6X09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe Review

Angels, Demons, Aliens OH MY!

Part One: Summary

     As a fourth person from Elwood, Indiana disappears in a corn field with crop circles in it, Sam and Dean go to investigate what seems to be a series of alien abductions. Suspicions rise as the brothers interview the fourth victim's father, Patrick Brennan, while he is working in his clockwork shop so Dean decides that he'll go explore the fields while Sam should stay behind and keep an eye on Brennan. While Dean is walking through the fields he begins to experience the same signs of abduction as the other victims and runs for his life while on the phone with Sam, but ends up disappearing as well. Sam noticing that something is wrong goes out to find him and comes across a camp site full of UFO hunters. Finding no leads there, Sam returns to the hotel where Dean unexpectedly shows up and tells Sam how he escaped. Once again the boys split up to piece together exactly what Dean went through and while alone, Dean is visited by a small, winged creature surrounded in gold light. Dean kills the creature and calls Sam to check it out, but Sam doesn't see it. This indicates to the boys that there is something much more fantastical happening than aliens and it leads them on a hunt for a cunning mythical being they never believed could exist in their world.


Part Two: Review

     Writer and producer Ben Edlund worked on Supernatural seasons two through eight and is well-known for incorporating absurdest/surrealist elements into the episodes that he writes, such as black-and-white Monster Movie (4X05) and the time-travel sequence in The End (5X04). Clap Your Hands If You Believe is in one of the more ludicrous episodes that Edlund created. The episode begins with X Files-themed title credits, as Supernatural has been critiqued as a show is parallel to what X Files stood for. It then transitions as a homage to the "mockumentary" which is a, "...motion picture or television program that takes the form of a serious documentary in order to satirize its subject" (Dictionary.com) by having the audience peer through the interview camera's point-of-view as the "subjects", or victims in this case, recount their or someone else's experiences of being abducted by aliens in Elwood, Indiana. Because of alien abductions being a real-world issue, the audience begins to perceive this episode as absurd, humorous, and that it can't be worth anything to the plot although Edlund tries to use the magical concept of the "leprechaun" as somehow being more powerful than an angel by offering to bring back Sam's soul.
     Perhaps the big issue that Edlund is trying to highlight in this episode is the fact that Supernatural is trying to illustrate Soulless Sam as a human "monster" with questionable societal standards, a lack of empathy, and tendency to be more sexually active than pre-Cage Sam. Dean's harsh criticism of Soulless Sam, such as when he nags on him about having empathy when interviewing subjects or that instead of sleeping with "hippie chick" he should have been suffering over the disappearance of his brother portrays to the audience that you could be seen as "soulless" if you don't have sympathy or if you just sleep around with whoever you want. Soulless Sam recognizes the fact that he is not exactly "human" and that he is not Dean's brother, but he tries to at least win him over as a hunting partner by  possibly using memories of what he likes, such as when he says "Okie Dokie" to Dean as an homage to season 2 episode 12, "Nightshifter," when Dean comments that he liked a guard because he said, "Okie Dokie."
     All of that is hidden underneath the layer of lore and mythology about fairies that Edlund uses to build the case for the brothers. In order for the brothers to obtain more information on these creatures, Edlund incorporated a "crazy fairy lady", Marion, who wears obscene amounts of glitter and lives in a trailer adorned with countless fairy statues. Marion goes in depth about the lore behind fairies, how they take first-born sons (allusion to one of the plagues used on Egpyt during the time of Moses in the Bible), how they love fresh cream, are burned by iron, and that if you poor salt in front of them they must count every grain. Since Dean is abducted by them he is the only one who can see them, thus introducing that there is an "alternate universe" inside the Supernatural universe. Similar to the introduction of the gods of other religions (i.e. Kali of Hindu faith and Zeus of Greek mythology in "Hammer of the Gods" 5X19) the fairies bring confusion to the audience for they don't make sense to the Biblical lore that the show is loosely based off of.

Part Three: Questions/Concerns

     To be honest, I did not enjoy this episode. I am not a fan of absurdest or surrealist entertainment. I like when what I am reading or viewing has a strict purpose to it or is used to highlight another concept that will appear again later on. I felt as though this episode was strictly a "filler" or "monster-of-the-week" instead of a piece of exposition or the like. The way this episode mocks Marion and uses the fairies tendency to count salt as OCD-like comes off as somewhat offensive because of personal connections I have to both points. The overuse of pop-culture references, such as Dean's comment on Close Encounters of the Third Kind the use of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" while fighting the fairy and Sam breaking the fourth wall with, "Why didn't I do that earlier?" while referring to pouring the salt instead of shooting the leprechaun, are far more comical than the are tasteful. One question I have is this, why is it that every time the boys are sneaking through the door it never makes a sound? It doesn't need to be answered I was just wondering. Perhaps I am too harsh on this episode, but I have never been a fan of season six so I feel as though it gives me an advantage when writing about it as I don't feel connected to it.