4x20: Reaction
Spoilerfree. But where does the time go?
Warning: Babies eat brain cells. Proceed with caution re: language.
ETA: This more or less turned into Quote the Show.
Okay, I lied. I did get spoiled for the fact that CASTIEL's going to be in this. \o/
Then
Well, I'd've guessed the angelic appearance was in the cards from the first seconds, so I'm not disgruntled. :)
*hee at 4x01-Dean and Castiel*
"I wish to God I could stop."
I wonder how hard Sam's even tried...Or do the 'pros' of sipping Ruby's blood outweigh the cons? (Imo, the answer's yes. Hunterly-wise. But why the heck would demon blood grant the ability to exorcize/kill demons? Or is that just a variation of commanding demons, which is what Ava had worked up to in All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1 [2x21]?)
Based on that, then... We're due some Castiel with a side of Sam-angst? Which, you know, is a rather fitting description for almost entire S4... ;)
But of course, one way to fit these two together would be Castiel killing Ruby... save that I'm having trouble seeing that, for some reason. Doesn't smell enough of narrativium? *shrugs*
Now
Water's good. I like water. Wait. Dean, fishing? I guess I can buy that. I don't, however, like how bloody close to the edge he is there. Even if the scenery's all pretty and sepia-shaded, with Dean so very clear in his blues...and positioned about one-third into the shot, I'd say. -folks, you know more about this stuff than I do. :)
But this is the second ep in a row beginning with the boy(s) at the water's edge. Methinks there's a metabunny there, too...
Stalky-camera from behind does not make me happy.
Ah, hello, Castiel! \o/
I like that rather subtle noise signifying the angel's arrival, you know. But so far, this seems like... ah, yes. "I'm dreaming, aren't I?"
"'More private' - we're inside my head!"
Oh, come on, Dean! You've ran across at least two mind-reading psychics so far! And demons, at least according to Phantom Traveller (1x04), can read minds... though I wouldn't be surprised if Kripke & co. have 'forgotten' that...
Castiel's making me paranoid. *brrr*
*GLEEE*
The way Dean wakes up? With the camera straight above him and a vehicle going by outside? Home (1x09) or Nightmare (1x14), lovelies. Save with Sam. \o/ \o/ \o/
*HAPPY*
Dean dragged Sam up, too, instead of going to meet Castiel alone! \o/
Considering the 'Then', though, that may not have been such a hot idea...
"There was a fight here."
"Between who?"
Considering that an angel asked you to meet him here, and that you're currently surrounded by two apparent extremes, I do wonder who the combatants might have been...[/sarcasm]
Granted, the boys might not be aware of what sort of destruction a fight involving an angel (or two) brings to the surroundings.
And now I keep wondering if Uriel ever went "There Can Be Only One!", killing his comrades...
"So what, Cas was fighting angels?"
Stranger things have happened, Sammy. But how come everyone's calling Castiel 'Cas'? Why do they wanna pick on the poor guy?
Incidentally, does this mean hurt!Castiel? I mean, whose blood is that sigil drawn with? Who drew it? (Anna?) Are demons aware of Angel Away™ doodles?
And *hee*, more blood! \o/ I really, really wish I had a fully functioning brain right now. Because that meta about blood is just fudging begging to be written... *sigh*
HURT!CAS!
"Jimmy. My name's Jimmy."
That's oddly fitting. And unless this 'Jimmy' turns out to be some extramundane critter shacking up in Castiel's abandoned vessel (wouldn't be nice, two eps in a row), I think I'm going to like him. Gods know I already adore how different from the angel this Jimmy appears, even before the title screen: voice and seeming vibrating with flickers of feelings, emotions, blurry with nervousness, whereas Castiel was always still and solid...austere.
"The Rapture"
*heeheehee*
2 (the Rapture) (according to some millenarian teaching) the transporting of believers to heaven at the second coming of Christ.
I'm just hoping like hell that either Castiel comes back and reclaims his vessel or Jimmy survives this ep some other way. Because losing Misha would not make me happy.
"When's the last time you ate?"
"I don't know - months."
Too bad that that's about as vague as dating things go... but...
Detail: Angels don't bother with such simple humane functions as food and eating. Most likely they wouldn't care about wcs, either. Or anything else. They haven't struck me as physical beings, despite the Show's canon of angels being mad about fisticuffs...
Curses, the motel sign outside the room looks bloody familiar, but I can't locate it, nor see it clearly enough to have the slightest clue.
"I mean... Angel inside you is kinda like being chained to a comet."
Going in circles around a shiny thing? And occasionally becoming a meteor, which brings us back to Anna again... Talk about celestial bodies. :p
"Cas said he wanted to tell us something-"
This is exactly why I love English's 'you'. Can never tell whether it's supposed to be singular or plural... ;)
I sort of adore it that the boys automatically (apparently) assume that when one of them's being told "I need to talk to you", it means both of them. *smishes the silly boys*
Random: there's a lot of close-ups in this scene. Sam shares the shots with a yellowish lamp, Dean with a very blurry background of grey(?), red and white and Jimmy with a light blue blob.
Detail: Jimmy Novak, from Pontiac, Illinois. With a wife and a daughter, Claire. A year ago, things changed began to change.
Detail: Claire is wearing a red cardigan with a flower motif. And she's blonde.
Her mother's wearing purple, and her father pale blue shirt with a greyish tie.
Random: I like the fact that Jimmy pronounces it 'A-men', not 'ã-men'.
Another man who has fallen asleep in front of the TV... for a moment there, I expected Jimmy to be woken up by his wife's scream. Granted, unlike John, Jimmy's sleeping to the sound of a NDE-story, complete with a mention of angels.
Um... being possessed by an angel is like having an epilectic seizure? Or is this just a test to see if Jimmy'd be an okay vessel, because far as I can tell, there was no praying to be one...
*curses the motel sign's obscurity* But the room's number 9. *heeheehee*
Random: Sam's sharing his close-up shot with a red blob.
Why does "angel-on-angel violence" make me giggle?
On the other hand, so far this ep's had me at least grinning a whole hell of a lot, if not outright giggling, so I think I'll blame all the sugar I've ingested today. Yay for (non-alcoholic, homemade) mead and doughnuts! \o/
Random: My, what pretty pink-ish flowers they have on that wallpaper there.
"-I've been shot and stabbed and healed and my body's been dragged all over the Earth-"
Well, I'd say Jimmy here remembers plenty enough. At least to know that Dean did his fair share of that shooting and stabbing.
"-the safest place is with us."
*BWAHAHAA*
I can't believe JPad managed to utter that with a straight face. Because seriously? If you wanna stay alive, you stay the hell away from the Winchester boys. :D
"Harsh way to put it."
Remember last week, when Sam's "He's a Winchester. He's already cursed"-had me doodling hearts around JPad? This week, I believe, this takes the cake. Gods, Sam.
For the record, btw, I don't think Jimmy's pretty wife and daughter are alive anymore...
It's the hour of the wolf and Sam's restless...
But I have a question: when Dean's gone to bed of his own volition during this season, has he ever been under the covers? Because I think I've only seen him lying on the bed, fully dressed. No one should trust my memory at the moment, though.
Apparently Jimmy went to bed fully clothed, too. Damn.
That bottle of Holy Water wtf, Sam! He has a stash and he's gotten his hands on some anticoagulants, too and what the fudge, Sam! Well, whatever. It's the very same one Sam used to whisk some Holy Water on John back in Devil's Trap (1x22) and in After School Special (4x13), it contained salt Sam used to exorcize the ghostie from a girl.
But at least the boy's standing in front of a blue and white vending machine, so maybe it'll all turn out okay in the end...
"I was getting a Coke."
Talk about an appropriate excuse... save that Sam's not sniffing the substance he's addicted to. *heeheehee*
Detail: Unlike Sam, Dean likes his teethbrushes manly blue. :)
Jimmy's clearly touched by an angel: even the bus he's on features shades of blue in the interior. And I daresay those windows are tinted, too.
DNW. Cutting up vegetables is bad for you, at least in this Show. DNW. Especially since Red and Yellow are so very, very prominent... But he's still wearing pale blue.
Seriously, Show?! *has issues with boiling hot water and hands*
In other words, Jimmy's one of those 'special people' who can hear angels without getting their brains blown out?
But it's starting to seem rather unlikely that Jimmy's family is either alive or talking to him. I'm still leaning towards his wife (and daughter) being dead.
ANNA!
She's an angel, alright. Just as random as Castiel... and everyone else we've seen so far, which isn't really much.
I still like her hair. Combined with those slightly-larger-than-normal eyes, she's actually reminding me of Lyta Alexander of B5-fame.
I, however, do not like my brains' suggestion that she's behind the Show's lack of Castiel. Folks other than her are bound to know about the Angel Away™, right?
"You seem...different."
And you just know that Sam's trying to figure out ways to shut her up right the bloody now...
Anna, love? These two boys have been living in the middle of "something big" for the last four years. I think words like 'huge' and 'storm' and 'apocalypse' have lost their threat.
But I don't like what you're saying about Castiel's situation. I don't have the capacity to really deal with it, either, but... *does not understand* Unless there's civil war in Heaven. Or shomething. Certainly the angels aren't unified.
Detail: The Novaks live in number 428.
And this, Jimmy standing on the path to the front door, looking up? Is a very pretty shot, imo.
Bah. They're alive and appear relatively happy. Well, then I'm saying Jimmy and his wife aren't talking. Or she and their daughter will end up dead by the end of this ep. Because I cannot believe the Show would give someone the fandom seems to like a happy ending...
Detail: Castiel had spoken to Jimmy about a dozen times when Jimmy's wife told him to take some pills.
Detail: Jimmy's job was to sell add time for am radio.
"No, he said that I'm special. It's in my blood."
Again with the blood. \o/
"This is the most important thing that ever happened to me."
Nice way of making... Ah, she said it, too. Moving on.
"Promise my family will be okay and I'll do it."
Curious...
"I am not your father."
This whole shift, the change from Jimmy to Castiel... *LOVE*
It'll be a surprise if Claire didn't need counselling or something after that, though.
And Misha, framed with a mandorla, but obscured by the curtain... That'd be an(other) awesome shot for spnematography's Episodic Meta, you know. ;)
But I just keep waiting for some sort of a twist. Her eyes to flash black, or something. Good thing that she's not all "Let's Play Happy Families!", though.
Meanwhile, in Supernatural... Sammy needs his fix. Badly. And Ruby's leading him by the noose...
*dingdong*
Let me guess... "Hi! We heard you've got an ex-vessel of an angel here!" *stab-swing-slice*
Well, not exactly, but close enough. I have to admit that I do like the consistently visceral way the demons are. And \o/ for Jimmy not losing his shit completely at being faced by something supernatural/threatened. \o/
\o/
The BEDs of Supernatural succeed in being a threat, imo. At least like this when there's no blade nor - Oh, never mind.
Good idea, Sam. And like I said, I love the demons and their way of talking, all casual and stuff...
But show of hands: who had a flashback to Jus In Bello (3x12) when that BED fled? And subsequently getting worried like hell over the fact that now the demons know the latest development in the game? Or, you know, possessing another neighbour nearby?
Could they possess Jimmy? Or, hell, daughter and wife are there, too, and if they didn't have chinks in their mental/emotional armour before, they sure should be shaken now...
"-You're putting your family in danger. You have to come with us."
As if the demons and co. wouldn't try to use Jimmy's family to get him...
There's another curious close-up shot of Jimmy during this conversation: black background with blurry white bars in a cross-like arrangement, with reddish blobs here and there.
Sam's curiously straight-forward with people who are not Dean. Last week the whole spiel about hunting being for life, this week this, telling Jimmy that he's fucked, no matter what he chooses.
Oh. And just when I thought Amelia and Claire would make it through this ep after all... I see they need to fill their seasonal quota of 'bitch', though.
"Stunt demon number three". *hee*
"I'm scaring myself."
At least Sam's admitting that he's got a problem. It would be awesome if Dean could help him with it, though...
Talking of the problem, that's Ruby calling? Or then not. Awesome.
That warehouse looks distinctly familiar. What Is And What Should Never Be (2x20)?
"Now for the punchline: everybody dies."
Why, oh why do the BEDs tend to make me so very, very happy? *heeeee*
NO KILLING HIM OFF!
What bipolarity?
If that's the same warehouse where they shot Salvation (1x21), then I'm finding fun even when Misha seems to be leaving the cast. Because in that earlier ep, BED!Meg was shot in the belly by BED!'Tom'. :)
\o/ for Castiel!
Um... Ooops?
But he looks so content, exorcizing that BED...
'Angel Specialty' is an inheritable trait, like the colour of one's eyes. I can almost see the character sheet... :p
Detail: Being possessed by an angel isn't a picnic, either. But while you're possessed, you don't age or change in any way, nor do you die.
It's getting harder and harder to tell the demons and the angels apart, imo...
Yay, Misha's not leaving the cast after all! \o/
And lookie, the Novaks made it through the ep, too. Though no happy endings.
"-I serve Heaven. I don't serve Man. And I certainly don't serve you."
And that's a sneaky way of telling us what Castiel was probably going to tell Dean. \o/
I wonder how those who ship Dean/Castiel will 'fix' their boys. But then, relationship with problems is the salt of storytelling...
But if Jimmy hadn't recognized Castiel, I'd suggest that the angel now in Jimmy is not Castiel. Apparently, though, that angel was just returned to factory settings. I can't really wait to see the next time Castiel and Dean meet/have a chat/whatever. And just who rebooted Castiel's system?
"What do you want me to say, that I'm disappointed? Yeah, I am. But mostly I'm just tired, man. And I'm done. I am just done."
I repeat: Dean's grown. His family's problems aren't his problems: he can't live their lives for them, can't choose for them. And he's not alone.
Bobby! Bobby's Panic Room!
And the reason Ruby's been quiet is because Bobby's got her locked up...?
"So...what's the big demon problem?"
Holy FUDGE.
And the great, big Season Finale will be Sam's Path Through Detox? The hard way, unless they're going to go creative with time...
Two eps left of this season. I can't wait. Good gods.
Happy Birthday, Sammy. You certainly live in interesting times. I think condolences are in order.