Episode poll 11.16: "Safe House"

[caranfindel]

[Poll #2040564]

Remember, no spoilers in the comments, please!

Comments

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

our house was built in 1846 so it's a fair bet that someone has died here... No ghosts though, it's a happy house, which is a shame because it means the Winchesters will never come to sort me out.

[gidgetgal9.livejournal.com]

Great episode but yeah some of it made my head hurt. Luckily I've watched lots of Doctor Who so I'm used to Timey Wimey. :)

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

I watched doctors 9 and 10 and some of 11 but apparently it wasn't enough!

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

I handwaved RThompson's fan-servicing; it wasn't as obvious as it usually is with his episodes, but it was still there. He likes to shine a light on how "progressive" he's being sometimes, too, which I certainly don't mind his attempts at diversity, I just wish he wouldn't be so, hrm, obvious about it? I wish he'd slip them in casually. Could've been a bit of the directing this time, though. Annnnywho...

This is the song I wanted in the episode: "Time", by ELO. I'm fixated on SPN using an ELO song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U52sP25ynE

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

I'm fixated on SPN using an ELO song.

Well, you did get Long Black Road last season! :-)

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

OMG YES. How did I forget that?? Oh, yeah, OLD. ;D

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

No, just distracted! :-)

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

I did not handwavew the "not it"!

Maybe the person's body outside needs to have at some point reached a specific amount of time under of of peril or something for the person to see other people - otoh, talking and stuff is linear, so

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

It WAS out of character, wasn't it?

My thoughts on timey-wimey stuff

[casey679.livejournal.com]

I think maybe the state of the spirits in the Nest depends on how much the soul eater has fed on them. We don't know how often or how fast it consumes things, or if their rate of consumption correlates in any way to the deterioration of their bodies in the real world. But given the episode, I think it's more than likely there's no direct one-to-one correlation, since the consumption happens in the nest and therefore outside of time and space.

So the soul is outside time and space, but still lunch; if it is devoured (which most are as no one stops the soul eater) then the body dies, and the little bits of soul stick around and look sad and scary. Assuming a non-correlative rate of consumption to rate of body deterioration, we can deduct that it had abducted but not gotten around to eating either of the newer families or Bobby and Dean.

Then Rufus trapped it, presumably preventing access to the nest; which meant Bobby and the older family didn't get devoured, but their souls were stuck outside of space and time. When the new family released it, it started gnawing on them (hence the victims' beginning to deteriorate in the past and present), but is killed by the boys before it can (thus, the deterioration is halted and sets of victims wake up). So the two families and hunters were able to return to their bodies.

And the kids could see sad people because either a) they had been there the longest (having been grabbed first) and it takes either time to adjust OR a certain amount of soul-nibbling to see them; or b) kids are always more attuned to seeing spirits and stuff.

I think the biggest question I work up with was: why didn't they pretend to be from the CDC like they did with the Striga, because they would have had a better explanation for being there AND precedent in investigating strange coma victims.

Re: My thoughts on timey-wimey stuff

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

Well, if they'd been CDC (which you're right is a better idea) they wouldn't mirror Bobby and Rufus. Unless of course Bobby and Rufus were also CDC. I got nothin. Maybe they lost their fake CDC IDs.

[percysowner.livejournal.com]

I've decided that the sad people were Schrodinger's sad people they were neither dead nor alive until someone saw them dead. Harvey was dead because Bobby found him dead. Bobby, who wouldn't have been released from the first house until Sam and Dean went to take care of THAT Soul Eater many years later, wasn't found dead by anyone, so he was alive, even though that Soul Eater wasn't killed until like 20 years later. Frankly it makes my head hurt and a local wine shop is having wine tasting tonight, so I'm going to go try lots of wine and not think about it too much.

I'm sure this was foreshadowing a lot, but I'm not sure what. I mean other than being beaten over the head with "not everyone gets out alive" and "there is always a sacrifice". But who won't get out alive and who will be the sacrifice, I have no idea.

[fanspired]

I like the Shrodinger's sad people theory :)

But how about this:

Bobby and Rufus' sigil didn't just trap the soul eater, it preserved the souls of the living victims keeping them "safe" until they could be returned to their own time by Sam and Dean's sigils. That's why it was a safe house . . . right? right? :D Bobby's friend died because he was already dead before Bobby painted the sigil so his soul was never preserved. Which means I'm going to have to change my answer for what happened to the sad people to: they went to heaven because their bodies had died before the saving sigil was painted.

OK, now you can get drunk.

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

This is awesome, and now we ALL need to go get drunk.

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

OMG. Schroedinger's Sad People. You guys are killing it.

[fanspired]

> But if the nest doesn't follow a linear timeline, why did Bobby and Dean have to wait a while before they could see the other people? Doesn't that imply linear time?

Yes, but you're going to have to hand wave it because it didn't mean anything. It was just there for dramatic effect.

> How is this episode foreshadowing the rest of the season?

None of the above. It just reverses all the previous foreshadowing implying that Dean, or Sam, or Cas, or possibly all three will die because Jensen, Jared and Misha have all signed their contracts and agreed their paychecks for s12 now so there's no longer any reason to threaten them with being written out. Everybody lives.

Oh, and they're going to trap Amara with a celtic sigil, or once Amara's defeated they're going to trap Lucifer with a celtic sigil.

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

YOU COMPLETE ME.

[fanspired]

Oo! Even better: someone goes back into the cage with Lucifer and draws a celtic sigil while someone draws one outside. The cage turns out to be timeless so Sam's soul is still in there, but when the sigils are complete they kill Lucifer and boot Sam's soul back to the moment after he dropped into the cage in the first place, and the last 6 years (or 186 years in the case of Sam's soul) never happened!

This is, of course next season's finale because after Amara is defeated, Lucifer will become the big bad for season 12, (after some imaginative hocus pocus that returns him to Mark Pellegrino's meat suit, naturally). Once he's defeated, as per above, the season will end with Sam, Bobby, Jody and Rufus spending Sunday lunch at Dean, Lisa and Ben's place.

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

This is either awful or inspired. I'm not sure.

[fanspired]

This means Adam'll be saved as well, of course :P

[ex1led-nyer.livejournal.com]

First, THANK YOU EVER SO for including Frank in the list of characters worthy of bringing back. I loved that paranoid old bastard!

I also miss Zachariah. And I'd like to say that I am so glad that I didn't watch Psych when it originally aired, because seeing Kurt Fuller as Zach if I'd seen him as Woody first would have made Zach a bit less scary. And I like scary Zach.

The main thing I handwaved was the absence of making any connection between the soul-eater and Amara, WHO EATS SOULS. Soul eating-- ring any bells, boys? I'm just going to assume they chatted about the coincidence on the way home.

But man, I loved this ep so much I want to sleep with it. Even if I did watch the whole thing with a map of Oklahoma in the upper right of my screen (storm warnings in counties that aren't even near me so who gives a fuck, get off my screen!) and the CW
logo below it.

Creepy sad people are creepy!

If there was any justice in the world of TV awards, this ep would win for editing, at the very least.

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

It's so weird and funny to watch evil Zachariah as adorable Woody! And yes, good call on the soul eating thing. I'm embarrassed I didn't notice that.

[z-publicizes.livejournal.com]

I spent most of the episode annoyed and unable to hand wave because I thought the Bobby & Rufus stuff was supposed to be set in season 5 and Bobby wasn't in the wheelchair. Then we got the Lilith reference, I realized it was season 4, and forgave the episode everything.

I'm going to slow-clap casey679 for best explanation of the timey-wimey stuff.

Foreshadowing for all of the above, probably.

I read Bobby Singer's Guide To Hunting this week and it was pretty good, as SPN tie-in books go. Would recommend to anyone looking for more of the Bobby & Rufus show.

And now I want to know what's going on in heaven, because wasn't Bobby in trouble with the management when last we left off?

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

And now I want to know what's going on in heaven, because wasn't Bobby in trouble with the management when last we left off?

Yes! I do wonder if we'll ever get back to that. Considering that Jim Beaver has managed to come back every season since Bobby died, I won't be surprised if we see him in S12.

[candygramme.livejournal.com]

I want them to bring back Tessa the Reaper. Did I say want?

I need them to bring back Tessa the Reaper.

[percysowner.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I meant to say this and then forgot. Tessa, come back!

[madebyme-x.livejournal.com]

Awesome poll! The only handwave I had was were those bones inside those ash filled coffins? Or maybe it was ash shaped bones that would collapse into ash? I can't believe that Bobby and Rufus would have reburied coffins where the bones weren't ALL destroyed.

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a good point. I wonder how burned those bones have to be, and how long that takes.

[ladyjane]

I already have a headache, so I'm not even going to begin contemplating timey-wimey Sad People. :-P
OTOH, there are so many people I want to see again (Linda Blair, anyone?), that I should just say, "Everybody. I want ALL the bodies back!" Then there are some sets of people I'd like to see together in an episode: 1) Grandpa Samuel and humanized Zacharia, for the epic battle of creepy pervs; 2) Charlie and Ash for the geek-fest; and 3) Charlie and Jo for the simple reason they never had a chance to meet.

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

Oh my. Zachariah and Samuel. That would be awesome!

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

Here are my thoughts on the timey-wimey:

The nest may exist outside of our time and space so that everyone goes there at the same time (which was why Dean and Bobby saw each other, but does not explain why they didn't see each other until the very end), but time does pass within the nest, perhaps at about the same rate, so once a soul arrives and its body dies in our realm (perhaps when its mouth turns black, or maybe that's when the soul starts being consumed), it can't return (and hopefully just went to heaven). But yeah, lots of big holes here, too, like why then doesn't every soul arrive there at the "start time"? ....

But as for why they can't see the others there at first, I assumed it's because they're fresh and not near death themselves and so can't see the other souls in their same state or the state they're drawing near--it did last, for both Bobby and Dean, less than a minute before they could see the others, more and more the closer they came to being past the point of no return.

Or maybe the black-mouthed people are like "ghosts/husks" of consumed souls? That would make the most sense of all (if you can get past the problem of something non-corporeal leaving something ELSE behind once consumed), but yeah, it's pretty much the same inconsistent mess as the monster stuff usually is, alas.

Great poll, dear.

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

Ack! So much thinking! I cannot handle it!

[themegalosaurus.livejournal.com]

What was wrong with Sam's hair? YOU MONSTER

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I stand by that statement. Look at it in the scenes in the hospital or when he's fighting with Dean. It's stiff and flat and floppy at the ends. I know you didn't notice because you were looking at his butt!

[meus_venator]

I really loved this episode and yes Robbie Thompson is always a bit heavy handed, but at least he hasn't started using big neon arrows to point all the clever things he does out. Maybe next season : P

I think the biggest thing I had to hand wave away was the spray die on Bobby's head to try and suggest he had more hair that he does now. EEEK. That red glow on his scalp was kind of scary, it was a relief every time they had him wearing a hat! : )
But for me this was a really lovely episode. I loved how the Rufus and Bobby scenes folded into Sam and Dean scenes. And the boys of course looked gorgeous. Best Carver season to date, by far.

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, I did not notice Bobby's faux hair.