photo: cw
Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie
Original Air Date: Feb 10, 2012
Anne – Associate Editor
anne@thetwocentscorp.com
We all have fears; some more rational than others. What is your biggest fear? Mine is fire. But at the same time, I love fire. It amazes me. I can go down to my parents’ house and watch the fireplace for hours. It’s the same way with tornadoes for me. I’m awed by them, but scared to death. As for a more irrational fear, I would have to say it’s the sleestaks from Land of the Lost. I used to have nightmares about them as a child and they still scare me. Stupid reptiles.
For those of us who have been watching from the beginning, it’s no secret that Sam Winchester is deathly afraid of clowns. Let’s just say tonight is not his night.
We open on said Winchester running for his life from something. It’s a clown. And then another clown.
Cut to 60:00 earlier – Dean (whose code name is apparently the Egg Man), gets a call from Frank. Not much new “Dick on Dick”, as Sam put it. So they decided to look for a new case. But Dean has some stipulations:
– No babies
– No baby mamas
– No bars or booze
– No hot chicks
Someone is still a little gun-shy since siring a demon child last week. I suppose I would be too. Sam finds a case in Wichita, Kansas. There is a man in the morgue who was attacked by a 30 foot octopus with vampire fangs. Octuvamp? Vamptopus? They can’t decide. They talk to the wife, Debra and she thinks that her husband, Brian, might have been having a thing with the nanny, Stacey. As the brothers are leaving, we see a little girl at the top of the stairs who looks a little suspect. I thought her eyes went black at first, but she just looked off.
Dean went to check out the hot nanny (that didn’t last long, did it?!?) while Sam stayed behind to keep an eye on the house. Nanny Stacey says that the night Brian died, she had to stay with Kelly because he had to work late. It was Kelly’s birthday and she had a party at Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie (Basically Chucky Cheese), but he was only able to attend for five minutes, so Kelly was upset. Debra had been out-of-town. I wonder why she wasn’t mad at her mom? Anyway, some kid at the party told Kelly that her parents didn’t love her. Stacey also mentioned that Kelly was scared of the monster in the closet. Dean called Sam to share this info and told him to talk to the little girl. She tells Sam that she tried to warn her father that the monster would get him. Then Debra came out and took her away. Sam looked down and realized that Kelly had drawn a large octopus with fangs on the sidewalk. Well. Isn’t that special?
Cut to a man in a bathrobe running from and getting gored by a unicorn, which was apparently passing rainbow gas.
Back to the present, Sam is getting majorly beat down by the duo of clowns. He tries to shoot them, saying to himself, “if it bleeds, you can kill it”, but all they do is throw off glitter.
36:36 earlier – Dean learns that unicorn dad has an 8-year-old who was at the Plucky’s party. He tells Sam and Sam’s face turns ashen. He hates that place. Dean reminds him that 99.9% of clowns are harmless and if it bleeds, you can kill it. Then he makes Sam go to Plucky’s and check around, because he’s going to see Billy, unicorn child. When Sam gets to the restaurant, he recoils at each clown on the wall and all over the place. I have to admit, they are mostly pretty dang spooky. He notices a spot on the wall where kids have drawn their worst fears. But there are two missing. Kelly’s and Billy’s. Coincidence? On this show? Of course not!
He talks to the manager and apparently unicorn dad had caused a major scene during the party because he wanted to leave. The janitor, Saul, pulled Sam aside and told him to come back after closing because he has information for him. Back at the hotel, Dean shows Sam the picture that Billy had drawn of a unicorn goring a person. Well, duh. Meanwhile, back at Plucky’s, Saul is cleaning out the ball pit of vomit when he is sucked under Jaws-style, complete with a spray of blood. The bros show up at the scene and deduce that the ball washer (ball washer) didn’t do it, so who did? Well, Saul does have a huge shark bite, if that helps. I totally didn’t know that when I wrote the Jaws thing, I swear! Saul didn’t have a child, but someone had been afraid of sharks and didn’t want the janitor talking to Sam.
At Plucky’s we meet a single mother named Libby who has a son named Tyler, who is obviously frustrated with her always have to work there. Could she be the next victim? His drawing is of a huge robot attacking a city with laser shooting eyes. That can’t be good.
Back in present time, Sam is still getting smacked down by the clowns.
04:39 earlier – Sam and Dean are clueless. Who or what is causing all this? Sam decides to go back to the restaurant and pull the mean cop act to get a reaction out of somebody. Dean has to take along and watch people’s reactions when Sam is done with them. Sam really digs into the suspects. First the manager, who leaves and lights up a joint. Nope, not her. Then he questions the overjoyed prize vendor, not him either. Then the lion mascot, who flees. Totally non-related, I ‘ll bet. No, this is not about the crystal meth lab in Butte. But did they know that Plucky’s has a basement?
Tyler catches a kid cheating at skee ball and Dean has Tyler’s back. Tyler snaps at his mom and Dean tells him to cut her a break. He knows how it is to have a single parent. After agreeing that the pizza tastes like butt, Dean notices Tyler’s robot drawing. He later overhears that the picture was stolen. Uh oh. Sam goes to warn them and Dean checks out the really creepy drawing and clown accessory filled basement. And did I mention the black magic book? And the happy happy joy joy prize vendor with the gun on Dean? His name is Howard, by the way, and he has sicced two clowns on Sam. This we already knew.
Howard is protecting children because his little brother drowned and their parents wouldn’t listen to him and “let him die”. Dean throws a drawing of the drowning brother and a clown figurine of Howard’s into the fire as Howard shoots at him. Suddenly the little brother appears in the room and touches his older brother, who starts to drown just standing there. Dean just watches in horror. Meanwhile, Sam has managed to get the two clowns to kill each other. When the brothers are reunited and Sam is covered with clown innerds (read – glitter), it’s so funny. Dean thinks so too. He bought Sam a clown doll to celebrate facing his fears. Sam tosses it aside and off they go. As they drive away, the clown lying on the ground winks at us and laughs evilly. Damn clowns.
I really enjoyed this episode. We all know I like a little humor in my episodes and this fit the bill. I was a little disappointed, however, that there was not more advancement in the “bobby is a ghost” department. I was hoping that after it was touched on last week, we’d get more on it this week. But I was still entertained and that’s really all I look for in my regular shows. What did you guys think? Please share your own TwoCents below and let us know what you thought! Thank you for reading!
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