growyourwings | SPN 6x15 reaction (with weird aftertaste)

This reaction is mixed.   I'm so torn!   Because during the episode I laughed so HARD.   I enjoyed the episode SO much.   I loved a lot about it. All the crew characterizations.   Jared's house with the Warhol paintings and the cowboy photo of Jared that had me cracking up each time they showed it.   The boys gleefully spending Jared's money. Jensen's trailer with the helicopter and fish tank and the male-model, blue-steel magazine cover. Sera being "new".   I loved Virgil (a lot, nothing torn about that.)   I loved Kripke's death scene. I loved Misha's tweets (both in show and in RL).   I loved how Misha played Misha (ok that was weird even writing that sentence.)

And O.M.G.   I had to stop watching for a moment when Dean & Sam were *acting* Dean and Sam.   I literally could not catch my breath.   Dean's batman face and voice. Sam's figgeting and looking anywhere but the camera. And Sam's overacting and waving the arms when trying to deliver the lines about the key (while also making up lines as he went). And Dean's trying to make his mark! Ha! I know that Jensen has talked a few times about making sure to get on his mark (how it's become second nature after all these years, etc.)

And I loved the russian crew guy's Matrix-like moves to not get shot (was that supposed to be Serge? Does Serge have a Russian accent in RL?)

And Murray rocked it as Bob Singer.

Sam saying at the end that they weren't even brothers in that other world--which made their world preferable, even if it was also populated with demons, monsters, and especially douche-bag angels.

But...

I'm kinda in a weird spot. Because I did enjoy the episode. I did like it a lot while I was watching. I couldn't catch my breath at times.

But after the episode I just had this weird feeling. That the fourth wall had been SO obliterated that I had trouble getting *back* into Sam & Dean world. It's like Jensen/Dean and Jared/Sam were now fused together in my head and I could not separate them. (And yeah I know that technically this was a meta episode and perhaps did not directly break the 4th wall. But to me it was SO meta, that it had the effect of breaking the 4th wall completey for me. If you get what I mean?)

Dean's speech to director Bob Singer was surreal to me.   I loved and appreciated the words, but it was like the last remnants of the fourth wall truly came down at that moment. Because it *was* DEAN but he was truly on the soundstage of SPN talking to the director of SPN.   My brain cells just got muddled in confusion. Talk about character bleed. (And good on Jensen and Murray for truly selling that, even if my brains were scrambed by it.)

So while I totally enjoyed and liked the episode, I did not enjoy the aftertaste (if that makes sense.)

Maybe because of the purposeful OTT acting in the AU world--all I could see when they returned was Dean's batman face/deep voice. ~~Misha~~Castiel's (I truly started to write Misha instead of Castiel)..Castiel's uber-serious face (with a touch of over acting). Even the new BAMF woman!Raphael seemed melodramatic to me.

So maybe it *was* too much after all? Despite the fact that I truly enjoyed the ride?

And an aside thought:   At one point directly after the show finished I found myself wondering what a non-fandom viewer of this episode would think of it. Would it be funny to them? Would it be too weird and OTT to them? Would it be enjoyable?   I've honestly no way of predicting that. I've no idea.

Edit:   I like what