Season 2, Round 5, Bracket #1/1:

• I am so proud of you: They are both marvellous, revelatory, relationship-clarifying quotes, but I gotta go with the John and Dean moment. It just said so much about who he was, and gave so much depth to what we were seeing onscreen. And, oh, how much he needed to hear it.

Ugh. Hard pick. Every vote is the wrong one. Also, right.

eta: Thanks, Julie. I haven't looked at aesc's stuff in an age.

Happy, happy couple! And I love Genevieve's dress. Much prettier (or maybe just more my thing) than Danneel's.

I loved seeing how gloriously happy both JA and JP looked in their wedding photos.

Um. Voting time. Fuck.

S2, R2, B1

• What am I supposed to do?: Really hard choice, but in the end this is the scene that really does it for me. Maybe because, despite what John said to him, he still doesn't get it. He still thinks he's letting people (Sam) down. And he's all alone! My heart can't take it.

John gave so much in making his speech, though. Sure, I still don't vote him as Dad of the year, but he made his love clear that episode, and talking is not easy for him. But he did it, right there.

STOP VOTING AGAINST PAPA JOHN!!!

I couldn't help it!

STOP VOTING AGAINST PAPA JOHN!!!

And in the next breath told the son he was so proud of that he may have to kill his little brother. John thy name is Flawed.

ETA: It's starting to feel like a Quote Death Match now.

See?! ehab knows!

I mean, I think that was huge of John, especially in that moment, knowing that he was going to die. Knowing that he'd never told Dean those things, and he deserved so much to hear them.

But as much as I love it, the fact that it never occurred to him to say it earlier, as well as what he had to tell Dean after that, really mitigates it (when up against Dean's quote anyway). I don't know how much of that Dean really absorbed, when all he's thinking after that is, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I MIGHT HAVE TO KILL SAMMY?!"

I was there for John's quote for a long time. But in the end, *my* show is about the broken brothers, not the whole broken family.

Apparently.

Today.

Okay, at the moment I voted.

STOP VOTING AGAINST PAPA JOHN!!!

I LOVE HIS PIZZA!

P-C, Is that a vote you just cast?

the fact that it never occurred to him to say it earlier

See, this is part of why it's so affecting to me. Because he's been that clueless the whole time, just operating on automatic, and not processing what his son has been and what his son might emotionally need...and in that moment he gets it. And it is too late, but he's giving him everything he can give in those scant moments he has left.

But he's still John. And he doesn't know Dean well enough to know that the order he won't follow is the order about killing Sammy. Or maybe he does...maybe he has to say it anyway. But I think he came slap bang up against his limitations right there, and I think in that moment he transcended them, just a little.