Episode description for episode 20

[agt_spooky]

Here's the episode description for episode 20 from The Futon Critic



"What Is and What Should Never Be"

DEAN SEES WHAT HIS LIFE MIGHT HAVE BEEN - While hunting a Djinn, Dean (Jensen Ackles) is attacked and transported to a world where his mother (guest star Samantha Smith) is alive, Sam (Jared Padalecki) is in law school and engaged to Jessica (guest star Adrianne Palicki), and Dean lives a very normal life with his girlfriend (guest star Michelle Borth). However, after he starts seeing a strange girl (guest star Melanie Neige Scrofano) and learns all the people he has saved in the past have died, Dean must decide whether he wants to stay in this new safe life where everyone he loves is alive or if he should return to the hunt. Raelle Tucker wrote the episode directed by creator/executive producer Eric Kripke.

~~~~

Oh wow...I knew about this alternate reality thing, but NOT that the people Dean had saved in the "real" world have all died.

Good GOD, Eric, just keep piling on the angst on poor Dean!

SO cool that we'll see both Mom and Jess again! But what about John? I wonder if he'll still be around, too.

Looking forward to this one, for sure!

ETA: Jeffrey Dean Morgan's appearance in this episode has been confirmed by both SpoilerFix and imdb.com. Awesome!

Comments

[jellicle.livejournal.com]

I did a tiny bit of speculation about this episode on my lj, if you want to take a look. :)

[tracys-dream.livejournal.com]

Exactly, what about John? Maybe he will be there too but the show are keeping it hush, hush. Crosses fingers!

[laine89.livejournal.com]

According to both the IMDb and Spoiler Fix, JDM will be in this episode. While I don't trust the IMDb worth a damn, I do Spoiler Fix ("04/04 - John's appearance in 2.20, 'What Is and What Should,' is now confirmed."). They tend to be pretty accurate. Jensen mentioned "Dean, Sam, Mom and Dad" in an interview with SCI FI Wire. I'm guessing John's in it.

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

Ha! You just beat me to it! I had just made a separate post about John being in episode 20 and came back here to edit this one when your comment showed up. :-)

SO thrilled to know we'll see him in this!

[laine89.livejournal.com]

Oh, really? I was quite excited when I read that.

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am, too!

[tracys-dream.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[squee1123.livejournal.com]

Dean's girlfriend is kind of a hottie. I am super excited for this episode.

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

She is good looking! And she looks mature, which is the kind of person that I could see Dean with, unlike a certain blonde they tried to hook him up with this season.

[squee1123.livejournal.com]

Heh. I actually like Jo, not as necessarily as a love interest for either of the boys, but I like her.

[dairwendan.livejournal.com]

I am SO SO happy that JDM will be in this ep! It wouldn't be the same to see the 'happy' Winchesters without John! Besides, we KNOW how much Dean misses Dad, gotta see that look on his face when he sees him alive again! Maybe another hug, even?

Thanks for the news, Barb!

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

This episode is going to shatter Dean into a thousand, million pieces, having to choose whether to leave all of this happiness behind to go back to insure all those he had saved still live. [sob] Oh, Kripke you bastard!

[dairwendan.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it is in anyway a setup for the finale? Like it puts Dean in a certain place emotionally which will affect the outcome?

Even if only in the proximity of time, like when Sam said "Mom died when you were what, four? Jess died six months ago, how could you know how I feel?" Well, going into this, Dean's attitude is like, "I just saw Mom (and Dad) last week, so I'm super-pissed"?

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

Dean's attitude is like, "I just saw Mom (and Dad) last week, so I'm super-pissed"?

Oh YEAH, that's awesome! I always was pissed at Sammy for saying that to Dean - like it makes Dean's pain at losing his mother insignificant next to Sam losing Jess. And Eric did say that it was going to be a Dean story arc at the end of the season. So since he just saw Dad and now maybe there's a chance at getting him back from Hell? Yeah, nothing's gonna stop Dean now. :-)

[dairwendan.livejournal.com]

I always was pissed at Sammy for saying that to Dean - like it makes Dean's pain at losing his mother insignificant next to Sam losing Jess.

Really? I didn't see it that way at all. I felt that what he meant was that having lost his mother 22 years ago, when he was only four, Dean's grief is just not at the intensity Sam's is at having lost the girl he was in love with 6 months ago.

First losing someone as a child is different than losing someone as an adult. Dean has possibly 10 to 20 distinct memories of his Mother. Sam probably remembers nearly every day with Jessica. Hundreds of memories.

Also grief and pain does lessen over time. It seems like it won't but there is no way that Dean is in the same amount of raw pain over a death that occurred 22 years ago, as Sam is over a death that occurred six months ago.

These two things I know because I lost my mother at 13 and my father at 26 and the experience was completely different. Even losing my father at 26 and my father-in-law at 37 was different. The more mature you are, and the more involved you were with the person who died the more intense the grief.

I've never lost someone I love, or someone who was the same age as me even, but that must bring issues which are completely different from losing a parent as well.

I'm only writing all this because I feel that the writer (it was John Shiban) didn't want to show Sam as being dismissive of Dean's grief. I think, especially because for us, the audience, Mary's death and Jess' death were in the same episode, that JS wanted Dean, and us, to stop and realize that Sam and Dean aren't in the same stages of grief, and this is why they cannot agree on whether to follow John's orders or find John. Because they are coming from two totally different places.

For Dean, even if John is getting close to The Demon, this is all still part of the long haul, and he'll go and hunt whatever Dad wants him too. Dean didn't know Jess.

For Sam, the hunt has a whole new meaning. And his grief is fresh and he wants revenge. He is where John was 22 years ago, and he's not gonna be distracted from finding Jess' killer any more than John let anything, inclusing ahving a 4 year old and a six month old, stop him from finding Mary's killer.

You may not agree with me, which is fine, but I just wanted to tell you the other layers that I saw in the lines.

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

Looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree over this one. :-) Though you've certainly got good reasons behind your opinion! Sam's statement there will just always grate on me. You can tell by the look on Dean's face how much Sam saying that hurt Dean, like because Sam's loss happened right now it's more important. And it's not. BOTH losses are equally important to both of them and it just felt very lopsided to me in that scene.

Hmmm...DeanGirl vs. SammyGirl - how great debates are created! :-)