Saturday 22 April 2017

Leylin Vixen's Quick Draw SPN Roundup - 12x18 The Memory Remains


The Memory Remains

Opening words

Here we are are again. The Memory Remains was a myth arc filled MOTW that felt very old school. I got to hand it to them, the broment in the end was great. No, it was more than that. It was awesome! The story was simple at a first glance but in the end it turned out to be pretty complex. It was also an ominous episode. The BMoL, Ketch, and the boys thinking about their legacy gave me goosebumps. It is not unusual to feel like this when the finale is closing in but I feel like some huge trouble is ahead. I fear for the Winchesters and everyone they hold dear. I hope they and we will survive what ever is coming!




Now, lets move on.



















Details

Title:                The Memory Remains
Episode:           12.18
First aired:       April 13, 2017
Directed by:     Phil Sgriccia
Written by:      John Bring
Monster:           Moloch
Location(s):      Tomahawk, Wisconsin, Lebanon, Kansas



















Story

Remember how how it ends in horror movies for teenager/s out in the woods alone/with someone at night? Yup, same happens here. A bunch of teenagers are spending the night outside by a campfire. Among them are Jared and Daryn. Of course with couples being there - the situation continues to heat up so Jared chooses to bail. He finds a backpack full of money and when he falls for the trap, he gets tied to a tree. A goat headed monster arrives and hits him with a wooden sledgehammer. Daryn sees it all.


Castiel is still MIA when Dean walks the corridors of the bunker and trying to contact him. Sam has had no luck with the Prince of Hell research. They get an email from "Mick" about the case in Wisconsin. The town has a dark history because for 20 years one person went missing each year until 1997. It seems what ever monster did it is now back.

We find out that all this was a plan though to get the boys out of the bunker by Mr. Ketch. So, when the boys leave in come the BMoL. Ketch orders them to find out everything about the boys so they go through the bunker. They totally invaded the privacy of the boy's home and items. That freaked me out. And hands off The Colt ya'll, it belongs with the boys. Ketch's team also plant a listening device in the bunker. Ketch finds Dean's old photo of Dean and Mary and steals it. RUDE! And the creep factor went to 100 with that.

And in Wisconsin the creep factor continues when the sheriff is stuffing animals. (Yes, I have seen Psycho. I see what you did there show). He is not being helpful at all and suggests that the kid Jared probably ran away. The Winchesters leave empty handed until they go to question Daryn and he has another story to tell to them about the monster he calls "Black Bill" who took Jared.


They head out to a diner and while Dean checks out the waitress the brothers talk about the local urban legend of Black Bill. Dean leaves Sam to his research, as he already has worked out how to kill it -  The Colt. Dean hooks up with the waitress. The next morning, after Dean has eaten Sam's healthy breakfast, the boys head off to investigate as they discover Daryn is also now missing. 

The Winchesters head to the meat plant. The boss seems mighty friendly when he tells them that the plant is owned by Sheriff Bishop and his family, who run the whole show in town. It is creepy that Daryn was fighting for his life close by and Sam and Dean never knew it. He is in the freezer and whatever is after the people in their town is in there with him. When we get back to the boys it seems that every victim has worked for the meat plant. They head out to the Bishop house.

You know, I was afraid of the dark when I was young and this episode hit it out of the park with the old school darkness and mood. They find a locked basement door, Yikes! And of course they need to open it to check it out. They head down the butterfly filled stairs to a sunny and beautiful meadow. I'm kidding of course because the cellar is dark and gloomy murder nightmare with old blood stains.


The sheriff arrives and Dean "asks" him kindly to tell the whole story. His family is rich because they made a literal deal with a god they starved in the basement, feeding it for reward. Only thing the God of Sacrifice Moloch wanted was blood, ick... Black Bill was just a disguise for their father murdering people which ended when he died. The sheriff tried to make amends after that and he locked Moloch in the basement. But of course, the god is missing and the hunt continues. They hear some noise upstairs and Dean checks it out. Pete is there and he knocks Dean over the railing, and knocks him out, and locks Sam and the sheriff in the basement.

Pete is half brother to Barry and he decided to continue the family "legacy". Pete had simpler and rougher life so he sounds jealous and resentful against Barry and the rest of his family. Pete didn't like his half-brother, the sheriff selling all their wealth and was looking for things to take in the manor. When he was there he found Moloch. Dean is his next victim and he locks him up in the freezer with the beast. Sam and Barry are not far behind and they get Pete down. Sam saves Dean with The Colt while he played cat and mouse with Moloch in the freezer. The sheriff says he will clean up the mess and the brothers leave.


Sam and Dean return to the bunker and then we get a scene of the ages when they think about their legacy and what they will leave behind. Lets not think about how ominous and foreboding this scene might be too! It felt like a series finale last scene talk. They decide to carve their initials on the table and I am crying goo on the floor while we get that moment and flashbacks as they carved same initials on the Impala as children.


After that they call to Mick to report back but he's not the one that answers. Ketch is in charge and Mick has been sent back to London. When they end the call Ketch is still listening and he doesn't seem to like Dean's opinion about him. He also stares that picture on Mary he stole, and cue for creeping me out again!




















Characters

For the characters there was not one that particularly stood. The brothers outdid themselves like usual. but even more so with the last scene!  Even though I think Ketch is a creep the actor who plays him and the character are both great. One is hilarious on twitter and the other cold hearted bad guy...and pretty great as that. I just wonder if there is more to Ketch than him to be a psychopathic serial killer. Maybe he is Asmodeus that is still hiding somewhere? Or maybe Asmodeus is one of the "Old men" we are told about.


The rest of the characters were all good in the short amount of time they were on screen. The sheriff was good as good guy - bad guy - good guy, and his brother was, well, the real monster of the story. His lunacy just added to the story of Moloch. I really did feel for the victims even if we got even smaller glimpse at them. The panic with both was tangible when their end came. Black Bill itself was just a decoy to blind us from the real monster/s.

Here is the full list of characters:

Arthur Ketch
Pete Garfinkle
Sheriff Barrett Bishop Jr.
Daryn Boston
Jared Hayes
British Men of Letters Spy
Black Bill
Sacrifice Kid
Carmen
Moloch



















Set design

With the glimpses of the familiar bunker and BMoL headquarters we also got a few nice Set designs and few creepy ones. First one that was new is the small sheriff department room with the stuffed animals. Otherwise it would have been cosy but stuffed animals give me the creeps. Luckily we got to see the diner next and that was colourful and had a warmth about it. The diner also had the familiar sunburst-clock on the wall that has been on Supernatural many years. Only thing I don't really like about it is the hospital green painted walls.


The meat plant also gave me the shivers. I mean usually it wouldn't have, but this is Supernatural and well the victim is soon seen in the meat fridge with his dead friend! There is always something unusual with plants and how they are after dark. Supernatural has had its fair share of plants so there must be a reason for it. The meat plant was very fitting in that sense. The rooms with hanging meat and the machines that enable their production. Also the suits the plant workers wear to keep it clean reminds me a lot about the Leviathans.

The best and the creepiest was the Bishop house or should we call it a manor? Or was it big enough to be a manor? We even got a Shaving People Punting Things video showing the creepiness of the house. All the furniture is mostly covered in white sheets and there is dust everywhere. Also downstairs is the creepy torture dungeon that actually looks cleaner than it is supposed to. Old houses like that have history and a presence of their own. The most I loved about that set was the wooden stairwell.




















Monster of the week

I decided to discuss something new from the last episode as the props and costumes were not that significant this time. The second monster we had in this episode is already known by me from the TV show Sleepy Hollow. Moloch was one scary monster even in it. We also had Black Bill, and Sam suspected the monster to be satyrs. That would have been messy if what Sam told about them was true and btw ew.This is what wikipedia had about the god.

Moloch is the Biblical name relating to a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice. The name of this deity is also sometimes spelled Molech, Milcom, or Malcam. The name Moloch results from a dysphemic vocalisation in the Second Temple period of a theonym based on the root mlk "king". There are a number of Canaanite gods with names based on this root, which became summarily associated with Moloch, including Biblical  Malkam "great king" which appears to refer to a god of the Ammonites, as well as Tyrian Melqart and others.


Rabbinical tradition depicted Moloch as a bronze statue heated with fire into which the victims were thrown. This has been associated with reports by Greco-Roman authors on the child sacrifices in Carthage to Baal Hammon, especially since archaeological excavations since the 1920s have produced evidence for child sacrifice in Carthage as well as inscriptions including the term MLK, either a theonym or a technical term associated with sacrifice. In interpretatio graeca, the Phoenician god was identified with Cronus, due to the parallel mytheme of Cronus devouring his children.

Otto Eissfeldt in 1935  argued that mlk was not to be taken as a theonym at all but as a term for a type of fire sacrifice, and that *lĕmōlek "as a molk-sacrifice" had been reinterpreted as the name of a Canaanite idol following the Deuteronomic reform under Josiah (r. 640–609 BC). According to Eissfeldt, this 7th-century reform abolished the child sacrifice that had been happening, despite being unacceptable in the Jewish religion."



















Music

This week we had a treat of three songs, Prohibition (4th Amendment) by Bongzilla, Music to Watch Girls By by Tony Hatch and Burgers and Fries by Charley Pride and the first one is the one I chose lyrics from.

Officer, leave the room

Skunk #1
White rhino
Purple kush
Black domina
Durban poison
Master kush
Super skunk

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects
Against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue
But upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation
And particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized


Here is the short +/- rundown for The Memory Remains:

+ Moloch
+ The Colt
+ Cinematography
+ Creepy!
+ Dean vs Moloch
+ Sam saves the day
+ Story
+ Old school

- BMOL going through the bunker
- Ketch took Dean's Mary&Son picture!
- Cas is missing! ;´(
- Foreshadowing (The season finale will kill us)

-/+ Mr. Ketch

 DW & SW


Now, we will have one week hiatus but see you after that!

-Leylin

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