#spn commentary

[smallfoe]

New video out, if you even care

Actual link: https://youtu.be/xskvNl93sDc

[azrael08]

Weird take but I have huge grudge towards the background actors in the diner scene in 15x08, not throughout the entire scene but just at the end when Michael smites Lilith, when it pans around to the rest of the diner none of them look afraid enough, they all just look mildly shocked (except that one girl on the table behind Micheal when he leans over the booth, that girl look traumatized and I appreciate it) and it just takes me out of his whole 'Archangel power thing that Jabel had going on.

[fandom-hoarder]

A lot of people seem to be taking that "s1 sam is kinda spoiled" post as wank and sam negative/dean glorifying and... idk if I'm just reading it wrong, but I didn't take it that way AT ALL, and seeing people pop off upset over it is weird rn. I'm kinda reeling. It's just...commentary on s1 dynamic? Yeah 'spoiled' is not exactly the term I would've used, but I didn't take it as a negative like others apparently have??

Bratty, somewhat self centered S1-Sam is my beloved. Because he has to be that way. Because he doesn't have all the info --and that's not his fault, and it was self preservation to want out of that life, but the fact remains that some of the things Sam doesn't KNOW he doesnt know gives him space to BE self centered. Most young people are self centered in some way -- this is not a moral judgement; it's how brains work. And Sam HAD to be self centered, because he was so often responsible for himself.

Sam being alone a lot does not negate the ways his family sheltered and babied him, though. Some people also seem upset about this word choice, as if it means Sam had it easy and didn't have to deal with the trauma of hunting life -- um, NO, that is not what I mean. When people shelter and baby someone, it hampers their agency. Life is multifaceted that way. The reasons for doing it may come out of deep love -- in spn it's a combination of misguided love AND emotional self protection that lead both John and Dean to not tell Sam key things about their life. Even so, Sam not having all the information DOES affect his behavior -- even his snark -- but because of the baby of the family effect, s1 Sam isn't even aware of some of the ways Dean tried to protect him by omission; has seemingly never considered there's things about Dean he doesn't know, or aspects to situations he wasn't aware of at the time -- things that may have, in his own opinion, changed how he reacted to Dean about it.

Maybe it's the part about Dean sheltering Sam from truths 'the way a mother would' that has everyone really upset. I think the post took liberties with their read of parentified Dean there, but I still enjoy the idea that some things Dean never told Sam was him trying to preserve some vestiges of Sam's innocence. Liking/exploring that idea doesn't have to mean thinking Dean was a selfless paragon of motherly virtues or whatever. C'mon, y'all -- nuance.

[sammygender]

things that are gay according to eric kripke

umbrellas ("the boys aren't scared of demons but they're scared of a little rain?")

spells and magic ("they'd beat up harry potter")

any additions?

[mlobsters]

supernatural s1e4 phantom traveler (w. richard hatem)

(this is a rewatch, so spoilers abound)

another early reaction report to watching spn lol

what's so funny to me too is that like. this show is very low on skin overall. seeing half naked leg is downright scandalous on the scale of what we ever see of them through 15 years. they keep very thoroughly covered almost all the time! meanwhile the show i'd fixated on before this, teen wolf, those boys were shirtless constantly (except stiles. never stiles)

ps i've had it on my sort of floating to-do list to, at some point, paint that ever so shocking full length view with the 2/3 naked leg

s1e4 paul jarrett as george phelps / the fall of the house of usher s1e7 as doctor donaldson

airport man, paul jarrett, has been in a lot of stuff i've seen. (supposedly?) twilight eclipse (aka the one with the very bad bella wig), the xfiles, the killing, the fall of the house of usher most recently... god i just wasted a solid 30 minutes trying to find documentation of any/all that

demon as particles that went into the eyes instead of smoke in the mouth, wild early days

s1e4 as jaime ray newman as amanda / the magicians s3e10 as irene mcallister

too many people :S she's also been in a lot of bigger stuff but the recurring part on magicians hey-o

i'll spare them a screenshot of the bad visual effects on the airplane

picked spanish captions first accidentally, that's sweet. cariño for good morning, sunshine (an endearment that's like honey/sweetheart)

DEAN Did you get any sleep last night? SAM Yeah, I grabbed a couple hours. DEAN Liar. 'Cause I was up at three, and you were watching a George Foreman infomercial. SAM Hey, what can I say? It's riveting TV. DEAN When was the last time you got a good night's sleep? SAM I don't know, a little while, I guess. It's not a big deal. DEAN Yeah, it is. SAM Look, I appreciate your concern— DEAN Oh, I'm not concerned about you. It's your job to keep my ass alive, so I need you sharp.

not concerned, my ass :p but an additional concern that he can't do the job (or even drive safely or be a functioning human) with no sleep

DEAN Seriously, are you still having nightmares about Jess? SAM Yeah. But it's not just her. It's everything. I just forgot, you know? This job. Man, it gets to you. DEAN You can't let it. You can't bring it home like that. SAM So, what? All this it...never keeps you up at night? Never? You're never afraid? DEAN No, not really. SAM reaches under DEAN'S pillow to pull out a large hunting knife and holds it up as evidence. DEAN That's not fear. That is precaution. SAM All right, whatever. I'm too tired to argue.

LOL, good call, sam. not buying he never gets scared either. savoring the brotherly chat in the beautiful (albeit dark) lighting

JERRY Well, he was real proud of you. I could tell. He talked about you all the time. SAM He did?

shitty way of showing it there, john. tell him you walk out and stay gone, and no contact since. but he's proud! grinds my gears :p dean lookin over to sam like, see??? fucking JOHN. ugh! lol

JERRY Well, we're missing the old man, but we get Sam. Even trade, huh? SAM No, not by a long shot.

oh, sam.

brian markinson (as jerry panowski here talking to salmon dean) has been in a lot my stuff and in fact i did a hey i know you when he was amelia's dad in the fuzzy brightly lit flashbacks in 8x08

LOL copy jack making fake IDs

SAM Homeland Security? That's pretty illegal, even for us. DEAN Yeah, well, it's something new. You know? People haven't seen it a thousand times.

makes a good point. i didn't realize it was a thing in 2005, but apparently it started in 2002 (makes sense that they made it happen quickly, like every shitty thing that got put into place after 9/11). guh

s1e4 birkett turton as max jaffe / the magicians s3e7 as vince

another person that's been in one of my shows..... almost turned alice into a vampire? lolol totally forgot about that. i should rewatch s3 again, been a while

the coloring and lighting just really did such lovely things for jackles, an already exceedingly lovely looking human

widow of plane guy was in a very small part in the killing but i am not looking this up. i'm t i r e d

DEAN Man, I look like one of the Blues Brothers. SAM No, you don't. You look more like a...seventh-grader at his first dance.

LOL get him, sam! also i was gonna blame the music on jay but it was actually just a bad sub by netflix yet again, was supposed to be black sabbath paranoid

so it's one thing to fake the paper/picture/card part of the fake id, but what about the badge shields??

also kind of amused that this is presented like it's the first time they're wearing the fed suits, in that they had to buy them. dean really didn't need one before with john? rolling up in his oversized jackets, flannel, ripped jeans and boots pretending to be any manner of official?? i can see sammy needing a suit, since all his clothes got torched (and might have had dress wear for say, law school interview, but maybe not a suit.) yet again thinking too hard about this :p not even halfway through the episode damnit

SAM Yeah, I know what an EMF meter is, but why does that one look like a busted-up walkman? DEAN 'Cause that's what I made it out of. It's homemade. SAM Yeah, I can see that.

ok so my 2nd-4th screenshots while watching this show? this interaction LOL. poor dean, sam not impressed 😔

stir-of-echoes on lj transcribed jared and jensen's commentary for this episode:

JP: (Bursts into laughter at Dean’s face when Sam informs him that he can see that they EMF meter is home made) JP: That is always one of my favourite moments. I seem to remember laughing over my coverage… JA: A little Dean comedy thrown in there…

so i guess this is part of my impression that they were pretty inexperienced with demons at this point. they didn't know the residue on the emergency exit of the wreckage was sulfur until they had the dude look at it under a microscope

the effects in this episode are definitely showing their age/budget. the airplanes and the demon particles woof

the stuff on the wall a la john, so impractical in a hotel/motel/holiday inn (i think i've made this reference before lol.) also those teeny tiny beds so close to each other

SAM Well, that's not exactly true. You see according to Japanese beliefs, certain demons are behind certain disasters, both natural and man-made. One causes earthquakes, another causes disease. DEAN And this one causes plane crashes? All right, so, what? We have a demon that's evolved with the times and found a way to ratchet up the body count?

feel i might give myself a headache if i think about this too much. so like. are we saying that a different culture's demon is doing this? but (will be) affected by christo/exorcism? or that all of those folklore creatures in different cultures were christian-hell-demons (surely not that one)? or that maybe if their demons were up to these shenanigans so would christian-hell-demons? ugh. nothing makes sense to me when i try to go outside the christian sphere for more than 2 seconds in this universe

DEAN It's biblical numerology. You know Noah's ark, it rained for forty days. The number means death.

okie doke

(perpetual irritation and frustration at how sometimes captions are greatly condensed and remove whole sentences of dialogue)

we all know the talking him through his panic on the plane but this conversation too where both their voices are going progressively higher is pretty cute as well. sam walking the line of a) got a job to do or a bunch of people are gonna die b) desire to mercilessly tease over the newfound weakness, as is the sibling prerogative

also, they are very smushed together in those airplane seats. also ALSO, jackles seems to have been getting different makeup than padalecki because he's got poppin highlights all over his face like it's pretty glossy looking regularly, where sam's cheeks are regularly matte in the same lighting. wonder what that's about. wonder if it's because jared sweats so much as he's having to wipe down so much he loses the sheen. maybe jackles was just more naturally oily and they went with it. anyway, his skin looks gorgeous in these early days

SAM Now, I found an exorcism in here that I think is gonna work. The Rituale Romanum.

more reinforcement that dealing with demons is a new thing for them. now i can't even remember why i'm questioning this. maybe it's because of how pre-series gets talked about later in the show or something. ugh. brain, get it together

DEAN Maybe the thing's just not on the plane. SAM You believe that? DEAN Well, I will if you will.

LOL sam's face. it's fun having dean be a mess without it going over the top broad humor which mr ackles tends toward

also funny that holy water in this first incarnation makes the demon's clothes burn like acid too. wonder if that was a one-off, definitely adds a lot of extra work to something they use on the regular later on

man, kripke apparently talked a lot of shit about the effects in 1x02 (and later took it back saying it wasn't so bad upon rewatch a decade later) but the effects involving the exterior "shots" of the airplane in this are 10x worse than anything in wendigo

DEAN You okay? SAM Dean, it knew about Jessica. DEAN Sam, these things, they, they read minds. They lie. All right? That's all it was.

so i guess my interpretation of that is with christian-hell-demon up to similar shenanigans as the japanese folkloric disaster causing demons which was only mentioned to add Flavor

so we got a sign of life from john via amelia's dad, by way of reconnected phone with new voicemail recording to call dean's current number

so, here's my guess as to why sam's lookin like this. dad is definitely still alive as of recently so there's that relief but he's also completely ghosted them. transcription says that sam "fumes" and gets in the car. but we got the sad string musical score and he's definitely on the verge of tears, jaw clenching/swallowing. i'm voting sad and frustrated and a skosh angry

and again from the commentary:

JP: (Jared talking about the scene where Dean and Sam are resting against the Impala and Dean is calling John’s cell phone) Now I remember this was a big milestone for the series at the beginning because this was the first time that we’d heard not only confirmation of the fact that our father was still around… JA: Right… JP: But that he had made communication with someone, so this was a big important scene as far as the series itself goes. JP: (Talking about the look of sadness on Sam’s face when they hear John’s voice on the phone message) And that’s why I have that look on my face… (Both laugh loudly) JA: (Talking about the look on Dean’s face in the same scene) Oh, and there’s the jaw-clench, was that a jaw-clench? JP: You can’t teach that Jensen, I remember getting this shot and we were sitting outside the airport and erm…

the commentary is a fun read and a lot faster than rewatching the episode to listen to it :) so thank you to stir-of-echoes for posting that in 2006 and miraculously still being around for me to read it 18 years later

[passiveagressivepoet]

super “let’s make the first few seasons in complete darkness so you can barely see anything” natural

[fandom-hoarder]

They turned reblogs off, but I need this.

[sammygender]

listened to commentary script for pilot. kripke keeps mentioning how the concept of spn was 'star wars in truck stop america' where sam is luke skywalker and dean is han solo. i know next to nothing about star wars characters but its interesting how sam&dean were originally drawn in Tropes rather than as fully formed characters cause. like. dean is not whatsoever han solo adjacent in terms of actual motivations or internal world. he also keeps going on about how sam and dean are 'tough guys'. at one point he said they'd beat up harry potter??

[ardentpoop]

[ihatedean]

jared: i remember shooting that scene over the car as the day i told everybody on set that we were pregnant. jensen: that you and i were pregnant? jared: yeah. yeah, that we were— *dorky laugh*.

[fandom-hoarder]

Appreciating how lovely and rich spn from a lapsed Catholic perspective could be-- especially when applied to Sam's storylines-- while also wishing more people understood the American gothic aesthetic and application of faith and religion in actual spn is very midwest Protestantism.

[sammygender]

embarking on ep 4 commentary with jensen and jared. jared u better say something interesting about sam winchester im counting on you

[autisticandroids]

FAMINE: That's one deep, dark nothing you've got there, Dean.

[youtube with closed captions]

dean and his father. dean and his family. dean and how bad it is.

(via @closetoyou1970)

[disabled-dean]

Yeah but has anyone checked on the CW sniper? Are they okay?

[seasononesam]

team free will 2.0 + phones | template

[ardentpoop]

many people in spn fandom used to (and probably still) do this thing where they flattened sam into a collection of stale jokes and/or just dean’s docile little brother who is There Sometimes. a wall for dean to bounce his shimmering personality off of

obviously i hated that shit for several reasons lmfao but first and foremost you’re missing out on a character with SUCH a rich inner life. gentle giant who’s actually almost as much of a killing machine as his big brother. monster-freak-abomination since childhood. boy who fought his dad for the right to get a college education. boy who could’ve been a professional writer instead of a professional murderer. dean’s “trusty sidekick geek boy” who is the heart of their operation, who gets the witnesses and the surviving victims to open up. written to be “effeminate” for laughs but it draws discerning women to him. only dean gets to call him “sammy” even though he once hated that nickname in dean’s mouth too; he once wanted to be his own person. violated as an infant in his crib and stalked by dark things that infiltrated his life even when he thought he’d rebuilt it from scratch. the devil’s rebellious meat puppet. fighting for control over his own body for the entire duration of this story. “pathetic infant,” “misty-eyed milksop,” “sweetheart,” but also highly trained and dangerous and sharp-tongued. the bonnie to dean’s clyde, the scully to his mulder, the sundance to his butch cassidy. always “running away” from men who want to control him, including dean. I could actually keep going forever lol

the absolute best thing this show ever produced and you’re just gonna gloss over him like the fucking writers eventually did? couldn’t be me <3