Bergamot

Yeah, I tend to believe that Jensen's instincts are good and that he had a very valid reason for his initial reaction.To me, the fact that he talked about it so openly shows that there was something quite specific that he didn't like about it, not just a general feeling of not wanting everything to end, or whatever. I think he just decided to let it go and live with it. I mean, what else could he do? He saw that everyone else was okay with the idea, he talked with Kripke, he talked with Singer (but not, interestingly, with Dabb -- make of that what you will). Everyone on the show, and the fans as well, wanted to spend this last part of the last season enjoying and honoring the legacy of the show. From everything I have seen of Jensen, it is not in his nature to sit around with a grumpy face saying repeatedly, "I still don't like this!" No one will convince me, though, that what happened is that he realized he was wrong. I think he just decided to accept it. I also think that it is likely we will never know. LOL, me neither! And honestly, there are too many things in real life to worry about right now, for me to stress out about the show. However, precisely because real life is so bleak and stressful right now, is why I wish we did have more hints to speculate about in regard to what is going to happen. Considering that we are just weeks away from the show's big finale, it is sad to me how little there is to talk about. (And sorry, but I have to admit I couldn't care less what episodes Castiel does or doesn't show up in, or what will happen to Jack and Lucifer in the end.) Spoiler speculation is fun! And I could use some fun right now. That's why I have been studying this picture and trying to think what it might mean. Not because I am worrying. Anyway, I have stared at the picture intently enough that for now, anyway, I have convinced myself both of them definitely have some extra grey in their hair. 😄 Still don't know what it might mean, but I do like to think that it is a hint that whatever happens, Dean and Sam share the same fate. And I think I would prefer that.

True! Also, maybe it is just the light in the photo, but do Jensen and Jared have a little grey in their hair?

I saw this picture online, and someone said on Twitter that they are dressed the same as they were in the pilot, when they were on the bridge in that episode. Also the Impala has her original license plate. I don't know what, if anything, this means, though.

Here is an interview with Eric Kripke regarding the filming of Season 3 of "The Boys". It doesn't mention Jensen, but Jeffrey Dean Morgan's name comes up! https://collider.com/the-boys-season-3-filming-eric-kripke-interview/ Here is another article (from July) that talks about "The Boys". I really know nothing about the series and found this interesting. https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/07/26/amazon-is-trying-to-turn-the-boys-into-its-own-walking-dead/#73ea977939f3

It's hard, in a way, because I did love Supernatural. But I know that it's time for Jensen to move on. And even if he had chosen a show just like Supernatural, with all the same components that I loved about it, it still wouldn't be the same. Supernatural was special to me, but I think it was unique, in the way all the elements came together, and I don't think it could be recreated. Time for something new. And I freely admit that "The Boys" is probably not a show that I would have chosen to watch otherwise. But I definitely will now, and I am excited to see what Jensen does with it! I am also excited at the idea of sharing my enjoyment of Jensen with new viewers who don't know him and have never had the pleasure of watching him on the screen! Welcome to them all! (I don't have Instagram, so I don't know much about it, but I saw where someone said that Jensen has 10,000 new followers on Instagram since yesterday?) I found an article that has an interview with Kripke -- they talk about the 3rd season of "The Boys" but don't mention Jensen. (They do talk about Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the interview.) I'm not sure where I should put it since it is not really Supernatural Media -- I guess I will link in the Cast In Other Roles thread.

Thanks for sharing these, Lemuria! Watching them, I had two thoughts. First, although I can't pretend to be that interested anymore in whatever story the writers wanted to tell for this season, I didn't realize how much I have really, really missed Dean Winchester. ("Any bloodsuckers in here?" lol) Second, what am I going to do when he is finally gone? (*sob*)

For me too! I loved this episode. I think it was the only one in this entire season that I enjoyed watching from start to finish. I had kind of a different reaction than some did, though. To me, the episode was not just about the tragedy of Dean losing his memory, although of course that was part of the story -- it was about what this showed us about who Dean is. I liked the playing of the song at the end better once I remembered the rest of the lyrics. I am old enough to remember when it first came out, but I had forgotten that it was actually an anti-war song from the Vietnam War era. So I was thinking when I heard it in this episode how strange it was, to refer to growing up to be a man as a "dreadful thing". But then I remembered that the song is not just about a little boy who has to leave behind his toys and take on adult responsibilities someday, as we all must. It's about the fact that there is a war to be fought, and the boy will have to become a soldier, and learn to hate and kill the enemy, and watch his brothers die. (Broomstick Cowboy) Which of course is just what happened to Dean, and it was even more dreadful and tragic because it happened to him when he was only 4 years old. I thought it was interesting what the spell showed us about who Dean is at his core. Who would Dean be if all the weight he has been carrying since he was 4 years old could be stripped away, if all the lifelong pain and damage had not happened? We saw a Dean who was stripped to his essence. And I liked who the essential Dean was shown to be. He was sweet and good-natured -- without knowing who she was, he was generous and kind even to Rowena. He was fun and charming, filled with a zest and an ability to enjoy life. And he was brave, eager and ready to take on the monsters of the Supernatural world, even without the ability to draw on his experience as a hunter. I think the spell showed us that Dean is special and awesome in spite of the tragedy and damage of his life, not because of it.

Funny, I must have missed the cheap shots that the writers took at Jared's character, to balance out the ones that were aimed at Jensen's character. Sure, everything was nice and even.

Thanks Aeryn! And I agree, that would be the kind of finale that Dean deserves. It sounds as if the Arrow writers did their best at the end to give the characters, as well as the fans that loved them, the respect and appreciation that they deserved. Needless to say, I am not expecting anything like that from Dabb.

I like the actress that plays Eileen, but I have to agree. That interview seemed to just go on and on, didn't it? It seemed kind of repetitive and overdone to me. Also, wasn't it just a couple weeks ago that they had an interview with Andrew Dabb, where he was emphasizing the great importance of having Eileen back on the show (he said that she was there to "ground" the "God-like" Sam with her "real world" perspective.) I feel as if the show is trying to hit me over the head with the importance and wonderfulness of Eileen. And for a character that, let's face it, has played a relatively minor role over the whole 15 years of the show, to receive that much attention right now, at the very end of everything, is kind of off-putting. I mean, I like Eileen okay, but I am starting to feel like they are trying to shove her at me too hard. Anyway, it's hard to believe that Variety would be doing this long interview and that the character would be receiving this much attention if she weren't going to be a big part of the series finale. Let's put it this way, I find it impossible to believe that they just brought her back to have her die or just disappear from view. I agree. I mean, Dean is such a wonderful character and it makes me sad, because he deserves more than to die in the end. He deserves so much more, he deserves peace and happiness. But I agree completely, considering the showrunner and the writers we have now, and considering what awful ending they might come up with, that this would definitely be the best case scenario for Dean that I could hope for. I have never watched that show, but now I am curious. Could you maybe, I guess with spoiler tags, tell me what it was about the Arrow finale that you would like to see happen for Dean?

Very true! I do understand that the whole concept of this season is that Dean and Sam have now discovered that they are characters in a story written by Chuck. But the writers have been so vague as to what this actually means, that the whole thing collapses for me if I start to think about it. If Dean and Sam are characters written by Chuck, do they have any free will at all? When one of them sacrificed themselves to save their brother, how could it mean anything? Was it just because Chuck wrote the story that way? If they are defiant of Chuck, is it just because he is writing them that way? Or what about, as Katy puts it so well, the "millions of little inconsequential things--good and bad" that our lives are filled with? This latest episode seems to be saying that unless Chuck included those things in the story, they did not happen. In which case, as I mentioned, the brothers should have been amazed in the episode at the idea that they needed to have a bowel movement, because they never have had one before! Hate the whole idea of this season. Because it is not about Dean and Sam as fictional characters who have now come to life, now that they realize they are fictional. It is the opposite. They are characters who had been real to me, that have now apparently been reduced to just poorly written stories created by Chuck on his typewriter. Thanks for nothing, show!

But we already knew this about Dean and Sam! That they only ever had problems that were plot-relevant is not some amazing or clever insight on Dabb's part. Here's what Garth, speaking as the writer's mouthpiece, says about the episode: The thing is, having only plot-relevant problems does not make them "not normal" heroes, it makes them FICTIONAL. We only see the plot-relevant problems that Garth (or any other character) faces as well. We saw one of Garth's babies filling its diaper, because Dabb wanted to make a (stupid) joke about it, but we didn't watch the whole process of Garth changing the baby's diaper. Not because Garth is too heroic to have to change a diaper, but because it wasn't part of the story and Garth is not a real person -- he is a fictional character in a story. Just like we saw Sam making a mess by spilling things on the kitchen floor, but we didn't have to spend several minutes watching him clean up the floor, because that wasn't part of the story. If Dean getting a cavity was part of the story before now, we would have seen him getting a cavity. As others here have already pointed out, we have seen Dean and Sam have "normal-people" problems before lots of times, when these problems were part of the story that the writer wanted to tell, whether for plot purposes or characterization purposes. And, contrary to what Dabb seems to think, no one would complain, "But Dean can't get a cavity! He is a HERO, and heroes don't get cavities!" The flaw at the heart of Dabb's oh-so-clever idea, and the reason it totally failed to work for me, is that he tries to conflate "being a hero versus being a normal person" with "being a fictional character versus being a real person." Dean and Sam being heroes does not mean that they would not know how to use a toilet, just because we have never seen them going to the bathroom. Believe it or not, writers, we know that sometimes Dean and Sam are going to have a flat tire, whether we see it or not, and that after they change the tire, we don't then watch them drive from one town to another in real time. Because we actually do understand that they are fictional characters. So what was the point here?

I think it would be hard to demonstrate less comprehension of what the show is really about, at its heart, than Dabb shows here. As you say, Dean and Sam were never superheroes who had everything in their lives fall into place to enable them to triumph over adversity. It's like Dabb was deliberately making a nasty joke out of something I loved. What a small, petty, man he must be. And you know what? It wasn't even funny. Just dumb. Dabb thought he was so clever, but I didn't even smile once. Well, that's not true. I did have a great big smile on my face as I watched Jensen dance. That was fun! But that scene really didn't have anything to do with what the episode was about. So, so true! The episode made me think about Edlund's "Bad Day at Black Rock", which was both clever and very funny. I might have to do a re-watch of that episode to enjoy watching this kind of thing done right. Dabb really needs to stop putting himself in the position of being compared to writers like Edlund, because it just makes him look even more pathetic, if possible, than he already does.

https://www.tvguide.com/news/supernatural-season-15-episode-10-dj-qualls-garth/?UniqueID=65D01798-3D50-11EA-B90F-95B096E8478F&ServiceType=twitter&TheTime=2020-01-22T19%3A50%3A10&ftag=COS-05-10aaa3b&PostType=image This is the part of the interview that caught my attention: Any guesses on what this "skill" is? My guess comes from that shot in the "Drowning" video where we see Dean in the white suit and hat, standing in a spotlight as curtains open. Maybe, for some bizarre reason, we see the two of them dancing? Because, okay, now I want to see Jensen doing some sort of soft-shoe tap dance! I have to say, his description of Jensen "sort of muddling through" as they were learning, only to then "show up and be amazing", sounds just like Jensen. He continually amazes me at how he manages to be good at so many things!

No, he wasn't. He really wasn't. Being unable to save people is not the same thing as sacrificing them. Taking a risk that people might die, in order to save as many as you can, is not the same thing as sacrificing them. I see no evidence that this is what the show was saying, so just saying that it is the same thing does not convince me. Half the world dying was a possibility, not a fact. (We have referred to them as "potential" deaths.) Dean saw people dying every day in the Apocalypse, and wanted to do something to stop more people from dying. Unlike when Sam decided to say yes to Lucifer, when they actually had a way to trap him, they had no other options, literally no other way to stop Lucifer. Dean still wanted to save everyone, just as much he always had; he had just lost faith that there was ever going to be any way to do that. If he said yes to Michael, and he then saw a way to stop even more people from dying -- if somehow he was able to come up with more metaphorical lifeboats and save 90% of the population -- he would do it. He wasn't going to stand in front of the lifeboats and refuse to let anyone at all on them, until and unless there was room for everyone. Or maybe he could have managed to stop the final battle from taking place at all -- if Sam could take control of the situation as he did, there is absolutely no reason that Dean could not have done it. Anything could have happened. But here's the thing. What if Sam had done want Ruby wanted him to do, and carried out her orders to kill Nancy by tearing out her heart? Even if Dean and the others had figured out another way (which of course they did) Nancy still would have been dead. If Dean made his choice to say yes to Michael, half the population did not automatically drop dead. Dean chose no one to die. There was still the possibility of saving anyone, or maybe everyone. But if Sam made the choice to say yes to Ruby, after that, no matter what happened, there was no way to save Nancy. She would be the one person that he had made it impossible to save. Because he had chosen to sacrifice her. That's why the two situations are apples and oranges, as I think arhtee has already said so succinctly. But now I am really starting to feel that there is nothing that we haven't already said. So it could be time for me to agree to disagree!

I don't know, I don't think this theoretical situation is comparable. The example only works for this discussion, in my opinion, if the person who is telling you to send someone down to fix the problem even though they will drown, is actually lying to you and manipulating you and trying to push you toward the darkside, so that they can get you to release Lucifer. Who will then proceed to destroy everyone on earth, including the rest of the people in the submarine. In other words, to ignore what Ruby was really up to, is a distortion of the story the show was actually telling. I think that the show was pretty clear that the line that Sam considered stepping over in "Jus in Bello" was the line between good and evil. In "Point of No Return", there is never any indication that anyone thinks Dean is about to go darkside. They think Dean is making a mistake. They tell him not to commit suicide, not to sacrifice himself. They accuse him of giving up, of failing, of losing faith in his family. But at no point does anyone accuse him of becoming evil or inhuman or being okay with human sacrifice. (Or being "Machievellian". I'm sorry, but I can't think of anyone less likely to be viewed as Machievellian than Dean, even if he were going evil. He's no good at being subtle and devious.) Dean is not choosing to sacrifice anyone, because he believes that everyone is about to die. He thinks the Titanic is about to sink. He thinks that he should help as many as possible get into the lifeboats, while from his point of view Bobby and Sam are objecting to lowering the lifeboats, and trying to prevent him from getting people on them, simply because they would rather pretend that are still going to keep the Titanic from going down. Dean is not portrayed by the show during this time as someone who is willing to break a few eggs to make his omelet, and so is losing his humanity. I think this again would be a distortion of the story that the show is telling. What happens with Dean is that, as the result of the accumulation of all his experiences since he returned from Hell, he loses his faith in his family, specifically in Sam. Although he later regains it, this loss of faith is what the narrative frames as his mistake, and the sin he must repent of. Sorry, I did not notice this until after I posted. Agree to disagree!

I guess we have reached an impasse, but I can't resist having one more go at it. 🙂 Dean's lack of hope that they would find another way cannot be equated with a lack of hope that he could still get people into the lifeboats. Dean had hope that what he was planning to do could save people, just as Sam did. Except if Dean was wrong, a lot of people might die, while if Sam was wrong, everyone might die. The difference in Dean saying yes and Sam saying yes was not that Sam's plan was better because he had more hope. It's that it was a plan based on the fact that they now had a way to trap Lucifer, which they didn't before. The writers could just as easily have had Dean then say, "Great! Now we have a way to trap Lucifer, and no one else has to die! I am going to say yes to Michael, take control over him, and make sure Lucifer falls into that hole!" The only reason -- the ONLY reason -- that this didn't happen is that the writers had decided to take Dean out of the story at that point, and Sam was going to be the hero to save the world. It had nothing to do with Sam being more hopeful or his plan less risky. Remember, in comparing Dean's considering saying yes with Sam considering agreeing to Ruby's plan, an important point is the word you yourself use in describing Dean's choice: "potential". This wasn't a mathematical equation: remove half the population, and the other half will remain. And I think this is where Dean was coming from a different place than Sam was in considering Ruby's plan. Potentially, if Dean said yes to Michael, half the population might die. Or maybe more. Or, if things turned out differently, maybe less -- or maybe no one else would die. If Sam said yes to Ruby, Nancy definitely -- not potentially -- would die. She had to die, and at Ruby and Sam's hands. So why was that such a big deal, if we are only talking about the loss of one person? Because it wasn't just about one person. Because of what ILoveReading said: Ruby was trying to condition Sam to obey her, to trust her judgment, to do what she said when she said it was necessary, to believe that the ends would justify the means. To believe her when she said that it was all up to him to save everyone, even if it meant going down a dark path. To feel that he had gone down that path too far to make it possible to come back. And, of course, Ruby succeeded. She didn't succeed in making him kill Nancy, because Dean stopped her. But it was a step in her conditioning of Sam, that he was willing to consider crossing over that line. That's why Ruby went to them afterwards to rub in the fact that people had died anyway, to reinforce that conditioning. It was a first step toward Sam's decision to kill Lilith, resulting in the return of Lucifer, the beginning of the Apocalypse, and the death of a lot more people than just Nancy. In spite of what you assert, that the writers were refusing to "condone" the risk that Dean was taking by deciding to say yes, I never saw anything in the text of the show, or anything in what the writers said, to indicate that they intended or wanted us to see Dean as about to step over the line that Sam was about to cross with Nancy. They absolutely would and could not do this. Why not? Because they knew that they were going to have Sam say yes -- at the potential risk of the loss of not just half the population but of everyone -- and they were going to frame it as a noble and heroic thing to do.

Yeah, I am afraid that this particular exercise of whataboutism does not work for me. I tend to agree with the comment above, that this is like comparing apples and oranges. I think a better comparison to Dean's decision would be if Ruby told them they had to pull some kind of switch (metaphorically speaking) that would allow them to defeat the demons but could destroy them all as well. And suppose they do it, and are trying to pull everyone to safety, and they can't get Nancy out in time and she dies. Except in the case of Ruby's actual plan, Nancy herself was going to be the switch that had to be pulled. Ruby wasn't telling them to risk Nancy's life; she was telling them to take Nancy's life. I think that Dean had reached the point where he really felt that humanity was doomed. He talked about the angels having the only lifeboats on the Titanic. Dean had lost all hope, and felt that the whole ship was going down. So he was going to pull the switch -- say yes to Michael -- and hope that at least some people could make it onto the lifeboats and be saved. Yes, maybe he shouldn't have given up on trying to find some other way to stop Lucifer that would save everybody -- well, at least everybody who wasn't already dead -- but like I said, I understood why he had reached that point. If you are talking about why he changed his mind after deciding to say yes to Michael, I don't think it had to do with a realization that "both sides are dicks". I don't think Dean ever had any illusions on that score. He had just lost all hope that he could find another way, but then realized that he couldn't let Sam down and so he chose to keep trying.

There were already serious consequences. Events had already been set in motion. Lucifer had been released from the Cage, and he wasn't just waiting around for the battle with Michael to commence. He was summoning the Four Horsemen. War caused a townful of people to kill each other in "Good God, Y'All". Lucifer sacrificed another whole townful of people in "Abandon All Hope" in order to summon Death. Then there were the people killed by Famine in "My Bloody Valentine", and those killed by people coming back from the dead in "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid". In "99 Problems" there was the appearance of the Whore of Babylon, a manifestation of the Apocalypse whose purpose was to cause humans to damn themselves to Hell. And at that point Pestilence had not even gotten started. And the effects of Lucifer being set free were not just limited to the people that Dean and Sam saw die. In "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Free To Be You and Me", they hear fragmented news reports of global disasters. Sam refers to some of them in the "The French Mistake" (although in that alternate universe they never took place): "The whole earthquake spike. You know, the 9.2 in Rome? I mean, the 8.5 outside Boston? The whole east/west tsunami chain?" People were already dying. Who knows how many, or how long it would be before the total would match or even exceed the number that would die in the battle between Michael and Lucifer? Because Lucifer wasn't going to stop. And then they found out in "Point of No Return" that God was not going to do anything about it. Also, remember, until Dean shamed Gabriel into helping them, so that they learned how to use the Rings, they had no way to trap Lucifer. Before then there would have been no point to Sam saying yes to Lucifer; it would just have led inevitably to the final battle. As far as Dean knew in "99 Problems", there were no other options besides him accepting Michael in order to stop Lucifer, and at least save some people. Personally, I've always thought it was seeing what was happening to the souls of the people in "99 Problems" that tipped the balance for Dean. Because what he saw was that people were not just going to die, they were going to end up being damned to Hell. It was too much for him to bear, and he had to try to do something. Maybe he should have just kept looking for another way out, even though it did seem hopeless, but I think if I had been in his shoes at that point, I would have done the same thing.

As far as the ending is concerned, there are a couple quotes that I have been turning over in my mind. (I don't know if discussion of this type is considered a spoiler, but I will spoiler tag it just in case there are those who don't even want any hints.)

Yes, I agree. And in regard to Castiel, as far as I can tell, the show's writers seem to have no desire to write about his journey as a character anymore; their sole motivation when writing him appears to be doing things with him that will satisfy his online fans. An occasional instance of fanservice, as some one-off thing, is not necessarily the ruination of a character, but not if fanservice is all there is that is left of the character. As far as I can tell, there was no point whatsoever to the conflict between Dean and Castiel this time -- except to fulfill the fanfiction trope of having woobie Castiel be treated unfairly after making a mistake, so that Dean can later tearfully apologize. During those scenes in Purgatory, I could hardly pay attention to what was being said, due to the big neon sign flashing "FANSERVICE" which kept appearing on my screen. At least all the drama between them seems to be over. (And with Jack returning, Castiel's entire attention is going to be on his nougat baby, and he is not going to care either way about Dean. If so, this episode could be the last one to focus on Dean and Castiel's relationship -- and how sad is that, to think of this as the final word on that subject?) Anyway, personally I would like to just forget it even happened, especially considering how pointless it all turned out to be.

Yes, I agree about Chuck's future being bs. Also, this makes no sense to me -- if Chuck is God and the one who supposedly creates what happens, why was he suddenly insisting that this particular future was "the TRUTH!" which cannot be altered once you start down that path, and not just something he would choose to write? (Is there an even more omniscient and omnipotent God who is in charge of the REAL future?) Why would this be the only particular future that would be set in stone? And if it could be altered, then why would hearing about it be a reason to give up hope, any more than seeing any of the other futures would be? And boy, are you right about what would have happened if it were the other way around, and Dean was the one who gave up hope and so refused to smash the orb. We would never have heard the end of it from Sam and Castiel -- there would have been none of this, "Well, if you believe that, it's good enough for me!"

Actually, Castiel was the one who threw it to Sam. As for why Castiel -- the only person who could NOT use it -- was the one who was carrying it, rather than Dean, who could use it, who knows? Maybe it's because Berens was sucking up to a certain group of fans who like seeing Castiel as being all dominant and in charge, and Dean as being weak and ineffectual, so Castiel apparently could not even trust Dean to handle the orb on his own. Or maybe it's because Castiel is actually the stupid one.

LOL! I love this! But as Chuck said, go easy on us -- it took a lot to beat it out of us! The writing for the episode was really bad, but especially for the parts that were supposedly about Dean and Castiel's Thrilling New Adventures in Purgatory. Castiel summing up for Dean how he managed to escape from Eve and the Leviathans in as few words as possible, just so the two of them could get back to talking about their feelings, was unintentionally hilarious. That's the way I felt about Dean's prayer scene. So his brother is in grave danger, he is surrounded by the monsters of Purgatory, and he has only minutes to escape back through the rift -- and Dean just pauses for a while to sink to his knees and choke out a long, tearful apology to Castiel? Seriously? Not the Dean Winchester I know. It's like they were going to Purgatory but ended up instead in Bizarro World.

Yes, I feel the same. It really is a shame. Every change that Dabb has made to the show has been for the worse. He has brought nothing good to it. I was never a shipper, but I used to love the friendship between Dean and Cas. Here's the way I have decided to view it, just for my own private head-canon. Cas is the character who was Dean's friend. Castiel is the character who came back from the Empty, and he is an entirely different person. He looks and sounds like Cas, but it isn't him. Here is an example of a scene with Cas, who was Dean's friend: Supernatural - The Things We Left Behind (Sneak Peek) The contrast between the "Cas" in this scene, and the "Castiel" in the episode last night, is why I don't think of them as the same person. Whatever it was that Jack brought back from the Empty is somebody else.