caffienekitty (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
caffienekitty) wrote2008-10-25 05:35 am
caffienekitty) wrote2008-10-25 05:35 am
Entry tags:
Reaction: Supernatural 4.06 -Reaction, meta and other things
Contains profanity.
Spoiler Timeline
Most confusing spoiler timeline ever.
-Oct 11: Clip directly from 4.06, link labeled as non-spoilery.
[BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEP]
There, I feel better now. To summarize, people's definitions of "Spoiler" vary widely.
Anyways. Dean will either be relaxed enough to goof off this episode, at least at the start, because that had a "right after the titlecard" feel. Relaxed OR so wound up with stress he's gone off his nut a little. Or drunk in the middle of the morning. None of which bode well, because wound up from stress and going off his nut is not good as it leaves Sam without a supportive presence to keep him on the psi-abstinence wagon, drunk in mid-morning has the same result, and relaxed enough to goof off means the shit's about to hit the fan big time. OR Dean's having more nightmares about Hell and not sleeping as a result which means something's about to get revealed along that line. Or since it was hard to tell if those were Ackles' hands and they looked a little slimmer, we'll get a de-aging or gender-swap episode and fandom will go 'splody.
Eye of the Tiger will be on the soundtrack and Dean will rock out geekily to it. (Yaaaay! Now do Final Countdown!)
Sam might drive the Impala, because even if the angles imply Dean's legs and butt are in the driver's seat, there's no guarantee they'll stay there, since Sam came up to the driver's side and Dean's acting distinctly altered. After the crack episode that 4.05 is shaping up to be [was, hee], I'm leaning towards "Dean's off his nut with extreme stress or drunk". Since they haven't been known to do two breather episodes in a row, this will either be the introduction of the Hunt Sam club, or a case-fic that ties obliquely into the mytharc or go tripping merrily along until about halfway through and then things go boom.
-Oct 16: Bit that I did see of the promo, Dean looking badly freaked. Not a spoiler on its own, but linked with the above I'd say reversal of expectation of a character, and Hunt Sam Club looking likelier all the time.
-Oct 18-19: General fandom reactions to the promo, which are pointing unerringly towards "WTF?" and the couple places I run across promo descriptions tacked on to 4.05 reactions, the only description of the promo I see anywhere is "What the hell was that?"/"I can't even describe that!" So... O.o Something weird this way comes, and it's freaking the crap out of Dean. So. I get the oddest feeling Dean's going to in some way appear to be dead again. Not sure why.
-Oct 20: While looking for screencaps, bumped the scroll button on the mouse, title of 4.06. "Yellow Fever"
Eeeeeeeeeeek! O.O Okay, so, it's either a revisitation of the Croatoan Virus, or Sam's eyes are going to flash yellow for some reason during this. Or something. Holy crap, already? EEEEEEK!
-[*Spoiler carried forward. Which explains a lot about why I got confused*]
-Oct 22: Second hand report of the promo. Dean's asking if he's haunted. Gahhhhh. Okay, SO! Now we have the possibility of some dead character/s hanging around, which could be awesome cool, as there's a lot of dead characters that it would be cool to see again, thanks a lot Kripke. HOWEVER! This does not simplify what the hell is possibly going on in this episode, it adds another factor. Gaaaahhh.
So, at this stage, Dean thinks he might be being haunted by someone/thing [*spoiler carried forward*], YED or the Croatoan Virus might come into play, and... I need a drink.
-Oct 23: SPN Newsletter. There's going to be a 'surprise' after the episode. O.O Okay, so not the promo? Instead of the promo? Before the promo? After the promo? AS the promo??? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WHEN THE CREDITS ROLL DAMMIIIIIIIT?!?!?!?
*blinks* *frowns* *grimaces* I'm getting a headache.
-Oct 23: AGAIN, mentioned in a post that was supposed to be a link to the Friday the 13th promo. The surprise may be the clip which was linked earlier as part of the episode. Which may not be part of the episode after all, but... an advance blooper reel clip? Or not? Or something? So the first thing about Dean being stressed out and so forth may or may not actually be part of the show, and/or they've started writing their own missing scenes or I HAVE NO IDEA!
*develops severe nervous tic*
Gaaaaaaah... Okay. I've gotten bits all over the place for various aspects of this episode and seriously, I can't make a single coherent theory about anything. I'm so confused by all this I feel physically nauseous. Croatoan Virus or rebirth of YED, Dean's probably seeing dead people, [*spoiler carried forward, which, again, explains a lot about my confusion*], and now there's a 'surprise' ? My nerves!
I'm not used to having this much data and still being confused! The only possible thing that makes any sense is if this is all a dream or hallucination or something, maybe some kind of monster that feeds on fear and there'll be rats everywhere and planes crashing, ooo, or maybe the Dream a Little Dream guy again? Maybe something that reveals a YED connection or... No. I have no idea. All I know is something's going to happen and it's going to scare the crap out of Dean.
At this point a tap-dancing platypus could show up as the reincarnation of John and I wouldn't bat a freaking eye. Because my brain has melted.
In conclusion of spoiler timeline: Gaaaaaah.... *headdesk*
Reactions, theorizing, retconning, nitpickery, rhetorical questions, snark and meta for Supernatural 4.06 - Yellow Fever
Dean's getting scared to death! Oh yeah! Bring it on! \o/
-[Rewatch: Last week's promo for this episode looks like a totally different episode. Looks very serious and intense. And there's Lilith, and there's Sammy with yellow eyes... Sigh. Naw, now spoilery at all.]
-In the previously, which I'm watching on the first go round because I'm too confused to plug my ears and squint until the NOW comes up: Lilith, Hellhounds, Sam has demon blood, Ruby-is-Lillith, Castiel threatening a smackdown. Ooo. [Too bad, that'd have been an interesting hallucination... *releases plot-bunny into the wild*]
-Hee! Dean's scared face! Fleeing the incredibly tiny dog with the little pink bow! Of course I'm such an incredible chicken about dogs if that little thing came running at me barking and snarling I'd run away too. It looks like a Fifi. It shall be Fifi. *nods* [Rewatch: replays about five times. Heeee!]
-So, judging by that, we're going comedic, yes? Hm. Two breather eps in a row. Although the previous one got juggled due to the political thing... anyway. There's gonna be some serious hurt coming to balance out the ha-ha. *nods*
-43 hours earlier in Rock Ridge, Colorado, something happened to Dean that made him scared of tiny dogs. Although who knows, maybe Hellhounds really look like that and no one know because only their targets can see them. And maybe that's why only their targets can see them. *ponders*
-Ohhhh... Yellow as in 'cowardly'. Ah. Ha ha.
-Tyler and Perry *facepalm* At least pick more obscure bands and band members, guys. I even recognize those.
-Two other guys dropped dead of heart attacks in... Maui? Naw. Malmy or Maumy or something. The Impala is never getting anywhere near Maui. Sadly.
-Has the writing credit gone up yet? I think I missed it.
-Okay, I'm thinking this coroner is either bored out of his mind and looking for something to do, or a... compulsive autopsier or something looking for an excuse to cut the guy open, because there's paperwork and stuff that needs taken care of to get an autopsy, isn't there? But this guy just whips out a scalpel and goes for it, happy for an excuse to get up to his elbows in a three-day old corpse and freak out some pushy FBI guys. I kind of like him.
-Speedy too. Autopsy in two minutes or less or your next one's free.
-Heh. I'm getting a 'Quincy' credits flash back from the way this is being shot with the coroner and Sam and Dean on the other side of the table. Something about the framing and camera angles, as well as the coroner's attitude of "Let's see if we can make 'em lose their lunch". Very unprofessional methodology. Surely there's a bowl or scale or something that heart could go into.
-This guy is a quack. "Ooops! I just sprayed you with a dead guy's bodily fluids, tee hee!" Yeah. That's not a potential health risk at all.
-There's the writing credit! Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin. Hm. Andrew Dabb is brand new and has come from the comics field, looks like, and Daniel Loflin has directed an episode of Oz, and done a short film. Hm.
-Young desk cop is very young! He looks all happy and chipmunky. Young cop's name is Linus and I would not be surprised if he has a security blankie under the desk. *feels very old*
-We're all weird and quirky in this town, us figures of town authority, hm? Shoes off? Seriously?
-Way too much hand cleaner. You're going to get chapped, Sheriff Britten. My boss does the same thing.
-"Big heart." No need to be a smartass, Dean.
-Chupacabra! Hee! "Scared to death by a Chupacabra" just sounds like a silly cause of death. I get the feeling that Chupacabras are the default monster, they get mentioned, waved off and never appear. Probably for the best because I can just imagine after his reaction to "Gamecocks", Dean's sense of humour would have a field day with a monster with a name that translates to 'goat-suckers'.
-Teenagers... Dean, you haven't hit 30 yet, (though you will in three months,) stop being crotchety.
-Never mind figures of authority, the whole damn town's quirky, like Mr. Lizard here.
-Busted! I warned you about that last week, guys. If you can't stick to obscure groups then stick to the lesser known names; bassists and drummers, not singers and guitarists. No one would be batting an eye if you were Agent Hamilton and Kramer, now would they.
-Not that it actually matters because Sam's evaded the issue.
-Witches. Sigh. Oh, well, Wizard of Oz witches. And among other things, Pez dispensers, which are indeed freaky. They stare at you, with those eyes, because they know you're going to flip their heads back and steal their candy, biting at their necks like a vampire. Creepy.
-Dean and the house of reptiles (and amphibians) is making me giggle with all the twitches and so forth.
-Ah ha! A bully!
-Hee! Snake! Marie is weird, pale and way too huge, and I am certain I've seen her on some local news broadcast at some point in time. Also, there is the slightest hint of humming from Dean under the music.
-Manic-depressive and off her meds. Yeah, sure. Just because he's on a swing shift when she disappeared doesn't mean he couldn't still be completely involved.
-Dean going the speed limit is cause for alarm. *snerk* Also, the speed limit inside a town in Colorado is 20 mph??? Really? That's like 32 kph, or playground/school zone speed where I am. Wow.
-Bluebird Hotel... why is that familiar... It's not the one from "Hunted" that was the Blue Rose.
-Good god, someone's stolen their brains. They're both on autopilot.
-Heee. Dean sets off the EMF and freaks about being haunted. *glee*
-Eye of the Tiger scene! A ha. So it is part of the episode... so what's the 'surprise' then? *is nervous*
-Incidentally, it's an awesome demonstration of Dean using music as an escape and a way to calm down. He's just found physical damage on himself where he wasn't expecting any and is getting out of his brain and into the music for a bit. And what did I say up in the spoiler timeline? Stressed and freaking out. *nods*
-Ghost sickness. Sounds like Space Madness... Is Dean going to accuse Sam of coveting his beloved ice cream bar? The one he's had since he was a child? Must be. *nods sagely*
-This ghost sickness should be whacking a whoooole lot more people if it spreads like the flu. There must be another factor. Also, haven't seen a ghost in weeks, which would have been 4.02, yes?
-Corn Jerkers? Who in hell named the softball teams? Besides the writers? :-P
-Hey, why isn't it infecting Sam?? Dean just held the guy's heart, Sam got sprayed in the face with bodily fluids. If anyone's sick, Sam should be. Well, him and the Coroner because god only knows what he does with a corpse after an undocumented spurious autopsy. :-P
-And Dean's asking about Sam too now. Hehe.
-"Basically they were all dicks." Wha-?? According to who? Sure, guy number one probably offed his wife and was a bully in the past, so he'd be a dick, but being a bouncer does not automatically mean a person is a dick. Same with being a Vice-Principal. Maybe people in positions of actual or assumed authority and control over the comings and goings of others? Which speaks even worse of Dead Vector man and his "suicidal" wife, unless he had an authoritarian job somewhere.
-"You're saying I'm a dick?"/"It's not just that." WTF???? Dean's not a dick! Neither are those other people, necessarily! What the hell? Also I don't believe for a second Bobby is the source of this 'They're all dicks' nonsense Sam. You're picking a piss-poor time to twit your brother. *glares*
-"Use fear as a weapon." Whaaaaaaat? Sam, um. Are you feeling okay? When has your brother done that?? I still say 'position of authority and control'.
-"I don't scare people!"/"Dean, all we do is scare people." ...um... actually, you kind of unscare people. The only reason they might not be scared before you show up is because they don't have a full grasp of the severity of the situation. Like, for example, the Ghostfacers, whose grasp of situational severity is not exactly operating with a 'Kung-fu Action' grip.
-"Apparently I'm not." Look. Sam. You're cute. But you were less of an asshole when you were in antichrist training. ...Oh... Hey... Hold on. It's a smokescreen. It's all a smokescreen! Sam's got this 'they were all dicks and you're a dick too, but I'm not' story concocted for the specific and express purpose of putting Dean off-balance and on the defensive and distracting Dean from the fact that Sam should be infected and he's not. At all. And it's freaking Sam out, because it's probably related to the whole demon-blood thing, and he doesn't want Dean to make the connection he has, because Dean's already treating Sam like a freak, conciously or not, and having that extra layer of 'You can't get sick' added to the freak end of the scale is something Sam'd need to repress... because I bet Sam knows that it's going on, and can't handle the ramifications and is scrambling to re-cement the wall he built around yourself while Dean was away. Ooo. Okay.
-*swishes the meta mop around*
-"It's high." Nawwww, Dean. He sounds so young and vulnerable. *pats*
-Why do clocks tick louder when there's a deadline? Evil chronometric bastards.
-That's an awesome book. Perfect thing to read when you're dying of fear. *nods*
-"You're dying..."/"Again."/"Loser." Ohhhh Dean. *hugs him tight*
-Clock go smash. Yeah, I've had days like that.
-What did Dean cough up? Was that a Mahjongg tile? There was a symbol on it, wasn't there? *pauses* Looks like an ampersand and an 'S', with part of another letter like a 'C' or something with a little bit that sticks up from below. Ooo, and we're playing with the censors again! Dean said "What the f-" So, maybe another Winchester cursing rule is "If you just coughed up a Mahjongg tile" but Dean washes it off and sees that that's not what it is, so stops himself because it doesn't qualify for R-rated cursing. *nods* So. Hunh. Wood chip from something that had lettering on it. Did the guy die in a wood chipper??? o.O
-Dean's little "But I don't wanna be a clue!" Hee!
-Hey! That mill looks familiar... Did they do an interview from there once?
-Dean is drinking waaaaay too much. He doesn't get wasted on a case, and has gotten pissed off at Sam for doing so. Maybe, since he kind of is the case, they've decided he has an exception? In which case, if he's drinking heavily, why is he still in the field, and why in fuck is he still driving. *glares*
-Ooo! Trunk! Hi TRUNK!!! *glee*
-"I'm not carrying that. It could go off." Also, it's almost certainly not loaded with salt since it uses bullets and not shells, and therefore useless. Sam? Where is your brain?
-Aw. Dean's "I'm six and I'm helping!" pose with the flashlight kills me dead.
-The EMF apparently has no off switch. Good to know, and explains why it didn't weird Dean out excessively when it went off on its own way back in Scarecrow. I want a schematic for that damn thing.
-They found Frank's ring! ...where are we again? Right lumber mill where whoever's haunting Dean died. So why was Frank there recently enough to lose the ring after the hand injuries started? Hm.
-I love the location! And they would have no problems finding an abandoned lumber mill in BC. My town had one for a few years and finally dismantled it and shipped it somewhere.
-Ooo! Something in a locker! I'm betting rats. Dean hates rats! Hee, he gives a little headshake before Sam opens the door, very cool.
-Aw, kitty! And Dean shrieks like Jared in the Season 1 blooper reel. "That was scary!" HA! That was awesome. [*rewinds several times*] Aw, and the little half-voiced freaked out "What?" from Dean as Sam walks away. Aw.
-He tore the picture and the mill started up... okay, how did that work? Was it jamming something open? Oh, no wait. It's a ghost thing. Der. *smacks forehead*
-'Blair Witch' has forever changed the sight of an unexpected person standing in the corner with his face to the wall as seen in the light from a flashlight and made it exceptionally freaky.
-Dean runs. Hm. I really want to see his perspective of all this.
-Hm. And Dean's developing a bit of a drinking problem, it seems. Sam better not let him drive back to the hotel. Grr.
-[Saw number whatever-billion looks like it's doing a take on the pit and the pendulum.]
-[Sam and Dean need to hunt down and uncurse that poor Skittle man. His life cannot be happy.]
-[Holy crap, how many commercials are there???]
-Dean's drunk. A relatively subtle drunk compared to his brother. Interesting. Still controlled despite being weaving. Why is Sam still dragging him along when he's obviously not up to working the case?
-"You're awesome." Heee! Much as Dean likes his beer, he doesn't drink to excess very often in canon. He was getting a little loose and goosey with... damn. The awesome hunter guy with the Johnny Walker Blue in 3.15. But he wasn't totally sloshed, just wiggly. Even here he's not utterly gooned though. He's downed enough to accomplish the effect necessary, drowning the fear hallucinations, and stopped. This does not speak well for Dean's possibilities of becoming an alcoholic, but since the ghost effect has taken all his normal defense structures against anxiety and fear off-line, he's pretty much forced to try to find an external means of coping, which is apparently not 'talking to Sam' because there seems to be something ...off about Sam. Plus, Sam called him a dick, so among the pre-existing anxieties running rampant inside Dean right now there has to be the thought that since Sam apparently thinks Dean's a dick, Dean thinks Sam thinks that Dean deserves this. Ow. And since Dean's coping mechanisms aren't functioning, even his miniscule sense of self-worth isn't there to cushion that thought, and it's gone straight to heart and is sitting there festering. Owwwww. See? This is why I want to see Dean's internal perspective of this episode.
-*mops up spilled meta*
-Murals everywhere in this town. Even in the police station. It's not Chemainus, is it? No, I don't think so. I mean, I'm a spoilerphobe, but if the show had set foot on the Island, I would have heard about it.
-Gaaahhh, scratching his skin off with steel wool. Yeah, that's sane. So, is that the ghost's marks, or is it that fear of disease he's got with the hand sanitizer and shoes off thing out of control there. Hope he's not dumping hand sanitizer on that, because OW!
-Oooo, hallucination! "They know what you did." Ah hah! A murder and a cover-up. So, the Sheriff covered up a wrongful death, either this Luther guy who died at the mill, or what's his name's wife. Or both. Hm...
-"These badges are fake!!" Aw, Dean. *pats* See? It's like the effect the ghost has is to unhook all the rational adult coping mechanisms and magnifies every single one of the person's inner anxieties and fears, even the little ones that breeze right by normally. Which is why Dean's seeming like he's 6, and why I want to wrap him up in warm blankets and feed him soup and cocoa. And also why I want to see Dean's perspective of this episode, because for him? It's absolutely not funny.
-"Those are real. Obviously. I mean who would pretend to be an FBI agent, hunh? That's just nutty!" *facepalm* Yes. Six years old. *pats Dean and his very distressed face*
-I'm guessing Garland's brother's not originally from Colorado with that accent...
-Luther Garland is too big and too mean-looking? He's a monster?? Whaaaaa-? He looks like an okay guy, just bald and a bit hefty! Seriously, is this town full of paranoid assholes or what??
-"Her man Frank killed her." Yeah, figured. {{ETA: After a careful relisten, I can hear now what the guy actually says is "Her man Frank killed Luther". Dude, seriously, enunciate.}}
-Ooo! Old Mac! The mill office uses a Mac!!! \o/ To be specific, the earliest model with that specific case would be a Mac LC520, (roughly equivalent computing power to a 386 with no math coprocessor). Which was first produced in 1993. Hee. So. When was this murder again? *is a smartass* Sorry. Hee. I love that they got the old Mac though! Not quite old enough to be twenty years ago, but having an old Mac Plus there with the 9" monitor would have been hilarious. Also extremely hard to find perhaps, as they haven't exactly been getting preserved as collector's items. :-P
-"Turns out she killed herself, but Frank didn't know that." Whoa, whoa, whoa. Waaaaaaitaminute. You just said Frank killed her! Like a minute ago! Dude, what the hell?? He's starting to remind me of the 'wise old stereotype' from "Bugs" for crying out loud. *checks IMDB* Hm. Which was also written by two new writers no one ever heard of before. Hm. {{ETA: Sigh. See? This is why enunciation is important.}}
-Coming in and finding a wall full of drawings of your spouse would be massively freaky, but certainly not something to commit murder over. A discussion of some kind, maybe a restraining order? Murder, not so much. Even if she's missing and Frank killed her/doesn't know where she is, so... gah. Brain hurts. {{ETA: Brain still hurts}}
-Taking Luther out at gunpoint and chaining him to the- Oh wow. Luther got road-hauled. That's a horrible way to die, and not a quick one. Jeez. Poor Luther! Yeah. First degree murder, that. I'm glad Luther came back and killed this fucker. And is gonna kill the officer that covered it up. Go Luther. *glares in fury*
-"Frank wasn't thinking straight." ...okay, Luther's brother, I am now ignoring you. You are inconsistent and contradictory {{ETA: and don't enunciate worth beans}}, and you just excused your brother's murderer verbally. You, sir, are a dick. *ignores*
-Sam, tell me you are not letting Dean drive in his current state. You can get the keys from him, you have reach on him by about three inches.
-Now. Dean's anti-hunting outburst is all his fears brought out without any of the higher thought or positive thought allaying them. Judging by the suit and time of day, (incidentally, insta-night, yes?) he's probably coming up to where we saw him at the start, running from Fifi, and coming up on his deadline. So, right now, all he is is his fears and anxieties, untempered by any kind of coping mechanism. So, outburst.
-You know, it is technically possible to set an entire road on fire... soak some of that copious sawdust in gas, 'borrow' a dumptruck or something with a spreader attachment, maybe a tarring torch or two... *koff* Not that the town would be thrilled about their roadway getting torched, but seriously, screw the town. It's full of quirky nutbags, liars and assholes who think a big, bald guy is a monster that doesn't deserve justice for being horribly murdered for drawing pictures of the only person who's nice to him. Screw what the town thinks. Grr.
-Sorry. Rant. I feel better now.
-"We are insane!" Yep! And that's why we love you. *nods*
-Only 8 hours a day in the car? Hm. That's a mite low, methinks.
-Five albums! (I figure he actually meant five albums he plays over and over and a smattering of other stuff that he pops in once in a while. Like Bon Jovi) Okay, name them! Back in Black by AC/DC, The Black Album by Metallica, Led Zeppelin something or other, Fire of Unknown Origin by Blue Oyster Cult, and... what? Pieces of Eight by Styx? I dunno. I rather like the idea of Dean having a tape with "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" on it, although I doubt he plays that track anymore. And he has to have "Unforgiven", "Wherever I May Roam" and "Nothing Else Matters." Must. Hard to narrow it down to five though... maybe one of them's a 'Greatest Hits of Hard Rock' style compilation, or a mix tape. *ponders*
-Dean walking away... that bears more pondering. Obviously on the surface of it, the writers needed to get him off on his own so he could get chased by Fifi. Now. Sam not chasing after him when he's on a countdown to a heart attack? Something's off there. Really off, and I don't know now if Sam's actually off in some way, or if it's a lazy script convenience. Needs pondering. *ponders*
-So, the summary of Dean's outburst, beyond the surface, is all the reasons not to do what they do, and why Sam might not want Dean around. And why Sam might want to do something other than hunt, which Dean doesn't want to be 'learn how to be the antichrist'. And because Dean's coping mechanisms are offline thanks to the ghost sickness, he can't handle any of it and walks. Hm. Needs more pondering. *ponders some more*
-Hee! As Dean is confronted by Fifi, on the soundtrack, that's the "silly boys" incidental music! That 'buduh buh buh' guitar thing. Wow, been a long time since we heard that, hasn't it?
-Hey, is Dean's bed not the one nearest the door? That would be awesomely consistent with him being freaked and Sam taking the role of protector! \o/
-Oooo. Oh yeah. Dean's fears about Sam, here we go! It's just a hallucination, but here we have Dean's Sammy anxieties combo, of 'Sam doesn't need me anymore', 'I'm in Sam's way', and 'Sam secretly wants to be evil.'
-YEAH!!! YEAH!!! YED!SAM!!! DEAN GETTING THROWN INTO A WALL BY YED!SAM!! And! AND!!! "No one's possessing me Dean!" 'Scuse me a minute. *IS FREAKING SMUG* There I feel better. Even though this is just a hallucination and didn't actually happen? I bloody called it. Kind of back at the start of Season two, too. Along with 90% of fandom no doubt, but still. Yeah! *dances with glee*
-So, to stop with the smug for a second, this is Dean's fears for Sam, possibly also a sense or intuition he doesn't want to admit to himself, that he's becoming YED. And foreshadowing. And the whole "Sam turning evil" thing doesn't bother me at all, because Dean's totally going to bring Sam back from this when it happens, no matter how far it goes. Because this show is and always has been about the strength of family to survive impossible-seeming challenges. Sam and Dean will end up together, as brothers and family, and it'll save the world in the process. It's going to hurt like thunder getting to that, but it's going to happen. I've known it since "Bloody Mary" and it's about damn time. I LOVE THIS SHOW! \o/
-Bobby! Making excellent time from South Dakota to Colorado.... Wait, it's daylight again? What happened to four hours? Insta-night, insta-day... arg. Okay. So. There was, um, an eclipse, and... *headdesk* Arg.
-Heh. Gumby and Pokey. Hadn't realized it was such a grim show. O.O Also, callback to "Does that make me Pokey?" maybe? Eee. Dean's poor arm. I wonder how much of the 'road rash' on the victims is ghost effect, and how much is them scratching themselves? Eee.
-"Just under 2 hours." Okay, so it's 6 AM, four hours to go (hotel room) was 2 AM, Fifi was 1 AM (43 hours after the start), sooo... they left Luther's brother just after midnight? Or earlier, and Dean was wandering all over town in his FBI suit getting scared by random things and thinking about stuff before he met up with Fifi, and why in hell couldn't Sam find him in that case?? Gahhh. This is totally reminding me of "Bugs", this whacked out, yet precise timeline. Arg.
-Also, Dean has 2 hours to go and you're sitting on the Impala swapping notes? Gnh. Naw, no rush at all. You just have the bare bones of an idea of how to figure out a half-assed plan and Dean has two hours left. No rush or anything. Arg.
-Bobby speaking Japanese! \o/ Of course Bobby knows Japanese! Bobby's awesome! What did he say? What's Japanese for 'idjit'? Was there a 'baka' in there? *flails with gleeeeee* Sounds like: "Kimi naku mareru mai karazuto daiyo." Which my 'make the machine translator beg for mercy' word-mangling skills are converting into: "You weep rarely bent over dancing crow promoted pawn substitute." Sooooo, probably not what Bobby said, unless he's jerking Sam's chain about speaking Japanese. Which I figure is entirely possible, either way. Or both. Because Bobby is that awesome. *nods*
-Buru Buru. Okay, so, probably not this or this, though I think even in his current freaked out state, a shivering, weeping puppy that is scared of everything and likes strawberry jelly or a vibrating pig might be a bit daunting for Dean. Heck, I'm daunted by the vibrating pig. The closest thing I can find on Wikipedia (yeah, yeah *handwaves*) in Japanese legendary creatures is a Baku which is a dream and nightmare devouring beast, or also a... tapir. M'kay. Doesn't sound like it. In crypto-zoology there is a Buru, but it's a giant blue lizard with white spots that's some variety of monitor lizard or lake monster. Proooobably not that either. So, google-fu is failing me, or I have the name wrong, or the writers of this episode made it up. If it's the last one? *shakes head and tsks* New guys.
-Scare the fear ghost to death. Okay, yeah, uh... That makes no sense at all. If it's born of fear, how is scaring it to death going to help? Also, that's frigging mean guys! Poor guy had a crappy life, got murdered by an asshole, had his murder covered up, and is killing the jackasses who wronged him. And I guess going viral and killing off innocents like the vice-principal and the bouncer and Dean, but really, isn't there some better way of stopping this thing than scaring it to death? Won't that make it worse?? Why not unscare it somehow? Point out that the people who wronged him are dead, and he can stop now? And that Dean's not a dick? Gahhh.... *wants plot logic*
-Although given the sterling example of Dean as to how expediently Sam and Bobby can build up a person's self-confidence and so forth, they'd be trying to unscare the ghost for decades before they made any progress.
-What's with the long shot of Sam and Bobby at the mill? Is something watching them? I mean, it's pretty and all, I guess, very BC, but why is that shot there? It's incongruous.
-Hey, Dean's got his Season 2 ringtone back! It survived Sam's giant stomping foot of 'Verizon cancelled the product placement money, the bastards'! Still no idea where it's from, it's none of the obvious options.
-Yeah. Don't tell Dean your half-assed plan. He's already got enough reasons to be scared to death. Bobby thinks it's a terrible plan too. This does not bode well. Like at all
-Hounds. Oh Dean. A person with so many real nightmares in his life should not be exposed to a thing that exacerbates fear.
-Gun swatting! Yay! Ooo! When Dean's hallucination had the cop flash black eyes at him, did Dean get, like, a freakish burst of strength there?? Or what? o.O
-Very slight blue tinge to the cop's face as he's having the heart attack. There's a lovely touch. Not sure what's scared him bad enough, but hey, Dean can be a scary S.O.B., I guess. Although there is a veeeery, very faint "I know what you did" in the soundtrack. Nifty.
-Hang on... Was the cop exposed from the post-softball nachos? He should be dead yesterday then, shouldn't he? ...Or was he exposed when he went to see the guy at the morgue in the morning before Sam and Dean got there, from the scratches, I guess? And why are the coroner and the cops who went to find him and all them not dead? I don't buy the 'dick' rationale, because that's just Sam's smokescreen to distract Dean from asking questions about why Sam's not infected and Dean is, because Sam knows Dean would take it to heart and not deeply question that someone would think he was a dick and Sam wasn't and, ooo. Sam, you ass. *glares* Sorry, right. So. Why is the ghost really infecting the other people. I'm thinking it's people with a position (or perceived position) of authority/responsibility, and a sense of guilt or failure in it, or a sense of lost control. Can't speak to the Vice-principal and bouncer, because all we have for them are names, occupations and a ludicrously-named softball team. The murderer, aside from being the murderer may have been an abusive spouse, or a spouse murderer, {{ETA: or not}} or may have had other issues, because he certainly wasn't a prince of a guy. Him getting infected 20 years later... and we're back to why was his ring at the old mill again? Did he go out there to be guilty, or gloat, or re-visit the shrine for his wife that poor, murdered Luther set up? But he went after the injuries began, because the right showed as a void in the damage on his hand. Arg. Okay. Getting headache here. I say, the murderer went back to the scene of the crime, maybe he goes jogging by there or something, lost or threw away his ring, sense of failure and guilt, wakes up the fear ghost thing, gets infected. Or something. Then goes to the softball game, infects the Vice-Principal and the Bouncer who are in positions of some kind of authority and feeling guilty or like failures about something for some reason (aside from being on a softball team named the Corn Jerkers), then goes home, goes nuts and dies, the two guys he infected also die in the other town, original guy is not found 'til three days later by wholly unguilty or failure-feeling officers *pats Linus* and taken to the deranged yet non-guilty-authority-feeling coroner, and is then visited by his friend the very guilty figure of authority who covered up the horrible murder of an innocent man who happens to be the original source of the infection, and so Luther gets the cop who covered up his death, then Sam and Dean show up shortly afterward and are handed organs and sprayed with spleen juice and Dean's baseline sense of responsibility/failure/guilt is a little off the charts with this whole "Sam's going evil/armageddon" thing, so he's like cake to the fear ghost thing, and Sam's either previously occupied by YED germs or immune in some way or doesn't feel any sense of authority/responsibility or guilt about anything, so the ghost sickness bypasses him entirely for the sweet, gooey emo cake that is Dean's sense of personal responsibility and perceived failures, real or strictly sourced in Dean's negligible sense of self-worth. HA!
-*inhales* Gah. Sorry. I had to try to make some kind of sense of this for myself, even if it required beating things into shape with a hammer and it makes no sense to anyone else. *hides hammer*
-Hm. A guy just died, more than just a guy, the town's top cop, in the middle of their hotel room, in front of the busted open door, when I'm sure the hotel front desk noticed him heading upstairs, and someone probably heard the door being busted down... surely that's reason enough for a massive anxiety spike for Dean. Not so much though. Hm.
-WALKIE TALKIES!!!! \o/ YAY!!! I love that Bobby uses walkie talkies! For short range stuff they make much more sense than cell-phones, and also are a neat little 'old-school hunting' touch from Bobby's involvement. Although... where is Bobby?
-Yeah, like planning to scare the poor bastard to a second death isn't bad enough, you have to tear up his pictures. Are you sure you're not a dick, Sam?
-Ooo, he's taller than Sam, hee!
-Hm. Corpse of the dead cop lying in the middle of the floor in front of the busted-in door, and Dean's tossed a blanket over it. Yeah. That'll help.
-Owww. Dean's arms. Ow. Oh Dean.
-Dean and the Bible. Hm. I sense that scene may have been taken in a few vastly different ways by fans, which I'm not getting in to right now, but what I'm wondering is how did the Bible end up on the floor right there. Did Dean have it out earlier and pitch it at a hallucination? *ponders*
-Lillith! Little non-kissy Lillith! Cute makes evil eviler Lillith! Yay! Totally a hallucination because the kid she inhabited in last year's finale is still somewhere in Indiana. In therapy. *nods*
-So, form aside, is Lilith real here? She doesn't seem to have the wiggly-Dean-view fx going on... I don't think she is. I don't think. Hmm.
-"Doggie years" Heeeeeee. Ah hah! There's the wiggly Dean's-eye-view. Lilith is indeed hallucinatory. Yeah.
-I think Dean really doesn't remember his time in Hell. This Lilith, being a hallucinatory projection of his fears going on about how can he forget that is the voice of his own anxiety that, that, something happened to him in Hell that he can't remember, and it's freaking him out. I think I know what it iiiiiis but that's just my theory. Anyway, I think he doesn't remember his time in Hell, and fear!Lilith is the representation of Dean's own massive freakedness about seemingly having no memory of something he figures he should remember with great clarity, but doesn't except for fleeting incomprehensible nightmares of Hell, and what that might mean.
-"Silly goose. You know why." Hm. You know, because this is fear!Lilith, and a hallucination which is bringing up deeply held conscious and maybe subconscious anxieties for Dean, this is almost like his intuition talking to him and taking all the stuff he's afraid is happening that's setting off the little "something is wrong" alarm bells that he's been pushing aside and bringing it up to the surface. Of course it's doing it to scare him to death, but still.
-Silly Sam. Why'd you leave the salt gun way over there? And if this ghost is a buruburu fear ghost thing, why is it physically attacking, and not killing Sam with his fears? Unless there's something different about Sam and it can't get into his head to gain access to his fears, because if he's immune to the disease, he's probably immune to the mind-friggery. Also, he's got his Mystery Spot walls almost entirely back up, and if anyone can hide their fear behind emotional fortifications, it's a Winchester. Dean was having an off day. Plus that whole guilt and responsibility thing. *nods like that made sense*
-And not being able to access Sam's fear, the ghost continues to kick his ass physically which *handwaves*
-OOO!!! OOO!!! During the combat! They've CGI'd in a blue undershirt on Sam to cover where his tattoo would be!! When the Luther grabs Sam's shirt to haul him off the floor! There's a flash of blue-white on Sam's chest, and if you can slow it down, you can see a very un-shirt-like day-glo patch of straight not-very-fabricy pale blue where Sam's over-shirt gaps over where his tattoo would be!! That's there one frame and not there the next when the over-shirt's high enough again. Oh, very well done, CGI crew! *applauds them for catching that before fandom did and spun the lack of tattoo on Sam into a giant heaving pile of erroneous meta* Woo! I wonder if they have a person or two on staff whose job it is to watch Sam and Dean's chests for flashes of skin that should have tattoos so they can fix them in post-production. Hee. That's fantastic! Yay detail!! \o/
-Baboom! Hee. Oh I bet they had so much fun shooting the scenes with Lilith and Dean. I want bloopers, or behind the scenes silliness or something.
-*sighs at the 'let's kill the ghost again' resolution* Making the ghost unscared would have sat way better with me than scaring it to death again.
-*randomly snuggles Bobby's boots for being fugly steel-toed clodhoppers like the boots of a guy who owns a wrecking yard and kicks demon ass on the side should be*
-Also, yet again, Dean's heart is under attack. So, is it a theme? Or coincidence? Hm.
-Yech. Poor ghost. I guess the whole buruburu thing made it so there wasn't any options or whatever, but that was nasty. I still don't see why the ghost won't come back worse. This feels like half the horror movie sequel-set-up endings ever.
-OMG! Ghost gets scared to death, makes it worse, comes back, only this time it was Bobby, Sam and the Impala that did it. This guy's gonna haunt the frigging Impala! Oh crap. O.O
-Or totally not! Not at all! Ever! I didn't even think of that! No idea what I'm talking about. What great weather we're having. How about that local sports team... *looks around nervously for Kripke*
-Dean's arms... are better. Hunh. No scratches, even though at the end there, half of the damage may have been self-inflicted from scratching. That's handy. Hrm. So, is that a 'monster's dead now' effect or a lingering 'Castiel made it all better' effect? In which case, Dean's *koff* de-rehymenated status is self-renewing too, so he'd be a perpetual virgin. Heh. Naw. I figure it's the 'monster's dead effect'.
-[How much do I love that there's people going to a sci-fi con in the T-Mobile G1 commercial? It's like, that's my people. Okay, not exactly, but still, it's neat to see the subculture of fandom getting accepted into the mainstream enough to be exploited for advertising purposes. Also, I think the one on the right might be wearing an attempt at a Vorlon encounter suit with the mask not on. *glee*]
-Iron chain etched with spellwork. Sure. That didn't sound like a last minute explainer or random handwave at all. *pats new writers*
-"Awww"/"He's adorable!" Heee! Sam and Bobby are Dean girls!
-Again with the random long shot of the scenery! From above this time. Still very BC, with theabandoned sawmill and all. But again, why scenery then? Ooo. Unless Castiel's perched on top of the mill observing Sam's actions, a la "Wings of Desire" maybe? Hm. Gotta be a reason for that shot to be there other than 'it looks pretty'. Hm.
-"What did you see? Seriously." EYEFLASH! Sam's eyes flashed yellow! Eeeee! Heh. I say that's a lingering hallucinatory effect, and that's what Dean's writing it off as. Maybe. *is still smug like a smug thing*
And the Extra?
-BWAH! I love that you can hear Jared just gutting himself laughing and all the crew snickering and so forth. Hee! That was awesome.
Generally speaking, That was fun, but it bears more pondering.
Now. What I want to see? What I really, truly want to see? Is the non-humorous version of this episode. Or certain scenes from Dean's perspective, and some of the scenes we got through Dean's eyes from Sam's perspective. Because as I mentioned above, for him they weren't funny at all, and it'd be freaky to see this all in that light.
Also an AU happy ending for Luther's ghost. Poor guy.
NO SPOILERS IN COMMENTS, OR REFERENCES TO ANY PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL OR PREVIEWS FOR UNAIRED EPISODES, PLEASE.
Spoiler Timeline
Most confusing spoiler timeline ever.
-Oct 11: Clip directly from 4.06, link labeled as non-spoilery.
[BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEP]
There, I feel better now. To summarize, people's definitions of "Spoiler" vary widely.
Anyways. Dean will either be relaxed enough to goof off this episode, at least at the start, because that had a "right after the titlecard" feel. Relaxed OR so wound up with stress he's gone off his nut a little. Or drunk in the middle of the morning. None of which bode well, because wound up from stress and going off his nut is not good as it leaves Sam without a supportive presence to keep him on the psi-abstinence wagon, drunk in mid-morning has the same result, and relaxed enough to goof off means the shit's about to hit the fan big time. OR Dean's having more nightmares about Hell and not sleeping as a result which means something's about to get revealed along that line. Or since it was hard to tell if those were Ackles' hands and they looked a little slimmer, we'll get a de-aging or gender-swap episode and fandom will go 'splody.
Eye of the Tiger will be on the soundtrack and Dean will rock out geekily to it. (Yaaaay! Now do Final Countdown!)
Sam might drive the Impala, because even if the angles imply Dean's legs and butt are in the driver's seat, there's no guarantee they'll stay there, since Sam came up to the driver's side and Dean's acting distinctly altered. After the crack episode that 4.05 is shaping up to be [was, hee], I'm leaning towards "Dean's off his nut with extreme stress or drunk". Since they haven't been known to do two breather episodes in a row, this will either be the introduction of the Hunt Sam club, or a case-fic that ties obliquely into the mytharc or go tripping merrily along until about halfway through and then things go boom.
-Oct 16: Bit that I did see of the promo, Dean looking badly freaked. Not a spoiler on its own, but linked with the above I'd say reversal of expectation of a character, and Hunt Sam Club looking likelier all the time.
-Oct 18-19: General fandom reactions to the promo, which are pointing unerringly towards "WTF?" and the couple places I run across promo descriptions tacked on to 4.05 reactions, the only description of the promo I see anywhere is "What the hell was that?"/"I can't even describe that!" So... O.o Something weird this way comes, and it's freaking the crap out of Dean. So. I get the oddest feeling Dean's going to in some way appear to be dead again. Not sure why.
-Oct 20: While looking for screencaps, bumped the scroll button on the mouse, title of 4.06. "Yellow Fever"
Eeeeeeeeeeek! O.O Okay, so, it's either a revisitation of the Croatoan Virus, or Sam's eyes are going to flash yellow for some reason during this. Or something. Holy crap, already? EEEEEEK!
-[*Spoiler carried forward. Which explains a lot about why I got confused*]
-Oct 22: Second hand report of the promo. Dean's asking if he's haunted. Gahhhhh. Okay, SO! Now we have the possibility of some dead character/s hanging around, which could be awesome cool, as there's a lot of dead characters that it would be cool to see again, thanks a lot Kripke. HOWEVER! This does not simplify what the hell is possibly going on in this episode, it adds another factor. Gaaaahhh.
So, at this stage, Dean thinks he might be being haunted by someone/thing [*spoiler carried forward*], YED or the Croatoan Virus might come into play, and... I need a drink.
-Oct 23: SPN Newsletter. There's going to be a 'surprise' after the episode. O.O Okay, so not the promo? Instead of the promo? Before the promo? After the promo? AS the promo??? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WHEN THE CREDITS ROLL DAMMIIIIIIIT?!?!?!?
*blinks* *frowns* *grimaces* I'm getting a headache.
-Oct 23: AGAIN, mentioned in a post that was supposed to be a link to the Friday the 13th promo. The surprise may be the clip which was linked earlier as part of the episode. Which may not be part of the episode after all, but... an advance blooper reel clip? Or not? Or something? So the first thing about Dean being stressed out and so forth may or may not actually be part of the show, and/or they've started writing their own missing scenes or I HAVE NO IDEA!
*develops severe nervous tic*
Gaaaaaaah... Okay. I've gotten bits all over the place for various aspects of this episode and seriously, I can't make a single coherent theory about anything. I'm so confused by all this I feel physically nauseous. Croatoan Virus or rebirth of YED, Dean's probably seeing dead people, [*spoiler carried forward, which, again, explains a lot about my confusion*], and now there's a 'surprise' ? My nerves!
I'm not used to having this much data and still being confused! The only possible thing that makes any sense is if this is all a dream or hallucination or something, maybe some kind of monster that feeds on fear and there'll be rats everywhere and planes crashing, ooo, or maybe the Dream a Little Dream guy again? Maybe something that reveals a YED connection or... No. I have no idea. All I know is something's going to happen and it's going to scare the crap out of Dean.
At this point a tap-dancing platypus could show up as the reincarnation of John and I wouldn't bat a freaking eye. Because my brain has melted.
In conclusion of spoiler timeline: Gaaaaaah.... *headdesk*
Reactions, theorizing, retconning, nitpickery, rhetorical questions, snark and meta for Supernatural 4.06 - Yellow Fever
Dean's getting scared to death! Oh yeah! Bring it on! \o/
-[Rewatch: Last week's promo for this episode looks like a totally different episode. Looks very serious and intense. And there's Lilith, and there's Sammy with yellow eyes... Sigh. Naw, now spoilery at all.]
-In the previously, which I'm watching on the first go round because I'm too confused to plug my ears and squint until the NOW comes up: Lilith, Hellhounds, Sam has demon blood, Ruby-is-Lillith, Castiel threatening a smackdown. Ooo. [Too bad, that'd have been an interesting hallucination... *releases plot-bunny into the wild*]
-Hee! Dean's scared face! Fleeing the incredibly tiny dog with the little pink bow! Of course I'm such an incredible chicken about dogs if that little thing came running at me barking and snarling I'd run away too. It looks like a Fifi. It shall be Fifi. *nods* [Rewatch: replays about five times. Heeee!]
-So, judging by that, we're going comedic, yes? Hm. Two breather eps in a row. Although the previous one got juggled due to the political thing... anyway. There's gonna be some serious hurt coming to balance out the ha-ha. *nods*
-43 hours earlier in Rock Ridge, Colorado, something happened to Dean that made him scared of tiny dogs. Although who knows, maybe Hellhounds really look like that and no one know because only their targets can see them. And maybe that's why only their targets can see them. *ponders*
-Ohhhh... Yellow as in 'cowardly'. Ah. Ha ha.
-Tyler and Perry *facepalm* At least pick more obscure bands and band members, guys. I even recognize those.
-Two other guys dropped dead of heart attacks in... Maui? Naw. Malmy or Maumy or something. The Impala is never getting anywhere near Maui. Sadly.
-Has the writing credit gone up yet? I think I missed it.
-Okay, I'm thinking this coroner is either bored out of his mind and looking for something to do, or a... compulsive autopsier or something looking for an excuse to cut the guy open, because there's paperwork and stuff that needs taken care of to get an autopsy, isn't there? But this guy just whips out a scalpel and goes for it, happy for an excuse to get up to his elbows in a three-day old corpse and freak out some pushy FBI guys. I kind of like him.
-Speedy too. Autopsy in two minutes or less or your next one's free.
-Heh. I'm getting a 'Quincy' credits flash back from the way this is being shot with the coroner and Sam and Dean on the other side of the table. Something about the framing and camera angles, as well as the coroner's attitude of "Let's see if we can make 'em lose their lunch". Very unprofessional methodology. Surely there's a bowl or scale or something that heart could go into.
-This guy is a quack. "Ooops! I just sprayed you with a dead guy's bodily fluids, tee hee!" Yeah. That's not a potential health risk at all.
-There's the writing credit! Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin. Hm. Andrew Dabb is brand new and has come from the comics field, looks like, and Daniel Loflin has directed an episode of Oz, and done a short film. Hm.
-Young desk cop is very young! He looks all happy and chipmunky. Young cop's name is Linus and I would not be surprised if he has a security blankie under the desk. *feels very old*
-We're all weird and quirky in this town, us figures of town authority, hm? Shoes off? Seriously?
-Way too much hand cleaner. You're going to get chapped, Sheriff Britten. My boss does the same thing.
-"Big heart." No need to be a smartass, Dean.
-Chupacabra! Hee! "Scared to death by a Chupacabra" just sounds like a silly cause of death. I get the feeling that Chupacabras are the default monster, they get mentioned, waved off and never appear. Probably for the best because I can just imagine after his reaction to "Gamecocks", Dean's sense of humour would have a field day with a monster with a name that translates to 'goat-suckers'.
-Teenagers... Dean, you haven't hit 30 yet, (though you will in three months,) stop being crotchety.
-Never mind figures of authority, the whole damn town's quirky, like Mr. Lizard here.
-Busted! I warned you about that last week, guys. If you can't stick to obscure groups then stick to the lesser known names; bassists and drummers, not singers and guitarists. No one would be batting an eye if you were Agent Hamilton and Kramer, now would they.
-Not that it actually matters because Sam's evaded the issue.
-Witches. Sigh. Oh, well, Wizard of Oz witches. And among other things, Pez dispensers, which are indeed freaky. They stare at you, with those eyes, because they know you're going to flip their heads back and steal their candy, biting at their necks like a vampire. Creepy.
-Dean and the house of reptiles (and amphibians) is making me giggle with all the twitches and so forth.
-Ah ha! A bully!
-Hee! Snake! Marie is weird, pale and way too huge, and I am certain I've seen her on some local news broadcast at some point in time. Also, there is the slightest hint of humming from Dean under the music.
-Manic-depressive and off her meds. Yeah, sure. Just because he's on a swing shift when she disappeared doesn't mean he couldn't still be completely involved.
-Dean going the speed limit is cause for alarm. *snerk* Also, the speed limit inside a town in Colorado is 20 mph??? Really? That's like 32 kph, or playground/school zone speed where I am. Wow.
-Bluebird Hotel... why is that familiar... It's not the one from "Hunted" that was the Blue Rose.
-Good god, someone's stolen their brains. They're both on autopilot.
-Heee. Dean sets off the EMF and freaks about being haunted. *glee*
-Eye of the Tiger scene! A ha. So it is part of the episode... so what's the 'surprise' then? *is nervous*
-Incidentally, it's an awesome demonstration of Dean using music as an escape and a way to calm down. He's just found physical damage on himself where he wasn't expecting any and is getting out of his brain and into the music for a bit. And what did I say up in the spoiler timeline? Stressed and freaking out. *nods*
-Ghost sickness. Sounds like Space Madness... Is Dean going to accuse Sam of coveting his beloved ice cream bar? The one he's had since he was a child? Must be. *nods sagely*
-This ghost sickness should be whacking a whoooole lot more people if it spreads like the flu. There must be another factor. Also, haven't seen a ghost in weeks, which would have been 4.02, yes?
-Corn Jerkers? Who in hell named the softball teams? Besides the writers? :-P
-Hey, why isn't it infecting Sam?? Dean just held the guy's heart, Sam got sprayed in the face with bodily fluids. If anyone's sick, Sam should be. Well, him and the Coroner because god only knows what he does with a corpse after an undocumented spurious autopsy. :-P
-And Dean's asking about Sam too now. Hehe.
-"Basically they were all dicks." Wha-?? According to who? Sure, guy number one probably offed his wife and was a bully in the past, so he'd be a dick, but being a bouncer does not automatically mean a person is a dick. Same with being a Vice-Principal. Maybe people in positions of actual or assumed authority and control over the comings and goings of others? Which speaks even worse of Dead Vector man and his "suicidal" wife, unless he had an authoritarian job somewhere.
-"You're saying I'm a dick?"/"It's not just that." WTF???? Dean's not a dick! Neither are those other people, necessarily! What the hell? Also I don't believe for a second Bobby is the source of this 'They're all dicks' nonsense Sam. You're picking a piss-poor time to twit your brother. *glares*
-"Use fear as a weapon." Whaaaaaaat? Sam, um. Are you feeling okay? When has your brother done that?? I still say 'position of authority and control'.
-"I don't scare people!"/"Dean, all we do is scare people." ...um... actually, you kind of unscare people. The only reason they might not be scared before you show up is because they don't have a full grasp of the severity of the situation. Like, for example, the Ghostfacers, whose grasp of situational severity is not exactly operating with a 'Kung-fu Action' grip.
-"Apparently I'm not." Look. Sam. You're cute. But you were less of an asshole when you were in antichrist training. ...Oh... Hey... Hold on. It's a smokescreen. It's all a smokescreen! Sam's got this 'they were all dicks and you're a dick too, but I'm not' story concocted for the specific and express purpose of putting Dean off-balance and on the defensive and distracting Dean from the fact that Sam should be infected and he's not. At all. And it's freaking Sam out, because it's probably related to the whole demon-blood thing, and he doesn't want Dean to make the connection he has, because Dean's already treating Sam like a freak, conciously or not, and having that extra layer of 'You can't get sick' added to the freak end of the scale is something Sam'd need to repress... because I bet Sam knows that it's going on, and can't handle the ramifications and is scrambling to re-cement the wall he built around yourself while Dean was away. Ooo. Okay.
-*swishes the meta mop around*
-"It's high." Nawwww, Dean. He sounds so young and vulnerable. *pats*
-Why do clocks tick louder when there's a deadline? Evil chronometric bastards.
-That's an awesome book. Perfect thing to read when you're dying of fear. *nods*
-"You're dying..."/"Again."/"Loser." Ohhhh Dean. *hugs him tight*
-Clock go smash. Yeah, I've had days like that.
-What did Dean cough up? Was that a Mahjongg tile? There was a symbol on it, wasn't there? *pauses* Looks like an ampersand and an 'S', with part of another letter like a 'C' or something with a little bit that sticks up from below. Ooo, and we're playing with the censors again! Dean said "What the f-" So, maybe another Winchester cursing rule is "If you just coughed up a Mahjongg tile" but Dean washes it off and sees that that's not what it is, so stops himself because it doesn't qualify for R-rated cursing. *nods* So. Hunh. Wood chip from something that had lettering on it. Did the guy die in a wood chipper??? o.O
-Dean's little "But I don't wanna be a clue!" Hee!
-Hey! That mill looks familiar... Did they do an interview from there once?
-Dean is drinking waaaaay too much. He doesn't get wasted on a case, and has gotten pissed off at Sam for doing so. Maybe, since he kind of is the case, they've decided he has an exception? In which case, if he's drinking heavily, why is he still in the field, and why in fuck is he still driving. *glares*
-Ooo! Trunk! Hi TRUNK!!! *glee*
-"I'm not carrying that. It could go off." Also, it's almost certainly not loaded with salt since it uses bullets and not shells, and therefore useless. Sam? Where is your brain?
-Aw. Dean's "I'm six and I'm helping!" pose with the flashlight kills me dead.
-The EMF apparently has no off switch. Good to know, and explains why it didn't weird Dean out excessively when it went off on its own way back in Scarecrow. I want a schematic for that damn thing.
-They found Frank's ring! ...where are we again? Right lumber mill where whoever's haunting Dean died. So why was Frank there recently enough to lose the ring after the hand injuries started? Hm.
-I love the location! And they would have no problems finding an abandoned lumber mill in BC. My town had one for a few years and finally dismantled it and shipped it somewhere.
-Ooo! Something in a locker! I'm betting rats. Dean hates rats! Hee, he gives a little headshake before Sam opens the door, very cool.
-Aw, kitty! And Dean shrieks like Jared in the Season 1 blooper reel. "That was scary!" HA! That was awesome. [*rewinds several times*] Aw, and the little half-voiced freaked out "What?" from Dean as Sam walks away. Aw.
-He tore the picture and the mill started up... okay, how did that work? Was it jamming something open? Oh, no wait. It's a ghost thing. Der. *smacks forehead*
-'Blair Witch' has forever changed the sight of an unexpected person standing in the corner with his face to the wall as seen in the light from a flashlight and made it exceptionally freaky.
-Dean runs. Hm. I really want to see his perspective of all this.
-Hm. And Dean's developing a bit of a drinking problem, it seems. Sam better not let him drive back to the hotel. Grr.
-[Saw number whatever-billion looks like it's doing a take on the pit and the pendulum.]
-[Sam and Dean need to hunt down and uncurse that poor Skittle man. His life cannot be happy.]
-[Holy crap, how many commercials are there???]
-Dean's drunk. A relatively subtle drunk compared to his brother. Interesting. Still controlled despite being weaving. Why is Sam still dragging him along when he's obviously not up to working the case?
-"You're awesome." Heee! Much as Dean likes his beer, he doesn't drink to excess very often in canon. He was getting a little loose and goosey with... damn. The awesome hunter guy with the Johnny Walker Blue in 3.15. But he wasn't totally sloshed, just wiggly. Even here he's not utterly gooned though. He's downed enough to accomplish the effect necessary, drowning the fear hallucinations, and stopped. This does not speak well for Dean's possibilities of becoming an alcoholic, but since the ghost effect has taken all his normal defense structures against anxiety and fear off-line, he's pretty much forced to try to find an external means of coping, which is apparently not 'talking to Sam' because there seems to be something ...off about Sam. Plus, Sam called him a dick, so among the pre-existing anxieties running rampant inside Dean right now there has to be the thought that since Sam apparently thinks Dean's a dick, Dean thinks Sam thinks that Dean deserves this. Ow. And since Dean's coping mechanisms aren't functioning, even his miniscule sense of self-worth isn't there to cushion that thought, and it's gone straight to heart and is sitting there festering. Owwwww. See? This is why I want to see Dean's internal perspective of this episode.
-*mops up spilled meta*
-Murals everywhere in this town. Even in the police station. It's not Chemainus, is it? No, I don't think so. I mean, I'm a spoilerphobe, but if the show had set foot on the Island, I would have heard about it.
-Gaaahhh, scratching his skin off with steel wool. Yeah, that's sane. So, is that the ghost's marks, or is it that fear of disease he's got with the hand sanitizer and shoes off thing out of control there. Hope he's not dumping hand sanitizer on that, because OW!
-Oooo, hallucination! "They know what you did." Ah hah! A murder and a cover-up. So, the Sheriff covered up a wrongful death, either this Luther guy who died at the mill, or what's his name's wife. Or both. Hm...
-"These badges are fake!!" Aw, Dean. *pats* See? It's like the effect the ghost has is to unhook all the rational adult coping mechanisms and magnifies every single one of the person's inner anxieties and fears, even the little ones that breeze right by normally. Which is why Dean's seeming like he's 6, and why I want to wrap him up in warm blankets and feed him soup and cocoa. And also why I want to see Dean's perspective of this episode, because for him? It's absolutely not funny.
-"Those are real. Obviously. I mean who would pretend to be an FBI agent, hunh? That's just nutty!" *facepalm* Yes. Six years old. *pats Dean and his very distressed face*
-I'm guessing Garland's brother's not originally from Colorado with that accent...
-Luther Garland is too big and too mean-looking? He's a monster?? Whaaaaa-? He looks like an okay guy, just bald and a bit hefty! Seriously, is this town full of paranoid assholes or what??
-"Her man Frank killed her." Yeah, figured. {{ETA: After a careful relisten, I can hear now what the guy actually says is "Her man Frank killed Luther". Dude, seriously, enunciate.}}
-Ooo! Old Mac! The mill office uses a Mac!!! \o/ To be specific, the earliest model with that specific case would be a Mac LC520, (roughly equivalent computing power to a 386 with no math coprocessor). Which was first produced in 1993. Hee. So. When was this murder again? *is a smartass* Sorry. Hee. I love that they got the old Mac though! Not quite old enough to be twenty years ago, but having an old Mac Plus there with the 9" monitor would have been hilarious. Also extremely hard to find perhaps, as they haven't exactly been getting preserved as collector's items. :-P
-"Turns out she killed herself, but Frank didn't know that." Whoa, whoa, whoa. Waaaaaaitaminute. You just said Frank killed her! Like a minute ago! Dude, what the hell?? He's starting to remind me of the 'wise old stereotype' from "Bugs" for crying out loud. *checks IMDB* Hm. Which was also written by two new writers no one ever heard of before. Hm. {{ETA: Sigh. See? This is why enunciation is important.}}
-Coming in and finding a wall full of drawings of your spouse would be massively freaky, but certainly not something to commit murder over. A discussion of some kind, maybe a restraining order? Murder, not so much. Even if she's missing and Frank killed her/doesn't know where she is, so... gah. Brain hurts. {{ETA: Brain still hurts}}
-Taking Luther out at gunpoint and chaining him to the- Oh wow. Luther got road-hauled. That's a horrible way to die, and not a quick one. Jeez. Poor Luther! Yeah. First degree murder, that. I'm glad Luther came back and killed this fucker. And is gonna kill the officer that covered it up. Go Luther. *glares in fury*
-"Frank wasn't thinking straight." ...okay, Luther's brother, I am now ignoring you. You are inconsistent and contradictory {{ETA: and don't enunciate worth beans}}, and you just excused your brother's murderer verbally. You, sir, are a dick. *ignores*
-Sam, tell me you are not letting Dean drive in his current state. You can get the keys from him, you have reach on him by about three inches.
-Now. Dean's anti-hunting outburst is all his fears brought out without any of the higher thought or positive thought allaying them. Judging by the suit and time of day, (incidentally, insta-night, yes?) he's probably coming up to where we saw him at the start, running from Fifi, and coming up on his deadline. So, right now, all he is is his fears and anxieties, untempered by any kind of coping mechanism. So, outburst.
-You know, it is technically possible to set an entire road on fire... soak some of that copious sawdust in gas, 'borrow' a dumptruck or something with a spreader attachment, maybe a tarring torch or two... *koff* Not that the town would be thrilled about their roadway getting torched, but seriously, screw the town. It's full of quirky nutbags, liars and assholes who think a big, bald guy is a monster that doesn't deserve justice for being horribly murdered for drawing pictures of the only person who's nice to him. Screw what the town thinks. Grr.
-Sorry. Rant. I feel better now.
-"We are insane!" Yep! And that's why we love you. *nods*
-Only 8 hours a day in the car? Hm. That's a mite low, methinks.
-Five albums! (I figure he actually meant five albums he plays over and over and a smattering of other stuff that he pops in once in a while. Like Bon Jovi) Okay, name them! Back in Black by AC/DC, The Black Album by Metallica, Led Zeppelin something or other, Fire of Unknown Origin by Blue Oyster Cult, and... what? Pieces of Eight by Styx? I dunno. I rather like the idea of Dean having a tape with "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" on it, although I doubt he plays that track anymore. And he has to have "Unforgiven", "Wherever I May Roam" and "Nothing Else Matters." Must. Hard to narrow it down to five though... maybe one of them's a 'Greatest Hits of Hard Rock' style compilation, or a mix tape. *ponders*
-Dean walking away... that bears more pondering. Obviously on the surface of it, the writers needed to get him off on his own so he could get chased by Fifi. Now. Sam not chasing after him when he's on a countdown to a heart attack? Something's off there. Really off, and I don't know now if Sam's actually off in some way, or if it's a lazy script convenience. Needs pondering. *ponders*
-So, the summary of Dean's outburst, beyond the surface, is all the reasons not to do what they do, and why Sam might not want Dean around. And why Sam might want to do something other than hunt, which Dean doesn't want to be 'learn how to be the antichrist'. And because Dean's coping mechanisms are offline thanks to the ghost sickness, he can't handle any of it and walks. Hm. Needs more pondering. *ponders some more*
-Hee! As Dean is confronted by Fifi, on the soundtrack, that's the "silly boys" incidental music! That 'buduh buh buh' guitar thing. Wow, been a long time since we heard that, hasn't it?
-Hey, is Dean's bed not the one nearest the door? That would be awesomely consistent with him being freaked and Sam taking the role of protector! \o/
-Oooo. Oh yeah. Dean's fears about Sam, here we go! It's just a hallucination, but here we have Dean's Sammy anxieties combo, of 'Sam doesn't need me anymore', 'I'm in Sam's way', and 'Sam secretly wants to be evil.'
-YEAH!!! YEAH!!! YED!SAM!!! DEAN GETTING THROWN INTO A WALL BY YED!SAM!! And! AND!!! "No one's possessing me Dean!" 'Scuse me a minute. *IS FREAKING SMUG* There I feel better. Even though this is just a hallucination and didn't actually happen? I bloody called it. Kind of back at the start of Season two, too. Along with 90% of fandom no doubt, but still. Yeah! *dances with glee*
-So, to stop with the smug for a second, this is Dean's fears for Sam, possibly also a sense or intuition he doesn't want to admit to himself, that he's becoming YED. And foreshadowing. And the whole "Sam turning evil" thing doesn't bother me at all, because Dean's totally going to bring Sam back from this when it happens, no matter how far it goes. Because this show is and always has been about the strength of family to survive impossible-seeming challenges. Sam and Dean will end up together, as brothers and family, and it'll save the world in the process. It's going to hurt like thunder getting to that, but it's going to happen. I've known it since "Bloody Mary" and it's about damn time. I LOVE THIS SHOW! \o/
-Bobby! Making excellent time from South Dakota to Colorado.... Wait, it's daylight again? What happened to four hours? Insta-night, insta-day... arg. Okay. So. There was, um, an eclipse, and... *headdesk* Arg.
-Heh. Gumby and Pokey. Hadn't realized it was such a grim show. O.O Also, callback to "Does that make me Pokey?" maybe? Eee. Dean's poor arm. I wonder how much of the 'road rash' on the victims is ghost effect, and how much is them scratching themselves? Eee.
-"Just under 2 hours." Okay, so it's 6 AM, four hours to go (hotel room) was 2 AM, Fifi was 1 AM (43 hours after the start), sooo... they left Luther's brother just after midnight? Or earlier, and Dean was wandering all over town in his FBI suit getting scared by random things and thinking about stuff before he met up with Fifi, and why in hell couldn't Sam find him in that case?? Gahhh. This is totally reminding me of "Bugs", this whacked out, yet precise timeline. Arg.
-Also, Dean has 2 hours to go and you're sitting on the Impala swapping notes? Gnh. Naw, no rush at all. You just have the bare bones of an idea of how to figure out a half-assed plan and Dean has two hours left. No rush or anything. Arg.
-Bobby speaking Japanese! \o/ Of course Bobby knows Japanese! Bobby's awesome! What did he say? What's Japanese for 'idjit'? Was there a 'baka' in there? *flails with gleeeeee* Sounds like: "Kimi naku mareru mai karazuto daiyo." Which my 'make the machine translator beg for mercy' word-mangling skills are converting into: "You weep rarely bent over dancing crow promoted pawn substitute." Sooooo, probably not what Bobby said, unless he's jerking Sam's chain about speaking Japanese. Which I figure is entirely possible, either way. Or both. Because Bobby is that awesome. *nods*
-Buru Buru. Okay, so, probably not this or this, though I think even in his current freaked out state, a shivering, weeping puppy that is scared of everything and likes strawberry jelly or a vibrating pig might be a bit daunting for Dean. Heck, I'm daunted by the vibrating pig. The closest thing I can find on Wikipedia (yeah, yeah *handwaves*) in Japanese legendary creatures is a Baku which is a dream and nightmare devouring beast, or also a... tapir. M'kay. Doesn't sound like it. In crypto-zoology there is a Buru, but it's a giant blue lizard with white spots that's some variety of monitor lizard or lake monster. Proooobably not that either. So, google-fu is failing me, or I have the name wrong, or the writers of this episode made it up. If it's the last one? *shakes head and tsks* New guys.
-Scare the fear ghost to death. Okay, yeah, uh... That makes no sense at all. If it's born of fear, how is scaring it to death going to help? Also, that's frigging mean guys! Poor guy had a crappy life, got murdered by an asshole, had his murder covered up, and is killing the jackasses who wronged him. And I guess going viral and killing off innocents like the vice-principal and the bouncer and Dean, but really, isn't there some better way of stopping this thing than scaring it to death? Won't that make it worse?? Why not unscare it somehow? Point out that the people who wronged him are dead, and he can stop now? And that Dean's not a dick? Gahhh.... *wants plot logic*
-Although given the sterling example of Dean as to how expediently Sam and Bobby can build up a person's self-confidence and so forth, they'd be trying to unscare the ghost for decades before they made any progress.
-What's with the long shot of Sam and Bobby at the mill? Is something watching them? I mean, it's pretty and all, I guess, very BC, but why is that shot there? It's incongruous.
-Hey, Dean's got his Season 2 ringtone back! It survived Sam's giant stomping foot of 'Verizon cancelled the product placement money, the bastards'! Still no idea where it's from, it's none of the obvious options.
-Yeah. Don't tell Dean your half-assed plan. He's already got enough reasons to be scared to death. Bobby thinks it's a terrible plan too. This does not bode well. Like at all
-Hounds. Oh Dean. A person with so many real nightmares in his life should not be exposed to a thing that exacerbates fear.
-Gun swatting! Yay! Ooo! When Dean's hallucination had the cop flash black eyes at him, did Dean get, like, a freakish burst of strength there?? Or what? o.O
-Very slight blue tinge to the cop's face as he's having the heart attack. There's a lovely touch. Not sure what's scared him bad enough, but hey, Dean can be a scary S.O.B., I guess. Although there is a veeeery, very faint "I know what you did" in the soundtrack. Nifty.
-Hang on... Was the cop exposed from the post-softball nachos? He should be dead yesterday then, shouldn't he? ...Or was he exposed when he went to see the guy at the morgue in the morning before Sam and Dean got there, from the scratches, I guess? And why are the coroner and the cops who went to find him and all them not dead? I don't buy the 'dick' rationale, because that's just Sam's smokescreen to distract Dean from asking questions about why Sam's not infected and Dean is, because Sam knows Dean would take it to heart and not deeply question that someone would think he was a dick and Sam wasn't and, ooo. Sam, you ass. *glares* Sorry, right. So. Why is the ghost really infecting the other people. I'm thinking it's people with a position (or perceived position) of authority/responsibility, and a sense of guilt or failure in it, or a sense of lost control. Can't speak to the Vice-principal and bouncer, because all we have for them are names, occupations and a ludicrously-named softball team. The murderer, aside from being the murderer may have been an abusive spouse, or a spouse murderer, {{ETA: or not}} or may have had other issues, because he certainly wasn't a prince of a guy. Him getting infected 20 years later... and we're back to why was his ring at the old mill again? Did he go out there to be guilty, or gloat, or re-visit the shrine for his wife that poor, murdered Luther set up? But he went after the injuries began, because the right showed as a void in the damage on his hand. Arg. Okay. Getting headache here. I say, the murderer went back to the scene of the crime, maybe he goes jogging by there or something, lost or threw away his ring, sense of failure and guilt, wakes up the fear ghost thing, gets infected. Or something. Then goes to the softball game, infects the Vice-Principal and the Bouncer who are in positions of some kind of authority and feeling guilty or like failures about something for some reason (aside from being on a softball team named the Corn Jerkers), then goes home, goes nuts and dies, the two guys he infected also die in the other town, original guy is not found 'til three days later by wholly unguilty or failure-feeling officers *pats Linus* and taken to the deranged yet non-guilty-authority-feeling coroner, and is then visited by his friend the very guilty figure of authority who covered up the horrible murder of an innocent man who happens to be the original source of the infection, and so Luther gets the cop who covered up his death, then Sam and Dean show up shortly afterward and are handed organs and sprayed with spleen juice and Dean's baseline sense of responsibility/failure/guilt is a little off the charts with this whole "Sam's going evil/armageddon" thing, so he's like cake to the fear ghost thing, and Sam's either previously occupied by YED germs or immune in some way or doesn't feel any sense of authority/responsibility or guilt about anything, so the ghost sickness bypasses him entirely for the sweet, gooey emo cake that is Dean's sense of personal responsibility and perceived failures, real or strictly sourced in Dean's negligible sense of self-worth. HA!
-*inhales* Gah. Sorry. I had to try to make some kind of sense of this for myself, even if it required beating things into shape with a hammer and it makes no sense to anyone else. *hides hammer*
-Hm. A guy just died, more than just a guy, the town's top cop, in the middle of their hotel room, in front of the busted open door, when I'm sure the hotel front desk noticed him heading upstairs, and someone probably heard the door being busted down... surely that's reason enough for a massive anxiety spike for Dean. Not so much though. Hm.
-WALKIE TALKIES!!!! \o/ YAY!!! I love that Bobby uses walkie talkies! For short range stuff they make much more sense than cell-phones, and also are a neat little 'old-school hunting' touch from Bobby's involvement. Although... where is Bobby?
-Yeah, like planning to scare the poor bastard to a second death isn't bad enough, you have to tear up his pictures. Are you sure you're not a dick, Sam?
-Ooo, he's taller than Sam, hee!
-Hm. Corpse of the dead cop lying in the middle of the floor in front of the busted-in door, and Dean's tossed a blanket over it. Yeah. That'll help.
-Owww. Dean's arms. Ow. Oh Dean.
-Dean and the Bible. Hm. I sense that scene may have been taken in a few vastly different ways by fans, which I'm not getting in to right now, but what I'm wondering is how did the Bible end up on the floor right there. Did Dean have it out earlier and pitch it at a hallucination? *ponders*
-Lillith! Little non-kissy Lillith! Cute makes evil eviler Lillith! Yay! Totally a hallucination because the kid she inhabited in last year's finale is still somewhere in Indiana. In therapy. *nods*
-So, form aside, is Lilith real here? She doesn't seem to have the wiggly-Dean-view fx going on... I don't think she is. I don't think. Hmm.
-"Doggie years" Heeeeeee. Ah hah! There's the wiggly Dean's-eye-view. Lilith is indeed hallucinatory. Yeah.
-I think Dean really doesn't remember his time in Hell. This Lilith, being a hallucinatory projection of his fears going on about how can he forget that is the voice of his own anxiety that, that, something happened to him in Hell that he can't remember, and it's freaking him out. I think I know what it iiiiiis but that's just my theory. Anyway, I think he doesn't remember his time in Hell, and fear!Lilith is the representation of Dean's own massive freakedness about seemingly having no memory of something he figures he should remember with great clarity, but doesn't except for fleeting incomprehensible nightmares of Hell, and what that might mean.
-"Silly goose. You know why." Hm. You know, because this is fear!Lilith, and a hallucination which is bringing up deeply held conscious and maybe subconscious anxieties for Dean, this is almost like his intuition talking to him and taking all the stuff he's afraid is happening that's setting off the little "something is wrong" alarm bells that he's been pushing aside and bringing it up to the surface. Of course it's doing it to scare him to death, but still.
-Silly Sam. Why'd you leave the salt gun way over there? And if this ghost is a buruburu fear ghost thing, why is it physically attacking, and not killing Sam with his fears? Unless there's something different about Sam and it can't get into his head to gain access to his fears, because if he's immune to the disease, he's probably immune to the mind-friggery. Also, he's got his Mystery Spot walls almost entirely back up, and if anyone can hide their fear behind emotional fortifications, it's a Winchester. Dean was having an off day. Plus that whole guilt and responsibility thing. *nods like that made sense*
-And not being able to access Sam's fear, the ghost continues to kick his ass physically which *handwaves*
-OOO!!! OOO!!! During the combat! They've CGI'd in a blue undershirt on Sam to cover where his tattoo would be!! When the Luther grabs Sam's shirt to haul him off the floor! There's a flash of blue-white on Sam's chest, and if you can slow it down, you can see a very un-shirt-like day-glo patch of straight not-very-fabricy pale blue where Sam's over-shirt gaps over where his tattoo would be!! That's there one frame and not there the next when the over-shirt's high enough again. Oh, very well done, CGI crew! *applauds them for catching that before fandom did and spun the lack of tattoo on Sam into a giant heaving pile of erroneous meta* Woo! I wonder if they have a person or two on staff whose job it is to watch Sam and Dean's chests for flashes of skin that should have tattoos so they can fix them in post-production. Hee. That's fantastic! Yay detail!! \o/
-Baboom! Hee. Oh I bet they had so much fun shooting the scenes with Lilith and Dean. I want bloopers, or behind the scenes silliness or something.
-*sighs at the 'let's kill the ghost again' resolution* Making the ghost unscared would have sat way better with me than scaring it to death again.
-*randomly snuggles Bobby's boots for being fugly steel-toed clodhoppers like the boots of a guy who owns a wrecking yard and kicks demon ass on the side should be*
-Also, yet again, Dean's heart is under attack. So, is it a theme? Or coincidence? Hm.
-Yech. Poor ghost. I guess the whole buruburu thing made it so there wasn't any options or whatever, but that was nasty. I still don't see why the ghost won't come back worse. This feels like half the horror movie sequel-set-up endings ever.
-OMG! Ghost gets scared to death, makes it worse, comes back, only this time it was Bobby, Sam and the Impala that did it. This guy's gonna haunt the frigging Impala! Oh crap. O.O
-Or totally not! Not at all! Ever! I didn't even think of that! No idea what I'm talking about. What great weather we're having. How about that local sports team... *looks around nervously for Kripke*
-Dean's arms... are better. Hunh. No scratches, even though at the end there, half of the damage may have been self-inflicted from scratching. That's handy. Hrm. So, is that a 'monster's dead now' effect or a lingering 'Castiel made it all better' effect? In which case, Dean's *koff* de-rehymenated status is self-renewing too, so he'd be a perpetual virgin. Heh. Naw. I figure it's the 'monster's dead effect'.
-[How much do I love that there's people going to a sci-fi con in the T-Mobile G1 commercial? It's like, that's my people. Okay, not exactly, but still, it's neat to see the subculture of fandom getting accepted into the mainstream enough to be exploited for advertising purposes. Also, I think the one on the right might be wearing an attempt at a Vorlon encounter suit with the mask not on. *glee*]
-Iron chain etched with spellwork. Sure. That didn't sound like a last minute explainer or random handwave at all. *pats new writers*
-"Awww"/"He's adorable!" Heee! Sam and Bobby are Dean girls!
-Again with the random long shot of the scenery! From above this time. Still very BC, with the
-"What did you see? Seriously." EYEFLASH! Sam's eyes flashed yellow! Eeeee! Heh. I say that's a lingering hallucinatory effect, and that's what Dean's writing it off as. Maybe. *is still smug like a smug thing*
And the Extra?
-BWAH! I love that you can hear Jared just gutting himself laughing and all the crew snickering and so forth. Hee! That was awesome.
Generally speaking, That was fun, but it bears more pondering.
Now. What I want to see? What I really, truly want to see? Is the non-humorous version of this episode. Or certain scenes from Dean's perspective, and some of the scenes we got through Dean's eyes from Sam's perspective. Because as I mentioned above, for him they weren't funny at all, and it'd be freaky to see this all in that light.
Also an AU happy ending for Luther's ghost. Poor guy.
NO SPOILERS IN COMMENTS, OR REFERENCES TO ANY PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL OR PREVIEWS FOR UNAIRED EPISODES, PLEASE.
no subject
I heard that line as -"Her man Frank killed HIM." (meaning Luther). It flows with the rest of the narrative. Wife disappears. Husband thinks she is dead (I think the brother mentioned they were still looking for her). Husband thinks Luther killed wife. Husband kills Luther. Wife is discovered to be a suicide. Oopsie-Woopsie, we killed the wrong guy, but we're all buddies here, so let's cover the murder up. I admit the brother forgiving Luther's murderers seems odd and unloving, but time and time again, the things that turn into ghosts and bad supernatural things are those that can't let go of what has happened to them and it has been 20 years since Luther's death. Maybe, at some point the brother decided to let go of the anger and hate.
As for burning the road, I too thought that that would be the obvious solution. Later I realized that the whole idea was screwy. The point of burning the bones, is to destroy what is LEFT of the body. 20 years of being exposed to the elements should have taken care of anything but bone, and it is unlikely that bone would have come off during the roadhauling. It was just a poor excuse to have an extremely violent end for a ghost that got screwed in life and screwed again in death.
I had mixed feelings about this episode. I felt the characterizations were off for both Sam and Bobby at points. Your meta has smoothed over some of my problems. So thanks for writing this.
no subject
It's the backdrop for Jared's "why does Jensen cry my name in his sleep" interview.
... Why the hell are you trying to apply a consistent timeline to Supernatural?! *eyes you*
Meta (which I will post on my own eventually)
Oooo, hallucination! "They know what you did." Ah hah! A murder and a cover-up.
In my opinion, the They-Were-All-Dicks theory is just a theory. When in fact they were all involved in the death and cover-up of an innocent.
Which, you'll recall, is damn near exactly the type of person Bloody Mary went after. In that episode, Sam was covering up the premonitions he'd had about Jess and we never found out why Dean's eyes bled.
Sam's "involvement" in Jess's death is no longer a secret. He wouldn't be infected. Whatever Dean's hiding is still hidden and he's fair game.
Sam and Bobby don't know what it is. No one does. They didn't know about Luthor yet so they didn't have any other information. So they assumed it was some sort of personality trait. Because that's what usually drives angry spirits.
Sam either thinks he's immune the way he is to everything or is so far in denial he's all "lalalala... I'm not scary at all. YOU are SO much scarier and more a dick to people than I am. Yes, all is well."
no subject
Ahh. Yeah. *facepalm*
... Why the hell are you trying to apply a consistent timeline to Supernatural?! *eyes you*
It's just they were doing so well this season so far! I thought they were on the wagon for the cracked out timelines! *heavy sigh*
When in fact they were all involved in the death and cover-up of an innocent.
Hm. Doesn't speak well for the Vice-Principal and the Bouncer, but yeah, I can see that.
no subject
I just re-listened and he actually says "Her man Frank killed Luther." Which does indeed make a hell of a lot more sense and jives with the narrative.
The point of burning the bones, is to destroy what is LEFT of the body.
I kind of thought the 'fire and salt' thing was to purify the bones, as both have some lore as agents of purification. Fire doesn't destroy bone, not unless it's a lot hotter than could be managed on a recently exhumed corpse.
Your meta has smoothed over some of my problems. So thanks for writing this.
Cool, I'm glad it helped. :-)
no subject
I totally thought of you when we got YED!Sam, and all your theories. You do realize that it means that you and DEAN think alike, right? :-D
Fandom has been making a lot of fuss about the bible clutching, but geez. Apart from the whole Castiel business (he even specifically told Dean to read the bible, now that I think about it) I know that if I was in that situation I'd be clutching any holy book to my chest, hallucinated or not, including the Coran, Buddist scrolls, Shinto... er, what do they have, scrolls too? Hell, I'd probably clutch one of those scientology books if that was all I had at hand!
The "dick" thing: apparently Kripke DOESN'T think Dean is a dick, and felt so strongly about it that he went on the net and announced publicy that it was just poorly executed. The key is "uses fear". Also Lilith's "you know why" was supposed to be underscored better (so, good spotting!). Me? I immediately thought about Croatoan. If Sam is immune to demon plaugue, a little ghost illness is nothing. And we still need an explanation to that, and we're going to get it, right Kripke? RIGHT?
Sam's final yellow-eyes-flash: I read it exclusively as Dean thinking about what he's not telling Sam. A visual reminder. I think they should have re-cut a snippet of the first hallucination (because that's how I see it and they must pander to me, see? *nods*) or done something more along the lines of Dream a little Dream Demon!Dean snapping his fingers at the end. But probably they wanted that extra helping of ambiguity.
And finally: dude! *points* you see that? Your plot bunny is having it's wicked way with my plot bunnies! I shall not stand for this! *stomps feet, gets bucket of cold water, mutters about Castiel running amuck in all my fanfic ideas lately*
I saw the promo last week, and wasn't as confused as most people seemed to be. Maybe it was a different version because mine had the plot point clearly spelled out, with captions and ominus promo voice-over. But I was expecting something very different. More along the lines of Faith. Heh. I'm a whumper at heart, therefore I wanted serious h/c, not played for laughs (I could hear JA being on set and being all "no, wait I know I can scream higher! let me try again!"). This was supposed to be right after Metamorphosis, and I have to hand it to TPTB, if I had those two back to back without the awesome crack of MM in between? I think I'd be an emotional wreak now.
Gah, sorry for making such a long comment. *looks around* Is it thursday yet?
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I had Friday off, so I spent all day on this. *facepalm*
I totally thought of you when we got YED!Sam, and all your theories. You do realize that it means that you and DEAN think alike, right?
Hee! That thought gives me warm fuzzies, although it really, really shouldn't.
Fandom has been making a lot of fuss about the bible clutching, but geez.
Oh, I'll bet. Sigh.
The "dick" thing: apparently Kripke DOESN'T think Dean is a dick, and felt so strongly about it that he went on the net and announced publicy that it was just poorly executed.
Hee! I saw the unspoilered version of that! Hehe. I think we make him nervous. *evil grin* And, yeah, poorly executed is a phrase I'd use to describe it.
The key is "uses fear".
See, and I don't get that from Dean at all. I've had people in my life who do use fear as a weapon pretty much my entire life, and Dean doesn't, IMO. From my perspective, "uses fear" rang even falser than 'Dean's a dick'.
Sam is immune to demon plaugue, a little ghost illness is nothing.
Well of course. :-D
Sam's final yellow-eyes-flash: I read it exclusively as Dean thinking about what he's not telling Sam. A visual reminder.
*nods* That makes sense too.
Your plot bunny is having it's wicked way with my plot bunnies!
Ooo, er. Heh, well, such is a plot-bunny. I've got a bunch threatening to gang up on me right now and make me re-write this entire episode, and they're stomping on my poor WIP-bunnies that I've been trying to coax into playing for weeks/months. This is not happy-making for me. :-(
I could hear JA being on set and being all "no, wait I know I can scream higher! let me try again!"
He did a damn near perfect rendition of Jared's goofball girly-scream. I wonder how many times they had to re-take some of those shots because Jared lost it. :-D
This was supposed to be right after Metamorphosis, and I have to hand it to TPTB, if I had those two back to back without the awesome crack of MM in between?
*nods* You have a definite point there.
Gah, sorry for making such a long comment.
No worries. Long comments make me feel like I've done something that's made someone think about stuff, so I'm happy to see long comments on this. :-)
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Heh. I'm getting a 'Quincy' credits flash back from the way this is being shot with the coroner and Sam and Dean on the other side of the table. Oh yeah...was half expecting one of them to hit the floor, like the cop did in the Quincy opener :)
Fleeing the incredibly tiny dog with the little pink bow! The only dog I've ever been deliberately bitten by was a chihuahua. So I've got a prejudice against small yappy dogs and a deep abiding love for big dogs that bark but rarely bite.
Pieces of Eight by Styx? Nah, if he's got a Styx album, it's Equinox. Cause it's got "Born for Adventure" on it. "Cause I was born, born for adventure...women, whiskey and sin. No, never surrender...Live by the sword till the end!... They spoke of my capture, And of my escape. They called it misfortune, but I called it fate." Damn, now I want an SPN vid to that song. I also thought 8 hours in the car was way too low a number. How about "We're together nearly 24/7."?
This is totally reminding me of "Bugs", this whacked out, yet precise timeline. Arg. Sometimes you have to not think so much. After we knew the sheriff was infected, I thought maybe he was infected before Dean, which might explain the hand cleanser. Then was Dean infected at the autopsy or by the Sheriff?
Lilith is so well done by that child. She's so good at being creepy. Loved evil!Sam in Dean's hallucination...they must have had a great time filming that.
I hated the way they had to kill Luther. I thought he'd already been given enough shit in his lifetime. Was hoping Sam was just going to talk him into moving on. No, that's not gory enough. I was thinking salt and burn the road and hope the local fire department could keep it from becoming a huge forest fire, before Sam called Bobby. Why did it take 20 years for Luther to get pissed off enough for people to start dying? He couldn't leave the mill, and the husband only wandered back recently? I'd like to have seen Sam and Bobby a little more worried about the deadline, but if they'd started thinking about loosing Dean *again*, they wouldn't have been able to deal with the ghost. Loved Sam getting to be the big brother/protector for a change. Hoping someone (hint, hint) will do a story from Dean's perspective on this episode. He had to be dying inside while showing all his fears that are normally locked up.
I do watch the promos for next week, but most of the time, they don't give me an accurate impression of the episode to come. Which is probably the point! LOVED the extra bit! I think Jared was probably aware of what Jensen was planning, but I adored hearing his laughter in the background. I love that these guys still have such a sense of play and fun, and aren't taking themselves so seriously that they're afraid to have fun.
YAY!! loved that T-Mobile commercial with the Sci-Fi geeks! LOL!! I kinda want to follow them back to the hotel to watch the costume contest.
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Oooooo, no you wouldn't! I'd be miserable company during a first viewing! I don't talk during episodes at all, just scrawl notes, and am very much a growly bear if there are any distractions. The cat even knows to stay away when the note-taking table comes out! XD
After the first watch through I'd be much more social. *nods*
Oh yeah...was half expecting one of them to hit the floor, like the cop did in the Quincy opener :)
The implication that they might was definitely there. But they're too tough for that. *nods*
Nah, if he's got a Styx album, it's Equinox.
I mainly picked "Pieces of Eight" because of Renegade, but in retrospect that wasn't being played on the Impala tape-deck, that was over-top music, so it could very well be Equinox instead.
Then was Dean infected at the autopsy or by the Sheriff?
I'd say autopsy, because, really, they should have caught anything the guy had from the unsanitary things going on there. :-P
Lilith is so well done by that child. She's so good at being creepy.
I know! Isn't she fantastic? I hope they can get her any time Dean dreams or hallucinates Lilith. :-)
I hated the way they had to kill Luther. I thought he'd already been given enough shit in his lifetime.
Absolutely, and I think a sense of 'it has to be this, we've tried everything else and we're running out of time!' urgency instead of 'ho hum, hey, here'a a plan we just pulled out of a hat, whatever' was what was missing. Tension can make or kill a plotline, and there was some serious tension lack in this episode.
Hoping someone (hint, hint) will do a story from Dean's perspective on this episode. He had to be dying inside while showing all his fears that are normally locked up.
Oh I know. I'm hinting broadly for that myself because I'm about set to shoot myself if I don't make progress on some WIPs, and work is about to go insane again so time is going to be at a major premium. Also, I don't think I could do it justice. :-/
I love that these guys still have such a sense of play and fun, and aren't taking themselves so seriously that they're afraid to have fun.
I love that they are such awesome friends and utter absolute goofballs. I also loved the background traffic slowing down to rubber-neck when he's climbing on the roof of the car. :-)
metaing…
Sam being immune to all supernatural illnesses has possibilities…
Re: metaing…
Maybe mean to people like him. This is twenty years after Luther's death, so I doubt they were people he'd ever met. I didn't necessarily get that Luther was mentally disabled, although I can see that the implication was there.
Sam being immune to all supernatural illnesses has possibilities…
Oh, definitely.
Re: metaing…
Not necessarily. If Luther was in his late 20s or early 30s when he died, he'd be in his 40s or 50s now—the age of authority figures such as vice principals. The VP could've been a classmate. That doesn't explain the bouncer, but your idea of "people like him" could work, or the bouncer could be just as accidental as Dean.
I really should stop trying to impose logic on the show, shouldn't I? ^^6
Re: metaing…
Re: metaing…
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You've just made me enjoy this ep so much. I think I love this. *hugs the review close*
This may be(come) an episode that makes sense down the road. At the moment, however, I prefer to try and not think too hard about it.
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I think you're right about this being an episode to take another look at with later information about what's going on. Thinking too hard seems to be something I have a problem avoiding, unfortunately. :-D
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I was SO hoping someone else noticed Dean shaking his head "No" when Sam was about to open the locker, because it was so cute and funny.
I also hated how they had to defeat Luther. That sucked.
And I loved Sam's eyes flashing at the end. :)
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Summary:
-Thanks! Some episodes it's a little harder to be 100% positive with, but I gloss over or slide past stuff that I can't rationalize out of harshing my squee.
-Between the head shake and the little whimpery broken "What?" as Sam brushed passed, even though they were played for laughs, broke my heart.
-Luther's defeat was not a good one, and it seemed like lazy 'let's see what kind of special effect we can do' writing.
-Sam's Eyes: Shrieking and flailing aplenty, ask the cat. :-D
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(Anonymous) 2008-10-28 09:11 pm (UTC)(link)Sharon
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And the whole "Sam turning evil" thing doesn't bother me at all, because Dean's totally going to bring Sam back from this when it happens, no matter how far it goes. Because this show is and always has been about the strength of family to survive impossible-seeming challenges. Sam and Dean will end up together, as brothers and family, and it'll save the world in the process. It's going to hurt like thunder getting to that, but it's going to happen.
...and just had to say HOW ABOUT THAT for an accurate prediction? *applauds*
Love your ep reviews.
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*bows* Thank you, thank you. I'm often way the hell and gone out in left field, but sometimes I get something right. :-D
Love your ep reviews.
And thank you again! :-D