Rewatch S4: Ep 03 (In The Beginning)

[hells_half_acre]

Supernatural S5 begins tomorrow!!! :-)

In celebration, I rewatched the episode that shows us how it all began....

In The Beginning

I had forgotten that this episode came so early in the season! Yay!

Interesting sidenote: Dean's cellphone says that it's 5:12pm, when he wakes up in Lawrence, Kansas.

John! He's a Sonny and Cher fan! Look how concerned he gets over their marital status!

Dean really hates Lawrence. I love his reaction to finding out where he is, even when he hasn't even figured out the time travel thing.

Then we get the reveal on the fact that the dude at the diner is his Dad...and man, I love the look Dean gets - the one that shows how much misses his Dad, and he sort of has him back in this moment, but he doesn't really...and MAN.

Dean: "So what? Angels got their hands on some Deloreans?"

The guy playing John, Matt Cohen, is REALLY good. I mean, maybe that's just his real voice, but he SOUNDS like a young JDM.

I love how John calls Dean "Mister" - it's really only then that I clued into the fact that Dean is OLDER than his Dad.

Then poor Dean gets beat up by his mother, and we get the Hunter!Mary reveal! It's done really well - I love Dean's reaction. I think that probably part of the Mary-Myth in the Winchester's Personal Mythology is that she was some defenseless innocent. For Dean to even find out that she was AWARE of the Supernatural would be mind-blowing - let alone find out that she was culpable in her own (and the Winchesters') destruction.

Samuel Campbell: "[John's] a really nice...naive civilian"
-I love Dean's face at that line.

Dean: "Did you find anything on the web....of information you've assembled?"
-It's cool that they sort of dove into this just a smidge - about what Hunting was like before the internet.

Dean: "My dad could see the future" - hehehe, I don't know why I love the way Dean delivers this line so much.

I think it's really saying something about Dean that he when he has a younger version of his mother infront of him, the first thing he does is ask what his dad was like. I think Dean really missed out on KNOWING his father as a person. Usually you start to get to know your parents as people when you reach your twenties...but probaby not so much when your parent is also your drill-sargent and boss-of-everything. And of course, there's the fact that John was an "obsessed bastard" (according to Dean himself)...I mean, don't get me wrong, from what we've seen of John, we know that he loved his kids very much, looked at them with great affection, and did his very best to do right by them. But yeah, Dean really lost both parents in that fire - because "sweet, kind, happily ever-after, and everything a hunter isn't" really doesn't describe the John Winchester we all know and love/loathe.

Mary: "I want to be safe"
-I read this GREAT meta somewhere...about how Sam and Dean both view safety as different things. Dean views being a Hunter as "safe" (at least in the first season), because he HAD normal, and normal meant that his mother was killed by something that they didn't know how to protect themselves from...normal meant NOT being safe. Whereas Sam, who never knew normal, saw that normal families didn't risk their lives for strangers, normal families didn't have to patch each other up in shabby motel rooms...normal was safe, and Hunting was dangerous. I love that this is echoed in Mary too - who, like Sam, has been brought up in Hunting and has never had normal - and thus, idealizes it and craves it.

Mary: "You want to now the worst thing I can think of - the very worst thing? It's for my children to be raised into this like I was. I won't let it happen."
-My heart broke along with Dean's on this one. There aren't even words. I love how it's after this that he tells her not to get out of bed on November 2nd, 1983. I think after that speech, it's not so much about saving her, as saving them all.

Then, we see that even after hell, Dean is still Dean - because he'll choose his family over the hundreds of people that Sam, he, and their Dad saved. He'll feel bad about it, but he won't regret it.

Dean: "You look into my eyes, you son of a bitch, because I'm the one that kills you!"
-Awesome! I LOVE the fact that Dean is the one that kills the YED. I think he, out of all of them, deserves to be the one to do it. Argue with me all you like on that.

Then, we have the start of the Winchester tradition of deal-making, and it starts with a Campbell trading a Winchester for a Winchester...even if she doesn't know it.

Castiel: "Destiny can't be changed. All roads lead to the same destination."
-Interesting....

Interesting timeline fact: Mary makes her deal 10 years before Sam is BORN, not 10 years before the demon comes calling.


Extended Scenes

We have Mary climbing out of a second story window in order to meet up with John and check out his new ride. It's early morning in Vancouver, and I'm glad they removed the morning sounds for the scene they did use, because it would have really messed with the timeline to have it suddenly be the next morning.

The second extended scene is when Mary and Dean talk to Charlie Wiltshire, but for the life of me I couldn't tell what was different about it, besides maybe some of the camera angles.


Commentary - Kripke and Carver

Kripke is a chatty Cathy. Haha, you only hear a few things from Carver, but the commentary is pretty interesting.

Kripke tells us there was no logistical reason for Jared's vacation - it just worked best for the episode for Dean to be alone. He mentioned how some fans thought it was because of promo shoots for Friday The 13th (he doesn't mention the rumour I heard, that it was because Jared had some sort of crazy flip-out and had to take a vacation), but that was not the case - they really just wanted Dean, because they needed Dean to learn the secrets that Sam's been keeping (some FOR OVER A YEAR!).

Kripke also pointed out some of the Back To The Future references, including that the doctor in the episode is called Doctor Brown.

He gets into the Time Paradox, and how he personally saw it as a close-ended loop - in which Dean ALWAYS goes back in time and causes things to happen. Apparently Jensen called him though, and was like "I make my Dad buy the Impala, but I make him buy it because he did buy it...this doesn't make sense!"

We also learn that Castiel's outfit is a tribute to John Constantine in the Hellblazer comics, which Kripke adores. (He says the three major influences on Supernatural are Hellblazer, Sandman series, and American Gods).

There is much description of how production works, and some of the tricks they use on the show to make things cheaper and whatnot.

There's an odd compliment to Jensen, when Kripke tells us that "by now, Jensen's really good at taking a punch" as the scene with Mary and Dean outside of the diner plays.

Then Kripke has to shatter the dream, because he full out ADMITS that he only ever has vague notions on where the story will go, and it's never as intricately planned out as people think it is. So, I guess my response to that is to say: Great job on making sure you at least have continuity!

Kripke's wife is named Deanna, and she was constantly complaining that he never named any characters after her.

Then we get to the scene where Dean and Mary are talking to Charlie Wiltshire and Kripke totally makes fun of the fact that Dean and Mary walk two feet away from him to have a "private" conversation. Kripke starts saying, "Um, I can still hear you! What was that about a demon?!" Haha, so true.

Then Carver and Kripke have a discussion on why it is that Mary may have forgotten Dean's warning not to get out of bed...basically, I believe they chalk it up to being in the moment and acting on the instinct to protect Sam.

Kripke then goes on to make fun of the writing-device of always having the Winchesters drop their weapons during pivotal moments.

We find out that although Carver wrote the episode, Kripke wrote the YED monologue, because it had to tie in so much mythology.

Apparently, Carver initially wrote that Mary KNEW she was selling Sam's future for John's life, but Kripke axed it, because it made Mary unsympathetic.

Misha! Both Kripke and Carver talk about how great Misha Collins is. Carver calls him "a hottie with a body" and Kripke calls him "a tall drink of water" and then goes on to say what a nice guy he is too.

Kripke tells us that this episode is really all about Sam, even though he's not even in it. They seem to have a tradition of that on this show too - remember the first season, when it was all about John and he was only in four episodes?
 

Tomorrow me and my sister watch Supernatural, then go for our nightly walk (during which we will discuss Supernatural), then I'll come back on here and share in all the happiness with the rest of you! :-)

Comments

[auriliawestlake.livejournal.com]

I've always held the notion that both fate and free will coexist happily; that one does not negate the existence of the other, and one of my favorite moments in Show was when Cas (even though I wasn't sure I liked him at the time or not) said that thing about all roads leading to the same destination. It perfectly illustrates what I mean by fate and free will coexisting - some things are fated to be; how you get there is up to you, though. It's like if I decided to go visit San Antonio: I could take the easiest path and hop on I-10 and just follow the signs, or I can decide to take the back roads and hit all the tiny, insignificant towns between here and there, and have far more fun getting there (I've always been a 'path less traveled' kind of chica); both options are equally valid and both get me to my destination, but the journey and experiences would be vastly different.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

That's a really nice visual! I like that. I was contemplating something along those lines in my head, I think, but you put it rather nicely. After all, it's not the destination that matters, it's the journey. I think the journey is what makes us who we are, not where we end up at the end of all things.