The Official Regarding Dean (Ep 12.11) Live Recap Discussion Thread

 


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I’ll be live-recapping (EST) as I watch the episode here, as well as on IMDb and at Wayward Children for the next two weeks. After that, I’ll definitely be dropping IMDb (since they’re nixing their message boards). Which place I will recap (or both) will depend on how much response I get where.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460681/board/flat/265873912

http://waywardchildren.boards.net/

Starting now.

Recap of witches and bunnies and Rowena.

Cut to Now. A guy is running through the deep, dark woods. He’s wounded and scared. He calls someone to tell them to run. He’s being chased by…Dean Winchester.

When Dean corners him, the dying man has drawn a glowing pink sigil on a tree that blasts Dean and tosses him into the leaves, unconscious.

Title cards.

We are in Eureka Springs, KS.

Dean wakes up in the woods, hugging a very large rabbit. A very large, *tame* rabbit. His phone is busted. When he tries to ask a nearby jogger with a baby to call on a phone, she gives him money, thinking he’s homeless. He eventually gets a bored Yuppy dude to lend him a phone and he calls Sam. He can’t remember where he is until he sees and hears a passing truck.

Cue the sneak peek, set in a diner with waffles, where Dean (and Sam) thinks he’s been on a bender and blacked out, and Dean gets slapped by a girl he doesn’t remember getting jiggy with. They also briefly discuss the “devil baby mama drama” that nobody in the audience actually cares about and Sam says he will text Mary.

Cut to the Brothers in FBI mufti at an autopsy of their case, a guy Dean thinks was killed by the Mob. But it turns out he was filled with paper money–and a hex bag.

They talk about their next step as they get in the car and Dean can’t remember which key to use. He also can’t remember whether he’s in reverse or not. Sam still thinks Dean is hung over until Dean has a major dizzy spell and can’t remember his own name. Whoops.

That was an awfully early commercial break. They usually don’t come until about the twenty-minute mark.

Dean insists he’s fine while Sam figures he got hexed. Dean figures he would have been killed if hexed. Sam tests him by asking about the members of Bon Jovi (Dean can only remember Bon Jovi). Dean also forgets the name for lamp.

Dean insists Sam not call Mary or Castiel, so we cut to Rowena cheating at cards (rather nicely lit scene, I must say). She gets a call–from Sam.

Rowena teases Sam about being in his contact list and asks if she’s got her own “ring tone.”

She starts asking questions and thinks it might be an “Obliviate” spell. To get rid of it, “ideally, [you] kill the witch.”

Sam turns around and finds Dean gone. Dean went for ice and forgot where their room number was.

Sam asks Dean the last thing he did and Dean says that he just forgot to get ice.

Off to a law office where Dean remembers being with Sam the day before.

FYI, I got a thunderstorm coming fairly quickly here.

They check out a photo that Dean doesn’t remember. Sam says he went to do research and Dena went for a burger. Cut to a burger joint, where they see the girl from the waffle place. She’s a waitress and she’s still pissed.

Sam introduces them as FBI and she says Dean used a rock ID. She’s kind of annoying.

She finally gets over her butthurt long enough to tell them that Dean came in, killed four shots of tequila, rode the bull, then rode the waitress. Then he got a call or saw something and ran out.

The waitress realizes Dean remembers known of this and apologizes, figuring he’d been roofied.

So, they score some CCTV footage of Dean leaving the bar and confronting Doomed Teaser Witch(?), who TKs Dean into some garbage bags. Sam realizes the guy was in a photo at the law office.

Dean has no forgotten he can use guns.

Out back, Sam finds a pistol shell from a shot Dean and Dean today gets a dizzy spell. He now can’t remember supernatural things like witches. Sam reminds him and Dean thinks that’s “awesome.”

And even flashlights are confusing.

In the woods, Sam is surprised to find himself giving Dean The Talk.

Sam finds evidence of Dean shooting people and then the spell runes the witch used, but no witch. Oh…but Dean finds him. The guy is pretty dead. Looks like Dean killed him, after all.

Sam is worried. Killing the witch didn’t do the trick.

In the woods, two other witches, a man and a blonde woman, find the dead guy and the woman vows vengeance. The other guy warns her that “Gideon” (the dead guy) wanted them to run. She doesn’t want to run. Oh, yay, two vengeful bitchy women two weeks in a row. I sure hope we’re not going for a bathetic sob story for these two.

Anyhoo, back at the motel, Dean doesn’t remember finding the dead guy and is cute and complimentary to Rowena when she shows up (which she finds flattering). She says the spell used was an ancient Celtic one (“language of the trees,” i.e., druids). She recognizes the dead guy as Gideon Lochlin, from a family (a trio) of witches who came over to America a hundred years ago and created their own little kingdom in one backwater on the Mississippi. The other two are Lloyd and Katrina. We see all this over a montage of the other two resurrecting the first guy. She dislikes them and thought they were dead.

All of their magic comes from a book called The Black Grimoire.

She says that the Hunters killed the family. As Dean watches Scooby-Doo, Rowena tells Sam they need to kill the witch or Dean will slowly forget to do everything, including breath. He will die.

In the bathroom, Sam breaks the news to Dean, who is upset. Sam says they’ll figure something out.

In the bedroom, Rowena asks Sam how Dean is and Sam says, “Like you care?” Rowena, wisely, doesn’t pursue it. Sam admits this is worse than just watching Dean die.

In the bathroom, Dean tries to run through the basic facts of his life, slowly forgetting them.

Meanwhile, Rowena lets slip she wants The Black Grimoire (which could also save Dean’s life), but also figures it’s good to have a Winchester owe her one.

Sam wants to leave Rowena back at the the motel room with Dean, hoping to force one of the witches to read the book for him. Or Sam can just kill them all.

Oh, Dean.

Dean is like a little child with Rowena. She hands him a voodoo doll to play with and tells him her origin story with the Lochlins, figuring he won’t remember.

Sam goes after the witches, bodyguards first.

Oh, Jesus, Rowena’s actually complimenting Dean! She unburdens herself to him in his blank state, admitting that seeing Chuck and Amara fight was a real shock to the system.

They get a call from Sam, who is going to send them the translation. I’m sure that will all work out. [/sarcasm]

He goes after Katrina, who knew Sam was coming. And, of course, they set a trap. Sam gets knocked out by Lloyd. Katrina speaks a spell that enlivens her dead butterfly collection and makes Sam scream as his ears bleed.

Dean wakes up in the Impala, with notes from Rowena briefly explaining Sam has been kidnapped and to stay in the car.

Meanwhile, Lloyd and Katrina fight while tying up Sam. Lloyd blames Katrina.

Oh, and Rowena has decided to ride to the rescue. She meets Katrina first. Katrina doesn’t remember her. At first. When she does, she’s nasty.

Sam wakes up as Lloyd is beginning a spell to swap souls with his brother and bring him back from the dead.

Boy, Katrina is mighty stupid. Rowena TKs her into a wall.

Dean ignores Rowena’s command to stay and opens up the trunk. Rowena was smart enough to leave him notes identifying the gun with witch-killing bullets.

Inside, Katrina has pinned Rowena to a wall and is about to kill her when Dean comes in and levels a gun at him. Katrina is contemptuous, even when Dean shows her the note saying “witch killing bullets” and stupidly turns her back on him. So, Dean shoots her down.

Upstairs, Sam gets loose and fights Lloyd, who comes down the stairs. Dean is momentarily confused who is the good or bad guy until Sam identifies himself as “brother” and Lloyd” as “witch” and Dean shoots Lloyd.

Moral of the story: Don’t mess with Dean Winchester.

Sam waits anxiously downstairs as Rowena says the spell and pink light spills out. Dean and Rowena come back downstairs. Dean still looks confused, to Sam’s consternation, then bursts out laughing at Sam. He remembers. He was just doing a little prank on Sam.

As they see her off in a taxi, Sam relieves Rowena of the magic book, though admits they do now owe her one.

Rowena rather wistfully asks Dean, if he remembers any “odd conversations,” to let her know. Totally deadpan (and totally lying) Dean calmly assures he doesn’t remember a thing. Hmm.

Sam and Dean have a brief conversation by the car, with Sam saying it’s almost too bad that Dean couldn’t have still forgotten all that bad stuff. Dean says yeah, but the problem he was actually forgetting everything.

We then get a montage of Dean’s “forgotten” memories and riding the bull over Bobby Goldsboro’s “Broomstick Cowboy” that make it pretty clear he remembers everything when he was hexed. Hmmmm.

And again, Riverdale’s cutting into SPN’s time so no preview. Bastards.

So…odd one. Wasn’t impressed by the witches, who were too stupid to have lived over a century. Some of it was reminiscent of “Malleus Maleficarum,” though Rowena’s a *little* more trustworthy than Ruby and much better acted.

Jensen’s acting was good. I especially liked Dean and Rowena together, and Rowena getting confessional with him. Also her going into the lion’s den to help rescue Sam. They perhaps played it a little too light and “funny” with Dean forgetting things, but that bathroom scene was heartbreaking and he was badass at the end.

Promo for next week.


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15 thoughts on “The Official Regarding Dean (Ep 12.11) Live Recap Discussion Thread”

  1. PS This business of IMDB.com dumping its message boards is really irritating to me. And you, you have been there for at least a decade.

    HAVE the participants gotten so much worse or is it just that they aren’t getting the revenue they want? I have to admit, I am ‘still’ pissed about what happened with Television Without Pity.

    THAT was a fun website too.

    1. I don’t know, but I think they just wanted to ditch the message boards and didn’t care about them, anymore. It happens more often than you might think. I do think it will kill the site.

      I’ve been registered on there since 2002.

  2. Yeah, again re the waitress: she saw nothing wrong with hooking up with Dean. So if (by the explanation Sam was giving her for Dean’s behavior) Dean was roofied by some person who thought it was funny to do that but not necessarily commit sexual assault (I hope you get what I mean) it was important to ‘her’ that nobody think ‘she’ roofied a customer and then assaulted him. Dean’s behavior in the bar when they met again told her he remembered nothing BUT he was not blaming her. I wonder if they got together again when his memory came back. THAT should’ve been part of the montage.

    I still have the address to send money to innismouth press. Can you email me with an address to send some money?
    My address in with my sign up but if you need it again just tell me.

    1. Is that the valor one?

      I agree about the waitress. She was mad because she thought he ditched her and had already forgotten about her, not that he’d been roofied (which is exactly what did happen, even if the roofie was magical).

    2. Dean wasn’t under the forgetting spell when he rode the bull or the waitress. This all occurred before hand. Remember when she said she was told Dean ran out of there like his pants were on fire? That’s when he went after the witch and was hit with the curse. To be fair the witch (warlock) was acting in self defense. 😉

  3. I am unsure ‘who’ left the post-it notes behind; on one site the theory was that Dean left the notes himself.

    I first thought Rowena left the notes, but I don’t think she would’ve left any in the trunk. So I ‘think’ the idea that Dean had enough memory to leave notes for himself but I am not sure.

    I ‘know’ Sam did not do it.

    Anyway, I liked the episode; and you are right, the scene in the bathroom with Dean repeating again and again his touchstones was just sad. A couple of people discussed knowing persons with Alzheimer’s (how it comes and goes and suddenly WHILE THE PERSON IS DOING SOMETHING forgetting how to do it).

    I liked the waitress and how she realized by Dean’s behavior that he truly ‘did’ not remember her; saying he was roofied made sense to her. I ‘liked’ that she apologized for taking advantage of him (maybe). And he said, she wasn’t part of it.

    As a technical matter, I wonder how ‘slow’ the bull was actually set when Jensen rode it. And that sexy sprawl at the end…yowsa.

    1. Rowena wrote them. I’m surprised Dean could even read at that point and no matter how far gone he was, I can’t imagine him calling the Impala a piece of junk. Also, Rowena wasn’t dumb enough to go in without a backup plan, however jury-rigged.

      The montage at the end was in slo-mo. I think the bull was going at regular speed.

      Dean’s memory loss was consistent with dementia, Alzheimer’s and otherwise, but it wasn’t particularly in line with the way the spell was described, which was supposed to be strictly progressive. Dean seemed to go back and forth. I thought it was interesting that he was so sunny with others but panicking in the bathroom.

      The waitress started out seeming very unsympathetic, but I liked how she changed her tune when she realized Dean had been “roofied” (which he had, just not with the kind of stuff she thought). Once she realized that, she also realized Dean hadn’t dumped her.

      1. Given that Dean is the only one in the show that has ever been able to successfully resist his predetermined role in the universe, it seems consistent that he would be able to fight the effects of the spell, once he realized what was happening. Even if it took his entire strength and will. So the back and forth quality was probably him resisting the effects.

        1. It’s possible. I just wish the writing had been clearer about it, as they definitely had Rowena Tell that the spell is strictly progressive, then turned around and had the Show be something different.

    2. Logically the notes would have been left by Sam (hence the NO! on the grenade launcher) but then it also makes sense that it was Rowena. Tho the printing on the note in the car looked different than the ones in the trunk. I don’t see where Dean would have been the one that did. It was confusing and unclear. I guess a case could be made for any of the three…

  4. Wow, you sure got that up fast. I, unfortunately, was not able to watch until this morning.

    So, first impressions. What an utterly vindictive spell. It was clearly designed to cause maximum psychological suffering in both the recipient and the loved ones. Of course I work with people who have dementia, and it was clearly intended play out like that. I must say it was fairly realistically portrayed.

    As far as the brothers, I don’t think I’ve seen Sam so desperate or Dean so frightened since hell hounds were barking at the door. And it was nice to see Dean’s inner sweetness coming to the fore. So often they seem to want to portray him as a dick, and he’s really not. Even as a demon, with Anne Marie, he wasn’t unnecessarily cruel.

    The moral of the witches seemed to be that if you have power, you don’t need brains. I am surprised they had never heard rumors of the Winchesters before, but I suppose they were living in an insular little bubble. The rivalry between witches and hunters was really evident.

    Rowena was interesting. They gave what seemed a realistic reason for her (slight) change of heart. I imagine the only reason she willingly gave up the grimoire was because she knows where it is and figures she can retrieve it if needed. And no, that is not a small favor they owe her. This should provide some interesting ethical dilemma down the road.

    Anyway, thanks for the recap. Its nice to have someone to talk about this with. My family gets really tired of it.

    1. Well, it’s just a live recap. I haven’t done the review yet.

      Yes, it was a really vicious spell, though it makes sense that a person who had lived on black magic for over a hundred years, and suddenly found himself hunted down and dying, would come up with something like that. This particular writer seems to favor portraying Dean as super-badass to a frightening extent.

      Those witches were colossally stupid, weren’t there? Previous witches have been smarter–though, come to think of it, the Steins were almost as foolish. Perhaps relying too much on a single book of powerful black magic makes you stupid about real-life things after a while.

      I think that Rowena was being honest with Dean. There was simply no reason for her to lie at that moment. She was created a monster by rejection and cruelty. Dean’s sunny response to her when she first arrived seemed to touch her and we did see her have second thoughts toward the end of last season. It wouldn’t make sense for her (or Crowley) to experience no growth whatsoever from all that.

      1. It occurs to me that these multi generational families of witches are rather like the children of some very wealthy families. They didn’t have to earn their knowledge, and the power they have inherited by right of birth leaves them feeling entitled and exempt from consequences, even the physical laws of nature . I have a feeling that Rowena, for all her faults, worked for her magic.

        1. I do think they were dumb and arrogant, but to turn their backs like that on someone who could easily (and, as it turned out, was) be the Hunter who had killed their brother was a little tough to swallow, even for spoiled brats. They’d survived for over a century somehow.

          Rowena has definitely worked for her magic. We already know that she was born in poverty in Scotland, got pregnant with Crowley by the laird of the manor, and then abandoned. So, she’s had a dark backstory.

          I think it was interesting that the only real thing that separates her from the Brothers is, as she put it, their obsession with working for the Greater Good. Otherwise, they’re just as much card sharks, thieves, tramps, and grifters as she is. Maybe that’s why she’s so attracted to working with them. Theirs is a heroism to which she can actually aspire.

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