Having penned the first episode of season six, Gamble was able to reveal a little more about where our favorite demon-hunting duo will be when we meet the Winchesters again, one year later. “Dean has been retired from hunting; he hung up the gun, he walked off the battlefield,” she explained, teasing that Dean will have fully embraced a normal, apple pie life, right down to the car he drives …

“He’s not driving the Impala,” she confirmed, much to our horror. “It’s under a tarp, and when he needs something from the trunk, he just lifts up the edge — it’s torturous!” We can’t argue with that, but why banish something that’s as synonymous with Dean as classic rock and a slice of pie, a car that’s arguably as beloved a character as Sam and Dean themselves? For precisely that reason, Gamble said. “The Impala represents everything to Dean — it represents his childhood, and more to the point, it represents hunting and it represents Sam. He’s not a hunter anymore and his brother is dead, so it’s under a tarp and he’s living a different life.”

That different life comes with its own baggage, namely a woman and a child who have become inexorably attached to Dean in the year that he’s been living with them. So how does Gamble intend to deal with Lisa and Ben once Sam returns, albeit under “mysterious circumstances”?

“We deal with it by dealing with it,” she admitted. “Our goal is to have Dean be an adult. He’s in his early thirties at this point, and Lisa is a real character with a point of view and a child who’s in the mix here — a child who really loves Dean.”

Gamble reasoned that she was interested in playing out the relationship dynamics between Lisa and the elder Winchester, seeing it as “an opportunity to tell a lot of story about Dean. If you’ve been in a relationship of any length, it has stakes, to the point where you’re living with someone and you’re raising their child with them. There’s real affection there, so you don’t just pack up your sh*t and go, even if you really need to go — it’s a conversation for them both to have.”

Gamble wouldn’t divulge too much on the “monster problem” that brings Sam and Dean back together, except to say that our favorite angel, Castiel (Misha Collins), will be involved in the ongoing mystery of the season.

“Although we’ve been saying that this season is much more gritty and down to earth, we didn’t completely ignore everything that came before it,” she said. “It’s about the post-apocalypse in that the concerns of heaven and hell are part of the mythology of the season, and Castiel brings us the news of what’s happening in heaven.”

But Castiel won’t just be sitting on a cloud playing holy news anchor; Gamble pointed out that “he’s very attached to Sam and Dean, and wants to be involved in helping them as much as he can. He’s being pulled in a lot of directions …”

While Gamble admitted that he’ll remain “a little bit mysterious” in the first part of the season, she promised that what’s going on with Castiel will become more central as the season goes on, tying into the larger story arc of the year.

The new showrunner couldn’t be tempted into spoiling much when it came to new or recurring guest stars, but did confirm what’s already been widely circulated — that Mitch Pileggi will return in some capacity as Sam and Dean’s maternal grandfather, as well as “demons you’ve seen before,” such as Mark Sheppard’s Crowley and — if set reports are to be believed — Fred Lehne as Azazel, the eponymous Yellow Eyed Demon who set the show’s entire mythology in motion.

Gamble also reiterated what we learned at Comic-Con — that the archangel Raphael will return. “He was not in a good mood when we saw him before, and he’s the only one left in heaven, so he has a role to play,” she teased.

As for Jensen Ackles’ recent directorial debut, Gamble only had praise for the actor: “Every report was glowing, every meeting I had with him was fantastic and professional,” she enthused. ” He’s spent so much time on a set and he has such a strong point-of-view, he understands the show on a level that visiting directors couldn’t possibly, and he was set up for success that way.”

But when it comes to her own success, Gamble is far more modest, “I feel really spoiled and really fortunate, because Eric [Kripke] is still really involved and he’s been very gracious and very active,” she said. “And Bob Singer has been co-showrunner from the beginning and is still with the show, and is one of the most experienced executive producers in television, period. He’s very much responsible for the success of the show, as much of any of us.”

Source: TV Squad

4.18 – The Monster at The End Of This Book

4.20 – The Rapture

Jimmy awakens a year after being possessed by Castiel and has one thing on his mind. Seek out his family he left behind after agreeing to become a host vessel for an angel (which we see happen over the course of a number of flashbacks during the episode).  And it was a bittersweet reunion with his family tentative of him after a year away but the moments with his daughter and wife were touching and sad given he really didn’t know what he was in for when he signed up for the post, obviously.

Of course, once word gets out that an empty vessel is going back home the demons come hunting but luckily Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) are searching for Castiel after he escapes them and they arrive just in time to stop the demons from killing Jimmy/Castiel and his family. But when a demon possesses his wife, things change and the Winchester brothers and the former vessel fight to save them.

Meanwhile, Castiel had taken possession of Jimmy’s daughter who fights to save all of them as well and only as Jimmy is dying from a gunshot wound does he offer to become the vessel forever, saving his daughter from the torment and giving her a life to live – the ultimate sacrifice any good father would do.

More importantly than the character establishment of Castiel and his reaffirmation of being a worker for God rather than a worker for humans (or Dean has he points out), was the discovery by Dean that Sam has been drinking the blood of demons in order to get his heightened powers.

That leads to the end scene where Dean and Bobby (Jim Beaver) lock Sam away in order to, my guess, purge him of the demon blood in order to restore him down a path of the good rather than the path of evil he is currently following. Not sure if it is going to work as it looks like he gets a visit from an old friend and Ruby shows up again to give him another dose of the red stuff. It also appears as if we are definitely building toward the moment where Sam and Dean face off against one another because of it.

Dean is also going to be met with a choice which will probably bring us to the finale of the season where he either sacrifices himself, much like Jimmy did in this episode, or let the world succumb to the evils of Hell. And boy, what a ride that’s going to be.

Source: ifmagazine.com

PCZ: In making up your audition reel what film clips would you use?

ACKLES: My entire three years on Days of Our Lives. I don’t know. There are a lot of scenes that are kind of close to me. Obviously the emotional ones are the ones I kind of remember…you put a lot of yourself into them. The scene where Sam is laying on the bed dead and I’m talking to him, telling him that I’m sorry and all that kind of stuff. Kim directed that episode and I remember going up to his office and saying, “I don’t know how many takes I can do. So what are your camera angles, how many shots are you seeing because I don’t know how much gas I’ll have to do this scene more then a couple of times.” And he adjusted his camera angles and closed off the set and kicked everybody out and allowed me to do my thing and it was kind of cool.

Another one was the grave yard scene in “What Is and What Should Never Be” where I’m on top of my Dad’s grave. And that was [Eric] Kripke. He set it up where it was going to be one shot with two dolling cameras back and forth; one tight and one a little wider. So I basically came in and it was two in the morning and I just walked up and hit my mark and gave it. I really liked how that turned out.

PCZ: If we didn’t know Jared at all do you have a story that would describe him to us?

ACKLES: Going through all my files of Jared stories. There are so many. I could tell you a story about any aspect of Jared. I can tell you when he gets angry how he is. I could tell you when he gets sad how he is. Or if he’s having a fight with a girl friend. With all of those he is a very passionate person about what he does. He loves his family and friends, he loves his dogs…and they love him.

I feel responsible for teaching him this… how he has managed to make it to 26 years and not come across anyone who has not wanted to pull his finger. I unfortunately showed him the ‘pull the finger trick’ and now he does it all the time. We’ll be sitting in the Impala while they’re fixing the camera lens, and he look at me and goes (wiggling his fingers — much to the delight of the audience) all the time.

PCZ: In “Lazarus Rising” the opening scene at the gas station, the windows blow out and you can see in one of the scenes that you have a Band-Aid on your arm and maybe scars. Any comments on that injury?

ACKLES: The great Kim Manners directed that episode. He had a knack for really making things real. If you remember some of his episodes like “Bugs.” He came up to me prior to the episode and asked, “Are you allergic to bees? Because we’re going to have thousands of really stinging bees in this scene.” But in this particular scene he wanted to use real glass instead of candy glass. Because candy glass doesn’t really shatter like tempered glass. So with the windows blowing [up] you kind of see a high and wide shot, that’s actually my stunt double, Todd Scott, who came out of there just completely bloody. But there was still glass all over the ground and I had to fall into frame at one point. So I fell right on a bunch of glass. There were other nicks and cuts and my arms were pretty bloody too. I turned to Kim, “Are you happy?” And he just goes, “Get that cleaned up. We’re going to need you in the next shot.” So I have something to remember him by. [Kim Manners died on January 25, 2009.]

PCZ: If you had a chance to play one of all the Supernatural creatures which one would it be?

ACKLES: I think I’d want to be an angel. Those guys are cool. The way they’ve created and written the angels this year is really neat . They’re all different and when the lights flash and they’ve got the big giant wings…they’re cool. (Pause) Or a vampire!

Source: popculturezoo.com