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pagannatural · 18 days

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2.11 Playthings 👭👬

-episode of my life. If you only ever watch one episode of supernatural let it be this one. Creepy dolls creepy dollhouse creepy little girls a lonely Connecticut inn a desperate drunken tousle between the incest brothers. It doesn’t get any better than this.

-Dean gives Sam a hard time about suggesting a case after they’ve been looking for Ava for a month. Dean doesn’t even know Ava, but he’s spent the last month looking for her because it was important to Sam. When Sam doesn’t respond to Dean’s teasing, he backs right off. Dean is controlling and possessive but he is also respectful and considerate because he thinks the world of Sam.

-Dean says Sam’s attitude “is just way too healthy for me, I’m officially uncomfortable now” which is funny because it’s not true that Sam’s attitude is healthy and he will get drunk and misbehave about it, but it checks out that Dean is uncomfortable with healthy dynamics.

-Sam smirks at Dean’s joke in this really cute way. It shows that he still looks up to Dean, even though he wouldn’t admit it.

-the innkeeper mistakes them for a gay couple and assumes they’ll want a king sized bed and Sam says “what? No—no two singles. We’re just brothers.”

Spot the difference between these two pictures

That mighty flustered, genuinely panicky “just brothers” sounds exactly like a “we’re just friends” moment between a will they/won’t they couple and it’s so weird that he says it that way. A normal answer would be “oh this is my brother” and then everybody moves on. But this is a tv show and there’s a reason for this scene to be included in this episode. It highlights that the nature of their relationship as brothers is more layered, and this messy denial tells the viewer that there is a romantic/sexual layer.

Back in Asylum in s1, Dean was mistaken for Sam’s boss specifically to make it clear to the viewer that Dean had more authority in their dynamic at the time, which played into Sam’s anger at Dean. This is a similar way for an outsider’s interpretation of the relationship to shed light on it. Their individual reactions to the assumption that they’re a romantic couple are meaningfully different—Sam is embarrassed and nervous like he’s been caught. Dean is feeling some kind of way.

He looks guilty, like he’s doing something wrong. He played along with people thinking he and Sam were a couple in Bugs and went as far as to slap Sam’s ass and call him honey. He seems pretty comfortable with his sexuality and with people being gay in general, like the joke he made about the only real thing about him being his boobs or the time he sarcastically told a scowling male store owner that his smile really lights up a room. He’s playful, he’s not weird about it (until season 8 but that’s another post). So something else is going on here.

His attitude toward this kind of mistake has changed since season 1. A lot has happened, but I think the point at which things shifted for Dean was that moment in Croatoan when he decided that he was going to stay with and protect Sam when they thought he was infected. The episode was a major turning point for Dean. That’s what pushed him to finally tell Sam what John said, and it was the first time Dean really thought Sam was going to die. It also paralleled the scene from Provenance in which Sam almost puts his feelings for Dean into words. Back then, Dean was able to take control of the situation to avoid Sam’s feelings and his own. In Croatoan, he’s the one forced to consider his feelings and why he would live and die and kill for Sam, and Sam alone. It’s no longer possible for him to ignore the feelings between them. He knows or suspects strongly that Sam has feelings for him, and now he can’t deny that he does too. It’s one of his major conflicts moving forward.

-Dean asks Sam why people always assume they’re gay, saying it’s a “troubling question,” and Sam says “you are kind of butch. They probably think you’re overcompensating” which Dean takes in as though it’s an equally troubling revelation. They look like a couple, and therefore they look queer, from the outside: Sam with his shy demeanor, soft voice, longish hair, deference to Dean in most situations (Dean goes to the front desk, Sam hangs back a little, his body mostly facing Dean), and just general feminine-coding throughout the show. Dean with his cropped hair, gravelly voice, overconfidence, and constant womanizing.

Queer people have this shared experience of never feeling like they’re doing masculinity or femininity correctly, and knowing or realizing that other people can tell they don’t fit in, but not really being able to name what they’re doing wrong. Sam is too feminine and Dean is too masculine and when they’re together they read as a gay couple.

Croatoan drew attention to this too, but again, it’s not really about coding them as lgbt, it’s about coding them as queer and incestuous in a gothic, monstrous way. They are Other and it’s in their blood just like the monsters they hunt.

-Dean has Sam pretend to love dolls, to further underscore his feminine role in their relationship for the viewer. It would be so cute if Sam really did love dolls as a kid.

-Dean tells Sam not to look at porn in their room, apropos of nothing.

-someone else dies. Shot of Sam, damsel, gazing out the window of his tower as the body is carried out and Dean talks to the innkeeper.

Dean goes into their room, where Sam is sitting facing away from the open door in a way that feels foreboding, like something is wrong. It’s similar to the shot of Rose a little later in the episode, with her in her chair facing away from the door.

Sam is drunk because he couldn’t save the guy who died, and “the more people I save the more I can change.” He’s afraid of becoming corrupted and at least some part of him believes that he will (that he already is) and needs to make up for it.

Sam says Dean has to watch out for him “and if I ever turn into something that I’m not you have to kill me.” He argues that John said Dean has to and Dean says “Yeah well dad’s an ass” which is a very bold thing for Dean to say about the dead father he once idolized. He obeyed John to keep Sam safe, and he’s finally letting himself be angry with John.

Sam says even now everyone around him dies. He says “please, Dean, you’re the only one who can do it. Promise.”

So Sam is drunk and in crisis over believing that he will become evil, in this episode that makes sure to emphasize the sexual undertones in his relationship with his brother, in an interaction that looks charged and erotic. He’s begging his brother to kill him rather than let him fall, holding onto Dean’s shirt and pulling him down toward him, his eyes locked on Dean’s.

Dean says “Don’t ask that of me” but Sam gives him the puppiest tear-filled eyes so Dean lies, he says “I promise.” At this point Sam is sitting on his bed and Dean is leaning over him, Sam grasping his shirt to keep him close and keep his attention.

Sam looks at Dean’s lips, says “thank you,” inhales, and grabs Dean’s face in both his hands, his thumb near the corner of Dean’s lip. It looks like he’s trying to kiss Dean. The fact that he inhaled rather than exhaled also just makes it feel more like a lead-up to something rather than a conclusion.

Dean pushes Sam away, closing his eyes as if conflicted, Sam still holding onto his face. It’s a little aggressive. Dean has to shove Sam off of him forcefully.

Dean pushes Sam onto his back on the bed, where he watches him turn to his stomach and nestle into the mattress, arching his lower back with his face in the pillow. Dean puts a hand over his mouth and traces his lips, his eyes dragging over Sam’s body.

Just describing the basic mechanics of this scene makes its eroticism clear. Dean touches his lips after Sam looks at them in a gesture loaded with restraint and tension. It’s another of those scenes that usually happen between romantic leads: the woman gets drunk and confesses something and/or needs to be taken care of and the man treats her respectfully but not so respectfully that he isn’t a little seduced. Dean could have let Sam kiss him (or do whatever he was going to do), but he has so many reasons not to: fear of hurting him, of Sam leaving him, of betraying his role as his savior and protector. Dean’s self worth comes from loving Sam, so if he loves Sam Wrong he feels worthless.

And that’s to say nothing of the fact that Sam is begging Dean to take ultimate control over his body by deciding whether he lives, and deciding whether he’s good or bad. His fears are soothed by the idea that whatever happens he can be Dean’s, he can belong to his brother. He’s okay with dying only if it’s by Dean’s hand. His whole life he’s felt something was wrong with him, so if it’s true and Dean confirms it, he is the only one who can kill it. The corruption in Sam (in both of them) has already been heavily linked to blood and their relationship and now Sam is verbalizing it—No! We’re just brothers. Why does everyone assume we’re gay? Sam holding Dean’s face, drunk, saying there is something wrong with me and it’s your responsibility. Please, you’re the only one who can do it.

-Sam is throwing up the next morning. Dean says something gross about a sandwich in an ashtray that makes Sam gag and say “I hate you” and Dean says “I know you do.” The way Dean says this sounds like he really thinks Sam hates him, which came up in Asylum as well. After last night, this has to have something to do with Sam’s feelings for him and the fact that Sam thinks Dean is the only one who should kill him. He thinks it’s tied to Sam hating him and his self-hatred for loving Sam wrong.

-Maggie tells Tyler “I can’t leave this haunted house and you can’t leave me.” Sam and Dean can’t leave the haunted house that is their life because they can’t leave each other.

-Maggie tells Rose “you’d do that for me?” which Sam has basically said to Dean, and “you kept me away for so long I thought you didn’t love me any more” which fits both of them at different times. Rose is the little sister choosing to die so that Maggie doesn’t have to spend eternity alone, and saving Tyler. It’s a creepy, haunting ending that parallels Sam and Dean. The sisters play together forever in a haunted house and the brothers drive off to hunt together out of the haunted houses and motels and backroads they were raised in.

#wincest #samdean #supernatural #spn meta #sam and dean #spn 2x11 #playthings

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