Ah, Show!
Well, rather there than Bela's place, or the sheriff's station, or some mediocre motel room. It was part of the Food Network's South Beach Food & Wine Fest, and I had a tiny Kobe burger with gorgonzola, a slider with tomato-ginger chutney, s'mores from Dylan's Candy Bar, Yukon Gold fries, diet coke in a glass bottle, and other wonderful things.
Boys, why did you go to silly Broward County when we in Miami-Dade have hamburger-and-Amstel-festivals right on the beach?
But that's last week.
And now we have the Episode of the Reveals - the tattoos and their purpose, the Leader Rising in the West (Little Lilith), The Deal With Hendrickson (He is with Snape! He is not dead! Or if he is, can be become a ghostie, please?), and a semi-resolution to the FBI plotline (although I am wondering whether anyone managed to leave the station before Lilith showed up and thus has a Weird Story To Tell About The Night Before The Place Blew Up). Am I the only one who wanted both the Deputy and Nancy to be virgins? But it would've used up precious minutes on them debating who'd be self-sacrificing and wouldn't have changed the plotting, as they clearly wanted to Get To A Certain Ending.
In other words, a solidly good episode - and I'm not terribly wigged out by the continuity switch of 3.11 and 3.12 - Sam felt to me to still be more hardened, more stressed and more omg-cannot-be-separated-from-Dean, which is a whole other bag of Issues for me anyway.
As some of you know, I have been seriously squicked by the FBI-hunts-the-boys plotline because of things like Supermax, and also because no matter what, except perhaps for trial-purposes, the boys would be separated, forever if they were really arrested (Deacon's jail doesn't count because he needed them to be able to work together, although of course I didn't know that until during the episode, so I was very nervous about it beforehand). And it hits me emotionally, the idea that the Feds could tear them apart at any time - and while there is still, I guess, a risk of Kripke throwing more jail/prison scenes and eps into the future, and Hendricksen didn't hack around with the database so if they ever get caught again their fingerprints may still be in the electronic system and they'd be screwed especially because of the explosion...
At least it's less of a concern. And it's good to know that part of what was behind the FBI's dogged pursuit (and perhaps putting superskeptic Hendricksen on the case) was the presence of Demons At the FBI!
ETA insert: Boys, please someday let us know that you have some sort of incomprehensible-to-everyone-else code in which you can write letters to each other if you are ever horribly separated by evil law enforcement people. Please?
And was Hendricksen possessed when he told Nancy he'd keep her safe? Because it makes me v v wibbly if he was (UGH! Evil!) and even moreso if he wasn't because that was just such a good thing to say. I <3 him and his bonding with Dean! And how sad was Dean to hear that he'd been killed? Wah!
I was 95% unspoiled for this ep - I knew there would be tattoos on the boys, and I knew Hendricksen would be in it, but I didn't know the rest, and it was just heart-pounding to watch.
But I don't think I'll go back and re-watch it as many times as I'll go back to the last two episodes, because that kind of intensity level can't be replicated. Maybe just one or two more times so I can catch the nuances and listen with clarity to (a) Dean's humor even in this terrible situation, and (b) Sam's Latinating.
Oh, and I saw a few people ask about why the arsenal is still in the trunk of Dean's car - I would think that for evidentiary purposes, the FBI would want to have it properly cataloged and searched with a full chain of custody in order to use any of the contents as evidence in trials of the boys, and they didn't have the staff on hand to do it properly, so by keeping it in the Impound Lot, they kept the chain of custody solid until such a search could take place.
Which it never did!
I just hope that Lilith blew up the Impound Lot, too, or someone might notice that the '67 Impala wasn't in there after the explosion.
Gah, Kripke, don't eventually pin that one on the boys, too! I can't wibble at any more jail/police station/prison settings!