#to establish a broader context . i think i just wish the show had more breathing room instead of 8 30 minute episodes

[francisforever2014]

also ok i watched the christmas episode of the bear and i did greatly enjoy it . i ❤️ dysfunction. twas a bit heavy handed at times and the sheer amount of famous guest actors was silly but idc i love jon bernthal so i had fun

[mittensmorgul]

300, and other random observations

Last night Mel and I were scouring the episode looking for the expected obvious “300″ to jump out from some random door or building number, or appear SOMEWHERE in the episode the way 100 did in 5.18:

or 200 did in 10.05:

In case it isn’t obvious from this image, this is the 200 Motel:

So I was looking for the 300 in 14.13, and weirdly didn’t find anything quite this obvious. I rambled a bit about my search here on @drsilverfish;s post:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/182669346730/14x13-lebanon-some-silent-storytelling-notes-on

But I saw some interesting things in the pawn shop and around Lebanon that I can appreciate, as well as some very well hidden “300″ references. Basically this is just my Jerry Wanek appreciation post, because what a guy!

All screencaps are from hotn.

The one thing I’d overlooked as a HUGE “300″ is the most prominently featured guitar in the shop:

That one right in the middle, raised up above the others, looks a bit downtrodden. It’s missing its strings, first off. While another guitar is labeled “PLAY ME!” this one isn’t playable at all. And yet it might be the rarest instrument in the shop, and with a bit of tlc could easily be worth thousands. It’s a ww2 era Gibson ES300. Between 1942 and 1946, Gibson only produced a few acoustic guitars, since metals for the electric pickups were needed for the war effort. I think this could be one of those guitars. So talk about a big, blaring 300. Unstrung, a product of war, seemingly unplayable, but with care and attention, possibly the most valuable and precious instrument in the shop. Easy to see why it’s given pride of place.

But again, this isn’t an obvious 300. You kinda have to know something about something to even recognize it among all the other second-hand guitars.

(also lol at the giant tv in the background that makes us think of 13.16)

(and lol at the tuba that makes me think of the house of horns or whatever from 6.06. This show has such a bizarre history with pawn shops...)

Under a cut because this got way longer and more rambly and tangential than I intended >.>

There’s a lot going on just at the register:

Roadhouse Monkey, “You break it, you buy it,” and the sign that says “Your baby daddy sitting in jail? Sell your gold and get bail!” with the weirdest assortment of random jewelry pictured on it... and oddly a mala draped around the register itself. Clearly this dude hasn’t been using his mala for meditation practice.

In the post I linked above, I already described their entrance into the secret back room, where everything was “one of a kind” and we immediately saw two identical goblets. Go read that post for more on that. :D

Behind the goblets, it almost looks like a heart frozen in a block of something. But what the shop owner points to is a Hand of Glory, which was the central magical item from 3.06, the plot of which had to do with people who committed acts of violence against family (and the spell they found to banish the ghost killing people forever contained the first use of the word “Castiel” on the show).

He goes on to point out “gris gris bags” and “anointed dove’s blood.” Gris gris bags are protective talismans, which my brain immediately associates with Gordon Walker. He traded his to Bela for the Winchesters’ location in 3.07, and after giving it up, he was turned into a vampire and then killed by Sam. I can’t remember any use for the dove’s blood in canon...

It’s hard to see, but one shelf over is a Jason Voorhees style hockey mask (which is interesting to me because of 14.04 and the horror movie callbacks that were referenced later in 14.13 again at the movie theater in Lebanon playing All Saint’s Day and Hell Hazers). Not to mention as we talked about during 14.04, the original “monster” they were supposed to fight with in 3.10 in their nightmares was Jason, but Kripke didn’t realize they couldn’t obtain the rights to it, so that scene had to be cut. So in a roundabout way we get another reference to that iconic scene between Dean and his demon self, rejecting John’s influence over him. Beside the mask is the first of three Centurion Helmets we see in the episode (actually the second instance is probably this helmet again, but in a different context, in the box the teens steal from the Impala and take into their party house, along with the teddy bear Sam plays with here in a minute).

There’s the spray bottle of Dragon’s Breath, that looks like an innocent bottle of perfume with the squeezy bulb, but shoots out a gout of fire. 

Inside his safe, along with the skull of Sarah Goode, executed during the Salem Witch Trials, is an odd assortment of things, double-locked inside this already secret room:

It looks like a clock of some sort, a brass globe, and a genie’s oil lamp. But it’s the fact he had the skull at all, stolen from a murdered hunter that they knew, meant that he’d been involved with that horrific crime, like the previous references to Bela who traded in these artifacts (and had sold the hand of glory when she’d needed to destroy it to save her own life... I mean this was pretty heavy Bela parallels here), the owner turns the Dragon’s breath on them and pulls out a saber:

It’s called “Chrysaor.” Whether the one from Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene” that belonged to Sir Artegal, the Knight of Justice, and had supposedly been used by Zeus to battle the Titans, or to the offspring of Poseidon and Medusa and the brother of Pegasus, or whether it was a nod to Assassin’s Creed (I honestly think it’s the former and the latter is a bonus here...)

This reminded me SO MUCH of Gog and Magog and their Special Swords forged by a god, with the reference back to Zeus and the Titans here, AND to the actual circumstances around how Dean managed to kill them. Because Gog and Magog... just would not shut up. Dean even lampshades the fact this guy stood there with the sword over his head, raised above Sam sprawled on the ground the same way Cas was in 13.14:

But he talked long enough about Cas’s “beautiful death” that Dean was able to stab him from behind, just as he was able to shoot the store owner now, because he wouldn’t stop talking. Forged by a god, touched by God...

Then we see the store’s secret ledger:

I honestly don’t want to know what’s in the “genitalia jar.” But these entries are dated from 1956. How long has this shop been into this sort of shady business? At least as far back as the original MoL was operating in the US (they were annihilated in 1958 by Abaddon). And there’s even a reference to a “Men of Letters membership discussion” in the ledger:

Of interest on the next page is a lock of hair from a victim of HH Holmes (taking us back to 2.06), as well as trinkets associated with Vlad the Impaler and Napoleon, a “bag of sorrows,” and a “razor of the damned.” Among other items of interest.

But here’s the page with the magical pearl:

And nowhere in this book does it say the pearl “gives you what your heart desires.” It says, “a pearl that grants wishes.” So... where did Sam get that additional information? I find it fascinating how things that are written in books are interpreted in a much broader fashion by the reader-- first Dean with the book Billie gave him in 14.10, and now Sam with this entry in this ledger.

Because this has been happening a lot.

For example in the scene immediately prior to this, the kids outside are talking about the Winchesters when they actually drive up. Their conversation is really interesting:

Eliot: People say they’re brothers. All I know is I was standing right here when-- when I heard this BAM! from the trunk of their car. And then, this like, shallow breathing. Max: No way. Flower Shirt Girl: Eliot, you’re creeping Max out.

I have to assume this was when they still had Garth in the trunk of the car, and just :’). Eliot is making some assumptions, but he’s much more terrifyingly accurate than he probably could guess. And Max’s flippant comment in her next scene proves it:

Eliot: I mean think about it. Where do they even come from? Them or their weird sidekick with the trenchcoat. Or what about the kid with the dumb Bambi look on his face all the time? Max: So what, it doesn’t mean they kidnapped Bigfoot or whatever.

And they all laugh, and Eliot calls them dicks. :P

And all of this makes me think of how the show spent the early part of the season teaching us how to read between the lines, to fill in narrative gaps, and to parse the subtext to understand exactly what it was they were actively not showing us.

Like in the scene at the party house where the John Wayne Gacy clown appears, we don’t see Dean thrown by the clown (just as we didn’t see the other boy who was attacked escape from the clown), nor do we see Sam light the fire that burned the cigar box tethering the ghost. But it’s clear that Dean was thrown because we saw him land, and Sam obviously eventually got his lighter to work because there’s the evidence of the flames.

Also, did they bring that old pickup truck from the bunker? Because they should DEFINITELY drive that thing more often. :’)

And Eliot follows his instincts, wanting to know what’s up and witnesses the ghost going up in flames. And he knows what he saw, and doesn’t even question it. When Sam confirms it, he feels so validated. Just like us when we read the subtext and fill in the blanks.

I have no idea how I got here from rambling about finding the 300′s in the episode but here we are.

OH. Right! The Centurion Helmets!

The first we see was in the shop pictured above. We see it again at the Party House in the Establishing Shot inside, nestled in a box with Sarah Goode’s skull, which was the original Macguffin that led Sam and Dean to that pawn shop in the first place, which enabled them to find the pearl to even be able to make this wish at all:

And the second and third Centurions are on the wall of B&E Pizza:

(and the one on the other side of the menu board hasn’t been screencapped yet, but is much more clearly visible than this one because Cas lights it up:

Three Centurions. Each of whom commands a century, or a group of 100 soldiers. So I’m going to use the fact that the show is actively telling us to notice and read between the lines, and assume we’re seeing yet another 300.

Especially after Misha’s tweet joking about it: https://twitter.com/mishacollins/status/1093606706532282371