WARNING: Spoilers, discussion of torture and brainwashing.
I should probably preface this whole review project by saying that I am a huge Supernatural fan. I'm unironically enthusiastic about the classic Hero's Journey of the first few seasons, and even more excited by the apocalypse plot (I did a Tumblr post on cataclysms, apocalypsoi, and Superstorm Sandy aboard inspiration) and what happened after.
I love the Winchesters in all their flawed and broken glory. I get that Sam will always come first for Dean, and killing off Dean hardens and breaks Sam every time it happens. I get that their love and codependency -- Wincest fan or no -- is legendary.
But that doesn't mean it's healthy.
Dean deserves to have friends. Sam deserves to be with the woman he loves. Hell, Kevin Tran deserves to be able to live with his mom.
But since this is Supernatural, we apparently can't have nice things.
And it's immensely frustrating as a fan, a critic, and a student of narrative to see circumstance ruin every nice thing the Boys ever get, only to be shown and told that it's okay because look, they're not fighting anymore, they have each other. As a fan, I'm upset for them because I'm emotionally attached and I want to see them happy and healthy. As someone who values the arc of the story, I'm really disappointed, because this isn't character growth. This, if anything, is character regression.
We've done the "they chose family" plot, in Season 5, and it worked. It worked so well, because we had the parallel of Michael and Lucifer not doing the same, and because family didn't end in blood. The Winchesters weren't alone; they didn't give up everything for each other -- if anything, they sacrificed their relationship for the world.
Not so in "Torn and Frayed." Oh, no, in this episode, it's all about the removal of other characters so as to force the brothers together -- which, by the way, was already done and done better in Season 7 -- at the cost of almost everything else.
Dean loses Benny, who has literally been Dean's only uncomplicated friend in the whole history of the show. Sam loses Amelia, who he loves, and who turns out to love him right back. Castiel is called back to Heaven after being forced to try and save (and then kill) Samandriel, in so doing forcing the brothers to work together.
And for what?
Literally nothing. Instead of dealing with their problems like big boys, the Winchesters try to make each other happy by sacrificing their own happiness. We get them drinking beer together in Rufus' cabin, as if we're meant to think that what's happened in this episode is even remotely okay.
It isn't.
As a card-carrying member of the fandom, I got to see the full range of reactions after the episode aired. Literally the only people who were happy about the episode -- or even just okay with it -- were Wincest or codependency purists. Everyone else was (and is, if asked) pissed off.
And not just for the putting Benny and Amelia on a narrative bus, either.
Castiel's whole plotline in this episode was fucking awful. It's gross enough that we know that Naomi is brainwashing Cas at all -- taking away the free will and agency that Castiel has worked so hard to attain over the course of his character arc -- and that Naomi has to once again be an example of the monsterization of female characters in the show, but the worst part is without doubt that Castiel is forced to kill Samandriel, who had already been through so much this episode.
Samandriel was good.
That sentence lies at the heart of the problem. Samandriel was everything that Castiel was trying to make the angels into during Season 6. He respected the Trans' free will in 8x02, letting them go -- unlike angels like Hester or Inias, who were insistent, as most angels were, that Kevin abide by the Plan.
Samandriel, also, while he wore a uniform, wasn't in the blank, white and black business suits favored by Heaven's angels -- even worn by one-shot wonder Rachel in her first appearance. And she wears blue in her last, dressed still in the business mode, but in her own way, wearing her own freedom on her vessel until the moment her wings are charred on the pavement of the warehouse floor. Samandriel wears bright colors, wears a teenager for a vessel -- he represents from his first appearance the idea of progress in Heaven, of some lingering success in Castiel's attempt at "teaching poetry to fish." He was something new.
Supernatural doesn't like new things, apparently.
Because what does Samandriel get? Death. Torture at the hands of Hell, then betrayal and death at the hands of a brother he still remembered with love and fondness.
Despite Samandriel being good, despite him still loving and believing in his brother, we lose him. We lose him like we lose every character who shows a modicum of free will and isn't Sam or Dean. He's another symptom of the show's terrible inability to hold to its own nominal themes.
It's not fair, and we all, both characters and viewers, deserve better.
So, in sum, I was really disappointed in this episode. It was an awful note, emotionally and narratively, to come back from the holiday hiatus to. Disappoint.
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