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SPN 3x11 - Mystery Spot
I think "Dream a Little Dream" and "Mystery Spot" work as a pair—each episode showed the soft underbelly of one of the brothers. From the reactions I've seen on my f-list, a lot of people hated one ep and loved the other. I'd suspect this is as much a representation of the Dean girls and the Sam girls as anything else (I'm a Dean girl myself). Neither of these revelations was exactly a revelation—they're things we've known for a loooong time. But it's still good to see on the screen.
"Mystery Spot" has one notable difference from every other Groundhog Day episode I've ever seen. In every other, the looping character gives up at some point. There's a montage in the middle where they just don't care anymore. It was true in the original, in Xena, and in Stargate (can't really tell in X-Files since the repeating character was not the POV character). But not here. Sam gets depressed, clearly, but he never stops trying to save Dean. He's not even trying to get out of the loop so much as trying to save Dean. He guesses early on that the two are related, and from there, he's just trying to keep his brother alive. And that's the point.
Sam would never have known who the Trickster was if he hadn't tipped his hand. That's what the strawberry sauce was—not a mistake, the Trickster was revealing himself. Why? Because Sam did not learn. He never gave up, he never stopped and he didn't change. The entire episode he didn't change. The Trickster is neither good nor bad, though some have speculated this puts him on the side of good. But I think he just saw the Winchesters as easy targets and Sam as someone he needed to be taught a lesson. But Sam never learned, so the Trickster just got bored. It was only fun for so long watching Sam struggle and then watching him self-destruct and then he got bored and sent Sam back. But Sam didn't learn anything.
This experience changed him, but only by making more potent what he already feared.
"Mystery Spot" has one notable difference from every other Groundhog Day episode I've ever seen. In every other, the looping character gives up at some point. There's a montage in the middle where they just don't care anymore. It was true in the original, in Xena, and in Stargate (can't really tell in X-Files since the repeating character was not the POV character). But not here. Sam gets depressed, clearly, but he never stops trying to save Dean. He's not even trying to get out of the loop so much as trying to save Dean. He guesses early on that the two are related, and from there, he's just trying to keep his brother alive. And that's the point.
Sam would never have known who the Trickster was if he hadn't tipped his hand. That's what the strawberry sauce was—not a mistake, the Trickster was revealing himself. Why? Because Sam did not learn. He never gave up, he never stopped and he didn't change. The entire episode he didn't change. The Trickster is neither good nor bad, though some have speculated this puts him on the side of good. But I think he just saw the Winchesters as easy targets and Sam as someone he needed to be taught a lesson. But Sam never learned, so the Trickster just got bored. It was only fun for so long watching Sam struggle and then watching him self-destruct and then he got bored and sent Sam back. But Sam didn't learn anything.
This experience changed him, but only by making more potent what he already feared.