caranfindel

On further review, regarding 9.10 and 9.11...

First, I said this in the comments in

spn_bunker but I want to put it out here as well.

Dean, you know your little speech in 9.10 about how you're poison, and everyone around you dies? Did you notice who you were giving it to? Sam, who has lost everyone you lost. He doesn't even have memories of your mother. He lost your father twice - when he died, and four years earlier when he told him to not come back. He lost Ellen and Jo, he lost Bobby, he lost Castiel, right along with you. You lost your friend Benny, and Sam lost every friend he's ever had. You lost Lisa and Ben, and Sam lost every woman he's ever loved, or even had feelings for (and aside from Amelia, he doesn't have the comfort of knowing at least they're safe somewhere without him). You both lost Kevin, but Sam gets the unique experience of seeing his body do the deed. He's even lost you more than you've lost him. So yeah, your life sucks. Believe me, I know your life sucks. But you really picked the wrong person to listen to that particular complaint.

Thinking some more about things that bothered me in 9.11...

I’ve seen the concept “yes once means yes forever” when it comes to giving consent to an angel, and I’m pretty sure it’s only appeared in fanfiction and fan speculation, not on the show. But I think it’s been well and fully Kripke’d now, since 9.10 showed Gadreel’s previous vessel saying “yes” again, which strongly indicates he needed to be asked. But this raises the question… that unnamed vessel was available and presumably willing to be Gadreel’s vessel again. So why did Gadreel cling to Sam? He could have left when things started getting uncomfortable, before he hooked up with Metatron. He could have left rather than sit through Crowley’s painful procedure. Why didn’t he? Is there some particular reason he needs/wants Sam as a vessel? Why else would he be willing to go through a torturous procedure rather than leave Sam’s body, even after his cover was blown?

Castiel’s timeline for healing Sam is peculiar. I’ve seen complaints that it makes no sense that Gadreel had to be inside Sam to heal him, and that it took weeks/months, and yet Cas was able to heal him instantaneously with a hand to the forehead. I don’t have a problem with that if we accept what Gadreel said about being injured himself and suffering from reduced powers. If he was telling the truth, there’s no reason Cas couldn’t heal Sam faster and easier. However, that doesn’t address Castiel’s own inconsistency, when he tells Sam he’ll have to heal him in stages, and yet after he undoes almost all of Gadreel’s work, he is able to re-heal him back to that point AND finish healing him instantly.

Why do I say almost? Because Castiel basically admits he didn’t remove all of Gadreel’s grace with the big-ass needle. He said at one time, he would have kept going, would have pushed the needle in further. That means there must have been more grace in Sam after he stopped, right? And it didn’t disappear until Cas healed him totally.

Cas and Sam... I still love these two. And I'm still irritated by Cas saying he didn't know guilt before he was a human. Note to the writers: Season 7. Also, I'm really bothered by "supportive" Cas telling Sam that he's "the only one who messed up more than you." Yes, Sam made a mistake. A very big mistake, that ended up unleashing Lucifer onto the world. But really, has he done anything else to deserve the label of the second biggest mistake-maker ever (and has anyone gone further than Sam to make up for their mistake)? It's interesting that Cas would give him this kind of barb-disguised-as-support, because it seems like a very Dean thing to do, and Dean is Castiel's model for how to treat Sam. So naturally he's going to be all "you're too important to lose even though you're a giant fuck-up." I just wish I knew the writers were doing this intentionally, and not because they really think Sam is a giant fuck-up.

And finally... a couple of wishes I made earlier in the season came true. I'm going to take that as a sign, and make some wishes for the rest of the season:

Sam is depressed. Clinically depressed. That's why he's acting this way. And by the end of the season he works his way out of it.

Dean apologizes, not for going to extremes to save Sam, but for lying to him about it. And Sam doesn't immediately let him off the hook, just like Dean never immediately lets Sam off the hook. Not because I dislike Dean, but because that's what people do.