Rewatch S6: Appointment in Samarra (6x11)

[hells_half_acre]

Ok, after the controversy that was yesterday's rewatch - let's continue with something a little more light-hearted and filled with puppies!

Notes:
1)Clothes were once again easy. They both wore the exact same thing the entire episode.
2)My rewatch notes are pretty short, so I might not actually have that much to say about this one - that doesn't reflect how much I liked it though!

DEATH! Woot! Bucky Haight! (I really just love that character name of his - plus, you know, how can you not love an ex-rocker who sacrifices a goat while on acid?)

Dean is in Chinatown
- I was actually in that shop without realizing it once this spring. I was in there thinking "this place looks oddly familiar for some reason."  
- I actually love the fact that they used 230 Keefer street, and didn't even rename it.

"Son, I stitched up your daddy more times than I can count - it's good to see you. Mind you, that was back when I still had my medical license."
- I love meeting old friends of John's - especially when they treat Dean and Sam like little kids still. I love the clasping of the face and the grandparent-like "aren't you adorable!" expression.

"So you have done this before?"

"Many many times."

"And your success rate?"

"Oh, great, almost 75%!"

-Hey, I think that's a pretty damn good success rate. :P

"I would have thought you'd have something for your brother Sam"

"If I don't make it back, nothing I say is going to mean a damn thing to him."

-This is both touching and sad. Because Dr. Robert knows Dean and Sam from the past and knows how close they are, but Dean hasn't told him that Sam is soulless and incapable of loving him at the moment.

I like Tessa. It's kind of weird that she's the only female reaper that we've ever seen though, and the rest are all old dudes in suits. She's the rebel, I guess.

"Sam's soul is in that box, and our other brother - Michael rode him in."

"Dean, quit shuffling and deal."

"I need you to get them both out."

"Hm, pick one... Sam's soul or Adam's?"

- And this is the last mention we ever get of Adam, I think. Poor Adam. Worst luck of any Winchester in my book. 

"Dean, Dean, what do you think the soul is? Some pie you can slice? The soul can be blundgeoned, tortured, but never broken, not even by me."

- I love this information we get about the soul in the Supernatural universe. I like that it's this amazing thing that cannot be broken, but can be tortured into something new. I mean, demons were all once humans. It makes me wonder if Sam would have eventually become a demon if he had been left in the cage...after all, Lilith was a demon created by Lucifer. Hmm...I wonder if that's what is going to happen to Adam...that would REALLY suck for Dean's guilt issues.

"But it's not permanent."

"She's right, nothing lasts forever - well, I do, but..."

- I love Death.

"Don't roll your eyes Dean, it's impolite."

- Did I mention that I love Death? I do, I really do. I love the way he is so intimidating, even though he's not intimidating physically. I love that Dean is genuinely terrified of him. I love every single seen that Jensen and Julian do together, they play the dynamic so goddamn well.

"I want you to be me for one day."

"Are you serious?"

"No, I'm being incredibly sarcastic."

-LOVE HIM. I mean, he is saying the line "No, I'm being incredibly sarcastic" INCREDIBLY SARCASTICALLY. Good god, man, you are perfect.

"You couldn't have given me 5 more seconds."

"Son, you were gone for 7 minutes."

- I like how some people were like "you can't be dead for 7 minutes! That's unrealistic" He was just TALKING TO DEATH. Uh, I don't think realism is a concern here. :P

Man, Jared has this mole at the bottom of his neck that can be...pretty distracting.

Uh, sorry, I seem to have gotten distracted somehow.

"You're the one with the compass, just don't mess it up."

"I won't." *Dean turns and walks away, passing Bobby* "Watch him."
- I like how we ALMOST get a touching brother moment, where Sam is like "I trust you to look after me." and Dean is like "you should, I'll look after you so well!" but really it's like "I'm going to pretend that I like this plan" and "I'm going to pretend that I believe you like this plan, but then I'm going to tell Bobby to watch you, because you obviously have other plans."

"So is this the part where you pull a gun on me and lock me in the panic room?"

"Do I have to?"

-It's kind of sad how often Sam gets locked inside the panic room. 

"Let's be clear, so we get through this with a minimum of screw up. I don't like this."

- I like Tessa because she is a professional, goddamn it. 

"Here's one for the list of dumbest things ever - summon the angel who wants to kill you?"

-I actually forgot that Balthazar had bad blood with the Winchesters at this point. Crazy. You know, it kind of sucks, because Sebastian Roche made such a bad impression on me at the Con, that now I have difficulty telling whether I don't enjoy Balthazar that much because of the character or because of the actor. If memory serves me correctly, before Seb kind of turned me off, I was indifferent - I liked the idea of Castiel having a friend, but I wasn't actually very enamored of the character. Maybe because he was too much like the Gabester, yet not as likable.

"I need some advice."

"Advice?"

"Angel advice."

"Well, then, go ask your boyfriend."

"Cas can't help me."

-SASSY! (Haha, again, I don't ship it - I just love the name. It's my favourite name for a ship ever, I think.)

"Where's your soul, Sam? Good god no, it's not still...it is."

"My brother found a way to put it back in me. I don't want it."

"No, you don't, no, because Michael and Luci are hate-banging it as we speak."

-And we return to our theme of sexual-assault against males. It's interesting though, when we do learn about what happened to Sam in hell, the emphasis is on Lucifer, not Michael. It makes me kind of hope that perhaps Michael wasn't THAT much of a douche, and he and Adam are sitting in the corner somewhere playing checkers or something.

"Well, you seem like a capable young man, so I'd love to have you in my debt. And I have to say, I'm not a fan of your brother, so screwing him will delight me."

-It's a shame this is never brought up again. I mean, would Sam STILL be in his debt, even if he didn't remember?

"Patricide."

"My father's been dead for years."

"To be clear - you need the blood of your father, but your father need not be blood. Comprende?"

-Family theme again - patricide is only patricide if you actually consider your father to be your father.

"Just so you know, when people die, they might have questions for you - well, not you, but Death."

"You mean like 'how did Betty White outlast me?'"

-Because Betty White is made of more awesome than you! BURN!

"He's in agonizing pain, right?"

"Ah, yes,"

"Give me a moment."

-Uh, ok, I sort of get what Dean is doing here, but it makes me uncomfortable - because he doesn't know that dying kid, he doesn't know his circumstances - and yeah, fine, what the kid did was shitty and he probably is just an asshole, but still.

"Wait, tell me what it all means"

"Everything is dust in the wind."

"That's it! A Kansas song!"

-Carry on my wayward son....Yes, yeah, I think that's it. A Kansas Song.

"This guy have any other family?"

"No, not really."

-I do like this added touch. Yes, it's about Dean not wanting to kill a little girl, but it's also about Dean not wanting to leave that guy alone in the world - because that's Dean's own worst fear.

"So, all the times you messed with life and death, it just worked out for you? It was just a beach party every time, huh?"

-Yes, and he played Volleyball without a shirt on...oh, wait, that was Top Gun. 
-Ok, I'm getting off track here. I like how the show is slowly introducing the idea that the Winchesters are pulling at threads that they shouldn't be pulling at. That they're changing the pattern, so to speak. (Um, just a warning, that my comments here and a bit later on, will make a tiny bit more sense if you've read The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan).

I love the quiet tension while Bobby and Sam are playing cards. So good.

"So her heart, it just healed?"

-Of course, what Dean does end up doing to this girl's father is kind of worse than just killing his daughter. Though, maybe it depends on your view....is it better to have a false sense of hope and happiness and then have it ripped away? Or is it better to be mentally prepared for the death? In any case, poor Dean.

"I may have been born at night, boy, but it wasn't last night."

- I love that line.

Sam took lessons from Cas on how to disappear quickly.

"I gotta do this Bobby, I'm sorry, you shouldn't have cornered yourself."

"I didn't."

- I love Bobby. Mostly, I love that I can see his thought process here, because that was the same closet that he and Dean got trapped in during the zombie attack in S5. So, you can just imagine Bobby thinking "Man, if only I had a trap door right there....oh, hey, I'll just build one."

"If Dean shoves that soul back in me, think how bad that could really be? I can't let it happen, Bobby. I mean, it's not like a I want kill you, you've been nothing but good to me."

"So what, demon deal or something?"

"Spell."

"You're making a mistake, Sam"

"I'm tryng to survive."

"Dean's got a way to make it safe."

"Oh yeah, what? Some wall inside my head that maybe stays up, come on.?"

"If it works?"

"Yeah, well what if it doesn't? Dean doesn't care about me, he just cares about his little brother Sammy, burning in hell, he'll kill me to get that other guy back."

- And here we get the clear separation between Soulless!Sam and Sammy as being two different and distinct people. Soulless!Sam doesn't identify with Sammy any more than Dean identifies him with Sammy. It's very interesting. Especially since Soulless!Sam basically sees it as Dean killing him in order to save his brother.

Oh man, Bobby, don't go down the stairs....

"You knew this would happen."

"No, I just knew that you knocked over a domino."

- Personally, I think it'd be more thrilling to not know what's going to happen next. If I were Death, I'd probably play it by the books 364 days of the year, and then on one day I'd just go crazy and watch the world implode a little. This is probably why I am not Death.

"She's disrupting the natural order by being alive. You of all people know what that means. Chaos and sadness will follow her the rest of her life."

-This is super depressing, because it is basically saying that Dean and Sam can never have happiness (and yes, yes, I know that all signs point to the fact that Supernatural is fundamentally a tragedy, but still). And it's not even their fault, because it was their mum who was manipulated by the YED to make that deal to bring John back to life...so yeah...anyway, chaos and sadness, now....

Bobby has a history of being knocked out by Sam in his salvage yard (ok, TWICE, but still).

"I lost the bet"

"Sorry about your brother."

-Dean lost the bet because he cannot be selfish. Every single time he's tried to do something for himself, he's been punished, or has punished himself for it. So, yeah, he could have just let that dude take out the bus, and killed the little girl, and won the bet - but he couldn't, because he is Dean.

"I can't keep doing this Bobby, I mean, what am I - going to tie him up every time he tries to kill someone? I mean, that's not going to hold him - I mean, he's?"

"Capable of anything."

"What am I supposed to do here?"

"I don't know."

-When I first watched this episode, I remember thinking that Dean was fiddling with Death's ring because he was sad that he had lost the bet. Someone had to point out to me that it was quite possible that Dean was thinking he would have to kill Soulless!Sam. That's heavy, man. "You either have to save Sam, or kill him" - seems to be a recurring theme in Dean's life.

"So, if you could go back, would you simply kill the little girl? No fuss, no stomping your feet?"

"Knowing what I know now, yeah"

"I'm surprised to hear that. Surprised and glad."

"Well, don't get excited, I would have saved the nurse, okay, that's it."

"I think it's a little bit more than that. Today you got a hard look behind the curtain. Wrecking the natural order isn't much fun when you have to mop up the mess, is it? This is hard for you, Dean. You throw away your life, because you've come to assume it'll bounce right back to you. The human soul is not a rubber ball. It is vulnerable, inpermanent and stronger than you know - and more valuable than you can ever imagine. So, I think you've learned something today."

- I like that it was a test that Dean passed. That Death just wanted to see where Dean's priorities really were when he was given all the facts.
- I also like the "The human soul is not a rubber ball. It is vulnerable, impermanent, and stronger than you know - and more valuable than you can ever imagine" line.

"I lost fine, but at least have the balls to admit that it was rigged from the jump."

"Most people speak to me with more respect."

"I didn't mean..."

- Again, I love these two actors together! The way you can just see Dean realize that he just pissed off the ONLY being in the universe that could help him. The way Death just DOESN'T HAVE TO TAKE YOUR SHIT! It's so well done.

"We're done. It's been lovely, but now I have to go to hell to get your brother's soul."

"Why would you do that for me?"

"I wouldn't do it for you. You and your brother keep coming back. You're an affront to the balance of the universe and you cause distruption on a global scale."
- I love that Death sets up Dean and Sam here as pattern-makers. In Wheel of Time there are three dudes who are basically pattern-makers...every action they do, every person they encounter - they change the pattern of time/events. They can be either horribly disruptive or amazingly stabilizing forces and they have very little control over which one they end up being. I sort of see Dean and Sam the same way here - they are an affront to the balance of the UNIVERSE, that is how important they are - and yet, they also must be a force for good, otherwise Death wouldn't just leave them to continue making his job difficult.

"But you have your use - right now you're digging at something..."

- See, for some reason, as much as Dean and Sam are an apparent affront to the universe, the universe actually needs them.

"Wait - with Sam, is this wall thing really going to work?"

"Call it 75%"

-Ooo, nice circle there, show. I missed that the first time.

"Now Sam, I'm going to put up a barrier inside your mind. It might feel a little itchy. Do me a favour - Don't Scratch The Wall - because trust me, you're not going to like what happens."

- I love how Death has an old-fashioned doctor-bag and talks in a calm doctor-voice too. It's very cool and very well done.

And I love the tension of this final scene - Sam screaming, and honestly, Soulless!Sam is right, we DON'T know what this is going to do to him, but we do know that it has to be done. Completely awesome mid-season cliffhanger, if you ask me.

Well, that was fun! I'm trying to do one of these per day, now, because I really want to finish up before November, when I start working again and The Novel Project starts.