“There are Sam girls and Dean girls…” Dean, S4E18

I began watching Supernatural two years after it started in a marathon DVD session of Seasons 1 and 2.

Believe me when I tell you I watched all episodes from both seasons in two days. I don’t think I slept. I picked them up at a big box store from the discount rack after reading about the Winchesters all over my favorite pop culture websites. I’d seen the ads but was somewhat hesitant to watch the series. I’m not sure why, but the idea of watching a show about demon hunting brothers bothered me.

Anyway, I was hooked from the first episode.

At first, I had a lot more sympathy for Sam and thought Dean was a bit of a dick. Sam was just so tragic, having lost not only his chance at a normal life but also a great love and his father, all at the same time.

Gradually, my sympathies shifted to Dean. He was funnier—God, the one liners he spits out—and seemed to feel things so deeply it actually hurt. Not that Sammy didn’t feel deeply; it’s just that Dean seemed to internalize it all and make jokes to hide the true depth of his. I realized that in some ways, Dean was the more tragic figure. Sam at least had had a normal life, even if only for a little while at college. Dean never even had that bit of respite.

To prepare for the new season, I decided to watch all four of the earlier seasons to see if I could pinpoint the exact episodes that caused me to shift permanently from a Sam girl to a Dean girl and I came up with two: “Heart” and “The Kids Are Alright.”

In “Heart,” the brothers try to save a girl that has been changed into a werewolf without her knowledge. She and Sam falls in love, and in the end she asks him to kill her because she can’t do it herself.

You’d think this would make me more sympathetic to Sam, right? Wrong.

The closing shot of Dean in the kitchen listening to the sound of the shot literally took my breath away. You could see in his face his heart breaking for Sam, knowing that if Sam had any innocence left, it was truly gone now.

In “The Kids Are Alright,” Dean tracks down a memorable one night stand in hopes of repeating the experience—only to learn that she has a kid that is the right age to be his. And boy, is he Dean at age 8—obsessed with cars, girls, hard rock and determined not to be a bitch.

You can see the shock, hope and disbelief in Dean’s face all at the same time. By this point, Dean has already made his deal with the crossroads demon to bring Sammy back to life, so he knows his days are numbered.

Again, the expression on his face when he learns that the kid isn’t his is incredible—a combination of disappointment and regret all at the same time. You can practically feel his yearning to have the knowledge that he’d left something of himself behind. And the girl sees this, offers to let him stay, and he declines, knowing that they would only be hurt when his year is up.

Why, you ask, didn’t I pick the episode where Dean makes his deal to save Sam, or goes to hell, or any of the others? I think it’s because he’s at his most human and accessible in these episodes.

In so many of the others, he’s heroic, larger than life. It’s the deeper layers, though, that I find most interesting. That’s not to say that Dean’s emotionless in the other episodes. Far from it—these just spoke the most strongly to me personally.

Please keep in mind that these selections are from the first four seasons—they might change after season 5.

A lover of all things quirky and pop culture related, Katie Lawson is “owned” by a Great Dane named Ash. She lives in South Louisiana, where she writes obituaries for the local paper and wonders if Sam and Dean ever venture forth to warmer climes.