Talk About A Slow Burn - Tumblr Posts
This is one scene that made a lot more sense to me - and more sense of what's going on with Castiel overall - once I watched the extended version in the BluRay deleted scenes. The full scene makes it explicit that Cas got demoted beneath Uriel, so it's more notable that Uriel leaves them to speak privately when Dean tells him to.
Cas tries to act as if his demotion isn't that important, but he can't look at Dean when he addresses it directly. He's off-balance and uncomfortable in a way that the aired scene doesn't show. That means he comes off as being less on the fence about what they're doing here and more frustrated - emotional - as well as torn on strategy. More as if he already knows for sure that this is objectively wrong, but isn't yet at a place where he has headroom for "Heaven's just plain wrong on this one and I need to do something about it." By the end of the episode, having dealt with Uriel's betrayal and listened to Anna, he's there.
It's a long scene - just over five minutes including a cutaway to show Alastair on the rack - so cuts were inevitable, but still. Some key Uriel-Dean tension got the chop, and it lost some thoughtful pauses and tense blocking.
It was maybe the wrong side of his conversations with Anna to give clarity to Castiel's personal motives; maybe it muddied the waters by suggesting that the demotion is a factor in his discomfort, but I think this unedited scene much better explains how and why Dean's persuaded to go along with the ghastly plan - why it takes a scene and a heartfelt conversation with Cas rather than an episode and heavy-handed tactics from Uriel to get Dean on board. In the full scene, Dean sees Castiel struggling with the wrongness of it, sees as well as hears the evidence that this is the last thing Cas wants to ask of him.
It also shows a little more of the doubt that Anna defines for Cas later in the episode - just that bit more show-don't-tell to help things along. It shows more clearly that Cas already knows that what he feels is doubt, and how much that alarms him, lending more context to the moment when Anna goes too far too soon, touches his hand, and he falls back on the certainty of obeying orders rather than being immediately persuaded by her offer of solidarity. That in turn makes the scene where he calls Anna back, asks her to help him, begs her to tell him what to do, even more momentous for the character.
Thank technology for BluRay extras!
4x16 — ’On the Head of a Pin’