Supernatural (8.5): “You’re the Short Bus…”

While the rest of you were wondering why Matthew Fox didn’t think again when acting struck him as a career option, I was actually enjoying my viewing evening (and what an enjoyable view). Okay, maybe enjoy is a stretch, allot of upsetting things were packed into that hour.

I have two things that I have to get off my chest first. One: “Every Rose Has Its Thorne?” Brett Michaels is haunting me. I was stunned, but I did eventually laugh. I love the music they use in this show! Two: I know that I shouldn’t, but I really want Sam and Ruby (Katie Cassidy) to hook-up. Yes, she’s a demon possessing some girl’s body, and Sam will eventually have to kill her, or exorcise her. But Sam and Ruby have something, and lets face it, Sam needs a little lovin.

And if Sam does start acting more like Dean (Jensen Ackles) he would get a lot more. It just broke my heart to find out that what Dean thought was Sam not being Sam was really a choice on Sam’s part. I have been so frightened, along with Dean, that Sam really did come back different, that his hardness, and lack of questioning his choices, means that Sam isn’t Sam. Sam is consciously changing; he has recognized that to win the war he has to be more like Dean. It is interesting that Sam may have been picked to lead the demon army, but Dean is the one who can defeat them, that Sam on his own won’t win. It makes me rethink the end of Season Two. The crossroads-demon made it seem like Dean wasn’t worth all that much, and the yellow-eyed-demon always put the importance on Sam, but Ruby knows that Dean is the one who could win, making me think everyone else did too. He got a year to live, because knowing that without him his side would eventually loose, they could accept the damage he would do to their side in that year. As necessary as Sam’s change might be, it is difficult to watch. There is a continual process of sacrifice on this show; there is never a point where either of them gets to say that they have done enough. For all Sam’s introspection, he understands the nature of his life (and all of our lives) and accepts his responsibility. The possibility that Sam would ever be able to have a “normal” life is decreasing rapidly.

Especially because there is still no way of getting Dean out of his deal. I didn’t actually believe that Ruby had a way (the show needs to fix this in a way that doesn’t involve any more deals with demons). The crossroads-demon told Sam that she didn’t hold Dean’s contract. The witch-demon last night told Sam that a new demon leader is rising to organize the war. I’m thinking the new leader is the one who holds Dean’s contact. Kill the next big bad, no dead Dean, everybody wins!

Neither of the boys has such a positive outlook as I do, and Dean is preparing himself for his next fight. According to Ruby Hell is forgetting you were ever human. This is what impresses me so much about this show. Without pontificating, without proselytizing, and pretty much without moralizing, they bust out traditional, grounded, and universally understandable conceptions of good/evil, right/wrong and hell/heaven. The boys struggle, especially Sam, and there are subtleties to what they discover, but in the end this show doesn’t mess around; doesn’t exist in a moral grey area.

Shout Outs:
Little Things to Know that Make Watching Better

If you have been following the Fictional Throwdown, you know that Jared Padalecki is Dean from Gilmore Girls.

Jeffery Dean Morgan, who played their dad John, is best known as Denny from Grey’s Anatomy, and can we all just take a moment to recognize how sad our culture is that Denny’s death was actually a feature on the evening news. I can boycott terrible TV, but I can’t escape it. I like to remember that dear Jeffery also played Judah Botwin on Weeds, Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker)’s husband whose death is the premise of the show. If you look up interviews of his he jokes about being the most often deceased man on TV. Big points for having a sense of humor. According to IMDb he was also on an episode of The O.C. and Monk.

I remember Jensen Ackles on Days of Our Lives. This is back in the day, because I haven’t followed Days since I was in high school, and he played Eric, Sammi’s twin brother who was involved with Nicole before she was married to Victor and had the affair with Brady. Long time ago. (Is there a point when long-term crush turns into unhealthy fascination? Oh well.) I immensely enjoyed him on the second season of Dark Angel; Alec was kind of a proto-Dean. Not to be outdone in the who-was-on-the-worse-show competition by daddy, he was also on Smallville. Good to know there is redemption in the world.