Supernatural: Ladies Drink Free (12x16)

Claire survives another one! And Mick is... getting interesting? Let's take a look!

Cons:

In order for Claire's central conflict in this episode to work, we have to do some retconning. I understand that being a teenager is confusing and difficult, and must be even more so for somebody like Claire Novak. But the last time we saw Claire, we were dealing with the fact that she wanted to hunt behind Jody Mills' back, and Sam and Dean helped her see that she could have a real family. In this episode, Claire is continuing to hunt behind Jody's back, and the boys once again help her to discover that she should place her trust in family. It's not a bad arc, it's just an arc that we already saw.

Also, Claire gets bitten by a werewolf, and then a magic cure is discovered and she's fine. I'm torn here, because I'm really glad that Claire isn't a werewolf. I like her dynamic with Jody and Alex too much to want that to change. But on the other hand, why have her be bitten at all, if we weren't going to ask her character to deal with that? It feels a little cheap...

Pros:

But not that cheap. Honestly, this episode was a really good one. There are two character arcs going on here, with Sam and Dean's contributions being fairly secondary. Let's start with Claire, since I've already talked about her a little bit.

She's a brave kid. A bit of a brat, but really brave. And in the end, after her harrowing near-werewolf experience, she leaves Jody a message revealing what she's been up to. She needs to hunt on her own. It's scary, but it's what she needs to do. This was a great moment. Claire calls Jody her mother, and she talks about how much she loves Jody and Alex. They really did become a family.

I also adore the way that Sam and Dean interact with Claire in this episode. They're both protective, but not in the gross man-protects-woman kind of way. It's more in a father-protects-child kind of way, and it's so amazing to watch. Dean repeatedly threatens harm to anybody who hurts Claire in any way, and Sam tries to talk to her about her life and how she's doing, even though she wants nothing to do with this conversation. The best/most tragic part is when Sam and Dean are waiting for Claire to wake up from the dangerous werewolf cure. They are both having a really really hard time watching her in so much pain. It lends credence to their claim that they really do care about her.

Also, Claire's situation brings up a lovely philosophical divide between the brothers, and it's resolved in just the right way. When Claire learns there's a slim chance for a cure to becoming a werewolf, she wants to go for it, even though it's most likely to kill her. Dean, who knows Claire can survive as a werewolf and live a mostly normal life, is firmly against this. He tells Claire she doesn't get to make this decision, and then he turns to Sam for backup. Sam says, quietly and unhappily, "it's her life." At the end, Claire is fully transformed and bent on attacking the boys. Before Dean sticks her with the blood of her werewolf sire (the supposed cure), he asks "she wanted this, right?" and upon getting confirmation, he does it. That's actually a very powerful moment. There have been so many times when Dean has known exactly what Sam wanted - i.e., to let himself die - and Dean said screw it, and did whatever it took to keep him alive. In this moment, he knows that attempting to cure Claire is more likely to kill her than just forcing her to live her life as a werewolf. But he actually respects what she wants. He lets her make that choice for herself.

Meanwhile, you've got Mick. Dean is still not happy with the idea of working with the BMOL, but he begrudgingly goes along when Mick says he's going to join them on a werewolf hunt. Of course, things go wrong when Mick discovers that a victim of a werewolf attack was bitten. Mick surreptitiously kills the girl, because it's his job to rid the world of all monsters. When Sam and Dean find out, they are horrified and disgusted. While this is going on, they discover that Claire is also on the case, and when she gets bitten, it's Mick's chance to redeem himself. He doesn't kill Claire. In fact, he helps to save her.

Mick has become an actually interesting character. He's a counterpoint to most of the hunters we've met in this world. He's what Sam would have become if he'd been allowed to be a Man of Letters, and not a hunter. He's deeply knowledgeable about the lore, but has very little in the way of practical experience. All of the brutal things the BMOL have been doing have been totally abstract to Mick. Unlike Mr. Ketch, who kills victimized children, Mick isn't much of a killer. He sits in a lab somewhere and issues orders, following progress, making decisions from afar. The minute he's in the nitty-gritty, and he sees that things aren't black and white, he allows his opinion to be shifted. This makes him a thousand times more interesting than the British MOL have any right to be at this point.

We're finally getting the ramp up to the conflict I knew we'd be getting to eventually. This idea that the MOL "gets results," vs. the fact that not all supernatural creatures are irredeemably evil. Obviously this is going to come to a head in a much more serious manner at some point. I think when that time comes, Mick might defect to Sam and Dean's side, while Mary... well, that remains to be seen.

I also want to mention that Sam and Dean have some tension over Mick, too. Dean continually pokes fun at the fact that Sam and Mick are a couple of nerds, but there's this underlying sense of insecurity to the whole thing. Dean sees the merits in doing things the way the BMOL does them, but he's not about to give them the satisfaction of admitting it. Sam, meanwhile, is much better at playing nice. When it comes down to it, their whole "us against the world" thing is a lot less true than it used to be, what with their close relationships to so many other people, and a burgeoning alliance with a whole organization of hunters and supernatural researchers. I think there could be some real tension to explore here.

In all, this was a C-plot episode that didn't feel like a C-plot, due to the inclusion of Mick. We learn more about him as a person, and we start to lay more of the groundwork for the major conflict between the Winchesters' hunting philosophy, and the British MOL's sensibility. We also get some more exploration of one of my favorite recurring characters. Claire survives another episode! Woo hoo!

9/10