SPN 5:08
First:
GLEEEEEEEE!
Also rambly, because linear thinking is so not available to me now.
I was dying laughing in this episode from the beginning to end.
A couple episodes back, I think I wrote in destina's journal that my ending among endings would totally suspend my own deus ex machina rule if I could get what I want out of this whole series... ergo; that despite all claims to contrary, God is not dead but is merely on walkabout, casually and possibly even closely observing, and the endgame to all this is that Dean and Sam steadfastly refuse to become the chosen vessels or to turn on each other and on the brink of losing it all (all being any or a combination of: the deaths of millions, the death of one or the other of them, the end of the world... whatever threat or carrot might possibly tempt them to say "yes" to either Michael or Lucifer,) and as the great hammer of final consequence drops and it's clear they will not yield God pops up and watches all his children drop to their knees (fallen or otherwise)a nd looks Lucifer in the eye and points out "This is why you will bow to man, because this free will I gave them, and it makes them different and beloved in my sight; swallow your pride and come home, son," and he looks at the not-fallen and says, "when I tell you to look after my house, I did not expect a re-enactment of Risky Business, with or without Tom Cruise in his underwear. You're all grounded. Except Castiel."
And then he brings Dean and Sam back and they go off an live in the Salvation-verse.
Now, I don't actually think I'm gonna get all that, but looking at the machinations of the Trickster/Gabriel (who is, purportedly, the messenger of God) there is a certain amount of fringe playing going on here that actually seems to make more sense to me now than when it first happened.
Angels are all about absolutes, "So mote it be", and all that, because they aren't built to question, they are built to keep order in the house of Heaven. And Lucifer's fall was because of failing that huge component of his makeup, to be obedient to Heaven because that's how he was defined to be. (It's not unlike the theory of Asimov's the three laws of robotics, in that robots are incapable by design of any action, direct or indirect, that results in the harm to human beings, and only then can it look out for it's own existence -- Lucifer kind of took the third law and ran with it, by deciding the first law was wrong...)
Anyway, (tangent OMG) there's a certain delicious IRONY in the idea that Dean has, in the past, complained a bit about having to stand between Sam and his father, only to turn around and charge Gabriel with the same task, in that if Michael and Lucy are destined to fight, the way you stop it is to get between them, not stand to one side and egg them on.
Which is, in Dean's own way, a kind of subconscious admission that Sam is no more destined to be Lucifer's host than he was destined to make bad choices. They both made bad choices -- their whole family made bad choice, not the least of which was Mary deciding to save John at the expense of her yet unborn second child, or Dean deciding to bring Sam back from the dead rather than face the world without his father AND his brother and going to hell because of it, which left Sam floundering in the world after Dean's subsumation into hell in ways that were now obviously foreshadowed in Mystery Spot.
But more than that, and something I think Anna was the spokesperson for it, is the hosts of heaven do not love as humans love -- the indescribable love they say to have for God is not the love humans have for each other (or for children, small animals, lolcats, and warm fresh chocolate chip cookies). It is, by their own definition, tied to obedience and absolute faith whereas humans love in the absence of both - not always wisely, but it's still love because it's a choice.
And this series is nothing but about choice, good, bad, indifferent and taking responsibility for those choices. Not blame which both Sam and Dean both tend to do both for themselves and each other... but that's the crux of a huge chunk of Judeo-Christian (and not a few other) religious beliefs, in that God, or gods, can command, threaten, bribe make promises and threats, bring on fires and floods, but cannot or will not, by the wave of his/her/their hands, make devotion and obedience the default state for human beings, because faith without choice, while it has its uses (see angels), is worth nothing. The same is true of faith/obedience based only on fear (which is where most lesser demons operate).
Which makes the existence of a crossbreed like Jesse reaaaally interesting, because my theory is, that while the story on the ground is that he's half human/half demon, antichrist or cambion, I'm poking at the idea that the fathering demon in this case may well have been another of the fallen, if not, Lucifer his own self...which would make Jesse half human/half angel as well and that leads us back to ... you guessed it...back to the Grigori and The Nephilim, who, along with one version of the myth of Lilith being the first wife of Adam before Eve (and also cast out for defying God's will) all took their divinely constructed personas and purposes and became more like the humans God purported to love so much.
Anyway, I'm fascinated by the idea that Dean and Sam maybe be the actual "trigger" to reset the whole mess by refusing to bow to a battle they didn't start no matter how the angels or demons try to twist the tale around to make it seem so. This particular family spat started long before either Dena or Sam were born and if they are holding to the pseudo-Christian myth they've been riding, started shortly after the birth of mankind... I'll give you that Dean and Sam both have made some stupid choices, for what we humans would normally think of as the right reasons (save your brother, save the world) but putting them at fault for the instigation of the aeonic war is stretching it even for Archangels.
So, aside from all of that the episode filled me with glee, although I do think the question during Nutcracker to Dean was an even broader indication that the angels are looking to blame anyone other than themselves for this mess -- because while Dean might occasionally think, or once have thought that both his parents would be alive if Sam hadn't been born, I think the flashback episode to young Mary makes that a lie. Mary made her deal for her own reasons, and trying to pin that choice on Sam is something I don't think Dean would actually consider for more than a second and if he did, he is seriously not someone I want to know or care about any longer.
So, there you go, GLEE. Fascinations, and if we don't see young Jesse again, I will be seriously surprised because it occurs to me, that Jesse is at least, if not more, powerful than Gabriel, and Jesse does have that half-human free will thing going for him. It would be interesting to see if he could both reset events, or tweak them, and decide to unmake himself.
The only thing that could make me happier in this season is if they could bring Sarah back too (amid the long line of returning guest stars) and do it in good way.
GLEEEEEEEEEEE!!
** 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.