A Flailing We Will Go – A Dean Girl’s Thoughts Regarding Demon Dean
(otherwise known as) Flailing, Oh Yes, There Will Be Flailing! A Dean girl’s thoughts regarding DemonDean
MOC storyline and the road ahead. Writers note: I penned this some time ago and seeing as we are in Hellatus and Alice is accepting articles/commentary from prior seasons I thought she might want to post this. I am also taking this opportunity to apologize up front because my punctuation sucks and I can’t construct a sentence worth a damn, but it was originally warmly received so I hope you like it. It is my one and only article I have ever written.
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I wasn’t going to write anything, but then I found that I really could not. This was in response to another site’s article that I read. The author of the review/ commentary pretty much covered it all and I found myself agreeing with most everything she said and yet I still had to put something down “on paper” just because. So this is my first attempt at writing a piece. Good, bad or indifferent, here were go!
As I referenced in my subtitle, this is just my personal observation in regards to the execution of the DemonDean/Mark of Cain storyline. Likes, dislikes, that sort of thing. My take? Too much subtlety when everyone and their mother were expecting just the opposite and eager to see it unfold. Don’t get me wrong, I loved DemonDean. I loved the first three episodes, just not the Cas/Hannah “Road Trip to Boredom” or “the other side show” (writers note – I’m not sure what I was referencing here other than possibly the rogue angels?). However since I’m talking about the MOC/DemonDean/FirstBlade storyline I’ll leave that discussion for some other time. I enjoyed watching DemonDean’s progression from karaoke fool to bedding Anne Marie, jackass (sorry, that’s what I hear in my head every time I think of her name), to cold hearted bastard- tho I’ve gotta say, I still wonder what the Hell ‘that thing with the thing’ was. ;). Sorry, I digress.
I loved DemonDean and Crowley together, and his fights with Cole. I thought the scene where DemonDean was sitting at the piano playing the first three chords of “Hey Jude” before “picking a bloody side” was masterful. Sam seeing his brother “alive” again for the first time since he had laid Dean’s corpse down on his memory foam mattress, so painful. The conversation, the back and forth between them both. Sam’s hesitation, desperation and then fear when DemonDean picked the First Blade from off the top of the piano not knowing what he had in mind or what he’s going to do – and Sam’s quiet, steadfast resolve listening while the demon, his brother, warns him to take advantage of the opportunity he is being given to leave before he rips his throat out “with his teeth.” Then the end of the episode with that glare directed at Crowley and the stone cold promise to Sam to show him no mercy? I was so excited that I may have fallen to the floor, flailed about and ended up underneath the couch… Not really, but close. Close. The coffee table blocked my way. :).
Next we get “Soul Survivor” and the dark, taunting, hurtful, evil, bad, naughty, brother-killing “simply because you pissed him off, Sam” DemonDean. The torturous injections, the demon’s verbal salvos which repeatedly, unerringly found their target and then the cat and mouse… DemonDean sniffing the air, stalking his prey, picking a hammer as the weapon of his choice – saying he wasn’t going to leave “not until I find you!” That final moment where Sam gives in knowing he can’t, won’t kill his brother, willing to die rather than having to do so and then Cas showing up at the last second…the flailing had begun again in earnest and just as I’m dangerously teetering on the edge of the couch cushions – it’s over. WHATTT!!! I picked myself up off the floor staring incredulously at the black screen with white letters giving credit to the Executive Producers Robert and Jeremy. Surely that isn’t it, is it? My brain struggled to comprehend how what I had just watched coincided with Show’s repetitive promise of the Year of the Deanmon. Huh. But what about the way Jensen (my persistent mind posited), having directed the episode, played that last look after DemonDean was cured? That didn’t look like “I’m glad to be back” so much as a “I’d like to be gutting you both right about now!” But alas, it was not meant to be (no, not the gutting part!). DemonDean was no more.
So I thought to myself, okay I can deal, the MOC/FirstBlade is still on the table and what Show apparently wants to concentrate on so there’s yet more dark, taunting, hurtful, evil, bad, naughty, possibly still wanting to kill your brother “simply because you pissed him off, Sam,” MOC/FirstBlade Dean left to come!!! Right? Nope. We got Kate the Werewolf and a High School musical. Oh, and then what seemed like more filler than you could shake a dripping FirstBlade at. And let’s not forget subtlety. So much subtlety that when it came to the MOC/FirstBlade, even if it was touched on in an episode, if you blinked you probably missed it. But what I found extremely frustrating and that I really don’t remember quite to this extent in other seasons, was that when we finally did get an episode where something big actually happened, like Dean under the influence of the MOC wiping out a bunch of would be rapist scumbags or the moving confrontation with Cain…leading us to believe that finally, finally O Lord, that there would now be some solid progression regarding the MOC storyline, that the glacier like creep was coming to an end, show would just yank the Devil’s trap marked rug out from under and instead spoon feed us some crappy episode such as “Paint It Black” the following week. Such a provocative, promising title. Teasing a possible tie in to “Black” when in reality it should have been named “Paint It Bleak”. That would have been truth in advertising. 😉
I often picture that if there were an actual writers’ room that they would all be sitting there hysterically laughing, tears streaming down their collective faces as they mock our naivete and childish hope, kind of like the Gods of Mount Olympus over the mere foolish mortals. Without the face leaking part of course. By the time they got around to actually having Dean going off the rails I couldn’t help but think that we should have been at this point several episodes back. Pacing. They suck at it. (Edit. Still to this day!). In fact, its been a problem long enough now that instead of it being a problem, a weakness if you will, I’m starting to see it as intentional. They couldn’t possibly be that oblivious season after season, and yes, I understand they have to have fillers but is it too much to ask that more of them be good ones? Or maybe they could have tied in the MOC more strongly? Supernatural did a much better job of that back in Seasons Three, Four and Five. Otherwise known as ” back in the day”. :). Oh and if you are going to have Sam run around convincing everyone that Dean is losing it, then SHOW it. Stop with the TELL. There’s too much lazy story writing going on and several of them are guilty of it. This show deserves better than that.
So, Season Eleven. Cautiously optimistic, though I can’t promise that I won’t heave a brick at my TV if anyone representing the Darkness!!! shows up in any form of corporate attire (who knew – boobs! Another friendly edit), or if Show cheats us all, both Sam and Dean girls, by cutting short the promised, long awaited, way overdue car wash scene (what car wash scene! Am I right?!? – yet still another edit). Oh, and Show? You are on notice. Seriously.
I want you to make me want to flail again. It doesn’t have to be the kind of flailing that would make it into the Guinness World Book of Records – I can’t afford to replace my furniture – but major. I expect major flailing, bordering on epic. A veritable epic flailfest if you will, and fellow viewers, you are welcome to join me under the couch.
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