#chuck being god all along just makes his episodes way less interesting to watch it kind of. washes out the strength of the narrative to me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

incarnateirony · 3 years

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Hi! I’m still not really over the last episode (and that happy montage in the end i-) and I’m feel confused about what’s part of the episode was fake. I mean the end totally is. But all Chuck scene was superweird too. And sometimes i think that it should be Cas instead of Lucifer and Jack felt him. I mean... confused! How do you feel about that?

Okay so here’s the thing -- this is a multifaceted episode--

BuckLeming, while often herded efficiently by Dabb, can muddy up the textual waters, leave gaps, and things unexplained.

However, that doesn’t account for Showalter’s choices in direction. Dutch shots out the ASS which are typically used to evoke that something is "wrong." Lots of panoramas, tracking shots, zooms and blurs in ways that simply are-not-standard for SPN. Extreme aerial shots.

One might even think “maybe it’s Chuck looking in on them!” but then you realize the same overhead view zoomed out on *Chuck* even and panned out to the horizon again.

One of the early mega-zooms literally zoomed out to The World, even. I’m just gonna gesture people to my tag on that and let them think on that, much less the empty world orbiting on the news or whatever the hell else.

There were *several* Cas-baits, yes. Yes, that was intentional from our actual authors.

But when it comes down to “fake episode”, here’s where we were at.

15.17-19 run immediately concurrently. At the end of 17, Chuck says this was his ending.

Now, the Winchesters largely derailed that ending, so Chuck was writing new material.

But Chuck is also seeking death.

He wrote a suicide note in 11. He wrote the story that would end in him and Amara being eradicated. And whatever influence he was exerting forcefully with Michael and Lucifer to bop the story around was all in the interest of seeing his book. One might think “to keep the Winchesters from killing him”, but he was desperate to see what his ending WAS, to know it and experience it and scream after them.

The dour taking of “no one cares” right after “I care(d)” about humanity is its own highlight going on. But wait, there’s MORE.

When Dabb dropped his pre-episode thing, we started talking before the episode.

So I mean, I think what we were *mostly* witnessing is the pen being ripped away.

But this is that emptiness that lingers even with Chuck generally resolved. They’re still kinda on the pages. The book is presented as shut, and the next steps are not taken. Development stops, if not drops.

This entire thing is so meta my damn head hurts.

Summarily: Is it just like, some weird AU that’s gonna go away? Not so much. Is it an incomplete portion of the story told from a skew? Absolutely. And is there still someone watching over them? T’would seem so. The whole World, even. Beyond Chuck.

Now the point at which we start blocking off issues of “eugenie writes like she’s 3″ is where we ask about things like “god power” or whatever else being thrown in the mix along with eugenie’s ki ball special effects that are literally always unique to her episodes, even if other people have to add the SFX.

So while it was a good bit of masterful work to do it via buckleming for this style of bump, it still inevitably has its flaws because... buckleming. But... Showalter was there. And one thing to note is almost every single scene entrance had some sort of major pan or zoom effect. That’s not typical for him.

The entire thing is designed to evoke, directorially:

One style: crooked shots, unlevel, unbalanced, uneasy feeling.

Second style: Over-under; some force is watching them on high, while others have a sort of brechtian absurdity, which seats it like a play on an elevated stage.

We are the audience, looking up at figures half the episode; but a second audience is looking in from “on high” and out over the world. As if perhaps even from the heavens.

Third style: CSI Miami, basically? Parts of this episode were sectioned off to be like a procedural crime drama in its cinematography and flashbacks. Which is ironic, because Dean loathes procedural dramas, but at the same time some of this fandom demands a procedural monster show instead of a family drama show.

Sam and Dean barely have any lines in the episode *until* we hit Crime Drama Time. Then suddenly, they reveal all of their case work. Despite Dean’s hatred of crime dramas, this is honestly when I feel like the brothers kicked in their own pen.

Let’s play a game-- the winchesters are aware they can write their own story. So they start telling the story they think people want to hear, or maybe just fill in the gaps from when Chuck gets dropped on his ass. Maybe Dean’s the one writing about how many times god punched them in the face whereas Sam is breaking down the crime scene investigation front. Another, where it feels like we’re loosely circling the war table as others lightly wander too.

But everything before that is the first and second style, and even after that, the overview-angle remains. The uneasiness is gone but there is an emptiness otherwise. But we are no longer spectators from beneath the stage, but staring into them.

I still very much expect everyone to “die” one more time and several specifics to choose to walk back into life at the end of it.

Is it a *complete* false narrative? No. We’re not just gonna turn around and be like “oh that whole ep didn’t happen.” But the writer lost his pen and got jacked at one point, while we also observed the stage from a series of angles as different audiences.

Riddle me this: Why show the World? “Because it’s empty and just them!” okay but there’s a lot of ways to show that which actually gets that point a whole lot better across than “here, here’s a planet that still looks lit up”--yes I know electricity is still running until stuff runs out but essentially speaking, the end of the episode shows us the kind of dramatic shots that could be used for that.

CASey just poofed in the World in the TV, seems legit.

Let’s see these overhead angles again, knowing it isn’t just Chuck.

This sort of overview is known for causing a “dollhouse effect” that derealizes the episode and makes them seem, well, like toys. Which is interesting. Because Chuck isn’t the only one watching them on high.

Cool, this is fine.

Either way, the entire episode is DESIGNED to cause some major uncanny valley. There’s a lot of parts that simply *haven’t been told or filled in.* It’s almost like evasive maneuvering, half the content just never made it to print, and what did wasn’t in its best draft. There may be battling authors, or a transition of authorship. But the thing is: this is not the complete story.

There is an entire missing section about Sam and Dean even finding out that Jack is a power siphon which they hadn’t witnessed yet much less arranged an entire plan.

Even Chuck’s episodes are generally told from the general POVs of the Winchesters, but this was absolutely not.

Matthew 28: 18: And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Put a pin in that one.

Unless CHUCK IS WRITING HIS OWN FAKE DRAMATIC END, the overhead view, however, IS NOT CHUCK PERSPECTIVE.

-- Regardless, the metaness of “fish in a toilet bowl BRL plot” stacked into this makes it very difficult to accurately decipher the lines, especially with only one watch so far--just skimming back through right now to grab a few things I remember.

Some parts are plot salad buckleming.

Some parts are us as forced spectators of a stage play.

some parts are shifting authorship

Some parts are the heavens looking out over the earth it loves.

------

It almost feels as if, within enclosed spaces, unsteadiness and stageplay, we have Chuck’s POV.

But by the end it ceases to have any relevance, as he is no longer the author, and instead, we have the Presence of Being overseeing them, letting the Winchesters argue for their own proverbial pen in their own storytellings between here and there.

ALTERNATE PROPOSAL:

it is all one point of view. All of it. Pretend you’re someone’s eyes on a situation, you just happen to be in the sky half the time, and the uncanny valley is pulling forward the concept of being a presence that simply isn’t *there.* For example we're looking extremely closely at passed out dean but the camera turns and raises to level with Sam before Dean gets up. Our viewership lens is rising to meet Sam.

The camera stays in motion to fill a role or slot of a viewer. At first it’s haunting and ominous, but at other times, it’s simply part of the room, when it isn’t hovering from on high. Rather than speaking of empty space, we are viewing The World through that empty space, as if it were a Being.

Just a few more eye catching shots.

But whoever or whatever frames the end, even without Chuck--like the story is still turning on the pages, roughly.

The montage at the end feels like the Swan Song one, more or less, but there’s no narrator, no chuck.

The writer, the writer we know at least, is Absent.

Men are writing their own Stories.

But they aren’t alone.

I know how you see yourself. Angry and dark like your father. You think that’s what you are. But you are the most loving man in the whole world. That is who you are.

Someone does care. Even if right now, Sam and Dean don’t feel like anyone does.

...Because of you. I cared. For you, for Sam, for Jack, for the Whole World.

I cared.

“That’s not who I am.”

I am.

I speak therefore I am.

#supernatural #spn #15.19 #meta #my meta #the world #world #absence #being #polol

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katsidhe · 3 years

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15.19 Final Thoughts

I was all set for disappointment after 15.18, but this was… good, actually! Not perfect by any means, but the beats it hit and the points it made were by and large ones I’d been waiting for all season. Where it wasn’t touching (and it was touching!), it was absurd enough for me to enjoy it heartily anyway. I wish that this episode had been split into, like, three, so that it could have spent the time it needed on wallowing.

I love the empty earth. Love it to absolute PIECES. Because it fits so, so well, right? The claustrophobia of the Winchesters’ lives writ grotesquely large. They’re the most important people in the universe, of COURSE they are, because Chuck feels like it, and of course they can’t die, of course they’re doomed to wander eternally—ughh I love it. It’s the natural, absurd, and absurdist conclusion to where this story has always been heading. I am so glad that they went there.

Sam’s heartbreaking guilt—his knowledge that his defiance in 15.17 was what led to this empty universe. Oh, Sam. Again sublimating his loss and his agony into personal responsibility. And the worst part is that he’s right. I love the tragicomedy of Sam and Dean’s offer to play along for Chuck, and that he refuses, preferring to watch them walk the earth alone. Honestly? if it had cut to black right there? I would be mightily pleased.

ok but SAM!!! if there was a winner of 15.19 (and therefore a winner of SPN in general? sure feels that way to me), it’s Sam. Sam defied Death and defied God (and in 15.17 defied Dean). Sam saved Jack, who was the key to everything. Sam got the assist on Lucifer. Sam tricked Michael. Just, GAHH, what a great episode for him.

I about lost my goddamn mind when Lucifer showed up, because I had lost any inkling of hope that he’d turn up again. Kinda figured that plot thread had been irrevocably dropped. I’m sorry for losing my faith, Show! I should have believed that you’d eventually give me a taste of what I wanted!

I predict this opinion is going to be a little unpopular, but I was so happy to see him. I don’t care that he was too quippy, I don’t care that he was gone in like six minutes, I don’t care that his and Michael’s fight was, again, anticlimactic (though at least there weren’t wires, t god). Here’s the thing. I don’t NEED my fictional suffering to be like, artisanal, and thoughtfully designed. I’ll buy that shit at Costco, in ten gallon drums. I’ll chug it straight from the bottle like trauma ketchup. I’ll watch Lucifer resurrected a thousand times, if it means I get to watch Sam’s FACE while they’re in the same room. PRAISE.

The corollary: the ABSOLUTELY AMAZING CONCEPT of the last five people in the entire world being Michael, Lucifer, Sam, Dean, and Jack, all stuck awkwardly in the Bunker. Omfg. This SENT me so hard I had to take a walk, I was laughing too much. What a ripe premise. What an ugly premise. I need fic, immediately, stat, stat means now.

Relatedly, I love the mental image of Sam unobtrusively going offscreen and getting the archangel blade and handing it to Michael and quietly hissing, “uh PLEASE ffs kill your goddamn brother.” Pfffffffffffffffff.

Deeply disappointed that Jack didn’t get a chance to say anything to Lucifer. Yet another thing that needs further treatment.

I’d figured Lucifer was telling the truth when he told them he was joining Team Kill Chuck. However, Lucifer’s willingness to be on board with Chuck’s plan makes, just, a ton of sense. He’s always had less to lose than Michael, when it comes to accepting his father’s olive branch, since he fell so far so long ago, while Michael is still teetering on that precipice. And Chuck’s just extended, basically, a massive apology to him by erasing all the people and places and stories that he favored over his children. Of COURSE Lucifer wants to be alone with his dad, the only chosen one left, in a universe that is finally pristine. Of course he wants to rub his new favor in Michael’s face. I just wish we’d seen and heard more of this. His resurrection wasn’t pointless at all, but it was underdeveloped.

Michael’s inability to separate himself from his father’s will at the bitter end is a tragic and somber end. Jake Abel brought his A-game again. I wish very deeply that we’d been able to see more of him this season: he is one of the few surviving people with genuine investment in Chuck as a person, and he had a deep, deep betrayal to unpack.

Chuck and his enemies: Billie was always too straightforward in her goals and motivations to be truly interesting as an enemy to Chuck; she is less a character, and more an avatar, a force of nature. She opposed him the way a river opposes stone. The Emptity is nearly disinterested in the whole mess—it just wanted to be left alone. The really interesting sources of conflict for Chuck were always going to come from his family: Amara, and the archangels. And I’m glad we got some of that conflict now, even if it was too little too late.

Both of his children were unable to separate themselves from craving his approval. It’s a dire, tragic condemnation of this immortal cosmic family. And it says something about the microcosm of the Winchesters, of them as the model for the stories Chuck enjoys, the stories he inhabits. Supernatural is a story about being trapped.

Sam somehow tricking both Michael and God? Sam, your BRAIN, it’s simply too big! but real talk how did he manage this? Does he still have the protection from Chuck’s sight via his now-erased God hole? I’m gonna go with yes, and in fact I’m gonna go a step further and pretend he still had that bullet wound this entire season, and that it healed when Jack took Chuck’s power, because now it makes even less sense than ever that the writers chose to erase that tantalizing physical connection. There, in my head, I’ve now fixed it.

Jack. Oh, Jack, what was the show ever going to do with you? The only thing it could, I think. I love that Dean, with absolutely no sense of irony, demanded Jack return with Sam and Dean to where he ~belongs, accusing him tacitly of selfishness, as if not three days ago he’d been egging him on to suicide. For Jack’s own sake, I am glad he is away from the Winchesters, and I hope he spends several decades talking to Amara and like, manifesting as a tree or something, to get some badly needed emotional balance and sense of scale. There is still so much wrong with putting this much power and responsibility in the hands of a browbeaten three-year-old. But, yes, my heart does swell at the thought of Sam’s imperfect love fostering the new God.

The image of Sam and Dean, broken bones, bloodied faces, laughing in the face of God like they’re insane is a pretty damn good one.

Also, Dean denying himself as the “ultimate killer”? Hahahaha so much to unpack there

My least favorite part was, predictably, the saccharine speech about #freewill, complete with the goddamn table carvings. I will certainly cop to really enjoying the montage, tho (but can anyone explain to me why it was like, almost-but-not-quite in chronological order? ).

I’m probably going to have more to say about all of this. Please talk to me about this episode. I’ll forgive 15.18, and hell, I’ll proactively forgive 15.20. Together with 15.17, 15.19 paints a more pleasing, more damning, and more fruitful conclusion for SPN than I ever dreamed I’d get.

#spn spoilers #15.19 #final thoughts #sam and jack #sam and lucifer #sam and chuck #chuck and lucifer #lucifer and michael #cannot believe I liked this!#cannot believe it gave me so many things I really wanted

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cooloddball · 4 years

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DESTIEL AND COCKLES RANT

THIS IS A RANT ON ALL THINGS DESTIEL AND COCKLES

PS. I do not know how to make gifs and or use photos yet so feel free to add yours

I have said this before and I will say it again. I have been in this fandom for a month and I ship Destiel and Cockles anyone who has a problem with this then move along and/or if you are an anti and read this, keep your hateful comments to yourself.

That being said, I have read about almost all ships in the fandom but mostly Destiel, Cockles, Wincest, and J2. Through all the reading and discovery, I still have to say I ship Cockles and Destiel more than ever before. However, I have seen some things from the antis that did not sit well with me.

This is going to be a long post so brace yourself and it is mostly about the hate the antis (anti-cockles, anti-wives , and anti-Destiel Shippers spread). Also this is a rant so don’t mind me,

ON DESTIEL

The hate on Destiel is massive. Mostly this is from Bronlies who hate Cas like he is the anti-Christ, and the Wincest shippers.

Now I am not trying to rain on anyone’s parade but come on. Cas is Dean’s best friend. Whether you ship them romantically or not, it is canon that Cas Dean’s best friend. We have seen time and again how miserable Dean is every time Cas dies. Dea has also expressly stated that Cas is his best friend and even said they are better together; all three of them including Sam. He has called him his family. So why the hate? Chuck himself has said that he has rebuilt Cas more times than anyone.

Now, people who believe that it is better to ship Sam and Dean who are literally blood brother but it is not okay to ship Dean and Cas what is wrong with you? Is it okay for someone to fuck their brother and/or be in love with them? I mean come on.

Before I was even a shipper, I always looked forward to episodes that Cas was in. He brought a different dynamic to the show in a positive way. Yes, I love the brothers but Cas is just deifferent and all the sass he brings makes the show, at least to me 10 times better. Sue me.

People saying that JA would never be comfortable with Destine because he is a Christian. I mean, he can call Chuck a dick, call angels dicks, make deals with demons and all other unchristian things but kissing another man is where he draws the line? If he was such a Christian, why does he let another man straddle him on stage or want to kill God?

Someone once said that JA supports wincest. I saw the video and I get what he said is that whatever floats your boat or something like that. So why is it so hard for him when it comes to Destiel? I don’t understand this man. He is a paradox.

ON COCKLES

I have seen antis, mostly those who ship J2 throw shade at MC saying that JA doesn’t like him, he just tolerates him and everything they do is for PR. I have not once seen anyone say that JP doesn’t like MC. You know why? I believe they view MC as a threat to their J2 ship.

So I stumbledupon this antis blog who had a whole analysis (much like am doing here) on why JA cannot be a couple. Here are some that I remember from the top of my head:

1. That JA said that he thinks Matt Bomer is attractive.

2. That JA moved to Austin to be live next to JP.

3. That JA and MC have nothing in common being that JA plays golf and sings etc and that MC does woodwork, writes poetry and bicycle touring.

4. That JA is with JP hence no. 2.

5. That JA does not curse on stage but MC does.

6. That MC does not take acting seriously but JA does.

Now now now. This beats logic. All the above things I beg to differ with not because I am cockles shipper but it is just common sense.

Being with someone or rather being in love with someone does not mean any of the above things have to be true. Hear me out.

1. On finding Matt Bomer attractive. I have many celebrity crushes, there are also ordinary people that I find attractive. But then again, I have a boyfriend, who I am in love with; I have been with for six years. But he looks nothing like my celebrity crushes or the ordinary people I find attractive. Does that mean I am not in love with him? No. It means I have eyes and I can appreciate beauty and have a few fantasies but I chose to be with him because I love him. He also has other people he finds attractive that look nothing like me, does that mean he does not love me? I mean come on.

Oh the most hilarious thing is that the anti said you cannot compare Matt to MC since Matt is way attractive. I mean come on; they may not look alike but they both have dark hair, blue eyes. Seriously people! And MC is so handsome and adorable at the same time. Sometimes I feel like he looks better than JA and JP. Sue me.

2. On JA moving to Austin. Lol. This means that he went to live next to his best friend. I mean come on. I have moved to live next to my best friend (bff) who is married. Does that mean I am in love with her? Hell no! But I feel safer knowing that she is there for me.

Also people need to understand, MC and JA could be involved romantically or not (pick your poison) but you don’t need to be next to your lover to love them or be in a relationship with them. Lond distance relationships anyone? They have families and kids and other priorities. Just because you are in a relationship with someone does not necessarily mean you live together or evn in the same area. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and also they are where they are now because of other priorities in their lives. So, living together or in the same town doesn’t make you more or less in love.

3. On the issue of common interests. This made me laugh so hard. I mean comeon, People who are together do not need to share any interests. The diversity of their interests is probably what attracted them to each other. Also how can you say a poet and a singer have nothing in common? They are artists. MC can write poems that JA can sing. Oh also remember that video MC’s friend DM posted on Twitter where they did the whole bicycle touring in Germany? Uh huh? JA seemed to be interested in that a lot. So..

4. I could say a lot about JA being with Jp. This J2 being married and their wives being beards is the weirdest thing I have ever seen. Seriously, J2 tinhats have gone ahead to hate of D’s posts and call her names. Telling her to stop pretending that she is JA. It is laughable and not in a nice way, really. Can they just stop? Before I became a cockles shipper I watched J2 videos where they interact be it cons, red carpet moments or even gag reels. It is just different. All I see are two bros; one that is really playful like a little puppy and the other one trying to be the big brother. As for JA and MC, it is different, there are things that JA is comfortable when Mc does that he is not comfortable when JP does them. Neck kisses for a start.

Also most of the J2 tinhats evidence about J2 being real is rarely backed up by visual evidence and if there is any, it is usually from years ago. I am not hating on antis, just stating facts.

5. I mean, cursing on stage really? I curse all the time my bf doesn’t. Does that mean he doesn’t like me or love me? Hell to the Fucking No! Suck it!

6. On Mc not taking acting seriously. Yeah I can guess why he doesn’t. It is not his only priority unlike JA who has chosen it as a career path. From what I have seen, MC’s priorities include making the world a better place through charities, politics, and oh, he is also a writer. Oh so forgive him if he is not obsessed with acting. Besides JA says that he likes how he acts as Cas because it is not like anything he has seen from other guest stars that have come on the show. I mean not being serious about something does not mean that you are not good at it. Would he have lasted 11 seasons if he was not good at what he does?

There was also hate that JA is only around MC for PR and he actually hates him. There were some photos and gifs so the apparent hate. So, if he cannot stand him, why is there so much evidence of JA going to MC to give some love, Neck kisses, intimate IG posts, face caresses, ass smacks, calling him his baby dadfy, heart eyes, even when they don’t know that they are being filmed?

Also why is it during the Vegascon 2020 all JA did was bring up MC unnecessarily even when no one, absolutely nobody asked him to. Come on! stop the bs and admit that Cockles is the realest ship in the history of ships!!

ON THE WIVES

I swear bitches be crazy. How can you just hat someone for literally nothing? This is mostly from J2 tinhats at other J2 stans who do not ship J2 together romantically. I mean…comeon. You do not need to be a stan for the wives just because they are married to J2 but please stop with the madness.

I recently saw someone comment on various JA posts on IG asking why he is lying to the fans that he is with D when he is with JP. So many rude things have been said about the wives especially D that it breaks my heart.

Seiously? People have gone ahead even to say that she is with JA’s friend SC and that the twins are not JA’s they are SC’s since D and SC are ‘always’ hanging out together. My question is, so D is not supposed to hang out with their friends? And for Chuck’s sake, everyone can see that the twins especially the boy (idk their names, sorry) looks like JA’s twin. I mean come on people.

I believe that they hate D because she says how much she loves MC and that Cas is her favorite character and that they are also bitter that JA chose her and not them. Just my opinion, but what do I know. On JP and G. I don’t know much about them mostly because I do not follow either of them of IG or elsewhere but I have seen hate on G as well.

The antis have gone ahead to say that when JA said that he was hanging out with SC writing songs, that he was lying and that nothing was happening he was just trying to dampen the rumours. I wonder how they felt when the album by JA and Sc came out last year. Jokes on you haters. Bitches be crazy fr.

Oh, the antis also say that the same way JA looks at his wife is the same way he looks at MC. With contempt. I mean talk about hanging yourself with your own rope. What they are saying is, JA feels about his wife the same way he feels abouts MC. Aww! That is true love bitches.

If JA actually cannot stand MC, shouldn’t he have gotten him fired from the show or at least make sure he gets less screen time and that they don’t have any panels together being that JA is the star of the show and all. I mean Mark left and he was a major character to the plot so...

Also why would JA give and buy MC clothes if he hates him? Give him a ring, a bracelet? Huh? Explain it to me.

Oh, some anti also said that before every Cockles panel at JIBCON JA cries and has to be forced on stage by Daniella and JP has to give him a hug and that’s why he drinks a lot of apple juice. LOL. WTF? What do you say to such people. I cannot even..My question is, are we talking about the same Cockles panels that I have seen? Then JA deserves all the Oscars and Tony Awards for his impeccable acting skills when he is around MC. Must really hate him. *wink*

MY TWO CENTS ON COCKLES

I know JA gives off mixed actions about MC. But I think it is to confuse people like us, shippers. He does’t want to too out there so he tries so hard to be mean with his words. But his actions tell a different story. I mean, who gets a boner when their friend straddles them on stage and then goes ahead to post that chest to chest selfie on IG. That is the gayest thing I have ever seen.

Sharing clothes? I mean friends do share clothes but if it is like a daily thing. More than 20 articles of clothing exchanged between each other on various occasions even when they are apart does not make sense to me. And to make matters worse, JA does not deny it. One even had a tag on it. Lol. We are not children, we can see what is going on.

The 2014 DallasCon – Rob’s Birthday Party. WTF? Was all that between JA and MC? Why did he he swallow and react like that when he saw MC’s bare abdomen? Who does that? Also the looks when MC was leaving the stage. Come on.

Also what was up with the” I love you from the bottom of my heart” at the MTV top 10 in 2010.

The wife is my rock but I am glad to have some pebbles in my life.

Truth is, JA could post a video of him balls deep in MC and the antis could say that somehow MC manipulated JA to post it for PR.

People need to leave MC alone, he ie a human being who has made mistakes, JA and JP have too and I don’t see the antis hating on them. The double Standard s FOH.

I could write about this forever but the truth is JA loves MC, and D and V know that they love each other. All their friends know including JP and other castmates. I believe they know it is more than just friends and the antis can’t stand it because they also know it to be true.

JA LOVES MC. JP LOVES MC. J2M LOVE EACH OTHER. J2 LOVE THEIR WIVES. STOP THE HATE!!

I am not done but I am done for now. I could be here forever writing about this if I do not stop.

#destiel #cockles #cockles is real #cockles csi #stop the hate #antis are mean

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dotthings · 4 years

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All right let’s do this. SPN 15.10. “The Heroes Journey.”

Look, I have now watched Jensen tap-dancing. A whole extended musical number of Jensen Ackles, dancing. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW, ALL RIGHT I NEED TO GET A GRIP. WRITE SOME META. HERE YOU GO.

How very Joseph Campbell of you, Dabb. Except the irony here is it’s not Joseph Cambell style hero journey exploration that’s being highlighted here, those big mythic gestures--the call, rejection of the call, acceptance of the call, reckoning with the father and so on. This ep tapped into a different heroic theme that has a lot in common with superhero narratives. It’s not the powers, it’s not the mask, it’s not the really kevlar or mecha suit or the cape that makes a hero a hero. It’s who they are as a person when all that’s stripped away. Who are they without that. This ep gave me some some S6 Buffy vibes, or it symbolically pre-serum Steve Rogers’ed Sam and Dean.

It showed their courage and determination and refusal to give up even though they no longer has the same literally God-given, chosen ones blessed luck. It’s not that they didn’t know how to lock-pick or throw a punch or dodge a punch or what to do about monsters any more. They are still highly trained, but none of it was working. I think Chuck didn’t just remove the blessed luck, he gave them an extra zap of extra rotten luck just to be a stinker.

But they didn’t give up and this episode yet again makes it clear--Chuck can fiddle with environment around them, even do stuff directly to people, but he can’t make them feel, he can’t give them feelings they don’t have, he can’t control their thoughts. We started the season with Dean’s doubts about what’s real and whether anything he and Sam have been through has meaning, given the reveal of Chuck as puppet master, but Dean throws down here with a battle cry of it wasn’t all Chuck. It was us. The blood, the sweat the tears.

That’s how this storyline works and the show keeps indicating that’s how it works. They are not without free will. They don’t stop being themselves. They didn’t do everything because of Chuck. They made choices despite the manipulations around them, it was still all them, just trapped in Chuck’s rat maze.

Huh and just an aside maybe Dean really listened to Cas’s speech about that earlier this season, not just to Sam’s, ya think? Considering we’re past the deliberate Cas erasure stage, then we went through the reluctant begrudging actually speaking to each other stage, then we had the pretending not to look at each other yet constantly looking at each other stage, and then we had the ice melting and things are still a mess but the deep freeze is ended. All through that, Dean was thinking about Cas’s words. About how they made their own choices. And “we are.”

This ep self-referentially deconstructed SPN’s own conceits about Sam and Dean. They’re supposed to be these “sweaty overwhelmed hunters” (Kripke) and supposedly regular guys. And yes that has been a massive part of the appeal to me all along, I was never a big fan of Sam and Dean as Chosen Ones or the only guys who can do this. The point is they’re regular guys who are trained and honed into the warriors they became. But here’s the thing, SPN never really did that. The grit was soft focus, Sam and Dean cloaked in fantasy. Perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect manicures. We saw some dirt, some blood, but they’re also the highly marketable leads on a CW genre urban fantasy horror tv series. They didn’t get colds, or cavities, nor did Baby ever break down. I know Baby is an amazing car but if we’re going to talk realism...she would break down at least sometimes. Have they even so much as run out of gas and had to walk 10 miles?

So there has always been this heroic glow around them, an idealization the show itself used, the way they’re filmed and shot. And that’s the thing about many hero narratives...would we really want it another way for some things? Some hero narratives are more genuine gritty. SPN...never was. It occupied a liminal space. It’s gritty...only so far. They’re just regular dudes...not exactly. Not just in the lack of everyday people realism, but their entire story, their whole existence, was revealed in S4/5 as engineered by Heaven. Surely it can’t be a shock the reveal at the end of S14 their whole existence...as engineered by Chuck. SPN already ripped that open, the difference is how far up the power chain the manipulation went. Turns out it went up to the deity CEO not just squabbling angels. They were Special. Chosen. Destined. Play your roles. The Boy with the Demon Blood. The Righteous Man. I have always been a lot more interested in heroes who aren’t the Chosen Ones (although I am a big Buffy fan). I liked that Sam and Dean were regular guys. Which...they are. With the god luck, without the god luck, they are.

They’re no less themselves, they’re not less Sam and Dean, they didn’t retroactively lose their free will, because of the reveal of Chuck as puppet master. They didn’t stop being Sam and Dean because the god luck was taken away. This ep captured that spirit, through the lens of an off-center, comedic meta episode, but that right there, is Sam and Dean’s spirit.

Isn’t it interesting, the ringmaster came up with a marketing hook for Sam and Dean in the fight cage, “The two of you against the world,” when what actually ends up happening is Sam and Dean go all out to save themselves, but it doesn’t actually work, and their friend Garth saves them. Because along with the whole thing about it not being the mask or the costume or the powers that define superheroes, there’s the thing about how heroes need their friends, sometimes they need an assist.

Sam and Dean, alone against the world...ok in some respects, SPN works within that trope, the mythic appeal of that dynamic, part of the hazy glow of fantasy that surrounds these characters, but what have we seen on SPN time and again, and again, and now again in its final season, where it’s a theme shown even louder and it’s been pretty loud for a while.

I can't do this alone Yes you can. Yeah, well, I don't want to.

Think that was just the brothers, off into infinity, no, while that’s a great Sam and Dean moment, that was just the opening notes of this song, it began there with them and kept expanding to include them and their friends and their family. It was all there right from the start. First it was John, not just Sam and Dean. Then it was Bobby, not just Sam and Dean. Then it was Sam, Dean, Bobby, and the Harvelles. Then it was Sam, Dean, the Harvelles, and Cas. Then Team Free Will. Charlie. Garth. Jack. Eileen. Or the Wayward Sisters who, like Garth, saved Sam and Dean because even heroes aren’t 100% perfection who can always save themselves, sometimes they do in fact need some help.

Here’s something else the ep showed us. While Sam and Dean have done all they did with this extra god chosen good luck, all the other hunters took the risks and did a dirty, terrifying, exhausting endless job without being blessed the same way by Chuck. Chuck didn’t care about them, not like he does about Sam and Dean. They are brave and needed and necessary too. Oh I see you, SPN. I see you.

Dean’s utterly sappy soft look watching Garth dance with his wife, continuing on that theme of that longing for...something, someone.

Can’t go wrong with Sam and Dean and babies. Big Sam holding his namesake baby Sammy. MY HEART.

Dean holding baby Cas with Cas’s namesake being a supernatural creature with an intense stare was cute.

Baby breaking down just feels so...emblematic. Because I agree that a show that runs this long will have trouble sustaining itself indefinitely and will decline, it’s an inevitable tv thing. I don’t agree it’s in decline right now or that the quality has sunk. In fact S15 is reminding me repeatedly why I love it so much to the begin with. It’s calling me back in. I wouldn’t be seeing this through to the very end if the story wasn’t pleasing me and it is not only satisfactory, it’s startling me how much it resonates for me now, speaking as someone who’s had some highs and lows with engagement with the show and has criticized it and gotten frustrated, tried to quit, did quit, came back, several times.

This season is also reminding me how deeply I love Sam and Dean and their sibling bond, after some seasons that alienated me from that bond for various reasons, but S15 is...it’s me bursting into tears at random moments because of a Sam and Dean Thought. It’s like that. What even is this. I don’t know I just hope it continues.

#Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #Sam and Dean: a work in progress #meta #Supernatural #spn #supernatural spoilers #garth fitzgerald iv #with slight nods to ships that i didn't insert the canon did #you'd have to be really REALLY intense about your denial to see what the show keeps pointing towards #the something...someone....

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mittensmorgul · 4 years

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eeeee I’m very happy that a dead Cas is now officially chuck's ideal ending. (Kind of? I mean,,,, he told Sam that what he showed him is what would happen if TFW won, but it was still the ending *Chuck* has been wanting.) either way! It’s now textually part of the What We Absolutely Can’t Let Happen package!

Lol, I mean, a dead Sam and Dean are officially part of Chuck’s ideal ending, so it’s kinda like... if Chuck is targeting you like that, if he specifically and horrifically wants you off the table that bad because he knows that with you alive then his plans fall apart... yeah...

Which, honestly... explains an awful lot why Chuck’s spent so much effort keeping Cas busy with other stuff in the past. I’m entirely rethinking s6 and s7 here, because this explains so much. It’s not that Cas was being controlled by anyone, but after 5.22, Cas... poked at things. He let (half of, anyway) Sam out of the cage, he stood up to Raphael who was scheduled to finish the apocalypse, and then he teamed up with Crowley to hoover all the souls out of Purgatory.

I mean Chuck was probably giddy with anticipation over the leviathan getting freed, you know? He didn’t even have to interfere to bring on his monster apocalypse. Just sit back and watch the chaos. He didn’t even mind Death nudging Dean in the right direction a few times, because Dean was so busy with his own immediate problems he couldn’t figure out Death’s hints in time to stop Cas anyway... And then Cas inadvertently and conveniently cleared himself off the table once the monsters were free. And yet... something about this wasn’t entirely satisfying, and Cas was brought back without his memories and stashed away to what... to give Dean a bit of hope that Chuck could just dash again? Because then Cas stashed himself away AGAIN after fixing Sam and taking on the trauma that was killing him, and then stashed himself in Purgatory for a while before coming back as an unwitting pawn of Heaven.

I think Chuck enjoys watching Cas go through this over and over again.

“Punishment resurrection.”

But s15 TFW isn’t the same fractured and scattered TFW from s6. They know Chuck’s God. And they know he’s the antagonist who keeps pushing them through more and more horrific versions of his own ugly story.

Billie is not OG Death, and she’s willing to bide her time and plan.

Sam is not soulless. He’s been through all of this before, and he’s endured, and he’s gonna endure again. He may have had his hope shaken a bit, but I don’t think that’s something Chuck can actually take from him entirely. As long as he’s alive, there’s a chance.

Dean is not the grieving, out of the loop shell of himself he was in s6. He knows what’s going on now, even if everything seems kinda bleak... He’s already established that in addition to Sam (who’s not in hell or soulless now), he also needs Cas in his life, even if it’s just the two of them sitting at the table commiserating.

And Cas... finally understands that Dean wants him to stay, needs him to stay, and that every time Dean has told him this before (even if it was worded differently, because Dean struggles to express himself directly) Cas had left anyway-- for Dean’s own safety, to shield Dean from having to do something terrible, to sacrifice himself so Dean wouldn’t have to-- Dean didn’t care because all he could see was I asked him to stay and he left anyway. I am not enough. I am not worth staying for. And now in Purgatory, they finally began to have that conversation. Cas got a win for Dean, a year worth of s8 prayers that Cas had heard have been condensed into a single prayer that finally brought them together instead of convincing Cas he needed to keep running away to protect Dean. Instead of shoving Dean through the portal and staying behind, Cas waited at the portal for Dean and they walked back through together. Almost like ALL of the things that have been haunting Cas and driving him to penance since s6 have at least begun to be addressed and resolved in s15.

What were we talking about at the top of this? I think I’ve gone off on a tangent again...

RIGHT! Chuck’s gotta nerf Cas for his plot to work out.

It’s wild, right? Because Chuck’s whole “This Is Your Future Life” episode he crafted to convince Sam that locking him away with a Mark is a terrible idea that can only end one way... Do you know how frustrating it must’ve been for Chuck to have to stop them from caging him? Because it was a double-edged sword. I mean, on the one hand, I’m sure he LOVED the idea of Cas slowly going mad with the Mark until Dean was compelled to lock him in a ma’lak box and bury him right along with his hope and happiness, but if they had succeeded in casting that spell, then CHUCK WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO WATCH HIS FAVORITE SHOW. Like Amara in that same cage, his fun would’ve been over.

Can’t watch all the suffering if you’re locked in a cosmic dungeon!

It’s incredibly funny to me that Chuck convinced Sam that his nonsensical “future” was a true seeing, that he “shared his omniscience” with Sam with that watch. Because the one thing the show has demonstrated over the years that Chuck sincerely hopes they’ve forgotten, is that you can’t change the past, but the future is never set in stone until it comes to pass. And the future is built on choices.

Chuck can account for a lot of things, but he can’t account for Free Will. He can nudge, he can remove options, he can create roadblocks leaving only terrible choices open to them that will have awful consequences or require painful sacrifices, but... TFW has never completely done what they’re told, you know? Cas is the original “spanner in the works,” and Edlund once commented that yes, he has a “crack in his chassis,” but it’s a crack through which great things come. But Sam and Dean also have this frustrating and fascinating gift to stymie Chuck’s plot.

And this is the true power of TFW. I think this is the tool they need to fully understand for themselves in order to finally win. They’ve been edging around it for a while, but Chuck always finds some way to foil them when they start getting close to examining their own wants. Like every time Dean starts talking about being able to take a vacation, or feeling hopeful that the future looks a little less bloodsoaked for them, Chuck steps in and throws them a monster of a curveball. Last time Dean started up with the toes-in-the-sand talk, he’d been possessed by AU Michael by the end of the episode, and crushed like a bug, his free will rendered entirely irrelevant. No amount of fighting against Michael, of telling him to get out, was able to free him. And then Chuck showed up again to hammer the lesson home. Only they learned a different lesson from the one he was trying to teach.

Heck, that’s another frustrating thing for Chuck, isn’t it? TFW has a long, long history of doing that.

Dabb even tweeted lyrics from “The End” by the Doors before this episode aired. Because this was a 5.04 redux, in a lot of ways. The circumstances of the future that Chuck imagined to horrify Sam may be entirely different, but the premise, the themes, the structure of it all... it’s functionally identical. But that was a distraction of sorts, as well. The other episode this referred back to... was 9.18.

Metatron showed his hand, revealed his process, and it’s identical to Chuck’s, because Metatron was just playing God, in the exact same way Chuck always did. He was a writer.

CASTIEL: And you did all this to make me a hero?METATRON [laughing]: Ah, that's priceless. Um no. You are not the hero in this mess-terpiece. You are the villain. I'm the hero.

and

METATRON: Didn't quite turn out as I'd planned, but that is why we rewrite. That was God's problem, you know... he published the first draft. You got to keep at it till you get all your ducks in a row.GADREEL: Was the Winchesters grabbing me part of your plan?METATRON: That was a surprise. But, hey, what writer doesn't love a good twist? My job is to set up interesting characters and see where they lead me. The by-product of having well-drawn characters is...They may surprise you. But I know something they don't know...the ending. How I get there doesn't matter as long as everybody plays their part.

Chuck also thinks he knows the ending. He’s absolutely convinced-- a la Lucifer’s conviction in 5.04 that “no matter what choices you make, we’ll always end up here,” and Metatron’s conviction that the ending was always destined to happen, couldn’t account for the true nature of humanity. Lucifer never saw it, because he never bothered to look for it. Metatron only saw it after he’d been rendered human himself. And Chuck? He thinks he understands, that his “omniscience” gives him a complete understanding of his creation, and yet... there’s things that humanity has created that he could never have dreamed up for himself.

He was right back in 11.22 (oh, hello Bobo episode again) when he told Amara that creation needed to be born, that it became something better than them. And yet Chuck can’t stop inflicting his own tired, formulaic story on his favorite characters. Because Amara was also right about him, that he was also greedy, and selfish, and only wanted to feel “big.” Chuck admitted that to Becky in 15.04, until he got over his writer’s block and started writing with a vengeance.

Wait, what was this about again? *scrolls up*

OH! Right! Nerfing Cas so the writer can have his way with everyone else. Kind of a long-standing tactic, no? And it’s not even about limiting Cas’s angel powers, but about Cas himself, and what he means to TFW. And it’s taken Cas a VERY long time to even begin to understand this. It’s not what he can do for them, it’s not being “useful” or “powerful” or being able to wave a hand and whoosh away the bad guy. It’s about him being HIM. It’s about him standing up to Dean and telling him he’s being stupid, and Dean listening and following him when if they’d gone their separate ways they both probably would’ve failed in Purgatory. It’s about them having each other’s backs and anticipating each other’s needs, and knowing that they aren’t alone and are wanted and needed because they are the best friend the other has ever had. And there’s something to that very human connection, that very human concept of family and love that Chuck... is incapable of understanding.

Whenever love rears its ugly head, Chuck rushes in to crush it. Because in love lies hope, lies a power that he can’t beat down. It’s a plot twist he can’t write his way out of.

Amara tried to give the very beginning of that to Dean in 11.23, to give him a chance to understand Mary, and Chuck couldn’t abide it. Jack is too powerful in a mojo-way, sure, but his true power for all of TFW was love. And Rowena-- pushed into self-sacrifice after Chuck “pinataed Hell”-- her entire journey into TFW had been about love.

Remember the plot of Metatron’s narrative? Love, and heartbreak, and love? Yeah. Remember how he thought he defeated Cas? By killing Dean Winchester? Yeah.

Big picture themes time? Chuck tried to drive wedges between TFW and everything they love. And has been trying to force his own contrived romance plots on them. But Chuck doesn’t understand love at all.

That’s their one true weapon against Chuck, if they each can learn to wield it.

How did my intended lol response to your question turn into this? That’s the cosmic lol for you.

#spn 15.09 #spn 15.04 #spn 5.04 #spn 9.18 #spn 11.22 #spn 11.23 #chuck's process #grand unification via love theory #Anonymous

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caranfindel · 4 years

Text

Recap/review 15.12: “Galaxy Brain”

Oh, my friends, so many things have happened since we last got together. Most of them bad. But let’s try to forget them and immerse ourselves in our favorite show again, shall we?

THEN: Sammy lost hope (Saaaaaaammmmmm!!!!), Chuck needs to visit his other worlds, and oh. Crap. Kaia. Claire’s wooden response to Kaia’s death, Dark Kaia’s stupid dramatic poses… ugh. I’m not here for any of this. And also, Jack has to do exactly what Billie says if he wants to kill God.

NOW: Four weeks ago. Earth 2. Apparently Radio Shack Shed is still in business in this other world. Maybe because Hillary Clinton is the president. Oh, but things are going to go downhill for Radio Shed, because Chuck just walked in.

I take it you’re unsatisfied with your viewing experience at home?

You have no idea.

Hee!

The friendly Radio Shed employee tries to interest Chuck in his giant wall o’televisions, but he’s not here for a TV. What is he here for? “An audience. It’s monologue time.” Each of the TVs begins to show scenes from one of Chuck’s worlds, including the interior of the bunker in our world, as he begins his monologue. As we watch Sam’s visions from the other worlds, Chuck complains that he created his one world, created copies, and should be happy. Because he’s gotten what he wants from hundreds of Sams and Deans, and could get more. But the other worlds don’t spark joy like the original Sam and Dean do. “They challenge me. They disappoint me. They surprise me. They’re the ones.” Chuck doesn’t need more. He suddenly realizes he needs less. It’s time to cancel “all the other worlds, the alternate realities, the subplots, the failed spinoffs.” YES, CHUCK, ESPECIALLY THE FAILED SPINOFFS.

Title card!

Sioux Falls. Our version. Jody is examining a dead cow. Alex calls, wanting to know when she’ll be home to eat vegan lasagna. Which sounds nasty. I’ve got nothing against vegan cuisine, but I think taking a dish that’s supposed to be loaded with cheese, and loading it with not-cheese, is a mistake. Just make spaghetti. Jody says she thinks her dead cow is evidence of humans, not monsters. She sees something suspicious in a barn and heads inside, where she is promptly clobbered.

Bunker. Sam’s wearing that orange plaid shirt that fits him just right, although the collar is higher than I’d like, and we’ve discussed my feelings on orange. Whatever TFW is talking about, he doesn’t like it. “Which part?” Dean asks. “Jack’s deal with Death, or the part where she’s got him eating angel hearts?” Yeah, there’s a lot to dislike there. Sam doesn’t think they should trust Billie, and he’s concerned about Jack’s state of mind, considering that he is still soulless, and was in the Empty for months. And I’m sure this was not intentional on the writers’ part, but I like the way this played out. When they first saw Jack, Sam was the one who immediately reached out, because his boy was back, and it wasn’t until later that he thought oh, things might be fucked up. Dean, on the other hand, immediately had his guard up, and took a moment before he decided it was okay and accepted Jack. This feels true to the characters and I like it. But as I said, I’m sure it’s an accident.

For his part, Jack is wandering the dark rooms of the bunker. He comes across the initials scratched into the table and touches Mary’s, then retreats to his room. Where a strange woman suddenly appears behind him and says she’s answering Jack’s silent prayer to Death, who is busy at the moment.

Meanwhile, Cas says he has some concerns, but Jack trusts Billie and he trusts Jack. And that makes sense. Jack is, what, two years old now? So of course he’s learned who is trustworthy. It’s not like he ever trusted Lucifer or anything like that. Sam reminds them of the required cosmic balance, what with Amara needing to be cancelled out by God. Dean says, having spent time with Billie and visited her library, that he believes in her and her commitment to the rules. He thinks she’s probably got it all figured out.

“Probably?” Sam says. “Like she had the Ma’lak box figured out?” Well, there’s an interesting point. Billie was sure there was only one road that didn’t end in chaotic destruction, and she was wrong. {Or she was lying. Discuss.} But Dean’s still willing to put his faith in her. After all, she was right about Rowena. And it’s the only plan they’ve got, which Sam reluctantly agrees with. Well, he doesn’t agree as much as he just stops arguing.

Skeptical Sam!

Jack is telling his visitor about how he called out to Billie for help with the Grigori, but she didn’t respond. The visitor must be a reaper. She’s a pleasant change from other reapers – a middle-aged woman with gorgeous silver hair and a matronly outfit. She assures Jack that Billie must have known everything would turn out okay, or else she would have stepped in. All Jack has to do is follow Billie’s rules – lie low, wait for instructions, and don’t use your powers under any circumstances, because God might find you. Oooh, what could possibly happen now? Whose life will be in jeopardy, forcing Jack to use his powers?

Approaching Jack’s room, Sam hears him talking to the reaper. Sam knocks on the door and then opens it, which is not cool. {Sidebar: A knock is supposed to say “can I come in,” not “here I come.” You should wait for permission to open the door.} Anyway. When Sam enters, the reaper is gone. Jack claims he was talking to “no one,” and Sam lets that pass. He tells Jack he’s just checking in on him, and stumbles a bit when trying to express how glad they are to have him back. He tells Jack that he could have come to them, even though I’m pretty sure Jack said he couldn’t because he was hiding from God, but that was so long ago that I’ve forgotten. But let’s concentrate on the important part of this conversation. Sam’s face.

He’s awkward and endearing and I adore him.

Dean and Cas are sharing a decanter of whiskey now that Sam’s finally out of their hair. {waves to the Destiel shippers.} Cas explains that he was sure Jack would save the world somehow, and he was “lost” when Jack “died” because he knew Jack’s story couldn’t be done yet. And now, he is absolutely sure that he was right all along. “Here’s to being right,” Dean offers as a toast. He’s also excited about the idea of revenge against Chuck, though Cas says he’s only interested in “Jack fulfilling his destiny.”

Can we just have several minutes of Dean drinking whiskey? Please?

But before Dean can spend a lot of time basking in his anticipated revenge, his phone rings. It’s Jody. Someone’s holding a phone up to her face, so she must be tied up. “Dean, I’m in trouble. Route 11, Fletcher Farm, the old barn. If you don’t come, I’m dead.” Yeah, looks like trouble, all right.

Fletcher Farm. The Impala pulls up next to Jody’s Sheriffmobile. (Aw, typing that makes me miss the Pimpmobile.) It’s just Sam and Dean, though Sam is on the phone with someone when they arrive.

Hello, gorgeous.

The guys find Jody tied up, as predicted, inside the old Fletcher barn. Sam starts to untie her, as Dean conveniently looks the other way and therefore completely misses someone attacking Sam. You will probably not be surprised to hear that this someone is Dark Kaia. She dispatches Sam easily, as people always do when it’s convenient for plot reasons, and gets Dean by the throat. “You have something that belongs to me,” she says. Which, as we know from the Then, is her magic spear. That got broken. Oops. Dean doesn’t care that he promised her he’d get her back to her own world, or that he promised to return the spear, because “that promise expired the minute you hurt our friend.” Although, Dean, you were conveniently ignoring that promise long before Jody got involved, but okay. Luckily, Jody is able to sneak up behind Dark Kaia and hit her with something, allowing Dean and Sam to pull their guns. Yay! {Sidebar: I love Jody, y’all, but that doesn’t mean I want her being the badass instead of Sam.} Sam asks Dark Kaia why she’s so desperate to get back to “that hellhole,” because apparently Sam doesn’t get that your home is your home, even if it’s a hellhole, which makes perfect sense, she said sarcastically.

It turns out the awful orange jacket doesn’t actually match the orange plaid shirt all that well.

Dark Kaia explains that her world is dying, and she knows this because she’s psychically connected to Kaia 1.0. Who is still alive, somehow. Jody feels awful, but Sam and Dean are the ones who didn’t even bother to haul her carcass back through the rift, so. {Sidebar: Coincidentally, I just watched “Defending Your Life.” I wonder if Dean’s feelings of guilt have changed since that episode?}

Bunker. Jack is beating Cas at Connect Four when they hear the creaky door open. {Sidebar: The Husband winces every time he hears the Impala’s squeaky doors. Do the Winchesters not know what WD-40 is?} Sam comes downstairs with Jody, and we have this weird conversation.

Jody!

Hey, Jack, Cas.

Nice to finally meet you in person.

Have Jody and Cas really never met? And if not, why did she casually greet him with “hey, Cas?” Weird. Carrying on. Dean appears with Dark Kaia, who also greets Jack, because I guess she knows him from Kaia 1.0’s dreams or whatever.

Time jump. Cas insists Jack can’t help Dark Kaia, and the guys are like, no shit. But they still want to rescue Kaia 1.0 somehow, so they send Jody into the depths of the bunker to look for something they might not have thought of that can help them jump worlds. Let’s just think about that for a minute. These two, experts in hunting and lore, residents of the bunker for the past 7 years and at least one of them a cataloguer of its contents, who spent a huge part of previous seasons trying to break into a different world and scouring the bunker for anything that would help, think Jody will find something they didn’t?

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Cas says he’s going to call Sergei to see if he has any more archangel grace. Sergei? Sergei who almost killed Sam recently, and had to be threatened with death to fix what he’d done?

Oh, seriously, for fuck’s sake.

Carrying on. Cas wants archangel grace because, other than Jack, it’s the only thing that’s opened a rift before. And Sam agrees, because both Sam and Cas have forgotten that an angel’s vessel retains some grace which can be extracted after the angel is gone.

Come on, guys. I’m trying, but you’ve got to meet me halfway. And this isn’t even a Buckleming episode.

Shhh. Concentrate on the pretty.

Dark Kaia yells that they’re wasting time, and Jack is right there and could get them to her world right now. “Hey, Not Kaia?” Dean says. “Not helping.” Hee! Jack decides he’ll do research instead, and then they have to decide what they’ll do with Dark Kaia. Jody says “She killed a prize heifer just to get my attention, then she jumped me, beat me up, and threatened to kill me. Do I get a vote?” Oooh, I like Dark Jody.

But the worst thing that happens to Dark Kaia is that they handcuff her to a table and force her to read a fashion magazine. She pretends she’s not interested, hurling it across the table, but sweetie, you’re not fooling anyone. I’m looking at your hair and makeup right now and I can tell you’re into it.

{Sidebar: Is this model supposed to remind her of Claire? Is that why she got upset, because she feels Kaia 1.0’s love for Claire? Discuss.}

Jack throws himself into the research and finds an old Italian spell that requires the liver of a monster which is, unfortunately, extinct because John Winchester killed the last one. Awkward. Dean suggests Jack check on Cas and Jody, and Jack does the oh, because I’m a failure look. The guys are sure they won’t find anything, but to me, the possibility of one spell that requires a monster’s liver implies that other spells might be possible. I mean, how special could that one monster be? Unless it was an archangel monster. Sam suggests he might be able to jerry-rig some magic using a substitute, and oh, guys, once again I’m sure this was accidental, but I love Sam being able and willing to do magic. Love it so hard. Unfortunately, he abandons this idea, since no substitutes are available.

In another part of the bunker, Cas is leaving fruitless messages with Sergei, who presumably remembers the last episode he was in better than Cas does. And Jody’s not having any luck identifying what she finds. They have a little chat about Claire, who is out of cell phone range (which means she won’t show up in this episode, thank you baby Jesus). Jody doesn’t want to involve her anyway, because she loved Kaia so freaking much after knowing her for, what, a day, and if they’re not able to rescue her, Claire would just be crushed.

I don’t know how we’ll be able to tell, since this is Claire’s crushed-by-the-loss-of-her-true-love face. And it’s also her Alex-borrowed-my-sweater-without-asking face. And her Patience-ate-all-the-Cheetos face.

Uh oh! Jack was listening! What will that do to him? He goes to see Dark Kaia and apologizes for not being able to do more. Dark Kaia blames him for Kaia 1.0 crossing over, and reminds him again that she’s going to die soon. Oddly, she doesn’t try this guilt trip on Dean, who pointed a gun at Kaia 1.0 and forced her into the car, as we saw in the Then. Dark Kaia says she crossed over into our world because she envied Kaia 1.0’s peaceful world, but it turns out she hates it, and desperately wants to go back to her own world. She grabs Jack’s hands and begs him to fix it. Jack touches her face, like he did when he was showing the Winchesters where Mary was being held in AU World, and sees Kaia 1.0 in the Bad Place. She’s got a shelter and a campfire and a lizard in a cage, so I guess things could be worse.

He goes to Sam and Dean and tells them he saw Kaia 1.0 and is going to save her. He confesses to dreamwalking, which is against Billie’s rules, but he insists it’s the right thing to do. “You’ve gotta be kidding me” says a voice from the shadows. Jack introduces Merle, his silver-haired reaper. “How did you get in here?” Dean asks, because he’s forgotten how reapers work, I guess.

(Checks again to make sure this isn’t a Buckleming episode.)

Merle says being willing to risk everything for one person isn’t just dumb, “that’s Winchester dumb.” Dean is offended but, well. She ain’t wrong. Merle says if Jack tries to use his power to save Kaia 1.0, she’ll tell Death. Jack says she should go tell Billie, but while she does that, he’ll open a rift, and therefore Merle will be in big trouble. And I kind of had the impression that reapers didn’t have to, you know, physically go find Billie to tell her anything, but maybe I’m the one who forgot how reapers work.

{Spoiler alert: I don’t think I am.}

Anyway, Jack’s threats work. Merle agrees to fix the bunker’s cosmic warding, which the Winchesters did not completely repair after Amara destroyed it. It can’t be restored permanently, but she can put up a temporary fix that will hopefully hide Jack from Chuck. And she’ll need to use Cas to juice it up. Oh, so many possibilities for disaster here. Later, Sam performs a spell and we see glowing sigils appear on the walls, which is a nice effect.

Sam reading the spell is also a nice effect.

Another time jump. The guys are packing for their journey. Dean asks how Sam feels about it, and Sam says “Honestly? It feels like we’re taking a big, probably stupid risk. It feels good. Disobeying cosmic entities, doing the dumb right thing. Feels like we’re back.” Aw yes. My boys, doing the dumb right thing.

Jody thanks Cas for staying, and he asks her to stay too. Because he’s concerned that if she gets killed, Claire will never get over it. Jody agrees that he’s right. And I’m pretty sure this is going to be important somehow; that something awful will happen because Jody isn’t there, or Jody staying behind will mean she’s able to save the guys somehow. {Spoiler alert: I’m wrong.}

Oddly enough, Jody doesn’t seem to actually tell the Winchesters she’s not going. I guess it happened off camera. Merle and Cas power up the sigils, Jack does his thing, and the rift opens. Dark Kaia goes through first, followed by Sam and Dean.

Bad Place! It’s dark and windy and there are lots of those weird little red-eyed dudes around, but they don’t attack. Dark Kaia says they’re afraid of the oncoming storm. {Sidebar: What evolutionary purpose is solved by glowing eyes? It seems like a hindrance.} They yell for Kaia 1.0, and she comes out to meet them, grabbing Dean for a hug. {Sidebar: Yeah, of course it’s Dean.} They turn to leave and wait, you’re just going to leave your lizard? He’s in a cage! He’ll starve! Dark Kaia doesn’t follow, and says she’s going to stay. Sam reminds her she’ll die, but she doesn’t care. She can’t live in our world. Which, well. It sucks sometimes. No judgment here, kiddo. And I guess she can take care of Kaia 1.0’s lizard. The Winchesters head back to the rift with Kaia 1.0 just as the lightning picks up and a huge cloud of destruction approaches. Oh. I guess that lizard didn’t need anyone to take care of him after all. Bye bye, Bad Place!

Bunker. Jody is sitting in front of the rift when the boys burst through with Kaia 1.0. Big hug! Later, we see Kaia (I’m gonna just call her Kaia now, since I think she’s the only one left) wearing Jack’s clothes. It’s cute. Jody invites her to move back with her. “Will Claire be there?” Kaia asks, because, you know, the love story for the ages, blah blah blah. Kaia thanks the guys, and leaves with Jody. Yay! Job well done, right? Except there’s a little too much time left in this episode for a happy wrap-up, so.

Merle tells the guys that if she gave a rat’s ass about Kaia, she’d call this a victory. But she’s pretty sure their scheme worked, since none of them are dead and oh crap, she’s impaled by a scythe. Guess again, Merle!

So, yeah, Billie’s here and she’s not happy. She lectures everyone and points out that one life isn’t important, because all the worlds are dying. All of them except this one. Sam angrily asks Billie what her plan is. She tells them everyone has a death book in her library, even God. God didn’t plot his own death, but “the books wrote themselves,” so Chuck’s death is in there, pre-plotted. But no one gets to read their own book unless Billie lets them. Jack is in Chuck’s book, and so are the Winchesters. “This is your destiny. You are the messengers of God’s destruction.”

Back at the Radio Shed, Chuck is watching his worlds self-destruct on the bank of TVs. He’s been there a while, judging by the number of takeout containers. The sales clerk is curled up on the floor, having served him “for weeks.” He asks Chuck if he’ll be spared, and Chuck says “You’ll be fine. Everything’s just fine.” Then he walks out of the store just as the sky fills with falling meteorites. Hey, I think that was a lie!

So. Several annoying things happened (yes, we know, because you wouldn’t shut up about them) but I can’t call this a bad episode. But I can’t call it a really good one, either. As mytharc episodes go, I guess it could be worse. What did you think? (And what does the title mean?)

Please help me stay unspoiled, thanks!

#spn #15.12 #recap #tv recaps

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eisforeidolon · 5 years

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Episode: Back and to the Future

I get why, thematically, they chose that song for the previouslies that kick off the final season. However, from my perspective I just do not think it actually works at all. It is far too sedate for the action it’s recapping and the scene it cuts into. The juxtaposition of such different paces is just ... odd.

I guess I'm supposed to feel all sad and shit from the lingering shots of dead!Jack's burned out eye holes? Maybe if he'd had a personality other than being an amorphous shifting blob of unbelievable power and permanent intellectual infancy I was supposed to care about because of the number of times they had the other characters say he was their son/family/awesome. As is? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wish I could say I was surprised that the veritable army of animate corpses making a beeline for the Winchesters and Cas just … somehow … let them escape and run away. I'd have been a lot more surprised if the writers had actually bothered to do the work to get the characters out of the corner the last finale put them into, at this point. Then there's the bit where the writers shove some nonsense into Dean's mouth to try and make it seem like this whole thing with Chuck isn't a sudden random asspull to go for the most absurdly overpowered villain they could think of for the last season. Totally believable, oh yeah.

Although the idea of a sewer running through a graveyard including right to the wall of a crypt does not exactly seem likely to me, I do actually give the writers points for having that not actually work as an escape route. Also awarding some points for them remembering that as an angel, Castiel should be able to see demons.

As other people have already pointed out, considering what he did to the Novak family and how haphazardly he handled Claire, especially? Him bitching about any other creature defiling somebody's corpse is pretty fucking hilarious. Though I'd possibly be more sympathetic if demon!Jack didn't already show a 500% more interesting personality in thirty seconds than actual!Jack did in two seasons. So far as I’ve been concerned, the only think Jack has really had going for him is Alex, so Alex as a different character, even a demon, I’m calling a win.

I honestly do not get the decision of trying garner fan nostalgia by bringing back ghosts from previous seasons if they're just going to arbitrarily make them kill anyone at random for kicks. Would it have been that hard to have shown “Bloody Mary” killing one person who might have had a secret where someone died? Because I could buy it for one of those teen girls, but not both. Or limiting the “Woman in White” to attacking men along highways who might possibly be unfaithful? Maybe we're supposed to believe that they're all just so pissed off at having spent all that time in hell that they have completely lost touch with what originally tied them to earth and drove them to kill in the first place? I don't mind them no longer being tied to a physical location since they were banished and unnaturally returned, but to be so disconnected to what drove them to become angry spirits seems much more intrinsic to who and what they were. I guess even the ghosts lose their personalities to become cardboard in the hands of Dabbernatural.

Oh, look, mysteriously, big G God's tantrum opening up hell is not actually big enough to impact the whole planet – or even, you know, more than the literal next town over. This is my surprised face.

Then we get to the bit where the Winchesters find an abandoned car with a bloody mess inside and are all, “Look at this Woman in White kill! Obviously it was a Woman in White! Totally the specific one we sent to hell! Because … car! And, uh, blood! And, oh, because the fucking script says so.” REASONS, YO.

Aren't all garage doors required to have an emergency pull for if the power goes out? Obviously the script required the pair of VotW end up stuck hiding in the garage, which, uh, a ghost can't find people hiding now? Did I miss something in there that explained that silly convenience that makes the ghost even less spooky in an episode that really really fails on that count even more later on?

I guess maybe I should be happy that it's Castiel that gets hit with the dumb characterization stick to necessitate Sam & Dean not work together to clear out the town? Look, at this point, considering the way the writers have had him act as a constant disaster zone of idiotic choices and betrayals for several seasons now, my ability to sympathize with Cas is a wee bit limited. To have him now sulk like a toddler and refuse to work with the demon to help the Winchesters save an entire town full of people and prevent the spread of angry hell ghosts to the world beyond that? Because oh noes it's wearing Jack's face and he was just sooooo attached? Even though all of them supposedly thought of Jack as their kid? He doesn't even try to offer up alternatives to working with the demon with the very convenient solution, just whines about it?

So basically this billions of years old angel somehow has less fucking practicality than the Winchesters (despite how easily he killed the shit out of his fellow angels when it suited his plans). Not to mention that by refusing, he's saddling Dean with having to work with demon!Jack. The human guy who was just recently convinced he had to kill Jack for the good of the world after Jack killed his mother, only to have a change of heart when he saw Jack’s understanding, only for Jack to end up killed anyway – you know, emotions a hell of a lot more conflicted about their supposed kid's than Castiel's? Castiel is just fine with that! What a self-centered dick.

I liked Dean's conversation with Rowena on the phone and his response to her presumable demand to ask more nicely. I laughed at Sam accidentally shooting Cas and Cas' resultant reaction. I thought it was curious that they had the demon bring up Dean's time as a torturer in hell, though I'd be pleasantly surprised if it was anything but a way to segue into the Cage getting opened. One utterly wasted Michael storyline is apparently not enough for Dabb! Maybe it's just supposed to be some kind of weird demon idea of flattery, but I did find their interactions interesting. I would be intrigued by the weird flashes when Cas was trying to heal Sam (Another angel power that actually works for once? Wow!) … if Dabb hadn't already yammered on about what it means in an interview. That dude is absolutely allergic to leaving any kind of major storyline an open mystery or letting it retain any intrigue for fans to speculate about. I was not impressed with Sam getting damsel-ed to be saved by Castiel at least twice. Come on, show.

As I speculated before and said above, I’m fine with the Chuckified nature of their release meaning some rules don’t apply. I could maybe even understand the thought process that them being out in the daytime, without being limited to darkness, was scarier? I just wish anyone behind the camera was awake enough to actually look at the aesthetics of what they did here and realize that no, it's really really not. The whole thing just looked so embarrassingly mediocre - pantomime actors in bad bargain basement costumes silly. I think it was @hippychick006 that suggested gifs of the whole end portion looked like they should be set to Yackety Sax? The context of the episode does not in any way negate that. Just … wow. Like with the wire fight, I am flabbergasted that this made it to air without somebody finding the brakes.

I'm not sure if the writers actually made a failed reference by having the Woman in White say Dean was the one who took her home when it was Sam, or if they meant to imply he and Sam together had been there/responsible and Dean was the one she was addressing. Regardless, I'm not impressed with how all the ghosts Sam & Cas were being confronted by just … stood there to be shot one by one for a while. And then … ran … literally ran … chasing them down the street instead of doing the whole ghost teleport thing. There are way, way too many times in this episode where the guys get away or win a fight because reasons and there is absolutely no tension in that. Even if it didn't also look ridiculous. Dean’s part of the confrontation was a little less absurd in that respect, at least. And the spell effects actually looked reasonably cool.

I'm a little annoyed at myself that the obligatory brother scene at the end of the episode kind of works on me. Though I’m not particularly impressed with Sam's conclusion that God is totally going to leave them alone now. Sure, Chuck has a long habit of leaving when he's bored, but he isn't leaving this world because he's bored. You guys actively pissed him off! Yet Sam treats it like a foregone conclusion Chuck will have buggered off instead of sticking around to watch his previously favorite but now uncooperative toys suffer and die first. Though I'm not sure if that's a writer issue, actually, or just a legit choice I don’t care for. I could see Sam insisting on trying to sell a potential positive side with no room for doubt with as fatalistic as Dean is being. I could also see it just being one of those things Sam convinces himself must be true because he's reasoned it out in his head and refuses to consider alternatives may exist. Like how he was so convinced it could only be God planting visions in his head back in season 11. Still, I like the callback and I can even see why Dean is the most immediately cynical and pissed off, so hey! There was actually one whole entire scene I enjoyed in there!

#negativity for ts #anti dabb #anti castiel #anti jack kline #writer incompetence #spn 15x01 #spn season 15 #long post

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canonicallysoulmates · 5 years

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Supernatural 14.20 (Season Finale)

After watching this episode, and if I’m being honest for the last couple of episodes, I can fully understand why j2 decided to end this show and while it’s still painful and I’m still not ready to let Sam and Dean go, sometimes letting go of the things we love is for the best and I think this is one of those cases. The love and thought and quality is not there anymore from the EPs/writers, so I’m thankful j2 decided to end Supernatural. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision because I have no doubt in my my mind that they love this show but it was the right thing to do. It’s time to say goodbye to this show, I’m just sorry we have to say goodbye to it with Dabb at the helm.

I don’t know where to begin and I have a lot to say so this isn’t going to be very linear, in fact, it’s going to be the opposite and I apologize in advance for that but hopefully, I will be able to express what I feel and my points in a way that is understandable.

I’m going to start this opinion post off talking about Chuck being turned into a villain and what I feel is a very unpopular opinion cause I didn’t like that, I know for a lot of y’all Chuck has always been the villain of this story that’s fine and dandy, I’ve never subscribed to that, and I can understand why some would be excited or find it interesting that God is the last big bad, go big or go home and all that, but I take issue with it cause to me this character has never been a villain and making him one is changing who he is, now I’ve never hidden that I like this character just as I’ve never hidden the fact that my views of this character are slightly influenced by my own personal beliefs nonetheless I am going to try my best to explain why I’d never seen him as a villain without getting into those beliefs.

There are two ways I see this character: as a character and as a representation of Kripke/the showrunner. In neither of these views have I ever seen Chuck as anything other than flawed but loving his creation.

Looking at him as a character only, I completely understand the argument some might make that Chuck has played Sam and Dean like puppets, but I’ve never seen it that way, to me he’s never been this master puppeteer who has controlled every aspect of Sam and Dean. I’ve always viewed him as a flawed but complex character that regardless of whether or not he put things in the boys path or how many those things were, which is not an argument I’m going to get into in this post, he’s rooted for them, he wants them to make the right choices and win - cause he’s always given them free will, even in this episode when they don’t play along and do what he wants he still didn’t take away their free will even though he easily could have, and in Swan Song the whole point of it the beautiful aspect about it is that the boys chose each other, that Sam and Dean’s life was theirs, that they playing or not playing along with heaven and hell’s plan was up to them and they chose not to play along-, and in a way he loves them like to put it in the most basic of terms before this episode where he’s turned into a villain I would have said Sam and Dean were his favorite creation.

So, I’m not just not ok with the implication that this whole time Chuck has been controlling everything, that everything that has happened has been because Chuck wanted it that way, or that Sam and Dean never actually had free will, I’m just not ok with any of those things. I don’t like it.

If I look at him as the representation of Kripke and stop looking at him as a character, I can understand even more why he is the way he is and be more...forgiving I guess; he was an accurate representation cause Kripke did write Sam and Dean to be in those situations but at the same time he loved his creation.

I feel like I made no sense so to put in hopefully more understandable terms:

As a character: I have put you in or let you to some of these situations but I have given you the free will to choose how you handle them and I’m rooting for you to make the right ones and win.

As the representation of a writer talking to their creation: I have put you in these situations but I did it because I love you and I needed you to grow and take a life of your own.

Not sure that’s any more understandable, my thoughts on this character are very difficult to explain but the gist of it is, I’ve never seen Chuck as the bad guy.

[And, as to the argument of why hasn’t he stepped up more to help the boys, if he did there’d be no show. He’s an all knowing all powerful character if he appeared to help every time the boys had a problem there would be no show cause he could solve the problem with a snap of his fingers so I can understand and forgive the writers for not...using him?]

Anyways, to me, his personality in this episode doesn’t make any sense and Dabb changed him to make him into a villain [Note: I do not believe for even one second that he was always intended to be a villain, Chuck was introduced by Kripke back in s4, Kripke had no plans for this show to go past s5 and nobody expected it to reach s14 so saying him being a villain was always the plan makes no goddamm sense to me so save your breath]. I will say however it’s fitting that Dabb would turn Chuck, a representation of the show creator/showrunner, from flawed but loving, into a villain who throws a temper tantrum and undoes all of Sam and Dean’s hard work, I didn’t know Dabb was so self-aware!

I don’t know, maybe if this character had never been introduced, or if he had been written differently or if I didn’t see him as a representation of the show creator/showrunner, maybe then I could get behind the idea of him being a villain but as it is I got issues with it.

From a story POV I’m also not the biggest fan of God being the last big bad, I actually don’t find it that creative. I think it would have been a lot more interesting and creative if they had actually killed him and they either had to deal with the repercussions of that or even more fun if Sam had been the one to kill him and turned into God. Which I actually thought was going to happen for like 3mins after Sam shot Chuck (I watched this epi live and there was a commercial break in between I can be given some leeway for this), well to be honest, I thought he was either going to become God or King of Hell or return of his powers, either way, any one of those three would have been 100% more fun than what we actually got, but I guess I should have known better than to expect Dabb to ever give Sam a storyline, it was probably torture for him to write Sam doing something as badass as shooting God in the first place.

Now, to be fair, we might still get Sam with powers or King of Hell!Sam, the shows not over yet but I’m not going to hold my breath for it. And maybe something cool will be done and I’ll warm up to the idea of Chuck being the villain but as of right now that’s not the case and I don’t see my view changing anytime soon.

That being said, it was great to see Rob Benedict again! He’s looking good!

Moving on from all that, this episode could have been so much more. It should have been so much more, this is the last season finale ffs! But this didn’t even feel like a season finale, the only time it did was at the very end during the last, I’d say, 5mins. the rest felt more fitting for a pre-season finale; take the last couple of minutes away and this would have been more fitting as 14.19. Or even as a standalone episode it would have been better, cause there’s a concept used at the beginning of this episode, that imo would have been good for a standalone, and it’s that Jack made it so people can’t lie, I think that could’ve made for a fun standalone and it’s a pity that instead it was thrown in here cause it didn’t contribute to the plot if anything it actually played a large part in making this feel like less of a season finale.

I’m not gonna lie to you guys the ending with all the monsters and the zombies appearing did make my jaw-drop and for a minute I felt something akin to excitement for s15, but as the scene continued that excitement started dying down and something about it started bugging me. It wasn’t until the episode finished and I started thinking about it and what that ending could possibly mean that I realized why that was and it’s because that little spark of excitement I felt when the woman in white appeared was because of nostalgia.

It’s because I saw her and the creepy af clown and bloody Mary and I didn’t imagine current Sam and Dean fighting them, my mind saw them and immediately went to s1 and s2, that little spark was because I was reminded of the show I love so much, the show that is now coming to an official end and never coming back, and again I won’t lie, for that minute my mind considered the possibility that s15 would be a throwback an homage to the beginning but as the scene continued on I realized that while s15 does have that potential to be something beautiful that pays tribute to the early seasons there’s a way bigger opportunity for it to be a destruction of the legacy j2 have built. And now that the opportunity is there, there’s a big chance that s15 will be a revolving door of secondary characters instead of being about Sam and Dean.

I’m worried that instead of Dabb doing something beautiful that pays tribute to the early seasons it’s just going to be a lazy retelling full of retconning. And it frustrates me that he undid everything Sam and Dean have done, that instead of original new stories we’re bound to get a retelling of the ones that we know and love and are already perfect.

Also, I fucking hate that feathers is gonna be around for the last season especially if the last season is meant to be an homage to s1-s2 cause that useless prick wasn’t introduced till s4...maybe they can start with s4, work their way backward and kill him off.

I won’t deny that there were good moments cause there were! When Dean was about to shoot Jack that was legitimately tense, Sam shooting Chuck was badass, I loved Sam standing up to Dean and telling him that he couldn’t lose him and Jack, I liked the conversation between Sam and Chuck in the Bunker, I loved Dean making weapons for him and Sam at the end, so there were legitimate good moments scattered throughout but for me in the overall scheme of things those moments, as much as I enjoyed/loved them, are not enough for me to consider this a good episode and sure as hell, not enough for me to consider this a good season finale. Especially considering this is the last season finale and even more, if I compare it some past season finales like my beloved AHBL.

If you liked this episode, that’s wonderful I’m happy for you, but...I don’t like the way it left me feeling. It left me feeling hollow, and frustrated, and angry and conflicted and worried about s15.

I wish j2 the best of luck in making s15 a good one, they have an uphill battle ahead of them.

As for me, I’m happy this season is finally fucking over and I’m looking forward to the break before the last season begins.

#spn negative #anti andrew dabb #anti castiel #anti dabb #anti dabbernatural #Opinion on Supernatural #spn 14.20 #spns14 finale #mine

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vampire-email · 5 years

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while the rhythm of the rain keeps time: chapter two

ao3 link (kudos appreciated!)

from the beginning: ao3

Rating: General Audiences (subject to change)

Pairing: Dan Howell/Phil Lester

Chapter Word Count: 4,604

Full Word Count: 8,670

Summary: Phil didn’t very much like the rain, but at the same time, he didn’t very much dislike it, either.

It had a distinctly lonely feeling, like if he allowed himself to get lost in the sights and sounds and smells of the rain everything else would disappear and he’d become the only person in the world.

A little odd, yes, but some days he’d ache for this feeling. He wasn’t sure why, but sometimes all he’d crave was utter solitude, so he’d have space to think his own thoughts and exist without being a bother to anyone else.

a/n: a special thanks to my beta readers, @freckliedan, @shrugs-are-kinky, and @edgylester for making this fic possible! Go show them some love!

likes and reblogs appreciated!!

Chapter Two: Melt Your Headaches, Call It Home

Phil didn’t very much like the rain, but at the same time, he didn’t very much dislike it, either.

It was okay, he supposed.

It made his mornings a bit slower, he mused, but it was also kind of peaceful, listening to it pound the outside world tirelessly.

The rain was melancholy and somber, and it put Phil in an odd sort of mood where all he wanted to do was lay down outside in the grass and let it wash over him.

If it was warm enough. Cold rain was the worst. He was staying inside for that shit.

Today, unfortunately, he didn’t have any time to ponder the different ways rain made him feel, because he had a double shift at the Starbucks next to Tesco and it started in less than an hour and he hadn’t even gotten out of bed.

He’d recently taken up a second, part-time job because as it turns out, a job in graphic design didn’t exactly make the most money--and to put it bluntly, he was broke as fuck.

He went in to the office three times a week, and was expected to finish his assigned projects at home if they hadn’t been completed at work. Which was all fine and dandy, but the little ADHD monster that lived in his brain tended to grab the controls and make him do something utterly ridiculous like hyperfixate on the interesting article he was reading about children’s brain development instead of doing literally anything else he was supposed to.

He had actually been offered a home office, which would have been excellent in the fact that he would have been able to wear nothing but socks and a pair of boxers while working, but it also meant that he probably would have ended up lying on his back and watching the blades of the fan spinning and trying to count how many times they go around in a minute instead of getting any work done.

He was glad, at least, for the fact he had a steady income and he didn’t absolutely hate his job, no matter how slow it got sometimes.

Anyway, whenever it got boring he’d always end up doodling straight onto the desk he was sitting at (he’d have to wipe it off later) or coming up with elaborate daydreams in his head about scenarios that were completely unrealistic (that was the fun part).

Speaking of daydreaming--Phil reluctantly pulled himself back into the present and realized that he’d wasted ten minutes allowing his mind to wander as he sat in bed, being about as useful as a garbage bag full of rocks.

That was the one thing he didn’t like about his job--his mind wasn’t allowed to wander or else he’d lose track of time and five minutes turned into ten and ten minutes turned into thirty and suddenly he’d been thinking about absolutely nothing for the better part of an hour.

Unfortunately for Phil, he got most of his best ideas when he let his mind roam free, and sitting at a desk all day was the perfect way to kill all of his inspiration.

He wasn’t completely oblivious to what was going on inside his mind, however; he had seen a doctor about medication for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and while it had worked pretty well at first, at some point or another the doses stopped working as well and it felt like the pills were only taking all his ADHD-fueled ideas and guiding them in the general direction of where they were supposed to go. The side effects were also awful--sometimes it seemed like any noise that was too loud or sudden could launch him into a panic attack and he often felt like vomiting.

He hadn’t had the time to go back to the doctor who had prescribed them in the first place, and so he’d just put the bottle on a high shelf and tried to forget about it.

Alongside battling his attention-disorder, Phil also had to deal with being both physically and mentally exhausted to the point of breaking due to his new part-time as a Starbucks barista.

He barely had any free time, either, and he usually spent his blessed days off sleeping for fourteen hours and ordering takeaway and playing Mario Kart on his couch alone.

Lovely.

With these thoughts in mind, Phil finally rolled out of his bed and dressed in the boring all-black that his job required he wear.

His mind still muddled with sleep (though thankfully warmed up by his wandering thoughts), Phil shuffled his way into the kitchen to get breakfast.

Pulling the coffeemaker towards himself and shoveling generous amounts of ground coffee inside it, Phil wondered if he’d have time to shower before heading to work. Probably not.

He lived close enough to walk to the cafe where he worked (not that he particularly wanted to--it was all drizzly and cold outside) and so he never had to worry about finding a method of transportation (he was awful at driving, the Tube gave him anxiety, and he didn’t have money to spare on cabs). He had a bit of time before he had to leave, enough to finish breakfast and sit and stare at the kitchen counter beneath his mug (or perhaps the telly) and wonder whether it was really worth getting out of bed this early for a job.

Shuffling around the kitchen and pulling a box of cereal from a cabinet, Phil made himself The Breakfast of Champions with little more than dry cereal and a big enough bowl (likely because of all the times his mum had chastised him for eating cereal with his hands straight out of the box, which resulted in a squirmy guilty feeling every time he did it).

There was, however, no point in using a spoon for dry cereal, which really only meant less dishes to wash later.

Pushing his glasses up his nose and sitting in front of the television, Phil wondered whether he could turn it on and watch half an episode without all his self-control going down the drain. Considering… er, previous events, Phil decided to keep the telly off or else he very well might end up marathoning The Office or Food Wars! instead of going to work like he was supposed to.

At least he knew what he was doing tonight.

Before he knew it, fifteen minutes had passed and he had to be at work in ten and he hadn’t even gotten his shoes on- but that was okay because they were just by the door, and so were his house keys-

Running back into his room to grab his phone and to turn off all the lights, Phil skidded back through the kitchen and nearly hit his head on a cabinet door he had forgotten to close.

Damn cabinets.

Phil slid his shoes on and slammed the door behind himself, barely remembering to lock it.

Walking briskly through the lobby of the apartment complex (his flat was on the ground floor, which was by far the Least Cool place he’s ever lived) and stepping through the double doors, Phil immediately found himself standing in the pouring rain.

He wished, as he always did whenever it rained, that he owned an umbrella.

It’s not like an umbrella is always first on his mental list of Things To Buy whenever he went to the store--after all, there were always much cooler and conventionally useful (he had always had trouble preparing for the future--which was why he currently lived on the first floor of an apartment building with one job in graphic design and another at Starbucks).

Phil resigned himself to walking along the sidewalk, already soaking wet and freezing. For God’s sake, it was June! Why was it so bloody cold outside?

Checking his phone and realizing that his shift was supposed to start in three minutes, Phil started walking slightly faster. He could always blame the rain for his tardiness.

By the time he finally set foot in the coffee shop and stepped behind the counter, the rain had relented slightly (although Phil was still very wet).

At the sound of his arrival, Devon (the shift manager) turned and regarded him with a look of slight disapproval.

“Phil, you’re late. Again.”

Phil swallowed. “I’m sorry, Devon- I lost track of time and it was pouring rain and I uh, forgot my umbrella-”

Devon dropped their stony disposition and grinned. “Yeah Phil, I’m sure you forgot your umbrella that totally exists. C’mon, we were gonna draw straws-” They guestured in the general direction of Alex and Liz, who waved, “-but since you’re the late one, you get to wipe the tables!”

Phil groaned exaggeratedly.

“C’mon, Devon, I did that last week! Besides, I’m all wet and-”

Devon held up their hand to hush Phil, and turned towards the back room, chucking an old towel at Phil.

Phil then proceeded to get hit in the face with said old towel, to which the people behind him burst out laughing.

Ignoring Liz and Alex’s giggling, Phil ripped the towel off his face and surveyed Devon with a look of mock disgust on his face.

“Fine,” Phil said haughtily, “but believe me, you’ll regret making me do this!”

Devon snickered.

“C’mon Lester, we don’t have time for dramatics. Just wipe the damn tables down and be done with it, okay?”

Phil rolled his eyes, hiding a smile on his face. Doing actual work might suck, but at least he wasn’t totally alone. His coworkers were pretty cool.

After wiping the tables down, Phil was instructed to make drinks for the morning stragglers with Liz as Alex manned the registers. Devon was in the back doing inventory- something that Phil was very glad he wasn’t in charge of.

Making drinks was fairly simple for the most part--save for the insanely complicated ones. Phil still hadn’t gotten the hang of doing the fancy ones with the custom flavors and customers who knew the menu better than he did--especially the Starbucks “secret menu,” which simply took drinks that already tasted good and added a bunch of complicated ingredients to them. Liz was in charge of those. Phil was fine with making lattes and frappuccinos and tea for now.

He and Liz made a great team, with Devon scrawling the abbreviation of the drinks on the cups and passing them to Phil, who glanced at the order and determined whether or not he could make themself. If not, he would have to pass them to Liz, who had been here for years and knew every possible combination like the back of her hand (that metaphor confused Phil. There wasn’t really anything that distinguished the back of one hand from another, unless you had a tattoo or something). Phil had only been here about a month, which immediately meant he was tasked with the more physical jobs, like sweeping the floor after the shop closed and taking care of the registers when nobody else wanted to.

Phil, Liz, and Alex continued working until about ten-thirty, when the lunch rush was just beginning.

That was when Alex, who looked even more exhausted than usual, took off her apron and hung it in the back. Devon stepped out, and stood in front of Liz and Phil.

There was a chocolate chip in their hair.

“Okay guys, Alex is taking her break and I need Phil to watch after the registers. I’ll be helping Liz make the drinks, and as soon as Alex is back, she’ll help Phil. Got it?”

They all nodded. Alex walked out the back door, likely to go sit at the plastic table out back. In the pouring rain. Sometimes Phil admired Alex for her complete inability to give a shit.

Phil took up his place at the register, and plastered on a smile for the growing queue of customers waiting to order.

God, people were scary.

Taking orders was quite stressful, and he had to remember the correct abbreviations of the drinks and try to understand what the customer said their name was- Riley? It was probably spelled Reileigh or Rylie (he’d had both already) or some other monstrosity sent from hell.

It was during a lull in business that Phil took the opportunity to slump against the counter and stare at the door to the shop, desperately hoping for no one else to walk through so he wouldn’t have to get up.

Devon looked at him pityingly.

Phil glanced down at the counter, swaying slightly and studying the swirling design of the plastic countertop and the crumbs that had managed to stick there.

Lo and behold, someone else stepped into the shop, and Phil smiled automatically while stepping forward to take their order.

An hour later, his head throbbed from talking to so many people, and with a nod from Devon, Phil stepped out of view from the customers and perched himself on an old stool in the corner.

This was exhausting.

Tipping his head back against the wall and closing his eyes, Phil took a few deep breaths. Only a few hours until his break, and Devon was being kind enough to let him relax for a few minutes.

He was already so tired, but that didn’t mean he could slack off his job like this.

After a few minutes of sitting down, he’d surely be able to stand up again and go back to work without wanting to die.

...Okay, maybe that was a bit dramatic, but Phil was a gay twenty-something and also happened to be exhausted to the point of collapsing. He figured he could cut himself some slack.

When the boy with curls damp from the rain and eyes the color of the coffee Phil was making stumbled into the shop like some great force of nature, Phil couldn’t help but glance up.

And he kept glancing, but then he somehow ended up taking longer looks that lasted only a few seconds and then only a few seconds turned to even more seconds until suddenly Phil realized he’d been outright staring at the man for at least a minute.

Behind him, Liz cleared her throat loudly.

“You can’t stare at the pretty boy while I do all the work, Lester,” she teased.

Phil nodded, taking his eyes off the stranger and finishing the iced tea he was making.

At that moment, Alex stepped back into the store, her short hair soaking wet and her clothes dripping water on the floor.

“I’m off my break,” she announced.

“You do know that someone will have to clean that up later, right?” Devon inquired dryly.

Alex said nothing and stepped behind the counter, putting her apron back on and gesturing drippingly to Phil to help her with the cash registers.

Devon sighed and stepped back to help Liz with the drinks.

It was at this moment that the boy (who was still slightly damp and who also seemed to be having some internal battle) stood up from his seat and made his way over to the counter.

Phil’s heart did a funny swoop thing and he was pretty sure he could hear the blood rushing through his ears.

Did he really fall apart this easily whenever an attractive person breathed in his direction? Honestly.

The stranger, who still hadn’t noticed Phil yet, surveyed the pastry cases and stepped closer to study the menu.

With a jolt, he seemed to realize that Phil was there, and proceeded to stare at him, a slight blush tinting his cheeks.

Phil was aware of the fact that his own face was likely bright red.

“Er, hello,” Phil began. “I’m Phil. What can I get for you today?”

It was a miracle he hadn’t embarrassed himself already.

“Oh, er, well- I, I actually haven’t decided yet? I mean, uh, yeah.” The stranger’s tongue seemed to trip over itself in an attempt to get the words out. “Sorry,” he added as an afterthought.

Phil felt his heart soften at the boy’s nervous stuttering.

“It’s fine. Take your time! It’s not like I’m going anywhere,” Phil managed, and then felt himself cringe as he realized that it probably sounded he was implying that the boy needed Phil to make an order, or something. God. Why was Phil always embarrassing himself like this?

The stranger cleared his throat, and Phil snapped back to the present.

“I- could I actually have, um, the er, the Caramel Mocha Latte? That’s good, right?” He paused, considering. “Could I also get an, er, a blueberry muffin?”

“What size?”

The man blinked. “Sorry?”

“What, er, size do you want your drink?”

“Oh, sorry. Um, medium, I reckon.”

Phil nodded, pulling a grande cup towards him. “Could I get a name?”

The stranger looked confused for a second, and then seemed to realize what Phil meant.

“Oh, right. Uh, Dan.”

His name was Dan.

Phil scribbled that on the cup, along with the abbreviation for the drink.

“That’ll be, er, £8 .50. Cash or card?”

Dan, who had seemed to be staring off into space, seemed to jolt himself back into the present. Phil could relate.

“Oh, yes, card, sorry,” Dan said, fumbling for his wallet and extracting a credit card.

Phil nodded and took it. Dan’s eyes were very pretty. So were his curls, and the light dusting of freckles across his nose- Phil shouldn’t be thinking about this.

Dan, as if oblivious to the effect he was having on Phil, seemed fascinated with the way Phil’s hands moved as they swiped the card.

If the twinge of pink lining his cheeks were anything to go by, Phil could guess that it was either very cold outside or Dan was still embarrassed about the loud entrance he had made a few minutes previously. There had to be a reason he was blushing like that, right?

Phil handed the card back to Dan, who now appeared to be staring at Phil’s mouth. Embarrassed, Phil wondered whether he had food stuck on his upper lip or if he had missed a spot shaving that morning.

Ducking his head and reaching into the pastry case, Phil pulled out Dan’s muffin. Tucking it into a paper bag, he set it on the countertop between them.

Clearing his throat, Phil waited for Dan’s gaze to snap back up to his own. God, his eyes were gorgeous.

“Er, your drink will be ready in a few minutes over there-” he gestured towards the end of the counter, “-and here’s your muffin! Enjoy your food,” Phil added, smiling at Dan.

Dan smiled back. He had a dimple. Phil immediately wanted to kiss it. He also wanted to bury his face in the crook of Dan’s neck and stay there for a while, but he had a job to do and also Dan was a complete stranger and- God, Phil was probably so creepy for thinking like this.

As if on cue, Dan took the muffin between them and gave Phil an awkward wave before walking back over to his table and sitting down.

Turning back to face his coworkers, Phil was immediately unsurprised to see all three of them gaping at him. Even Alex.

“That was literally the most awkward interaction I have ever seen.” Devon said, their hand over their face.

“Oh my God you guys, get a room,” Liz quipped, trying not to laugh.

Alex just stared, an expression of shame on her face. “God, Lester, what was that? Have you ever successfully flirted with anyone, I don’t know, ever?”

Phil rolled his eyes, his heart beating unfairly fast in his chest. “Can you guys just make the drink? I wasn’t even trying to flirt at all! I was just taking his order! He probably doesn’t even like guys, for fuck’s sake.”

Devon snickered. “You mean to tell me, the master of gaydar, that that man wasn’t ogling your ass when you turned around to get his damn muffin?”

Phil sighed. These people were relentless.

Alex grabbed his shoulders, looking like she was ready to shake him. “Phil, I swear, if you don’t have that guy’s number by the time he leaves this place, I am going to personally walk to his house and get it myself. You hear?”

Phil shrugged her off. “C’mon guys, seriously. Can you just make his drink?”

Liz raised an eyebrow. Devon smirked. They all backed off a little, although the looks they shot each other definitely meant they weren’t going to leave this alone.

A few minutes later, Dan’s drink was ready and Phil had taken orders from three more customers. Liz had called Dan’s name and he had come up to collect it--and Phil definitely didn’t miss the intense stares all of his coworkers had given Dan as he walked away.

“Nice ass,” Alex commented slyly, eyeing Phil to see his reaction.

Phil resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Again. Honestly, at some point his eyeballs were going to pop out of his head and onto the floor, just like his mum told him they would when he was a teenager.

Phil’s co-workers weren’t the only ones staring at Dan, though. Phil had to admit it was actually quite hard to keep his eyes off the man’s figure, hunched over the table and scribbling in what looked like a journal of some sort.

He was left-handed. Phil wasn’t sure why that was important to him, but it was.

Once or twice, he was sure that Dan was looking at him as well. It was hard to tell, though, and anyway, why would someone as pretty as Dan be looking at Phil?

When it was nearing the end of Phil’s shift and he was glancing anxiously at the clock every few seconds, Devon seemed to take notice of this and casually made their way over to Dan, who was still sitting at his little table.

Phil was too far away to properly hear what was going on, but when Devon first began to speak, Dan’s head jerked up, like he hadn’t expected anyone to take notice of him.

Dan only seemed to look further confused as Devon went on, but when they jerked their head back in the direction of the cash registers, Phil began to have an idea of what was going on. Dear God, he wished he didn’t.

Hiding his face in his hands, Phil wished dearly that Devon had only walked over to inquire about the quality of Dan’s drink, or the weather, or literally anything other than what Phil knew it was about.

Peeking through his fingers, Phil saw just in time Dan scribbling something on a napkin and offering it to Devon. Dan’s face was quite red.

When Devon turned around with a smile big enough to engulf their face, Phil groaned and stood up fully, hands gripping the countertop.

Dan, whose face was still beet-red, stared at the floor and tucked one ankle behind the other nervously. Phil turned his attention back to Devon, who slapped the napkin down on the counter proudly.

“You’re welcome, Lester. I just got you a pretty boy’s number, and you bet your ass you will call him, or I’ll do it for you! ”

Phil sighed. “Like how you got his number from him for me as well?”

Devon rolled their eyes. “C’mon, I’m doing you a favor. He was so cute about it too! I thought if his face got any redder, he’d explode!”

Devon looked at him expectantly.

Phil swiped the napkin off the counter and tucked into his pocket. “There. Happy?”

“Obviously.”

Phil was sitting in his flat.

The rain was still drizzling outside, and the sounds of it hitting the pavement echoed off the tall London buildings and created a peaceful, rumbling sound--like a cat purring loudly or the far-off sounds of a train on the railroad.

The sun was setting, and the darkening sky seemed to breathe with the city, creating that special sense of calm that only a rainstorm at night could produce.

All the curtains in his flat were open, as if trying to welcome the last streaks of washed-out daylight left in the world, and the room was getting darker and darker at such a pace that if you tried hard enough, you’d be able to watch it happening.

Phil, oblivious to the rest of the world, was clutching a brown, wrinkly Starbucks napkin with pen marks messily scratched onto its surface.

His handwriting was adorable. It had a slight left slant, and he had drawn a smiley face next to where he had scrawled his number for Phil.

His number. For Phil.

Phil wondered if he had even gotten out of bed that morning or if this was all a dream.

God, he hoped not.

It was around six in the evening, and Phil, in lieu of turning on Netflix and binging a series like he normally would, was sitting on his couch with his phone in his hand and debating whether to call the number on the napkin.

Oh God, what if it was fake? What if Dan had just given a pretend number to make Devon go away? Phil wouldn’t blame him. Oh God. This was so embarrassing. Phil didn’t even know what Devon had said to acquire the number, and to be completely honest, he didn’t want to know.

This was nerve-wracking.

Should he call or text? A call might look like he was trying too hard, but a text might look like he wasn’t trying enough- oh, he was insane. He definitely wasn’t going to call Dan. Did he have a deathwish? Phone calls were awful.

Before he could overthink it, Phil typed out a quick text.

Hey, Dan. It’s me, Phil, from Starbucks!

Okay, that was simple enough. Phil highly doubted Dan had met another person named Phil and had also given them his number on the same day, but it never hurt to make sure, right?

Phil sent it before his brain’s irrational panicking could get in the way, and tossed his phone down on the coffee table as if it were a bomb.

Staring at it, Phil waited for something, anything, to happen.

Nothing happened.

Phil was forced to acknowledge the fact that no, sending a text before he got the chance to over-think it was definitely not a guaranteed way to stop his anxiety from going into overdrive. If anything, it was worse.

Flopping back against the couch, Phil stared up at the ceiling. Maybe it was a fake number. Dan probably wasn’t going to reply, and Phil would never be able to face his coworkers after this embarrassment.

Suddenly, his phone buzzed with an incoming text, and Phil lunged for it.

hi phil! to what (or whom, i suppose) do i owe this pleasure? :)

Grinning to himself in the semi-darkness of his flat, Phil typed out a response to the boy with the coffee-colored eyes and a blush that happened to be the exact shade of the begonias growing in the dirt outside the building.

Maybe rain wasn’t quite so melancholy after all.

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jbuffyangel · 7 years

Text

Lingering Effects: Arrow 6x01 Review (Fallout)

Hello friends!!! Missed you guys! Man it has been a long writing break for me. I hope I remember how to do this!

Another hellatus survived! Another season premiere! Six seasons - wow. We've put in a chunk of time with this show. What I admire about Arrow is they really pay attention to what worked and what didn't in the previous season and try incorporate those lessons into the next. Arrow has five years of lessons informing their sixth season premiere and the episode reflected it.

There is a seamless fluidity and confidence to "Fallout." Arrow knows what it does best and what it doesn't. The captain of the Arrowverse, the original DC TV show, "the veteran" is owning their experience. The cast feels incredibly well integrated, it's fast paced, funny and emotional. Most importantly it answers the long awaited "cliffhanger" while still leaving some unanswered questions and launching new mysteries.

The term "Fallout" is an interesting choice for the episode title. It stuck with me as I watched because of the open endedness to the term. The definition of fallout is:

1 a :the often radioactive particles stirred up by or resulting from a nuclear explosion and descending through the atmosphere; also :other polluting particles (such as volcanic ash) descending likewise

b :descent (as of fallout) through the atmosphere

2 :a secondary and often lingering effect, result, or set of consequences

There is no conclusion or end to what happened on Lian Yu and what Adrian Chase did. The characters are still falling through the consequences. Some are grappling more than others with the, but the lingering effects are shifting them all in new directions. For some, these new directions are wonderful. For others, it is like a radioactive particle slowly descending all around them... like a cancer taking hold.

Let's dig in...

Who Survived?

Let's just get right to it because thankfully Arrow did. In order of appearance: Diggle, Rene, Curtis, Felicity, Dinah, Lance and Bl&ck S&ren. There are absolutely no surprises in this list. We knew all the series regulars would be returning.

We'll get to Thea.

Arrow didn't go more than one minute without John Diggle because... they know how this works. Our Queen came home around the 5 minute mark. It's good the show can acknowledge they cannot survive more than five minutes without these two.

Who Didn't Survive?

Samantha is the only confirmed death. Again, no surprises there. We knew William was living with Oliver. As saw in the preview, Samantha charges into the woods in a panic looking for their son moments before the explosion.

I appreciate a mother's love and all that, but WHAT ARE YOU THINKING WOMAN? It's an island with 250 bombs about to go off in a matter of seconds. If William is truly in any danger don't you think Oliver would have SAID SOMETHING to Felicity over the comms? Perhaps something like, "Hey by the way, I have no idea where my son is so could y'all not leave him for dead? Enjoy the flight honey."

Which I am sure is exactly what Thea (and Felicity) were going to tell Samantha as they charged after her into the woods. Samantha's actions were nothing more than suicide, which part of her had to know. Some part of her had to know that she couldn't save William because BOMBS! So instead she chose to die with him.

I'm not trying to take anything away from Samantha or disparage William's mother. Obviously, she deeply loved her son and would do anything to save him - even if it meant the cost of her own life. It's selfless love and what any good mother would do. But one has to admit the extreme stupidity of her actions. IT. IS. AN. ISLAND. 250. BOMBS.

It's pretty obvious Arrow wanted Mama Clayton permanently gone, so Oliver was forced into the full time dad position. That's fine. Story arc has to go where the story arc has to go. However, that's not going to stop me from pointing out the illogical actions so they could blow the woman up.

Of course, @callistawolf called it as she always does and Samantha dies in Oliver's arms. She makes Oliver promise to be a father to William and he does because of course. Then... she's gone. For a character we really didn't know all that well it was pretty effecting. In no small part to Oliver barely keeping it together during their conversation. I cry when Stephen Amell cries.

Unknown

The fates of Talia Al Ghul, Nyssa Al Ghul and Evelyn are left unanswered. Slade tells Oliver that Ra's Al Ghul's daughter went after the girl in the cage. He didn't specific which one, but I'm assuming he meant Nyssa. We don't know if any of them survived, so they could pop up anytime. I will take whatever hope I can get for Nyssa's survival.

Oliver Queen and William

Of course, the biggest change to the show is Oliver becoming a full time dad. I agree with Stephen Amell's assertion that Oliver's mind send is similar to the Season 4 premiere. He's at peace and settled.

Source: @olivergifs

However, it's not because he ran away from the hood, his past and the darkness. It's because he faced it. The lessons Oliver learned in Season 5, primarily letting go of the guilt he carried over Robert Queen's death, have taken hold in his soul in a way we've never seen before.

Source: @olivergifs

There are some stunningly refreshing comments from Oliver throughout the episode. Our man is embracing logic and approaching life from a new perspective. Except, the difference between this man and Season 4 Oliver is... he hasn't abandoned one side of himself. He accepts it and is balancing it.

This makes Oliver ready to be a father, but it doesn't mean it will be easy. Obviously, William is deeply traumatized. A man kidnapped him and his mother, put a gun to his head, announced rather unceremoniously that the Green Arrow was his father, and then blew up an island with his mother on it. It's safe to say William needs therapy. Call your insurance carrier Oliver. See who is in network.

William is withdrawn, sullen, distant and angry with Oliver. He refuses to talk about anything with his father even though he's not sleeping and having nightmares. Instead, he takes comfort in RAISA!!!

Source: dmichellewrites

God bless this woman. It is good to see her back on my television screen. Oliver doesn't have a lot of good parenting examples to draw from. Raisa is the grandmother role Oliver so desperately needs filled. One Moira is sadly unable to fulfill. However, I think Raisa probably provides a more grounded and less nefarious approach to parenting than Moira ever did.

Can I just say... I love that this kid is carrying around a Flash backpack? Let's review. Initially, William was obsessed with The Flash.

After the Green Arrow saved him from Damien Darhk, the kid chucked the scarlet speedster action figure for one of Green Arrow.

Now, we're back to carting Barry (in backpack form) around all day. There is a direct correlation between William's toys and his emotional progression with his father. Come fight me.

Sure it's totally possible for the kid to love both, but I don't think that's what's going on. This is exactly the kind of passive aggressive behavior a ten year old boy would pull. William knows Oliver is the Green Arrow and blames him for his mother's death. This kid is no dummy. Toys R Us presents an effective and not so subtle dig at his father. William took it. His petty is my kind of petty.

The biggest insight into the state of their relationship is when Oliver says goodnight to William. His son replies, "Goodnight Oliver." Ouch.

I winced right along with Oliver. That hurts. It's harsh, but very fair on William's part.

Being a father is more than biology and Oliver has to earn this. Samantha isn't the only issue between father and son. Oliver didn't know about William for many years. That's not Oliver's fault, but it doesn't erase the feelings of abandonment William has carried around his entire life either. Even after Oliver discovered that William was his son, he sent him away. The reason? The Green Arrow. Trust me, this kid has connected all the dots.

William is right to make Oliver earn being his father. The problems between them aren't going to be fixed with junk food, video games, staying up late, watching sports or tiptoeing around their issues. Oliver's initial approach to parenting felt very reminiscent to Moira's in Season 1, specifically with Thea. In "Lone Gunman," Thea steals some clothes, but rather than punish her Moira gives her space. Oliver called out on it:

Obviously, the situations are very different. William doesn't need to be punished, but Oliver doesn't need to tiptoe around him either. This isn't about being William's friend. This is about being his father.

He delivers the message with a gentle and loving tone, but it is firm.

Oliver has learned the first rule of parenting. Your child doesn't have to like you in order to take care of them.

His message to William is clear: William can push Oliver away all he wants. It won't change anything. Oliver is never walking away. He will never leave him.

Source: @olivergifs

This is exactly what William needs to hear from his father whether he knows it or not. There is a deep rooted fear under all this anger. Every time Oliver puts on that hood, every time he leaves the house, William is afraid he's going to lose him just like he lost his mother.

This reassurance is what William so desperately needs and will continue to need for a very long time. It's why we see the first crack in the wall he's put up. He agrees to watch a baseball game with his father.

Source: @olivergifs

It's a small step, but it means everything to Oliver. He mourned deeply when Samantha "lost" the baby and carried that pain with him always. The moment Oliver knew William existed he wanted to be a father to him. However, Oliver is also learning what "being there" means and it's not always easy.

When William finally calls Oliver "Dad" it will be because he earned it. And Oliver Queen will earn it because he loves his son and that's what fathers do.

Olicity

Fandom... we have done our time in Angst City. Hello Sunshine & Rainbows. I have missed you.

The first scene between Oliver and Felicity tells us everything we need to know about the state of their relationship. Yes, they are together (five months and counting). They are currently living separately. Felicity is not spending time with William yet.

There are several reasons why I love this scene. First, Oliver Queen is the cutest cute to ever cute. Felicity Smoak walks into the room carrying cheeseburgers and Oliver cannot hide his pure joy at her arrival. So, he smiles shyly and does his patented "Felicity Smoak Shuffle. "

Felicity brought food for both Oliver and William, covering the basis for all lactose digestion possibilities.

Source: westallenolicitygifs

(Motherhood will be no issue. Felicity has this sewn up).

The man just wants to eat cheeseburgers with his girl and son AND BE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY OF THREE. I just want to throw glitter all over his puppy face.

Felicity has a very Felicity Smoak reaction. COMMENCE THE BABBLE.

She asks Oliver, "Unless you're asking because you think now is a good time..." and immediately we know that William and Felicity have not spent any time together. This is extremely wise on both Oliver and Felicity's parts.

William just lost his mother. No, five months is not a long time when a monumentally life altering event such as this happens to a child. He is deeply mourning. Oliver introducing Felicity too soon could potentially make William feel like his father is pushing a "replacement mother" on him. It will only make William more confused and angry. There is no escaping that any woman romantically involved with Oliver carries that kind of connotation because he is William's father. The child needs time. Oliver and Felicity are respecting Samantha's death and William's grief.

Not to mention, William and Oliver are just getting to know each other. A lot of William's resentment is created by Oliver not being in his life before now and his fear over something happening to his father (like his mother). William shouldn't have to share Oliver's attention when they are together. Not yet. Not at first. William needs to feel secure with his father first. Also, Oliver and Felicity need time to feel secure in their relationship before they are ready to tackle William together. This is Oliver and Felicity putting William's needs first, which is exactly what they SHOULD be doing.

This doesn't mean it's easy on Oliver and Felicity.

Oliver tells Felicity he doesn't need a buffer, but c'mon son you would absolutely LOVE a buffer right now. I give you an Oliver Queen internal monologue:

Who doesn't love Felicity? Felicity fixes everything!!! She is my lobster and harnesser of my light! She's bringing cheeseburgers. This is a perfect time to get my forever family together and BOND. William will immediately fall in love with her, then fall in love with me, forgive all and call me Dad. We'll all watch the game together, I'll put William to bed and then Felicity & I can have all the sex.

I'm not saying I've nailed his every thought, but feel strongly I'm on the right track about the sex. “I could use some company” is one of the most blatant euphemisms for sex that I've ever heard in my life. I bet you could use some company big fella.

Kidding aside, life with William isn't easy and Oliver is lonely. He misses Felicity. Felicity, in her infinite wisdom, tells Oliver this isn't the night.

Source: oliverfelicitygifs

This is probably the dirtiest thing Oliver Queen has ever said to Felicity. The way he lowered his voice and looked her up and down? My man. Keep it up Mr. Queen.

It rivals the eye sex of, "I believe you ordered the crate of stolen military weapons Mr. Queen.”

He was giving serious thought to going at it on the floor mats again. I know it. WE WERE ROBBED.

See? This is all I need. Felicity babbling and Oliver looking at her like my dog looks at hot dogs on a stick. I'm a simple woman Arrow writers. Takes very little to keep me satisfied.

Real talk though, just between us girls Oliver, how long as it been? Are we hitting the week mark? Couple weeks? Months? Welcome to parenting!! Finding time for sex is a little trickier now. Honestly, Oliver and Felicity have never been more relatable. Cheer up though. William isn't a baby. He's 10. Eventually, he'll make a friend and this is why God invented sleepovers. Also, we have Raisa. *Jen fall to her knees and thanks Jesus for Raisa*

Oliver isn't the only one who is disappointed. Felicity pouts when he walks away. Even though she knows now isn't the time, Felicity wants to spend time with William. She misses Oliver and wants to YA KNOW too. The two of them are on the same page, which is glorious to see. This is how open and honest communication works.

Speaking of open and honest communication, Oliver comes into the bunker upset because his son basically called him a murderer the night before.

Oliver’s broken puppy face kills me.

Source: @olivergifs

Felicity notices Oliver is upset right away.

Source: oliverfelicitygifs

He would love to talk about it?

THIS IS SIX YEARS OF CHARACTER GROWTH!!! I AM ALIVE. OLIVER QUEEN IS READY TO GET MARRIED AND MAKE ALL THE BABIES.

We end the episode with what seems like a nightly ritual - Oliver and Felicity speaking on the phone after William is in bed. SWOON

Unfortunately, this conversation isn't all adorableness and phone sex (C'mon it's a 9 pm time slot. We need SOMETHING.) It seems there is a photo of Oliver in the Green Arrow suit.

Source: queensarrow

DUN DUN DUNNNN!!!! I love nothing more than when Oliver is up against the ropes and has to punch his way out. Revealing his identity is a perfect way to infuse some significant trouble into all the character's lives. We've danced this dance before, but they never had PHOTOGRAPHIC evidence before.

Watching Oliver wiggle his way out of this one will be fun. Or maybe he won't? We shall see! But what I love about the scene is Felicity asking, "Oliver what are we gonna do?"

Source:sharingmyworld

"Fallout" gave Oliver and Felicity just plenty to contend with. They may not have all the answers, but they are in this together. This is the Olicity I've been waiting for... and we're just getting started.

John Diggle

My biggest complaint with Season 5 was benching John Diggle. "Fallout" assured me that is NOT happening in Season 6. If Oliver and William are the A storyline, then John Diggle is the solid B storyline. He has the strongest arc and set up of all the supporting characters.

I've come to find stunt scenes are Arrow's way of saying, "This character is back and better than ever." They've returned to the gritty, one man against twenty, fight sequences of Season 1 and 2 in the Green Arrow stunt scenes. There's still group fights, but Oliver isn't standing on the sidelines watching the team work. He's taking down eight guys all by himself. The shift happened in Season 5 after complaints that Oliver's fight scenes were becoming too soft for the man who can do this. Arrow put the spotlight back on the Green Arrow.

It was the same with Diggle in "Fallout." There are some standout fight scenes in which Diggle kicks major ass. If Oliver Queen is the quarterback, then John Diggle is left tackle... and they are bringing him off the bench.

Diggle is hurt during the blast, but we don't know how.

Source: olvrsfelicity

Felicity stumbles as they race to the plane (THIS WOMAN IS ME) and Diggle comes back for because of course he does. DELICITY FOREVER. He's caught in the blast some way.

What we do know is there's a big surgical scar on his shoulder, his handshakes when he's aiming a gun, he can't make a shot, he's in a lot of pain and he's not telling anyone about it.

Source: plotbunnyshipper

John is perfectly capable of defending himself without a gun, but it's causing some problems in the field. He fires at a mercenary and misses, giving the man the chance to shoot Rene. Rene is hurt badly. A collapsed lung is no joke my friends. Of course, falling 10 feet with Oliver Queen onto a car didn't help matters either.

John chooses to say behind on the next mission and run comms. Even Felicity gave him a WTF look when he volunteered. I am glad we are all on the same page. John Diggle sitting one out is weird. LET'S NEVER FORGET IT AGAIN ARROW. Another mercenary gets the drop on John and almost blows his head off during the Bl*ck S*ren attack. Honestly, this was the most we've ever seen John in danger. Things are not going well.

I read a lot of summaries of the episode and many reporters were saying Diggle is suffering from some form of PTSD and that's what is causing his hand to shake. I am a little flabbergasted by this. Certainly John can be suffering PTSD and it is Arrow's mainstay mental health issue. But I don't think this is just mental. I believe this is physical. A real injury - not just phantom pain. Diggle is absolutely hurting after the BS attack and it's apparent he is not in tip top physical shape. Despite a lack of medical expertise in pretty much anything, I'm thinking it's some kind of nerve damage/central nervous system thing.

Keeping it a secret from the team isn't good. It puts them at risk and John would never want to put anyone's lives in danger. So... why is he keeping it secret? Well, I think it's pretty easy to fool yourself that everything is fine in these kinds of circumstances. I also believe John knows that if he tells the team, if he tells Oliver, then they won't let him in the field. Therefore, something serious is going on with John physically and he knows it.

Something may be going on with John mentally too and I'm not just talking PTSD. Diggle has to be afraid what life looks like without Team Arrow. This mission pulled John out of a dark hole more than once. If John Diggle can't fight for the city, if he can't help people... then who is he? These are terrifying questions he may not want to answer. John is running. Not unlike how Oliver ran from the questions that haunted him for ten years. Oliver eventually faced those questions and came out the other side. It'll be his turn to help Diggle do the same. Once he finds out the truth.

There is one person sniffing out John's lies more than anyone else: Dinah.

Source: @valeriemperez

She knows Diggle wasn't telling the whole story about what happened on the bridge with Rene or the Bl&ck S&ren attack. John also knows Dinah isn't telling the truth about what happened between Lance and BS. John and Dinah had each other's numbers last night.

So, let's just talk about the elephant in the room. Yes, I noticed the chemistry between the two actors.

I think you might have to live in a cave NOT to notice it. Their scenes were electric. I didn't particularly notice anything in the writing, but rather feel it's just the natural chemistry between the two actors. And... I noticed it last year too.

Do I think Arrow is going to put Diggle and Dinah together? Well... not while John Diggle is married. That's for damn sure. This is John Diggle we are talking about here. Keep in mind, David has great chemistry with Audrey too. It's one of the reasons we love Dyla. Do I want more of Dyla? Sure, but Audrey's availability is always a factor with them.

Now, before we all start a Dyla panic I think it's absolutely possible for two characters to have great chemistry together and not be romantic. Entire television shows have been built around that concept. They've also been built around the opposite concept, so it's really anybody's guess.

The point is, I enjoy Diggle and Dinah's scenes together. The chemistry adds an interesting complexity to them and every relationship (romantic or not) needs that kind of spark. Actor chemistry is an important piece of the organic puzzle. We've seen it in romantic and non romantic relationships alike. We've seen how bad it is when the chemistry is lacking between actors - both romantic and non romantic relationships alike.

So, I'm just going to enjoy it. The same way I enjoy OTA, Rene and Lance, Felicity and every character she comes into contact with. If I see something romantic in the writing I will say something, but I don't. Not yet anyway.

What I am excited about is John's storyline. The push/pull with Dinah, his marriage to Lyla, keeping secrets from Oliver and Felicity, dealing with whatever his injury is - this is the kind of attention I've been waiting for John Diggle to get. It's time to sit back and watch Diggle shine.

Thea Queen

Again, not a lot of surprises here. Thea is in a coma. They pretend Thea is dead most of the episode, instead of John and Felicity like I expected. Finally, Oliver returns to the island and runs into Slade. At least the supreme jackass had the decency to admit he abandoned everyone. (Really bummed out my "Slade saves everyone" theory didn't pan out. You are very disappointing Slade Wilson.)

Slade leads Oliver to Thea's body.

Source: olivergifs

Kudos to Stephen Amell. Every time he has to act like Thea is dead Stephen knocks it out of the park. Is this his fourth time? I've lost count. Each time it is effecting because of the bond between brother and sister. QUEEN SIBILINGS FOREVER.

Somehow Thea was revived and receives the medical attention she needs. She's in a coma and Oliver sits vigil while waiting for a miracle.

This is Arrow's way of dealing with Willa Holland's shortened contract. I'm not upset about it. This is the way it goes with long running television shows. But I have to say... I feel like we are running out of ideas with Thea. I love the character, but we've done the "Thea is going to die" storyline multiple times. It does start to lose the edge after awhile.

Season 5 was a make or break year for Oliver for me just like Season 3 was make or break for Laurel. I'm willing to see where Thea goes in Season 6 after she wakes up, because she is going to wake up. However, I believe the story needs to comes first. If Arrow is unable to service the character then it's time to let her go. They don't need to kill her like LL. Let her run off and live happily ever after with Roy. Or take the character in a new direction. Either way... a decision needs to be made.

Quentin Lance/Bl&ck S&ren

Hot mess alert! Things are a little rocky over on the bird side of the storyline, but what else is new?

Quentin and Dinah lied to Team Arrow and told them Bl&ck S&ren is dead. The truth is BS was alive after the explosion. She was about to take Dinah out and Lance shot her. STONE COLD! I loved it.

Unfortunately, BS survived the gunshot wound. This bitch is like a cockroach. Can't kill her.

Unfortunately, Quentin is in a shame spiral over it.

Apparently, he's decided that Bad Laurel (Their name for her. I have gleefully embraced it.) is his daughter and this parallel universe thing is crap. He feels in his bones that HIS L*urel is in there and he has to save her.

I have whiplash.

What happened to, "You're not my Laurel?" and THIS

The 180 degree turn is confusing. Quentin Lance YOU DID NOT TRY TO KILL YOUR DAUGHTER BECAUSE SHE IS NOT YOUR DAUGHTER.

Everyone needs to get on the same doppleganger definition page.

Where's Barry? He might actually prove useful right now.

Not that Oliver wasn't. He told Quentin that BS is not L*urel and he needs to stop blaming himself. Whole and healed Oliver embraces LOGIC. I could get use to this.

I don't believe this is a lingering effect from Lian Yu. This runs deeper for Lance. This feels like transference. Lance feels responsible for L*urel's death because of his involvement with Damien Darhk. He wasn't able to save his his daughter. He's projecting that guilt and blame onto Bad L*urel. He's using her to make amends because he can't with L*urel. It's really no different than what Oliver was doing in 5x10.

Is it me or did Arrow try to build Bl&ck S&ren's vendetta against Team Arrow, and particularly Lance, around her anger over Quentin shooting her?

Because Bad L*urel was such a supportive friend BEFORE Lance shot her???? We do remember she was one of the primary reasons they were all on Lian Yu in the first place right????

We are not doing this. We are not pretending that BS is suddenly bad because Lance shot her. I live in a world called reality.

It's clear BS has some kind of deal with Michael Emmerson's character. That was Emmerson saving BS on Lian Yu even though we didn't see his face. She was in cahoots with Emmerson's character before Lian Yu otherwise why would he save her? So, it wasn't all about Adrian Chase for her. She has another agenda. One that has NOTHING to do with with Lance shooting her. BS knows it even if Quentin does it.

Are they redeeming LL? Honestly, I don't think so. Primarily because she ended the episode telling Lance she would have pulled the trigger if the roles were reversed. But she has an ooey gooey center of caramely goodness deep down.

@fanmommer told me she feels like BS is the new Malcolm Merlyn and I have to agree. It makes sense to me if BS is evil with occasional moments of goodness/potential hope for redemption. They can play that grey zone with her no different than they did with Malcom or even Slade now.

Thea hoped for Malcolm's redemption. Sometimes that hope was rewarded, but a lot of times she was left disappointed. I have a feeling we'll see the same with Quentin. They are going to play with this redemption. However, If they redeem BS then we are simply back to LL 2.0 and all the same problems we had with the character.

What BS has going for her is that she is DIFFERENT than LL and I don't think Arrow has forgotten that. But again time will tell.

It frustrates me to see Quentin Lance pulled back into the LL black hole. I was very excited with where the character was going in Season 4 with his interactions with Felicity and relationship with Donna. That seems to be all over now though. I'd be more interested in the "Save Laurel" storyline if we hadn't already done it in Season 2 with LL's alcoholism storyline.

Imma need to talk about KC's performance now. Is it me or was the camp factor at an all time high? I felt like I was watching a rerun of Adam West's Batman.

I know this kind of campiness is what some of the comic book fans love, but it doesn't make for particularly great acting.

I say this as someone who enjoyed KC's performance in 5x10. The sneering voice and facial expressions just felt waaaay over the top in "Fallout." She needs to dial it back. Way back.

Also... the stunts. It hurt y'all to watch.

I don't watch stunts with a terribly critical eye. I never notice if they make errors. However, BS & BC would go at it and there were entire long shots of KC's stunt double doing the entire fight. They didn't even attempt to hide it. Just as the fight was getting going they would cut/pan away from it. I don't know a thing about stunt work, and I say this as a person who survived Season 1 of Buffy, but those scenes need some work.

Source: arrowsource

However, BS as Dinah's villain does work. The snappy comebacks were fun and the two women battling it out made for acceptable "episode villain filler" as Arrow focused on larger arcs like William and Diggle. As long as Arrow is strategic with BS and uses her in pinpointed ways like in Season 5, it'll be fine.

Stray Thoughts

Felicty Smoak's outfits were off the hook. I want to buy every single one. Slay on Slayer. Source: @songbin

Dinah's outfits too. I just want to shop in her closet. Source: luthores

"What do you mean by that?" I have waited six years for Oliver to respond with this question every time he receives sage advice nobody understands.

Oliver used his mayoral power to get Rene another hearing for custody of his daughter. I AM EMOTIONAL. Also, these two need to hug more. Source: arrowsource

“It’s like I keep telling you hoss. I got the soul of a poet.” HA! My fondness for Rene keeps growing. Keep it up Arrow. He also seems to be keeping secrets of his own too. Hmmm..

Diggle is so happy his OTP is back together. Same brother. Source: sharingmyworld Also, never learn subtle Team Arrow. Less fun for us.

Curtis just threw the t-spheres and Felicity put him in his place. This is how I want my Curtis Holt always. Source: sharingmyworld

Coolest entrance ever. Source: olivergifs

Oliver calls William "kiddo." I call my daughter that.

If you wondering what 6x02 will explore this is it:

Source: oliverdant

He’s still Oliver. Things haven’t changed THAT much, but he made a funny about it. Source:rinmaidtsuoka

Just a note on the reviews, I'm doing this new thing called sleeping on Thursdays. So, I probably won't be finishing reviews until Friday night or Saturday morning. Work is just too busy and I am getting old. I can't keep the same pace up anymore, so I am finally listening to all of you who said that you don't mind how long the reviews take. I really appreciate your patience.

Disclaimer: Any gifs on the blog are not mine. If you would like a gif removed from my reviews, please message me. 6x01 episode gifs credited.

#arrow #olicity #arrow season 6 #arrow 6x01 #oliver and william #john diggle #arrow spoilers #season 6 episode review #thea queen #anti laurel lance #anti black siren #dinah drake #quentin lance

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darkstar6782 · 3 years

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4.18: The Monster at the End of This Book - My Rewatch Review

There is probably no single episode of the series that is more meta or contains more unintentional foreshadowing that this episode. In the former case, I know that it was absolutely intentional, and I love it, because only a show like Supernatural could jump so completely off the self-referential meta cliff of making its characters characters of their own in-universe book series and not just have it make sense, but have it follow them around from this point on while simultaneously having very little impact on their day-to-day lives. Because if there is one thing that makes the Winchesters true heroes, it’s that, even though they are just regular guys (more or less), they somehow manage to obsess over the fact that there is someone out there who knows everything that is going to happen to them only for a single day, and then they drive off and seem to forget Chuck even exists, when any normal person would have the guy on the line constantly, wanting to know what is coming next. (I only slightly kid, but I also feel like it would take a hell of a lot of willpower not to be calling Chuck up at every turn, especially given how uncertain Dean in particular is about his future and the path that he’s on).

But then there is the other aspect of this episode, the one that causes it to read very different now that the series is over and we know who Chuck really is and how much control he actually had over the Winchesters’ story. There is no more fitting and yet also mind-blowing unintentional foreshadowing for this show than the fact that this episode is titled ‘The Monster at the End of This Book’, because when you take Supernatural as a whole, Chuck does eventually become the monster at the end of the story, and yet, when this episode was being written, no one had any intention of that being the case, or even knew that the show would go long enough for that to be a storyline that would eventually come to pass. And even when it comes to Season 11, and they decide to bring Chuck back as God, they were not intending even then to make him the bad guy, which means that there were multiple levels of decision-making and storytelling that the writers had to go through to arrive at something that, upon a series rewatch, it could look like they planned all along. And I suppose it is possible that, while discussing the potential of Chuck as God in later seasons, they were informed by the title of this episode when choosing to take him in the direction that they did, which would be equally as clever, but, either way, it is a coincidence only worthy of a show like Supernatural.

The question always does come back around, though, to how to reconcile Chuck as he is portrayed here, as a hapless, unknowing prophet, with Chuck once he is revealed as God in Season 11. I have struggled with that disconnect myself, but after watching the episode this go-round (my first rewatch since he tuned evil at the end of Season 14), I think it actually can make perfect sense if you allow for the possibility that Chuck immersed himself so deeply in the story at first that he actually didn’t know who he was. That in order to manipulate events as God needed them to play out, he had to suppress all knowledge of who he was even from himself, in order to keep from giving everything away. And once he allows himself to be released from the persona of Chuck the prophet at the end of Season 5, and goes back to being and knowing himself as God, of course he can see everything he did and understand why he did it, which is why he acts so proud of himself for ‘playing the part’ later on. But that doesn’t negate the fact that, when Sam and Dean first meet him, he does not know he is anything but Chuck, and that is why his personality and his actions read as sincere—no ret-con required.

And, given that perspective, I have much less of an issue with them eventually turning Chuck into God, and then into a petty, evil God, than I did before. Because the Chuck that we see here is really not the same person as God!Chuck in the later seasons, and it’s not that big of a stretch any more to see how he can be both this sympathetic character here, and the arrogant deity that we will later feel for and then grow to hate by the end of the series. But there’s no reason to hate him here, because he doesn’t yet know who he is. And if that’s a stretch that some people are unable to make, that’s okay. I am fine with it, though, because I find the evolution of Chuck’s character to be fascinating, and I want to believe that the writers were taking advantage of the questions that they left open in their own story, and were deliberate in their choices, and that all of this doesn’t just come together by chance, because that makes the story that is going to unfold that much better and more interesting. It won’t make me love it any more or less either way, but having threads that tie potential plot holes closed does make for a much more interesting narrative, in my opinion, and makes for a story more worthy of the characters and the setting we have been given.

#supernatural #4.18 the monster at the end of this book #spn rewatch #the great pre-convention SPN rewatch #tgpcSPNr

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the-desolated-quill · 6 years

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Face The Raven - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

FINALLY! A GOOD EPISODE!

And no it’s not just because Clara dies at the end. Sarah Dollard has done an excellent job in creating a compelling mystery story that piques your interest throughout. After all the crap I’ve had to put up with from Series 9, Face The Raven feels like having a bucket of cold water being chucked on you during a hot summer’s day. Shocking, but refreshing.

Rigsy from Flatline is back and he has a strange tattoo on the back of his neck that is counting down to his death, and he has no memory of how he got it. Already I’m intrigued. After the number of dull and predictable stories we’ve been getting this series, it’s nice to be able to watch an episode where I genuinely have no idea where they’re going with this. Did Rigsy in fact kill someone? If so, what was the reason? If not, why would someone try to frame him for it? It’s a great mystery story that grabs you by the lapels and refuses to let go until the end credits. While he wasn’t terrible in Flatline, Rigsy wasn’t exactly the most interesting character ever. Here Joivan Wade makes the most of the extra material he’s been given and does a really great job. He’s not just tagging along for the ride anymore. He’s an integral part of the narrative and that makes all the difference.

I also love the idea of the trap street and everything that takes place inside. The whole refugee camp is handled with much more subtlety than The Zygon Invasion/Inversion managed, and it’s infinitely more interesting too. The amount of tension and paranoia hanging around the street is practically tangible. You get the sense that there’s a knife-edge between peace and total anarchy as the refugees become more and more wary of each other. To the point where even with the prospect of Rigsy being innocent, they’d rather he died in order to give the street peace of mind and maintain the balance. To them, catching the real killer doesn’t matter. So long as someone is seen to be blamed and punished, everything will be fine. It’s much more complex and nuanced than anything that’s come before in this series, and thus makes it all the more watchable.

I will say this episode does suffer slightly from the curse of 45 minutes. As much as I love the scenario of the trap street, it would have been nice if we could have spent some more time actually getting to know some of the refugees. But in some ways this minor criticism is actually a testament to how intriguing Sarah Dollard’s story is. Whereas before in episodes like Sleep No More and The Witch’s Familiar, I was more than happy to see the back of them by the end, here I actually wanted to stay a bit longer and delve into this environment further. I particularly liked Letitia Wright as Anahson. An alien with two faces, one that can see into the past and the other the future. I would have liked to have learned more about her.

And who is in charge of this trap street? Ashildr of course! Yeah this didn’t come as much of a surprise and while I did find her dialogue at times to be a bit too smartarse-y on occasion, I quite liked her here, and Maisie Williams continues to do a good job playing a character who’s much older than she is. Plus I loved the slow peeling of layers until we get to the revelation that Ashildr was the one that engineered this whole situation to capture the Doctor for some unknown client. Again I’d just like to reiterate how refreshing it is to be able to watch a Doctor Who story and not have the slightest idea where it’s going until the end where all the pieces of the puzzle come together with a satisfying click.

Right. I suppose I can’t put this off any longer. Let’s talk about Clara’s death. I’ve made it no secret how much I despise the character, and you’ve probably got mental images of me throwing a party when she did kick the bucket. Well as a matter of fact, I didn’t. Throw a party that is. In all honesty I was rather lukewarm about the whole thing. Like I said, I’ve never liked Clara very much so it’s hard to really muster up the energy to give a shit about her death. That being said, I will admit that her death scene was written, performed and directed well enough that if you did give a shit about Clara (God knows why), I imagine you were most probably moved to tears. However there are several issues with this, and I should point out none of this is Sarah Dollard’s fault. These are all problems that have been carried over into this episode, courtesy of Moffat.

Like with Amy and Rory in Series 7, Clara really serves little to no purpose in Series 9. She doesn’t grow or evolve in any meaningful way and she often felt like an afterthought in most stories. Oh sure Moffat has given the illusion that Clara has been undergoing this whole arc, but she hasn’t really if you think about it. The Doctor is worried that Clara is becoming more like him, but before this episode, the only time this was addressed was back in Under The Lake, and even then it was less about Clara and more about the Doctor (as if the Doctor hasn’t been scrutinised enough during the Peter Capaldi era as it is). Face The Raven is supposed to be a culmination of everything that’s come before, but it doesn’t feel like that because Clara has never really been the focus of her own arc. It’s all been about the Doctor. The Doctor’s fears. The Doctor’s concerns. The Doctor’s vengeance should Clara ever come to harm. It’s never been about Clara, which ruins the impact of her death.

Something else that ruins the death for me was the stuff building up to it. Clara persuades Rigsy to give her the tattoo, but it feels less like a selfless sacrifice or an act of kindness, and more like just another example of her smug bravado, which is something that has always really irritated me. She just doesn’t behave the way a normal person would act and often comes across as really unsympathetic. She cares less about helping people and more about showing off. They keep making the excuse that it’s because Clara is becoming more like the Doctor, but the thing is the Doctor isn’t really like that. He’s compassionate. He cares. Clara doesn’t. Just look at Flatline. Anyone else would have been slightly upset that they failed to save everyone. Clara meanwhile was too busy boasting what a great Doctor she was. Why should I care about her?

But my main reason why I was positively unmoved by her death was because of Moffat’s track record. How many characters have died in the Moffat era? And when I say died, I mean died and actually stayed dead. Virtually none. Nothing has ever been permanent in the Moffat era. This combined with the fact that Clara has seemingly died two episodes before the finale, and I’m suspicious. Moffat has pulled the bait and switch so many times now that i straight up don’t trust anything I’m seeing anymore, and that’s a big problem. I honestly don’t think Clara is dead (and remember this is the first time I’m watching this series, so I have no idea if I’m right or not), but even if it turns out this is the real deal this time, the fact that I’m questioning the validity of her death, and thus robbing it of its potential impact, shows just how bad Moffat’s Who has gotten. It’s The Boy Who Cried Wolf effect. This could very well be a genuine death for all I know, and yet I’m sat here stony faced, refusing to get too invested, just in case Moffat might be bullshitting me again. This is what happens when you feel the need to constantly wrong-foot your audience. Do it too often and after a while they just stop caring altogether.

While I think Clara’s original departure planned in Last Christmas would have been a much stronger ending for her, I did still really enjoy Face The Raven for the most part. It’s most definitely the strongest episode of Series 9 by a considerable margin and I hope to see more Who stories from Dollard in the future.

#face the raven #sarah dollard #doctor who #twelfth doctor #peter capaldi #clara oswald #jenna coleman #steven moffat #bbc #review #spoilers

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alexanderwrites · 7 years

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Thoughts Roundup - Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 11

“There’s Fire Where You’re Going”

Here is an episode that i’ve heard a lot of people describing as the point where this season “hits its stride”. What i’d say is that, while each episode has been nothing less than great (for me), there has been a certain scattershot style to the season which has displeased some. This scattershot style is not detrimental, but certainly is different to what we expect from narrative, serialised television. So far, the season has been like a closeup of a patchwork made of smaller segments, and with this episode, we’re starting to get a clearer idea of what the patchwork will look like when viewed as a whole. Will we really see the big picture by season’s end? Maybe not. But by “hits its stride”, what I believe people mean is it is satisfying to see the threads pulled tighter and the picture look a bit clearer, as it does in tonight’s episode. There is a narrative flow in Part 11, as well as what feels like quite a bit of progress. Adding to this is the episode’s crafty blending of all the elements that make Twin Peaks Twin Peaks. The show’s deadpan humour, jarring violence, abstract nightmare segments and small-town drama were all present tonight in an episode that felt cohesive, tight and covered a lot of bases that people wanted covered.

. Miriam ISN’T DEAD!!! If last week’s episode punished by presenting women without agency, this one gave them a bit more to do. Miriam, thank the lord (or lords David and Mark) is alive, and her crawling out the bushes is a relieving but nightmarish image, and really reminded me of Ronette Pulaski. This Miriam’s a fighter and a good person, and I hope she helps to put an end to Richard’s reign of terror.

. Becky is Laura, right? I mean, not literally Laura. But she is sort of Laura? The shots of her looking skyward while riding in her boyfriend’s car a while back visually recalled Laura, and her scream tonight was Laura all over. Pained and furious. Even if her actions differ from Laura’s, I think she is supposed to remind us of her. Violence is cyclical, people don’t change, and what has been will always be. That’s what the show is about for better or worse, so echoes from the past reverberate as Laura’s ghost looms heavily on the town, and on Becky. I liked seeing Becky intent on revenge, and part of me really hoped she’d kill her sleazebag boyfriend. But then again, I’m glad she didn’t, because I wouldn’t want to see her locked away so soon. I found her super interesting tonight and can’t wait to see where her character goes, and what a lovely surprise it was that she’s Bobby’s daughter.

. Seeing Bobby and Shelley together was surreal. I kept remembering how they looked when partying around Leo’s comatose body, and thinking “shit, that’s actually them”. It’s a shame they never made it work, but it’s an even bigger shame that Shelley has found an even bigger sleazeball (sleazebag? There are too many Sleazes in this show. I’m not sure what comes after Sleazebag and Ball. Sleazecar? Sleazehouse?) in Balthazar Getty, who’s name i’ve forgotten and won’t look up because I prefer writing the name Balthazar Getty. Shelley hasn’t made a good choice in hooking up with this guy who we know is a drug importer, and it seems that Becky is following a similar path. I love Shelley, and will always sympathise with her. She brings out the protectiveness of the audience, and Becky does the same. I really, deeply hope to god that history doesn’t repeat itself, and that Shelley and Becky won’t get hurt.

. Did anyone else think of the little kid with the gun as a lodge spirit? You could say that about anyone on the fucking show (James Hurley is a lodge spirit! The pie they serve at the Double R is a lodge spirit!), but he reminded me of little Lynch Jr as little Tremond (who turned out to be a lodge spirit in Fire, Walk With Me). Maybe it’s because of his creepily defiant stance, his silence, and that he’s dressed exactly like his dad, but it felt like a surreal moment and that something more sinister is happening there. Then something even MORE surreal happens, and it’s the hardest i’ve laughed at something that’s scared me in the show yet. Yes, i’m talking about the slime puking teenager and the screaming woman. The scream was so repetitive and strange sounding, and the longer it went on, the more funny yet disturbing it sounded. I put my hands to my cheeks Kevin Macallister style and could only offer up a big, loud “WHAT THE FUCK”. I love that Bobby simply watches like we do. Utterly bizarre - and what do we think of the Woman’s dialogue? Did it remind anyone else of “Around the dinner table, the conversation is lively”? It did for me, but it might mean nothing which is totally fine with me. I’m here for individual moments, and if by episode 18 i’m saying “Wait - what the fuck happened to the slime puking teen?”, that’ll be fine with me.

. Elsewhere in town, Hawk and Frank are planning their field trip to the black lodge. I hadn’t thought before of electricity being the modern version of fire because i’m a dumb asshole, but when Hawk says so it makes a lot of sense. Fire and Electricity seems to be the Uber of the spirit world. They use it to travel, as well as way that they harness their power. The thing we really want to know is the thing that Hawk tells Frank he doesn’t ever want to know about: that weird symbol that was on Doppelcoop’s playing card, and is on the top of Hawk’s map. Why does nobody ever say ‘actually, I really DO please’ when told ‘you don’t want to know’? I want to know!! And we get another touching call from Margaret, who tells us her log is afraid of fire (i’m still keen on the theory that her log contains the spirit of her husband - a logger who died in a fire) and that there is a fire where they’re going (hey! that’s the name of the show!). Her warnings are to be taken very seriously, and with how bleak this season can and has been, we should start preparing ourselves now for something bad to happen out in those woods to Hawk, Bobby and to a lesser extent, Frank. I am so excited about this storyline because I just want any excuse to see more of the woods and more of the black lodge.

. Let’s raise a toast to Matthew Fucking Lillard. Matthew Fucking Lillard. The longer I think about it, the more certain I am that he’s been my favourite performer this year so far, and I was saddened to see his head...uh...smashed off(?) tonight - in a manner that recalls how the heads of those lovers were smashed off by the box monster all those weeks ago. In an ensemble of hundreds, he truly stood out and made every moment he was on screen utterly riveting. And this scene is the most memorable of the night for me, while Cole’s deadpan of “He’s Dead” is the funniest line of the night.

There’s so much to unpack, but the image of Cole staring into a portal to another place is absolutely a standout moment. This place in South Dakota is another Glastonbury Grove (if we weren’t sure enough, it’s on Sycamore Street), and seeing Gordon begin to fade as he stands in the path of the portal really reminded me of Cooper descending into the Black Lodge at the end of Season 2. Also at the scene, we get a couple of woodsmen spirits standing on some stairs (which reminded me of the stairs in the Palmer household) inside the portal, as well as one very real woodsman who gives Bill Hastings’ head a cheeky little burst. It’s such a simple effect, but the fading in and out of the woodsmen deeply scares me. It’s so uncomfortable and dreamlike, and a neat way of hammering home that these things are not from our world. I don’t like how they sneak! And then they find Ruth Davenport’s corpse (Ruth, we hardly knew ye) with coordinates on her arm which will doubtlessly lead right back to Twin Peaks. It’s beginning to become clearer how the FBI will end up back in our favourite town, and Diane loses the trust of both us and Albert even more when she clearly mouths and memorises the co-ordinates written on Ruth’s arm. It’s hard to figure out at this stage just what is going on with her, but whatever the answer is, we’re likely to find out that she is in cahoots with some really bad eggs. This might lead her and the FBI on the path back to town, but it’s still vague as to how Coop will find himself back there. Speaking of Coop....

. I was really, really pleased with how his story developed tonight. He seemed a lot more lucid in this part, and seemed affected by his gentle knock-on-the-chin by his boss. And his final scene is monumental, but before I get to that let’s tackle...

. Those darn Mitchum brothers (a spinoff sitcom produced by Chuck Lorre?). Last week, I wrote that they weren’t my favourites and that i’d like their story to move at a pace quicker than Dougie eating pie. Tonight, perhaps because of the makeup of the episode, I enjoyed every moment with them and, yes, the story moves swiftly along. They make a really fun unit to watch bounce of each other, even if it is hard to reconcile that i’m praising the work of Jim Belushi and T-Bag from Prison Break (for the record, Robert Knepper is a great actor. Prison Break is not a great anything). Their scenes tonight developed their chemistry and personalities, and I liked seeing Brother Jim talking about his dreams (the work of someone in the black lodge?) - and the fact that he doesn’t want to kill Dougie if he “isn’t our enemy” was a nice touch. It highlights that there is an intelligence and even a tiny bit of humanity in him, and that he’s not as simple as a ruthless thug who’ll kill anyone he feels like. They may be a couple of bastards, but tonight I found them interesting and of a different breed to the typical tough-guy gangsters. Coop has brought them a cherry pie, as instructed by Mike via the Black Lodge. Brother Jim had a dream about a box with a cherry pie in it, and if its in there, ‘Dougie’ is not their enemy and they can’t kill him, he insists. And so Black Lodge spirits save Coop again! Again the question arises of why they want him alive, and why they need him to wake up. I’m still betting that it’s because they need Doppelcoop back in the black lodge, and that Coop waking up has something to do with Doppelcoop being sent back. We’re edging closer and closer, and it’s getting pretty damn exciting.

. And then the Mitchum brothers and Coop go for cherry pie! There are plentiful allusions to the past, and who Coop used to be, but he can’t get back. And in a sense, the show Twin Peaks cannot get back to what it used to be - and why should it need to? People have aged, actors have died, times have changed and the world is different now. The 1950′s aesthetics of chrome diners and cherry pies and colourful fashion were always a veneer that the show hid under. It was never about that, but instead about how a surface of gloss is wrapped over the ugliest crimes of humanity to make them more palatable. It is entirely possible to enjoy the aesthetics of the show (and honestly, everyone who loves Twin Peaks, me included, enjoys it), but it is important to remember that that’s not what the show is about. If anything it’s a pretty vicious critique of how false this aesthetic is, and about the damage done by ugliness being wrapped in a pretty package. And now, that pretty image isn’t as strong as it used to be. It’s not there because it never really was. Coop can (loudly) eat his cherry pie, he can even call it “Damn good”, but he’s been through too much now. He’s seen too much, and we have too. We can’t get back to the idealised version of Twin Peaks because Lynch and Frost have shown us that it isn’t real. Nostalgia might call us back to it, and we can fawn over images of the past and try to get that feeling back - the feeling Coop gets when he hears a pretty song, or sees a pair of red shoes - but it isn’t there for us anymore, and I think that’s what The Return has all been about. It’s not about going back and finding that everything is beautiful and exactly how you left it, but about the fruitless struggle of trying to recreate the past. Who knows - maybe by season’s end we’ll have a beautiful moment of Coop waking up, of order being restored and him enjoying a meal at the Double R. And if we get that, it will doubtlessly be stunning, and moving and haunting - because we will have the knowledge of what has happened. The pull between an idealised past and a cold, stark present is a powerful one, and the final scene of tonight’s episode conveys this masterfully. The song the pianist plays - which sounds quite a bit like Laura Palmer’s theme - is the past calling out to Coop, and he responds, as does the viewer on hearing it. Where it goes from here is impossible to predict, but this is a moment of real beauty that summarises the entire run thus far.

“If you put these two symbols together, you get this”

“Black Fire”

“Correct”

#twin peaks #twin peaks spoilers #twin peaks: the return #david lynch #dale cooper #TV

21 notes · View notes

elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

Text

12x23 watching notes

Sucks to be you lot, I got nearly a week less hiatus than you to think about this

(Oh god, hi it's Monday evening after the episode and I've finally made it through a day without a bizarre dizzy spell and limbs made of solid lead. Time to watch this >.>)

expectations: Mittens told me she loved it and she's my barometer so I'm tentatively hoping that it works :P

Also whatever happens, 13x04 or thereabouts is going to be a fucking Scooby Doo episode so there's no way literally anything happens here that won't be better in 4 episodes.

I feel like I don't any anything snarky OR clever to say about the opening montage, which is ominous. About my brain, I mean. Season 12 has been a wild ride.

It's also possible I entirely transcended after the hug in 12x22 and don't actually need anything from the show any more, like, Sam and Mary are happy, Dean's all better and so things will clearly eventually work out with Cas, like... I don't even need to see that to know it happens :P

(I mean I'd have HATED the show to end here because AAAH CAS but just assuming he's fine, this is how it goes now Dean's ticked "parent issues" off his emotional burden and is basically just left with "i'm gay for the angel help" on there :P)

CAS! Hello! He's enjoying the view of the lake.

Kelly gives us a fake-out "prayer" where it turns out she's blaspheming.

I would have no idea if this is important or not for later because even with 12x19's great work we really don't have a strong measure on Kelly as a character as we should have, except that she was originally devout or going along with being devout. She now thinks her baby is a God and if she's taking the original God aka Chuck's name in vain, then yeah. (Also important for Cas, I suppose considering his much more complicated personal relationship with Chuck aka God)

I like it because it makes her position in this all the more interesting because she seems to be asking for help but it turns out she is asking for the strength not to kill "Sven" and if she was really thinking she'd burn down an IKEA, that's using the nephilim's power for harm, because she's 110% capable of grabbing Cas, dragging him back to IKEA, and making him set the whole thing alight for her.

Since it's the opening line of the episode, the whole "not what it seems" element, especially showing her as vulnerable and devout, immediately re-casts her as angry and violent and blasphemous... Obviously it turns out to be on a hilarious level but like with many many things I talk about, the initial suggestion was an honest plea for help. And though it's subverted, what does it say about the actual relationship with God, and how she feels... I mean she was asking for help so that means she feels she doesn't need any help from GOD, just help from this Sven

Also the fact this means they went IKEA shopping is pretty hilarious to me all by itself because Cas and regular human activities. I would assume Cas is indulging her whims for the baby whether he thinks it will kill her to give birth or not, if he's mostly in control of his thought processes and is in general behaving like Cas except for the override switch being thrown on priorities.

Remember back in 12x17 where I was talking about how Kelly would be so much more interesting if Dagon had let her decorate a room in their abandoned hovel of the week? I would still have loved to have seen that version but once again Dabb and I are on a wavelength because there's no way this wasn't already in the pipeline when I was saying all that, so I imagine he got quite a kick out of reading it on my blog, knowing what was to come. I was even thinking she'd paint it yellow. Anywho, as I was saying there, the uncanny valley of making a beautiful baby room in such a location is beautifully jarring and creepy and everything about her trying to treat this as normal and to make the world ready for him in this very specific mundane way, when there is no way in a billion years she could make the world ready for him considering what he means to this world.

Oh no I hit play and Cas said he was good at following orders. I'm pretty sure that's the exact opposite of what he is, but he THINKS he is, or at least thinks that he was MADE to follow orders. Question that this episode may or may not answer: if a being is designed to be the perfect order-following drone, and then attempts IKEA furniture, will it succeed? More importantly, even if it's actually terrible at following orders when it's making emotional calls, will the simple morality-free consequences of building an IKEA thing make it easier and give it one easy thing to do in its life when it's never had it easy before to follow orders without making concerned calls of its own based on its better judgement, or will it somehow fuck up the furniture anyway because it thought there was a better way to do something?

Is this possibly a metaphor

Kelly is angry because she knows she's going to die and wants to teach the baby to ride a bike and get married... Look, you really have a skewed idea of what he's going to be ALLOWED to do. Even if he grows up at a normal speed, if he's left with his powers, I doubt he will ever have a free afternoon to learn to ride a bike in peaceful safety.

"I will give my life for your son. And I will raise him - " *pauses immediately to scowl at the blatant awful contradiction*

"- and I will make him someone you will be proud of"

the other thing is I just can't imagine Cas teaching anyone to ride a bike and I am not sure he has entirely thought this through, because I DO have absolute faith in Cas that if he was allowed and everything went in this saccarine way he would do his absolute best for the kid and raise him perfectly but dear god that means Cas will feel a burden like he has never felt before to learn how the hell to ride a bike and impart that knowledge to a kid on training wheels, and at this point we get so deep into an incongruous mental image I am pretty sure I'm imagining a total AU Cas

on the other hand several watching notes ago I visualised Cas's perfectly normal house in suburbia where he's hidden stuff like the demon tablet, first blade, and whatever the hell it was in season 12 that made me conjure this image up in the first place, and now I think Cas would obviously move the kid there to grow up, and the fact that he hasn't yet is probably mostly because he's a little nervous about what would happen if a nephilim touched the demon tablet.

see there's a secret continuity to these notes

The other thing that makes me convinced the baby will not be allowed to live a normal life is not because its powers are too great to be left alone but because if it's with Cas, he's such a fucking beacon of madness and drama from the rest of the world that he'd have that baby in a baby pouch on his chest, running around smiting stuff, all year long :P Again, getting to the point of a ridiculously incongruent mental image.

This world is engineered towards freedom, not peace, and Cas was the one who by being bad at following orders, made sure it was so. Now he more than anyone pays the price for that

Omg talk about multi-layered. Dean telling Mary about how Crowley is so hard to kill he's like a cockroach, and he'll believe it himself when he sees the body, and burns it. Obviously you got salt n burn of a bad guy, and hunter's funeral of someone he cares about. Which would he give Crowley? All surface stuff Dean wants to indicate at this point is that Crowley's an idiot who somehow got tangled up in Lucifer again and made him their problem, AGAIN, and basically he has no reason to admit his fondness for the King of Hell to his mom who barely gets the situation, and Sam who mocks him about the summer of love at any given opportunity but still probably doesn't *get* what that was for Dean, and really doesn't like Crowley all that much, still, after all this time.

It belatedly occurs to me that Sam forcing out a thanks he mostly means but hates saying to Crowley in 12x15 was a lot like Dean trying to thank Ruby in 4x09 and knowing he actually is sort of grateful but you know... not pleased about her one bit :P

*interlude that allows me to hit the 5 minute mark as we recap Crowley not being dead* He mimics Dean in 4x01 crawling out of his grave, with rather less bizarre sex appeal.

(... I have no idea but Jensen Ackles can make literally anything sexy.)

Also the music is clearly making a mockery of him doing that, like, it's just too overdramatic, while with 4x01 of course the whole thing was treated with the respect and importance it deserved. If Dean had resurrected with the exact same motions it would have been a comedy

I dislike the five minute mark intensely.

I'm just going to assume she'll resurrect herself quietly without a fuss once Lucifer's gone, and go hide out until this is all over, maybe do that spell to punt herself back to the 1400s like she wanted to in 11x22

Hope she has fun on a second time over.

And avoids literally all of this crap

There's a diamond-ish pattern on the wall in the room - fancier than normal diamonds because Lucifer isn't just a regular demon >.>

Oh dear he's waving around Rowena's voodoo doll now. The big black heart patch is even more relevant.

You know I think Sam is genuinely mourning Rowena, all his expected Lucifer panic aside

This place Cas and Kelly are holed up in really really looks like places I saw in Scotland when I was visiting. I may be mourning Rowena.

As I was saying to Mittens I think 12x13 is supposed to be the episode that tied up all their ends and should have been her true farewell episode wrapping up all the MacLeod family drama which truly started in 9x21 shortly before Rowena was introduced in season 10... Buuut they made such a hodge podge of the story I can't even remember without checking what else was in it except for 3 brief interludes about Kelly, which was nowhere near enough to rob all the time from Gavin and Rowena getting a good story, so... I'm confuzzled.

Meanwhile, Cas is being Cas about childrearing. He says everyone poops but HE doesn't poop - the baby may poop if it's more human in physiology, but that's not actually a 50 50 chance if it turns out to be more angel than not, and it's certainly so powerful what's left for the human side of it... i guess except for pooping, until it's old enough to have actual working empathy and reason to discover if it's got free will and compassion

It did something to the truck through Kelly but to my great disappointment there's no Dabb vs cars pay off and it makes the truck magic. It just briefly holds the power until they're not looking, then it dribbles out and floats off to cause trouble elsewhere

"Lucifer's right," Dean says, and probably sacrifices like 3 sanity points to say it (we're doing Call of Cthulu this rewatch instead of D&D I guess?)

It's a fair point that they're really playing on the wrong board here; they can deal with a human problem like the BMoL. A little blood and tears, but they conquered it and the 3 of them solved their family drama and everything's right again. (I assume someone gave Mary the "It's okay you were brainwashed when you killed all those people, it totally doesn't count" speech)... But yeah they don't know how to find Lucifer, their plan is a vague "find Cas" and Dean seems to be relying on making Cas do what they want (he's good at following orders >.>) rather than wrangling the larger problem. Sam says they can hopefully siphon off the baby's grace but if not... they find something else, again, vague and again, no resources to do it - to be clear, they have at the moment, no way to find Cas, no way to kill Lucifer, and no way to deal with the baby if their desperate way doesn't work, and dealing with Cas is a pretty desperate option too, to make him do something when again Dean said "Team Free Will" to him last time they had a real talk, and, yeah.

"I always wanted to punch the devil in the face" I love Mary Winchester

I didn't pause in time to tell Cas not to touch the creepy line of power that came from his truck. I assume he's been transported to an alternate dimension that is loosely connected to his truck. Spiritually, perhaps.

Buffy style demons?

I did not expect to be at this moment as soon as we are. Seemed like a last 3rd of the episode thing, after shit had gone down, but Cas has been thrown into angry truck verse too soon.

I also thought it would be pretty random but I didn't expect HOW random and you know how I said a while back Dabb era is totally random and it's so hard to guess anything that happens because he will just be like "Lol whatever if it gets where we want to go" - this is why I hate speculating this season :P Certain things happen *exactly* on cue and others are like, Cas probably ought not to be around for this part, let's just... put him over here

Kelly to Jack - "you have an angel watching over you!" yeah like that's not already the most corrupt phrase on the show since Mary said it to her own pregnant tummy in 5x13 right when Michael had just happened to Dean (and prompted the saying of "team free will" in the first place. I've been ironically using it as my Mary & her sons (and step son) dynamic tag all season because of that - to refer to the cosmic fuckedupness of their backstory with angels, Mary's attitude towards her boys, their feelings towards her (re: 2x13 and how DEAN felt about Mary encapsulated in that comment and how Sam was left out because he didn't know anything about Mary) and of course the fact they obtained an actual angel to watch over them who is awesome at watching over them and caring about them like Mary always wanted, and Dean was so upset she said but she DIED and he had no faith and angels weren't even real and -

okay when I said the Winchesters were done with their story, the "and Cas" dynamic completely changes the emotional stuff they need to address and I was being pretty flippant about Dean swapping that to making out with Cas, but essentially, yeah. Kelly is showing that this exact thing is still a narratively relevant thing after Dean got some core, childhood trauma level catharsis out of Mary finally, dealing with the absolute baseline of their relationship.

This is still to go, I guess, because Kelly saying this shows there's still some fucked up stuff the Winchesters have to deal with, and faith and angels and is a shared nightmare of a family therapy session for this squad.

Ahahaha Dean's reactions are great. Just punch Crowley in the face and have a knife out in moments.

And yeah Crowley deserves that. As I said somewhere ELSE in my notes over the season, Dean had one lie left to discover, after everyone else lied to him in the second half of the season and he discovered it.

(everyone except Rowena *sobs*)

Sam remains beautifully in character re: killing Crowley. Dean definitely seems like he will but then in 12x19 he packed an angel blade to go yell at Cas. Not sure what level of mad and betrayed those two things compare like but Crowley's already on a barely tolerated frenemies list when Dean isn't compromised by the whole summer of love thing and it's pretty easy to forget that when Crowley let out Lucifer.... So yeah he's got a lot more to be worried about than Cas :P

Crowley admits he kept Lucifer out of the cage because he wanted to win - belatedly giving us the exact same motivations as Cas doing all the betraying and getting dragged off by the nephilim

We very belatedly get to the part of Crowley's arc where he voices he really really hates running hell. I mean, Dabb wrote 6x04 where Crowley was immediately displeased with doing the job because he couldn't trust anyone else to do it (the sort of people who want to run hell are... pretty volatile. And the ecosystem only supports one Crowley type personality doing well there :P) He says being in the rat made him realise he hated it, but it's been clear since season 10 that this is where it was all going for Crowley, another plot thing that got dragged out (and is filed under my lesser complaint that they didn't know what to do with him at the end of the season just like Cas because they both ended up having such a weird non-role in the end of the season...)

Anyway I suppose we're getting back to that, while Cas has been on a much more well developed emotional journey since the start of season 11 so it's less like he's just been on ice :P

And Crowley bargains with closing the gates of hell, because I guess all our talk about how season 8 was all over the place with the killing hellhounds thing and nephilim and all that... It was enough to actually prompt someone to ask me if Crowley could I think, so kudos that anon if I'm not imagining it. I remember saying somewhere or other that Crowley could shut the gates of hell in an afternoon if he was fully in control of Hell because he'd have all the resources available to him. Including someone to do the trials for him so he doesn't have to die for it :P I doubt he'll get a chance to actually do this, but it's nice to have a reminder, if only to bring to the surface that this has been the theme all year.

I feel like the weird spiky realm that looks freakishly expensive to film will probably be the realm we have to worry about though :P

*Kelly wanders around looking for Cas, also concerned about him*

He's back! And he immediately lies about what happened to him, probably not to worry her, but... Yeah, something happened. Whoever he met there, he's back and not commenting, so he's either alive and fine despite everything, or being impersonated.

I guess it just wants to open a portal to a dimension of weird spiky demons because why not. Kelly's labour pains are stressing the portal Cas went through, so assume birth is going to tear it open and birth a whole bunch of spiky demons on this realm to go along with the nephilim.

If anything goes remotely predictably.

Is Crowley about to lampshade how boring 12x08 was?

"Is this what you do when I'm not here? Type?"

You know, I don't think Dabb likes sitting through Buckleming episodes any more than we do.

Uhoh, weirdness in the Pacific Northwest.

Look I spent the entire time I was facedown in a load of cushions between these episodes airing and now watching most of Twin Peaks in one go.

I also caught MORE than enough references back to it from other episodes in Supernatural to be confident that Robbie, Dabb and Edlund have been going around quoting it all the time in their episodes since the start, so there's that. :P

Oh no Cas is using "James Novak" to rent the house. I suppose everyone who cares about Jimmy is at peace now but it still makes me weird to think about how that's still legally who he is as long as he keeps hold of stuff like Jimmy's driving licence and for all we know life savings

"It's about time," Crowley says, still lampshading how boring 12x08 was.

Cas is being really sweet. He took a class online to help him help Kelly give birth. He's like... the nicest guy ever

I don't think he's quite twigged that humans have no idea how to do half this stuff either from a standing start... unwittingly walking the path of the expecting father without knowing everyone freaks out this much without the whole "helping give birth to a nephilim in the shack in the woods with no medical professionals around" side

Yeah the glowy thing is still there Cas... Still not telling her about it, I see. She's as they think going to be dead in 12-18 hours anyway so no point worrying her about the fact the birth of her son is opening a portal to this-world's-hell-isn't-actually-scary-anymore

"Thank you, for everything." "of course"

*generic exchange from the Destiel playbook*

He tells her a bedtime story of his vision of the Future, reminding us with the visual of the nephilim's power creeping up his arm and taking over his eyes - and she grabs his hand again. A world without pain or hunger or want. Sounds... a bit unrealistic as he gets to a world without fear or suffering or hate - he saw paradise, which is confirming he's doing the same thing as Mary with the "world without monsters" mantra that nearly was her total undoing. He's got a world without suffering, just the same deal, on a bigger scale. I love love love how he's the centre of everything - Mary sharing one side, Crowley using the same story about wanting a win in his own selfish way, and Cas in the centre with the much more deep, complex story going on utilising all of this.

Nyooom

Cas knows that motor anywhere

Oh dear he has his angel blade out to meet them

"Dean." (Mary and Sam also walk into the hall)

Sam does eventually take the lead on telling Cas they seriously need to worry about Lucifer right now - a shared thing between them, I guess. Dean and Cas are hostile but Sam moves around to stand behind Cas. Dean says they'll work through their crap later because they always do. Accepting that fights are transient parts of being a couple (uh, family) and obviously they might be mad at each other now but that doesn't mean an end to it.

*Cas angrily heals Dean's knee and I'm sad he didn't grab his knee but amused at how pissed off Cas was because he was never not going to heal Dean when he saw he was hurt but he doesn't have to be happy about it*

Sam takes the time to wander further into the house and Cas has to chase after him to defend the odd garden feature from him

Too late.

Oh dear it's a tear in space and time. is it showing the future that will happen if the nephilim is born and that's what Cas has been seeing despite describing paradise to Kelly?

Aww it's just an alternate dimension.

Sam and Dean relate to this because they remember The French Mistake. Oh dear. :P I never thought that would get mentioned again.

"How did this get here?" Asking the real questions, Sam. You know, after the deviation to reminisce fondly about 6x15 while staring at a hole in the fabric of reality.

Cas tells them they don't want to know what's on the other side, but Dean says they need to. You can't just hide things from someone because you don't want to worry them, especially when it's staring them in the face with a great big glowy rip in reality.

Oh, it's daytime now. Guess it runs backwards to their world with timezones.

Cas has to defend that he thinks it's perfectly okay to hang out here because the nephilim opened the portal and will close it again and he has faith. Dean is like !?!?!? okay no??

Calls him a dumbass again

hey it's the guy from the 2 in 1 promo. C'mon, turn out to be Garth with padding.

Fuckin knew it

Go a year without seeing that face on our screens? Never.

Also let me just rewind and yell about Cas calling him a friend and Dean being grumpy about Cas having friends but listen, Cas and Bobby is the best and truest friendship on the show shut your mouth Dean.

you know technically Bobby is "garth with padding" in the sense that Garth metaphorically took over his role after his death, while being a lanky guy.

I'm calling that a win.

Correction: beret!bobby. He's awesome.

Making up for being killed off-screen in the opening of Endverse

I love how Sam and Dean keep on trying to make Bobby know who they are even after Cas keeps on trying to explain that he has no idea who they are

You know Cas seeing a world that Sam and Dean never saved while he's currently helping the nephilim be born in a way that is utterly terrifying for the fabric of their reality should probably make him a lot more nervous, but he's fine because he has faith

for Sam and Dean, it's a different thing to see altogether, because sure they get they saved the world and they didn't NEED to see how awful it would be without them to know they did a good thing. But Dean literally just made peace with Mary over this and Sam seemed to as well although honestly he's been going along with it all so much as it happens maybe he needs a great big set piece to see all this and muse on how their lives changed the world because it gives him a very external way to see and process that Mary's deal may have sucked for them personally, and kinda damned him for a little while etc etc Dean gave her the sob story on Sam's behalf last episode, but if he was ever going to have a similar way to be at peace with Mary compared to Dean getting the personal one, it's revisiting the early seasons Kripke Era mytharc and asking what would have happened if it hadn't happened.

Ironically in 4x03 Cas sets Dean on his little quest to silently observe everything with "you have to stop it" but if anything his actions set things in motion and averted this world... Quite a self-fulfilling prophecy that Heaven and Hell were so obsessed with the bloodlines and the prophecy and the blah blah blah that they managed to avert the apocalypse by trying to make it happen.

Blah blah nothing we didn't already know with Mary and Kelly although nice they're talking female character to female character >.>

Getting a bit worried they were like omg Lucifer's coming and then Sam and Dean and Cas all go have a vacation elsewhere and leave Mary alone to defend Kelly. I suppose we know Cas comes back because there was the promo scene with him kissing Kelly on the forehead presumably as she's dying but I didn't analyse the video very much at ALL so I can't really remember what else we haven't seen as we've now seen all the bits I think anyone was yelling about and forcing our attention to

Bobby called his gun Rufus :')

It's angel killing bullets. :O Dean is like "awesome" and Cas side-eyes him with the best side-eyes Cas has had in years like, I was SHOT with one of those, you dick.

I don't think Mary's going to keep the hand :P

Oh they made it back.

"Are you alright?" Cas immediately asks Dean, personally, if he's alright and Dean's like "NO" and his voice creaks as he describes being trapped between Lucifer and Mad Max

"I don't even know where to start!" yep still on with that theme from earlier. They've been witnesses all year, really - just showing up in episodes as events unfold, and they really, really haven't had a handle on stuff. Even the BMoL situation played out in such a way that Mary killed Ketch and Jody killed Dr Hess and Ketch killed Mick and Toni, and Mary killed that awesome lady who attacked them at the start of the season - whether it's the brothers specifically not being allowed to kill too many humans too causally on screen or what, combined with being witnesses to round after round of the Lucifer thing, the only "win" they thought they got was banishing him, and Crowley fucked that up too so no wonder Dean hit him

Oh he's back

hi crowley

"Turns out I'm the answer to all your problems"

(did they seriously think he couldn't get out of being pinned to a table with a knife and no other restraints? I mean it HURTS but it doesn't actually incapacitate him from doing stuff like... pulling the knife out...)

Anyway didn't we have some speculation Crowley was maybe going to dramatically hero moment the day?

(Ah maybe something silly I was saying to Mittens in 12x08 when I was joking about what could possibly happen next with the vague teasing that something ridiculous was about to happen)

Kelly and Mary are now BFFs and Mary is unwittingly Kelly's hand holding friend through this. I suspect this is just to tie up some things about all the Dagon and Mary as parallel mothers that was going on at some point in 12x17 or 12x19 when she was villain monologuing

Is Cas going to tell her that her son is opening holes in reality? Or just whatever the plan is Crowley showed up with

Dean has the pre-drama chat with Sam about having faith in their family. Weirdly includes Crowley in that too despite almost killing him earlier, and adds a "sometimes" - he's got used to rely on Crowley to want to save his own bacon via using them and incidentally saving THEIR bacon enough times it almost looks like friendship :P

(Also... summer of love.)

You know it was totally sweet in context where Cas kissed her on the head. Definitely nothing to actually be concerned about in this episode - the whole opening was so funny and cute with guardian angel plays at being dad but the fact he was doing it AS a guardian angel was very very clear

Anyway Lucifer showed up

Sam makes a bizarre out of left field play telling Lucifer that Chuck wouldn't allow him to do whatever he wants to do, though 12x07 had Lucifer's big meltdown (literally) in front of them about how abandoned and miserable he felt. Not sure if this is part of the plan or Sam's buying for time hoping to get him ranting again.

(I mean. Lucifer is ranting again so.)

If there IS a random Chuck and Lucifer second attempt at reconciliation at this point I wouldn't put it past Dabb although not currently sure what part that plays. Chuck did choose these losers to defend the planet on his behalf after all

You know, Lucifer thinks this world sucks. A very obvious solution is just to let him chase them around the house, then someone kick him into that portal right before Jack closes it, if he is indeed going to do that

"Apocalypse take two. That's your plan." "When in doubt, go with the classics" You know, Lucifer, did you ever ask what happened to your brother Raphael?

Cas. Cas happened to him.

Anyway part of the great season 6 redux. How does it go this time? Well there's a lake literally right there and a portal full of nasties, and Bobby did some basic lore info on them so I have to assume it's not totally random what was through there, but at least SOME of it is going to be a problem for them next year

"See you on the other side" yeah that's... a thing that Dean said

LOL Dean and Sam turn and leg it around the house

*glances at Dabb* I worry about how much I think like him sometimes.

They lure Lucifer in out of curiosity. It's power, he's interested, and... I really hope Bobby kills him

"You wanted the apocalypse, you got it" this honestly seems like almost a kind way to retire Lucifer without killing him. Just shove him in a world even worse than endverse and let him have a crack at things where he's not the biggest fish in town and has some catching up to do

Dean gets to shoot Lucifer a billion times with an assault weapon because, well, he already shot the grenade launcher today, he needs something more fun to do now

Oh dear, now he's out of bullets

Lucifer really likes puching Dean in the face. He probably still feels he owes him some more face punches since 5x22

Dean is happy to volunteer his face up as a distraction, at least because Lucifer won't kill him instantly because he prefers punching Dean and making it slow...

Oh wow gee doing a spell that seals the rift needs someone to stick around and -

not just do it, a life apparently. Uh, Crowley... Are you gonna do this just to spite Lucifer?

Sam and Dean employ the tactic of running away again

Lucifer teases Crowley for wanting to make it personal by not locking him away in the cage and just ending it when it should have ended.

I think personal spite is going to play a biiit of a role here :P

*Crowley villain monologues like a champion*

Time go, Sam and Dean

"Bye, boys"

BYE CROWLEY

Maybe

for now anyway

The MacLeod Family Drama definitely ended this season anyway - I do think 12x13 ought to have been a showstopper of an episode with all their laundry aired and stuff to make it fair, and of course to have resolved the time travel nonsense better

but anyway, I think Rowena and Mary have a huge thematic overlap for what they do for Dean and Crowley - it did resolve Crowley's emotional arc in a way where rounds of villainy and winning/losing could be an eternal pattern with the Winchesters. Even if it ended badly it still ENDED and they all came to a point where there was closure of some sort. And Crowley is still the dark mirror to all this, and same for Rowena, even if she also softened to the Winchesters in the last season. (And Sam softened enough to Crowley to say thank you to him - him getting the hug and thank yous was a real doom :P)

*a lot of things happen very quickly to which my reaction is just ????*

I suppose Cas either had no idea what was going on and charged in to save the day when it took too long, or the nephilim sent him in to kill Lucifer because why not. Mary just got knocked out and Kelly's glowing

I kind of feel this is Cas wanted to be there because the writing moved him there

CAS

Oh my fucking god remember how terrified I was last episode of Jody standing with her back to the open door because the same thing happened to that random hunter?

ALSO I tried to rewatch the season before I got sick and everything ground to a halt and all these episodes suddenly happened, and the opening road so far recapping 11 had that random angel who died and looked like Cas in the promo for 11x09 and freaked everyone out and it looked pretty much exactly like this, so if you can somehow retain the entire season in your head, uuh

Fuckin Dabb era fucking - GAH

Did Lucifer really just growl at Mary

Brass knuckles! Work on angels too

Repeating 12x01 where Ms Watt (rememebred her name) was so badass and unstoppable with them and kicked their butts until Mary stopped her. Mary is the unstoppable force

Oh didn't want to see a random shot of dead cas not thinking about that lalalala

We forgot Adam

Lucifer didn't

*swan songs Mary out of there*

Technically Michael did that to HIM but I guess flippy flippy everything's reversed, Mary's going to the reverse verse anyway

Dabb era is freaking inside out

Run, Mary.

Okay I can see what they said about Purgatory, but that is a reverse of it completely, Mary alone in a hostile land but with Lucifer instead of how Dean was with Cas, and whatever they were in season 7 and however it looked like Cas flapped off and abandoned him at the end, he wouldn't be a threat to him

Sam sees the light is flashing in the house as Jack is being born, Dean is a bit distracted looking at Cas in a way that made my brain ache so much I saw stars and had to pause

I drank half a bottle of water and hit play and I mostly screamed at Mittens about the following succession of events in incoherent caps but my conclusion is, that long shot of Dean having fallen to his knees then falling to sit down in despair looking up while right beside Cas and we have wings and... yeah that is the Worst Shot On The Entire Show and will never ever ever be topped by anything they ever do ever again. I have seen the image that my Hell will be wallpapered with.

I didn't even believe in Hell until just now :P

Anyway Sam has stuff to worry about

Hey look Kelly put herself to rest except for the open eyes

bye bye

now where's the baby

Oh look it has adult sized feet

Is Sam ending the season in a room with a crib because yiiikes Dabb. Yikes. Jack is after all metaphorically connected to him strongest of anyone because of the whole original Sam arc that this season has been aaaaaaaaall about

Yeah he's ending the season in a room with a giant naked baby with yellow eyes huddling by its crib

Anyway what the fuck.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

I don't like being in hiatus with you all it was actually nice being horrifically ill and binge watching Twin Peaks.

#12x23 #my stuff #Dabb vs cars #Dabb vs everything #Dabb like I'll kick your butt I'll kick your mums butt I'll kick my OWN butt #ow

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orionsangel86 · 7 years

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12x11 Episode Review - What a Ride That Was!

Having just completed my second watch of this episode I have to say I am slightly stunned. I guess the best way to put it is ‘not what I expected’. But then what did I really expect? I was expecting pain, heartbreak, drama, interspersed with some humour and a big “no homo” scene to counteract last episode. I was expecting some dudebro Dean to appease certain types of viewer, along with a nice helping of deep subtext into Dean analysis for us to eat up that would go straight over that type of viewers head. I was certainly not expecting… Larry.

I haven’t looked at tumblr yet, except to glance at my askbox. I assume that you are all suitably going mad over Larry. Over the implications of Larry. Over the sheer insanity of the episodes biggest innuendo fuelled moments and probably laughing about it. I expect a hundred gifsets. I want to reblog those gifsets. I am also sure that Larry has already been meta’d to death… But what’s the harm in a little more meta to add to the massive pile gonna do? Because I wanna meta the FUCK out of Larry.

But there is a lot more to this episode than just Larry. We did get heartbreak. We did get drama and we did get some really nice character moments. Rowena particularly was amazing this episode (who am I kidding though she is always amazing) and I loved learning more about her thoughts. Overall I think it was entertaining, though not one of the best episodes, but that could be because the writing was a bit sloppy and sometimes the story didn’t make sense. I’ll get to why in a bit. Let’s just say that Meredith Glynn isn’t my favourite of the new writers by any means. I didn’t even review The One You’ve Been Waiting For because I didn’t feel particularly inspired by it at all.

But having said that she gave us Larry, and for that I will forever be thankful… even if she didn’t intend for us to take it the way I have (and I am guessing most of you reading this have too).

Anyway, main points to take away under the cut:

Regarding Dean

Obviously the main point of the episode was to delve a little further into Dean’s head and explore a very unconventional and unexpected fear. The fear of losing ones memory is actually horrifying. It is even more horrifying because this is something that the majority of us will have had at least some experience being first hand witnesses to. I am of course talking about dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. My grandmother had it, and in the later days when she didn’t even know who we were it was completely heart breaking. The fact that this is something that many of us fear as we get older is something that certainly wouldn’t be lost on the creators of this show, and with many many references in the later seasons to Dean’s getting older (including one in this episode) it is quite a fitting topic to explore. What if he doesn’t go out with a ‘bang’ the Hunter way? What if they do both end up in the Lebanon retirement home where Mildred currently hangs out enjoying sunsets? What if Alzheimer’s becomes an actual legitimate fear for them? This is most definitely the episode that Jensen talked about at a recent con that explores a very big fear. Because this fear is huge and very prevalent in society. It also makes me think of the film The Notebook and how that story deals with a loved one having to watch the person they care about most in the world forget all about them. (FYI I have never been able to sit all the way through that film without crying even though I usually despise sappy love stories).

Dean’s whole existence in this show revolves around his love for his family. The found family that he keeps close by that is. Sam and Cas and now Mary are his world, losing that would utterly destroy Dean. It is why that scene in front of the mirror is so so heartbreaking to watch. Next to Larry, it is the most memorable moment. Though I do think that the deeper themes and meanings to this particular MOTW story were a bit lost in all of the lighter humour. Hence why I said I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing. It could have gone deeper, it didn’t quite reach the impact that Yellow Fever had even though it tried very hard to pay homage to it.

Starting at the beginning then, Dean wakes up after being wammied by some mysterious witchy guy with a bunny rabbit by his side. I don’t get the point of the rabbit at all. I’ll be honest. It was completely non relevant to the plot. I thought at first that maybe the witch had turned himself into a rabbit but it was literally there for us to all “aww” over. For that reason though, have a pic:

Awwwwwwwwwwwww so CUTE!

It was interesting that this scene came so shortly after the “then” sequence which included a young and much less gruff voiced Dean saying ““Why does a rabbit always get screwed in the deal? Poor little guy”. Have we had many other rabbit references in this show? I don’t think so… except maybe Bugs Bunny in Hunteri Heroici which immediately brings Cas to mind “So we are dealing with some insect-rabbit hybrid?” Though this episode does also feature a character happily watching cartoons so maybe the connection there is totally valid. Rabbits are also a symbol of fertility, spring, new birth and most obviously sex. In an episode absolutely chocablock with innuendo. That is also an interesting point. Though I have no idea how to connect it to anything else so I am just throwing all this stuff out there for you guys to pick at. By all means tell me if you have any ideas!

Dean losing his means of communication means reaching out to people in other ways… A lady with a pram comes by and rejects him as a bum. Gives him money instead of even trying to listen. A guy comes along with a dog (our famous white dog whose name I can’t remember) and gives Dean his attention… before doing some stretches, jogging on the spot and wiggling his hips. (I found this guys movement kinda um… suggestive when considered in the context of the rest of this fucking episode). Without going into too much detail here, I just thought I’d point out that Dean is rejected by the woman and child (traditional family) but accepted by the guy with the dog. Because of course he fucking is.

The waffle house brings us our first promo scene, but knowing the context now makes it so much clearer. I was guilty of making assumptions. Just like Sam does. Thinking that Dean went out, got drunk, had a one night stand… he did no such thing. The promo mislead us and I think it did so deliberately. It is getting clearer and clearer all the time that that version of Dean that Rowena so kindly spells out later in the episode “manners of a Neanderthal and the dining habits of a toddler” the “season 1” version of Dean, if you like, just isn’t the guy we see on our screen anymore. We aren’t getting these moments anymore. Have we even seen the Asian porn yet this season? Personally I hope it never makes another appearance.

Sam’s comment “Dean, you’ve had a good run, but maybe lets pump the breaks a little bit I mean you’re not 20 anymore…” is pretty much what I was thinking the whole promo. The waitress is far too young for him, that kind of behaviour fooling around in bars just isn’t really any kind of behaviour for a man his age, and in an episode with a heavy underlying theme that could easily be compared to the worst potential problems that come with growing older I don’t think it was accidental.

“I would be dead okay, I wouldn’t be Dory.”

“Dory?”

“Not gonna apologise for loving that fish. Not to you, not to anyone”.

I love that we have yet another thing to add to the list of things that Dean Winchester loves that don’t fit in with his macho image. This is wonderful. Dean likes Disney films. This is canon. If he can admit to loving that fish, this means that at times he will go out and watch Disney films and get excited about them and actually have strong feelings about them. Now I am totally headcanoning that he forces Cas to watch them with him and I BET that Cas’s favourites are The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Why I hear you ask? Because they would resonate with him. If you don’t get it, rewatch those movies from a destiel perspective.

“smooth like a Ken doll” This is the second time the show has compared Dean to a Ken doll. Probably just a tease at Jensen Ackles very perfect features, but I keep thinking about Ken from Toy Story 3 and after the Finding Nemo/Dory reference a moment ago I think it is valid. Ken in Toy Story 3 had a very... um... loud personality.

The cowboy bar… How do I even BEGIN to meta the cowboy bar? All I can say was this seems like the kind of place that Gabriel would send Dean in fanfiction to work on his gay panic before ultimately hooking up with Castiel.

The third place they come to (and I’ll talk about Sam’s lack of Dean knowledge a bit later) and the first thing we see is a shot of:

Well that’s a rather large phallic object hanging over the Winchesters heads! Yeah this is totally Dean’s kind of place. He does have a cowboy fetish after all. This sign also caught my eye:

Because Chuck is certainly off having some “R&R” right now with his sis… It also seems to be the kind of place that Chuck would have hung out in his stint living on earth… ya know, playing his music, since there is clearly a stage set up with band equipment, picking up girls… and guys. Like we are ever gonna forget that GOD in the Supernatural universe is bisexual.

Lets talk about Larry

Consider this a sub point to my “regarding Dean” point because it all technically falls under the same category.

“he’d ordered burgers to go, it was gonna be a minute, we were slammed, then you knocked back four shots of tequila? Put some “sick jams” on the juke and then you hit the bull.”

“oh yeah, you had the hots for larry as soon as you walked in”.

Now, there is innuendo, and then there is this line. Why give the mechanical bull a guys name? Specifically so you can make this into one big innuendo. This entire scene is about Dean riding dick. I’m sorry, deny it all you like but that’s the joke. That’s the bottom line (pun unintentional until reread then found hilarious). On checking my ask box yesterday once I first watched the episode this is what I got:

Thanks guys by the way for sending these. I am with you. Consider this review your asks answered if that’s okay (I’m being lazy because I still have a load of asks to answer and I have no idea when I’ll get to em). So Dean rode Larry. Haha. It gets brought up again later in the episode by Sam when he is trying to tease Dean about it. What I am interested in is Dean’s reaction. When Sam first asks “You rode Larry?” Dean hesitates, but he isn’t embarrassed. Yeah he’s still hexed at this point and regressing but he doesn’t get defensive about it. Just asks if he was good. This is then revisited later on once Dean is cured “I can’t believe you rode Larry” and Dean’s only defence is “I was awesome on that Bull… like a God.” Which is also a call back to Chuck again, in the bar that had a Chuck sign and really did seem to be Chuck’s kind of place… Is Dean like God? Well yes. For one thing they are both bisexual.

Perhaps mechanical bullriding isn’t seen as homoerotic in the kind of places where you would actually get mechanical bullriding. It could even be considered as a very macho thing to be able to “tame the bull”. But the way the episode frames it… the way they shove the innuendo at us over and over again. It is intentionally played out to be a gay joke. What I can’t decide is whether or not this is the creators joking along with us or whether they are doing it to take the piss. There is a level of regression here back to the pre carver era spn where the gay jokes were rife and not ever really taken seriously. Dean’s subtextual bisexuality used to be a joke in the show. It hasn’t been framed as a joke since pre season 8 and yet I can’t help but wonder if this new writer hasn’t yet got with the programme. Because Dean’s bisexuality is not a joke. Especially when this episode is framed by two very Cas heavy episodes, the first of which was loaded with destiel subtext that was deep, meaningful and very very serious. Looking at the promo for next episode, I have a feeling that we are only going to get more of that. So why sandwich a Dean episode full of gay jokes in between two Cas episodes full of serious destiel heavy storyline? If their intention was to make it into a joke again, they have failed. Because when taken with 12x10, the humour is stripped away and what is left is the viewer wondering whether Dean really does have a hankering for dick? Specifically Castiel’s. I know that my language here is very blunt. I also know that the chances are this review could find its way to some antis who would like to take the piss out of this… but seriously? Go ahead. Try. With the show playing up to the things we like, and with very little “no homo” moments to counteract it, I don’t see how you can view this any other way than the way we do.

Dean left Sam, went to this specific bar, had some Dutch courage and rode the bull. He also flirted with a waitress but that never went very far. His main concern was how good he was with Larry…How good his riding skills were… and spoiler alert… he was awesome.

(yes nonny - Dean could totally ride dick like a porn star. This is now true. Since we have seen him in action with our own eyes. Its not like most of those ‘Larry riding’ shots at the end even had the bull in them. It was all Dean from the waist up just having the time of his life and going up and down... up and down... like this wasn’t subtle. This totally wasn’t subtle.)

I also need to point out that all this happened before Dean got hexed. This was all Dean Winchester. This wasn’t performing Dean. The Dean who puts on a mask which half the time seems to be specifically for Sam. Nope. This was Dean as himself, the same Dean that owns booty shorts, likes ballet and has a thing for Dr Sexy.

The moment that the waitress says “you were…amazing” can be taken as the “no homo” to the Larry narrative of course. The way she says those words can easily be taken to be a comment on Dean’s sexual prowess. But its only there to cover up the underlining sexual nod to Dean’s “amazing” ability to ride the bull. The bull being called ‘Larry’ and therefore along with all the other phallic references this is, as I said previously, all one big “Dean rides dick” joke. And I can’t actually fucking believe the show did that.

Actually that’s a lie. I fucking well can. They have been flirting with this idea of Cas being a top and Dean being a bottom for AGES but THIS takes the biscuit.

So Dean rides dick. Thanks for confirming bottom!Dean show. Great job.

I wonder if even this went over poor ‘innocent’ Jensen Ackles head… Is he Charlton Heston? REALLY? Or is he 100% on board with this because how can you possibly act this out. INCLUDING THAT RIDICULOUS MONTAGE AT THE END and NOT see it? You do realise how fandom is gonna take this Jensen? You do realise this will probably DOUBLE the number of destiel fics where Dean is happily riding Cas’s dick all night long?!? (as a disclaimer here that is not what destiel fic is all about but there is still a lot of smut out there so I feel like the show is only encouraging this) (on the other hand I expect to find 20 12x11 coda’s on my dash where Dean goes home, finds Cas, tells him about Larry and how he wants to “show Cas his skills” *nudge nudge wink wink* and Cas will be like “oh. yes please!” and yeah... that happens. That totally happens.)

The other takeaway from this scene so loaded with meta potential is the waitress’s explanation of what happened. Because it seems weird and makes no sense. The question I’m sure a lot of people will be asking is Did Dean sleep with the waitress? But when you consider her explanation of what happened, how could he possibly have?

Ooh I actually got an ask about this too:

She said they were slammed, Dean had to wait for his burgers, hence he had time for 4 shots of tequila and a ride with Larry. So how did they get talking and “blew off some steam”? Because she didn’t even see him leave, it was her bartender that saw him run out of there like his pants caught fire (liar liar)

Is that the hint? Liar liar pants on fire? Was she lying about fooling around with Dean? If so why did she slap him earlier? She must have been insulted that he didn’t remember her and didn’t meet up with her later but it still doesn’t make any sense. How did she have time to fool around with Dean somewhere if they were slammed? If the place was slammed they surely wouldn’t have been able to find a quiet space to actually do the fooling around either? This whole thing smells like a lie and when you consider Dean’s later line “first action in I don’t know how long and its like it never even happened” seems to me that the writer wanted us to consider that maybe all is not a it seems. The only action Dean got in that cowboy bar was from Larry.

Consider another ask answered! Dean did not have sex with the waitress! They possibly squeezed in a kiss when she was on break but there is no way they had time to properly fool around.

Another thing I liked about this scene was the way the waitress then apologises for possibly taking advantage of Dean when he was “roofied”. After the mess and drama of the Amara stuff last season this is refreshing. Dean gets an apology for being sexually harassed, which from a meta perspective could also be the writer apologising for the Amara situation. I dunno if that’s really the case but I like the idea of it so I’m sticking with it.

Back to Regarding Dean

Once the Winchesters start tracing Dean’s steps into the forest Dean loses more memory. We have another call back to season 4 and Yellow Fever with the flashlight moment and Sam has to remind Dean what they do since he has now forgotten all about witches and monsters. The difference between his reaction to being a monster hunter here and in yellow fever is huge though. In yellow fever he thought they were both insane, horrified at the thought of actively going after these dangerous supernatural beings. In Regarding Dean he is excited about the idea, finds it awesome and calls them both “heroes”. It’s nice to know that without his memories of the horrible things they’ve done Dean is able to accept that he does something good and is able to be happy about that.

Another call back to season 4 with the mention of the Siren “Siren’s aren’t all hot chicks?” Nope. Sorry Dean some of them are hot guys who are totally your type. To bring up the Siren (an episode absolutely full of homoerotic subtext) in this episode (an episode absolutely full of homoerotic subtext) seems like another subtle nod to Dean’s bisexuality. Like a ‘hello! Remember this? Dean’s siren was a dude come on guys catch up!’ At moments like this I feel like the show is specifically trying to tell the audience what we (as fandom) already know. Dean is bisexual, like last episode they were trying to tell us that Cas is in love with Dean. This is all extremely promising.

THEN right after we are reminded of the Siren, but right before Dean totally randomly brings up Cas we get this:

I mean of course I was gonna bring up the handprint! Although I admit I have been lacking in my watchfulness lately for any hand or hand print symbolism in the show. But this is definitely meant to pique the audiences interest. Because why is it there at all? Why bother with the hand print if they are gonna find the sigil shortly after? It doesn’t seem to add much to the plot except to be there to ping a memory in Dean’s mind. Of Castiel.

“And our best friends an angel! Whaaaaatt!”

This is another season 4 callback after all. Season 4 being the season of Cas’s handprint. When their ‘profound bond’ was formed. There is no way this handprint isn’t supposed to invoke the memory of that most famous of handprints. Dean remembers Cas fondly. Even when he doesn’t remember him he still thinks he is awesome. This makes me so happy. As Cas fans we are so used to Cas just being forgotten about in MOTW episodes, but like I have been saying for ages now, Andrew Dabb is the biggest Cas fan and he won’t let our angel be forgotten about at all now that he is showrunner.

Moving on and Rowena shows up a her awesome self and Dean is nice to her. His base nature is actually to be nice to people regardless of who they are. Its something we don’t see very often from our very grumpy and deeply traumatised monster hunter. “your hair it’s all so bouncy” he says. Noticing the smallest things. Its cute. Its so very un-dean-like and yet at the same time it is exactly the kind of thing Dean would do. We know he likes to take care of his own appearance, his room, and often teases Sam about his hair and Cas about his trenchcoat. These are more in-sights into how Dean’s mind works.

Dean is sat down to watch an episode of Scooby Do whilst Rowena and Sam talk about the curse, firstly thinking he gets to watch porn. Nope. Instead we get this:

Which… in an episode full of sexual innuendo is *ahem* something I’m not going to comment on. Yes my mind did go there. No I am not specifying where “there” is. Look at the picture and figure it out for yourself. Flowers and dogs also have specific symbolism in this show. Maybe this wasn’t intentional but with everything else? I think it is. I am partly laughing and partly crying at how obvious this is to me at least. But like I said I ain’t going there. LOL.

Then, once Sam has explained to Dean once again what is happening we get this beautiful scene:

Honestly Jensen killed it. The fear in his eyes, the horror and confusion. “My name is Dean Winchester. Sam Winchester is my brother, Mary Winchester is my mother, and Casti- Cas is my best friend” This was beautiful and painful to watch. My heart breaks for him. Amongst all the humour and silliness of Larry and Rowena and Sam’s squabbles, this moment showed the truth. That the situation is dark and terrible and frightening. I wish they had given us more moments like this than all the humour to be honest. Because this was real. This was Dean vulnerable and terrified. Once again a scene where he faces his reflection and struggles with what he sees, though this time for a totally different reason. Dean has never had a good time with mirrors in this show. Ever since Bloody Mary they just tend to be bad luck for him. This moment is no different.

As Dean continues to forget more and more Rowena leaves him to go and save Sam (how awesome is it that Rowena is technically saving them now?!?) and leaves Dean in the Impala surrounded by notes. This is where Dean really has forgotten everything and yet his hunter instincts still kick in.

We get another moment where Sam denies the use of the grenade launcher. Three times and it’s a pattern. I would bet money on Dean getting to use that thing by the end of the season.

Dean finds his way to the witches mansion and is able to save Rowena and Sam by firing the gun and killing the witch. Proof that hunting really is in his blood, part of his soul. He will always be a hunter. No witches spell can take that away. In a way it is quite sad because it kind of implies that however this show ends, it won’t be with Dean giving up hunting. Even with the talks of retirement in previous episodes, I can’t see Dean doing it. Its who he will always be.

Once the witches are dead and the spell reversed, Dean admits that he wouldn’t be better off forgetting all their crap, because he would have forgotten everything else too. No matter how happy he might have been.

“Was it nice to drop our baggage? Yeah maybe, hell probably, but it wasn’t just the crap that got lost it was everything, what we do, all of it. So, that’s what being happy looks like, I think I’ll pass.”

Of course Dean wouldn’t choose to forget everything. Like the previous scene proved, Its in Dean’s blood to be a hunter, and he wouldn’t ever wanna forget his family. The people he loves. Forgetting the people who love you is not happiness in any way shape or form.

I feel like maybe this episode was lacking an emotional final scene. This was short and sweet but it didn’t seem to have the satisfaction that I thought it would, regarding Dean’s memory loss and fear and dependence on his loved ones. But it was still a great analysis of Dean’s character nevertheless.

Sam Winchester isn’t looking hard enough

This episode was predominantly about Dean, but there was a lot of stuff about Sam in here too. Specifically how he doesn’t really seem to notice much about his brother. I don’t mean this as a dig, but it’s honestly quite surprising. When we compare episodes where Sam has been changed somehow, it has taken Dean no time at all to realise something is wrong. Sam however, seems to shrug it off as Dean being a dumbass, or Dean being drunk, or Dean doing something to make Sam roll his eyes again. It seems like Sam has got an idea of who Dean is in his mind and it is so deeply ingrained that he is kinda blinded by it. He has his expectations of his brother, and he has got it so so wrong. Sam judges Dean. He doesn’t mean to, but the problem is that Dean has been building on his ‘character’ on his ‘performing Dean’ persona just for Sam for his entire life. Sam sees the performance, he doesn’t see what’s underneath. Its episodes like this that make me question all our fics with “shipper!sam” because I sometimes doubt if that’s the case. Does Sam actually see it for what it is? Or is he so blinded by his version of Dean that he cannot see the truth? Clearly Cas and Dean’s tension makes him uncomfortable, as last episode all but proved. But does Sam really understand what is going on here?

If he can be surprised that Dean loves Dory, what else surprises him? How much of Dean does he not know about?

What I found really striking in this episode is how Sam doesn’t find it easier to track Dean’s movements of the night before, because if it was the other way around Dean would have figured Sam out straight away. This was shown to us back in season 4 (again with the season 4 references in this episode!) when Dean was able to locate Sam based on how well he “knows that kid”. If Sam had truly known his brother well, he would have known that the cowboy joint was the first place he’d go. Sam knows that Dean has a ‘cowboy fetish’ and therefore it make the most sense? Dean wanted to ride the bull, but Sam was so surprised that Dean rode Larry that he “couldn’t believe it.”

Even the end scene, Sam admits that he was kinda jealous. For him, forgetting everything they have done is a weight off their shoulders. Something he would like to experience. I think this is also a hint towards Sam not entirely accepting that hunting is his life. Whereas Dean is generally happy with what he does, because it is in his blood Sam doesn’t feel that way. I know we have seen previous episodes where Sam has seemed to accept it. But he only accepts it if he can do it with Dean. The co-dependency is extremely strong with Sam at the moment. Sam also always seems to be looking for something more. I don’t just mean relationship wise, though he did admit this in 11x04, but something more than just hunting.

We have always known that Dean was more like Mary. Mary’s family are the hunters. Dean is one of them. Sam though? Sam was all John. And John might have taken to hunting once his revenge had consumed him, but hunting was not in John’s blood. Nope, John’s blood is all Men of Letters. This is the path that Sam seems destined for.

What also seems to encourage this theory is that it is usually Sam who is paired up with Rowena in any of her episodes. It is common in this show for most side characters to develop a better relationship with Dean than to Sam. Dean is charismatic like that, but Sam has ‘bonded’ with Rowena if you wanna call it that, far more than Dean has, and it is always Sam who calls Rowena in to help. Is Sam attracted to magic? This is something that we have been speculating for a while. The Men of Letters use magic this we know, even their grandfather Henry was able to “harness the power of his soul” to cast spells. It was Sam who spoke to Lily last episode about how she developed her power. It is Sam who finds all of that stuff very interesting, and it is Sam who holds on to the Grimoire at the end of the episode. Will we get witch!sam in the future? I think it is still a possibility, but if nothing else he will become a true men of letters eventually… that I am sure of.

I said I was slightly disappointed with the end of this episode as it seemed to brush over the deeper, more meaningful conversation that could have been had. Another moment of missed potential I think was this one:

“Brother. Witch”

Isn’t it all a bit too easy? What if the witch had turned around and said “no! I’m your brother! He’s a witch!” and it could have got confusing for Dean. I think this moment could have really been great for Sam to have to convince Dean somehow why he was indeed his brother… revealing something about himself and their relationship? It would have been nice to see that moment of doubt from Dean followed by pleading from Sam to believe him rather than the witch. It’s an old TV cliché though so maybe that’s why they didn’t do it.

The next great Sam moment was this one: “Who’s this hippy?”

Sam looked broken here. For a moment he was really worried that his brother had forgotten him… that is the moment I was talking about earlier about the horrors of Alzheimer’s. Thinking that your loved one doesn’t know who you are is horribly painful. Jared did really well to capture that moment, even though it turned out to be Dean joking around. I’m with Sam here, that wasn’t funny Dean. That was mean.

Rowena’s future

Rowena was totally awesome in this episode. We first see her playing poker with some shady characters and cheats her way into winning. I’m so interested in what Rowena is up to off screen. First the rich businessman who Crowley blew up, now this. She is clearly completely done with other witches, but she isn’t quite ‘out completely, and still comes to Sam and Dean’s aide even though she could easily tunr them down. Like Crowley, could Rowena be starting to care for the Winchesters?

“Am I saved to your contacts now? Tell me, have I got my own ringtone?” Lol. So Rowena is flirting with Sam. Which is fun but also reminds me of 10x19 and Sam’s hallucination of Rowena that got all flirtatious with him. That was Sam’s mind remember so is there actually something in this? Oh god do we need a ship name for this now? We had Drowley now we have Samena/Sawena? Eek I dunno about this! Though I might just go with it purely for the look on Crowley’s face.

Anyway I just love Rowena and Sam’s banter okay?

Then she turns up at their door and as much as Sam brushes it off as Rowena having her eyes on the Loughlin’s book, partly I think Rowena actually enjoys their company.

“altruism isn’t exactly your style”

Isn’t it though? Because she seems like she is also putting on a performance of villainess when really it’s not who she is at all. Like Dean, it’s all a performance.

“You’re a killer, Dean Winchester”

“But, though you may be a stubborn pain in the ass, with the manners of a Neanderthal and the dining habits of a toddler, everything you’ve done, you’ve done for the greater good.”

“Oh and that’s supposed to make it okay?”

“I wouldn’t know. You help those other than yourself, but me? I’ve done horrible things. I told myself it was fine. It was the price of power and powers what matters right? Then I meet god and his sister, the two most powerful beings in the universe, wasted on squabbling with each other. I thought if they can’t be happy or at least satisfied how can there be any hope for me?”

This is such a fascinating insight into Rowena’s mind, how she thinks. For ages it was all about getting power but since God and Amara she has given that up. It’s not about power. She still wants money so she can support herself, but like her son what she is missing is love. This is why I think she helped the Winchesters. She likes them, even if she acts like she doesn’t. They are technically the only people she really knows and I can see this being part of her storyline that she tries to build on a relationship with Sam and Dean. As an ally at first, but then at some point a friend.

After all, when she hears Sam is in trouble, she goes to rescue him. She doesn’t flee and decide it’s not her problem. If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t have put herself at risk for Sam. She doesn’t even get the book in the end. So what did she possibly risk her life for? If not to save Sam. This is a huge turning point for Rowena. She made a decision to save Sam’s life. So much for being a villain.

When Rowena does face Catrina, her story is horrible and sad, we are starting to learn more and more why Rowena is the way she is. Though nothing has come too close to her speech to Crowley in 11x10. Rowena hated being weak, being at the mercy of others. Her experience with the Loughlin’s shows just how awful it was for her. The way she was treated does not excuse the horrible things she has done, but it seems as though since meeting God and Amara she is trying to make up for some of that. She is not unkind or uncaring at all. She has always cared maybe too much. Otherwise she would have easily left both Winchesters to die.

This goes back to her speech to Crowley. “If I didn’t hate you, I’d love you. And love, love is weakness.” This I think is the theme of Rowena’s arc. For her to learn that love is not a weakness, that to have people who love and support you only makes you stronger. It coincides with Cas’s arc as well, where he is constantly being told that his weakness is his love for “humanity”. Castiel already said himself that “my friendship with Sam and Dean makes me stronger”. Rowena just needs to learn this too.

Overall

This episode wasn’t one of the strongest but it had some very good moments. I didn’t like the villains. I found them rather boring, but then they weren’t the focal point of the episode. The writing was sloppy in places and some of the plot didn’t quite make sense, but ultimately it worked. Just, what the hell was the end montage? I get that it was supposed to be another call back to Yellow Fever but seriously? The song was kinda fun. About innocence lost by the sounds of it.. but seriously? I was suffering from a bit of second hand embarrassment I’ll be honest. I think they just really needed an excuse to put Dean riding Larry into the episode for real.

This makes me think that we totally missed out on a booty shorts dance from Dean at the end of 11x04.

Main takeaways from the episode?

Meredith Glynn binge watched season 4 and used it for all her references.

Sam really needs to pay more attention to what Dean isn’t telling him.

Sam may be tempted by witchcraft.

Rowena cares. A lot.

Dean likes to ride dick. (but then we already knew that.)

#supernatural #episode review #spn meta #dean winchester #destiel #sam winchester #rowena #12x11 #spn spoilers #season 12 #dean is bi #destiel dreaming #my thoughts #dean analysis

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