elements in 4.09 leading to wild speculation
These are all about Anna who I’ve already speculated about once!
As we’re introduced to Anna, she’s dressed in the equivalent of Dean’s 2.01 In My Time of Dying wardrobe of blue hospital pants and white v-neck tee.
The sign outside her door clearly identifies Ward 42. That has to be shorthand for an answer in the vicinity, no? Maybe more that that…. time to wonder if the right questions are being asked?
When the boys get to Anna’s parents’ house, the camera takes time to show some mail. But what kind of address is that? I just stopped to look to see what town/state they were in, but I’m still clueless. Even the zip code is weird. (It would be great if someone with skills would take the time to get a better zoomed in shot.)
Now for the wild speculation portion of the posting….
Could Dean be in a limbo of sorts? Maybe Sam and Bobby got him out of hell (by the grace of God and angels), but he’s still incapacitated from the experience and been curled up in a ball in South Dakota this whole time. Could Anna be a construct? projection? guide? to bridge Dean’s return to us the fictional world the Winchesters occupy? She’s wearing Dean’s clothes from the S2 opener when he was trapped between existences. She can listen in on angels. She also sees demon faces. How Dean-like for her to assume that the angels probably aren’t even aware of her. How sweet that Anna would be glad to find the Dean. The doctor’s words take on another meaning if they are applied to a trapped Dean. “I hope you find her. It’s dangerous for her to be out there alone.”
Remember Dean saying he’d choose to come back as a girl (cheerleader, hee!) in 4.08 Wishful Thinking? There’ve been other odder-than-usual, less-than-tough-guy moments for Dean this year. Heck, they rehymenated the man and put him in short pants in 4.05 Monster Movie! 4.06 Yellow Fever was one big excuse for a juvenilized Dean. Scared of shadows and clinging to his brother’s arm? Lying on his back in the Impala’s front seat air-drumming as if he were a kid in a playpen waiting for nap-time to be over? (I lovelovelove these moments and credit Jensen Ackles with pulling them off so I recognize Dean in all of them and never considered them unreal.)
I KNOW there’s something about the deserted gas station Dean happened across in 4.01 Lazarus Rising. It was perfectly designed to set him on a path to recovering himself. The episodes and monsters we’ve seen could be Sam and dreamroot or Castiel induced? For the most part don’t they boil down to being afraid for Sam and remembering how much Sam needs Dean? The angels insistence that Anna has to die would be a “time’s up” prompt for Dean to give up the security/crutch of the limbo?
I can not wait for Thursday. I going to stop playing with this idea much more because I’m liking this one and will be disappointed if it doesn’t amount to anything after all.
EDIT: Yeah, I can’t leave it alone. Ruby would fit into this! She takes on saving Anna (Dean!) which Dean isn’t prepared to really trust. He’s following Sam’s lead under protest. Dean sort of extends a truce based on what he learns from Sam. After the initial fear, we see Anna (Dean!) is much more comfortable about accepting Ruby being different from other demons. Perhaps Ruby was instrumental in some way regarding the mechanics of getting Dean out of hell? That would be the way the show could guarantee I’ll get behind Ruby! (The angels’ attitude toward her ought to be less severe if that were the case, though.)
EDIT 2: More ‘evidence’? Why didn’t Dean stitch Sam up in 4.09? We don’t know Anna well, but “Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em” sure sounds like Dean, doesn’t it? Now I ‘ll be going through the whole season looking for things Dean did and didn’t do that are a bit off from what we’d expect. Would something like this help explain why Dean was sent back to 1973 and Sam wasn’t invited?
EDIT 3: Lnking to the entry at spnematography where there has been some discussion.
16 Nov 2008 09:48 pm robin 3 comments
That address looks like something written by a Canadian PA who doesn’t understand how US addresses work. There’s no state, there is USA, and the ZIP code is either three digits too long, or one too short.
ATP Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I checked with some Canadian friends and it doesn’t match the patterns for Canadian addresses either.
It seems like an easy enough thing to have taken care over since they had Dean pick up and look at the mail — and the camera focused on it enough to get the cap. hmmm… It’s not huge, but it is another alarm bell for me. Wish I had even a crazy theory to explain it!
I was just rereading this entry and realized 4.10 Heaven and Hell provided a neat follow up I had missed. For some reason the doctor’s words about a missing Anna stood out to me in 4.09. “I hope you find her. It’s dangerous for her to be out there alone.”
I like thinking that was a precursor to having Anna tell Dean that when he’s is ready/able to talk about what happened in hell, he does have people who want to help and that he isn’t alone. By 4.10′s end, Dean is able to take her advice and open up enough to Sam to relate what he experienced.