There is a Reservoir Dogs episode???? Plz elaborate.
Season 12, Episode 12: Stuck in the Middle (With You) is a pretty straightforward homage to Reservoir Dogs, and also just Tarantino films in general. I'll admit I'm not a huge Tarantino buff myself so I might have missed anything subtler, but the references aren't much of a deep cut. A quote, some cinematic scene echoes - diner scene, badass group walk scene, Mr. Orange gut wound plot - and the whole thing gets framed as Mary telling Ketch a story through timestamped flashbacks.
For the most part it seems like a homage episode where they are having fun with it? Honor the iconic filmmaker and get your audience to go "heyyyyy" about how that's just like this iconic scene, but not doing anything particularly juicy with it.
Ok, so the episode was written by Davy Perez (of Tombstone fame) and directed by Richard Speight Jr. (of Destiel confession scene infamy). And at the very least Speight needs to defend himself before the court for this one, because at minimum directorial crimes were committed. That bit I mentioned above about the Mr. Orange gut wound plot? Well here's the thing:
I'm assuming you know this, but the whole Mr. Orange bleeding out from a gut wound while Mr. White homoerotically cradles him is kind of a big deal. Even crucial to the reference, you might say. Like the whole "you can be as intimate and emotional as you want with your warrior's-bond good buddy as long as he's tragically dying on the battlefield" is the whole fucking point. And yet... when they make the central plot of the whole episode stabbing good buddy Cas in the gut with a slow, painful, angel-killing spear they run into a snag.
Because this is Supernatural, and Cas is not going to die at the end of the episode to wipe the slate clean of gay vibes, and also doing things like homoerotic references with Cas in S12 just draws attention to how much homoerotic shit is already there. So they cast Dean as Mr. White and then absolutely break the parallel and upend the reference in order to no-homo the homoerotic gut wound arc.
Dean barely touches him. His emotions are subdued. They put Mary in the backseat to cradle him while Dean drives. And then right as he's actively "dying" Cas looks at Dean and the camera closeups on Dean and we get an "I love you" - pointed beat, remember there are more people in the room - "I love all of you". And instead of cradling him or even just sitting next to him Dean is standing across the room with minimal reaction.
They no-homo'd this so hard that it's almost impossible not to see Destiel in the negative space. Like by choosing to make a Reservoir Dogs reference and then immediately backing away from the reference in a panic, they a) look like cowards, and b) raise the question of why Cas and Dean can't do Mr. Orange and Mr. White. Go on, viewer. Imagine what that would look like if Dean cradled Cas and held his bleeding guts in and wiped the sweat off his face while panic muttering "You're gonna be fine".
