Some initial thoughts on S5...

[ginzai]

So, the season five. I don't normally do episode reaction posts, preferring to get my squee on in meta-post comments, but these two episodes have quite pleased me and I want to jot out a few thoughts. I thought both of them were generally tightly plotted, brilliantly acted, and that the cinematography (particularly in 5x01) was just delightful

Comments

[ginzai]

Aw, I love Ellen. The only issue I had with her was seeming to put the sins of the father onto the sons in regards to Bill's death, but that only ever became a problem when she was trying to squelsh Jo's crush on Dean. My pet theory anyway is that Ellen and John DID have a fling back in the day and that Jo is probably a result of that and that was why Ellen was giving Dean and Jo so many odd looks and was so disapproving in general.

As for the amulet, I don't think that Bobby knew because his initial response when Castiel said what he was looking for was "well, we don't have anything like that." I like the idea though that the amulet is important because of Sam and Dean, rather than being important in its own right. I'd have actually loved that concept too, had we had any major foreshadowing about it. As it is, the only "special power" the amulet might have shown is possession prevention because people have theorized for a while now about Dean alone having never been possessed.

I'm not sure I trust Kripke and co. to actually give us solid information about it, but here's very much hoping!

[sethra2000]

I think the whole Dean not being possessed thing is because he is a "vessel", and they cannot be possessed without their express permission. Otherwise Michael could have just come on down and done the deed. Also Cas had to get Jimmy's permission and even Lucifer needed to get his vessel's permission. At least that's my theory on it.

[ginzai]

I'd agree with you except that Sam didn't give permission when he was possessed by Meg in S2 (as far as we know, anyway, but I'm pretty sure the writers would have brought a point as important as that up because it would have been severely OOC for him to agree) and he's just as vessel worthy a candidate as Dean is since they share the same parentage and bloodline. The permission issue seems to be a limitation of the angels, not a power of the vessels. IMHO, it's not that Dean has the innate power to withhold consent, it's that the angels themselves require it.

Dean having never been possessed could have something to do with him being the Righteous Man, perhaps, or maybe he's just been lucky - Bobby said way back in S1 that there were normally only three or four cases of possession a year back before 2005 and even when it started to skyrocket that year, there were only 20 or so cases. Then they got the anti-possession charms and later their tattoos, so there were only a handful of months where he was really vulnerable to it and even then, you had all the demons under the YED's thumb. The YED had his own reasons for ensuring that Dean wasn't possessed because he suspected Dean of being the Righteous Man and doing anything to disturb that status wouldn't have helped his plans along.

(He had no issues with Sam being possessed, however, which has long made me think that Meg wasn't rebelling against Daddy when she went after Dean in BUaBS - she even termed the whole affair a "test" to confirm whether Dean would have been able to kill evil!Sam! Meg hasn't been one to randomly test Winchesters, but her father sure liked that schtick.)