SPN 7x11-13
I guess I won't be caught up for tonight's episode, though I kind of wanted to be, but I'm only two episodes back and so I will be this weekend!
Adventures in Babysitting: I completely love Frank and I love watching only-slightly-saner-Dean play off of him. And I SERIOUSLY love this kid. And…Dean is kind of cute with her, and it was nice to see him encourage people out of the life and find a little joy in his job. Sam, because this show is all about patterns and cycles and how doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result might be “insanity” but it’s also how we cling to survival and more importantly our will to survive, goes off the best information he has and screws it all up royally, but this time the people he trusted that he shouldn’t have were his father and Dean. Twist my heart a little harder, child.
Time After Time
- Sheriff Mills! And she and Sam team up and there are SPARKS and I clap and squee because, as is known, what the Winchesters are lacking in is Oedipus complexes. (Seriously, Dean’s endgame relationship is going to start with him walking up to a lady on the street and wailing MOMMY, LOVE MEEEEEE.) (Sam’s will begin with him flinging himself on a demon and wailing MOMMY, LOVE MEEEEEE. Symmetry.)
- Is this the cutest bro-time we’ve had in a while? IT’S CALLED ANIME AND IT’S AN ART FORM. Okay, Dean. You’re back on notice. On a probationary basis. Also, ARE YOU STRICTLY INTO DICK NOW, HAHAHA.
- Sam is all up on the god-stabbage this season. Yeah, that’ll fix the terminal hubris.
- LOGAN ECHOLLS!
Splice Girls
AUNT JENNA! AND she got away from the Winchesters with her life and mind intact! SOMEONE GET THIS LADY A COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUE.
Honestly, I’m surprised at the complexity the Amazons got. I was gritting my teeth and waiting for the obligatory cracks on humorless old man-haters, because duh, race of female man-eaters. But they really did band together to defend themselves against overzealous hunters - exactly, as the cop-lady and narrative point out, like the Macho Macho Manchesters, who are, in fact, thugs and vigilantes whose arrogant, pathetic attempts at scorching the earth would’ve been the end of them; no way were they going to be able to take out a roomful of warrior superwomen. In response to the horrors of gendercide, the Amazons became strong and smart and, with the exception of the unfortunate executions of their sperm donors, they seem like they add quite a bit to society at large as well.
And - look, I’m not defending the use of murder as a coming-of-age thing, obviously. It’s not justified as something metaphysically necessary for them one way or the other, though they could easily have been woobified by making some “blood of the father” ritual a survival need. As it stands, it’s a pretty powerful way of not only desensitizing the girls to violence, but also of cutting them off (badum-ch!) from any potential support network in the outside world. (Children who grow up too fast? Desensitized to violence? Cut off from the outside world? Cartoonishly destructive familial relationships? HMMMM.) But those narrators - as was underlined in our last man-eating chicks episode - are notoriously unreliable. They probably consider it a necessary step in establishing agency, in destroying the one man the outside world still thinks can lay claim to them. Maybe to end the patriarchy, the patriarch has to go - and given the behavior of father figures in the show generally, and Dean specifically of late, that’s not really a huge leap. This might be more of a subversive reading than subversive writing, but I THINK FOR MYSELF, SHOW.
And not only are there no feminist-trashing jokes that I caught (and I usually catch ‘em, but tell me if I didn’t), but we see the ways the boys benefit from feminism. Sam’s whole survivor narrative is a story that didn’t get told before women’s lib. Their little safer sex talk is really cute, and also in large part down to reproductive justice advocates throughout the last couple of decades. Though it’s kind of a bummer that with all the trash we hear them talk every other minute they’re on screen, neither of them can spit out the word “condom.” Or “rubber.” Or even “dickbag,” which they say all the time anyway. (I really want the missing scene from after Unforgiven where Dean drags Sam off to a clinic because EVEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU’VE BEEN, SAMMY, YOU TRAMP and is all kind of proud, and they have to smack down the evil Randall Terry monster. It would be awesome.)
ANYWAY, THE ‘VERSE NOW HAS AMAZONS. XENA APPROVES.
And! I caught a CW preview while watching TVD last night and
WAS THAT REALLY a frame of our baby I saw? I know I know it is foul to hope for yet another dudesurrection while all the ladies rot in obscurity but that isn't Castiel's fault okay. Time to come out, Cas, OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE.
This is me not getting my hopes up. Really.