There is the fact that John and Dean both ended up in Hell via altruistic deals to save the lives of someone they love... I can see how either would be good for breaking the first seal. But I don't think we can trust Alastair's word when he's trying to find the most horrible things to torment Dean with.

One thing I credit Heyerdahl's performance for: despite the spoken emphasis on repeated bodily harm, he made it pretty clear that physical pain means nothing to demons and that it's the psychological torture that they're really all about down below regardless of the racks and so forth. The writing has been a little too face value about what actually goes on in Hell, but the actor saved it for me.

[link] - SPN opening sequence set to music/style of Chuck.

That was awesome. Thanks.

Wow, all of you were much more satisfied with Heyerdahl that I was... that voice in and of itself was enough to throw me out of the scenes. It seemed so overdone, overemphasized, and blatantly exaggerated that I couldn't focus on anything else. Obviously, YAlistairMMV.

I had the same problem, Morgana. It was focusing on Dean/JA that allowed me to get through the scenes and relate to them somehow.

You know, I was just pondering... when did we get to a point where we take everything that demons say as The Truth?

Pre-xactly! Pfft, even if the demons only lie as much as Sam does, they would have a whole bunch of wiggle room.

[link] - SPN opening sequence set to music/style of Chuck.

That was fun! It amuses me that they changed the order so JA comes first in the cast list.

Demons tell the truth in order to cause as much pain as possible. Why lie when the truth is so much more useful?

Demons are going to say whatever fits their purpose. The "good" guys lie in this world to attain their goals so the "bad" guys are certainly not going to be constrained by facts. You can't trust anything anybody says in this universe.