Frankly, unless a kid is being raised amid The Gentle People, I don't think kids should be taught non-violence until they are old enough to be in a situation where violence is not routine, and old enough to be skeptical of what they are taught.

I think it's more nuanced than that. Small children need to be told to play nice, share, don't hit/bite/whatever. I suspect it's the ones who aren't taught this who become bullies. When they reach the age that they are encountering bullies then they need to learn to stand up for themselves. They need to learn proper and acceptable behavior first and then add the caveat of what can sometimes be necessary.

The other dad wasn't a biker-- he was a bar back in a biker joint.

Hmm - well if he was bartender in a biker joint, he could have been a biker as well. (Rationalizing for the sake of my fic.)

And I remember she said that "scars and no fixed address" was her type.

Hey, the mother of the evil little girl?

She played the werewolf in that sexy werewolf episode of Dresden Files.

She really resembled Lili Taylor to me.

I have a wee question. Did anyone else notice the Roger Rabbit color palette that seems to surround Sam so far this season? It's eyebleedingly colorful, which is just hilarious, coming from a show whose look has been unremittingly noir and shadowed, after Kripke snerked at a network directive to "make it brighter and more colorful." Dean, so far, seems to have eluded Toonville sets. But I was pleased he seemed a lot less of a caricature of himself this ep.

And as much as I love Bobby Singer and am always glad to see him in an ep, I'm a student at the Minear school of character-killing, and I'd like the spotlight to swing away from Bobby, just a bit. I hope he stays around.

So... did it bother anyone else, the business with Ben's reference to "bitches"? Because I twitched, then I wrote it off as a callback to something earlier in the episode, because I'd missed the first 12 minutes or so.

And then, not so much. I'm mildly skeeved by it. It's one thing to have a joking relationship with your brother in which you call him names, and another entirely to tell an 8-year-old boy that misogynistic language is fine and dandy.

I'm also pretty sure that Lisa wasn't lying: it's too early in the series for them to introduce something as life-changing as a kid for Dean. If he's a hero, he can't just abandon the kid. But the show changes too much if he sticks around, too.

and another entirely to tell an 8-year-old boy that misogynistic language is fine and dandy

I think that was the point and was the least offensive part of the scene for me. I would have been completely outraged if that had been my son and his father popped into town and the first "life lesson" he gave the boy was how to solve your problems by fighting. I'm thinking "bitches" + fighting was a pretty heavy anvil of Dean doesn't know anything about kids.

I'm thinking "bitches" + fighting was a pretty heavy anvil of Dean doesn't know anything about kids.

Yeah, and we got the fighting clue from Lisa. But she didn't hear the bitches exchange, and... if it had been a word we hadn't heard on the show, I'd be more willing to cut the writers some slack. But it's a word Dean uses as an epithet to cut other men down. Because of the female associations. It makes both Dean and Ben skeevy.

I'm still not reading it as deliberately/intentionally used *because* of the female associations. I'm reading it as being used with no thought even given to the female associations.

ETA, and Suela, I know you're not the only one who it pinged like that, which makes me wish they'd used "babies" or "wimps" or something instead.

I'm reading it as being used with no thought even given to the female associations.

Likely, yes. Except the reason it's an epithet when used to describe men is because of the female associations.

Sigh.