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Well, that was weird. With last week's Amazons having long since vanished into the mist, and with no further Leviathanical developments in sight, Our Intrepid Heroes decide to motor on over to Wichita, Kansas, to investigate -- you guessed it -- a series of mysterious and gruesome murders that have been plaguing the town as of late. The first of these bizarre killings involves a bloodsucking octopus attacking an obese gentleman shortly after the fat-fat fatty ruined his only daughter's birthday party, the second features an actual unicorn impaling a "full-frontal douchebag" of a dad shortly after that gent humiliated his only son at another boy's soiree, and the third sees some hapless janitor chomped to death by an invisible land shark, the latter of whom has taken to prowling the fetid depths of a children's ball pit because, hey, why not?
Fortunately, it takes very little time for Sam and Dean to link all three murders to the dreadful kiddies-only restaurant from which this episode takes its title, and here's where things really start to go south for poor Darling Sammy. As you'll no doubt recall, the dear lad suffers from an intense case of coulrophobia, and as Plucky Pennywhistle's relies rather heavily on the clown-themed amusements to keep its customer base satisfied, Darling Sammy is of course rendered nearly paralytic with fear the instant he sets foot in the wretched place. Luckily, Dashing El Deano's there to handle most of the investigative heavy lifting this week, and what he eventually discovers is this: A Plucky employee by the name of Howard has taken it upon himself to rid the world of lousy parents (and interfering janitors) by having children's worst fears come to life through the magic of hoodoo. In fact, Howard's about to set a robot with laser beams shooting out of its eyes on yet another sucky dad when Our Intrepid Heroes interfere with his nefarious plan, so Howard first sends a team of demonic clowns to slaughter Darling Sammy, after which he attempts to talk Dashing El Deano to death. Dean, of course, has long since grown impervious to such nonsense, and eventually hoists Howard with the latter's own mojo by summoning the ginger nerd's own worst fear at an especially crucial moment in this evening's action.
And in the end, Our Intrepid Heroes chit-chat about their goddamned feelings -- again, some more -- for the better part of two and a half minutes. I'd tell you what they said to each other, but seriously: I'd fallen asleep by that point. Besides, does anyone really care anymore?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Rattle, Rattle WE DON'T GIVE A SHIT ANYMORE THEN! And while it does provide us with a brief reminder of Dashing El Deano's recent clothing-optional run-in with the Amazons, the bulk of this evening's THEN! is devoted to a central plot point from this second-season episode, for reasons which will become readily apparent once we've blundered our collective way through the...
...Rattle, Rattle STILL NOT GIVING A SHIT NOW! Darling Sammy, his normally pleasant features contorted into a rictus of sheer panic and despair, bursts through the oily drip-drip-dripping of tonight's NOW! to race across a rain-dampened nighttime parking lot and crouch behind an SUV. Practically hyperventilating with terror, he pants, "It's okay! They can't hurt you!" before changing his obviously fear-addled mind and deciding, "They can hurt you!" The editing then gets a little jumpy as he tries to talk himself down, and he repeats the phrase, "If it bleeds, you can kill it!" a couple of times before steeling his wobbly resolve and pushing himself up to peer across the car's hood to find...a green-haired John Wayne Gacy clown loitering at the far end of the lot! DUN! The camera leaps over for a horrifying close-up of The Green-Haired Gacy's filthy, rotting teeth as the thing unhinges its lower jaw to chortle wickedly in Darling Sammy's general direction, and Our Desperately Coulrophobic Hero wastes not an instant tearing off in the other direction, with The Green-Haired Gacy hot on his remarkably healthy heels.
Darling Sammy first runs smack up against a high chain-link fence he wisely decides not to scale before ending up at the creaky wooden door of a little-used auto repair shop. He promptly boots his way into the place and somehow manages to barricade the flimsy entrance just as the high-stepping Gacy arrives to hurl itself, loudly and repeatedly, against the wall until it manages to break in. Frenzied Sammy makes to hustle himself to the opposite side of the shop, but alas! Another green-haired Gacy clown has materialized to block Sam's path to safety, and this second Green-Haired Gacy shudder-zips up to push its foul, giggling face into the camera until everything gets obliterated by this evening's...
...SNOT ROCKET! and apparently, the dark demonic force responsible for this season's snot rockets snorted a couple dozen lines of neon-tinted glitter before spraying tonight's title card, because the stuff's so thick in the air at the moment, I can barely make out the lettering. But that's not important right now because what is important right now is this: Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon is still missing. The lovely and talented timimoon108 did provide what initially seemed to be a promising lead on the forum boards, but upon closer inspection, it became clear that video was shot during Raoul's madcap adventures down in New Orleans three years ago. (You can just barely see the dear, dizzy lizard in the far blurry left-hand corner of the opening shot, obscenely shaking his scaly stuff for some Mardi Gras beads.) The bad news is, the police continue to be of absolutely no help at all. The good news is, I did hear some vague stories involving a series of random dragon sightings down in Bay Ridge the night Raoul vanished, but with my crazy schedule this past week, I haven't had a chance to chase any of those stories down. God knows what's happened to him, but it's driven me frantic with worry. Sigh.
In any event, fretting about it now won't do me much good at all, because I've got this entire episode to deal with, right? And, given the fact that I was quite literally falling asleep the first time I watched it, I have no real idea what I'm in for tonight, so where the hell was I? Oh, yeah: As the camera emerges from the darkness following this evening's glittery SNOT ROCKET!, a 24-style countdown clock appears at the bottom of the screen, where it proceeds to tick back from "60:00:00 Earlier." Meanwhile, a much-calmer version of Darling Sammy casually peruses a newspaper while Dashing El Deano answers an insistently ringing payphone, and long story short, it's Frank Devereaux, calling to inform the boys that he's managed to turn up nothing new on Richard Roman since last everyone spoke with each other, aside from the fact that wee little Fred Savage is now also leaking motor oil from his fingertips. Conveniently enough, there's no sign of last week's Amazons, either, so Our Intrepid Heroes decide to head on down to Kansas again. Darling Sammy, you see, had been perusing a copy of the Wichita Sun, whose briefly-visible headline reads "Peculiar death baffles authorities," so Sam and Dean shimmy into their FBI drag, hop into this week's crapped-out piece of automotive trash, and soon enough find themselves in...
...The Sedgwick County Coroner's Office, where the obliging attendant is just now drawing back the sheet on a morbidly obese corpse whose torso and face are puckered with a series of vivid suction marks. "You're saying an octopus did this?" Sam eyebrows. Not just any octopus, the obliging attendant informs them, but a "giant Pacific octopus." Naturally, as giant Pacific octopi tend to be quite rare out in the Plain states, the obliging attendant and his colleagues are convinced the morbidly obese gentleman actually died as a result of some "freak fetish attack" wherein the killer or killers first dotted their victim with those vivid suction marks before bleeding the gentleman out through that massive, ragged hole in the corpse's neck. Our Intrepid Heroes go, "Hmmm!" then retire to the hallway for a processing summit, during which they briefly consider the extremely unlikely possibility that they're dealing with a devious "octovamp," here, before deciding to interrogate the corpse's widow.
Which they proceed to do in the very scene, and long story short, Widow Fatty doesn't have much to tell them, aside from hinting broadly at the fact that she's convinced her late, unlamented husband was having an affair with their daughter's nanny, so Our Intrepid Heroes decide to split up for the phase of their investigation, with Dashing El Deano skipping off to interview the "naughty nanny" in question while Darling Sammy remains behind at Chez Fatty to see if the widow starts acting suspicious.
We immediately hop on over to the exceptionally attractive nanny's tastefully-appointed apartment, and as the conversation that follows amounts to little more than a chatty exposition dump, let's get through it quickly: Fatty's preadolescent daughter, glimpsed briefly during the scene, recently held a birthday party at the titular Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie, which is apparently some sort of local pizza joint "for lazy parents" modeled upon the near-ubiquitous Chuck E. Cheese's chain of nightmares and tears. Unfortunately for little "Kelly," Fatty and his wife pretty much blew the entire party off, leading one of Kelly's so-called friends to claim that "her folks didn't really love her." Naturally, this sent poor little Kelly into a shrieking shame spiral from which she did not emerge for several hours, during which the nanny noticed nothing unusual back at Chez Fatty. Well, except for one little thing, of course: Poor little Kelly grew especially afraid of her bedroom closet that evening, because she was convinced "a monster" had decided to take up residence in the thing. Dashing El Deano goes, "Hmmm!" and darts out to...
...the street, where he quickly dials Darling Sammy's cell to announce, "We talked to the wrong person." "Forget the mom," he continues. "Talk to the daughter -- she's mad at her dad for ditching her birthday." "So, what do you think?" Sam wonders by way of reply. "A birthday wish gone wrong? Something like that?" Dean hasn't a clue, but as Poor Little Kelly represents their only lead at the moment, Sam has little choice but to hang up and head back to Chez Fatty, where he finds Poor Little Kelly scrawling on the sidewalk with a piece of chalk. "My mom will get mad if I talk to you," Poor Little Kelly almost instantly pouts. "How come?" Sam gently prompts, furrowing his mighty brow with immense amounts of false concern. "Because of what I told the police," Poor Little Kelly blurts out despite herself. "I told them that I tried to warn my [worthless bastard of a so-called father] -- that the monster would get [that fat sack of bloated crap]!" Widow Fatty chooses this very moment to call her wayward and resentful daughter back into the house, leaving Sam alone out on the sidewalk to examine the picture Poor Little Kelly had been so busily drawing on the cement, and wouldn't you know it? It's an image of a massive, nine-armed, scowling octopus baring a mouthful of pointy teeth. DUN!
That evening, a balding, flush-faced, middle-aged gentleman clad in little more than his pajamas and a robe races through a dew-slicked field, pursued by what initially appears to be a white horse. This evening's bit of Monster Chow -- spoiler! -- vaults a wooden fence to land in what seems to be a high school's baseball field, then cowers, panting, with his back against the boards until...a gold-tinted spike rams its way straight through his chest! "GORE!" I scream to myself in a feeble imitation of my missing Raoul as a small circle of blood seeps out from the gentleman's sucking chest wound to stain his pajamas, and it's just not the same. Where the hell is he? In any event, after a very long moment during which the soon-to-be-dead gent gasps and chokes and gags while flailing his arms around uselessly in the air, the gold-tinted spike slowly slides back from whence it came, allowing the now-definitely-dead gent to keel over face-first into the damp outfield grass. The camera focuses in on the gent's rapidly-cooling corpse for a beat or two, then rises to vault the grue-streaked wooden fence to land on the dead gent's attacker, and...it's a unicorn. A unicorn that proceeds to shoot rainbows outta its ass as it gallops off to vanish into the depths of this evening's first METAL TEETH CHOMP! And even though this episode initially aired a few days ago, I still don't quite know how I feel about that particular sight gag, so let's keep this recap moving, shall we? Excellent.
We return from the break to find ourselves thrust back into the middle of the action from the top of the hour, with Desperate Sammy's frenzied face taking up much of the screen for a couple of seconds until The Green-Haired Gacys finally decide to attack. Desperate Sammy nails one of them right on the schnozz with a vicious right hook before booting the other in the stomach with one of his oversized feet, but unfortunately, both of The Gacys recover almost instantly from this assault, and Desperate Sammy's forced to repeat his "If it bleeds, you can kill it!" mantra until he somehow manages to overcome his pants-pissing levels of terror to whip out his trusty pearl-handled automatic. Sam then squeezes off a point-blank shot directly into the second Gacy's chest, but much to his dismay, the bullet simply explodes into a spray of twinkly glitter. The giggling Gacys proceed to kick Desperate Sammy's tantalizing ass from one end of the dimly-lit auto repair shop to the other, and just when things are looking their most dire, indeed, for poor Desperate Sammy, we slam back to...
..."36:36:08 Earlier," according to the convenient 24 countdown clock at the bottom of the screen, to watch as Dapper El Deano inspects the gore-bedecked hole left behind by the unlikely unicorn's deadly attack the evening. And when he's done, he chit-chats with a member of the local constabulary for a while until he notices the recently impaled gentleman's weeping widow standing all by her lonesome on the sidelines, just waiting to dazzle us all with yet another burst of expository blather, so Our Intrepid Hero obligingly grants her a moment in the sun, and we learn that the recently impaled gentleman just yesterday escorted his 8-year-old son to another child's birthday party at -- wait for it -- Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie. DUN!
This Week's Motel Room. Which, by the way, has a decidedly Polynesian feel to it. You know, in case you were wondering. Anyway, Darling Sammy's cell phone bleats, and it is of course Dashing El Deano on the other end of the line, calling to inquire, "You remember a chain called Plucky Pennywhistle's?" Darling Sammy blanches, then LIES, "No!" Unfortunately, Darling Sammy's LIES are all for naught, for Dashing El Deano distinctly remembers dropping Wee Sammy off at various of the restaurants on numerous occasions in the distant past so he could "go trolling for chicks." In any event, as both murder victims had been to the local Plucky's with their children on the very days they were slaughtered, Dean orders Sam to check the place out. Naturally, as Darling Sammy is deathly afraid of clowns, he refuses, but Dashing El Deano will not be taking no for an answer this evening, and he tells Sam to hustle his ginormous ass over to Plucky's, pronto. Lest he seem like a complete dick about it all, however, Dean does offer his brother the following kind words of advice: "Just know that ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of all clowns can't hurt you, and if it bleeds, you can kill it." With that, Dean hangs up on the call, leaving a woeful-looking Sammy to blink back tears of anticipatory terror as he gazes up at the ceiling and repeats, "If it bleeds, you can kill it." Aw.
Soon enough, Dapper Sam's trepidatiously tiptoeing through Plucky's front doors, dodging the non-demonic green-haired Gacys he finds closing in on him from all sides until he reaches the reception desk, where a ginger-haired greeter named Howard welcomes him with a too-chipper and entirely sincere, "Welcome to Plucky's, where all your dreams are good!" Dapper Sam flashes the dork his fake badge and asks to speak with the manager. Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie promptly scoots off to fetch the woman in question, and while he's waiting, Dapper Sam tensely makes note of a harried waitress named "Libby," who's just now planting her ungrateful brat of a son in one of the restaurant's booths, urging him to finish up with his homework while she finishes up with her shift. "Like I can concentrate in here," Libby's ungrateful brat snots back at his mother, and if Libby chose this moment to backhand the little shit through a wall, my only reaction would be applause. Christ, I hate kids on TV.
Anyway, Dapper Sam turns his attention to the series of kiddie-decorated placements now lining one of the reception area's walls. Each placemat has a large space in which the children are meant to crayon their "worst fear," which a small cartoon rendition of Plucky The Clown promises to then make disappear. The various fears on display include a green-faced witch, a bloody-toothed shark, a red-faced cannibal homunculus sporting an overloaded diaper, and a man-eating basketball. Only one of these things will become important later. Unfortunately.
Eventually, a petite brunette materializes at Dapper Sam's side and remarks, "Real beauties, huh? We rotate them out once a week -- kids love having their art on the wall." Dapper Sam's all, "Buh?" so "Jean Holliday, Shift Manager" explains, "It's just an exercise some pop psychologist came up with -- plus the owner's obsessed with 'aiding children's development,' so the placemat's a safe way to get kids to talk about their fears." "Personally," she adds, "I think it's a load of hooey." Good for you, sweetie. Now, can we get to the point? Excellent. Dapper Sam, after deftly dodging yet another green-haired Gacy, learns that last night's corpse created quite a scene at the restaurant yesterday afternoon, pulling "a full-frontal douchebag" as he dragged his hapless child away from the party they'd been attending long before the cake and presents had arrived. Dapper Sam goes, "Hmmm!" then steps off to one side to make a phone call. Before the call can connect, however, a shifty-eyed and poorly-groomed janitor whistles to catch his attention and, after hinting that he has a story to tell, the janitor tells Dapper Sam to return once the restaurant's closed for the evening. Dapper Sam tugs down the corners of his mouth, blinks, squints, frowns, blinks again, and sighs, and then it's time to return to...
...This Week's Motel Room to watch as Darling Sammy arrives to fill Dashing El Deano in on recent events, after which Our Intrepid Heroes bang their empty heads together in a failed attempt to figure out what's going on.
Meanwhile, back at a darkened Plucky's, the camera finds Jean Holliday, Shift Manager counting out the drawers as that shifty-eyed janitor makes with his goodbyes. Unfortunately for him, "some kid puked in the ball pit," so he's going to have to give the thing a "full sanitization" before he'll be able to clock out for the evening. The much put-upon janitor rolls those shifty eyes of his and dejectedly plods back towards...
...The Ball Pit Of Filth, where he vacuums up the disgusting, vomit-smeared balls in question until...dun-dun! Dun-dun! Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-da-da-DA! For yes, gentle reader, a never-seen Land Shark has invaded The Ball Pit Of Filth and, after circling the shifty-eyed janitor for a couple of passes, the razor-toothed beastie drags tonight's bit of Monster Chow beneath The Pit's surface to chomp him to bits. Off camera. Fortunately, what the sequence lacks in gore, it more than makes up for in its clever riff on the justly famous opening sequence of Jaws, so I do have to give them credit for that. At certain points, it almost seems like a shot-for-shot remake of the original scene. With balls. Bravo.
And once the late shifty-eyed janitor has disappeared beneath the waves of candy-colored vomit-smeared fun for good, the scene shifts outdoors, where Our Intrepid Heroes are just now pulling up to Plucky's in this week's crapped-out piece of automotive trash to find a cadre of emergency personnel already crowding the restaurant's front entrance. The boys flash their fake badges at everyone within eyeshot and manage to get a good, long look at the late shifty-eyed janitor's remains, after which Dashing El Deano grunts, "That's a shark bite." "Yeah," Darling Sammy glumly agrees. "And judging by the radius," Dean sagely adds, "I'd say a twenty-footer, at least!" Darling Sammy's eyebrows meet just above the bridge of his nose, and he tilts his head to one side, all, "Are you fucking kidding me with that bullshit?" "Shark Week!" Dean yelps in his own defense. "Man, how do you not watch that?" Darling Sammy sighs and wanders off, leaving Dashing El Deano alone to pout, "It's a whole week of sharks!" Hee.
Moments later, Our Intrepid Heroes make with the flashlight-fu through the darkened corridors of Plucky's proper and, after pausing to examine The Wall Of Fear -- which is now of course missing that bloody-toothed shark so prominently featured a couple of scenes ago -- they realize that someone or something in Wichita can now "literally fire off childhood fears at will." And as the boys whip out their trusty EMF readers to continue their after-hours investigation, the shot cross-fades to...
...the following morning, where it catches up with Harried Libby, who's just now arriving at Plucky's for the day shift, and I'm going to assume they'll be roping off The Filthy Ball Pit Of Doom for the day, because otherwise: Ew. Though, you know, all the rotten little brats that'll be traipsing through the place today deserve to end up elbow-deep in janitor guts, but whatever. That's not important right now because what is important right now is the fact that Harried Libby's wicked little shit of a son is once again giving her guff, this time for making him take the bus the rest of the way to school. And as the two exit Harried Libby's cramped Volkswagen hatchback to go their separate ways, the camera peers in to the passenger seat, where the wicked little shit's thoughtlessly left his notebook, a page of which features a fifty-foot-tall, laser-eyed, city-destroying robot currently rampaging through downtown Seattle. What? That is the Space Needle in the background, isn't it? And on that thrilling note, we enter this evening's commercial break most woefully CHOMP!-less.
And we return from that break to find ourselves once again thrust back into the middle of the action from the top of the hour, with Desperate Sammy's heretofore remarkably healthy frame flipping ass-over-end to land against a pickup truck's windshield. The Green-Haired Gacys giggle and hoot and take turns booting Desperate Sammy in the derriere until it's time to slam back to...
..."04:34:12 Earlier," according to the ever-convenient 24 countdown clock at the bottom of the screen, to watch as Our Intrepid Heroes fruitlessly scour both the Internet and Sucky John's demonic day-planner for possible sources of this evening's villainy over in This Week's Motel Room. Eventually, they resign themselves to the fact that their assiduous research is getting them nowhere, and they bang their empty heads together until Super-Smart Sammy comes up with the following plan: Sam will don his FBI drag and play Bad Cop for the day, shaking down the remaining Plucky's employees until one of them cracks. For his part, Dean will loiter around the restaurant in his civvies and track anyone who freaks out. "What's my cover?" Dean rightfully wonders. "I don't know," Sam shrugs. "Just hang back. Act normal." "Yeah," Dean grunts. "Guy in his thirties hanging out at Plucky's alone -- that's normal. That's not pervy at all." Heh.
Plucky's. A supremely pissy Dapper Sam stalks up behind Jean Holliday, Shift Manager and interrupts her hastily-called staff meeting to haul her into the employee's lounge for the first of this lengthy sequence's interrogations.
Meanwhile, an uncomfortable-looking Dean spots a tedious brat wandering past his table with a gigantic, multicolored Slinky in her hands, and he darts over to the restaurant's prize booth to offer Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie cash money for a gigantic, multicolored Slinky of his very own. Unfortunately, Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie has -- as Dean puts it -- "mainlined the Kool-Aid," and he refuses to accept Dean's money, instead directing Our Intrepid Hero over towards the restaurant's sole Skee-Ball machine so that Dean might, through "hard work and determination," win enough tickets to trade properly for the ridiculous object of his unlikely desire. Dashing El Deano unleashes a fearsome glare in Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie's general direction, but he eventually relents and clompy-stomps off to get some quarters.
Employee Lounge. And as nothing these two have to say to each other has anything to do with anything else in this episode, we'll be skipping back over to...
...the restaurant's sole Skee-Ball machine to revel in Dean's disappointment as his first attempt at the game earns him a meager three of the thousand tickets he needs for that ridiculous, multicolored object of his unlikely desire. He's about to plug another few quarters into the machine's slot when the door to the employee's lounge swings open, and Jean Holliday, Shift Manager emerges to scamper off towards the loading dock. Instantly suspicious, Dean tags along after her, only to find her sparking up a much-needed joint out amongst the Dumpsters, and color me shocked, because I had no idea they could portray such casual drug use on broadcast television in prime time. You learn something new every day, I suppose. Though it's kind of asinine that Jean Holliday, Shift Manager gets to bake herself cross-eyed with no repercussions whatsoever when the only guy we've ever seen smoking an actual cigarette on this show ended up decapitated with a length of razor wire. Whatever. In any event, Dean arches an amused brow and hastily texts the following to his brother: "High Times not our gal."
Back in the employee's lounge, Supremely Pissy Dapper Sam begins his interview with Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie. Yawn.
Meanwhile, through a series of unlikely events I'll not be bothering to detail, Dean befriends Harried Libby's wicked little shit of a son, and because I absolutely will not be forced to suffer through this monstrous little twit's so-called "performance" on my television, I'll be skipping through the heartfelt exchange that follows to give you only those bits of it that are immediately relevant to this evening's plot, and guess what? There are no bits of the heartfelt exchange that follows that are immediately relevant to this evening's plot. !
Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie emerges from the employee lounge apparently unscathed, so Dashing El Deano texts a curt "Nope" to Supremely Pissy Dapper Sam, who receives the message just as he begins an interview with some sketchy dirtbag in a cartoon lion suit and, long story short, the sketchy dirtbag is the first employee to flip out over Sam's whole Bad Cop routine. And as the guy races out through the loading dock entrance, both Sam and Dean chase after him until Dean eventually manages to tackle the guy into a rather convenient pile of soft, springy tires out in the restaurant's main parking lot. During the lengthy -- and I do mean l-e-n-g-t-h-y -- conversation that follows, we learn that Plucky's has a mysterious subbasement, from which the sketchy dirtbag has occasionally heard "spooky stuff through the vents," and...that's about it, really. I mean, the sketchy dirtbag has unusually yellow teeth for someone on network TV, but I think they've actually had this theme of disturbingly unattractive dentition running throughout the episode, so maybe that's what's going on with his mouth. Are we done here? Good.
Back inside Plucky's proper, Our Intrepid Heroes arrive just in time to witness a bit of conciliatory business between Harried Libby and her wicked little shit of a son that I will not be bothering to transcribe, after which Dean notices that the placemat the wicked little shit had been doodling upon is now missing. By now understanding that -- as Dean more or less puts it -- "bitchy [parents] plus sad kid plus placemat with something nuts written on it equals wacky corpse," Our Intrepid Heroes once again decide to split up, with Sam chasing after Harried Libby and her evil spawn "just to be safe" while Dean investigates the Plucky subbasement, alone. This should work out well for them. Doesn't it always?
Subbasement. Dashing El Deano expertly picks the lock on the door and proceeds to deploy a little flashlight-fu until he stumbles across a flaming brazier set atop a foul-looking sigil painted on the concrete floor. "Now, that's perfectly normal," Dean announces to no one in particular, after which he examines a series of childish drawings tacked to one of the walls, evidently by Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie if that photograph of the dork in question in happier and far-younger times is anything to go by. As a precaution, Dean draws his trusty pearl-handled automatic and pushes further into the subbasement's gloom until he reaches a makeshift altar, upon which is opened some ancient tome filled with ominous squiggles, beneath which lies the wicked little shit's purloined placemat. "Drop it," calls out a voice from somewhere behind him, and Dean turns to find a wild-eyed Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie leveling a trusty little revolver of his own at Dean's head. For whatever stupid reason, Dean does not immediately shoot the goopy-eyed shithead in the face, and instead stoops to set his automatic on the floor before rising to wonder, basically, what gives, and Jesus H. Motherfucking Christ on a stick -- they're gonna try to talk each other to death, aren't they? God, I hate this show.
ANY-way, Dashing El Deano and Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie commence with the chatter, and from what I can gather while trying desperately not to lapse into a Coma Of Boredom of my very own, The Wonder Weenie's using a little old-fashioned hoodoo to conjure up abused children's worst fears, then setting the various personifications of those fears after the kids' parents. Harried Libby was meant to be Howie's victim, of course, but Dashing El Deano rips up the wicked little shit's placemat, so I guess Harried Libby will now live to see another day. Another day wherein she wishes she had actually gone through with that abortion, I'm thinking, but that's neither here nor there at the moment, because Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie is now confessing to the fact that he's already targeted Darling Sammy for destruction, which anyone who's been paying attention to the episode thus far should have figured out already.
Nevertheless, to confirm The Wonder Weenie's assertion, we now leap across town, where we find Darling Sammy watching as Harried Libby and her wicked little shit make it home safely, after which Darling Sammy disembarks from this week's crapped-out piece of automotive trash to find himself staring directly into...the rapidly decaying teeth of Green-Haired Gacy Number One! Darling Sammy goggles and gasps and staggers backwards in abject horror and dismay until he foolishly trips himself up in this evening's METAL TEETH CHOMP! DUN!
And once more, we return from the break to find ourselves thrust back into the middle of the action from the top of the hour, only this time around, they've stepped things back a few beats so we can rewatch that whole glittery-bullet bit again. Joy.
Meanwhile, back in the subbasement, Dashing El Deano and Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie won't stop talking already. Naturally, we must suffer through a recitation of The Wonder Weenie's thwarted hopes and dreams -- intercut, I should add, with recycled footage of Desperate Sammy getting his remarkably healthy ass handed to him by Green-Haired Gacys One And Two -- until Dashing El Deano focuses in on one particular drawing The Wonder Weenie tacked to the subbasement wall: As best as I can make out, it's of a blue-faced preteen lying dead at the bottom of a lake, and Dean correctly surmises that the crayoned corpse represents Howie The Ginger-Haired Wonder Weenie's brother, who drowned thanks to some seriously neglectful parenting. Dean also correctly surmises that the never-named brother's untimely demise so traumatized Howie that The Wonder Weenie never went close to an open body of water again, and with that, Dean snatches the drawing from the wall, wraps it around some nothing of a Plucky's-related tchotchke Howie had been working on, and tosses it into the still-flaming brazier in the center of the room. On cue, the personification of Howie's worst fear -- that would his long-dead brother, of course -- materializes to grasp at The Wonder Weenie's hand, and Howie immediately falls on his knees to drown at his long-dead brother's feet.
Meanwhile, The Gacys charge at Desperate Sammy one final time to take him down for good. Naturally, they reach him just as The Wonder Weenie drops dead, so instead of squishing the dear boy like a bug, they explode into a tremendous cloud of sparkly glitter, leaving the flabbergasted Sammy to flounder his way into this evening's final commercial break most thoroughly CHOMP!-less and alone. Poor Sam.
Plucky's Parking Lot. Aftermath. A glitter-bedecked Sam arrives looking like he'd just been attacked by "some PCP-crazed strippers," as a positively giddy Dean describes it, and after they both have a good laugh over how utterly ridiculous this entire episode's been, they settle in to chat about their goddamned feelings -- again, some more -- after which Darling Sammy presents Dashing El Deano with a gigantic, multicolored Slinky. Dashing El Deano responds to this kindness by presenting Darling Sammy with a large stuffed Plucky doll. Darling Sammy, bless him, promptly rips the hateful thing's head off and tosses it to the asphalt, after which Our Intrepid Heroes climb into this week's crapped-out piece of automotive trash and motor on off towards their adventure.
Well, that didn't entirely suck. That's good, right? Right?
Oh, whatever. Going by the promos, week's episode is told at least in part from the perspective of a demonically-enhanced gentleman Our Intrepid Heroes stumble across during the course of their travels, so I'm thinking it's pretty much guaranteed to bore me to death. Have fun!
Demian has to head down to Bay Ridge, of all the godforsaken places, because that's where Raoul was supposedly last seen. You may reach the former at demian_twop@yahoo.com. The latter is an imaginary gay dragon on the Internet who's been missing for more than a month.