Family as Dean’s driving character motivation

[rusty_halo]

Really wonderful Dean meta from amonitrate.

This ties right into why the Dean & Sam story isn’t doing it for me anymore–

Dean's core driving motivation has always been that he wants to be part of a family. It's the thing that was torn away from him as a child and that he's spent his entire life wanting to get back.

In season one, Dean was so pathologically attached to Sam, and so driven to find John, because they were his only concept of family. The only way he could imagine being part of a family was to get the three of them back together. It was pathological and sad because it was living in the past. Children don't stay with their parents forever. Siblings grow up and live their own lives, like Sam (very sanely and healthily) tried to do.

After John's dean, Dean became even more attached to Sam, and it was even more fucked up, desperate, fascinating, and complex. (The show was well aware how fucked up it was--the storyline culminated in Dean selling his soul to hell for Sam.)

But also, we had the first glimpse of Dean seeing a potentially healthier, more stable vision of family--Lisa and Ben. (Well, actually Cassie was the first instance--and her rejection an obvious contributor to Dean's tendency to deny himself what he wants most.)

When Dean actually did end up with Lisa and Ben, it was the closest he ever got to what he actually wants for his life. For a year, he was part of a family, and of course it wasn't perfect, but it was the happiest he was going to be--certainly happier than he is now that he no longer has it. (amonitrate's meta covers this really well.)

And Dean lost what he wanted most, because of his own issues and because fate hates him, and he's accepted that he can't have it/doesn't deserve it. But that doesn't mean he doesn't want it. The driving core of Dean's personality is still that he wants to be part of a family. (Look at this season, when he finds out that his one night stand has a small child and his interest in her immediately increases x10.)

So this is why Sam & Dean isn't working anymore. Because Dean knows now that there can be more to family than just Sam. It's not that he doesn't still love Sam and want the best for Sam, it's that he's grown up enough to realize that Sam is not the be all and end all of family. So we've lost that desperate, single minded obsession that Dean had with Sammy, and we have instead this knowledge that Dean wants more, but a storyline that isn't giving him any hope on the horizon, so we're left with a character who longs for happiness but a storyline that isn't going anywhere but emptiness.

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

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Siblings grow up and live their own lives, like Sam (very sanely and healthily) tried to do.

I agree to a certain extent. Sam had every right to go to college and live his own life, but that wasn't where my issue with him was. I never blamed Sam for wanting to get away and go to Stanford, but I DID blame him for not picking up the phone when Dean called him (which Dean said in an episode) - and just trying to erase Dean from his life. Just because you're living your own life doesn't mean you turn your back on your loved ones completely (I can see why with John, but Dean isn't the one who told Sam not to come back). Sam didn't have to do anything else but pick up the phone and at least talk to his brother.