Supernatural - Episode 5.08 - Changing Channels - Recap Posted by Selina at Monday, November 09, 2009 View Comments Labels: Recaps, Supernatural

WOW. What an episode. This might be my favourite so far this season! For fear of sounding like a broken record, we've got a LOT to get into in this week's discussion - from fantasy to reality, from composition and generic conventions to foreshadowing and tone... this episode calls for some serious textual analysis guys, and also of course for some speculation, because this episode might just have given us all the answers we could ever have asked for.

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Cue: Laughter
First thing's first - what the hell went down this week? Well, the Trickster showed up again, ready to play with the boys some more. He sent them to TV land... channel surfing them, if you will - for our amusement, certainly, but also to allow for some exploration of characters and themes in Supernatural as we know it. It's interesting, the way television uses humour and/or the "other" in order to communicate strong messages about the "normal": look at Buffy, which needed a musical episode to bring all the unspoken character conflicts to the surface, or Roswell which (very similarly to this episode) made a sitcom episode to explore the problems in Isabel and Jesse's marriage. It goes all the way back to Moonlighting, where they needed to show the baby's perspective from inside the womb in order to get away with its miscarriage. Supernatural is the master of these special episodes of course, there's too many to even name but some key examples are: "Mystery Spot", "The Beginning" (and its Back to the Future emulation) "It's a Terrible Life" and "The Monster at the End of This Book". This episode might just be the strongest one yet, and as with all of SPN, the more ridiculous the plot, the more brilliant and poignant messages it will send.

As a Film and Television major, this episode appealed to all my analytical instincts, so I apologize for the heavy focus on style that this review will feature, but I promise to get to the textual analysis eventually. It's all important for the interpretation of this episode, seriously. Seriously? Seriously. So, this episode of course featured a blending of generic conventions (as all good postmodern television does), used very effectively to communicate the medical drama, sitcom, gameshow, commercial, and procedural cop show (and some car-buddy adventure I couldn't identify) atmospheres respectively. I'll look at those individually when discussing the different acts, but for now I want to just briefly mention the overall structure, which interestingly enough struck me as very movie-like. Usually in an episode of SPN we'll have the brothers going to a town, discovering a mystery, solving it, and leaving, but in this episode there was a very clear 3-act structure with the full monty of identifiers: establishing normalcy (going to a town as usual, discovering a supernatural cause of a crime as usual...) the Inciting Incident was there (meeting the Trickster), the Call to Action (when the Trickster tells them to play along), Commitment to Act (when they decide to play along) etc. etc. It was fascinating to watch as a film student. The final act of course, they've reached their goal: stabbing the Trickster... but as my scriptwriting lecturer says, raise the stakes! Turns out we're not dealing with the Trickster after all, but a frickin' arch-angel! Man, if only I could think of stories like this I'd be sweating far less about my final project.

But before we go on to the main confrontation and all the serious business, let's discuss the adventures Sam and Dean had in TV land!

1. Dr. Sexy M.D.
I'll come back to the sitcom later, even though it was technically the first mentioned, because chronologically this was the first show they entered into. Sooo what have we got here - the elevator. The melancholy plinky plonky music. The passionate doctors. The slaps. The sexy, yet earnest doctor at Seattle Mercy Hospital. Iiiit's Greys everybody!! Seriou---ok I'll stop doing that, cause it's annoying. This was probably my favourite of all the show styles they emulated, mainly cause I myself used to watch Grey's Anatomy but stopped because I got fed up with exactly the things that Supernatural here takes the liberty to mock. We've got some interesting things happening between the lines too though (no, not Dean's way inappropriate crush on Dr. Sexy... well, not just that), most remarkably Dr. Piccolo's description of Sam as a "brilliant coward", who is afraid to operate and love again after that girl died on his table. Isn't this... pretty much an accurate description of Sam, medical references aside? Ever since Jess (whom it was established earlier this season that Sam is still grieving over), Sam has been hesitant to love again (and can you blame him after Madison and Ruby?!), and he is definitely afraid to "operate" again, with the dark!side cloud hanging over his head and the fear that he'll fail - again. His decision to operate on Dean was partially to signify that he was playing the game, but I think it was also something deeper: he is ready to take that leap for Dean. It also of course might be significant that Sam was the first of the brothers to "play along". Foreshadowing? Uh-oh.

2. Nutcracker!
Wow, they don't play around on this show! A Japanese gameshow - oh boy, I'm so embarrassed by this, but I feel the situation calls for a confession: I have spent many a night sitting on my friend's floor, watching Hole in the Wall (original Japanese edition, of course... cause that makes it cooler) and laughing my ass off. THERE I SAID IT. On with the show! This show is of course in Japanese, and oh I just have to admire the set designers on how authentic all these "shows" looked, I mean SPN just doesn't do anything halfway does it? But Sam and Dean are up there...in the nutcracker... having to answer questions. And as with the previous scene, there is some serious symbolism and deeper significance to the lines that were delivered to them. Sam's question was: "What was the name of the demon you chose over your own brother?" Ouch. And also, OUCH! Surely that must be punishment enough already for the poor guy! Dean's question was, "Would your mother and father still be alive if your brother was never born?" which, holy crap, the Trickster means serious business doesn't he? Dean plays along, and answers in Japanese: yes. He doesn't know what he's answering, but the significance remains. Maybe to show that subconsciously, he believes this? The brothers don't understand the questions they are being asked - perhaps this reflects that they are unable to admit to this themselves? Also, for fear of sparking as much controversy as last week (honestly, Dean or Sam, who cares, it's all about BOBBY for me ;) no just kidding... kind of. Who could choose?! They're a team! Anyway), I just couldn't help but note that it was Sam, not Dean, who got hit with the nutcracker. Now, I would argue that in season 1, Dean would have been the one getting the physical beating for comic relief - are we seeing more role reversal? Yes, I know I'm being wayyy over-analytical, but guys, this is television and everything is significant!

Oh, and Castiel was there! But then he wasn't. Huh.

3. Genital Herpes commercial
Well, what can I say? It was probably the funniest bit of the episode. Again, poor Sam. Hilarious, poor Sam.

4. The sitcom
Do you think this was meant to represent any particular sitcom, or just a generic all-smiles-all-the-time show? The font in the opening credits (my favourite part of the episode by the way, it was just hilariously awkward and stupid and so sitcom-like, it was just too good to be true) reminded me of Full House, but the show seemed more like, I don't know... I don't watch a lot of generic sitcoms honestly, I mean I'll defend Friends till the end of the world but that's about it. So we've got the comically large sandwich, the nudges to the "live studio audience"... was I the only one who actually laughed when the tin laugh did? I hate that it actually works on me, I always laugh when they play the laugh! But then when we cut back to the sitcom, we know that Sam and Dean are only playing their parts, and are actually getting fed up with it. Castiel manages to break into the TV world again, bleeding this time, but the Trickster immediately shows up and banishes him - but not before Castiel reveals that he might not be a Trickster after all. Oooh. At this point I was just hoping he wouldn't turn out to be God, cause that would have been a bit of a downer seeing as how much I dislike him (the Trickster).

The Trickster reveals that he is in fact trying to prepare Sam and Dean for "playing their parts" as Michael and Lucifer. Celebrity Death-Match is what it is. He claims that he doesn't care which side wins, yet Dean manages to push his buttons and Mr. T finally shows some emotion. Hmmm.

CUT.

5. CSI: Kansas?
Haha, I gotta say I'm with Dean on this one, I hate procedural cop shows as well. But this scene was brilliant, with Sam and Dean really giving their all to the parts (ironically the parts that are probably closest to the parts they play every day, investigating mysteries and posing as FBI agents and such). "Well I say... jackpot." Good stuff.

Of course we also finally see the payoff to something we've been waiting for since season 2: the Trickster is finally stabbed! Woo-hoo, celebration time! I know I was dancing... yeah, I didn't realise there were another 10 minutes of the episode to go, okay, I'm easily fooled. Moving on.

6. Some car show... I wanna say Herbie?
Or should I say, "SAM-bie"? Hahahaaa... or not, whatever. So, Dean is riding Sam, that should make the fangirls happy. They stop, Dean, um, goes there, and they call for the Trickster ("Should I honk?"). Finally we get the big reveal: the Trickster is actually the arch-angel Gabriel, gone Pagan. And even though he sounds like a spoiled child, he actually makes good sense - he's sick of seeing his family kill each other, and just wants it to be over (anyone else think this was like Dean in "Croatoan", btw?).

Srs bsns tiem. Srsly.
So now we leave the TV land behind, and enter the final act, where all the tables are turned. Gabriel points out an interesting connection (I'm glad they spell these out for us, because despite my love of symbolism I can be so thick in picking up on the obvious ones sometimes): this isn't about a war, but about "two brothers who loved each other, and betrayed each other". Sam and Dean, their entire situation, was allegedly(!) manufactured, their relationship composed to reflect Michael and Lucifer's relationship: and older, righteous brother, and the younger one who went against the father. And now one brother must kill the other, and that's the way it has to be. It was always gonna end with the Winchesters. And this is both brilliant, and really depressing, so I don't know if I want this to actually play out. Because while I've always been against the vessel thing and I hope they somehow work around it, it does kind of tie everything in the show up in a nice little bow with a star on top, bringing it all back to the brothers even though the game has gotten far bigger than them. Yet again, what does it say about free will and the power of the everyman if everything comes to pass the way Gabriel has told us it would? It's like in Lost, I just can't see how it's going to end. It's brilliant.

But what I'd like to see is the Winchesters being the variable rather than the constant in this equation. Destiny has guided them this far, but they're headstrong individuals - and with finding God, it would be great to see humanity outsmart the angels and demons. I mean is the world really going to be destroyed at the end of the series? Possibly... but I hope it'll be saved. Maybe one brother will end up killing the other in the end, or maybe they'll die together, but they'll do it on their terms and not playing the Michael and Lucifer roles.

Well guys, I think that's about my word limit - sorry for the monster post, next review will be considerably shorter but there was just so much to say, and I still don't think I've said it all! Please share your thoughts about the episode and/or the review in the comments, and thanks for reading!

Aaaand SCENE.