#15x11 the gamblers

[monstermoviedean]

[soullessjack]

cas right after entering the church: oh jack my sweet darling boy have you returned to me at long last (〃´𓎟`〃)

jack:

[samepisodebracket]

Round 1; Group 28

[shallowseeker]

I actually would have loved Sam and Eileen having clutzy fails. Eileen pokes Sam in the eye. Sam goes for a kiss and rams his teeth into her forehead somehow.

[garashir]

guy who tries to hustle people at pool but he actually sucks

[shallowrambles]

I'm going to break these up to respond @ilarual, because these are so good!

#this is very much Dean giving Cas the kind of compassion no one else in Cas's life ever has least of all Cas himself#it's not so much Dean forgiving Cas because he believes Cas has taken real accountability for what he did wrong#as it feels like it's Dean forgiving Cas because he looked at the ways Cas has hurt him and he looks at Cas's emotional needs#and decided that giving Cas grace and forgiving him was more important

Yes, exactly. It's grounded in compassion and understanding, because they do understand each other and what motivates the other. They're both "men of action," types in very big ways, and they both act as "family protectors." And strangely, even when things are going terribly, they wind up being huge sources of support for each other! They need each other's support now to heal and grieve, and they wind up prioritizing that, which is really how partnerships work. Cas knows what lies behind Dean's sometimes razor-sharp words, and Dean knows what lies behind Cas's sometimes inexplicable lone-hero actions. (Feature/bug dilemma, on both sides. Cas likes Dean's passion; Dean likes Cas's heroics.)

#which isn't necessarily sustainable long term but it's also a) something they can actually work on once all cards are on the table#and 2) not necessarily something that's anywhere near as likely to recur in a post-Chuck world where the crises aren't as apocalyptic#either way it's an expression of incredible compassion and love and I don't think Cas takes that for granted#anyway I thought too hard about The Trap prayer and went fully insane again oh my god#spn

Yeah, it would help not to have cosmic deals, cosmic consequences, and murderous grandfathers-out-for-their-grandson's blood breathing down their necks all the time. The most believable thing about season 15 is that when Dean's hero-magic goes away during The Hero's Journey/The Gamblers, he immediately shows signs of stress-exacerbated disorders, like IBS. Yeesh!

I agree that Cas doesn't take it for granted. I think Cas knows his own tendencies at this point, as evidenced by how he was able to verbalize it more successfully in Absence (if only he'd gotten back from Anael sooner!). He usually realizes that he needs help and should communicate better with his partner and family; he just has the horrible luck of doing it too late, too often. Poor Cas!

I think the thing with Jack was unique, because this time, he did the lone wolf thing during a critical risk period, and it was in relation to co-parenting rather than "Heaven business." (Jack was dangerous and volatile, even if it hurts to admit that. He could've hurt any one of them.)

Then, it all got so tragically fragmented.

It's fascinating to me how much I've changed my mind about Dean in The Trap. I'm waaaaay more sympathetic to the whole Cas-being-forgiven aspect of it, because yes, Cas apologized initially, but the root of the issue was Cas's painful withdrawal of his partnership and his withholding of critical information. Full stop. He and Dean are NOT equally culpable in this one.

It's not just about Mary and Jack, and yet Cas keeps pivoting to "Dean blaming him for Mary." Which oversimplifies the whole thing in a terrible way. Yes, they're all culpable, and yes they all saw that things were wrong with Jack, but next to Donatello, Cas is THE authority on souls and physically the strongest of TFW. To make matters worse, he all but demanded Dean to parent Jack and take care of Jack's emotions, even though Dean expressed discomfort over his memories of soulless Sam. Dean has repeatedly expressed how he wants Cas to be open and honest with him, especially now that they're co-parenting, and although Cas demanded Dean parent Jack, he then turned around and hid Big Parenting Stuff from him and went off to meet Anael.

Barring Cas's one feeble and poorly-timed, "I tried to fix it on my own because I was afraid of losing this family," he doesn't really spell out his part in the communication failures or apologize very well for withdrawing from Dean, specifically. He sorts of sulls up and say, "I already apologized and I'm not doing it again." Yet, Cas has a continued, longstanding pattern of withdrawal from the partnership. I'm floored that my Cas goggles kept me from seeing it before, and maybe I'm a little embarrassed, too. I mean, honestly, it's amazing that Dean takes him back at all. :/ Once you look past, "Oh no! Dean said mean things!" anyway.

I think by The Trap, Dean has given up trying to get Cas to change or hold him accountable for his lack of communication. Cas sort of gave Dean ultimatums over it, if you squint, and Dean rolled over. And Dean wants to get back together. He needs Cas's support and Cas need his. He looks at everything Cas is and decides that Cas's avoidance and want to protect the family is just woven into the fabric of him, and Dean decides to accept that. It's something he loves about him as much as he resents it. Cas's chivalry is a feature and a bug. Dean loves him for it. It makes his life a Hell sometimes.

Occasionally, I still see people harping on how horrible Dean was for "forgiving" Cas, like Cas doesn't need to be forgiven. And with some distance and clarity, I find that pretty baffling now, but I also remember feeling that way when I wasn't looking at their partnership equally and giving Cas too much leeway on his continued absence from the partnership. I almost...respected Cas more. That thought makes me wince. But his bad decisions I was way more likely to stamp as protective or tactically genius, at least compared to some of Dean's similar decisions. Dean's things I tended to group as "too angry/emotional/irrational." :(

I guess I've come a long way when it comes to holding Sam and Cas accountable for their actions, too. Much of the time, my issues with Dean devolved to unfortunate tone policing or not liking him to express his anger and be angry at his boundaries being breached over and over, even when he was taking his anger out on inanimate objects. I balked just because it made a loud sound that made Sam wince (oh noes, not the wincing).

///

On the other hand, I'm quite impressed that Dean and Cas were finding their way back to each other after the Death of a Child. That's about the hardest thing a marriage can go through, and they were getting back together and trying to heal even before Jack reappeared. Clearly, it's a stress-tested relationship. WAY more stress-tested than your everyday marriages; they've been through multiple apocalypses. On the whole, they often have good communication, even when they disagree, they knew where they stood (like with Donatello). It's just these huge, incredibly unusual horrible earth-shatteringly terrible things that throw them. Chuck's grooming is such a bitch.

[seasononesam]

Stackednatural- 170/327

The Gamblers (15x11) January 30th, 2020

[xofemeraldstars]

well well well....... congrats to the 31.6% that got it right!!🥳

[pollsnatural]

[blood-prayer]

15x11 The Gamblers

[missjackil]

Supernatural Battle of the Episodes!

Looks like P&L took home another win! 2 more wins to make it to the Hall of Fame!

Let's bring out the next challenger Chuck!

Chuck: Next up we have The Gambler - Sam and Dean head to Alaska to look for a mystery pool hall that grants good luck in hopes to find their Mojo!

[monstermoviedean]

one of my fave quotes from season 15 is when dean says "i've been playing pool since before you were born" to sam and sam looks at him and without missing a beat is like "oh yeah? when? between naptime and snack?"

that line just stuck with me forever

that was so good!!! it was like the fog lifted for a brief moment and we finally got to see sam again

[soullessjack]

look at my son, pride is not the word I’m looking for

[castiellesbian]

Richard Hatem:

1x04 Phantom Traveler

1x10 Asylum

Davy Perez

12x04 American Nightmare

12x12 Stuck in the Middle (With You)

12x15 Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell

13x06 Tombstone

13x11 Breakdown

13x17 The Thing

14x04 Mint Condition

14x11 Damaged Goods

14x16 Don't Go in the Woods (with Nick Vaught)

15x04 Atomic Monsters

15x11 The Gamblers (with Meredith Glynn)

15x15 Gimme Shelter

[shallowseeker]

I was thinking about yours and somnatime's comments about The Trap being one-sided in terms of only addressing Cas's renegotiations, and then I thought about Sam and Dean going to Alaska and I wondered if Dean is being passive-aggressive. Leaving without telling anyone where he's going is a Cas thing, and maybe he wants him to have a taste of his own medicine.

I feel like I've pondered that before but not too deeply. You're talking about 15x11 The Gamblers, I presume.

In this episode, we see Sam awkwardly leave a sticky note for Cas, and then text to Eileen very actively in the episode.

INTERIOR – BUNKER LIBRARY – NIGHT [CAS turns the paper around and sees the note written by SAM. “Cas, we’ve gone to Alaska. Sam.”]

&

INTERIOR – IMPALA – NIGHT [SAM is checking the messages on his phone as it continues to chime. DEAN glares at the phone.] DEAN: Silent mode’s always an option. SAM: Yeah. Right. Sorry. DEAN: And how’s Eileen doing? SAM: She’s hanging in there. She thinks our plan sounds a little too good to be true. You know, maybe she’s right.

Dean gets irritated at the PING PING PING of Sam's phone. I think he's feeling some frustration in general not just because he's got IBS/heart burn and everything's going wrong but because, yeah, in 15x09 The Trap, his needs were not really expressed.

...which would probably center around Cas's lone wolf, unilateral decisions, secret-keeping, and going dark and etc etc, so yea. Sure, sometimes Cas's ghosting is justified, but then sometimes Dean's anger is justified, too. The point is he didn't really get to talk about his side, like, at all. (He mostly just laid his own mistakes and flaws but wasn't given the chance to talk about how the behaviors of his loved ones contribute to his frustration. No matter how extenuating and well-meaning their actions were, Dean is swallowing that kinda thing over and over again just to entice people to stay and it probably feels very...difficult.)

That in mind, I think you're onto something. It's not a stretch to assume going to Alaska could be something of passive-aggressive "taste of your own medicine" thing re:Cas. Here it definitely seems he's purposely being "dark," -- you could even call it Silent Mode.

And the worst thing is Cas doesn't even seem to react, haha. He doesn't actively wring his hands over check-ins and daily case safety in quite the same way Dean does. And Cas's comms-style is not nearly so clingy either, leaving Dean a little...hmm probably feeling like he needs Cas more than Cas needs him. Very frustrating indeed. (Add to the mix the previous fight, "You've been to Hell before," and it gets...messy and complex.)

We could suppose that even after everything, after their big fight that culminated in Cas leaving, Dean is still trying to goad a reaction out of Cas. (And more often than not, trying to get a reaction out of Cas is a losing game.) I think you're right that part of the reason Dean is pushing is because he was cut off before voicing his needs and feelings in The Trap.

CC @somnatine Because you were mentioned.

[unhinged-jackles]

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