SUPERNATURAL: Mommy Dearest

Well, wow. Perhaps I should have, especially given Rachel the lady-angel’s warnings last week, but I did not see the ending of this episode coming. At all. It was a great reveal, and I still don’t know what to make of it, but I’m excited to learn more. Before we get to the end though, let’s first discuss what led up to it, shall we?

Something about watching Team Hunter use an iPad just seems completely out of place, doesn’t it? I feel like these guys live in a world of corded telephones and dial up connections – not one where there may soon be a demon tracking app, you know (Demon Findr)? Maybe it’s Dean’s car and cassette player, but even when they’re using cell phones and surfing the net, there’s still an air of vintage about them that makes an iPad seem very out of place, especially in Bobby’s hands.

Technology quibbles aside, ‘Mommy Dearest’ turned out very different from what I expected. I went into the hour expecting that Eve was going to really step up her game and announce her big evil plan for the destruction of the world; thereby setting up the main thrust of the last few episodes of the season. Instead, she stepped up her game, toyed with the brothers’ emotions for a while, and then promptly bit the dust. Problem solved. Of course, Sam and Dean’s lives are never problem-free, and there is definitely trouble still brewing, but we’ll come back to that.

Eve was in Colorado working on a hybrid monster that Dean later dubbed “Jefferson Starships”. I love the idea of kids watching SUPERNATURAL behind their parents’ backs and later crying to their confused mom or dad that they can’t sleep because there’s a Jefferson Starship in their closet. But really, am I the only one who has fond childhood memories of “We Built This City” or “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”? Yeah, just me? Okay, I’ll shut up now.

Anyone who saw the promos for the episode knew that Eve would turn herself into the spitting image of Mama Winchester just to mess with the brothers’ heads while she spilled her evil plan of evil. Mary sightings are generally pretty heartbreaking on this show, but this one lacked some of the punch of the others – probably because nobody was fooled for a second about who she really was. These semi-frequent Mary cameos are also just really starting to highlight the fact that we haven’t seen John Winchester in a very, very long time and I still think that it NEEDS to happen. Hey Jeffery Dean Morgan, could you quit it with the soaring movie career for five minutes and go see your boys?

The Starship saga lent itself to a really nice brotherly moment when the Winchesters rescued a set of young brothers and drove them to their uncle’s house. That shot in the Impala with the older boys so clearly reminded of their own childhood dynamic – all alone in the world, the big brother steps in as caretaker for his little brother – was really sweet. It almost felt like we were looking at the eventual successors to the “Most Special Hunters in the World” title. Alas, it was not to be, because this is SUPERNATURAL, where cute children almost always end up eating someone’s face off.

Cas ended up tracking Eve down without assistance from Steve Jobs (incidentally, I REALLY wanted to see what went down in that room between Cas and the Starship Sheriff. After seeing the end of the episode, I want to see it even more.). After Eve pulled her little special effects trick, Dean baited her into biting him so she’d ingest the phoenix ash he had swirling around in his bloodstream. Pretty great, even though there would have been way too many variables for me to be comfortable with that plan if I were him.

So now Eve is dead, and the Mother won’t be the big bad that has to be destroyed at the end of the season. She did leave a parting gift though – intel that Crowley is still alive (oh no! But also, yay!) and that his endgame is not prime purgatorial real estate after all, but rather souls. Souls are apparently the greatest source of alternative energy ever, and Eve and Crowley were battling to collect the most. But how could Crowley be alive since Cas burned his bones, you ask. And that, my friends, is THE question for next week, where it looks like we’ll finally find out what the ‘baby in a trench coat’ has been up to all season. Something tells me it’s not going to be good news.

Part of me is really excited for this development; I love Crowley, I love Cas, and I love the idea of Cas going off the rails, because it will make for interesting tv. But on the other hand, I feel like we’ve been opening a Russian nesting doll of ‘big bads’ since the first episode of the season. Souless Sam revealed the Campbells, who revealed Crowley, who revealed the Alphas, who revealed Eve, who revealed…Cas, and also Crowley again? All this with a side of angel war. With everything that’s happened, it’s hard not to feel like this season has lacked focus despite the amount of fun I’ve had watching it. I feel that, in hindsight, we’re going to see that all of these things were actually just distractions to keep the boys (and us), from looking too closely into Cas’ affairs. At least I hope so – right now the season feels more slapdash than structured, but I’m choosing to trust that things will come together in the end. If not, at least we get another season to make things right!

The episode was much lighter in tone than I expected, which means lots of great quotes to choose from. Here are some of the best:

• “Why do I always have to make the call? It’s not like Cas lives in my ass. Cass, get out of my ass!” “But, I wasn’t in your….”
• I was expecting more Zombieland, less Pleasantville.
• I’m glad we’ve got Smitey McSmiterson on our squad.
• Well now it just looks like you’re pooping.
• I have a…uh…painful burning sensation.
• Jefferson Starships. Because they’re horrible, and hard to kill.

Next week is obviously all Cas, all the time, which only seems fitting given how background he’s been for most of the season. If like me, you can hardly wait, here’s the promo for you to watch a hundred times between now and next Friday:

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