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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

Text

12x21 watching notes

not proof read

expectations: I was in fandom for 10x21

Here is the lowest bar ever

*buckleming crawl under the bar*

I took a few hours and I'm sure I have nothing to say that hasn't already been yelled about in great length by others, and I mostly just don't care about anything they ever do ever again but let's watch this for the plot because I'm a completionist, and this is going to affect 12x22 and 12x23 whether I want it to or not >.>

Oh the first scene is the promo one, which we already discussed a bit with all the parallels and such. The entire room and set and everything is yelling a ton of parallels and references, which I have already got a post on on my blog. Okay.

The stuff we didn't get was Jody calling to tell Sam about Eileen.

*pictured: the blogger taking about as big a step back to think about this as Sam just did to prioritise freaking out over Mary over grieving for Eileen*

(this is a thing - Sam compartmentalises so much, and he has done all season, and Dean's called him out on it, but it's practical when hunters are dying, and mom's in trouble, that you don't ditch everything, you help out hunters who are in trouble (12x20 - what if Tasha had been got by the BMoL? It only doesn't fit the pattern once they know what happened to her)... Sam says they know of another hunter who disappeared recently, anyhow. He links Mary to being the 3rd in trouble in the same way, and they KNOW the BMoL are with her and being sketchy. So. There's that.)

Anyway, Jody serves 2 purposes - we have the horror of Claire being on the BMoL's list so her call could have been about her, but we also know Jody has the APB out on Cas - Jody is becoming the nerve centre of the hunters because she's the one with all the links when it comes to looking out for them, it seems. Raising girls who have a foot in the life, and keeping an eye out on the official record for other hunters who might be in trouble, as well as occasionally bringing them cases in the same way.

So that call could have been to tell them Cas had been found dead in a ditch like Dean feared, or Claire had been found dead in a ditch like WE fear, but instead it's Eileen for Sam. It's a sort of last horrible hurrah for using Cas and Eileen parallels - that both are connected to Jody like this. And Sam gets his horrible news while Dean had been waiting for it about Cas.

Sam shuts down and goes all business like, putting a potentially still living hunter (and also their mom but HONESTLY his compartmentalising is that good I wonder if mentioning this was only to get Dean emotionally hooked) ahead of dealing with what happened to Eileen.

At this point I feel like Terrible Coffee AU has become his djinn dream where he gets to just fuck off from all his responsibilities and scream in the woods for as long as he likes and actually feel everything he's bottled up.

Also I am going to go write in a scene where Sam gets to go scream in the woods.

Also if you've been reading it, feel free to assume that between scenes where we've seen Sam, he has been off screaming in the woods. Or that it's canon Sam's djinn dream and starts some point immediately after this.

Hi yes I am now a bitter Sam girl, who knew.

So Mittens has helpfully explained the bad car continuity to me while I was blinking at Sam saying "2 hunter deaths" in the motel and "7" in the morgue. Possibly in all that driving time they reached out to others and found out more, but it really doesn't sound like it, it just sounds like he's repeating the exposition but with a higher number.

If they did spend like 50 hours in the car as she worked out, then I guess he would have had time to make a lot of calls.

*gif of the guy with the duct tape on the really big crack*

Things I like: Jared's acting of Sam at the morgue, anyway.

Thinks I hate: he's acting like that because Eileen is dead and it's the worst thing to happen to Sam in ages and he can't do anything about it, emotions-wise. And there are bigger problems than giving Eileen a hunters' funeral and getting shitfaced for a week.

But where *did*they get 7 monster related deaths? Last scene it was all 2 isn't a pattern and that seemed to be the point of the conversaion but now the point of the conversation is omg there's been seven.

I'd ask who proof reads this but the answer is clearly either no one, or Bob Singer.

ANYWAY I went out to get snacks for a party tomorrow, nearly passed out on the way home, and also in a separate incident got stung by a bunch of nettles and it was still more fun than watching this :P

Mary is one of the ones going around killing hunters, though they kept her away from Eileen. She's also being kept in a room one part Heaven parallel one part panic room parallel, being a sort of Sam in 4x21 and Cas in 8x17 mash up. She's being brainwashed to go kill hunters and Toni comes to mock her for not being able to tell reality from fiction.

Buckleming like little digs at fans so I'm just gonna ignore that because I am ignoring them.

It is also thematic for the problems they've all been having of dealing with their expectations about this that and the other, or in copious denial and so on. It's ALWAYS a relevant theme to this show but this year we don't have a strong meta character or plot, it's just in the characterisation.

We get a giant chunk of exposition that explains eeeverything. I was joking last night about the pie subtext being explained in the text and taking all the fun out of it... Obviously that was a lie and I've been really enjoying it (and also it's not strictly out of the subtext, it was just being heavily utilised to tell the story instead of passing jokes, which made it even more fun than normal) but this really does take the joy out of meta-ing it except that I guess it's the show telling us we were right to pick up on everything going on with Mary under the surface

So Toni takes a thin connection to start talking about all the Mary stuff, covering:

- the "illusion" she has about her perfect life as it stood before she died - well the concept of "perfect" in general which is something being challenged everywhere in the fact vs fiction stuff - her willful denial it was normal despite that fact she was a hunter and still hunting so it wasn't even like she was living totally normally - the fact it wasn't all based on her deal with Azazel, and that that was going to come for her at some point - despite reading his journal a zillion times, just like last week Mary didn't realise Ketch was a psychopath until massive lines were crossed, her willful denial that John went off the rails after her death - that Sam and Dean didn't TELL her this stuff - literally just saying that John abused them - that Sam and Dean are damaged because of what he did (and that he did it because it was her fault for the deal)

*And all pretty much in these words*

Like. Wow. This is obviously, like the same bulletpoints on the secret pinboard we don't see in the writer's room explaining everything about what's going on with each character. Buckleming copied down the bulletpoints and then somehow thought that was just their notes for what Toni was going to say here :P I disapprove of exposition like this, but it has now brought all of this into the main text for Mary to deal with. Whether she agrees or not, she has to consider that what John did was abuse, and that Sam and Dean aren't telling her everything about it. She can't know for sure whether it was or not without their explanation but she'll have to ask them for it and weigh their answers against the possibility of abuse... I don't really know wtf they're doing with all this but it's forced too much character stuff on Mary at once to even deal with.

Toni goes on to say they're restoring her to being Mary Campbell, stripping away all her life after things got messy with cupids and kids and all... She's a born hunter, and to the BMoL they clearly see it in her blood (just like they see being a BMoL legacy in people's blood). Anyway nature vs nurture stuff, and they're going for raw nature as a killer (which Ketch firmly believes in about himself even if it's possible he was just programmed to be this way from such a young age he never got a chance to think he was anything else)... It fits into the wider discussion of the season which also relates to the nephilim.

And by stripping away her life, it's reducing her to a person without choice in what she is - "interesting choice. soon you won't be making any". It's blatantly just cramming in themes of the season, but I guess this is what Buckleming episodes are often for: laying out on paper everything that has been hidden more carefully and subtly in the juicy parts of the season :P This is the bare bones, look at what this story is about, explanation.

Oh I guess the cut on Mary's palm also parallels Sam's in 7x02 which was his link to reality. She's having her own reality issues but this reminds her that she's being made to kill hunters, not monsters. And hunters who seem to know her, even to be friendly when they find her in their house (that whole scene seemed weirdly out of character for a dude I'd never met to be chill about that but whatever, he kept his still-bloody machete in the umbrella rack, maybe he was just sloppy)

Crowley comes to cross over some storylines at the very last moment of the season, after basically living in a bubble for the entire season since 12x08. He greets Dr Hess by name, and I had some speculation he was somewhat connected to the way the Winchesters got the tip off to kill Ramsay in 12x15... Earlier they were talking about hellhounds and it cut to Crowley to suggest he was involved, so this seems to be confirming a connection, especially for the messing around with Hellhounds between the BMoL and Crowley.

Yep, he loaned out the hellhound to Ketch, anyway. >.>

This conversation finally confirms what I suspected since 12x01 - the BMoL have a deal with Crowley that crossroad deals go uninterrupted as long as there's no other demonic scheming in the country, just the humans idiotic enough to summon demons to sell their souls so it's all their own fault. This shows corruption in the BMoL that they let this happen anyway - a line drawn that they can't keep the demons out so they just pretend to go along with them like they had a choice in the matter. I suspect this deal with the BMoL is more symbolic than anything that they don't harrass a percentage of demons that they come about in the course of things, because there is no way to police humans choosing to do this without like, a Minority Report level awareness of what they're about to do. There's no saving people who made the deals, though the Winchesters have intervened several times on behalf of people they felt didn't deserve the punishment for the deal they made. The BMoL have opinions about that.

Crowley is also, predictably, challenged about his relationship to the Winchesters, which is a sort of as per usual thing - and he's saved them an awful lot lately. He pretends not to be conflicted about it to Dr Hess, but the close up on his poker face is still a dramatic close up after challenging him about something or other. There's been some speculation he might come to a decision about them but the Lucifer thing has been really throwing him off for me and any speculation I might speculate, by keeping him out of the way. His interactions with them in 12x12 and 12x15 showed his loyalties pretty clearly but that was a 2 times is a pattern that could be broken sort of thing and here he is finally being put to that test (his earlier interactions helping them find Lucifer, despite some mild self sacrifice gestures in 12x07, were really more about them solving a joint problem with some character stuff on the side... he begins being put to the test in the second half of the season)... It SEEMS pretty clear that his loyalties to being the big bad evil dude are fucked when it comes to the Winchesters despite himself, and he stands with Mary on the screen behind him, almost like a faction, or picked side, in this conversation, but that could just be because it was there on the wall to show they're monitoring Mary so closely they have her blood pressure and everything on display and Crowley's involvement is incidental.

Anyway I'm not sure which way he'd go, because everything suggests he'd pick protecting them but if it happens this episode, any amount of fuckery can intervene and if it happens later, I'm still not sure wtf the point of this Lucifer stuff is for him and what it means for where he's going

it's just... messy and weird and I don't get the point of it yet because it feels more like they need this thing happening on the side because they gave the Marks contracts to be in this season and this is how they've been killing time, because neither character has that much left to offer the Winchesters because Sam's arc with Lucifer ended in season 5 or 7, and Dean's with Crowley in 10 or 11. Sam might not LIKE finding out Lucifer is still alive but they haven't been connected since 11x10, and Dean might be pissed off at Crowley's choice but aside from lol we're exes jokes, nothing has happened between them all season, and even Cas working with Crowley wasn't an arc so much as just showing the current state of politics between them.

I type all this ignoring another scene in Crowley's lair, this time the Lucifer and his minion who is almost 10000% not going to survive because he's acting as a shifty demon, a black actor, and talking to Lucifer, in a Buckleming episode, and we cut our losses with caring about this stuff. >.> I'm done since the cold open.

Sam phones up Crowley, which is rare enough, but he has a reason to be pissed off at him, and that's because Sam already suspects that Crowley's at least half-responsible.

He's hated him since they met but if Crowley's gonna die, Sam should do it, and this is a good motivation, at least. If Cas gets to vaporise Lucifer with nephilim power (I hope although like anything this season I'm not putting money on it :P) then Sam deserves a big kill of his own >.>

Anyway Crowley just called Cas "the Winchesters' love slave"

The old refrain of using them plural to talk about Cas's investment in them, the suggestion there is something sexual about his devotion to them missing the point entirely about why he cares for them, but also hinting at a truth underneath that Crowley knows full well the situation with Dean n Cas, and tbh Lucifer has possessed Cas so he probably knows Cas's side too... A sort of awareness from both parties in the room that Cas is bananas for Dean but using it in a mocking way, and making it a general moral failing.

BMoL scene - no one has any nuanced characterisation that makes a great deal of sense in context, e.g. Toni trash talking Ketch in front of their superior, but we get some exposition that Hess thinks Ketch is cruel enough to take control of the BMoL one day and would do well as a test run as head of the American operation. Toni is also up for the job out of the blue because why not.

For some reason Dean goes to check their junk mail. They have a letter from Eileen! More expotion in the form of a letter. I hope she explains why she was still in America, but I've paused on Sam's face when Dean says Eileen because I like hurting myself, and look at poor broken little Sammy in there :<

Of course, making it aaaall about Sam and Eileen and making it clear he was the one more emotionally connected to her.

He's wearing a tan coat and blue shirt which makes me nervous casting him as a Cas mirror while dealing with this

Nice montage of Sam and Dean checking for bugs.

I am assuming they go to their trap, and Mary comes to kill this dude they made up, and Sam and Dean are like D:

oh wow gosh there's a design flaw in Crowley's control on Lucifer and it can be reversed so Lucifer can control Crowley who would have ever thought........

(I mean maybe not this exact scenario but that things were potentially going to flip between them at some point and Lucifer would be in charge...)

I hate that they used the "reverse the polarity" line because it didn't deserve that :P

I would wonder if there's some meta application to this theme though - especially with Mary AND Cas being controlled, Lucifer being controlled has been the least interesting or well-used part of this, barely even serving as a mirror to this, but it's not too late :P

Toni asking how Ketch knew the hellhound sat when she told it to and basically says better not to disagree with it even if you can't see what it's doing. Can't work out what level this commentary works at.

They ARE about to be duped by the Winchesters via a transmission they can only hear without seeing what they're doing. I wouldn't *mind* Ketch being mauled by the hellhound although I do think one of the Winchesters should kill him

Sam owes him 2, Mary would get a hell of a lot of satisfaction but I still suspect Dean will do it anyway for meta purposes, dark mirrors, etc.

oooh ketch and mary scene. Please be as interesting as these two characters generally are regardless of writer

Oh no her face when she sees Ketch. I don't think she can credit her memory of fighting him enough to know if it was real or not, and after spending so much time with him he's a familiar face >.> And he's soft on her, which is a whole other problem, but whatever happened with Ketch, I think Mary finds him weirdly comforting. But his idea of comfort is that he's happy for the transformation she's going through - mostly because she'll be like him and they can have lots of sex while killing things together

Then Mary uses the "world without monsters" line as the lie falls away and she realises how badly this has turned on her and her dream.

It's sort of the realisation I wanted her to have ~12x14 when I wrote my "a world without monsters" fic but oh well better late than never - she is going through the exact mental process I wrote which is always fun to watch on screen :P

And now Mary is feeling betrayed - "we worked together" and she mentions how she knew him. She uses that "closeness" even when he denies it to get near enough to grab his gun and *nearly* repeats how she nearly killed herself in 12x09 before Cas stabbed Billie and shocked her out of it. Ketch grabs the gun to protect her from herself, despite putting her through what makes her want to kill herself >.>

(This scene is brilliant by the way)

Mary now honourary member of Team Free Will - all she ever had when it came down to it was her free will... except she never even had that. What Toni mentioned about her deal was coersion from Heaven and Hell because she doesn't know about the cupids, that the only reason she had her family was because her free will was taken away. But actually FEELING its loss immediately hurts her spirit so badly. (And she didn't ask to be brought back and wouldn't have chosen it)

Anyway that was an incredible performance, and Ketch was okay too, showing his weird half-concern where he kind of likes her and wants her to be what he thinks will help her - to take away the pain not by killing her but by removing her will to feel upset by this.

Mary is left sobbing on her knees and I just love that she was allowed to messy cry and hiccup her lines like... that was brilliant. I love Mary okay.

Although Sam and Dean seem to be going to their trap already so I now doubt Mary will come

there's a flickering light by the warehouse which makes it look like ghosts are around.

Just them!

Dean gets kicked in the nuts, which is a reverse mirror of Mary kicking Ketch in the nuts - he the light mirror to the dark kicker, vice versa to Mary etc. Dean makes a quip about how they'll have to start dating if she keeps doing that, which in a Buckleming way solidifies this. I'm just, not gonna poke that.

Oh but it's a Crowley and Lucifer scene next.

God, watching the end of season 9 so recently really makes me hate this even more because remember when Crowley won everything?? After he lost Dean all the oomph went out of him - Dean shoving him in 10x02 and Crowley realising he's fucked and hastily manipulating himself to safety - when he makes that bargain with Sam, he loses his threat and cred to them and on a narrative level. There's nothing Crowley can do to the Winchesters now that's as bad as demon!Dean, and he's had no motivation to really get in their business and they don't fear him. It's not just a Buckleming problem although they've written most of Crowley this season it feels like (or these scenes are all individually 1000 years long) - they introduce Rowena immediately to give him another reason to be relevant and in scenes, but she quickly discovers he's whipped by the Winchesters, and he spends season 11 messing around being invested in main plot stuff just because he happens to live in the same world as them, not because he's out to get them or doing anything they urgently need to stop him doing. Even him harbouring Amara was only tangential to giving them a way to discover where she was - Crowley was nothing really to do with that particular confrontation. And then he got mired in the Lucifer stuff...

Now this season he has not only lost his edge but he's genuinely only being portrayed as protecting the Winchesters or being an idiot. And now Lucifer has managed to take control of him, but not even through his own cleverness, just getting a random demon to help, and being told he could do it.

There's really nothing of interest in these scenes because it's all.. blah.

I mean I wouldn't mind Crowley going soft so much because it's been interesting in other episodes (12x12, 12x15, and the season 11 episodes where it was interesting or even 10x14 or 10x17) but that's not really being explored as a character thing - now Buckleming are just exploiting that Crowley's been off his game for seasons by doing this to him.

But I suppose the loss of agency thing is sort of relevant with Mary and Cas also in trouble - it's like everyone but Sam and Dean is being controlled or is controlling >.>

I assume Crowley did just get some karma from Olivette and he's now possessing that rat, especially since they made such a big deal out of cutting Crowley with an angel blade = loud demon burny sounds, and then like in 11x01 when Cas stabbed Crowley's much shot and stabbed meatsuit, there was no sound effect.

Honestly at this point it sounds much more fun to have him stay as a rat, and also I guess his meatsuit is compromised

i would like someone else to play Crowley for a short period just like in 11x01 but without the orgy murder, and not because I dislike Mark S because he's made Crowley's long endurance since season 10 much more worth it than I guess it could have been with a less charismatic actor. But because it would be interesting and shake things up...

Wait I completely forgot to talk about the toni in the car scene... I mean that was all predictable and she was winding them up with the truth/half truths, and of course Mary is the sorest sore spot to push. The reveal she and Ketch had sex has a predictable reaction.

I finally figured out what's bothered me all episode - the Brits don't use ANY euphemisms for sex. IDK if Buckleming are particularly verbally creative anyway but they didn't spend any time giggling at some sort of list online of ridiculous British euphemisms and then go out of their way to use it, so there's now a drinking game for every time someone says "sex" in a pained British accent.

The real crime is they haven't seen Austen Powers because using "shagged" is at least the most obvious one to use if you're scared of being imaginative.

shoot out in the Bunker!

Dean gets some really improbable headshots but it's cool because I love him

"how many more guys you have in here?" "our mom! where is she!?"

lemme guess she's the other guy in here

*mary emerges with a gun*

oh lookie at that then

I suppose the 8x17 and Naomi parallels are about to do something. Mary's already on the crypt scene graph a few times. I'm laughing because 10x03 has another "I know you're in there" that I have totally blanked on since it aired, mostly because the failed ones really just kind of stack up in a little sad pile in the corner, but I did literally just watch it.

Interesting that Toni is ~more~ of the Naomi and Mary is basically here to free her... Ketch gets out sooner because Mary makes a shot just to scare Dean and Ketch gets his gun. Toni is the only one in peril now but she's the one who seems to have been doing the hard work on Mary.

elizabethrobertajones oh cripes it didn't work what the hell did Robbie DO he must have blackmail material on Singer and killing off all his faves is payback

mittensmorgul >.> wait, what didn't work?

elizabethrobertajones the crypt scene failure with Mary

mittensmorgul oh, yeah. well, did we expect it to?

elizabethrobertajones I mean I know he played the game hard to establish only romantic love breaks it in his episodes

mittensmorgul The crypt scene was supposed to be founded on mutual love and understanding

elizabethrobertajones but... like... did that get engraved permanently in the show's rulebook?

mittensmorgul the whole "YOU KNOW ME" but Mary really... doesn't//

elizabethrobertajones I know :P But it doesn't work on Sam and Dean??? they have at least 3 failures between them

mittensmorgul sam broke through in blade runners... adn after he killed abaddon

elizabethrobertajones yeah but he wasn't in danger and Dean was only sort of thinking about killing him

mittensmorgul but it took cas intervening in 10.03

elizabethrobertajones not overtly :P it wasn't a staged crypt scene it was just Sam breaking through Dean's murder fugue state caused by murdering someone else

mittensmorgul yeah...

elizabethrobertajones but 10x03 "i know you're in there" has no effect, and Robbie's parting one in 11x16 seemed mostly to be there to prove the rule

mittensmorgul nobody's ever really broken dean free in true crypt scene fashion

elizabethrobertajones I mean you have a point about Mary not knowing them and it being a miscommunication thing but in the wider picture I'm actually stunned that it works every time :P

mittensmorgul yeah

elizabethrobertajones I'm guessing she gets reclaimed some way or other but it seems they need to find another way than just appealing to her like that which means even if they break through it's going to be a subversion of sorts and has a past failure

mittensmorgul yeah

elizabethrobertajones while Dean nailed it first go on Cas :P although! they never told her to kill them and leaving them to die is different from making the shot

mittensmorgul yep if they'd ordered her to fire on them... that might've broken their hold on her It's like Doctor Who and the Big Red Button

elizabethrobertajones but the important thing is that's not what they showed here :P

Anyway that's pretty ominous about the Bunker being their tomb - yet more stuff about it being less and less like their home - it's always being threatened but every couple of years it seems really like it's going to permanently happen. I spent this equivalent area of season 10 convinced they were going to torch the Bunker. With it being Dabb era, and the 5th year of the Bunker, bets are off.

Mary talking about it being easier to hurt the people she loves, like there aren't only 2 people and she just left them to die and doesn't expect to see them again

"How do you feel?" "Fine. I'm fine"

I think she might take the cake for one of the worst "i'm fines" ever on this show.

She's now successfully been transformed into the Mary I wrote in A World Without Monsters and I never wanted to see that on screen despite kinda writing it assuming it would happen.

*shoves my fic far away from me because it's done nothing but cause me pain* :P

oh thank god that's over. I'm going to go to bed and spite-write Sam and Eileen's relationship accelerating dramatically faster than I meant it to in Terrible Coffee AU.

#12x21 #season 12 spoilers #my stuff #buckleming appropriate wank for ts

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