Supernatural: Celebrating The Life of Asa Fox

November 19, 2016 9:27 PM - Season 12, Episode 6

When the boys visit Sheriff Jody Mills, they accompany her to a hunter funeral.

"I killed Hitler."
(loooooong looks)
"...Thank you?"
"You're welcome!"

When Dean goes on about how Jody is a badass sheriff chick, not a rom com chick, Sam helpfully reveals Dean's anime porn chickness. Muahahahah.

"They're going to salt and burn the body tomorrow. I can't believe I just said that like that's something normal."

"THE Dean Winchester. Aren't you dead like, four times?" "Yeah, it didn't take."

"Randy Bull. Watch out for the horns!"

Wendigo is the magic drinking word! "Stop saying that, we're not going to make it until morning."

Jody is all, you told me the whole ride over here in excruciating detail about killing Hitler, but "you neglected to tell me your mom was back from the dead?"

posted by jenfullmoon (10 comments total)

Liked this ep, anything with Jody is amazing, though I fear desperately for her survival anytime she's on screen, given how the show likes to burn through supporting characters. I loved the scene where is she is possessed and is telling all of the hunters' secrets. Everyone was already suspicious of each other for possibly harboring the demon, and, this on top of the base-level hunter paranoia. I always want more Jody - does this episode mean we're not going to see her for the rest of the season? I enjoyed the glimpse into hunter society, which we don't really get too often because Sam and Dean are kind of outside that at this point, since their Cas/Crowley/Rowena/Men of Letters connections have largely replaced the need to get information from other hunters.

Can we talk about Mary stealing the angel blade? Is she going after Lucifer with it? Maybe as her ultimate revenge for John dying? Does she even know about the Lucifer/yellow eyes connection? Honestly, I kind of thought the way they set up the episode to get Sam & Dean & Mary in the same room again was clumsy. Mary looked up someone she met exactly once, found out he was just recently deceased, and Sam and Dean also just happened to stop by Jody's just as she was getting word that her friend/lover had died. I mean, good episode overall but of the four main/recurring characters, only Jody had any real reason to be there. I liked that Billie now has it out for Mary as well, because oh course she does. Cheating death clearly runs in the family.
posted by eeek at 6:36 AM on November 20, 2016

I enjoyed this one watching it, but it's only been a few days and I'm already fuzzy on the details. It's always good to see Jody again, but I wait in vain for the spin-off where she and the other lady sheriff move to the big city and solve monster crimes together. (I know it's all wrong for the CW demographic, but it'd be such an awesome show!) I'm also wondering when we'll see Cas and Crowley again. Those two traveling the nation together would be worth its own spin-off!

After the MOL lady made a big point of Sam and Dean being small-time shmoes, it was kind of nice for them to meet some hunter fanboys and be reminded that they've really done some impressive shit. Speaking of the MOL, the mythology stuff is off to a kind of slow start this season. Next week we check in with Lucifer, and presumably they'll be upping the stakes then.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:10 PM on November 20, 2016

It is a touch annoying that the mythology of the Winchester's has changed over the seasons. Earlier (i think season 4 after Sam opened Hell?) it was pointed out that other hunters didn't want much to do with them because the Winchesters were crazy and trouble. So it's a little weird to see that they have fan boys in the hunter community. Or maybe that's just Canadian hunters being extra polite.
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 8:06 AM on November 21, 2016

I think anyone who has as many crazy stories about their lives as the Winchesters do might get some kind of fanboy admiration after awhile. For example, WENDIGO! DRINK!
I don't remember the season 4 stuff so much any more, but in this episode they made it sound like their father wanted to avoid other hunters as well.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:48 PM on November 21, 2016

Yeah, whatever the Winchester rep was in the early 2000s, I think by now it makes sense they'd have some serious cred. Taking out scores of monsters, saving the world a few times, coming back from the dead on numerous occasions... plus there's the whole thing about the Supernatural novels and the conventions and stuff, although the show seems to only pick up that thread when they get goofy and meta.

So, did the demon just want to clear its name about killing Asa Fox? In hindsight I'm not sure what its point was in holding everybody captive at the wake, killing a few of them and then leaving.

Also, did they really just leave the charred corpses out there at the end? I don't know much about cremation, but those skeletons still looked rather... intact. That seems like it could cause trouble when/if the cops find that pyre!
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:32 PM on November 21, 2016

I do want to point out though that most of the world saving was needed because of Sam and Dean. They opened the hell gate, they freed lucifer, they killed death and brought out the darkness. Other hunters blamed them (and rightfully so) and I fairly recall an episode where Sam and Dean were being hunted by other hunters to get them to stop causing the apocalypse. Sure they're bad ass with crazy stories, but they often get anyone who gets involved with them killed (oh the list of dead supporting characters!) and bring all sorts of havoc down in mankind.
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 7:01 PM on November 21, 2016

Well sure, they started all the craziness, but it was because all of that was planned by the respective villains. The Winchester boys just happened to be at the center of it all. I don't think the British MOL realized how lucky they are that the demons and angels targeted America; all of their surveillance and traps and preparations would go out the window if Lucifer, the Leviathans (because Castiel and Crowley royally screwed up), or Metatron wanted to mess with them. It's important to remember that despite being pawns to the villains' plans, they always succeeded in defeating them.
posted by numaner at 2:06 PM on November 23, 2016

I'm way behind on this season, just got to this episode today, but I feel compelled to point out:

Dean: Can we buy you breakfast at least?
Mary: Bacon?
Dean: All the bacon.
Mary: I would love that.

And then as they turn toward the Impala, the camera pans down to remind us that their conversation about tasty fried pork was taking place beside three burning human bodies.

Very dark, Supernatural showrunners. Very dark indeed.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 9:22 PM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Trivia

This is only the second time the show has used Canada for its setting, and the first time it has shown Canadian hunters in an episode, despite all the filming taking place in Canada. This episode is set in Manitoba, Canada which is also where Bachman-Turner Overdrive, the singers of "Let's Go", the first song in this episode's soundtrack, originated.

The brother and sister hunters who hunt witches and yet was raised by one, mirrors the plot to the movie Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.

When Mary Winchester brings Asa Fox home in 1980, there is a second generation Chevrolet S-10 extended cab pickup in the drive. As the S-10 was not produced until the 1982 model year (late 1981), one could not exist, let alone a second generation model (1994 to 2004).
posted by orange swan at 10:56 AM on January 11, 2022

Asa's mother was way too hard on Mary. Would it really have been better for Mary to let Asa be murdered as a child than for him to become a hunter, especially when she never so much as suggested he become one? But then... grief.

Wouldn't a wooden funeral pyre burn along with the bodies? That one looked pretty sound.

It was neat to see some Canadians and Canadiana for a change.

Hunters really ought to have some sort of centralized headquarters, the way the Men of Letters do. When the Men of Letters were eliminated by Abbadon in the fifties, it probably had a huge impact on hunters too. They no longer had the support or the infrastructure that the Men of Letters provided, and became fragmented and isolated. It would make their work easier if they had a more concrete system, and could call on each other for information and muscle instead of relying on word of mouth in a loose network in which each hunter knows a handful of the others.
posted by orange swan at 11:00 AM on January 11, 2022