I'm with you Sail, but I'm easily bought--I'll take what I can get.

Earlier, when Sam was dealing with the Invisi-kid, he was really channeling Dean, I thought.

I hate to nit but wouldn't Dean be showing even more trauma than drinking? He said it wasn't just one bad day. We know it was forty years. Forty years of things he can't put into words. I'm surprised he still speaks english.

I read a lot of fic like that, Austin. And it does seem a bit more likely. But it would also be sort of torturous for us to show him completely wrecked, I think. Plus, interfere with Plot.

I would have traded Yellow Fever (not the bonus) and this episode for tortured Dean dropped naked from the ceiling and brought back to humanity by Sam.

It would make me want to make him soup.

eta: But Sam isn't that Sam anymore. He said so. :sniff:

I think we're supposed to infer that along with re-hymenating Dean and erasing his scars, Castiel may have put those memories someplace Dean can't readily access them. He *knows*, he remembers, but he said tonight, "What I saw," not what I felt. I don't think he's more than just barely remembering, and I think Castiel had something to do with that. Otherwise, as Austin says, he wouldn't be functional.

Another reason to love Castiel.

That's a good theory, Bev. I like that.

Especially when you get Lilith saying "four months is like forty years".

I would have traded Yellow Fever (not the bonus) and this episode for tortured Dean dropped naked from the ceiling and brought back to humanity by Sam.

I think there are worlds of reasons why they didn't go there, Austin, and I think all of them are related to the good of the show.

I think most audiences would have hated an episode devoted to a screaming, incoherent and ruined Dean, and a frantic, overwhelmed and desperate Sam. I think the actors would have hated it. And I think the characters would have been so irrevocably changed by the experience they could never have gotten back to hunting partners. Plus, the majority of the viewing audience would be tuning out.

Not that I wouldn't want to see at least a little of that myself, but I think the decision not to go that way was sound.

And you can still want to make him soup--make both of them soup. You heard Dean--they're miserable. Soup might make it better.

I agree, Bev. I mean, a glimpse might have been good, but then you can't stop there. And it would have been too much, not only for us, but for them.

DEAN. And Sam's look when Dean said he wouldn't describe it! BOYS.

And Dean's stance makes sense to me. I can't imagine wanting to put whatever horrors my time in Hell held into someone else's head, too, even if only by rough description. (ETA: Though I completely get Sam's wanting to know.)

I applaud Dean's coming clean about remembering. Well done scene by both of them. Would be nice to see more of it on the DVDs. I mean, I assume there was more...