That was fun, although man, is Dean going to be pissed when he learns Cas lied to him. Cas was nicely threatening and inscrutable in this episode, although his gooey marshmallow center showed in his LURVE of Sam and Dean.

The Mustang is such a sweet ride and yet ... not right. Not at all.

I love how so much can change but it doesn't change who people are. "Too soon?" "Yeah, Dean, I'm pretty sure six seconds is too soon."

Also, BOBBY. Oh, Bobby. He really is an honorary Winchester, if only because life (and Fate, and the angels) has fucked him six weeks from Sunday at every opportunity.

Note: Chester, PA, is a shitty, scary, gritty industrial small city outside Philly, where mountains definitely cannot be seen at the end of the street. And Russo's accent was way more Jersey than Philly.

Fate was cute, though. And smart, if vengeful.

I'm wondering if the plan involved getting those 50,000 new souls to sell themselves to Balthazar, Castiel, and their allies. Surely just existing wouldn't automatically shift the balance of power when there are already 15 billion souls or more in the afterlife.

Help me, b.orgistas, you're my only hope! Something went beserk to my cable system and the unthinkable happened -- the CW cut out and I didn't get to see our Boys tonight! You should have been able to hear my screams wheresover you are. Where's the best place for me to find the episode online? The CW site? I think I've heard people mention Amazon, but I've never gotten video from them before. Where do you guys recommend?

I used Amazon once, and it was fine. The CW has it up within a day or two, I think, but I've always had problems with their player.

I would check Amazon, iTunes, and CW by tomorrow and if you had the will power (who does?) Hulu would have it in like 3 weeks.

Okay, it sounds as though Amazon might be the best option. Thanks for the advice. (No, I definitely don't have that kind of will power!)

You bastard, Castiel. How many times you brought Sam & Dean back to life and you can't let us have Ellen?

Well, that was interesting.

Notice that Dean played scissors and beat Sam who seemed surprised? What's that about? Obviously we're in an alternate reality.

And we have Balthazar declaring Cas's love for the Winchesters, but that means little compared to what he'll do to keep them alive. I'm not sure what advantage he gave up, but it was something, and he was going to keep those crazy kids safe one way or another.

Ellen! You were so good with Bobby. It's best he never ever now. At best it's creepy, at worst it's poignantly sad.

Sam, you really need to sit down the rest of Team Free Will and have them talk about their feelings. It's the elephant in the room right now, and the tutu is starting to chafe. Srsly.

As far as changing the past goes, I was thinking that if they just needed more souls that hadn't existed before, curing patient zero of the 1918 influenza pandemic would have spared 20 to 40 million people rather than a couple thousand, and possibly resulted in half a billion or more new people today. I wonder if Titanic wasn't so much a test run as a surgical strike, like maybe passengers who lived went on to marry those who would have otherwise produced children for the bloodline that Raphael draws his preferred vessels from.

Normally when the protagonists are faced with "this isn't the normal future" they scrabble to put the normal future back in place. I like that they were given motivation not to do that. The main protagonists, I mean.

Cas, on the other hand, folded like a house of cards in Hurricane Gilbert. I'm sure he'd like to watch Sam and Dean every second of every day, and maybe if he wasn't fighting Raphael he'd have left things as is and done just that.

They know he's doing "regrettable things." They know he'd rather be with them. But what will happen when they find out the sort of regrettable things he's doing, and will it be balanced by knowing that he'll toss it out the window for them now?

Excuse me, I gotta go look for more codas.