Little Match Girl sad, looking into all the lit windows at the happy warm families, while standing barefoot in the snow.

I think this is what drove him to Stanford. He wanted so desperately to be "mainstream" and not living on the fringes that he abandoned all thought of family. (Only learning later that sometimes all you have is family.)

comes off with an undertone of desperate that's...just a bit off-putting. It also makes me waver between thinking Sam is sociopathic material, and Little Match Girl sad

Bingo. Which is why, if I stop to think about it, I am more fond of Dean. Dean knows exactly who he is. (Macho crunchy coating, with a fluffy marshmallow center that watches Oprah.) Sam doesn't know what he really wants, which means that he hasn't figured out who he is.

Second season, though, I've really liked Sam more and more. I think the change in him started in Salvation.

As many times as I've watched eps out of order, and sequentially, Sam's metamorphosis has impressed me. You see what you expect to see, and I did, all through the season until Houses of the Holy, when I went (Keanu) whoa!(/Keanu). And stepped back and took a good look at Sam and the progression he's made through the season. Part of it was JP maturing as an actor, really getting into the character, very gratifying. But part of it is the writers' choices for Sam and how the character changes through S2. I had very little regard for Sam other than as an obnoxious little brother and plot device, even though his name is billed first and the premise is ostensibly Luke's journey, with Sam as Luke, in early S1. Now I regard him as a character who's complex, intriguing and "Oh, Sam!" in his own right.

ed. to remove embarrassing typo.

Bingo. Which is why, if I stop to think about it, I am more fond of Dean. Dean knows exactly who he is. (Macho crunchy coating, with a fluffy marshmallow center that watches Oprah.) Sam doesn't know what he really wants, which means that he hasn't figured out who he is.

Yes, this, and the other stuff JilliBob said. Sam is a hell of a mimic, but I don't think he understands people or himself very well.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to Sam's arc in S3, because I think we'll see the character really come into his own. JP has proved he can step up to the plate, so the writers have a lot more flexibility with him.

Dean knows exactly who he is. (Macho crunchy coating, with a fluffy marshmallow center that watches Oprah.)

Even though he doesn't admit it. Bless.

John wears his macho like his skin, it's just there and something he can't take off, whereas Dean wears his macho like a cloaking device. Um. A cloaking device with bling?

First, snerk at the cloaking device with bling. Second, perhaps it's due to the type of combat each man grew up in? John's tour in Viet Nam didn't require any stealth (other than combat), and so the macho he learned to inhabit was born out of the daily interaction with his fellow soldiers, the service, and what was necessary to go in the field. Dean's macho is born out of having to disguise himself, not only to the strangers they're helping and the monsters they're hunting, but also to Sam & John in order to keep the peace.

Or I could just be flapping my hands for no good reason. Flaphandium.

John wears his macho like his skin, it's just there and something he can't take off, whereas Dean wears his macho like a cloaking device. Um. A cloaking device with bling?

You almost made my coffee go all over my keyboard with that last sentence.

To my eyes, Sam doesn't get people. He puts up one hell of a well-socialized front, because he wants to fit in; he thinks he wants what Normal People want. But on some level, he doesn't quite understand Normal People, and works really, really hard to get them to accept him.

Hmm. While he came at his normal desires from a roundabout way (wanting safety and stability), I think he understands them fairly well, or at least as well as anyone can. He doesn't, certainly, have the depth of disconnect that Dean does, and he picks up on social cues and norms quite adeptly.

Where I see Sam, at the start of the series, and what's he's been moving away from ever since, is as someone defining what he thinks he wants by what he knows he doesn't want: a rootless, dangerous, constantly shifting lifestyle.

There's this thing I'm too tired to articulate, but here goes, where I think Sam's struggle has been to define who he is as a part of the family, where Dean's has/will be to figure out who and what, if anything, he is outside of it.

where I think Sam's struggle has been to define who he is as a part of the family, where Dean's has/will be to figure out who and what, if anything, he is outside of it.

Oh, I agree with this.

The differences are reflections of how they were raised, even though they were raised in a rather closed family of three, they were raised differently and that causes conflict and changes how they react/interact with the world.

Sam's struggle has been to define who he is as a part of the family, where Dean's has/will be to figure out who and what, if anything, he is outside of it.

Oh yes. Definitely.

A cloaking device with bling?

Heh.

I'd posit, Juliana, that rather than a complex analysis of their experiences, you can go with the general reason why John and Dean perform their masculinities so differently: one of these two grew up in the 50s, with all the attendant repression-and-mayonnaise that era involves, and the other one didn't.

Ow! Help, I sprained something, imagining Dean watching MTV circa 1986.

I just want to see Dean's glam phase. (Please?)