I thought what the YED wanted from him personally was tied into the TK and the visions, so no YED, none of those powers. However, the blood taint, the long game, led to the banishing.

Basically, the long and short game don't really hold up all that well.

I guess I thought the powers would come through the blood he dripped into the babies' mouths. But it's hard to draw a nice neat line through every motivation, and I'm not sure they had it all planned out as well as Kripke claims they did.

That said, I do like the fact that even without the powers (which would have been fun to watch), Sam's still not coming up completely normal, which he was so invested in.

When all he wanted as a kid was "normal," too. SAMMY

I haven't watched the pilot episode in quite a while, but I was reminded of this when someone (sorry but I forget which one of you it was) pointed it out earlier:

Sam: You think Mom would have wanted this for us?
Dean: So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?
Sam: No. Not normal. Safe.

I think that may have mutated as the show went on, but at the beginning at least it seems Sam's motivations were safety more than normalcy. Dean was the one who constantly mocked him with the "normal, apple pie life" phrase.

I think the Thanksgiving scene from heaven, as well as Sam with dog, shows him wanting normal. And I think even in S1 when he wanted to go back to school after they killed the YES, that was part of wanting normal, too.

Even in After School Special, the paper he wrote seemed as much about railing what was abnormal about his life as it was about not being constantly in danger.

I really need to rewatch the Heaven episode to recalibrate the emotional content of those scenes in regards to normal vs. safe. Because my takeaway from the Thanksgiving scene was that he was feeling very much like an alien in an unfamiliar world. He may have wanted to learn about it, may have been curious about what it would be like to experience a "real family Thanksgiving," but I don't remember him looking as though he felt at home. But I could be totally wrong. And I remember him thinking of the time with the dog as an adventure and a brief span of time with the pet he always wanted. But I don't know that Sam would regard squatting in those conditions as normal.

Now going back to Stanford, that I would view as a return to "Normal" for him. He had built a life for himself there, and was envisioning a future. (Is 'envisioning' a word?)

Envisioning is a perfectly cromulent word.

I can see 'safe' and 'normal' as both being other ways to describe stability. Staying in one place for more than a few weeks at a time. Being able to have ongoing relationships that didn't have very high odds of being severed violently. Etc.

Dean, I see as wanting normal at some level but suppressing that desire for any number of reasons. I remember his delight at mowing the lawn in WIAWSNB, of being a PA in Hollywood Babylon, and then dreaming about having a life with Lisa. PTSD issues aside, he seemed to adapt to his new life with Lisa reasonably well. If he had those suppressed/repressed desires, he might well project them on Sam to some degree.

I'm not sure they had it all planned out as well as Kripke claims they did.

I think there was a fair amount of handwavium involved in their planning. Also, maybe the planning was more of a general road map from A to B to C to D, with details being made up as they went along. I can also imagine a situation where Cool Idea 1 ended up getting trumped by Cool Idea 2--but with no way to go back and tweak details in episodes that had already been filmed and aired.

PTSD issues aside, he seemed to adapt to his new life with Lisa reasonably well

I'm not sure what to blame all that drinking on. PTSD, Sam, misfit, whatever. But I think he adapted to caring for Lisa and Ben better than he adapted to normal life. Part of this is my own personal fanon, but still. It's not like I'd expect an experienced hunter not to take precautions, but his night patrolling and his gun under the bed in a house with a kid in it isn't quite fitting in.

Hard to tell with what we were given, though.

On whose orders was Anna acting? Can someone go to a convention and ask that question?

When she was sent to kill Sam?

Yup. I remember assuming it wasn't Michael, because he ended up killing her, but I'm fuzzy on if I ever decided on anything.

Also, dead or not dead? I just read someone saying she wasn't. Lack of wing imprint?