Lemuria

Wow, that is one incredible editing job. And it reminds us that if you remove all the soapy nonsense, this is not a show for children! 😳

I really enjoyed this Dean vid, to Disturbed's cover of "Sound of Silence." Silence

I have to disagree with this as well: it was Dean's idea to lock him in there and he got the "storeroom" open; Sam just happened to be standing behind Michael and gave him the push in. Dean then locked the door and has held it closed all this time.

Two things: First, I agree that Dean told them and Sam and Cas did not want to listen. He knew how hard it was going to be; it was Sam and Cas who pooh-poohed it. This reminds me of season 8, where Sam insisted on taking on the trials because he saw a light at the end of the tunnel, while Dean was just giving up and being suicidal (can't begin to tell you how much I hated that nonsense; Dean was being pragmatic about how not easy it was going to be to close the gates of Hell without Hell's permission!)--and then, within an episode or two, Sam was going on about how Dean had been right and how hard it was. So...no lessons learned there, then, huh? And, yes, I'll be ticked with both S & C--and anyone else--who criticizes Dean in any way over this. The blame, if Michael breaks out, is on Sam and Cas, IMO. It's amazing that Dean has held Michael at bay this long. Second, I don't agree with the interpretation of "Michael breaks out." Everyone's talking about Michael's jumping into someone else. As I see it, that's referring to Michael's breaking out of the storeroom, not out of Dean. The last time, he chose to leave Dean as part of a plan to ultimately destroy Dean's resistance to him. In this case, Michael's breaking out would probably destroy Dean's resistance completely. 99.99999999999etc.% of Billie's books have the world being destroyed by Michael wearing Dean. Why would Michael leave his "Perfect Vessel" to take a lesser vessel? Especially if he intends to confront his Dad at some point? That makes no sense, especially as the very act of breaking Dean's control would give Michael a compliant Perfect Vessel.

Actually, Adrienne said that. After saying she was making it from scratch, she added that you don't come on TC and use boxed flour, which somebody else was doing (and since it seemed that Sarah was the only other person using flour, she might as well have used the name), and gee, she didn't really want to throw them under the bus but...To which Tom noted that she didn't throw them under the bus, she ran the bus right over them. She knew exactly what she was doing and, to me, she intended it to give her the win if she went head to head with Sarah and the judges seemed to like them both equally. As for what happened on the court, that was not gentle teasing, that was taunting designed to humiliate and throw someone off their game. If that had happened to me, there is no way I could have stayed out there. JMO. YMMV

In the sense we've been talking about it, it probably would have. But, boy, would it have started wildfires IMO: if, for some reason, it was Sam who had to use it to make the "get rid of Michael" wish--maybe Michael's presence in Dean interfered with Dean's being able to use the pearl, for example--and we get the same John scenario, then that would have meant that talking to John again, after all these years and after the whole Sam-John bit in "The Song Remains The Same," was more important to Sam than possibly saving Dean from spending eternity locked in a metal coffin with a ticked-off archangel And we think SPN fandom is divisive now? Hah!

Not to mention, Chekhov’s “Dad sent me away to punish me.” This is something that has never been said before in the show. Why bring it up the week before John returns if you have no intention of doing anything with it?

I do like that the episode highlights again for us that Dean is really the people person and Sam is a natural-born loner. And with the brothers separated permanently in this changing timeline, TED Talk Sam dumps family (and presumably friends) along with hobbies and greasy food.

Mayhap, but the design matches something that Robb wore.

I have to say that I did expect more from the 300th episode. I know that there wasn't nearly enough time for everything--make it a 2-parter--but at least have an actual story there. John being here should really have meant something to the events going on at this point in the series. Instead, the ep was just a series of loosely connected "feels" moments (I can't begin to tell you how much I hate the word "feels." Right up there with "soulmate"), that didn't work for me nearly as well as the writers thought they would. Especially the John and Mary stuff. Maybe if this ep had been done nine years ago but by now we've learned that the two of them were maneuvered by Heaven and really hated each other and we saw that "it only became perfect after she died" (poor Dean. Taking care of everyone even before Mary died). And we seen Mary, only a few months (for her) after John died, jumping into a relationship with Ketch and then with AU Bobby. Yep, mourned a long time, didn't she? I do think Dean got an apology of sorts from John for screwing up Dean's childhood and putting too much on his shoulders in Ep. 2.01, so he probably didn't need it as much here. (Of course, John then immediately dropped a mountain range on Dean. I was ticked for quite a while after over that but I mellowed a little: John knew he was going to dead a few minutes later and he wouldn't be there to save or kill Sam. And he knew that Dean was the only hunter--including Bobby, I think--he could trust to do everything possible to save Sam before going for the other option.) Still, I would have liked to have seen John have to face the fact that his making Dean responsible for Sam in general and for the "save/kill" situation in particular landed Dean in Hell. And why, show, did you bring up the "he sent me away to punish me" a whole week ago--which apparently exceeds your retention span--something that had never been even hinted at before, it you had no intention of addressing this week? Did you just forget? And then there's the 10,000 pound gorilla in the room. Is Michael still in Dean? If so, shouldn't Zachariah have picked up on the presence of his boss? If not, how come and, even more importantly, shouldn't that have been a consideration in regard to changing things back? Then there's Baby. I've seen comments about why didn't Dean ward the car? Why? What difference would that have made? She wasn't supernatural. No, the real question for me is how she was able to take off with it. Are we supposed to assume that Dean, with his obsessiveness about the Metallicar, left his keys in the car? Or that he and Sam got out and left the engine running? Or that a teenager who otherwise proved herself totally useless hot-wired the car? I mean, that was just ridiculous. I didn't totally dislike the young guy but only because I thought his enthusiasm about what the "Campbells" did was funny and I loved his description of Jack. I did like Dean's speech at the end and hopefully we will get a less depressed Dean from here on in. And I liked the "I have a family" line: even though I think Dean has forgiven John, I felt a hint of anger at John still there in that line.

Jaime, in addition to being nicely scruffy, is not wearing Lannister gold but Stark black. V-e-r-y interesting.

Uh uh *Nods head vigorously* I admit to rolling my eyes when Sam's defense to Dean about his letting Nick go was really All. About. Sam. And how what if it were him etc etc. Once again, Sam seems to see everything in terms of how closely it relates to himself. I mean, he didn't have any "compassion" for the hosts of the wannabe King of Hell and his minions in Ep. 1: his great plan involved (in addition to bringing along two basically useless and barely trained neophytes) having his people burst in and shoot up the demons' hosts, without knowing if any of them had still been alive. Edited to add: I do agree with the post that Sam's telling Nick to burn in Hell was a step forward for Sam in this regard.

(Sorry about the box above. I have no idea how to delete it.) Came across this nice Dean vid by DemonBlakex: Lions Inside

Billie is no longer a reaper. She was promoted. She's Death. And we saw that OGDeath had no problem killing people. The guy who bumped into him and was rude, for example. Everyone in the restaurant, for another. Wait...is there a Sam on this show I haven't met yet? 'Cause you sure ain't talking about Sam Winchester. Book of the Damned, anyone?

Question: Old Death said that one day he would even reap Chuck. So why can't New Death (ie Billie) reap AU Michael?

Not to mention, his own yelling and throwing things at the door! LOL Oddly enough, I didn't have any problems with the sneak peek. We have no idea what Dean was doing before the scene started but I don't see his researching anything at this point because he knows the only answer. Or at least, what he thinks is the only answer. Sam presumably is trying to solve the Michael-in-the-DeanCage problem; Dean already knows what to do. He's just trying to come to terms with it. And I don't understand the criticism that Dean is reaching out to Mary and not the other way around. Sure, Dean probably wants to say goodbye to her, too; she's still his mother. But I don't believe, based on the promo, that he's going there just to see her. It's out of the way, it apparently has a tool shed and it gets him away from Sam and Cas, who might try to stop him. As Myrelle pointed out above, for one of the only times I can think of, Dean is doing what he's doing solely for what he needs to do, not for Sam or Mary or Cas or Jack, or even Baby. Under different circumstances, I might cheer that.

Not surprising: the book he was handed was about his death. The only difference from the other books was the particular version of his death in this one.

I meant to add that I really liked Violet and her "We have to have shifts because you guys just screw up 'so, so many' things." And when Sam tried to play the "I helped you with the Rowena thing" card, she was all "Oh, the Rowena 'thing' that you created?" Hee. Definitely a keeper. (I also like that Yockey acknowledged that Sam was the one who gave Rowena the page that made her think she could challenge Death.)

Unless, of course, you don't play them very well when you do. Which, IMO, has occurred in previous seasons.

Except that I believe that this was the ep where JA made the crew cry. I have to at least watch that part!

I still think that Michael was behind that particular part of the dream and that if Dean had signed those papers, it would have been the equivalent of giving Michael an irrevocable "yes" and an ironclad hold on Dean. JMO. Storywise, I totally agree with you; it was as idiotic as letting her go off and hunt alone, back in the djinn episode. I suspect they gave her the "leader" role because she's the only one the audience has seen before and would recognize at all. Honestly, Sam hasn't done a great job of training these guys, especially when it comes to hitting a target: The railing in the bunker, around the landing and then down the stairs, is an open metal-work kind of thing and all of the monsters were way taller than the railing. Yet, the only thing that any of the hunters could hit was the railing! Which meant that they were aiming only toward the bottom half of the beings coming down the stairs, as the top halves projected above the railing. They're the hunting equivalent of Imperial stormtroopers. Yup. And did you notice

That’s not the last time they were seen. Or, perhaps, I should say that’s not the last time that Death’s ring was seen. Dean brought the ring with him and gave it back to Death when he asked Death to save Sam’s soul. And Death then gave the ring to Dean to be Death for a day, so as to teach Dean a lesson. I always thought I gave the lie to the belief that Dean would do anything to save Sam that, for the year between season five and season six, Dean researched to try to find a way to rescue Sam but he never tried to use, as Thanos said to Doctor Strange about the Time Stone, his “greatest weapon,“ that is, the rings. Even to rescue Sam, Dean would not re-open the cage and risk releasing Lucifer again.

I believe it's 14.12

Yay. It might finally make him interesting instead of being one-note, bland, boring, and without nuance or layers--except, of course, we know it won't last and then he'll just be coddled and told how special he is even more. There's always a downside, isn't there? I'm not one who thought they did a good job with Chief the Leader to begin with (they had him prioritizing badly, failing to delegate--suggesting he didn't trust anyone in his crew--and exhausting himself as a result, making bad decisions and not making some tough ones etc) but this whole thing with Maggie was absurd. I'm assuming the show decided to use her because she was the only one of the AU hunters (I'm not counting Gigolo Bobby) that the viewing audience could tell apart from everyone else but in story terms, it was ridiculous for her to be put in charge. And you could tell that she felt completely out of her depth in dealing with the monsters. I am grateful, though, that the AU hunters didn't just roll over Michael's enhanced critters. In fact, they didn't do particularly well at all. I did find it amusing that they were really great at hitting the railings in the bunker. Just not the monsters actually walking past them! Back to the firing range for them. LOL Maybe it wasn't Dean's perfect dream, just something Michael believed would keep Dean quiet and occupied. It also needed to be something that Dean might consider selling: I think that if he ever signed those papers, he would never have been able to control Michael.

I was going to reply to this but Aeryn13 said it better so I'm just going to +1 her! Which may be why we see Dean welding something in the multi-ep promo.