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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

Text

12x16 watching notes

confession: I really like Mick

Also if he makes it out the season alive and comes back to England I’m finding him myself to kill him.

Maybe the show is running behind time and that’s why Cas’s car was parked in my town

----

I'm barely taking off my shoes and sitting down with some tea and I'm getting a faceful of the werewolf lore

(Claire continues to be linked to Dean and hunting, not Cas and angels)

they're stressing the detail about the werewolves not being like the ones in Heart, still, with Robbie's helpful change in 8x04 to make werewolves easier to write. That's interesting to me just because we've spent so much time remixing everything lately that stressing that something isn't how it was in season 2 is more of a meta point than normal. There's also, I think, an assumption people know the show very very well by now, and it's written like you'd know all the random tiny plot details, or at least, the remixes and re-dos are all easter eggs for if you are well-versed enough in the show to spot them. Telling us it's not like it was in the old days has got more important than season 8 - which attempted to soft reboot the show TWICE. (in 8x01 and 8x12) ... Season 12 is the hard reboot where you hold down the power key for 10 seconds and then let it shut off before you try again :P

season 12 recap stuff, condenses down Dean vs Ketch interestingly with several more reaction shots than I'd have expected, including one from I think 12x08 while Ketch was showing off his toys - a real focus on Dean's conflict with them but NOT reminding us as a recent previous episode about stuff like Toni and Ms Watt or Sam getting tortured. Short term memory, or there's always the queer-coded stuff between Dean and Ketch and I do think it's going to be between them at the end whatever happens to Ketch just because they've been shoved together so many times now so it makes sense to make Dean's emotional focus here suddenly switch to hating Ketch, and Ketch making a play for him etc and Dean saying about that they've worked with people they don't trust, overlaid with a little clip of him and Crowley hanging out in glasses, which, of course, again parallels that his lack of TRUST in Crowley is oooh so layered with maybe not trust but reliance, familiarity, and a weird sense of even friendship or family if he'd dare admit it... to DEAN Crowley is much more than he might be to Sam or Cas - THEY would easily be like "uh we don't trust Crowley and hate working with him" while Dean's probably like "Okay so he turned me into a demon that one time and we're not making any excuses but - "

there's also speculation some people have about the fight coming down to the line about Crowley and Dean having to face if he really would save Crowley or not (even if he can pretend it's just repaying the favour for Cas or whatever)

also blah blah interpersonal drama with Sam and Dean, we know how that goes

The sign we start on says "cold beer and wine to go" - what kind of a bar is this :P

I hope it doesn't have wine out of a vending machine but this is the sort of establishment my brain has decided to expect. (It's called the Lucky Badger so who knows)

Oh dear the cold open girl is lying blatantly to whoever Ben is, saying she's studying (with her friend Angela, so... I have no idea yet but using a name with "angel" in it probably is an easy way to get in character mirrors >.>) - he's right behind her and turns out to have been watching her as she texted, so probably spotted her in the Lucky Badger or had been creepy stalking her

He seems to think it's a joke though so I guess he's either a werewolf so no wonder he's not taking it personally outwardly - if he's pissed off with her he's way more dangerous in other ways than just having a fight, or they're friends, and this actually is a joke to him. Either way, she didn't seem to like him texting her like that and wanted to lie in the first place.

Nice shot of the moon.

Oh, they're siblings. That explains the entire dynamic as a normal human interaction :P He's 100% allowed to teasingly be concerned about her getting into trouble, and the "busted" comment is because they both answer to the same higher power aka their parents. And if you saw your sibling at a bar they weren't supposed to be at, that's immediately within your right to jokingly freak them out via text message, because the whole level of interpersonal drama changes... if it was some bloke she knows being over-protective or over-interested in her life, then yeah. brrr. Of course the show has all the stuff about Sam and Dean policing each other and taking it too far with that and their overprotectiveness, but for now this all seems normal enough for writing siblings, as long as we stick a pin in that thought in case that's a meta thing later >.>

They also have mom drama. She won't let them get a car, aka a sign of being grown up and personal freedom - the girl teases her brother for not having a car but he speaks about it as "us". The mom is deciding when they get to grow up and on what terms. (In 12x01 it seemed like Mary might get possessive over the Impala and we were speculating/wondering if that would happen. So far she hasn't driven it or been given a reason to. Wherever they stashed the Impala between 12x08 and 12x10, Mary never got hold of it in the weeks they were gone. I'm now reminded I'm waiting for Mary to drive Baby for some reason.)

I'm tentatively labelling yellow plaid guy as Sam because tall, and girl in short shorts Dean because... she's shorter.

Kudos to the actress for doing all this in the snow

Anyway the brother tells the girl to act her age (they're now pinging my Twin radar which would be fascinating to have MORE fraternal twins in one season especially in the aftermath of God and Amara - Alicia and Max are interesting but I guess they aren't reliable data until there's more sets to measure them against), and doesn't want/need the car/personal freedom, or to be sneaked into a bar to get a Moscow Mule, while the sister is acting out and trying to get that freedom/do things beyond her expected age.

The brother says the mom is doing the best she can, which of course has been Sam's role mediating between Dean and Mary and wouldn't be weird for him to say

Also more teenagers/young adults thinking about leaving home/growing up - Gwen last episode leaving to go to vet school, these guys 2 years from whenever Actual Personal Freedom hits them (what age does that happen for Americans? I'd just assume 18 if they were British meaning they could be 16, which looks way too young for these guys, but American drinking laws are weird so they could be 19 and still 2 years off bar hopping as a way of life :P - anyway Claire should be coming up to 20, if she hit 18 in season 10, so I'll have to assume these guys are 19 and therefore a year older than when I'd assume teenagers get personal freedom >.>)

(they’re TV teenagers and therefore the actors are probably 25 with youthful faces)

Sam and Dean have regressed or never managed to "leave home" in the sense they never had a home to leave from and fell out of the nest aged Way Too Young, and there's been meta I'd seen about at least Dean and Cas (separately) having adolescence or childhood arcs, and of course in season 12 with Mary back, Sam and Dean are metaphorically zapped right back down to aged six months and four, respectively, with a need to reconcile Mary back into their adult lives, and for her to reconcile adult Dean and Sam back into hers. It's nice if the subtext is moving them up to adolescence in this respect because it means they're nearly adult and ready to fly the next properly and to be their own people. If they don't get mauled by hellhounds or werewolves first, like the poor sucker from last episode who never made it out of his hometown or married the girl... Bit worried one or both of these kids are about to die, because, well, cold open.

They are the right sort of age that the boy could get eaten, the girl turned, and then she's a new BFF for Claire as werewolf friends :3

Yay she's genre savvy - she knows not to go into the woods when it's dark and full moon :P Come on you have to survive this...

Dean was being genre savvy last episode. Also Ben is not listening to his sister's concerns (and it seems fairly obvious speculation that Sam might not listen at first to Dean's concerns about the BMoL)

Oh AND he calls her a drama queen, after Sam said Dean was "dramatic"

I feel almost bad for making the call about this parallel entirely from the short shorts.

"It's fine I'll prove it"

You are so going to get eaten by werewolves.

LOL she has a "Bae" in her phone that she's coming right back to

I hope it's Angela

Nooooo she got attacked

she still looks, like, not devoured. She is presumably just turned. (Is she called Eden or Eve? I can't make out the dialogue at all here)

Heh called it, Ben gets his heart ripped out by the corny mask-wearing monster (a monster playing up being a monster - I'm on Monster Movie red alert because that's like a fave episode ever and we never refer back to it when we really should because it was Edlund at his best :P) - I mean obviously updated from the Nosferatu generation to the Scream generation.

I'm also gonna assume this lame teenage werewolf in a mask (come on, he's wearing a mask and a hoodie) is a peer they know, and like the shapeshifter had a thing for Jamie, kinda wants the girl for himself here.

I'm gonna assume Claire is our "Mr Harker" because she is, after all, a Dean parallel.

Anyway that's a grim sibling parallel - the one who didn't believe/listen to the concerns gets his heart ripped out just for playing around not treating it as seriously as he should, and the genre savvy short-shorts wearing sibling who just wanted to drink in peace with the bae has presumably had as far as we know for now irrevocable damage done to her life...

I hope someone's written a lot about Sam being trapped in this triangle:

because that's fascinating. He's definitely separated from Dean and encased/caged in it; whether it's technically a halo because it's glowing or not is a thought for later. But that's not an accidental shot and it's definitely singling Sam out

Oh good, Dean's temper is doing well.

I thought he'd taken his jacket off for the first shot and was about to comment on that because Sam's in a bulky jacket, but it turns out they're just trying to kill me with the wardrobe because that IS Dean's jacket painted onto his back and shoulders there.

Dean's chafing at having to "report for duty" with them - the getting cases was fun (especially when he didn't know where they were coming from, or at least, may have suspected but didn't ask questions)... but now he's being treated like a soldier, and he has issues with the big picture - it's staring at the map looking at the scope of their organisation that's got his mind on this, and that comes with the fact they're being used for the big picture stuff. Last time he felt like this, I think, was in season 6 between 6x07>6x10 where he's resenting working for Crowley doing pretty much this exact same thing with taking out monsters - of course 12x14 had aaaall the parallels and callbacks to season 6 and the Campbells.

Mick's actually still upset about the poor dead people from last time we saw him - nice to see emotional continuity and that this really is part of his arc.

"Wow that is some world class repression, you really are British" - You know if there was an olympics for it, Dean would have taken home the gold medal pretty much every year until now. Shh Dean. Just because you're the Honesty Hour character NOW

I love Dean's look at Mick after "stiff upper lip" - not sure if it's understanding, or intimidation, or a bit of both. Or the old "he said a weird phrase in a British accent, is that meant to be an innuendo" double check.

(Everything said in a British accent is an innuendo)

Oh the girl's called Hayden, I think. Thank you, Mick, for speaking in an accent I actually understand :D

Ahaha Mick did EXTENSIVE research. He's an EXPERT you guys. I really headcanoned hard he's always been a hit the library hard kind of guy, which is probably how he got as far as he did in the ranks of a top secret HEREDITARY order while having a coded in media as lower class accent. Kinda nice to find out he was top of his class in "hunter hogwarts" to quote whoever said that... For some reason I'm convinced it's Bobby but I think that was because he made a joke about phoning Hogwarts when they were hunting dragons.. hang on, I need to look this up.

OH Crowley in 9x11. Of course.

I wonder if he knows there's actual schools for this. We don't actually have much Crowley and BMoL interaction to go off.

I'd assume it's higher education style, sort of like going to law school or whatever, but instead you go to some country house with a big lore library... I can't imagine there are many students.

Dean has come to learn that people around him will incessantly reference whatever a Hogwarts is, while Sam, a Nerd, references it and Mick, a British Person Alive Since 1997, is just like yeah that place. This is almost no indication of nerd cred whatsoever.

Sam's like "COOL" and Dean's like "Oh god shut up" with his glare. Like, he KNOWS he's watching Sam get suckered in with everything Sam would love (lore, Harry Potter references being acknowledged) so it's like, OBVIOUSLY you are not being critical and careful here, you just said "COOL" and looked at me with that enthusiastic smirk just like that guy who got eaten by a werewolf in a silly mask in the cold open.

Also Sam WAS critical in 12x14 and ready to leave, but changed his mind after events; of course Dean didn't see that and doesn't know that Sam gave Mick the exact same wariness that Dean is giving him now.

However Dean always tends to be right (and it's blatantly obvious the BMoL are a bad idea to US) so clearly Sam didn't vet them hard enough...

I love that Mick wants to come along for said personal development reasons and NOT because he's Umbridge-ing them like I had been speculating. (that's a verb, I'm British, let it happen :P)

He and Sam seem pretty good at talking each other up about 12x14 - Sam credits them wholly with killing the alpha vamp, like he might have just been the trigger finger but they did everything (and he and Mick did pretty much tag team it all, from making the bullets to getting one TO Sam to shoot the Alpha so I can see how circumstantially, ignoring the bigger picture of why the Alpha was even there, Sam can see that it was all their work and he just happened to be the one who picked up the gun - of course symbolic for how hunters work with the BMoL anyway, like Ketch seeing himself as their razor blade for slitting throats and nothing more) but of course Mick now credits Sam and "his mum" with saving HIM and sorting out the mess by being competent, and he has learned from them far more than we've seen Sam develop as a result of working with them.

He's got the dangled bait of the world without monsters to look forward to, and knows he just has to be the trigger finger however many more times, and it'll be done. MICK has to think about it in many more directions, and has come to realise he's on the front line, and it's DANGEROUS, so he needs to be more adaptable and trained in ways other than extensive research. Sam and Dean are the best hunters in the world because they combine research and fighting, and have access to MoL research and a smaller library of their own to help them, which means they'd probably have held their own at Hunter Hogwarts as Mick's classmates, and yet because of the specialisation, Mick comes out miles behind them.

(Actual Hogwarts taught practical skills right alongside the theoretical and academic, meaning the BMoL have a long way to go :P)

I don't think this is going to go spectacularly well for Mick, BUT whether he survives the season or not, or ends up helping them or not, it's interesting that he is developing and learning and wants to be more like them. They have a sort of siren call to other creatures/people - I mean just look at Cas and Crowley transforming after being in their presence. Mick being the character who is now obviously changing while Ketch is as bloodthirsty and awful as ever at this point says a lot more than anything else that Mick is being earmarked for positive development/change and realising the error of his ways because he wants to be more like a Winchester. (It could also be sort of sad/pathetic for him if he becomes a groupie but for now it looks like positive, because he still is very self-assured and in a position of power and not yet changing his overall goals for them, and also sees them as a resource)

(also if you were ever going to go on a hunt, you'd want Sam and Dean, top shelf hunters, to come with you and protect you :P)

Anyway Mick does sound a shade scared/frantic as he makes his request so we'll see how that goes for him

Dean immediately like "He's dead weight"

ominious :P

"These people have some serious knowledge" shown over Mick attempting to fit a very large box into a very small bag

I'm cackling

"You can't learn this in a book: you put on a flannel, you pick up a gun..."

I'M CACKLING HARDER. Dean is made even more clearly the genre savvy character, aka parallel to Hayden in her short shorts.

Dean's got a brightly lit door behind him, Sam a dark staircase heading up. The bright yellow railings remind me of 9x23

ominous pt 3 (pt 1 was the parallel in the opening)

"The better they are the better we are" - yeah, that's definitely that speculation Sam was won over because he thought he could improve and change them for the better and make use of their resources and plans and not just surface level what he SAW but what he thought he could DO with what he saw. It's earnest but it is also somewhat assuming he's going to be a positive force of change and mould them, which when they're so untrustworthy and all, makes me really nervous about hubris coming for Sam. Especially when he's the last character to need an arc with hubris, except perhaps below Cas. :P

Again - "Mick held his own against the Alpha" - Sam crediting him with staying alive and maybe out-sneaking the Alpha but not exactly out-fighting him. Mick got thrown around and ended up not dying because the Alpha was more distracted with Sam as a known and more dangerous enemy in the room... Overselling Mick to make it sound like if he survived that... but he has no practical fighting skills and the whole point is cleverness won't get you so far, and you need to learn to fight, which is what MICK is saying, so Sam's misunderstanding there on a matter relating to Mick's safety and skill level...

Mick heard Dean saying he could be killed and Dean saying "Good" about him complaining about hearing that - because no sugar coating and if you're terrified for your life maybe you won't be an idiot, and listen to them :P

He then tells Sam he's babysitting Mick, which immediately makes me very worried for Mick because it puts Sam in a position of responsibility and of course narratively Mick is a very acceptable loss to demonstrate Sam's playing with fire with this decision.

Of course Claire is around so she's also going to be an innocent in the line of fire, again, for a decision that Sam and the BMoL will entirely get them involved in.

PFFT Mick is listening to that podcast that Sam mentioned in 12x07... Did Sam share it with him or do they have the same tastes? Obviously back in 12x07 Sam was lying and using the snobby intellectual content as a way to deflect Dean's interest, not expecting in a million years Dean would want to listen, even just to have some noise in the car - obviously there's always the chance Dean knew Sam was lying from the start (like when he knew Sam was working with the BMoL probably and was challenging him in the start of 12x15 about where his cases came from, again for content on Sam's phone he was lying about) - anyway this time they apparently are listening to the very thing Sam used as his deflection and cover, which is pretty bloody ominous

So Dean complaining about the podcast has all its own connotations about lying and Dean complaining about it because it was something used to hold up a cover once - at HIS expense of being the dumb hunter who doesn't care about history. So I'm guessing if he bitches about the history lesson Mick starts giving here about hunting monks (awesome) it's not because he's being portrayed as stupid by the writing, but he's portraying HIMSELF as stupid in rebellion and anger at all this.

"In Europe everything's old" pfft

Ohh dear, Sam's been working with them how long and NOW he finally has to ask, wait, even the monsters who aren't hurting anyone?

As it suddenly occurs to him, maybe they don't have any harmless vampire buddies (since Benny is dead) but wait, the BMoL are turning their attention to werewolves, and there's no werewolves in Britain because they killed them all, but GARTH.

Mick just raises his eyebrows like, okay, I'll believe that when I see it. He's been taught too much to give a monster the benefit of the doubt just because Sam and Dean said so.

So we had the Badger pub earlier, now the Wild Elk lodge - of course it's a werewolf episode, so there's a theme of the wildlife in the woods... *pauses to google the distrubution of badgers and laughs at how the American badger is all thin and fluffy instead of built like a terrifying tank on little tiny skittering legs like the badgers that make living here a bit interesting, if by interesting you mean terrifying* (Yes I know they're not even knee high, have you ever been charged by one on a dark night?) Anyway, whatever badger they were thinking of, not as bad as a werewolf - the badger is lucky, and the elk is wild, with a pretty majestic picture, and of course it's a super fancy hotel

Dean tosses the keys to Sam, and Sam fumbles them while trying to hold onto all the books from Mick. Probably not symbolic (filed under: "ominous" (pt.5))

Last night me and Mittens were laughing about how Mick wows them with the fanciest hotel in the area and was in a crappy motel when he was on his own.

This episode is now going down in infamy as the one where Dean was skinny dipping and we'd never see it in a million years

I like how he says they've "ruined" him - it's not like they've never stayed in (suspiciously) fancy places before, but Dean's in a sort of culture war here with their lifestyle vs being pampered by a rich sponsor. Of course he steals everything, and doesn't play by the rules when taking a swim, and obviously is being unnecessary gross, still (I mean who knows, he probably DID pack more than enough boxers this time and went swimming in a spare pair, but when it's time to tell Sam, he has to gross him out...)

Also 2 Glynn episodes in a row where Sam is openly revolted at the idea of Dean's naked body.

better informed meta than I could ever write has already been written about how that frames Sam in relation to Dean as a sort of parental figure rather than peers (e.g. I'm pretty sure it's a trope that groups of boys who are peers, either brothers & cousins etc, and/or friends, would skinny dip together in a totally non-sexual way in the sort of hazy summy nostalgia stories I generally associate skinny dipping with rather than "fancy hotel pool" where obviously it's rude and transgressive no matter who you do it with or even if you're alone, as Dean clearly was, to not get them kicked out :P)

Ooh werewolf cure. Plasma therapy - changing the bit that carries the blood, not the blood itself. I have no idea why I associate the lymphatic system with werewolves - if it was some pseudo science article speculating how it might work I read many moons ago, or if it's just because it's an "ly" word like "lycanthrope" :P

"Not going to give him the satisfaction" - Sam caught between both sides, knowing Dean's secrets, but having clearly had a more Mick-aligned experience yet again, staying up reading, and of course Mick finishing Sam's sentence about what the potential werewolf cure would have been.

LOL Mick uses "Buckingham" as an alias. Wow. Are you worried people won't notice you're British?

His methods get them access, which I think is really just an early victory for him - he IS very smart and quick thinking and obviously 12x14 showed he could keep up with Sam in that way... Beginner's luck worries me :P Obviously whenever Cas starts hunting he has a ton of bad luck starting out - this is probably an 8x08 parallel in that way, with the "You were being bad everything" parallel right now of gaining information in an interview and dealing with grieving family.

LOL the mom apologises to them and Sam's like "You have no reason to apologise after what you've been through" parallels to Mary and Sam much? I mean she was a parallel in regards to to Hayden and Ben anyway but now Sam's borrowing her too

Oh no the mom thinks it's a nightmare about what happened to her kids and she might just wake up and it'll all be better... I'm sure Mary's handling being dumped in a dystopian post-apocalyptic nightmare world just fine :P

*Sam and Dean recognise that Claire is Claire-ing via "smol, bad attitude"* - nice.

Wondering what the "big foot truthers" are and if they have a real part in this - obviously a guy in the mask parallels Thinman, too, as well as of course the original internet episode, Hell House, with the ghostfacers and Tulpa instead of ghostfacers and ANOTHER monster of their own creation that got out of control on the internet :P I also immediately remembered 11x16 for some reason and how the mom felt like her story was being discredited that it got picked up and reported by hokey paranormal websites - which was how Sam and Dean found the case, but was seriously upsetting her.

"Oh, NO" Mick realising he's going to have to set Sam and Dean on the girl to kill her, or at least, if this was the Great Mick n Ketch Roadtrip episode with no Sam n Dean it would be open and closed "welp she's bitten, now you go kill her" - Sam, Mick's way IN to this, has been like "the ones who don't hurt anyone!!" already so Mick knows he's reluctant. His own faith has been challenged by WAY more experienced hunters pointing out that not all werewolves are monsters in the metaphorical sense, and she's also like, 18 and a girl with a grieving mother hovering around her, so this is going to be MESSY.

Oh he hated telling the mother that. Compassion despite... all this. A CHANCE.

And yeah, he lies about her being bitten - most likely he decides Sam and Dean will be too sensitive to deal with her because they are terrible at finishing the job (see also: Magda, and does THAT come out this episode, because it's pretty likely Ketch was on the phone with Mick when describing how they couldn't finish the job)... He can't really DOUBT his "programming" so much he'd give her a chance, and anyway he knows Sam and Dean would approve of that method so it would be fine to bring it up.

Sam then failed to pick up the cue that it was Claire, that Dean immediately knew. Not sure if Sam's just not got his head in the game, or if it's obviously a point about Dean's greater closeness to Claire and probably a deep dread of her hunting and getting hurt even though it's what she wants to do and they've had to deal with that already before. If you're always running worst case scenarios for her, then eventually you'll be right :P

Heeey it's a Gas n Sip! I hurt inside!!

(Have... Have Biggersons been gone since Edlund left? I can't recall seeing more than a sign for one once... I can't believe he took Biggersons with him in the divorce)

Claaaaire

She has the red Gas n Sip logo (there's variations) and Cas is more likely to be associated with the blue... But it IS a Cas thing in GENERAL after his huge associations to it, so it's nice he's... sort of... watching over her, I guess.

She's got a beat up car with fast food rubbish in it, and a shoebox full of cheap phones. Oh, you are well settled in.

Like Hayden, she's lying to family about where she is and what she's doing.

Okay Dean making fun of Claire with a fake call to wildlife services is the best thing since his impression of Rowena :P

He should do more weird voices. I love when he has fun.

I'm laughing so hard because I forgot in the last hour that I already reminded myself of the alcohol thing and then not only did I forget but MICK forgot and bought Claire a drink, and then Dean's like DUDE THIS IS AMERICA WE DON'T LET GROWN ADULTS DRINK UNTIL THEY'RE LIKE NEARLY 30 and I was like what the hell she was EIGHTEEN TWO YEARS AGO

I'm with Mick here, let Claire have a beer. She's surrounded by responsible adults who'd never let her hurt herself >.> Bah, I suppose they'd never let it happen on American TV... We already had Hayden underage drinking...

Can't believe Dean watches Downton Abbey and loves it

Claire dealing with the downsides of being a smol blonde hunter on her own - grabby bartenders. Dean looks ready to kill a guy.

"Foreign exchange student" I do love outside beloved characters trying to figure out the plot from being back in the Winchesters' orbit for the first time that year. For example Jody trying to deal with all the times Dean and now Mary come back from the dead.

(Jody, off-screen, still not over it since 12x06: "WOW")

"Sam's best friend. They're like nerd soulmates" - just read Harry Potter already, you'll love it. Even BOBBY read Harry Potter, sheesh.

I don't think he's jealous of the BFF angle - at least not in the way Sam gets jealous, mostly because Dean has been able to make actual BFFs all over the place, and there's Cas and all... He's way more balanced about this particular thing, and would probably love Sam to have actual BFFs of his own if they were GOOD BFFs and not really sketchy operatives from some weird secret organisation that once tortured Sam :P Which is the angle he's playing up with his snarky criticism

Claire lying to THEM about Jody knowing and then deflecting about calling her, especially now she's with professionals who will keep her safe so OBVIOUSLY Jody wouldn't worry and be fine with it because c'mon, WINCHESTERS

yes I am aware this is the same reason Mick is happy going with them as I said earlier :p

Anyway Sam complains about road food, Dean defends it; again, mentions the Gas n Sip directly despite them not strictly knowing they "found" Claire at the Gas n Sip this time.

Claire and Cas parallels but also Dean defending living out of a Gas n Sip - metaphorically, but Cas LITERALLY did it.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that"

Pfft also Dean defending lifestyle choices connected to him and Cas... metaphoooor

"Go nuts, it's on Harry Potter"

Oh dear, Harry Potter is going to go kill Hayden. Surpriiise.

Except I assume this goes terribly wrong.

the lethal injection imagery is particularly unsettling - she's in hospital with a "condition" that's changed her life dramatically and this ~doctor~ is coming in and deciding for her to kill her with an injection because he decides her quality of life is not worth living/that she's a burden on society (because she will eat people's hearts but shh metaphor) and so he's just gonna kill her without even informing her about her ~condition~ or giving her any choices about it.

So yeah, he's only resembling some of the worst and most prolific serial killers ever - those "angel of death" doctors, who can often get away with it for a LONG TIME because people don't notice or don't value the people they kill.

"I'm sorry" well he feels a little bad about it at least.

Oooh moon activating a werewolf. I FORGOT HOW FUN THAT IS. This show seriously hates the moon :P it's such a classic image but it's so hard to structure a procedural monster hunt around it apparently. It's the sort of horror that's intensely personal to the one transforming or else the people in close proximity to them, depending on the metaphor. I suppose Bitten is the only other werewolf episode that could have realistically played with that because of the unusual framing, but it was expressly about CHANGING the werewolf lore to make it EASIER to write, so had to ditch this imagery anyway.

Also - new wolf eyes instead of the old contacts, these are more obviously CG and glowing and yellow, which is brilliant, and I approve.

I guess the moon touching her and her transforming is also the age old coming of age/puberty image for a female character (and female werewolves and the moon should be such a bigger thing but I suppose that would freak men out so no wonder I can't think of mainstream female werewolves :P)

Buuut then Mick immediately injects her and oh no, life cut short just as it began :<

At least she scratched him up a bit in the process.. never managed to bite him. Boo. Give him a REAL reason to re-think all this

Nooo she died.

Pfft I guess Mick's redemption will be via death then because that's put narrative karma firmly against him, no matter how much he may change his mind as he's being hinted to do.

THIS is great framing to make him look tiny, by putting Claire in the foreground:

"Hobbits" pfft

So now all the PROFESSIONAL HUNTERS know she was a werewolf because the doctor points out she's completely healed, so Mick just... missed her bite? BAD INTEL

"... Right Mick?"

Dean doing exactly what he threatened to do and actually being directly and instantly skeptical of their benefactor.

And Mick puts it down to a mistake, just like all the other bad intel they had... Awfully blurry what WAS a mistake and what wasn't

Like, they almost certainly knew about Ramiel, with this much hindsight of ~mistakes~ and bad intel.

Dean says he'll take Mick and Sam will take Claire, but he and Claire storm out together because they're, well, peas in a pod. It's adorable. I love them. Also it leaves Sam and Mick to stare ruefully at dead Hayden.

But then Claire is in Sam's trust now.

I think the bar is going to be a dead end and it will be someone Hayden knew, because of the silly teenage werewolf in a mask from the cold open :P Also Claire needs to be in peril, but Dean going fruitlessly to bars with someone he needs to talk to/suss out is a Thing

Claire is Dean - she said "awesome" and "dude" in the same breath, while telling Sam how she is. She also drove Sam there, and has her own plan and is telling him to stay behind.

He is firmly NOT in the fatherhood bracket to her.

Anyway Claire plays to her age, with her hair like that, and her headphones she puts on just as an accessory. Sam gets told he's old to his face, which is something Dean passed through in the last couple of years, but now Sam's there :P I already reblogged the gifset of this paralleled to the similar moment of Dean dealing with hunting with Charlie in 8x20 and her music and getting told he was old, and basically doing this 4 years ago, which, conveniently, is his and Sam's age gap.

Mick struggling to open the door with the American flag in the corner, mostly because he fucked up. LOL. He's been struggling to get through that door all season.

Oh great, the grabby tribal tat guy is the "Bae" that Hayden was seeing - obviously older than her, was gross to Claire, the same age as her, and this reminds me of 10x20 and how Dean smacked that guy's head into the table for calling Claire a bitch and TO BE HONEST I get the feeling we're about to find out that was not exactly Mark of Cain behaviour but protective Dad Dean behaviour :P

Dean is being super rude to Connor and defensive of Hayden aka the parallel to his daughter, Claire... heh

Dean accidentally-deliberately interrogates Mick at the exact same time as Connor and I am overwhelmed with love for him because he is brilliant okay

*Dean smiles until Mick admits to watching The Great British Bake Off*

Mary Berry would be ASHAMED of you, sir. Using her to lie like that! TUT TUT

*Sue and Mel closing in with various baking implements to enact their revenge on Mick's treachery*

... see now I just want this to end with Sue Perkins showing up in a swish suit and kicking the snot out of Mick and I know there's some wish fulfilment you just have to let go but it's still going to hurt not to get

Oh my god Dean now following up the Claire thing

"what are you, her dad?"

Uh, well.

Basically yeah, I would assume, after that threat :P

God I love how Dean and Cas are just her dads and that's a thing.

Mick wandering around in his beige coat just lampshades how WRONG this all is

I can not BELIEVE right after typing that Dean clamped his hand down on Mick's shoulder and gripped it tight

(to make him say "ow ow ow ow ow ow ow" and reveal his lies and falseness)

I can't WAIT to reblog a gifset of that and just tag it with "Dean's elbow fetish for ts" with no explanation on the reblog.

I mean DAMN that's a dark and horrible mirror... I suppose also Cas has a mercy-related story this season with Kelly and the nephilim, and he already learned his first lesson about mercy in 12x10, and took it with better grace (snerk) than Mick has here. I mean Mick has narratively fucked up into not coming back from this land, but Cas obviously has a longer game and has already softened and changed his position WITHOUT fucking up to learn it, or at least, only being tangentially connected to a historical fuck up, where it was very very easy to blame Ishim for everything :P

But yeah, Dean and Cas keep each other in check and the shoulder grab is their thing - now Dean uses it to expose lies and treachery on a dark Cas mirror, with that ~sacred~ touch of theirs being used to reveal the truth. Dean is like, on the side of Truth and Justice this season...

I don't think this necessarily means anything bad for Cas because he and Dean are in such a good place - rather it's using the example of Cas as a perfect GOOD person to show how terrible Mick is... Like I said about the Gas n Sip sign looking down on Claire, Cas is sort of all over the place here, and right now it's in Dean's use of that goodness in his life to expose the badness.

"I did what needed to be done" Oh hello thing people say when they done fucked up and know it. Last said by the guy in Red Meat who thought he'd killed Sam for the greater good of saving his own ass and his girlfriend's ass.

I think werewolf episodes are still connected to that same thread of thematic stuff that turned up the Mark of Cain arc, because 8x04 set up so much thematic imagery for it, it's ridiculous, and of course that "did what had to be done" was a key phrase of season 9 - said so often in some episodes you'd die on the drinking game of it :P

"she attacked me" PFFT BECAUSE YOU WERE A STRANGE MAN IN HER ROOM WHO WANTED TO KILL HER

"I had orders!" "You had a choice!"

Hello there Cas mirror from season 4 just like we all predicted back at the start of the season (okay, in some cases, about Toni, before she was shipped off and Mick replaced her - but SOMEONE in this organisation was gonna get to this point at some point this season :P)

But he made a bad choice and chose to lie and go behind their backs instead of questioning, thinking and talking. Obviously Mick has a ton of missing footage compared to Cas in season 4 - 4x16 is where HE began SERIOUSLY questioning and following his doubts through and Mick’s just not put in the same effort, and already fucked up where Cas had not.

Ooooh low blow then Mick brings up how Dean pals around with witches and demons - a witch who has saved their butts several times now, WILLINGLY, most recently in Glynn's last episode... And a demon who, well.

Mick tells Dean to do his job, Dean explains how it's not black and white - and how Magda is an example, and Mick is like... yeah we have a code... and doesn't tell Dean what Ketch did.

I hurt inside :P

VENGEANCE FOR MAGDA

Also this has abruptly made me wonder if Mick is even part-way redeemable despite his interest in learning just because of his stance in the argument and not telling Dean about Magda... There COULD be a more nuanced sort of thing where he's judged for being the passive evil that authorises such killings as Magda's, like the people in government positions who do the evil of the government in a way where the blood is never on their hands literally, only figuratively... it really depends on if Mick REALISES what this ideology will do in the end, but he's keeping this secret for now and it's been made clear where he is in relation not just to killing Hayden, but all the awful the BMoL do

like if he killed Hayden but then immediately regretted it instead of sticking his ground, then he could have had a teachable moment (pfft) and because of regretting the blood spilled of his OWN people he was at least somewhat potentially sympathetic at the start of this >.>

Claire goes and gets basically the same info as Dean did so I'm assuming creepy Connor is the werewolf just because he's the only character left with any connection to the MotW stuff :P

The parallel from the cold open switches around though - now Hayden is in too deep getting let into the bar on the down low by a guy who likes her and I guess wants to add her to his collection in the same creepy way the BMoL want to collect top shelf hunters... Got Sam on the hook, but the older brother is concerned and goes along to check on her and save her, and she's only doing this because she's bored and stifled and wants another life from the one she has... Her brother gets his heart ripped out for the trouble of protecting her >.>

(I think both the readings work it's just the episode does swap it around with this reveal that Ben went to protect her specifically, but he had no idea it was a werewolf, he just wanted to take her home away from the creepy older guy)

Oops, now Claire's lying is caught out. By Sam! Who is NOT ratting her out to Jody but letting her maintain that lie I guess while he feels Claire is under his protection so he doesn't need to worry Jody about it.

... Although makes you wonder from Jody's POV what exactly is going on when Sam phones her out of the blue to ask about Claire.

"... just wondering ... for no reason..."

Oh no Claire :< She just wants to be alone because no one gets hurt and everyone's happy if she's not a burden on the-e-emmmmm *beats fists on the floor*

Do you think that you can catch the morbs from having been possessed by someone with them :P She sounds like Cas, at least, last year, although who knows, maybe this is a parallel to how he feels about why he popped back to Heaven, because he's depressed and it doesn't always make sense why he would feel like a burden or that people want him to be something he's not (Dean just wants him to be THERE) but Cas probably still feels bad he fucked up that vampire hunt, and now Claire is alone and hunting and miserable, and... She's probably paralleling Mary and Cas tbh.

Owie ow ow.

Because Mary also feels like her family wants her to be something she doesn't feel like she can be. And also they were very precious with her to start with (12x03 she had a lot of better reasons to leave but I think she felt enormously stifled on the hunt)... Argh.

Sam sucks at talking to The Youth btw.

I find it quite ironic I watched 8x18 at some point in the middle of this and Victor makes a point of asking if Sam had kids or wanted them, and Sam's a bit like, no and eeeh in response, because, well, it's post-Amelia break up for him and it hurts and normal life is for people who shut the gates of hell and survive to tell the tale, really. But anyway. Yeah. Dean is effortlessly fatherly to Krissy or Claire; Sam struggles, and is surprised to be considered old, I think because he's still somehow got the backpack he had in season 1 that makes him look like a 10 year old schoolboy when he shoulders it, and in some ways he's never managed to get to the mature adult stage. Like, he needs to have genuinely lived it to absorb it into his personality, and he got as far as wanting to propose to a college girlfriend, or wanting to move in with Amelia and have a dog... He's never had a kid forced on him or someone he adopted... Magda was the first kid he'd potentially adopt HIMSELF for the entire show I think, and he still related to her directly; some part of him still resonates with the lost hurt child phase of life... I mean, watching season 8 and 12 concurrent, as I'm accidentally doing, we've got Sam wanting to shut the gates of hell and go live a normal life, and Sam wanting to rid the world of monsters and live a normal life. In both cases he's got this big hurdle before he grows up and completes any life stages I suppose.

Dean's sort of unintentionally matured on the fly, so he's still got an adorable childlike layer of his personality, but he also falls into being a father more naturally, and at the very least, something awoken by thinking Ben might be his back in season 3 for an episode, and having to think of him that way may have... idk flipped some levers or something. Sam's busy having it all ripped away and putting up big walls that need to be overcome before he can rebuild. Dean lost everything so young he's re-made his life within the framework of being who he is, and endgoals that fix everything don't mean as much to him - which goes right back to that conversation in 1x16 where Dean thought killing Azazel would bring the family back together to hunt, and Sam thought it meant he could go back to college and be a person again.

*Claire stomping off listening to music and shutting out the world* I bet she's not going to get grabbed when she walks through this patch of trees or anything

Wow she got attacked while walking through the patch of trees wow

(this is a totally muted reaction because I screamed "CLAAAAAAAAAAIRE" into Mittens' chat box with barely any context :P)

She did seem like she has learned to fight a little, but the werewolf just totally overpowered her :<

TBH I think she's probably close to normal hunter level - I mean Garth got bitten, and most hunters aren't crazily OP and used to fighting demons with nothing but a tea towel like Dean

I hope no one's complaining about her being useless or deserving that... I think we're spoiled by Sam and Dean

SAM HUGGING CLAAAAAAAAAIRE

SAM BEING DONE WITH MIIIICK

I'm glad it was that easy after all and they didn't keep a load of secrets or make it hard. Killing kids is the line and Mick crossed it, and Dean told Sam, and Sam is like, yep, okay, bye bye Mick.

Google: How to extract mom from BMoL now

Google: How to un-werewolf my ward before my angel finds out

I am not handling Dean's face in this scene

Dean's trying so hard. He looks.. argh

"Maybe some people can control this. But I can barely keep it together on a good day." Aka she already is angry and lashes out and runs off etc and that's not exactly got better from having a sort of stable life with Jody... So now she's a werewolf she's terrified of what she'd do to them with extra violence in her, and she loves Alex and Jody so much she doesn't WANT to be near them...

So yep, now we have the Madison dilemma back >.> "I'd rather die."

But this time Mick mentioned an old cure that doesn't work

Google: how has werewolf medical knowledge improved since the 1920s?

Ouch, 1/9 test subjects was cured. That's considerably worse odds than Dean had with the vampire cure - the Campbell recipe clearly described of the test subjects, one died and one lived.

It seems to work every time now so I assume they've refined the recipe a bit. Like, longer fever, but less chance of puking your guts up to death, because in 6x05 it happened quick and horrible but by 9x19 Alex is moaning and feverish and says she's been throwing up but is obviously having a slower recovery than Dean, but in a sense a long fever is much less violent and therefore easier to bear.

Oh, nope, that was mice (WEREWOLF MICE AAW) - we have one dead human, and Claire saying "second time's the charm" - same odds, with ominous test data behind it.

"It's my life. I get all the votes."

"It's her life"

Sam might not be great at the truth but he's always there for bodily autonomy.

Dean puts the fear of God into Mick and by that I mean fear of himself :P

Pfft the Lucky Badger has a huge "No under 21s" sign on the door which I don't think has been clear until now.

I find it somewhat surreal that a 20 year old is being treated as a minor and child but I suppose it's the law over there >.>

I suppose Mick buying her a beer was a real sign of the culture clash which also is symbolic of him just not getting how it works.

I LOVE they use a shot of the lurking Impala before they stalk Connor

OH NO He was just a jerk... who totally deserved that.

Now what???

There's like no leads to follow??? Maybe lurk in the woods and see if a weird man in a mask is around??

Meanwhile: high drama with Claire transforming and challenging Mick to kill her

AAAAAAH

Oh good he didn't kill her. >.> well if he learned his lesson it's too late for both him and the Winchesters and the whole mission.

And they'd better phone Mary as soon as this is over, like, get the hell over here and never answer your phone to them again

Pfft sedating and restraining her for his protection. Mick's really not very brave, and his methods are repeatedly showing his weaknesses, mostly because of his priorities.

Like, he thinks, I'm not as bad as Ketch but I'm still a coward and you're a scary monster

Oh no Claire being sad about not telling Jodyyyy and she's going to be so maaad

She loves Jody and Alex so much... this is killing me :(

AAAH MASK GUY

AAAH is that the OTHER douchey bartender? :P

"You can kill me later, after we find Claire" in a way, knowing you've fucked up THIS badly is somehow liberating :P

Ahaha, "Eat me, Teen Wolf" has that show ever been referenced here before?

LOL it's the "the apocalypse made me do it" excuse for an episode - same as the ghoulpires in 11x04 being like "welp the Darkness is coming we're all doomed" draws attention. Now this dick is like "Mary and Ketch murdered everyone I love and so I'm hurting people" which means the BMoL are the bad guys on BOTH sides of the equation.

"We weren't meant to live like this. A werewolf needs its pack" family stronger together message again, if very dark here

Sometimes monsters have a weird line on the truth - the vamps in 1x20 who talked about how revenge wasn’t worth it

Hahaha Claire calling out "nice guys"

Nooo, don't eat, Claire

"I have a family and they love me" AAH CLAIRE

It's like Cas's declaration in 12x12!! except no one hears it but here come Sam and Dean to save her!

(And Mick)

Uhoh Dean's got to fight Claire... this is not going to look good on his fight resume

oh nope, he did just knock her out via throwing her into the fridge

sometimes you have just got to deal with a problem, apologise, and move on :P

Yay Mick killed himself a monster

Now fix Claire pls.

She's very snarly still *looks dubious*

Oh noooo

OH YAY

I hope Dean went out to pray to Cas btw

She would make waking up with a face covered in blood look like a disney princess awakening

Why are they giving Mick a second chaaaance? Is this because he helped Claire? This is because they don't know about Magda because that was the second chance and this episode has made it suuuuper clear >.>

I mean THEY give him a second chance but to us and the story I think it's pretty clear Mick might help them at some point but he's on borrowed time and about the only way he could survive this now is if he, like, personally murders Ketch for them, although I'm not sure that will happen because Ketch and Dean seem destined for a reckoning, which to me means that Mick will probably get killed by Ketch and then Dean will kill Ketch and *invokes the entire Hmmmm whatcha say meme*

ANYWAY EVERYONE LOVES CLAIRE AND CLAIRE LOVES EVERYONE AND SHE CALLED JODY HER MOTHER AND THAT'S IT I'M DONE

*lies on the floor and weeps*

#12x16 #season 12 spoilers #my stuff

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