Picspam Reaction: Supernatural 8.15
Warning: Contains profanity, and a bit of insanity about personal phobias and hot-button issues.
Spoiler and Theory Summary
Nothing spoilery heard for this one.
I suspect either a breather episode while Kevin figures out what trial number two is, or some kind of update from the Castiel situation.
Picspam Reaction, with speculation and randomness for Supernatural 8.15 - "???" "Man's Best Friend With Benefits"
-Darn thing paused on an image while skipping through the THEN that looked like that guy who ate the razor blade candy before the monster keg-party held by SAM HANE, teh feersest demun evaaaar, back in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester", which also involved a 600 year old witch and keeping a Seal from breaking. Because of that, possibility of witch activity in this episode has greatly increased, although it could be Seals again as part of the second trial (because seriously, it's not like the unbroken ones stopped existing because there's no longer an impending Apocalypse) though that's doubtful since there are much more Seal-linked scenes the could have used than SAM HANE's kegger invitation if that were the case. So, witches. Always a minefield.
-St. Louis, Missouri as some familiar-looking alleyways, with doomed people in them.
-Why does this guy look so familiar? Work has been frying my brain lately, so he could even be an established character in the show already.
-GAH! Strangling with blood explosions! That was unexpected. And it was a all a dream. OR WAS IT? Dun dun dun... probably not, since we're still ahead of the title card.
-When the camera is waiting for you at the bottom of your trash can, you're about to have a really messed-up morning. Before coffee too, poor possibly-murderous bastard.
-Naw, that blood spray is low velocity, though it could be seepage through a jacket. There's writing on it... Imp?
-Title...
...I literally cannot describe the expression on my face right now. Um... Okaaaay? O.o
-And the boys are arguing over the roof of the Impala about... the Three Stooges? Hunh. Signs are pointing to this being a crack/breather episode, wherein Sam and Dean are stuck behind their own walls about recent Trial-related events and emotional situations that they have as usual burrowed down under big thick distracting barricades of 'not dealing with it ooo look a bunny' for a little while until they get their personal equilibrium statuses back to quo. Or not. Assuming Winchesters have an emotional equilibrium. We shall see. Nonetheless, arguments about Stooges.
-The hook of the evening's case being that the cop called them in and they owe him because he saved their lives once... Does he look familiar because he played a cop in a previous episode? I doubt it. But that would have been cool. Continuity rocks.
-"I wanna make sure that you are... okay."/"I'm good." Ooo, Dean brings the Trial thing up first and Sam is just 'good'. Because talking about it will open up a brand new round of Winchesterian arguing about whose job it is to sacrifice themselves for the good of their family the party the Earth, and so on and so forth, not that we won't be getting into that reasonably shortly and that it won't be hurtingly awesome. But for now, walls and conversational trebuchet volleys to bracket the range. And this is why they've spent the past however many states they've driven through talking about the comparative merits of the Three Stooges. As if they needed an excuse.
-"We could find another devil dog, you could tag out, I could snuff the sonofabitch." You know, aside from the obvious inadvisability of going off to kill another hellhound when you just did one and Crowley's kennel club is going to be on alert for further shenanigans, that's almost a tactically sound course of action. Having two separate lines of attack on the trials, so either of them can finish the job. Almost. Except for the whole being suicidally stupid thing. Dean's face is making a darn good case for it though. He looks like he's asking for a cookie, not a quest.
-"Kevin doesn't even know what the next trial is yet." Given they started with killing a hellhound, I'm thinking it's only going to get tougher from here. Hoping it doesn't end with something like 'kill the King of Hell' or something that's going to be nigh impossible to do, though really, the stuff they've done over the years, some of it might turn out to be stuff they did before, they just didn't have the spell to read out after.
-Clawing noises at the door are not a good thing.
-AAAAAAAAAAAH! SUDDEN UNEXPECTED DOG! No! Sorry! I'd be slamming the door, locking it, and hiding in the closet. I'm not good around dogs. At all. It's a phobia. I ran across a parking lot once to avoid a chihuahua. Literally.
-AAAAAH!!!! IT'S RUNNING INTO THE ROOM NOOOOOOOO! *hides*
-AAH IT JUMPED TOWARD THE CAMERA! THIS EPISODE IS SO FAR NOT GOOD FOR MY NERVES. Though I sort of guessed it wouldn't be from the title.
-Maybe it's the cop guy, maybe he's a skin-walker or something. Yeah, okay.
-Though if that turns out to be true, this belly-scratching incident could be retroactively awkward since it didn't sound like they were on belly-scratching terms with the cop guy who saved their lives once. There's something calming about Sam and a dog though. He's such a big puppy.
-"This wasn't my fault, she just showed up at the door." Ahahah. 'She followed me home, Dean, can I keep her?' Nice try. Hm. Would it be weird if the Trial and the Hellhound blood somehow made dogs want to follow Sam around and be all friendly at him? Yeah, that'd be weird. Also, she? Not their cop contact then, unless his dog form is a different gender, which I guess it could be, I mean hell if you're changing species, gender should be a snap.
-Dean is looking quite disturbed by Sam's preemptive defensiveness. Also, written by Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming, who have written a few scripts in the past two seasons. And something in season one but, well, that was over 7 years ago now so the statute of limitations has run out.
-"She just wanted her belly scratched, and I figure she'd stay the night and maybe we'd try to find her a home tomorrow. *opens door without looking*" ...oh crap. The dog's going to have turned into a woman. Because that last speech of Sam's has that all over it.
-Hahah. Yeah. Unless this is some weird side effect of the Hellhound blood where... no. No.
-Dean is processing this recent turn of events. Also, directed by John F. Showalter, familiar name.
-"She can stay the night." Heeeee. Dean. Never change.
-"Two seconds ago she was a dog." You know, there are so many ways that can be taken, and none of them are very good.
-"I'm a familiar." OOO. New lore! Cool. The last RPG character I had that had a familiar had an insect of some kind, so the whole 'can transform into a human and speak to people that aren't her wizard' is a damn handy attribute. There's only so much a bug can do to get the attention of the other party members without getting swatted after all.
-*Sam info-dumps about familiars* Aw, look at Sam busting out some of the knowing things about stuff he's been acquiring in the Men of Letters library! Because neither of them knew familiars were a real thing before now. Now, is a familiar an elevated animal, a variation on human, or a minor demon? General legend and myth and RPG rules has examples of all variations, but given the general "how 'witches' work" in Supernatural, I'm thinking minor demon of some kind.
-"I belong to James Frampton(?)" From Dean's face, I take it that this is their cop-contact and that they weren't expecting him to be a witch. Oopsie!
-"Lunatic alchemist, it was nasty." Sounds intriguing though.
-So, he helps them take out an out-of-control magic user who was probably killing people or trying to turn them to gold or something, and after they leave goes "Hey, that looked like fun." Hm. Well, I suppose stranger things have happened, but there's probably more to it than just curiosity, or a complete lack of common sense. Either way, I second Dean's face.
-Oh, James didn't call them, his familiar did, because she's worried about him. Awwwwwww. Seriously, awwwwww. Henchbeings showing concern about the person they are henching for is one of my weak spots. Doubt that's the whole story and everything, but still awwww.
-*nods along with the 'using his powers for good' speech* Has merit. Still, there's the whole 'getting duped by a demon' thing as the power source, unless James went a different way to get his witch powers, but we haven't seen much success for alternative approaches on this show, plus he's gotta be pretty far along if he's got a familiar, which so far, none of the other witches the Winchesters have encountered have had, and that seems like it was pretty darn quick if he's not taking demonic shortcuts.
-"That was incredibly hot." *facepalm* Dean!
"It was pretty hot." Not you too, Sam! Yeesh!
-I agree with the familiar's (her name's Portia?) eyeroll and disdainful glare.
-Hokay! Arcane decor and telekinetic chess playing. Not too much on the keeping things quiet end of the magic-user spectrum are the spell-casters of St. Louis Missouri.
-And here's our James, who is having dreams of committing blood-spattery murders and then waking up to a bloody shirt that's been disposed of without even the slightest bit of forensic countermeasure. Hm. If he's just doing good things with his powers, perhaps his power-supplier is getting tired of the goody two-shoes routine, grabbing some handy sticky-outy bit of James' psyche and giving it a serious twisting. Or maybe it's one of his fellow magic-users because seriously, there's this many practicing openly in a bar, St. Louis has to have a significantly large percentage of 'witches' in the population.
-"At least that's what I picked up before he started blocking me." Oh ho. So. He thinks he's pushing her away and doesn't want to. She thinks he's blocking her. Definitely third party involvement, or Portia is lying and running around killing people after hours because she's bored of the 'good deeds only' stricture, and calling in the Winchesters to... hm. Try to push James into committing an evil act? All of which she may be doing at the behest of James' power-supplier. Hm. We'll see.
-Ripping a blind guy's throat out with your bare hands. Right. So. Also a possibility, another 'witch' is doing these things, beaming the experience of it straight into James' head, and leaving physical evidence at James' house, to get him at the very least, turfed off the police force so he can't use his 'witch' skills in solving crimes, leaving the murderer free reign to do whatever. Hm. Plot possibilities.
-...Speaking of dreams, DREAMROOT. Just, you know, tossing that out there. Because someone needs to think of it now and again. Because it's AWESOME.
-Sitting in the living room as the wizard and familiar have an argument. Awwwwkkkwaaaard... Hey, it's that book on China again! Wasn't that prominently on a coffee table in a previous episode?
-Well, that's a conclusive way of saying "I have nothing more to say to you." Rather than 'talk to the hand' it's talk to the dog.
-Something about the reverse angle height of Sam's shoulder makes this guy look adorably pocket-sized.
-"You screw with that stuff you're gonna fry your wiring." Heeee! It's an intervention!
-"Not so sure." Seriously, dude, you're a cop. You can look up whether anyone got gutted in that way last night when you get to work. Because also, this could be premonitions, and wouldn't premonitions be a handy thing for a cop to have access to, (See also, Minority Report, Medium, Psych (sort of), The Mentalist (kind of), and a whole schwackload of others I'm not remembering) and something, as a responsible good-guy magic-user you might want to see if you have? This is the problem with magic-users, they stop thinking of using mundane resources.
-"Those people? They died." Well, that's fine then. Well, no it's not fine, really, but at least you're confirming the facts of the matter sensibly.
-Random, but something about the combination of shirts is making me think those shirts have been paired before.... Maybe "Nightshifter"?
*quick check* Dean's shirt is the Nightshifter shirt, or close enough, Sam was wearing a striped shirt that was very different though.
-"James Martin Frampton." Is monogramming your shirts a thing? Oh, hey, maybe at the station in the locker room, people kept messing with his shirts, or he kept getting them confused with another officer, so he has his initials put on now, like he's at summer camp. Yeah. Also, normally blood stains would have gone brown long before now, except James here has been keeping it in a super special plastic bag that keeps that from happening. By stopping time or something. It's a magic bag. Yeah. Sure. Sigh. *handwave*
-When in doubt, chain someone to the furniture. Between the handcuffs last episode and the bag of chains this episode, I wonder if the writers are baiting certain portions of the fanbase.
-Whee! Spell components! Hm. I somehow doubt the green things in the quart sealer are jalapenos, although they look a bit like them.
-Witch-killing spell sounds rather, um, untargeted. O.o
-"Is anything we ever do a sure thing?"/"Well, no, but I'd just like to have the odds in our favour as much as possible." And when does anything you guys do ever have the odds in your favour?
-"Concerned about the uh, the witch-killing spell, or that I'm going to mess these trials up?" Took going back over that a few times and doing a bit of lip reading to determine that Sam said 'mess' and not 'ass', though assing the trials up is also something to be avoided.
-"Asking myself, 'Why doesn't he trust me?'" Oh Sam. That's really, really not it.
-"It's not that you don't trust me, it's that you can only trust you." OW. Still not quite the central reason he wants to take over the Trial quest from you, but accurate nonetheless I suspect. This is why Winchesters have walls. To keep all the spikes and broken parts on the inside.
-"You done?"/"I'm done if you're done." And the walls go back up. Oh boys.
-"Benny, Kate, they were forced to be what they are. James chose this." True. He doesn't seem to have done too badly with it though.
-Tie Report: Dark blue stripes bounded by grey thinner stripes on a light blue tie. Sam is well-walled and on the job.
-*snerk* Nothing beats down attitude from the local authorities like waltzing in with evidence they 'missed'.
-"Anything else."/"*stare*...no." *koffBULLSHITkoff*
-"Are they all witches?"/"And stuff." Hee. This is like the opening to a joke. Dean Winchester walks into a bar full of witches. ...Admittedly the likeliest result of that isn't much of a punch line and more of a splatter line, but there we are.
-"Guess a lot of people feel that way about their pets." Ooo! That's a cheap shot.
-Not intentionally low though, just Dean being socially obtuse.
-"Between a master and a familiar there's an unbreakable bond-" *chokes on lemonade* Um. Sorry. Just had a stray thought there, considering Castiel said something similar about bonds and Dean that once and now I'm alternatively boggling at the very idea and bemusedly trying to figure out if it's Castiel or Dean who is the familiar. Never miiiind, carry oooooonnn...
-This guy summoning her with a tone of voice and a click of his fingers like she's a pet really isn't helping. I suspect him of being involved in a negative way.
-"Meet Phillippe Le Chat." Heh. Unless he's also a familiar, and a cat, in which case, he's just being a cat. No big deal.
-"That's weird. That only happens around cats." Yeaaaah.... Hm. Is that new, or have we seen that before? Castiel interrogated the cat at the retirement home that one time... Hm.
-"I'm a wiccan. I'm from Detroit." Don't know why it's funny when Dean says it, but still. Also, somewhat glad they've got some kind of a separation between 'witches' and wiccans.
-"No, I've never heard of a thing like that." And Dean had his head down with the sneeze, so he didn't see that little shifty thing the guy did when he said that. Hm. Hmmmm.
-Okay, I know Phillippe's a cat, and the purring is a kind of clue for Dean here, but seriously, getting up close to Dean Winchester and turning your eyes yellow WILL NOT HELP YOU PRESERVE YOUR NINE LIVES, DUDE! Dean and yellow eyes have a history you do not want to set off.
-Aw, sweetie kitty! I was sure he'd turn out to be ginger for some reason, maybe the reddish overtones in his hair at some angles, but as mentioned before in a different context, if you're changing your species, picking whatever pigmentation you damn well pleased would be a breeze. Aw. Black kitty. Aw. *smiles*
-"I knew it." No you didn't. But that's okay. *patpat*
-Handy that he's got a decent bed frame for affixing chains to. Hope you went to the john and have a glass of water handy, dude, because you're in for the night.
-"If I'm innocent, I have to do the right thing. And if I'm not innocent, I have to do the right thing." Awww, he's honorable.
-"I love you. *smooch*" ... *shrug* What the hell, right, they're both consenting sentient beings, and what they do together is their business. The fact that she's sometimes non-human doesn't make her any less sentient, so... Okay. Moving on.
-*koff* Erm. Yeah, this is the same pair of writers that wrote that season one episode. *facepalm*
-Well at least the nookie is plot-related, since she's regained contact with whatever she got disconnected from and can see what is in his head, though obviously it's not a dream since he's not sleeping unless he's narcoleptic, which is possible.
-Okay, I'm trying to figure out what Dean's planning on doing with the lighter and the ...trowel? I mean, kill their pal James for crimes he didn't commit is the obvious intent here, but is he planning to sterilize the trowel first or what's the fire for? *headscratch*
-"They had sex."/"Wow!" Dean. *headshake*
-"Considering that you're... and he's.... That's. Little help here?"/"*tiny headshake*" *sneeeeerk* Just stop talking, Dean.
-"No?" And then there's this face. Heeeeeee.
-Second tie of the episode for Sam, maroon, alternating narrow white and gold stripes, tilting the other direction. More focused on the job now, and less on the walls and such regarding the trials and Dean's need to put himself in harms' way instead of Sam, which Sam is interpreting as a lack of trust. Gnh. BOYS.
-"Still investigating this crappy little case." Hm, you know, four violent murders in close succession is usually not considered a crappy little case. The head cop here did say earlier that the victims were people that no one would miss, which I suspect is his reason for being dismissive of it, which makes him a great big bag of dicks. So to speak.
-Oh really? Looks like they're on to the situation, or someone put them on to the situation, because James Frampton is a case, not the investigator. Also, forensics dude tie report: lots of little squares that are all like layers of walls around a central block. An extremely defensive tie. Forensics dude is up to something.
-HI CAR!!! *waves like a doofus*
-There is something oddly funny about Dean asking someone else a question about their self-identity. Funny and a bit sad.
-"This have anything to do with what I told you about James and me last night? How you're imagining it?"/"What, no, that's, heheh... yes." *facepalm* DEAN!!!
-AHAHAHAHAHA!!! IT'S A GREMLIN!!! You'd think a warlock would go for better, but there's probably some magic keeping that damn thing in one piece and running. XD
-"That exposes the rest of us." Assuming the local law enforcement has the imagination to believe magic is real, and seriously, that's going to be a hard sell.
-"There is a spell for implanting images into another person's brain." Just like Andy Gallagher could do. Hmmm. Also, Dean doing research from Bobby's old files. AWWWW.
-"It's been 15 hours since Portia mentioned her night with James and not one bestiality joke out of you." Dean looks so genuinely pleased at Sam's acknowledgement of that. Like a 5-year-old who's learned to tie his shoes.
-Well someone had him loose and got him dressed between when the chains went on and now, so maybe there have been potty breaks. Also there's a coffee cup on the nightstand, so there is probably need for potty breaks.
-"A witch can go to a place without having to go to a place." Okay, astral travel I'm guessing, cool. Not that the boys haven't done something like that, though there was an unfortunate body count involved, in the shape of Pamela Barnes.
-"What, like phone sex?" *sigh* I suppose he has to let off the repressed sex jokes somehow.
-"Astral projection." Astral travel, astral projection, to-may-to, to-mah-to. I think.
-"But only if we can go with you." I'm on the side of Dean's face here, Sam.
-"Just close your eyes." Because that's reassuring. Considering the implanted memories are also probably somehow connected with the astral plane, it's probably a good thing to have Sam and Dean along, in case the memory implanter is waiting there to kick James' ass in the astral plane. Probably some collusion of the head cop and the guy with the cat familiar. Which makes me nervous, because I don't want to see anything bad happen to a cat or cat-being, even if the cat is a familiar who was stupid enough to go evil.
-WHITE EYES OH MY GOD, OKAY THAT IS SO NOT REASSURING!!!
-Zoom through the station. That was kind of cool.
-You know, if whoever this is is implanting memories in a fellow 'witch', implanting false memories in Joe Mundane would be a cakewalk. And then there's Glamours, and all kinds of mundane ways to fake evidence that a little magical tweak would make harder to detect.
-Aw, Phillippe (with two L's and two P's *retroactively changes*). Silly kitty, lying to the police is not a good idea!
-Always approach pissed off magic-users with extreme caution, even if they aren't pissed off at you.
-Yeah, he's a bit irked.
-"My master made me." I can believe that, but I tend to side with the cats and cat-like beings in situations like this.
-"Please, don't hurt my face." He is such a cat. :-)
-*snap* *cringe* Oof. ...I ...Taking a short break.
-Right. Okay, that's the downside of Phillippe being ordered against his will. His master might murder him casually for telling the truth. Now please can we kill the living crap out of his asshole master?
-Asshole master tie report: Crazy flowers. Fake-innocent-seeming-yet-backstabbing-evil-lunatic tie for a backstabbing evil lunatic. Who by all rights should be suffering mightily right now from his familiar being killed, but obviously he's found a way to break the connection whenever it suits him. Have I mentioned that aside from not wanting to see anything bad happen to a cat or cat-like being that I have a bit of a thing for loyal henchbeings, even if they're associated with evil, and any character who casually kills his own loyal henchbeing can just die immediately in great pain? And that when the henchbeing is also in some way a cat, that particular need to see the killer ended messily goes asymptotic? I think I might be madder at this mage guy than James is right now, and mage-guy hasn't been plotting to set me up for a quadruple homicide and messing with my brain. So yeah, crazy flower tie. I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON IT, YOU HENCH-CAT-KILLING ASSHOLE. *huffs*
-What? Me? Issues? Pft. *handwaves*
-"You never considered my feelings?"/"...Portia." Oh no no no, crazy flower tie man, we've seen what you do to your familiars, you do not get to, to... I don't know. Was he after Portia before? If it was mentioned I missed that part. Regardless, you do not ever get another familiar. People like you are why there should be Familiar Protective Services or a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Familiars or something. Asshole. You die now. Soon. Please?
-"Can you imagine the insult when she chose you? I wanted her as my soulmate the moment I saw her." Yeah. That's nice. She chose someone else, and that's when you should get the hint, let go and move on. So I guess now we can add 'creepy obsessive stalker' to this guy's list of reasons he's an asshole.
-"But when you two went all Bella and Edward-" And now he's making Twilight references. Inaccurate ones too because Jacob's the werewolf, not Edward, so never mind. Possibly not another reason he's an asshole, but definitely another reason he's crazy. Unless he likes thinking that all women should be like Bella. In which case, probably safe to add that to the asshole list.
-"The wiccan from Detroit." You boys really need to work on your sneaking skills.
-Also on your 'knowing when not to just stand there yapping at a pissed off magic user' skills. Winchesters being thrown into a wall! What day is it?
-Ah, but they were an effective distraction. Mage fight! \o/
Magic missile, Levitate with some kind of internal pain generation added...
-And that one would be "Mass Hold Person", area effect of 2. Snapshot with zero casting time while maintaining a second spell, impressive. *nods* And yet he still needs to die now. *nods much harder*
-"It's not only James' head I can get inside." *gasp* Though really, hehe. Good luck messing with the inside of Sam's head. He had Lucifer in it for half a year, or a few centuries depending how you count.
-Oh crap. Or, there could just be a lot more crap memories to lock them into without needing to add any false ones.
-So, that leaves Portia to save the day, yeah?
-Yep. Knew she would be coming, and I'm not the evil bastard currently in the process of killing her master/boyfriend, so she's not freaking me out now. Plus, she can rip the asshole's throat out, YAY! \o/
-Side benefit of attacking a spellcaster, their concentration breaks and any maintained spells fail if they don't make a will save. I think. It has been far too long since I gamed. Anyway, spell failures. Which aren't capping well, phoo.
-Get 'im, girl! Get him right in the crazy flower tie!
-Ah, so the 'witch-killing' spell is a Molotov cocktail with bonus Latination. The Molotov cocktail would do it for many things, really. And that would be what they were packing in to James' bedroom. Not a trowel. *facepalm*
-Oooo, special effects.
-And he uncappably disintegrates into atoms, like a watermelon in a particle accelerator. *sniffs analytically* Yeah, that'll do. Going to be a pain to get James' name cleared, maybe, but *handwave* details.
-I do love how the boys are so tall, they make most of the guest actors look tiny.
-Well, given all the mundane and 'witch' side trouble coming after them, taking off makes the most sense. I... kind of like these two? I wouldn't mind seeing them come back in a future episode as a resource or an ally of sorts. Between these two, and Charlie, and Aaron and his Golem, the boys could be building a bit of a contact network of sorts. Hm...
-Hee! She must really like the breeze flapping past her ears, because her human form would be far more practical and comfortable for a long car ride.
-Re-use of transition shot! This is a really early one, though I can't place the episode it was first in offhand. (Wendigo maybe? Or Scarecrow?) Time for another in-car discussion!
-"The only way we made it through it all was by hanging together." YES. THANK YOU. \o/
-"If you say you're good, then that's it. I'm with you 100%." Dean's faaaaace, with the pain in there and the stuff and things! And then Sam's faaaaace, with the 'who are you, person who is being sort of accepting about me risking my own life to save the world?' *flappy hands and dolphin noises*
-"I'm good *koff gack wheeze*" Um. Sam? Did you inhale some evil crazy-flower-tie-wearing asshole mage back there or something? I thought you sounded a bit like you had a cold earlier, but I figured that was probably a Jared thing rather than a Sam thing so I didn't mention it. O.o
-Sam, I speak from experience when I say coughing up even a little bit of blood is not a good thing. And that's not a little.
-Sam, Dean's trusting you that if you say you're good, you're good. That means if you aren't good, like if say you start randomly coughing up blood you say that you aren't good and you freaking tell your brother that you're coughing up blood. Honestly!
So. They have another potential roaming contact of a 'witch' and familiar, and Dean's getting to grips with this whole "letting his baby brother risk his own fool neck and back him up rather than trying to be the Winchester family tank again some more and take all the hits" thing, and SAM IS COUGHING UP BLOOD AND SAYING HE'S FINE, WHICH IS BOTH PERSONALLY AND STRATEGICALLY STUPID. SAM, YOU IDIOT, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING!!
(PLEASE, NO SPOILERS OR REFERENCES TO UNAIRED EPISODES IN COMMENTS! Any and all promo material for unaired episodes is considered to be a spoiler in this journal. The further definition of what constitutes a spoiler for this journal is located in left hand sidebar. Theory and speculation based on aired episodes only.)
Spoiler and Theory Summary
Nothing spoilery heard for this one.
I suspect either a breather episode while Kevin figures out what trial number two is, or some kind of update from the Castiel situation.
Picspam Reaction, with speculation and randomness for Supernatural 8.15 - "???" "Man's Best Friend With Benefits"
-Darn thing paused on an image while skipping through the THEN that looked like that guy who ate the razor blade candy before the monster keg-party held by SAM HANE, teh feersest demun evaaaar, back in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester", which also involved a 600 year old witch and keeping a Seal from breaking. Because of that, possibility of witch activity in this episode has greatly increased, although it could be Seals again as part of the second trial (because seriously, it's not like the unbroken ones stopped existing because there's no longer an impending Apocalypse) though that's doubtful since there are much more Seal-linked scenes the could have used than SAM HANE's kegger invitation if that were the case. So, witches. Always a minefield.
-St. Louis, Missouri as some familiar-looking alleyways, with doomed people in them.
-Why does this guy look so familiar? Work has been frying my brain lately, so he could even be an established character in the show already.
-GAH! Strangling with blood explosions! That was unexpected. And it was a all a dream. OR WAS IT? Dun dun dun... probably not, since we're still ahead of the title card.
-When the camera is waiting for you at the bottom of your trash can, you're about to have a really messed-up morning. Before coffee too, poor possibly-murderous bastard.
-Naw, that blood spray is low velocity, though it could be seepage through a jacket. There's writing on it... Imp?
-Title...
...I literally cannot describe the expression on my face right now. Um... Okaaaay? O.o
-And the boys are arguing over the roof of the Impala about... the Three Stooges? Hunh. Signs are pointing to this being a crack/breather episode, wherein Sam and Dean are stuck behind their own walls about recent Trial-related events and emotional situations that they have as usual burrowed down under big thick distracting barricades of 'not dealing with it ooo look a bunny' for a little while until they get their personal equilibrium statuses back to quo. Or not. Assuming Winchesters have an emotional equilibrium. We shall see. Nonetheless, arguments about Stooges.
-The hook of the evening's case being that the cop called them in and they owe him because he saved their lives once... Does he look familiar because he played a cop in a previous episode? I doubt it. But that would have been cool. Continuity rocks.
-"I wanna make sure that you are... okay."/"I'm good." Ooo, Dean brings the Trial thing up first and Sam is just 'good'. Because talking about it will open up a brand new round of Winchesterian arguing about whose job it is to sacrifice themselves for the good of their family the party the Earth, and so on and so forth, not that we won't be getting into that reasonably shortly and that it won't be hurtingly awesome. But for now, walls and conversational trebuchet volleys to bracket the range. And this is why they've spent the past however many states they've driven through talking about the comparative merits of the Three Stooges. As if they needed an excuse.
-"We could find another devil dog, you could tag out, I could snuff the sonofabitch." You know, aside from the obvious inadvisability of going off to kill another hellhound when you just did one and Crowley's kennel club is going to be on alert for further shenanigans, that's almost a tactically sound course of action. Having two separate lines of attack on the trials, so either of them can finish the job. Almost. Except for the whole being suicidally stupid thing. Dean's face is making a darn good case for it though. He looks like he's asking for a cookie, not a quest.
-"Kevin doesn't even know what the next trial is yet." Given they started with killing a hellhound, I'm thinking it's only going to get tougher from here. Hoping it doesn't end with something like 'kill the King of Hell' or something that's going to be nigh impossible to do, though really, the stuff they've done over the years, some of it might turn out to be stuff they did before, they just didn't have the spell to read out after.
-Clawing noises at the door are not a good thing.
-AAAAAAAAAAAH! SUDDEN UNEXPECTED DOG! No! Sorry! I'd be slamming the door, locking it, and hiding in the closet. I'm not good around dogs. At all. It's a phobia. I ran across a parking lot once to avoid a chihuahua. Literally.
-AAAAAH!!!! IT'S RUNNING INTO THE ROOM NOOOOOOOO! *hides*
-AAH IT JUMPED TOWARD THE CAMERA! THIS EPISODE IS SO FAR NOT GOOD FOR MY NERVES. Though I sort of guessed it wouldn't be from the title.
-Maybe it's the cop guy, maybe he's a skin-walker or something. Yeah, okay.
-Though if that turns out to be true, this belly-scratching incident could be retroactively awkward since it didn't sound like they were on belly-scratching terms with the cop guy who saved their lives once. There's something calming about Sam and a dog though. He's such a big puppy.
-"This wasn't my fault, she just showed up at the door." Ahahah. 'She followed me home, Dean, can I keep her?' Nice try. Hm. Would it be weird if the Trial and the Hellhound blood somehow made dogs want to follow Sam around and be all friendly at him? Yeah, that'd be weird. Also, she? Not their cop contact then, unless his dog form is a different gender, which I guess it could be, I mean hell if you're changing species, gender should be a snap.
-Dean is looking quite disturbed by Sam's preemptive defensiveness. Also, written by Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming, who have written a few scripts in the past two seasons. And something in season one but, well, that was over 7 years ago now so the statute of limitations has run out.
-"She just wanted her belly scratched, and I figure she'd stay the night and maybe we'd try to find her a home tomorrow. *opens door without looking*" ...oh crap. The dog's going to have turned into a woman. Because that last speech of Sam's has that all over it.
-Hahah. Yeah. Unless this is some weird side effect of the Hellhound blood where... no. No.
-Dean is processing this recent turn of events. Also, directed by John F. Showalter, familiar name.
-"She can stay the night." Heeeee. Dean. Never change.
-"Two seconds ago she was a dog." You know, there are so many ways that can be taken, and none of them are very good.
-"I'm a familiar." OOO. New lore! Cool. The last RPG character I had that had a familiar had an insect of some kind, so the whole 'can transform into a human and speak to people that aren't her wizard' is a damn handy attribute. There's only so much a bug can do to get the attention of the other party members without getting swatted after all.
-*Sam info-dumps about familiars* Aw, look at Sam busting out some of the knowing things about stuff he's been acquiring in the Men of Letters library! Because neither of them knew familiars were a real thing before now. Now, is a familiar an elevated animal, a variation on human, or a minor demon? General legend and myth and RPG rules has examples of all variations, but given the general "how 'witches' work" in Supernatural, I'm thinking minor demon of some kind.
-"I belong to James Frampton(?)" From Dean's face, I take it that this is their cop-contact and that they weren't expecting him to be a witch. Oopsie!
-"Lunatic alchemist, it was nasty." Sounds intriguing though.
-So, he helps them take out an out-of-control magic user who was probably killing people or trying to turn them to gold or something, and after they leave goes "Hey, that looked like fun." Hm. Well, I suppose stranger things have happened, but there's probably more to it than just curiosity, or a complete lack of common sense. Either way, I second Dean's face.
-Oh, James didn't call them, his familiar did, because she's worried about him. Awwwwwww. Seriously, awwwwww. Henchbeings showing concern about the person they are henching for is one of my weak spots. Doubt that's the whole story and everything, but still awwww.
-*nods along with the 'using his powers for good' speech* Has merit. Still, there's the whole 'getting duped by a demon' thing as the power source, unless James went a different way to get his witch powers, but we haven't seen much success for alternative approaches on this show, plus he's gotta be pretty far along if he's got a familiar, which so far, none of the other witches the Winchesters have encountered have had, and that seems like it was pretty darn quick if he's not taking demonic shortcuts.
-"That was incredibly hot." *facepalm* Dean!
"It was pretty hot." Not you too, Sam! Yeesh!
-I agree with the familiar's (her name's Portia?) eyeroll and disdainful glare.
-Hokay! Arcane decor and telekinetic chess playing. Not too much on the keeping things quiet end of the magic-user spectrum are the spell-casters of St. Louis Missouri.
-And here's our James, who is having dreams of committing blood-spattery murders and then waking up to a bloody shirt that's been disposed of without even the slightest bit of forensic countermeasure. Hm. If he's just doing good things with his powers, perhaps his power-supplier is getting tired of the goody two-shoes routine, grabbing some handy sticky-outy bit of James' psyche and giving it a serious twisting. Or maybe it's one of his fellow magic-users because seriously, there's this many practicing openly in a bar, St. Louis has to have a significantly large percentage of 'witches' in the population.
-"At least that's what I picked up before he started blocking me." Oh ho. So. He thinks he's pushing her away and doesn't want to. She thinks he's blocking her. Definitely third party involvement, or Portia is lying and running around killing people after hours because she's bored of the 'good deeds only' stricture, and calling in the Winchesters to... hm. Try to push James into committing an evil act? All of which she may be doing at the behest of James' power-supplier. Hm. We'll see.
-Ripping a blind guy's throat out with your bare hands. Right. So. Also a possibility, another 'witch' is doing these things, beaming the experience of it straight into James' head, and leaving physical evidence at James' house, to get him at the very least, turfed off the police force so he can't use his 'witch' skills in solving crimes, leaving the murderer free reign to do whatever. Hm. Plot possibilities.
-...Speaking of dreams, DREAMROOT. Just, you know, tossing that out there. Because someone needs to think of it now and again. Because it's AWESOME.
-Sitting in the living room as the wizard and familiar have an argument. Awwwwkkkwaaaard... Hey, it's that book on China again! Wasn't that prominently on a coffee table in a previous episode?
-Well, that's a conclusive way of saying "I have nothing more to say to you." Rather than 'talk to the hand' it's talk to the dog.
-Something about the reverse angle height of Sam's shoulder makes this guy look adorably pocket-sized.
-"You screw with that stuff you're gonna fry your wiring." Heeee! It's an intervention!
-"Not so sure." Seriously, dude, you're a cop. You can look up whether anyone got gutted in that way last night when you get to work. Because also, this could be premonitions, and wouldn't premonitions be a handy thing for a cop to have access to, (See also, Minority Report, Medium, Psych (sort of), The Mentalist (kind of), and a whole schwackload of others I'm not remembering) and something, as a responsible good-guy magic-user you might want to see if you have? This is the problem with magic-users, they stop thinking of using mundane resources.
-"Those people? They died." Well, that's fine then. Well, no it's not fine, really, but at least you're confirming the facts of the matter sensibly.
-Random, but something about the combination of shirts is making me think those shirts have been paired before.... Maybe "Nightshifter"?
*quick check* Dean's shirt is the Nightshifter shirt, or close enough, Sam was wearing a striped shirt that was very different though.
-"James Martin Frampton." Is monogramming your shirts a thing? Oh, hey, maybe at the station in the locker room, people kept messing with his shirts, or he kept getting them confused with another officer, so he has his initials put on now, like he's at summer camp. Yeah. Also, normally blood stains would have gone brown long before now, except James here has been keeping it in a super special plastic bag that keeps that from happening. By stopping time or something. It's a magic bag. Yeah. Sure. Sigh. *handwave*
-When in doubt, chain someone to the furniture. Between the handcuffs last episode and the bag of chains this episode, I wonder if the writers are baiting certain portions of the fanbase.
-Whee! Spell components! Hm. I somehow doubt the green things in the quart sealer are jalapenos, although they look a bit like them.
-Witch-killing spell sounds rather, um, untargeted. O.o
-"Is anything we ever do a sure thing?"/"Well, no, but I'd just like to have the odds in our favour as much as possible." And when does anything you guys do ever have the odds in your favour?
-"Concerned about the uh, the witch-killing spell, or that I'm going to mess these trials up?" Took going back over that a few times and doing a bit of lip reading to determine that Sam said 'mess' and not 'ass', though assing the trials up is also something to be avoided.
-"Asking myself, 'Why doesn't he trust me?'" Oh Sam. That's really, really not it.
-"It's not that you don't trust me, it's that you can only trust you." OW. Still not quite the central reason he wants to take over the Trial quest from you, but accurate nonetheless I suspect. This is why Winchesters have walls. To keep all the spikes and broken parts on the inside.
-"You done?"/"I'm done if you're done." And the walls go back up. Oh boys.
-"Benny, Kate, they were forced to be what they are. James chose this." True. He doesn't seem to have done too badly with it though.
-Tie Report: Dark blue stripes bounded by grey thinner stripes on a light blue tie. Sam is well-walled and on the job.
-*snerk* Nothing beats down attitude from the local authorities like waltzing in with evidence they 'missed'.
-"Anything else."/"*stare*...no." *koffBULLSHITkoff*
-"Are they all witches?"/"And stuff." Hee. This is like the opening to a joke. Dean Winchester walks into a bar full of witches. ...Admittedly the likeliest result of that isn't much of a punch line and more of a splatter line, but there we are.
-"Guess a lot of people feel that way about their pets." Ooo! That's a cheap shot.
-Not intentionally low though, just Dean being socially obtuse.
-"Between a master and a familiar there's an unbreakable bond-" *chokes on lemonade* Um. Sorry. Just had a stray thought there, considering Castiel said something similar about bonds and Dean that once and now I'm alternatively boggling at the very idea and bemusedly trying to figure out if it's Castiel or Dean who is the familiar. Never miiiind, carry oooooonnn...
-This guy summoning her with a tone of voice and a click of his fingers like she's a pet really isn't helping. I suspect him of being involved in a negative way.
-"Meet Phillippe Le Chat." Heh. Unless he's also a familiar, and a cat, in which case, he's just being a cat. No big deal.
-"That's weird. That only happens around cats." Yeaaaah.... Hm. Is that new, or have we seen that before? Castiel interrogated the cat at the retirement home that one time... Hm.
-"I'm a wiccan. I'm from Detroit." Don't know why it's funny when Dean says it, but still. Also, somewhat glad they've got some kind of a separation between 'witches' and wiccans.
-"No, I've never heard of a thing like that." And Dean had his head down with the sneeze, so he didn't see that little shifty thing the guy did when he said that. Hm. Hmmmm.
-Okay, I know Phillippe's a cat, and the purring is a kind of clue for Dean here, but seriously, getting up close to Dean Winchester and turning your eyes yellow WILL NOT HELP YOU PRESERVE YOUR NINE LIVES, DUDE! Dean and yellow eyes have a history you do not want to set off.
-Aw, sweetie kitty! I was sure he'd turn out to be ginger for some reason, maybe the reddish overtones in his hair at some angles, but as mentioned before in a different context, if you're changing your species, picking whatever pigmentation you damn well pleased would be a breeze. Aw. Black kitty. Aw. *smiles*
-"I knew it." No you didn't. But that's okay. *patpat*
-Handy that he's got a decent bed frame for affixing chains to. Hope you went to the john and have a glass of water handy, dude, because you're in for the night.
-"If I'm innocent, I have to do the right thing. And if I'm not innocent, I have to do the right thing." Awww, he's honorable.
-"I love you. *smooch*" ... *shrug* What the hell, right, they're both consenting sentient beings, and what they do together is their business. The fact that she's sometimes non-human doesn't make her any less sentient, so... Okay. Moving on.
-*koff* Erm. Yeah, this is the same pair of writers that wrote that season one episode. *facepalm*
-Well at least the nookie is plot-related, since she's regained contact with whatever she got disconnected from and can see what is in his head, though obviously it's not a dream since he's not sleeping unless he's narcoleptic, which is possible.
-Okay, I'm trying to figure out what Dean's planning on doing with the lighter and the ...trowel? I mean, kill their pal James for crimes he didn't commit is the obvious intent here, but is he planning to sterilize the trowel first or what's the fire for? *headscratch*
-"They had sex."/"Wow!" Dean. *headshake*
-"Considering that you're... and he's.... That's. Little help here?"/"*tiny headshake*" *sneeeeerk* Just stop talking, Dean.
-"No?" And then there's this face. Heeeeeee.
-Second tie of the episode for Sam, maroon, alternating narrow white and gold stripes, tilting the other direction. More focused on the job now, and less on the walls and such regarding the trials and Dean's need to put himself in harms' way instead of Sam, which Sam is interpreting as a lack of trust. Gnh. BOYS.
-"Still investigating this crappy little case." Hm, you know, four violent murders in close succession is usually not considered a crappy little case. The head cop here did say earlier that the victims were people that no one would miss, which I suspect is his reason for being dismissive of it, which makes him a great big bag of dicks. So to speak.
-Oh really? Looks like they're on to the situation, or someone put them on to the situation, because James Frampton is a case, not the investigator. Also, forensics dude tie report: lots of little squares that are all like layers of walls around a central block. An extremely defensive tie. Forensics dude is up to something.
-HI CAR!!! *waves like a doofus*
-There is something oddly funny about Dean asking someone else a question about their self-identity. Funny and a bit sad.
-"This have anything to do with what I told you about James and me last night? How you're imagining it?"/"What, no, that's, heheh... yes." *facepalm* DEAN!!!
-AHAHAHAHAHA!!! IT'S A GREMLIN!!! You'd think a warlock would go for better, but there's probably some magic keeping that damn thing in one piece and running. XD
-"That exposes the rest of us." Assuming the local law enforcement has the imagination to believe magic is real, and seriously, that's going to be a hard sell.
-"There is a spell for implanting images into another person's brain." Just like Andy Gallagher could do. Hmmm. Also, Dean doing research from Bobby's old files. AWWWW.
-"It's been 15 hours since Portia mentioned her night with James and not one bestiality joke out of you." Dean looks so genuinely pleased at Sam's acknowledgement of that. Like a 5-year-old who's learned to tie his shoes.
-Well someone had him loose and got him dressed between when the chains went on and now, so maybe there have been potty breaks. Also there's a coffee cup on the nightstand, so there is probably need for potty breaks.
-"A witch can go to a place without having to go to a place." Okay, astral travel I'm guessing, cool. Not that the boys haven't done something like that, though there was an unfortunate body count involved, in the shape of Pamela Barnes.
-"What, like phone sex?" *sigh* I suppose he has to let off the repressed sex jokes somehow.
-"Astral projection." Astral travel, astral projection, to-may-to, to-mah-to. I think.
-"But only if we can go with you." I'm on the side of Dean's face here, Sam.
-"Just close your eyes." Because that's reassuring. Considering the implanted memories are also probably somehow connected with the astral plane, it's probably a good thing to have Sam and Dean along, in case the memory implanter is waiting there to kick James' ass in the astral plane. Probably some collusion of the head cop and the guy with the cat familiar. Which makes me nervous, because I don't want to see anything bad happen to a cat or cat-being, even if the cat is a familiar who was stupid enough to go evil.
-WHITE EYES OH MY GOD, OKAY THAT IS SO NOT REASSURING!!!
-Zoom through the station. That was kind of cool.
-You know, if whoever this is is implanting memories in a fellow 'witch', implanting false memories in Joe Mundane would be a cakewalk. And then there's Glamours, and all kinds of mundane ways to fake evidence that a little magical tweak would make harder to detect.
-Aw, Phillippe (with two L's and two P's *retroactively changes*). Silly kitty, lying to the police is not a good idea!
-Always approach pissed off magic-users with extreme caution, even if they aren't pissed off at you.
-Yeah, he's a bit irked.
-"My master made me." I can believe that, but I tend to side with the cats and cat-like beings in situations like this.
-"Please, don't hurt my face." He is such a cat. :-)
-*snap* *cringe* Oof. ...I ...Taking a short break.
-Right. Okay, that's the downside of Phillippe being ordered against his will. His master might murder him casually for telling the truth. Now please can we kill the living crap out of his asshole master?
-Asshole master tie report: Crazy flowers. Fake-innocent-seeming-yet-backstabbing-evil-lunatic tie for a backstabbing evil lunatic. Who by all rights should be suffering mightily right now from his familiar being killed, but obviously he's found a way to break the connection whenever it suits him. Have I mentioned that aside from not wanting to see anything bad happen to a cat or cat-like being that I have a bit of a thing for loyal henchbeings, even if they're associated with evil, and any character who casually kills his own loyal henchbeing can just die immediately in great pain? And that when the henchbeing is also in some way a cat, that particular need to see the killer ended messily goes asymptotic? I think I might be madder at this mage guy than James is right now, and mage-guy hasn't been plotting to set me up for a quadruple homicide and messing with my brain. So yeah, crazy flower tie. I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON IT, YOU HENCH-CAT-KILLING ASSHOLE. *huffs*
-What? Me? Issues? Pft. *handwaves*
-"You never considered my feelings?"/"...Portia." Oh no no no, crazy flower tie man, we've seen what you do to your familiars, you do not get to, to... I don't know. Was he after Portia before? If it was mentioned I missed that part. Regardless, you do not ever get another familiar. People like you are why there should be Familiar Protective Services or a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Familiars or something. Asshole. You die now. Soon. Please?
-"Can you imagine the insult when she chose you? I wanted her as my soulmate the moment I saw her." Yeah. That's nice. She chose someone else, and that's when you should get the hint, let go and move on. So I guess now we can add 'creepy obsessive stalker' to this guy's list of reasons he's an asshole.
-"But when you two went all Bella and Edward-" And now he's making Twilight references. Inaccurate ones too because Jacob's the werewolf, not Edward, so never mind. Possibly not another reason he's an asshole, but definitely another reason he's crazy. Unless he likes thinking that all women should be like Bella. In which case, probably safe to add that to the asshole list.
-"The wiccan from Detroit." You boys really need to work on your sneaking skills.
-Also on your 'knowing when not to just stand there yapping at a pissed off magic user' skills. Winchesters being thrown into a wall! What day is it?
-Ah, but they were an effective distraction. Mage fight! \o/
Magic missile, Levitate with some kind of internal pain generation added...
-And that one would be "Mass Hold Person", area effect of 2. Snapshot with zero casting time while maintaining a second spell, impressive. *nods* And yet he still needs to die now. *nods much harder*
-"It's not only James' head I can get inside." *gasp* Though really, hehe. Good luck messing with the inside of Sam's head. He had Lucifer in it for half a year, or a few centuries depending how you count.
-Oh crap. Or, there could just be a lot more crap memories to lock them into without needing to add any false ones.
-So, that leaves Portia to save the day, yeah?
-Yep. Knew she would be coming, and I'm not the evil bastard currently in the process of killing her master/boyfriend, so she's not freaking me out now. Plus, she can rip the asshole's throat out, YAY! \o/
-Side benefit of attacking a spellcaster, their concentration breaks and any maintained spells fail if they don't make a will save. I think. It has been far too long since I gamed. Anyway, spell failures. Which aren't capping well, phoo.
-Get 'im, girl! Get him right in the crazy flower tie!
-Ah, so the 'witch-killing' spell is a Molotov cocktail with bonus Latination. The Molotov cocktail would do it for many things, really. And that would be what they were packing in to James' bedroom. Not a trowel. *facepalm*
-Oooo, special effects.
-And he uncappably disintegrates into atoms, like a watermelon in a particle accelerator. *sniffs analytically* Yeah, that'll do. Going to be a pain to get James' name cleared, maybe, but *handwave* details.
-I do love how the boys are so tall, they make most of the guest actors look tiny.
-Well, given all the mundane and 'witch' side trouble coming after them, taking off makes the most sense. I... kind of like these two? I wouldn't mind seeing them come back in a future episode as a resource or an ally of sorts. Between these two, and Charlie, and Aaron and his Golem, the boys could be building a bit of a contact network of sorts. Hm...
-Hee! She must really like the breeze flapping past her ears, because her human form would be far more practical and comfortable for a long car ride.
-Re-use of transition shot! This is a really early one, though I can't place the episode it was first in offhand. (Wendigo maybe? Or Scarecrow?) Time for another in-car discussion!
-"The only way we made it through it all was by hanging together." YES. THANK YOU. \o/
-"If you say you're good, then that's it. I'm with you 100%." Dean's faaaaace, with the pain in there and the stuff and things! And then Sam's faaaaace, with the 'who are you, person who is being sort of accepting about me risking my own life to save the world?' *flappy hands and dolphin noises*
-"I'm good *koff gack wheeze*" Um. Sam? Did you inhale some evil crazy-flower-tie-wearing asshole mage back there or something? I thought you sounded a bit like you had a cold earlier, but I figured that was probably a Jared thing rather than a Sam thing so I didn't mention it. O.o
-Sam, I speak from experience when I say coughing up even a little bit of blood is not a good thing. And that's not a little.
-Sam, Dean's trusting you that if you say you're good, you're good. That means if you aren't good, like if say you start randomly coughing up blood you say that you aren't good and you freaking tell your brother that you're coughing up blood. Honestly!
So. They have another potential roaming contact of a 'witch' and familiar, and Dean's getting to grips with this whole "letting his baby brother risk his own fool neck and back him up rather than trying to be the Winchester family tank again some more and take all the hits" thing, and SAM IS COUGHING UP BLOOD AND SAYING HE'S FINE, WHICH IS BOTH PERSONALLY AND STRATEGICALLY STUPID. SAM, YOU IDIOT, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING!!
(PLEASE, NO SPOILERS OR REFERENCES TO UNAIRED EPISODES IN COMMENTS! Any and all promo material for unaired episodes is considered to be a spoiler in this journal. The further definition of what constitutes a spoiler for this journal is located in left hand sidebar. Theory and speculation based on aired episodes only.)