rocksalter, on Tumblr, pointed out the one from 6.22, where Sam is comatose in Bobby's panic room for most of the episode. The screencap is from the beginning of the episode, before he learns that he's in a dream world. Before.
ETA 2: I just realized that both of the earlier season pics are from episodes where SOMEBODY HAS TAMPERED WITH THEIR MINDS.
Another thing we've all noticed is how much Sam's flashback of Amelia and the picnic with the birthday cake resembles Lisa's picnic for Dean in "Dream a Little Dream of Me," but look at this:
Open picnic basket in the bottom left quadrant, part of which is out of frame. Object immediately to the right of the picnic basket. Wine glass. Lowcut sundress. Hairstyle. Position on the blanket. Something obscuring the feet. Strappy sandals. The tall leafy vegetation in the background.
That is not an accident, that is a point for point recreation of Dean's picnic dream.
ETA: I actually forgot about this, but it fits the pattern better than the Madonna reference:
One is an incident.
Two is a coincidence.
Three is a pattern.
Something is very wrong with Sam's memories...
And then there's the Madonna reference that camille_is_here pointed out in the comments of this post:
This may actually truly be me seeing something that isn't there, but I'm not willing to rule out the possibility that it means something. *G*
When we get the horrified reaction shot when Sam first sees Amelia, and it cuts to her, this is what we see, for a split second:
Tell me that's not a halo.
And a RED halo, at that, though I think the white thing (which is also halo-shaped) behind her head, and the white light glare ameliorate the red somewhat. (Okay, I did not mean to make that pun, but I'll let it stand. *G*) She moves from right in front of that spot, so the effect only lasts for a second, but even when she moves, she's still got all that red wall behind her. That much red wall is never a good sign in this show.
Actually, I've been using the term halo, since I first started noticing all the red in the show, to describe something that we see directly behind or at the side of somebody's head, very close to or touching their hair, like red lights, or a red sign, or the tall back of a red diner booth, or even, as in this photo, a red wall. Sometimes there are halos of different colors, but the red ones always ping for me, and they pretty much mean Trouble with a capital T. I've never seen anything this blatant, though.
This one is also unusual because it is literally the brightest lit thing in the shot; everything else is indirectly lit EXCEPT that very round patch of wall directly behind her head. We're supposed to notice that shape.
(As a side note, because somebody really should have warned Amelia about Sam Winchester's Amazing Peen o' Death, I really want to see a music vid to Jen Titus' O Death using all Sam's romantic encounters. Hey, maybe that's why she's got a red halo! She'll soon be singing with the angels! Or, you know, something.)
is from 2.20, What Is and What Could Never Be. The girl in the ad is where Dean got his image of the perfect girlfriend he had while he was in his Djinn-induced perfect life.
This:
is from 8.09, Citizen Fang. Sam has just seen Amelia walk into a bar. This is NOT A FLASHBACK.
ETA: It was the placement of the sign, right next to his head, and the size of it, that made me notice this.
Also, there's a really prominent "you gotta be 21 to buy booze" placard underneath the El Sol sign that has "We Card" on a red stripe. (This show has conditioned me to notice red things, especially red things near people's heads.) Both the neon sign and the placard have strong connotations of "this may not be the truth you're seeing" and the three elements, Sam, sign and placard, cover almost the whole frame.
I am not making this shit up, y'all. There is something going on with Sam that we don't know about yet.
I really feel like I've been watching it rain anvils for an hour.
OH, WAIT.
[Episode Spoilers] I just want to say, it was AWFULLY CONVENIENT that Amelia got that call about her husband so soon after Sam overheard her telling her dad that he made her happy. Because hearing that was freaking Sammy the hell out and making him the complete opposite of happy.
Also, I think it was really appropriate that in an episode that featured the literal dropping of anvils, we got that extremely anvilicious dialog before EVERY SINGLE FLASHBACK...
Reposting to top level from a comment I made in janedavitt's post here.
This episode reminded me very strongly of the one in season 7 where Sam ends up locked in the mental ward and helps one of the other patients get rid of her brother's ghost. That one made a big point of the fact that she had something her brother had given her that had to be destroyed, and we all knew it was foreshadowing the boys having to destroy Bobby's flask.
Now we have an episode that made a big point of Sam and Dean destroying all the soldier's effects, except, wait, there's one thing that they missed, something somebody took before they had to do the salt and burn.
And we have Garth, who has kept Bobby's hat. The hat that Bobby had clearly worn so much it was ragged around the edges, so much that Dean recognized it right off. And, seeing as how it was Bobby's, there's a good chance that he bled on it at some point.
I could just be grasping at straws, here, because, I did not handle Bobby being dead very well at all, but that parallel--in a season that so far is practically using "parallels" as a damn theme--along with that last, "Balls!" just before Garth drives away, is just way too much of a point by point match to the season 7 episode for me to dismiss the notion that Show may be opening a loophole that would allow them to bring Actual Bobby back.
As for Sam? Well, do you remember the M*A*S*H series finale, where Hawkeye is in the psych ward and everybody's trying to get him to remember what sent him there in the first place? We kept getting the story in a series of flashbacks, and it was clear that Hawkeye was sanitizing his memories, changing the horrible thing into something he could deal with, until finally he was able to remember the actual event.
Sam's flashbacks have been so extremely NORMAL, almost idyllic, especially in comparison with Dean's flashbacks, and that is scaring the crap out of me, because the Winchesters do not get to have normal. There's something very, very bad underneath that normal that we're seeing, and it's going to come out, sooner or later. When Sam said his world "imploded" when Dean disappeared, I think he was underplaying things. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that losing Dean on top of all the mental issues he had last season just completely broke him, maybe even to the point that he ended up locked away again.
I've been thinking for a while now that things with Sam aren't what they seem, and last night's flashback, when we see Sam and Amelia in bed, really made me sit up straight in my chair, because their bedspread was covered with flowers. So what, you say?
Well, set dressing on this show is not random (the wallpaper in "Sex and Violence," for example). And one of the recurring motifs in this show is that flowers mean secrets. So there's something we don't know about Amelia, and about Amelia and Sam. (Given the nature of the women Sam has slept with in the series, if Amelia turns out to be some kind of supernatural something or other, I will be SO not surprised.)
There was so much about this episode that just made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, wow. By the end of the ep, I was pretty much sitting there chewing on my knuckles, saying, "That was all wrong. Sam and Dean are wrong. Everything about this is wrong." like, Pet Sematary kind of wrong. I wasn't sure about this season until last week, but man. If things go the way I think they're headed, this is going to be a roller coaster of epic proportions, even for Show.
I've been seeing a lot of posts about the buttload of parallels between Benny and Sam.
This is not just coincidence, and it's not just parallels.
I've seen a lot of posts that talk about Benny as "Dean's new boyfriend." But I don't think that's where this is going. I think Show is positioning Benny as another Winchester brother.
No, not literally, the age is totally wrong. And not to Sam and Dean. It's the audience Show is pitching this to. To us.
The title of the episode is "Blood Brother."
We all know what "blood brothers" means--people who aren't actually related by blood forge kinship with each other by literally mingling their blood. But the title of the episode is "Blood Brother," singular. Is it Dean, or is it Benny?
Benny calls Dean "brother." AND DEAN LETS HIM. "Brother" is not a word Dean takes lightly, it's not a word he's going to let just anybody use in seriousness. I can only think of one person, in fact, who gets to call Dean that.
Traditionally, people become blood brothers by each of the parties cutting themselves enough to bleed and pressing the open wounds together so the blood from each is mixed with the other's. However, I don't imagine that's a good idea if one of the parties is a vampire and the other one has to remain human in order to escape from Purgatory. ETA: Wow, I REALLY did not expect Show to ACTUALLY GO THERE. /ETA So I'm guessing what happened is that Dean offered Benny his blood at some dire point, and Benny drank it. In Benny's eyes, that might be enough of a reason to call Dean "brother." But what about Dean? Does he count Benny as a blood brother?
We know that Dean and Benny did something in Purgatory that Dean doesn't regret "for a minute." He's very clear that it's something they both participated in, and the fact that he has to say he doesn't regret it means it's something he thinks he should regret, that somebody else *cough*sam*cough* might not approve of, and it has to do with the title of the episode.
It's clear from the episode that the reason Dean actually brought Benny back instead of bleeding him out in a ditch somewhere is that Benny saved Cas' life. But Dean cares what happens to Benny, or he wouldn't have gone to him when Benny called asking for help. He didn't seem happy about parting ways, if not permanently, then for a long time, and he hugged back when Benny hugged him.
Except--Dean Winchester really doesn't hug people he's not attached to. Heck, he doesn't even touch people in a non-sexual way unless he cares about them a lot, except to shake hands or pull them out of danger, and he even avoids shaking hands when he can. So Benny is important to Dean, and not just because he saved Cas. Benny is someone Dean feels he needs to protect--just look at the way he warns Sam off when Sam is getting ready to pull a weapon on Benny. That's his "don't fuck with my family" face, and the fact that he has to pull it on Sam is huge. Sam knew it, too, and was really not happy about it.
I don't think Dean consciously thinks of Benny as a blood brother, but it sure seems to be the way he's treating him. And Sam certainly doesn't, and probably won't. But the audience is definitely meant to be starting to think of Benny that way, because for seven years, Show has used the song "Wayward Son" in connection with the Winchesters. I don't know any SPN fan who hears it and doesn't immediately think of Sam and Dean, no matter where we are or what we're doing. So when the writers have Benny's maker call him his "wayward son," they're counting on the accumulated weight of seven years of tradition to snap that connection into place for us.
If you're wondering why you all of a sudden like Benny a lot more after this episode?
Okay, see, Teen Wolf. Buncha OOOOOOOOOH, pretty, right? I mean, um.
And there's hardly an episode without at least one of these guys shirtless.
But DUDE. There's payoffs coming up in the second season finale that were set up in the first season. They're using obscure Shakespeare references as foreshadowing, there's legitimate TORCHER all over the damn place, and mindfuckery up to the standards of Kripke, Whedon, and Moffat.
I showed up last season for the pretty. I so did not expect to have actual Thinky Thoughts. I mean, TEEN FRICKIN' WOLF. The hell???
anythingbutgrey is hosting a Harry Potter comment ficathon, and lunasol28 has written a Sytherins in the dungeons bit which addresses all my problems with the way JKR handled the Slytherins in the book.
It's angsty, and hot, and after I read it an entire AU sprang fully formed into my head. (LALALALALALALA, Kripke, I totally did not see that picture on the wall between them in "Good God, Y'all," LALALALALALALA)
Because I know there's a couple people on my flist who will appreciate this...
Okay, so I'm rewatching Season 1, and I get to "Bugs," which is probably my second least favorite episode ("Yellow Fever" is at the top. By a country mile.) and I don't know how I missed this when it aired, because at the time I was a SHAKESPEARE GRAD STUDENT OMG, but there's this exchange:
SAM: (carrying box of skulls) Question is, why bugs? And why now?
DEAN: Eh, that's two questions.
Compare to my favorite bit from Hamlet:
HAMLET: What's his weapon?
OSRIC: Rapier and dagger.
HAMLET: That's two of his weapons, but well.
Oh, SHOW. How I love you. *G* Because, DEAN IS HAMLET-- a snarky smartass with Daddy issues. *flails* Also, points for finding a (relatively) obscure reference from FRIGGING HAMLET.
