Bloodline
Now THAT was John Winchester's son! (spoilers for just aired ep)
Things I loved madly about the episode:
Adam. While I enjoyed "Jump the Shark" a great deal, and also enjoyed the way Jake played Adam in that episode, one of my favorite things about that whole episode was the fact that it had been the ghoul from moment 1, so we'd never actually seen even a glimpse of the real Adam's personality. And it was one of my favorite things because it allowed the wild optimist in me to hold out hope that maybe we'd eventually get to see the real Adam, and he'd turn out to be, as the one son not raised by John and only John, the one most like John. It really does my poor, battered, outnumbered, oft-laughed-at-and-ridiculed inner optimist good to get the occasional opportunity to flip the rest of my jaded self off, singing "told you so, told you so." Because that Jake? THAT was John Winchester's son. No doubt about it. And perfectly articulated. Exactly the right mix of jackass and likeability. And his flat-out fuck you to Sam's entitled toss-off that living with John around had been no picnic, either? Is the best "I've been waiting for that forever" moment eva. Can I have some more, mum?
Jake. Played Adam perfectly. Not well. Not exceptionally. But flat-out perfectly. And if it were possible to double perfection (which it isn't, by the way)? I would double that assessment simply for how much Jake put into the ghoul-Adam to make him believable as John's son might be if he'd been sheltered and sweet and grown up idolizing an oft-absent father rather than resenting him and yet how much he played this Adam as also John's son (clearly 100% so, by nature if not nurture) but as having absolutely no other resemblence in any way to the first version. Did I not know both Adams were played by the same actor? I would think they'd been played by different actors. And that is the highest compliment I've got for an actor: playing 2 visually identical characters in such a way as to make them feel like 2 completely different people. Nicki Aycox told me that she knew one of her friends was a really outstanding actor when she could sit in the audience at one of their movies and forget she knew them. I'm pretty sure, if she knows Jake personally, she could say that about him in this performance.
Bloodline. Not to nanny-nanny-poo-poo any of my fellow SPN fen or anything, but would it be ungracious of me to dance about naked like a little wild thing, whooping my lungs out with a victory chant off the canon revelation that it ain't Mary's fuckin born-hunter blood that makes the boys the vessels of heaven and hell, but rather John's non-hunter-until-made-a-hunter bloodline? Yeah? It would be ungracious? Tough shit. I'm doin it anyway. Nanny-nanny-poo-poo, bitches!
Bobby. The bullet. The power of that voice. Yeah. I bought that. 1000% percent. But then again: Jim. Nuff said.
Shadows. OMG, I damned near wet my fuckin pants at some of those mirrors of John and Dean in Shadows as played out this go-round by Dean and Adam instead. When Adam said "It's a trap" and Dean said "Yeah, I figured"? I think I did wet my pants a little ... which is really embarrassing when you're dancing about naked like a little wild thing, whooping your lungs out.
Dean. Take that shot, baby. You're not my dad. I don't have faith in you any more. Day-um. Fearless writing. Played fearlessly. Thank you, show. (Notice how I'm not giving the cred for those wildly succefull moments soley to Jensen? That because, for the first time in a LONG time, I don't feel Jensen carried the writers on those lines. The writers gave him the perfect lines, and he ran them across the finish line for the gold. Equal collaboration is most excellent.)
Bobby again. Responding to "You're not my dad." What can I say other than: Jim.
Writers again. Sam responding to "I don't have faith in you any more." Because that? Was the perfect Sam response. Not whiny, not bitchy, not chest-pounding angsty in a "good God, get a soap opera slot" way. But rather heartbreaking and powerful and SAM in all the best ways. And this one? I'm actually not giving to Jared at all. Despite the fact that Jared played it perfectly. But this one? Was the writers. Because Jared actually manages to pull off most of their bullshit "Sam's a fuckin diva" responses way better than he ought be able to. But this time? Much as Jared nailed the moment perfectly, what he was given there by the writers make this their gold, not his.
Jared. Playing every moment he played against Adam. In JtS, Sam could hit no false note with not-Adam. He was the perfect brother who understood everything perfectly. But in this ep? "Sometimes I don't even know why we're butting heads, son." Jared has always excelled at playing Sam's inner bitchness, particularly in terms of his "preciousness" when it comes to both Dean and John. But particularly John. How consistent Sam has been as an unreliable narrator on the subject of John-the-Father, particularly in being utterly unable (not unwilling ... unable, which is different) to empathize with how his father might have been doing the best he could as he so catastrophically failed -- by Sam's measure, not by mine --- as a father even when, as a man in a similar position, he now understands much of where his dad was coming from? That's always been the benchmark of Jared's skill as an incredibly naturalistic actor who can so wholely inhabit the skin of a character he truly understands as to make one forget he's inhabiting a skin not his natural own. His ability to resist unifying the my-dad-sucks child-Sam view of John with the evolving understanding adult Sam has grown over the past 5 seasons about why John did the things he did, and how much those things might have actually been the right choices, has been Jared's greatest brilliance, IMO. That ability to play someone who can walk in his father's shoes as an adult and STILL resent the piss out of that same father when he looks back on his unhappy childhood from the perspective of a man who grew up an unhappy child -- that's the complexity of real humanity there, and Jared has always, always, always captured that with Sam. Always captured the inability to change the thirty-year-cherished perspective of a martyred child to align with an adult realization that he didn't really have it so bad as he always thought he did, and captured it in a way that portrays the very essence of the complex reality of a father-son relationship like the one John and Sam have and will always have. And in these moments with real-Adam, that aspect of Sam's character that Jared has always played so well as to seem to not be acting it at all, shows itself at its finest. He is the catalyst to true magic in an equation that takes his 5-season portrayal of both the man Sam's become and the child Sam once was and combines it with Jake's pitch-perfect you-don't-know-me Adam portrayal to an end result that is greater than the sum of its parts: the perfect chemistry of the unappreciative "I had it so bad because my dad was around" Sam as he butts up against the unsympathetic "fuck you, you were so lucky, I'd have sold my left nut to have dad around in any capacity" Adam. The true magic of every one of those sequences is in how true both portrayals were to the reality of the resentment sons will have for their father no matter WHAT that father does ... and how much the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. And while Jake deserves gold for accomplishing that for one episode with Adam, Jared really needs to be canonized for maintaining such a consistent Sammy-perspective on this issue across five long years that his subtle bitchslapping of John doesn't come across as something he does intentionally, but rather as an unfair internal perspective that is so much a part of Sam's world view that, until Adam says "fuck you, you have no right to bitch", he honestly has never realized there was another side to that chip he's been carrying around on his shoulder for better'n 30 years.
Jensen. Oh, fuck Jensen. Jensen's always brilliant, and this episode was no different. :)
Big Brothers & Fathers. The fear of being seen as less than they think you are in the eyes of a child who adores you is what makes heroes out of men like John and Dean Winchester. You will never convince me that the difference between John hunting himself into damnation and John being able to hold the line just this side of staying human was anything but 100% how Dean saw him. How Dean idolized him. And how unwilling John was to let Dean down in that regard. And Dean's wink was the perfect articulation of that concept both as it applies to John in the eyes of Dean and Dean in the eyes of Sam.
Castiel. What happened to him? Me. 'bout time, Cas. 'bout fuckin time.
Catiel again. Boxcutter to the chest? Seriously, Cas? That is one badass angel right there.
Zachafuckinriah. I've always loved Zach, but I loved Zach most of all here. What a perfect run. Fred Layne Azazel level perfect run. Huzzah.
Eyeball Melting White Lights. The bitch-about-our-bosses bar scene was absolutely. Fucking. Perfect. That angels have so little regard for individual humans that they couldn't have found a way to recall Zachariah to duty that didn't including melting the brains of 2 innocent bystanders? Is the very essence of angels like Zachariah and Uriel. Perfect. Seriously, seriously, seriously perfect. And funny as hell, too.
Blow me, Cas. LOL. Would have been so easy for that to be "Bite me, Cas." That it was "Blow me," instead? Is everything that makes this episode what it was. The devil's in the details, boys. But so is the magic.
Things I didn't like about the episode:
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