SUPERNATURAL and the Deathly Men of Letters

Season 12, Episode 17 “The British Invasion”
Written by Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming
Directed by John F. Showalter

The British Men of Letters are bad. I told you they were. They are downright evil incarnate, and it’s worse the farther up the chain of command you get. Faced with a supernatural danger, I’d be on the side of the monsters rather than call them in. I was wrong about one thing, though. The boys didn’t miss a thing not getting to go to Kendricks, the BMoL’s version of Hogwarts.

Poor Mick (Adam Fergus). He barely had a chance to be a better person. He made the most of what he had, though. He really learned not to be a Nazi during his time with the Winchesters.

The show opens with a memory of Mick’s. He is at Kendricks and he and another child are called to the Headmistress’s office, which has plastic laid on the floor. She tells them that only one of them will come out of the room again and reveals a knife on a table. Only one comes out and of course it’s Michael (Mick), covered in blood.

Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) finally get a clue as to where Kelly (Courtney Ford), the mother of the devil’s spawn, is hiding. They get it from Eileen (Shoshannah Stern), the deaf hunter whose parents were killed by a banshee. It’s great that they brought back Eileen, unless of course she ends up getting killed. She’s one of my favorites of their fellow hunters and contacts.

Mick picks that day to tell them that the BMoL are tracking Kelly down as well because they know that Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino) is having a child. Dean and Sam admit that they know and share what they know about it. Mick is appalled that they didn’t kill Kelly when they had the chance. For the first time I can tell that his being judgmental is motivated by fear.

He ends up drinking Scotch with the boys all night. During another bad dream about his killing his friend, he gets a call from Mrs. Umbridge…I mean, Dr. Hess (Gillian Barber), the headmistress. She has lost patience with the American hunters and tells Mick that they have to assimilate or be eliminated. She sounds like a Dalek.

Mary (Samantha Smith) sleeps with Ketch (David Haydn-Jones), which is not a big surprise, but sure to make the boys unhappy when they find out.

Kelly insists on visiting a real Ob-Gyn, which results in getting the cheerful doctor killed. He’s killed by a demon of Dagon’s, who then gets killed by Eileen. She gets some information first.

Hess sends a minder for Mick, a young man named Renny Rawlings (Darren Adams).

Mick brings the Colt to Sam. Rawlings is in tow. Dean grabs Kelly and brings her to where they’re waiting. They start talking to her about the baby. Renny Rawlings wants to shoot her, but Dean makes him back down. Dagon (Ali Ahn) shows up and they are no match for her. I didn’t realize until then that the Colt was not for Kelly or the baby but for Dagon. Sam drops the Colt and Eileen picks it up and shoots. Unfortunately, Dagon is phasing out right at that moment and the bullet hits Renny. This leaves Eileen devastated and Mick determined to kill Eileen. Evidently part of the code is that when someone kills one of the Men of Letters, they die, regardless of why they did it. Sam talks him down. He tells Mick he can make his own decisions and not blindly obey.

Dagon tells Kelly she won’t survive the birth but she can quit worrying about the baby’s health. The baby is strong and will be just fine.

Headmistress Hess shows up at the Men of Letters bunker with Ketch. She criticizes Mick for failing to keep Kelly or to kill Dagon and for letting Eileen go. Mick tells her what he really thinks: the Winchesters’ way is better, and that their way leads to kids killing their best friends. It’s a fine speech and during the middle of it, Hess nods to Ketch, who shoots Mick in the back of the head. Hess pronounces the experiment dead and wants all the American hunters dead as well.

Cas is still missing (probably trapped in heaven) and Eileen is on her way to Ireland, where I presume she will be picked up at the airport and murdered. I don’t give much for her chances. Not only are the Men of Letters still after her, but she flirted with Sam and he comforted her after she shot Renny. If that’s not the kiss of death on Supernatural, I don’t know what is.

Let’s give Mick a moment here. He completed a profound character arc in less than a season. He started out a smarmy, useless but smart guy tasked with the impossible goal of recruiting American hunters, which is like herding feral cats. He ended up a guy who bucked the system even though he knew it would lead to his death and even though it meant that he had to face the evil he had done in the name of the system. That’s where most people fail. They protect the system so they can keep from facing their guilt. Now he will never turn into a real hunter or start wearing flannel or shave. Or let the beard grow out. Sadly, he will be buried in that stubble. Adam Fergus deserves a big round of applause for his performance.

They can’t possibly do that test on all of their students. They’d lose fifty percent of their school. That kid had parents and so a cover story would have to have been created. Perhaps Mick was slated for special things, or perhaps he had shown signs of rebellion they wanted to squash. Maybe the other kid was targeted and Mick was just expendable.

Now we have an idea of how evil the BMoL can be. But Hess is not the head bad guy, although I am sure her influence, starting in childhood, is immense. They referred to the head person as “he” and “the old man”.

If Ketch starts hunting Winchesters, will he have mercy? I don’t know if he can love anyone, but he admires Mary greatly. Once again, Ketch had a scene where I wasn’t sure he was human. He acted very strangely after he killed Mick, circling around the body and looking at it curiously.

Kelly’s high risk pregnancy doesn’t mesh with a previous episode, “Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets”. Why would they think Lily’s child was a nephilim if the mother doesn’t survive the birth? Maybe it’s just when you have an archangel’s baby. It can’t be something that is common knowledge or Castiel would have used it earlier to talk Kelly into ending the pregnancy.

Crowley (Mark Sheppard) and Lucifer have some back and forth in this episode. Crowley is trying to use Lucifer’s humiliation to gain respect from his demons. Lucifer is trying to figure out how to game the system.

Supernatural has gone to the dogs. Hess compares hunters to dogs constantly. Crowley calls Lucifer a dog and a puppy during their brief interactions. I don’t know if there’s a higher meaning to that.

The worst part is that the Winchesters are completely unaware of what happened to Mick and that the British Men of Letters has decided that they need to be put down. Since there is a small level of trust there, any of them could be caught unaware.

Next week it looks like they are hunting for a goat-headed man in a small town. How can they do that with everything that’s going on?

Supernatural airs on Thursday nights on the CW at 8pm/7c.