I love the thing with the food at the beginning. Because it calls back to like the first flashback ever, back in s1. You know, the one where teeny!Sam puppy-eyed Dean out of his cereal or something...
It is sort of interesting the way Sam's attitude towards forgiveness changes when it's Dean instead of Cas later in s9. I think a lot of it comes from two sort of related areas--Sam always forgives Cas, because Cas' mistakes track pretty closely with Sam's. If he doesn't forgive Cas, he can't forgive himself, and if he can't forgive himself, he can't function. And, sort of along those lines, Cas' mistakes, like Sam's, tend to have global consequences that outweigh the personal ones, or the personal betrayals are secondary to the 'oops I broke the world' factor (at least in Sam's eyes; Dean tends to focus on the personal first regardless). Dean's mistakes (or maybe I should say 'mistake' 'cause he's basically been making the same one since, like, season 2) tend to have the opposite pattern--the global consequences are secondary to the personal ones. And then we get the Gadreel stuff in s9 which is not only a repetition of the same mistake he's been making for years, but it's sort of the culmination of that pattern--making decisions for Sam/putting Sam's safety over everything else, with largely personal consequences outweighing (at least for the moment) the global ones--and Sam's finally reached the ends of what even he can tolerate, and he's like the most forgiving forgiver who ever forgave.
It is sort of sad that, even in the most communicative episode/arc that Sam and Dean have had in, like, ever, they still can't say a lot of the Really Really Important Things directly to each other.
I personally love the angel wars, mostly because I'm a sucker for that kind of political narrative. Though it is kind of interesting, to try and compare the various temporary angelic 'governments' to post-dictatorial upstart regimes throughout history, especially since we're missing a probably not-insignificant chunk of it. I mean, there's the s6 civil war, then Cas nuked the command structure and we didn't see any angels for...basically all of s7, so who the hell knows what was going on up in Heaven at that point, and then at least one faction has carved out enough of a stable niche for Naomi to do her thing...
Yeah, they never really address what happens to the host after the demon is cured. Come to think of it, I mean, with the exception of a few people they actually personally know, they've sort of stopped thinking about hosts/vessels in general. I mean, they mention Josie Sands and compare her to Abbadon, and they talk a little bit about how the s9 angels are finding their vessels, but...yeah.
(I know it's such a stupid thing to get annoyed at but nephilim is a plural! :( The singular should be nephil, like with seraph/seraphim, and cherub/cherubim. And it's dumb, but it bugs me and it has since I first watched the episode.)
Oh, the utter stupidity that was their setup with Abaddon for this. I mean, above and beyond the 'she won't survive your Frankenstein surgery once she's mortal again' and the 'leaving her unsupervised to take a phone call' and the 'leaving her other body parts within easy reach'...would it have killed them to, I don't know, put a precautionary Devil's Trap around her? Or brought in the chains from their dungeon? Seriously, the worst applying redundant security measures will do is make you feel stupid! Better than her somehow wandering off!
I don't necessarily think that the nephilim defending herself was supposed to make her unsympathetic to us, so much as it was supposed to keep Cas from balking? Because I'm not sure he could have gone through with it if she hadn't gotten aggressive. And the whole 'I'll show you an abomination' thing I think goes back to something the show's touched on a couple times, with monsters who become monsters because everyone treats them like monsters. This girl has heightened perception and super-strength, and for as long as she's known what she is, she's known that a lot of people, particularly the supposed paragons of 'good', consider her a monster. She tries to be good, but, sooner or later she's just had it. Especially when people are trying to kill her.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-03-09 03:18 pm (UTC)It is sort of interesting the way Sam's attitude towards forgiveness changes when it's Dean instead of Cas later in s9. I think a lot of it comes from two sort of related areas--Sam always forgives Cas, because Cas' mistakes track pretty closely with Sam's. If he doesn't forgive Cas, he can't forgive himself, and if he can't forgive himself, he can't function. And, sort of along those lines, Cas' mistakes, like Sam's, tend to have global consequences that outweigh the personal ones, or the personal betrayals are secondary to the 'oops I broke the world' factor (at least in Sam's eyes; Dean tends to focus on the personal first regardless). Dean's mistakes (or maybe I should say 'mistake' 'cause he's basically been making the same one since, like, season 2) tend to have the opposite pattern--the global consequences are secondary to the personal ones. And then we get the Gadreel stuff in s9 which is not only a repetition of the same mistake he's been making for years, but it's sort of the culmination of that pattern--making decisions for Sam/putting Sam's safety over everything else, with largely personal consequences outweighing (at least for the moment) the global ones--and Sam's finally reached the ends of what even he can tolerate, and he's like the most forgiving forgiver who ever forgave.
It is sort of sad that, even in the most communicative episode/arc that Sam and Dean have had in, like, ever, they still can't say a lot of the Really Really Important Things directly to each other.
I personally love the angel wars, mostly because I'm a sucker for that kind of political narrative. Though it is kind of interesting, to try and compare the various temporary angelic 'governments' to post-dictatorial upstart regimes throughout history, especially since we're missing a probably not-insignificant chunk of it. I mean, there's the s6 civil war, then Cas nuked the command structure and we didn't see any angels for...basically all of s7, so who the hell knows what was going on up in Heaven at that point, and then at least one faction has carved out enough of a stable niche for Naomi to do her thing...
Yeah, they never really address what happens to the host after the demon is cured. Come to think of it, I mean, with the exception of a few people they actually personally know, they've sort of stopped thinking about hosts/vessels in general. I mean, they mention Josie Sands and compare her to Abbadon, and they talk a little bit about how the s9 angels are finding their vessels, but...yeah.
(I know it's such a stupid thing to get annoyed at but nephilim is a plural! :( The singular should be nephil, like with seraph/seraphim, and cherub/cherubim. And it's dumb, but it bugs me and it has since I first watched the episode.)
Oh, the utter stupidity that was their setup with Abaddon for this. I mean, above and beyond the 'she won't survive your Frankenstein surgery once she's mortal again' and the 'leaving her unsupervised to take a phone call' and the 'leaving her other body parts within easy reach'...would it have killed them to, I don't know, put a precautionary Devil's Trap around her? Or brought in the chains from their dungeon? Seriously, the worst applying redundant security measures will do is make you feel stupid! Better than her somehow wandering off!
I don't necessarily think that the nephil
imdefending herself was supposed to make her unsympathetic to us, so much as it was supposed to keep Cas from balking? Because I'm not sure he could have gone through with it if she hadn't gotten aggressive. And the whole 'I'll show you an abomination' thing I think goes back to something the show's touched on a couple times, with monsters who become monsters because everyone treats them like monsters. This girl has heightened perception and super-strength, and for as long as she's known what she is, she's known that a lot of people, particularly the supposed paragons of 'good', consider her a monster. She tries to be good, but, sooner or later she's just had it. Especially when people are trying to kill her.