I liked a lot of this although I continue to be annoyed at how Rowena has totally fractured of the fabric of the show. How about a whole EPISODE with Dean gaga over some random witch? Nope! Rowena’s the cavalry!
And do I have to burn the bunker down myself? Because you know I will.
“There is no fifth base.” Very good, Yockey.
BUT. The development of Sam, digging into his helplessness – not to mention his trauma coming up, the flashbacks – completely abandoned at the end of Season 11 – that was all very welcome. I did not buy him opening up to Rowena of all people, but it was a good opportunity to get CLOSE to Sam again. I’ve missed Sam. He’s felt a million miles away. And I guess it does make sense that he wouldn’t open up to Dean, and so decided to take a chance on Rowena. This is the problem with murdering their friends. Charlie. Eileen. Garth. Dean and Sam talked to them about stuff they couldn’t talk to each other about. They were entertaining and welcome presences but they also served an important purpose. Otherwise, we have the boys reading in the damn bunker and there’s nothing going on.
I am so sick of every damn actress in the world having the same damn hair style. It’s got to stop.
These are my thoughts. For now.
Anyone else?
It was Clapton’s Bad Love – 83% meh with the awesome guitar solo/BM scene in the bunker near the end.
Oh what a feeling I get when I’m duped by you,
You make me roll my eyes with everything you do,
And it makes me nod for the lonely people
Who long for those gone so long,
But I know I’m one of those cranky people
Who say retconning’s all wrong.
I’ve had enough of fan service,
I say it’s time to move on,
I’ve had enough of fan service,
No more, move on.
I think I liked it more than you did. To me, the BM scene IS “fan service.” More fan service, please, in general. I don’t know WHO they were serving in S12 but it wasn’t the fans.
In other news: There’s been an issue for a while now in the writing of Castiel – it was most flagrantly obvious last season. They are injecting sarcasm into his language, eye-roll type language. It happened with Crowley and now it’s happening with Lucifer. It doesn’t sound right to me.
I really really love the way Dale said his own name. Dale! Victory arms for Dale!
I really do enjoy RC as a performer, despite what Rowena does to the show. She was very good with her fear in the car. The brutality of the sledgehammer (learn to swing it, girl!) and sister-on-sister stabbing death was fun.
I thought at times the management of tone and colour was off — some odd/frustrating shot choices — the editing of that Sam-Rowena car scene!! D-: — what the hell with the witches’ wallpaper? — yikes with that final battle — and still this whole chunk of the show devoted to pointlessness — but several fun Moments, and Stuff Going On With Sam, and Fifth Base, and Wrasslin, and Eight Feet Tall, and Dale. Dale! Oh Dale, you were too precious for this world.
You know, it’s interesting: through the sudden depth provided in re: Rowena’s terror of Lucifer – it provided the opportunity for Sam to relate, and to open up – big gigantic monologue – that space that opened up in that car was sooo long overdue.
I have to say – and this is a different note, just an observation on how I watch it now, my experience of watching it: so much of the show – its specifics – have felt like a “wash” to me – over the last couple of years. I have a hard time maintaining the details – like: “wait, when did he kill her? When did Crowley die? What was their last interaction? Who? What?” I lose the thread. Rowena’s place in this – outside of her deus ex machina presence, which has ruined so much of the show – has been very amorphous for me. I can’t keep track of it. This is my fault. Maybe it’s the show’s fault too – but I’ll take the blame.
Her “connection” with Lucifer … I need to do a review of the highlights. I mean, I remember her zapping Rick Springfield back to … where?
So I guess I need a refresher course. I thought her work in the back seat of the car was some of the best she’s ever done – but considering the mad-crazy-sexual-whatever-it-was final scene where her eyes blaze blue … was her “I’m so afraid of Lucifer” thing a load of crap? Just to … toy with Sam? Or … get him to be vulnerable so she could use it against him? Or was she on the level?
I assume it was part of her “triple cross.”
But like I said, the details of all of these relationships aren’t STICKING like they used to.
//I have a hard time maintaining the details – like: “wait, when did he kill her? When did Crowley die? What was their last interaction? Who? What?”//
I paused during the Previously because I thought I might have missed an episode: I had NO memory of ANYthing.
Other notes:
The sledgehammer death was GREAT! And how the blood spattered up on her face? Sooo nasty. I get so immune to bodies getting stabbed and ripped apart on SPN – but that was really graphic.
I liked those two actresses (their hair notwithstanding) – especially once they were alone at home. I still think they could do with a little bit more diversity in casting – people not so shiny-new-penny red-carpet-ready (oh Patience) – but I did like their scene alone together. It was a pretty obvious metaphor for Sam and Dean – but I LIKE it when the show goes after those metaphors – because it keeps the focus on Sam and Dean. They are not peripheral to the show – they are central – they must be central. So I do appreciate that part of it.
The use of the sledgehammer really struck me – such a creepy grizzly way to go if you need to kill a witness/victim and especially for a woman to wield it (or not wield it well, but let’s put that to the side).
//Oh Dale, you were too precious for this world// same
I liked this one, after feeling meh the last few (since Jack went MIA).
I like Rowena and the energy she brings to her scenes – she fills the screen with her presence. I’m always looking at her, at her hair, her make-up, her mouth as she spits out lines in that exotic (to my NY ears) accent. Maybe I have a small girl crush on her? She has some funny lines – fifth base? That blew Dean’s mind! JA was wonderful as Dean struck by love, so upbeat and happy but still showing a kind of silly giddiness. That wrestling scene was gold.
It was all shits and giggles and then the convo in the car happened. I found myself murmuring “oh, Sam” several times. Jared is so great at conveying a deep, dark sadness that it almost becomes too sad when you know his personal story. That makes scenes like this even more heartfelt and devastating. The end scene in the bunker with the brothers BM put a small bandaid on the hurt from earlier.
Close your ears if you like Lucifer, but I cannot stand the character anymore. Mark Pelligrino seems to be so hammy to me now. Ugh – take Ozymandias or whatever is name and leave.
I’m always looking at her, at her hair, her make-up, her mouth
me too!! Her lips are so perfect!
Re: Lucifer: when the Lucifer plot imperils no one we care about (as it has been for several seasons now) — when he’s stuck trading quips with in a styrofoam cage* — all he is is ham. There’s no menace or sense of eternity or transcendence. His scenes actually borrowed potency from Sam and Rowena’s conversation, instead of lending.
His pettiness, his smallness, his grudges and obsessions with dad and brother and son, despite being a being of ancient terror and scope — it’s not that that doesn’t work, character-wise. But the way they use him is very diminishing, especially since we carry the memory of his early days around. His best moment in ages (imo) was a few episodes ago when he asked if Jack had hurt S&D. As with every element of the show — if it doesn’t mean anything to Sam and Dean, there has to be a very good reason for it to be on screen.
*Because angels are too powerful so it’s always just a matter of they don’t have power now they do have power now they don’t yak yak yak quip quip quip now they do. No one has ever been able to write that well or shoot it well or act it well and it is pure dead air.
The problem with Rowena. I like the character and how Ruth makes her so transparent in her manipulations and unmitigated in her grasps for power. But she’s just too convenient as a tool for the plot, and the way she’s dropped into storylines takes me out of the story. Like the last two seasons, I have no idea what the point of Rowena is but I usually enjoy the scenes she’s in.
Loved how Sam is just unraveling slowly when there is no huge threat to the end of the world and no plan to act on, and that Dean seems to be pulling himself together. Takes me back to s1 Sam dealing with his grief internally and Dean keeping an eye on it, even if he can’t do anything directly to make it better. I love that dynamic.
you’re spot on Paula about how fascinating Sam is once the pressure of circumstance starts to lift. Dare I say I’m kind of excited?!
There was a great, funny bit of fight choreography in that last fight scene, when the brothers but the ground at the same time.
I loved giddy Dean, and that perfectly timed punch when he knocked Sam out. I really liked the scene with Rowena in the car, liked how the faces filled up the screen throughout (Kim Manners style?). I liked how empty Dean’s promise of “we’ll figure it out” sounded–he has said it too many times, I think–and that Sam called him on it.
Ah Rowena. She has the potential to be a shortcut character, by which I mean, someone that can be brought in for exposition, information, or solutions to problems. Like Bobby, Kevin, Frank, Charlie, even Cas–but if that is the plan, they ought to be lowering her down, not up. I have a feeling that she’s going to go the villian route, rather than the frenemy. But that’s part of what made the talk with Sam so compelling. She was telling the truth, I think, but also manipulating him. She keeps us off balance with her sudden turns, in a way Crowley never did.
*hit the floor
*powering her down.
Gotta love auto correct!
I know how I could have cared more about this episode, but I’m not quite sure how I could have cared less.
this exquisitely crafted but needlessly bitchy and ultimately unhelpful remark brought to you by my resigned acceptance of these plot-heavy episodes that tend to feature nothing I am interested in. I’m sorry folks! I’m sorry Barb! I do my best not to be Simon Flitteris. But these episodes these days always seem to be a lot of Winchesters dashing incompetently from room to room while bigger things happen around them, overshadowed by too many scenes of “personalities” saying their plans in the most unimaginative and least stylish ways.
It was all fairly competently done, although I can’t believe the appalling, hilarious clumsiness of that opening scene with Cas leaving a location, having a flashback to the location, falling over, returning to the location, and then yelling at it!!!!! Get it together, guys!!
I am excited about the Gabriel reveal! I liked the KFC joke! And I am excited for DA, her story gave me some Ruby flashbacks which is cool.
Paula, I am increasingly enamoured of your It’s Not Cas theory.
I blame the Buck-Lemmings.
Jeez, don’t apologize to me! I actually agree with you with regards to most of Ross-Lemmings/Buckner’s episodes, though they do have some good ones (Soul Survivor and this year’s Rising Son come to mind). There are almost always some good ideas floating around, but they also seem to have a habit of overstuffing their plots while losing track of Sam and Dean in the chaos, and I feel like this one falls into that trap. I might need to watch this one again to be fair to it–but in addition to the manic plot, something seemed off to me. The pacing maybe? For such a full episode, it felt like the beats weren’t hitting in the right places (for me), which left the whole thing a bit flat. Compared to their last ep, War of the Worlds–directed by Speight, natch–which was equally crazy in terms of plot, but zipped along and kept me at the edge of my seat the whole time.
Even more than Billie’s “house of cards”, I think we now have a juggling act of storylines. I’m growing a bit concerned that Dabb and his merry crew have lobbed a couple too many balls in the air to sustain.
BUT: hooray for Daneel Ackles! She had some good scenes, especially her seduction of Lucifer. And Gabriel! Wow–They managed to keep that bombshell hidden, quite a feat for the internet age.
“Winchesters dashing incompetently from room to room while bigger things happen around them”
Don’t disagree – it’s kind of annoying. I generally enjoyed these last 2 episodes, but… It almost seems like with the Wayward Daughters and then Rowena and now Sister Jo they are giving away their awesomeness in order to let these women shine. Newsflash! Women like Ellen, Jo, Pamela, and Charlie have always been strong and shiny without Sam and Dean acting like helpless chumps. Is anyone else annoyed that they are reusing the name Jo? I did like Danneel’s character especially the sexualized grace sharing scene and my favorite, flopping out on the bed in post climax exhaustion! Having said that, the whole Sister Jo is really an angel thing, like vampire Doug was just too easy. Compare to Season 2’s ‘Faith’. There was real tension around Roy healing, questions of faith and morality. It was so deep and bold and this was not…
“It’s Not Cas theory”
Are you referring to the idea that Cass is actually the being from ‘the empty’, because I have considered that as a strong possibility as well? If that’s the case it’s yet another ball the jugglers threw way up in the air.
Finally – Yay, Gabriel!
//Is anyone else annoyed that they are reusing the name Jo?//
YES!
Well, but the faith healing was not the main point of the episode. I didn’t mind that they didn’t go deep with questions of religion and faith this time, it doesn’t somehow erase the depth of “Faith.”
The questions that Jo are have to do more with use of abuse of power. She’s not healing people out of a sense of duty and compassion, like Cas did as “Emmanuel” or still does on occasion. She is purely mercenary, has a $300 fee that she doesn’t cut for anyone. Is this a proper use of her power?
Btw, love that bit of Laurie and Fry!
Just want to chime in with the reusing of names sitch-WHY the end to resume names? There are a gazillion names in the world? And they rescued Becky with the “roommate Becky” fake-out by the angel in the season 13 premiere, not to be confused with “Its Time for a Wedding” and dated God/Chuck, Becky. Come on, writers, pick new names!
And on the Cas fake out, this goes along with some interviews I had read, plus I was listening and not looking at an episode when Cas was talking and I completely thought it was a different character. Yeah, something is off. Not surprised this group caught it first.
Really, if the writers would just read these posts, just from Ms Shiela and Company, it would be all the feedback they would need. This group covered everything they need to know. Someone send one of em a look, ok?
Yeah and give Mark P something to do instead of just quip. And finally they don’t have to reference stuff just from season one to be legitimate, there are classic SPN things from all the seasons, spread throughout. That’s what makes them classic.
//your It’s Not Cas theory// So glad I’m not the only one to see it. So many odd visual cues and his reactions as he sat in Hell’s jail definitely struck me. If it really is Cas, then the writing of his character has been all over the board this season.
I enjoyed Sister Jo/Anael much more than I thought I would. Would be great to have someone manipulate Lucifer for once. Between Lucifer playing the role of pouty child and the flip flopping of angel powers/weapons/motivations, I feel very disconnected. As someone said, the Winchesters don’t play a role in any of that (really? Two ex-archangel vessels are nobodies?).
Bucklemming. *sigh* I will cut them a break on this – these transitional episodes pack way too much in (as Barb mentioned above) and not many writers could do the events much service (am thinking about We Happy Few and Bobo last year, just as crazy).
One detail I did love was that Gabriel’s mouth was sewn shut. I knew it reminded me of something at the time and someone on tumblr pointed out that in Norse mythology, Loki’s lips were sewn shut so he couldn’t manipulate anyone. Nice touch. Also now we know where Asmodeus got his shapeshifting powers from. Question is how did the least of Lucifer’s creations overcome/resurrect an archangel? It’s too bad that they didn’t cut out some of the more useless scenes earlier to focus on a more grand reintroduction here.
And hating the duplicate names? Ugh, me too. Me too.
Sorry y’all for not putting up a new post!! But you’ve handled it. I thank you.
Initial thoughts on the episode:
I guess what I’m missing is a sense of continuity of emotion – the sense that there’s one or two emotional Arcs making up this season – some kind of emotional conflict between the brothers – things the writers get mileage out of – in multiple storylines, clarified or intensified by Impala scenes … We’ve had some of that, but it just feels more isolated than in other seasons, which are really tied together by some essential conflict, or growth spurt, or change in dance step in their relationship. Season 9 is the most obvious example – or the one that comes most readily to mind – but every season features that type of continuity. It focuses us entirely on THEIR experience, and how whatever it is they are fighting affects their relationship. I’m just not feeling that this season. It’s better than last season – where there were maybe 4 Impala conversations in the entire season! But I’m still losing that sense of continuity, so I’m more like … “wait, what is it that they’re fighting? and what is it that Sam wants? That Dean wants? What is their conflict?”
This episode was okay though. Too much going on – but that’s par for the course in this kind of episode where the plot is moved forward, and other players enter the stage. Asmodeus isn’t doing it for me – like, you get rid of Crowley and just replace him on the throne with a LESS interesting villain? Crowley had been superfluous and unnecessary for about 3 years now … but why not invigorate his character and give him some OOOMPH again, as opposed to this low-rent scarred Big-Daddy who seems just silly to me …
Why did they name the character Jo? I do not understand that choice. I did like the spin on her character, that she’s a practical mercenary. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.
I am so over Ketch. I guess some fans really love him. They fawn over him on Twitter. Different strokes for different folks.
But there’s something missing here for me. Dean and Sam keep going in and out of focus.
I will say that this season LOOKS really good. Definitely not in comparison to the first 5 seasons – but still.
Don’t J&J look tired?
As much as I liked this episode with DA, I couldn’t shake the thought that Jensen and Jared looked so tired. The scene in the bunker around the table seemed forced to even get through. I’ve binge watched YouTube SN Conventions lately and I have to say, it seems they are almost done. Jared continues to say that when the time comes he wants to go in a blaze of glory, both dead. Believe it was 2 episodes back that Sam basically said the same thing in the car. Jensen, on the other hand, tells a great tale of a dream of Sam dying so Dean doesn’t need Baby any more. He hands the keys over to someone on the side of the road and rides off into the sunset. I’ve my own ideas about how that should go…
Hello. Happened across this site as I was searching “supernatural s1 ep 10 who is on cover of magazine”. I’ve looked it up previously during one of the three times I’ve watched the series; I’m now in the fourth binge and can’t remember…again.
My real reason for dropping in is to say I hope they go out in a blaze of glory. I can live with that and be satisfied. I will weep at however it ends, but if one of them dies and leaves the other, I will be a mess.
You all have some very interesting takes. Great website, Sheila.
Relishing all the comments above and just chipping in on the latest couple of episodes.
(I don’t really comment these days because my thoughts tend very much to the nostalgic and Gude Olde Dayes of Yore, but … )
1) firstly, (and having refused to watch the second half of Season 12) WHAT IS IT with Ketch’s frankly weird-ass accent? Never have I heard so many vowels strangulated to such little effect. It is sheer torture to listen to.
2) Aside from the question of why.in.the.name.of.all.that.is.holy is Rowena back in the game, I loved her in the sister witches episode. Over the past few seasons I just flinched at any episode with Rowena because of So Many Reasons but always had the feeling RC was being ill-served by all the nonsense and plot shenanigans she was encumbered with. RC really shone in this episode – as she does whenever she is asked to dig deep in to the embattled emotion, vulnerabilities and manipulations of the character – and I loved her eyeshadow.
3) The Sister Jo-or-whatever-she’s-called character filled me with so many feels about S1’s ‘Faith’, in that towering quartet of episodes from Home, Asylum, Scarecrow to Faith. I guess what the current season (anything post Season 9, basically) lacks for me is that sense of wonder, mystery, the sublime even, of standing at a threshold and being awed at the very prospect of glimpsing what might be on the other side.
What I really mean is, I should dig out the DVDs and watch Season 1 again right now.
Hi everyone…lurker popping in to ask– did the set designers really think we wouldn’t recognize the stage backdrop from the Supernatural Musical (s10e5) being used behind Sister Jo in the church? My 15 year old and I actually found it distracting from the scene.
Lol, the signpost with Blackwater Ridge and Lawrence! Normally there’s some connection to the scene with the props and design, but this did seem random reuse of props.
Absolutely! I did not get that set design at all. I chalked it up to too much going on. Again, can’t help comparing to the authentic set of ‘Faith’.
ha ha, Barb —
Jeez, don’t apologize to me!
I am just trying to preserve the precious jewel of your enjoyment!
I think we now have a juggling act of storylines
I saw someone on tumblr who had attempted to tally them all — something like 9 antagonists and over twenty running plots. RIDICULOUS. And why? To what purpose do they keep piling it on?
They managed to keep that bombshell hidden, quite a feat for the internet age.
I was so happy to be pleasantly surprised!!!!!!!! (even though it’s another plot element)
Melanie—
Are you referring to the idea that Cass is actually the being from ‘the empty’
yes although I really have no understanding of this theory or to what extent it is a theory ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ *bows to Paula*
Paula–
If it really is Cas, then the writing of his character has been all over the board this season.
That doesn’t sound like the Cas I know……..
Between Lucifer playing the role of pouty child and the flip flopping of angel powers/weapons/motivations, I feel very disconnected. As someone said, the Winchesters don’t play a role in any of that (really? Two ex-archangel vessels are nobodies?).
Perfectly said. And like some other angel blade thing, like, who cares? I barely remember any angel blade mythology (because it became so easy to kill them so again, who cares?) but I saw it and turned into a giant eye roll. I am SURE that it is a contradiction of some previously established canon fact but I don’t even mind contradiction when it comes down to it — what I mind is dilution and lack of imagination.
Sheila —
this low-rent scarred Big-Daddy
hahahahaha!! It’s so true though. Who amongst this roster of villains is captivating or truly scary or interesting in their own right? None of them have anything to do with Sam or Dean except in the most technical sense.
Helena —
Good to have you back!!
1). Ketch has a teeny tiny mouth. It’s true.
2.) Agreed 100%
3.) And all others lamenting the unfortunate comparison to Faith: agreed 110%
BY THE WAY
Did anyone else see the leaked production (Dabb, Singer, Wanek & co) brainstorming notes on the Angel storyline? I copied them here in case you didn’t but keep it under your hats:
Really makes you think.
Wait, did I just jump to the HGTV Joanna Gaines blog?!? Let’s paint the shiplap white and turn all the books on the shelves with the pages out so they all look the same…
And don’t forget the white subway tile!
//Really makes you think.//
Really does.
Thank God for you, Jessie. :)
… Stale Porridge; Fairy Fart; Antique Badger;Pimple Crust;Sexy Spore
Damn you, Jessie, don’t mock me now, you know I painted my entire flat in ‘White Disclosure’
I don’t judge you for White Disclosure. I judge you for Nana’s Toilet Seat. I thought we agreed Cardigan Dreaming was a better trim option.
well they were doing a BOGOF off deal on Nana’s Toilet Seat if you bought the Consumptive Victorian Waif splashbacks,
I think White Duck and Surf Wax are actually the same color.
I did recently have another thought, regarding all of the bouncing (sorry, juggling) balls going on in the plot. Give Dabb credit, he is not afraid to go big. He also seems to have a clear reason for all of his plot points, unlike Carver who often seemed to be throwing out ideas just to see if they landed somewhere (s. 9’s angel civil war, anyone? that damn “mysterious figure” who watched Sam leave Amelia at the beginning of s. 8?) and then dropping them altogether. So, from a story standpoint, these things are happening for a reason–whether they work together in the end, of course, is still to be seen.
So, that said–we’ve got all of these powerful figures coming into play, and the return of several characters in different forms, and Billie saying that Sam and Dean are important. Are we heading towards a final battle of some sort, with these figures aligning themselves on one side or the other?
Wait, so who are powerful figures, here? I’m not being ironic, everyone seems weak to me – Asmodeus, Lucifer, huh… the others (who again?). I keep forgetting what is happening and who is there!
Lucifer (Hail to the King), Michael (from the other side, for now), Rowena (Unchained), Billie (Death), Gabriel. And potentially the most powerful, Jack (son of heaven, earth, and hell).
Riiiiiight! Thanks for the refresher, I had forgotten half of them… I’ve never been very plot-oriented, but lately I’m really having trouble with it. Probably a mix of the stakes being (or seeming so low) and too many things (balls) for my brain anyway.
Oh man, stakes and balls – I’m always getting these things mixed up these days.
All I know is that everyone who was supposed to be dead is somehow still alive, but the ones I would like to be alive are definitely dead.
You may have a point, Barb. Love your description of Jack.
Long time lurker, first time commenter.
Has anyone else noticed that in the last few episodes Sam and Dean come in to ‘confront the bad guys’ and then just stand there staring at them until they fight back and then the boys lose their weapons and get incapacitated until someone else comes in to save them. Where is the element of surprise? Where is the action? What was their plan? Stare at them until they kill you? They literally stand and stare at the sister witches instead of shooting them with their Witch Killing Bullets. Then they have to be ‘saved’ by Rowena. I felt the same thing happened here with confronting Lucifer. They come in practically unarmed to apprehend Lucifer? Of course they will get into trouble.
They are master hunters, yet they haven’t done anything since they got into the Dino-world. (Except needing rescuing). Usually they are the ones with the crazy plan that accomplishes something, but they hardly even have screen time right now.
I would really like it if they didn’t seem like side stories in their own series.
And I agree with Sheila, they have so much potential for some emotional character arcs, but they are so busy with the other characters that the boys are lost.
Hi, Sandra! Yes, I have noticed and you’re NOT wrong! Frustrating!
Hi Sandra, welcome! I completely agree!
Was half convinced by the complete cardboard flimsiness – of character, set, dialogue, and circumstance – in the alt-world that it was all still taking place in either Mary or Jack’s head, but then there were scenes that were outside their POV. Did anyone else get that impression?
I have a huge bug up my ass about the Mary’s Deal discussion with Bobby. Firstly, the character has been so wasted that that this absolution of sorts connects to not one second of her storyline over the last two seasons. It’s completely unearned. More egregiously imo it undermines the dangerous horror and power of her choice and turns Mary, Sam and Dean once more into heroes who shit rainbows for a living. Her choice was murky and gross and ambiguous and tragic and this discussion made it clean. It’s such a bummer.
Jessie, what you have to say is insightful and totally on point, but… I confess… my only feeling about “Mary’s Deal discussion with Bobby” was, “Oh good, surely that’s a wrap on the Mary Winchester plotline.”
That’s was sort of my thought too, Melanie. One step closer to being wrapped up.
I don’t know if the thought that her demon deal was the catalyst to allow Sam and Dean to stop the apocalypse was absolution necessarily, although it does smack of We’re Heroes ™. Hearing that point reminded me that there is no decision in SPN that isn’t without some cost. Reminded me of finding out in s5 that Sam was surrounded by demons growing up, and how that threw the question of how John was raised them into a different context. What if he hadn’t raised them to be soldiers? Would they have just been fodder for the apocalypse? Neither situation (John’s or Mary’s) necessarily had a good answer, or one that would have been less painful. It just was. (Maybe a little too tidy and obvious in its execution.)
haha Melanie no I was right there with you!!
Thanks for the extra thoughts Paula — I would be happy to be bug-free and it’s (highly) likely the execution plays a big part in my antipathy. But I’m left with this feeling of something that used to be an eerie queasy single choice compounded into the rhythm and flow of fate and desire becoming the “right” choice in a forked path.
(I am kinda laughing though about how much it sucks to be alt-Mary who didn’t want to mack on her own dad and is now responsible for the eradication of the human race???)
I suppose part of it is How Do You Solve a Problem like Mary. The character’s function was as a series of touchstones and triggers — she had a mythic quality. When you change her function this other stuff is affected. And the other problem is the French Mistake Conundrum, in which trying to give an alt-world a weight of its own (by making it the Bad Fork and filling it with fuckin dirt-faced urchins in some low-budget coal-country Prince of Thieves production) cheapens “our” universe.
OK here’s something I did like, I really enjoyed the scenes with Donatello ranting at an empty chair and S&D confronting him and Dean getting asthma or whatever. I kid but that was a great sequence.
//dirt faced urchins// howling
I think my reply just got flagged as spam :)) Sheila, could you check your spam filter?
trying this in chunks :(
You always catch me at the worst possible points! I’m right here right now – right now as in I have been here for the last several days and I haven’t been able to make myself move forward.
I have for the most part really been enjoying s13 – I was thrilled with Rowena’s conversation with Sam about Lucifer, so thrilled that I was willing to utterly wipe the Casifer-to-now slate clean (minus Jack) in order to emotionally accommodate this conversation. I didn’t care for Rowena’s early episodes on the show, when she was hanging around the asylum with Crowley. I think, for me, the blandness of the set mixed with the over-the-top theatricality of both her schemes and her general person gave it all a soap operaish feel. Once she got out and particularly once she started interacting with Sam, I liked her much more. And this conversation, where she and Sam can be open with each other in a way they would not with any other person or being, creates so many opportunities. Also, I feel there’s a trend where they introduce characters who seem to open up something interesting with Sam – Crowley, Charlie, for example – and then that just gets dropped and the character primarily interacts with Dean instead. I like that this hasn’t happened yet with Rowena.
I absolutely understand where Sheila (hi, Sheila! Thank you so much for sharing your site and your experience and your knowledge and your enthusiasm! Sorry for using this mainly as public email with Jessie. I don’t expect anyone else to be checking the old entries and replying, though I would be thrilled if they did!) is coming from when she calls Rowena a showbreaker, and I agree that witchery in general has undergone a negative change over the course of the last few seasons, from an earthy, messy, mundane, sacrificial art to a shiny purple one where “witch-killing bullets” make sense. I can kind of accept that the Tasha Banes and Rowena magic fall under the natural&borrower categories – demon-powered/aligned – and the earlier magic was under the third type, the hard workers scraping a modicum of power that required life essence (bodily fluids left everywhere) or sacrifice to ignite, but the problem here is that the third type is the more interesting magic, the one where you have to weigh the costs. They could correct this (presuming I am actually watching this show as it is happening and not two years behind) by making working with Rowena herself costlier. (And also cutting down on the purple light effects.) If Rowena is so otherworldly, make her otherworldly. She doesn’t just show up. She isn’t so easily outwitted. She’s not so willing to play along. She requires sacrifice.
(Also I think angels are the ultimate showbreakers, but that ship has sailed.)
More egregiously imo it undermines the dangerous horror and power of her choice and turns Mary, Sam and Dean once more into heroes who shit rainbows for a living. Her choice was murky and gross and ambiguous and tragic and this discussion made it clean.
This drove me bonkers. It ties in with the last thing we were talking about, Sam not looking for Dean and all the other murky, ambiguous choices the two of them have made, their dad made, etc. Thatis the show. The people they save but leave destroyed. The people who help them but end up dying for it. Is it better to lose your childhood to monsters but live, or keep your childhood but lose your life at 18 when the ghouls come for you and your mother? Tessa, in Appointment in Samarra, tells Dean that by refusing to reap the girl, he has interfered with the natural order, and that chaos and sadness will follow her for the rest of her life. I thought that was beautiful, and that it was the show in a nutshell. Since Mary Campbell’s choice to save her boyfriend, chaos and sadness have followed the Winchesters, and John’s decision to save Dean, Dean’s decision to save Sam, have only compounded it. None of their good actions are purely good. There is always a price and it is always steep. And you always, always ask, was it worth it? This exoneration of Mary made me wonder what show I was watching.
Which is why it’s a bad place to catch me! Because I have really enjoyed s13. I like Jack! I knew he was coming – every Netflix episode summary from here on out is basically “Jack struggles with what kind of ice cream to order, the Winchesters try to help him with his decision” – and I did not expect to like him. My thought was basically, Who is this dude who is front and center in all the promo shots and episode caps? Why are Sam and Dean suddenly “the Winchesters”? I was not inclined to like him, but I love him.
The episode with the grief counselor shocked me, in that it deeply moved me, like I hadn’t been since Mary left the bunker at the beginning of s12. It was an electric current. Sam! Jack talking to “Kelly”! The “I have to believe it” and how it rippled out from the counselor to Jack, to Castiel, to Sam – it was beautiful. When Dean popped out his suicide kit, I yelled, “I’m breaking up with you Dean Winchester!!” at the screen but I was so happy to be so emotionally involved, it was one of my best breakups ever. In the Dodge City episode, I loved that Jack killed the security guard by knocking his head into a pole – it was so mundane and people are so fragile and it broke my heart for Jack. I loved every minor character. I was a little let down by Wayward Sisters – I love all those characters and was so irked when I heard they tried for a spinoff and it didn’t end up happening – but I felt there was a ton of potential there. I loved the episode with Donna and her niece, I loved the very Midwestern feel of Wendy (something I think the Midwestern episodes of the show have been lacking for several years)* and the gruesome stakes. I accidentally spoiled myself for Gabriel’s return about 45 minutes before I saw it in the episode, but it still shocked the snot out of me when it happened.
So this is the first time this season that I’ve been genuinely upset at the show. It’s such a huge misstep!
Anyway, on my other viewing track, Pam and I just finished s11 tonight and she isn’t sure she wants to watch s12. We paused after Don’t Call Me Shurley and she couldn’t sleep that night at all, she was buzzing with ideas about it. The next night we went back and watched Hollywood Babylon/Folsom Prison Blues, mainly because she was happy and I dreaded showing her the last 3 s11 eps. But now we’ve done it and she is mad and who knows, we may just start a rewatch from the beginning rather than continue on with this one. (Edit: she’s consented to a Readers’ Digest version of s12.)
We’re still stuck in a hotel and will be for the foreseeable future. We got a tree through our roof, but so did everyone else in the state and it will be a while before construction companies can fix us all. We haven’t even gotten the tree off our house yet, and it happened a week and a half ago and we are on the emergency tree removal list. This is a different world, Jessie, a world you never saved. We’re all safe and well, though, no injuries and good insurance and a hotel staff that doesn’t mind a cat. And a kitchenette.
Hope all is well with you and your family.
*which is something that probably disappoints me and no one else: I think that the show was at its finest when it was set between the Rockies and the Appalachians. There was a dirtiness and lack of glamour and a sense that John, Sam and Dean concern themselves with the places and things most people prefer to/don’t even know not to overlook, that they had a personal investment in this particular patch of ground and these particular people. I felt it was organic, with a creator who grew up in Ohio and stars from Texas, characters from Kansas, a roadhouse in Nebraska and a safehouse in South Dakota, a hell gate in Wyoming, Death rising in Carthage and Pestilence settling in Davenport. I know it’s tough to pass the Pacific Northwest off as middle America. If I had unlimited moneys and the ability to turn back time, the first thing I would do for this show is give it a monumental location budget and say, All right, enjoy Missouri <3
Okay, apparently Akismet really doesn’t care for criticism of Bobby and Zach. Fair enough.
it’s not fair enough, they are such a downer! haha
I’m so pleased to read you are enjoying 13! And I’m particularly interested in your list of moments that thrilled you (which I suspect has increased a little if you managed to keep watching). It made me realise that when I think back looking for “electric current” moments in this era most of them involve Sam, even where I would argue that a lack of attention to him has been imo fundamentally ruinous. Sheila noted somewhere in these comments that when the writers start to coast with Sam and Dean and write them in a general and soft-focus, instead of a specific and precise way, it’s Sam who suffers more because Dean has jokes and business and behaviour that keeps him alive, even in the poorest way. But the inverse of that is that when they actually do bother to write, tapping into that gangbusters Sam history gives some sublime moments while Dean remains dimmed out and flanderised.
I could not agree more about how trying that Hell/pseudo-Hell set was, and how dispiriting is that Crowley was relegated for multiple seasons to just “Hell set with interlocutor” plotlines. Good riddance!
Hollywood Babylon/Folsom Prison Blues
just reading these names makes me ache haha. such a s2 tragic.I hope in your s12 recounting to Pam you paid sufficient attention to Sam getting wet and tortured!!! and also Dean getting excited about live skinemax with Rowena and Sam! and also the welcome eerieness of the goat head monster episode!
Locations — yes, I miss that Midwestern lived-in feel too. I also, somehow, miss the deserts we never got. I would have loved to see them in a desert! Maybe in the alternate universe where you have a grand budget you can allocate some for that.
I’m glad your living conditions are bearable — what an upturning, my gosh. your cat must be so confused!
Sam getting wet and tortured
Jessie, he got mindraped in my mom’s brass bed!!!!! I know exactly how those white knobby things spin and rattle, I’ve unscrewed those brass flowers a thousand times. She hasn’t had that bed since I was maybe 14 (SO THE POSSIBILITY REMAINS THAT THIS IS TRULY THE EXACT SAME BED!!!!!!!!!!!!) but omg extra zingy layer of trauma RIGHT THERE.
We watched the first 4. I’m going to have her watch Asa Fox and Regarding Dean and … then it gets kinda murky. Goats and Tasha Banes definitely. I need to crystalize the Mary/BMoL plotline somehow. I’ll probably just tell her about Lucifer, Kelly and Castiel. Maybe show her the Raid, the hellhound, and Claire? What a mess.
Just a few other thoughts:
Alt world Bobby is still a crusty marshmallow, just in camo.
Alt world Zachariah. That was Zach? He was so, well attractive and all Seal Team Six and I’m disturbed.
Jack and shadow puppets. Yeah Bobby, watch out for that one going all darkside.
Poor Donatello. But also, that means we will never get another prophet while he is still lying there brain dead. I’m confused by the mechanics of that.
Wait and let’s not forget the cheesy Land of the Lost cavemen. What was that about?
I just can’t with Beret Bobby and Camo Zach. There’s no meat on those bones.
The Land of the Lost!! I appreciated the attempt to inject some life into the proceedings. Like the S&D ghost hunt in the S12 finale it was a dead-end narrative decoy, which is not bad in-and-of itself, especially if it’s filmed attractively as the ghost hunt was. Unfortunately….this one….not so much in terms of looks, and because Dean’s interior life is so hollowed out now there’s nothing really going on with him so it was all a big eh. When you get to that point it all comes down to humour and my guess is it worked for some and not others?
That ghost hunt was gorgeous even if pointless.
There are times when a little humor works (thinking of the silly call-out to JDM and Lucille) but the caveman/terrible Biblical warriors who were really sand puppets definitely did not. Landed with such a thud.
Re your thoughts about Bobby and alt world, you’re right on why it’s not working when they give it weight. I don’t want to be there, I just want to know it exists. The scariest things in SPN were unseen threats, like Dean going to Hell in s4. We knew terrible awful things happened there but no one took us there to show us the rack and the unsuffering.
//The scariest things in SPN were unseen threats, like Dean going to Hell in s4. We knew terrible awful things happened there but no one took us there to show us the rack and the unsuffering.//
You can do that sort of thing when you trust your audience. Now we need reminders that they are heroes who will do whatever it takes.
I hate the Alt-universe! Supernatural is supposed to be Route 66 X True Grit with a pinch of X-Files thrown in. This is full on comic book action. I get that’s what CW does best, but they shouldn’t mess with their best show. I love Jack, but did anybody notice when he uses his power it makes the same cheesy sound effect as the transporter on Star Trek TOS? “I’m givin’ her all she’s got Cap’n!” Stop it NOW!
Lol Melanie, it is the same sound
I really enjoyed seeing Jack again. The accidental CGI shadow puppets seemed like the sort of good-hearted but poor impulse control that is him. I liked how he understood that he was being manipulated by Zachariah. He’s just a great character with his early-seasons-of-Cas earnestness and loyalty and desire to do good.
And Dean enjoying bacon, always a treat. Donatello ranting (and being out of breath after running down the halls shouting “eureka”) was very good. I hope he’s not brain dead forever. I’ve forgotten, do we know who the Reaper-in-charge is now?
The cheesiness of the alt-world… yeah. It really contrasts with how well-constructed the Bunker is. Which I agree should be abandoned for a series of cowboy-themed motel rooms. The hero-ness seems like it’s become a part of the atmosphere now. Disappointing.
And, Dean and Cas summon two mythical ultra-warriors them with a simple spell (oh-wa ta-goo siam) and then defeat them in hand-to-hand in 28 seconds? Oy. Although, Dean snickering”they’re wearing loin clothes” did go a long way toward making it watchable.
Still, I really enjoyed the episode since I’ve accepted some cheese and “that’s what we do” as a cost of being a long time fan.
Funny, I didn’t care for the last couple of episodes as much as everyone else here – and now I’m on the other side. I’m pretty sure I’m watching the same show… Pretty sure.
I’ll take the time to read all your comments later tonight. I might even try to be articulate about all the disappointment. But I HAVE to say:
THAT is Zachariah? Fuck no! The Colt, and now my favourite angel? No. NO no nonOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Have a nice day.
“I have six wings and four faces, one of which is a lion.”
???????
Even angels think lions are cool.
Ha ha ha, right?
I loved his middle-management pettiness – much more dangerous than para-military douchery. Which, alternative universe or not, I’m refusing to believe exists. From now on, I keep what pleases me – so, Jack, and Dean rolling his eyes – and immediately erase the rest from my memory.
I’m currently re-watching season 12 so I have to.