Supernatural: The Things We Left Behind
December 11, 2014 12:45 AM - Season 10, Episode 9 - Subscribe

Castiel attempts to reconnect with Claire Novak, the troubled daughter of his human vessel. Meanwhile, Rowena (she of the World's Greatest Accent) tries to get back in Crowley's good graces.
posted by brundlefly (8 comments total)
 
I very much liked the final scene - the desperation in Sam's voice and Castile backing out of the room, turning Claire's face from the carnage. The bar scene with the story about Papa Wincester was bittersweet.
posted by viggorlijah at 7:21 AM on December 11, 2014 [2 favorites]


Papa Wincester

This is definitely the best Supernatural-related typo I've ever seen.
#brothertouching
posted by dialetheia at 8:41 PM on December 11, 2014 [7 favorites]


The writing is still incredibly clumsy (Clare's mother just left to find herself? Really? How is that at all consistent with the character? And the CBGB story was tone deaf and inconsistent timewise to put it mildly) but at least they appear to have a plot of sorts going on. If they could just make demons evil and scary again we'd be getting somewhere. And normal people as secondary characters.

Also what happened to the souls in the veil?
posted by fshgrl at 6:27 PM on December 13, 2014


If Abbadon in the world's 2nd angriest redhead, does that make Rowena the world's angriest redhead? Or is there a yet unnamed even angrier redhead?
posted by Requiax at 2:42 PM on December 15, 2014


I think one should take Claire's angry assessment with a grain of salt about the "finding herself". Mom left, for whatever actual reason, and doesn't know Grandma died.
posted by tomboko at 4:54 AM on December 26, 2014


Quotes

Dean: Whoa. Hey, Miley Cyrus, settle.
Claire Novak: Eat me, Hasselhoff.

Castiel: Do you think Claire is in trouble?
Dean: She's hanging out with a guy named Randy. She's in trouble.

Crowley: You said you'd be back in a flash and then you disappeared. I was eight years old! Eight!
Rowena: Oh, now you're being dramatic.
Crowley: I didn't even have a father!
Rowena: Of course you had a father! You were just conceived during a winter solstice orgy and it's not like I was taking names.

Sandra Phelan: What is it that you do exactly?
Castiel: I... um... I fight certain deadly threats to humanity.
Sandra: ...
Claire Novak: He's an exterminator.
Castiel: I'm an exterminator.

Dean: Cass, I need you to promise me something.
Castiel: Of course.
Dean: If I do go dark side, you gotta take me out.
Castiel: What do you mean?
Dean: Knife me. Smite me. Throw me into the freaking sun, whatever. And don't let Sam get in the way, because he'll try. I can't go down that road again man. I can't be that thing again.

Castiel: [buying Buzzed magazine] It's for a teenage girl. She's urinating.

Castiel: You could eat a vegetable.
Claire Novak: Ketchup's a vegetable.

Castiel: Is ketchup a vegetable?
Dean Winchester: Hell, yes.

Dean: [to sandwich] Oh. Hello, beautiful. Oh, yeah. Mmm!
Sam: You want some alone time with that thing?

Crowley: She was a horrible mother. Did I tell you the time that she almost traded me for three pigs. Three! I was an attractive child. I could juggle. I was worth five pigs, at least.

Rowena: King of Hell. Bravo. I always knew my boy was meant for big things.
Crowley: Really? As I remember it, you said I would die in a gutter, covered in my own sick.
Rowena: I was motivating you to do better, aim higher. And clearly, it worked.

Crowley: Mother.
Rowena: Fergus.
Crowley: Crowley.
Rowena: Fergus.

Salinger: How about I give you a break? And you give me the girl.
Randy: That's a joke, right? Claire's like family to me.
Salinger: Please. I know the con, all right? You find some kid with major league daddy issues, and then you get her to steal for you. Cut the proud papa act. I'll make you a good deal.
Randy: Like I said, Claire's family. So it better be a damn good deal.

Gerald: My Ma used to burn me with cigarettes.
Crowley: Nobody cares, Gerald. Don't get me started about the name, Fergus. Sounds like venereal disease, and not the fun kind.

Claire Novak: I appreciate the meal. And, you know, the felony. But you don't need to babysit me.

Castiel: I thought I could make it up to her.
Sam: I don't think you can. I mean, Jimmy was her father. And to some people, that's... that's everything, you know?
Castiel: No. I don't. I never knew my father. He was distant, to say the least.

Claire Novak: You changed. The Castiel I met, he was crappy, like super stuck-up and a dick and you just wanted to punch in his stupid angel face.
Castiel: I don't think I was that bad.
Claire Novak: You totally were. And now you're just, I don't know, nicer. Kind of a doof... no offence.

Castiel: Now I realize that there is no righteous path; it's just people trying to do their best in a world where it is far too easy to do your worst.
Claire Novak: Wow, deep.
Castiel: Yeah, for a doof.

Claire Novak: My Dad, is he still in there?
Castiel: No. The human soul... it can only occupy a body while it retains a certain structural integrity, and this vessel, it was... it was ripped apart on a sub-atomic level by an archangel.
Claire Novak: Then how are you --
Castiel: I was reassembled. Your father is in Heaven.
Claire Novak: Well, yay for him. Anyway good talk, you can get the hell out of my life now.

Dean: So you're having a midlife crisis?
Castiel: Well, I'm extremely old. I think I'm entitled.

Dean: This is why you called us, this is your emergency?
Castiel: Yes!
Dean: No Cass, an emergency is a dead body, okay or a wigged out angel, or the Apocalypse take three. Some chick bolting on you is no emergency. That's every Friday night for Sam.
Sam: Dude.

Trivia

When Castiel urges Claire to eat more vegetables, she replies that ketchup is a vegetable. This is referring to the controversy early in the Reagan administration over school lunch regulations that allowed items such as ketchup to count as a serving of vegetables for the purpose of meeting nutritional requirements.

Castiel says his vessel was ripped apart on a subatomic level by an archangel. This could either refer to Raphael who vaporized Castiel at the end season 4, or Lucifer who did the same at the end of season 5. This marks the first time it's confirmed that Castiel's vessel, Jimmy Novak, is dead and his soul has gone to Heaven. Prior to this it had never been explicitly stated what had become of Jimmy after the numerous times his body had been obliterated while under Castiel's control.

Rowena tells Trish that tugging on the chains won't work and Trish replies, "I didn't ask you, Braveheart." To which Rowena retorts, "Freedom!" Their banter is from Mel Gibson's movie Braveheart.

Dustin works at Wiener Hut. This is the same restaurant that employed Alfie, the vessel of the angel Samandriel, from season 8.

When Castiel, Sam, and Dean enter the tiki bar, Les Baxter's iconic "Quiet Village" is playing in the background.
posted by orange swan at 10:09 AM on December 2, 2021


It's hilarious that Claire's isolation room includes a punching bag among its few amenities.

Couldn't Castiel just have zapped Claire out of her locked room without having to break her out?

Is Castiel using Jimmy Novak's credit cards? We know the Winchesters run credit card scams, but how do the angels fund their lives on earth?

Poor Claire. She's lost so much under such bizarre circumstances, and being in the foster care system is bad enough without also knowing about the monsters out there when no one around you does. I found it a comfort to know she's going to get the kind of home she needs soon.

Have we ever seen Sam get rejected or dumped or stood up by a woman? That seems like a gratuitous, baseless insult on Dean's part, and possibly also projection, because as the brother who takes far more shots on goal, he's the one who is much more likely to have been ditched often by women.

John Winchester spending a day exploring New York with his sons is the second incident of him doing something with them just for fun that we've heard of (the first being a donkey ride in the Grand Canyon). And it was impressive that he would be able to find Dean, but I think he knew all about Dean's love of music and classic rock and that he would be likely to go to CBGB.
posted by orange swan at 10:27 AM on December 2, 2021


Not everything about Claire totally works for me and I don’t love the actor they got to play the older version, but her position in the show as an innocent, vulnerable person who can very justifiably tell the main characters they destroyed her family and ruined her life is such a neat and unexpected choice of a recurring character. That scene in the alley is devastating because everything she says is completely true, and could be said by so many other people we never see.

It says so much about this show's mythology and sensibility and why things happen the way they do that when Castiel talks casually with the Winchesters about how he had a distant father he never knew, he's also an angel describing his relationship with God (while trying to mitigate the mess he created by taking a loving father away from his daughter.) As I’ve said before, I don't know that SPN is nihilistic per se, but this world never really had a chance.

Sam and Dean tell the CBGB story together even though Sam wasn't even there for most of it, as one does with beloved family stories you've told a million times, and I have to figure they must almost never get to talk about their dad or that time in their lives with anyone but each other.

Sam's so confident his brother is a terrifying badass that he doesn't think twice about leaving Dean in the house with like six huge armed dudes and going to wait in the car, and then when he hears a commotion, he's just worried Dean is inside murderizing everyone in sight. He’s a badass too, but Dean not being okay is—still—the scariest thing there is.
posted by jameaterblues at 6:20 PM on December 6, 2021


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