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Supernatural meta? Here? Bet you didn't see that coming.
Okay, so. Um. I don't usually write episode reviews, and strictly speaking this isn't one.
But. Gotta talk about SPN 2.12: "Night Shifters." Because this episode had downright kaleidoscopic levels of thematic symmetry, and that always gets me where I live. I flailed incoherently about it to a few people, and finally decided to get it down in text.
So here we go.
This mostly came out while I was on the phone with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dotfic right after the episode. (And when I say right after, I mean the episode ended, the credits rolled, the phone rang, I picked it up and said "We are SO SCREWED.")
And we got to talking about Ronald. And I said, you know, I think the boys gave him an unnecessarily hard time about the "mandroid" thing. Because, really, he was right. He observed the facts and came to a startlingly accurate conclusion: that what he had seen that night was not his friend Juan, and was in fact a nonhuman creature capable of changing itself to look like different people. He further deduced this creature's M.O., traced its activities, concluded (correctly!) that it must be working from an underground base, and predicted (again correctly!) its next target. And all this on what by all appearances was his first attempt at doing anything like this.
So he was wrong about the thing being a robot. Not his fault. He was explaining what he saw with the only vocabulary available to him.
Sam says "he's not a hunter," though. And Sam's right. He's not. He's a damn fine researcher, but when it comes to actually hunting and killing the shifter, Ronald's an amateur, hopelessly outclassed, with no training and little to no aptitude. But he felt he had to do it anyway, because as far as he knew nobody else would -- because nobody else knew, or believed, what they were dealing with.
(There's a tangent here about how this, sadly, makes Sam at least in part responsible for Ronald's death. But I'm not going into that right now.)
Anyway. Ronald's not a hunter. But there's someone else in this episode who is.
Special Agent Henrickson.
On our first sight of Henrickson, he's sweeping in to take over the scene from the local cops. Local cops naturally don't take too kindly to this notion: this is, after all, their job. Except Henrickson clearly thinks it's
("Stupid cops." "They're just doing their job." "No, they're doing our job, they just don't know it, so they suck at it.")
his job rather than theirs, and makes that clear: "You have no idea what you're dealing with here. There's a monster in that building."
And on that line, the camera? Cuts to Sam.
Henrickson knows exactly what he's dealing with here: two psycho brothers, raised by a psycho father, with a string of grisly murders and corpse-desecrations and a truckload of lesser crimes behind them. Which is exactly what the Winchesters look like if you don't know, or believe, the truth about what they hunt.
He has, in fact, been observing them for some time. And he's explaining what he has observed with the only vocabulary available to him.
This last observation came up whendotfic asked if I thought there was any chance that Henrickson might come around, in the long run. (Come on, you know he's around for the long run.) Because when he first came in, just for a moment it looked like maybe he knew what was really going on, and then it turned out he didn't, and what might happen if they told him?
I said I didn't think so. Because what could they tell him that his own vocabulary couldn't explain? He thinks he already knows what's really going on; he's got a word for what they are, and it explains everything.
Ronald was open to learning a new vocabulary. I don't think Henrickson will be.
----------------------------
Meanwhile: let's examine the various quarries of the various hunts for a minute here, shall we?
The camera cutting to Sam rather than Dean on the heels of Henrickson's "monster" line, when Henrickson is talking primarily about Dean, makes a tempting lead ... but I think it's ultimately a red herring. This isn't about Sam and his Troubling Clouded Destiny; this is about the brothers. Both of them.
And I'm leaning towards that (a) because this is the first episode in a while that hasn't touched on Sam's Troubling Destiny, and (b) because of the episode title: "Night Shifters." Which can mean "those who work the night shift" -- like Ronald did, before he lost his job -- or it can mean "those who change at night."
This episode brought into a new perspective something we've known for a while:
Sam and Dean are shifters.
No, really, hear me out. They take on false identities all the time. They do it to gain entry in places they ordinarily wouldn't be able to go, to collect information that people ordinarily wouldn't be inclined to give them ... and occasionally to steal things they wouldn't ordinarily have access to. And in this episode we see them do it three separate times. Hell, the episode opens with them working under false identities.
And what forms do we see them take? FBI guys, like Henrickson. Bank security guys, like Ronald was. And finally, members of the SWAT team hunting them.
Not convinced of the parallel yet? Consider this: Three times in this episode, we see someone reveal a stripped or nearly-stripped body that's been concealed. The first time, it's a dead victim of the shapeshifter. The second time, it's the shapeshifter pretending to be its own victim. And the third time, it's the two SWAT guys Sam took out -- and Sam and Dean walked out wearing their clothes. In a false identity so complete that even we didn't recognize them.
----------------------------
What, if any, conclusions can be drawn from this? I'm honestly not sure. I certainly don't think this is an OH NOES SAM AND DEAN ARE TURNING INTO MONSTRZ situation; SPN has done the you're-becoming-the-things-you-hunt riff before, and that's not what this looked like at all. In the same vein, I don't feel particularly inclined to draw any parallels between Henrickson and, say, Gordon.
But I'm pretty sure that the parallels I'm seeing were put in deliberately, and that they're meant to mean something.
And if I'm right, it's going to be followed up on, in theme as well as plot.
We'll see.
But. Gotta talk about SPN 2.12: "Night Shifters." Because this episode had downright kaleidoscopic levels of thematic symmetry, and that always gets me where I live. I flailed incoherently about it to a few people, and finally decided to get it down in text.
So here we go.
This mostly came out while I was on the phone with
dotfic right after the episode. (And when I say right after, I mean the episode ended, the credits rolled, the phone rang, I picked it up and said "We are SO SCREWED.")And we got to talking about Ronald. And I said, you know, I think the boys gave him an unnecessarily hard time about the "mandroid" thing. Because, really, he was right. He observed the facts and came to a startlingly accurate conclusion: that what he had seen that night was not his friend Juan, and was in fact a nonhuman creature capable of changing itself to look like different people. He further deduced this creature's M.O., traced its activities, concluded (correctly!) that it must be working from an underground base, and predicted (again correctly!) its next target. And all this on what by all appearances was his first attempt at doing anything like this.
So he was wrong about the thing being a robot. Not his fault. He was explaining what he saw with the only vocabulary available to him.
Sam says "he's not a hunter," though. And Sam's right. He's not. He's a damn fine researcher, but when it comes to actually hunting and killing the shifter, Ronald's an amateur, hopelessly outclassed, with no training and little to no aptitude. But he felt he had to do it anyway, because as far as he knew nobody else would -- because nobody else knew, or believed, what they were dealing with.
(There's a tangent here about how this, sadly, makes Sam at least in part responsible for Ronald's death. But I'm not going into that right now.)
Anyway. Ronald's not a hunter. But there's someone else in this episode who is.
Special Agent Henrickson.
On our first sight of Henrickson, he's sweeping in to take over the scene from the local cops. Local cops naturally don't take too kindly to this notion: this is, after all, their job. Except Henrickson clearly thinks it's
("Stupid cops." "They're just doing their job." "No, they're doing our job, they just don't know it, so they suck at it.")
his job rather than theirs, and makes that clear: "You have no idea what you're dealing with here. There's a monster in that building."
And on that line, the camera? Cuts to Sam.
Henrickson knows exactly what he's dealing with here: two psycho brothers, raised by a psycho father, with a string of grisly murders and corpse-desecrations and a truckload of lesser crimes behind them. Which is exactly what the Winchesters look like if you don't know, or believe, the truth about what they hunt.
He has, in fact, been observing them for some time. And he's explaining what he has observed with the only vocabulary available to him.
This last observation came up when
dotfic asked if I thought there was any chance that Henrickson might come around, in the long run. (Come on, you know he's around for the long run.) Because when he first came in, just for a moment it looked like maybe he knew what was really going on, and then it turned out he didn't, and what might happen if they told him?I said I didn't think so. Because what could they tell him that his own vocabulary couldn't explain? He thinks he already knows what's really going on; he's got a word for what they are, and it explains everything.
Ronald was open to learning a new vocabulary. I don't think Henrickson will be.
Meanwhile: let's examine the various quarries of the various hunts for a minute here, shall we?
The camera cutting to Sam rather than Dean on the heels of Henrickson's "monster" line, when Henrickson is talking primarily about Dean, makes a tempting lead ... but I think it's ultimately a red herring. This isn't about Sam and his Troubling Clouded Destiny; this is about the brothers. Both of them.
And I'm leaning towards that (a) because this is the first episode in a while that hasn't touched on Sam's Troubling Destiny, and (b) because of the episode title: "Night Shifters." Which can mean "those who work the night shift" -- like Ronald did, before he lost his job -- or it can mean "those who change at night."
This episode brought into a new perspective something we've known for a while:
Sam and Dean are shifters.
No, really, hear me out. They take on false identities all the time. They do it to gain entry in places they ordinarily wouldn't be able to go, to collect information that people ordinarily wouldn't be inclined to give them ... and occasionally to steal things they wouldn't ordinarily have access to. And in this episode we see them do it three separate times. Hell, the episode opens with them working under false identities.
And what forms do we see them take? FBI guys, like Henrickson. Bank security guys, like Ronald was. And finally, members of the SWAT team hunting them.
Not convinced of the parallel yet? Consider this: Three times in this episode, we see someone reveal a stripped or nearly-stripped body that's been concealed. The first time, it's a dead victim of the shapeshifter. The second time, it's the shapeshifter pretending to be its own victim. And the third time, it's the two SWAT guys Sam took out -- and Sam and Dean walked out wearing their clothes. In a false identity so complete that even we didn't recognize them.
What, if any, conclusions can be drawn from this? I'm honestly not sure. I certainly don't think this is an OH NOES SAM AND DEAN ARE TURNING INTO MONSTRZ situation; SPN has done the you're-becoming-the-things-you-hunt riff before, and that's not what this looked like at all. In the same vein, I don't feel particularly inclined to draw any parallels between Henrickson and, say, Gordon.
But I'm pretty sure that the parallels I'm seeing were put in deliberately, and that they're meant to mean something.
And if I'm right, it's going to be followed up on, in theme as well as plot.
We'll see.
no subject
My sister and I sat up considering some of those things (though no where near as eloquently, I'll admit!) after we watched the episode this weekend.
no subject
You two cover anything I missed?
no subject
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Three times in this episode, we see someone reveal a stripped or nearly-stripped body that's been concealed. The first time, it's a dead victim of the shapeshifter. The second time, it's the shapeshifter pretending to be its own victim. And the third time, it's the two SWAT guys Sam took out
I'm not sure about conclusions either and anything I could say would open a very deep well of questions about Dean's actions in Croatoan and Sam's decisions that lead to people dying and...
Or it's as you said, a become-what-you-hunt situation.
Hendrickson's going to be all KINDS of fun.
When did this show get so complicated? Wow.
no subject
When the writers realized that they had to step up their game in order to live up to your expectations. :-P
Hey Btoon, nice insight w/ Sam and Dean also being shifters. I totally didn;t see that.
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no subject
I'm less convinced that Henrickson can't be brought to understand the truth, since he already has admitted he doesn't have all the relevant information--that comment about how he hasn't yet pinned down what John's ultimate purpose was is pretty revealing.
Man, that was an excellent episode. Hang onto Edlund, Kripke!
no subject
While it's true that he's admitted he doesn't have all the relevant information, it still seems to me that he's made up his mind as to what kind of information he's looking for. He's not gonna be open to new information that completely overturns what he thinks he knows.
I'm not going to throw all my certainty behind that prediction, though. We've only seen him once. Let's see what he looks like next time.
no subject
Henrickson fascinated me, because all of sudden, I could see them from an outsider's POV, and it was a SCARY picture. There's a line about John calling him a "survivalist," I think? And that conjured up a surprising number of images.