7x17 (take two) and other general thoughts
Okay, so it was the morning after, and I watched it again. My overall impression of the pacing didn't change much, but I was able to enjoy the overall episode despite that. Rachel Miner's voice still bugs me, but I appreciated her performance better the second time around. The Cas/Dean stuff was just shy of perfect but still beautiful, and Jared's acting was top notch.
Misha's acting as Emmanuel was just perfect. It made me think of the subtle differences Jensen brought to future!Dean. Just a beautiful performance. Then when his memories were restored, the shift back to Cas was subtle again and solid. He just hit every note perfectly. I've missed Misha so much. ♥
Although the situation itself felt impossibly rushed, I did love the sequence where Cas went all BAMF on the demons and remembered Dean in the process. I really loved that the moments he remembered were those when he was the BAMF meeting Dean ("Lazarus Rising"), when he was the BAMF who rewarded Dean's trust ("Lucifer Rising"), when he was the BAMF who betrayed Dean's trust (Sam's wall), and when he was the broken not-BAMF tried so hard but couldn't win back Dean's trust ("Meet the New Boss"). I've always felt that Cas has experienced the universe differently since raising Dean; I think the show has established it well enough that it isn't a matter of Cas being changed by being around humans in general but by being around Dean, specifically. It's not a matter of it being any angel and any human, but this angel and this human that created this beautiful, complex relationship they have that sort of defies tidy labels. Friendship, family, brothers-in-arms, love, everything... Sometimes, it feels like Dean is almost God-adjacent ("Point of No Return," "Good God, Y'all," etc.), as if belief in Dean's conviction is what gets Castiel through the tough times. Other times, it feels like Cas is trying to be as big as he can to make up for all of the space left in Dean's life given God's absence and John's absence and Sam's latest "wrong"-ness, etc. I always get the feeling that it's a complex mix of those two, partly because--against all odds of species and experience--they always react to each other as equals, no matter the harsh or soft dynamics of the moment. That said, I love that so much of the montage was of Dean's big, vulnerable eyes in various moments of distress. I see what you're feeling there, Cas, you self-appointed guardian angel, you. He takes the image of those bambi eyes with him everywhere, as if they're always waiting for him and trusting him, like he's the moon they've cast their lasso around. It's kind of sweet, and it's kind of sad. He really puts so much of himself into being that one solid presence in Dean's life that Dean can believe in.
God, I have missed Cas. He is such an integral part of the show.
I loved that Jensen's unscripted instinct to safeguard the trench coat for Castiel turned into a sign of loyalty, love and forgiveness in Dean as he transferred it from junker to junker after leaving the Impala behind. That was just beautiful; thank god, they left it in. (I can't believe they cut the line out, though. If they had to cut that, I wish they'd put some line in at the end that shows how Dean felt about leaving Cas. The end was so... blank. Not exhausted and grieving blank the way Dean has been but actually blank as if they forgot to include the line or scene Y that connected Point X to Point Z.)
Dean's initial reaction to seeing Cas was beautifully done by Jensen; that whole sequence with his wife and in the car was just perfect. Jensen and Misha both knocked it out of the park. I have no words for how perfect their performances were. There are so many little moments in that scene that it's hard to pick out every one: how Jensen delivered the line about how "messy" it all was, the "you're not a machine, Dean," the bit with the names, the "you're angry" and Jensen's expression when Cas assumed Dean had killed this "dude" who betrayed him, all of it. I can just watch it over and over and find new things to appreciate; it's one of those scenes that rewards repeated viewings. It kind of reminds me of that next-to-last scene in "The End," in that sense. The situation is fairly straightforward, but there's so much happening underneath.
About Dean's response to Cas remembering everything, though... I dunno. I get that Dean has been exhausted and sort of muted all season long, but part of that (a huge part of it) was Castiel breaking Sam's wall and then his apparent death, so I wish Dean had shown more passion underneath the exhaustion. I love that he gave him the trench coat, I love that he was defending Cas even though (as we saw in the car) it was clear that he had conflicted feelings about what had gone down with Cas in S6. I guess I was expecting some glimmer of the anger, frustration and hurt that we saw in "Let It Bleed" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much." Whichever one of them was trying to talk the other into seeing their side during those episodes, it was still clear that there was so much water under the bridge that Dean was having a hard time getting over. The amount of people he lets all the way into a place of trust in his heart can be counted on one hand with fingers to spare, after all. Cas had earned that place at the end of S4, and it had held true all the way through S5 and S6. It hadn't broken like a clean break when they learned about Crowley and purgatory; it had been like some wasting disease that he kept trying to cut dead tissue from, only he couldn't disconnect himself enough to do that until it was too late and he felt dead all the way through and Cas was no longer there for him to even have anyone to feel bruised at. So he shut down. I get it. I just wish the episode had felt less rushed, particularly at the end, so that we could have seen more of these feelings, even just one scene between Cas taking in Lucifer and the boys driving off. That was the unkindest cut of all. I'm not even going to touch on fandom wank between opinions that say Cas is just a tool (so who cares?) and those that say Dean's a dick for leaving Cas. It's just my opinion, but both of those views miss all of this messy, rich, complicated stuff between Cas and Dean that's only been growing deeper (and messier) ever since they met in "Lazarus Rising." Which is why I much prefer Edlund's introspection to Gamble's Cliff Notes.
Random Stuff:
"Tree-topper" is now my favorite euphemism for angels. "Angel condom" is still tops for meatsuits.
That last special effect was cool and creepy in a way that reminded me of S1. Kudos.
I particularly enjoyed the intercut of Sam getting check-ups and Dean making calls.
Jared and Jensen both need to be in short-sleeves far more often. Scrubs will do just fine.
I liked the line, "I wouldn't call you on a 'maybe'," mostly for Jensen's reaction.
Dean being a slightly confused BAMF against the random onslaught of demons was ♥.
That said, hasn't he committed the exorcism incantation to memory? I miss exorcisms. :(
How is leaving dead bodies everywhere in every episode a non-issue? *sigh* I miss Henricksen.
About Lucifer: I wish they remembered that jumping into Lucifer's cage was something Sam planned himself. Maybe I'm just getting caught up on semantics, but the passive language they use (that he uses, specifically, like "when you throw a soul into Lucifer's dog pit" or whatever that line was) throws me a bit out of the drama of the moment sometimes. He never expected to get out, correct? Whenever I feel like they're losing touch with that, I feel like rewatching "Like a Virgin," which was kind of a stupid, silly episode but the character moments between the brothers were some of my absolute favorites in the entire series. It feels a little like how book Frodo's courage of conviction was completely watered down for film Frodo, who was a useless woobie that proved time and time again that he had no business carrying the ring. However I feel about how S5 went down, how monumentally stupid the Michael/Lucifer showdown was and how ridiculous it was for a toy soldier we've never seen before to be the shining light that saves the world... I love that moment in the car when Sam looks at Dean and says with great care and seriousness, "You got to promise not to try to bring me back," and later when Sam looks down at Dean's bruised-up face and says, with this sort of horrified love, "It's okay, Dean. It's gonna be okay." What can I say? I get all tingly when he takes control like that. It was his choice, and, though overblown along with everything else about Winchester destiny in S5, it was the stuff of heroes. So where did big damn hero!Sam go? He floated around a few times in S6 (I'm not counting soulless Sam) and in "Slice Girls," but he's mostly MIA. Is that exhaustion, trauma and grief? Is it PTSD from hell? Okay, then let's deal with that. Let's not step back and turn his big damn choice into a woobie puddle on the floor. No more passive voice, please.
But on that topic, it also keeps bugging me that soul-full Sam takes on soulless Sam's point of view about getting out of hell. For soul-full Sam, coming back should have been either like breaking out of the water to breathe at last OR, if we're meant to take hallucination Lucifer's words at face value, then nothing really changed for him because his perspective of what is real and what is hell was constantly being toyed with since he took that dive into Lucifer's cage. The only thing that doesn't make sense for soul-full Sam to say is this "what did you expect when you put my soul back?" sort of dialogue that he's been dishing out since S6. Shouldn't he be saying, "When you brought me back?" Me-the-self, not me-the-object? Soul-full Sam should either feel thankful that he was actually finally saved, OR he should feel completely numb about it because it never actually made a difference... because he was the one being tortured for 150 years, correct? Not the soulless brain and body bits of him. Right? So why would he ever advocate for the reasoning that left him in the cage and the soulless brain and body bits of him safely disconnected? It bugs the hell out of me that the writers are so internally inconsistent on an issue they were determined to make as epic as possible. This is not even mentioning that they take Cas's warnings about re-souling Sam in early-to-mid S6 still at face value, which doesn't go at all with late S6 revelation that it was Cas who brought his brain and body bits out. They never connected that dot after throwing everything at Cas towards the end of S6, and it's a nitpick that shouldn't bug me, only they spent so much time between Dean and Cas building up how tortured Sam's soul would be and warning against re-souling him, when in retrospect, it reads as if Cas was playing Dean all along and piling unnecessary guilt trips on him, which Sam and Bobby then continued to play off of. It's not keeping in-character, and it takes away from the internal logic of the situation. That just bugs the hell out of me.
I do get the fridge logic of Sam's worst case of hell scenario being this nightmarish clown (joker) with the face of Lucifer. If they could have done something with perspective, that would have been quite cool; a person's worst case of hell could be entirely subjective. Or, that it's what the Cage is all about and why it's the worst place: take someone's deep-set fears and build their sense of reality around it. Sam fears and loathes clowns, so Lucifer acts like a (class) clown in his head. Maybe Adam fears and loathes ghouls, so he imagines himself being eaten alive every day. That would be kinda cool. But now Cas seeing the same (class) clown Lucifer sorta ruins it. Darn.
In other news, I wish Meg could have been introduced earlier in one of those episodes that felt completely disconnected from the main Leviathan plot where absolutely nothing happened. She would have naturally fit into "Repo Man," "Slash Fiction," "Defending Your Life," or even that godawful "Time for a Wedding!" There was already too much crammed into this episode without re-introducing two major characters instead of one. They should have dropped her or the ghost business, or else cut short that phone conversation between Dean and whatshisname--Mackey(?). Cramming too much in turned what was an emotional roller coaster ride into Cliff Notes. Boo.
In any case, I hope Dean was referring to a mutual agreement between the boys and Meg to watch over Cas. Why they would ever even trust her, I have no clue, but the show seems to push for this alliance, so if they're gonna drive off knowing that Meg is alive and knows who and where Cas is, at least I hope they came to an understanding about it. Hopefully that's what Dean was referring to with that line about "mutually assured destruction" and what Sam meant by calling it a "deal."
I waver between hoping Daphne is a player (Leviathan? another "double-agent"?) and hoping she can just be forgotten rather than brought back in to provide unnecessary angst when she is inevitably fridged. Hopefully, she's not pregnant.
Also, I waver on just how satisfied I am with the storyline that Castiel--who has endured being killed several times, fighting the forces of hell to save first Dean and then to (halfway) save Sam from Lucifer's Cage itself, not to mention all of the angel politics and being around for how many thousands of years of angelic warring and such--should now become catatonic because he has taken in hallucinations of Lucifer. He's still got the angel mojo, the angel memories, etc. He's clearly not Jimmy. I appreciate the symmetry of the transfer; I just wish they'd be a little more imaginative about what taking in hallucinations would do to an angel. It's not actually Lucifer manipulating Cas's mind; it's Castiel imagining that Lucifer is there. Angel minds should be completely unlike human minds, right? Angels can manipulate memories so easily, would it even do anything? Hopefully, we don't come back to find he's dying of sleep deprivation.
Generally, I liked what the episode was trying to do. I just wish it had taken more time and space to show those things in their full potential.