"Dean's Got It." - John Winchester

[itsnotmymind]

Brief exchange from Dead Man's Blood, while Dean is off getting the blood:

Sam: It shouldn't be taking this long. I should go help.
John: Dean's got it.

It cracks me up at John, who much of fandom is convinced had no respect for his older son, has absolute faith in Dean here. It really flies in the face of the two-dimensional take on John and Dean's relationship that many fans have.

The Winchester family dynamics are far more complex in those first couple of seasons than most people remember. Even the show writers themselves - Bad Boys fits in better with popular fanon about the Winchester than with family than what we saw in S1.

Don't get me wrong - I think John was a lousy father. I think his behavior in Something Wicked was criminal. But the fanon 2D monster who was unambiguously awful, who hated one or both of his sons, who was so neglectful as to leave the boys no better off than orphans...that has nothing to do with the man I saw on the screen in S1 and S2. It has nothing to do with how he interacted with his sons, and they with him.

Comments

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

John in Dead Man's Blood tells Sam, "I stopped being your father" (after their mother died), and apologizes in depth to Dean in In My Time of Dying. I think John was always supposed to be a complex character who had done poorly as a father, but it seems like the complexities got lost at some point, and amnesia set in with many fans and some show writers.