Synopsis: “Sam is forced to confront a childhood fear when a case takes him and Dean to Kansas to investigate Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie, a local pizza chain that hosts children’s birthday parties. Sam and Dean discover that the victims’ children had recently been to the restaurant and drawn a picture of their worst fear, which then came to life to kill their parent. While Dean confronts the man behind the magic, Sam is left to deal with some very angry clowns.”
If you have not seen this episode yet and do not wish to be spoiled, do not continue reading!
Hello, fellow hunters! I decided to change up my style of writing these reviews. If you prefer my other style after reading this, please sound off in the comments. Hopefully, that will not be the case. Enjoy!
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What better way could there be to start an episode of this wonderful show than what happened last night? Sam, running for his dear life, being chased by the Pennywhistle clown he has feared his entire life was awesome. It actually reminded me of the season 4 episode “Yellow Fever” where the episode began with Dean sprinting away from a small, harmless dog. Classic. Bravo for the colorful show logo as well. Another clever side detail about the show was its random 24 inspired clock countdown.
This episode had a ton of great things going for it. It was nice to have a little bit of Frank Devereaux in the beginning of the episode, even if it was via a phone call. The dialogue written between Dean and Frank is always entertaining. The writers pulled another interesting death out of their very large hat with the giant Pacific octopus. The effects on the body were nicely executed. It was pretty funny that despite Dean wishing for “no hot girls” being involved in the case he still elected to talk with the first victim’s nanny instead of Sam.
The next victim to bite the dust may go down in my all-time favorite death scenes on this show. Death by a rainbow-spewing unicorn had me rolling. This investigation tied both deaths to Sam’s worst nightmare: Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie. I love that Dean tells Sam that “if it bleeds, you can kill it.” I love even more that he repeats his brother’s wisdom throughout his battle royal with the clowns and it backfires on him by them not bleeding.
The writers delivered an amazing and unique connection between the kills by tying them into kids’ worst fears displayed on a wall. It felt very fresh to this show which has seen so much in its seven seasons. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, they also delivered a cleaning man’s demise in reference to the movie Jaws. Instead of a woman being pulled into the water multiple times before succumbing to the sea monster, we get a man going through the same motion in a colorful ball pit. This was the second time that I laughed hysterically at a man’s death.
The dialogue, like usual, was fantastic! Some of my favorite quotes are highlighted later in the review, but Dean seems to be getting back to form with his dialogue. Sam had been picking up his slack the last several episodes, but this show is at its best when the Winchesters play off of each other. There was plenty of this throughout the episode. Dean stating how shocked he was that Sam has never watched Shark Week before was great. It may be more humorous that Dean has made it a point to do so.
When Sam and Dean made their way back to Plucky’s to interrogate the employees, that stretch of scenes made this episode a classic and easily one of the best post-Kripke episodes. Sam intimidating the workers while Dean was seeking out enough tickets in order to get himself a giant rainbow slinky was amazing. The look on Dean’s face when he only gets a couple of tickets from skee ball was funny. It was even better that he took another kid’s tickets after scolding him for cheating. Another high point of this episode was watching the brothers chase the employee wearing his lion costume into a back alley with Dean pummeling him.
The big reveal of who was behind the fear monsters was not too surprising. The overly polite Plucky’s employee was a good fit as the big bad of the week. Howard was blamed for his brother’s death as a kid and is against all bullies, which is why he targeted those parents being mean to their children. If Sam hadn’t been so hard on Howard during his bad cop act, he may have gotten out of dealing with the murderous clowns. Another perfect note regarding the clock showing the timeline of the episode was it reading “Right Friggin’ Now” instead of the typical “00:00:00” of 24.
It turned out that Howard’s biggest fear was that he watched his brother drown when they were kids. In a gruesome turn of events, Dean threw Howard’s own fear drawing into a fire barrel, which activated the spell and brought his dead brother back. He then watched as Howard drowned, ending the magical spell and freeing Sam from his new “buddies.”
This perfect episode ended on a humorous note with Dean teasing Sam about how he looked (like he was attacked by some PCP crazy strippers.) Sam gave Dean the slinky prize he had been seeking. Dean then gave Sam a Plucky doll which he proceeded to leave on the ground as they drove away.
Some of my favorite quotes from the episode are as follows:
Dean: (On the phone) “I am the eggman. Seriously, Frank. Payphones? I mean, c’mon. I’m getting the clap off this thing just touching it. Fred Savage? Really? Yeah, I know. The big mouths are everywhere.”
Sam: “So, we got dick on Dick?”
Dean: “That’s a vivid way of putting it.”
Sam: “Kid therapy. You draw your worst nightmare… POOF! Plucky fixes it. They hang them up on this big wall.”
Dean: (Looking at one of the drawings) “Can’t argue with this. Leprechauns are deadly.”
Sam: “The manager found the body in the ball pit. Blood everywhere.”
Dean.: “The cops have a theory?”
Sam: “Yeah. They think the ball washer did it.”
Dean.: “The what?”
Sam: “The ball washer.”
Dean.: “The what?”
Sam: “The ball…” (Stops talking after realizing Dean was screwing with him)
Dean: “Seriously? Dractopus. Seabiscuit the Impaler. Landshark. What’s next? ”
Sam: “Any idea what he drew?”
Dean.: “A robot… about the size of a house… shoots lasers out of his eyes.”
Sam: (Surprised and concerned) “At least I’ll see it coming.”
Rating: 5 Seabiscuit the Impalers out of 5
