Welcome to week nineteen of the rewatch! It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for, superfans. Everyone’s favorite recurring baddie, the Trickster, makes his debut appearance, livening up the Winchesters’ usual angst with some snarky pranks (and one or two murders).
Drink up, everyone! Let’s all get Loki-ed.
THE OFFICIAL FYA SUPERNATURAL DRINKING GAME:
Take a drink every time:
• Dean or Sam flashes a badge
• A demon possesses some hapless schmuck
• Sam tries to talk about feelings only to be spurned by Dean
• Dean crams his face full of junk food
• Anyone makes a deal with a demon
• Either brother picks a lock
• Someone employs a Titan of Classic Rock as an alias
• The Glorious and Faithful Impala is damaged in the line of duty
2x15: Tall Tales
Monster of the Week: Trickster
A pretty girl waits to see a university professor. He agrees, even though 1) he doesn’t recognize her, 2) it’s after office hours, and my favorite, 3) it’s winter and she’s waiting in the snow in a slip dress, with no signs of shivering. Dude! Have better situational ghost awareness. In his office, they start making out. But when they come up for air?
She’s a monster. Surprise! Or, you know, whatever is the opposite of that.
She tosses the professor out of the window to his death.
They boys are on the case (and on each others’ case, too)! Dean is being annoying as heck, listening to bad music and scarfing fries on Sam’s bed, while Sam puts on his poutiest of pout faces. Bobby turns up at the boys’ request. They need help on the case, which is stranger than anything they’ve seen.
Sam starts the story, saying he interviewed some students at a bar, learning that the professor’s fall matched a campus urban legend about a lovesick girl who jumped to her death from the same building after another professor broke off their affair. Meanwhile, Dean was doing “purple nurple” shots with a drunk girl. Dean protests that’s not how it went down! He was talking to a very classy folklore grad student, whose name he can’t quite remember, and they elegantly sipped their purple nurples as he tried to pump her for information. Until Sammy came along and messed it all up.
OMG you guys, I think maybe Jared Padalecki knows we make fun of his pursed lips.
Sam resumes the tale, saying next they interviewed the janitor who found the professor’s body. Or he did, anyway. Dean was wandering around like a goon, shoveling the dead guy’s office candy into his mouth.
“I only had one or two!” protests Dean. #LiarLiar
The janitor tells them it’s ironic that the dead professor taught ethics because he was always bringing girls around to his office and cheating on his wife. When they get back to the motel, Sam’s computer is broken, frozen on “busty Asian beauties dot com.” Dean denies responsibility. The hilarious tension rises. Meanwhile, a frat boy is abducted by a UFO. Bobby interrupts the story, asking, “ALIENS???”
Indeed, my grizzled friend.
Not only was the frat boy abducted and probed repeatedly, he was forced to slow dance with a little green man to “Lady in Red,” by Chris De Burgh.
♫There’s nobody here…just you and me ♫
Dean tells Bobby that they found a crop circle in the quad, supporting the man’s tale of abduction. When they interview his frat brother, Sam makes sure to let the guy know he’s there to listen, calling him a “brave little soldier” and catching him in a bear hug, saying he’s “too precious for this world.”
“I DON’T SAY STUFF LIKE THAT,” protests Sam. #PantsOnFire
Anyway, the guy says he’s cool with what happened to his frat brother, actually. The guy’s a jerk who used his job as pledge master to torture recruits. When another man, a research scientist who performs animal experimentation is eaten by a sewer alligator, Dean realizes the connection between the victims: they’re all dicks.
As Bobby listens to them snipe at each other, he realizes what’s up. They’ve been punked by a Trickster, a demi-god who can make anything materialize out of thin air and enjoys bringing the high and mighty low through hilarious, if sometimes-deadly, pranks. He’s been making the boys fight to keep them off his trail.
Meanwhile, the Trickster’s planning his next prank, a chainsaw massacre urban legend, while conjuring a sweet-ass dessert platter and two sexy ladies to eat it with.
The Tricksterettes.
Sam and Dean figure out that the janitor = The Trickster, and pretend to have a fight in front of him. When Sam stalks off, the Trickster lures Dean to the campus’s theater with the sweet sounds of Barry White. He finds the Tricksterettes beckoning him. The Trickster appears and says Dean can have a good time with them in exchange for letting him skip town.
But Dean, as we all know, is not so into supernatural loving. He declines, though he does give the Trickster an “A” for effort. The creature tells Dean he shouldn’t have come alone. Dean says he didn’t. Sam and Bobby come into the theater, both armed with stakes. The Trickster realizes the brothers were only pretending to fight and gives them credit for tricking him. Then he summons his final prank, Chainsaw Massacre Monster, to kill them. The monster and the Tricksterettes fight the good fight, but in the end Dean wins, staking the Trickster.
OR DOES HE?
You can’t trick a trickster, Dean. Soon as the Impala heads out on the road, the staked Trickster disappears. It was a decoy, and the real version walks away unscathed, ready to delight us all in future episodes. YAY!
Brotherly Angst Quotient: Chagrined.
The Trickster works his magic, making Sam think Dean stole his computer and Dean think Sam let the air out of the Impala’s tires. They end up getting in a slap-fight/wresting match, and it is amazing, and I absolutely insist you go right now and watch it.
When it’s all over, Sam starts to apologize for his mistrust. Dean cuts him off, saying he’s sorry too. “You’re breaking my heart. Could we please just leave?” Bobby says, being the best.
Yellow-Eyed Demon: Not here!
How Drunk Are We?: Stumbling. Take four drinks for Dean’s encounters with junk foods, Sam’s lock picking, and the Trickster’s attack on the Impala.
The Quotable Winchesters: “It's just your standard haunted campus, alien abduction, alligator in a sewer gig.” –Dean.
Moment Most Likely to Inspire Troubling Fan-Fic:
Yes.
Notable Cameos:
Richard Speight Jr. of Justified and Jericho plays the Trickster.
Neil Grayston of Eureka plays Sammy’s brave little soldier who is too precious for this world.
David Tom of Veronica Mars and The Young and the Restless plays the frat boy.
Emma Lehana of Haven plays the frat boy’s girlfriend.
2x16: Roadkill
Monster of the Week: Ghost, car crash varietal
A married couple drives through a dark woods, lost and arguing. Just as they begin to make up, a man suddenly appears in the road. The driver, Molly, swerves to avoid him and crashes. When she awakes, her husband has disappeared. Looking for him, she comes upon a little cabin in the woods that contains a blood splattered table and a wall of sharpened tools. The man who appeared in the road is standing in the corner, holding his suppurating gut wound and all ghosty-face.
Molly runs! She makes it to the road and flags down the nearest car, which happens to be the Impala. Lucky break, Molly. After she leads them to the crash site and they find her car gone, she agrees to let them take her to the police station. But they haven’t driven far when the radio starts spitting static. A ghostly voice says, “she’s mine,” and before they can blink, the man is in the road again. Dean guns the engine, driving straight through him. He disappears, but the Impala makes a clunking noise and shuts down, stranding them.
When Molly sees the boys’ carsenal, she wants to run. But soulful puppy Sam convinces her that they’re hunters looking for the ghost of a farmer who was run over on that road and has spent the last twenty years choosing a driver to torment on the anniversary of his death. Dean is gruffer, saying its clear the ghost has no plans on letting her leave. Indeed, after she agrees to go with them, the ghost launches several attacks, trying to get Molly back.
Luckily, Dean came prepared.
The threesome locate the farmer’s abandoned house. Inside, they find love letters he’d written to his wife. Also, they find his wife. Or her skeleton, anyway. She’d hung herself in the attic after burying his body.
Molly wonders how someone capable of such beautiful love letters could become such a twisted ghost. Sam says spirits are like wounded animals—they just keep lashing out without reason or control. The ghost makes another bid for Molly, and this time grabs her. He takes her back to his torture cabin and gets to work.
Hate to nitpick, but I feel like she could get out of those bonds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Dean fights the ghost while Sam finds out where the farmer is buried and salts and burns his corpse in…you guessed it…the nick of time.
Brotherly Angst Quotient: Non-Winchester angst
Molly wants to know what happens to ghosts when the boys salt and burn them. Sam says no one knows. His theory is that ghosts don’t move on because they’re scared of the unknown. Molly says she’s only scared of not seeing her husband again.
When the baddie is killed, the boys tell Molly the truth. They weren't only there to hunt the farmer. She died twenty years ago in the car crash, and the ghost of the farmer, the man she accidentally killed on the road, has been torturing her ever since. After Molly realizes she’s a ghost, Sam and Dean take her to see her husband, who is still alive and remarried. Her body was cremated, so they can’t forcibly take her out of the world. She needs to let go. For a moment, she protests, wanting to speak with her husband. But when she realizes she’s just scare him for no reason, she decides it’s her time to move on. As the sun rises, she closes her eyes and disappears in a halo of light.
This actress, y’all. Why do you make me cry all the time, Tricia Helfer???
Yellow-Eyed Demon: Not yet. But soon.
How Drunk Are We?: Not even tipsy. The only drink comes courtesy of the ghost messing with our beloved Impala.
The Quotable Winchesters: “It’s an old country custom, Dean. Planting a tree as a grave marker.”
“You’re like a walking encyclopedia of weirdness.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Moment Most Likely to Inspire Troubling Fan-Fic:
When Molly says she and her husband only ever bickered while on road trips, Sam identifies a little too much.
Notable Cameos:
Tricia Helfer of Battlestar Galactica plays Molly, and seeing her again reminds me I own far too few slinky red dresses.
Next week: Sammy proves he’s Team Jacob.