10x12“About A Boy”“To be or not to be…”Be still my heart, a Hamlet moment. I have kind of been really excited about the multiple mentions of Shakespeare over the course of the past two seasons already with Dean being called Romeo and a poster of Shakespeare hanging in the theater teacher’s office in 10x05 “Fan Fiction”. I wrote a lot more about Hamlet in relation to SPN back then already (see here), but cliff notes: Hamlet is mourning his father’s death and to find out, who killed his father he starts to “play mad” (though it is still up for debate within literary circles whether he truly is going mad or just pretending). The “to be or not to be”-moment is probably one of the most well-known lines there are from the play. In that moment Hamlet is pondering the big questions of life and death while he himself is deeply unstable, depressed and suicidal. And that soliloquy is happening while he is holding the skull of Yorick in his hands. In that regard, the “dialogue” between skull (death) and Hamlet (life) can almost been seen as some sort of mirror shot here. And to me all these aspects fit perfectly with what Dean is struggling with not only but amplified by the mark. He is deeply depressed and like he says himself (“Psycholiller”) going mad. And the past few episodes have been exploring deeply how Dean thinks about life and death at present, how he said cannot continue living with the mark. Thank you SPN, thank you for doing another Hamlet scene 9 seasons after the first one. And standing ovations for Dylan Everett in general! You freaking rock, sir!
So Dean’s room in 10x12 starts out pretty much as it always is (
I see you fallen cross over the bed I see you), but as the shots progress we see it beginning to fill up with clutter, mostly research materials…Dean’s dresser drawers are half open with clothing strewn about, his bed is a mess, and the ledge over his bed which is normally home to a number of significant objects has been turned into an area for all the books and files he’s bulled from the bunker’s library.
It’s not clear where he moved most of the other objects to, but I do see that one of the bags that I’m assuming contains rock salt remains. Jerry Wanek you are a clever devil…
If Dean’s room is an extension of his psyche, then he is an absolute mess inside at the moment. But hey, at least it’s a mess trying to survive, fighting for himself, maybe deep down believing that he does in fact deserve to be saved…
Surely Sam couldn’t possibly have believed that long unless someone went out every Easter, bought or stole a bunch of candy, and painstakingly stuck it into plastic eggs and put it all in a basket, every year without fail…
He wasn’t only saying ‘thank you for saving us’ he said ‘you pulled a Dean Winchester’, which means 'you saved us by being you’. This is one of the most important things Dean needed to hear. Being a hero by being himself. By being clever and strong and fast thinking and brilliant, as Sam sees him, as he really is. and just look at his face the way he listens to this, not truly believing he deserves this but letting it sink in. ‘Any time’.
- dean is a dad.
- further proof that sam likes dean’s cooking no matter what the fuck it is.
no but. do you understand. dean did such a good job taking care of sam and protecting him from what was really out there that sam was innocent enough to believe in the easter bunny until he was eleven and a half