The Time Is Out of Joint: Something Isn’t Right, Here…
There is something way off in the Samelia flashbacks in “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and “Blood Brother.” (Yeah, I know, that’s a shocker coming from me.) The timeline doesn’t seem to make any sense.
We first see Sam extending his stay at the motel “another week.” He’s been there long enough to get to know Everett and his dad’s situation. Dog is with him, on a leash, and has a cast on one foreleg, so Sam hasn’t been there very long. Everett remarks that he’d thought Sam would have left by now, and Sam says that the dog has a follow-up at the vet’s “on Tuesday.” Everett offers Sam a job.
Then we see Sam working on the ice machine some days later, as indicated by the change of clothing. Dog is lying beside him, still with a cast but not on a leash, so it’s likely that the Tuesday appointment has already happened, for reason that will become apparent in a minute. Everett tells him about the sink in Amelia’s room. When we see Sam working on the sink, he hasn’t changed clothes, so it’s the same day. And remember, the dog is still in a cast.
The next time we see Dog is when he runs into Amelia’s room.
Let me say that again. The dog runs into Amelia’s room. The cast is gone, and the dog is running. Not flat-out flying, but not just trotting, either. And when Sam comes chasing after him, he’s not carrying a leash.
Now, it generally takes six to eight weeks for a bone to heal. For at least the first four of those weeks, the dog is to be on restricted movement—only allowed out on a short leash, kept to a walk. No running allowed. After that, the dog can be allowed to get up to a trot, but still on a leash and not for long periods. At six weeks or so, if the bone is healed, the dog may be allowed to work back up to regular activity levels, including running, off the leash. And Dog had at least two broken bones, per Amelia.
Okay. So it’s been two months since the accident, the dog’s healed up, everything’s fine.
But when Sam goes into Amelia’s room to get the dog, she asks him if Dog is “taking his antibiotics.”
Now, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but I am somewhat familiar with long courses of antibiotics, as I am prone to stubborn sinus infections, and the LONGEST my doctors have been willing to let me take them is three weeks. The usual course of antibiotics is 5-14 days for humans. Dogs tend to have longer courses, but I’ve never heard of any that went past three weeks, and I’ve never had to give my dog antibiotics for more than two weeks.
So why is Dog still taking antibiotics after two months? Certainly there are situations that would warrant that, but unless the dog’s immune system is somehow compromised, or Sam completely failed to take care of him properly, or Amelia is completely incompetent (which is entirely possible, because I don’t know any responsible vet who would pressure someone who’s telling her he’s not in a position to care for an injured dog into doing just that), Dog should not have needed antibiotics by the time the bone was healed enough to run on.
So either something is very wrong with Dog, or something is very wrong with the timeline. Occam’s Razor would suggest that the problem lies with the dog.
But.
In “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” Dean reconstitutes Benny in Louisiana at the same time as Sam leaves Amelia’s house in Texas. They both head to Whitefish, Montana, Sam in the Impala and Dean apparently hitchhiking.
GoogleMaps tells me that Clayton, LA and Kermit, TX are 761 miles apart, about 11 hours of driving. Kermit is about 1,600 miles and 25 hours driving time from Whitefish. Clayton is about 2,100 miles and 32 hours driving time from Whitefish, a difference of about 500 miles and seven hours, assuming normal speeds on interstate highways.
So how did Dean, who was hitchhiking, get there before Sam, who was driving the Impala and had 500 miles less to go? And not only get there before Sam, but enough ahead of him to have gone shopping for groceries and beer. Especially when you consider that Dean had to find rides in rural BFE Louisiana.
Dean’s scene with Benny is happening at approximately the same time Sam is sneaking out of Amelia’s house—Show has already alerted us to a four-day time skip between Dean arriving in Maine and when he got to Benny’s burial site in Louisiana. We hardly ever see time skips of more than a few hours in the progress of an episode, and we almost always see a daytime scene between things that happen on two different nights. There wasn’t a daylight scene in between Dean in Louisiana and Sam in Texas, so they were, if not simultaneous, at least sequential on the same day.
Clayton, Louisiana is in a rural area, about sixty miles from an interstate highway:
And one of those interstates is in Mississippi. Even if Dean lucked out and caught a semi hauling straight from Clayton to Whitefish, which I find highly unlikely because BFE Louisana at night, it would have had to stop for refueling and rest; federal law limits drivers to 11 continuous hours of driving in a 14 hour work day, with a mandatory rest period of 10 hours. Even if a driver pushes way past 11 hours, he’d be a damned fool to drive for 32 hours straight.
It took Dean four days to get from Maine to Louisiana, about 1600 miles, and it’s almost half again as long as that from Louisiana to Montana. If he hitched instead of stealing a car (because I doubt he had enough cash to rent one and his credit cards would have been blocked for non-payment after a year) it would have taken nearly a week. If he stole a car and drove, he was still at least seven hours and probably more behind Sam. Sam would have to drive significantly fewer hours per day than Dean in order for Dean to beat him to the cabin, and Dean, in a stolen car, would have to stick closer to the speed limits than Sam, unless he took back roads, and that would have made his trip still longer.
So while it is theoretically possible for Dean to have beaten Sam to Whitefish, it doesn’t seem very probable. Especially if the Impala can do that magic thing where she can drive across the country in twelve hours.
Or, I could just be trying to make sense of the writers saying, “Fuck logic, this is what the story needs.” In which case I will be mightily disappointed.
