Do you think the part where he burnt his brain out was his motivation? Or a side effect?

What part was that?

he told Dean to quit after he left, so maybe he was always going to punk out and I was wrong to respect him.

Maybe that's where we differ. I don't believe just because Sam and Dean can do this job means they have to. We know that there are other hunters. The entire world isn't their responsibility every moment.

I will admit that ignoring the Leviathans was pretty rotten. They were also the Winchesters' responsibility, in lieu of Cas dealing with them, and that clearly wasn't going to happen at the end of last season, even before he went poof with Dean.

Yeah if he decide to drop hunting, I would expect him do it after going after Keith and the Ls. Or at least passing it on to another hunter. A doctor might retire in the middle of treating a patient with a difficult cancer but probably not without passing it along to another doctor he trusts. I'll give Sam a pass on not trying to get Dean back, because he saw him caught in a goo explosion. But if he was going to give up on Kevin and Leviathan I'd expect him to only do so after finding a substitute hunter. No substitute, then retire only after those last two cases. I don't see it character for Sam. That is why I was talking about Amelia beingthe vet and dead. Really I'm backing off of that casue I realize that is advocating fridging and, no - I don't want to that. But on top of Dean being dead, if Sam felt like his hunting was responsible for killing the woman he loved, that I could see driving him to quit and destroy his phones and so on.

I've never been interested in the story of Dean and Sam after hunting. I don't read curtain fic, and if the show spends too much time on it, I'm not interested in it there either. I don't like Sam and/or Dean retired. I needed the Dean at Lisa's house to love her but not Love her, to be able to bounce back onto the road and stabbing demons and saving lives because it does call to him, because no matter what bullshit the angels say about his destiny, this is different--he's just the kind of guy who doesn't sit by. He's someone I'm not--he's a hero and a champion and he makes the hard calls, and he suffers for it, but he also gets the reward from doing good and saving people.

When they led with the "family business" quote in "the road so far" I choked up...if that's not true, why should it make me emotional?

I think one of my problems with Sam's decision to quit and the seemingly quick timing of it is that, sure, you can list logical points why it makes sense, but unless we're talking about Soulless!Sam, Sam thinking logically at that point in time doesn't track for me. Sam doing illogical, emotional, frantic things like searching with no leads and banging down doors tracks. Even if it's for just a week, before the hopelessness of the situation becomes unavoidably clear, and he realizes that he can spiral into post-Mystery Spot, or try something different, pull himself together, try to do what he asked Dean to do post-Swan Song.

Honestly, one of the things that bothers me most is how the hell anyone (or thing) is killed in purgatory. According the alpha vamp, way back in S6, it's where the souls of dead evil things go. So ... they shouldn't really have bodies, first of all, but also ... they're already dead. So when Dean kills them, what happens then?

They're only mostly dead? Yeah, I don't know either.

GWAR are... GWAR. Jilli should explain them.

Ha! (And yes, I'm still reading this thread, even tho' I only saw three episodes of LAST season.)

GWAR are ... a shock-rock band. With puppets, giant costumes with enormous foam codpieces and/or penises, and a fondness for throwing buckets of stage blood on the audience. They're ridiculous, and they're also HUGE geeks. The members of GWAR completely fandorked out at Pete when I introduced them at a convention long ago.

I think one of my problems with Sam's decision to quit and the seemingly quick timing of it...

Overall, I really liked the episode, but right now, I'd really like a bit more information about the timing of things from Sam's perspective. We know that Kevin stopped contacting him several months back (will need to re-watch to be sure), but I'm assuming the first call didn't come in right away. Kevin first had to guile his way out of Crowley's clutches. Also, I got the idea that before hitting the dog, Sam was still on the road. What we don't know is how long that was. If it was a few months, and there was no sign of Leviathan during that time, his decision to stop and give up hunting makes a lot more sense to me. I hope we see more of Sam's year as we get more about what happened to Dean in Purgatory.

When they led with the "family business" quote in "the road so far" I choked up...if that's not true, why should it make me emotional?

I think for Sam, hunting is very much is a family business, and without family, there's no business. Between S3 and S4, he had the hope of getting Dean back (and Ruby's interference). In this case, there was no sign he would get Dean back, and his entire chosen family has been wiped out. I also think Sam has good reason (and some chilling precedents) to fear what he'd become on his own.

Also, I'd like to hear more about the "there was a girl" factor. From the look of things, Sam snuck out on his bunkmates (human and canine) in the middle of the night as soon as he got word that Dean was alive. I very much got the feeling that not going back is very much an option he's keeping open.

For me, I think that if Sam had valid reasons, and a valid timeline that showed he did his due diligence before he threw in the towel . . . wouldn't he have led with that when explaining himself to Dean?