Supernatural: The British Invasion (12x17)

Eileen! Yay! Mick! No! Mary and Ketch! Ew! Crowley! You're an idiot! This episode was a bit of a disjointed mess, all things considered.

Cons:

I think there was just too much going on with this one. You could make an entire episode about Eileen coming back to help find Kelly Kline, and dealing with her relationship with Sam. Instead, that's just a tiny sliver of the pie. You could do an entire episode learning about Mick's past with the BMOL and why he is the way he is, but instead we have to balance that with Mary and Mr. Ketch hooking up for some gross reason. Oh, and then we've also got Lucifer manipulating Crowley, or maybe Crowley manipulating Lucifer, I'm not sure. And Cas is apparently AWOL again. Why is all of this crammed into one episode? From what I gather from next week's promo, we've got another Monster-of-the-Week sort of thing going on. Why not scrap a C-plot episode and instead spend a little longer untangling all of these plot threads?

Crowley and Lucifer's thread is perhaps the most agonizing, but it could possibly still be redeemed. Lucifer submits to Crowley, crawling on the ground and playing dog. Crowley forces Lucifer to announce Crowley's dominion in front of a bunch of other demons, but Lucifer uses the moment to work the crowd, making it clear behind Crowley's back that he still expects to be in charge one day. He gets help from a demon in checking out the warding system in his vessel, and gets a promise that this system can be broken. My problem with this is that the whole thing makes Crowley seem very, very stupid. Sure, the vessel is warded. But Lucifer is able to talk in his mind to Dagon, and he's able to get alone time with other demons, which makes him so much more likely to escape than he would be if he were just in the cage. Maybe Crowley has something else going on that we don't know about. But if not, this is seriously disappointing.

Also, Mick dies in this episode. He decides to turn against the code of the BMOL and do the right thing, so Mr. Ketch shoots him and kills him. I guess they get kudos for making that moment shocking, but it's really annoying to me that the one member of the BMOL who actually had the potential to be interesting is now dead, right after we started to learn some really juicy stuff about him. Laaaaame.

Also Mary and Ketch sleep together. I'm all for Mary getting out there and hooking up, but this feels really gross to me. Sam sees working with the BMOL as a means to an end, while Mary seems to be embracing it in a weird way. The BMOL tortured Sam and Dean, and now Mary is having sex with a straight-up murder addict? I'm not sure how I'm supposed to sympathize with that.

Pros:

I did love learning about Mick's backstory. When he was a school boy at Hogwarts - I mean, whatever that place is called, but let's face it, it's Hogwarts - he was forced to kill or be killed in order to get ahead in his schooling. So, Mick killed his best friend. He follows the code, unwavering, because the BMOL gave him a chance in life. He grew up on the streets. All of this makes his transformation all the more powerful. When Eileen accidentally kills Renny, another member of the BMOL, Mick is supposed to kill her. But Sam manages to talk him into following his own code of ethics, and he lowers his gun. We already saw from last week that he was willing to bend the rules to help people, and now he's done it again, in a big way. What I find all the more fascinating is that he still reports the full truth to his superiors, even though that truth contains his own downfall. I hate that Mick is dead. He was pretty much the only thing keeping me interested in the BMOL story. However, I will admit that his death was pretty epic in how sudden it was. I expected Mr. Ketch to kill him, but I didn't expect him to do it without any warning or buildup.

Also, Eileen! Yay! I'm so glad she came back. I wish we could see a bit more how her Deafness actually affects her, but I appreciated the way Sam and Dean were always facing her and speaking clearly when communicating with her. There was never an unrealistic moment where she had her back turned but still caught part of a conversation, for example. I want more sign language, dang it! But I shouldn't complain too much. Eileen is great. She and Sam should be together. Seriously. I love the way she flirts with Sam a little bit, but also gets the stamp of approval from Dean, who notices the vibe going on between Eileen and his little brother. Eileen accidentally kills a human being in this episode, and we see how badly this affects her. She lets Sam comfort her through this trauma, which I thought was quite lovely. I hope we see more of her in the future!

I suppose we should talk about Dagon and Kelly and the little devil baby. Dagon is pretty cool. I like her deadpan way of going about things. The best moment is when, at Kelly's insistence, they go to a doctor's appointment. The doctor sees Dagon with Kelly, and the following exchange takes place:

"you're her... partner?"

"No."

"Birth coach?"

*pause* "Sure."

So great. And Dagon doesn't mess around, either. She sends demons in to clean up her work and keep Kelly off the grid. She's a pretty formidable foe, and the fact that she has a direct line of communication with Lucifer makes her all the more intimidating. We also learn that the mother of a nephilim never survives the birth, so Kelly has signed herself up for a death sentence by having this baby. This is an interesting dynamic. Kelly is such a girl-next-door in the sense that she really did not sign up for this, and she's just trying to keep her head above water. I hope she somehow survives all of this, but at this point it seems unlikely.

One last note: Cas is apparently AWOL. I hate it when he isn't around and there's no good reason for it, but maybe this time there will be a good reason? He's back in Heaven, and at some point we're going to have to deal with whatever he's doing up there. I loved hearing Cas' voicemail message again, and it's awesome that Dean tries calling him three times. I hope he's around soon... and I hope that this season can wrap up in a satisfactory way, defying my expectations. We shall see.

6.5/10