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dustydreamsanddirtyscars · 7 years ago

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04x01 “Lazarus Rising” // 09x05 “Dog Dean Afternoon” 09x08 “Rock and A Hard Place” 09x11 “First Born” // 10x23 “Brother’s Keeper” 11x03 “The Bad Seed” // 12x23 “All Along the Watchtower”

On the Topic of Healing on Supernatural

Loosely belongs to the Series “Of Blood, Bone and Darkness”: A Carver Era Rewatch Hiatus Meta-Series

***prefacing this by saying this meta will probably feature a few very critical/negative thoughts on Dabb and his showrunning***

While working on the next couple of posts for my rewatch meta series linked to above, I kind of realized once more why S9 will probably always be the season closest to my heart and why Carver to me personally will always remain an absolute favourite in terms of showrunning. And it is based in how he structured the narrative stretching from S8 to S10 and the whole MoC arc and how this storyline factored in and built on everything Dean as a person has been through at that point in the show - his struggles, his traumas, his whole life, light and dark spots alike. But not just that I truly adored and still adore how the aspect of “healing” was tackled in those seasons, because it also transfers, transpires and makes a point about to how the series in general deals - or rather not not deals - with the topic of healing, which is a huge and important aspect however and something all characters - even though I will focus on Dean here mostly as the MoC arc was centered around him, his past and his struggles - need deeply, but which to this day and particular for Dean after the mess that was S12 and the showrunning of Dabb seems further off and the least of anyone’s concerns on the writing team than every before. So, that’s why I like to look back to a time when imo SPN was at its peak writing wise.

At the time when S9 aired I have talked about the narrative and the MoC arc often times in terms of “band aid”-metaphors, which to me still seems a very fitting visual, which is why I am bringing it up here again as it also relates nicely to the aspect of healing - or well, not healing. Throughout S9 this topic is tackled and illustrated by two polar oppositional journeys, which are connected to the Winchester brothers (and are also kind of explored in a different but comparable sense through Cas and Crowley growing more human over the course of S9 while Dean veers off into demonhood). One is illustrated by Gadreel possessing Sam in order to heal him “from the inside out” (which serves as a band aid for a deeper underlying problem - the inability of the brothers to let the other one go/co-dependency) and the other is centered around Dean taking on the mark of Cain which poisons him and kind of kills him “from the inside out” (Dean taking on the mark can be also read as a band aid for the underlying issue of his lack of self-worth and as a form of “sentence” for the fallout his decision to save Sam via possession has caused). The aspect of “superficial healing”, which in the end ain’t healing at all, is contrasted to the brothers and is further showcasing “internal healing” opposed to “internal death”. At the time S9 aired I have talked about these things a lot with the summary of “the true big bad is internal”, because in fact S9 did not showcase a true big bad as an external force, but focused on how someone can fall apart if his traumas and issues and fears remain untreated, unheard and uncared for - essentially what happens when much needed time for healing simply is not allowed to happen. This is also imo the reason why S9 was so heavy and so tough in terms of emotions, because it was a very psychological and in that regard very emotion driven arc.

And I love how very intelligent S9 showcased and explored the topic of healing in the MotW episodes as well. I singled out two moments that stood out in particular as they also focus on an internal aspect, consumation/incorporation really (though I won’t go into that in depth as it opens a whole new cans of worms when you bring Freud into it - though his structural model of personality was very directy woven into the MoC arc as I have written about multiple times at the time). In 9x05 “Dog Dean Afternoon” we meet Chef Leo, who is basically dying from cancer but he cheats death by consuming different animal’s organs. When he wounds Sam and Gadreel saves him, Chef Leo want Sam as his next main course for his “healing powers”. Similarly but with a slightly different end game in 9x08 “Rock and A Hard Place” we meet goddess Vesta consuming people’s livers to regain some of her powers. One of her most interesting lines of her surely is the one when she tells Sam he’s basically only barely stitched together and shouldn’t by all means be alive judging from his internal condition. And this is where the Band aid metaphor imo works pretty well again. Because while Gadreel did truly try and heal Sam it was kind of a band aid - like the MoC as a suicide mission for Dean - that was plastered on a bleeding wound, a wound that would be covered up, but that would never truly heal underneath, but fester. Meaning, while physically the brothers throughout the series got mended time and again, mentally is a whole other beast and that beast, showed its claws best in S9, because in that season it was all about how the way one feels and sees himself determines your choices and those can lead you down dark roads and right into self destruction.

Now when keeping all this in mind I find it important and interesting to take a look at how SPN treats healing in general, because imo one thing gets pretty clear when truly thinking it about it: the route the show goes can be seen in direct opposition to what the characters would need for true healing. What do I mean with that? Let me explain. Not always f do wounds stand for a bigger underlying issue with SPN, often times they appear in fights, but still often enough and especially when tied to the big emotional and myth arcs they do stand for and serves as symbols for a larger underlying problem. And especially in those cases I find it very telling how the show tends to deal with these instances, because most of the time they don’t and go the easy route by having Cas for example fix the Winchesters as captured above in 12x23 “All Along the Watchtower” for example. We have seen those moments countless times since S4, but what’s important to remember is that this is physical healing, internal healing is something drastically different. Just because it’s out of sight doesn’t mean it’s out of mind. The best example for that is when Dean looks into the mirror in 4x01 “Lazarus Rising” and sees himself without a scratch but vividly remembers being torn apart by hellhounds. Similarly can be said for Sam and his Hell and cage experiences. Though they both are back top side, it doesn’t mean they are “freed” and that is btw also something S9 utlized beautifully visually with all of the prison imagery we see in that season.

In this regard I find it important to point out one moment in which Dean actively refuses to be healed by Cas in 11x03 “The Bad Seed” (talked about this aspect here in that gifset as well at the time). As talked about in the meta linked to there is much more to this action and scene, but what in relation to this meta imo is important to point out is that in this case Dean actively wants the reminder of what happened, wants to hurt, because he thinks he deserved it. Here being healed would have felt like scorn, because he couldn’t possibly forget what he himself did - so it’s basically in a nutshell an incident in which physical healing and emotional healing as narrative concepts overlap and are head on addressed on SPN and that doesn’t happen a whole lot on the show.

So basically what we witness throughout S9 is Dean internally withering away while Gadreel tries to internally heal Sam. But it’s only a stepping stone of course. Being physically alright doesn’t mean you are emotionally stable. Just because you are healed physically, doesn’t mean you’re healed mentally. And that is something I feel sadly has been very far off, but which is increasingly important for the characters and especially Dean after the MoC arc. This is where the title of this meta “Our scars remind us that the past is real” comes into play, because what the important takeaway from this saying to me is that not only do you realize and remember what you’ve been through when you look at your own scars, but they also tell you that “you survived”, that you’re still standing, that you overcame them, that you grew stronger the more those scars fade away.

And this is where I have to mention once again how I will alway remain more than a bit disappointed how the MoC arc was wrapped up and even more so how Dabb did away with it and the progression and process towards healing was comletely discarded by him. Now of course it is useless to be upset about an arc not playing out the way you wanted, believe me I know, but in terms of set up and how this whole arc was structured to me it never made sense for it to be possible to erase the mark from Dean’s arm, because IT WAS JUST SO MUCH FREAKING MORE THAN A MARK. It served as a symbol abd visual stand in for so much more. It brought up the resentment Dean felt for never having hid own life, how he was treated by his father, etc. etc. and while of course the mark was changing Dean and turned him into something he didn’t wanrt to be, at the same time it did shake things loose that needed to be tackled for a long time in order for Dean to heal. So to me it just doesn’t make sense the way the show “resolved” this, because the mark was just an outward physical sign for an underlying issue Dean has struggled with for years. By simply erasing the mark, to me they took away the possibility of Dean healing and that to me would always have come to be connected with Dean getting more in tune with himself and that the more he healed the mark would have faded away. After all the mark and Amara as a force behind it was directly connected to how Dean was denied an own life, just like Amara wasn’t allowed to exist in her brother’s world.

Now, I did still like it a whole lot when Amara was freed and it got clear that the MoC arc wasn’t truly finished. The struggle Dean had fought on the inside was externalized through Amara and he could head on tackle it. Needless to say of course that didn’t all end in the way Carver had planned as he also wasn’t allowed to kill God. So the aspect and what to me the Amara arc all lead up to: Dean re-integrating his externalized “dark parts” in order to become whole and heal didn’t really pan out. Dean didn’t heal and S12 made a great effort in undoing any kind of step Dean went towards healing from S8 onwards - even though healing was what Amara had wanted for Dean. Instead it’s further off than ever before after clusterfuck that Dabb wrote and called a season, because what he did with all of this set up was throw it out the window and worse made it an entire goddamn scene to say that Dean’s own traumas aren’t even worth mentioning (and yes I know and I have made countless posts on this before trying to explain it when people misunderstand by hate with Dabb’s writing: Dean always puts himself last. That is absolutely in character. The show has done that before, but it always made sure to make it clear that only Dean thinks of himself as worthless but everybody else doesn’t. Now with Mary they did the opposite and the entire season finale showed that indeed Dean’s mother doesn’t give a flying fuck about Dean, but only when he talks about Sam - so yeah, the show or rather D(r)ab(b) made plenty clear how important Dean’s healing is for him...). Sorry about all the hate in the end, but wow, it just makes me so sad and angry to look back and see the amazing structring and narrative focus that was part of Carver era and how it was all rendered undone and useless under Dabb. Anyway, in order to end this post with rather some Dean feels than utter frustration, I’m just gonna leave these lyrics here, because yeah, they do describe Dean and the MoC arc pretty well

“I tear my heart open, I sew myself shut My weakness is that I care too much My scars remind me that the past is real I tear my heart open just to feel”

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