stacked day 41: 8.05

half personal essay half episode analysis

Can I be honest with you, ten or so dear people who read this newsletter that I put out at a harried rate? Yesterday, I wanted to give up. I started the episode and texted a friend, what if I just didn't write? I don't have anything to say about this episode. They asked me if I felt tired with stacked or tired with the episode in particular; I thought about how lackluster I felt writing day 40, and how typo-riddled my writing on Mary Winchester was because I simply did not have the energy to check my work. I am not someone who finishes things: partial drafts haunt my desktop, notebooks for specific projects are sad and abandoned, a myriad of hobby supplies on a shelf in my closet unmastered. I don’t often know what I want, my goals morphing with my mood and the state of the world, but honestly? I really, really, really want to finish this.

In December 2022-January 2023¹, I got super into needle felting. I sat hunched over, every day, and made a little creature. My first attempts were horrendous, but by the time my work schedule resumed, I felt confident enough to gift creatures to my friends. I still make creatures on occasion now, but each time I attempt, I am more aware of how it affects my body: my posture is never right, I am never in a well-lit room and so it strains my eyes, and on and on. It's like the frenzy made me unaware of how irresponsible I was being with myself. The last creature I made was a Kirby a few months ago, sitting at a desk with my lamp on, Ted Lasso² playing. It was better for me. I haven't made anything since.

I do love the frenzy, of acting without thinking. I'm a pretty boring person, and so it mostly manifests around what I'm watching, what I'm filling my time at home with; what makes you feel like the rest of the world fades away? What alters the way you see landscapes, pick your produce, spend your mornings? It is so often my shows. Yesterday, I spoke to a creative writing class about my chapbook. One student asked about the role imagination and memory play in my poetry; I don't think I gave a great answer, but I've continued to think about it. I think that's sort of all my work is, the interplay between imagination and memory: a poem is crafted from a moment in my memory, and then a world is built around it. I brought up Haikyuu to give my answer, of the way Kenma sees the world: like it is a video game. This fixation alters his external world, playing on imagination. I think that's how it works for me, too; the frenzy fuels my excitement to do, to see where else I can reflect my obsessions.

I watched the Haikyuu movie last night, finally; I turned off my phone and tried to emulate the theater experience from bed. I cried a lot, laughed, delighted. I say that I miss the person I was when Haikyuu was my frenzy. When something bad would happen at work, I would think: today you are the defeated, but what will you become tomorrow? and I'd feel motivated for that tomorrow. These days, I feel like that Barbie meme:

It is a symptom of my late 20s, isolated unemployed Palestinian loser during an ongoing genocide, the depression that's always been there wrapped up in climate collapse and everything else that could possibly be awful. I know we are not meant to give into despair, it is not productive, but I don't know how productive I feel these days. I felt great watching a movie before bed last night, especially with my phone off. I wished I did that every night and wondered why I felt like that was out of reach. As the frenzy of putting this newsletter together fades, that's what I'm left with: what hours do I have to spend each day? and is this where I'm putting them?

Well, yeah. About ten minutes after I texted Nico how this episode is boring and I have nothing to say and I hate Amelia, Benny starts telling Dean about his past. His maker, whom vampires refer to as their father, always protected their coven but kept them separate from the rest of vampire society. He was a good and loyal son. (Does something sound familiar to you?) But, he strayed when he fell in love. Hmmmm!!!!!!! Here, I am reminded: Supernatural is my longest frenzy. It does not matter what I do to express it. I am bashing my head into a metaphorical wall: there is always more to think about. Sometimes, when I think about my life, I think: of course this is the only thing that makes sense.

The first half of Season 8 is clunky; it feels like Jeremy Carver³ hates Sam, which unfortunately kind of makes me hate Sam. I've been trying to be kinder to him as I write this newsletter, because I want to refine my ability to write about character and television, but it really is hard in these episodes. The way he and Dean are at odds in is so intense from seemingly nowhere, especially sandwiched between Season 7 and Season 9 episodes where there is a legitimate betrayal on Dean's part. This bubbling anger doesn’t really feel like the Sam we know, who shuts down into pragmatism when he's upset. Dean is the one who acts with anger when he's lonely or afraid; his anxieties about Benny bring out both. The instinct to parallel the brothers' plotlines is conventional, but it's their different ways of dealing that's really crafted the intrigue. In Season 4, Sam is falling into the darkness with Ruby, trying to understand it as good; Dean, recovering from the literal pit of hell, pulls the guy who got him out towards their side. This push-and-pull is not exactly symmetry, but the ways in which they move through it allows the pieces to not line up and still feel satisfying⁴.

It is interesting, in these parallels, how often the Sam story is romantic while the Dean story is about him getting a friend. It's probably because of the way fans reacted to Dean love interests in the past? and so the writers not really wanting to push, or Two Romances at Once is too much to play around with. I think about Season 6 and how in their year apart, they both gain families. The reality is: they both need more friends! Name a single friend that Sam has. But, with these parallels, in practice, the intimacy Dean has with his “friend” storyline is just about the same as (or more!) what Sam has with his proper love interest. Big fan of friendship over here, but when it comes to narrative…It is achingly blatant with Benny and Amelia; there is an attempt to place the stakes of these flashbacks on the same footing, but it's just impossible. Sam is working odd jobs at the motel Amelia lives, where she is disproportionately rude to him. There's an attempt to relate the two: she, too, is a weirdo drifter who lives in a motel by choice—is that hot? But we know Sam and Dean lived in motels because of their hunting upbringing; what's her excuse? The relating doesn't land satisfyingly, the way it immediately tracks when Benny is telling Dean about his past.

Dean going off with Benny is intercut with moments in purgatory after recovering Castiel; Benny insists the angel puts a target on their back. Cas agrees. Dean continually pushes back: he said it before, he needs Cas (emotionally not strategically which Cas doesn't seem to understand), and the portal out of purgatory is for humans, so he calls the shots. He doesn't seem to fully trust Benny yet, either. We know Cas won't make it out of purgatory, his reluctance to stay with the two of them seemingly proven right in that flashback earlier this season. It's interesting, to see Dean so weary of Benny in the past and so devoted to him in the present to the point where he lies to his brother. What solidifies that trust, of course, is Castiel. The three of them are attacked by Leviathan; just as one is about to chomp on Cas, Benny cuts its head off. You can see the shift: someone who cares for Cas, despite the danger he puts them in, is worthy of trust.

Something I really love is fandom polls that cause useless drama; the way the simple posing of a question can make people incredibly defensive, cruel, on and on. It's fun to feel something twist ugly deep in you, and think, jesus christ, why do I care? then spend some time seeing lots and lots of people who did not second guess that instinct. (Reader, I suggest you always second guess that ugly, ugly instinct). My favorite in recent history was: was it wrong of Dean to stay in Purgatory looking for Cas when it meant delaying getting back to Sam? Like, oh my god. Has anyone ever had that thought before? Dean is pretty cagey with the details about Purgatory, so for all Sam knows, he got back as soon as he could. It's unclear how long it takes for Benny and Dean to find Cas, but I'm not sure a few weeks would have made a difference in terms of what Sam does up on the surface. It is a funny thought to follow though, especially with some of the groundwork set in this episode. When Benny says he strayed because he fell in love, well, the sirens did go off in my head. Did Dean stray from his family (Sam) in looking for Cas? Season 8 is a mess in its confusion of players, everyone reminding someone of someone else, Dean and Amelia and Benny and Cas and Amelia's shitty ex who we'll meet later all rotating around to fill the role of person I lost in someone's sad little head. This episode adds another player, Andrea, Benny's girlfriend before he died and went to Purgatory. We meet Andrea at the coven. Benny kills his maker and hopes she'll leave the others with him; she says no, that she's going to stay. He looks at her and says, oh. You always knew you were going to stay.

The thing is, there's always more to think about Supernatural. I'll spoil something for everyone who doesn't watch the show and is experiencing it via my recaps: when Dean steps through the portal out of Purgatory, Cas's hand doesn't slip because of the intensity, or Dean's grasp isn't tight enough. He deliberately lets go, sends Dean off to the surface so he can remain to carry out penance. The memory we see in those early Purgatory flashbacks is Dean's head repressing the reality: that Cas left him. That Cas always knew he was going to leave him. Did I ever really process this foreshadowing, with Benny and Andrea? No, no I did not. I feel retroactively justified, though, about the serial-killer-red-string-board of conspiracy that Season 8 brought out in me as a teenager. What are we saying here? Only the frenzied can really uncover it, I think.

Stray Observations

• me at a convention in 2024: why were y'all so orange in Season 8

• Despite being the only episode to actually air on Halloween, this episode has nothing to do with Halloween :( I kind of want to dig into my Twitter archive from this date and see what I was up to. Probably handing out candy in between watching…

• I really love the score in Purgatory!!!! Supernatural has the same composer for all fifteen seasons, Jay Gruska. I enjoyed hearing him talk about the music for “Monster Movie" on the Then & Now podcast, but I hope they have him back to talk about the Dance Sugar Plum Fairy(I think that's what it is) whistles???? Rob and Rich if you're reading this I have a request. and also sorry for being mean

• In many ways this essay is just variations on my poem about Haikyuu and my poem about Supernatural

1. It definitely seems like an unemployment activity, but it was actually a “I am emotionally coping with the holidays" kind of thing. I did make a little Castiel once I fell back into SPN, but of ALL of the creatures I made he is the only one I LOST!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. a show i hate

3. I have questions for every person who has ever worked on Supernatural, but man Jeremy Carver is up there…someone whose individual episodes I love, someone whose seasons I…don’t? Maybe like the least???? I’m worried I’m overcompensating for how much I wanted to Love Season 8 as a teenager and how much misogyny informed my relationship to Season 6 & 7, but we’ll see.

4. It's a common rumor that Anna was meant to fill Cas's role through the rest of Season 4. I'm not sure how true it was based on things Julie McNiven has said, but having the boys' love interests be explicitly mirrored in that way is kind of funny on-the-nose for Supernatural. Sam fucking a demon, Dean fucking an angel, we get it!!! I LOVE!!!!! Julie, and I really like Anna (although I like her more when she's a disinterested angel) so it would be an interesting alternate world, but. That's not what we get! Sometimes I crave more symmetry from Season 4, if only to indulge the grand romance of an angel rebelling against Heaven for you…but unfortunately…homophobia was big in 2009.