Oct 10, 2009 12:49 AM
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Wed Feb 10
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The Winchester Brothers traveled deep into the dark heart of fandom in Thursday night's episode, with a monster of the week straight from reality TV. There was also a lot of processing about trust issues. Spoilers ahead!
"Fallen Idol" wasn't a terribly strong episode, but it was still good fun watching the Winchesters trying to track down a creature who is murdering people who are superfans. Yes there was a zany scene where the creature takes the form of Gandhi and attacks Sam (who is apparently a Gandhi superfan). And then there's the ultra-showdown with the monster, who has taken on the form of Paris Hilton and taunts Dean amusingly.
Turns out the monster is a washed-up forest god whose old stomping grounds were razed to make room for a Yugo factory. Her worshipers used to hand themselves over to her rapturously, allowing her to eat them for sustenance. But now that the whole "old school religion" sacrifice thing isn't common anymore, the god has to take on the forms of celebrities to eat people. As long as it munches on people who adore it, the god is satisfied. Plus it gives Sam and Dean a little lecture on how celebrities are the new gods, which thankfully ends in Sam chopping off Paris Hilton's head. I'm on the fence as to whether it was worth sitting through some dorky wax museum scenes just to see the Paris beheading.
The question is, why were the Winchesters hunting Paris when Armageddon is on? It's a little trust-building exercise that Dean has come up with to bring them back together. So basically killing Paris is like therapy for the brothers. Once they've done a little forest god fu together, they'll be ready to face Lucifer.
While they're mending fences, Sam admits that he was hanging around with evil demon Ruby because he needed to get away from Dean's older brotherish control freakery. So Sam's been seething for a while about how Dean bosses him around. I like how Sam's confession was also a sneaky way to basically blame Dean for the whole Apocalypse thing. Because you know if Dean had really believed in Sam, then Sam never would have run away to Ruby, drunk a bunch of her blood, then slaughtered Lilith and released Lucifer from Hell.
You can tell Dean feels bad about how he's treated Sam, which is why he lets Sam drive the car as they leave town after chopping up Paris. He's starting to get used to the idea that Sam is his equal, and that's a good thing. Now they're back on the hunt for the enchanted Colt gun that can hopefully slaughter Satan.
I'm looking forward to getting back into the Armageddon arc, with Cas leading the brothers to kill cute kids and everybody going to a Supernatural fan convention for the full meta effect.
Send an email to Annalee Newitz, the author of this post, at annalee@io9.com.
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