Previously: Meg came back from Hell to possess Sam and generally be a murdery, torturey dick.
Tall Tales
Kirsti: Okay, y’all. This is one of my favourite episodes ever, because of reasons. So I’ve been excited for, like, EVER about recapping this one. Let’s get to it. A middle-aged professor type heads up the steps of a college building after dark, then stops when he sees a pretty young thing (who looks weirdly like a brunette Reese Witherspoon) in a sundress fixing her shoe. I’m going to go ahead and award him a “THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS” because he’s in an overcoat and scarf, and doesn’t think her lack of coat is at all suspect. Anyway, Brunette Witherspoon flirts a little as she says that she’s in one of his classes and he invites her up to his office. There’s some more flirting, a little making out, and then her face turns all grey and rotten. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like me any more?” she says sadly. Downstairs, a janitor locks the front of the building and heads down the stairs. There’s a crunch behind him and he turns to see Creeper Professor, face first in the concrete.
FLAME ON!
After the Not Credits, it’s a week later. The boys are at the Motel of the Week, bitching at each other. Research is slow because apparently Dean broke Sam’s computer. Dean can’t go anywhere because apparently Sam broke the Bromobile. There’s a knock on the door, and they’re both relieved to see Bobby. He’s a little confused about why he’s there, and asks them to fill him in on the job they’re working. Sam starts off, telling him that they saw Creeper Professor’s obituary and found a rumour that the building was haunted. They posed as reporters to dig a little deeper.
That throws us into a flashback. The boys are at a bar. Sam’s interviewing two of Creeper Professor’s students. The cute girl starts telling Sam about the legend while the jock boy scoffs. The legend is as follows: 30 years ago, a girl was having an affair with her professor. He broke it off so she jumped out the window of room 669 and now haunts the building. Sam excuses himself and goes to find Dean, who’s doing shots. Apparently they’re called Purple Nurples.
He suggests to Dean that they go check out Creeper Professor’s office, but Dean disagrees because he’s on the verge of hooking up with a redneck-looking drunk girl named Starla. He introduces her to Sam (though he calls Sam “my co-pilot, Major Tom“) and she flirts with Sam a little before literally throwing up in her mouth and struggling to keep her booze down. Sam looks grossed out, more so when Dean says she has a sister.
Dean’s voice cuts across the scene: “Whoa whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute.” Back in the present, he insists that’s not how it went down. The girl’s name wasn’t Starla – he doesn’t know what it was, but she was hella classy. Dean!Flashback: they’re still drinking Purple Nurples, but the girl is in heels and a cocktail dress. And is also played by a thinner actress. What the fuck, show. I’m tempted to hand out Misogyny Shots for that. Anyway, Dean asks her about the legend and she gushes about how pretty he is. Sam, acting a lot like Carson Kressley, comes up and bitchily asks what Dean’s doing. Dean ignores him and kisses the girl. Actual thing that happens in the show and not something Tumblr has mangled:
Sam!Flashback. The boys pose as electricians and the janitor from the teaser lets them into Creeper Professor’s office. They claim to be rewiring the office and that their EMF meter helps them with that. The janitor looks sceptical. He bluntly tells them that it’s pointless because the dude’s dead and he saw it happen. Dean starts stuffing his face with nuts while Sam asks questions. Sceptical Janitor informs them that Creeper Professor wasn’t alone. Dean asks who he was with, and we freeze on his chipmunk-y face as he voiceovers that he only ate one or two.
Sceptical Janitor says that he hadn’t seen Brunette Witherspoon before (or since), but that Creeper Professor “got more ass than a toilet seat“. Dean chuckles, Sam bitchfaces, Sceptical Janitor grins. After confirming that there’s no room 669 because the building only has four floors, the boys leave.
Motel of the Week. The boys discuss what to do next. Sam goes to research the history of the building for unusual deaths and finds that his laptop is frozen on the Busty Asian Beauties website. I feel like I should have added “porn” to the Supernatural drinking game a long time ago… Anyway, Dean insists that it wasn’t him, which obviously Sam doesn’t believe for a second.
Back in the present, Bobby asks if there were any unusual deaths. Nope. He’s all “So it’s not a haunting”. Dean says they’re not sure, because what happened next is hella weird, although they didn’t see it themselves. Flashback to the jock boy from the bar walking across campus. There’s a bright light, and he tries to run but gets sucked up in a tractor beam. He screams as he’s dragged up into the sky. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Bobby’s all “WTF, this isn’t The X-Files!”. The boys agree, but say they thought it was worth looking into anyway. Flashback. The boys are at the bar, watching Jock Boy do drink-away-the-pain shots. He says the aliens probed him like a millionty times, and then made him slow dance to Lady in Red. The boys struggle not to laugh. We freeze frame, and Bobby voiceovers “You guys are exaggerating again, huh?“. But no. On campus, they find a circular burn mark in the grass where Jock Boy was abducted. They work out that there has to be a connection between the abduction and Creeper Professor’s death, but they have no idea what it is.
Dean voiceovers that they kept digging. They talk to another guy from Jock Boy’s frat house, who basically has zero fucks to give about the whole thing. And then this happens:
Back in the present, Bobby plays surrogate parent and asks if Dean took Sam’s computer. He insists that he didn’t. Bobby eyerolls some more and asks what happened next. There was one more case that they also didn’t see. Flashback. A dickish animal research scientist walks across campus after dark. He spots something sparkly in a storm drain and shoves his arm down there to get what turns out to be a gold watch. Something grabs his arm, he screams and blood splatters across his face. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, the boys break into the morgue to look at the scientist’s very mangled remains. They discuss how all three weird things took place in the same location, then Sam finds an alligator belly scale in the corpse. Classic urban legend stuff. They decide to call Bobby but to check the sewers just to be safe. Upon leaving the sewers, Dean finds that the Bromobile has four flat tyres. And there’s a money clip with “S.W.” on it by the car. He storms back to the Motel of the Week and yells at Sam. Sam insists he didn’t do it, and then is all “Oh, hey. You found my money! I’ve been looking for that.” They scuffle over it like children and it’s amazing.
The flashback freezes as Bobby voiceovers that they’re idiots because if they’d been paying more attention, they would have worked out exactly what they’re dealing with: a trickster. And they’re the biggest clue. The trickster knows it’s onto them, so it’s messing with the things they love (car, laptop) to distract them. He gives some basic background on tricksters – immortal, lots of cultures have them, can create things out of thin air, have a major sweet tooth, like to torment douchebags – and mentions that they look human most of the time. Dean realises that there’s one human who’s been on the scene the whole time.
Cut to Sceptical Janitor flipping through a supermarket tabloid. He passes articles alien love slaves and alligators in sewers, then settles on one about a guy attacking people with a chainsaw. I kind of love that he gets his ideas from supermarket tabloids. The camera pans out to show that he’s in an undershirt and boxers in a tacky swinger’s pad. He whistles to a dog, then makes a bunch of food appear. I wish I had that skill. That would be excellent. He deems something to be not quite right and makes two scantily-clad women appear. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, the boys are disguised as electricians again and claiming they need to check out some more offices. Trickster Janitor lets them in while making lewd comments about all the sex he had the previous night. Dean makes a face. Sam says he left something in the truck and darts away, but he’s really going to the locker room to rummage through Trickster Janitor’s stuff.
Later, the boys leave, discussing whether the janitor is their culprit. Dean thinks he is, Sam disagrees. It progresses from disagreement to bickering to full blown arguing that ends in Sam storming off, telling Dean to wait until he gets back. Trickster Janitor watches thoughtfully from the window. Cut to Dean still waiting outside that night. He decides he’s waited long enough and heads inside. As he heads inside, he pulls out a large wooden stake, which makes me realise that at no point do they actually discuss how you kill a trickster. But apparently it involves a fuck-off sized stake.
Anyway, Dean hears Barry White playing in the auditorium and heads in there to find a disco ball spinning and the two scantily-clad women that Trickster Janitor conjured up are lounging on a tacky round bed in the middle of the stage. They try to seduce him, but he reluctantly refuses. Trickster Janitor appears and informs him that they’re a gift (my brain just went “yeah, a second-hand gift” and now I need brain bleach), a peace offering. Dean says he can’t let Trickster Janitor keep hurting people, but Trickster Janitor insists they had it coming. Sorry, but I can’t resist:
He likes Sam and Dean, however, so they should treat themselves to his artificially created women long enough for him to leave town. Dean says that as much as he likes Trickster Janitor’s style, he can’t let him do that. Trickster Janitor says it’s too bad and his tone becomes threatening as he says Dean shouldn’t have come alone. “Well, I’ll agree with you there…” Dean says. A door shuts at the top of the auditorium and Trickster Janitor looks up to see Sam and Bobby standing at the top of the stairs with their own big-ass stakes.
Trickster Janitor is impressed with Dean’s sneakiness – the fight was staged for his benefit.
But he offers them a real trick and makes a masked man wielding a chainsaw appear and attack Sam. One of the scantily-clad women attacks Dean. Trickster Janitor watches, smirking, as Bobby rushes over to help Sam. The women punch Dean, knocking him across the room. He lands in some seats by Trickster Janitor, who’s eating a sandwich. He applauds their work and stands over Dean, gloating. Sam tosses his brother a big-ass stake, and Dean slams it into Trickster Janitor’s chest, a little apologetically. The chainsaw-wielding man and the scantily-clad women disappear. Dean pulls out the stake, and Trickster Janitor falls to the seats, dead. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Dean checks that Sam and Bobby are okay. They stagger outside, and the boys thank Bobby for his help. He’s all “Cool story, but LET’S GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE DEAD BODY BEFORE YOU THANK ME.” Apparently the boys aren’t paying attention because they stop to have a feelsy sibling moment of “Sorry I blamed you for messing with my stuff”, forcing Bobby to repeat his former get-the-hell-out statement. They all hop in the Bromobile and leave.
The camera pans back through the auditorium and we see a figure step up next to Trickster Janitor’s dead body. The body shimmers, then vanishes, and the camera pans around to show Trickster Janitor standing there, smugly eating a chocolate bar. Fade to black.
I love this episode. There are, in fact, no words for how much I love this episode. It’s utterly ridiculous from start to finish, and there are some obvious gaps (how you kill tricksters, for example) and a little grossness, but I adore the Trickster and the way he’s all “Sam and Dean are kind of dicks, but not enough to warrant killing them so I’ll just mess with their heads a little”. Because these assholes need that in their lives from time to time. I think I also love this episode because it reminds me of the more ridiculous episodes of The X-Files, like Bad Blood. And that can only be a good thing. Plus, it gifted us this extreme bitchface of awesomeness:
AMAZING.
Next time, there’s a girl on a highway being chased by a creepy dude. But all is not as it seems. Find out more in S02 E16 – Roadkill.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
