Sam and Dean - Double Standards

[Abaddon]

My other thread about Dean got me thinking about this.

Why is Sam "punished" for not looking for Dean when he went to Purgatory but there is no problem with Dean not trying to rescue Sam from Hell?

They are two very different circumstances I think but the level of crap Sam gets for it just seems a bit hypocritical to me.

Lets take Bobby for example - When Dean left Sam in Hell and went to live with Lisa, he was happy for him. But when he finds out that Sam didn't look for Dean he is incredulous. Why?

Is it because there was more of a finality when Sam went to Hell? When Dean went to Purgatory, it was all so up in the air, Sam didn't know where he was and was surprised when Dean told him where he had been.

I have been thinking that, if I am going to be irritated with Sam then I also should be with Dean. However, there is one thing that really puzzles me about Sam's situation - Kevin.

Sam saw him get taken by Crowley....why didn't he try to rescue him? I have trouble trying to understand the reasoning behind that. I get that he was all alone and would be freaking right out but still.....

What do you guys think? Is there a big double standard here? Or are they two very different situations that can't really be compared?

 

[Abaddon]

Crap. I think I worded this thread all wrong.

I did mean to mention that obviously Sam was out of Hell pretty much straight away, but Dean didn't know that.

Also, the way Dean treats Sam about him leaving hunting for a girl, when he did in a round about way, the same sort of thing.

Does that make more sense? Oh I should so go to bed already, haha.

 

[Ruby]

I don't see any difference. I think they did the exact same thing and it bugs the hell out of me that Sam gets dumped on and Dean is the perfect little angel.

As for why Sam didn't look for Dean, people need to remember just exactly Sam went through that season. Between his wall being broken, his hallucinations of Lucifer, his hospitalization, I think, by the time Dean vanished, Sam just broke. He just lost it and didn't know what to do next. He literally had no one to turn to, everyone he knew was either dead or missing. He didn't even had a place to start. I don't blame him for going off the reservation. It's for that reason that I think Sam was planning on committing suicide the night he hit the dog. Sam isn't that negligent that he wouldn't be able to avoid a dig running out in the middle of the road, his reflexes are razor sharp, just like Dean. I think it Sam's mind was just gone, he was so far out of his mind that he just didn't notice what was going on around him.

Sam might have had a life with Amelia, but I don't think he was ever completely 100% with her, he still lived in a motel, as far as I'm aware, and as soon as he found out that Amelia's husband was still alive, he didn't even try to fight for her, he just left and went back to the cabin, finally ready to get back into hunting now that he had his head on straight. Nothing pulled him back, he didn't even know Dean was back. He just went back to the only four-walls home he had left.

Dean didn't leave Lisa until he was literally pulled back in kicking and screaming and even then, he did everything he could to hold on to Lisa as long as possible.

And Sam wasn't out of Hell straight away, his soul was stuck in there for the equivalent of hundreds of years.

 

[Death]

I think part of it is that Sam chose to go to Hell and he told Dean to go be with Lisa, whereas Dean didn't get a choice, he just got pulled into purgatory, although Sam didn't know where he was at the time.

I wonder though if Sam remembered how he was when Gabriel did kill Dean for those 6 months, not to mention the time Dean was in Hell, and knew that he couldn't go though all that again to try and find him, that it hadn't helped last time and he had even less to go on this time. He suffered so much then, and he couldn't go through all that again and still not get Dean back.