stacked day 44: 12.04

welcome back the horror genre

I started this episode while family was still over last night. It opens with a woman walking through a church, chanting, a phantom presence whipping her back. She collapses in pain, blood pooling out around her. My niece stared at the TV in awe; not a great thing for a less-than-three-year-old to watch.

I was telling my brother about The Substance, how ultimately I decided I loved it because of how gross it was; sometimes, you need a shock to your system. Body horror, I told him, is not my genre. He said, isn't Supernatural kind of scary?

When I'm trying to convince someone to watch the show, I tell them it’s only really spooky in Season 1; there are episodes throughout that bring it back, but not so much after Season 4. It stays gross, for sure, but after a point it doesn't feel as present or impactful. Watching this episode, I thought: am I wrong? does it actually keep its genre forever, and I just got really desensitized?

In 12.04 “American Nightmare,” Sam and Dean are investigating that mysterious death in the church and another one just like it. They hold three disguises in this episode; priests, FBI, and social workers. I like the different levels of their undercover, makes the episode more fun (different outfits). As social workers, they go to see an off-the-grid religious family who is connected to both deaths. It's interesting when the Winchesters meet devout Christians considering their relationship to angels, demons, God, the Devil, and on. This episode takes place just weeks after the conclusion of Season 11, in which God and his sister stop the death of the world through family reconiliation, and she revives their mother as a thank you. This gift, however, is complicated; Mary left at the end of 12.03. Sam is trying to be understanding, Dean is upset, as is the usual. How do you face the devout when you know the truth?

It turns out the mysterious deaths were caused by Magda, the missing daughter in the family; she is not missing at all, instead kept captive in a cellar and abused by her mother who believes she has the devil in her. Sam witnesses the mother abusing her daughter, reading chants and forcing Magda to harm herself with her psychic abilities. The son catches Sam, the dad knocks him out, and they throw him in the cellar with Magda.

She doesn't know she's hurting people; Sam sympathizes with her, tells her about his old psychic abilities and that there's nothing wrong with her, nothing is her fault.

This episode is dark, visceral; the violence feels heavier than it's felt in a while. Like a lot of horror-action-comedy shows on the WB/CW, most of the gore feels camp, a drama to the movement of chopped heads that doesn't feel harsher than popping the head off a Barbie doll. There's something about the whipping that Magda inflicts on herself, though, that makes my stomach churn; the phantom movement replicated on others haunting. Her mother tries to poison the family into a group murder-suicide after realizing they've been caught; the father dies. The mother stabs Magda's brother as he tries to protect his sister, finally. Sam watches the family destruct in horror.

Madga's mother is arrested, and the social workers set her up with an aunt in California. As Sam and Dean retire to the car, Dean asks if he thinks they made the right choice, letting her go; Sam says yes, she never meant to hurt anyone. These kinds of moral questions were agonizing for seasons and seasons, the line of human-or-monster, where the line is in harm to be taken out by a hunter. Of course, Sam and Dean have hurt many people while under the influence of something; it's a nice correction, here, to show sympathy for someone who has been abused (unlike the first psychic kid they meet in Season 1, who we are reminded of in the “Last Time On”). There’s a neatness to this episode, in the moral clarity Sam shows and the lack of fuss from Dean (who isn't super prominent in the episode, anyway). The sides are clear: in this horror-story that takes its beats from generic religious scary stories, the abused child is not the evil one. Easy! Yay! Except; remember our villains for the season, the British Men of Letters, who do not exhibit anywhere near the shades-of-gray agony that the Winchesters do. At a rest stop, Ketch murders Magda, quickly, cleanly. I find the BMoL to be an effective antagonist, for the easy reasons I've said before (I hate British people), but I like the the technique to establish their threat level. I realize my sudden attention to genre is less about me becoming desensitized, and more a device. 12.04 is a peeling back; Cas is off doing whatever it is in between Misha's contracted episodes, and Mary is gone for a bit. The boys are alone, the classic soft reset into isolation after a heavy beginning arc. We get a case that feels more like Season 1, but they make different choices: they've learned. Our antagonists are here to undo that progress. The stakes are smaller, more personal, an effective mirroring of the central tension the first three episodes set up between Mary and her sons.

Stray Observations

• Dean texting Mary “is it okay to still call you mom?” WOOHOO!

• Kind of funny that Dean is like, Ok Ok I get it Mary can have space, after seeing a legitimately horrifying family dynamic.

• I wrote “Sam is so nice" like three times in my notes, lol