S02E20 What is and What Should Never be

Episode Summary

Dean and Sam hunt a jinn in Illinois. When Dean investigates an abandoned building the jinn captures him and puts him in a kind of dream state where his mum didn’t die in a fire. In this alternative world Dean and Sam don’t get along and all the people they’ve saved in the real world are dead. Thus the perfect fantasy soon turns sour and ends up with Dean and alternate-Sam driving to Illinois (again) to hunt the jinn. In his lair, alternate-Sam and his companions (Jessica, their mum and Dean’s dream girlfriend) try to persuade Dean to stay in the alternative world but he refuses and kills himself to wake up. When he does, he and Sam manage to save a girl who had been captured by the jinn as well.

Commentary

“What is and What Should Never be” is closely connected to the issue already raised in the previous episode: Sam and Dean’s motivation for doing “the family business”. While “Folsom Prison Blues” focused more on the lengths to which Sam and Dean are willing to go (to honour the family (business)), this episode explores what keeps them going in general.
The focus clearly lies on Dean which, I think, has two reasons: First of all, he has been in the business for longer. Sam at least has had the chance to live a normal life, he “had Jess” as Dean puts it. Thus it is implied that his sacrifices were maybe not as big as or certainly not as numerous as Dean’s. And secondly, Dean is, and has to be, the strong one – for the business, for all the people they save but especially for Sammy. After all the pain and the sacrifices and after Sam asking for reasons to justify them going as far as prison to hunt in the previous episode, it is Dean’s turn to question their activities – and find strength in a creepy girl in a white dress.

Before going into this journey of heart and its different stages, here’s an interesting fact: More than 30 minutes of the roughly 40 minutes of the episode are shot in Dean’s dream world and we learn extremely little about the place he and Sam investigate. We only know it’s Illinois because Dean tells alternate-Sam they drove there while he slept. I think this emphasises the focus of this episode on Dean and his emotions and motivations rather than the “monster of the week”, that is, the jinn.

When Dean first wakes up in his dream world he lies, not exactly surprisingly, “next to some hot chick”, as he explains to alternate-Sam over the phone. As far as dreams are concerned, Dean is very predictable up to this point. Almost immediately afterwards, however, the letters Dean picks up show that “hot chick”, aka Carmen, isn’t just a fling but actually lives with him. I can’t say that would’ve been my first thought when asked to guess what Dean might wish for. The initial superficiality of Dean’s dream world crumbles further when the audience first finds out what this fictional world is built upon:

Dean [to his alternate-mum]: “What did you say when you put me into bed?”
[After she answers correctly:] “I don’t believe it. […] You don’t think wishes can get really…”
Alternate-Mum: “What?”
Dean: “Forget it.” *hugs her*

This is not only the moment when we find out what the whole “hot chick”-story is about, that is, a dream that came true, but also where Dean’s initial doubt starts to waver. The slow waning of doubt is also very nicely illustrated by a short question-answer dialogue between Dean and his mum which first takes place when she opens the door and is later paralleled when Dean makes himself comfortable on the couch:

At the door: “Are you alright?” – “I don’t know.”
vs.
On the couch: “Are you sure you’re alright?” – “I think so.”

Shortly after begins the stage of content suburban Dean where he eats the “best sandwich ever” and realises he now has an utterly normal job (at a garage). And for some precious hours, Dean is a perfectly happy suburban citizen that likes to mow the lawn, look at garden gnomes and scare his neighbours by waving at them – all to the sound of “What a Wonderful World” in a rock version. Seeing Dean smiling that widely, don’t tell me you wouldn’t watch a series where Dean does nothing but mow the lawn with awesome rock music playing in the background! Not only does he have the body to rock any suburban dream but even after only two seasons you really think he deserves a break, or at least I did.

Only a little while later, however, Dean realises that in this perfect world he and Sam don’t get along. Without hunting, the just-engaged law student and always-drunk car guy simply don’t have anything in common. After this rather simple realisation begins the next stage where Dean starts to cling onto hope despite of himself. He is convinced that he “can fix things with Sammy” and sees the alternate reality he stumbled into as a second chance he doesn’t want to waste. Dean throws all his experience as a hunter out the window, ignores the jinn and embraces this freak world just so he can hug his mum again – or some mental image of her.

Of course, this stage doesn’t last too long either and is followed by one that highlights the problems of Dean’s fantasy. The almost extinguished hunter fire in his heart is rekindled when he realises that the anniversary of a plane crash, where all the passengers died, he hears about on TV is the one he and Sam prevented from happening (S01E04). Dean does a quick search and finds out that the plane passengers weren’t the only people that didn’t make it in his dream world. Struggling with the sheer number of victims Dean is drawn to his alternate-Dad’s grave:

“All of them. Everyone you saved, everyone Sammy and I saved, they’re all dead. […] My old life […] doesn’t want me to be happy. […] You’d say: ‚Go hunt the jinn. […] Your happiness or all those people’s lives – no contest.‘ But why? Why is it my job to save these people? […] Why do we have to sacrifice everything, dad?”

After this powerful monologue Dean leaves the graveyard and one senses that the stage of solutions has begun. Considering the dilemma and the pain that comes with it, the solution in this case is almost absurdly simple: “Go hunt the jinn.” And so Dean sets out to do what he always does. Except this time everything is a bit different and Dean as well as we, the audience, can’t help but notice all the little things that are off. There is, for example, the already well-established bitch/jerk exchange that doesn’t work with alternate-Sam, who accompanies Dean to the lair of the jinn after catching him steal part of their mother’s silverware. From a more cinematic perspective, there is also the repetition of a scene from the very beginning of the episode: Dean is introduced with a frontal shot of the Impala where the camera starts just above the ground, passes the licence plate and finally shows the driver of the car. The slightly off version in this part of the episode contains the same camera movements but the licence plate is “wrong” and next to Dean sits a version of Sam that is out-grossed by lamb’s blood. Once they arrive at the jinn’s hiding place, this alternate-Sam tries to convince Dean to go back and while a part of him wants to listen (and parts of us wouldn’t judge him if he did), Dean continues. When he finally finds the creepy girl that kept appearing in his perfect fantasy world, he knows he is doing the right thing.

In the end, Dean is able to make sense of what has happened to him. He now has an answer to the half-formulated question addressed to his mum at the beginning of the episode:
“Is that what the jinn does? I doesn’t grant you a wish. It just makes you think it has.”
It doesn’t take long, then, that the jinn, or the part of Dean’s brain under his control, realises that he has to stop Dean from escaping his dream world. Thus, Jessica, Dean’s mother and Carmen appear to help alternate-Sam convince Dean to give in and live this alternate life:

“Why do you have to keep digging? […] You were happy.”
“No more pain, no more fear. Just love and comfort and safety. […] Get some rest.”
“Why is it our job to save everyone? Haven’t we done enough?”

They pick up a lot of points Dean has questioned himself. Some of this parallels his monologue on the graveyard where he turned to his dad to find the strength to hunt the jinn. This time he finds a reason to stay strong within and by himself: “You’re not real, none of it is.” At this point, Dean realises that real pain is better than false peace – quite a conclusion for a mainstream TV series, if I may say so. Later on, when the real Sam congratulates Dean on his strength, we also learn that it was not an easy decision for him:

“I wanted to stay so bad. […] All I can think about is how much this job’s cost us. We’ve lost so much. We’ve sacrificed so much.”

In contrast to other more superficial and black-and-white storytelling, the questions of sacrifice and pain aren’t suddenly gone. I am certain this won’t be the last time Sam and/or Dean wonder whether what they’re doing is the right thing. Thus Supernatural shows us that our heroes are only human (mostly). They, too, are weak and desperate, even. But Sam reassures us as well as Dean:

“But people are alive because of you. It’s worth it Dean. It’s worth it. It’s not fair and, you know, it hurts like hell, but it’s worth it.”

And so the last stage of the episode doesn’t exactly stick to what it promises. Even though Dean tries to make sense of it all (the jinn, the family business, life) in the end, all he and we can do is to trust Sam and hope that they will be able to “get some rest” eventually. The fact that Dean hears this phrase three times during this episode seems to imply that the desire for a break will keep them company for a while and, sooner or later, come up again. Until then, however, there is nothing to do but to carry on wayward son.