 Strap yourselves in, we've got a lot to talk about with this one. Ooh, that's a hot mug, guys! Hey guys, this is my review for Episode 19 of Supernatural Season 6, Mommy Dearest. This is probably one of the most controversial episodes for me in terms of the writing, the story structure, the villain, and just everything about this episode. This is probably going to be the longest review I do of this whole season, unless maybe the finale, but realistically, this episode pissed me off so much when it came out. I still can relate to that anger, I can see some good in this episode, but I also see just how much of a mess it is overall. This episode starts with the boys putting together the Phoenix Ashes into some shells and then trying to find out where Eve could be. They actually do a pretty decent reference callback to the Vampire Girl group that Sam and Dean helped out in Season 2, and in fact, they actually kill her off because Eve is driving all monsters mad on the planet to basically start to kill everyone, and she, even though her best intentions has succumbed and has attacked a 16 year old, so Castile has a few cool, very cold moments in this episode, some cool, some unexplained, which we will definitely get to. This is all following when Eve comes into this bar and starts to touch everyone and they all turn into these weird monster things and attack and kill each other. When the boys come to the town, they start to try and figure out what's going on, and they find one of these guys who is multiplied, like basically his genes or whatever got copied over into all these different versions of himself and they're all dying off. I thought that was actually pretty cool when they come into the room and there's all these different versions of this guy, that was a pretty funny little bit. But then once they come to the bar and they get arrested by the cops, things really do start to fall apart in terms of the pacing and as well as just kind of taking the audience's meaningful intelligence seriously. There's a lot of, well, just because kind of story writing excuses in this. It's almost on the level of dab in terms of really just placing things for the plot to happen rather than actually logically coming about with it. The first instance, well the first two instances actually would be the boys wanting to get the two kids out for no other reason than to just get them away. This never usually happens, especially when they're in a town with a serious issue, something like this, they wouldn't normally be akin to wanting to get the kids out. Sure, you could say that because there isn't a overall prevalent threat that they're not surrounded, that that's why they would want to get the kids out. But it's such a flaming gun in terms of story writing that you know something is up and it's just stupid that the boys don't figure it out. Even Castiel is talking about it with them. It's like, why are you guys letting these kids go? You are seeing everyone is becoming something. It's just really silly when the audience can pick up something that's very clearly going to happen. And then the other bit that happens is when they're torturing the sheriff, Castiel's like, give me five minutes alone with him and he figures it out. Do we know what he did? No. Do we know why what he did? No. This is just a piece of story that just kind of never comes about to it. And then when they find out where they're outside the restaurant and in less than two minutes, the brothers, particularly Dean, contradicts himself immediately. They're outside and they're like, well, what's the plan? Well, Sam and Dean and I will walk in and if you guys see something, you guys come in and after us is like, that's the plan. Yep. Not a great plan. And then immediately upon walking in and looking and seeing with a phone that they're filled with Jefferson Starships, which by the way, definite props given to that, the Jefferson Starship joke is still great. Even after all this time, it's still pretty funny. I actually do like that. They're like, Starships or Jefferson Starships. I think that part's good. But then immediately upon sitting down, Dean's like, oh, yeah, we should get out of here. What the fuck was that? You are made of stupid. What a stupid, stupid idea. And that's where I'm kind of coming about with the writing. The writing and a lot of elements is really, really stupid in this episode. However, the mother is actually pretty well written, especially with her cause. Her reasoning as to why she has come back and she's making all of her monsters go homicidal as well as making these Jefferson Starships is in retaliation to what Crowley has been doing with torturing and capturing monsters, including firstborns, to try and figure out purgatory. And even Eve knows that there's actually an ulterior motive behind it all. And that is when we start to see the overall connectivity of all of these storylines, except for Sam's lack of soul. That was just a tangent. But the monsters and Castiel's battle do have a connection at the end of this episode. And then when the mother is done talking with them, they're like, all right, well, fuck you. We're not going to fight for you. The last few months we've been working for an evil dick. We're not about to sign up for an evil bitch. We don't work. And then there's a real big scary moment when she bites Dean, but Dean actually did something kind of smart, even though we never saw it happen. He apparently took a shot of the ash and whiskey earlier and that went into his blood stream and that's how they kill the mother Phoenix Ash. One shell or ounce of whiskey down the hatch. Should that have been a kill shot? Maybe. But I'd still a pretty witty bit of writing. Do you have any kind of lead up to it at all? Not really. All you see is Dean take the shells and put them into his pocket. You should have maybe had a shot of him putting one of the shells by a whiskey glass or a whiskey ball or something because then you can really connect it. Otherwise, it again happens just for the sake of happening because it's cool. You didn't really lead up to it well. And then obviously they find out that the kids are monsters too, which is like, all right, I was fucking stupid. Everyone could see that coming. But then they go into the kids and find out that while they did kill dad, demons came and iced them. And on top of all of that, they also found out that Crowley is still alive, which then begs the question that Bobby brings up. How is Crowley still alive if Castiel burned his bones? And that is when you finally get the gears in tandem. There's a really cool scene where Crowley and Castiel are at the diner. Crowley is revealed to be alive and there's the great song playing in the background and Castiel does a pretty cool turn all covered in blood and really serious face and whatnot. Then we start to turn Castiel sort of into the villain of this season. But the problem is I still get really pissed off at the mother who had been built up quite significantly dies on the 19th episode. Is it better than killing off your main villain in, I don't know, a really terrible filler episode like season 14? Yeah, so it is considerably better than that. But there are so many plot holes in this episode. There's so many inconsistencies with character logic, character motivation that it really comes across as a giant piece of goo. Are there some good bits of goo here and there? Yeah, no, there are some decent parts to this episode, but they are very much overshadowed by the failures and the misgivings and the generally bad writing that happens throughout this episode that constantly is blamming in your face. Does it end, though, with you still being intrigued in what's going on with the season? Sure, it does, most certainly. Is it disappointing that certain aspects that you had been led to believe would be, you know, much more important than they actually are? Sure, they took a risk of killing off the supposed big bad much earlier than the season finale. They broke the norm with that, which I'll give them credit. It works in an extent, but it still is messy. Overall, the first season finale, if you want to call it that of season six, is messy, but it's still engaging. It's rough, but it does have a few glimmers here and there. It has some humor, it has some action. So in the end, I will give Mommy Dearest a 3 out of 7. It has some fun, it has some action, it has some jokes, it has some cool intrigue, but it is buried under a mountain of really bad writing scattered throughout it. But those are my thoughts about this episode. Let's see what you guys had to say. Mommy Dearest is a good episode. I like Eve as a villain finally creating a new monster that managed to get past the Winchester. Always laugh when Dean calls the new creatures Jefferson Starships. I love being the diner when Eve says I'm just defending my children as I am a mother. I had already predicted Sam and Dean had drank the ash. I did see that coming. The twist with Crowley being alive was very cool when he says, really, Cass, how often am I going to have to clean up after your messes? That was a pretty cool ending. I like how they finished one storyline to reveal another. There's a few of the things I can say I like about this episode. Mommy Dearest makes it more apparent we can kiss our Cass goodbye. Nice to see Lenore, but it's sad to see Eve got to her. It makes you wonder about every monster that tries not to give into their nature and ends up being like Lenore overall. Yeah, there's been a few of them, but yeah, it's something that could have been made more of maybe. I empathize with Eve being a parent, upset with her children being tortured left and right. Love that she brought about her own demise with Dean improvising as he regularly does. Mark Shepard himself requested that his name not appear in the opening credits to make his return far more surprising. But to me, this episode honestly is an excellent follow-up to my favorite episode of the season. Eve, to me, proved expendable only because we see even the Queen piece and the chest can be defeated by what fans treated as a pawn in chess. Hence the title of the episode, The Man Who Would Be King. That's actually a pretty cool move on Mark Shepard that's kind of similar to that of what Kevin Spacey did with Seven. The Ash thing is a cool trick. I just hate how it got there, as I pointed out. I thought for the longest time that this was the season finale. I guess it was because it is an end of the Eve storyline. All I can say about this episode is how shocking it was to hear Bejesus. Always wondered how that made it past the censors. Would that not be okay? I feel that's okay to say on TV, wouldn't it? Really like this one. It's a well-done episode, some good fight scenes, and Eve is finally given five minutes to relate with her perspective. Plus we get several twists and surprise reveals. I'd say it's a 5 out of 7. The scene where Eve is poisoned and begins regurgitating black goo and crying goo before casts mites every monster in the diner is one of the most well-executed monster deaths of the season. But this episode helped build Eve into this more complex, less amoral personality and gave us a taste of her godlike powers only to kill her off prematurely. She always feels to me like one of those show's unfinished projects, like Demon Dean or Alternate Michael. Very much agree with you on the Demon Dean thing here. It's very spot-on. This is the beginning of those very, very short-lived concept ideas that they would just get rid of in a couple of episodes. Her death results from Dean's clever trick, but it doesn't make sense that such a diluted amount of ash would kill her instead of just weakening her. And when you point that out too, that is also another good point. I do like the direction of the remaining episodes this season, but that has always bothered me. Question for you, who are you more inclined to agree with? In Castor Dean's discussion of whether or not to leave the town to drop the kids to safety, I think I've kind of really explained that in this episode, but I thought that this was such a stupid idea because how often does this actually happen? Usually they leave them in a bunker to just are in the basement and they leave someone with them. Hey, we're gonna go out and kill everyone else. You stay here. I feel that it was kind of wasted and it's such an obvious ploy from a screenwriting perspective that the twist that comes from it is just so easy to predict. I usually very set in my views when it comes to entertainment and if I dislike something I'm very adamant about in the first opinion and the first time I watched Mommy Dearest, I thought it was okay. I gave it a 6 out of 10 because I really thought it was a plot heavy episode. However, after watching the show recently for the seventh time, this has become one of the rare times where my opinion has drastically changed and I really don't like Mommy Dearest. For the first minute, I'm tearing this episode apart and largely in more majority of the problems come to the mother. I hate this villain. She's without a doubt the third worst in the entire series. Let's talk about the actress. She's horrible. I mean, can you give us more than one goddamn emotion of your deadpan face? That really can be a direction from the directors. If they're not giving her anything and they're kind of just saying, hey, this is like the norm of what our villains do, it's hard when you don't have that much direction there. And then there's their screen presence. This is the first and the last time we see Eve get gets to have a full villain presence. The scenes in the previous two episodes did not count. They're just cameos. That is true. Yeah, Eve gets one episode to prove to us that she's a villain. I just don't buy it. I don't buy the fact that she can ground angels. I don't buy the fact that she is supposedly more powerful than angels. And I don't buy her as a legitimate threat when I know an archangel can incinerate her in seconds. And just the fact alone that she is older than angels irritated me throughout the whole thing because it goes completely against the biblical lore. Thankfully in season 11, Jeremy Carver retconned this by saying that they... At first came the archangels. Then Eve and the Leviathans were essentially a failed experiment for the angels. Now I can buy that. Eve and her masterpiece of a plan was easily foiled by the supposedly less powerful demons. Just piss off. All I see here is Sarah Gamble's ego. I'm sorry, but I don't get... You don't get to make angels less powerful than monsters because you hate angels. The only good thing about Eve as her death, which was actually really smart and unexpected, other than that, no matter how many excuses people make about this character, I will always debunk them because they're just a choice of villain. Let's straight up screw this episode into the ground. I feel that it's the writing that screws this character into the ground because she just doesn't get anything, doesn't get any real actual basis or creation. And it's thrown away for a surprise. Admittedly it is a pretty big surprise, but considering this was supposed to, as we said, be a big build up, I feel like it was definitely a wasted character. And there was a lot of potential that could have been done with her. And they essentially just regurgitate that entire story with season 14. I was quite surprised that Eve was able to make Castiel's powers go limp, but I wasn't shocked that she was trying to create more monsters. I knew that one or both of the boys were turned by Eve. Castiel was so right about focusing on taking down Eve, but once again, Sam and Dean don't see the big picture. I really liked seeing Eve turn into Mary Winchester. Samantha did a great job playing the mother of Eve. Of all Eve to me, it was really anti-climactic seeing her get killed off. It seems way too easy to me. Sucks because she had a potential to be a great villain, but once again, like many characters on the show, just wasted to make more room. Yep, no, 100% agree there. Last one here, episode has some horrifying and truly disturbing moments. I don't think I'll be forgetting about the way the mutations turned people into sickly abominations, aka Air Jefferson Starships. Really showed how much of a monster Eve was, although I feel like this was a preview of what was to come with defeating the monster way too early, and it only gets worse from here. Man, season seven is gonna be rough. Thanks, hollow man. All right guys, those are your guys' comments. Thank you for giving me those. And now we are moving on to episode 20, The Man Who Would Be King. This is when we start to see a different side from Castiel. Three episodes left. Can't believe I'm almost there. This has been rough, because now I think we're going into the parts that I don't like, but I don't know. So far, the latter half of the season has been much better than the first half, but we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Anyways guys, that's all for me. I hope you enjoyed the review. If you did, leave a like, and if you're interested in more, subscribe. Otherwise, see you guys next week.