4.10
Um. That was awkward. In general. I did like a few things but I often found myself pausing to go do something else, like get water or tease the brother, or watch the kids next door jumping into their pool...
Watched it with the Brother (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!) and we've both decided my main issue is the reasoning behind Anna's falling. She gave away her Grace (Jesus. Christ. More on this later) because she wanted to "feel"? Isn't Castiel confused by human antics? Doesn't he like Dean? Don't you need a certain level of involvement and emotionality to like someone? Isn't Uriel angry and spiteful? Wasn't he taking an amount of pleasure from punching Dean? You need to be able to "feel" in order to register those kinds of emotions. Anna wanted chocolate cake, she wanted the physicality of being human, we have reasons to believe that such a seemingly devoted girl would have been a virgin until she married and all that, so it stands to reason that she slept with Dean because she wanted to have sex before either biting it or getting her Grace back... Or it does to me, anyway. In fact it would explain why Dean was being so careful and gentle and overly tender with her if it was indeed her first time as opposed to her last time, clearly he was her last time as well, but there could have been more fire there than what it seems to have burned.
As a side note, I didn't think the backseat of the Impala would be so roomy....
On Anna's Grace. This is what totally broke the deal for me. This sounds like something I wrote when I was ten and starting to get a taste of plotting stuff, of reasons why and ultimate goals to justify the actions of my two-characters stories. I felt it was too simple and almost silly, it falls to the Earth with you where it begets a tree (that apparently glows) then it can be ripped away from said (apparently glowing) tree and be bottled up?, I will admit that the light effect was pretty cool but it was too Galadriel for my tastes, unless you're Frodo it is not cool to walk around carrying glowing sticks around your neck. It does make sense, however, that it would be so simple to be mud-monkey-fied, just rip out you grace/kidney and your human like ::snaps fingers:: that, if your Grace is what allows you to exist in greater planes (for lack of a better word) then without it you're confined to this one, right? Now, is that what Lucifer did? I don't think so, I think Lucifer's falling was far greater, and for entirely too different reasons, unless unlike Anna he'd become human and hated instead of loved (?) and thus his demonic-ness came to be, but wouldn't he require some level of power to have become what he ultimately became? or did he turn to, say witchcraft to get his powers.... It bugs me because I seriously doubt this is the kind of questions I'll ever get answers to.
I liked Ruby here, in fact, I'm not missing KC's bite all that much. I think Genevieve is doing a great job and her Ruby is far more compelling to me because I still don't believe she's doing things out of love for Sam (though I do believe there is a fair amount of love in it) but because she has her own agenda (I'm having fun playing around with possibilities here) and she's being tremendously manipulative in order to push it forward. Her torture was deeply unsettling, mostly because this is the kind of horror that I like, the one that doesn't focus on the gore of the knife going into the skin but on the visceral response that the emotions played out get. She was being tortured pretty awfully, it WAS sexualized yes, but I took that to be meant to get us to identify with her vulnerability, her powerlessness, while at the same time giving us the sight of how much Alastair (sp?) was enjoying it, like maybe we could enjoy it too. winterlive has a pretty interesting take on this, and I get where she's coming from because that's pretty close to how I felt about it.
CASTIEL IS URIEL'S BOSS! had to get that out of the way, because I think Dean meant Anna at the moment, or maybe even God himself, and Uriel went all "Castiel?" on him and I made a little noise that my brother made fun of.
I will, however, file this one on the nice eps folder EXCLUSIVELY for the last scene. How it went from relieved to intimate to too intimate in three lines approximately. I cried because Dean was openly crying, this was not the Single Perfect Tear of Emo Manpain, this was overflowing, this was out of control (no matter how many times he tried to pull himself together) and it was excruciatingly hard to witness because I think this was the ultimate loss of innocence for Dean, he faced his own demons, his own capacity for evil, he caused pain to others in exchange of his own comfort (so to speak). This fits completely with the Dean I know. It makes sense that this would be the actual hell, the actual punishment. And I loved how he couldn't face Sam; Dean wasn't turning his face away, no, he had his whole back turned on Sam, I think he needs to be able to block out the pain he'd cause Sam even though that pain is not the same kind Dean thinks it would be, Sam was sympathetic, he hurt for Dean, but we knew he would, Dean otoh might have avoided the sight of Sam's tears out of fear of them being tears of disappointment because that, that would hurt worse.
So, all in all, I did enjoy this episode. Somewhat. But there were pieces of extreme clumsiness that had me all cringy in the face, not to mention the amount of eyerolling and facepalming induced by it.
Kinda long. And possibly abusive of italics (and parentheses). But then, this is me typing here, so. It also came out way more positive-looking than I though it would, huh.
Watched it with the Brother (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!) and we've both decided my main issue is the reasoning behind Anna's falling. She gave away her Grace (Jesus. Christ. More on this later) because she wanted to "feel"? Isn't Castiel confused by human antics? Doesn't he like Dean? Don't you need a certain level of involvement and emotionality to like someone? Isn't Uriel angry and spiteful? Wasn't he taking an amount of pleasure from punching Dean? You need to be able to "feel" in order to register those kinds of emotions. Anna wanted chocolate cake, she wanted the physicality of being human, we have reasons to believe that such a seemingly devoted girl would have been a virgin until she married and all that, so it stands to reason that she slept with Dean because she wanted to have sex before either biting it or getting her Grace back... Or it does to me, anyway. In fact it would explain why Dean was being so careful and gentle and overly tender with her if it was indeed her first time as opposed to her last time, clearly he was her last time as well, but there could have been more fire there than what it seems to have burned.
As a side note, I didn't think the backseat of the Impala would be so roomy....
On Anna's Grace. This is what totally broke the deal for me. This sounds like something I wrote when I was ten and starting to get a taste of plotting stuff, of reasons why and ultimate goals to justify the actions of my two-characters stories. I felt it was too simple and almost silly, it falls to the Earth with you where it begets a tree (that apparently glows) then it can be ripped away from said (apparently glowing) tree and be bottled up?, I will admit that the light effect was pretty cool but it was too Galadriel for my tastes, unless you're Frodo it is not cool to walk around carrying glowing sticks around your neck. It does make sense, however, that it would be so simple to be mud-monkey-fied, just rip out you grace/kidney and your human like ::snaps fingers:: that, if your Grace is what allows you to exist in greater planes (for lack of a better word) then without it you're confined to this one, right? Now, is that what Lucifer did? I don't think so, I think Lucifer's falling was far greater, and for entirely too different reasons, unless unlike Anna he'd become human and hated instead of loved (?) and thus his demonic-ness came to be, but wouldn't he require some level of power to have become what he ultimately became? or did he turn to, say witchcraft to get his powers.... It bugs me because I seriously doubt this is the kind of questions I'll ever get answers to.
I liked Ruby here, in fact, I'm not missing KC's bite all that much. I think Genevieve is doing a great job and her Ruby is far more compelling to me because I still don't believe she's doing things out of love for Sam (though I do believe there is a fair amount of love in it) but because she has her own agenda (I'm having fun playing around with possibilities here) and she's being tremendously manipulative in order to push it forward. Her torture was deeply unsettling, mostly because this is the kind of horror that I like, the one that doesn't focus on the gore of the knife going into the skin but on the visceral response that the emotions played out get. She was being tortured pretty awfully, it WAS sexualized yes, but I took that to be meant to get us to identify with her vulnerability, her powerlessness, while at the same time giving us the sight of how much Alastair (sp?) was enjoying it, like maybe we could enjoy it too. winterlive has a pretty interesting take on this, and I get where she's coming from because that's pretty close to how I felt about it.
CASTIEL IS URIEL'S BOSS! had to get that out of the way, because I think Dean meant Anna at the moment, or maybe even God himself, and Uriel went all "Castiel?" on him and I made a little noise that my brother made fun of.
I will, however, file this one on the nice eps folder EXCLUSIVELY for the last scene. How it went from relieved to intimate to too intimate in three lines approximately. I cried because Dean was openly crying, this was not the Single Perfect Tear of Emo Manpain, this was overflowing, this was out of control (no matter how many times he tried to pull himself together) and it was excruciatingly hard to witness because I think this was the ultimate loss of innocence for Dean, he faced his own demons, his own capacity for evil, he caused pain to others in exchange of his own comfort (so to speak). This fits completely with the Dean I know. It makes sense that this would be the actual hell, the actual punishment. And I loved how he couldn't face Sam; Dean wasn't turning his face away, no, he had his whole back turned on Sam, I think he needs to be able to block out the pain he'd cause Sam even though that pain is not the same kind Dean thinks it would be, Sam was sympathetic, he hurt for Dean, but we knew he would, Dean otoh might have avoided the sight of Sam's tears out of fear of them being tears of disappointment because that, that would hurt worse.
So, all in all, I did enjoy this episode. Somewhat. But there were pieces of extreme clumsiness that had me all cringy in the face, not to mention the amount of eyerolling and facepalming induced by it.
Kinda long. And possibly abusive of italics (and parentheses). But then, this is me typing here, so. It also came out way more positive-looking than I though it would, huh.