I thought last night’s episode was the best one yet, better even than the season 2 opener.
We learned so much about Dean’s character in this one – the scene at his father’s grave was a perfect illustration of how highly he values duty and is willing to sacrifice so much of himself to help others. We also saw how little he thinks of himself but how much he loves Sam (and Sam loves him).
One of the main reasons I love this show is that the characters are genuinely good people, not anti-heroes – I find the anti-hero so overdone in modern television. I love me some villains (like Sylar on “Heroes”), but I really enjoy watching these two characters who are good people with realistic flaws and who don’t tear each other down (but quite the opposite). And with this episode, with Dean actively choosing to give up his own health and happiness to save others (and this was before he figured out he was hallucinating), instead of being a(n also overdone) reluctant hero. I find that refreshing.
I got a kick out of all the references to the pilot, with the late-night break-in to Sam’s apartment and the abortive “Bitch”/“Jerk” exchange. And Dean’s joy at mowing the lawn was very cute.
Nope! There’s only a brief mention of their fugitive status at the very beginning of the episode, but if you’ve been watching all season, that’s nothing new.
There are references to past episodes in this and last season, but they’re brief, and if you’ve seen the pilot, you’ll get the important ones.
I thought the scene where Dean mowed the lawn was very touching. He was so desperate for normalcy that a chore like that was pretty much the coolest thing he could conceive of.
I think it would have been a neat twist at the end if the woman they saved wound up killing herself, or at the very least cussing out the Winchesters, because she preferred whatever fantasy world she had been hurled into.
Okay, watched it. Teared up when Dean saw his mom for the first time, but stayed dry-eyed after that.
This episode was good for a reminder that while watching Sam and Dean hunt and run and outwit the cops is great fun for us, it’s not how they’d choose to live, if they had a choice.
That said, I can’t imagine that Dean would be happy, settled down in a normal life.
I thought that was neat, too, because we’ve seen him be openly scornful of normal before, but he’s also made brief and subtle comments that show he misses what he never got a chance to experience. (Like in the episode, “Playthings,” when the old man running the hotel says something like, “Wouldn’t you be upset to leave the only home you’ve ever known?” and Dean answers quietly, “I don’t know…I never really had one.”)
I didn’t choke up, but I…my throat ached whenever he would close his eyes when his mother touched him, and at the graveyard scene. And at the end, when he made the decision to wake up despite his family (or “family”) persuading him to stay. This one was very heavy.
I very much enjoyed the episode, especially since it focused on Dean instead of Sam. Yes, I am a Deanfangirl.
I feel like this show is just hitting its stride. I confessed a few months back that my two favorite shows are on the CW, but I really can’t feel ashamed about it. Veronica and Supernatural are simply good.
I agree. Maybe I’m mis-remembering the first season, but this season seems deeper and darker. Sam and Dean’s relationship is closer – they’re a true team now. It’s a natural progression from S1, with Sam being all reluctant and missing his former life, etc. He’s settled in.
Amen, sisters. Thank God for TiVo – sometimes you need to rewind and pause on those big luminous eyes right while the episode is airing.
Yes, this season seems much darker than last year. You really feel the isolation of their lifestyle, and the difficulty of their calling.
Sometimes I feel like the show or the writers bite off a little more than they can chew, but when they get it right, it’s really good. And my God, yes, Jensen Ackles is beautiful, but the man can act his fine ass off. Even when some of the dialogue has been sketchy, he always seems to make it believable because he makes Dean seem so real. That’s a big part, I think, why this past episode was so good – he made you feel everything Dean was feeling right along with him.
If this show is still around in a few years, I hope it becomes as respectable as the X-Files (and then I can admit to watching it in public ).
Neither can I. Also, I couldn’t help noticing that he seemed to be a bit of a loser in his pretend normal life, what with shitty brother to Sam and hints of a drinking problem.
I like this show more when its less angst-y but at least Dean looks very very pretty while doing it.
It should be improved this season due to a staff addition. It looks like Ben Edlund (creator of The Tick and writer for Angel) took over as executive producer. Since then, the episodes have gone up in quality. The first season was fun (and even I was impressed how, at the very beginning, they actually used real legends for their stories), but the second season easily beats it. I think they can do better in contributing to the seasonal arc a little more for each episode, but since it has improved, I ain’t complaining too much.
On Television Without Pity, they (used to) refer to Dean as “Hot Dean” and Sam as “Cute Dean”. I described the show to a straight male friend and told him about the Hot Dean/Cute Dean divide.
Now he says things like, “Woo! New episode with Hot Dean tonight!” and then complains about how gay he sounds.
Oh yeah. Sam seemed shocked that Dean wanted to go out and party after mom’s birthday. I thought maybe the woman in the white dress that Dean saw was the ghost of someone he’d killed while driving drunk or something.
Then I thought some more, and figured Carmen wouldn’t be with him if he’d done something like that and was still drinking.
Isn’t it a bit weird that John wasn’t alive in Dean’s fantasy life? Mixed feelings about dad, maybe?
I read that Jeffrey Dean Morgan was supposed to be in this one but had to bow out due to a filming conflict, so they had to re-write the episode to work around that.
I think his dad was Authority to him, so he didn’t have any room left over to give respect to anyone else in a position of authority. But that’s one of my favorite aspects of Dean’s character: he looks like a typical bad-boy rebel to outsiders, while we know he’s extremely dutiful to his father and loyal to his brother, and puts everyone’s happiness before his own. He even apologized to all the figures of his imagination, knowing they weren’t real, before waking himself up. That’s thoughtfulness.
But when your eyes are dry, come back! I want to hear others’ thoughts on this episode!