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About A Girl
It is hardly surprising that that any attempts Sam and Dean make at lasting relationships with the opposite sex end in disaster.
The issue of female characters in Supernatural is complex. The show is accused of misogyny by some and on the other hand female characters get a notoriously hostile reception from some factions of the predominantly female fan base.
The four longest surviving leads (Sam, Dean, Bobby & Castiel) are male. Female characters do not seem to have longevity and they are frequently considered somewhat one dimensional. But I would suggest this is a little unfair. The simple fact is that no one fares well in Supernatural. Most people who come into close contact with the Winchesters meet a sticky end. The themes of loss and insularity are what makes Sam and Dean's relationship so compelling. And while the show occasionally dips a toe into genre stereotype territory (virgin sacrifice in Like A Virgin, a racist phantom truck in Route 666) I would argue that it is self-aware, playful and generally subversive enough to avoid this.
It is worth bearing in mind also, that all peripheral characters are presented to us through Sam and Dean. Most of their contact with the wider world is fleeting and transient, and this is how we experience those characters. A lot of the female characters we meet are simply decoration because that's how Dean views them. Similarly, we experience pivotal characters such as Mary Winchester and Jess Moore mostly in memories and flashbacks. John Winchester is absent for the first half of the first season even though he's the reason the boys are reunited – as he has been for much of their young lives.
More established female characters with a platonic attachment to the brothers all reflect something about them and their relationship: Ellen Harvelle is a surrogate mother figure to the boys. She is a connection to their father. Her daughter, Jo Harvelle, meets them at a time when John's death is still raw. She has also lost her hunter father, and it is Dean's empathy with her, her headstrong desire to hunt which simultaneously irks him and fills him with affection. She is the same age as Sam and ultimately Dean views her as a little sister, which I would argue makes his love for her the most profound we ever see him feel for a woman. Pamela Barnes is both afflicted with psychic power like Sam and sexually predatory like Dean. She's independent, capable, funny and prepared to die for their cause.
Many of the recurring female characters are adversaries – monsters like the crossroads demons, Lillith, Eve and Meg, or human ones like Bela Talbot. There are also characters like Tessa, Lenore and Ellie Visyak who straddle the line between monstrous and sympathetic and challenge the boys' perceptions of good and evil.
But it is the boys' romantic connections which speak the most about the extent of their dysfunction. When we first meet Sam and Dean, Sam is in a steady relationship with Jess, while Dean is incredibly promiscuous – or at least appears that way. Dean and Sam have been separated for nearly four years. As an interesting aside, Jess and Dean share the same birthday – 24th January - which presumably would connect them somewhat in Sam's mind. But the relationship Sam has with Jess – and in fact his whole life at college - is based on untruths. Jessica has no idea about Sam's past as a hunter or his family.
After Jess's violent death (which we later discover Sam had premonitions of), Sam's first potential love interest is Meg, a girl he meets on his way back to California after a bust up with Dean. They fight over Dean's blind faith in their father, and Sam's frustration at being no closer to finding Jessica's killer. In the portentous episode, Scarecrow, Dean struggles to keep Sam on the road with him, while Sam still feels drawn to his life at Stanford. Although they are reconciled by the end of the episode, their brief separation gives Meg – a demon – access to Sam.
SAM: I still want to find Dad...And you're still a pain in the ass. But Jess and Mom...they're both gone. Dad is God knows where. You and me. We're all that's left. So, uh, if we're gonna see this through...we're gonna do it together.
DEAN: Hold me, Sam. That was beautiful.
Meg re-appears a few episodes later in Shadow, where her true nature is revealed and, although nothing happens between him and Meg, the precedent of Sam being seduced by monsters to Dean's chagrin is set:
DEAN: Hey Sam. Don't take this the wrong way, but your girlfriend...is a bitch.
DEAN: Hey, Sam…?
SAM: Hmm?
DEAN: Next time you want to get laid…find a girl that's not so buckets of crazy, huh?
This episode also sees Dean reach the end of his tether about Sam's continued threat of departure.
SAM: But there’s got to be somethin’ that you want for yourself—
DEAN: Yeah, I don’t want you to leave the second this thing’s over, Sam.
SAM: Dude, what’s your problem?
DEAN: Why do you think I drag you everywhere? Huh? I mean, why do you think I came and got you at Stanford in the first place?
SAM: ‘Cause Dad was in trouble. ‘Cause you wanted to find the thing that killed Mom.
DEAN: Yes, that, but it’s more than that, man.
This is an emotional scene, and his anxiety about being abandoned by his brother, combined with his annoyance at Sam having been taken in by a demon, foreshadows Dean's pain in later seasons when he feels he has lost Sam to Ruby.
Later in season 1, Sam and Dean meet Sarah in Provenance, and it is clear she is interested in Sam even when she discovers the truth about what he does. But Sam is reluctant to pursue anything with her despite his brother's encouragement:
SAM: You know what, I don’t get it. What do you care if I hook up?
DEAN: Because then maybe you wouldn’t be so cranky all the time. You know, seriously, Sam, this isn’t about just hooking up, okay? I mean, I think this Sarah girl could be good for you. And I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’m sure that this is about Jessica, right? Now, I don’t know what it’s like to lose somebody like that, but….I would think that she would want you to be happy. God forbid, have fun once in a while. Wouldn’t she?
SAM: Yeah, I know she would. Yeah, you’re right. Part of this is about Jessica. But not the main part.
This is a turning point. Here, Sam is making a conscious decision to opt out of trying for the 'apple pie' life he was previously desperate to return to, because he realises it is not sustainable for him, even though he has found someone prepared to accept the truth of who he is.
Dean's attempt to foster Sam and Sarah’s romance is also out of character. Their dynamic is usually such that Dean will impede or sabotage Sam's chances, seemingly in favour of improving his own with the woman in question. But primarily – as he demonstrates with Jessica – this is a way of reinforcing his dominance in terms of his relationship with his brother. Although he starts typically by competing with Sam for Sarah's attention, he soon realises this is futile and turns his efforts to setting them up on a date. While he genuinely seems to want his brother to be happy, it may be that Sam's reluctance from the outset leaves Dean feeling secure enough to let him off the leash. Sarah is only ever going to be 'a bit of fun'. Sam himself questions Dean's almost zealous interest in his 'hooking up', and in light of Zachariah's 'erotically co-dependent' jibe and the lack of boundaries between them, this suggests an element of pleasure being derived vicariously. While he pushes Sam towards Sarah, he also physically interrupts them each time things get slightly intimate, and when they finally do kiss, Dean watches them intently.
While Dean appears to be more blasé about relationships, in Route 666, we find out that he did actually date and seems to care for – even love - Cassie. But this relationship is ended by her when she finds out about Dean's life as a hunter. This time it is Sam who is annoyed by this revelation:
SAM: You told her? The secret? Our big family rule number one: we do what we do, and we shut up about it. For a year and a half I do nothing but lie to Jessica, and you go out with this chick in Ohio a couple of times and you tell her everything? [Dean says nothing] Dean!
DEAN: Yeah, looks like.
Where Sam has previously been more concerned with visiting danger on 'outsiders', here he appears to be irked by the fact Dean has allowed someone into their 'private family business' (as Dean refers to it when addressing Jessica).
In this instance, it is Cassie who puts a stop to their relationship for the second time, and their parting presents us with another instance of a continuing theme – the voyeuristic element of the brothers watching each other with women. Sam first watches Dean and Cassie kiss before they go to stop the killer truck, actually interrupting them by clearing his throat. After watching Dean drag up the actual truck from swamp in a display of machismo, he says:
SAM: Nice.
DEAN: Hell, yeah.
SAM: Now I know what she sees in you.
And when Dean kisses Cassie goodbye before their departure, Sam watches from inside the car.
Sam is first accused of voyeurism by Dean in Shadow when he is surveilling Meg. He is also called out as a ‘pervert’ by a female passerby. Meg herself, once she is revealed to be a demon, tries to seduce Sam in front of Dean, telling him she knows he likes to watch. There is an interesting expansion of this in the episode, Tall Tales, when we see Sam watching Dean kissing a woman in a bar from Dean's perspective. Sam's perception of 'Starla' is that of a drunken, blonde girl who is on the verge of throwing up, whereas Dean remembers her as a 'classy chick'. As Sam watches them kiss, Dean imagines his tone as prissy and outraged as he demands to know “Dean! What do you think you're doing?” To Dean's mind, Sam is camp and his voice tinged with something that sounds like jealousy.
But perhaps the most bizarre and overtly voyeuristic incident comes in The Magnificent Seven, when Sam sits outside a house in the Impala, watching Dean through the bedroom window as he strips to his underwear and cavorts with two women. The understanding is that Sam is letting Dean have fun, knowing he has less than a year to live (having sold his soul to resurrect Sam). But after a call from Bobby with a lead on their case, Sam lets himself into the house and walks in on Dean having sex.
SAM: Let me see your knife.
DEAN: What for?
SAM: So I can gouge my eyes out.
DEAN: It was a beautiful, natural act, Sam.
SAM: It's a part of you I never wanted to see, Dean.
DEAN: (chuckles, slaps SAM on the thigh)
Hey, I appreciate you giving me a little quality time with the Doublemint Twins.
SAM: (quietly)
No problem.
DEAN: Really? Well, I got to say, I was expecting a weary sigh or an eye roll, something.
SAM: Not at all. You deserve to have a little fun.
This encounter is jarring on a number of levels. Dean coming to the window to give his brother the thumbs up indicates that he knows Sam is watching and derives some kind of amusement or pleasure from the fact. Even given the intimate nature of what he's about to do, he keeps that bond with his brother, drawing him in. Sam is aware of what is happening inside the house, which makes his decision to enter the bedroom, knowing what he will find, pretty transgressive. This is reminiscent of the lack of boundaries displayed when Sam watches Dean on the vibrating bed. He voices distain, but never actually avoids seeing his brother in a sexual context – quite the opposite in this case.
This 'over sharing' works the other way around. In season 4's I Know What You Did Last Summer, Sam confesses to Dean all about the alliance he formed with Ruby while his brother was in Hell – including the sexual nature of their relationship:
DEAN: Sam?
SAM: Yeah?
DEAN: Too much information.
SAM: Hey, I told you I was coming clean.
DEAN: Yeah, but now I feel dirty.
Sam, knowing how betrayed his brother feels by his seduction at the hands of the demon, makes a full and frank confession. He is seeking benediction, laying it all out like a faithless lover in hope of forgiveness. I would argue that Sam's relationship with Ruby is born out of grief and desperation. Sam is a shell of a man having watched his brother dragged to Hell, and bent on avenging his death. Ruby offers him power, and a hope at revenge when he has nothing else left. Dean mirrors his brother's transgression in the following episode, Heaven and Hell, when he sleeps with a non-human - the angel, Anna. While this act serves to underscore the roles the boys are being forced into as vessels on opposing sides of a holy war, it can also be seen as retaliation. Dean reacts to Ruby's presence by sleeping with her antithesis. But Dean immediately sells Anna out the second Sam's life is threatened by the angels who wish to destroy her.
Sam's penchant for 'banging monsters' is a metaphor for his inability to conform to a heteronormative lifesyle. His brief relationship with Madison in season 2's Heart could be seen as his last attempt to form a genuine attachment, but this ends in tragedy when she turns out to be the werewolf they have been hunting and he has to kill her. Madison's death is effectively also the death of Sam's hope of ever having that regular life. From here on, his dealings with the opposite sex are either with 'monstrous' women like Ruby and Cara in Sex and Violence – although the latter is later vindicated – or, in a reversal, with a string of meaningless one night stands while he himself is 'monstrous', having lost his soul. Even with Cara, before he loses his soul, Sam's attitude towards relationships is shown to be irrevocably altered:
DEAN: You gonna say goodbye to Cara?
SAM: Nah. Not interested.
DEAN: Really? Why not?
SAM: What’s the point?
DEAN: Well, look at you. Love ‘em and leave ‘em.
In the season 6 episode, Clap Your Hands If You Believe, Dean, thinking he has been abducted by aliens, is particularly distressed to return, only to find Sam having sex with a 'hippie chick' he has just met instead of out looking for him. Sam argues that he had no leads, so searching would have been futile, and Dean tries to explain to his soulless brother that even if there was nothing he could have done, he should have been too upset to pursue his own pleasure:
DEAN: You sit in the dark and you feel the loss.
SAM: Absolutely, but couldn't I just do all that and have sex with the hippie chick?
DEAN: NO!
There is an irony and an echo of past mistakes in Dean's words, as they could refer back to his time in Hell when Sam felt his brother's loss so keenly he was driven towards Ruby and demon blood addiction. There is an element of possessiveness too – Dean is upset that his position as Sam's first priority has been waylaid by a casual encounter. It is also interesting that Dean does not leave the motel once he interrupts his brother and 'Patchouli'. Instead he watches them get up and search for their clothes, before unceremoniously slamming the door on Sam's conquest. This again underlines the lack of boundaries the boys have, and the voyeuristic element of their relationship.
The full extent of Soulless Sam's sexual exploits during his missing year become apparent in Unforgiven, when a newly re-souled Sam is lured back to a town he hunted in. Women have been going missing presumed dead, and it is Dean who realises the connection:
DEAN: Sam, answer the phone, damn it. I found the connection between the missing chicks. They all banged the same dude -- You. It's you, Sam.
This episode serves as justification of the younger Sam's fears about getting close to anyone after Jessica's death. Indeed, not many women survive an intimate encounter with Sam Winchester.
Dean's attempts do not fare much better. We get a brief suggestion that he was capable of loving Cassie, although interestingly, in Sam, Interrupted, the idea that they had a relatively long term relationship is contradicted by Dean himself:
DR. CARTWRIGHT: Okay. When was the last time you were in a long-term relationship?
DEAN: Define long-term.
DR. CARTWRIGHT: More than two months.
DEAN: Never
Dean's promiscuity is interesting in light of Sam's comments about him being 'butch' and 'overcompensating'. Many of Dean's conquests are stereotypes – women who are overtly sexual and available. A lot of Dean's interactions with women are fleeting - so seemingly not consummated, and many of his experiences are relayed to the viewer by Dean himself – an unreliable narrator. He also finds himself in situations where he attracts male attention and is forced to protest that he "doesn't swing that way".
But there are instances where Dean's sexual tastes are portrayed as experimental, his sexuality more fluid. His speech is littered with references to sexual acts, pornography and positions ('plushies', 'the full cowgirl', Casa Erotica). In The End, Dean and his future self establish their credentials by sharing a secret only they would know about. That secret turns out to be that Dean enjoyed being made to wear women's underwear by a partner in his teens. He often quips about strippers and interestingly, having a threesome with twins, and it's clear in the humorous episode, Changing Channels, that Dean has a crush on the male lead of his favourite TV show, Dr. Sexy MD:
But Dean's few attempts at deeper, lasting relationships with women are equally as doomed as Sam's. Aside from Cassie who is unattainable, Dean's next long term relationship exists only in his mind. In the season 2 episode, What Is And What Should Never Be, Dean is kidnapped by a Djinn and locked inside an elaborate fantasy life while his body is being drained in the real world. In this alternate existence, Mary and Jessica were never killed, but John has died of natural causes and Dean is settled with a nurse called Carmen. She appears to be the ideal partner, but Dean cannot be truly happy in this life because he and Sam are not close.
We are told Dean 'hooked up with Rachael Nave' – Sam's prom date - which Dean proudly admits "does sound like him". In this reality where Jess is alive and Sam and Dean have "nothing in common" (because they were never hunters and didn't grow up living in each other's pockets), this 'typically Dean' behaviour irks his brother. It seems that the success of their respective relationships is only possible at the detriment of the brothers' intimacy.
The fractious relationship between the boys is particularly interesting because, in terms of the narrative, it is incongruous. The Djinn relies on Dean being so seduced by the fantasy that he won’t want to break the spell. The dreamscape is constructed around Dean's wishes, so it follows that if he desires his relationship with Sam to be better, it should improve. But this is not the case:
DEAN: My favourite. I guess you know me pretty well.
CARMEN (sits down next to him):
'Fraid so. You alright?
DEAN: Sammy and I... You know we don't get along.
CARMEN: Well, you don't spend a lot of time together. I mean, I just think you don't know each other all that well.
DEAN: Hmm.
CARMEN: For the record: He doesn't know what he's missing.
DEAN: I can fix things with Sam. I can make it up to him.
In a mirror of the pilot, Dean breaks into their family home and confronts Sam, dragging him along for the ride as he pieces together his situation, just as he pulled him away from Stanford. Once Dean realises his 'reality' is just an illusion, no amount of persuasion from his mother, Jessica or Carmen can get him to stay. Dean accepts that what he and Sam do in the real world means sacrifice, but ultimately he won't trade because his relationship with Sam is damaged. He takes his own life in the dream to get back to his frantic brother:
SAM: Thank God. Thought I lost you for a second.
(He pulls out the tube in DEAN's throat)
DEAN: You almost did.
Dean is quite explicit in his reasons for breaking out of the trance when he speaks to Sam.
SAM (smiles):So we didn't get along then, huh?
DEAN: No..
SAM: I thought it was supposed to be this perfect fantasy.
DEAN: It wasn't. It was just a wish. I wished for Mom to live. If Mom never died, we never went hunting and you and me just never... you know.
SAM: Yeah. Well, I'm glad we do.
Dean cannot be content without Sam in his life constantly. It's not enough for him that he and Sam are settled in their respective relationships and lives, and that they are brothers. He wants all of Sam. He keeps digging until he uncovers the truth, and once he has, he won't leave his brother alone in the real world. He is choosing their insularity and co-dependence over comfort.
This is mirrored in the season 6 finale, The Man Who Knew Too Much, when Sam's 'broken wall' results in him being locked inside his mind with fragments of his own personality. His guide on this journey is an attractive bartender with a smart mouth called Robin, and there seems to be a rapport between the two. But it transpires that Soulless Sam shot the real Robin to get to a demon who was holding her for leverage. Robin wears an amulet and a leather jacket so that, visually, she resembles a female version of Dean.
On meeting the version of himself that remembers his time in Hell, Sam is told to stay in his fantasy and to "go find that bartender, go find Jess". But he refuses without hesitation, wanting to get back to his body:
HELL SAM: “Why is this so important to you?”
SAM: “You know me, you know why. I’m not leaving my brother alone out there.”
As demonstrated time and time again, their exceptional bond enables the brothers to find their way back to each other whether they are in Heaven, Hell or locked inside themselves.
Dean's only other attempt at a lasting 'apple pie life' is with Lisa and Ben and, while he cares about them, he only settles with them for the year that his brother is in Hell because he made a promise to Sam that he would. This is made clear in Exile on Main Street when he first finds out Sam has been back for almost the whole year:
SAM: You finally had what you wanted, Dean.
DEAN: I wanted my brother! Alive.
And reiterated later when Dean discovers Bobby knew about Sam's resurrection:
DEAN: Do you have any clue what walking away meant for me?
BOBBY: Yeah -- a woman and a kid and not getting your guts ripped out at age 30. That's what it meant.
DEAN: That woman and that kid -- I went to them because you (points at Sam) asked me to.
BOBBY: Good.
DEAN: Good for who? I showed up on their doorstep half out of my head with grief. God knows why they even let me in. I drank too much. I had nightmares. I looked everywhere. I collected hundreds of books, trying to find anything to bust you out.
SAM: You promised you'd leave it alone.
DEAN: Of course I didn't leave it alone! Sue me! A damn year? You couldn't put me out of my misery?
This is Dean laid absolutely bare. Even while trying to keep his promise, he cannot entirely turn his back on 'the life', and certainly not on his brother. While he manages to stay faithful to Lisa (as demonstrated in the opening of the episode when he tears up the waitress' phone number) and maintains a veneer of domesticity and normality, the implication is that this is more to do with the fact he is 'sitting in the dark and feeling the loss' than because he genuinely wants to make a go of things. In much the same way as he turns down Jo when he's grieving for John, Dean's newly tamed nature speaks more about how numb and broken he is without Sam than how much he values his relationship with Lisa. By his own admission, he is in 'misery'.
Once his brother is returned to him, Dean's reasons for staying become clouded by guilt. Knowing they are potentially jeopardised by association, Dean stays with the Braedens for a while but it is clear his heart is not in it, as Lisa herself tells Dean in You Can't Handle The Truth:
LISA: You've got so much buried in there, and you push it down and you push it down. Do you honestly think you can go through life like that and not freak out? Just what? Drink half a fifth a night and you're good?
DEAN: Hey, you knew what you signed up for.
LISA: Yeah, but I didn't expect Sam to come back. And I'm glad he's okay, I am, but the minute he walked through that door, I knew it was over.
Lisa here is summarising the extent to which the Winchesters' "crazy, tangled up thing" defines them by this stage in their story. Both have proved completely incapable of sustaining a long-term heteronormative relationship, and even Dean's flirtatiousness has dried up somewhat as demonstrated in Frontierland:
DEAN: Think we'll have time to hit on saloon girls?
(Sam gives Dean a look)
DEAN: I'm kidding. Come on.
In Let It Bleed, Dean asks Castiel to wipe Lisa and Ben's memories of him, meaning he can never go back, thus ensuring by the end of season 6 that a line has been drawn under his own efforts at having a family which conforms to social norms. Sam is once again all he has.
All In The Family
While Sam and Dean's unorthodox relationship is the crux of Supernatural, it is set within a network of equally complex and ambiguous connections. The notion of 'family' while being central to the universe they inhabit, is often complicated and even perverse.
Sibling relationships especially are often portrayed as unhealthy. In Simon Said, the boys meet Andy - another child who was visited by the Yellow Eyed Demon. Although he is suspected of killing people in his town using mind control, it transpires that the crimes are being perpetrated by his long lost "evil twin", Webber, who is murdering people he feels kept them apart. In Bloodlust, it is revealed that Gordon's grief at having his "beautiful" sister turned vampire drove him to hunt her and become consumed by hatred for all things supernatural. In Playthings, Rose and Maggie are sisters, separated by death as children, but still bound to one another. Rose is only able to prevent Maggie's spirit killing people by giving up her own life so that they can be playmates forever.
The angels and demons of Supernatural have their own attachments and hierarchies – most clearly illustrated by the battle between Lucifer and his angelic brothers. God is depicted as an absent father. Demons such as Crowley and Azazel are also fathers.
Family ties also extend beyond mere biology. Sam and Dean look to Bobby as a father figure before, and especially after, John's death. Their bond is such that Balthazar assures Soulless Sam that killing Bobby will be patricide for the purpose of scarring his vessel to ensure his soul cannot be re-seated.
Dean and Castiel have a "profound bond", forged when Castiel raised Dean from perdition, and this is strengthened as Castiel becomes more humanised with the passage of time. Dean even refers to him as "like a brother" in the latter part of season 6 when trying to persuade Castiel away from his determination to open Purgatory.
But Dean and Castiel's relationship also deviates from the traditional concept of familial love. Castiel's regard and affection for the Winchesters – especially Dean – causes him to rebel. Much like with Sam, Cas's faith in Dean is such that when it is tested, the repercussions are often highly emotional and sometimes violent as demonstrated in the following scenes:
"I did it, all of it, for you!"
"I gave everything for you!"
Dean plays on Castiel's seeming naivety and taunts him sexually, flirtatiously, in much the same way he does with Sam, as in The Point of No Return, where he draws attention to the intensity of Castiel's gaze:
DEAN: Well, Cas, not for nothing, but the last person who looked at me like that…I got laid.
The angel's weakness for the Winchester boys, and the obvious tension between Cas and Dean in particular, is also highlighted by other characters. Balthazar refers to Cas as "your boyfriend" to Sam. He also tells Dean in My Heart Will Go On:
“Sorry, you have me confused with the other angel. You know, the one in the dirty trench coat who's in love with you.”
This may be partly jest, but as with the brothers' love for one another, Castiel's sacrifice and his willingness to rebel against God himself for the Winchesters is excessive. It is also part of a broader tradition of homoeroticism on the show. There is palpable tension between Dean and Castiel, and also between Sam and Castiel. There is also a hint at a deeper love turned bad between Cas and Balthazar. Trickster/Gabriel flirts with and sexually teases the boys and Crowley uses sexuality to taunt Bobby, Sam, Dean and especially Castiel, referring to him as "the bottom in this relationship" – an explicit reference to gay sex.
Balthazar's brash and gung-ho nature is often used to bring the shadier subtext to the fore. In the season 6 finale, The Man Who Knew Too Much, he interrupts Dean watching over an unconscious Sam, asking,
“How's Sleeping Beauty? You didn't steal any kisses, I trust?”
This serves to recall Dean's indictment of watching someone sleep as 'rapey', and also the many occasions that the boys have watched each other in a less than wholesome way.
Incest is referred to both directly and indirectly with surprising frequency in the show. The season 4 episode, Family Remains, deals with the subject directly. One of the cases the boys investigate turns out not to be supernatural at all, but rather the crimes are being perpetrated by the damaged children of a woman who was raped by her own father, kept locked away for their whole lives.
In the season 4 episode, In The Beginning, Mary Winchester makes a deal with the Yellow Eyed Demon who is inhabiting her father's body. She agrees that he can visit Sam in ten years time in exchange for bringing John (whom he has just killed) back to life. The deal is sealed with a kiss, which presents the viewer with the visual of young Mary kissing her father passionately, if unwillingly, on the mouth.
Sam and Dean also comment that they find their mother attractive on the occasions they are sent back in time to meet her as a young woman. In the same episode, Dean says:
“Sammy, wherever you are - Mom is a babe! I'm so going to hell. Again.”
And in season 5's The Song Remains The Same, it is Sam who cannot stop staring at the young vision of his mother:
SAM: W—oh. Yeah, yeah. Um, I'm just, um — You are so beautiful.
JOHN [leans forward].
DEAN: He means that in a—a non-weird, wholesome, family kind of a way.
SAM: Yeah, right.
Dean’s attraction to his mother in In The Beginning is seemingly referred to by the episodic title of The End:
Superwiki tells us: The episode title might refer to The Doors Song "The End", which uses themes of the apocalypse and a world gone mad ('all the children are insane'). The song also evokes the image of the devil ('the snake is long, 7 miles...and he's old, and his skin is cold'), and has an Oedipal part, where a son goes to murder his sister, brother and finally father, to confront his mother, who he wishes to have sex with.
The boys’ discovery that John fathered Adam Winchester, leads Dean to remark that he’s “thinking about Dad sex” in 4:19 Jump The Shark. Incest is also alluded to in the season 6 episode And Then There Were None, notably in a taunt from their grandfather:
(Samuel gets up. Sam blocks his path)
SAMUEL Relax. Bathroom break. So unless you want to hold it for me...
Bobby also makes a joke involving the brothers in the same episode when they meet up with Rufus:
DEAN: Well, look what the cat dragged in.
SAM: It really is good to see you, Rufus.
RUFUS: I can believe it. It must get old dealing with this miserable cuss here all by yourself.
SAM: Is it that obvious?
BOBBY: Why don't you three get a room?
Indeed, the boys' rooming habits lead to much of the speculation touched on earlier. They are assumed to be a couple in 1:08 Bugs, in 2:11 Playthings, and in 1:18 Something Wicked. On checking into a motel, Dean is confronted by a young boy called Michael:
Michael: King or two queens?
Dean: (Asking for a room) Two queens.
Michael (Looks at Sam waiting outside): Yeah, I bet.
Michael and his younger brother, Asher, are mirrors of Dean and Sam, and remind Dean of an incident in their childhood when he left Sam unattended and put him at risk from a Shtriga which nearly killed him. It is worth noting that although Michael assumes Sam and Dean are a couple, Dean never corrects him. Although he uses the fact that he and Michael are both big brothers who would do anything for their little brothers to bond with the kid, he never actually tells Michael that Sam is the little brother in question even though Sam is often in the same room. Michael only finds out when overhearing Dean call Sam 'little brother' in a moment of panic once they have killed the monster. Dean's angst at having let the Shtriga get away once before and his desire to protect Sam at any cost is apparent in the way he continues to shoot at its lifeless body after it attacks the now adult Sam.
While their being mistaken for a couple is usually played for laughs – most recently inFrontierland when Sam tells Judge Mortimer “We're looking for a man” and the judge replies, “I'll bet” - occasionally the brothers themselves act the part to obtain information. Dean calls Sam "honey" in Bugs and playfully slaps him on the ass, and in A Very Supernatural Christmas, they lead a shopkeeper to believe they are together to gain intel for their case:
SHOPKEEPER: Help you, boy?
DEAN: Uh, hope so. Uh we’re playing Jenga with the Walshes the other night, and a… he hasn’t shut up since about this Christmas wreath. I don’t know you tell him.
SAM: Sure. It was yummy.
SHOPKEEPER: I sell a lot of wreaths, guys.
SAM: Right, right, but you see, this one would have been really special. It had, uh, it had, uh, green leaves, um, white buds on it. It might have been made of, uh… meadowsweet?
SHOPKEEPER: Well, aren’t you fussy one?
DEAN: (Smiles) He is…
This tactic is interesting within the context of the episode, in which we have the scene of awkward domesticity between the boys when they are determined to have Christmas together but unable to face the reality that it will be Dean's last.
In the season 4 opener, Lazarus Rising, Ruby watches Sam and Dean – who is freshly back from Hell - share an emotional reunion hug, and asks them if they are "together". Although Dean doesn’t recognise her in her new body, she knows that they are brothers. This is both a taunt and foreshadows the role she will play as an interloper, responsible for damaging their relationship.
Incest and the show’s perceived subtext is dealt with in the self-referential ‘meta’ episodes. The season 4 episode Monster At The End Of This Book, deals directly with the concept of Wincest and slash fiction. Finding definitions of ‘Sam girls’, ‘Dean girls’ and ‘Sam/Dean girls’ online prompts the following exchange:
DEAN: What’s a slash fan?
SAM: As in Sam slash Dean. Together.
DEAN: Like together together? They do know we’re brothers right?
SAM: Doesn’t seem to matter.
Having the Winchesters acknowledge this perception of them, their bewilderment at it, is both comic, and serves to highlight how blinded they are to the obsessive and unusual nature of their relationship.
In season 5’s The Real Ghostbusters, Sam and Dean attend a Supernatural fan convention and are confronted by lovers Demian and Barnes who role-play as Sam and Dean. When Dean questions why anyone would want to pretend to be him and Sam, Demian cites their love as the appeal:
DEMIAN: I'm not sure you get what the story's about.
DEAN: That so?
DEMIAN: In real life, he sells stereo equipment. I fix copiers. Our lives suck. But Sam and Dean. To wake up every morning and save the world. To have a brother who would die for you. Well, who wouldn't want that?
DEAN: Well, maybe you've got a point.
The fact that they are lovers in ‘real life’ who hold Sam and Dean’s relationship up as an ideal, something to aspire to, means we once again draw parallels between romantic love and familial love. The edges begin to blur.
Season 5’s Changing Channels also presents some interesting situations in terms of the brothers’ relationship. In a parody of Knight Rider, Sam is turned into the Impala, an object Dean refers to as his ‘baby’ and fetishises deeply. Much of the comedy in these scenes is derived from the fact that Dean must get inside Sam and retrieve things from his trunk:
DEAN: Rummages in the trunk of the car.
SAM: Dean?
DEAN: What?
SAM: That, uh, feels really uncomfortable.
The way that Dean has previously joked about Sam being possessed in Born Under A Bad Sign (“Dude you... You like full on had a girl inside you for like a whole week. It’s pretty naughty”) and Bobby’s anti-possession charms stopping the demon "getting back up in ya"(“That sounds vaguely dirty, but er, thanks”) makes it difficult for the audience to experience these scenes without hearing sexual connotations. The idea of Sam’s transformed body as an object of desire is reinforced by Trickster/Gabriel:
TRICKSTER, appearing from nowhere: Wow. Sam. Get a load of the rims on you.
SAM: Eat me.
The nature of Sam’s objectification and the inappropriate intimacy this affords Dean is then underlined:
TRICKSTER: Well played, boys. Well played. Where'd you get the holy oil?
DEAN: Well, you might say we pulled it out of Sam's ass.
In season 6’s The French Mistake, Sam and Dean are sent to another dimension whereSupernatural is a TV show, and meet their real life counterparts, actors Jared and Jensen. In this alternative reality, Jared is married to Genevieve – the actress who played Ruby (as he is in reality) which makes Dean very uncomfortable. His old insecurity creeps in when he suggests that Sam might prefer to stay in this world, where there is no supernatural and no magic, and he has an attractive wife. But Sam rebuffs this, citing the fact that they are "not even brothers here" as the reason he’d rather go back to their dangerous, less comfortable life. This harks back to What Is And What Should Never Be. Jared and Jensen do not get on. Someone who resembles the demon that came between them shares a bed with Sam. They cannot exist in a world where their relationship is damaged, where they are not everything to each other, even if all other aspects of that world are preferable.
In the season 6 episode, Two And A Half Men, Sam finds a baby Shapeshifter and drags Dean away from Lisa and Ben to help him look after it. This episode deals with the notion of fatherhood. Dean feels like a father to Ben, but he still leaves the Braedens to hunt with his soulless brother. He is aware he doesn’t want Ben to have the kind of childhood he had – on the run or ‘on lockdown' - but Sam accuses him of making the same mistakes John made with them.
Sam and Dean name the baby ‘Bobby John’ after their dead father and their living surrogate father. Interestingly, it is Sam who suggests ‘John’, and Dean who says ‘Bobby’. Dean's unswerving devotion to his father has been somewhat adjusted since John's death, by his relationship with Bobby and all he has been through. Sam - no longer in posession of his soul - plumps for John, although he has always had the more strained relationship with their father. Since a young age he has placed faith in his older brother, even gifting him the amulet he intended as a present for John once he became disillusioned with his father's lies and failure to come home for Christmas.
Placing Sam and Dean in the roles of parents to the baby monster, muddling through and on the road, is both comic, but also juxtaposed with the life of domesticity and fatherhood Dean is being pulled away from. Once again, when presented with the safer, ‘normal’ alternative of a family life with a woman and child, Dean chooses Sam, minus his soul, a baby monster, and motel rooms. Dysfunction over normalcy. Sam over all.
While Dean’s entire existence is focused on Sam and vice versa, fans’ enjoyment of the show also seems reliant on the state of Sam and Dean's relationship. However you view it, their "crazy, tangled up thing" elicits fervour and devotion and inspires fan fiction, art, videos and heated debate. While the show gets dark and characters are lost along the road, the love between the brothers keeps us hooked and gives us succour. It remains to be seen where Castiel's betrayal and Sam's damaged mind will lead us in season 7, but the Winchesters are together which means they can overcome pretty much anything. As Dean Winchester tells his brother in Born Under A Bad Sign,
DEAN: But you're, you're okay, and that's what matters. Everything else we can deal with.
N.B. I am in no way affiliated with Supernatural or CW. All views expressed in this piece are entirely my own. This article is purely for fun - no offence intended.
-- An how about Dean`s pattenning over Sam`s chest and holding his face tight in his arms in order to watch if there are any damages that Gordon could make. Middle of seasone 2
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About A Girl
It is hardly surprising that that any attempts Sam and Dean make at lasting relationships with the opposite sex end in disaster.
The issue of female characters in Supernatural is complex. The show is accused of misogyny by some and on the other hand female characters get a notoriously hostile reception from some factions of the predominantly female fan base.
The four longest surviving leads (Sam, Dean, Bobby & Castiel) are male. Female characters do not seem to have longevity and they are frequently considered somewhat one dimensional. But I would suggest this is a little unfair. The simple fact is that no one fares well in Supernatural. Most people who come into close contact with the Winchesters meet a sticky end. The themes of loss and insularity are what makes Sam and Dean's relationship so compelling. And while the show occasionally dips a toe into genre stereotype territory (virgin sacrifice in Like A Virgin, a racist phantom truck in Route 666) I would argue that it is self-aware, playful and generally subversive enough to avoid this.
It is worth bearing in mind also, that all peripheral characters are presented to us through Sam and Dean. Most of their contact with the wider world is fleeting and transient, and this is how we experience those characters. A lot of the female characters we meet are simply decoration because that's how Dean views them. Similarly, we experience pivotal characters such as Mary Winchester and Jess Moore mostly in memories and flashbacks. John Winchester is absent for the first half of the first season even though he's the reason the boys are reunited – as he has been for much of their young lives.
More established female characters with a platonic attachment to the brothers all reflect something about them and their relationship: Ellen Harvelle is a surrogate mother figure to the boys. She is a connection to their father. Her daughter, Jo Harvelle, meets them at a time when John's death is still raw. She has also lost her hunter father, and it is Dean's empathy with her, her headstrong desire to hunt which simultaneously irks him and fills him with affection. She is the same age as Sam and ultimately Dean views her as a little sister, which I would argue makes his love for her the most profound we ever see him feel for a woman. Pamela Barnes is both afflicted with psychic power like Sam and sexually predatory like Dean. She's independent, capable, funny and prepared to die for their cause.
Many of the recurring female characters are adversaries – monsters like the crossroads demons, Lillith, Eve and Meg, or human ones like Bela Talbot. There are also characters like Tessa, Lenore and Ellie Visyak who straddle the line between monstrous and sympathetic and challenge the boys' perceptions of good and evil.
But it is the boys' romantic connections which speak the most about the extent of their dysfunction. When we first meet Sam and Dean, Sam is in a steady relationship with Jess, while Dean is incredibly promiscuous – or at least appears that way. Dean and Sam have been separated for nearly four years. As an interesting aside, Jess and Dean share the same birthday – 24th January - which presumably would connect them somewhat in Sam's mind. But the relationship Sam has with Jess – and in fact his whole life at college - is based on untruths. Jessica has no idea about Sam's past as a hunter or his family.
After Jess's violent death (which we later discover Sam had premonitions of), Sam's first potential love interest is Meg, a girl he meets on his way back to California after a bust up with Dean. They fight over Dean's blind faith in their father, and Sam's frustration at being no closer to finding Jessica's killer. In the portentous episode, Scarecrow, Dean struggles to keep Sam on the road with him, while Sam still feels drawn to his life at Stanford. Although they are reconciled by the end of the episode, their brief separation gives Meg – a demon – access to Sam.
SAM: I still want to find Dad...And you're still a pain in the ass. But Jess and Mom...they're both gone. Dad is God knows where. You and me. We're all that's left. So, uh, if we're gonna see this through...we're gonna do it together.
DEAN: Hold me, Sam. That was beautiful.
Meg re-appears a few episodes later in Shadow, where her true nature is revealed and, although nothing happens between him and Meg, the precedent of Sam being seduced by monsters to Dean's chagrin is set:
DEAN: Hey Sam. Don't take this the wrong way, but your girlfriend...is a bitch.
DEAN: Hey, Sam…?
SAM: Hmm?
DEAN: Next time you want to get laid…find a girl that's not so buckets of crazy, huh?
This episode also sees Dean reach the end of his tether about Sam's continued threat of departure.
SAM: But there’s got to be somethin’ that you want for yourself—
DEAN: Yeah, I don’t want you to leave the second this thing’s over, Sam.
SAM: Dude, what’s your problem?
DEAN: Why do you think I drag you everywhere? Huh? I mean, why do you think I came and got you at Stanford in the first place?
SAM: ‘Cause Dad was in trouble. ‘Cause you wanted to find the thing that killed Mom.
DEAN: Yes, that, but it’s more than that, man.
This is an emotional scene, and his anxiety about being abandoned by his brother, combined with his annoyance at Sam having been taken in by a demon, foreshadows Dean's pain in later seasons when he feels he has lost Sam to Ruby.
Later in season 1, Sam and Dean meet Sarah in Provenance, and it is clear she is interested in Sam even when she discovers the truth about what he does. But Sam is reluctant to pursue anything with her despite his brother's encouragement:
SAM: You know what, I don’t get it. What do you care if I hook up?
DEAN: Because then maybe you wouldn’t be so cranky all the time. You know, seriously, Sam, this isn’t about just hooking up, okay? I mean, I think this Sarah girl could be good for you. And I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’m sure that this is about Jessica, right? Now, I don’t know what it’s like to lose somebody like that, but….I would think that she would want you to be happy. God forbid, have fun once in a while. Wouldn’t she?
SAM: Yeah, I know she would. Yeah, you’re right. Part of this is about Jessica. But not the main part.
This is a turning point. Here, Sam is making a conscious decision to opt out of trying for the 'apple pie' life he was previously desperate to return to, because he realises it is not sustainable for him, even though he has found someone prepared to accept the truth of who he is.
Dean's attempt to foster Sam and Sarah’s romance is also out of character. Their dynamic is usually such that Dean will impede or sabotage Sam's chances, seemingly in favour of improving his own with the woman in question. But primarily – as he demonstrates with Jessica – this is a way of reinforcing his dominance in terms of his relationship with his brother. Although he starts typically by competing with Sam for Sarah's attention, he soon realises this is futile and turns his efforts to setting them up on a date. While he genuinely seems to want his brother to be happy, it may be that Sam's reluctance from the outset leaves Dean feeling secure enough to let him off the leash. Sarah is only ever going to be 'a bit of fun'. Sam himself questions Dean's almost zealous interest in his 'hooking up', and in light of Zachariah's 'erotically co-dependent' jibe and the lack of boundaries between them, this suggests an element of pleasure being derived vicariously. While he pushes Sam towards Sarah, he also physically interrupts them each time things get slightly intimate, and when they finally do kiss, Dean watches them intently.
While Dean appears to be more blasé about relationships, in Route 666, we find out that he did actually date and seems to care for – even love - Cassie. But this relationship is ended by her when she finds out about Dean's life as a hunter. This time it is Sam who is annoyed by this revelation:
SAM: You told her? The secret? Our big family rule number one: we do what we do, and we shut up about it. For a year and a half I do nothing but lie to Jessica, and you go out with this chick in Ohio a couple of times and you tell her everything? [Dean says nothing] Dean!
DEAN: Yeah, looks like.
Where Sam has previously been more concerned with visiting danger on 'outsiders', here he appears to be irked by the fact Dean has allowed someone into their 'private family business' (as Dean refers to it when addressing Jessica).
In this instance, it is Cassie who puts a stop to their relationship for the second time, and their parting presents us with another instance of a continuing theme – the voyeuristic element of the brothers watching each other with women. Sam first watches Dean and Cassie kiss before they go to stop the killer truck, actually interrupting them by clearing his throat. After watching Dean drag up the actual truck from swamp in a display of machismo, he says:
SAM: Nice.
DEAN: Hell, yeah.
SAM: Now I know what she sees in you.
And when Dean kisses Cassie goodbye before their departure, Sam watches from inside the car.
Sam is first accused of voyeurism by Dean in Shadow when he is surveilling Meg. He is also called out as a ‘pervert’ by a female passerby. Meg herself, once she is revealed to be a demon, tries to seduce Sam in front of Dean, telling him she knows he likes to watch. There is an interesting expansion of this in the episode, Tall Tales, when we see Sam watching Dean kissing a woman in a bar from Dean's perspective. Sam's perception of 'Starla' is that of a drunken, blonde girl who is on the verge of throwing up, whereas Dean remembers her as a 'classy chick'. As Sam watches them kiss, Dean imagines his tone as prissy and outraged as he demands to know “Dean! What do you think you're doing?” To Dean's mind, Sam is camp and his voice tinged with something that sounds like jealousy.
But perhaps the most bizarre and overtly voyeuristic incident comes in The Magnificent Seven, when Sam sits outside a house in the Impala, watching Dean through the bedroom window as he strips to his underwear and cavorts with two women. The understanding is that Sam is letting Dean have fun, knowing he has less than a year to live (having sold his soul to resurrect Sam). But after a call from Bobby with a lead on their case, Sam lets himself into the house and walks in on Dean having sex.
SAM: Let me see your knife.
DEAN: What for?
SAM: So I can gouge my eyes out.
DEAN: It was a beautiful, natural act, Sam.
SAM: It's a part of you I never wanted to see, Dean.
DEAN: (chuckles, slaps SAM on the thigh)
Hey, I appreciate you giving me a little quality time with the Doublemint Twins.
SAM: (quietly)
No problem.
DEAN: Really? Well, I got to say, I was expecting a weary sigh or an eye roll, something.
SAM: Not at all. You deserve to have a little fun.
This encounter is jarring on a number of levels. Dean coming to the window to give his brother the thumbs up indicates that he knows Sam is watching and derives some kind of amusement or pleasure from the fact. Even given the intimate nature of what he's about to do, he keeps that bond with his brother, drawing him in. Sam is aware of what is happening inside the house, which makes his decision to enter the bedroom, knowing what he will find, pretty transgressive. This is reminiscent of the lack of boundaries displayed when Sam watches Dean on the vibrating bed. He voices distain, but never actually avoids seeing his brother in a sexual context – quite the opposite in this case.
This 'over sharing' works the other way around. In season 4's I Know What You Did Last Summer, Sam confesses to Dean all about the alliance he formed with Ruby while his brother was in Hell – including the sexual nature of their relationship:
DEAN: Sam?
SAM: Yeah?
DEAN: Too much information.
SAM: Hey, I told you I was coming clean.
DEAN: Yeah, but now I feel dirty.
Sam, knowing how betrayed his brother feels by his seduction at the hands of the demon, makes a full and frank confession. He is seeking benediction, laying it all out like a faithless lover in hope of forgiveness. I would argue that Sam's relationship with Ruby is born out of grief and desperation. Sam is a shell of a man having watched his brother dragged to Hell, and bent on avenging his death. Ruby offers him power, and a hope at revenge when he has nothing else left. Dean mirrors his brother's transgression in the following episode, Heaven and Hell, when he sleeps with a non-human - the angel, Anna. While this act serves to underscore the roles the boys are being forced into as vessels on opposing sides of a holy war, it can also be seen as retaliation. Dean reacts to Ruby's presence by sleeping with her antithesis. But Dean immediately sells Anna out the second Sam's life is threatened by the angels who wish to destroy her.
Sam's penchant for 'banging monsters' is a metaphor for his inability to conform to a heteronormative lifesyle. His brief relationship with Madison in season 2's Heart could be seen as his last attempt to form a genuine attachment, but this ends in tragedy when she turns out to be the werewolf they have been hunting and he has to kill her. Madison's death is effectively also the death of Sam's hope of ever having that regular life. From here on, his dealings with the opposite sex are either with 'monstrous' women like Ruby and Cara in Sex and Violence – although the latter is later vindicated – or, in a reversal, with a string of meaningless one night stands while he himself is 'monstrous', having lost his soul. Even with Cara, before he loses his soul, Sam's attitude towards relationships is shown to be irrevocably altered:
DEAN: You gonna say goodbye to Cara?
SAM: Nah. Not interested.
DEAN: Really? Why not?
SAM: What’s the point?
DEAN: Well, look at you. Love ‘em and leave ‘em.
In the season 6 episode, Clap Your Hands If You Believe, Dean, thinking he has been abducted by aliens, is particularly distressed to return, only to find Sam having sex with a 'hippie chick' he has just met instead of out looking for him. Sam argues that he had no leads, so searching would have been futile, and Dean tries to explain to his soulless brother that even if there was nothing he could have done, he should have been too upset to pursue his own pleasure:
DEAN: You sit in the dark and you feel the loss.
SAM: Absolutely, but couldn't I just do all that and have sex with the hippie chick?
DEAN: NO!
There is an irony and an echo of past mistakes in Dean's words, as they could refer back to his time in Hell when Sam felt his brother's loss so keenly he was driven towards Ruby and demon blood addiction. There is an element of possessiveness too – Dean is upset that his position as Sam's first priority has been waylaid by a casual encounter. It is also interesting that Dean does not leave the motel once he interrupts his brother and 'Patchouli'. Instead he watches them get up and search for their clothes, before unceremoniously slamming the door on Sam's conquest. This again underlines the lack of boundaries the boys have, and the voyeuristic element of their relationship.
The full extent of Soulless Sam's sexual exploits during his missing year become apparent in Unforgiven, when a newly re-souled Sam is lured back to a town he hunted in. Women have been going missing presumed dead, and it is Dean who realises the connection:
DEAN: Sam, answer the phone, damn it. I found the connection between the missing chicks. They all banged the same dude -- You. It's you, Sam.
This episode serves as justification of the younger Sam's fears about getting close to anyone after Jessica's death. Indeed, not many women survive an intimate encounter with Sam Winchester.
Dean's attempts do not fare much better. We get a brief suggestion that he was capable of loving Cassie, although interestingly, in Sam, Interrupted, the idea that they had a relatively long term relationship is contradicted by Dean himself:
DR. CARTWRIGHT: Okay. When was the last time you were in a long-term relationship?
DEAN: Define long-term.
DR. CARTWRIGHT: More than two months.
DEAN: Never
Dean's promiscuity is interesting in light of Sam's comments about him being 'butch' and 'overcompensating'. Many of Dean's conquests are stereotypes – women who are overtly sexual and available. A lot of Dean's interactions with women are fleeting - so seemingly not consummated, and many of his experiences are relayed to the viewer by Dean himself – an unreliable narrator. He also finds himself in situations where he attracts male attention and is forced to protest that he "doesn't swing that way".
But there are instances where Dean's sexual tastes are portrayed as experimental, his sexuality more fluid. His speech is littered with references to sexual acts, pornography and positions ('plushies', 'the full cowgirl', Casa Erotica). In The End, Dean and his future self establish their credentials by sharing a secret only they would know about. That secret turns out to be that Dean enjoyed being made to wear women's underwear by a partner in his teens. He often quips about strippers and interestingly, having a threesome with twins, and it's clear in the humorous episode, Changing Channels, that Dean has a crush on the male lead of his favourite TV show, Dr. Sexy MD:
But Dean's few attempts at deeper, lasting relationships with women are equally as doomed as Sam's. Aside from Cassie who is unattainable, Dean's next long term relationship exists only in his mind. In the season 2 episode, What Is And What Should Never Be, Dean is kidnapped by a Djinn and locked inside an elaborate fantasy life while his body is being drained in the real world. In this alternate existence, Mary and Jessica were never killed, but John has died of natural causes and Dean is settled with a nurse called Carmen. She appears to be the ideal partner, but Dean cannot be truly happy in this life because he and Sam are not close.
We are told Dean 'hooked up with Rachael Nave' – Sam's prom date - which Dean proudly admits "does sound like him". In this reality where Jess is alive and Sam and Dean have "nothing in common" (because they were never hunters and didn't grow up living in each other's pockets), this 'typically Dean' behaviour irks his brother. It seems that the success of their respective relationships is only possible at the detriment of the brothers' intimacy.
The fractious relationship between the boys is particularly interesting because, in terms of the narrative, it is incongruous. The Djinn relies on Dean being so seduced by the fantasy that he won’t want to break the spell. The dreamscape is constructed around Dean's wishes, so it follows that if he desires his relationship with Sam to be better, it should improve. But this is not the case:
DEAN: My favourite. I guess you know me pretty well.
CARMEN (sits down next to him):
'Fraid so. You alright?
DEAN: Sammy and I... You know we don't get along.
CARMEN: Well, you don't spend a lot of time together. I mean, I just think you don't know each other all that well.
DEAN: Hmm.
CARMEN: For the record: He doesn't know what he's missing.
DEAN: I can fix things with Sam. I can make it up to him.
In a mirror of the pilot, Dean breaks into their family home and confronts Sam, dragging him along for the ride as he pieces together his situation, just as he pulled him away from Stanford. Once Dean realises his 'reality' is just an illusion, no amount of persuasion from his mother, Jessica or Carmen can get him to stay. Dean accepts that what he and Sam do in the real world means sacrifice, but ultimately he won't trade because his relationship with Sam is damaged. He takes his own life in the dream to get back to his frantic brother:
SAM: Thank God. Thought I lost you for a second.
(He pulls out the tube in DEAN's throat)
DEAN: You almost did.
Dean is quite explicit in his reasons for breaking out of the trance when he speaks to Sam.
SAM (smiles):So we didn't get along then, huh?
DEAN: No..
SAM: I thought it was supposed to be this perfect fantasy.
DEAN: It wasn't. It was just a wish. I wished for Mom to live. If Mom never died, we never went hunting and you and me just never... you know.
SAM: Yeah. Well, I'm glad we do.
Dean cannot be content without Sam in his life constantly. It's not enough for him that he and Sam are settled in their respective relationships and lives, and that they are brothers. He wants all of Sam. He keeps digging until he uncovers the truth, and once he has, he won't leave his brother alone in the real world. He is choosing their insularity and co-dependence over comfort.
This is mirrored in the season 6 finale, The Man Who Knew Too Much, when Sam's 'broken wall' results in him being locked inside his mind with fragments of his own personality. His guide on this journey is an attractive bartender with a smart mouth called Robin, and there seems to be a rapport between the two. But it transpires that Soulless Sam shot the real Robin to get to a demon who was holding her for leverage. Robin wears an amulet and a leather jacket so that, visually, she resembles a female version of Dean.
On meeting the version of himself that remembers his time in Hell, Sam is told to stay in his fantasy and to "go find that bartender, go find Jess". But he refuses without hesitation, wanting to get back to his body:
HELL SAM: “Why is this so important to you?”
SAM: “You know me, you know why. I’m not leaving my brother alone out there.”
As demonstrated time and time again, their exceptional bond enables the brothers to find their way back to each other whether they are in Heaven, Hell or locked inside themselves.
Dean's only other attempt at a lasting 'apple pie life' is with Lisa and Ben and, while he cares about them, he only settles with them for the year that his brother is in Hell because he made a promise to Sam that he would. This is made clear in Exile on Main Street when he first finds out Sam has been back for almost the whole year:
SAM: You finally had what you wanted, Dean.
DEAN: I wanted my brother! Alive.
And reiterated later when Dean discovers Bobby knew about Sam's resurrection:
DEAN: Do you have any clue what walking away meant for me?
BOBBY: Yeah -- a woman and a kid and not getting your guts ripped out at age 30. That's what it meant.
DEAN: That woman and that kid -- I went to them because you (points at Sam) asked me to.
BOBBY: Good.
DEAN: Good for who? I showed up on their doorstep half out of my head with grief. God knows why they even let me in. I drank too much. I had nightmares. I looked everywhere. I collected hundreds of books, trying to find anything to bust you out.
SAM: You promised you'd leave it alone.
DEAN: Of course I didn't leave it alone! Sue me! A damn year? You couldn't put me out of my misery?
This is Dean laid absolutely bare. Even while trying to keep his promise, he cannot entirely turn his back on 'the life', and certainly not on his brother. While he manages to stay faithful to Lisa (as demonstrated in the opening of the episode when he tears up the waitress' phone number) and maintains a veneer of domesticity and normality, the implication is that this is more to do with the fact he is 'sitting in the dark and feeling the loss' than because he genuinely wants to make a go of things. In much the same way as he turns down Jo when he's grieving for John, Dean's newly tamed nature speaks more about how numb and broken he is without Sam than how much he values his relationship with Lisa. By his own admission, he is in 'misery'.
Once his brother is returned to him, Dean's reasons for staying become clouded by guilt. Knowing they are potentially jeopardised by association, Dean stays with the Braedens for a while but it is clear his heart is not in it, as Lisa herself tells Dean in You Can't Handle The Truth:
LISA: You've got so much buried in there, and you push it down and you push it down. Do you honestly think you can go through life like that and not freak out? Just what? Drink half a fifth a night and you're good?
DEAN: Hey, you knew what you signed up for.
LISA: Yeah, but I didn't expect Sam to come back. And I'm glad he's okay, I am, but the minute he walked through that door, I knew it was over.
Lisa here is summarising the extent to which the Winchesters' "crazy, tangled up thing" defines them by this stage in their story. Both have proved completely incapable of sustaining a long-term heteronormative relationship, and even Dean's flirtatiousness has dried up somewhat as demonstrated in Frontierland:
DEAN: Think we'll have time to hit on saloon girls?
(Sam gives Dean a look)
DEAN: I'm kidding. Come on.
In Let It Bleed, Dean asks Castiel to wipe Lisa and Ben's memories of him, meaning he can never go back, thus ensuring by the end of season 6 that a line has been drawn under his own efforts at having a family which conforms to social norms. Sam is once again all he has.
All In The Family
While Sam and Dean's unorthodox relationship is the crux of Supernatural, it is set within a network of equally complex and ambiguous connections. The notion of 'family' while being central to the universe they inhabit, is often complicated and even perverse.
Sibling relationships especially are often portrayed as unhealthy. In Simon Said, the boys meet Andy - another child who was visited by the Yellow Eyed Demon. Although he is suspected of killing people in his town using mind control, it transpires that the crimes are being perpetrated by his long lost "evil twin", Webber, who is murdering people he feels kept them apart. In Bloodlust, it is revealed that Gordon's grief at having his "beautiful" sister turned vampire drove him to hunt her and become consumed by hatred for all things supernatural. In Playthings, Rose and Maggie are sisters, separated by death as children, but still bound to one another. Rose is only able to prevent Maggie's spirit killing people by giving up her own life so that they can be playmates forever.
The angels and demons of Supernatural have their own attachments and hierarchies – most clearly illustrated by the battle between Lucifer and his angelic brothers. God is depicted as an absent father. Demons such as Crowley and Azazel are also fathers.
Family ties also extend beyond mere biology. Sam and Dean look to Bobby as a father figure before, and especially after, John's death. Their bond is such that Balthazar assures Soulless Sam that killing Bobby will be patricide for the purpose of scarring his vessel to ensure his soul cannot be re-seated.
Dean and Castiel have a "profound bond", forged when Castiel raised Dean from perdition, and this is strengthened as Castiel becomes more humanised with the passage of time. Dean even refers to him as "like a brother" in the latter part of season 6 when trying to persuade Castiel away from his determination to open Purgatory.
But Dean and Castiel's relationship also deviates from the traditional concept of familial love. Castiel's regard and affection for the Winchesters – especially Dean – causes him to rebel. Much like with Sam, Cas's faith in Dean is such that when it is tested, the repercussions are often highly emotional and sometimes violent as demonstrated in the following scenes:
"I did it, all of it, for you!"
"I gave everything for you!"
Dean plays on Castiel's seeming naivety and taunts him sexually, flirtatiously, in much the same way he does with Sam, as in The Point of No Return, where he draws attention to the intensity of Castiel's gaze:
DEAN: Well, Cas, not for nothing, but the last person who looked at me like that…I got laid.
The angel's weakness for the Winchester boys, and the obvious tension between Cas and Dean in particular, is also highlighted by other characters. Balthazar refers to Cas as "your boyfriend" to Sam. He also tells Dean in My Heart Will Go On:
“Sorry, you have me confused with the other angel. You know, the one in the dirty trench coat who's in love with you.”
This may be partly jest, but as with the brothers' love for one another, Castiel's sacrifice and his willingness to rebel against God himself for the Winchesters is excessive. It is also part of a broader tradition of homoeroticism on the show. There is palpable tension between Dean and Castiel, and also between Sam and Castiel. There is also a hint at a deeper love turned bad between Cas and Balthazar. Trickster/Gabriel flirts with and sexually teases the boys and Crowley uses sexuality to taunt Bobby, Sam, Dean and especially Castiel, referring to him as "the bottom in this relationship" – an explicit reference to gay sex.
Balthazar's brash and gung-ho nature is often used to bring the shadier subtext to the fore. In the season 6 finale, The Man Who Knew Too Much, he interrupts Dean watching over an unconscious Sam, asking,
“How's Sleeping Beauty? You didn't steal any kisses, I trust?”
This serves to recall Dean's indictment of watching someone sleep as 'rapey', and also the many occasions that the boys have watched each other in a less than wholesome way.
Incest is referred to both directly and indirectly with surprising frequency in the show. The season 4 episode, Family Remains, deals with the subject directly. One of the cases the boys investigate turns out not to be supernatural at all, but rather the crimes are being perpetrated by the damaged children of a woman who was raped by her own father, kept locked away for their whole lives.
In the season 4 episode, In The Beginning, Mary Winchester makes a deal with the Yellow Eyed Demon who is inhabiting her father's body. She agrees that he can visit Sam in ten years time in exchange for bringing John (whom he has just killed) back to life. The deal is sealed with a kiss, which presents the viewer with the visual of young Mary kissing her father passionately, if unwillingly, on the mouth.
Sam and Dean also comment that they find their mother attractive on the occasions they are sent back in time to meet her as a young woman. In the same episode, Dean says:
“Sammy, wherever you are - Mom is a babe! I'm so going to hell. Again.”
And in season 5's The Song Remains The Same, it is Sam who cannot stop staring at the young vision of his mother:
SAM: W—oh. Yeah, yeah. Um, I'm just, um — You are so beautiful.
JOHN [leans forward].
DEAN: He means that in a—a non-weird, wholesome, family kind of a way.
SAM: Yeah, right.
Dean’s attraction to his mother in In The Beginning is seemingly referred to by the episodic title of The End:
Superwiki tells us: The episode title might refer to The Doors Song "The End", which uses themes of the apocalypse and a world gone mad ('all the children are insane'). The song also evokes the image of the devil ('the snake is long, 7 miles...and he's old, and his skin is cold'), and has an Oedipal part, where a son goes to murder his sister, brother and finally father, to confront his mother, who he wishes to have sex with.
The boys’ discovery that John fathered Adam Winchester, leads Dean to remark that he’s “thinking about Dad sex” in 4:19 Jump The Shark. Incest is also alluded to in the season 6 episode And Then There Were None, notably in a taunt from their grandfather:
(Samuel gets up. Sam blocks his path)
SAMUEL Relax. Bathroom break. So unless you want to hold it for me...
Bobby also makes a joke involving the brothers in the same episode when they meet up with Rufus:
DEAN: Well, look what the cat dragged in.
SAM: It really is good to see you, Rufus.
RUFUS: I can believe it. It must get old dealing with this miserable cuss here all by yourself.
SAM: Is it that obvious?
BOBBY: Why don't you three get a room?
Indeed, the boys' rooming habits lead to much of the speculation touched on earlier. They are assumed to be a couple in 1:08 Bugs, in 2:11 Playthings, and in 1:18 Something Wicked. On checking into a motel, Dean is confronted by a young boy called Michael:
Michael: King or two queens?
Dean: (Asking for a room) Two queens.
Michael (Looks at Sam waiting outside): Yeah, I bet.
Michael and his younger brother, Asher, are mirrors of Dean and Sam, and remind Dean of an incident in their childhood when he left Sam unattended and put him at risk from a Shtriga which nearly killed him. It is worth noting that although Michael assumes Sam and Dean are a couple, Dean never corrects him. Although he uses the fact that he and Michael are both big brothers who would do anything for their little brothers to bond with the kid, he never actually tells Michael that Sam is the little brother in question even though Sam is often in the same room. Michael only finds out when overhearing Dean call Sam 'little brother' in a moment of panic once they have killed the monster. Dean's angst at having let the Shtriga get away once before and his desire to protect Sam at any cost is apparent in the way he continues to shoot at its lifeless body after it attacks the now adult Sam.
While their being mistaken for a couple is usually played for laughs – most recently inFrontierland when Sam tells Judge Mortimer “We're looking for a man” and the judge replies, “I'll bet” - occasionally the brothers themselves act the part to obtain information. Dean calls Sam "honey" in Bugs and playfully slaps him on the ass, and in A Very Supernatural Christmas, they lead a shopkeeper to believe they are together to gain intel for their case:
SHOPKEEPER: Help you, boy?
DEAN: Uh, hope so. Uh we’re playing Jenga with the Walshes the other night, and a… he hasn’t shut up since about this Christmas wreath. I don’t know you tell him.
SAM: Sure. It was yummy.
SHOPKEEPER: I sell a lot of wreaths, guys.
SAM: Right, right, but you see, this one would have been really special. It had, uh, it had, uh, green leaves, um, white buds on it. It might have been made of, uh… meadowsweet?
SHOPKEEPER: Well, aren’t you fussy one?
DEAN: (Smiles) He is…
This tactic is interesting within the context of the episode, in which we have the scene of awkward domesticity between the boys when they are determined to have Christmas together but unable to face the reality that it will be Dean's last.
In the season 4 opener, Lazarus Rising, Ruby watches Sam and Dean – who is freshly back from Hell - share an emotional reunion hug, and asks them if they are "together". Although Dean doesn’t recognise her in her new body, she knows that they are brothers. This is both a taunt and foreshadows the role she will play as an interloper, responsible for damaging their relationship.
Incest and the show’s perceived subtext is dealt with in the self-referential ‘meta’ episodes. The season 4 episode Monster At The End Of This Book, deals directly with the concept of Wincest and slash fiction. Finding definitions of ‘Sam girls’, ‘Dean girls’ and ‘Sam/Dean girls’ online prompts the following exchange:
DEAN: What’s a slash fan?
SAM: As in Sam slash Dean. Together.
DEAN: Like together together? They do know we’re brothers right?
SAM: Doesn’t seem to matter.
Having the Winchesters acknowledge this perception of them, their bewilderment at it, is both comic, and serves to highlight how blinded they are to the obsessive and unusual nature of their relationship.
In season 5’s The Real Ghostbusters, Sam and Dean attend a Supernatural fan convention and are confronted by lovers Demian and Barnes who role-play as Sam and Dean. When Dean questions why anyone would want to pretend to be him and Sam, Demian cites their love as the appeal:
DEMIAN: I'm not sure you get what the story's about.
DEAN: That so?
DEMIAN: In real life, he sells stereo equipment. I fix copiers. Our lives suck. But Sam and Dean. To wake up every morning and save the world. To have a brother who would die for you. Well, who wouldn't want that?
DEAN: Well, maybe you've got a point.
The fact that they are lovers in ‘real life’ who hold Sam and Dean’s relationship up as an ideal, something to aspire to, means we once again draw parallels between romantic love and familial love. The edges begin to blur.
Season 5’s Changing Channels also presents some interesting situations in terms of the brothers’ relationship. In a parody of Knight Rider, Sam is turned into the Impala, an object Dean refers to as his ‘baby’ and fetishises deeply. Much of the comedy in these scenes is derived from the fact that Dean must get inside Sam and retrieve things from his trunk:
DEAN: Rummages in the trunk of the car.
SAM: Dean?
DEAN: What?
SAM: That, uh, feels really uncomfortable.
The way that Dean has previously joked about Sam being possessed in Born Under A Bad Sign (“Dude you... You like full on had a girl inside you for like a whole week. It’s pretty naughty”) and Bobby’s anti-possession charms stopping the demon "getting back up in ya"(“That sounds vaguely dirty, but er, thanks”) makes it difficult for the audience to experience these scenes without hearing sexual connotations. The idea of Sam’s transformed body as an object of desire is reinforced by Trickster/Gabriel:
TRICKSTER, appearing from nowhere: Wow. Sam. Get a load of the rims on you.
SAM: Eat me.
The nature of Sam’s objectification and the inappropriate intimacy this affords Dean is then underlined:
TRICKSTER: Well played, boys. Well played. Where'd you get the holy oil?
DEAN: Well, you might say we pulled it out of Sam's ass.
In season 6’s The French Mistake, Sam and Dean are sent to another dimension whereSupernatural is a TV show, and meet their real life counterparts, actors Jared and Jensen. In this alternative reality, Jared is married to Genevieve – the actress who played Ruby (as he is in reality) which makes Dean very uncomfortable. His old insecurity creeps in when he suggests that Sam might prefer to stay in this world, where there is no supernatural and no magic, and he has an attractive wife. But Sam rebuffs this, citing the fact that they are "not even brothers here" as the reason he’d rather go back to their dangerous, less comfortable life. This harks back to What Is And What Should Never Be. Jared and Jensen do not get on. Someone who resembles the demon that came between them shares a bed with Sam. They cannot exist in a world where their relationship is damaged, where they are not everything to each other, even if all other aspects of that world are preferable.
In the season 6 episode, Two And A Half Men, Sam finds a baby Shapeshifter and drags Dean away from Lisa and Ben to help him look after it. This episode deals with the notion of fatherhood. Dean feels like a father to Ben, but he still leaves the Braedens to hunt with his soulless brother. He is aware he doesn’t want Ben to have the kind of childhood he had – on the run or ‘on lockdown' - but Sam accuses him of making the same mistakes John made with them.
Sam and Dean name the baby ‘Bobby John’ after their dead father and their living surrogate father. Interestingly, it is Sam who suggests ‘John’, and Dean who says ‘Bobby’. Dean's unswerving devotion to his father has been somewhat adjusted since John's death, by his relationship with Bobby and all he has been through. Sam - no longer in posession of his soul - plumps for John, although he has always had the more strained relationship with their father. Since a young age he has placed faith in his older brother, even gifting him the amulet he intended as a present for John once he became disillusioned with his father's lies and failure to come home for Christmas.
Placing Sam and Dean in the roles of parents to the baby monster, muddling through and on the road, is both comic, but also juxtaposed with the life of domesticity and fatherhood Dean is being pulled away from. Once again, when presented with the safer, ‘normal’ alternative of a family life with a woman and child, Dean chooses Sam, minus his soul, a baby monster, and motel rooms. Dysfunction over normalcy. Sam over all.
While Dean’s entire existence is focused on Sam and vice versa, fans’ enjoyment of the show also seems reliant on the state of Sam and Dean's relationship. However you view it, their "crazy, tangled up thing" elicits fervour and devotion and inspires fan fiction, art, videos and heated debate. While the show gets dark and characters are lost along the road, the love between the brothers keeps us hooked and gives us succour. It remains to be seen where Castiel's betrayal and Sam's damaged mind will lead us in season 7, but the Winchesters are together which means they can overcome pretty much anything. As Dean Winchester tells his brother in Born Under A Bad Sign,
DEAN: But you're, you're okay, and that's what matters. Everything else we can deal with.
N.B. I am in no way affiliated with Supernatural or CW. All views expressed in this piece are entirely my own. This article is purely for fun - no offence intended.
-- An how about Dean`s pattenning over Sam`s chest and holding his face tight in his arms in order to watch if there are any damages that Gordon could make. Middle of seasone 2