Heh. D was just reading over my shoulder as he was saying good night, and he caught ita !'s rant: ...Get off our team! You're making us look bad!

and he snorted at me me and was all "I like her!"

I agree, btw, with the rant and D's opinion. I totally get why Misha pulled back AND I am utterly jazzed to see him again on SPN.

No other angel was getting all the plotline our wee Castiel earned himself.

Exactly. They saw what they had, and decided to do more with it than originally planned, and that's awesome. And they did an awesome job. And yet? Still not a show about an angel of the lord, as you said.

(It is kind of funny that the showrunners did the same thing with Jensen on Dark Angel, though. Just as an aside.)

Cas definitely had more character *growth* but he was facing conflict from the word go. Bobby's only real conflict was how to stay alive and keep the boys sane and whole, if possible, which is not so much a conflict as a motivation. And I think they did a nice job fleshing him out and making him a much richer, more dimensional character over the course of the series.

Dark Angel wasn't the writers' decision, though. Ackles was brought in as a love interest for Max, and the plan was to sideline Logan. Weatherly and Alba were co-producers, and engaged at the time. And Weatherly wanted to keep his acting gig, so he and Alba pressured the writers to reduce JA's role. There is a famous anecdote of Weatherly on set with a new script, counting his lines and JA's, to make sure Logan had more lines.

Castiel's role has been driven first by fan response and ratings. I give the character and Misha's willingness to engage and entertain fandom credit for rescuing a show on the edge of cancellation. I think only secondarily was his storyline a consideration. The writers could have done something else with his character and kept him on board. Just conjecture on my part, of course.

Is this the same trailer that aired after the ep: [link] ? I'll have to go look. It looks like it's been on the CW, anyway.

Didn't Collins say he wanted to do less with the show? If it was Collin's decision, the rest of the show did not have a lot of choice.

Weatherly and Alba were co-producers, and engaged at the time. And Weatherly wanted to keep his acting gig, so he and Alba pressured the writers to reduce JA's role.

How does that end up with him being in the whole second season?

I thought they liked what they saw of him when he was in the one S1 episode, and they expanded the role from there.

Even if it was a producer's decision to keep Misha on, the writers did well with it, and so did Misha.

I think only secondarily was his storyline a consideration.

I don't know what the specific reasoning for keeping him was, but his storyline doesn't feel like a throwaway to me. I'm not sure what you mean above -- they have to write and film things to air long before fans can even have a reaction to the bulk of it.

I'm actually considering a coffee date with a guy on OK Cupid just because he's the first one to mention Supernatural to me after reading my profile. One other guy mentioned Buffy before I took any reference to Whedon out (not sure why I did that), and that's been it for guys tapping into my interests. I wonder why they don't try that. They totally should.

From the trailer ita ! linked to a couple posts back, do we know who the woman is standing next to him when he's talking to Cas... or the dude who looks like Cas?

I think that's Meg . No? ETA: Okay, I watched again and now I'm not sure. But the wardrobe is the same.

he's the first one to mention Supernatural

Score.

I doublechecked, and yeah, that's the trailer after the episode, and that's Meg, and apparently that's Cas.

AND PART OF HIM ALWAYS BELIEVED CAS WOULD BE BACK.

So, no crushing hug, it looks like. It looks like, in fact, he says it to his back. But it's choked up, and it's needy, and it's Sammified. I'm good to see how it turns out.

I just hope it's not at the end of the episode.