Now Playing Tracks

Supernatural and the Love Narrative: Special “Sacrifice” Edition

sarasarai:

 “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” - Mark Twain

There’s a lot said between Dean and Castiel in this episode. There’s honesty, and there’s trust. There’s help offered, and help given.

But nothing is more important than what they don’t say.

The bar scene has caught a lot of attention for a number of reasons: the arrow, targeted at Cas and shot right at him and Dean; a slightly different model of bow and arrow then angled at the bartender after Cupid has worked her own arrow magic (emphasizing the potential link); the explicit, surprise pairing of the two male hunters right in front of a watching Cas and Dean (romance number seventeen. our last and final); the romantic crooning in the background, the singer aching for a love that will soon be leaving and her resigned acceptance that there is nothing she can do about it.

This could all very well be relevant; the arrow matching is the most interesting, playing up the potential for foreshadowing in the hunter couple. The scene plays as a joke (not because they’re gay, but because all expectations are subverted, as we see by way of Dean), but the joke need not have been there at all. After all, this is the end of act one, in what we now know is a true three act structure. We’ve established the goal, and now we’re supposed to be seeing the true propulsive moments that will take us to act two—will take us someplace from which we can never go back. Also, it is the finale—we only have so much time. 

Personally, though? What brings my attention back to this scene again and again is the way Carver teaches us all a lesson in the rightly timed pause: in listening not to the words, but to the silence, in a move oddly fitting in a finale with no resolutions but many reminders of those things that have gone unresolved.

Including them.

Read More

Hey, Cupid

obsessionisaperfume:

I want to talk about the bar scene in “Sacrifice,” but first let me refresh your memory about an exchange in “The Monster At the End of This Book.”

There’s a bit where Dean has asked for Castiel’s help in preventing Sam from meeting Lilith, and Castiel turns him down:

CASTIEL
You must understand why I can’t intercede. Prophets are very special. They’re protected.

DEAN
I get that.

CASTIEL
If anything threatens a prophet, anything at all, an archangel will appear to destroy that threat. Archangels are fierce. They’re absolute. They’re heaven’s most terrifying weapon.

DEAN
And these archangels, they’re tied to prophets?

CASTIEL
Yes.

DEAN
So if a prophet was in the same room as a demon –

CASTIEL
Then the most fearsome wrath of heaven would rain down on that demon. Just so you understand… why I can’t help.

The words you see up there may have sounded like there’s nothing else going on, but it was clear in the episode that even though Castiel wasn’t permitted to interfere, even to the extent of overtly telling Dean how to do it without him, he was nevertheless giving Dean the information he needed in the subtext of the conversation.  The pause indicated by the ellipsis in the last line was accompanied by a very pointed look from Cas that made it clear that he’d just said something important.

Right now, Show is in a position where they absolutely cannot give us a yes-or-no answer about whether or not Dean/Cas will go overtly canon.  Many of us are of the opinion that Show is doing what Cas did in the scene from TMATEOTB:  making the answer clear in the subtext.  And up until now, there’s been enough ambiguity that one could plausibly argue that it wasn’t intentional, or that it was just fanservice.

But with the Cupid scene in the bar in 8.23, I believe Show has given us as close to a YES answer as it’s possible to get without actually saying the words.

Read More

To Tumblr, Love Pixel Union