Supernatural - S11E12 - Don’t You Forget About Me
Previously on Supernatural, ‘Into the Mystic’
Images: The CW/Screenshots
In this week’s episode, the Winchesters take a back seat to Sheriff Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) and her home for wayward daughters, Alex and Claire. Having no leads on Amara they visit the Mills’ residence when Claire calls them for help on a series of disappearances in their neighborhood. What they find is a surrogate mother, Jody, struggling to manage her two damaged daughters.
Claire (Katheryn Newton), having arrived later than Alex, is struggling to adjust to the normal lifestyle that Sheriff Mills and Alex have managed to build. To compensate, she’s chosen to become a hunter, unfortunately she sucks at it as, in her exuberance, she keeps attacking innocent people.
Meanwhile Sheriff Mills issues with Alex (Katherine Ramdeen) are of the ordinary teenage variety (like finding birth control pills in her bag) as Alex has been able to adjust to normalcy after she started dating the most popular kid in school. Unfortunately for Alex, it turns out Claire was not wrong in that the disappearances are related to a vampire who’s looking for revenge after he was lured by Alex into a vampire nest. He has set Alex up by turning her boyfriend into a vampire so she can feel happiness before he kills her. After the vamps trap the girls they’re eventually rescued by the Winchesters - Dean decapitates the leader after he takes a bite from Claire. In turn, she decapitates Alex’s ex.
There’s a sort of role reversal as Alex is feeling guilty for Jody (broken leg) and Claire (beaten up and bitten) getting hurt. Jody and Claire both understand and explain to Alex she was just a kid, and didn’t really have a choice, when the vampires took advantage of her. Nevertheless, Alex is still morose and thinks about leaving while Claire seems excited that Jody is going to start training her in investigating (so she can stop gripping up innocent people with silver swords).
Funniest Moment
Probably the most uncomfortable dinner scene since Jesse ate dinner at the Whites’. Among things discussed were Claire catching a werewolf that turned out to be a rabid German Shepard and Jody throwing Alex’s business in front of everyone while confronting her about finding her birth control pills (Sam’s response “Oh, we going there”). Jody justifies it by saying “if you can’t talk about it then you shouldn’t be doing it.” Jody follows up with classic words of wisdom: “Birth control pills are useless against STDs. Whoever you are with needs to suit up every time, always, no pulling up the drawbridge early.”
Supernatural S11E12
-
Plot - 8/108/10
-
Action - 7/107/10
-
Dialogue - 9/109/10
-
Performance - 8.5/108.5/10
Summary
I always tend to like episodes with recurring characters as they always bring a change to the monotony that the show tends to exhibit, while adding some spice to the monster of the week format. And of course, they also add tension that at any moment one of the characters could end up dead.
That I like Jody Mills and the idea of the wayward girls doesn’t hurt the episode as well. By the way, they are, unfortunately, one of the few remaining recurring characters.
I’m sure it was no coincidence this episode was setup as if Claire and Alex were young female versions of season one Winchesters, with Claire playing the Dean role of not only accepting being a Hunter, but also being excited by it - albeit without Dean’s training by his father, thus making her not very good at it. And Alex playing the role of Sam, who’s unsuccessfully trying to lead the normal life, but is always being pulled back into the hunter life because of their past.
I wonder if they’re thinking of either spinning off Supernatural with the girls as the leads (and having the Winchesters guest star from time to time) or just straight up remaking it. In either case, I could see Jody Mills playing the role of Bobby, as their surrogate mother, mentor and using her connection in the sheriff’s department to supplement them as needed. I’m not sure how this show would work as 11 seasons of Supernatural has sort of run the well dry of topics. While I think Kathryn Newton (Claire) is charismatic, Katherine Ramdeen (Alex) has no screen presence and is plain boring. Although she could be playing it that way in a failed attempt to mimic Sam.
In either case, Supernatural has had discussion of spinoffs in the past - even going so far as writing a pilot that was later nixed - with characters that were less interesting than the ones from this episode, so it wouldn’t be that inconceivable of an idea.
I’m surprised she has lasted this long tbh.