Playing with Fire – Supernatural 12.13 Family Feud

WB/The CW
WB/The CW

Last week’s Supernatural won’t go down in history as one of my favorites – it was at times downright unpleasant to watch, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t impactful. Luckily, the difficult to watch scenes were interspersed with some lighter moments that I enjoyed and some excellent acting, which helped. And I just had the opportunity to re-watch after spending the weekend at a Supernatural convention in Nashville, which gave me some different perspectives on the episode, especially Mary’s situation.

The opening scene is classic Supernatural – dark, full of foreboding, and scary as hell. I don’t know if it’s just left over from childhood and none of us ever really outgrew it, but fear of the thing hiding in the closet or grabbing us from under the bed is always lurking underneath our adult composure. The opening scene played on all those fears, leaving my heart pounding by the time we transition into Sam and Dean at home in the bunker.

I will never get tired of seeing Sam and Dean in the bunker, so I was happy just to see them researching a case, hunched over Sam’s laptop together like it was Season 1 all over again.

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My happy place was jolted, however, when the boys called Mary and she lied to them outright about where she was and what she was doing. I know she’s not the first Winchester to lie, and she undoubtedly won’t be the last, but it rankled anyway. It’s impossible for me to get myself out of her sons’ headspace – they are heartbreakingly vulnerable when it comes to their mother, and it’s very hard to watch her let them down. Her ‘I love you’ made me grimace, which can’t be a good sign.

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Stuck In The Middle (With You) – Supernatural 12.12 Gets Innovative

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Say what you will about Supernatural, the show is not afraid to mess with form. Last week’s episode, written by Davy Perez and beautifully directed by fan favorite #SPNFamily member Richard Speight, Jr., brought a Tarantino-inspired aesthetic to a very Supernatural story. Together with Serge Ladouceur’s gorgeous cinematography, some kickass VFX and some superbly choreographed fight scenes, these all combined to make for an outside the box episode that still felt like the Show I love. I’m often struck by Ladouceur’s work, and his and Speight’s direction together made for a visually striking episode.

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The Tarantino touches were spot on – a slow motion montage of Team Free Will Plus Two walking toward danger, with the added bonus of Ackles’ and Padalecki’s long long legs eating up the screen (and in perfect sync because Sam and Dean).

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An Emotional Home Run for Supernatural’s Regarding Dean

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This week’s Supernatural made me emotional before we even knew what was happening, simply because I knew that this was it – the Dean loses his memory episode. The tiny preview clip shook me weeks ago, and then I asked Jensen about it at a recent con. Would it break my heart? He said that it at first would make me laugh, but then…

His silence spoke volumes. He knows how much I adore the fictional character he plays, and I’m quite certain he knew the scene with Dean in the mirror was indeed going to destroy me. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s just say I was looking for signs of the impending amnesia even before they came, which made the opening ten minutes full of trepidation.

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The Evolution of Castiel (and Misha Collins’ Deft Portrayal) in Supernatural 12.10

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Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets is an odd title for a Supernatural episode. It sounds like something I might pick for a big bang fic that I can’t figure out how to title, because it’s unusual and might make people go, huh, I wonder what that one’s about? I sometimes really miss the days of classic rock episode titles. But other than the unusual title, this was a solid episode. I will always prefer the Winchesters onscreen 100% of the time (Jared and Jensen do not appreciate my preference, but this hasn’t deterred me), and I haven’t always been a fan of the angels/heaven storyline in the past, but this episode was less about angels in general and more about the one angel I care about – Cas.

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Much as we’ve been witness to the evolution of Sam and Dean’s views on when killing is justified and when it’s not, increasingly falling into the gray areas instead of black and white, we were able to see some growth in Castiel’s views in this episode. I was chilled by his coldness in the flashback scenes to the execution of Lily’s husband and child (though even then Cas was the only angel who flinched when the human in the house cried out). But other than that flinch, Castiel was at that time truly the ‘good little soldier’ that Dean has often been disparagingly called. The events of the present were a sharp contrast to that way of being, a reminder of how far Cas has come – and that, in contrast to what Ishim believed – that change is in large part due to his relationship with the Winchesters.

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Supernatural Is Back With Its 250th Episode!

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This was one of those Supernatural episodes that didn’t leave anyone shrugging and going eh, it was pretty good – you either loved it or hated it, if my timeline is anything to go by. I mostly loved it, but there were some things that were an exception. Let’s cover them first, shall we? Then I can go back to my happy Winchester place.

The first quarter – that big chunk before the first commercial – was oddly slow. We jump back and forth between the Winchesters being put into solitary confinement, stoic and silent and looking RIDICULOUSLY hot….but wait, that belongs in my happy Winchester place section…

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Then back to Mary and Castiel feeling bad about letting the boys get captured in the first place. I liked the Mary and Cas interaction, both of them clearly struggling with some guilt. It made sense that they might snap at each other, but eventually decide to work together for their common goal. And then Mic the Man of Letters trying and failing to recruit American hunters. His soft hands clearly worked against him, as did his insistence that hunters would take orders – which goes against that independence we know hunters value.

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Supernatural “LOTUS” – The Good, the Not, the Hmm and the Mmm

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The mid-season finale of Supernatural won’t go down in history as one of my favorites, much to my disappointment. I didn’t hate it – it kept my interest throughout, so there’s that. Some of that sustained interest was me shaking my head and muttering “too soon, too soon,” and some of it was me shaking my head and demanding of my television “what the hell is even happening?” and occasionally it was me going “mmm boys in handcuffs,” but I wasn’t bored.

The episode moved the season’s arc forward, following Lucifer in his vessel-hopping reign of wreaking havoc right into the President of the United States, and eventually managing to drive him out. Yay for a moment of Winchesters success! Crowley and Cas continue to be a team, and Rowena joins in to help, all of them united in their very evident hatred of Lucifer. Along the way, the British Men of Letters reappear to seemingly save the day and Lucifer manages to create a Nephilim who will undoubtedly be a problem going forward. The cliffhanger ending sees Cas losing the Nephlim’s mother to be in a diner and the Winchesters managing to get themselves arrested. That’s a pretty good plot, and I like where we ended up, but there were some frustrations along the way.
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Winchesters in Leather! Supernatural’s ‘Rock Never Dies’

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This is a drive-by review, written from the family vacation last week, where I couldn’t actually watch Supernatural as it aired.   Of course, I couldn’t entirely stay off twitter either, so I knew that a) I was probably going to enjoy the episode and b) Sam and Dean are wearing leather.  And someone mentioned Dean in eyeliner. What????  Why was this the episode I had to miss??? I then spent the next day biting my nails and trying to find it on amazon or hulu and wondering when the hell the new episode finally appears on the CW app.  Finally youtube allowed me to buy it, much to my tremendous relief. Because, Sam and Dean in leather!

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Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox (and Another Great Supernatural Episode!)

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I was nervous about having so many new writers on my favorite show this season, but Thursday’s Supernatural episode proved once again that the new writers are doing their homework. Welcome to the family, Steve Yockey!

This episode had some great 80s rock, some remarkable VFX, some gorgeously lit scenes, and some amazing acting. And yes, the writing was great too. Let me list all the things I liked about this episode (nothing makes me happier than having an actual list!)

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I love having a plot that makes sense, and an emotional arc that makes me either reach for the tissues or bite my nails to the quick (or both) – but none of that is satisfying if I don’t recognize the characters I love. The risk with having new writers is that they won’t get it right – after all, eleven seasons of character development is a lot to catch up on! But Yockey clearly did his homework, and fandom very much appreciated it.

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Supernatural Takes on The Thule

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This week’s Supernatural episode was by another new writer, Meredith Glynn, but directed by a returning fan favorite director, Nina Lopez Corrado. The Winchesters once again come up against the Thule, Nazi necromancers who are determined this time to resurrect Hitler himself.

The first half of the episode was a bit oddly paced and choppy, but it had some wonderful scenes. This season we’re getting more domestic Winchesters than we usually do, which makes me incredibly happy. Robbie Thompson was onto something when he wanted to show us more of the brothers’ lives in between cases. That lets us see the people they are, and lets us see the bond between the two of them in a different way than we see it on a hunt. We know they have each other’s backs, and that’s wonderful to see as well, but part of the reason they’re so close is that there are all those little moments in between – the little moments that bond all of us to the people we care about.

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American Nightmare – Classic Supernatural!

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This week’s episode was like a return to old school, classic Supernatural – and I am SO on board with that! I watched the episode while at a Supernatural convention in New Jersey with a fellow fangirl, which meant a lot of shared exclamations during the ‘THEN’ opening.

Me: OMG psychic kids!

Both of us: OMG baby Sammy with bangs!

Then the episode went very dark very fast, which should surprise no one who’s ever watched Supernatural. Some poor woman gets flayed alive by an invisible force in front of a horrified priest and churchgoers and once again I’m a little queasy. Supernatural has been even more graphic than usual this season and I think I flinched every time a new gash opened up on her back. OUCH.

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