Review for 2x10 'Hunted'

[galathea]

Here is my review for the latest SN episode Hunted. I am so happy that the boys are back after that damn long holiday hiatus and they are in better shape than ever *g*. I loved this episode so much, it made me giddy for quite a while, so prepare for lengthy rambles behind the cut!


And I say it once again, I loved this episode, in fact it may be one of my favourite episodes for this season and I think Raelle Tucker is now officially my favourite writer for the show as she wrote my 2nd fav episode so far, which would be Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and now Hunted. It seems she always gets the job to pull the strings together and so far she does a fantastic job with it, great characterisation and believable dialogues ! :)

It’s all about parallels! I am a huge sucker for parallels and Supernatural truly has its fair share of them in nearly every episode and in its general structure so far. At the beginning of S1 Sam is hit by a huge traumatic event that makes him re-consider his choices in life and sends him on a rocky emotional path, that he overcomes with the support of his big brother, leading to their re-commitment to each other mid-season after a deliberate separation in Scarecrow.

In S2 Dean is burdened with huge traumatic events, that let him tailspin and question his path in life, but Sam’s support stabilizes him and after a deliberate separation in Hunted they again re-commit themselves to their brotherhood and 'mission'. Scarecrow and Hunted give a kind of closure to the respective brother-arcs of their seasons, which is one reason on why I appreciate these episodes so much.

Unsurprisingly it’s both times Sam who leaves and both times he gets his brother into life-threatening troubles because of his departure and he comes back, realising Dean is the only one he can count on in this situation he finds himself in. It’s so typical Sammy to leave his brother out of anger but with the first sign of danger he calls him for help. He really should know better by now, but hey, you gotta love the kid brother routine. *g*

Dean: "Before Dad died, he told me something. Something about you!"

I think it is interesting to look at the development that lead to Dean finally giving up the secret John told him in In My Time Of Dying. It’s an established character trait that despite the chick-flick moment aversion he expressed in the Pilot, Dean is very emotional and absolutely able to express what he feels, but he needs an external motivation to do so. He is internalising most of his feelings and problems, mainly because he doesn’t want to burden the people around him but also because he usually doesn’t take comfort in sharing, like for example Sam does.

In almost every situation we see Dean open up about his feelings, he was pushed into it by external factors: Sam leaving him in Scarecrow, Sam threatening to leave him again in Shadow, the need to convince Sam to use Michael as bait for the Shtriga in Something Wicked, the self-identification with Zombie-Angela’s fate and Sam’s consistent pushing in Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things just to mention a few. The only time we see him freely opening up on an internal motivation is in Devil’s Trap, when he confesses to Sam that the thought of how far he would be willing to go for Sam and John scares him.

After Dean’s first confession to Sam at the end of CSPWDT we see him slowly heal and overcome his immediate grief for John and trying to come to terms with the second chance on life that was bestowed on him by John's sacrifice. Through The Usual Suspects and the beginning of Crossroad Blues we see him nearly back to his old routine, relaxed and in sync with his brother. At that point he obviously buried the 'secret' deep inside and there is absolutely no given motivation for the character to let Sam in on it. It’s huge and emotionally burdening and he promised John to keep it from Sam, so to believably push Dean into telling it after he partly recovered from the events in IMTOD they needed to bring him to a breaking point.

The discovery in Crossroad Blues that John not only traded his life but also his soul for Dean’s recovery, suffering eternal damnation in hell, crushes his newfound balance, bringing him down once again. In Croatoan he then undergoes the worst case scenario, when he fails to save Sam from the infection with the demonic virus, finding himself in the situation John warned him of: needing to kill his brother as soon as he turns into a 'monster'. With this development he effectively touches breaking point and it’s only then, in the aftermath of nearly losing his brother that the motivation for Dean is created to finally spill the big secret. I really love how the writers progressed the character arc for Dean in the first half of this season. Kudos!

Dean: "He said that I have to save you!"
Sam: "Save me from what?"
Dean: "He just said that I have to save you and nothing else mattered. And if I couldn't, I have to kill you. He said I might have to kill you, Sammy!"

So, the big secret is out and it isn’t that big of a secret at all, but what I was saying all along ever since Bloodlust, that Dean has to save Sam or he might have to kill his younger brother. I am not at all disappointed that it wasn’t some huge apocalyptic, demon-y stuff, but a simple yet emotionally immensely straining revelation that neatly fits into the established family dynamics of Dean, the protector and Sam, the protected and it kind of redirects to the end dialogue in Nightmare with Dean’s “As long as I am around, nothing bad is going to happen to you!”.

What I love most about this episode (apart from Sam&Dean re-establishing their brotherly relationship of course) is that like in CSPWDT Dean’s confession sheds a new light on the previous episodes, making yet another layer visible for why he is so conflicted this season. It delivers retroactively arguments on why he was so hell-bent to eliminate every possible danger (to Sam) in Croatoan, which with his now clear mind-set had to be a nightmare come true, it partly explains his weariness with his job in Croatoan and No Exit, his emphasis on why he didn’t want Andy to be a killer in Simon Said and gives another reason for his frustration with John in ELAC, Bloodlust and Crossroad Blues. It’s not that for the attentive viewer it wasn’t already readable from Dean’s reactions anyway, but it is satisfying to have it confirmed and spelt out in this episode.

Speaking of John, I find it endlessly fascinating about this show, how a character that is vanished for most of S1 and dead for nearly all of S2 can have such an influencing position in effectively screwing up both of the main characters. The enigma that is John Winchester will never cease to amaze me and from a story telling PoV I love this character to death, though emotionally I am so angry with John (again!) for putting such a huge burden on his firstborn’s shoulders yet again.

It makes me wonder for how long John exactly knew about this. I guess it’s fair to say any time between Home and Shadows and if he knew this for so long it is kind of irresponsible to keep this from both of his sons, putting Dean and Sam in a position in which they are unaware of what to look out for. I want to give John credit and think that his main motivation to stay away from his children and deal with this on his own, was to find that threat to Sam and eliminate it before it could reach his youngest son, yet I find that his lack in information sharing, his keeping it strictly on a 'need to know' basis, endangers his sons more than it does them any good.

Anyways, Dean spilling the secret allows him to finally stop lying to his brother and maybe share his burdens in the process. He also wants to give their path a different direction, to figure out on how to proceed, to lay low for a while and avoid deliberately putting themselves into danger every day, making it all the more difficult for him to protect Sam, as his 'failure' to do so in Croatoan showed him clearly.

For someone like Dean, who is all about being in control of his own life (and Sam is an integral part of that), this situation has to be immensely scaring. He is fighting blind, the situation spins out of control and every security is slowly pulled out from under his feet, no wonder that he wants to just stop for a minute and try to retain a sense of control again. I don’t think this is a sudden overall rejection of his hunting lifestyle, but something that comes from the immediate situation he finds himself in.

At the moment, hunting isn’t about saving other people, but about saving his own family. Dean’s focus shifted, he has a distinct mission now, to save his brother, but he doesn’t know from what exactly and how to achieve it and hunting isn’t helping in that regard. So when he says to Sam in their end conversation in the car, that he is tired of hunting, I think it is mostly an expression of his fears. They don’t get paid, that’s true, but they do get thanked from the people they save, every single time, as far as I can remember. Dean expresses his regret about missed chances in his life in No Exit and I think it is of significance that he does it now and not earlier. He is in the situation to lose everybody he ever loved in pursuing this lifestyle, which makes him wish for a different path.

Sam of course will have none of this. He is angry, rightfully so. The secret that was kept from him confirms every fear he ever had about his role in the bigger scheme of things and his wish to be pro-active about it is comprehensible. He wants answers and he wants them now and we all know how focused and stubborn Sam can be if he sets his mind on something. And so he leaves Dean, although he knows that this is one of his brother’s biggest fears.

Sam: "You can’t protect me from this."
Dean: "I can try!" ♥

It was one of my biggest fears that 'the secret' would drive another wedge into their relationship, possibly a more permanent one and I am so relieved, that instead it brought them back together in the end, closer than ever. I love love love their conversation in the car at the end of the episode. With the secret out in the open Dean was a lot more relaxed and Sammy making bad jokes at the expense of his brother’s fears (‘What? You gonna kill me?’) and their 'Bitch! Jerk!' routine, which is established as a common good-natured banter between them in the Pilot, made me grin like a fool. ♥

I also loved the referral to the end of Bloodlust when Sam offers to stick around to be Dean’s pain in the ass *g* and now he makes Dean stick around to have his back. Sam needs to stick around for Dean and Dean needs to stick around for Sam, it confirms once again how much they need each other, how truly interdependent they are. We know ever since IMTOD that Dean does believe in choices and not in fate or destiny, neither for him, nor for Sam for that matter, so he does see a chance for them to make it out of this, if they only stick together.

What else was squee-worthy?

Ava! Now that was a great female guest star and I really hope to see that character again. I loved her very understandable mixture of being confused and scared by the situation, yet willing to not let that hold her back do the right thing and trying to save Sam and being delighted in discovering an adventurous streak in herself. The interactions between her and Sam were funny and charming and believable.

While I am usually not very happy to have Sam and Dean separated I think this episode was handled very interestingly, since both brothers got a counterpart at their side that play off their respective personalities very well. Sam of course instantly relates to Ava’s situation as she mirrors his own earlier disbelief in regard to his abilities and he surely understands her wish to just go on with her 'normal' life. The same goes for Dean and Gordon, who was already used in Bloodlust to mirror facets of Dean’s inner darkness.

I found the dialogue between Gordon and Dean very fascinating and very well acted on both behalves. I love how Sterling K. Brown plays Gordon calmly, his voice almost emotionless, quiet, barely above a whisper, which makes him so much more threatening. A man with (wrongly guided) convictions but secretly desperate for the approval of a fellow hunter like Dean, whom he respects in his own way. Ackles, though he didn’t have much to do in the scene, what with being bound and all *g* delivered all the right reactions to Gordon’s speech. From his cocky and teasing attitude as long as he thinks Gordon is only paying him back for the events in Bloodlust, to his increasing worry and desperation as he realizes what Gordon is after and why.

His despair when he thinks Sam died in the explosion is tangible, fighting the urge to throw up on the spot and I just love the scene after Sam put Gordon down, when both brothers need to physically reassure themselves that the other one is okay and alive. It’s as close to a hug as you get it with the Winchester brothers *g* And delivering Gordon to the law enforcement at this point is absolutely believable, after all, this time they can pin a human murder on him, something that would have been difficult in Bloodlust.

I am also happy they picked up where they ended the relationship between Ellen and the brothers in No Exit. Ellen got my respect back when she was big enough to kind of apologize to Sam for her harsh behaviour. Nevertheless there was an understandable reservation in both their behaviours, both dodging personal questions from the other side. With being revealed that Gordon got his confirmation from someone at the Roadhouse though, a trusting relationship between the brothers and the Roadhouse gang seems more and more unlikely. While I do have difficulties in believing that either Ellen, Jo or Ash deliberately gave the information about Sam to other hunters, it does indeed shed a suspicious light on the place and I am curious on how that plays out further along the road.

Last but not least, the puzzling end scene was intriguing, the mystery of what happened to Ava and her fiancée. Sam’s "Go home Ava, you’ll be safe there!" proved to be wrong. Yet another personal tragedy that derives out of the demon arc. Was Ava possessed? Did she kill her fiancée? Again, I ask myself, why did the demon try to corrupt Webber and Scott in their dreams, but not Sam, Andy or Ava as far as we know. How much control does he actually have over the special children?

I have to admit, the thought of an epic battle, a war between good and evil with our brothers smack in the middle of it is an exciting thought, at least for me and I am very curious if they manage to get they mytharc together consistently in the next seasons.

I love this show! ♥