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Yeah, I think this format would probably work better for this show in the later seasons with the way they seem to cram everything into the final 3 episodes.
I think May sweeps ends on the 24th of May and the finale would be on the 25th of May if the last two episodes weren't doubled up. That could be why they decided to do it this way this year.
Here's an update on the Episode 18 summary:
SUPERNATURAL 12.18 “The Memory Remains”: Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) investigate a missing person’s case in a small town. The lead witness tells the Winchesters the attacker was a man with the head of a goat. Sam and Dean aren’t sure what to believe but when the witness goes missing they realize the town is hiding a dark secret. Phil Sgriccia directed the episode written by John Bring.
http://www.spoilertv.com/2017/03/supernatural-episode-1218-memory.html
I'm not really sure what to say about this one. Head of a goat? I guess there are two ways it could go. The witness was wrong in what he or she said/saw, or the witness was right. If the witness was right, then some monsters that have the head of a goat:
Chimera (fire breathing monster with the body of a lion and head of a goat)
Then you have the goat man in Kentucky with something akin to Jersey devil or Big Foot sightings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5CRxqvyeHk
I guess Pan, fauns, and sytr were depicted as top half human and bottom half goat (or horse), but that doesn't really seem to fit. Lucifer could sometimes be depicted as part goat, but since we've seen Lucifer not as a goat, I'm thinking that's not it.
Of course it could also just be somebody wearing a mask, like in Plush last year.
I would've loved to see Dean run into Gordon in Purgatory too.
I thought of another thing they've redone this year.
Sam and Dean coming to the attention of the authorities and then being on the run. We had it in seasons 2-3, and then in 7. In theory, there's probably more fall out to come from that incident (If the writers want there to be, I guess). Just having Mr. Ketch go through and kill all the soldiers who'd been keeping Dean and Sam wouldn't have erased the entire situation. Those men had to report to someone, so someone would notice when they stopped responding; someone would've gone to check it out, and I guess whoever went to check it out would've found the whole place abandoned. The SS men who arrested Dean and Sam would still remember doing so and would presumably be kept appraised of events unless the BMoL also wiped them out one by one, which is a lot of bodies to drop in high level areas without anyone noticing or questioning it, especially if one is the president, the man who agreed to be Lucifer's vessel.
"- Castiel's journey to earn the forgiveness of his fellow angels #343 maybe? - COULD BE A HIT IF HE'S ACCEPTED AMONG HIS OWN IN HEAVEN AGAIN
- Sam once again looking slightly tempted by the possibility of a world where no one would need to hunt and could live a normal life because they would be no monsters anywhere? - A COMPLETE AND UTTER MISS"
Ah, yes. How could I forget these two. I guess with Castiel, they've done this so many times that other than trying to find whatever it is that Sam and Dean want to find in whatever season, trying to earn the angel's forgiveness is all he does (I think it's been every season since 8 now).
The Sam storyline does seem to be throwing out all the growth he's had in the last 2 seasons, which is disappointing. I'd add that the way this BMoL/Sam storyline is playing out feels like season 4, but sped up in that he only lied to Dean for an episode. Now if Dean sees something he doesn't like about the BMoL and says they're backing out, but Sam then continues to work with them (either in secret or openly), I'll consider it even more of a season 4 retread and the way Sam was with Ruby.
So, I guess my next question would be are all of these retreads/repacking of old ideas a lazy attempt to distract us from the show's minimizing of Dean and Sam to make it a new show? It feels like that's what they're doing. 'Oh, we'll give them something they liked in the past, like the Colt, psy kids, and YED, and maybe they won't notice that the brothers are no longer the focus of the show. Our new female OC, we'll slap Mary's name on her, and the fan's won't notice. We couldn't get Bloodlines off the ground. The rules for monsters, like shifters, are ones this fandom seem to want us to follow. We can't be bothered to go through over 200 episodes to get those rules right for our new show, so we won't make them monsters. We'll make them human and call them the BMoL. Lucifer? Oh, well, they liked Lucifer in previous seasons. Let's throw him in there too, and we need our main villain to have a redemption arc, so that'll be him.'
"It sounds like there was a bit of a revolt in the writers room last spring when Dabb trotted out his plan for Lucifer to be the main focus of the season."
That's interesting. Do you have a link? I may have to revise some of my thoughts on a few things if I'm provided proof. At the moment, I'm thinking that some of the dialogue from Rock Never Dies (manager:lets basically keep repackaging the old and selling it to die hard fans we know will stay with us vs. Lucifer: I dislike retreading old story lines, like Lucifer/ YEDs/ psy kids, etc., and if that's really want the fans want to see, then I want entirely new fans, because the ones we have want things to stay the same with this show, which I consider rerun after rerun after rerun) is maybe Berens tattling on Dabb (Lucifer) vs Singer (manager). After some thought, I realized, the 'sticking to a formula' is definitely Singer's M.O. But if Dabb came up with bringing Lucifer back and the other writers didn't like the idea, and if Berens isn't renewing his contract, then maybe Lucifer is Berens/other writers and the manager is Dabb/Singer, and it's kind of hilarious that Berens has Lucifer kill the manager and that it got past Dabb to end up on our screens.
Yeah, the 'to get it to the shape it was in' doesn't bode well for where the script was before they got involved.
I'll add that I like that Misha and Mark feel comfortable enough in their roles on the show to also give that kind of feedback to the writers.
JIB Con last year. Here's the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6HOPOtEijw Start at around the 3:20 mark.
There's a Metallica song called The Memory Remains, and it's about a celebrity fading into obscurity, which drives her mad.
"Yes but what you described is from Dean's side. My issue is from Mary's."
I know, but I didn't want to talk about that. I just wanted to talk about pie. It's been a while since I've had any, and now I can't stop thinking about it. :)
"What I'm trying to ask is did Mary get Dean pie as just par for the course or did Mary get Dean pie when she was trying to comfort him or quiet him because he wasn't happy. Those are two different reasons to get pie and taints the reason why Dean loves pie. And actually can tie into into your reasoning of Dean not wanting pie as he is questioning things about his mother."
Well, considering she offered him pie right after he hugged her, told her that Dad loved her, he loved her, and he would never leave her, I think that she gave him pie for two reasons. One, as something of a reward for saying what she needed to hear (I don't mean that she was being selfish. I just think that she wanted to give him something for being so grown up and caring). Two, as a way to reverse their roles back to normal. Dean, the four year old, wasn't supposed to be the one taking care of her. She was supposed to be taking care of him, and she did that by giving him pie.
Actually, if they wanted an easy fix for the mess they've made of this season, they could have Lucifer figure out how to get out of his body to stop Crowley from using him as his puppet, convince Mary to be his vessel, and then have Lucifer take off with the baby, never to be seen again (I'd be using an evil grin emoji right now if we had them).
"Because Dean's love of pie is it because Mary gave it to him when his life was settled. Or is it that he got it after she brought it back when she got back from her trips or when she wanted him to be quiet so he equated pie with getting attention from his mother. Which is two completely different things."
Um, aside from Dean loving pie, because it's pie, and pie is great, and disregarding the ongoing joke of Sam always forgetting to get Dean his pie or various other things that have come between Dean and pie, I think what DSotM did was indicate that Dean's obsession with pie was bore out of pie being a comfort food, something that reminded him of his Mom, a time when he felt safe and wanted and normal.
It makes the fact that he chooses to call a 'normal life' an 'apple pie life' interesting, because it's also something he's never said in a positive way, mostly a negative, because it's something he had and doesn't think they'll ever have again in any meaningful way.
Then you have how pie has been used this season. When he launched into the pie in episode 12.2, it was right after Mary said she didn't cook (again something that isn't that important. Lots of women don't cook. It's just that in Dean's perception of his childhood, Mary did, but he was wrong, and if he was wrong about that, what else was he wrong about? That had to be what he was thinking on some level). While meant to be something of a joke to lighten the mood, I also thought that in some respects Dean stuffing his face with pie was him trying to cling to his childhood memories, and I think we began to see the cracks when he was sitting by himself, looking at old photos in the kitchen.
Then I think it was a few episodes later (The One You've Been Waiting For, so 2 episodes after Mary left) that Dean wouldn't touch the pie Sam got him. It took killing Hitler for Dean to get his bearings back after Mary left or maybe even just feel something that resembled self worth, and only after that did he suggest going for pie. And then he hid behind killing Hitler for the start of the Asa Fox episode as something of a shield until Jody called him out on it, which is another topic altogether.
"But give me John any day. Him I understand."
Yeah, I think what they've done is somehow make John more sympathetic. Personally, it calls into question those 'fights' John and Mary would have where he would take off for days. Before I thought that a lot of the blame for those went on John, or that's the way they tried to portray it, but now?
Oh, I should say that I do love Scarecrow for a pagan god episode.
"Because her actions speak louder than words pre and post first death and they aren't good."
Yeah, but I think a lot of what we're seeing as problems with her are mostly post death.
We all knew she lied to John at least about being a hunter in the past, but as long as we didn't know her, it was something we could forgive, because she died for her sins.
Some people thought that maybe Michael wiped her memories of her deal along with meeting Dean (Not me. I definitely thought that Mary recognizing Azazel in the vision Azazel showed Sam during AHBL was enough to say she at least remembered the deal), but we've gotten confirmation this season that wasn't the case (Although why he erased Dean being there during the deal doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. They could've just said that Michael erased her memories of The Song Remains the Same, but I guess they needed to have a reason for Mary not to connect with her adult children in any way even if one of those ways was to have her remember meeting Dean on what was presumably the second worst night of her life). That means that for 10 years she knew about her deal, didn't tell John, didn't ward her house, etc., and that raises all kinds of questions about her that maybe we might've wondered about in the past, but again, she died for her sins, so it was forgivable. We could live without knowing, but now that she's here, and none of those issues are being addressed, it makes them stand out more.
She was shown to be a caring mother who cut the crusts off PB & J sandwiches for Dean, made Dean soup when he sick, etc. We were given the idea that maybe Dean's love of pie came from Mary (DSotM). Now we find out that she didn't cook, which is fine, but as Dean's perception of her changes with that one little admission, it calls into question everything we've seen of her through our previous experiences, because we've primarily seen them through Dean's perspective (I'm talking about Samantha Smith's Mary here), and then we find out post-death that she was hunting too, which continues to twist our perception of her, raises all kinds of questions that aren't being addressed, and tarnishes the character further.
We knew she lied to John to varying degrees, but now post-death, we've seen her not only lie to her sons, but put them in danger for her said lies. Remember these are lies she is telling, because she wants to rid the world of monsters for her sons, and yet she was willing to put them and Cas in mortal danger to keep her lie hidden. This casts a shadow once again over what she did in the past, because her lies about hunting and Azazel endangered her entire family (for decades), and she hasn't learned from it yet.
It makes it worse that again post-death we see that she's not at all sorry for lying to her sons. Sure, she comes clean, but then she refuses to admit she has done anything wrong, refuses to understand why her sons don't agree with her choices after she tells them 'it's a better way,' and in fact, takes another crack at Sam on his own when it's clear that Dean won't respond.
To me, the way Mary manipulated Sam into being on her side by lying to him to get him to the bunker 2.0 (thereby separating him from Dean), and saying things she knew Sam might want to hear deep down about having a normal life (She knew he tried to get away by going to Stanford, so she knew it was there), shows how hard-headed and manipulative she is, but not in any kind of endearing way.
As an aside, I think that Sam going to see Mary without telling Dean (If he really thought she was in trouble, he would've told Dean, or I hope he would. Dean's always been his back up), capitulating so easily by the end of The Raid to what Mary wanted by joining the BMoL, lying to Dean most of the next episode until the random GotW guilted him into telling the truth, and then Dean caving (reluctantly) tells me that they're going to have Mary become a wedge between Sam and Dean, because she used Sam to get through to Dean in my opinion, and it worked. She has no reason to think it won't in the future.
Hm. Hammer of Gods is a little different for me for three reasons. Lucifer. Gabriel. And while that episode was offensive to some because Lucifer was shown as stronger than some gods that people still worship today, I'm more than all right with Lucifer wiping the gods out in that episode, or I would be if he'd gotten all of them (except for Kali, who probably shouldn't have been there. Just replace her with Venus if she was supposed to be Gabriel's ex-love interest), and then we never would have had to have any of the other gods we've had since that episode. But again with the gods they showcased in that episode, they got the mythology surrounding some of those gods wrong, which was another bone of contention with followers of some of those deities.
Yeah, I don't mind Bugs. I think Bugs had some important conversations between Dean and Sam in relation to their Dad, so it gave us more insight into both of them, and I think the way the sun magically comes up in a few seconds flat at the end is hilarious. I laugh every time it happens. In Route 666, I like the background we get on Dean. I like the way they get rid of the ghost truck by doing something outside the box and have it drive over consecrated ground. I also liked Cassie.
I forgot all about Angel Heart (although I think for me, I disliked Claire more in The Hunter Games. Her hating Dean and wanting to have people kill him was idiotic to me given what'd happened in the previous episode).
What's Up, Tiger Mommy? That auction scene was awful, and that's the way I tend to think of pagan gods on this show (sorry to keep hammering that home, but when pagan gods are on, I feel like I'm watching an episode of Charmed instead of Supernatural).
The Raid is definitely a contender I forgot about because it's so new.
I agree with all of your almost made the list episodes. The Bad Seed didn't do anything for me either, but again poor Jensen got stuck directing it.
I quite liked Family Remains. I think if you're going to have people as the monsters, as this season seems to be doing, then Family Remains was a better/ scarier way to do it than what we've seen in season 12.
"I agree with your dishonorable mentions minus Red Sky at Morning, one of my favorite SPN episodes ever."
Really? :)
I guess what I don't like about that episode was the ghost summoning part that culminated in a big splash. I can't really shake the feeling I've had ever since I first watched it that it was a bit of a weak episode. Compared to later seasons, I know that's not really fair, but it's stuck with me.
In hindsight, I do like how Castiel is mentioned in the ghost summoning part. They obviously had no plans to bring him into the show at that point, it's just something they probably thought was cool to put into the spell, but I find it funny.