dira | woobie button, meet MALLET.

I. Wow. I spent pretty much the entire episode with my hand over my mouth, just staring and trying to remember to breathe, because. DEAN. with the. DEAN.

Making his mother CONFIRM HER IDENTITY before he could relax with her. I'm surprised he didn't bust out a Christo, but, just. DEAN. Offered everything he wants, at the price of Sammy and the job. DEAN.

Is it, like, crazy-go-nuts to think that Jensen hit that so very far out of the park that there should be, like, award nominations? Gillian Anderson won a SAG back when the X-Files was all cult-y. (Ahahaha, and then I had this whole train of thought about "So maybe Sam is Scully, but clearly Jensen is Gillian Anderson, and, okay, maybe only funny to me.)

Anyway. I'm sure there's some perfectly reasonable external-to-the-plot explanation for John not being there, and I'm also sure that I would actually be dead on the floor of my living room if he had been, because oh OW, but--

Why isn't John there? This is Dean's Happy Fantasy Life. Sam's estrangement from him comes as an obvious and direct result of not hunting, something Dean obviously does want for Sam. It's a price Dean is content to accept and work around--and when the rubber meets the road, Sam's right there in the car with him. ("You're supposed to say 'jerk'." <3 <3 <3 and OH DEAN.)

Anyway! John having had a stroke a year ago doesn't follow logically from Mary not being killed by the demon, so it has to have some other purpose in giving Dean his Happy Fantasy Life. So let's see...

1) Absolution. John would have died when he did no matter what, and it's Not Dean's Fault.

This one just occurred to me as I typed the last sentence, but I like it a lot. I think this might have been one of the harder things for Dean to let go of--the idea that he'd gotten some alternate-reality parallax that let him off the hook for John's death. If it was just a fantasy, then so was that, and it's His Fault all over again--in fact, his father being dead in the fantasy is also His Fault, because he must have wanted it that way.

2) Resentment. Dean can't be happy in a life where Daddy's around.

I think that's not unreasonable--Dean's got to have buried some serious anger over the years. Plus, nobody wants their CO hanging around when they're on leave, especially not if that CO's going to pretend to be your pal while you're out of uniform.

3) Protectiveness. Dean couldn't respect a softball-playing civilian John and refuses to see him that way.

Sort of the opposite of #2 and sort of not. Dean refuses to see his father weak. Better that he's dead than vulnerable in front of Dean.

4) Guilt. Dean is so absolutely convinced that he can't be alive without his father dead that even in Dean's wish, John doesn't make it.

...any other ideas?

Also, you know, I worried about show and comic canon not stepping on each other's toes and then it kinda went and happened RIGHT AWAY THE FIRST WEEK. According to Supernatural: Origins #1, Mary's birthday is November 2. Anybody wanna tell me they're mowing bright green lawns in Kansas in November?

*facepalm*

Aaaaand I was going to say something else about how pathetically sleep-deprived I am and how I had an anxiety dream, not about being at work naked but about being at work in blue jeans, but this got a bit long, so I won't. *g*