I'd Just About Kill For The Canonical Backstory On This Statement. 2014 Cas Was So Different, So Damaged

I'd just about kill for the canonical backstory on this statement. 2014 Cas was so different, so damaged - so differently damaged to his timeline-equivalent Dean, who's all hard edges and cold purpose. Yet the episode implies they've made the journey together.

What left Endverse!Cas soft and bleak and open and emotionally articulate? Did he crawl through broken glass hell to get here, dragging himself up from nowhere to achieve this level of function and resignation, or has it been a slow, blurry slide from grace into decadence with the bumps softened to meaningless by drugs, booze, and orgies? Why does he package the last one with the 'love guru crap' as if there's still a point to existence, a meaning beyond the moment, then act with Dean (both Deans) as if there isn't? And when did 2014!Dean stop looking at him the way 2009!Dean does?

THE END (5x04)

I know this is a gorgeous Cas scene, but there's something about Sam here that really tickles my interest. He's wary in a way that borders on fear once he gets past 'incredulous', like half thinking this is a 'talk someone down from the ledge' moment, but also like he's never forgotten who and what he's dealing with in Castiel.

Looking back over the seasons of Supernatural, I think it's a long time before Sam loses that sense of Cas as something 'other' and a bit awe-inspiring. He accepts Cas as a friend long before it wears off, but there's this... ginger handling thing Sam does with him, like he never quite knows how to tread. And a humour to it, like he's really enjoying the puzzle.

An angel showing up three sheets to the wind - all that power with the brakes of predictability off - ought to be proper scary. I mean, Cas could sneeze and accidentally level the building or something!

(It was a stupid question, though.)

One Castiel Quote per Episode 23/136 → 5.17 “99 PROBLEMS"

I could write a thesis on the performance of body language in this scene (if I didn't keep getting distracted by the dialogue, and the expressions on their faces, and 2014!Cas being more insightful while toasted on god-knows-what than most characters are on a good day). The before and after of Cas looking at Dean and spotting that he's not 2014!Dean.

The whole ep is a performance goldmine, a cinematic one, a worldbuilding one, a script one. The direction, I mean... wow. Incredible work. And half of it's held up by Jensen Ackles playing opposite himself, which is the extreme sport of acting - the sheer amount of dialogue between the two Deans alone makes this episode extraordinary when the rest of the episode pivots on him too. There's a reason you usually only get quick glimpses of 'double' characters interacting on TV: the time and performance energy it takes to do it well needs a movie schedule, not a TV episode one.

My list of 'best eps of anything ever' is actually pretty short after 40 years of active viewing. Adding this one was a no-brainer.

"Whoa, strange." ↳ 5.04 - THE END

Gabriel got mega-whumped for years, then these two trying to help him mend. Hurt, yes. Plenty. Comfort... I think they missed.

13.18 - Bring ’em Back Alive

Most purpose is more burden than glory. You just choose your burden. And trust me, you never wanna be the guy who avoids it ’cause you can’t live with the burden.

This is one scene that made a lot more sense to me - and more sense of what's going on with Castiel overall - once I watched the extended version in the BluRay deleted scenes. The full scene makes it explicit that Cas got demoted beneath Uriel, so it's more notable that Uriel leaves them to speak privately when Dean tells him to.

Cas tries to act as if his demotion isn't that important, but he can't look at Dean when he addresses it directly. He's off-balance and uncomfortable in a way that the aired scene doesn't show. That means he comes off as being less on the fence about what they're doing here and more frustrated - emotional - as well as torn on strategy. More as if he already knows for sure that this is objectively wrong, but isn't yet at a place where he has headroom for "Heaven's just plain wrong on this one and I need to do something about it." By the end of the episode, having dealt with Uriel's betrayal and listened to Anna, he's there.

It's a long scene - just over five minutes including a cutaway to show Alastair on the rack - so cuts were inevitable, but still. Some key Uriel-Dean tension got the chop, and it lost some thoughtful pauses and tense blocking.

It was maybe the wrong side of his conversations with Anna to give clarity to Castiel's personal motives; maybe it muddied the waters by suggesting that the demotion is a factor in his discomfort, but I think this unedited scene much better explains how and why Dean's persuaded to go along with the ghastly plan - why it takes a scene and a heartfelt conversation with Cas rather than an episode and heavy-handed tactics from Uriel to get Dean on board. In the full scene, Dean sees Castiel struggling with the wrongness of it, sees as well as hears the evidence that this is the last thing Cas wants to ask of him.

It also shows a little more of the doubt that Anna defines for Cas later in the episode - just that bit more show-don't-tell to help things along. It shows more clearly that Cas already knows that what he feels is doubt, and how much that alarms him, lending more context to the moment when Anna goes too far too soon, touches his hand, and he falls back on the certainty of obeying orders rather than being immediately persuaded by her offer of solidarity. That in turn makes the scene where he calls Anna back, asks her to help him, begs her to tell him what to do, even more momentous for the character.

Thank technology for BluRay extras!

4x16 — ’On the Head of a Pin’