foggy cinematography, exorcising not killing demons ("you're supposed to help people but why didn't you help me?"), guilt, researched christian lore, sam's demonic powers (boy king of hell sam winchester is such a missed opportunity), horror road movie style, things actually trying to be scary, the power of angels ("i draggedd you out of hell i can throw you back in"), looking for god while he was there the whole time ("cruel, capricious god"), inventing free will, crowley being actually scary, lucifer being a threat and not some annoyed child, the way plot tied up...
Cas really read dean to filth within an inch of his LIFE three (3) minutes after meeting him (What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved?), threatened him the very next time he saw him (You should show me some respect. I'm the one who dragged you out of hell. I can throw you back in.), then the time after that overshared about being a good little soldier (Can I tell you something if you promise not to tell another soul? I'm not a... hammer, as you say. I have questions. I have doubts)
several thoughts(tm) on dean’s bar-owning hallucination/dream from when michael was possessing him:
first of all, obviously all the details of this incarnation of pamela are basically a parallel to cas, making her as close as she could be to cas without being cas. the “to hell and back” t-shirt and the wings necklace are incredibly on the nose. but i also wanna add that the fact that this manifestation is pamela in the first place is a parallel to cas.
first, it doesn’t really make sense for it to be pamela at the time of this series. we hadn’t seen pamela for maybe eight seasons, and she died in season 5(?), so she wasn’t exactly relevant to the series at this time. but i think it was her of all people because she was dean’s first impression of cas. it was pamela who reached to cas in the séance and was the first in the whole series to speak his name, and it was the image of pamela finding castiel that is dean’s first time ever experience of him.
also, on the cas stand in being a woman: aside from the fact that the cw is very obviously homophobic, i prefer to think that it’s dean’s internalised homophobia. this version of pamela is as close to cas as she could be, but she’s just not a man.
thirdly and finally, there’s the repeated mantra of sam and cas being on a hunt and that they are supposed to be back tomorrow. or something. and it just kinda hurts that in dean’s ideal world, cas is coming back to him. cas is always coming home.