dustydreamsanddirtyscars:

13×04 “The Big Empty”
Projection and Misplaced Blame

Alright, so this scene should have had by all means more emotional impact than it had for me personally – like I said before to me this episode made a beeline back to S12 and everything I disliked about that entire season. Here we have all of that expressed in a nutshell. And it is kind of frustrating, because this “family therapy”-talk thing could have been a great scene. But here are my issues with these scenes.

First and foremost, of course we see Dean showing not the faintest bit of interest in seeing Mia and has his walls up. That said, despite his clear “get off my back”-attitude, he is honest here. Yes, he is using harsh words, dark irony and the drinking to keep people at arms length, but ultimately Dean isn’t pretending here (he knows himself perfectly well that his “sympatico”-line and how Jack throws it back isn’t meant to be taken seriously) and yes, he may use his anger as a shield in some proximity, but that is also due to how he is pressured into a corner by Sam projecting his own issues and struggles onto Dean.

And this is where I really have my issues with these scenes, because

a) Where and when please did we see Mary care at all about Dean? All throughout the entirety of S12 we saw Dean reach out to their mother and being ignored and that going right until the season finale where she just showed any kind of slim interest in her older son when he started talking about his younger brother. Plus, Sam was the one to work with Mary (behind Dean’s back as well). So sorry, show but this entire thing is just bs from an objective outside perspective, which of course Sam doesn’t have, so I get his reaction. It’s not the problem that he says these things and how he perceives them, but how the narrative later implies that he is in the right for what he thinks when what we know is the utter opposite. The lack of correction here is what bugs me, but I’ll talk about this more in a little while.

b) Sam placing blame and being jealous of Dean and attacking Dean, because he supposedly is withholding a relationship he could have had with his mother is just all kinds of wrong. Especially because he knows damn well Dean will take that blame and treat it as is he truly is to blame, which he isn’t.

c) I am not excusing Dean exploding into Sam’s face the way he did here, but I can understand why it happened. Thing is, like all of S12, the narrative and with that the writers make a point about how Dean’s reaction is wrong, when by all signs and means it isn’t. It is a natural reaction. This has been my main issue (aside from lack of emotions – which were lacking in this episode as well where they should have been front and center) with S12: the way the narrative treated Dean and now here we are again. Dean is being walked all over, the one who is singled out as “the problem”. I mean, we have the narrative strengthening twice how supposedly what Sam throws at Dean’s head here is somehow right (when it isn’t by a long shot but whatever) and that Dean is “wrong” and in need of “correction”. First, we have Mia tell Dean that he is to blame for Sam leaving the room and conveniently leaving out the huge chunk of  hurtful stuff Sam threw at Dean there as well and then at the end of the episode we have Dean apologizing to Sam (once more proving his emotional maturity) and Sam not even considering to maybe apologize as well, which by all means he should as well. This is how the show renders Dean wrong and how it has been doing it all throughout S12 when none of the things Dean was subjected to were corrected in the end, so yeah, this episode had raw potential, but all it did for me was show me that Dabb doesn’t give a flying fuck about consisent writing and even more so Dean as a character. Sighs…

Sorry for the negativity, but I am frustrated. But it’s my own fault, I shouldn’t have trusted the first three episodes to actually be emblematic for the entire season…