1. Dean broke the first seal and Sam broke the last one without really knowing – they finally acknowledge it. It’s about time.
2. They’re still looking for the Colt. Dean, haven’t you just learnt the Colt is useless when you face Lucifer?
3. Supernatural is notorious for the amount of episodes about its own fandom. “Fallen Idols” is one of them, though it deals with fandoms other than the show’s own and the concept of fannish obsession in general.
4. Over with “mythological” episodes so far!
5. Thanks to the exposition featuring James Dean’s “Little Bastard” car, I expected a full-fledged cars-centered episode. Cars are a staple for the show, after all. No such luck this time.
6. The exposition black-humouredly satirizes the many people who idolize their cars – their beloved babies can literally kill, and not necessarily in accidents.
7. Dean, are you joking? Do you think it’s possible to have lost most of your “dynamic duo” synergetic competence in just a few weeks, when you had been building it up for years, so that now you need an easy case to get back into gear? Start it all over again? How un-Dean of you.
8. Sam feels like he’s “on probation” and yet can barely suppress his impatience for a major case. Why hurry, Sam? Don’t trouble trouble. Trust your big brother. Dean, having made a few spontaneous decisions that went bad, is now going to be very cautious and think before he leaps. He surely knows the methodology and technique. What did I tell you about teaching career, Mr. Winchester?
9. When Dean gets under “Little Bastard” to check her engine number, he practically heathenly invokes her not to harm him. For a car letting somebody check her belly must feel like getting under a girl’s skirt on a first date. But “Bastard” is a clever one, won’t she recognize the man who genuinely loves motors, that Dean sure is? The man who also shares name with her first owner? The Impala would never be so mean to people, she takes it from Dean. Hmm. If people and their cars share certain character similarities, does it mean James Dean was a dick?
10. Working together again is not without its perks, Dean, see? While your brother is slogging away at the computer, finding all of fake “Bastard”’s owners’ names, you can take your time in a bar, chatting up a naïve girl who thinks you’re a film producer.
11. There’s a hell of a lot we don’t yet know about these guys! Something new comes every day – first it’s pink panties, now it’s Sam speaking Spanish. Mucho loco, indeed.
12. How many laptops do you guys have, seriously?
13. Dean, are you a James Dean fan, too? You know everything about his car, and who else could recognize a blurry figure of his ghost in this footage? It’s good “Little Bastard” had already had her share of fan blood.
14. It’s interesting how a person’s possessions (for example, a car, a hat, glasses) can contain the spirit/ghost of their former owner. Like, metonymy. Cf. “It’s a Terrible Life”, where they had to find and burn the gloves that belonged to their owner to dispose of his evil ghost.
15. Another fairytale nightmare – wax figures coming alive.
16. Like any fandom-focused episode, “Fallen Idols” is full of meta references: (a) two teen idols, past and present, James Dean and Paris Hilton, make cameo appearances; (b) the boys investigate a wax figures museum – and then mention the film “House Of Wax” where both JP and Miss Hilton starred; (c) jokes about “Us Weekly”/Penthouse Forum.
17. Sam admires Gandhi, the great politician and humanitarian. Add to the character profile.
18. AT A TANGENT: I’ll be waiting for some time in the future, when somebody in a movie or TV show, faking FBI or the police, would introduce themselves as “Agent Ackles, Agent Padalecki”. Supernatural references so much culture, why not other shows and films reference Supernatural yet?
19. Ghosts of people are like shadows, only they are independent and wayyywaaard.
20. Dear show, did you run out of American/Western European monsters so that now you employ a Slavic one (“the Leshii”, no less)? Nice to all us Eastern European fans. Could this creature really take on the form of famous people, though? Merely by touching their possessions? Is it that hungry? I mean, how loosely do you interpret the genuine folklore and mythology?
21. Pop culture is modern folklore. Then Paris Hilton is an archetype?
22. Season 4 lacked this focus on folklore and low mythology. This particular episode is old-SPN-school heavy on folkloric references, though. And the monster in it highlights Dean’s issue – his everlasting admiration of his father. Honestly, this episode would have looked great in Seasons 1 or 2. A pleasant flashback.
23. Show, if you had made Dean a Paris Hilton fan, fan girls would have despised you.
24. The monster-come-idols wants to literally eat his/her fans. It’s literally hungry – a metaphor of celebrities feeding on other people’s adoration? It’s a funny and clever inversion of the normal order – usually fans want to molest and eat their idols alive, fans’ lives get wrapped around and swallowed up by these of their idols. It happens to us fans while we breathlessly watch and recap Supernatural. It’s happening right now. Meta moment to end all meta moments. But idols strike back! Everyone who’s at least a bit famous should relate to this episode.
25. It’s telling that Paris Hilton’s fans in the episode are girls, not guys. She’s far too rich and high society for most men not to feel inferior at her presence, so small wonder men won’t idolize such a woman, while girls will, as they see in her an inspiring role model. Dean, being an outcast, can only form relationships with women who are also different from most in this or that way (and so does Sam), hence his disgust of Paris.
26. Also, Paris Hilton is not that beautiful, either. Not a blonde bombshell, exactly. She emerges as some modern philosopher here, telling Dean people used to have religion, but now they have “Us Weekly” instead. Literally, us (=idols) weekly. It’s very obvious, but Supernatural needed to have its own take on the fans/idols romance.
27. Dean prefers Penthouse Forum to “Us Weekly”? Don’t sell yourself short, Dean, we know how you like serious books. You just hide it because it’s so unmanly, and may hurt Sam’s celebrated geekiness, right?
28. Monster-as-Paris wants Dean for dinner, and for that she only has to touch Dad’s axe the boys brought to kill her with, then, in one touch, turn into John whom Dean idolized, but, surely, Dean won’t let anybody mess with his father’s memory. A great missed opportunity for a perfectly mythological father-munching-up-his-son/Freudian son-killing-his-father action. Frankly, maybe it would have taken the burden off Dean’s mind to destroy this monster in his Dad’s disguise. I mean, he could have made up for all the bitterness John caused him to suffer by metaphorically finishing him off. But no, father is a sacred figure for Dean.
29. Dean still idolizes his Dad. Period.
29. “Paris
30. “Dude, you just got wailed on by Paris Hilton”. Yeah, Sam, now you have one more in-joke to tease Dean with.
31. Dean suggests Sam should drive the Impala and tosses him the car keys. It’s Dean’s way to show Sam his trust and approval. Sam is pleasantly amused. In 5.02, Dean offered him the car as well, but Sam wouldn’t take it because back then they openly admitted they didn’t trust each other and oneselves and couldn’t help it, so it was Sam’s way to declare himself unreliable. But it’s over now.
32. You know what, boys? You scared the hell out of all these fan girls who idolize you. What if they go out, and get molested by a Balkanian monster in your disguise? It’s hot as a sexual fantasy, sure, but… for real? Oh wait… you had killed the monster, hadn’t you? Anyway, that was a nice lesson taught, a friggin’ warning. We hereby swear to try and get a life.
No comments:
Post a Comment