YMMV / Supernatural S 04 E 20 The Rapture

• Ho Yay:
  • Castiel regularly visits Dean's dreams at this point, something Dean is mostly comfortable with. He has also become so attached to Dean that he's willing to share secret information with him, something that prompts his arrest and torture in this episode.
  • Dean also treats Jimmy completely different from Cas to the point of being somewhat callous about the danger Jimmy's in. There's also no sexual tension between Dean and Jimmy, who barely takes notice of Dean and is fixated on returning to his wife and daughter.
  • Also, when occupying Claire's body, Cas still manages to fixate on Dean.
  • Cas also looks quite devastated at the end, when he essentially breaks off his friendship with Dean.
• One-Scene Wonder: More like one-episode wonder, but this is the only episode that heavily features Misha Collins as Jimmy Novak, who is completely distinct in voice, mannerism and personality to Castiel. His tragic story haunts Castiel's character for the rest of the show, even though we briefly see Jimmy and Amelia reunite in heaven in Season 10.
• Paranoia Fuel: Castiel refuses to tell Dean what the problem is, because someone may be listening. At the time, he's inside Dean's head.
• The Woobie: Poor Jimmy Novak. He's a devout man who prays to become an angel's vessel, only to discover it means that he's stuck in a constant state of And I Must Scream. Describing it as "being chained to a comet", Jimmy is freed after a year of this and is left starving, disoriented and horrified at what has happened to his life. He returns home, only to have his beloved wife and daughter held captive by demons (and, in the former case, possessed outright), and then the poor man's wife is forced to shoot him. He's told his job is done, and that he can go to Heaven - but that means that his daughter is going to suffer his fate, so he insists that Castiel take him instead (leaving him in an even worse place than he started the episode in, as his wife and daughter now know his fate and are endangered by his presence).