#spn hell

a bit of canon

first, let's agree on exactly how we view the cage. as you probably know, on wiki fandom, the cage is listed in both the "places" and "objects" sections, but I want a more comprehensive approach.

so, I suggest referring to the fact that the cage, in a global sense, is a phenomenon that arises as a result of eternal imprisonment with the help of Chuck's magic (Enochian symbols). in other words, the cage is a state of confinement alone with constant torment, and because of it a place is formed. A prison. That's what we saw a few seasons later:

but is that all? how can the cage be interpreted if it's both a state, a place, and a space too? let's figure it out.

let's start with why time goes differently in the cage. as is the case with the usual levels of Hell, this was mentioned repeatedly in the series itself: time stretches, and one earthly year turns into several hellish/even a century.

we see a similar effect when we talk about black holes: gravity in them is so strong that time actually stops. of course, gravity itself is more a convention than a real force, but according to the theory of the singularity, gravity tends to infinity exactly in the center of a black hole.

however, in the case of black holes, we can detect them, even if they are very, very far from our solar system (look at sum random simulation or a digitized image of a black hole through a telescope, and you will see an accretion disk that gives it a "glow"). this doesn't resonate too well with the idea of the cage, that is almost impossible to find:

but who told us that the cage is a three—dimensional space and object?

may sound corny, but believe me, it changes a lot.

imagine that angels, such as in SPN, actually exist. if they are complex, multidimensional beings with their own structure and energy, not similar in properties to ours, then how will we see them? in fact, there is no way. if we talk about them, without resorting to the whole story of the vessels, we, three-dimensional creatures, do not realize even a part of what angels really are.

therefore, to keep such a creature locked up, without the ability to move freely in space, we need something more complex than, ahem, an ordinary cube. what about the tesseract? or even a penteract?

just look at this... ugh

many people have probably already explored this, or heard about this, but didn't quite understand. that's why I recorded my screen with several objects from "4D toys", so it would be more interesting and easier for ya'll to perceive. :)

since a tesseract, or hypercube, consists of layers of many 3D cubes, this is exactly how it will be perceived by our eyes:

(I'm also pretty sure that the cage, being smth "material", most likely rotates around it's axis, and if we saw it from the outside, it would be smth similar ig.)

this happens because our 3D world, like our 3D perception, cannot capture the fourth plane, and being in it, the 4D object seems to "disappear". the next example is more illustrative:

this is what happens to a dodecahedron from the perspective of a 2D person when it's in his dimension, while you and I know that the object has not disappeared.

the same with this 600-faceted thing. beauty ^_^

well we've more or less figured out the behavior of multidimensional objects that we can't fully comprehend. to summarize, the cage might look like a 5D cube in the picture below:

but what about time and condition of the person trapped in it?

as I already said at the beginning of the post, the cage is not just an object and/or a place. this is also a state of eternal imprisonment. this vision explains the canonical moment when Crowley used Enochian cage spells on Nick to imprison Lucifer in this body forever.

but there's other existing theory that can explain such oddities.

do y'all remember Schrodinger's cat, and how it's in superposition? (which, in turn, is based on the wave function, quantum entanglement and decoherence.) well actually, the cat isn't alive and dead at the same time. the observer's paradox is that we, as an observer, find ourselves in only one of many possible outcomes. in our outcome, the cat may be alive, while in the other it's dying. that's what multi-layered reality theory says. observation doesn't change the position of particles, because particles don't care we are looking at them. we just catch only one result out of all possible ones (a multi-world interpretation).

and here's the point: if there's no such thing as time in the cage at all, which makes it seem to people it's going too slowly, then all possible outcomes of events will never happen. perhaps not for us, lol. but, for example, for more complex creatures. for example, for Lucifer. no, I don't want to say that it makes the reality of the cage simply. I want to say that, in that case it's hell. really. experiencing nothing in one permanent "now", like a constantly frozen frame, he will probably just stop feeling anything at all (no time = no sounds, light and etc). it will merge into one big "nothing", even if a vacuum isn't really empty. "virtual particles" are constantly being born and disappearing in it. but still. all this may well be the reason why the cage is so unbearable. yes, Lucifer is used to enduring this, somehow, but remember about Sam's mental state and imagine the scale of his horror.

overall, this is more my own artistic interpretation of the cage based on what I've already told you above. but there remains one last, important point.

the infinity of the cage

remark: infinity is not a number. it's a word that means endless growth. for this reason, infinity cannot be achieved, one can only strive for it.

what does it mean? well, if we talk about infinity as a property of our universe, then the universe isn't necessarily infinite in the usual sense. infinity can mean a cycle, and here's why:

this is an approximate model of what our universe might look like (yes, a donut). going up we'll return from below, going to the right we'll come to the left, so we'll never return to the same point. in fact, this is a limited version of infinity, which, in my opinion, perfectly match with the concept of the cage.

what do we have in general?

as I promised, now we'll answer (or try to) some questions and inconsistencies from the spn canon. so:

why does the cage have multiple entrances/exits if, according to the prophecy, it only opens at St. Mary's Convent? answer: as we found out together, the cage is a complex multidimensional space/object created as a result of magic that shackles the freedom of a being under it's influence. we cannot fix the accurate coordinates of the cage, because without magic it wouldn't exist at all as a "cage" or a box with chains (XD). that's why it can have more than one entrance and exit. this may also be the fault of the alchemical mistakes btw.

how was Azazel able to "talk" to Lucifer while he was still in the cage? answer: referring to the same difficulties of 4 or more dimensions, in the 3D world we will not be able to recognize such an object/phenomenon completely, we'll only see it's constantly changing parts as it moves through space-time. so I suppose that Azazel, being a 3D demon like humans, just managed to catch the right moment and choose the right place where he "came into contact" with the cage and Lucifer in it.

how can the cage contain an entity "inside it" in practice? answer: this is where magic works (with the help of science, hehe). quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two or more particles become so connected that the state of one instantly affects the state of the other, even if they are light years apart. the creature that finds itself "inside" the cage becomes so connected to the Enochian symbols that it can no longer separate itself from them. nope, this doesn't necessarily mean staying in the "same" place all the time. this means that no matter where the prisoner goes, he will remain in the cage dimension. he will remain connected, both literally and metaphorically. subsequently, this generates real torment and, possibly, even hallucinations due to psychological pressure.

what does it take to escape from the cage? answer: it's impossible to break the quantum entanglement. however, it's known that any interaction with the environment destroys quantum states, and entanglement disappears. do you remember how Amara, having broken free, damaged the cage by her mere presence on earth? I believe that this is a prime example of such an interaction. of course, focusing only on the canon of spn magic, it's hard to say why Lucifer couldn't get out right away, but these're more scenario errors lol.

CONCLUSION

Anna was almost definitely intended to be much more than a supporting character in a handful of episodes. I lack credible sources so am careful to hedge what I say, but I expect Anna was intended as Dean’s end-game romance. Not only do the parallels between Dean/Anna and Sam/Ruby in this episode jump out of the screen and grab the viewer by the throat, but the slightly-too-long looks Dean and Anna give each other upon first meeting in the church give the unmistakable impression of a potential romance. As ever, however, female love interests in the show are short-lived (in part due to bad writing, in part due to insane fangirls) and Anna’s original story was transferred to a character who was only supposed to be around for four episodes: Castiel.

To avoid ambiguity: Anna was beyond reasonable doubt intended as Dean’s romantic partner, but Cas’s popularity dwarfed hers. This resulted in Dean’s romantic partner’s storyline of fighting on their side during the Apocalypse being taken over by Cas. Cas took over the role of Dean’s lover angelic ally. The pairing of Cas and Dean was immediately popular among the fans with the first fanfic posted to Ao3 40 minutes after 4x01 Lazarus Rising finished its first airing in America. In the few appearances Cas has made in the interim, there has been subtle subtext and plot beats between him and Dean which hint at at least Cas’s burgeoning attraction to Dean. These include visiting Dean and only Dean in 4x02 Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester, admitting to Dean that he has doubts and questions about God, Heaven, and his orders in 4x07 It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester, and the almost hungry, longing look on his face in 4x10 Heaven and Hell when he sees Dean kiss Anna. Tell me I am wrong.

The discussion being about angels, do let us begin with Anna’s introduction in the cold open of this episode. One of the reasons Paula dislikes this episode is how Anna is written in all her scenes. To paraphrase my predecessor, Anna does not act in the least bit like a psychotic person, meaning it is hard to understand why she would have been admitted to a psychological hospital. Paula also describes Anna as a bit of an idiot, blathering about her angel-radio powers to anybody who will listen. Paula also took umbrage with Anna being an unknown new character in a mental hospital when the show has been building up Dean’s mental health problems for years and does nothing with them.

I do not agree with all of these points, but present them so you can make up your own mind. I lack strong opinions on Anna, but in spite of her ultimately being underused I generally like her. ...Or at least dislike her much less than the majority of angels.

The other significant female character in this episode is quite a different matter. On the one hand, Ruby’s general plot is clever (at least in theory) in that she manages to play a 4D game of chess and double-crosses everybody but the one she is working for. She managed to play Sam like a fiddle by leading him around by his penis for two years. While acting like an utter douchebag 100% of the time, she still manages to ingratiate herself and even win over a portion of the audience.

In practice though, she does not look so much clever as the others (Sam especially) look stupid. Even Dean apologises to Ruby at the end of this episode after hearing about how she saved Sam’s life etc, even though Dean was the one who pointed out that Ruby was using sex to control Sam and encouraging him to use his evil demon powers. Ruby wished for Dean’s death in 3x16 No Rest for the Wicked and has been machinating in the background for over a year, which Dean knows very well. Having him apparently forget and forgive was out of character. Rather than Ruby being clever, this was bad writing. More convincing would have been to win the audience over but not have Dean apologise. Events in the next episode 4x10 Heaven and Hell would have convinced a lot of viewers of where Ruby’s loyalties lay anyway. For the time being, Dean might have looked like a douche bearing a grudge to a lot of people, but he would have eventually been proven right.

As for Ruby’s general presence in this episode, the sheer amount of it in Sam’s exposition accompanied by Dean’s apology really give the impression that this was the moment the viewer was supposed to accept Ruby onto the team. Given that she was a hostile, manipulative, smug, lying bish for the whole of series three and four up to now, it is too little too late. Her animosity towards Dean, abandoning Dean and Sam to their deaths in 3x12 Jus in Bello, and controlling Sam with promises of being able to save Dean cannot be waved away with Ruby’s manipulation of Sam when Dean was dead.

Yes, she ‘saved’ Sam, but take e.g. the scene where Sam goes after ‘Lilith’ and gets ambushed by demons, only to have to end up saving Ruby using his powers. It does not take a genius to suppose that whole thing was a set-up to make exactly what happened happen. Ruby is working for and with Lilith, after all.

When I watched series four almost ten years ago, I expect I at the very least gave Ruby some more benefit of the doubt, and my distaste for the writing here could well be due to knowing what happens later and seeing right through both the scheming as well as Gamble and Kripke’s not-too-successful attempts at apologia for Ruby. That said, Ruby herself gives the viewer plenty of reason to dislike and distrust her. Not only does she have the nerve to turn up in Dean’s presence after poisoning his brother for over a year, but she shows a lacuna where her shame (and survival instinct) should be by being shirty with Dean when he rightfully brings her up short for her brazen intrusion.

Sam does not get off the hook either. I have stated numerous times that Ruby manipulated him, but he let her do it out of spite, bitterness, and pride. In 5x05 Fallen Idols, Sam will claim that everything that happened with Ruby happened because Sam wanted to get away from Dean who (Sam claims) controlled and stifled him and did not let him grow up (and that is not verbatim). This is, of course, equine effluent of the stinkiest variety, but it does not mean that Sam does not at least partially believe it. Since episode one of the show, Sam has always harboured an acidic dislike of Dean for many reasons.

As discussed elsewhere, Dean does not in fact control Sam: quite the opposite. Dean frequently makes concessions for Sam’s wants, and is generally a complete push-over. I last discussed this in 4x04 Metamorphosis and it still holds true. Even in this very episode, Dean drives Sam to the hospital against his own wishes because it is what Sam wants. Sam’s fans like to claim Dean drags Sam around the country against his will, but it seems quite the opposite to me. Even if Dean were not such a pushover, he has no control over Sam whatsoever. As I discussed in 1x11 Scarecrow (unless my memories is mistaken), Sam is free to leave whenever he wants, as he does in said episode. He does not need to go where Dean wants him to go, and at any moment could take control of his own life and agency by simply getting up and departing. He did this in 1x11 Scarecrow and 2x10 Hunted (both times almost getting Dean killed in the process), as well as frequently sneaking out of motel rooms to fraternise with Ruby in series three and four.

The reason Sam does not, I wager, is because he is scared of the responsibility which comes with making his own choices. He might bitch and complain about how Dean ‘controls him’ or whatever, but

1) Dean does not 2) Sam is much more comfortable letting himself believe he has no real power over his situation and that Dean is responsible for everything that happens to him.

Sam is, for want of a better word, a victim who weaponises his own ‘powerlessness’. Such being the case, he refuses to accept his own culpability for his wrongdoing, instead externalising it all and blaming other people. Narcissistic personality disorder, i.e. weaponised victimhood. The effect of this on the people around him (namely Dean) is poisonous, resulting in a situation where Sam is always the wronged victim and Dean always the guilty villain.

(And yes, I am aware Cas exhibits some of these traits, too, but the reasons are different: Cas does not properly understand the concept of ‘personal responsibility’, and has put Dean on the pedestal God used to be on. I agree completely with Paula that 15x03 and 15x10 did Cas and his fans a huge disfavour, but more on that in several years’ time.)

This situation is very comfortable for Sam as ultimately he is not responsible for any of his own wrongdoing (in his own mind, at least) and he gets to exorcise his own demons by treating Dean as his punchbag. Moreover, he also gets to have a protracted adolescence by rejecting the fact he is responsible for his own choices. This is quite likely learnt behaviour from John, see 1x18 Something Wicked RE: John blaming Dean for John’s own criminal negligence.

Sam might not even fully realise that he is doing this, in fact he probably does not, and the frustration and bitterness comes from what might feel like helplessness to him. Dean is not in control, but as far as Sam is concerned his options are ‘Do whatever Dean is doing and pretend I have no choice’ or ‘Do what I want and accept all the responsibility’. Neither option is good for him, and he does not want to commit fully to either, so he takes a little bit of ‘freedom’ for himself, but only enough to hang Dean with.

I say all this with derision and contempt for Sam’s behaviour, and this is in part because I am well-acquainted with narcissistic personality disorder. A person with narcissistic personality disorder does not love himself, but rather hates himself and cannot stand being put in a situation where he is forced to face his flaws and deal with shame. To avoid this, the narcissist will instead blame everybody around him for his own problems, and even try to make other people feel bad in order to make himself feel better about himself. This could well be the result of child abuse (thanks, John) essentially triggering feelings of intense shame and fear of punishment whenever criticised or brought up short for bad behaviour. Lashing out first becomes a defence mechanism. As a result, the narcissist in unable to reflect on himself, face his flaws, and improve on them. He is trapped in a box made of one-way glass where other people can see in at the mess he is making of his life, but he in unable to see the effect his actions have on others, or even see other people at all.

Given Sam’s isolation from other children, there is a good argument to be made that he never quite learnt that other people are just as complicated and important as he is, and that his needs do not supersede those of others. His treatment of Dean is evidence for this: Dean is not a real person to Sam, just a trope and an extension of John.

The reason for my raising all of this is the bitterness and hostility Sam directs at Dean in the car. The acidity I mentioned regarding Sam in 5x05 Fallen Idols is evident here when Sam responds to Dean’s hesitance in following Ruby’s guidance. ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it’ Sam snottily says with snooty contempt, soon followed by the facepalm-inducing ‘Want to talk about keeping secrets, why don’t you tell me about Hell? Don’t skip the details.’ One could only talk to a person like that about something like that in that tone of voice if there were a fundamental disgust and derision that had festered for years.

You probably do not need me to tell you that Dean keeping what happened to himself in Hell a secret is not at all comparable to the secrets Sam and Ruby kept, but Sam clearly does because his understanding of the whole situation shows a undeveloped, immature mind coupled with the typical narcissistic battle strategy of use other people’s vulnerability as a weapon against them. See, telling narcissists one’s secrets is just giving them ammunition.

I see all my own trust issues reflected in Dean’s refusal to open up to his own narcissist, and my own experiences reflected in Sam attacking Dean at the slightest perceived provocation. Did that get a bit personal? Never mind...

We also see in that scene Sam’s entitlement to Dean’s thoughts, as well as his inability to understand he has no right to feel indignant and aggrieved (if we are not already a few hundred words too late for that). But do let us not drive this into the ground. Other than being further evidence in my case of Sam being a total cockwomble, it is this very acrimony and resentment which Ruby exploits like a shark sniffing blood. She was only able to sow her evil seeds because there was already acres of fertile ground to work with.

As well as that, Sam is an idiot who is easily controlled by women and sex, and Ruby might have sensed as much. She did push for sex with him, after all, ignoring his objections and getting groiny with him in a gross necrophilic way.

Mentioning the hostility in the car has reminded me that it has been a while since the last time the brothers argued in the car. Well done, writers. You learnt your lesson.

Another aspect of Sam was visible in this episode, that being bereaved Sam in the flashbacks. As far back as 1x12 Faith I wrote that Sam loves Dean, but he only ever shows it when he is about to lose him. Or in this case, when he has already lost him. In the first flashback scene, Sam summons a crossroads demon (a male this time) aiming to trade places with Dean. This is one of few instances where I find Sam human and relatable as in the immediate aftermath of Dean’s death (ultimately by suicide) grief and survivor’s guilt consume him. As I wrote in 1x12 Faith, survivor’s guilt is when a bereaved person believes s/he should be dead. Such guilt undermines any feeling of security and stability one might believe life has, as if the ground beneath can crumble at any point.

On the subject of grief, in 2x22 All Hell Breaks Loose Part 2 I wrote:

Huge losses like death have a way of showing us that all the sureties, hopes, goals, and even pastimes we build our lives around are ultimately inconsequential. They force us to confront the fact that life and everything in it is ephemeral and ultimately meaningless. We can try to give our lives meaning through our choices, but some situations force us to wonder why one would even bother. What difference does it make if the world ends if it does not matter that it exists in the first place? In 10,000,000,000 years, the Earth will have long since been destroyed by the death of our sun, and nothing resembling any kind of human may be left in the universe. If a spaceship from some civilisation in the far distant future were to chance across the slowly cooling embers of the white dwarf which was once our sun, would the lifeforms inside such a spacecraft even stop to wonder for one second whether that star ever once hosted a planet which for the briefest of time saw an ape stand on two legs, craft tools, learn to speak, and in one of their endlessly varying languages once call their home Earth? I doubt it.

Knowing an afterlife of some forms exists, Sam would not experience bereavement in quite the same way as this, but he is still in the throes of despair raging at the cosmic injustice of his brother’s death (read: suicide) and desperate to put it right by sacrificing his own worthless life.

While watching this scene, I am left wondering where this deep love and affection for his brother was when Dean was still alive. In one of his posts, Leonard at lmclt likened Sam’s attitudes towards Dean in series three as akin to those of people who do not believe suicidal people until it is too late. Sam did not truly believe Dean was going to die, or even could die, until the very end, and could not understand Dean’s own relationship with his impending death. This is unfortunately very true of the majority of ‘normal-brained’ people.

Like with monsters in the Superverse, people in our ‘verse simply do not generally see mental health struggles, trauma, and suicide as real or possible things until it is too late, whereas those of us with experience of them see them all too often. I recently had a redux of this with James Somerton’s attempted suicide. The majority of people I saw on the internet scoffed at the idea, claiming he was attention-seeking or trying to guilt people into pitying him. I and my friend, however, saw things very differently. Suicide can and does happen, and I chose to err on the side of taking him seriously until given good reason to believe otherwise. The divide is stark.

I will speak for myself out of hesitance to put words in others’ mouths with the hope my experience will be familiar to many. The loss of a friend, loved one, or even classmate does not ‘simply’ bereave, but it also traumatises. There is nothing natural about a friend hanging himself, drowning herself, a brother gassing himself, or finding out an old acquaintance died of a (possibly intentional) overdose. It goes against every instinct of self-preservation humans have and how we fundamentally believe the universe should work, and once that veil has been shattered it can never be fixed again. Whatever we may do to repair ourselves and our lives, the cracks will always be there and we will always see the other, real world through the cracks.

Returning to Sam, his behaviour with Ruby and his treatment of Dean is almost incomprehensible to me after seeing him willing to trade places in Hell. How can I reconcile Sam’s continued betrayal of, endangering of, and shitty treatment of Dean with his willingness to die for him? I cannot. If I were to have my friends back like Sam got Dean back, or if my mum were to have her brother and her friend back, I cannot imagine a situation where we would treat them like Sam treats Dean.

Once again I am left with the impression that the writers truly bit off more than they could chew with this storyline.

Moving on, Alistair’s appearance in this episode was a welcome return to demons being a threat. While I still do not care for the show’s choice to have demons be people with contact lenses, Alistair still managed to have presence. Ruby was scared of him, the statue started crying blood, and the name ’Alistair’ has clear demonic associations. In Greek mythology, Alastor was the personification of familial feuds as well as sins passed down from father to son (interesting, given Alastair tortured both Dean and John), and in Christian demonology he is an archdemon and chief executioner of Hell. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Alastor was a fallen angel and Hell’s most skilled and sadistic torturer. He was head of the malebranche, an order of demonic torturers tasked with guarding a certain area of the eight circle of Hell.

Alistair in Supernatural is clearly inspired by this figure from demonology, though considering his pedigree it is a shame he was a) a man with contact lenses and b) not around for all that long. In his brief time on the show, he did however provide a brief glimpse of the horror Dean endured, as well as give us a glimpse at the horror Dean became.

Alistair in Supernatural is clearly inspired by this figure from demonology, though considering his pedigree it is a shame he was a) a man with contact lenses and b) not around for all that long. In his brief time on the show, he did however provide a brief glimps of the horror Dean endured, as well as give us a glimpse at the horror Dean became. Alistair’s claim that he and Dean were ‘close’ in Hell in the context of revelations etc in subsequent episodes also raises other stomach-churning likelihoods, but this is best left for my analyses of 4x10 Heaven and Hell and 4x16 On the Head of a Pin, so I will not linger on it any longer here. One thing which it is appropriate to bring up now is the damage Dean and Sam sustained in surviving and escaping Alistair.

How on Earth Dean and Sam managed to survive jumping out of the church window and hitting the ground is anybody’s guess, but while my disbelief groans in resentment at its need to be suspended once again, I am surprised that The Show actually showed consequences.

It is a very rare occasion indeed when Dean and Sam are shown to sustain damage in combat, but the scene following their defenestration begins with Sam stitching up a wound in his arm using a fish-hook. Sam cut the line after each stitch so that there would be minimal tugging, and then wisely (but painfully) sterilised the wound with alcohol. Dean seemed to have taken some damage to his right flank as well as having a dislocated shoulder. Having scenes like this makes things feel more genuine and dangerous. It also showcases some more of how tough Dean and Sam have to be in order to survive.

The same scene also had Dean suggest that Ruby might have used him and Sam to get to Anna, then called in Alistair to kill them while Ruby escaped with Anna. Hindsight suggests this

The conversations and scenes between Alistair and Ruby in 4x10 Heaven and Hell are written to lead the audience to believe they are not working together. This would mean Dean’s conclusion is wrong, but the root suspicion and misgivings are certainly well-placed and attentive. Is was convenient, after all, that Ruby should turn up at the church just as Dean and Sam found Anna, and just before Alistair turned up. Why would anybody listen to Dean though? Who was the Apollo whom Dean spurned to get landed with his Cassandra’s curse? Whatever the case, Dean’s right to be suspicious and even points out Ruby’s manipulation of him, only to be met with denial from Sam.

Two last little things before I finish:

1) Anna’s parents deserved to be killed for having a sign by their front door which read ’The Milton’s’ rather than ’The Miltons’. It really tells of a slump in the quality of native English speakers’ grasp on the conventions of their own language when people on both sides of the Atlantic (and presumably Australia) believe that one adds a comma before plurals in English. And regarding the name ’Milton’, have we talked about Paradise Lost before? The name was not coincidental.

2) In the scene with the fake Lilith when Ruby ’saved’ Sam, one of the demons threatened her with lame dialogue. ’...the things we’re gonna do to you.’ A vague disclaimer is nobody’s friend, random demon: I need specifics. What precisely are you threating to do to her? Remember when Azazel threatened Jake in 2x22 All Hell Breaks Loose Part 2 with (and this is not verbatim) ’Your mum and little sister will know the chewy taste of their own intestines before they die’? That was less vague. It could benefit some more specification, but it is sufficient.

And with that, this analysis is at an end. You can read more of my reviews here:

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4

Sundry