You know, some of those small, strange, subtle moments are some of the best things about SPN. Some of my favorites:
When Dean’s making the deal to bring Sam back from the dead. He buries his spell box in the crossroads and demon takes her sweet time showing up and he starts yelling for her. That breathy sound she makes right before she says, “Easy, sugar, you’ll wake the neighbors.” All that woman’s nuance was perfect, the way she very nearly tongued Dean’s lips before telling him, “Then no deal.” The way she had to ‘stop and smell the roses.’ This thing that Dean was doing was terrifying for us and he very much felt like it was nothing to him because he was so sure he was gonna get ten good years to spend with Sam, even if, at the end of it, he’d be in hell. Then the scene just goes straight downhill from there. It’s clear that this dead beautiful woman has all the power to bestow. She’s the thin line between Sam’s life and death at that point, and between Dean’s sanity and him eating a bullet. That little breath she takes to start. These things are dead and gone to hell. They only fill their host’s body with oxygen for something to do; surely they don’t actually need to breathe. I know it’s reading too much into the scene, but that little breath she takes is more air than Sam can pull into his lungs at that moment.
The way Lilith’s neck cracks as she settles into Ruby 1.0’s body. She’s this horrifying fucking creature, probably the most twisted demon we’d met at this point. Yellow Eyes at least had an agenda. All the other demons were just bad. Even Ruby was just bad but we assumed, at that point, that she was sick of hell and wanted the Winchesters to win. Lilith likes to terrify people. Her idea of a vacation is micromanaging the torment of a small child’s family. The idea that she doesn’t fit into a grown human body properly is so squicky and creepy. It’s a great little sound. Like all her evil is bigger than can fit into such a package.
Every subtle facial expression and all the minute movements Jensen makes in his performance in 02.12. It’s 75% of the reason I want to see the original script, because all that detail can’t possibly be dictated by the writing, I’m pretty sure Jensen is just that good.
The way that Jared always does his Victorian-Bodiced heaving-chest thing. It’s when he chooses to use it that lends to the interest, nevermind how it’s just a very trademark Sam thing to do and I love it. I associate that movement with all the humanity in Sam. The way that he holds himself back when he could run for another six miles without stopping. Or how he holds himself back when he could make a Jackson Pollock out of an enemy’s face. It just seems like there’s a lot of power surging inside of Sam and, whether you can attribute it to the demon blood or just how powerful he is as a hunter and a human, it looks like restraint to me. It’s beautiful. It’s like the mercy move before a king delivers the final blow on the battlefield. It feels like Sam wasn’t nearly as destructive as he could have been and that promise gives me tingles yes, good.
"You were rotting in hell for months— for months.” Tell me it isn’t hard to breathe after the way he delivers that line. He’s so angry and disappointed with himself but his brother is back and he’s so relieved but sadness doesn’t go away in a matter of twenty minutes. He’s still brimming with it.
Sam setting a place and ordering food for Dean after the first Wednesday in 03.11. It could be seen as overdone, overblown grief, except for the fact that Sam plans to kill the trickster more diligently than Dexter ever planned a kill. Sam keeps a motel room with every small factoid on him precisely arranged on the walls, makes his bed like it’s a part of this temple devoted to killing the thing that killed Dean. Except how, when face to face with the trickster, he’s lost so much, he actually doesn’t give a shit for killing him. He crumples; he just wants Dean back. He was hunting for the trickster to beg, not to kill. Killing “Bobby” had shown him that it didn’t feel right, that it wasn’t what he thought he was gonna do, didn’t make him feel the same way.
Dean freaking out in the very first moments of 02.14. The way it’s filmed, in the gloom and the rain, jumping like Dean’s eyes, like his wired nerves, like his fingers on the phone every time it rings, anticipating that it could be word of Sam. Worrying that he’ll get a call from a stranger in a morgue before he’ll hear Sam’s actual voice again. He’s losing his goddamn mind because it’s just like when he showed up at Stanford to get help looking for dad, only there’s absolutely no family left to turn to if he can’t find Sam. Just like in 01.01 where he can do it on his own, but he really doesn’t want to.
Dean’s hand shooting up from the floor in The Magnificent Seven. “Hello. Bleeding here.” That’s it. That’s the entire moment. It kills me every time, it’s fucking hilarious.
That long moment when Sam has his hand out for Cas to shake in 04.07. It extends into awkward so fast which is horrible both because we’re sharing Sam’s skittishness over having just exclaimed “Oh my god!” and because it’s dawning on us that an angel probably wouldn’t want to touch Sam, The Infected. And while Castiel confirms the assumption that Sam is known as a demon boy, he also takes Sam’s hand in both of his and extends him that physical respect, despite saying something that wounds him a little. Cas has done his research on his charge. He knows Sam’s important to Dean, he’s willing to display his understanding of it, he would just prefer, at this point, that Sam not be important. He would rather keep his distance from Sam, and it takes a while to see that there’s no exception within Dean when it comes to Sam. So he eventually gets to the same place himself. But the way that Sam’s hand extends, and then he shakes it again, like, ‘you know you’re supposed to shake my hand, dude,’ while at the same time it’s dawning on him that Castiel might not want to. It’s such a tiny and important and nerve-wracking thing.
Dean putting the music back on at the end of Bitten. 08.04 is another episode full of important tiny details but I liked Dean respecting their music, their song, even if it’s music he can’t stand, personally. After spending an hour, presumably, or the length of their little documentary, in their home, with their bodies, with what remained of lives cut short, it seemed somehow deeply respectful to me. And I think Dean has a respect for mise en scène; the way they lived the last of their lives on camera, I think he could respect that the song was an important part of that. It was a little more important than his distaste for the music, even for what they’d become before the end.
