Epic SPN Rewatch: Season 12
Feb. 5th, 2019 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caitri Season 12 is when SPN got consistently good again. There are a couple of weak spots (eg. Sam and Dean, who have both been tortured in Hell amongst other traumas, being broken by six weeks in solitary confinement by the US gov. That was just....dumb. And then apparently the British Men of Letters can easily nerf a secret detention center?? Bah. DUMB.) but in general the plot and character arcs are solid af.
Mary Winchester was resurrected in the S11 finale. Finally, the boys have their mom back! And it turns out that...their dream of the perfect mother/nuclear family unit was all bullshit. Which is a plot decision I love for undercutting gender expectations and so on, but as a fangirl frustrates me because it hurts to see my boys hurt. Mary Winchester is not thrilled about being back from the dead. She's not sleepwalking through life ala Buffy S6, but she also does not know how to deal with two adult sons--or three, if you count Castiel, which she does, calling him one of "her boys". Interestingly, the show seemed to start a Mary/Cas friendship in early episodes where Cas urges her to talk to Dean and so on. This was a really interesting decision and the writers seem to have forgotten about it, for better or for worse. But there are some great character moments, particularly with Jody Mills in "Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox." When Jody meets Mary, her response is an excited "It is so wonderful to meet you!!!!!!" and she gives Mary a big hug. Mary is...uncomfortable. By the end of the episode Jody has a greater sense of the emotional schism of the family and she too tries to help fix it, telling Mary that the boys are such good men. Mary says that she knows, and looks apologetic. There's so much shorthand there that is wonderfully done, even if it hurts. By the end of the season, in "Who We Are" Mary has been partially brainwashed by the British Men of Letters into a human weapon to kill other Hunters going after Jody. JODY is the one who provides medical care and back-up when they go on the offensive against the BMoL, but before that is just a wonderful moment of Jody holding Dean's hand as he stares wordlessly at Mary. He is DONE with her bullshit, even if it doesn't altogether come from her.
The other big plot line is Lucifer and his impregnating a nephilim son. I enjoyed Lucifer more in S11 when it was him being the brat son of God. On Earth and on his own he is chaotic evil with a lot of Trumpisms, because S12 started in 2016 and decided Fuck Yeah We're Getting Political.
The British Men of Letters plot is interesting in how it functions as a weird colonialization plot that isn't too self-aware. Like, the British MoL include people they have colonized (an Irish character, another who is Indian) and so more diverse than the Americans who are primarily white dudes. That just seems ill thought out to me.
There are several good standalones: "The One You've Been Waiting For" where Dean kills Hitler (which he is delighted about for EPISODES after), "Regarding Dean" where a spell makes him mentally regress and contains some of Jensen Ackles' best acting (the scenes where he stares at himself in the mirror, reciting his name, that Sam is brother, that Cas is his best friend, OW MY SOUL OW), "Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets" about a woman on a vengeance quest against angels.
This season also gives us some amazing Destiel moments. I was talking with a friend recently about how in earlier seasons there are a lot of moments where Destiel is played for laughs or as insults, eg. Balthazar's line in S6 where he says "I'm sorry, you've got the wrong angel, I'm not the one in the dirty trenchcoat that's in love with you." In this season, the subtext flirts a lot more with text. In "Stuck In the Middle (With You)" Cas is stabbed and thinks he is about to die, so he says "I love you" and the camera IMMEDIATELY GOES TO DEAN, then he adds "I love all of you" and it goes to Sam and Mary. Okay. Then in "The Future" we find that at some point Dean made Castiel a mixtape of his favorite Led Zeppelin songs (and this seems to reflect back on a bit in the season opener where Dean explains that his parents fell in love to Led Zeppelin, so heaaaaaaaavy family mythology text here in a season already filled with it) and when Cas tries to give it back after an argument Dean hands it back and says "This was a gift. You keep those."
Like. I know I'm a broken fangirl, but how the hell else are you supposed to read that scene??
The season concludes with the discovery of Apocalypse World, the shitty au where the boys were never born and never saved the world; the death of Crowley by self-sacrifice--which was beautifully done but such a goddamn loss for the show; and the last-minute murder of Castiel and birth of the nephilim Jack. This show is always brutal about cliffies, but that one was really bad.
Okay then. Deep breaths. Time for S13.
Mary Winchester was resurrected in the S11 finale. Finally, the boys have their mom back! And it turns out that...their dream of the perfect mother/nuclear family unit was all bullshit. Which is a plot decision I love for undercutting gender expectations and so on, but as a fangirl frustrates me because it hurts to see my boys hurt. Mary Winchester is not thrilled about being back from the dead. She's not sleepwalking through life ala Buffy S6, but she also does not know how to deal with two adult sons--or three, if you count Castiel, which she does, calling him one of "her boys". Interestingly, the show seemed to start a Mary/Cas friendship in early episodes where Cas urges her to talk to Dean and so on. This was a really interesting decision and the writers seem to have forgotten about it, for better or for worse. But there are some great character moments, particularly with Jody Mills in "Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox." When Jody meets Mary, her response is an excited "It is so wonderful to meet you!!!!!!" and she gives Mary a big hug. Mary is...uncomfortable. By the end of the episode Jody has a greater sense of the emotional schism of the family and she too tries to help fix it, telling Mary that the boys are such good men. Mary says that she knows, and looks apologetic. There's so much shorthand there that is wonderfully done, even if it hurts. By the end of the season, in "Who We Are" Mary has been partially brainwashed by the British Men of Letters into a human weapon to kill other Hunters going after Jody. JODY is the one who provides medical care and back-up when they go on the offensive against the BMoL, but before that is just a wonderful moment of Jody holding Dean's hand as he stares wordlessly at Mary. He is DONE with her bullshit, even if it doesn't altogether come from her.
The other big plot line is Lucifer and his impregnating a nephilim son. I enjoyed Lucifer more in S11 when it was him being the brat son of God. On Earth and on his own he is chaotic evil with a lot of Trumpisms, because S12 started in 2016 and decided Fuck Yeah We're Getting Political.
The British Men of Letters plot is interesting in how it functions as a weird colonialization plot that isn't too self-aware. Like, the British MoL include people they have colonized (an Irish character, another who is Indian) and so more diverse than the Americans who are primarily white dudes. That just seems ill thought out to me.
There are several good standalones: "The One You've Been Waiting For" where Dean kills Hitler (which he is delighted about for EPISODES after), "Regarding Dean" where a spell makes him mentally regress and contains some of Jensen Ackles' best acting (the scenes where he stares at himself in the mirror, reciting his name, that Sam is brother, that Cas is his best friend, OW MY SOUL OW), "Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets" about a woman on a vengeance quest against angels.
This season also gives us some amazing Destiel moments. I was talking with a friend recently about how in earlier seasons there are a lot of moments where Destiel is played for laughs or as insults, eg. Balthazar's line in S6 where he says "I'm sorry, you've got the wrong angel, I'm not the one in the dirty trenchcoat that's in love with you." In this season, the subtext flirts a lot more with text. In "Stuck In the Middle (With You)" Cas is stabbed and thinks he is about to die, so he says "I love you" and the camera IMMEDIATELY GOES TO DEAN, then he adds "I love all of you" and it goes to Sam and Mary. Okay. Then in "The Future" we find that at some point Dean made Castiel a mixtape of his favorite Led Zeppelin songs (and this seems to reflect back on a bit in the season opener where Dean explains that his parents fell in love to Led Zeppelin, so heaaaaaaaavy family mythology text here in a season already filled with it) and when Cas tries to give it back after an argument Dean hands it back and says "This was a gift. You keep those."
Like. I know I'm a broken fangirl, but how the hell else are you supposed to read that scene??
The season concludes with the discovery of Apocalypse World, the shitty au where the boys were never born and never saved the world; the death of Crowley by self-sacrifice--which was beautifully done but such a goddamn loss for the show; and the last-minute murder of Castiel and birth of the nephilim Jack. This show is always brutal about cliffies, but that one was really bad.
Okay then. Deep breaths. Time for S13.
