And now it's time for the weekly post of over-analysis and Dean-adoration
here...
Fun episode. As usual, we'll ignore the clunky exposition and unintentional silliness to focus on the good stuff. So much fun to see the boys actually having fun. The scene in the diner with the laughing man was just priceless and so utterly appropriate in all its fraternal aggravation.
I loved the first scene with Spengler and Venkman (or whatever those goofy names were) in which Sam and Dean are trying not to bust their guts laughing at the "professionals". Sam is so visibly having to work at keeping a straight face and is pretty much completely failing at it. They had "business cards"! Hee! I thought Dean might lose it on that point alone. I also liked the juxtaposition of the geek boys fiddling anxiously with their EMF detector (that Dean had already pointed out was useless) with the Winchester boys all sharp-eyed and intense with their handguns. Nice.
And then there's the irony of Dean ragging Sam about his vast mental storehouse of random eclectic trivia early in the episode, yet the fact that he has his own collection of random eclectic trivia is what eventually gives them the decisive break in this case.
But my favorite part of the episode has to be the fact that Dean's final solution to the whole problem is simply to burn down the house. That's such a typical Dean-logic response. Get. The. Job. Done. Whatever the cost. When it comes down to it, that's really all he cares about. Sam probably could have come up with another -more subtle and more academic- solution eventually. But Dean's gut instinct -drastic and dramatic though it may have been- was immediate and effective. And when you have a crazy ax-wielding phantom thisclose to killing you, immediate and effective is exactly what you want.
Not that I don't think Sam is entirely lacking in the ability to think on the fly. He demonstrated with the flares in "Shadow" and with the holy ground trap in "Route 666" that he can do it. But I can't decide whether he has the same instincts Dean does but tries to suppress them in favor of Logic and Reason and Pretending the World Ought to Make Sense because he so desperately wants to be normal. Or if faith in Logic and Reason and all that is just his natural, default way of thinking but prolonged exposure to Dean's... wildness is rubbing off on him occasionally, making him more willing to take risks without being absolutely positively certain of the outcome.
But still... Dean... If you can't rid the haunted house of the ghost - rid the ghost of the haunted house. Hee! I love Dean-logic. Maybe that should be my new hypothetical icon... A picture of a house in flames and the text reading Dean-logic!
And tonight, new Doctor Who! I love my shiny new fandom.