Not Your Average Janitor & Gym Teacher

Did your high school have men like this working there?

This week on Supernatural we’re going back to high school!!!  Can you feel the joy?  Actually, you should because Sam and Dean became the hottest janitor and gym teacher ever in the history of the world.  Why in the hell did my high school not have handymen and teachers like that?  I loved my gym teacher, Coach P, but he was approaching retirement age; I wasn’t actually pondering jumping his bones like I would have been had Dean been my instructor.  I did have a hot substitute in biology once, he was the older brother of one of the guys in my class.  I miss that hot guy.   Oops, tangent!  Sorry!  Not going to do my usual list of things I liked and things I hated because I really didn’t hate a heck of a lot this week.  It was fun to get a glimpse of younger Dean and Sam and meet the teacher that set Sam on his own path until 4 years ago when Dean showed up on his doorstep worried about their dad.

Drop and give me...I'll leave that to your imagination.

The mystery this week involves these bullied kids in the high school fighting back against their tormentors.  The first girl gets called a fat, ugly pig by a bitchy cheerleader who she had tried to be nice to after her friends attacked her with the slut cough.  The girl found the cheerleader in the bathroom and proceeded to bash her head into a mirror, drag her to a toilet, drown and kill her.  Then some blood-like substance leaked out her eye, thus showing us that this was not her doing the action.  Dean & Sam hit the town and reminisce about how they went to that school for a brief few weeks when Dean was a senior and Sam was an 8th grader?  Not sure exactly how old Sam was but he was a tiny little guy.  Extremely cute though…I liked both actors playing the younger brothers.  After interviewing the girl, they determine they need to go in undercover, she’s not crazy and something was controlling her.

Aww brotherly love, even then.

We get to see a glimpse of the Impala pulling up to school and high school Dean and Sam stepping out.  Dean quizzes Sam on having everything he needs to get through the day, including his butterfly knife.  Protective big brother as always.  Sam’s not happy about going to his 3rd new school that year by November; Dean shrugs it off and says they’ll be out of there in a few weeks anyway.  Our boys get introduced in their new classes; Dean immediately catching the eye of a blond chick and Sam befriend a nerd named Barry.  Dean calls the teacher sweetheart and rocks his leather jacket, like one would expect.  Dean plays the rebel, not in need of books since he won’t be there long anyway.  Sam’s teacher assigns a story on their memorable family experience that will be half their grade.  Sam notices Dirk flicking Barry’s ear and tells him to leave him alone.  Dirk asks if Sam wants to take his place and Sam says sure.

Dean revels in the power of the whistle.

Cut to Sam in a janitor’s outfit pushing a trash can and looking around and Dean in his coaches gear instructing kids in the art of dodge ball and sounding very much like an Army drill sergeant. He hurls a ball into an unsuspecting lad and when some dork tries to tell Dean that they’re not allowed to play dodge ball because people get hurt Dean blows his whistle and orders the kid to take a lap.  Hilarious.  Sam comes to visit and Dean tells them to go nuts.  Sam, “Having fun?” Dean, “The whistle makes me their god!”  Sam, “Nice shorts.”  Yes, these are the Winchester brothers I know and love, nice to see them again!  Of course the child that tried to warn Dean about the perils of dodge ball takes one in the face and runs past clutching his mouth.  Dean tells him nice hustle and to walk it off.  Awesome.  I grinned through that entire scene; might have been because of the headband and gym shorts though!

The power of the PE teacher.

Elsewhere in the school, another lad was getting bullied.  Some jock demanded to copy a kids algebra homework.  After some mouthing off and threats, the kid takes jock boy’s hand and shoves it into a blender.  Sam runs in and sees the attacker collapse and the bloody good leak out of his ears.  Aha, we have proof of possession!  Sam and Dean chat up the possibilities of ghost possession but can’t find any EMF in the building.  After letting Sam know that three of the cheerleaders are of legal age, a fact which Sam is unimpressed with, Dean gives Sam a piece of paper with a kid who died on campus, a suicide, none other than Sam’s friend, Barry.  He cut his wrists open in the girl’s bathroom.  Sam remembers Barry having a hard time with bullies in school.

Cute little Sam.

And we’re back in time with Barry getting shoved to the floor by some jock and Sam helping him pick up his books.  Barry tells him he’ll be out of school in 3 years and on  his way to Michigan State to be a vet.  Dean, meanwhile, is making out with blondie in a dark classroom.  He wants her to sneak out and see a horror movie with him at midnight and she is floored by his lack of parental supervision when he says he can do whatever he wants.  She’s not impressed with his hotel lifestyle.  Dean doesn’t really respond when she asks if he misses his dad.  Barry and Sam walk by as Dean and Blondie (Amanda) are kissing goodbye; Barry asks if that’s Sam’s brother and Sam says yeah and Barry says he’s cool.  In true brother fashion Sam says “HE thinks so.” Dirk comes up to see if Sam really wants to take Barry’s place and Sam says sure but he won’t fight him.  Dirk punches him but is interrupted by Sam’s teacher.

Sam & Dean in present time are salting and lighting Barry’s bones, assuming that will stop the possession at the school.  Sam, of course, takes the blame, wishing he’d been at the school longer for Barry.  Dean tries to talk sense into him and tells him he was glad they got out of there.  Back in time, Dean wants to kick Dirk’s ass for hitting Sam.  Sam won’t let him and Dean wants to know why he didn’t kick his ass himself.  Sam tells him he wants to be a normal kid and not be a freak.  Dean can’t comprehend how taking a beating is normal but that’s that.  Dean’s antsy about Amanda wanting him to meet her parents and wants out of town but Dad’s going to be at least another week.  Ahh Papa Winchester, ever absent.

Rebel with a cause?

Sam’s teacher calls him after class and Sam thinks it’s about the fight.  But the teacher reminds him that his assignment was nonfiction and he wants to know why Sam would write about him and his family killing a werewolf last summer.  Hehe  He tells Sam he’s going to give him an A despite him not doing the assignment properly.  He tells Sam that his brother is quite a character.  I cannot help but agree.  He talks to Sam about his future and Sam says he’s got to go into the family business.  The teacher asks if he wants to and Sam tells him he doesn’t want to.  Teacher gives him the old you can break the mold speech, do what makes you happy.  This inspires Sammy down the line to take his own path and head to Stanford for law school.  Essentially that’s what this whole episode boiled down to, how Sam tried to stray from the path before him but ended up back on it anyway.  And now he’s unhappy and wants to get back to living his own life.

Sam wants to go visit the teacher that changed his life and on his way in he runs into some girl who asks him for directions.  He talks to her and all of a sudden she says “thanks Sam” and stabs himwith something, then starts kicking his ass down the hall way.  The goo leaks out of her mouth and Sam holds salt there, sending some black specter flying out of her.  Allow me a moment to laugh over Dean referring to the possessed kids as Martha Dumptruck (Heathers!!!), Revenge of the Nerds & Hello Kitty.  Dean is truly awesome.  Anyway, he figures out all the kids ride the same bus, so the ghost must have it’s base there.  They finally get their EMF reading on the bus, so they’re on the right track.  The bus driver is one Dirk McGregor, Sr., father of none other than the bully that was after Barry.

And we’re back to high school.  Dirk is again picking on Barry and this time Sam is not going to let him get away with it.  Dirk pushes him down and Sam responds by punching him over and over again, showing badass fighting skills.  The kid is about twice his size but Sammy kicks his ass and dubs him “Dirk the Jerk.”  Apparently this name stuck with old Dirk up until he died.  Our boys visit Dirk Sr. and find out that Dirk died from drug overdose.  He tells them about how poor they were and Dirk had to care for his mother as she died from cancer.  Sam, of course, takes this to heart and feels guilty for having kicked his ass and dubbing him Dirk the Jerk.  Sorry, Sam, that one wasn’t that creative, nothing to hang your head over!

Dad kept a lock of his hair on the bus in his bible, so the boys head there to exorcise our ghost Dirk.  Eddie the bus driver that evening is actually possessed by him and has hidden the lock of hair so that he cannot be easily dispatched by our boys.  Sam confronts Dirk while Dean ties him up in a salt water soaked rope so he can’t leave the body he’s inhabiting.  Dean goes into the bus and tells everybody to sit tight and the teacher asks him if he’s the PE Teacher.  Dean says he’s more like 21 Jump Street (Johnny Depp!!!) and the bus driver sells pot.  Yay for the pop culture references tonight!   He tells Sam he’s evil and Sam tells him he isn’t and neither is he.  Dirk breaks out of his ropes and starts kicking Sam’s ass.  Sam firest his gun at him and Dirk hops into some other kid.  Dean finally finds and burns the hair after Sam gets the crap beat out of him for awhile and off goes Dirk’s ghost.  The kid collapses on Sam and Dean comments on him giving him the cowgirl.  HA!

I ran out of pics, this is for next week, SO HOT.

Back in high school, Dean is making out with some brown haired girl when Amanda walks in on him.  He tries to pretend nothing was up but he’s caught of course.  Amanda tells him she thought maybe there was something more to him than the bad boy but she was wrong.  He spends so much time putting on a cool act but he’s just a sad, lonely kid and she feels sorry for him.  Dean doesn’t want to hear that of course.  He yells about being a hero but just looks pathetic.  Meanwhile Sam is getting congratulations for kicking Dirk’s ass.  Dean’s alone and Sam’s admired.  How things have changed.  Dean gets the call that they’re leaving and he’s thrilled.  The Impala drives up and Sam gives Barry a last goodbye look and a wave.  Awww.

Current day Sam goes in and is recognized by Mr. White, the teacher who inspired him.  He remembers Sam’s horror story after he tells him his name.  Sam thanks him for telling him he could make his own choices.  Sam tells him he did for awhile and then he grew up and responsibilities took over.  Sam thanks him for his interest and that it mattered to him.  Mr. White asks Sam if he’s happy, cause that’s what truly matters and of course we cut away.  We all know Sam isn’t happy.  And that’s our lesson from this little flash back in time.  Sam tried to be someone else but his obligations took over.  Now he wants to get those obligations out of the way and return back to a different life.  Can he?  Time will tell.  It was nice to get a more Samcentric episode again, we needed one of those after all the Dean time (not that I mind Dean time!)  Next week Dean will at least be in heaven instead of hell, because it’s Strippers!  Yeah, he’s gonna enjoy that one!

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Ghosts Or Inbreds?

Keeping it all in the family.

So, Supernatural is back and I couldn’t be happier.  Well, I could be, had this episode kicked more ass than it did, but still, Dean & Sam back on my screen is always a good thing.   I had some big issues with a couple of things in this episode, which I will outline for you list style.  This time around I’ll start with things I liked because I think the things I didn’t like, for the first time, outweighed that which I did.

Dean looks for some new ass to kick.

Things I Liked:

• Dean’s determination to find a new job and the revelation that he’s barely sleeping at all; he’s so focused on finding the next job and saving more people.  This is very Dean-like behavior, trying to make up for his time torturing souls in hell.
• Sam’s attempts to reach out to Dean, telling him that he was running from what he told him about his time in hell.  I love the way the brother’s understand each other and will call each other out but not press on the issues either.
• The “super disturbing” doll head in the middle of the floor and the boys reaction to it.  Doll heads are always scary, make no mistake about that.
• The casting of the father and the daughter and even Uncle Ted.  Loved the sarcastic nature of the teenage girl (but she looked too much like Ruby for my taste, I really thought it was her for a minute or so).
• The return of Supergirl!  Helen Slater in the house!  I didn’t know it was her until I rewatched and saw her name in the credits.  I actually wasn’t overly impressed with her or Danny, acting-wise, but it’s fun to see Billie Jean back on my screen.  We will be invincible!!!
• The fact that our intrepid heroes weren’t actually hunting a ghost or demon for once, although they didn’t know that for quite a while.  They were fighting honest to goodness humans, albeit inbred scary ones who like to eat animals and kill people.  Fun!
• Dean’s dark determination to bring Danny back to his family, it was a need to make up for his time in hell and that really came across even before his conversation with Sam at the end of the episode.  His internal anger is coming through in everything he does at this point and it’s interesting to watch.
• Dean’s actual willingness to tell the family who they were and what they did.  Sam was being sarcastic but you could see that Dean was actually fine with revealing their true purposes.  Maybe he’s getting tired of the game?
• You hunt ghosts?  Dean: That’s right!  Like Scooby Doo?  Dean: Better.  True and hee!
• The revelation that the girl was not a ghost, when she stepped over the salt circle.  That was a pretty fun way to go about it I thought, rather than them reading the diary first.  Plus Dean called her “Psycho Nell”.  Awesome.
• Dog, it’s what’s for dinner.  I may not appreciate the killing of the dog (AT ALL) but that line did make me laugh.  Sarcasm always pleases me, as you may have figured out.
• Dean’s revelation that Ted was dead.  I both liked and hated this…he was so emotionless about it.  He said he was sorry but it didn’t feel like he was and it didn’t feel like Dean.  The guilt was there, you could hear it, but there wasn’t any gentleness that I would have expected.  As I said, I don’t know if I liked this or not but I at least found it interesting.
• Dean’s talk with the father about Andy the dead son and his promise to bring Danny back if it was the last godforsakened thing he did.  The dad started to question him and it would have been great to hear Dean’s answer to that question, it felt like he might have let it all loose in that moment.  Sam interrupted but it was a very intriguing moment.
• The revelation when Dean rescued Danny that there was a second kid floating around, a brother or a twin.  I liked that this was kept quiet for the whole episode, good twist.
• The fact that the dad killed the girl, it was nice to see (or more accurately hear) one of the recuees become a rescuer and take matters into their own hands.  I really was quite fond of the father in this episode.

Dean & Sam explain things to Brian.

Things I hated:

• Dead dogs.  I can handle people getting hacked up all day and night but when you murder the animals, I get mad.
• The damn dark.  Look, I get that by it’s very nature Supernatural is a dark show but this episode?  It felt like I couldn’t see half of it.  I watched twice and still could barely make out the living quarters of the kids.  I imagine they spend quite a bit of money setting these scenes up and it would be nice to actually take in some of the effects instead of just black the whole time.
• Danny’s interaction with the “girl in the walls”.  He was just rather calm and boring about the whole thing, even when telling his parents what was happening.  Really it was just a set up to reveal the dead kid in their past.
• Hand licking.  So the girl things the dog is slobbering all over hand but really it’s one of the wall twins.  Um, ick.  Clearly they weren’t out to kill the kids but to lick them?  Gross.
• Defacing of the Metallicar.  Just because it should never be done!
• The inbred aspect.  That’s always gross.  I remember, and I was not a big X-Files watcher, but they did an inbred episode with that dude that played Malachi from Children Of The Corn (is their a scarier looking guy than him? I think not!) and it just grosses me out.  As I said above, I can handle murder and mayhem all day but that’s just an ick factor that I’m really not wanting to watch.
• Dean getting to have Uncle Ted get hacked up on his watch.  We really ramped up the angst for old Dean this episode and it was a bit much.  This was only the start of crap Dean had to endure today.  Are they trying to drive him insane?  Is that our story for the last half of the season?  I can do without it, really.
• Dean having to kill the boy down in the basement.  I know he had to do it, it was him or the inbred boy, but you can’t tell me that having to kill a living, breathing person is not gonna mess with his head even further.
• Rat killing.  Also not a fan.  I don’t love rats like I do dogs but I could have dealt without seeing the girl snap the rats neck and begin eating it.  By this point we already knew they were barely human, it seemed, HAHA, overkill to show that.
• And finally, the big one.  Dean’s revelation to Sam that he LIKED torturing people down in hell.  This flies in the face of everything we know about Dean and it really changes the way I see this season coming up.  I mean, is Sam going to go dark side or is Dean?  Apparently all the pain he felt went away when he was torturing people.  I do like the aspect that he can’t save enough people to make up for that, but I’d rather he felt that way because he hated what he did in hell rather than liked it.  I dunno, maybe people will see that one differently than I did but I was really bugged by it, and frankly that’s what made me dislike the episode.

Where exactly is this season heading?

So, there you have my reaction.  I’m glad it’s back and I was actually glad to not have a big mytharc episode as well.  Straight up scary stuff instead of heavy exposition, although we got that at the end anyway.  So what did ya’ll think about this revelation of Dean’s?  I don’t think it’ll totally change my view of him but I really don’t care for them going in this direction either.  I guess we’ll see how it all plays out down the road to have to accurately judge that one.  Next week, Barry Bostwick as a freaky magician!

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Not So Super Supernatural Spoiler

I ran across something I found disturbing last night and thought I would bring it to you, my SN lovin friends, to see if you have the same reaction that I do to this potential spoiler news.  I don’t read actual spoilers for Supernatural or Heroes or Lost, not since I let myself get spoiled on the season 3 Lost finale and some of the awesomeness of the most awesome episode of anything I’ve ever seen was diminished by my knowing what was coming.  But I do read those spoiler chats on eonline and tvguide.  They rarely give away any huge plot point.  Usually you find out some blond on Heroes is going to die, but it might not be what it seems.  Then you fool yourself into thinking it won’t be Elle, but then it is, and it’s exactly as it seems.  So I take all these with a grain of salt but the idea is obviously floating out there in cyber space and needs to be addressed.

EOnline’s Kristin reports here the following:

Madison in Eugene, Ore.: What’s the latest on Jared and Jensen on Supernatural?
Let’s just say that if you happen to look like these dreamy dudes above (and God bless you for it), you should contact the CW right away, because I’m hearing that yes, you guessed it! There just might be a third freaking Winchester brother out there. Hear that? It’s the sound of my mind exploding! I’m told that the possible third brother has not been cast, but we’ll start hearing rumblings of another son courtesy of Dean and Sam’s father John Winchester, aka Jeffrey Dean Morgan, this season. Seriously, does that dead dude get around or what?! Meanwhile, I’m dying to know what you think of this twist and if anyone out there could possibly be delicious enough to pull off the same genetic code as Jensen and Jared. So please comment below, and if you have any casting suggestions, bring ’em!

Reactions?  I can tell you mine is a resounding NO THANK YOU!  Like Dean and Sam don’t have enough going on without a third brother appearing on the scene?  For me, the main appeal of Supernatural, other than the Pretty, is the relationship between the brothers.  They don’t need an interloper coming in and getting in the way of their issues.  I think, you know, the whole Dean working with the angels and possibly having to fight his brother Sam with the demon blood is more than enough to focus on for the season, don’t you?  If they must bring a third party in, make him an unknown uncle or cousin or something.  I don’t want another Winchester brother.

Kristin also mentioned in another spoiler chat that they want to bring Anna back.  Ugh to that one as well, though I can handle it as long as Dean doesn’t get touched by an angel with her again.  Sorry, there was no chemistry there and I blame a lot of that on the actress looking like she was going to the dentist instead of getting to have sex with the Pretty.  Probably, again some more, the fact that she wore a bra during their sex scene.  Reminded me of some frigid virgin.  Much hate.  I mean, it’s on tv, so why not take the bra off, they’re not gonna show your boobs to the audience woman.  Maybe I can’t identify because if I was an extra in a background scene with Jensen they’d have a hard time keeping me clothed.

Oops, I got sidetracked.  So what do my SN readers think of this brother idea?  The commentary on Kristin’s report all seems resoundingly negative.  I know Kripke hits the web so maybe he’ll see it and torpedo the idea.  I hope so, this season has some really promising things going on with the Dean/Sam potential battle and I don’t want that interfered with.

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