cupidsbower:

That’s a great question. I don’t know that I’d use the word “suffers”… but then again, maybe that is the right word for Supernatural. 🙂

The short answer to your question is yes, of course. Think about it: the central conceit of the show is that they are secret hunters of supernatural creatures that “normal” people don’t know about. For that reason alone, the show’s morality is tied to the protagonists, because if we don’t believe they’re really fighting monsters and there’s some justification for it, then… they’re really serial killers hallucinating people as monsters as they rampage across the country?

There’s a reason that’s a trope in fanfic.

The longer answer is that the show has tended to privilege Dean’s opinions of people and events over the years. His attitudes are nearly always borne out. I’m too tired right now to collect a bunch of caps to illustrate this, but Ruby for instance. She was really convincing, but Dean was never convinced.

The text is more likely to paint Sam as wrong in comparison – the way God called out Sam for instance in 11×20.

The way Sam and Dean are contrasted in this regard is a definite textual bias, used for dramatic effect. It ups the stakes of the conflicts between the brothers.

All of that said, the show has started to shift on that a bit lately. In Red Meat, for instance, Dean was definitely coded as wrong to take those drugs, and Sam was coded as righteous and kick-ass.

I think this shift in morality is linked to the arc about undoing their co-dependency. But that progress is in fits and starts, and sometimes there are setbacks, so it’s not yet as obvious as the pattern of Dean usually being right that existed throughout the earlier seasons and still lingers to the current season.