From MadCap's Couch - "Supernatural: Tall Tales"

Well, would you look at that? One of my favorite episodes of Supernatural and on my birthday, no less! Never mind that I am now thirty-one.

Without any further adieu, let's dig into Tall Tales.

A recap shows not something related to the plot...but to Sam and Dean's various pranks on one another, particularly from Hell House.

At a university somewhere, a professor who seems bundled up for the winter weather finds a woman who is most certainly not looking bundled up is apparently looking for him specifically...and charms her way into his office. She confesses that she's not really one of his students, so the professor plays dumb for a bit as to why she's here. . .and he ends up telling her not to leave and ultimately gives into temptation. . .which we know is not going to end well for him or her or both. And indeed, she begins to rot as they kiss, which causes him to freak out. A man leaving the place is suddenly witness to the professor having landed in a heap against the ground, having fallen to his death.

A week later, Sam and Dean are clearly having some issues cohabitating. Dean is eating seafood on Sam's bed, much to his irritation. At some point, Dean wrecked Sam's computer as well and somehow, someone has damaged the Impala as well. In comes Bobby, who has come to help them out. Bobby tells them to begin at the beginning after Sam and Dean tell him that they've run into something unlike anything they've ever run into before.

The boys came to town investigating a death at a campus building that is supposedly haunted. A female student tells Sam about a legend involving a Room 669 that a student threw herself from after an affair with a professor went bad. Unfortunately, she isn't able to tell Sam the name of the girl or where the legend originated from. Sam finds Dean at the bar, Dean having incredibly overexaggerated traits with his drinking and his lecherous behavior.

Suddenly, the footage stops and Dean insists that that isn't how it happened.

And thus, we get to the genius of this episode. Tall Tales, I'll go ahead and spoil it now, gives us a great deal of insight as to how Sam and Dean see each other.

You know what they say, Sammy - once you pop...

Dean presents his version of the scene, where Dean is being very James Bond-esque with a far classier version of "Starla", the woman for the bar. She's completely enamored with him, the two kissing...and then Sam arrives to be a cockblock. Like Dean in the previous vignette, Sam's traits are over-exaggerated...and the footage stops once more.

Bobby notices the boys are more than a little on edge, which they admit.

Again, we have another vignette as Sam and Dean meet a janitor who will become very familiar to us very soon. The janitor relates to them about the professor having...a guest...

Also, Dean eats a mouthful of mints (while insisting that he didn't do that).

Regardless, the janitor tells the boys that the man got "more ass than a toilet seat", so he had a habit of doing this. He also tells that the building only has four floors, so there's no way there can be a Room 669. Getting back to their room, Sam attempts to do some research only to find his computer has been stuck on a website called "Busty Asian Beauties". Dean awkwardly leaves as Sam berates him.

In the present, they relate to Bobby that they weren't able to find anything on any ghost or any history on the building. They relate a story that they were told and we see a student walking past the dorms one night and getting abducted by aliens of all things. Bobby says that he's never been able to find evidence of any alien abduction. Sam relates when they ran into the guy, who they convince to tell him about what happened. 

What you might think will end in an anal probing (which does happen) or something of the sort actually ends much, much more surreally: slowdancing to Chris BeBurgh's "Lady in Red".  Both Sam and Dean are. . .stunned into silence. When Bobby reiterates that the guy is clearly nuts, the boys relate finding a rocket impact crater on the campus grounds.

Dean gets another vignette where Sam gets too touchy feely with a student. Sam refuting it wholesale.

We do get some actual information that the abductee apparently was an asshole who had it coming, getting off on things like pledge week. As Dean puts it later - the professor and the frat guy were both dicks. The punishments are almost poetic in nature, Dean notes. Sam gets more concerned with his missing laptop that leads to an argument between the two and eventually leading into the Impala getting trashed...though that comes later.

The boys relate a third victim, a scientist doing animal research, who they pieced together what happened to him. Namely, in trying to pull a gold watch out of the sewer, he was attacked by a vicious animal. When Sam and Dean break into the morgue to check him, they find a leg, an arm, and some gore. They relate this to the urban legend about alligators behind dropped into the sewers as babies and growing up full sized and attacking people from said sewers.

So they have a ghost story. . .an alien abduction. . .and an alligator in the sewer.

They split up to second out the campus, Dean coming back to find the Impala's tires without air and Sam's money clip left by it. The two have a lengthy, brotherly fight with tensions high as can be...and Bobby stops the story, telling the boys that they didn't pull the pranks on one another that they think they have. He knows just what they're dealing with: a trickster. Tricksters create mischief and chaos, which has kept Sam and Dean off-balance on purpose for so long.

He's just living his best life, guys...

There are dozens of these creatures around the world in all sorts of folklore - Loki, Anansi, etc. - who target the high and mighty and take them down a peg. And who is the one who has been at the epicenter of it all? Why, Richard Speight, Jr. as the janitor...or, rather, the Trickster. We see him in a swinging pad with a dog, some tabloid shlock to pull ideas from, and a bunch of sweets. He decides something is missing, conjuring up a few scantily clad women while funky music plays in the background.

The next day, presumably, Sam and Dean head in as electricians once more, Sam finding an excuse to split up and go checking in the locker rooms while Dean heads up with the Trickster. While Sam finds the tabloids in the locker, he's not sure that that's proof of anything. Dean and Sam resolve to wait and check the janitor's place before going in to stake him...unaware that the Trickster himself is watching.

Later that night, Dean returns to the campus and decides to head in anyway. After going through the building for a bit, he gets lured to the auditorium by the dulcet tones of Barry White's "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love, Baby". The Trickster has set up quite the spread, his two scantily clad, voluptuous chicks awaiting Dean center stage on a large heart-shaped bed.  The Trickster appears, calling them a peace offering. The Trickster tells Dean to treat himself, long enough for him to slip away to the next town.

Dean, unfortunately, can't let that whole "killing people" thing go. The Trickster tells Dean that he shouldn't have come alone...and Dean replies that he didn't, Sam and Bobby coming in and the Trickster realizing that the argument outside had been faked. He applauds them, right before summoning up a cloth-sack wearing serial killer to attack Sam and Bobby and having the two women attack Dean. With some last minute teamwork, Sam manages to toss a wooden stake to Dean, who impales the Trickster. With him dead, the illusions disappear. Dean has to admit, in spite of everything, the Trickster had style. The three head out, Sam trying to apologize for what happened before...and Dean also doing the same, without either of them actually saying "sorry".

After they've gone, however, we head back into the auditorium and the body of the Trickster...or so it seems. The body disappears, and it's revealed that the Trickster survived, munching on a candy bar as he watches the body vanish.

I haven't exactly made it a secret, but I love this episode. Tall Tales is some of the best comedic bits of the entire show. It's a neat study in perspectives, showing us how Sam and Dean see one another. Granted, it's under the duress of their situation and how the Trickster is ultimately pitting them against one another for funsies, but it's still rather telling. Sam seeing Dean as a sleazy sex maniac while Dean sees Sam as an incredibly uptight, touchy-feely type toward the people they're interviewing is really funny to watch and both Jared and Jensen play both ends of it very well.

I'd be remiss, too, if I didn't mention the Trickster himself. Richard Speight, Jr. is a fan favorite with good reason. The guy just oozes charisma as the Trickster in pretty much every scene he's in, even making an earnest plea for Sam and Dean to just let him vamoose. You almost get the feeling that Dean would take him up on it, if it weren't for the killing innocent people thing. Well "innocent", but you get the idea.

The best strength of the episode is that we don't ever really get to see the "real" versions of some events, just events from the various perspectives, which really works in the episode's favor and makes it all the funnier even on repeat viewings.

I love Tall Tales, but that's just my slant on the story.

The Trickster will return.

Now, seven episodes lay before us until Season 2 is officially done. Instead of the more light-hearted nature of this episode, we head into some darker fare next time. A woman and her husband end up in a car wreck, and the woman ends up alone and being pursued by a man hellbent on killing her. Who you gonna call? Sam and Dean. . .but not everything may go the way that you'd expect.

Next time, Roadkill. . .which is kind of a macabre name for the episode.

Be there!