Surely, I’m the last person to post up my thoughts about the S5 finale. I do love it. I am able to keep my theories alive -  though again there’s no real confirmation that I haven’t been off my rocker the past two seasons watching the show. I felt badly about that for a little while, but decided that this is how I’m able to enjoy the show. I’ll keep on as I have been without believing I can get anyone else to buy into my view.

Without having read reactions with any kind of thoroughness, I’ve seen more complaints recently from people about the excessive drinking in the show. However, I haven’t see anyone notice the equally obligatory inclusion of sleep scenes. And we got both in Swan Song with Castiel in the Impala’s backseat (leading to Sam reminding Dean that angels don’t sleep) and Sam and Dean with the green cooler of beer at the Impala deciding to go with Sam’s idea of saying yes to Lucifer. Dean is shown drink in hand at Lisa’s dinner table. (Could be tea, I suppose.) Chuck also drinks while completing his writing and toasts the boys passing the test.

The Impala’s first owner, Sal Moriarty, is obviously a hybridization of the roadtripping narrator and friend characters from Jack Kerouac’s autobiographical novel On the Road. I think it interesting that the choice was made to combine the two characters into one and make him an alcoholic bible distributor, no less! Can it be taken as another hint of the crossover/merging of Sam and Dean spirits?

I’ve also seen comments dismissing the parallels and reversals as lazy storytelling from a writing team who either don’t care or who tackled a story beyond their capabilities. Of course, as I see it, it’s much more than weak literary symmetry. (If it were, we ought to have gotten scenes of Sam packing a box of belongings, etc.) I maintain it’s deliberate and meant to take us back to the beginning. Like Swan Song’s army man, nothing we’ve seen in S5 can’t be traced back to the early days. It’s all a reverberation of elements previously introduced. One reason I’ve been able to come up with for something like that would be the one we’ve been given by the show in episodes like 2.16 Roadkill and 3.13 Ghostfacers: death echoes.

There’s also still the potential for mental illness to be in play. We witness Sam and Lucifer conversing in a cracked mirror – presenting Sam as fractured into pieces – reminding me of Dean torn apart in hell.

Another point I haven’t seen anyone else notice is that Lucifer shows Sam the demons who’ve watched him throughout his life -  in an abandoned theater. How perfect is that, I ask you? It’s another aspect to the storytelling theme.  Chuck’s narration about the Impala took me out of what was happening currently to the boys on one level. But, it worked perfectly (for me) as  setting up and executing an end to the apocalypse. edit May 24: I forgot to include a note about another reference to drinking and authoring when Dean used “Bukowski” to respond to Castiel’s suggested plan of drinking copious amounts of alcohol.

If I weren’t where I am in my speculating, I don’t know how I’d get past the similarities between Bobby’s basement and others we’ve seen (such as the pagan gods’ of 3.08 A Very Supernatural Christmas).

Michael reappearing to be trapped with Lucifer is not unlike Dean’s inability to let Sam die alone. “I’m here. I’m not going to leave.” “It’s my job. It’s who I am.” They left plenty of room for the viewer to interpret the looks between the characters during the climax since dialogue was minimal. It’s almost as if I saw (now I’m projecting!) Sam on the brink of the hole realizing Michael would start the whole thing again if he was prevented from his mission?

I started crying early when Chuck said, “Here is how it ends.” I was distressed every time the boys were separated since I was afraid that’s how it would be left for the summer. So I was relieved when the shot pulled back to show Sam (or some version of him!) under the street lamp. The first connection I made was to Roadkill’s Molly looking in from a distance to see her husband having gone on to establishing a new family. (We also had an outsider looking in with Callie from 3.05 Bedtime Stories.)

It occurs to me that Lisa’s welcome to Dean, “It’s never too late”  has the same feel as the encouragement Sam received in 5.03 Free to Be You and Me from the waitress who took an interest in his recovery/redemption.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ REWATCHING BEGINS ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OH MY! Students had their last day so I’ve started rewatching from S1 and am through the first disc. In 1.03 Dead in the Water I’d forgotten the ARMY MEN Dean and Lucas bond over in the park and in Lucas’s room.  They’re also shown on display in the dead boy’s house! And it is an army man floating in the lake that Lucas is reaching for when he is pulled off the dock! (! ! ! !) (Now I want to go check Cole’s room from 4.15 Death Takes a Holiday and Jesse’s room in 5.06 I Believe the Children Are Our Future for army men. Okay, I did.  I didn’t spot them in either of those rooms, BUT… Supernatural’s crack set dressers did include army men on the bedroom table in Dean’s first heaven memory of home in 5.16 Dark Side of the Moon! I do love this show.)

When the army man showed up in Swan Song as a trigger for Sam to access his bond with Dean and ‘beat’ Lucifer, I thought it just tied to the ‘Dean is John’s soldier’ (and Michael is God’s) show mantra. But this is another connection taking us back to the story’s beginning. It’s a link across generations between spirit and living. “Come play with me,” (2.11 Playthings sisters!) is the line Andrea reports hearing as she was attacked in the bathtub. Doesn’t that hark back to the lonely despair of S4-S5? Doesn’t it make sense if you buy into the idea that everything we’re shown is projections illustrating Sam and Dean?

In 1.04 Phantom Traveler the one exchange that caught my attention with potential new meaning was when Sam and Dean were on the plane and unable to find who the demon was possessing. Dean says maybe they’re wrong and it isn’t on the plane. Sam says, “Do you believe that?” and Dean replies with, “I will if you will.” They take another look and right away Dean’s EMF goes off and he is able to recognize the demon in the co-pilot. If he’d been able to convince himself to believe the demon wasn’t there, would that have been enough for that crisis to pass?

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