But that scene read very real to me.

It did for me, too. And I don't think Kripke is trying to show that Dean is *right* so much as showing that for Dean, that bedrock is FAMILY. And Sam didn't choose that.

I think Dean also feels like he's lost more than Sam, maybe. His dad, his image of his dad, his image of *himself*, and his brother. Who he's always been afraid of losing, and did for a while. And this is more proof that a) he couldn't save him, and b) that Sam won't always choose family.

Yeah. Sam chose something other than Dean AGAIN.

But he looks so sad about it afterward. I mean, sure Sam did an unforgivable thing, but couldn't Dean just give him a little hug to erase some of that hurt in those eyes?

The ending was ouchy.

He wrote this.

The end was totally ouchy.

I also thought Sam (well, Jared) looked YEARS younger, little boy young and vulnerable again, when demon!Bobby was telling him to lose his number.

He wrote this.

Ah. Can you explain what you meant, though? How is Kripke trying to prove that?

God, that look when Dean said the trust wasn't there anymore - he was shocked.

Sam's been practically begging Dean to attack him, to lay the blame for the apocalypse at his door. And Dean wouldn't play along. And he finally runs him to ground, and what he gets isn't "you ended the world" but "you broke us." Even after everything, after the bullshit "if you walk out that door don't come back", he didn't expect that. Ouch ouch ouch.

They weren't in sync last season, not at all. But this is new. I so hope the arc of this season is them figuring it out again.

That's what I think it is, brenda. And yeah, Sam was STUNNED.

Sam chose something other than Dean AGAIN.

And that Sam's motivations for his "choices" were trying to avenge Dean and trying to become strong enough to stop Lilith? Dean doesn't care, because he is incapable of seeing shades of gray. He will always see anything other than what he (or John) declared the Winchester Way to be rebellion and betrayal. Sam's choices led to a crappy outcome. He was taken in by Ruby and then allowed himself to be misled. You'd think if nothing else the sucking down of demon blood would have raised giant red flags for him. But again, it wasn't as though he was deliberately working to cause Armageddon - when he broke the 66th seal it was done because he thought he was preserving it. And whoever/whatever caused the other 65 seals to break caused the Apocalypse too. If those seals hadn't gone down, it couldn't have happened.

what he gets isn't "you ended the world" but "you broke us."

I like this, because I've always felt that the bond between the two of them was the heart of the show for me.

Dean feels betrayed, by the last living family member he has left. Logic doesn't usually enter into things like that. The fact that Sam had well-intentioned reasons for it doesn't really make much of a difference. It's still the choice he made, and Dean feels betrayed.

I don't think it's out of character for Dean to see things in very stark lines. He lives in an us-vs.-them kind of world.