As anyone within earshot of a CW promo monkey last week knew going in, “Clap Your Hands If You Believe” was about the boys, specifically Dean, being plagued by faeries. Written by Ben Edlund, he of “Monster Movie” and “Hollywood Babylon,” among others, the episode had tongue firmly in check for most of the hour.
Beginning with an homage to The X-Files, complete with opening credits for the first time ever, the episode commences in a corn field (which almost had me thinking CW biffed it and was restarting Smallville) where a guy and a gal are making out. When the guy hears a sound, he takes off into the corn to investigate, leaving his hot (annoyed) girlfriend behind. A flash of white light later, she, along with a group of UFO theorists, is being interviewed by (investigative journalists) Dean and Sam and she just wants her missing boyfriend back.
As the boys interview the UFO folks, there’s one slightly ditzy gal who says the whole thing is actually faerie-related, which sends Dean racing down the block wanting to wash off the crazy (no chance there, honey). They visit the father of the missing boy from the teaser, who’s a watchmaker, and he seems to be involved in some way that isn’t totally clear at the outset.
Later, at night (because that’s just the brightest thing to do), Dean goes to the corn field while Sam is assigned to watch dad in the bar. Sam calls Dean to report a whole lot of nothing and then the cornfield starts to buzz a bit. Dean finds himself caught in a bright light and then he’s gone—all the while still on the phone with Sam, who’s sort of snarky about avoiding close encounters. Sam finally snaps to that maybe something really is amiss so he goes looking for Dean, finds his phone, gets as worried as he can (which isn’t much), and heads to the UFO camp for info on how to get Dean back, where he’s waylaid (and then laid) by the resident hippie chick. Out in the corn field, Dean reappears, hollering full throttle, gun blazing, and knife drawn, but relieved to be back. When he gets to the motel, he walks in on Sam and hippie chick and he’s not a happy camper.
He learns several hours have lapsed while it was only about an hour of his time. Sam doesn’t quite get why bedding the gal was an inappropriate reaction, so they discuss for a bit and then Dean says he just wants to take a shower. Then begins the “How to pretend to have a soul when you really don’t give a rat’s ass 101” lesson. Dean is shaken up by his kidnapping, about which he’s hazy on the details, and sort of torn between that and being furious with Sam. Then, the next night, while alone in the motel room, he has a one-on-one with a faerie (to the tune of “Major Tom,” more misdirection) until he gets the upper hand and microwaves her. Sam arrives to get the story and of course doesn’t see anything inside the microwave, while Dean, and we, see faerie goop. One cute sidebar is that Sam is in the library reading book upon book about aliens while Dean trolls the Web, and Dean’s response to Sam’s bitch about all the books is that at least the books have punctuation. HAH! (We do strive for proper grammar and punctuation here, y’all).
Sam says faeries were in the theories he came across in his research, so they go back to princess fruit loop and she gives them the faerie 411 that firstborn sons are often the targets, which begets some double entendres from Sam. The boys go re-investigate the watchmaker and he confesses (sort of) to accidentally sacrificing his son for the business because he needed help with his hands, since he’s developed Parkinson’s. Dean goes to the shop to try to get the book with the spell that will undo faeries gone wild, and when he spies the shop full of faeries, he wusses out and heads back to the alley where in a pique of panic he takes down a diminutive DA, which begets his arrest and screaming at Sam that he has to “Fight the Faeries!” While Dean is jailed, he also has a close encounter with a shadowy human-sized man that only he can see (we don’t get an explanation).
At the shop, Sam faces off with a leprechaun we’d met earlier (when he was posing as a UFO theorist, which was sort of a given there would be more to him because he’s played by Robert Picardo). After he kills the watchmaker, he tries to bait Sam with the no-soul argument and a tease that he can retrieve it from Hell. When Sam is all talked out, he finally breaks out the one useful weapon against the faeries – that they HAVE to count spilled salt or sugar (why this wasn’t used at the 40 minute mark), which gives him enough time to do the spell to send the faeries, and leprechaun, home.
Later, Sam tells Dean (which surprised me) about the soul offer. Dean asks him why he declined and he says he didn’t want to take another deal (which is plausible, but still), so Dean’s back to wondering what’s up with Sam. Laughs are over. Again, Jensen did all the heavy lifting. I hope the second half of this season balances it out because they are completely kicking his ass.
So, the gist of this episode was quite a bit of fun but I had to shelve my promo rage about the fact that if the promos hadn’t pre-released all the faeries stuff, we might just have been able to go with the XF nods and enjoy that before the rug was pulled, so I was sort of distracted about the amount of work that went into the promo, the credits, and the set up for the reveal for it all to be pre-spoiled. So, new policy – not watching promos anymore.
No new episode next week. New episode on December 3rd, which gets a hee from me because December 3rd was the name of Robert Singer’s production company. That’s all I know.
In the interim, vote for Supernatural for Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy Show at the People’s Choice Awards!
Photo Courtesy of Jack Rowand/The CW