(no subject)

[frelling_tralk]

Supernatural 717.

I was very disappointed quite honestly because I had been really excited for some hardcore h/c and lots of Dean angst over having Sam committed, instead it's mostly sleep deprivation and Lucifer constantly bugging Sam, but it's okay now because Castiel has taken it from him and he's all better...I wanted Dean having to comfort actual crazy Sam or something Idk. The brotherly talk-down in 702 was soooo good, and I was hoping for more of those kinds of scenes, and instead the brother moments didn't really move me at all. And after all of the time this season spend on how depressed Dean is I'd been half-expecting him to reach his breaking-point when Sam hit his, and instead the writers and Jensen seemed to opt for quite a stoic Dean almost? Which is a valid choice too I guess, but compared to say Jensen's amazingly intense performance to Sam's dead body in AHBL, I wasn't feeling even close to the same emotion from this episode

I suppose really my gripe is that I kept waiting for the episode to be about Sam and Dean and it never was. I've given up on expecting them to hug (unless it's a coming back from the dead moment!), but some kind of physical comfort would have been nice to see. In season 1 I loved how hands-on Dean was when Sam was experiencing the physical pain of the visions actually, so could we not have had one freaking hug in the moment when Castiel brings Sam back to himself and saves him :pouts: That should have been one of the epic brotherly moments, but instead the focus of the scene immediately shifts to Cas experiencing the hallucincations now, and so there was no brotherly moment at all. MAJOR LETDOWN for a show that's supposed to be build around the brotherly bond and moments like those

My favourite part of the episode was actually when Castiel starts killing demons and gets his memory back cause that was just beautifully done! Really the Cas and Dean moments were the most emotionally effective for me which would ordinarily be fine in an episode about Castiel's return, but I was expecting so much more for Dean's worry over Sam's mental breakdown that it just makes me wish that Sam's breakdown and Cas's return could have both had their own episodes. It also felt really rushed at the end there where Cas is suddenly in the hospital and we don't get a parting scene for him with Sam and Dean. Those are the sort of emotionally effective scenes that the fans appreciate, so it felt like both Sam and Cas got a bit short-changed in this one IMO. It would have added a lot more pathos if we had seen Sam and Dean looking in on Cas and asking if there's really nothing else that can be done, instead of just throwing that in there as some quick exposition in the last scene

Mostly I'm annoyed because there was potential there for two really epic episodes. One to deal with Sam's breakdown, and one with both Sam and Dean being confronted by Castiel's return. Instead it feels like a lot of possibilities were thrown away. Yet it's otherwise okay to have all kinds of filler like the Becky wedding episode, but when it comes to the important character moments, that's when they have to cram it all in to as short a timespace as possible???

Comments

[silverusagi]

I'm weirded out by the fact that Sam is fixed now. I mean, he's fixed fixed, right? IDK, we've been dealing with this for two seasons, and now it's just handed off to another character. Did Cas put the wall back up, or just take the memories from Sam?

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I'm confused because the writers kept emphasising that the wall breaking would never be easily fixed and those long-term consequences would stay with Sam, and instead after 702 they barely spend any time on it (a 5 second moment of Sam squeezing his hand in Death's Door does not count as spending time on it :grumbles: ) and then, when it finally does come back up again, it's instantly fixed by Castiel? I was impressed for a brief moment there when Castiel said that there wasn't an easy way of healing Sam, but then of course immediately after that...

And it seemed like Cas just took the Lucifer hallunation, but really that doesn't make any sense either because wasn't Sam's problem supposed to be all of the memories from hell? But then Lucifer didn't seem menacing as much as doing his best to be really annoying for Sam , so it was hard to take from it what torturous memories were being battled exactly. Well the maggots in the food I guess eh

[silverusagi]

Also, there's the fact that it took DEATH to put the wall up, and now Cas can fix Sam.

And if Cas has the memories, well, he's like what, 300,000 million years old? What's 100 years in Hell? And don't tell me angels haven't done or had done to them horrible things in the wars they've fought. Like, I bet Cas already has some pretty horrible memories of his own (Heaven's persuasion?) And if it's just Lucifer, why does he look so horrified? He wasn't horrified of Lucifer in 5.10 or 5.22. And he's an angel, surely he shouldn't be experiencing memories like a human would? And even if he IS hallucinating, why exactly does he need to stay in the hospital? IDK.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

It didn't really make sense because Sam was more or less functioning except for a lack of sleep (he could still attempt to help when he saw the other patient in trouble), so why would Cas be almost catatonic at taking whatever he took from Sam. Castiel doesn't even need sleep? And yeah nor should seeing Lucifer have hit him nearly as hard as it hit Sam when we've never seen Castiel have that reaction to him before. It would have been better if, instead of him seeing Lucifer, we were left to imagine Castiel seeing his own personal horrors

[silverusagi]

instead of him seeing Lucifer, we were left to imagine Castiel seeing his own personal horrors

Yeah, like all the horrible things he's done, instead of inhereting all the things Sam had done to him. I guess 'redemption' is just for breaking Sam's wall, not opening Purgatory, etc.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Well to repeat what I saw below, originally it was supposed to be about the wall protecting Sam from memories of hell and don't scratch it no matter what. And it feels like they then simplified it way too much by ultimately making it about a chatty guy who is disturbing Sam's sleep, and it can be solved by transferring said guy to someone else's head instead. It was never clarified if Sam had lost the memories of hell or not, the only thing we got to see was Castiel looking so horrified at Lucifer speaking to him now as if Lucifer was the sole problem. So Sam's supposedly horrific time in hell mostly consisted of Lucifer bugging him all the time by singing and so on, this is what everyone is so afraid of???

7.17 thoughts from around LJ

[auroramama]

...could we not have had one freaking hug in the moment when Castiel brings Sam back to himself and saves him :pouts: That should have been one of the epic brotherly moments...

Absolutely. Let's hope they shot it and the network or studio cut it for some reason. Same for their actually saying goodbye to Castiel. Even if Dean hasn't forgiven him for Sam, Sam understood and offered forgiveness to Castiel last season. There had better be deleted scenes on the DVD.

Re: Sam's degree of fixedness, I think he's still got all the memories but not the vicious piece of malware called Hallucifer. I've been thinking of Hallucifer as entirely Sam-created as a coping mechanism gone malignant, and then perhaps acquiring reality in the same fashion as that belief-generated monster -- I forget the ep.

The other theory I've heard and rather liked is that Sam is not, or not entirely, hallucinating. Instead, he has a vessel-to-archangel connection to the Cage, recently made much stronger (higher bandwidth?) by Sam's speaking to Lucifer about saving Dean. In that case, Castiel wasn't strong enough to break the connection, but was able to transfer it.

In either case, Castiel has reason to look horrified, because whatever the hell Hallucifer is, it's on his case now. If it's software, it's now executing the algorithm "drive your host insane with torment and guilt about their misdeeds" on Castiel instead of Sam. If it's a line to Hell, Lucifer is going to be mightily peeved at Castiel depriving him of his human toy. But perhaps Castiel can defeat it, given time (and help from Meg? We'll see.)

Re: 7.17 thoughts from around LJ

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

SPN never seems to have much to offer in the way of deleted scenes, I get the impression that they're shooting so with so little time that they cut anything they see as unnecessary right at the script stage, rather than filming when the episode will run long. Too bad because it would have been a delightful surprise to get their reactions on the DVD to Cas being sectioned. There was a cut line from Dean to Cas in the trailer in a earlier scene, so an extended scene is a possibility at least. It doesn't feel like the editing allows Dean to have the Thank God my little brother is okay moment with Sam though as focus does so quickly shift to Castiel struggling then

And I have wondered if Lucifer is supposed to be a real presence in some way as certain things don't make a lot of sense otherwise. And really it's odd that it was never clarified whether Sam still has the hell memories or not, it seemed like at the end of it the only real problem was Lucifer driving him crazy and denying him sleep. Which wasn't at all how they set up the purpose of the wall originally with Sam needing it to protect him from memories of being tortured in hell. It's almost like they made it too easy and simplified it by it all coming down to needing to just remove one chatty guy from Sam's head, and he's cured now as Castiel gets him instead

[iron-kat.livejournal.com]

I actually watched this, purely because Castiel was returning. I haven't watched Supernatural in....I honestly can't remember the last episode I watched. I've kept up with enough spoilers to know enough.

All I could think at the end of the episode was how "off" Dean seemed to be to me. How he didn't seem to quite care enough in places. It bugged the hell out of me at the end, when he acts like it's no big deal to leave Castiel there. "We don't have friends." And that led me to look back at the episode, and I would agree that he seemed "blah" about Sam too. Sam was losing it pretty hard, and Dean just....there wasn't enough reaction from him. Toward either Sam or Castiel.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

That ending felt weirdly abrupt to me as well. After spending so much time on Sam with the guest star (which tbh I wasn't all that interested in) it felt like they then wrapped everything up as quickly as possible when Cas goes in to heal Sam. The pacing was so awkward and we get no real emotions from Dean over Sam being saved from what Dean thought was certain death, or from the boys at Castiel then being the one lost in his own mind. It was more like a 3 second er what's going on with Cas moment, and then switch straight to the exposition and Sam apparently being just fine again? I know people say you can't expect too much of kind of fannish h/c and leave that for fanfic, but normally SPN has given us the kind if material which inspires people to write fanfic and build off it (if that makes sense!) when we do get episodes like this, but this episode didn't move me at all in the way I had been expecting

Jensen's performance definitely underwhelmed me, but then it didn't seem like the writing was there either at certain key points to give him the chance to react? Most of fandom that I saw has been expecting him to be just heartbroken at having to section Sam,and yeah I get that it was hard for him, but at the time time I wasn't really feeling it definitely. And I was moved to an an extent by his interaction with Castiel, but then at the end it seemed to all just stop as Dean shrugs it off with what can we do but leave Cas there. And yeah maybe that's true, but still it seemed off to me when Dean is normally a more intense person than that