#300th

Keeping it like old times

Aramis: You're not still mad about the Beginner's Guide, are you? Athos: And WHY would you think that? Aramis: Because your face...? Athos: *death glare™️* Aramis: I guess this would be a bad time to tell you about the second Athos guide... Athos: *death glare™️ intensifies a hundredfold* Aramis: *enthusiastically* It's really popular with- wait, are you... growling? Porthos *hisses from the far end of the room*: ARAMIS!! RUN, you idiot!!!

'One wit, like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a zest and flavour to the dish, but more than one serves only to spoil the pottage'. ~ From The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771)

Happy 300th Birthday to the delightful Scottish author Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)!

Smollett, whose literary output included plays, poetry, travel narratives and such wonderfully picaresque novels as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Adventures of Peregrin Pickle (1751), was a great influence on later writers such as Charles Dickens. George Orwell referred to him as, 'Scotland's best novelist'.

Wow with a side of whoopee, that was a wonderful episode. An episode full of wondrous moments, is what that was. I latched onto this final sequence we got, because to me the entire episode is very... reflective of what love looks like, or can look like, or should look like. 

And they’re visually tied together through the characters holding hands, imagine that beauty!

There’s the very gentle thread through the ep of love and longing, with the local teens immediately establishing that these things will be ingredients of this episode’s narrative. 

Max and girl who has no name so I’ll call her Flowery Top Girl (notice the flowers are yellow) (and Max is wearing Dean’s red PLUS lumberjack trademark, if you wanna call it that) are sweet, and hesitant, and it’s very, very, very brand new, but the way there’s encouragement and quiet flirtation there makes the heart sing high notes of joy.

Then we get John and Mary, who gives us a love that’s full of familiarity and history and zero hesitation. That kiss as they’re reunited... Yeah, that’s what a no-nonsense reunion between people deeply in love looks like. (yeah I’m so not eyeballing you Dean) (not at all)

This rooted love is then subtly juxtaposed through the episode, but most notably this is brought to a head in the final sequence.

Cue: hand holding -->

(I get emotional) So, John has to go, and he knows he does, or else everyone else will fade away, because Mary won't have been brought back, and Dean and Sam won’t be themselves anymore. Neither will Cas be, and, of course, Jack doesn’t exist at all. High stakes that make it understandable that this is the right choice to make. They got to have one family dinner together. That’s more than they ever would’ve thought they’d get to have. (still blowing my mind a bit)

So, Mary takes John’s hand before he fades away, back into 2003.

Now, the fact that Cas is incredibly important to this narrative is established through dialogue, when Sam saying they don’t know what else has changed leading right into the discovering exactly what else - or who else - has changed: Cas. 

In this final sequence we get John and Mary holding hands and as John returns back to his time, we get a reminder of the fight scene with Cas -->

--> being righted. Cas is back and all is well with the world. (or so it’s implied)

Aw, Dean, you can’t seriously equate being “cool” with being wanted for assault, murder and theft, can you? Also, you look like a wannabe douche in that mugshot, trying so hard to be something you’re truly not. 

Thank goodness that mugshot is exchanged for this ^^^, where community, health and family is the focus.

And now we get the mirrored hand holding, via Max and Flowery Top Girl -->

--> it is such a wonderful moment and I love these girls. Max’s reaction is brilliant! Interesting that Max steals a car to try and impress Flowery Top Girl and is doing lots of things to show she’s interested, but it’s Flowery Top Girl (wearing a little heart on a chain around her neck no less) who makes the first move... And look at that very, very tall friend walking alongside them. :) #mini-tfw

Anyway, look what the above image fades into! 

Yup. It fades directly into Cas returning to the bunker. As himself. Our Cas. 

And here are the faces of those who hear him arrive back -->

Oh, darling Dean. 

There he is. Had to add him because oh, darling Cas. You’ve no clue what Dean just went through. Sam, too, yes, but please do note how Sam is never in focus throughout Dean’s entire exchange with Cas. That’s Dean’s moment. Of terror.

Wanna know what really gets to me with all this? The symbology that I see in these final images.

Because the love between the parents willingly gives way for the budding love between, well, who do we think Max and Flowery Top Girl echo, if we’re getting deep into it? Yes, Dean and Cas.

John and Mary’s hands clasp as John’s hand fades, while the episode ends on the mirror image of Flowery Top Girl taking Max’s hand and in so doing saying, yes, I like you too, this is a thing, I want to be with you.

There’s another possible foreshadowing here in how Mary lets John go, because it’s necessary, and the right thing to do.

See, I was speculating as the season began that Dean would need to let Cas go, but it seems it might actually be the opposite, which, essentially, means Dean letting Cas go at the same time, but Cas being the one having to truly accept Dean’s choice and the necessity of Dean following through on it.

My speculation was based in my feeling a need for these two men to go through this phase in how they relate themselves to one another, because so much of their story has been about the other, not exactly in a codependent way, but in a blinding way, where the absence of one means lack of an internal compass in the other. This is unhealthy. 

And what they need - what they’ve essentially always needed - is to engage in what Jung would call individuation - answering the questions who am I? and who do I want to be? for themselves - in order to be able to live, you know, a long and happy life together. 

So for Cas - and Sam, too, though coming at it from the codependency angle - to actually come to a point where they’ve shown Dean how they’ll fight for him only to, ultimately, getting to show him how they’ll stand by him, because they love him, respect him and support his choice in the moment of absolute necessity, then this will pave way for what I do hope will happen: 

Dean appearing to have to surrender to fate by putting himself in that box, but having gained so much self-knowledge during his journey from building the box to now getting ready to surrender, that he realises it’s so far from what he wants for himself that what he’s going to do is face Michael and cast him out.

And possibly trap Michael’s essence in that box, because hell, we got a full minute of welding!Dean and I can’t imagine they’d spend a whole episode on the construction of that box if it’s not actually going to prove useful somehow...

Anyway, sorry for attaching speculation to my meta, but it feels quite fitting, looking at the possible foreshadowing here of letting go of the person you love, but as the narrative hints, letting go in order to get to start fresh.