But Dean canonically said that he doesn’t do shorts. Therefore, what he is wearing in those two other scenes CAN’T be shorts. You are all delusional. Dean SAID he doesn’t wear shorts and that’s fact so you are all imagining him wearing shorts. Just stop with your ‘Dean in shorts’ obsession okay just URGH!
;-)
Delusional people seeing shorts where there are no shorts.
Why cannot Dean and shorts just be friends? Save the platonic friendship between a guy and his shorts. There is just so little of that on tv now a days.
Yeah, you can’t just suddenly say Dean likes shorts after eleven years, when he obviously never liked shorts before. It’s just not believable. Stop trying to force Dean into pants he obviously doesn’t enjoy wearing, because he said so once, as a joke, eleven years ago.
Friendly reminder you can platonically wear shorts! The sexualization of shorts may seem progressive, but can actually contribute to negative pants stereotypes!
I mean come on, people don’t say things and then realize they spoke too soon. If Dean says he doesn’t do shorts, how dare you think he discovered he actually likes shorts after trying them? People don’t claim to dislike things simply because they’re afraid of being judged. If Dean says he doesn’t like shorts, it has nothing to do with the stigma of men wearing shorts. It has nothing to do with repressed affinity for the wind in his leg hair. He clearly stated a decade ago that he doesn’t like them. He was clearly forced to wear them recently, but he absolutely did not enjoy it. It’s offensive that you people are projecting your own love for shorts upon this man who clearly ONLY likes full-length pants. It’s canon. Dean loving shorts will never happen. Get over it.
Uh, although Dean has never said in canon that he even likes full-length pants. We normally see him wear them, yes, that might be true, but he has never personally confirmed anything about his relationship with pants. It is rude of us to assume that he automatically HAS to like wearing them. Let the man live!
On the other hand, you can’t just say that Dean suddenly likes wearing shorts and completely ignore what’s canon. It’s uncharacteristic of him! Dean is a man of his word, which means that the only item of clothing he is comfortable wearing is the pink satin panties he mentioned in season 5.
y'know i was just thinking, you can’t really watch supernatural out of order bc like
one episode will be the fuckboy Ken doll saying to his 12 year-old-looking brother “oh no this ghost case is really hard what are we gonna do”
and then next time you watch will be an episode that’s 11 years later with playgirl model and Fabio calling up the literal King of Hell and saying “hey buddy and/or fuckhead it’s me Dean, we need help killing God’s sister, also we’re forcing Lucifer out of my angel boyfriend. anyways you’re stupid but yeah help us”
But one thing that I don’t remember reading, that I feel is missing, was a comparison between the scene of Dean and Castiel at the diner and the scene between Sam and Dean in the bunker earlier in the episode. And I think this is crucially important.
I first started thinking about this in response to questions by Sam-girls as to why the scene of Sam preparing the grilled cheese sandwich for his brother Dean was cut out of the episode. There was a response by someone involved with the show (I want to say Jim Michaels?) that it was cut for time which didn’t satisfy the fans demanding answers, because there were so many other things that could have been cut for time in the episode. And I agree with these people, although do not share their upset over the scene being cut.
Because cutting the scene of Sam preparing the sandwich and having Sam deliver the sandwich to Dean brings the two scenes into sharper contrast, and we need to contrast the two scenes.
We cannot understand one without the other. We need both scenes to get the full impact of the other. Andrew Dabb, as I’ve discussed many, many times in the past, loves narrative symmetry and his scenes are always in conversation with and complementing one another. And these two scenes are especially dependent on each other, the first interpreting the second and vice versa.
So, what we learn from the first scene is that Dean hasn’t been eating for a long time. Sam doesn’t prepare food for Dean. Sam doesn’t concern himself with Dean’s eating usually. Dean is the big brother that takes care of his little brother Sam and makes sure that Sam is fed.
Andrew Dabb has written more about Sam and Dean’s childhood than just about any writer on the show, has established the canon of their childhood in which Dean took care of Sam, was parentified. It was in Andrew Dabb’s Clip Show that we saw Dean still take care of Sam as an adult, making sure that he got something to eat even when they had nothing to eat in the bunker. And this scene is in sharp contrast with what we have learned about the boys in the past. This is the first time we see Sam take care of Dean’s physical needs. That is how concerned Sam is for Dean. This is to emphasize how long it has been since Dean last ate, last concerned himself with food, how small of an appetite he has under the thrall of the Mark of Cain.
Dean is not hungry. He doesn’t seek out food. But he eats the sandwich that Sam has made for him – in order to avoid having a conversation with his brother.
The line that laid the foundation for Sam and Dean’s scene, which lingered over it, was spoken by Sandy the social worker just prior to the first shot of Dean in the episode [about Claire]: “She doesn’t need a friend, she needs a father”. We are meant to ask of Dean what he currently needs – is it a father? Is it a friend? Is it a brother? Or something besides?
Sam, Dean’s brother, attempts to mother Dean, and that is the wrong answer. Dean doesn’t need Sam to be his mother. It’s a bust. Dean doesn’t respond but withdraws.
In the scene, Sam and Dean sit at the same table but there is a distance between them. Dean uses the Three Stooges film he’s watching to build and maintain a wall between them. While they are sitting down together at the same table, watching the same film, laughing together, they’re not actually connecting. There’s a disconnect between them. Dean is avoiding the exploration of his own inner feelings, his own dark thoughts, by escaping into watching a comedy, disguising his true thoughts and feelings into levity, which is what he does. We’ve known since the first season that when he’s really hurting, when he’s truly in pain, he will make a joke out of it. It’s how he deals.
There’s a disconnect between Sam and Dean while Dean eats the sandwich Sam prepared for him. Their conversation tends toward the trivial. Dean is not hungry. They are both dishonest – Sam telling Dean that he’s glad he’s feeling better when what he is is concerned for his brother, and Dean letting Sam think he’s doing better when he’s genuinely not. When, and we learn this in the other scene, what Dean is thinking about inside while he laughs on the outside, is that Sam will never be able to stop him when the moment will inevitably come that Dean Winchester will need someone to stop him. That is the subtext in the scene.
“Better than ever,” Dean tells to Sam. It is every inch a bold faced lie. Dean is not honest with Sam. Dean is not even honest with the sandwich while he greets it with “Hello, beautiful!” And Sam is not honest with Dean, his gaze lingering on the Mark of Cain, clearly worried but keeping it all inside.
Sam returns to being Dean’s brother by teasing him, asking him whether he needs some alone time with the sandwich, as he makes some obscene sounds of pleasure acquainting himself with it. This is also in contrast with the other scene.
They sit together. They laugh. They share a picturesque broment. And everything about it rings hollow. Everything about it is a lie.
In the other scene, Sam doesn’t ask Dean whether he needs alone time with Castiel. Sam can tell that he does, and agrees basically to work the case on his own to let Dean have the time alone with his friend that he clearly wants and needs.
Everything in the diner scene is an inversion of the scene between Sam and Dean.
Where Dean had avoided Sam’s company in the bunker they shared together, Dean seems to have dropped everything the minute Castiel called to get to him. Where Dean pretended for Sam, he has no artifice with Castiel. He tells his honest thoughts, he shares his feelings. They don’t laugh at something outside of themselves, but share humor between them. They connect.
Dean is hungry. He’s really hungry. He’s not pretending to be hungry to avoid a conversation. He’s hungry to a point that he does something he knows will look very strange to the normal, every-day on-lookers in the restaurant. He lies neither to Castiel nor to Castiel’s sandwich. It is Castiel that attempts to avoid having a real conversation with Dean initially, making small-talk on the ketchup. It’s Dean that insist they have a real conversation about what’s bothering him. It’s Dean that insists on a real, genuine, honest connection between them.
Dean looks at Castiel and tells him, “Hell, yes” in tones that have more want in them than his dishonest “Hello, beautiful” had had previously.
Dean is interested in how Castiel is doing, not feigning interest. He wants to know how Castiel is doing where he had no interest in how Sam was doing, where he avoided his rather obviously hurting little brother earlier.
I want to emphasize this: the fact that Sam actually made a sandwich for his big brother Dean whose nutrition he has never felt responsible for in his life means that Dean had not been eating, had not been hungry, for long enough of a time for Sam to have paid attention to it, for Sam to have become worried about it. This same Dean eats two sets of burgers and fries, the epitome of a hungry, hungry hippo.
The contrast is of utmost importance.
They have a normal conversation, and then they have a deep, emotional conversation, and the question lingering over all of this is whether what Dean needs is a friend and a confidant over a brother at this moment – or whether it is something else besides that he needs. Unlike Claire he does need a friend absolutely, of this much we can be certain.
Castiel sits on the same side of the table that Sam had occupied at the bunker, but where Dean had been turned toward his lap-top his entire body is open and facing his friend, leaning toward him like a dove huddling for affection.
Where Sam did not ask Dean how he was doing but spoke what they both knew was a lie about Dean looking better, Castiel asks directly. And initially, Dean does lie. It’s a reflexive lie, it’s his instinct. But where Castiel doesn’t press him but merely gives him space, he does fess up to the truth of what he’s feeling.
Where it was dark in the bunker, it’s very bright in the diner. Where Dean was wrapped in dark tones, he’s now shed his dark cloak. Where he avoided Sam’s gaze, he looks Castiel directly in the eyes, his gaze firm except for when the bashfully look away. We cannot understand the full impact of one scene without the other.
And don’t mistake this contrasting of the scenes for a competition on Dean’s affection. This is not a Dean-off. The scenes are contrasted to highlight the theme of “Love… and love” in the narrative, of what we were told over and over during the tenth season. Dean loves both Sam and Castiel. Both Sam and Castiel love Dean. These things are truths that we hold self-evident. But they are not one and the same, love… and love.
Sometimes a girl needs both a father and a friend. And sometimes a guy needs both a brother and… that very loud negative space.
