chaos. just pure chaos

-Rob Benedict, Richard Speight Jr. Supernatural Then and Now

Bobo: And this is me saying that I was not. Like at the outskirts-

Rich: You’ve heard it here first, people.

Bobo: Like, I was not conspiring. I was conscious. Like I knew that there was this fandom and this reading and I think there was some- you don;t want to foreclose readings, right? So it’s like-

Rich: No!

Bobo: So I was open. I was open to that coding, but my primary job took a lot of time and a lot of- a lot of it was telling the story we set out to tell.

Rob: It’s fascinating to me really. You get involved with the theory. The theories that fans are having. It’s not necessarily fact, it’s just a theory and what’s supporting what, you know- It’s just really interesting.

Bobo: And the show that runs as long as Supernatural does, and especially at that moment of social media and fandoms, and fandom communities online. It’s like- It becomes porous. And I think Supernatural is a test study of that, unique almost. Like Star Trek was too early, later stuff was in a different era. And this show ran so long, that you kind of can ignore fans and their theories or you can engage with them. But ultimately across all those seasons the inner penetration of that discourse and those ideas became very complex. And of course Supernatural is so elastic and has so many episodes, that there was a lot of play with those expectations and those readings of the show. I sound very pedantic right now.

Rob: No, you don’t. No, you don’t. You sound really interesting and true.

Rich: No, it’s really cool. It’s really cool. And it’s really interesting- It’s really cool to hear you talk about nuances of the relationship, how it’s executed, by accident or on purpose, how it’s perceived, by the writers and people on the inside. Because it’s all conjecture from out here. It’s all just some sort of chitter chatter and water cooler talk and rumor mill stuff and kind of guess work. It’s interesting to hear how it was playing out on the home field.

Rob: And look, there’s an element of it that is fun. As a fan watching the show, it’s fun to have some theories and go “Oooh, I think-”

Rich: The “Are they or aren’t they” of it all.

Bobo: And I guess my arc on the show was from not a sleeper agent to eventually like a sleeper agent in my last season.

-Rob Benedict, Richard Speight Jr. and Robert Berens Supernatural Then and Now

Rich: It definitely felt like a gender reveal party gone awry.

Bobo: And honestly, I think that kind of serves, I mean, not to bring this up, but kind of like- the intense pink pop of it all kind of ends up serving as kind of queer reading of an episode. That was definitely not intentional, but when I watch the episode now, I’m like- It really does feel like I’ve designed it to communicate queer subtext. A lot of it was incidental to the work I was doing, just, you know, managing the story that I had and the idea that I had.

Rich: You mentioned queer subtext. Was there something else in that episode that was queer subtext?

Bobo: Yeah, I mean, I like- Look-

Rich: I wish America could see the look you just gave me.

Bobo: It comes down to the Destiel of it all. You know, the Cas/Dean story, which- I’d inherited that Dean kicked Cas out  of the bunker at the end of the last Dean/Cas myth episode. So it was an episode of them kind of coming back to a bit of a reconciliation and I just watched the first 15 minutes of the episode this morning and I was just like- reading here is so clearly- that’s not that the intended meaning was romantic, but it is about  a relationship and that Dean feels guilt about how he treated Cas. So he leaves the bunker to go at the first opportunity to reach out and make amends for the fact that he was for various reasons still compelled to kick him out in the last episode. But what it can be read as and was read as by many fans is like, he’s sneaking out because he misses his boyfriend. Even like sort of  management of Sam and Kevin back at the bunker, it’s like “Oh, no, I’m going to this thing.” He’s kind of pretexting and they like “Is that what this is about?” It’s just a reading of this  that is kind of like a heartache for Cas. Which the intended meaning was really like he cares about Cas, he’s his friend, he misses him. But it ends up reading  as kind of this romantic story with like looks for over the gas station. I remember screen caps coming, flooding back to me on Twitter when the episode aired of like Dean looking at Cas through the glass in like- There is a romantic subreading of the episode that fits in extremely neatly and that plays out by accident very perfectly for readers who want to read it through that lens.

Rich: The only thing that I picked up on, just to prove that I’m not completely immune, is when Dean gets the phone call- “Well, well, well, you haven’t called me-” That sort of like watch for the silent treatment, you know, kind of vibe. That now is kind of like-  that had a little bit of a twinge what I would read into that as sort of romance or maybe romance is too strong of a term. But you know what I mean. That sort of like- There’s subtext there.

Rob: Well, also with Castiel’s character. There’s almost an asexuality to Cas, right? He’s- could go either way. You know what I mean? And Dean sort of showing him to unbutton his shirt and loosen up and “This is what women like”. There’s stuff that could be read in there of him TRYING to be straight or trying to do the thing that humans do.

Bobo: Playing those roles. And part of that story is about- where Cas is in his story is about Dean, you know, wanting to help his friend and seeing his friend in a situation where he kind of doesn’t know his way. And really that’s the meaning we were writing when we were breaking the story, but then you get screen caps of  Dean telling Cas to unbutton his shirt and you get a look over his chest as he does. And it’s like- that stuff became very quickly- The funny thing was, I think, some members of fandom already determined that I might be their sleeper agent inside the show because of some random, slightly jerky tweets I tweeted before I joined the show. About things like “Oh, it’s so boring writing straight characters.” They were like “Oh, he’s our guy.” And then episode kind of ended up fulfilling that expectation that was it for them.     

-Rob Benedict, Richard Speight Jr. and Robert Berens Supernatural Then and Now