Look at these dorks. I can’t believe they actually manage to get a season finished with all these shenanigans! (x)
This scene was so important in the episode, you guys.
We don’t see the shorts, at all. We don’t see Dean wearing them.
We hear Sam Winchester make mention of the shorts. We hear Sam asking Dean whether he is wearing shorts.
Dean doesn’t confirm that he is wearing shorts textually, he evades the comment with “It’s a free bunker“. Dean does not give actual unambiguous verbal confirmation that he is wearing shorts.
And yet, Jensen Ackles was wearing the shorts while they were filming. He was wearing the shorts all along, even though the textual support is meagre and open for interpretation.
And there was absolutely no one out there claiming that Dean wasn’t wearing them.
Interestingly, there was also no reason for Jensen to be wearing shorts, since we never saw them. So why would Jensen wear shorts, or the costume department give him any, knowing that there is no textual confirmation he’s wearing shorts at all?
What’s also interesting is that this decision was made by the director – based on the script alone, they could just as easily have shown us Dean in his short shorts.
Interesting how something that was subtext and never actually shown in canon turned out to exist after all. Amazing. I’m sure there are Dean Loves Shorts deniers out there. Clearly, this was an acting/directing decision, not a choice the character would ever choose for himself. No, this was spn pandering to people who have been saying Dean Loves Shorts for years now. It’s *our* fault they were pressured into including this in the show. And still, we were not satisfied. We didn’t take what they handed to us and say thank you. We had the nerve to demand more than subtext! We needed proof, and poor Jensen was forced to wear short shorts, knowing his character would never do such a thing! Shame on us! Clearly Jensen was uncomfortable with the idea of Dean Loving Shorts. We should stop reading into the subtext so much and accept the show canon from s1 at face value: Dean Doesn’t Do Shorts.
Season 11 was all about not subverting Dean’s season 1 character, but of making text out of the subtext of the first season, textually confirming that the things Dean said were not things that Dean actually meant. There were, in fact, several moments where he was made to eat his own words from the first season. I should make a list of them at some point.
So I’m currently re-watching The Benders, and I’m going to need someone who can gif to do a thing.
Because you know that scene in Kugel’s Keg, just before Sam goes outside and gets taken by the Benders? There’s this exchange:
SAM: Look, Dean, I don’t know if this is our kind of gig either.
DEAN: Yeah, you’re right. We should ask around more tomorrow.
Dean looks at Sam while he speaks, but then he shifts his gaze and winks at someone over by the pool table. Just as he steps under the “Men’s” sign.
A few seconds later he tells Sam he’s going to take a leak, and when he eventually goes outside to discover Sam has disappeared, he asks some people if they’ve been outside in the last hour or so.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Ha!
I just went back to look (I can’t gif but eh, screenshots can help you for for now until someone more talented comes along :P)…
Their table is right next to the pool table manned by like 5 different burly guys all with pool cues (I have no idea what they’re playing):
This is Dean looking over his shoulder apparently at Sam while questioning him about various body-snatching monsters:
A moment later walking back towards him he looks Sam dead on and his eye line is more direct and downwards; the camera angle is slightly different to the previous screen cap so it makes the above image harder to say where Dean was looking, but this is definitely eye contact with Sam:
He looks up and away to his right/Sam’s left/the pool table, breaking the eye contact he had with Sam to look elsewhere (his eyes turn as well, so he’s not just turning his head to direct a wink at him, as he’d keep eye contact with Sam, at least so far as all my experience of winking ever goes):
And then as he keeps on moving past the camera and turning more away from Sam, he winks (wow it is impossible to get nice screenshots of him doing it. 😛 Offered for scientific purposes as comparison to the last 2 screenshots and not for the chronicles of good pictures of him):
And then we have this:
“Saw a motel…” Sam tells him and Dean says, “Woah, woah, easy, let’s have another round.”
With a return to the earlier angle where it wasn’t clear if he was looking at Sam or not:
Oh, no, wait, THIS is what he looks like looking at Sam from this angle:
And then he does the bit where he says he’s going to stay a minute longer and loses an hour.
Conclusion: Something is really fascinating off and up to Sam’s left and Dean sucks at time management.
*jumps in* Here ya go! (I have some time to kill and a new found ability to gif :D) You can definitely see the moment he looks away from Sam to something over his shoulder and winks.
I’d just like to point out that this is a John Shiban episode and he rolled with bisexual Dean more than anybody in the history of the show has ever rolled with it.
Dean Winchester in the men’s room, for an hour or so.
I love the wave of season 1 queer subtext that is happening lately
So check out the sign that was next to the darts board Dean was shooting darts at:
Thursday Night Meat Draw.
“they can’t make him be bisexual out of the blue after 11 seasons!!!!!!!!”
Well, they have a point, we don’t actually see Dean suck a dick.
We see him fondle a dude’s hip bone in the episode, though.
At length.
A dude’s hip bone. Where the penis attaches. We see that in this episode.
OH GOD I NEVER CAUGHT THAT now my life is complete
Do you know what completely blind-sided me about this glorious John Shiban masterpiece? I finally figured out why the fuck it all happens in HIBBING.
I never get tired of Dean openly flirting with dudes.
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Let me put on my serious business hat for a moment, too:
The only thing that makes this inadmissible as evidence of Dean flirting with men for the heteronormative audience is the lack of the Male Gaze. In the grand tradition of visual story-telling, we’re used to the use of the Gaze shot in signaling desire and in this scene we are not shown the object of Dean’s flirtation visually. Dean is the object of the shot. And because the audience is not made to desire the object of Dean’s desire, a regular viewer will dismiss the possibility that the character desires.
Supernatural has the most awesome fucking people working on it.
Sooo, anyone in the mood for some It’s probably nothing but dear God let’s hope it’s subtext?
I know we speculated that Dean talking about Charles in Charge with Billie – Billie saying out right, in fact, that Dean would be likely to die watching Charles in Charge and choking on a burger because, apparently, he does both so often – had to do with what that show was about – a boy babysitting children. And yes, it’s true Dean would respond to that, especially considering the thing aired when Dean was a teen himself, stuck with his younger brother in some motel.
But today I was on Buzzfeed and I clicked on this Who Supports Whom article, because, yeah, with everything that’s been going on that’s what I need – to get angrier – and guess who supports Donald fucking Trump for President of the United States?
Which, okay, maybe it’s not a surprise, because apparently the guy supported Ronald ‘Let’s have a shootout with the Soviet Union’ Reagan back in the day, but the funny thing is, his endorsement of Trump came out on March 20th – Red Meat aired on March 30th.
Now, the fact they chose Charles in Charge as Dean’s go-to show – I found it weird back then, because to be honest I’d never even heard of the show and when I had a look at American television in the late 1970s and 1980s – the kind of thing that would have been available in motels when Dean was a kid – well, I’d have gone for Happy Days, no questions asked. Just look at cool af Fonzie and his cool af leather jacket. Dean 101.
And now I’m wondering if the fact they chose Charles in Charge and they mentioned Baio specifically, by name (my God, Billie accusing him of watching some half girly, definitely family show and Dean sassing her back, “Well, that was peak Baio.” – aaaaaaaw)
was done deliberately to imply not only that Dean was attracted to Baio, that he’s followed Baio, in fact, from show to show (peak Baio – that implies Dean’s seen it all) like a girl with a crush – or, well, a boy with a crush – but that our Taylor Swift loving, chick flicks digging, raging bisexual hunter Dean Winchester downright jerked off over a conservative Republican idiot who would hate his guts because of who he is – and there’s nothing you can do about it, baby.
Gay men perving over you, the all-American good boy: the ultimate nightmare for that merry band of witch hunters, and some fine level trolling.
Slow clap, guys.
Excellent point in Dean having followed Baio throughout his career – just as he did Swayze and Clint Eastwood.
I wonder whether watching Charles in Charge was another thing Dean and Chuck had in common.
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