seeing_ghosts | 8x04 Bitten aka the charade that is the event of the season? (Reply)

Spoilers for all kinds of shit, speculation, the works, you should know how I roll by now!

Basically, this episode cemented for me what I've started to think might be the theme of this season - the monsters among us and within us.

Starting with, of course, Dean; carefully set as the monster of the week in the beginning of 8x01 We Need To Talk About Kevin, and carefuly crafted into this heartless SOB in the rest of it - throwing demons, killing shit, the Purgatory business - the monster within us. And his counterpart, the monster among us - Benny the friendly vampire, set free upon the Earth.

In 8x02 What's Up, Tiger Mommy Dean continues to be in the moral grey area; roughened up, all sharp edges and no compassion, seemingly no conscience - a silent admission that Dean has embraced some monsterous part of himself. And the monsters among us are, of course, all the supernatural entities gathered at the auction. (And then there's Crowley, possessing poor Mrs. Tran - does that qualify as the monster within or among us?)

In episode 8x03 Heartache, there is the tragic romance of that Brick guy - old mayan warrior that slipped through centuries among ordinary humans (yes, the monster among us), and his wife-slash-mother that was unfortunate enough to fall in love with him, let him get under her skin and became his 'partner in crime' - in the name of love embraced his true nature and thus, by proxy, became a human monster of sorts, too (the monster within us).

And in 8x04 Bitten we have three teenagers who get caught up in a hell of a situation; and tangle up with the monsters among us, represented by professor-pure-blood-alpha-whatever and Michael the first bitten; and the monsters within us, the doesn't-want-to-be-Piggy-anymore whiney Brian who desires power and despises his best friend (and kills him once his inner monster is set free) and Katy, who murders the murderer of her lover in completely cold blood, but promises to never hurt anyone else again.

I think this element has always been present in Show but it has never felt as profound as it does this season. How does Dean fit in? How does Cas fit in? What about Sam's dog? I guess we'll see...

Oh, and next week episode is Edlund's - we're all gonna die.