holy shit this is a GREAT scene overall, but i'm particularly blown away by this moment here. for all dean talks about family, i love how he always, always, always comes back to sam above all others, including his own mother.

they've been claiming that both sam and dean were tortured by toni, and yeah sure they were, but let's be entirely honest: sam took on the overwhelming burden of that torture. dean got roughed up and it could have gotten worse, but sam did endure the worse. and i'm sure dean knows it, because dean always knows. he's deeply and shamefully aware of just what sam has been through at all times.

and sam and dean have no other real reason to refuse the british men of letters beyond their experience with toni. yet because of that dean is creating a false sense of tribalism here: us or them. mary chose the "them" which is a betrayal of the "us" and therefore she's no longer part of the family (not mom, mary).

so now dean is here dominating the argument and rejecting mary. in essence, he's choosing sam over mary here. sam's negative (understatement) experience with the BMoL trumps whatever rationale mary could have for working with them; dean won't even hear her out. it's shockingly black and white for a guy who claims to put so much stock into the idea of family (that's a deconstruction for another day). but it's because sam was hurt by these guys, so these guys are an enemy. and a friend of an enemy is an enemy, even if they were family.

what i love about this is how easily dean steps into the protector role and stands up for sam, even at the expense of ruining his relationship with his mother. he did this with john in season 1, he continues it now. sam is always placed above anyone else in his family, no matter what. mary is supposedly what dean wanted the most, according to amara, and now he's rejecting her because sam's well-being is more important than his relationship with his mom.

and what i love even more about this is that sam just sits there and lets dean defend him. i love that the camera flickers to sam silently watching as dean chews her out, his expression open and hurt. it's very vulnerable and little-brother of him, and i'll bet it means a lot to him that dean is playing mama bear on his behalf—if it didn't, he would stand up for himself, or say anything in this conversation at all. i'll bet it's especially meaningful because sam has stood in exactly mary's spot before, dean getting all tribalistically self-righteous on him for getting friendly with demons. and now dean is defending him just as vehemently over something so (tragically) mundane as torture. it's nothing sam hasn't been through before, but dean won't stand for it regardless, and sam lets him. he sits there in the chair while dean and mary stand as opposing forces. he looks up at them and watches them battle it out and he doesn't say a word. he's on dean's side of the table—dean's side of the argument—and he has nothing to say, for himself, for mary, for dean. he's just letting his big brother take care of him.

and then at the very end, when mary turns on him and forces him into the argument, all sam has to say is "you should go." echoing dean, supporting dean. and his eyes are teary and hurt. nothing to add, nothing to say for himself. just fully and totally coddled by dean. that's so delicious and so, so cathartic to witness after all of the times sam has been the "wrong" or "bad" one. to see dean defending and protecting his little brother to such an extent that he's giving up the thing he apparently wanted most. choosing sam over everything else. how meaningful that would be to sam, who struggles to believe how much dean truly loves him. i'm going to be sick