Rewatch S7: The Born-Again Identity (7x17)
Okay! Huge important episode....
See, they didn't even have to show Out with the Old in the THEN, which to me makes it a pretty odd episode to stick between Repo Man and Born-Again... I mean, it tells us that Dean knows about the sleeping thing, and it sets up the fact that he hasn't been sleeping for a while...but really, we could have assumed both those things based on the dialogue in the opening of Born-Again anyway...so yeah, definitely the previous episode was one of very little substance.
This part at the beginning is filmed not too far from me. It's a really spooky area of town with a lot of art studios. Hence the abundance of graffiti. I was actually there the night they were filming this, but it's not the best neck of the woods and it was a school night - so even though they told me they were going to be doing an exciting car stunt, I wandered on home at a respectable hour.
Dealer: "Hold up, wait, hold up - you want to knock out. I can knock you out."
- I wonder what Sam paid with. :P
Also, they never really explain how Sam ended up running around the neighbourhood. I mean, they explain that him and Dean had been drinking until the passed out, even though Sam never passed out - so we know that Dean is unconscious somewhere, but that's it. I wonder what made Sam venture out into the city.
Hallucifer: "Pills? You do get that you're just bringing free drugs to the party, right?"
- This is why I don't do drugs.
Hallucifer: "Hey, you always wanted to be normal, Sam! If you are, you'll be dead in a week!"
- Again, I just wanted to reiterate that Hallucifer isn't Lucifer, he's a manifestation of part of Sam's tortured soul. So, this is actually Sam making fun of himself for having an unattainable dream, or being careful what he wishes for, or something. Also, it's kind of ironic that Sam is going to die a "normal" death because of a supernatural affliction.
Dean: "He was in a car crash, why the hell can't I see him?"
Doctor: "You're Sam Smith's brother."
- Woe betide any man who gets between Dean Winchester and his brother.
Doctor: "Sam was admitted. He was treated for a broken rib and lacerations."
Dean: "Okay, that's not too bad. And?"
Doctor: "And he's on our locked psychiatric floor."
Dean: "Well, I mean, he's had some troubles...."
Doctor: "So you're aware that Sam's experiencing a full blown psychotic episode."
Dean: "Psychotic?! Come on, it's not like the guy's freakin' Norman Bates."
- I like this exchange because it's a lot of things in one. 1)It's Dean not wanting to acknowledge how serious Sam's problems are. 2)It's about the social stigma that comes with mental illness, and 3)it's about loaded words and how they mean different things to different people. Just two episodes ago, Dean used the word "psychotic" to mean "like Norman Bates", and Sam heard it as "like you" and technically they are both correct.
Doctor: "Sure he isn't. We need to determine whether his state was brought on by the insomnia or whether the insomnia is a symptom of his condition, you understand? So that we can figure out how to treat him."
Dean: "Well, all I can say is that the sleep thing is kind of new."
- I like how Dean actually is forth coming with information. He realizes that he is out of his depth and that the hospital is actually just trying to help - so he tells them what he can without getting admitted himself.
- Okay, avoiding a lengthy story from my own life here..."whether his state was brought on by the insomnia or whether the insomnia is a symptom of his condition" - I still question this about a friend of mine who once went without sleep for three days to mostly hilarious, at the time, results. And I say "at the time" because a month later he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and now I'm not so sure that the hilarious results of his lack of sleep were actually even due to the lack of sleep or were even actually hilarious.
Hallucifer: "Ah, Mr. Helpless! Pull up a six pack, buddy."
- The fact that Hallucifer calls Dean "Mr. Helpless" is just...well, kind of heartbreaking. Because again, this is SAM. Sam knows Dean, and Sam knows the situation...and yeah, Mr. Helpless is both accurate and horribly cruel.
Dean: "Sam, I'm going to find you help."
*Sam sighs*
Hallucifer: "Now that sounded a little cynical"
- Again, Hallucifer is Sam, this is him critiquing himself...and Sam is our optimist remember? So, yeah, Sam the optimist is no longer an optimist. :(
Sam: "I don't think there's help out there Dean."
Dean: "You don't know that."
Sam: "It's all snake oil, last faith healer we hooked up with had a reaper on a leash, remember?"
- Yeah, but it worked! Hahaha, oh man, I have no morals.
Sam: "I'm just saying...don't do this to yourself."
- Don't get your hopes up. Don't be an optimist. You'll only be crushed in the end. Oh Sammy.
Dean: "Sam, if I don't find something-"
Sam: "Then I'll die."
Hallucifer: "Oh you're upsetting me!"
- For all Sam's talk about being too tired to care, there is PART of him that does.
Sam: "Dean, we knew this was coming. When you put my soul back, Cas warned you about all the crap it would-"
Dean: "Screw Cas! Quit being Dolly frickin' Yoda about this, okay! Get pissed!"
Sam: "I'm too tired. This is what happens when you throw a soul into Lucifer's dog bowl. I mean, you think there's just going to be some cure out there?"
Hallucifer: "Oh, you guys are having a moment!"
- At least this time Sam should go to heaven.
- But you see what's going on here? Sam's not an optimist anymore, so DEAN is. This is why I love Supernatural - the brothers are different people, but they are always Yin and Yang to each other... which, I guess, is what makes them soulmates.
Hallucifer: "Narcisstic personality disorder - okay, now this one I could have... sets unrealistic goals, check. But trouble keeping healthy relationships? Not so sure about that, thoughts?"
- I just love that Sam's broken brain is diagnosing the devil. :P
Halluci-Doctor: "Sam, how are we feeling today? Rib pain, scale of 1 to 10?"
[Sam answers]
Halluci-Doctor: "You don't have to lie, Sam."
Sam: "I'm - I'm not."
- I just love the way Jared delivers this line. Sam's so wounded that he's being accused of lying. He's like a kicked puppy.
Halluci-Doctor: "You've suffered terrible agony, I mean a ten must be astronomical."
Sam: "Yeah, I guess I have a high threshold."
- This happens to me. Though, sometimes it's worked to my benefit. Back in elementary school when the boys used to give the girls "Indian rope burns" to get them to scream, they never bothered with me because I never gave them the satisfaction of a reaction, even though it did hurt. Also, it's now occurring to me how twisted child psychology is. Children are demons, you guys.
Halluci-Doctor: "Yeah, but the worst is knowing that there's always a new ten."
Sam: "What are you talking about?"
Halluci-Doctor: "Well, I'm talking about the truly elegant torture I have prepared for you today..." *morphs into Lucifer* "...Sam"
- Awesome. And yet more horrible insight into the cage - and how it ALWAYS got worse and that Sam never expected any reprieve ever.
Hallucifer: "Sam, you, me, locked ward. Is it me or is this just like the cage?"
- Yeah, probably not ACTUALLY the best place for Sam.
Gross maggot sandwich.
How did Bobby know about Mackey? Mackey had to have called Bobby before he died to tell him about Emmanuel.
Hallucifer and the megaphone... sometimes I can hear high pitched noises that other people can't. From my experience, it DOES make you look crazy if you react too visibly to them. :P Thankfully, they aren't auditory hallucinations. One time, it was low noises, and they DID keep me awake - and my mother couldn't hear them and I was being driven insane. Eventually, I managed to fall asleep...we found out the next day that a freight train had derailed about 3-4 blocks away and I guess a train engine had been idling or something while they fixed the problem. Anyway, I was happy that I wasn't crazy.
Dean: "I'd think twice - or don't you know that your boss issued a hands off memo."
Demon: "Hahaha, please, what have you done for him lately? Roman's head on a plate? No? Whatever Emmanuel is, Crowley's going to want him - a lot more than he wants you these days, so."
- And Emmanuel trumps Winchesters in the "what Crowley wants" game. I wonder what Crowley wanted to do with Emmanuel. It's not like he knew it was Cas.
CAS!
Cas: "I'm Emmanuel"
Dean: "Dean. I'm... Dean."
- I kind of do wish I could do these reviews in gif-form sometimes, because there's this look Jensen does when Dean introduces himself that basically says, "Dean, I'm *the righteous man you raised from perdition we fought side-by-side against the apocalypse and won, you were my best friend and then you betrayed me, and then you died and I missed you so much, but I don't know how to say any of this, besides to say that I'm...* Dean."
Dean: "Thank you for protecting my wife."
Cas: "Your wife, right."
- Emmanuel's wife, who we never see again. Did they ever consummate the marriage? Who marries a guy within a month or so of finding them naked wandering around the woods? Unless she WAS sent by god and not what she appeared to be. Seriously though, did they have to make her his wife? Couldn't she have just been his friend?
Cas: "I saw his face. His real face."
Dean: "He was a demon."
Cas: "A demon walked the earth."
Dean: "DemonS, you don't know about-"
- Up until this point, I think part of Dean wondered if Cas was just playing some sort of game, and he was just going along with it. Like, maybe Cas just needed to lie in front of Daphne or something.
Dean: "I've heard that about...Emmanuel. That you can heal people up."
Cas: "I seem to be able to help to a certain degree. What's your issue?"
Dean: "My brother."
- It's interesting from the perspective of first-meetings. Cas is meeting Dean for the first time again, and this time Cas doesn't know anything about him. He can probably, to a degree, still see into his soul a bit (the old "you don't think you deserve to be saved" trick), but I wonder what he sees this time...a guy who battles demons, and who needs to save his brother. And Cas "meets" Sam as someone who needs to be saved. Which, is kind of ironic, because when Cas first arrived in 4x01, it was Dean he saved while Sam battled demons... it was probably Sam who prayed every night for Dean to be saved.
Sam: "None of this is real."
Hallucifer: "And yet, you know what really sucks? It doesn't really matter. Because - I won. Your madness won. I mean, look at you. It's hard to believe you were the guy that saved the world once."
- This is interesting...and I'm not sure how I can put it into words. I guess, first, it's interesting because even Hallucifer names himself for what he really is "your madness" - he's a personification of an mental-illness (or, in Sam's case, a damaged soul). Lucifer didn't win. But, knowing that Sam defeated Lucifer - that Sam WON - probably gave him strength in the cage. It probably helped him endure the torture, because through it all he had his accomplishment that he had fought the devil and the devil had been defeated. And that hasn't changed... but what is that accomplishment worth to him now? In the cage, it could help him weather the torture - no matter what Lucifer did to him, SAM was always the victor; but now he's tired and burned out, and he feels defeated. It doesn't matter that he is still the victor. He feels defeated.
Sam: "Thanks"
Orderly: "Yeah, no problem. How are you doing?"
Sam: "Ah, a little better. That girl Marin-"
Orderly: "Look, I'm not really supposed to talk about it. Let's say that unlike you, she didn't get here because of no accident"
*Hallucifer lights a lighter*
- I like that Sam's already picked up on the burns - because after he sees Marin the first time, suddenly Lucifer is playing with fire.
- Also I like that orderly (I don't believe he's possessed at this point)... I kind of have this vision of everyone in the ward really LIKING Sam. Like...Sam's only been there a short time, but they like him and feel bad for him and want him to get better.
Dean: "So, Daphne, she's your wife?"
Cas: "She found me and cared for me."
- Actually, it just occurred to me that Cas didn't say "yes" here. "She found me and cared for me" could mean anything. It could mean that she set him up with some ID and the easiest way to do that was to take him to a hospital and say that her "husband" had been in some accident and lost everything, including his memory. :P
Cas: "A few months ago, she was hiking by the river and I wandered into her path, drenched and confused and...unclothed. I had no memory. She said God wanted her to find me."
- See, really, who gets married within "a few months"...unless Daphne really was sent by God and knew what she was getting into.
Dean: "So who named you Emmanuel?"
Cas: "Bouncy baby names dot com"
Dean: "Well, it's working for you..."
- I like Dean's face here. I actually think he means it - that Emmanuel is a good name for Cas. FYI: Emmanuel means "God is with us."
Dean: "...It must be weird not knowing who you are."
Cas: "It's my life. It's a good life."
Dean: "But what if you were some kind of, I don't know, bad guy."
Cas: "I...don't feel like a bad person."
- I think Dean is testing the waters here. I don't think he believes Cas is a bad person - I think he believes that Cas made a mistake, that Cas betrayed him - but not necessarily that Cas is a bad person. But, I think he wants to test how Cas might react if Dean tells him the truth about who he is.
Sam: "And the non-doctor answer?"
Marin: "I feel like crap. I just want it to be over."
Sam: "What?"
Marin: "Everything. Go on, tell me I'm young and have everything to live for."
Sam: "Why would you believe me?"
- A lot of this season is about being suicidal, geez. Also, it's about grief and how to deal with it. We get both in Marin's storyline, whereas Sam and Dean divide the suicide and the grief between them.
- I do think that Sam gives the exact right answer here though. It might sound like he's saying that there's no argument against suicide, but what he's actually saying is that he knows that nothing he says is going to convince her not to do it, if that's what she wants to do. He's basically saying that he's not going to talk down to her about it or presume to know better than she does. But maybe I'm just projecting, because whenever I'm depressed, I don't want people to say "you shouldn't be depressed. You have a good life!" or "well, if you just fix this and this and this, maybe you wouldn't be depressed anymore!" What I want people to say is "that sucks."
Marin: "I heard you're here because the voices won't let you sleep."
Sam: "Just one, really."
Marin: "Who is it? Like Charlie Manson or the devil?"
Sam: "Kinda, yeah."
Marin: "Me too, I hear a voice."
Sam: "Is that why you set the fire?"
Marin: "Who told you that!?"
- Blew it! Best not to know too much about partially crazy people...or people who think they are crazy anyway. Mental Illness is another theme of this season...Sam, Frank, Jeffrey, Bobby...
Sam: "It's your brother..."
Marin: "Yes, it sucks, when it's your dead brother saying kill yourself to be with him, or he'll do it for you."
- This is interesting, because siblings often reflect Sam and Dean - and here we have two siblings, one is dead and one is alive, and the dead one wants to be together "kill yourself to be with [me]'. And then you have Sam who "won't leave [his] brother alone out there." Sam chose life to be with Dean, but when it comes to the Winchesters, choosing life can lead to your death. :P
Dean: "Someone did this to him."
Cas: "You're angry."
Dean: "Yeah, this dude broke my brother's head."
Cas: "He betrayed you, this dude. He was your friend?"
Dean: "Yeah, well, he's gone."
Cas: "Did you kill him? I'm sensing you kill a lot of people."
- I think Cas must be able to see Dean's soul to some degree. He KNOWS Dean kills people, yet he's relaxed and willing to travel a great distance with him in order to try to help him. He knows Dean deserves to be helped.
Dean: "Honestly, I don't know if he is dead. I just know this whole thing couldn't be messier. You know, I used to be able to just shake this stuff off, you know, whatever it was - might take me some time, but I always could. But, what Cas did, I just can't, I don't know why."
Cas: "Well, it doesn't matter why. You're not a machine Dean, you're a human..."
- I love Cas. I do. We've had three people try to give Dean advice. Bobby's advice was to find a reason, a driving force, and live for it. Frank's advice was to fake it 'til he made it, even if he never made it. Eliot Ness' advice was to stop being a "nancy" and realize that his life was better than most people's. Castiel's advice? Castiel's advice is to basically say "Feel your feelings. There is nothing wrong with them."
Cas: "Your friend's name was Cas? That's an odd name."
- Heheheh.
And enter Meg... as if this episode weren't complicated enough... he voice really annoys me in this episode. I think it's because her cadence never varies.
Dean: "He doesn't remember he's Cas"
Meg: "I know, I've been watching you for hours."
- How is this possible?
Why did Meg want Cas? She ends up basically just tagging along with the Winchester's plans, even though she doesn't care about Leviathans. I wonder what her original end-game was.
Marin: "You're worse. Your organs need sleep you know. Your hair and nails are going to fall out and your kidney's are going to shut down. I saw it in a movie. Sorry."
Sam: "You're brother...when did he pass?"
...
Marin: "How can you help me?"
Sam: "I can put your brother to rest. He's stuck here."
Marin: "For real? Like-"
Sam: "Like, he's a ghost."
- A lot of fans, after this episode aired, praised Sam for the fact that even when he was dying, he was trying to help other people. I agree. I also think though, that he NEEDED a distraction. It was either help Marin or lay in bed and listen to Lucifer yatter on at him until he eventually died. Marin was someone REAL that he could talk to, that he could focus on, instead of focusing on the depressing fact that he was not long for this world.
Cas: "This silence is very uncomfortable, is there something I should know?"
Meg: "I don't know, Dean?"
Dean: "No. Meg has that effect, awkward, you know?"
Cas: "That must be very difficult for you."
Meg: "Dean's making a joke, Emmanuel."
Cas: "Oh" *smiles*
*Dean looks over at him*
- I love this little thing - the fact that Cas doesn't (usually) smile...and this just cements how un-Cas-like Cas is at the moment for Dean.
Doctor: "Sam, how are you feeling now?"
Hallucifer: "His soul is broken, Doc, can you give him a pill?"
- I just love that line. It sums up the despair of the situation, because no pill can fix the soul.
Meg: "Oh for the love of... Sam's in there! I know you're enjoying the double-dip with your old pal-"
Dean: "You think it's that cut and dry? Really? You know what he did and you want to tell him and just hope that he takes it in stride? He could snap, he could disappear, who knows!"
Cas: "I gather we know each other."
Meg: "Just a dollop"
- I do love Meg's lines here. One would think she were a destiel shipper.
- It's interesting though that Dean IS thinking of Sam. For all he knows, he can only have Cas' help if Cas remains Emmanuel.
Cas: "You can tell me. I'll be fine."
Dean: "How do you know? You just met yourself. I've known you for years."
- I love this line too. The fact that Dean DOES know Cas better than Cas knows himself at the moment. And Dean DOESN'T know how he'll react, but he's guessing it'll be badly.
Meg: "You're an angel."
Cas: "I'm sorry is that a flirtation?"
Meg: "No, it's a species. A very powerful one."
- I do like the description of angels as a "species" - as though this isn't some supernatural thing, but a natural one. Like humans and neanderthals but on a whole different level. Now, of course, this isn't the case, but I like it nonetheless.
Cas: "Why wouldn't you tell me - being an angel, it sounds pleasant."
Dean: "It's not, trust me. It's bloody, it's corrupt, it's not pleasant."
- I'm losing my ability to put my thoughts into words. Maybe what I want to say here is that Dean is describing angels not dessilmilarly to how he describes hunting...well, minus the corrupt part, I guess.
Meg: "He would know, you used to fight together. Bestest friends, actually."
Cas: "We're friends? Am I Cas? ... I had no idea. I don't remember you, I'm sorry."
- I love how many conversations in this show are had through facial expressions alone. I read a statistic the other day about how much of human communication is actually non-verbal. If you ever go to a country (or hang out with friends) who don't speak your language, then you really understand this...but yeah, I forgot the number, but it was a very large percentage. So, yeah, I like when TV shows remember this. I also think it's especially true for males, but that might be a bias of mine. From my own experiences, men tend to communicate in action rather than words. I'll talk more about this in a minute...
Cas: "But I don't remember how."
Dean: "It's in there. I'm sure it's just like riding a bike."
Cas: "I don't know how to do that either."
- Hehe, Dean's eye-roll...really though, he should have realized that this was a sign that Cas was very much still alive and well and in there.
SMITING TIME! I love the way this sequence is done.
Dean: "Cas?"
Cas: "I remember you. I remember everything....What I did. What I became. Why didn't you tell me?"
Dean: "Because Sam's dying in there."
Cas: "Because of me. Everything. All these people. I shouldn't be here."
- And Dean was right, Cas found out and he wanted to take off.
- Also, Misha immediately drops into his "Cas voice" once Cas gets his memories back.
- It's also interesting that Cas's reaction is to get angry with Dean. Cas is SORRY for what he did to Dean, yet he still expresses this with anger. I think one of the major hurdles to Dean and Cas' relationship is the fact that BOTH of them express themselves through anger more often than not, even though they aren't actually angry. The problem is that both of them interpret anger as anger.... I could get more pop-psychology and say that I actually think this is a problem with men in our society in general - they're basically told their whole lives that any extreme emotion other than anger is feminine and therefore wrong...and so suddenly every extreme emotion is expressed in the form of anger. This is why misogyny hurts everyone.
Orderly: "Don't be freaked, I've seen this help a lot of people."
Sam: "My brother-"
- Sam's on his last legs and it's all instinct at this point - and his instinct is and will always be "my brother..."
Dean: "If you remember, then you know you did the best you could at the time!"
Cas: "Don't defend me. Do you have any idea the death toll in heaven? On earth? We didn't part friends, Dean."
- I love this, because Cas is angry at Dean for defending him - he's angry at Dean for NOT being angry at him, for seemingly forgiving him when Cas hasn't forgiven himself.
Dean: "So what?"
Cas: "I deserved to die. Now I can't possibly fix it, so why did I even walk out of that river."
Dean: "Maybe to fix it. Wait-"
*hands over trench coat*
- Firstly, I love how Cas basically encapsulates the idea that it's actually much harder to fix your sins than to die for them. Sam, could do both, but Cas can't. Dying would have been the easy way out, and so, I'd argue that Cas DIDN'T deserve to die - he deserved to live, because that's actually the greater punishment for him. Dean says it in a much nicer way though.
- Secondly, I know that Jensen and Misha rewrote this scene on the day because they couldn't stand the original dialogue. The original script eventually did make it onto the internet, and all I can say is that I wholeheartedly agree with them. The dialogue, although good drama, was not realistic...and it comes back to what I was saying before. A lot of human communication is conscious and unconscious nonverbal communication...it's stuff we say through facial expression and action. And, in my experience, men especially tend to communicate through action. Dean is also very much a man of action, not words. Him simply handing over the trench coat says enough.
Cas: "I should never have broken your wall, Sam. I'm hear to make it right."
*Cas tries to heal Sam*
Sam: "You're not real."
Cas: "Oh Sam, I'm so sorry."
- I love that for all Cas and Sam's weird angry-tension-filled history, they both do love each other. You can tell by the way Sam never gives up on Cas in 7x01, even though Cas hurt him...and you can tell by the way Cas says the above line.
Dean: "What do you mean you can't?"
Cas: "I mean there's nothing left to rebuild."
Dean: "Why not?"
Cas: "Because it crumbled. The pieces got crushed to dust by whatever is happening inside his head."
- The wall was always a metaphor, and Cas is still speaking in metaphor. Whatever Death did, Cas needed a remnant of it to be left in order to understand how to do it again. There's nothing of it left now.
Dean: "So, you're saying there's nothing. He's going to be like this until his candle blows out."
- I think Cas DID heal Sam's physical symptoms...the nails, hair, and kidneys...but he can't stop the madness that comes with prologued insomnia.
Cas: "I'm sorry, this isn't a problem I can make disappear. You know that."
*Cas looks at Sam and gets an idea*
Cas: "But I may be able to shift it."
Dean: "Shift-"
Cas: "Yeah, it would get Sam back on his feet."
*Sam looks terrified*
- First, I love how Cas cuts Dean off.
- Second, I love how Sam looks absolutely terrified of Cas as Cas sits down on the bed.
- Third, I want to know what this "shift" is exactly - but I'll get into that in a moment.
Cas: "It's better this way. I'll be fine."
- Again, I'm always interested in parting words. These are Cas' possible last words to Dean. Giving the most amount of information he can in as few words as possible.
Cas: "Now, Sam, this may hurt, and if I can't tell you again, I'm sorry I ever did this to you."
- And Cas' possible last words to Sam. And I do count them as last words, because Cas himself seems doubtful that he'll be able to tell Sam after he does what he does.
*Red Light Transfer Thing*
- So, I want to know what this is! I want to know what exactly Cas does. It's not to do with the soul, because you can't severe the soul, nor repair it. Sam's soul will ALWAYS be damaged. Cas can't repair that. So, what does Cas do? It's something physical. You can also tell that because of the red light...when Cas looked for Sam's soul when he didn't have one, Sam glowed red. Yet, when Cas looked at someone's soul when they DID have one, they glowed blue. So, in my mind, red glowy things are for physical changes.
In my mind, the only thing that works is a weird sort of psychic connection. Cas can't take away the damaged bit of Sam's soul, but he can interrupt the flow of information from it to the brain. It's the information from the damaged bit of his soul that is making Sam's brain break down. When death put up the wall, he basically walled Sam's mind from accessing the information from that part of the soul - or the memories that might trigger a connection with that part of the soul. When Cas tore down the wall, Sam got the memories first (Soulless!Sam and Hell!Sam) and the memories are what put him back in touch with the damaged bit of his soul and led to the hallucinations and Hallucifer as the personification of the damage.
So, yeah, my personal headcanon is that Cas interrupted that flow of information. Sam still has the memories, but whenever the damaged bit of his soul tries to talk to Sam's brain - instead it gets sent to Cas' "brain" (do angels have brains?). So, Sam and Cas essentially have a partial-psychic link that only flows one way. Cas gets constantly gets fed information from the most damaged part of Sam.
Dean: "Sam!"
Sam: "Dean!"
Dean: "Sam!"
Sam: "Cas? Cas is that you?"
- It must be so jarring to Sam that the first time he sees Cas, he's "coming to" on a hospital bed and Cas is just there, sitting beside him, where Hallucifer was a moment before. Cas probably thinks he's still hallucinating.
- I had to include those "Sam!" and "Dean!"s because...well, it's always hilarious and awesome when they do that.
And this is where Sam's damaged soul is too much for an angel to deal with.
Sam: "I don't know, I mean we can't just leave him!"
Dean: "Well, we can't bring him with us! Everything on the planet is out for us. If word gets out, we can't protect him, not really. This is safer. Every demon that knows about Cas is dead."
Sam: "Not every one."
- I like the fact that Sam thinks they should kill Meg. But then, they need someone to watch Cas...someone who knows what he is and what the stakes are.
Sam: "Look, Dean, this whole enemy of my enemy is my friend thing feels kind of like a demon deal."
Dean: "It's not a deal, it's..."
Sam: "It's what?"
Dean: "Mutually assured destruction. Look, I get it, she's not our friend. we don't even have friends. All our friends are dead."
- I didn't catch the Cold War reference until now. Nicely done. Also, now that Sam's on his feet again, we see that Dean has returned to his role as our Winchester pessimist :P
- Also, "all our friends are dead" - it makes me wonder if Dean has written catatonic Cas off already. He just got his friend back and then he lost him... in return for his brother, but still.
I wonder what they did with all the dead bodies, that the head doctor guy is just like: "That's odd, half my staff disappeared. Ah well, I guess I'll hire this convenient new applicant."
And then I imagine Dean putting on a soft rock station and Sam sleeping for hours and hours, and Dean just drives, and all his turns are gentle, and when he has to stop for gas, he does everything as quietly as possible.
And there you go. Long rewatch for an important episode. I'm sure I missed something, or explained myself ineloquently at some points...but hey, hopefully you forgive me. :)
See, they didn't even have to show Out with the Old in the THEN, which to me makes it a pretty odd episode to stick between Repo Man and Born-Again... I mean, it tells us that Dean knows about the sleeping thing, and it sets up the fact that he hasn't been sleeping for a while...but really, we could have assumed both those things based on the dialogue in the opening of Born-Again anyway...so yeah, definitely the previous episode was one of very little substance.
This part at the beginning is filmed not too far from me. It's a really spooky area of town with a lot of art studios. Hence the abundance of graffiti. I was actually there the night they were filming this, but it's not the best neck of the woods and it was a school night - so even though they told me they were going to be doing an exciting car stunt, I wandered on home at a respectable hour.
Dealer: "Hold up, wait, hold up - you want to knock out. I can knock you out."
- I wonder what Sam paid with. :P
Also, they never really explain how Sam ended up running around the neighbourhood. I mean, they explain that him and Dean had been drinking until the passed out, even though Sam never passed out - so we know that Dean is unconscious somewhere, but that's it. I wonder what made Sam venture out into the city.
Hallucifer: "Pills? You do get that you're just bringing free drugs to the party, right?"
- This is why I don't do drugs.
Hallucifer: "Hey, you always wanted to be normal, Sam! If you are, you'll be dead in a week!"
- Again, I just wanted to reiterate that Hallucifer isn't Lucifer, he's a manifestation of part of Sam's tortured soul. So, this is actually Sam making fun of himself for having an unattainable dream, or being careful what he wishes for, or something. Also, it's kind of ironic that Sam is going to die a "normal" death because of a supernatural affliction.
Dean: "He was in a car crash, why the hell can't I see him?"
Doctor: "You're Sam Smith's brother."
- Woe betide any man who gets between Dean Winchester and his brother.
Doctor: "Sam was admitted. He was treated for a broken rib and lacerations."
Dean: "Okay, that's not too bad. And?"
Doctor: "And he's on our locked psychiatric floor."
Dean: "Well, I mean, he's had some troubles...."
Doctor: "So you're aware that Sam's experiencing a full blown psychotic episode."
Dean: "Psychotic?! Come on, it's not like the guy's freakin' Norman Bates."
- I like this exchange because it's a lot of things in one. 1)It's Dean not wanting to acknowledge how serious Sam's problems are. 2)It's about the social stigma that comes with mental illness, and 3)it's about loaded words and how they mean different things to different people. Just two episodes ago, Dean used the word "psychotic" to mean "like Norman Bates", and Sam heard it as "like you" and technically they are both correct.
Doctor: "Sure he isn't. We need to determine whether his state was brought on by the insomnia or whether the insomnia is a symptom of his condition, you understand? So that we can figure out how to treat him."
Dean: "Well, all I can say is that the sleep thing is kind of new."
- I like how Dean actually is forth coming with information. He realizes that he is out of his depth and that the hospital is actually just trying to help - so he tells them what he can without getting admitted himself.
- Okay, avoiding a lengthy story from my own life here..."whether his state was brought on by the insomnia or whether the insomnia is a symptom of his condition" - I still question this about a friend of mine who once went without sleep for three days to mostly hilarious, at the time, results. And I say "at the time" because a month later he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and now I'm not so sure that the hilarious results of his lack of sleep were actually even due to the lack of sleep or were even actually hilarious.
Hallucifer: "Ah, Mr. Helpless! Pull up a six pack, buddy."
- The fact that Hallucifer calls Dean "Mr. Helpless" is just...well, kind of heartbreaking. Because again, this is SAM. Sam knows Dean, and Sam knows the situation...and yeah, Mr. Helpless is both accurate and horribly cruel.
Dean: "Sam, I'm going to find you help."
*Sam sighs*
Hallucifer: "Now that sounded a little cynical"
- Again, Hallucifer is Sam, this is him critiquing himself...and Sam is our optimist remember? So, yeah, Sam the optimist is no longer an optimist. :(
Sam: "I don't think there's help out there Dean."
Dean: "You don't know that."
Sam: "It's all snake oil, last faith healer we hooked up with had a reaper on a leash, remember?"
- Yeah, but it worked! Hahaha, oh man, I have no morals.
Sam: "I'm just saying...don't do this to yourself."
- Don't get your hopes up. Don't be an optimist. You'll only be crushed in the end. Oh Sammy.
Dean: "Sam, if I don't find something-"
Sam: "Then I'll die."
Hallucifer: "Oh you're upsetting me!"
- For all Sam's talk about being too tired to care, there is PART of him that does.
Sam: "Dean, we knew this was coming. When you put my soul back, Cas warned you about all the crap it would-"
Dean: "Screw Cas! Quit being Dolly frickin' Yoda about this, okay! Get pissed!"
Sam: "I'm too tired. This is what happens when you throw a soul into Lucifer's dog bowl. I mean, you think there's just going to be some cure out there?"
Hallucifer: "Oh, you guys are having a moment!"
- At least this time Sam should go to heaven.
- But you see what's going on here? Sam's not an optimist anymore, so DEAN is. This is why I love Supernatural - the brothers are different people, but they are always Yin and Yang to each other... which, I guess, is what makes them soulmates.
Hallucifer: "Narcisstic personality disorder - okay, now this one I could have... sets unrealistic goals, check. But trouble keeping healthy relationships? Not so sure about that, thoughts?"
- I just love that Sam's broken brain is diagnosing the devil. :P
Halluci-Doctor: "Sam, how are we feeling today? Rib pain, scale of 1 to 10?"
[Sam answers]
Halluci-Doctor: "You don't have to lie, Sam."
Sam: "I'm - I'm not."
- I just love the way Jared delivers this line. Sam's so wounded that he's being accused of lying. He's like a kicked puppy.
Halluci-Doctor: "You've suffered terrible agony, I mean a ten must be astronomical."
Sam: "Yeah, I guess I have a high threshold."
- This happens to me. Though, sometimes it's worked to my benefit. Back in elementary school when the boys used to give the girls "Indian rope burns" to get them to scream, they never bothered with me because I never gave them the satisfaction of a reaction, even though it did hurt. Also, it's now occurring to me how twisted child psychology is. Children are demons, you guys.
Halluci-Doctor: "Yeah, but the worst is knowing that there's always a new ten."
Sam: "What are you talking about?"
Halluci-Doctor: "Well, I'm talking about the truly elegant torture I have prepared for you today..." *morphs into Lucifer* "...Sam"
- Awesome. And yet more horrible insight into the cage - and how it ALWAYS got worse and that Sam never expected any reprieve ever.
Hallucifer: "Sam, you, me, locked ward. Is it me or is this just like the cage?"
- Yeah, probably not ACTUALLY the best place for Sam.
Gross maggot sandwich.
How did Bobby know about Mackey? Mackey had to have called Bobby before he died to tell him about Emmanuel.
Hallucifer and the megaphone... sometimes I can hear high pitched noises that other people can't. From my experience, it DOES make you look crazy if you react too visibly to them. :P Thankfully, they aren't auditory hallucinations. One time, it was low noises, and they DID keep me awake - and my mother couldn't hear them and I was being driven insane. Eventually, I managed to fall asleep...we found out the next day that a freight train had derailed about 3-4 blocks away and I guess a train engine had been idling or something while they fixed the problem. Anyway, I was happy that I wasn't crazy.
Dean: "I'd think twice - or don't you know that your boss issued a hands off memo."
Demon: "Hahaha, please, what have you done for him lately? Roman's head on a plate? No? Whatever Emmanuel is, Crowley's going to want him - a lot more than he wants you these days, so."
- And Emmanuel trumps Winchesters in the "what Crowley wants" game. I wonder what Crowley wanted to do with Emmanuel. It's not like he knew it was Cas.
CAS!
Cas: "I'm Emmanuel"
Dean: "Dean. I'm... Dean."
- I kind of do wish I could do these reviews in gif-form sometimes, because there's this look Jensen does when Dean introduces himself that basically says, "Dean, I'm *the righteous man you raised from perdition we fought side-by-side against the apocalypse and won, you were my best friend and then you betrayed me, and then you died and I missed you so much, but I don't know how to say any of this, besides to say that I'm...* Dean."
Dean: "Thank you for protecting my wife."
Cas: "Your wife, right."
- Emmanuel's wife, who we never see again. Did they ever consummate the marriage? Who marries a guy within a month or so of finding them naked wandering around the woods? Unless she WAS sent by god and not what she appeared to be. Seriously though, did they have to make her his wife? Couldn't she have just been his friend?
Cas: "I saw his face. His real face."
Dean: "He was a demon."
Cas: "A demon walked the earth."
Dean: "DemonS, you don't know about-"
- Up until this point, I think part of Dean wondered if Cas was just playing some sort of game, and he was just going along with it. Like, maybe Cas just needed to lie in front of Daphne or something.
Dean: "I've heard that about...Emmanuel. That you can heal people up."
Cas: "I seem to be able to help to a certain degree. What's your issue?"
Dean: "My brother."
- It's interesting from the perspective of first-meetings. Cas is meeting Dean for the first time again, and this time Cas doesn't know anything about him. He can probably, to a degree, still see into his soul a bit (the old "you don't think you deserve to be saved" trick), but I wonder what he sees this time...a guy who battles demons, and who needs to save his brother. And Cas "meets" Sam as someone who needs to be saved. Which, is kind of ironic, because when Cas first arrived in 4x01, it was Dean he saved while Sam battled demons... it was probably Sam who prayed every night for Dean to be saved.
Sam: "None of this is real."
Hallucifer: "And yet, you know what really sucks? It doesn't really matter. Because - I won. Your madness won. I mean, look at you. It's hard to believe you were the guy that saved the world once."
- This is interesting...and I'm not sure how I can put it into words. I guess, first, it's interesting because even Hallucifer names himself for what he really is "your madness" - he's a personification of an mental-illness (or, in Sam's case, a damaged soul). Lucifer didn't win. But, knowing that Sam defeated Lucifer - that Sam WON - probably gave him strength in the cage. It probably helped him endure the torture, because through it all he had his accomplishment that he had fought the devil and the devil had been defeated. And that hasn't changed... but what is that accomplishment worth to him now? In the cage, it could help him weather the torture - no matter what Lucifer did to him, SAM was always the victor; but now he's tired and burned out, and he feels defeated. It doesn't matter that he is still the victor. He feels defeated.
Sam: "Thanks"
Orderly: "Yeah, no problem. How are you doing?"
Sam: "Ah, a little better. That girl Marin-"
Orderly: "Look, I'm not really supposed to talk about it. Let's say that unlike you, she didn't get here because of no accident"
*Hallucifer lights a lighter*
- I like that Sam's already picked up on the burns - because after he sees Marin the first time, suddenly Lucifer is playing with fire.
- Also I like that orderly (I don't believe he's possessed at this point)... I kind of have this vision of everyone in the ward really LIKING Sam. Like...Sam's only been there a short time, but they like him and feel bad for him and want him to get better.
Dean: "So, Daphne, she's your wife?"
Cas: "She found me and cared for me."
- Actually, it just occurred to me that Cas didn't say "yes" here. "She found me and cared for me" could mean anything. It could mean that she set him up with some ID and the easiest way to do that was to take him to a hospital and say that her "husband" had been in some accident and lost everything, including his memory. :P
Cas: "A few months ago, she was hiking by the river and I wandered into her path, drenched and confused and...unclothed. I had no memory. She said God wanted her to find me."
- See, really, who gets married within "a few months"...unless Daphne really was sent by God and knew what she was getting into.
Dean: "So who named you Emmanuel?"
Cas: "Bouncy baby names dot com"
Dean: "Well, it's working for you..."
- I like Dean's face here. I actually think he means it - that Emmanuel is a good name for Cas. FYI: Emmanuel means "God is with us."
Dean: "...It must be weird not knowing who you are."
Cas: "It's my life. It's a good life."
Dean: "But what if you were some kind of, I don't know, bad guy."
Cas: "I...don't feel like a bad person."
- I think Dean is testing the waters here. I don't think he believes Cas is a bad person - I think he believes that Cas made a mistake, that Cas betrayed him - but not necessarily that Cas is a bad person. But, I think he wants to test how Cas might react if Dean tells him the truth about who he is.
Sam: "And the non-doctor answer?"
Marin: "I feel like crap. I just want it to be over."
Sam: "What?"
Marin: "Everything. Go on, tell me I'm young and have everything to live for."
Sam: "Why would you believe me?"
- A lot of this season is about being suicidal, geez. Also, it's about grief and how to deal with it. We get both in Marin's storyline, whereas Sam and Dean divide the suicide and the grief between them.
- I do think that Sam gives the exact right answer here though. It might sound like he's saying that there's no argument against suicide, but what he's actually saying is that he knows that nothing he says is going to convince her not to do it, if that's what she wants to do. He's basically saying that he's not going to talk down to her about it or presume to know better than she does. But maybe I'm just projecting, because whenever I'm depressed, I don't want people to say "you shouldn't be depressed. You have a good life!" or "well, if you just fix this and this and this, maybe you wouldn't be depressed anymore!" What I want people to say is "that sucks."
Marin: "I heard you're here because the voices won't let you sleep."
Sam: "Just one, really."
Marin: "Who is it? Like Charlie Manson or the devil?"
Sam: "Kinda, yeah."
Marin: "Me too, I hear a voice."
Sam: "Is that why you set the fire?"
Marin: "Who told you that!?"
- Blew it! Best not to know too much about partially crazy people...or people who think they are crazy anyway. Mental Illness is another theme of this season...Sam, Frank, Jeffrey, Bobby...
Sam: "It's your brother..."
Marin: "Yes, it sucks, when it's your dead brother saying kill yourself to be with him, or he'll do it for you."
- This is interesting, because siblings often reflect Sam and Dean - and here we have two siblings, one is dead and one is alive, and the dead one wants to be together "kill yourself to be with [me]'. And then you have Sam who "won't leave [his] brother alone out there." Sam chose life to be with Dean, but when it comes to the Winchesters, choosing life can lead to your death. :P
Dean: "Someone did this to him."
Cas: "You're angry."
Dean: "Yeah, this dude broke my brother's head."
Cas: "He betrayed you, this dude. He was your friend?"
Dean: "Yeah, well, he's gone."
Cas: "Did you kill him? I'm sensing you kill a lot of people."
- I think Cas must be able to see Dean's soul to some degree. He KNOWS Dean kills people, yet he's relaxed and willing to travel a great distance with him in order to try to help him. He knows Dean deserves to be helped.
Dean: "Honestly, I don't know if he is dead. I just know this whole thing couldn't be messier. You know, I used to be able to just shake this stuff off, you know, whatever it was - might take me some time, but I always could. But, what Cas did, I just can't, I don't know why."
Cas: "Well, it doesn't matter why. You're not a machine Dean, you're a human..."
- I love Cas. I do. We've had three people try to give Dean advice. Bobby's advice was to find a reason, a driving force, and live for it. Frank's advice was to fake it 'til he made it, even if he never made it. Eliot Ness' advice was to stop being a "nancy" and realize that his life was better than most people's. Castiel's advice? Castiel's advice is to basically say "Feel your feelings. There is nothing wrong with them."
Cas: "Your friend's name was Cas? That's an odd name."
- Heheheh.
And enter Meg... as if this episode weren't complicated enough... he voice really annoys me in this episode. I think it's because her cadence never varies.
Dean: "He doesn't remember he's Cas"
Meg: "I know, I've been watching you for hours."
- How is this possible?
Why did Meg want Cas? She ends up basically just tagging along with the Winchester's plans, even though she doesn't care about Leviathans. I wonder what her original end-game was.
Marin: "You're worse. Your organs need sleep you know. Your hair and nails are going to fall out and your kidney's are going to shut down. I saw it in a movie. Sorry."
Sam: "You're brother...when did he pass?"
...
Marin: "How can you help me?"
Sam: "I can put your brother to rest. He's stuck here."
Marin: "For real? Like-"
Sam: "Like, he's a ghost."
- A lot of fans, after this episode aired, praised Sam for the fact that even when he was dying, he was trying to help other people. I agree. I also think though, that he NEEDED a distraction. It was either help Marin or lay in bed and listen to Lucifer yatter on at him until he eventually died. Marin was someone REAL that he could talk to, that he could focus on, instead of focusing on the depressing fact that he was not long for this world.
Cas: "This silence is very uncomfortable, is there something I should know?"
Meg: "I don't know, Dean?"
Dean: "No. Meg has that effect, awkward, you know?"
Cas: "That must be very difficult for you."
Meg: "Dean's making a joke, Emmanuel."
Cas: "Oh" *smiles*
*Dean looks over at him*
- I love this little thing - the fact that Cas doesn't (usually) smile...and this just cements how un-Cas-like Cas is at the moment for Dean.
Doctor: "Sam, how are you feeling now?"
Hallucifer: "His soul is broken, Doc, can you give him a pill?"
- I just love that line. It sums up the despair of the situation, because no pill can fix the soul.
Meg: "Oh for the love of... Sam's in there! I know you're enjoying the double-dip with your old pal-"
Dean: "You think it's that cut and dry? Really? You know what he did and you want to tell him and just hope that he takes it in stride? He could snap, he could disappear, who knows!"
Cas: "I gather we know each other."
Meg: "Just a dollop"
- I do love Meg's lines here. One would think she were a destiel shipper.
- It's interesting though that Dean IS thinking of Sam. For all he knows, he can only have Cas' help if Cas remains Emmanuel.
Cas: "You can tell me. I'll be fine."
Dean: "How do you know? You just met yourself. I've known you for years."
- I love this line too. The fact that Dean DOES know Cas better than Cas knows himself at the moment. And Dean DOESN'T know how he'll react, but he's guessing it'll be badly.
Meg: "You're an angel."
Cas: "I'm sorry is that a flirtation?"
Meg: "No, it's a species. A very powerful one."
- I do like the description of angels as a "species" - as though this isn't some supernatural thing, but a natural one. Like humans and neanderthals but on a whole different level. Now, of course, this isn't the case, but I like it nonetheless.
Cas: "Why wouldn't you tell me - being an angel, it sounds pleasant."
Dean: "It's not, trust me. It's bloody, it's corrupt, it's not pleasant."
- I'm losing my ability to put my thoughts into words. Maybe what I want to say here is that Dean is describing angels not dessilmilarly to how he describes hunting...well, minus the corrupt part, I guess.
Meg: "He would know, you used to fight together. Bestest friends, actually."
Cas: "We're friends? Am I Cas? ... I had no idea. I don't remember you, I'm sorry."
- I love how many conversations in this show are had through facial expressions alone. I read a statistic the other day about how much of human communication is actually non-verbal. If you ever go to a country (or hang out with friends) who don't speak your language, then you really understand this...but yeah, I forgot the number, but it was a very large percentage. So, yeah, I like when TV shows remember this. I also think it's especially true for males, but that might be a bias of mine. From my own experiences, men tend to communicate in action rather than words. I'll talk more about this in a minute...
Cas: "But I don't remember how."
Dean: "It's in there. I'm sure it's just like riding a bike."
Cas: "I don't know how to do that either."
- Hehe, Dean's eye-roll...really though, he should have realized that this was a sign that Cas was very much still alive and well and in there.
SMITING TIME! I love the way this sequence is done.
Dean: "Cas?"
Cas: "I remember you. I remember everything....What I did. What I became. Why didn't you tell me?"
Dean: "Because Sam's dying in there."
Cas: "Because of me. Everything. All these people. I shouldn't be here."
- And Dean was right, Cas found out and he wanted to take off.
- Also, Misha immediately drops into his "Cas voice" once Cas gets his memories back.
- It's also interesting that Cas's reaction is to get angry with Dean. Cas is SORRY for what he did to Dean, yet he still expresses this with anger. I think one of the major hurdles to Dean and Cas' relationship is the fact that BOTH of them express themselves through anger more often than not, even though they aren't actually angry. The problem is that both of them interpret anger as anger.... I could get more pop-psychology and say that I actually think this is a problem with men in our society in general - they're basically told their whole lives that any extreme emotion other than anger is feminine and therefore wrong...and so suddenly every extreme emotion is expressed in the form of anger. This is why misogyny hurts everyone.
Orderly: "Don't be freaked, I've seen this help a lot of people."
Sam: "My brother-"
- Sam's on his last legs and it's all instinct at this point - and his instinct is and will always be "my brother..."
Dean: "If you remember, then you know you did the best you could at the time!"
Cas: "Don't defend me. Do you have any idea the death toll in heaven? On earth? We didn't part friends, Dean."
- I love this, because Cas is angry at Dean for defending him - he's angry at Dean for NOT being angry at him, for seemingly forgiving him when Cas hasn't forgiven himself.
Dean: "So what?"
Cas: "I deserved to die. Now I can't possibly fix it, so why did I even walk out of that river."
Dean: "Maybe to fix it. Wait-"
*hands over trench coat*
- Firstly, I love how Cas basically encapsulates the idea that it's actually much harder to fix your sins than to die for them. Sam, could do both, but Cas can't. Dying would have been the easy way out, and so, I'd argue that Cas DIDN'T deserve to die - he deserved to live, because that's actually the greater punishment for him. Dean says it in a much nicer way though.
- Secondly, I know that Jensen and Misha rewrote this scene on the day because they couldn't stand the original dialogue. The original script eventually did make it onto the internet, and all I can say is that I wholeheartedly agree with them. The dialogue, although good drama, was not realistic...and it comes back to what I was saying before. A lot of human communication is conscious and unconscious nonverbal communication...it's stuff we say through facial expression and action. And, in my experience, men especially tend to communicate through action. Dean is also very much a man of action, not words. Him simply handing over the trench coat says enough.
Cas: "I should never have broken your wall, Sam. I'm hear to make it right."
*Cas tries to heal Sam*
Sam: "You're not real."
Cas: "Oh Sam, I'm so sorry."
- I love that for all Cas and Sam's weird angry-tension-filled history, they both do love each other. You can tell by the way Sam never gives up on Cas in 7x01, even though Cas hurt him...and you can tell by the way Cas says the above line.
Dean: "What do you mean you can't?"
Cas: "I mean there's nothing left to rebuild."
Dean: "Why not?"
Cas: "Because it crumbled. The pieces got crushed to dust by whatever is happening inside his head."
- The wall was always a metaphor, and Cas is still speaking in metaphor. Whatever Death did, Cas needed a remnant of it to be left in order to understand how to do it again. There's nothing of it left now.
Dean: "So, you're saying there's nothing. He's going to be like this until his candle blows out."
- I think Cas DID heal Sam's physical symptoms...the nails, hair, and kidneys...but he can't stop the madness that comes with prologued insomnia.
Cas: "I'm sorry, this isn't a problem I can make disappear. You know that."
*Cas looks at Sam and gets an idea*
Cas: "But I may be able to shift it."
Dean: "Shift-"
Cas: "Yeah, it would get Sam back on his feet."
*Sam looks terrified*
- First, I love how Cas cuts Dean off.
- Second, I love how Sam looks absolutely terrified of Cas as Cas sits down on the bed.
- Third, I want to know what this "shift" is exactly - but I'll get into that in a moment.
Cas: "It's better this way. I'll be fine."
- Again, I'm always interested in parting words. These are Cas' possible last words to Dean. Giving the most amount of information he can in as few words as possible.
Cas: "Now, Sam, this may hurt, and if I can't tell you again, I'm sorry I ever did this to you."
- And Cas' possible last words to Sam. And I do count them as last words, because Cas himself seems doubtful that he'll be able to tell Sam after he does what he does.
*Red Light Transfer Thing*
- So, I want to know what this is! I want to know what exactly Cas does. It's not to do with the soul, because you can't severe the soul, nor repair it. Sam's soul will ALWAYS be damaged. Cas can't repair that. So, what does Cas do? It's something physical. You can also tell that because of the red light...when Cas looked for Sam's soul when he didn't have one, Sam glowed red. Yet, when Cas looked at someone's soul when they DID have one, they glowed blue. So, in my mind, red glowy things are for physical changes.
In my mind, the only thing that works is a weird sort of psychic connection. Cas can't take away the damaged bit of Sam's soul, but he can interrupt the flow of information from it to the brain. It's the information from the damaged bit of his soul that is making Sam's brain break down. When death put up the wall, he basically walled Sam's mind from accessing the information from that part of the soul - or the memories that might trigger a connection with that part of the soul. When Cas tore down the wall, Sam got the memories first (Soulless!Sam and Hell!Sam) and the memories are what put him back in touch with the damaged bit of his soul and led to the hallucinations and Hallucifer as the personification of the damage.
So, yeah, my personal headcanon is that Cas interrupted that flow of information. Sam still has the memories, but whenever the damaged bit of his soul tries to talk to Sam's brain - instead it gets sent to Cas' "brain" (do angels have brains?). So, Sam and Cas essentially have a partial-psychic link that only flows one way. Cas gets constantly gets fed information from the most damaged part of Sam.
Dean: "Sam!"
Sam: "Dean!"
Dean: "Sam!"
Sam: "Cas? Cas is that you?"
- It must be so jarring to Sam that the first time he sees Cas, he's "coming to" on a hospital bed and Cas is just there, sitting beside him, where Hallucifer was a moment before. Cas probably thinks he's still hallucinating.
- I had to include those "Sam!" and "Dean!"s because...well, it's always hilarious and awesome when they do that.
And this is where Sam's damaged soul is too much for an angel to deal with.
Sam: "I don't know, I mean we can't just leave him!"
Dean: "Well, we can't bring him with us! Everything on the planet is out for us. If word gets out, we can't protect him, not really. This is safer. Every demon that knows about Cas is dead."
Sam: "Not every one."
- I like the fact that Sam thinks they should kill Meg. But then, they need someone to watch Cas...someone who knows what he is and what the stakes are.
Sam: "Look, Dean, this whole enemy of my enemy is my friend thing feels kind of like a demon deal."
Dean: "It's not a deal, it's..."
Sam: "It's what?"
Dean: "Mutually assured destruction. Look, I get it, she's not our friend. we don't even have friends. All our friends are dead."
- I didn't catch the Cold War reference until now. Nicely done. Also, now that Sam's on his feet again, we see that Dean has returned to his role as our Winchester pessimist :P
- Also, "all our friends are dead" - it makes me wonder if Dean has written catatonic Cas off already. He just got his friend back and then he lost him... in return for his brother, but still.
I wonder what they did with all the dead bodies, that the head doctor guy is just like: "That's odd, half my staff disappeared. Ah well, I guess I'll hire this convenient new applicant."
And then I imagine Dean putting on a soft rock station and Sam sleeping for hours and hours, and Dean just drives, and all his turns are gentle, and when he has to stop for gas, he does everything as quietly as possible.
And there you go. Long rewatch for an important episode. I'm sure I missed something, or explained myself ineloquently at some points...but hey, hopefully you forgive me. :)