Grilled Cheesegate

Grilled Cheese sandwich from 10.09 The Things We Left Behind

In the episode 10.09 The Things We Left Behind there is a scene where Sam brings Dean a grilled cheese sandwich. Robbie Thompson made a funny comment about “cutting your darlings” while he was live-tweeting the show and later Guy Norman Bee in a podcast with Winchester Bros mentioned that the scene where had been cut in length and originally showed Sam making the sandwich. Fandom expressed outrage over this instance of Sam Erasure and many were critical of the episode's editor, the (ironically) named James Pickel. The incident became known as Grilled Cheesegate.

In an interview with the SuperWiki, editor James Pickel talked about the reaction:

Yeah, it was incredible. The scene was just Sam making a grilled cheese sandwich and he could hear The Three Stooges playing on Dean’s computer and he just stopped making the grilled cheese and walked out. The camera was on the grilled cheese, it panned up to Sam, Sam was like “huh”, looks over his shoulder, like what do I hear, and then walks out of the room. It was just like a few seconds, we needed time, and we cut it. The point of the scene is that Sam comes out with a grilled cheese and is giving his brother a grilled cheese while his brother watches The Three Stooges.

It was a complete eye opener as to the passion fans have. I already knew they had passion, but I thought everyone would just be "oh a grilled cheese, who cares?" But no, they exploded and I was like, wow, that is powerful. I mean, that says a lot, and I appreciate it. That’s passion.