hunenka:

I think maybe I’d feel a little better
about the “Dean learns that sometimes people need some space” thing if the
episode wasn’t pushing the issue so hard and in such an obvious way. The
message has been repeated several times by several people, always with a
reaction shot of Dean, as if to tell the audience “Look, he’s being told a
lesson!”, finally culminating in a happy end when this oh so wise and new lesson sinks in and
Dean is able to parrot it to everyone’s satisfaction…

Besides, I don’t like the implications that
Dean doesn’t understand that people or families might occasionally need space or some time apart. Yes, he may be having trouble accepting that his mother chose to leave her family
right now, but don’t tell me he’d disagree on this in general. He values family
greatly, but not at the cost of individual people’s well-being. In fact, throughout the seasons, we’ve seen numerous times that Dean doesn’t believe family needs to stick together at all
cost. He’s seen way too many ruined or damaging relationships to think that.

So the episode’s narrative conflating “Dean
learns that Mary needs some space” with “Dean learns that people in general need some space” is pretty idiotic, because Dean’s learned the latter a long
time ago. After all, how many times in season 1 (starting with the Pilot) have
we seen Dean offer to let Sam go, or at least back off and give Sam emotional
space, when Sam asked for it?