Lle Llywela

YAY, recap! I'm not getting tired of reading about this episode! ♥

Jared Padalecki was otherwise engaged: finishing off the film he made over the summer. Hm, Mitch Pileggi stated in an interview that Jared was in Hawaii while they were shooting the episode. I got the impression it was for vacation, but maybe they did reshoot stuff for his summer movie there?!

(…)vague flashes of blood and screaming rather than anything more specific. But who knows how often this has happened since his return – could be every time he sleeps, for all we know. And now I am asking myself if the reason why we see Dean sleeping so much this season is because his nightmares about hell prevent him from being really rested, making for a permanent state of exhaustion. :(

Wow, in that cap where Dean and young John look towards the diner entrance they look eerily alike, stunning family resemblance. The casting was really good in this episode!

Robert Campbell was one of the names investigated by Sam in The Kids Are Alright, we remember; he died in July 2001. Ooh, good catch! Now I wonder if they have also been hunters and if that’s the reason why YED killed them, worried that they would be able to put his pattern together. Hm, interesting!

It is sad to think that in another life both he and Sam might have sat around this very table every week, visiting their grandparents. Oh man, that thought just totally teared me up! :(

Samuel is confused by Mary's attitude, every inch the clueless dad. Samuel’s reaction here gave me the impression that he reacted way more favourably to Mary’s wish to give up hunting than John to Sam’s wish. Mary obviously never hid her desire to leave the life behind from her parents, which talks of a trusting relationship between them. Sure, Samuel dislikes the notion, but she’s his daughter and I doubt he would have cut his bonds with her after her marriage to John.

But I'm inclined to think the kiss isn't strictly necessary, and is just another example of Azazel's twisted sense of humour. I don’t think that the YED needs to seal his deals with a kiss either, but he mentions earlier to Dean that while he doesn’t breed with the women who bear the psychic children, he’d like to make an exception for Mary. She clearly captured his fancy and he seized the opportunity here.

Did she remember Dean's warning, and connect the date he gave her with the ten years mentioned in Azazel's deal? Even if she didn’t repress her memories in favour of living the illusion of a normal life, I think that when the 2nd of May passed and nothing happened she might have thought that the threat was over. The YED didn’t show up and she didn’t have a reason to assume that just 6 months later her debt would come due! Twisted thing about this deal and it makes you wonder why the YED made the deal for 10 years when he only used that permission later.

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I got the impression it was for vacation, but maybe they did reshoot stuff for his summer movie there?!
I haven't seen that interview - I just heard that he was called back to the movie to reshoot some scenes.

Now I wonder if they have also been hunters and if that’s the reason why YED killed them, worried that they would be able to put his pattern together. Hm, interesting!
I'm trying to remember what the comics imply about Mary's uncle - not that the comics bear any resemblance to canon, of course. But I don't want to have to actually read them again to find out...

Sure, Samuel dislikes the notion, but she’s his daughter and I doubt he would have cut his bonds with her after her marriage to John.
Totally. Which would make it that much harder for Mary to give up hunting completely, in fact, or to keep it hidden from John. For Sam, it was easy - he severed all ties to his former life. He had little or no contact with his father and brother to know what they were hunting when, and therefore had no conscience pricking him to go help out on occasion. For Mary, if she had married John and tried to give up hunting with her parents still alive, she would always have been torn - spending time with them, she would find it hard to avoid knowing if they were working a case at any given time. So...yeah, from the YED's point of view, removing the parents was a smart move. :(

it makes you wonder why the YED made the deal for 10 years when he only used that permission later.
*shrugs* So it was ten and a half years, rather than ten on the nose - I don't think it makes that much difference. It isn't like a Crossroads deal, where the timing is exact. He was just providing himself with an in with a lot of young people, and presumably only ever used a fraction of them, depending on how many went on to have children of the right age. The six months date is clearly important, so I guess he could take up his permission at any time during the tenth year, depending on which of those parents had a baby the right age and depending on what date that baby became six months old.

It was 2 November 1983 that Dean warned her about specifically, and she promised to remember. Within that tenth year.

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I haven't seen that interview - I just heard that he was called back to the movie to reshoot some scenes Well, maybe they shot on Hawaii then, because Pileggi stated that in order to tease/annoy Jensen, the crew pinned postcards from Hawaii at the front of the cameras when they were filming to rub it in where Jared was. *lol*

I'm trying to remember what the comics imply about Mary's uncle Wellllll, the comics are problematic, because the Jacob in the comic isn't adressed as Mary's uncle but as Sam and Dean's uncle, he openly calls them his nephews, so that would mean he was Mary's brother, which obviously contradicts the episode since Mary apparently was a single child. It's also said that it was this uncle Jacob who took care of Mary after her parents' death, which obviously isn't in sync with the episode either. So, the comics were utterly Kripke'd with 'In The Beginning'.

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And doesn't even have internal logic, since if he was Sam'n'Dean's uncle and Mary's sibling, he would not really be in a position to look after Mary when their parents died, unless the age gap was large! I did wonder if maybe the details could be twisted so we could imagine Mary's uncle coming to take charge of her in the aftermath of her parents' deaths, since in the episode she is only 18/19, unused to coping alone, and would be very shaken - the uncle coming to stay and help out until her marriage would make sense. But...no, the comics bear no resemblance to the show whatsoever.

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Right! I think it is better to just forget about the comics altogether. If Kripke can't be bothered with trying to keep the comics in canon, why should I even bother with the comics? LOL

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wildcard-sej.livejournal.com

FWIW, I believe "being in Hawaii" is SPN-speak for not being available for filming (or cons), and doesn't mean that the person in question was actually there (Hawaii).

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Ahh hehe, that's entirely possible. It's still a funny anecdote even if Jared wasn't actually in Hawaii *g*

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I am so sorry, I have been a horrible...meta-er? I promise I will read this when I am feeling better, promise!!!!

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You don't have to apologise for anything - it's up to you if you're in a reading/commenting mood or not.

Feel better soon.

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oxoniensis.livejournal.com

Your review was fascinating - thanks so much for linking me! I just wish I had more time right now to think about, because there were just so many fascinating little details.

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Ooh, you read it? Thanks. I just linked so you could see that your caps were being put to use :)

This show breaks my brain - too many thoughts!

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percysowner.livejournal.com

This is a great recap of the episode. One of the things I look forward to every week is your take on what has happeed.
Just to prove my age

The Impala's licence plate is wrong. It is C-45P4 – it should be KAZ 2Y5. Now, when the licence plate was wrong in What Is And What Should Never Be, that was just one of a number of tiny clues that Dean's experience in that episode was a dream, rather than reality. In this instance, I wonder if there is some other reason it would have been changed in the 35 years that elapse between the events of this episode and the Pilot. Did John, perhaps, change the plates when he went on the run with the boys, after Mary's death? Or did US vehicle registration go through some kind of overhaul between 1973 and 2005?

I owned cars during that period. In Ohio, at least, when you renewed your license plates, you got new plates. If you were willing to pay extra you could keep the same number. If you were cheap, like I was, you got whatever number happened to come up. The idea of keeping the plate and just attaching a little sticker showing the year came much later. So John may well have had several different license plate numbers until he got the one we know so well

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Ooooh, useful cultural information that allows me to understand! Thanks!

I know nothing about cars, whatsoever. On either side of the Atlantic.

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I had literally filled a Notepad with my whole reaction to this, and guess what?

I SHUT DOWN MY COMPUTER AND ACCIDENTALLY PUSHED "NO" WHEN IT ASKED ME IF I WANTED TO SAVE.

*crawls into a corner and cries*

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Yikes! Man, that's the worst feeling, knowing all that hard thinking has been lost.

Your timing is perfect. I've been feeling really lousy all weekend to the point where I'm not sure there will be a recap for this week's episode, because I just don't think I'm in any fit state to write meta. But I love talking Show, and don't want to get into the kind of funk where even the things I love lose their shine, so hopefully replying to comments will help my brain click back into gear :)

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Maybe Sam pulled the jacket over his brother, seeing that he'd fallen asleep on top of the blanket, and he does rather look as if he just crawled into the room and crashed…but then again, he used his coat as a blanket last week, as well. We've been seeing Dean sleep a lot since he got out of hell, and he never looks what you'd call comfortable, as if he's falling asleep wherever he is when he can no longer stay awake, rather than choosing to settle in for a good night's sleep. It doesn't exactly suggest healthy rest, does it?

Someone did a picspam on this, Dean's sleeping patterns since season one. He used to sleep in boxers and a T-shirt, on his belly, face buried in a pillow. And now, he doesn't even bother to take off his boots, let alone get under the covers. It makes me think of Dean saying he was tired - and now he still doesn't get to really rest. Poor Dean.

Whatever. Dean is asleep. And Sam? Sam still isn't savouring his brother's return in any way. He's taking the opportunity to sneak out and away from Dean once again – that's the second time in three episodes. It's as if he's too busy trying to lead this double life of his to stop and appreciate the miracle he's been given, no time to pause and take stock.

We talked a little bit about this, in a different light - like Sam running out to kill the coven when Dean was dying, or spending all his time searching for a way to save Dean instead of actually spending time with him. Sam's choices are choices a soldier makes, not a brother, to me. I think you're totally right, it's like he can't see the smaller picture anymore, at all.

You know, as much as I'm loving the action-packed start to the season, I would also really, really love an episode that was purely domestic – like a missing scenes story that fills in the gaps of these dramatic early episodes.

So would I! I mean, we got, what, a 10-second scene with Sam returning Dean's necklace? And yeah there was emotion but it was kind of moved past very fast! Toss us a bone here!!

Presumably, these flashes of memory will continue to increase and become clearer as time goes by. But of course, if Sam is never in the room when they happen, it will be easier for Dean to conceal what is happening, at least until the memories overwhelm him.

I'm naturally paranoid, so it makes me wonder if perhaps it's a bit TOO convenient that Dean never has any flashes when Sam is there. Of course, it could just be Dean is a bit more relaxed when he's alone, even if Sam is his brother. Maybe being around ANYONE is too much right now.

And the older man greets him as John. John Winchester. "Dad?" Dean whispers, shocked to his core.

Okay, now - the only thing that bothered me about this guy was his body didn't seem to go with what I thought John was at that age. Of course, Sam kept growing until he was...well honestly I'm not convinced he HAS stopped growing, lol. And this actor has the same body type that Jared Padalecki had at age 17, so. When I thought of it like that I got over it!

o have Dean be the one that convinces John to buy the Impala? It's mind-bending stuff. Dean wants John to buy that car because he knows that's the car his dad drove, the car he and Sam grew up in – the car John gave him, still his beloved pride and joy. That car is a fact of history, from Dean's point of view. But then if the reason John drove that car (and the boys grew up in it and John gave it to Dean) was because Dean talked him into buying it in the first place, because Dean knew that's how it was…man. Talk about the paradoxical infinite loop! Time travel breaks my brain.

Mine, too! But for this episode, I honestly think Dean would never have been able to change things in any significant way. Maybe the sales guy would have urged the young man towards the "cooler" car, maybe John would have talked himself into it. But I do still love that Dean got to talk his dad into buying Dean's car. (And yes, I think this establishes that the Impala was Dean's car before he was even born!)

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Poor tired Dean. I think the sleeping on his belly thing has been a little exaggerated in the fandom - I don't think we ever saw him doing that enough to make it his normal sleeping position; it seems more like he fidgets around a lot while he sleeps, as we've seen him in just about every position. But he definitely doesn't seem to rest as comfortably this season.

Sam's choices are choices a soldier makes, not a brother, to me. I think you're totally right, it's like he can't see the smaller picture anymore, at all.
In a sense, I think it's more that he hasn't been letting himself see the smaller picture, because if he stopped and thought about it too closely he'd fall apart. So he's just focused absolutely on putting one foot in front of the other from day to day, as it were. Task to finish, never letting himself think about anything beyond that task. And having Dean back must have made it so much harder to hold it all together, all that inner conflict. It's the way in which he is most like John, that narrow focus as a coping mechanism.

It's funny, because on the surface Sam comes across as Emo Boy, the emotional one...and yet so much of his emotion is focused inward and remains unseen. Whereas Mr Macho Dean wears his heart on his sleeve a hell of a lot more than anyone would realise on first glance, all his emotions bursting outward.

yeah there was emotion but it was kind of moved past very fast! Toss us a bone here!!
I believe this is where the episode switch comes into play, alas. 4.05 was originally meant to air as 4.03 and would have fitted perfectly as the lighter, more 'domestic' episode we craved in the midst of all that angst, with Sam blatantly just enjoying having Dean with him. *sigh*

it could just be Dean is a bit more relaxed when he's alone
I tend to think that is more like it - and that he is more distracted when he is alone. We've only seen the one waking flashback, very brief. When he has people around him, he would be well and truly distracted from any potential brooding over what happened to him - and as time goes by, I think he is less and less inclined to ponder it, just accepts that it happened, he doesn't remember, and move on. Asleep, his guard is down, so the memories surface - but I'm not convinced he is fully aware of the memories, yet, whether because the details fade once he is awake or because he is repressing and denying. I am very interested to know if Sam has noticed his brother's bad dreams and disturbed rest, or not.

only thing that bothered me about this guy was his body didn't seem to go with what I thought John was at that age. Of course, Sam kept growing until he was...well honestly I'm not convinced he HAS stopped growing
ROFL he is definitely shorter than Older John! Clearly, he had a growth spurt in his 20s - and bulked up considerably having settled into comfortable married life/become a hunter...

I honestly think Dean would never have been able to change things in any significant way.
Yep, and I'm still not entirely convinced it was genuine time travel anyway. I think that even if Dean hadn't been there...well, the salesman left John alone. His eyes could easily have wandered, landed on the Impala, and true love followed. It wasn't hard for Dean to talk him into it!

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"Mom," he realises, awed. Like John, Mary was born in 1954, is also no more than 19 years old here.

The picked a fantastic actress for Mary! She looks like Pilot-Mary. She also looks like Kara from Smallville.

And aww – I always loved Dean's habit of talking to himself or to inanimate objects.

Me too!

"Are you a hunter?" he gasps, worldview rocked to its core yet again.

Fandom has been playing with that idea for quite awhile, but nobody ever really did anything with it because I think they weren't sure how to fit it with the rest of the pieces concerning the YED. So now we know how it fits!

Aww. Mary's mother is great. She introduces herself to Dean as Deanna, and Dean is stunned all over again. And her husband is Samuel. Samuel and Deanna. Oh, Show. So very cheesy – fanficky, even – to have Mary's sons named after her parents. And yet also kind of cute. Especially that Dean is the one named after a girl…

I liked it, it was cute. But the fact that Dean did not even know his maternal grandparents' name makes me wonder if Mary, and by extension her family, was ever discussed at all when the boys were growing up. AT ALL! Sam's line from the pilot, that he wouldn't even know what she looked like without pictures, kind of proves that you're right when you say she wasn't ever really talked about. I also wonder if the same was true for John's side of the family.
And you know, Deanna doesn't have that many scenes in this episode, but she clearly fills much the same role within the Campbell family that her namesake Dean does for the Winchesters. She is the glue that holds them all together, the homemaker, the mediator to smooth over rough edges and ruffled feathers – the heart of the family. Nicely done, Show.

I just LOVE all these traits that you can kind of see in this episode. We know some things came from John, and others must have come from Mary, but to see it go back further is cool.

Overall, and taking all these variations into account, it does seem clear that the extreme itinerancy, and, let's face it, deprivation, in which John Winchester raised his sons was very definitely the exception, rather than the rule – it was a choice that he made, rather than necessity, and his sons suffered for it.

I wonder too - I think it comes down - AGAIN - to that question of, "How much did John know?" Did he know that a demon had its eye on his family? Did he know that the demon might come for Sam some day? But also, if you think about it, I don't think they really could have settled down - the town would have noticed him being one days at a time, leaving two boys home alone. Maybe when they got older, though...

"I want to get out," Mary admits, and Dean stares at her, quietly falling apart. "This job, this life – I hate it. I want a family. I want to be safe. You know the worst thing I can think of? The very worst thing? It's for my children to be raised into this like I was. I won't let it happen."

I think what really broke my heart is that hunting is the only worthy thing Dean feels he's ever done with his life. It's so central to who he is, to hear that is just....poor Dean. ♥

"No," Azazel agrees. "I just want their children. I'm here to choose the perfect parents, like your mommy."

"Why her?" Dean grates out, filled with horror. "Why any of them?"

"Because they're strong," Azazel gloats. He always did enjoy talking at his victims at length, boasting about his own cleverness, instead of going for the quick kill.

I seriously think there's more to it than that. AND I WANNA KNOW WHAT IT IS!

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It's awesome in 4.04 to see the younger and older versions of both John and Mary in the recap and realise how well they were cast.

I've seen a few different fan interpretations over the seasons of how Mary might fit into the mytharc - but no one came up with quite this scenario!

It definitely seems like neither Mary nor her family were ever spoken of within the family. In a way, that makes more sense, having seen this episode - no matter how much John did or didn't piece together later, the tragic events of the episode as they would have come across to a layman are enough for John to want to protect his sons from - especially the bit where he has to have believed that Mary killed her father to protect him. They never met Mary's uncle, either, we know, even though he obviously cared enough about his niece to pay for her headstone. Such a tragic family!

I just LOVE all these traits that you can kind of see in this episode.
It's awesome, isn't it, that we can look at John and Mary and now Samuel and Deanna and pick out character traits from both Dean and Sam in all of them, a real mix-and-match, just as it should be. It's one of my favourite aspects of the show.

if you think about it, I don't think they really could have settled down
I've written reams about this in my John Essay, that may or may not ever be finished. Maybe I should just let you read the draft at some point!! Because I think we have seen enough hunters now to know that it is completely possible to hunt from a stable home base, and even to raise children at the same time. But to do so does require balance, and that is what John's methods are completely lacking. I think the reason he was unable or unwilling to hunt from a stable home base was because he refused to compromise - for John, it had to be all or nothing.

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Because I think we have seen enough hunters now to know that it is completely possible to hunt from a stable home base, and even to raise children at the same time.

Like Mary's parents did! But the only thing that would be a problem is John being the only adult - who's there for the kids when he hunts? We know he didn't mind leaving the boys on their own, but the people in town would!

I think you're right, and it really was what John wanted, or thought was better, no matter what!

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See, the way I see it, if John had managed a better balance between hunting and normal life, it wouldn't have mattered so much that he was a lone parent. He would just need to build up a support network around him to help with the boys - neighbours and fellow parents, perhaps, or paid babysitter, and tell them he was going on business trips when he went off hunting. But I think that balance is something he never achieved, and maybe never tried that hard for - he focused his entire being on hunting to the exclusion of everything else, and as a result their lives were never stable or normal enough (or settled enough) to build up that kind of social support network. There was never enough appearance of normality not to seem suspicious. All or nothing.

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Dean smirks a mirthless smirk. "Maybe not today. But you look into my eyes, you son of a bitch. 'Cause I'm the one that kills you."

Oh Dean, I ♥ you!!!! I'm glad he got that one in.

He did express somewhat indifferent regret over Mary's fate in All Hell Breaks Loose, we recall – told Sam that it was merely bad luck that she walked in on them. Wrong place, wrong time. Killing the mothers is not part of his plan, although he does not hesitate to do it if they disturb him.

That's what's so horrible. I mean, we don't know what would have happened if Sam had never become a hunter, because Sam not knowing all he knows could be worse, but it really was as simple as Mary sleeping through the baby monitor that night!

It is May 2nd 1973. Exactly ten years from this day, Sam will be born. For the sake of John's life, Mary has sold her unborn son to a demon, condemned her entire future family to their tragic destiny, and she doesn't even know it – doesn't know that by trying to ensure her own safe, normal future and happiness, she has created the very life for her sons that she least wanted them to ever know. All she knows is that she can't lose John – just as John, many years in the future, knew that he couldn't lose Dean, just as Dean knew that he couldn't lose Sam. Just as losing Dean has sent Sam spiralling down a dark path. Somehow, for this family, sacrifice has become the staple reaction to personal loss, and this is where it all started.

That breaks my heart, too. It also makes me think that it's all going to end with Sam. Whatever the end is.

"Don't be too hard on yourself," Castiel smoothly intones. "You couldn't have stopped it."

And that makes me hate him a little, for ever letting Dean, who already carries too much guilt over things that aren't his fault, believe he could do anything about it.

"Four-twenty-five Waterman," says Castiel, for once giving a straight answer to a straight question – but still for reasons of his own. Dean glares at the angel, grabs his coat, and heads for the door. "Your brother is headed down a dangerous road, Dean," Castiel calls after him. "And we're not sure where it leads. So stop it. Or we will."

That is NOT the way to go to gain Dean Winchester's trust!

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we don't know what would have happened if Sam had never become a hunter, because Sam not knowing all he knows could be worse
Yeah, it's one of those where you can argue both sides. Sam being raised as a hunter meant that he had the strength and skills to survive where others like him fell at the wayside (except...he didn't, really, because Jake killed him). If he hadn't had that training, he probably would have ended up no differently than, say, Andy or Ava. So being trained gave him an advantage...but also brought him to the YED's attention a lot more than the others, which can't be considered a good thing, and also meant that his family and loved ones became much more of a target than any of the other psychic kids. Damned either way, really.

It also makes me think that it's all going to end with Sam. Whatever the end is.
You know, I have a horrible feeling that one truly fitting way for the show to end would be Sam sacrificing himself for the greater good, so that nobody - whether good or bad - could use his psychic powers, because they are part of him and will always be a target. And then Dean being the one who finally learns that it is possible to live with grief and go on and still lead a fulfilled life, even without his beloved family.

Course, I'd rather just see them both driving off into the sunset...

And that makes me hate him a little, for ever letting Dean, who already carries too much guilt over things that aren't his fault, believe he could do anything about it.
Yes. Sadistic bastard. I can understand him needing Dean to witness what happened, because it was the only way to be sure he would believe. But there was no reason to let Dean believe he could change things; that wa just cruel. I tend to think, though, that Castiel just honestly doesn't understand enough about how humans work - how Dean works. He's learning, though. There was genuine compassion in his eyes when he came to take Dean back, as if he finally got it, realised how hard the experience had been.

And I don't think the threat against Sam was designed to gain Dean's trust - it was designed to motivate him, and it worked!

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gwendolyngrace.livejournal.com

Catching up on the recaps, now that I've (finally!) finished watching the season....

See, this episode was actually what made me fall *out* of love with S4 for a while. Well, this and the Armageddon plotline (though I will cheerfully admit that on that score, they're doing it badass).

All the inconsistencies and paradoxes and even the pat-ness of the flashback convince me that Castiel was creating it for Dean's benefit, that he was, in fact, walking through more of a dreamscape than a reality. Now, it's possible that Castiel wanted Dean to be able to interact with Azazel on the chance that the demon would reveal more information than the angels already had, but I doubt it. I don't think he actually sent Dean back. As such, I don't believe all the details.

I can (eventually) reconcile to Mary having been from a family of hunters, but I still don't particularly like it. There's just too many problems with the explanation, and it's too neat and tidy.

Meh. I dunno. Angels - Castiel in particular - are manipulative creatures (that part, btw, I love), and I just don't trust that this vision is anything other than what Castiel wanted Dean to see.

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