Reaction: Supernatural 4.19 - with mild meta
I FINALLY GOT TO WATCH 4.19! \o/
I doubt anyone wants to know what I think this long after the episode, but here we go anyway. (ETA: Now with error fixed *facepalm* I hate tax season.)
(contains profanity)
Spoiler and Theorizing Timeline
Was anyone not spoiled for major parts of this episode?
-Jan 6th (malevolent73, you'll want to skip this point in particular. Contains rampant speculation) See everyone freaking about some spoiler for some episode, I'm guessing one past 4.13, given the filming to article timeline. From the reactions witnessed, I'd say it's either 'Dean's got angel blood' or "Dean Vs. Sam" If it's option 1? Sigh. I'll hand wave it when it happens. If it's option 2? It won't stay like that. I could babble here about hero cycles, and arcs and character arcs and so on, but in the end, it'll all work out. *twitch* Oh. Third option. Kripke stepped up the time table and is getting Sam Luciferized in some way before the end of the season, since it was mentioned in an interview that he at one point figured this might be the final season, and that'd allow a short run-up and denouement. Or not. Me? I have zen. Ooo! Fourth option. Castiel falls. Ooo. I... Ooo. It will bear pondering, depending on what comes out. Something along that level of event, though, I suspect.
-Jan 14th Re: above spoiler, Kripke may or may not have made another statement in response to fan response. He may own us, but apparently we may own him a little too. Hee. No idea as to whether this is true, but if it's a press release like last time, it will be hard to avoid. I suspect the content is something like: "Wait for it", "It gets fixed later" or "It's not what it looks like, really." General summary: Kripke is being an evil bastard and screwing with us again. Well, that hasn't been a spoiler since the Pilot! :-D
-Feb 5th Trying to determine whether the above rumours/spoilers were regarding the siren and fight in 4.14, find out it's about some vague long-lost Winchester brother. Hehehehe. Geez. Is that all? It's either a one or two show stunt, (or given the episode placement, something that is directly related to the season finale...) a trick by demons, a poor bastard doomed to die to cause an anvil angst spike or just Kripke messing with us n some other way! Come on!
-Feb 9th Darn near everywhere, including major media services, people capslocking about a huge spoiler related to sides for a character in 4.19. Hm. Someone new and shocking causing mass pandemonium, or the interaction and what's revealed by it in the sides, causing mass pandemonium. Anyway, mass pandemonium inbound, already in progress. Possibly the brother thing, possibly something else? Although given the stuff that's shown up in sides that's subsequently turned out to be fanbait, if I did know what the sides said I wouldn't trust the info. Spoilerphiles, Kripke is on to you and tormenting you for sick, sick jollies. *nods*
-Feb 16th Woke up with my brain in full ponder mode. Am thinking Re: the "brother" Sam will do something or be revealed to be doing something Dean can't cope with. Latches on to 'new brother' as surrogate Sammy. younger, innocent, etc. 'New brother' will proceed to lead Dean down the garden path into a trap, and there will be a 'Never was J.W.'s son/possessed him, ha ha/these hunter friends of that guy Sam killed back in Season 2 are using me as a stalking horse/working for the winning side, don't give a crap about you, dumbass' type reveal close to the season finale, leaving Dean betrayed and alone and feeling like ninety billion kinds of crap for giving up on Sam, Sam feeling betrayed and alone and going full-out with Ruby's plan and probably becoming a vessel for Lucifer as previously theorized, and new guy getting killed or surviving the season finale to become, not a big bad, but an intermediary bad in Season 5. These were my thoughts this morning. Going to have to wait a few months to see what transpires, but there we are. Fandom will go batshit if that happens though.
-Feb 16th later Episode may be titled "New Kid In Town" Okay, fine. If it was titled "New Kid On The Block" I do believe Kripke's head would explode, or he'd need checked for possession or something.
-Feb 19 Kripke's talking about the episode of epic kerfufflage, 4.19. (title of which has nothing to do with kids, and is actually called "Jump the Shark" Heh. Kripke's plaaaaaaying with us! Hee.) Again, isn't it? Do any other showrunners stop to address fan insanity concerns this directly, this often? I honestly can't see how a 'missing Winchester brother' character alone could cause this much strife. I'm guessing the sides for 4.19 don't hint at the guy's role within the mytharc. Or who knows, maybe maybe he's the offspring of John and something non-human. I'm so tempted to peek and see what Kripke's saying. But I won't. Because I'm sure someone will spoil me for it soon enough. :-)
-March 3rd ish More latent pondering. What if, now this may sound crazy, but what if the long lost brother is a Mary-Sue Monster. (Like the episode 'Adam' in season 2 Torchwood) He has this family connection, assorted other well-known Mary-Sue features, insinuates himself in between Sam and Dean to set them against each other, or whatever. Actually, maybe not directly that last one because we just had that with the siren. Hm. Still thinking that the combo of the title and the 'long-lost brother' are going to turn out something more along those lines. Or a trap set up by someone, etc, see previous theory.
-Apr 2 Minor minor comment re: 4.19 photos. According to reports, the boys look worried. *looks at prior spoiler mountain* Yeah, probably. I suspect fans who actively seek spoilers are looking a bit worried too. Not me. Nope, Not one bit. It's all part of a plot. *nods*
-Apr 9 Promo glimpse. Dean's in the ductwork. Hee!
Well. How about them papayas?
Reaction and Mini-Meta Bits for Supernatural 4.19 - "Jump the Shark"
Heh. He was even named Adam.
{Now edited. I misheard one number and misinterpreted large wodges of the episode, because I am a moron :-( }
-Hi John! *waves at the previouslies* I know why you're there!
-Sam's eyes!! *glee*
-I kind of love the funky drummy incidental music they've got over the previouslies.
-Ooo. Hunting Sam line again. Ooo.
-This person is really good at making appropriately freaked out noises. [Oh hey, she's wearing scrubs! Nice detail :-D]
-Is it a monster under the bed? Is it a monster under the bed?? It's a monster under the bed!!! \o/ *gleeeee*
-Hee! Hi John! Smiling... damn that's scary.
-Seaside dental hygiene FTW! \o/
-Hee! I love Morning!Dean! Did Dean throw up when he opened the car door there? Nope, just nearly fell out of the car.
-Dean doesn't like tuna! And wants fed immediately even though they're out in the ass-end of nowhere! Heee. He's so very five. He also wakes up about the same way I do; stumbling around trying to get the world to co-operate and dismally failing.
-*giggles* And miles away, Chuck wrote down the words: 'Sam spat curiously.'
-Hello Adam Milligan, John's other son. Good to get that datapoint out of the way and not hang onto it for a big reveal since it's been nearly impossible to avoid spoilers for that particular element of this episode.
-Windom, M... um. MA? MS? MN? I missed the state and don't know a lot of state codes. [Minnesota, MN] Windom. Unusual spelling, doesn't it usually have y's and h's in there? Wyndham?
-Cousin Oliver's has a sign on the front that says 'Hilltop Cafe' Hm... *googles* Heh. Well! There's a piece of Supernatural memorabilia for some avid, entrepreneurial fan with enough money to buy a small business. The Hilltop Cafe in Langley, BC appears to be up for sale. :-D
-Adam was born in {'92} '90 and is an Eagle Scout! \o/ HEEEEE! {He was a real go-getter if he's an Eagle Scout at the age of, what, nearly 16? What month is this? And he's graduated high school with honors and is in pre-med? At 16? Hunh. Maybe he is a Mary-Sue Monster! Does he have purple hair?} He's 18, perfectly normal, never mind.
-Yes! Paranoid Dean! And absolutely correct to be too. *nods* Holy water swap! Actual silverware! WHEEE! I LOVE DEAN SO FRIGGING MUCH!!!! \o/
-OMG, did Sam just say 'hence' in normal conversation? Heeee! I'm not taking that as a Laundry Day shout-out because I am not insane. It's a word. People use it.
-Ooo, yes. Using a connection to John to get the boys to come out to play would not be a good idea for a monster. As we will no doubt see. [Yup!]
-{*scratches head* How is January - or any point in time in 1990 - nine months from any date in 1992? Maybe John came back a couple times. Or missed the monster the first time around. Or spent several months in hospital. Or Adam gestated for 20 months. Or something. *handwaves*} September 1990. Never mind.
-Oh really. Torn out? It's a ring binder, guys. John didn't need to leave any part of those pages behind, or any sign they were ever there. That's not torn out pages, that's the start of a conversation he never got to have with Sam and Dean. If you want to hide something, you leave no trace. If you want someone to find out and ask questions that will lead to a discussion, you leave a trace. John wanted them to know about Adam, just not right away. Maybe it was one of those 'for when we kill the thing that killed Mary and can have normal lives' vague little hopes, like registering the boys in schools under their real names so they'll have an academic record for some brighter future day. That's my take on that, anyway.
-Adam's a little... odd-looking for John's son. Also oddly familiar... don't know why.
-"A car fell on him." *snerk*
-Heh. She was a Nurse. I think I've read that in fic a few times. Given Dean's dream girl choice is a Nurse as well, I kind of wonder if there isn't something to that.
-Adam was 12 when John found out about him, making it {2004} 2002. John dropped everything and drove all night. Unlike Dean calling when he was desperate and never getting an answer back. OW Dean. OWWWW. However... {2004.} 2002. That was in the early Stanford Era I say Sam was gone for 4 years, but didn't have contact with Dean for 2). Aside from the brand new fracture/imminent fracturing of his existing family, I'm betting that by then, John knew something about what was going on with Sam. Maybe he figured the same as Dean did just now, had to figure out whether the kid was genuine or a trap of some kind. That would have been a strange meeting. "Adam, this is your Dad, John."/"Hi, whoops spilled my water."/"Oh, that's okay."/"...really? Uh, great. Here, hold this silver crucifix for a second, kid."
-All 'is the kid a trap/cursed/a target/etc' aside... I can see John having just discovered something big and bad about what was happening with Sam, seeing Dean as his own broken shadow and actually going and doing things with this family because he knows something is coming and he can't take it. He was escaping into the normal, because he feels like he's failed. Or something. I don't know. Someone's gonna fic or meta about this and it'll all snap into perspective.
-Under table gun! Dean is Han Solo! Love the tension music.
-Once a year, from the age of 12, hunh? Bought him beer at the age of 15.... hey. Hang on. {Adam would have turned 15 on September 23, 2007. John was dead by then, wasn't he? The guys must be really rattled to miss that. "In My Time of Dying" was set sometime late 2006-ish. Which leaves the options of: A) Adam is lying and actually an evil thing of some variety. B) His memory sucks. C) Something pretending to be John visited Adam on his 15th birthday and bought him beer. or D) John got out of Hell long enough to buy Adam beer, but not to get out altogether or communicate with Sam and Dean. E) Some variation of Demon took John for a walk to show him that his 'innocent' child was very vulnerable. By buying him beer. Or something. I'm leaning towards A, with Adam being an evil, lying, evil thing. I'd say something's taken the form of John's sprog now in order to lure John into a trap, but wound up getting his kids instead and is frantically improvising to try to prove to a couple people for whom the face he's wearing is not familiar that he does have a strong connection to John, to get the random people he doesn't know at first are John's kids to trust him in case John's actually still alive and they're hiding his whereabouts. Yeah. *nods*} Except since the little bastard (what, it's a technical term) was born in 1990, and not 1992, he would have turned 15 in 2005, making it a couple months before the Pilot and kicking a fine chunk of theory in the teeth. :-(
-OH YOU DID NOT LEARN HOW TO DRIVE ON THE IMPALA, YOU EVIL LITTLE WEASEL!!! Not if you only saw John once a year {and not if he bought you beer after he was dead. Honest to pete! Shoot him, Dean! *snarls*} I don't care, he's still lying. Shoot him anyway, Dean! *snarls more*
-Oh hai photoshop! Heeee! The lighting angles! The saturation levels! The sizes of heads! Oh dear! *smishes the art department* Baseball games and birthdays. Hunh.
-Ow, ow, ow. Oh Dean. That rabbity little face twitch that covers so many different internal bits of dialog I can't even begin to name them all! And then that voiceless... I can't even describe that, what he did there. It's fantastic. Jensen Ackles is awesome! \o/
-Okay, this is definitely a Trickster or some evil thing or something. The photos everywhere are a shade too much for John only being there a couple days in {2004, 2005 and 2006} 2002-2006. Unless he was trying really hard to get in as much 'over-the-top normal' as he possibly could. Or whatever evil thing Adam is pulling out every photo of John he can find to add weight to his story, as postulated above.
-Yay for canon Dean exceptional perceptiveness! \o/
-Rock, paper, scissors! *glee* I think Dean keeps throwing scissors because he figures that one of these days, Sam will stop throwing rock. Or maybe he secretly really likes crawling into ducts. Or maybe Dean not-so-secretly knows Sam's ginormous frame will just plain not fit down that duct and so is allowing Sam to preserve the delusion he is still wee!Sammy and can fit into ductwork easily and also thereby saving them all the trouble of unwedging Sam while some duct-crawling monster leisurely nibbles on Sammy's massive face. Yeah, that's it. *nods*
-Dean in the duct work! \o/ I'm surprised he fit either. Shoulders.
-Splitchiness! Man, the central heating in that place would have reeked after a few days. Old blood is not a pleasant smell.
-Fishing divider! A different one! The last one was in BUABS I think, and had little jumping fish things, and not oars and floats.
-Aw. Hey. That was a Kim Manners thing. The little Happy Hour ad they focussed on for a little bit, with a big K and M on it and a photo of Kim with a very silly mustache and weird hair. Aw. *smishes the art department and smacks the hell out of the CW for covering half of it with their stupid flying green crap*
-"Godzilla's just a movie." Heh. I had this dream once...
-Ow Dean. Oh Sam. Dean trying, again, to preserve the innocence of a little brother, even if it's one he just met; Sam bitter, pragmatic and denied innocence due to circumstances himself, set on training the kid to be able to handle himself with what's really out there and what's coming. Sam being all fatalistic and inevitable. Owwww. Ow, ow, ow.
-"Tell me, Agent Nugent, have you thought about where you might like to spend eternity?"/"...All the damn time." HA! Also awww! Also Ooo! Also *ponders smacking Dean for being down on himself* Also *flail* Also Oh, Dean.
-"A Little Bitty Tear" by Burl Ives? In a bar? Must be the not-so-happy hour. I like the barkeep though. Lisa Barton. She and Ellen need to go into business together. *nods*
-[I wonder if the sad-looking kid in front of John in the newspaper photo is one of the ghoul kids]
-Sam, you let some random guy you just met clean the guns? And take them apart? If When you have to shoot him later and your gun jams, you know exactly who to blame. *facepalm*
-Oh crap, lights out. Blue??? Why is the bathroom glowing blue?? Radioactive Tidy-Bowl?
-Adam tosses his keys like a Winchester. Hm. If it's Adam that's the bad guy, what's chasing them? And why Sam? It went after him, not Adam. Is Adam being used as bait by something? Naw, he's evil. Obviously. Hm.
-That was an insanely good shot for a newbie. Hang on... Hm. There's a Scout badge for shooting or two. Mr. Eagle Scout must have earned a few. [Or he's retained some previous memory from the ex-cop bartender. Heh.]
-JEEZ, Sam! Laying it on a little thick to scare the kid or what? If so, you should have done the 'scared normal' speech before spilling as many beans about the reality of freaky evil crap to the kid as you already have.
-Aw Dean. With the preservation and protection of Adam getting a chance at normal that he never really had himself and feels he'll never get. Owww. Adam has got to be a trap. Adam's either the bad guy or dead. Or both.
-*shivers at Sam's new perspective of things* Holy crap, Sam. O.O
-Yay canon Dean perception again! Not so much in the stealth department, though. Anything at the other end of that tunnel will hear you coming and be waiting with a large sharp object or lots of bitey teeth.
-Sloppy Joe. *facepalm* For the non-North Americans (particularly the Australians, for whom a Sloppy Joe may be an article of clothing), Sloppy Joe, which I never until this moment realized looked so disgusting.
-Nonononono, no burying Dean alive, please no burying no nonononono. *hyperventilates* Okay. Dirt stopped. Lots of space. He'll get out. Good grief, show, warn a person!
-Wow, Adam's Mom is tiny. So, wait. Is it her and not Adam? No, Adam lied about the beer thing. It's Adam. I think.
-*drifts in a happy floating love of the set design crew* Holy crap guys! I love the crypt. The crypt is frigging awesome! And there's lots of it! It's like something from Indiana Jones!
-Ooo. Adam's dead mom. Okay, so it's her... maybe it's both of them. Show's been doing quite a few tag-team monsters lately.
-Wow. Sam truly does suck at the hand to hand if an untrained guy can disarm him without hardly trying. Unless the untrained guy is actually a monster, in which case yeah, okay. Maybe that's what Adam's little pause there was. Not "Holy crap I just disarmed him, wow!" but "Aw, crap, he's gonna know I'm not human now." Which Sam doesn't pick up on because he's used to sucking at hand to hand since the devastating childhood growth spurt he's still getting over. Mhmm. Yup. *nods*
-YEAH! Awesome expression transition from confused Monster Chow to smirky evil guy! Adam's a bad guy! It was a trap! Woohoo! Oh. Crap. Sam's trapped and Dean's trapped and dear god this is awesome! Yay! Everyone's imperiled! Woo! *glee* \o/
-So, my spoiler-based theory was sort of correct. I'm very glad Kripke went for 'resolve the brother thing in a single episode' versus 'long-drawn out building of trust followed by devestating betrayal', since lynch mobs would be forming as soon as either Winchester took off with Adam. Ooo. You know, I think I hear thundering herds of AU bunnies roving around out there.
-Aw. Poor dead real!Adam looks so freaked. And now Dean's going to go berserk trying to get out and rescue Sam, yes? Yes. Because hanging around in a crypt poking around for clues while the air is starting to run out is fine if it's just him in danger, but if Sam's in danger, he'll drop everything and start trying to save himself so he can save Sammy. Oh Dean.
-GHOULS!!! YEAH!!! I love the SPN-verse mechanics of Ghouls. Retain the form and memories of who they eat. How does that work with corpses I wonder? It also introduces yet another way dead characters could come back. Heh. We could have Ghoul!Ash. Har har har.
-Interesting. Sam says 'I' should have known, and not 'we' should have known. Interesting in a "fucking OW, Sam!" kind of way. It sort of makes me want to slap Sam a little for disincluding his brother from his personal mental hunting equation, but still interesting. And very very very ow.
-When did the ghouls get Adam, though? Must've been when he got into town after his mom 'went missing'.
-Evil!Adam rocks. It's like the awesome came out from behind a cloud. I could watch him be evil all day. Adam's mom is rocking the casual evil as well.
-Yay for crypt-escaping MacGyverism Dean!!! The air was starting to run out a little there, with the staggeryness after wrenching off the coffin rail. Also holy crap for Jensen Ackles' pulling himself up and out there! Dude! Wow! That's impressive! O.o
-Ow! OW! Fingers don't go there! Eeek!
-"Then we thought, hey! Why not move up to fresher game?" I love her delivery of that line. Like "Hey, why not use olive oil instead of margarine?" :-)
-Wow, signs of the effects of blood loss too. Sam's voice is also a little odd, like the table's tilted and his head is lower down than the rest of him. That would make sense if they plan to keep him alive and aware the whole time he's being eaten, since he'd still have blood to the brain and be less likely to pass out, while still being too weak to fight back from the blood loss. All of which Adam would know about as a first-aid-trained-Eagle-Scout-pre-med-student. Detail-oriented monsters. Eeeeek. O.O
-Adam really was John Winchester's son. Not saying that John {really clawed his way out of Hell to buy Adam a beer on his fifteenth birthday} was around as much as the ghoul has implied, but he was John's son. Some truth, some lie. The most effective lies are part truth. *nods*
-Ow! Ow! Bleeding, ow, crap! Eek! Oh yay Dean!
-Ghouls need to have their heads blown off to be killed. Good to know. Weird that the shotgun that just blasted Adam backward would blow her head clean off, but maybe they have extra tough torsos. Or very weak skull structure. Sure. *nods*
-Yay combat! Um. Sam's really bleeding fast! Eeek! O.O Hm. I wonder if Sam has a 'low battery warning' of some kind and Ruby will just randomly show up to offer a snack if Sam's level of demon blood drops below optimal 'control the boy-king' levels. Hm.
-Wow. Little rage there Dean? Well, actually, if it requires removing the head or destroying the brain a headshot to kill a ghoul, then really, it takes a lot of effort to decapitate something with a similar skeletal structure to a human being using only a blunt object. What the heck did Dean pick up anyway? Can't tell. Plus, it killed his brand new baby brother, and was going to kill Sam. Dean didn't need a tactical reason to pound it into paste.
-Yes Sam, your big brother is still quite capable of saving your ass. Demon blood and all. Do not forget that. Even though I bet you totally will. Sigh.
-Keep pressure on it? How?? Oh, no, wait, if Sam half-crosses his arms, grips his own forearms and keeps them both elevated, that might work. He'll look a bit like 'I Dream of Jeannie' about to grant a wish, but hey, it's first-aid. Also probably second- and third- aid because if he gets anywhere near an emergency room with wounds like that, he'll be up for psych evaluations and restrained to a bed in no time. Also, his head should be down and his legs should be elevated, I think for that whole 'keep blood to the brain thing, like the ghouls were possibly doing. But whatever. *handwaves*
-Aw. Post-mortem adoption of their half-brother they never actually met who probably didn't have nearly as much quality time with John as the Ghoul had said. Must've been a pain in the ass to haul the body out of the crypt.
-He died like a hunter. Hm. Screaming, terrified and being gutted alive by something he doesn't understand and never believed in... Yeah, okay. *nods*
-Pictures. *koff* Dean obviously doesn't do a lot of in-depth photoshopping. Regardless though, he's right, the ghouls didn't take the pictures, but I still think they went through the family photo collection and pulled every single photo of John they could find. John was in a statistically ludicrous percentage of the photos in that house even for the stated amount of time he was supposed to have visited. No, I don't think the ghouls did a bunch of rush photoshopping, but... Actually, that'd explain a lot.... :-D
-Calling in a favour with Cas? Yeah, that went well last time Dean asked Castiel to make people not have to be dead. Plus Dean just got the circumlocutious hint regarding the Archangel-Prophet connection, so the favour balance is not as tipped as it may have once seemed to be.
-Awesome location. Awesome sparse woods. Awesome shot of the two of them by the pyre through the trees. Awesome.
-"More like him than I will ever be."/"I'll take that as a compliment."/"You can take it any way you want." Ow ow ow ow ow! Ohhhhhhhhh, boys! Dammit! OW!
Woo! That was one hell of an episode!! I'm gonna go see what the rest of you thought of it now, and then I have to go to work. BLAH!!!
(PLEASE, NO SPOILERS OR REFERENCES TO SPOILERY MATERIAL IN COMMENTS! The definition of spoiler for this journal is located in left hand sidebar. Theory and speculation based on aired episodes only.)
I doubt anyone wants to know what I think this long after the episode, but here we go anyway. (ETA: Now with error fixed *facepalm* I hate tax season.)
(contains profanity)
Spoiler and Theorizing Timeline
Was anyone not spoiled for major parts of this episode?
-Jan 6th (malevolent73, you'll want to skip this point in particular. Contains rampant speculation) See everyone freaking about some spoiler for some episode, I'm guessing one past 4.13, given the filming to article timeline. From the reactions witnessed, I'd say it's either 'Dean's got angel blood' or "Dean Vs. Sam" If it's option 1? Sigh. I'll hand wave it when it happens. If it's option 2? It won't stay like that. I could babble here about hero cycles, and arcs and character arcs and so on, but in the end, it'll all work out. *twitch* Oh. Third option. Kripke stepped up the time table and is getting Sam Luciferized in some way before the end of the season, since it was mentioned in an interview that he at one point figured this might be the final season, and that'd allow a short run-up and denouement. Or not. Me? I have zen. Ooo! Fourth option. Castiel falls. Ooo. I... Ooo. It will bear pondering, depending on what comes out. Something along that level of event, though, I suspect.
-Jan 14th Re: above spoiler, Kripke may or may not have made another statement in response to fan response. He may own us, but apparently we may own him a little too. Hee. No idea as to whether this is true, but if it's a press release like last time, it will be hard to avoid. I suspect the content is something like: "Wait for it", "It gets fixed later" or "It's not what it looks like, really." General summary: Kripke is being an evil bastard and screwing with us again. Well, that hasn't been a spoiler since the Pilot! :-D
-Feb 5th Trying to determine whether the above rumours/spoilers were regarding the siren and fight in 4.14, find out it's about some vague long-lost Winchester brother. Hehehehe. Geez. Is that all? It's either a one or two show stunt, (or given the episode placement, something that is directly related to the season finale...) a trick by demons, a poor bastard doomed to die to cause an anvil angst spike or just Kripke messing with us n some other way! Come on!
-Feb 9th Darn near everywhere, including major media services, people capslocking about a huge spoiler related to sides for a character in 4.19. Hm. Someone new and shocking causing mass pandemonium, or the interaction and what's revealed by it in the sides, causing mass pandemonium. Anyway, mass pandemonium inbound, already in progress. Possibly the brother thing, possibly something else? Although given the stuff that's shown up in sides that's subsequently turned out to be fanbait, if I did know what the sides said I wouldn't trust the info. Spoilerphiles, Kripke is on to you and tormenting you for sick, sick jollies. *nods*
-Feb 16th Woke up with my brain in full ponder mode. Am thinking Re: the "brother" Sam will do something or be revealed to be doing something Dean can't cope with. Latches on to 'new brother' as surrogate Sammy. younger, innocent, etc. 'New brother' will proceed to lead Dean down the garden path into a trap, and there will be a 'Never was J.W.'s son/possessed him, ha ha/these hunter friends of that guy Sam killed back in Season 2 are using me as a stalking horse/working for the winning side, don't give a crap about you, dumbass' type reveal close to the season finale, leaving Dean betrayed and alone and feeling like ninety billion kinds of crap for giving up on Sam, Sam feeling betrayed and alone and going full-out with Ruby's plan and probably becoming a vessel for Lucifer as previously theorized, and new guy getting killed or surviving the season finale to become, not a big bad, but an intermediary bad in Season 5. These were my thoughts this morning. Going to have to wait a few months to see what transpires, but there we are. Fandom will go batshit if that happens though.
-Feb 16th later Episode may be titled "New Kid In Town" Okay, fine. If it was titled "New Kid On The Block" I do believe Kripke's head would explode, or he'd need checked for possession or something.
-Feb 19 Kripke's talking about the episode of epic kerfufflage, 4.19. (title of which has nothing to do with kids, and is actually called "Jump the Shark" Heh. Kripke's plaaaaaaying with us! Hee.) Again, isn't it? Do any other showrunners stop to address fan insanity concerns this directly, this often? I honestly can't see how a 'missing Winchester brother' character alone could cause this much strife. I'm guessing the sides for 4.19 don't hint at the guy's role within the mytharc. Or who knows, maybe maybe he's the offspring of John and something non-human. I'm so tempted to peek and see what Kripke's saying. But I won't. Because I'm sure someone will spoil me for it soon enough. :-)
-March 3rd ish More latent pondering. What if, now this may sound crazy, but what if the long lost brother is a Mary-Sue Monster. (Like the episode 'Adam' in season 2 Torchwood) He has this family connection, assorted other well-known Mary-Sue features, insinuates himself in between Sam and Dean to set them against each other, or whatever. Actually, maybe not directly that last one because we just had that with the siren. Hm. Still thinking that the combo of the title and the 'long-lost brother' are going to turn out something more along those lines. Or a trap set up by someone, etc, see previous theory.
-Apr 2 Minor minor comment re: 4.19 photos. According to reports, the boys look worried. *looks at prior spoiler mountain* Yeah, probably. I suspect fans who actively seek spoilers are looking a bit worried too. Not me. Nope, Not one bit. It's all part of a plot. *nods*
-Apr 9 Promo glimpse. Dean's in the ductwork. Hee!
Well. How about them papayas?
Reaction and Mini-Meta Bits for Supernatural 4.19 - "Jump the Shark"
Heh. He was even named Adam.
{Now edited. I misheard one number and misinterpreted large wodges of the episode, because I am a moron :-( }
-Hi John! *waves at the previouslies* I know why you're there!
-Sam's eyes!! *glee*
-I kind of love the funky drummy incidental music they've got over the previouslies.
-Ooo. Hunting Sam line again. Ooo.
-This person is really good at making appropriately freaked out noises. [Oh hey, she's wearing scrubs! Nice detail :-D]
-Is it a monster under the bed? Is it a monster under the bed?? It's a monster under the bed!!! \o/ *gleeeee*
-Hee! Hi John! Smiling... damn that's scary.
-Seaside dental hygiene FTW! \o/
-Hee! I love Morning!Dean! Did Dean throw up when he opened the car door there? Nope, just nearly fell out of the car.
-Dean doesn't like tuna! And wants fed immediately even though they're out in the ass-end of nowhere! Heee. He's so very five. He also wakes up about the same way I do; stumbling around trying to get the world to co-operate and dismally failing.
-*giggles* And miles away, Chuck wrote down the words: 'Sam spat curiously.'
-Hello Adam Milligan, John's other son. Good to get that datapoint out of the way and not hang onto it for a big reveal since it's been nearly impossible to avoid spoilers for that particular element of this episode.
-Windom, M... um. MA? MS? MN? I missed the state and don't know a lot of state codes. [Minnesota, MN] Windom. Unusual spelling, doesn't it usually have y's and h's in there? Wyndham?
-Cousin Oliver's has a sign on the front that says 'Hilltop Cafe' Hm... *googles* Heh. Well! There's a piece of Supernatural memorabilia for some avid, entrepreneurial fan with enough money to buy a small business. The Hilltop Cafe in Langley, BC appears to be up for sale. :-D
-Adam was born in {'92} '90 and is an Eagle Scout! \o/ HEEEEE! {He was a real go-getter if he's an Eagle Scout at the age of, what, nearly 16? What month is this? And he's graduated high school with honors and is in pre-med? At 16? Hunh. Maybe he is a Mary-Sue Monster! Does he have purple hair?} He's 18, perfectly normal, never mind.
-Yes! Paranoid Dean! And absolutely correct to be too. *nods* Holy water swap! Actual silverware! WHEEE! I LOVE DEAN SO FRIGGING MUCH!!!! \o/
-OMG, did Sam just say 'hence' in normal conversation? Heeee! I'm not taking that as a Laundry Day shout-out because I am not insane. It's a word. People use it.
-Ooo, yes. Using a connection to John to get the boys to come out to play would not be a good idea for a monster. As we will no doubt see. [Yup!]
-{*scratches head* How is January - or any point in time in 1990 - nine months from any date in 1992? Maybe John came back a couple times. Or missed the monster the first time around. Or spent several months in hospital. Or Adam gestated for 20 months. Or something. *handwaves*} September 1990. Never mind.
-Oh really. Torn out? It's a ring binder, guys. John didn't need to leave any part of those pages behind, or any sign they were ever there. That's not torn out pages, that's the start of a conversation he never got to have with Sam and Dean. If you want to hide something, you leave no trace. If you want someone to find out and ask questions that will lead to a discussion, you leave a trace. John wanted them to know about Adam, just not right away. Maybe it was one of those 'for when we kill the thing that killed Mary and can have normal lives' vague little hopes, like registering the boys in schools under their real names so they'll have an academic record for some brighter future day. That's my take on that, anyway.
-Adam's a little... odd-looking for John's son. Also oddly familiar... don't know why.
-"A car fell on him." *snerk*
-Heh. She was a Nurse. I think I've read that in fic a few times. Given Dean's dream girl choice is a Nurse as well, I kind of wonder if there isn't something to that.
-Adam was 12 when John found out about him, making it {2004} 2002. John dropped everything and drove all night. Unlike Dean calling when he was desperate and never getting an answer back. OW Dean. OWWWW. However... {2004.} 2002. That was in the early Stanford Era I say Sam was gone for 4 years, but didn't have contact with Dean for 2). Aside from the brand new fracture/imminent fracturing of his existing family, I'm betting that by then, John knew something about what was going on with Sam. Maybe he figured the same as Dean did just now, had to figure out whether the kid was genuine or a trap of some kind. That would have been a strange meeting. "Adam, this is your Dad, John."/"Hi, whoops spilled my water."/"Oh, that's okay."/"...really? Uh, great. Here, hold this silver crucifix for a second, kid."
-All 'is the kid a trap/cursed/a target/etc' aside... I can see John having just discovered something big and bad about what was happening with Sam, seeing Dean as his own broken shadow and actually going and doing things with this family because he knows something is coming and he can't take it. He was escaping into the normal, because he feels like he's failed. Or something. I don't know. Someone's gonna fic or meta about this and it'll all snap into perspective.
-Under table gun! Dean is Han Solo! Love the tension music.
-Once a year, from the age of 12, hunh? Bought him beer at the age of 15.... hey. Hang on. {Adam would have turned 15 on September 23, 2007. John was dead by then, wasn't he? The guys must be really rattled to miss that. "In My Time of Dying" was set sometime late 2006-ish. Which leaves the options of: A) Adam is lying and actually an evil thing of some variety. B) His memory sucks. C) Something pretending to be John visited Adam on his 15th birthday and bought him beer. or D) John got out of Hell long enough to buy Adam beer, but not to get out altogether or communicate with Sam and Dean. E) Some variation of Demon took John for a walk to show him that his 'innocent' child was very vulnerable. By buying him beer. Or something. I'm leaning towards A, with Adam being an evil, lying, evil thing. I'd say something's taken the form of John's sprog now in order to lure John into a trap, but wound up getting his kids instead and is frantically improvising to try to prove to a couple people for whom the face he's wearing is not familiar that he does have a strong connection to John, to get the random people he doesn't know at first are John's kids to trust him in case John's actually still alive and they're hiding his whereabouts. Yeah. *nods*} Except since the little bastard (what, it's a technical term) was born in 1990, and not 1992, he would have turned 15 in 2005, making it a couple months before the Pilot and kicking a fine chunk of theory in the teeth. :-(
-OH YOU DID NOT LEARN HOW TO DRIVE ON THE IMPALA, YOU EVIL LITTLE WEASEL!!! Not if you only saw John once a year {and not if he bought you beer after he was dead. Honest to pete! Shoot him, Dean! *snarls*} I don't care, he's still lying. Shoot him anyway, Dean! *snarls more*
-Oh hai photoshop! Heeee! The lighting angles! The saturation levels! The sizes of heads! Oh dear! *smishes the art department* Baseball games and birthdays. Hunh.
-Ow, ow, ow. Oh Dean. That rabbity little face twitch that covers so many different internal bits of dialog I can't even begin to name them all! And then that voiceless... I can't even describe that, what he did there. It's fantastic. Jensen Ackles is awesome! \o/
-Okay, this is definitely a Trickster or some evil thing or something. The photos everywhere are a shade too much for John only being there a couple days in {2004, 2005 and 2006} 2002-2006. Unless he was trying really hard to get in as much 'over-the-top normal' as he possibly could. Or whatever evil thing Adam is pulling out every photo of John he can find to add weight to his story, as postulated above.
-Yay for canon Dean exceptional perceptiveness! \o/
-Rock, paper, scissors! *glee* I think Dean keeps throwing scissors because he figures that one of these days, Sam will stop throwing rock. Or maybe he secretly really likes crawling into ducts. Or maybe Dean not-so-secretly knows Sam's ginormous frame will just plain not fit down that duct and so is allowing Sam to preserve the delusion he is still wee!Sammy and can fit into ductwork easily and also thereby saving them all the trouble of unwedging Sam while some duct-crawling monster leisurely nibbles on Sammy's massive face. Yeah, that's it. *nods*
-Dean in the duct work! \o/ I'm surprised he fit either. Shoulders.
-Splitchiness! Man, the central heating in that place would have reeked after a few days. Old blood is not a pleasant smell.
-Fishing divider! A different one! The last one was in BUABS I think, and had little jumping fish things, and not oars and floats.
-Aw. Hey. That was a Kim Manners thing. The little Happy Hour ad they focussed on for a little bit, with a big K and M on it and a photo of Kim with a very silly mustache and weird hair. Aw. *smishes the art department and smacks the hell out of the CW for covering half of it with their stupid flying green crap*
-"Godzilla's just a movie." Heh. I had this dream once...
-Ow Dean. Oh Sam. Dean trying, again, to preserve the innocence of a little brother, even if it's one he just met; Sam bitter, pragmatic and denied innocence due to circumstances himself, set on training the kid to be able to handle himself with what's really out there and what's coming. Sam being all fatalistic and inevitable. Owwww. Ow, ow, ow.
-"Tell me, Agent Nugent, have you thought about where you might like to spend eternity?"/"...All the damn time." HA! Also awww! Also Ooo! Also *ponders smacking Dean for being down on himself* Also *flail* Also Oh, Dean.
-"A Little Bitty Tear" by Burl Ives? In a bar? Must be the not-so-happy hour. I like the barkeep though. Lisa Barton. She and Ellen need to go into business together. *nods*
-[I wonder if the sad-looking kid in front of John in the newspaper photo is one of the ghoul kids]
-Sam, you let some random guy you just met clean the guns? And take them apart? If When you have to shoot him later and your gun jams, you know exactly who to blame. *facepalm*
-Oh crap, lights out. Blue??? Why is the bathroom glowing blue?? Radioactive Tidy-Bowl?
-Adam tosses his keys like a Winchester. Hm. If it's Adam that's the bad guy, what's chasing them? And why Sam? It went after him, not Adam. Is Adam being used as bait by something? Naw, he's evil. Obviously. Hm.
-That was an insanely good shot for a newbie. Hang on... Hm. There's a Scout badge for shooting or two. Mr. Eagle Scout must have earned a few. [Or he's retained some previous memory from the ex-cop bartender. Heh.]
-JEEZ, Sam! Laying it on a little thick to scare the kid or what? If so, you should have done the 'scared normal' speech before spilling as many beans about the reality of freaky evil crap to the kid as you already have.
-Aw Dean. With the preservation and protection of Adam getting a chance at normal that he never really had himself and feels he'll never get. Owww. Adam has got to be a trap. Adam's either the bad guy or dead. Or both.
-*shivers at Sam's new perspective of things* Holy crap, Sam. O.O
-Yay canon Dean perception again! Not so much in the stealth department, though. Anything at the other end of that tunnel will hear you coming and be waiting with a large sharp object or lots of bitey teeth.
-Sloppy Joe. *facepalm* For the non-North Americans (particularly the Australians, for whom a Sloppy Joe may be an article of clothing), Sloppy Joe, which I never until this moment realized looked so disgusting.
-Nonononono, no burying Dean alive, please no burying no nonononono. *hyperventilates* Okay. Dirt stopped. Lots of space. He'll get out. Good grief, show, warn a person!
-Wow, Adam's Mom is tiny. So, wait. Is it her and not Adam? No, Adam lied about the beer thing. It's Adam. I think.
-*drifts in a happy floating love of the set design crew* Holy crap guys! I love the crypt. The crypt is frigging awesome! And there's lots of it! It's like something from Indiana Jones!
-Ooo. Adam's dead mom. Okay, so it's her... maybe it's both of them. Show's been doing quite a few tag-team monsters lately.
-Wow. Sam truly does suck at the hand to hand if an untrained guy can disarm him without hardly trying. Unless the untrained guy is actually a monster, in which case yeah, okay. Maybe that's what Adam's little pause there was. Not "Holy crap I just disarmed him, wow!" but "Aw, crap, he's gonna know I'm not human now." Which Sam doesn't pick up on because he's used to sucking at hand to hand since the devastating childhood growth spurt he's still getting over. Mhmm. Yup. *nods*
-YEAH! Awesome expression transition from confused Monster Chow to smirky evil guy! Adam's a bad guy! It was a trap! Woohoo! Oh. Crap. Sam's trapped and Dean's trapped and dear god this is awesome! Yay! Everyone's imperiled! Woo! *glee* \o/
-So, my spoiler-based theory was sort of correct. I'm very glad Kripke went for 'resolve the brother thing in a single episode' versus 'long-drawn out building of trust followed by devestating betrayal', since lynch mobs would be forming as soon as either Winchester took off with Adam. Ooo. You know, I think I hear thundering herds of AU bunnies roving around out there.
-Aw. Poor dead real!Adam looks so freaked. And now Dean's going to go berserk trying to get out and rescue Sam, yes? Yes. Because hanging around in a crypt poking around for clues while the air is starting to run out is fine if it's just him in danger, but if Sam's in danger, he'll drop everything and start trying to save himself so he can save Sammy. Oh Dean.
-GHOULS!!! YEAH!!! I love the SPN-verse mechanics of Ghouls. Retain the form and memories of who they eat. How does that work with corpses I wonder? It also introduces yet another way dead characters could come back. Heh. We could have Ghoul!Ash. Har har har.
-Interesting. Sam says 'I' should have known, and not 'we' should have known. Interesting in a "fucking OW, Sam!" kind of way. It sort of makes me want to slap Sam a little for disincluding his brother from his personal mental hunting equation, but still interesting. And very very very ow.
-When did the ghouls get Adam, though? Must've been when he got into town after his mom 'went missing'.
-Evil!Adam rocks. It's like the awesome came out from behind a cloud. I could watch him be evil all day. Adam's mom is rocking the casual evil as well.
-Yay for crypt-escaping MacGyverism Dean!!! The air was starting to run out a little there, with the staggeryness after wrenching off the coffin rail. Also holy crap for Jensen Ackles' pulling himself up and out there! Dude! Wow! That's impressive! O.o
-Ow! OW! Fingers don't go there! Eeek!
-"Then we thought, hey! Why not move up to fresher game?" I love her delivery of that line. Like "Hey, why not use olive oil instead of margarine?" :-)
-Wow, signs of the effects of blood loss too. Sam's voice is also a little odd, like the table's tilted and his head is lower down than the rest of him. That would make sense if they plan to keep him alive and aware the whole time he's being eaten, since he'd still have blood to the brain and be less likely to pass out, while still being too weak to fight back from the blood loss. All of which Adam would know about as a first-aid-trained-Eagle-Scout-pre-med-student. Detail-oriented monsters. Eeeeek. O.O
-Adam really was John Winchester's son. Not saying that John {really clawed his way out of Hell to buy Adam a beer on his fifteenth birthday} was around as much as the ghoul has implied, but he was John's son. Some truth, some lie. The most effective lies are part truth. *nods*
-Ow! Ow! Bleeding, ow, crap! Eek! Oh yay Dean!
-Ghouls need to have their heads blown off to be killed. Good to know. Weird that the shotgun that just blasted Adam backward would blow her head clean off, but maybe they have extra tough torsos. Or very weak skull structure. Sure. *nods*
-Yay combat! Um. Sam's really bleeding fast! Eeek! O.O Hm. I wonder if Sam has a 'low battery warning' of some kind and Ruby will just randomly show up to offer a snack if Sam's level of demon blood drops below optimal 'control the boy-king' levels. Hm.
-Wow. Little rage there Dean? Well, actually, if it requires removing the head or destroying the brain a headshot to kill a ghoul, then really, it takes a lot of effort to decapitate something with a similar skeletal structure to a human being using only a blunt object. What the heck did Dean pick up anyway? Can't tell. Plus, it killed his brand new baby brother, and was going to kill Sam. Dean didn't need a tactical reason to pound it into paste.
-Yes Sam, your big brother is still quite capable of saving your ass. Demon blood and all. Do not forget that. Even though I bet you totally will. Sigh.
-Keep pressure on it? How?? Oh, no, wait, if Sam half-crosses his arms, grips his own forearms and keeps them both elevated, that might work. He'll look a bit like 'I Dream of Jeannie' about to grant a wish, but hey, it's first-aid. Also probably second- and third- aid because if he gets anywhere near an emergency room with wounds like that, he'll be up for psych evaluations and restrained to a bed in no time. Also, his head should be down and his legs should be elevated, I think for that whole 'keep blood to the brain thing, like the ghouls were possibly doing. But whatever. *handwaves*
-Aw. Post-mortem adoption of their half-brother they never actually met who probably didn't have nearly as much quality time with John as the Ghoul had said. Must've been a pain in the ass to haul the body out of the crypt.
-He died like a hunter. Hm. Screaming, terrified and being gutted alive by something he doesn't understand and never believed in... Yeah, okay. *nods*
-Pictures. *koff* Dean obviously doesn't do a lot of in-depth photoshopping. Regardless though, he's right, the ghouls didn't take the pictures, but I still think they went through the family photo collection and pulled every single photo of John they could find. John was in a statistically ludicrous percentage of the photos in that house even for the stated amount of time he was supposed to have visited. No, I don't think the ghouls did a bunch of rush photoshopping, but... Actually, that'd explain a lot.... :-D
-Calling in a favour with Cas? Yeah, that went well last time Dean asked Castiel to make people not have to be dead. Plus Dean just got the circumlocutious hint regarding the Archangel-Prophet connection, so the favour balance is not as tipped as it may have once seemed to be.
-Awesome location. Awesome sparse woods. Awesome shot of the two of them by the pyre through the trees. Awesome.
-"More like him than I will ever be."/"I'll take that as a compliment."/"You can take it any way you want." Ow ow ow ow ow! Ohhhhhhhhh, boys! Dammit! OW!
Woo! That was one hell of an episode!! I'm gonna go see what the rest of you thought of it now, and then I have to go to work. BLAH!!!
(PLEASE, NO SPOILERS OR REFERENCES TO SPOILERY MATERIAL IN COMMENTS! The definition of spoiler for this journal is located in left hand sidebar. Theory and speculation based on aired episodes only.)