I saw some people complaining about another female bad guy. Uh, antagonist != bad guy. Cas was the bad guy. Fate was right.

I'm not sure if it's a rush to see the show as sexist or Cas as good or what that made that an easy conclusion to come to. But Cas fucked with the order of things for a "greater good" which doesn't make Fate a bad person--and then he told Sam and Dean to kill her to keep his plan safe without telling them and then he changed his mind and ended the lives to keep Sam and Dean safe.

Fate is so totally blameless in this scenario.

She is totally blameless. And hot. And in response to a comment upthread, not at all prissy. She is focused, but she enjoys her work.

Fate had a legitimate beef with being downsized, yeah. She was trying to restore the balance of souls according to her job description, and Cas was going rogue for his purposes, both times.

I need to listen to his lines about choices and freedom again, when he's talking to Sam and Dean. He's so conflicted now, with power he didn't have before, and fairly good intentions, but throw the people he actually loves into the mix and all of his own rules go out the window.

RegrettableThings!Cas is one of my favourite flavours, although I have many. It's a shame he couldn't have spent more time with Robo!Sam and had allAboutDean!DarkSassy.

I don't tune in for the mental health.

I said she reminded me of Witherspoon playing prissy. Not that Fate herself was prissy. Fate was resolute, and righteously pissed. But physically she reminded me of Reese in glasses and ramrod back in one or another of her roles.

I did notice the hotel room was a step up out of the usual squalor--a surviving Titanic ancestor must have had an effect on Winchester finances. And the lisence plate was a very dear touch.

I am intrigued that Cas is blatantly keeping his decisions and his intentions from the Winchesters. I'm just so happy to see the character with a plotline and a will of his own. As someone on my flist commented, the character has actual interest and investment for me for the first time in too long with him as essentially a sidekick.

Angels should not be sidekicks. Allies, yes, protectors, yes. Sidekicks? No.

As someone on my flist commented, the character has actual interest and investment for me for the first time in too long with him as essentially a sidekick.

He's always had that for me. He may not have been comfortable with making his own decisions before nowish, but as an angel, he wasn't trained to be.

He did have his own agenda, though, and we saw that in S4. He was supposed to guide Dean to his fate, after resurrecting him, and a few of his plans weren't revealed to Dean or Sam, at least not at first.

From the get-go, he was supposed to keep Dean in line, and make sure Sam didn't need to be offed. And then it got more complicated, because Sam and Dean came to mean something to him that he didn't understand about humans before then. I've never really seen him as a sidekick -- even when he was losing his mojo, that was a result of his own rebellion, and fit his storyline.

SPN makes MTV's 10 thingy again. They show a couple stills from next week, but nothing spoilery. Some bits of interview I'd not seen before, and one hell of a double entendre from Jared. Stop feeding people, seriously.

Annalee liked this week's ep. Despite a predisposition against Titanic (and Western) eps.

It's a weird mashup of mythology,

So what else is new?

The number of souls thing is very confusing, because that seems to imply that the greater the population, the more souls Cas has to work with. Like Matt, I can't see how 50,000 would make a difference.

and one hell of a double entendre from Jared.

and the slow, impish grin after. Hilarious.

Oh, Jared. "I'd like a Misha head of my very own." Snerk.

Just read the recap on io9, and realized (as someone brought up in the comments), what happened to Death and the Reapers in this episode? Maybe ... the Fates are usually supposed to simply make the list of who and when, and Death and the Reapers do the wet work? Only in this case, Atropos was doing it herself because she was off book?

Outlining mythology as this universe constructs it would be tough, man.

I can't believe there are only five episodes left in this season. Gulp.