#spn 12.04

12x04 - American Nightmare

This has been a very long game, and I salute Dabb for pulling it off.

Yeah, I know there’s one more season to go, and anything could still happen, but whoa it’s almost like Dabb knows this entire story so well, and had set out a deliberate plan the moment he was handed the reins, and then has stuck to it at all costs, with the full intent of finally being the one to close the story, and the eternal narrative loop.

He understood the story, the spiral narrative, and hired writers who could write in circles, while also educating the audience and preparing the characters for this particular endgame situation.

And I’m thinking that as Dabb’s second in command in this era, Bobo was in on the twist from the start. Because of this conversation in 12.07:

Crowley: This whole Vince Vincente comeback thing… It's a joke, right Russell: No. Deadly serious, my friend. We've raided, repackaged, and resold everything else from our past. Why not give hair metal another shot? Yeah, okay. I doubted it, too, but Vince came to me with a killer pitch. The original Ladyheart lineup reunited. Back in the day, those cats sold, like, 10 mil. Crowley: So did Hootie & the Blowfish. Russell: And I'll bring them back, too. I know Ladyheart might be a punch line, but the band's got off-the-chart name recognition. And just talking to Vince, he seemed different, you know? Energized. Reborn. Lit. Crowley: Like a whole new man. Russell: Exactly.

Substitute “Vince” and “Ladyheart” with “Lucifer,” and put Dabb in Crowley’s role, you have the key to Dabb era on one meta level. And from that angle:

Vince Vincente: Did not take you for the martyr type, Crowley. Crowley: I'm really not. I just hate you that much.

and

Dean: Why are you doing this? Vince Vincente: [Chuckles] Why? Sam: You and God made up. You forgave him. What would he think? Vince Vincente: I'm not especially interested in his opinion. Dear old dad, he finally apologized for abandoning me. And what's the very next thing he does? [Voice breaks] He ditches me. [Laughs] And you, too, by the way. And rides off into the sunset with Auntie Amara. He needed my help, and he'd say anything to get it. His words, your words, they mean nothing. Don't you get it? This is all meaningless. Heaven, Hell, this world. If it ever meant anything, that moment is past. Nothing down here but a bunch of hopeless distraction addicts, so filled with emptiness, so desperate to fill up the void… they don't mind being served another stale rerun of a rerun of a rerun. You know what my plan is? I don't have one. I'm just gonna keep on smashing Daddy's already broken toys and make you watch.

Oh shit, Cas is in trouble!

Superman theme starts playing

I didn’t find this scene funny during the episode and I still don’t think it is funny. I think it does Dean a HUGE disservice, bordering on disrespectful. Jensen may have played it for comedy, but that isn’t the way I see it. 

Hi there! This is an interesting question. :D

I’m not sure we have any evidence that John was a good cook, or that he did much cooking at all. We know that in the few scenes we have of Mary in the past:

in 4.03, Mary’s mother is the one preparing the meal they share with Dean. Mary herself is in no way involved with this preparation. We only see John eat a couple of times in diners.

in 5.13, Mary is preparing dinner for her and John when Sam and Dean show up on their doorstep. She even pulls the Mom Line of smacking John’s hand away from the basket of rolls on the table to tell him to wash up before dinner. What we learn in s12 about how she bought meatloaf and pie from the Piggly Wiggly leads us to believe that her “homemade” dinners were more often than not purchased pre-made and heated up at home.

We also learn about Mary making Dean tomato rice soup when he was sick as a child in this episode. But you know, Campbell’s makes tomato rice soup in a can, so it’s not likely something she slaved over from scratch, you know? But a small child wouldn’t understand or know that.

in 5.16, in Dean’s Heaven Memory, Mary makes him a PBJ and pours him a glass of milk, then offers him some pie. And again, we know now that she likely bought the pie already made.

in s14 we learn that the one thing Mary did actually make was a terrifying dish known as “Winchester Surprise.” And we’re led to assume that the “surprise” is actually surviving eating it. :P

But what do we really know about John cooking for Sam and Dean? Nothing, really, aside from one of Dean’s comment in 8.21:

“Alright, here we go. John Winchester’s famous cure-all kitchen sink stew. There you go. Enough cayenne pepper in there to burn your lips off, just like Dad used to make.“

So we know John at least cooked them one (1) thing. We also know both through flashbacks (like in 3.08 and 9.07) as well as comments Dean and Sam both have made throughout the series (marshmallow fluff mac and cheese! it’s exotic!) that Dean did a large portion of the food prep for him and Sam over the years.

But also, the recipe for kitchen sink stew (also known as “everything but the kitchen sink soup”) is basically “throw everything you have on hand into a pot and boil it for a while.” Rice, beans, noodles, veggies, meat… whatever you have, it goes in the pot. Making it isn’t really a demonstration of culinary mastery, especially if the main flavor that comes through in the end is “will burn your lips off.”

I’ve always felt that John was more likely to go for fast food, diner food, or low-prep food like the aforementioned stew, or the ubiquitous PBJ, or even like… stuff microwaved at the Gas N Sip that has often been described as a staple in the Hunter Diet. I don’t think we’ve ever had any indication that John ever really cooked.

And yeah, Dean did his best to learn to cook (and the rest of the stereotypical “housewife” chores) partly because he understood that John needed him to fill that role. Not that Dean ever understood how Mary may have relied on prepared meals from the Piggly Wiggly to cover her shortcomings in the kitchen, but he would’ve ASSUMED (especially based on his shock at Mary’s confession in 12.02 that she didn’t cook) that she was a good cook. I mean, where did Dean get most of his knowledge about the duties a mom was expected to fulfill? Mostly from television, from possibly observing other mothers in the wild, or from babysitters they had over the years (like Donna in 5.12 who watched them for months at a motel in Massachusetts when they were children).

So Dean did have Responsible Adult Behavior modeled for him, but never in an actual home setting in reality, you know? Donna’s JOB was cleaning and tidying the motel, so he would’ve picked up the how-tos while she was watching out for him and Sam. But he probably picked up even more from watching TV and movies.

Then it came to making their limited resources into something that wasn’t horrifically boring. When they only had a loaf of bread, some assorted sandwich fixings, a box of cereal, and some canned food to last them a week or two until John came back again, he had to get creative to keep from losing his damn mind, you know? There’s only so much spaghettios a person can eat before it’s like OKAY ANYTHING OTHER THAN THIS PLS.

Who knows, he may even have begun watching cooking shows on television in attempt to learn something about making their food taste better. Maybe he watched Julia Child or Justin Wilson or Graham Kerr (being three people who had regular cooking shows back in that era), and decided this was something worth devoting a bit of his time and attention to, for his own sake as well as Sam’s and John’s.

Imagine after the incident he related to Mary where he’d burned his attempt at Winchester Surprise, he realized he needed to actually get some proper training in this cooking thing before he either burned down their motel by accident or poisoned them all from cooking something wrong, you know?

There could’ve been a million reasons why he’d want to become good at cooking, not the least of which was because Dean himself really enjoys good food. I mean, look at the pleasure he takes in a good slice of pie or a well made burger. He appreciates what goes into cooking a tasty and satisfying meal, and he derives a lot of personal pleasure from eating.

@thejabberwock doesn’t come around these parts much anymore, but has a tag for “tactile dean” that I think this theory fits under, as well. Taste and pleasure through eating is just as much a part of this sensory fulfillment for Dean as physical touch. So of course he’d be interested in pursuing it when given the chance.

Such as during his year at Lisa’s. In the final scene of 5.22, he sits down at Lisa’s table to a meal she prepared, but by the montage at the beginning of 6.01, Dean himself is doing some of the cooking, entirely at home in Lisa’s kitchen and hosting backyard barbecues. He also demonstrates his mastery of the grill in 8.14, proving that with the resources to obtain good quality food, he’s just as competent as anyone else at preparing it well. Food is just important to Dean in ways that it’s not to Sam.

Sam eats to live, to be healthy, to maintain his body and fitness. Dean eats for the sheer pleasure of it. I think he’d enjoy cooking just for the pleasure of it, too. He was so damn proud of his “nesting burger” back in 8.14.

And heck, how many different schools did Dean cycle through over his educational career before he finally dropped out? Being in a town for a week here and there may have given him a bit of a chance to drop in on a few Home Ec classes along the way, too. Maybe he’d even specifically ask to be put in a cooking class in school– both because they were more often than not full of girls he could hit on, and because he might be allowed to take home his class projects and have something to feed Sam for dinner that he wouldn’t have to pay for.

But considering how often it seems Dean was left alone in charge of Sam when they were children, he had a vested interest in learning for himself how to “run a household,” including everything from cooking to cleaning to childcare, since it was all literally dumped on his shoulders, and nobody else was consistently there to do that stuff for him.

My guess, in tl;dr fashion, is that he picked it up from a combination of observing various babysitters over the years, from watching tv and movies, and out of the sheer necessity to make sure he and Sam didn’t draw suspicion from teachers or other locals that they were the victims of neglect and bringing unwanted attention from family services organizations. I mean, there’s deep-seated reasons he was antagonistic toward the social workers in 12.04, you know? John must’ve drilled it into him from an early age that they needed to maintain secrecy about their lives from “civilians,” and the need to protect themselves from well meaning but seriously unprepared social workers from trying to interfere in their lives.