Past is Prologue is an interesting title for last week’s “Walker” episode. So often, our past is what impacts our futures – if we don’t make sense of it, it can have way too much impact.
Bonham is still grumpy about nobody coming to his family meeting and the horse rescue not being run by him first, feeling like he’s been “put out to pasture”. Abeline’s having none of it and I am here for her, as always.
Abeline doesn’t want Bonham to have regrets, feeling bad that she waited so long to reconcile with her brother. She of course prevails, telling him she’s got his back and is on his side, but also, he needs to talk to Liam and Stella, even if they should have talked to him first.
Abeline: We need to do the teaching, lead by example… and bask in your superiority.
God, I love Abeline.
I love that Liam and Stella now have a horse rescue because it means I get to see lots of gorgeous horses too.
Liam and Stella shoot a social media promo post, much to Bonham’s annoyance. He walks out.
Stella: He’s still mad?
Abby: He’s still somethin’…
Bonham eventually listens to Abeline and comes around, telling Liam that he did accept that he and Cordell didn’t have that “rancher green thumb”, and that what matters is that they’re happy. He’s grudgingly impressed with what Liam’s done and is “man enough to admit that it hurt,” that it wiped away a vision he’d become fond of. It’s a pretty candid thing for Bonham to admit, so I give him a lot of credit.
Liam says he was hoping it could be “ours,” a family thing that the new logo is based on his Grandad’s signature.
Bonham: Well hell, William, when you put it like that…
Of course, he can’t leave it at that, though. He needs a parting shot to keep his grumpy grampa persona intact.
Bonham: Daddy’s signature was damn chicken scratch – that ain’t it.
Meanwhile, just when we were all open-mouthed at Captain James’ ability to be harsh (to Trey), we get to see the softer side of him when Kelly returns to town and they rekindle their romance at a new level, with her moving to Austin full time. Awww.
Most of the fandom figured out that Trey wasn’t really fired, and that James was setting him up to do some undercover work, but it was good to have that confirmed in this episode. So yay, now we can go back to liking Captain James again! Though Trey got to hang out in some nice outfits while he was “unemployed.”
It doesn’t take long for the bad guys aka the lobbying group (disguised as country club golfing types) to reach out to Trey, in fact. It also doesn’t take long for him to figure out their ‘prove you’re smart enough to do this job’ little test.
Trey is smoooooth in not seeming to want it too much, and the lobbying guy is smooth too in making it sound like they’re actually trying to help vets (who in real life really don’t get the help they need). I confess to not really understanding the whole Grey Flag thing, honestly.
Julia is off working in DC, so it’s Cassie and Cordell teaming up to try to figure out why his old squad is maybe being targeted – and why maybe HE is being targeted. I love Cassie for being all in on trying to get Cordell some closure, and also her willingness to drop back and give him some space when digging into all this brings back his PTSD and survivor’s guilt big time. Jared Padalecki is so good at showing those emotional struggles, and I love when this show gets serious and goes there.
(Padalecki also tweeted a CW video encouraging people to fight the stigma around talking about mental health issues, which is so important in making real-world change. The chapter he wrote in Family Don’t End With Blood was a similar encouragement, since Jared opened up about his own mental health in it, and it’s helped many other people do the same.)
Cordell looking into his past and how his “brothers” died means flashbacks – which means we get Colin Ford as young Cordell again. Yay! Colin is SO good and it is uncanny how much he seems like a young Jared Padalecki, both on Supernatural and on this show. We see some of the trauma that Cordell and his unit endured in combat, their vehicle blown up and one of their own losing his hearing.
Cordell and Cassie’s visit to the widow of his other “brother” turns out to be traumatic itself, Cordell remembering Rob’s struggle with addiction and his widow not wanting to hear it. We see another painful flashback, Rob being reprimanded for getting high and Cordell trying to reassure him that he’s not alone, that he’ll be okay.
His wife is understandably angry, blaming their military trauma for what happened to her husband.
She eventually orders them to leave, and Cordell feels guilty for having upset her.
Cassie wants to continue their investigation, but Cordell is overwhelmed with emotions stirred up by their conversation and his flashbacks.
Cordell: We all did what we had to do to survive over there, and we all had vices. What happened over there to us, that was ugly, and what happened when we came back, the guilt, the regret, that was ugly too.
Every time we understand more about that trauma and his time in the military, we understand a little better just how much Cordell is carrying. Still.
He tells Cassie he tries to avoid thinking about it because it hurts. That’s a raw, honest thing to say, and she takes it in like the serious admission it is.
She gives him the time and space he needs, and then when he’s had a little time and feels like he’s ready to be all in, they try to reach Tommy for more information – and get a disconnected phone.
Uh oh.
They find Tommy mortally wounded, set up for Cordell to find him – a scene so dark it seemed like something out of “Supernatural” honestly.
Cordell’s “no no no no no, stay with me, hey stay with me” hit wayyyy too close to the barn scene in “Supernatural” when Sam loses Dean (Jensen Ackles), so it made me unexpectedly emotional. Cordell stays with his dying brother, again evoking the Winchester brothers with his “I’m not going anywhere.”
Meanwhile, Cassie takes off after the guy who apparently gutted poor Tommy. The music montage actually works for this one as Cassie floors it and the lyrics say “I’m a monster…going going gone…” The bad guy rams his vehicle against hers and then crashes, Cassie looking shocked as the car flips again and again. The guy who must not have been wearing a seat belt is dead, half out of the vehicle. Cassie finds a file with Tommy’s name and photo on it.
Uh oh.
There’s a pretty cool shot of the destroyed vehicle from above, Cassie holding the file, the truth of what this means hitting her.
Cassie still respectfully covers the dead guy with a blanket. The file confirms the dead guy was Grey Flag, and they realize now that this isn’t an anarchist group taking issue with the military – this is something personal. That Cordell’s unit was targeted – and so is he.
Cassie: Walker, you’re next.
Walker: I think it’s time we read in James.
Who at that moment is in his car on a dark road not taking Walker’s call – because he’s meeting with Trey. It would have been a gasp-worthy reveal if most of us hadn’t figured it out (possibly because we just wanted it to be the case!)
James: Mission is a go. Be careful, man.
Trey: Will do. It’s good to see you, Cap.
They part ways, their cars under two isolated lights on a deserted road – another dramatic shot that worked really well.
Caps courtesy of raloria/spndeangirl
This episode was beautifully filmed and directed, and the music in this case worked instead of throwing me out of the action. Ashley Reyes and Jared Padalecki were both so good at conveying their characters’ slowly dawning realization of just how serious – and how personal – this is for Cordell. And both also showed us their emotions, Cassie’s empathic negotiation of when to push and when to back off as Cordell struggles with survivor’s guilt and PTSD.
So well done!
James and Kelly negotiating the complications of a mature relationship of two people who were bonded at one time but pulled apart trying to carefully come back together was also really well done.
The Bonham and Abeline scenes almost always work for me because Molly Hagan is amazing, and I liked the grudging softness of Bonham’s admitting to his son that his personal aspirations for his sons was getting in the way of his being happy for them just being happy.
Plus, beautiful horses!!
A very solid episode in just about every way.
New episode of “Walker” tonight with 3.12 Best Laid Plans, so stay tuned!
“The Winchesters” has three episodes remaining in its first season after this one, Suspicious Minds, so I expected things to ramp up as far as finding the Big Bad (aka the Akrida queen). That ramping up did happen, it turns out, in both expected and unexpected ways.
The Akrida have apparently been wreaking havoc since the 1950s, killing poor Dorothea who was only trying to be helpful by fixing a car (I love all the women on this show who are so mechanically talented, even if that is so not me).
The Men of Letters didn’t manage to send all of them back to their own universe, so some have been hiding out ever since – including the Queen.
I’m not as invested in the Akrida as I’m probably supposed to be – this show is more interesting when it’s telling me something about these characters that I know and love from OG “Supernatural,” assuming it feels like it can connect the two. So as soon as John finds a letter from a university amongst the pile of mail on Mary’s table and asks her about it, I instantly thought of Sam Winchester getting a similar letter – and having to hide it from his family.
Mary has been paralleled to Sam in wanting to have a “normal life” and get out of hunting in this show and in the original, and in this episode that’s made explicit. It made sense in the context of this show, so I enjoyed the parallel – it’s only when it seems like a stretch and doesn’t make sense that they don’t work for me. In this world, however, Mary opens it and John shares her excitement about being accepted – unlike the John Winchester of “Supernatural.”
We get the Jensen Ackles Dean narration early on, a bit of a warning about expecting happy endings from this show (just as we were warned in “Supernatural,” and if you didn’t heed that warning, you probably had a tough time with November 2020).
Dean: Hunting and happy endings don’t usually mix. So, when you get your chance, you’ve got to ask yourself, how far will I go to get it?
Dean has a lot more Texas twang than he used to, especially in this particular voiceover – but he’s right about not usually having happy endings when you’re a hunter. That is not a complaint – that’s what we all signed up for because that’s what “Supernatural” has always been about!
I will forever feel fortunate that we got to see Sam and Dean get the closest thing to a happy ending possible for two hunters by being in Heaven, their ‘peace when you are done.’
There are two storylines in this episode, one with John and Mary and their Men of Letters guest, and the other with Carlos and Lata. Lata and Carlos are out looking for the Akrida Queen, but mostly they’re a little bit hilarious as Carlos is at first totally dreamy over Anton and then wants to run away from his feelings, and Lata tries to talk him out of it.
They’re over the top sometimes (seeing “his round dimpled face in pancakes”?) and I really really want to know where they get the money for those fabulous outfits, but still, when they bicker over who will get in the van first, I had to laugh. I also love that Lata has been seeing Tony, Ada’s half djinn son, in her dreams. I hope we actually get to see Tony again before the season ends.
They find Roxy, who’s been fired and had her girlfriend break up with her and has been drinking to try to forget the trauma the Akrida possession put her through. Bridget Regan is outstanding in this episode, showing how much Roxy trying to avoid the traumatic memories is not working and how horribly they’re tearing her apart. It’s a pretty accurate depiction of PTSD and I feel for her – and Regan is a really talented actress.
Lata surprises Carlos by knowing a memory extraction and wipe spell that she uses on Roxy, which gives them enough information to find where the Queen is underground. The introduction of a memory wipe is interesting given that’s a possibility for how “The Winchesters” can actually make sense given the inconsistencies with “Supernatural.” I have no doubt there will be some explanation for why things are “off” and that’s one explanation, along with maybe this is an Alternate Universe and not the familiar one we know (which would make all the parallels kinda fun). We shall see…
Roxy decides to hang onto her memories after all, even though it’s painful, offering to help in any way she can to bring down the Akrida. That’s a small scene, but I found it significant – it’s the decision that Sam and Dean make multiple times in “Supernatural” also.
Stay in the fictional world of The French Mistake where they live in mansions and Sam is married to ‘Ruby’? Nope. The brothers opt to go back to their own world, where they’re hunters and brothers and they make a difference. Stay in the djinn created fantasy world where Dean is with Lisa and Sam is with Jess and they have their mom alive and well? Nope. He opts to go back to his own world and be who he really is.
They don’t want to not remember, even when a lot of their memories are of loss and trauma; it makes them who they are, and as Dean memorably says, “I’m good with who I am; I’m good with who you are.” This episode, more than any before it, seems to ‘get’ what “Supernatural” was all about more, so the parallels are subtle but powerful.
Carlos is tempted to want to take the easy way out and ask Lata to erase his memories of Anton, but Roxy’s courage inspires him to not run away from Anton also. Something I’m happy about (but stop talking about his round pancake face, Carlos…)
Meanwhile, in the John and Mary storyline, a man of letters named Porter lets himself into the clubhouse with his key and offers to help them kill the Akrida queen. (Causing me to yell “Victor Cassadine!” because Charles Shaughnessy is also on General Hospital).
I love that they pull some old Men of Letters files and that they look so familiar from “Supernatural” – I have a folder that was in the things they sold when they tore down that amazing set and I cherish it. We also get a glimpse of a chess set in the clubhouse, which also made me miss Sam and Dean’s Men of Letters bunker so much it hurt. I was lucky enough to spend some time on that set and to sit down at the little table with its chess board, and so seeing such a familiar set dec made my heart ache with how much I miss “Supernatural.”
Anyway, the guy is sus from the jump, but John and Mary go along with him for quite a while, ignoring his prejudice against hunters (“that’s your nature”) and his history of experimenting on “monsters” and lobotomizing them into watchdogs for the MoL.
Does that seem a little off to you?
Here the parallels to things that “Supernatural” dealt with (like killing Hitler and the Thule story arc) are a lot darker. I would have hoped that John and Mary would bristle at that and do a little more nuanced thinking, especially since their friend Ada has a son who’s half “monster”. Then again, if we think of how black and white John is when we meet him in Supernatural, I guess not!
John and Mary do exchange an epic WTF look when Porter smiles happily as he talks about how the Queen will suffer greatly before dying if he carries out his plan (kudos to Meg Donnelly and Drake Rodger because it was priceless). However, they still are so focused on “getting the job done” that they don’t realize for too long that Porter is a man bent on revenge – at any cost. That’s a message I wish John Winchester had learned a lot better.
Weird that the possessed people are still just doing their jobs and eating donuts like poor Officer Jones, who John and Mary bring to the crazy guy (I still don’t entirely get the whole Akrida possession versus bugs thing but luckily the show hasn’t confronted me with it recently).
They do finally figure out that Porter is not who he says he is – in fact, he’s Jack Wilcox, not Porter Hobbes, and the Akrida killed his wife Dorothea back in the 1950s. Unfortunately, the bad guy knocks out both the hunters rather easily and prepares to put his dead wife’s consciousness into Mary and himself into John so they can have their happily ever after. He also turns into someone who sounds like Asmodeus instead of Victor Cassadine, alarming most OG “Supernatural” fans.
Also. unexpected was the appearance of a golem that the bad guy apparently created to protect him and his experiments. Wilcox’s monster experiments are disturbingly Nazi-like, which makes killing the golem, a Jewish folklore creature created to protect, by incinerating its head in a kiln no less, even more disturbing. I’m guessing that was supposed to be in keeping with the theme of being possessed and controlled against your will.
I think this was also intended as a callback to “Supernatural’s” golem episode – John even does the Dean line “that was my spleen” and there’s a moment when he confronts the golem at first and has to look up…and up and up and up which was similar too.
The difference is that “Supernatural’s” Everybody Hates Hitler kept the golem in context as not a monster and wisely avoided ovens. This episode also confused me – why did they make so much of getting the scroll out of the golem’s mouth if they were just going to decapitate and incinerate it? Not a fan of that whole part of the episode.
The episode is also reminiscent of the episode where Sam wants to save Dean from dying by co-opting another insane doctor’s mad experimentation so they can both live forever as patched-together Frankenstein-esque people. It seems we’re going down the Winchesters-will-do-anything-to-save-each-other road that is Mary and John’s fate and eventually their sons’ modus operandi as well.
I like that kind of callback; again, it makes sense in the context of this show as well as the original. It’s one of the things I love most about Sam and Dean, their willingness to do anything to save each other, and I love that it was presented as both powerful and also something that in real life you’d definitely worry about. (Luckily, it’s fiction, so we don’t have to worry!)
Dorothea and Jack ended up together after all (though not alive).
Later, Mary and John salt and burn the bodies in dimly lit woods – which gives us some beautiful not-brightly-lit cinematography, something I’ve been wishing for more of on this show.
John: Things we do for love.
Mary: That’s not love. Jack was only thinking of himself, of what he wanted. It didn’t matter if it cost him his humanity to get it. That’ll never be us, right?
John: Never.
Me: Ouch. Nope, no one will ever sell their soul to bring back someone they love, definitely not. Not a Winchester thing at all…
That parallel worked for me, as did their salt and burn and bury, and the two walking away with their shovels through the dark woods, as their sons will do so many times in the future.
But the real ramping up of the stakes in this show happened in this episode when we get to eavesdrop on the Akrida (in their not-scuttling-bug forms which thankfully we haven’t seen in a while) talking about how the hunters have become a problem (and how awesome ranch dressing is). Because they are most interested in one particular hunter and the Queen wants them to find “this bastard” – aka Dean Winchester. Now that’s making this personal!
Possessed Kyle is perfectly willing to spill his host’s blood (RIP Kyle) to set up John Winchester as a violent killer who went after Kyle as a rival for Mary. Millie arrives to see John bent over a bleeding mortally wounded Kyle as police sirens get closer.
Poor John – that was a pretty well-done setup.
And a beautiful final scene, John bending over Kyle seemingly having attacked him, Millie standing there in shock, framed by the garage door and the giant WINCHESTERS sign flickering above them as the sirens draw closer.
Captions courtesy of spndeangirl/raloria
I liked this episode more than I’ve liked all nine that came before it (though not all of it; see golem oven no above). It connected to “Supernatural” more authentically than the other episodes have, which I hope will continue in the final three episodes of the season (though having Dean back onscreen without Sam will inevitably make me sad, even though I expect the reason will make logical sense).
“The Winchesters” takes a few weeks off now, and when we come back it’s the final three episodes beginning with 1.11 You’ve Got a Friend. Will the Akrida catch up with Dean Winchester? Will we??
Last week’s episode of “The Winchesters’ 1.09 Cast Your Fate to the Wind was extra fun – because I got to watch it with my friend Nightsky from The Winchester Family Business. We’ve been friends since the early seasons of “Supernatural” but we live in different cities, so getting to watch anything “live” together is rare.
We went to the premiere of “A Knock At The Cabin” in New York City the night before (it was awesome fyi), so were both at my house on Tuesday – which meant viewing party for “The Winchesters!” Here’s our morning after thoughts on the episode….before coffee, so keep that in mind….
Let’s start with our OG “Supernatural” fave, Dean. Here’s his narration from the episode:
Dean: This isn’t how I saw things going when I pushed over that first domino. Thing is, I’ve had more than a few dances with free will and fate, but as my dad used to say, “fate is what you make it.”
Lynn: Wait, did John Winchester actually say that on “Supernatural?”
Nightsky: I don’t remember him saying that, and if he didn’t, this is huge! It means that Dean is changing the timeline.
Lynn: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I don’t want OG “Supernatural’s” timeline changed!
Nightsky (not at all rattled by the outburst): Including Dean’s narration, fate is mentioned fifteen times in the episode. The gem is the Gem of Ursitoare, the Roman gods of fate.
Lynn: Okay, so it’s about fate. That’s a “Supernatural” theme for sure. But what was it trying to say about fate?
Nightsky: Lata says, “fate has a different meaning for the undead… It shows the next fated moment in your destiny. According to the legend, the leader saw he was fated to die and chose to save himself over the clan… Once the object reveals your fate, it is sealed.” But John proved that the context of fate is unknown, and within his control. Dean is “undead” in a way, so are they hinting that Dean is trying to change his and Sam’s fates, and maybe even the entire Winchester clan’s fate?
Lynn: That makes me nervous. I didn’t necessarily see this as John changing his fate though. In this episode’s climactic scene, I saw the fact that the outcome was not what we first expected as made possible because John didn’t know the full context of what was happening in that vision of the future – it didn’t necessarily show that he was being killed, only that the vampire was biting him, and we don’t know what happened before or after. What if that is exactly what happened before and after, and he just figured it out? That would mean John didn’t change anything. My head hurts already.
Nightsky: Even though Dean remembers his dad saying “fate is what you make it”, going back through the episode, it was Millie who said it, not John. Maybe this is where John learns that lesson from his mother.
Lynn: A lot of this show is about where John or Mary learned things from their parents, that’s for sure. (What’s also interesting is that Nightsky and I both thought that John DID say it, but it’s not in the transcript we’re looking at over breakfast…)
Nightsky: In the pilot of “The Winchesters,” Dean says “I know this story might sound familiar, but I’m gonna put the pieces together in a way that just might surprise you, and in order to do that, I have to start all the way at the beginning.” In this episode, that’s exactly what John did. He was shown a vision of one version of events, but he put together the pieces of that puzzle in a way that wasn’t initially what he thought it would be. Maybe that’s what this series is doing – putting a context around the Winchester story that we know. They’re not changing anything, but fitting it into a larger, more complete, paradigm.
Lynn: Maybe, though that still makes me a little nervous. It still feels like change, even if it’s not going to change those goalposts they talked about not moving.
Nightky: In my reviews, I’ve been noting how I’m getting a much deeper understanding of all of the Winchesters because of the context of their history. It’s not changing anything in their personalities but I’m understanding so much more about them than I ever did before. It’s giving me “aha” moments that are enriching my love of “Supernatural.”
Lynn: There are some times I can fit them into the canon of “Supernatural” and then I can feel them as expanding my understanding of them, but there are those other times when I can’t make them fit, so I’m just left scratching my head. One of my hopes for this show is that it doesn’t change anything I know and love from “Supernatural” – hence my persistent concern – but instead fills in some blanks. There are also moments that make me go, huh? That doesn’t sound like anything this character would have said or done in “Supernatural!” Times when I can’t see Samuel ever saying that, or Mary, or even Dean in his narration. It’s only sometimes, but those times are confusing – hopefully they will all make sense in episode 13!
Nightsky: So besides the theme of free will versus changing or contextualizing fate, what were the highlights of the episode for you?
Lynn: There was a lot of Millie, and that always makes me happy. Bianca Kajlich is amazing, and I believe every single ounce of her portrayal of Millie. Whenever she and Drake Rodger get a chance to interact in an emotional scene, I’m captivated by it because it feels so genuine.
Lynn: I love her toughness, and the fierce love underneath, maybe because it appeals to the mom in me, but I also love how we get only little glimpses of that reluctant vulnerability. Hmm. Am I saying she reminds me of Dean? Because sometimes she reminds me of Dean. We haven’t heard her say “no chick flick moments” but that’s one of those things that I can trace forward to Dean and it feels like it makes sense.
Nightsky: I agree, Millie is a gem. More of her please! Her “save it for the kids, kiddo” perfectly cut through all of the young adult angst and dating drama and saw the truth of the situation as only a parent could. John immediately knew she was right!
Nightsky: She also deftly delivered their cover story when Betty was interrogating her about Mary. As far as her discomfort with talking about feelings, I saw that as a strong tether back to the characterization of the Winchesters that we’d been given for so long from “Supernatural.” Maybe John’s and subsequently Dean’s preference for “the punchy part” of hunting rather than emotional sharing comes from Millie and the feminine of the family rather than the masculine stereotypes we may have assumed.
Lynn: Well, we all absorb those stereotypes – Millie embodies more of the masculine stereotypes in a lot of ways. She’s a mechanic too. I think I like that about Millie because that was an actual hole in canon that you can fill in without messing with OG “Supernatural” – it’s like what fanfic does sometimes, find a gap in the canon and then fill it in, in a way that makes sense and is more or less seamless. I like it when the show can do that. So yes, I agree.
(narrator: they agree!)
Lynn: So what was the highlight for you?
Nightsky: I was pleasantly surprised with Mary’s fight scene – it’s about time! They’ve been telling us that she’s a fierce fighter, but we finally got to see some impressive combat skills that allowed her to take on and defeat several monsters at once.
Lynn: That was a good scene, yes.
Nightsky: For me, the scene would have been even more powerful if she wasn’t constantly battling with her “sweet girl next door” image. Curled hair and platform shoes are unlikely choices for a hunter – unless you are going to use them to your advantage, as Carlos did. The straight hair, jeans, and gym shoes that she wore in the pilot seem more practical. I understand that her outward appearance conveys the internal battle she has with wanting to be like the other girls in town, but I’d like to see her be the character who shows that women can dress practically and still be feminine. With all that said, though, I still adored that scene.
Lynn: I think she might be fighting the CW stereotypes more than anything, which doesn’t allow you to not have carefully coiffed hair even if you’re fighting monsters. I liked that scene a lot – it was so well choreographed and Meg did a great job – but it is sometimes hard to believe that such a physically tiny person could swing a machete with enough force to lob off a vampire’s head! I do think Meg Donnelly really showed how desperate Mary was in the fight scene, and her portrayal of those strong emotions was what made the scene more believable for me – she just kept getting up, knowing otherwise John might die. She also made me believe in Mary’s deepening feelings for John, more in this episode than in any before.
Nightsky: Another highlight for me was Carlos’ reaction to seeing John and Mary kiss. JoJo Fleites stole the scene with Carlos’ surprised/not surprised facial expressions and hand waving.
Lynn: Totally. Carlos was like “What? I knew it!” And Lata was like, “wait, you knew it? I knew it!”
Lynn: Speaking of Carlos, I love that he’s getting another chance to maybe start a relationship with Anton after they hit it off so strongly when they first met. It seems believable to me that Carlos got nervous and tried to back off – for some reason he’s insecure about relationships even though we all find him attractive and appealing, I think – but I was rooting for them so I’m glad they had a chance to rekindle those sparks.
Lynn: John and Mary didn’t have the only kiss in the episode! I really hope we get to see more of Anton and that their relationship has a chance to be explored.
So, was there anything you didn’t like about the episode?
Nightsky: There were two things for me. This episode gets the award for the worst insertion of a commercial ever. The entire story built to the climax of John’s fated death and his mom and Mary’s frantic efforts to save him, but right in the middle of their big, emotional scene, the show cut to a commercial. It tanked the scene’s momentum and impact. That was either poor editing or post-production timing.
Lynn: I don’t know whose job that is but yes, that was jarring. And if I’m remembering correctly, it pulled us both right out of the moment. I also got thrown out of the moment in that scene by how quickly they stopped doing CPR. I know you can’t have a TV show with 30 minutes of people attempting CPR, but you absolutely wouldn’t give up after 30 seconds if you want to give that person the best chance of survival! Maybe that’s where the commercial should have been… Those are small constraints by the realities of TV things, but still jarring. Other than that quick giving up, though, that was a powerful scene with Bianca and Meg both doing a good job of showing the women’s panic and grief – even if we all knew he was going to wake up.
Lynn: Anything else?
Nightsky: I’m still not absolutely sure about the monster lore they portrayed. Holy water hurts demons, not vampires. It was a brilliant hunting strategy from Carlos (and reminiscent of the Trickster calling our attention to Carlos’ hair modeling career last week), but was it a mistake or a clue that we’re in an Alternate Universe? Am I wrong here?
Lynn: I thought the same thing. It’s so confusing because vampire lore is so different across books and films and TV series, but I don’t remember Sam and Dean ever tossing holy water at vampires. If this is an AU, that makes me happy because I don’t have to worry and be overly protective of canon, but if it isn’t, that seems like a canon fail. It was an amusing moment, but sometimes this show skews closer to campy than “Supernatural” did, and that’s a little jarring too. Also, I feel like it took time to soak his hair and the vampires just stood there watching – maybe it would have been better to just quickly toss the holy water on them from the bottle? Luckily for some reason they just stood there … maybe Carlos’ hair is just that fascinating! (It is pretty awesome NGL)
Lynn: Remind me of vampire lore in “Supernatural?”
Nightsky: John was bitten by a vampire but, consistent with “Supernatural” lore, he wasn’t transformed because he didn’t ingest vampire blood or feed on human blood.
Lynn: Right, it’s not just being bitten itself. Anything else stand out to you?
Nightsky: I was surprised to learn that the reporter was possessed by an Akrida, but I never trusted him anyway. Do you think he was already possessed when he “ran into” Mary at the theater? I do. He was just too smooth to be trusted.
Lynn: Probably, though I didn’t necessarily think possession at the time – but he was a little sus from the start. Which is too bad because I kinda like his character. It’s interesting that the two “exes” have teamed up now, Kyle who dated Mary (once) and Betty who was engaged to John. But I think Betty’s intentions are good, don’t you? She has reason to be suspicious after the gang keeps turning up at crime scenes.
Nightsky: Yes, she’s become an antagonist in the story but not in the way I expected. I thought she would be the love interest in a romantic triangle, but they bypassed that cliché and are using her law enforcement training to make her suspicious. I hope she ends up like Victor Henriksen, who was a thorn in the Winchesters’ side but ultimately became an ally.
Lynn: I was just gonna compare her to Henriksen! She gives an outsider’s point of view on the way hunters would surely appear to the rest of the world, and I love that trope.
What else stood out to you?
Nightsky: It was nice that they expanded the “clubhouse” – Lata described it as “endless, in the best way”. That really opens up the possibilities for future stories and is again consistent with Sam and Dean slowly discovering the mysterious caverns of the bunker.
Lynn: I wish they didn’t call it the clubhouse, it sounds a lot less serious than the bunker, but yes, that was a nice callback to the bunker and its many, many rooms. I don’t think they actually constructed it like they did the bunker, though! I had the pleasure of being in that physical set and it was amazing – but I’m sure very costly to make it an actual real (and large) “building”.
Nightsky: I’m also fascinated that besides fate, another underlying theme of this episode was time. One possibility is that Dean was inserted into this timeline via time travel. While no one traveled through time for this hunt, the amulet looked into the future. Carlos specifically asked if the amulet “has the ability to tell me the future or a future” which again emphasized that timelines can be influenced.
Lynn: I had a visceral reaction to the mention of an “amulet” on a show that’s in the universe of “Supernatural,” gotta say. But yes, that was an interesting connection. Clearly part of what the show is all about, but it’s also part of what makes me so anxious about it! Also, John really takes after Dean – I mean, Dean really takes after John – like oh, amulet, here let me pick it up, oops!
Nightsky: Mary’s desire to keep things “in the moment” with John was also a study of time in a way. Then the vampire told John “it’s not your time yet, but it soon will be, John Winchester” and Millie said, “I’d say that our time is running out.” What are the connotations of those quotes to the Winchesters’ timeline??? “Time” was mentioned fifteen times in the dialog. That’s not accidental.
Lynn: So both time and fate are mentioned fifteen times. Obviously, this show is all about time, and “Supernatural” has always been about fate versus free will, so I guess that makes sense.
Nightsky: Time travel is a favorite theme for Robbie Thompson, and this story emphasized both the present and the future. I have to wonder about the implications for what Dean is doing.
Lynn: I noticed when the vampire said that, too. Was it just to move the story along a few minutes so we could get to the red carpet scene? Or did it have a more prescient meaning, that it turns out his time is not that day at all, but he’s still in danger? (Also, that poor woman – did she really think she could trust that vamp?)
Lynn: As for Dean, we know he’s trying to change something, I just hope he remembers watching “The Butterfly Effect” at some point in his life – or what happened when he went back in time before (after…) this. I was amused that Mary calls the guy in the photo handsome, not knowing he’s her son. A nice callback to Dean calling his mom “a babe” when he time-traveled to the 70s in the original show.
Caps courtesy of raloria/spndeangirl
Lynn: Time travel makes my head hurt, seriously.
We left it at that, since my head was hurting (and I had to go to work…) But we were both surprised that we actually agreed on a lot of things, both positive and negative! Do you agree?
Catch a brand new episode of “The Winchesters” on the CW tonight with 1.10 Suspicious Minds!
“Walker’s” Blinded by the Light is a great title, referring literally to what happens to Cordell (Jared Padalecki) and Julia when they confront Tommy, but also to the fact that just about everyone has some kind of blinders on that aren’t letting them see things entirely clearly.
Of Fathers and Sons
The Walker family continues to bicker, Bonham still cranky with Augie, both parents cranky with Liam when he tries to bring work for the horse rescue and therapy center to the table, and Cordell misses breakfast altogether much to their annoyance.
On a Saturday.
Bonham calls a family meeting for both his sons to “sort things out” leaving Liam to tell his brother about it. I love the framing here, Liam and his father are separated, in two different worlds right now.
Bonham also finally tells Abeline about his conversation with Cordell and asking him to move out. Bonham is worried that there’s too much stress around there for Abeline, admitting he’s scared but then projecting it all onto his sons. He says Cordell needs to fix his family.
Abeline: Fix his family? We are his family! I’m curious how you decided that abandoning our son when he needs us the most is best for my health!
Me: You tell him, Abeline!
She says he’s welcome to stay in the farmhouse as long as he wants, and demands that Bonham apologizes (and also finish the dishes alone lol).
Strikingly, when Trey comes over to see Liam to get some legal advice, Bonham is the good dad to Trey with offers of coffee and words of inspiration and consolation. Trey says he feels like he belongs with the Rangers, and Bonham says he was born to do that job, and the Captain and DPS, they see it too. He insists they’re not gonna let a man like him go.
Where is that for your own sons, Bonham??
To make Bonham even more cranky, neither of his sons shows up for the family meeting. Angry, Bonham tells Abeline that their sons didn’t turn out to be the pretty picture he imagined it would be, and what? You have two awesome sons, Bonham, be grateful! (Also, they make quite a pretty picture, just saying…)
Liam has a positive meeting with an accountant (that goes long so he misses the family meeting) and offers Stella a legal partnership in the horse rescue and therapy program since she’s 18.
This show is convinced that 18-year-olds are all grown-up adults, but having worked for a decade as a psychologist in a college counseling center?
I am side-eyeing you, show.
Setting Boundaries
It’s a day of Saturday meetings being called, Captain James calling Trey, Cassie, and Walker in too, and immediately being cranky because they’re a few minutes late. He’s particularly hard on Trey, who was supposed to be on desk duty.
James: Do you have a thing for defying me?
Walker interrupts to defend Trey and James cuts him off.
James: I didn’t ask for your input.
Walker: Yessir.
Trey has to go up before DPS for insubordination, in fact. And while everyone assumes it will turn out fine – it doesn’t.
Trey is dismissed from being a Ranger.
Most of us are convinced that James needed Trey out of the Rangers so he can be recruited by Grey Flag and go undercover, but we’ll see. If not, James is just really cranky.
James also asks if there’s anything else Cassie and Cordell want to tell him about opening that case, which he knows because Cassie said the name ‘Grey Flag’ at Thanksgiving. The whole beeping inside the case thing sounds like quite a logical reason to open it to me, but James thinks it’s weird that they thought a bag of digital watches was a bomb – except they didn’t know what was in there!
He’s really pissed at them for lying to him and tells them to speak up if there’s anything else. It looks like Cordell is going to, but at the last minute, he says no with nothing more to report.
This is a very harsh episode, seriously.
Cassie and Kevin go on a date even though she’s in a bad mood after James chewed them out. Kevin does everything right on the date, including consulting with Ben to pick the perfect restaurant, and insisting he’s “an open book” so she can ask him anything, even though because he’s in politics he’s got a scrubbed social media history.
I don’t know whether to be totally suspicious of Kevin or to find him adorable because after all, he is Jake Abel.
We do learn that he was close to his mother and his father died when he was ten though, which could turn out to be pivotal information if it’s fodder for a revenge plot, just sayin. If that turns out to be the case it’s too bad though, because Kevin and Cassie are cute together. They bond over being workaholics and over why their mom/abuela had to work multiple jobs.
Kevin oversteps the next day though, “fixing” it because he’s worried about the Mayor pinning medals on Rangers under disciplinary review, calling in a favor and putting a favorable spin on it. Cassie is pissed, saying she didn’t ask him to do that and wanted to keep her personal and work life separate. He apologizes but she says this isn’t going to work.
Ouch.
Of New Partners and Old Brothers
Walker teams up with Julia, who is about as no-nonsense as a reporter can get. She’s the antithesis of warm and fuzzy, but I actually like her – or liked her – for most of the first part of the episode. She and Cordell put their heads together to try to figure out who might have sent him that threatening box of drinks, Cordell reiterating that they’re trying to get him to join them which continues to not make sense to me at all. He’s shocked when Julia knows the name of the anarchist organization and just puts it right out there – Grey Flag.
Julia: I’m an investigative reporter, it’s my job to know things people aren’t supposed to know.
She warns him that it’s possible there might be moles at the Rangers and while he doesn’t entirely trust her, it’s enough to stir up some doubt in his mind.
I like their halting sort of friendship and how they push each other; she’s not afraid to tell him exactly what she’s thinking and she’s not lying when she says she has good instincts for figuring out what people are feeling. How she’s gonna use that?
We don’t know yet.
They undertake this informal investigation off the books, which always leaves room for things to go off the rails. Julia says her sources say that they didn’t actually manage to shut down Grey Flag after all, telling Cordell to “calm down” which makes him bristle and that’s kinda adorable. She’s good at pissing him off, pushing him to “open his mind” but comes to a dead end when she admits she doesn’t have the names of the people running Grey Flag.
She’s got her own agenda for sure, and she understands what he may not want to do – he’s their prime target. They’re also competitive, allowing them to eventually figure out that the specific energy drink sent to Cordell was a sort of private joke with his unit. Walker doesn’t want to consider that the person might be a fellow Marine, the five of them in his unit were so close they were like brothers.
Julia: Cain and Abel were brothers too.
He gets so pissed at that; he walks out. She comes over the next day to apologize and he says he’s glad she’s there, though he’s having a lot of trouble wrapping his mind around it being one of his ‘brothers’.
Cordell shows Julia a photo of The Green Raiders, Raider Team 3, and together they brainstorm who it might be. Julia crosses out possibilities, starting with “Coop” who died – I sort of cringed when she markered over the photo though!
Julia surprisingly has access to a Pentagon database – what?? – and figures out that all but one of the five are dead, maybe under suspicious circumstances?
Tommy Adams, however, is still alive. Julia crosses out everyone but Tommy and suggests he may be the one behind Grey Flag, and they set out to find him.
Julia is so eager to confront Tommy that she refuses to wait for backup, pulling out a gun and stalking towards his house out in the middle of nowhere.
Cordell: This is not a good idea!
Julia: Who asked you? Don’t worry, I’m a big girl – with a gun. I’ll be fine.
She refuses to listen to him, and then all the floodlights come on and Tommy confronts them and Julia’s bravado disappears. Cordell orders him to stand down, but he gets jumped instead. We get to see Cordell fighting like a Marine would, ordering Tommy not to fight back and then letting him up.
But it seems like Tommy isn’t the guy, insisting he’s the one who sent the drinks to warn Walker. He assumed that a cryptic message would be responded to in kind, trying to stay out of the light of whoever is picking them off. He says the others were a professional hit – that they’re being hunted.
One by one.
Caps courtesy of raloria/spndeangirl
I am not sure where this is going, and I really like that! This was a strong episode and it left me eager to find out what’s going to happen next week, which is exactly what every show wants to do.
I also watched an excellent episode of “Walker Independence” right after, which if you’re not watching, you should be – it managed to check off a whole bunch of fanfic bingo card spaces in one episode!
New episodes of both “Walker” with 3.11 Past Is Prologue and “Walker Independence” this week before a mini hiatus!
The one thing that “Supernatural” fans who are watching “The Winchesters” have in common – possibly the only thing – is that they really want Dean Winchester back. Last week’s episode of “The Winchesters” knew what it was doing when they finally “gave back” the beloved character – on his birthday. Jensen Ackles, who portrayed Dean for so many years, usually acknowledges his best imaginary friend’s birthday, but this year he did it up right, buying plates and party hats and a cake and having the young cast of “The Winchesters” sing happy birthday. To Dean.
The show was extremely fortunate that it airs on Tuesdays and last Tuesday happened to be Dean’s birthday, so the PR Gods all lined up and made for a fun celebration, topped off by Dean’s “return” to the prequel in a grainy black and white photo.
“The Winchesters” cast all got together to cook dinner and have birthday cake and then watch the episode, as they’ve done several times – it seems like they genuinely enjoy each other and it’s fun to “hang out” with them on Instagram.
Executive Producers Jensen and Danneel are a little like the mom and dad of the gang of mostly young actors, Jensen doing his best grumpy old man shtick to everyone’s amusement.
As they watched along with us in real-time, we got to watch their reactions to the show. When Mary, eyes wide, demanded to know “who’s that guy?” we were treated to a video close-up of Ackles looking like “what guy??”
And then when it was confirmed to be Dean Winchester (and Baby), he sat there grinning like the cat that ate the canary.
All that interaction added to the fun and excitement of this episode – in fact, it was the most enjoyable episode so far for me. I’ll run down the things I liked about it in a minute, but before I do that, this show also makes me scratch my head a lot, and this episode wasn’t an exception entirely.
I continue to struggle with lining this show up with the canon of OG “Supernatural,” and with seeing its characters as the people they will become in just a very short while. Tom Welling is doing a fine job as Samuel, but he’s so different than the Mitch Pileggi version I sometimes can’t see them as the same character. He’s also a bit of an enigma in this episode. He’s bristly, gruff, referring to his daughter as a jackass and admitting that she’s just like him (which fits fairly well with the Samuel we see a little later). And yet, we also get this conversation, which to me seemed to come out of nowhere.
Samuel: Had I told you what I was doing, I know you would’ve charged in headfirst. I did everything I could to get you off my trail, because I couldn’t… I can’t let you turn out like Maggie. You could’ve been anything, Mary, anything. But when I put that knife in your hands, I chose this life for you. I forced you to follow in my footsteps, just like my dad forced me. It was wrong. I don’t want you to hate me like I hated him. I heard tall tales of an Oppenheimer– someone who found a way to nuke all these damn monsters, so that you could be free of all of this—forever… I can’t give you back all those years. But I’m your dad. I have to try.
That’s why Samuel disappeared? To get rid of all monsters so Mary wouldn’t have to hunt?? That was surprising coming from this Samuel, and it would be even more surprising coming from the Mitch Pileggi version that we know from the future.
This Samuel had been sending Mary on hunts for her whole life, encouraging her to be a hunter, making her feel so guilty about thinking about quitting that she’s been struggling with that all season. I mean, just raising her not to feel like she HAD to hunt them would have accomplished the same thing, and more quickly and effectively, Samuel, just sayin. This is not what I expected him to say to his daughter! And if he did feel that way at this point, he sure as hell lost it completely a year or so later!
It was also perplexing to hear John tell Samuel that he should treat Mary more like a daughter and less like a soldier, when John ends up doing that exact same thing to his sons. The EXACT same thing. It sounded like a bad joke when he said it, because it’s so not what John himself does.
Both of those are 180-degree turnarounds in the future, which isn’t impossible, but isn’t all that likely either. If a mind wipe is coming, it sure is gonna be a good one! I was sort of hoping “The Winchesters” had Dean visiting an Alternate Universe so it wouldn’t need to line up with canon, but I’m thinking that’s probably not what this is. And that makes me anxious.
On the other hand, there were a lot of things I enjoyed in this episode. I did appreciate the little “Supernatural” call back of the “Sam” vs “Sammy” vs “Samuel” conversation that’s part of Dean’s relationship with his brother (as in, he’s the only one who gets to call me that). John makes the mistake of calling Samuel “Sam” and is gruffly corrected. I giggled.
One of the things that did make sense and that I could tie to the future was that Mary (when she comes back to life in OG “Supernatural”) tries the same thing that her father apparently did – ridding the world of monsters so your child(ren) don’t have to hunt them. I immediately thought of Mary’s unrealistic and ill-fated alliance with the British Men of Letters, who somehow convinced her that they could do that same thing – so that her children, Sam and Dean, wouldn’t have to hunt monsters.
Much like Samuel, she doesn’t tell them what she’s doing and just disappears a lot – something else Mary may have learned from her dad. At the time, I thought Mary’s decision made little sense (like a lot about the Mary-comes-back story arcs), but this at least provides some explanation. Mary following in her father’s footsteps (even if perhaps it turns out she doesn’t remember him saying that thanks to a canon-saving mindwipe of some kind).
This episode, more than the previous ones, offered a more organic bridge to the Mothership – Samuel leaving instructions for anti-possession tattoos, his derision for the Men of Letters. I might have laughed out loud when he referred to them as “mole men” as in MOL, buried underground with all their books instead of out there risking their lives and getting their hands dirty. I have never heard anyone in fandom refer to the Men of Letters as MOLE but now I probably can’t unsee it.
Bianca Kajlich’s Millie is always a highlight for me, and I loved her push back when Samuel got all haughty with her about being a hunter. Here he is alive and well, after all, and Henry – a MOL – was lost trying to do the right thing. And he saved the day – and both John and Mary – just recently, back from the dead. So there, Samuel!
Apparently, it was Bianca’s idea to have Millie cook up some Winchester Surprise too, another tie to Mary on “Supernatural,” serving up that old favorite to her son Dean who’s about to lock himself into the Ma’lak box for the rest of time. Oof.
Most of the fandom knew that Richard Speight, Jr. would be returning to the SPN universe in this episode, so that wasn’t a surprise, but it was still good to see him. (I smiled that Carlos’ friend was named Jericho, since that show is something that Richard and showrunner Robbie Thompson have in common).
Loki was always a bit over the top, and he’s even more over the top here. He’s fun to watch and his outfits fit right into the seventies vibe of the show. I would have liked them to slow it down just a little so I could appreciate him though – he was on 78 RPM for sure (that’s a 70s joke….ahem…)
I admit to being somewhat confused about whether that was Loki (as I assumed) or Gabriel possessing Loki (as Speight seemed to be saying in the livestream with the cast on Instagram). I also am not entirely sure what the point of his meddling with Jericho was or why Carlos being genuine and altruistic ended up breaking the spell and keeping him from catching fire. Literally.
If he was Gabriel, would he have been able to be trapped in a mirror? I think not. Lata is clearly thrilled to have him there, though, whoever he is. This was Tom Welling’s face on the IG live when they were discussing this – and totally mine also.
The other highlight of this episode was the music. First, one of my actual favorite bands (composed of some of my actual favorite people) were in this episode – Louden Swain were the backup band for Jericho and for Carlos! That was also not a surprise, but still seeing them all decked out in their seventies regalia was a thrill. (We didn’t know that Rob Benedict was going to be there too, and while I don’t think he was supposed to be Chuck, it was still extra thrilling to have him back in the ‘verse).
Adding to the charm, was some fandom in-group historical knowledge that always feels good when you find it – the band’s names were the names that Louden Swain used one long ago Las Vegas convention when they came onstage looking like they’d walked out of the 1970s and performed that way without any explanation, while we all were like HUH?
We all called Billy ‘Sweet Jonny Highpockets’ for a long time after that – so I was thrilled to see those names return. I love that the SPNFamily has been around for 18 years and there are quite a few of us who remember those early days and cherish them.
Second, best music cue yet was Elton John singing Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting while the Trickster duplicated himself so he – all the he’s – could fight our hunters. It made the fight scene not at all serious, but that was clearly the intention.
And when he was serious, Speight still made Loki frightening, a nice contrast to his silliness. I hope we see more of him!
I also liked that this episode gave us a better understanding of Carlos and his backstory. Yes, the comic delivery is spot on (the deadpan “I’ll allow it” lol). But JoJo Fleites can rise to the challenge when given some serious scenes to do, and they brought a lot of emotion to their performance here (and not just the singing).
Much like the acceptance and even contentment that Sam and Dean eventually arrive at on “Supernatural,” Carlos is nostalgic for his old life as a singer but also satisfied with his life choices and who he is now – a hunter – and able to recognize what being a hunter has given him.
Dean’s monologue narration echoes this idea.
Dean: Being a hunter, it means living a life of sacrifice– not a lot of room for dreams. But you open your heart and get a little lucky, you’ll find you gain more than you lose.
I get what he’s trying to say, and I think Dean did come to believe that, that hunting was what he was meant to do and he was good with that, both him and Sam were. But someone online said that Dean’s narrations sound like a Hallmark card and I can’t unsee it – that’s been why they haven’t been working for me, I think. That does sound like a Hallmark card, and that is not a characterization of Dean Winchester that makes sense to me.
As for the Rivers Gemini performance? Carlos, a queer character, and JoJo, a nonbinary person, singing “Hard Times Come Again No More” was more than a little moving for many people watching, and the performance was spot on. Also, wow, what a voice! (Is there a Saturday Night Special performance in JoJo’s future??)
Like many fans, I was also fairly certain that the mysterious man who gave John the letter was in fact his future son Dean – that was confirmed when John interrupts Mary’s attempt to move their romantic relationship along when he sees that same man in the background of a photo that’s Samuel’s.
So, I wasn’t bowled over by the reveal, but it does mean that we’re probably going to get some hints about how and, more importantly, when and why Dean is there.
And please God let there also be some answers to why Sam is not with him, because a photo of Dean and the Impala without Sam where he would have been standing is pretty painful!
There are a lot of theories floating around now about what’s actually happening in “The Winchesters.” Is it an Alternate Universe that Dean has traveled to, a sort of mirror universe if you will? Or, is this our world in the past, and Dean is trying to change things – which sounds like a really dangerous thing to do if you’ve watched all the movies and TV shows that have attempted it!
There’s a new episode of “The Winchesters” this Tuesday with Cast Your Fate to the Wind on the CW that might bring a few more clues, so stay tuned!
Last week’s episode of “Walker” was aptly named, with multiple situations setting up the prospect of change for some of the characters who have been a bit in limbo recently.
Cassie and Trey are both in trouble with Captain James, but for now, they’re enjoying being adorable besties out for a food truck dinner, Trey is clueless when the waitress hits on him (not sure she’s a good bet because how did she know Cassie wasn’t his girlfriend though??)
Trey is worried about how angry the Captain is at them. Cassie for some reason isn’t – after he totally went off on them last week.
Cassie and Kevin are ‘buffering’ their relationship, Trey insists, determined to keep their work/life boundaries separate. Cassie’s not interested in “another fling” and she’s a little worried about where Kevin stands, especially because he didn’t tell her about an upcoming luncheon with the mayor honoring them all for their bravery.
Things are at an uncomfortable impasse with many of the Walkers too. Abeline is recovering nicely, but Bonham hasn’t forgiven August and still seems intensely on edge about making sure she doesn’t experience any stress at all (which isn’t realistic if you want to, you know, actually live…)
The Walker family is under a lot of stress, much of it caused by Bonham being horribly cranky while ostensibly trying to make things LESS stressful for Abeline in the wake of her TIA. He’s grumpy with August, who he’s having a hard time forgiving even though August is bending over backward trying to make it up to everyone. He was grumpy with Cordell last week, leaving him this week saying he’s trying to avoid even going over to his parent’s house in the wake of the ‘find your own place to live’ advice. And he’s grumpy with Liam, who is still really floundering trying to figure out who he is and what he wants to be – it doesn’t seem to be a rancher, if the cranky feed store guy who goes off on him for using too big words can be believed.
(I felt so bad for Liam there, having been someone who maybe once or twice got called out for using too many big words…) Liam was trying to help with his offer to go down to the feed store to straighten things out, but Bonham immediately warned him not to mess it up instead of being happy about the offer.
Liam introduces himself as Bonham’s son to the feed store guy and he’s like oh, Texas Ranger?
Liam: No, the other one.
Ouch.
Liam comes in armed with research on feed prices which is clearly not how it’s done in the good ol’ boys’ network that’s going on and the guy calls him “not a real rancher” and then says if he’s the one in charge they may as well sever ties right here and WHAT? The Walker boys CANNOT get a break!
Jim: Go find yourself a feed store that can handle your big vocabulary.
Me: Wow. Jerk.
Liam takes refuge at the Side Step, lamenting that he still can’t get a drink there, and doesn’t want to go to the mayor’s lunch with his dad after messing up at the feed store.
Colton is also grumpy, super busy at the Side Step and unsure if he wants to be involved in the horse rescue because of bad karma (and memories) of what his grandma did, much to Stella’s surprise. Another member of the extended family who’s been through a lot, losing his grandmother, his parents moving away, leaving him on his own at 18 to be an adult and figure out who he is all at the same time. No mean feat!
I enjoy the family aspects of “Walker” most of all and appreciate that they are usually quite realistic, but less so for Stella and Colton. They’re only 18, fresh out of high school, and having worked in a college counseling center for decades, that is really NOT adulthood. Yet they’re living on their own (in Geri’s place) and making very adult decisions, fresh off a lot of serious trauma. Not sure that would be working out as well as it seems to be, showing.
August is also in limbo, trying hard to make it up to his grandparents for what he said before her stroke. He comes in and says he’s done a lot of chores and Bonham grumps at him too, asking if he’s expecting a prize. August asks if there’s anything he can do and his grandfather suggests he pick up an extra shift at the Side Step to make up for all the liquor he stole at the party. Oof. Bonham is really on a roll.
Mawline says he could find them a replacement Queen for the chess set since their other one was lost in the move.
Once August is gone, Abeline tells Bonham he needs to forgive August, that he was once a reckless teenager too, but Bonham has it in his head that Augie is causing too much stress around there – clearly still worried about Abeline.
Later at the Side Step, Colton and August have a chat, Augie saying Colton has every right to be mad at him and wondering if his Gramps is ever going to forgive him. Colton says he’s going through something similar with his grandma, from the other side. She sent him a letter and wants him to visit, but he’s not sure he can. He still loves her but feels guilty about all she did to hurt the Walkers.
Colton: It feels like she died…
Augie points out she doesn’t expect him to forgive her in one night, that maybe he could write her back instead. The two bond as the closest thing they have to brothers, which is sweet.
This show is at its strongest when it’s exploring the complications of things like trauma and grief and loss, and that line of Colton’s rang very true. He lost the grandmother he thought he knew; she ceased to exist as that person when he found out what she had done. That’s as painful a loss as it gets.
Meanwhile, in the case of the week, Walker and Cassie are back to work while Trey is on paperwork detail, much to Cassie’s guilt when he’s in trouble for something she insisted he does. They find a guy holding a woman hostage in a warehouse with lots of servers. She was entering something into a system – they’re not quite fast enough to stop her from hitting ‘enter’.
The guy at the server farm was apparently trying to launch some ransomware attack, they think – yet Cassie finds out that the guy was a sort of do-gooder, which makes all the Rangers scratch their heads.
While Trey tries to figure out that paradox, Cassie and Cordell go to the lunch to plan the Mayor’s honor celebration, all dressed up and looking FINE.
Cassie: Okay, handsome.
Cordell: Huh?
Cassie: You had to be there… (It’s a private joke with Trey, but Cordell has no clue).
She insists he ask if they’ll be getting medals. Jared Padalecki and Ashley Reyes can be hilarious when they get going on a riff like that, and they were adorable here.
She’s nervous about how to shake Kevin’s hand –as a stranger? As someone he’s dating? Cordell, exasperated, tells her to just go with it.
Cassie: From the guy who threw in the towel. When was the last time you talked to Geri?
Cordell: It’s been a while.
It has – of course, in real life, Odette Annable had a beautiful little baby girl, so that’s a good reason for Geri to be away. But the mention probably signals her return, which will complicate things for Cordell.
When Cordell and Cassie come inside, they’re surprised to see that Julia Johnson, the reporter Cordell was in captivity with, is there to be honored too – the mayor, on the other hand, couldn’t make it.
So, it’s the Kevin show! I love Jake Abel, but Kevin is….I’m not so sure… It turns out Julia knows him and there’s instant awkwardness because he’s acting like he and Cassie are just “collaborators” who are still “working out the logistics”, as Cassie puts it.
The lunch itself is also incredibly awkward – first, Cordell and Julia haven’t seen each other since they were held captive together, so being around each other is a shock. Second, Kevin asks them questions about that captivity that are oddly specific, and that rattles both of them. Everyone at this point is wondering if Kevin is a good guy or a bad guy…poor Cassie if it’s the latter. I love Jake Abel, but Kevin is undeniably a bit smarmy.
The lunch also has its comedic moments, like when Cassie pushes Cordell to ask Kevin if they’ll be getting medals as part of the “honoring”. Jake Abel tweeted that Jared’s delivery of that reluctant question broke him several times, which I can only imagine.
Then Kevin asks about the anarchist group behind the abductions. Cordell says they don’t know much yet. Kevin also wants to know if anyone reached out to Julia after the article. Cassie suggests maybe they should stop the questions as Julia gets uncomfortable; Kevin makes a joke that if anyone wants to stab him, the steak course is on the way.
He covers with humor, but why did he ask those questions? Hmmm.
Julia goes outside for some fresh air and Cordell follows. While they’re gone, Kevin asks Cassie if she created the work/personal life boundaries because she’s embarrassed by him. She assures him no, and they decide maybe they can ease the boundaries a little. They agree to take it slow and share an almost kiss before they get interrupted.
I love the conversation that Julia and Cordell have while taking a break from awkward lunch. She could be an interesting character to see more of.
Julia says she thought maybe Cordell would reach out to her after her article came out, and when he didn’t she assumed there was a reason – that they symbolize pain for each other maybe. They bond over how hard it is to go through the kind of traumatic experiences they have. And it’s awkward, they both agree, sharing a laugh.
Cordell: For me, you wonder if you’ll ever feel things the same way again.
He touches on how much trauma sets you apart, separating you from people who love you.
Julia: Sometimes, when I feel numb, I try to focus on one thing. A detail of a story I know is true, then fit the rest of the pieces in there.
Like I said, this is where the show excels.
Back at HQ, Trey goes through the surveillance tape of the hostage, noting that the guy with the knife stops and helps the hostage woman when she falls. When he goes to question the guy, however, he’s already gone – which is odd since he should have been accused of domestic terrorism. What is going on here??
Trey keeps calling Walker, who finally picks up. He catches Walker up – they let the guy go because he apparently wasn’t trying to freeze the servers – and the hostage woman didn’t press charges. They figure out he may have been targeting a credit union. Walker tells Cassie they’ve got an emergency at the credit union and she takes off to meet him there.
Trey and Cassie end up there to find ATM machines spewing cash and a riot going on in response, while someone records the mayhem. That’s apparently what the “hostage” situation people were actually up to!
The perpetrators on motorcycles speed away; Walker spins his truck around and goes after them (obligatory music montage happening) but Jared apparently had a blast screeching the truck around that parking garage and it shows.
He confronts the two young people, correctly surmising that they’re not attempting a ransomware attack but maybe trying to Robin Hood it – except he points out that they’ve all been caught on camera stealing and instead of doing good, all the people who are trying to grab the free money are getting aggressive and hurting each other.
He asks them to stop it, putting away his gun, as the riot intensifies around poor Cassie and Trey. It’s a Lord of the Flies situation, not a very pretty view of humanity for sure.
Luckily, he’s able to convince them to shut it down.
The wrap-up scenes range from bittersweet to scary to downright painful. Stella makes Colton dinner; he tells her about the letter, says he didn’t know how to talk about it but Augie gave him some good advice. Colton feels guilty for still loving his grandma after she hurt Stella’s family. Stella validates his feelings, just like Augie did.
August manages to carve a new Queen for the chess set and Abeline is touched that he did that. He asks her to teach him to play.
Abeline: You know I’ve already forgiven you.
He says it was just a gesture making the new Queen, that spending time with her is the cherry on top.
Bonham, much like his son last week, is listening outside the door. He finally smiles.
Liam comes home all excited and proud that the paperwork is filed to create the horse rescue and rehab center, but Bonham isn’t happy about that, worried that taxes etc will cause stress.
Liam: I thought you’d be happy for me, this is what I’m passionate about.
Bonham: I am, but you’re making decisions that affect my reputation, my land. Just… know your place.
Liam walks out and wow, I do not blame him.
Julia calls to check on Walker as he comes home from the successful case solve; he finds some packages on his porch. Cordell mentions that it’s odd that they were delivered there but he’s glad because he’s been trying not to bother his parents. Poor Cordell.
He opens the package and is shocked to find a note “Stay hydrated, War Hero” and a case of that drink that they gave him when he was in captivity.
What the hell??
Cordell has a flashback to that awful time, and whirls around, yelling “Hello!” like it will tell him if anyone is there. He’s freaked, and who can blame him?
We leave just about every character on some kind of precipice. I wonder what will happen this week with “Walker” 3.10 Blinded by the Light!
The last episode of “The Winchesters” was special in an unexpected way – the entire cast and EPs Jensen and Danneel Ackles took to Instagram to do a live reaction video every time there was a commercial break in the episode’s airing. It was frankly insane and chaotic and thoroughly enjoyable as I went back and forth between watching the show, watching the cast and grumpy “old man” Jensen commentate, and trying to tweet a little myself.
I wish the “Supernatural” cast had done more of that back in the day!
At one point an ad for “Walker Independence” (from EP Jared Padalecki) came on and the whole cast of “The Winchesters” started cheering and saying what a great show it is.
Jensen: All in the family!
Awww.
The cast also complained about Drake Rodger’s smelly farts, prompting Ackles to reminisce about “Supernatural.”
Jensen: It’s like Jared 2.0…
Okay, back to the episode – which had a great opener. A woman runs through the woods, falling, frightened, limping in the dark forest. She takes refuge in an old barn, starting to draw some protection sigils on the door, but the lights begin to flicker and then – in true horror movie fashion – she thinks the sound she heard was just a bird and shrugs, relieved.
Of course, that is when she gets suddenly pulled up to the ceiling and turned into a bloody mess. That was a scary opening though – in the dark like it should be!
Cut to Lata, chanting ‘I am at peace’ as though she’s trying to convince herself of that, which is what happens to me sometimes when I try to meditate so I can relate.
Interrupted by Dean Winchester:Hunting has a way of changing a person. After a while right, wrong, good, evil, they all start to look the same. And then it makes you start to wonder, who’s really the monster here, them or me?
You’ve certainly personified that question from time to time, Dean Winchester.
Lata as her friends argue in the next room: I am at peace….I am deeply annoyed!
Me: lol
John wants to keep searching for the Akrida, Carlos doesn’t, accusing John of being obsessed.
Carlos: Mellow out, amor.
John: The fate of the world is literally at stake!
Very dramatic, John. Carlos suggests that maybe John should come with him to see Dr. Z, who’s really been helping him, but John isn’t interested in either that or meditating with Lata. Their arguments (and Carlos stealing Mary’s robe) are interrupted by the “hunter line” ringing – it’s a landline in a phone table! Mary answers, and they head out to help a retired hunter named Tracy who used to hunt with Mary’s mother back in the day – and who just found another hunter friend Darla dead in her barn. (I wonder if Darla is named after Jensen’s aunt?)
John questions that a hunter successfully retired, since Mary says it’s so rare and Carlos told him early on that the only thing worse than how it starts for a hunter is how it ends.
Carlos: Okay so I embellished for dramatic effect, are we really gonna act surprised by that?
Mary says it’s part of why she thinks she can do it too. Tracy calls Mary ‘Cricket’, much to the amusement of her friends. They think at first it was the werewolf Darla was hunting that killed her, but soon realize it was something else. Mary is envious of Tracy no longer being comfortable around death and dead bodies, which was a great line that makes it so clear the toll that hunting takes on a person – something we don’t always think about as fans of the “Supernatural” universe.
Tracy tells Mary that this isn’t the first time her parents have separated – when she was little, she stayed with her ‘Aunt’ Tracy when they were ‘on a break’. Tracy says that Mary should start looking out for number one. Mary says she’d like to finish school, college maybe. Tracy says she never had any regrets about leaving hunting – except that she didn’t get out sooner.
Tracy comes into the barn and says everything’s ready, and the episode takes a very serious turn.
This was my favorite scene of the episode, though the hardest to watch also.
John asks “what’s ready?” and before Carlos can answer my heart leapt into my throat. Ohgod. Oh no. It’s gonna be a hunter’s funeral, isn’t it? I know it’s been two years since we watched Dean Winchester burn on that pyre, and I know we ended with both Winchester brothers happy in Heaven, but that scene of Sam Winchester giving his brother a hunter’s funeral, Miracle whining at his side, is still too tender to revisit. Especially when I hear ‘Brothers In Arms’ playing over it in my head.
But I digress. It is indeed a hunter’s funeral, and there’s no way “The Winchesters” doesn’t know what that’s going to do to all of us. We don’t even know Darla, so we don’t care about her, but our own memories are still raw enough to make it incredibly painful – and we can see the effect it has on these young hunters and on Tracy. The show is smart (cruel?) enough to play ‘Joan of Arc’ as Tracy tenderly cleans her friend’s body and says goodbye and damn it, it’s too close, especially once she’s wrapped in a sheet and it looks too damn similar.
Tracy holds out the lighter…like Sam did…
Okay, that hurt a lot.
Tracy doesn’t have anymore lore books but offers Carlos the use of her Harlequin romances at least. Not my thing, but you go, Carlos.
John wants to try to capture whatever unicorn monster this is to lure the Akrida in, but Lata points out that the only thing that can harm them is the Men of Letters box and they still can’t get that to work. Carlos and Lata go see a friend of hers who’s a monster identification specialist.
On the way, Lata asks if Carlos thinks she’s a liability as a hunter because she’s a pacifist and doesn’t do the fighting part. I admit to being not so sure about that part myself – I mean, she doesn’t actually carry a gun or knife or whatever, but she works with three people who enact all kinds of violence on other creatures, facilitated by Lata. Is that some kind of ethical stance that makes sense? It doesn’t entirely to me.
Carlos is skeptical about Lata’s friend when the front of his store is full of taxidermied animals, which yep, I’m with you Carlos.
Carlos: What kind of weirdo likes to stuff dead things…
Upon seeing the very handsome and charismatic Anton…
Carlos: I loved ‘Psycho’…
He’s adorably smitten and totally flustered. As in, he can’t actually say a damn thing.
Anton figures out it’s a soucouyant, a Caribbean vampire witch. Tracy says that’s impossible, that it was her last hunt with Darla, Rob and Mac, that they killed 3 of the 4 and the last got away. Mac got impatient and went into a cave after it, which collapsed – she thought it was killed.
Apparently not, because it shows up at the door at that moment, once again in broad daylight and looking way too clear for my taste as it staggers around threateningly.
John impulsively wrestles with it on the front lawn until Mary slices off its arm and it runs away. In broad daylight. I have the unwanted reaction to have to smother a giggle every time that happens. I need monsters in the dark – that opening scene, when we didn’t even see the monster, was so much scarier!
Carlos has to sew up a shirtless John, distracted because he keeps thinking about Anton. Much to John’s dismay because ouch, distracted.
Tracy says that Rob went back recently to retrieve Mac’s body and give him a hunter’s funeral, but they never heard from him after. Uh oh.
John is gung ho to go behead it or stab it in the chest, but Mary isn’t.
Mary: Pump the brakes, soldier boy, I wanna play this safe.
I smirk every time she calls him Soldier Boy.
He goes outside to whale on a heavy bag, not appreciating Mary’s protectiveness.
Mary tells him that everyone is worried about him, especially Carlos after what happened with Neto. She asks him to talk to her, after she let him walk around inside her head and see everything.
John: Want in my head? Fine. This morning we cremated someone who used to be a hunter just like you. Every moment is another moment that you could die. I will not be the person to wrap you in a white cloth and send you out in a blaze of glory!
Mary: So, you’re doing all this for me…
She says that Millie told her how he runs toward danger any time, and says she doesn’t appreciate him using her to avoid his own issues.
I’m not entirely sure what the show is telling us about John here. He hasn’t really tried to talk Mary into leaving hunting immediately, so where is this sudden guilt and protectiveness coming from? I think she’s right to see that as an excuse, that this is not about her. But what is it about? Are we supposed to believe that John has had anger issues all his life? That he’s always looking for a fight? Is that because his father left or is it some kind of personality trait? I’m not sure what the show is trying to say. I guess we’ll see.
Anton and Lata figure out that the monster’s arm is filled not with blood, but with ectoplasm. It’s a ghost, a vengeful spirit that possessed the soucoyant.
Turns out the cave in that killed Mac wasn’t an accident – Tracy and the team killed him.
This they did not see coming!
Tracy says they knew Mac was ‘a dark soul’ but he was a damn good hunter. Rough childhood, abused by his dad, bullied, hoping hunting and killing real monsters would free him from the other kind of pain he’d experienced. When that didn’t happen he turned to dark magic, became more violent, more aggressive – stuck in a cycle of violence.
Lata: You wielded him like some kind of weapon?
She claims they tried to help him, but it all caught up with him and he snapped, got paranoid, and attacked Darla. They were afraid of him and so they killed him.
Tracy: We didn’t have a choice.
Lata: Violence is always a choice.
It contaminates Tracy’s reason for leaving hunting for Mary, as Tracy apologizes. John goes back to the barn alone for some reason, which is clearly a bad idea. The monster attacks him, then the ghost leaves the zombie monster and gets absorbed right into John as the zombie monster disappears.
They find him in the barn.
Mary: John?
Not!John: I’m sorry, tall dark and angry can’t come to the phone right now.
Drake Rodger does a good job channeling all those memorable “Supernatural” possessions that have come before this, from Yellow Eyes to Lucifer.
Mary doesn’t let Tracy shoot him because John, telling him she knows he’s in there, that he has to fight – a time honored speech from multiple episodes of “Supernatural.” Mac insists that John is along for the ride and that’s why he picked him, insinuating that John’s anger is making the possession easier. He tosses Carlos and Mary around easily and then approaches Tracy menacingly, strangling her against a post.
Mary pushes him off and they fight, John brutally throwing Mary against a wall. She tries stabbing her finger into his wound ala possessed Sam to Dean in Born Under a Bad Sign but he’s impervious, throwing her off again.
Mac: All I’ve ever known are clenched fists, learned that from my old man.
Tracy raises her rifle to Mary’s pleas not to, saying she has no choice when suddenly Lata throws herself between them.
Lata: Yes you do! More violence isn’t the answer, not when you’ve spent a lifetime with it.
She tells her own story then, of her father returning from the war violent and angry. Of how she tried to make herself small so the violence wouldn’t find her, but it did. How she felt powerless – until she felt angry. Until she acted on that anger just like her father, and hurt someone, and then decided to choose peace instead.
Mac: I chose my team, but they turned their backs on me, because it was easier.
Tracy explains she was scared, she didn’t know how to help him when he needed his family. She apologizes, says she’s here now.
Lata: It’s not too late Mac, you can still break the cycle.
He stabs the knife in the ground and smokes out, leaving John on the floor. Mary sighs with relief – he’s alive.
Carlos to Lata: You did it!
I don’t think that’s going to work with most of the monsters they encounter, but Nida and Drake did a good job with the tense confrontation and the intergenerational violence story made sense here for Lata to tell.
Tracy decides to go back to hunting to try to make her wrongs right, much to Mary’s dismay. She insists that Mary is better than her, that she’ll be able to get out “the right way”.
The next scene of Carlos tearful because Anton touched the severed monster arm and they’re about to burn it is a bridge too far for me – he’s not a fourteen-year-old, after all. But Anton leaves him a note and that’s fine for him to be that excited about that – I hope we get to see Anton again, they’ve got a lot of chemistry.
John wakes up to Mary sitting with him, without much memory of what happened. John is ready to talk though, saying that she was right, he’s wrestled with anger his whole life. That the fight with Neto woke it up for him, and that he has been using hunting as an excuse to avoid the problems he doesn’t know how to fix. He doesn’t want to end up like Mac.
Mary: That’s not gonna happen, I promise. I still wanna get out of hunting, but it’s not gonna be at your expense. You mean too much to me.
Lata goes back to trying to meditate, and this time it’s John who interrupts her, to say thank you and to ask how to not live in the anger and the violence.
He joins her for some meditation, and then Dean Winchester’s voice made me literally jump.
Dean: Hunting’s not for everyone. You have to be strong, stay sharp, make tough decisions. And it’s not easy. But then again, the righteous things never are.
I cannot shake the fact that Dean doesn’t sound like Dean in these voiceovers. Not his voice, but the things he’s saying, I have a hard time imagining Dean waxing wise and poetic like that, even from Heaven if that’s indeed where he is. ‘Righteous’ has all kinds of connotations in the world of “Supernatural,” most of them not positive – so I’m not sure how exactly he’s using that word here. Are hunters righteous? It’s not all that black and white – That’s what the voiceover that kicked off this episode said, after all.
The episode ends with the foursome finding the Akrida – the radio tower, that is.
Caps courtesy of spndeangirl
A new episode of “The Winchesters” airs on Tuesday with Reflections 1.07, so we’ll see what happens when the team finally goes after the big bad!
All too soon, “Walker” is headed into its mid-season hiatus – but boy, did it go out with a bang!
Last week’s episode was an emotional roller coaster, which we should have expected since it’s titled “Just Desserts.” That doesn’t just apply to what comes at the end of Thanksgiving dinner either!
The opening scene sets up the episode as one that deals with loss and family strife. Abby leaves a message for her brother William, saying she’s here if he wants to talk. Molly Hagan can make me feel so much with just a short little scene.
Cordi and Liam try to cope with everything they’ve been through by starting a new tradition – ranch-to-table turkey, complete with turkey imitation gobbles (which we also got some behind-the-scenes iterations of, lucky fandom that we are).
Stella always said she wanted to “mix things up” and Cordell is really missing his daughter, so he’s also planning Stella’s favorite dessert. Abeline and Bonham point out that Cordell is making grand gestures instead of talking to her instead of avoiding some awkward conversations. He clearly is upset that she’s been “radio silent” for a few weeks – and I find it hard to believe that Abeline hasn’t made sure Cordell realizes he got it wrong about what happened at the SideStep yet. What the hell??
The brothers tell their mom she’s not lifting a finger, assuring her they’ll have everything ready in time for the traditional Circle of Thanks, because they know this is a tough day for her.
They also do some hilarious imitations of their dad, which I’m sure Jared Padalecki and Keegan Allen thoroughly enjoyed regaling Mitch Pileggi with.
They also clearly enjoyed roaring around on ATVs wearing hunting camo gear and trying to outpace their dad – both the characters onscreen and definitely the actors. The whole kill the turkey on Thanksgiving Day and get all dressed up in camo gear and oh we also need to race ATVs didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I don’t think that was the point – it was some indulgent fun that everyone could roll their eyes at a little.
They find some turkeys just hanging around gobbling and take a shot – which misses.
Liam: I was kinda hoping a Texas Ranger would be a better marksman.
BOYS.
They oddly give up on hunting fairly quickly, perhaps because they ran out of time riding around on their big toys like little boys. Cordell rationalizes.
Cordell: These gobblers are crafty.
Me: lol
Defeated by the wild turkeys.
It was silly but I enjoyed it anyway.
Bonham came prepared though, having already bought a turkey a week ago at the market. It’s clearly been a bonding experience for the Walker boys despite the lack of turkey, who vow to keep the truth about that between the three of them.
BOYS. Did I say that already?
Liam has invited Ben and seeks a “significant other exemption” from the Circle of Thanks tradition, whatever that is, but I love how supportive everyone always is of each other’s relationships. All of them. That seems important to say when there just was a hate crime mass shooting at an LGBTQ club the very week this episode was airing. It may not seem like a big deal, and it shouldn’t be, but shows like “Walker” make a difference in the way people look at ALL relationships.
This episode is all about family traditions, and Cassie and Ben have their own to uphold – Black Friday doorbusters and vowing never to pay full price.
Unfortunately, their tradition is in direct conflict with the Walkers’ all day festivities since Doorbusters start at 8 pm and the Walkers eat at 9 pm.
Ooops.
Of course, in keeping with the theme of nobody ever telling anyone what the hell is really going on, neither Cassie nor Ben mention this conflict to any of the Walkers.
Meanwhile, Colton and Stella serve meals to people who need them and then contemplate whether to start their own Thanksgiving tradition or “give into bribery” and join in the Walker family one. The stereotypical developmental crisis that every young adult must face eventually – individuation and do your own thing, or keep to the family of origin tradition?
Nobody tells my kids they’re not coming home for the holidays though, I don’t care if they think they’re grown ups…
Colton is the only one who expresses the same kind of incredulity I’m feeling, asking why August has STILL not set the record straight about who really threw that ill-fated party. Stella is furious that Cordell is blind to who August is becoming. I don’t blame her for at all on this. To complicate things even more, there’s a Notice of Closure on the Sidestep door thanks to the disastrous party.
This family really cannot get a break.
Colton: Well, Happy Thanksgiving…
Colton is the voice of reason, saying someone has to know that it’s been shut down, and Augie especially needs to know – he’s defensive of Stella, wanting to drop the grenade on the family and then bounce, making August clean up his mess for once.
Back at the ranch (literally), Trey and the Walker parents watch football. I kinda love the Walker ranch, it looks incredibly homey and comfortable. I appreciate you, Walker set dress crew!
Cassie texts with Kevin, who she’s realized is not so bad, and Trey suggests she invite him to dinner while he has to go to work.
Cassie: Invite him here, for a first date? That’s crazy.
Trey: It is crazy – but it’s also very much you.
Cassie: Oh…you’re right.
Capt James shows up too, saying that he had to handle a barrage of calls from the DA’s office – and misses Liam being in that office, which agreed, me too.
Liam: It must be pretty bad if you’re wishing that.
Me: Awwww Liam, no!
Cordi is still jittery when Grey Flag is mentioned by mistake by Cassie, and in between all these other things happening, Liam and Cordi bicker like brothers do as they try to work together to pull off this Thanksgiving meal. I give them credit for trying so hard!
Stella shows up and her grandparents are happy to see her, but she recoils a bit when her dad tries to hug her too.
As a parent, that made me say “ouch” out loud.
August is apparently sleeping in Stella’s room, and everyone is awkward when Stella says she’s just there to talk to August and then they’ll be going.
That sends an upset Cordell into the workshop, and Bonham after him. Bonham says more of this is about August than he’s admitting; that he has a blind spot about August and Stella – as many of us do at times about our kids, I suppose. Cordell still blames Stella for the lies about the car, and now for her moving out, insisting that August is the solid one and it’s been that way forever.
Bonham: Don’t look now, but I think they call those blinders.
Sometimes Bonham is just plain right.
At that, the electricity goes out and a tree falls – right through the kitchen window.
It’s total Thanksgiving chaos, gravy spilled all over the floor, the oven no longer working, the food not fully cooked – and honestly, who hasn’t experienced the absolute stress of a holiday you’re trying to make perfect going south in a spectacular way?
So relatable.
Stella finds August and hands him the notice, demanding that he tell the truth to their dad.
Abeline joins their discussion and agrees with Stella, and also tells them both that it’s not worth it to stay on the outs like this.
Everyone has been empathizing with her about what a tough day this is, the implication being that her own fractured relationship with her brother Will makes holidays bittersweet – and we soon find out it’s even more than that.
Liam wants to call it and give up on their dinner; Cordell asks if their forefathers had a working oven.
Liam: I find it problematic whenever we examine the history of this holiday too closely.
Good point, Liam – I love that this show never backs down from telling it like it is. They decide to “spatchcock” the turkey and Liam’s “what?” is priceless.
James and Abby have a chat about their tradition of Abby not cooking on Thanksgiving – it turns out that her mom died on Thanksgiving almost 20 years ago, and it’s defined the whole day for her.
She and Will got into a fight that night, and it’s never been the same between them. Her boys made it their mission that she never lift a finger on Thanksgiving. They’re good kids, Liam and Cordell, honestly.
Kevin shows up in the pouring rain and the dark.
Cassie: How did you even get here? You’re soaked.
Kevin: I’d very much like to come inside now if that’s okay.
He’s not about to squander a second chance with a woman he’s aware pretty much hated him the first time they met, he says. Kevin and Cassie are so cute together, not gonna lie. I’m really glad to have the amazing Jake Abel on the show. He was so good as Michael and Adam on “Supernatural,” and we’re lucky to have him on “Walker” now.
So, Stella and Colton and everyone else ends up staying for dinner after all, though the turkey turns out to be half frozen – which is weird if it was only killed a few hours ago, Abeline points out – and what they think is gravy is actually soup.
To make things even more uncomfortable, August keeps making snide comments about “the new guy” aka Kevin.
Kevin: It’s okay…
All the guests try to run interference as the Walkers become more and more and more awkward and bickering. All the actors get a chance to show off their comedic talents because the whole scene is priceless and I thoroughly enjoyed watching the struggle not to have it all decompensate.
The tension is so thick, and they are all so anxious that when Cordell brings out a blow torch for the baked Alaska, we can all understand Captain James’ warning.
James: Oh, blow torch… I just wanna make everyone aware there is now a blow torch in the room.
Coby Bell’s delivery was so perfect I laughed out loud.
Abeline interrupts that with FINALLY protesting how no one in this family ever bloody talks about the elephants in the room, and Stella shows Cordell the notice. Now things are REALLY awkward.
When Cordell continues to blame Stella, Abeline FINALLY spills that too, saying that it was August who threw the party and got his sister thrown in jail and lost the license.
She adds that August is skating by on privilege, and she is frankly afraid of what he might become.
August: You don’t have to be such a bitch about it, Mawline.
I legit gasped out loud! All the kudos to Kale Culley for playing that flawlessly.
Bonham is pissed as hell and says Cordell better handle it or he will, and looking at him? Oh boy, I believe it.
Abeline leaves the table, and oh boy Cordi, you are in bad spot right now in part thanks to your own inability to listen (but also to many other people’s inability to TALK).
After the awkward family dinner to end all family dinners, Liam and Ben connect over their family traditions and the awkwardness that always gets in their way too – like it does for most of us! Liam tells Ben how thankful he is for him and their relationship, and they share a passionate kiss, and I love the two of them together so much.
Matt Pascua and Keegan Allen have great chemistry, and I think everyone in the fandom is rooting hard for Liam and Ben!
Ben: I’m excited about my new relationship.
Liam: Me too, that’s why I was yammering on about mashed potatoes earlier…
Ben: It was adorable.
Me: It so was.
Ben and Liam set out to make some traditions of their own.
Kevin helps with clean up and he and Cassie are also freaking adorable.
Kevin: it might sound kinda messed up but I kinda enjoyed it. I always wondered what it was like to have a loud and chaotic table.
I love Kevin and Jake, as I said, and Ashley Reyes also, who has created a character in Cassie that feels very real to me. I am so rooting for them!
Cordell tries to awkwardly apologize to Stella as she and Colton are leaving, though he doesn’t manage to actually say those words – he does say he should have listened to her, that he missed what’s happening with August, that he’s been stuck. He says she was right, that he didn’t give her an inch of slack and he gave August a lot – and that he hopes he’s not too late.
Stella: I don’t know, Dad. I hope it’s not too late too, but we’re pretty far gone, and right now, I’m tired. So have a good night.
She leaves with Colton. I do feel bad for Cordell, he tries really hard, but like all parents, he doesn’t always get it right. Sometimes he gets it very wrong. Jared Padalecki is so good in these emotional scenes – Cordell tries to swallow it all down, but you can see the hurt and how lost he feels, right there on his handsome face.
He sits down with August and tries so hard to listen instead of yelling at another of his children, but he’s so much gentler with August than he was with Stella that it’s kinda hard to watch. August does say he knows he keeps messing up, that he feels out of control – and it’s a pretty realistic depiction of an adolescent who is dealing with a lot, from loss and grief to the hormonal changes of adolescence and has always pretended to be the “okay one” who doesn’t have any needs.
Cordell realizes he assumed that August was doing such a great job that he’d grow up all on his own, which is what happens sometimes to the kid who isn’t quite as needy right then.
Cordi emphasizes the importance of how men speak about and treat women with respect and tells Augie he needs to go apologize to his grandmother.
He goes outside, where Abeline is taking a walk in the night air, maybe missing her brother, when suddenly she stumbles. Molly Hagan made these few moments hauntingly chilling, as you see Abeline realize something’s wrong, try to keep going, and then just crumple.
She falls to the ground.
I legit screamed because NOOOOOOOOOOoooo not Abeline!!!!
And that’s where we leave the Walker family, for a mid-season hiatus. With my fave face down and me not knowing if she’s gonna be okay!!
Caps courtesy of spndeangirl
‘Walker’ Thoughts Halfway Through Season 3
I’m rooting for everyone in this awkward and tragedy-prone family, honestly. They have all been through way too much. None of them are perfect, and I’m okay with that – more than okay, actually. I prefer characters who are realistically flawed, and story lines that don’t wrap everything up neatly in a bow, as long as their reactions make sense.
I feel for Cordell, who has been trying his best for the past three years we’ve been watching him. He was the firstborn of the family, who got the message that he had to be strong and resilient and maybe close to perfect. I’m not sure that was ever a great fit for his personality, just as it doesn’t seem to be for his son’s, but he tried. He found a great partner in Emily. who provided enough stability that Cordi could be imperfect and do some youthful acting out and exploring, and that allowed him to be successful and disciplined in the service and to come home and be a dad and a husband.
Her loss upended all that and he’s been struggling ever since, all the coping strategies that worked perfectly fine with a stable partner by his side falling apart when she’s not there. Eventually he was overwhelmed and turned to avoidance, physically and emotionally – and he’s been drawn back there repeatedly ever since when things get overwhelming.
And unfortunately, in this show they often are overwhelming! It’s hard to be a fictional character on the CW, let’s face it.
I hope we continue to get some exploration of the relationship between the Walker brothers, because Liam as the little brother seems to have had a different experience growing up with Abeline and Bonham. He was in the shadow of his big brother as he struggled to become his own man and figure out who he was and feel solid enough to invest in an intimate relationship wholeheartedly.
In some ways, he was given more leeway, but in others he remained in that shadow, as recently as when the brothers returned from captivity and torture and everyone seemed to prioritize Cordell’s needs even as Liam was falling apart.
And then there are the younger siblings. I sometimes have no patience with August and Stella and have to remind myself that they’re teenagers. Teenagers whose childhoods were cut off by loss and trauma and haven’t had a chance to really stabilize ever since. Stella was the vocal one whose needs were front and center, and August got the message that he had to be the ‘strong’ one, who didn’t have any additional needs that might overwhelm his emotionally fragile father – the only parent they had left.
No wonder the strain finally got to him, and as hard as it is to watch him act out and fall apart now, it strikes me as realistic enough that we all should have seen it coming. Augie has been a powder keg, and these are the inevitable explosions.
Stella’s acting out has been more consistent throughout the past three seasons, and while her refusal to forgive her father for not listening to her side of the story is frustrating to those of us watching from the outside and remembering the things she’s lied about, it nevertheless is also realistic for an eighteen-year-old who feels unmoored in every single way right now. Who can she take it out on other than her father, the only parent she has?
I appreciate that the show is taking all these complicated humans and letting us see them struggle, flaws and all.
How will Mawline’s stroke affect them, when she’s been a rock for all of them? I have a lot of trepidation, which means I can’t wait to find out!
“Walker” returns on Thursday January 12, followed by a new “Walker Independence!”
The fifth episode of “The Winchesters” starts with an unlucky councilman having terrifying nightmares he can’t wake up from, waking up from one into another into another until he finally wakes for real only to fall to the floor screaming and holding his head. Ouch.
And then, we’re at the Winchesters Garage…
Dean Winchester words of wisdom for the day:
Spending a lifetime hunting monsters takes its toll. There comes a time when you gotta let out that pain inside you. If you don’t it’ll eat you alive.
Well, Dean Winchester should know. But easier said than done for most of the characters on OG “Supernatural” and this prequel!
The episode is mostly about our merry band of young hunters trying to figure out who’s turning people’s brains to mush (surprise, it’s the Akrida), but the more personal story running parallel is John and Mary trying to figure out if they like each other and if they have the courage to talk about it if they do. John’s working on a motorcycle that Millie bought Henry for his birthday – and then he left two weeks later.
Mary: Ouch.
John offers to teach Mary the ropes, which she pretends to go along with until he realizes she already knows, taught by her parents so she “wouldn’t be faced with a starter that won’t catch while escaping a pack of werewolves.”
John says she could work at the garage after she leaves hunting, but Mary confides that she may leave Lawrence too when she leaves hunting, which John doesn’t take all that well – but doesn’t say anything. Millie is glad John’s taking a little break and spending time with Mary, though he insists it’s “not like that” with Mary.
Then Mary finds the councilman’s case in the newspaper (which I love that it’s always in the actual newspaper) and they head to the ‘Clubhouse’ (which I hate because it makes them sound too much like kids playing at something instead of hunters). Anyway, they read about the poor guy who died in the opener, of a massive brain trauma that came from the inside and turned his brain to mush.
Bummer.
They go undercover as supporters of the councilman, whose secretary tells them he’d changed in the last month – very angry, not eating, nightmares. Drake Rodger looks oddly good in a should-not-be-attractive short-sleeved mock turtleneck, which is quite an accomplishment. Lata thinks it sounds like a djinn, so the team goes to check out abandoned warehouses in their 70s bell bottoms (except John damn it).
They do indeed find a djinn who easily outruns them with some impressive acrobatics, which was a very cool scene, and Lata realizes that Ada knows him.
Lata: Ada, who is he?
Ada: He’s my son.
I was spoiled for that reveal, but otherwise I think I would have been quite shocked!
Apparently, her son Tony is half djinn. Ada tells the story she’d kept hidden: She fell in love with a djinn named Ali who thought he could use his powers for good, but eventually his hunger to feed took over and he was found by hunters and killed. She was determined to save her baby and hoped he wouldn’t inherit his father’s urges or powers, so she hid the truth.
When he was seventeen, the djinn marks started to show, and then he walked into her dream and saw that she was terrified of him, and he ran before she could explain anything. Poor Ada – though I’m not sure why she didn’t tell him as soon as the djinn marks started to appear. Denial, I suppose. Fear.
John is unmoved by Ada’s story, clinging to the good old ‘he’s a monster and we have to hunt him’ thing. Ada says Tony will come back to get his father’s necklace that he left behind and pleads for a chance to talk to him first.
John still looks skeptical, but Lata reminds Ada that her son is only half djinn, and Carlos offers to stay there with her in case he comes back, sending John with Mary to the police station. They have some awkward car conversation about relationships, which is clearly about their relationship, but no one wants to say that out loud.
John has a better idea, bringing lunch to officer and ex-fiance Betty to ask her questions. He finds her painting in the backyard – a painting of St. Miguel that was her mother’s, patron saint of law enforcement. (Also known as Michael?? That’s a “Supernatural” relevant painting for sure.) She tells him she thinks the councilman’s death is suspicious too, and that there were two other victims.
John leaves and if I were Betty I’d be like, huh? He came over here for literally 2 minutes to bring me a French dip sandwich??
Mary calls John Soldier Boy again as he walks back to the car, and it will never fail to be amusing because of The Boys. They have a half tension-filled and half flirty banter, John accusing Mary of being not very easy to talk to and Mary insisting that’s not true.
Ada and Carlos wait for Tony to return, and Ada confides that she feels she failed Tony.
Carlos says she did the best she could in an impossible situation.
Tony visits Ada in a dream (though neither she nor we know it’s a dream at first), saying he’s angry, insisting he hasn’t hurt anyone and upset that his mother is scared of him and doesn’t believe him. He’s hurt that she didn’t tell him the truth and that he had to leap from dream to dream not knowing how to control it, seeing too much suffering and loneliness.
It struck me because I’d just finished preparing a lecture on therapist burnout and compassion fatigue, which is essentially what Tony is talking about here. I really hope the character recurs!
Anyway, Tony says he refused to feed at first, and that now he’s helping people in their dreams, feeding just enough to get by and only giving a guy a headache as a result. He also says that he started hearing a sound in his head recently and was drawn to Lawrence and that there was already another monster inside the councilman’s mind that was controlling him – Tony tried to help.
Tony: It was like a giant bug. And if you and your hunter friends really want to do some good, go find Derek Fisher, because the monster in control said he’s their next victim.
I’m rooting for Tony tbh.
When Ada tries to touch his face, she realizes he’s not really there; he doesn’t trust her that much.
Ouch.
Lata corroborates Tony’s story with the x-ray of the councilman’s brain, showing three stinger holes and ewww. The Akrida are literally giant bugs and that’s…weird.
Mary lets Ada know that Lata confirmed Tony’s story. (Ada is a plant person and no wonder I like her so much). Look at that beautiful set!
She feels guilty that she saw Tony as just like his father and now is worried she’ll never see him again and get a chance to do it differently. Mary asks about Ada and Ali – would she follow her heart again if she had the chance, even if she was scared? She says yes, it’s just part of falling in love, and of course, we all know Mary’s talking about her and John, though we haven’t seen much in the way of sparks between them yet. John overhears but walks away.
They go after Derek, pretending to be building inspectors, and JoJo Fleites gets a chance to show off his comedic chops. They surprise Derek, who understandably asks who the heck they are.
Carlos: Building inspectors.
Derek: (skeptical)
Carlos:College building inspectors…this is our first building.
I laughed out loud. He tells Derek it’s not up to code.
Derek: I know it’s not up to code, I was hired to fix that.
Me: lol
And then the Akrida turns up, looking like a B-movie giant bug that I can see wayyyyy too clearly, and they all run away as it almost gets them.
Derek: What the hell was that thing?
Carlos: Roach….
Me: lol
Mary gets knocked down and collapses, apparently not unscathed after all, and John sees the telltale wounds on her neck that says the Akrida got to her instead. Uh oh. Mary asks them to tie her up, saying she doesn’t want to hurt them. Carlos does, trying to use a little humor again.
Carlos: Hey, you got a safe word?
Lata: We need a supernatural brain surgeon.
Ada: Like Tony…
Carlos urges her to just tell her son the truth, and Ada goes after Tony, finding him on the bus out of town. She apologizes to him, saying she was wrong for not believing in him. He doesn’t exactly forgive her, but he comes back with her and tries to help save Mary.
Tony: Our nightmares are rooted in trauma, they take shape in our darkest memories. Mine are about turning into my dad. The Akrida hide their stingers in the place the person’s deepest darkest fears exist.
This show is doing a bang-up job of creating monsters who get inside its characters’ minds as a way of getting us inside those characters’ minds, gotta say.
But Tony needs a volunteer to go in, someone she feels connected to. Of course, it’s John.
Tony says he’ll immediately be in Mary’s mind, so “Someone’s gonna need to help John.”
Lata: Help him with what?
Carlos: On it. (punches him in the face)
Much like Sam punching Dean to knock him out to go into Charlie’s memories to get her out. This episode also reminds me of “Supernatural’s” Dream A Little Dream of Me, Sam and Dean taking dream root and ending up inside each other’s dreams reluctantly too.
John successfully ends up in Mary’s mind, where she’s stuck in a bad dream. They’re in Mary’s house, with a lot of smoke and eerie music.
A locked door is probably the place she needs to go, John figures, saying she can’t fight her trauma but she can face it.
Inside is young Mary and someone she killed, who was just a kid himself, part of a werewolf pack her family hunted. Mary gets a chance to comfort her younger self, distraught because the boy changed back into human form.
It’s definitely a trauma, but apparently not the core trauma that Mary doesn’t want to face – poor Mary has really been having a run of having to face her own traumas recently. If I were her, I’d be trying to keep everyone else the hell out of my brain at this point!
They try another room, Mary reluctant to face it, John there to convince her. She’s convinced fairly quickly; he kicks in the door and little girl Mary lies in bed, looking scared.
Mary explains that unlike John’s parents and most other kids’ parents, her parents told her that the monsters she was afraid of were real, and that one day it would be her job to kill them. This is the night they told her that, as she hides a knife under her pillow. Mary punches a hole in the wall, angry. (I actually thought she was looking for the Akrida spikes because she didn’t seem angry until that moment).
Mary: I was five, John. Five! Every door to every other future closed that night forever.
John empathizes and validates but reminds her that the doors aren’t closed forever. Asks, what would you have wanted to hear, when you were five?
John is a pretty good therapist because that’s a common question if your adult self is going to try to console that wounded child self.
Mary tells her younger self it’s okay to be scared, that you can’t be brave if you’re never scared. And that eventually, it will be okay, that she’ll find a way to open all those doors that were closed for her that night. Her younger self shows her the talons, and she plunges the knife in and comes back to reality. That was definitely easier than I thought!
Mary to John (still holding his hand): Thank you.
Me: Someone should thank Tony! (who looks exhausted and drained from the process)
Mary thanks John for being there with her, and John tells her that she probably should leave Lawrence, that she deserves that fresh start – and that he’ll give her the bike, so she can go anywhere she wants, just like she always dreamed of.
The supernatural monsters they’ve encountered in the last few episodes have really given John a lot of insight into Mary’s childhood traumas – much more than most of us would know about someone we just met a short while ago. He clearly empathizes, trying to do the right thing by encouraging her to get out. Mary’s ambivalence about all of it – including John – is also clear.
Lata and Tony have a bit of a connection starting up, and Tony gives them a little more intel on the Akrida – that they’re talking about collecting an essence from the remains of rare monsters.
Lata: So we’ve also been doing the Akrida’s dirty work…
Ada gives Tony a ride, and he asks Lata if he can write to her, and the two of them are kinda adorable. I really hope we see more of Tony – possibly in part because he looks a lot like my son, so I may think he’s extra adorable, but also because he’s such an interesting character as part human and part “monster.”
I mean, look at them!
While John was helping Mary face her childhood trauma, Carlos and Lata have figured out the Akrida are hanging out near a radio tower and that would be a good way to send out a signal to lure rare monsters there. Back at the clubhouse, they go over blueprints and broadcast licenses and find Roxanne as the common denominator.
Carlos: You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?
Me: What I’m thinking is that Carlos’ outfit is freaking amazing.
Nina Simone’s “Put A Spell on You” starts to play as we see Roxanne spinning the record. Her assistant says the young hunters are gonna be a problem, but Roxanne isn’t worried. She shooes him away and lets the music play, unconcerned.
Caps courtesy of spndeangirl
I really liked some parts of this episode, particularly the Tony and Ada story line, and the introduction of Tony as a hopefully recurring character. I always enjoyed the episodes of “Supernatural” that looked at the world of ‘monsters’ as nuanced and shades of gray instead of black and white, and watching Sam and Dean struggle with that (with John still being pretty black and white at that point, I think, and passing a lot of that viewpoint on to Dean at least at first). I’d enjoy seeing these young hunters wrestle with that too, and Tony would allow that.
I’m still not feeling as many sparks between John and Mary as I think I’m supposed to be, and the Akrida being literally giant bugs isn’t inspiring as much horror about them as I think I’m supposed to feel either. I’m ready to get out of poor Mary’s head too! (But it seems that the Campbells were arguably even worse at parenting than John Winchester eventually turned out to be, judging by terrified five-year-old Mary gripping her big knife instead of being able to go to sleep).
It feels like a big gap that we haven’t actually seen any of Mary’s family yet, and don’t have much understanding of who they were – I think I’d be more invested in her story if we did.
Let’s see what this week brings – a new episode of “The Winchesters” airs Tuesday on the CW with Art of Dying!
It’s the awkward morning of all mornings at the start of this “Walker” 3.06 episode, when Cordell gets up and Liam is ready to have that talk they discussed but Cordell is a bit distracted by the fact that he left his daughter in jail the night before.
It only gets more awkward when Mawline comes home – with Stella, who she bailed out.
Cordell is angry, saying he left her there to think and learn the consequences of her actions now that she’s an adult (he did have the sergeant separate her, so we know she was safe, which is what I figured, but still…)
Abeline: She’s 18!
Cordell: And she’s MY daughter!
They’re both right actually. She is undermining his parenting, and he is refusing to listen to Stella’s side (though she did a terrible job of actually trying to TELL him her side too.) This family is infuriating sometimes! (Like all families…)
He’s also angry that she told Cassie, accusing her of “meddling in my work as well” – and again, he’s actually not wrong, that’s not her place. But her saying “you need to take it down a notch and you need to hear your daughter out” is also good advice.
Stella FINALLY tells what really happened to Abeline – who she apparently also did not tell the story to for some reason I literally cannot fathom!
August is still infuriating (and hungover), saying he can’t help clean up the mess at the SideStep because he’s the head of the homecoming dance committee. Mawline doesn’t take excuses though, insisting they follow the list of chores that their father left and clean up their mess at the bar. Augie also insists that Cordell wouldn’t let him tell the story, but I find that even harder to believe. He still isn’t owning up to any responsibility or apologizing, insisting he’s becoming his own person and she’s just pissed because she’s losing a sidekick and holding everyone hostage with her indecision.
Ouch.
August: So since you wanna stay hogging up the limelight…who knows, I might even shine…
Wow, Augie. But it’s clear that’s what’s really getting to him, the struggle of the younger sibling in the shadow of their superstar older sibling’s spotlight all the time.
Colton arrives in the middle of awkward sibling rivalry fighting and offers to make breakfast – a “happy curry.” What a sweetie Colton is.
Stella seems truly lost, saying the ranch doesn’t feel like home anymore. Abeline tells the story of her sibling rivalry with her own brother Will, that she felt misunderstood and finally moved in with a friend – and then kind of missed Will.
Stella: So time apart helped?
Mawline promises it will get better with her and her brother.
Geri heads out on a trip that has something to do with Hoyt, though that’s not what she tells anyone. She asks Colton to house sit for her – and in real life, Odette Annable heads out to have her new baby girl!
Excellent job with the conveniently placed open suitcase hiding that fact.
Meanwhile, Cordell really is trying to do the right thing with Liam, putting aside all the other (substantial) family drama to make time for them to do some healing. They go back to the scene of their captivity to confront their trauma. Liam immediately has flashbacks, and Cordell supports him, saying “you got this, why don’t we do it together?” In they go, Liam once again remembers, and Cordell too. Liam’s right, knowing he did a lot of work in therapy, but that doesn’t stop all the memories from flooding back.
Liam: Sorry Cordi, I thought that I was ready…
Cordell: You’re good, you stepped in. And we can leave whenever you want.
He thinks that Liam is still dealing with the physical torture memories, but Liam says no, it was the mind games. He finally tells Cordi the truth – a theme of this episode, that people need to step up and tell their truths, and other people have to make the time to listen.
The worst part for Liam was when the captors told him they’d killed Cordell and ordered Liam to bury his brother’s body. When he begs to see him one last time and takes off the hood, he sees that it’s Neo, not Cordell.
Poor Liam, I so felt for him – what a horrible horrible psychological torture.
Keegan Allen does an amazing job showing us Liam’s pain, and Jared Padalecki does an amazing job showing Cordi’s shock and distress when he realizes what Liam has been going through all this time that he’s been avoiding listening to him.
Cordell embraces his brother, saying “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere” and for me as a “Supernatural” fan who misses Sam and Dean so much, this was such a “Supernatural-esque” moment between them. I might have needed a few tissues, not gonna lie.
Cassie is also an unrepentant meddler in this episode, she and Trey bonding over their not-dating woes. I do love that Cassie wants a guy who she can share a beer with while watching Hawk’s Shadow – pretty much how (as a fan) that sounds like a great way to pick a partner! Unfortunately, as Trey points out, her history of being catfished isn’t helping her trust guys.
Which is the introduction for her to be hypervigilant about a visitor at Capt. James’ door. It turns out to be Kevin Golding, aka Jake Abel! Cassie isn’t wild about him at first, saying sarcastically “I love politicians…” lol. But Kevin is in agreement with Trey about the importance of rubbing elbows with Wall Street so they understand the real issues on Main Street, and anyway, who wouldn’t be won over by Jake Abel?
So, Trey and Cassie head to the Mayor’s big fundraiser.
Kevin: I bet you look baller in a dress, which I mean with total respect.
Cassie: That’s how I took it…
The Mayor’s fundraiser is a good excuse for a dressed up Cassie and Trey and Kevin. And puts Cassie on Kevin detail, so they can snipe and banter and obviously end up attracted to each other because this is TV.
Cassie’s convinced Kevin is only ‘fake politician nice’ until she overhears him giving a pep talk to two little brothers hiding under a table. I love that this show is all about the brothers at times!
That of course melts Cassie’s heart a little – just in time for Kevin to collapse and them all to eventually realize he’s been poisoned with nerve gas! There was a threat letter that morning that said “your time is up and you don’t even know it.” Uh oh.
Cordell realizes the letter came from Eastvale, right next to where he and Liam were held, and Liam remembers that he smelled sulfur – as did Kevin on the threatening letter the Mayor received. Cordell puts on his bulletproof vest and Liam comes with him, realizing that the guy who did this awful thing to him may be still out there. Cordell doesn’t want to wait for backup to get there, concerned about a nerve gas release – though I think he should have waited for backup!
The bad guy ends up getting the jump on him, infecting him with the nerve agent – but luckily Liam throws on another vest and saves the day, including injecting his brother with the antidote. Badass Liam to the rescue! Talk about facing your fears…of both walking into danger and of your brother dying.
You get the feeling that shooting the guy who so tormented him felt kinda good, though that’s a pretty complicated message if this were real life since we can’t go around shooting everyone who torments us.
The brothers stagger out; Liam supporting his big brother.
Cordi: I’m okay, I’m okay. We’re okay.
He thanks Liam for saving him, saying that what he did is the reason Cordell is alive. He also apologizes for not meeting him earlier where he was.
Cordell: I guess I’m ashamed of myself.
Cordell didn’t re-enlist so he didn’t miss any milestones with the kids, but when Em was killed, he left and fled, and Liam stayed. He feels like his family suffers because of him, but Liam says that no, he’s not responsible – only for how he handles a situation or how he avoids it.
Wise words.
Liam: Thank you for coming with me today, it meant a lot. It makes me feel better that we can face it together and that you’ll listen.
Cordi: I will listen, I promise I’ll be better about that.
Awww, brothers.
Cassie connects a bit with Kevin before he heads to the hospital and the fandom is so glad to have Jake Abel as part of the Walker family. I got to tell him that at the “Supernatural” convention last weekend in fact.
Taking Mawline’s story to heart in a way she most likely did not intend, Colton and Stella move into Geri’s house. Cordell comes home determined to listen to his daughter. Standing outside her door, he apologizes for not listening and “for everything”, only to find her gone.
Caps courtesy of spndeangirl
Consequences are another big theme of the episode, and Cordell just got a face full of them. The “Something there that wasn’t before” of the title could be that awareness of the importance of listening that I think Cordell really got, or the deeper trust that’s now there between Liam and Cordi. Or maybe Stella’s leap into independence that got thwarted by her decision not to go away to college.
Whatever it is, I enjoyed Liam and Cordi finally helping each other through the repercussions of their shared trauma, and I’m looking forward to more of Jake Abel playing Kevin – I think he might be the rare man who could keep up with Cassie. And I have a feeling he’d fanboy over Hawk’s Shadow right along with her!
New episode tonight on the CW of “Walker” with Just Desserts!
Last week’s episode of “Walker” was titled Mum’s the Word, which was partly about mothers and children and how we all cope with the danger that’s all around us, but also about silence and when you need to break it.
Stella and Augie are still in a bad place, August still angry that Stella didn’t go away to college as planned. It’s not pleasant to watch and it makes him an unappealing character for now, but it strikes me as very real for an adolescent who desperately wants out from under his older sibling’s shadow.
I don’t think Cordell really gets it, because in his own sibling relationship, he’s the older sibling in the spotlight.
Augie has got a bit of a martyr thing going, asking his dad to please be there to play on the junior team for the annual flag football match tradition.
Walker says he will if he can, but he’s got a new assignment the next day so can’t promise.
Stella isn’t happy either, feeling lost and not knowing what her future holds. She and Geri work the food truck at the game the next day, a former classmate of Geri’s coming by to condescendingly say she’s so brave to still show up there after all she’s been through and then toss out to Stella, “I could’ve been your mom…” Not very good taste in previous girlfriends if that’s what she’s implying, Cordell!
Afterward, Stella says she doesn’t want to be “that weird alumna who’s always around” and then realizes Geri might take that personally. She doesn’t, though. She tells Stella that she was originally supposed to go to business school, but then her dad died and left her the Side Step, and “life got in the way.” Part of being a grown-up is owning your choices, she says, pointing out that Stella is lucky to have a safety net.
She definitely is, but an 18-year-old isn’t really an adult (says someone who was a psychologist in a college counseling center full of 18-year-olds for many years). Everyone is expecting Stella to magically turn into an adult just because she graduated high school, but that’s not really fair.
Stella tries to say that their dad has been trying to show up for them lately, but Augie dismisses that, saying “for you maybe”. She invites him to hang out with her and Colton – which I think an 18-year-old would definitely know that would not be what your 16-year-old brother would want! – and he is once again furious that she doesn’t get it.
Stella is in the tough position of trying to be August’s big sister and also a bit of a mother figure for him too, which is never going to go over well with a younger sibling. When Augie hears that the Sidestep will be closed that night, he gets his 16-year-old rebellion on and invites all his friends for a party there, with beer flowing freely.
Augie ends up locked in the tap room with his friends, who tell him that they actually think he’s “badass”, which I feel like a 16-year-old would not say, but anyway, they thought he was the one on his high horse.
Savage was the word teens for badass a couple of years ago.
August is making strides in popularity, but has to text Stella to come let them out. She comes and kicks everyone out and frees her brother, angrily asking “what were you thinking?”
And that’s the moment the police show up and arrest both of them.
Meanwhile, back at Ranger HQ…
Cordell now runs on a treadmill instead of outside, which I really can’t blame him for, and he’s still jumpy and hypervigilant, but he seems to be slowly recuperating from his ordeal. James assigns Walker and Cassie to go pick up a briefcase of evidence from the Dallas station, from the mercenaries who are now all captured. On the way back, a strange ringing comes from the case, and they leave it on the road for a while, pondering whether it’s a bomb.
Cassie: It could be kitchen timer…or a Furby…
Finally, Cordell decides to open it, with a realistic flinch as he finally pops the lid. Inside are synchronized watches going off.
Cassie: At least we didn’t go boom!
It’s hard for Walker to see it though. He explains that when he was held captive, every day at the same time, the mercenaries would come and take them… and they would…
Cassie: Right.
Cordell: Right.
The mercenaries were apparently called Grey Flag, and they have files on Cordell and Miles and Fenton and even Cassie. His has tons of information, right down to his dental records. Hers is nearly empty. I’m not entirely sure why that bothers her so much, but it does.
Cassie is dealing with an identity crisis of her own, realizing her life has been way too focused on just her job and determined to turn that around.
As a start, she and Walker take a detour from their assigned delivery to join the centennial celebration for Cassie’s family business. Walker is impressed that she’s apparently ‘Texas barbeque royalty’ and fine with helping her start a new trauma-less chapter of her life (though I’m not sure Texas Ranger is the best way to go about staying away from trauma…).
Cassie, not Ben, invites Liam to the centennial party. Ben doesn’t introduce Liam as his boyfriend, and his abuela keeps calling him Lucas, and it’s pretty awkward.
She is very impressed with Walker.
Abuela: Who is this handsome young man? And tall too!
When she hears his name, she says oh, the famous Ranger, always on the news. Cordell says he’d prefer not to be, and Liam is once again the little brother never in the spotlight.
Meanwhile, Trey is officially made a Ranger, and his mom comes to town for that celebration. Liam, Ben and Cassie get a preview show with Trey for some reason skidding into the living room with an unbuttoned shirt – which they (and we) appreciate, but his mama? Not so much.
Trey: Sorry Mama.
At Ranger HQ, everyone applauds as Capt. James pins a badge on Trey, and everyone puts on their white hats, but his mom looks a lot less happy.
Even Micki Ramirez sends a “meat bouquet” which is a bit awkward, but clearly, they’re staying in touch as he knows she’s headed to New Orleans with her moms.
Captain James is excited enough about Trey being a Ranger for both himself and Trey’s mom, telling Trey the story of a Ranger who was one of only a few Black rangers, who gave James a holster with initials engraved.
James: Willy had it made to set himself apart. It was his way of saying, I’m one of you, I’m here, I ain’t going anywhere. A legacy that you’re a part of and I know you’ll live up to.
He shares how proud he is with Trey’s mom, but also understands her fear for her son and her disappointment that he’s no longer the guy with the house, the girl and the safe job.
James to Trey’s mom: Call me Larry.
Trey: Can I call you Larry?
James: No.
At the party – after Ben and Cassie repeat their childhood teenage dance routine much to their abuela’s joy – Cassie tells Walker that she realizes that for too long she’s just been living for the job.
Walker admits that work/life balance isn’t his strong suit either, but sometimes all you need is family. Cassie replies “is that why you’ve been tiptoeing around your brother all night?”
Cordell takes the suggestion and calls Liam over, giving him some relationship advice to talk to Ben and not just go with the flow and not say anything about the little things. The brothers finally talk a little about their shared trauma too. Liam says the horses are helping, but he’s still very far from better.
Cordell: When you and I get home, how about we talk about it, what we went through?
Liam: Yeah, I’d really like that.
Cordell: it’s a date.
That’s definitely progress, for Walker especially.
On the way back after the party, Walker and Cassie have a heart to heart.
Cordell: What you said earlier – the captivity, those things have a way of sticking with you, so the watches, the files, it all made it rush back. But I’m not gonna let past traumas rule my life. It’s gonna happen again, no matter what I do, someone is gonna come for me. I can’t change that, but I can change how I react to it. I’m done looking over my shoulder.
Cassie: I know you have the whole boys club thing, but happy to join you any time, running and frying on a dirt road.
Walker says that their partnership has really helped a lot. The two agree not to say anything about their scare with the watch alarms. Bags were never opened, no tampering, it would be a whole mess for nothing.
Liam and Ben have that open conversation Cordell recommended, choosing not to stay ‘mum’, and finding themselves on the same page.
Liam: You wanna take a break?
Ben: God no!
Everything is going pretty well….which makes the last scene even more shocking. Stella and Augie in the county jail, Augie saying this is why he wanted her to leave, Stella saying she’s sorry about the favoritism thing, but he made a choice that night. Cordell arrives and orders August to wait in the truck without letting him explain anything.
Then he turns on Stella, furious.
Walker: What the hell were you thinking?
Stella: You should ask August.
Cordell says he’s been trying to be patient, but she lied for months about the car, and he was trying to be the cool modern dad who lets her make choices, but he’s furious that she threw another party and ended up in jail and dragged her brother into it too – which of course is the opposite of what happened.
Stella: This is not my fault. I was trying to help August out. Ask him what happened.
Me: Why the hell are you not telling your father EXACTLY what happened right this second, Stella?? This is a case when “mum’s the word” is not a good idea! She just keeps saying “Dad, please” as he says how can he believe her when she’s been lying. That she’s an adult now and has to face the consequences of her actions and that means she’s staying overnight in the county jail. (Note: this is not prison, it’s a holding cell, so she’s safe, but still, it is a cell!)
Caps courtesy of spndeangirl
I don’t condone what Cordell did, but it also strains believability that Stella didn’t tell him everything – he wouldn’t have done that if he knew what had actually happened, after all! And if August doesn’t fess up right away, whoa, that is really not cool.
The fandom was pretty unhappy with Cordell Walker, but I’m always game for a complex, complicated, flawed character – so much more interesting than a one-dimensional “good guy”. Walker has been flawed from the jump, so I don’t mind seeing his lingering trauma do a number on his patience with his own children. It’s hard to watch though, as the door slams shut and he leaves Stella behind.
I wonder how long it will take him next week to find out what really happened and how bad will he feel when he does??
A new episode of “Walker,” Something There That Wasn’t There Before, airs this Thursday on the CW – with new addition Jake Abel (Adam/Michael from “Supernatural”)!
The fourth episode of “The Winchesters” first season is titled Monsters of War, which is a good description of what it was about – fighting your monsters, whether you’re a hunter or a veteran or anyone who’s experienced loss, grief, and trauma.
The opening is an older man stumbling down a psychiatric hospital corridor, walking right into a vivid flashback of his time in the midst of a war, bombs flying, warning shouts of “Incoming!” blaring. He takes refuge in an empty room only to find himself facing something that calls itself “Destiny” armed with a spear.
Blood splatter, title card, Dean Winchester, narrator.
Dean:Fighting the battle between good and evil isn’t easy, especially when the first monster you have to face is the one inside yourself.
I don’t really need it spelled out for me, but yes, true that. One of the main premises of “Supernatural” from day one, when the monsters Sam and Dean were fighting was not just the literal ones we saw onscreen. Cut to John and Mary sparring like the aforementioned Sam and Dean often did, Drake Rodger shirtless because, well, Drake Rodger, and Mary looking authentically seventies and I’m pretty sure I had those shorts.
John doesn’t want to stop or take a break, saying he missed fighting, even though in the service it was a 24/7 “gym class with grenades” which does not sound like fun. He laughs it off defensively, but when Mary laughs too, he admits that was Murph’s line, and the defensive laughter fades away as he remembers his friend’s violent death.
Mary realizes that he needs to punch something “that can punch back” to get that kind of big feelings out, so they spar for real. Mary taunts him a bit with “monsters aren’t gonna play nice and neither should you”, and bests him what seems like too easily to me – he’s a trained fighter too, after all, and I wouldn’t mind him coming out on top once in a while to make it realistic.
Carlos arrives when they’re in what looks like a compromising position, asking if he’s interrupting “whatever kind of hetero mating ritual this is” which did make me laugh. Sparring always seems a bit like it should engender those kind of questions to be honest, no matter who’s doing it.
Carlos and Lata share news of the strange deaths at the hospital, and when Carlos mentions hearing it from one of his vet friends, John has a hard time believing that Carlos hangs out with vets, because stereotypes. John is surprised to learn that Carlos is also a veteran, of the navy – and not because he enlisted.
Carlos’ vet friend Manny was there when the WWII vet was killed and doesn’t think it was a suicide thanks to singe marks on the walls and ceiling. Lata has some ideas about obscure monsters it could be, Mary makes a joke about it being a dragon (which, go figure, turns out really do exist in the Supernatural universe!) but they only go after virgins, and Carlos jokes that at least he’s safe and everyone scoffs. I know it’s the 70s and free love is the assumption, but I’d like to see that assumption being applied to not just one character.
Mary gets to call John ‘Soldier Boy’ again, which totally threw me out of the moment and into “The Boys” universe momentarily, but not in a bad way. She also worries that the monster targeting vets might hit a little too close to home for John, but he insists he’s okay and just wants to do more fighting (instead of think about those pesky feelings). John’s not the only one repressing feelings though. Mary steers him away from one of the rooms in her house, which turns out to be her cousin Maggie’s old room. The Campbells really aren’t coping with her death too well, because no one has been in there since.
John, Mary and Lata in lab coats with caps not trying very hard to cover all their hair make their way into the morgue to see how poor “Patches” looks, Carlos in the body bag because (like Dean Winchester) he sucks at rock paper scissors. I wonder if John learned that way of making decisions from the Campbells and Sam and Dean then learned it from him…. (but maybe this is an AU anyway so that kind of speculation is irrelevant).
John notices Patches’ silver cross which is laying beside him on the slab and has a flashback to Murph’s death, losing time and being thrown back to that moment that so traumatized him. Patches’ widow arrives at that moment and finds John (aka Graham Nash so the show is still on a CSN&Y kick) still clutching his cross. He covers by presenting it to Mrs. Pasternak and thanking her for her husband’s service, then gets overwhelmed by his own emotions and has to leave.
Apparently, Patches was having some anger issues and argued with a doctor in the therapy group he was attending the day he was killed. When Mary asks his widow who the doctor was, she says another person just asked that – a young reporter named Kyle Reed; Mary recognizes his name.
Meanwhile, John is having a breakdown in the hospital bathroom with another flashback and a lot of shaking. He sees the same monster who killed Patches, then smashes his fist into a metal trash bin again and again, trying to ground himself.
John, speaking as a psychologist, there are less damaging and more effective ways to do that, just saying.
He tells Mary it’s just indigestion when she asks him if he’s okay.
“Yeah, I’m fine” is the mantra that many veterans – and many men – repeat to themselves to keep up a veneer of invulnerability, following the demands of all those toxic masculinity messages. Certainly in the 1970s, before that term was coined, the idea that men who were “real men” should not express emotions was widespread, and John is well aware of those prohibitions.
Mary and Lata’s idea for how to get more information is immediately a threat to John’s repression of that vulnerability – he and Carlos, as veterans themselves, join the therapy group.
Lata and Mary do research. Lata says there’s not a lot of pre-Christian lore in the Men of Letters library, which I’m not sure lines up with what we knew of them on “Supernatural” even if they were ‘a bunch of old white men.’
Joining a vets’ therapy group means we get to see John back in uniform, attending the memorial service before the therapy group. Millie understands when he says he’s reluctant to sit around “talking about how I feel”, saying that’s never been their strong suit and that actions matter more than words. Something that John Winchester certainly seems to subscribe to for most of his life! (Also I continue to be fascinated by Millie, who defies a whole bunch of gender stereotypes herself, for better or worse).
Carlos gets to make an entrance also in uniform, to John and Millie’s appreciation.
Millie: Everyone loves a man in uniform.
Carlos (grinning): Including other men in uniform.
When he’s right, he’s right.
Millie reminds John to get out of there if they “try to blame it all on the mother” and John replies “of course, we all know it’s Dad’s fault anyway,” but it’s a shared moment between them that ends with a smile.
Requisite psychologist note: Therapy is not all about trying to blame it all on the mother, or on the father for that matter, but the past is relevant to the present nevertheless, that part’s true.
They ask for the therapist that Patches saw, a Dr. Zimpano, but he’s all booked up. (They also disturbingly refer to him as “Dr. Z” which is how my clients and students refer to me, so I immediately protested that I do not want to have the same name as the monster, thank you very much!)
Carlos turns his puppy eyes and flirting ability on the desk nurse to get them switched, and it works as well as it did for Sam Winchester in the future.
Meanwhile, Mary and Lata talk about Maggie, Lata saying how much she misses her and how much she wishes she could “see past the darkness” like Maggie could.
Mary meets up with the reporter she went to the movies with (who’s also the guy who interviewed the widow), returning his dime to him and saying Patches was a friend of the family and what a coincidence! Hmmm. Are there really coincidences in this show? I think not. Sure enough, Kyle is there chasing a story because Patches isn’t the first vet to be killed mysteriously in psych units. He seems like a good guy, and one we’ll perhaps see more of.
Carlos and John attend Dr. Z’s group, where not all the vets think he’s all that great. Carlos tells his actual story, living life off the grid until he got arrested and had to pick jail or service, so it was a navy medic and a bad haircut. Then he gets unexpectedly serious, sharing his own version of flashbacks and admitting that it doesn’t make a difference how he felt about the war or how he got there, that it was still experiencing a trauma.
He leaves after and says John will be next, though John says he wants to just listen. Dr. Z, on the other hand, encourages him to talk. So, John reluctantly shares his experience about being ambushed, his buddy stepping on a land mine and him seeing it happen. His survivor guilt is obvious, as he uses that defensive humor again.
John: My friend died, and all I got was a lousy scar.
John has to keep talking to give Carlos a chance to ransack Dr. Z’s files – he finds notes in the file about seeing a figure with a spear wearing a horned mask, assumed to be a hallucination. John is increasingly uncomfortable back in the group, hands shaking.
The other vets run defense for him, saying they were raised to bottle it up, to be a man. They attack Dr. Z verbally, accusing him of not listening to them like he didn’t listen to Patches. The therapist pretty much breaks all the rules of being a therapist by getting both defensive and punitive, ordering the outspoken vet to his office like he’s the principal or something.
Boo for depictions of bad therapists! (I know, that’s part of the plot)
John goes after fellow vet Jimmy and breaks through the door when he hears an altercation, but he’s too late to save the other vet from the same kind of attack. When John finds him dead and bloody, he sees Murph again, back in the flashback, and the sense of overwhelming guilt, once again not being able to stop it.
Enraged and overwhelmed by his own strong emotions, John confronts Dr. Z physically, demanding to know who the man in the horned mask is that Patches – and he – saw. Dr. Z is surprisingly empathic this time, insisting it’s not real, that “there are no monsters in this hospital”.
John retorts: you have no idea.
John is dismissive of sharing in the group, but Carlos tells John that he actually felt it was helpful, so much so that he forgot they were working on a case and shared for real. Apparently, that doesn’t help him avoid the monster though, who sucks him into an empty room as Carlos also gets thrown back in time to a flashback of the war.
Carlos isn’t the only one who’s finally facing his repressed feelings. Mary and Lata confront their own feelings by going into Maggie’s room finally. I got thrown out of the moment temporarily by the framed poster of Donny Osmond over Maggie’s bed – I’m not sure any of us actually framed our posters back in the 70s, but sure, we all had similar posters plastered on our walls though mine were definitely not Donny Osmond.
Lata comments that ancient myths and creatures weren’t Maggie’s only obsessions. (I bristle at fandom being referred to as an obsession, but it happens all the time, so I’ll let it slide since it’s affectionate here).
They sift through Maggie’s inspiration cards – they write down 2 bad things and 1 good thing idea she did for every hunt. A sort of Hallmark way to “see past the darkness” but it can’t hurt. I just tend to bristle at overly simplistic strategies like ‘tack an inspirational message on your fridge and you’ll be fine and dandy’ solutions to legitimate mental health challenges.
I see what they’re going for here though, and optimism and gratitude are good for humans, so Maggie was onto something there. Especially hard to hang onto for hunters constantly faced with violence and hopelessness. (And yet one of the things I cherish about “Supernatural” is that the show was dark, gritty and realistic, and sometimes quite hopeless – that’s what made it so compelling that Sam and Dean struggled not to succumb to that hopelessness and yet kept fighting anyway).
Lata far too easily finds the exact monster they’re looking for in like one minute flat, Mars Neto, not a monster but a deity, complete with helpful illustration. Poor Sam and Dean had to really work for their figuring out “the lore,” complete with MoL libraries AND the internet, but Lata just puts her finger on it like that! Mary and Lata enlist Millie’s help, since the hospital only allows family to visit, filling her in on the guy who’s a god, who’s also immortal.
Millie, always the protective mom: You sent John into battle against a god that’s immortal?
They assure her that if they destroy his totem, he’s killable, reminding her that John and Carlos are trained soldiers, but that doesn’t reassure Millie. She says that John’s been a fighter since he was four years old, inevitably running right towards the enemy. (Sounds like his son at that age and beyond too?)
And that’s exactly what John is doing, frantically looking for Carlos, opening doors and noticing the do not enter tape torn down from one. He switches on the light to walk right into… the Viet Nam jungle. They find each other in the jungle and embrace, but Carlos says they’re trapped in there, that maybe they have to face what’s in there if they want to get out – not the monster with the mask but…
And then Carlos steps (literally) right into John’s trauma, stepping on a landmine and calling out, just like Murph did, voice quavering, “John?”
John tells him not to move, and then the god appears – it’s the vet Jimmy, who is not dead after all. He’s literally wearing a horned mask that he takes off (and that makes him sound a little like Darth Vader) as he welcomes them, saying men of action are so hard to come by. That’s a riff on Millie’s ‘it’s all about actions, who needs talking?”
The god says he was trying to get John ready, to get him to embrace his anger, so he’d be ready to fight the Akrida. This is pretty much the theme of several seasons of “Supernatural, “but he is not nearly as scary as the Yellow Eyed Demon, or The Trickster for that matter. The god says he’ll let Carlos go if John joins him – or fights him – which seems different to me, but that’s how he puts it.
It’s a fight to ‘draw first blood’ and although Carlos begs John not to fight, John agrees, mysteriously armed with a spear of his own and still eager to fight fight fight instead of deal with any of his issues.
For some reason, the god doesn’t stop with drawing first blood after all, tossing John up in the air and cutting him repeatedly and urging him to set his violence and rage free, to become what he was born to be… This seems to be referencing the idea that John (and Mary) were chosen for some sort of destiny, which eventually results in Sam and Dean – and some gods and monsters already know of him.
John seems to be succumbing to his own rage, but help is on the way!
Millie proves herself to be a pretty adept hunter, threatening Dr. Z with an expose about their lockdown on the nightly news with Walter Cronkite. Poor embattled Dr. Z has to go deal with Jimmy’s corpse mysteriously disappearing and throws up his hands, saying “ladies, have a blast” – and apparently now you don’t have to be family to get in to visit after all!
Lata gets distracted by the beauty and fragility of the totem when they finally find it, which Millie smartly shatters immediately with a ‘we do not have time for irony’ truth. That weakens the god and, with epic music playing according to my subtitles, John stabs him through the chest with the spear. Instead of taking up the mask, he knocks the god over with it. It seems that might be just what the god wanted though.
God: I was right, you are just like me.
John: No.
He beats him again and again, practically channeling his namesake Soldier Boy from that other show and Jensen Ackles character – and pretty much proving the god’s point, splattering himself with blood, breathless.
Dying God: You’re ready for the war against the Akrida.
Carlos is freed from the land mine as the god dies, but he stares in shock and maybe a little horror at a bloodied, wounded, given-into-violence John.
Shades of bloody out of control Dean Winchester shocking his brother in early seasons “Supernatural.”
John and Carlos meet up with Millie, Mary and Lata. Carlos tells them that the god said the only way out was for John to fight him, and Lata asks the obvious question.
Lata: Just John? Why?
Is this another “Supernatural” case of ‘the chosen one’?
I liked the real-life results of this case. Dr. Z assures Carlos that he’s now committed to doing right by the veterans, and that the deaths will be better investigated. He says he hopes they didn’t scare Carlos off, that he sees a lot of potential for growth and healing in him. Mary gives Dr. Z Ryan’s card to help.
So, Dr. Z didn’t turn out to be the monster after all – my name is vindicated! Carlos has himself a new therapist, in fact.
Mary offers Carlos Maggie’s room to stay with her, since he’s still shaken up, saying she “can’t keep the door locked forever,” both actually and metaphorically, so there’s progress for Mary too.
Carlos thanks John for what he did saving him from the landmine, perhaps a symbolic making up for not being able to do that for Murph, so maybe the god did him a little bit of a favor after all. Carlos offers that he’s there if John ever wants to talk, and you get the feeling that John and Carlos bonded in a deeper way after the events of this hunt.
We get the classic 70s song from Harry Nilsson playing, the lyrics “Everybody’s talkin at me, I don’t hear a word they’re sayin, only the echoes of my mind…” playing as we see where all our main characters ended up. Carlos back at the group, along with some WWII vets who look so much like my dad, also a vet, that it made me tear up unexpectedly.
Mary and Lata follow Maggie’s write-down-two-good things on cards thing.
Millie makes dinner, hears the shower running and finds the door open, John kneeling in the tub fully clothed, sobbing. She embraces him from behind, rocking with him like all mothers do with crying children.
Caps courtesy of spndeangirl
It’s an odd but popular fictional trope to sob in the shower fully clothed, but I thought Drake and Bianca sold the emotional impact of that moment, and I felt for them both. As I mentioned, my dad was also a vet who came back from the war with PTSD, long undiagnosed because he followed those harmful tropes of “don’t talk about it, don’t show your feelings” for far too long before realizing he actually could get help – and deserved it. I really appreciated the respectful treatment of the veterans in this episode, including the implication that they deserve a better system of help than they often get in this country.
Much like “Supernatural,” it’s the very human themes and the relationships between the characters that so far are what most capture my interest about “The Winchesters.” I appreciate the psychological themes more than I do the gods and monsters, in this episode the strong performances from Drake Rodger and JoJo Fleites especially.
New episode tomorrow of “The Winchesters” on The CW with Legacy of a Mind!
