#spn 8.05

[rainbow-motors]

[spngeorg]

Episode 154 - 8.05 Blood Brother

no, really, how does benny know how this portal works? how is he the only being in the universe that seems to know about it, and exactly how it works? how does he know it’s only for humans to pass through? why does cas so easily believe it’s truly only for humans to pass through? i have always believed that it’s because it suits their respective agendas to believe that, whether it was the truth or not. In this essay I will…

Okay, that's just one of my usual questions around the beginning of season 8, and I will continue to ask them! But there's plenty of other things to wonder about in this episode, like how did Sam end up spending an entire year with Amelia... mysteries we will never really understand, I suppose. But at least we do get some insight into just why Dean trusts Benny so much. All this and more! including Dean's exasperation with Sam, Sam's exasperation with Dean, and interesting new facts about vampires!

LINKS!

The Superwiki page

My tag

My rewatch notes from November 11, 2020

My rewatch notes from January 2018

Some Destiel for you (i swear, completely relevant to this episode, but still important)

Plus, this week's notes are on ao3 right here.

Listen now on Spotify, or wherever you enjoy podcasts!

[ardentpoop]

he said "can't argue with that one"

[lower-the-volume]

castiel. blood brother

[castiellesbian]

Robbie Thompson:

7.06 Slash Fiction

7.12 Time After Time

7.20 The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo

8.04 Bitten

8.11 LARP and the Real Girl

8.17 Goodbye Stranger

8.20 Pac-Man Fever

9.04 Slumber Party

9.11 First Born

9.18 Meta Fiction

10.05 Fan Fiction

10.11 There's No Place Like Home

10.18 Book of the Damned

10.20 Angel Heart

11.04 Baby

11.11 Into the Mystic

11.16 Safe House

11.20 Don't Call Me Shurley

Ben Edlund:

2.05 Simon Said

2.12 Nightshifter

2.18 Hollywood Babylon

3.03 Bad Day at Black Rock

3.09 Malleus Maleficarum

3.13 Ghostfacers

4.05 Monster Movie

4.08 Wishful Thinking

4.16 On the Head of a Pin

5.04 The End

5.10 Abandon All Hope...

5.14 My Bloody Valentine

5.20 The Devil You Know

6.03 The Third Man

6.09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe...

6.15 The French Mistake

6.20 The Man Who Would Be King

7.02 Hello, Cruel World

7.09 How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters

7.15 Repo Man

7.21 Reading Is Fundamental

8.05 Blood Brother

8.13 Everybody Hates Hitler

8.21 The Great Escapist

[foxthefanboi]

Sam Winchester Appreciation Week ➤ Day 7: Free Choice     ↳ Favorite Mannerism

[sensitivehandsomeactionman]

[mittensmorgul]

welcome to the eternal rewatch. in today’s edition, 8.05 where I was unexpectedly punched in the face by a reference I did not want! WHEEE!

Let’s back up first, though. I was gleefully looking forward to rewatching the purgatory scenes, of course, and Benny’s “Why’d you do it?” and Dean brushing it off before a flashback showing Benny saving Cas’s life... yep... Dean owed him and he couldn’t explain it to Benny, and he almost couldn’t explain it to himself, but it was because he did his best to save Cas even if doing so hurt Benny’s chances of actually getting out of Purgatory (he spends the ENTIRE episode worth of flashbacks arguing that it’s too dangerous to travel through purgatory with Cas and he was going to get them all killed, and going through the portal with Cas-- Dean just said he was gonna try even if it killed all three of them. And this is still two episodes before we find out how the Purgatory Saga ended and Cas is returned to them.

So at this point of the narrative, Dean is in mourning, but it’s a different sort of mourning than we’ve ever seen before. this is a point where he’s forced himself to believe that Cas didn’t make it out of Purgatory because Dean failed to rescue him, because he simply couldn’t bear the truth that Cas was the one who pushed him away. At this point, it was easier for Dean to take the blame than it was to feel that Cas had rejected him.

And doesn’t that just recontextualize Dean’s every action after that point with regard to how he manages his feelings for Cas. He’s come to Cas feeling pre-rejected for his own convenience.

FOR YEARS.

Dean has carried that mindset, that expectation toward Cas since at least this point in the story. And he did such a good job of it that even by 15.18, Cas doesn’t think Dean would walk through Purgatory a thousand times if it meant he could keep Cas by his side at the end of it.

Look, it’s one of Dean’s love languages, and it’s the one language Cas doesn’t seem to have learned yet. Dean needs to provide him a translation.

And now on to the stuff that hit me out of the blue, because it’s not destiel stuff, but narrative structure stuff, and just wow:

DEAN: Yeah, so, if you were your maker's favorite, why did he kill you?

BENNY: When you get turned, it's like you're reborn into a vampire nest. Your maker – he means everything to you. I mean, you really start believing he's God. Now, if your maker happens to believe the same thing, well...

DEAN: See how that could be a pickle.

So we have it established, that baby vampires feel a sort of inherent loyalty to their maker, who they think of as a god. And through Andrea we see that typically that loyalty isn’t something they can resist:

ANDREA: You remember what it's like at first. First, everything resets. Life is blood. That's all. And whoever gives it to you –

BENNY: I know. It's complicated. Every damn thing is complicated.

ANDREA: It doesn't have to be.

BENNY: Andrea.

ANDREA: Benny, I can't kill him...none of us can. But you – you came back from the grave. You're proof that he's not all-powerful, that he's not God. He's scared of you, Benny – I know it.

We understand that the thing that “broke the connection” for Benny was partly because he was always stronger, always able to resist to a degree, but that his ultimate act of defiance against his maker was falling in love with Andrea (at the time still a human woman) and leaving his nest to be with her. So... technically it was Love that saved him, even if it was “complicated” and brought his maker’s revenge down on him and led to his original death. His maker-- his god-- couldn’t let his rebellion stand. And it’s the words his maker chooses to express this with:

BENNY’S MAKER: You're right. I've been here so, so long, Benny, seen all the outcomes, all the patterns a trillion times. It all means so little. This universe is a pyramid of despair, nothing else.

BENNY: A little dark.

BENNY’S MAKER: I am evil, after all. At least I've had that much to keep me cold at night. You never had that, did you? Everything had to be thought about, considered.

BENNY: You know what Socrates said about a life unconsidered.

BENNY’S MAKER: Yes. But what we have in us? Benny, that's not life. That's what you still don't get. That's why it's always been so hard for you, my poor Benjamin.

...

BENNY’S MAKER: This is my story, you gnat.

BENNY: Get up!

BENNY’S MAKER: It ends the way I choose, not you.

And that’s our “he’s some level of actual God parallel in the narrative” proof. Granted, there’s distinct differences, because Benny’s maker is, like Metatron will become later, just another small character with a god complex, but the Language of God is still there-- the bending of the will of others to his own, the “writer of the story,” and the “director of his own narrative.”

This is how you create Bad Guys in the Supernatural universe. They’re just cobbled together aspects of what we will eventually understand was Chuck’s Grand Story.

And between Benny and his Maker, Benny was able to easily cut him down after his maker had unwittingly locked him away in Purgatory only to build himself up and make himself ready to take back his own story. Only doing so cost him the woman he’d loved. He’d thought Andrea had died the night he had, years ago, but then discovered his maker had turned her, and she had succumbed to him completely. She wasn’t the woman he’d fallen for anymore. She didn’t dream of freedom with him anymore, and he lost her forever, too. It’s a sad counterpoint to Dean and Cas, who have BOTH fought free of the story being written for them. And isn’t that just wild?

[subcas]

[beatsheetketch]

the problem with the post-purgatory arc of season 8 is that they show too much purgatory. Like they imply it to be really brutal but then what they show of it is actually pretty mundane. if i wanted to suggest that dean’s experience there had “changed” him and maybe even “awakened” something in him i would not have so many flashbacks, i would conceal instead and just heavily imply. early early in the season after a few episodes of him acting weird--uncomfortable in fast food restaurants and social situations, failing epically at pretending to be a fed, getting violent very eagerly in hunting situations--we would have a motw where he and sam need intel on a vampire colony out in the middle of nowhere. It’s a huge, infamous colony in like deep back country alaska or something really far out, and they’re known to only drink animal blood--except lately hikers have been going missing. so, Dean goes undercover pretending to be one of the vampires… and he blends in perfectly.

There is just one moment of doubt when he’s sitting around a campfire with a bunch of vampires and the one suspicious guy makes him drink some blood, and dean, making direct eye contact with him, does it. and it doesn’t have any effect on him bc it’s just deer blood, but for a minute the viewer is tricked into thinking it was vampire blood. and that the reason it didn’t have any effect was that he’s already turned. But it’s not--he’s fine, still just a human. And then, who’s that watching from the other side of the campfire? it’s Benny--the vampire we briefly saw at the beginning of 8x01! surprise reunion! will he give dean up? (of course not.) NOW we get some flashbacks (brief!!!) to their time in purgatory together.

this nest isn’t benny’s community either and he’s there for his own ulterior motives, but they fall through so he helps dean find the one vampire who’s been feeding on humans and they kill the guy. there’s way too many in the colony to kill all of them, and anyway they aren’t hurting any humans, they just drink deer and fight bears and live loose and large in the wilderness. So they head out, and as they’re about to leave, benny’s like you made yourself fit in pretty well here brother and dean’s like, well i learned from the best. and benny’s like, in his half-teasing serious way, we could even stay. and dean’s like yep. we could. and then they go. and when sam stops to pick dean up, dean pretends benny is just a human he saved from the vampires, and they drop him at the nearest town and keep on driving.

[ardentpoop]

*taps mic* can i say something

[lower-the-volume]

dean winchester. blood brother

[winsyncspn]

8.05 Blood Brother

[castiellesbian]

Ben Edlund:

2.05 Simon Said

2.12 Nightshifter

2.18 Hollywood Babylon

3.03 Bad Day at Black Rock

3.09 Malleus Maleficarum

3.13 Ghostfacers

4.05 Monster Movie

4.08 Wishful Thinking

4.16 On the Head of a Pin

5.04 The End

5.10 Abandon All Hope…

5.14 My Bloody Valentine

5.20 The Devil You Know

6.03 The Third Man

6.09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe…

6.15 The French Mistake

6.20 The Man Who Would Be King

7.02 Hello, Cruel World

7.09 How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters

7.15 Repo Man

7.21 Reading Is Fundamental

8.05 Blood Brother

8.13 Everybody Hates Hitler

8.21 The Great Escapist

Steve Yockey:

12.06 Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox

12.10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets

12.20 Twigs & Twine & Tasha Banes

13.05 Advanced Thanatology

13.12 Various & Sundry Villains

13.19 Funeralia

14.06 Optimism

14.10 Nihilism

14.14 Ouroboros

14.15 Peace of Mind

15.05 Proverbs 17:3

[foxthefanboi]

8x05 - Blood Brother

[sensitivehandsomeactionman]

Jensen Ackles & the push-in shot

From Jensen’s podcast interview on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum -- MR mentions a complicated scene he shot with the camera “on sticks” (fixed on a tripod), and that reminds Jensen of a Supernatural shoot and this story (slightly paraphrased for brevity) --

JA: We’re shooting down on a beach, it was at night, a boat comes in, and it goes up onto the beach, and the camera’s on sticks on the beach, and basically the waves are kind of crashing against our ankles, and we’re having this conversation. The tide is starting to come in, and we’re not getting the shot, and they keep having to pick up the camera on the tripod and bring it back. 

Eventually it gets to a point where it’s like the end of the scene and we get it, but the director yells out from his tent, “Give me a push in!” For the audience, that’s where the camera slowly moves in to the actor, and it adds a little dramatic flair.

Well, they’re running out of beach, and the water’s really getting high, and there’s no time to lay track. The camera guys are like, “We don’t have any track, we can’t lay track! We’re running out of time, water’s coming up!” And I’m like, “I got it! ROLL!” And we roll, and I’m not kidding, I just do this--

MR: You moved up! You literally bent into the picture! JA: I spread my legs out, and I just slowly moved while looking at the other actor, and just slowly went straight towards camera. MR: You created a push in! And when they said Cut did they applaud you? JA: The crew did. The director was like, [barking] THANK YOU. MR: Dude, that’s genius! Do you have that? You had to get that piece of film. JA: Oh yeah, no, they used it. And now we’ll just do it all the time, and the director’s like [to the camera crew], “What are you doing, why’re you pushing in, I didn’t ask for the push in!” The camera guys are like, “We’re on sticks! That’s the actors being assholes!” [Laughter]

Gifs from SPN 8.05 Blood Brother, directed by Guy Bee