Rewatch S5: The End (5x04)
This one has commentary - so it was sort of like taking notes on two episodes.
THE END
I got distracted by my clothing project for the first bit, and forgot to pay attention to the dialog. So, I'll just say that I still love Cas' lines of "The voice says I'm almost out of minutes" and "I'll just wait here then."
It's 4:15am when Sam calls. He's already driving in a car. This is why, in my timeline, which you'll see eventually - I don't believe that the storylines in Free to Be You and Me are simultaneous. I really think that after Sam had his visit from Lucifer, he through all his stuff into a bag, stole a car, and called Dean. Dean had been driving for 16 hours to Kansas city - and we last left him in Maine...which is further than 16 hours from Kansas City...so yeah...it's been a couple of days for Dean at LEAST (personally, I think it's been months). But yeah, I'll get into this when I post the timeline.
"Damn it, Cas, I need to sleep!"
"Dean, it's me."
-Another reason why I think the brothers have been apart for months instead of days/weeks...I know Cas was JUST bugging Dean, but still, Dean's surprise at it being Sam suggests to me that he hasn't heard from him in a while.
"Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in, eh Sammy?"
"So that's it? That's your response?"
- I think the reason Sam was calling his brother is because he's SCARED. As much as he complains about being coddled - I think he's looking for that protection right now. Some response of "Come here, Sammy, it'll be ok. I'll protect you from Satan, because I'm your overprotective big brother and that's my job..."
Then Sam calls the angels/Lucifer, "sons of bitches" - yay! I love Dean-Sam overlap. Sam actually rarely uses the term 'son of a bitch' - so I get a kick out of it when it does.
"So we're back to revenge now are we? Because that worked out so well the last time..."
"Not revenge - redemption."
-And here we get the set up for the ultimate tragedy of Sam's life. Because yeah, Sam will get redemption - but after everything, it shouldn't be too surprising that it has to be through self-sacrifice. Also, note: Dean really doesn't like revenge.
"So, your just going to walk back in and we're going to be the dynamic duo again?"
-Aww, yes please?
What I want to say though is that I love the way Jensen acts. I love that he'll deliver whole lines of dialog with his eyes closed. Or, in the case right here, the way he closes his eyes and you KNOW that he's about to turn Sam down. You know that look - you've done it yourself...you close your eyes because you don't want to look at the other person when you break their heart - even when they aren't in the same room, you still close your eyes. It's the universal language of 'I don't want to say this, but I have to...'
"We're the fire and oil of the Armageddon, on that basis alone we should just pick a hemisphere, stay away from each other for good."
-*sad face*
"We're not stronger when we're together, Sam. I think we're weaker. Because whatever we have between us - love, family, whatever - they're always going to use it against us."
- It's not the love they use against you, it's the dysfunction...but what I like about this line of dialog is that Dean uses the word "love" when talking about Sam. I'm not looking at it from a wincest point of view at all - I'm looking at it from a sibling point of view. No one ever tells their siblings that they love them (or at least, no one I grew up with does). It's assumed. My siblings and I don't even hug...and when we do, it's all awkward. Anyway, besides getting wasted (which Sam does later this season), this is about as close to a declaration of love as Dean is ever going to get - you know, besides the whole selling his soul for his brother thing.
"We're better off apart"
-Eyes closed for that whole line....man...I love Jensen.
"Dean, don't do this"
"Bye Sam"
-Again, Jensen has his eyes closed - and he just KEEPS them closed as he hangs up, folds his phone, and presses it to his face....man, did I mention how I love when Jensen does that? Because I do. They end the scene on it, and it's brilliant.
The Future, Conan?
"Little girl?"
-Hahaha, I think this line is sort of lame...or it's something...I don't know. I'd never call a little girl "Little girl", but who am I to judge.
Then Dean punches out that little girl!! Woo!
So, yeah, all the signage/newspapers in the future are from August 2014, Dean says he's from the "tail-end" of 2009, and they always just talk about him being tossed "five years in the future" not "five or so years"...so, I think in the present it's August 2009 - and since Sam and Dean parted way's at the end of May, that means they've been apart for nearly 3 months.
Back to the show....
Jensen does surprised-and-then-annoyed-at-being-surprised really well, when Zach shows up in the car. That's what I look like every time someone jumps out at me, though I usually swear really loudly.
Dean spends 3 days in the future - I love it when they just TELL me how many days are in the episode, so that I don't have to count.
Ah Bobby...taken out by at least 3 bullets. And we also learn about the secret journal-compartment in the fireplace.
Impala! Oh the horror.
Dean gets punched out by himself!
"Tell me something only I would know."
"Rhonda Hurley. We were nineteen. She made us try on her panties. They were pink and satiny and you know what? We kinda liked it."
"Touche"
-Oh man, what's not to love about this? Mainly, I love it because they manage to give Dean a panty-kink without making it diminish his masculinity at all. I wish more shows would do this. I get annoyed sometimes at the way society pigeon-holes men - in that basically, they have to only be turned on by missionary-sex with women in order to be "real men". I liked Captain Jack on Torchwood for this same reason - he was able to be masculine AND omni-sexual (and in a relationship with a man). Yay for society's very slow progression forward into being SANE when it comes to sexual expression. (Can you tell I'm a Dan Savage fan?).
"What about Sam?"
-I love the pause and the look that Jensen give Future!Dean here...because you can just tell that he's thinking "Uh oh, Past!Me really isn't going to like this..."
"From what I understand, Sam didn't make it"
-There's such a subtle emphasis on "Sam" in that sentence. It's really well played.
"You weren't with him?"
-I like how Dean JUST turned down Sam and told him to stay away - but yet is appalled that he wasn't there when Sam was killed. It's very much in accordance with his decision that he was not going to let Sam die alone...in that, I don't even think that was a decision...Dean could not see his brother for twenty years, but he'd still want to be there if Sam were to die. I'm not sure if it's illogical or heartwarming, or both.
"Oh come on, you don't trust yourself?"
"No, absolutely not."
"Dick"
-Hahaha, Dean. I don't even think Future!Dean trusts Future!Dean - Future!Dean is MESSED UP.
Chuck!
-You know, if Chuck is God...this is even funnier. It's like God decided that he was going to watch a show - so he unplugged his phone and tuned into the Supernatural - and whether ends in five years or ten, he's going to watch it until the grand finale...and he just happens to be watching it from inside the show...so, you know, if it gets to the ten year mark, he'll just put himself in charge of toilet paper and try to stay out of the way.
I wrote "Hippie!Cas" in my notes, and then the very next lines of dialog were:
"What are you, a hippie?"
"I thought you had gotten over trying to label me."
-Haha, sorry, Future!Cas.
"Whoa, strange! You are not you. Not now you, anyway."
-Misha plays this so well - where he can be both slightly supernatural, but profoundly human at the same time.
And man, Castiel's laugh when Dean tells him to strap-on his angel wings. It's the very definition of 'humourless' - it's actually closer to a sob than a laugh, in my opinion.
Future!Dean's one handed beer opening is pretty cool. I'm impressed with odd things. It's probably easy to do.
The guy he kills is Jaeger - haha, imaginative naming there Edlund..."Jaeger" means "Hunter" in German, for those who don't know.
"Torture?" Oh so we're torturing again? That's good. Classy."
*Cas laughs, Future!Dean glares at him*
"What? I like Past!You"
-Of course you do Cas...Past!Dean was the Dean that was your friend - not the Dean that was all broken and willing to send you like a lamb to the slaughter.
"Lucifer's wearing him to the prom"
-Ohh, through line..same metaphor Past!Dean used with Sam just before he was sent to the future.
"...now we don't have a choice"
-And it circles back to John's final orders: Save Sam or Kill Sam. It's only when the option to save is completely off the table...
"The angels aren't listening. They just left, gave up!"
-I like to play the "how did the future get like that?" game. So, I'm thinking our littlest Anti-Christ Jesse was found by the demons and made to kill the heavenly host. Sam thought of his plan to trap the devil by forcing him back into the hole - but without Dean there, he couldn't gain control...and Cas, well, as we see later in the season, Cas WAS heading towards this slowly. Thankfully, he was reangified before that happened.
"You mean, you're going to feed your friends into a meat-grinder? Cas too?"
-I love the separation of Cas and friends here.
"Oh man, something is broken in you."
-Yes, yes it is.
Both Jared and Jensen are so great in the Dean vs. Samifer scene. I know some people didn't like Jared's performance, but personally, I thought it was brilliant.
And then we get Dean posturing even while he cries....god, I love Dean. You can tell he's terrified, and heartbroken over what's happened to Sam, and horrified and all that...but he's still giving his speech to sound confident in the face of his enemy.
"I win, so, I win."
"You're wrong."
-He IS wrong! You can't win on a tautological argument! It's against the rules.
"Oh, I learned a lesson, just not the one you wanted to teach"
-Yay! I love the fact that Dean went into the future, and with all the shit that was going on, the thing that makes the most impression is that Future!Dean is broken and torturing and inhuman...and he can put it together and think "Sam would never let me get like that."
"Pretty nice timing, Cas"
"We had an appointment."
-I LOVE the look on Dean's face here, because there is SO MUCH LOVE in it for Castiel as he is now. I think, it's in this very moment that Cas and Dean actually become friends. I love Cas' little smile too, how he's so pleased that he was able to save Dean from Zachariah...so nicely done.
Then we get the reunion...and Sam's little flinch as Dean draws the knife. It's the first clue that things are still far from perfect between them, because Sam honestly just went there not knowing if Dean was going to take him back or not...and he actually did think for a split second that the "something" that Dean "should have done in the first place" was to kill him. And you know, I'm sure Sam would have let him if it was an option. Breaks my heart.
Then, of course, Sam goes from the flinch into an emotional grateful expression that Dean is taking him back.
"Look man, I'm sorry, or whatever I need to be, but I was wrong."
-The addition of 'or whatever I need to be' is so interesting here. I haven't been quite able to figure it out. Basically, I think Dean is saying that he's not REALLY sorry, but he will do whatever it takes to keep Sam close to him.
"The point is - maybe we are each other's Achilles' heel, maybe they'll find a way to use us against each other, I don't know - I just know that we keep each other human."
-I love the fact that it's not just Sam who has the possible dark-destiny. So much of the beginning of this show has been "will Sam go darkside" and then in S3 they dangle the idea that Dean could become a demon...but then he's resurrected, so no harm no foul right? Wrong. Because then it's about Dean becoming a HUMAN monster. A broken thing that tortures and doesn't love anymore...and yeah...just, it's nicely done. You don't need demon-blood to have the potential to become inhuman. Sam and Dean really both have the same struggles in this show.
"Thank you. Really. Thank you. I won't let you down."
"Oh, I know it. You are the second best hunter on the planet."
-Awww
COMMENTARY
The commentary is done by Eric Kripke, Ben Edlund, and Robert Singer.
Kripke and Edlund spend a good portion of the commentary making fun of themselves and each other and the writing process...while Singer tries to point out how awesome Jensen is.
Kripke starts by talking about how annoyed he was that they never followed through on Croatoan before this. Apparently he was the only writer who cared about this thread that they started and never followed through on.
Apparently, originally the idea was to have Sam and Dean meet their clones.
Kripke: "We couldn't figure out how to break that story. Probably because of the overwhelming stupidity."
Edlund: "It might have been the stupidity."
They talk briefly about the closing lines (at the beginning of the commentary oddly)...this was enlightening, because I was always confused at the seemingly abrupt ending. But yeah, the closing lines of "We make our own future" and "I guess we have no choice" is to chose that although the brothers are back together, they aren't on the same page yet - Dean here is speaking in accordance with free will, and Sam's sentence is one that reflects an unchangeable destiny.
Ben Edlund talks about how they had to go into the future to set the base note for the apocalypse, because they just couldn't pull it off week after week in the present.
Kripke talks about how their constant struggle in Supernatural is that they have an epic story, with non-epic budget and time to pull it off with.
Singer: "We probably get more on the screen per dollar than any other show around."
The shot of the Impala had to be CGed because the props department had dressed it down so much it was unrecognizable.
They then talk a little about Jensen and how awesome he is. How he was playing two different characters where the ONLY difference was five years of experience.
Edlund: "We didn't even give him an eye-patch and a scar."
Kripke: "He would text me from the set and say 'please don't ever do this to me again.' [...] If we were the type of show to garner any type of respect...this would be an emmy performance."
Edlund: "If you weren't elevating us constantly every week..."
Kripke: "The guys are better than the material they receive."
-This reminds me of the report on the Jensen and Jared meet-and-greet at VanCon over at Fangasm...in which Jensen talked about how it's the job of the actor to make bad writing good. I think he said it a lot more politely than that though. But, if you want to see a cinematic demonstration, I recommend the play scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream with Rupert Everette, Stanley Tucci, and Christian Bale? Anyway...that scene is well done.
Then comes the scene where Future!Dean kills Jaeger, and Kripke and Edlund act like they haven't seen it before: "Oh oh no! Ooh...we kill that actor."
Then Kripke and Edlund go into other wacky versions of the script that never made it - they were going to have Sam living with a family, after successfully getting out of hunting. Kripke: "And we were like what? It made no sense."
Kripke: "The idea of killing Lucifer has always been schmuck-bait"
Edlund: "We're scaring them that we're going to be lame...discourse on the interweb where they're like - oh my god! That's going to be so lame!"
In another version of the script, Future!Dean was going to also have had the time-travel experience five years previously. Kripke talks about explaining it to Singer and having him be like "what the hell is this?"
Kripke: "We were drawing a diagram of the nature of time and time-travel...and he says 'You going to draw this picture for the audience?'"
They ended up pulling 6-7 pages when they were already in prep for the episode.
Singer talks more about how awesome Jensen is. How he's meticulous with his preparation for each episode, so this one "really wore him down."
Kripke talks about how they threw Chuck in there for much needed levity.
In another concept for the script, Edlund had Castiel as a madman...in which he had gone insane, and was sitting in a dark room, killing a cockroach and bringing it back to life and then killing it again. Kripke deemed it "a little depressing."
Kripke then talks about Misha: "Apparently this character has more in common with the real Misha [...] he was raised in a counter-culture household [...] and when you speak to him, he's an amazingly intelligent and philosophical personality."
They talk about Ben Edlunds work habits, and how he always procrastinates and then turns in his scripts late - but they always require little to no revision. (I'm assuming this is about the finished scripts, given how many alternative ideas they've talked about rejecting so far.)
Then Kripke complains about a problem they had in S5: "You fight your way to the monster at the climax and what do you have for the climax? A really long conversation!
Edlund: "Talkative Monster #6."
War, Lucifer, Gabriel...they noticed it halfway through and tried to correct it.
Kripke *as Lucifer*: "Let me tell you the story of how I fell"
Edlund *as Dean*: "Yes, but I didn't ask any question about that. I'm much more concerned about my own body lying dead on the ground."
Kripke: "Dude, I know what the devil's problem is. It's called Noshutupis.
Kripke: "[Telling the story from Lucifer's POV] certainly not original to us. It was Milton's Paradise Lost and a bunch of graphic novels *laughs* It went from Milton to a bunch of graphic novels to us. That's the timeline."
Edlund: "There's no interceeding lineage."
Kripke talks about how S5's timeline isn't as twisty and surprising as S4's because it's more about depth of character, and taking the unknowable beings of Michael and Lucifer and turning them into flawed human characters.
Edlund: "Wait! We missed the Man Tear! It was a good one."
Kripke: "Yeah, Jensen is beautiful *slight pause* at that."
Edlund: "I love that-"
Kripke: "Don't disparage him!"
Edlund: "I'm not! Who was?!"
They talk about the Lulu Island Trestle Bridge, and Singer says that if anyone uses it again, he's going to be angry.
Singer: "I think we should actually do an episode of all the people who have had their cars stolen...and we never see them."
Kripke: "My favourite is when they leave the climax of the show with, like, dead bodies everywhere. Like in a suburban home, there's four slaughtered bodies. And then you cut to Sam and Dean in a motel room and they're like 'you were mean to me back there'...
Edlund: "Fifth act should always be them with gloves on and big tarps...and just washing and scrubbing."
Kripke: "'You were mean to me' - 'I know, I'm sorry about that' or 'I found some dander and hair over here, hand me that lye' - 'I won't, damn you' - 'Why? Something wrong?'"
Edlund: "'Let's get these bodies to the pig farm we passed earlier...'"
And on that note, the commentary ends.
Hey, remember back on my first few rewatches, when I would only talk about one or two things in the episode and it didn't take me 2+ hours to type up my notes? Those were the days...