Supernatural: Fight the Faeries

I am sorry I didn’t get to this recap sooner, as it’s the first Season Six episode of Supernatural that isn’t Bobby- or Castiel-heavy that I loved. “Clap Your Hands if You Believe” actually starts out un-promisingly inasmuch as the X-Files rip will no doubt pale in comparison to the glory of “Changing Channels” and we already know that it’s not aliens, it’s faeries. On the other hand, how could Dean bellowing at Sam to “get those faeries” from the back of a black and white ever be a bad thing?

Let’s skip over most of the first twenty minutes, given what we know. Notable: Misha Collins’ credits only appearance and Soulless Sammy getting kind of hilariously angry at a lady who insists it isn’t aliens but faeries who have taken the fine citizens of Elwood, Indiana. Dean drags him off, and Soulless Sammy’s like, “What?” Dean: “Do you have to ask? Oh, you do have to ask.” Delusional Dean explains that the Sam of yore would have gifted the crazy lady with his Super Special Puppy Dog eyes. That hasn’t been true for years, and Dean admitted as much in “Jump the Shark,” but I can see how having Zombie Sam riding shotgun might have Dean wanting to return to a simpler, gentler, “too precious for this world” time. Soulless Sammy wonders if Dean wants him to fake having a soul. “Yes. Yes! Fake it. Fake it ‘til you make it.” And just like that, I love Dean again. Soulless Sammy points out that he was faking it before, and it was “exhausting” (how can you be exhausted yet not need sleep?).

Posing as journalists, Soulless Sammy and Dean question the Watchmaker, whose son was the first to get abducted. He’s suspicious enough that Soulless Sammy needs to be dragged off before he pulls out his daddy’s tools. Dean assigns Soulless Sammy to tail the Watchmaker while he investigates the crop circle where the abduction took place.

Dean’s barely arrived when Soulless Sammy calls to check in, and he’s barely done that when he starts running from the white light into the corn. “Close encounter! Close encounter!” “Which kind?” Soulless Sammy nonchalantly wonders. “First? Second? I hear the fourth’s a butt thing.” Hee! Dean drops the phone to double fist his revolver and a knife, while Soulless Sammy orders another beer. The white light carries Dean away.

Soulless Sammy arrives at the corn field, finds the Metallicar and Dean’s phone, and promptly hits up the alien follower traveller’s camp for intel about how to get Dean back. When none is forthcoming, Soulless Sammy is markedly calm about Dean’s disappearance but less so about how the main alien follower sucks at his job. He wanders off to do the job himself when Poor Man’s Rachelle Lefevre offers to help. Soulless Sammy wonders why, but the glint in PMRL’s eye gives the game away.

Dean lands back in the corn shooting and slashing. Realizing he’s back on earth, he heads back to the motel room, where he finds PMRL in bed with Soulless Sammy. Whoa. Welcome to the gun show, Soulless Sammy. I know they’ve been there for a while, but wow. Ahem. Dean hides in the corner while PMRL gathers up her clothes, celebrates Dean’s return, and pauses to excitedly wonder what it was like. Dean shoos her off with a “bright and grabby,” while Soulless Sammy pulls a t-shirt over his respectable patch of chest hair. Man.

Dean goes to plant his ass on the bed closest to the door, realizes it’s tainted, and plants his ass on the other bed instead. Heh. See? SEE? That’s the show I love. That’s my Supernatural. Soulless Sammy pours Dean two drinks, then sits down on the edge of sex bed to listen to Dean’s tale of woe. Dean starts with the bright light and the feeling of being dragged toward the . . . “Probing table?” Soulless Sammy helpfully supplies. “Don’t say that out loud!” Dean shudders. Soulless Sammy reaches out, clamps one giant paw on Dean’s knee, and looks him right in the eye: “It’s okay, Dean. Safe room.” HA!

You guys, if loving Soulless Sammy is wrong, I don’t want to be right. I just laughed for 10 minutes.

Dean explains that no one got to the probing stage, due to the aforementioned shooting and stabbing. His abductors didn’t know what to do with that, so they zapped him back down to Earth. Soulless Sammy thinks that Dean’s time lapse fits with the alien abduction profile.

Morning. Soulless Sammy’s trying to pick up the waitress while Dean explains, probably not for the first time, why it was wrong for Soulless Sammy to be out banging a hippie chick while Dean was missing. Soulless Sammy rationalizes that he had already done all he could to find Dean. Dean, however, thinks the appropriate thing to do at that time would be to “sit in the dark and feel the loss.” Every time Dean says “feel,” he brings his hand in over his heart, like he’s trying to cover up the hole there created by the brotherly loss. Hee! This episode is so on. Soulless Sammy wonders if this means “soul = suffering” while trying to wrap his head around his soul as a giant cockblocking robot. Dean neither denies the equation nor offers a proof, “It’s the only game in town.” Yeah, if you’re a Winchester. If I were Soulless Sammy, I doubt I’d be eager to return to Saint Sammy the Celibate either. Also, Dean sees a dude that no one else can see.

Research! Soulless Sammy checks in from the library while Dean does online research from the hotel room. David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” comes over . . . the PA system? Okay. A bright ball of light containing a naked lady floats into the room, hellbent on kicking Dean’s ass. That’s working for her until he traps her in the microwave and nukes her to death. A little voice even says, “Hey, let me outta here!” before she goes splat. Kind of harsh, man.

Back in the hotel room, Dean sees a microwave full of sticky black remains while Soulless Sammy sees nothing. Soulless Sammy does put together that it’s not aliens, though, but faeries. The sídh! Quick, find a hill! Really, this is my only quibble with the episode. We already knew it wasn’t aliens. Stupid publicity.

Over at crazy faerie lady’s place, she’ll giving them all the intel they need. Trolls, goblins, elves, etc. are all forms of faerie; they’re hot for cream; they don’t like iron or silver; if you spill sugar or salt in front of them, they have to stoop to count all the grains. They come for firstborns and bring them back service Oberon, faerie king. Soulless Sammy tries to sensitively wonder if Dean serviced Oberon, which the other flatly ignores. Hee! They’ve been drinking tea this entire time from a child (faerie?) sized set, and finally giant Soulless Sammy looks up and goes, “Got any bigger cups?” Hee!

Outside, Dean’s got glitter on his ass, and they’re back to the Watchmaker. They catch him buying up crates of cream on sale. Soulless Sammy’s on the trail after the Watchmaker drops the cream off while Dean breaks into the shop. He finds the shop full of elves hard at work, just like the Shoemaker, and Soulless Sammy gets kind of excited that he can finally interrogate someone. He calls the Watchmaker out on totally being in league with the faeries, and Watchmaker confesses that he used one of his crazy grandmother’s tricks to summon someone. The Watchmaker wanted his hands healed (Parkinson’s), but the leprechaun offered do to him one better: elves to do all the work in exchange for a place to rest and to feed from the fruit and the fat of the land. Watchmaker didn’t realize that included crop circles and alien abductions and firstborns disappearing, so there you have it. The Watchmaker does have a reversal spell that he can’t get at (stupid elves), so Soulless Sammy and Dean will provide back up while he works the magic.

At this exact time, Dude Only Dean Can See is following Dean down a dark alley, so Dean hides around a corner and jumps the dude in the middle of the damn street. Of course, an entire restaurant full of people are there to witness Dean rolling around on the ground with a little person, yelling, “What do you want, you friggin’ faerie?” So he’s getting popped into the back of a squad car for hate crimes while Soulless Sammy wonders what the hell, and Dean just keeps yelling, “You get those faeries! Fight the faeries!” I guess the cops don’t suspect that Soulless Sammy is in on the hate crimes when they’ve already got one guy in custody ‘cause Dean’s the one in the jail cell while Soulless Sammy and the Watchmaker head back to his shop.

The elves are all passed out from the cream while the Watchmaker goes for the spell books. Wait, it was this easy? Geez, Watchmaker. He gets busy spelling while Soulless Sammy stands watch for creatures he can’t see, which is why he misses the part where the main alien follower is also a leprechaun and also just stabbed Watchmaker through the middle. The leprechaun hits the bargaining stage pretty quickly, offering Soulless Sammy his soul back, making all sorts of grandiose claims like, “Your devil not mine” and “I’m talking about real magic.” Soulless Sammy decides he’s just fine, thank you very much, so the leprechaun switches to beating Soulless Sammy’s ass. Since one is occasionally invisible and one is visible from outer space, you can image how well that’s going. The leprechaun is basically like, I think we both know I am going to win this fight, and Soulless Sammy agrees by way of popping open a pill bottle full of sea salt and pouring it out. The leprechaun sits down to gather up the grains while pouting and calling Soulless Sammy a cheater and a big jerk. Soulless Sammy gets to spelling, which is just as well, as Dean’s about to get cell stomped by the Dude Only Dean Can See. All the elves, the leprechaun, and the Dude Only Dean Can See get sucked into a white light.

Angst by the Bayou: Indiana Field Edition. Enjoying a beer in the middle of the damned road, Dean toasts the DA who forgave Dean’s charges off screen and for no reason whatsoever. Also, I guess no one cares that none of those firstborns are coming back. I’m not sure if/when we learned that was not a possibility. I guess it never was, minus Dean of course. Dean wonders why Soulless Sammy didn’t take the leprechaun up on his offer, and Soulless Sammy mildly counters, “It was a deal. Since when is that ever a good thing?” Exactly, Soulless Sammy. Dean, because he loves his angst, worries that Soulless Sammy didn’t jump on the chance because he’s changed his mind about getting his soul back, which Soulless Sammy denies, but then the episode has to end with the two of them looking off into different directions so we know that maybe Soulless Sammy is thinking about changing his mind.

Which, he ran the numbers. Honestly, in that scene, you could see him run the numbers, and he said no because he knew there would be a hefty price, and that price would probably be Dean. I could feel it in that moment. So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

In other news:

• The stills for this episode weren't very good.
• Linden Banks, who played The Watchmaker, also played the father stuck in the portrait in “Provenance” way back in Season 1. Both characters are named “Isaiah Mercant.” Don’t know what that’s about.
• Misha Collins is credited as “Castile” for this ep. Don’t know what that’s about either.
• His soul is apparently what keeps Dean almost calling but never actually calling Lisa.
• There is little to complain about in the way of Padalecki’s hair this episode.
• Every time there is a brightly lit scene (so rare) like the one where Dean’s under faerie attack, I am reminded that Jensen Ackles has striking green eyes. Good on ya, show.
• I also noted something of a “things are not what they appear” theme in the motel room’s decor, which is a step up from pretty much every hotel we’ve seen this season.

On Friday, December 3: Hell house, Grandpa Sam, Meg’s back, Castiel. The stills are making me nervous about Castiel and Meg’s relationship. Can’t he just walk all over her again?

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