But, at the same time, human beings have survived BECAUSE of their ability to repress. She’s saved my LIFE over the past three years. His definition of “sublimation” was: “You take your pain and you make it sublime.”) In our current self-help culture (much of which has not been backed by scientific peer review) saying that is a no-no. Or I like to call it sublimation, because I have always remembered something one of my great acting teachers once said. (There was a great op-ed column in the New York Times post-911 about all of this and I felt vindicated by it since repression/redirection is how I have survived. So something horrible happens, a person throws himself into his work/hobbies/personal life, and someone will say he is “in denial” as opposed to surviving.
The theory that wearing your emotions on your sleeve as the Ultimate in Healthy is an extremely recent mindset. Talking about your trauma is also important, but it is not the only way. Studies have been done showing that repression/redirection, as opposed to constant Expression, is often very effective in dealing with trauma. Sam and Dean are Gen-X, a tough skeptical independent generation (the last to be raised without bike helmets and seatbelts) and were brought up in a warrior tradition (a tradition, by the way, that has thousands of years of evolution behind it, much stronger than the current trend of sensitivity-prized-above-all-else.) Dean’s Burlesque is a survival technique, one that he needs as much as food/sleep/sex. And that’s the POINT of the Burlesque, make no mistake. I’ll have more to say about that when the time comes, but suffice it to say: Dean’s Burlesque is so strong that even he is fooled by it. Interestingly and beautifully, that will all topple with “What Is and What Should Never Be,” not only one of the best episodes of Season 2 but one of the best episodes in the show entire. (Motel room conversation in “ Shadow.” These are long emotional arcs.) But he “accepts” that. Dean, who has always been more cut-and-dry about the whole thing, keeping Sam on course, arguing about what their job actually is, feels the cost in a primal way in “Heart,” because of #2 on this list. There are some lines Sam has in “Heart” that are tragic, because you can tell he has succumbed to the darkness of The Life. This is more noticeable in Sam, since he always had one foot outside of the Winchester family business. But now they are starting to really feel the cost. As long as they can assure themselves that they are helping people, maybe the sacrifices will be worth it. Their growing understanding of what it means to be a hunter. Dean’s worry about Sam, and his commitment to protect Sam and look out for Sam.ģ. Sam’s worry about what he will become, and – connected to that – his growing sympathy with “monsters”.Ģ. “Heart” brings together all of the themes that have been worrying/nagging the show since Season 2 began (and some go back to Season 1):ġ. A lot of that success depends on the depth reached in “Roadkill” and “Heart.”
You’re amazed the show can actually take it. We are about to go into the season’s final stretch, the episodes of which are a mix of silly/tragic/burlesque/poignancy that has rarely been reached in the show again, at least not at such a sustained level. If “ Tall Tales” had come before “Heart,” we’d have a very different Arc, wouldn’t we? That final moment in “Roadkill,” with Sam’s anxious glance down the road, leads us to “Heart” effortlessly. “ Roadkill,” with its dark wet gloom, its themes of mortality/loss/letting go, was one of the best stand-alones in Season 2 (thus far), but it was also a perfect emotional launching-pad for “Heart”. That electrical tension has been building through episodes. Like the electrical tension in the air broken by a huge summer storm. The mood is watchful, anxious, and emotionally fraught. Despite the urban setting, the rhythm of the natural world is explicit. “Heart” has an insistent rhythm, like a heartbeat: The moon rises, sets.
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