Rewatch S6: The French Mistake (6.15)
French Mistake! Woo!!
The trick with this one will be not copying out every single line of dialogue just to tell you how much I love it.
Also, just a note: a VERY easy clothing episode. They don't even take off their coats for very long.
Let's start!
Oh! Genevieve is in this! I love Genevieve!! She has the body shape that I find the most attractive in women. I want to cuddle her - a lot.
"Where's Bobby?"
"In town - supply run."
"In this?!"
-Ok, I paused here to get a cap of the clothes Sam was wearing, and I actually caught the expression he made - and it is hilarious. It is perhaps the most horrified expression that I have ever seen on Sam Winchester's face...and it's because Bobby is going to the liquor store in the rain.
"Hello boys!"
"Balthazar..."
"You've seen the end of the Godfather right?..."
- I like the way Dean says Balthazar - for some reason, I forgot that Balthazar was a real wild-card in these first few appearances. They don't actually know if he's there to kill them himself.
"Blood of lamb, blood of lamb...*moves to fridge*...beer, old pizza, blood of lamb! Yes!"
- I just love that Bobby has blood of lamb next to his old pizza in the fridge, and a bone of a lesser saint in the false bottom of his desk drawer.
"And where's Cas?"
"Oh, Cassi? He is deep deep underground...so good ol' Raphi put out a hit list on every last samariton that helped him out..."
- I also love that Balthazar called Castiel 'Cassi' it's cute.
"Real good solid fall, way to go" *ass pat*
- Haha, I love the fact that someone actually pats Dean Winchester's ass. I find it funny when football players do that too each other too...mainly because in my family, the only asses you patted were those of babies when you wanted to calm them down.
"Supernatural Scene 1 Echo Take 1 Tail-Slate Marker!"
- This is perhaps my favourite cut-to-title-card ever.
I love Meta!Serge. (I have kind of a weird history with French-Canadians...which really, only people my age from Ottawa would understand...but long story short, my two closest friends are French-Canadians and one of them has the accent, and I just always associate it with love and support now, so it's basically my favourite thing to hear.)
"Should we be killing anybody?"
"I don't think so"
"Running?"
"Where?"
- I love that Sam's defaults are killing people and/or running - if he's not supposed to be doing one of those things, he's not sure what's going on.
"Then we could have them fly at the window then freeze frame, then cut to black, act out..."
"Freeze frame?"
"Freeze frame."
"Serviceable"
"Whatever, Season 6...."
- I love the fact that they actually freeze frame later in the show.
"Oh crap, I'm a painted whore."
-Haha, oh Dean.
They sit Sam in the panic room to interview him....like I said, Sam must have such a very weird relationship with that panic room.
"Dude they put frickin make-up on us! Those bastards."
-Overcompensating, Dean. You know you looked pretty.
"No, seriously, why would anybody want to watch our lives?"
"According to the interviewer, not many people do."
-Ok, I really am just copying out lines to laugh at them at this point.
"...I'm just saying we landed in a dimension where you're Jensen Ackles and I'm something called a Jared Padalecki."
"Oh so what? Now you're Polish?"
- Dean really knows his ethnicities by last name, doesn't he!
"I want to go home. I feel like this whole place is bad-touching me."
"Yeah, I know, me too."
-Poor Dean. He is having a rough year when it comes to bad-touching. Which, in Dean's case, just always means that he is feeling extremely unsettled and uncomfortable.
Hahaha, I love Misha acting like he's acting. He's so good at it.
"Amen, Padaleski"
"Lecki."
'What?"
"Lecki - pretty sure."
- I wonder how many times Jared has had to do that in his life. I have a similarly uncommon (in this part of the world) last name, so I sympathize. Actually, technically, *I* don't even say my last name correctly.
"Misha? Jensen? What's up with the names around here?"
-Hehehe.
"I'm totally going to tweet this one. Ola Mishamigos, J-squared got me good. Really starting to feel like one of the guys."
-Yeah, again, just laughing at lines here. I like that they actually used J2 in an episode though.
"That's fake me. This must be fake mine."
"Dude, I have a helicopter"
- Dean and Meta!Jensen aren't THAT dissimilar, methinks.
"Alright, here goes, says you're from Texas"
"Really?"
"And uh, oh, says you were on a soap-opera"
*watches days of our lives clip.*
"I don't like this universe Sammy, gotta get out of this universe."
"Yeah, no argument here."
-That had to be disturbing for BOTH of them. Hahaha.
"Well at least they're talking to each other."
-So, as Jensen and Jared informed us at the recent Toronto Convention, this was a dig at the X-files (or similar shows) which most of the crew worked on before...where the two leads didn't speak to each other at all.
"What the hell is going on here - what is wrong with this thing?"
-Ah, the real prop car. It's a sad world. Also, the PA trying to get them to stop reminds me of the story Jensen and Jared tell about doing doughnuts with the Impala and shooting gravel at the poor PA trying to get them to stop.
KM Motion Picture Studios
-A lovely tribute to Kim Manners, of course. Sadly, that sign doesn't actually exist. Though, I like the maple leaf. I think the art department had a lot of fun putting maple leaves on everything they possible could in this episode.
"Where the hell are we anyway?"
*Shot of Vancouver from the Cambie Bridge*
"Dude, we're not even in America."
- Again, maple leaves on every lamp post, welcome to Vancouver sign, and neon maple leaf - all art department. None of that is on the Cambie bridge.
"Nice modest digs, Jay-Z"
"Wow, I must be the star of this thing."
-Again, just like the line.
"Dude you have a camel in your back-yard."
"It's an alpaca, dumbass."
-One of the best entrance lines.
Man, I love Genevieve.
I love the picture of the alpaca beside their wedding photo.
"What are you doing?"
"Work! Work."
- I love the way Sam says that. I wonder how weird this was for Jared and Genevieve, playing characters, but um, also sort of playing themselves...and yeah...weird.
"You've never even been to our house."
"Well, now that I know there's an alpaca out back, I am definitely coming back."
- Again, I love the contrast with reality, because Jensen used to LIVE at Jared's house.
"Well, alpacas are the greenest animal"
"Right, right, that is so important."
- I love the way Dean says 'that is so important' because...well, celebrities tend to get very caught up in bizarre causes that are suddenly VERY IMPORTANT even though there are a lot of other problems with the world. And that's not belittling what they are doing, it's just...hilarious.
"Well, it looks like you did alright."
"Yeeeaah, yeah. I should figure out her name."
-Haha, ok, yeah, I just like this...and how much Sam is like 'score!' I think there's a little bit of Jared in there. ;)
Of course, I have to talk about the set dressing of Meta!Jared's mansion. It's awesome! I love the warhol-esque paintings, and the photoshopped cowboy picture...and brilliant. It's over the top and hilarious.
Sam speaking Spanish!
"Hey! Hi! Hi, um, Gen-evieve"
"Gen"
"Gen, of course. So, um...how was the otter thing?"
- The way Sam greats Genevieve is not how someone would great their wife. It's great.
"You remember the year before last, all those disasters?"
"Disasters?"
"Yeah, you know, the whole earth quake spike. The 9.2 in Rome. The 8.5 outside Boston? The whole east-west tsunami chain?"
"Yes, I remember all of those from last season on your show."
-Ok, so, the thing with Supernatural is that they don't trumpet things. These disasters were what was on the news in the time between when Sam got possessed by Lucifer and when Dean met up with him and Adam!Michael in the field. A LOT of people missed the existence of these disasters, so part of me kind of likes the fact that they reiterated them...but I remember a lot of people being confused too, because they had missed them the first time. The show has to find a way to emphasis things a little more sometimes, I think.
You know, call me a sexist misogynistic douchebag, but I kind of want Sam to have slept with Meta!Genevieve. False pretenses be damned. I find it hilarious....and sexy. Man, I wish Jared and Genevieve were into threesomes...with me.
"We finish this day in 12 hours, if it kills us all..."
-This line is kind of a throwaway and hard to hear, but I love the fact that they have it in the episode. A 12 hour day would be a SHORT day for a show like Supernatural. Typical days are about 15 hours, I believe. The cast and production crew basically just work and sleep for nine months of the year - which is why I wish people would stop asking Jared and Jensen if they are going to do other projects in their time off. If you were them, would you? Personally, I needed a 6 week vacation this year and I didn't even have a job!
"Oo, priority what's in it?"
"I bought part of a dead person."
-There is nothing I don't love about this exchange and the way Jared and Misha act it.
Oh man, the acting scene. Hilarious. It never gets old.
"What's happening?"
"An atrocity is 'appening."
- Awesome line.
"Who wrote this? Nobody says penultimate!"
-Apparently an inside double joke, that I've never heard fully explained. But, I do love the word penultimate.
"Misha's celebrity tweet says it's a black market organ thing. I'm betting drugs."
*Sam and Dean jump through window*
"Drugs."
-Again, just hilarious.
"That spell was perfect, it should have worked."
"What if it can't? Look, I was up all night looking online, there's no sign that anything like the apocalypse happened here or anything like it. And as far as I can tell, monsters, ghosts, demons, they're all pretend."
"So nobody's hunting them?"
"No hunters."
-This is pointed out later in the commentary too, but I'm going to talk about it here aswell. Mainly that really, this universe should be a paradise to Sam and Dean - nothing to hunt. But, given that their identity is hunters...it's basically also makes them meaningless, and destroys their entire way of life. It's an interesting phenomena where Sam and Dean's goal is to get rid of all the monsters, but yet, if they do that, they also get rid of themselves. It's the classic problem where they basically are PART of the monster-world themselves.
"Maybe we can't get out of Earth #2 right now, but the least we could do is get out of the Canadian part of it. I hear one more conversation about hockey, I'm going to puke."
- Now, not EVERYONE is obsessed with hockey in Canada...but, it IS sort of like the weather, in that you learn how to make small talk about it even if you don't watch it yourself.
- Also, I love this line because I once spent Easter weekend with a very religious family. And by the end of that weekend, if I heard one more thing about Jesus, I was going to punch somebody.
Stunt guys! I'm glad we actually got to see Jensen and Jared's stunt guys. It's neat.
"Well, uh, Sera, we don't really understand it ourselves, but it seems Jared and Jensen were seen beating an extra to death."
"Huh."
"This is Jim here, Sera, and it wasn't all the way to death, only part way, so that's a plus."
- I love this line...trying to see the brightside.
-Also, as someone who is sometimes an extra, I very much hope that I am never beaten to near death.
"..besides, Eric's off in some cabin somewhere writing his next pilot."
"He sold Octocobra?"
"Yes"
"Mother of God, they'll buy anything."
-They really will. Sharktopus!
"Goodnight Misha"
"Goodnight little fella"
-Misha, you need your call sheet for tomorrow. Sigh. I love how douchey Misha tries to make himself in this episode.
"Ever get that feeling someone's in the back seat. frowny face."
- before I had a phone that had the colon and bracket symbols, I actually used to write out "sad face" and "smiley face" - it'd take me an extra two minutes, but I felt it was worth it.
"There you are guys, you got a minute?"
"Actually, we're looking for-"
"For that extra you tried to kill? Is this about money? Is this the kind of act that goes away if we can scare up some coverage on a raise?"
-That's one elaborate ruse for a raise!
"You're kidding? So the character in the show, Bobby Singer-"
"What kind of douchebag names a character after himself?"
-Poor Bob Singer. This wouldn't have happened if the character wasn't so beloved...and if there wasn't a Robert Manners living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. (For those who might not know: Originally the character was supposed to be Robert Manners, but yeah...)
"Guys you can't come to work on poppers, and smuggle kidneys in from mexico, and make up your own lines as you go. You CANNOT make up your own lines. Good god, what about your careers?"
- I love how the emphasis is on them not being able to make up their own lines, and not on the actual illegal activity.
"You know what, screw our careers, Bob!"
"What?"
"You heard my brother, that's right, I said brother. Because you know what Bob, we're not actors, we're Hunters, we're the Winchesters - always have been, always will be. And where we're from, people don't know who we are, but you know what, we matter to that world. In fact we even saved the son of a bitch once or twice. Ok, and here, maybe there are some fans who give a crap about some of this nonsense."
"I wouldn't call it nonsense."
"But, Bob Singer, if that is your real name, tell me this this: What does it all mean?"
"Ok, this is good. I mean, we've all had our psychotic breaks. I can work with this."
- I like this speech, it's so suitably dramatic, yet undercut by the ridiculousness of the situation.
"How do you do it? Live in this grubby, shabby desert with nothing greater than yourselves? Nothing but dirt when you die. No power, no magic..."
-Ah, but that's what makes it a challenge to be won.
I love the way Misha whimpers throughout this and has his voice be high pitched. It's such a contrast to how we usually see him as Castiel.
"Oh my god, oh my god!"
"What?"
"Misha - he's been stabbed to death!"
"Where?"
"Where?!"
-And this is what makes Sam and Dean different from your common man.
Oh man, maple leaf on crime-scene tape...that had me ON THE FLOOR when this episode aired. I guess you can file this under Visual Jokes Only Canadians Get.
"That's right, the scary man killed the attractive crying man, and then he started to pray..."
- That's usually how I describe people too.
50 bucks! I need to give Dean Winchester some information...
Gun shop. There could have been such a good Canada joke in here. It'd have been simple - like, "Ok sir, if you just fill out this paperwork, once everything is approved, I'll give you a call - should be about 3 months or so." Sigh.
"You know, if we drop Virgil, get the key, I mean, this might be it. We might be stuck here."
"No, we'll figure out a way back."
"You wouldn't be that broken up if we didn't though."
"What? Don't be stupid."
"Well, I'm just saying, no hell below us, above us only sky."
"Dean, our friends are back there."
"Yeah, but here you have a pretty good life. Back home the hits have been coming since you were 6 months old. You gotta admit, being a bazillionaire married to Ruby - the whole package - there's no contest."
"No, you know, you were right. We just don't mean the same thing here. We're not even brothers here, man."
"Alright then, let's get our crazy show back home."
- I like how Dean is trying to protect Sam here - he's floating the idea that maybe Sam should stay, we all know he is. He didn't even explore his own life in this alternate reality. Besides the trailer, we know nothing about Meta!Jensen. But, maybe if Dean saw Danneel, he'd be reluctant to back to his own world! Haha.
-Also, I like that Sam says "our friends are back there" - Bobby, Rufus, and Castiel. Those are the only 3 friends they have now, I believe.
"Bob! Dude! What the hell, right?"
"Eric, thanks for coming, I know you're busy, it means a lot that we can still call on you-"
"Yeah, I know, Misha right."
"Oh I know I know, it's just awful."
"Got us the front page of Variety though, did you see that?"
"Front page, really? But tragic."
"Tragic, that's what I was going to say."
- I love this dig at the whole "any publicity is good publicity" culture of the entertainment industry.
Kripke's slow motion death scene.
-So, the other night when I was on the Supernatural set talking to Jim Michaels. He told me that the whole reason Kripke got this death scene was because Kripke HATES slow motion. He won't let them use it on the show at all. So, they did it to annoy him, and he ended up loving it! Haha, they can't win with Kripke, I guess.
Serge the ninja! I love the fact that he just calmly dodges the bullets. I think out of everyone, with not very much information, we learned the most about Serge Ladouceur in this episode.
"You two have the strangest luck."
"Raphael? Nice meatsuit. Dude looks like a lady."
- I always thought of angels as inherently genderless. So, I kind of like them skipping bodies and trading pronouns like it doesn't matter...but I think the amount of digs and the pronouns used in the show sort of undermine that theory of mine. Still, my personal headcanon is that angels are without gender.
"If you don't want to die tonight, back off."
-Of course, this gets us into the debate of "why didn't Cas just kill him" and why amass the weapons if he seemingly wasn't going to use them for the war, but instead still go with the souls plan? My theory at the time, and I think it still stands, was that Castiel COULD have killed Raphael, but he wasn't yet powerful enough to act against Raphael's followers, who may not have bowed so easily to Castiel after he killed their leader. Who knows though, perhaps it's just convenient writing.
"Well Cas, now that you have your sword, try not to die by it."
-Sigh, I don't think that's advice that Castiel heeded.
"Wait, you were in on this? Using us as a diversion?"
"It was Balthazars plan. I would have done the same thing."
"That's not comforting, Cas."
"When will I be able to make you understand, if I lose against Raphael, we all lose everything."
"Yeah, Cas, we know the stakes, that's about all you've told us!"
"I'm sorry about all this. I'll explain when I can."
"Friggin' angels"
-Castiel seems to want to convince Sam and Dean that the stakes are high, so that they'll understand why he had to make the deal with Crowley, but without actually telling them about the deal with Crowley...because, deep down, Castiel KNOWS it was/is a bad move. He's just in denial.
"Solid. It's real."
-Sam hits the fourth wall. I like that bit.
"Yeah, real, moldy, termite-eaten home-sweet home. Chalk full of crap that want to skin ya, and we're broke again."
"Yeah, but hey, at least we're talking."
-You know, the more I watch Supernatural, the more I see it as a show about a Pessimist and an Optimist who have to continually save the world.
COMMENTARY!
It's Sera, Bob, Ben again!
They comment about how in Season 6 they have a loyal fanbase.
Sera: "The least we can do is do an episode that acknowledges that they know more than the average viewer knows about the show."
Ben: "We were taking part in this weird relationship that we have with the fans....this is a very specific situation, this Supernatural, the show and the audience and how this functions. I think it's very sociologically interesting."
Sera: "I think it's something sort of unique about Supernatural, the quality of our fanbase."
Sera's favourite use for angels is to have them make the show so fantastical.
Ben calls them the "door to freedom," and mentions how they used the Trickster for that before it was revealed that he was an angel too.
Lou Bollo is the only one who plays himself.
"He's an excellent Lou Bollo."
Serge is "so unruffable" says Sera.
Sera: "I actually walked up to him once and was just like "How do you do that?"...and you know, he just looked at me and he was super zen, and he said "I just do not spend energy when I do not need to spend energy.""
Ben: "There's a kind of a magical quality to Serge."
Origin of pitch. - been around for several years. Eric pitched it often, but it never worked until now.
Sera: "I had the same reaction that I think everyone had, which was 'that is awesome, and could spell the death of us'"
Jared and Jensen embraced it very quickly.
Crew members volunteered to be killed in the massacre.
They all praise for Misha.
Bob: "We were worring about shooting ourselves in the foot, and Misha was already shooting-"
Ben: "He was loading six guns at once!"
Nothing is truthful. No one is playing themselves. It's all hyper-reality.
Bob *sarcastic*: "Yeah, he does have a helicopter and an aquarium"
Ben *sarcastic*: "That's the one thing" "He insisted that they be filmed, also, very peculiar."
Sera: "Jared does have Genevieve, that's true."
Ben: "But she's not an object."
Ben: "That notion of doing slightly different versions of everyone but us into a very weird conceptual framework. It's like Earth 3, and that's the only reason you can buy guns in Canada is 'cause we're in Earth 3 - her majesty's gunstop, or her majesty's guns and ammo."
Sera: "That Soap Opera clip is the most precious thing. Thank you, Jensen"
Bob: "You know, other than the fact that he looks like a baby, the dialog there is just so perfect"
According to Ben, the running 'at least they're talking' gag was the only potential thing to upset fans - and some fans were actually were upset by the notion that it might be a truth and got on twitter and were quite forceful about how they had it on good authority that Jared and Jensen were indeed friends.
Bob: "Nobody calls him Mr. Ackles, by the way."
They talk about Frigging vs. Freaking - no one like any of them and they all wish they could use the actual words.
Sera talks about how a world without magic is simultaneously "what they long for, but also undercuts their life's purpose."
The character of Ben Edlund was actually in the writer's draft. So Ben could poke fun at himself too.
Ben: "There was a point where I jabbed at my own use of intoxicants. That seemed like an appropriate gag."
Sera: "Nobody says penultimate was a nice double-jab"
Ben: "Yeah, I say penultimate twice in the morning before I even brush my teeth."
When it comes to the acting scene, they all just start laughing.
Sera: "It's hard to do entertaining bad acting, it's an art form. This is my favourite thing since Boogienights."
Sera: "What is Jared doing with his hands? That's the best thing ever."
Bob: "By the way, I found myself - this was just life imitating art. Directing episode 22 this year, we just had a bunch of false starts, and I found myself saying 'what's happening? what's happening?' and then I realized I was doing dialogue from the show."
1st AD Kevin Parks remembers everything they do on the show. They call him Parksepedia.
Clothes!
They actually talk about clothes!!
Sera talks about having conversations about "the clothes that they were wearing when they zapped into the real universe" - do they change, do they stay? four conversations that lead to them wearing the same outfits throughout this episode.
Sera: "And you probably wouldn't have noticed that...but now I've mentioned it. But these are the kinds of things we obsess about."
-Ha! That's what YOU think. I totally noticed...I notice EVERYTHING TO DO WITH CLOTHES. (eventually, usually not right away, because I like to turn off that part of my brain while I watch the show, or else I miss dialogue.)
Ben goes into this whole rant about wondering where Meta!Jared and Meta!Jensen went and whether Supernatural the show collapsed after Sam and Dean were returned to their reality...and then Sera tells him to stop talking. Haha.
Ben: "This kind of ended up being kind of a sitcom for a number of acts"
Sera did her own voice originally, but she wasn't good enough.
Sera: "Bob politely told me that I was crappy."
Bob: "That's Jim doing what Jim does which is put the best spin on everything."
Misha asked to wear the sweater for the scene.
Bob: "We just slide by the fact that Ben Edlund called me a douchebag"
Ben: "I didn't call you a douchebag! Someone in the course of events called you a douchebag."
-Bob once again explains that Kripke named the Bobby Singer character while Bob was away.
About allowing the possibility of making a call through blood-bowl:
Ben: "I don't know if that's cheating or not."
Sera: "It's creating a rule by which you can tell the story."
Bob Singer likes Dean giving the bum Canadian money:
Bob: "And he looks at it like 'what the hell am I doing with Canadian money?'"
When the Gun-Shop scene finally comes on, I discover that the reason the awesome opportunity for a joke was missed was because the writers don't actually know the gun rules in Canada. Just that we have some. Well, that explains it, I guess, but still...missed joke opportunities make me sad.
Ben: "That's definitely illegal though. that is not how you complete a transaction at a gun-shop."
Bob: "It's very uncanadian."
Ben will never write the same again now that he's directed.
Ben: "I will have so much more care for the fragile constraints of reality that express themselves in Vancouver, yeah. There's such casual things you can write into a script that could make a tremendous amount of effort - unnecessary effort - for a lot of people."
Both American and Canadian casting directors called to confirm what the producers wanted for looks because they were afraid of offending.
There is praise for guy who played Kripke.
Apparently, Kripke called wardrobe to make sure they got his brand of sneakers right.
Sera: "You can't kill Serge, no."
Ben: "No, he's got too much to do."
Ben says that apparently there were people after the show speculating about whether Serge was secretly an angel or something, since he was able to avoid the bullets.
Sera calls Balthazar a dick. Haha.
Sera: "He doesn't usually do that, but he's finally evened up with Raphael for the moment, so it's a good moment to show your junk"
Ben: "It's the angel version of showing your junk. Look at my big wings!"
About the moment when Sam tests Bobby's wall:
Sera: "It's actually not real."
Ben: "That means he's lying! That sets the same one as the one that's not real!"
Sera: "More meta would be use in smoking jackets, with a camera pointed at us, just reading you scripts."
"This is Sera Gamble and thank you for watching the show."
"This is Bob Singer and what's happening?!"
"This is Ben Edlund. An atrocity is happening."
In other news, I had about an hour and a half to kill today, so I put together the first 28 seconds of my first-ever Supernatural vid! Woo! Look for it to come out in...um...months from now, because it takes forever to make!