From MadCap's Couch - Supernatural: "Criss Angel Is a Douchebag"

"We are but poor, lost circus performers. Is there a village nearby?"

Magic gone bad... which is pretty much an avid description of most uses of magic on this show.

The recap focuses on Sam and whatever enigmatic thing that Ruby says he has to do to get his demon powers on full power more again that he doesn't want to do.

Gee, I wonder if that will be important this season?

We begin with a magician named Jay (played by Brad Majors himself - Barry Bostwick!) in a bar. As he gets heckled by a Walter Peck impersonator by the name of Vance, he tries to perform a card trick for an encouraging (if patronizing) bartender. Vance pulls the rug out from under him and the bartender (unintentionally) makes Jay feel bad about his age. Jay, feeling like a bitter old man, sits in on the rehearsal performance of a not-Criss Angel by the name of Jeb Dexter along with his two best friends and fellow magicians - Charlie and Vernon. Jay speaks of them all getting old and dying and resolves to perform a trick known as the Table of Death - where he will be shackled to a table and have to escape before spikes descend upon and impale him.

Elsewhere, Vance is leaving a bar drunk off his ass and falls dead with ten stab wounds on him. Back onstage, having seemingly been impaled, Jay peels back the curtain and gets thunderous applause from an awestruck audience. Charlie, and indeed Jay, is surprised and joins in on the applause.

After the title card, Sam and Dean watch the Criss Angel-esque magician from before perform a card trick where he somehow gets a specific card behind a glass window. This after he fakes having a seizure... oh, sorry, a "demonic possession"... and Dean rightly calls him a douchebag much as Vernon and Charlie called him in the last scene. We learn a bit about the boys' early days - namely that Sam went through a phase of wanting to be a magician around the age of thirteen.

I can relate, Sam!

"The Lannisters send their regards..."

Dean, however, doesn't think playing around pretending with demons and magic when the actual thing can kill you outright is just offensive. Sam can't really disagree with that.

The boys question Vance's employee, who tells them that he was notorious for stealing other people's acts and likely had a lot of enemies. When asked if she found anything weird among his personal effects, she produces a tarot card: a man impaled by ten swords. Vance, she says, was not a fan of card tricks and never wanted them around.

In his motel room, Jay is finding himself in much better spirits. Charlie questions Jay on how he performed the Table of Death and notes that he's done a complete 180 on his mood. Jay shows Charlie that he seems to have an almost supernatural good luck, able to pull three aces from a deck of cards that was shuffled completely at random (though Charlie mentions the one he didn't pull is the Ace of Hearts). Jay decides to try the Executioner, a trick that not even Houdini would perform. When Charlie says he doesn't want to see Jay die and he'll miss that show, Jay insists that he will be there for him like he always has been. Upon being told to check his pocket, Charlie finds the missing Ace of Hearts and seems convinced.

Dean puts on the FBI act to question Vernon and Charlie. Before that, however, Jay finds himself in an interview setting with Jeb (Vernon getting to note that he's a douchebag, much to Dean's approval). Dean shows the tarot card off to the two, and they point him in the direction of "a guy down on Bleecker Street". They give him an address and tell him to make sure to ask for "Chief".

Dean is soon at an S&M joint, finding a dominatrix by the name of Chief. Despite the act, the guy does actually drop it for a bit to ask Dean what his safe word is.

Consent is important, kiddos.

It's an uproariously funny moment, which is contrasted by a more serious scene of Ruby showing up at Sam and Dean's hotel room to chastise the former about wasting time on smaller jobs when the Apocalypse is nigh. She mentions that thirty-four of the sixty-six seals have been broken, meaning Hell is halfway to starting the end of the world. As we learned from Anna, there are over six hundred seals... so it seems that this system was designed by an asshole that wanted the world to end? Or, y'know, maybe they're taking the Wolfram & Hart approach? They had no intention of winning?

...anyway, so Ruby insists that Sam needs to do whatever it is that he needs to do in order to bulk up. Sam refutes her again, but Ruby digs at him and says that he needs to admit that he likes what it does to him. Still, he refuses and Ruby storms out in irritation.

Back at the hotel, Sam and Dean confront Vernon and Charlie, who reveal that they know well that the boys are conning them and are not actually Federal Agents. The two then pose as aspiring magicians, and Charlie tells them to settle in to watch Jay's act if they really want to learn something. Jay does indeed take on the Executioner - in which Jay will have sixty seconds to get himself out of a noose and straitjacket before he gets hung.

This scene is intercut with Jeb Dexter in his dressing room, listening to very loud music that sounds like it could be playing in the Asylum in Santa Monica, where a rope animates to wrap around his neck and hang him. Jay, meanwhile, escapes from certain death. Dean is impressed and so is Sam... him noting that what Jay just accomplished was not humanly possible.

In their hotel room, the boys do some research on Jay and discover that he was once a very big name in the magician world, but eventually he just got old. This sparks a conversation between Sam and Dean where they discuss if they'll still be doing what they do when they get old. Dean believes that they'll end the life either bloody or sad, though Sam is more optimistic and twinged with something he very clearly isn't telling Dean, but keeps denying. It's a very definitive moment in their relationship this season, Sam even trying to use Ruby's earlier parallel of cutting the head off of the snake and ending the threat at the source.

Dean reels Sam back to reality and sends him to tail Jay.

"I've heard of being well-hung, but this is ridiculous!"

Later at the hotel, as Jeb is wheeled out, Dean shows Sam the tarot card he found on Jeb: the hanged man. With Jeb and now Vance having been killed and both having insulted Jay before, the boys come to the conclusion that Jay is working black magic to both get his act going and to get rid of the douchebags he comes across. The boys bust into Jay's room and put him at gunpoint. However, it soon becomes clear to the boys that Jay has no idea what they're talking about.

Sam and Dean, being smart, tie Jay to a chair and then barely keep an eye on him as they try to figure out who worked the black magic. He naturally escapes. Because they're smart, they don't check the closet and Jay calls the cops to have them both arrested.

Jay later talks to Charlie and they laugh at how crazy the boys were. However, Jay is beginning to have doubts: Vance died the night he first performed the Table of Death, Jeb died the night that he performed the Executioner. Jay doubts that he should go out tonight. When Charlie protests, Jay lays it out for him: he was going to kill himself doing the Table of Death that night and he has no idea how he got out alive. Charlie insists that he has to go on, he hasn't seen Jay at his best like this in years and he needs to seize the moment. He can't throw it away. Jay seems convinced.

Another Table of Death is done, only this time it's Charlie who ends up getting the bad news after Jay has stepped out from behind the curtain. Jay is, needless to say, shaken by this. Sam and Dean return, Jay having dropped the charges. He wants to find out what is really going on. Someone has killed his friend, his brother, and he agrees to team up with the boys. When they finger Vernon as the culprit, Jay insists that that couldn't be the case - Vernon butted heads with Charlie, but he'd never do something like this. However, he's the only suspect that they have that fits the criteria.

Dean also dips into Buffy's well and compares magic to drugs - once someone gets a taste, they'll do surprising things to get another.

Jay gets Vernon down to the stage while Sam and Dean check his room. Vernon tells Jay that the head of the convention has given him the headlining gig. Jay doesn't want to go through with it after Charlie's death. Jay accuses Vernon of having killed Vance, Jeb, and Charlie and all for getting them back in their prime. However, a third party gets involved... Charlie, back from the dead and once more in the bloom of his youth at twenty-eight or so.

Upstairs, Dean finds a flier for a magic act that has a suspiciously Charlie-looking individual on it. A flier from several decades prior...

Charlie reveals the truth to his friends - he's older than both of them, having worked for the original P.T. Barnum, who gave him a grimoire. He discovered that the spells within worked and he's been using it ever since. Having been friends with Jay and Vernon for so long, he has decided to do something he's never done before: offer them immortality like he has enjoyed. While Vernon's seemingly onboard, Jay isn't and insists the entire thing is wrong.

Charlie tries to put up a good argument and does rather well, but Dean and Sam get involved quickly to move in for the kill. Sam and Dean are soon taken care of by some of Charlie's spells and it seems that all hope is lost... until Jay reveals that he snaked one of Charlie's tarot cards and has stabbed himself in the stomach, meaning Charlie receives the fatal wound. Charlie, shocked and betrayed, dies as Vernon looks on shaking his head in dismay.

After Charlie has died, Sam and Dean meet a sad and destitute Jay in the bar from the opener. They thank him for saving them, but Jay doesn't want their thanks. Charlie is dead and Vernon will no longer speak to him, meaning the only people he had in his life are now gone. When Dean tells him he did the right thing, Jay refutes that: Charlie had offered him a gift and he threw it back in his face, and now he'll be dying old and alone. Taking a swig of his drink, Jay turns to leave. The bartender picks his cards up from the table, and Jay tells her to throw them away.

Dean decides to get a beer while Sam insists he'll take a walk. Sam finds his way to a parked car where Ruby is waiting for him. He tells her that he's in, and she asks what changed his mind.

Sam tells her he doesn't want to be hunting when he's old. We end on that sad note as Ruby and Sam drive off into the night.

And that's Criss Angel is a Douchebag. Magic is something that I never felt Supernatural delved enough into, particularly in the earlier seasons, and that's a shame. Rather like barely using the Pagan Gods, there's a wealth of material there. In this case, as I mentioned earlier, dipping into Buffy's well by using magic as a metaphor for drug addiction.

Gee, I wonder if that will be relevant in any way this season...

Jay's story is an obvious parallel to Sam and Dean and a manifestation of Sam's fears of being a broken old man who could never leave hunting. Despite Sam's commitment in the beginning of Season 2 where he claimed to be all in on the hunting life, his desire for something normal hasn't really gone away yet and is now just more of a background element. But it's still there and it colors a lot of his actions as we head into back half of Season 4.

One critique I will make of the episode, however, is that the grimoire that Charlie received from Barnum never comes up again. Did Sam and Dean find and destroy it? Did Vernon somehow manage to get it? Did it just disappear into the mists? Never addressed. I guess it ultimately doesn't need to be addressed, but it's still notable for its absence when it was the driving engine of the conflict in the episode.

Bostwick gives a fantastic performance as Jay.

With that, however, we have come to the end of the Supernatural reviews for Horror Month 2024. We'll still be continuing with Season 4 and you won't have to wait until 2025 for it! Next time, it's time for Sam and Dean to pull a Rodney Dangerfield and go back to school.

Next time, it's an After-School Special!

Be there!