"The A-Team are back in business!"
Feb. 8th, 2008 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaI'm really freaking out about the job thing today. Trying to calm myself by thinking about the week's telly, but doubt I'm going to manage much coherence. *sigh*
'Intriguing' was the foremost word on my mind coming out of the first episode of Ashes to Ashes.
It's different than Life on Mars was, and I don't just mean different comatose character and different setting. The style and tone are different, the cinematography, atmosphere, everything. They even broke the strict narrative rule of LoM by showing us several scenes in which Alex was not present. LoM never did that, ever, except for that one episode when Sam was tripping out and watched the case unfolding on TV instead of actually being there. LoM had that really intense richness in tone and a sharp editing style, which conveyed Sam's absolute disorientation beautifully. A2A didn't have the same kind of instant and profound impact, especially with the transition scene, which on LoM was so iconic, but I got the impression that was deliberate. Alex is having the same experience as Sam, but it affects her in a different way. She already knew all about it, having studied Sam closely, so has that knowledge to cushion the impact, being able to measure her own experiences up against his. What is happening to her is freaky as hell, and terrifying and bizarre and incomprehensible, but it's also fascinating. She's a psychologist. Where Sam spent all his time floundering, Alex spends all her time analysing.
I think it'll take a couple of episodes to get used to Alex; she didn't make a huge emotional impact on me, but I think that'll come and is actually part of the character. I loved that she used air quotes every time she said anyone's name, and their nonplussed reactions to that.
Plus, of course, we are now seeing these characters – Gene, Chris and Ray – through Alex's eyes and via the perception she gained of them from studying Sam's experience. So they are all a bit larger than life, and that also fits with the 80s theme. It's all very intriguing.
The creepy mime man really is creepy, especially when he has Molly's voice. "Don't fight to wake up; it'll hurt too much." But Zippy and George were creepier!
The young WPC, Shaz, distracted me all the way through, because I knew I knew her from somewhere but could place it. Turns out she did an episode of Midsomer Murders a while back. That would be why I remembered her. She and Chris are sweet together; I approve.
I'm still not happy about the ending of Life on Mars and Sam's suicide, so it was a bit depressing to have it laid out there in black and white in Alex's notes. I liked her reaction when Ray told her that Sam had come back and lived another seven years inside the fantasy before he died. It's fascinating because…she's a psychologist. She's studied this phenomenon in Sam. But now she's experiencing it herself and already the doubts are creeping in. Logically, her analytical brain has created this explanation: that Sam jumped and killed himself, but in those last seconds before death was able to live out a life in this fantasy his mind had created for him, and now her mind is incorporating what she knows about him into her own fantasy. But she's also talking about it as an actual place where both their minds have sought refuge in time of trauma, populating by distinct characters with lives of their own. And thus we get to see these characters in scenes that Alex isn't witnessing. And they aren't reacting to her out-of-time oddities in the same way that they did with Sam. They already experienced Sam and his culture shock freak-outs, and Alex knows that. To her, what she's experiencing isn't a new or unique phenomenon in the way that it was to Sam, for all that she never expected it to happen to her, so her mind doesn't need them to react to her in that way.
It's intriguing. I'm looking forward to finding out more!
Torchwood's fourth episode, Meat, was a little patchy, I felt.
Mind, having said that, it completely lost me very early on, when Rhys gave the cop his dead driver's address as 54 Keppoch Street, Roath. That's literally just around the corner from me, and it's very distracting when reality and fiction collide like that. I completely lost the thread of the episode, because I was thinking things like: 'I wonder who really lives at 54 Keppoch Street, and if they are watching?' and 'Is Keppoch Street in Roath? I suppose it is, barely, but right on the border with Cathays...' and so on. Totally distracted.
Story: this episode succeeded in making me feel sorry for a gigantic CGI whale-slug. That's no mean feat. At least, I was feeling sorry up until the ending, which was overly-sentimental for my tastes.
When Gwen and Rhys were screaming at each other? That was good. That felt real.
I can't work out the weird relationships these characters have going on at all. I suspect because none of the writers seem to actually be communicating on a detailed level. I did wonder, though, whether Jack's thing about Gwen is about envy, as much as anything else. He wanted her on the team because she had a real life out in the world, and that real life out in the world is what he loves about her, but that's a paradox because if he was to act on it, he would instantly destroy the thing he loves about her. Plus I think he's more envious, than anything else. It isn't so much Gwen that holds his attention as what she stands for: stable, happy normality, of a kind that is completely unavailable to him. He's craving something he can't have, and knowing that makes it look all the more tempting.
I think. If that makes sense. Or it's possible that the writers just don't know what they are doing.
Except, of course, that he already has his thing with Ianto going on. But this is Captain Jack, after all, omnisexual and insatiable.
Who knows? Overall, it seems like the sense of cameraderie among the team is a lot better this year, but the individual relationships are still jumping all over the place.
Tosh: "We could feed the world."
Ianto: "We could release a single."
They are definitely giving Ianto all the best one-liners. He's very droll.
Supernatural's Dream a Little Dream of me. Whoa.
Bobby.
The backstory makes so much sense. Every hunter does what they do because of some personal tragedy or another. That much was already clear. So he was forced to kill his wife because she was possessed and rabid and deadly? That's harsh. I'm amazed he escaped with his life. And it completely explains why demons are his area of expertise – demons took his wife, so he's dedicated his life to becoming an expert in the field, trying to keep the same thing from happening to other people. What's going on right now must be his worst nightmare, by that token, with so many of them out there on the loose.
But then take that reaction and compare it to John's, when a demon took Mary from him. Bobby clearly learned very early on what happened to his wife. It took John years to find out what had killed Mary. That probably had something of an impact on their different reactions – Bobby had something tangible to focus on, while John was just lashing out blindly – but I've no doubt that personality also played a huge part. Bobby's a bluff, gruff guy, but a hell of a lot steadier than John was, even-tempered, and lacking that obsessive vengeful streak.
It hit me really hard in a very hurt-y place that Bobby had Dean listed as his emergency contact. There's just something that strikes me as really sad and poignant about that, because it has been established that Bobby knows a hell of a lot of people – Bobby knows absolutely everyone it seems at times – but those boys are special to him. We've been told that he's known them since they were children, we've watched him take them under his wing since their father died, we've seen how close he has become to Dean in particular and how he reacted when he learned of the deal. So the emergency contact thing just really struck a chord.
Bela.
Meh. Bela…still isn't quite sitting right with me. I read an interview with Eric Kripke recently in which he talked about wanting fans to like her because she's so much fun to write for. And I can see that. Everything he said about her is true – she does add a lot to the entertainment value of any given scene. I think it's the fact that she still has to be shoehorned into any given episode that's the trouble. She doesn't fit all that neatly with the formula, and this episode is a good example of that. Her presence made no sense whatsoever. I mean, Bela's motivations for going there to help out became clear come the end, with her theft of the Colt (idiot boys – will you never learn?) but I couldn't completely buy that the boys would ever have called her in the first place. Everything about their history with her says that this woman cannot be trusted. She shot Sam, and was prepared to let him die of the rabbit's foot curse rather than lose out on the money she could earn selling it. She sold them both out to Gordon Walker without batting an eyelid. She is dangerous, and they hate her, and they know that she doesn't do a damn thing unless there is something in it for her, so why they hell would they call her, never mind expect her to help?
I suppose because it was for Bobby, and they felt desperate enough to give it a try, even knowing that she would say no. But they just keep letting their guard down around her, and I don't understand why, and it is frustrating.
Having Bela steal the Colt, as annoyingly easy as they seem to have made it for her, does at least add a new layer of intrigue to the season, as well as creating ongoing difficulties for our heroes in fighting this demon war without their most effective weapon. Not that the Colt is infallible, but it was practically all they had going for them, and now it's gone, and I like that. Because it was getting too easy for them to just resort to the Colt at the drop of a hat, but now they aren't going to have that any more.
Sam.
Bless his heart, Sam at the start of this episode is really, really wallowing in his despair, and that hurts, and it follows on beautifully from where we left him last week. Drowning his sorrows and admitting to Dean that he feels he's failed because he can't find a way out of the deal, and he's just completely given up.
Has Dean told Sam about his conversation with Ruby, I wonder? Sam seems to know about the demons being hellfire-corrupted human souls thing, but he could have extrapolated that himself from what Tammi told them. He clearly doesn't know that Ruby told Dean straight out that she can't save him, so Dean clearly hasn't shared the entire conversation with him, even if they did talk through the demon mythology. I can't honestly see Dean being able to verbalise any of what Ruby said to him, not to Sam, not when it's because of and for Sam that it's happening. But maybe he did manage to find the words, and that's why Sam is even more depressed than he was last week.
But then when Dean admitted at the end that he doesn't want to die, Sam just completely let go of all that despair and hopelessness, because Dean's opposition and fatalism was a large factor in his depression, and because Dean needs him to provide a bit of support and reassurance, and it's the least he can do for his brother. And that kind of hurt, as well, that he started the episode drunkenly admitting that there's nothing he can to do save Dean but the moment Dean admitted he doesn't want to die and go to hell, Sam's all 'right, we'll get on that, then', so matter-of-fact, because he can't remind his brother how hopeless the situation is, not now, and he's able to take heart from knowing that Dean actually wants to survive, and just…boys. Poor, poor boys.
I loved that when Dean told Sam he didn't want him digging around in his head, Sam didn't ague the point. He went through with it anyway, because it was important to provide backup, but he didn't belabour the point. Dean's head is a screwed up place to be, and they both know it, and it was clear once they were inside Dean's dreamscape that Sam felt uncomfortable, knowing that he was intruding on something private.
I have no idea where Sam's Bela fantasy came from. She shot him, and she sold him out, and she doesn't give a damn about anyone but herself and can't be trusted in any way, and…ah well. I suppose maybe it's just that he's a guy, and she's an attractive woman, and his subconscious is getting tired of living like a monk! And his reactions were fab when Dean woke him and then when Bela herself walked in.
As for his ability to manipulate the Psycho Dreamwalker's dreamscape…it's the first time this season Sam has admitted that he doesn't know if his psychic mojo had anything to do with it or not. Every other time the subject has been raised, he has flat out denied that he even still has any psychic abilities. Denial is such a staple of the Winchesters. But Sam isn't so sure any more, and that's potentially interesting.
Dean.
Man, Dean does it to me every time.
It kind of killed me how upset he was about Bobby, because Dean avoids getting close to people for that exact reason. He gets close to someone, and they inevitably either reject him or up and die on him. We already knew he felt that way. Since John's death, Dean has gradually grown to rely on Bobby's gruff but unconditional support, able to do so, perhaps, because he has known Bobby since he was young. To hear him admit out loud that he regards Bobby as a father-figure hit hard. So then when he was sitting by Bobby's hospital bed, just watching him sleep, that was a gorgeous scene – so much conveyed with no dialogue whatsoever: the crushing inevitability of losing the people he is close to combined with almost desperate desire to not let it happen again. And then Sam walked into the room, and you could see that he recognised exactly what Dean was thinking and feeling, but didn't say anything about it, because he knows better than that by now. Dean is closer to Bobby than Sam is; we've already seen this season that they connect on a level that Sam has never yet reached, and we saw the divide again here. And that's not to say that Sam doesn't love Bobby as well, because he does, but he doesn't have the same kind of bond. And I think maybe in part that's because he doesn't need it; Sam has always had Dean to lean on, mentor, brother, parent and best friend all rolled into one. But Dean needs someone who isn't Sam to lean on in turn, and Bobby has filled that role since John's death left Dean floundering. And so Bobby's predicament really hit Dean hard.
As for the dreamscape…whew! Man, that was a killer, and it didn't even tell us anything we didn't already know. We got Lisa filling the role Carmen played in the WIAWSNB fantasy, but representing the exact same longing: for security and stability, a home, a family, someone to love. A future. The difference was that this time Sam got to see it, too.
And then there was the Dean-on-Dean scenario, and whoa, that was a doozy! All the self-loathing and insecurity and daddy issues that he's kept bottled up inside most of his life all finally hitting meltdown and pouring out, and just damn. Like I said, it wasn't anything we didn't already know about how Dean's upbringing and John's questionable parenting choices affected him, but still. Damn. Hearing him actually say it all out loud, acknowledging that he doesn't deserve what's happened and going to happen to him…man. And seeing himself as a demon, and blowing himself away, and then the blood-splattered Demon!Dean just popping right back up like that, just…damn. And it was the final straw that tipped him over the edge at last. We already knew he was dreading what lies ahead of him. Ruby confirmed last week that it is going to be worse than his worst nightmares could ever prepare him for. Experiencing it in that dreamscape? Final straw. And so, finally, he was able to come out and admit to Sam that he doesn't want to die. He couldn't or wouldn't say it before – it sounds too close to implying that he regrets the choice he made, and I don't think Dean could ever regret choosing Sam's life over his own. He just isn't made that way. But now he's managed to admit that he doesn't want to die, doesn't want to go to hell, and that's a huge step forward.
There's probably a lot more I could and should say, but my brain isn't cooperating with me today - far more interested in wallowing in misery. Maybe my thoughts will come together better when I write up the recap, whenever that might be - time is looking a little pressed this next week. We'll see how things go.
'Intriguing' was the foremost word on my mind coming out of the first episode of Ashes to Ashes.
It's different than Life on Mars was, and I don't just mean different comatose character and different setting. The style and tone are different, the cinematography, atmosphere, everything. They even broke the strict narrative rule of LoM by showing us several scenes in which Alex was not present. LoM never did that, ever, except for that one episode when Sam was tripping out and watched the case unfolding on TV instead of actually being there. LoM had that really intense richness in tone and a sharp editing style, which conveyed Sam's absolute disorientation beautifully. A2A didn't have the same kind of instant and profound impact, especially with the transition scene, which on LoM was so iconic, but I got the impression that was deliberate. Alex is having the same experience as Sam, but it affects her in a different way. She already knew all about it, having studied Sam closely, so has that knowledge to cushion the impact, being able to measure her own experiences up against his. What is happening to her is freaky as hell, and terrifying and bizarre and incomprehensible, but it's also fascinating. She's a psychologist. Where Sam spent all his time floundering, Alex spends all her time analysing.
I think it'll take a couple of episodes to get used to Alex; she didn't make a huge emotional impact on me, but I think that'll come and is actually part of the character. I loved that she used air quotes every time she said anyone's name, and their nonplussed reactions to that.
Plus, of course, we are now seeing these characters – Gene, Chris and Ray – through Alex's eyes and via the perception she gained of them from studying Sam's experience. So they are all a bit larger than life, and that also fits with the 80s theme. It's all very intriguing.
The creepy mime man really is creepy, especially when he has Molly's voice. "Don't fight to wake up; it'll hurt too much." But Zippy and George were creepier!
The young WPC, Shaz, distracted me all the way through, because I knew I knew her from somewhere but could place it. Turns out she did an episode of Midsomer Murders a while back. That would be why I remembered her. She and Chris are sweet together; I approve.
I'm still not happy about the ending of Life on Mars and Sam's suicide, so it was a bit depressing to have it laid out there in black and white in Alex's notes. I liked her reaction when Ray told her that Sam had come back and lived another seven years inside the fantasy before he died. It's fascinating because…she's a psychologist. She's studied this phenomenon in Sam. But now she's experiencing it herself and already the doubts are creeping in. Logically, her analytical brain has created this explanation: that Sam jumped and killed himself, but in those last seconds before death was able to live out a life in this fantasy his mind had created for him, and now her mind is incorporating what she knows about him into her own fantasy. But she's also talking about it as an actual place where both their minds have sought refuge in time of trauma, populating by distinct characters with lives of their own. And thus we get to see these characters in scenes that Alex isn't witnessing. And they aren't reacting to her out-of-time oddities in the same way that they did with Sam. They already experienced Sam and his culture shock freak-outs, and Alex knows that. To her, what she's experiencing isn't a new or unique phenomenon in the way that it was to Sam, for all that she never expected it to happen to her, so her mind doesn't need them to react to her in that way.
It's intriguing. I'm looking forward to finding out more!
Torchwood's fourth episode, Meat, was a little patchy, I felt.
Mind, having said that, it completely lost me very early on, when Rhys gave the cop his dead driver's address as 54 Keppoch Street, Roath. That's literally just around the corner from me, and it's very distracting when reality and fiction collide like that. I completely lost the thread of the episode, because I was thinking things like: 'I wonder who really lives at 54 Keppoch Street, and if they are watching?' and 'Is Keppoch Street in Roath? I suppose it is, barely, but right on the border with Cathays...' and so on. Totally distracted.
Story: this episode succeeded in making me feel sorry for a gigantic CGI whale-slug. That's no mean feat. At least, I was feeling sorry up until the ending, which was overly-sentimental for my tastes.
When Gwen and Rhys were screaming at each other? That was good. That felt real.
I can't work out the weird relationships these characters have going on at all. I suspect because none of the writers seem to actually be communicating on a detailed level. I did wonder, though, whether Jack's thing about Gwen is about envy, as much as anything else. He wanted her on the team because she had a real life out in the world, and that real life out in the world is what he loves about her, but that's a paradox because if he was to act on it, he would instantly destroy the thing he loves about her. Plus I think he's more envious, than anything else. It isn't so much Gwen that holds his attention as what she stands for: stable, happy normality, of a kind that is completely unavailable to him. He's craving something he can't have, and knowing that makes it look all the more tempting.
I think. If that makes sense. Or it's possible that the writers just don't know what they are doing.
Except, of course, that he already has his thing with Ianto going on. But this is Captain Jack, after all, omnisexual and insatiable.
Who knows? Overall, it seems like the sense of cameraderie among the team is a lot better this year, but the individual relationships are still jumping all over the place.
Tosh: "We could feed the world."
Ianto: "We could release a single."
They are definitely giving Ianto all the best one-liners. He's very droll.
Supernatural's Dream a Little Dream of me. Whoa.
Bobby.
The backstory makes so much sense. Every hunter does what they do because of some personal tragedy or another. That much was already clear. So he was forced to kill his wife because she was possessed and rabid and deadly? That's harsh. I'm amazed he escaped with his life. And it completely explains why demons are his area of expertise – demons took his wife, so he's dedicated his life to becoming an expert in the field, trying to keep the same thing from happening to other people. What's going on right now must be his worst nightmare, by that token, with so many of them out there on the loose.
But then take that reaction and compare it to John's, when a demon took Mary from him. Bobby clearly learned very early on what happened to his wife. It took John years to find out what had killed Mary. That probably had something of an impact on their different reactions – Bobby had something tangible to focus on, while John was just lashing out blindly – but I've no doubt that personality also played a huge part. Bobby's a bluff, gruff guy, but a hell of a lot steadier than John was, even-tempered, and lacking that obsessive vengeful streak.
It hit me really hard in a very hurt-y place that Bobby had Dean listed as his emergency contact. There's just something that strikes me as really sad and poignant about that, because it has been established that Bobby knows a hell of a lot of people – Bobby knows absolutely everyone it seems at times – but those boys are special to him. We've been told that he's known them since they were children, we've watched him take them under his wing since their father died, we've seen how close he has become to Dean in particular and how he reacted when he learned of the deal. So the emergency contact thing just really struck a chord.
Bela.
Meh. Bela…still isn't quite sitting right with me. I read an interview with Eric Kripke recently in which he talked about wanting fans to like her because she's so much fun to write for. And I can see that. Everything he said about her is true – she does add a lot to the entertainment value of any given scene. I think it's the fact that she still has to be shoehorned into any given episode that's the trouble. She doesn't fit all that neatly with the formula, and this episode is a good example of that. Her presence made no sense whatsoever. I mean, Bela's motivations for going there to help out became clear come the end, with her theft of the Colt (idiot boys – will you never learn?) but I couldn't completely buy that the boys would ever have called her in the first place. Everything about their history with her says that this woman cannot be trusted. She shot Sam, and was prepared to let him die of the rabbit's foot curse rather than lose out on the money she could earn selling it. She sold them both out to Gordon Walker without batting an eyelid. She is dangerous, and they hate her, and they know that she doesn't do a damn thing unless there is something in it for her, so why they hell would they call her, never mind expect her to help?
I suppose because it was for Bobby, and they felt desperate enough to give it a try, even knowing that she would say no. But they just keep letting their guard down around her, and I don't understand why, and it is frustrating.
Having Bela steal the Colt, as annoyingly easy as they seem to have made it for her, does at least add a new layer of intrigue to the season, as well as creating ongoing difficulties for our heroes in fighting this demon war without their most effective weapon. Not that the Colt is infallible, but it was practically all they had going for them, and now it's gone, and I like that. Because it was getting too easy for them to just resort to the Colt at the drop of a hat, but now they aren't going to have that any more.
Sam.
Bless his heart, Sam at the start of this episode is really, really wallowing in his despair, and that hurts, and it follows on beautifully from where we left him last week. Drowning his sorrows and admitting to Dean that he feels he's failed because he can't find a way out of the deal, and he's just completely given up.
Has Dean told Sam about his conversation with Ruby, I wonder? Sam seems to know about the demons being hellfire-corrupted human souls thing, but he could have extrapolated that himself from what Tammi told them. He clearly doesn't know that Ruby told Dean straight out that she can't save him, so Dean clearly hasn't shared the entire conversation with him, even if they did talk through the demon mythology. I can't honestly see Dean being able to verbalise any of what Ruby said to him, not to Sam, not when it's because of and for Sam that it's happening. But maybe he did manage to find the words, and that's why Sam is even more depressed than he was last week.
But then when Dean admitted at the end that he doesn't want to die, Sam just completely let go of all that despair and hopelessness, because Dean's opposition and fatalism was a large factor in his depression, and because Dean needs him to provide a bit of support and reassurance, and it's the least he can do for his brother. And that kind of hurt, as well, that he started the episode drunkenly admitting that there's nothing he can to do save Dean but the moment Dean admitted he doesn't want to die and go to hell, Sam's all 'right, we'll get on that, then', so matter-of-fact, because he can't remind his brother how hopeless the situation is, not now, and he's able to take heart from knowing that Dean actually wants to survive, and just…boys. Poor, poor boys.
I loved that when Dean told Sam he didn't want him digging around in his head, Sam didn't ague the point. He went through with it anyway, because it was important to provide backup, but he didn't belabour the point. Dean's head is a screwed up place to be, and they both know it, and it was clear once they were inside Dean's dreamscape that Sam felt uncomfortable, knowing that he was intruding on something private.
I have no idea where Sam's Bela fantasy came from. She shot him, and she sold him out, and she doesn't give a damn about anyone but herself and can't be trusted in any way, and…ah well. I suppose maybe it's just that he's a guy, and she's an attractive woman, and his subconscious is getting tired of living like a monk! And his reactions were fab when Dean woke him and then when Bela herself walked in.
As for his ability to manipulate the Psycho Dreamwalker's dreamscape…it's the first time this season Sam has admitted that he doesn't know if his psychic mojo had anything to do with it or not. Every other time the subject has been raised, he has flat out denied that he even still has any psychic abilities. Denial is such a staple of the Winchesters. But Sam isn't so sure any more, and that's potentially interesting.
Dean.
Man, Dean does it to me every time.
It kind of killed me how upset he was about Bobby, because Dean avoids getting close to people for that exact reason. He gets close to someone, and they inevitably either reject him or up and die on him. We already knew he felt that way. Since John's death, Dean has gradually grown to rely on Bobby's gruff but unconditional support, able to do so, perhaps, because he has known Bobby since he was young. To hear him admit out loud that he regards Bobby as a father-figure hit hard. So then when he was sitting by Bobby's hospital bed, just watching him sleep, that was a gorgeous scene – so much conveyed with no dialogue whatsoever: the crushing inevitability of losing the people he is close to combined with almost desperate desire to not let it happen again. And then Sam walked into the room, and you could see that he recognised exactly what Dean was thinking and feeling, but didn't say anything about it, because he knows better than that by now. Dean is closer to Bobby than Sam is; we've already seen this season that they connect on a level that Sam has never yet reached, and we saw the divide again here. And that's not to say that Sam doesn't love Bobby as well, because he does, but he doesn't have the same kind of bond. And I think maybe in part that's because he doesn't need it; Sam has always had Dean to lean on, mentor, brother, parent and best friend all rolled into one. But Dean needs someone who isn't Sam to lean on in turn, and Bobby has filled that role since John's death left Dean floundering. And so Bobby's predicament really hit Dean hard.
As for the dreamscape…whew! Man, that was a killer, and it didn't even tell us anything we didn't already know. We got Lisa filling the role Carmen played in the WIAWSNB fantasy, but representing the exact same longing: for security and stability, a home, a family, someone to love. A future. The difference was that this time Sam got to see it, too.
And then there was the Dean-on-Dean scenario, and whoa, that was a doozy! All the self-loathing and insecurity and daddy issues that he's kept bottled up inside most of his life all finally hitting meltdown and pouring out, and just damn. Like I said, it wasn't anything we didn't already know about how Dean's upbringing and John's questionable parenting choices affected him, but still. Damn. Hearing him actually say it all out loud, acknowledging that he doesn't deserve what's happened and going to happen to him…man. And seeing himself as a demon, and blowing himself away, and then the blood-splattered Demon!Dean just popping right back up like that, just…damn. And it was the final straw that tipped him over the edge at last. We already knew he was dreading what lies ahead of him. Ruby confirmed last week that it is going to be worse than his worst nightmares could ever prepare him for. Experiencing it in that dreamscape? Final straw. And so, finally, he was able to come out and admit to Sam that he doesn't want to die. He couldn't or wouldn't say it before – it sounds too close to implying that he regrets the choice he made, and I don't think Dean could ever regret choosing Sam's life over his own. He just isn't made that way. But now he's managed to admit that he doesn't want to die, doesn't want to go to hell, and that's a huge step forward.
There's probably a lot more I could and should say, but my brain isn't cooperating with me today - far more interested in wallowing in misery. Maybe my thoughts will come together better when I write up the recap, whenever that might be - time is looking a little pressed this next week. We'll see how things go.
