#sam & ruby

Jared: Talking about how Sam holds things very "close to the vest" and that he in a way was a poker player where he would talk (to people who hurt/abused him) and be like "Hi, how you doing?🙂" like he was okay but it was really all the wheels turning in his head. So he thinks Sam, with meeting Ruby again, would be very protective of himself but also really curious. He talks about how when you live long enough, you're gonna meet people who hurt you in the past, and how Sam tries not to focus too much on grudges because it makes you miserable/hurts you more than the other person. So he thinks Sam was trying to get to a point where he'd like, acknowledge his pain and feelings, but tries not to harbor them or keep them in the front of his mind, because "hatred is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies". So he thinks Sam wouldve kept/tried to keep his bearings when meeting Ruby, but because when Ruby revealed her plan in S4 she was immediately killed ("then Uncle Jensen comes in and stabs her, which will be a fun episode to watch with my kids"), Sam never really had the chance to ask "Why?". So he would've been interested in the why, because Sam in general is so concerned with the Why's and so curious

off the top of my head, two major exceptions to this binary stand out: madison, in episode 2x17 “heart,” and bela is s3. “heart” appears to set up sam as the violent one, madison as the non-violent one, but the reveal that madison is a werewolf puts both her and sam in the violent role. the balance of violence in the narrative is disrupted, and instead of transcending the binary, the show returns to the status quo with sam killing madison at the end of the episode. in s3, bela arrives fully on the side of violence, and particularly in her relationship with dean, they both inhabit the violent role. while bela lasts longer than madison, she still dies in 3x15 and is never brought back into the story. again, instead of trying to transcend or break the binary, bela’s character arc fits neatly within the status quo of ‘violent woman contends with the violent male protagonist, but loses in the end.’ bela disrupting the violence binary explains both why she’s such a fascinating character and perhaps one aspect of why the general audience reacted so badly to her character, as bela defies the usual narrative beats.

Sam starts mixing the pancake batter and prays that Ruby feels better soon.

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