hells_half_acre (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hells_half_acre) wrote2019-10-10 10:50 pm
hells_half_acre) wrote2019-10-10 10:50 pm
Entry tags:
Quick Reaction: 15x01 Back to the Future
I'm BACK!
I do apologize for being so busy as of late. This reaction is going up pretty late in the night too, because I had VERY BUSY DAY.
Before we get into it though, I just wanted to mention that I HAVE ORDERED the S14 DVDs - they should be arriving tomorrow. So that means that rewatches will begin imminently. I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing this year. Maybe similar to what I did last year, when I also couldn't figure out what I was doing. Because I'm so busy, they'll probably be favouring the short-side rather than the indepth reviews that I used to do - but hopefully ya'll still enjoy them.
Reminder about how Quick Reactions work: I've only seen the episode once, while drinking, and taking bad notes - all quotes are meant to be paraphrased and I'm not going to remember everything exactly. Please only correct me if the thing I got wrong is crucial to my understanding of the plot or character actions, or if I ask you to.
Let's get into this season premiere - it's the first of the last!
Enter your cut contents here.After the opening, which was a LITTLE out of order, I have to say, and set to a more mellow reflective song... we begin where we left off, with the fight continuing.
It was cool to see Cas smiting old-school style. He then grabs Jack's body, throws it over his shoudler, and runs with Sam and Dean away from the zombie-ish hordes.
We then get the new title card, which is PRETYT DANG COOL LOOKING!
They boys all flee into a crypt, which, while safe, is also a dead-end.
They each visibly react to seeing Jack's dead body, but their focus is primarily on staying alive - none of them are really taking time to grieve, though Cas being the dimensional wavelengths of celestial intent seems to be able to do more things at once.
Dean asks if Cas can heal Jack at all - but he can't - he doesn't try, he just knows that he can't.
It seems to be a mixture of ghosts and demons possessing dead-bodies out there. Dean points out that if they stay in the crypt, they'll starve to death. Cas helpfully points out that HE won't starve to death - Dean does not appreciate this help.
Dean complains about God always being "squirrely" - I do have to say that if I had made up a wishlist for the end of the series, one of my wishes would have been "Dean kills God" - just because I've been fascinated with the idea of it ever since Dean said he was going to do it at the end of S5. So, part of me is still holding out hope.
Sam thinks he hears running water and wonders if there's sewer line under the crypt. They dig at the wall - Sam has a SURPRISINGLY MOBILE shoulder after having been shot in it.
Meanwhile, Jack, eyeless, pops back up to standing. Only it's not Jack... it's a demon who introduces himself as something like "Balagar"? - If anyone caught what that was, let me know.). Cas is IMMEDIATELY PISSED that someone is defiling the corpse of his son... and I mean, fair. That's SUPER FAIR, Cas. Man, Cas breaks my heart in this episode - especially if you remember how much potential for good he saw in Jack before he was born into this vile world where vilest worms do dwell.
Anyway, Dean wants to hear the demon out - reminding Cas that Jack is gone, rather coldly. But really, Dean is just doing that thing where he SWIFTLY COMPARTMENTALIZES so that he can survive. Unfortunately, I'm not sure Cas is in an emotional space where he can understand that fully. Sam also agrees with Dean, which doesn't help Cas' feeling of isolation in his grief.
The demon guesses that this recent hell-mouth was their work. They explain how it was God, and the demon at first doesn't believe them - and then realizes they're serious. He explains who he is - he's the guy who counts souls in hell, and also a run of the bill tormentor of those souls. He tells them that he LIKED his job, he likes the status-quo - so he wants to help them restore hell to what it was and fix this current problem. For lack of other options, Dean and Sam choose to believe him. He offers to do a spell to get rid of the current problem, and they go ahead with that plan - it works! Only he hasn't vanquished the ghosts and demons - he's just made them vacate the immediate area and the bodies they were inhabiting.
Which means that they've all been set loose on a nearby town.
We see Bloody Mary strike first... and then there's also a the Gasey clown chasing a mother and daughter.
(And, just as a sidenote: You can really see the change in aesthetic of the show by comparing this bloody mary to the original - it's what I've been referring to as the "sanitization" of SPN.... basically the slide from Horror Cinema to Melodrama TV that happened under Carver.)
As they drive towards the town in the car, the demon tells the boys that there were about 2-3 billion souls in hell that all escaped. The demon knows a spell that can contain the ghosts to a 1 mile wide radius. Sam points out that Harlen Kansas is within 1 mile of the cemetery, so that won't work unless they get the town to evacuate.
As they drive towards this town, they come across a car accident without a body - which is a sign that it was done by a woman in white. Sam makes the leap that it could actually be the same woman in white that he killed in S1. Dean then makes the next logical leap that perhaps all the things they ever killed are back.
The next day, they pull up to the town in their FBI gear - perhaps it was day faster than we thought? Who knows. Or maybe it's only night in the cemetery and surrounding area - since God technically turned it from day to night last episode. So. perhaps it was just night where they were, and they drove out of it into regular time again. ANYWAY... Dean tells Cas to find the demon the stuff he needs for the spell, but Cas refuses - and says that he can't even look at the demon. Cas gets out of the car and chooses instead to accompany Sam as he pulls his FBI routine and gets the Sheriff to believe that there's been a pipeline burst outside of town and he needs to get everyone out of the city due to the fumes.
Dean puts the magic equalizer gun that Chuck gave them into the glove box. The demon asks what it is, but Dean doesn't tell him. The demon then comments on how attractive everyone is - and how Dean himself is gorgeous. He explains that he went to hell a LONG time ago - when everyone was worshiping a giant penis shaped rock and everyone was ugly and had humps.
The demon then asks WHO he is inhabiting - "who was he?" and Dean admits that "he was our kid... kind of" or words to that effect. Oh Dean, this is all going to hit harder later, I know.
The demon needs a bag of salt and a human heart for the spell.
Sam and Cas go out to the outskirts of town to get the stragglers.
They split up to check out houses, and Sam, of course, has to go into the clown house! Poor Sam.
He ends up rescuing the mother and daughter, but the clown attacks and Sam gets slashed. Thankfully, Cas comes to the rescue.
Meanwhile, the demon inside Jack's body makes it even MORE awkward by telling Dean how he was a big fan of his when Dean was a torturer in hell. Dean redirects him by asking more about what the incident looked like from hell's perspective - and the demon tells him that all the doors in hell opened. Dean then clues in what ALL the doors might mean, and he asks about the cage - and yes, this means that THIS universes' Michael (the one wearing Adam) may well be out of the cage. (Not going to lie, when Dean brought up the cage, I AT FIRST had a small panic that they might be once again resurrecting Lucifer - then I remembered that he's dead-dead - as in, out in the EMPTY dead - that he's not in the cage anymore, and everything was okay again.)
Back at the clown house, Cas heals Sam - fixing his clothes too, so we FINALLY get to see tailor-Cas in action. :P
They explain to the traumatized woman and child that Cas is an angel, and the clown was a ghost - and Sam is "just a guy". Sam then winces and moves his shoulder, and Cas is like "hold up, what's with that wound?" and Sam is like "yeah, when I shot God..." and then has to say "Long story" to the woman and the child.
Then he shows Cas the bullet wound and Cas goes to heal it... and it causes Sam to have some weird premonition!?!? Of him in the bunker killing people with his mind?! Cas can't heal the wound, it's got a weird energy. Sam tells him not to worry about it.
Meanwhile, the sheriff is attacked by the woman in white. Sadly, the show could obviously no longer get Sarah Shahi to return, and those are pretty big shoes to fill. ANYWAY, it's a pretty convenient death, since it gives Dean and the demon the human heart they need for the spell when they interrupt the kill before the woman makes the body disappear.
Back in the outskirts of town, Sam and crew try to head for safety but are interrupted by attacking ghosts. Sam accidentally shoots Cas (awkward).
Dean and the demon due the spell, and the containment barricade is set. Sam and crew see it go up and run across the line.
They then (off screen) meet up with Dean and the demon and drive the woman and child to the high school that the rest of town is chilling at. Sam walks them into the school, while Dean stays with the car. The demon seems to fuck off somewhere all of a sudden and no one comments on it - but... maybe he just walked out of frame? I don't know. I was concerned, but no one else seemed to be.
Dean asks Cas if he's okay, and Cas says "Yes, but-" and Dean cuts him off and says "Good." Which... yeah, definitely frought Dean and Cas times ahead. Dean needs to shut down all grief until he has time to deal with it, and Cas needs to know that he's not the only one suffering from profound sadness at having lost Jack.
Sam gets back from escorting the mother and daughter into the school and reports that people are already starting to question the pipeline leak story - and that they probably only have a day and a half until the real FBI show up. Dean waves that concern away and asks to see Sam's wound. He discovers that there's no exit wound. He cleans the surface of the wound, but there's DEFINITELY something fishy about it that they don't currently have time to address.
Dean does tell a cute story while he cleans the wound, about how when they were kids, Dean would tell bad jokes to distract Sam from pain. Awww...
But, then Dean goes on to complain about God again - and how Sam and he were just rats in a maze the whole time. That their choices were false ones, because they were still confined by the maze that God set. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there and like "Dean, you are preaching to the choir when you complain to Sam about this - that kid didn't have agency until he ran away to Stanford and then he didn't have it again until he jumped into a pit and condemned himself to eternal torment... and I'd hardly call that a choice he WANTED." But, Sam is super cool about it, because of course he is... Sam's middle name ever since he got back from the cage is "calm and collected". In response to Dean's "what did it even mean?!" after he points out that all their work has been undone, Sam points out that they still saved people - and that mattered.
Then Sam makes the assumption that God has abandoned them in his ire, and that really, this is a GOOD thing, because it means that it's "just us" now, and that as soon as they fix this current problem, they'll have WON - God will still be gone, and they'll be free.
Dean likes that version of reality and says, "you and me versus every soul in hell" and then it's concluded that "we have work to do" - and we get another from-the-trunk Impala shot, mimicking the last frame of the pilot episode, and then it actually CUTS TO THE LAST FRAME OF THE PILOT EPISODE! And it's so cute, they are BABIES.
All in all, a pretty good opener! I'm definitely interested to see where the season goes. They've laid some good mysteries in, with the bullet wound in Sam's shoulder that caused the weird vision, the new demon character, and the odds not being in their favour. And then they've also got some good drama in there, such as the tension already between Dean and Cas, and the fact that everyone is delaying their grief.
Mostly, I'm interested in Jackie-boy, who in the finale last season had a meeting with Billie and the Entity after death - and to me, that meant there was a good chance he might be able to come back and not stay dead... and I'm still holding out hope for that!
Let me know your thoughts in comments!!!
I do apologize for being so busy as of late. This reaction is going up pretty late in the night too, because I had VERY BUSY DAY.
Before we get into it though, I just wanted to mention that I HAVE ORDERED the S14 DVDs - they should be arriving tomorrow. So that means that rewatches will begin imminently. I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing this year. Maybe similar to what I did last year, when I also couldn't figure out what I was doing. Because I'm so busy, they'll probably be favouring the short-side rather than the indepth reviews that I used to do - but hopefully ya'll still enjoy them.
Reminder about how Quick Reactions work: I've only seen the episode once, while drinking, and taking bad notes - all quotes are meant to be paraphrased and I'm not going to remember everything exactly. Please only correct me if the thing I got wrong is crucial to my understanding of the plot or character actions, or if I ask you to.
Let's get into this season premiere - it's the first of the last!
Enter your cut contents here.After the opening, which was a LITTLE out of order, I have to say, and set to a more mellow reflective song... we begin where we left off, with the fight continuing.
It was cool to see Cas smiting old-school style. He then grabs Jack's body, throws it over his shoudler, and runs with Sam and Dean away from the zombie-ish hordes.
We then get the new title card, which is PRETYT DANG COOL LOOKING!
They boys all flee into a crypt, which, while safe, is also a dead-end.
They each visibly react to seeing Jack's dead body, but their focus is primarily on staying alive - none of them are really taking time to grieve, though Cas being the dimensional wavelengths of celestial intent seems to be able to do more things at once.
Dean asks if Cas can heal Jack at all - but he can't - he doesn't try, he just knows that he can't.
It seems to be a mixture of ghosts and demons possessing dead-bodies out there. Dean points out that if they stay in the crypt, they'll starve to death. Cas helpfully points out that HE won't starve to death - Dean does not appreciate this help.
Dean complains about God always being "squirrely" - I do have to say that if I had made up a wishlist for the end of the series, one of my wishes would have been "Dean kills God" - just because I've been fascinated with the idea of it ever since Dean said he was going to do it at the end of S5. So, part of me is still holding out hope.
Sam thinks he hears running water and wonders if there's sewer line under the crypt. They dig at the wall - Sam has a SURPRISINGLY MOBILE shoulder after having been shot in it.
Meanwhile, Jack, eyeless, pops back up to standing. Only it's not Jack... it's a demon who introduces himself as something like "Balagar"? - If anyone caught what that was, let me know.). Cas is IMMEDIATELY PISSED that someone is defiling the corpse of his son... and I mean, fair. That's SUPER FAIR, Cas. Man, Cas breaks my heart in this episode - especially if you remember how much potential for good he saw in Jack before he was born into this vile world where vilest worms do dwell.
Anyway, Dean wants to hear the demon out - reminding Cas that Jack is gone, rather coldly. But really, Dean is just doing that thing where he SWIFTLY COMPARTMENTALIZES so that he can survive. Unfortunately, I'm not sure Cas is in an emotional space where he can understand that fully. Sam also agrees with Dean, which doesn't help Cas' feeling of isolation in his grief.
The demon guesses that this recent hell-mouth was their work. They explain how it was God, and the demon at first doesn't believe them - and then realizes they're serious. He explains who he is - he's the guy who counts souls in hell, and also a run of the bill tormentor of those souls. He tells them that he LIKED his job, he likes the status-quo - so he wants to help them restore hell to what it was and fix this current problem. For lack of other options, Dean and Sam choose to believe him. He offers to do a spell to get rid of the current problem, and they go ahead with that plan - it works! Only he hasn't vanquished the ghosts and demons - he's just made them vacate the immediate area and the bodies they were inhabiting.
Which means that they've all been set loose on a nearby town.
We see Bloody Mary strike first... and then there's also a the Gasey clown chasing a mother and daughter.
(And, just as a sidenote: You can really see the change in aesthetic of the show by comparing this bloody mary to the original - it's what I've been referring to as the "sanitization" of SPN.... basically the slide from Horror Cinema to Melodrama TV that happened under Carver.)
As they drive towards the town in the car, the demon tells the boys that there were about 2-3 billion souls in hell that all escaped. The demon knows a spell that can contain the ghosts to a 1 mile wide radius. Sam points out that Harlen Kansas is within 1 mile of the cemetery, so that won't work unless they get the town to evacuate.
As they drive towards this town, they come across a car accident without a body - which is a sign that it was done by a woman in white. Sam makes the leap that it could actually be the same woman in white that he killed in S1. Dean then makes the next logical leap that perhaps all the things they ever killed are back.
The next day, they pull up to the town in their FBI gear - perhaps it was day faster than we thought? Who knows. Or maybe it's only night in the cemetery and surrounding area - since God technically turned it from day to night last episode. So. perhaps it was just night where they were, and they drove out of it into regular time again. ANYWAY... Dean tells Cas to find the demon the stuff he needs for the spell, but Cas refuses - and says that he can't even look at the demon. Cas gets out of the car and chooses instead to accompany Sam as he pulls his FBI routine and gets the Sheriff to believe that there's been a pipeline burst outside of town and he needs to get everyone out of the city due to the fumes.
Dean puts the magic equalizer gun that Chuck gave them into the glove box. The demon asks what it is, but Dean doesn't tell him. The demon then comments on how attractive everyone is - and how Dean himself is gorgeous. He explains that he went to hell a LONG time ago - when everyone was worshiping a giant penis shaped rock and everyone was ugly and had humps.
The demon then asks WHO he is inhabiting - "who was he?" and Dean admits that "he was our kid... kind of" or words to that effect. Oh Dean, this is all going to hit harder later, I know.
The demon needs a bag of salt and a human heart for the spell.
Sam and Cas go out to the outskirts of town to get the stragglers.
They split up to check out houses, and Sam, of course, has to go into the clown house! Poor Sam.
He ends up rescuing the mother and daughter, but the clown attacks and Sam gets slashed. Thankfully, Cas comes to the rescue.
Meanwhile, the demon inside Jack's body makes it even MORE awkward by telling Dean how he was a big fan of his when Dean was a torturer in hell. Dean redirects him by asking more about what the incident looked like from hell's perspective - and the demon tells him that all the doors in hell opened. Dean then clues in what ALL the doors might mean, and he asks about the cage - and yes, this means that THIS universes' Michael (the one wearing Adam) may well be out of the cage. (Not going to lie, when Dean brought up the cage, I AT FIRST had a small panic that they might be once again resurrecting Lucifer - then I remembered that he's dead-dead - as in, out in the EMPTY dead - that he's not in the cage anymore, and everything was okay again.)
Back at the clown house, Cas heals Sam - fixing his clothes too, so we FINALLY get to see tailor-Cas in action. :P
They explain to the traumatized woman and child that Cas is an angel, and the clown was a ghost - and Sam is "just a guy". Sam then winces and moves his shoulder, and Cas is like "hold up, what's with that wound?" and Sam is like "yeah, when I shot God..." and then has to say "Long story" to the woman and the child.
Then he shows Cas the bullet wound and Cas goes to heal it... and it causes Sam to have some weird premonition!?!? Of him in the bunker killing people with his mind?! Cas can't heal the wound, it's got a weird energy. Sam tells him not to worry about it.
Meanwhile, the sheriff is attacked by the woman in white. Sadly, the show could obviously no longer get Sarah Shahi to return, and those are pretty big shoes to fill. ANYWAY, it's a pretty convenient death, since it gives Dean and the demon the human heart they need for the spell when they interrupt the kill before the woman makes the body disappear.
Back in the outskirts of town, Sam and crew try to head for safety but are interrupted by attacking ghosts. Sam accidentally shoots Cas (awkward).
Dean and the demon due the spell, and the containment barricade is set. Sam and crew see it go up and run across the line.
They then (off screen) meet up with Dean and the demon and drive the woman and child to the high school that the rest of town is chilling at. Sam walks them into the school, while Dean stays with the car. The demon seems to fuck off somewhere all of a sudden and no one comments on it - but... maybe he just walked out of frame? I don't know. I was concerned, but no one else seemed to be.
Dean asks Cas if he's okay, and Cas says "Yes, but-" and Dean cuts him off and says "Good." Which... yeah, definitely frought Dean and Cas times ahead. Dean needs to shut down all grief until he has time to deal with it, and Cas needs to know that he's not the only one suffering from profound sadness at having lost Jack.
Sam gets back from escorting the mother and daughter into the school and reports that people are already starting to question the pipeline leak story - and that they probably only have a day and a half until the real FBI show up. Dean waves that concern away and asks to see Sam's wound. He discovers that there's no exit wound. He cleans the surface of the wound, but there's DEFINITELY something fishy about it that they don't currently have time to address.
Dean does tell a cute story while he cleans the wound, about how when they were kids, Dean would tell bad jokes to distract Sam from pain. Awww...
But, then Dean goes on to complain about God again - and how Sam and he were just rats in a maze the whole time. That their choices were false ones, because they were still confined by the maze that God set. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there and like "Dean, you are preaching to the choir when you complain to Sam about this - that kid didn't have agency until he ran away to Stanford and then he didn't have it again until he jumped into a pit and condemned himself to eternal torment... and I'd hardly call that a choice he WANTED." But, Sam is super cool about it, because of course he is... Sam's middle name ever since he got back from the cage is "calm and collected". In response to Dean's "what did it even mean?!" after he points out that all their work has been undone, Sam points out that they still saved people - and that mattered.
Then Sam makes the assumption that God has abandoned them in his ire, and that really, this is a GOOD thing, because it means that it's "just us" now, and that as soon as they fix this current problem, they'll have WON - God will still be gone, and they'll be free.
Dean likes that version of reality and says, "you and me versus every soul in hell" and then it's concluded that "we have work to do" - and we get another from-the-trunk Impala shot, mimicking the last frame of the pilot episode, and then it actually CUTS TO THE LAST FRAME OF THE PILOT EPISODE! And it's so cute, they are BABIES.
All in all, a pretty good opener! I'm definitely interested to see where the season goes. They've laid some good mysteries in, with the bullet wound in Sam's shoulder that caused the weird vision, the new demon character, and the odds not being in their favour. And then they've also got some good drama in there, such as the tension already between Dean and Cas, and the fact that everyone is delaying their grief.
Mostly, I'm interested in Jackie-boy, who in the finale last season had a meeting with Billie and the Entity after death - and to me, that meant there was a good chance he might be able to come back and not stay dead... and I'm still holding out hope for that!
Let me know your thoughts in comments!!!
no subject
My hinky meter went off with demon!Jack giving me the odd feeling it's actually Chuck inhabiting the kid's body in order to better control the narrative.
I suppose we shall see.
no subject
I definitely don't trust the demon inside jack though, no matter who they really are.