TV Recap: When Deans Collide – A Commentary on Supernatural 5.04 The End

 

Yes as you know by now, I like to take a quick look at what’s going on around the fandom before I start into the commentary on an episode. The first thing to take notice of is that The CW Network still has plenty of reasons to be doing the happy dance where season 5 of Supernatural is concerned. Here are some of the stats they have sent out following the airing of The End last Thursday.

SUPERNATURAL had another solid performance with “The End” episode—which does NOT represent “the end,” SUPERNATURAL fans—improving 17% over last week in adults 18-34 (14.4) and 7% in women 18-34 (1.6/4). SUPERNATURAL also performed well in both adults 18-49 (1.2/3) and women 18-49 (1.4.3).

And in the Live +7 stats that were released for the prior weeks episodes, we see that when these were compiled SUPERNATURAL had increase of 35% in women 18-34 (2.33rtg v. 3.83rtg), 47% increases in adults 18-34 (1.21rtg v. 1.78rtg) and total viewers increased 38% (2.9M v. 4M). That’s mighty impressive and I’m thinking that if this keeps up that 6^th season is going to become a reality and hey I can handle one more season of having the Winchester brothers on my TV every Thursday night. And speaking of those handsome hunters of the supernatural, let’s move on to my commentary for The End.

There is no doubt about it, this episode was a ‘Deangirls’ dream come true as Jensen Ackles pulled off a tour de force performance as two different version of his character, Dean Winchester. I have no trouble imagining that Ackles went home after this episode was finished filming and passed out from exhaustion. However The End also includes some amazing work from Jared Padalecki as the Lucifer possessed Sam Winchester and some interesting work by Misha Collins as the humanized Castiel.

The End, which was written by Ben Edlund, finds Sam (Jared Padalecki) making a late night phone call to Dean (Jensen Ackles) to tell his brother that Sam wants to rejoin him in the hunt for a way to stop Lucifer and end the Apocalypse before the world is destroyed. Sam says he wants to do this not out of revenge as Dean first surmises, but out of redemption. Dean turns Sam down, telling him he thinks its best they stay away from each other given the positions they have been put in as the chosen vessels for Lucifer and the Arch Angel Michael.

I really liked this scene and the use of imagery that was written into it. I have to admit I was highly surprised that Ben Edlund, whose scripts are often times more on the humorous side, wrote it. The power in the imagery was in having the call late at night with Sam driving on the road and Dean at rest in the hotel room. It was a very interesting way to show us that while “in the darkest hours” Dean is set in his decisions and course of action, Sam’s life is in flux again as he is once more journeying towards another goal. The conversation between Dean and Sam is filled with angst and emotion but never goes overboard into being too girly. The guys remain guys but Dean is not afraid to use the word love to describe the bond between he and Sam as brothers and family. It shows us how much the choice to turn Sam away is hurting him. That Sam is not afraid to use the word redemption shows how much he is moving away from the influences of the way he was raised by John Winchester.

The End has some of it’s roots in episode nine of season 2 title Croatoan in which the brothers travel to Rivergrove, Oregon and discover a demonic virus transmitted by blood has infected the townspeople and that Sam Winchester is apparently immune to. The virus makes a reappearance in The End when the angel Zachariah (played with such zestful glee by the talented Kurt Fuller) flings Dean five years into the future as punishment for not reuniting with Sam or saying yes to allowing himself to be inhabited by Michael. Zachariah wants Dean to see the consequences of his decisions and how Lucifer has unleashed the Croatoan virus on the earth as his “endgame plan” to destroy humanity.

It’s in this Coatoan ravaged future in which all of civilization has broken down into chaos that Dean meets his future self: an embittered and ruthless leader of a band of resistance fighters. Future Dean is a man seemingly without remorse who is relentlessly set on doing whatever it takes to “kill the devil and save the world”. He isn’t too amused to find himself confronted with the past part of himself.

Again Edlund does an amazing job of writing the dialog and scripting the scenes. The subtle differences between past and future Dean are intricately created and make each “Dean” a slightly different character in his own right. Then Edlund and the rest of the producers put it all in the capable hands of Jensen Ackles and Ackles didn’t let anyone down: not the writers, the directors, the viewers or either Dean. There is no doubt in this viewer’s mind that Jensen Ackles can put most A-list actors to shame and to me he more than proved that opinion right in The End.

Jensen Ackles is quoted as saying that in filming these scenes between the Deans he had only his stunt double to work off of and the double wasn’t an actor so he couldn’t really provide something for Ackles to play off of. Yet watching the “two Deans” interaction onscreen, the emotions, the timing the presentation is flawless. You see and feel the difference between these two versions of the same man. You see how appalled past Dean is at what he has become and you see the longing in future Dean to still be the kind of “innocent” and still in touch with his humanity past Dean is.

This future Dean/Past Dean interaction was also filled with some nice character insights. We found out that when Dean was nineteen a girl named Rhonda Hurley (and I’m guessing she was not some dainty little thing) got Dean to try on her panties. “They were pink and satiny and you know what we kinda liked it.” That no matter how the future changed Dean, he still had his penchant for the sarcastic use of pop culture TV/movie references: “I got a camp full of twitchy trauma survivors who don’t need to see this version of The Parent Trap”.

Past Dean also finds he has to deal with version of Castiel that really throws him for a loop. It seems that when Sam Winchester said yes to Lucifer and allowed himself to be taken as a vessel, all the angels simply gave up and went away. Castiel who was left behind completely without his “connection to heaven” found himself unable to cope with becoming fully human. To deal with the loss of what he once was, future Castiel has fallen into drug use and sins of the flesh: Castiel is a Woodstock wannbe. While this version of Castiel was certainly interesting and quite a change from our stoic angel, I have to be honest and say that I didn’t think Misha Collins did as good a job playing “hippy Castiel” as he did playing “Jimmy Novak” back in season 4. However I am glad that it convinced Dean not to try and humanize Castiel and to let his friend be himself. I think Misha does an awesome job playing Castiel as someone who is learning to change slowly and yet retain his uniqueness.

The End also contains the inevitable meeting between Past Dean and the Lucifer possessed Sam Winchester, after all this is what Zachariah wanted Dean to see and to know was the consequences of his decisions not to rejoin with Sam or to open himself to possession by the Angel Michael.

Yes, there is no doubt that Jensen Ackles hit it out of the ballpark in playing the duel role of past and future Dean, but I also realize how much Jared Padalecki stepped up to the plate in this episode. While Ackles basically had to play two slightly different versions of his character, Padalecki not only had to play Sam Winchester as Sam is now with all the remorse, guilt and conflict going on inside of him, but he had to totally mimic another actor’s take on another character. Jared did a seamless and dead on mimic of Mark Pellegrino’s Lucifer. The facial movements the voice inflection, the body language..everything was flawlessly done.

There were only a few moments when he was ‘Samlike’ and even those made perfect sense as you could imagine that Sam was still in there somewhere. Yes I think Jensen Ackles is a great actor and I realize that what he had to do in this episode was no easy task. He had to give us two believably different versions of Dean but in all honesty I have to say that Jared really had the harder task. He had to totally step outside of Sam and play a character already established by another actor and keep that character “in character” based on the other actor’s work.

“Brother against brother, learn to kill one another.”

Those are lyrics from the song Split Red by the Minutemen and I thought they were kind of appropriate for the main sort of “ah ha” moment I had while watching The End in regards to the whole thing of Sam and Dean being chosen as vessels and why. Viewers like myself and fans as well have been noticing and commenting on what seems like the inevitable “brother vs brother” direction the story line for Supernatural has been headed in since season 4. There has been a lot of talk about the biblical “Cain Vs Abel” scenario among the fans disseminating the show but I had a different sort of revelation (no bible pun intended) as I watched the confrontation between past Dean and Lucifer possessed future Sam and why everyone from Zachariah to Lucifer himself keeps saying that Sam had to be Lucifer’s vessel.

All the angels are brothers and sisters; Lucifer and Michael are brothers. The battle between Lucifer and Michael will be brother against brother. As I see it, Kripke is putting forth that in the final showdown, Michael and Lucifer need vessels that are tied together by the bonds of blood as brothers so that they can physically represent the bond of brotherhood between Michael and Lucifer as angels. I’m sure that there are other viewers and fans of Supernatural that have come to this conclusion, but for me it wasn’t until The End that I got this impression.

I’m not sure when this whole angel/apocalypse/brothers as vessels thing became the story direction for Supernatural but in my opinion, I don’t think it was what was originally intended for the direction of the show. I’m not Kripke and maybe I am wrong about there seeming to be a not so subtle switch in story direction but I do know that I firmly believe that wherever the show was leading up to in season 3 changed during the writers strike. I know I feel that the season 4 episode In the Beginning was the “reset button” – for lack of a better term for it – that set in motion the new direction. No longer was it about Azaezel having his own agenda or even anything about Mary Winchester being a hunter. I have come to conclude that was about her being able to bear children that can be vessels to the angels and about the angels covertly cluing Azaezel in on the fact that Dean was going to be born as the vessel of the Arch Angel Michael and that if Azaezel wanted to help start the Apocalypse then he needed to make sure that the second son of Mary and John Winchester was primed to be the vessel of Lucifer.

Overall and my personal “ah ha” moments aside, I thought The End was an amazing episode. I loved seeing Chuck Shurely again. Rob Benedict has such great deadpan comedic timing that suits his character to a tee. I loved seeing one of favorite actress, Lexa Doig finally having a guest-starring role on Supernatural. I would love to see an episode where Dean meets up with Risa as she is in “normal life” as part of a jolting reminder to him of where his destiny might lead him.

I liked how they used the Impala in the future. Seeing her up on cinderblocks in disrepair and neglect was, in my opinion such a stunning allegory for how far into his loss of his humanity that future Dean had fallen; that even taking care of his precious Baby didn’t matter to him anymore. Yet the fact that she hadn’t been tossed into scrape and was still being watched over by him was also the one clue that some spark of his soul, his capacity to care remained alive. I really liked the way future Dean had gone full on “Han Solo” and had the thigh holster strapped around his leg. Yes I’m female and yes I found that sexy..so sue me!

Next week is a brand new episode of Supernatural Season 5, but so as not to chase the spoilerphobes away from reading this commentary, I’ll be making a separate post to promote Fallen Idols. So be sure and check back here if you want to know more about that episode before it airs and then tune into the CW Network at 9PM EST time to see Sam and Dean Winchester on the hunt again.

Supernatural 5.04 screen caps courtesy of NoApology86