Saturday, April 15, 2017

Supernatural, Season 12, Episode 18: The Memory Remains




The Men of Letters are moving against Dean and Sam – so first send a message on Mick’s account to get them out of the Winchester Bunker

(We also have some acknowledgement that Castiel is missing. Wherefore art thou Castiel?!)

So they get a mission for our monster of the week episode. And I kind of like it because though it doesn’t add a great deal. But it’s nice to see the Winchesters doing the standard day-in-day out hunting with local monsters and small town disasters. This was the bread and butter of the Winchester hunting and I think it matters more as we get to the ending theme

So I’m going to kind of brush over this episode as the details don’t matter much. We have a small town with missing and dead people. We have the usual staples of interviewing the local authorities who are a bit confused at the fake!FBI’s presence, questioning people, Dean flirting with waitresses (and, yes, his pick up lines are terrible. It doesn’t matter if you look like Dean) and mocking Sam’s healthy eating choices.

We do have a little laziness in that Dean has kind of taken the possession of the Colt to replace research – since the Colt does pretty much kill everything. We do have a nice side note of one of the underlying but not really examined themes of this whole series: disposability of victims. If a victim is considered disposable (in this case because he smokes cannabis so has been written off by the authorities) then the powers that be probably won’t bother with them – which helps with monsters preying in the populace.

Sam does lots of research for the monster –a goat headed beastie with a hammer – and comes up with satyr.

Which is all well researched except it turns out to be a man with a hammer in a goat mask. Aha, if you look for monsters all the time you miss serial-killer-in-costume option. Kind of like reverse Scooby-Doo (who always assumed a monster but it turned out always to be a rich guy in a mask)


In this case it isn’t the rich guy – though the Sherriff whose family owned half the town does have a suspicious serial killer room in his basement. They confront him in his serial killer room and he says that while his dad, granddad et al had indeed being murdering random townsfolk to feed to the god they had captured in the basement in exchange for lots of wealth and prosperity (Moloch, god of sacrifice and big bad for Sleepy Hollow season 1), he most certainly didn’t approve of their murdering ways and has started selling his ill-gotten gains and hoping that the god monster in the basement staves to death

Of course there did have to be a supernatural cause. Going to small town America and solving mundane murders isn’t Supernatural, it’s Murder, she Wrote. And now you can all either picture Angela Lansbury as a hunter or Dean as Angela Lansbury. You’re welcome.

The problem is that the Repentant sheriff has a half brother who is all bitter about not growing up in the Big House (Dean is unimpressed given he and Sam grew up in motels and a car) so he’s going to use the monster and save the town

I think more could have been made of this point if the town was more clearly shown to be in any way really struggling except for the local meat plant needing updating.

Of course, economic stimulus via murder is too ridiculous even for pol-….  for most politicians. So it’s time to have a battle to bring down evil little brother (who gets shot by Sam to safe the Sheriff). Dean ends up locked in with Moloch but, I can only assume the CGI budget has been cut, so it’s only a shadowy force being all menacing and occasionally smacking Dean. It’s kind of disappointing because this should have been scary but really wasn’t

Moloch gets colted and, yes, the Colt pretty much does remove the need for lots of planning since it kills everything.

Case clear, sheriff left to clean up and mope over his family legacy

Which leads us on to the end theme as Sam and Dean discuss their own legacy – whether they will be remembered. Sam says no (which I call nonsense – no way that the Hunter Community at least isn’t going to remember them. If nothing else than as the brothers who nearly ended the world a gazillion times. Plus, remembered 100 years from now? There are angels and demons who will be cursing you still by then! GOD will remember you)

But Sam’s uplifting idea is their legacy isn’t about who remembers them – but in all the people they save and, ultimately, that they left the world better than they found it (except for all those apocalypses). They seal this by thinking of the Winchester Bunker, who will occupy it after them and leaving some table graffiti for future generations (with lots of cute flashbacks to childhood vandalism)

Which is sweet. But also means they’re going to leave the Winchester Bunker soon and/or it’s going to blow up. I bet the latter. Because this is Supernatural and sweet happy emotions need to be squished

Especially since while they were out god hunting, Arthur Ketch (seen with obligatory delicate china cups of tea because American depictions of English people require this) has taken the opportunity to raid the Winchester bunker, looking for the Colt (which he doesn’t find), looking for info about the Winchester’s (Dean’s porn – he still has paper porn? – and  photo of Mary for him to get all drippy over) and to leave a listening device

Dean also calls him a cut price Christian Bale. Which you know has gotta hurt.