Rewatch S10: Halt and Catch Fire (10x13)

[hells_half_acre]

Another weekend, another rewatch - we're one away from possibly my favourite episode of the season... so, that's good. But first, we have to see if there's anything interesting to say about...

Halt and Catch Fire

So, it's another MoTW... an obviously, from the THEN, it's going to be a ghost.

Lalala... oh yeah, teaser death. Really, I just like having something to do while I watch, and if it's not talking about the show, it's just me randomly typing - like this - sort of, stream of conscious. I really don't understand people who follow their GPS directions even when it's QUITE CLEAR that their wrong. Like... "woman drives into lake because her GPS told her to" - what?! I'm pretty sure something else must have been telling her to, like a broken brain.

I do love that "JANET, GET OUT OF THE TRUCK!" though. I would get out of the truck.

Crosookie - I don't know if the joke is worth the effort, to be honest.

Dean: "What did Cas say?"
Sam: "Good news bad news - Bad news, he discovered riverboat gambling. Good news, he thinks he might be closing in on Cain."
- So, the interesting thing about this scene, for me, is that Sam is RETURNING HOME. He didn't PHONE Cas, Sam has just gone and SEEN him - without Dean. Dean's quite obviously been in the bunker eating junk food. Sam also walks in carrying a backpack, so it's not like Sam just went down the road to meet Cas - he took an overnight bag... and he tells Dean that Cas might have tracked Cain to somewhere "just east of the Mississippi somewhere near Illinois." Anyway, mostly, the fact that Sam is taking trips to see Cas in person just thrills my little Sassy heart.

Dean: "Don't you think that if Cain knew how to remove the Mark, he would have done it. Like, centuries ago?"
Sam: "We won't know until we try."
- As much as Sam's optimism warms my heart. I'm with Dean on this one. It seems logical that they can rule out Cain as a source of knowledge for the cure. But, Supernatural must always have a pessimist and an optimist at the helm, and Dean is clearly in the pessimist roll this season, so that leaves Sam to foolishly hope all over the place.

Dean: "...let's say we take our own trek to the mid-west."
- This line drives me nuts, because YOU ARE ALREADY IN THE MIDWEST! Iowa is literally KITTYCORNER to where you are.

*Dean checks out girls*
Dean: "Sorry I ever made you leave."
- I'm torn on whether enough time has passed for Dean to make jokes about that. I mean, for both their sakes. Just as shortly ago as S7, we saw that Dean carried a lot of guilt for "making" Sam leave school... and just as shortly ago as S8, Sam was still thinking of returning.

I don't know what bra the girl is wearing, but it's not a good fit. Sorry - I just paused the video in a spot where I could tell.

Janet: "Trini is the navapp we were using. It's like a talking map. ... You're GenX, right."
Dean: "Okay, so Trini and everything else in the truck went all Christine."
Janet: "Who's Christine?"
Dean: "It's a Gen X thing."
- I kind of loathe this sort of humour, to be honest. It's NOT a generational thing, it's an INTEREST thing. Dean is brilliant at hardware, Sam's his software guy - it's a division of labour so that Dean doesn't HAVE to know more than the basics of software and hacking. He can learn, if he wants to, and has in the past. He KNOWS about apps and whatnot, because we've seen him play with them before. He's just not interested in whatever the latest tech is. More than that, in this specific case, do you really think someone who has probably memorized the entire roadmap of the US needs a GPS/SatNav app? Really? Also, if the girl had an INTEREST in horror movies, she would know exactly what Christine is. The fact that she doesn't has very little to do with her generation. If I told you that I liked German films, and then said "what's Run Lola Run?", you'd be a little shocked - but, if I had absolutely no interest in German films and I asked "what's Run Lola Run?" you'd be like, "oh, it's a German film." You wouldn't say, "Ugh, your generation is the WORST!"

Anyway, yeah, it annoys me. And I could go on a whole other rant about stereotyping generations into "personality types" and whatnot... or blaming them for things. But I won't, because I'm better than that. And also, this is vastly off topic.

Janet: "...Billy got it when he died, and you know, it's a thing."
Dean: "Yeah."
Sam: "So, what's a thing?"
Dean: "You know, the truck thing. You honour the deceased by driving their truck. Sam, they wrote a whole country song about it. Why don't you google it?"
- So, again, this is about knowledge gaps - and I guess the joke is that for all Sam knows about the latest software, he doesn't know an important cultural thing? I don't know - ugh, this humour just annoys me.
- Of course, I didn't know about the truck thing either, but I'm going to go ahead and say that it's because I am Canadian, and we have different things up here. CANADIAN THINGS. I don't know what Canadian things, but it probably involves beer and/or hockey.

Dean: "Okay, so big brother didn't get along with little brother, was pissed because he was driving his baby. I get it."
Sam: "What - are you saying that if you died and I drove your car, you'd kill me?"
Dean: "If you stunk her up with taquitos, probably."
- I know that the Impala is technically Dean's, but... I sort of think that at this point, it's THEIRS. Because it's basically the only permenant home Sam's ever had too, the Bunker now excepted. So, I sort of see this conversation as "you'd kill me if I continued to live in our house." But, I mean, the answer is really "only if you ruined it" and it's a joke anyway. Also, Sam totally has driven Baby every single time that Dean's died. So, he knows it's cool.

You can see the rain in some ofthese shots, so it must have been pouring. The 13-18 episodes are the ones they shoot in the darkest of winter up here, I think.

Do people actually say hashtag outloud? When not making jokes about social media?

This episode is kinda creepy on a level of - if you actually think about the ghost as a middle age dude, them him baiting a young girl over social media is REALLY creepy. Anyway.... girl is going to bite it.

It's nice that they had a competitent female detective as their local law enforcement. I like that Supernatural does what they can to offset the misogyny inherent in the genre.

Dean: "This is unreal. Look at this, I got italian, I got chinese. Serve yourself fro-yo. College is better than Vegas."
- If US colleges are anything like Canadian universities - than all that food is mediocre at best, and also way more expensive than it has any right to be.

Sam: "Now I'm going through her deleted files."
Dean: "You can do that?"
Sam: "Yeah, I mean, nothing really ever gets deleted from the internet. You knew that, right?"
Dean: "Yeah."
- Ah, yes, the window into the very vast amount of possibilities for what internet activity Dean might not want anyone to know about.
- Though, what Sam said isn't really true - depending on what you're deleting. You just have to know how to delete it. But, seeing as how Dean's not the software guy, I doubt he does.
- The good news for Dean is that Sam probably just DOES NOT WANT TO KNOW.

Woman: "...and to be reminded of that every time I look out the window or leave the house."
- If it were me, flowers or no flowers, I'd be reminded everytime I looked out the window or left the house. I'd move. BUT, I'd also be like "who the hell is this teenage girl leaving flowers? PERHAPS SHE HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE HIT AND RUN THAT KILLED MY HUSBAND?! I SHOULD TELL THE COPPERS!" And then I would do that, and everything would be fine. But, whatever.

I forgot Dean was using the alias "Grohl" - that's one I actually get! Awesome.

I like it when Dean and Sam wear suits for most of the episode. It makes my clothing cataloging so easy to do - because I don't do the suits. That being said, LOVE these trenches.

And now dude is going to die, because of TOO MUCH MUSIC! I'm pretty sure too much music would cause you to curl in on yourself and not spread out your arms weirdly - but you know, I'm not a doctor.

Delilah: "The car accident wasn't exactly an accident."
- Um, yes it was, the story you are about to tell us is CLEARLY an accident. It might have been caused by recklessness, but it wasn't a premeditated murder, nor even a spur of the moment murder. It was an accident, followed by a decision not to remain at the scene. I guess maybe she's talking about the fact that none of them confessed/betrayed-Billy, who was obviously the biggest asshole in the group.

Dean: "I have made more mistakes than I can count. Ones that haunt me day and night."
Delilah: "So, how do you deal?"
Dean: "Whiskey. Denial. I do my best to make things right, whatever that may be. For you maybe it's coming clean. You know, finding a way to ask for forgiveness - but not breaking the bank at your local florist - I mean, real forgiveness. You can't just bury stuff like this. You gotta deal with it."
- Aww, Dean, so emotionally intelligent when it comes to other people. Though, he DOES always try to make things right.
- Also, I love the fact that Dean differentiates between giving someone flowers and actually seeking REAL forgiveness. Again, I've said it a million times, but one of my favourite sayings from my mother is "what do flowers have to do with anything?" If you want to say your sorry, do it in a way that means something, rather than just throwing money at the situation in a token gesture.

Sam: "You know what, I have an idea - do what I said, stay safe, I'll be right back."
- Oh Sammy, I get all tingly when you take control like that.

Dean is destorying SO MANY HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS IN TECH!

Sam looks so tall in these scenes with the widow.

Dean: "But take it from me, the more you kill, the crazier you'll get - the blood fuels the rage."
- Aww, poor Dean.
- Also, Sam has a Kansas areacode now.

Dean: "You can keep killing and become something that you won't recognize, or you can move on, because that is the only thing that is going to give you peace...."
- Ah, foreshadowing for the finale, when Dean decides the only way to stop his own decent into madness is to find a way to die.

So, this next conversation is all over the map, so I'm going to take it in chunks...
Sam: "Looks like Andrew wasn't the only one who chose peace."
Dean: "Yeah, looks like. Think I'm going to follow his lead too."
Sam: "What do you mean?"
Dean: "My peace is helping people, working cases, and that's all I want to do."
Sam: "Is this about the Mark?"
- Really, Sam? You have to ask?
- Also, it sounds like Dean has found his zen - helping people, working cases - this COULD be Dean's "bees"
Dean: "I'm done trying to find a cure, Sammy."
Sam: "Dean, Cas is so close!"
Dean: "To what? We don't even know if there IS a cure. So far we've got nothing. We have found nothing at the Men of Letters library. Metatron may or may not know something and MAYBE Cas is onto something with Cain, maybe."
Sam: "Yeah, maybe. Nothing is guaranteed, Dean. You can't just stop fighting."
Dean: "Yes, we can."
Sam: "So this is it. You're just going to give up."
- So, it DOES sounds like Dean is like "I must resign myself to my slow decent into murderdom... if you ignore what he said about PEACE at the beginning of the conversation.
Dean: "No, I'm not going to give up. I appreciate the effort okay, I do, but the answer is not out there, it's with me...."
- Again, this sounds like Dean is agreeing with what Sam said a few episodes ago, when he told Dean that the answer might be WITH DEAN, that DEAN had to be the source of strength needed to fight the Mark.
Dean: "... I need to be the one calling the shots here. I can't keep waking up every morning with this false hope. I gotta know where I stand, otherwise I'm going to lose my freakin' mind. So I'm going to fight it until I can't fight it anymore. And when alls said and done, I'll go down swinging."
- Here, we see that it IS a little bit more pessimistic than that. Because, Sam was saying that maybe the strength FOR THE CURE could partially come from Dean. Whereas Dean is sayng that there is no cure - all he can hope for is to have his "bees", to find that zen thing that allows him to strike a balance wherein he doesn't become a murder machine. BUT, Dean is also saying that eventually he foresees that it won't be enough and he'll inevitably lose, but he'll be proud of himself for fighting it as long as possible.
- But really the argument they're having is over hope. It's the same argument that Andy and Red have in Shawshank - is hope a good thing or a poisonous thing? Does it save you or does it destroy you? Red thinks that all hope is futile, that it's only false hope, and the realization of that is what kills people... and that's what Dean is feeling here. What Dean is feeling isn't "false hope" really, it's the fact that he ALREADY believes that it's false hope - that he ALREADY has lost hope. Sam still has hope, as usual... because hope is a good thing, and no good thing can ever die. :P
- What Dean can't live with is TRYING to hope... trying to put up a front for Sam. Trying to make himself believe Sam's optimism. He's done doing that. The best he can hope for is to find his version of a bee farm and hope that he's got a hundred years in him. Though, if he's already clued into the fact that he's immortal now, then he's probably just hoping to last until Sam dies. So, yeah, that's Dean's hope levels at the moment, and that's why Sam's pissed - because Sam's hope levels are still at "EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY FOREVER" and Dean is like "I can look forward to the heat-death of the universe."


And there we have it. Good times. Short write-up.

The most interesting thing I learned: I desperately need a Sassy icon. I don't have one. This is a travesty.

Next rewatch probably won't be until February, because I am visiting family next weekend.