From MadCap's Couch - "Supernatural: Everybody Loves A Clown"

You're never the same after your first pig in a jar.

And for the third time, no.

Alright. Now we've got that out of the way.

Last time was a bit of a bummer. Oh, not the episode, just the tone of it. The episode itself had great bits added to reaper lore, great performances from the entire case, the introduction of Fredric Lehne playing Yellow Eyes (who remains the most terrifying demon on Supernatural to this day - I will die on this hill!), and what most can you ask for than that?

. . .okay, a few things, but never mind that. Let's dig into Everybody Loves A Clown (no, they don't!)

We get a recap of Then, explaining the premise of the show for people who are just now joining them in the second episode of the second season. I joke, though. I really do like this quick montage to get people up to speed on the current happenings within the show's lore and I really wish more shows did this sort of thing. We recap the events of Devil's Trap and In My Time of Dying, leading up to John's deal with Yellow Eyes to save Dean's life.

Then we get to the "Now." At a fair in Wisconsin, a little girl giggles over some clowns while her father rightfully disapproves. She spies a not at all conspicuous one that she waves to...and he waves back. When she tries to get her mother to see the clowns, however, she can't. That night, driving home, the girl sees the clown along the roadside and once again her parents can't see it. Later that night, she wakes up to see the clown in her yard. Being the dumbest child we've seen in the show thus far, she lets him into the house, taking him by the hand and leading him in...

Back with Sam and Dean, they give John a hunter's funeral - i.e., a massive funeral pyre. Sam is a wreck and Dean, trying to be stoic, isn't much better. Sam asks Dean if John had said anything to him before he died, Dean lies and tells him "No...nothing..."

A week later, the pair are back at Bobby's junkyard and - just as Sam insisted last episode - Dean is hard at work getting the Impala back in working order. Sam attempts to get Dean to open up about his feelings, and Dean replies with his usual brand of 900 mph sarcasm. Sam berates him for having apparently given up on the quest to kill Yellow Eyes, who they're pretty sure now is responsible for what happened to John seeing as the Colt is also gone.

Dean, with his usual grace and sophistication...drowns him in sarcasm with some very excellent points about how they have bupkis at the moment and then gets back to working on the car. Sam says they do have something, however, a message that John kept on his phone for four months. Someone named Ellen, who says she can help him. Sam managed to do a trace on the phone and got an address, so he and Dean get a car from Bobby to go investigate.

They get all the way to the Harvelle Roadhouse in a soccer mom van (much to Dean's dismay) and break in. They find a bug zapper, a passed out drunk fan favorite character on the pool table, and a blonde shotgun-wielding pile of badass in Jo Harvelle, played by Alona Tal. Sam, likewise, finds himself at the end of a pistol wielded by Ellen played by Samantha Ferris. When Ellen realizes that they're John's sons, the welcome gets a little more warm and a lot less bullet-y.

The news about John's death clearly has brought up some conflicted feelings for Ellen, which will be touched upon in a later episode. Ellen mentions that John was like family once...what could have possibly caused a rift to sprout up? Questions for later.

"I AM NOT GOING TO FLOAT WITH YOU, YOU PAINTED FACED FREAK!!!"

When asked how they can help them out, Ellen points them to Ash - the previously mentioned drunk on the pool table played by Chad Lindberg. He has a mullet, seems pretty damn cheerful, and is a genius as Jo puts it. When he starts going through John's research, Ash amazes Sam and Dean with his out of nowhere intellect. He thinks, with 51 hours, he can work out a system to track Yellow Eyes.

With an ass shot of Jo for Dean (and the audience's) viewing pleasure, Sam gets the plot going by asking Ellen about a folder on the bar. She tells him it's a job, and Sam eagerly begins looking through it.

We get some Dean and Jo shipteasing that is, sadly, never going to go anywhere over the course of the series. Dean gets pulled from that before he trips completely over his own feet by Sam. 

A transition later and they're in the soccer mom van and dropping some exposition about the couple and their daughter from the earlier scenes - the clown apparently killed the parents, but left the child alive. They went to the carnival, but everyone at said carnival had alibis that would keep them from being the killer. Also, the cops have no leads, so it's a monster of some kind most likely. Dean tries to tease Sam over his fear of clowns (something that will be visited again over the course of the series) and Sam retorts with Dean's fear of flying in another nice piece of continuity.

They speculate about what could be causing this, settling on a potential cursed object. Dean questions why Sam was so quick to pick up another job, Sam saying that he thinks it's what John would have wanted them to do. Dean is about to question this, but drops it.

Elsewhere, an unimpressed boy is playing video games while his father takes him through a haunted house. Y'know, because that's what you do with your children. Take them through haunted houses. He also makes the cardinal sin of saying that clowns are nothing to be afraid of after the boy sees a clown in the reflection of some glass.

All business up front, party in the back!

Needless to say he (and unfortunately his wife) gets taken out by the clown when the boy lets the clown in that night.

The next day, Sam and Dean get to the carnival grounds to find the cops are already there. They learn of the murders from last night and that the killer clown apparently vanished into thin air after the deed was done. Sam mentions that finding a cursed object is like finding a needle in a stack of needles, it could be anything! Dean just says they'll have to use an EMF detector on everything, and notices a Help Wanted sign stuck to a post saying to inquire with one "J. Cooper".

After some jokes about the blind and the vertically challenged, Dean and Sam get admitted to Mr. Cooper's office. Cooper interviews them for the job. When their Deception checks fail, Cooper gives them a speech about how the carnival is a bunch of outcasts...and Sam and Dean aren't really those people. They need to go out and live regular. Sam gives an equally impassioned speech about how he and Dean don't want normal...they want this.

Dean calls him out on this afterward, Sam saying that he would think that sticking with the job was what John would have wanted. Why? Because he died. I suppose that's Sam's form of survivor's guilt rearing its head.

As part of the cleaning crew, Sam and Dean go around and Sam eventually makes his way into the haunted house...and finds a real, human skeleton. After he calls Dean about it, Dean gets pulled aside by the blind knife thrower he didn't insult before who is rather suspicious of him and Dean bluffs his way out of it.

Sam witnesses a little girl insisting that she sees a clown - one that neither he nor her parents can see. The brothers tail the family home and Dean drops a bit more exposition - apparently Cooper was at one of the previous carnivals that had a killer clown problem. The boys bust in and attack the clown after the girl brings it in...but it doesn't get its image disrupted by the rock salt, it's solid. It escapes by leaping through a glass door and disappearing, causing the boys to flee before the authorities get there. They abandon the soccer mom van after stripping the plates.

The boys walk down a sun-parched highway and talk about current events, Sam pressing Dean to deal with their father's death. Dean retorts by calling Sam out on him worrying about what John would want and very angrily telling him that he can't make things right with John, John is dead.

Sam calls up Ellen and she gives her best guess: a rakshasa. A trickster creature that appears in human form, eats human flesh, can make themselves invisible, and can't enter a home without first being invited. They sleep on a bed of dead insects, have to feed every few decades, and can only be killed by something made of pure brass. They think, given his connection to the previous carnival, Cooper is the rakshasa.

Dean goes to the knife thrower to get a brass knife while Sam breaks into Cooper's office and gets a shotgun pulled on him. As Dean checks the trunk, he finds a clown suit...and finds that a very not blind knife-thrower is indeed the rakshasa, playfully waving at him before seemingly disappearing. After some knives get thrown into the door, Dean makes his escape and gets back to Sam. Sam, striking inspiration, heads into the Haunted House. Sam tries to pull the brass pipes from an organ as more knives start getting thrown around. Luckily, with the help of some steam from the organ, Sam is able to 86 him a spooky ghost clown thing.

Back at the Roadhouse, Ellen congratulates the boys on a job well done and Jo gets Sam to vamoose with a facial expression so she can flirt with Dean some more. Again, this never goes anywhere.

Damn it, let them be happy! #DeanJo

Ash comes in, bringing in his demonic tracking system. There are no current signs of the demon but, when there is, he'll be able to track it down. We learn that Ash actually went to MIT before he was kicked out for fighting.

Ellen offers the boys a place to stay, but they politely refuse her. Dean has something to finish.

Back at Bobby's junkyard, Sam and Dean take another stab at talking about John. Sam apologizes for how he's been since John died, insisting it's because he's not alright. Not at all. He knows that Dean isn't alright, either...but he lets him get back to work.

Dean takes a crowbar to the Impala, finally letting out some of those feelings he's been repressing. The last shot of the episode being Dean's stoic face, but crumbling a bit showing that no, he is not alright.

Everybody Loves A Clown (no!) is a good episode. Again, this is still in the 'licking the wounds' category of episodes like I said last time. We have a low-level supernatural threat - in this case, the rakshasa - and an emphasis on the character building. Sam and Dean have a lot to work through following John's death. I think, though, that they've built the first stepping stone on the path to picking themselves up and dusting themselves off again.

The introduction of Ellen, Jo, and Ash to the show is pretty good here, too. There's some mystery as to what caused the rift between John and Ellen, there's some clear ship teasing intended for Dean and Jo that (again) sadly never went anywhere, and Ash is a great bend of both comic relief and a helpful support character.

The rakshasa is a neat addition to the lore of the show, as well as a neat new creature to add to the bestiary of the show. Kind of a pity that they never show up again in the show at any point.

Yeah. Sorry to drop that bummer on you.

Next time, we'll be going back to a creature that shows up quite a lot on Supernatural: vampires! For the beings that were apparently so close to dying out that John thought they might not exist anymore back during their first appearance, they do seem to show up a lot. I'll give you a little spoiler, though: they aren't the bad guys.

No, next time, something else will have a great Bloodlust...