SPN 2x17: Heart
Mar. 22nd, 2007 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznettiSo there I was, thinking that this episode was surprisingly low on the boy/boy melodrama, and then wham!, the ending: Sam and Madison reversing the scene of possessed-Sam and Dean (and how much of that, I wonder, does Sam remember?), as Madison begs him to kill her before she hurts anyone else. And then Dean stepping in to do this thing, because this is his role, and Sam's the innocent -- and after all, he'd already killed Glenn, one innocent dead, what does one more death on his hands matter? And then Sam demanding to take that burden on. Beautiful.
If only I didn't have the irresistible urge to mock Dean's single perfect tear. I'm sorry, fandom. I know this makes me a bad person. I know how important the scene was. It's just -- Single. Perfect. Tear. I can't help it.
But that said, I loved that Dean was the final shot, because a lot of what was important here happened in Dean's head -- Sam might have drawn the first connection, but it's Dean who can see the whole of what happened here, all the implications, even more than Sam can. And I wonder whether Dean is driving a bargain of his own: every half-innocent he kills is another sacrifice to keep him from having to kill Sam.
* * *
Sam had sex, too. That was nice.
...sorry, where was I? Sam looked really good in this episode.
* * *
The two scenes which made the director's cut this week did not stop being awesome. And I maintain that in the second scene, all Dean is thinking is, "scissors! that's a good one -- I'll go with scissors!"
And I think I had better officially apologize to
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vee_fic about being all nit-picky about parking the Impala in San Francisco. Or even in Vancouver trying gamely to look like the city.* * *
But mostly, it was all about those final scenes: Sam and Dean, and what they do. And what they might be or become.
Spoilers under the cut, of course.
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Date: 2007-03-23 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 02:33 am (UTC)I mock the single tear with you. (I did not even see it the first time, only on rewatch.) And really, I think the all-over flinch that ended it did the job nicely.
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Date: 2007-03-23 01:20 pm (UTC)I remember the X-Files, too -- but as a native, I have both the right and the obligation to mock Vancouver's attempts to act like a stand-in for SF at all times. Because frankly, it's a nice town and all, but it just isn't up to the job.
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Date: 2007-03-23 02:56 am (UTC)Man, poor Sam is never having sex again.
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Date: 2007-03-23 01:17 pm (UTC)Or, as I think
I think the tear seemed a little over the top for just that reason -- that the last time we saw it was at the pyre -- but then, Dean wasn't mourning fo the girl there: he was mourning for Sam.
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Date: 2007-03-23 03:00 am (UTC)Maybe on the re-watch. I can't mock while the ep is playing.
However, I do hope that at the big scene - you know, the one where Dean hammers John and there is flailing and screaming and finally weeping? In that scene, I hope that they convince JA to let it all out, and go for the whole storm cloud.
And I wonder whether Dean is driving a bargain of his own: every half-innocent he kills is another sacrifice to keep him from having to kill Sam.
I'll stick by what I said at the begining - they are more screwed now than they were at the begining of the ep. And? Sam has just demonstrated himself capable of doing what Dean would not.
My bet? Next time the Demon possesses someone while Sammy has the gun, the Demon is going to regret it.
- hg
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Date: 2007-03-23 01:14 pm (UTC)I don't usually say this, but yes -- it should be the kind of messy, uncontrolled weeping that you don't even realize is happening until there's snot all over your face. There needs to be snot, when that scene happens. Tasteful snot, but still.
Sam has just demonstrated himself capable of doing what Dean would not.
Sam has always had an easier time crossing lines than Dean has, I think; he knows that he'll find a way to justify it to himself. Dean draws fewer lines, but he takes them more seriously.
Next time the Demon possesses someone while Sammy has the gun, the Demon is going to regret it.
I totally agree. Part of me thinks the Demon is smart enough to know this, but then, who can say?
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Date: 2007-03-23 04:06 pm (UTC)Dean owns his guilt: Sam (generally) argues that it was righteous. Not sure how he's going to handle this one, though, especially if he realizes that they really didn't have to kill her right away.
... I wonder what would have happened if she'd turned herself in to the police?
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Date: 2007-03-24 02:57 am (UTC)*sing-song*
You should write that! /sing-song.
More seriously? She'd have either been let out on bail because I don't think any lawyer would have let them keep her -
she's charged with ripping the hearts out of the chests of two guys? *this* gal? please, pull the other one
or Baker Act'd into a nuthouse and broken out and killed someone, or if kept in the jail, broken out and killed someone. At the very least, she'd have been free by the next full moon, the cops would have still been searching for 'the real killer' -
- right, and she took down that cop, too - they aren't going to buy that, even a gal as tall as that -
and swept up the Winchesters along the way.
But you should totally write that.
- hg
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Date: 2007-03-23 03:38 am (UTC)I thought it was effective that they had no "then" at the beginning, as if this was a completely stand-alone episode. And they never specifically referenced any of the backstory. So, on the one hand, I wondered what someone who hadn't watched the show before thought about all that weeping manpain. And on the other hand, I was pretty amazed at what a completely different episode it is if you have watched the show...obssessively?...
Those sneaky devils
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Date: 2007-03-23 01:54 pm (UTC)I asked BH about this, since he hasn't seen any of S2 but was of course watching with me last night. He thought it was obvious that Sam was worried about becoming evil, but otherwise it all seemed a little random. He felt that the episode ran out of steam at the end, whereas of course if you'd watched all season the final few minutes were what it was all about.
Then again, he is not much for the weepy manpain in general.
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Date: 2007-03-23 03:52 am (UTC)*nod nod nod*
And this time he didn't, and can't protect Sam from that forever, and knows it. Oh my Dean's FACE there.
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Date: 2007-03-23 01:56 pm (UTC)Yes. And I'm wondering whether this act -- the knowledge that he can kill an innocent person in cold blood -- will be part of what pushes him over the edge, and whether Dean sees that as a risk as well.
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Date: 2007-03-23 05:59 am (UTC)Oh, god, yes. *wibble* I don't have much to add to that, but YES. Like he's making his own kind of voodoo to keep that moment away.
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Date: 2007-03-23 01:58 pm (UTC)Yes -- each one of them is Sam in a way, but not in the only way that matters. And also, of course, the cleaner Sam's hands are, the safer he is from whatever fate he's carrying with him.
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Date: 2007-03-23 06:18 am (UTC)the Impala in San Francisco: I was so (geekishly) looking forward to the scene of Dean trying to parallel park his baby in San Francisco. Possibly on a hill.
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Date: 2007-03-23 01:10 pm (UTC)For a while when I was small, our car didn't go into reverse, so th only way to park it was to parallel park on a hill: my mom would put it into neutral, I guess, and let gravity do the work.
See, and I could almost hear him thinking "HA! He'll never expect me to use scissors after that!"
Ha! No, I'm sticking with "Scissors! Scissors are the best!" But the point, of course, is that Sam knew exactly what he'd do there.
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Date: 2007-03-23 05:33 pm (UTC)Was the car a Volkswagen, by any chance? I grew up in 70's VWs and couldn't let go of them when I got my own car. A whole section of our family lore is dedicated to the problems they got us into and the creative solutions that got us out.
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Date: 2007-03-23 06:48 pm (UTC)When she finally got a new car, she claims that she was shocked by the prices in the supermarket -- since for all that time she hadn't been to one.
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Date: 2007-03-23 06:19 am (UTC)Also, WORD on the Single Perfect Tear. Barkley and Vonnie will tell you about my response to "Clown" when we watched it in Italy and there was a single perfect tear and I laughed, I tell you. I suspect I am SPT-proof.
But JP did look very fine indeed, this evening. There is, as Vee pointed out, no way those boys live on diner breakfasts and mini-mart microwaved burritos, though. Those are whole-wheat-and-turkey, organic spinach and sprouts abs.
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Date: 2007-03-23 01:24 pm (UTC)I know! I mean, where were all the black people? And the drug dealers? I really hate the Vancouver industry, sometimes: they're so lazy.
I was knocked right out of the pyre scene in "Clown" by that Single Perfect Tear, and the same thing happened here, although I didn't mind quite as much.
Camille, just below this, has a comment on the muscles; I don't know if you saw it.
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Date: 2007-03-23 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 06:41 am (UTC)Did have to mention, though, that as the ep has time to sit a little longer in my head, I am getting tired-er and tired-er of dead girl syndrome.
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Date: 2007-03-23 02:01 pm (UTC)Yeah. I mean, it looked to me like there were two options, once she was the werewolf (or a werewolf) -- that she's an innocent who has to be killed or that she knew all along and was playing them, and thus also has to be kiled. But that leaves out the third option -- the Oz plot from Buffy -- which is to figure out some way to control the change, or keep her locked up at night. Emotionally, the killing worked, but logically, it was stupid and part of a disturbing larger patternt.
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Date: 2007-03-23 02:25 pm (UTC)I would have loved it if it turned out Madison was playing Sam. I really would. Ah, well.
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Date: 2007-03-23 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 01:23 pm (UTC)I would have liked this too, but to be fair I think that then people would complain about how women are all too often evil on the show.
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Date: 2007-03-23 05:09 pm (UTC)Killing her was evidence of a failure of their own logic with the vamps, or a growing dismissal of women that is even more disturbing because it's women who seem to be writing those eps, and being gleeful about the girl-death in interviews.
It also disturbed me because within the logic of the show, given Sammy's fears about his own evil nature and guilt about what he has done in the past and just then, we should have heard a second shot, found Sammy on the floor too, and no more show.
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Date: 2007-03-23 05:56 pm (UTC)*snickers* OMG yes. There is no such thing as parking on the street in SF. *laughs*
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Date: 2007-03-23 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 05:35 am (UTC)--Jessica
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Date: 2007-03-24 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 01:59 pm (UTC)- hg