SPN 8.08 Hunteri Heroici

[snick_backup]

Y'all, this is the Team Free Will casefic episode I have been wanting for three seasons now. And there was heartbreaking Samness in it. And Cas development. And ongoing references to Who Framed Roger Rabbit and other things Loony Toons. But mostly SAAAAAAAAM. (I expect we'll soon see what he meant when he said holding onto the dream would destroy everything.) And also Dean and Cas having a heart-to-heart - "Talk to me" - because tuning into people's emotional turmoil is apparently a thing Dean does now. Unless it's Sam's. (Also, Sassiest episode since 7.21, y/y?)

On the downside, apparently we have seen the end of Dean's post-Purgatory adjustment period, which makes me sad. Woe. Also, I continue to feel that Cas is being written very... bluntly. I feel like it's all on the surface with him right now, no layers.

Perhaps there will be a more coherent review tomorrow, possibly to be accompanied by reviews for the last two eps.

Original entry posted at Dreamwidth. Feel free to reply here or there. ( DW replies)

Comments

[scarletscarlet.livejournal.com]

Sassy indeed :D. For just a moment, when Dean told them "No flirting" in the rest home, that he meant with each other ;).

But oh. Most of my feelings about this episode are apparently very achy for Sam. I had a kind of torn-sad-for-Castiel thing going on, because on the one hand, he did DO all the bad stuff, but on the other, some of it was while he was kind of possessed, so there's some sympathy there. Not a huge amount of story for Dean this episode, I think - he got to do lots of fun stuff, but the emotional weight of it was all very firmly with Sam. And a wee bit with Castiel.

Oh, Sam. What if Amelia wants to get back with Don, as one presumably would, and Sam has trouble letting go? I mean, his face with the news (and her face, tbh) - it's the kind of thing that's technically good news, but it changes everything, just when they were getting their feet under them.

Interesting implication from the dad that both Sam and Amelia need something too much for it to be genuine. If it had been them building something together from nothing, a slow burn thing, that's one story. It may instead have been pretty quick, in which case it feels more like they weren't so much building it as *creating* it, maybe. Very interested to see how the rest of it plays out.

[snickfic]

For just a moment, when Dean told them "No flirting" in the rest home, that he meant with each other

Seriously. I do not actually have any Sassy feelings, but I still find myself sort of rooting for unintentional ship fodder. I think it's because the actual shippers seem to be so good-humored about their ship.

YES for achy Sam-feelings. And look at show has completely undermined all plans I had for subversively shipping long-term Sam/Amelia. (I mean, I suppose I could just posit that Don never came back, but it seems fairly clear to me now that Don's arrival is what eventually prompted Sam to go back to Rufus's cabin, so if Don never comes back, Sam and Dean would never get back together, and that would be Bad.) But I'd have a reeeally hard time shipping the married woman away from her lost-now-found husband. Phooey.

[scarletscarlet.livejournal.com]

Apparently sleepiness robbed some words from that sentence. Between "rest home" and "that he meant", there should have been "I imagined" :).

I just watched the first season of Homeland a couple of weeks ago, and in the first few minutes of the first episode, a soldier who'd been missing for 8 years, presumed dead for most of them, is found - there's the call to his wife, who has been in a steady, happy relationship with a close friend of theirs for *almost* a year, about to tell the kids, having held out hope for just not quite long enough. And she ends it with that guy for the husband, because what else do you do, really, and it is, for a while at least, horrible.

But given that it was reports of Don's death that sent Amelia into such a spiral, and that it hasn't even really been *that* long, I can't want anything but for them to be together again, even though it's going to rip Sam into little pieces.

Ohhh, I had the thought earlier that the exchange Sam had with Amelia's dad about being a fixer-upper (and, ouch - I'm guessing we've met the source of Amelia's, um, bluntness) might have been something of a spur to him to look into school again. Because ten years ago, Sam's in Stanford, full of hope and potential, and now he's pretty much a mess.

While sure, if you trace it back, hunting's the only reason he's NOT dead (he wouldn't have made it out of the end of season 2 - the YED didn't target Mary because she was a hunter, so Sam would still have been an inadvertent offering), it's still got to be hard to not see that life as the thing that's brought him to this low point. And plenty of other people seem to manage to have steady lives despite the existence of the supernatural - I can see him hoping that he's served his purpose, as far as all that goes, and all the demons, all the angels; they might be willing to leave him alone now.

And then Dean comes back, and it's got to be a bit like Don and Amelia, right? I mean, joy that he's not dead; love, and happiness to see him; the complete upheaval of the life you've made in the meantime.

[lastabernathy.livejournal.com]

There is a little part of me that wonders if Amelia is even real. I mean, when Sam finally admits that he's running from something Don pops up.

I mean, yes yes, TV convenience but I wonder... It'd be an interesting twist.

[snickfic]

You know, I've been seeing the "imaginary!Amelia" idea around for a while now. I don't like it, because it'd mean this female character I've come to like so much isn't even real. But yeah, you are not the first to wonder.

[lastabernathy.livejournal.com]

I don't care for it much either, I'm finding myself liking Amelia and the way Sam is around her. Imaginary!Amelia might be just too much sad for me.

[tifaching.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about the fact that the actor playing Amelia's dad had guest starred on the show back in season one. Makes me want to check out the other people in Sam's bright and fuzzy year away and see if they also had shown up before. Because I'm starting to wonder if Amelia is real too. "Living in a dream world" was a big theme last night.

[snickfic]

That's an interesting idea! I mean, actors get reused all the time on this show, so I don't know that that alone is an a key indicator. But you're right about "living in a dream world" being a big theme, and of course Sam's flashbacks look awfully dreamy.