Walker Confronts The Man Who Was His Brother in “The Deserters”

Many of the separate threads that have been woven this season came together in this pivotal episode – some in the way I feared, and some with a twist that I didn’t see coming. In the feel good portion of this episode, the Walker family works on building new stables for the horse rescue, taking time out for Augie to try some comedy and everyone to find out that Mawline used to be in a comedy troupe!

Is there nothing Abeline cannot do?

Bonham grouses that Cordell is too busy to come help with the stable building, but Kevin shows up to pitch in. Abeline sees through his earnest just wanna help speech to being all about retaining the mayor’s biggest donor, but Kevin is nothing if not a complex character. He really does seem to want to help, at least part of him does.

Kevin thanks Liam for saving his life when he was hit with the nerve agent, calling him a real hero – which is nice to hear because Liam doesn’t hear that often enough. Of course Kevin wants to use that in his speech because Kevin always has an angle. We find out he’s an amateur pilot when he hammers his hand by accident, which maybe will be important at some point.

Kevin runs into Cassie at Cordell’s house, and they’re sort of adorably awkward together. I can’t help but kinda like the two of them, though I’m guessing when he says that he can promise that next time he sees her, it will be different, that means something much more ominous than mere awkwardness. (Spoiler alert now that I’ve seen the whole episode: It does.)

August sees Kevin as a mentor, and asks Mawline to be nice to him. I hope Augie isn’t gonna get hurt in all this… (More spoiler alert: uh oh…)

That’s the feel good portion, such as it is. The rest of the episode is emotional, taut with suspense, and not exactly the feel good part.

Most of the episode is devoted to the mystery of Cordell’s old mentor, Coop, and where the hell he’s been for two decades. Cassie and Captain James speculate – has he been hiding all these years? Was he captured and turned? Cordell and Julia have been busy too, using Walker’s knowledge of Coop’s use of aliases in the past to track his movements and money.

(We’re treated to some flashbacks with Colin Ford as young Cordell – I love that he’s become a recurring part of the show).

Neither James nor Cassie are sure that Cordell is actually going to be able to take Coop down if it comes to that.

James: Cordi, this guy was your mentor. If you do find him, are you sure you’re gonna be able to slap the cuffs on him, or worse?

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‘Walker: Past Is Prologue’ Looks at How our Past Impacts our Present

Past is Prologue is an interesting title for last week’s Walker episode. So often, our past is what impacts our futures – if we don’t make sense of it, it can have way too much impact.

Bonham is still grumpy about nobody coming to his family meeting and the horse rescue not being run by him first, feeling like he’s been “put out to pasture”.  Abeline’s having none of it and I am here for her, as always.

Abeline doesn’t want Bonham to have regrets, feeling bad that she waited so long to reconcile with her brother. She of course prevails, telling him she’s got his back and is on his side, but also he needs to talk to Liam and Stella, even if they should have talked to him first.

Abeline: We need to do the teaching, lead by example… and bask in your superiority.

God, I love Abeline.

I also love that Liam and Stella now have a horse rescue because it means I get to see lots of gorgeous horses.

Liam and Stella shoot a social media promo post, much to Bonham’s annoyance. He walks out.

Stella: He’s still mad?

Abby: He’s still somethin’…

Bonham eventually listens to Abeline and comes around, telling Liam that he did eventually accept that he and Cordell didn’t have that “rancher green thumb”, that what matters is that they’re happy. He’s grudgingly impressed with what Liam’s done, and is “man enough to admit that it hurt”, that it wiped away a vision he’d become fond of. It’s a pretty candid thing for Bonham to admit, so I give him a lot of credit.

Liam says he was hoping it could be “ours”, a family thing. That the new logo is based on his Grandad’s signature.

Bonham: Well hell, William, when you put it like that…

Of course he can’t leave it at that, though. He needs a parting shot to keep his grumpy grampa persona intact.

Bonham: Daddy’s signature was damn chicken scratch – that ain’t it.

Meanwhile, just when we were all open-mouthed at Captain James’ ability to be harsh (to Trey), we get to see the softer side of him when Kelly returns to town and they rekindle their romance at a new level, with her moving to Austin full time. Awww.

Most of fandom figured out that Trey wasn’t really fired and that James was setting him up to do some undercover work, but it was good to have that confirmed in this episode. So yay, now we can go back to liking Captain James again! Though Trey got to hang out in some nice outfits while he was “unemployed”.

It doesn’t take long for the bad guys aka the lobbying group (disguised as country club golfing types) to reach out to Trey, in fact.  It also doesn’t take long for him to figure out their ‘prove you’re smart enough to do this job’ little test.

Trey is smoooooth in not seeming to want it too much, and the lobbying guy is smooth too in making it sound like they’re actually trying to help vets (who in real life really don’t get the help they need). I confess to not really understanding the whole Grey Flag thing, honestly.

Julia is off working in DC, so it’s Cassie and Cordell teaming up to try to figure out why his old squad is maybe being targeted – and why maybe HE is being targeted. I love Cassie for being all in on trying to get Cordell some closure, and also her willingness to drop back and give him some space when digging into all this brings back his PTSD and survivor’s guilt big time. Jared Padalecki is so good at showing those emotional struggles, and I love when this show gets serious and goes there.

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Happy Birthday Sam Winchester – We Miss You!

I wasn’t sure I’d do a happy birthday post for my favorite characters this year. Supernatural ended nearly six months ago, and that means the Winchesters haven’t been on my TV screen. But that doesn’t mean that they haven’t been in my heart, where I’m fairly sure Sam and Dean will live forever. So even though I can’t watch new episodes, in my heart Sam Winchester is having a birthday, and I want to celebrate!

Over the course of fifteen years, Sam became a beloved character to so many of us, thanks to Eric Kripke who created him and Jared Padalecki, who brought him to life. I was fascinated by Sam and Dean from almost the beginning, and over time, through good times and bad times, that fascination only grew. So here’s a post full of reasons of what I love about Sam Winchester, from the start to the finish (at least temporarily, because I’ll hang onto the hope that we’ll see the Winchesters again in time…)  Instead of not doing a post at all, I got entirely carried away and took a trip down memory lane, reminding me of all the reasons Sam is special to me.

One of the reasons Sam Winchester is so inspiring as a character is because he’s been through the kind of trauma and loss that would have most of us flat on our backs and unable to put one foot in front of the other. The first losses come when he’s just a baby – his mother, his home, and his father too – still there but no longer the same man or the same father to his young sons.

Twenty years later, Sam’s at school, with goals and aspirations, kicking ass on the LSATs and planning his future with Jessica. And disaster finds him again, Jessica burning on the ceiling just like his mother did.

The boys hit the road. So young and pretty, so many challenges yet to come.

We experience Sam’s empathy and his strength early on. We’ve followed him on quite a journey in just one year, from the boy who struck out on his own to the boy almost as bent on revenge as his father, and finally to this – the young man who understands that there are things more important than revenge, including his love for his family. Sam goes against his father in a completely different way here, with Sam and Dean on the same page about family and reconnected with each other.

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Rolling the Dice at Supernatural VegasCon

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There was no way that VegasCon this year was going to outdo VegasCon last year, when all four Winchesters were onstage together and the actors were every bit as emotional about that as the cheering fans were. There was no way anything was going to top Jensen Ackles turning into an effing rockstar right before our eyes belting out Sister Christian at the Saturday Night Special. I left VegasCon last year on a high, clinging to my fellow fangirls in a sort of euphoria that was hard to believe wasn’t the result of some illegal substance. A Supernatural high, if you will.

So yes, there was no way that was going to happen again. This year’s Vegas Con was definitely different – awesome in its own way, but full of more highs and lows than generally happens at a con. There are several con chapters in Fangasm in which things went rather amusingly awry for us; this year’s VegasCon will probably be part of the eventual sequel.

I almost didn’t go.

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Supernatural Returns with a Bang! But The Devil’s In The Details

11.11 luci taunts sam

Wow. Supernatural came back from Hellatus with a vengeance, didn’t it? There’s always a special energy for the season premiere and finale episodes, of course, but the mid season premiere is also hotly anticipated by a fandom who has been starved for Show for months. This episode, by Andrew Dabb, came crashing into my living room like a bulldozer, and didn’t let up throughout the entire 42 minutes. In fact, so much happened that my head was spinning by the time we were halfway through – some of it awesome and some of it gutting.

In other words, Supernatural.

The Road So Far was definitely part of the awesome. Both the appropriate song choice and the montage, which amped my excitement up even further. Good job, Show!

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