Reaction: Supernatural 4.04 - Episode Reaction and Spec
Contains profanity.
Spoiler Timeline
-Oct 03: In an attempt to SHUT MY BRAIN UP with the meta after 4.03 for two seconds while at work, I glanced at something. Title of 4.04 Metamorphosis, which... OMFG SAM!!!! O.O
Or! All those people out in the world infected with the Croatoan virus are gonna go off like Lemmings when you hit the nuke button. 3...2...1... Hands on the sides of the head, "Oh Noes!" *pohf* *shower of confetti* the whole nine yards. You know it. *nods*
-Oct 09: Frigging CW promo. I caught "at age thirty" before I plugged my ears and fled the room. So, not likely to be Sam because he won't be thirty until 2013, and unless the show starts seriously compressing or jumping sections of timeline, we aren't going to get that far in televised canon. Dean'll be thirty this upcoming January, but it's a bit sudden to have a not previously implied sinister birthright show up for Dean. Also makes no sense for Croatoan virus since people of all ages were infected with it. So, Monster of the week, possibly some kind of hereditary change, maybe inherited lycanthropy?
Reactions, Slight Meta and Sporadic Speculation for 4.04 - Metamorphosis
Case-fic! Yay!
-[On rewatch, went back too far on tape and watched promo from last week. Holy crap, CW. Thanks for the episode summary. :-P]
-Wow. Is this demon out of the loop about Sam and the whole Boy King business? If he was working for Lilith he can't have been very high on her 'need-to-know' list.
-I'm pretty certain this was not originally intended to be a 'to be continued' episode. Insufficient episode interrelation and dove-tailing to warrant it.
-Sam's using his Demonic Emetic Hand again! \o/ Ooo, eyes open this time, are we going to get a hint of yellow? ...not that I saw. Darn. Oh well, not yet then. It'll happen. I'm totally betting it will. *nods*
-Woo! And Dean sees him! Holy crap! Way to up the stakes in a hurry, Show! Not going to be a long stint of 'Are you or aren't you?'/'Of course I'm not, no way, gotta go ...somewhere... now. Uhhhh bye!' and Sam digging himself deeper by continuing to lie and hang out with Ruby until everyone, fans included, feels like a kicked puppy and the both split up and so on with the hunting Sam and the pain and the end of the world. Now we are going to get epic shoutiness, some angst and emo, Sam swearing off the demon tutoring sessions with Ruby and probably swearing off using the powers altogether * glances at blithering meta from 4.03* and Sam and Dean are going to go roam around and hunt some things and save some people as God John Winchester intended them to! For a while! Until mytharc roars in and bites 'em again! And then there will be even more glee! Woohoo! \o/
-That's a lot to pin on a half-second glimpse of Dean's face lurking in the shrubbery in the dark, but what can I say, Jensen Ackles is awesome like that.
-"No headaches." There's an interesting note. Also, Sam has that happy puppy 'I did good yay!' tail-waggy face and I want to smack him for it because this is Ruby he's looking for positive feedback from like he's just learned how to tie his own shoes. Grrrr, Sam. You should be using that face on Dean, or Bobby, or anyone but Ruby pretty much because she's doing that whole 'Kingmaker' thing, where she gets you into a position of power so she can reap the rewards herself and right here, you're acting like she's lead dog and if you're already doing that then you're up the creek without a paddle. Heh, scrambled metaphors, sorry.
-Speaking of Dean, here he is! And let the epic shoutingness begin! You are so toast, Sam! ...Except Ruby's there, sucking the life out of everything. Gaaaah. *headnotebook*
-I'm sorry, I truly am, I'm sure the actress is a lovely person and kind to kids and animals and such, and this is entirely my own opinion but... wow does her acting suck here. There's no hint of, of anything in the combat scene, no underlying personality flavoring her actions. What's most frustrating to me is aside from the character of Ruby having a few quibbles like the occasional "We're going to do it my way now" that the boys don't dispute and "Most speciallest demon ever with the special knife and sparkly witchy 'I remember being human' backstory" (which, don't get me wrong, are huge quibbles) the character concept isn't bad. It has potential, but not with this person playing her. Much as I disliked Katie Cassidy, she at least woke up for the arguing with Dean scenes. This person... there's nothing there, no snap, no vitality, no... arg! Where the character has been set in the story could be fantastic for character conflict, but she's sucking the energy out of the scene. It's frustrating to watch. It's like Dean's fighting with a girl-shaped lump of library paste. Blah. Moving on.
- ...AND when she's talking, and she mumbles! What did she even say when she's hoisting the recently possessed guy? "Rhett yar", "Front yard", "Get car"...? Clarity! Diction! Emotion of some kind other than vague petulance! Anything! Gah. *facepalm* RIGHT. Moving on now.
-Room configuration looks familiar, sort of Bloodlust/Phantom Travellerish...
-Ooohooo. Dean's pissed. He's packing, hangers and all. Wait, Dean uses hangers? Ohhh, I think I've got it! It's Sam's latent OCD. Before Sam took off to get tutored by Ruby, he unpacked everything and hung it on hangers in the hotel closets in order of light spectrum wavelength or something. *nods*
-"You don't need me, you and Ruby go fight demons." The roughness in his voice there, like he's been driving around in the car for a while just screaming at the top of his lungs, and is trying not to just cut loose on Sam now.
-Cathryn Humphris wrote this, she's usually good for some soul whumpage, and Kim Manners directed it, and if I recall correctly, he usually gets the premieres, the finales, the 'Special' episodes and the 'difficult' episodes to try to beat into some better shape. Hmm. So, special or difficult... hmm.
-Oooo, punch! And another! Considering Dean's just found out Sam's been lying to him and willingly consorting with a demon to try and tap powers that might lead to the end of the world, I think that was warranted. Not in a punishment sense, but in a 'hey, moron, wake the fuck up and look at what you're doing' sense.
-"And I have every reason in the world to believe that." Ow. Yeah. Dean's always had a disproportionate willingness to take Sam at his word about some things, and a Sam-sized blind spot because of it. Having that trust broken, yeooooowch. And Ackles is kicking ass at getting that hurt and betrayal across. And Padalecki is doing excellent at the slow cracking of those defensive "I'm doing this for good purposes so it's okay" walls of his. Good god these two are awesome!
-Sam does have a point there, about the lack of killing the host... OMG. Speculation inbound. So, now I'm thinking that if he does stop using the powers, the lack of killing hosts will become an issue with a capital Ish, and then somewhere down the line (probably just before a hiatus, or during sweeps) Bobby or Dean will be possessed and Sam will have to use powers to save them and there will be more shouting and it will be like I said in that meta, sort of like alcoholism where it's not necessarily an addiction but using the powers makes it easier to use the powers and then harder to not use the powers, etc and Sam will slide his way down to a very dark season 4 finale and eeeeek. Oh I hope there's a season 5 O.O
-Heh. And Dean just said slippery slope.
-Oooo. Dean's mad and swats a lamp. What I like about the way Jensen plays Dean's anger, like with the Impala trunk smash back in season 2, is that even though it is a violent outburst, it's still in a way controlled. He's decided to take the action of breaking something and willing to accept the consequences of the action. He's not turning into a violent flailing moron that lashes out randomly and then gets madder afterward because there are consequences to deal with. Moving on.
-"If I didn't know you I would wanna hunt you, and so would other hunters." Firstly, OMG Jensen rocks, and secondly, foreshadowing for the "Hunt Sam Club", yes? Which has to be out there in some form or other, since Gordon no doubt talked to some people, and there was a posse forming up after Steve Wandell's murder in "Born Under a Bad Sign" and smashed computer tower or not, there are ways of recovering the data from a destroyed hard drive, if a person is determined to.
-However I want to smack the camera operator who is bobbling the camera around! It's like it's mounted on a frigging confused moth, with the herky-jerky leftrightupleftdownrightbackleftdiagonalforward thing, and I get that that technique is supposed to add a sense of unease and off-balance-ness to a scene, but for the love of Mike, make it less overt! It's not subtle if it makes viewers nauseous.
-Once again my VCR truly loves Dean. Dean looks so hurt and worried and scared and mad and I just want to hug my TV and feed it cookies and wow Ackles!
-"Cas said if I don't stop you he will." Okay, aside from a brief and rather disconcerting moment when I thought Dean had said "Cassie said" has Dean actually said Castiel's full name out loud? I thought he'd been avoiding using it, either to deny the angel's existence, or avoid invoking him with the whole 'power in names' thing, or to avoid Sam getting hold of the angel's name, doing research and finding out he's an angel of Thursday and Dean being targeted for some mockage because inside the Supernatural universe, there's nothing special about Thursdays.
-"That means God doesn't want you doing this." Ooo. So, is that Dean accepting the existence of God, or using it as a figure of authority Sam might listen to since he's dismissing Dean's arguments, or both?
-Ooo. VCR is having a moment of liking Sam. He looks like a five-year-old whose just found out his new puppy belongs to some very nice people from across the country where he can't even visit it, and the puppy's much happier with his original family than he ever was with Sam. It always comes down to puppies with Sam, somehow. Funny, that.
-Mutual manful wibbling! *glee*
-Is it just me or does Sam look a little like he's fighting off a Psychic Migraine when he's answering the phone there...? Fighting to patch the cracks Dean's just punched into Sam's walls of pragmatic self-defensive deception.
-GAH! CHEWING MOUTH CLOSE-UP SLURPY GRUNTY SMACKING CRUNCHY NOISES GAAAAAAAAAAH!! Ewwwwwww. That was disturbing.
-"I'm just hungry."/"Or you have tapeworms." I love ...Mrs. Montgomery. Missed her first name. She's brightly snarky while still concerned and lightly freaked. Perfect!
-Okay, show of hands, who saw the guy at the bathroom sink and thought "Oh god, not more teeth." *raises hand*
-Heh, though when he started doubling over in pain, my first thought was "Well, you ate three steaks, dude, you have to expect certain consequences." Speaking of steaks, why are they cooking three steaks for dinner anyway if all three weren't going to get eaten? Was one to be leftover for breakfast or sandwiches or something?
-Eeee, spine! Chiropracter'll clear that right up.
-How huge a missing scene goes in between where they were when Sam got the phone call from Travis and this scene with Sam and Dean in the car? Or did they both just do the usual Winchester thing and wall themselves inside themselves again because there was a case. And why do I suddenly feel like glaring at John? *headscratch*
-Dean tells all! Wow, sharing. Although in this case?
-Aw, Sam missing out on Mom, again.
-Hee! Sam's speculating! About time someone started questioning YED's strategy, because it hasn't made a heck of a lot of sense to date.
-"So yellow-eyes could get in my nursery and bleed in my mouth?"/"...Sam I never said anything about demon blood." BUSTED! AGAIN! Sam, you are not doing so well at the secret-keeping now that Dean's gotten some good cracks going in that wall of yours. Your wall is wobbling and getting shored up as fast as you can, but you're slipping. It needed to crack before you did, not that won't still happen, but there is a full season to work through so maybe we can take a little more time with the character development arc and let you get good and nuts before you go 'splody.
-Also, interesting what Dean withheld from his trip into the past. He told Sam personal things about their mom, and that she was a hunter, and about John being happy and hopeful, and that YED killed their grandparents. He didn't tell Sam about the blood... I'm thinking he may have also not told Sam that Mary made a deal to save John. What he's withheld then is things that would tend to make Sam think he's a freak, that he can't resist this, and that he has no choice. Also to try and preserve hope for Sam. Same reason I figure he withheld the 'Ruby says there's no way to save me' last season. Dean wants Sam to have hope, and will withhold vital info that directly relates to Sam in order to preserve it. Oh, Dean.
-Aaand when Sam says he's known the blood thing for a whole year, everybody's walls go back up. Winchesters!
-WEIRD WITH CRAZY ON TOP! I need an icon NOW!! Gaaah!
-Now, I can understand red meat cravings, but yech! Raw hamburger is just gross. Helps that it looks closer to raspberry jello than ground beef, but it probably needed to be something the actor could stomach without risking botulism or e. coli, and the budget is certainly not going to allow for several rounds of Steak Tartare.
-Ooo. Synchronized binocular gross-out faces FTW!
-Apparently while Dean was in Hell and Sam was taking Anti-Christ 101 lessons from Ruby, Winchester hotel room security has gone completely to crap, but given their respective emotional states when they left the room, I shouldn't be surprised.
-Oh, wait, it's Travis. He has Sam's old cast to prove that Sam isn't the only breakable hunter in the business. Ten years since they last saw him, incidentally.
-MATHLETE! HEE! Go Sam! Speaking as someone who was doing the Canadian equivalent of that from about grade 7 on? YAY FOR GEEKS!! \o/ Also, this story just got either Kripke'd or confirmed. I choose confirmed, because I need validation for something dammit.
-Hm. A heretofore unknown hunter, yet one familiar to the boys, with some backstory tidbits. So... either he'll be dead before the last commercial break, or he's an advance probe for the hypothetical 'Hunt Sam Club' Or both. *nods*
-Did he say loup garou?? That's a werewolf, so it looks like it is a kind of hereditary lycanthropy then. No, wait, it started with an R. *googles* Rougarou Heh. Which comes from the French: Loup Garou. Or werewolf. Hehehe. And Supernatural is already referenced on the page. Go team! \o/
-*glomphs the casefic* Hee. Love mytharc, but it needs a breather every so often. Makes it more likely the "to be continued" was tacked on to try to get casual tuners from debate night to come back and check it out again because really this isn't any more of a continuation than other eps have been.
-I cannot believe Dean has been hunting or in reasonable proximity to hunters (including all kinds of survivalist types and ex-military, no doubt) and has never heard the term "Long Pig". Heck, I heard the term when I was 16 in a gaming group. With the stuff these guys hunt, they had to be tossing around every euphemism for cannibalism they had handy. Along with many other words. Young Dean would have had a veeeery interesting vocabulary. Personally I say Dean was snarking at the choice of euphemism here and then playing along to humor Travis. *nods*
-"Hunting kids" Hmmm. I can't decide if that's an anvil or a foreshadow or a clue. It plays into 'Travis is a probe' though, perhaps one that's been suspicious of Sam for a while... And I'm going to completely banish the thought I just had that it's a foreshadow for Bobby watching Sam and- and, just shut up now brain! :-/
-Is Jack at the bar eating pistachios shells and all? That's rough. I am really liking the guest actor, he's doing a really good job of being freaked out of his mind.
-Gyah! Compound fracture! Gyah! Oh, nasty.
-["Brought to you by the Army." ...Wow... I don't know what to make of that...]
-It's the brule torch from Malleus Maleficarum, the thing they're using to weld the flamethrowers together! Hi brule torch! *waves*
-"Sam loves research" etc. *facepalm* Countdown to Sam/research porn showing up starts now. Sigh. I kind of wonder if the writers threw that in deliberately for that purpose.
-Resisting evil and waiting for a body count. No, there totally isn't two levels of conversation going on there at all.
-OH MY GOD! "PURE BASE INSTINCT" *flails* Travis said pure base instinct! That's a Gordon line, Gordon who was trying to roust the troops to get Sam on the 'Most Hunted' list so I BELIEVE I AM TOTALLY RIGHT! I bet Travis's cast is a fake as an excuse to call the boys for help, so he can check out what's up with Sam! I reserve the right to be embarrassingly smug if this is revealed to be true. *is preemptively smug for practice*
-"What's up with your brother?" Oh yes there was a spin on that question, indeed there was. I've got your number, Travis, you, you, probe. I'm almost certain I'm right. Ooo... which means if Travis dies here, it's going to look very bad for Sam.
-Disturbing scene at the Montgomery house is very very disturbing. Moving on.
-Since I've already pointed out the egregious Impala transition shot, I'll refrain from direct transcription of the reaction to that as it's mostly incomprehensible scrawling. However, I will say that I do believe that was a deliberate 'Hey, fandom! See what's different? Miss anything?' to see if fans are going to kvetch about the missing spotlights and the license plate, or whether us few nutters and our summer postcard/letter campaign were not representative of fandom at large, who may not notice or care the Impala's been defaced. So if you miss the spotlights or the old license plate, now would be an awesome chance to read it.
-Incidentally, on the astronomically small chance Kripke stops by to read this, har har har: *looks significantly at Dean's pendant* *sets fire to her own shoes* Bastard. ;-P
-Oh, hey, wait.... if Kim Manners directed this episode, would HE have picked that transition shot? So, maybe he wants to get fans to notice the missing spotlights and write in. Either way, the answer appears to be: Spam Kripke. *nods sagely and points to spn_spotlights*
-Where was I when I wasn't insane? Ah yes. Enjoying the anvils foreshadowing. Which I dearly love. All of it. *hugs the foreshadowing*
-"Stop the car!" Ooo, Shouty-time! Hey! It's the pull-off from Salvation! Perfect place for epic yelling! And angst! Yay!
-*basks in the glowing awesomeness of the little roadside scene* Anvils be damned. This is Sam's carefully constructed wall, that Dean has gotten spidered through with cracks, crumbling a bit more. Now we know what Sam's doing and what rationale he's been telling himself, and why. Pressure released, but a massive blow-up with people being thrown into walls... I think it's still possible, just later in the season than it was before this point.
-Ooo, Jack's drowning his plants. He must be eeeevil!
-YOU GAVE THE GUY YOUR REAL NAMES?? *facepalm* Look, boys, I know with all the 'returned from hell/omg angel/sammy's taking psychic lessons from the most frustratingly-portrayed demon in existence/anvils falling all around' and the fact that you've been a bit off the Monster-of-the-week cases for a while, giving this guy who you may need to kill later your real names where he might conceivably tell someone you stopped by before you leave his smoldering corpse in his nice suburban house for his traumatized wife to find? Not smart. This will also totally NOT come back to bite them in the ass. At all. Uh uhn. C'est impossible. *eyeroll*
-"About you. About how you're changing." HA! I'm sorry, but I lost it there for a full minute because the old health class tape from the dawn of time about "Blossoming into Womanhood" started with exactly the same words. So maybe instead of the Judy Blume book-named episode, this will be the episode that tackles tampon use and bra-shopping. *snerk*
-Heh. Alcoholism metaphor. *glances at small part of meta for 4.03* Okay, that's just freaking me out. So, I'd say that's a foreshadow too, maybe?
-The ad on the bench Jack is sitting on is for the Hotel Sam and Dean are staying at, I think. The fish looks familiar.
-Heh. When is a guy lurking outside your bedroom window watching you undress extra creepy? When he's a compulsive cannibal.
-Interesting; reflection of his monster face in the window is like Gordon's in Fresh Blood. *ponders*
-BWAH!! "We're here to save you I guess!"/"We should go now"/*closes kicked in door* *GLOMPHS SCENE AND FEEDS IT COOKIES!* That was fantastic! [*rewinds*]
-[Verizon Ad: Hm. Looks like they got over the "So, you terminated your product placement contract" giant Sam boot of phone-stomping doom enough to pay for adspace]
-[...about ten minutes later and it's still commercials???? How short is this damn episode?? Forty minutes flat? Come the hell on, CW.]
-Travis jumps the gun and goes solo and is scary as fuck., because he's kind of disturbed and regretful that he's about to kill a man and his pregnant wife, but he's going to do it anyway, even after letting them wake up and talking to them with some kind of weaving rationality. Gah. Disturbingly believable in a very scary sociopathic way. Show is really doing well with episodic guest cast this season.
-Mmm. Travis is chewy.... Heh, and there's a little CGI gap in the neck there. Also in the middle of munching on the guy's jugular, there's a little incongruous-seeming squeak noise and I know someone in the sound department has spent some time in a slaughterhouse or something. I grew up on a meat-producing farm. Squeak happens. 'Nuff said. X-P
-The foreshadowing is driving me nuts here, because Jack's taken this step over the edge in order to save his loved one and, well, needing to use powers to save a loved one... yeah. That's something Sam might definitely do, no matter how much his loved ones told him not to. This season is going to be utterly lethal.
-What a tidy blood trail. Travis's corpse corners like it's on rails.
-Chunk of Travis. Eeek. Yeah, if he was being a probe, this is totally not going to look good for Sam.
-Iiiiiiiidiots! I know you're busy angsting and stuff (yay!) but rusty much? Room check? Secure the scene, make sure the monster isn't going to jump you? Hello? You just know in the bright shiny afterlife place somewhere, John Winchester is facepalming.
-Dean went down like a sack of wet cement, and Sam can't operate a flamethrower and gets beaned over the head with it. See, you guys are off your game. You need to get everything out into the open and deal with it so it doesn't distract you like this. *headshake*
-Oooo... Nightmare callback! Of sorts. Sam's in a closet and Dean's imperiled.
-"Dean can't come to the phone right now!" Yipe! O.O I am shocked that that door wasn't halfway across the room from Sam barreling through it after that statement. Seriously, closet doors are usually crap. A couple good hits and it'd be down.
-Jack not telling them about his wife. Wise, wise man, and awesome touch to point up the grey area. The guy is still thinking like a human, it's not a case of conversion into a blind, uncontrollable animal of nothing but instinct.
-Dean on the glass table is reminding me of the dinner table scene from Rocky Horror and it's... a rather shuddersome association, actually.
-"You don't have to be a monster", "it only matters what you do", "It's your choice." And right there are the primary defenses Sam has for using his powers and working with a demon. This is not going to go well, is it?
-Choice vs instinct/destiny. It's a theme, not an anvil. *nods*
-Is Dean playing possum? Oooo... he's not. Ouch. That's a helluva knock in the head then.
-Okay, did Sam pick the lock, kick the door down, or somehow psychic it open? The sound effect wasn't conclusive to me and it seemed a bit abrupt an escape.
-Hallo there, random incomprehensible drop into jerky season 2 slow-motion! How I haven't missed you. :-P
-Sam torching the guy (though seriously, the guy totally charged at him in a sort of 'suicide by hunter maneuver' in order to not kill anyone else which dear god please let that not be foreshadowing) SAAAM'S FAAAAAACE! *flails* This is Sam, his walls reduced. His defenses, not versus the world, but versus himself and his rationale for the actions he's taken while Dean was in Hell are shaken here, because Sam is a creature of absolutes. This guy not being able to resist is all guys not being able to resist to Sam at this moment and his defenses in that regard are collapsing here, because he's feeling he has been fooling himself to think otherwise, and this is why we get the heart-breaking face.
-"Not alone" Aw, Dean.
-And another reflection, with another person seeing himself as a monster. Wow. That's kind of linking right back through to 'Bloody Mary" isn't it?
-"I'm done with them." CALLED IT! Like half of fandom, but still yay! Oh yes! Now, betting we'll have several case-based eps with nudges of mytharc or a "Hunt Sam" club showing up, and some kind of 'you never call' scene with Ruby and then Sam's powers getting pinged off of a couple times where a possessed person might have survived if he'd used them, before, like I said earlier, sheer conjecture here, Bobby or Dean gets possessed and Sam is forced to use the power or lose the person, followed by aaaaangst, recrimination and Sam going slippery sloping again. *squiggles with glee*
-And I think I escaped the promo entirely! Woo! \o/
NO SPOILERS IN COMMENTS, OR REFERENCES TO ANY PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL OR PREVIEWS FOR UNAIRED EPISODES, PLEASE.
*points to sidebar* See sidebar for definition of spoiler here.
Also to all my fellow Canadians, have a happy Thanksgiving! \o/
Spoiler Timeline
-Oct 03: In an attempt to SHUT MY BRAIN UP with the meta after 4.03 for two seconds while at work, I glanced at something. Title of 4.04 Metamorphosis, which... OMFG SAM!!!! O.O
Or! All those people out in the world infected with the Croatoan virus are gonna go off like Lemmings when you hit the nuke button. 3...2...1... Hands on the sides of the head, "Oh Noes!" *pohf* *shower of confetti* the whole nine yards. You know it. *nods*
-Oct 09: Frigging CW promo. I caught "at age thirty" before I plugged my ears and fled the room. So, not likely to be Sam because he won't be thirty until 2013, and unless the show starts seriously compressing or jumping sections of timeline, we aren't going to get that far in televised canon. Dean'll be thirty this upcoming January, but it's a bit sudden to have a not previously implied sinister birthright show up for Dean. Also makes no sense for Croatoan virus since people of all ages were infected with it. So, Monster of the week, possibly some kind of hereditary change, maybe inherited lycanthropy?
Reactions, Slight Meta and Sporadic Speculation for 4.04 - Metamorphosis
Case-fic! Yay!
-[On rewatch, went back too far on tape and watched promo from last week. Holy crap, CW. Thanks for the episode summary. :-P]
-Wow. Is this demon out of the loop about Sam and the whole Boy King business? If he was working for Lilith he can't have been very high on her 'need-to-know' list.
-I'm pretty certain this was not originally intended to be a 'to be continued' episode. Insufficient episode interrelation and dove-tailing to warrant it.
-Sam's using his Demonic Emetic Hand again! \o/ Ooo, eyes open this time, are we going to get a hint of yellow? ...not that I saw. Darn. Oh well, not yet then. It'll happen. I'm totally betting it will. *nods*
-Woo! And Dean sees him! Holy crap! Way to up the stakes in a hurry, Show! Not going to be a long stint of 'Are you or aren't you?'/'Of course I'm not, no way, gotta go ...somewhere... now. Uhhhh bye!' and Sam digging himself deeper by continuing to lie and hang out with Ruby until everyone, fans included, feels like a kicked puppy and the both split up and so on with the hunting Sam and the pain and the end of the world. Now we are going to get epic shoutiness, some angst and emo, Sam swearing off the demon tutoring sessions with Ruby and probably swearing off using the powers altogether * glances at blithering meta from 4.03* and Sam and Dean are going to go roam around and hunt some things and save some people as God John Winchester intended them to! For a while! Until mytharc roars in and bites 'em again! And then there will be even more glee! Woohoo! \o/
-That's a lot to pin on a half-second glimpse of Dean's face lurking in the shrubbery in the dark, but what can I say, Jensen Ackles is awesome like that.
-"No headaches." There's an interesting note. Also, Sam has that happy puppy 'I did good yay!' tail-waggy face and I want to smack him for it because this is Ruby he's looking for positive feedback from like he's just learned how to tie his own shoes. Grrrr, Sam. You should be using that face on Dean, or Bobby, or anyone but Ruby pretty much because she's doing that whole 'Kingmaker' thing, where she gets you into a position of power so she can reap the rewards herself and right here, you're acting like she's lead dog and if you're already doing that then you're up the creek without a paddle. Heh, scrambled metaphors, sorry.
-Speaking of Dean, here he is! And let the epic shoutingness begin! You are so toast, Sam! ...Except Ruby's there, sucking the life out of everything. Gaaaah. *headnotebook*
-I'm sorry, I truly am, I'm sure the actress is a lovely person and kind to kids and animals and such, and this is entirely my own opinion but... wow does her acting suck here. There's no hint of, of anything in the combat scene, no underlying personality flavoring her actions. What's most frustrating to me is aside from the character of Ruby having a few quibbles like the occasional "We're going to do it my way now" that the boys don't dispute and "Most speciallest demon ever with the special knife and sparkly witchy 'I remember being human' backstory" (which, don't get me wrong, are huge quibbles) the character concept isn't bad. It has potential, but not with this person playing her. Much as I disliked Katie Cassidy, she at least woke up for the arguing with Dean scenes. This person... there's nothing there, no snap, no vitality, no... arg! Where the character has been set in the story could be fantastic for character conflict, but she's sucking the energy out of the scene. It's frustrating to watch. It's like Dean's fighting with a girl-shaped lump of library paste. Blah. Moving on.
- ...AND when she's talking, and she mumbles! What did she even say when she's hoisting the recently possessed guy? "Rhett yar", "Front yard", "Get car"...? Clarity! Diction! Emotion of some kind other than vague petulance! Anything! Gah. *facepalm* RIGHT. Moving on now.
-Room configuration looks familiar, sort of Bloodlust/Phantom Travellerish...
-Ooohooo. Dean's pissed. He's packing, hangers and all. Wait, Dean uses hangers? Ohhh, I think I've got it! It's Sam's latent OCD. Before Sam took off to get tutored by Ruby, he unpacked everything and hung it on hangers in the hotel closets in order of light spectrum wavelength or something. *nods*
-"You don't need me, you and Ruby go fight demons." The roughness in his voice there, like he's been driving around in the car for a while just screaming at the top of his lungs, and is trying not to just cut loose on Sam now.
-Cathryn Humphris wrote this, she's usually good for some soul whumpage, and Kim Manners directed it, and if I recall correctly, he usually gets the premieres, the finales, the 'Special' episodes and the 'difficult' episodes to try to beat into some better shape. Hmm. So, special or difficult... hmm.
-Oooo, punch! And another! Considering Dean's just found out Sam's been lying to him and willingly consorting with a demon to try and tap powers that might lead to the end of the world, I think that was warranted. Not in a punishment sense, but in a 'hey, moron, wake the fuck up and look at what you're doing' sense.
-"And I have every reason in the world to believe that." Ow. Yeah. Dean's always had a disproportionate willingness to take Sam at his word about some things, and a Sam-sized blind spot because of it. Having that trust broken, yeooooowch. And Ackles is kicking ass at getting that hurt and betrayal across. And Padalecki is doing excellent at the slow cracking of those defensive "I'm doing this for good purposes so it's okay" walls of his. Good god these two are awesome!
-Sam does have a point there, about the lack of killing the host... OMG. Speculation inbound. So, now I'm thinking that if he does stop using the powers, the lack of killing hosts will become an issue with a capital Ish, and then somewhere down the line (probably just before a hiatus, or during sweeps) Bobby or Dean will be possessed and Sam will have to use powers to save them and there will be more shouting and it will be like I said in that meta, sort of like alcoholism where it's not necessarily an addiction but using the powers makes it easier to use the powers and then harder to not use the powers, etc and Sam will slide his way down to a very dark season 4 finale and eeeeek. Oh I hope there's a season 5 O.O
-Heh. And Dean just said slippery slope.
-Oooo. Dean's mad and swats a lamp. What I like about the way Jensen plays Dean's anger, like with the Impala trunk smash back in season 2, is that even though it is a violent outburst, it's still in a way controlled. He's decided to take the action of breaking something and willing to accept the consequences of the action. He's not turning into a violent flailing moron that lashes out randomly and then gets madder afterward because there are consequences to deal with. Moving on.
-"If I didn't know you I would wanna hunt you, and so would other hunters." Firstly, OMG Jensen rocks, and secondly, foreshadowing for the "Hunt Sam Club", yes? Which has to be out there in some form or other, since Gordon no doubt talked to some people, and there was a posse forming up after Steve Wandell's murder in "Born Under a Bad Sign" and smashed computer tower or not, there are ways of recovering the data from a destroyed hard drive, if a person is determined to.
-However I want to smack the camera operator who is bobbling the camera around! It's like it's mounted on a frigging confused moth, with the herky-jerky leftrightupleftdownrightbackleftdiagonalforward thing, and I get that that technique is supposed to add a sense of unease and off-balance-ness to a scene, but for the love of Mike, make it less overt! It's not subtle if it makes viewers nauseous.
-Once again my VCR truly loves Dean. Dean looks so hurt and worried and scared and mad and I just want to hug my TV and feed it cookies and wow Ackles!
-"Cas said if I don't stop you he will." Okay, aside from a brief and rather disconcerting moment when I thought Dean had said "Cassie said" has Dean actually said Castiel's full name out loud? I thought he'd been avoiding using it, either to deny the angel's existence, or avoid invoking him with the whole 'power in names' thing, or to avoid Sam getting hold of the angel's name, doing research and finding out he's an angel of Thursday and Dean being targeted for some mockage because inside the Supernatural universe, there's nothing special about Thursdays.
-"That means God doesn't want you doing this." Ooo. So, is that Dean accepting the existence of God, or using it as a figure of authority Sam might listen to since he's dismissing Dean's arguments, or both?
-Ooo. VCR is having a moment of liking Sam. He looks like a five-year-old whose just found out his new puppy belongs to some very nice people from across the country where he can't even visit it, and the puppy's much happier with his original family than he ever was with Sam. It always comes down to puppies with Sam, somehow. Funny, that.
-Mutual manful wibbling! *glee*
-Is it just me or does Sam look a little like he's fighting off a Psychic Migraine when he's answering the phone there...? Fighting to patch the cracks Dean's just punched into Sam's walls of pragmatic self-defensive deception.
-GAH! CHEWING MOUTH CLOSE-UP SLURPY GRUNTY SMACKING CRUNCHY NOISES GAAAAAAAAAAH!! Ewwwwwww. That was disturbing.
-"I'm just hungry."/"Or you have tapeworms." I love ...Mrs. Montgomery. Missed her first name. She's brightly snarky while still concerned and lightly freaked. Perfect!
-Okay, show of hands, who saw the guy at the bathroom sink and thought "Oh god, not more teeth." *raises hand*
-Heh, though when he started doubling over in pain, my first thought was "Well, you ate three steaks, dude, you have to expect certain consequences." Speaking of steaks, why are they cooking three steaks for dinner anyway if all three weren't going to get eaten? Was one to be leftover for breakfast or sandwiches or something?
-Eeee, spine! Chiropracter'll clear that right up.
-How huge a missing scene goes in between where they were when Sam got the phone call from Travis and this scene with Sam and Dean in the car? Or did they both just do the usual Winchester thing and wall themselves inside themselves again because there was a case. And why do I suddenly feel like glaring at John? *headscratch*
-Dean tells all! Wow, sharing. Although in this case?
-Aw, Sam missing out on Mom, again.
-Hee! Sam's speculating! About time someone started questioning YED's strategy, because it hasn't made a heck of a lot of sense to date.
-"So yellow-eyes could get in my nursery and bleed in my mouth?"/"...Sam I never said anything about demon blood." BUSTED! AGAIN! Sam, you are not doing so well at the secret-keeping now that Dean's gotten some good cracks going in that wall of yours. Your wall is wobbling and getting shored up as fast as you can, but you're slipping. It needed to crack before you did, not that won't still happen, but there is a full season to work through so maybe we can take a little more time with the character development arc and let you get good and nuts before you go 'splody.
-Also, interesting what Dean withheld from his trip into the past. He told Sam personal things about their mom, and that she was a hunter, and about John being happy and hopeful, and that YED killed their grandparents. He didn't tell Sam about the blood... I'm thinking he may have also not told Sam that Mary made a deal to save John. What he's withheld then is things that would tend to make Sam think he's a freak, that he can't resist this, and that he has no choice. Also to try and preserve hope for Sam. Same reason I figure he withheld the 'Ruby says there's no way to save me' last season. Dean wants Sam to have hope, and will withhold vital info that directly relates to Sam in order to preserve it. Oh, Dean.
-Aaand when Sam says he's known the blood thing for a whole year, everybody's walls go back up. Winchesters!
-WEIRD WITH CRAZY ON TOP! I need an icon NOW!! Gaaah!
-Now, I can understand red meat cravings, but yech! Raw hamburger is just gross. Helps that it looks closer to raspberry jello than ground beef, but it probably needed to be something the actor could stomach without risking botulism or e. coli, and the budget is certainly not going to allow for several rounds of Steak Tartare.
-Ooo. Synchronized binocular gross-out faces FTW!
-Apparently while Dean was in Hell and Sam was taking Anti-Christ 101 lessons from Ruby, Winchester hotel room security has gone completely to crap, but given their respective emotional states when they left the room, I shouldn't be surprised.
-Oh, wait, it's Travis. He has Sam's old cast to prove that Sam isn't the only breakable hunter in the business. Ten years since they last saw him, incidentally.
-MATHLETE! HEE! Go Sam! Speaking as someone who was doing the Canadian equivalent of that from about grade 7 on? YAY FOR GEEKS!! \o/ Also, this story just got either Kripke'd or confirmed. I choose confirmed, because I need validation for something dammit.
-Hm. A heretofore unknown hunter, yet one familiar to the boys, with some backstory tidbits. So... either he'll be dead before the last commercial break, or he's an advance probe for the hypothetical 'Hunt Sam Club' Or both. *nods*
-Did he say loup garou?? That's a werewolf, so it looks like it is a kind of hereditary lycanthropy then. No, wait, it started with an R. *googles* Rougarou Heh. Which comes from the French: Loup Garou. Or werewolf. Hehehe. And Supernatural is already referenced on the page. Go team! \o/
-*glomphs the casefic* Hee. Love mytharc, but it needs a breather every so often. Makes it more likely the "to be continued" was tacked on to try to get casual tuners from debate night to come back and check it out again because really this isn't any more of a continuation than other eps have been.
-I cannot believe Dean has been hunting or in reasonable proximity to hunters (including all kinds of survivalist types and ex-military, no doubt) and has never heard the term "Long Pig". Heck, I heard the term when I was 16 in a gaming group. With the stuff these guys hunt, they had to be tossing around every euphemism for cannibalism they had handy. Along with many other words. Young Dean would have had a veeeery interesting vocabulary. Personally I say Dean was snarking at the choice of euphemism here and then playing along to humor Travis. *nods*
-"Hunting kids" Hmmm. I can't decide if that's an anvil or a foreshadow or a clue. It plays into 'Travis is a probe' though, perhaps one that's been suspicious of Sam for a while... And I'm going to completely banish the thought I just had that it's a foreshadow for Bobby watching Sam and- and, just shut up now brain! :-/
-Is Jack at the bar eating pistachios shells and all? That's rough. I am really liking the guest actor, he's doing a really good job of being freaked out of his mind.
-Gyah! Compound fracture! Gyah! Oh, nasty.
-["Brought to you by the Army." ...Wow... I don't know what to make of that...]
-It's the brule torch from Malleus Maleficarum, the thing they're using to weld the flamethrowers together! Hi brule torch! *waves*
-"Sam loves research" etc. *facepalm* Countdown to Sam/research porn showing up starts now. Sigh. I kind of wonder if the writers threw that in deliberately for that purpose.
-Resisting evil and waiting for a body count. No, there totally isn't two levels of conversation going on there at all.
-OH MY GOD! "PURE BASE INSTINCT" *flails* Travis said pure base instinct! That's a Gordon line, Gordon who was trying to roust the troops to get Sam on the 'Most Hunted' list so I BELIEVE I AM TOTALLY RIGHT! I bet Travis's cast is a fake as an excuse to call the boys for help, so he can check out what's up with Sam! I reserve the right to be embarrassingly smug if this is revealed to be true. *is preemptively smug for practice*
-"What's up with your brother?" Oh yes there was a spin on that question, indeed there was. I've got your number, Travis, you, you, probe. I'm almost certain I'm right. Ooo... which means if Travis dies here, it's going to look very bad for Sam.
-Disturbing scene at the Montgomery house is very very disturbing. Moving on.
-Since I've already pointed out the egregious Impala transition shot, I'll refrain from direct transcription of the reaction to that as it's mostly incomprehensible scrawling. However, I will say that I do believe that was a deliberate 'Hey, fandom! See what's different? Miss anything?' to see if fans are going to kvetch about the missing spotlights and the license plate, or whether us few nutters and our summer postcard/letter campaign were not representative of fandom at large, who may not notice or care the Impala's been defaced. So if you miss the spotlights or the old license plate, now would be an awesome chance to read it.
-Incidentally, on the astronomically small chance Kripke stops by to read this, har har har: *looks significantly at Dean's pendant* *sets fire to her own shoes* Bastard. ;-P
-Oh, hey, wait.... if Kim Manners directed this episode, would HE have picked that transition shot? So, maybe he wants to get fans to notice the missing spotlights and write in. Either way, the answer appears to be: Spam Kripke. *nods sagely and points to spn_spotlights*
-Where was I when I wasn't insane? Ah yes. Enjoying the anvils foreshadowing. Which I dearly love. All of it. *hugs the foreshadowing*
-"Stop the car!" Ooo, Shouty-time! Hey! It's the pull-off from Salvation! Perfect place for epic yelling! And angst! Yay!
-*basks in the glowing awesomeness of the little roadside scene* Anvils be damned. This is Sam's carefully constructed wall, that Dean has gotten spidered through with cracks, crumbling a bit more. Now we know what Sam's doing and what rationale he's been telling himself, and why. Pressure released, but a massive blow-up with people being thrown into walls... I think it's still possible, just later in the season than it was before this point.
-Ooo, Jack's drowning his plants. He must be eeeevil!
-YOU GAVE THE GUY YOUR REAL NAMES?? *facepalm* Look, boys, I know with all the 'returned from hell/omg angel/sammy's taking psychic lessons from the most frustratingly-portrayed demon in existence/anvils falling all around' and the fact that you've been a bit off the Monster-of-the-week cases for a while, giving this guy who you may need to kill later your real names where he might conceivably tell someone you stopped by before you leave his smoldering corpse in his nice suburban house for his traumatized wife to find? Not smart. This will also totally NOT come back to bite them in the ass. At all. Uh uhn. C'est impossible. *eyeroll*
-"About you. About how you're changing." HA! I'm sorry, but I lost it there for a full minute because the old health class tape from the dawn of time about "Blossoming into Womanhood" started with exactly the same words. So maybe instead of the Judy Blume book-named episode, this will be the episode that tackles tampon use and bra-shopping. *snerk*
-Heh. Alcoholism metaphor. *glances at small part of meta for 4.03* Okay, that's just freaking me out. So, I'd say that's a foreshadow too, maybe?
-The ad on the bench Jack is sitting on is for the Hotel Sam and Dean are staying at, I think. The fish looks familiar.
-Heh. When is a guy lurking outside your bedroom window watching you undress extra creepy? When he's a compulsive cannibal.
-Interesting; reflection of his monster face in the window is like Gordon's in Fresh Blood. *ponders*
-BWAH!! "We're here to save you I guess!"/"We should go now"/*closes kicked in door* *GLOMPHS SCENE AND FEEDS IT COOKIES!* That was fantastic! [*rewinds*]
-[Verizon Ad: Hm. Looks like they got over the "So, you terminated your product placement contract" giant Sam boot of phone-stomping doom enough to pay for adspace]
-[...about ten minutes later and it's still commercials???? How short is this damn episode?? Forty minutes flat? Come the hell on, CW.]
-Travis jumps the gun and goes solo and is scary as fuck., because he's kind of disturbed and regretful that he's about to kill a man and his pregnant wife, but he's going to do it anyway, even after letting them wake up and talking to them with some kind of weaving rationality. Gah. Disturbingly believable in a very scary sociopathic way. Show is really doing well with episodic guest cast this season.
-Mmm. Travis is chewy.... Heh, and there's a little CGI gap in the neck there. Also in the middle of munching on the guy's jugular, there's a little incongruous-seeming squeak noise and I know someone in the sound department has spent some time in a slaughterhouse or something. I grew up on a meat-producing farm. Squeak happens. 'Nuff said. X-P
-The foreshadowing is driving me nuts here, because Jack's taken this step over the edge in order to save his loved one and, well, needing to use powers to save a loved one... yeah. That's something Sam might definitely do, no matter how much his loved ones told him not to. This season is going to be utterly lethal.
-What a tidy blood trail. Travis's corpse corners like it's on rails.
-Chunk of Travis. Eeek. Yeah, if he was being a probe, this is totally not going to look good for Sam.
-Iiiiiiiidiots! I know you're busy angsting and stuff (yay!) but rusty much? Room check? Secure the scene, make sure the monster isn't going to jump you? Hello? You just know in the bright shiny afterlife place somewhere, John Winchester is facepalming.
-Dean went down like a sack of wet cement, and Sam can't operate a flamethrower and gets beaned over the head with it. See, you guys are off your game. You need to get everything out into the open and deal with it so it doesn't distract you like this. *headshake*
-Oooo... Nightmare callback! Of sorts. Sam's in a closet and Dean's imperiled.
-"Dean can't come to the phone right now!" Yipe! O.O I am shocked that that door wasn't halfway across the room from Sam barreling through it after that statement. Seriously, closet doors are usually crap. A couple good hits and it'd be down.
-Jack not telling them about his wife. Wise, wise man, and awesome touch to point up the grey area. The guy is still thinking like a human, it's not a case of conversion into a blind, uncontrollable animal of nothing but instinct.
-Dean on the glass table is reminding me of the dinner table scene from Rocky Horror and it's... a rather shuddersome association, actually.
-"You don't have to be a monster", "it only matters what you do", "It's your choice." And right there are the primary defenses Sam has for using his powers and working with a demon. This is not going to go well, is it?
-Choice vs instinct/destiny. It's a theme, not an anvil. *nods*
-Is Dean playing possum? Oooo... he's not. Ouch. That's a helluva knock in the head then.
-Okay, did Sam pick the lock, kick the door down, or somehow psychic it open? The sound effect wasn't conclusive to me and it seemed a bit abrupt an escape.
-Hallo there, random incomprehensible drop into jerky season 2 slow-motion! How I haven't missed you. :-P
-Sam torching the guy (though seriously, the guy totally charged at him in a sort of 'suicide by hunter maneuver' in order to not kill anyone else which dear god please let that not be foreshadowing) SAAAM'S FAAAAAACE! *flails* This is Sam, his walls reduced. His defenses, not versus the world, but versus himself and his rationale for the actions he's taken while Dean was in Hell are shaken here, because Sam is a creature of absolutes. This guy not being able to resist is all guys not being able to resist to Sam at this moment and his defenses in that regard are collapsing here, because he's feeling he has been fooling himself to think otherwise, and this is why we get the heart-breaking face.
-"Not alone" Aw, Dean.
-And another reflection, with another person seeing himself as a monster. Wow. That's kind of linking right back through to 'Bloody Mary" isn't it?
-"I'm done with them." CALLED IT! Like half of fandom, but still yay! Oh yes! Now, betting we'll have several case-based eps with nudges of mytharc or a "Hunt Sam" club showing up, and some kind of 'you never call' scene with Ruby and then Sam's powers getting pinged off of a couple times where a possessed person might have survived if he'd used them, before, like I said earlier, sheer conjecture here, Bobby or Dean gets possessed and Sam is forced to use the power or lose the person, followed by aaaaangst, recrimination and Sam going slippery sloping again. *squiggles with glee*
-And I think I escaped the promo entirely! Woo! \o/
NO SPOILERS IN COMMENTS, OR REFERENCES TO ANY PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL OR PREVIEWS FOR UNAIRED EPISODES, PLEASE.
*points to sidebar* See sidebar for definition of spoiler here.
Also to all my fellow Canadians, have a happy Thanksgiving! \o/