it's all very west side story.

[pocochina]

I’m glad Cas is back because I love him, but I also think his importance to the Winchester saga is underrated. It’s a little bit strange to think of an angel as a reality check, but that does seem to be Castiel’s function in the narrative. I’m reminded a lot of Anya from BtVS. Castiel’s literalness is funny, sure. But he’s also an oddly innocent

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[pocochina]

I will have a much easier time with Cas if he actually establishes a relationship with Sam that is more than being Dean's friend and realizing that he has to interact with Dean's little brother. I think a Sam Cas friendship could be very interesting and bring more to the story than the Dean focused relationship that has been established.

I agree that some more substantive interaction between Sam and Cas would be helpful to balance out a lot of the dynamics there. I just think that's a general issue with how Dean tends to be the POV character. Throughout S5 especially, I got the sense that Sam was as important to Cas as Dean was. Dean is better at the more surface-level aspects of their friendship, but Cas took on Anna and stood up to Lucifer for Sam's sake. He's the first one who believed in Sam's ability to fight off Lucifer, when Bobby and Dean were openly mocking Sam for it. And for all it went so wrong, nobody made him break Sam out of the Cage - he took that huge risk out of loyalty and compassion. The line about his "more profound bond" with Dean came during early S6, when Cas was looking hard for any excuse to avoid Sam because he was so afraid to face if and how he'd screwed up in trying to help. And, idk I see things from Sam's POV so easily, but I think it's fairly well-established that Cas means the world to Sam.

There's also the in-universe explanation that Dean probably isn't entirely comfortable with Sam and Cas having a bond that doesn't go through him, because he's afraid that if they have each other then they will leave him. So he's subconsciously trying to re-create the dynamic he grew up with, with himself as the necessary buffer between John and Sam, without regard for the fact that Sam and Cas get on brilliantly. I hope Cas working on some cases with them will force some interaction, which will be good for everyone and for balancing out the narrative a bit.