of grey in Dean’s decision to save Sam. Not only is Sam alive because of Gadreel, so are Cas and Charlie.
Good stories can explore a theme from more than one angle. I just wish we had seen more of Sam’s viewpoint. I do think the finale showed Sam did appreciate that his possession had some good consequences as well as bad. Kevin died. Charlie and Cas lived. Maybe that doesn’t have to be reconciled, just accepted.
Bardicvoice
Random Thoughts
If the opening scenes of this episode don’t serve as the opener on the S9 DVDs to the Jerry Wanek-hosted special features on the MOL bunker, I will be very surprised! (I was going to say I’d eat my hat or something similarly inedible, but – that first scene with Dean and Sam turning on the lights in Everybody Hates Hitler could also work as an effective intro … *grin*)
Too bad they couldn’t/didn’t use the handcrafted chess set fan Sandra Paola Echeverri presented to Jared way back at Eyecon in September 2008, but it might have been a bit too on the nose in the “forecasting the future” department, since the chessmen included such recognizable figures as Bobby Singer and the Yellow-Eyed Demon! The devil’s trap design on the chessboard would have been a nice touch, though … 🙂
Loved Tiio Horn as Dorothy! She kicked ass in a wardrobe inspired by Amelia Earhart.
Follow the cables instead of follow the yellow brick road!
Home versus work: Sam not treating the bunker as home really hurt Dean. But also pointed up some of the quintessential differences between the brothers, one of them being that Dean ALWAYS made the best of wherever he was, while Sam always searched for the better place where he belonged and thus never found it. And that made Sam’s comments at the end, calling the bunker home, a piece of deep hope … that just kept diminishing over time. Damn it, I want them both to share a home, and if not the bunker and the Impala, it will never be anywhere.
I could appreciate Charlie’s desire for magic and quests. I think we all wish for romance in our lives. But sometimes, there’s nothing worse than adventure … and that’s sad.
So: could Dorothy’s binding spell be used again to freeze demon!Dean in time?
Crowley immediately recognized the Wicked Witch; whoa!
“Help the smartest person in the room.” Way to go, Sam, Dean, and Robbie!!
Poppy bullets: the heritage of silver, salt rounds, and bullets carved with devil’s traps, and the first hint of more, including bullets made from angel blades.
Dean’s immediate choice, no question: “Save her.”
“You’re not a real hunter until you’ve died and come back again.” That line of Dorothy’s made me grin, considering how often the hunters we’ve known and loved have died – and come back again.
“Sometimes real life is darker than fiction.”
“End of the day, it’s our story – so we get to write it.” And that, for me, is the defining line of the episode and of the show overall: the demonstration of free will allowing us to defeat destiny, fate, and any and all forms of predestination by writing our own stories to reflect our own decisions. That doesn’t free us from the effects on our own lives of the decisions made by others – for example, Charlie wouldn’t even have been alive to go her own way but for Dean’s decision to tell Zeke/Gadreel to save her no matter the cost, even as Sam wouldn’t have been alive but for Dean’s decision to trick him into unwittingly accepting possession by an angel – but we do always have the freedom to choose how we react to choices made by others and where we go on from there.
Nate
Random Thoughts
Here are the points I made during my live-tweet session. The sub-points are the detail I couldn’t fit into 140 characters!
It’s a lot harder to argue against Charlie’s Mary Sue tendencies when the recap recites most of them in a row.
o At least this episode and her previous one did a lot to deepen and balance out her character.
I do believe this is the first and only time we see the key actually open the bunker.
They really should have dedicated an entire season to exploring the bunker.
There’s an idea: What if Sam had turned out to be a total fanboy of Dorothy’s?
o It would have made for a comical, yet thoughtful, parallel between him and Becky.
I’m actually disappointed Crowley couldn’t scrawl up a spell to escape using the crayon & paper.
It’s funny watching Sam point out their own plot hole with Cas being kicked out.
o Yes I still say Gadreel’s talk with Dean should have happened before he resurrected Cas and then Dean explains to Cas why he can’t bring the guy along.
“Let’s track angels” – another idea dropped.
“Men of Letters IT support”, I SO want to do that show (given that IT support is my day job)
The scene transitions are VERY good in this episode.
“It sounds like a YA novel if you say it out loud.” Or a failed #SPN spinoff. (burn by @rthompson1138 there lol)
“It detects global badness”. ‘I’m surprised we didn’t burn it out in the last 5 years.’
I’ll believe in an ACTUAL Land of Oz before I believe a windows 8 tablet can work with anything over 6 months old.
Seriously, I can’t list the headaches just trying to run old games I loved in the 80s/90s. #windowsSucks
Kudos to the VFX guys for the tile list on Charlie’s tablet though. The “SPN by Carver Edlund” was esp. a great touch
“A top secret place I call Amazon.” Boys vs that website would have also been a better season arc.
This episode would have been best of the season had they actually braided Sam’s hair.
o And then frustrated with the result, HE ACTUALLY GETS A HAIRCUT! (then wonders whether he actually wanted his hair cut or if it was the angel’s influence)
“This isn’t our home” – S9 award for most organic & best brother discussion
“Where’s all this?” Game of Thrones? SPN has far more magic than GoT does!
So they knew the bonds wouldn’t last forever on the witch but they left her in them? Dorothy should’ve asked for a jail.
Poor Jenkins. Final words of warning to the person that will never hear them (Charlie)
So the MoL accepted females as hunters but not members? I don’t really buy this arbitrary sexism.
o I mean especially back then, “Men” of anything could just as easily apply to “human” of anything, it was a common language convention.
Crowley’s a fan of the wicked witch… so many questions & possible plot threads…
o Did he read the books? Is “Wicked” his favorite musical? Did he actually visit Oz at some point?
“Holy oil and a lighter” …Shouldn’t that have about the same effect on a demon as any regular oil & a lighter?
Would have been funny had the MoL actually not had the key.
“Split up, cover more ground.” Don’t mention to anyone that the Witch can take over minds…
Guest star is dead, everybody take a drink. #SPNdrinkinggame
Kudos to the writer for at least giving an excuse for why Gadreel couldn’t do more in this episode.
I mean S9 really should not have had resurrection in it but…
We really should have seen more of Dean geeking out over all the classic cars he now has.
Man, Charlie’s one-liner was so 80s. I feel 20 years younger.
“Come along, Red.” And thus we discover Charlie is actually Little Red Riding Hood.
And best closing to an episode this season.
***
So there you have our impressions second time around! Gerry, Bardicvoice, Bookdahl and I also had several questions about the episode answered by the omnipresent Robbie Thompson, plus we tweeted many other quick observations and off-handed remarks not included here. If you missed the live tweet session, check out our Twitter accounts if you want to catch up (Sorry – we’re all new to this so we forgot to use the hashtag #WFBRewatch that would have made that so much easier! We did use #Supernatural though. We’ll get it right one of these days!) Nate rewatches and live tweets on Wednesday mornings (U.S. time) once the CW website posts the episode. It would be great if some of you in other time zones could join him so he has tweeting company!
Let’s hear from you! What did you think this time?
- I’m the Co-Editor-in-Chief, Social Media Manager (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram), Live Tweet Moderator, reviewer and feature writer for The Winchester Family Business. Before joining the Supernatural Family, I worked for 22 years at a global consulting firm, but after years of long hours, high pressure and rigorous demands, I quit corporate life to raise my children. After my first Supernatural convention, I was driven to share my shock and awe in a two-part essay that The WFB was brave enough to post, and my second life calling, that of being a writer, began. My first published book, Fan Phenomena: The Twilight Saga was released in late 2016. Please share in my cross-fandom excitement by following its Facebook page @FanPhenomenaTwilight and my personal Twitter account @LSAngel2. You can read about this whole miraculous transition in my chapter in Family Don’t End With Blood, published in May 2017.
Yay!! I’m so glad that most of you loved this episode. It is definitely one of my favorites from S9. It was fun. Exploring the MOL, kitchens, garages, Sam’s bedroom…loved it. Sam actually smiling for most of the episode, Dean actually bitch-facing here and there. I didn’t think about following the cables=follow the YBR how clever is that. I loved the witch, her interactions with Crowley (snarky as ever). The flying monkeys were uber-cool. Charlie wanting a quest and getting it with hero Dorothy…in OZ…who wouldn’t want that. I love reading everyones take on this episode. You all see so much more than I do it really enhances the story for me. Thank you all. Love these re-reviews.
I actually have issues with Sam’s acceptance of the bunker as “home”. To me it’s just one more instance of Sam stating how he feels and what he wants from (in this case) a home and Dean bulldozing over it. Dean is happy. Dean wants Sam to want the same type of home that Dean wants. Dean tells him to accept compromises, so that Sam will accept what Dean wants him to accept. There is no indication that Dean even LISTENS to how Sam feels about what he wants in a home. I also was not sure if Sam meant it when he used the “there’s no place like home” line. He may have decided that he feels that way, although I saw nothing in the episode that would have changed his mind about it. He also may have been giving Dean what Dean wants, to hear that Sam sees the bunker as home. Honestly we also don’t know if Sam said it, or if “Zeke” said it. Since we don’t ever see his room again in this season we don’t know if he made it his. We don’t see him populating the place with things that make it his home.
I personally find it distressing that the one thing Sam has been pretty set on is wanting safe and secondarily wanting nothing to do with the supernatural. We and they know at the end of the episode that the Wicked Witch was able to take over both Sam and Dean. We also find out that the MOLs that Dorothy knew were murdered by the WW in the bunker. All of that underscores that the bunker is not safe, no matter what the MOLs liked to think. Frankly I am personally bugged that Sam isn’t permitted to even dream of getting a little apartment/cabin/house a few minutes drive from the bunker where he can set up wards and make sure that the only supernatural items in his home are any books or movies he wants to watch. I find Sam’s “there’s no place like home” to be heartbreakingly sad as it means he is giving up more and more of what he wants to be happy, just so Dean can be happy.
Or he might think of it as a home. Who knows? Why would a little cabin with wards be any safer than the bunker? I don’t think anywhere is 100% safe for them. I think that has been established. Since neither one of them have really had a home for the majority of their lives and Sam has no memory at all of one it may well represent home for them. It isn’t a shabby motel, it has tons of resources, it is a place to retreat to when the current fight is over. Maybe that’s enough. Plus I have always felt that in the final analysis ‘home’ is each other. In spite of everything I think that is their comfort zone. It would be awesome if Sam went off and found a safe place where he can be happy. I just don’t think it is in the cards for him. Or Dean.
We got to see Sam’s room for a second when he pulled a gun on Dean! 🙂
I enjoyed this episode, a very clever Supernatural twist on the Wizard of Oz. VFX were stellar, and the new MOL rooms (computer room, garage) were outstanding. And, I enjoyed seeing some of the history of the bunker – hope this is revisited in Season 10. I agree with Gerry about Charlie become a little bit too “Mary Sue” at this point, though it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the episode.
Commodore 64! – I still have one boxed up on the basement; was still working when I tested it out last year.
So, the bunker is warded against all known evil, except the wicked witch, and Crowley, and the Mark of Cain….
Like Nate, I was disappointed when they dropped the whole tracking angels thing. Just as they seemed to drop the things that Dean brought up in Sacrifice (killing hellhounds, savings souls from hell, curing demons, etc.).
Didn’t care for the continuity error when Charlie died and went to heaven, when we later find out that heaven’s been closed for business since Metatron cast the angels out. These are the little things that really started to add up over the course of the season.
Sam and home – I had a slightly different take away, more that Dean is Sam’s metaphorical home. I disagree with the argument made by Gerry about Cas and Charie being alive because of Sam being possessed; it’s post hoc ergo propter hoc; assumptions are being made about events that occurred that may or may not have happened if Sam had died. I realize this argument is academic, no Sam, no show, but raise the point anyway.
njspnfan, your comment “Dean is Sam’s metaphorical home” is how I feel also and what I was trying to say in my post above. You said it better.:)
I know Kevin said that heaven had been closed to human souls since Metatron cast out the angels, but he also admitted that he was getting his information through soul “telephone” i.e. one soul tells the next soul who passes it on. IRL telephone often does not get the real message through. We know that around the time Metatron ordered Kevin’s death that Metatron did something to make certain no more prophets came online. We also had no reports of any extra ghost activity really either before or after Kevin died. I think there is a pretty good chance that Metatron did whatever it was that stopped prophets from coming online also was what closed the doors to heaven to human souls. It is possible that access for human souls was restricted before that, but that the spell stopping prophets closed it completely.
I agree that the fact that Gad saved Cas and Charlie doesn’t mean they would have died if he had never possessed Sam. Charlie came to the bunker because Sam contacted her to figure out the computer. So no Sam, no reason for Charlie to come to the bunker. Cas is iffier, but it’s impossible to say what Dean would have done in regard to finding Cas if Sam was dead.
Well I guess it is warded unless you bring the evil in with you. Isn’t that why there is a dungeon? And Dean wasn’t evil yet so I guess the mark itself couldn’t be evil on it’s own. So since Sam brought Dean in he had a way in.
I made that point somewhere, sometimes when story lines aren’t working (special children) they are dropped never to be heard from again. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be revisited at some future date. Tracking angels may or may not be necessary in the future.
Your right about the veil. We’ll see how they explain that one…. or not.
I agree with you about whether or not Sam was alive or dead. The events wouldn’t have occurred the same way so Castiel and Charlie might not have needed saving.
I think that Sam wants Dean to be happy so if having the bunker as Dean and Sam’s home makes Dean happy he will try to consider it home. At least he thought so at the time. I don’t know what he thinks about the bunker now.
Cheryl – I get your point, it made sense when they brought Crowley in at the beginning of S9, and when Dorothy dragged the wicked witch in. The head-scratcher for me was when Crowley popped in to visit soon-to-be Demon Dean before Sam had even summoned him. They’ve made a point of mentioning how safe and warded the bunker is on more than one occasion, yet at times that have more traffic coming in and out of there than a McDonald’s drive-thru.
I’ve got a theory about that. I’m sure it’s way out there but I’m wondering if the human blood Crowley has been chugging is making him human enough to escape the warding. He did say that Sam was summoning him as he spoke so I assume a little time passed before we saw him in Dean’s room. I think the bunker is warded against intrusion. This is the first time that we have seen someone or something evil come in on it’s own. Everything else has been brought in by Sam and Dean or Dorothy. Kevin’s ghost was supernatural but not evil and supposedly his spirit was attached to his fathers ring, so I’m not sure how that works. And since Crowley is never what he seems to be and Mark is now a regular I’m sure we will explore his character in depth in a future episode.
Cheryl42 – I like this – very interesting theory. Given that many have always suspected there’s more to Crowley than meets the eye, we’ll see how this plays out next season.
Since I have always loved Crowley and Mark Shepard I can’t wait to see what his story is.
Metatron doesn’t exactly trash the Winchester Gospels (Kripke years), he calls them “Pulpy stuff” which isn’t exactly a pejorative. His throwing the book in the fire appears to have a deeper subtexual meaning continuity and retcons than “screw Kripke,” given that Metatron talks about those things in the episode. Look at the book he tosses in Tall Tales, which was the first appearance of the Trickster — who would go on to be retconned into Gabriel.
[quote]Home versus work: Sam not treating the bunker as home really hurt Dean.[/quote] Bardicvoice can I ask you what you are saying here? I am really puzzled by this as being the take-home message. You might be saying that Dean is worried about Sam but that isn’t how this comes over. If that is what you are saying please ignore the rest of this….
Are you really saying that Sam has a duty to be happy because otherwise Dean will be hurt? That Sam’s point about how traumatic having a place called home has always been for him is somehow less important? Or that Sam’s problem with the concept (which he wasn’t at all making a fuss about, or discussing, until forced into it by Charlie and Dean) has anything at all to do with Dean. Dean can’t understand how Sam feels about this since HE knows what a home and family look like so why in this case do we worry about whether Dean is hurt by Sam? Hurt FOR Sam would be a more brotherly attitude would it not?
And Dean hadn’t even noticed that Sam wasn’t treating the place as home until Charlie pointed it out.
I do know that if you are saying that Sam should treat the bunker as home because that will make Dean feel better then I have always felt that that is EXACTLY what Sam did at the end of the episode. Sam wanted Dean not to have hurt feelings …
I think probably sees it like, it doesn’t matter where they are as long as he’s got Sam around, it feels like home for him. Sam sees it all as work.
But that is a judgement of Sam (by Dean and by the fandom) which is unreasonable. Sam has made it perfectly clear that he has chosen Dean over everything else. He is now angry about the way he was tricked but assuming he wasn’t going to be allowed rest (by dying) he had ALREADY chosen Dean in season 8 (and seasons 1 through 7, but, whatever) and at that stage he wasn’t even angry. That Dean doesn’t see that Sam has chosen him is not on Sam. Why are Sam’s personal feelings about THE BUNKER a slight on Dean? If Dean had found the bunker and said ‘You must be happy in this home that I have worked to produce for you because otherwise you don’t love me as much as I love you’ that would be one thing (and deeply weird since they are brothers and not a caveman and his mate). But SAM was the one given the key, his logic for why he doesn’t feel like it is home is perfectly reasonable (and should be something that Dean cares about for Sam’s sake since it shows how totally adrift and broken Sam is), and Sam can’t help how he feels about a place. If anything Sam found a home for Dean. Since Dean is the one who longs for a home.
EDIT: Hi Vince: It has been pointed out to me that I might be putting too much into the word ‘all’ in your comment. If you are not saying that to Sam that Dean is just ‘work’ then my answer is out of place. Though I still mean all of it (just not necessarily as a reply to you!)
I am just really over this idea that Dean cares for Sam and Sam doesn’t care for Dean. (Following on from a different discussion I wish Jerry Wanek would decorate a motel room in a way that shows the boys are equally there for each other since the writers keep failing to show it…)
Agreed.
eilf,
you just made my point. my entire belief on the story carver is telling. I’ve been saying that the story carver is telling, the big bad monster of his arc, isn’t metatron or Crowley or the angels or the demons…these are just filler, back stories intertwined with the real plot. this time the monsters the boys have to face are themselves. I just rewatched wnttak and the setup is right there. dean comes back from purgatory different. he comes back the monster he always feared himself to be. he didn’t have sam to be his conscience down there. he didn’t have sam to monitor dean’s actions. i’m not saying there wasn’t a need to kill because of course there was. but benny told dean at the end of the eppy…I should’ve appreciated purgatory more the way you did. then it zeroed in on dean’s face and his face was cold and dark. I said it before, all his crap that he deflected onto sam in s8, his resentment towards his brother, it wasn’t because dean hated purgatory, it was because dean found contentment there. he didn’t hate purgatory. his inner monster had come out and reigned free. he could kill without guilt. sam wasn’t there to keep dean from enjoying the kills, to give him those worried glances, to help dean keep his inner monster at bay. no instead dean connected to benny, who had no conscience, who wouldn’t dream of stopping dean from killing. dean connected to benny, he could relate to him, he was at ease with benny because benny was like dean…they were both monsters. when dean came out of purgatory, his inner monster, his belief that he was at heart a killer, still ruled his actions. he was willing to kill kevin’s mother. he was ready to kill the prisoner who knew where the tablet was…only this time sam was there. dean wasn’t as free as he was. the monster inside of him didn’t like this. he did everything possible to push his brother away. all that crap that he put on sam, leaving him behind in purgatory…sam didn’t do that, but dean did do that to cas. even when dean got out with benny, he never did anything to even attempt to try to get cas out. dean getting angry at sam in sc, blaming him for not telling him he was soulless, that was dean. dean was the one lying to sam about benny. he’s the one who lied to sam about cas being dead…cas was alive when dean saw him last. dean telling sam that benny was more of a brother, he never let him down…I think he was referring to himself. all of dean’s crap he deflected onto sam. there was no reason to keep sam from benny except for the fact that benny knew the truth about what really happened in purgatory. sam would’ve never killed benny without due cause..dean kept them apart to protect himself. his inner monster was trying to stay alive…dean sent that vile text…not to keep sam safe from benny, but to push sam away towards the girl. the part of him that’s dark. that part that would rather sam gone so that he can kill as he sees fit. but sam wasn’t so easy to get rid of. sam did something very smart. he gave dean a choice. benny or him. making dean have to make that choice helped to push that dark part of him away. when having to make that decision, dean chose his brother. his light. the best part of who he is. his home. he spent the second half of the season making up for all the crap he pulled in the first half. he knew he’d gone to far. it was as though he couldn’t control himself, not until sam stepped in with the ultimatum. I think sam saved dean’s life in that eppy…
but all of it…all of dean’s actions…the way he thinks…the warped way in which he views things, the constant misperceiving what sam says….that’s his issue. his monster at work. his dormant but still very much alive inner monster. the part of him that believes himself to be a killer and that part of him which he could only keep as long as he has sam. dean sees sam as his salvation. his goodness. sam is literally the light at the end of dean’s tunnel. that monster started to take over last season, but sam helped dean rein it in. dean started to act like dean again. but it’s always there. the only way dean can truly conquer his inner monster is to face it….dean is the one who turned himself into a demon. he did this to himself. maybe he had to. maybe this is the way for dean to truly conquer his inner monster…to actually make it become a living and breathing entity. he will conquer it. sam will save him ….and yes dean will come to see how much his brother has always loved him. but more important, he will finally admit to himself that it was his own fear of what he would become that influenced his behavior.. I believe that this is carver’s version of therapy….the Winchester way. 😉
[quote] his resentment towards his brother, it wasn’t because dean hated purgatory, it was because dean found contentment there.[/quote]I do not think that was what he stated in s08 finale.
Dean didn’t speak of purgatory in s8 finale. He told Sam it was pure in first eppy. Benny also told dean that he should have appreciated purgatory more , the way dean had. The camera closes in on dean and you see his dark calm. Watch if u get a chance …Benny freaks out a bit when dean kills that thing when looking for. Cas
I did not see resentment rather a longing.Him resenting earth makes sense .
I am emphatically NOT saying Sam has any responsibility for Dean’s happiness, or vice versa. No one can make another person happy; we each make our own happiness by our own choices of how to view and react to the world around us. I do believe we should support and be kind to each other, but in no way am I EVER saying we should change ourselves to try to fit someone else’s image of who we should be, especially not in pursuit of trying to make them happy while making ourselves unhappy.
My comment was simply an observation. I do believe that Dean and Sam, the closest of brothers, love each other and want each other to be happy. They each feel hurt when the other isn’t made happy by the same things that make them happy. Neither one is obligated to change their reactions to suit the other! And neither one has EVER defined their personal happiness in terms that matched the other’s.
My point was actually the next piece: my observation and belief that Dean has always generally been more happy than Sam because he was wired to make the best of whatever he had, while Sam’s wiring always favored striving for what would make life [i]better[/i] than what he had. And I’ve written about that a lot in the past, and simply don’t have time now to expand on it. Sorry for that.
Thanks for clarifying that Bardicvoice I guess what we both are saying is that: ‘Be good to yourself, cause nobody else has the power to make you happy” is a reasonable way to live life. It is a concept alien to Dean I think. Hopefully it won’t continue to be.
Once he is good to himself he will realize that other people aren’t letting him down, they are doing their best in impossible circumstances.
This occurred to me earlier. If Sam seriously did decide to make an effort and call the place home, here is the other side of the argument. Looking back at all of the people who have been in Sam’s home, the bunker, (excluding the mama god and her godling whose current whereabouts are unknown so they could be dead for all we know, and Dorothy, and Crowley who is unkillable) the following is an (I think) comprehensive list:
Charlie
Castiel
Prometheus
Kevin
Gadreel
Dean
All of them have spent quality time in Sam’s ‘home’ and all of them have died. Some of them remain dead.
If I were Sam I wouldn’t put up posters either 😉
Heh, how sad their lives that this is not a deal breaker? I think Sam sees it more as a home base/headquarters. Dean depersonalized his room. I’m not so sure he felt the same about it anymore ****edited to add**** after the death of Kevin and the effects of the MoC started sapping his humanity.
I’ll bet Dean didn’t really depersonalize his room, I’ll bet that TPTB just forgot about the fact that they had shown his room differently the year before. If they wanted to make an issue out of Dean feeling differently about the bunker then they would have shown him taking stuff down. Instead we just got to see the room altered and no one commented on it within the show. To me that smacks of continuity error rather than plot point, something that’s been happening A LOT lately.
But again. Why? In a real relationship between two people if one said ‘Why don’t you like X’ and the other one said ‘I just am not ready for it yet, it isn’t working for me, you go ahead’ and the first one’s main reaction to that was that it was a personal affront to them that the other didn’t feel what they felt, don’t you think that it would be time for those people to get some counselling? Especially if as a result of this conversation the first person destroyed everything they personally had related to X.
Don’t you also think that the counsellor would be dealing with very different issues in each person?
Having said that I think, if it wasn’t as E said, a continuity thing, it is more likely Dean depersonalized his room as he became less human, heading towards being a demon, not because of Sam.
Hi eilf…I am not sure I understand what you are saying here. I only was responding to Leah with the idea that the fact that Dean’s room went from being decorated with his favorite weapons, albums, posters and a pic of his mom in season 8 to being bare bones in season 9 probably didn’t mean anything and the change in the rooms was not noted, or discussed by anyone, there was no absolutely no point made by the characters or TPTB as to the difference in the rooms, they were just suddenly, out of the blue, different with no explanation or meaning attached. To me, that’s a continuity error, not a plot point. Fans can discuss the difference in the rooms and draw conclusions from that and many have (and that’s cool and not wrong necessarily either) but to me it’s part and parcel of the kind of sloppy lack of attention to detail that we’ve been seeing in the show lately and in fact doesn’t mean anything. It could have been a cool way to show how Dean was slipping down the slippery slope as the MoC began to effect him over time had anyone in the show commented on how his room has changed lately, but that’s not how it was presented to us, and to me that’s not how it reads…. it reads as though everyone forgot how the room had been decorated in episodes past and simply didn’t follow through with continuity so there are no conclusions to draw from it.
Hi E, sorry, the bulk of the reply was for discussing Leah’s point and it just came up in the wrong place. 🙂
Honestly I kind of agree with you that the bareness of Dean’s room is way more likely to be a lack of follow through for exactly the reasons you mention. Most shows if they want you to follow a particular thread will actually give you a thread to follow and the fact that it went from cosy home to bare room was not really explained. It was just a headcanon thought (since we seem to have to do a lot of that nowadays).
There is also the rather depressing thought that it isn’t Dean’s room at all it is just the one closest to the bunker entrance because Sam is strong but dead bodies are heavy. To which there follows a chorus of “Dean would never have left Sam in the first room he came to …” *sigh*
Actually, a more sad thought was that Sam brought Dean into his room. That would account for it being so bare and is much more poignant
I thought about that too E, and that would have been beautiful and sad, but the layout is wrong for Sam’s room. The door in relation to the bed is in the wrong place. I am pretty sure ….
I thought the same.
Hi E and Eilf, I think maybe you guys may have read too much into my comment. 🙂 I just meant that for normal people all the death and near death would be a deal-breaker. But they are still there. Sam anyway. I personally have no beef with Sam not feeling particularly cozy there. I don’t know if he was just trying to make Dean happy or if he sorta feels it’s a kind of “home” now. As I said, I think he thinks of the bunker in a more practical way and less of a sentimental way. Dean’s sparse room may have been a continuity error but if that is the case then it is a HUGE one. What continuity person would forget to place items in a room that we have seen clearly and on top of that, such a big deal was made about Dean making it his own? IDK, really seems unlikely. I just thought after Kevin’s death and the MoC he just didn’t feel any connection to the personal touches. I didn’t say it was because of Sam. Or maybe it’s just a continuity error.;) Plus honestly, I just wanted to talk about anything but reapers!
Hi Leah, oh, ok, I see what you are saying 🙂 I thought you were saying Dean depersonalized because Sam didn’t feel at home. I misunderstood your point.
[quote]I think maybe you guys may have read too much into my comment.[/quote]
Heh! That’s very likely. :p:p
[quote]it is more likely Dean depersonalized his room as he became less human, heading towards being a demon, not because of Sam.[/quote]
This is absolutely the way I view the change. Jerry Wanek’s team of set designers pay attention to excruciating levels of detail. I do not believe for a moment that they changed Dean’s room because they “forgot” what was in it before. I totally accept that there are continuity errors in the writing because there are so many cooks in the kitchen making the banquet of episodes each season, but Jerry only has one team doing every set, every episode. I have a vague memory of him even saying in an interview that they changed Dean’s room on purpose. Does anyone else remember that? His team’s contribution has always been to give subliminal clues to the myth arcs through their designs. Their sets have always told us things about the mood of the characters without the writers having to overtly write it into the script. They take pride in that, in fact.
I suppose you could be right in this and i’d like to think that this is the case; but the problem that I have with this take on things is that absolutely no one commented on it during the actual show. There were no camera angels that lingered on Dean’s room, panned over the room or were somehow loaded with subtext to indicate that we should notice the change, and there were no scenes of Dean clearing things away in one of his sleepless nights. So, even if it wasn’t a mistake it still ends up looking like a mistake because of the lack of continuity or lack of attention to these small, but important things in the writing. If they want us to notice or even more note it, then they have to do a better job of bringing these tidbits to the forefront is some way, otherwise mistake or intentional, it makes no difference; it’s either an error or a terrible missed opportunity.
It really shows how fabulously important the editing is doesn’t it. Though Jensen did say at a con that they shoot very little that ends up on the cutting room floor (immediately after he said it we got to hear about several things that ended up on the cutting room floor, talk about timing …). But there does seem to be somehow less of the filling that makes the world seem real than there used be. For example how DO the lights stay on in the bunker and when do the guys change their credit cards and why don’t they pretend to be different fake characters occasionally and how far is the shop and where is the entrance for the car and how many levels does the bunker have and why is everywhere a car drive from the bunker and how do people get in and out whenth ere is only one key etc etc ….
A few scenes of Sam working out. A few seconds of Dean packing away his mother’s picture (which we know the demon!Dean would take pleasure in destroying). A trip to the pub. Indications that there is a coffee shop down town that they frequent … wouldn’t those be nice little moments to build their world around?
Nightsky – I was going to agree but this episode was before the Mark of Cain story started. In this particular episode, Dean’s room was still personalized, but with fewer weapons mounted on the wall. However, from a practical standpoint, when they first showed Dean’s room in S8, my first thought was why the hell would he mount all the weapons he uses for hunting on the wall? Does that mean every time he and Sam go on a hunt, he has to take all the weapons down and put them back in the trunk of the Impala? That made no sense to me 🙂 Later in the season, when they showed Dean listening to music on his bed, with his room “de-personalized”, that made perfect sense to me in light of the Mark of Cain story and the dehumanization of Dean.
OHHH. Now I get it. I was, in fact, thinking of the headphones-on-the-bed shot of the room, later in the season. Yes, when Dean was looking for the key, his room looked different. I attributed that to people sometimes change around their room decor (I do it myself occasionally), but I do now better understand the concern since the feeling of home was the theme of this ep. Agreed that even 1 line of comment would have been appropriate.
That’s funny it just occurred to me today that is what everyone was upset about. Makes all of my posts completely out of line. Sorry about that everyone. I honestly didn’t notice the room at all. I will have to go back and look.
LOL. I got so caught up in reading comments that I may have started this off with my “depersonalized” comment which was just to point out that Dean came to a point later where he might not have thought of the bunker as much of a “home” anymore either. At least not in the same way he did in this episode.
It certainly explains why I wasn’t getting it. Everyone probably wanted to hit me over the head with an obvious plot discrepancy.
Honestly Cheryl I just think the conversations (about this episode, how they feel about the bunker as home, and Dean’s later sparse room) overlapped a little. No big deal, it got a bit confusing.:)
😉 I do confuse easily.
[quote]To me that smacks of continuity error rather than plot point, something that’s been happening A LOT lately.[/quote]
Well put, E. And THAT’S another reason why one should always put in the effort to be consistent with canon in their work. If, as a creator, you put constant and consistent effort into your work and its details, then the audience is more inclined to believe such things like “the room is different now” have deeper meaning. Even if you didn’t [i]intend[/i] for there to be a deeper meaning, you can take the ideas given by the audience and then run with them & fold them into your work, making it stronger, better, a more powerful narrative.
If, however, you have shown repeated signs to your audience that you don’t care about the details, then even when you [i]try[/i] to put in subtle hints, they’ll discount them as just another gaff by you, the creator. It’s “the boy who cried wolf” in narrative form.
During Kripke’s era, I would have taken the room gaff as having some story/character-related purpose. This season? Nah, they just didn’t care. Why would they? They haven’t cared about anything else.
…and that’s the beauty of having so many WFB writers’s views in one place. I absolutely believe the room change was symbolic and on purpose. Nate, you want to hear a mention of it in writing to believe it had meaning…
At this risk of beating a dead horse, and with the understanding that I am sometimes not the most observant viewer on the block, but until people began to mention the changes to Dean’s room here at WFB, I hadn’t even noticed that it was different. I hadn’t even noticed that a scene took place in his bedroom at all, what they did with it, the changes made to it, had that little impression on me. I don’t need to have it be specifically spoken of in the dialog to notice generally, but a little something more than what we got, something a little more pointed would not have gone amiss IMO. Perhaps I need to pay better attention, or perhaps the PTB need to be more specific.
[quote] with the understanding that I am sometimes not the most observant viewer on the block, but until people began to mention the changes to Dean’s room here at WFB, I hadn’t even noticed that it was different.I hadn’t even noticed that a scene took place in his bedroom at all[/quote]Same here.
Well it doesn’t have to be mentioned as much as established at some point. Either a scene of Dean changing the room or a scene of Sam in there cluing us in that it’s his room.
And like I said, it depends on goodwill. Had this occurred in S1-5, I probably would buy that it was symbolic, but given how grossly they let slide the big things, it’s a bit hard to swallow that they’re being meticulous in the small things. 😉
sam’s reluctance to consider any place a home is quite understandable. he gave us his pov regarding this matter. his idealistic view of home hasn’t exactly been his experience and his attempts at trying have all ended up catastrophic. i think sam is afraid to even consider himself ever having a home for fear that he’ll lose it. i think it’s a bit of foreshadowing.
i think though, as we go through the episode, sam’s defenses begin to break down. i think he starts to see things differently, based not only on what dean says, but also his time spent with both dean and charlie. i think sam begins to realize that a home isn’t a building where one sleeps, eats and takes showers. i think sam begins to realize that home is about being with those you love. it’s truly where your heart is. as he spends his time defending the bunker and all who are in it, i think he comes to understand what home is truly about and what it truly does mean to him. dean is his home. those he loves and cares for are his home as well. charlie, kevin, cas…in essence, his family. he will always fight to protect them.
slumber party is a great example of foreshadowing:
this is very telling of the story ahead. sam spends most of the second half of this season fighting for relationship with his brother. fighting to protect his home…..dean. yes sam is angry and hurt, but never for one moment does he stop fighting to save his relationship with his brother, even when dean refuses to fight, sam pushes him on…even when dean decides to run from sam because he fears facing his own issues, sam still fights. he doesn’t let dean walk away. sam demands dean to fight with him. even when dean refuses, even when he decides to wallow in his own guilt instead of facing up to what he did to hurt sam and deal with it head on, even when dean ignores sam’s pain and guilt and hurt and focuses on himself and how he did the right thing and he’d do it all again, still then, sam stays. sam’s love never waivers. his actions never deny how much he loves his brother. the end result…we get a sam who will do what it takes to save dean…because as sam is to dean, dean is to sam….he’s his home.
[quote]still then, sam stays. sam’s love never waivers. his actions never deny how much he loves his brother. the end result…we get a sam who will do what it takes to save dean…because as sam is to dean, dean is to sam….he’s his home.[/quote]
Is there any possibility that Dean is ever going to recognize that do you think? Because honestly at this stage Dean is beginning to look like he actively doesn’t want to believe it. Which makes NO SENSE. At all. None. Because if Dean doesn’t believe this (in its absolute, demonstrated, truth) it is time he let his brother go, actively encourage him to leave without a guilt trip, and they both try to be happy alone. Oh wait, they did that scene, in Season 8, and Sam chose Dean, what more can he do?
I know we seem to be concentrating on this issue as to whether Sam thought the bunker was home or not, but it did seem to be the core point of the story. The core of the Wizard of Oz being about home being where family is. Charlie was in the end looking to see if a home with Dorothy would work. I don’t know whether Game of Thrones is a story about home? (My understanding is that home is not one of it’s core issues but I could be wrong). Possibly showing that home is where the person you love is.
If Sam did decide to try once again to have a home the last scene that showed the doors closing symbolically on the supernatural and leaving behind ‘home’ as being Sam&Dean, the Impala and the bunker was very sweet.
[quote]I know we seem to be concentrating on this issue as to whether Sam thought the bunker was home or not, but it did seem to be the core point of the story.[/quote]
Robbie’s very last tweet about the show, in closing his “office hours” was “There’s no place like home”. I think he did see the whole exploration of their home as a key message of this episode.
[quote]If Sam did decide to try once again to have a home the last scene that showed the doors closing symbolically on the supernatural and leaving behind ‘home’ as being Sam&Dean, the Impala and the bunker was very sweet.[/quote]
Awww.
[quote] Sam did decide to try once again to have a home the last scene that showed the doors closing symbolically on the supernatural and leaving behind ‘home’ as being Sam&Dean, the Impala and the bunker was very sweet.[/quote]
Eilif, that’s the way I took the exploration of “home.” The story was examining Sam’s resistance to seeing the bunker as home, not his guilt in relation to Dean. I think Sam’s ruminations were internal and he was articulating as much for himself as Dean as to why he has difficulty with that concept. He’s built defenses because he doesn’t really know what a home feels like and the two attempts he made to build one ended badly.
I think what he realized in this episode is that home is where the heart is – it’s not mortar and bricks, it’s where the people you love are. The bunker can be home because he’s there with Dean and sometimes other people he cares about. He’s lowering his defences and taking a chance. And it’s both sweet and heartbreaking, because the bunker has in fact been compromised, as his autonomy has been compromised. Dean’s action took away the very thing he most values: a home with Sam. And Sam’s decision to trust comes just as he should be most suspicious. It does lay out the complexity of Sam’s position for the rest of the season. He’s angry that Dean lied to him, but upset at feeling Dean move away. He’s trying to push Dean to fight with him to get their issues out in the open, but trying to reach Dean because he can feel Dean changing. He needs to express his anger and hurt, but hang on to and believe in his bond with Dean.
It’s actually a wonderfully layered plot – but to really do justice to it, we needed much more of Sam’s point of view.
I liked Charlie at the beginning. after she credited Dean aand told Sam what she told well not so much.So that tinged this episode.
*edited to add fullstop after beginning and removed now*
Hi eilf,
Of course Dean’s room in “Do You Believe In Miracles” could be a continuity error, but Jerry Wanek and his team aren’t known for their lack of attention to detail. I think the fact that the room was bare was intentional, especially since such a big deal was made about Sam’s room in “Slumber Party”. Either it was a sign of the Mark’s influence, like the lack of sleep or the uneaten burger, or it wasn’t Dean’s room at all. Sam might have found Dean too heavy to carry to his own room, or he just couldn’t handle Dean lying on his memory foam mattress surrounded by his things as if he was alive. Sam could have chosen to put Dean in a spare room to acknowledge his death, similarly to the way bodies are laid out in funeral homes.
Actually one of the writers or maybe JM tweeted that it was done intentionally. The bare room was supposed to reflect Dean’s mindset, his disconnect from humanity.
*grumble* only people who have access to Twitter can reliably understand what the writers of the story are trying to tell us */grumble*
Actually, you have a good point. I have gotten quite a few answers from them on Twitter.
I actually explored putting Robbie Thompson’s tweets into this article. He answered several questions for us very clearly. Couldn’t do it this time, but maybe soon.
I think they do these kind of things all the time. It is set up so that we the audience feel the mood of the moment or what the character is feeling at the time. There was a scene in MLH that showed Dean in the bar, the way Misha set up that scene was to show how isolated Dean was becoming. These scenes are supposed to be there more subliminally than verbally explained. And yes those of us that follow the writers and actors when they live tweet get the inside scoop, but this has always been done on the show long before we had access to the staff.
But if they are going to be subtle then they can’t contradict themselves later because ‘oh well only some of the audience will get that we contradicted ourselves’ As Nate commented suspension of disbelief is a fragile thing.
There is pretty good evidence that the way the plot turned on Sam has come as a surprise to Jared (personally I believe it happened to him live on stage, which must have been an interesting moment for him) and HE is supposedly in-the-know about his character. If it is a surprise to him, how are we supposed to know what is subtlety and what is something that doesn’t at all matter because it will never be touched on again?
Random rambling: Heh for anyone who has read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy it just occurs to me that ‘flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss’ is what this is. A lot of people who want to see more in the show than is spoken in the text are getting injured by the ground at the moment …
I don’t think it’s subtlety as much as it is a mood enhancement for the audience. We were supposed to be focused on the fact that Dean was laying in his empty room listening to music on his headphones by himself as a way to show his distancing himself from his humanity. I don’t think the empty room was supposed to have any other meaning than how empty his life was becoming. The show has done similar things to it’s characters over the seasons. Sam in the panic room how dark and out of focus the room was and how Sam was so brightly lit like the focus of the world was on him told the story in the background of Sam’s reality fading into hallucinations. The next scene was in the hotel room bright, beautiful and clean with Sam feeling powerful and back in control. It’s just a visual aid that many television shows use to set the mood of its characters. It was done on purpose, at least according to the tweet I read during the episode.
How Jared feels about his character and his relevance in the second half I really couldn’t say. I also read that account at Jared’s meet and greet but I came away with a different interpretation of his reaction. He seemed surprised that the fan felt that way.
[quote]How Jared feels about his character and his relevance in the second half I really couldn’t say. I also read that account at Jared’s meet and greet but I came away with a different interpretation of his reaction. He seemed surprised that the fan felt that way.
[/quote]
Oh yes, I wasn’t talking about that. Thing about M&G s is they are by their nature hearsay so there is no way of knowing what the emphasis was in Jared’s comment or even what was really said. What I was talking about was was actually on stage, I saw the video of it. I will link to it if I find it again
I think there is difference between Dean’s room being depersonalized and Panic room being dark and unfocused.The first one is something done by Dean and the second a choice of the director.
I was just using the panic room as an example of the director or writer using the background as a way of setting the mood of the character. Anyway seems like some will be able to see what they were going for and some won’t. Since we have beat this subject to death we should probably get back to the review of Slumber Party.
edit: Since this discussion was about SP I apologize. I thought everyone was talking about Captives. My bad.
[quote]There is pretty good evidence that the way the plot turned on Sam has come as a surprise to Jared (personally I believe it happened to him live on stage, which must have been an interesting moment for him) and HE is supposedly in-the-know about his character.[/quote]
Could you elaborate on what you mean by that? Do you mean that Jared had to defend Sam to the audience although one might expect that Sam would be shown as being understandably upset because he was lied to and tricked into letting an angel in?
I do not consider what they tell in twitter canon.I do not have twitter.But I have tumblr if they somehow tell me the same thing on tumblr I will reply by telling SHOW IN THE SHOW.It just shows me they are lazy or blind.
Yes, anonymousN, I agree. The show should stand on it’s own, we shouldn’t need twitter and a connection to the writers outside the show to get the plot to make sense.
Glad you remembered that too, so it wasn’t just something I made up in a fog…
Yes I clearly remember reading it I just can’t remember who said it. The starkness of the room really struck me as an “UH OH” moment in Dean’s unraveling humanity so I paid attention to the remarks made at the time.
The theme of home is even more obvious after hearing the choice of song in the finale. Blind Faith’s I can’t find my way home. Multiple layers…again.
Yes, that multiple layer I did get. Too bad Dean’s bedroom issue wasn’t more pointed the way that the song was. It would have been so easy for them to add a 12 second scene of Dean manically clearing out his room instead of sleeping during his MoC decent; they could have shown him ripping things down and then maybe lingering over the picture with his mom; then Sam could have come into the room and said “dude, what’s going on?” to which Dean could could have responded “I’m redecorating!” They could have set the whole thing to an awesome rock song too. Then we could have had some Dean angst, some Sam worry and another rock song to vote on at the end of the season. Win/win instead of loose/loose; because i said before, it was just a bed and a pillow, I didn’t even make the connection as to what room it was, let alone that there was supposedly some sort of subtext going on. Maybe this is an editing problem, I don’t know, but in the past the show has generally done better with the subtext.
.