John – Post Dream a Little Dream of Me
Episodes, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kripke, Reviews, Supernatural February 11th. 2008, 9:44amI haven’t seen terribly many posts on this subject, but the ones I have seen have been intelligent and balanced. I imagine there are a few posts out there that aren’t, and each to their own, but I hope I don’t run across those. My weekly review is coming out tomorrow, and I’m thinking that I left the whole John as obsessive bastard out of it because I didn’t feel that PRG was an appropriate forum for my own private views on the subject. Plus, rather than posting to this comment or that, in that I agree or don’t, I thought I’d post my own personal thoughts here.Â
First, the whole of Dean’s dream sequence left me rattled. Yeah, TV uses the “confronting self” technique in more than a few places, and never in such a satisfying way. I mean, yeah, I got that Dean was going to face up to himself and that revelations were going to come of it, but NOT like this. If I thought Dean was hard on himself before, man, he was downright cruel. I mean, yes, he was helping himself face what needed to be faced, but like that? Don’t know when I’ve last been so moved, to the point of standing up and shouting out loud. I don’t know where Dean will go from that point on, but I sure as heck know he’s not in limbo anymore. The whole scene was vicious and hard to watch and utterly satisfying. I downloaded it and watched this scene several times, trying to get a grip. Did he say what I thought he said? And what does it mean?
Second, yeah, what he had to say…and how he said it. In the beginning he’s all like, yeah, Dean wake up, let me snap my fingers and you’re history, wake up. Like it’s that easy. Of course it wasn’t. I think he felt like he was in real trouble when he says, “Come on, wake up,” because he could see where Nightmare Dean was taking him and he didn’t want to go. Not at all. It’s one thing to know, in the back of your head that you are messed up and your own worst nightmare, it’s another to face it. So Nightmare Dean taunts him, saying stuff that I never thought I’d hear said aloud, but that I thought.Â
Yeah, I always figured Dean had Dad issues, why else would he be driving his Dad’s car (and no other), wearing his Dad’s leather jacket, and listening to music that was HOT when his Dad was his age? Obviously, he adores his Dad and wants to be like him, and imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. So there’s that, and up to a point, it’s normal to admire someone and want to be like them. So that part wasn’t so bad. It was when Nightmare Dean started in with the whole “all he did was train you, boss you around,” and “Sam he doted on, Sam he loved,” and “you’re just his blunt little instrument,” and Dean’s getting steamed. I was AMAZED that Show went this direction with this, and that they said it out loud. With FORCE and INTENT. Then Nightmare Dean says the worst thing ever, “Your own father didn’t care whether you lived or died, why should you?” Which is when Dean looses it and says all the stuff about The Dad being an obsessive bastard, and the part that broke my heart full out, “He was never there! He was never there for Sammy and I always was.”
True? Obviously Dean believes it, which is what makes it hard. But it isn’t, not really. Because, as any fan recalls, John sold his soul and the Colt for Dean’s life. A father’s love will sacrifice all, so it isn’t really true that John didn’t care whether Dean lived or died. But part of Dean believes it. Hell, maybe all of him does, regardless of what actually happened. He feels unloved, he feels like his one purpose in life has nothing to do with what he wants and who he is. He’s been going on so long with his one purpose being look after Sammy that he’s forgotten to be or want anything else and it’s taken him this long to get mad. So I take this scene as less a reflection of John’s parenting than on Dean’s inabitlity to….be his own man. There’s something whacked there. (Even though I’ve heard the theories that at around 30 you kind of fall apart and put yourself back together again. It happened to me, and then I read up on it, and warned all my friends who were approaching that point so they wouldn’t think they were going crazy when it happened to them.)
I’m not saying John was inculpable here. I belive that yeah, he did train his boys and he wasn’t nice. I think that he did make Dean his brother’s keeper, that he meant for Dean to be a good solider, someone upon whom he could depend, and when Dean turned out to be the best blunt little instrument ever, it must have been rather hard for him to not use that. And keep it honed sharp. John was wrong in that his singlemindedness trained his boys to be hunters before they were old enough to determine that’s what they wanted. Growing up as a hunter? My lord? That’s no life. John had tunnel vision and his boys suffered for it. I think he suffered for it, come to that.
But I don’t, at the same time think that John meant for it to happen. (If Mary had been around, demon or no, there would have been balance.) And I don’t think he had any idea how what he was doing affected Dean, but, being the man he was and in the situation he was he NEVER LOOKED.  That’s where he needs to take the blame. He never looked, he never thought, he never considered – and at the end of it all, his blunt little instrument is having nightmares where he shoots himself in the chest with a sawed off shotgun.
Dean was the kind of kid to take “look after Sammy” as the end all and be all of commands. And Dean doesn’t seem the kind to complain about it, after all, pulling your little brother out of the flames at four years, and then again when you’re 26 is going to solidify that command like cement. So while John’s intent was to keep his boys safe (if you see life as a war, you train for a war), because Dean is that kind of guy, it all went screwy. I think what Dean is saying in this scene, to himself, because no one is listening but him, has less to do with The Dad and more to do with what Dean did with what The Dad gave him.Â
Don’t get me wrong, when I see the effect John’s parenting had on his boys, I’m boiling over with fury and I want to spring into action on Dean’s behalf. And I think both Dean and The Dad are both responsible for what went on, not in the same way, but it occurs to me, at this point, that for YEARS Sam kept saying “THIS IS BULLSHIT,” because for some reason he could see the forest for the trees. Dad never listened because Sam was his kid and a mouthy one at that. Dean never listened because Sam was his baby brother and golly, couldn’t possibly have a sane thought in his head that made sense.Â
I think there’s enough blame to spread far and wide here. Blame in the sense of taking responsibility, not in the pointing fingers sense.Â
When I think about The Dad, I get a headache. Doesn’t help that he looks like JDM, which makes me want to think about him all the more.
Pictures (of course)
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That is so true about Dean and John. Maybe if they didn’t see Sam as the dumb little brother or the youngest mouthy son things wouldn’t be so damn screwed up for Dean. When I saw this and they finally put to words what I had always suspected about Dean it made me want to take him in my arms and comfort him and then find a really good Psychologist help him.
One thing you gotta admit about this episode though is that Dean looked HOT as a demon. I thought that Sam was hot as a demon but Damn that was just sexy as hell.
Misskitty, you are right, Dean is damn hot as a demon! Although, thank goodness, he’s never really been possessed…yet.
I’m wondering what they’re going to do with this and whether Sam will finally have his say.
I don’t think that is why Dean didn’t listen to Sam, I think it’s because Dean couldn’t listen and hope to continue being able to function. Dean had to believe John was right because it was the only way to deal with tons of responsibility that was being put on a child too young to handle it and who on some level knew he was too young to handle it, but who HAD to handle it, otherwise his family would fall apart. And it’s not something that is going to just disappear when that child reaches 15 years old. Sam could see it because he had Dean there to blunt it, he could see it in the way a more normal person could because he could BE a more normal person. Because of those responsibilites and pressures, Dean wasn’t allowed the stages of normal emotional development that Dean’s presense allowed Sam to have.
I hate to say it but in some ways “John” is reaping what he sowed here with Dean. 20+ years of sowing it and one action, no matter how apparently grand and sweeping(said soul selling) is going to be able to erase all that damage. Sure John sold his soul, but given Dean’s viewpoint, a viewpoint he’s got because it was imbued into him by John, whether John meant it or not, it’s quite easy for me to see why Dean would not believe John did it FOR HIM but simply because he was Dad’s most useful “instrument” at the time. John knew well he couldn’t work with Sam, they just have those sorts of personality and Sam at a certain level doesn’t trust him. John’s best bet on “saving Sam” was to leave it to Dean and on top of it he also asked Dean, whom he’d always told to put Sam first, to kill him if DEAN did not succeed in saving him. So he’s basically, again whether he meant to or not, putting the potential failure on Dean’s shoulders. He apologizes in one breath for what he did to him and then in the next does it 20 fold.
And the reason Dean can feel that John didn’t do it because he loved him is because of the 20+ years of what was really emotional neglect prior to that. Don’t forget only a few months earlier Dean was also dying and Dad couldn’t even be bothered to give him a call. Imagine how that would feel? John didn’t even apologize for it when he was called on it in Salvation, he just said Dean was right that they wouldn’t have gotten in touch with him(not that he should have called) and that he didn’t like Dean’s tone.
Now on the other hand, when it’s got something to do with Sam, suddenly Dad can sell his soul for him? Hmmm…so while I believe John did it for Dean, it’s really very logical in it’s own way that Dean could believe otherwise. The message he’d gotten for 20 years before that was that he wasn’t the important one, he wasn’t the one who mattered. Sam mattered, getting revent for his mother mattered, the fight mattered. The message he got was he was there to do a job, to be a soldier, to be an instrument of war. When you get that message from the ages he did, so very young, that can seriously screw a person’s mind up, their whole view of their place in the world is entirely skewed. They feel like they are nothing, worthless, empty inside, just like Dean’s Dream self said. The writers, about whom I have many complaints(mainly spelled B.E.L.A.), actually got his just very right I think.
I don’t think the listening thing is mutually exclusive…nobody listens to the baby of the family! But your point here feesl right, if Dean did listen to Sam, then his carefully constructed world would crumble. And kids in dire situations tend to work very hard at keeping that from happening. Dean especially, since Sam and Dad (when Sam got older) were always at loggerheads with each other. And brilliant, the part where you say that Dean blunted these negative effects for Sam so that he could see it more clearly.
Your points about John are all very good. Trouble is, I tend to sit on the fence because John’s such an ambiguous character to me, I’m at my wits end trying to make up my mind about him. There might be several reasons for this. First, we have very little to go on in canon giving us John’s viewpoint. Like, very little exposition from him about how he thinks, with the rare exception (Dead Man’s Blood, when he told Sam about keeping him safe, and In My Time of Dying, when he apologized to Dean). Second, fanfiction is all over the map with him, and I read as much as I can. Some make him out to be a caring and loving and attentive dad. Others make him out to be a tyrant and a narrowminded bully with tunnel vision. I think the truth is somewhere between the two.
I personally would like to think that if The Dad ever did take a look at what he was doing to Dean, he would have done something different. But your point here is so good (that yeah The Dad looked and saw and apologized, but then turned around and put MORE on Dean) that I’m forced to realize that even if he looks (which he did – knowing he should NOT have done that to Dean all those years), he won’t change. “Here son, here’s an impossible task. If you can’t succeed, kill your brother.” Say what? Oh man, I love John, but he sure makes my head spin.
And Dean, being raised like that, no matter what The Dad says or does (soul sacrifice), he’s going to KNOW in his heart that the reason was because of Sam, saving or helping or killing Sam. Still, the scene was more about how Dean felt than what The Dad did. Right? Because Dean was finally coming to the point where he didn’t want to feel the way The Dad made him feel all those years. His perception of himself (and the situation) was so onesided up to that point, it was time to change. What made him change? I think, personally, getting close to the point of really loosing Sam, of leaving Sam behind (still looking out for baby brother), was too much for him.
Someone has said to me, you know, it’s all the YED’s fault. No one else is to blame. And while I believe that’s true, I think that adversity tries people, and it’s what you do in a calamity that shows your true colors. John did very well keeping his little boys alive, and surviving, and doing good by saving people, hunting things. But the cost was So high, so very high.
“Still, the scene was more about how Dean felt than what The Dad did. Right? Because Dean was finally coming to the point where he didn’t want to feel the way The Dad made him feel all those years. His perception of himself (and the situation) was so onesided up to that point, it was time to change. What made him change? I think, personally, getting close to the point of really loosing Sam, of leaving Sam behind (still looking out for baby brother), was too much for him.”
Totally agree. Really in some ways John himself doesn’t matter. He can’t do any more harm or good for Dean and Sam. So Dean in that scene I think was just trying to force himself OUT of that mindset and he had to be cruel to do it. He had to say “I didn’t deserve it” because for all those years he’d felt like he DID deserve it, like he was responsible for it. I think it was less about blaming John and more about not blaming himself, saying “Dad screwed up, why should I keep trying to pay for something he did” on some subconscious level. It’s not like Dean has ever been one to fob off his own responsibilities, so it’s not like he’s being a crybaby blaming someone else for his problems. He’s just trying to stop taking responsibility for someone else’s problems. Hopefully. I guess we’ll see what comes of it in future episodes.
And isn’t that the saddest thing? That for years he thought he did deserve it, to be the soldier son, to feel unloved, to be responsible for everything, and to keep going to matter how bad he felt. That he was able to get out of that mindset and stop taking responsibility for John’s mess, while still loving his brother and taking care of him, is a MIRACLE. That boy is strong. And he’s going to have to be, because I don’t think Kripke is going to make it lighter before he makes it darker.