“Bitch” Vs. “Jerk”: Where We Discuss Who The Writers Screwed This Week/Season/Ever

[ILoveReading]

16 minutes ago, Reganne said:

Sam was also made to apologize many times.  Lucifer rising and Sympathy for the devil come to mind which specifically deal with Ruby which Dean appologys don't.  Dean was never made to apologize because he didn't trust Ruby.  Of course I am not saying he should but to me, that means Dean was validated when it comes to Ruby.

But Dean did have to apologize for not trusting Sam, even though Sam earned the lack of trust.  That, IMO, is no different. 

As for Sam's apologies, they were invalidated the minute he announced he went to Ruby to get away from Dean.  Because it came across as 'its only my fault because you made me do it in the first place," 

I despise Fallen Idols so much because of that.  It dumped the whole mess into Dean's lap because he was too bossy and controlling.  Even though Sam spent season 4 thinking Dean was weak.  Which is it, Sam can't have it both ways.  That's why I feel like Sam was blaming Dean.

We can agree to disagree.

Edited May 28, 2018 by ILoveReading

[companionenvy]

12 minutes ago, Reganne said:

Sam was also made to apologize many times.  Lucifer rising and Sympathy for the devil come to mind which specifically deal with Ruby which Dean appologys don't.  Dean was never made to apologize because he didn't trust Ruby.  Of course I am not saying he should but to me, that means Dean was validated when it comes to Ruby.

Right. There's all kind of adjacent issues over which we could debate whether Sam or Dean was ultimately more validated, but in the specific issue of "Sam trusts Ruby and Dean does not," Dean is unambiguously validated in canon. Just like I'd say Dean is fairly unambiguously validated over Benny (although there's a little more wiggle room there, IMO, as there is grounds for thinking that Benny couldn't have stayed good long term and would have returned to killing), and Sam has, thus far been fairly unambiguously validated over Jack (which I don't expect to change).

[AwesomO4000]

15 hours ago, ILoveReading said:

Also no more so then Dean is a bad person. For daring to be suspicious of a demon that proved to be a know liar. 

I agree with @Reganne. Dean was validated in the end. There was the momentary Ruby helping with Anna situation, and Dean having to admit that Ruby was helpful, but Dean never really trusted Ruby and said as such up until the end when she was proven to be a traitor and lying the whole time.

This wasn't like the Gadreel situation where Sam was shown to be bad / wrong for doubting / questioning poor "misunderstood" Gadreel who in the end helped to defeat Metatron and who Sam was made to call a "real friend." That, in my opinion, was the narrative changing things up to make Sam the bad guy.

If Ruby had instead been redeemed like Gadreeel was by actually helping to defeat Lucifer and Dean had to admit the error of his ways and call Ruby a "friend," then I would agree with you, but that isn't what happened. Instead Dean was justified and Ruby was never redeemed and Sam had to apologize for believing her... even though, in my opinion, the angels were just as much the traitors and leading everyone down the wrong path as Ruby had been, but believing them wasn't as big a failing as believing Ruby according to the narrative. Castiel even got to call Sam out for his "bad choices" while ignoring most of his (Castiel's) own.

26 minutes ago, ILoveReading said:

Ruby didn't make Sam feel strong, it was only an illusion.  So for Sam to say that was why he was with her is a complete lack of awareness on Sam's part. 

I don't think it's a lack of awareness to admit what Sam did. For me it only would have been a lack of awareness if Sam actually believed that Ruby made him stronger, and I personally thought it was fairly obvious that Sam realized that what Ruby did was all a lie, because Sam had already admitted trusting her and getting addicted was a mistake on his part, so I didn't need to see Sam specifically point this out yet again.

9 minutes ago, ILoveReading said:

But Dean did have to apologize for not trusting Sam, even though Sam earned the lack of trust.  That, IMO, is no different. 

In my opinion, it's a different thing... and even though Sam was trying to earn that trust back, Sam wasn't even asking for that. Dean had to apologize in "Fallen Idols," because he was letting his (understandable) personal issues cloud his judgement in a case. And as Sam said, not trusting Sam personally was an entirely different thing - which Sam told Dean he was entitled to - than trusting his opinion / judgment on the job. Two different issues which Sam made sure to say were separate. If these things were not separate issues in Dean's mind, then he shouldn't have come back to hunting with Sam at all or at least explained to Sam the entire truth of why he came back.

And Dean apologized in "Point of No Return," because he unilaterally decided what the course of action would be without getting input from anyone else in his team (that he named), and then lying about it. It wasn't just Sam that Dean wasn't trusting there, but Castiel and Bobby as well, neither of whom had anything to do with Ruby*** and who Dean hadn't expressed any trust issues with. Dean's trust issues with Sam weren't the only things in play there or Dean would have consulted with Castiel and Bobby also before deciding that he alone should be the one to decide what the course of action should be.

*** That Dean knew about anyway.

49 minutes ago, ILoveReading said:

It was Sam who spent the entire s4 lying and going behind Dean's back so when Dean has to apologize to Sam 3 different times (Fallen Idols, PONR, and Swan Song) for not trusting him, and then prove that he think of Sam like an adult (something I thought Dean in abundunce in s4) and the creator himself says Dean has to learn to love Sam more, than Sam was validated. 

If it's not onscreen, I personally don't care what the showrunner claims. Onscreen Sam wasn't validated in the choices he made... or we wouldn't have heard about Sam's "bad choices" for seasons to come.

As for Dean treating Sam like an adult, I agree with you ...to an extent. That still didn't mean that Dean's instinct to protect Sam to the point of overriding Sam's wishes and choices doesn't sometimes override Dean treating Sam like an "adult." One of the reasons that Sam ended up listening to Ruby in the first place was because Dean decided for Sam to bring him back from the dead by making a deal, even though Dean knew Sam wouldn't have wanted him to do so. Now it could be up for debate as to whether Sam would have listened to Ruby anyway, but we can't know that, because Dean made the deal, so it was already on the table as motivation for Sam.

48 minutes ago, ILoveReading said:

As for Sam's apologies, they were invalidated the minute he announced he went to Ruby to get away from Dean.  Because it came across as 'its only my fault because you made me do it in the first place," 

I despise Fallen Idols so much because of that.  It dumped the whole mess into Dean's lap because he was too bossy and controlling. 

I disagree that it was all "dumped into Dean's lap." Dean isn't responsible for how Sam feels, so Sam feeling like a little brother isn't Dean's fault. Besides I don't even see "being bossy" - which wasn't even what Sam said - as some kind of major character flaw. If Sam chose to feel "bossed" instead of saying "shove it" that's on Sam, and if Sam chose to not feel bossed by going off with Ruby... well then that, too, is on Sam. And Sam confirmed that line of reasoning for me by saying it wasn't Dean's fault he felt that way when he explicitly said "No it's mine (fault)."

So for me there is no in canon "blaming" of Dean by the narrative for any of Sam's decisions here, especially since in the very next episode, the narrative position that it was Sam's bad decisions that got them into this mess was reiterated by Castiel and Sam.

Obviously your miles on this vary, but for me it didn't come across as blaming Dean at all. Even if Sam suposedly believed it - which as I said, I don't agree with - that's just Sam's POV, not the narrative, which pretty much continued with it was Sam's bad decisions, no one else's that the writing had been showing before and after... with even Ruby reinforcing that it was Sam's bad choices.

[ILoveReading]

15 minutes ago, AwesomO4000 said:

disagree that it was all "dumped into Dean's lap."

Then Dean should have been allowed to defend himself and been given a counter argument, because Dean wasn't guilty of what Sam was accusing him off.  He did let Sam make his own decisions.

The "no its mine" was invalidated by Sam's follow up words that he had to get away from Dean.

 

15 minutes ago, AwesomO4000 said:

One of the reasons that Sam ended up listening to Ruby in the first place was because Dean decided for Sam to bring him back from the dead by making a deal, even though Dean knew Sam wouldn't have wanted him to do so. Now it could be up for debate as to whether Sam would have listened to Ruby anyway, but we can't know that, because Dean made the deal, so it was already on the table as motivation for Sam.

This, IMO, is just blaming Dean.  Maybe shouldn't have brought Sam back but time and time again Ruby proved herself untrustworthy.  Sam chose to follow her. 

That's not on Dean. 

Edited May 28, 2018 by ILoveReading

[DeeDee79]

15 minutes ago, ILoveReading said:

This, IMO, is just blaming Dean.

IMO that's what it seems like also. 

[trxr4kids]

Just to put in my 2 cents worth in since this conversation started out about Benny vs Ruby = Dean vs Sam relationship wise...

When Sam met Ruby he had zero (or less than) reason to trust her as she was a demon (a demon had ruined his entire family and infected him), she may have given him pretty words to believe her spiel( I just want to help,I'm different, blah blah blah) but in actuality gave no concrete reasons to trust her, especially since she couldn't deliver on saving his brother which was her main promise.

When Dean met Benny he had a small reason to try to trust him (season 2 Bloodlust, he was persuaded by Sam, mind you) as a possible ally, he was given further reason to trust him because he fought with/for him and his spiel was backed up by a concrete reason, ie: he knew of a way out and delivered.

So IMO whereas Sam's trust/faith in Ruby was questionable repeatedly, Dean's in Benny's wasn't. I honestly don't see the two as comparable but to each their own. I think Ruby and Gadreel/Ezekiel are more comparable. Ruby delivered on some things like fixing the colt and saving Sam, although it's questionable that she didn't set him up to need to be saved. Gadzekiel delivered on some things like saving Sam's life and mostly healing him, although it's questionable about how much damage there was and how long he dithered. Each had ulterior motives however the results of their "help" far outweighed the positives as opposed to Benny whose only ulterior motive was freedom. MMV

[companionenvy]

52 minutes ago, ILoveReading said:

Then Dean should have been allowed to defend himself and been given a counter argument, because Dean wasn't guilty of what Sam was accusing him off.  He did let Sam make his own decisions.

The "no its mine" was invalidated by Sam's follow up words that he had to get away from Dean.

Dean only needs to defend himself to the extent that one reads what Sam was saying as an accusation that needs a defense, which several of us don't. 

Someone can be the cause of something bad without being actually at fault. In fact, there's even another obvious example of this in Sam and Dean's own relationship: baby and child Sam was the pretty direct cause of a lot of pain for Dean even though he was totally innocent in the situation. Suppose Dean sat Sam down and said, explicitly, "Look, I've been looking after you my whole life. I sacrificed my childhood to you. I have an unhealthy habit of totally negating my own needs, wants and desires - or even acknowledging myself as a person possessed of independent worth -- because of my ingrained sense that my value is totally tied to my ability to protect you. I can't do that any longer, and so for this to work, I need some space." That wouldn't be blaming Sam; it would be Dean making a self-aware assessment of his own emotional needs.

Admittedly, the situation in Fallen Idols is murkier, because it does involve some criticism of Dean - Sam is (rightly) calling out Dean for jeopardizing the case in the present day, and by tying that to a larger dynamic, suggests that Dean has failed to treat Sam as an equal in the past. I think there's less justification for that claim, although even there, I'm not sure that Sam is specifically blaming Dean for being bossy so much as he is pointing out a dynamic that both have fallen into that is no longer working as a path forward in their adult relationship. In any case, even to the extent that Sam is criticizing Dean, I think Sam is trying to be clear that he isn't saying that this means Dean bears part of the blame for what Sam did.

 In assigning blame in legal and, I think, moral terms, there's a concept of foreseeability: to be deemed negligent, for instance, you have to done something that a reasonable person might have expected to lead to negative consequences. Even when someone has been negligent, their culpability is generally going to be limited to proximate and predictable results, even if the ripple effect from the original action also has wider repercussions. If you forget to lock your gate and your dog gets out and bites someone, that's on you. If the dog runs in the middle of the road and causes a six car pile up, that's also on you. If two random people find your lost dog, get into a fight about who gets to keep him, and one winds up taking a gun and killing the other guy , however, that's not on you, because that goes so far beyond what anyone could have anticipated, and involves much more direct, terrible decisions on the parts of other people. Even though there was an original "wrong" action on your part, leading to a tragedy that wouldn't otherwise have happened, you're no more to blame, in that case than you are if someone tragically dies in a traffic accident while coming to meet you for lunch.

The idea that Dean being too bossy with Sam - which may or may not even be precisely what Sam is saying, here -- could make him to blame or at fault for the apocalypse is ridiculous, and Sam knows it. This isn't simply a matter of saying that at the end of the day, Sam is responsible for his own choices, even though he is. Its a matter of recognizing that Dean's "wrong" is so absurdly minor and the consequence so outrageously disproportionate and indirect that it would be like saying a parent who was slightly too strict was to blame for their kid turning into a serial killer: the parent may have been too strict, and that may even have had some role in an initial rebellion that wound up taking a much darker turn, but no one would really take seriously, I think, the idea that little Bobby is serving six life sentences in Sing Sing because his loving parents gave him too early a curfew. 

This, again, is why Sam, even within that episode, says that what he did is on him and is not Dean's fault. He's identifying the psychological pressures that played into his bad choices, which leads him to a realization about his relationship with Dean. He is explicitly not telling Dean that what happened is Dean's fault. 

[Reganne]

3 hours ago, AwesomO4000 said:

 

In my opinion, it's a different thing... and even though Sam was trying to earn that trust back, Sam wasn't even asking for that. Dean had to apologize in "Fallen Idols," because he was letting his (understandable) personal issues cloud his judgement in a case. And as Sam said, not trusting Sam personally was an entirely different thing - which Sam told Dean he was entitled to - than trusting his opinion / judgment on the job. Two different issues which Sam made sure to say were separate. If these things were not separate issues in Dean's mind, then he shouldn't have come back to hunting with Sam at all or at least explained to Sam the entire truth of why he came back.

And Dean apologized in "Point of No Return," because he unilaterally decided what the course of action would be without getting input from anyone else in his team (that he named), and then lying about it. It wasn't just Sam that Dean wasn't trusting there, but Castiel and Bobby as well, neither of whom had anything to do with Ruby*** and who Dean hadn't expressed any trust issues with. Dean's trust issues with Sam weren't the only things in play there or Dean would have consulted with Castiel and Bobby also before deciding that he alone should be the one to decide what the course of action should be.

*** That Dean knew about anyway.

If it's not onscreen, I personally don't care what the showrunner claims. Onscreen Sam wasn't validated in the choices he made... or we wouldn't have heard about Sam's "bad choices" for seasons to come.

 

I completely agree.  Dean's apologizing that he did in season 5 didn't have anything to do with not trusting Sam in season 4.  (not saying it should have) They were about different situations where as Sam's apologies in Lucifer Rising and Sympathy for the Devil were directly for his involvement with Ruby and the consequences that followed which tells me the narrative not only showed but also verified that Sam was wrong about Ruby, which he was.

 

2 hours ago, ILoveReading said:

Then Dean should have been allowed to defend himself and been given a counter argument, because Dean wasn't guilty of what Sam was accusing him off.  He did let Sam make his own decisions.

The "no its mine" was invalidated by Sam's follow up words that he had to get away from Dean.

 

The "no it's mine" actually came after Sam's comments about getting away from Dean.  After Dean says "What, so it's my fault now?"  then Sam says "No, it's mine".   IMO, making it clear that Sam still blamed himself for it.  

[Myrelle]

5 hours ago, companionenvy said:

Admittedly, the situation in Fallen Idols is murkier, because it does involve some criticism of Dean - Sam is (rightly) calling out Dean for jeopardizing the case in the present day, and by tying that to a larger dynamic, suggests that Dean has failed to treat Sam as an equal in the past. I think there's less justification for that claim, although even there, I'm not sure that Sam is specifically blaming Dean for being bossy so much as he is pointing out a dynamic that both have fallen into that is no longer working as a path forward in their adult relationship. In any case, even to the extent that Sam is criticizing Dean, I think Sam is trying to be clear that he isn't saying that this means Dean bears part of the blame for what Sam did.

 

5 hours ago, companionenvy said:

This, again, is why Sam, even within that episode, says that what he did is on him and is not Dean's fault. He's identifying the psychological pressures that played into his bad choices, which leads him to a realization about his relationship with Dean. He is explicitly not telling Dean that what happened is Dean's fault. 

Leaving aside the thought or idea or possibility that Dean was written wildly OOC in this episode by the writer of this one in order to specifically push the rest of the bolded statement here, this is still just a one-side viewpoint(Sam's) of only one of the problems(Dean's) that's inherent in the brothers' dysfunctional and CO-dependent relationship. 

I'm still waiting for the writers to verbally identify what Sam does wrong within it, as they seem to have no problem telling us over and over and over and over again what Dean continues to do wrong in that regard; and this, even though, IMO, they've shown us how Sam contributes to both the dysfunctional and the CO-dependent aspect of it over and over and over again, while rarely(if ever) allowing Dean(or anyone, for that matter) to point it out to Sam, so that Sam can realize and acknowledge his part in it.

And there have been plenty of opportunities for this other than Fallen Idols-which was only the first. Jump the Shark-the end scene, PONR, Torn and Frayed, the stupid church scene in Sacrifice,and more recently, that stupid therapy session or within that same episode Sam comparing DEAN to John and adding insult to injury by stating that what John did "worked" on Dean(talk about a WTF! moment there), but not on him(Sam)-that one had me wondering what show Sam via these clueless writers has been watching all these years. And then there was the kiddie table nonsense, too. And those just off the top of my head.

I think that the writers actually feel that Dean is more responsible for the dysfunction within the brothers' relationship and that Sam's only problem within it is that he follows when he should actually be leading because that's all that I can ever remember them specifically pointing out as something that Sam has done wrong strictly within the context of the brothers' relationship. Never have they said or have they had Sam own up projecting his own faults and flaws onto Dean. Never(aside from Dean pointing it out and Sam taking it as "a complement") have they acknowledged or have they had Sam acknowledge that he pulls some of the same type of emotional blackmail on Dean that John used to. Never have they pointed out that Sam's need to feel that he must be "first" in Dean's life could feed into or be a partial "cause" behind some of the poor choices that Dean has made.

If they want us to believe that Sam was simply identifying the psychological pressures that played into his bad choices, which lead him to a realization about  his relationship with Dean, why then, in the name of a balanced narrative would they not do this for/with Dean also? And tbh, at this point and IMO, it wouldn't even necessarily have to involve Dean being present for this to take place, and so no need for even an apology of any kind-just an acknowledgement by the writers through someone(ANYONE! AFAIC) that from a psychological standpoint, Sam has in the past, and still to this day, also does some things that could be classified as "causes" behind the wrong choices and/or poor decisions that Dean has made, both in the past and to this very day, within their relationship-because minus this kind/type of a balance in the narrative, we are IMO, simply being given a character(Sam) who inherently and even possibly unconsciously attempts to shift the blame for his own poor choices and decisions onto someone else(usually Dean) even while he's actually mouthing words to the effect that he's not doing that or trying to do it and really just making it appear that he's being unambiguous in that way.

[AwesomO4000]

10 hours ago, ILoveReading said:

This, IMO, is just blaming Dean.  Maybe shouldn't have brought Sam back but time and time again Ruby proved herself untrustworthy.  Sam chose to follow her. 

That's not on Dean. 

10 hours ago, DeeDee79 said:

IMO that's what it seems like also. 

I never said that it was. I said that if Dean hadn't made the decision to make the deal, Sam might not have trusted Ruby. However that doesn't mean that that makes Sam trusting Ruby Dean's fault, because Sam still had the choice not to trust Ruby. It's the same for me as saying Dean being "bossy" (whatever that means) is somehow blaming Dean. As I said, I greatly disagree with this. So for me, neither is blaming Dean.

And I think @companionenvy explained it above better than I could. There's no direct cause and effect here. In between Dean's actions and the results, Sam made decisions that were his own, and at that point, it became Sam's responsibility.

However, the behavior of Dean's that lead to him making the deal in the first place was Dean's fault, and I think Sam had the right to call him out on it. For me that was the "before" that Sam was talking about. It was the not letting Sam be an equal that Sam was referring to. And just as I don't give Sam a pass for Ruby, I don't give Dean a John pass for making the deal. Between John's negative influence and the deal, Dean made his own decision, and to me, that means it's on him.

And my point for using that was that it is an example of Dean not treating Sam as an equal but instead as someone he thinks he needs to protect (it's why Dean said that he was going to do it, because he'd failed to protect Sam) and make decisions for. So while Dean did somewhat treat Sam as an adult in season 4, that hadn't always been the case in the past and it lead to a bad consequence... in other words I was saying that Sam had reason to question Dean's ability to treat Sam as an equal as much as Dean had a reason to question Sam's trustworthiness in their relationship. I see both of their points.

10 hours ago, ILoveReading said:

Then Dean should have been allowed to defend himself and been given a counter argument, because Dean wasn't guilty of what Sam was accusing him off.  He did let Sam make his own decisions.

In the case of the deal, no he didn't. Sam never had the chance to have a say there. The decision was made for him.

And again, I'm not saying that what Sam ultimately did after that was Dean's fault, but the original decision to take Sam's choice away was, and I think Sam had an understandable reaction about being concerned when Dean was making rumblings of deciding things for Sam again in the on the job situation. Sam wanted to nip that kind of thing in the bud, especially because innocent people were involved and had the potential to be affected.

8 hours ago, companionenvy said:

This, again, is why Sam, even within that episode, says that what he did is on him and is not Dean's fault. He's identifying the psychological pressures that played into his bad choices, which leads him to a realization about his relationship with Dean. He is explicitly not telling Dean that what happened is Dean's fault. 

Yes, this exactly. I wish I could like your post many many times.

8 hours ago, trxr4kids said:

When Dean met Benny he had a small reason to try to trust him (season 2 Bloodlust, he was persuaded by Sam, mind you) as a possible ally, he was given further reason to trust him because he fought with/for him and his spiel was backed up by a concrete reason, ie: he knew of a way out and delivered.

Except that even Lenore ultimately succumbed to her nature - as did the rest of her nest - despite her better intentions, and Dean saw it happen. So Dean had seen that even a formerly trustworthy vampire ultimately succumbed to pressures.

I also don't see how Ruby's spiel wasn't just as "backed up" myself. She did save Sam many times, helped him to exorcise other demons, and helped him to save people. And she delivered on "training" Sam to use his powers.

8 hours ago, trxr4kids said:

So IMO whereas Sam's trust/faith in Ruby was questionable repeatedly, Dean's in Benny's wasn't. I honestly don't see the two as comparable but to each their own. I think Ruby and Gadreel/Ezekiel are more comparable. Ruby delivered on some things like fixing the colt and saving Sam, although it's questionable that she didn't set him up to need to be saved. Gadzekiel delivered on some things like saving Sam's life and mostly healing him, although it's questionable about how much damage there was and how long he dithered. Each had ulterior motives however the results of their "help" far outweighed the positives as opposed to Benny whose only ulterior motive was freedom. MMV

Well, his ulterior motive was freedom as far as Dean knew, however, in my opinion, it could have just as easily been Benny gaining his freedom so he could go on a killing spree at worst or even being sincere until actually being faced with what "freedom" meant and just falling off the wagon. Dean just happened to be somewhat lucky in that his decision didn't lead to something like that. In my opinion anyway.

I would also agrue that - at least in terms of the narrative - Gadreel ended up being the same way. Most of the "negatives" ended up happening to Sam, but the narrative had Gadreel end up being redeemed and doing a bunch of positive things. Even Kevin's death which was supposed to be so awful and give Dean guilt ended up having an important positive result (saving his mother) and Kevin ended up getting his peace.

Edited May 29, 2018 by AwesomO4000

[Myrelle]

Oh, and I think Sam choosing to follow Ruby was validated within the narrative when it was shown to us that Sam could not have defeated Lucifer w/o drinking the demon blood. He would never have done that w/o her "help" and so would not have been able to host Lucifer which lead to him to being able to jump into the pit while hosting him.

So while Dean wasn't shown to be wrong about Ruby, neither was Sam shown to really be "wrong" either, IMO. She was kind of like Gollum in that way. And I even think that's what Kripke was going for.

[AwesomO4000]

1 hour ago, Myrelle said:

I think that the writers actually feel that Dean is more responsible for the dysfunction within the brothers' relationship and that Sam's only problem within it is that he follows when he should actually be leading because that's all that I can ever remember them specifically pointing out as something that Sam has done wrong strictly within the context of the brothers' relationship.

For me if this was the case, then the writers would have more situations where Sam takes the lead and things go right. That to me would be an easy way to show this is their opinion. But as far as I can see they don't, so in my opinion they don't think this. In general - to me - the writers seem to show: Sam doesn't listen to Dean = Bad things happen. This is the opposite of Sam should lead. This to me looks like: Sam should do what Dean says and/or follow Dean or things go wrong.*** Your miles may vary.

*** With the exception so far being Jack.

1 hour ago, Myrelle said:

If they want us to believe that Sam was simply identifying the psychological pressures that played into his bad choices, which lead him to a realization about  his relationship with Dean, why then, in the name of a balanced narrative would they not do this for/with Dean also? And tbh, at this point and IMO, it wouldn't even necessarily have to involve Dean being present for this to take place, and so no need for even an apology of any kind-just an acknowledgement by the writers through someone(ANYONE! AFAIC) that from a psychological standpoint, Sam has in the past, and still to this day, also does some things that could be classified as "causes" behind the wrong choices and/or poor decisions that Dean has made, both in the past and to this very day, within their relationship-because minus this kind/type of a balance in the narrative, we are IMO, simply being given a character(Sam) who inherently and even possibly unconsciously attempts to shift the blame for his own poor choices and decisions onto someone else(usually Dean) even while he's actually mouthing words to the effect that he's not doing that or trying to do it and really just making it appear that he's being unambiguous in that way.

Because as @companionenvy said, some of us didn't see Sam as blaming Dean for anything in "Fallen Idols."

And as I aid above, I don't think either "causes" the decisions of the other. What could Sam do that would cause Dean's decisions? Dean can make up his own mind. Even if I bought that Sam does blame Dean... say Sam even did it all the time. Dean doesn't have to accept that blame. He's an adult. I don't even know how that would affect any decisions Dean makes anyway. Maybe I'm missing something.

Besides, as far as I can see, the show doesn't even seem to think decisions of Dean's are poor anymore anyway Take Dean lying to Sam about Gadreel as an example. Where were the awful consequences from that "poor" decision? How about killing Death to save Sam? Again I didn't see the show showing that as a poor decision either. There were no bad consequences... and instead there were actually good consequences. Even Dean taking the mark of Cain was validated by God himself as not being a poor choice. Trusting Benny... no problem, he's good. Bargaining to get out of solitary... no problem, Castiel kills the bargainee, who gets a promotion because of it, so there are no bad consequences - everyone wins! Yay for Dean's choice.

So basically I'm confused here as to what poor choices Dean is being blamed for by the narrative. The only person I remember repeatedly being blamed specifically in the narrative for "bad choices" is Sam.

53 minutes ago, Myrelle said:

Oh, and I think Sam choosing to follow Ruby was validated within the narrative when it was shown to us that Sam could not have defeated Lucifer w/o drinking the demon blood. He would never have done that w/o her "help" and so would not have been able to host Lucifer which lead to him to being able to jump into the pit while hosting him.

Why couldn't Castiel have just told Sam just like did? Castiel found out because he found out that Nick was drinking demon blood. Ruby had been long dead when this came up again. Also it was said that Sam needed to drink the demon blood to house Lucifer not to defeat him. We don't know if the blood had anything to do with that part, and I would more lean towards not. In my opinion, if it did, Sam would have defeated Lucifer right away when he had the most demon blood in his system, but that's not the way it happened.

53 minutes ago, Myrelle said:

So while Dean wasn't shown to be wrong about Ruby, neither was Sam shown to really be "wrong" either, IMO. She was kind of like Gollum in that way. And I even think that's what Kripke was going for.

Well, in my opinion, there's the point that Sam wouldn't have had to get Lucifer to fall in the cage to begin with if what he did hadn't let Lucifer out in the first place.

The fact that Sam listening to Ruby directly lead to him killing Lilith and releasing Lucifer - to me - is pretty much the part that was showing Sam to be wrong. And in case I missed that clue, there were the many people in the narrative telling Sam he was wrong to remind me.

Gollum wanted the ring and was half crazy from his obsession. He didn't want to raise a dark lord to kill humanity and have demons take over the world - which is what Ruby wanted, and she knew exactly what she was doing - no crazy that I could see. I don't find them to be similar myself.

Edited May 29, 2018 by AwesomO4000

[mertensia]

But again, there was nobody aside from Dean, Bobby and Rufus who were interested in stopping Sam's breaking the last seal. The demons weren't. The angels weren't. God wasn't. The angels could have destroyed Ruby multiple times but didn't. Dean said it himself "who would have though killing Lilith was a bad idea?" You're arguing after the fact that he should have known. How? 

[companionenvy]

5 hours ago, Myrelle said:

Oh, and I think Sam choosing to follow Ruby was validated within the narrative when it was shown to us that Sam could not have defeated Lucifer w/o drinking the demon blood. He would never have done that w/o her "help" and so would not have been able to host Lucifer which lead to him to being able to jump into the pit while hosting him.

So while Dean wasn't shown to be wrong about Ruby, neither was Sam shown to really be "wrong" either, IMO. She was kind of like Gollum in that way. And I even think that's what Kripke was going for.

Aside from AwesomeO's point above that Sam didn't need to have previously drunk demon blood to have done so -- and known that he had to do so -- in Swan Song, this still seems like a stretch. Lucifer only needed to be stopped because Sam had let him out. Maybe Sam and Dean would have found another way to kill Lillith even without Ruby, but that isn't what wound up happening. 

Ruby played no positive part in the story, and after her true motives were revealed, we were (rightly) never asked to sympathize with her or think of her as anything but an evil manipulator. 

Again, I also think that at some point, while it may be interesting to go back and trace the furthest and most indirect reaches of character's actions, it isn't relevant in assigning moral value, or even, past a certain point, of meaningfully changing the legacy of the people involved. Unambiguously good things almost always have the potential to lead to certain negative consequences, and unambiguously bad things almost always have the potential to lead to certain positive consequences, especially when we're talking about large-scale actions with world-changing repercussions. It is an uncomfortable truth that basically any descendant of a slave, or a Holocaust survivor, or of any person who has fled historical persecution of some variety would not be alive today if it hadn't been for the mass atrocities that led to their ancestors winding up in the right place and time to meet and start a particular family line. That doesn't mean the perpetrators of these atrocities are validated - even if some of those people wind up becoming historical figures who exert a powerful influence for good on the world. 

59 minutes ago, mertensia said:

But again, there was nobody aside from Dean, Bobby and Rufus who were interested in stopping Sam's breaking the last seal. The demons weren't. The angels weren't. God wasn't. The angels could have destroyed Ruby multiple times but didn't. Dean said it himself "who would have though killing Lilith was a bad idea?" You're arguing after the fact that he should have known. How? 

Sam was not actually wrong for killing Lillith, based on what he knew at the time. He was wrong in thinking Ruby was trustworthy and on their side.

In addition, while the show does acknowledge on a few occasions that Sam couldn't have known that killing Lillith was a bad thing, he is far more consistently treated as morally accountable, and often accepts moral responsibility himself. This is true in large measure precisely because of the way it happened - namely, trusting and even sleeping with a demon and getting addicted to demon blood. If Sam and Dean had represented a united front throughout S4, figured out a way to kill Lillith through good old-fashioned research, and then realized in horror that they had played into her plan, while I'm sure they still would have felt terrible about the trap they had walked into, that would have been a very different story. Instead, the show frames the killing of Lillith as the end result of a series of terrible choices on Sam's part.

Personally, I've argued before that I actually do think Sam's actions in S4 -- including trusting Ruby, which he had a lot of good reasons to do, and even drinking demon's blood -- are a lot more sympathetic than they've been painted; I think he's much more culpable for Amara and the BotD situation than he is for the initial Apocalypse, because it was predictable that using the BotD could lead to cosmic-level disaster and because his motivation was purely selfish (save Dean, vs. stop the apocalypse). But for better or worse, the narrative has been fairly consistent in painting Sam's actions throughout S4 as a terrible sin that he needs/needed to atone for. 

[mertensia]

The thing is I see a rigged game. No matter what Sam et alia did, it was all going to end up with Sam killing Lilith. He never drank blood? Plan B. He knifed Ruby early on? Plan C. Should the show have gone a different route? Sure, maybe. But it's like watching them create a con on Leverage. The mark behaves like this, so we do that. Sam behaves like this, so the pro-Apocalypse people behave like that.

[ILoveReading]

My issue with Sam in season 4 was never breaking the last seal.  It was how he treated Dean from the moment Dean showed up at that motel room room.  The first thing Sam did was lie.  Sam left Dean his first night back to go be with his demon lover and it kept escalating to the point where Sam strangled Dean for nothing more than a show of dominance. 

Dean repeatedly called Dean weak (the siren ep doesn't get a pass because it didn't put those thoughts in Sam's head).  He repeated this to Ruby in the On the Head of a Pin, it was in his head in When the Levee Breaks.  Dean thanked Ruby more than once and gave her more chances then she deserved.  Sam was already firmly in her grip when Dean was in hell. 

So Fallen Idol's created a false narrative for no other reason than Sam's words being justified.  Sorry show, but if your going have Sam repeatably talk about how strong and superior he is to Dean, don't back track and tell me that Sam wanted to be with Ruby because she made him feel strong.   Its a direct contradiction.  Its the reason why I felt that yes, Sam was blaming Dean for his actions.

Sam went his own way every step of the way in s4. It didn't matter what Dean said or did.  Once again Sam's actions don't match what he was saying. 

Prior to that ep, Dean was taking his fair share of his part in the apocalypse starting.  "We made a mess we clean it up."  "You broke the last I broke the first"  Then in this ep we get a one sided phone call with "whose fault is that"  So why the 180 if there wasn't an agenda by the writers?

So that ep was written with the purpose of dumping it all in Dean's lap.

As for Sam's powers, Kripke himself called them cool and said Dean has to learn to accept them.  That's why there was suddenly a noble purpose for drinking demon blood, and the show made Dean watch and participate.  Its the text book example of whitewashing.

I was watching Children Shouldn't play with Dead things recently.   There are a lot of similarities with FI.  Sam was as dismissive as Dean in this ep.  He didn't listen to Dean and put the case in jeopardy .  He thought Dean was seeing things because of John's death.  Dean put his foot down, "I know how to do my job."  He didn't say "Your making me act this way."    There are so many other ways they could have worded that conversation or they could have allowed Dean a voice.  

[Myrelle]

Quote

Again, I also think that at some point, while it may be interesting to go back and trace the furthest and most indirect reaches of character's actions, it isn't relevant in assigning moral value, or even, past a certain point, of meaningfully changing the legacy of the people involved

If this is so, then why do the writers bring those kinds of things up for Sam in relation to Dean, but not vice versa if not to show us that in their opinion this is a behavior of Dean's that "caused" and continues to "cause" and create the dysfunction and co-dependence within the relationship while Sam's desire/demand to be "first" in Dean's life (for one) must not be-not in their opinions, anyway, because it's never brought up as the same type of causal behavior regarding the brothers' relationship that needs to be changed by Sam.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Myrelle

[Katy M]

10 minutes ago, Myrelle said:

Sam's desire/demand to be "first" in Dean's life

I have never seen any evidence of this.

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, mertensia said:

The thing is I see a rigged game. No matter what Sam et alia did, it was all going to end up with Sam killing Lilith. He never drank blood? Plan B. He knifed Ruby early on? Plan C. Should the show have gone a different route? Sure, maybe. But it's like watching them create a con on Leverage. The mark behaves like this, so we do that. Sam behaves like this, so the pro-Apocalypse people behave like that.

Again, probably true, but in that case we basically have to throw out the significance of most of the major events leading up to the apocalypse. If Sam hadn't been killed by Jake, the PAF (Pro-apocalypse faction) could have killed him at any point in order to motivate Dean to make the deal. If Dean hadn't made the deal, the PAF could have killed him and condemned him to hell whether or not he "deserved" it. If Dean hadn't broken from torture after 30 years, they could almost certainly have gotten him to shed blood in hell by threatening Sam, or setting up a total manipulation, a la Ruby and Sam, so that Dean thought he was doing the right thing. And so on. It is part of the problem with having characters with so much power.  Frankly, if you think too hard about it, the idea that a group of highly super-powered beings with almost infinite means of persuasion at their disposal couldn't get Dean and/or Sam to say "yes" well before it actually came to a head is absurd, given that "consent" could be obtained via deception, torture, etc.

 

1 hour ago, ILoveReading said:

but if your going have Sam repeatably talk about how strong and superior he is to Dean, don't back track and tell me that Sam wanted to be with Ruby because she made him feel strong.   Its a direct contradiction.  Its the reason why I felt that yes, Sam was blaming Dean for his actions.

I don't think it is any more of a contradiction than a bully with extremely low self-esteem, or a desperately lonely person who nonetheless fears intimacy and walls themselves off from others, both common psychological phenomena. 

Sam felt strong while he was with Ruby because of the artificial high of demon blood, because he actually was manifesting quite impressive powers, and because Ruby was constantly feeding him a narrative in which he was the only true savior. The reason he was susceptible to that narrative prior to succumbing fully to Ruby's manipulations is precisely because he did not feel strong, and in fact was feeling weaker and more useless than he ever had before, having been unable to save Dean. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, to the extent that I agree that Sam is attributing his turn to Ruby to Dean's overbearing behavior specifically and his own need to feel powerful more generally, it is doing a major, major disservice to Sam's psychology and motivations. For all that we didn't get tons of insight into Sam's mindset in S4, I think the show had done a very good job of establishing exactly why he would be so ripe for manipulation. It is actually a very sympathetic story, and not one that should be reducible to a base lust for power or petty resentment toward a sibling.

Sam, like Dean, was raised in a family in which your worth as a person was synonymous with your worth as a hunter. When he - reasonably enough -- didn't take naturally to the hunting life, he tried to find other, more normal metrics of value -- academic success, an ordinary life with a person he loved -- only to have that ripped away past reasonable possibility of recovery. He winds up back in the hunting life, where the old rules apply: value comes from being a good hunter, and being able to protect the people you love. John models this, dying for Dean. Dean models this, making the deal for Sam. Sam tries this....and fails. Forget ordinary survivor's guilt; Dean is going to burn in hell for eternity because of something he did to save Sam. And for the most part, in the year leading up to Dean's deal, Sam has to repress his righteous resentment at Dean for laying that guilt on him because Dean is dying and Sam is supposed to be grateful for having been saved. 

Enter Ruby, who waves before Sam the possibility that he can save Dean, after all. Of course Sam is much more trusting of her than Dean is, partially because Sam is generally more willing to believe monsters can be good, but also because he's the one that needs her to actually be for real and have some way of saving Dean. According to Winchester family values, dying yourself is a much, much more acceptable outcome than allowing a loved one to die; if Dean had had to trust someone sketchy to save Sam, he would have done it in a heartbeat (and, indeed, he has done any number of irresponsible things to save Sam). More specifically, S3 Ruby engineers things perfectly to prime Sam to accept her. In Jus in Bello, she sets up a scenario in which the brothers' unwillingness to sacrifice one innocent (who is volunteering, to boot) for the greater good winds up with both that innocent and a bunch of other people dead, teaching the "lesson" that sometimes we can't afford to hold to moral absolutes. She then dangles before Sam the possibility that he could save Dean entirely if only he would use his powers, subsequently framing his failure to have done so as the reason his brother is now in eternal torment, increasing Sam's sense that he has failed on every level, and is essentially worthless.

Did Ruby make Sam feel more powerful? Of course she did. And Sam liked feeling powerful, because he's only human and generally we do like feeling strong, competent and important. But his reasons for needing that feeling were much, much more complex than "my brother was mean to me, and now I'm working out sibling rivalry through giving myself over to the forces of darkness." Sam wasn't some megalomaniac; he was acting out his guilt, despair and self-loathing by latching on to someone and something that seemed to give him the chance to make up for his failures. 

[trxr4kids]

9 hours ago, AwesomO4000 said:

Except that even Lenore ultimately succumbed to her nature - as did the rest of her nest - despite her better intentions, and Dean saw it happen. So Dean had seen that even a formerly trustworthy vampire ultimately succumbed to pressures.

Lenore only succumbed to her nature due to Eve's influence IIRC.

 

9 hours ago, AwesomO4000 said:

And my point for using that was that it is an example of Dean not treating Sam as an equal but instead as someone he thinks he needs to protect (it's why Dean said that he was going to do it, because he'd failed to protect Sam) and make decisions for.

I actually agree that Dean and the show for that matter doesn't think of Sam as an equal, he thinks of Sam as superior to and more important than himself in every way. Regardless of that though it's possible to think of someone as an equal but still want to protect or care for them. I think that Sam doesn't see it that way is just another way he projects his own insecurities and issues onto Dean.

[Myrelle]

2 hours ago, ILoveReading said:

So Fallen Idol's created a false narrative for no other reason than Sam's words being justified.  Sorry show, but if your going have Sam repeatably talk about how strong and superior he is to Dean, don't back track and tell me that Sam wanted to be with Ruby because she made him feel strong.   Its a direct contradiction.  Its the reason why I felt that yes, Sam was blaming Dean for his actions.

Sam went his own way every step of the way in s4. It didn't matter what Dean said or did.  Once again Sam's actions don't match what he was saying. 

Prior to that ep, Dean was taking his fair share of his part in the apocalypse starting.  "We made a mess we clean it up."  "You broke the last I broke the first"  Then in this ep we get a one sided phone call with "whose fault is that"  So why the 180 if there wasn't an agenda by the writers?

So that ep was written with the purpose of dumping it all in Dean's lap.

This. So much. This was the episode that made me lose it for Sam for good. Up until this episode, I actually thought that they were going to redeem Sam for what happened in S4 and the brothers could and would go back to being able to trust one another more. Foolish me. Little did I know that the writers were actually just setting the stage for the brothers to stay joined at the hip in spite of the fact that trust of, in, and for each other was no longer going to be depicted as a necessity. Apparently their Familial Lurve was all that was necessary. This is when the relationship took it's first turn for the worst, IMO, and the writers simply continued to destroy it even more with every subsequent season for this fan until we've reached this time wherein(and I cannot stress this feeling strongly enough in me) I think that the only way that the brothers will ever be able to have truly fulfilling lives is if they agree to live separate from each other.

5 minutes ago, Katy M said:

I have never seen any evidence of this.

Sam said it outright to Dean about Amara when the fog was attacking him and IMO, it can also very easily be gleaned form what Sam said in the church scene in Sacrifice, too, but that one will always be debated and debatable in this fandom.

[companionenvy]

19 minutes ago, Myrelle said:

If this is so, then why do the writers bring those kinds of things up for Sam in relation to Dean, but not nice versa if not to show us that in their opinion this is a behavior of Dean's that "caused" and continues to "cause" and create the dysfunction and co-dependence within the relationship while Sam's desire/demand to be "first" in Dean's life (for one) must not be-not in their opinions, anyway, because it's never brought up as the same type of causal behavior regarding the brothers' relationship that needs to be changed by Sam.

IMO, they're bringing it up because it is important to the interpersonal relationship between these two brothers. Not because they're trying to draw a meaningful causal link between Dean's behavior and Sam starting the apocalypse, an interpretation that Sam explicitly rejects.

As for the rest of it, it isn't like Sam doesn't get his share of blame both for the tangible consequences of his actions and for his attitudes toward Dean. Dean, IMO, has never acknowledged that he was wrong for judging Sam for leaving for Stanford, and in fact Sam has expressed that he was the one who was wrong to leave Dean "every time." And it seems to me that Dean is pretty determined that he needs to be first in Sam's life, too. 

Edited May 29, 2018 by companionenvy

[Myrelle]

3 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

IMO, they're bringing it up because it is important to the interpersonal relationship between these two brothers. Not because they're trying to draw a meaningful causal link between Dean's behavior and Sam starting the apocalypse, an interpretation that Sam explicitly rejects.

Well, IMO there are a lot more things that need to be brought up because it is important to the interpersonal relationship between these two brothers, but they're not.

And it Is the one thing about the relationship that has been mentioned and discussed by the brothers ad nauseum as a causal reason for the dysfunction since S5 and the dysfunction IS what lead to the Ist Apocalypse and every one afterwards and it looks like they're going to go to that same old well again for the upcoming one with Dean being put in the scapegoat role for the exact same reason, yet again. Oh joy.

[Myrelle]

12 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

And it seems to me that Dean is pretty determined that he needs to be first in Sam's life, too.

Well, IMO and as far as that goes, it's hit or miss whether Dean actually still believes in even the possibility of that at this point in the series.

I mean if Sam hits another dog, then I'd bet that Dean would now think that Sam isn't likely to do that.

J/K. Sort of.

[Katy M]

28 minutes ago, Myrelle said:

Sam said it outright to Dean about Amara when the fog was attacking him and IMO, it can also very easily be gleaned form what Sam said in the church scene in Sacrifice, too, but that one will always be debated and debatable in this fandom.

WEll, yes, I do expect both of them to expect the others to choose them over monsters such as Amara, which Sam was specifically talking about with the fog.  He also told Dean to leave before he hurt him.  If he were that invested in Dean choosing him over everything else, he would have insisted that Dean stay so that he could eat him or something.

And, as far as the church scene, that wasn't about Dean putting Sam before everyone else, it was about Dean trusting him.  It goes mostly to the line in Citizen Fang where Dean said Benny was the only person who had never let him down.  And again, vampire.

Sam pushed Dean to go be with Lisa and Ben. He called him antisocial when Dean said they couldn't have any other friends.  I've never really felt that Sam wanted to be the only, or even most important, person in Dean's life.  But, of course, he does want a good, close relationship with him.  And vice versa.

[Reganne]

4 hours ago, ILoveReading said:

 

So Fallen Idol's created a false narrative for no other reason than Sam's words being justified.  Sorry show, but if your going have Sam repeatably talk about how strong and superior he is to Dean, don't back track and tell me that Sam wanted to be with Ruby because she made him feel strong.   Its a direct contradiction.  Its the reason why I felt that yes, Sam was blaming Dean for his actions.

Sam went his own way every step of the way in s4. It didn't matter what Dean said or did.  Once again Sam's actions don't match what he was saying. 

Prior to that ep, Dean was taking his fair share of his part in the apocalypse starting.  "We made a mess we clean it up."  "You broke the last I broke the first"  Then in this ep we get a one sided phone call with "whose fault is that"  So why the 180 if there wasn't an agenda by the writers?

So that ep was written with the purpose of dumping it all in Dean's lap.

As for Sam's powers, Kripke himself called them cool and said Dean has to learn to accept them.  That's why there was suddenly a noble purpose for drinking demon blood, and the show made Dean watch and participate.  Its the text book example of whitewashing.

I 

I don't think there was any backtracking.  Sam felt strong because of Ruby and the demon blood and that's why he thought Dean was weaker than him in season 4.  Because being hopped up on demon blood made him feel strong.  I think the issues are actually related, not contradictory.

 

I think with the whole "well we all know who's fault that is" shows that in fallen idols they weren't dumping it all on Dean's lap.  That was Dean blaming Sam for it.

 

With the issue of Sam's powers, Dean never had to learn to accept them.  If Kripke did say this, he did an extremely poor job of showing it.  Dean never accepted Sam's powers.  He never worked with Sam on a daily basis and accepted his powers.  He only let Sam use them when he knew that Sam wouldn't be alive much longer.  There was no long term anything which tells me that Dean never had to learn to accept them.  With stories, you really need to show your audience your intentions not just tell them in an interview.  That's when things fall flat.  That's why I take what the writers say with a grain of salt.  I want to be shown things.  Not told.

[catrox14]

2 hours ago, companionenvy said:

I don't think it is any more of a contradiction than a bully with extremely low self-esteem, or a desperately lonely person who nonetheless fears intimacy and walls themselves off from others, both common psychological phenomena. 

Are you saying Dean is both of these things?

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, catrox14 said:

Are you saying Dean is both of these things?

No, and I'm honestly not sure what in my words could possibly have implied that. I'm saying that people's psychologies are complicated. 

Edited May 29, 2018 by companionenvy

[catrox14]

3 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

No, and I'm honestly not sure what in my words could possibly have implied that. I'm saying that people's psychologies are complicated. 

Because you have been referencing Dean's psychological state of mind throughout your comments. 

And saying that people are complicated psychologically doesn't mean you weren't talking about Dean.  If you weren't, fair enough.  That's all I was trying to understand.

[catrox14]

4 hours ago, trxr4kids said:

Lenore only succumbed to her nature due to Eve's influence IIRC.

This is correct.

IMO, the issue is that Sam was basically a hubris filled broken numbnut  in s4 and it was hard to accept.  Personally, I accepted it right away and it seemed pretty consistent with the messed up, self doubting, tainted Sam we saw in s2. And to me it's obvious, it was the set up the Evil Sam vs Good Dean battle between the brothers and their vessels that Kripke wanted. (His words). And I really found Sam completely unlikeable and contemptible in s4 and he was a 100% more interesting character IMO. 

IMO, Fallen Idols is when they opted to change that story to Sam's redemption and Sam alone in the pit. To do that they had to minimize Dean's role in breaking the first seal, then have Dean say it was Sam's fault in a side conversation that Sam overhears to make Sam as woobie as possible. 

[Aeryn13]

Quote

Sam felt strong because of Ruby and the demon blood and that's why he thought Dean was weaker than him in season 4.  Because being hopped up on demon blood made him feel strong.  I think the issues are actually related, not contradictory.

Then he can`t use it as an argument on why Dean has to change his ways in the relationship because previously he drove him right into Ruby`s arms. And the episode was specifically tailored to make Dean look like a complete unreasonably bully and act like he doesn`t act normally on their cases. And like he didn`t act during Season 4.

What is Sam´s argument here then? He regarded Dean as a stupid weakling in Season 4 because he was hopped up on demon blood and Ruby. However, the next year Sam basically says that Dean being controlling and bossy drove him to Ruby who made him feel good. Sam can`t keep his own narrative straight. If he saw Dean as a little weakling, he didn`t see him as controlling and dominant because one is the antithema of the other. He can`t in hindsight claim that the loser bullied him. Though, I feel that`s what he did and the narrative backed him up.  

And if he says he liked how Ruby made him feel, then perhaps he liked the feeling of superiority that she and the blood gave him. In which case the onus to change is on him.  

Or if he wants to say that he enjoyed Ruby`s way of making him feel strong, then he should be perfectly fine with a hunting partner who outwardly is submissive but secretely plays him for a fool. Holding up Ruby as a positive example doesn`t strike me as self-aware. 

This entire relationship convo should have been at least a quid pro quo deal. If Dean has to change, then Sam has to explicitely and verbally concede to what he plans to change and where he went wrong in the relationship. And it can`t just be "I will now tell you whenever I feel victimized by your unreasonably meanness". It would have to be something that actually adresses negative behavioural traits of Sam that he acknowlegdes and promises to work on. 

[trxr4kids]

2 minutes ago, catrox14 said:

IMO, Fallen Idols is when they opted to change that story to Sam's redemption and Sam alone in the pit. To do that they had to minimize Dean's role in breaking the first seal, then have Dean say it was Sam's fault in a side conversation that Sam overhears to make Sam as woobie as possible. 

That's how I saw it too. They had to shift all blame to Sam because he was going to be the only "redeemed" via sacrifice and thereby relevant to the conclusion of the plot. They even went so far as to have his stand in say Dean was no longer a part of the story in SS just in case we didn't get it the first dozen times it was spelled out. 

IMO that's the reason that when Sam does x or y regardless of it seems like a good or bad choice there is a consequence and follow up, because he matters to the plot. Dean on the other hand can become a Knight of Hell, kill actual Death and crickets.

[companionenvy]

34 minutes ago, Aeryn13 said:

Then he can`t use it as an argument on why Dean has to change his ways in the relationship because previously he drove him right into Ruby`s arms. And the episode was specifically tailored to make Dean look like a complete unreasonably bully and act like he doesn`t act normally on their cases. And like he didn`t act during Season 4.

What is Sam´s argument here then? He regarded Dean as a stupid weakling in Season 4 because he was hopped up on demon blood and Ruby. However, the next year Sam basically says that Dean being controlling and bossy drove him to Ruby who made him feel good. Sam can`t keep his own narrative straight. If he saw Dean as a little weakling, he didn`t see him as controlling and dominant because one is the antithema of the other. He can`t in hindsight claim that the loser bullied him. Though, I feel that`s what he did and the narrative backed him up.  

The argument, as I'm understanding it goes something like this:

Prior to Dean's death, Sam felt that he was in the secondary/subordinate role in the relationship. This was not necessarily Dean's fault; a lot of it had to do with childhood dynamics, and Dean's role as the older brother (not to mention, the older brother that, from tween and teen Sam's perspective, was John's "good" son to Sam's disappointing one). When they began hunting together again after the pilot, Dean was still more often than not the leader, and still saw himself as a protector to Sam - hence sacrificing his soul for Sam's life, something that makes a lot more sense in the context of a parent/child relationship than in a partnership of emotional equals. 

When Dean died, Sam felt powerless. Some of this was ordinary grief/survivor's guilt, but it was also compounded by the more enduring sense that he was - in hunting terms -- the family screw-up who needed to be bailed out of trouble. Remember that he was the one who had, not so long ago, found out that he was demon tainted, had to be resurrected by his brother at the expense of his brother's soul, stood by as Dean killed Azazel, and then utterly failed in his frantic attempts to save Dean, who had been ripped apart by hellhounds in front of him. 

Ruby then made him feel strong by propping his ego and also giving him superpowers that actually did, objectively, make him super-strong, and physically stronger than Dean. Some of his sense that Dean was "weak" probably came from a not-entirely off-base recognition that Dean was in a really bad place, emotionally speaking. But some of it also came from the combined influence of Ruby and the demon blood. It did not come from any previous sense of himself as stronger than Dean; if anything, he was ready to jump on the idea that Dean was weak because he preferred the idea that he was the stronger one after many years of not feeling that way.

So, whether Sam is being fair or not, there's no contradiction. Sam had felt weaker than Dean before S4, so he embraces something that makes him stronger than Dean during S4. 

[AwesomO4000]

4 hours ago, Myrelle said:

If this is so, then why do the writers bring those kinds of things up for Sam in relation to Dean, but not vice versa if not to show us that in their opinion this is a behavior of Dean's that "caused" and continues to "cause" and create the dysfunction and co-dependence within the relationship while Sam's desire/demand to be "first" in Dean's life (for one) must not be-not in their opinions, anyway, because it's never brought up as the same type of causal behavior regarding the brothers' relationship that needs to be changed by Sam.

I'm not exactly sure what you're describing here, but even if Sam wants to be Dean's number one, how does he supposedly cause dysfunction in the relationship this way? Sam accepted Castiel from the beginning even though Castiel didn't like and openly insulted Sam. Sam doesn't insist that Dean get rid of Castiel or not listen to Castiel, because Sam feels that Castiel is good for Dean even though Castiel is fairly unambiguously not good for him (Sam) in season 4. (Even when Castiel later openly attacks Sam in season 6, Sam forgives him and wants him to stay - mostly for Dean I'm suspecting.) And Dean is there for some of the insults and the threats and doesn't object much. In season 4, when Castiel told Dean that if he didn't stop Sam from using his powers, they / he would, Dean didn't say something like "Don't you dare hurt my brother," or even defend Sam in the least, even though he knew that he (Dean) did have some influence with the angels (as shown at the end of "It's the Great Pumpkin..."). So I'm not seeing as how that had much affect on what Dean did or his actions. In my opinion, Dean was able to make up his own mind about what he thought and wanted to do, so I wasn't seeing this huge affect on their relationship if Sam wanted to be Dean's number one back then.

It wasn't until Carver and season 8 that things were made into an issue with Sam (Benny) that really hadn't been there before, in my opinion, and it really didn't make much sense either, but if not then we couldn't have had super special, woobie Benny, so...

5 hours ago, trxr4kids said:

I actually agree that Dean and the show for that matter doesn't think of Sam as an equal, he thinks of Sam as superior to and more important than himself in every way.

As with the above examples, I guess I'm just not seeing this. The purgatory situation is a good example. If Dean supposedly thinks of Sam as more important than himself in every way, why would Dean even stay in purgatory so long to make sure to find Castiel and get him out instead of wanting to go back as soon as Benny told him about going back so he could make sure Sam was okay? Dean spent part of the second half of season 9 under the influence of the mark of Cain thinking Sam was less than him and pretty much just a screw up. He repeated some of those things in season 10, going so far as to wish Sam dead, wanting to exchange Sam for Charlie.

Even Dean making the deal could - in my opinion - be questioned as being for Sam's benefit, because Dean knew what that guilt felt like, but still decided that he'd put Sam through that anyway for some reason that had at least as much to do with himself as it did Sam.

Dean, in my opinion, does have other priorities than Sam and acts on them as often as not which is as it should be.

5 hours ago, trxr4kids said:

Lenore only succumbed to her nature due to Eve's influence IIRC.

There wouldn't be any guarantee that Benny wouldn't have been under external influences of some sort either. The point was that Dean knew that even a "good" vampire / monster could be made to turn again given the right circumstances. He saw it again with Amy Pond. Heck he even watched Castiel go bad given the right circumstances. The only thing that made this situation different was that it was now his (Dean's) monster friend who he had spent time with, but there was still no guarantee... except that since it was Dean, I pretty much knew Benny would be good, because the show often has Dean be right about those kinds of things. But normally, there would've been no guarantee.

56 minutes ago, Aeryn13 said:

And if he says he liked how Ruby made him feel, then perhaps he liked the feeling of superiority that she and the blood gave him. In which case the onus to change is on him.  

Which Sam did by giving up the blood and admitting that he had a problem with it and how it made him feel. Sam already admitted all of that to Dean previously just a couple of episodes ago, so I'm really not seeing why it had to be brought up again here myself except in his "I'm trying to dig my way out" comment, but obviously miles vary.

59 minutes ago, Aeryn13 said:

Or if he wants to say that he enjoyed Ruby`s way of making him feel strong, then he should be perfectly fine with a hunting partner who outwardly is submissive but secretely plays him for a fool. Holding up Ruby as a positive example doesn`t strike me as self-aware. 

Except I didn't see Sam as holding Ruby up as a positive example.

1 hour ago, Aeryn13 said:

However, the next year Sam basically says that Dean being controlling and bossy drove him to Ruby who made him feel good. Sam can`t keep his own narrative straight.

I didn't see Sam saying this either. I'm not sure where "bossy" and "controlling" even comes into this, since Sam never said either of those things. He never even said "you made me feel..." and after he explained how he had felt, he made sure to reiterate that it was his fault and not Dean's.

And in my opinion, @companionenvy explained it very well...

I look at it as similar to Dean making the deal. Dean felt like he had failed to save Sam and so here was this "opportunity" (the deal) to put him in the driver's seat again in terms of an option to save Sam... and so he took it, but that wasn't Sam's fault, because it was Dean's decision. In my opinion, similar thing here. Sam felt weak / powerless (like a little brother) and Ruby - much like Dean's deal - provided Sam with an opportunity to feel like he could do something (be strong), so yeah, understandably, that would feel better than being weak and helpless, however, Sam's feeling that way and what he did to compensate for that weren't Dean's fault... which Sam exactly pointed out after he explained it.

I'm still not basically getting "bossy" and "controlling" out of it.

[AwesomO4000]

1 hour ago, trxr4kids said:

That's how I saw it too. They had to shift all blame to Sam because he was going to be the only "redeemed" via sacrifice and thereby relevant to the conclusion of the plot. They even went so far as to have his stand in say Dean was no longer a part of the story in SS just in case we didn't get it the first dozen times it was spelled out. 

Except that Chuck counteracted that, as did the narrative. Obviously - to me anyway - Dean was a part of the story, because there he was. Not only was he there, but he affected the story by convincing Castiel and Bobby to show up, too, the latter of which Molotoved Michael thereby providing the necessary time for Sam to finally overcome Lucifer. So Michael only wished that Dean wasn't part of the story, but he wasn't that lucky, since Dean was and no matter how small a role can be made of it if one is so inclined (I'm not), it was a crucial one... actually more than one crucial one.

It's like Sam rallying the troops in season 11. It was necessary for the rest to get done. Except that in this case Dean was also there as well providing support.

1 hour ago, trxr4kids said:

IMO that's the reason that when Sam does x or y regardless of it seems like a good or bad choice there is a consequence and follow up, because he matters to the plot. Dean on the other hand can become a Knight of Hell, kill actual Death and crickets.

Crickets would mean nothing happened, but that's not the case. Actually in both of those cases you mention some good things happened. When Dean became a Knight of Hell, he was able to kill Abaddon and stop her. When Dean killed Death, Billie came to Sam and later to Dean, getting to know them... and what do you know, Billie helped them in their plan to defeat Amara. Same with Gadreel, there were consequences, but mainly good ones.

As for "follow up" in the case of Amara, it was Dean who provided much of the follow up. Sam just provided the screw up. So I guess Sam mostly matters to the plot as the one who screws things up. In that case, I think I'd rather have Sam less relevant to the plot myself.

It remains to be seen what will come of this latest development. Maybe I'll be surprised and something actually bad will result from Michael!Dean. And maybe it won't even somehow end up being Sam's fault. *joke... sort of*

[auntvi]

5 hours ago, companionenvy said:

As I mentioned in a previous post, to the extent that I agree that Sam is attributing his turn to Ruby to Dean's overbearing behavior specifically and his own need to feel powerful more generally, it is doing a major, major disservice to Sam's psychology and motivations. For all that we didn't get tons of insight into Sam's mindset in S4, I think the show had done a very good job of establishing exactly why he would be so ripe for manipulation. It is actually a very sympathetic story, and not one that should be reducible to a base lust for power or petty resentment toward a sibling.

Sam, like Dean, was raised in a family in which your worth as a person was synonymous with your worth as a hunter. When he - reasonably enough -- didn't take naturally to the hunting life, he tried to find other, more normal metrics of value -- academic success, an ordinary life with a person he loved -- only to have that ripped away past reasonable possibility of recovery. He winds up back in the hunting life, where the old rules apply: value comes from being a good hunter, and being able to protect the people you love. John models this, dying for Dean. Dean models this, making the deal for Sam. Sam tries this....and fails. Forget ordinary survivor's guilt; Dean is going to burn in hell for eternity because of something he did to save Sam. And for the most part, in the year leading up to Dean's deal, Sam has to repress his righteous resentment at Dean for laying that guilt on him because Dean is dying and Sam is supposed to be grateful for having been saved. 

I agree with your entire post! This is the background we keep forgetting.  In the family structure, Dean's job was to protect Sam, which made sense when they were younger. Now that they're both adults, where does that leave Sam? What's his job? In fact in the finale of s. 2 Sam basically asks Dean that question:

SAM You shouldn't've done that. How could you do that?

DEAN Don't get mad at me. Don't you do that. I had to. I had to look out for you. That's my job.

SAM And what do you think my job is?

DEAN What?

SAM You've saved my life over and over. I mean, you sacrifice everything for me. Don't you think I'd do the same for you? You're my big brother. There's nothing I wouldn't do for you. And I don't care what it takes, I'm gonna get you out of this. Guess I gotta save your ass for a change.

Sam has no options here, what's he supposed to do? He feels useless! It just adds to his guilt, despair and self-loathing.  I was looking for Dean's reaction to the demon deal John made to save his life but can't find it right now. As I remember, Dean was conflicted & pissed that John had done it, so he knew how Sam felt at this point.

[Aeryn13]

Quote

So, whether Sam is being fair or not, there's no contradiction. Sam had felt weaker than Dean before S4, so he embraces something that makes him stronger than Dean during S4. 

The "I`m stronger, smarter, better" thing wasn`t something out of the blue that only showed up in Season 4 for Sam. He made a similar point as far back in Season 1 Asylum. And while the anger in this episode was amped up, Sam made those same points "sober" in the following episode. It was pretty much the same during Season 4 where he called Dean weak under the Siren spell and then called him weak the next episode under no spell. The words are nicer but the gist is the same. 

So those are IMO believes Sam has held for a long time, the demon blood and Ruby just brought those out in increasingly nasty ways. I remember just rolling my eyes during the episode where hallucination!Mary tells Sam that Dean can never know how strong he, Sam, is. 

Something akin to that happened with head!Bobby in the Season 9 Finale. 

Basically, I saw that before Season 4 and after. What I did think during Season 4 on first watch was that it was getting THAT nasty because it was gonna be adressed for real and progressed forward in a positive way in Season 5. Hahahaha, more fool me.

Dean gets to be called a loser for a year and then be blamed for being the bully who is at fault for what goes wrong in the relationship the next. Oh, in Season 6 he is the loser again. Splendid. 

Fallen Idols was when I gave up on the relationship and any positive progression from the Season 4 dynamic. The Season 5 Finale then gave me the rest. They couldn`t have written a better anti-redemption stories in my eyes if they tried. 

Quote

So Michael only wished that Dean wasn't part of the story, but he wasn't that lucky, since Dean was and no matter how small a role can be made of it if one is so inclined (I'm not), it was a crucial one... actually more than one crucial one.

Well, actual, if you think like me and others who believe the role is being so small that it might as well be non-existant, it goes without saying that it was non-crucial to me. I see nothing in it that was even remotely crucial. The episode would have worked just as well if Dean hadn`t been in it. 

Really crucial was John holding Azazel or Sam throwing Dean the blade before Lucifer could finish him, even as Michael. 

Even pigeon lady in the Season 11 Finale had a pretty crucial role.  

The car and a toy soldier had one in 5.22. Cas kinda contributed, that`s true.    

Hence, I think Michael spoke the truth on a meta-level. Dean wasn`t part of this story. It`s debatable if he was not "anymore" or if he had never really been at that point. And Chuck`s narration was full of shit, to be honest. They didn`t "choose each other". Sam heroically chose the world. Dean pathetically showed up at stull cemetary because quite frankly he was so useless, it`s not like he had something else to do or another purpose. 

It wasn`t unlike the Season 8 Finale when he was shuffled between Sam and Cas` stories because the writers really had no use for him in either one until making another pathetic declaration. 

Edited May 29, 2018 by Aeryn13

[trxr4kids]

41 minutes ago, AwesomO4000 said:

If Dean supposedly thinks of Sam as more important than himself in every way, why would Dean even stay in purgatory so long to make sure to find Castiel and get him out instead of wanting to go back as soon as Benny told him about going back so he could make sure Sam was okay?

I can only imagine what fans would've said about Dean abandoning poor Crazy Cas in purgatory to rush back just to be mean old controlling Dean. 

 

49 minutes ago, AwesomO4000 said:

There wouldn't be any guarantee that Benny wouldn't have been under external influences of some sort either.

I think that the Mother of All was a pretty giant external influence though. MMV

 

20 minutes ago, AwesomO4000 said:

Obviously - to me anyway - Dean was a part of the story, because there he was.

Dean's only role in the story at that point  was driver.The car, the sun, the army man and Sam's strength and bravery were what was highlighted and bolded with added exclamation points IMO.

28 minutes ago, AwesomO4000 said:

Crickets would mean nothing happened, but that's not the case.

Killing Abbadon was completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things, all she wanted was the key to the bunker, which LMAO, she clearly wasn't the brightest bulb since everybody and their dimwitted cousin can get in there. As far as Amara goes the pigeon lady had as much if not more of an impact on her decision to stand down as Dean did and I find it telling that his role was equal to that of a nameless throwaway character.

[DeeDee79]

54 minutes ago, auntvi said:

As I remember, Dean was conflicted & pissed that John had done it, so he knew how Sam felt at this point.

From what I remember Dean wasn't angry with his father for making the deal; he basically acted like his father deserved to live and he should have let him stay dead. From Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things: " And for Dad. I mean, he was your dad too. And it's my fault that he's gone." and " You and Dad ... you're the most important people in my life. And now ... I never should've come back, Sam. It wasn't natural. And now look what's come of it. I was dead. And I should have stayed dead. "

Then there was the exchange with Bobby from AHBL II: "DEAN: That's my point. Dad brought me back, Bobby. I'm not even supposed to be here. At least this way, something good could come out of it, you know? I--I--It's like my life could mean something. BOBBY: What? And it didn't before?! Have you got that low of an opinion of yourself? Are you that screwed in the head?! (He grabs DEAN again)

FWIW this isn't to take away from your post. I just wanted to chime in because you said that you couldn't remember his reaction.

[Reganne]

49 minutes ago, Aeryn13 said:

The "I`m stronger, smarter, better" thing wasn`t something out of the blue that only showed up in Season 4 for Sam. He made a similar point as far back in Season 1 Asylum. And while the anger in this episode was amped up, Sam made those same points "sober" in the following episode. It was pretty much the same during Season 4 where he called Dean weak under the Siren spell and then called him weak the next episode under no spell. The words are nicer but the gist is the same. 

So those are IMO believes Sam has held for a long time, the demon blood and Ruby just brought those out in increasingly nasty ways. I remember just rolling my eyes during the episode where hallucination!Mary tells Sam that Dean can never know how strong he, Sam, is. 

Something akin to that happened with head!Bobby in the Season 9 Finale. 

Basically, I saw that before Season 4 and after. What I did think during Season 4 on first watch was that it was getting THAT nasty because it was gonna be adressed for real and progressed forward in a positive way in Season 5. Hahahaha, more fool me.

Dean gets to be called a loser for a year and then be blamed for being the bully who is at fault for what goes wrong in the relationship the next. 

What Sam said in Asylum was different than saying Dean was too weak to kill Lilith.  In asylum he criticized Dean for following all their dad's orders.  To me these are two completely different things.  

48 minutes ago, trxr4kids said:

 

Killing Abbadon was completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things, all she wanted was the key to the bunker, which LMAO, she clearly wasn't the brightest bulb since everybody and their dimwitted cousin can get in there. As far as Amara goes the pigeon lady had as much if not more of an impact on her decision to stand down as Dean did and I find it telling that his role was equal to that of a nameless throwaway character.

I though Abadon was only interested in the key in As time goes by.  Come season 9 wasn't she fighting Crowley to become King of Hell? That's not insignificant IMO.

[DeeDee79]

52 minutes ago, Aeryn13 said:

Oh, in Season 6 he is the loser again. Splendid. 

I know!! The Campbell's treatment of Dean seriously grated and the " you have delicate features for a hunter", and " I'm in the rear with the reject?" made me want to throw things. I was very happy when they were all dead.

51 minutes ago, trxr4kids said:

I can only imagine what fans would've said about Dean abandoning poor Crazy Cas in purgatory to rush back just to be mean old controlling Dean. 

Yup! It seems that since Dean stayed behind he didn't really care about Sam. If he left he would have been an asshole that didn't care about Cas. And he's still an asshole either way for befriending Benny in the midst of everything. *sigh*

54 minutes ago, trxr4kids said:

I think that the Mother of All was a pretty giant external influence though. MMV

Especially since she was able to render Cas completely powerless as soon as he hit town. And this was fully powered Cas at that. 

[companionenvy]

5 minutes ago, Reganne said:

What Sam said in Asylum was different than saying Dean was too weak to kill Lilith.  In asylum he criticized Dean for following all their dad's orders.  To me these are two completely different things.  

I agree that those are different things. But I'm going to go further and say that even if Sam did sometimes perceive Dean as weak prior to S4/demon blood, I still don't think there's a real contradiction.

People are complicated, and develop all kinds of psychological defense mechanisms. A man you love breaks up with you, and you start convincing yourself all the reasons you're better off without him. You're angry at yourself, and you project and express it as anger against someone else. You have low-self esteem, but mask it, perhaps even to yourself, with cockiness that might come off as outrageously egocentric. 

Sam reacting to feeling insecure about his place in the family by telling himself that he's actually the strong one for rejecting John's values is a classic example of this kind of defensiveness. And of course, Sam actually isn't wrong in IDing all kinds of problems with John, and by extension, with Dean's obedience to him. But I think it is clear that whatever he tells himself, for most of his life up to the Apocalypse arc, Sam has vacillated between wanting success and acceptance precisely on his family's terms and rebelling against those expectations in part because he doesn't feel he lives up to them. On an intellectual level, he can be clear-eyed about some of the problems with the hunting life, but emotionally, there's still the kid who wanted to be included and valued in the realm he grew up in.

He resolves this problem in favor of rebellion and rejection when he leaves for Stanford. By the time S4 rolls around, that path - literally and psychologically -- is very much not an option for him any more. He's back to identifying himself by his place in the hunting role, is deeply insecure about that place, and so jumps at the idea of a narrative in where he gets to be the strong one for a change. 

This is why, BTW, I didn't see the "Just My Imagination" flashbacks, where Sam is desperate to be taken on a hunt, as a retcon; it is completely plausible to me that Sam could chafe against many aspects of the hunting life while simultaneously wanting to be a part of it. In fact, it would have been far more implausible to me if Sam had never wanted to participate on hunts.

I also don't think it is a contradiction that late teens and twenty-something Mary expressed a consistent desire for a normal life, but also, on at least one and probably a few other occasions, gravitated back toward hunting, but that's a subject for another thread. 

[trxr4kids]

42 minutes ago, Reganne said:

Come season 9 wasn't she fighting Crowley to become King of Hell? That's not insignificant IMO.

It is to me, I just don't see that title as some huge threat to the world at this point, let alone then. Maybe I'm weird but I don't see monologuing demons who either hang around in random warehouses bossing around moronic lackeys or try for the hundredth time to raise a demon army and take over the world < mwah ha ha > all that threatening. 

 

51 minutes ago, DeeDee79 said:

Especially since she was able to render Cas completely powerless as soon as he hit town. And this was fully powered Cas at that. 

I had forgotten that, thanks. Seriously how was poor Tara/Lenore supposed to withstand that kinda power.

[DeeDee79]

3 minutes ago, trxr4kids said:

I had forgotten that, thanks. Seriously how was poor Tara/Lenore supposed to withstand that kinda power.

And she asked to be killed for going against her beliefs. Which to me is proof that ultimately she was good despite her nature. As was Benny IMO.

5 minutes ago, trxr4kids said:

It is to me, I just don't see that title as some huge threat to the world at this point, let alone then. Maybe I'm weird but I don't see monologuing demons who either hang around in random warehouses bossing around moronic lackeys or try for the hundredth time to raise a demon army and take over the world < mwah ha ha > all that threatening. 

Neither do I.  Abaddon's story was significant mostly because of her ties to the Winchester family and the MOC plot that was sprung up when they needed a way to take her out.

[AwesomO4000]

2 hours ago, Aeryn13 said:

The "I`m stronger, smarter, better" thing wasn`t something out of the blue that only showed up in Season 4 for Sam. He made a similar point as far back in Season 1 Asylum.

I agree with @Reganne that those things are different. Not only that, but Sam apologized for his words in "Asylum" and not only apologized, but changed his attitude later on to wanting and trying to do what John would have wanted, thereby changing his opinion on both Dean and his original stance.

Quote

Basically, I saw that before Season 4 and after. What I did think during Season 4 on first watch was that it was getting THAT nasty because it was gonna be adressed for real and progressed forward in a positive way in Season 5. Hahahaha, more fool me.

Exactly what would have to have happened for you to feel the narrative had addressed it "for real?"

Quote

Well, actual, if you think like me and others who believe the role is being so small that it might as well be non-existant, it goes without saying that it was non-crucial to me. I see nothing in it that was even remotely crucial. The episode would have worked just as well if Dean hadn`t been in it. 

I disagree, but it all depends on perspective. I often see it argued that Sam had an important role in season 11, because without his rallying the troops, nothing would have happened.

Quote

Really crucial was John holding Azazel or Sam throwing Dean the blade before Lucifer could finish him, even as Michael. 

About time. It only took 8 seasons for Sam to have a (onscreen) crucial role again in a major win. (Since apparently rallying the troops doesn't count as crucial.)

Quote

It wasn`t unlike the Season 8 Finale when he was shuffled between Sam and Cas` stories because the writers really had no use for him in either one until making another pathetic declaration. 

I'm not really sure why someone would want Dean to have a role in either of these arcs myself, because they both failed. They were basically either non-entities (closing the gates) or actually caused harm (the angels falling).

2 hours ago, trxr4kids said:

I can only imagine what fans would've said about Dean abandoning poor Crazy Cas in purgatory to rush back just to be mean old controlling Dean.

First just to be clear, Dean had no idea that Castiel was crazy. He didn't even know if Castiel was still in Purgatory truthfully. He was talking to Castiel one moment, then he turned around and Cas had taken off. But Dean wanted to make sure Castiel wasn't there and not leave him behind... which had nothing to do with Sam and everything to do with Dean and castiel. Which was my point in refuting the claim that Dean thinks that Sam is more important than himself in every way.

Quote

Killing Abbadon was completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things, all she wanted was the key to the bunker, which LMAO, she clearly wasn't the brightest bulb since everybody and their dimwitted cousin can get in there. As far as Amara goes the pigeon lady had as much if not more of an impact on her decision to stand down as Dean did and I find it telling that his role was equal to that of a nameless throwaway character.

I could just as easily say that if Abaddon was insignificant, then how significant was not closing the gates of hell in comparison? Or how telling is that Sam - who actually let Amara out and so had that strike against him - had an even less significant role than a nameless throwaway character in stopping it?

As I said above, I guess it depends on perspective.

2 hours ago, DeeDee79 said:

From what I remember Dean wasn't angry with his father for making the deal; he basically acted like his father deserved to live and he should have let him stay dead. From Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things: " And for Dad. I mean, he was your dad too. And it's my fault that he's gone." and " You and Dad ... you're the most important people in my life. And now ... I never should've come back, Sam. It wasn't natural. And now look what's come of it. I was dead. And I should have stayed dead. "

Then there was the exchange with Bobby from AHBL II: "DEAN: That's my point. Dad brought me back, Bobby. I'm not even supposed to be here. At least this way, something good could come out of it, you know? I--I--It's like my life could mean something. BOBBY: What? And it didn't before?! Have you got that low of an opinion of yourself? Are you that screwed in the head?! (He grabs DEAN again)

FWIW this isn't to take away from your post. I just wanted to chime in because you said that you couldn't remember his reaction.

I think maybe @auntvi might have been remembering this conversation about John from "Crossroad Blues?"

Sam: Demons lie all the time, right? Maybe she was lying.
Dean: Come on. That really what you think? (Sam looks down) How could he do it?
Sam: He did it for you.
Dean: Exactly. How am I supposed to live with that? You know, the thought of him... wherever he is right now. I mean, he spent his whole life chasing that... yellow-eyed son of a bitch. He should have gone out fighting. That was supposed to be his legacy. You know? Not bargaining with the damn thing. Not this.

Dean was seemingly fairly angry at John during this conversation if I remember correctly, and it had been building up to this throughout the episode, because Dean had been pretty unsympathetic with the PIPs who had made demon deals. He was even unsympathetic with Evan who had done it to save his wife, because Dean thought Evan had been wrong not to think of how his wife would feel about the situation... which paralleled what John did with him, leaving Dean with the guilt.

[Myrelle]

7 hours ago, Aeryn13 said:

The "I`m stronger, smarter, better" thing wasn`t something out of the blue that only showed up in Season 4 for Sam. He made a similar point as far back in Season 1 Asylum. And while the anger in this episode was amped up, Sam made those same points "sober" in the following episode. It was pretty much the same during Season 4 where he called Dean weak under the Siren spell and then called him weak the next episode under no spell. The words are nicer but the gist is the same. 

So those are IMO believes Sam has held for a long time, the demon blood and Ruby just brought those out in increasingly nasty ways. I remember just rolling my eyes during the episode where hallucination!Mary tells Sam that Dean can never know how strong he, Sam, is. 

Something akin to that happened with head!Bobby in the Season 9 Finale. 

Basically, I saw that before Season 4 and after. What I did think during Season 4 on first watch was that it was getting THAT nasty because it was gonna be adressed for real and progressed forward in a positive way in Season 5. Hahahaha, more fool me.

Dean gets to be called a loser for a year and then be blamed for being the bully who is at fault for what goes wrong in the relationship the next. Oh, in Season 6 he is the loser again. Splendid. 

Fallen Idols was when I gave up on the relationship and any positive progression from the Season 4 dynamic. The Season 5 Finale then gave me the rest. They couldn`t have written a better anti-redemption stories in my eyes if they tried. 

I wish I could like this a hundred times.

And I've always seen the "I'm stronger, smarter, better" thing as more of a general feeling of superiority over Dean that Sam has sometimes voiced and put out there in other more subtle ways; but to me it's hard to tell if those are his true feelings or if it's just more of how he'd like and want to be and feel than how he feels that he truly is. I suspect it's the latter, tbh, and if so, that would have been something he could have owned up to in Fallen Idols as something that he needed to work on since it's this kind of a thing and those kind of comments and thoughts and vibes from Sam that likely exacerbated and fed into Dean's feelings of such low self worth that John instilled in him originally when he made Dean responsible for Sam's safety, well-being, and even his actions(running away) or non-actions(not calling when he was getting visions)-as we saw in the family dynamic in S1 in the few episodes that John was in. And how sad must it have been for Dean(not to mention the number that it must have done to his psyche) that John never even mentioned Sam's phone call when Dean was dying, but made sure to make time to rag on Dean for not calling him about Sam's visions.

Unless Sam really feels that way, to which I'd say he shouldn't, because he's not, and he should own up to that too, then.

And it never ceases to amaze me that Sam never realized that while he was lying to Jessica about his life and following Dad's Big Rule No. 1 w/o questioning it, Dean was the one who was bucking the old man's rule and system by daring to tell Cassie the truth and refusing to lie to her-definitely not always simply and just the Good Little Soldier that Sam accused him of being under Dr. Ellicot's spell, but all we got from Sam on that was anger at Dean over it in Route 666.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Myrelle

[mertensia]

10 hours ago, AwesomO4000 said:

Except that Chuck counteracted that, as did the narrative. Obviously - to me anyway - Dean was a part of the story, because there he was. Not only was he there, but he affected the story by convincing Castiel and Bobby to show up, too, the latter of which Molotoved Michael thereby providing the necessary time for Sam to finally overcome Lucifer. So Michael only wished that Dean wasn't part of the story, but he wasn't that lucky, since Dean was and no matter how small a role can be made of it if one is so inclined (I'm not), it was a crucial one... actually more than one crucial one.

 

Exactly. As I've said before it's like dismissing Eisenhower's role in D-Day because he wasn't personally fighting on the beaches of Normandy.

 

[AwesomO4000]

5 hours ago, Myrelle said:

And it never ceases to amaze me that Sam never realized that while he was lying to Jessica about his life and following Dad's Big Rule No. 1 w/o questioning it, Dean was the one who was bucking the old man's rule and system by daring to tell Cassie the truth and refusing to lie to her-definitely not always simply and just the Good Little Soldier that Sam accused him of being under Dr. Ellicot's spell, but all we got from Sam on that was anger at Dean over it in Route 666.

Since Sam didn't know about Dean not following John's rule with respect to Cassie at the time of the Dr. Ellicot's spell, I don't see how he could have taken it into account.

And why would Sam bring up what he said under Dr. Elliot's influence, rather than just being annoyed, when he did find out that Dean did tell Cassie? He might've thought that Dean told Cassie to impress her maybe rather than as an act of defiance, I don't know, but it seems like it would be weird - to me - that Sam would choose that moment to say "Gee, Dean I guess you didn't always follow Dad's orders after all."

I saw this more as Sam projecting some of his own issues onto Dean there, because Sam was feeling guilt about not telling Jessica - which we had already learned that Sam had in abundance - and the situation with Cassie brought that all back up again. Was it a bit unfair of Sam to be annoyed with Dean? Yup. But would it bring back up feelings concerning the "good little soldier" incident? In my opinion, nope, because this was an entirely different issue. Sam at this point was still a ball of guilt, frustration, and loss - not to mention just recently having gone through almost losing Dean as well just to add to Sam's screwed up emotional state - so even though he was being unfair to Dean here, he was human and fallible and hurting, so I'm not going to hold his momentary lashing out against him.

In my opinion, it made much more sense that Sam apologized for his criticism concerning Dean following orders when he did do so in "Something Wicked" after Sam learned the origins of why Dean followed John's directives. And then, when Sam learned that truth, he not only apologized to Dean for not understanding and making his criticism, he told Dean that what John had done had been unfair to Dean - (paraphrase) "You were only a kid yourself."

So yes, Sam accused Dean of being just a "good little soldier" under the influence of Dr. Ellicot, but he also later admitted that he hadn't understood the situation and apologized for not understanding. So Sam's anger in "Route 666" is not the only thing we got on the subject. There was subsequent understanding and an apology as well which I think Sam seldom gets credit for even though the "good little soldier" thing never seems to be forgotten.

[ILoveReading]

For me apologies mean nothing if the person continues to repeat the behavior.  Its why it doesn't bother me that Dean didn't apologize for saving Sam's life in s9.  He was sorry Sam got hurt but he wasn't sorry he did it.  Because I think its a given that its a behavior Dean will continue to display.  Right/wrong, love it or hate it its a big part of Dean's character. 

Looking down on Dean is something that I feel Sam also displays time and time again.  It's a pattern that is repeated whenever Sam loses his filter.  In Asylum he called Dean pathetic which is worse than good solider.  Maybe he didn't use that word again the the sentiment was certainly on display in The Siren ep when he called Dean weak.  Those thoughts were Sam's.  Maybe the anger was amped up but they were not put in Sam's head. 

When bought it up after the Siren ep, Sam's tone certainly implies it shouldn't have bothered Dean.   It was "Do we need to talk about this."  The way Jared delivered that line certainly wasn't open and inviting dialogue.  There was irritation and annoyance that Dean bought it up.  It was clearly bothering Dean. 

Even this very season we had a scene where Sam remarked that John's parenting style worked on Dean.  If he thinks that, despite how many times hes' said he understands, does he really?

A Most Holy Man every word Sam uttered in that episode sounded condescending.  I really don't understand Jared's acting choices in that episode. 

Simply saying the words isn't enough.

I know that there are times and issues about Dean doing the same thing to Sam, I'm not saying there not, but IMO, its just more reason for me to believe that these are two guys who really don't like each other very much.

[trxr4kids]

13 hours ago, AwesomO4000 said:

First just to be clear, Dean had no idea that Castiel was crazy. He didn't even know if Castiel was still in Purgatory truthfully. He was talking to Castiel one moment, then he turned around and Cas had taken off. But Dean wanted to make sure Castiel wasn't there and not leave him behind... which had nothing to do with Sam and everything to do with Dean and castiel. Which was my point in refuting the claim that Dean thinks that Sam is more important than himself in every way.

He absolutely knew Cas was bat shit, he'd been dealing with him for quite awhile. I think Dean staying in purgatory backs up my opinion that Dean thinks Sam is more important and superior to him. He believed Sam was capable of cleaning up after the latest mess, looking out for Kevin and still having time to try to rescue him. Thinking Sam is better doesn't equate to being glued to his side to me. 

Edited May 30, 2018 by trxr4kids
gender issues lol