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Sunday, 20 May 2012

Supernatural - 6.9: "Clap Your Hands If You Believe" Review


Supernatural's own foray into X-Files territory when Dean gets abducted by what could possibly be a UFO. Then there has to be some rational explanation, which they do eventually find.

Elwood, Indiana:  A couple in a cornfield see lights and the boy disappears after being taken by the light, similar to a UFO abduction.   Supernatural opens with credits like the X-Files in a homage to the show, ending with the caption, "The truth is in there."  Everyone thinks it is a UFO.   Wayne Whittaker Jr (Robert Picardo) has eye witness accounts of the goings-on.   They're in the "middle of a UFO flap."  A woman thinks it's the work of fairies.  Sam (Jared Padalecki) is direct and abrupt when questioning and asks Dean (Jensen Ackles) if he's taking this seriously.   Dean believes 'old' Sam would have given some "dewy eyed crap" about what is happening.   He tells Sam that he must care about everything.   Sam: "I can't care about what I can't care about. "Dean suggests he should just fake it, like Pinocchio.   Dean will be his conscience, his Jiminey Cricket.

The watchmaker's son, Patrick (Joel Hayes) has disappeared and was 'taken'.   Sam and Dean are reporters now and not agents, cos that would have been too X-Files.   The watchmaker, Brennan (Linden Banks) doesn't want to talk and the watch swings when they leave and he asks if that was okay.   Dean investigates the crop circle.   Sam follows Brennan.   Sam was on his own for a year and did 'fine' without Dean.   Dean doesn't want to know Sam's definition of 'fine'.   Dean has a close encounter when he gets to the crop circle and tells Sam.   He's chased by a light.   Sam asks what kind of encounter he's having, the first or second kind. "Fourth encounter is a butt thing." Sam displays no empathy whatsoever towards Dean's predicament.   Dean vanishes too.   Anyway Sam's too busy checking out waitresses to have a care about Dean.

Sam heads for the crop circle and finds Dean's phone, then pays a call to Whittaker.   He said "The truth is out there."  Sam needs to know how to catch an alien and he shows Sam eye witness accounts.   A hippy chick, Sparrow (Devon Weigel) overhears Sam say his brother was abducted and would like to help - only not the kind of 'help' Dean would want.   Dean is returned and catches Sam together with Sparrow and calls the 'aliens' "grabby, incandescent douchebags."   He was only gone for an hour and Sam tells him he's been gone all night.   Sam calls it a "UFO timeslip" which is present in many abduction stories.

Sam gives him a drink (cos that's all Dean's been doing lately) and Dean avoids sitting on Sam's bed.   He saw a bright white light.   Sam places his hand on Dean's leg by way of comfort.   The light was too bright to look at and Sam questions about the probing table.   Dean hacked and he fired his gun and surprised them.   Dean won his close encounter and is convinced aliens exist.  Sam watches the waitress (Sienna Bohn) again and Dean tells him he should have done everything to get him back.   Sam should have sat in the dark and suffered, even if there was nothing he could have done.   Sam: "Having a soul means suffering." Just like the number of times Dean almost called Lisa.  

Dean notices a man peering in at the window but Sam can't see him.   Dean threatens to hit Sam (again).   The radio comes on to David Bowie's A Space Oddity.   The lights go out and a bright light enters the room.   Dean notices it has nipples and hits him.   He zaps it in the microwave.   Sam can't see the gloop in the microwave.  Dean insists it was a naked woman.   Sam adds it had wings.   These abductions were the work of ultra-terrestrials, i.e.  fairies.   They visit with the woman, Marion, (Trish Allen) Sam made fun of earlier and she tells them fairies come in all shapes and sizes.   That was a clue.   People who are returned can see the fairy.  They take first born sons, Dean being one, and likens it to Rumpelstiltskin.   In service of the King of fairies in Avalon.  Also Oberon.   Sam asks if Dean "serviced" him.   They can leave a bowl of cream out for them, or use iron, burns with silver.   If you spill sugar or salt they have to stop and count the grains.   Sam asks if she's got a bigger tea cup.

Dean sat on the glitter.   They see Brennen stocking up on cream supplies.   Dean checks out the watch shop and sees fairies at work there, like The Elves and the Shoemaker.   My sister said that before Dean did.   Dean calls Sam and he questions Brennan.  He made a deal with the fairies.   Dean sees the old man again from before and follows him.   Sam says that's why he can make so many watches.   Brennan has a soul so what's his excuse.   Dean ends up tracking a little man and gets arrested for jumping him and calling him a fairy.   Don't the police run prints anymore then.   Brennan couldn't work anymore cos of Parkinson's.   He used the spell and it worked.   A leprechaun appeared to "take the fruit and the fat of the land."  His first born, Patrick and others too.   The spell can be reversed.

The Sheriff (Rob Morton)asks what kind of hate crime it was.   The man Dean assaulted is the DA (Colin Naples).   Back at the shop, Brennan is stabbed in the back when he reads from the book - so all that conjuring was for nothing.   It's Whittaker, duh and the clue was when Marion said they take all shapes and sizes.   He's a leprechaun and he encourages UFO stories.   He too gleans Sam isn't like the others and is missing a soul, now that we already know that.   The soul "gives off a certain perfume." His soul can be returned for a price, 'his blue fairy.'  Sam asks if he can "make me a real boy again."   He shoots him and they fight, as does Dean in jail with the old man.   Already said it but why didn't Sam think of using the salt in the gun earlier?   Whittaker has to stop to count the grains.   Sam chants the incantation and the charges against Dean are dropped.

Sam refused his soul, a deal's never good.   Dean must ensure Sam's not having second thoughts about getting his soul back, which he is, that much is obvious.   Plenty  of lore in this episode and a mix of fairytales too, no pun, with Rumpelstiltskin, Pinocchio, the Elves and the Shoemaker.   Kind of reminded me of season 2's Trickster episode 2.15 Tall Tales where Dean claims, "This is my shuttle co-pilot, Major Tom," from A Space Oddity, the song also used here.   In that episode there were tales of college students being abducted and one pledge master was probed in a spaceship.   Sam hugging the roomie adding, "you're too precious for this world" with Dean exclaiming, Sam's "always saying pansy stuff like that."   Season 3's Bedtime Stories alluded to fairytales too.  a forerunner to Once Upon A Time.

Also get to see how Sam handles Dean disappearing, whereas before he'd be frantic, now he just takes his time to shoot the breeze, hook up with a chick and doesn't worry about what he can't fix.   Never mind about Dean being taken.   In the credits there's footage of Sam and Dean portraying FBI agents from past episodes.   It was a chance for us to glimpse soul-less Sam without him having to pretend in front of Dean that he's normal and nothing's wrong.   Sam acts just like Dean here, what with watching all the 'fun' (chicks) so longingly, actually that should read lustfully and wanting his own action.   Unlike Dean he couldn't care less what happened to his brother.   Dean didn't 'get it on' whilst Sam or anyone else for  that matter, was in trouble.   With all the references in past episodes to Sam and Dean not being brothers, but an 'item' and together etc, it should have dawned on Dean the trouble he'd be in by calling the DA a fairy.   Though he wasn't being homophobic but referring to a real fairy.

As for many fans and others rebuking this episode - clearly they've forgotten Supernatural is a show which doesn't take itself too seriously all the time.   It doesn't have to be dark every episode and of course Sam would get 'horny', he's been that way since he returned and we saw him in 6.1 with that prostitute - so his behaviour with Sparrow shouldn't have shocked.   It wouldn't and didn't shock him he has no soul.   Thus he didn't see he was doing anything wrong and in not worrying about Dean.   But as soon as Dean says he'll be Sam's conscience, this is what Sam gets up to when Dean is abducted, so proving he does need Dean around.  That was hilarious and in keeping with 'new' Sam's character thus far.

The abduction scenes of this episode alluded to the Pilot episode in particular of the X-Files with the flashing bright light.   Other episodes included Duane Barry and Ascension, remembered especially for Scully (Gillian Anderson) being abducted.   Here's a joke about Dean being the one to be abducted (even if it was by a fairy) since he refers to Sam as a Scully in the past, a chick, so who was abducted like Scully now.

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