#s13e6

This episode also marks Cas’ first attempt at parenting Jack and it goes both well and disastrously bad for him. Now, parenting is a fucking hard job consisting of infinite responsibilities, one of which is saying no and setting boundaries. This is how Cas starts parenting Jack.

The good news for Cas is that he seems to instinctively predict Jack’s actions, thus knowing when it’s time to say “no”. The slightly bad news is that Jack doesn’t listen to him. And, I mean, this totally makes sense because 1. Jack’s all happy and energized about “his” case; 2. he’s very eager to show off what he has learnt; 3. this is his first chance with his father, it’s like a clean slate for him and he really wants to pass the exam with a “good” stamped on his forehead.

Three times Cas tells Jack “No” and three times Jack disobeys.

The first time is when Jack wants to wake up Dean to tell him about the police update and Cas tells him that he “wouldn’t do that”. Jack, however, would very much want to and so he finds himself face to face with Dean’s gun. Things will get very bad.

The second time Cas tells Jack “No” is when they’re outside the bank and Cas tells Jack to stay where he is but Jack tells him that he’s “got this”. Which he doesn’t because he accidentally kills the security guard.

The third and final time that Cas tells Jack “No” is before he disappears from the bunker. He does it anyway.

Now this might sound strange but, so far, Cas hasn’t done that bad. This is the super-secret that SPN doesn’t want you to know but disobeying the father is actually not that big of a deal, rather it’s quite healthy and it also makes sense for Jack because he’s known his chosen father for maybe less than two days. Their relationship has just started and they need to find their own balance. What’s more important here is the fact that Cas can foresee and understand Jack’s actions, which is a victory for everybody because so far in the season he’s the only one who’s been able to do that.

What he totally fails at is, unfortunately, trying to understand who Jack is. Sam, Dean and Cas have their own (different) opinion about who Jack is and they all hold tight to their beliefs. One thing that always struck me is that nobody asks Jack any question. For me this means that nobody is trying to understand him, they're not curious enough to want to get to know someone like Jack.

Jack is good or evil or special and that's it. And "that's it" because Sam, Dean and Cas see him that way but there isn’t much communication going on in that damn bunker. For instance, when Cas comes back he tells Jack that Sam and Dean have told him that he’s doing well. I don’t want to say it’s a lie but it’s a lie. Nobody is doing well since May 18th. Jack agrees but promptly changes the subject by showing him the pencil trick. This is deflection 101.

One thing that Sam and Cas have in common, though, is that their idea of Jack is strictly dependent on what they think about Kelly and I can’t help but grimace because of it.

Sam, for completely unknown reasons, thinks Kelly was a “good” person, therefore Jack must have a good, perhaps “stronger” side in him that can win over Lucifer’s evilness. Leaving aside for a moment that this a backward, problematic view of maternity, Sam can’t possibly know if Kelly was a good person or not because the two maybe talked to each other one or two times and both times weren’t particularly meaningful moments for either of them. Not saying Kelly wasn’t a good person, just underlining that Sam’s beliefs about Jack are based on his own assumptions bearing zero evidence of reality and founded on outdated notions about maternity.

Cas, on the other hand, thinks Kelly believed that Jack would change the world for the better and so he does too. The thing is, though, if we look back at s12 it’s not Kelly who thought that her son would change the world, it’s Castiel. Kelly thought that she was part of a plan, that she and Cas were destined for something great. She wasn’t the one who had the vision of the future, Castiel had. We have to consider two things here: what Kelly meant by “something great” and Cas’ utopic vision that we don’t see.

I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again: not even one writer was interested in giving Kelly a little bit of backstory so that we could have an insight on how she is as, you know, a Real Character. As far as motherhood (the sole defining trait of her character) is concerned, we know she wanted to do the “baby thing” with the President and that she had always dreamt about being a mother.

What we do know for sure, however, is that she was a pregnant woman who: was sexually assaulted, abducted, forced to suddenly understand and comply with the supernatural world’s dynamics, abducted again, chained, had committed suicide, had been resurrected, was abducted again, was intimidated by two strangers to get into their car to go to an underground bunker so that they could perform whatever the hell Sam planned to do on her. So, I ask, maybe, just maybe, is it possible to view her behavior and her words in “The Future” as those of someone who probably had all the rights to be on the verge of a mental breakdown? They could’ve framed her “fanaticism” re: Jack's birth as, perhaps, a way to cope with the living hell she was subjected to during her pregnancy. To give meaning to what was happening to her. Regardless of the framing, the show makes a point to tell us that she first and then Cas, Kelly thought, were the ones destined for something great. The writers compared her to Rosemary (from the movie/book "Rosemary's Baby"), like, three times. I hoped that it was a way to signal the abuse she had to endure but I don't think it's the case, sadly.

This is a part of Kelly and Cas’ dialogue in “The Future” that I particularly hate:

Kelly: Maybe. Or maybe it was a miracle. Maybe – maybe everything that I've been through, everything that I still have to go through, is happening for a reason. Maybe it's part of some plan. Castiel: No, it isn't. I used to believe in a plan. I used to believe that I had some mission. But I have been through enough now to know that everyone is just winging it. Some of us quite badly. Lucifer, he's just breaking toys. He's sowing destruction and chaos, and there is no grand purpose at work. And there's no special role for you. When Lucifer took over Rooney's body, I'm sorry. You were just there.

While I understand that Castiel here is more speaking about himself than about Kelly and he, as well, is very well much on the verge of a menty b, I find it so utterly unfair to tell her that she was “just there”.

First of all, NO, if anything, Lucifer was “just there”, she was where she had her right to be, doing her job, sleeping with her partner, talking about her dreams, living her life. That was her life and it was destroyed in an instant, it was only human that she needed a way to make sense of what she was going through. Pregnancy is already a nightmare and, on top of that, she had to go through all that?

And second of all, she literally came back to life after suicide, how couldn’t she not start behaving weirdly? I know the writers were writing Supernatural where Death has only value for characters without any “special role” in the narrative, but come on, they literally just wrote a character telling another character that she has slit her wrists and this is the reply she gets: you’re not special, what happened to you was because you were just there. Brrrrrrrr.

But let’s move to my second point.

Let’s talk about Castiel’s vision. Because, you see, we think that Jack manipulated him but how do we really know it? Yes, there’s that cut scene but it was cut nevertheless and it’s crucial that we don’t see it because, by not seeing it, we can’t really know for sure if Jack had manipulated Cas for real.

Let’s compare it with what Kelly sees when Jack sends her “visions of the future” and what we see: Kelly sees what will happen next in the episode. Period. We see the same thing. Period. No mention of destiny, just the future in the very sense of “what’s going to happen in the next few hours”. She, like us, doesn’t know what Jack has supposedly made Cas see. We know she hasn’t seen anything because in “All Along the Watchtower” we have this little scene here:

KELLY: Tell me again. Tell me again what you saw. CASTIEL: Right, I saw– I saw... I saw the future. I saw a world without pain or hunger or want. I saw the world that this child... that your child... KELLY: Mm. CASTIEL: ...will create. KELLY: Mm. CASTIEL: And it is a world without fear and without suffering and without hate. KELLY: Mm. CASTIEL: I saw paradise.

So the one who was in love with the idea of Jack’s special destiny was not Kelly but Cas.

This is why this dialogue from “Tombstone” seems suspicious to me:

CASTIEL: Yeah, I know she is. Kelly was… She was a very brave woman. JACK: She left me a message. She said I had an angel watching over me. CASTIEL [sighs]: Jack, I'm so sorry. I-I should've been here for you. JACK: No. It's okay. It's just… I understand why she trusted you. Why I trusted you. CASTIEL: You remember that? JACK: I remember feeling… safe. CASTIEL: Jack, your mother, she believed that you would do amazing things. She said that you would change the world for the better. And now, looking at you, talking to you, I know that she was right, that we were right. Kelly would be so proud of you.

I think that the reason why we don’t see Cas’ vision in s12 is because the show wanted to do something with it in s13. It might be the case, what with all the talk about how “Paradise on earth” the Original World seems to be compared to Apocalypse World in s13. I mean, these are just my speculations but it could be. Because, as a matter of fact, Cas’ vision of Jack’s future is dropped in favor of Kelly’s vision of Jack’s future and this… actually never happens?

What we know , though, is that Kelly tells Jack the following in “Patience”:

Kelly: Jack, don’t let anyone tell you who you’re supposed to be. Because who you’re supposed to be isn’t fate, it isn’t me, it isn’t your father. You are who you choose to be. And I know you’re going to okay. You are going to be amazing. You have an angel watching over you.

She’s telling Jack that who he is isn’t fate, that he can choose who he wants to be. I mean, there’s definitely something off going on here.

Maybe they just dropped Cas’ “I saw the future” beat (that was presented as what convinced Cas to save Jack) on Kelly because, by the time the writers started planning s13, they decided that they weren’t gonna use it anymore? I don’t know, what I’m saying, though, is that Kelly was more focused on her kid being good rather than evil as everybody assumed, whereas it was Cas who “saw” Jack change the world for the better. But we don’t see what Cas sees so we have to take his and Dean’s word for it. And both words seem to be pretty biased. At any rate, something doesn’t add up in between s12 and s13.

So, to recap: what we have seen is that Kelly has never actually said that her son would do great things, but that she believed that her son would be good. It was Castiel who believed that Jack would create great things in the future because of a vision neither us nor Kelly have ever seen. Even if we consider the cut scene it still doesn’t account for the difference between Kelly’s and Cas’ visions and/or why Kelly didn’t see what Cas saw.

Another person that underlies the “to be vs to do” dilemma is Mia Vallens where in “The Big Empty” she shapeshifts into Kelly:

JACK: Sam thinks you were right, that—that I’m good. He wants me to believe it, and I wanna believe it, too. It’s just, I… I’ve hurt people. I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. And I know I should feel bad, and I say I feel bad, but most of the time, I mostly… I don’t feel anything. And that’s why I think maybe… Maybe I’m a monster. MIA/KELLY: Jack. It doesn’t matter what you are. It matters what you do. And even monsters can do good in this world. JACK: You really believe that? MIA/KELLY: I have to. I have to.

First of all, Mia is telling Jack that he’s a monster, lol. And she literally doesn’t know he’s a Nephilim so WTF? Anyway, the things are two: either the writers were drunk when they wrote this (Jack: “I’ve hurt people, I think I’m a monster” Mia: “It doesn’t matter what you are, only what you do”. MIA, ffs, THIS IS WHAT HE HAS JUST TOLD YOU, HELLO????? HELLO???? He’s just told you that he has done something that makes him think he’s a monster, how do you not see how your advice is shit?) or, more probably, they blatantly wanted to remind us that the person who’s speaking is not Kelly but a shapeshifter who tries to do good things to atone for her past crimes. She has to believe that because of her own past, not Jack, not Kelly, Mia.

What’s more, Jack saying he doesn’t feel anything… doesn’t really mean he doesn’t feel anything. Since he was born he’s been living with two men obsessing over “good and evil”, two concepts he still clearly and rightfully doesn’t understand because nobody is explaining him shit. How is he supposed to know? Of course he’s confused as to how or what he should feel.

For example, by the end of “Tombstone” Jack is evidently confused and ashamed. He feels shame because he has “failed” in front of his father, his “failure” resulted in the death of an innocent man and, what’s more, Sam, Cas and Dean are talking about him in the other room like he’s just proven that he’ll never be good. Excluding and talking about someone when this someone is feeling shame is, like, the worst response ever.

No wonder the episode ends like this:

SAM: Jack, look, this life, what we do, it's… it's not easy. And we've all done things we regret. JACK: Just don't. You're afraid of me. CASTIEL: Jack, no. JACK: No, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just another monster. DEAN: No, you're not. I thought you were. I did. But… Like Sam said, we've all done bad. We all have blood on our hands. So if you're a monster, we're all monsters. JACK: No, you don't… Every time I try and do something good, people get hurt. I thought I was getting better. I'm not… I don't know what I am, but I know I can't make the world a better place, not like this. I can't even do one good thing. And I know that if I stay, I'm gonna hurt you. All of you. And… I can't. You're all I have.

My heart aches a little at the words “You’re all I have” because they have all failed him so much and he literally doesn’t have anyone else.

Also, Jack echoing of Cas’ words “She said that you would change the world for the better” resembles what Chuck told Sam and Dean in s11 and that Dean paraphrases in his prayer to him: “You said the earth would be fine because it had me… and it had Sam” discarding them as false (can’t shake the feeling that they wanted to go somewhere with that “Paradise on earth” crap).

All Jack has has unfortunately failed him: Sam has failed him with his training mentality that bore no fruit and made Jack think that he had value only if he succeeded; Dean has failed him because he both threatened to kill him and provided “shelter” for him putting Jack in the position of basically having to live with his possible executioner (we know Dean wouldn’t eventually do it but the point is that Jack doesn’t and Dean’s threats deeply, deeply affect him).

Cas was the only one who could have had a real shot with Jack but he arrived tooo lateeee! And he (understandably) came back with his own package of preconceived ideas, ideas that made it all worse because Cas didn't know that Jack was noooot doing well! I hate SPN, why would they do this to meeeee?