#deeeean

“I can’t promise our life will be perfect now, but by any means, it will be much better than all the stuff you’ve gone through.”

With how we left off in 8x23, we could have either gone to a glorifying the toxic brotherhood place (which is what both Kripke and Gamble frequently did) or we could actually start deconstructing it and dealing with it. I was leaning toward 'dealing with it' because of the way Carver wrote "Mystery Spot", so I already felt like he did not have the same kind of romantic attachment to the Sam & Dean ~bond~ that Kripke and Gamble did. But 9x01 confirmed to me we were going to actually deal with the issue* on-screen. I wasn't quite prepared for some of the exact places we went and I've had issues with some specific episodes but none with the basic arc.

Next week's promo pics make me really excited (as my pre-episode Sweeney Todd almost-meta showed), because I am so thrilled Dean is getting the chance to go on this dark journey. Because, from what we've seen, Carver does not break things in order to break them forever.

He breaks things in the way that you re-break a bone that's been set improperly, so that it can heal again the right way. He did it with Cas and Dean last season, breaking open the wound from S6 so that the poison could seep out and the relationship could genuinely heal, and it's what I see him doing this season with Sam and Dean.

Sam and Dean are harder to do than Cas and Sam because their relationship pattern is deeper set in both of them, as it began in childhood and was reinforced by their father and by the events that have happened in their lives. So, the wound, once opened, is a lot more gaping and raw and harder to clean out. You have to dig deeper to get the poison out. But once the poison is out, Sam and Dean will have the chance to have a healthy, mutually-trusting, mutually-respectful bond. And that would be really, really neat to see.

* From my 9x01 review:

Now, it’s Sam and Dean’s turn. I fretted a bit, over the break, because the set-up in the church could either take the brothers right back to co-dependency and keep them there or… or it could be the beginning of something new. 9x01 confirms, for me, that Carver plans the latter. There’s a gifset going around comparing Dean talking to the crossroads demon in the S2 finale with Dean talking to Ezekiel in 9x01. The set-up, the pause, Dean saying, “wait” and then giving away whatever the other party wants, heedless of the consequences, as long as it gets him back his brother. As long as it means he hasn’t failed at this, at the most important job in the world.