Supernatural: Who We Are
September 16, 2017 9:56 AM - Season 12, Episode 22 - Subscribe

Sam and Dean only have each other to rely on when they're caught in a dangerous situation; the fight between the American hunters and the British hunters comes to a head.
posted by terilou (5 comments total)
 
Boy, the American hunters sure are keen to go on a suicide mission to kill basic humans. Seems a big leap from monster hunting.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:59 AM on November 21, 2017


Well, that grenade launcher from S08E14 finally got Chekhoved.

Another hint that the writers are Richard Kadrey fans - Sam using the term "hoodoo" for big explosive magic.

I'm a ambivalent about the BMOL being the season monsters. On the one hand, becoming monsters to battle monsters, on the other, completely lacking any nuance and the accents are annoying.

Though I'd have to argue that BMOL are less basic humans than messed up in the head humans. But, yeah, ham fisted.
posted by porpoise at 5:59 PM on January 9, 2022


Quotes

Sam: I think I got something. “When the Romani people were forced to assimilate in Europe, the, uh, the Romani used a spell, the Abrogation ritual, as an act of rebellion against their persecutors. The Devla turns back complex mechanical processes, resets equipment, machinery.”
Dean: What's it take?
Sam: Seems like pretty basic ingredients. Nothing we don't already have.... Oh.
Toni: What?
Sam: The mechanisms “must be anointed with the blood of virgins”.
Dean: [looks pointedly and questioningly at Toni]
Toni: Not even close.

Toni: You're lunatics. This is a colossally stupid idea.
Dean: Yep. Big, beautiful [holds up the grenade launcher] and dumb. I've had this thing for so long. Been waiting for the perfect moment to use it.
Toni: The explosion could kill us all. You could bring the whole bloody place crashing down.
Dean: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah.
Toni: [as Sam drags her out of the room] You're lunatics! Action movie-loving, cheeseburger-eating, moronic American lunatics!

Trivia

Dean says he always imagined he and Sam would go out "like Butch and Sundance," referencing the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which the titular characters go out in a blaze of glory, running headfirst towards their enemies, despite being greatly outnumbered.

In the episode, Dr. Hess calls Sam "Dean" by mistake, and Sam corrects her. This could have been a nod to Gilmore Girls, in which Jared Padalecki played a character named Dean.

Dean says "We're going to straight Shawshank this bitch," referencing the movie The Shawshank Redemption, in which a prisoner escapes Shawshank prison by gradually digging a secret hole in the wall of his cell for over the many years of his sentence, in order to escape through the sewage system.

The hunters Walt and Roy in this episode are the same two hunters who killed Sam and Dean in "Dark Side of the Moon" (ep. 5.16).

When Dean is blowing up the wall with the grenade launcher he says, "Yippee ki-yay mother-." This is a reference to Die Hard, as it is the line used by the main character before he blows something up or kills someone.
posted by orange swan at 4:03 PM on February 2, 2022


Ketch sealing Sam, Dean, and Toni in the bunker to die was ridiculous, reminding me of the classic exchange between Dr. Evil and his son Scott Evil in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery:

Dr. Evil: I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death.
Scott Evil: Why don't you just shoot him now? I mean, I'll go get a gun. We'll shoot him together. It'll be fun. Bang! Dead. Done.

He would totally have shot them.

Dean's "I hate you, I love you" speech to his mother was him verbalizing years of suppressed anger over the hardships of his life in a way he'd never do unless it became necessary, as now, when he was doing it to get through to his mother. He doesn't really blame his mother logically speaking, as he knows full well that's unfair, but at the same time... he's angry in a child's unreasoning way.

Bye Toni, Dr. Hess, and Ketch. Won't miss you, please don't write through any Ouija boards.
posted by orange swan at 4:11 PM on February 2, 2022


I think it was…good? for Dean? to say out loud to Mary the anger and sense of unfairness he’s been carrying around his entire life, though I wonder how his feelings about her have changed over the course of the series. He calls them perfect parents and a perfect family before her death, and knows that was definitely never true, but I think he spent a lot of his life needing to believe it and professing that belief to her is maybe the only way he can communicate the depth of his abandonment. And sure, it’s not fair or rational either, but it's emotionally true for Dean and I think it got started way, way before he knew about Mary’s deal with Azazel, or really, anything about Mary as a person at all.

But it’s interesting that this whole conversation was given to Dean and not Sam. It makes sense with the dynamics we’ve been given, Dean is the one with the seriously unsettled issues with his mom. But with all the talk of him forgiving her for everything that came of promising Sam to Azazel (even if she had no idea that's what she was doing), I wish we knew a little more about how Sam thinks about the agency and responsibility of that whole situation (and given the givens, "Mom, you don't have to be scared of me" is a kind of upsetting answer on its own.) (At a guess, Sam is extremely wound up in the telling where everything was his fault, maybe a little John's, and understands himself as intrinsically bad independent of the demon blood so Mary if anything greased the wheels of things that were probably going to happen no matter what.) And I wish we got an extended soft-lit angry monologue about what Mary thinks or feels about the situation and her part in things while everyone else stands around in a daze forced to listen, but this is not that show.
posted by jameaterblues at 10:20 PM on May 15, 2022


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