Top Ten 2015 Supernatural Moments
3. Cain and Dean Showdown – “The Executioner’s Song”
I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to steal from my own words on this one. Here’s an excerpt from my review that explains just how gorgeous this whole exchange is:
The grand event though was clearly Dean’s confrontation with Cain in that barn. What a stunner. First, how perfect was that setting? Dean standing in that gorgeous barn setting, the ghostly lit ceiling in the background, the straw covering the floor, the wide open dimly lit space for these two men to engage in a final confrontation behind closed doors. It’s epic. Second, Tim Omundson as Cain was stunning this go around. In “First Born” he was just awesome, here he was master class. It was inevitable that he was going to come back to Dean and force his hand, but it had to be something extremely horrific. It had to be so bad that Dean would have no other choice but to go down that road. Now the burden of the Mark of Cain takes on a whole new meaning.
This scene was Jensen’s turn to take his acting to a master class of his own and I got chills seeing just how great he was with Tim Omundson. He played it as if Dean wouldn’t be coming back from that fight and it hurt. Every bit of Dean’s anxiety pored into that confrontation with Cain, and Cain tragically anticipated every move. He knew Dean perhaps better than Dean knew himself, and no matter what the outcome, Dean wasn’t coming out of it unscathed.
Every inch of this scene was brilliantly constructed, both verbally and visually, the back and forth like a ballet (yeah, that sounds hokey, but it’s true). I’ve read various theories on why Cain returned, and I don’t think his mission was to defeat Dean. I think it was to push the right buttons to get him to kill him. Cain’s lust to kill was too great and his fight had gone one long enough. He provoked Dean in every possible way, including taking the First Blade away as a challenge to fight for it.
Dean anguished over the idea of killing Cain no matter what was said to him, mostly out of resistance to losing himself in this process. No matter what he tried though, Cain forced his hand. He even pulled the one card that was sure to get Dean, mentioning that Sam as the end recipient of his very dark fate. It’s the worst case scenario that’s popped up time and time again in this series and it’s Dean’s worst nightmare. Dean had to choose, kill Cain at accept a very dark fate or be killed and let the genocide continue. Obviously he wasn’t going to choose the latter, despite the personal cost. It was the no win scenario. Cain even called Dean out on his courage and reckless bravado, knowing exactly what Dean would choose.
Even after Dean cut off Cain’s hand though and the vulnerable man was kneeling, passively accepting his fate (gorgeous visual), Dean gave him another chance. “Tell me that I don’t have to do this, tell me that you’ll stop. Tell me that you can stop.” Cain had already made up his mind. “I will never stop.” Dean fought every urge, knew every consequence, and he killed Cain anyway. The thunder as he did so was the most ominous of signs. The wrath has begun. Dean Winchester as we know him is dead.
Happy New Year for all! Half an hour left for me still but I needed to toss that here. Nice list Alice. Loved the number one. Baby is perfect!
Here for you all.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m5HP13FrIo[/video]
– Lilah
Good choice on that number 1! 😀 I’m afraid most of my highlights would be Sam based :p
I think all of my top ten moments would be from Baby. But I did love all your choices. They were great moments from S10 and 11.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/images/thumb/7/76/DeanAuto.png/450px-DeanAuto.png this was a highlight for me too!
Alice, I agree with ever one of your choices. All these scenes were all defining Winchester, SPN why I watch moments. I wish the showdown between Dean and Cain had carried over with some ramifications but it seemed to be a one episode breath taking event (no consistency with MOC Dean). I totally agree with your assessment that the biggest mistake was killing Bobby. Every time I watch an ep prior to his death, I think the same thing. He could have continued to enhance the story and I loved the possible romance with Jodi. My only change is I would have switched 1 and 2 but again those moments in Baby were happy and priceless and who wouldn’t rather see our boys enjoy a carefree moment. Thanks for the New Year recap!
Nothing to see here folks.
[quote]
Test: test comment, delete me.[/quote]
And, today, in comments that don’t look suspicious [i]at all…[/i]
😀
Don’t worry about that eilf. That test comment came from my husband, aka the WFB network administrator. We’ve been having email notification problems for about a month now and he’s been trying to fix it. It’s funny, because I told him to pick my article for the test and I even told him (actual quote), “Don’t worry, no one will notice.” Of course I thought I would get around to removing the comment much sooner than I did. 🙂
The hubby and I have been doing a crap load of maintenance on the site the last few days (trying to clean up stuff for an upcoming February server move), so you might notice a some more strange things in the weeks to come. Thanks for noticing though!
Hi Alice, heh, I just thought it was funny was all, like someone was trying their new account – but they were going to end up being called ‘test’ . Never occurred to me it was an admin thing. Sorry 😀