Lle Llywela

/sighs Man, I love this episode even more, knowing the world of hurt that comes after. Glad you managed to get this one out despite your nasty cold. *hugs* Excellent read, as always, hon!

"What, are you crazy?" snorts the girl currently incarcerated on a secure ward of a psychiatric hospital. Heh, that reminds me that the guy who admitted himself to the psychiatry in Phantom Traveller says the same to Sam when he asks if he saw a mirage. *g*

Dean is clearly comfortable with the idea of going out at night and leaving Sam alone Sam is not only older now, he also is now a full team of the Winchester family unit, training and all. The fact that he was part of the werewolf hunting team and the way he takes down Dirk, demonstrates that he is very much able to defend himself. So, I think Dean just trusts Sam to be able to take care of himself, much more than in previous flashbacks, where Sam was still in the dark about the truth.

hard to believe that Dean would make such an outburst or refer to the secret nature of what his family does in this way. I think it's a very understandable juvenile reaction. I had to think back to Dean's confession to Gordon in Bloodlust, that at age 16 he embraced the hunter's life and realised that while other kids worry about pimples, he gets to see things they don't even dream about. As a teenager hunting is still in parts an adventure for him and something that sets him apart from other kids, and I think that in his distress over Amanda's public berating he just slipped. He is still a kid after all, one with very low self-esteem at that, and I can see him desperately trying to regain his sense of self in that scene, because he knows that what he did to Amanda was cruel. Also, it was unlikely that anybody would have believed a word Dean said, just like Mr. Wyatt didn’t believe Sam’s werewolf story.

This was a great ep, but I can’t help wishing that there was more of a sense of time passing in the flashbacks. It all feels like it happened the same day, not over a month. And poor Barry. I liked him.

Brock Kelly didn’t really convince me most of the time, and I think it is mostly accent issues and that scene with the teacher, but I think he had a very difficult job and it would have been difficult to find anyone better. So well done to him. However, he is completely outshone by Colin Ford, who does such a marvellous job with Sam.

Seeing Dean wearing John's old leather jacket, trying so desperately to mimic his father while so young, is heartbreaking.
>>their unique circumstances mean that each of them is always effectively alone, and always they gravitate back to one another as their only true friend and confidante.

This is hopeful for the future, in the way Sam’s reaction to meeting Mr Wyatt will likely not be.

>>Since Dean shows such little interest in doing any actual schoolwork during his brief stay at this school, and knowing that all recent school experiences have been similarly brief,

Of course, we see him in a History class, which seems unlikely is going to ever be his strongest subject and this also ties in with Croatoan. I’ve wondered a lot about how there seems to be such a massive academic difference between Sam and Dean. I think with the mountain of responsibilities on his shoulders, an absence of parental supervision and value placed on it and just a plain lack of the love for learning that Sam has, he struggled to keep up with school during all the moves and just gave up trying in the end. He had an exciting job to go into after all.
He must have learnt something though, else how would he have been able to make an electro-magnet? Or balanced that budget?

>>Dean tends to be good with kids he can relate to, one-on-one, usually kids who are troubled or traumatised in some way.

Also, just boys. He tends to leave the girls to Sam.

>>Oh, man. Remember way back when, when Dean claimed not to do shorts?

I thought he was mainly being flippant when he said that, but I don’t disagree that it was probably true. :)

>>Amanda asks when his curfew is and he proudly shrugs that he doesn't have one

I didn’t have one either, but mostly because I was way too boring to need one. I like being indoors.

>>Frustrated, Sam sighs for his brother to just shut up.

Despite what happened to him, I was stuck throughout this scene by how very self-assured Sam is at this age, almost as if he’s the one actually in charge.

>>"Not really. I'm like 21 Jump Street," he claims. "The bus driver sells pot."

And thus I enjoy spending the last couple of weeks rewatching a very young Johnny Depp in a variety of fetching outfits. Thanks, Dean!

>>Dean's back in the broom closet…but this time making out with a brunette

Ironically, I think that girl looks incredibly like Ruby.

>>The sound of a horn announces the arrival of the Impala

As if the distinctive sound of engine wasn’t enough!

>>Sam […] introduces himself with his real name and awkwardly announces that he just wanted to thank the teacher.

Maybe it would be just too much work to go into this much detail of their backgrounds, but Hendrickson did look thoroughly enough into the boy’s lives to know how they’d lived. It might be a stretch, but the FBI may have interviewed people who had come across them in the past and Mr Wyatt could have been one of them if they’d tried to track where they’d been. Sam is actually taking a bit of risk.