Mark Watches ‘Supernatural’: S06E19 – Mommy Dearest

In the nineteenth episode of the sixth season of Supernatural, this show found a way to get even more messed up than it was before. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Supernatural.

Trigger Warning: For talk of gore/blood and body horror.

WELL, NOW MY QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED AND EVERYTHING HURTS.

Just… holy shit, y’all. (Literally? Because this is some shit.) I can’t claim to have figured this out until seconds before it was spelled out to me, and yet? I was so close. I WAS SO CLOSE. I had the pieces, I guessed a few things correctly, and then I fell apart. I had one job, y’all, AND I FAILED.

Lenore

Christ, we hadn’t seen Lenore since the beginning of the second season. THAT WAS LAST YEAR for me. (I can barely remember a time when I wasn’t watching this show. This is my life now.) And while I can’t deny that she’s brought back to the show in a similar matter as Ellen in the last episode, I do appreciate that Lenore’s brief appearance at least has some closure. After she was spared in “Bloodlust,” she’s tried to avoid hunting humans, but Eve’s arrival on Earth has made that practically impossible for her. So, after giving the team Eve’s location, she begs to be killed.

What’s telling in this scene is Cas’s reaction, but naturally, I was distracted by everything else that was happening. Cas quickly gives Lenore the mercy killing she wants, claiming that they need to move forward. Over the course of this season, we’ve been slowly seeing Castiel’s behavior change, AND I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THIS WAS A CLUE.

I knew nothing. I was not ready.

Experimenting in Grant’s Pass

Supernatural does this thing a lot where they introduce something that seems familiar. We’re certain a killer is a specific creature, or we’re comfortable making judgments about where the story is going, and then the rug is pulled out from under us, and I spend a lot of time screaming at all of you and blaming you for something I willingly chose to do. I suppose that “Mommy Dearest” is no different. It is, however, perhaps the most extreme example of this narrative device, given that we don’t actually know what’s going on until the very end. Initially, we see Eve turn an entire bar into… something. That’s left ambiguous on purpose, as it serves to create an air of mystery about what she’s doing. It’s not surprising that she is making people kill one another, and I just assumed it was the whole khan worm thing all over again. Except they were biting each other, which was weird and didn’t fit the pattern, but who am I to judge?

Any theory I might have had fell apart the second the team found Ed’s body outside the doctor’s office. It made absolutely no sense at all. Why kill Ed? And if the Doctor didn’t kill him, why dispose of the body like that? Little did I know that this was the start of a constant state of confusion on my part. Because once the group went to Ed’s house and saw Ed in the window, we’re forced to accept that Eve was creating shifters, and then, less than a minute later, even that doesn’t fit anymore. If they’re all shapeshifters, why did they attack one another as they did inside that bar? Why would Eve make Ed into a shifter? Why did she confine the others in the bar? Why are they all so sick? Why would Eve leave all those bodies behind to be found? WHY DOESN’T ANY OF THIS MAKE ANY SENSE.

Hybrids. HYBRIDS. She is making hybrids for… something? Goddamn it, y’all, even when there were answers in “Mommy Dearest,” they only made my head hurt more. Why the fuck is she creating hybrids? What possible purpose would they serve? If they were healthy hybrids, I might have understood, but they’d all died. WHAT. WHY. Why is this episode?

Well, clearly it exists for Dean to name the hybrids Jefferson Starships. Everything was worth this moment. EVERYTHING.

Testing the Winchesters

Y’all, I can never take back the moment where I observed that Joe and Ryan were perfect stand-ins for Dean and Sam, orphaned boys who were unfairly thrust into the world of the supernatural because of tragedy. They were perfect, I knew it, and I didn’t see how fucked up this was. Look, it’s not like children are off-limits on this show; NEED I REMIND Y’ALL OF LILITH? And yet, I assumed that the awful thing that would happen with Joe and Ryan would occur back at the police station. Despite wondering aloud (!!!! WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS !!!!) if those kids were even human, I thought that they’d passed all the tests that the Winchesters put them through, and I was convinced that Eve would attack in Dean and Sam’s absence. That would be the horrible thing here.

Haha. Ha.

It’s just so terribly messed up, y’all. Eve used a child to perfect a creature that could get past a hunter, and that child killed his brother and relatives, and THIS IS SO AWFUL.

Mommy Dearest

Hi, Samantha Smith, you were INCREDIBLE here. She’s able to perfectly capture Eve’s behavior, and it’s one of the more surreal elements of an episode full of surreal imagery and scenarios. It hurts to see Mary Winchester again because we know it’s not her, and we also know how willing Eve is to be utterly cruel. Up until the end, she’s clearly in charge here. She destroys Dean and Sam’s only weapon, captures Cas and Bobby, and lays all her cards on the table. She’s bold and unafraid, and why should she be afraid? Until Dean reveals his ace up his sleeve, she’s obviously got the upper hand.

She also has one hell of a story.

I wanted her to simply be mistaken, but I was unsettled by her certainty that Crowley was still alive. Like… that couldn’t actually be true, right? We saw him die. WE WATCHED HIM DIE. It’s not a case of his body not being seen on camera or anything. HE IS DEAD. I SAW IT. But she continues telling Dean and Sam about the war machine that Crowley is trying to fuel using monster souls, and I did not understand this. I knew that souls contained energy; Cas revealed that in “Frontierland.” (It’s a clue, Mark, THAT WAS A GODDAMN CLUE.) But if Purgatory wasn’t really his goal, why go to such depths to get the souls? Why torture so many alphas? What was his endgame?

Well, I wasn’t really asking those questions because I was still hung up on the fact that Eve was insisting Crowley was alive. Not possible, thought I, while watching a show that has ruined me more times than I can count. Can I just point out that one of the main antagonist threats this season is now dead? And there are three episodes left? And this worries me so much because what the fuck is this season heading to? Eve’s death was shocking because it was premature; I’d totally believed she’d be the Big Bad for season six, but nope. She’s dead, the Jefferson Starships are all dead, and then –

Goddamn it.

Alliances

The worst part about this is how well it all fits together. This is why Rachel betrayed Castiel; this is why Castiel encouraged Balthazar to save the Titanic; this is why Castiel has seemed more desperate than ever before. Since “Caged Heat,” Castiel has been lying to everyone, working in secret with Crowley to construct some sort of weapon or war machine or I DON’T KNOW WHAT. What does Crowley get out of this? Because you know he wouldn’t do this unless he benefitted directly from Castiel. Does he get Purgatory, while Cas gets the souls there?

More importantly, what is Castiel turning into? In his quest to wrestle control from Raphael, he’s drifted further and further from any sort of humanity he’d found alongside Sam and Dean. He’s pragmatic, he’s eager to find power, and he’s lost the respect for human life that he once had. How many people have died so that Castiel could defeat Raphael? Oh god, how much worse is this going to get?

Don’t answer that. JUST DON’T.

The video for “Mommy Dearest” can be downloaded here for $0.99.

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About Mark Oshiro

Perpetually unprepared since '09.
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