12.09 First Blood
THE VERDICT
Oooohhhh boy. That was damn good. So much understated stuff in pretty much every single performance, too. Loved seeing the difference in Sam and Dean’s reactions to being confined to solitary. Isolation as Dean’s true hell has long been something I’ve had in the back of my head, so seeing that played so well in this was excellent. I’m disappointed to see Billie go, but as far as character deaths go it made sense and wasn’t gratuitous, so at least it’s not the rage-inducing kind of disappointed. And I’m relieved that they didn’t shove Mary back in the fridge.
A play-by-play recap with meta-adjacent notes is under the cut!
Ok, rebloging this again, because I remember you were wondering about the diner Mary was in in the first scene. According to the SuperWiki it is the same diner she and John had her first date in (as Dean told her in 12x01). I feel like the tumblr dot com meta community should have noticed this, but the episode all left us in a puddle of Cas emotions we didn’t.
Oooh yeah, it is, and she was drinking coffee just like Dean said they did on that date (I mean that’s not a wild stretch but :P)…
Anyway I was mostly just dropping by to suggest Mary blatantly pining for her lost husband goes alongside Cas and his moping, never mind the time they hang out in diners but…
(I feel it’s worth pointing out that though they don’t know it that Cas scene is during the brief time the Winchesters were legit dead)
I mean there’s bigger parallels as well about their mental state in general because they’re both messed up, but I like that Cas left his phone in that spot, just like at the end of 12x03 we get back to the Bunker and Mary had left John’s journal there - since once we see the phone alone without Cas moping over it waiting for a call, it actually is Dean ringing it.
Dean on the phone: “Stop telling people I’m dead”
OH MY GOSH THANK YOU. I’d been driving myself BONKERS trying to remember why I associated Mulroney’s diner with John and Mary’s history. I guess it’s a factor of not having completely internalized s12 yet the way I have past seasons, but the only reference I could come up with was John taking Mary out to dinner in 4.03 to propose to her… and that was at the Jaybird Diner… and I kept thinking I was losing it. :P
FIRST DATE. NOT MARRIAGE PROPOSAL. Thank you for clearing that up. :D
and then ugh oh mary with john’s JOURNAL, the paper record of his life, because that’s all that’s really left of him to communicate with Mary now, and Cas with Dean calling up on the phone… It’s the whole past/present thing yet again, too.