From MadCap's Couch - Supernatural: "The Kids Are Alright"

Lisa smiles mockingly as Dean cannot figure out why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

So, as of this writing, I have only exhaustively watched the show up until the 200th episode.

It broke me.

But that is an issue for another day. I have seen major spoilers for things that happen later, which I'll talk about when we get to them (if we get to them, again, the 200th broke me). The reason I bring this up here is because the earlier seasons of the show (at least) are split up between "Sam Seasons" and "Dean Seasons". Whoever's season it is is the one who gets the most focus overall from the overarching plot of that season. So, Season 1 is a Sam Season. Season 2 was kind of a misnomer, but was ultimately more about Dean than Sam in the end. John's deal ended up foreshadowing Dean's choice to make a deal to save Sam, many of the episodes went to address issues that Dean had (and that he himself didn't address) and the crown jewel of that being What Is And What Should Never Be.

So, which is Season 3? Well, it's a little muddled due to the major instigating factor for the Season being Dean's deal at the end of Season 3 as well as the season overall being cut short thanks to the Writer's Strike. Had the show been able to go with the original 22 episode formula, I'd be inclined to say it's a Sam Season due to a particular episode coming up that we can't discuss quite yet. Episodes like The Kids Are Alright throw that into question, however. While it does have Sam looking into some things that don't seem important, but may or may not be later, the episode is mostly focused on Dean and his past... and the first signs that maybe he's not so eager to go to Hell as he claims to be.

After we escape the recap, a woman steps outside of her house in Cicero, Indiana and greets her daughter and her ex-husband. It seems the daughter was inconsolably upset and tells her mother that her father is mean and there are monsters at that house. Said father is at his house doing some woodworking when something stalks him before going in for death by power saw.

Yep. I completely agree. Very nasty indeed.

Back with Sam and Dean, Sam is trying to on the sly translate Sanskrit that may or may not be a demon dispelling ritual. Dean has found a lead: the aforementioned death by power saw. However, Dean reveals an ulterior motive: Lisa Braeden, a woman Dean spent most of a week's vacation in the loft of eight years ago. As Dean explains... she was a yoga teacher.

They head out to Cicero Pines and there's a housing development under construction which, as we all know, means nothing good is about to happen. Arriving, Lisa apparently lives in the same place after eight years and there's a party to be had... a children's party, for her son Ben. Her son Ben who is turning eight today...

Naturally, Dean's a bit... terrified at the implications of this, seeing as Ben is intentionally set up in the show as being a spitting image of him. Leather jacket, spiked hair, AC/DC, way he eats his sandwiches, and very much liking the ladies...

As he lets that settle in for a moment, denying what is right in front of him, we get some thirsty dialogue from some of the other moms in the neighborhood before Dean goes to confront Lisa. Lisa, meanwhile, is speaking to the mother from the opening... who is not holding up well in spite of outward appearances, and she thinks that something is wrong with her daughter, Katie, something more than just losing her father... punctuated by shots of her standing out in the backyard looking deadpan while the other children run around and play.

Lisa offers to get the mom help when she starts saying that Katie isn't her daughter... which the mother naturally is upset by.

"So you can go ahead and ask me what you're going to ask me, and my natural response could be to get offended, then through no fault of my own I would have broken my promise."

Dean starts to breach the subject about Ben's parentage with all the grace and civility of a bull in a china shop listening to Slayer whilst on fire. Lisa denies all allegations, but now we have to get to the plot again and Lisa mentions there's been bad luck in the housing development, including the death by power saw.

Sam, meanwhile, is a diner doing research when Ruby shows up. It seems that Ruby has been training Sam since Nebraska, and he's taken notice. She recaps Yellow Eyes' whole plan with the psychic kids pretty succinctly and hints that Sam is still special regardless despite his denial. She asks about Mary and what happened to her friends, which Sam knows nothing about... so she sets him on the path and gives him her number for when he's caught up on Mary's past.

Also, she tells him that there is a job here, which Dean calls to confirm. Apparently, there have been five deaths in all... four of which haven't even made the paper.

At their home, Katie's mom awakens from a nap to find her dead-eyed daughter standing over her and demanding to be played with. When she hugs her, Katie in the mirror looks like a decaying corpse just for a fraction of a second... unnerving her mother.

So I found out, her character is apparently named Dana.
Just pretend I didn't get lazy and edited my script for that.

Sam poses as a life insurance salesman, looking into one of the deaths and finding that the only person there besides the husband... was the daughter, who stares at him with the same unnerving eyes Katie has and Sam notes two things: a bloody print under the window and a strange wound on the back of the mother's neck, something that we find Katie's mother also has in a very terrifying scene where she locks herself in the bathroom and Katie pounds on the door demanding to be let in...

Katie's cries for her mummy making me think of something else entirely...

At the park, Dean sees Ben hanging out by his lonesome after some bullies took his video game handheld. Dean gives him some not at all fatherly advice that results in Ben taking a groin shot to the bully and taking back his game... which makes Lisa very upset indeed, telling Dean to leave them alone. Despite the departure, Ben hugs Dean before leaving, thanking him for helping him out.

Dean also notes how more and more of the kids are looking... unnerving.

Katie's mother buckles her daughter into the car and we get a terrifying look at a demonic face in the rear view mirror before she drives them off... and proceeds to try and drown the car in the river. Unfortunately, in a very Twilight Zone-esque fashion, Katie is there at the kitchen table when her mother returns... dripping with water and still calmly asking for ice cream and giving a totally not at all terrifying smile.

Sam has gotten onto a research path and has come out with Changelings. The theory Sam is proposing is that there's one Changeling child in every murder victim's house. The Changeling feeds on the mother and will kill anyone who gets in the way of their feeding. Luckily, fire will cleanse their warped flesh... but what will the Home Owners' Association think?! However, the actual kids might still be alive... but any kids might be vulnerable.

So Dean, being an idiot, goes to Lisa and tries to get her and Ben to head off with a fake credit card. However... Ben's already got the dead eyed creepy going on. Despite Dean's insistence, Lisa slams the door in his face and no-sells him. When he finds the bloody mark on the siding, it pretty much confirms the worst, Ben has been Changeling'd. However, Dean doesn't think it's blood... but dirt. The boys run to one of the houses underdevelopment and find dirt is the same shade of red as the marks and the two start to scouting the area.

"Hello! Avon calling!"

Dean finds Ben and the other kids in cages in the basement while Sam finds the Mother Changeling... the Cicero Realty woman from earlier who was exchanging thirsty dialogue with a neighbor. Sam attempts to flamethrower her, but she escapes. As Changeling Ben starts trying to do a number on Lisa, she notices his Changeling reflection in the coffee table and realizes that something is up. Dean, meanwhile, gets the kids out and Ben assists in getting them all out.

The Mother Changeling pops in to make the kiddies scream and the Changeling kids mass on Lisa's house when she tries to escape. Back at Katie's house, a similar situation is occurring as Katie demands to be let in as her mother tearfully starts running a bathtub. After getting beaten around by the mother Changeling a bit, Sam and Dean finally roast her but good and this has a cascade effect that also kills the Changeling kids...

MAKES IT EASY!

We get the wrap up, Sam and Dean bringing Ben back to Lisa and all the kids have likewise been returned to their families. Dean offers to explain everything and Lisa thanks him for saving Ben's life. As Ben listens to something on his CD player, Dean and Lisa talk. Dean reveals the truth to Lisa about his job and she confirms that no, Ben is not Dean's son.

Is she telling the truth? The series creator Eric Kripke has said no. Whether or not that means that it's the truth is... several degrees of another matter. More on that... much later.

Dean tells Lisa that he is a bit disappointed, given his situation (which he doesn't go into in detail), that Ben isn't his son but he tells her that she has a great son. The two kiss and Lisa offers Dean a place there for a bit, but Dean once more has to hit the road. This isn't his life, and he doesn't feel that it ever will be.

Back at the hotel, we get a montage of Sam talking to various people about various individuals including liberal use of the name "Campbell" for the first time in the series as Sam learns that every single person who was connected to Mary Winchester is dead, all of them systematically wiped off the face of the map by someone trying to cover their tracks. When he relays this to Ruby, she attributes it to none other than the Yellow Eyed Demon.

The effect of the Changeling face is genuinely unsettling. I love it.

I kind of have to stop the review portion of this to bring this up... unless it gets explained somewhere after Season 5 or so... this makes no sense and never gets brought up again after this episode besides one mention of it in Season 4's "Metamorphosis", which we're still quite a few ways from. We already know from the flashback in All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1 that Mary and Yellow Eyes knew each other from before. Without wishing to spoil anything, when we do learn how they know each other, this plot thread doesn't make any sense. I'm not sure whether it was Season 3 being quickly Frankensteined together due to the Writers' Strike or it was simply an avenue that the writing team chose not to go down, but it just baffles me in either case that this was brought up and made up like some sort of big revelation... and then it ultimately had nothing to do with anything.

Oh, and Sam finally has enough of Ruby's cryptic bullshit and forces her to out herself as a demon. He goes for the holy water and she claims to want to help him, having been looking into this and wanting to know what's so special about Sam that Yellow Eyes tried so hard to cover it all up. Then she plays the coup de grace: she can help him save Dean, which definitely gets Sam's attention as we end the episode.

The Kids Are Alright is one of those ironic titles we authors are so fond of using. The best part is, it has multiple meanings. You have the obvious one with the kids in Lisa's neighborhood not being alright due to the Changeling infestation. You have Dean, the kid of John and Mary who is definitely not alright as his aloof veneer about going to Hell is starting to ever so slightly crack. You have Sam, the other kid of John and Mary who we've been getting hints since the Season 2 finale is not alright and may be something altogether different than just the Sam we've known for two seasons now... kind of tying all three of the meanings together with that.

It's a pretty alright episode with your standard monster of the week hunt with a bit of Dean's backstory and some myth arc sprinkled in with mixed results. The kids are genuinely creepy and the monster design for the Changeling definitely falls right into the uncanny valley with both arms held high and screaming at the top of its lungs.

Lisa and Ben being introduced here is very important to Dean's character arc through the show, but their full impact won't be felt until later down the road. Both actors do well with their parts throughout the show, I will say that much.

The episode is good. We get the solid performances from the main cast that we've come to suspect and nothing really seems wonky or out of place. The reveal of Ruby, I remember when I first watched it, was a genuinely awesome moment and spoke so much about the show trying to go for a more gray sense of morality. Demons, before this point, had only been pure and simple evil and nothing more than that. Was the show trying to become more nuanced in its approach like it did with vampires in Bloodlust? Of course, we don't know at this point if Ruby can be trusted, but...

Well, for my full thoughts here, come back for Lucifer Rising next season.

Got a black magic woman, she's tryin' to make a Devil outta me...

For now, Season 3 has started out pretty strong. From demons to changelings and now we're heading down to Black Rock, where there's going to be a bad day. A... Bad Day at Black Rock, if you will.

See you there!