Quick Reaction: 8x12 As Time Goes By
Jan. 31st, 2013 12:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hells_half_acreI was really fearing that I would hate this episode... but thankfully I didn't!
Woo! Let's talk about it....
Sometimes I wish I weren't spoiled at all for these episodes. It would have been nice to not know who Henry was until the reveal with the Winchesters, but between people spoiling me on the internet and the promo from last week, I already knew...ah well.
We got to see cute little John, and his dad watching him sleep (Maybe Dean should give him a speech about that.) I think John's bedside lamp might have been the same one that was in Sam's nursery. I could be wrong though. Henry leaves and promises he'll be back in the morning, and then turns on the music box which plays As Time Goes By... awww...
Of course, at that point we all know that he's never coming home. Now, before you guys all point out the canon discrepancies - Superwiki has you covered..They actually leave enough wiggle-room in that you can still explain things. John was fairly young when Henry left, and with those genetics, I'm sure his mother was a fox and was able to get remarried to a mechanic.
I was relieved, because with Henry going missing when John was young (and the secretness of the society he belonged to - The Knowledge? I forget what they called themselves) - it meant that John technically still was a civilian until Mary died (and even John's mother might not known about the Supernatural). And, I kind of liked the whole Brains+Brawn thing that it meant...but I'm getting way ahead of myself here.
Henry goes to the secret club and meets a classy dame. Never trust the classy dames, Henry! Have you learned nothing from Noir films? Classy dames turns out to be Ab...uh, Abron? Abubnon? Agammemnon? Superwiki will save me: ABADDON! Anyway., Abaddon kills every one, but before they die (or get blinded and almost die) they give Henry a box! SAVE THE BOX, HENRY!
Henry finds a room with spell ingredients and he USES ENOCHIAN! It's amazing! Man, I love knowledge... learn those spells Sam and Dean! Well, maybe not that one, because I don't want you to travel through time (and apparently Dean doesn't either), but in anycase, it's wicked cool.
And Henry successfully escapes to - WINCHESTER MOTEL ROOM!
And yeah, falling out of a closet and asking for John Winchester is probably not something you want to do in front of Sam and Dean. (I feel like I should be making a gay joke here, and for that I apologize.)
Sam and Dean try to handcuff him to a chair until they figure out who the hell he is, but he's a magician! He handcuffs them instead!
What I want to know though is why do Sam and Dean just have handcuffs sitting out on the table? I mean... um... it's not like they use handcuffs a lot in their line of work, so.... yeah, my brain has just kind of written this scene where Dean's like "Hey Sammy, I'm putting the handcuffs on the table." And Sam's like "Uh, okay?" and Dean's like "I'm just saying... handcuffs are ON THE TABLE.".....*bow chicka wowwow*...
*cough* Anyway...
Henry runs outside and is overwhelmed by MODERN CARS! And he spots the Impala and checks out the license plate and it's 2013! "Guess the Mayans were wrong" - nice. Then Henry BREAKS THE DRIVER'S SIDE WINDOW OF THE IMPALA! BAD HENRY! NO! Oh man, Show & Dean have trained me well, because I was suddenly like "NOW YOU MUST DIE, HENRY! NOW. YOU. DIE!"
Dean at least compliments his taste in wheels before he hauls him out of the car and back into the motel room.
And since Dean's livid, he gives up the game and yells that John Winchester is his dad, which gets Henry's attention... and then the boys yell that John's dead, and Henry reveals that John is his son... and yeah, as we faded to commercial break, I couldn't help but think Sam and Dean might be regretting not breaking the news a little more gently.
Of course, then me and my friend launched into wondering if the Winchesters were going to have to shoot another one of their grandfather's in the head.... they don't have the best track record with grandfathers.
Henry meanwhile, is none too impressed that Sam and Dean are Hunters - apparently the legacy of the Winchesters is to be a "man of letters" and KNOW things, while Hunters are "apes" - all violent and shoot first, ask questions later. Interesting.
Anyway, Abaddon crashes the party and the demon blade doesn't kill her! She's still black-eyed, but the only other demons we know that resisted the blade were Alistair and Lilith - both, white-eyed, and one we KNOW was Lucifer's first demon, the other one I'm guessing must have been one too. So, does this mean that Lilith was a Knight? Or was she something else entirely? Was Alistair. Maybe not, since Henry seemed to think they were all dead except for Abaddon.
When Henry mentioned Lucifer, I wanted Sam to be like "He was inside me, you know!" and then I played that sentence back in my head and I understood why Sam kept his mouth shut.
I've stopped going through the episode scene by scene now, because I can't actually remember the order of things anymore.
Let's talk about the comic books store place! First off, it's in Gastown. You may remember that street corner (where they had the Jewelers from nearly every other show shot in Vancouver - but I always think of it as the bookshop in The Neverending Story.
I liked the goth girl. Also, SOMEONE in the art department has a connection to Mint Records, because every music poster in that place was a Vancouver band that's signed with Mint Records. Also, there were THREE different Nardwuar posters!
Off to a graveyard!
I liked the whole "Have you boys ever exhumed a body?" and Sam and Dean just look at each other... it's like asking if they've ever experienced a Thursday. :P
Of course, this whole time we're learning about what the heck the secret society was all about. They only shared their knowledge with "elite" hunters. Um, Henry, not to speak out of turn, but I don't think you can get much more elite than Sam and Dean Winchester at this point. The only person who could have given them a run for their money is now dead.
Let's jump ahead to the family drama.
So, Dean's pissed off on behalf of John that Henry left him. As my friend said, "It seems abandonment issues run in the family." And Dean's pissed because Henry prioritized "hunting" or whatever the heck was in the box over being there for his son. So he storms off in a huff. Before all that happened though, we find out that John's journal was actually Henry's journal that he ordered right before he left. Awww... and that's what sets Dean off... because their dad's journal was, this whole time, their grandfather's journal.
Anyway, Henry reads his son's journal while Dean and Sam sleep on top of the covers like adorable puppies. Well, Dean sleeps like an angry adorable puppy with his arms crossed like he fell asleep saying "hurrumpf!", while Sam sleeps in a too tall for the bed pile of puppy. Seriously, their adorable.
What's even more adorable is Sam waking Dean up in the morning by hitting him. And they're only in one layer! Oh man...
Henry's taken off "to make it right" - and so Dean and Sam split up. Sam goes to talk to the only survivor of the secret club, and Dean goes to get Henry.
Of course, this whole time Abaddon has been following them...and that's a pretty cool trick she does where she just possesses people a little bit in order to get their memories.
So, Dean tracks down Henry... now, part of me kind of thinks that maybe Dean SHOULD let Henry try to go back into the past - but at the same time, Dean's time travel has always worked on closed loops (and he's an old pro at this), so because it already has happened, it HAS to happen. And unlike when they were trying to stop the apocalypse, Dean actually doesn't want to be not-born.
And he has a point. For some reason John moved from Normal, Illinois to Lawrence, Kansas... maybe because his mother had family there? Maybe his mom was the mechanic and there was a job there for her? Also, there's the fact that having his dad around would have made John a different father - actually, everything would have been different, because John would have already known about the Supernatural. It's a little bit too much to mess with. Dean's invested too much into this life to have it unmade I guess.
That being said, we'll never know, I guess....Henry could have solved everything AND lived if he went back. But, closed loops, always closed loops...so he didn't.
Meanwhile, Sam is finding out that Henry is holding the key to the "supernatural mother lode" of information. YES PLEASE! (Good god, I love information... I don't know if you've noticed from my obsessive collecting of it... but I do.) Sadly, the WIFE IS POSSESSED! Sam gets punched out and the old dude gets killed. No worries, he lived a full live of 127 years. And now they have to hostage trade....
So, Dean knocks out his poppa, and sticks him in the car... and wow, Dean fixed that window quickly. Always prioritize the Impala repairs, I guess.
And Dean explains that he understands, because he reads that journal all the time and every time he reads it, it hurts. Geeeeeeeez, Dean. It's been 10 years (8 of which you've spent reading that journal - firstly, you're a masochist, and secondly, don't you have it memorized by now?) And then Dean goes on to explain that he feels bad about not being able to do anything to save his Dad, so now he makes sure that no matter what, he ALWAYS does EVERYTHING HE CAN to save Sam, because he doesn't want to regret Sam's death too. Oh Dean. I'm willing to bet that you still regret Sam's death every damn time he dies on you.
This leads me to think about John though, and how his own father's perceived abandonment might have affected his fathering style. Like, there's the fact that John dragged Dean and Sam across the country and raised them like warriors.... who wants to bet that part of that (besides, you know, all the love) was because John didn't want to abandon his kids like his father had abandoned him?
They get to the warehouse and the exchange happens... and of course the demon doesn't keep her end of the deal. She plunges a hand into Henry's stomach (oh, that's a nasty way to die), but Henry gets a bullet lodged in her head. Now, unless that was a .22, which I think it was far too big to be, I'm pretty sure that bullet would just be a through shot...but whatever. Apparently Henry carved a devils trap in the tip and so it locks the demon in place! Crazyness. Especially crazy because I'm pretty sure the original colt bullets had the devil's trap carved in them too... unless that was a cross. I can't remember now.
So, the demon is as dead as that demon is going to get, seeing as how they don't have the colt anymore... and they're going to chop her up and put her under concrete. Lovely. I wonder what happens when the flesh rots to nothing? Salt-laced concrete?
Poor Henry is dying though. He dies in Sam's arms...awww... and his final words were that he never got to meet John as a man, but he can tell by his sons that he would have been proud of him.
I couldn't help but think of my friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
metallidean_grl here, who is a big John Winchester fan, and how much she was going to like all the positive John comments in this episode. And with apologies to her....
I couldn't help but make the joke, "Don't tell him about how emotionally messed up you both are thanks to your father's questionable parenting... or about how Bobby had to pick up a lot of the slack...." My friend added an additional Henry line "but having met you two, I can tell I would have been proud of him... he only managed to screw up his first-born." :P
Seriously, the "was John a good father?" debate is a really good one, and I'm not coming down on either side of it really - I just like making jokes. I'm really happy thatmetallidean_grl got a John positive episode, because I know she's been hurting the past few years when they've tended to criticize him on the show rather than praise him.
Anyway, I know I'm missing a whole lot from this episode - some of which might be important, and for that I apologize. Um, let's try to cover some random points:
1)Goth girl! Why did she have to die?!?! I liked her.
2)Ethnicity! Badass Indian-lady hunter shop-keeper!! Yes, Henry knocked her out with a dirty trick, but... SHE WAS AWESOME. I want to know more about her, and see her kicking ass... and can we have "the Adventures of BAMF Indian-Woman Hunter/Shop-Keeper" now?
3)DEAN AND SAM HAVE ANGEL FEATHERS IN THE TRUNK! I repeat: ANGEL FEATHERS IN THE TRUNK. Hmmm... I wonder where they get these angel feathers... CUE CASTIEL WING-GROOMING FICS! Personally, I just picture him showing up from time to time and handing them a bag full of feathers, because it's the Cas equivalent of handing them the tangle of hair from his hairbrush... and all their angel feathers are black...(because I like black-winged Castiel, even though I know theirs an argument that the wings aren't actually black, we're just seeing the shadow - but I don't care. The wings can be black AND we can only be seeing the shadow of them.)
4)Like I said, I was prepared to hate this episode, because I didn't want John's family to be hunters... but I'm glad that they sort of skirted that by making them scholars rather than hunters and then breaking the line before it got to John. Also, I like the whole Brains+Brawn thing as being part of the reason that it was important for John and Mary to get together. Furthermore, I think it's in keeping with John's bloodline being Michael's vessel-line... and Mary's being Lucifers... because, you know, the badass Hunters being Lucifer's vessel-line works, because Hunters are constantly falling onto both sides of the good/evil spectrum in kind of this crazy gray mess. Whereas Michael's line, being scholars, gets to act all self-righteous about being good, because they're not in the trenches. Feel free to disagree with me though.
ETA: 5) Dean actually acknowledging that Sam and he stopped the apocalypse and being proud of it was pretty awesome too! I think that's the first time he's actually done that.
Anyway... surprisingly good episode, given that I was prepared to hate it! It was also Serge's directorial debute - and I wish I knew more about that aspect of things, because I don't feel like I can really comment on it. It looked good to me! I'm more of a writing-critic, not a director-critic...so, yeah... episode looked good. Brad Creasser was the Director of Photography while Serge directed, and from what I could tell he did a good job too!
As always, let me know if I missed anything that you desperately want to discuss... or well, just let me know if there's anything that you desperately want to discuss!!
Woo! Let's talk about it....
Sometimes I wish I weren't spoiled at all for these episodes. It would have been nice to not know who Henry was until the reveal with the Winchesters, but between people spoiling me on the internet and the promo from last week, I already knew...ah well.
We got to see cute little John, and his dad watching him sleep (Maybe Dean should give him a speech about that.) I think John's bedside lamp might have been the same one that was in Sam's nursery. I could be wrong though. Henry leaves and promises he'll be back in the morning, and then turns on the music box which plays As Time Goes By... awww...
Of course, at that point we all know that he's never coming home. Now, before you guys all point out the canon discrepancies - Superwiki has you covered..They actually leave enough wiggle-room in that you can still explain things. John was fairly young when Henry left, and with those genetics, I'm sure his mother was a fox and was able to get remarried to a mechanic.
I was relieved, because with Henry going missing when John was young (and the secretness of the society he belonged to - The Knowledge? I forget what they called themselves) - it meant that John technically still was a civilian until Mary died (and even John's mother might not known about the Supernatural). And, I kind of liked the whole Brains+Brawn thing that it meant...but I'm getting way ahead of myself here.
Henry goes to the secret club and meets a classy dame. Never trust the classy dames, Henry! Have you learned nothing from Noir films? Classy dames turns out to be Ab...uh, Abron? Abubnon? Agammemnon? Superwiki will save me: ABADDON! Anyway., Abaddon kills every one, but before they die (or get blinded and almost die) they give Henry a box! SAVE THE BOX, HENRY!
Henry finds a room with spell ingredients and he USES ENOCHIAN! It's amazing! Man, I love knowledge... learn those spells Sam and Dean! Well, maybe not that one, because I don't want you to travel through time (and apparently Dean doesn't either), but in anycase, it's wicked cool.
And Henry successfully escapes to - WINCHESTER MOTEL ROOM!
And yeah, falling out of a closet and asking for John Winchester is probably not something you want to do in front of Sam and Dean. (I feel like I should be making a gay joke here, and for that I apologize.)
Sam and Dean try to handcuff him to a chair until they figure out who the hell he is, but he's a magician! He handcuffs them instead!
What I want to know though is why do Sam and Dean just have handcuffs sitting out on the table? I mean... um... it's not like they use handcuffs a lot in their line of work, so.... yeah, my brain has just kind of written this scene where Dean's like "Hey Sammy, I'm putting the handcuffs on the table." And Sam's like "Uh, okay?" and Dean's like "I'm just saying... handcuffs are ON THE TABLE.".....*bow chicka wowwow*...
*cough* Anyway...
Henry runs outside and is overwhelmed by MODERN CARS! And he spots the Impala and checks out the license plate and it's 2013! "Guess the Mayans were wrong" - nice. Then Henry BREAKS THE DRIVER'S SIDE WINDOW OF THE IMPALA! BAD HENRY! NO! Oh man, Show & Dean have trained me well, because I was suddenly like "NOW YOU MUST DIE, HENRY! NOW. YOU. DIE!"
Dean at least compliments his taste in wheels before he hauls him out of the car and back into the motel room.
And since Dean's livid, he gives up the game and yells that John Winchester is his dad, which gets Henry's attention... and then the boys yell that John's dead, and Henry reveals that John is his son... and yeah, as we faded to commercial break, I couldn't help but think Sam and Dean might be regretting not breaking the news a little more gently.
Of course, then me and my friend launched into wondering if the Winchesters were going to have to shoot another one of their grandfather's in the head.... they don't have the best track record with grandfathers.
Henry meanwhile, is none too impressed that Sam and Dean are Hunters - apparently the legacy of the Winchesters is to be a "man of letters" and KNOW things, while Hunters are "apes" - all violent and shoot first, ask questions later. Interesting.
Anyway, Abaddon crashes the party and the demon blade doesn't kill her! She's still black-eyed, but the only other demons we know that resisted the blade were Alistair and Lilith - both, white-eyed, and one we KNOW was Lucifer's first demon, the other one I'm guessing must have been one too. So, does this mean that Lilith was a Knight? Or was she something else entirely? Was Alistair. Maybe not, since Henry seemed to think they were all dead except for Abaddon.
When Henry mentioned Lucifer, I wanted Sam to be like "He was inside me, you know!" and then I played that sentence back in my head and I understood why Sam kept his mouth shut.
I've stopped going through the episode scene by scene now, because I can't actually remember the order of things anymore.
Let's talk about the comic books store place! First off, it's in Gastown. You may remember that street corner (where they had the Jewelers from nearly every other show shot in Vancouver - but I always think of it as the bookshop in The Neverending Story.
I liked the goth girl. Also, SOMEONE in the art department has a connection to Mint Records, because every music poster in that place was a Vancouver band that's signed with Mint Records. Also, there were THREE different Nardwuar posters!
Off to a graveyard!
I liked the whole "Have you boys ever exhumed a body?" and Sam and Dean just look at each other... it's like asking if they've ever experienced a Thursday. :P
Of course, this whole time we're learning about what the heck the secret society was all about. They only shared their knowledge with "elite" hunters. Um, Henry, not to speak out of turn, but I don't think you can get much more elite than Sam and Dean Winchester at this point. The only person who could have given them a run for their money is now dead.
Let's jump ahead to the family drama.
So, Dean's pissed off on behalf of John that Henry left him. As my friend said, "It seems abandonment issues run in the family." And Dean's pissed because Henry prioritized "hunting" or whatever the heck was in the box over being there for his son. So he storms off in a huff. Before all that happened though, we find out that John's journal was actually Henry's journal that he ordered right before he left. Awww... and that's what sets Dean off... because their dad's journal was, this whole time, their grandfather's journal.
Anyway, Henry reads his son's journal while Dean and Sam sleep on top of the covers like adorable puppies. Well, Dean sleeps like an angry adorable puppy with his arms crossed like he fell asleep saying "hurrumpf!", while Sam sleeps in a too tall for the bed pile of puppy. Seriously, their adorable.
What's even more adorable is Sam waking Dean up in the morning by hitting him. And they're only in one layer! Oh man...
Henry's taken off "to make it right" - and so Dean and Sam split up. Sam goes to talk to the only survivor of the secret club, and Dean goes to get Henry.
Of course, this whole time Abaddon has been following them...and that's a pretty cool trick she does where she just possesses people a little bit in order to get their memories.
So, Dean tracks down Henry... now, part of me kind of thinks that maybe Dean SHOULD let Henry try to go back into the past - but at the same time, Dean's time travel has always worked on closed loops (and he's an old pro at this), so because it already has happened, it HAS to happen. And unlike when they were trying to stop the apocalypse, Dean actually doesn't want to be not-born.
And he has a point. For some reason John moved from Normal, Illinois to Lawrence, Kansas... maybe because his mother had family there? Maybe his mom was the mechanic and there was a job there for her? Also, there's the fact that having his dad around would have made John a different father - actually, everything would have been different, because John would have already known about the Supernatural. It's a little bit too much to mess with. Dean's invested too much into this life to have it unmade I guess.
That being said, we'll never know, I guess....Henry could have solved everything AND lived if he went back. But, closed loops, always closed loops...so he didn't.
Meanwhile, Sam is finding out that Henry is holding the key to the "supernatural mother lode" of information. YES PLEASE! (Good god, I love information... I don't know if you've noticed from my obsessive collecting of it... but I do.) Sadly, the WIFE IS POSSESSED! Sam gets punched out and the old dude gets killed. No worries, he lived a full live of 127 years. And now they have to hostage trade....
So, Dean knocks out his poppa, and sticks him in the car... and wow, Dean fixed that window quickly. Always prioritize the Impala repairs, I guess.
And Dean explains that he understands, because he reads that journal all the time and every time he reads it, it hurts. Geeeeeeeez, Dean. It's been 10 years (8 of which you've spent reading that journal - firstly, you're a masochist, and secondly, don't you have it memorized by now?) And then Dean goes on to explain that he feels bad about not being able to do anything to save his Dad, so now he makes sure that no matter what, he ALWAYS does EVERYTHING HE CAN to save Sam, because he doesn't want to regret Sam's death too. Oh Dean. I'm willing to bet that you still regret Sam's death every damn time he dies on you.
This leads me to think about John though, and how his own father's perceived abandonment might have affected his fathering style. Like, there's the fact that John dragged Dean and Sam across the country and raised them like warriors.... who wants to bet that part of that (besides, you know, all the love) was because John didn't want to abandon his kids like his father had abandoned him?
They get to the warehouse and the exchange happens... and of course the demon doesn't keep her end of the deal. She plunges a hand into Henry's stomach (oh, that's a nasty way to die), but Henry gets a bullet lodged in her head. Now, unless that was a .22, which I think it was far too big to be, I'm pretty sure that bullet would just be a through shot...but whatever. Apparently Henry carved a devils trap in the tip and so it locks the demon in place! Crazyness. Especially crazy because I'm pretty sure the original colt bullets had the devil's trap carved in them too... unless that was a cross. I can't remember now.
So, the demon is as dead as that demon is going to get, seeing as how they don't have the colt anymore... and they're going to chop her up and put her under concrete. Lovely. I wonder what happens when the flesh rots to nothing? Salt-laced concrete?
Poor Henry is dying though. He dies in Sam's arms...awww... and his final words were that he never got to meet John as a man, but he can tell by his sons that he would have been proud of him.
I couldn't help but think of my friend
metallidean_grl here, who is a big John Winchester fan, and how much she was going to like all the positive John comments in this episode. And with apologies to her....I couldn't help but make the joke, "Don't tell him about how emotionally messed up you both are thanks to your father's questionable parenting... or about how Bobby had to pick up a lot of the slack...." My friend added an additional Henry line "but having met you two, I can tell I would have been proud of him... he only managed to screw up his first-born." :P
Seriously, the "was John a good father?" debate is a really good one, and I'm not coming down on either side of it really - I just like making jokes. I'm really happy that
metallidean_grl got a John positive episode, because I know she's been hurting the past few years when they've tended to criticize him on the show rather than praise him.Anyway, I know I'm missing a whole lot from this episode - some of which might be important, and for that I apologize. Um, let's try to cover some random points:
1)Goth girl! Why did she have to die?!?! I liked her.
2)Ethnicity! Badass Indian-lady hunter shop-keeper!! Yes, Henry knocked her out with a dirty trick, but... SHE WAS AWESOME. I want to know more about her, and see her kicking ass... and can we have "the Adventures of BAMF Indian-Woman Hunter/Shop-Keeper" now?
3)DEAN AND SAM HAVE ANGEL FEATHERS IN THE TRUNK! I repeat: ANGEL FEATHERS IN THE TRUNK. Hmmm... I wonder where they get these angel feathers... CUE CASTIEL WING-GROOMING FICS! Personally, I just picture him showing up from time to time and handing them a bag full of feathers, because it's the Cas equivalent of handing them the tangle of hair from his hairbrush... and all their angel feathers are black...(because I like black-winged Castiel, even though I know theirs an argument that the wings aren't actually black, we're just seeing the shadow - but I don't care. The wings can be black AND we can only be seeing the shadow of them.)
4)Like I said, I was prepared to hate this episode, because I didn't want John's family to be hunters... but I'm glad that they sort of skirted that by making them scholars rather than hunters and then breaking the line before it got to John. Also, I like the whole Brains+Brawn thing as being part of the reason that it was important for John and Mary to get together. Furthermore, I think it's in keeping with John's bloodline being Michael's vessel-line... and Mary's being Lucifers... because, you know, the badass Hunters being Lucifer's vessel-line works, because Hunters are constantly falling onto both sides of the good/evil spectrum in kind of this crazy gray mess. Whereas Michael's line, being scholars, gets to act all self-righteous about being good, because they're not in the trenches. Feel free to disagree with me though.
ETA: 5) Dean actually acknowledging that Sam and he stopped the apocalypse and being proud of it was pretty awesome too! I think that's the first time he's actually done that.
Anyway... surprisingly good episode, given that I was prepared to hate it! It was also Serge's directorial debute - and I wish I knew more about that aspect of things, because I don't feel like I can really comment on it. It looked good to me! I'm more of a writing-critic, not a director-critic...so, yeah... episode looked good. Brad Creasser was the Director of Photography while Serge directed, and from what I could tell he did a good job too!
As always, let me know if I missed anything that you desperately want to discuss... or well, just let me know if there's anything that you desperately want to discuss!!
