#spn2.13

it feels startlingly similar to gordon's words way back in 2x03:

this strikes me as thematically odd because by the time houses of the holy comes around, dean has seemingly denied his father (represented by gordon) and refused his fate (also represented by gordon) in favor of his complete devotion to sam. since croatoan, dean has been working on sam's behalf and only sam's behalf; everything else is unimportant to him now. he made his decision, and his decision was sam.

but for him to be echoing gordon's words would indicate quite the opposite. to me it sounds like he's internalized gordon's mindset and even if he's not conscious of it, he is walking in the footsteps of his fate through gordon's influence. gorden is an allegory of dean's fate: if dean is mirroring him in any way, that should set off alarms. it means he's not as directly opposed to destiny as he claims to be.

(a side note: this actually fits very well with sam's character arc throughout the season, because he's doing the same thing. he claims he's chosen dean and refused his fate (or is trying to at least), but he is also the one who keeps pursuing it by chasing after john (a symbol for their fate) and continuing to hunt (which is what azazel wants him to do). he thinks he is opposing fate while dancing right in the palm of azazel's hand. so, cool parallel here.)

this line also pops up in the midst of a pretty wide ideological gap between them—they're opposed on the grounds of faith and the very existence of a god, and this conflict drives the story forward. interesting then that a line that is so similar to what gordon told dean is nestled so neatly within this conflict—it seems to prove the point that whenever sam and dean are in conflict, whenever they're not choosing each other, they are inevitably choosing their destinies. they can't fight because it will drive them apart and the only other direction they can go other than toward their brother is toward their fate.

but what dean is doing with this line, functionally, is making an attempt to comfort sam.

don't you want to know for sure? dean isn't saying that sam is wrong anymore; he's giving a concession by way of offering a solution to their conflict. he's offering sam something real, whatever that reality may turn out to be, and he's letting sam be the one who decides whether he wants to cling to faith or know what's really going on. this gets through to sam, and they go through with the seance.

and sam does see that dean was right. at the end of the episode, he adopts dean's pessimistic view of god and admits he was wrong. there's a slight theme here, too: when sam's worldview is shaken and he is given evidence that he can go dark side, he assimilates to dean's worldview.

this happens in season 1, also. dean is the one who originally asserts the idea of "saving people" as part of their job. dean is the one who looks for hunts and advocates for saving as many people as they can, even while sam is rather content to leave people to die to the monsters they know are out there (the most illustrative examples of this being 1x01, 1x02, and 1x11). this only changes after 1x14, when sam is shown a mirror version of himself in max and has to confront the reality that he might be going down the path to evil. the demon wants something from him, and from max, and now he can't ignore it anymore. and for the next several episodes, it's suddenly sam who is seeking out hunts, sam who is trying to save people, even when dean is reluctant to take a case.

what happened here? it's a sudden and stark change, and it's reminiscent of what dean told sam back in wendigo; it's reminiscent of how dean carries himself. sam is, perhaps, modeling himself after dean—he sees dean as someone to look up to, as someone who is worthy where he is not, as someone good where he is not. to sam, if he can become more like dean, he can be saved. he can avoid the fate that fell upon max.

and so we see this again in 2x13: sam has been presented with evidence that there is no god, that no one is going to save him, that he's damned and forsaken. and he copes with this by admitting he was wrong and immediately adopting dean's ideology as his own.

dean is good, dean is right, and if sam can just be a little bit more like his brother, he can avoid the horrific fate lying in wait for him.

and he all but confirms this pattern in 3x07, too:

but herein lies a danger, which brings me back to my original point. if dean's line here parallels gordon, if dean is voicing the echo of a man who embodies his fate, then what does this mean for sam? if sam is so quick to change his beliefs and behaviors based on his admiration for dean, that puts dean in a difficult and tenuous situation. because now, at a time when dean is supposed to be solidly dragging sam away from his doom, he's backsliding toward his own—and he's taking sam with him.

y'know, like:

when sam first sees the "angel" in houses of the holy, dean offers him a drink from his flask—sam refuses. at the end of the episode when sam's faith has been crushed by the disappointing reality, dean offers his flask again, and sam accepts it this time.

the difference between these two scenes lies in sam's faith: in the first sequence, sam is filled with a religious fervor and a hope for his own redemption. in the second, he's crippled and lost and hopeless. there's a few interpretations of this which i think all kind of overlap and influence each other.

first and foremost, the most literal, baseline interpretation of this is probably that sam is interpreting dean's gesture (somewhat accurately) as being dismissive of his experience in the first sequence, but as compassionate in the second. there is a marked difference in how dean offers the flask to sam each time, and dean too has undergone a change throughout the episode to influence his understanding of god and faith.

but these scenes can also have interesting symbolic meaning, too. this is alcohol that dean is offering. it's a substance from which abstinence is associated with moral purity—the prohibition movement was led by protestants seeking to eliminate corruption and violence from the world, and it was framed as a battle for morality. therefore, temperance is seen as good, pure, and righteous. when sam is consumed by his faith, he abstains. when he loses his faith, he imbibes.

and through that moral lens, there's another interesting interpretation that can be found. the flask belongs to dean, and he is seen drinking from it. when sam drinks from it, too, they're literally swapping spit. metaphorically, drinking from the same flask can be seen as a kiss, and this isn't the only time this metaphor is used, either. in sex and violence, nick drinks from dean's flask, then lets dean drink from it again—and this sharing of saliva is what puts dean under his siren's spell.

in sex and violence, sharing a flask is depicted as an explicitly sexual act, a stand-in for a kiss. nick is dean's sexual fantasy, the ideal little brother, and he snags dean through an indirect kiss.

so if sharing a flask is a sexual act, then it can apply here: abstaining from alcohol is morally righteous and good, and imbibing is morally tarnished. sam, in his ecstasy, wants to be good—he thinks he's been chosen for redemption, after all. he wants to live up to the potential that the "angel" sees in him. he refuses the drink, and only when he's lost his faith does he accept it.

but it's dean's flask. accepting the drink would also be a sexual thing—he would be kissing his brother. it would be an act of incest, something impure and unholy and sinful. he wants to be good, so he rejects not just the drink but dean himself, because to engage with him would be a sin. this rejection is embedded within a plot which drives sam and dean apart, their religious philosophies at war. they drift further apart with each clash of theologies, and they both reject each other's perspectives in their loyalty to their own.

the allegorical conflict in croatoan centers around whether dean will kill duane or not (and, by extension, whether dean will be willing to kill sam). in the end, dean lets him live, which is an act of devotion and deference to sam. duane ends up not being infected with the virus, and so dean made the right decision. this is the general framing of the conflict—dean unlocks the good end by deferring to sam's judgment.

the ideological conflict in houses of the holy centers around the concept of fate, taken through a christian lens: is god real? does god have a plan? sam is faithful and dean is faithless, and their beliefs butt heads throughout the episode. in the end dean was right and the "angel" was just a ghost, and sam acquiesces to dean's beliefs and accepts god isn't real. this too is the general framing of the conflict—sam arrives at truth by listening and believing in dean.

but both of these episodes end ambiguously.

as it turns out, duane was possessed by a demon, which means that dean's instinctual distrust was right on the money, and killing (or attempting to kill) duane would actually have been the right choice—dean correctly assessed the danger and took steps to stop it, and it was sam who got in the way and persuaded him to stand down, which allowed the demon to escape.

and also as it turns out, a bigass rebar killed that would-be killer sam was sent after, and it was such an outrageous death that it throws dean off balance and makes him reconsider whether fate and god are actually real—which, as we come to discover later, is true, and sam and dean are cosmically destined to assume the roles of cain and abel in the coming apocalypse. sam was actually the correct one here, and the beliefs he was operating under were given ample support literally throughout the episode; it was dean who clouded sam's judgment and directed him away from the actual truth of the divine plan for them.

i don't think there's a grand revelation in comparing these two episodes this way, but i do enjoy how the show keeps them spinning on an axis, and how the seemingly correct decision is actually much more nuanced than it seems on the surface. when dean is right he's still wrong; when sam is wrong he's still right—and vice versa. black and white answers simply can't exist in this world because there is nothing wholly good and nothing wholly bad. dean had to let duane live because to do otherwise would be to succumb to his fate, even if letting duane live symbolizes that dean will allow sam to succumb to his. sam had to defer to dean's ideology because to do otherwise would be to spiral further down the path to his destiny, even if that destiny is real and it's coming for them both anyway and they can do nothing to stop it. they're the best decisions they can make in those situations, but they're still not unambiguously perfect.

roy le grange claims that dean was "picked" by god. his method of choosing is never quite revealed, its mechanisms overshadowed by his wife's more insidious schemes. the episode ends on a bitter note: that god is not healing people, and dean's atheism is more correct than sam's faith.

however, this axis begins to flip in 2x13, when dean does concede to the possibility that some cosmic force is moving pieces on a higher plane. the questions that were left unanswered in 1x12 are given proper attention here, and though definitive answers still elude them until season 4-5, the issues are no longer being ignored. and then zachariah tells dean he is chosen, destined to be the michael sword. it recalls, then, the episode so long ago when roy le grange told dean that god "picked" him. and because of that interaction, dean remains alive to fulfill his destiny.

so you have to wonder—was dean's salvation a coincidence, or was a higher power truly whispering in roy's ear? 2x13 makes a strong defense of the latter being true. if an unseen force can tell father gregory who deserves to live and who deserves to die, that same force can equally tell the faith healer speaking the gospel in his tent. and if this is true, if it was god or the angels dictating who roy should save, then that calls into question the moral character of the angels, nearly four seasons before they even appear. if the angels are willingly guiding roy's hand, then they are complicit in the use of reapers to kill those his wife deemed deserving of death. they are complicit or even accepting of her victims, and therefore they are taking a moral stance by not intervening and by enabling the continued abuse of power.