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shirtlesssammy · 2 years ago

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The Winchesters 1x08: Hang on to Your Life

Kansas City, Missouri

Outside a bar called the Knave of Hearts. (The marquee indicates that Jericho is headlining with Brock Billings. Is Jericho a nice nod to Robbie and Rich’s old show? Love it.) Brock pops out of one of the doors and wanders into a back alley. He scares a poor street cat and promptly burns up for it.

Oh, wait, there’s got to be something more going on here. A whistling, dapper-dressed man approaches and warms his hands by the glowing charred remains of Brock.

Mary, Millie, and John are back at Mary’s tending to an unconscious Samuel’s wounds. Ada has prescribed a magical tea to help with the nasty Akrida gash on Samuel’s shoulder. Operation Heavy Flirting has entered its next stage for Mary and John, and Millie knows when to give these two Alone Time.

Samuel wakes and mumbles that he found a way to find the queen.

Mary and John tell Carlos and Lata about the Akrida queen. There’s been radio silence from the Akrida since they found Samuel. Carlos did hear about a man burning up outside the Knave of Hearts though. The Knave of Hearts is THE place in the midwest to make it in music. Mary opts to stay behind to help her father mend. John opts to stay behind to simp after Mary. Carlos approves.

“Being a hunter means living a life of sacrifice – not a lot of room for dreams. But you open your heart and get a little lucky, you’ll find you gain more than you lose.”

(Boris puts on clown nose)

(Natasha against her better judgment, reluctantly also puts on clown nose)

Once at the bar, the duo sets out to investigate the case. Carlos interrogates the bartender with no luck. Lata finds sigils in Brock’s dressing room. They discuss the meaning of them when Carlos runs into an old music buddy, Jericho. It seems they were a duo once upon a time named Rivers Gemini and The Jericho Kid.

Operation Flirtfest actually gets to the meat of the situation and John and Mary talk about the kiss. Neither regrets the kiss but Mary doesn’t know what the future holds.

Lata is having the Time of Her Life reminiscing with Rivers Gemini and The Jericho Kid.

As Carlos and Lata head out, Carlos knocks a hat off the table of another customer. He picks it up and hands it back to the man.

GABRIEL!!!!! OR LOKI!!!! OR THE TRICKSTER!!!!! THEY”RE ALL THE SAME!!!! AGGGHHHH

Lata’s van research reveals that Brock’s sigils were trying to protect him from dark magic. Lata asks if Carlos wants to go to the show that night. He declines and makes it clear that it was always a choice of careers. “It’s a matter of time before you come across a monster and then something has to die – the dream or the monster.”

They interview the roadie. He tells them about the hat man following Brock out of the bar the night he died.

Meanwhile, Millie and Samuel get to know each other. It’s chilly.

He doesn’t want the tea until Millie mentions that Ada prescribed it. Samuel is able to get in quite a few zingers about John. And he learns that Henry was a Men of Letters. (Or as he so Dean-ly says “Mole Men”, and then proceeds to explain the joke and it’s hilarious and not hilarious but at least we know where the Dean Dad humor comes from.) Millie makes it clear that without her “mole man” of a husband, Samuel’s daughter would be dead right now.

Jericho’s set has begun. Lata spots Gabriel Loki jamming out in the back of the room and alerts Carlos. Jericho starts to smoke and Carlos grabs him and drags him off stage. Lata goes to confront Gabriel Loki but it’s no longer him. Meanwhile, the bartender burns.

Lata and Carlos head backstage later to find Jericho hurriedly packing up. He’s somewhat reluctant to talk, but quickly falls sway to their puppy eyed earnestness. He explains that his solo career fizzled until a few weeks ago. He met Loki and, while drunk, agreed to some kind of deal. He woke up with a flaming tattoo on his forearm.

After that, his songs light the audience up inside…but in the bad, SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION way. Each night, one member of his audience dies a terrible, fiery death. If he doesn’t sing to someone (and sentence to burn), then the curse will burn him up instead. When Brock tried to get cut into the mad profits of Jericho’s rising career, Jericho killed him off. Tonight, he tried singing to the guy in the suit who bound him in the deal - some guy named Loki.

At Casa de Campbell, Samuel stumbles his way into the den, apparently with the intention of grilling John about his dad. Instead, Mary cuts him off. She wants to know more about what Samuel was mumbling in his sleep. How can they find the Akrida queen? Samuel explains that he picked up on some signs and decided to check them out. He’s got three rolls of film (THOSE WERE THE DAYS AMIRITE?) for them to develop and figure out clues. Mary stalks off to play photo lab. John confronts Samuel and tells him to treat Mary like a daughter “and less like a soldier.” Oof.

Back at the hunt, Lata, Carlos, and Jericho head for the van. Inside the van they find Loki lounging. “You were right about this one,” he says to Jericho, gesturing to Carlos. “He’s got pluck.”

Jericho’s largely unsurprised to see him, and we quickly find out why. Loki made a deal with Jericho - if he can pass on his curse to another then he can be free from it. Jericho led Loki to Carlos. Before their eyes, Loki transforms, proving his powers, and tells them that Carlos taking on the Mark - I mean, the tattoo - is the only way he can save his friend. Former friend?

Loki reads us Carlos’ resume, which is very enjoyable for me AND for him! It includes:

Love of modern dance

Gifted typist

Musician, hunter, hair model

He also sees Carlos’s nature, and knows that Carlos won’t walk away and let his friend remain cursed, or die. Against Lata’s protests, Carlos agrees to take on the curse.

Loki zaps Jericho away. Where did he go? “Oh, please, nobody cares. At least I don’t. He’s like a security deposit. Move on from that.” He hands Carlos a.k.a. Rivers Gemini a concert flyer for…his own comeback show. Carlos needs to play that night or face the consequences.

They bring the news back to the Campbell house. John suggests just removing the tattoo. Please. The only way you can do that is by magically de-aging Carlos for the duration of the episode via an ancient witch’s curse and who has one of THOSE just lying around? The team sets to their research tasks with gusto.

Samuel watches them spring into action. Carlos and Lata have come very far in just a few months, according to him. John earnestly tells him that it’s all down to Mary’s leadership. The gang settles in for a good old fashioned research and strategy session. Millie hands Carlos a pile of research, and heads off to prepare the “family special” dish for the somber occasion of Carlos’s maybe impending death. Millie’s special dish turns out to be a regular slice right out of my childhood. It appears to be something like…beef stroganoff over toast, with boiled green beans!

As they eat, they continue to research. Lata discovers a clue. Loki’s power is tied to a hand mirror he keeps with him. And sticking with the shiny objects theme, Samuel finds some guidance that says Loki can be killed with a shiny knife imbued with the hunter’s own blood. The gang prepare to slice their palms to seal the magic into their knives. (“Not the palms, my god you need to fight!” I hiss at them, but it’s like I’m watching them on a screen or something and they ignore my sage advice.)

There’s a brief hiatus where Mary pulls Samuel aside and tries to order him to stay home. It turns into a confrontation about him leaving on his secretive, solo hunt. He tells her that he tries to stay under her radar. He didn’t want her to die like Maggie did. He got her into hunting, just like his dad did…and he hates it. OH THE REGRETSSSS. “When I put that knife in your hands, I chose this life for you. I forced you to follow in my footsteps, just like my dad forced me. It was wrong.” I can barely hear him over the deafening sound of Cat’s in the Cradle and glass crunching between my teeth. But! Mary’s a glass case of emotions as Samuel tells her that he wanted to get rid of all monsters so that Mary could live a life free of hunting. Instead, he stumbled into the looming threat of the Akrida.

Back inside, the team imbues their knives with blood mojo and then they all head to the bar to finish their hunt. Loki shows up, sassy and saucy and shaking up a cocktail. He sizes up their bloody blades and intentions, and suggests evening the odds. We get a lovely fight scene of Loki, Loki, Loki, Loki, and Loki versus the gang.

They scuffle to the tune of Saturday Night’s Alright, until Samuel gets pinned down. Mary knifes Loki and smiles triumphantly at her kill, only for Samuel to tell her he won’t fall for any more of her tricks. Samuel knifes her in the gut and then twists it. Mary morphs back into Loki, who topples to the floor, apparently dead. Samuel tells everyone that Loki/Mary attacked with his left hand, so it couldn’t have been Mary.

Everyone regroups for a moment, until Loki hauls himself up again. ‘Twas but a flesh wound! He gleefully watches as they realize that Carlos still has the tattoo. He snaps his fingers, and the scene gets set. Carlos gets a wardrobe change and appears on stage, decked out in finery with a guitar. Mary, John, Lata, and Samuel immediately find themselves bound to chairs. Just behind Carlos, Jericho sits bound and gagged. Loki suggests Jericho as the ideal target. After all, why should Carlos suffer for Jericho’s misdeed?

Carlos lifts up the guitar as though to play and then —

Smashes it! Carlos gives us a wild window into his soul, and it’s beautiful. He sacrificed music to hunt, but he gained more than he ever thought he would. Carlos starts to burn when all of a sudden…the smoke rising from his arms turns to GLITTER. NOW it’s a PARTY!

The tattoo zaps away from Carlo’s arm. Loki screams at Carlos and tells him that humanity should always choose the selfish way out. “I am not gonna lose to you!” he exclaims. Just then, a hand mirror crackles from the table. Loki gets sucked into the mirror and a moment later, everyone’s free. Lata delightedly taps at Loki’s trapped visage.

Carlos tells everyone that they’re his family. HEARTS!

The next day, Millie heads out with the box. She tells a skeptical Samuel that she’s going to try to repair it. She IS a mechanic after all. Samuel tells Millie that she has a “good kid.” You did it, bbys.

Mary brings out the newly developed photos from Samuel’s reconnaissance. The photos are barely legible - mostly washed out and useless for intel. Samuel tells Mary to take John to reassess the locations. While they do that, he’s headed to Ada to work on figuring out some magical means to defeat the queen. Samuel hands Mary a little recipe for a magical ant-Akrida tattoo. Handy!

At the venue, Jericho contemplates his guitar. He plans to turn himself into the police, but Carlos tells him that’ll only get him in an institution. Carlos suggests an alternative: move on and put some good in the world. Jericho convinces Carlos to play one last concert. ONE. MORE. TIME!

Cut to the concert, where Lata shrieks at Carlos to play some Sabbath (she’s more of a metal girl). Readers, I love her.

Carlos plays the theme song of the episode: Hard Times Come Around No More. We flash back to Mary handing her dad his hat and giving him a farewell hug. Elsewhere, Millie opens up the box. In the clubhouse, Lata locks away Loki’s mirror in a trunk.

Carlos’s song is lovely and all, and I’m experiencing emotions, but also. ALSO. CHUCK IS THERE. IN THE BAND. PLAYING KEYBOARD. Guys. We get some good, clear close-ups of Chuck to really drive it home. Amazing. Love it.

Later, John and Mary look at the photos and make out. Mary’s ready to take the leap with John. They’re about to kiss again, when John looks down at one of the barely developed photos. He recognizes the man in the photo as being the same person who gave him his dad’s letter. It’s…..

……

……………….

DEAN BEAN WINCHESTER!

For I’ve Got Him, He’s Right Here Science:

Natasha: Okay, Dean in the past is VERY IMPORTANT TO ME but did anyone else get some serious Book of Job / God placing bets for and against humanity. Who was Loki/Gabriel playing against that got him trapped in the mirror? It was someone who thought humanity would pull through and be selfless…

Oh Quote Times Come Again No More:

Lata, let’s boogie

I don’t know why everyone that comes in here thinks I’m a shrink. If you wanna cry on something, cry into your glass

It’s a matter of time before you come across a monster and then something has to die – the dream or the monster.

Doctor who?

The least you could do is treat her more like a daughter and less like a soldier

Hey guys, monsters that kill to feed and survive are one thing. Ones that kill for kicks - we’re in for a fight

Weird sensation but contemplating my mortality has surprisingly made me hungry.

For the brains of this operation, you are not the smartest cookies. Cookies aren’t smart to begin with. Think on that.

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spnwin #spnwin spoilers #spnwin recap #the winchesters #spn #mary campbell #john winchester #carlos cervantez #latika desai #millie winchester #Samuel Campbell #dean winchester #spnwin 1x08 #hang on to your life #the winchesters season one #gabriel #chuck shurley

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shirtlesssammy · 2 years ago

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The Winchesters 1x10: Suspicious Minds

Lawrence, Kansas

1957

On a lonely stretch of highway, a woman paces around her broken-down vehicle. Another woman stops and offers to help.

Unfortunately for her, helping seems to imply getting the ol’ Sam Winchester head treatment. The attacker turns out to be an Akrida!

Lawrence, Kansas

1972

Millie has installed a state-of-the-art alarm system for the clubhouse in Mary’s home. She bolts when finished, leaving Mary and John to continue their hunt for a way to take out the Akrida. John finds an unopened letter from KSU. Mary applied, but now is too nervous to read the contents of the envelope.

John opens it for her and she was accepted! This calls for a make-out sesh, but they’re sadly interrupted by the handy bell Millie just installed!

“Hunting and happy endings don’t usually mix, so when you get your chance, you got to ask yourself, “How far will I go to get it?”’

(Boris: Yes, Dean, over the next four episodes, please enlighten us on how far you’ll go for your happy ending)

Lata and Carlos are at a dead-end with their hunt for the Akrida queen. Carlos seems distracted. When Lata presses for answers, he admits that he can’t stop thinking about Anton. He’s lovesick, guys! And they’re taking it slow, so he’s a mess right now. He resolves to break up with Anton, and forget what he needs to forget. That gives Lata an idea –find someone that was possessed by an Akrida to mine their memories. Carlos has an idea!

Meanwhile, Mary and John sneak into the clubhouse and find (*Fran Fine voice activated*) MR. SHEFFIELD! Or, er, Porter J. Hobbes, Men of Letters. (British Men of Letters?!)

He’s there to help them find and kill the Akrida queen. Mary demands his full CV, so he fills them in on how he was a neurosurgeon until he was recruited into the Men of Letters. He was their resident Dr. Frankenstein, conducting experiments on monsters and turning them into watchdogs for the MoL(e men). He retired about 15 years ago to a quiet life with no family.

Lata and Carlos head to a motel room of impeccable decor. They found Roxy, and folks, she’s not doing great. (Lata on the other hand is in peak hair, wardrobe, makeup, and accessories mode. She is a vision tonight!)

They ask her about the Akrida. She can’t remember clearly. She doesn’t want to remember. She’s lost everything: her girlfriend (we keep winning, guys!), her job, and her apartment. Now, she’s just going to drink her way to oblivion. Lata suggests another way.

Back at the clubhouse, Mr Sheffield Hobbes tells Mary and John that he can create a toxin that will kill the queen but he needs Akrida stingers to make it work. Mary knows of a human under Akrida control.

Enter Officer Jones, the policeman with the nice mustache. Busy eating doughnuts, he gets a call on the CB for roadside assistance. He’s quickly overpowered by Mary and John.

At the monthly Akrida Meeting of Minds, a group of Akrida touch on old business: the finer points of diner food (ranch dressing) AND new business: KILLING DEAN WINCHESTER.

(Yeah, that’ll never be funny, sorry guys!)

In the lab, Hobbes has Officer Jones hooked up to some heavy sedatives. Now is his chance to pay back “those bugs for what they took from [him].” Whoops, not from HIM per se, from EVERYONE. Hahaha. Pay no attention to the ring indentation on his finger.

Carlos arrives back at the motel room with ingredients for Lata’s blood spell. She’s been learning things from Tony in her dreams. Ooohlala. They’re going to extract and then erase Roxy’s memories of the Akrida.

Lata carefully paints the spell onto Roxy’s arms, and the spell ignites blue. Roxy begins to relive her memories of the Akrida attack and possession. Lata reassures her, and asks her for intel on where the Queen is hiding.

At the Clubhouse, Mary reads up on their new visitor and the MoL’s creepy monster torture lab. She discovers that the actual creator of the lab was credited as the physician’s assistant. When they look up the assistant’s file, they discover that the good-n-creepy doctor is ACTUALLY the assistant, Jack Wilcox! Furthermore, Wilcox was kicked out of the MoL for experimenting on humans (and Henry Winchester turned him in).

Mary and John stroll over to the atrium to confront Wilcox. He reads the room pretty quickly, and chucks yellow powder in their faces, knocking them out. His accent shifts from posh British to southern smarm in an instant.

At the motel, Carlos digs through Roxy’s belongings and finds a warehouse that matches Roxy’s description of the Queen’s digs. (Pun completely intended.) Lata watches over Roxy, who stirs uncomfortably. She wakes up from what is only stage one of Lata’s forgetting spell with all her trauma still fresh on her mind. Lata reassures her - stage two of the spell is coming - and starts work on it. Carlos offers her come-down tea, and sympathy. Roxy’s expression morphs from agony to determination.

“I don’t want to forget,” she tells them. She wants to remember the Akrida and the torment she went through, so she can ALSO remember that she helped to bring them down. “Time to dry out,” she mutters and grabs her stash of alcohol to pour down the sink. She also offers up her services to take down the queen, should the need arise in the future. YES!

At the Clubhouse, John’s tied up to the stairs in the Atrium. Somebody should travel back in time and tell the MoL to just cut to the chase and build a bunch of chain-cuffs at the foot of the stairs. Save some time AND some rope! The now overtly villainous Wilcox announces that Mary’s been readied for surgery. YIKES. He’s been casing the Scooby gang for a little while and set his sights on John and Mary for his victims. When Lata and Carlos took off in their “hippie van” he swooped in. Oh, and the police officer they rescued? Yeah. He died. Wilcox was more interested in retrieving the stingers than helping anyone. “Anywho,” Wilcox basically says as he strolls away, “I’m off to perform supernatural surgery on your girlfriend.”

Mary SPARKLE EYES Campbell wakes up strapped to a chair in the lab. For a moment I picture Mary Winchester from the latter seasons of Supernatural in sparkle eyeshadow. (Who among us HAS NOT worn large amounts of glitter on one’s face in their youth?) Wilcox congenially introduces Mary to the other occupant of the lab: a comatose woman who turns out to be Dorothea from the cold open, and his wife.

The Akrida took revenge on Wilcox after he was kicked out of the MoL - and took it out in their attack on Dorothea. He took her home and placed her in a suspended magical state. Instead of a true love’s kiss to wake her up, he plans to use the Akrida’s stingers to transfer Dorothea’s consciousness to Mary’s body. “There’s no world worth saving without her in it,” he argues. (I turn this over as a possible thesis statement.)

John slices his way out of his ropes, only to face a hulking golem controlled by Wilcox. In the lab, they hear the fisticuffs ensuing and Wilcox villain-drops how to defeat the golem: remove the scroll from the golem’s mouth. John’s never been up against a golem, and tries to sweet talk his way out of the fight. When he tries to knife the guy and hits stone, he rethinks his plan.

Wilcox merrily tells Mary that the golem has been instructed not to kill (or presumably severely maim) John because he intends to use John’s body for himself. So that both he AND his wife can traipse about in young, hot bodies. They’ll get revenge on the Akrida and then live their best lives. Adding an extra creep factor, he tells Mary that she won’t DIE. No, it’s SO much better. She’ll ride in the backseat of her own mind and body like some kind of relationship voyeur bonus person? Gross.

John bursts in, pursued by the golem. Mary tells him to get the scroll from his mouth and then wriggles her way out of her bindings. They fight the golem, while Wilcox frantically looks after his wife’s body (who has been unceremoniously dumped onto the floor). During the fight, the golem is beheaded and his head incinerated in the lab’s inciner-monster-inator. The golem solidifies and crushes Wilcox and his Snow White wife to death. (Boris: Yeah, um, having a golem burned in an oven is not a good look. I really have no words.)

Later, John and Mary bury them in unmarked graves in the forest. Is it their favorite unmarked gravesite? Inquiring minds want to know! Mary muses on Wilcox’s actions.

Important dialog alert!

Mary: He gave up everything. All so he wouldn’t lose Dorothea.

John: Things we do for love

Mary: ….

Mary: It’s not love

John: What do you mean?

Mary: Jack was only thinking of himself. Of what he wanted. It didn’t matter if it cost him his humanity to get it. That’ll never be us, right?

John: Never

That evening, Lata and Carlos drive. Carlos can’t believe Lata withheld her amazing memory-altering skillz from him. He would have totally asked her to erase Anton from his crush-addled mind. “But seeing Roxy choose to live with her memories of the Akrida and hearing her say she’d be okay in spite of it made me realize that sometimes the things you want to forget are probably the things you shouldn’t.” For Carlos, that’s something SWEET AND LOVELY YAAAAY.

The Mystery Machine arrives at Roxy’s warehouse. It’s looking very abandoned-warehousey, when suddenly one of the Akrida pulls up and strides inside. They found her nest!

We’re ready for an easy, triumphant conclusion, when John gets back to the garage. Kyle’s waiting for him there. “You don’t know it yet, but we’re about to get in a big fight about Mary.” Smirking, Kyle reveals that he’s been carefully setting John up. He’s been writing in his diary about John’s harassment, talking to the cops about his rap sheet, AND he just so happened to call the cops before heading to the garage. John realizes Kyle’s controlled by the Akrida. Kyle smirks and pulls out John’s knife, slicing himself. John begs him to stop, but Kyle - er, the Akrida - stabs himself in the heart.

Kyle dies as Milie arrives back at the garage. In the distance, police sirens wail.

Natasha: Augh, we’re already at episode TEN? These are going by too fast! (Shakes fist at CW)

These Quotes Go On When I Close My Eyes:

Car trouble? And on my way back from the market with a pot roast in the oven!

A normal life’s right around the corner for you, Campbell

Taking things slow and seeing faces in pancakes is for stupid, boring people who don’t have the fate of the world on their excellently proportioned shoulders

Oh, you dirty dozing tramp. Have you been seeing him in your dreams?

I guess research is just another arrow in my quiver of talents

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spnwin #spnwin spoilers #spnwin recap #the winchesters #spn #mary campbell #john winchester #carlos cervantez #latika desai #millie winchester #suspicious minds #spnwin 1x10 #the winchesters season one

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