Changing Channels – The Aftermath

Danger! Danger! Spoilers Will Robinson!

Supernatural season 5 episode 8 spoilers are contained in the following post!

So that question that had been nagging everyone since series three – namely “why does the trickster care what happens to Sam when Dean’s contract is up?” has finally been answered.

Or has it?

Was he ever the trickster? Or was the trickster subsumed by Gabriel after series two’s Tall Tales? Who knows…

What we do know is that Gabriel thinks he knows the future – he thinks he knows how it ends. He gives The Boys a scenario with two options: take on their vessels and get down and dirty in a scrap to the death for pretty much the entire planet… Or live in TV shows forever.

(Incidentally, was that his only threat? What if Dean replaced Dr McSteamy – sorry, Dr McSexy – and enjoyed living in TV Land? Was that the only threat the trickster could come up with? Sam could have made very good money in something like, I don’t know, Gilmore Girls or something…)

Well I say: we are nothing but the sum of what our culture teaches us. These immortal truths, lore of our society, if you will, are boiled down into film and, ironically, TV. And I say: if I’ve learnt anything from TV and film, it’s these little tidbits:

1) Even toys (and action figures?) know the single painful truth: there’s always a third option.

Exhibit A: Toy Story 2:

“You must choose, Sheriff Woody – how shall she die? Sharks? Or death by monkeys?”

“I choose… Buzz Lightyear!”

“What? That’s not an option!”

2) Good men can try but ultimately they fail; heroes do the impossible.

Exhibit B: Batman Forever.

“Just one little touch, and your two friends are gull feed on the rocks below. Not enough time to save them both. Which will it be, Batman? Bruce’s love or the Dark Knight’s junior partner?”

“Poor Edward. I had to save them both. You see, I’m both Bruce Wayne and Batman, not because I have to be. No, because I choose to be.”

I’m thinking Sam is a Toy Story kind of thinker. (See his “We could use him” argument, re: the trickster himself.) When the options they give you are shit, throw ‘em together, mix them about, check them through a few different lenses and voilà – another option presents itself.

I’m thinking Dean’s more the Batman type – let’s face it, he is Bruce Wayne without the family inheritance. No super powers, no psychic whatever, no demon blood, just pure old stubbornness and a Russell Crowe refusal to take it lying down, just because someone he doesn’t like tells him to. And give him a choice, he’ll find a way to do both impossible things.

Question is, can these two chuckleheads actually work together long enough to pull it off?

On a side note: how long will it be before Jeremy Carver supplants Ben Edlund as my personal writing god? We shall wait and see.

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