Oh, narrative parallels. These are some quick-and-dirty gifs, but they make the point. SPN makes liberal and obvious use of narrative parallels constantly. That’s not exactly special, honestly, parallel narratives are part of the bedrock of storytelling. It’s a super straightforward concept: they show you a thing that clearly means X, then they show you another thing that draws similarities to the first thing to show that the second thing also means X.
You can’t just conveniently forget how Storytelling 101 works just because something looks kinda gay. This episode is pretty light on Sam-specific development because Sam’s main job today is to make Dean look queer.
Yes, I’m serious.
In the scene where Sam and Dean meet Rio and Gunner, they each do 4 distinct things: they get giddy over recognizing their childhood idol, they stutter and flail while they try to look cool, they admit they had a thing for the person, and they do something fannish and embarrassing. Like so:
Now normally I don’t usually consider the same things as a No Homo that a lot of people seem to (because bisexual means he likes BOTH, yes good okay), buuuut I’m not going to deny that “HEY, REMINDER THAT DEAN LIKES WOMEN, YES?” isn’t something that happens, and that it doesn’t end up being fodder for the Dean-is-straight-and-you-are-dumb people.
So. That fucking said.
The moments in this ep where a No Homo would have been shoved in not only just didn’t exist, but were DELIBERATELY PASSED OVER. Let me explain. –No, it’ll take too long, let me sum up.
Dean walks into the bar, and sees the girl dancing on the table.
He looks, but he doesn’t get invested. No smirking, no once-over, none of the tell-tale “aw yeah” reactions we usually get from Dean. The one who gets his attention is Rio, who gets a friendly, nonsexual nod of solidarity.
Then there’s a girl laying down on a table with her mouth open and being fed alcohol all sexy-like. Dean not only doesn’t look interested, but he gets that “oh, well, all right” face that people tend to make when they’re watching something that isn’t quite their thing.
And then he sees Gunner and makes a goddamn beeline.
Here’s his face when Gunner knows his name without asking and hands him a shot.
This is not subtle. It’s not played off as so much of a joke that it’s an effective No Homo. If you made it through tonight’s episode without at least suspecting that Dean isn’t straight, those Hetero Lenses are welded to your damn face.
Dean has an obvious crush on Gunner, and this is explicitly mirrored by Sam’s crush on the show manager.
The Casifer/Crowley scenes and the Dean/Gunner scenes flowed into each other pretty seamlessly multiple times–to the point that I was surprised a couple of times that we’d switched.
There was ABSOLUTELY NO ATTEMPT to present that Aaron’s staff scene as anything but homoerotic, to the point that Lucifer fucking LAMPSHADES IT by saying, “Is it me, or is it getting phallic in here?”
Dean can’t save Gunner because he refuses to be saved and insists on taking the punishment he thinks he deserves. (why does that sound so familiar…???)
That Hand of God could have been anything, but they picked AARON’s staff. In an unabashedely homoerotic scene. It’s almost like they wanted to remind us of another Aaron in a different unabashedly homoerotic scene…
ETA: Dean walks right past a hot chick dancing on a pool table without even looking, just makes right to the bar, AND he makes an ew face at a girl lying on her back getting booze poured down her throat as he sits down next to Gunner.
BARING FLESH AND COMPARING SCARS
Y’all, I can’t EVEN with this episode.
But also, like, can we talk about the absurd HoYay between Gunner and Dean a bit more?
Like when Dean walks over to the bar and Gunner hands him a shot
Which followed the rather suggestive wink that Gunner gave to him earlier during the match
Which followed Dean’s flirty and awkward fanboying at the funeral, including Dean just wanting to hold Gunner’s hand, to the point of awkwardness
And if a guy hands another guy a shot after those other two exchanges, let’s just say that the first guy is probably also interested
Like, he didn’t even order the shot when Dean got there, like he saw Dean coming in the bar and knew Dean would make a beeline for him and got the extra shot just to give to Dean (which, when you’re making $25 a match, is quite the investment)
Gunner was interested in Dean and Dean was more than interested in Gunner
And getting away from Gunner for a bit, there’s the added point of Dean getting into the ring and pretending to be a wrestler for a few minutes. Wrestling is extremely camp and extremely homoerotic, and Dean throwing himself into the ring is a way of embracing that world, those concepts with abandon. Dean wants to inhabit a world where he can embrace that side of himself, but he isn’t there yet, given how he reacted to Rea showing up.
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