Dean thought he as Ben's dad and Lisa told him he wasn't. But the bio-father wasn't in the picture either. I could see Dean wanting Ben to have a father even if it wasn't his bio-dad.

Until he met Ben, Lisa was just a good time. After meeting Ben, he discovered his white picket fence fantasy. Could he really live that life - heck no. But I don't think that is an image you let go of easily, even if you don't voice it out loud.

Theresa, I read your link but I may be thick as I don't get the significance of Ben's name.

Benjamin means "son of the right hand; son of the south; son of my old age". The boy's name Ben ben is pronounced ben. It is of Hebrew origin, and its meaning is "son".

I took son of the right hand to mean the son of the favored one, the right hand of God. I think Dean's happy place could be Ben as the "son of my old age." I don't have any meaning read into "son of the south." But as invested as the show is in Biblical icons, myths, legend, whatever, I have a hard time seeing the name as coincidence.

I could see Dean wanting Ben to have a father even if it wasn't his bio-dad.

And that's as far as I can comfortably go, really. Surrogate dad, and pretty damned good at it. If he's had a bigger weight on his mind this whole time I would want to have known about it.

After watching the clips from next week, this montage made me feel a little bit better. funny moments

Of course, maybe Lisa is in a relationship, and the whole thing is moot. That will be my fanon.

Oh, and in reference to clip #1: Sammy! You did not make a mistake leaving for Stanford! But I get why you said it.

Totally agree.

I'll not address the whores verbiage, as it's been done and I agree with others' take on it.

I do want to speak to the increasingly frequent mention by Dean of John as a deadbeat dad, related to the comment upstream that Dean is making those adolescent breaks he never did in his actual adolescence. He revered his dad, but also he'd lost one parent in a traumatic way. Circumstances bound him tighter than normal to his remaining parent, and in highly dangerous conditions. I'm sure he was too desperately clinging to Dad to have rebellious thoughts, or to act on any he did have, for fear of actually losing Dad.

I think he's gained enough distance now to allow realization of all the harm the way he and Sam were raised did to them, and he's suffering rebellious backlash. I do think if he lives beyond the current crisis and is allowed to settle into some kind of norm, that he will eventually come back to center, with a more honest perspective on his dad, with all the love and affection tempered by an acknowledgement of how badly John managed fatherhood--aside from the fact that they did actually survive to adulthood.

All the clips are amazing.

But damn, the crackle in the room in the second one; all eyes on Jim, all focus on Bobby. And man, does he deliver. I'm almost sorry I didn't see it first time in situ. The third one is equally amazing, for all of us who've bemoaned the lessening of Castiel to a shattered and ruined doormat. Apparently? NSM.

As for Lisa, it never occurred to me she was anything other than a symbol for Dean of what normal could have been, had he lived another life. A real-life avatar for the Carmen of his dream-life (who I believe may have actually been an avatar for Lisa. It's complicated). I don't believe Ben is his, and I don't think I want him to be; he works just fine as a could-have-been. I'm not ready to see Dean settle down, and if he does, I don't think I want it to be with somebody who shares a history. He's earned a new start with a blank slate, both of the brothers have done. Not that I have any power of influence, but as long as we're stating preferrences....

As for raising kids, I think they would both be awesome fathers, having had both a fiercely positive and a grimly negative example in their own dad. But I'd be content if the bloodline stopped with them. So, ready-mades, adoption, or benevolent and/or courtesy uncles would be my choice.

I think he's gained enough distance now to allow realization of all the harm the way he and Sam were raised did to them, and he's suffering rebellious backlash. I do think if he lives beyond the current crisis and is allowed to settle into some kind of norm, that he will eventually come back to center, with a more honest perspective on his dad, with all the love and affection tempered by an acknowledgement of how badly John managed fatherhood--aside from the fact that they did actually survive to adulthood.

This. Thank you for articulating what I was thinking.

Amidst all of this, I'm still intrigued/bothered by the impression that Michael Shank's character and the hot bartender were lovers. The whole ep I was waiting for that "sin" to be proclaimed. Maybe my slash-goggles are a little too tight on my head, but the looks they gave each other at church seemed more than good buddy annoyance at praying. Of course, I was also expecting the fact that it was Michael Shanks to mean that his character was going to realize the craziness and stop his wife from setting fire to the "sinners" and that didn't pan out either!

If the source material wasn't so vast, and if I still owned an editor . . . I keep hearing SPN vid songs. I don't vid shows on my playlists often, but Supernatural is the one that comes up the most. First it was Gomez's "Bone Tired" [link] and now it's The Swell Season's "The Rain" [link]