SPN 5x08
Ahahahaha heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ♥♥♥
Ahem.
+Painful 80's sitcom flashback, there.
+Dean has a gigantic mancrush on Dr. Sexy!
+DENNY!!
+The questions in that game were nastily designed to put the wedge back between Sam and Dean.
+Sam is the Kitt Impala! THAT IS SO AWESOME. And amusingly messes with my head because Dean/Impala is really the only canon otp the show has so if Sam is the Impala then...show, stop confusing me!
eta: Oh god I am about to commit Knight Rider-adjacent meta. What was Kitt's primary mission? Protect the driver. Oh, SPN.
+During the first confrontation, I did guess "angel" -- it was something about the fervor that the Trickster talked about wanting Sam and Dean to Lucifer and Michael-up. It sounded Zachariah-like. But I didn't figure out exactly who or what was going on until later, I thought maybe it wasn't really the Trickster at all, but a totally different being.
+I noticed The Trickster-Gabriel looked at Sam and then at Dean when he said who popped Lucifer out of the box, who started all of this. Most of that speech, he was looking right at Dean.
+Really really amused at how Kripke pulled this plot twist out of his ass, because he didn't get the idea to add angels into the mytharc until right before they started working on Season 4. Retroactive continuity. Right now, I think it bleeds back okay, especially given the Trickster's speech to Sam in Mystery Spot, where he tried to get Sam to distance himself emotionally from Dean. Although I think there was a flip side to that lesson, which is what Sam and Dean are having to do now -- not to stop caring or to separate, but to stop taking the bait, stop letting the supernatural baddies use their love against each other. ETA: With this new retroactive continuity, I'll go with the first reading, he was trying to maneuver them apart and nudge things so they'd take on being Lucifer vs. Michael. Wait, scratch that last sentence. He was trying to stop it in Mystery Spot. Now he's doing everything he can to accelerate it because he's given up on them. The logistics are the same -- lessen the intensity of the Sam and Dean bond -- but the goal is now different. destinahas a smart take on it.
This is what the Trickster said to Sam in Mystery Spot: This obsession to save Dean? The way you two keep sacrificing yourselves for each other? Nothing good comes out of it. Just blood and pain. Dean's your weakness. And the bad guys know it, too. It's gonna be the death of you, Sam. Sometimes you just gotta let people go.
/edit
Anyhoo...I am so not going to poke this too hard with a stick because the whole thing will probably fall like a house of cards. Fun, fun reveal though.
+Gabriel! Aw, Gabriel, tired of everyone bickering at Sunday dinner and defensive of his family and torn apart by all the in-fighting. I want to smish him. Raphael was weary, Gabriel just wants everyone to get along. Lucifer feels betrayed...I can't wait to meet Michael. Where is Michael? He probably thinks it's all his fault.
+It did make me laugh how Castiel shows up during the Japanese game show and is all SRS BIZNESS and "you have to get out of here," but when he goes to do his BAMFy thing, he goes *blip*. Oh Castiel, it's okay, you'll get to be BAMFy later.
+And Dean was worried about him. <3
+Castiel was kind of quietly badass in the scene with Gabriel. That last look that went between them? Yow, Castiel looked pissed and Gabriel just kept needling him and yet in this dismissive way. Castiel is pretty much the kid brother here, outside the big kids' table at the Sunday dinners. And oooh, Gabriel *taunts* him about searching for daddy. I'll note though, even if Castiel didn't physically do much in this confrontation, that Gabriel, who is an archangel and far more powerful than Castiel, is the one who never stood up to his family and instead ran away from home in secret and went deep into hiding, pretending to be what he wasn't, while Castiel, who has 1/16th the fire power, openly defied them all and made himself hunted and kept acting as himself even if he was on the lam.
+Fandom had already figured it out about Michael and Lucifer, Dean and Sam. ( smilla02 already wrote a gorgeous fic on that subject.) Having it all set out in dialogue like that wasn't real graceful but I think it was a smart choice narratively. It's been telegraphed like crazy and for the show to keep playing coy would be silly.
+Somewhere ash48's head just went 'splodey with Kripked glee.