I agree that Cas going off on his own at the end is a positive development. I find Cas very interesting when he has his own agenda and his own set of relationships, as in s6, and much less interesting when he is more straightforwardly aligned with Dean, or when his alignment with Dean is disrupted only by the device of external control.
In some ways, actually, the SS shoutout sort of emphasizes the degree to which Dean tends to use his friendship with Cas in a way that undermines its mutuality. In Swan Song Dean wasn't trying to stop Samifer from killing him, he wasn't even trying to get through to Sam with a view to preventing apocalyptic disaster. He was explicitly there simply so that Sam wouldn't die alone, and that was what he promised Sam and how he got through. I don't object to Dean trying to stay alive and stop bad things happening by making emotional appeals to Cas (as he did in 6.22 as well). In fact, I like to see Dean in a healthy enough place to have an urge for self-preservation. But it doesn't work for me as an act of pure love.
While I'm not 100% happy about the presentation of Sam and normal (I think it shows that while Thomspon is a good writer, he's not a writer with a long, deep history on Spn -- sometimes it feels more like he knows things about the characters than like he knows the characters) I think the writing of that scene showed more subtlety than some reactions I've seen have credited it with. It's interesting that the "unicorn who carried Sam away from hunting" stuff is coming from Meg, not Sam, and that it is made clear how large an element of projection Meg has going on there. What Sam himself said was much more cautious and modest -- that his time with Amelia made him realize that normal was possible for him. I'd certainly much, much rather, both for characterization and narrative, see them exploring Sam as Man of Letters and exploding the normal/hunting dichotomy rather than doing "Sam eventually wants normal but will keep postponing for the demands of hunting." But I can also believe that Sam needed to know that normal wasn't an impossible unicorn daydream but a workable possibility for him before he could set about a positive assessment of what he wants and how he can live it.
I, too, really liked the maturity and lack of drama in their last conversation, and that Sam had enough self-knowledge to admit that he was trying to keep the truth from himself as much as Dean. I like how tired Dean is of being lied to because it's a believably imperfect view of the situation -- understandable in the immediate context, but not discontinuous with his tendency in Southern Comfort to see himself as the victim of other people's lies while seeing his own iterations of the same pattern of dishonesty as individual contingencies or mistakes but not inherently a betrayal.
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Date: 2013-03-27 03:02 pm (UTC)In some ways, actually, the SS shoutout sort of emphasizes the degree to which Dean tends to use his friendship with Cas in a way that undermines its mutuality. In Swan Song Dean wasn't trying to stop Samifer from killing him, he wasn't even trying to get through to Sam with a view to preventing apocalyptic disaster. He was explicitly there simply so that Sam wouldn't die alone, and that was what he promised Sam and how he got through. I don't object to Dean trying to stay alive and stop bad things happening by making emotional appeals to Cas (as he did in 6.22 as well). In fact, I like to see Dean in a healthy enough place to have an urge for self-preservation. But it doesn't work for me as an act of pure love.
While I'm not 100% happy about the presentation of Sam and normal (I think it shows that while Thomspon is a good writer, he's not a writer with a long, deep history on Spn -- sometimes it feels more like he knows things about the characters than like he knows the characters) I think the writing of that scene showed more subtlety than some reactions I've seen have credited it with. It's interesting that the "unicorn who carried Sam away from hunting" stuff is coming from Meg, not Sam, and that it is made clear how large an element of projection Meg has going on there. What Sam himself said was much more cautious and modest -- that his time with Amelia made him realize that normal was possible for him. I'd certainly much, much rather, both for characterization and narrative, see them exploring Sam as Man of Letters and exploding the normal/hunting dichotomy rather than doing "Sam eventually wants normal but will keep postponing for the demands of hunting." But I can also believe that Sam needed to know that normal wasn't an impossible unicorn daydream but a workable possibility for him before he could set about a positive assessment of what he wants and how he can live it.
I, too, really liked the maturity and lack of drama in their last conversation, and that Sam had enough self-knowledge to admit that he was trying to keep the truth from himself as much as Dean. I like how tired Dean is of being lied to because it's a believably imperfect view of the situation -- understandable in the immediate context, but not discontinuous with his tendency in Southern Comfort to see himself as the victim of other people's lies while seeing his own iterations of the same pattern of dishonesty as individual contingencies or mistakes but not inherently a betrayal.