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trinityofoneWhen I first watched this episode, all I could manage in the way of a response—as everyone from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bmouse to aesc will attest—was cries of “AHHHHHHHHHHH!” and what Mouse calls “jellyfish fingers.” Now, after a truly sad number of rewatches, I have some actual observations. I’ve also highlighted what I consider to be some of the big questions that I hope the show will answer—or that we need to answer in fic. Some of this is general stuff, but I will admit that the whole post has a serious Dean/Castiel bent.
The Observations!
1. Possibly the most significant thing that I took away from this episode was the utter lack of any connection between Dean and Jimmy. The chemistry, the bond that we’ve been seeing all season was totally gone—there were no more of those lingering gazes that Dean and Castiel have been sharing since they first met. Dean seemed to think Jimmy was a nice guy who should be able to get back to his family, and Jimmy looked like he felt nothing for Dean at all. Which means that everything we’ve been seeing up to this point really was a connection between Dean and Castiel, between a human and an angel uninfluenced by his vessel. That’s…actually sort of amazing to me. It certainly represents a whole lot of emotion coming from a being that’s not supposed to feel anything.
2. Speaking of feelings: the terror on Cas’ face in the first scene! Wow. I think that is the most raw emotion we’ve seen from him, and it creates such a great contrast with his affect in the flashbacks (“I am not your father”) and at the end of the episode. He’d really come a long way. (Note past tense.) Ouch.
3. We really weren’t given much of an idea what Jimmy thought of Dean and Sam, which is unfortunate, at the very minimum because I always like to see outsiders’ views of main characters. One interesting thing was the line “These boys are going to get you a car”—these boys? If we assume Jimmy is Misha Collins’ age (b. 1974), then he’s only five years older than Dean and that’s sort of an odd choice of words. (For the record/for comparison, Jared and Jensen are both one year older than their characters.) I wonder what it says about how Jimmy views the brothers Winchester—maybe it’s a commentary on their lack of certain types emotional maturity or their lack of general stability (they're not fathers, they don't have wives, homes, children)?
4. Another line that fascinated me: “He asked me to do it,” Jimmy says when trying to explain to Amelia why he’s sticking his bare hand in boiling water. So either Castiel identified to Jimmy as male or Jimmy assumed as much. Since I am curious about whether angels are naturally sexed (not like that. Perv.) in the SPN-verse, the former case would be interesting to me. And it would add an interesting element to Castiel’s (apparent) willingness to use Claire as a vessel.
5. Some thoughts about names. First, everyone—EVERYONE: Sam, Anna, Jimmy—is using Dean’s nickname for Castiel now. This really seems to me like everyone adopting Dean’s nickname, not like Dean being the first to use a nickname that was there all along. (Can you really see Castiel saying, “Call me Cas?” No.) But I would be interested in other theories on this. Second, I’m not sure if this was intentional, but I’ve been thinking for a while that I was unusually impressed with Anna being called Anna: the name means “graceful one.” I may be giving TPTB too much credit here, but there was another nice one in this episode: James means “the usurper,” which is painfully ironic in the case of poor usurped Jimmy.
6. A timeline quandary: Castiel obviously prepped Jimmy for more than a day, which itself would have been less than the time (right?) between when Cas stopped trying to talk to Dean directly and Cas appeared to Dean all vesseled up. So are we to assume that Castiel used his time bending mojo? Or did he have Jimmy waiting in the wings? My gut instinct says the former, but again, I would love others’ thoughts.
7. Details I liked: Jimmy’s mad chopping skillz, and also his really rather impressive reflexes when taking on Roger!demon. (Am I starting to scan everyone for hunting-applicable skills?) Also, the fact that Jimmy got dressed up (changed out of that sweatshirt into the ensemble we know) to have his big talk with Castiel on the walk—an interesting display of reverence there. And I love that we actually got to see the tie get loosened into its usual, slightly askew position. That’s a gorgeous detail.
8. It may be worth noting that what Sam was offering Jimmy in regards to his family—“Either you get as far away from them as you can or you put a bullet in your brain”—is actually about comparable with what heaven/Castiel ends up offering—and Jimmy ends up taking. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place!
9. It’s not until Jimmy gets shot in the stomach that we FINALLY get a reaction shot from Dean. (Dean. Not Sam. Just Dean.) I would love to hear some people analyze that moment from Dean’s perspective. Is what he’s feeling just his usual guilt and worry over the death of one of the innocent people his whole life is about saving? Or is he finally having to confront the fact that Cas is missing and may be dead?
10. When Sam, all bloody-mouthed after snacking on demon juice, turns around to kill the demon in Amelia, Dean actually starts away like he’s afraid of him before he realizes that Amelia is there. Tiny tiny thing, but brilliant: for a second there, Dean though Sam was coming after him. Brr!
11. “I learned my lesson while I was away, Dean. I serve Heaven, I don’t serve Man. And I certainly don’t serve you.” There’s three sentences that I won’t be able to get out of my head for a while. This episode was so painful, but so brilliant too—it crushed me, but at the same time filled me with hope because it made me feel like the show is taking the relationship between Dean and Castiel really seriously: it’s important to them, too. (Albeit platonically.) On a less serious note: I know this is not the metaphor they were going for at all, but it kind of feels like mommy and daddy realized their son Cas was in love with his friend Dean, so they sent him to creepy Bible cure-the-gay camp. There’s a “But I’m a Cheerleader!” AU here somewhere. (“But I’m an Angel!”?)
12. And fine, while I’m being ridiculous, I just want to say: a) “Was it a refreshing Coke?” = a line that has not ceased to provide me with glee, which in such a dark ep I really needed; and b) I really like Jimmy’s skinny little arms. Thank you, temporary trenchcoat removal!
So if you wade through all that blather, what you’re left with are these essential questions that we either need to have answered or need to answer for ourselves:
The Questions!
1. First and foremost, what did Castiel want to tell Dean? I’ve come up with one theory, based on absolutely nothing, which is that Cas wanted to tell Dean not to let any angels (including him) put the Heavenly whammy on Dean that we got a glimpse of in the teaser for next week. (See below.) Possibly this is not so much a theory as the germ of a fic idea, but anyway: THOUGHTS?
2. What is in Jimmy’s blood that makes him special? Someone somewhere mentioned the idea that Jimmy might be descended from Nephilim, which is certainly an interesting thought.
3. Why does Castiel need Jimmy to stay in his body? Is this a requirement specific to angels? Ruby—and therefore demons in general—obviously doesn’t need the human soul to still be present for her to possess a body. And we’ve generally seen angels to be more powerful than demons—an angelic vessel can be injured and survive even without the angel present, unlike with demonic possession where a fatal injury is a death sentence for the human host. So what gives?
4. In the meantime, assuming that Jimmy has to stick around for whatever Dean and Cas get up to in the future, what I’m curious about is this: If Jimmy doesn’t care much about Dean by now—which, judging from their interaction in this episode, he doesn’t seem to—what could make him change his mind?
5. Was Castiel really intending to stay in Claire or was it (and I strongly feel that it was) a ploy all along? (The alternative is just waaaaaaay too creepy. And on a practical level, Castiel had to know that camping out in a little girl would have made Dean almost impossible to work with, due to Lilith associations and just general skeeviness.)
6. What did the team upstairs actually do to Castiel? And why? I think it wasturtlespeaks who said she assumed it was because of Cas helping Dean protect Sam from Lilith via Chuck, but I’m not sure. One, is that big enough? Two, if that had been it, wouldn’t the response time have been faster? I think it was something else.
7. WHAT IS THE WHAMMY CAS IS PUTTING ON DEAN IN THE CLIPS FROM THE REMAINING EPISODES? I NEED TO KNOW THIS IMMEDIATELY.
So there you have, basically, everything that I’ve been turning over and over in my head and trying to make sense of since the episode aired on Thursday. Here is all of the information I have to work with as I ask myself: where do we go from here? I would love to hear people’s answers to that question, or any of these others, or some questions of their own.
I certainly haven’t been this excited by something happening inside my TV in a long time.
bmouse to aesc will attest—was cries of “AHHHHHHHHHHH!” and what Mouse calls “jellyfish fingers.” Now, after a truly sad number of rewatches, I have some actual observations. I’ve also highlighted what I consider to be some of the big questions that I hope the show will answer—or that we need to answer in fic. Some of this is general stuff, but I will admit that the whole post has a serious Dean/Castiel bent.The Observations!
1. Possibly the most significant thing that I took away from this episode was the utter lack of any connection between Dean and Jimmy. The chemistry, the bond that we’ve been seeing all season was totally gone—there were no more of those lingering gazes that Dean and Castiel have been sharing since they first met. Dean seemed to think Jimmy was a nice guy who should be able to get back to his family, and Jimmy looked like he felt nothing for Dean at all. Which means that everything we’ve been seeing up to this point really was a connection between Dean and Castiel, between a human and an angel uninfluenced by his vessel. That’s…actually sort of amazing to me. It certainly represents a whole lot of emotion coming from a being that’s not supposed to feel anything.
2. Speaking of feelings: the terror on Cas’ face in the first scene! Wow. I think that is the most raw emotion we’ve seen from him, and it creates such a great contrast with his affect in the flashbacks (“I am not your father”) and at the end of the episode. He’d really come a long way. (Note past tense.) Ouch.
3. We really weren’t given much of an idea what Jimmy thought of Dean and Sam, which is unfortunate, at the very minimum because I always like to see outsiders’ views of main characters. One interesting thing was the line “These boys are going to get you a car”—these boys? If we assume Jimmy is Misha Collins’ age (b. 1974), then he’s only five years older than Dean and that’s sort of an odd choice of words. (For the record/for comparison, Jared and Jensen are both one year older than their characters.) I wonder what it says about how Jimmy views the brothers Winchester—maybe it’s a commentary on their lack of certain types emotional maturity or their lack of general stability (they're not fathers, they don't have wives, homes, children)?
4. Another line that fascinated me: “He asked me to do it,” Jimmy says when trying to explain to Amelia why he’s sticking his bare hand in boiling water. So either Castiel identified to Jimmy as male or Jimmy assumed as much. Since I am curious about whether angels are naturally sexed (not like that. Perv.) in the SPN-verse, the former case would be interesting to me. And it would add an interesting element to Castiel’s (apparent) willingness to use Claire as a vessel.
5. Some thoughts about names. First, everyone—EVERYONE: Sam, Anna, Jimmy—is using Dean’s nickname for Castiel now. This really seems to me like everyone adopting Dean’s nickname, not like Dean being the first to use a nickname that was there all along. (Can you really see Castiel saying, “Call me Cas?” No.) But I would be interested in other theories on this. Second, I’m not sure if this was intentional, but I’ve been thinking for a while that I was unusually impressed with Anna being called Anna: the name means “graceful one.” I may be giving TPTB too much credit here, but there was another nice one in this episode: James means “the usurper,” which is painfully ironic in the case of poor usurped Jimmy.
6. A timeline quandary: Castiel obviously prepped Jimmy for more than a day, which itself would have been less than the time (right?) between when Cas stopped trying to talk to Dean directly and Cas appeared to Dean all vesseled up. So are we to assume that Castiel used his time bending mojo? Or did he have Jimmy waiting in the wings? My gut instinct says the former, but again, I would love others’ thoughts.
7. Details I liked: Jimmy’s mad chopping skillz, and also his really rather impressive reflexes when taking on Roger!demon. (Am I starting to scan everyone for hunting-applicable skills?) Also, the fact that Jimmy got dressed up (changed out of that sweatshirt into the ensemble we know) to have his big talk with Castiel on the walk—an interesting display of reverence there. And I love that we actually got to see the tie get loosened into its usual, slightly askew position. That’s a gorgeous detail.
8. It may be worth noting that what Sam was offering Jimmy in regards to his family—“Either you get as far away from them as you can or you put a bullet in your brain”—is actually about comparable with what heaven/Castiel ends up offering—and Jimmy ends up taking. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place!
9. It’s not until Jimmy gets shot in the stomach that we FINALLY get a reaction shot from Dean. (Dean. Not Sam. Just Dean.) I would love to hear some people analyze that moment from Dean’s perspective. Is what he’s feeling just his usual guilt and worry over the death of one of the innocent people his whole life is about saving? Or is he finally having to confront the fact that Cas is missing and may be dead?
10. When Sam, all bloody-mouthed after snacking on demon juice, turns around to kill the demon in Amelia, Dean actually starts away like he’s afraid of him before he realizes that Amelia is there. Tiny tiny thing, but brilliant: for a second there, Dean though Sam was coming after him. Brr!
11. “I learned my lesson while I was away, Dean. I serve Heaven, I don’t serve Man. And I certainly don’t serve you.” There’s three sentences that I won’t be able to get out of my head for a while. This episode was so painful, but so brilliant too—it crushed me, but at the same time filled me with hope because it made me feel like the show is taking the relationship between Dean and Castiel really seriously: it’s important to them, too. (Albeit platonically.) On a less serious note: I know this is not the metaphor they were going for at all, but it kind of feels like mommy and daddy realized their son Cas was in love with his friend Dean, so they sent him to creepy Bible cure-the-gay camp. There’s a “But I’m a Cheerleader!” AU here somewhere. (“But I’m an Angel!”?)
12. And fine, while I’m being ridiculous, I just want to say: a) “Was it a refreshing Coke?” = a line that has not ceased to provide me with glee, which in such a dark ep I really needed; and b) I really like Jimmy’s skinny little arms. Thank you, temporary trenchcoat removal!
So if you wade through all that blather, what you’re left with are these essential questions that we either need to have answered or need to answer for ourselves:
The Questions!
1. First and foremost, what did Castiel want to tell Dean? I’ve come up with one theory, based on absolutely nothing, which is that Cas wanted to tell Dean not to let any angels (including him) put the Heavenly whammy on Dean that we got a glimpse of in the teaser for next week. (See below.) Possibly this is not so much a theory as the germ of a fic idea, but anyway: THOUGHTS?
2. What is in Jimmy’s blood that makes him special? Someone somewhere mentioned the idea that Jimmy might be descended from Nephilim, which is certainly an interesting thought.
3. Why does Castiel need Jimmy to stay in his body? Is this a requirement specific to angels? Ruby—and therefore demons in general—obviously doesn’t need the human soul to still be present for her to possess a body. And we’ve generally seen angels to be more powerful than demons—an angelic vessel can be injured and survive even without the angel present, unlike with demonic possession where a fatal injury is a death sentence for the human host. So what gives?
4. In the meantime, assuming that Jimmy has to stick around for whatever Dean and Cas get up to in the future, what I’m curious about is this: If Jimmy doesn’t care much about Dean by now—which, judging from their interaction in this episode, he doesn’t seem to—what could make him change his mind?
5. Was Castiel really intending to stay in Claire or was it (and I strongly feel that it was) a ploy all along? (The alternative is just waaaaaaay too creepy. And on a practical level, Castiel had to know that camping out in a little girl would have made Dean almost impossible to work with, due to Lilith associations and just general skeeviness.)
6. What did the team upstairs actually do to Castiel? And why? I think it was
turtlespeaks who said she assumed it was because of Cas helping Dean protect Sam from Lilith via Chuck, but I’m not sure. One, is that big enough? Two, if that had been it, wouldn’t the response time have been faster? I think it was something else.7. WHAT IS THE WHAMMY CAS IS PUTTING ON DEAN IN THE CLIPS FROM THE REMAINING EPISODES? I NEED TO KNOW THIS IMMEDIATELY.
So there you have, basically, everything that I’ve been turning over and over in my head and trying to make sense of since the episode aired on Thursday. Here is all of the information I have to work with as I ask myself: where do we go from here? I would love to hear people’s answers to that question, or any of these others, or some questions of their own.
I certainly haven’t been this excited by something happening inside my TV in a long time.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 02:54 am (UTC)He'd skirted the line before but not actually crossed it, but if he told Dean something that 1) was interfering with the prophecies and 2) something which was forbidden to share with the Winchesters, then that would be Bad. As Anna said, disobeying is angel's murder one.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 03:30 am (UTC)Cas has definitely been skirting that line for a while, as you say; I'm just very interested in specifics—I want to know specifically what made Zachariah or whoever decide that they actually needed to intervene in such a drastic way. Or, if they were just disturbed by a general pattern, why act to correct it NOW?