I'll bet Sam and Dean are thinking right now....

[giandujakiss]

...the mystery would have been solved so much easier if the babies had had tails.

Leaving aside my deep longing for someone who can write like Darin Morgan, this was definitely better than last week's episode, if only because the pacing felt right. And I really liked that they followed up with the idea that Sam isn't properly feeling things from 6x01 - it gives me some hope that this is a new character trait that will be confronted, and not just bad writing. Also a nice touch - that Dean moving his family around, hesitating to let them go outside, were remnants of his own childhood.

A lot less cool: Dean's relative helplessness with the baby, and the fact that any knowledge he has comes from Lisa's niece. Jesus, Sera, fandom has been dying for some kind of recognition that Dean raised Sam, that Dean must have learned to care for a baby because John was in no position to do it. We've been waiting for this moment, the moment when Dean was forced to care for a baby as part of case and would reveal his skill; the moment when, for example, he'd sing to the baby and Sam would remember that Dean used to sing to him. It is agonizing to me that this opportunity was squandered (which is why I demand that fandom rectify this situation immediately).

Is Dean's new house near Bobby's place? I ask because apparently it's part of that same space-time bubble where it's magically no more than an hour's drive from anywhere else in the country.

I'm sorry but it made ... zero sense ... that the Alpha shifter would have kept morphing into the hunters. Uh, why?

The ending bit was cool but if they just moved,wouldn't Dean have driven the Impala to the new house, so that the car was not in fact mothballed all this time?

Are they going to have a car war next week?

I'm happy that Mark's dead because the Campbells are boring and with one fewer of them to concern Show, there's more of a chance that Show will be able to make the remaining ones interesting. That said, the actress who plays Gwen has so far managed with about three lines to be really, really creepy. That's a compliment.

I know they're going somewhere with the whole evil!Skinner plot, but I do resent that we still can't just have Sam 'n' Dean - we've got to have these Campbells running interference. Maybe Show really is trying to avoid Wincestuous overtones.

Comments

[musesfool]

Yeah, when Sam was like, "How do you know that?" I wanted Dean to be like, "You always needed a ton of crap," but meh. Was it a new writer? I didn't recognize the name.

[giandujakiss]

I never remember to pay attention to the writers. But yes, exactly - I wanted Dean to answer that he knew this stuff from experience. And when he didn't, I hoped he was lying because he didn't want to admit he'd taken care of Sam, or something, and that he'd be exposed - but, sadly, no.

[elliemurasaki]

In fairness, all my memories of taking care of a baby (or watching Mom do same) date from sister the littlest, not sister the next littlest (assuming we're excluding babysitting Mrs. B's littlest on grounds of that was last year), which means I remember baby stuff from eleven years ago when I was ten, not from fourteen years ago when I was seven. Dean's trying to remember stuff from ~seventy years ago when he was four. I do not blame him in the least for not remembering.

(And on the flip side of that, my ex vividly recalls changing his baby sisters' diapers when he was three.)

[musesfool]

While I wouldn't expect him to remember a detailed shopping list (I totally allow the niece milk-run for that), the idea that babies need a lot of crap strikes me as something he would remember, even if he hadn't been taking care of Sam from an early age, simply because babies require a lot of crap. But in his case, even if he weren't the primary caretaker at four, which he likely wasn't, he probably still had to help pack all that shit up when John was moving them around and it's not like there's that much less stuff up through age 3.

[giandujakiss]

See, that's my point. It's not that I think in reality Dean necessarily would have remembered. It's that I think they could have made the choice to allow him to remember, and I'm very disappointed that they didn't.

[coffeeandink]

Jesus, Sera, fandom has been dying for some kind of recognition that Dean raised Sam, that Dean must have learned to care for a baby because John was in no position to do it.

Also, I was really hoping Dean would sing "Hey, Jude" to calm it down.

[giandujakiss]

IKNOWRITE???! That occurred to me too.

I am DISAPPOINT.

[darkemeralds]

EXCELLENT point about Dean and baby care.

May fandom definitely do your bidding in this instance.

[giandujakiss]

Sadly, if you check out the comments, especially on LJ, lots of people don't particularly want to see that. Which makes me cry. It's not that I'm into babies - but I am into caretaker!Dean.

[darkemeralds]

That's sad. I'm not into babies either--I never read fic where a baby comes into the picture in any meaningful way, and mpreg is anathema to me!--but the particular construction you've placed on the notion here hits a nice sweet spot for me, and I'm surprised it's not more general.

[giandujakiss]

It's reasonably general - I mean, I see it around the fandom, and I'm not the only person to fault the episode over this. But obviously there are plenty of people who have a different interpretation.

[sothcweden]

Small Potatoes! I loved the Darin Morgan-written stuff, too. And him playing Eddie Van Blundht ("the H is silent") was laugh-out-loud funny, though SP was written by Vince Gilligan, if I remember correctly.

I have to mention that this was the first ever ep of SPN I've ever seen as it was being broadcast; I was in a hotel for a conference. I thought it was a good episode, but it was such a different watching experience because I'm not used to having to wait through commercials and usually I can rewind if I miss a line. And as much as I loved the boys with a baby stuff, I was similarly disappointed with Dean's answer about how he learned to do it and not having any brotherly snark along the lines of "If you think this is bad? When you were [blank] I though I was going to [blank] from all the [blank]."

But the scene where he's talking to Lisa about how he didn't want to become John was one I really liked because it demonstrates how he's changed since the Pilot when he told Sam "It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad." Now if we can just get some insight into Sam's head...please, Sera!

[giandujakiss]

Oh, yes, you're right - Darin was just acting in SP :-).

I realize that we've had hope before and have been let down before, but I do think we're going to get into Sam's head. Because they really do seem to be waving a red flag over his failure to feel emotion properly, and both Sam and Samuel mentioned it as strange in this episode. It feels like they're leading up to something. *fingers crossed*