Supernatural: The Kids Are Alright
June 28, 2021 4:21 AM - Season 3, Episode 2 - Subscribe
In Cicero, Indiana, a man fatally falls in his own power saw, the fifth recent suspicious accidental death in that neighborhood. Dean insists on investigating because it's the hometown of Lisa Braeden, a woman he had a fling with over eight years before, and when he drops by her house, he finds out Lisa has an eight year-old-son who looks and behaves a lot like... him.
Quotes:
Sam: [hangs up the phone because he was making a call he didn't want Dean to know about] I was just ordering pizza.
Dean: Dude. You do know you're in a restaurant?
Sam: I just felt like pizza.
Dean: Ok, Weirdy McWeirderson.
Ruby: I'm interested in you.
Sam: Why?
Ruby: Because you're tall I love a tall man. And then there's that whole antichrist thing.
Lisa: What? I had a type: leather jacket, couple of scars, no mailing address. I was there.
Trivia:
Sam states that changelings feed on synovial fluid from the mothers and that they always feed on the back of the neck. Synovial fluid is a type of fluid found only in the spaces between joints; it acts as a form of shock absorption it helps lubricate and also helps remove waste from the joint space. All humans have synovial fluid, not just women, and there is very little in the cervical vertebra. The majority of synovial fluid is found in larger joints such as the elbows and knees, so there might be other reasons as to why these creatures only feed on the mothers and only on the back of the neck.
If the writers didn't really understand body fluids, they might have been thinking "cerebrospinal fluid" when they said "synovial". CSF surrounds the brain and spinal cord, and it can be removed by piercing the skull or the spinal column. Since the body only makes about 500cc of this vital CSF a day, tapping that sweet brain juice can easily kill the subject.
Quotes:
Sam: [hangs up the phone because he was making a call he didn't want Dean to know about] I was just ordering pizza.
Dean: Dude. You do know you're in a restaurant?
Sam: I just felt like pizza.
Dean: Ok, Weirdy McWeirderson.
Ruby: I'm interested in you.
Sam: Why?
Ruby: Because you're tall I love a tall man. And then there's that whole antichrist thing.
Lisa: What? I had a type: leather jacket, couple of scars, no mailing address. I was there.
Trivia:
Sam states that changelings feed on synovial fluid from the mothers and that they always feed on the back of the neck. Synovial fluid is a type of fluid found only in the spaces between joints; it acts as a form of shock absorption it helps lubricate and also helps remove waste from the joint space. All humans have synovial fluid, not just women, and there is very little in the cervical vertebra. The majority of synovial fluid is found in larger joints such as the elbows and knees, so there might be other reasons as to why these creatures only feed on the mothers and only on the back of the neck.
If the writers didn't really understand body fluids, they might have been thinking "cerebrospinal fluid" when they said "synovial". CSF surrounds the brain and spinal cord, and it can be removed by piercing the skull or the spinal column. Since the body only makes about 500cc of this vital CSF a day, tapping that sweet brain juice can easily kill the subject.
One of the thing that surprises me about this show is just how many episodes take place on a residential construction site. I don't know what the producers had against new home developments but apparently they're the height of evil.
On a more serious note, I'm really surprised that a TV show could get the subdivision developer's insurance company to sign off on shooting at a construction site. You'd figure the liability issues must be enormous.
I'm kind of two minds about this one. Mini-Dean (Ben) did a good job of mimicking Dean. He was cute. Dean was cute with him. The whole thing was a big ball of adorable (including Dean regretting that Ben wasn't his.) But it was almost a bit too broad. The similarities between the two were almost at the level of a joke. I don't think they had to go quite as far as they did. They should have trusted the audience a bit more to get the implication without telegraphing it so hard.
I like this Ruby much better than the first one.
Is Ruby meant to be a character we've already met before? She's not Meg. I didn't think she was the Crossroads Demon. What did I miss?
posted by sardonyx at 7:22 AM on June 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
On a more serious note, I'm really surprised that a TV show could get the subdivision developer's insurance company to sign off on shooting at a construction site. You'd figure the liability issues must be enormous.
I'm kind of two minds about this one. Mini-Dean (Ben) did a good job of mimicking Dean. He was cute. Dean was cute with him. The whole thing was a big ball of adorable (including Dean regretting that Ben wasn't his.) But it was almost a bit too broad. The similarities between the two were almost at the level of a joke. I don't think they had to go quite as far as they did. They should have trusted the audience a bit more to get the implication without telegraphing it so hard.
I like this Ruby much better than the first one.
Is Ruby meant to be a character we've already met before? She's not Meg. I didn't think she was the Crossroads Demon. What did I miss?
posted by sardonyx at 7:22 AM on June 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Oh dear, I got Meg and Ruby confused. Yes, this is the original Ruby.
posted by orange swan at 8:28 AM on June 28, 2021
posted by orange swan at 8:28 AM on June 28, 2021
While the body can produce about a half liter of CSF a day, there's only about a quarter of that in the body at any one time.
It serves a few functions, a major one is getting metabolic waste out of the central nervous system. Basically, brain pee.
/not kinkshaming
construction site
Meta-commentary about the filming location? The first quarter seasons were during the run-up to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and its attendant construction boom. You can tell that its a new crappy cookie-cutter development out in the 'burbs; at about 6:20 you can see a Canada Post community mailbox - that's where mail gets delivered, not into a slot/ box at the house.
Children are inherently scary to me - especially when they can't be reasoned with/ aren't rational. But that car scene was oof, nonetheless.
(lets play I want ice cream)
posted by porpoise at 2:36 PM on June 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
It serves a few functions, a major one is getting metabolic waste out of the central nervous system. Basically, brain pee.
/not kinkshaming
construction site
Meta-commentary about the filming location? The first quarter seasons were during the run-up to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and its attendant construction boom. You can tell that its a new crappy cookie-cutter development out in the 'burbs; at about 6:20 you can see a Canada Post community mailbox - that's where mail gets delivered, not into a slot/ box at the house.
Children are inherently scary to me - especially when they can't be reasoned with/ aren't rational. But that car scene was oof, nonetheless.
(
posted by porpoise at 2:36 PM on June 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
ah the time and loving attention this show puts into killing a guy with his own power saw <3
But it was almost a bit too broad. The similarities between the two were almost at the level of a joke. I don't think they had to go quite as far as they did. They should have trusted the audience a bit more to get the implication without telegraphing it so hard.
It goes waaay too hard on this for me. It wasn't the kid actor's fault, but it kept feeling like a joke but never actually working that way, and also an eight year old version of Dean's id is A Lot. (and the adult version is on thin ice but that's another conversation.)
Meta-commentary about the filming location? The first quarter seasons were during the run-up to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and its attendant construction boom.
Oh! I never would have put this together, I'm not sure I ever even specifically noticed all the construction sites, but there really are a bunch of them, and yeah wow that makes total sense.
It's really odd that Dean and Sam would have had so little contact with their mother's family that they didn't even know they had died, but I suppose that's another of John Winchester's parenting fails.
I was really genuinely interested in all the stuff about how everyone Mary Winchester knew had died, and--I guess this is spoilers--it's not that that goes nowhere, but IIRC they never specifically get back around to this thread because of the writer's strike or just sloppiness or whatever, and that is too bad. But yeah, it is in character that John never told them anything about Mary's family and friends. Maybe especially since I bet he got VERY little from Mary herself about her family and their friends, and had to figure it out on his own after she died. And if he found the same pattern Sam did years ago, knowing what he eventually knew about Yellow Eyes and Mary and all that, he probably kept it back for the same A+ reasons he did not warn them about like 99% of the other stuff they really should've been worried about.
posted by jameaterblues at 7:00 PM on June 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
But it was almost a bit too broad. The similarities between the two were almost at the level of a joke. I don't think they had to go quite as far as they did. They should have trusted the audience a bit more to get the implication without telegraphing it so hard.
It goes waaay too hard on this for me. It wasn't the kid actor's fault, but it kept feeling like a joke but never actually working that way, and also an eight year old version of Dean's id is A Lot. (and the adult version is on thin ice but that's another conversation.)
Meta-commentary about the filming location? The first quarter seasons were during the run-up to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and its attendant construction boom.
Oh! I never would have put this together, I'm not sure I ever even specifically noticed all the construction sites, but there really are a bunch of them, and yeah wow that makes total sense.
It's really odd that Dean and Sam would have had so little contact with their mother's family that they didn't even know they had died, but I suppose that's another of John Winchester's parenting fails.
I was really genuinely interested in all the stuff about how everyone Mary Winchester knew had died, and--I guess this is spoilers--it's not that that goes nowhere, but IIRC they never specifically get back around to this thread because of the writer's strike or just sloppiness or whatever, and that is too bad. But yeah, it is in character that John never told them anything about Mary's family and friends. Maybe especially since I bet he got VERY little from Mary herself about her family and their friends, and had to figure it out on his own after she died. And if he found the same pattern Sam did years ago, knowing what he eventually knew about Yellow Eyes and Mary and all that, he probably kept it back for the same A+ reasons he did not warn them about like 99% of the other stuff they really should've been worried about.
posted by jameaterblues at 7:00 PM on June 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
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Sam: Yeah. Yeah, the five states, five-day -–
Dean: Yeah. Well, kind of. Although I spent most of my time in Lisa Braeden's loft.
Sam: So let me get this straight. You want –- you want to drive all the way to Cicero just to hook up with some random chick?
Dean: She was a yoga teacher. It was the bendiest weekend of my life. Come on. Have a heart, huh? It's my dying wish.
Sam: Yeah, well, how many dying wishes are you gonna get?
Dean: As many as I can squeeze out.
The young boy who played Ben did a great job of acting like a mini-Dean, and Dean's subtly freaked out reaction to him was hilarious. You could practically see the wheels turning in his head as he did the math. The way Dean sleeps around, I'm surprised there isn't at least one little Dean or Deanie out there somewhere and/or that Dean hasn't contracted some sort of STD. We never hear any mention of him buying or using condoms in the entire run of the show that I can recall.
But it was nice to see Dean connect with Ben and take care of him the way he did (though teaching Ben to knee the bully in the groin was probably less than ideal). He genuinely likes children and because he knows he will never have any of his own, he satisfies that urge by freely giving care and guidance to all the children, and later on, to the teenagers, who cross his path.
I like this Ruby much better than the first one.
It's really odd that Dean and Sam would have had so little contact with their mother's family that they didn't even know they had died, but I suppose that's another of John Winchester's parenting fails.
posted by orange swan at 4:40 AM on June 28, 2021 [2 favorites]