Bobby Singer

[itsnotmymind]

One of the reasons I don't like Bobby Singer is that he so often feels like a plot device. His down-to-earth take-no-shit personality is supposed to be cute, I guess, but it’s shallow and cutesy because his actions don't match it. He goes along with what Sam and Dean want. In Lazarus Rising, he objects to Dean’s plan to summon Castiel, and to not tell Sam. But while he complains, he goes along with it. Dean felt the need to keep Sam out of the plan, but not Bobby. I’m also think of WtLB (where, again, Bobby objects to Dean’s plan but goes along with it). He also, in early S6, bizarrely supports soulless’ decision to not let Dean know he’s alive. I’m thinking, too, of Mystery Spot - here, Bobby does nothing but nag Sam. When he finally seems to actually do something, it’s the Trickster, instead. Bobby is ineffective when dealing with Sam and Dean. He acts as a sounding board, but rarely seems to have any influence over them.



What major conflicts are there between Bobby and one or both of the Winchesters? He mostly seems to go bitchly along with one or the other in their conflicts. That’s why his gruff persona seems more cutesy than believable. It’s telling that his beef with the two of them in Weekend at Bobby’s is simply that they take him for granted and he has his own life. His role, generally, is to be a sounding board, provide a home base, provide them with information when they need it, and save them when they need it. He might as well not be a character.

I guess looking at it from a Watsonian perspective, this is kind of interesting: Bobby has self-worth issues, I guess, needing Sam and Dean’s support, or wanting it, more than anything else. He's also not their father. He claims the role because he wants it, because he wants to prove he can parent adequately, but in fact he doesn't parent them, and there's no evidence that he ever did. The one story we know is that he played baseball with Dean, and this pissed John off. This probably did make Bobby feel like he was better with the kids than John was, but it's not much for evidence of fatherhood.

From the Winchesters brother's perspective: Dean used Bobby as an alternate father to assist him in his rebellion against John after John’s death, kind of an emotional support and quasi-replacement, I think. I'm not entirely sure about Sam: I think he mostly went along with the father thing because Bobby and Dean said it (and he does love Bobby).

The one time Dean does reject Bobby as a father, in Point of No Return, Bobby comes down hard on him. "That’s the round that I mean to put through my skull. Every morning, I look at it. I think, ‘Maybe today’s the day I flip the lights out.’ But I don’t do it. I never do it. You know why? Because I promised you I wouldn’t give up!"

Note what Bobby doesn't do: Offer any evidence of his fatherhood to Dean. No reminders of how he was there for Dean growing up (he wasn't). No assertions of authority. Bobby Singer did not raise the Winchesters brothers.

Comments

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

The one story we know is that he played baseball with Dean, and this pissed John off. This probably did make Bobby feel like he was better with the kids than John was, but it's not much for evidence of fatherhood

Urgh thank you, I hate the narrative the show kept trying to push of Bobby being more of a father to them than John ever was. I can absolutely believe that Bobby would see it that way, but then it's easy to just be the friendly 'Uncle Bobby' and chastise John (not unjustly) for being too hard on the boys, but that's not the same thing as actually being a parent to them. There's no real indication that either Dean or Sam would have responded to Bobby as a father figure in their childhood if he ever had attempted to say discipline them, he was more the grouchy uncle figure that they stayed with occasionally.

I know that things got slightly retconned later on as obviously the writers did want to change it to Bobby being a bigger influence on their childhood, but when we first meet Bobby in season 1 the show is pretty clear that they they lost contact with him after John fell out with Bobby and that they haven't seen him in years, so my impression is that it was really only as adults that they truly bonded with Bobby. He did not raise them as children.

I think that Dean did occasionally look at Bobby as an alternative to John, wishing that his own father had been more like Bobby when it came to offering him emotional support and validation, but yeah I don't even get that much from Sam really. He cared about Bobby, but I never felt like he saw him as a father

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

In S1 and early S2 Dean says more than once that Sam and John are the most important people in his life. No mention of Bobby. He was not their father, and he did not raise them.