#greys 12x06 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

elizabethrobertajones · 8 years ago

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I don't know if you have noticed, but they have some serious clothing issues in season 12. Seasons 1-11 we just had Sam and Dean. But now that there's Mary, they can't all wear plaid. Because there would be too much flannel with three Winchesters. I'm being serious. I've rewatched season 12, and there's no episode where all three Winchesters wear plaid. One of them always has to sacrifice the hunter look.

Yeah, they don’t all wear it all the time anyway - Dean’s always had a bunch of stock shirts which are so boring he can wear them all the times he’s going to get killed or whatever gets him covered in blood to the point that he can’t use it any more :P Sam has slightly more variety, I think, because he doesn’t wear as many block colours in general, wears his shirts buttoned up so Dean can get away with wearing a block colour shirt and t-shirt, and Sam’s on the wrong side of the self-imposed class divide so doesn’t wear henleys either, all adding up to him needing at least subtle stripes on his shirts a lot of the time… Sam wearing boring grey in 11x22 should have been a warning something pretty horrific was going to happen to him because that’s Dean’s choice of colour for “I’m about to have a bad day and I don’t know it yet” which he at least also mixes into his regular wardrobe to add the element of surprise :P

Buuut yeah I bet there was at least 1 time they had a moment where they did all wear plaid and looked at each other and had to work out who had to go change immediately.

Anyway since we have a whole season now, let’s look at Mary because I like looking at Mary :D

12x01:

generic hunter jacket, jeans and boots (workman boots halfway between Sam n Dean’s). Shirt doesn’t look like much of anything she likes wearing, never did find out where Dean got this from for her, because finding perfectly fitted jeans at dawn in the middle of nowhere within apparent walking distance of the bunker?? There’s a weirdo gap where he stole clothes for his mom off a clothes line or something. I think the point was it was white and a little lacy at the top, mimicking the nightgown as a shirt, upgraded for hunter Mary. Easing the transition along :P

12x02:

she’s so SMALL.

At some point Dean also found her fluffy slippers. These are modern fluffy slippers because they don’t match ones we’ve seen him wearing around the bunker which I assume are period authentic ones.

Dean wears grey and black, I guess to match Sam’s nondescript colours, while Mary cracks out her first plaid, AND with a white henley underneath

she’s still wearing white because mom, and Sam hasn’t seen her yet, but the plaid is the sign of hunting, and she’s officially dressing more like Dean right now. Dean wore red n blue and achieved balance in 11x23 and Mary is immediately the next one to wear it as the next plaid on screen since. I think it’s a sort of family integration theme since Sam n Dean often are red v blue coded.. I like this shirt because it has an XOXOXOXOX pattern embroidered on it. The mumsy version of their plaid :P

Cas is not wearing plaid.

I noticed a couple of episodes further down the line that she almost always wears her shirt untucked on the right side, and I guess I thought she was just rumpled because of the fight but she already does it in both main outfits this episode.

Sam has swapped into plaid, but Dean and Mary are dressing identically except for the colour schemes and Mary’s untucking habit.

12x03:

Mary’s wearing the ring prominently for I think the first time, and of course is wearing her shirt tucked in like that (I think this is where I first noticed it) and is the outfit she cuts her hair in, so having her in 1 pale layer quietly mimicks her show-long look for a final time before she ditches it for having a much broader and more practical wardrobe. She’s wearing this to mourn John and read the journal, and also her conversation with Cas. Looking like a default Mary, as she “should” in the saint!Mary image influences Cas to feel he has to leave because she belongs or should feel she does and he wants her to bond with her sons, but she begins breaking away immediately after this.

Aaand Sam’s still the only one wearing any sort of pattern, and Mary is dressed like Dean (but belt, no untucked shirt) and Dean is wearing grey so he doesn’t step on anyone’s toes…

Mary also keeps wearing the red maroon of family, in a one off, no one else ever wears anything remotely like it, sleeveless jacket, which she wears exclusively in the car or in the dark so no screen shots

I think this is a lovely sweater, tucked into the left side, a tank top underneath it, which is like in 12x14 where she’ll be wearing a blank tank top similar but without the fashion layer on top, and her ring very obviously displayed. Going from white because mom to black because mourning, both her entire family, and in these conversations, the old way of hunting. She’s moved I guess from shock and non-stop action to the next step of grief.

At the motel Sam wears green and purple plaid, and Dean wears a denim shirt.

Look what you are doing to your sons, Mary.

12x06:

Mary is introduced boots first (the cowboy boots seen in her room in 12x02?)

This outfit is truly unflattering and practical - she’s swimming in the coat, but she’s also wearing a belt again like 12x03, which was the other way to distinguish how she wears her shirts, and on the family unity theme not only wearing red n blue plaid again, but has it half buttoned half unbuttoned, bridging the gap between how Dean and Sam wear theirs. She exists in a lot of spaces between - half-tucked, or half-buttoned.

Dean once again wears plain grey, and Sam wears grey plaid.

12x09:

White because Lawrence, plain blue shirt in closeness to Dean’s outfits, and wearing *dark* grey-green because she’s in mourning still. She’s not wearing plaid or family colours because she’s on her rejecting her living family tour in exchange for moping about the dead.

Swaps to red to yell at Cas for not wearing plaid. She’s angry, and she’ll later still be wearing this for getting Alicia’s call and going off on the path of distracting herself with hunting, a la Mark!Dean with random vampires, when Dean got really into wearing a red shirt of a similar hue. You couldn’t see the ring in Lawrence but it’s on top of her clothes again here. Maybe she just couldn’t bear to expose it while sitting in the same place she had her first date with John? Winchester repression and all.

Cas is not wearing plaid, and this is the epitome of ‘hey we’re gonna wear boring grey shirts to lose in 12x08 and boring grey jumpsuits all of 12x09’ for the Winchesters to keep them out of it, but Mary has the same under layers as at Mulroney’s but instead of dark grey-green she’s wearing her tan jacket, the Cas colour scheme because they’re bonding, and hilariously (or not >.>) the colour Sam is wearing in 12x21 in the letter scene… Dean has a plaid in these colours too which he wore in 12x13 to see Gavin reunited with his lost love, and first wore in 10x14 at the very end, so I’ve got it lodged in my brain as the Colette/pining set of colours on others.

I guess in Mary’s case here it’s not about dead lovers, but an upgrade to focusing on a now problem instead of a past problem, and also of course is part of the huge Cas n Mary web of parallels, of which this episode visually doubles down on with the Cas missing Dean paralleling Mary in 12x03 missing John sitting at the table in the dark in the Bunker thing. Actually missing Sam n Dean, she sits at the kitchen table, the private family space, to avoid any cross-contamination of visual images, and links to the bacon scene in 12x03 where she and Cas both refused to engage with Dean’s happy family breakfast…

In the first scene Mary’s wearing this we get introduced by ANOTHER pan up from her boots (her… 3rd? maybe? already) this time again showing she’s wearing Dean-like boots, and her more killing-things friendly belt choice, and dark red plaid (so dark you can’t see it well >.>) and dark pink shirt, all of which screams Mark of Cain and Dean parallels.

Cas is still not wearing plaid.

this is the most generic Winchester plaid she has so far rather than one that yells mark of cain or the family balance and integration themes - everything from “what you needed most” to Dean n Sam getting to a better understanding re: all 12x22 did for them as well) but fits in the TFW plaid from earlier, with tan and blue (Dean is wearing his original tan plaid in that scene in 5x13 although not the first time he wears it - it goes back to Nightshifter and for some reason my brain always tells me he didn’t have the plaid until 8x01 at which point I briefly clip out of reality every time he first appears in it in season 2 :P) Anyway 5x13 is aaaall about Mary and their family destiny/curses (I say curses because it’s about the apocalypse but Michael throws in the Cain and Abel thing for free)

Since Sam n Dean didn’t get a chance this episode (and were purposefully wearing non-memorable clothes in 12x08 so nothing important got lost) she’s covered the whole plaid thing for them. She’s making the choice to work with the BMoL here and wearing Sam-like plaid in a Dean-like way - note the sleeves too - but ultimately this arc does fall on Sam.

Anyway she is acting as the representative head of the family here making the decision for them.

12x12:

ANON YOU ARE WRONG. All 4 Winchesters are wearing plaid, because my brain just clipped out of reality while I had it paused like this:

and my brother who is coincidentally here on the other side of my monitor and I forgot was in the room because he’s listening to podcasts, stretched, and his plaid-covered elbow appeared behind Cas and I thought it was his.

(I’m very tired, it’s been a loooong day)

Anyway Sam’s wearing blue and white, Mary is wearing blue and black, Dean is wearing Burger Date Plaid which is more important for the diner scene than the rest of the episode, and Cas is at least going to have the decency to nearly die on the plaid sofa the same-ish pattern as Dean’s shirt next episode.

I suppose when 3 Winchesters get together all wearing plaid, Bad Shit Happens, so if all FOUR of them wore plaid at once, reality might fracture, and considering season 13 looks like reality is going to be having some serious fracturing issues anyway… Yeah. Bad idea.

Even Wally is wearing plaid…

Much luck it gave him.

Anyway Mary’s generally having some more dark arc stuff, with a blank henley and the evil version of sam’s plaid, and a nondescript pale green jacket over the top. The ONLY reason Mary has this many plain nondescript jackets of varying hues is for symbolism. In this case green is kinda toxic and since she and Sam have negative versions of each other’s plaid and connect over the yellow eyes thing, I think it’s more about her guilt.

This all transforms at the end to the 3rd version on a simple outfit, of the one from 12x09 but this time with pale blue to make her even more Cas-like, but these colours could honestly just be associated with bad decisions, given the context here… I mean, not like Cas isn’t a freakin beacon of them :P

She also blends nicely into the diner, with its blue and beige tones. Compared to Ketch in his fancy suit. She also isn’t wearing plaid for this, going under the table with this as it were.

12x13:

Sam, Dean and Mary aren’t all in the same scene but Dean is wearing dark grey/puple and Sam a dary grey/blue with thin red lines - Mary’s wearing the opposite again, white with thick red outlined in blue.

She’s also untucked on the same side again.

Sam and Dean swap into the generic red plaid for Sam and the TFW/Cas plaid I mentioned for Dean - beige, white and blue, which he wears the rest of the episode while dealing with the MacLeod family drama.

This is their most plaid intensive episode, then as all of them get a costume change and all opt for more plaid. They’re working on family loyalty stuff so it’s quite important.

Mary’s next one is for the very monotone scene with Ketch, where she’s wearing grey and brown, and her shirt isn’t tucked interestingly or anything.

I think that’s about as much as you need to say about this episode :P

12x14:

Ooops I forgot 12x13 fed into this episode. In my defence it’s a bad idea to split a 2 episode cliffhanger by cliffhangering like 3-4 minutes before the end of the episode, even though the next episode is going to start immediately where you left off with what of all of the things happening in your cluttered episode is the main plot thread… Ah well.

Mary shows up in a cream henley, under a strawberries and cream plaid - although pink is a baaad sign on this show, I guess she may have been aiming for cute and mumsy again, but not wearing the cute XOXOXOX family integration theme plaid from 12x02 when it looked she might have a hope of doing that before draaaama hit.

Sam is wearing all black (keeping out of the way in the fight and thematically) and Dean is wearing a non-pink and much more tightly patterned shirt (he’s drawing those family lines closer together) in the same broad colour category as Mary’s, but does sort of link them - they have a fight that gets thiiis close to dealing with Dean had to be the mom all their lives not Mary, because Berens and all, but they don’t get close enough and it has to wait until 12x22 after this, but it aligns them in a different way to how Sam and Mary have been having night and day versions of each other’s plaids, just as her blue n red plaid is so similar to Dean colours, but not the ways Sam wears it.

We then cut to her wearing her black tactical gear, and in an alarming move for a Winchester, later just a tank top. Incidentally they should all do this more often, Mary right through to Cas. She however is not bearing all, because her texts just aren’t laying out the whole problem and I don’t think she can see it, because she brings sam to meet her, and gives him the pitch as soon as he gets out the car.

The main day of the action, Dean wears a red shirt, Sam wears blue, white and beige plaid (They own a LOT of these colour-combinations)

Mary is wearing red and black plaid I think the same as 12x09’s main action, which aligns her with Dean (for the Ketch seduction parallel?) and sets her at odds with Sam so they’re not too conspicuously wearing night and day versions of each others’ clothes. They ARE both wearing hunter plaid (as Dean says, to do the job you put on a flannel…) while dealing with the hunter specific arc of the season, while Dean is wearing a plain red shirt, which he uses to face inner demons. Mary’s colour aligns her with Dean, the pattern with Sam, and he wears a red plaid shirt more often than Dean these days. For Sam and Mary it’s an episode where they’re doing their thing together. Especially as it deals with repercussions not root causes - their lives branched, and Mary’s giving Sam the speech about a world without monsters like he can reclaim what life he lost, but he is on the path to lead the hunters and all his MoL stuff, so the TFW/bad decisions colours are appropriate? Mary’s on a dark arc which the actions make clear but the red plaid is always a nice reminder of when it’s channelling Dean… Sam wears his with impunity.

12x17:

Another episode where Mary and Sam n Dean are separated for the most part so can get away with them all having at least worn plaid in the same episode, though 12x12 remains the only one they all wore it TOGETHER (see above: look what happens >.>)

I’m still bothered by the way Buckleming often write Sam and Dean as a total matching unit and I never managed to put my finger on it until this episode when they give Mick the “so yeah Lucifer’s baby is a thing” speech because it combines multiple other scenes they’ve written in the past to finally just make SamandDean a stock exposition unit. I probably have another post to write about this and how they helped contribute to an overall weird feeling with both sides of the fandom stanning for 1 brother and some who love both feeling their fave/s was totally sidelined this season - done right Sam n Dean as passive viewers to the story is a great device (11x14!!) and this season did it a lot as a way to lighten the load on dudes who managed to have 3 babies between the two of them this year in the space of a couple of months, but also to broaden the story to give Cas and Mary development and to follow some other threads beyond what the Winchesters see and know just because the show has grown so far out of its original bounds… But anyway this wardrobe moment the morning after makes Sam and Dean literally dress identically to talk to Mick, and the show knows the theme, it just wasn’t well-done here, and I love the use over all in the season but this episode made me really side-eye the execution.

The wardrobe in the Mary stuff was good though. She wears her XOXOXOXOX plaid with the red n blue blah blah family integration theme - Dean’s wearing his About A Boy plaid up there, incidentally, which is red and BLACK lines - Mary’s one was her uniform for saving Sam at the start of the season and she’s at a cusp of things here. She’s in a comfortable pattern working with Ketch, but I think lets her guard down to sleep with him, and though she puts up emotional walls immediately and there’s all the stuff with her ring and mourning and wanting to have both hunting and family (a GOOD side of the red n blue theme in other places) she’s really putting herself on the path that leads to her mini demon!Dean arc in 12x21/22 as the inevitable result of this Mark of Cain arc stuff since midseason.

12x20:

Grey jumpsuits, for her and Ketch, which now I’m looking at the costumes for season 12, should have been an even more obvious clue after 12x09, although honestly the fake out introduction to Mary in this episode with the shifter in captivity with her face > the end of the episode with Mary captured, was pretty telling without throwing in the obvious prison uniform imagery that this jumpsuit transforms completely depending on context; Mary in the chair or Mary out the chair.

Sam n Dean off on their side of things has Sam in the 12x12 light blue shirt, Dean in his off-brand demon!Dean shirt which isn’t a demon!Dean shirt at all, but one of coping and better decisions and trying a better way. But looks a whole lot like the old ways on the surface :P

Mary, meanwhile, is wearing grey plaid again. The prison jumpsuits thing is making me wonder belatedly if wearing grey this season has been about imprisonment, metaphorically or not - Sam wore it in 12x01 etc, and Kelly had a grey coat she wore a lot.

this one is darker, and with her black coat, her henley buttoned almost all the way up. Mary is defensive and secretive and beginning to be very suspicious about what she got herself into, investigating or interrogating in all her scenes except for the one where she kicks Ketch in the nuts aka the best thing Mary did for like all of 2 more episodes before she was like “I wanna punch the Devil in the face” because after killing Ketch she needed new goals :P

12x21:

Bearing in mind how MANY times she changes her clothes, including swapping out jackets and all, once she’s under the BMoL’s control, she has a freshly laundered set of exactly what she was wearing in 12x20 and no changes. It’s out of her control to decide now.

She starts dressed jacket and all, then is down to the plaid in the next scene and finally stripped down to the henley and a single layer as the BMoL metaphorically strip her inside too.

Then, new DARK jacket, I think a looser shirt, but the SAME grey plaid at the end. Untucked, on the wrong side.

Incidentally if you want bad things happening when all the Winchesters are in one room in plaid, Sam’s in a generic Sam shirt, Dean in his red and black checked plaid which is aaaalmost exactly like both Sam and Mary’s version of it, but not like the About a Boy one or other variations he has on the theme.

12x22

Hey guess who is now wearing grey plaid with RED AND BLUE in it under the black jacket? Aka Mary is imprisoned (we’re going with this, pls ignore how I’ve decided like 50% of the themes AS I analysed it :P) but has family back in her plaid - a sign she can be brought back, and a reason to hope at this point, and by the end of the episode, what she’s wearing for FAMILY REINTEGRATION :D

Hey look they all wear plaid :D

This may or may not open a rift in reality.

12x23:

Mary is back in white but in a wearing comfy plaid way, and it’s got blue and red in it. She’s mom again, but now updated and upgraded to being a hunter in the GOOD way not the way in 12x01 where she wore a white lace shirt just to hastily make her practical for one day of action, but she’s comfortably being Mom Winchester in the new understanding of what their family is.

Sam and Dean are in red and blue-ish colour coding although Dean’s actually in grey and you know what fuck them wearing grey. Take that shirt off right now.

nothing happens to Dean but he does kind of get shattered at the end of the episode and we don’t know what would happen to him next, so like I said maybe just avoid on principle.

Anyway the whole family looks all comfy and soft, at least until Dean and Mary put practical jackets over theirs, and Sam stacks the orange jacket over the brown-red plaid.

Cas continues to not wear plaid and pays the ultimate price. Get with the picture, buddy.

#Asks #the sam shoe saga #this is needlessly long #my stuff #season 12 #Mary F Winchester

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