"If only I knew when to stop."

[llywela]

Because I absolutely cannot twist my brain around this episode any longer - herein find recap :-)

And, um, this one got really long again. I just couldn't stop talking, and found my thought process derailing itself off at tangents at regular intervals. Also, there is a vast surfeit of images in there, because...family!!

Must try to scale back a little next time!

Okay, so here it is: many, many pages wherein I ramble on about Dean sleeping, Sam sneaking and Castiel creeping, potential future confrontations and the fate of Castiel's holy tax accountant host, Young John's Jessica to Mary's Sam, Castiel's unhelpful vagueness, the brain-twistiness of time travel, the Campbell family and hunting, inherited personality quirks, pre-Internet research, more brain-twistiness of time travel, why The Family Business should be a spin-off show, Dean's priorities, Azazel, Mary's choice and the fate to which she doomed her family, pre-destination versus free will, secrets and evasion, and much more besides.

To read the recap, click the link below:

"What, are you allergic to straight answers, you son of a bitch?"

Screencaps found at Screencap Paradise and oxoniensis

Comments

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

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.

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

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.

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

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'.

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

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.

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

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

[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).

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

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