Supernatural Talk

Tarts talk about 9.07: Bad Boys

By Suzette Chan
January 20, 2014

Welcome to Supernatural Talk, where Tarts talk about Supernatural, their favourite show about demon-hunting brothers. This week: 9.07: "Bad Boys."

When the Winchester brothers investigate a haunting at a group home for juvenile delinquents, Sam learns that Dean had stayed there for two months when he was a teenager. After the case wraps up, we learn that Sam had always thought Dean couldn't wait to leave the home to get back to hunting, but we discover that Dean wanted to stay and had a shot at a normal life -- until John pulled him back into hunting.

What was this week's monster?

Suzette Chan, Features Editrix: The monster was Timmy's mother's ghost, just as it was in 4.13 "After School Special." Both of these flashbacks to the Winchesters' teen years were written by Adam Glass, who makes good use of the metaphor of being haunted by the past.

In both episodes, the present is haunted by a ghost that can't let go. In "After School Special," the ghost of a bullied boy can't stop wreaking revenge on a new generation of school children. In this episode, the ghost of Timmy's mother can't stop hurting people who bully her son.

Ghosts need to let go. They may not be acting out of evil, but they wreak havoc on the world of the living. Really, it's their need to hang on that causes problems.

Katherine Keller, Culture Vultures Editrix: The monster was the ghost of Timmy's mother. In addition to the ghosts that Suzette mentions above, I think the story of Timmy and his mother makes an interesting comparison and contrast to the spirit of Mary Winchester. In 1.09 "Home" she returns to the home where she died, and in an act of self-sacrifice, she saves her sons from a very powerful and malevolent spirit.

Timmy's mother managed (probably at the expense of her own life) to get her son out of the burning car, and she's been protecting him ever since. I also gather that she managed to get him a birthday present after she died. Her love and dedication to her her son is beautiful.

However, since she's a straight up ghost (unlike whatever Mary Winchester was), she eventually begins to go mad and causes more harm than good.

I also thought it was interesting that, like Molly from 2.16 "Roadkill", since there wasn't really anything to salt and burn, the way to stop the problem was to convince Timmy's mother to move on.

Anita Olin, Staff Writer: Timmy's overprotective ghost mom was using extreme measures to protect her son from beyond the veil. The madness of her ghostly existence only understands keeping Timmy safe, and nothing else.

How did the episode relate to the season?

Suzette: When explaining how Timmy could help his mother's ghost, Dean says, "Sometimes you have to do what's best for you, even though it's going to hurt the ones you love."

It's advice that Sonny gave to Dean when Dean was a kid at the home. Dean probably should have taken the advice back then, but he's using it now, perhaps inappropriately. Dean judged it best to keep Sam alive, so he let Ezekiel in, knowing Sam would object if he knew. Dean always knew he was taking a risk, but his fears for Sam's well-being have not been assuaged.

Katherine: This episode had a lot of "who do you love?" wound into it. Timmy's mother went to great lengths to protect her son because she loved him so much. Obviously, it didn't turn out well. Dean's line about having "to do what's best for you, even though it's going to hurt the ones you love" was so ironic because though we know he loves Sam, letting Sam be possessed by an angel is, in some ways, a very selfish act by Dean.

On the whole, I think this episode made an interesting exploration of the complexities of love. It does so much for us, but sometimes, it is a powerfully destructive force.

Anita: Everyone is haunted by their pasts here. Dean remembers his transgressions -- both gambling away the food money and getting caught stealing food -- what felt like his father's abandonment, some redemption with the help of Sonny, and his crush and how he had to abandon her on the night of the dance.

Robin was haunted by Dean's disappearance, and I got the impression that Sonny was a bit haunted by the way Dean left the home.

The only one not haunted was Sam, but only because he had been lied to about what was happening and was taken to Bobby's.

Timmy's mother and Dean have both gone to inordinate lengths to protect their loved ones. Timmy's mother had gone mad as a ghost and didn't know where the line was anymore. Dean knows where the line is, and he crossed it anyway, preferring to deal with the repercussions later rather than lose Sam. Dean is aware that he's crossed the line, and he's haunted by that, as well. But it's not like he's never crossed those kinds of lines before.

How did it fit into the Supernatural universe?

Suzette: Sam and Dean have trouble letting things go. This can be good and bad. In Season 4, Sam couldn't let go of the idea that he could stop the apocalypse by killing Lilith, and unintentionally doomed humanity. But in Season 5, Sam would not let go of the idea of capturing Lucifer and taking him down to Hell with him, thus saving the world.

Dean tried to bring Sam back from Lucifer's cage, and he might have succeeded, had Castiel not done it first. (In 6.20 "The Man Who Would be King," Castiel tells Crowley: "We stopped Armageddon, but at a terrible cost. And so I knew what I had to do next. Once again, I went to harrow Hell, to free Sam from Lucifer's cage.")

Previously, Dean made a deal with a Crossroads Demon to get Sam back, much to Sam's ire. Now, Dean has allowed an angel to occupy Sam. Dean knows he went against Sam's wishes, but Dean is acting on advice that he should have acted upon earlier, in response to John's control of his life. Dean's personal tragedy is the inability to disentangle desire and duty.

The results of both Winchester brothers' choices contribute greatly to the show's ongoing story of good intentions gone bad.

Katherine: I think it filled in some of Dean's (and Sam's) adolescence quite nicely. It also speaks to what a hard-ass John Winchester could be that he would let Dean sit in jail as a lesson in (a) don't get caught if you're going to steal and (b) don't lose the food money in a card game. My heart broke for Dean that John wouldn't let him have one night to take a girl to a dance.

It also carries along the theme that all of Sam's life people have been lying to him "for his own good." In this episode we have his father and Dean lying to him about why he got shuffled off to Bobby's so quickly, and now Dean's lying to him about what's really going on with him.

Anita: Really, it's a wonder Sam believes anything his family tells him anymore.

Of all the times I have wanted to slap John Winchester, this was pretty strong. He couldn't let Dean have just a few more hours to have a normal teenager experience. It's consistent with John's being so hard on Dean and making looking out for Sam the priority. John treated his kids like an attack dog and a time bomb.

What were the highlights for the characters?

Suzette: Dean was able to revisit a time of his life that was elided by the demands of the family business (more specifically, by John's demands). When Dean talks about his past, he usually emphasizes his bravado (especially his sexual bravado), but flashback episodes like this one, "After School Special," and 1.18 "Something Wicked" reveal his vulnerability.

Along with the audience, Sam gets a glimpse at what Dean's been hiding with his macho talk. Sam tells Dean he appreciates Dean's support, but unlike the audience, Sam has no idea that Dean has betrayed Sam's wishes and may have put Sam in great danger.

Poor Winchesters! They just can't have heartwarming memories without barbs.

Katherine: I loved Sonny. (Blake Gibbons owned that role.) Just to know that he stood up to John Winchester and was ready to go to bat for Dean, that if Dean wanted to go to that dance, Sonny was going to make it happen? Yeah.

All of Dean's scenes with Timmy melted my heart. He's far from perfect, but he's good with small children in ways that Sam (sometimes) is not.

I enjoyed watching Sam's discovery of this part of Dean's past, especially where he figured out what was going on with Robin.

No-nonsense Ruth was made of win. Making Sam and Dean take their shoes off because she had just cleaned the floor? Priceless.

Anita: Sonny was a great character, and a wonderful counterpoint to John. It's nice to know that Dean did have that sort of mentor, even if it was just for a few weeks. It was also nice to see Dean's vulnerability and his ability to be vulnerable when he was out of his normal family dynamic. Part of me thinks that Dean is so good with kids because his childhood development was stunted and part of him is still a little kid himself.

Sam's slow discovery of what happened to Dean in those weeks was fun to watch, and he got to realize that his brother did know what a normal childhood could be like.

What other observations did you have?

Suzette: All last season, I had issues with consistency and continuity. Inattention to detail can really throw off an episode. In this episode, Dean and Sam clearly remember hunting a rugaru when they were kids. However, in 4.04 "Metamorphosis," they had never heard of a rugaru, which significantly affected how they dealt with the monster. This is just sloppy and irreconcilable (if their memory had been less sure, their future ignorance of the rugaru could have been put down to Sam's extreme youth and Dean's erasure of that entire period of his life).

Also difficult to reconcile was Dean's age in this episode compared to how he looked as an 18-year-old (played by Brock Kelly) in "After School Special." In this episode, Dylan Everett does a great job of playing Dean, but he looks closer to 14, the age originally set in the script, than 16. Adam Glass tweeted that the decision was made after the episode was filmed, so I really hope they change it back to 14 when the show is released on DVD, or for future syndicated episodes. Hollywood doesn't cast for actual age (Kelly was 24 when he played an 18-year-old Dean; Everett is 18 playing a 16-year-old Dean), but some visual consistency within the show would be nice.

I was annoyed that Robin's chief role in the episode is to be a back-up mother. We know that Dean's relationships are often more complicated than they seem to be on the surface.

Finally, why is Sam judgmental about ex-cons? He and Dean have consorted with many ex-cons, and are ex-cons themselves.

Now for the good news.

Sam picking up a copy of The Marvelous Land of Oz was a nice touch. It calls back to 9.04 "Slumber Party," when he, Dean, and Charlie met the real Dorothy, and hints that Charlie and Dorothy may be back.

Welcome back, Erin Karpluk! She played the mother of one of a new generation of Azazel's children in 1.09 "Home." She also starred in the series Being Erica, in which she plays a woman with the ability to revisit incidents in her own lifetime: very appropriate for this flashback episode.

In "After School Special," writer Adam Glass introduced the idea of ghosts haunting DNA to the Supernatural universe. Here, he takes the logical step of including the DNA passed from a parent to her child as a hauntable item. It's really quite chilling: a child in this universe may never be rid of a ghost parent -- but maybe that's a lesson for Dean and Sam as well. They can't go on being phased by the legacy of their parents. It's part of their DNA, literally. They need to find coping mechanisms, other than holding on to each other at the expense of everything else.

Sonny speaks the truth! "Because these days, the system would rather incarcerate the boys than redeem them." After this episode aired, I read an update on the "kids for cash" scandal, in which private prisons paid two Pennsylvania prosecutors to send children to their jails. I imagine a mini-episode or a comic where Dean discovers this and goes all demon hunter on those sorry humans' asses.

Katherine: I won't repeat Suzette's continuity error catches, except to say I was a bit annoyed by them, too.

I liked the detail of Dean's amulet during the 1995 scene in the diner with Sonny.

"We're no angels." Oh, the irony of that line.

I concur that Sonny speaks the truth about redemption vs. incarceration. The problem is that private, for-profit prison facilities are a part of that problem. There's a lot of money, and I mean a lot of money to be made off of prisons. Unfortunately, it's really a short term kind of profit. While it initially costs more in terms of money and time to truly intervene and reform, society (and the taxpayer) reap long-term benefits in the terms of less court, police, and prison costs, and, more people go on to become productive members of society.

But no, people like to punish because it lets them be holier than thou, and it lets politicians play the "tough on crime" card.

Anita: I had forgotten about the rugaru business. Apparently the writers had, too.

The actor playing young Dean did a remarkable job. I had no trouble believing that was Dean. I also appreciated the markings on the bed where he had slept, and that he had tried to tell Sonny what his family did, even though Sonny didn't believe him at the time. It showed that Dean trusted Sonny to a degree that he trusted very few people outside of the hunter culture, ever. The actor playing Timmy (Sean Michael Kyer) did a good job, too.

Let me voice my agreement to what's been said about prisons. The situation is a horrible commentary on the USA.

Ruth's death scene was one of the most terrifying ones on Supernatural in quite some time. I hope the writers continue to remember that there's supposed to be horror happening in this show.

Supernatural — Official Website
Supernatural Wiki — A Supernatural Canon & Fandom Resource