It wasn't being pissed. No not John. But I bet it echoed. And part if it may have just been the speech patterns. Maybe it was the just the pattern of a continued unrelenting cloud of anger. In my family if I did something wrong there would be shouting, and some clear definite punishment finished if possible, or assigned. And then it was over, with any continuing punishment carried out without malice, in a "you did wrong, and the consequences will take a while to work through" fashion. The unrelenting cloud of disapproval looks to me like something very hard to live with.

I didn't see him there long enough to be labouring under an unrelenting cloud. We saw two, maybe three conversations with his parents, one mad because he came home "drunk" and disoriented, one at breakfast where he was still acting weird and not taking them seriously or treating them respectfully.

Let's just say my father and mother wouldn't have let up on me in that 12 hour span, and they totally don't count as an unrelenting cloud of disapproval or borderline abuse.

The first conversation with the parents, I could hand wave.

one at breakfast where he was still acting weird and not taking them seriously or treating them respectfully.

This? Dude, Sam, you realize you are in the wrong body. Man up and fake it through breakfast. I can see him being pissed that he can't get a hold of Dean and at Gary for the whole body swap, but how does acting like this help him fix things? I kinda expect more from Sam.

He definitely knows better than that. He could have played the part and gotten the information he wanted less confrontationally. He's faked it before. Give the dad a little rope, take a little info.

Or just go straight to the sister and ask her those questions and skip out on breakfast entirely and move on with your big plan. Assuming you knew Gary had a sister before breakfast.

I think that's a show of change in Sam, though. He doesn't really care much anymore about BSing, or covers. He wanted info, and he was going to get it, and he didn't really care much if the parents thought their kid had gone crazy.

Sam doesn't care much about nicey-nice anymore.

I agree. Sam has come a long way from the polite, sensitive soul he was in S1. I thought he did at least have the grace to look a little ashamed of himself after he blurted out that he didn't give a shit about the plan, either.

That change started during the year he was trying to figure out a way to break Dean's crossroads deal. He became more coldly pragmatic the more frantic he felt. He was focused on his goal and had less patience for the fuzzy issues around the edges... Dean's the one who soothes victims' families now during interviews, for example. That used to be Sam's role.

I'm wondering why Dean didn't notice his damn phone was MIA. And why Sam didn't call Bobby for help, or at the very least, moral support.

That used to be Sam's role.

[Sigh] I do miss the old Sam. Sure wish he'd lay off the workout, too. Don't like beefcake. At. All.

He was focused on his goal and had less patience for the fuzzy issues around the edges

I think that the whole demon blood addiction thing has changed him a lot too. Suburban life can't seem like an option after all of that. I don't think Dean thinks he (Dean, not Sam) deserves it either, but I think they're coming from very different places. I think Sam thinks he's all wrong because of Azazel and the meatsuit dealio. Dean thinks he just doesn't belong because he has never belonged, because he has a job to do. Less to do with direct arcane influences or taints.

Salvation is today's TNT episode. I got as far as John throwing the fit when he finally finds out about Sam's visions, mad because they never told him. Dean points out that they called him during rough times (oh, like deathbed) and he never responded. It takes a big fanwank to make him a decent parent in retrospect--he cops to being in the wrong, even as he chides Dean for tone.

Oh, and I love the "Carry On My Wayward Son" at the start. It's better than a montage. It's a vid.