The newly brainwashed Mary is now hunting down other American
Hunters – and Jody Mills is on her list.
Oh, Supernatural
if you pull a Charlie on Jody there will be ructions!
In the bunker after Arthur has decided to embrace his
inner Bond villain and leave them all to die slowly rather than just shoot
them, the Winchesters and Toni discuss options. Option 1 is to kill Toni
because EVIL. But she says she can deprogram Mary so they let her live for now.
So it’s time to escape.
Idea #1 involves Romani magic - and for once when drawing
on Romani woo-woo we have both a lack of demonisation as evil and an open
acknowledgement of Romani oppression.
It doesn’t work even with the purified virgin blood. Plan
b involves sledgehammers (and blatantly remembered goggles which amused me
muchly) which also doesn’t work
So time for Plan C – a grenade launcher
See, all problems in the world can be solved by a big
enough explosion.
It breaks the door down – but it also injures Dean’s leg
pretty badly.
They quickly send out warnings to the other hunters that
the Men of Letters are totally evil guys before hurrying to warn Jody
Mary got their first – and is now tied to a chair because Jody and Alex are Not Playing.
Time for a big hunter reunion – and you can tell they’re
all American hunters because of the sheer amount of flannel in the room. They
must buy it wholesale.
There Sam confesses that he’s been totally taken in by
the Men of Letters, reveals their true intention and begins to rally the
hunters to attack. Frankly I don’t buy the whole speech. It’s too emotional,
too dramatic, too idealistic. I don’t think the flannel wearing gang are the
kind of people to be that moved by emotion
Still it works and they charge in and start murdering men of letters. After all the Men of Letters spends most of their time murdering each other and most of the rest seem to have no combat abilities. Also the Men of Letters have no concept on how to defend a place. Really, they’re astonishingly bad at this.
There ends in a confrontation with Dr. Hess who insists
they need the British Men of Letters because Lucifer is out and about – and they
have footage to prove it. Sam considers it but rightly decides against trusting
them again and shoots the computer – while Jody shoots Dr. Hess (I think
because Supernatural is concerned at
the optics of a man they designate good guy shooting a woman). The Men of
Letters are finished
Except Arthur Ketch who is tracking Mary.
Mary was left with Dean and Toni – because Dean’s leg
meant he didn’t want to go on the attack – or so he claimed; it was a useful
excuse. Because he wants to fix mother Mary
Trusting Toni and her electrodes and drugs (ye gods, why
would he trust her!)
The drugs work magically and allow him to enter Mary’s
head where she has weaved a happy fantasy of her and her two sons as small
children and her playing mother. And Dean savagely and emotionally attacks her –
invoking the whole life he has had to live since she died, since she “left
them.” How their father became completely absent, how he was left to basically
raise Sam alone, all the things Sam had to endure, from going to hell to losing
his soul et al. He drops it all on Mary, says it was all her fault while at the
same time emotionally forgiving her for everything.
Gah, no. And yes. I mean yes because Dean’s anger,
emotions rage, et al – that’s all reasonable. The target isn’t – but Dean
having a chance to rant and cry over what life has served them? That’s
powerful. That’s pointful, that’s important. He has every right to be angry at
his life and what he endured. He has every right to be furious about
everything, to rage against this and double points for finally acknowledging
that John Winchester was an utterly terrible father
But putting it on Mary? No, that’s intolerable – there’s
absolutely no way she can carry the blame for DYING just because of Motherhood.
And I get needing an emotional shock to rally her – but this is a problem when
it’s picked up later
Getting to that – first while Dean is brain visiting with
Mary, he’s rudely awakened by Arthur who has already murdered Toni (again
sparing us the bad optics of Dean killing Toni and the terrible decision of
letting her actually live). Arthur and the injured and drugged Dean fight,
because Arthur seems to have just decided to do everything the long way and isn’t
just going to shoot people any more. Which gives Mary time to wake up and shoot
him. Twice. Now the Men of Letters are dead
And we can have a reunion of the Winchesters and especially
Dean and Mary talking about their lives and a fresh start. But she’s fully internalised
the idea that she’s to blame for Sam and Dean’s lives. She talks about whether
Sam could ever forgive her and is absorbing a whole lot of guilt. See guilt
about the Hunters she killed? I can get that, I can run with that. But guilt
because she died and “failed” as a mother? Guilt because Sam and Dean led
unpleasant lives because she died? No, I can’t accept this – this HAS to be
challenged. To make Mary responsible for their entire
Especially since John never came into even half the slam
that Mary just has – and he had far less excuse for being such a terrible
parent. John got the heartfelt but quiet disapproval of Bobby (oh I miss Bobby.
And you want to do a scene about parenting the Winchesters and how badly it
went? Bring Bobby back somehow and have Mary thank him for being the one true
parents her sons ever had), nothing like this emotional savaging.
This whole episode had a lot of emotional moments in classic Supernatural fashion but I think they were all off - they were poorly directed or to a wrong audience or just a bit contrived. But at least Jody lived
