12.21 There's Something About Mary

Title	There's Something About Mary
Episode #	Season 12, Episode 21
First aired	May 11, 2017
Directed by	P.J. Pesce
Written by	Brad Buckner Eugenie Ross-Leming
On IMDB	There's Something About Mary
Outline	As American hunters begin dying at an alarming rate, Sam and Dean worry Mary may be in danger. They soon encounter unexpected trouble, shocked to find Mary in cahoots with the British Men of Letters. Lucifer turns the tables on Crowley, with disastrous results.
Monster	British Men of Letters Hellhound
Timeline
Location(s)	South Carolina Lebanon, Kansas Fall River, Massachusetts
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Characters

• Sam Winchester
• Dean Winchester
• Mary Winchester
• Crowley
• Lucifer
• Eileen Leahy
• Mr. Ketch
• Lady Antonia Bevell
• Dr. Hess
• Drexel

Definitions

• Angel Blade
• Angel Wings
• British Men of Letters
• Costumes & Disguises
• Crowley's Lair
• Hellhounds
• Hunters
• Impala
• Men of Letters Bunker
• Table of Death

Music

None

Quotes

Dean: Ketch, calling to see if my Mom's with you. It's Dean. Winchester. Because I'd like to speak to her, that's why. No, I'm not being terse. Look, if you haven't seen her, do you know where she is? No, I'm not being curt either. Look, I don't have time for Manners 101 from you, okay? If she's with you, I wanna know about it. Fine. Such a dick.

Sam: People who do what we do, you know there are gonna be deaths, but... This...

Sam: Dean, monsters and demons don't team up. Seven hunters are gone. We can't grab a signal from Mom's phone. Cas has Kelly Kline who knows where. Mick has slipped off the grid. Ketch is lying to us. I-I... I wanna punch something in the face.
Dean: Good. Hold on to that, 'cause it look like we got a hellhound to deal with. Which means...

Lady Bevell: Well, not about this illusion of you that you hold on to. The perfect life. Loving husband and kids. But it never really was perfect, was it? All those secrets you kept from your beloved John -- that you were a hunter. That you invited Azazel to visit when he spared John's life.

Mary: How do you-

Lady Bevell: I have sources, Mary. Everywhere. After you died, your beloved John was a man slowly going mad, searching for revenge. What? Your boys didn't tell you? The drunken rages? The weeks of abandonment? Child abuse, really. It's no wonder they're... damaged. So... enough with the fairy tale. We are returning you to a more pure version of yourself -- Mary Campbell, natural born killer.

Crowley: So... Dagon dead. Kelly's now in the clutches of the Winchester's love slave, Castiel, who's no doubt dragging her to a gruesome death.
Lucifer: Mm. As opposed to the fun-packed death you have planned.

Mary: I believed in what you people were doing. I fought with you so that my boys could maybe live in a world without monsters. How can you just-
Mr. Ketch: I'm not sure what you're expecting. That I'll intervene? We made it clear to each other, we don't have a relationship.

Mary: Then you do it! Kill me. All my life all I ever had, other than my family, was my will. And it's going away. I'm... I'm putting people in danger. I'm putting my sons in danger. You... have to... please. For God's sake, kill me.

Dean: Did you -- did -- did your people, did they kill her?
Lady Bevell: Probably. Rule of thumb -- if you think we killed someone, then we probably did. Speaking of, you do realize that by attacking me, you invite the retribution of the entire British Men of Letters? No investigation, no trial. Just punishment and ruin. Possibly at the hands of Mary Winchester.

Dean: Mom? Look at me. It's us. Please. What's wrong with you? Mom!

Mr. Ketch: I do have to hand it to Lady Bevell. Your treatment's been most successful so far. And so you know, this will become... easier.

Mary: Easier... to hurt people I love?

Mr. Ketch: Easier to hurt people you don't remember loving.

Trivia & References

"There's Something About Mary" is a reference to the 1998 comedy of the same name.

Lady Bevell: The American hunters haven't fallen into line as we'd hoped, so they're being eliminated, repealed and replaced by our people, and you, Mary, you play a key role in that.

"Repeal and replace" has been the slogan of the Republicans regarding the removal of the Affordable Care Act and its replacement with a more conservative-leaning health care bill.

Drexel: The device, it's cemented directly into your DNA and that of the King's. As it's powering down in you, the polarity is somehow reversing.

Reversing the polarity is an established trope -- a classic bit of technobabble used to explain away all sorts of sci-fi problems through the years.

Lucifer: "Master strategist." More like Kermit the Frog. Oh, my little Muppet! Crowley, what will I do without you?

Kermit the Frog is the most famous of the Muppets.

Sam: She's your prisoner? Why?

Lady Bevell: Prisoner? Who said anything about prisoner? No, Mary's joined the team. Even has her own super-secret decoder ring.

Decoder rings are usually sold for kids to send and decode secret messages.

Lady Bevell: Oh, that Oedipal myopia again. And did you really think she was just 'working' with Ketch? All of those days and nights?

Oedipal relates to psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's theory of the Oedipal complex, which posited that children have a repressed desire to have sex with their opposite-gendered parent.

When Lucifer cuts Crowley's nose, it is reminiscent of this scene in the 1974 Roman Polanski film Chinatown.

Lucifer: Well, I could do this all day, but since I'm King, et cetera, et cetera...

Possibly refers to a scene in The King And I, in which the King orders his subjects that when he sits they shall sit, when he kneels they shall kneel, "et cetera, et cetera, et cetera."

Minutiae

Andrew McNee, who played Rick, previously played Deputy #2 in 6.16 ...And Then There Were None.

This episode reveals that Crowley has a working arrangement with the British Men of Letters in the UK, wherein his crossroads demons are able to operate only insofar as to make deals for souls, explaining how Bela Talbot sold her soul when she was a child when the BMOL supposedly had the UK safe from any supernatural incursions since 1965.

Eileen Leahy was killed off in this episode. Since season nine, the twenty-first episode of each season has included the death of a recurring character: Abaddon (9.21 King of the Damned), Charlie Bradbury (10.21 Dark Dynasty), and Metatron (11.21 All in the Family).

Some, fans were upset with the killing of Eileen Leahy and saw it as the fridging of another minority female character similar to the death of lesbian hunter Charlie Bradbury in 10.21 Dark Dynasty. The hashtag #firebuckleming (referring to the writers of the episode) trended on Twitter during the broadcast.

Sides, Scripts & Transcripts

• 12.21 There's Something About Mary (transcript)

Promotion

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