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.

The act where Cas talks to Fate Sam and Dean have no lines. It struck me as weird. Apart from openers or closers, I don't remember that happening. Not just in the middle of the show, an entire segment between commercial breaks. It was suggested that Cas and Meg with the holy fire fit that criterion, but the script reveals that Sam and Lucifer were also in that act.

Can you think of other middle acts where Sam and Dean don't have lines?

Only two codas so far. I'm kinda disappointed in my fandom.

Kate Walder as Fate really hit my glasses fetish. Guh.

It's possible they're finally setting Cas up as a character whose appearance isn't merely the Winchesters' genie or fairy godmother who pops in when summoned and grants--or not--their wishes. Which is good. If he's the third lead, give him more stuff to do on his own and let him carry scenes--whole eps!--and let the Js sleep late once in a while.

Fate reminded me of a prissy Witherspoon.

It was wonderful to see Ellen again--I wish we could keep her. Both Bobby and his house were so neat and arranged and colorful (well, his hat was fairly new and clean) and clean, as opposed to the organized and dust-covered he's managed to keep it. The contrast from AHBL II and up to DaLDom is subtle but apparent, so the (suggested) Ellen-kept house was a point made. The moment where Sam & Dean watched him sleep, then covered him and turned off the light was very tender. I live in fear for Bobby, every ep, every season.

And I'm with Amy--the mustang was a beauty, but...so very wrong. I'm not even sure how they folded Padalecki into shotgun, to be honest.

did everyone notice that the Mustang had the old Impala license plate? i love that they put little things like that in for us.

did everyone notice that the Mustang had the old Impala license plate?

I did! So sweet.

I also felt like the motel room was nicer than usual, or supposed to be.

Bacon cheeseburger:

What interested me was that Fate (Atropos) was clearly working with heaven, the heaven we've seen characterized as the Judeo-Christian heaven so far. She knows the angels, she says God gave her a job. It's a weird mashup of mythology, especially when in The Hammer of the Gods, we weren't given the impression that everyone worked together, even if they know about each other.