At the airport in San Francisco and they're playing episodes of Supernatural in one of the bars in the year of our Lord 2024

Look, I know you've covered this already but I just want to reiterate how AWESOME it is that several lines and scenes of s14 were deliberately drawing our attention to the in‐betweens, to the fact that these guys have lives outside of what we seen and that they have significant moments in those off screen lives. I just fricking *love* that.

Hi hi! I know you sent this like a week ago, but I really wanted to have time to sit down and detail all the moments in s14 where they’ve used this device before replying– both for the sake of completeness in demonstrating just how critical they’ve made these “in between” spaces to the overall narrative, as well as for my own general reference purposes. :P

I’ll start by saying that the show has done this on some level from the start. I mean, the entire series begins with a cold open in 1983 before jumping 22 years into the future to begin in the “present day” of October, 2005. We begin our introduction to the story of Supernatural immediately aware that there’s already a metric fuckton of backstory we’re due to have filled in, and we’re primed to begin looking for more pieces to flesh out that history from the moment the first scene airs.

*clenches fist* STORYTELLING

I’m currently in mid-late s7 in my eternal rewatch, and even s7 uses this device MULTIPLE times. I mean, s6 does this, as well, immediately informing us that a year has passed since the events of 5.22, and gradually filling in the missing events from that gap, using Sam’s soullessness and then post-re-ensoulening amnesia about his soulless time, him “scratching the wall” and beginning to piece his own memories together, as one entry point into this “filling in the blanks of the past for full understanding of the present” storytelling device. The other major expression of this device in s6 is Castiel’s story throughout the season, which doesn’t truly begin to fill in all the blanks and answer all the questions until episode TWENTY.

(I am not defending this storytelling choice, because in s6 it served as a metaphorical “punishment,” which is still so skeevy I struggle to watch the season as a whole… in Gamble Era, characters are “punished” for remembering their past– Sam for his guilt over what he did while soulless, and eventually Cas for his hubris in believing he could devour the souls of purgatory without consequences… and again, what I get from Gamble Era overall is an unkindness to all the characters… this Erasure of Identity. For years now, I’ve read this exchange from 6.09 as a bit of an indictment of the story of that era by Ben Edlund:

SAM: So you’re saying having a soul equals suffering.DEAN: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.SAM: Like, the million times you almost called Lisa. So you’re saying suffering is a good thing.DEAN: I’m saying it’s the only game in town.

but back to the point)

S7 employed this technique in really in-your-face obvious ways, showing us time skips with little montages that cover several weeks in a matter of less than a minute, during which we’re shown the tone of the events of the “missing time” and are being told directly how to fill in those blanks:

7.01 shows this montage through Dean repairing Baby while receiving occasional updates on Sam’s recovery and Cas’s Godstiel rampage.

7.03 gives us a montage of Dean’s healing leg while he’s relegated to the sofa in the cabin watching tv… weeks elapse like this before the action picks up again.

7.10 uses flashbacks as Bobby lays dying to directly show us a fuller snapshot of who he is as a character, and why he’s been so important to Sam and Dean as their adoptive father figure

7.11 uses another “weeks pass” montage to show us Sam and Dean’s grief and their respective ways of handling Bobby’s loss

7.17 uses another flashback montage as Castiel literally rebuilds his identity from these moments… can’t really be more anvilicious than this about the import of filling in the narrative gaps…

But over the years, this has evolved in the narrative from these blatantly obvious tells to something we’re being low-level reminded of in nearly every episode through a constant implicit assumption that these characters have lives outside of what we see on The Magic Rectangle for 42 minutes a week. The show’s gone from literally subtitling these scenes and telling us exactly what we’re seeing to requiring our assumption that all we need to learn how to fill in the blanks is to assume these are actually real people who casually reference things we never knew before from their own lives and assume we know all the characters well enough by now to correctly fill in the blanks they so casually point out to us, or even expand on vast swaths of otherwise “missing time” from what we actively see of their lives from an otherwise minor comment made in passing…

Gosh, ain’t it nice when writers assume their audience is actually intelligent, considerate, engaged, and caring like this? Honestly in this day and age of GOTCHA! oneupsmanship, of authors attempting to demonstrate their intellectual superiority over their audience, it’s rather refreshing.

One more thing before we jump right into s14. Dabb and Company have been “educating” us on how to read these subtextual instructions for years now. We had the Mixtape Revelation in 12.19 that idiotically devolved into fandom arguments over what a mixtape itself was intended to symbolize, with people arguing that the thing itself had no inherent romantic implications (which… wow… but people be dumb sometimes…). I’d argue that regardless of what anyone has convinced themselves the gift meant symbolically (or didn’t mean symbolically for people with their heads shoved so far up their butts they actually made that argument in a public forum with a straight face and actually got mad about folks who actually know better…), what it meant NARRATIVELY was that the original gifting of the tape was something that had happened in the past, that we-the-audience previously had no knowledge of this particular interaction between Dean and Cas, and were being SPECIFICALLY TOLD that even though WE DID NOT SEE IT HAPPEN ON SCREEN, it absolutely, definitely, CANONICALLY ACTUALLY HAPPENED regardless of that fact.

Not only did that unseen exchange canonically happen, it was discussed by Dean and Cas in a casual fashion, as if it was simply one moment in a past filled with moments just like it. In a season where the episodes leading up to this one were filled with comments about Dean and Cas calling each other regularly (conversations that we never see, yet are informed casually happen constantly offscreen), and Dean’s increasing distress over NOT being able to reach Cas for several episodes, it’s impossible NOT to draw the conclusion that this lack of communication is HIGHLY IRREGULAR and therefore SOMETHING WE SHOULD ALL BE CONCERNED ABOUT. We didn’t need to *see* all of this to apply this fact far more broadly to the entire narrative, and understand there were massive gaps between what they could show us in 42 minutes a week versus what the baseline background life is for all of these characters in those between-times.

They doubled down on this in s13, specifically in 13.06, both with the “Dean and Cas regularly watch movies together” comments AND in the casual knowledge Cas shares with Jack about Dean’s sleeping and coffee drinking habits. It’s not just these isolated facts that we’re supposed to take away from these sorts of exchanges, but what they mean in the larger context of their off-camera interactions and relationship as a whole.

So that said, let’s move on to s14, where this has honestly evolved to the next level. The rest of this is going under a cut for now, because the totality of this post is something like 7700 words...

14.01, Stranger in a Strange Land:

The season begins with a montage of Dinkle’s actions over a period of weeks, talking to different people and asking what they want. We don’t see every one of these conversations, but we can extrapolate out from the ones we DO see and infer how all of those experiences guide his subsequent actions (as well as Dean’s subsequent emotional and psychological state later down the road).

But we’re shown one more of those conversations INDIRECTLY, from an offhand comment of another character, where we’re both reminded of Dinkle’s little conversations, AND reminded that they don’t constitute the sum total of those conversations. There is much we haven’t seen (and will NOT see, because this scene renders any additional on-screen time to cover the tone and content of those conversations superfluous and redundant), and yet we still understand the importance and gravity of Dinkle’s entire occupation during those missing weeks:

Kip:You see, recently, I had a revelation. You know, somebody asked me what it was that I wanted. And I realized that after 600 years as a demon walking the planet, destroying, drinking, defiling – you know, the Three D’s – I didn’t know. So, I sat back, and I gave it a good think, and I realized exactly what I wanted.Castiel: And what is it?Kip: Everything.

We also see this from the other side of the narrative– through the progression of events occurring at the Bunker in Dean’s absence. Sam’s despair is conveyed not only in dialogue in his conversation with Mary, it’s conveyed through just how poorly he’s looking after his own wellbeing, not shaving (visual confirmation of his mindset informing us of what his life’s been like over the previous weeks), not eating or sleeping (we’re told, and believe because of how he’s presenting himself, but also emotionally informs us of how he’s been affected by his ordeal), while simultaneously having stepped up to lead the army of AU Hunters– i.e. people from a world where war against Michael has been their lives for more than a decade, and are literally bringing that experience to THIS world, metaphorically going back to the start of their own battle to a world where Michael is only BEGINNING to enact that war on this world, who now have the experience of having survived that war and the knowledge gained while having fought against it, but also a chance to stop it before it can be allowed to start again. Or that is the hope, you know?

We’re also seeing Jack struggle with guilt, with adapting to life without the magical powers he’d been born with, and being forced to confront what is truly important to him, and what his own humanity means to him.

We’re subtly being reminded of VAST quantities of canon upon which the current character developments are resting.

14.02, Gods and Monsters:

There’s a lot of “backtracing” through character arcs in this one, which I’m gonna boil down to the general themes:

Jack seeking out his familial history, seeking out Kelly Kline’s parents to make a personal connection to his mother’s past in order to better understand himself now

Cas relating parts of his own past to Jack (falling and becoming human, not mourning the past he can’t change but finding strength in himself regardless of his current circumstance, and to have patience while his circumstance will change in future) (aside to remind folks that this setup at the beginning of the season is entirely about subverting his words through his own actions throughout the season… with 14.14 being the massive turning point again for both Jack and Cas)

Nick’s setup of beginning to fill in the blanks from his own life after a decade of having lost everything to his possession by Lucifer. He’s got a lot of catching up to do, and a heck of a lot of blanks to fill.

the absolute knowledge that the show is 100% aware of how they’ve trained us to look at the narrative this deeply, using character mirrors, foreshadowing, parallels, etc., and that they’re keen to use this power against us. And it’s up to us to understand the difference between “things being presented to us for the purposes of subversion” and “things being presented to us to fill in narrative blanks.” Like the entirety of Dinkle’s conversations with both Dean and Lydia the vampire. Heck I’m already down to bullet points and I’m gonna need to extrapolate on this one… *sighs*

Let’s start simple, with a couple of quotes:

Michael: Why do you think I dumped your brothers and sisters in plain sight? Why do you think I let you escape?Lydia: You let me escape?Michael: Rule number 1 – you can’t have a trap without bait. That brings us to rule number 2, which says once the trap has been sprung, you don’t need the bait anymore.

and

Dean: Get… out!Michael: I don’t think so.Dean: You can’t!Michael: Oh, but I can. Because, see… I own you. So hang on and enjoy the ride.

Because the first defines and contextualizes the second… Do I really need to elaborate? No? Oh good, then we can move on!

14.03, The Scar:

Again, using the trope of amnesia and memory recovery to illustrate the emotional and psychological impact of “missing time,” if not the entirety of the content of that missing gap. In addition, to Dean recovering his memories and demonstrating his reaction to his own lost time, the two respective cases of the week (Darth Kaia, learning how she came to this universe, and everything she’s endured at Dinkle’s hands also informing further the information we learned in 14.01, and in the bunker Jack and Cas helping heal Lora of a witch’s curse that was literally stealing time from her in the form of her own life energy).

I love demonstrating how “filling narrative gaps from the past” is not only built into the inherent structure of the narrative like this, it’s also the entire purpose of all the character development we’re witnessing, as well as setting the foundation of the entire story going forward.

We had that in spades from Jody, putting in plain words what we all saw happening in 13.10:

Jody: They have a right to know but I can’t. I promised Claire human cases are mine, but anything “monstery” I’d loop her in: this. God. Claire’s been doing so good. I mean anything connected to Kaia, she’s a powder keg. First loves strikes quick, and then to lose it like that. Wow, you two are having a time of it.

Confirming the subtext of Claire and Kaia’s relationship, while simultaneously informing us of what Jody, Claire, et al’s lives have been like since then, filling in a huge narrative gap with just a few innocuous comments. But there’s one more example from within the span of this episode:

Sam: Okay, look, I’m just saying… you said you let Michael in, then, bang you’re back in a blink. But for me? You were gone for weeks. I didn’t know if you were alive. I just need you to talk to me, to slow down so I can catch up.

Sam, defining the narrative gap and begging for information to fill it with. And then at the end of the episode, he gets an answer, but it’s nothing like what he expected or hoped for:

Dean: And it wasn’t a blink, being possessed. I make it sound like that, but it wasn’t. I don’t remember most of what Michael did with me because I was underwater, drowning, and that I remember. I felt every second of it – clawing, fighting for air. I thought I could make it out, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. And now he’s gone and he’s out there putting an army of monsters together and he’s hurting people. And its all on me, man. I said yes. It’s my fault.

And it’s still not really an answer.

14.04, Mint Condition:

Narrative gap reshuffle yahtzee. I’m just gonna give a few links to meta already written for this one, because it’s about the journey, and being informed enough to pay attention to all the sights along the roadside as we go:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179792849870/when-in-doubt-sing-mittensmorgul-i

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/181790806615/questions-and-their-empty-spaces

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179742780230/mittens-help-dean-says-he-loves-hatchet-man

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179734411135/i-love-there-wasnt-any-acknowledgement-about-dean

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179724128520/stuarts-my-best-friend-we-watch-movies-and-eat

(gotta throw in at least one destiel reference…)

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179700702490/hey-mittens-just-wondering-if-you-could-help-me

And because this reading list is already getting long, I just want to use this post to point out how the use of narrative mirrors informs our understanding of those one-off characters through our established understanding of the main characters, enabling those mirror characters to serve their function in the story. Davy was not subtle with pointing that out in this episode, and it’s an essential tool in understanding the bigger picture of the narrative. But it’s also a device in filling narrative gaps by recognizing and applying the subtextual lessons being demonstrated:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179695858820/a-few-observations-on-the-mirror-characters

So this isn’t just about individual lines at this point, but an entire narrative shift that the writers spent the entire first half of s14 laying out for us through these sorts of storytelling lessons hidden just under the surface of the story itself. Brilliant.

Basically, if you’re NOT making these connections and using your brain to flesh out the entire world pointed at in the narrative gaps, you don’t really have a hope of understanding the bigger story.

14.05, Nightmare Logic:

Aah, the superpowered djinn, 3D walking metaphor for filling in gaps from the past to find wholeness in the present. Also, one of Michael’s “monster traps” he laid out in order to lure in and kill unwary hunters, which he believed (and the monsters themselves believed) made them more powerful, but in reality became the vehicle through which the Winchesters were eventually able to gain the upper hand… they survived the encounter and walked away with new knowledge about both themselves AND Michael’s bigger plans that had been evading them before this episode.

Information fills narrative gaps.

The djinn itself has been “enhanced” from djinn we’ve seen in the past, able to create its illusions in reality rather than only within its victims own minds. What was imaginary becomes tangible. Subtext becomes text.

We also get AU!Bobby’s backstory, which demonstrates that this alternate version of Bobby is really nothing like our original version, and the sum of his life experiences have made him who he is.

We also get another “zombie” reference, which the more I think back on this entire season (and Jack’s long obsession with zombies in general) is an interesting metaphor for this sort of viewing, not engaging with the deeper text and instead shuffling across it without looking deeper. Because pretty much every time someone suggested the monster could be a zombie, it’s definitively shown to be something much more complex once they begin to dig for answers.

(we also have Dean discussing his past, his relationship with his father, and talking about how setting that baggage aside and living in the present, and for the future, is something he’s worked long and hard to achieve for himself. And we’ve seen some of that journey for him, but this was a huge step for him, which will become profoundly more evident in 14.10 and 14.13)

14.06, Optimism:

Oh, we wanted zombie references? Well, alrighty, have some zombie references! Via the entirely self-deluded MotW character, masquerading as a person with a sad backstory of being “unlucky in love” while all the while she’s a necromancer who murdered and resurrected her boyfriend as a mindless zombie she enacts a brutal game with for her own personal pleasure: luring in suitors and letting her zombie boyfriend kill and eat them. Worst honey trap ever.

Speaking of honey, the other MotW is a fly dude who couldn’t find love among his species and exiled himself to live alone among a pile of rotting corpses of his victims. I mean… ew.

But back to our necromancer, who is a lonely librarian, who is surrounded by stories and laments that people in her town aren’t interested in stories. All the while she’s not engaging with her own reality, and has decided that her own version of the story is an accurate reflection of reality (while the rest of us shake our heads in horror because whoa no hon…)

We also learn AU!Charlie’s backstory, with the constant reminders that what Sam keeps mistaking on the surface level for “his Charlie” IS NOT HER. Man, I feel that feel, AU!Charlie.

Jack: What's 'courting?'Dean: It's what you do before you start dating.Jack: Oh, and that's the thing you do before the sex.Wanda: Sometimes you just have the sex.

Yes, Wanda. Sometimes you skip all the courting, all the emotional and interpersonal stuff, and just go right to the sex. But then you tend to just walk away after without any sort of deeper connection having been made. One night stands are fine, but they’re very different things from deep interpersonal relationships.

You can absolutely engage with Supernatural like a one night stand. The story’s fun on the surface, but ultimately the courting is what provides the deep payoff.

14.07, Unhuman Nature:

We get back to the twisted story of Nick, and his quest to understand himself. He’s filling in more of those horrific gaps in his history and getting closer to the Worst Possible Conclusions about himself. He ENJOYED being Lucifer’s vessel, and wants that feeling of power back, even if it wasn’t HIS power, just being the vehicle for that power is enough for him, more important to him than even discovering the truth about himself. At the bottom of himself, he’s just an empty douchebag-shaped vessel for pure evil.

What a fucking delight >.>

Nurse: Uh-huh. Family medical history? Let's start with the father.Dean: He's dead.Nurse: Cause of death?Castiel: He was stabbed through the heart, and he exploded.Dean: Okay, you know what? We don't have time for this. All right, he's sick. His name is Jack Kline. His father exploded. There, you've got all the basics. Now what does he need to do to see a doctor?

Well that simplified the whole “filling in the backstory through the narrative negative spaces” thing in this episode, didn’t it?

Jack: Since I've been alive, everyone assumed that I would be this special 'person' who goes on forever. Only now it looks like forever might be a couple of weeks, so--Dean: We don't know that.Jack: What I do know is I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it. I just want a chance to get a tan or see a hockey game... get a parking ticket... get bored... and when it's all over -- die.

I mean, isn’t that what all of TFW kind of wants? They want to not be “special.” They want the universe to stop picking on them specifically. They want to just live their lives until they’re done.

Jack: You once told me you and your father did the exact same thing. It was your happiest memory of him.Dean: I didn't say that.Jack: It was how you said it. I could tell. I guess my point is that if I don't make it... The stuff I'd miss -- it wouldn't be things like Tahiti. Or the Taj Mahal. I'd miss more time with you. I'm getting that life isn't all these big, amazing moments. It's time together that matters. Like this.Dean: Well, who'd have thought hanging out with me would make you sentimental?

Dude. Dean. Everyone thought this. You are the king of “family is the most important thing in the universe without which I am nothing.” Talk about Jack filling in that particular blank for you.

14.08, Byzantium:

Aka that one where we discover something important to Jack in his own Heaven-- and it’s literally a missing scene from 13.06 and their road trip to Dodge City where they stop for burgers. UNPROBLEMATIC FAMILY BONDING IS JACK’S HEAVEN. And it also fills in a past narrative gap, specifically from an episode that was structured around filling in narrative gaps. WE’RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, PEOPLE.

We also have the return of Lily Sunder, now grown old since she’d completed her revenge quest against Ishim and the other angels who’d wronged her (including Cas, who literally killed Ishim FOR her). Talk about filling in a lifetime worth of gaps, and her literal near-lack of a soul she “fills in” through one final sacrifice made of love, which earns her redemption and entrance to Heaven.

I mean… those narrative gaps are looking pretty important here right about now.

Also, what’s that other big gap I haven’t mentioned yet? Oh, right! A villain literally known as “The Empty.” I’m sure that’s not meta relevant to the importance of the narrative empty spaces at all...

14.09, The Spear.

Sequel to The Scar (since the spear is what left Dean with the scar in the first place, so we’re back on our Dinkle nonsense again). There’s a lot of blank-filling going on in this episode.

Remember Garth? Well, as he’s reintroduced in this episode it appears as if he’s gone over to the Dark Side, but of course we learn he’s actually there as a deep cover agent for the Winchesters. This tells us they’ve been keeping in close touch with Garth all this time, despite us not having seen him on screen in ages. (FIVE YEARS!)

Remember Ketch? Well, he’s also doing deep cover agency stuff for the Winchesters, but with a level of incompetence that reminds us all that he’s still not one of the good guys, no matter how hard he’s trying, he’s still… falling a bit short. But at least they’re still keeping contact with him. And BOTH of these characters appearing after a while offscreen reminds us that TFW truly aren’t alone in the world, and they DO have this network of people (at varying degrees of competence still ranging from typical bumbling civvie to TFW themselves).

This entire episode was also a massive reference to Die Hard. Just… it was Die Hard: Supernatural. And we know Dean has referenced this movie endlessly. But the funniest thing: Die Hard isn’t actually referenced ONE SINGLE TIME in text in this episode. Nobody points out the similarities between the situation at the Hitomi Plaza at Christmas with Die Hard. Narrative negative space ftw.

And then we have the reveal that Michael had somehow left a “secret back door” open into Dean, and was able to just jump right back into him when it was convenient to do so. I.e., when he was losing the fight to Dean. He had a cheat code at the ready, because his possession of Dean had been operating on cheat code rules since the start in 13.23. His entire possession of Dean was a violation of the “standard rules of angel possession.” Consent of the vessel being primary. Even BAD consent has been enough in the past-- tricking the vessel into saying yes, backing them into a corner. I mean, remember s5 and the horrors Zachariah was willing to go to in order to secure Dean’s yes? Not even manipulation here with this version of Michael. Even if the face of Dean’s abject rejection of his possession, he refused to vacate the premises. Which is an interesting narrative blank to fill in, yes? Angels may have these rules, but for some reason-- is it Michael’s supreme power? Is it the fact Dean is his “destined vessel?” is it a factor of this Michael being from an alternate universe that might operate on different rules? Is it a factor of Dean’s own lack of conviction in his demand that Michael get out? Whatever it is… it is interesting.

We also catch up with Darth Kaia, who after months of balking at the notion, hands over her spear to Dean with the promise that he’ll return it after he kills Michael. It would solve her ongoing problems with the monsters Michael had been relentlessly sending after her. But he also promises to help her find her way back to her own universe. And now we don’t even know if any of that is possible… (aside to say that I’m now crying over the loss of Wayward again, and I feel this lack of resolution here is a damn pointed statement on that from Bobo.)

14.10, Nihilism.

Nihilism being a descriptor of Michael’s basic personality, in this case.

The most long-term relevant narrative negative spaces in this episode are Sam and Cas venturing into Dean’s mind, and literally using what they know about Dean to find where Michael had locked him away. They literally rely on their knowledge of who he is as a person as a map to find him, and then as a codex to actually get through to him and break him out of the illusion Michael had trapped him in. And then they all turn around and weaponize all of that to lock Michael away in Dean’s mind fridge.

Metaphors, anyone?

Meanwhile, Michael literally insists he’s telling everyone the truth about how Dean really feels about them, but it’s all… ALL OF IT… a manipulation and a lie.

(aside to admit that at this point I have been working on this post on and off for the last 12 hours, can barely remember what the point of it even was, and regret everything. I think we were supposed to be discussing Narrative References To Stuff That Happens On Screen, but at this point, that is so deeply intertwined with the narrative structure as a whole that I’m having trouble separating out textual references to offscreen stuff from the actual content of the story as a whole… yes this is already approaching 5k words at this point, and no I don’t care anymore :P)

14.11, Damaged Goods.

Dean is given information (that we have not yet seen) by Billie (again, offscreen) about “the only way to save the universe.”

Disclaimer to note that we STILL haven’t seen exactly what Billie showed Dean in her magical destiny book… which fact in itself can be open to myriad interpretations, because canon itself has shifted from this point in the canonical timeline to what we have actually witnessed unfold, which fundamentally differs between what Billie told Dean and what actually transpired on screen.

This… is major.

Also, Nick, and the effective end of his story… or is it? He’s finally got his personal backstory filled in, and turns out he was just a dick all along! Surprise! Because his “truth” never actually mattered to him. It was all a lie he told himself from the very first moment he was ever introduced on screen back in 5.01. He was never a good person who’d been used by Lucifer and manipulated into doing terrible things. He was always just a bad person who’d been looking for an excuse to do terrible things. Lucifer was just his excuse.

Dean fills in some horrific bits of their childhood for Mary through the metaphor of Winchester Surprise. Apparently delicious to Dean, but yikes… stuff like that’s really not healthy…

14.12, Prophet and Loss:

So, Donatello might not be as brain dead as previously believed! Let’s fill in that backstory, through a broken prophet who can’t be fully realized because Donatello’s technically not dead, so the new guy is getting a distorted message because Donatello’s interrupting the signal.

Dean asked Sam not to tell Cas about his Drama Coffin plan, but of course Sam had immediately told Cas about his drama coffin plan anyway…

CAS: Sam. Maybe if I spoke with Dean…SAM: It wouldn’t matter. Believe me, I-I I’ve never seen him like this. He won’t listen to me. H-He just – No. If we don’t find some way… Dean’s gone.

But then just a little while later, when Dean talks to Cas and learns that Cas knows his entire dumbass plan:

DEAN: Really?SAM: Dean, it’s Cas. I had to tell him.

Well, some time in the previous few hours, when Sam hasn’t been trapped in the car with Dean (which we know he has been canonically), Sam’s first priority was calling Cas to tell him about Dean’s plan. Like… duh… 

14.13, Lebanon:

I love this episode on every possible level. It drops us at the climax of a hunt and just trusts us to understand what’s going on. Someone has been murdered for their collection of supernatural artifacts, and it’s been traced to this shop, where the owner trades in dangerous artifacts… all of that happened offscreen, yet we understand the context if not the specific case itself. Beautiful.

Then we have the cursed pearl that apparently grants a wish. Dean uses it to theoretically wish that Michael was out of his head. In monkey’s paw fashion, instead of just granting the wish through the simplest means, the wish actually attempts to rewrite history (this is the sort of thing that differentiates a “cursed object” from a “magical cure”) in order to remove the root infiltration of Michael into Dean’s life… by literally bringing John Winchester into the present time from 2003, removing him from the entire timeline to this point and changing EVERYTHING.

Talk about filling a narrative negative space. Cas doesn’t know them, Dean never went to Hell. Hell, Dean never even went to collect Sam from Stanford. NOTHING from the entire history of the series as we know it actually happened AT ALL.

D:

At least we got to see Zachariah get stabbed again. Sam deserved a turn, you know? :’)

But we also have the other half of the episode-- the case in Lebanon, and seeing the Winchesters through the eyes of the locals. Talk about a HUGE reminder of the things that happen offscreen. They go to the post office, the local shops, and have a weird reputation around town, despite most of the townsfolk accepting their brand of weirdness. It’s… weirdly refreshing, seeing how they’ve gone from “hunters of urban legends” in s1 to “actual urban legends themselves” in s14. The power of storytelling at its finest.

In this case, so many personal blanks were filled in for Mary, Sam, and Dean just by being able to share a single family dinner with John in the aftermath of everything else. In the end, Sam and Dean CHOSE their own lives, and smashed the pearl with John’s blessing, putting everything back the way it was. The most powerful line in this entire episode, to me:

John: Dean. I, uh -- I never meant for this.Dean: Dad, we pulled you here.John: No, son. My fight. It was supposed to end with me, with Yellow Eyes. But now you -- you are a grown man, and I am incredibly proud of you. I guess that I had hoped, eventually, you would... get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family.Dean: I have a family.

HE HAS A FAMILY. :’)

It might not be what John ever imagined for him. Or even what Mary wanted for him when she rejected the hunting life the first time around. But it’s the family Dean earned for himself. The one he CHOSE for himself. And he wouldn’t trade it for anything-- not even for the family he was born into, or a white picket fence he used to think he should have.

And then after this… everything changes… again…

14.14, Ouroboros:

Right. That one where everything changed. Where everything from Billie’s Books of Certain Prophecy to Jack’s soul to Dean’s certainty about… pretty much everything… went up in a swirling whirlpool of burning grace.

Yes, the episode where they burned the spiral narrative structure and were clearly beginning the inevitable run toward endgame. I mean it had been hinted at as a possibility before this, and 14.13 was certainly a product of the inevitability of endgame, but this episode sealed the deal.

They could’ve technically still gotten away with 14.13 as a one-off product of “very special 300th episode” and still continued down the narrative spiral that they’ve been circling for years now, but in retrospect from beyond the rest of s14, this was the official burn point.

So the story shifts radically in very fundamental ways from this point on, and reference to the past become… different. But what happens offscreen in the context of these episodes going forward takes on so much more weight as a result. We’re now “living in the present” with these characters.

We have Sam’s relationship with Rowena, which has clearly developed to the point of casual intimacy. Rowena confronts Sam in ways we’ve never seen before, demonstrating a confidence in their interactions DESPITE Billie’s assertion that Sam will be the one to “kill” her. That has strangely given her a sense of… comfort… with Sam, that’s demonstrated in the fact that they work together through this entire case-- paired off much the way Dean and Cas are.

Again, like in 14.06 and 14.13, we’re dropped into the middle of their case, and only informed that they’ve been tracing this monster through numerous other towns in this episode, requiring us to extrapolate out their entire hunt from discovering there might be a case, to the point where they’ve even brought Rowena onboard to help give them an advantage of a monster that had repeatedly eluded them.

The monster itself has an advantage in that it can literally see the future and escape before they catch him, until they discover the huge gaping hole in what it can actually see-- Cas and Jack are literally invisible to it. He can’t see THEM coming, specifically. The importance of actually reading what we DON’T see. Because if the monster hadn’t been so confident in what it COULD see, he would’ve understood that he was missing a critical piece of information-- the door literally shut itself in his vision of the future and he didn’t bother to stop and question WHY. And it was his downfall.

The narrative is telling us that missing this key gap-filling information is effectively our downfall as viewers.

14.15, Peace of Mind:

Hooray, we’re back to simple “missing scene” levels of text to latch on to, and I don’t have to swim through the whole of the narrative structure to make a comment. Wheeee! (sorry it’s been like 14 hours since I started writing this reply and I’ve achieved Peak Mental Exhaustion for it) :P

Let’s reflect on how all of the characters managed to delude themselves in this episode, and simultaneously approach their own personal concerns without actually talking to each other directly… and then instead focus on this exchange:

Dean: Oh. Hey! How was Arkansas?Sam: Arkansas was, uh It was weird.Dean: Heard you wore a cardigan.Castiel: Yeah, I told him about the cardigan.Sam: Great. Thanks.Dean: And the wife. He said you were, uh, really happy.

Yep. Proof again of offscreen communication happening, in a way I can yell and point at without having to write paragraphs to explain and defend. :P Aah, just like the simpler days of our past… which hey, is also a narrative theme of this episode! Nostalgia!

14.16, Don’t Go In The Woods:

Or, that one where we discuss why we don’t share everything with the general public, while Jack… behaves poorly with the general public, and then hides that fact from Sam and Dean. Also, we have this confirmation of offscreen conversation:

SAM: You got it. I'll grab Cas.DEAN: Mm. He actually left.SAM: What?DEAN: Early this morning.SAM: Why?DEAN: I don't know. Something about being cooped up in the bunker for a few weeks. We all need to stretch our legs. I get it.

Dean… had a whole conversation with Cas… and didn’t even mention it until Sam specifically asked about Cas. Stuff happened offscreen… big important stuff… and we’re only getting a peek at it now. Not only that-- because this will be VITAL to remember two episodes down the road-- they have been cooped up in the bunker “for a few weeks.” In 14.15 ONE EPISODE EARLIER, Dean complained to Sam that he’d been driving them literally from case to case without a break:

Sam: (Sam was in the map room flashing back to Maggie and the other hunters dying. He looked sad as he went to the kitchen) Found us a case. Arkansas.Dean: We've just done three back-to-back Hunts. I need some rest. At least a night. We both do.Sam: Yeah, well I'm leaving in ten.Dean: Like I said, not good.Castiel: Maybe I should go with him. And you can stay with Jack.

So the events of 14.16 are clearly after a hiatus of several weeks. Again, things have happened offscreen, and we’re only learning about them in the absolute most casual statement-in-passing sorts of ways, but these tiny references are pretty earth-shattering.

14.17, Game Night:

The timeline isn’t concrete, but I’ve written in several places that I believe 14.16, and 14.17 flow one into the other, just based on these subtextual sorts of cues-- Dean’s statement in 14.16 that Cas had been feeling cooped up after several weeks in the bunker, the fact that Cas had only LEFT the bunker at the beginning of 14.16 and we only see him reach his destination of talking with Anael now in 14.17  (and how long do we REALLY think it took him to find her and convince her to meet with him? Especially when the events of 14.17 take place over about 36 hours before bleeding directly into 14.18…). So this timeline that I’ve understood presupposes the gap of “several weeks” of being cooped up in the bunker to have elapsed between 14.15 and 14.16 as suddenly resolved itself into all of them willing to spend time in the bunker as a family… except for Cas, who’s on an as-yet unspecified mission.

This episode reinforces those missing scenes, through showing us the very different mission Cas is on, finally addressing the seriousness of Jack’s condition, but also paralleled through Mary’s growing suspicions of Jack that she’ll be unable to ignore by the end of the episode…

Jack even addresses this “but in that scene you didn’t see play out, this important thing happened!” IN TEXT, TO MARY:

Mary: If Sam and Dean saw what you did, they would be as worried as I am.Jack: Are you gonna tell them?Mary: You need help, we'll help you. We're your family.Jack: You can't.Mary: We care about you, Jack.

And now the things that happen offscreen have been lampshaded as being CRITICAL to understanding the whole of the story. And the divide between the two can be fatal...

14.18, Absence.

Literally, the title itself is telling us to be aware of what’s missing.

But we finally get the payoff on the “missing information” about those several weeks spent cooped up in the bunker-- Sam was literally not there. It was Dean and Cas, alone with Jack.

Sam: You know, after Maggie and the other hunters died... I just left. Just dumped Jack on Cas and left.

That happened in 14.14. The other hunters dying. But we KNOW that Sam had not left on his own at that time. He’d dragged Dean and Cas and Jack on three consecutive hunts in the aftermath of that to avoid going back to the bunker, in the run up to 14.15. THIS was the payoff of that “cooped up for weeks” comment in 14.16… because SAM hadn’t been cooped up with them. He’d dumped Jack on everyone and run off on his own after 14.15…

But this episode doesn’t stop there. It takes each character individually and pushes them through memories of the past, of Mary specifically, but those memories do so much narrative heavy lifting I can’t even begin to yell about them here. I’ll just link a post:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184195342200/you-know-when-deans-turns-around-after-that

Wait, I found that post while looking for the one I’d set to to find, but it’s in my Narrative Negative Space tag, so yay? Bonus. This is the one I’d meant to find:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184144189665/drsilverfish-mittensmorgul-mittensmorgul

There. My best thing from s14. And I’ll leave this episode at that.

Oh, and with the reminder that if Dean and Cas had truly still been at odds over Mary’s death, then Dean would not have brought Cas to Mary’s funeral pyre. Period. 

14.19, Jack in the Box.

Aka that one we’d all figured out what the big plot thing was just by the on-the-nose nature of the title, months before it aired.

At least the drama coffin got blowed up good?

14.20, Moriah:

The most meta meta to have ever meta’d. There’s not much happening offscreen in this one aside from the entire setup and premise of the episode as a whole. Again, we’re dropped into a hunt and expected to understand the setup, the legwork that’s already been done. We learn that Dean has been in touch with Cas, but they’re investigating different avenues. We see Chuck FINALLY answer Cas’s prayer for help from 14.17, but Chuck’s idea of “help” isn’t helpful in the least.

We understand the fundamental nature of the extent of the personal little lies Sam and Dean tell each other (Thanks for that one, Jack!), and therefore are being asked to reassess which comments from their past were the full, honest truth, and which were the comfortable performance they put on to maintain their own projected self-identities.

And whoa.

It’s now 3 am, and I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last 16 hours. And I am tired, and officially out of mental steam to keep thinking about it. So I’m gonna post it. All 7700 words of it. I hope this helps... :P

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/supernatural-good-intentions-aka-paving-road-hell/

'Supernatural' Good Intentions aka paving that road to hell

I’m going to do something I never thought I’d do for a review. I’m going to give you a disclaimer with this Supernatural review: If you cannot separate any actor from the character they play (the main picture above is a helpful hint), then you’re free to go. Class dismissed. No hard feelings. Seriously. In fact, I’d rather you go. Still here? Okay, then. I’m going to start with a brief rundown of an episode I skipped reviewing last month, “Devil’s Bargain.” I skipped it for a very personal reason: because unlike some fans, I don’t hate Eugenie Ross-Leming and Brad Buckner. I don’t think they’re awful writers. I don’t think they’re misogynists or racists, in fact, I think the opposite. I don’t think “Taxi Driver” is that bad compared to a lot of other episodes we’ve endured. I think “Route 666” is unbelievably underrated and if possible more relevant now than it was twelve years ago. Finally, I think a lot of fandom screaming “canon fail” at them is a two-fold issue: one, we’re all very married to our head-canons and two, all the writers do it and alway have. Blaming just them is simply childish. And before you say it, no, I don’t care that they wrote the death of Charlie Bradbury. Seriously. I don’t care. The character was way past expiration, like a couple other characters that we’re still enduring. I digress. For now, a quick rundown of “Devil’s Bargain.” It was… okay. Danneel Ackles made her Supernatural debut as faith healer Sister Jo, but frankly, even before her first scene aired, we all knew she’d be revealed as an angel. Now, as someone in fandom, it’s hard to remove yourself from knowing that you’re watching Jensen Ackles’ wife onscreen, but since I’d watched Danneel on TV way before they even began dating I have a slight advantage, and there were definitely shades of her One Tree Hill character, Rachel Gatina, in Sister Jo. While, I would’ve liked to see a bit more comedy out of this role, because I think that’s where Danneel Ackles shines, the sultry selfishness of Sister Jo wasn’t unwelcome. In fact, it was refreshing to finally see an angel who wasn’t wearing a boring suit and acting like an office drone. Honestly, Supernatural, the angels and demons on your show have become so homogenous. One big blurry blob of maybe good, maybe bad, but all definitely bored, ad execs. Sister Jo and Lucifer were the actual highlights of this episode, separately and together. Their encounters were unsettling, but they were supposed to be, and the performances were there. Yeah, the dialogue was wordy, that’s Ross-Leming and Buckner for you, but a good actor can turn wordy into conversational. Danneel Ackles and Mark Pellegrino were able to do that. Was the sexual metaphor heavy handed? Oh, yeah, totally. That said, after the very literal hammers to the head in Steve Yockey’s episode “Various & Sundry Villains” we learned that it’s not a deal breaker for an episode. Misha Collins himself once said there was nothing subtle about the writing in Supernatural. You know what is a deal breaker, though? When your tertiary characters outweigh your primary leads and secondary regular. I spent every moment that Dean, Sam, and Castiel were on screen thinking, “can we get back to Lucifer and Sister Jo?” And it wasn’t the director, I can’t blame Eduardo Sanchez for the drag in momentum, because if anyone can build tension and deliver it’s the director of The Blair Witch Project. Sanchez is horror royalty, a tension king. I’m not going to blame the writing either because again, Danneel Ackles and Mark Pellegrino were engaging. I blame the show running and the editing. I know, I know, I’m not being subtle in where I’m going with this, but we’ll get back to that later. Anyway, “Devil’s Bargain” was passable. Not a top 20 episode, but not a bottom 20 one either. It existed. It’ll be mostly memorable for the fact that Danneel Ackles was in it. Her presence, whether it was because you know her from One Tree Hill, know her as Jensen’s wife, or just plain enjoyed Sister Jo, basically saved this episode from complete obscurity. What’s that you say? But what about the big reveal of Gabriel at the end? Well, if we hadn’t seen it coming, it might have been cool. Same with Bobby in the next episode. There’s no shock left because like with Ruthie Connell’s, between the cast, crew, and PR we know everything weeks in advance. Speaking of the next episode, let’s get into episode 13.14, “Good Intentions,” penned by Meredith Glynn and directed by P.J. Pesce. I’m going to get two petty things out of the way because they are the least of the problems with this episode; the camera angles were really awkward, and the use of the episode title in the dialogue during act one was, wow, hammers to the head again, anyone? I have one more issue that’s less about writing, directing, and acting, but I’m saving it for, you guessed it: later. Have you been filing away those “laters”? Hope so. What I am going to get into here is the overall writing of this episode, specifically the dialogue and characterization. First of all, can we stop asking how Castiel is all the time? I get that you are all struggling to justify the character, but no one, absolutely no one, gets asked about or talks about their feelings more than the soulless angel. It’s honestly preposterous when you think about it. We’re also going to have Castiel be the one both worried about and coddled over Lucifer being free? The dude who let Lucifer free? I know you’re fairly new, Meredith, so hey, let’s give you a break, I mean no one expects you to understand twelve years of canon. Who can? Except millions of fans who aren’t paid to do so. Let’s also discuss how you’re going to have characters that are “sometimes referred to as brothers” and then send Castiel and Dean off to fight them? Meredith, Meredith, Meredith. No ma’am. That’s just bad narrative symmetry. A rookie move, honestly. So is using “migraine” and “headache” interchangeably, but that’s a pet peeve puddle I’d don’t have the patience to play in, not when there’s an entire pond of “what even is going on here??” to paddle through. Actually, no, I’m going to address this a bit further; if I’m so removed from your storyline that I have the ability to focus your very common, yet annoying, medical inconsistency then something is very wrong. And what’s wrong is that this episode is an Everlasting Gobstopper of info dumping. It’s all exposition. No heart, no soul, no characterization. All tell and no show. This episode felt feature length and not in a good way. Actually, the only one in character is Mary. Her caring about six-month-old manchild, Jack when she can’t seem to genuinely care about her six-month-old baby turned hero of a man; Sam was very spot on. Although, I somehow don’t think you intended that bit of irony. Speaking of Mary and Jack, let’s get into a bit about the alternate world. It’s a cool idea, Andrew Dabb. In theory, it really is. I mean, apocalypse AUs have never been my personal preferred fanfic trope, but I get that it’s popular. In execution, however, if you’re going to retread the characters of Michael and Zachariah in new bodies then you need to have writers that can keep the characterization consistent with the season 4 and season 5 characters we knew. These two dudes aren’t that. Don’t get me wrong, the physical casting for Michael is superb, very nice eye candy, and hey, I’ll even allow the argument that we saw so little of Michael in SPN 1.0 that you and your writers have room to play. But Zachariah? Kurt Fuller’s performance is what brought Zachariah to life, the combination of determination, manipulation, and exhaustion all delivered with smug sarcasm. This Zachariah, he’s a generic second in command character. He could literally be anyone. You’ll notice I’ve barely mentioned Sam Winchester. Yeah. That’s because you forgot to write him and the director forgot to focus on him and yo, I’m so tired. So let’s talk about all the “laters”, shall we? I said I wasn’t going to blame director Eduardo Sanchez and honestly, I have very little blame for P.J. Pesce aside from some dubious camera angle choices. I blame the writing and the show running. Now if you’re someone who preaches Team Free Will, that door from earlier is still open, please, walk through it, because there is nothing more tedious than a scene with Dean, Sam, and Castiel or Dean and Castiel. I’m not here to debate that; it’s my opinion in my opinion piece. Not one single writer can keep the dialogue in these types of scenes flowing. It’s forever awkward, stilted, and redundant and very clearly existing because it’s required by the showrunner. Every season for the past few years has been Castiel screwing up, then storming in thinking he knows better, then screwing up again. Maybe that’s a sign the character has overstayed? Perhaps. Fact is, it’s become so boring. The only consistent thing about Castiel is his hubris followed by his pouting and moping. Another I later implied was editing. I have so many issues with the editing in this episode. Listen, horror genre is my thing. Good horror movies, bad horror movies, slasher flicks, torture porn, psychological thrillers, ghost, monsters, all of it. I love it. Often times what makes or breaks a horror movie isn’t the acting or the writing, it’s the editing. It’s the way scenes are put together. It’s the sound mixing. It’s practical effects versus reliance on CGI. This episode failed on each of these points. The thudding steps from the “giants” Gog and Magog sounded comical, not to mention the fact that we suddenly had subtitles for an ancient language. Oh, I get it, Meredith had jokes. Anyway. The other editing failures were the cut from Zachariah tossing Jack into his cell to Jack landing and several other POV switch edits that were equally as awkward and choppy. Not to mention the random moments of surprise!shaky cam. This episode felt cobbled together out of several other things. Not other episodes, actual different projects. As for the CGI, the lighting in the AU world was very near animated in appearance. The reveal of Zachariah pretending to be Castiel felt like funhouse horror editing, which can work… if you’re watching The Houses October Built. Not to mention the beheading of the giant was pretty bad, especially for a show that has had amazing beheadings in the past. And Jack turning the angels into missiles was just… I don’t even have words. Again, I come from a horror background, so these things matter a lot. But finally, my last, and biggest gripe is this: what even are we doing? Season 13, what is your thesis statement? We are fourteen episodes into this season, and there’s no story. Not really. We spent the first half setting up a spin-off that may or may not happen, and now we’re just throwing spaghetti at a wall. Michael, Mary, Jack, Lucifer, Asmodeus, Bobby, the AU world, the real world. It’s all a hodgepodge. The only thing I know for certain is what this season isn’t about. Sam and Dean Winchester.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

DESTINY'S CHILD

spoilers below - backdated from 10/8/2020

oh boy here goes I put off watching this last episode because if the series never came back I didn't want my experience to end on a buckleming note but here goes

I still need to post my liveblogging for the last two, my fucking chromebook died right after the may stay-at-home hunt but I backed it up at least, but it took those text files with it except for when I get around to digging through the backup

the episode title gets several songs stuck in my head simultaneously

I'm wearing my GISH sock monkey DISOBEY shirt for this

god I am so infinitely sad about the bunker set being gone now

the recap footage makes me want a pizza so badly

I miss meg

the only thing I'm looking forward to about this one is I know gen and danneel are in it

god I fucking love savage garden, I've been following darren hayes' posts throughout quarantine and his dog is so cute

I had registered for a meditation webinar with lisa berry but Real Life got in the way and I missed it :(

why do buckleming episodes always have this "metal GEAR?????" question and answer exchange, sam's like "wow! that's in latin!" no shit

well if they have to be "not stupid" that's a no-go because buckleming constantly have everyone holding an idiot ball

good on jack for not divulging details to dean

sergei's back i guess??? didn't cas almost kill him last time and he almost killed sam or something bullshit like that

dean interrupting cas makes my blood boil

it is nice to see ruby again

if it's stashed in hell, like... just go ask rowena? usually they've killed off all their friends who could help but in this case she's still there and she's in charge so what's the problem.

why do sam and dean always resort to violent threats? oh yeah it's buckleming

oh well thank fuck that jack is preoccupied with dean's forgiveness and castiel is making excuses for dean's angry outbursts

excuse me why can't jack feel things without a soul, angels feel things without a soul, I guess if FEELING THINGS like a human is the only thing that matters then dean is the king of all feelings for "feeling acutely" fuck off

I hate that all the cas and jack moments wind up being about the winchesters

god you can tell jensen was struggling to deliver that ultra forced "air abracadabra jet lag" line

I like the idea of a welcome reception, good for rowena

why wouldn't dean know that sam and ruby dated, he threw it in sam's face plenty enough

castiel knows what being sexually intimate is, he's not stupid

it really does feel like the end of an RPG though where they just walk into hell like "no big deal, we're level 99"

I JUST WANT CAS AND JACK TO TALK ABOUT THEMSELVES FOR ONCE

normally I'd be all about this as a trust exercise but I'm really very upset jack is being asked to nearly kill the only person who loves him (yes kelly too but A) she's not exactly around B) he sort of killed her too :c so that's gotta be tough)

also this plot was 100% stolen from yockey's episode 13x05

"what if I screw up?"

"oh well then I'll be lost forever" uhhhh fucking excuse me?? cas would not be so flippant with ASKING HIS CHILD TO KILL HIM, also jack brought him back last time (????????) and I realize jack can't use his powers without drawing chuck's attention but isn't he using them to nearly kill castiel

god i hate buckleming this writing is so sloppy

I guess we're back to saying bitch all the time again

I'm legit disappointed that rowena isn't throwing parties

god i've missed meg, i've missed rachel miner

I've missed ruby too

I guess this is just... uh, what, cas and crowley but really it's aziraphale and crowley but now it's jo and ruby? sort of? again?

I am so uncomfortable when the winchesters boss jack around and especially that this is framed to make it look like "lol jack killed cas while you were gone" can't wait for that to be held against jack

not ever gonna be okay with dean calling castiel an idiot

won't opening a rift get his attention

also I'm feeling weirdly vindicated that the sam from another universe keeps winning rock paper scissors

"you get... paid?"

I've been watching a lot of venture bros lately so I almost want this AU sam and dean to be along those lines lmao

sam looks really cute with a "man bun" but it wouldn't be a buckleming episode without violence to women and plenty of homophobia

yeah I knew instantly it was hellhounds, why wouldn't it be guarded

I like this fake "search the web" brand youtube with cat videos, adorable

put the metal thingy in your mouth, guys, it'll be like putting a coin on your tongue or something like that, buckleming are not very clever

trust fund sam and dean, sam's drinking beer with a pinky up. god.

we can't leave bustyasianbeauties behind can we, yep, still here insisting upon it

ah yeah there we go, the garden of eden. of course. sure. why not

jack IS an angel, he's half angel, is he allowed to claim that or what

I'm glad cas is standing up for himself a bit at least?

is this girl... supposed to be a More Different lilith or the serpent or something

oh i guess not there's a snake

the garden of eden just has like, bromeliads

"snake hissing" says the subtitle, it's a burmese python who's been handled enough to be on camera, sure okay

oh i guess the girl was a snake who is maybe lucifer after all. this is a deep cut, buckleming. you guys are academics

I'm glad jack thinks primarily of dean for some reason when he starts to hallucinate

why didn't they barricade the door with the wooden pews or that chair i can clearly see next to the door, why aren't dean and cas helping sam hold the door back while they wait, literally what the fuck

god i fucking hate buckleming. oh yeah just go to brazil. it's being run by bolsonaro but no big deal

oh i love this slate grey shirt on sam

kinda glad I waited until now to watch because I could not have handled months of the last aired words of SPN being Jack begging "Please forgive me" for something that was not his fucking fault, and them... not forgiving him, and it cutting to credits

also fucking like, do buckleming think angels don't have regrets just because they don't have souls? like. fuck. god i'm so mad

I need a palate cleanser

raising hell

SPOILERS BELOW 

okay I really learned my lesson last time about not typing this directly into tumblr so it's going into notepad first and then I'm pasting it over

I have angel's envy for the episode in general, which I will be drinking gradually as a special occasion just for S15 as it airs, and also devil's cut for this episode in particular because I hear buckleming wrote it and I'm toasting to crowley and drinking that one if/when something fucked up inevitably happens to kevin

I'm SO FUCKING GLAD to see osric in this btw just like. I love him he's so good I'm glad he's back

I've tried to avoid spoilers but from what glimpses I've seen before I could glance away it sounds like maybe some meta shit is getting into territory I was also going into with the kevin/crowley/castiel fic I'm doing? so super intrigued to see where that goes but also not getting my hopes up because I fear the writing is going to drop the ball

I love meta shit though I'm so here for it, I gotta double back for time travel shenanigans in Lebanon

okay anyway let's start

oh and apparently rob benedict had a stroke a while back?? and i'm so glad he's all right, here are the signs of a stroke if you need to refresh because you really ought to know what to look for https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/too-young-to-have-a-stroke-think-again I had this open in a tab from someone totally different on twitter

I like the "road closed" sign we start with because it seems thematically on point for like... shutting down the infinite potential of stories as they are not done being told, and as all those doors close

it's not a buckleming episode unless it starts off with gratuitous violence against women

the amazon subtitles are spelling it "benzine" [sic] and it's pissing me off

I love jared playing sam playing an FBI agent who's nervous about delivering speeches

crams all this sam and cas footage into my mouth

I don't believe "belphegor" at all but I love seeing alex playing this part

this implication that belphegor has teamed up with a hunter previously.........

pretty impressed with these townspeople actually? their concerns are not unreasonable and they're right to be skeptical

pffffff at this parallel of sam addressing the living crowd vs jack the ripper addressing the ghost crowd

the makeup on the ghosts is pretty fuckin good, I like the wardrobe and hair too

I like the fake posters at the school for various fictional sporting events

castiel continues to have a conscience and I adore him

rowena "am I interrupting something juicy" eyes emoji

ruth is pretty fun, I like her necklace

I like that ketch literally has a gun that just kicks spirits out of people. like. ...why haven't they been using this technology the whole time. guess it's an endgame weapon.

hahahahha an attractive female demon named Ardat. ................me @ homestuck like oh Ardata got it

this is the first time i've seen adult amara? it's bizarre to see characters I've only heard of

dude's right to be very upset and worried about his neighbors and cas should tell them what's up honestly, I see sam's point about not inciting panic but on the other hand :\

no idea where this arthur/rowena thing is going except I do I guess

I really, really like castiel's take (which is also sam's take from the last episode) that even if their lives were written by chuck, their experiences still mattered, and are not rendered worthless because of external circumstances about how they came into being

are people seriously doing a "THIS IS A DESTIEL MOMENT" from this? like. i guess.

also i hate that cas is having to apologize for "dropping the puck". he didn't. fuck off. he didn't drop the ball. dean didn't give a shit about felix being killed anyway so what the fuck.

misha and jensen both have excellent delivery though

I do like seeing dean play off ketch and belphegor and rowena, it's a nice change of pace

dude these stunts of getting thrown into a wall or a shelving unit like I realize they're stunts but OUCH

ahhhhhh that's kevin i hear osric's voice

kevin got the other ghost to go away by yelling at them lmaooooo I love him so fucking much!!!!!

so we're gonna retcon that kevin has spent the last what, four??? four fucking years? not in heaven, but in hell or purgatory or just wandering earth? remember how a year on earth is forty years in hell?

I'm glad I specifically have the devil's cut to drink to kevin getting fucked over because I'm already enraged

** "DRINK FOR KEVIN" COUNT: 1 **

god he's been on the screen for less than sixty seconds and he was just never sent to heaven because god lied, I'm so glad I have bourbon for this. fucking buckleming, how do they keep getting put in charge of kevin episodes

I got up to get my kevin keychain to watch the rest of this episode with I'm so mad holy fuck I'm so mad, it just never stops

the amazon subtitles: "the vegetables and herbs are finely chopped and added to a SEXY pastiche of fragrant tripe"

thinking emoji, did you mean zesty....

I took like a 30 minute break because I was so mad just now about kevin being denied access to heaven like fuck you

the break was so long that amazon timed out, goddamn it

oh so we can't get kevin into heaven because god's not around to make an exception and god hates the winchesters and how god feels about the winchesters extends to their surrounding "friends" and family. amazing. this is bullshit.

** "DRINK FOR KEVIN" COUNT: 2 **

"whiny kevin tran! typical millennial." he should whine more. he has every right to be furious

also amazing that bobby and john manage to stay in heaven, and chuck didn't cast them down to hell along with mary out of spite when this all went down? so like... why not kevin. AMAZING!!!!!!

** "DRINK FOR KEVIN" COUNT: 3 **

sam has the dignity to actually look concerned instead of just annoyed

oh I like sam being linked to chuck lmaooooo

I do love this shot of a bunch of ghosts just hanging out in some suburban kitchen.

osric is so handsome I'm so glad to see him on this again

"you know how the hellspawn are, all they talk about is sam and dean, sam and dean" maybe the only time jack the ripper has been right about anything

not a fan of this extremely heteronormative bullshit courtesy of buckleming

also left-brain/right-brain is basically a lie isn't it

this fucking music. I'm so sick of buckleming

like I would be fine with this if it had been written by literally anyone else but this is the worst shit, nobody flirts like this

the road is "FAIR WYND", that's the cousin of zack fair and cid highwind

she hooked up with jack the ripper briefly? weird flex but okay

oh kevin is now being held GHOST HOSTAGE because dean told him to go do some reconnaissance

** "DRINK FOR KEVIN" COUNT: 4 **

also I paused on a screenshot that's extremely funny to me

oh I don't like hearing kevin screaming :(

drinking for kevin being tortured by jack the ripper trying to ghost-vore him

** "DRINK FOR KEVIN" COUNT: 5 **

I'm also waiting for the ghostbusters containment thing to backfire and swallow him too

DEAN: you can see them, how many are there "BELPHEGOR": 100 at least, more keep coming

convenient way not to animate 100+ ghosts

oh ketch took off the fucking iron, or maybe it fell off when he was hurt?

good job rowena for real

CASTIEL: I tried to heal him, but it didn't work. I don't know why. SAM: You're probably just tired, Cas. We all are.

for fucking real the biggest sastiel mood is taking naps

also this is troubling

it's like legitimately weird to see them call an ambulance on this show? I guess since they're posing as FBI agents it's more feasilble but

SAM: I'm sorry, Kevin. I wish there was some way to make this right. KEVIN: Me too, but there isn't. And sometimes you just gotta accept that.

actually fuck you lmao holy shiiiiiiiiiiiit omg fuck this

I'm about to drink the rest of the kevin-designated devil's cut

"there's nothing to keep him tied to earth, he'll go crazy!"

hey what about y'know

his mom...........................................

I'm screaming

"I love you guys" osric I know you love them IRL but this is so unfair for kevin the character

I like alexander and osric in the same shot, that's kind of fun, I enjoyed their panel I watched

and there's him waving goodbye. this is so unfair. time to down the rest of this

** "DRINK FOR KEVIN" COUNT: 666 **

to kevin, and to osric

thank fuck I was already in the middle of writing fix-it fic, this is injust

I have such mixed feelings because I'm so happy to see osric back but like AT WHAT COST, the worst timeline

there's a finality to this too like he's not coming back after this unless there's massive all-cast-reunion episode at the tail end in a paradise party AU but I doubt it

goodbye Kevin, this sucks :(

I'm more motivated than ever to finish this fic

"Even on your best day, you couldn't force my hand." is a pretty good line

also negative space is not inferior or "backup vocals"? it's part of a composition

you fucking know what buckleming is that WE CAN FIGURE OUT THAT THERE'S A NARRATIVE PARALLEL ABOUT HER LEAVING HIM TRAPPED WITH HIS CREATION, WITHOUT YOU SPELLING IT OUT jesus christ

bluhhhhhhhhhh I liked the premiere a lot more