S14.E19: Jack in the Box

[TexasGal]

Quote

Sam, Dean and Castiel investigate a string of suspicious deaths that have a biblical element to them.

Airdate 2019.04.18.

[Casseiopeia]

Some of the responses are pretty funny...no spoilers.

[gonzosgirrl]

1 hour ago, Casseiopeia said:

Some of the responses are pretty funny...no spoilers.

Surely to Chuck he is not truly that simplistic and on the nose? There has to be some kind of twist/surprise, right? RIGHT?

Yeah, right.

[PAForrest]

6 minutes ago, gonzosgirrl said:

Surely to Chuck he is not truly that simplistic and on the nose? There has to be some kind of twist/surprise, right? RIGHT?

Yeah, right.

It's cute that you think that. LOL!

[Lemuria]

 What amazes me is the number of people responding to that post – – despite the fact that the title of the episode has been known for weeks – – who never put it together! No wonder Dabb gets away with what he does. 

Edited April 18, 2019 by Lemuria

[Casseiopeia]

Wasn't there an earlier episode that had a curse box that looked like a Jack in the Box toy?

[AwesomO4000]

26 minutes ago, Casseiopeia said:

Wasn't there an earlier episode that had a curse box that looked like a Jack in the Box toy?

Yes, but it was a Chekov's toy box, because Sam wanted to open it - twice if I remember correctly (why is an interesting question, because curiosity killed the cat and all that, and it was surely most likely an evil toy box), but he never got to do so. Dean talked him out of it - twice.

[ahrtee]

26 minutes ago, AwesomO4000 said:

Yes, but it was a Chekov's toy box, because Sam wanted to open it - twice if I remember correctly (why is an interesting question, because curiosity killed the cat and all that, and it was surely most likely an evil toy box), but he never got to do so. Dean talked him out of it - twice.

Granted, I haven't been paying that much attention, but wasn't that the teddy bear (in Lebanon) that Sam kept trying to pull the string on?  

Wasn't the curse box the one that had the demon Nick wanted to kill, and kidnapped Mary to find it?  IIRC, he had to drill it out to get the demon out.  Or am I confusing several eps?  (Entirely possible for this year...)

[gonzosgirrl]

I'm debating waiting to watch this episode together with the finale after it airs next week.  I feel like it would be better for my blood pressure,  but I'm not sure I can stay away from the forum for a week.

[Jediknight]

Yeah, there's no way Jack killed Mary.  Something else is at play, and Duma and Heaven are involved.  Sam and Dean screwing up by locking Jack in the box makes it obvious that Jack is innocent.  He says Mary kept talking about him having no soul, she wasn't saying that.  Somebody was talking to Jack.

Jack crying out for Sam and Dean was heartbreaking.

[ILoveReading]

2 minutes ago, Jediknight said:

Yeah, there's no way Jack killed Mary.  Something else is at play, and Duma and Heaven are involved.  Sam and Dean screwing up by locking Jack in the box makes it obvious that Jack is innocent.  He says Mary kept talking about him having no soul, she wasn't saying that.  Somebody was talking to Jack.

Jack crying out for Sam and Dean was heartbreaking.

That would require the writers putting effort into this season and thinking things through.  They are too literall and about as subtle as a sledge hammer

[trudysmom]

 That's an hour of my life I'll never get back.  Dean crying in the woods was only good thing about it.  

[BabySpinach]

The Dean hate train is blasting full steam ahead! Berens laid it up and Bucklemming slam-dunked it!

To all the Tumblrites salivating over sweet, precious Jack and calling Dean a terrible father: DEAN IS NOT JACK'S FATHER. HE NEVER OWED SHIT TO THE ANTICHRIST. HE NEVER ASKED TO BABYSIT AN OVER-POWERED TODDLER.

JUST SHOOT HIM, DEAN. PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY.

[Myrelle]

I thought The Ackting was Amazing in this one, but, as usual, the writing sucked out loud.

I thought the episode was okay,  until the Nougatbabysue broke out of the Malak box.

MarySue/MartyStu writing is always, always such a turn-off to me.

[Lastcall]

So did Sam and Dean advertise the wake in the paper or something “Come on down to the super secret bunker outside Lebanon. No I.D’s necessary. Honor system in place. No monsters please.” Well at least all you have to do is throw a hatchet in their heads now. Way easier than the old days.

[DeeDee79]

5 minutes ago, BabySpinach said:

The Dean hate train is blasting full steam ahead! Berens laid it up and Bucklemming slam-dunked it!

To all the Tumblrites salivating over sweet, precious Jack and calling Dean a terrible father: DEAN IS NOT JACK'S FATHER. HE NEVER OWED SHIT TO THE ANTICHRIST. HE NEVER ASKED TO BABYSIT AN OVER-POWERED TODDLER.

JUST SHOOT HIM, DEAN. PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY.

From all of the fawning that Sam and Cas gave Jack and the fact that Lucifer is his actual father seeing fandom blame Dean for poor parenthood is rich but sadly predictable at this point. Ugh, my blood pressure...

[Myrelle]

5 minutes ago, BabySpinach said:

The Dean hate train is blasting full steam ahead! Berens laid it up and Bucklemming slam-dunked it!

To all the Tumblrites salivating over sweet, precious Jack and calling Dean a terrible father: DEAN IS NOT JACK'S FATHER. HE NEVER OWED SHIT TO THE ANTICHRIST. HE NEVER ASKED TO BABYSIT AN OVER-POWERED TODDLER.

JUST SHOOT HIM, DEAN. PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY.

It was all so predictable, tbh.

[DeeDee79]

3 minutes ago, Myrelle said:

I thought The Ackting was Amazing in this one, but, as usual, the writing sucked out loud.

Accurate summation of this season as a whole.

[Wateroflife]

3 minutes ago, Myrelle said:

I thought The Ackting was Amazing in this one, but, as usual, the writing sucked out loud.

I thought the episode was okay,  until the Nougatbabysue broke out of the Malak box.

MarySue/MartyStu writing is always, always such a turn-off to me.

How did he break out of the supposedly invincible box??? (Sorry I gave up after Lebanon, but I'm curious how the writers explain this one) Are they really playing that Jack had near-god equivalent powers??

[Myrelle]

Just now, Wateroflife said:

How did he break out of the supposedly invincible box??? (Sorry I gave up after Lebanon, but I'm curious how the writers explain this one) Are they really playing that Jack had near-god equivalent powers??

Yes.

[Pondlass1]

8 minutes ago, Lastcall said:

So did Sam and Dean advertise the wake in the paper or something “Come on down to the super secret bunker outside Lebanon. No I.D’s necessary. Honor system in place. No monsters please.” Well at least all you have to do is throw a hatchet in their heads now. Way easier than the old days.

Wasn’t that ridiculous 🙄 

I was hoping Jack would spend season 15 locked inside the box with Nick. No such luck!

[BabySpinach]

How dare these hacks frame the original leads (Dean, especially) as foolish, misguided antagonists who need to be taught a lesson by a Super Speshul 1D Toddler? HOW. DARE. THEY. 

[AwesomO4000]

2 hours ago, ahrtee said:

Granted, I haven't been paying that much attention, but wasn't that the teddy bear (in Lebanon) that Sam kept trying to pull the string on?  

Wasn't the curse box the one that had the demon Nick wanted to kill, and kidnapped Mary to find it?  IIRC, he had to drill it out to get the demon out.  Or am I confusing several eps?  (Entirely possible for this year...)

Oh, you're right. It was the Teddy bear that Sam wanted to pull the string on. I actually forgot about the box with the demon. The box that I remembered - and was probably confusing the Teddy bear with (since it was the same episode) - was the box that had John Wayne Gacy's hand in it, but the ghost opened that box himself... sort of like Jack.

I'm awful, 'cause I still want to know what that Teddy bear would've done... ; )

[Pondlass1]

Wow, they’re  out for Dean’s blood on Twitter. 🤣🤣🤣

[Lastcall]

1 minute ago, Pondlass1 said:

Wasn’t that ridiculous 🙄 

I was hoping Jack would spend season 15 locked inside the box with Nick. No such luck!

The entire episode was so paint by the numbers that I pretty much expected Jack to be out of the box two minutes after being put in. As usual, the speculations for why Dean was crying in the woods were way better than the reality. All the duo staples were in full effect Lucifer, flagrant disregard for canon and all the incomprehensible nonsense that goes along with it. Another thoroughly wasted episode.

[Castiels Cat]

47 minutes ago, Jediknight said:

Yeah, there's no way Jack killed Mary.  Something else is at play, and Duma and Heaven are involved.  Sam and Dean screwing up by locking Jack in the box makes it obvious that Jack is innocent.  He says Mary kept talking about him having no soul, she wasn't saying that.  Somebody was talking to Jack.

Jack crying out for Sam and Dean was heartbreaking.

There was a buzzing sound which signals angel to angel communication however Dumah seemed clu about what Jack was up to and Jack himself would know if another angel had used their power. I suspect it would take haven's combined power to do that kind of blast if they could do it with their recuxed numbers.

I have no doubt that there was a voice in his head agitating him and speaking to him along with Mary I so believe he lost control. He has been losing control since he absorbed Michael's grace starting with killing the teenaged girl.

[Ninamags]

Ugh, that’s pathetic, Dean. She doesn’t deserve your tears! 🙄

Well, I did feel a sense of dread and foreboding throughout the episode. 

He was in the box for like 5 fucking minutes! Damn that Nickefer!

Another interesting woman/whatever dead and gone. 

[Wateroflife]

20 minutes ago, Pondlass1 said:

Wow, they’re  out for Dean’s blood on Twitter. 🤣🤣🤣

None of the response options are quite right for the combination of disgust and head-shaking complete lack of surprise this post inspires in me. I just do not grok the SPN fandom that lives on Twitter.

I am truly impressed by the breadth of the SPN fandom. Not the number. But the number of little cliques that manage to hold such contradictory opinions about the same show...

[OrigamiNightmare]

2 minutes ago, Wateroflife said:

None of the response options are quite right for the combination of disgust and head-shaking complete lack of surprise this post inspires in me. I just do not grok the SPN fandom that lives on Twitter.

I am truly impressed by the breadth of the SPN fandom. Not the number. But the number of little cliques that manage to hold such contradictory opinions about the same show...

It's kind of fascinating, in it's own way.

[Samwise979]

Well I for one liked it. 

Who knows if the box would have held Michael either.  It's not like they tested it. 

Jack calling out for Sam and Dean did pull at my heart strings but more so because I could see how it was affecting Sam and Dean as opposed to feeling bad for Jack.

[Wateroflife]

8 minutes ago, OrigamiNightmare said:

It's kind of fascinating, in it's own way.

Right?? It really says something about a show that it can bring enjoyment to so many different people in different ways.

[AwesomO4000]

31 minutes ago, Wateroflife said:

How did he break out of the supposedly invincible box??? (Sorry I gave up after Lebanon, but I'm curious how the writers explain this one) Are they really playing that Jack had near-god equivalent powers??

30 minutes ago, Myrelle said:

Yes.

13 minutes ago, Lastcall said:

All the duo staples were in full effect Lucifer, flagrant disregard for canon and all the incomprehensible nonsense that goes along with it.

Now granted, I could be wrong and it's more like they aren't really caring about canon, but if Jack as a nephilim of an archangel is anything power-wise similar to Jesse, then his getting out of the box isn't really messing with canon too much, because according to Castiel, Jesse could have wiped out all of heaven with just a thought.

I'm guessing that if Jack did have some soul left, that would be enough to make him different enough that the box couldn't hold him like it would a straight-up archangel.

32 minutes ago, BabySpinach said:

How dare these hacks frame the original leads (Dean, especially) as foolish, misguided antagonists who need to be taught a lesson by a Super Speshul 1D Toddler? HOW. DARE. THEY. 

I'm not yet convinced that's what's going to happen. It may have just been me, but I was more seeing the kid from the Twilight Zone who sent people to the cornfield. I mean yes, Sam and Dean technically betrayed Jack's trust, but he killed their mother... and showed little remorse about it. And Jack was convinced rather quickly by his Hallucifer.

I have a feeling that this whole thing is going to come to roost in terms of what Dean was saying at the end of the episode. They - and especially Dean - knew it was a long-shot. It's likely going to turn out that Dean was right and they should have ended Jack to begin with and based on the previews...

Spoiler

I'm wondering if Jack will eventually come to the same conclusion.

[DeeDee79]

44 minutes ago, Pondlass1 said:

Wow, they’re  out for Dean’s blood on Twitter. 🤣🤣🤣

One small ( miniscule ) comfort is that the fans on Tumblr are truly disgusted on Dean's behalf. Then again I follow a lot of Dean friendly blogs ( hi @BabySpinach! ) so my data may be skewed.

[SueB]

1 hour ago, BabySpinach said:

The Dean hate train is blasting full steam ahead! Berens laid it up and Bucklemming slam-dunked it!

48 minutes ago, Pondlass1 said:

Wow, they’re  out for Dean’s blood on Twitter. 🤣🤣🤣

Wow.  I'm going to have to go thank my timelines for being decent people.  I generally don't see hate tonight (not that I doubt it exist). 

[Wynne88]

2 minutes ago, AwesomO4000 said:

I mean yes, Sam and Dean technically betrayed Jack's trust, but he killed their mother... and showed little remorse about it.

I think his lack of sincerity and understanding is what enabled Sam and Dean to go through with locking him up.  I suspect it would have been a lot harder if he had begged for their forgiveness and demonstrated that he truly understood what a terrible thing he had done.

I hated the wake, with all the relics of Saint Mary.  But that's just me.  

They surprised me twice.  Once with Castiel taking such quick action to eliminate Duma, and secondly with it being Sam that convinced Jack to climb into the box.  So there's that.

[BabySpinach]

To Dabb and all the writers making camp up Jack's ass.

[S Cook Productions]

13 minutes ago, Wynne88 said:

I think his lack of sincerity and understanding is what enabled Sam and Dean to go through with locking him up.  I suspect it would have been a lot harder if he had begged for their forgiveness and demonstrated that he truly understood what a terrible thing he had done.

I hated the wake, with all the relics of Saint Mary.  But that's just me.  

They surprised me twice.  Once with Castiel taking such quick action to eliminate Duma, and secondly with it being Sam that convinced Jack to climb into the box.  So there's that.

I agree. I didn’t see Cas killing Duma coming. Now who’s running heaven?? The first half of this ep was a little boring but then it got better IMO. Usually the penultimate eps are better than this, though. 

[Aeryn13]

This is not going to turn out that Dean was right. They are in full throttle of poor sweet Nougat Baby with Sam and Cas in his corner ultimately. This episode was basically a precursor to that.  

[ahrtee]

Wow, they're really mining the bottom of the barrel for this.  

First, they turn Jack into Cas-season-6, was it?  When he decided to become a "better god" by punishing the false religious leaders?  No wonder he's sympathetic towards Jack now.  Been there, done that.

Then they turn Dean into John season 1, being completely revenge-driven against the thing that killed Mary, with no sympathy or feeling for the kid he was crying over just a few eps ago.  (Yes, they're couching it as trying to save the world, but the "show," with Dean cold and furious and Sam sympathetic, says something different.) 

Further, Dean ignores Cas and bullies Sam into agreeing with him (thereby negating "leader Sam" who was willing to stand up for himself, because he obviously didn't think it was right to lock Jack away.)   And Jack turns bad within 10 minutes of being locked up, because, oh yeah, Nickifer hallucinations (like season 6 Sam) are driving him crazy.  Seriously, didn't they think to give him a cellphone and some games to keep him busy for a while?  (They could have opened the box to give him more batteries as needed, at least as long as he was in control of himself.)  Or at least a pillow and blanket?  

So what part of this mess is in any way new and/or different?  Well, it's more overtly anti-Dean than anything before (he was more sympathetic as Demon!Dean, TBH).  

[DeeDee79]

3 minutes ago, ahrtee said:

So what part of this mess is in any way new and/or different?  Well, it's more overtly anti-Dean than anything before

Another excellent summation for this season! Add seasons 12-13 to that list.

[SueB]

FIrst thoughts:

THAT WAS SO UNCOMFORTABLE! 

Talk about a divisive episode!  Since I love them all, I'm having a hard time condemning anyone for their actions.  But it's just so hard to see them all be right (to some extent) and yet all be so unhappy with what is happening!  I take some comfort in the knowledge that we are SUPPOSED to be unhappy/uncomfortable/unsettled.  There is not a simple, good solution if you like all the characters.  Now if you hate X or Y, then it's easier to say a particular outcome should happen.  But I think they did a good job of making me feel conflicted.  

Having said all this...

I can totally see WHY they put him in the box.  I can totally see WHY it was damaging to their own mental well-being to do so.   

Dean - his speech at the wake was perfect -- until you realized that he's just going through the motions.  How is he even breathing at this point?????  And the scene in the woods was good but insufficiently cathartic.  He's still so ANGRY.  And rightly so.  I'm not remotely judging him for his anger.  That anger is earned!  But I feel like he's hanging on by a thread.  It feels like at each step he's trying to do the right thing but in the meantime there's this defeaning howl going on inside him.  It feels like everything he's saying is carefully controlled because if he opened his mouth uninhibited, he'd never stop screaming.  I'm just in agony for this guy. And then there was the confrontation w/ Jack.  "Accident".  I nearly stopped breathing when Dean repeated the word.  And the look on his face as he 'smiled' while Jack was going into the box?  While Dean was clearly terrified of Jack letting loose, the look on his face was f*cking SCARY.  Jensen Ackles is so very gifted. Dean is NOT okay.  Not remotely.  I don't know how to GET him okay.  And I think Sam knows it. I think Sam wasn't sure at the beginning but he sees it now.

Sam- it hurt just to watch him.  He was so openly grieving and 'not okay.' Where Jensen brought the pain via anger, Jared brought the pain via sorrow. I do think Sam is coping better about Mary but I felt like Sam was damaging his own soul as he talked Jack into the box.  This is like torture porn but it's with feels instead of saws.  I was glad he voiced he didn't know if he could live with Jack in the box.  So on the one hand, I think he too is at a loss on what to do and could rationalize what they did, on the other hand, I think his instinct that this was fundamentally not a long-term viable solution is spot on.

Cas - Bless him for protecting Mary & John's heaven.  It seems like every freakin' time an angel gets put in charge, their petty power trip goes to their head.  In this case it's Duma who started to settle grievances. But Cas is just so determined to save Jack.  And when everyone else is looking at him like he (Cas) has lost his mind, Cas just won't give up.  I admire that.  I admire that as much as he loves the brothers, he called them out on manipulatiing Jack.  Because that's the part that blows -- that Jack went into the box trusting Sam and Dean were telling him the truth.  Again, I don't blame them for lyiing.  Mary didn't lie.  Mary was atomized.  But I can simultaneously accept why the boys had to lie and yet whole heartily agree that manipulating Jack was inherently a bad thing.  

Jack - Jack is a f*cking mess.  Alex does a great job of showing him 'fake' sincerity and yet also be sincere.  Duma knew JUST how to manipulate him.  And Jack was so eager to please the Winchesters.  That wasn't false.  He wanted them to make it all better and go back to when he felt like family.  And yet as Jack talked to them about "the accident", it range so HOLLOW.  I honestly didn't know who scared me more tonight - Jack or Dean.  Obviously Jack has all the power, but that's not the part that scared me.  What scared me was the carefully controlled mask that they were wearing and how well the actors showed us the 'mask' versus a ton of other thoughts/feelings under the mask.  Jack is also not okay.  And yet it's a completely different 'not okay' than Dean's 'not okay'. 

Yes, I find myself highly conflicted. 

Simpler thoughts:
- Did Jack really make angels out of people?  Is that going to last?  
- Is Naomi really in a cell? 
- With Duma dead, who is #292304980987413 on the list to be "in charge of Heaven" now??? 

I watched this episode twice already. I want next week to come right away so I don't have to sit with this 'not okay' place that TFW is in right now. 
 

Edited April 19, 2019 by SueB

[ILoveReading]

5 minutes ago, SueB said:

Dean - his speech at the wake was perfect -- until you realized that he's just going through the motions.  How is he even breathing at this point?????  And the scene in the woods was good but insufficiently cathartic.  He's still so ANGRY.  And rightly so.  I'm not remotely judging him for his anger.  That anger is earned!  But I feel like he's hanging on by a thread.  It feels like at each step he's trying to do the right thing but in the meantime there's this defeaning howl going on inside him.  It feels like everything he's saying is carefully controlled because if he opened his mouth uninhibited, he'd never stop screaming.  I'm just in agony for this guy. And then there was the confrontation w/ Jack.  "Accident".  I nearly stopped breathing when Dean repeated the word.  And the look on his face as he 'smiled' while Jack was going into the box?  While Dean was clearly terrified of Jack letting loose, the look on his face was f*cking SCARY.  Jensen Ackles is so very gifted. Dean is NOT okay.  Not remotely.  I don't know how to GET him okay.  And I think Sam knows it. I think Sam wasn't sure at the beginning but he sees it now.

The show spent the hour judging him or it would have had Sam and Cas backing him or siding with him.

Instead it manipulated the writing so that Dean was once again the bully who made Sam bend to his well.

While I would love to see Dean snap (and I mean really snap) I doubt the show will actually go there.  Instead it will probably be another very special lesson on how Dean was wrong in how he treated Jack, while focusing on Sam's guilt. 

[tessathereaper]

1 minute ago, ILoveReading said:

The show spent the hour judging him or it would have had Sam and Cas backing him or siding with him.

Instead it manipulated the writing so that Dean was once again the bully who made Sam bend to his well.

While I would love to see Dean snap (and I mean really snap) I doubt the show will actually go there.  Instead it will probably be another very special lesson on how Dean was wrong in how he treated Jack, while focusing on Sam's guilt. 

Sam is a grown man who made his own decision.  He wasn't bullied into anything.  I know the writers like to frame it that way.  But Sam made his choice and it's absolutely stupid to not make him responsible FOR his choice.  No one held a gun to Sam's head.  Sam did this of his own free will.  

[ILoveReading]

Just now, tessathereaper said:

Sam is a grown man who made his own decision.  He wasn't bullied into anything.  I know the writers like to frame it that way.  But Sam made his choice and it's absolutely stupid to not make him responsible FOR his choice.  No one held a gun to Sam's head.  Sam did this of his own free will.  

I agree, but I know how this will end.

[ZennyKenny]

- started off with my eyes doing somersaults at all the Mary stuff. I know how important she is to the boys, but that doesn't meant she was important to me that I wanted to spend all this extra time on her even after the end of last episode.

- then my eyes left their sockets and rolled into orbit when I saw hallucifer again. Can we not? Can we NOT do that? Can we please just go to school and take a class and earn a degree and become a guru in the fine art of NOT doing that?

- But then DAMN... Jenson reminds me why I watch this show. That scene in the woods... Honestly both Jensen and Jared's acting outweighs any of the other elements that makes me want to stop watching.

- I don't know why, but to me Jack actually comes off as much more natural being soulless. I kinda prefer him that way.

- Was I trippin' or did anyone else hear a snap right when Castiel stabbed Duma?

- OF COURSE the box that's supposed to hold literally anything can't hold back Jack. I knew that wasn't going to last long.

- But I was surprisingly uncomfortable with how the boys manipulated Jack into getting into the box, and how Jack became increasingly scared as he lay there and called out for Sam & Dean.

- But I did get a kick out of how the box got twice as wide to fit hallucifer in it with Jack. 

EDIT: Oh yeah and the wraith thing was like "Baby's First Fan Fiction" level of cringey.

Edited April 19, 2019 by ZennyKenny

[Bergamot]

1 hour ago, BabySpinach said:

How dare these hacks frame the original leads (Dean, especially) as foolish, misguided antagonists who need to be taught a lesson by a Super Speshul 1D Toddler? HOW. DARE. THEY. 

Actually I thought it was Castiel that looked foolish and misguided. I thought he looked especially stupid when he seemed to think that what Dumah was up to meant that Jack bore no responsibility for the lives he was destroying. Oh, but people were being mean to Jack and manipulating him and so nothing was his fault! Tell that to the loved ones of the people Jack killed, why don't you?

(Plus I am really tired of Castiel's bitchy, huffy self-righteousness. I'm sorry, but I have had enough of his pompous indignation and I wish he would just go away.)

I think that Jack has become a more interesting character the last couple of episodes, but the fact is that he has never had a moral center or the ability to tell right from wrong without being constantly coached as to what his next move should be. And now that he is all powerful, and willing to listen to whoever flatters him and tells him what he wants to hear, the situation calls for something more than Castiel's "helping" of Jack.

Dean's plan was actually not a bad one; I guess it was inevitable that the box wouldn't hold Jack but it was worth a try. Dean is obviously really messed up by Mary's death, but he wasn't wrong that Jack needed to be stopped

And you know, although it remains unsaid, that Dean wishes he had gone ahead with his plan to trap Michael in the box, in order to prevent any of this from happening. I would like so much for him to remind Castiel and Sam, when their inevitable criticism and second-guessing starts up, that the fate he had planned for Jack was nothing that he was not first willing to do to himself in order to save the world.

[ahrtee]

Isn't it sad that what most of the people here liked (and think makes the episode worth watching) was *5 seconds* of Jensen crying?  Imagine if they gave him a whole minute to himself?

[ZennyKenny]

2 hours ago, Wateroflife said:

How did he break out of the supposedly invincible box??? (Sorry I gave up after Lebanon, but I'm curious how the writers explain this one) Are they really playing that Jack had near-god equivalent powers??

And you know they're aware of it, too, because they made a point of Duma specifying that Jack's not God. 

[AwesomO4000]

1 hour ago, Aeryn13 said:

This is not going to turn out that Dean was right. They are in full throttle of poor sweet Nougat Baby with Sam and Cas in his corner ultimately. This episode was basically a precursor to that.  

Dean's already been shown to be mostly right when Jack went off the deep end and was so easily manipulated. How many people would he have killed after Mary? Would he really think that killing people and "cleansing" would be what Sam and Dean wanted? If so, he was already likely damaged beyond help.

And if they were trying to show me a poor, sweet, Nougat Baby, someone missed the mark, because I found Jack to be completely creepy and full on Castiel under the influence of all of the souls "I'm making the world better by killing people" crazy...*** not very nougaty at all.

I agree with @Samwise979. I felt more sorry for Sam and Dean having to listen to Jack in the box than I did Jack. Jack had his own "company"... company that was convincing him he would be justified in doing bad things.

And if Sam was soully in "Jack's corner" for me this would just be another screwing over of Sam with faint "praise" thing, because that would mean that Sam went along with Dean even though he thought that he should stand up for Jack, but apparently didn't stand up for Jack. So how would that be a good thing for Sam?

Castiel is a different story. As I said in another thread, I think he has a soft spot for soulless beings, and also for Jack specifically. (and yeah good point on that @ahrtee. Castiel can see himself in Jack, I'm sure.)

*** I was actually writing this before your post came up, ahrtee. Jinx! ...or great minds think alike?

55 minutes ago, ahrtee said:

Further, Dean ignores Cas and bullies Sam into agreeing with him (thereby negating "leader Sam" who was willing to stand up for himself, because he obviously didn't think it was right to lock Jack away.) 

If true, and Sam does say something to this effect next episode, I will sadly not be surprised. I've been questioning the purpose behind the "leader Sam" arc all season and have been expecting it all to be negated since episode 1. And if it does happen that way - with Sam saying "I didn't want to do it and you made me!"*** - it will do nothing but damage Sam's character by making him look both like a hypocrite and weak. Also not only completely negating his leadership arc, but showing his reasons for trying to take on a leadership role were selfish and from a place of not understanding what a leader actually has to do - which would be stupid, since Sam certainly does understand these things.

*** Basically damaging Sam's character by making him moral exposition guy, but instead making him look like a jerk.

39 minutes ago, ILoveReading said:

The show spent the hour judging him or it would have had Sam and Cas backing him or siding with him.

Well, then Sam would've actually had learned something about being a leader - can't have that now could we?

As for judging Dean - I'm still not sure. At no time did I see the show actually showing that Dean was wrong here. Jack killed Mary... he was killing other people. He wasn't sorry about it, and he is dangerous and they had no other way to contain him that we saw. That Sam didn't really want to put Jack in the box was just Sam not facing what had to be done until Dean explained it was the only way.

I saw Dean doing the difficult thing. That he was angry that Jack killed Mary while doing it? In my opinion, Dean had every right to be.

Edited April 19, 2019 by AwesomO4000

[ILoveReading]

I don't recognized this Mary, Dean described.

They got to know her?  When?

Sam how are you doing.

And the "other one"

Screw you Bobby.  You're not any better than the old one.