Changing Channels

Tonight’s episode opened with a voice-over from Dean: “Supernatural is filmed before a live studio audience.” LOL! “Supernatural: The Sit-Com” had Dean mugging and Sam making exaggerated movements and the bitch-face. I have to say, the theme song was fun—two hunting bros, when demons come out to play—LOL. Also, the bicycle built for two!

Two days earlier, Sam and Dean are investigating a man killed by the Incredible Hulk (Lou Ferrigno, not Bana or Norton. I loved Dean’s matter-of-factness following this line of questioning). Sam is pretty quick to identify the Trickster as the baddy, based on the punishment fitting the crime (the vic was a hot-head, you wouldn’t like him when he was angry) and candy wrappers at the crime scene. Sam wants to recruit the Trickster’s help, thinking the Trickster isn’t going to want the world to end, and will work against the demons and angels. Funny that Dean didn’t know MySpace a couple of seasons ago and now asks Sam why he wants to be Facebook Friends with the Trickster.

A fake call on the police radio sends them to an abandoned warehouse. When they walk through the door, they’re suddenly wearing doctor coats and are in the halls of Seattle Mercy Hospital, the setting of “Dr. Sexy, M.D.” Sam is accosted by a female doctor who slaps his face and says “seriously” a lot. Dean points out the characters, including Johnny Drake, who’s a ghost in the mind of the sexy-but-neurotic female doctor. The brothers riff about why the show has ghosts, and then Dean goes all fan-boy when Dr. Sexy himself approaches. Dean knocks him off for wearing tennis shoes instead of Dr. Sexy’s cowboy boots, and Dr. Sexy morphs into the Trickster.

Sam tries to talk to the Trickster, who says if they survive the next 24 hours, they’ll talk. He disappears and Dean and Sam try to escape. When Dean tells a patient at the fake hospital that none of it is real, he shoots Dean in the back. Dean ends up on the operating table with Sam as the surgeon, who asks for a penknife, dental floss and a fifth of whiskey to operate.

The brothers then appear—as in, suddenly—on a Japanese game show called “Nutcracker.” They’re standing, legs spread, while the host asks questions in Japanese. Sam can’t answer, so he gets smacked in the groin by a giant spring-loaded ball. When Castiel appears to save them, he disappears. The host chides them, saying he doesn’t want pretty boy angels. Dean decides to play the role and gets the answer right—in Japanese.

Their next appearance is in a commercial for genital herpes. Sam doesn’t want to, but the boys realize they have to play their roles to survive. He says his lines, then does a nice lay-up in the basketball game his character is playing.

Back to the sit-com. The Trickster shows up and wants the brothers to take their roles (ahhh) as Lucifer and Michael to get the show on the road, to accept the roles destiny has chosen. If they don’t, they’ll stay in TV Land.

Next is a procedural cop show, a la CSI. The brothers are dressed hot as hell, in suits, blue shirts and shades. At night. They adopt gravelly voices and toy with the glasses. They joke over the body with a CSI tech who’s eating a lollipop, and stab him with a stick. Turned out to be the wrong guy, but when the Trickster shows himself, Sam is there to stab him and the brothers return to reality.

Or….not. Suddenly Sam is the voice of Metallicar, in a Knight Rider take-off. Sam-as-the-car and Dean discuss whether or not the stake didn’t work because their nemesis is something else, not a Trickster after all. The Trickster shows up and Sam and Dean light a circle of flames around him. Turns out he’s the archangel Gabriel who had left heaven and was happy until the apocalypse began. He blames the brothers for HIS brothers killing each other. He says there’s not stopping this, that this war is about 2 brothers who loved each other and betrayed each other.

He says the brothers were born to be the vessels: the big brother, loyal to an absent father, the little brother, rebellious, and that one has to kill the other. Heaven has always known it would come to Sam and Dean.

Gabriel tells them he wished this was a TV show with easy answers, but it’s going to end bloody. Oh, dear, not a good sign for the end of the season!

Dean is defiant, but Sam looks worried. Dean does get Castiel back, and accuses Gabriel of being too afraid to stand up to his family of angels. He puts out the fire and the brothers and Cas leave. The ending was a little weak, with the brothers climbing in the car asking what they were going to do and not having an answer.

I really wanted to like this show more. Maybe on a second viewing. What did you think?