stacked day 46: 5.08, 6.07, 9.05, 15.18

despair

[studio audience applause]

I grew up afraid of the evil eye. My mother would whisper about people who praised their children on Facebook, worried about the ramifications of everyone looking. To celebrate oneself was to engage in risk, if someone was watching. I learned: there is always someone watching. Surveillance begins in the home; for some, it means a policing of their clothes, their phone, their friends, and so on. For me, it manifested in a hyper-innate sense of orderliness, meaning my parents knew every nook & cranny of my bedroom, noticed when I, or it, were out of place. Then, of course there is the surveillance of the state, and so on, so familiar to the Arab. This surveillance, litigated by the public: I felt so often aware of what I was saying if there was someone to see it. I have always included evil eye in my domestic conception of surveillance—a gaze not necessarily in the home, but of it, and against it. Most importantly, it is cosmic. A rise and fall that works because the universe craves it so.

From every angle of looking, this awareness manifested in social anxiety, agoraphobia, paranoia. Wherever I felt restricted in life, though, I had freedom in the books, the shows, the games I spent time with. And so, as motivated by art: my teenage coping mechanism morphed that feeling of watched into performance. Divine dictation. If I believed in the evil eye and all cosmic machinations that made it so, let that balance be done upon us via a writers room. To section a life: how easy it is, to explain turmoil by citing a midseason finale. Citing viewership numbers and message boards. If you must be watched, understand the strife by pulling the television from its screen. Maybe it can feel momentous. Maybe it can feel fun.

5.08 “Changing Channels,” is about playing roles. Here, performance is pretty fun. Sam and Dean are forced into a series of alternate realities based on TV shows: a Grey's Anatomy spoof, a sitcom, a medication commercial, and so on. It is one of the best episodes of Supernatural, illustrative of everything Season 5 does well—funny, plot-forward, with an interesting shape to it. I like how excited Dean is to be in Dr. Sexy, how quickly Sam adapts to the procedural language. It is an episode that mirrored my world view, both in the companionship television brought me and the way I conceptualized my personal issues—someone was writing my story, I simply had to figure out the right cues to hit.

The Winchesters are put into this reality by the trickster they just can't seem to nab. There is an explanation for this: he's not a trickster, rather, the archangel Gabriel. He's forced Sam and Dean into this simulation as a lesson: he sees them avoiding their fates as vessels and wants to show them the only choice is to perform what God has ordained.

Castiel appears throughout as a glitch, interference. Each time he reaches the Winchesters, Gabriel snaps him out in a spark of television static. As long as Cas is there, the desired performance cannot unfold. He is an intervention against the cosmic.

It's interesting to turn the trickster god into Gabriel. I don't care to engage with Real Bible Lore much when considering Supernatural, but the cosmic things I believe in are ultimately rooted in my upbringing.

I was baptized in the Orthodox Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, one of two places believed to be where Mary learned she was pregnant with Christ. My baptism was later than most, seven years old and aware of everyone's eyes on me as I was anointed. My faith is less about the teachings of Christianity and more about the ways in which my ancestral land is imbued with that faith; there is both magic and history running through each monument, erected not just to house the language of the holy but to mark its presence. And so, as much of Nazareth does, I felt close to this act. It wasn't about the birth of Christ, it was about being rooted in a site of revelation. In the corridor that surrounds the annunciation, my ancestor is buried. Empires rise and fall. He watches.

Yes, Gabriel is the messenger angel. I think, then, this reveal attached to television works. In lieu of a church, what rituals have I made holy?

This episode was strong the first time I watched it eleven years ago and it's even stronger after Season 15. 5.08 plays with what it means to be watched; what does the audience expect of us? This theory of performance—everything will turn out as long as we do what we are expected to do.

That brings us to Season 15, of course. Gabriel's desire for Sam and Dean to play their roles is a familial one; he says it hurts to see his family at odds. He says he wants the story to play through so the tension concludes quicker. Like father, like son; we know that the Winchesters are Chuck’s favorite TV show. 15.18 picks up where 15.17 left off, Jack as a lit fuse meant to go after Chuck. All three of his dads move him to safety after Chuck's departure. Billie sends Jack to the Empty where he explodes, but survives. On to the next plan.

15.18 has a very present threat: people are disappearing. Those who disappear, though, are very particular. First, the boys get a call from Apocalypse World!Charlie, who says Stevie, another Apocalypse World hunter, disappeared right in front of her. We know this version of Charlie was reluctant to fall in love again, but she did anyway. Her girlfriend vanishes before her eyes. Sam and Dean think it must be Billie, angry about the subversion of the plan denying her power, putting people back in their “rightful” place; she is a cosmic being dedicated to order, with full faith in the phrase “what is dead should stay dead”—full faith that visitors from other worlds should remain in those other worlds, even if there's nothing to go back to. Charlie is disgusted at the idea of becoming collateral in the Winchesters’ story, a dig at her character's original death.

I used to align people leaving my life with scheduling difficulties or contract negotiations, for surely the fans of my life rooted for the people I wanted to stay. But, of course, this is entertainment. The tension is more interesting.

Sam realizes who could be next on Billie's list: Eileen, who he himself resurrected with magic. He, Dean, Cas, and Jack get into the car and speed towards wherever she is. Sam very tensely texts her from the passenger seat, instructing her to stand outside her car when they arrive. Eventually she stops responding. When they finally get to where she is supposed to be, her phone is on the ground, a half-finished message drafted. Another lover has disappeared.

15.18 is tense; it fills me with dread, every time. Jack and Sam head north to meet Donna and hopefully secure a warded space for the rest of the people on Billie's possible list. Dean and Cas return to the bunker in order to get into Death's library, hoping to deal with Billie themselves. This was the wrong move: Billie isn't the one snapping people out of existence. But, she is reminded of how much she hates Dean, how representative he is of an upset to the natural order.

The writers’ strike meant Season 3 had less episodes; this meant less time to save Dean from his demon deal, which means he isn't saved at all. We know what happens, instead.

In the earlier confrontation with Chuck, he says every other version of Castiel did what he was told: pulled Dean out of hell, and faded into the background after that initial three-episode arc. Castiel is a character defined by rebellion and regrets: he is never doing what he's supposed to, to varying success. His role in the story is an unexpected one. Just as Gabriel zaps him out of the scene in 5.08, he continues to disrupt Chuck's arcs. I think back to 15.02, in which Castiel insists that his relationship with Dean (and Sam, and Jack) is real—despite the meddling God. We learn here that he is a factor that Chuck could not control. The divide is: the cosmic is false, the Earthly real. Castiel is a character that falls from his cosmic standing to an Earthly one; what is realer than that?

My coping mechanisms were not healthy, obviously. My anxiety over perception kept me from so much. I didn't know how to celebrate my wins without fearing a fall, and so it all evened out into a gray numb. My tendency to project my life onto a network structure faded as I got older, likely attached to the variety that autonomy produces in a life. The rigidity of a season's structure is an easy graft for a high schooler. The ebbs and flows of my adult life were monotonous—as I faded into a larger pool of students, graduated and shortly life fell into a pandemic, the sense of being watched was less relevant. As a writer who shares work publicly, there is a specific control of that looking. I can dictate where the eye goes, even if it is only for a moment.

Castiel is an appealing character because of his relationship to autonomy. He is someone who felt and then acted from those feelings; his first choices in a millennia of existence! from that feeling. Choice is an interesting thing in my depression; it makes my indecision worse, makes me wish I never had to consider any option at all. In the depths of my figuring life-as-a-TV-show, I moved with little intention. I did what I thought I was supposed to do and thought little else of what I wanted when each line on that list was crossed off. In art, at least, I could imagine want as filtered through the fictional. Television added lines to my list; I wanted to be here for another Wednesday, because my favorite show was on.

In 15.18, what me and every other annoying loser on the internet knew is finally confirmed: that feeling was love, and yes it was romantic. For years, fans were condescended to or even kicked out of conventions for this belief. “Destiel” was a dirty word, queerness an underlying dirty topic, despite the show’s later gestures towards inclusion. But, finally, the threads that so many saw for over a decade were allowed to come together (sort of).

Billie chases Dean and Cas through the bunker, using her powers to constrict Dean's heart. His heart! Death is crushing his heart! It is so beautifully on the nose. Everything that has happened so far is signaling what's to come. He and Cas find reprieve in the bunker dungeon, where Cas paints a protective ward in his blood to release Billie's hold on Dean. He breathes, again, but realizes their situation. They are trapped with Death. Dean blames himself; he thinks if he hadn't been so volatile about Chuck, volatile about Billie, none of this would have happened. He says, she's going to come in here, and she's going to kill you. And she's going to kill me. But Cas knows there's one thing that can stop Billie, a cosmic entity waiting to collect on a deal. He tells Dean as such, that the Empty would come for him when he was happy. He realizes what would make him happy is not necessarily getting what he wants, but just saying it where someone can see.

The confession scene is infamous, memed to hell on the night it aired (coinciding with Biden's election) and forever cursed to deliver news after that. I'll admit I was a hater without context. There are things I wish were different in context, too, but—the content of it! It changes everything.

I think back to 15.03, in which Rowena sacrifices herself to continue this act of saving the world. She says there is nothing she cares about enough to take her own life. Castiel, by contrast, tells Dean he cared about the whole world because of him. We know how Dean sees himself, said outright in the truth spell in 6.06: a killer, undeserving of anything more. Castiel tells him, no, you are loving. What is real, and what is written? Each time Dean mentions his anger, he speaks of how it felt like he just couldn't stop; this is how he is written, the role he plays into. So much of Dean is performance even before the show leans into this theme: his clothes, his taste in music, his car, all born from wanting to emulate his father. There are many points of closure from Season 1 and now with regards to Dean's hyper-masculine posturing, but we saw him fall into that obsessive anger that's been written for him just an episode ago. Cas is the opposite, a lifelong wild card. Even God could not track him as a factor. Here, Cas is saying, I know who you are when no one is watching. And that's the man he loves.

Happiness is in the being, I guess, and so the Empty comes just as Billie breaks through the warding. The black ooze takes both of them, leaving Dean alone on the dungeon floor. Another love disappeared. He ignores a call from Sam, the phone's vibration echoing in the silence. With only us to watch, he cries.

Stray Observations

• My “life is a writers room” anxious depressive delusional lifestyle originated from being a GLEEK so we can safely say the SPN writers were mining MY TUMBLR for ideas for their little show!!!!!

• 6.07 is a solid episode; we finally learn Sam is soulless, get details about Samuel's resurrection and goals, Castiel is there. Good all around but did not fit into my crazy girl essay sorry to say

• 9.05, on the other hand, is the kind of episode to make you stop watching Supernatural. Kind of insulting that Changing Channels is so heavily featured in the “last time on”…now what does that have to do with anything!

• I'm thankful Cas and Jack get a sweet father-son moment before Cas dies. Lol

• Stevie and Charlie 3 minutes of lesbian domestic bliss ruined by the fast that those eggs Stevie makes look disgusting

• Richard Speight Jr. who plays Gabriel directs “Despair”. No comment!

• My main gripe with the confession is Misha looks funny when he cries and I think he should have been covered in blood instead!

• Wrote this in bed on my phone 🙏

• Confession in full just cuz

CASTIEL

(tearfully) I always wondered, ever since I took that burden, that curse, I wondered what it could be? What my true happiness could even look like. I never found an answer because the one thing I want... It's something I know I can't have. But I think I know... I think I know now. Happiness isn't in the having, it's in just being. It's in just saying it.

DEAN

What are you talking about, man?

CASTIEL

I know. I know how you see yourself, Dean. You see yourself the same way our enemies see you. You're destructive, and you're angry, and you're broken. You're "daddy's blunt instrument." And you think that hate and anger, that's... That's what drives you, that's who you are. It's not. And everyone who knows you see it. Everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love. You raised your little brother for love. You fought for this whole world for love. That is who you are. You're the most caring man on Earth. You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know. (he smiles, crying now) You know, ever since we met, ever since I pulled you out of Hell... Knowing you has changed me. Because you cared, I cared. I cared about you. I cared about Sam, I cared about Jack... I cared about the whole world because of you. (sad laugh as a tear rolls down his cheek) You changed me, Dean.

DEAN

(quiet, resigned) Why does this sound like a goodbye?

CASTIEL

Because it is.

Dean inhales, ready to argue, but Castiel confesses before he can.

CASTIEL

I love you. (he smiles)