Picspam Reaction: Supernatural 9.01
Warning: Contains profanity.
Spoiler and Theory Summary
No spoilers other than Castiel is still in the series, so he's not going to get killed anytime in the first five minutes of the episode. Well, that and Bobby's back (yay!) and Death turns up, but really, Heaven just purged all the angels so people currently in Heaven and entities involved in sending people to Heaven have gotta have something to say about that and the further ramifications of what's going on, etc. Can Death unkill Bobby? Or is Metatron actually going to pick new angels from the human dead in Heaven and actually make Bobbiel happen? (Which if he does will be the stupidest thing he ever did, because Bobby back in any form will thwart the living crap out of him). Or with the angels gone, does Heaven start devolving and the souls up there start to drift back to earth to start haunting as ghosts again. All things to ponder.
Now, non-spoiler-related theories. Well, Sam's loaded with frustrated Trial radiation and that's got to be dealt with in some way. Also, when the angels started falling, Crowley had a very interesting expression on his face. Like his ears were perking up. Maybe he won't go for the healing after all.
In the broader picture, it's going to be awful hard for Hunters and their global equivalents to cover up hundreds of men and women in suits falling from the sky, so there might be some kind of alien invasion media stuff or integration of former celestials turned human into society issues going on in the foreground or the background of this season.
Because it's fun to watch Misha Collins looking confused, I expect a considerable amount of 'Castiel adjusts to mortality' stuff, at various points. Castiel might change his clothes as the angelic auto-dry-cleaning magic will no longer be effective.
New tie for Castiel. Aw.
And so it begins.
Picspam Reaction, with speculation and meta and randomness for Supernatural 9.01 - "???" "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here"
-Oh yes, and there will be montage! \o/
-Song lyrics. "I walked 47 miles of barbed wire. I've got a cobra snake for a necktie." Heh. They had to pick a song that referenced ties, didn't they? XD
-I'm just going to sit and flail over the scenes they've paired up with the iterations of "Who do you love?" in the lyrics. Although this one gets a snerk. "I deserve to be loved!" Hee!
-Prettiest apocalypse-like event yet.
-HI CAR!! HI!!! *WAVES*
-Looks like Sam's over his Trial Radiation Organ Melting Inversion or whatever from the end of last season. He's well enough to argue about things not making sense at least.
-"How many angels fell, hundreds? Thousands? And nobody sees anything? [...] They're calling it a meteor shower. Seriously?!" Awwww, darn! There goes a fine load of crack-laden second level plot material. Aw.
-"Because we hugged it out in that church and now we're gonna go to Disneyland?" Heee!
-Speaking of that church, what did they do with Crowley? Unless they rearranged some cargo in a big hurry, I don't think he'd fit in the trunk, regardless of the ampleness of Metallicar's rear cargo compartment. ...and now Crowley's ringtone from the finale is running through my head. *facepalm*
-"We're not gonna sleep 'til this is done." Much as I approve of the dedication, sleeping in shifts for a few hours each (say, whoever's not driving catches some zzz's instead of yapping) might make you less likely to be tactical idiots. Actually, never mind. I don't know if any amount of sleep will help that at this point, given some of the bone-headed tactical decisions in 8.22 and 8.23.
-"What's the problem?"/"You." Sam: *puppy-face* Hee.
-"You're dying, Sam."/"...Shut up." AND THE CAMERA ANGLES GO WHACKY AND THERE'S HEARTBEATS AND MEDICAL BEEPING AND CRAP ON THE SOUNDTRACK AND THIS WHOLE DAMN SEQUENCE IS INSIDE SAM'S COMATOSE HEAD, ISN'T IT? At least that's a more realistic outcome than POOF Sam's fine. Oh hey, wait. *rewinds that scene before carrying on* Nope, it wasn't done in such a way that Dean's lines could be him talking to comatose Sam with no interaction. Darn. Missed opportunity there.
-YEP! DREAMROOT TIME NOW? OR WILL WE BE HAVING A CHAT WITH A REAPER? And where did they leave Crowley?? Although if Sam collapsed beside the Impala shortly after the Angel Fall, I can see Dean piling Sam into the car and taking off and not remembering a damn thing about Crowley until he's at a hospital falsifying insurance paperwork.
-Sam is apparently hearing the news in his comatose state though, which is a good sign maybe?
-Oh wow. Fried angel wings for the title card this year, with a hint of angel radio whine. Ooo.
-And hello Title: "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here" Hm. Angels adapting to Earth life perhaps? Somehow, I don't think they'll be having as extravagant an introduction to Earth as Little Orphan Annie, source of the title reference for the evening, though Season 9 would be the season to start whipping out spontaneous dance routines if they're gonna do it. (Still waiting for a 'Town under a Musical Curse' episode, because seriously, why the heck not?)
-Massive internal burns affecting many of the major organs, and oxygen deprivation in the brain. Well, these things happen when you try to choke down a crap-ton of glowy quest-related radiation instead of using it for its intended purpose, so in essence, Sam was hooped no matter what he did, which is pretty status quo in the life of your typical Winchester all things considered. But still. Gaaaaaaah O.O
-"This wasn't supposed to happen." Most comas aren't. Well, unless they're medically-induced, but that still counts as most.
-It's a good thing I knew Bobby and Death were going to be in this episode in some way because I am SUCKING at blocking out guest cast names tonight. Hi Jim Beaver and Julian Richings. *sighs and puts sticky notes on screen*
-"I'm afraid that's in God's hands now." Oh, great. Just what Dean really wants to hear right now. I know it's probably how you were raised and that you mean well Doctor whatever, but really, not helpful.
-"What is that supposed to be, a comfort?" Yep. That's about the same reaction I have had to very similar situations, although I tend to stop talking and walk away or ask people to leave rather than shouting, even though shouting at people would have been very cathartic at the time. Sorry. Personal crap. Moving on now.
-And there's the modified Family Theme, of course. Now, Dean has several inadvisable options for saving Sam, which will he pick? Kind of hoping they do have Crowley in the trunk so Dean can drag him into the hospital, gash Sam's palm and... well, no he wouldn't, because that would kill Sam too, and Crowley's far less likely to be amenable to going human and shutting the gates of Hell if he knows the angels have all fallen. Though he did say once that closing Hell would kill all the demons, so going human would be a damn fine way to keep himself exempt from death by Hell Sequestration. Hm. Anyway. Dean, contemplating inadvisable solutions to the problem of keeping Sam alive and sane again some more. With Family Theme.
-It's got to be tricky, visiting a chapel when you've spent several years with empirical knowledge that God isn't home, and you have no idea what happened with the angels and Castiel and Metatron... ooo. Dean doesn't know about Metatron, does he? If he prays, is Metatron going to answer? ... eh, probably not. Too busy re-staffing Heaven. And if he prays for Castiel, Cas isn't even going to hear him, let alone come running. Aw. All that said, prayer's one of the less inadvisable options available to Dean at the moment, even though it's now going to be just as effective for him as it is for any other person on the planet.
-"Please man, I need you here." Aw. No more Castiel ex Machina. Awww. Nice fakeout with the road noise sounding slightly like the start of a flappy wing sound there though.
-"This one goes out to any angel with their ears on." Oh dear. Yep, inadvisable plans.
-Oh hey! So, did the angels out on missions or in deep cover get exempted from the Fall and still have powers etc? Ooooo... there's some potential in that.
-Offering a carte-blanche future favour to the newly homeless remainder of the Heavenly Host. Whelp, that's... not as inadvisable as it could be. Maybe. Or... hm. We'll see. Factoid note: Glenwood Memorial Hospital, Randolph New York is where Sam is. Hm. Where was that abandoned church?
-Written by Jeremy Carver, new Head Honcho I believe?
-"It's no secret that we haven't always seen eye-to-eye." HAHAHAHA um. Yeah. Just a bit.
-Directed by John F. Showalter, familiar name.
-Jensen Ackles has perfect tear duct control. Just saying.
-"You are in a coma, and are dying." Sam's head-Dean is bossy, but given it's Sam's interpretation of Dean as heard from inside a coma, and Dean is simultaneously there, determined that Sam not give up, and is driving Sam's head-Impala, I'd say that's a considerable amount of subconscious trust and faith in his brother, regardless of the superficial token scoffing.
-Must say, love the lack of road noise in Sam's head-Impala. *nods approvingly*
-Sorry, I find myself needing to laugh my face off at Sam trying to understand that head-Dean is part of his subconscious and not actual-Dean who is doing all the inadvisable wide-band praying out in reality, and that this means Sam has absolute trust that even though he's in a coma, Dean is still in charge and will save him, which will probably lead to a moment of self-actualization in a second here and realizing he has to be self-reliant or something and not just wait for Dean to haul his bacon out of the fire again some more, and that's going to hurt but really be necessary in a way because they're both grown-ass men, and if Sam's subconscious is still in "Dean will always save me so I shouldn't even try" mode, he's really not as autonomous and self-sufficient as he wants Dean to treat him, is he? It's a big aww moment leading to a probable ow moment, but at the same time, Sam's scrambled logic is making me laugh. Also, there's his face.
-"I have no idea what you just said, but continue." Heeeee!
-"Hell yes he's serious." HI BOBBY!!!! *FLAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL!!!!!* Oh my god I think I sprained something from flappy hands. SAM HAS A HEAD-BOBBY YOU GUYS!!! THIS IS AWESOME!!! And much less likely to piss Bobby off than being made an angel. WOO!! \o/
-HI BC WOODS AND HILLS AND ROADS AND EVERYTHING. Sorry I mean "Longmont, Colorado" *CONSPIRATORIAL WINK* And little wee former angels in trenchcoats. Aw.
-Ooo, Castiel's still picking up something on the angel wavelength. *ponders*
-The first rule of listening to the voices in your head is make sure you don't walk into something dangerous like traffic. Though this may shorten the amount of time Castiel spends trying to walk from Colorado to New York State, or the nearest phone.
-Ow. "It hurts." Owwwwwww.
-"I heard angels."/"...How 'bout we get you some water, hm?" Yes. Water. Rehydration cures angelic hallucinations. Of course. Or it could be a drunk/drugged/hungover thing, which is valid. Just something about the intensity that this guy offers water is making it really hard to stop laughing.
-"I don't drink water." Oh dear. Learning how to be a mortal is going to be a really steep learning curve for Cas.
-"I would fly but I have no wings. *head-tilty 'whaddayado?' shrug that is not capping worth beans but is making me cackle.*" Hee!
-"Not anymore." Aw.
-Man, it is rough when the voices in your head start arguing with each other. Trying to figure out why Sam's head-Bobby is on the side of Sam giving up though. Is it just Bobby takes Sam's side versus Dean? Or Bobby is Sam's fatalism? Eek.
-"Suck as that may, sometimes that's just the way things go." Or he's Sam's voice of previous coma experience. Aw.
-"You mean like the way one of you idjits does some bassackwards crazy thing to beat Death, like sell your soul?" Or he's Sam's sense of 'OH SHIT WHAT'S DEAN DOING WHILE I'M STUCK IN A COMA DYING, MAYBE I SHOULD JUST DIE NOW AND HE WON'T DO ANYTHING STUPID', in which case, uh, no, and you know you being dead won't stop Dean from doing stupid things to try to bring you back anyway, and have you even met your brother? Oh and also, too late. The doing stupid things has already commenced.
-"Excuse, me? Are you dead? Because I am!" Oh this is so much more fun than Sam's head Lucifer. Can Sam stay in the coma a few episodes and just be riding around in the rainy dark in his head-Impala with his head-Dean and head-Bobby snarking at each other across the back seat, while real world Dean does whatever inadvisable desperate thing he's going to do to save Sam and get the Season 9 plot arc launched?
-"Sam put me here because he wants to fight, right?"/*sudden front-seat Bobby* HEEEEEE!!
-"Seeya, Dean."/"Sam, don't you dare-" Eep! What? Change of mental construct, ah, okay. Bit nerve-wracking, but okay. O.O
-"It's okay, I don't eat." Heh, yeah, SUPER steep learning curve ahead.
-"Take care, kid." Okay. I just have to say, this nameless guy is just plain awesome. And cuddly. But mostly just awesome. Which means the strangely conspicuous woman with the black truck getting gas at the gas station is going to turn out to be Abbadon's new host, and she's going to macerate him. Or she's done that 'splitting her smoke' trick and is secretly stalking Castiel from inside Mr. Awesome here. Either way, on this show, this guy is just too awesome for his own continuing good health. Such a shame.
-Possible timeline hint: Christmas lights are strung on the fence there. Since this would have been filmed in July, those are likely a deliberate addition, so this probably sometime between mid-November and early February. Of some year or other. *nods*
-See? Strangely conspicuous woman. I'm thinking Abaddon.
-Also, strangely conspicuous motorbike. ...heh. Again, speaking of steep learning curves for Castiel, maybe?? I could see him riding a motorbike... eventually... :-D
-"Hang up the phone." Ohhh dear. One painful learning curve about to commence. *squints* That's not Cliff. It should be Cliff. Nice shirt though.
-"Sure you do. Hurt me." Oh dear oh dear oh dear. *snerk*
-"Castiel." Oh, she's one of the fallen angels, not Abaddon. Yet. Maybe. *side-eyes*
-"My name is Hail." Or is it Hayel? Hayel would fit the traditional angelic -el suffix for angel names, though most don't seem to, and who knows, maybe she's the angel of ice-pellets that fall from the sky. Or was.
-"My name is Kim Shorts and I'm a grief counsellor here at the hospital." And she's come to hug. Or is that only fake grief counsellors who are breaking into the house of a guy they suspect resurrected his crush and turned her into a zombie?
-Also, nail her with some holy water or something, Abbadon's still out smoking around somewhere. But be subtle. Bless Sam's saline bag or something.
-"Inevitable? that's a fighting word where I come from. There's always a way." Usually a stupidly self-sacrificing and occasionally apocalypse-triggering way, but a way. Oh Dean.
-"Unless you're telling me you have a direct line to those angels that you were looking for-"/"Yeah, naw, I ah... guess I don't. But I might have something better." Oh crap. This is Dean, having an idea. This very likely does not bode well, and may take until episode 12 to straighten out the broader consequences. Knowing the Winchesters.
-"I've got the King of Hell in my trunk." AHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHA Well that answers that question. Even though he was ready to revert to human last we saw him and Sam's blood has no doubt worn off, but Abaddon may have already taken over and he could just be a hunted exile by now. Also, that's a great general purpose conversation-exit line. 'Gotta go, I've got the King of Hell in my trunk.'
-"Sorry, is that a metaphor?" Heeeeeee!
-"You alive? One for yes, two for no." ...okay, so, by what criteria do you mean alive? Crowley is a demon, so, the soul of a deceased person who's gone to Hell, been processed, come out as a demon and is inhabiting a human host who is probably not particularly lively anymore either at this stage. Post-mortal entity? So it's a complicated question. A simpler question to answer would be "Are you conscious?" which bypasses the alive debate altogether. It doesn't however solve the remaining problem of how Crowley was supposed to knock twice if the answer is no.
-"You prayed?" Heh. Not the sort of answer you were hoping for. Considering the past experiences your family has had with the general angel hierarchy, maybe broadcasting your location and vulnerability to all and sundry wasn't such a hot idea.
(Hey... that angel sword looks rather unshiny, doesn't it? Wonder if that's a side effect for the downside angels who weren't directly part of the Fall. Also, is the angel tall, or is he standing on a cement parking divider? He's looking taller than Dean here... Unless he's hovering. Which would be weird and possibly not an option anymore.)
-"If you lie to me Dean Winchester, I will rip your throat out." Heh. And Crowley's got a front row seat for this confrontation, so to speak. Bet he's very smirky right now.
-"Where's Castiel?"/"Who's asking?"/"Try every angel who was ejected from their home." Oh dear. Not good. Wondering about doe-eyed little Hayel now... Also Pissed Off Angel Tie Report: Purple dots. No job to be on anymore, stuck in a holding pattern and frustrated.
-"This young man has prayed for our assistance." And offered a carte-blanche favor. Whiiiich is sounding like it could take the form of 'lure Castiel in so we can annihilate him. Which will not go over well at all.
-"Are we creatures of wrath, or compassion?" Weeeeeelll that all depends on which part of which text you're reading. And in Supernatural, which angel is standing in front of you and whose agenda he or she is following. Again with the not-so-simple questions.
-"Happy to make your reacquaintance, after you disarm." You know, if angelling doesn't work out for this guy, he could probably do dramatic movie trailer voice-overs.
-And why wouldn't you attack the random angel you don't recognize that seems to be implying he's a long way further up the Great Chain of Being than you are, since all the angels are kinda-sorta on the same level now? I suspect this isn't going to go too well for Suit-and-Tie angel though. He seems a bit of a hot head.
-Yeah, no, it really didn't. If you're an angel who recently threatened Dean or his family, don't drop an angel blade and turn your back on him. Though killing an angel is really not the way to try to get them on your side, Dean. *headshake*
-Also this guy has a family. The kids have to be his host's kids, or they'd be little Nephilims though, and Metatron said there was only the one, though he could have been lying since he'd know there would be no way he could get Castiel to rip the heart out of a child, Nephilim or not.
-Man, I am distractible. Sorry.
-"You are Dean Winchester, I have heard your prayer." Seriously, dramatic movie voice-overs. It's hard not to giggle when he says anything. That said, if you ask someone their name and they say "That's not important right now," IT'S REALLY FRIGGING IMPORTANT THAT YOU FIND OUT THEIR NAME.
-"And I am here to help. *passes out*" Yeah, that's reassuring.
-And now, a moment with Dean's face.
-Aw. There's something kind of sad about this. Wistful. Two people who can't go home again sharing experiences.
-"How could that happen?"/"I don't know." Does he mean he doesn't know how the spell made it happen, or is he covering himself or Metatron for some reason. He didn't willingly give his Grace to Metatron to be burned up in the spell, so.... Hehe, well actually now that I think about it, he started out helping Metatron willingly with the thought that Heaven would be closed off from the plane of Earth, and that's also likely something he doesn't want getting around too much, even if the final stages were not his idea or choice. Maybe he does have a reason to be evasive, so any angel not in the know doesn't go poking around his motivations and decisions on this matter. Aw. Poor Cas.
-No Grace, can still hear Angel Radio (Hee, he called it Angel Radio) like Anna did, although Anna's post-Gracectomy life was a bit different. The other Angels then do still retain their grace (as clearly demonstrated by Dean), but have been kicked out of Heaven/lost their wings. Oh dear. This could get quite messy for Earth.
-"Believe it or not there may be something even better down here." Have you heard about Free Will, Hayel? Here, have a pamphlet. XD
-She built the Grand Canyon, hee! This show has a bit of a thing for the Grand Canyon, doesn't it?
-Ah yes, the Dean Winchester version of pranking the first person to fall asleep at the party. Instead of waking up with Sharpie doodles on your face, you wake up in a circle of Holy fire. If you're an angel. Is this the same parking garage? Because I don't know how they made enough room to squish Crowley into the trunk, but there's definitely not enough room for the voice-over angel in there too, and I don't think Dean would be too keen on dragging him into the back seat of the Impala and driving to a secondary location if he had no idea how long the angel would be passed out for.
-"You want to help? Start with a name." Yes, exactly. Hm. Not sure what is behind Dean there, but it does look like they aren't in the same parking garage, which is good, because there's a hospital attached to that one, possibly with a nice warm psych ward for people found interrogating random bleeding men inside rings of fire in their parking garage.
-"Ezekiel." *snort* Hahahaha! HOW APPROPRIATE TO HAVE EZEKIEL IN A RING OF FIRE. According to the bible etc, Ezekiel was among other things, a prophet who saw a bunch of stuff, like four-faced four winged angels, wheels within wheels rolling, fires within fires burning, etc. Hm. So, maybe prophets become Angels when they die? Or when they vaporize? Like Chuck? ARE WE GOING TO SEE THE ANGEL CHUCK IN A FUTURE EPISODE? Heeeeeeee! Anyway, random brain dump aside, lets see what Supernatural-verse has to say about Ezekiel.
-"Some of us still do believe in our mission, and that means we believe in Castiel. And you." Really? Castiel, who showed up in Heaven one day full of Leviathan souls, declared himself God, and smote the crap out of the archangels? I'm trying to figure out which mission would have had the mandate 'believe in Castiel and Dean Winchester', and how far out of date Ezekiel's orders might be. Back to 'hook Dean Winchester up with Michael' orders? Dunno. Could be he's totally lying and running his own agenda. Naomi wasn't the only faction in town. Just the one with the shiniest offices and sharpest Dremel.
-Deep in Sam's excessively golden sun-lit head-forest (which given it's Sam probably has memory-monsters lurking everywhere waiting to jump him) the camera angles are still wonky, so Sam's mental world is still skewed.
-So pretty. Very BC, except of course the colour-balance twiddling on the light. But... you know, this golden light is starting to make me worry too, because wasn't the Trial radiation a golden light? And wasn't there a goldish-reddish light in the head-Impala too? Hm. Maybe the Trial energy is trying to convince Sam to give in and let it eat his tasty organs in lieu of reverse engineering Crowley's demon-hood. O.o
-Head-Bobby: *lists off all the times Sam's saved the world and goes on about legacies, while graciously editing out all the times the thing Sam had to help save the world from was a problem he and his brother started* Head-Bobby has tact. Hee.
-I doubt this is going to work, since didn't Castiel already say the damage from the Trial radiation wasn't something he could fix?
-Yes, leave the room to take a call from your friend who the still-powered angel beside you may or may not be hunting. Although leaving the guy in the room with Sam is a pretty dodgy proposition too.
-"You hear my prayers? I been praying to you all night!" Hee! Aw.
-"He took my Grace."/"What?!"/"Don't worry about me. What are you doing for Sam?" I am having a very complicated moment of Awww, wherein I want to wrap Castiel in blankets and feed him soup, and go awww some more for him downplaying his own situation so Dean doesn't have to be distracted from his dying brother's needs, and also shake Castiel until he develops a sense of self-worth. Though shaking isn't probably the best way to accomplish that.
-"Ezekiel. Yes. He's a good soldier." Oh good. Castiel knows him and is not freaked out that he's around the Winchesters. Good! Something positive. Which means of course it'll all go to Hell very soon.
-"Helping angels is what got you in trouble in the first place." Mmmm, not really. Depending which portion of trouble you mean, helping Winchesters, or helping himself to all the souls in Purgatory did that. valid point about the current grounded and pissed off ones though. Hey, here's a thought. Let Castiel hole up in the SUPER SECURE BUNKER you have. It's a lot closer to him in Colorado than you and Sam are in New York, and since he's unpowered and couldn't help Sam when he was powered, he's not going to be much help in New York anyway.
-"I'm begging you, for once, look out for yourself." AWWWW *flail* "Until we figure out what's going on, trust nobody." Keep your laser handy. Sorry, sudden Paranoia RPG flashback.
-"That means you bleed and you eat and you sleep and everything you never had to worry about before."/"I'm fine Dean." Dean has a very excellent point. Castiel should probably eat a sandwich and have a big glass of water and have a nap before he goes making any other strategic decisions today. Dean however has yet another direction to worry in since he's not there to make sure Castiel learns how to be human and doesn't forget he can't teleport and stuff now.
-Oh crap. Earthquakes? Archangels? Metatron? Abaddon? Sam going nova? What now?
-"Get your ass to the bunker. Alone." Yes, thank you. But, uh. Who has the key? Kevin? Is Kevin still there, or is he going to hide the key somewhere on his way out?
-Oh yay! All hospital rooms should have a whiteboard in case someone needs to draw angel repellant sigils on the walls. And I really love that Dean can draw it from memory under stress. YAY!
-"I need help." Call me paranoid, but she is sounding more and more like bait for a Castiel trap.
-Yep. There she goes. Either it was a trap all along, or she's being quite liberal in the interpretation of "help yourself."
-Dean Winchester is a sigil-drawing machine! But do they need to do the floor and ceiling too? A room has 6 sides.
-"They're here." Almost never a good thing. Definitely not a good thing now. Oh, hey, look, that sigil next to the whiteboard looks like Snoopy. Hee!
-"Do not open this door for anyone but me." Can he open the door though? He's an angel too, and he's kind of trapped inside by the sigils keeping the rest of them out.
-Ah yes, glass everywhere. Forgot that about angel landings.
-Fire alarm, excellent, get the bystanders out. Not terribly likely many of them are from strong vessel bloodlines, but right now I doubt the inbound angelic hordes care.
-Guest appearances by BC, portraying Colorado today.
-Yes, now that he's human, Castiel will also be subject to getting a crick in his neck from sleeping wrong. and that way is very wrong, though he didn't have any choice in the matter, or any choice in the probable concussion he'll be having.
-Looking more like a trap all the time. Though really, if a deer runs out on the road and she hits the brakes, that thing is flying up into the footwell in a heartbeat.
-"You understand I couldn't just let you leave." Getting Misery vibes off Hayel now, even despite her adorable pert little nose.
-"This is all your fault, isn't it? Making the angels fall?" Yeah, I was wondering when that particular shoe was going to turn up. So she did know and was playing the innocent to get to Castiel.
-"We'll drive to the Grand Canyon, you'll tell me more bout humans, and I'll show you what I'm capable of." That really doesn't sound like it's going to be a healthy thing for Castiel, or even for planet Earth maybe.
-"You want to possess me." Ohhhh, she only wants you for your vessel. Typical. Speaking of which, what does Jimmy Novak think of all this, or did he dissipate while Castiel was full of monster souls? It'd be cool if he was still rattling around in some form or other, but all things considered, not likely.
-Yep. Any port in a storm sometimes lands you at one your ship won't fit into. Or something.
-They're heeeeere. (And I still don't trust that grief counsellor, but yeah yeah paranoid as usual *handwave*)
-Except when I'm right. It's not paranoia if the grief counsellor really does have you in a stranglehold. Oh hey. If she's an angel, that means the angels know Dean has Crowley in the trunk. O.o
-Oh hey. If she's an angel, that means the angels know Dean has Crowley in the trunk. O.o
-"Everything inside you need to help you on your way." Yeah, that's not a foreboding shack at all. I mean, even with it being some kind of *handwave* mental-construct metaphor for Sam giving up the fight for life, it's still foreboding.
-"I'll be waiting for you with a couple of cold ones. *GLAGCH!*" AH! That actually made me jump. I mean of course Sam's head-Dean's going to be as likely to give up and let Sam shuffle off as the real Dean is, and it's been an awful while since they started wandering in the woods, but I kind of thought it'd be more of a shouty arguing confrontation than a STAB SAM'S HEAD-BOBBY IN THE BACK sort of confrontation. ...unless Sam's head-Bobby is really a tiny tiny remnant of his head-Lucifer that has been waiting for an opportunity to put on a trusted face and talk Sam under a bus. Hmmm *ponders*
-"Dean, are you insane?" And now we get to the shouty arguey portion of the 'convince Sam to fight for life' battle, yes?
-Yep. Ow ow ow ow ow ow.
-"Then what's your plan, Dean?"/"My plan? *right-cross*" Yeah, that's a plan. Protector-fighter part kills the (sadly Bobby-shaped) self-negation part, and knocks out the waffling primary part who is being a self-destructive doof and needs to take a break from the active decision-making process for a while. Or maybe slip into a deeper coma. We'll see.
-"My plan is to fight!" Or get him to fight back by starting a fight. Yeah, okay. Whatever works.
-Yep, loud and shouty and full of ow. Oooof. I'm just gonna go ow and cap here for a bit.
-"You telling me there's nothing to fight for? Nothing to hope for?"/"No. I'm telling you there is." Ohhhh crap. Sam's going to die to get up into Heaven and see what the heck's going on, isn't he? Aaaaack.
-Aaaaack. Oh god.
-Still not the worst way Dean's woken up. Oh. And of course they won't kill him or Sam. They're Vessels. AAAAAA!!! I think that's about the most horrified I've been by this show in a good while. DDDD-:
-Yeah, fire-axe kind of beats white-board marker.
-"Anybody ever tell you, you hit like an angel?" Which is pretty darn hard, as Dean most recently was reminded in "Goodbye Stranger" last season.
-Meanwhile in Sam's head-shack... head-shed? Naw, too many appliances. What's in the shack? I'm thinking Death, but that's based on knowing Death will be showing up and not having seen him yet. Also, the shack is pretty heavily foreshadowed to contain Sam's death, and he's met Death, so his head-death will be... Death. Wonder who it'd be if he hadn't met Death? I also wonder if whoever wrote the script is a fan of Jungian psychology, because I feel like there's a lot of archetypes roaming around in Sam's head here that someone more familiar with Jung could get some darn fine meta out of.
-Yep. HI DEATH! You're looking very deathly. *eyes chairs* Oh I really hope there's even a passing mention of a chess game.
-Axe 1, Sigil 0. Damn.
-Dean whump! *cringes a little because OW* but still, DEAN WHUMP! \o/
-"I'll tell you where Cas is." Heh. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Castiel never actually told Dean where he was, did he? So this would be purely a delaying tactic, or a 'send them into a trap' tactic to keep them from getting in at Sam with no additional risk to Castiel, and probably giving Ezekiel enough time to get Sam out of there somehow, now that the protection is disrupted. So as long as it gives some time and distraction... "Yeah, last I saw Cas he was heading for Mount Doom, something about a ring. Take a left at the big swamp full of dead people."
-"If Heaven is locked, then where do you go when I do this." WOO! THERE'S DISTRACTION FOR YOU, and unfortunately probably also for Ezekiel, unless walls act as a barrier to the effect but anyway, SECOND TIME IN AN EPISODE show caught me by surprise! WOOOOT! \o/
-Hey, Ezekiel's still there, looks like the effect is blocked by walls. Good to know. *nods*
-"Are you saying there's no way to save my brother's life?"/"No good ways I'm afraid."/"Well what are the bad ones?!" HA! Yep. Heheh. Gee, I wonder if one of the bad ways would be Ezekiel taking over Sam's body as a vessel, and Ezekiel just did a sneaky end-run to get into one of the strongest vessels on the planet without all the fuss and screaming. Heh heh heh.
-"There is a chance I can fix your brother. From the inside." Heh heh heh. Yep. And then you'll have to hang around in there keeping things patched up because 'Trial radiation *handwave*' and maybe Sam 'won't wake up right away' and Ezekiel will have to pilot him around and do repairs etc and maybe eventually Sam's going to be switching personalities between Sam and Ezekiel for the several episodes of the season, or Sam will figure out he's being kept hostage in his own body by an invading sentience and have to do that wonderful psionic 'GET OUT OF MY HEAD' thing, either or both of which will rock. Sneaky sneaky Ezekiel. Good soldier indeed. Get the best equipment available to complete your mission, even if it's by midnight requisitioning. *ponders heavily*
-"There's no way in Hell Sam would say yes to being possessed by anything."/"He would rather die?" And then Dean's little head-bobble with complex emotional facial maneuvering and just OW. Because Sam's talking to Death, and he's going to code in the hospital, and Dean will give the go ahead because Sam is dying in front of him and Sam can yell at him all he wants or never talk to him again as long as he's alive to do it. Oh Dean.
-"I'll leave you two alone, then." Or Ezekiel will shut off the noise-making machines and leave Dean standing beside Sam dead on a bed again and given the last time that happened, Dean ran out and sold his soul at a discount to bring him back... hehe. Tactically smart sneaky Ezekiel. Rather than pushing Dean directly to get him to ask Ezekiel to possess Sam, he's just going to be polite and not push and follow Dean's wishes with no pressure and be respectful and stuff, all while using the stark reality of Sam's imminent corpse as a big old kick straight to Dean's squishiest parts. Push Dean, he resists. Let Dean spiral down into his own realizations and decisions and he'll hand over the keys to Sam on his own. Ooo. I think I'm going to like Ezekiel as an adversary if that's what he's really up to. *steeple-fingers*
-"Wait." And he didn't even get out of the room. Oh yes indeed. I think we have a new adversary character, and it's going to be inside Sam. *slow clap*
-OH SHIT, REAL DEAN'S ABOUT TO BUST INTO SAM'S HEAD-CABIN. Beats trying to scrounge up Dreamroot in a hurry.
-"I consider it an honour to be collecting the likes of Sam Winchester." Heh. So is this actually Death, or is Sam's head-Death secretly also his ego? XD
-"Can you promise that this time it will be final?" Oh dear. Maybe Sam isn't doing a sneaky to get up and figure out what Heaven's up to after all. Eeek. Though really, the death and resurrection and Hell and so forth over and over has to be wearing on a soul. Although I doubt he'll get there anyway, since he's managed, just as Dean gets a peek inside Sam's head, to be having a conversation with Death that's going to stomp the crap out of all of Dean's "OH HELL NO" buttons.
-You know, I'm going to be pondering the meaning of the decor in Sam's head-shack for a while. Particularly those snowshoes on the wall. What the heck??
-"And nobody else can get hurt because of me." Oh Saaaaaaaaaam! *smishes him so hard*
-And Dean's back in reality, and the 'HELL NO'ing is about to begin.
-Ooo. Blood spray on the driver's seat belt anchor. Yeah, she's already learned to kill people to save her own butt. And to drive, but the killing people one is usually harder.
-SEATBELT! PLANNING SOMETHING! YES! *FISTPUMP EVERYWHERE* Well actually, it's probably for when the car loses control after he stabs her or jerks the steering over, since he's human now and needs to think about things like that, but still, yay seatbelt and planning his own rescue! GO CAS!
-Sidenote: Sam's hospital hair is kind of awesome.
-"Sam would never say yes, not to you." Ooo, is Dean actually going to follow what Sam would want? Given there are 22 more episodes this season with some form of Sam in them, something's going to happen here.
-See? Wear your seatbelts kiddies!
-GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, I'M NOT CAPPING THAT. Well done makeup and special effects grue, but GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. O.O
-"I will devote my life to helping you all."/"Do you know how ridiculous you sound?" True. He means well though. And Castiel's good intentions have kicked off some pretty major things. Usually bad, but hey, the streak has to break sometime.
-"If you leave me here in this broken girl, I swear Castiel, I will tell them where you are." Ahah. So they've lost the power of self healing too, or the weaker vessels can't cope with the demands, since her vessel was already breaking down. Really, if she hadn't decided to drive to the Grand Canyon first, she could probably have already taken Cas over. But she's a little deranged, and Castiel's still pretty cool, so what can you do? *shrug*
-"Unless you open your heart and say yes."/*splitch* Yeah, that whole threatening thing really wasn't the way to break down Castiel's possession resistance. At all.
-"Hold on." Heh. Okay, so is this Dean visiting Sam's coma, is this Sam in the coma, hearing Dean and what is going on in the room around him and regenerating his head-Dean, or is this Sam's innate will to live in the form of his head-Dean coming back to go 'Hey, second thought on this giving up business.'
-"I found a plan." Something about Dean's expression may make it look like the plan involves chasing frogs in the pond out behind Bobby's junkyard in the fading summer sun, but I really don't think that's the case.
-"There ain't no me if there ain't no you!" OW. And sometimes I wonder if it's not only Sam's head-Dean that thinks like that. Just ow.
-*flappy hands* Dean has this faaaace you guuuuuys.
-FRIGGING EZEKIEL. OH MY GOD. Now, was that Dean, was that Sam's head-Dean, or was that SNEAKY EZEKIEL GETTING THE ACQUIESCENCE HE WANTED BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. AAAAAAAH!!! *flail*
-Yeah, those weird symbols on the wall must be from that earthquake too. Commonly happens, earthquake, high-pitched squealing, windows breaking, weird symbols on the walls, sure, nothing out of the ordinary there. Sweep on past, paint later, whatever. Yeesh. Average mundane people in SPN-verse have like, hero-strength levels of Completely Oblivious, don't they?
-Except the good doctor here, who has been kind of cool. *squints* Is that Ezekiel's former vessel? If he's doing the vacant staring and drooling, rather than being confused as heck but moderately coherent, then Ezekiel's an archangel. Oh, right, or the person used as a vessel didn't have the right *handwave* bloodline to be a vessel, and any angel would have fried him. *nods* Ezekiel is not necessarily an archangel then (didn't Castiel-on-Monster-Souls wipe all the archangels out anyway?)
-"I have no idea." Ah, he's not even fried. Definitely not an archangel.
-"Not good. There is much work to be done." Of course there is. Suuuure. Well there probably really is, but right now I don't trust Ezekiel further than I could throw him and that's whether he's in Voice-Over Guy's body, Sam's body, or a formless glowing light. Have you ever tried to throw disembodied light with your bare hands? It's not easy. On a side note... I foresee having a very very hard time not laughing my head off any time Ezekiel talks from Sam because, just BWAHAHAHAAHAH. Oh god. It's like Jared on the gag reels. XD
-"There is no reason for Sam to know I am in here at all." Except it's his body? And you're just "borrowing it to fix it"? Dean's face is already going 'Um... what?'
-"Without his acceptance, Sam can eject me at any time." Ooo! handy to know. Still, taking ignorance of your existence as acceptance is really bending the rules, and kind of being a dick. But this is Sneaky Ezekiel, who's the only one of the fallen angels who's managed to land himself one of the best vessels on the planet by seeming altruistic. Also he's going to need to learn how to shave. Dean can teach him. Again, probably since Dean probably taught Sam to shave in the first place. Awwww... except... Hm. This is going to be an interesting thing to mess with.
-"And if he does eject me, he will die." Says you. But he probably will. Arg.
-Oh Dean. Just that. Oh Dean.
-"Then we keep it a secret for now." *facepalm* Because keeping secrets always works out SO WELL in your family. AAArg. And hello plot arc for large swath of the season, yes? Or maybe shorter because guaranteed, the first thing Sam's going to do when he gets awareness of the world around him, realizes he's not dead, and then sees his brother is to start yelling, "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO NOW, DEAN?"
-"I can erase it all if you like. He will not remember any of this." Um. No. Dude. You're in a rental. You do not go doing any memory-remodeling without the landlord's permission. Also, he went from watching the angels fall and dying of ingrown Trial radiation straight to a coma. From Dean's perspective, what memories are there to erase? Although it could also be positive, in that it's a kind of confirmation that Sam's still aware in there enough to have made memories inside his coma. Which can be a really good thing to know.
-LAUNDROMAT! Hee! Steep learning curve time again, like "don't walk into public places covered in blood, people will probably get the wrong idea and make your life more complicated than you need it to be." Though the coat has done quite well at avoiding bloodstains.
-However, given my own limited experiences in 24 hour laundromats, people stripping off the clothes they are wearing to wash them doesn't often raise much fuss, as long as the underwear stays on and it's after midnight.
(Aw, there goes the tie.)
-Why do I have the feeling someone in the fandom has already taken that sequence and put it to stripper music in slow motion? No idea. XD
-Aw. I kind of hope Jimmy is still in there somewhere and trying to coach Castiel on being human, but humans have all these incomprehensible rules and things and that pout of life being so unfair... poor angel. That's really not an overload on that machine, though, and some soap might be a good idea.
-*facepalm* Also food. Yes. Food would be a really good idea. What is that thing on the bottom row that looks like a tube of raw hamburger? O.o
-Heheh. Yeah, we could be looking at a really bizarre costume change here if he's going to dress in stuff from the lost and found.
-Not bad, could be worse, and I see that his time hanging around Sam and Dean has taught him the importance of layering. *nods*
-Human tip for Castiel: Water can be found for free in many locations, including public washrooms. If you're desperate, which you will be for a while until you get to the Batcave, so can soap, paper towels, the capacity to hand-wash small articles of clothing, oh, and also toilets. Which you're going to be needing to acquaint yourself with, now that you're ingesting something other than starlight, moonbeams and slow-moving quarks.
-Lying tip for Dean: If you're going to not tell your brother that a sequence of events he may or may not have had informed consent on has landed him with a fallen angel in his mental co-pilot seat yet again (except unlike Lucifer, this one is more subtle in his plotting *side-eyes sneaky Ezekiel*), do try to remember not to ask confirmation of his identity when he wakes up.
-"What the hell happened?"/"What do you remember?" Getting slightly better at the lying thing, but not much.
-"Let a few Japanese tourists take some pictures, nobody got too handsy." Hee! Brothers.
-"I knew you'd pull through." Yeah, about that lying thing, you're really not doing so great on it, you should stop now.
Right, some interesting plot-balls going airborne in the premiere. Dean won't have to re-teach Samzekiel how to shave, though he might have to show Castiel, lies and half-truths everywhere for the sake of saving Sammy, who is saddled with an angel of dubious intent who may be fixing Sam and letting him have the driver's seat, but he may be fixing Sam just to take his body on a joyride and... hehe. Crowley's still in the frigging trunk, isn't he? XD
(PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, NO REFERENCES TO EPISODES PAST 9.01 IN COMMENTS! I'll catch up as fast as I can. Any and all promo material for unaired episodes is considered to be a spoiler in this journal. See left hand sidebar. Theory and speculation based on aired episodes only.)
Spoiler and Theory Summary
No spoilers other than Castiel is still in the series, so he's not going to get killed anytime in the first five minutes of the episode. Well, that and Bobby's back (yay!) and Death turns up, but really, Heaven just purged all the angels so people currently in Heaven and entities involved in sending people to Heaven have gotta have something to say about that and the further ramifications of what's going on, etc. Can Death unkill Bobby? Or is Metatron actually going to pick new angels from the human dead in Heaven and actually make Bobbiel happen? (Which if he does will be the stupidest thing he ever did, because Bobby back in any form will thwart the living crap out of him). Or with the angels gone, does Heaven start devolving and the souls up there start to drift back to earth to start haunting as ghosts again. All things to ponder.
Now, non-spoiler-related theories. Well, Sam's loaded with frustrated Trial radiation and that's got to be dealt with in some way. Also, when the angels started falling, Crowley had a very interesting expression on his face. Like his ears were perking up. Maybe he won't go for the healing after all.
In the broader picture, it's going to be awful hard for Hunters and their global equivalents to cover up hundreds of men and women in suits falling from the sky, so there might be some kind of alien invasion media stuff or integration of former celestials turned human into society issues going on in the foreground or the background of this season.
Because it's fun to watch Misha Collins looking confused, I expect a considerable amount of 'Castiel adjusts to mortality' stuff, at various points. Castiel might change his clothes as the angelic auto-dry-cleaning magic will no longer be effective.
New tie for Castiel. Aw.
And so it begins.
Picspam Reaction, with speculation and meta and randomness for Supernatural 9.01 - "???" "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here"
-Oh yes, and there will be montage! \o/
-Song lyrics. "I walked 47 miles of barbed wire. I've got a cobra snake for a necktie." Heh. They had to pick a song that referenced ties, didn't they? XD
-I'm just going to sit and flail over the scenes they've paired up with the iterations of "Who do you love?" in the lyrics. Although this one gets a snerk. "I deserve to be loved!" Hee!
-Prettiest apocalypse-like event yet.
-HI CAR!! HI!!! *WAVES*
-Looks like Sam's over his Trial Radiation Organ Melting Inversion or whatever from the end of last season. He's well enough to argue about things not making sense at least.
-"How many angels fell, hundreds? Thousands? And nobody sees anything? [...] They're calling it a meteor shower. Seriously?!" Awwww, darn! There goes a fine load of crack-laden second level plot material. Aw.
-"Because we hugged it out in that church and now we're gonna go to Disneyland?" Heee!
-Speaking of that church, what did they do with Crowley? Unless they rearranged some cargo in a big hurry, I don't think he'd fit in the trunk, regardless of the ampleness of Metallicar's rear cargo compartment. ...and now Crowley's ringtone from the finale is running through my head. *facepalm*
-"We're not gonna sleep 'til this is done." Much as I approve of the dedication, sleeping in shifts for a few hours each (say, whoever's not driving catches some zzz's instead of yapping) might make you less likely to be tactical idiots. Actually, never mind. I don't know if any amount of sleep will help that at this point, given some of the bone-headed tactical decisions in 8.22 and 8.23.
-"What's the problem?"/"You." Sam: *puppy-face* Hee.
-"You're dying, Sam."/"...Shut up." AND THE CAMERA ANGLES GO WHACKY AND THERE'S HEARTBEATS AND MEDICAL BEEPING AND CRAP ON THE SOUNDTRACK AND THIS WHOLE DAMN SEQUENCE IS INSIDE SAM'S COMATOSE HEAD, ISN'T IT? At least that's a more realistic outcome than POOF Sam's fine. Oh hey, wait. *rewinds that scene before carrying on* Nope, it wasn't done in such a way that Dean's lines could be him talking to comatose Sam with no interaction. Darn. Missed opportunity there.
-YEP! DREAMROOT TIME NOW? OR WILL WE BE HAVING A CHAT WITH A REAPER? And where did they leave Crowley?? Although if Sam collapsed beside the Impala shortly after the Angel Fall, I can see Dean piling Sam into the car and taking off and not remembering a damn thing about Crowley until he's at a hospital falsifying insurance paperwork.
-Sam is apparently hearing the news in his comatose state though, which is a good sign maybe?
-Oh wow. Fried angel wings for the title card this year, with a hint of angel radio whine. Ooo.
-And hello Title: "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here" Hm. Angels adapting to Earth life perhaps? Somehow, I don't think they'll be having as extravagant an introduction to Earth as Little Orphan Annie, source of the title reference for the evening, though Season 9 would be the season to start whipping out spontaneous dance routines if they're gonna do it. (Still waiting for a 'Town under a Musical Curse' episode, because seriously, why the heck not?)
-Massive internal burns affecting many of the major organs, and oxygen deprivation in the brain. Well, these things happen when you try to choke down a crap-ton of glowy quest-related radiation instead of using it for its intended purpose, so in essence, Sam was hooped no matter what he did, which is pretty status quo in the life of your typical Winchester all things considered. But still. Gaaaaaaah O.O
-"This wasn't supposed to happen." Most comas aren't. Well, unless they're medically-induced, but that still counts as most.
-It's a good thing I knew Bobby and Death were going to be in this episode in some way because I am SUCKING at blocking out guest cast names tonight. Hi Jim Beaver and Julian Richings. *sighs and puts sticky notes on screen*
-"I'm afraid that's in God's hands now." Oh, great. Just what Dean really wants to hear right now. I know it's probably how you were raised and that you mean well Doctor whatever, but really, not helpful.
-"What is that supposed to be, a comfort?" Yep. That's about the same reaction I have had to very similar situations, although I tend to stop talking and walk away or ask people to leave rather than shouting, even though shouting at people would have been very cathartic at the time. Sorry. Personal crap. Moving on now.
-And there's the modified Family Theme, of course. Now, Dean has several inadvisable options for saving Sam, which will he pick? Kind of hoping they do have Crowley in the trunk so Dean can drag him into the hospital, gash Sam's palm and... well, no he wouldn't, because that would kill Sam too, and Crowley's far less likely to be amenable to going human and shutting the gates of Hell if he knows the angels have all fallen. Though he did say once that closing Hell would kill all the demons, so going human would be a damn fine way to keep himself exempt from death by Hell Sequestration. Hm. Anyway. Dean, contemplating inadvisable solutions to the problem of keeping Sam alive and sane again some more. With Family Theme.
-It's got to be tricky, visiting a chapel when you've spent several years with empirical knowledge that God isn't home, and you have no idea what happened with the angels and Castiel and Metatron... ooo. Dean doesn't know about Metatron, does he? If he prays, is Metatron going to answer? ... eh, probably not. Too busy re-staffing Heaven. And if he prays for Castiel, Cas isn't even going to hear him, let alone come running. Aw. All that said, prayer's one of the less inadvisable options available to Dean at the moment, even though it's now going to be just as effective for him as it is for any other person on the planet.
-"Please man, I need you here." Aw. No more Castiel ex Machina. Awww. Nice fakeout with the road noise sounding slightly like the start of a flappy wing sound there though.
-"This one goes out to any angel with their ears on." Oh dear. Yep, inadvisable plans.
-Oh hey! So, did the angels out on missions or in deep cover get exempted from the Fall and still have powers etc? Ooooo... there's some potential in that.
-Offering a carte-blanche future favour to the newly homeless remainder of the Heavenly Host. Whelp, that's... not as inadvisable as it could be. Maybe. Or... hm. We'll see. Factoid note: Glenwood Memorial Hospital, Randolph New York is where Sam is. Hm. Where was that abandoned church?
-Written by Jeremy Carver, new Head Honcho I believe?
-"It's no secret that we haven't always seen eye-to-eye." HAHAHAHA um. Yeah. Just a bit.
-Directed by John F. Showalter, familiar name.
-Jensen Ackles has perfect tear duct control. Just saying.
-"You are in a coma, and are dying." Sam's head-Dean is bossy, but given it's Sam's interpretation of Dean as heard from inside a coma, and Dean is simultaneously there, determined that Sam not give up, and is driving Sam's head-Impala, I'd say that's a considerable amount of subconscious trust and faith in his brother, regardless of the superficial token scoffing.
-Must say, love the lack of road noise in Sam's head-Impala. *nods approvingly*
-Sorry, I find myself needing to laugh my face off at Sam trying to understand that head-Dean is part of his subconscious and not actual-Dean who is doing all the inadvisable wide-band praying out in reality, and that this means Sam has absolute trust that even though he's in a coma, Dean is still in charge and will save him, which will probably lead to a moment of self-actualization in a second here and realizing he has to be self-reliant or something and not just wait for Dean to haul his bacon out of the fire again some more, and that's going to hurt but really be necessary in a way because they're both grown-ass men, and if Sam's subconscious is still in "Dean will always save me so I shouldn't even try" mode, he's really not as autonomous and self-sufficient as he wants Dean to treat him, is he? It's a big aww moment leading to a probable ow moment, but at the same time, Sam's scrambled logic is making me laugh. Also, there's his face.
-"I have no idea what you just said, but continue." Heeeee!
-"Hell yes he's serious." HI BOBBY!!!! *FLAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL!!!!!* Oh my god I think I sprained something from flappy hands. SAM HAS A HEAD-BOBBY YOU GUYS!!! THIS IS AWESOME!!! And much less likely to piss Bobby off than being made an angel. WOO!! \o/
-HI BC WOODS AND HILLS AND ROADS AND EVERYTHING. Sorry I mean "Longmont, Colorado" *CONSPIRATORIAL WINK* And little wee former angels in trenchcoats. Aw.
-Ooo, Castiel's still picking up something on the angel wavelength. *ponders*
-The first rule of listening to the voices in your head is make sure you don't walk into something dangerous like traffic. Though this may shorten the amount of time Castiel spends trying to walk from Colorado to New York State, or the nearest phone.
-Ow. "It hurts." Owwwwwww.
-"I heard angels."/"...How 'bout we get you some water, hm?" Yes. Water. Rehydration cures angelic hallucinations. Of course. Or it could be a drunk/drugged/hungover thing, which is valid. Just something about the intensity that this guy offers water is making it really hard to stop laughing.
-"I don't drink water." Oh dear. Learning how to be a mortal is going to be a really steep learning curve for Cas.
-"I would fly but I have no wings. *head-tilty 'whaddayado?' shrug that is not capping worth beans but is making me cackle.*" Hee!
-"Not anymore." Aw.
-Man, it is rough when the voices in your head start arguing with each other. Trying to figure out why Sam's head-Bobby is on the side of Sam giving up though. Is it just Bobby takes Sam's side versus Dean? Or Bobby is Sam's fatalism? Eek.
-"Suck as that may, sometimes that's just the way things go." Or he's Sam's voice of previous coma experience. Aw.
-"You mean like the way one of you idjits does some bassackwards crazy thing to beat Death, like sell your soul?" Or he's Sam's sense of 'OH SHIT WHAT'S DEAN DOING WHILE I'M STUCK IN A COMA DYING, MAYBE I SHOULD JUST DIE NOW AND HE WON'T DO ANYTHING STUPID', in which case, uh, no, and you know you being dead won't stop Dean from doing stupid things to try to bring you back anyway, and have you even met your brother? Oh and also, too late. The doing stupid things has already commenced.
-"Excuse, me? Are you dead? Because I am!" Oh this is so much more fun than Sam's head Lucifer. Can Sam stay in the coma a few episodes and just be riding around in the rainy dark in his head-Impala with his head-Dean and head-Bobby snarking at each other across the back seat, while real world Dean does whatever inadvisable desperate thing he's going to do to save Sam and get the Season 9 plot arc launched?
-"Sam put me here because he wants to fight, right?"/*sudden front-seat Bobby* HEEEEEE!!
-"Seeya, Dean."/"Sam, don't you dare-" Eep! What? Change of mental construct, ah, okay. Bit nerve-wracking, but okay. O.O
-"It's okay, I don't eat." Heh, yeah, SUPER steep learning curve ahead.
-"Take care, kid." Okay. I just have to say, this nameless guy is just plain awesome. And cuddly. But mostly just awesome. Which means the strangely conspicuous woman with the black truck getting gas at the gas station is going to turn out to be Abbadon's new host, and she's going to macerate him. Or she's done that 'splitting her smoke' trick and is secretly stalking Castiel from inside Mr. Awesome here. Either way, on this show, this guy is just too awesome for his own continuing good health. Such a shame.
-Possible timeline hint: Christmas lights are strung on the fence there. Since this would have been filmed in July, those are likely a deliberate addition, so this probably sometime between mid-November and early February. Of some year or other. *nods*
-See? Strangely conspicuous woman. I'm thinking Abaddon.
-Also, strangely conspicuous motorbike. ...heh. Again, speaking of steep learning curves for Castiel, maybe?? I could see him riding a motorbike... eventually... :-D
-"Hang up the phone." Ohhh dear. One painful learning curve about to commence. *squints* That's not Cliff. It should be Cliff. Nice shirt though.
-"Sure you do. Hurt me." Oh dear oh dear oh dear. *snerk*
-"Castiel." Oh, she's one of the fallen angels, not Abaddon. Yet. Maybe. *side-eyes*
-"My name is Hail." Or is it Hayel? Hayel would fit the traditional angelic -el suffix for angel names, though most don't seem to, and who knows, maybe she's the angel of ice-pellets that fall from the sky. Or was.
-"My name is Kim Shorts and I'm a grief counsellor here at the hospital." And she's come to hug. Or is that only fake grief counsellors who are breaking into the house of a guy they suspect resurrected his crush and turned her into a zombie?
-Also, nail her with some holy water or something, Abbadon's still out smoking around somewhere. But be subtle. Bless Sam's saline bag or something.
-"Inevitable? that's a fighting word where I come from. There's always a way." Usually a stupidly self-sacrificing and occasionally apocalypse-triggering way, but a way. Oh Dean.
-"Unless you're telling me you have a direct line to those angels that you were looking for-"/"Yeah, naw, I ah... guess I don't. But I might have something better." Oh crap. This is Dean, having an idea. This very likely does not bode well, and may take until episode 12 to straighten out the broader consequences. Knowing the Winchesters.
-"I've got the King of Hell in my trunk." AHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHA Well that answers that question. Even though he was ready to revert to human last we saw him and Sam's blood has no doubt worn off, but Abaddon may have already taken over and he could just be a hunted exile by now. Also, that's a great general purpose conversation-exit line. 'Gotta go, I've got the King of Hell in my trunk.'
-"Sorry, is that a metaphor?" Heeeeeee!
-"You alive? One for yes, two for no." ...okay, so, by what criteria do you mean alive? Crowley is a demon, so, the soul of a deceased person who's gone to Hell, been processed, come out as a demon and is inhabiting a human host who is probably not particularly lively anymore either at this stage. Post-mortal entity? So it's a complicated question. A simpler question to answer would be "Are you conscious?" which bypasses the alive debate altogether. It doesn't however solve the remaining problem of how Crowley was supposed to knock twice if the answer is no.
-"You prayed?" Heh. Not the sort of answer you were hoping for. Considering the past experiences your family has had with the general angel hierarchy, maybe broadcasting your location and vulnerability to all and sundry wasn't such a hot idea.
(Hey... that angel sword looks rather unshiny, doesn't it? Wonder if that's a side effect for the downside angels who weren't directly part of the Fall. Also, is the angel tall, or is he standing on a cement parking divider? He's looking taller than Dean here... Unless he's hovering. Which would be weird and possibly not an option anymore.)
-"If you lie to me Dean Winchester, I will rip your throat out." Heh. And Crowley's got a front row seat for this confrontation, so to speak. Bet he's very smirky right now.
-"Where's Castiel?"/"Who's asking?"/"Try every angel who was ejected from their home." Oh dear. Not good. Wondering about doe-eyed little Hayel now... Also Pissed Off Angel Tie Report: Purple dots. No job to be on anymore, stuck in a holding pattern and frustrated.
-"This young man has prayed for our assistance." And offered a carte-blanche favor. Whiiiich is sounding like it could take the form of 'lure Castiel in so we can annihilate him. Which will not go over well at all.
-"Are we creatures of wrath, or compassion?" Weeeeeelll that all depends on which part of which text you're reading. And in Supernatural, which angel is standing in front of you and whose agenda he or she is following. Again with the not-so-simple questions.
-"Happy to make your reacquaintance, after you disarm." You know, if angelling doesn't work out for this guy, he could probably do dramatic movie trailer voice-overs.
-And why wouldn't you attack the random angel you don't recognize that seems to be implying he's a long way further up the Great Chain of Being than you are, since all the angels are kinda-sorta on the same level now? I suspect this isn't going to go too well for Suit-and-Tie angel though. He seems a bit of a hot head.
-Yeah, no, it really didn't. If you're an angel who recently threatened Dean or his family, don't drop an angel blade and turn your back on him. Though killing an angel is really not the way to try to get them on your side, Dean. *headshake*
-Also this guy has a family. The kids have to be his host's kids, or they'd be little Nephilims though, and Metatron said there was only the one, though he could have been lying since he'd know there would be no way he could get Castiel to rip the heart out of a child, Nephilim or not.
-Man, I am distractible. Sorry.
-"You are Dean Winchester, I have heard your prayer." Seriously, dramatic movie voice-overs. It's hard not to giggle when he says anything. That said, if you ask someone their name and they say "That's not important right now," IT'S REALLY FRIGGING IMPORTANT THAT YOU FIND OUT THEIR NAME.
-"And I am here to help. *passes out*" Yeah, that's reassuring.
-And now, a moment with Dean's face.
-Aw. There's something kind of sad about this. Wistful. Two people who can't go home again sharing experiences.
-"How could that happen?"/"I don't know." Does he mean he doesn't know how the spell made it happen, or is he covering himself or Metatron for some reason. He didn't willingly give his Grace to Metatron to be burned up in the spell, so.... Hehe, well actually now that I think about it, he started out helping Metatron willingly with the thought that Heaven would be closed off from the plane of Earth, and that's also likely something he doesn't want getting around too much, even if the final stages were not his idea or choice. Maybe he does have a reason to be evasive, so any angel not in the know doesn't go poking around his motivations and decisions on this matter. Aw. Poor Cas.
-No Grace, can still hear Angel Radio (Hee, he called it Angel Radio) like Anna did, although Anna's post-Gracectomy life was a bit different. The other Angels then do still retain their grace (as clearly demonstrated by Dean), but have been kicked out of Heaven/lost their wings. Oh dear. This could get quite messy for Earth.
-"Believe it or not there may be something even better down here." Have you heard about Free Will, Hayel? Here, have a pamphlet. XD
-She built the Grand Canyon, hee! This show has a bit of a thing for the Grand Canyon, doesn't it?
-Ah yes, the Dean Winchester version of pranking the first person to fall asleep at the party. Instead of waking up with Sharpie doodles on your face, you wake up in a circle of Holy fire. If you're an angel. Is this the same parking garage? Because I don't know how they made enough room to squish Crowley into the trunk, but there's definitely not enough room for the voice-over angel in there too, and I don't think Dean would be too keen on dragging him into the back seat of the Impala and driving to a secondary location if he had no idea how long the angel would be passed out for.
-"You want to help? Start with a name." Yes, exactly. Hm. Not sure what is behind Dean there, but it does look like they aren't in the same parking garage, which is good, because there's a hospital attached to that one, possibly with a nice warm psych ward for people found interrogating random bleeding men inside rings of fire in their parking garage.
-"Ezekiel." *snort* Hahahaha! HOW APPROPRIATE TO HAVE EZEKIEL IN A RING OF FIRE. According to the bible etc, Ezekiel was among other things, a prophet who saw a bunch of stuff, like four-faced four winged angels, wheels within wheels rolling, fires within fires burning, etc. Hm. So, maybe prophets become Angels when they die? Or when they vaporize? Like Chuck? ARE WE GOING TO SEE THE ANGEL CHUCK IN A FUTURE EPISODE? Heeeeeeee! Anyway, random brain dump aside, lets see what Supernatural-verse has to say about Ezekiel.
-"Some of us still do believe in our mission, and that means we believe in Castiel. And you." Really? Castiel, who showed up in Heaven one day full of Leviathan souls, declared himself God, and smote the crap out of the archangels? I'm trying to figure out which mission would have had the mandate 'believe in Castiel and Dean Winchester', and how far out of date Ezekiel's orders might be. Back to 'hook Dean Winchester up with Michael' orders? Dunno. Could be he's totally lying and running his own agenda. Naomi wasn't the only faction in town. Just the one with the shiniest offices and sharpest Dremel.
-Deep in Sam's excessively golden sun-lit head-forest (which given it's Sam probably has memory-monsters lurking everywhere waiting to jump him) the camera angles are still wonky, so Sam's mental world is still skewed.
-So pretty. Very BC, except of course the colour-balance twiddling on the light. But... you know, this golden light is starting to make me worry too, because wasn't the Trial radiation a golden light? And wasn't there a goldish-reddish light in the head-Impala too? Hm. Maybe the Trial energy is trying to convince Sam to give in and let it eat his tasty organs in lieu of reverse engineering Crowley's demon-hood. O.o
-Head-Bobby: *lists off all the times Sam's saved the world and goes on about legacies, while graciously editing out all the times the thing Sam had to help save the world from was a problem he and his brother started* Head-Bobby has tact. Hee.
-I doubt this is going to work, since didn't Castiel already say the damage from the Trial radiation wasn't something he could fix?
-Yes, leave the room to take a call from your friend who the still-powered angel beside you may or may not be hunting. Although leaving the guy in the room with Sam is a pretty dodgy proposition too.
-"You hear my prayers? I been praying to you all night!" Hee! Aw.
-"He took my Grace."/"What?!"/"Don't worry about me. What are you doing for Sam?" I am having a very complicated moment of Awww, wherein I want to wrap Castiel in blankets and feed him soup, and go awww some more for him downplaying his own situation so Dean doesn't have to be distracted from his dying brother's needs, and also shake Castiel until he develops a sense of self-worth. Though shaking isn't probably the best way to accomplish that.
-"Ezekiel. Yes. He's a good soldier." Oh good. Castiel knows him and is not freaked out that he's around the Winchesters. Good! Something positive. Which means of course it'll all go to Hell very soon.
-"Helping angels is what got you in trouble in the first place." Mmmm, not really. Depending which portion of trouble you mean, helping Winchesters, or helping himself to all the souls in Purgatory did that. valid point about the current grounded and pissed off ones though. Hey, here's a thought. Let Castiel hole up in the SUPER SECURE BUNKER you have. It's a lot closer to him in Colorado than you and Sam are in New York, and since he's unpowered and couldn't help Sam when he was powered, he's not going to be much help in New York anyway.
-"I'm begging you, for once, look out for yourself." AWWWW *flail* "Until we figure out what's going on, trust nobody." Keep your laser handy. Sorry, sudden Paranoia RPG flashback.
-"That means you bleed and you eat and you sleep and everything you never had to worry about before."/"I'm fine Dean." Dean has a very excellent point. Castiel should probably eat a sandwich and have a big glass of water and have a nap before he goes making any other strategic decisions today. Dean however has yet another direction to worry in since he's not there to make sure Castiel learns how to be human and doesn't forget he can't teleport and stuff now.
-Oh crap. Earthquakes? Archangels? Metatron? Abaddon? Sam going nova? What now?
-"Get your ass to the bunker. Alone." Yes, thank you. But, uh. Who has the key? Kevin? Is Kevin still there, or is he going to hide the key somewhere on his way out?
-Oh yay! All hospital rooms should have a whiteboard in case someone needs to draw angel repellant sigils on the walls. And I really love that Dean can draw it from memory under stress. YAY!
-"I need help." Call me paranoid, but she is sounding more and more like bait for a Castiel trap.
-Yep. There she goes. Either it was a trap all along, or she's being quite liberal in the interpretation of "help yourself."
-Dean Winchester is a sigil-drawing machine! But do they need to do the floor and ceiling too? A room has 6 sides.
-"They're here." Almost never a good thing. Definitely not a good thing now. Oh, hey, look, that sigil next to the whiteboard looks like Snoopy. Hee!
-"Do not open this door for anyone but me." Can he open the door though? He's an angel too, and he's kind of trapped inside by the sigils keeping the rest of them out.
-Ah yes, glass everywhere. Forgot that about angel landings.
-Fire alarm, excellent, get the bystanders out. Not terribly likely many of them are from strong vessel bloodlines, but right now I doubt the inbound angelic hordes care.
-Guest appearances by BC, portraying Colorado today.
-Yes, now that he's human, Castiel will also be subject to getting a crick in his neck from sleeping wrong. and that way is very wrong, though he didn't have any choice in the matter, or any choice in the probable concussion he'll be having.
-Looking more like a trap all the time. Though really, if a deer runs out on the road and she hits the brakes, that thing is flying up into the footwell in a heartbeat.
-"You understand I couldn't just let you leave." Getting Misery vibes off Hayel now, even despite her adorable pert little nose.
-"This is all your fault, isn't it? Making the angels fall?" Yeah, I was wondering when that particular shoe was going to turn up. So she did know and was playing the innocent to get to Castiel.
-"We'll drive to the Grand Canyon, you'll tell me more bout humans, and I'll show you what I'm capable of." That really doesn't sound like it's going to be a healthy thing for Castiel, or even for planet Earth maybe.
-"You want to possess me." Ohhhh, she only wants you for your vessel. Typical. Speaking of which, what does Jimmy Novak think of all this, or did he dissipate while Castiel was full of monster souls? It'd be cool if he was still rattling around in some form or other, but all things considered, not likely.
-Yep. Any port in a storm sometimes lands you at one your ship won't fit into. Or something.
-They're heeeeere. (And I still don't trust that grief counsellor, but yeah yeah paranoid as usual *handwave*)
-Except when I'm right. It's not paranoia if the grief counsellor really does have you in a stranglehold. Oh hey. If she's an angel, that means the angels know Dean has Crowley in the trunk. O.o
-Oh hey. If she's an angel, that means the angels know Dean has Crowley in the trunk. O.o
-"Everything inside you need to help you on your way." Yeah, that's not a foreboding shack at all. I mean, even with it being some kind of *handwave* mental-construct metaphor for Sam giving up the fight for life, it's still foreboding.
-"I'll be waiting for you with a couple of cold ones. *GLAGCH!*" AH! That actually made me jump. I mean of course Sam's head-Dean's going to be as likely to give up and let Sam shuffle off as the real Dean is, and it's been an awful while since they started wandering in the woods, but I kind of thought it'd be more of a shouty arguing confrontation than a STAB SAM'S HEAD-BOBBY IN THE BACK sort of confrontation. ...unless Sam's head-Bobby is really a tiny tiny remnant of his head-Lucifer that has been waiting for an opportunity to put on a trusted face and talk Sam under a bus. Hmmm *ponders*
-"Dean, are you insane?" And now we get to the shouty arguey portion of the 'convince Sam to fight for life' battle, yes?
-Yep. Ow ow ow ow ow ow.
-"Then what's your plan, Dean?"/"My plan? *right-cross*" Yeah, that's a plan. Protector-fighter part kills the (sadly Bobby-shaped) self-negation part, and knocks out the waffling primary part who is being a self-destructive doof and needs to take a break from the active decision-making process for a while. Or maybe slip into a deeper coma. We'll see.
-"My plan is to fight!" Or get him to fight back by starting a fight. Yeah, okay. Whatever works.
-Yep, loud and shouty and full of ow. Oooof. I'm just gonna go ow and cap here for a bit.
-"You telling me there's nothing to fight for? Nothing to hope for?"/"No. I'm telling you there is." Ohhhh crap. Sam's going to die to get up into Heaven and see what the heck's going on, isn't he? Aaaaack.
-Aaaaack. Oh god.
-Still not the worst way Dean's woken up. Oh. And of course they won't kill him or Sam. They're Vessels. AAAAAA!!! I think that's about the most horrified I've been by this show in a good while. DDDD-:
-Yeah, fire-axe kind of beats white-board marker.
-"Anybody ever tell you, you hit like an angel?" Which is pretty darn hard, as Dean most recently was reminded in "Goodbye Stranger" last season.
-Meanwhile in Sam's head-shack... head-shed? Naw, too many appliances. What's in the shack? I'm thinking Death, but that's based on knowing Death will be showing up and not having seen him yet. Also, the shack is pretty heavily foreshadowed to contain Sam's death, and he's met Death, so his head-death will be... Death. Wonder who it'd be if he hadn't met Death? I also wonder if whoever wrote the script is a fan of Jungian psychology, because I feel like there's a lot of archetypes roaming around in Sam's head here that someone more familiar with Jung could get some darn fine meta out of.
-Yep. HI DEATH! You're looking very deathly. *eyes chairs* Oh I really hope there's even a passing mention of a chess game.
-Axe 1, Sigil 0. Damn.
-Dean whump! *cringes a little because OW* but still, DEAN WHUMP! \o/
-"I'll tell you where Cas is." Heh. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Castiel never actually told Dean where he was, did he? So this would be purely a delaying tactic, or a 'send them into a trap' tactic to keep them from getting in at Sam with no additional risk to Castiel, and probably giving Ezekiel enough time to get Sam out of there somehow, now that the protection is disrupted. So as long as it gives some time and distraction... "Yeah, last I saw Cas he was heading for Mount Doom, something about a ring. Take a left at the big swamp full of dead people."
-"If Heaven is locked, then where do you go when I do this." WOO! THERE'S DISTRACTION FOR YOU, and unfortunately probably also for Ezekiel, unless walls act as a barrier to the effect but anyway, SECOND TIME IN AN EPISODE show caught me by surprise! WOOOOT! \o/
-Hey, Ezekiel's still there, looks like the effect is blocked by walls. Good to know. *nods*
-"Are you saying there's no way to save my brother's life?"/"No good ways I'm afraid."/"Well what are the bad ones?!" HA! Yep. Heheh. Gee, I wonder if one of the bad ways would be Ezekiel taking over Sam's body as a vessel, and Ezekiel just did a sneaky end-run to get into one of the strongest vessels on the planet without all the fuss and screaming. Heh heh heh.
-"There is a chance I can fix your brother. From the inside." Heh heh heh. Yep. And then you'll have to hang around in there keeping things patched up because 'Trial radiation *handwave*' and maybe Sam 'won't wake up right away' and Ezekiel will have to pilot him around and do repairs etc and maybe eventually Sam's going to be switching personalities between Sam and Ezekiel for the several episodes of the season, or Sam will figure out he's being kept hostage in his own body by an invading sentience and have to do that wonderful psionic 'GET OUT OF MY HEAD' thing, either or both of which will rock. Sneaky sneaky Ezekiel. Good soldier indeed. Get the best equipment available to complete your mission, even if it's by midnight requisitioning. *ponders heavily*
-"There's no way in Hell Sam would say yes to being possessed by anything."/"He would rather die?" And then Dean's little head-bobble with complex emotional facial maneuvering and just OW. Because Sam's talking to Death, and he's going to code in the hospital, and Dean will give the go ahead because Sam is dying in front of him and Sam can yell at him all he wants or never talk to him again as long as he's alive to do it. Oh Dean.
-"I'll leave you two alone, then." Or Ezekiel will shut off the noise-making machines and leave Dean standing beside Sam dead on a bed again and given the last time that happened, Dean ran out and sold his soul at a discount to bring him back... hehe. Tactically smart sneaky Ezekiel. Rather than pushing Dean directly to get him to ask Ezekiel to possess Sam, he's just going to be polite and not push and follow Dean's wishes with no pressure and be respectful and stuff, all while using the stark reality of Sam's imminent corpse as a big old kick straight to Dean's squishiest parts. Push Dean, he resists. Let Dean spiral down into his own realizations and decisions and he'll hand over the keys to Sam on his own. Ooo. I think I'm going to like Ezekiel as an adversary if that's what he's really up to. *steeple-fingers*
-"Wait." And he didn't even get out of the room. Oh yes indeed. I think we have a new adversary character, and it's going to be inside Sam. *slow clap*
-OH SHIT, REAL DEAN'S ABOUT TO BUST INTO SAM'S HEAD-CABIN. Beats trying to scrounge up Dreamroot in a hurry.
-"I consider it an honour to be collecting the likes of Sam Winchester." Heh. So is this actually Death, or is Sam's head-Death secretly also his ego? XD
-"Can you promise that this time it will be final?" Oh dear. Maybe Sam isn't doing a sneaky to get up and figure out what Heaven's up to after all. Eeek. Though really, the death and resurrection and Hell and so forth over and over has to be wearing on a soul. Although I doubt he'll get there anyway, since he's managed, just as Dean gets a peek inside Sam's head, to be having a conversation with Death that's going to stomp the crap out of all of Dean's "OH HELL NO" buttons.
-You know, I'm going to be pondering the meaning of the decor in Sam's head-shack for a while. Particularly those snowshoes on the wall. What the heck??
-"And nobody else can get hurt because of me." Oh Saaaaaaaaaam! *smishes him so hard*
-And Dean's back in reality, and the 'HELL NO'ing is about to begin.
-Ooo. Blood spray on the driver's seat belt anchor. Yeah, she's already learned to kill people to save her own butt. And to drive, but the killing people one is usually harder.
-SEATBELT! PLANNING SOMETHING! YES! *FISTPUMP EVERYWHERE* Well actually, it's probably for when the car loses control after he stabs her or jerks the steering over, since he's human now and needs to think about things like that, but still, yay seatbelt and planning his own rescue! GO CAS!
-Sidenote: Sam's hospital hair is kind of awesome.
-"Sam would never say yes, not to you." Ooo, is Dean actually going to follow what Sam would want? Given there are 22 more episodes this season with some form of Sam in them, something's going to happen here.
-See? Wear your seatbelts kiddies!
-GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, I'M NOT CAPPING THAT. Well done makeup and special effects grue, but GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. O.O
-"I will devote my life to helping you all."/"Do you know how ridiculous you sound?" True. He means well though. And Castiel's good intentions have kicked off some pretty major things. Usually bad, but hey, the streak has to break sometime.
-"If you leave me here in this broken girl, I swear Castiel, I will tell them where you are." Ahah. So they've lost the power of self healing too, or the weaker vessels can't cope with the demands, since her vessel was already breaking down. Really, if she hadn't decided to drive to the Grand Canyon first, she could probably have already taken Cas over. But she's a little deranged, and Castiel's still pretty cool, so what can you do? *shrug*
-"Unless you open your heart and say yes."/*splitch* Yeah, that whole threatening thing really wasn't the way to break down Castiel's possession resistance. At all.
-"Hold on." Heh. Okay, so is this Dean visiting Sam's coma, is this Sam in the coma, hearing Dean and what is going on in the room around him and regenerating his head-Dean, or is this Sam's innate will to live in the form of his head-Dean coming back to go 'Hey, second thought on this giving up business.'
-"I found a plan." Something about Dean's expression may make it look like the plan involves chasing frogs in the pond out behind Bobby's junkyard in the fading summer sun, but I really don't think that's the case.
-"There ain't no me if there ain't no you!" OW. And sometimes I wonder if it's not only Sam's head-Dean that thinks like that. Just ow.
-*flappy hands* Dean has this faaaace you guuuuuys.
-FRIGGING EZEKIEL. OH MY GOD. Now, was that Dean, was that Sam's head-Dean, or was that SNEAKY EZEKIEL GETTING THE ACQUIESCENCE HE WANTED BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. AAAAAAAH!!! *flail*
-Yeah, those weird symbols on the wall must be from that earthquake too. Commonly happens, earthquake, high-pitched squealing, windows breaking, weird symbols on the walls, sure, nothing out of the ordinary there. Sweep on past, paint later, whatever. Yeesh. Average mundane people in SPN-verse have like, hero-strength levels of Completely Oblivious, don't they?
-Except the good doctor here, who has been kind of cool. *squints* Is that Ezekiel's former vessel? If he's doing the vacant staring and drooling, rather than being confused as heck but moderately coherent, then Ezekiel's an archangel. Oh, right, or the person used as a vessel didn't have the right *handwave* bloodline to be a vessel, and any angel would have fried him. *nods* Ezekiel is not necessarily an archangel then (didn't Castiel-on-Monster-Souls wipe all the archangels out anyway?)
-"I have no idea." Ah, he's not even fried. Definitely not an archangel.
-"Not good. There is much work to be done." Of course there is. Suuuure. Well there probably really is, but right now I don't trust Ezekiel further than I could throw him and that's whether he's in Voice-Over Guy's body, Sam's body, or a formless glowing light. Have you ever tried to throw disembodied light with your bare hands? It's not easy. On a side note... I foresee having a very very hard time not laughing my head off any time Ezekiel talks from Sam because, just BWAHAHAHAAHAH. Oh god. It's like Jared on the gag reels. XD
-"There is no reason for Sam to know I am in here at all." Except it's his body? And you're just "borrowing it to fix it"? Dean's face is already going 'Um... what?'
-"Without his acceptance, Sam can eject me at any time." Ooo! handy to know. Still, taking ignorance of your existence as acceptance is really bending the rules, and kind of being a dick. But this is Sneaky Ezekiel, who's the only one of the fallen angels who's managed to land himself one of the best vessels on the planet by seeming altruistic. Also he's going to need to learn how to shave. Dean can teach him. Again, probably since Dean probably taught Sam to shave in the first place. Awwww... except... Hm. This is going to be an interesting thing to mess with.
-"And if he does eject me, he will die." Says you. But he probably will. Arg.
-Oh Dean. Just that. Oh Dean.
-"Then we keep it a secret for now." *facepalm* Because keeping secrets always works out SO WELL in your family. AAArg. And hello plot arc for large swath of the season, yes? Or maybe shorter because guaranteed, the first thing Sam's going to do when he gets awareness of the world around him, realizes he's not dead, and then sees his brother is to start yelling, "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO NOW, DEAN?"
-"I can erase it all if you like. He will not remember any of this." Um. No. Dude. You're in a rental. You do not go doing any memory-remodeling without the landlord's permission. Also, he went from watching the angels fall and dying of ingrown Trial radiation straight to a coma. From Dean's perspective, what memories are there to erase? Although it could also be positive, in that it's a kind of confirmation that Sam's still aware in there enough to have made memories inside his coma. Which can be a really good thing to know.
-LAUNDROMAT! Hee! Steep learning curve time again, like "don't walk into public places covered in blood, people will probably get the wrong idea and make your life more complicated than you need it to be." Though the coat has done quite well at avoiding bloodstains.
-However, given my own limited experiences in 24 hour laundromats, people stripping off the clothes they are wearing to wash them doesn't often raise much fuss, as long as the underwear stays on and it's after midnight.
(Aw, there goes the tie.)
-Why do I have the feeling someone in the fandom has already taken that sequence and put it to stripper music in slow motion? No idea. XD
-Aw. I kind of hope Jimmy is still in there somewhere and trying to coach Castiel on being human, but humans have all these incomprehensible rules and things and that pout of life being so unfair... poor angel. That's really not an overload on that machine, though, and some soap might be a good idea.
-*facepalm* Also food. Yes. Food would be a really good idea. What is that thing on the bottom row that looks like a tube of raw hamburger? O.o
-Heheh. Yeah, we could be looking at a really bizarre costume change here if he's going to dress in stuff from the lost and found.
-Not bad, could be worse, and I see that his time hanging around Sam and Dean has taught him the importance of layering. *nods*
-Human tip for Castiel: Water can be found for free in many locations, including public washrooms. If you're desperate, which you will be for a while until you get to the Batcave, so can soap, paper towels, the capacity to hand-wash small articles of clothing, oh, and also toilets. Which you're going to be needing to acquaint yourself with, now that you're ingesting something other than starlight, moonbeams and slow-moving quarks.
-Lying tip for Dean: If you're going to not tell your brother that a sequence of events he may or may not have had informed consent on has landed him with a fallen angel in his mental co-pilot seat yet again (except unlike Lucifer, this one is more subtle in his plotting *side-eyes sneaky Ezekiel*), do try to remember not to ask confirmation of his identity when he wakes up.
-"What the hell happened?"/"What do you remember?" Getting slightly better at the lying thing, but not much.
-"Let a few Japanese tourists take some pictures, nobody got too handsy." Hee! Brothers.
-"I knew you'd pull through." Yeah, about that lying thing, you're really not doing so great on it, you should stop now.
Right, some interesting plot-balls going airborne in the premiere. Dean won't have to re-teach Samzekiel how to shave, though he might have to show Castiel, lies and half-truths everywhere for the sake of saving Sammy, who is saddled with an angel of dubious intent who may be fixing Sam and letting him have the driver's seat, but he may be fixing Sam just to take his body on a joyride and... hehe. Crowley's still in the frigging trunk, isn't he? XD
(PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, NO REFERENCES TO EPISODES PAST 9.01 IN COMMENTS! I'll catch up as fast as I can. Any and all promo material for unaired episodes is considered to be a spoiler in this journal. See left hand sidebar. Theory and speculation based on aired episodes only.)