Reaction: Supernatural 4.12 - Mild pondering included.
Spoiler and Theorizing Timeline
-Nov 11th Widely disseminated comments from Jim Beaver's Myspace. Bobby will not be appearing in this episode. I miss Bobby. :-(
-Late November Title, somewhere: Criss Angel is a Douchebag. Hee! So, either a massive stuntcasting, or stage magic that isn't stage, or a cursed object in a magic show, or something. Oooooo goodie! When I was a kid, like, six, eight years old? I went to see a stage magician, I think it was with the school. The guy must have sucked pretty bad, because I basically debunked the entire show, loudly, from the audience. I was an obnoxious child. The guy even got me up on stage to do some kind of last ditch "I'll prove I'm not crap" trick involving a balloon and a needle, and I saw through that one too and explained it while standing on the stage, but he made like I was lying, and didn't let me have the burst balloon to prove there was a patch of tape on it where he'd poked it the first time and not burst it. Everyone believed him, and I had no proof. I got a lecture from either the teacher or the magic show organizer about willing suspension of disbelief, and that people didn't want to know how the trick worked, they wanted to think for a bit that magic is real. Never went to see another live magic show. Anyway, sorry, sidetracked.
-Jan 8 CW Promo. Fraaaaaaag. Caught a microsecond flash of Dean hanging in a noose, apparently alone, and a title screen of 'We're Sorry.' Eeeek. O.O Well. Obviously he's not permanently dying, but uh... meep. It's probably some Monster of the Week trick, right? Or the writers' going down the checklist of 'How haven't we killed Dean yet?' *is nervous anyway*
-Jan 16 Barry Bostwick is in 4.12 and chews scenery. Whoever the hell Barry Bostwick is, he sounds vaguely familiar, and I'm not looking it up in case it's Alistair. And there may be crack. After the end of 4.11, crack is due. And the scenery hasn't had a really good chewing since Fred Lehne.
-Jan 19 So very random, [and apparently a total fever hallucination as Barry Bostwick was absolutely, provably not ever part of Spinal Tap. I blame the fever.]
So, Stage Magic with a scenery-chewing guest star, possibly a cursed object, and probably boatloads of Winchesterian repression. And maybe teeny druids. YAY!
Reaction to Supernatural 4.12 - "Criss Angel is a Douchebag"
I love that title! *giggles* It really stands out and I hope it draws in a whack load of the idle curious.
Caution: This episode should not be watched by anyone with severe chest congestion or mild to moderate pneumonia. Seriously. Not with out a frigging pause button so you can stop horfing up a lung during the funny bits. Gack.
-Hee! JoyTV ran the 'That was scary!' Promo at the end of Smallville to announce Supernatural was on next. A neutral, no spoiler promo. Now that's class. :-)
-Well, hello there Sam-powers-focussed previouslies! I wasn't expecting you! O.o
-"You know what." What? No, really, what?
-Iowa. Magic week. *scans around for dates on posters and stuff and doesn't see any*
-'Old guy', hunh barkeep? Methinks you just lost your tip.
-Hee! I knew that Kripke and co were stoked to get the use of the word 'douchebag' past the censors, but this is getting silly. I hope someone counts 'em.
-I love the classic magician trio. They're all 'hey it's that guy's to me. I'm guessing the main one is Barry Bostwick. [Whooooo, since I've gone back and fact-checked my hallucination to confirm he was never part of Spinal Tap, I did discover where I recognized the name from. Rocky Horror! He was BRAD!! Ahahahahahahah! XD He's looking rather awesome!]
-Aaaand heckler-boy is dead now yay! Wow! Death transference! That is frigging cool!
-Another 'douchebag' there. For anyone keeping track.
-At age 13, Sam was into stage magic. Whoa. There's some teen!chester fic waiting to happen. It would be a great way to develop dexterity in the fingers though, and sleight-of-hand and all kinds of useful, practical for hunting skills. *nods*
-Written by Julie Seige (is she new? [No, she also wrote the Halloween episode, the one with SAM HANE. Hm]), directed by Bobby's namesake.
-Aw. Bunny. First live bunny there's been on the show, isn't he? *is suddenly massively paranoid something bad will happen to the bunny*
-Dean seems oddly fascinated by the brightly colored scarves. I'm going to pretend he's having a flashback to Hell and an incident where the intestines of someone with a really colorful diet were being pulled out. *nods*
-Oooo! Tarot!! Ten of Swords!!! OMG I did research on that card for " When the Fiddler Stops"! Gaaaaah. *rummages through pile of used notes* Here we are. Pulled off the 'net somewhere: "Ten of Swords - (Upright) Ruin, desolation, disruption, although generally this refers to a group rather than an individual. Sorrow, sudden misfortune, accidents, muggings or personal robbery. There is some cause for optimism; as the lowest point in the cycle, from now on things can only get better the worst is over." Just for the sake of trivia.
-I love these guys. Charlie and Jay. They're awesome. And I'm not detecting any scenery-chewing, so that's cool. It's either all or nothing with scenery-chewing. *nods*
-Aw, heck, I'll try and keep track of the 'douchebag's. I'll put the total at the end.
-Interesting atmosphere to 'Chief's' place it's... Oh god. *facepalm* Well, I suppose it's the modern equivalent of the 'getting misdirected to the gay bar' trope from movies of the late seventies and early eighties. :-P [Or a sideways Rocky Horror shoutout? I mean it wasn't exactly cat-o-nine-tails there in Rocky Horror, but there was leather and so forth. Maybe?]
-*sigh* Hi Ruby. I see you're still having trouble with that "realistic emotive communication while individually attending to all the autonomic functions of your brain-dead corpse" thing. You should skip the fries before you try to talk to people. Less biological systems to coordinate. *headdesk*
-Hello, factoid of note! 34 seals broken, Lilith's halfway there. Ooo. And we're half-way through the season. *nods and notes on season arc chart* Progress in the season arc ahoy.
-*headdesks some more at the painful line-readings* Gaaaah. I'm sorry, but it's reminding me of running lines in High School. Not acting, just running the lines for memorization. But then again, she's doing all that 'making the heart beat/lungs breathe/muscles move/fries digest' thing conciously since there's no native soul in the body to do it for her, so *handwaves*
-"Oceans of people." Really, Ruby? Oceans? That's almost as good as the 'cosmic' line. No, wait, I see. She's also lacking a native soul in the body to crib modern language patterns and metaphors from. Ah. She's doing very well not to be speaking entirely in "medieval". *eyeroll* *handwaves*
-"You have to do it"/"I don't wanna"/"You're just afraid because you like it, how it makes you feel." Oh for pete's sake, what already??! Eating his Wheaties? Mugging old ladies? Bathing in the blood of a virgin walrus under a full moon? Disco dancing in a barbed-wire thong? Just practicing??? What?! Actually, I don't much care what, just please, please, please, gods let it not be boinking Ruby, because the implications that it might be are starting to make me twitch. :-P
-"Aspiring magicians" hunh? "Rings 'n' doves... 'n' rings..." Yeah. that's convincing. That'll last less than five minutes. Also, did Jared get taller again or is Jensen standing in the orchestra pit? O.o
-Hey! Hey! The guy who checked Jay's straitjacket there, was that Mr. Pagan God from the Christmas episode? I think it might have been!
-Appropriately, Douchebag Jeb the Poser magician is posing. To Douchebag Jeb Music. What is this anyway? I'm not really familiar with this kind of music. It's the same stuff that was playing during his tech rehearsal, and also possibly at Chief's Place.
-OMG! The Rope!!! Doing the snakey thing! It's like the lamp cord from 'Home'!! XD
-*is glad commercials are giving her a chance to catch her breath, because laughing at the rope snake was hazardous*
-Yay, boys doing research and spinning theories in a hotel room! *glee*
-Oooo! Sam said 'death transference'! I got the term right! \o/
-And also ow, Sam. *wibbles*
-Travis and Thorton? Who's Thorton? Is it Billy Bob Thorton? Since when is he a hunter??? Oh, no, wait. Gordon. My ears must be stuffed up too. But Gordon wasn't old, he was just batshit.
-To stop all of it? Ghosts and Wendigos and Vampires and Werewolves and Chupacabras and everything? Is that even possible? Well, I suppose if the world ended the monsters would end too... Um. Sam? You're scaring me again.
-Awww, boys. You'll get past this end of the world thing and both live to be well over ninety, snarking at each other and riding herd on your vast extended families of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Really. In fic if nowhere else.
-Oh ho! Hanged Man? Really? "Hanged Man: (Upright) - Devotion to a worthwhile cause. Temporary suspension of progress. Flexibility of mind and a willingness to adapt to changes. Sacrifice in the present to reap benefit in the future. A waiting period. Rebirth. Sacrificing one thing to obtain another. Transformation. Circumstances literally turned on their head." I guess it's still as close a picture as you'll get to 'someone being hanged' from the Rider-Waite deck.
-He lost you?? Really? Well, he's an old guy who's been magically enhanced and you're about a head taller than most crowds around Vancouver Iowa, so you'd have a -2, erm I mean, a disadvantage to Shadowing.
-Although really, if the boys doing their creditable imitation of a goon patrol don't tip the guy off that he's being followed, Sam should have had no trouble.
-Door-kicking! \o/
-Hee! Boys are not doing so well with the charging in and confronting the wrong people.
-You tied him to a chair? Seriously. You tied the guy, the one you saw escape from a straightjacket while in a noose, to a chair? You do know he's gonna be gone as soon as the camera pans away, right? Though given how obvious it is that he's going to be gone when the camera gets back around, how awesome would it have been if he was still there? ...nope, he's gone. Arg. Yeah you should've seen that coming Dean, it was visible from orbit. Mars orbit.
-Also this show needs a bondage 'tying people up effectively' consultant because seriously, I could've gotten out of that. :-P
-Buh... guys, wait. The door didn't open and close, why are you leaving the room before searching it??? Even if he isn't there, you can search his room for clues and hex bags and crap. Aaand you're gone. Never mind.
-Ooo, cops are fast in Iowa. I guess they've already had two murders relating to the Magic Convention though, so rapid response would be reasonable to expect. Actually a hotel crawling with cops would be reasonable to expect.
-Wow, boys, you're... really slow today... Are you deliberately trying to get caught by the cops there? *scratches head*
-HEEE! Jay in his stage get-up there looks like the Third Doctor in the classic Doctor Who series, John Pertwee.
-Ohhh... I bet Charlie's doing it. He's a little too uncurious about the hows of Jay's escape. [retrospectively: "Makes me feel young", hunh Charlie? *facepalm*]
-I love these guys, I do. There's a great dynamic and all the acting is spot on. However, I kind of wonder what kind of mayhem's happening down at the cop shop while they try to process the Winchesters who are, as far as I know, officially dead, and if not dead then wanted for everything under the sun by the FBI. Because, you know, it's their show. Not that I don't love the guest cast. But uh. More Winchesters please?
-Awww, Charlie's dead? Okay, maybe it wasn't him.
-Ack! Feed glitched! Sound and video went foom! Ack, ack ack! Did I miss a 'douchebag'? Okay it's back. Gaaaah...
-Oooo... Magic's like crack, eh? *looks in the general direction of pre-hiatus, post 4.03 musings on Sam and powers usage being like alcoholism and stuff* *is smug*
-Oh ho! Young Charlie! Ooo! Nifty! *flails a little and wishes the Winchesters were here*
-A grimoire. *nods* *[RPGGEEKMODE]makes notes about Magery levels in case of a need for conversion to GURPS[/RPGGEEKMODE]*
-Hee. Radioactive. Yeah, no touching the magic items.
-I still love the guest cast and their messed up little relationship dynamic. *looks around for some Winchesters*
-Ah! There they are! Heh, 'Cocoon'. I haven't thought of that movie in years. Aaaand now I have Wilford Brimley's oatmeal commercials stuck in my head again, thank you very much, Dean. "It's the right thing to do and a tasty way to do it." Gahhh.
-Noose from that other promo! There it is! And he's not alone, so yay, no implied suicide dying for Dean today.
-OH, OH, OH WILL THIS BE A PSYCHIC POWERS VERSUS MAGIC POWERS SHOWDOWN BETWEEN SAM AND CHARLIE??? *preemptively flails*
-...and that would be a no on the powers showdown. Wow. Getting his and Dean's asses saved by an old stage magician is definitely going to make Sam go back to Ruby for training, isn't it?
-Hahahahaha! Good god, the perfectly upright tarot card in dead!Charlie's hand was cheeseball! But I guess they figured they needed the subtitle to be clear so the uninformed could tell it was The Magician. Speaking of which: "The Magician - (Upright) Mastery of the material world, creative action, self discipline and a willingness to take risks. An ability to recognise one's own potential, the power to initiate, communication and wit."
-I like the guest characters so much I almost don't mind that the Winchesters needed rescued and were pretty incompetent and absent for this episode. Except that I do mind. I really, really do. :-/
-Yay, it's a bar! It appears to be serving anvils foreshadowing. Straight up, or with a dash of bitters. *flails a little at the assorted implications and has no coherence*
-Yep, and Sam goes back to Ruby and her Drug-Pusher-Mobile. Which is an even more appropriate choice of vehicle given the whole "Magic (presumably including powers) equals Crack" thing.
-Because you don't want to be doing this when you're old??? Seriously, Sam? Well, I guess it's as good a thing to tell Ruby as any other. *eyes Sam sideways*
-OMG, the show's over and THE RABBIT DIDN'T GET HURT!! YAY!!! \o/
-Heh. They're getting their money's worth out of the music rights. The feed I watch (JoyTV) has the full-screen DVD style end credits and instead of the usual funky guitar stuff, over the end credits this time is Douchebag Jeb's music.
-NO PROMO ON THIS CHANNEL STILL, YAY! No flying crap on the screen, no overt station bug, full-sized credits, and no promo! JOYTV is made of WIN!!! \o/
Aaaand now for the 'douchebag' count:
-One titular 'Douchebag'
-Five solo 'Douchebags'
-One stereo 'Douchebag' between Charlie and Vernon
-And one 'douchbaggery' courtesy of Dean, which I suspect to be a shout-out to the TWoP recapper's frequently used phrase: "rampant internecine douchebaggery"
Hunh. Seemed like a lot more. I may have missed a couple due to feed glitches but that's my estimation. I think Kripke got his mileage out of the word there. *nods* Also, did we skip the traditional "sonofabitch" to sneak in some extra "douchebags"? I don't recall a "sonfabitch".
NO SPOILERS IN COMMENTS, OR REFERENCES TO ANY PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL OR PREVIEWS FOR UNAIRED EPISODES, PLEASE.
-Nov 11th Widely disseminated comments from Jim Beaver's Myspace. Bobby will not be appearing in this episode. I miss Bobby. :-(
-Late November Title, somewhere: Criss Angel is a Douchebag. Hee! So, either a massive stuntcasting, or stage magic that isn't stage, or a cursed object in a magic show, or something. Oooooo goodie! When I was a kid, like, six, eight years old? I went to see a stage magician, I think it was with the school. The guy must have sucked pretty bad, because I basically debunked the entire show, loudly, from the audience. I was an obnoxious child. The guy even got me up on stage to do some kind of last ditch "I'll prove I'm not crap" trick involving a balloon and a needle, and I saw through that one too and explained it while standing on the stage, but he made like I was lying, and didn't let me have the burst balloon to prove there was a patch of tape on it where he'd poked it the first time and not burst it. Everyone believed him, and I had no proof. I got a lecture from either the teacher or the magic show organizer about willing suspension of disbelief, and that people didn't want to know how the trick worked, they wanted to think for a bit that magic is real. Never went to see another live magic show. Anyway, sorry, sidetracked.
-Jan 8 CW Promo. Fraaaaaaag. Caught a microsecond flash of Dean hanging in a noose, apparently alone, and a title screen of 'We're Sorry.' Eeeek. O.O Well. Obviously he's not permanently dying, but uh... meep. It's probably some Monster of the Week trick, right? Or the writers' going down the checklist of 'How haven't we killed Dean yet?' *is nervous anyway*
-Jan 16 Barry Bostwick is in 4.12 and chews scenery. Whoever the hell Barry Bostwick is, he sounds vaguely familiar, and I'm not looking it up in case it's Alistair. And there may be crack. After the end of 4.11, crack is due. And the scenery hasn't had a really good chewing since Fred Lehne.
-Jan 19 So very random, [and apparently a total fever hallucination as Barry Bostwick was absolutely, provably not ever part of Spinal Tap. I blame the fever.]
So, Stage Magic with a scenery-chewing guest star, possibly a cursed object, and probably boatloads of Winchesterian repression. And maybe teeny druids. YAY!
Reaction to Supernatural 4.12 - "Criss Angel is a Douchebag"
I love that title! *giggles* It really stands out and I hope it draws in a whack load of the idle curious.
Caution: This episode should not be watched by anyone with severe chest congestion or mild to moderate pneumonia. Seriously. Not with out a frigging pause button so you can stop horfing up a lung during the funny bits. Gack.
-Hee! JoyTV ran the 'That was scary!' Promo at the end of Smallville to announce Supernatural was on next. A neutral, no spoiler promo. Now that's class. :-)
-Well, hello there Sam-powers-focussed previouslies! I wasn't expecting you! O.o
-"You know what." What? No, really, what?
-Iowa. Magic week. *scans around for dates on posters and stuff and doesn't see any*
-'Old guy', hunh barkeep? Methinks you just lost your tip.
-Hee! I knew that Kripke and co were stoked to get the use of the word 'douchebag' past the censors, but this is getting silly. I hope someone counts 'em.
-I love the classic magician trio. They're all 'hey it's that guy's to me. I'm guessing the main one is Barry Bostwick. [Whooooo, since I've gone back and fact-checked my hallucination to confirm he was never part of Spinal Tap, I did discover where I recognized the name from. Rocky Horror! He was BRAD!! Ahahahahahahah! XD He's looking rather awesome!]
-Aaaand heckler-boy is dead now yay! Wow! Death transference! That is frigging cool!
-Another 'douchebag' there. For anyone keeping track.
-At age 13, Sam was into stage magic. Whoa. There's some teen!chester fic waiting to happen. It would be a great way to develop dexterity in the fingers though, and sleight-of-hand and all kinds of useful, practical for hunting skills. *nods*
-Written by Julie Seige (is she new? [No, she also wrote the Halloween episode, the one with SAM HANE. Hm]), directed by Bobby's namesake.
-Aw. Bunny. First live bunny there's been on the show, isn't he? *is suddenly massively paranoid something bad will happen to the bunny*
-Dean seems oddly fascinated by the brightly colored scarves. I'm going to pretend he's having a flashback to Hell and an incident where the intestines of someone with a really colorful diet were being pulled out. *nods*
-Oooo! Tarot!! Ten of Swords!!! OMG I did research on that card for " When the Fiddler Stops"! Gaaaaah. *rummages through pile of used notes* Here we are. Pulled off the 'net somewhere: "Ten of Swords - (Upright) Ruin, desolation, disruption, although generally this refers to a group rather than an individual. Sorrow, sudden misfortune, accidents, muggings or personal robbery. There is some cause for optimism; as the lowest point in the cycle, from now on things can only get better the worst is over." Just for the sake of trivia.
-I love these guys. Charlie and Jay. They're awesome. And I'm not detecting any scenery-chewing, so that's cool. It's either all or nothing with scenery-chewing. *nods*
-Aw, heck, I'll try and keep track of the 'douchebag's. I'll put the total at the end.
-Interesting atmosphere to 'Chief's' place it's... Oh god. *facepalm* Well, I suppose it's the modern equivalent of the 'getting misdirected to the gay bar' trope from movies of the late seventies and early eighties. :-P [Or a sideways Rocky Horror shoutout? I mean it wasn't exactly cat-o-nine-tails there in Rocky Horror, but there was leather and so forth. Maybe?]
-*sigh* Hi Ruby. I see you're still having trouble with that "realistic emotive communication while individually attending to all the autonomic functions of your brain-dead corpse" thing. You should skip the fries before you try to talk to people. Less biological systems to coordinate. *headdesk*
-Hello, factoid of note! 34 seals broken, Lilith's halfway there. Ooo. And we're half-way through the season. *nods and notes on season arc chart* Progress in the season arc ahoy.
-*headdesks some more at the painful line-readings* Gaaaah. I'm sorry, but it's reminding me of running lines in High School. Not acting, just running the lines for memorization. But then again, she's doing all that 'making the heart beat/lungs breathe/muscles move/fries digest' thing conciously since there's no native soul in the body to do it for her, so *handwaves*
-"Oceans of people." Really, Ruby? Oceans? That's almost as good as the 'cosmic' line. No, wait, I see. She's also lacking a native soul in the body to crib modern language patterns and metaphors from. Ah. She's doing very well not to be speaking entirely in "medieval". *eyeroll* *handwaves*
-"You have to do it"/"I don't wanna"/"You're just afraid because you like it, how it makes you feel." Oh for pete's sake, what already??! Eating his Wheaties? Mugging old ladies? Bathing in the blood of a virgin walrus under a full moon? Disco dancing in a barbed-wire thong? Just practicing??? What?! Actually, I don't much care what, just please, please, please, gods let it not be boinking Ruby, because the implications that it might be are starting to make me twitch. :-P
-"Aspiring magicians" hunh? "Rings 'n' doves... 'n' rings..." Yeah. that's convincing. That'll last less than five minutes. Also, did Jared get taller again or is Jensen standing in the orchestra pit? O.o
-Hey! Hey! The guy who checked Jay's straitjacket there, was that Mr. Pagan God from the Christmas episode? I think it might have been!
-Appropriately, Douchebag Jeb the Poser magician is posing. To Douchebag Jeb Music. What is this anyway? I'm not really familiar with this kind of music. It's the same stuff that was playing during his tech rehearsal, and also possibly at Chief's Place.
-OMG! The Rope!!! Doing the snakey thing! It's like the lamp cord from 'Home'!! XD
-*is glad commercials are giving her a chance to catch her breath, because laughing at the rope snake was hazardous*
-Yay, boys doing research and spinning theories in a hotel room! *glee*
-Oooo! Sam said 'death transference'! I got the term right! \o/
-And also ow, Sam. *wibbles*
-Travis and Thorton? Who's Thorton? Is it Billy Bob Thorton? Since when is he a hunter??? Oh, no, wait. Gordon. My ears must be stuffed up too. But Gordon wasn't old, he was just batshit.
-To stop all of it? Ghosts and Wendigos and Vampires and Werewolves and Chupacabras and everything? Is that even possible? Well, I suppose if the world ended the monsters would end too... Um. Sam? You're scaring me again.
-Awww, boys. You'll get past this end of the world thing and both live to be well over ninety, snarking at each other and riding herd on your vast extended families of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Really. In fic if nowhere else.
-Oh ho! Hanged Man? Really? "Hanged Man: (Upright) - Devotion to a worthwhile cause. Temporary suspension of progress. Flexibility of mind and a willingness to adapt to changes. Sacrifice in the present to reap benefit in the future. A waiting period. Rebirth. Sacrificing one thing to obtain another. Transformation. Circumstances literally turned on their head." I guess it's still as close a picture as you'll get to 'someone being hanged' from the Rider-Waite deck.
-He lost you?? Really? Well, he's an old guy who's been magically enhanced and you're about a head taller than most crowds around Vancouver Iowa, so you'd have a -2, erm I mean, a disadvantage to Shadowing.
-Although really, if the boys doing their creditable imitation of a goon patrol don't tip the guy off that he's being followed, Sam should have had no trouble.
-Door-kicking! \o/
-Hee! Boys are not doing so well with the charging in and confronting the wrong people.
-You tied him to a chair? Seriously. You tied the guy, the one you saw escape from a straightjacket while in a noose, to a chair? You do know he's gonna be gone as soon as the camera pans away, right? Though given how obvious it is that he's going to be gone when the camera gets back around, how awesome would it have been if he was still there? ...nope, he's gone. Arg. Yeah you should've seen that coming Dean, it was visible from orbit. Mars orbit.
-Also this show needs a bondage 'tying people up effectively' consultant because seriously, I could've gotten out of that. :-P
-Buh... guys, wait. The door didn't open and close, why are you leaving the room before searching it??? Even if he isn't there, you can search his room for clues and hex bags and crap. Aaand you're gone. Never mind.
-Ooo, cops are fast in Iowa. I guess they've already had two murders relating to the Magic Convention though, so rapid response would be reasonable to expect. Actually a hotel crawling with cops would be reasonable to expect.
-Wow, boys, you're... really slow today... Are you deliberately trying to get caught by the cops there? *scratches head*
-HEEE! Jay in his stage get-up there looks like the Third Doctor in the classic Doctor Who series, John Pertwee.
-Ohhh... I bet Charlie's doing it. He's a little too uncurious about the hows of Jay's escape. [retrospectively: "Makes me feel young", hunh Charlie? *facepalm*]
-I love these guys, I do. There's a great dynamic and all the acting is spot on. However, I kind of wonder what kind of mayhem's happening down at the cop shop while they try to process the Winchesters who are, as far as I know, officially dead, and if not dead then wanted for everything under the sun by the FBI. Because, you know, it's their show. Not that I don't love the guest cast. But uh. More Winchesters please?
-Awww, Charlie's dead? Okay, maybe it wasn't him.
-Ack! Feed glitched! Sound and video went foom! Ack, ack ack! Did I miss a 'douchebag'? Okay it's back. Gaaaah...
-Oooo... Magic's like crack, eh? *looks in the general direction of pre-hiatus, post 4.03 musings on Sam and powers usage being like alcoholism and stuff* *is smug*
-Oh ho! Young Charlie! Ooo! Nifty! *flails a little and wishes the Winchesters were here*
-A grimoire. *nods* *[RPGGEEKMODE]makes notes about Magery levels in case of a need for conversion to GURPS[/RPGGEEKMODE]*
-Hee. Radioactive. Yeah, no touching the magic items.
-I still love the guest cast and their messed up little relationship dynamic. *looks around for some Winchesters*
-Ah! There they are! Heh, 'Cocoon'. I haven't thought of that movie in years. Aaaand now I have Wilford Brimley's oatmeal commercials stuck in my head again, thank you very much, Dean. "It's the right thing to do and a tasty way to do it." Gahhh.
-Noose from that other promo! There it is! And he's not alone, so yay, no implied suicide dying for Dean today.
-OH, OH, OH WILL THIS BE A PSYCHIC POWERS VERSUS MAGIC POWERS SHOWDOWN BETWEEN SAM AND CHARLIE??? *preemptively flails*
-...and that would be a no on the powers showdown. Wow. Getting his and Dean's asses saved by an old stage magician is definitely going to make Sam go back to Ruby for training, isn't it?
-Hahahahaha! Good god, the perfectly upright tarot card in dead!Charlie's hand was cheeseball! But I guess they figured they needed the subtitle to be clear so the uninformed could tell it was The Magician. Speaking of which: "The Magician - (Upright) Mastery of the material world, creative action, self discipline and a willingness to take risks. An ability to recognise one's own potential, the power to initiate, communication and wit."
-I like the guest characters so much I almost don't mind that the Winchesters needed rescued and were pretty incompetent and absent for this episode. Except that I do mind. I really, really do. :-/
-Yay, it's a bar! It appears to be serving anvils foreshadowing. Straight up, or with a dash of bitters. *flails a little at the assorted implications and has no coherence*
-Yep, and Sam goes back to Ruby and her Drug-Pusher-Mobile. Which is an even more appropriate choice of vehicle given the whole "Magic (presumably including powers) equals Crack" thing.
-Because you don't want to be doing this when you're old??? Seriously, Sam? Well, I guess it's as good a thing to tell Ruby as any other. *eyes Sam sideways*
-OMG, the show's over and THE RABBIT DIDN'T GET HURT!! YAY!!! \o/
-Heh. They're getting their money's worth out of the music rights. The feed I watch (JoyTV) has the full-screen DVD style end credits and instead of the usual funky guitar stuff, over the end credits this time is Douchebag Jeb's music.
-NO PROMO ON THIS CHANNEL STILL, YAY! No flying crap on the screen, no overt station bug, full-sized credits, and no promo! JOYTV is made of WIN!!! \o/
Aaaand now for the 'douchebag' count:
-One titular 'Douchebag'
-Five solo 'Douchebags'
-One stereo 'Douchebag' between Charlie and Vernon
-And one 'douchbaggery' courtesy of Dean, which I suspect to be a shout-out to the TWoP recapper's frequently used phrase: "rampant internecine douchebaggery"
Hunh. Seemed like a lot more. I may have missed a couple due to feed glitches but that's my estimation. I think Kripke got his mileage out of the word there. *nods* Also, did we skip the traditional "sonofabitch" to sneak in some extra "douchebags"? I don't recall a "sonfabitch".
NO SPOILERS IN COMMENTS, OR REFERENCES TO ANY PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL OR PREVIEWS FOR UNAIRED EPISODES, PLEASE.