All the King's Men

[rivkat]

OMG!

1. I am so sad that Erica Cerra's character is/was dead all along.  I had a brief moment of hoping she'd be recurring.  Recurringly awesome!

2. Cas was right!  I wonder whether he would have listened to the humans about renouncing his power had they trusted him in the first place.  Guess we'll never know given the Winchesters' ability to take any situation and make it worse!

3. For those looking for Sam/Castiel parallels, the fact that Cas blew up the first angel he encountered after getting pumped up past archangel strength was very Lucifer-like.

4. On the mindwipe, I have the following working theory: there's a guy, let's call him John for no reason whatsoever, in Lisa and Ben's memories, who had a fling with Lisa right before she got pregnant with Ben and who came back and saved Ben from a bad thing. Then he came back and after a good year things went bad. He convinced them to move but that wasn't good enough and they ended up parting, sad but understanding that it was the right thing for Lisa and Ben. Lisa and Ben haven't forgotten about salt lines, runes, or guns, only about a day of terror. The pictures Lisa keeps of that year have John in them.

This doesn't help at all with the part where Dean's request denies them agency and choice and all that fun stuff, I understand, but it limits the amount of explanation required for why they moved etc. so they won't be shocked when they try to go home, and also keeps them relatively safe, about as safe as they could be otherwise. Given that Castiel stepped up his advance planning game substantially in this episode, I am just presuming that he did so w/r/t Ben and Lisa as well. Further on safety: Let's face it, Crowley has other things to worry about, and it's not clear to me who else is left with a grudge against the Winchesters and the knowledge of what Lisa and Ben mean to them.

Comments

[margrave]

2. AGREEMENT! Also, I understand what the writers were trying to convey (you don't lie to your family, too much pride lead to downfall, and all road to hell...) BUT! Everyone kept on TELLING Castiel what he was doing was wrong (which, OK, based on the SPN verse it makes perfect sense) but NO one was providing an alternative.

4. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

And yes, OMG!

[rivkat]

Speaking of parallels between Sam and Cas: giving someone orders without explanations is a mistake. Even when it's couched as asking for trust. Then you can try "we'll sit down and share our information, maybe figure out something else together." Oh well!

[margrave]

Shut Up and Take Orders Without Asking - The Winchester Way since 2005.

The thing that gets to me is that all of this MAKES sense within the Supernatural verse. All of their relationships is about not talking or explaining. *SIGHS*.

In regards to Lisa and Ben. I can understand why Dean did what he did - he is in pain, he caused all this crap to happen to Lisa and Ben, and the memories of him hurts the two of them. BUT ALL I COULD THINK ABOUT WAS OMFG! HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING ABOUT HOW DANGEROUS IT IS NOT KNOWING ABOUT YOUR FAMILY/WINCHESTERS? Just look at the Campbells, hell, look at Adam and his mum. I admit I actually didn't mind the taking away of agency, which is rather strange because it is the one thing that annoys me.

[percysowner]

I agree with you on Castiel somewhat. I always felt that if Dean had told Sam that he would trust him when Sam was going after Lilith then a lot of what went down at the end of season four wouldn't have happened. So, I'll give Castiel the same credit. However, as with Sam, everything happened too fast and Dean didn't have time to get over the betrayal of Cas allying with Crowley.

I also thought of you for a minute when Moisha Campbell was brought up. I mean we will not get a Jewish Sam and Dean, but maybe somewhere out there Moisha had kids or a sister and one of them hooked up with Rufus's father and Rufus was our Jewish Campbell hunter. Hey, it could happen.

[rivkat]

Oh, I definitely agree Dean could've done better with more time to deal with the surprise. And Dean does hold his grudges.

I like the thought of Moishe Campbell out there, doing mishnas, hunting things.

[tehomet]

On the mindwipe, I have the following working theory: there's a guy, let's call him John for no reason whatsoever, in Lisa and Ben's memories, who had a fling with Lisa right before she got pregnant with Ben and who came back and saved Ben from a bad thing. Then he came back and after a good year things went bad. He convinced them to move but that wasn't good enough and they ended up parting, sad but understanding that it was the right thing for Lisa and Ben. Lisa and Ben haven't forgotten about salt lines, runes, or guns, only about a day of terror. The pictures Lisa keeps of that year have John in them.

This is a) a cool idea and b) now my headcanon.

[rusty_halo]

I'm not sure if it's correct to say "Cas was right." Cas was half-right, I guess, in that he was able to absorb the purgatory souls and stop Raphael. But a big part of the risk was of Castiel not being able to control the power, of Castiel's dark side getting out of control... and from the final scene it seems the Winchesters were right to worry!

I suppose it may have turned out differently if the Winchesters had trusted him all along, but... they trusted him throughout most of S6 and he still made a secret deal with Crowley. So who's to say that trusting him about the purgatory souls would have had a better result?

[rivkat]

I think this is part of the problem of the writing not taking Cas and his relationship with Dean seriously enough and hoping that telling would carry it. Since the Winchesters didn't explain themselves, we can only guess at their concerns. I thought it was "deals with the devil never work right," but this one did in part because Cas betrayed first. Until Balthazar they had no reason to worry about the nuclear reactor problem, which was also wrong. As it happened, Cas fell to the arrogance of absolute power, which I didn't think was Dean's objection until it was already apparent. There's no way to know if Cas would have been more willing to let go if they'd been in better sync, but doing it this way seems like a Winchester "orders not explanations" error.

[rusty_halo]

Yeah, I think poor writing is at the core of it. It was never clear exactly what was at stake or what the risks were, so the audience had no way to make up our minds whether to side with the Winchesters or with Cas.

[serrico]

I spent most of Erica Serra's time on-screen *sure* she was going to turn out to be Sam's messed-up-brain avatar for Dean's role in his life. Because a) she was quick to help him, b) she was tough-talking and pretty and awesome, c) she was closely associated with alcohol, and d) she has a raspy voice.

I only wish I were joking about that last one. In fact, it's the one that tipped me over into certainty. But then they DASHED ALL MY HOPES and made me sad.