Meta: Supernatural Season One

[rusty_halo]

Previously:

- Intro & 1×02-1×04

- 1×05-1×07

- 1×08-1×10

- 1×11-1×13

- 1×14-1×16

- 1×17-1×18

- 1×19-1×20

- 1×21-1×22

Overall thoughts on season one:

Even though the first season consists mostly of MOTW episodes, with a slow-moving arc about the search for John and mystery of Meg/the YED, nearly every episode ties into the emotional arc, which is all about Sam and Dean re-bonding and re-negotiating their childhood relationship as adults. The whole season is set up as a quest for their lost father, but what they're looking for from him--family, connection, meaning--they ultimately find in each other, not in John. Almost every single episode shows us another facet of who Sam and Dean are and why. And it all builds up perfectly to the conclusion--Sam learns to appreciate his family, while Dean learns to stand up to his father.

We've seen the threads of that confrontation developing all season--Sam's willingness to do anything for revenge, Dean's role as peacemaker and desire to protect his family above all, Dean's insistence on following his father's orders even as part of him wants to question them, the boys' growing loyalty to each other over John, John's desire to protect his children but also his willingness to put the most horrific responsibilities on them, Dean learning that John is imperfect, Sam realizing how much John loved them--all the threads come together in that final confrontation, in Dean begging Sam not to shoot, in John's insistence that Sam kill him, in Sam's choice to listen to Dean and to choose family over revenge.

I love the complexity of it--it's not neat. Would they have been better off if Sam had pulled the trigger? John dies either way; this way the YED would have died too. Then Sam wouldn't have died, Dean wouldn't have sold his soul, and the apocalypse wouldn't have started. Yet at the same time, if Sam had killed their father, the boys' own souls and their relationship to each other may have been too destroyed to ever recover.

Dean's such a mess in so many ways that I tend to see most of what he does through the prism of his ~issues~, but actually, one of the most interesting aspects of the season is the contrast between Dean and John as parental figures. Dean is a much better parent than John. We see, again and again, that Dean notices what's troubling Sam--his nightmares, his isolation, his fear that his powers are dangerous--and Dean tries to help. Dean gets Sam to talk, encourages him to move on from Jessica and try to find happiness again, and tells him he's going to be okay and that he's not alone. Dean very clearly doesn't want to let Sam go, but several times when it looks like Sam's going to leave, Dean suppresses his own clinginess long enough to praise Sam for knowing what he wants out of life and to wish Sam the best.

John, on the other hand? Well, you know. He's so caught up in his own mourning and desire for revenge and terror that his boys will be hurt that he teaches them to fight, but fails badly at being there for them emotionally. Which means that Sam gets his emotional guidance from Dean, but Dean doesn't get it from anyone, and so it's no surprise that Dean grows into a needy, self-hating, insecure mess of an adult. One of the interesting questions is how Dean is capable of being as good of a parental figure as he is--I would assume he learned enough in his first four years, from actually having a loving mother and father who were there for him, that he is capable of modeling that behavior toward Sam even though he no longer has that kind of role model himself.

And another interesting question is how much his role as a parental figure for Sam shaped Dean's personality. If it had just been Dean and John, I suspect Dean would've grown into an even more emotionally closed-off, less functional adult. But it's interesting--having Sam to take care of and love obviously gave Dean's life meaning and formed him into a more compassionate human being, but it also led to a kind of pathological martyr complex, a sense of immense responsibility and a sense of guilt for being imperfect, not to mention the insecurity that comes from defining himself through other people, particularly through someone who is going to eventually grow up and not need him anymore. Dean spent his whole life subsuming his own needs and desires and focusing entirely on pleasing his father and taking care of his brother. Dean also learned to repress his own emotions to "be strong" for Sam and to impress John, and developed a sense that he's responsible for taking care of/protecting everyone weaker than him, thus the endless monster-hunting that can never be enough--he can never be good enough because he can't save everyone.

Sam spends much of this season re-examining the childhood he's so bitter about and realizing how much John did mean well, how much Dean loved him and was there for him, and how much Dean needs him now. It's not surprising that Sam ends up staying (especially after John dies). But still, he stays because he's grateful, because he feels guilty, because he still wants revenge--out of a sense of obligation, not because being a hunter is what he really wants for his own life. (I do wonder how much Sam really wanted to live a normal life, and how much was just rebellion against his family, though--he mourns Jess but he doesn't really seem to mourn his potential life as a lawyer.) I can definitely see, though, that by the end, Sam has re-bonded with Dean to such an extent that it would be very hard for him to leave again, and that a significant part of him wouldn't want to leave, even though I still say it'd be much more emotionally healthy for them to separate, to at least develop their own significant social ties to people other than each other.

The season is all about family, a theme it explores via the Winchester arc and from various angles in the MOTW plots. The show looks at both the dark and light aspects of family, but I do think ultimately it presents a very moving portrait of familial love in the relationship between Sam and Dean, even as it does a fantastic job of portraying them as flawed characters whose relationship has some very unhealthy undercurrents. Really, I can't say enough how impressed I am at how nuanced and multidimensional and complicated the Winchester family dynamic is written. I think season one might end up being my favorite, just because it's so focused on exploring every aspect of how the family works and why the characters are who they are and have the issues they have--it's full of delicious emo porn but it's also really really interesting.

Bechdel test results: 7 out of 21 episodes pass (I didn't include the pilot because it wasn't part of this rewatch). That means 1/3 of the episodes in season one pass the Bechdel test (although several of those just barely made it). This is better than, say, White Collar, in which so far not a single episode has passed. (jaydk keeps asking me how I can stand watching such a sexist show, but I have to say, Supernatural feels a lot less claustrophobic than White Collar--White Collar portrays women as some sort of incomprehensible alien species, while Supernatural more often writes us as people with diverse motivations and goals, although it does also contain more overt sexism. [Not that either show is exactly a paragon of feminism.])

There are several excellent female characters in season one--women written as people, not as sex objects, with their own agency and development. Officer Kathleen is my favorite--she has a strong personality, a motivation I was invested in, makes a morally ambiguous decision, and is portrayed a character, not as a ~female~ with all the accordant male gaze bullshit. Katherine, the girl in "Asylum," is another of my favorites, because she's an example of the show actually subverting the horror movie victim cliche and portraying the girl as the strong one while it's her boyfriend who is weak. And major kudos go to Julie Benz for making Leila in "Faith" such a moving and three-dimensional character. (I also kind of want to give the show props for making Cassie so assertive and opinionated and strong-willed and portraying these as positives, but it loses major points for never mentioning her again.)

The show also has a lot of female villains, which I like in that it recognizes that women are complicated and can be just as messed up as men. I particularly like Sue Ann in "Faith" and Emily's aunt in "Scarecrow," who have complex motives and believe they're doing what's right. (I dislike the female villain aspect when it becomes part of a pattern of "women are always victims or villains and die either way" or when the female villains are presented as a sexual threat to the pure true man love, but I'm certainly not inherently opposed to female villains--this season has several examples of female villains done well.)

Supernatural replicates a lot of the problems with the genres it's drawing from. Horror movies in particular are known for sexualized violence against women. This isn't an excuse, though--the people making this show could challenge the exploitative aspects of the genre instead of emphasizing them (like they did do briefly with Katherine). They could also choose not to use sexist language like "bitch"--Dean uses it twice in season one against Meg, and of course, it only gets worse in later seasons. This is one of the biggest barriers preventing me from wholeheartedly embracing the show, much as I'd love to.

Overall, I wouldn't say that season one of Supernatural is particularly worse than most other US TV shows. That's a hell of a low barrier, though, and I would much prefer to support media that challenges oppressive social dynamics rather than reinforces them. *misses RTD's Doctor Who*

My recommendation after seeing season one would have been that they introduce a couple of strong female characters along the lines of Katherine and Kathleen, but make them recurring and give them arcs. Which is exactly what they did do with Jo and Ellen... until it fell apart. I wish desperately that they'd given Jo more thoughtful character development and less screentime as a sex object/victim, and I wish even more that they hadn't replaced Ellen with Bobby. Ellen and Bobby serve the exact same narrative function, and so many of the show's problematic patterns could've been broken with a strong, recurring, alive Ellen in the mix.

Well, that's it. Thanks for reading. :)

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[musesfool]

I wish even more that they hadn't replaced Ellen with Bobby. Ellen and Bobby serve the exact same narrative function, and so many of the show's problematic patterns could've been broken with a strong, recurring, alive Ellen in the mix.

THIS. SO SO MUCH.

[rusty_halo]

Ellen was awesome. *sigh*

It's so frustrating because it feels like they really did try to fix their gender issues with Jo and Ellen, and then they tried again with Ruby and Bela, and then they tried again with Anna and Pamela, and each time they started out with a lot of promise and then just inexplicably gave up and fell into the same old pattern where women are victims or evil and, either way, dead.