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Present in Every Deal: John in Crossroad Blues
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spn_heavymeta on John in SPN 2x08, Crossroad Blues. Then I totally forgot about it, but I got an extension and so here it is.
The first season taught us to find John Winchester in his absences, to see him when he wasn't in the frame. The second season has built on that, particularly in the early episodes of the season, when Sam and Dean's grief for their father is practically a character in its own right, and John himself seems to stand behind every shadow. But in "Crossroads Blues," the eighth episode of the season, John is more present than ever in his absence: a set of characters mirror him, and a set of choices mirror the terrible choice he made in "In My Time of Dying." There are, I would say, three important deals in this episode, each of which sheds light on what John did when he dealt with the Yellow Eyed Demon: George Darrow's, Evan Hudson's, and finally, Dean's double dealing.
George Darrow, as he says over and over again, knew what he was doing: he walked into the deal he made with his eyes open and now that the bill is due, he's ready to pay it. "Sometimes," he says, "you make your bed and you got to lie in it." And later on, he adds that he's tired. He's bitter about the way the deal worked out, though: his life is a reminder that dealing with a demon is tricky business. Darrow serves as an obvious analogue for John: John too knew what he was doing when he summoned the YED, even if the deal he ended up making was perhaps not quite the one he expected to make. John seemed very much in charge when he met the demon in IMToD and in the end he didn't give up anything he wasn't willing to. At the same time, he was driven to the deal in a desperate tiredness which far exceeds Darrow's resignation (I think fans sometimes underestimate just how traumatic the events of Devil's Trap must have been for John): he was ready to die before the accident, and in IMToD his death, I think, seems a small price to pay for Dean's life.
(Sam asks Darrow whether or not he wants to die, and Darrow turns his back: Dean is the son who is most obviously speaking to his father in this episode, but there, in that one question, I think we see just how abandoned Sam feels, and how well he hides his grief.)
In Darrow's bitterness, there's a warning (too late!) for John -- is the deal he made the one he thought he was making? Just how safe is Dean, and from what? Was removing himself from the board really the right choice, or will it come back to hurt his sons even more than it already has?
Evan Hudson is the innocent in the story, the good man who trades his own soul and life to save the woman he loves. He too is willing to die (he has bills to pay, he says), and sends his wife away to keep her from having to see his death. When Dean questions him, his response is a simple, "I'd have died for her on the spot." It's true that he doesn't think of whether his wife would have wanted him to pay the price, whether he was doing something profoundly unnatural: all he can do is act on his love and his need to see her live. Again, the comparison with John is clear: in the simplest form, he gives up his life to save his son's. He sends Sam away, and leaves Dean's room, to spare them what he can. He makes the deal, knowing that it will cost him not only his life but also his revenge, trusting his sons, as Sam says at the end of the episode, to be his legacy. John hasn't been an innocent in a very long time, but he is a good man.
(Dean's argument with Hudson is really his argument with John: that in giving up his life for his son he was acting selfishly, that he didn't want to be left alone. Dean, of course, assumes that his father's motives were the motives Dean himself would have -- fear of abandonment -- and he points to the cost, the burden laid on the one left behind and sacrificed for. We don't at this point, know the details of the burden placed on Dean's shoulders before he died, but we suspect that it was a heavy one. Even so, I think Dean misjudges his father: the deal isn't a betrayal. John didn't try to do something unnatural, but made his deal to prevent something unnatural, to prevent a son dying before his father. Summoning the demon and making the deal were just the tools he used to that end, in the same way he'd use a gun or a knife.)
Evan Hudson is a good man who made a mistake and needs to be rescued from it: that seems to be the conclusion Dean and Sam come to, at least. Again, we might have here a possible future for John, if Dean and Sam ever do (as has sometimes been hinted) march into hell to fight the demons on their own turf. I'm not sure that John really does need to be rescued from his own bargain, but the possibility seems to be there, that he could be brought back, or at the least allowed to move on.
The final double for John is, of course, Dean himself, who stands at the crossroads, in full knowledge of what he's doing, offering himself (even if only as distraction) in exchange for Hudson. Dean, who knows just enough to be dangerous, is both knowledgeable and an innocent, here. He knows what he's doing, like Darrow, and is acting selflessly to save another, like Hudson (more selflessly than Hudson, in fact, since Dean is saving a person he feels no attachment to). And yet the deal he offers isn't the deal he intends to make: first he offers to trade himself for Evan, then for his father, and only when he's trapped the Crossroads Demon does he make the deal he actually intends, forcing it to trade Hudson's life for its own freedom. If Darrow was deceived, it's Dean who manages to double-cross a demon. After IMToD there were fans who wondered whether John's deal was entirely what it seemed: was there a possibility that John was in some way offering the demon a poisoned chalice? That John had some secondary plan in motion, so that the deal YED thought was on the table might turn out, in retrospect, to be a trap? If Dean is another mirror-image of John here, then it might be possible.
(The Crossroads Demon insists that it, at least, is an honest dealer. "My word is my bond" it says, and "it is when I make a deal." There may be an implied comparison to the Yellow Eyed Demon, or to humans in general, as well as to Dean in particular. It may suggest that the Crossroads Demon is not lying: first, that John is in Hell, and second, that he can be broken out. It is also likely to be the case that it isn't telling the whole truth, or is shading the truth to mean something else entirely. This is, however, the nearest thing we've had to hard evidence for John's status since the end of IMToD.)
In the end, Dean doesn't succumb to the temptation to mirror his father's ultimate choice, to trade his life for John's. (In part, I think, because he knows that John would kill him himself if he found out.) Dean's disgust at his father's bargain -- "He should have gone out fighting," he says at the end. "That was his legacy. Not bargaining with the damn thing." -- may be wrongheaded, but it keeps him from falling into the same kind of error Darrow and Hudson, and arguably John himself, succumbed to. And that itself is, as Sam points out, John's legacy for them in action. He's in the frame, as long as they are.
(One final thought, from watching again last night: to my ear, the ticking in the background in this episode evokes the preview of ELaC, as John makes his final deal. John is everywhere, in the background, just on the edge of being too soft to hear.)
spn_heavymeta on John in SPN 2x08, Crossroad Blues. Then I totally forgot about it, but I got an extension and so here it is.The first season taught us to find John Winchester in his absences, to see him when he wasn't in the frame. The second season has built on that, particularly in the early episodes of the season, when Sam and Dean's grief for their father is practically a character in its own right, and John himself seems to stand behind every shadow. But in "Crossroads Blues," the eighth episode of the season, John is more present than ever in his absence: a set of characters mirror him, and a set of choices mirror the terrible choice he made in "In My Time of Dying." There are, I would say, three important deals in this episode, each of which sheds light on what John did when he dealt with the Yellow Eyed Demon: George Darrow's, Evan Hudson's, and finally, Dean's double dealing.
George Darrow, as he says over and over again, knew what he was doing: he walked into the deal he made with his eyes open and now that the bill is due, he's ready to pay it. "Sometimes," he says, "you make your bed and you got to lie in it." And later on, he adds that he's tired. He's bitter about the way the deal worked out, though: his life is a reminder that dealing with a demon is tricky business. Darrow serves as an obvious analogue for John: John too knew what he was doing when he summoned the YED, even if the deal he ended up making was perhaps not quite the one he expected to make. John seemed very much in charge when he met the demon in IMToD and in the end he didn't give up anything he wasn't willing to. At the same time, he was driven to the deal in a desperate tiredness which far exceeds Darrow's resignation (I think fans sometimes underestimate just how traumatic the events of Devil's Trap must have been for John): he was ready to die before the accident, and in IMToD his death, I think, seems a small price to pay for Dean's life.
(Sam asks Darrow whether or not he wants to die, and Darrow turns his back: Dean is the son who is most obviously speaking to his father in this episode, but there, in that one question, I think we see just how abandoned Sam feels, and how well he hides his grief.)
In Darrow's bitterness, there's a warning (too late!) for John -- is the deal he made the one he thought he was making? Just how safe is Dean, and from what? Was removing himself from the board really the right choice, or will it come back to hurt his sons even more than it already has?
Evan Hudson is the innocent in the story, the good man who trades his own soul and life to save the woman he loves. He too is willing to die (he has bills to pay, he says), and sends his wife away to keep her from having to see his death. When Dean questions him, his response is a simple, "I'd have died for her on the spot." It's true that he doesn't think of whether his wife would have wanted him to pay the price, whether he was doing something profoundly unnatural: all he can do is act on his love and his need to see her live. Again, the comparison with John is clear: in the simplest form, he gives up his life to save his son's. He sends Sam away, and leaves Dean's room, to spare them what he can. He makes the deal, knowing that it will cost him not only his life but also his revenge, trusting his sons, as Sam says at the end of the episode, to be his legacy. John hasn't been an innocent in a very long time, but he is a good man.
(Dean's argument with Hudson is really his argument with John: that in giving up his life for his son he was acting selfishly, that he didn't want to be left alone. Dean, of course, assumes that his father's motives were the motives Dean himself would have -- fear of abandonment -- and he points to the cost, the burden laid on the one left behind and sacrificed for. We don't at this point, know the details of the burden placed on Dean's shoulders before he died, but we suspect that it was a heavy one. Even so, I think Dean misjudges his father: the deal isn't a betrayal. John didn't try to do something unnatural, but made his deal to prevent something unnatural, to prevent a son dying before his father. Summoning the demon and making the deal were just the tools he used to that end, in the same way he'd use a gun or a knife.)
Evan Hudson is a good man who made a mistake and needs to be rescued from it: that seems to be the conclusion Dean and Sam come to, at least. Again, we might have here a possible future for John, if Dean and Sam ever do (as has sometimes been hinted) march into hell to fight the demons on their own turf. I'm not sure that John really does need to be rescued from his own bargain, but the possibility seems to be there, that he could be brought back, or at the least allowed to move on.
The final double for John is, of course, Dean himself, who stands at the crossroads, in full knowledge of what he's doing, offering himself (even if only as distraction) in exchange for Hudson. Dean, who knows just enough to be dangerous, is both knowledgeable and an innocent, here. He knows what he's doing, like Darrow, and is acting selflessly to save another, like Hudson (more selflessly than Hudson, in fact, since Dean is saving a person he feels no attachment to). And yet the deal he offers isn't the deal he intends to make: first he offers to trade himself for Evan, then for his father, and only when he's trapped the Crossroads Demon does he make the deal he actually intends, forcing it to trade Hudson's life for its own freedom. If Darrow was deceived, it's Dean who manages to double-cross a demon. After IMToD there were fans who wondered whether John's deal was entirely what it seemed: was there a possibility that John was in some way offering the demon a poisoned chalice? That John had some secondary plan in motion, so that the deal YED thought was on the table might turn out, in retrospect, to be a trap? If Dean is another mirror-image of John here, then it might be possible.
(The Crossroads Demon insists that it, at least, is an honest dealer. "My word is my bond" it says, and "it is when I make a deal." There may be an implied comparison to the Yellow Eyed Demon, or to humans in general, as well as to Dean in particular. It may suggest that the Crossroads Demon is not lying: first, that John is in Hell, and second, that he can be broken out. It is also likely to be the case that it isn't telling the whole truth, or is shading the truth to mean something else entirely. This is, however, the nearest thing we've had to hard evidence for John's status since the end of IMToD.)
In the end, Dean doesn't succumb to the temptation to mirror his father's ultimate choice, to trade his life for John's. (In part, I think, because he knows that John would kill him himself if he found out.) Dean's disgust at his father's bargain -- "He should have gone out fighting," he says at the end. "That was his legacy. Not bargaining with the damn thing." -- may be wrongheaded, but it keeps him from falling into the same kind of error Darrow and Hudson, and arguably John himself, succumbed to. And that itself is, as Sam points out, John's legacy for them in action. He's in the frame, as long as they are.
(One final thought, from watching again last night: to my ear, the ticking in the background in this episode evokes the preview of ELaC, as John makes his final deal. John is everywhere, in the background, just on the edge of being too soft to hear.)