I fell like it's canon that the boys felt John was sometimes too hard on them

They've both said so, Sam to his face. In fact, I'd say "sometimes" is a strong underestimation of Sam's feelings.

However, John's reliance on emotional incest was wrong. Wrongity wrong. He took advantage of Dean's basic nature, and it cost the guy a childhood in more ways than just being motherless and on the run technically would. I don't think that was a misunderstanding, or them not getting how complicated or tough it was. You don't hand a kid his age a shotgun and berate him for not defending his little brother with lethal force at age nine. Nuh-huh. I'm never going to believe that was the *right* choice to make.

I don't think, if I suddenly found out the world was full of monsters, that I could have done a better job. Maybe the kids would have been better off being raised by a friend, but I'd be afraid the monsters would come and snatch them while my back was turned.

Oh, the H.H. Holmes episode was on today. I'm surprised to be reminded that the show was a lot creepier in its early days.

Dean was essentially abused and robbed of a childhood. I'm not going to argue with what you're capable of (how would I know?) but I do hope you'd aim higher to do right by your children. Lying to Sam and never lying to Dean were two extremes around a middle John didn't seem to consider viable.

I don't think anyone in the story thinks he did a good job, and I think he did a valiant job, and a dramatically resonant one, but not *good*.

Jared is perfectly capable of weird hair on his own. I don't dislike what I see on Show, so there's that. Sometimes it's too lank, but by and large I like his shag.

I like Sam's hair this season, although sometimes it's almost too perfect. I am getting a little scared of where the sideburns are going, though.

Dean was essentially abused and robbed of a childhood.

I don't think I fully grasped it until some of the more recent flashbacks, although I know Plei had latched onto pretty much immediately. Especially when you compare how John treated Dean and Sam, Sam was the child and Dean was the surrogate adult/parent/authority figure for him.

It makes Azazel's lines about Sam being John's favorite so much worse, because he said while he was in John's body, and that had to be a subconscious fear of Dean's. How could it not? Sam is to be protected at all times, even if Dean's the one doing the protecting. Who's supposed to be protecting him? No one, which translated not to him being capable, but to being unworthy of care or protection.

DEAN.

John's speech, before he goes to hell for Dean, and Dean's instant conviction that something was wrong (hey, kinda like he worked out John wasn't John when he was too easily forgiving)...that's one of my favourite character moments for one of my favourite characters right there.

That's a hurting boy-man right there. Motherfucker.

This is a kinda cute anthology vid. I'm not sure about the sequencing or the choice of the important scenes, but it was well edited and some of the song choices amusing/appropriate.

I love that Dean knows Sam and John inside out. Like when he knows Sam will use the pseudonym Wedge Antilles, even when Sam's trying to throw him off with a different car or whatever.

The very end of that video was especially cute.

I love season five Sam for knowing Dean in a real way, and for knowing himself. Dean gets a lot of Sam's...well, he can predict his actions, but I don't think he knows how he's feeling, or he'd have let the "he ran" stuff go a long time ago. But he knows what he'll do.

Sam's been bright, but I think he was way wrapped up in himself for a long time (not for lack of having major shit going on! It's not a judgment), and then the upcoming apocalypse and the result of his contribution to freeing Lucifer, as well as being his prom dress really snapped things into focus for him in a way I don't know if most of us could handle. I mean, that's a lot of shit to actually process.

But there he was in S5, letting Dean out of the panic room, getting that even though Dean didn't mean to make the right choice, he would, and understanding the sort of sacrifice he could make to save the world.

I think he got over involved in atoning for what RoboSam did, but that's still a lot more perspective than Dean's got. Dean's trying to make up to random strangers¹ for not being perfect, not even something his body did while his self was being tortured.

¹: Well, not so much as of the start of last episode. But I can't wait to see what the start of this week's ep brings in terms of perspective. Last week he wasn't fighting at all, for anyone, for probably the first time in ever.