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Congratulations to the person responsible for Sam's drunken letters to Stephen King, because you just got a massive shout-out in tonight's episode. After the boys salt and burn their father's corpse (as one does, of course), they crack into his voicemail and track down the source of a message John had been saving for four months -- a woman named Ellen who, with her daughter Jo, runs a roadhouse-slash-meeting-lodge for peripatetic gentlemen who shoot monsters in the face with rock salt. These lovely ladies, I'm told, will feature throughout the season, but tonight their primary role is to clue Sam and Dean in on some demonic doings at a local carnival. Seems a clown visible only to children (the brothers among them, apparently) finagles his way into the kids' houses late at night after they've visited the fair and eats their parents. Yet another reason never to reproduce. Quickly enough, Our Intrepid Duo figures out the carnival's supposedly blind knife thrower is responsible and, after a brief bit of hand-to-hellbeast tussling in a fun house, the guys dispatch the thing to the black beyond. There's also a lot of grief-related angst -- including one horribly painful scene in which Dean takes out his anger on the defenseless Metallicar with a tire iron -- but all that can wait for the recap proper. Line of the night? "I'm on it like Divine on dog dookie." Don't ask. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
We start off with another "Previously on Supernatural" sequence of the same sort I cursed last week, but this one's so cleverly intercut over snippets of The Chambers Brothers' "Time Has Come Today" that the images and the song combine to make last week's episode seem even more entertainingly disturbing than it actually was. After a couple of clips of soon-to-shut-up-for-good Shut Up Daddy in action over lyric snippets like "Young hearts can go their way" and "The rules have changed today -- I have no place to stay," we hit the best bit at the end, where they jump forward to the part of the song where time seems to slow and attenuate as the guys just keep chanting, "Time!" at lengthening intervals, with blackouts hitting the screen each time they do so, until everything starts overlapping on top of each other: Time! "I will give you the [fucking] Colt and the bullet, but you gotta help Dean." Time! "You still need to sweeten the pot." Time! "Today's your lucky day, kid." Time! Dean gasps awake on his hospital bed. Time! "You watch out for Sammy, okay?" Time! John whispers something distressing in Dean's ear. Time! John's ready for his close-up, Ceiling Demon. Time! "Dad?" Sufferin' Sammy bleats. Time! Coffee hits the floor, Sam bellows soundlessly for help, and John's flatlining monitor begins to drone underneath the song. Time! "Time of death: 10:41 AM." Time! Sam and Dean vanish into the last blackout, from which emerges that huge, flaming "NOW." It creeps towards the screen before cross-fading into an...
...enormous red balloon that quickly pops to reveal crowds thronging a carnival midway in, as the title card notes, "Medford, Wisconsin." We cut through a couple of the rides and pan past a muscular and bald firebreather in gladiator gear before we're assaulted by a pair of mutely affable tramp clowns who entertain a pretty little brunette child with juggling and plate-spinning and such. "God, I hate clowns," the brunette's father mutters to the wife a couple of steps out of his daughter's earshot. "Always creep me out." "Shhh!" the mother, who's blonde and therefore will be dead before the opening credits, chides. "She likes them!" she continues, nodding towards the girl. Yeah. She likes them so much that the coroner's office is going to have to use a Dust Buster to vacuum up what little remains of your implants after tonight's Monster Of The Week is through with you. Ooops! Spoiler! After another spin through the fair -- during which we are treated to an unnecessarily lingering shot of a female contortionist's lower half -- Dad Of Nora checks his watch while Mom Of Nora tells the kid she has time for one last go. Nora glances around for a bit, trying to decide what to ride, and eventually opts for the Pagliacci clown standing off to one side. And if you think that joke was rude, you obviously haven't watched this entire episode. By the way, I typed this clown as a "Pagliacci" to distinguish his puff-ball-and-frilly-collar self from the two Emmett Kelly variations who'd been entertaining this child earlier, but a quick trip to Yahoo reveals that this guy's more of a cross between Bozo, the beloved alter-ego of late Chicago-based children's entertainer Bob Bell, and Pogo, the psyche-scarring alter-ego of late Chicago-based children's serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Seriously. He's got Bozo's hair and Pogo's makeup. This show is so sick and wrong. And I love it.
Anyway, John Wayne Gacy waves at the little girl, who flaps her hand around by way of response while drawing her mother's attention to her new friend. Neither Mom Of Nora nor Dad Of Nora can see John Wayne Gacy. DUN! MON, amused, smiles, "What are you trying to do, scare your father?" Nora sort of half-grins in reply, but looks puzzled when she sees that John Wayne Gacy's no longer standing by the truck.
Night. The Family Of Nora cruises down a lonely two-lane highway, on their way home. DON's driving, MON's asleep in the passenger seat, and Nora's glancing out the side window just in time to spot John Wayne Gacy waving at her from the side of the road. "Look, Mom!" Nora cries. "The clown!" MON snaps her eyes open and blinks around for a bit, but Nora dejectedly notes, "You missed him." MON smiles distractedly as The Plaintive Yet Spooky Piano Of This Family Won't Be Enjoying Each Other's Company For Much Longer PING-PING-PING-PINGs and we cross-fade to...
...Nora's bedroom, later that evening. Just as she's about to drift off, the child hears rustling noises coming from outdoors through her open window and sits up in her bed to eye the massive clown-shaped shadow now appearing on her ceiling. She pads silently to her window to find John Wayne Gacy jingling his little clown bells at her on the lawn below. RUN, NORA, RUN! Unfortunately, Nora's just as insanely stupid as every other child we'll be meeting this evening, so she ignores me in favor of darting downstairs in her little preadolescent nightie to escort the pedophile serial killer right into her home! God, I hate kids. Nora clicks open the lock, swings wide the door, and takes John Wayne Gacy's hand in her own to ease him across the threshold and into...
...RAAAWWWR! The new flaming opening credits! "Eeeeeeeee!" shrieks The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon. With delight!
We crawl out of the blackness that follows the flames of the credits to find...more flames, actually. Daddy Shut Up's enshrouded corpse lies upon a bier atop a fiery pyre, and as the camera pans down from an overhead to the body's level, we can see Sam and Dean standing side-by-side on the opposite end of the clearing. I'll not be wondering how they managed to snatch away their father's corpse from the proper authorities, nor will I be wondering how they managed to pull off this middle-of-the-night DIY cremation without said authorities slinging their tantalizing asses into jail, because these are The Winchester Boys, and they can do anything. Sam's a watery-eyed emotional wreck, as one would expect, and Dean appears to be made of stone, which, you know, go figure. All is quiet save for the crackling of the fire until Sam at long last manages to choke out, "Before it...before he...did he say anything to you? About anything?" Dean takes a long moment before whispering, "No." LIAR! "Nothing," he mutters further, ignoring me. BIG, FAT, LYING LIAR! Sammy bites his lower lip and dissolves into a series of silent sobs as Dean stares stoically into the flames until -- wait for it -- one perfect tear drops from his right eye. Dean's a fucking pussy, y'all.
We get another eyeful of John's blazing corpse before the camera cross-fades to an overhead pan across various wrecks of the automotive sort in Bobby's sunnily bright junkyard as a title card appears at the bottom of the screen to inform us it's now "One Week Later." The opening guitar lines of Three Dog Night's "Shambala" rise tinnily from some unseen tape deck as the camera lands at last to hover over Metallicar's restored roof. Hooray! Still a long way to go -- including replacing, oh, the engine -- but progress has clearly been made. As a gentleman asks to have his troubles and pain washed away with the rain in Shambala, the camera pans down past the Impala's gutted interior to land on a sweat-stained Dean doing something manly with a wrench, on his back beneath the car. Sam lankily ambles over just as the gentleman implores the rain to do the same to his sorrow and his shame. No, I'm not reading too much into any of this at all. Why do you ask? "How's this car coming along?" Sam awkwardly opens, because, um, duh, College Boy. Are you blind? Dean's a bit kinder than I was just now, but his gruff, monosyllabic "slow" carries with it hints of increasing irritation. "Need any help?" poor Sammy tries again. "You, under a hood?" Dean snorts as he slings something chunky and metallic off to the side. "I'll pass." Because everyone is helpful and everyone is kind on the road to Shambala, Sam tries once more with, "Need anything else, then?" Dean rolls his grimy self out from beneath Metallicar, pointedly adjusts his socket wrench, and glares, "Stop it, Sam." "Stop what?" Sam flails. "Stop asking if I need anything," Dean sighs as he stalks over to his ramshackle work table. "Stop asking if I'm okay -- I'm okay," Dean insists, "I promise," but we know he is LYING just like he LIED when they were burning their father's corpse, because Dean is a LYING LIAR. "It's just that we've been at Bobby's for nearly a week," Sam exposits needlessly, for the title card already provided us with that information, "and you haven't brought up Dad once." "You're right," Dean admits apparently sincerely, and Sam allows his brother a sad smile. Then, just as McG's fucking name pops up in the credits at the bottom of the screen, Dean smarms, "Come here -- I'm gonna lay my head gently on your shoulder. Maybe we can cry? Hug? Maybe even slow dance!" Shut up, Dean. Can't you see that Sam's mangled tangle of hair is in pain?
The boys explode into angst-laden bitchery, with Sam being all, "Dad's dead, the fucking Colt is gone, The Ceiling Demon responsible for it is somewhere out there, and all you can think about is fixing your fucking car!" and with Dean being all, "Even you can't decipher Dad's cryptic notebook crap, College Boy, and if you could, we'd still have nothing to kill the damned dirty demon with anyway, so cram it!" and me being all, "Sam did not just diss Dean for fixing Metallicar, did he? Oooooh! Catfight!" Dean finishes it all up by asserting that as long as he can't accomplish anything productive with regard to the primary demon in their lives, he'll be fixing what he can: Metallicar. By the way, the song's just hit the part where the gentleman can tell his brother by the flowers in his eyes on the road to Shambala, and I am not making that up. Go back and check yourself, if you don't believe me. Sam, leaving the whole issue of Dean's screwy grieving process behind for the moment, finally reveals why he came out to bother his brother in the first place: He found one of John's old cell phones and cracked the voice mail password to retrieve a message John had been saving for the last four months. Dean presses the thing to his ear to hear a woman say, "John, it's Ellen -- again. Look, don't be stubborn. You know I can help you. Call me." Click. Dean's all, "Yes, and...?" Sam found no references to Ellen in their father's papers, but he reverse-directoried the phone number, or something, and he's got her address. Dean mulls this over, then nods his head, adding, "Ask Bobby if we can use one of his cars."
Cut to a squeaky, panel-sided mini-van squealing up into the dirt parking lot of an abandoned-looking roadhouse that's helpfully named "ROADHOUSE," if that sign above the porch is anything to go by. On the radio in Van Morrison (and the Trademark Without Pity goes to fadedfireflies for that one)? The mellow melodies of Miss Toni Tenille crooning "Do That To Me One More Time." Hee. "I feel like a friggin' soccer mom!" Dean grumbles as he disembarks. Sam needlessly reminds his brother that Van Morrison was the only piece of automotive transport Bobby had available at the moment as the two check out the ROADHOUSE. Not receiving any answer to their repeated shouts, they decide to pick the lock, which Dean does quite easily with the little lock-picking kit Sammy remembered to bring along. The boys ease themselves into the bar just as the bug zapper electrocutes yet another fly, so we know the place hasn't been left to ruin, despite its neglected façade. They spot a drunk passed out on the pool table, quickly agree the gent likely isn't Ellen, and split up to investigate further. As Sam vanishes into the back rooms, Dean ambles around the bar proper until some old-timey guitar twangs on the soundtrack as the business end of a shotgun finds its way into the middle of his back. "Please let that be a rifle," Dean jokes as the thing is loudly cocked behind him. "Nah, I'm just real happy to see you," Alona Tal smirks as the camera swings around Dean's body to take in her face. Hi, Alona! Sorry about the crappy way they wrote you out of Veronica Mars, but hey. Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki are way hotter than Teddy Dunn and whatever that other guy's name is, so it worked out rather well for you, all things considered. "You should know something, miss," Dean begins, a little freaked but still slyly calculating, "when you put a rifle on someone, you don't wanna put it right against their back, 'cause it makes it real easy to do...this!" With that, Dean spins around to yank the shotgun out of her hands and disarm the thing. Alona sucker-punches him in the nose. Hee! Awesome.
As Dean staggers backwards, clutching at his nose and bellowing for his brother, Alona retrieves the gun from his hands and quickly reloads. Or whatever. I think I'm going to have to do something stupid like studying the art of modern weaponry if I'm going to get through recapping scenes like this one. "Sorry, Dean," Sam apologizes, poking his way through the swinging door from the ROADHOUSE kitchen with his hands on his head. "I'm a little tied up now." Well, he's not exactly, but he does have a massive revolver pointed directly at the assy tousle of a mop he's sporting on the top of his head, so it's more or less the same thing. Holding the revolver is Samantha Ferris, whom I know from The 4400, where she plays the head of the government agency in charge of monitoring the genetically altered freaks from the future. She's quite hysterically blasé in that role, too -- like, whenever a bunch of people inexplicably turn up instantaneously mummified or eaten by their pet parakeets or frozen into solid blocks of ice on their toilets, she'll be slightly rolling her eyes at the news as if she's thinking, "Oh, Jesus, what the fuck is it now? I've got Pilates at four." ["Contrary to all expectations, I've loved her on that show, and for this very reason." -- Joe R] Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Ellen wiggles an eyebrow around and asks, "Sam? Dean? Winchester?" Beat. The boys -- Dean still cupping his bruised schnozz -- warily grunt, "Yeah?" in unison. Heh. "Son of a bitch," she breathes before chuckling while dropping the gun to her side and introducing herself as Ellen. Alona's her daughter, "Jo." I hate that name.
Moments later, Ellen's passing Dean a towel full of ice for his bruised schnozz as Dean explains why they're there. Ellen replies that she offered their father her help after she'd heard through the hunters' grapevine that John was getting close to ensnaring The Ceiling Demon. Sam and Dean are as shocked as the audience to learn that such a grapevine exists, but exist it does, with the ROADHOUSE here one of the more popular meeting places along it. Just go with it. After all, it's not as difficult to swallow as, say, crack dens for elite Army forces who like having vampires suck on their wrists or karaoke bars run by feyly telepathic monsters from other planes of existence, now is it? "John was like family once," Ellen reveals. "Oh, yeah?" Dean retorts, still suspicious. "How come he's never mentioned you before?" "You'd have to ask him that," Ellen shrugs. "Aaaaawk! Waaaaard!" trills The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon. Dean slides past the awkward to manfully rebuff any offer of assistance from mere women, and Ellen's most awesomely all, "Hey, don't do me any favors. You don't want my help? Don't let the door smack your ass on the way out." "But," she adds, "John wouldn't have sent you if...." The camera pulls slowly in on her face as she realizes there's something wrong. Sadness and denial abound as Sam informs Ellen of the circumstances surrounding John's death at the presumed hands of The Ceiling Demon, and Dean gets snotty with regard to Ellen's proffered sympathy. You're starting to piss me off, Deano. "Look," Sam says, trying to smooth things over even as Dean shoots him a supremely annoyed side-eye, "if you can help, we could use all the help we can get." "Well, we can't," Ellen lightly admits while swiveling her head to exchange a glance with her daughter, and I must compliment the casting director, because unlike, oh, say, all of the main guys on this show, Samantha Ferris and Alona Tal actually look like they're related to each other. "But Ash will," Ellen finishes, and she now rouses the besotted gent who's spent this entire sequence passed out on the pool table. Ash's drunk-rising-from-the-dead schtick here is unbearable, so long story short, Ash is purportedly a "genius" as far as demon hunting is concerned, despite the fact that he looks more like "a Lynyrd Skynyrd roadie," what with a mullet unlike any I've ever seen in my long, long life, despite having grown up square in the middle of the Alabama part of Pennsylvania. Seriously. No one grows the party in the back bit long enough to sit on it. Whatever. It matters not, because Ash here is what you would call "eccentric." Also likely "brain-damaged," if that story about him getting struck by lightning is true. In any event, Our Intrepid Boys test Ash's bona fides by tossing him their father's research on The Ceiling Demon, and Ash makes impressive-sounding noises about "nonparametric statistical overviews" and "cross-spectrum correlations" before asking for exactly 51 hours to determine The Ceiling Demon's current location. Ash then gets an exit line so horribly delivered that I'll not be bothering to transcribe it. I think I hate him.
Thank God, then, for Ellen, who now returns behind the bar to start refilling the salt shakers, for she offers Sam a chance to inquire about the file folder tucked away behind the police scanner over by the top-shelf bottles of booze. You know, the file folder that reads in big, red letters, "COUPLE MURDERED CHILD LEFT ALIVE." I realize this is a hunter hangout, but please. Try to hide your research a little better, lady. In any event, Ellen was holding onto it for a friend of hers, but she agreeably passes it over to Sam.
Meanwhile, over in another corner of the bar, Dean tries and fails to flirt with Jo, but that's not important right now, because College Boy over at the bar proper has already identified a pattern in the series of mysterious murders in nearby Medford, Wisconsin, and Dean needs to leave with him on a roadtrip, pronto.
Smash to Van Morrison on the road to Medford, with Dean grumbling, "I can't believe this. Killer clowns?" Yup, Sam confirms, reading aloud from a newspaper article presumably detailing the gruesome deaths of Dumb Nora's parents after the family's visit to "The Cooper Carnival." John Wayne Gacy left Dumb Nora alone, by the way, before vanishing into thin air. The cops attribute this bit of her witness to trauma-induced hallucination. Naturally. Also, all of the carnival employees have rock-solid alibis, as they were all tearing down the fair at the time of the murders. "I know what you're thinking, Sam," Dean snerks. "'Why did it have to be clowns?'" "Gimme a break," Sam grumps, busted. "You didn't think I'd remember, did you?" Dean snickers. "Come on, you still bust out crying every time you see Ronald McDonald on the television." "At least I'm not afraid of flying," retorts Sammy. "Planes crash!" Dean protests. "And, apparently," Sam sniffily replies, "clowns kill." Hee. Other details in Ellen's file reveal there was a similar spate of carnival-connected murders in 1981, leading the boys to surmise that the evil spirit responsible is attached to some object the individual fair companies involved must be unknowingly trading amongst themselves. Because evil spirits are usually attached to a particular place, you see, rather than a cursed object, which is why this case is so bizarre. And I'll be damned if I'm going to search through last season's recaps for show-presented evidence to the contrary, because this entire Monster Of The Week plot is simply pretext for a little character development, post-paternal-death-style. Dean too casually wonders why Sam was so gung-ho on accepting this assignment, and Sam quite seriously replies that it's what their father would have wanted them to do. "What Dad would have wanted?" Dean eyebrows incredulously, the "Since when did you ever give a rat's ass what Dad would have wanted?" implied. Sam, clueless, just guhs, "Yeah. So?" Dean shakes his head all over the place, but remains silent.
Meanwhile, over at the fair, a father's leading his bored-looking son through the fun house. Despite the fact that this kid looks like he's about five years old, he's expertly flicking his thumbs around the PSP in his hands, completely ignoring the blacklit devils and bats and three-headed babies in jars that surround him. The dad, oblivious in his own way, continues yammering to himself as the kid wanders into a corner of the hall, in front of the aforementioned three-headed babies in jars. He happens to lift his eyes from the PSP in time to see John Wayne Gacy's reflection wiggling his fingers at him on this particular exhibition cabinet's glass. The kid slowly turns around, but there's no one behind him, and when he redirects his attention back to the exhibition cabinet, the clown's reflection has vanished. The father, noticing the change in his son's demeanor, bends down to ask the kid -- "Evan" -- what gives. "I...I saw a clown!" Hee. And I hope when you see that clown again, it eats your overindulged ass, too, you little brat. "Don't be afraid of clowns," Dad Of Evan foolishly counsels. "They're nice -- they're your friends." Yeah, be sure to remind him of that when he's watching John Wayne Gacy rip your liver out of your torso with his teeth, Dad. Ooops! Spoiler!
Later that night, Dad Of Evan slumbers in the master bedroom of House Of Evan with a blonde I'm guessing is both Mom Of Evan and more of this week's Monster Chow. Evan's little hand appears atop his father's duvet-covered leg, and the kid shakes his father awake with, "Dad! Dad!" DAE groggily wonders what's going on. "You were right!" Evan whispers excitedly. "He is my friend!" Dad Of Evan's eyes drift from his son's face to the enormous gloved hand clutching his child's own, then all the way up to John Wayne Gacy's blankly staring eyes. The sides of John Wayne Gacy's mouth slink up into a foul smile as Dad Of Evan jerks backwards in the bed with a terrified "Hey!" that's gobbled up by the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Back from the break, Van Morrison wheezes into The Cooper Carnival's gig, a benefit for The Children's Charities of Mishicot, Wisconsin. This show is evil. Also, the real Mishicot's barely big enough to warrant its own gas station, much less a collective of children's charities, but I suppose that's neither here nor there. Right before the boys disembark from Van Morrison, Dean spots the "5-0" chatting with the Emmett Kellys from the top of the hour. A short bit later (geddit? "Short"? You will), Sam's cooling his heels by the Tilt-A-Whirl when a midget clown toddles by. This is amusing for a number of reasons, first among them Sam's near-paralyzing fear of clowns no matter how small, as entertainingly displayed by Jared Padalecki in the wordless exchange of mutually suspicious side-eyes that follows. A little more amusing is the fact that this little woman has bent her head all the way back to meet Jared Padalecki's eyes, because she's a midget and he's fifteen feet tall. And even more amusing than that is the flashback I just had to the Season One gag reel, wherein Jared Padalecki as itching-powder-infested and therefore crotch-scratching Sam bitches, "I think that midget stripper gave me herpes." Heh.
Anyway, the suspicious midget eventually toddles off, allowing Dean to bow-leggedly lope over and tease, "You get her number?" Sam wrinkles his nose at Dean eight or nine times until Dean finally passes along the information he was able to procure from sources that will remain unidentified: Two more murders the evening: a couple "ripped to shreds" after attending the fair with "a little boy." "Who fingered a clown," Sam guesses. There's a very funny moment wherein Dean goes to the same sick, twisted place you just went, glances over at Sam to see if the latter understands how disgusting he just was, realizes the latter is utterly oblivious to the foul double meaning of the statement so recently uttered, and decides to drop it all in favor of confirming that yes, the little boy did indeed finger a clown, who then vanished into thin air. Hee. They get to realizing that even though a cursed object will certainly emit EMF, there's no easy way to scan everything at the carnival without drawing suspicion upon themselves. No easy way, that is, until Dean spots a "Help Wanted" sign attached to a nearby tent.
The boys wander into the tent to find an elderly gentleman hurling knives at a bull's eye he never misses. "Excuse me," Dean calls out, "we're looking for a Mr. Cooper -- have you seen him around?" "Is that some kind of joke?" the elderly gentleman scowls, ripping off his black sunglasses to reveal a pair of cataract-clouded eyes. This leads into a crotchety rant from the geriatric knife-thrower, punctuated by Dean's mewling apologies and Sam's snickers of glee at his brother's inadvertent faux pas. Dean sticks his foot in it when a diminutively statured gentleman arrives to find out what's up with all the geriatric ranting, and Dean assures the arrival, "It's all just a little misunderstanding." The midget goes apeshit over the perceived slight, and Sam just laughs and laughs and laughs until the boys are finally...
...escorted into Mr. Cooper's trailer by Mr. Cooper himself, who invites them to take a seat. As the seats available are one dingy-looking black padded armless office chair and one garishly-decorated piece of trash festively shaped like a clown -- complete with arms that wrap around one's torso to function as rests -- Dean of course darts over to the dingy one, leaving the other for his coulrophobic brother. Sam hilariously twitches himself down on the thing, perched on the very edge as if ready to flee the instant the thing comes to life and starts gnawing on his behind. Long story short, Mr. Cooper calls them on all of their job interview lies and delivers a lecture on the sad history of side-shows and their freaks before announcing that his carnival functions as "a refuge for outcasts." As Sam and Dean clearly have other things going for them, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, Mr. Cooper encourages them to take their fine selves back to school so they can "find a couple of girls, have two-point-five kids," and "live regular." There's a joke to be made about the two and the point-five and how the point-five would just love to be part of a traveling freak show, but I can't find it right now. Anyway, Sam slips into his Captain Sincerity suit and leans forward to breathe, "Sir, we don't want school, and we don't want regular. We want this." Sam's legs look so scrawny in those tights.
And that little display apparently assuaged all of Mr. Cooper's many misgivings, for we join the boys as they wander away from the fair owner's trailer as newly minted carnival employees. There follows a scene wherein Dean confronts Sam about both the whole not wanting to go back to school thing and the whole suspiciously abrupt change in Sam's attitude as far as the hunting life goes thing, but I can't focus on any of it because Jared Padalecki's hair has finally reached the point where it can spread its wings and take to the air of its own volition. As CaffeineKitty so succinctly noted on the boards, you watch this scene fully expecting Dean to interrupt Sam's little heartfelt speech with, "Hang on a second, Sam, I think your hair has a question." CUT IT. NOW. Anyway, where was I? Oh, it doesn't matter, because they cover the same territory at least two more times before the night is over. !
Later that day, Sam's picking up trash while clad in a carnival windbreaker within which he's cleverly concealed an EMF detector, and I do hope it's the one Dean fashioned from a Walkman, because that was too fucking cute. Anyway, nothing on the midway triggers the detector, so Sam sneaks into the fun house through the exit and starts poking around in there. Poking, poking, poking. ["Yeah, far be it from me to go to the 'dirty!' place, but: 'sneaks into the fun house through the exit and starts poking around in there .' Fantastic." -- Joe R] Sam clears the calliope and the three-headed-babies from suspicion, then nearly jumps out of his skin when a skeleton in a noose drops down from the ceiling. He passes the detector across the bones a couple of times and looks grim.
Outside, Dean interrupts his own trash detail to take a call from Sam. "What's the matter?" Dean asks upon hearing his brother's wavering tone of voice. "You sound like you just saw a clown, heh heh heh." You know, it all sort of blew past me when this initially aired, but the repeated references to Sam's phobia are beginning to annoy now that I'm typing them out. They should have stuck to the exchange in Van Morrison, the midget, and the chair, and cut everything else out of the episode. Then again, this episode's barely 39 minutes long without the Previously segment, so maybe that's why they decided to beat the dead horse. In any event, Sam tells Dean about the human skeleton in the fun house, guessing (incorrectly, as it eventually turns out) that the evil spirit's attached to its own remains. Just as Dean agrees to check it out, the blind knife thrower grabs hold of his arm and demands, "What are you doing here, kid?" Dean attempts to bluff his way out of it, but Professor Lodz calls him on his bullshit, firing off question after question about skeletons and EMFs and whatnot. "Dude," Dean Keanus, "your blind-man hearing is out of control!" Professor Lodz issues a few more words of warning about carnie justice, or something, before demanding again to know what Dean and Sam's real purpose is. Dean takes a moment, then leans in conspiratorially. "Do you believe in ghosts?" "Whaaaaa?" "My brother and me, we're...we're writing a book about 'em!" Dean then busts out this beautiful, broad smile of pride, presumably solely for the audience's benefit, because God knows that blind old bat can't see it. Or can he?
Dean catches up with Sam at the fun house just as another small child fingers a clown. There is, of course, no clown to be seen from anyone's perspective but her own. Our Intrepid Boys gulp.
Later that evening, Van Morrison pulls up in front of the latest little fingerer's low-slung homestead. Sam can't believe Dean told "Papasian" about their homicidal clown. "I told him an urban legend about a homicidal clown," Dean corrects before adding that when he mentioned "The Bunker Brothers'" "evil clown apocalypse of 1981," Professor Papasian dished some dirt about Mr. Cooper having worked for the Bunkers at the same exact time. The boys realize Mr. Cooper's likely in possession of the cursed object himself. The screen fades to black...
...only to fade back in again with a pan down the low-slung façade of the latest little fingerer's homestead at some point much later that night. A light flickers on in the living room. Cut to Van Morrison, where Dean's practically drooling against the doorframe in his sleep, while Sam keeps a watchful eye on the imperiled house. As soon as he spots movement in the living room, he shakes Dean awake in time for them to spot the stupid moppet wandering towards the front door. "Wanna come in and play?" she asks John Wayne Gacy. He eagerly nods his head, so she reaches out her hand to draw him across the threshold and into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Seconds later, the stupid little idiot leads John Wayne Gacy through the back of the house, where Our Intrepid Duo are already lying in wait. As Sam snatches the stupid little idiot from John Wayne Gacy's grasp, Dean spins around another corner to fire off both barrels of his sawed-off shotgun. The dimwit shrieks. "That's my job, you little bitch!" The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon shrieks right back at her. John Wayne Gacy takes both barrels to the chest and goes down like a French prizefighter. But then, just like Michael Myers in Halloween, he slowly rises back up into sitting position. The dimwit's still shrieking, by the way. You better shut up, bird brain. The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon will cut you. John Wayne Gacy leaps first to his feet and then through the glass door behind him, both shattering the thing as he passes through it and dematerializing as he does so. We get a hint that he retains some sort of solid form, though, when a potted plant on the back porch crashes down the steps as he presumably passes by. The stupid little shrieky idiot dimwit's parents finally arrive on the scene, and great is the shouting and screaming that follow until Sam and Dean bolt through the shattered back door. "They shot my clown!" the stupid little shrieky idiot dimwit pouts. After you let a homicidal maniac into your house at two o'clock in the morning, you're lucky they didn't shoot you. In the face. Moron.
Van Morrison, the morning. Sam grabs the rest of his belongings from the back seat while Dean unscrews the license plate and shoves it into his duffel. "Do you really think they saw our plates?" Sam wonders, and hey, College Boy! Yeah, over here. You and your equally dim brother should be worried about them finding all of the fingerprints you both just left behind all over the doors and the windows and the upholstery, you jackass. MOVING ON. Sam and Dean amble down a gloriously sun-drenched rural blacktop lane and, after they let the audience in on the fact that they're not hunting a spirit after all -- "That rock salt hit something," as Dean puts it -- they shift into extremely uncomfortable territory when Sammy loudly wonders if Ellen and their father ever got it on. "Nah," Dean shakes his head immediately. "Then why didn't he ever tell us about her?" Sam asks. "Maybe they had some kind of falling out," Dean shrugs, which is a really dumb answer, given the topic, because if Ellen and John actually did have something going on and it ended badly, that would certainly count as "some kind of falling out," but it doesn't matter, because the real reason the writers gave him that line is so that Sam might too carelessly note, "Ever notice Dad had a falling out with just about everybody?" which Dean Takes! Personally! even though he's still very quiet about it all, and they just damn the nice little stroll they'd been having down that beautiful country lane straight to hell by ramping up the fraternal bitchery. You'd think dealing with sudden, violent death all the time would make these people more appreciative of the good moments in life, like this one, and not waste them with pointless internecine douchebaggery. Oh, wait a minute. Silly me. I forgot. They're straight. Which means they can't be appreciative of the good moments in life like this one and not waste them with pointless internecine douchebaggery because otherwise, people would think they're faggots. I did get that right, yes, Mr. McG, sir?
Oh, I kid. It's not because they're straight. It's because they're John Winchester's sons, and look at what a gigantic fucking tool that guy was. "I am going to impart a piece of vital and deeply disturbing information in a whispery voice right before I die!" Drop dead, asshole. Erm. I mean, drop dead some more.
ANY-way, where was I? Oh, yeah. The pointless internecine douchebaggery. Sam's picking at Dean because he's certain Dean's shutting down like he always did in the past and not dealing with their father's death at all, which is A Very Bad Thing. Dean's furious with Sam for picking at him, and what's more, Sam's sudden bout of posthumous obedience to their father is chapping Dean's ass, because when their father was alive, Sam went out of his way to be contrary, and all this crap coming out now amounts to too little, too late. Did I touch on all of the major points? Don't worry if I missed a couple. After all, we'll be dealing with them for the rest of the season. Fight over and splendid day thus ruined, Sam runs into the bushes to cry. I mean, "to call Ellen." Dean sets his jaw manfully.
Later, the boys are back to ambling down the highway. Sam gets off his cell to give Dean the bullet on tonight's Monster Of The Week: It's a Rakshasa, from "a race of ancient Hindu creatures" who "appear in human form, feed on human flesh, can make themselves invisible, and cannot enter a home without first being invited." "Why don't they just munch on the kids?" Dean quite reasonably wonders. "No idea," Sammy shrugs. "Not enough meat on the bones, maybe?" He then carries on with the weekly exposition, noting that Rakshasas "live in squalor, sleeping on a bed of dead insects," "and they have to feed a few times every twenty to thirty years." Our Intrepid Duo agree that the demon's M.O. matches the timeline for the various carnival murders, and further agree that the likeliest suspect at this point is old Mr. Cooper himself. Sam notes that the only way to kill the thing is by stabbing it with a knife forged from pure brass. Dean remembers Professor Paisan's stash of stabby things, and instructs Sam to confirm that "Cooper's got bedbugs" while he himself finagles a way into Professor Paisan's trailer.
The Deadliest Show On Earth, If You're The Parent Of A Particularly Stupid Child. After the carnies shut down the twinking lights and retire for the evening, Sam and Dean emerge from the shadows to go sleuthing. As Professor Paisan tells Dean he's not sure if he has any brass knives, Sam breaks into Mr. Cooper's trailer and starts slicing open the mattress on his cot, only to be interrupted by Mr. Cooper himself, cocking a rifle at Sam's assily coiffed head. D'oh! Meanwhile, over at Professor Paisan's, the blind knife thrower tells Dean to check his trunk. Dean hoists the creaky thing open, only to find John Wayne Gacy's clown outfit underneath a black cape. DUN! Dean fingers the curly red wig, then whips his head around to blurt, "You?" Professor Paisan deliberately allows his cane to drop to the floor before sliding the sunglasses from his face. His eyes, once cataract-clouded, are clear. Well, until they flip into their Thriller form, at any rate. "Me!" he confirms with a coy little waggle of his fingers and an almost triumphant smile on his face. That triumphant smile, however, quickly gets CGI'd way into horrifying freak show territory as it shoots through Jack Nicholson as The Joker straight into Jim Carrey as The Grinch. Still wiggling his fingers around in the air, The Rakshasa dematerializes, cat's-eyes-last, right into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Dean frantically fumbles with the doorknob as the still-invisible Rakshasa hurls daggers in Dean's general direction that somehow always go wide to embed themselves in the wood. Whatever. Dean finally bursts through the door onto the midway, where he meets up with Sam. They rapidly fill each other in on their respective situations, and Sam stumbles across a cunning plan. Our Intrepid Duo vanish into the funhouse.
Which is still blacklit, even though they should have the work lights on now that the fair's closed for the day, and various carnie grunts should be in there sweeping the floors and wiping the kiddie snot off the exhibition cabinet glass, but Sam and Dean are alone, and whatever. Sam disappears behind a set of doors that swiftly slide shut behind him, blocking the boys off from each other. Sam bellows for Dean to "find the maze," which I totally don't under...oh! The maze will lead him to Sam! We were supposed to know this from our visits to the fun house...how, exactly? Nevermind! Look at the blacklit Pretty! Sam reaches the calliope and wrenches away at one of the brass pipes. All of which happen to be very, very hot because of the steam rising through them. Ooo-kay. Let's just get through this as quickly as possible, then, shall we? Because even the first time I watched this sequence, I knew it was nearly 100% filler. Dean eventually makes his way to the calliope, only to have The Rakshasa pin him to the far wall via a couple of particularly well-flung daggers through his jacket. Meanwhile, Sam's managed to wrest one of the calliope's pipes from its mooring, but alas! The monster is invisible! How ever will Sam be able to stab it back to Hell? Dean thinks fast and yanks the steam valve conveniently located directly above his head into full open position. This sends a jet cloud of the stuff shooting through the corridor, thereby delineating the monster's form as it sweeps around his body. Sam jams the pipe into The Rakshasa's gut, and...demon go boom? No, invisible demon just scream until invisible demon stop screaming. Dean finally frees himself and stretches to shut off the steam. The cloud dissipates to reveal Professor Paisan's empty set of clothes on the floor. Monster Of The Week thus dispatched with, Dean makes a witty remark I can't hear because I'm being chewed up head-first by the METAL TEETH CHOMP!
ROADHOUSE. Ellen passes Our Intrepid Duo a couple on the house in recognition of "the helluva job" they just did, and wanders off as Jo wanders up. Sam looks at Jo, then Sam looks at Dean, then Sam looks at Jo, then Sam looks at Dean, then Sam looks at Jo, then Sam looks at Dean, and then Sam finally buys a goddamned clue and quite adorably bumbles, "Oh, uh, yeah! Um, I've, uh, I've gotta, ah...I gotta go." "Over there," he adds, nodding to a completely random corner of the bar. "Right now." And with that, he darts out of the frame. Heh. Left alone -- except for Ellen, who's eavesdropping as she polishes the glasses -- Dean and Jo flirt a little bit more, but agree the timing is completely wrong. Fortunately, they're interrupted by Ash, who arrives from the kitchen (!?!) with his uber-nerd homemade laptop to announce that his fifty-one hours' worth of work on tracking The Ceiling Demon have been only partially for naught, for while he can't find The CD anywhere right at this moment, he's set everything up so that, should The CD rear its fugly/attractive/whatever-it-picked-this-time head anywhere at any point in the future, Ash's uber-nerd laptop will, um, start hooting and yodeling at him? I guess. You see, as Ash puts it, he's "all over [The Ceiling Demon] like Divine on dog dookie," and that line would have been funnier had he been allowed to say "dog shit." Also, Sam's reaction to this news is "What do you mean?" and you can tell Ash can't figure out if Sam's inquiring about the uber-nerd laptop or the John Waters reference. Heh. Anyway, we also learn that Ash went to MIT before he was "kicked out for fighting," and that's about it for Ash at the moment. He'll notify the boys if his laptop spits out anything of relevance. As the guys rise to leave, however, Ellen takes a moment before calling out an invitation for them to crash in one of her back rooms, if they need a place to stay. They're family now, you see? Dean thanks her kindly enough, but insists, "There's something I gotta finish."
Damn straight. How dare you waste all that time chasing after killer clowns when Metallicar has been languishing in the hot sun, clearly in need of a little tender, loving care? Dean's back under the Impala doing something to one of its back wheels when Sam picks his way across the dirt to admit, "You were right. About me and Dad." Dean glances up at Sam for the briefest of moments, then goes back to puttering around the car. "I'm sorry that the last time I was with him, I tried to pick a fight," Sam bravely soldiers on in the face of Dean's apparent indifference. "I'm sorry that I spent most of my life angry at him. For all I know, he died thinking that I hated him, so you're right. What I'm doing right now, it is too little, too late." Sam, beginning to choke up because he's the one who's comfortable expressing his emotions, admits, "I miss him, man, and I feel guilty as hell, and I'm not all right. Not at all." The camera's been on Sam's face this entire time, saving Dean's reaction shot for when Sam follows all that with the accusation, "But neither are you -- that much I know." Dean is -- wait for it -- impassive. Sam swallows some tears and, after shrugging a bit at Dean's impenetrable demeanor, announces that he'll let his brother get back to his work. Sam wanders off, and Dean stands still for a very long moment, watching him go. Dean then paces around for a bit between Metallicar and another nearby wreck, grabbing hold of a crowbar at some point as he goes. And then? DEAN SMASH. Yep, he wields the crowbar like a pickaxe and crashes it through the other wreck's window. He then takes the briefest of pauses before slamming the thing down on Metallicar's just-restored trunk, and this is when I lost it. Not in a blubbery, "Oh, my poor damaged boys!" kind of way, but in a "DEAN! What the FUCK do you think you're doing to that CAR, you DIPSHIT?!" sort of way. Because I counted -- twice -- and I don't care if you do look like Jensen Ackles in a tight grey t-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans: NO ONE HITS METALLICAR WITH A CROWBAR SEVENTEEN TIMES AND LIVES TO TELL ABOUT IT. And then, just to make me feel sorry for the character again, Jensen Ackles nails his last, silent close-up as Dean, breathing heavily, gazes after Sam, his face unperturbed and nearly immobile -- except for his entire lower jaw, which is quavering with unexpressed grief and anger and anguish and fear. Damn you, Kripke!
The episode ends with a dedication card in memory of Peter Ellis, the director of last season's "Bloody Mary" and "The Benders." Just so you know.