caranfindel | Episode poll 12.14: "The Raid"

"Why was Dean so disturbed by Ketch punching the vampire he planned to kill..."

Dean's never been happy about torturing monsters - although he's never seemed to mind torturing demons! - and stopped Gordon from torturing Lenore back in the day. I think he feels that making them suffer is wrong, which is why he promised her to make it quick.

I always love these polls, you always make me giggle! I loved this...

"Why did Dean and Ketch feel confident about killing ten vampires but Sam and Mary were a bit panicky at the thought of killing ten vampires, even before they knew the Hunter King of Baton Rouge wasn't going to be any help?"

Thanks :)

Dean hasn't tortured anyone since 11x01 when he and Sam pinky-swore to be better people.

Need to watch the ep again, but wasn't it the fact that the Alpha was with the ten that pressed the panic button? Dean and Ketch were only anticipating ten ordinary vamps, plus I think their confidence was supposed to indicate their reckless bloodlust - speaking of which, I felt there was a strong nod back to Bloodlust in the Ketch/Dean bond. Dean was drawn to Ketch in the same way as he was initially to Gordon, because he claimed a kinship and understanding of Dean's dark side but, as in Bloodlust, Dean drew the line at wanton sadism. I think he instinctively saw Lenore in the vampire Ketch was beating up, and he may have been right to. It was interesting that the vamp who offered her the glass of blood* made a point of saying it was human, like that would be a treat for her. It made me suspect that her nest may have been cow blood drinkers until hunters wiped them out. So, I do think the grey areas of monster-is-as-monster-does may become an issue at some point.

*I think we're going to have to hand wave the fresh blood issue. Drinking blood out of wine goblets has become a common trope of vampire fiction.

Incidentally, it's not the first of Beren's episodes to allude heavily to Bloodlust. Seems it's an old favourite of his.

I watched it again last night, and you're right - they realised it wasn't just the vamps but the Alpha too, hence the panic stations!

And the scene of Sam shooting the Alpha was so cool, with the hole right through his head! But I'm sorry they killed him off.

" I felt there was a strong nod back to Bloodlust in the Ketch/Dean bond. Dean was drawn to Ketch in the same way as he was initially to Gordon, because he claimed a kinship and understanding of Dean's dark side but, as in Bloodlust, Dean drew the line at wanton sadism."

So right - Dean will kill because he has to, and gets a rush from it, but he's not a sadist and I loved that Dean stopped Ketch from hurting the vamp - he's a nasty bully.

I reckon there's going to be a power struggle within the BMoL at some point, and Ketch is buttering Mary up so she'll take his side over Mick's. Same reason he tried to buddy up with Dean. I mean, not that the prospect of that storyline fills me with joy, but it's my guess at where this is going. ;)

Mmmm, that's very plausible.

Oooh, you could be right! Ketch and Mick obviously don't get along, despite their shared annoying accents!

I'm just imagining "The Old Men" as a renamed Watchers' Council, and I expect them to get the same results when ~~Buffy~~ The Winchesters do what they do, in spite of BMoL rules and regs.

Yes, I thought this too!!!!

Or . . . they're like the 'senior partners' from Angel . . .

Was Dean knowingly playing good cop to Ketch's bad cop?

Things that I disliked in this episode: "Pick a side."

Umm, could the BMoL have killed all the Vamps in the Mid West Region vs Northwest since the remainders were holed up in Wichita?

Another unanswered question - what happens to the vampires of the world now their Alpha is dead? And if nothing, why not!

And why would the vampires surrender when the Alpha was dead, as Mary said. I didn't get that at all.

I thought they fled?

I'm conflicted on Sam being willing to kill all monsters. It's not even Lenore, he didn't go and try to take out Benny even after Benny killed Martin. I'm not sure why he joined the BMOL, except I think he wants Dean to get out of hunting. I think he is resigned to the idea that he can't get out. He's been touched by Lucifer and poisoned by a demon and soulless. I think he sees himself as beyond hope, but I think he thinks Dean can have that life that Dean pretends he doesn't want.

Although I don't think Dean wants Mary to kiss his boo boos, I do think that he wants her to do what he says and live up to his image of her. Dean has always been pretty controlling and this is another side of that. I basically liked this episode.

Words cannot express how much I loved the scene with Dean and the vampire. If the rest of the ep had been crap, that scene would have made it worth it.

He didn't taunt, scare or lie to her; in other words he treated her with respect. I think it's because for the first time in years he's not facing some horrible fate or under some sinister influence.

I wasn't surprised Dean didn't like Ketch punching the vampire - shades of Gordon, really. There's hunting and then there's taking sadistic glee in the kill. Ketch seems like a more sophisticated honey-trap to get Dean back to his more violent ways. I think Dean sees himself that way a lot, especially after MoC.

I think Mary has a reputation as the best Winchester for them because she has the hunter pedigree but isn't associated with any of the major occult apocalyptic things that the boys had to deal with, so she's got the skills without the apparent black marks. That and she was "smart" enough to willingly work with them.

So much of this episode made no sense to me I'm just going to leave my checkmarks here. Sam works with the BMoL after they tortured him? I liked the idea of "cops and robbers" whether it was a bluff or not. It seemed truer to the Winchester's mission. That whole part of the episode was a mess.

I figured it took so long for Dean and Ketch to get there because they were hate fucking.

However, the bunker family scenes were GOLD.

Yes, cops and robbers, where you don't slaughter someone just because they might be a robber. Except that's a bad analogy, because they're killing known monsters.

I like your Dean/Ketch idea. They would have needed an outlet for all that adrenaline.

I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking it.

(Even though I don't find Ketch at ALL attractive, Dean has enough charisma for the both of them.)

> SERIOUSLY, WHY THE FUCK WOULD SAM WORK WITH THE BMOL?

You know, it's not so utterly impossible when you think about it. I'm just re-watching Criss Angel is a Douchebag - that convesration:

Dean: it ends bloody or it ends sad; that's just the life.
Sam: what if we could win? cut the head off the snake.

We know that Sam is capable of a kind of "end justifies the means" pragmatism when he's up against it. (We saw it in Jus in Bello and Mystery Spot, too). Now, true, he was up against the Apocalypse then, and his relationship with Dean was critically damaged, neither or which are the case at the moment. Nevertheless, I think the show has made an effort to make it psychologically plausible. Firstly, the Winchesters have just saved the world from the feud between God and his sister, and Sam thinks they've defeated Lucifer, too. It's possible this could have re-ignited his old hubris that it's his job to save the world, especially combined with the damage that was done during his spell in pseudo-guantanamo. He's admitted he's still having issues with that, and I think they went deep. Was it you I was talking to about the scene where he was working out and how I thought that was a nod back to The Third Man and a shorthand way of saying Sam was losing his soul in that place? Now, I know BMOL stuffed up but I think Sam was already well on the way to being sold when he saw what they'd achieve in the North West Region or whatever it was, and I think the fact that they actually showed some vulnerability may even have helped - when he saw the place was staffed with ordinary people who were just trying to do their jobs, and that Daniels was willing to acknowledge their failures. Also, I believe wanting to bond with Mary is a huge factor in this. All season we've been seeing subtle hints that Sam is even more desperate than Dean to have a relationship with her and, though I'm not suggesting he thought of it this way consciously, I think the division between Mary and Dean over BMOL presented him with an opportunity to 'get Mom's attention' by 'picking her side'. What Mary has signally failed to appreciate up until now is that the little boys who never had a mom are still very much alive in the adult men in front of her but, possibly, she's starting to get it now.

Were there great gaping holes in the plot of the episode? Hell, yeah! I think Dabb's main weaknesses are in plotting and sometimes a certain moral blindness, plus there are some really really weak links in his writing team, but I do think he has a reasonable understanding of the characters, and cares about them in a manner that's been woefully absent in preceding seasons. I actually do feel that, whatever else this season's episode have sometimes lacked in the execution, there has been more effort made to maintain emotional and psychological credibility and continuity than there has for years. So, I'm gonna give show kudos for effort :)

Possibly interesting addendum: at the end of Criss Angel, when Sam goes to meet Ruby, he tells her "I'm in." Exact same words he said to Daniels. Hmmm. *strokes chin*

Edited 2017-03-06 12:43 (UTC)

That seems like a pretty good summation of what the writers are going for. It gels with my interpretation of Sam's general headspace/motivations, anyway.

But yeah, plotting is a big weakness. Unless the whole kidnapping/torture opener later pays off in some big way, I think it was a pretty major misstep to have that be the BMoL's introduction. If the show was going to go the should-we/shouldn't-we-work-with-them route they should've been set up as a temptation from the start--introduce some genuinely sympathetic members, have them contribute something useful, make the audience want to trust them. Then we get gradual reveals of their shadiness and have to guess at which members can be trusted and which can't and how deep the corruption goes. Basically, what was done with the angel story arc in season four.

That said, I still can't get around how anyone is supposed to buy that the BMoL are going to be the big picture saviors of North America when they failed to even show up for multiple apocalypses--apocalypses which would presumably have also taken out Great Britain. Which I get is the unavoidable plot wrinkle of introducing a new world-building element on top of so much established history--it would be really hard to come up with a seamless retcon, but they could've at least tried to handwave it.

There's also the ethical issues--the xenophobia/fascism the BMoL espouse which so far has been only glancingly addressed. Well, I'm pretty sure the endgame conflict and resolution is going to hinge on that--there's going to be an oh-fuck-we're-in-the-belly-of-beast-and-the-beast-is-committing-genocide moment. I'm undecided about which side of the Doyalist/Watsonian line I'll fall on--more annoyed with the writers or the characters when that happens.

Well, I'm pretty sure the endgame conflict and resolution is going to hinge on that--there's going to be an oh-fuck-we're-in-the-belly-of-beast-and-the-beast-is-committing-genocide moment.

I can live with this if they actually address the situation.

I suppose, if the show wanted to annoy me even more, they could make the final conflict/resolution about quibbling over the BMoL's precise means instead of the full implications of their ends. Reveal that they've been assassinating humans and have that be where the Winchesters draw the line.

I know this could never happen on the show, but I have been entertaining the premise: what if that wannabe Jack Bauer dude from 12x09 actually managed to track/put Sam and Dean - and by extension the BMoL - under surveillance and the US intelligence services are about to blow the roof off everybody's operation?The big bad hell our heroes unleash this season turns out to be the US government and the lengths they (and the American public in a monsters-are-real frenzy) would be willing to go to in the name of, er, securing our metaphysical borders. Which would mean a dystopian hellscape brought on not by monsters but by the people who fear them.

That would be a a good way to go for a series finale :)

I think the fundamental problem with the show's season arcs is that they're clearly planned in two halves: they run with one plot for the first part of the season, then they adjust their plans for the second half once they've got some viewer feedback on the early episodes. This can make for some really awkward disjoints when the feedback on their original plans is negative.

The two halves structural problem makes a lot of sense. Oh, network television, how frustrating it can be...

Was it you I was talking to about the scene where he was working out and how I thought that was a nod back to The Third Man and a shorthand way of saying Sam was losing his soul in that place?

I don't think so. I LOVE THIS IDEA.

though I'm not suggesting he thought of it this way consciously, I think the division between Mary and Dean over BMOL presented him with an opportunity to 'get Mom's attention' by 'picking her side'.

Hmmm, very interesting.

Possibly interesting addendum: at the end of Criss Angel, when Sam goes to meet Ruby, he tells her "I'm in." Exact same words he said to Daniels. Hmmm. *strokes chin*

ALSO VERY INTERESTING! And I believe his state of mind then was "this is a bad thing but I have to do it in order to achieve the good thing," which makes a lot of sense in context.

Exactly. I think z_publicizes is right and this is a belly-of-the-beast deal. I think that, beause the BMOL are human, Sam doesn't recognize that he's making another devil deal, but that's what he's doing.

Why did Dean agree to hunt vampires with Ketch?

Because he needed to hit something. Now.

Which fits in neatly with

cuddyclothes's hate sex theory above...

:P

I think Dean, and to some extent a lot of us fans, are struggling a bit with the fact that Mary is a hunter. The Mary we saw was from Dean's memories from when he was a child, of her cutting off crusts and making tomato rice soup and praying to angels, so I think they're all struggling with this, and I love that. Because yes, Mary isn't just a Mom, she's a hunter, and her children are adults and not babies, and that's complicated for them all to deal with, and I loved the family arguments that we saw in this episode.

Episode poll 12.14: "The Raid"

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