This might prove to Dabb’s biggest mistake. Because we all believed in the box. Not everyone liked Dean’s plan, some thought he was being “too literal”, but everyone believed the box provided a viable solution for the Michael problem.
Dabb’s given us very few things to believe in, constantly over-throwing previously introduced lore, relativising every new plot development before we’d even properly had a chance to react to it.
The box was special. ‘Was’ being the operative word. Designed to contain an arcangel forever, it was now destroyed with a modicum of effort.
Storytelling is always ‘make-believe’. But after trampling over all our beliefs like that, it will be very difficult for Dabb to make us believe anything else.
re: yuuri as a possible dance major, i don't think it'd be likely because dance majors have so much training to do too, and so many performances. i don't think you could physically keep up if you were skating competitively too, it'd be too much for your poor body. rip yuuri's feet like, all the time and in every universe. sports psychology sounds plausible, of course, and tbh canon!yuuri might go for business for practical reasons (i.e. onsen)
I totally agree with this. I don’t think that Yuuri would be a dance major. I actually wrote him as a business major in everything that’s silver is not gold for that reason exactly. :D
I also don’t think that he attended a uni in the detroit area. “What?!” I hear you all cry? Isn’t it accepted headcanon that he went to Wayne State?
Not by me. Oda trained in NJ, he attended Kansai University studing languages. Another Japanese skater though I can’t remember who – I’ve been researching this college thing since I started writing bysoti(d) – trains in upstate NY but attends a university in Japan.
The Japanese school year (even for uni) is not the same as it is in the States. That’s why Yuuri returned home in March. That’s when the school year ends in Japan. Also also… distance learning is a thing. And so are transfer credits. Take it from a former college professor. :)
Bringing someone back from the dead has always been problematic on SPN. However, in the past there seemed to be at least a vague line between more and less acceptable ways of resurrection. A line that made it possible for us viewers to empathise with Sam and Dean refusing to accept each other’s death, while also allowing us to root for them when they were hunting down a monster who did the same thing.
Ever since Dabb took over, the methods of resurrection employed by “the good guys” have become markedly more monstrous. In S12 there was Max who decided to build himself a puppet sister instead of making a good old-fashioned demon deal to bring her back. This season Sam, Dean and Cas resurrected Jack with magic that fed on his soul; and in the latest ep all of them considered a necromancy spell from the Book of the Damned a great way of bringing Mary back.
I assume that this development is due to Dabb thinking that the audience has grown bored of watching demon deals or bargaining sessions with reapers. It would feel meaningful if it came along with a more acute awareness of just how problematic the Winchesters’ refusal to accept death as part of the human condition is. Yet the opposite is the case. Under Dabb bringing back your loved one’s has practically become a moral duty.
Provided you’re a Winchester family member, of course. Otherwise you need to be talked out of it or killed. We even had a necromancer case this very season.
It’s incredibly sad that Rowena seemed to be the only one this week who was fundamentally opposed to the idea of bringing back some sort of zombie!Mary. Rowena, the one who’d been talked out of resurrecting Crowley just last season. Who was reminded again this episode that she’s just a second-class citizen whose loss doesn’t matter nearly as much as the Winchesters’.
Both the writing and the acting of the scene above gave me the impression that despite Rowena’s warnings Sam and Dean were more than willing to accept a zombie!Mary instead of the real deal. They didn’t run into the forest shouting, “Jack, whatever you’re doing, stop it, this isn’t the right way!” They seemed disappointed at finding only a corpse instead of a zombie waiting for them. And, who knows, maybe on a subconscious level that’s what they really wanted - a zombie utterly devoted to them, just like the zombie!boyfriend in the necromancer episode, as opposed to the cold, closed-off mother who didn’t want to interact with them more than two or three times a year.
Either way, in an episode that reminded us once again that the Winchesters are “the bravest, kindest, most heroic men on the planet”, that’s just unacceptable.
By far my favourite part of the episode. Not just because watching it I knew the ep would be over any minute now. Not just because of Nina’s stunning camera work. But because of Sam putting Dean first by shielding him from Cas. 💕
Usually, Sam plays peacemaker between Dean and Cas and urges Dean to forgive Cas, no matter how stupid and/or unforgiveable his actions were.*
So I was really grateful to see Sam stopping Cas from dumping all his grief and guilt on Dean during the funeral. It was an acknowledgement that Dean’s feelings are valid and that he deserves a bit of space, if only for a moment. An important message at the end of an episode that showcased the dire consequences of ignoring a person’s boundaries and walking all over them as everyone on this show has done with Jack. Thank you, Sam!
* He tends to infantilise Cas even more than Dean: With Dean there’s this visible resignation when he cleans up one of Cas’s messes and tells him that it’s okay, like he’s accepted that Cas is going to act like a child despite believing him capable of more than that. With Sam, there’s no resignation. For him Cas is a child that needs to be coddled, end of story. Which is probably the healthier approach. *g*
This scene encompasses everything that’s wrong with the Dabb era in a nutshell:
Ever since she died Mary’s received more attention from Dabb than she did in three years on the show - fourteen seasons, and nothing’s changed. Dabb never unfridged Mary, he just fridged her in slow motion.
There’s a black-and-white photo of Sam Smith on the table. It’s very obviously a photo of Sam and not of Mary, because apparently in three years Mary was never involved in a single scene that might have merited a sentimental photoshoot. It feels anachronistic, out of place. It feels less like a farewell to Mary than a farewell to Sam, a quick ‘Thanks for sticking around even though we never made you a series regular, since that type of honour can only ever go to men and Mark Pellegrino clearly deserved it more than you or Ruth.’
Dean gives a touching speech that reminds us why we couldn’t care less about Mary’s death to a bunch of people we neither know nor care about.
It’s all very sad. Or at least it’s supposed
Then - an axe. Random dude drops dead.
Sam and Dean look around with mild curiosity: Has an interesting plot finally arrived on their doorstep?
But no, it’s just AU!Bobby who decided to Make An Entrance™ at his girlfriend’s funeral like the psychopath badass he is.
He informs us that dead dude was a wraith. Considering we never got to know AU!Bobby anymore than Mary I’m not going to take his word for it. Maybe he just likes axing people.
Either way, it all feels off, and tone-deaf.
SPN has always meshed tones and genres, and it’s one of the things I’ve always liked best about the show. But Dabb has a way of ruining my favourite things for me. In a great script likeYellow Fever the humour and the drama intensify each other. (Which Dabb should know, since he wrote it.) But in this case Bobby’s supposedly fun entrance just killed whatever little emotion the scene managed to evoke. It reminded me unpleasantly of the tone-deaf drinking scene after Jack died. If Jack had seen any footage of it, I’m pretty sure he’d have told Cas, “You know what, I think I’ll just stay here,” when Cas came to fetch him in heaven.
This week on “The writers want to make Sam look really smart but fail to do so because they can’t be bothered to do even some basic fact-checking”:
Like the rest of the New Testament the original text of the First Epistle of Peter is Greek, not Ancient Hebrew.
This mistake could easily have been avoided if they’d stuck to Donatello speaking Enochian (which would also have made more sense given that he transmitted passages from the Bible to the other prophet in Enochian in Prophet and Loss). It’s not like the plot of the entire episode depended on the message being particularly difficult to translate.
But no, it had to be “Ancient Hebrew” to show us how super smart Sam is.
If you think that “I followed you to Hell and back” is a touching Winchester variant of “I love you to the moon and back”, you probably want to stop reading now, fair warning.
Dean may feel like he’s run out of cards to play, but Sam’s got one trump card up his sleeve he can always use to bring Dean to heel: “I followed you to Hell and back.”
It’s a reminder that Lucifer’s release and the apocalypse that never was, ending with Sam throwing himself into the Cage with Lucifer, was a result of Dean selling his soul to Hell.
It’s a reminder that Sam outsourced his conscience to Dean back then and won’t hesitate to do so again, basing his actions not on moral convictions but on Dean’s (perceived) opinion of him.
And, going even further back, it’s a reminder that Dean dragged him back into hunting.
It’s a lie, of course, but a lie both Sam and Dean believe in. Even in Who We Are, long long after they discovered all about Azazel’s and Lucifer’s manipulations, Dean presents Jessica’s death as the result of his inability to be a good parent to Sam. And Sam still thinks that he could have protected Jess if only he’d been at home that weekend, thereby making her death at least indirectly Dean’s fault.
Of course, Brady would have killed Jess, no matter if Dean had shown up that weekend or not. Jess, with Sam or without Sam, would always have let Brady into their flat, because he was a friend. And even if Sam had been there, he would have had zero chance of doing anything useful to hold off a demon - he didn’t have the Colt, he didn’t have Ruby’s knife, he didn’t know about devil’s traps and he hadn’t yet memorised the excorcism either.
And when Jess died, Sam didn’t decide to start hunting again because of Dean, but because he wanted revenge. He wanted to find Jessica’s killer. If Dean hadn’t been around, it’s just as likely that Sam would have gone on a wild revenge quest across the States all by himself.
Back then Sam was still a college kid, wrecked with grief. One can’t expect rational thought from him back then. But now Sam is a man in his thirties who prides himself on his analytical skills. He could very easily reach these conclusions himself if he even bothered to think about this for five minutes. But of course he can’t be bothered to do so because being able to guilt-trip Dean into anything with a “You dragged me back into this life” is way too valuable to him to give up. See this episode.
The level of restraint and diplomacy Dean displayed throughout the episode was truly remarkable. Dean is the most experienced hunter on the planet and more than capable of judging for himself if someone is ready to hunt or not, yet he carefully avoided anything that might seem like he was undermining Sam’s authority.
