Supernatural: Twigs & Twine & Tasha Banes

September 16, 2017 9:53 AM - Season 12, Episode 20

Alicia Banes calls Mary for help after her mother, Tasha goes missing. Sam answers Mary's phone and he and Dean head out to help Alicia and her twin brother, Max find their mother who was hunting a powerful witch. Meanwhile Mary starts to have some doubts about the British Men of Letters.
posted by terilou (3 comments total)

Quotes

Sam: You did the right thing. You saved him.
Dean: Yeah, he seemed super saved.

Ketch: I must say, I am pumping with adrenaline. Perhaps we could find some privacy and tire ourselves out. It's not illicit motel sex, but –
Mary: I remember us agreeing that was a onetime thing.
Ketch: Did we? Ah, well.

Ketch: Those Enochian brass knuckles only work on angels. And sadly, I'm not an...
Mary: [punches Ketch in the groin] Brass knuckles are brass knuckles.

Max Banes: Is that a grenade launcher?
Dean: Yes she is.

Shapeshifter posing as Mary: That eye of yours twitches when you lie.
Ketch: My eye twitches all the time.

Trivia

When Mary phones Dean and gets his voicemail, the prompt is, "This is Dean's other other cell, so you must know what to do." This has been his voicemail since practically the beginning of the show, a span of almost a decade.

Sam says to Dean (to convince him to check on Tasha Banes), "Their mom is on a hunting trip, and she hasn't been home in a week." This is a call back to one of the first lines of the series, except it was Dean who said to Sam, "Dad's on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home in a few days." This line helped convince Sam to come with him to find their father, which jump-started the entire series.

This is the third episode of Supernatural to be directed by Richard Speight Jr.
posted by orange swan at 11:04 AM on February 1, 2022

Mary was more than a little slow to pick up on the fact that Ketch is a sociopath.

A hunter and a witch having twins who are themselves a hunter and a witch was a pretty good premise for a storyline -- or a number of storylines. This show's writers are so good at creating cool and interesting characters. Alas, we don't see Max and Alicia again in the series.
posted by orange swan at 11:05 AM on February 1, 2022

Aww, Max was so proud and excited to show off his mom. They seem like a genuinely lovely family, so it’s surprising that even one of them escaped a gruesome early death. Of all the minor characters who pass through this show, I really would’ve liked seeing more of Max and Alicia’s story. (Does he explain everything to her? Does it help? Is Alicia's soul in the doll, or in Heaven with their parents? Does Max wind up in Hell? Sometime down the road, do he and Sam get together for, jesus, the saddest beers imaginable?)

Later season set dressing does not live up to the motel era’s glories, but putting Tasha in a room where the wallpaper has them visually crowded in by trees on all sides was a nice touch.

The old lady was great at being, sure, evil, but also just DEEPLY unpleasant from the moment you meet her, I’m glad Tasha got to spit in her face. But building a rider into your soul contract that you get to live several hundred years as a rad witch, and if you give away your enormous supernatural power you don’t even have to go to Hell, seems like an extraordinarily sweet deal on some crossroad demon’s part.

This Mary/BMOL subplot is not doing it for me and Ketch has overstayed his welcome by a lot, I’m not sure if it’s better or worse Sam gets to know Magda Peterson died alone and terrified in a truck stop bathroom. But I did kind of laugh at the brass knuckles bit, partly because it was funny and partly because carrying around a set of brass knuckles specifically in case you are ever called upon to sucker punch an angel of the lord is the exact kind of bewildering nonsense I've come to expect from the BMOL.
posted by jameaterblues at 9:45 PM on May 6, 2022